Interview a DM: Phil Robb

in case you're wondering yes we are returning with a chain of Acheron tonight 7 o'clock Pacific there is a link in the doobly-doo to the twitch channel my friend Phil was nice enough to take over while I took a three-week hiatus and so we did plain D&D and his game and lots of folks had fun watching that and wondering whether or not there was gonna be a campaign diary for Phil's a game and Phil wasn't super comfortable doing you know a huge long director camera retelling of what he did so instead we got together and I interviewed him much the same way as I did my friend Jim I had a lot of fun I think Phil did too I hope you have as much fun watching it I will see you in just a few hours for the return of the chain welcome to the show everybody my name is Matt Koval I am joined today by my friend and my former boss and now former DM twice and current player in the chain of Akron game Phil Rob Phil is a illustrator character designer executive art director co-owner at Turtle Rock Studios where I used to work and he was nice enough to come by today we just wrapped up a three Episode story in his campaign into the bowels of Allen guard and whereas normally I do a campaign diary I thought it would be neat to just talk to Phil about his history with the game and then also about how he thinks the last three episodes went how long you been playing D&D Phil so it would have been I think we started dabbling in in the the red starter box and when I was and I want to say seventh sixth or seventh grade right and we've that been that would have been let's see here when you're in sixth grade you're what 12 yeah so yeah that would have been 81 82 Wow okay yeah and how did you find out about the indie like what was your first exposure so so my friend who lived up the street he one of his friends got him the red box for his birthday alright and so we were just looking through it and we had no idea what it was cool yeah and then so yeah like I said we had we looked at the books and we kind of dabbled in a little bit but it it wasn't real clear to us how to play right but then another friend of mine who's had an older sister they had like a pretty hardcore group nice and and he he played with them and so he invited me over and that was the first time I I got to play and they had this big-ass castle made right and they did it with minis and everything like that right so so yeah I was like whoa that was cool and then we went back right and I think my friend actually just left the red box at my house and and I just started you know messing with it and eventually we we all got together right and started playing and we got the action you know the hard books right right right yeah our covers yeah the first it was first edition yes sure and yeah and just kind of went from there were you already a nerd at that point were you reading science fiction fantasy those early years I didn't like to read you know everything I had to read was [ __ ] school old school mate I really gotta read this yeah yeah yeah I think the first book that I read all the way through and really like I found that I enjoyed reading was The Hobbit yeah that's great I stuck in the library yeah that's what I'm gonna do this I found it's that old hardcover Hobbit book that was like green and blue I remember that had a super primitive like striped drawings on it I just started reading it and then I ended up taking home and finishing it then dragon lads saga like that there we go dragon lands classic classic gateway though I mean you know I go I've went back and I read that first that first novel yeah and I mean it's it's pretty like simple yeah it's well it's I think young adult yeah but for him for me then I was like holy [ __ ] readings it's actually fun and so then at that point I'd like to forward every like D&D you know TRS yeah yeah ts was Atias guess r TF TRS is us people get computers 5 yeah I mean I read like the Icewind Dale trilogy and all that stuff and then you know from there started branching out like I got some just books that I found in Dragon magazine and right I'd like the miss enchanted sword I don't tell ya I love Laurence a lot Evans yeah with a single spell and a Miss enchanted sword war - yeah he wrote two books he wrote they're great you know sort of worked my way into the greedier stuff later on so so D&D your first experiences with D&D sort of led you down the path of getting into the science fiction and fantasy well I always liked Star Wars yes right I mean on that because because as a kid I went from loving dinosaurs yeah - loving Batman and Robin yeah running home every day to watch that cheesy sure the 60s these thing but I thought it was awesome yeah of course dr. Mann and that's kind of ultraman yeah and then then when Star Wars came out we went and we saw it in the theater like that opening week and I think that was the first movie that like I paid attention to as a kid the whole way through where I was like riveted and actually watching the story and not just watching the cool parts and then doing this hey mom what's yeah exactly yeah distracted or whatever right when did you become interested in drawing like was that without that was during her after work yeah oh really like when I was little oh so by the time you were playing by the time you were exposed to D&D you could already draw oh yeah well that's cool that's already been drawn a lot like in fact I I had these I don't know if you remember them in the 80s they sold these things called nothing books it's basically like a little hardback book right they just had blank paper and dadada yeah and I I was drawing I had this like comic great that I was drives a little more like a you know 12 year olds version of a graphic novel yeah and they were like these anthropomorphic dogs you know tokenize and they were going on adventures like I had them going on like Indiana Jones style adventures and stuff like this do you still have these books yeah they're horrible I would never say they're embarrassing I mean for 12 course because your kid yeah right but still but then you can see like I think I get into the the second nothing book and you can see where I started playing D&D because all sudden drowse show up in my in the story right and they get zapped into another world and all this stuff and yeah it's pretty funny when did you go from being a player because your first experiences as a player to wanting to get behind the screen I think it was almost immediately really right cuz nobody else wanted to run so it was that the impetus was well if I want to play then I have to run or was there some kind of desire on your part to run just I think I was cool with it right I mean you know I mean going back to like enjoy telling stories right and writing those those silly graphic novels and I was doing um that gives you a chance to do that but I mean I should I mean to be honest like those first couple years of playing D was the indie was chaos course yeah right like your adventures were basically like you know stupid yeah right and then just a bunch of fighting in and then like because we were a bunch of teenagers right or you know early teenagers yeah our nights always devolved into everyone fighting against each other yeah yeah yeah and you know same thing yeah yeah and there was yeah there was a lot of cheating and you know folks would go home right from that night and then they'd come back the next week with magic items you know that like hadn't been given where did you get that oh I played into friends oh yeah a friend's campaign and we all did it so it was like nay okay whatever but yeah so it was a lot of silliness and then I think when we really got serious about like trying to do role-playing was right what in college oh yeah do you remember apart from D&D what other games you played we played a little bit of paranoia yeah we did a stint with Twilight mm I had the I still have the gamble world box said yeah let's play a little bit of that we always came back to D&D though yeah you know in college we played a little bit of Call of Cthulhu those were those were the big ones like by the time Shadowrun came around and my vampire the masquerade I think we were just like that D&D right sure yeah when I met you which was in 2011 you will is the last time at that point when was the last time you would play D&D I want to say when I was in EA which would have been when I was working at EA yeah that would have been from 98 to 2003 okay yeah yeah yeah so it had been quite a few years yeah and do you do you but still bought all the books oh you keep up with what was good yeah I mean I've got every edition of D&D I'm gonna shell for it I've got the 3.5 Edition I don't think I've ever even opened them really sorry that's crazy that's funny that's because I was a huge kind of back to back to old school play I didn't have a group at that point right I mean like getting people my all my my group that I played with in college there back east right there spread to the wind you know playing online was even though I don't do it now it was a lot a thing that you could do right in and you know everyone want work was busy we were crunching like all the time right so there was early time to get like a steady group going the campaign that we just wrapped up with a three issues the three issue the three episode arc that we did is kind of the sequel to the first one you ran kinda right is it takes place in balan garden place a week I wouldn't call it a sequel I would call it like a spinoff that's cool yeah well because it doesn't have the same characters right right the sequel presumably would have the same character right Yeah right this is definitely a spin-off of that first game are you aware when you're when you sit down to prep for the first time that last campaign that we played in are you aware of having a style that there is a there is a kind of if somebody asked you what kind of DM are you I don't know I don't know I don't know that I'd be able to answer that question because I mean I try to I try to keep it flexible where I don't want I want the world to be believable and to a certain degree gritty write brutal right but then I don't want it to be like dour I mean humor you want to definitely you got to have that right humor so I don't know what would you call that like well I would say like yeah well certainly your your setting is very low fantasy right in the sense that there's not a lot of high magic and so you do you tweet it or yeah you respond to somebody on Twitter when they were complimenting you on the amount of work you do on the ecology of your attention and you said something out that was brilliant which was I you have to believe in it if I'm gonna sell it to the players right and so there's definitely a lot of you spend a lot of time and thought on how does this work the practicality of how are there these creatures down there what do they live off oh well that's the thing like I mean I was thinking when I'm going back I wish that you know because it's called into the bowels of Vallon guard right you went into the bowels of Vallon guard and then you quickly shot out its ass like some one place completely different right yeah right yeah I think I should I should have spent more time in the bowels of Allen guard but given yeah because it was kind of a compressed yeah I supposed to be originally it was gonna be too right so well not only that but it was like we decided to like not even a week before everything at all so I had to throw it together and I couldn't at least in the time you know that I had allotted myself I had a really hard time coming up with a believable ecosystem to just to be living down in the bowels of this ancient hold you mean so that's why you know Kay well let's go with the rest monsters right because it's believable that they would tunnel into a mind because they're looking for metal right right yeah and then they would leave some sort of tunnel that would take you to another part I mean the place where you guys went is still the I don't know if you'd call kingdom fiefdom for them whatever Valon guard right but it's a different part right it's not it's not literally directly below castle or whatever the key right yeah I think it was like to to our about two miles northwest when all's said and done all that all the tunnels that we went through it yeah exactly but you know I mean like I said it mean it's true like I feel like if you're gonna put something down there that's alive I mean certainly you can put on dead down there but sure I don't know I just didn't I don't think my world is there yet where there's more there's like massive populations of undead running exactly exactly well that's a good interesting point because you when we first started playing in that Turtle Rock in your game you gave us the player's guide to sanctuary which is your campaign setting right and this is something people on Twitter if that's what we'll put a link in the doobly-doo to Phil's handout it's like 32 pages it's crazy yeah it's crazy yeah but like you how long did it take you to write Oh how long did I work on that I want to say like um two months and was something you created for that campaign that we played at Toronto rockin like 2015 uh six yeah I made it I'm eight well hmm or was it a world you had from when you were younger no it wasn't worked okay and I made it for based on the idea that I wanted to try and introduce a world that is it's not I wouldn't say it's a low magic world but it's like magic is sort of it's almost no magic it's below the surface right all right yeah and and the whole idea is that throughout the campaign right you guys are gonna experience this awakening right where we're you know because of the god of magic right is this one of the slumbering gods right and the idea is that like the slumbering gods are waking up and it shit's happening because of that right so the idea is that you know like your character yeah was was for the first true healing character that could truly magically heal and you know people who who don't know the first campaign I was playing rugaard steel Haven a dwarven cleric yeah one of the great things about it was whenever regular people would see me use any prayer cast any spell yeah they would be blown away and as a result I was I would attract like converts and stuff but also people who were threatened by that would run away and have to like go report that this stuff was happening so that was one of the really cool tensions yeah like I don't know if you remembered him but when you guys got to the gates of Vallon guard in this one right in this past one you were met by a guy named Garrett right now I remember him brother Garrett yeah I remember do you remember who he was I remember meeting that guy but I don't remember I remember writing his name down he was your first convert Oh was he okay he was one of the the Stranglers yeah ooh the one that you guys spared oh yeah I remember that guy and I saw you do true healing yeah yeah it became yeah you're like I was number one fan yeah I wish Steve Wright been there when I was like hey look at this guy's look and look over and you believe Steve was playing a basically and like an atheist sorcerer which is a perfectly plausible position to have in a world where there was basically no magic there was no there were no gods or anything like that what was there so you hadn't be him for you know like 10 15 years you decide to get back behind the screen you design sanctuary which is the setting right and it's it's bounded it's there's a sea to the north there's like mountains and forests of the south and you decided it's gonna be very plausible right right like everything like the only like the only healing we didn't find healing potions we found a pipe and some tobacco that you can smoke and it has some this magical medicinal herb quality to it does that it does that reflect your personal philosophy regarding how fantasy should be or was that just a flavor you were interested in for the moment yeah I think it reflects my preference better yeah yeah like I like I thought I I like whenever I find something magic for it to be special right right sure now as a DM I realized that players they want to advance quickly right so that's like okay well I start giving out plus-one swords but they're not magic they're mithril right there there there master crafted Yeah right so I mean it's essentially the same thing but it just automatically it's different well it's funny that you didn't play third edition because third edition had that idea of a masterwork weapon wasn't magic and it was just really well made and it would give you like plus one to hit but no bones to damage for instance oh it's split the difference between completely not magical and magic which is plus one about yeah and that's cool so when you when it comes to this most recent three episode arc that we did you