Episode 220 of Mastering Dungeons! Main topic: Listener Question Mega-Show! What do we do when we have tons of listener questions? Shawn and Teos dedicate the main segment to answering some truly awesome questions. Find out why this was the most fun we’ve had in months! News: Moonbeam Launches Alpha, New Maps Features, D&D Immersive Quest, and more! Contents 00:00 Bad Movie Season 02:14 Maps Adds Monster Stats 10:18 D&D Immersive Quest 14:11 D&D Adventurer Magazine 15:53 Licensing and WotC 18:05 Mearls on Death Saves 39:02 Jail-Compliant RPGs 40:54 One Foot in Fairy Land 42:47 Moonbeam Launches Alpha 44:34 Listener Questions 45:29 Improv Anxiety? 49:39 Player vs Character Skill? 01:02:12 Find Playtesters? 01:07:36 Easy RPG Entry Point? 01:18:46 Tricks for Creativity? 01:25:14 Shout-Outs Thank you for listening! Get the full show notes with links on Patreon. Show Search Engine: https://mdsearch.alphastream.org/ Our intro and outro music is Metropolis Fanfare, provided royalty-free by Tabletop Audio (https://tabletopaudio.com) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). MP3 file metadata populated with Online MP3 Podcast Chapter Editor, built by Dominik Peters. https://mp3chapters.github.io/ and customized for Mastering Dungeons by Vladimir Prenner from Croatia.
hello and welcome to this week's episode of mastering dungeons your favorite tabletop role-playing game news and reviews and and game design and all the stuff i am old man merwin here with less old man teos abadia hey teos welcome to the middle of december
yes i have succeeded at being on a ladder and putting up lights i felled a christmas tree uh right after a family member said that uh well i guess we'll wait for you to cut that tree and i was like watch this and i sawed through that thing with dad powered ire in just seconds it was great and uh yeah we held the christmas tree it snowed and we saw a rainbow all while getting a christmas tree if that isn't that's
That's pretty impressive. That's pretty impressive. Last year, I used the Snowblower maybe once. I don't even know if I used it once last year. This year, I used it three times in one day and probably eight times over the last two weeks because the lake effect snow here has been brutal, as it often is.
We usually just get the edge of it because the real snow belt is just to the north of us, but it creeped down and we got absolutely hammered by it. Now it's 45 degrees. Everything's melting. But I'm sure we've got another batch just waiting for us.
I hope all the bad holiday movies are making up for that.
Yes. Yes. Speaking of bad holiday movies. Yeah. No, not speaking about Hollywood. So what we are going to do this week is since we got a deluge of questions and comments from our listeners, we're going to do a main segment today of all the back listener questions and comments that we can.
So we are going to now just jump right directly into the news this week because there's a there's a fair bit to talk about. Yeah. And we're going to start right away with D&D Beyond adding some stuff, some functionality, if you will, to their Maps tabletop. And the things they've added.
The official D&D Virtual Tabletop, according to one of their recent advertising emails. That was awesome.
It is very strange that the maps team, maybe with blessing, maybe not, keeps talking about it as the official VTT of D&D, of Wizards of the Coast, of Dungeons and Dragons. And Taos and I are sitting there wondering, well, what is the 3D? virtual tabletop then? Is that the unofficial? Is it the secondary? Is it something else completely? We don't know.
But we do know that if you use maps, you can now do a few more things. You can track monster hit points and see their stat blocks directly in the virtual tabletop as part of the initiative order list. So what did this say to you, Teos? What did you think when you heard the news?
Yeah, it's cool. I mean, I'm impressed at how much they keep kind of rolling this out, right? We'd heard some rumors that maybe there was something that existed from, you know, before the acquisition of D&D Beyond even that was out there, a virtual tabletop they'd begun work on. But
they have you know come out with a solid initial release and then added things and it's easy to say oh man hit point tracking like my other virtual tabletop does that and sure but this started as something you know really light and more like owlboy rodeo and they keep adding to it and integrating which is nice so here when you now add a monster it'll pull its stat block across and it collapses nicely so you can kind of hide all that and just see the name of the monster in the initiative order or you can show more and more of the of the um
the stat block and you actually can click on like the attacks and the um uh you can click on skills you can click on things like that to roll the dice behind it right if it says d10 plus five is the damage roll you can click on that and off it goes and rolls it And that's really cool because before this, you had to do that over on something else, right?
Like in through the plug in that allows D&D Beyond to integrate with like Roll20 or you could do it with being in Discord, right? But you had to kind of move it across that way. Now you can do it directly there. And for hit points, you can just kind of subtract how much it's taken or state what the current value is. But you also can customize the max value, which is kind of a nice handy thing.
So you're able to kind of state this monster has this many hit points to begin with, and it's taken this many and just kind of track that as you go, which is very cool.
Yeah. Every time a new release comes out where they add a new feature, two things happen. The first thing is I tell myself, OK, I'm going to run a game with this, even if it's just an hour. I just want to see how it works, because Because the second thing I feel is, please don't put any more functionality in.
I don't want any more functionality because the reason I don't use other VTTs is because I don't want to learn them and I don't want to go through even the slightest hassle of connecting one thing to another or having to go into a setting to change for this reason or that reason.
So as these new features come out, I want them to be not necessarily optional, but I don't want them to add complexity to what I need to do to be able to run a game.
Yep. Yeah.
You want to slap tokens on there, move them, do the simple stuff. It sounds like this is that. It sounds like you're not having to connect anything. You're not having to do any background programming or even too much just using the interface, but you're already doing the thing and it's just adding this functionality without making you work any harder.
Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's still really in a nice sweet spot. And, you know, we joked about this before, but, you know, when you create a company and you kind of assign departments and you're creating teams and you're giving people different colored shirts.
And so when you say the D&D Beyond pillar and you say the virtual tabletop digital pillar, I forget the name of it, you know, like when you put people in different groups. they will do different things. And you, you know, if I were there or if I were advising somebody, if anybody's listening and you want a guy, you know, in the peanut gallery, here I am. You know, what I would say is,
The D&D virtual tabletop that is the 3D version sounds really complex, and maybe that's what it should be, right? A super complex, super amazing thing that you spend the time and you get the payoff of all that investment. Maps should be the opposite, right? The light, really easy thing. And if that's the way these pillars kind of shape up, I think they could both really coexist nicely.
You want something super simple. Maps has your back and it's easy integration and all that. If you start to get to that complexity, but you're not getting that absurd payoff that the virtual tabletop is promising, then that's where I think you're fighting each other rather than helping each other out.
Yeah. And here's where I wonder, because it's just in the DNA of sort of the business folks to want to add features, to want to add functionality, and then want to charge more for it. And right now I get maps free because I'm a subscriber. It's an additional thing. I was already subscribed. It was given to me free.
So the moment they, A, raise the subscription price because of maps, or B, you're right, start adding so much functionality, as I said before, what I would be okay with is there will be this basic maps there. If you're a subscriber, you get it. We're going to put out a version that you pay for that has these additional features that will let them then start to compete
on a more equal level with some of the other virtual tabletops like World 20 and Fantasy Grounds, et cetera, et cetera. And you want to use this an extra whatever a month, right? Extra $2 a month, you get the advanced maps that we're coming out with. But don't do what business people always try to do because it never works out in the end.
