Keeping a Game Going (with Amy Vorpahl)

[Music] hello and welcome back to adventuring Academy my name is Brennan Lee Mulligan I'm here with my good friend EB vorpal all the cameras hello to all the cameras we are here today talking as always about running tabletop RPGs how we do them how we set them up best practices guidelines tips and tricks amy is a whirlwind of nerdy entertainment on the internet you can find her stuff on Nerdist you can sundry D and E beyond all over the place you can see here on even here on dropout with episode of I'm actually a couple episodes actually I think you three excited you're never getting away from man no no no and we wouldn't this podcast if you're listening to this is available on dropout our streaming service prescription service here at CollegeHumor if your night listener on drop out it means it's been a couple weeks after all of our dropout subscribers got their hands on it and we're putting this up as well on CH 2 but only a couple weeks later if you want the good stuff you gotta head over to drop out yeah you gotta go to drop out all the kids are talking about it you're gonna get the first hand info you know you can you can know all the stuff that we say about each other way before everyone else the biggest feature on dropout is we have a giant gossip book it's enormous and it's all of our crushes and all of our beefs that we're having with each other it's the good stuff you really gotta head over there I've made a promise that people will be mad now if they can't find that gossip book housewives the college here right so Amy I wanted to talk to you a little bit you're preparing right now to run a game tomorrow yeah which is really exciting you're running it for I don't know I don't know when this goes live but yet tomorrow tomorrow in real world this will be released sometime afterwards but you're in a game for a bunch of awesome players ty kenric D&D Beyond and also Patrick Rothfuss who wrote the name of the wind and Wise Man's Fear that's right and needs to and he knows he knows what he's got to do you knows he's got to finish that third book he knows he knows we're all waiting just waiting here I met him and actually I met Todd too at gamehole Khan when we played that massive apparently it's weird to call a D&D a career but yeah like kind of career changing moment or at least a high point where I peaked and everything else is downhill from there but in that one game that Chris Perkins ran and we had such a good time together that we thought well yeah we should play D&D again together so why not during the holiday season it's so goddamn rad it's so rad yet speaking of sort of professional D&D playing you've run a bunch of games you've played in a bunch of games we were talking a little bit of this before but it was interesting to talk about like streaming versus home games do you find that your play style changes somewhat from one to the other as a player or a DM when you're doing stuff kind of for the camera versus doing stuff in your home game there are always there are always certain things that you have to be aware of on a stream like crosstalk that's the main difference does it always happen no the main the main thing I would say I'm more or at least I've had just all my years of experience which is almost twenty it has been as a player and then only in the last couple of years have I you know ventured over across the line on the other side of the desk to be the the other side of the screen to be the dungeon master but no I don't think there's a lot that's different because the main goal which no one ever talks about it's not in the books but the main goal is to make your friends laugh and and care yeah so - that make them cry but yes - feel strong feel strong feeling so I the impetus is equal in both in both mediums I really agree with that and it's funny because obviously the difference between streaming in home games are I think the degree of polish and the degree of like oh no crosstalking focus on this stuff focus on that but largely what I love about the D&D streams that I watch and enjoy and play is the pure unadulterated joy of tapping into someone else's fun it's kind of I'm gonna really blow up my own spot here and say I also when I'm feeling down sometimes I will watch Blind Auditions from the voice from it's true I will do it but wait why I do it because I like to watch the parents reactions when they cut over to the parents there is nothing more pure on this earth whatever cut judges coach's turn around that's not what I'm in for I want to see that dad lose his when his kid because when a good thing happens to you you always have you can't really ever fully enjoy something good that happens to you because you have to like like you know have perspective mm-hmm humble don't get a big head only go to your head when you see these parents watch their kids when it is the most pure unadulterated thing and I think a lot of why people enjoy streaming of any let's play or actual play variety of video games or something else's you're watching genuine authentic reactions you're watching people really feel pure joy and the I mean the other reason that we shouldn't take away from people is that as an adult playing D&D and getting your group together is the hardest mother effin thing in the whole world the key the key opponent like you're the key antagonist of that goal to get your friends together its children is babies and those are amazing creatures and so you can't fault anybody for not for like choosing to spend time with their baby over playing dandy with me but getting a group of adults together for any reason whether it's just to eat food or to hang out or talk or to play D&D is a feat in and of itself so we need to like hold those glasses up and sometimes you just can't do it because of your friends have babies so you what you come in on a stream and ideally everyone isn't isn't just performing everyone is hanging out having fun and you get to come along for the ride yeah absolutely speaking of which actually this ties into first of all you can play in babies I have and I will and I will continue to do it you can blame babies there's actually this I won't talk about this because this you're hitting on one of our lovely audience questions here so I'll just this is from mania our questions are submitted via our discord server or drop by discord service so you guys and if we're drop out if you want to submit questions and get them answered drop out guys like seriously why are you not 18 kids outside the office with skateboards today and they were all talking about drop out and I was like you guys know this crazy you're skateboarding outside where we make the stuff oh wow yeah they had tattoos they were they were just saying they had a song written about broken - freestyle rapping and they were like you old man we don't want to hear your we're