- Hello, and welcome
to Adventuring Academy. My name is Brennan Lee Mulligan. Today, my guest is Mr.
Noah Diamond Stallsman! Noah is an editor of Dimension 20, and also a player on the
DangerTown D&D Actual Play Podcast. Noah, thanks for coming by today. - Thanks for having me on. Surprised you ran out of
good guests so quickly. (laughing) - Noah, you are fantasist, and the fact that we see
each other every single day at work in the office where
we are only makes this logistically breezier, and it's a huge get for the podcast. So, thanks for coming by. - I come very cheap. (laughing) - So, Noah, thanks so
much for coming by today and talking with us. We wanted to talk a little bit 'cause we've been talking about it before about the idea of
transitioning from player to Dungeon Master. And I was interested in
getting your take on that because one of the things that
comes up the most frequently, and by the way, let me just say
that if you're watching this podcast on CH2 where it's
been released on YouTube, you could of seen it a whole
week earlier on Dropout. Go to dropout.tv which
also has the second half of season one of Dimension 20. It's got a whole bunch of
great goodies on there. So, go check out Dropout. But we've been talking a lot about because in the Dropout Discord server, people often are talking about, am I ready to DM? Do I know enough about the game, and setting up these
kind of internal rubrics of like, when I've gotten X to Y place or Z event has occurred, then I'll be ready to DM. What's your take on that? - So, I've been doing
tabletop games for 10 or more years now. I started in college. My first game was actually a Fallout game using the firefly system, which was... It was actually awhile
before I got into D&D. And I actually did a lot of
play by posts role-playing even years before that. And I actually ran stuff back then. But I only, in the last two
and a half years actually, started running tabletop,
formal tabletop games myself. 'Cause it always did feel like it's a very intimidating thing. I did a lot of LARP, I
did a lot of tabletop. It was always home brew stuff. So, just coming up with all that stuff. What actually got me into
it was I had a friend who wanted to play D&D for years. He owned a ton of 3.5 books and then never actually played D&D. He just collected them. He didn't even own them
anymore for awhile. He just got tired of waiting, and he decided that he was
gonna start running a D&D campaign without any
experience in the game, or any tabletop gaming
experience whatsoever. So, he picked up the 5e starter set, which is a really fantastic
introduction to the game. And he ran a campaign in that. And I got... And I watched him do that, and I was like, oh wow, it made it seem so
easy, so straightforward that he with zero gaming
experience whatsoever could come in and run a solid game. - [Brennan] Yeah. - So, I started looking into the modules, which had never really
been something on my radar. I knew they existed, but
every game I'd ever played was purely home brew. - [Brennan] Yeah. - So, a little while, about two and a half years ago, I picked up one of the modules. I kinda wanna say it, but I kinda don't so I can discuss it
without spoiling the story within the module.
- Sure, sure, sure, sure. - So, I picked up one
of the modules put up I was to the coast. I actually bought it on Rule 20. - Cool.
- Which is a really cool platform. It gives you tons of tools and stuff, and I ran an online game
with friends who were all out of town and stuff. And the one friend who ran that other game 'cause he had never been
able to play before. And we ran that campaign for
almost exactly two years. - Wild, very fun. - And wrapped it all up,
and I'm actually prepping for the next one right now. - Hell yeah! That's wild
- I think we started. It might go next week, Wednesday. - Very cool. So, you wrapped up. So, your first campaign that you ever ran ended up actually having a
completion to its story arc? That's a rare thing, that's awesome. Most people's first campaigns fall apart, just blah, so you know. It sort of fizzle out
mostly due to circumstances beyond the control of the in-game world. Schedules and yada yada.
- We definitely have months of nothing, and then we go like, get a few weeks in a row and then we disappear
for like a month or two. - Yeah, I think that's
most people's experience. So, that's really
exciting and interesting. So, you started playing in college, been playing for about 10 years. Two and a half years ago, seeing this person kind of take to DM-ing and be like, oh, they've
managed to run a game, for better or for worse
with very little experience. I think that speaks something
very human about people that are putting these
parameters of themselves. It was like, I'm not ready yet to DM. Mostly that is felt rather than factual. - [Noah] Yeah. - It is a trip you're
kind of laying on yourself because people jump into it and wing it and do a great job DM-ing right away. So, it's kind of that thing
of going off the high dive. You just gotta jump. - What really stood out for
me is I don't have a problem. I did play by post stuff, I ran a very successful, several year, play by post campaign back in high school. So, it's not the story
stuff that scared me, it's the encounter design I
find to be very intimidating. And which is one of the reasons
I still am with the modules is that I can wing it,
I can do the characters, and I can kinda help keep the story going. But having these fights and these stats and all this kinda stuff. Design, they don't have
to worry about balancing and stuff like that. And the dungeons built and
planned out with all their traps and the little blocks saying
here, what happens here. That kind of framework
or those rails to use, maybe not. - [Brennan] Yeah. - A phrase was not the best baggage to it, but those rails really do help
kinda give you a direction to be going. - Yes, I totally understand that. I feel like I dodged a
lot of bullets in terms of bypassing some of the self-doubt by starting at a very young age. And when you're a 10 year old child. - [Noah] There's no expectations. - There's no expectations, and I was just a little
weirdo who was like, I'll DM! 'Cause you're 10. You don't develop
self-consciousness until puberty. So, it was like I dodged that bullet well. - [Noah] You have self-consciousness? (soft laughs) - I mean, it's hard to
think of a 10 year old having just the emotional
wherewithal to be like. - For sure.