And we know all about the crapification of things that we like and things that are good in an effort to make more money end up becoming less usable, less friendly, and in the end end up dying a death.
And I always think that the funny thing is, is all companies and I work with a lot of companies on like interface type stuff around environmental compliance. But on the interface side of things, one thing that companies always forget is they always have a plethora of people in the office that don't actually use the product.
At any point, you can show those people a product and say, this makes sense. And they never do that. They never actually ask these. They've got a number of people that could just say, hey, take this for a spin and tell me what you think. And they never do. Right.
Because when you do that, that's where you see the basics that you can shave that time of coming up to speed, making it awesome, reinforce the things that work well. Right. Instead of just getting lost in features. So I know you've had those experiences, too.
Yeah, you've got to put that MBA to use and make the plan rather than actually doing the due diligence and learning about your product.
Yeah, because that's what will make people really, really enjoy it. So, so far, so good. Good, good stuff on the D&D Beyond side so far.
Yep, keep it up, maps. And also keep it up, D&D, the immersive quest. I learned about this because one of my friends in Canada said, hey, they've got this thing going on up here in Toronto. It sounds pretty cool. It's a D&D immersive experience. And it's going to be running. It already came out starting December 11th, running for several months.
And what you do is you form a party and become a rogue, a druid, a fighter, or a wizard. And then you go through this sort of immersive quest. And it's not 100% clear what exactly you do. Mm-hmm. If it's like an escape room type of thing or a true dungeon kind of thing or just an experience like walking through and seeing art and interactive exhibits.
What really got me interested was then after I'd heard about it and said, oh, that's cool. We should definitely do that. is that Philippe Antoine Menard, Chatty DM, said that he had left, who makes Assassin's Creed? Ubisoft. He left Ubisoft to start or get in on this new project. And this is the project that he was working on. That's awesome.
So he announced that he had been or is either the main designer or one of the main designers on this experience. What else did you learn about as you read about this, Teos?
Yeah, and it sounds like it has ended up with this sort of like immersive escape room-y type angle, right? So you form a party, you choose whether you're a rogue, druid, fighter, or wizard, and you explore a mysterious dungeon, starting with the Yawning Portal Tavern as a kind of getting started point.
then you go into this mysterious dungeon you encounter iconic creatures there was art of a beholder you gather experience points so you're clearly doing something to kind of get rewarded and then you face a final epic confrontation and that takes about an hour it said in the faq
And then you get to hang out as long as you want in the bustling, water-deep market and enjoy D&D-themed drinks and food. So we've got a LinkedIn announcement from Chatty DM. And then we have the events page where you can sign up. And it's already open, so you can go there now if you're in the Toronto area or can get there. It's www.vibrantstudios.events.en.dndimmersive. Looks great.
I'd love to be able to do that.
Yep, so here's the twofer that you need to do, folks. Are you ready for this? There is a D&D exhibit at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. I mean, it's a great museum on its own. It's got the Toy Hall of Fame, it's got the Video Game Hall of Fame, where you can play old video games, look at old toys, see this amazing collection, great for kids if you've got kids.
So Rochester's about an hour from Buffalo. Toronto is about an hour from Buffalo. So what you do is you plan a day of it, assuming you can cross the border, and just do both. Get your full D&D thing going. And that's what I hope to do over the next few weeks, because the D&D exhibit at the Strong Museum may close in like February or March. So you're running out of time a little bit on that.
Yeah, and this immersive experience said it would run for several months. So I didn't see an actual end date, but it may depend on kind of how well it does. So go there, show your love if you can, and I'm sure you'll have a blast.
And it's interesting because they use D&D, right? They use Dungeons & Dragons. They use that, which tells me that this is a licensed... Yeah, they use the Yawning Portal Tavern. They use Waterdeep Market. So this is a licensed thing that Wizards of the Coast is behind to a greater or lesser extent.
And, you know, this is not in our show notes, but I recently thought I had meant to include in show notes, which is that the we talked about that D&D magazine in the UK that has had a number of issues and you get kind of fun things with it. It's a format that's used for a lot of products.
And I guess typically what's done with these kinds of things, it's a certain number of issues that that go out in this magazine. So it's reached the end of its run. And one of our supporters, Richard Green, who is an amazing designer, works a lot with Kobold Press, does his own world. He has been working on this. Will Doyle, who also supports our show, has been working on it.
And and I even got to see an issue which was flump featured flumps. That's fantastic. And so I got to see how good this is and what was awesome. This is where it ties in is with license things. It was very interesting to me when I opened up the credits page. Sure, it thanked, you know, Richard and others who'd been involved. But it had so James Hake is the editor. Right. Works with Ghostfire.
And then it had a number of WOTC staff mentioned from sort of layout art marketing kind of effort. So it wasn't just licensed, but kind of like actually using the time of wizard staff as a sort of collaboration, which I didn't even think.
conceive of dnd sort of doing that kind of arrangement i thought that was really cool and sort of surprising because you don't hear wizards talking about this a lot maybe there is some promotion going on in the uk but i thought that was fascinating and so i wanted to share that but also say congratulations to richard green on an amazing run of that magazine yeah and i feel like that's i feel like since we're off on a little bit of a tangent let's continue uh that is one of the things that is interesting about
d and d and its relationship to wizards and its relationship to hasbro is that you know people groups companies may want to license it out for various reasons you may want to license d and d because you want to make d and d baloney and you likely don't need a great deal of work from wizards of the coast on that yeah uh however if you want to make something like this magazine
then it becomes a careful negotiation of, you're not just licensing our name and our IP, you are requiring us to do a lot of work on our end, both through the business side, the marketing side, the design side, right, like you said. And so sometimes, in my case once, Wizards reached out to me to work on a product that I thought was a product for them, but it was really a product for someone else.
And that was this book. Oh, yeah, yeah. The World Builder's Journal of Legendary Adventures. And so this was a third-party product that was licensed through Wizards, but Wizards also supplied the content, or at least some of the content for the book. So when you see these third-party products and go, that's not Wizards, why should I bother getting it? It's not official.
It might be more official than you think.
And that's a good point.
So just be aware of, and on the working side, there's opportunities out there if you are an expert in the rules, if you're an expert in a particular area, to find these opportunities where you're not doing the licensing yourself, but the licensee or the licensor needs some expertise to fulfill this product's goals. That's really cool.
That's a great point. Awesome.
Mike Merles has a Patreon where he discusses alternative D&D design approaches. His most recent Patreon output talks about death saves. He gives an example of a recent proposal for a new approach to death saves and exhaustion. How did Mike go about this one, Tejas?
Yeah, he has a nice conversational style in these posts. So he kind of frames the concept and sort of says like, you know, I've always hated exhaustion. This is what he says, right? I've hated exhaustion, but I really like death saves. And so what can we do to kind of like try to join the two and sort of solve the problem at hand?
And then he kind of speaks to you and says, hey, I'm going to ask you the following questions. And these questions are great because it does get you thinking a lot about what he's talking about. Also, because, you know, he has said he plans to put out an RPG at some point. Right. So he's actually actively constructing this and thinking through opportunities.
