(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to
the Adventuring Academy. My name is Brennan Lee Mulligan. This is my guest Lou Wilson. - Hello! - Welcome to our little podcast, our home away from home
where we talk about all things tabletop-RPG
related that have to do with running tabletop games
for you and your friends, be in D&D, White Wolf, what-have-you. We talk about how to play and run this awesome game here on this podcast. My guest Lou Wilson
today, you will recognize from Dimension 20,
- Yes. - both Fantasy High and
the upcoming second season, which has not been announced yet. - Shh, don't tell them.
- Don't tell them. Lou's my guest today because
I've been playing D&D with Lou for a long time.
- Yeah. - We have a 3.5 campaign
that's been going on for over a-- - Over a year now.
- Yeah, it's very special. - Very, very special, and Lou also has just started running
his first game of D&D. Lou, how did that experience go for you? - It was a learning one,
but an enjoyable one. Yeah, my world is called Scheherazade, it's like a very desert kind of landscape, with all your like, I don't
know, I wanted to just smash all the most cinematic like
Sahara, shifting sands, with the dry creek beds of Westerns, with the high arid deserts of some of your favorite, also like frontiersmen kind of stuff. I wanted to smash them all together in like one beautiful world. - It's like a very cool
Arabian Nights-inspired place that I was super-psyched
when you started talking to me about it because I'm obviously a big Homebrew campaign world guy. So, for those that are listening, DMs work in different ways, people that run these games
work in different ways. Sometimes with games like White Wolf or Vampire: The Masquerade,
the game is sort of impossible to divorce from the setting
that comes with the game, like this game takes place on earth. These are the types of
vampires you can be. D&D does a really good job of separating its campaign worlds from the rules, so the rules are kinda
presented assuming like hey, this is how elves and orks work, in whatever worlds you find them, right? So, as a Dungeon Master,
you have this kind of choice to make of do I buy a campaign setting? Do I go out and get Ravnica? Do I go out and get
Forgotten Realms, right, or do I make up my own? Was there any question in your mind about whether you wanted to start with a pre-made campaign setting? - Well, I mean there definitely was, it definitely crossed my mind, 'cause I had been, right before I met you when we started doing
our campaign together I had been like, you know what, it had been hard for me to find a DM in Los Angeles, and so I had been like, well you know what, if I can't find one, I'll learn it, and I was, and you can too.
- You can, too. - And that's why you're here, uhh, listening or watching this podcast! - Ah, please. - But I was, yeah, so I
had been on Amazon, Bing, like okay, do I get
these, do I get the books, and then do I get the starter set, and do I just run whatever
the starter set is, and then I met you, and what can I say, I'm very much a, I
consider you in many ways to be a DM or GM sansei to me, and there's definitely been
something about watching you run campaigns of your own creation that I think is like
a power that I wanted. I think there's just so
much more, I think there is, as an improviser, someone who's very good at thinking on their feet,
who likes to prepare, but then is also very
comfortable in kind of the wilds of just like we're going to a
place that I hadn't expected. It was exciting, I don't
know, there's a thrill there of being like, okay great if we go there, then we'll just kind of, I don't know, I didn't wanna have to
be going to a pamphlet, being like okay, so they
wanna go here, great, and what's there, okay I think it's the, okay wait, do you guys
wanna go to the left side or the right side, the left side, okay. (Brennan laughs) Oh the left side, I dunno,
the freedom and comfort to just be like I own, the ownership I think was
something that excited me, especially with like running
this campaign in Scheherazade. - I think that's so important, and that's very well put to
that idea of ownership, right, because I know that the
reason a lot of people rely on modules, and again, you
can split the difference. You can get a campaign
setting, where you can go out and get, you know, like
my favorite of all time was Planescape, which was
back in 2nd Edition D&D a million years ago.
- Way back. - Way back a million years ago, Planescape was my favorite
setting of all time, where I felt really
excited about Planescape 'cause it was this awesome setting that was so creative and wild, but it allowed me and my brother, other people that were DM'ing to still make our own adventures, which was very, very fun and cool, but there's even a level beyond that where you can not only
get a campaign setting but also run modules, like
run designed adventures. I totally get the appeal
of running a module, all that stuff, especially
if you're, for the record, Lou jumping into DM'ing
as a veteran improviser at the UCB theater, and
having played a lot before, and has a lot of complementary skills that make this a smaller leap
than it is for some people who maybe haven't performed before, haven't done something creative before and wanna to start DM'ing. Out of the box, a module's
a really tempting offer. I will tell one little story about why I, the first time
- Ooh, okay. - I became very creased and
swore off modules altogether. - [Lou] Oh, gotta get this out in the first episode (laughs). - The first episode, and this is what, and again, modules are great. Check 'em out, if you wanna
buy a pre-made adventure because that's gonna make you
feel more confident, awesome. So, when I was like 12 year old, right, I sort of on the basis of really designing my first own campaign where,
I already sort of had, but this was like me testing the waters of like, ooh, maybe to be a real D&D nerd I should buy a module and run one, so I got Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. This is like a 220-page adventure. It's thick, like
sourcebook, not hardcover, still paperback, but like
a thick adventure module for like 12th-level characters, and its this huge fucking
dungeon that's like thick and hefty, and I like
hand-traced all the maps and did all this stuff. - Did you get tracing paper out? - I brought the tracing paper out, memorized these stat plots, which by the way, I don't
know if you guys know this, but anyone who plays 5th
Edition Dungeons & Dragons, the bullets you dodged at
not playing 2nd Edition, you don't have to know what THACO is. It used to be this thing
that your attack role was based on your THACO, which was a number called
To Hit Armor Class 0. - That's what THACO stands for (laughs)? - So you didn't a bonus to an attack role, you had a number that if
you rolled it or higher meant you hit an armor class of 0, and if the person's AC
was different than 0, then you had to do the math in your head and figure out whether you
were adding or subtracting, so that the numbers were weird inverse mirrors of each other. It was bad.
