#139. Are these D&D Settings too Problematic to Return? | Eldritch Lorecast | DnD 5e | TTRPG

this week on the eldrich lacast the Americans are making references I don't understand it'll continue until morale improves tell us about greyhawk Sean greyhawk was sort of the first world that was around when I started playing well I'm in love with dark Sun let's look at all the problematic content that was in Dark Sun who wants to take that one I'm going zip it for a minute a Sak Forgotten Realms VNA greyhawk greyhawk greyhawk that Chris Cox is apparently currently playing in katur I mean it is like an opportunity to educate a lot of folks and immerse folks in a culture that especially now that we have more organic resources of information the wild success of radiant Citadel led to a lot of that all this and more Hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the eldrid law cast the number one tabletop RPG podcast in all the Realms and I won't hear anybody on this particular panel disagree or say otherwise my name is Ben joined this week by Sha Merwin Taos AA Omar N and Omar thank you for joining the lawcast once again I have to ask do you have a favorite campaign setting I am an old school like John Carpenter horror fan uh I know this isn't this isn't the nerdiest most hipster old answer but uh I love salt marsh I love a foggy scary mystery you've got uh not to ruin anything from the gecko but there's like a bridge with a curse there's a a monster in a house if you decided to go there there's nobility that's feuding I also love just grabbing a pint with the locals so I uh I would probably say uh uh you know in a larger scale of things I would say you know salt marsh or if you want to zoom out just a weird creepy coastal town I love creepy we fight so many monsters but sometimes just being an outsider is kind of the eeriest experience so uh something something within those Realms I would say sure sure you know you've given me a a thought maybe a separate question ask later which is like taking uh what what are maybe predominantly D andd settings mhm and then playing a different system in them or taking a different system setting and playing D and D in it because as soon as you like the way you're describing this I'm like could you say like K cthulu in salt marsh or even something like uh uh taking the the kendel obscur rules and putting them in salt marsh or assault Marsh face you know could be really cool Tera also thank you for joining us this week on the LW cast uh a setting that you are absolutely in love with well I'm in love with dark Sun but in terms of what I think uh should happen now like dark sun to me one of the beauties of it is that it is different from normal DND D and dnd's kind of been on a different kick in plcape and spell Jammer and stuff like that so what I would choose for 5e right now is actually to go from the macro into the micro and give us never winner uh which was gorgeously done for fourth edition take that to fifth edition and show us how you can really do one Urban location into a really awesome multitude of possibilities for DMS very open design you know you decide what do you want to go with the nashers uh and trying to take control from the government are you fighting valindra and the fans are you you know so many opportunities the elves the whatevers God Grim right like that is a beautiful book that just brings tons of stories into one city and shows you how that can be done and I think that would really work for fifth edition I I agree I was writing a campaign recently that was just like one city location and I was a little bit worried that from the outside looking in it might seem like the scope or scale of the campaign was a little bit limited but there's so many great video games that I can think of that that kind of really are limited to one city but there can be so much inside a city to to dive into and uh last but certainly not least Shawn mwin uh favorite setting so to tell you how ins sync I am with Taos I knew that he would say Dark Sun but then knew that he would say we can't do Dark Sun so we're going to do something else so I'm going to say dark Sun okay and because people say well look at all the problematic content in Dark Sun and I say yes let's look at all the problematic content that was in Dark Sun and let's dig into that and let's bring this setting where these super powerful beings and their minions were destroying the environment and we sucking the life out of the people whether willingly or unwillingly and let's just bring that right out into today because that is the 21st century we're living in and we need Adventures where we can fight that power and show that you can do that sort of content with fifth edition rules in the 21st century and really make it resonate amen uh somebody put uh we put a video up this week about the Crimson core in aoya uh which is a kind of a Gothic horror realm where vampires Rule and they inflict a blood and they kind of Ed the structures of society to keep the different echelons of society kind of socially stagnant and stuck and unable to rise against them and somebody in the YouTube comments said this seems awfully a lot like kind of the way the capitalism is sort of roughly structured uh and that wasn't the intention when writing it but I just kind of replied and said H life imitates art it seems maybe maybe we need a bit of this in uh a bit of catharus if anything you know know uh in in this sort of uh in the games that we play there there was a new setting announced uh for fifth well not a new setting but but a Revival of an old setting that they want to bring back and Spotlight again in the new fifth edition tell us about greyhawk Sean the funny thing is greyhawk was sort of the first world that was around when I started playing but we never played there my group we all made our own home campaigns the only thing we really knew about greyhawk was that there the adventure modules that you bought mentioned these places but we hadn't bought the box set so we didn't know what they meant so it was cool it's like oh yeah there's salt marsh over here and there's Grey Hawk City there but it's like what does any of that mean and it wasn't until much later in fact 2000 when the living greyhawk campaign came out when we really started to at least I started to understand all the trappings of greyhawk what the different nations were and what they represented and the stories that you could tell there so in that sense it was the first uh it was the first setting it was the setting that Gary gy brought his players into the game through so there's a lot of nostalgia there there's a lot of history there and it was interesting that they brought this out for this particular release but I don't think I don't think they're going to make anyone happy except me because they're not going to make the greyhawk people happy because there's not going to be enough detail there for them to really grasp it for the for the new players there's no Nostalgia for them so they're going to read this thing and go n okay it's a world hopefully what they use it for is what they say they're going to use it for which is to teach game Masters to teach World designers how to lift this up from from a skeletal BL blueprint and work with it from there it could be really great for that because Grayhawk was born from the idea that a DM could kind of mess around in the setting and then another DM might mess around in the same setting but it was all kind of home brew right because it was home brewed back then it was the first home brew or one of the first when greyhawk was written up reluctantly because gaks initially