But the questions he asks are what penalties should come with failed death saves? How many death failed death saves are enough? And then he says, I also stripped out the three saves and you are stabilized rule simply because I like the threat of death requiring active intervention by other PCs. Right. So you're not just going to do it on your own to stop rolling. Is that a good idea or a bad idea?
Mike asks.
Yeah, these these are great questions. And this is a great way to come up with your design. It's it's not.
let me start with what's there and sometimes when as a designer you go out and you start asking these questions people will use the current rules as as etched in stone and therefore their answers are always going to be well i like how it works now so the answer is whatever it is yeah and the the whole reason for asking these questions and the whole reason for designing
new rules is to put all of that aside and say, forget that there is a three death save and then you're dead. Forget right now that there are no penalties that come with a failed death save except getting closer to death. what could we do to make the experience more fun if we changed this and started asking questions? And I would go even further and say, do we even need death saves?
But Mike's already said, I like death saves. So I am going to keep that in there. So let's move forward from this point. And at some point in your design, you also need to do that. You need to start from a foundation and put down the bedrock that you're going to build the rest of this on.
That's a really nice point though, Sean, that a lot of times when we're designing, because we're being so thoughtful and we're engineering something and creating something, we can speak about it like it's the new law and like it is now sacrosanct and real and firm when it's anything but that, right? We're still at play testing.
We're still in the rough stages and we should pose it more as questions and invite others to poke holes on it rather than building it up on a defended stance. Yeah.
Okay, so what did Mike come up with for some of his thoughts in this?
Yeah, so he says, you know, when your hit points reach zero, you're unconscious and dying, all right? When you become unconscious, everything, all effects, spells, features you control immediately end. You're no longer an enemy or ally for any effects, can't use actions or reactions, so that kind of baseline stuff.
When your hit points reach zero and you start dying, at the start of each of your turns while you're dying, so same as current in 2024, 2014, You have to make a death save. You must also make a death save each time you take further damage while dying. So that part is still there, which I think is interesting. To make a death save, roll a d20.
If you roll less than 10, you suffer a failed death save. Otherwise, you forestall death for a moment. A death save is a special saving throw. Normal modifiers don't apply unless it specifically says it does. So here's what happens on the table of failed death saves. One failed, nothing. Two, nothing. Three, treat your bloodied hit points, your half hit point mark, as your maximum hit points.
Four failed saves, death.
Interesting.
So, okay. Lots of things there.
So, the first thing I'm going to say is... Are we going to critique this right now? Are we going to do this live?
Are we doing a live test? It's up to you. Do you want to hear the rest of it first? Do you want to think now? Like, I'm open.
I want to talk about it one step at a time. Yeah, go for it. Because... I like it. Without knowing the full set of rules that go with it.
Yes.
I just... love mike appreciate all mike's work we're having a designer conversation oh yeah yeah yeah if it if you can no longer count as an enemy or an ally for any effects that requires a redesign of many many things in the system like healing spells maybe but you're still creature it depends
right like like powers that a paladin might have of right if you're right uh you can lay on hands on an ally right if i don't know that it says that right right sure there are things in the game right now that say that yeah i love this i played with this idea of ally for a transformation that we're doing for ghostfire gaming
Whereas what are some of the bad effects of you having this transformation? One of them is you cannot be considered an ally to anyone because of this horrendous mental and physical transformation that's taking place. So I love the idea of playing with it. You just need to look at the ramifications of all of this.
So it's fine to say that none of these effects that affect an ally or an enemy are going to affect you. But then you literally need to go through every single power, every single spell of the rest of your game and make it a thing still or get rid of it completely. And so you have to be very, very careful right there. And then in the storytelling of the game,
while you're dying not to like it almost seems like the cage comes down around you the way this is being described uh all duration of all effects spells and features that you control okay that i can see maybe um Okay. Again, you have to go back and you have to look at what that actually means with all the spells that you could cast, all the effects that you can take.
If you summon something that's supposed to be there for an hour, does that count as a duration? Right. It's it's you're starting to get into territory where you need to really, really think that through.
Yeah, you'd have to. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The thing I so I did think about that ally aspect, but I sort of discounted as this is early enough that, you know, I'm sure Michael go back and check on this because he's more than a competent designer. But you're right. It's a thing that you have to ask yourself, am I causing trouble by adding this? And what's the benefit of adding this?
no ally no enemy thing and maybe he's going to dig in a lot more into that sort of rules angle elsewhere in the game and therefore this makes sense but you have to do that due diligence and go through everything to make sure it still works um yeah
it's also interesting the kind of all these features you end i was trying to remember where in 2024 5e it tells you that all that happens the only thing i see is being incapacitated your concentration is broken and maybe that's how they're sort of covering all of it so here you're kind of stating this and sometimes in stating it that's also you've got to look through all this like
features you control. So if it's a feature you don't control, it's still active. Someone else put it on you, that's okay. You know, you have to think through these things. The failed death saves is interesting, right? So the very clear thing is three failed saves was death. Now you get an extra layer, right? The third one is now half hit points.
So here, you know, and then you're kind of like, well, why does that matter, right? And most battles with this even matter. Well, it's going to matter because, spoiler, Your failed death saves don't reset after an encounter. You're going to carry them forward. So that's why this is happening. And just at this point, what I immediately thought was.
But taking damage when you are dying advances this track still. And I don't know for sure I'd have to play test and find out, but I would probably take that out because my that is the number one thing that I see that actually kills a character. is you have a death save, you take damage from a couple of sources, and you're out. You're done, right?
And that's the biggest problem, is just multiple sources of damage. That's very easy to happen, and if this track never resets, you know, being down and taking another point of damage, you're just, you know, two combats and you could be out of there. But, but that assumes that you're even going down in the first place and getting characters to go unconscious can be rare.
As, as I think you said recently, so rare that, uh, people will say that their character's dead when they're unconscious, right? Because, right. Yeah.
It, it,
Right now, this is a game. So right now, the truly tactical gamer will see one of their party members go down and it will just become a decision tree, right? It will become a decision tree of one extra person down means one less person doing damage, one less person soaking up damage unless the game master is going to attack a fallen foe.
we know that they have three turns, generally at least, with which to go. So you start doing this cost-benefit analysis. And what I would love, and I don't know, I'd have to think very strongly about this, what I would love to see is something where that cost-benefit analysis becomes less black and white. Where it
you don't know what the best thing to do because it's a little more random, because there's a little more in there. So in essence, I would love to see an effect for each failed death save. The first effect being slight, the second effect being a little more, the third effect being maybe what's there.
Because that then adds just one more lever that it's harder for the tactician to say, well, it's clearly better right now to let the person stay down and for me to cast the spell.
Right, so hearing what you're saying, this third failed death save that makes your hit points halved, that's actually pretty severe when you realize it continues past the encounter, right? Yes. That's like being hit by, you know, one of these life drain undead. Yeah. And the rest of the, you know, day is going to be like that. That's severe, right?
You're now talking that every combat, if you go down, going down now becomes you don't actually want that third failed save. It won't kill you, but it will severely impact you for the end unless you can change that. Let's let's read the rest of these rules of your game. Yeah, go ahead. So or at least or at least take the next step. Yeah.