It was bad. - As someone who, I haven't been playing, Brennan makes me sound like,
I do play a lot of D&D now, but I wasn't playing so long ago, and you often talk about how easy 5e is and how easy it is to jump into. That's like I feel like the first tidbit you've ever given me
though as to why what we, the paths you walked that we
could be where we are today. - Well like all credit to Mike Mearls, like the renaissance we're
in with D&D right now is credited to number one,
extremely popular awesome things that are D&D actual play
content, like Critical Role, like The Adventure Zone, like
our boy Murphs and Emily. - Not another D&D podcast!
- D&D podcast! Gotta shout it out. That's a great example
is that Murph is someone that I was his first DM like
two, 2 1/2, three years ago, something like that, I
think literally between two and three years ago, and
Murph is a great fucking DM, one of the most proficient DMs out there. He's got a fucking
podcast that's like huge, so if you're feeling
intimidated like oh you've, sometimes I'll see people be like well, of course that's person a great DM. They've been DM'ing for 20 years. You don't need to DM for
20 years to be a great DM. You can start and be
a great DM right away, if you make the focus of what you're doing your players enjoyment at the table. In any case--
- Can we go back to THACO, though, I'm very attracted
- Yes. - to why you were creased. - So here's why I got so creased. I get Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, right, huge adventure, big-ass dungeon, evil wizard, I'm like cool. This is a published D&D
adventure, let's do it. I get my four players at the table. They all make a bunch of dwarven PCs, - [Lou] Oh hell yes.
- very exciting, my brother makes this dwarven paladin lady. It's like a very cool
avenging, dwarven paladin. The setting dictates that the first event these characters go to
is a dwarven settlement where a marriage is going underway, and it's a little bit of like flavor. It's an older dwarven gild elder marrying this younger dwarven princess, and the princess is not super
hyped about the wedding, and it's like, but then
the wedding is attacked by the evil wizard Bombeldo, or whatever the guy's fucking name is, and what ends up happening
is I start to narrate this wedding literally
just to set the scene of the PCs doing a little
bit of role-playing before the adventure starts. Well, check it out! I narrate, someone rolls
something like insight check or whatever it was in
2nd edition back then. Well, on some wisdom-based check
about the dwarven princess, I go yeah, she's not super
hyped about the wedding. Guess what my PCs do? They fucking clock the groom
over the back of the head, (Lou laughs) kidnap the
princess and they're like, "We're not gonna watch you get married "to this person you don't like." - [Lou] Wow. - So I go, uh, "Are you
sure you don't wanna stay?" And they go, "No, we're
kidnapping the bride, and we're getting her
the fuck outta here." And so, the adventure
becomes the dwarven militia (Lou laughs) chasing these kidnappers,
and of course I'm like, they're immediately having the most fun in the world.