had like a week to prep right well since actually three weeks cuz I didn't finish it all right right okay I mean I finished I got the first net in a four days I got the first week done and about maybe a little bit into the second week right and then I've then I [ __ ] crunched for the second week right and I actually ended up over over planning right that's why we went into the third week how would you pitch your this game like if you were to describe it to somebody who hadn't watched how would you what's the high level into the bowels of Allen gar geez I'm not a marketing person but I mean it's a group of it's a group of dwarves that you know are travelling to this this mythical city that's been rediscovered to be part of the glory of retaking and re building you know the the Dwarven Empire or whatever you want to call it right I wouldn't say it was an empire but you know I mean it's a nation right right the hill dwarves in in my world God got shafted like a thousand years ago right they they got involved in some Wars that they shouldn't have and and their allies sort of used them poorly right right and so by the time they sort of realized that they were throwing their best men didn't do a meat grinder yeah it was kind of too late and they pulled out but then they didn't have the strength to defend themselves whenever the orc you know in goblin hordes you know rushed out of the forest and and so they were kind of [ __ ] and they went into exile for X number of years right and into the the mountain force King right right but then humans show up right and they're driven here for you know for a whole nother reason great once we don't know no you don't know yeah yeah yeah and I mean they're sort of interconnected right right but eventually you guys will know but yeah so they show up and you know humans being humans we're kind of what's the word ravenous yo rapacious exactly to get rid of yeah yeah and and the hell door see that and they're like well [ __ ] there's there here's our ability to sort of end our exile and go back out and start working towards rebuilding all right and they end up you know I mean they end up forming an alliance right and by the time you get to where we are the hill dwarves and humans that there's no real culturally they're all the intermixing yeah yeah I mean like the humans right being sort of orphans right and showing up at their doorstep right they they have adopted a ton of dwarf culture and the dwarves have sort of taken some of the human cultures and so there's there's no like there's not that like it's not always like oh you stupid human uh yeah right stunty you know like right kind of stuff I mean not to say that that kind of stuff doesn't exist it just doesn't exist between these guys and Vallon guard is a is a dwarven stronghold yeah right and is that it's a mountain dwarfs trommel correct no it's a hill draw right yeah cuz the mountain dwarves actually live under the mountain right right whereas these guys they live on the surface and elf yeah cuz my perception is a player having gone through that first campaign was that the majority of it was the gates of Allen it's true you know it was we never even got to the key Kroy we never got to explore it correct yeah we got to the and it was it was weird basically go through a mountain and come out to this valley on the other side and there was like a town there yeah but that was like the last thing that happened in the campaign we spent the entire time and just in the gate so for me as a player I always would conflate the gates of Val and guard which is something in a mountain mm-hmm with the thing it was protecting right and so that's why I was constantly like as a hill dwarf places at a mountain dwarf place now yeah I was a Hill dwarf place and the nice thing about doing this was because we basically fast forward it a year yeah yeah right and so I got to go back in and think a little bit more about how the gates worked oh sure yeah like like in the first time that that that that big sort of thousand foot yeah shaft up to the top it wasn't there right you just sort of came out but then I was sort of doing that the geometry try to figure out like where these things are yeah I'm like I don't know that wouldn't work because they would have to go up and then out you know for it to maintain that sort of you know natural defense right defensive landscape do you find that your career and your background as an artist informs how you run D&D yes right and so in what manner is it I feel like I want I want to visually describe everything where I set the mood right it's like you go into a room like you know I mean it's not to say that that's wrong right because everyone's has it has their own style right but for me I have a very specific picture that I want to communicate to the players I hope that they see it so I want to give a good just visual discret it solve it for you with you it's visual right right if I if I had the time to paint it you were getting everything yeah I mean this is what you see right but is there also a composer there are lots of different ways to be an artist it seems like one of the things that's really important to you is knowing how things work yes right like actually believing like not hand-waving stuff away like actually knowing well there has to be some kind of shaft here because there's a huge elevation difference between and is that is that related the type of artist you are do you think when you draw when you're drawing about detail-oriented I think yeah but yeah I mean I just like to know I just like to know how things work right right and I don't I don't I never like I don't like the idea that somebody is gonna go that would never work you know anything call me on my [ __ ] right right so I try to keep as much [ __ ] out of it as possible I mean the thing is I show a little bit about my own neurotic nature right you know whenever I talk about this stuff because it's like yet do it did I need like when you guys went down into the tunnel and I described the molds and then write the the the centipedes are eating the mold and the lizards were eat in the centipedes and the snake was eating lizards right yeah like I wouldn't have had to have done that right but I mean but that's what it didn't take me very long to just think okay you know if there's a giant snake down here it had to have eaten something to have gotten that giant right so I mean one it's flavorful right it adds flavor to to the environment but then also I mean like like when you guys saw those those giant lizards right like I mean I don't know if you did this or even thought about it but yeah but like is there something down here that eats those yeah right and so in a way it's a little bit of foreshadowing you know it's like okay there's these big lizards but they're up there and they're naturally coming down the [ __ ] yeah no we definitely noticed that there was I think we all were aware that there was an ecology down here and there was something in the water Frank I wouldn't know I I would not have been surprised if it had been like perfect like the DND piranhas or somehow I got the Clippers yeah exactly quip or like many small yeah yeah we might been a callback to that or one big thing but I definitely could tell based on the way you were describing that there's there's gonna be something in well that I think that is you guys we're old [ __ ] on your dissenter in your perception at all the whole time okay and we don't we failed to notice all budget yeah because they I had like the snake shed sort of like bits of rice all right loading through that water and there was a point where you describe that yeah I think was exactly the thing yeah yeah so yeah that is interesting because that I think is your style that is that is what is your style as a dungeon master is for you it's about believe it's why being able to visualize everything you're seeing and then being able to believe in the inter the functionality of it right so I think convincing is the word is what citrus because you said like you don't want someone to call you on your [ __ ] you don't want something go I would never work like that so for you that's your failure state like for you if you player is not having fun would be one of them yeah but for you like you feel like I dropped the ball if players like I wouldn't work that way so it's not just ecology like the how the gates of Alan Gard worked and the mechanisms of it and not only that but like you would spend a lot of time thinking about how do these guys communicate down here right so you came up with that whole life I had the Morse code yeah but all these iron bars that are built into this thing that conducts sound through the Rhine they tap them yeah guys now that control room yeah hear it and yeah if I were gonna describe your style I would say that it's it's there's a lot of emphasis on the practicality and believability of whatever it is we're describing yeah whether it is ecology or a layout or something like that and that that that is a great tool for suspension of disbelief right is it for us as players it makes it really easy to believe in one of the people live with that yeah I don't know are you conscious of that when you're that's what I said we'd how would you describe your style is a DM are you aware yeah this is what's important to me I think I'm just following my my gut right right it's like it's not calculated it's just like this is what I would want to play in this is what I want to run right so that's what I do you don't you don't like I remember when we worked on evolved we talked very very early we talked about like what kind of science fiction evolve was gonna be and you're like I don't like easy listed stuff you listed stay like I prefer stuff like dune or Firefly or Battlestar Galactica I don't like Star Trek I don't like I was all you don't like aliens all right and I feel like I detect that in Balon guard because found guard because there's you said at the outset when you're like okay I'm willing to run during the break from the chain but you all have to play dwarves like no is that was your that was here we were I think all of us were like yeah we're fine with that right uh but for you humans make sense and dwarves are cool but much beyond that and you like elves you're not a huge fan of and you don't like the crazy wild like different species yeah it's not that I don't like them it's just that I think for the world I was trying to build they don't really fit well I don't like hills it's nothing like them I mean I like them right like but like Dragonborn and tea flings and and you know all the all the other ones fine yeah right but it's just like I want I wanted the world to have this flavor of like like back you know in the Inquisition days right right when like magic was scary yeah right and weird things were scary and everyone's a little on the xenophobic side and paranoid side and superstitious yeah I think that that gives like kind of a cool yeah it makes it unique it gives an atmosphere yeah you know what I mean so like you know I you know if you're a wizard right like you you do run the risk of getting burned at the stake yeah there's there's no throwing spells around in a little bit you know a little rural village now I think there's probably places in my world where a wizard could go and use their magic and maybe people were delighted by it yeah you know they're like oh that's cool how do you do that you don't I mean like the same way people watch a magician right these days right and it's like they know there's a trick to it right or they think there's a trick to it it doesn't that really magic right you know but it is right I mean in the world I like I said it's not the magic doesn't exist it's just it's it's just starting to bug well I think like it's too bad we didn't scream in the first campaign because this is set a year after the first campaign and that that for people watching that was definitely the theme of that first campaign was the fact that like everyone we met they had never seen magic before and if we used any magic they had every reaction you could match somewhere I freaked out you know they would want to burn to the stake or some of them were just like in awe and would follow us mmm and yeah that was definitely that theme of that horse game but you guys also like you did it you guys you guys went with it and try - you didn't just like throw your magic around willy-nilly right back you guys did did make an effort to sort of be subtle you know that was I thought a great tension in the game was that having different reactions right right like my character was like listen the gods chose me for something they've given me these abilities why not use them and then we had you know Steve's sorcerer who's like a man I can I can people watch look at that I didn't I don't follow a god that was able to cast this crazy spell you're delusional and then there were other people were like you guys need to keep this on your hat you know what if somebody decides to burn us alive and all the different players all had different points of view frame about how to react to that core central tension you get so in this adventure you guys didn't spend any time in no civilization no real so a little bit with the caravan we got a little bit of a little bit there right but but I know I didn't really yeah that's true yeah but you guys got separated and some of those guys did see some stuff but yeah just because you know like we had some new new play you know we had Justin who'd a new player not only knew no way we're game but new to Danny that burden right like making you guys play through a city adventure and stuff like that and have have that that burden maybe it would be a little bit too much for new players and then these guys you know they hadn't OD and and and Tom like they hadn't played in my world so I we there was a lot more magic slinging yes in this one yeah right yeah we were higher level we started off at higher level yeah and you know I mean I think when the bad guys have the magic it's cool right they don't you know they're like hey we've delved into these secrets you know when you thought it was taboo and now we're a little bit ahead of you and you know um well yeah so now like there there are more characters though yeah they can do this amazing [ __ ] that up to now only very few have been able to do right and that's sort of how I'm at least in my mind I'm describing the the flowering the other ramping up yeah and maybe at some point it goes crazy I think they'll probably be like wars and mayhem oh sure that that happened that's cool because like magic comes out right like I mean the whole the whole church right the guys that sentence through guard to death for heresy yeah right like none of them can do any of this [ __ ] yeah right and so when revoir starts having these visions they're like you know they're they're either jealous they don't believe him right whatever but I mean it's it's a it's a corrupt organization sure yeah right they they think of themselves as good but you know how much good do they really do and now you know I mean if when if we pick that adventure back up right like the Inquisition is gonna be after Ruger yeah guys a heretic he was sentenced to die and he escaped and now look what he's doing Yeah right and so there'll be like this whole fun thing where you know where they're saying planting misinformation out in the countryside so if you go if Dargo is out there right like the Inquisition will got there first you you know you know you have no idea how people react to you they might be like heretics oh yeah throwing stones at you well you know I'm just basically rude are as creating this other alternate power structure right right that is that just its existence is a threat to the primacy of the church Yeah right and that's well and the whole system yeah exactly yeah usually a system of which the church is just one part right well when I asked you you were like yeah I was like okay are you a part are you a part of the kingdom or are you forming a new kingdom right right and you said a new kingdom right so already right there right like that's going to be a threat to - you know the king in kingsford sure Brian who is sort of like the this guy that's where it keeps all the separate territories working together you know I mean all these dwarven things right that you know they want a piece of this yeah right and they have have basically sworn allegiance to the Alliance right but now there's this upstart guy yeah right he was a heretic sentenced to death and he's starting his own do you think he is Yeah right and they'll be guys to try to take advantage of him right like hey let me help you you know like this is gonna be a really hard thing for you to do all by yourself Yeah right there are all kinds of like good [ __ ] like that I mean I don't know if there will