- Am I ready for this challenge? He goes like, I wanna play! And just went off and did it. So, by the time that I was
worried about doing a good job, I had already been DM-ing
for some amount of time. So, that's a basically
stroke of luck that I had in terms of starting at that age. But even with that, I
only played for about six or seven months before I started DM-ing. I went to a group of 20 year
olds that were kind enough to have a 10 year old at the table just to be like... It's like, oh, we'll
teach this kid how to play if they're into it. I think I was there for
a couple of sessions, but then it was like, eh, this is not... The age difference.
- It wasn't a synergy. - There wasn't a synergy there, so I was like, okay, I've
seen how this game is played. I'm gonna go get, teach
my friends how to play, and me and my brother were
already playing all the time. One of our friend's older
brother's would DM for us. We were already learning how to do it. I was already a little
nerd about drawing maps. I used to draw maps not
even for playing D&D, just like, I'm gonna make up a fantasy world.
- No, I totally. I wanted to be a novelist at one point before I realized I was
terrible at coming up with anything more than the first
three chapters of a book. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't fucking know what I'm doing now. - [Brennan] How does this end? - I would go to concepts. I would come up with a really cool idea, and then be like, I don't... Which is why D&D is so great because you don't have to
come up with everything. You throw it out there, and other people help carry
it the rest of the way. You don't have to do
everything from wholesale. That collaborative storytelling
that's so fantastic. - That's very true. It's interesting to talk
about the different things that are challenging because
I think a lot of people are nervous about the creative enterprise, or the improvisational aspect of DM-ing. People are like, oh, am I
gonna be good on my feet? I can't do NPC voices or whatever. But the encounter design
aspect is interesting. I haven't heard that before, but that is a very
stressful part of DM-ing because when you're designing
combats and encounters for your PCs, these are the
moments that could kill a bunch of your players, beloved characters. And the guidelines for, well, I speak to 5e right now, the guidelines for
encounters in 5e are good, for the most part. But I think do produce battles that are, for me, if a battle is not deadly in 5e, it's almost going to be anti-climatic. - And also I think an issue is that the action economy affects that so much. So, that's not really factored
into encounter design. You can have someone
who's a CR that's deadly, and it's just one person. And they're just gonna
stomp that one person. But if you have 100 mobs that
are that same challenge rating altogether, it's gonna be a widely different fight.
- It's gonna be incredible. - Even if they can take each
of them out in a single hit. - It's actually why the
legendary action mechanic is, I think the legendary actions
are whichever designer created those in the 518 needs to--
- Probably Crawford or Merle. - Crawford or Merle it's probably. That, to me, is the most
exciting way to make things like dragons and liches.
- I'm gonna feel really bad if it wasn't Crawford or Merle,
and they're someone that's just like, motherfucker.
- Motherfucker, those guys get all the fucking. No, it's a really incredible
mechanic to actually make things like dragons an liches
that do get screwed over by the action economy
actually stand out and matter. - I've heard 4e had a minion mechanic that I think I've heard
a lot people reference as being a cool thing. I don't know the specifics of it, but I like when people
mine for you for good ideas because there was some
cool stuff going on in 4e. Proficiency was a 4e thing. - [Brennan] Yep. - Other things that I
can't think of off the top of my head right now. But there was a lot of cool
concepts in the fourth edition. I really like where they were
going with really trying to streamline and overhaul the game, I think. They took it so far that
it stopped feeling like Dungeons and Dragons. - Did 4e have the cantrips
never run out mechanic in it? Or was that? - [Noah] That might have been Pathfinder. - Maybe it was Pathfinder. I know it wasn't 3.5 and that was always the biggest bummer. I always used a house
rule that you can cat when you prepare a cantrip. You can cat in 3.5. You can cast it as to your
level by preparing it one time. 'Cause it's like why is
this arc mage running out of detect magic? - I'll say I hated spellcasters in 3.5. I almost never played a spellcaster. Because I'm bad at resource management. It always gets me really stressful, but also because of the Vancan, which I'm 100 percent pronouncing wrong, the prepared spellcasting system of the specific, each spell
slot has a pre-assigned spell to it that I always was like, I don't know exact. I hated it. - The Vacium cast?
- Yeah, the Vacium, thank you.
- Yeah, where the spells are like bullets and a gun, and it's like I'm holding
these weird pieces of arcane ammunition in my mind. - Yeah, and so I think
I played a warlock once, and I played a warcaster
who I've spontaneously got the spellcasting like sorcerers. But it was never something, I
always played martial classes in 3.5, and now in fifth
edition with the way they've overhauled spellcasting, I
honestly almost never play not spellcasters now. My preferences have completely... Wizard is my favorite class. - [Brennan] Wizards are so good. - They're great, they're so much fun.
- I love wizards so much, and I love when there's
wizards in a campaign. There's a way five,
I've tweeted about this, but the way that 5e is
designed is the stats that are the most favorite
are strength, dex, and charisma because I think
strength, dex, and charisma share something like the majority of hero classes.
- For sure. - Use one of those three,
and then it's like cleric and druid use wisdom, and
then intelligence alone has wizard, and it's like... - Was it Eldritch Knight's, but they don't really care.
- Yeah, well some of them use them as secondary, but in terms of the primary stat.
- Yeah, for sure. - So, what ends up happening
is because strength, dex, and charisma are so
heavily weighted as primary stats for heroes, adventuring
parties are all hot, strong, and dumb. And that explains a lot
of how adventurers behave. - There is a movement to, and
I think one of the designers actually tweeted that this
was something they considered was making warlocks an
intelligence base class. And I think one of them was like, yeah, go ahead and do that if you want of signing off of an
alternate version of warlock that's on paper exactly the same, and it's just intelligence
instead of charisma. - I like that.