- Yeah. - They've kidnapped this
princess, and then I just start role-playing this princess as being like, "Yeah, thank you, this
was a bad situation," (Lou laughs)
"to be in." So, in other words, weeks and
weeks and weeks of my life, and 90% of this book
are gone in the first. - You wasted a ton of tracing paper. - God, the amount of tracing paper, I could have done so many
Pokemon, so many Digimon. - So many Pokemon, dude. You coulda used those for Shrinky Dinks. You coulda put it to good use. It's dead, it all became
nothing but Bombeldo, - Bombeldo showed up to learn, he's like, "I have come
to kidnap a princess." guess what, dog, she's gone. (Lou laughs) - She's fully gone, help us find her. - Oh that with you,
that reversing in there, like Bombeldo, nobody is
coming after Bombeldo. Bombeldo is coming after you. - I have come to snatch your princess, oh shit, okay, oh my god,
the groom's unconscious. (Lou laughs) Yeah, I guess, let's get on this, I have a whole dungeon full of monster. Well, can these monster chase
dwarves in a stolen wagon? No? It's a bunch of rust monsters and otiags underneath this bullshit, well fuck you. We can't use your help. (both laugh) So, that was a very, and it feels like a villainous origin story of like that one time I got burned that badly completely ruined modules for me and made me go I want to homebrew my own settings as much as possible with exceptions like something are so fucking dope like Plainscape rules, it's a very cool setting. But I want to homebrew my own settings and I specifically want to design own adventures because you cannot escape the degree to which the game is about the PCs I don't even really like to hear that dungeon Masters are storytellers. They're not. Because the story has to be predicated on the dreams and hopes and desires and actions of the player characters, right? So if their choices are not what's driving the story forward that's a problem Now obviously their choices occur in a world you've created and you need to create
villains and plot hooks and stuff like that for them to react to but the idea that you can
really have this adventure and not make it perfectly like a glove fit to the characters
you made is little crazy no one would ever watch a movie where the plot is totally divorced from the backstory of the main characters But in a weird way that's
kind of what modules do if you're not careful Is they go like, "Oh yeah there's some heroes, whoever they are gives a fuck, the main thing is they
go into this dungeon and do these things." I think that even if you're using a module you should go through and realign stuff to tie into your PCs back story or look at your PCs and say their motivations need to
tie into the core themes and plot of whatever this adventure is. - Yeah because all it takes is one moment of them like moving from their core or the core of their character instead of along the lines that were carefully drawn for them like, I don't know, to unseat everything - 100%. You know, like, and I'll say this because I don't think it's a spoiler For season 1 of Fantasy High. the plot with the missing girls at Eggfort was something I created. The setting was created beforehand I created the setting so that you got these six guys could make your characters but the whole plot with the missing girls and Eggfort was created
for Murf's character - I've never heard this before - Really? - You've never told me
that there, I had no idea You tell me that nobody was trapped in any There were no girls trapped in any crystals before Riz Guckgack was created - No that was created because you if one of your
characters at the table says "I want play a teen sleuth", and you don't give them a mystery, you're an asshole - Wow! - Like, if you like
"cool you're a detective I didn't plan it for a mystery in my setting so you can jerk off I guess, you can do whatever you want" like you have to put as
a DM I think you have to put things into the
setting that allow people to realize the fullness
of the character arc that they envision for themselves. That doesn't mean that you're not also involving your story
themes you want to include. You're one of several
players at the table, you should be having a fun time as well But your job is I think creating these moments where people get to go "Oh, my character became the person I wanted him to be in this moment" And if you don't plan that, If you don't really see
that stuff and there is you know what are the odds that's gonna happen organically? Especially with a mystery I think that's really necessary. - I mean that's beautiful. I know, but it is! I think about before I started on this campaign that I'm running. I'd like taking other
steps in other things to like try what it's like to be leading a role-playing thing and very much they told
me their characters and I was like, "cool cool cool" I did a much work
surfacey the level of like "cool, want to use him as a musician? Great, we'll start with
you like, at a concert" And that's like, I did it. You got what you wanted. We were at a concert you were playing because you're a musician. That is a level of, like, giving that I think is now as a player now I think about that, is so satisfying and that level of engagement that I think can sometimes be a hard thing to stir up as the DM at the table Especially in this technological era that we live in where people are like, want to check Facebook
like to grip them and give them those things so that
they feel so a part of what's happening like that's
very sweet and impressive. - (laughs) It's random but even something as small as you're saying of like oh, make sure that the musician
is at a concert playing music. It really is that thing of
like when people play D&D they want escapism, they want the ability to be somebody else and often there's an experience they're looking for and sometimes they don't
even ask for it explicitly and it's your job to
kind of empathically go "Okay how do I give, what is
it that you're looking for?" And weirdly, I think sometimes also to give people the character arc that they desperately want,
to let them be that person, sometimes you have to
actually not give them what they are asking for or want. I think about Fabian's arc in season one where you didn't get on
the team that first time. - Very surprising. I'll say I haven't been
out there about talking about things but you and I
have talked about it a lot but when you said "hit the
showers" the first time in episode one I truly
thought I was on the team and that you were just,
we were just kind of, you were just like "let's
move" I was like "I did it." I was very caught off-guard by the fact that you did not let me
be on the Blood Rush team. I thought I had earned, I thought (laughing) I think I rolled on that
