Episode 219 of Mastering Dungeons! Main topic: Recent Game Design Lessons! Shawn and Teos share what they learned from recent projects, from late 3E, 4E, and beyond. News: New Greyhawk OP Campaign, AI Takes Down Itch.io, Talking Exploration, and more! Contents 00:00:00 We're 93! 00:01:38 Redesign Gnomes? 00:10:08 Encourage in Character? 00:17:10 Adventure Opening? 00:22:14 Legends of Greyhawk and MagicCon 00:25:28 AI Takes Down Itch.io 00:26:57 12 Days of Beyond 00:29:06 Everyone's Talking Exploration 00:31:49 2024 Magic Item Changes 00:33:39 Kickstarter Project Finances 00:37:19 Recent Game Design Lessons 00:39:16 Form and Function 00:44:05 Know the Medium 00:46:08 The Audience 00:50:58 Xendrik Expeditions 00:55:09 Living Forgotten Realms 00:59:19 Ashes of Athas 01:03:01 Getting Noticed 01:04:34 Playtesting and New Editions 01:05:56 Understanding Companies 01:09:19 D&D Encounters 01:12:09 Full-Time Work 01:13:09 Balancing Freelance and Self 01:16:02 Other Paths 01:17:25 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 questions. This game design stuff podcast. We're number 93. We're number 93. Yeah, on blog feed, something, something, something, somewhere. Yeah. I saw that we were on the list. I was like, oh, cool. And then I saw it was like actual plays and all D&D related podcasts.
I'm like, well, we're like probably 99 then. No, Teos, I was wrong. We were 93. I want to thank all the fans. Yes, I'd like to thank everyone. Hey, on a list where Critical Role is number one, Ed, shows of that magnitude are on the list. I'll take 93 or whatever it was. So thank you to all of you listening out there for putting up with us, basically.
It's the same thing I say to my family. Exactly. That's it.
So you are all like family to us by indulging us like this. And not only do you listen to us, but sometimes you send us questions via social media or via our email. So we're going to take some of those questions right now. We're going to start with Sasha Morlock, who sent this to us via Mastodon.
I want to redesign gnomes for my world to be more like fourth edition as people from the Feywild, and because I don't want robots via gnome tinkerers in my world, at least for now. Of course, I already looked into Fey ancestry by asking myself if it's more or less or equal in value to their current ability. Should I keep it, replace it, or add both? Any other tips?
What route I should take or things to keep in mind?" I wanted to start by just setting the record straight on a couple of things. The 2024 Pallier's Handbook Gnome doesn't actually make robots. Now, the art is a little distracting because in the art right above the gnome entry for species, it shows a bunch of gnomes making or working on something like a warforge.
So it leads one to think, oh, no, they're making robots. Really, the only thing they do are make those little toys that can do the same thing as a cantrip. So... Leaving that now, if you want to get rid of tinkering completely understandable, but realize that it's a very limited thing.
And second of all, it's funny that you said, I want to be more like the fourth edition gnome because in the original player's handbook, you could not play a gnome. for a fourth edition monster. You had to, they're a monster. You had to wait until the second player's handbook player's handbook two came out to actually see the stats for, for a note. All right.
So all that aside tails, I will now turn it over into your capable hands.
Oh, that's that's a that's a stretch. But I mean, fey ancestry is you have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charm condition. Right. So it's all very simple. I would say it's a little blah for me. But, you know, sure, you could swap that. And, you know, in 2024, gnomes have dark vision, 60 feet. They have gnomish cunning.
So you have advantage on intelligence, wisdom and charisma saving throws. So to me, that could easily be a swap. But I don't know that, you know, that isn't your problem.
uh and then the gnomish lineage is either forest gnome and you know this minor illusion cantrip and you can speak with animal or you always have to speak with animal spell prepared and you can cast it without a spell slot a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus then Rock Gnome, you know, mending and prestidigitation.
And then you can spend 10 minutes casting prestidigitation to create this tiny clockwork device. You're talking about armor class 5-1 hit point, a toy, a fire starter, a music box. And you can determine its function by choosing one effect from prestidigitation, which is kind of clever design, right? You're sort of moving that spell that you cast forward into the device.
And so it can do that effect whenever you or another creature takes a bonus action to activate it by touching it. So that's your kind of robot, if you will. And there's a few more other fine points there as to what it does.
You know, I think that if you don't like that rock gnome, right, we can look to sort of the forest gnome for their idea of what's going on there rather than necessarily pay advantage. But I don't know. What would you think looking at this?
Yeah, I thought the forest gnome covered what Sasha was looking for. So I'm not sure what... If the idea is I want them to be more like fourth edition, I think that's what Forest Gnome does. It gives you that. Now, it doesn't give you fey ancestry, sure. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with elves being that and then gnomes being along those lines but over here. I would...
what i would do and i apologize for pushing a book is go to any of the ghostfire books that use the heritage system and just say here's a list of all of the things that characters might have let me pick and choose five of them
to make this what my gnome is and that way you're starting from scratch and you're really able then to differentiate the gnome that you want from the gnome that the 2024 book gives yeah so i think you could yeah that's an awesome system i like that a lot um uh a5e the ian world system has or no it's it's uh uh tales of the valiant that has the culture versus
heritage system sort of splits it up so you get that um i think in previous editions we've had the the the kind of more earthy gnome can speak with borrowing animals and so you could look to something like that for inspiration um
I love your idea of turning to the player and saying, hey, even if you just shove a bunch of books at them, like there's several Ghostfire gaming books at them and say, hey, what do you like out of this? But then come back and tie it into this fae essence in some way that would probably give you and the player a bunch of ideas that you could play off of, which would be neat.
If you're looking for like rooting your your the creatures in the game, like to say all gnomes are this. Then you might just sit there and explore that Fae thing. I don't think it's really about the Fae ancestry, but more something like, do you want them to be able to sense the Fae wild when it's nearby?
What could be a thing that would make sense and tie into your campaign in a way that you want to support it? Something along those lines. Yeah, precisely.
It's if this gnome in 2024 doesn't work for you, what doesn't work for you? Because it's your world. So you should make it to fit the story that you are trying to tell. And if it's just your world and it's just for one group of players...
then bring the players in and say what do you see as gnomes in this world and what would be exciting and fun for you to play yeah and but if it's because you're building a world that's specific to you and maybe multiple players or multiple campaigns then you need to step back and answer that question of why are gnomes different than else yeah
I think D&D, I suspect, in fifth edition has gone towards this tinker concept somewhat to kind of, you know, honor a little bit of that story that's been out there. But also because things like speaking to borrowing animals is really hit or miss, right? Like you can see this at Adventurers League tables, organized play tables where, you know, you're playing a character over and over again.