be but you know I and that's what's on your mind yeah that's a junior ruler who knows will actually express itself right it's not like you know you didn't Kingdom sure warfare in strongholds and followers it's like sounds easy it's just taking the hold right like you got you got to rebuild it you got to keep it right and then you know there's all kinds of people that are gonna want to hook their claws into you to get their chunk well that's the classic kind of there's a steady-state world before the movie starts right and that's the church and the king they're in charge there's no available the power and the authority there's no magic right and then there's an inciting incident which is you know there we've got rugaard can can can save or like the gods save him from being hanged meanwhile Steve sorcerer could do for meanwhile Tom's Balaton and all that and then that switches everything over and now now there's tension now these established powers are gonna have to decide what they do about these new comers because I can't they can't admit they were wrong correct yeah exactly cuz their whole power structure bands like what was like a hide benefactor or whatever we call him like that the the the main got the the dwarf that runs the the Church of of beeping hive in Decatur no no that's attacked right okay there was the the I think I called him the high benefactor he was the guy that sensed you did ya sentence regard to death yeah the the dwarf that was sitting up there all arias and you're like [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I think I really would love to like release those backstories at some point know why we can yeah I mean a few still got ya know when you sat down to run these three sessions first of all I didn't know was gonna be 3d thought was gonna be - did you have a structure in mind it was did you think in terms of beginning middle and end did you think in terms of a number of encounters did you think in terms of first week second week well I I think I had in terms of what I want to do what I wanted you guys to do I want you guys to sort of get to experience you know Vallon guard in this current state rabbit you know I wanted you guys to be able to go down and do some classic dungeon delving right and then I wanted you guys to find the horde and and fight and in fight something that maybe you'd never fought before you know or that's cool you know so that it was those things I mean in hindsight I think there's a lot of stuff that I could have cut out like that I don't think anyone would have and we would have been able to get it done in two I think the entire second session was kind of fluff it it didn't I mean you guys got to do some dungeon delving and you've got some of the encounters the Kay encounters weren't terribly challenging as it turns out and they didn't really sort of they didn't they didn't further the theme you know that of the Balon found our area into the bowels of Highland guard frame right he was just kind of like standard dungeon delving and again I think if I had more time I would realize that and changed it before we actually played it so let's talk let's like let's see if we can break it down on a session by session basis it's like what happened in the first session alright so in the first session you guys the first session I think was my favorite really okay I think I know why there are parts in the second and third that I loved but I think the first session was my favorite right cuz I got wolf won't wanna I just got to show you guys violent guard right I'd never seen it before I got to introduce you to the wormwood you know and it's just some of the sort of ins and outs of the world you guys you know even though you didn't really know it you've met some Stranglers right which was sort of the criminal organization where those yeah so who were those well yeah no spoilers but who were those guys that those were that those were the guys who were trying to get the kid okay yeah of course they're trying to get him into Balon guard yeah yeah I don't think that's not really a spoiler you guys knew that what you did well I mean I that's what I figured I figured the house guys I just didn't know what their plan was once they got him in right right and I won't tell you that so there was a there was a caravan there's a caravan of dwarves and humans going from basically civilization into this dark threatening wood and to get to this little Wharf yeah this old Wharf always this brand called Balon guard and that was the whole adventure yeah that whole sash that first session that was all that that really originally I wasn't gonna do it like that originally I was gonna start you guys in Ballinger but then when Tom said he was gonna play a druid okay I'm like well he's not really gonna have much do you know if he's down in the dungeon the whole time so let's maybe I'll have them go from blisters up and then he'll get a chance to be in the force for a little while and do some dirty [ __ ] right which I I think well I don't know I think I think he did well at the end of the day I mean I enjoyed that right because said I got to introduce you to those places you guys got to be introduced to to to the silent which I think give you know really those are cool guys yeah you know I got to throw some you know you got introduced to the black nose goblins right which which were you know we used those and the first goblins that use crows to communicate over long distance yeah and I thought that was a cool I knew you would remember it you know these guys hadn't experienced it and you know I like that idea so I thought it'd be cool to introduce that but then the one thing I didn't like was that man that wyvern went down quick oh yeah I thought he would give you guys a little more of a challenge and he did but like how does just skewer them yeah I mean it's the constant struggle is that for is the dealing with the just sheer amount of damage of players can dish out right now I did a good job for those people who haven't seen the episode this was an encounter where our Caravan which is going through a path in the woods is assaulted by goblins and the goblins are hidden which was cool so there was never really a point there was never a point that kind of where we knew where all the goblins were nope right we might have known where one goblin was or I mean we knew there was a goblin here but we didn't know exactly where in this in this giant you had the row of bushes exactly him he was and then you had so is us like one-two punch because it wasn't that we just bought this wyvern all by itself this Weaver and shows up as we're fighting these goblins so we're already ideally from an encounter design point of view we're already softened up by the goblins so that when the river and shows up it can threaten it can be a threat even though I tell any one creature right but yeah you get dealt with the goblins pretty handily and my rules my rules for them we're pretty shitty okay so any more hitting a lot right and I probably could have put more of them in right yeah I mean that they had way that encounter played out was it was like okay I'm gonna throw these goblins at you guys right and you guys are gonna get to experience that sort of guerilla warfare hate that I they do yeah right and I thought that would be cool but remembering how I did it the last time in in the first campaign right I felt like after a while it got a little slaw ghee okay and we were and show up because it stops and so instead of doing it the way the way we did it the first time when you guys were going up and you went to the in camp right ahead right because I felt like that was long kind of sloggy so I was like okay well I'm gonna do that for a little while and then when these goblins take a certain amount of damage or a certain amount of the caravanners get killed it's gonna attract this this wyvern for them for an easy meal yeah he hears the sound of conflict dying screaming he smells blood in the air right and it reinforces the idea that this force is dangerous right it's not just the goblins for us know this exactly so that was a that was a cool encounter I wish the wyvern had I could have just beefed up his hit points a little bit but it's a good point to make is that when you say the previous battle in the forest with the goblins in the first campaign I was sloggy mm-hmm I think what you mean is there was this arc to it of I don't know if we're gonna make it these goblins could could kill us all and then there was a point where it's like oh I'm pretty sure we're gonna beat them yeah and that's the point where you want to end it right because everything happens after that is just bookkeeping yeah chasing him around and wearing down their hit points and so your solution to that was let's not have a third act with like a part three with the goblins let's have that third act be a wyvern shows up and all these creatures scatter right right so now we don't have to hunt down all these goblins individually we've got this cool to happiness right I think that's great encounter design yeah cuz I mean the idea was that because remember I described the crows leaving right yeah right hmm and basically the crows they they said they sensed the wyvern coming yeah way before they're like all the crows are like we're out of here and when the goblins see that they're like oh [ __ ] something bigs coming and there you go they they you know beat feet so yeah I mean I liked that that structure you know I just you know I wish the wyvern had had been a little more Brazil if you were gonna do that again I think if I do whoever it's done it again or maybe something just nastier oh really you know like your most I mean it could have been you know that could have been be let right yeah I was up from out of the ground I may not I when I was planning this I I was highly considering throwing a dragon at you guys like a young dragon yeah whatever you know the the one that's not too bad sure yeah that's a claw but I I just didn't know like what you guys would be capable of oh I right and the thing is like with the wyvern a wyvern could have killed you guys right but you even have you dealt with them pretty handily but like if I throw a dragon at you yeah like it's a lot easier to scale up than it is used to scale down sure yeah it's easier to just give it more importance and I just wasn't confident you know it's like I didn't want to kill you guys like straight out the gate well you probably wouldn't have gotten killed but that's that's the constant challenge that's since I've started doing this again right that I think is the thing that I'm still trying to figure out with v is what is trying to because I don't think the combat rating system works terribly well at least in my experience yeah right cuz you know combat like those those hags had a combat rating of I believe it was six yeah right now I don't know if it's like you're all of you guys were fifth level yeah so that meant that your combat rating was twenty or if it meant your combat rating was six as a party there's um there's a thing in the Dungeon Master's guide about how to calculate like how much XP do I have to spend on this encounter based on how many pcs do I have of what level mm-hmm and I think that maybe I'm just not I'm not I don't know how to do it well I mean even people who do know how to do it complain about it oh yeah oh yeah so it's it's the the as I think you've learned like the challenge has a lot more to do with what they call the action economy like how many bad guys are there how many actions do they get are we outnumbered yeah right if there's only one it's really hard to make a challenging encounter against one creature yeah is it if it's strong enough to whether four or five or six players pounding on it mm-hmm then any creature in the Monster Manual that's strong has a tax that could kill one character yeah right okay so that's that's that's where that the trade that's where that trick comes from yeah like what is your perception of how I do it yourself always seems to work pretty good I mean I like when our epic battles are always pretty epic I don't feel like we just skate through them cuz I think I feel the same way you do behind the scenes yeah yeah and the thing is like I felt like that battle I don't I don't run my memory of the women battle she's now only three weeks old wasn't that long mm-hm is not that it was a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination maybe I didn't think death was on the line right oh my god well nor was I meant to be yeah yeah but I definitely didn't feel like so I think like maybe one of the lessons is that we as Dungeon Master's are often way more critical and we'll get to that way more critical of our stuff right then our players are our players ever are right the other thing I really liked about that first adventures I got to take all but one of the pcs from the first one and turn them in did yes we met propose to meet well you guys didn't meet Ruger you didn't meet lauric but you met Todd blue bars presence I mean it's yeah his place yeah exactly and so a lot of these guys kind of work for him they were talking about it yeah and like most of the NPC's were NPCs that I used them the first one again part of that is just because I love those NPCs and I thought it'd be great to use them again part of it is you know time right I don't I'm gonna think up new NPD's and it makes sense that a lot of those guys would still be around like all those scarred up miners yeah or all this scarred up guys in Vallon garden the guys that you pull on are done Jim oh yeah that's why I was like is this that dude who had to eat his sons foot or that the annual and all those guys had been tortured by hobgoblins and mutilated in some form right so it was cool to use those guys cuz they would be totally loyal to rugaard you guys came in and saved him yeah I saved them from certain doom they're like yeah this guy's our [ __ ] dude and he can heal that's pretty cool just guys so you were pretty happy with the way the first session I think we all work it was largely introductory right we are in a caravan we rescuing a bunch of civilians too yeah well you guys were part of the caravan it's just that Sarge kind of lets DJ's all care do you guys look tough yeah I kind of could use some help here cuz we always lose people on the way up right stragglers and stuff like that and they almost did yeah and we saw that happen right and so we get to Val and gar that's the end as we go through the gates of Allen gar we get to this place and it's that was amazing for me as a player because obviously I had been for the first campaign to see it again was pretty remarkable and then it's time for the that was the whole section Knoll session was pretty straightforward did you did we get done as much stuff as you thought we would first night went perfect guys as far as where I wanted to end and how I timed it I was like I don't think I could do that again do you feel like you got lucky or it was it what do you mean when you say you don't think you could do it well because it the amount of content that I had for that night it just it worked exactly we were good it was exactly right for our timeframe that we had we had a cool encounter you guys got to meet a lot of cool NPCs you got to see a lot of cool places it was light on encounters right but I drew that would be the case right just going into the the the rest would be heavier on encounters but yeah I mean I want that's that was the goal you're right and I did my best to make it happen and in this case it worked yeah so that way yeah it was a great ending it was obvious in retrospect it was obvious that it was this nice little package we got done in one night and then like halfway between the first session the second session you messaged me saying I think I need another week I think right so you were aware that this net you had a whole bunch of content you want to grind through somewhat quickly and you weren't gonna be able get it done in one night right and looking back I don't think I needed any of that content well so okay let's talk about this so what happened in the second session so in the second session you guys go down into the bowels right and you in you and you find an old mithril mine and that's where I throw them up the rust monsters at you right and that's that was intended to just be sort of like a warm-up encounter right right and so yeah cool you're in this mine right but then at that point I'm like well [ __ ] we're not go from here right like because it doesn't make sense to me like you know you have these dungeons where oh you go 100 feet down the hallway and there's a completely different monster that lives there right I was like why isn't that monster eat feeding on the rust monsters right in order for the rust monsters to have their home here I feel like they need to have sort of