one and then like an 18. I like was convinced both
in the meta Lou Wilson and the character Fabian cast I was like I killed that play, I win. - Yeah of course that's
the thing too is like Fabian the character
and also to some degree playing Lou Wilson the player wants Fabian to get on the Blood Rush
team as soon as possible. - Badly. - Badly. - Why did I put my character
in the varsity jacket if I can assume that
these things were going to work out a certain way? - Right. And what's horrible as a
DM is it's not it's like you're doing a very weird twisted kind of wish fulfillment because
you actually can't give people, because people want the experience of being their character
arc type fully realized so if you go and just do wish fulfillment just do very simple basic wish fulfillment and say "Cool, Louie wants to start being on the Blood Rush team,
I'm on the Blood Rush team, great you got your wish." (laughing) You did it, hooray, you did it. - Okay it would have been kinda cool (laughs) there would have been some games where I did some tackles and some flips and things alright. - Sure. - You're right. - But what I'm saying is
that it's a weird thing because it's so much more meaningful like we just had the coach Daybreak battle. - Same thing, yes, stabbing
coach Daybreak over and over again was so much. - I have never laughed harder in my life than when you fucking put
Riz in the thing and went, 'What's good? Whoo!" - I mean it was incredible,
I mean, okay you're right. (laughing) Okay, you're right, it was like way cooler to overcome, to lose and then win, to just
win from episode one. - but it's really hard because as a DM you're sitting there and it
feels a little bit manipulative, 'cause you're looking at players and they're like "I want this." And you have to go like "okay, not yet." And watch your friend,
your real-life friends at the table get frustrated and you have to just in your head go "Well I know it's gonna
be more meaningful later "but for the time being,
I just watch my friend "get really frustrated" but it's about knowing like "Oh what's actually the best thing, "what's gonna really
make them the best high?" And I think a lot of that
you can track by going "What's the fullness of
being this character?" Like if someone is some
revenge driven cowboy, don't start session one
where they kill their enemy but also like let them be a badass and you have to find
that balance but go like "No their enemy has to be smarter "and more powerful than them "and evade them for a long time." In order for them to fully
realize this journey, they're not looking for a quick hit. They want the full self-actualization. - Ooh baby, they want the good stuff. - The good stuff. - They want that stuff you gotta pay for (laughing) you know, not a cheap quick hit, you know, the stuff that lasts a while. - That lasts a while. I'm gonna pull up these
questions submitted from people on our discord. So for those of you
listening to this episode, you might be listening to it for free, if you wanna watch the
video of it, you gotta head over to dropout.tv where
you can get the full video and watch me and Lou's faces. - 'Cause you gotta get the whole picture, the smile on these two boys' faces as they talk about one of
their favorite hobbies. - And you gotta see Alphonse. - You gotta see Alphonse. - Alphonse here in the back. - We named him right now, in this moment and for however many episodes, he will always be Alphonse. - Alphonse. Cool so questions are submitted on our discord server which you get for signing up for Drop it Out TV, you can go hang out on our discord server, hang out with the cast
and different crew members and it's actually a fun time,
it's a really cool community of people in there. This first question comes from Marlyle and the person says is Colin. One D&D question I've
never really had answered in a satisfying way is about
making characters compelling. How do you manage to have characters who can be scary or unnerving when the heroes can also
make them projectile vomit and laugh uncontrollably on a whim? This is a very cool
question, thanks Colin. - Thank you Colin. - I actually think this
applies to PCs and NPCs alike. Lou, you've played a
couple different PCs now. You've played one that we can't talk about in season 2 but you've also played the on-screen Fabian but also,
you've played Condrock, the barbarian in our home game. And then you also played
NPC's for the first time on your foray into DMing. For you is there a difference
between making a PC and an NPC compelling? What are the rules? - I mean I think for
both, I think it's just about wholeness right I think it becomes like you get into a situation like that when you're like this
person is the evil guy and then the people are
like we make him silly, you're like "okay what do bad guys do?" like then it just turns
into, I don't know, a Disney movie where like
the evil guy is going "No please stop" It's ruining the façade that I've been trying to hold up but I think that you know
in creating the characters for my campaign it was
about who these major NPCs, that I thought that we're
going to come across and then kind of shaping the whole, what they're like, thinking
about private life, thinking about the person that they want to be seen as. I don't know if, this
is weird to say out loud I have never like really
expressed, but I was like "how do they want to be seen? How are they really? What do they want from,
thinking about if my PCs come across them, what are
they going to want from them? And how will they handle
those kinds of people? And I think when you give that like kind of wholeness to it, it doesn't, they are inherently going to be compelling because we're watching them experience a range of emotions
rather than the opposite of what they are. - Yeah, I think that's perfectly said. That honestly, something
that you guys can do if you're listening to this is I would recommend weirdly people I think really emphasize
writing as a dungeon master, a lot of running a game is about acting and I think improv training. Well something that improvisers have up their sleeve when they start
DMing is the understanding of how to make somebody whole quickly and how to give somebody a core quickly. Bistrar in season one Fantasy High that's a cursed genie who can only grant ice cream wishes and he runs an ice cream place and when you understand that deep sadness and he has this role (laughing) he cant fulfil, everything he does starts to pile up on top of that and make sense. He's gotta grant these wishes
because he's this genie but he can only grant ice cream wishes. And when you're designing your NPC's, coming from the heart is huge which is sort of what you're saying, this idea of wholeness,