Go for it. Yep. So recovery. As soon as you receive one or more hit points of healing, you are no longer dying and unconscious. However, you still suffer the effects of your failed death saves, if any. If you take enough damage to become dying again, you still count your prior failed death saves. So it's almost like a separate track that you're on and you stay on that track. Stabilize.
You can use an action to make a DC 10 intelligence medicine check to stabilize a dying creature. Stabilized creature automatically succeeds on death saves until they take any more damage. Then it starts dying once more. If it received any healing, it recovers as described above. So stabilizing a creature, let me think this through.
Stabilize the creature automatically exceeds that saves until it takes any more damage, so you're not conscious right, but you're not dying You're not rolling you can't go forward, so it's a nice way to keep someone from going from you know one to three for example Okay, but if they take more damage now they And one thing that's not clear so you know you're so you're stable you take damage and
Do I immediately roll a failed death save, or am I now back in the state where I make failed death saves?
Right, right.
I think I know what Mike wants, but... Yeah, I assume you would make a death save at the start of your turn. That would have to be spelled out, but I assume that's when you would make it, not whenever you take damage.
Let's see. Well, dying is when you are at zero hit points. Yeah, stabilize needs to tell you whether you are no longer dying, but are on, you know, like something like that. So there's a little piece to work out there to make sure you know that. Yeah. All right. So how do you how do you remove a failed death save? Yes.
While you are at your maximum hit points, you remove one failed death save and its effects after a long rest. Note that in the case of having two failed death saves, your maximum hit points are then restored to normal, requiring more healing to reach your maximum and then remove more failed death save.
A little quickly written, but I guess the point is, so if you're at bloodied hit points because you're at failed death save, you have to first get to that total. then remove your failed death save. Now get to your maximum hit points and now remove those other ones is what I'm reading.
Yeah.
Fair bet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It needed to be said because otherwise you'd be asking, all right, I took a long rest. Do I remove that and then automatically get all my hit points back? And he's saying no. Yeah, and that's rough, right?
Because it means that you would need two long rests to be fully out if you had just two failed, just three failed death saves, I should say. So you have three failed death saves. Yeah. Yeah. So three failed death saves. You would have to first heal yourself. Someone have to heal you to your max bloodied HP. Your bloodied max. If you're not already there. Yep. Your bloodied max. Yeah.
Now you got to take a long rest to cure that level. Now someone has to heal you to full and then you can cure the other two levels. Yep. Well, actually, each long rest is only one failed death save removed. So that's a lot of days.
Right. That's interesting. If you're at three, that's three days of long rests. And now we would also want Mike to tell us what a long rest is, how many you could take. Because that plays into this. If you can take three long rests in a day, eight hours, eight hours, eight hours, then that's one thing.
And all of this goes away if like wrestler restoration removes all this or something, right? And it becomes a totally different equation where now you must have a cleric or if you do have a cleric, it's one way to play. And if you don't, it's another way. Yeah.
Now what about things like starvation, drowning, or extreme temperatures?
Yeah, so this is the last part is most effects that grant exhaustion now grant failed death saves. There are likely exceptions that I need to work around, Mike writes, but the intent is to replace exhaustion levels with failed death saves.
So, you know, you're traversing through the wilderness and there is this situation that would, you know, you failed some check and you're going to get a level of exhaustion. Well, really what you're doing is getting a failed death save.
I don't know whether you get to make that saving throw to see whether you get the level or do you get the level because you already failed to check, you know, like I failed against the avalanche. Do I gain a failed death save or do I make a death save to see if I get worse? Right. Not quite clear, but but it's an interesting effect. What do you think of this?
I like it. If you're going to get rid of exhaustion but still want to have exhaustion-like effects, I like what Mike is thinking. I like the direction in which he's thinking. And that's another reason why I would add some small effect after one and two failed death saves. So you could
have a consequence for taking a failed death save when you are exhausted, when you are in need of hydration or in need of food or traveling through the desert and succumbing to the heat in some way.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I always struggle with exhaustion and making you less capable of in a game that's all about you being capable, um, is, is rough and, and it, it can turn players off of interacting, uh, or make them feel like everything has become a slog and it is an uphill battle in a non fun way. Right. And so, so I'm always conscious of that.
I, I, I, you know, I would want to play test this and I'm sure Mike will as it is with the
premise that i would want more than four failed death saves on this track and probably no effect for the first one but something minor for a second and either third or fourth that gets inserted in between either before or after three i'd probably want a new three or a new four just to make it a little long so that these exhaustion things can work and because i just worry that in many
If we're talking about three days worth of play, you know, if you're having the one encounter per day and you're doing a hard or like a very deadly type hard encounter to challenge characters, well, those death saves might kind of add up effect wise.
if you're in a dungeon it could be brutal right where you have lots and lots of opportunities and you're going through all those things with say half hit points right that going down becomes really tough like level three becomes giantly a problem right you have half your hit points that's twice the opportunity to go unconscious compared to before and yeah
Yeah, both of those points are well taken. You would need effects that don't do what exhaustion did or currently does, because you're right. Now, I think players would be more accepting of half hit points, right? Half your bloodied level is your maximum, because that's not something that is stopping them or affecting their play role by role. You're right.
I super agree with that. And the DM is happy, right? Because now you can threaten more easily versus so many times you can't. Even the paladin with the, you know, absurd, the paladin who's multiclassed and has shield and the absurd AC is now closer to being vulnerable and actually enjoy some fun for the DM. Yep, yep.
So interesting all around there. We will continue to keep an eye on Mike's Patreon and see what else he discusses as he moves forward. We have news about a jail-compliant free role-playing game. If you've listened to the show before, you've heard us talk about a story that talked about
People in jail wanting to play role-playing games but not being allowed to, sometimes because of the mechanics being problematic, sometimes because of the content being problematic. Gambling is often not allowed, so things like dice aren't allowed. So, this new game from Bull Press has been offered to position themselves as a conversational game.
What did you learn about this, Teos, in this article?
It's really impressive. So, the website states, quote, free does not mean low effort. We put thousands of collective hours into these games. They are free because we are idealists, which I appreciate. They have a variety of RPGs available, all for free. There is a printable spinner that's provided instead of dice.
So you can use like one of those like brass fasteners that you twist the kind of bottoms and other side. And then you can rotate these dials, these circular dials on flat paper and determine outcomes that way. So most of the books kind of have that as part of it.
Bull Press will cover all costs and will respond to requests sending printed books complying with prison codes directly to those facilities. Cool.
Yep. And this news came to us via Keith Ammon, who spotted a post on Blue Sky that discussed the soundness of the design behind their role-playing game.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it was talking about the Illidulf game, which is one of their many there that they have.
Okay, cool. So there's a link in our show notes to that Blue Sky article that leads on to the rest of the content. And speaking of Keith Ammon... He is a friend of the show and supporter of the show, and he has a new blog called One Foot in Fairyland. So Keith, of course, you know from The Monsters Know What They're Doing. And so this is something new from Keith.
What did you take from this article, Teos?
Yeah, it's pretty neat. So he has a two part series that he actually shared part of it on our Discord first and was conversing about sort of what he wanted to do with it with a second blog. So he compares the same character. I believe it's his wife's character that had to go through converting, I think, from 2014 to 2024.