didn't think that a setting would sell but then other people started doing it he realized well maybe adventures and settings actually do sell and as he wrote it up he wrote it up with great potential and he wrote it up lightly different than Ed Greenwood when he wrote The Forgotten Realms he's thinking I'm writing stories and he's just filling his cabinet with all of his stories and when the company buys it he just gives all of it right and so there's just buckets of lore GX is the opposite approach greyhawk is a place that's sort of thin at first and so it can be very hard to say why is it different the Forgotten Realms or what is it that makes it magical but its magic is actually in its openness and in all of the potential energy that's sort of set up like little powder kegs in each Nation with all of this conflict poised to take take place and in understanding the essence of those regions and what they what you can do with them as a GM is the magic as Sean says if the DMG can actually somehow manage to in the very limited space they're going to surely give this setting to say hey look at these little powder kaks and how you can make powder kigs like this in your game and then light them on fire with the help of your players that could be amazing for what the DMG needs to do is it amazing for greyhawk and greyhawk fans I probably not not right to me what makes settings amazing is shared experience in the space which is what living greyhawk gave us back in the year 2000 thousands of people all playing in these areas and and expanding upon each of these regions that was true magic we won't get that do you do you have a preference because um to quote the great Shawn mwin and and I will always remember this quote I've quoted it a few times on the lawcast uh sha said to me once when we were working on some kind of background law for Grim Hollow uh we don't write history we write the tools to give GMS to create history with their players at their table and there is a tension there that we feel uh very much as as the the kind of stewards of that setting because there is kind of a bit of a lack of detail in the Grim Hollow campaign guide you know it kind of brushes over the top of a lot of uh different things that that are happening even you know I mentioned earlier the Crimson court in the Grim Hollow campaign guide they're not all named there's meant to be seven of them but but you don't know who those seven are you don't even you barely even know who one or two of them are they later got named in a campaign book Citadel because you know campaign books for my money are meant to kind of do a little bit of that heavy lifting for GM so you don't have to invent all seven members of the Court yourself if you want to feature them in your game uh that that book right there that one right there indeed tiny little thing I I can do my exercise with this this thing's gorgeous I brought it to just say thank you because this is this is my plug for you on your behalf yeah go out and buy this thing it's incredible oh thank you so much I mean I I didn't work on it I appreciate that on behalf of James hake and the the writers and artists uh who worked on it but but we get a lot of folks who ask us like why why don't we have more detail in this law I want to know what this information is I want to know what that is and different folks are going to have different preferences in terms of I want room to invent because I'm a home Brewer GM and I like to to create lots of stuff or I need a lot of guidance I need a lot of Direction and I want to know all the details as you envisage it as what is Canon within within the world do you have a preference about which approach you think is better for a role playing game who wants to take that [Music] one as someone who gets to just absorb a bunch of this stuff as I get to be one of the kids in the Willy Wonka Factory in this conversation uh the more Clay on the table for me the better where if there is you know characters who just want to run through and do something very quickly and not spend a lot of time at the shops and they just want to get to that Adventure then great you can blast through and there is that sort of the Rails uh on which to like keep that action going that it doesn't feel stagnant at the same time some of my favorite sessions I've ever played have just been like the shopping montages where we're going around and it's just getting it activates my little Disney imagineering brain where I'm like of course in this environment these are the foods that would be offered that these are the festivals coming up that this is how people speak uh these are the different you know groups in society so I don't know for me I kind of think uh more is marrier in in the grand scheme of things and you know um it's kind of up to the design of how you relay that information because it can get a little clunky but I kind of like when a a player is like wait I'm sorry can we can we grab a drink here at this tavern and I'm like oh absolutely let me tell you the bartender's name let me get you a bunch of information about this what seat do you sit at oh you made a wrong decision you don't want to sit next to that guy so I'm I'm kind of more as marrier personally on the player end of things you can have too much that scares you right and if I look at a lot of Forgotten Realms uh products like like something like Cloak and Dagger you know uh the driz dordan books any of those Source books that that tell you like all you need to know about whatever the cult of the Dragon the Harpers whatever it's so much lore that you just it's like you're reading a story and you don't know what to really necessarily do with it and sure you can pick some stuff out of it but but it's it's it's hard to work with that much and you start getting intimidated to where you think that if one of my players read this they probably know more than I do they'll probably remember more and so you feel like you're not in control right and and I think what what books are getting better at in a lot of non- D and products are are getting good at doing is giving you a little more of that feeling of what the world's about but the space for you to do like what you're talking about Omar right to add to it and make that interesting make that resonate make that be about the story of the characters at the table that's when it really shines right if you can give me the stuff that's going to help me want to do something with it but make that easy right don't just say and there's an empty spot here right but give me some ideas and how I can go and fill it then we'll all have a lot of fun filling it together with the players if if as the game designer or as the World Builder you can be an architect without being a Storyteller you need to understand stories to help the game master and the players be the storytellers we can as World Builders do a better job in our books of saying here's the blueprint here's how you use the blueprint but you fill in those blanks you pick the colors of the the wallpaper you pick the type of curtains that you have here are some suggestions but we want you because you game master know exactly what characters your players are bringing to the table and we don't so we want you to be able to say the barkeep uh has this secret the barkeep can be anyone it can be any character you can imagine but this secret that the barkeep has is what leads the characters off on their first Adventure so make whatever you need to make it the the sister of this player make it the long lost Uncle of this other character whatever you need to do but this the secret that's the important thing uh