And this never comes up because it's not a home campaign. It's just, you know, people don't usually write an adventure thinking about giving you a borrowing animal to talk to. But it can be amazing and super powerful if there are actually a lot of boring creatures around and you regularly can get tips from them.
And if it ties into a animal creatures and stuff like that, that could really make you into almost a mini druid. It could be really valuable. So it really kind of depends on what you want to do. You've got the power here for it to represent your campaign. And that's what makes it awesome.
And Teos' note on the burrowing mammal right there is hugely important, because if you do make your own trait or pull a trait or change a trait, you want it to make sense
and not be game breaking, especially if you're designing for more than just your group or yourself, because as Theo said, it could be super fun, but it can also be highly variant from table to table where I take my gnome to this table and the game master basically gives away the whole plot of the story because this badger who lives outside the dungeon tells me everything that's going on.
whereas this other game master i take my my gnome to them and all the badger will tell me is i'm hungry i'm hungry i'm hungry over and over and over again because Because there's no rule to say exactly what a creature can relay, that sort of thing.
So that's just one more deeper into game design look at why you need to, if you're planning this rule to go out to everyone, be as specific as possible without damping down the DM's discretion. Amen. Love it. Yep. Next question comes from DT Norris via our Patreon Discord. I realize this is a perennial question for the hobby.
Have others had experience of or have recommendations for how to help or encourage reluctant players to engage more at playing the game, quote, in character? In particular, speaking to other characters in character, PC to PC, I ask because I have several players that really enjoy that style of gameplay.
It can be tough to watch as the DM and a bit of a downer when, quote, in character player A puts heart and soul into it and two or three out of the other four players just sort of sit there and not say anything in character back. How can I, as the DM, beyond just introducing semi-permanent party NPCs, nudge other players toward, quote, in-character gameplay?
Teos. I love this question, and it is a perennial question, and it's a perennial struggle for a lot of groups from both directions. And that's the thing I'd first start with is that, you know, not every player wants to be in character. And my first bit of advice is don't just push it. Lead by example, facilitate it.
And if it's a thing where players are going to get more comfortable with playing in character and will come to it and let that happen, you know, help that along. But don't demand it or make a big deal out of it, because that will just make somebody feel uncomfortable if it's really not the way they want to play.
um things that i do to facilitate this kind of interaction is to have a table tent for everybody with the pc names on them and you can just make them you know print card stock or thick paper of any kind on both sides and print or write their name their character names on it and maybe something like their class and species is often helpful sometimes background give that out to everybody at the tables and say so we can all use our pc names
right and that way you don't forget what everybody's playing and you as dm can use those names and players can choose to do that right and then when you when you uh are interacting with them as dm have your NPCs speak to everybody in character and switch characters often, always in that in character mode, asking pointed questions, right? What do you think, Presto? Do you agree, Sheila?
The more you make it personal, it becomes more efficient for the player to respond in character rather than always go back and add third person pieces of, Uh, my character says yes to them, you know, like that's extra words rather than just going, yes, we'll do that. And so the more that you're doing kind of important questions back and forth, it just is more efficient to be in character.
And that may help.
So everything Nateo said. The first question I ask myself when someone is not playing in character is, are they uncomfortable doing so or are they dreading doing so? If they're dreading doing so, then very, very light touch. You don't want
people to dread playing if they're just uncomfortable or if they're just not quite sure how then what teo said fits perfectly there are ways to help them along other things that i've done that i've found to be helpful are start with something that doesn't involve a great deal of speaking or a great deal of time start with something like what's your character's facial reaction to what you just saw
What hand motions did you do when you were trying to warn the players, other players, without talking to back up, right? Do that sort of thing. Start with nonverbal to get players, and then you can slowly work into one-word things. Give me one word to describe what Presto's magic missile looks like.
Hmm.
You know, that sort of thing. So start with physical pantomiming, then go to one word. Then go to three to five seconds in the spotlight. And then just slowly, and don't make a big deal about it when they do. Say, that's great, and then move on to the next thing. So you're not heaping embarrassment on them, even if they did a great job. You know, just say, awesome.
And let the other players who are more comfortable doing so sort of lead the way. But also, don't call on the good or the enthusiastic role player to do the 20-minute soliloquy and then expect the other player to do, right? So maybe talk to the other players beforehand and say, I'm going to ask a question. Keep your answers short. Yeah.
Just to model what the action that you're looking for at the table. So, right. It's small steps.
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the being in character is one part of it. Behind it can be if these are players who aren't really engaging players.
with you right like I'm very lucky right now I've got this this home group that we've been playing and we're all having a blast and telling each other how much it's fun and it's in part because people really lean into the characters and they're doing really cool stuff I don't think that it matters so much that it's in character though that is important but it's that part that they're really engaging with the story making fun characters they could be describing them in third person and it would all be fine right it would still be super awesome
And so I think the thing is sometimes we have players that are just happy to not be very engaged, which is a separate issue. And that may be a barrier, right? Where you're just, boy, I don't love playing with them because they're, you know, they're distant from it. And they're just sort of moving around.
Like I've played, especially in organized play games where people will be just knitting at the table. or playing a handheld video game while playing and yet would come session after session after session to the store or convention or whatever, they're clearly having a great time. They're not really the kind of player I want to have at my table. Right.
And so as a convention DM, I don't mind running them. If they were in my home game, I would say, you know, I think we have different styles. Yeah.
And on Taos's point there about that sort of engagement or doing other things at the table, also be aware of people's neurodivergency. There are some times when people are doing other things at the table, and I might think they're not engaged, but they are engaged in their own way. So just be aware of that at the table as well. Some people
they're only paying attention because they have something to keep their hands busy yes or they're only paying attention for those reasons so also you know keep being mindful of those sorts of things absolutely And the final question for this episode comes to us via DM Mark via Blue Sky.
Any tips for designers who don't generally have trouble putting together an interesting adventure, but always seem to struggle with how to plan the opening or the inciting incident or mission? So this, I mean, this is a question that we could do a whole segment on, right? Adventure design and starting. We probably have, if you go back and look.
To answer it as briefly as possible, if you are putting together an adventure that's interesting, you have the answer to your question because you want to use that interesting thing to be what opens. So if what's interesting in your adventure is that it's a mystery, start with the inciting mystery.
If what's cool is some monster that you've created that's going to beguile and blow the characters' minds, leave a hint as the inciting incident that this is what this monster does. Are these piles of diamonds on the ground in the shape of people? What is going on? Well, it's the monster that turns people into diamonds. Okay, so you're putting that out there. But the deeper question is,
you have to answer, what is this adventure about? Or what is this adventure's form? Is it a one shot adventure with pre-gens? You're gonna wanna start differently. Is it a adventure in the middle of a long running campaign? You're gonna be able to do other things with that. For me, the challenge of opening encounters is exactly the same challenge as writing fiction.