talking about drop out and it's like I work I fully worked there and they were like we haven't we don't make the connection connection how do you keep attendance going strong all games i DM fall apart due to player commitment come mania kamini a thank you for the question and I feel your pain that is a tough question number one like let's just go for it you got to get rid of those babies know the time we'll do it eventually time will eventually turn those babies into adults so I it is it is tough I will say like your game falling apart has nothing to do with you like let's not blame you know ourselves life happens life gets in the way the main the main reason that any game continues has actually nothing to do with the dungeon master I'm lucky in that a group of people group of friends wanted to play dandy and tapped me and I just happen to know some of them and I'm never responsible for planning it we never do it at my place we do it at someone else's home and anytime like the texts start back up of like I'm hungry for D&D I get so much joy in my heart because it's not my prerogative it's theirs and it's their time so I think the main reason is don't look to cast people with who you think will play it's like if somebody wants to play it's like put it together a group of friends I will I will dance the dance with you as a dungeon master but you guys have to want to spend time together anyway it's it's tougher as a DM to you know Cass and put together and this person wants to play from this group and then force them to be friends that that is infinitely harder that's a really great point that I have felt in my bones for a long time but I've never been able to put into as succinctly as you just did which is that idea of I need more legwork from the players like I need players to come up and be like we got the cabin we got the weekend we cleared it with your schedule everything's taken care of if you just do you having is a lot of work yeah and if the DM is also the de-facto producer producer of the group that's a lot that's a little unfair it is and it's what I found out with improv groups in the same way where you know like if I I was so excited about it but there's got to be some balance of equal equal excitement between everybody or at least two or three people and it has to be shared and mning weekends no no yes funnily enough it's a weird analogy to when I was an improv coach as well which whenever I got an email as an improv coach being like hey we'd love to have you be a coach we're thinking and setting up a practice group what's your availability I never said it as curtly as I wanted to but I always wanted to be like no no that's not how this works you get your friends together you pick a specific date yet time and then I'll give you a yes or no if I give you a no you find a different coach that's how that has to work I'm not gonna check my schedule and then get me off of your doodle I am NOT dude yeah then it's like I just not fun dandy is supposed to be fun and you're not making this fun right so actually I do agree that especially if you're getting someone to DM as players you can take a lot off of that by like getting your group together and being like okay who can DM here or how can we make this as expedited as possible I will say this so I kind of shouldn't weigh in on this issue because I have some I have a little gem in my heart that I understand people are rightfully jealous of which is how do we get that gym out of you that gym I have a game that I've been running for nine and a half years oh yeah you can can I curse on here yeah you can right off I've been running it since I was 21 years old it's a 3.5 D&D campaign they are now at 17th I'll still play 3.5 you have the old play 3.5 hi yep we simplified that crunchy hockey stick II loved it I came into dandy on 3.5 I'm nothing bad to say about it 3.5 winking blank and all this crazy how your attack bonus an AC all the bonuses that add up forever and ever look I'm gonna defend sneak attacks are broken broken bits it's a foot it's crazy cuz rogues get like two or three attacks and if you're getting sneak attack you're getting all those attacks around it's real goofy but the thing I will say about 3.5 - is people will be like that are advocating for 5 he will be like you like 3.5 more than 5 V and they look hands-down 5 e is a better designed game than 3.5 Moreau didn't know where you were going with that but okay I'm glad this better design game fight 5e is easier for new people to come into you can make a first level character in 20 minutes instead of an hour it's your you're ready to go with 5 it's a better design game let's ask though is it a better design game if you've already put 8 years into getting good at one thing no one can fault you for that right thing is you sort of will the the question would be like it's the I think it's very similar to talking about automatic versus stick where it's like oh it's easier to learn drive automatic obviously if you've already learned stick every single person I know that drives stick is gonna be like Oh sticks way better and I am that way with three point five where I'm like well yeah well I mean that's a good analogy because it is there one of the things I think is really good about D&D as an RPG system having played a bunch of RPGs is it it the current the crunchiness it doesn't go as far as Shadowrun but it's crunchy enough where there's this really cool structure so that your your demanded to be a little more creative on the outside so 5e while it's a little more relaxed the demand for creativity it's the onus is a little harder to achieve yes I mean absolutely also just in terms of the design of it in 5e when somebody makes the choice to multi-class it's a big deal you're like whoa like you really wanted to go wizard and fighter rather than like you know like doing one of the subclasses it gives you a little bit of magic or something else like that in 3.5 if you're not multi if you have if you get to 20th level and you don't have like 6 or 7 classes in 3.5 you up you fully up you're like wait you put 18 levels in sorcery they don't have a class feature pass first level why are you not taking a pure champion what's the problem but so that is sort of fun and of itself also a 3.5 when you get to a certain level of mastery my friend Jack Koval dear friend of mine played he's in the nine and a half year long campaign he it has made characters you know like we do some high-level campaign and he made this character that was like I'm a first level fiend of possession second level this thing third level that fought four levels of here this and that and it's like I don't see how any of this synthesizes and he's like well here's the thing fiend possession lets me possess enemies in combat as though through the magic jar ability this other class allows me to treat objects like people this third