[Dan]: Hello and welcome to Table Talk, a show where I chat with other creators in the TTRPG space about how they run their tables. I'm Danger'd the GM and host of D&D Arc, and joining us at the table today is a player in GM involved in multiple actual play shows, including the rainbow roll featured show darkest days and the rolling midnight show, thirty candles. Enzo, hello.
[Enzo]: Hello, it's so lovely to be here. Thank you so much for having me today.
[Dan]: Yeah, thanks for hopping on. It is lovely to have you. To get us started, can you tell us a bit about who you are and the various projects you're involved in?
[Enzo]: Absolutely. I'd love to. For those of you who do not know me, which is probably all of you. I'm Enzo. I used they in them pronouns. On the various internet spaces as either worlds of Enzo or Enzo, what the hell?
[Dan]: Great handles.
[Enzo]: I figured I'd heard it enough, I might as well make it that. So you can find me on various platforms as one of the two of those twitch and discord mainly for worlds of Enzo and then Instagram for Enzo, what the hell? The projects that I'm involved in are, again, a litany of things.
[Enzo]: Like you had mentioned, rainbow roll networks featured darkest days podcast. The show that I have put on with me and my three absolute nerdy friends that I have come to love through theater and to all the tangential related shenanigans we get involved in,
[Dan]: the typical pipeline.
[Enzo]: Yeah, and then the other show that got me interested in beginning, running this up was rolling midnight, thirty candles, which was one of the inciting incidents of me getting like, ah, I could do this more. And I would like to
[Enzo]: as a player that kicked my inspiration into overdrive and then as a GM and producer and whatnot, I just might fall throttle and I'm very excited to continue on with it.
[Dan]: Yeah, I am fascinated by both of your shows. So, respectively, darkest days uses the break system and thirty candles uses the ten candle systems. So, for players that are unfamiliar with either of those systems, can you lay just like a base groundwork for what those systems are and kind of how they work general basic rules?
[Enzo]: Absolutely. Yeah, so we're going to start off with ten candles because it has a very quick snappy little in and out ten candles is typically played around a tabletop with ten lit candles. And each of those candles is indicative of the dice pool that the players and the GM will have accessible to them. When a candle goes out, a die will remove from the player's dice pool and added to the GM's dice pool, making it increasingly more likely that you are going to fail checks and thus end a scene and thus remove more dice from your pool.
[Enzo]: It is a horror adjacent, I say, because every TTRPG that you play can be taken into any other genre, dependent on how you wind up running it and how you wind up fueling the fire of that, no pun intended. But it is an increasingly difficult game, the longer you play it. At the end, typically, as per the rules, all player characters will be dead by the end of it. Now, that is, of course, like all TTRPGs, up to GMs and players to say, hey, we do or do not want to utilize this for our game, but very much happened in thirty candles, spoiler alert.
[Enzo]: Thirty candles was very unique in that it was three separate games of ten candles that all three of the GMs managed to pull their other worldly spooky entities that were causing this chaotic wildfire and disappearances and other strange happenings tied them all beautifully together.
[Enzo]: And I cannot give more props to Safra the inciting individual behind the idea and to all of the fantastic GMs that made it happen and the players of course because they're the fuel to the fire as it were.
[Dan]: It's such a cool premise for like a mini campaign and I remember as soon as I started chatting with you and kind of got the little blurb about thirty candles I was fascinated about how do you make something This insular last for more than a one shot.
[Enzo]: So it's really cool that they were able to weave together multiple different sessions and games of ten candles into a larger overarching narrative.
[Dan]: Very cool and unique way to approach that.
[Enzo]: credible use of the system and the way that they could combine and tie all of these disparate ideas back into one seamless narrative. The way that I can foresee this being utilized as just a continual use instead of a simple one shot is that by the end of the ten-candle session, characters are taken out. When characters would otherwise die, they are set to downtime, or they are set to do other things in the narrative elsewhere. They are removed from the main story that is being told with the system.
[Enzo]: Otherwise, kill them. Absolutely, hundred and ten percent. It's the driving force behind all of the things that we do. If you're not afraid of death and your stakes for your characters are so much lower, Tell your characters and then have new characters in the same storyline that are trying to achieve similar or different goals and keep telling that story in the same world. It makes for a beautiful rich narrative that you keep fueling the fire of.