carved out a niche they drive uniquely there it's a logical in that yeah yeah yeah and I'm sure most people wouldn't care but you know it bothers me right I don't bother some players yeah some players rebel at the idea of like that so then I'm okay well so where do I go from here right I mean I could go deeper into the mine but you know then that starts to get stale or it's alright and what's down in the mind right what's plausibly down in the mind I thought okay I could put Sderot down there I kept a Dewar gar right the wire gar yeah I could put you know like any sort of subterranean race but one like I think in your campaigns we've done those a lot sure and so I was like you know I want to give these guys right something something new to fight and also you know because I knew it's gonna be streaming like yeah I'd be cool you know to just do some more of the classic [ __ ] right for right for the viewers to see well like when you chose the live urn oh wait hold on but then the other thing was like if I introduced like say I put say I put a colony of doir guard down in the mines that has big implications in the world for my world I'm like [ __ ] I don't think I'm ready to go there yet I would like to save that right because there is stuff down deep right cool that you guys have or not it will be be the world changing like discoveries but it's I don't think it's it's there yet right I mean right which is good right it tells you that I'm committed to this world and I'm yeah I'm ready to play it that sounds great for many you know however long it works but yeah so then yeah that's where I sorta like okay well I don't want to do that right and and so that I was just kind of like okay well the rest monsters had to get in here somehow right right okay they dug a tunnel from a natural cave right and that's where you guys you know and that leads us to the right and then I'm like okay well what kind of cool encounters can I do in the natural cave right and that's you know the giant the giant snake and snake yeah and you know you guys could have fought the giant centipedes in the giant lizards but at that point it is kind of like okay I got a lot of [ __ ] I want I want to get these guys to Keystone by the end of the night yeah right and so you know I'm like moving yet along moving you along I almost didn't even didn't even do the umber Hulk cuz I wasn't sure if you guys were him make it to Keystone right I'm glad I did because I think that was more that was one of the more challenging fight yeah those are really cool in John do you think when you're designing this stuff do you think in terms of like encounters that build like in difficulty are you primarily thinking just in terms of what's in this world what's down here and there's not necessarily any rhyme or reason to how tough it is I want the last fight of the night to be a little more epic right sure right then like there's the ones that just sort of you know they're not filler right they give you some cool combat and some chance to use all your [ __ ] but yeah the one near the end I want that to be a more epic battle so yeah the Elmer Hulk made sense and I actually gave myself the option of running too because I wasn't after you guys like right whoop the wyverns ass I'm like are they gonna [ __ ] this guy up to two rounds or hold it right I was like okay well I have another one right hiding in that other chamber right there a mating pair that's cool and if I need it I can have that one come but turns out that thing was pretty nasty and didn't need it yeah especially when you're using all of its crazy abilities and stuff like it's confusion yeah when you when you were talking when you were thinking about what kind of stuff is in this cave it should be it should let's not use bloggers are partially because I had to use them somewhat recently is there also an element of trying to keep things grounded because you did use a wyvern instead of a dragon for instance and there are parts about is how tough dragons are and also dragons are a lot more magical blog are a lot more explicitly fantastical yeah I got some stuff that I want to do with dragons but I'm not ready to do that yet right because you want to hold off on is the same thing with the doís guard you want to hold off on these explicitly fantastical things and have those be big moments in the campaign right like if you read the the if you read through the the description of the wormwood and in the players guide I talked about you know there's rumored that an ancient red dragon lives somewhere in in in the heart of the wormwood right so like I'm if I I would want to save dragons or something with a bang climactic that yeah exactly like a holy [ __ ] a barracks this is still alive and he's back yeah he's like I tricked this place once yes I'm gonna do it again I've been kind of waiting for that dragon to show up yeah learned about it are they not saying that that's gonna happen but I want to leave that option open and I think that's a much higher level adventure and a much more sort of you know it's not just a quick three shot kind of a thing so you feel like you could have a problem we cut you you feel like you could have just gone from you know the first session directly to the third session because there was definitely from my point of view like meeting a gallop door that is more explicitly fantastical yeah right and that was real I'd never met and all the years my tears of D&D I don't think I'd ever fought a gallop door before so I thought that was a really cool use of them he's not really a monster and implemented them before like a guardian yeah so do you feel like you could have just in retrospect do you feel like you could have just gone to the gallop door I think I think I could have or you know I think ideally I just would have figured out some cool way to keep you guys in the mind and going deeper right right and then it's a certain point the mind is as deep as it's gonna get and then you guys somehow make your way into this this tomb that's like way underground I think that would have been better I probably could have made less for the second session I think I could have made less more epic encounters got it instead of a giant snake right something else I don't know quite you know yeah I mean you know and I wanted to do some traps I wanted to do actually a lot of traps um I just you know again I'm it's just like I felt rushed you know I mean and and I felt like I didn't have the time to really sort of think through it's like there's a pit trap it's like well no let's I had all these like neat ideas right where it's like you know you step into a hallway to trigger the trap and and the hallway goes to a little hanging stuff and you've knocks the guy over and then the the brick that was here goes I mean thinking about how it would work right okay so it turns and then gravity it pulls it down right and then whenever it resets itself maybe it goes the other way and that's classic kind of grim truth straps I don't even remember those products yeah they were having lassic third party 80s so what what role do you think traps play in D&D were they a big part of the games that you played when you're a cow yeah yeah we used traps a lot but then you know like I feel like at least in first and second edition like that's that was the that was the reason you needed a thief yeah sure pranks are gonna pick locks and disarms the traps and I haven't Quentin rap I haven't quite wrapped my head around traps in fifth edition just yet because there's like a it's like a challenge rating associated with yeah it's like an and it's like typically like a thief you know if you're the thief you know that that's part of your job show alright I'm going to look for traps cuz here yeah but like in fifth edition like it's not always like I look for traps right I just don't hear it happening alright and it just it seems like more on the periphery I haven't figured out a good way to sort of whether or not there's I want you guys to look for the traps but I also don't want to be like hey you should look for traps here right yeah yeah and you also don't want to just spring one on the players like like it's almost like a punishment if the players didn't know this is the kind of game we're in and they're not gonna be looking for traps and the first one might you know could wrangle everybody right yeah it's definitely not something that is I would say it's not prominently featured like you know there's a player's handbook of dams got at Monster Manual there's not a book of traps the monster manual is called the Monster Manual not challenges right that might have a mix of puzzles traps and monsters so I think that's I think that's part of the problem is the emphasis on well yeah like when you guys went through the gate house yep right I had lots of traps in there but it was I mean you guys really didn't know they were there until you sprung them yeah right and unfortunately you know as I was designing those I kind of I was kind of seeing this sort of problem like well how are they gonna know to even check for these things so I didn't make them lethal I made them more like a that they box you in right so basically if a if an enemy were to storm the gate house right like these traps are basically meant to sort of box them in so that the defenders are shooting fish in a barrel well I think that's perfectly on brand for fill Rob the dungeon master right because it you like traps right but you're not just gonna throw them in here randomly you you wanted to believe and how is there a trap here right well because this is a defensive fortification right so these any trap would be something that would be designed to thwart invaders yeah yeah exactly yeah no that makes perfect sense you guys I think made the second session good I don't think I don't think it was me oh I mean I you know I mean I did my best to describe cool areas and have some cool stuff for you to fight but I think the value of the second one was just listening to you know these two go back and forward yeah and you know listen to more AG do her thing and you know and just you know that the characters sort of working through those problems were you surprised my us as players I wasn't expecting that much role playing really yeah yeah I was I mean like OD right he just went full bore yeah and then I think that sort of made Tom feel comfortable yeah right and you know I mean you know I didn't know what to expect from you I mean you played ruge are pretty boisterously right so I wasn't really surprised when you when you did more good but it was it was cool cuz you know the you know most of the table is is doing like yeah we had three and a little outwards sort of yeah expressive characters I think that was super entertaining for me and yeah I think probably you know I think that's you guys made the second the second episode cool that's interesting cuz I think that could have done tale into the third episode because the third episodes I think where we saw some of the coolest stuff from your side of the scream as far as the characters the characters you were playing not just encounter design yeah but also now like the little dwarf the quote-unquote dwarf girls that we met like that when I talked up my friend Phil as a dungeon master that is what I was time talking about so what happened in the third episode okay somebody hasn't seen the third episode what happened alright so in the third episode basically Keystone The Guardian has let you guys in he's let he's he's he's recognized Justin's character as having some distant bloodline to this to this and that was a random role by the way are you serious yeah I was like I was like I was thinking of that I was like okay why would Keystone let these guys in he's also gonna let any dwarf in right right okay well what if them have one of them has is distantly related to that clan into that family so I just I just did a d6 and dropped a six yeah and and Justin came up and which I thought was cool it's like oh is this first game yeah I would get to be a little bit special I'm gonna bet cash money they eat dust on purpose mmm because you because it was his character's name was a parade yeah and then the toom is the tomb of the iron why I came up with the name after yeah after I knew it was him yeah that makes that make sense yeah so there's like there's a gallop door Guardian that guards there's three these three tombs right and each tomb is like its own dungeon it seems like yeah yeah the other two were intact right so like Keystone you know he hasn't tried to it it's not really his job to address the they can't fix their you can't fix it alright cuz he can't even fit in there oh really okay I mean he was he was big but then you know he also has these other two dworkin I mean he's he's a simple creature right yeah it's not meant to to you know his task is keep people from going through these [ __ ] doors yeah yeah you know what I mean and if somebody subverts and gets in another ways I don't know what to do right [ __ ] blue screens yeah exactly well you're using computer terminology phrase he's basically not a baton yeah yeah so he lets them in and you guys go down and you start meeting these little these these dwarven girl child's yep Ural children and each one is sort of their own character and has their own sort of flavor they're eccentric you know and they're they're meant to be cute but they're also pretty [ __ ] disturbing right now sure like haunted kids that like I hate that [ __ ] like any movie that I ever seen with haunted kids freaks me out right so I was like okay you know you put the stuff that freaks you out in your game yeah yeah yeah cuz I just assume that if they freaked me out they faked everybody yeah sure well I mean yeah I mean you start you start with what you know like I know this freaks me out so Italy's successful is at least successful at that level but yeah I mean I spent quite a few days trying to figure out what that final enemy would be I was like well could it be it could be a dragon it could be you know I was like a dragon it just seemed so predictable right you know I've never played hag's okay you know it's like okay well the hives can disguise themselves and you know I'll give it I'll give you my notes and you can post them right there have to redact them a little because there's some stuff about the curse well you could you could you could you could post them and I know you could send to me and we won't read well just upload them so if you don't want us to if you know if you want those spoilers then or he gets up to you I'm just saying yeah I don't think I want I'm gonna redact the curse parts right because I I have written down how you guys can get rid of them nice and all that stuff is not straightforward oh cool good good and I think it's I think probably when we come back to this that's what's gonna see the next adventure I was like you guys come back lock this let's go trying to get rid of this curse yeah I was a high percent sure that I knew what kind of session what kind of what the what the hook for these kids was and that was completely wrong oh yeah yeah I thought you were ripping off a you I thought you're doing something I did and I'm not you're ripping off an old Star Trek I don't know any of those I know the tribbles episode and they are the one where Captain Kirk and Spock [Music] well there's actually I think there's also like there's a Venture Brothers episode that's like this it's about what happens it's kind of also some classic like fallout modding where what happens when you have a colony of dwarves for instance and they're trapped here and they can't get out and now it's a thousand years later right right and there's something that's made it so that there there's some supernatural challenge and then keep that kills off all the adults rapes them and someone keeps the kids and some kind of Perpetual eternal State yeah eternal kid said that I was certain that was the challenge so I was delighted to discover that and I was completely wrong because that's when we meet these dwarf children first of all we make we meet them one at the time mm-hmm right you used deliberately structure that so each kid to quantum on gets an introduction gets their own challenge gets their own encounter but they're also they appear to be feral all right that's what they seem like to us yeah but that was also the fact that they're they're actually just they're hags right right so it's not that they're it's not that they're feral children it's that they're hag right and they're filthy right yeah so I thought that was a great for me at least it seems like a great kind of bait and switch those were my favorite part of the entire thing oh sure yes those characters yeah I wish that their encounters had been more compelling well I mean like like meeting them and talking to them I think it was fun yeah it was fun