And that is, you have to provide information but you can't provide information in a way that detracts from the adventure and the fun and the tension. So getting that information to the players as efficiently as possible while still moving forward with the action is what an inciting incident or an opening encounter needs to be about.
Yeah, the beginning of the encounter, if you think about movies or TV shows or whatever, the intro frames the situation, gathers the party, the protagonist together in some way so that they can develop a kind of rapport that they're going to need later on, either as the audience or in this case, each other, so they can know what they're all about and propels you towards that adventure.
And the best situation is where you're doing one or multiple of those really strongly, right? So it can be like, hey, we have to go to Icewind Dale before the storm closes the pass. I mean, there's been this unusual cold and this is the last caravan you're getting paid to do this. That's not really the adventure itself, but it's a propelling reason
Tells you about the world, about what's going on, sets you up for, oh, there's this unnatural rhyme and now you need to solve it or you're in a position to solve it. Right. So it sets you up for that and gives you a nice introduction. How do you all feel about traversing the North and whatever? So that can be a little distant from the adventure.
But has that theme gets the players along that mode or can literally be like I remember Chris Perkins shared this one and I loved it. You know, you go to the tavern to get the job. And there's this person standing there at the table and then they fall forward onto the table, a dagger on their back. Right. Immediate weight. What's going on?
Like you were talking about that creates, you know, this sort of curiosity and whatever and can tie into the story you're doing. Right. Yep.
And there is no perfect introduction because there are so many different kinds of players. Some players want to know everything about their character, about the other characters, about the situation, about the world right away. And they're not happy until they have everything. And that's what session zeros are for. Right.
So you can then say, OK, we're going to introduce all our characters to each other. We're going to get that out of the way. I'm going to talk about the world that we're in. We're going to get that out of the way. So you know that you don't need to have that forward moving action right from the start because you have that time.
Or play a game other than D&D where building the setting is part of the game. Coming up with that collective information about the world, about the relationships between the party members, it's part of the play. So it's expected and it doesn't begin awkwardly then because that's what the game calls for. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for those questions.
You can hit us up via social media, via YouTube, or you can just plain straight up email us at masteringdnd at gmail.com. Now let's get to our news and commentary section, starting with Legends of Greyhawk being announced, previewing, not premiering, previewing at MagicCon Chicago. So tell us, we love organized play. And what does this tell us?
I mean, it's some pretty huge news. So just on the convention front, MagicCon is a big convention just by itself. And so now we're going to have D&D there run by Baldwin Games. The first time that we have D&D at this event, as far as I understand, this is February 21st to 23rd. And Tickets are on sale by the time you're listening to us.
We've got a link in our show notes or mcchicago.mtgfestivals.com. But it's huger news because this is a brand new organized play program called Legends of Greyhawk.
and that is something that we haven't had in quite some time an auxiliary kind of program and it has the feel of it being different new it's not part of adventurers league it doesn't follow it has its own rules right so that's really interesting yeah and there's an article on dndbn that provides a few details the campaign will use 2024 rules
D&D Beyond can be used for character creation. The campaign takes place in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide's time period for Greyhawk, which is 576 CY, and starts in the central Flanais. The focus of the campaign will be convention play. That's where special events will happen, although there will be ways to play both online and away from conventions.
The adventures are supposedly shorter, so normally you're looking at four-hour time slots. We don't know exactly what shorter means at this point, but probably less than four hours. And there will be ways for premier organizers to create adventures for this campaign. So here's the quote.
The first adventures, part of a preview for the campaign, are a featured part of MagicCon Chicago's D&D experience. Those adventures will be exclusive to players at that event for some time. and then will become accessible at other conventions during late spring and summer. At Gen Con 2025, a full launch of the campaign is planned. So, interesting news.
We will keep our fingers on the pulse of that. Tejas, did you have any other thoughts?
I think that what the campaign should do is take lots of forgotten Realm NPCs and move them into Greyhound.
It's a great call, Teos. It's a great call. Maybe even bring them over from Eberron and yeah. And Lord of the Rings, why not?
Yeah, steal some of those Forgotten Realms characters like Tasha.
Sure, sure. So next, we know AI is a threat, but did it take out itch.io?
That is what we understand. So apparently they're like... Funko Pop, of all things, has some AI, you know, did you find a thing that's messing up yours? Is some website messing up your IP or somehow phishing or something like that? And apparently it misunderstood a fan page on itch.io that dealt with a Funko Pop video game.
and included links to the actual website as being a sort of phishing thing. And this all result in claims that resulted in itch.io being down for a few hours. But the interesting wrinkle here is... Who's Funko Pop's CEO, Teos? It's Cynthia Williams, ex-president of Wizards of the Coast, which just makes us wonder, where will she strike next, Sean? Oh, so, so great.
And there are so many reasons not to like AI. And this is just like a small thing. If it takes down a website... what's what else could it take down right the power grid why not why not any of it yeah no yep We go from our hellish future to the 12 days of D&D Beyond. In the past, D&D Beyond has provided 12 days of rewards.
We covered it last year where it felt like it was mostly just advertising things, but this year they're actually giving away free stuff, especially stuff that we've talked about that was up and then was brought down or was up sort of behind a paywall. So you have things like the first chapter of the Radiant Citadel or a sample adventure from Big B's Glory of the Giants adventure book.
Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn, some digital dice, those sorts of things. Anything catch your eye on this 12 days of D&D Beyond?
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's all fine. We'll see kind of what else they offer. But it's already leaps beyond last year's where beyond last year's, which was was kind of depressing. Last year just felt like one giant ad campaign. And what I like is they actually had a separate email if you sign up for their email list.
with the marketing part of it that included actually a lot of savings off of various things you might be interested like for example the converse dnd shoes uh have a code d ampersand d cby that will get you 15 off the already really affordable converse shoes so if you've been like on the fence about that boy give this to somebody to get you a sweet pair of converse dnd shoes and uh and that's not bad and so if you're curious to that you know
Their mailing list has a whole bunch of coupons that just went out and that may be somewhere on their website. So I will say this D&D Beyond 12 Days of Christmas is very hard to find if you didn't get like the email or a social media link. Like I didn't find it on their main web page, which is a bit of an oversight. So a link in our show notes or it's dndbeyond.link. forward slash days of D&D.
But yeah, but an improvement over last year. And it's nice. This is fine. Like you don't have to go overboard, but giving folks an opportunity to catch up on those digital downloads they might have missed, get a few dice. That's great.
And if you celebrate Christmas and you're out in the woods looking for that perfect Christmas tree, ethically sourced, of course, you may get lost. So luckily, we've got folks who are telling us how to talk about wilderness exploration in the games. We had three different people. contributors to the D&D zeitgeist and community talking about different aspects of wilderness exploration.