how do they present? What they want and all those things aren't necessarily a
mechanical bullet list for every NPC understanding factoids about your NPC is not
what you're going for, you're actually trying to feel them on an intuitive emotional level. - I'm not saying write
paragraphs, the reason they feel this way is
because at the age of seven, they left the village (laughs) yeah it is just a bullet, it's just something that I can reference 'cause I think to your
credit I think like thinking about coach Daybreak and thinking about this fire where
we're making this man vomit and shit himself after he's
have killed a lot of us. I think there is so
much in the acting of it where your portrayal of him is a person who's trying to hold on
to that part of himself while shitting and vomiting (laughing) which I think is why it
still has some of that, why it doesn't just turn into a cartoon because of you holding onto, him still holding onto, you haven't given up, your not just like, he's just vomiting and shitting, you're still like, he's still
trying to be intimidating while vomiting and
shitting and seeing that I think is very compelling. - I will say there are almost two questions in this question. And one of is I think that rich kind of what makes a character compelling, which I do wanna address. There's another one here , that just so that we make sure, that there is like really
practical advice here, here's like the most nuts
and bolts advice I can give, that especially when your starting to introduce villains into a campaign, there are conventions from movies and television shows, that will not follow into
tabletop role-playing games. If you have your villain
try to do a monologue, and there is nothing stopping the PCs from just starting the clown on them, the PCs will start to clown that's from movies you can't do that. So if you want your villain to exposit a piece of
necessary information, or you want them to
seem really threatening or scary in some way. Realize you're not in a book or a movie, this is an interactive game and also if you have made
your PCs really hate someone, and they feel that they have the ability to enact violence on them, holy shit they are going to go buck wild. There is nothing more vicious than a group of PCs finally getting their hands on a villain. - All it takes is one barbarian
and the group was like "This makes me mad and I
rage and I charge at them." I asked a person who one
of the characters Candrac in another campaign that
Brennan and I have off-screen, is a barbarian and a 100%, if you tried to speak on something. Like my character, me and that character, I'm not going to respect you
enough as a DM to be like, "He's trying to do
something, let him have," I'm gonna be like "No Brennan I charge." - Well let's talk about the
first time that happened, we we're in a fight. So Lou plays this
character Candrac Rooskavi, he's from a species of Halforks, they're like tribes of this northern, their ancestry is human and Orkish. And he goes the southern city, he's watching this show, there's a bunch of these
Kildarian soldiers in the crowd. Candrac walks up to one of them and what did you say you were like? - They were arresting a person of interest for another PC that I had
like briefly interacted with. And I think I walked
up to one of the guards and I was like "Why
are you arresting him". And the guard turned to you and said like, "None of your business Rooskavi Scum." - Yes and I immediately buried an axe in the back of his head. - He just chopped him in the fucking head and that's like that's that character, that's Lou contributing to the story. - That's my part. - That's his part. So as a DM do not get swept
away in your own story. If you're a villain,
present a credible threat, or even a fun opportunity
for violence to your PCs, they're gonna take it. - Just give me one fun
opportunity for violence and oh how I'll capitalize. (Brennan laughs). It's really true but there's
a wild thing there where so that being said though, you do sometimes need your villains to do a threatening thing, you need them to do some
scary shit sometime. So what you have to do is think carefully as a dungeon master and say, "Why aren't my PCs unloading right now?" Does the villain have
some leverage over them, have the PCs just gotten
their asses kicked. That's a great time to have a villain exposit some shit and do a monologue, if they are legitimately
defeated and captured, or is there a reason why
the PCs aren't interacting. Sometimes I think it's also
fun to have a villain interact, if the PCs don't know their villains yet, or there's some reason
for them to hold off. They're at some fucking banquet, and there's some reason
for them not interact, do some cool shit where they're like in
Sigil the City of Doors, and they are not able to enact violence for fear of being excommunicated or thrown out of the city or X,Y or Z. So but that does need to
be taken into account. So don't trust that your villains, your PCs have signed up to play a game of heroic adventure, they are not going to act scared, they're going to act like heroes. So your big scary villain coming along, you're never gonna watch
them go like "Oh I'm scared." They didn't roll all these
dice to get to the villain and quake in their boots. So I think rather than trying to scare and intimidate your PCs, you wanna look for moments of like I'm trying to
think, have villains done, I don't think those have ever scared you in either of the home games we've played or something like that. But have there been moments
where villains like, I don't know, like maybe didn't scare you but like rattled you or
left some pause for like, "Ooh we need to think carefully "or we need to be more
strategic in this moment." - Well the problem is that I play fighter, I've you know for the
most part played fighters who are concerned with their appearance, and their being either legends or brutish or like both of my characters kinda have a chip on their shoulders in that they want to be seen as like incredibly
heroic, strong, legendary. - So it's I've never, often I'm like "Yeah this is the dumb moment "where I don't roll inside
or try and learn anything "and I just run an attack"
of like but I I think about maybe in the home campaign, I wanted to go pit fight somebody 'cause my pride had been hurt and I remember you had
set up a really nice, you had set up an
underground fighting ring of a death match versus just fisticuffs and I do remember like you
had done a really nice job of giving, we got a lot of information in the entrance of who
I was about to fight and kind of the you use the structure of about to kind of give us a moment of exchanging personality and information that I thought was really