And noting how the concept behind the character to just change it from 2014 to 2024 significantly changes the character itself and makes it hard to be exactly what that personality was. So he got into like, well, how do other systems transform the concept? And how do I like, for example, in Shadow Dark, where I'm all about my glaive, but Shadow Dark doesn't have glaive as a weapon.
OK, well, I can call it this, but does that impact my play? And, you know, when I go into Cypher system and now I've got to come up with different mechanics and explain what I am or how do I capture that concept and then even Pathfinder. So it's really interesting to look through this. It's actually quite fascinating and speaks to really kind of key design concepts that change out a character.
I liked it.
Yep. So, yeah, that's interesting. And we've got a link up in the show notes, but this is Keith's alternate blog from the Monsters Know What They're Doing called One Foot in Fairyland. So you can see that at onefootinfairyland.com. And now to our creator corner, we have the news that Moonbeam has launched its streaming platform.
We announced this when it was first talked about, but now it is up and available. Moonbeam is a streaming platform and a community hub focused on the TTRPG hobby. The service launched in its alpha form where creators can stream their video creations, whether it's actual plays, how-tos, or whatever you are looking to stream. There's an app now also for iOS and Android.
And in a video last week, our friend of the show, Anthony Joyce Rivera, covered how to stream on the platform. So if you're interested, there's a link in our show notes to the YouTube video where where Anthony does that. They support creators streaming to all platforms in addition to streaming through Moonbeam itself.
So you can also go to alpha.moonbeam.stream or go to the YouTube video of Anthony showing how.
Yeah, and it's open to folks who have alpha access, some creators and folks who backed their crowdfunding. And you may recall, we talked about this before, like a number of companies were part of that crowdfunding effort and working together to fund the whole platform. And so you can find what those companies are doing there as well. But it's neat to start seeing this coming along.
It is, of course, a very, very tough thing to take on YouTube. And there are a number of groups who try. It is difficult to take on Twitch or any of these. But that focus on our hobby space is something kind of unique and interesting. And so we'll look forward to seeing how this progresses.
This week in our main segment here on Mastering Dungeons, we are going to do a listener question catch up where we take in all of these questions that we have been piling up that we only get to two or three a week. We're going to go and we're going to dig in and we're going to answer some questions. So first of all, thank you for being a listener.
If you want to talk with us, you can chat with us via our Patreon Discord. You can leave comments on the YouTube channel. We are on Mastodon. We're on Blue Sky. We're here in the meet space as well. So if you see us at conventions, sidle up and say hi. Well, you can also email us, believe it or not, because we have a masteringdnd at gmail.com email address that you can send your questions to.
So here we go. We're going to dive in, starting with Christopher O'Neill 77 via YouTube. In the moment, what do you do with performance anxiety or improv jitters? Uh, that's... I am not a trained actor. I don't think Teos is either, unless there's a previous life that you're hiding from us. So I don't even know what to do. I try to take the energy and just turn it into whatever it is I'm doing.
i do have anxiety when i talk in front of people live and that's even including recording like this i get jitters i do get anxiety uh tomorrow i have two meetings about two different projects that i have to lead i'm having anxiety about that right now and it's not even a public thing right it's just i need to talk in front of a group of people and get information across uh uh anxiety
so and i also teach which right i will have panic attacks in front of my class i know what i'm saying and i just sort of kind of work through it and just use the energy that's building up to to talk uh doesn't always come out brilliantly but it's there uh what what do you have on your end teos
So, you know, it's funny. I'm usually not anxious. I'm pretty level. I, you know, like sort of shockingly, maybe we could say annoyingly. So like I'm kind of like, whatever, it'll be fine. You know, until because I'm not immune.
And so there have been times when, you know, I can think of a couple like in graduate school where there was one time where I was going to speak about the wonders of our school. And I really liked our school. I had like 20 ideas to talk about. But we had like 15 people, all students talking. And I was last. When it got to me, there was nothing to say. And I should have said, I love our school.
Everybody's covered everything. You know, if you have specific questions, come up and talk to me. And instead, I tried to ad lib just magically hoping something would come to my head. And it was just like my brain started talking to itself. You know, I was in that 3D space of trying to say things out the mouth while thinking. And it was the worst. So I'm not immune to it, you know.
And sometimes when I go on specific types of shows or something, I'll get a little more nervous. So there are a couple of things that I've read about and that I think are helpful.
um if you're doing a thing like an appearance or whatever if you can work out that kind of release of tension right of like kind of getting your body flowing can be really helpful to to keep you kind of feeling good to be in a positive mind space prevents anxiety build up um coming up you know having your plan be simple Right. So it's not like 20 things you need to remember, but just that simple.
I'm going to talk about this. Here's some points I can make. I don't have to make all of them. But, you know, something like that, that you can feel pretty if you feel comfortable about your plan and it doesn't feel overly convoluted, you'll usually do well. And I do that a lot for work meetings. Right. I don't have to cover everything. I don't hold myself to some high impossible standard.
Just something simple and streamlined like that will help me.
Yeah. And experience will matter in the long run. The more you do it, even if you don't ever lose that anxiety, you at least know
some strategies as teos just said or some paths you can follow if things start going wrong we'll move in this direction and everything will be fine with dming right and i do a lot of you and i both do a lot of dming in public and so one of the things is just stay busy right so you don't sit there and create dead air time you want to just get into it and say okay everybody hey welcome here's what we're going to play i'm looking forward to seeing everybody you know let's start with me painting the scene and getting right into character introductions and okay now let's do this and tell me about that and you just
One foot in front of the other keeps it all going, so there isn't that moment you have to sit there and go, oh my god, what do I do next? You just execute on that plan, keep yourself busy. Yep. Yep.
The next question comes from Arthur Marcus6191 via YouTube. Following up on a question where you mentioned the different character roles and the instigator barbarian versus the role-playing bard, a lot of old school folks may argue that role-playing based skills may disemphasize everyone at the table from role-playing. Now, I love this word. This is not a word.
Disemphasize is not a word, but I love it. I think it's disincentivize plus deemphasize. And I think this should be a word now. Arthur, thank you for that. As soon as you maximize charisma plus skill expertise, you create this hidden contract that the bard should always do the talking. So how exactly can you counterbalance that?
I feel that if we are playing a role-playing game, game design should incentivize role-playing rather than restricting the barbarian to need to rely on the bard with good charisma roles. A couple of things. This is a personal pet peeve. I hate categorizing old school folks versus new players because I know it's not meant to be derogatory, but it creates sort of false oppressions.
I know plenty of old school or older players that love skill-based games, and I know plenty of new players that would much rather role play than roll dice. So let's get rid of that. Okay, cool. Excellent question and discussion. So I'm going to use my favorite term that's come up recently, ludonarrative dissonance.
For those who've never seen the show, ludonarrative dissonance is the disconnect between the mechanics of a game and the story that's supposed to come from the play of that game. And for me, this is the perfect example of one type of ludonarrative dissonance. Teos, I'm going to set a scene for us here, okay?
You, Teos, are a well-spoken, charismatic, insightful person playing a six charisma barbarian. I am a grunting mouth breather with no sense of social interaction playing the 20 charisma bard with an expertise in persuasion, right? Happens all the time. If you say so.