what I thought was interesting was that a lot of characters that I think folks associate with the Forgotten Realms through fifth edition uh Are Not Forgotten Realms originated characters apparently again this is not something I'm like know a lot about but characters I to my understanding like morn Kanan and Tasha kind of originate in greyhawk and Not Forgotten Realms does greyhawk have more of those characters than Forgotten Realms oh yeah really you know it's we were just talk some friends of ours were talking about this and and I teased uh Dave Christ of of Ballwin games by by saying you know the the awesome Forgotten Realms characters like Moran Kanan and Tasha he just you know he's like stop it you know it hurts because it's true what's interesting is there are plenty of NPCs in Forgotten Realms but for some reason Wizards just loves stealing ones out of greyhawk I mean Tasha actually doesn't even have that much lore and they still had to bring her into the Forgotten Realms and many multiple Dimensions uh you know it it it tortures me every time it happens because I I do think that something should just stay in other worlds aak right vcna it's not just good guys it's it's it's everybody right uh I think a big part of it is that spells are named after people like Mor Canan right and artifacts are named after vcna and so that's the reason why they keep stealing it for parts but stripping greyhawk for parts uh erodes what greyhawk is um which is actually kind of interesting because I think forgan RS is a lot more elminster uh than Forgotten Realms is then greyhawk is more than Kanan uh greyhawk is actually less dependent on its NPCs in its Adventures for example than than Forgotten Realms tends to be but for some reason uh perhaps because these names and artifact names and so on Wizards just keeps doing this process and I think it it is a bit of a shame it would be nice if we could remember them through greyhawk I get the mechanics of it you know you don't want to dilute your Forgotten Realms Cash Cow but but it hurts yeah I I I had the exact same thought of like you know tash's um hideous laughter is a specific spell that people remember the name of from fifth edition and it's become for players who started with 5e iconic to fifth edition and therefore Tasha must be from the fifth edition setting right you know um I would imagine that's how that happened but you're right when you mentioned a serak and VNA correct me if I'm wrong a serak Forgotten Realms VNA greyhawk greyhawk greyhawk oh they're both greyhawk oh okay well that completely destroys the point I was going to make OFA eating a Serax lunch proverbially when he came across but he was already eating his lunch so it's okay we also have announced uh another look there's a couple of these coming along and I'm losing track of which ones are which another kind of like DND D history book uh a celebration of of the history of D and D if you will this one is kind of set in universe so to speak it's more of a fictional book than like a publication history uh 360 plus page hard cover D diving into the various D and D World settings narrated by morn Kanan famously from greyhawk uh including greyhawk uh Mista Dragon Lance fyon Eon the F wild and shadowfell grouped together for some reason uh spell Jammer the nine Hells the abyss sigil and the far realm who's excited for that train ride I always am even though I I will worry about the implications of of what such a book is trying to pack into a single t uh I will always go through those things for little tidbits and I love retro perspective books and I and I will still eat this up with a spoon uh because I do I love all these worlds I do enjoy reminiscing about them and looking over them and and going back to exploring them so I'm sure I'll enjoy this book it's also written by Adam Lee Adam Lee does really great work uh it's nice to see him uh you know he did a a Tarot deck not too long ago and now he's he's doing this as well and and and got this license deal with wizard so that seems great to me uh short stories as well kind of original fiction written for this book there's couple of authors Jaye Johnson who we know I recognize that name did uh some stories some novels around the D and D movie um but also some other recent D andd themed stuff uh Jody Hower and Eric Campbell Jasmine Buller uh and Jeffrey golden uh contributing on that book as well so it's a pretty good lineup of all I mean it'll be a fun dive if nothing else into into those settings um especially if you're not familiar I had never heard before now or maybe you'd heard the name of the far realm and stara those are two that are kind of blank uh spaces for me how important are they to D and D's cosmology take it away yeah the far realm is uh is where the beholders uh well beholders mind players it's the it's the culian other place that's not geometrically knowable uh marara is if I I sometimes mix these things up but I think that's the world from the D and basic set yeah the know world yeah the Known World the the basic rules and the uh products that followed along those lines they were set in a world called marara the Fay Wild and the shadowfell were introduced in Third Edition or fourth I feel like fourth really codified what they are though they've been around in some manifestation kind of forever but they they were that's where they truly wore mirror worlds right that mirror ours shadowfell is if you if you uh do stranger things it's the upside down it's that negative energy whereas the Fay wild is the positive energy alternative to that both dangerous for different reasons well that's why I was surprised to see those two listed here the shadow fou I associate much more with the Forgotten Realms as a fifth edition baby so to speak fifth edition of the fifth generation if you will but the fawad's an interesting one because again token Back To Grim Hollow we get asked a lot what does the F wild look like in Grim Hollow because the faay wild I had never thought of as a setting in its own right as much as a place that exists in some capacity in other settings such as you know the heavens the hells uh you know above and below the Mortal plane in theory everybody assumes there must be a fay wild because there are f is there a Nal Fay wild or is it just whatever makes sense for the Fay of a given setting 4E did codify it has a whole book Heroes of the Fay wild which kind of codifies their current View and sort of what are the princes that are involved in it Third Edition did write about like the various uh Fay princes that lived in in that area I forget if they Ed the term Fay wild I think they did but it was a little looser than it is now the kind of more original thing is the idea that there would be sort of Fate Pockets right um that you might be able to get into sort of a a fay area or a feish area this really kind of says it's a layer that goes over on top the way the shadowfell does and there are lots of shatter Kai and so like like um in the vean adventure we see never winner and then we see evernight which is the kind of dark reflection of never winner and and that's a world that's all monotone Grays and whites if you're interested to check out my YouTube channel later this week they'll have a video on it while show show it off so you can see what never winter looks like in in monochrome uh and then there's like like the the river is actually magma so it's sort of the dark version of it right because it's got this like fire instead of water um and and other aspects like that you know a night market where they trade and souls and things like that so and then the Fay wild would be the the market