playing them but at the end of the day like I would have thrown a lot more rats at you guys yeah okay sure if if I if if I thought we had the time to get through everything like we said okay tonight's the last night now and I played like 1:00 a.m. right right I probably could have stretched another another short session right you know I basically I think what I would have done was either one spent the whole session on last Wednesday and do each all three encounters and I would have saved with the final I was feeling I was feeling like I could be like structurally I was like I think this needed a 3 and 1/2 or 1/4 yeah it totally did because then I could have then I because like originally I was I was gonna go I was like 15 rat swarms I'm like final giant rats with something that would have made you guys like throw your fireballs right yeah yeah yeah yeah and like really sort of you know have to think about how how do we not just get nickeled and dimed to death by these little chittering you know things so but yeah I mean the characters themselves I thought were great do you feel as though your commitment to implausibility and using not crazy over-the-top fantasy stuff limited you in your encounter design because you're like we were four where we fight we're fighting rats and we're fighting hats and skeletons well as condos they're starting to get quasi right all right again with the second encounter right I had a lot more bats plant I've no surprise yeah and I giant bats right and I was like [ __ ] you know I'm looking I don't know if you guys noticed but I'm like looking at my I didn't know they're looking at my time everyone swallow yeah trying to just sort of a portion out yeah I trying to find I'm like okay we spent a little bit more time on that then I really wanted so I need to cut this one down a bit Yeah right ah and in the original original encounter design I was gonna throw thirty skeleton cheese fish right because it was original encounters it would have been wasted if we fought those hags at the end well I know but what you guys rested you know I mean yeah we would have guys interesting anyways so but it would have given you guys a chance to really throw out some epic [ __ ] yeah and [ __ ] ciock skeletons exploding all over the place right and getting these like cool you know area-of-effect I don't know exactly all the spells you guys had but but yeah I imagine those those and it's being a lot bigger than they ended up beating that that way you know so I introduced this cool character right and then you get a pretty cool epic fight scene like I mean if you're fighting thousands of rats yeah I mean that's kind of that's I mean the average that's mass but that's like then you know but nobody wants to fight a thousand rap you don't covered in rats yeah there's a never-ending swarm of them Frank it's a different scenario and they're just a handful of biting yeah like four yeah one was it 1 2 3 damaged well it creates a great dramatic arc where we are perception is us just rats and then and then there's a oh my we're all gonna die like if we know if we don't start doing some exacts and now I mean in Dagmar got oh yeah no I'm sorry giraffes which was cool all right yeah but yeah so I mean I think you know looking back like it's like I loved all the role-playing we did for the session 3 and I love those NPCs yeah they were great I'm glad that you guys will probably get to meet them at least two of them those two of them yeah yeah they were a huge hit yeah but yeah again they don't I think most of the time when I'm critiquing myself and being hard on myself it's because of the encounter stuff and with the hag fight with the N fight I had this idea right I wanted it to be like this like kitten you know hit you from all sides it was and there wasn't that right the problems I had with that were more logistical than like execution or well not execution more than the idea of it I thought the idea of it was cool the problem I was having was tracking everything that you guys were doing out here right and then tracking the hag's because I know it has work right because I didn't want to just like think you know oh hang pops out here right and shoot you right and then she's over here right it's like I have a [ __ ] did she get over there right because I didn't give them teleport sure right so I wanted it to I wanted it to feel fair were you counting squares where you count how much trying to okay right but I know I mean I guarantee you like there was a few that I fudged a square - yeah to get them where I want that's why yeah I'm the same way in the sense that they can't they can't be implausible but in my had I'm not I'm like I don't got time to count somewhere I'm sure they could get there in two rounds I'm sure he could get here from here to here there's some way right so I'm not gonna figure out the way I'm just gonna say okay tick right the thing I didn't have though for that was I didn't really have a solid battle plan really because because here's the thing about the the hag covens is as long as there's three there they're [ __ ] formidable yeah right like I think the DUP sir challenge rating to like nine three three green hags because they get all these coven spells and stuff like that right and so what I imagined them doing was that popping out here and they're frustrating you guys right and then at some point there would be like this showdown yeah where you know it's you guys and them and they're just throwing their crazy [ __ ] but I was never really able to get them into the position that I wanted them to be in you never got to that last phase it was you were weak the whole battle busily basically the hit and run phase yeah exactly and I was never I never found a good place for it to be like then popping out and being run yeah you know all three of them and you guys being yeah right and then running towards each other ya know if that's what you want if you want that dramatic conference right and the thing is when you guys were able to isolate got cut and kill her I was like that's it this battles over right because like those which like they don't have a lot of hit points you know I mean I could have juiced them past what they have they had yeah but at that point I'm we're getting late right shortly I'm like okay I think I just need to let this play out I thought about it and I was like okay well you know cuz I I planned if I could to have basra escape right I wanted her to escape and it was my plan to do everything I could to make her escape right I mean I was okay if you guys caught her and treasure tracked her down and then got hurt that was be fine too but I wanted her to escape the question that the problem was like taurah was in a place where she could escape right right and I'm like huh well I don't think she's gonna throw her life away I mean all these hags right they think hags are solitary creatures and tend to think of themselves as smarter and better than everybody else right toward was no exception so I don't think she's gonna throw her life away for Basra so she's like [ __ ] this is she runs right past balls or you're on your own [ __ ] right that's awesome yeah well I like that because I also you know I think there's a place for the fanatical cultists or you know mindless monsters that fight to the death but when the bad guys bathe intelligently and do things like run okay we're gonna break morale and get the hell out of here yeah that feels it feels more plausible and more realistic right I think that's kind of where you felt let down was because you were you had a there was like is this gonna be a dramatic epic confrontation or is this gonna be plausible where I possible thing the plausible thing is that once one of them is dead they lose their major powers so the other two are gonna split right that's what's plausible and yeah it's a trade-off is that yeah it it certainly felt realistic yeah but I think at the end of the day that's that that was what had sent me home feeling like thinking about it like that was not nearly as epic as an ending as I wanted it be probably was anticlimactic yeah yeah and I mean even like the way cuz you could I could feel it I don't know if you guys felt it but like I was like yeah oh is that it oh I do yeah well well I think it was because we didn't know what the once we didn't know the language like what's the signal yeah this is gonna be the end yeah I don't think I did either cuz I'm thinking the whole time like okay do I let them keep going and try and like chase him down right yeah you know I mean I was like that but they're not gonna chase him down right like they're running and they're going into a place that the players haven't been that yet right and it's full of the vines and all that other you know stuff so like I'll just end it and you know do better next time if you were gonna do it again what would what if anything because we all had a great time what if anything would you do different I think I would have given them minions in this battle got him right I would have I would have had whatever bats and rats and skeletons that you know made it out of those initial fights just retreat with them right or retreat after them and then that would have given basically it would have given me a chance to position them while still [ __ ] with you guys right and distracting you with minions you know and then I could have had them just like all like maybe you know run out of the one room I'm pointing at this like people can see it well I mean we might be recording this I don't know yeah but yeah the map yeah then I would have been able to get them in position and have that sort of epic final battle and I could have you know thrown because I had all those big spells I had I still had two lightning bolts that I could have cast yeah all right I had what was it phantasmal killer guys a pretty wicked spell yeah she I used the I bite because else I don't think I'm gonna get to use the eye bite right if I don't use it now which wasn't actually as cool as I thought it would be for some reason I thought I'd bite did damage and it just makes him go to sleep or run off earlier yeah that was one where it was a schmuck who went unconscious yeah the curse thing was pretty cool I could have cast that a few more times and you know where he had disadvantage on the wisdom say oh yeah well I remember when you were trying to figure out which of these effects to pick mm-hmm from the Stoker's mmm and you were like let's pick the wisdom one and then back my head the DM part of my brain was like there better be Phil there better be a creature here that's got a spell with wisdom saying otherwise you're gonna regret this yeah so I was glad that there was no perfect a lot of those they had a whole person a lot of those spells where wisdom saves that which is you know why polymorph if God could had survived that last turn she was gonna polymorph Dagmar into like a little peep or a nice like a baby chick something that's easy to step on crush what is your opinion now that you've because you've run now to your one major campaign we played for months in the first Balon card game and then now we've done a little mini cam a little mini adventure or three sessions what is your opinion about monster design of fifth edition no I think I think they're easier to run than they were in like first you know I mean I remember in first and second right like a lot of those things had all kinds of powers I mean it's made easier now like I had all I had Jerry pull all the spell cards oh really for fourth oh okay right which was I mean yeah if I if I hadn't know that thanks very good job yes if he hadn't done that that would have made it a lot harder because then I would have had to oh my god such a pain in the ass yeah and I was thinking okay well the nice thing about D&D Beyond is I've got I had the hag on there yeah and all I had to do is mouse over the spells and her spell list and right and pops up a window so if I didn't get the cards I was going to do that so that's pretty nice yeah I mean III like the monsters I wish I think because my world is plausible yeah I I feel limited Basharat right and so I mean and that's my fault it's not their fault that's a choice you've made regarding the choice well they also like when you look we just look through the Monster Manual you'll learn a lot about what level of fantasy is daily like there aren't that many challenging creatures to use that are quote unquote natural beyond a certain level yeah right they sort of expect that fighting natural creatures is something that happens when you're at low level right right too bad but you could imagine a different monster manual but there were all sorts of like that's one of the things I was wondering is that I've in the past and maybe in the future where I want to have an encounter where the players are like the cranium rats remember the cranium rats in the somnium tune Everest and I was like I want to be rats cuz it's the idea of the ship getting infested right away ship would but I think these guys are fifth level that I can so cranium rats just go from 30 rats for me more like you know and it's the astral see what kind of right yeah did you ever think about that when you were thinking about rats and bats did you ever think about making them rats and bats but more magical rats and bats or give him a giving them any kind of like crazy not really no I mean then the magical part was they had these sort of familial connections with with the fact that the hags could command them and stuff like that and they were good the way they coordinated with each other in a way they probably normal rats ran right that's cool yeah that means that's so yeah III didn't know I was like okay I'm gonna make a challenging just by throwing numbers at them right because I know that you know like I said the little wimpy creatures right in numbers darts are rolling oh yeah they're they're no joke yeah again like I said I think if I do if I had to stretch the final battle and just put it into a fourth week yeah I would have done that yeah you know I mean it's like I said it is what it is yeah fun I agree I had fun we had a ton of laughs overall I you know I counted as a success oh yeah you know I don't do anything without being critical without looking at the stuff and saying okay well how do I make this better now it's a perfectly natural I think that people you're an artist like you're an artist of the Capitol a game developer right I mean like you have no I mean wow you probably do have an idea because you were a game developer I still am yeah just a game you know every game that I've ever worked on that wasn't successful yeah I still think about like God if it had just done it this we've done this if we had done that yeah yeah stinkers like I mean you worked on left4dead and I was there throughout all of evolves development and you are often critical of stuff that was done in left 4 dad yer there was it's not just a unit success there are things I wish we could have done this oh I wish we could have done this and I think that people who you know for whom D&D might be their only creative outlet you know they're not familiar with they hear us being critical and they're like oh don't be don't be re it's like no no we're not being hard on ourselves it's the normal process it's the normal creative process is to look back at what you did Wrangler is creating content yes I've been creating content for oh god how long has it been since like 93 yeah I thought when you first got started as a professional illustrator that's what I was doing stuff for ya effort for D&D yeah which is crazy cuz Phil and I were both in the tabletop business at the same time yeah I think it was like this as far as our timelines yeah and there was a time when I was commissioning art for stuff like Star Trek and dune and we could have ended up working together which is crazy with what a small world it was and I was playing games you worked out I was playing knocks my friends I loved knocks Phil worked on that it was a great game yeah but yeah you're it's it's just being critical of working well any only process yeah it's one of those things it's like you want your name to be on stuff as well we're dark circles when you're a content creator well I mean not everyone cares right not a lot of people were just like that's cool you know I know that's that's fine right but I mean my temperament is that like is that I want to make awesome [ __ ] yeah right and I'm willing to put in all the more extra work to try and make it well not everybody has the opportunity yeah and you when you were conscious of the fact that not everybody has the opportunity to make video games not everybody has the opportunity to stream D&D for thousands of people that that drives you to make it as good as it can be right this is not just your home game with four people no one's ever gonna see this