During the game scene of a tense negotiation, you playing your barbarian eloquently makes the perfect argument to get exactly what the party is trying to get out of this scene. Or I make a terrible argument that would obviously not be accepted by anyone in their right mind despite me playing this barbarian. You know, persuasive, charismatic, well-trained and well-versed bard. Here's my question.
How should this be handled at the table? If we have a game that doesn't tell us how to handle it, it doesn't give us an exact process, then it's left up to us. And I see several potential answers for this. So let's step through that. So success should be based on just an ability check, regardless of any role play.
You should not role play or take it into account because the role playing doesn't matter in the success or failure because it's based on the ability check that this character is making. That's one way you can handle it. Another way you could handle it is success should be based on the ability check, but it could be modified based on the role playing that happened before.
So if the role playing is helpful to the check, you give a bonus of some sort. If it is unhelpful to the check, you would give it a penalty. Or if it is neither helpful nor unhelpful, you just let the check be made normally. Here's a third option.
Success should be based on the ability check with no role-playing before the check, and the role-playing of the scene should happen afterward, based on the success or failure. Because this is how combat works, right? We don't describe the way that we're going to go in and attack with the sword. We just say, I attack with the sword. Oh, I rolled a natural one, I missed.
Oh, let me show you what I did to trip and fly, right? So that's sort of how combat in D&D and several of its clones work. So we roll the attack, roll, or saving throw, and then we describe what happened based on that success or failure. Fourth option, success should be based on role play only, regardless of the ability or skills of the characters. So you are very eloquent, you do your thing.
Oh, the DM loves it. Okay, yeah, that's going to work. No check needed. You made the great argument despite playing a character that might not do that. So there we go. Those are like the four main things I see, although there are other potential solutions or intricacies. So what do you think about that so far?
I love this, Sean. It's fantastic. yeah this is this is great and and i i mean i think everybody i would suspect everybody struggles with to some extent you know the more you play about thinking about this because you you of course have those moments where somebody who's so incredibly skilled makes an impassioned, you know, plea with all the right points and rolls a one.
And so what do you do with that one? Right. And, and the, the, the, you know, a thing that you often hear and that you sort of want to do as well, you know, let's roll first and then role play. But, but actually while that works for combat, because all the questions are there,
It doesn't tend to work for role-playing scenes, kind of diplomatic type situations, because you often are thinking of the plan as you go or talking back and forth with NPCs or various players. So it's hard to do the role up front because sometimes you don't know exactly when to roll, right? So you do a bunch of construction and then you make that role.
And so it's very hard process-wise to say, make me a role for this scene. Now, what it can actually do, if you do that, you shortcut the scene.
right often because you well i succeeded i rolled a 20 so who cares you know i make a great point about the blah blah blah and now you missed out all the cool drama or you rolled that one or something else really low and now the player feels like they just go well i insult their you know so-and-so their partner and we're done here and and and again you miss out on the actual drama of play if you roll first right so it's it's tough it's a tough conundrum
Okay, so I want you, listener, to think about that first set of four things. How do you think that a role-playing scene that demands a check at the end of it for a persuasion or a diplomacy or whatever skill, whatever game you're working on? Now let's use those exact same criteria, but change things slightly.
Now we're not in a role-playing social scene, but we're in a room searching for a hidden trap door in the floor that's underneath a rug. So, same sort of thing, right? We're there, we're doing the thing, we want to succeed at this thing. How do we handle that? Teos is now charismatic, but he's not a player who cares about the details of an adventure.
But his Barbarian has a massive perception score. High wisdom, trained in it, expertise in it. Great. I'm terrible in social situations, but I'm the player that loves to poke and prod everything in the room, right? When that's described to me, I'm going to open every drawer. I'm going to look under every bed. I'm going to flip over every mattress.
But my bard has no wisdom and a terrible perception score. So while Teos checks out during this scene, right? Oh, I'm going to check my phone because I don't care. I'm there describing everything I do, lifting things up, checking. I pick up the rug and I look under it. Okay. So now how do we handle this? Same criteria. So success just beyond an ability check, regardless of any role play.
Or should you not role-play at all and just make the check because role-playing has no bearing on the success or failure? Should success happen based on the ability check but modified based on the role-play? Should success be based on ability check with no role play before, but the role play happens after you succeed? Or should success be just role play?
Just me lifting up that rug finds the trap door, regardless of my character skills, abilities, powers, or what have you. Or is there another potential solution or intricacy that we can add to this scene?
right does your answer change because you've gone from a talky thing to a pokey thing that's fantastic it's a fantastic question um and i'm trying to think like how uh how 2014 or 2024 handles it for dnd
you know to tease out exactly what is or isn't encouraged there I want to say if I recall correctly that it sort of has the like you know but consider other factors right which is what a lot of games do which is the easy way out of all this right because you're you for good reasons are afraid to dictate one of these choices that you've presented because all of the choices can it sometimes I think be the right choice
And if your game tries to prevent it, then it creates a problem. But I will say that different games have different ways of exacerbating this problem, right? Like spy games are a great example where they will say and even like Star Wars and games like that will often do this where you're the pilot. You're the face, right? The charisma person. You're the gun person. You're the infiltrator, right?
It gives you these very clear roles. And games from Shadowrun to Spycraft to Star Wars, they all have these kinds of things. And it cements this idea of this is what you're good at. others are not good at. But depending on the system, that may or may not be true to a lesser extent. And of course, the dice can still carry or the plan can carry.
And that exacerbates this issue of, you know, well, of course, we have to send the face in to convince the people to open up the door for us. But the person playing the face may not be clever at coming up with things on their feet. Right. And that that creates this problem.
Yep. And I think D&D succeeds and has succeeded over the years because it has not told us exactly how, as you're saying. I think you're right. Because it wants us to figure out on our own what process we want and be able to break that process if it doesn't make any sense to follow the process in the particular situation that we're in.
so i i hope uh i've got to go back up because that's a lot of text i i hope arthur that that sort of helps there is no right or wrong answer there's the answer that feels right in the moment or feels wrong in the moment but in the next moment it may make perfect sense to do it the way that felt wrong before
Yeah. And I think that is the you know, what is the right answer? The right answer is that you don't want to clamp down on it too much because it will other problems will arise that are worse. And so really, it's an ad hoc situation. Be aware of this and then play off of it in the way that will be most fun at that particular time.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Yes, we'll leave it right there and get to our next question, which is from Random Adam of Fun Installers via Blue Sky. Do you have ideas or tips for an extrovert who sucks at social media but wants to find more people to play and test TTRPGs? And by that, I mean I want to find more pals to play TTRPGs. And I also love playtesting new systems on and off my podcast.
So my first question is, are you talking about online or offline? Because they are very different beasts with very different purposes for finding players. Offline, in-person, meet space games, looking for new players comes with an awful lot of baggage. scheduling-wise. You need to find a place to play. Hosting people can be awkward, especially if they're strangers.
Even for extroverts, it can be problematic and anxiety-producing. Online can be easier, but there's still problems of attention, of finding the right right system to use with the software and the hardware that people have access to. All of these are questions. I do have more, but I've been talking enough, I'm going to let Teos jump in there.