- That they're more of a ritualist study,
book nerd style warlock. - It's also cool because
it gets to the idea of those patron warlock
relationships as being contractual rather than necessary. 'Cause when you say
it's based on charisma, it's like, okay, force of will. Like I'm better at casting warlock magic because I have a stronger
force of personality as opposed to, oh, I'm
clever and more able to take advantage of the magic
being granted to me. In any case, the nice
thing about having a wizard in a party is that there's
someone to solve your puzzles and, I will say as a DM,
there are certain things where it's like, sometimes
you don't want... Sometimes I would get
questions from people being like, what do you do if PCs
solve your puzzle too early? And I'm like, that's never the problem. The problem is always
you see strange clues. Everyone rolls, well we all
rolled a bunch of dumb asses, so no one gets it. And then you're like,
okay, you go back to town. - So, I had a DM, a good
friend of mine, Colin. Hi, Colin. And he would never design
solutions for his puzzles. Not never, but he wouldn't
design solutions for his puzzles. He would put something
interesting on the table, then he would just sit back
and just watch us fuck with it until he felt satisfied. Then he was like, yeah, that one works. Until we did something that he enjoyed and felt was applicable, and then that would be the
solution of the puzzle. - It's really interesting. It's very fun when you think
about when you play a character towards a high stat,
whether they're optimized for their class build or not. It's a player telling
you this is what I think my character should routinely be good at. And because of the
narrative element of D&D and Theater of the Mind, a character that's really
dexterous or really strong gets to experience those
successes very viscerally through the narration. Like, oh, my big strong
character fights really well, and throws stuff around.
- How do you? You can't just be like, it's
not fun to be I'm just smart. I talk at the person, I roll charisma, I talked to good, moving on. That's not entertaining. - Yeah, I think that's
always been a hard thing is like what if you're a
shy player trying to play a charismatic character. How do you play that out? Because it's not, narration feels better suited
to describe feats of strength than feats of charisma.
- I've seen people go in and if you have a really
hard time role-playing or speaking in character, and like oh, I'm going to give this speech,
this persuasive speech. You can switch into a
third-person narration. You can be like, Radagast the Brave. I meant to come up with an original name. That's not an original name. Sorry, Tolkien.
- Radagast! (soft laughing) - But, no, my character
goes up to the guard and he talks to them and he
gives them an impassion speech, pleading with him about how we're out here and we're in the cold, and
we really need to be let in. And kind of just feeling
it's easier to do like that, almost like a bullet point. You can still go into all those elements of what is persuasive about my argument, how is my character being persuasive without having to be as
persuasive as your character, and without having to
have that on the spot. Having to talk in-character
and be extemporaneous in that regard. - With charisma, I think that's very true. I think for players, you can
go into third-person narration, or find some other way
of communicating without having to embody a trait that
you don't feel confident in in your IRL experience.
- 'Cause at the same time, when someone's like, I
have a ton of charisma. I walk up and say, hey, let me in. And then they roll really
high and then that works. Just 'cause the number says,
so that's not fun either. So, anything they can
really facilitate that. - Right, I think as a DM, you can also hit the
other side of that coin by, let's say that someone
goes up and is like, I'm gonna roll a persuasion check or a deception check
or something like that. They go up and roll that ability check. As a DM, you don't sometimes
wanna narrate passed it, or narrate through it like you would with a feat of strength. You want to know actually what was said, but I think as a DM you
can support your player. So, let's say that you have
someone who's a very shy player IRL, but they're playing
high charisma character. They roll, and that 20 on
their persuasion check. And they go up.
- I would love to make her an app 20 and do cool shit. - Yeah! Oh god, I want nat 20 to
be enormous successes. So, they rolling that 20, and the player comes up and you're like, what is your Tiefling bard say? And they go like, um, please
let us into the dungeon. And I think, as a DM, you
can try to have your cake and eat it too of honoring
the manner in which the PC did role-play that, but also reward the nat 20 and reward the investment
in his charisma skills. So, if someone does have a
hard time embodying those charismatic speeches, they go like, please let us into the dungeon. You can just go like, oh, of course. Of course you sweet Tiefling bard of going like, yeah, that wasn't flashy or grandiose, but I can still reward. - There's more ways to be
likable than just being handsome and being able to fuck everything. - Yes! Exactly.
- Which I think a lot of people think
charisma is just that one. - I love...