nice and felt very truthful. I wasn't attacking
because you gave the rules of that moment were that you can't. I think when you do put
those societal those rules, your PCs will recognize
that, that it would be uncool to be seen as attacking or to go to, it would've been improper for me to attack in that moment so I didn't. - Yeah I think that's and I
think to think about it more, if you want, as the
question is to be scary and unnerving. Scary is a mood that you
can set at the table. I had that home game
with you and your friends where you guys went into this cavern. - Jesus Christ. I just remember randomly just describing this crevasse that had been created by a magical event, that split,
that had just created this. - A canyon. - Exactly. - And yeah between some ambient music you would put on and a lot
of your descriptor words, it was terrifying. (laughing) - Right, and this was
a geographical feature. All that it was is these guys have been in very temperate forest,
it'd been mostly wilderness and I described it, I put some effort in describing the wilderness but it was very Lord of
the Rings-y, Middle Earth-y kind of wilderness going on from town to different towns and
then we get to this place that suddenly the tone shifted and it was a shadow of the colossus style like some magical effect
has scoured the land as though the finger of God came down and there is a miles wide chasm scoured into the earth as though
by some unnatural force. - He's using I think a
lot of the words used on that day. (laughing) - And that's something you can do where that's an unsettling
thing to narrate partially because there is no way for, you guys can't shit talk a canyon, there's no way for you to like. - Hey fuck you, Canyon. Hey Brandon, I'd like
to piss in this canyon. (laughing) I'd like to show this canyon who's boss. - Fucking paid Canyon fucking these nuts. Yeah there's nothing you can do, you can't flash brain into the canyon. - You can't flash brain into the canyon. - Right. So I think there is an element of like finding those
creative ways into narr, so horror is a mood you can't
just have a lich show up or having a vampire show up and be like "Hey, I'm a classic monster, very scary." You have to find a way to create a feeling of dread or unease that
has to do with narration, using that poetic description
and I think unnerving as well, so that's the feeling of being unnerving. In terms of scary where
the PCs actually feel that they should run away right or the PCs at least feel
trepidation by their chances, if you want the PCs to
enter a combat knowing there is a high likelihood
for them to lose. I think that what you can do there is show an element of loss and also as a DMs show that you're not kidding. One of the ways I think
that you can best show that you're not kidding as a DM, you wanna show that it's not always scary, cool you can't do a total party, you can't kill all your PCs, kills some of your NPCs. Have a town or a city that
these PCs know and love and they get back and it's fucking gone, it's just smoke and ash. That's a way to set something up where the PCs are losing something they care about and can tell that this person means business and it is a way in the same way that
in real life we ponder our own deaths most
when we experience death with the people we know and care about and it becomes real suddenly. It's the same thing, if
your PCs are feeling hey, zero consequences, everything's
groovy, it's all shenanigans I remember playing in the
campaign that I did with Murph and Emily, the other aerial campaign where they had up to our,
in our first session, they'd been in this little
town, they're having a ball, they're going around,
and even some like spooky stuff had happened, there were like goblins in the woods. (laughing) and they were joking, joking, joking, it's a bunch of people that
have never played D&D before and they were having a ball joking around and I had them go up into
the forest a little bit and they'd met this old witch named Rose who had been very sweet and motherly to Emily's character and Emily
formed a really strong bond with her and she was like "Rose I love you." And they left, they came back to town successful haven
beaten these goblins and were being glib and they, I think it was John Wolf's barbarian, where they went up a new tree and looked and saw Rose hanging
from her witch's tree. - Oh my
(laughs) - and they had left her in town with the Baron's men. Now they hadn't sworn to protect her and they knew to Baron's
men were dangerous but there wasn't a conspiracy
that they were about to kill Rose but it was this weird moment where I watch six people
who'd started playing D&D for the first time three hours earlier who were like kind of joking
like being the characters some of them had silly
names, it was very like "Oh we're playing D&D for the first time." Every face went to stone and I watch people get it get the power of this game for the
first time and go like "we're going to make them
pay for what they did" and that's when the Baron suddenly became this person for them. - I think when you get people who are inexperienced to play D&D they do or like "Oh this is the one "where I can do whatever I want right "this is where I can like punch the Baker "and be like fuck it?" So when you teach them
that this is that and Actions have consequences, and like those consequences aren't like "Oh he took your gold" or
"ah, your item is gone" or "I don't know" when it's like things that
people have really engaged with and enjoyed, there is that switch where it's like, "oh" - Yeah another way to put it is like: D&D is a game about gambling your rolling with dice right? You're rolling with dice,
it's a game of chance what are you gambling with? it's not money you are
gambling with stories and the stakes are characters, locales, moments, adventures. So the things you stand
the lose are actually very meaningful because
people love stories So putting something up and having someone lose a character they care about even if it's only an NPC, suddenly makes the stakes real and someone realizes like "Hey man, we're just sitting here at a coffee table eating
chips and rolling dice but oh, I'm never gonna
see that character again." - It's even more potent than
harming the PCs themselves. Like in taking away an NPC's
like, that just...I don't know If the guards came and beat
me up I think I would be like "okay well then, fuck yeah", right? you be me up today,
tomorrow I'm gonna come and kick your ass. - Yeah. - But if, like, the guards
went and burned my mom's house down, that's so much more fire - yes - That is like even just
thinking about it right now I'm like, "Ooh, I cannot
wait, to go beat the Shit out of them." Like, I don't know.