would be overgrown and vibrant and wild creatures from both you know the the evil the UN Seely and the cely Fay would be there and that kind of thing right so it is actually a really nice tool for telling stories because you can so easily drape over what's known but it becomes unknown and changed right and then um I think from Wild and the witch light most folks are sort of familiar with the the Fay rules that the idea that that people treat you differently what you do matters if someone gives you a gift and what what that means and these kinds of things right so there are those kinds of rules in both Realms that make life interesting and and change it up have you journeyed to the the F wild March Omar in games that you featured or like what what is the F Wild for you it's the way that it's played for me in the games I've gotten a chance to sort of dabble in that world is when we really want to ratchet up the emotions and push people to the the the breaking point or reveal a really big secret it is kind of like exactly like you were saying like it is an unknown variation and so we kind of get to Alice and Wonderland tumble upwards in a way and it's really fun because it's you know kind of to touch on the the previous topic of conversation that like it is a realm where you do get to Sprinkle in a lot of your own stuff as you go through we have like the basic Foundation of a playground and then we can kind of emotionally uh construct out of that for the storytelling and so uh for me it's usually been a place where we're wandering around someone breaks a piece of twine by accident and suddenly Allah Doctor Who we're like in his space we're like we got to solve our dynamic as soon as possible because we're not quite sure what the rules are as characters uh so for me it's always a lot of scary fun that's what uh these sort of like higher and lower Realms are well speaking of higher and lower Realms this is uh a little bit of news that has a little bit of my uncle works at Nintendo energy but we're going to take it so so take it with a grain of salt but it was reported on uh on en world as well so they seem to trust that there's uh some uh uh veracity to it and there's no reason to think why not aside from the fact that it just came from a Reddit post um apparently Chris Chris Cox famous uh CEO of uh Hasbro uh former president of Wizards of the Coast um and target of much internet ey uh was in a small group investor meeting I think of about nine or 10 people it was described as uh with some Hasbro investors uh talking about investor stuff but one of the investors happened to be a fan of of uh DND and the Forgotten Realms specifically and so a couple of little tidbits came out of there that you know somewhat interesting primarily that Chris Cox is apparently currently playing in katur uh which is a setting that is part of the Forgotten Realms to my understanding I had to Google this full disclosure because I was not familiar with carer but Chris Cox kind of saying and you know it seemed a little bit offhand I wouldn't take this as like oh there's going to be a carater book next year but just saying that they would love to see a little bit more spotlit uh seeing that part of the Forgotten Realms or that setting spot lit a little bit uh for those like me who had no idea what katur was uh what is katur from the experts katur is a region that combines primarily Japan and China into two large islands that are joined by a golden road to the rest of the Forgotten Realms uh they lie believe it or not to the east uh and you if you talk to the designers of kator it's very clear that this setting was built with a lot of love and good intentions um a lot of hard work went into creating a this setting back in the era and which was written uh in a way that would be really cool for everybody right that was the goal and and and talking to any number of them reveals that over time we've looked at this differently through the lens of cultural appropriation and other issues which probably Chris Cox should have looked at through that lens in because this is the kind of news that comes out and it you know it's just going to make a lot of people go like oh of course he plays his setting is katur right you know good job white guy running the katur setting I I'm of I'm of split mind on that right uh on one hand I don't know that he needed to share that um but of course everybody could play wherever they want and it can be a super fun time the difficulty of something like katur is that because it's been written through an 80s lens which back then things were very limited if you listen to the articles of the writing of Cur the writing of uh the Arabic setting any of these you know they were doing their best with no internet right very limited information to kind of feel what kind of real world you know an analoges they could construct around and and a lot of it reflects the movies of the time which are wrong in many ways and so you can end up with things that are very stereotypical with things that are tropes that are overdone uh and you can miss out on the beauty of the actual cultures behind it at the same time you can also be I think honoring that concept and reaching for that and in fact wanting to learn more about these cultures because of your play uh I've written I think three times with katur Concepts uh twice on official projects and in each time that's what I've been trying to do with the space right uh I grew up in Columbia and I would watch martial arts flicks and and read comic books and manga and all of that and I have Japanese heart behind me uh I work with folks in Japan a lot uh I love this stuff and I'm no expert in it I still love being in it and that can be okay right so I've said a lot I'll turn it over to the rest of the folks I would love to see this setting fleshed out in a way kind of similar to uh you know ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms was a really beautiful looking uh 5e supplement um that was worked on by a lot of people from Japanese culture um uh and to my understanding handled in a really uh really respectful way coming from Japan in a large uh to a large extent and so I would love to see uh that setting fleshed out I I am also really uh fascinated and and interested and really enjoy uh delving into uh Japanese culture kind of specifically even though it is very romanticized in the west you know in the same way that uh you know our understanding of of of certain types of people is romanticized I'm thinking you know Samurai versus like how Cowboys have become this romanticized thing and kns in medieval times have become this romanticized thing um so I would love to see it fleshed out in a in a in a way that is suitable for that setting um but obviously you need to get the right team in place to be able to explore that in a way that is authentic and not just like I like katanas let's we're all wiing katas now you know what I mean I mean it is like an opportunity to um to educate a lot of folks and immerse folks in a culture that especially now that we have more resources um and more organic resources of information I know that um you know the wild success of radiant Citadel led to a lot of that where a lot of the conversations coming out of that a lot of the experiences weren't people playing in a realm where they were taking control of another culture or being a savior of another culture but instead were kind of getting to experience a version of it that were written by folks who were bringing stuff from their own lives and their own experiences and um sort of destroying the like the monolithic experience so anytime I kind of hear