We have the Patchwork Paladin with another great article on journey systems and exploration, which discusses hexes that don't have anything in them and how to make that more interesting. Any thoughts on that particular topic?
Patrick Paladin's been just nailing it. It's been really nice thoughts about different systems, different things that people are talking about and how to implement them. And so this was just really cool. There have been, I think a lot has been written about sort of what sort of hex crawl system do you have and how often should something come up?
And so I really appreciated this sort of, it's almost like a distillation of other thoughts and then their particular view on it was very useful to read.
Mm-hmm. We have Merrick Blackman writing about Wilderness Travel Redo, discussing the Lord of the Rings journey system, a similar system in Uncharted Journeys, and then combining that with the random encounters in Trials and Treasures from A5E and those in the Empires of the Ghoul campaign that he's running.
So he looks at all of those different systems and then shares the encounters that his group faced on a 600-mile journey.
Yeah.
And finally, we have MT Black, who wrote effective travel montages, sharing his approach to skipping the travel and instead providing a montage of interesting things the party encounters along the way.
Yeah, really nice. It's a short piece, but frames it all really well as to why you may want to, whether it's a point crawl or however you're handling it, to just sort of say like, okay, we're going to travel through this and here's this fun part that you saw and let's not get bogged down in the system, but instead, you know, bring it down to montage school. Nice, nice.
We get a look also from a Reddit post at the 2024 changes to magic items. This was on the Adventurers League Reddit. It drew a little bit of attention. It lists magic items that have changed between 2014 and 2024 and how the changes can have an impact in Adventurer's League play, but also it might be interesting for any DM or game designer. What were some of the examples that were shown to us?
Yeah, like wing boots is an interesting one. So now it's a magic action to activate it. It has four charges and each charge lasts one hour and your fly speed is 30 feet instead of your walking speed.
I thought that was a really good example of one where, you know, a number of little changes to make it, you know, you're still flying around, but it's in a different way now and you've got to use this magic action.
um the cube of force is completely different each side casts a spell and all of that previous like blocks this kind of thing feature is removed from the item um rings of resistance you know like fire resistance cold etc those are now not attunement so you could actually have a lot of them and being this an adventures league reddit it's like hey you might find a character that has you know 10 rings or however many resistance rings they can come up with
Because, hey, half damage from all these different sources, right? I thought that was interesting. The Robe of Eyes gives you 120 feet true sight now, so that's a big deal. And then Oil of Sharpness now permanently turns melee weapons into plus three weapons.
Oof. I need to take a closer look at the DMG before I start putting magic items in adventures, I see. Right. Okay, then. Oil of Sharpness. On the list. All right. And finally, our creator corner here. We are looking at Old Hammock. Press who have shared a rather interesting slash sad look at their Kickstarter finances.
So in 2024 February, Pulp Hummock Press crowdfunded Gods of the Forbidden North Volume Two, which raised just over $100,000, $107,911. So in November, the principal behind that, Robert, shared how the project went as a, quote, financial accountability report. Tejas, you want to walk us through this? You're our money break it down guy.
I'm glad to, which I think is awesome, right? Because you just see one hundred and seven thousand. You think, wow, that's great. I would, you know, I would kill to be the person that could get one hundred and seven thousand on their Kickstarter. Well, maybe, maybe not. So in this accountability report, he breaks down. What came in and what went out.
And so including late pledges and drive through sales since it went live, the product has raised a combined one hundred and twenty four thousand. Even better, except for total expenses are one hundred and fifty eight thousand for a loss of nearly thirty four K. The largest costs, we have to start out with an interesting thing, which is we see actually a lot in projects.
So the largest cost, $30,000 in debt from the previous Kickstarter. And so they had done this second Kickstarter hoping to recoup that initial debt.
um they also spent 30 000 on illustrations and layouts this was clearly an expensive project you know they're trying to make a really nice project they had 20 000 for offset printing and freight 20 000 for packing and fulfillment 15 000 for kickstarter advertising which they said was really important 11 000 for print on demand bulk print orders and 10 000 for kickstarter fees so
All of that adds up, you know, 10K here, 30K there. It adds up. Reflecting on the project, Robert says that customers take time to read a book and run it or talk about it. And so he thought, you know, sales from the product being talked about would be a lot higher.
I actually thought the drive-through looked pretty strong at $15,000 out of $124K revenue, but he saw it as pretty small compared to the Kickstarter itself, which is true. So the real money is Kickstarter, and we've heard this before from others. Advertising is a necessary evil.
There was a point where his credit card was momentarily blocked for some reason, and so he couldn't pay for ads, and his Kickstarter revenue just dropped during that part of the campaign until he got it back online and could again have Facebook ads. But the profit is really slim.
He talks about he's a professor in college, and so he sees very plain textbooks, no art, boring tomes that sell for $120 to $160 to all these students. But an RPG product is way nicer and has much lower profit margins. And he points out that you can save on a lot of costs if you have multiple talents. If you can do the writing, if you can do the illustration, you can do the layout.
It is expensive to hire people that do good work, and that's all very true.
It is. And we tip our hat to all the creators out there who are trying to make ends meet in an industry that doesn't necessarily bring much profit to those creators.
Yeah.
This week. on our main topic here on Mastering Dungeon. We are going to continue our look at the industry and what you need to do to become a part of it. So in previous episodes, we saw what Wizards of the Coast was looking in full-time game designers and game design adjacent workers through their help wanted ads.
Then we reached out to other publishers to talk to them about what they look for in freelancers and full-time employees. Last week, we talked about lessons that we learned in game design from our earliest projects when we were young alpha streams and young Merwins. Mad wizards. We're not... We're not young anymore. So now we're looking at more recent game design lessons that we have learned.
What mistakes did we make? What lessons did we learn? And how did we navigate the pitfalls of an industry that doesn't have a lot of money, but has a lot of competition? So we make up for it in volume. Yes, we do definitely make up for it in volume of mistakes. So last time we talked more about sort of the organized play third edition era that we were in.
Um, and so some of those lessons carry over, but a lot of it, third edition was a much different game than fourth edition, which is a much different game than fifth edition. The industry has changed from very analog to very digital, uh,
The ability to make money in the industry, while still low, has increased from what it was back then as gaming licenses have changed and opportunities have opened up to get your work out there in different ways. I want to start with three overall lessons that we've talked about and we will continue to talk about.
And Teos, if you want to comment on any of these, go ahead, and if you want to add to them, go ahead as well. The first lesson that I've learned going from third edition to fourth edition to fifth edition to different games and different forms and different formats
There's an old saying that was coined originally by an architect named Louis Sullivan, and then Frank Lloyd Wright sort of changed it a bit. It's form follows function is sort of the truncated version of what Louis Sullivan said. Form and function are the same thing is what Frank Lloyd Wright said.