thing lets me do this other thing he's like so I can possess objects and turn them into magical items so ok first fight we get into someone's like I cast fireball Jax turn comes around and he's like I turn into a laser wagon and I run them over what it's a brilliant energy wagon they bypassed their armor I run them over they're all dead that's amazing and it's like hey five he's cool no laser wagons the other thing that Fivey does yeah it it's it's it's hard to it's hard to insult it when it's so accessible for new player is also in line with the character building of the bonds the flaws and the ideals that they they give you you know they give you at least a starting point if you don't want to take any of those you at least get what that is then you can start to build your character and for people who don't have the I guess performance or actor or character building a right or background great you don't need it like this this is the core this is what you would be doing as that as that creator so it's nice it's nice too it's it's kind of it's it's it's changed into where alignment is is flavor now and the bonds ideals and flaws are actually taking over how you play the character I really enjoy that an alignment has always been sort of a weird thorn in the side yeah where it it doesn't feel as descriptive or appropriate for the level of nuance and complexity the main thing I've run into especially with new players is they'll they'll build a character they don't quite understand alignment but while we get into the third session and they're like wait I want it to be oh wait well can I I wanted to be chaotic I wanted to be chaotic neutral I I chose lawful lawful neutral I don't want that and you're like I'm fine like like like the building of it it just seems so hammered in stone and you get so like weird about it where it's like no no the the bonds ideals and flaws will do that work for you don't even worry about it yeah it's a funny thing I think the reason D&D can't escape alignment because it does it's as someone who's studied both I formally studied philosophy in college you know the level of nuance that is missing by just going like lawful to chaotic good to evil there you go it's like a lot of nuance missing in terms of really how people operate and also in terms of psychology well what mainly what I also get is like clerics or paladin's who are like so I'm lawful but I have my own laws and you know it's like yeah my I made up a deity and this D Deus is an anarchist and that's who I serve and you're like well oh yes like but why did you have to be like why do we have to make this a lawful thing can't like just to get our minds around it like your chaotic you're clearly chaotic sir if I can get very cynical for a second I would also say that most people are not motivated by ideological codes yeah elevated by impulse and construct ideological codes to justify and rationalize what they were already going to do maybe that's too cynical but that's no that's that's it that's what it should be too and that's where you're that's where yeah bonsbons flaws and ideals is actually kind of truthful yes an old freshmen might have great thing he said where he said on the level of individuals and civilizations personality predates ideology meaning before you were a fascist you were a bully in an you're what we talk about as philosophy your ideology is really again it's a little scaffolding you're putting on the outside of who you are right and I think that's kind of critical that's important to understand that especially when you're building characters that being said I think that there are reasons that you can't abandon alignment they actually have to do with cosmology which is that you got demons and fiends and Celestials right and there's certain clerical and paladin magic that really does fine it's the other fun thing where I was in a campaign that my friend Montag was running and the character was like was like I was playing a very lawful good actually a rogue character and which was very fun they were like a very dutiful like Tomb Raider for an Academy like well I'm gonna steal all this stuff and then log it in the museum registry is like a lawful good right but what ends up happening is someone was like well I don't believe that you know it's yours you see everything terms of black and white and there are shades of grey and I was like that demon is made of evil yeah substantively you've seen someone get sucked to hell I mean like yeah there may be shades of grey in between the fiends and Celestials that occupy the polar point of where we are on this plane really hard to be like a freshman year relativist in a world with bayit or and yeah I feel like we just had a bunch of fun and way way far away from this question about that tangent I love it nine and a half year long campaign yeah Congrats do you want to I don't know what you're doing doing here like congratulations we started playing as 21 and the the campaign took off it's called era Dean it's this very it's like a very Miyazaki steampunk ask like Zeppelin's but also like old forest spirits and muskets and sky trains and that kind of like you know an age of innovation and exploration kind of thing so many mustaches so many moustaches there we played once a month or once every two months for like six years and then our first person moved to California Oh in this case not a baby not a baby moved to California we went and then like four months in her six months and we were like the person's coming back for Thanksgiving let's play again there and then a couple months after that Thanksgiving session we went there's seven of us playing round-trip tickets if we buy ahead of time are like 400 bucks 500 bucks would everyone be okay to chip in to fly Nick Nick Murray jnanam actually is the guy that made California he's been playing it for nine and a half years flew him back out and we just all suddenly went like this is important enough for us that we're gonna I had a I had a moment at a home game where we hadn't played for a while because was maybe like a couple of months or three months so we actually got together at that person's house they had the baby they were gonna put him down so we just met earlier or whatever and we started talking we were catching up everything had happened a couple of terrible things a couple of great things we were all catching up and about like two hours in of just talking I was like well I prepared a game but it seems like we're having a great time and also this seems important like we should catch up so I am open to whatever we do next but if we're gonna play like we're getting down to the wire we're you know if we're gonna play what we should play now to get something happening and if not no big deal but we all they were like yeah I don't know if this does feel good but remind us okay it's been months remind us what we did again