again you know you feel like this could live on like the work you put into the players guide to sanctuaries crazy like people saw that they're like oh my god like look how much bigger those aren't you got and all the writing you did for that and I just stole that art well you still still took but I guess it's ref ref right as they call its reference right it's not it's not original illustration it would be it would be something would be if I really says if you really stood as a product you would use those images to tell the artist what to draw right but even finding those images takes time and requires you're having an artistic sentiment and knowing wishes right image in witches which is not I remember there was a great quote from David Gilmour's a guitarist from Pink Floyd talking about back when they were doing it was the before they did the wall they did an album called animals and their audience was so huge this is kind of same thing the Beatles had to deal with that when they were still performing man their audience was so huge and for them for the audience going to a Pink Floyd show was an experience unto itself and so they would be out there the audience would be drinking they'd be smoking they'd be having a great time while there was music playing and so David Gilmour would come offstage and all the people that worked for the kind of Pink Floyd organization be like great show you guys knocked out you guys know it was terrible we screwed this up we screwed this up his guitar wasn't plugged in right I was off-key I screw this up and only the people on stage know that it did only the person behind the screen knows that no it wasn't awesome right didn't go as well as I thought right but the people in the audience don't know that the people know what it's like yeah and they were having a great great cuz they what they experienced yes what's good yep right and what the creators were saying was it could have been so much better exactly well because those of us that's kind of the why that third session was so much fun actually that all three of the sessions had a strong component of us role playing off each other right interacting with each other so that allows you to kind of so us in the art in the audience our experience is not just the stuff you're doing mine's rights also each other yeah and so yeah you guys had me in stitches and quite a few you know quite a few time that's also so yeah you know I always I was sort of I I don't think I ever articulated this even internally to myself but there was definitely a low-level suspicion on my part that we might be annoying you like that like that the the either the amount or the the style and tone the kind of comedic tone that we were casting my kind of I was fun okay that's good I felt cool cuz it would be well because I mean I'm the one who presents you guys as with the situation yeah right and if you do something goofy right I mean I mean in I get to react to that right when yeah when you snore yeah starts blowing on his yeah on his bagpipes right I was like okay then you know that was funny yeah then I got to I got to do the jump scare yeah that's great yeah I thought that was something I tweeted about those of you who haven't seen the first episode there was a point where the caravan that were escorting it's nighttime we're gonna get everybody round up all the wagons we're gonna have dinner or whatever and Matt O'Driscoll is playing a bard man his instrument is bagpipes and so he starts playing the bagpipes in the middle of the forest and the way Phil contextualizes how that scares the hell out of everybody is fussing okay ready roll initiative and we were like oh god what's going on who's attacking us and why and then you're like oh after we had all rolled and told you our numbers you're like yeah nothing happens that was awesome because it actually everyone engine caravan pulled out their weapons yeah yeah it did a great job of getting the players this luto narrative harmony where us the players were having the emotions that our characters would have had but using a complete different mechanic yeah I mean that's fine I mean they you know and when we were like when we were playing in the last campaign like Steve did a bunch of goofy [ __ ] right that's fine you know I mean cool there yeah you just roll with it no it didn't annoy me at all I mean there were a few times when I was like I felt like okay or are we done yeah sure I continued you yeah Brian not because I was annoyed just because I was like you know yeah what are you guys good to go yeah right and I think I was like okay so right and and maybe not maybe that's what you read as me being irritated well no no I didn't read that at all I didn't get any reading off of that I'm just I'm just I'm aware of the fact that like I think everybody has the capacity to do this but certainly new dungeon masters often get kind of wrapped up in how they hoped their world would be internally I wanted to run a really serious game you guys are being silly but once you've done it a few times I realize that well there's a time to be serious and there's a time to be funny right yeah left4dead is a pretty dark world but there's a lot of yeah a lot of humor same with evolved right it was a dark world we put plenty of human you mean well that's something we talked about when we were working while was like a key reference for both of us as movies like the thing right and that stuff only works because the thing that makes it seem more real is the humor the humor punctuate sit cuz that's aliens aliens I think is oh yeah there's an example yeah like Hicks is such a great character and it's a lot of like Hudson Hudson yeah that notion of of intense moments when over-the-top crazy stuff is happening in the real world we have gallows humor on purpose to take you know to have like a release valve yeah and so that's that because nobody wants to be dour and doom driven all the time all the time yeah it isn't I'm in a play I mean even in the network books I seem to remember a few times when there was like kind of you know dark humor yeah moment so it wasn't very often no but also like there are times when L gets to do it but it's often the companion it's often like I love them yeah it's often Moonglow more rock here the red archer right who is the comment that can kind of commute a commentary right and gets to be like he's the one voices are are like wow you're awfully dark right that kind of stuff which is exactly i mean i think that just makes the content more relatable if you can like yeah get some laughs in there well yeah speaking of laughs like your performance as these three words i had told are these three hags i had told people that like you when you were playing like skoros and graves in my the turtle rock campaign that i ran you were you were much more in line with like tom jacobson or justin in the sense of of you were you were not you were certainly willing as a player to engage in the problem-solving and everything like that but you weren't often speaking in character and and then i saw you behind the screen were you were getting you were controlling your body and doing all these different voices I'm thinking where's that guy when we're doing this and so that's when you were like hey I want to play a gifting key I was like sure because I felt that I was right right you were gonna be a lot more kind of that Jim Henson Creature Shop is the phrase I use yeah and so as a really kind of outrageous personality that's awesome and these characters you were playing were were amazing what's you you feel a different pressure behind the screen yeah for to entertain well yeah because one yeah you are kind of you're in charge of your part your players having bond right so there's that part of it there's there's less there's less pressure on an NPC to be perfect right all the time you know so like with those with those hags right you were gonna meet them that night yeah good chance you would have killed them all that night right so so they're there there's not this sort of like protracted long long task of keeping them in character right it's right I get to hit him hard for an hour yep right and then I'm done and I don't know worried about it yeah like it's slim there's a we made any continuity 23 how many 21 I played 22 point one two sessions and if I had to come up with some like over the top I don't think I would have been able to I don't think I could come just you know maintain an over-the-top personality well it's also consistency like you were concerned with you don't have to worry about an NPC that's only around for like one encounter mm-hmm whether or not they're the same person consistent with who we met three weeks ago right whatever yeah well you as a player are worried about keeping slim in this I think it's interesting because it gets back to that fill raw brand yeah right it has to be fundamentally plausible and so playing slim means thinking about what would Slim do what does Slim want right rather than what do I think is interesting or cool in this moment yeah that's no good because that may contradict what you did last week yeah well you know if you're worried about without an NPC that has a life expectancy of like half an hour all right well it helps to like I mean I problem well I mean I probably would have done the role-playing stuff with these NPCs but it helps when you guys are doing it when all players are willing to put themselves out there it certainly makes it a lot easier you know you know and maybe you guys fed off of that as well like where you see me playing a character and sort of just letting it happen yeah I didn't being like oh well he's doing I can do it too I don't know you know there was no one in the first session with the possible exception of yunyoung yeah there was no one in the first session that was anything like that's just kind of over the top comedic like labyrinth / Dark Crystal personalities that we met in the third session was that what was the creation of those three hags and their personalities because you did a lot of work on that you had a lot of like dialogue you'd written out drops you had ready act not even not accents per se but like the [ __ ] yeah the personality and the and the cadence and the way they spoke which wasn't incredibly consistent for each one like you always knew which one was talking there was ever time was that was any of that a reaction to the way we had been playing our characters not at all pretty much okay so you knew it ahead of time that was all yeah like like torger was the artist right yeah she was the dumbest of the three as we artists your commentary on your artists you know I mean working in games for as long as I have you know it's just that the artists are always the artists right and she you hang out with these brilliant programmers they can make you feel dumb sometimes yeah I don't think the artists are dumb but you know torger was the dumb one yeah right and she made sculptures and like the paint you know been pretty yeah you know got cut was the smart one yeah she was the most powerful of the spellcasters right she had a high intelligence right and she she wrote Grimes and you know as she's no creative but you know she was she was again you know she fancied herself a poet or something I'm sure yeah you know I got that yeah right and then and then Bazar was the tough one yeah right like she wasn't terribly she wasn't dumb but she wasn't smart right and you know she wasn't like super you know she was the one that you know would have thrown down and pulled out that big axe yeah yeah if the time came for it so yeah and you know she was the one that was the most powerful overall right so I wanted her minions to be a little more like you know fantastic right yeah she had hurt her hitch of the skeleton yes she had her sculpture their skeletons minions that she had sculpted essentially out of it's something that I think we talked about this Queen last session now because they're all kind of artistic though you know well she's making sculptures right yeah I could you know exactly uh there was the first campaign in Balon guard one of the big encounters I remember was that dust method was kind of Lou my mind like it was I was not expecting face right and he and he kind of created this he'd taken a dwarf skeleton right and who and was animating him like almost like that marionette and we didn't even know the method existed and we were dealing with we were at the skeletons talking to us and it was this crazy encounter where we're trying much like the hags we didn't know what was really what was really going on is this uh is this is this an anime at scale and talking to us is this like a magic mouth type thing from which program to do and then there's a reveal where it's always actually and so I thought it was interesting that you used that same again there's like a fill raw brand right then that's in the next session in the next campaign instead of a death method it was three hags and then you went from one character to three and they're like wildly different personalities and I hope people I hope people go maybe we can find timestamp and go check out the encounter with Basra because like that that whole I was just the whole thing with the skull was so awesome it was so much fun and it did feel like it did feel scripted scripted and theatrical right but I don't know how you would do that any other way right it wasn't it didn't seem like you were playing an NPC and you were just improving off of what we were doing it was like no no this is a this is a this is there's certain beats that you're gonna hit as a character and I was like this is great how would you do this any other way other than kind of write it all down and no have the prop ready when you noticed like I ran rhymes for sure sure sure yeah yeah but there was also certain like I remember trying to figure out can can we not realizing they were hags can we get these kids to stop testing us and start relating to us and know the answer was that was not on the table no we still tried I mean that's that's part of the fun there right I'd present you guys with these critters that you would never dream of harming correct right yeah but then you know you make them kind of like wait these these things are kind of [ __ ] up yeah right and Madeline maybe and what I was really curious to see right because I I mean I I realized that this could happen right and so I had these three right the first one you know would be the one that you took your most off-guard right right but then it was most plausible she was the most plausible right yeah and then after the rats right getting into the bat so I thought okay well there is a chance they may attack her like preemptively right Yeah right because they know like there's something wrong here yeah I wasn't sure I was really curious to see if when you guys got to Basra if you'd just be like [ __ ] these kids I think partially because I was still hooked on the idea that they were actually kids that they were well that they were I know there was something going on but I didn't know what but that they might be kids left or we when we started to kind of imagine that maybe maybe Torgo was the actual real kid in the other two or something unusual that we're manipulating her there was an intense kind of it's funny because I compared you somewhat glibly I compare you with like that Jim Henson la presentación in the sense that you do all these crazy voices and you like to contort your body to kind of represent what this character looks like but also Jim Henson's stuff again labyrinth and Dark Crystal is very heavily fairy tale based yeah that was the lodgings yeah exactly the logic of what you were doing wasn't in perfect fairy tales like it's everything's done in threes right there's three different hags and right those like there's three bears and they each had their own flavor and it was a puzzle it was they were trying to trick us they were trying to manipulate us yeah I mean I didn't come up with that like I mean if you read Volos guide oh sure yeah they have a whole section about hags and I mean and even in fairy tales I said wait hacks are right there's the three fates you know she's drinking a bargain with the hags yes not really a good thing to do right and the other thing was you know finding when you find a hag treasure like yeah be careful careful yeah right yeah yeah there's no we're cursed but also that notion I remember from Clash of the Titans the original yeah the idea of that will they have like one eyeball between them and their masks around so that's when I was starting to key off of the fact that they might be asked because I was like I wondered that so I was asking is there some kind of like fetish that they might have right they're trying to share and I was oh yeah that was the whole thing was yeah it was great I'm glad that we streamed it