But really what they mean is before you can decide on the form of something, you need to decide what the function will be. And if you try to create something, give it form, without knowing what its function's going to be, you will end up not making the best possible thing for the job that it's supposed to do.
And while this is for architecture originally, it sort of travels through different industries, maybe with some slight variations, but the concept remains fairly sound to me.
Whether you're talking about game rules or settings or adventures or campaigns, this idea of knowing what the function needs to be and all the little intricacies that may be different from a typical version of that need to be sussed out and acknowledged and put into design.
Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say my worst projects or the most challenging ones have been ones where the people giving me the work did not particularly know what they wanted or didn't tell me what they wanted. They'd keep secrets or they weren't quite sure or there were several departments thinking it over and maybe had slightly different perspectives.
And that lack of understanding really messes it up. The best projects have been the ones where, you know, like Vault of the Dracolich, where we were all having calls, all the designer teams, myself being a developer, Scott being an editor, Mike Shea being a writer, and then all of us actually writing and developing and doing things and talking about it constantly.
So we knew exactly what we were trying to do. Or when we worked on Acquisitions Incorporated with Scott, right? You and I and Scott, like just from the beginning, having a say in what this book should be, you know, you and I dreaming up a possible table of contents and then working on it with the Penny Arcade team.
That means that when it came time to writing, we really knew what this project was trying to do. Right. And and that is such a big difference. Then, yes, you're going to do the right form for that function. Yeah.
It's like every corporation that you might work for or work with, they have their guiding principle or their motto or their five virtuous rules. And only this is like a good version of that. This is an actual, rather than just having these pie in the sky thoughts, actually be working toward bringing to life a thing in a form that you can use.
The flip side of that is since function may be different, form will also often be different. And that makes it hard for us to come up with thou shalt or thou shalt not commandments for this industry. Because there will always be some out of the ordinary thing.
desired function that requires some sort of unusual form and as soon as that form looks different people will sometimes push back against it not realizing that it's that form for a reason because we are trying to work toward this particular function so every time we say do this
There's always an implicit do this unless you are working on this other thing or this other goal or this other desired function.
Yeah, for sure. There have been projects where, like when I worked on HeroQuest, where I had some wild ideas, but HeroQuest is a board game that plays a particular way.
And whenever I would talk to the project manager about some of the wackier ideas, they would correctly point out, well, you know, that's going to kind of not... You could go that way, but just know the expectations won't support that. And so you'll be causing... you know, a brain twist on the sides of the players. I'm like, OK, you know, that's this is not the place for that.
So let's back that idea and come around it a different way.
Yeah. And that leads us directly into lesson number two, which is know your medium, but never be beholden to it. but know it. Because by knowing it, you can avoid situations where you try to do something different, but you end up inadvertently breaking the form rather than enhancing the form.
When we talk about that, always be ready and willing to break the rules, but know to your heart the rule that you're breaking and understand the consequences of breaking that rule. And what comes to mind for me always is the initiative system for different games, including fifth edition D&D.
Because what's the first thing that people play D&D, they play it for a long time, then they go play a different game, a different system that has a different initiative system. And they love it because it's different. And the first thing they want to do is bring that back and put that into their fifth edition D&D game.
Which is a fine impulse, but you have to then think through consequences and know the ramifications of doing so. Yeah.
And it's you forget how many things in D&D sort of hinge off of the initiative system, including just what the character, you know, the player chose to do with their character when they wanted to get a high result on initiative. Right. And be dexterous and take the particular feat and whatever. And you throw in some other system and you've invalidated that. Right.
And so but there are so many other ways as well where the game really works off of that initiative system and to change it. is to rub against those other elements, usually in a not so great way, unless it's for a very specific type of scene.
Yep. Yep. So again, keep that in mind. Anytime you're designing, know what you're doing, try to break the rules, but know what that will mean. And the third thing I want to talk about, lessons that I've sort of learned over the years, is my preference and my experience are not the same as the totality of the audience that I'm writing for.
I may like something and I may have to work on a project where I'm doing something that isn't my preference, but at least for the time that I'm designing, that needs to be my preference. That needs to be the thing I love. I need to learn to love this so that I can do the best job about it. Write what you know is great advice. Write what you love is great advice up to a certain point.
But when you become more advanced, when you become, When you get to the point where you're trying to do different things, it's not write what you know, it's start from where you know and learn. It's write what you love, but learn to love other things, or at least learn to appreciate other things.
Yeah, the games are bigger than we are and the audience is bigger than we are. And it's worth kind of picking those design battles where you want to be really creative. So like with Fifth Edition Adventures League that I only wrote, you know, two adventures, but the ones that I did for the official organized play program, they were I deliberately wanted to do wild things with them.
And the reason was that I was thinking about during third edition organized play, how I was so influenced by some of the wilder ideas we saw. Because, you know, you play hundreds of adventures and then you have those that really stand out. They don't necessarily have to succeed wildly, but they do something so different that you're like, oh, that was neat.
You know, I didn't think an adventure could do that. And just the other day I got a review or I was seeing a review on this one adventure I wrote Howling Void where it was like, I hate prepping and running this adventure was the comment. And I wrote an apology and said, you know, I'm sorry. When I wrote this, I knew some people would really this would not work for some people.
And I made that choice because the audience I was trying to serve was kind of more targeted towards the people who would benefit from something wild being in an adventure rather than every single table and DM out there. And I made that choice knowing that, you know, it might go that way.
I will say I made the same choice when I wrote The Artifact, my other AL adventure, but I did that in a better way. So I think... people don't react that way. Like they don't have trouble prepping for it or playing it or running it because it's a better job at being different without being difficult. So I did better my second time around, right? In that way.
When I was on the Kiel Lund Triad, one of the first things I did was put a sort of a Yahoo group survey out. And it was a question about prep time and complication and how much weight is appreciated for the effort versus making a simpler adventure that's a little more straightforward.
And people, a wide, wide margin said, yes, make it more difficult to run or prep if it has to, as long as it's going to be different. And those adventures were by far the least liked. So people say they wanted it, but then when the consequences of making it that way were presented to them, They did not like it.
Yeah. When they're prepping the week before the convention and go, oh, I really have to spend more time on this. Then it's harder. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it was also the players. Yeah. Right. The players said, yes, we want something different. And even if it's a little more complicated and it may not be the best experience ever. Yeah. And and then they're like, no, we don't like this. So, you know, it's sort of that. Be careful what you wish for. And yeah.
uh players players like uh like patients lie and and know the danger of it right know that you're going to create something super complicated some people that you may be creating a worse experience now yes it's great that there are various shades of complexity right you don't want everything to be simple that's out there but but just know that you're running into that problem.