- Representation. - Yeah, I love alternate
takes on those stats. If charisma is not like, suave, debenture. But it's like, oh, everyone
just loves you to pieces. - I mean, hey, Fabian had high strength, but he wasn't ripped. He had a swimmer's body. - Yeah! He was a high dex character. Exactly, and all the combat was sort of put into that context. Speaking of rewarding players, and how those kind of activities go, we were also talking
before the podcast started about the idea of being mean. And I was cruising the
Discord earlier today in anticipation of doing the podcast, and there was a conversation
around high death play where characters can die at any moment, and people advocating for that. And I actually have been
in those campaigns before where it is no mercy. What is the benefit to the
idea of being a mean DM to you? And why do so many DMs struggle with that? - So, I struggle with that. So, the campaign I just ran is a big, heroic, globetrotting campaign. And to the tone I gave it was
there were very successful. They did well, I was pretty
light and lenient with them. Right now, I'm prepping
for Curse of Strahd, which is a horror campaign. And I've been explicit with them, I've been like, I wanna be harsher. This is gonna be difficult. You're gonna have to work
to survive in this game. And I actually sent out a pre-game survey, and one of the things was how do you feel about character death, and
there was a few options of like, it should just
be any die any moment could lead to me dying. Or any die roll, rather. Or I need to do something
stupid that leads to me dying. Or I don't wanna ever die. That kind of stuff. And they've all obviously
'cause they're invested in this campaign, they know the direction. One of my players actually
said, she was saying, I don't mind dying, I
just wanna see it coming. I just wanna have a moment to disassociate or distance myself from the character. It needs to be a moment, not
all of a sudden, you're dead. And that's a very jarring
and difficult moment for her. - [Brennan] Yeah. - But for being mean, it's really, I wanna see everyone succeed. I wanna see them do great. I ran so the beginning of
Curse of Strahd is a standalone module called Death House. It's a very deadly and difficult campaign. I actually ran it for a
few people here at work since you got stolen away from us and you're not running
the office game anymore. - [Brennan] Brutal. - Brutal, Dungeon 20
fans, it's your fault. You stole him away from us. - And if you wanna make out an apology, just write to every single
work email at College Humor. (soft chuckles) And let them all know how you feel. We'll put up a list somewhere. - So, I went into that, and
that for me was a warmup in a few ways. One of actually running this module. I'm gonna run again
with the full campaign. But also of trying to
be harsher and meaner because it was a one-shot. And they didn't need to come out the other side unscathed. And actually I ended up
killing two out of three of them. Two of them did not make it out alive. And will appear the redo of
it with the full campaign. - [Brennan] Very fun. - But even in that context,
it was really hard. They're fighting the big
bad monster at the end, the very difficult, if not
impossible to defeat monster. And two of them burned
their last spell slots throwing their most
powerful spell out of them, and in both of them, it makes
the saving throw exactly. And I'm sitting there going, sorry. That doesn't do anything. You're completely out
of resources, congrats. It's a really tough position to be in. - To be the meanie at the table. Yeah, so first of all, what
is it people are talking about because sometimes people can
talk past each other on this. I like to find consensus
between different styles because there are some
voices that'll be like, oh, it's a dichotomy between
DMs that respect their players and give them what they want. And effort, it's a
collaborative storytelling. Or you're this harsh,
adversarial, antagonistic. And of course, the truth is
actually somewhere in the middle because the things about D&D, when you're telling, why aren't we writing a book together. Well, there is-- - Why aren't we writing
a book together, Brennan? - We should talk about
that after the podcast. Hold up. Why aren't we writing a book together? Why are we incorporating dice? Why is there a game aspect? Well, the game aspect punctuates. - [Noah] We need to be able to fail. - Yeah! There needs--
- It's not a game if you're not able to fail. - There's not a game if
you're not able to fail. And everyone knows that the purest joy, everyone who's played this game, knows the purest joy in
the world is when you need that nat 20 and it shows up. And the success is meaningful because of the weight of
all the failure on it. So, sadly, there is this element of, when we're talking about a mean DM, what we mean is the DM has
the responsibility to execute the will of the dice. And when bad luck occurs,
and a situation arise, or sometimes to execute the will just of cohesive narrative. Let's forget about the dice
for a second and just say a PC wanders into the lair of a monster that they knew was there and
has the ability to kill it, and it would break the
credibility of the world for the PC to survive this encounter. And those are really hard
calculations that you're making with certain emotional mathematics. Where you go, okay, in this moment, my PC does not want to die. If they survive, is irreparable
damage done to the authority and meaningfulness of the dice, and the mechanics of this game? Or is irreparable damage
done to the cohesiveness and internal logic of the
narrative world we've built? And I think that your
metric for meanness as a DM is it can never get to the
point where the credibility of the world or the authority
of the dice is sacrificed to preserve the individual
wants of the PC in that moment. Now, that barrier can be
different for different groups, but it's always somewhat there, even in the most RP heavy or
cuddly groups in the world, eventually you hit consequence. - That's great, yeah, and it's just, especially even with
tactics and enemy decisions of like, it's so much easier it seems. Yeah, they shoot the meteor target. Yeah, there's that, and
some DMs will be like, they're gonna always target
the wizard in the back. They're gonna beeline with
them with their strongest hit, and they're gonna take 'em
out of the fight right away. And that's a very, if that's
what your group is doing, that's fine, but that's a super tactical and antagonistic way to play. And it's that finding... I do have a hard time, like, oh shit, they're really low on health. I better not throw an attack their way, that's gonna take 'em out of the fight. And it's... - Well, when do you want do it? And I think, again, what a
lot of this comes down to is the story is what's the
game you've all agreed to play. In a game that is functioning
by metric and tones that are more closely related
to what you would call a narrative high fantasy story, I think it is okay to have
the tone of the battle dictate the choices of the enemies. It's fun sometimes when a
bunch of dumb ass goblins don't fight organized or well. And to be like, no, I
always have to be optimizing my NPC combatants to be
doing the most damage to the party, does that make sense? Are the NPCs well organized and evil? And on the flip side, I think it is fun. I've had games where it's like, oh no, there is a lot of collaboration
between PC and DM, and then you throw a real
scary villain at them, and that villain is