because I'm glad people get to see that play yeah at a great time playing playing those NPCs like I said I'm glad we'll get to we'll get to see them again I think we'll see them in a very different context next time but the other thing yeah I mean that they'll probably be more powerful and next time you see them too so we've talked about what happened in the first three episodes we talked about behind the scenes or your plans all right how you think they went and it seems like even before we had started the third session you were already jonesing to continue this whole thing I think you said something in chat about how I hope we get to hang out with these characters more oh yeah I love these characters right I mean I thought there were could they're cooled Wars right they're funny but you know not like stupid no yeah yeah right you're not like rolling your eyes right well some of us are more stupid than others right there's a range well the range of goofiness and there's a range of series right right but I mean I think that's fine because I mean Lars makes up for that in spaetzle right you know he's the the the Jerry Seinfeld of the bunch just rolling his eyes at all the antics there is a lot of that yeah but that's that's one of the reasons that we're friends one of the reasons I it's important for me that he's in the game is because there's a lot of different kinds of players out there and I want people to see those people who are like Lars those people who roll their eyes at that stuff those people who will focus on tactics rather than role-playing that they are that there was a place for them on the table yeah it doesn't all have to be mad address cold being kind of crazy over the top we're all playing yeah I will say this like Lars actually put some thought into his backstory which I thought was super cool that's cool you know I mean and he said he said like I want to be a member of the pact and I was like oh sweet right and that's why I put more work in that yep yeah so you know I give him a chance to meet Bart I wish that I had planned a little bit of time for him to interact with that character while Rick was our friend Tom plays copper's character in the first campaign and yeah if he basically was a member of the pack too low ranking member of the pack that was there when basically the pact was wiped out yeah and he was the last one and the high Vindicator him the growth or the the it's a book or wasn't it like a yeah yeah home yeah it's kind of I forget what I called it it's like The Grudge or something like that yeah right now it's not the garage but I remember was something like whatever it is yeah but it so you know that in as his mentor and leader is dying he her the last one yeah you're the hive indicator yeah right and like we sort of left it there and I you know I don't know what Tom wanted to do with that sure yeah alright but I thought it would be cool if you know okay like I think Baldrick would be happy to see that oh [ __ ] one of there's another one that survived right so I would have liked to have given them some time to sort of like delve into that maybe maybe next time what I did do was I took the the history barks history Yeah right and I basically changed all the words sound as if ball Rick was telling oh I got a ragna his story alright so I remember it like it was yesterday that's cool and so like you know and I gave that to Lars to read doesn't go we're not going to really have a chance to to roleplay this out but you know here this will give you some backstory and maybe we can continue it the next time we play so you're already thinking about the now I already know what the adventure is that's awesome right I mean III think it's probably maybe a three or four parter well we've talked about and I think you guys are gonna leave Val and guard who did me leave Vanguard like you're gonna go you're gonna go like down into the more civilized land no because you're gonna have to I mean I I mean no no spoilers no no it's not spoilers I don't I mean you guys are gonna have to track these hags down that's true yeah cry if you want to give really just cursed yeah we don't even know how the cursed manifests not yet the last thing that happened was Basra cursed us all and then fled right and I knew that I was like all this because it's not gonna be good but there's so far we haven't gotten we haven't used any of our abilities or anything right so there's been no mechanical we just feel it we just don't feel right we know we've been there's just something in the back your head it feels off and you've had those days wrong yeah sure I just don't feel right yeah you know and that's that that's what it feels like huh I'm looking forward to actually you guys finding out and then on top of that Justin has to get rid of his curse he's doubly cursed that's true he found he was he with a glamour he was himself right right I thought that was amazing cuz I don't know when the last time I saw like a legit cursed item was but you did an amazing job of describing it this is when things are working on me as a player this is true if I'm in a theater or like if I'm watching a movie if everything's working on me the critical part of my brain is not on mmm right and that's yeah I'm the same way yeah so it's like I didn't watch a horrible movie and be entertained yeah and go out and be like whoa what the hell was that [ __ ] so when you were describing the sword I completely bought it I thought yeah that's right this when you were describing this the ultimate weapon of Mordan from right to this yeah it was really like even tom schmuck pointed out how you said eat the language you used was telling but not revealing right when we went back and thought about it oh yeah he said you're convinced this is that and the other thing yeah but I completely bought it I think most of us did that there was crazy Joe passed Matt because it was it made perfect sense right it's the finale of the session this certainly is the weapon that's gonna help us defeat the hag's right right so we were primed and to find this awesome thing that was at random who was gonna find it I said yeah whoever would have opened that chest first would have would have well yeah who whoever opened the box inner-box yet would have been immediately glamoured right and and I notice I have found the hammer of Morden yeah yeah right basically the the the progenitor of the Dwarven race yes I have his hammer yeah right I was I was a little worried that I was that you guys what do we get you guys would be like there's no way you're gonna give us this at fifth level well I mean it probably helped that there isn't as far as I know it wasn't like we found at the axe of the door were sparks right right which is a famous actually if that had happened I would been like hang out a minute we're only 50 level but it was something that you had made up and so I was I oh yeah I was willing to believe that it was not that useful as a magic weapon that it might be just of you know historical values I wonder % fence yeah make sense what so when you revealed that it was just a fish allele it was a stick I was like this is amazing shitty old carpenters hammer yeah that's right yeah that was so awesome I was like this is the best and I've got this this image in my head of hell dust like interesting out with a flourish you know out of that room brandishing this this hammer thinking she's brandishing like this amazing glowing you know iam and gem and crested like mythical weapon yeah it's a [ __ ] carpenters heat up carpenters hand to Justin's credit he rolled with it yeah he didn't he didn't try to met it out of it no right and I thought talk to him about this morning in the kitchen I was like dude that that was awesome you know like a lot of players would have been like okay am I gonna met him my way out of there well a lot of players especially I think when you know what happened that sucks I thought hey I was tricked that's not fun and also this is you know a lot of people I think yeah depending on the tradition you are from a lot of people would feel like I deserved more of a chance to notice that this was not the real thing but Justin just completely rolled with it and and you could tell that the the light was going on or had gone on over his eyes regarding what can be done here at the table oh yeah playing along with some of this crazy stuff even when it makes your character look foolish is a big part of the fun the kudos to him in fact I'll probably give them inspiration for that when we started cool that's awesome yeah you already are aware of what the next thing in Balham guards gonna be but I'm out the next yeah adventure the next adventure yeah yeah and I'm surprised because like I have been trying to goad you into running in some case it's like on stream off stream I didn't care we had so much fun playing in that first campaign I was like oh I hope I hope I hope this hasn't put the bullet in the head of that we get to do it again man there was a lot of like I don't know if I don't know if have time I don't know I feel that streaming which I completely get there's no like this is a very weird thing to do so anyone who doesn't want to do it I get so I was I was astonished and delighted to discover that not only were you having fun and you I can't wait for this week ah man it's crazy and County you guys are gonna love it you were also even before the third session you were looking forward to the next chunk of content for Vanguard but you're also like hey you guys won't play Wild West Cthulhu yeah like so we had a whole thing about you order the Wild West Cthulhu books and do you think do you think that's gonna happen between now and the next found guard that's we'll see we'll see I cuz I think I wanna try running my kids through a couple of the practice adventures right or to learn the system because I don't think anyone at the tables gonna know and somebody at the table needs to know how it works sure yeah I might try doing something that lunch at work or something like that just to get my feet wet in that system supposedly it's once you know it it's it's a simpler system I don't write well find out think it's the fifth edition or seventh edition of basic role-playing yeah Call of Cthulhu and this is a this is something set in the Wild West which i think is pretty cool right yeah I played a little a million I played like the there there's a famous epic mountains of madness huge tome adventure that I played in in the 90s I think we got maybe like maybe 20% of the way into it before crunch time happened or whatever but I have some ancient familiarity with it right well nice thing is like I it's pretty easy to forget about this [ __ ] oh yeah look at me the cameras and the mics and stuff yeah yeah link I mean when we were playing I lost you know I mean I lost the the notion that I'm on Campbell that makes me really happy right because I wouldn't want you to feel like it would have been better if not for my awareness of the cameras so the fact that you had a great time and you weren't even conscious now I don't go back and watch myself because I think that could potentially spoil it like oh if I see if I like watch myself being a fool right watch the stream afterward after we can whenever I do all the time now I never have not once it's a lot of fun because one that I watched the I know I watched the first half of the Vallon guard boy and I got it to about half way and I was like okay this is pretty good stuff and right now it's like I I mostly watch for chat because aren't in our community is so awesome well that's the other thing is like in my experience everyone that I interacting with from this community yeah has been pretty [ __ ] cool yeah it's nice like I haven't gotten any you know like early on I think on reddit there was I went and I read some posts that were kind of like a little I thought overly critical of what we were sure yeah well and I sort of like okay I'm not gonna read reddit anymore well yeah I think back yeah I'm like oh it's actually there's there's no more of that [ __ ] correct I think it's because before we started streaming it was a the people watching were they didn't know they maybe they watched my videos but they hadn't seen me run before even though we had streamed it before you hadn't seen me run before or maybe they just knew about the Kickstarter right they knew about the Kickstarter they boss Ron holes and followers I didn't know anything about world my setting and just the fact that we raised all that money and built this crazy thing a whole bunch of people tuned in who were not part of the community and so and which is good you know that's how you build an audience yeah you know that audience by getting those people that tuned it at this point everyone who should know everybody who's left or they're the people who get it the debug it and they like the content and they like us and so you can go in like you've been in the discord talking to people about what was coming up and stuff it's an amazing resource having those people we have amazing moderators who work their butts off to make sure that everything's cool but that's the fun part for me of going back and watching as you get it's not necessarily seeing us it's remembering those amazing moments from the session and then swing back and seeing chats reaction to and because people love that stuff yeah yeah nothing I mean and not that I shy away from criticism I mean nature yeah if sometimes criticism super useful but like nobody's like me nor de riz of you know or like they don't I haven't seen anyone like making fun of ever anyone else dream or the way like somebody looks or we used to have when we had a larger general audience of people that didn't know who we were we got that but we persevered and those people are a lot like they didn't like what they saw so they left right I got ya and so now the people who are left are super cool and yeah it's it's that's that's for me a big part of the fun of going back and rewatching stuff yeah is that the audience is awesome well Phil I really appreciate you doing this I hope that this interview process was fun no yeah I like I mean I like talking about Indies awesome I hope that I hope like my plan for the chain is that we run for another five or six sessions and then we wrap up book one mm-hmm and hopefully we put a bow on it so it feels like it's the end of the first book in an epic series and then we'll then we'll take we'll go wool well my goal is to take like three or four months off mm-hm and there's no obligation that we're gonna do something on Wednesday nights maybe I'll just like at the worst case there on the street nethack but there are other people who've talked about running stuff and so it creates this it creates this space for other people to do stuff so yeah great totes place more Val and guard and it'd be great I think it'd be great to just see anyone run anything other than D&D it might be me it could be somebody else and Cthulhu is really cool in pox yeah yeah I mean I love that mythos so I mean getting I've played it a couple times and really enjoyed my set oh that's gonna be real interesting cuz it's a very different like I think I've talked to matey Lars or Anna I don't remove I'll probably keep my mouth shut about it to everybody else but that notion that like you don't win no you had me okay with your characters dying cuz they're gonna die yeah correct yeah you're gonna you're inevitably you're gonna either that there's nothing you can do your character is either going to die or go insane yeah it's inevitable it's not heroic right or another way of putting it is to say it's a kind of very different kind of heroine okay you're playing a normal dude you were playing a normal person with no special abilities yeah you're just an investigator you're gonna be exposed to crazy stuff it's gonna drive you crazy yeah and it's just a question of how you deal with that yeah it determines what makes you kind of a hero and that's something that's super different from D&D so that's kind of why I'm interested in seeing that play out plus I know how much you love that Wild West era right and so any Western yeah with with the great a deep one yeah we better yeah exactly that's pretty out so I hope we get to do that Phil thanks for coming by thanks for doing this my pleasure thanks for tuning in everybody I hope this was interesting and I hope I get a chance to do it again with some other folks until next time peace out how good was that thanks for watching everybody if you want an alert when new videos go up there is a little bell icon below the video you can click on if you want to support the channel we do have a patreon we also have a store where you can come by and pick up new shirt and also a copy of strongholds and followers if you do not already have one I do intend on doing more interviews like this until next time peace out