[Enzo]: I keep using fire today.
[Dan]: I mean, it's an apt metaphor and it makes me think a lot of the dread system, which I know is very often compared to ten candles. They're usually in the same conversation.
[Dan]: A show that I bring up all the time because we've stolen half of their cast for our show is a dread and breakfast. which is an actual play podcast that uses the dread system and does currently their second season. They're doing an overarching campaign where basically they've got rotating GMs.
[Enzo]: They are doing essentially a series of interconnected one shots kind of similar to what thirty candles was doing. where it's basically all within the same setting jumping around through various points of time with completely different groups of characters all within the same one town as this one like decades long event is happening and is kind of interweaving through the lore and the texture of the town.
[Dan]: It's a really cool way to approach something like that. They do have some survivors from story to story that occasionally carry over but telling more like insular pockets of stories within a larger scope as kind of their approach at least currently.
[Dan]: Their second season was much more focused from the outset of we want to tell one big interconnected overlapping story and it's more the story of the town than it is the story of the characters.
[Enzo]: That sounds so good.
[Dan]: Anyway, to bring it back around to you, now that you've laid the groundwork for thirty candles, can you tell us a little bit about break and darkest days?
[Enzo]: Yes, so break is a system that utilizes the D-twenty only and the checks and other roles that you are trying to make, you're trying to roll under your scores that you are setting.
[Enzo]: So it's very much the polar opposite of typical D-twenty systems where a Nat-twenty is like your best move and you're looking for crates all the time in a system where you're trying to roll under. Nat-twenty is not always looking too good for you.
[Enzo]: Uh, so I had a good kick of having my players be like, oh no, no, no, no. I have to flip my dice over to the other numbers so that they get the good juju. It was so silly. One of our players didn't line up succeeding a role for the first like two episodes. It was so funny. They're like, why do I keep rolling good for other systems? My dice are so confused.
[Dan]: We had a similar experience a couple years back when we did our Call of Cthulhu one shot because it similarly uses a D-One Hundred system and it's the same thing of low rolls are good. It was really funny the flip script with our table because we've got a notorious low roller who Call of Cthulhu was his game. We learned in the process of doing that. Oh, I don't roll bad. I roll low. So This is my system.
[Enzo]: It is a very different thing. I roll poorly, always. I am one of the players who are no matter what system it is. You can always depend on me to roll shiddly for a good long while. The dice tell your story not you. It's a deep unfortunate situation.
[Enzo]: Well, for most systems, let me be there. Not the case with a lot of things, but most of the games that I play rolling tells the story and boy, howdy, do I not roll well?
[Enzo]: But, tying back break, it is heavily, heavily inspired by anime, like especially the esikai and shonen genres, it has such a wonderful flavor and texture to it that fuel the goings on the world.
[Enzo]: the written story inside of the world is that on this world that people have come and gone from that species and other peoples have visited and left and been cultivated and created on this world. magic is abundant and all of the things that you want to see out of something like a ghibli film or out of like some studio trigger anime like all of the flavoring right there is baked into it for you to just turn the key and go and I am so, so grateful that my cast got to hop in the pilot seat of that one and start rev in that engine.
[Dan]: It's super fun even just from the outset with the title being all caps with two exclamation marks. There is an energy just injected into it even from the front page.
[Enzo]: Oh, a hundred and ten percent and that is with so much intention put behind it that it just fuels my heart. I feel like car locks infernal engine heart just that every little bit of anime that I can throw into there is another soul coin in my soul just getting going.
[Enzo]: So for Darkest Days, the unique aspect of the game that I brought to it is that the leveling system is by ranks that your character gets. And every time they rank up, they get new powers, new abilities, so on and so forth. They have a separate power system for being like light or dark or neutrally aligned as well.
[Dan]: Oh, interesting,
[Enzo]: which ties into all of that. Yeah, the world is broken fundamentally. There is no sun.
[Enzo]: There is a sun machine that sits on one half of the world that bathes it in bright sunlight and then the rest of the world is shadowed in darkness and there's spin twilight meridian that both sides kind of interweave in the middle of and make for very, very unique cultures and peoples and social aspects to that. It was so, so delicious.
[Dan]: That's right, as hell.
[Enzo]: Yeah. It was so, so, so good. I just can't get enough of it. But also the idea of a mechanical son that only exists.