Sure. Yeah. In the meat space, as you said, it can be hard. Sometimes conventions will, certain conventions will have like a play test area, which can be invaluable for game designers. A lot of board games do this. So they will go to these particular conventions that feature this to be able to run through tons of tables and they have some way of saying like, hey, come try new games.
So people know that they're not fully finished games and they're looking forward to that and providing that feedback. um there are groups online like discord channels like there is the um uh uh rising tide ttrpg group that is on discord you can find them uh on maston for sure maybe blue sky as well uh and join that server you can find people to play it to us people on our discord will um
put in requests to playtest, right? They will try things out there and say, hey, I want to run a thing next weekend who's available so that I can try this thing out. So just find some format where you're happy to be as happy as you can be to be and lowers that sort of anxiety and so on so that you can just find a group of people to kind of try through things and try it.
It is always difficult to find people, but a lot of these places at least have people doing this often enough that you're not strange, right? You're yet another person showing up to people who are ready for this and prepared for this. And that's the ideal thing is find some group like that that fits your needs, where that's the expectation is this is not particularly polished, etc.
Yeah, there's two other that come to mind immediately. It's unpub.org. They're a system for a group, a nonprofit for doing exactly this. And Metatopia is a convention, I believe in DC, in the DC area, that has that, it's either Philly or DC, but it has that feel where you bring your game and there are playtesters there who are willing to playtest it.
Either way, no matter online, offline, play testing, just finding a group, you do need to put yourself out there at some point. You have to occupy the same space with other people, whether it's online or offline. And in order to play several games with someone, you need to play one game with someone.
I've found that people, especially people who have anxiety or have a hard time putting themselves out there, will have one even slightly bad experience and just give up. There isn't going to be that perfect thing. You have to go and you have to play and you have to say, didn't go well, but that person over there seemed to be on the same wavelength as I am.
Maybe I'll reach out to them and together we will go to the next game day, play together and then see if A, we do mesh and B, if we can find other people. So it's a process that will always take time, energy, and a bit of emotional buy-in.
And, you know, the beginning of this sort of said, I don't do social media. And I would say that even if you did do social media, I would not recommend kind of typical social media for this because just like random people on Blue Sky or Macedon aren't necessarily going to be great play testers.
I would still say try to find the places where this is being done by others and join that because that's going to just give you a better result. It is great to get feedback from just random people, but you will get better results from people who understand playtesting and what's expected from it.
Yep. Next, we have Ben Rook via Blue Sky, who asks, I am working on a rule set that I hope will allow tables to indulge in a fantasy tailored to the group playing based on which rules the table selects. It is very rules heavy, as that is what will facilitate that sort of plug and play. With that in mind, what makes for an easy entry point for new players into a game like D&D or a Pathfinder?
The best entry point honestly depends on what the people you're trying to bring in already know about games, about fantasy, et cetera. So most people that I've experienced coming into the hobby come in knowing fantasy, but not knowing RPGs. So they watch Game of Thrones. They've read or watched Lord of the Rings. They went through the Harry Potter experience.
So they understand fantasy, but they need to be taught how a role-playing game is and how they work. So with those folks in mind, I ponder these types of questions by jumping to think about what hurdles there are to turn these folks from new folks into folks that love it and then into hopefully evangelists, super fans, people completely bought in. And so I came up with like four hurdles that
that I've found as the biggest to bringing in new folks. Teos, am I okay to go forward? Yeah, please, please. I'm excited. I want to hear these four. Okay, cool. So the first, believe it or not, is time. Asking someone to take an hour out of their day is a lot, especially in the 21st century, especially if they are adults. or even students or kids with a busy schedule.
If one hour is a lot, four hours is right out. So the first thing you need to do is make it clear that, yes, this is going to be a bit of time, but it's only going to be an hour, the same as sitting down to watch an hour-long show. So let's do that. Now, right now I can hear people say, you can't even start a game in an hour. For you, yes.
But if you want to bring in these folks, and obviously there are outliers. Obviously there are people that will sit down and play for six hours brand new and be happy. They are the exception, not the rule. Okay, so that's the first thing, Ty. You with me so far, Teos? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, the second thing is hitting the highlights.
You want to show the people who are playing what is best about this game. What is best about this hobby? Not to you, but in general.
So what is best about the hobby to most people are rolling dice, getting results, and telling a story.
Is there more to it? There's absolutely more to it. But you want them to get that taste right away. So if the first thing that you... Yeah, please.
Which is...
doing what you can't do in everyday life like that's something i see new people time and time again so achieving results but results that you can't you know in this imagined fantasy space right that i can ride a broomstick or cast a spell or whatever it is that you're coming from that you can now do that instead of seeing an actor do it or reading a book about it is a huge thing and so you want to show how easy it is to do that
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the thing is, then the last thing you want to do with this new player or this group of new players who have an hour and who want the highlights of the game is to sit down and make them make a character. Because as fun as that might be to us and as fun as that might be to them at some point, that is not necessarily fun right there.
You are sitting down and either making them use a piece of paper and a pencil or get onto an app, which is what they do in their regular life for the most part. So don't make them make a character. If you want to give them something, give them a character and have them make two small choices. Totally. And make those choices not rules-based, but sort of something they already understand.
Your character can be reticent or verbose. Your character can be emotive or sullen. Make it something that they understand just in the real world. So now that you're sitting down, they have a character and they have an hour to play it. So the next thing is a hurdle is trying to get them to embrace too much complexity. We may love role-playing games because of the tactics of it, right?
I've got these seven options and this is my problem. Which option should I choose with also an understanding of what options other people might use, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Others may not love that as much as we do. And others may not want to take the time to understand those options.
Because again, that is not telling a story that is making a difficult choice where they already have to make difficult choices in the grocery store and on their tax form, et cetera, et cetera. So don't get into the complexity of the game in that first session. Just show... Tell me what you want to do, roll this die, add that number, we're done. We're moving on to the next thing.
And the fourth is sort of a corollary of that, which is don't try to do too much. within the story itself. Make it very simple. Like Teo said, let them do things that they can't do in real life and have that move the story forward as quickly as possible. Get to a resolution. You have to track down and find a missing person. 20 minutes is, well, five minutes is hearing the problem.
Five minutes is following the trail. But 10 minutes is having a combat. 10 minutes is fighting, crossing the river with no bridge. 10 minutes is fighting the monster at the end and then have a resolution scene. Boom, you're done. Putting in all the fantasy that you can within that. Those are the four things that I always look at when I try to bring in a new player into a new system.
Yeah, I love those. I shared on a recent show that the struggle we had a little bit with Savage Worlds and Deadlands. And Deadlands has this interesting story where it was the RPG, then Savage Worlds, and so to the point where now, the current version, you buy the Deadlands set, but you also need the Savage Worlds core buckets.
And then when you're looking something up, you're like, where do I look? And the best explanation was actually their quick guide, not the Deadlands book. So that's their point number one, right? That the best way to learn the game is to go get the free product. not the paid product. But even with that, now I have three things. I have the Savage World book, the Quick Guide, and the normal book.
And then I have to decide which do I look in? And sometimes we were looking in all three. And that bogged down play, right? And, you know, I'm about to run Savage Worlds again. So I've been prepping an adventure and I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not looking forward to this continual problem of which book has the rules how.