and as I was talking through to the of where they were and the things that they had done and achieved and what they were after now and where they were heading and and the the overarching like maybe goal that they might have been trying to achieve and what their parents had tried to do in years past and they were like okay yeah we I went up we have to play like it you know it was this but it's so it's so nice when life seems so important and and you realize that even though life is very important you don't have control over it so give me that thing I have control over I think is what was happening where they were like yeah but I can be in this land I know at least what my goals are and I I can roll my dice and know that I'm at least going towards something where's all these other things that were bad or good or whatever it was like and so we'll all just kind of wait and see how you doing there yeah good there's only so much you can circle around with life yeah and I think too there's something here that's a little bit I totally agree with that and that's beautiful but I think there's a clue in what you're saying in terms of making a game sustainable which is that in order for a game to have longevity and this is not the sole responsibility of the dungeon master it's not like if your game falls apart it wasn't because you up it wasn't anything bad don't put that trip on yourself but I think our nine and a half year long game would have fallen apart if even a single person felt detached from the importance of the story that's why I wanted to come on and talk about anyway in the first place yeah it's adding importance to story Adam II imported the story I think that and it's no shade on dungeon crawls it's no shade on hack and slash style games those are really fun doing a big-ass dungeon crawl is great they're not mutually exclusive granted they're not usually exclusive that's absolutely true it's challenging when it comes time to BA and now by the way of the seven of us three live in LA three live in New York one lives in Chicago so when we play now as we do every four to six months when we it's three to four people flying across the country it's a big commitment financially everything else but we're nine years in on this story so I think that for those of you that want that long-running game the attachment and the shared ownership of the world in arid Ain each of them has played like multiple different pcs and explore different parts of the world we've done like what when one person can't make it we will shift the focus and do a one-off in another part of the world and right so that so that the PCs now feel even more ownership over the setup and easy I think an easy way in for that especially for new Dungeon Master's or if you're putting together a new group or even now develop a list what I do is like 15 questions of like how they fit in this world challenge them because a lot of I will say a lot of D&D Player's want to be the orphan or the outcast or the person who didn't fit in or the person who was left after everything was destroyed that is that can only take you so far because there has to be it's a life you know it's years it could be over a hundred years that some of these races live so you you don't you you aren't this isolated vacuum character so you have to challenge them ask questions about who they are related to outside of the party obviously for role playing you want them to have a relationship within the party but they've got to have a connection to something outside of the party as well whether it is a tribe that actually still exists and boy was it hard to leave and go adventure you know and that was a tough decision or maybe it was an easy decision everyone's rooting for them but I just developed like 20 questions that they can just make up have fun doesn't have to matter but then when you throw a mark into the story and mark just was you know they just were like oh this guy mark was you know at the bar and he he pissed me off whatever a lot of times never did any work and then when Mark shows up and it's like hey I want to join the party it's like it gives them something to go off of it draws them back to the place where they lived initially but exterior relationships to player to NPCs and also locations is really important and if they're writers or if they want to write about the town they're from let them do that like there's there's a lot that can be done and actually would take a lot of weight off the Dion shoulders that I've let them develop and I think and and then oh yeah like then you can write them letters or you know like Oh remember that symbol that you said well and then you find a little charm on Etsy or a charm on Amazon and oh it's a star oh you found that you know and it's something that connects into the world it's an easy way to make them cry yeah well god I mean no man is an island only in your experience though like when players start they're like I'm the one person and that's true they're adventurous they're heroes they're heroes but they're not yeah Amy I worked at a LARP camp where twelve-year-old boys would come and make heroes so I am used to going around a circle of ten different people and be like all right guys we're gonna talk about what our heroes are in the game we're gonna play today what are your names wolf dark moon I'm an orphan my parents were killed by wolves and then the wolves killed themselves and then I killed the wolves again in that after world my name is Damian silver blade I'm an orphan as well and you're like oh cool so our team of Rangers is 11 loners in a row well gang we're gonna get our ass kicked the first time a fight breaks out and we have no back tactics how every heist movie comes together and I don't hate it it's like people who work better better alone and then are forced to come together but they're still not alone and also in terms of your story but you're saying if you are completely unattached to the world around you you're not gonna have a fulfilling experience I actually through a little bit of shade in like a mouse-over text in my webcomic because I did this superhero webcomic stronger protagonist that I write with a monster tag we mentioned earlier and in it the main character she's got a sister and her parents are there and it's she's got and then she has like her friends and colleagues at work and my experience of life I don't know if this is true for everybody rather than being isolated my experience is the stress of attachment to the mold yeah there's more conflict yeah I have obligation and responsibility to and love and affection for and feelings of pain if you end up god forbid losing somebody right and absolute to me I'm so and I'm down I like I'm not just it's not just orphans it's it's like the lack of anything cuz even orphans have you know even Harry Potter has Hogwarts you know right and he has Hermione