doing stuff like locking down spellcasters, hitting the people. Not dealing damage evenly, but
attacking the weakest links. And the PCs feel that
tone of dread set in, but the dread is appropriate to the story. So, in that way, it's like, oh, the DM is being meaner, but
it's justified according to the stakes of the campaign. - That's what I'm really
looking forward to, so this game I'm
prepping, Curse of Strahd, is the players are all stuck in the realm of this vampire lord,
Count Strahd von Zarovich. And so he is a recurring antagonist, and he's centuries old. He's a military leader,
he's a powerful wizard, and he's a vampire. And so he doesn't fuck around. Sorry, he does fuck
around, but he can have fun 'cause he can play with them. They're his play things and his toys. And so being able to come in with this guy and just bat the players
around is something I'm really looking forward to, and
feeling more role-playing him basically and turning it
almost into that player versus DM because he's
almost like a DM character that I'm specifically controlling. And going in and seeing
how much fun I can have just knocking the shit out
of my players is something I'm really looking forward to. Hopefully, channeling,
using this one character as that kinda vessel that I
can imbue that energy into. - And I think, again, if
you've set it up ahead of time and said, hey, this type of
play is going to be extremely lethal, then that's great and
the characters will come in expecting that and I love
what your player said about like give me a second to
disassociate from the character before they die. I think that's a good thing. I think if a PCs going
through a death scene, slowing down time, giving narration, it's all about just people
don't like cognitive dissonance and having things feel jarring. And if you've been like, wait a second, I thought we were in Lord of the Rings. In Lord of the Rings,
Boromir's death scene is done in slow-mo, and he gets a lot
of time to ta da ta da ta. So, it's like, yeah, don't
put a horror movie death in a high fantasy series. Make sure that your tone, I
think it's all about lining up tone 'cause I remember
when I played a game of Call of Cthulhu, and the
game master was very nuts and bolts about hey, you
all gotta fucking die. And so what happened here is
the risk he also ran with that is the game master said, this is Cthulhu, don't get attached to your characters. And I was like, okay,
and I made a character with purposefully, incredibly low sanity. 'Cause I was like, 'cause it's in Cthulhu, you go mad from the horrors
of these elder evils. So, we started gameplay and he's like, alright, so all of you
guys are in this area. You're near Myscatonic
University or whatever. Introduce yourselves. People were like, I'm so-and-so,
I'm a reporter for this. And it got to me and I
was like, my name is Sam. And people started laughing
'cause I was basically playing the guy who's
like, oh he's already. - Were you the only one that survived? Please tell me you're the
only one that survived that campaign. You knew you've seen some shit, and you were like. - He'd seen some shit. I know you said this
on the podcast already, but in Arkham Horror, just
the big prestige board game. - [Noah] I played that once. - In the Lovecraft Mythos, my fucking favorite character in there is, I forget his name, but
it's like Ox or Hank or something like that. But every investigator
has their own superpower, and his superpower is he's
so dumb that he doesn't lose sanity because he
doesn't know what he saw. - He doesn't know that it's wrong. - He doesn't know that it's wrong, so some fucking Hound of
Tindalos comes out of a corner in some weird, geometric horror, and he's like, that dog's sick! (laughing) That dog is sick! And like, no Hank, that's
an eldridge horror. And he's like, okay, that
dog need to go to the vet. And we're all having a ball, right? 'Cause I think that's the
issue for me is the problem I have as a player with those
high lethality campaigns is if I know not to get
attached to my character, you are cutting off one
avenue of fulfillment for me as a player, which is to get attached. So, what I'm gonna do is probably
disassociate in some way, and play a more comedic character. Or if I'm playing a character
that I'm like not as attached to because I've been told
there's a high risk of them dying, then I might play a
little bit more munchkin-y. I'm like, okay, this is tactics game. I think that the only time
as a DM where going mean goes too far is if you're like, no, I wanna have my cake and eat it too. I wanna kill a lot of characters, and have you care about them.
- And if you're gonna do that, you should just play HackMaster. (laughing) Because HackMaster, you're explicitly not, you're supposed to bring four
character sheets to the table because you're not gonna make it through, and it's inherently antagonistic. - Yes, absolutely. Let's jump into some of these audience questions.
- Okay, great. - We harvest our audience
questions from our Discord server. - [Noah] Fresh picked. - Fresh picked, mmwha (speaks Italian). These questions come to us
from our Discord server. If you wanna ask us some questions, go ahead and head over to
Dropout's Discord server when you sign up for Dropout. This first one is from Thorfin R. "I'm interested in how
other DMs deal with item "slash wealth distribution in your games. "Do you eve regret allowing your players "to possess items of great
power or too much money?" Thanks Thorfin R. - Well, in 5e, I feel like money's. Your player, in fifth edition,
your player's gonna have too much money. I think that's just
inherent to the system. There's not that much
stuff to spend money on, and gold's just gonna pile up. And then they're gonna just
start buying towns and castles and shit like that. Which, depending on the
type of game you're running, that can turn into a whole new campaign like when you touch this,
resource management, town building. All of a sudden, you're
playing civilization on a board game. I have had trouble with, I had one trouble with
a magic item I gave up. This was in the campaign I just ran. I asked for this. THere's a very rare,
magic item in that game. It's called the Oath
Bow, which is, if you're familiar with the Oath Bow.
- I know, I'm familiar with the Oath Bow, yeah. - It's a bow, it does some extra damage, and you can choose a target,
and you can square them in as your foe, and you get
advantage to attack them, you do extra damage,
the arrow avoids covers. - [Brennan] It's bonkers. - It's bonkers, but this is Elfa Boom, one of my players in this campaign. I saw it in the book. I was like, oh this is really cool. One of my players were
playing it a half elf arcane archer. I'm like, he'd have a
lot of fun with this. This is a really cool item. And it shows up if they
go to a specific place, they have a certain
percent chance, I think, encountering a patrol. When they encounter that patrol, they have a certain percent chance of the leader being there,
and he has the Oath Bow. And man, I went really
out of my way to make sure they found this Oath Bow. I was like, they're gonna go there, the patrol's gonna be there, the guy's gonna be with the patrol. They approached it from the air, so they won't even meet the patrol. I'm like, it's too thick,
you have to approach from a little. I'm pushing them to get this bow. And he gets it and he wrecks
without faze with this goddamn bow. No, he's the arcane
archer with this thing, and then there's like a warlock
and a sorcerer and a rogue, and they're all doing cool stuff. And he's just, his turn's coming around, and he's just...