And with what's described here in this opening question of a system that's fairly complex and allows you to choose your approach to the rules, right, your rules modules or something like that, that's going to be even more critical.
And so how can you, especially at this quick guide level, whether it's someone else running it themselves or you're explaining it, you're running it at a con, something like that. The players must be able to do that really quickly. And so the perfect showcase is almost like what Sean was saying about a choice around your character.
If you could very quickly say, OK, we're going to play this game that I've made. Do you want it to be sci fi or modern? That's we've got many choices, but we're just going to choose those two things. Let's go with sci fi. OK, here's this very simple thing that we have. Here's this one page that captures all of the differences we're going to embrace because of that. And now let's play. Right.
That might be something that's doable. Right. For a new player to take on. Because when you ask about the entry points for D&D, why does it work so well? Because it fairly simply delivers on what people want out of the experience and then has more depth behind it. But the very basics are simple to grasp. They're iconic. They all translate. Right.
And that's sort of the opposite. It could be the opposite of the problem I was trying to solve. You could have somebody who are used to role-playing games, but not used to the setting or the genre or the story that tends to flow from a science fiction, supernatural horror... Western... Western game.
So then you need to do the same thing, but do it not from the rules point of view, but from the story, the flow point of view. But still follow these rules, right? Keep it simple. So if you have all of these rules supplements that you can plug in, just say, we're going to start with the most basic form. We're going to run one encounter with that. Did you like that? Did that work? All right.
You want a little more complexity? All right, we're going to plug in this module. And now with this, and then you take 10 minutes to explain how your tactical combat system will work. And then you go from there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yep. Last question from EMNDM via Blue Sky. As a writer and artist, do you have any tricks or rituals to get into the creative state? Sometimes I can be very creative, but it's much harder to do on demand. And I need to prepare my biweekly sessions. I think everybody's going to have their own answer for this.
For some people, they have done it long enough that they have tricks, they have processes that they can follow. If I'm going to go into a day where I know I'm going to have to do a lot of writing, I'm not editing, I'm not project managing, I'm going to write, the first thing I sat down and do is write.
not necessarily what I need to write, but I get my mind into the point where my fingers know what they feel like on the keyboard. I'm answering two emails and I'm writing a tip of the day, right? I'm doing something that things are going from here through my fingers onto, I'm pointing to my head by a big noggin here, from my head through my fingers onto the screen.
Then I am in a space where my body says, oh yeah, I've done this before. So I am going to continue to do this. If I'm working on a longer project, I will read the last few lines of what I wrote before or the section that I'm about to add to just to get my brain then thinking, all right, oh yeah, I'm working on this subclass and I need to continue from here.
And the last thing is when I'm ideating, when I'm thinking, I need to walk. And this was always a problem for me because I'd be sitting at my keyboard and I'd be like, okay, I need to come up with an idea. I'd have to stand up, walk around, get the idea, come back, sit down. I got a treadmill. And now I can walk and think at the same time and I don't have to leave the keyboard to do it.
That's just a me thing, but it was huge. I can go and I can start working and I will all of a sudden blink. And I've been walking for three hours. And I didn't even realize that a minute had passed. If I'm sitting or if I'm just standing after about 30 minutes, I start to feel it. I start to feel achy. I start to, but walking for some reason is the way my brain processes. So I do that.
That's a good trick. You know, a lot of there's a lot of talk about why ideas come out in showers. Right. And it can be the simplest explanation is because when we're in the shower, we're not really doing anything else other than a thing that we can kind of do while only thinking. And so you achieve a flow state creatively, flow state, get it? See what I did there?
Anyway, you are more creative because you can kind of not worry about the fact that you're currently putting in shampoo or whatever it is, and you are thinking about the problem and coming with ideas. And too often when we should be in a creative mindset, we are doing other things that don't allow for that sort of flow state.
And so what often happens is the flow state only comes when we have the deadline. I've got to run that game tomorrow. So I need ideas now. I just have to. So I turn everything else off and I focus. Well, that is the key. Turn everything else off and focus. And so a walk in the woods, a walk on the treadmill desk and those can often do that, too, because it sort of gets your body going.
And forgetting the other stuff sort of ties up your body functions into a flow state more easily so you can think through it. And so finding some way to get to that flow state is really good. One thing that I embrace very heavily is that idea that there is no muse, right? There's no magic that just shows up.
you must do the work and so especially if you have to put out you know thousands of words it's one thing to create your your you know your dm session of course you got to do that that's all important but if you have to really like write a whole big thing the only way to do it is to make progress and you just must make progress and so what i often do to get into a creative state is i'll outline
because I start thinking about the problem and then I'll start writing a few things. And as those things get cohesive, I will naturally continue that and be more likely to enter into that kind of creative flow state where I just start pouring out the words and they come out. But. It isn't going to magically happen on its own. I must set it up for it to continue happening. Right.
And so that's where the outlining, the working, the initial writing. And sometimes you may not particularly feel a flow state, but you just do the work. And at the end of it, there is the work. Right. Now you have something versus if you sit around waiting for some magic to really feel it or something like that. Well, you'll probably sit around and not have any words.
Write the next word, whatever it is. And if it's wrong, delete it and write a different word. And if that word's wrong, or if that sentence is wrong, or if that paragraph's wrong, or if that page is wrong, delete it and write a new one. Because you're creating the clay from which you're going to sculpt your final version of whatever.
And you don't have to hit your head against the end of the wall when you're not making progress, right? If you're working on your session for the next gameplay and you started with ways to play off the PCs and you're not thinking of anything, okay, think about what the villains are doing. Do that for a little bit.
Now, maybe that actually creates an idea for the previous thing you were wrestling with. Or if not, you think about, well, what kind of factions could be involved? And you go, hey, you know, that player had an interest in this faction. And suddenly solving one problem, you set another, right? So moving around can help. You just don't want to not do the work, right?
The common thing we do, and it happens back in school when we're doing homework, right, is they're like, boy, this assignment's hard. I better go get a cup of coffee and then I better get a sandwich. And then, well, what you aren't doing is tackling the problem, right? And you're waiting for that magic moment and magic moments don't tend to come.
You have to do the work in one way or the other and find your way to constantly be doing that work.
For sure. So, thank you for all of those wonderful questions. Teos, thank you for sharing your answers and thank you out there for listening. If you would like to support us, listening is great. Leaving reviews is wonderful. We also have a Patreon that helps us pay for the time we spend, the equipment, editing, all of that.
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Ooh, find me at alphastream.org. I'm trying to put the finishing touches on a blog post, but I also have all recent videos as well. Last time I discussed what the DMG teaches us to create, like magic items, spells, monsters, kind of, sort of. And I talk about what's there comparing to 2014. Where do we find you?
Oh, I'm on all the social medias except for one, at Sean Merwin. You can follow the podcast on Mastering D&D. We're on Mastodon. We're on Blue Sky. That's all that I'm on because I need to get off social media and get on with work. You can join us and ask questions via the Patreon. You can leave comments on our Mastering Dungeons YouTube channel by going to youtube.com at Mastering Dungeons.
And again, you can email us at masteringdnd at gmail.com. So we have answered so many questions. We have designed so many interesting games. What are we going to do now?
I'm going to drink eggnog until I have to make multiple death saves.
And I'm going to get on the treadmill and start walking.