and Ron yes I don't it doesn't need to be familial blood relation found family is great let's say you're playing this I just want to know who I can kill that will make you mad at me that being said like when we were talking about dungeons and how to make those important like it actually is a lot easier when you have all that information from the players that they develop themselves because you can be like oh this wasn't just a dungeon that I'm reading from a module that someone else wrote no this is the familial tomb and I think that's how everyone should play Forgotten Realms faerun anything that someone else wrote and developed you're just like you pick a city or you pick a thing and then you come up with it the way that works for you like and you get inspiration from it but but the dungeon or the tomb or whatever it put a person there or something that is like oh yes I knew your mother or I know yes we I actually know who you are and there's a prophecy and it looks like you're you're here to fulfill her or whatever and every trap someone set those traps the dungeon just didn't like SimCity plot down and dungeon traps it's like somebody went through you got to like ask yourself like why are they wire why are there so many traps doesn't this person like that does traffic trap a file what's true do that's also something I just like Smike trap right exactly well it's also funny too because when you have something like a dungeon full of traps you gotta be very careful - I very rarely use traps because I very rarely use traditional dungeons Hey most of the like the battle maps that I use are places of import for very dynamic I'm much more likely to set a campaign in a war than in dungeon crawling so the dungeons are gonna be like this flying sky ship where there's enemy soldiers that you're fighting I think that's going the dungeon crawl I don't want to say it's antiquated but I haven't as far as streaming and just what I play - its it's less because it's just less fun and and it's less used I think for that reason because to go through where you're like okay now you see a door on the left or in the front of your door on the right which way do you go okay this way but like that's an that's an easy multiple choice answer and pretty pretty binary like maybe its tertiary but it's pretty binary and and the better decision is here are these people giving you these emotions and they've got this this vissa jand and these are the things that they're thinking like now deal with deal with humanity as opposed to like answering a multiple-choice quiz yeah and getting into the logic of how people interact with their environments is really crude like if you have a bunch of living organisms living in a dungeon with traps you tell me these goblins aren't constantly getting them started in the ass by poison darts they're gonna be like take these traps down I had to walk through this passage every day every time you say traps now I'm only thinking I'm like John I trap yeah he does booby trap the officer says you got trapped that's dumb that's real dumb as real dumb so to wrap up that final thing of the nine and a half year long or rather to say it's a writ to wrap up Comenius question here I think that campaigns that become important stories to your players are going to be easier for them to prioritize at the end of the day what you're talking about we're talking about commitment is what are the reasons that we have to prioritize this over something else because the truth is even with busy parents even everyone else people are going to find a way to prioritize something that gives them sanity no one's literally like I wake up every day and serve others and then go to sleep and that's me time you know for mental health something even if it's just watching a little bit of TV or some Netflix or something is going to be a way that people self-soothe and what you're asking yourself is have we shared a story that isn't meaningful enough to us that we can prioritize it not over children god forbid but over that two hours of Netflix you're actually the way that you're talking the things that you're mentioning it just reminds me of just dating advice where where you're just like because it's so true just fits a lot of ways where you're like when you first meet someone or like you play together as a party take the pressure off like this doesn't have to be the nine year commitment okay like we're gonna see how this goes and if we want to come back for another session we'll come back for another session and if one person gets replaced or we move it around that's fine eventually we'll find the core so the pressure of like really wanting the campaign just sit back relax and let mr. right campaign find you that's really true and those are being like a parent about it it's like hey if your campaign ended it wasn't the one for you there's another one that there's plenty of fish in the sea but yeah I totally agree with that I'm gonna throw something could you go back to the earlier times we were talking about which is that idea of you alighted on this when you were talking about people making these kind of card two-dimensional characters right or the idea of characters that aren't serving you I'm gonna bring something up which is a little bit controversial and I think it's a job of the DM that doesn't get discussed enough I want to hear your take on this what do you do as a dungeon master in the process of character creation when you're helping your PCs understand your setting to build their characters some people might not even know what I'm talking about they would be like don't the pcs just make their own characters and show up if you do that that's fine but I'm talking about I think the most important unsung unspoken role the DM is to guide your pcs through the character creation process what do you do as a DM when you know someone is themselves over by making a character that you suspect pretty hard is not gonna be fun for them to play I've seen it happen ah I know I say like you say give me an example here's an example you've got a whole adventure set up you got four players the table three of them have made really fun characters that all tonally match you're going for if it's a whimsical comedic game they've made whimsical comedic characters if it's a moody dark can they made moody dark hairs with a lot to lose and a fourth person says my name's Trelleborg our Burien I'm an orphan I don't have any I didn't I don't know I don't have a reason to be adventuring but I'm a barbarian and you watch like what do you do as you see somebody a not yeah yeah okay so if we're if we're just talking about beginning stuff I actually am more like campaign running is it more difficult for some of us Brennan to get people to show at the puck up but so so one offs or like short term things are a little easier for me especially with streaming