stuff about this I do I'm like if we do it right though this could be really rad like this could be like it could be the conversation of it would be like did you know at one point this was a contentious thing and it could be something so beautiful and wonderful and kind of what we all kind of aim for with stories in general which is sharing parts of our Lives um and and creating Collective experiences so uh I'm we'll see if I get the blue ribbon for overly optimistic but I I don't know I I would love for this to be rad if if it if it were anything to come of it I I agree with you the reality and and Michael pastor and Chad is talking about this that you know wizards look looks at it and probably rightfully says why would I even bother I'm just going to get people are going to take shots at me no matter how well I try to do this and I'm going to get shots from lots of different sides right for lots of different reasons if you try to do it right there are people who will be angry at that uh and if you don't do it right or fail in any minor way you know that will happen I mean I looked at at chult uh in Tomb of annihilation as a really good attempt to modernize what the original setting was like and to move the lens of what it meant to be the foreign influences in that land and and cast them in a more negative light and allow you to to work against them it's still got a lot of criticism right and so there is that chance that Wizards will just say yeah this is all too much we're out of here we're not going to touch with a 10- foot pole and that I agree with you it's a shame because I think moving forward the only way we move forward is by doing and we have the technology needed to put people of diverse backgrounds and actual lived experience with Asian cultures into the room to write great stuff right uh that's that's not a a tricky thing to do one can one can do that a couple of other tidbits that uh fell out of that investor meeting um the the same investor who's a fan of the Forgotten Realms suggesting that uh print novels that are no longer imprint um uh could be made available for download uh by Wizards of the Coast or by Hasbro such as some of the old drizz novels that are no longer in print which I think is a cool idea you know there's there's kind of a this has talked a lot about video games which is like preservation of history and preservation of of things and so that could be a cool way to um preserve some of those older uh parts of the Hobby and also uh the investor asking about fans having difficulty getting their hands on Spanish language D and D books um which Chris Cox replied to was due to a distribution issue with a former licensing agreement in uh the sort of Latin American regions uh didn't elaborate on what that was didn't say whether that issue was being sought to be resolved so yeah at the end of the day you're going to you know you are in the position to work your distribution channels and if they're not working it's your responsibility to fix them and I think that you know Wizards before had some issues where it was very inconsistent in some countries translations and distribution was working great uh for example Japan and in others it was working very terribly and so they decided well we'll take it all away from gaale Force now 9 who we had outsourced this to we will now own it and them owning it has not really been a vast Improvement uh their dreams of we will release everything all at the same time has not happened even with them reducing what would be translated they've reduced the number of countries where translations are available and it still isn't working right and I don't care what your distribution excuses are get it done right if this is if you're going to actually commit to this get it done but even more importantly is take a step back and look at what it is that you're selling in these various regions and instead of just concluding oh folks in in Brazil aren't purchasing this so we're going to stop Portuguese think about what will actually sell there because the market to widen the market one must address that $60 books don't fly in most of the world and if you want D and D to exist in most of the world you can't just be translating $60 books you will that will only work in a handful of countries or regions yeah that that's that's a really good point of I think a lot of people would consider just like yeah just make the books in you know the languages of the region and that will make the book accessible but it's like no no no that's not that's not the point a $60 book is something you have to save up for months and months and months in in a place like Columbia and that's just not gonna you know distribution issues aside it's just not going to move product it's not going to get to fans it's not going to build a strong base that pay for products right because it's just unaffordable at that level only foreigners will purchase it or people who have inordinate wealth will purchase it well that being the news of this week very settings focused uh for the last week until we get scooped by mastering dungeons this week again um if there's something you don't know tell me tell me um let us jump on uh and dip into the email bag so to speak podcast ghostfire gaming.com is the address to send emails to if you want to send an email to us and I will take them and I will read them and I will uh read them to the folks here and we will get answers for your questions the the the people demand answers starting with Andrew who's asking about rubber band mechanics in quotation marks um that's where I put them in quotation marks this apparently came up off a conversation on mastering dungeons funnily enough so it's uh fortuitous that uh it's on this episode of the lawcast that we got to this question uh asking do we like rubber band mechanics such as blue shells and chain s in Mario Kart the idea being that if someone's like really far ahead they're really winning at a game there's some mechanic that will bring them back into the pack and stop them getting too far ahead and on the flip side of that if anybody's doing too badly in the game there's some sort of mechanic that will bring them back into the pack so that they don't feel like they're just losing upon losing upon losing this rose out of a conversation uh on mastering dungeons around dagger Hearts succeed with hope or fail with fear dice outcomes which apparently according to that conversation and Shan and Tails you can agree or deny um led to unsatisfying situations where winners kept winning uh to the point where the game didn't feel like a challenge or losers were being punished even further for for low dice rolls um but to Andrew's perception the succeed with fear or fail with hope mechanics are intended to kind of rubber band that a little bit where if you fail with hope at least you're not uh you you get a little bit of something I think that you have to look at them in two different ways I call them ketchup mechanics so I'm going to keep calling them ketchup mechanics they work one way if you're competing against someone and they work a different way if you are all on the same side against the story and so you have to look at it what are these supposed to do and if you can then put a goal for what they're supposed to do you can find a way to implement them so that they can do what they do what Taos and I were talking about was a little different than this um we weren't really talking about them in term of catching up we're talking about it in terms of adding complications or adding benefits when it happens every time when you always succeed but there's always a complication it becomes