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 121,129

Keywords: Matt Colville, Matthew Colville, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Running the Game, Running D&D, Campaign World, Campaign design, Worldbuilding, World Building, Playing D&D, Playing Dungeons and Dragons, Interview, Campaign Diary

Id: XuhnWg8YwQ8

Length: 109min 38sec (6578 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/monkeywork]

Thanks so much for doing this /u/mattcolville ... I really enjoy getting to see / hear the players outside of the game. I'd love to see a similar interview style with your players at certain beats of the story (like it would have been cool to have an interview with Tom after Omega Nails). It's great to see folks talk about things they are interested in.

[u/[deleted]]

In the middle of watching this, thanks especially to Phil! I remember looking at Phil's world guide when it was posted a while back and thinking it sounded really cool and hearing this really sounds like a great setting, would love to get some old school box set for it.

[u/Victuz]

Phil your adventure was awesome, I enjoyed it immensely and I've thoroughly enjoyed your style and creativity. My favourite moment as a fellow GM was definitely the bagpipe "combat" initiative roll. It was a brilliant ploy then, and it is a brilliant ploy looking back at it.

What specifically got me the most is the thought process you put into things "making sense", I always try to do the same but the fact is usually I quickly create a session on a saturday before the session (a deadly mixture of busy and lazy) so sometimes I just have to run with what I've got or come up with an explanation on the spot.

As for what you were saying about feeling limited by the setting you've created. I'm personally of an opinion that it's actually a good thing! For a variety of reasons. First and biggest is that limitations and obstacles breed creativity, another is that limiting yourself in what monsters you utilise or the environments/methods they use actually puts forward the "vibe" or "theme" of the world much better.

After all we could all play in a game where the players in a single adventuring day fight a manticore, an ilithid, a planatar, a gelatinous cube or three. But if these encounters don't make "sense" or don't create a cohesive sense of whole it can eventually lead (IMO) to the players feeling disillusioned with the world being presented. After all, if every fight seems to be a random hodge-podge what's to differ this fight with a 150 hp enemy from the other fight with the 150 hp enemy? It's all carried in the theme and the style you present after all.

[u/Deft_Delinquent]

I really like Phil's setting. It has a very mid 80s fantasy vibe to it with a sprinkling of Old World Warhammer.

[u/BlackstoneValleyDM]

Great video. I only got to see chunks of Phil's sessions each week as I passed out part-way through here on the east coast, but this was great all the same. Love conversation about approach, technique, and GMing autopsies, and all the other conversation that directly or indirectly related to it.

[u/OrangOetan]

Phil is the best for doing this. I love his style as a player and love his style as a DM.

"When I grow up, I wanna be just like Phil."

It will be great when he does another adventure during breaks.

[u/Hugo183510]

This interview help me clarify what I learned from Phil during this game: - how a place can be so evocative of lore and the environment by doing more detailed descriptions. - a great example of using a low magic setting to make magic feel and characters special. - making great villains

[u/ShivaX51]

Why do I always discover this stuff at 9:02 PM?

[u/HipposRevenge]

Did the math on his gaming years. There is no way that I’m going to believe Phil is 50 years old.