- It makes you feel something Or even like the end of
episode 2 in season 1 of Fantasy High when Eggfort died and you fucking lost your mind! - of course because I think there's also a thing where you forget NPC's can die like you've been the one
looking at your health And all of these kind of things. So as soon as you get
your that reminder death like this is a living world
and that like things are happening that you aren't like if you like other people walk to doors when you're not walking through them It's like shaking that
up and reminding people that this world is doing stuff without you - Oh, that's an awesome thing to light on that actually, for a
second one for this episode that's another critical DM tip - Oh, I like this - From Lou Wilson No, for real is make your world alive. If it has if the PCs are
to get this Final Fantasy feeling of like I can go out
of town kill 100 monsters and walk back and the Baker
is still standing next to the shopkeep just talking, No, if there's 100 monsters
in the woods they eat shit They're out there and if
the adventurers leave town the town's doomed like it's a living world when characters leave
and come back to a place the place should have changed unless for some reason
it is able to maintain whatever its status quo is,
which is in itself dynamic how was it able to maintain status quo? - What is the cost of that? - What is the cost of that, right. So a dynamic world where the PCs And that doesn't mean that PC's don't have agency and importance I think the trick is PCs
matter and can change the world but the world's also
always changing itself and if the PCs split their
focus or ignore something for the benefit something else, that matters and it
changes the result of that. - Whoo! - Hell yeah. We're going in today. - We're going in today guys. - This one's from Salt In Your Coffee. How do you reinvest players
that feel lost in a story due to missed hooks or closed up plots? What's the best way to
address players feeling like the game is becoming the
DM versus the players instead of telling a story together? That's really fun. I love that question. When you were playing you
started with a one-off for your player. - Yes, just like a session. Yeah. - How much were you
kind of giving them plot and a hook versus how much were you going like, "hey, this is collaborative, we're together"? Because I have some thoughts on this that are conflicting. - Okay, well I would say so for you know is for my session which I
had like in my head I wanted in talking with Brennan a lot about it As one does with their teacher, I was like okay great I know
what's like I want to do something simple because I'm new so it's like a Caravan guard
that was at the heart of it but I also thought about what the Caravan what that means like to the
world or what's on this caravan and who wants it all of those of things, and I wanted all those
things to be on the table if the PCs were invested in that but I also wanted it to
be if they just want like to be a bunch of mercenaries
who have a job to do then so be it but I think, getting back to the question instead of just talking
about my first session It was like I wanted it to be... I gave a lot of room to the PCs to kind of like do their own like to explore the world and I didn't have like
an NPC there being like, "Get back to work, we've got
to be somewhere tomorrow" It was very much like they
knew where they had to be and I wanted to give them
the space to get there and constantly moving the plot along and having them come across NPC's that would be like,
"oh, you're working? Great." Like constantly reminding
them that they are working and that they have a job to do but also that like if
they were in a mining town and they went to the dirtiest
part in the mining town and one of the PCs was like they got a shitty room that
had one bed for three people and one of them was
like I want to meditate and kick the other two out and so one of them started
cleaning this dirty bar and they started cleaning
and I rolled for the reaction of the other people in the bar and I got like a 19th so I was like, they also start cleaning. (laughs) And so it just turned into this moment of a bunch of like miners and the PCs cleaning this dirty bar (laughing) and then the bartender coming out like pulling out a brand,
like a bottle of whiskey that he got when opened the bar and they're all like cheering him so I don't know it was like I wanted space for those moments and those collaborative moments but also never trying to push plot, 'cause I feel like if
I had just been like, hey we got stuff to
do, we got stuff to do, hey there's like a cold caravan, like we get to the caravan (laughing) we like, like a 3 1/2
hour session ended with and then the you begin,
like the whole purpose but I think it was really
important to understand that I think the PCs define
the pace of a session. - Hell yeah, Jesus dude, yes. - And I think that is how things
always feel collaborative, I think of the PCs feel pushed if the PCs feel like
hey we got places to go, we have things to do like I
want you to be doing things, that's when the DM becomes more apparent and there're subtle ways
to keep PCs on track that don't involve you standing like being as clearly the DM asking
to move this forward. - Yeah I think pace is really hard and it is more in the hands of the PCs than the DM, it just is,
the camera follows the PCs you don't narrate stuff the PCs don't see or I've done it once or twice
in very insane circumstances but for the most part, the camera, the focus of the game follows the PCs because they're determining the pace and if they are enjoying
what they're doing, the game's successful in
the same way that like if you get a brand-new toy for your kid and they play with the box, that's still successful
gift you know like, okay you didn't like the thing
I thought you would like but, - I'm glad you're having
fun, exactly, yeah. - You're having fun, it's working. I would say too that I actually
can go either way on this because what this question