very hard to come up with complications every time when you fail but get a boon every time it it's hard to come up with the Boon every time so that was the problem atic nature and it's not just dagger heart right it's a lot of different powered by the apocalypse games or the um the Empire it's a Genesis system where you roll the funny uh dice with different symbols and and uh have to translate those it's those sorts of games that that can be really great but it takes a very good game master or someone who has been taught how to do it in order to run them well yeah and I think that that that is really true that it's less C up uh than it is trying to be narrative around it um what what maybe the reflection of that comments reflecting probably on I had a game that I played on on D20 play where as it just happened to be we either failed at our role or we succeeded but with fear and both of those cases generate the ability for the GM to take an action and so the GM who was still getting to know the system would basically act after of us even though in theory it's a very fluid initiative and oh we could go as many times as we want we couldn't even get like it felt like molasses because we would just even try to do a thing fail or generate fear that GM would now be empowered to take an action and and beat us up a bit but what what we're all learning including that same GM as we've been having conversations in between the games is that well actually the game is giving the GM a lot of capabilities with which to catch up or narrate if desired but you don't have to and you and the game may actually give you the ability to completely tpk the party but you're that's not the point it's not like in D and D where you you must do the optimal moves to the monster you are choosing whether you want to act now and you don't have to right and and you can wait and do other things or activate terrain or do many other things uh rather than just break up and take a turn so so you don't have to catch up if that makes sense have you had a chance to play dagot arml I haven't had a chance to and I want to say that in public cuz I haven't been invited to some games that some of my friends have been running so I'll say it here and now it hurts a little bit throwing them under the bus play we don't we can play online folks there's no excuse anymore all right that's it let's get the dice yeah let's go these mechanics are so interesting though um because in theory like I very much um like especially if I get to run a game for some folks who I don't know very well well the idea of keeping everything within that realm like you were just saying like within the realm of Storytelling and entertainment that these are heroes and that we're going to cook this in that you know a Pathfinder too I feel like has a little bit this cooked in there's some of that in blades where you can just make a huge move and do and throw the sword at the dragon in a way and it'll take you out of the scene um but you do a huge impact and I feel like there is some fun there I will say with my old friends uh that I grew up with that I've played you know TTR refes with for forever I love the nitty-gritty just too bad like it's the math too bad I love the Relentless like you can't catch up uh until the table turns of course and they're walloping on a monster I'm running and I'm just like I thought this was going to take we have a pizza in the oven it's nowhere near ready like but yeah I think it depending on the crowd I think there's a lot of fun um but if it is PVP in any way I do love that Mario Kart element because there's a flavor of when you get hit with the blue shell you feel it and you hear it in the room everyone screams when that blue shell hits so if you can capture that with the mechanic then absolutely yeah yeah I I I think I I I would see this being most useful in like a war game right I play infinity and infinity is a game where if you start losing badly and your opponent just runs away with the dice rolls it can really start to feel bad H and I would appreciate some sort of you know the dice mechanics themselves are meant to be I suppose a rubber band mechanic because Infinity can have moments where the game flips because the luck just you know the winds change or something um and you're able to claw some sort of Victory back uh but when it starts to snowball into you know a situation you can't come back from that's that's no fun uh for the the losing side although that being said I will admit Infinity is a game where it is a lot of fun to crush your opponent um what game isn't from a tabletop RPG perspective it's interesting because dagger heart sounds like a game again as someone who hasn't played it but from what you just describe Taos where the GM has to accept that they're not competing against the players they are the GM and that these tools these currencies are there to assist them somebody said in the chat a moment ago that they don't like GM currencies much and I think as someone who hasn't played a lot of games that use them I agree I read actually enough the infinity role playing game by modus has a lot of GM currency in it that to me feels restrictive because it feels like the GM's not allowed to invent unless they have you know resources and currency to be able to use but in dagg heart's case specifically from what you were describing it definitely sounds like it's like yeah this is a tool for you to employ that tries to balance the game in a way but if you are employing it mercilessly it's not balancing the game it's it's you know really tipping it against the players yeah it's really interesting like folks who love uh Cipher system or numera where there's the GM intrusion I have trouble even understanding why this exists right like if I think this should happen in a scene yeah I will just do it like I don't know why I would offer you XP to see whether you want it for one thing to me that just breaks immersion and destroys the scene of trying to actually set up makes it way harder to make it fun and then we get into this mechanical discussion of where they want to take XP or not to allow me to intrude on the G like I'm the GM shut up I'll intrude when I want to in the nicest way possible I'm doing it for you you know but like yes I will intrude when I want to or change the the the situation um and there is some of that to diger heart where I think that you know there's so much token spending or currency spending that it is a little bit like you know oh I'm moving two things over your brother shows up and that maybe does slightly undermine just saying your brother shows up but I think with it's not too big a deal right like you could easily Just You Chuck the currency aside and you just say it and and I don't think most players whether online or in person would care that you threw two tokens to one side or the other and then said that someone's brother showed up I think the emphasis is your brother showed up and that obviously means something or we wouldn't have chosen that example and so now it's drama time right and I think that's the kind of concept they're going for I think it can work okay yeah and it's weird you know it's very dagger Hart is very much owered by the Apocalypse driven game but it does have differences and one of those differences is GMS make moves and in a normal I'll say normal because every one of them is different but a normal powered by apocalypse game the GM just makes the move if if this happens I'm going to say all right you ran past the dragon the dragon bites you I don't have to spend any tokens I don't have to think anything else it just happens whereas when you're