- Laying away still. - And in the finale of this campaign, they get a magic item. They get, it's a potion of giant size. It turns them into giants, and they're fighting, excuse me. They're fighting the dragon
because this is a very on the nose climax for a
Dungeons and Dragons campaign. And I think that I've
seen a thread on Reddit, someone was like hey, if
they drink this potion, which triples the damage
dice of their weapons when they're enlarge. Does it affect the extra
damage from the Oath Bow? And people were like, oh, be careful. I was like, fuck it, I gave
him this awesome magic item. I'm gonna let him go ham with it. So, he crossed this
potion, and he's fighting. I made the wrong ruling there.
(laughing) As he unleashes just this triple, the full might of this
triple damage Oath Bow. And he's arcane archer, so
he's throwing his magic stuff on it, and like I guess
those all get tripled too, all your magic arrow shit. And I was afraid it'd be
too mean with the dragon, and I had the dragon kinda
stand there for a few rounds, be big and intimidating before
really doing a burrowing. And by the time I was
like, okay, it's time, it's gonna go crazy, the
dragon's gonna be super mean and tactical and burrow underground. It burrows underground and
pops up and he just shoots it in the face and it's gone. There was just no fight.
- No fight left. It's really interesting. So, I am very effusive with
praise for 5e on this podcast. I think it's incredible. The only thing about 5e that
I wish we can go back to about 3.5 is clarity around magic items. Because they got real chill
with magic items with 5e. They're like, hey, there's
some various rarities. We're not gonna give you a GP value. And use them or don't. Toss them in if you want. Here's kinda the appropriate
levels for the various rarities and it's all chill. And you're like, oh, but the... 3.5 for being completely
dependent on magical gear, I did find to be more
balanced as a result. - I do like the idea. So, I guess just to answer the question, is I think 5e does make you be synergic because the game is designed
it will work if they have no magic item. So, I think that's something
very important to keep in mind that any magic gear is inherently a bonus. - Here's something interesting. If you're worried about game balance, remember that it feels really
good to get a magic item that specifically gives
mechanical benefits to the thing your
character's supposed to do. You're like, I'm a barbarian,
I have a big magic ax that does extra damage. Cool, that's great. Actually I think some of
my favorite magic items that I've received as a player, and the ones that my players
have enjoyed the most at games where I was a DM
were things that weren't munchkin-y or min max-y. That weren't about making
a broken character. They actually had powers
that were almost unrelated. I remember I had a character that was sort of like water-affiliated character. They got a ring of water breathing, that's never gonna break
a game for a character to be able to breathe water. And it was the fucking best. It made me feel like, oh,
my character should be able to do this. So, I would say if you're
worried about game balance, and you're worried about... I'm gonna look at the wording
of this question again real quick. If you're worried about a game balance, give magic items that aren't
about adjusting combat, but are what would make
this character come into their ideal self.
- I was gonna say a similar idea. The stuff that gives actually, the Oath Bow is very cool
and does extra damage, but the stuff that
let's you do cool things like Boots of Striding and
Springing and stuff like that that reshapes the battlefield, as it were. And that's why whenever I play wizard, I don't go, I'm gonna just
blast things in the face. 'Cause if I wanna roll a
bunch of dice and hurt people, I'll play a fighter. It's those utilities, those
interesting applications that are gonna be so much more fun. - And memorable. And I would say too ask yourself as a DM, when you're giving the power out, you're giving a power to a player, whether it's a magic item or a boon, or you're giving them a lot of money. I don't think it's a problem
to give PCs a lot of money if you don't have magic
items stores in your world. You know what I mean? - But also if you do give them... Those things will give
them cool abilities, they're gonna have a harder
time breaking the game. But they might break the game. There might be sometime
when you have a boss fight, and they're able to click
their heels together and zip across the battlefield and interrupt them
before they do anything. And that is gonna break
your encounter design, but there's so much more interesting way for it to break your encounter. It's not like, oh, I just hit
them and I rolled really good. I did way more damage than you intended, and now he's dead. That's boring. But I activated my magic item and I flew across the battlefield, and I tackled them and
interrupted this ritual. Sure, that's the encounter. In both cases, was that over in one round and you didn't plan for that. But that, that's narratively interesting. That's a very cool, it feels
like an accomplishment. It feels earned. - It feels earned, and I think also things can be overpowered and not
fuck with your plans as the DM. For example, I was just going back to me, I was talking before about
how I often want my PCs to find clues. Giving an item that allows
you to cast a spell at will is always very powerful. Limitless magic is always very powerful. I give out items that
allow detect magic at will almost without thinking because I'm like, why don't I... Yeah, it's gonna make the
story better if you notice the crazy shit that I seeded in there. Take detect magic at will. That's fucking fine. Or when people--
- 'Cause that's only gonna lead to finding more stuff. - Finding more cool story stuff, or speak with animals and people are like, whoa, careful. Don't give out too much
speak with animals, and I'm like, what? What is ever gonna be--
- You'll punish people for being able to talk to
animals in your games anyway. (chuckling) So, that comes with a its own consequence 'cause those animals will
never ever stop talking. Brennan's animals don't shut the fuck up. - In the office game, our
friend Melissa was a powerful druid who had a talking
horse as her companion. And the horse was a military
horse, he was very proud of his lineage. And so constantly, she was like, can I just speak to animals all the time? And I was like fuck yeah. So, this horse was constantly like, I am the proudest and
bravest horse of all horses! My lineage's noble. My pedigree pristine. Why would I ever wanna limit that? - I was playing a fur ball again. I could understand him too. I think we realized that that
wasn't correct to the rules, but you went with it because
you wanted to punish me. (laughing) And you actually gave me
disadvantage on the perception check on the night watch at one point 'cause he was just... - The horse wouldn't shut up.