And it's why I think in a lot of written adventures, or let's say official D&D 5e adventures, that complexity can be very low because I think they rightly fear that that will bounce off of a lot of people, and it's true.
Okay, so let's talk about our newer experiences. Third edition was great. We had a great campaign in Living Greyhawk. We had some other sub campaigns. I worked on Zendrick Expeditions, which toyed with the idea of rather than tracking things just on paper, using computers to track. So at the end of a game, the game master would go online and answer the questions
that your group how they did and that would trigger a certain number of experience points or magic item access etc and then you would go and check on your website oh what level is my character now oh what what could i what could i do and you know this was this was pre-smartphones. This was like, you got to log on and look at this on your laptop.
So you couldn't advance during a convention, during a show, you'd have to wait till the end. And so weird things like that were going on. It was a great experiment that did not work for so many reasons, but it taught me that the format of a campaign can greatly affect Everything. How the rules work, how the adventure needs to be written.
When we wrote Adventures for that, even though it was just a third edition organized play campaign, so much else needed to be taken into account because of the way that the campaign was set up. Yeah.
And was, so Zendrik Expeditions was first and then was Mark of Heroes after that?
Mark of Heroes was first.
Was first, okay.
Then Zendrik Expeditions.
And which was the one that had the, that introduced factions? Because that was a big change too.
That was Zendrik Expeditions.
Okay. Yeah, that was a big, I remember that being like sort of the first organized play campaign where people were talking about, hey, you know, I'm a member of this group and I have this, you know, agenda. And that was also a very interesting thing to play with, I'm sure. Yeah.
There were four factions. I was overseeing the Crimson Codex, which was the mysterious arcana, strange prophecy group, which was the hardest to write for easily, and probably the least popular by far. But I'm sure it was just because of me. So your character could join this faction or had to join this faction, and you played your faction adventures.
But then they made adventures where a member of any faction could play sort of the core adventures. And what I found out immediately was... Let me step back. The four factions were the good, aligned, everybody is out for great, let's save the world. There was the military faction, which was like a mercenary kind of setup.
There was mine, which was this prophecy-driven, esoteric stuff, secret-filled stuff. And then there was the evil faction, where you could play an evil character if you were in this faction. And then we had these crossover adventures where people from any faction could play together.
And the first thing I saw was, as soon as you give anyone the slightest crack to be able to work against another player, they are going to take that, take the jaws of life, or the jaws of death in this case, and just put it in that crack and open it as wide as they possibly could.
which was fun for certain types of players and very disappointing for game masters and you know other players who wanted to role play it but not be like i'm going to yeah yeah
Yeah. That's so super interesting. I mean, what a great, I mean, it's amazing, right? You got to see that. And it's, I'm sure part of the reason, you know, so much about organized play because you, you ran those campaigns. You were part of the fourth edition official campaign. What was that like? Yeah.
Yeah, that was different as well. And this is where third edition came and went. Fourth edition was announced at Gen Con. And I still remember I got the key to my room and it said, like, for adventure. But it was like adventure, but it had instead of the A, a four. And so that was like, hey, is fourth edition coming?
And then they made that big announcement about fourth edition with the really weird sort of announcement. And then they had an organized play session after that where they basically said, hey, this campaign you love, yeah, it's ending. but we're going to do a Living Forgotten Realms. We're going to bring the organized play living system to the Forgotten Realms."
And I was like, okay, cool, whatever. Some people were like, I'm never playing D&D again. And most of those people made sure I said, I'll see you next year. And they're like, I'm not coming back next year. And then they came back next year to play the fourth edition game.
But I still remember at Winter Fantasy sitting down with Chris Tulek, who said, all right, you are one of three people who are going to be running this campaign. These are the rules we're implementing. And he started listing off the things. And I hated every single one of them. It was, we're going to allow people to replay adventures.
Mm-hmm.
That was the opposite of what Living Greyhawk was. We're going to let DMs run them and then play. I was like, why are we even bothering? And it took me a while to realize that I am not the audience for everything. There are other audiences out there. Sometimes they are a vast majority and I am in the great minority.
And that turned out to be the case in this case, because of the replayability, people were more willing to game master. They were more willing to DM because they didn't have to eat the adventure. Oh, I ran it, so now I can't play it. And every rule that Chris said I had an issue with, and every one for this campaign, The way they had decided to run it turned out to be exactly right.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I certainly saw in fourth edition that those friction points where things were changing. And I mean, the truth is, it's really hard to know something at that moment for what it is, even if you have a strong understanding of the past. You can only make your best guess for where you think something will go.
You know, I think from the beginning, I saw some issues with what Living Forgotten Realms is trying to do around regions and stuff and not to get bogged down in this, you know, for the show. But but seeing that when you change systems, well, this is going to have an impact. What exactly will be, you know, maybe I don't know for sure, but it's going to have an impact and it'll be interesting to see.
And I think that bore true with Forgotten Realms that. that it was that way. But as you said, sometimes when we're doing something, you know, we just have to take that plunge because it's what being asked of us.
If we like the job, we must serve it and try to do the best we can with it, acknowledging that, yeah, what we prefer may not be what's going to get the most people to play a game of D&D or whatever the higher calling is. Right. And like I've seen that not to jump to fifth edition, but in working like Emerald City Comic Con or PAX D&D events,
There is a total difference between what I would like to play at a convention and what I would like to run or offer to people and what will do the greatest good at those conventions in terms of signing people up, serving the audience that's walking up.
And when you meet those people, as they come in and tell you what they want and where they are in their life cycle of D&D, primarily very much at the beginning, then you realize, well, this is what they need. And that's different.
So along those lines, you then ran at the end or near the end of fourth edition, your own organized play campaign, Ashes of Athos. So what was it like ramping that up? And what was that like trying to bring Dark Sun to an organized play campaign with a larger campaign already in place? Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah, Living Forgotten Realms is obviously huge. And one of the early things is people would say, like, you know, this is going to be bigger than Living Forgotten Realms. I'm like, no, no, it's not. Like, let's be honest about this. I understood enough to know we're going to be small. And in fact, that's what we need to do.
We need to be the niche for people who either want to play something else that's different. Or they don't particularly love what the main program is. So they want something else that gives them a different type of experience. So we've got the latitude to be different. In fact, maybe even the imperative to be a little different.
but without taking ourselves too seriously like know that you've got to kind of carefully take care of your audience because it's a small one and craft a really good experience and so we broke a lot of rules but we did so with a lot of thought and one thing that we did that was really nice is you know you had folks like me who were
know died in the wolf you know super trained on all the previous organized play campaigns had played all sorts of organized play but then we had folks like derek guter who were brand new to this kind of thing you know had only seen it from afar or like in the initial days we had like chris sims helping us who would ask like will players really like strip the furniture and try to sell it?