not in combat you can do that in in dagger heart you don't have to spend fear or spend tokens to do those things outside of combat once you get into combat or you get into the second byc track the actions mode then you do have those so I think it's trying to bridge that gap for game Masters who may have only played D20 type games to say when you're outside of combat do whatever you want do all this when you're inside combat just follow the these rules to kind of keep things aligned a bit and and so I could see why they would do that to to try to ease game Masters into the combat at least of that sort of system yeah how does dagger heart decide the start of initiative right because in 5e there's a slight disconnect that I've had at a couple tables particularly with newer players who are like I cast Firebolt at this guy like like I I'm hitting him with a Firebolt and you're like all right everybody roll for initiative and then the the villain the the foe rolls a higher initiative than the person who said I cast Firebolt creating a bit of a disconnect for me I've always um said that because the rules dictate who's got the high who's got the the fastest reaction time it's kind of like a quick draw when you start casting that Firebolt they can see you start to cast it they can see you pull the gun out of the jacket you know they can see you draw a knife before you have a chance to actually stab them um how does dagger decide that at the start of initiative for a game that is relatively initiativ is it just whoever said it first and then you go into a fight from that point I to feel like we should all receive like a free ghostfire product because you as an Australian said the word knife that's that's not a knife now you need me to you need me to say the other Cutlery uh I need to need to say all forms of Cutlery first but but yeah I mean Sean correct from wrong but I mean it's just essentially like you know there are no turns there is no real initiative we just are in combat and so if you cast you know whatever your spell is uh we are now in combat and it began with you doing that and it may continue with doing you doing the next thing depending on how we feel things are are happening right like in in some ways if you've ever watched Acquisitions Incorporated it's always hilarious that there seems to be one character like Patrick Roth's character viari who gets away with doing like I want to run up the back of the dragon and jump from the chandelier and then I want to drink a potion and then I want to stab this other guy and then I'd like to go to the treasure chest and somehow Chris berkins will say yes the next person tries to do two things and it's like no and but but and it's like it's like a running gag right but it's because what Patrick comes up with is very fluid linked things that have kind of a theme to them right and that's what these kinds of games are trying to reward and so if you're going to come up with like three things you're doing that all seem connected fine go for it let the fiction guide the play if in the fiction I'm the one that says I cast Fireball uh then I have cast Fireball yeah or I throw open the chest and I cast Fireball well you can do both things you know like you know but if you just said the one well you do the one and you know yeah it's it's an interesting uh the kind of thing that if you haven't played those kind of games then it will take you time to feel comfortable with it because it's going to feel strange and they do have an optional rule where you can have three goes and every time you do an action you you toss one aside and when everybody has spent three then you get them all back but until then like if I take all three of my actions in a in a round in a in a in a go I have to wait till everybody is spent theirs before I can do that again so that's a way to keep people a little bit in control as an optional role um we'll get to to get to the heart of the question that Andrew asked like the real core of it um blue Shells in Mario Kart great mechanic or absolute four what do we think as someone who's terrible at that game it doesn't even matter I'm going to be in last place you could throw every nuclear war could happen in front of me and I would still somehow come in second to an empty to an empty motorcycle so it's great because the point is that a perfect run can and should be ruined even when you did everything right that is the point point because we are all laughing in the room and yelling at each other and complaining about this game if this game was a little less that then it would be atrocious because it's just too strong in effect that's oh do you do you enjoy a good blue shell or or are you good at Mario Kart a sibling of mine one time was in the lead got an item got a blue shell dropped back I wasn't paying attention to the this is N64 so everyone can see everything I wasn't paying enough attention I went in first and went i' I've sensed this and I got hit with the blue shell and so for that strategy alone as bruised as my ego is I do have to respect the blue shell yeah okay fair enough respect it's almost a Machiavellian blue shell and if you can dodge it with a mushroom then you feel really good yes and that's the thing right but all of these games we're talking about whether it's Mario Kart or a role playing game it's the but it's about the story yeah and you want the drama of the story and if there's no conflict if there's no way you can lose if there's no hurdle in your way then it's not really a story it's just a process so we want that we should if we want a good story want that uh tension and want that possibility that something is going to go wrong jumping to uh to close this episode of the lacast out Wade's question which which I just think is a a fun question uh how do you approach food in your games is there ever a mechanic like in breath of the wild or dungeon meshy a shambling Mounds vegetarian uh do you have lines you wouldn't cross I would you eat an Al bear but not a blink dog uh does it make a difference if they tried to eat you first oh that last question is very interesting kind of balances the playing field a little bit doesn't it as a Star Wars fan one thing about Star Wars that always is difficult is how freely uh they can attack beasts and consume beasts in that universe and so I feel like I I'm always almost trying to Star Trek my way out of that whenever it's whenever I get to run something where I'm like this was very ethically sourced food like however it is there's a magical replicator of sorts uh this was yeah this was essentially like lab grown meat or something you know we don't have to ask any ethical questions necessarily for sure for sure yeah cuz there is that Star Wars where the little thing that sits on Jabba the heart was it in the Mandalorian or something and he's like sitting in a cage watching his friends be roasted and it makes you go wait wait back up wait a minute are those intelligent creatures should we be eating them like por dark are pork smart you know like yeah yeah exactly um yeah sometimes they make a better pet than a meal uh I mean yeah dungeon meshies is brilliant um I generally don't do a whole lot with food uh I say that despite having designed taverns and things like that for my characters but as a as a GM I don't tend to to do too much with food except for one thing which is that magic is often great in a different world when you transmute it somehow and something that dark Sun did I knew I'd get back to Darkon is uh it made it got rid of Potion bottles because that's like watery right and that's like a it doesn't sort of fit with a world that is so