- Just wouldn't shut up. He was talking in my ear all night, and. - Yeah, so those powers,
you feel free to give away. But I think, yeah again,
to answer the question, I do think that you can fuck
up your game a little bit by giving an item that is too powerful if that item is going to
make them wildly better at a thing that all the
PCs are trying to do. Every PCs trying to defeat villains, but things... If you wanna give out cool
magic gear, which PCs love, I think PCs love gear that
allows them to have new abilities or create awesome scenes in
a way that is not related to the mechanics of the game. So, that's how I... If you're worried about that, lean in the direction
of cool magical gear. Or if you do wanna give
stuff that does have direct tangible mechanical benefits, give it cool story shit. Shioban Thompson in our
home game plays, literally, a half elven arcane archer. What are you gonna do? It's a popular build. And she has three items
that are really broken. They're very powerful, dangerous weapons. There's three arrows, what is it? It's Oath Keeper,
Spellbreaker, and Heart Seeker. And they are powerful, magical arrows that have death effects attached to them with a really high save DC. But they only work. So, Oath Keeper only works
on someone that's broken a promise to her. - [Noah] Oh, that's interesting. - Spellbreaker only
works on someone that has successfully cast a spell on her. And Heart Seeker only
works on someone that has broken her heart. So, it's like, oh yeah,
these are broken to bits, but they're only ever gonna--
- So, they're niche? - It's extremely niche. - Do you roll for your magic items at all? Or are they always pre-determined? Do you use tables? - I like to predetermine
them because I like it when magic shit is seeded into
the story of the world more rather than, this is a
apparatus of Qualeesh. You're like, who the fuck was Qualeesh? And you're like, that's a great question. - What I did on this campaign is I went, 'cause you know it's because
of a module and pre-written. It has roll from this table,
and I went through all the tables, and I actually
made a spreadsheet. I listed here's all the magic
items I think are gonna be interesting to my players. I color-coded them, I went
here's the table it comes from. And so they said, hey I
dig through this thing. I went cool, this has
roll magic item table B. Okay, what's a magic item
from table B that I flagged as being interesting for this person? And I was like, oh, you're
playing a warlock of Cthulhu? Here, take a staff of swarming insects. You're gonna have fun with that. - Yeah, that's great.
- But I didn't... And I would roll
sometimes, and I'd be like, well that's no fun. I would just roll it, I would
say out loud to my players, I'm not gonna keep this
one and roll again. - It's real bummer when you're
doing randomly generated magic items, and your PCs
get a magic item that truly nobody wants and doesn't fit
into anybody's character. It's really underwhelming
and it doesn't feel good. - I will say it did
lead to one great moment when I was rolling my random items, and the half ling in the party
went to go get his magic item and it was a potion of diminution. And I tell him, and then he
looks at me and goes really? Fucking giving me the, you're
giving me, the half ling, the goddamn shrinking potion? - But honestly that's great. Adventures on a breakfast table, dodging out of bowls of cereal. - He just was, he did like the
full side-eye at the camera. (laughing) I can shrink, I can get real tiny. Woo, that's gonna be a whole
new magic world for me. - I love that. "As a player, how do I get my fellow PCs "to try and move the story along? "Part of the fun of D&D is cracking jokes "and talking out of character. "We tend to get sidetracked
with side conversation. "Alternatively, some of
my fellow PCs tend to try "and loot slash interrogate
everyone they see "instead of moving toward
the sometimes obvious "next step in the campaign." That's from Hank, thanks, Hank. Well, boy have I been there. This is not even a per campaign thing, it's a per session thing. Sometimes your friends
just have the giggles, and they're just a little loopy. They're not focused. That's a great question. This is honestly on DMs and PCs alike. I don't have a hard and
fast opinion on this one because I think this really depends. I think that these moments
of not being focused can be in good faith
and can be in bad faith. - And you're so good at that. I guess people watching the
show don't get to see this, but you're really good at
just rolling with that kind of stuff and if we get
fascinated with an NPC, you'll just sit there
and you'll play that NPC. You didn't have anywhere
planned for us to go anyway, so you got no problem just sitting there and chatting up a storm with them. - Well, I remember in the office game 'cause it was a bunch of people
that never played before, that there was a certain degree
of people being really cagey about wanting to make big
moves in the office game we were playing. So, a lot of times, what
people were looking for was like, hey, I wanna fuck
around with this Gaul wig. It was this gnome, not gnome,
noll shaman apothecary. - [Noah] He lived in the docks. - He lived at the docks,
and he lived in a shack that he sold potions out of. And man, people loved Gaul wig. They just wanted more--
- He became the hub. - [Brennan] He was the hub of the campaign.