And it's like, yes, yes, they will if they can gain from it. Like if you start allowing for this behavior will emerge and they couldn't really believe it. Right. But but they would also come with really fresh ideas as to how to, you know, and ask these great questions that would lead us down towards particular paths. And that was a great learning experience, you know, and thinking about
Because we didn't have to do exactly what Living Forgotten Realms did, we could think about the way we build story arcs, the way we build player, what the characters do changes the story. All of that we were able to do. And it gave me tons and tons of knowledge as to overseeing writers, dealing with the writer who doesn't turn things in or turn something in that isn't great.
Being a developer, right, which which was really neat, like, you know, giving it that extra polish to make it work. And coordinating things like art and maps and all of that, you know, there's just so much that I learned from that experience and then seeing it play and run and trying to support DMs and and seeing folks, you know, like Alan Patrick before he became a fifth edition admin.
The way that kind of I found him was he was at working Winter Fantasy and he was like the marshal that was helping seat people for Ashes of Athos. And he said, hey, you know, I heard some complaints about a DM. So I sat at their table the very next slot to just see what was going on and then talk to them. And they're just over there in over their head.
And so they're going to, you know, bow out next slot. And here's what we're doing to help it. And I just thought this guy's amazing. Right. Here's a person who is so. cares about it all being in the right places. And I think it helped lead him to eventually becoming an admin and so much more because he was that kind of person, right?
And being at conventions like this, volunteering, helping, that's what happens. People notice that you're great and they give you opportunities and so on, which is awesome.
So fourth edition was your first foray into actual writing for pay in the D&D world, yeah?
Yeah, for pay. So I had done some third edition work with Living Greyhound, because we talked about last episode, but nothing had ever meant money. And so it was worth, and you in fact gave me the first adventure for part of a Theon series that I wrote for you, I think because you saw me kind of doing some stuff as sort of the hobby level. And so you invited me to write, which was super cool.
And it was really fun getting to know you. I met you at Gen Con. I think you were taking a bite of a sandwich when I met you and had to wait for you to finish.
Sounds about right.
But it was, yeah. So getting paid to do an organized play adventure was novel. Certainly not life-changing, but it was a novel. I'm actually getting paid and seeing my convention run at Gen Con. That was really cool. But what it did, and especially the Ashes of Athos work, what it did was lead to getting noticed, right?
So like Chris Perkins played at my table through an Ashes of Athos adventure and he asked who wrote it and I said that I did. And probably because of that, a little bit later, I got a would you like to write a D&D encounter season? And I actually said no. I said, I'm going to frame this email because this is so cool and I'm so thankful you asked me.
But I can't do that because Ashes of Athos is all consuming and there's no way I could do a good job on this. And I thought, well, maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot and that's the last opportunity I ever get. But it wasn't. I got a lot more opportunities after that with Wizards. But that really started my work for Wizards was the fact that I'd done these things.
My fourth edition experience was strange in that I play tested the rule set. And because I had play tested the rules, they had a limited pool of freelancers to work on projects that they had to get in the pipeline before the books came out. which was essentially four different projects. One was Living Forgotten Realms.
One was some articles for Dungeon and Dragon Magazine, which they had moved to digital. One was for a book called Dungeon Delve, which was the short sort of three encounter mini adventures that they put a book out of level one through 30. So I wrote like seven or eight of those.
And then Rob Schwalb dropped out of an adventure writing project in their adventure path, so they asked me to fill in for him. So I got to see four different projects with four different directors at Wizards. Wow. with four different sort of formats, organized play, short-term articles or adventures, these mini adventures, and then a longer adventure. Wow.
All while they were still sort of putting the rules together or getting their feet on the ground. And it taught me so much to be in that position, to see, to learn lessons from different people. But it also grounded me in the fact that Wizards of the Coast is like any organization.
disorganized yeah yeah uh and and so it it grounded me when you first come especially back then when there isn't a lot of social media a lot of interaction you're like think these people are just right demigods right right you think they're perfect right just they're they're there they know their shit sorry uh they know their stuff
uh they you think they've got it all together and then you realize that they're just like you right they have more experience they have more skill in some cases but they're they're just and so that helped me in that area but also then as social media became more prominent and the anti-wizards of the coast sentiments became magnified by the echo chamber, I also realized that they're not evil.
Corporations may be evil, but the people that populate it are just trying to do their jobs and they're generally fine folk. And that has been so important for me to keep my sanity. over the course of a 25-year career now. So important.
Well, you know, you've often been a mentor to me. And one of them was when I heard when you shared like your fourth edition stories of like writing before the rules were truly finalized. And then for fifth edition, I had a project. Well, both both the D&D next project where the rule sets were changing, Vault of the Dracolich, and then writing the first epic for Gen Con for Adventurers League.
And, you know, I'm asking, OK, so how do I know? which monsters to use because they don't have CR values yet. And they're like, yeah, sorry. I'm like, okay. And then I just remembered Sean telling me about monsters in early fourth edition not being balanced yet. And so I was like, okay.
So I just picked monsters that I thought were cool, ran a playtest with my home group that was all under NDA and TPKed them. And then I changed it and TPKed them again and changed it again. And then it worked. And I had to do that for every encounter because there were no CR values Nothing told you what monster was related to anything. They didn't have XP values either.
The only thing I did have was from Rich Baker's work writing Lost Mines of Phandelver. I had those. So those contained CR values. And I could guess maybe roughly which other monsters were along that track. When the event ran at Gen Con, I was just crossing my fingers hoping it all worked. And I think so were folks like Chris Duloc. You know, I hope this works. And it did.
But it took a lot of work to get it there.
Yeah, and those times of transition are, multiply it by 100, the awkwardness of trying to put together something that's already not perfect to start with, And then all that changed. I worked on two D&D Encounters seasons. The first one was War of Everlasting Darkness, which was a bridge between fourth edition and D&D Next. They knew fourth edition was ending.
They hadn't announced it yet, but they knew it was going to end. So they wanted to sort of experiment with the D&D Encounters format, which was a very linear adventure.
where you play one encounter that evening people level or not people gain stuff or not then the next week they come back and they play the next encounter this was play a chapter of a novel that could take place over months in one session Fourth edition had daily encounters, daily powers and counterpowers, at will powers. So we had to mess around with those.
And, you know, it was as you would expect. Some people thought it was cool, but for the most part, people were like, why are you breaking something I love? Then the next season, they already moved into D&D Next. They had already released the first version of those rules. So now they wanted an encounter season that could be playable for 4th edition or D&D Next.
And it also broke the D&D Encounters mold by being less linear. They wanted you to start in a town and be able to move in different directions. Well, the whole point of D&D Encounters was, if I don't show up a week, I'll just catch up the following week because it's a linear game. And whoever showed up will throw at a table.