you get those three session campaigns or something that's bite-sized and all the busy schedules can match up at least for you know three weeks so the the easiest way for me is to have those sets of questions which I I should I just should I should have had I should have had prepared but it is they have those sets of questions everyone has to answer them the other thing is I I when I write out those especially initial adventures I have my setting and I have these things that I want to do for instance I'll just do for instance so tomorrow I'm doing a a holiday-themed one and when we're celebrating jingles Harth and so comb burr so the first thing out of the gate I'm like it's it's basically jingles Arthas what we all establish is whatever we celebrate over the holidays the end of the year celebration of the failures but also successes and how they change us as a person so let's celebrate that it's cold but here we are warm together lots of lots of snuggly feelings so asking them well what was your favorite adventure or success or failure of last year and also what do you what's the tradition that you're most looking forward to at jingles hearth great that is canon that is part of the story so especially in the first game you you need they can answer those questions and then you fill in some blanks like like okay great like you have all this you know what else is true you actually know the name of the people you watched get murder the person you know the name of the person who killed your parents that you watch from under the bed you know that and you so have this item left behind from your parents like they didn't die and you just cried for years you know there there was a sense of there's just more you just yes and them I guess so it's I don't I haven't run into yet people building characters that they don't love or that get them in trouble I know though that I'm lucky in that I'm playing with streamers and and semi-professional role players who actually know how to manipulate their fun into maximum but I that's how I do it is ask them questions yes and their answers and then some somehow make them relate it to each other I like yes and is a great those no no yes and is the number one principle of improvisation article I know people that's the one thing people say when they come to improv is yes and yeah but I think what's good what your this the thing about the yes and there is the affirmation of the choice already made but an insistence as a dungeon master form more and I think that's an easy way to do it because the and is a command you're saying yes and give me more about this character and I think it's critical because what this comes down to is a balance between that kind of respecting autonomy versus doing what you think is the best for someone because I've seen people let me give you an example of watching someone faceplant in a way and and you're respecting their autonomy by saying I'm seeing you head to this cliff and there you go I respected your autonomy now you're plummeting to your doom I watched someone make a DND care for the first time and they were had this idea of a hero they wanted to play they wanted to play this paladin but they wanted to play a plucky paladin so they made this sort of halfling paladin and they're like I want this pounding to be really tiny and clumsy but they believe in themselves and they try hard and they roll their stats and I watched them put an eighth in strength and a ten and dexterity and they this other thing and it's like okay okay I get what you're going for but there and they went like but they're plucky and they save the day through their pluck and I'm going pluck ain't a game mechanic yeah I can't roll for pluck ooh fun witticisms I'll kill them I'm through with my wit and you watch as you go like you know cuz I say some people that's just one example that's an example of that happening through the literal mechanics of the game but you watch someone like at what point is a DM do you step in and go so if that happened and this is totally hypothetical because the the player's hand what gives you at least the top two traits or abilities that you should be doing as your class so if you choose to go opposite that and and it's fun like and somehow you're having fun great if not really fine re-roll like I'm down I'm down a session to session three that wasn't what you meant that's fine we can still do plucky we can still do all this but you can also be like effective yeah and I think also explaining to people like hey this is not a movie we're in a world that has the tropes and lore of these high fantasy stories but you're not protected by plot hearing on that plot armor that's that's also like I mean if I mean I would just I really would see how they play and if they are trying to persuade their way out of stuff I would just be like great can we consider can we consider warlock like something with better charisma or can we consider bard like like let's just you're playing this already by the way you still can have your fun sword you know you still can have your plate mail maybe not like but you could still have this stuff that you that you want but yeah like just you you're branding your own thing and there actually is a mechanic for that I exactly and I think leading people through that is really important and I think though that what's harder is when people do that emotionally or narrative lis design a character to not not be fun and I think there are a lot of very common pitfalls I think quiet antisocial loners are type of character people make a lot that to me new players love those characters and I would only trust a very advanced player to play some I've seen this a lot too because and and this even is on stream because you think you're surrounded by all these charismatic people and then you pick a character who is a little like Laurie from Silicon Valley or you know I I don't know the PC way of saying it but less emotional I guess I'm just a little more a little more laden aloof and I process things differently and you can play that and that is fine I guess but that you got to know what the trigger is to get your character emotional because that you know even Laurie from Silicon Valley is not is not operating where she doesn't care you know and and that can be yeah another another yeah and going in and finding those spots like whether your characters like this or your characters disaffected or apathetic like I used to give an improv note when I was teaching and coaching a lot when people would pick cuz I would say they pick a big emotion people would pick big angry big sad big happy fun funfun funfun and then some people would pick big board right Tana it's like you I would go the problem with choosing boring is you might succeed right and well big also mean it should be positive or negative like the middle ground it's just there's no there's no