devoid of liquid so instead they have potion fruit and and you can take that and and and play with it to a fair amount so uh I had a village once in Dark Sun where folks came and and they were you know running out of food and things like that and he gave them each a leaf this Druid that was the the Town lead and uh and said this Leaf is not just food though it can be food uh it will it will it will do more than that it will guide you on your track and so they're like oh you know and so then there was great respect to this food and when they would eat it it was it would give them a vision of something in the future and because and once they once one of them tried it then they're like oh yeah we got to save this right like you know use it when we really need it and so it might be when they were starving or it might be just because they needed to needed to know what to do and then I had like just so much fun riffing on what is it that happens when you eat this thing and that is so much better than a potion of healing right or a good Berry it's so much more interesting yeah the goodberry thing is strange because I was playing in a game where we came up on a cave and people had been locked in the cave for days and they were starving and they were so hungry and we're like here have this Berry and they're like what they're like no really go no we want food I'm like Ethan Berry no we want you've got rations there give us the no this is better really uh and it turned into this comedy routine of us trying to get them to eat this good Berry that would save all their lives but they wanted like the dried rations that we had which makes sense but yeah in a world of magic and and Sur yeah it's the high Magic High Fantasy Versus the survival fantasy yeah if you're in the survival fantasy mode then food and and nourishment should be a huge deal if you're in high fantasy mode uh then it's probably not quite as important to focus on food as survival you can do food as magic food as other story elements or other fantasy elements but it doesn't get down to that uh that theme of survival that you might have in a dark Sun type setting and fourth edition Darkon even tried to simplify it with the use of what we called survival days and these were just sort of units of stuff that keeps you alive right and then what was great is that you could do things like this storm come comes along and each of you loses one 1 D4 survival days and we don't have to Super explain like it's my rations or I have 10 or whatever like it's just it's a you have X survival days that you left town with and now you lost some of them and that's a little bit of pressure and then when you run out what you do and and you can come up with fun things like there was a season of D and D encounters where you know you run out of your survival days and so then you get to introduce stuff like well you know here are these giant bees in a hive and there's honey coming out so do you risk it right and and then you get you get really like that class sick pulpy old TV show type of feel where like you know the person wearing almost nothing has to scramble up the Rock and try to get the honey out without the bees all Awakening and going after them and of course then their character dies because it's starts sounds like my kind of setting me too no fun everyone dies excellent wait T you had a whole Adventure about food preparation what was that adventure oh yeah yeah well adamantine Chef was was all about that was the idea of like the Iron Chef kind of thing right where there's a cooking kind of competition going on and the whole idea and this was Set uh not in katur but katur characters and Concepts and so the idea was you know when when something goes wrong with this person's cooking competition and you're asked to help out you've got to go fetch ingredients and and figure out who's behind all of this and then at the end of it help make make the meal that that kind of thing and there's a food fight because that's how such an adventure should end uh those kinds of interaction are a lot of fun and you can have a lot of fun with uh it was inspired by by actually a living greyhawk um uh Adventure that someone wrote at at a convention where there was a food fight in it and and they had various the food functioned sort of as bombs or tangle foot bags or things like that and that was a lot of fun and I was like oh someday I must do something like that and so did my own of that and that is a lot of fun uh well we've come full circle there coming back to greyhawk um so uh Omar where can folks find you if they want to see more of you on the internet I know you're involved in a couple of live plays and different things yeah yeah if you want to check out you know uh some some stuff we mentioned earlier the uncy were mentioned so I'll shout out Dimension 20s a cordon fan flowers if you want to see the brilliant arria irar uh play around with f rules um it's it's a really really good time uh the show Daisy Quest is also something you might want to check out which is run by the aformentioned Jasmine buler uh who is an incredible GM and an incredible writer uh I am also doing a couple things over on the F and funny Channel and for the most part I uh if you want to follow stuff I I need to post more I've been doing too much in real life stuff I've ceased to exist digitally um but uh Oman film on Instagram and uh and also just play some good games have some good times in maybe I'm starting to think maybe I want to introduce a little bit more food and cooking and family meals into my games where we kind of wrap out each session which just a little potluck or something right right whatever you eat in the tavern that night is what you uh cook for dinner for the group good way to start a session all right we're at Camp what are we all eating Taos obviously you're on the mastering dungeons podcast with Shawn but where else can folks find you uh if you go to the YouTubes and you look for success in RPGs you'll make me very happy by looking at my series of videos on uh how to succeed in the role playing game creator industry uh I could use some views there so I would love everybody's help in checking it out uh you can go to alphast stream.org and there you'll find my blog with links to everything and lots of fun articles too thanks for having me no thank you both for joining us uh if you want to catch the alri lawcast live you can do so on Twitch Monday evening 700 p.m. Eastern Standard Time or 400 p.m. Civic Standard time it's 90000 a.m. Tuesday Australian eastern time so I got a rest of a day ahead of me otherwise find us on YouTube likes subscribes all those things uh very much appreciated uh do as Dale says an email it to your grandma email it to your grandpa too just email it to everyone uh so that more people can see the ELD flast all right we're getting out of here my name is been Ben burn here with Shawn Merin Taos Abida Oman aam and we will catch you all again for another episode next week because Dale isn't here to hold the line on the Bas [Music]

Channel: Ghostfire Podcasts

Views: 9,090

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, gamplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DnD, DM, Eldritch, Lorecast, Ben, Byrne, Ghostfire, podcast, podcasting, 5th Edition, ttrpg, 5.5e, dice, design, dnd, adventure, news, WotC, Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast, Beyond, Vecna, Ability Check, dragon, one dnd, grim hollow, kara tur, dark sun, greyhawk, campaign, setting, lore, omar najam, alphastream, chris cocks

Id: 7ts17bed6LI

Length: 61min 57sec (3717 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024