basically is talking about is a missed hooks, closed
out plots, stuff like that which has to do with that
idea of railroading or not, is your campaign setting a sandbox or the PC's totally
doing what they wanna do or is there plot that
needs to be followed, here's the funny thing,
I don't think there's one right or wrong answer to
this because the truth is, if you are playing with very new players, it can be cruel to put all
of the owners of creativity on them and say I don't
want a railroad you guys so you do the adventure and their like, dude I don't fucking
know, I'm an Elven Ranger, I'm excited to have
like a panther familiar, I don't know what he wants to do, like in other words if
you're playing with people that are not really confident
in their like creative writing or improbabilities
it is kind to say your old mentor shows up and says there are monsters at
the edge of the forest and they go cool, I
wanna help my mentor out that's a really simple, digestible story, I'm excited to tell that,
that lets me do the things I'm excited to do which is shoot monsters and be a cool badass Elven Ranger. - All I ever wanted - All I wanted. - Me and my panther familiar. Yeah but I feel a hundred percent. So do you think that like, is that the only situation
in which railroading, that sounds very specific
though, so is it like, do you think it carries
into other situations, or is a just new PCs? - I think that the that the biggest high, you get to as a PC, is where you start to
feel like the campaign really is becoming your story, right. It's not, in other words,
you are not a character that is being followed
by the camera randomly, you're not the focus of this
campaign world randomly, just cause like, "Hey I made a character, "and we were at the house playing "and I'm one of the PCs", but really start to feel
like no there's a reason, there's a story about this character. I'm growing in some way, or this quest could
only have been about me. Not 'cause I'm like a
chosen one necessarily, that's a whole other conversation about whether your PCs
should be destined heroes, but I'll put it this way. I think one of the best
and this I guess will be like the hard DM tip number three. - Critical. - Critical DM tip number three. - Gotta use the buzz words. - Use the buzz words,
yes and that 20 DM tip, - Oh. - is the sooner the better. When you are doing character
creation for a game, talk with your PCs about making characters that have an adventurous
motivation within them. In other words, I think that by default, we often make characters that are static, like if I make a character, lets say I make a Paladin
I love playing Paladins, they're my favorite PC types to play. - He'll never shut up about how much he loves playing Paladins. - I am a sucker for a knight, the belief and ideals right. So let's say you take
a paladin right, cool, I make a paladin, he's a
member of the Paladin order, he's a member of the Knights of the Sun, and he believes in honor and virtue and he's from the City of Greystone. - Wow what an incredible look at that, that's what you get the guy's 22 years, you can makeup like that. - Cool so that's like a character that a lot of people would make is their first paladin character. Cool now, that character
could feel really funny, I could even give him a funny name, he'd have a funny quirk, he loves. - Give him a funny name Brennan. - His name is Bilby
Buzzbeard, and he loves pasta. (Lou cheering, laughing and clapping) Now the problem with Bilby
is this, Bilby's a lot of, he's a lot of fucking work for a DM. Why is he a lot of work? Because he's just fucking standing there, he's just there in Greystone. - Okay he loves pasta okay. - He does love pasta. - He probably wants to get some pasta. - But there's such a difference between loving pasta and seeking out the world's greatest pasta. - Okay but what if he
burned down his pastas day. - Oh and if we start session one and his favorite Italian place burned down and he goes "No!" and
then has to chase down the people who burned it down, that's a great story. That's a natural DM right
here they burned down his, "Wherever you go whatever corner "or hole you hide in my
sword shall find you. "This is my quest."
- There you go, incredible. But what I'll say is this, your job I think as a DM
during character creation, because that's actually where a lot of your job happens, is to sit down and say
cool you're a paladin, can we make you come
from a disgraced house, and your honor is besmirched,
and your adventuring because you have something to live up to. Cool you're a paladin,
are you halfling paladin? Great what does it mean to be smaller than every other warrior and does that give you something that you need to prove, and to find characters that are already in
motion, they're not static. Because being an adventurer
is fucking crazy, you're going into dungeons
and killing monsters, close to a 100% of people in your fantasy world were monsters exist, don't do that and for good reason. So I think that there is a real good piece of advice with your DMing skills, crafting PCs that already have a reason to be doing crazy shit. - I love that. - Have you any final thoughts or words as we wrap up here on the inaugural session
of Adventuring Academy? - I mean the get out there and do it. I think if you have that, I think I similarly
let a lot of the things that maybe hold you back from being a DM, of like, will I be able to create an intriguing enough world, will I know what to do when they say they want to like push over the person that I thought was going to be the most helpful person. I don't know even you, I was a halfway through reading the entire Dungeon Master Manual when you were like,
"You already know enough "to go ahead and do it." Go do it. - Go do it guys.
- Go do it. - Hey thanks for joining
us on Adventuring Academy, I'm Brennan Mulligan, this is my friend Lou Wilson. - I'm Lou Wilson. - And we'll hope to see
you next time, later. - Adolphus. - Alphonse. - Alphonse. I don't have to know, I
was in the first episode I named him and now I'm gone.