real place for it same same token for if if the player is making a choice everyone if everything's all my biggest thing is sometimes you get you get bogged down with decision-making and you just have to be like hey you have to pick something whatever you pick guess what adventure will happen and that ain't so bad so it's like but the one thing is if the group is going this way and you have a you have a a bad vibe about it you can't go and you would rather just go to the bar instead just use it go you have to go to the place like you can't just like hang out at the bar and basically for a while be an NPC I'm roping you into this thing and you can have your panic attack and won't that be fun yeah absolutely want to see you guys go through it we want to see you put through the ringer speak a little bit about that about like hey whatever an adventure will happen we talked about this a little bit last week with Lou Wilson but I wanted to touch on this again because now we're talking about like in character creation and then in the game how to facilitate people having fun and I love what you said before about like what's the point of this game oh I told you this beforehand no my biggest thing about Dungeons and Dragons the book the minis the maps everything if you and your and your buddies and the plot a plot the story if you and your buddies get together and literally all you did was like explore room and and meanwhile you got drunk and made each other laugh you did D&D you did it to the chagrin of the dungeon master who prepped for hours for it but there is there is nothing wrong with that like you can just take the take a load off if you're having fun with your friends that's why I want players that's why whenever i GM I'm like you I will GM you you you it's not gonna be my friends I'm not bringing my friends you bring yours and I'll get to know them and we'll all have fun but but it is your game so so be free merry and fun because I'll be here to guide you and ideally I become friends with you too but yeah but I love that and the idea of like you are facilitating the experience at the table and there are so many ways that human psychology I think is broken in terms of we want a thing and we make a plan to get the thing and we're so focused on making the plan to get the thing that we good the thing falls right into our lap and we go I can't have the thing fall into my lap I'm busy making the plan to get the thing you know what I mean and that's so that happens in a million different ways where you go like you over hype all of these tricks and schemes and methods that it when you get to the table have to throw all that away there's an old like Patton quote that I think is like plans are useless planning is essential which has to do with the idea I think it was a great thing for DMS to memorize which is like no you planning is essential make an adventure because you want toys in the toy chest for your players if they're not feisty that night you should have stuff to throw at them yeah but remember that if hits the fan everything goes sideways the thing you came to do was have fun and the thing to do was be here for these people at the table and if we're going on that metaphor it expect the toys to be broken keep that toy chest there though like keep the toy chest it locked because you got to know that there are certain things you have to know and a lot of it is just story points of the best D&D games are actually mysteries like they are mysteries they're figuring it out knowing knowing a certain level of information and operating from what you know getting to the next level of information of what you know and then going there and then doing what you're got to do there oh that wasn't what you thought either so so now you're doing this thing and and and this cause and effect rollercoaster that you have to know and it just doesn't matter if they know it because they'll break everything along the way and you got to know what the consequences are but it doesn't have to change you know like like you can drop a clue here oh no they didn't go to the blacksmith I went to the bar instead oh okay well that NPC knows the info then you know you know like they're they can't break it too much especially if they're having fun that's all sort of thing to is to recognize that there's not these this big distinction between prep work and writing ahead of the game happening and then you executing your own script you're still writing when you're doing the game I would like this is this is a this is a what not to do I got very upset this one time of a I was a I was a player we were playing a longer campaign probably like two and a half years okay don't judge it was longer for me there's like turnout years and we'd established this character her her whole thing was needing family and everyone if she would just call everyone family and and that was a whole her whole deal she there was one bad guy that I had written out in my backstory and and we played that we got to the point where we killed him then the next game without talking to any of us players the next thing was like and now ten years have passed and and something has happened where your character's notion of family has basically turned into communist comrades so like join the join the family are you part of the family and like in ten years a whole political downfall restructuring happened throughout the entire land and now my character was the bad guy which wonderful plot hook i DM turned your character into a villain without talking to you basically and then so the first thing I did I was like I'm gonna I need to I have to sneak away and hide like my carrot this isn't what I wanted this is crazy and and I need to hide myself from everything and so what happened was I did and I snuck away and and from the party from everything I was gonna go into the mountains and he goes well great now you broke the game and I go well no I didn't that guy made a choice I made a choice because of the circumstances that I was given and what could have happened is Maya the other players were like hey where where'd she oh I woke up and where'd she go or go fine one of them had scribe Oh like this wasn't I didn't break anything like like I and I guess the the impetus is you can't be married to what you do if you make a big choice everyone else is also allowed to make a big choice yes and as a DM you may get told no like no yes no I'm not doing first of all amazing we so he wanted like what a weird PvP campaign were you guys really you were gonna be fought by the other players at the table or something I'd it yeah like I mean it's not worth getting into motivations or anything like that but it's a lesson I think and I've taken that I've actually taken it to heart it was a learning experience I think for everybody because the way Dedes built every it's a joke now when people like did you win