- He became the hub. - To the point where
someone asked if they could live with him. - That was Mel, that was Melissa. - Melissa, yeah! Melissa was like, can I live with you? And he was like, I'm
sorry, I met you yesterday. (chuckling) I fully don't know you. But she ended up living with him. - [Noah] She still lives there. - She still lives there. We stopped the campaign and to this day, so we're frozen in time. What I would say is this, so this problem isn't
actually a root problem. It is a symptom of a number of problems, some of which have fixes, and some don't. So, in other words, there's not gonna be a one-size-fits-all
solution to D&D sessions that have a lack of focus 'cause that lack of focus
can be coming from a couple different places. I will say this as someone who mostly DMs, a lack of focus on the
part of your players can sometimes be from
you as a DM not having a clarified story in front of them. And it can be PCs literally
protecting themselves and goofing off because
there's nothing else for them to do. And that's on you as the
DM to find a way to put the story in their hands more
and keep it captivating. - The game I ran, it ended
up being a pretty linear, and between I think the game,
the campaign that was written is not super great about
receiving the plot ideas. But me also as a a new
DM wasn't super great about conveying them. And it would, every
game that opened to me, okay, so what the hell are we doing again? What's going on right now? And I'd have to be,
well, you're going here to do this thing 'cause of this. And they're like, okay,
and then they would just go do that thing that I told
them they were just doing. Which is not practical advice. That is definitely a big pit
fall of seeding those ideas and making sure they
really have a strong idea of what they're even supposed to be doing. - Ultimately, the issue is this, people are pursuing their
internal goals all the time. The number one goal your
players have when they come to D&D is to have a fun time playing D&D. And if their characters are
not fully invested in the world for whatever reason, either
through the DM not conveying the stakes of the story, or to them as players maybe
playing PCs that aren't fully committed to the reality of the world. Which is also an issue. I'm not putting all the own on a DM, the PCs can be there as well. I think that if character
creation has happened, and these players are
playing PCs that are thin or cardboard-y or kinda
not fully in the world, of course you're gonna be
more goofing off than invested because the world's gonna feel
flimsy and two dimensional to you no matter what 'cause
you're not really playing a real person. So, I would say that look at your, if you're finding... Let me say this, this is not
an issue if it happens every once in a great while. Every once in a great while,
you're gonna have your session start too late in the day,
people are gonna be coming from work and be tired. The mood in the air is gonna be goofy. And people are just gonna
have a goof-off session. Every once in awhile, that's fine. - And for me, as long
as they're in character. If they're goofing off out of character, then it becomes a problem of, for lack of a better word,
discipline at the table. But if they're in character
and they're diving into an angle like, maybe that's
just what this session or this game needs to be about right now. And if they're getting... My favorite moments as a DM
is when I'm not DM-ing at all. And this sometimes happens with a puzzle or with a challenge. But it also been happening
if they get really into role-playing and I just kinda, I just sit back and I watch. Like that's the most
satisfying and fulfilling times to be running a game is when it has its own momentum.
- I love it! When the DM just looks around
and the PCs are telling a chapter of their own
story to themselves, that's fucking great. - That happens a lot. There's some really
great moments like that in season two of Dimension 20.
- Woo! Stay tuned. So, I would say that now,
if that lack of focus is coming up over and over and over again, I would say the most likely
causes of those symptoms would be the Dungeon Master
is either isn't offering a story at all, has made it too sandbox-y. And is just like, you're
here, what do you do? So there's not a clear hook, or their hook has not
factored in human psychology. So, it's like you're all
adventure is your inner room. The wizard tells you to go here. And people are gonna be fucking around 'cause they're like
that's deeply unsatisfying because my character
doesn't have any stakes on a personal level in what's going on. Why would I stay focused on
a quest that doesn't resonate with anything that I do
all for my character? So, as a DM, either your
story isn't hooked into the PCs motivations, or you
don't have enough story period. The flip side for the
PCs is this is happening over and over again,
look at your other PCs and decide for yourself if
maybe the other PCs at the table are looking for a fuck around game. Because there are people
out there for whom out-of-character commentary,
bantering at the table, whatever else is literally
an ideal circumstance. And if that's the case, then
I think you need to have a conversation with your other players and say, we'll trying to play
two different games here. - I think that's definitely important, or even the characters they've built. There's a pre-written
D&D game that opens with the players coming up
on a town being attacked by a dragon. And someone I saw once
went, oh, I'm about to start this game, I'm really worried. What if my players walk up and they go, fuck that and they leave and
they don't fight the dragon? - [Brennan] Jesus. - And someone's response
was, then you say okay, those characters leave,
they don't fight the dragon. And then another group of people show up who are the type of people
who would fight a dragon because that's what this campaign is, you play those characters. - Right, exactly. So, I think, yeah, dodging that bullet of PCs that are easily
distracted or just looting and interrogating everyone,
what is behind this question I think more to the point is it's, oh, I have a problem with
people looting and interrogating all the time or they're
getting sidetracked. What you're really kinda hinting at here is I want a deeper level of
characterization to the PCs because looting people is really fun, and banter at the table is really fun. So, what you're talking... In other words, let me phrase it this way. The presence of those
elements is not a problem, you're describing the absence
of this other element, which is deep commitment and
investment in the characters in the stakes of the story. If that's missing, you
probably need to either go back to character development
if it feels like the PCs are generating a lot of that. Or as a DM, you need to
go back to your story and say, how can I make
you feel more involved in this world? - Yeah, and maybe you
just need to throw a bomb in the middle of that
conversation and see what happens. (mimics explosion) Clearly they're comfortable, and maybe you need to find a
way to make then uncomfortable. By the players, never make
your players uncomfortable. - But the characters.
- Make the characters uncomfortable and put them
off ease and find something they're invested in and shake it up. - If people are fucking
around, that's a great time for a moment of dread, a moment of horror, raising the stakes. Think about movies and
television shows and novels. What interrupts moments
of comedic lack of focus in those things usually a
sudden swelling of stakes. So, that can be a way to address that as a Dungeon Master.
- And I will say one thing 'cause I run my games online. Running a game online
does wonders for focus 'cause there's none of that cross-talk or off-table chatter and stuff. And we'll do a two or three
hour tabletop session, we'll take five or two or
three hour online session will take five or six
hours in an in-person game. It's kind of fantastic for an adult with not that much time
to play D&D anymore. (laughing)
That I can't commit an entire half a day to play it. We can really sit down, come home from work at seven
o' clock and be done by 10, and I feel like we've
got a good amount done. - Hell yeah, that's awesome. Guys, this has been Adventuring Academy. Thanks so much for Noah to
coming by and talking to us. We'll see you next time!