And we know they played this encounter last week, so they'll play this encounter this week. And this was completely different. in that you could start in the town and you could investigate the moat house first, or you could investigate the temple first, or you could investigate the caves first. So it threw all of that out the window.
So this was sort of an experiment on top of an experiment on top of yet another experiment And let's see what we can do. And for some people, they said that was the most fun Encounters season we had because the DM had the freedom to move things around, tell a story. And again, for others, it was why are you breaking what we love? How dare you, you monster.
So the flexibility and the form following the function just keeps coming back to bear in these situations.
Yeah. What about since then? I mean, you've become full-time, you took all those lessons forward.
Yeah, I don't even know. I've still tried to get my feet under me. I became full-time first just as a freelancer, then working with Ghostfire full-time, now back to freelancing, but still working with Ghostfire. And it's just giving me the time and the opportunity to expand what I've what I've been working on.
So now instead of just writing an adventure, which is hard enough as it is now, it's like overseeing three different books being written at the same time with rules and with settings and with adventures all trying to come together. And it's it is overwhelming, but I wouldn't want to be doing anything else, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And what about you?
What's your path now that 5th edition is here and you're moving forward?
Yeah, you know, and I think it's interesting how you can you just from year to year, you don't know what you're doing. You're just kind of trying to get some work or do whatever. But then then at some point you realize, oh, wow, I've sort of changed how I'm doing things. Right. And so I think initially I was you know, I wanted to do more organized play.
I wanted to do more Vault of the Dracoliches. My work at Wizards dried up for unknown reasons. But then I started getting work with other companies. And really, when I look back at it, I've been really lucky. I've had really fortunate, you know, whether it's HeroQuest. I mean, HeroQuest is a game that's beloved by so many designers, was formative to them.
And so many of them said, oh, you know, I'd kill you to work on HeroQuest. And that was my board game experience, right? But also kind of adventure writing in a different format. And working with groups like MCDM, you know, I feel very lucky to do that. And there's been a lot of great creativity there.
But then also trying to do my own things and experiment a little with it, even while all of it has to be done for me because I have two kids in college and various other financial things like I can't stop my day job right as much as I would like to. That must continue. And so it all has to fit in around and be done at night.
It's also led to, you know, like this podcast or experimenting with doing YouTube videos about me eating bologna sandwiches. You know, these are all things that I'm discovering as I try to. find how to make a difference. And I think that's what I go back to is, you know, I think of like why I did this. I do like designing a lot. I mean, I love it.
But even more than that, what I like is to see that the game may be improved for somebody or that they have new ideas or are touched by it. And that's not only just through play. Right. So that's where I think like, you know, you and I doing this podcast and talking, breaking down
Concepts of the industry or the success in RPG series or whatever can accomplish that better than an adventure sometimes or accomplishes different things. And so I've changed up what I'm involved in. And I turned down a lot of work because I'm not necessarily looking for the shiny project.
And as I mentioned last time, sometimes the shiniest of projects get canceled because they're a little too shiny. And so, you know, trying to find that how how can I help? this hobby out while having it be creatively awesome going forward. And I think as we get older, we start thinking like, and I only have but so many years of this left.
You see the people that were mentors for you and that you thought of and you see, wow, they only have so many years left. So then you do the math and you realize, oh, I only have so many years left. And you start thinking about that as well, which is, I think, a whole new era that we'll be entering as we think about, OK, you know, do I
turn off the spigot or turn it down or change the way I approach things because of that, right? Like, I don't know. We'll see where that. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm in that same boat looking back and saying, I think I'm a better person for having played this game and for having been in the industry, having met the people that I met, whether they're players, game masters at conventions or industry people through corporations and companies or you name it. And I want other people to have the availability of that experience. Yeah.
I can't necessarily do that just by writing, even with Wizards of the Coast hardcover book. As fun as Halls of Undermountain was to write, there's other ways and other audiences to reach. And so something like teaching I hope will give that spark for what the gaming did for me to other people. That's all we can do.
Yeah, that's all we can.
So I hope that Teos and my experiences have helped everyone out. Again, if you have any questions, you can hit us on social media or email us at masteringdnd at gmail.com. And we'd be happy to go into detail on any of those experiences and what we learned. So thank you listeners out there.
If you would like to support us, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash mastering D&D, and you can become a master of dungeon supporters. And we really appreciate the people who are doing that.
you can become a master of the realm supporter and you get listed here in our show notes or you can become a master of the multiverse patron and you force me to say your name on the show we're going to start from the bottom this time zil walt winfrey zach types chris webster javier wasiak jason ward from accidental cyclops games graham ward james walton marcelo de velasquez the valiant dm joe tyler
Jeremy Taleman from the D&D and TV podcast, Talos the Storm Lord, Josh and Liwanika of the Tabletop Journeys podcast. All right, here we go. Spark from Dunor Games, D-U-N-O-R Games.
Krishna Simonsa, Andy Shockney, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Runner Rick, Ozymandias Rex, Pugness, Vladimir Pruner from Croatia, Robert Pasley, Post-Fiction RPG Audio, Frog Prince at Tentacles Squelching Wetly, Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo, Mighty Zeus, Tom Nelson from the Deck of Player Safety,
Falcon Neal, Sean Malley, John Mickey, Trey McLemore, Anna B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography, Eric Menke, The Mathemagician, Paul Mata, Chad Lynch, Jim Klingler, aka DM Prime Mover, Brian King, JR of The Twilight Perspective,
The Mighty Jerd, Mark and Mary's Gaming Compound, Sean Hurst, Ben Heisler, and Paige Leitman, William Harshman of Runeforged Tabletop Gaming, Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios, James Fisher, Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com, Will Doyle, Evil John, Calvin Bridges-Avalos, Merrick Blackman, Steve Bissonette, David Bastianzen, Craig Bailey, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios,
Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing. And first, but not least, Agile Monk. Welcome. Thank you so much for your support. Again, go to patreon.com slash masteringdnd if you would like to support us in ways that help us keep our show going. Teos. I've always wanted to see you eating a bologna sandwich.
If, say, I wanted to see that again over and over in super slow motion, where would I do so?
You can go to AlphaStream.org and from there you can find my YouTube channel where I do indeed talk about branded lunch meat. And do I eat a bologna sandwich from the 80s? No, but I LARP doing so, I guess. And while talking about the importance of branding.
And I will LARP being a game designer at all the socials. And you can also follow the podcast on YouTube. It's the mastering dungeons, YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at mastering dungeons. So we have gone through our careers and shown how very much we've learned and still have so much yet to learn. So what should we do now?
I'm going to create a time machine and go back in time and trade places with you and see what your career was like from the inside.
Yeah, I'm going to go eat a bologna sandwich. Slowly.