D&D and the fun answer is there's no waiting you can play forever it but that that's what it is yes just it's a TV show it's not a movie there's no end first of all I dislike the weird libertarian values of that 10 year shift making it what's wrong with communism [Music] yeah okay we're all a big family great yeah we're all passengers on Spaceship Earth go yourself that's just me but I will also say that yeah you have to talk to your pee if you're gonna do a 10-year time jump your as a DM is to go what did your characters do in the interim it's the same it's the same rebuilding it says if they're entering into the new thing so a tree ask the questions let them know where you're coming from who's to say I wouldn't have been like oh wow that's interesting yeah I should he want I know he wanted me to go fight the person who flips my who flipped out on a dime B I would say this this this is a really this is a very usable piece of Dungeon Master advice for those who are watching that so we talk a lot of grand theory here on the show but here's something really really consequential that you can just do I would say be really careful be really careful with trippy form bending stuff in terms of like it's 10 years you're all different people okay all you guys lose your memories and your abilities okay things that the whole point of what your pieces are trying to do they're playing a different game than the DM is I often say this the DMS play a different game and the players are the DM is playing a game about imagination because the DM is coming up with constantly the PCs aren't coming up with anything they are immersing they're not imagining they're immersing they have one character they're getting sensory information yeah and and when when you are building the game and being a dungeon master the simple answer is the best answer if if they know what the goal like mo the well there was a time when somebody said I get I get that I have to kill this guy I have no idea how and I'm like great I did though I didn't tell you you know like this it's the simple answer it's like if you kill this guy give them a way to kill it if there's a puzzle give them a way to solve it like there's they want that like they want they they don't want a spoon-fed necessarily but the simple answer is better don't develop this intense mystery where they're like oh the clue thing that you've said you know five sessions ago that no one's gonna remember because we were all drunk that's the answer no no like going the journey of just walking to the thing will be exciting for them you know it should be theirs they're gonna encounter whatever they encountering bond together it is it's a it is a huge deal to kill someone's character in a game even more than killing someone's character is causing them to have to change their identity when they didn't want to because if you kill a character there's still them in Mount Celestia somewhere doing some like robbing memories away changing what someone's values were although robbing memories is like a really fun like game tech I I am going to beg to differ and the well I guess I offer a caution against that all that character is is a pastiche of a couple different changes on top of your own mind so if used you know I this come from a LARPing background when we had LARP s-- where people's memories were robbed effectively like your memories are gone it's supposed to conjure this feeling of like misty amnesia instead what happens is you're just like well now I'm just Kyle and I see my sneakers on my I mean I mean the threat of memories going away where you're like okay like you see that I I recently ran a game where the threat you could see the NPC's kind of going blank you could and then I like handed out a script for them to read and some of the words were missing I was like yeah you guys are bards and you're forgetting like the words of the script so then you find her that's use a plot to like for them to going oh no not not like blank out person blank out person because it got lobotomy yeah look anything like lobotomizing or even the big alignment changing right right I'm not saying never do it but I'm saying that has to be the person's number one toy they're playing with at the table is this identity they've crafted and when you start with that it actually makes the game even less fun than if you killed the character we played a second edition game back in college and one guy had his character flaw was amnesia but the workaround was he had an amulet that let him remember who his friends were if he lost the amulet he also had this training that it was like a four step program where it was like assess a situation who is bad and who was good defend the good fight the bad run away and and if he could do those in that order then that's that and if his amulet was gone that's what he would do but it was like we had to have a structure for someone with which i think is actually grounded in real life yeah that's really excited again in real life there are things well you know like em usually you write a note to yourself every more for every morning there you you like have these oh I play the tape recorder whatever well like memento is an amazing movie but it's an amazing movie and I think I'd be hard to play that character in tabletop because part of what you're trying to do is get lost in a character ran that yeah hard to do when that stuff is disappearing I the time has flown by yes any final thoughts I have to tell you because because you didn't even know about this today kobold dot Club hold Fight Club Cobalt Fight Club go to cobalt dot Club and it gives you it does all the math of mechanics and and encounters for you but you can plug in how many players what levels they are you can search monsters and everything but by the books by type it's a big old sheet it's what a tool Amy blew my mind coming into the office today a couple of Fight Club who talk about a lot of work take it off your plate uh rock and roll Amy thank you so much for coming on this show today was a pleasure having you all my life thank you thanks so much guys hey guys it's Brennan from CollegeHumor click here to subscribe click here for more fun stuff and please keep watching because if you stopped watching I start to vanish forget it I'm not really real I'm just

Channel: Dimension 20

Views: 52,495

Rating: 4.9683971 out of 5

Keywords: CH2, jobs, feels, babies, improv, friendship, advice, fantasies, mythical creatures, magic, memory, role playing, games, nerds, dungeons and dragons, brennan lee mulligan, amy vorpahl, adventuring academy, podcast

Id: 99LdpMvIDQ8

Length: 57min 6sec (3426 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/FLMCN19]

The faces Brennan pulls honestly give me life, and loved Amy's input. What is the deal with the discord though? Is that not a thing anymore? Or is it just not a thing internationally?