[Dan]: Oh, yeah.
[Enzo]: Now, for those of you who are going to be listening to darkest days, this may not be the case of what you are listening to when you are adventuring through our world of promise, the title of this world. In our version of promise, the son machine is still up, it's still active, still rotating around the world, things are as they would seem on any other standard solar system planet.
[Enzo]: However, the unique feature that I have damed to bring to the table is an idea that I have taken from quite a few other pieces of media where names hold significant power. And the idea that being a named person among a society where being unnamed is the norm.
[Enzo]: What does it mean to have a name? What does it mean to give someone a name? What does it mean to take a name from someone? And what does a legacy that you leave behind with a name generate?
[Enzo]: And every time an individual is named or gains a title or gains a new status, it increases their magical and other worldly power in that world. And so it helps so much as a DM so that I don't have to name every single NPC. God's, it's been a blessing.
[Enzo]: However, it has been a juggling act of, oh God's, what do people call each other in a world where people don't have names? giving on a rifix or titles to people is so much more of a statement than anything now that I have to like really drive that home, because if you miss the mark, boy, howdy, on the one thing you got going for it, you really missed them.
[Dan]: That is a super interesting premise to jump off of and I can absolutely see the balancing act there. I hate coming up with names for NPCs. So I am a little bit jealous of how clever a workaround that is, but you're absolutely right that it makes it that much more important and essential to get them right.
[Enzo]: Yeah, if you ever have to worry about your players taking a name and truly making a mess of it and bogging it down with all of the different ways to miss pronounced and pardon my language, but fuck you up with over, uh, truly just Debasing this name. Yeah, I've gotten my fair share here.
[Enzo]: I will forever be upset with the fact that I did not realize until it was far too late. One of the titles that I had given to an NPC would quickly become my demise. The players that I have are wonderful, beautiful improvisers, and they truly just Julia Caesar took knives to my back and stabbed me. I could not have been happier.
[Dan]: Yeah, I feel like that is a canon event in every GM's story.
[Enzo]: Oh, absolutely. That's the moment that you know that you've been GMing properly. Once your players absolutely devolve into ruining the name of a character for you, the GM, so that you don't remember what it was initially called and just been calling it the idiocy that your players have been calling it. That's when you hit the mark. That's when you know you've made it as a GM.
[Dan]: For me, one of my moments with that, with D&D arc, like Central Conceit of Arshow, it's a five-week campaign that's set in Victorian England, in a like Gothic horror setting, and all of the player characters are the classic universal monsters.
[Dan]: So we've had, as we've gone, it turned into like there was an arc that fokily spotlit each character where they would kind of step in as, for this one arc, I'm kind of the one driving the story here.
[Dan]: As a spoiler for anybody who hasn't listened to it, once we get past the halfway point, Dracula is the main antagonist. And there's a plot point that we have at some point where we have a plot arc set in Big Ben Tower, where it's been converted into basically a monster making factory, and he is turning people into
[Dan]: monster manual wise. I'm using slods, but he's essentially imbuing people with monstrous powers to be like services frontline soldiers. and the title that I gave them was the Knights of Dracula, but because they turned into sloths, they became the Froggy Rangers.
[Dan]: I thought it for as long as I could, and I gave up Froggy Rangers is what stuck, and Knights of Dracula very quickly got buried.
[Enzo]: As cool as Knights of Dracula are? Yeah, no, I understand deeply unfortunately.
[Dan]: Especially because they're color-coded too.
[Enzo]: Oh, gods. Yeah, you really just set them up for success. You, you handed a player's a softball and asked them not to swing. I, but that's the joy of GMing.
[Dan]: Oh, absolutely.
[Enzo]: The unintentional softballs you love to your players that eventually get line-drived back at your own head, immaculate, just truly wonderful.
[Dan]: Some of the best experiences as a GM are when the story develops in a way that you didn't expect. And when the players keep you on your toes and you're having to adjust to them, the story got so much better based on the actions they made that I could never have accounted for.
[Enzo]: totally. I have a very unique approach to my GMing style that I have developed over quite a long period of time, about ten years at this point, that I have been GMing and accruing various systems styles for, that I have kind of Frankenstein's monstered into my own little creature to manage games.
[Enzo]: Now, when I say this, it is going to perhaps appall most of you, if not all of you, but I, as a GM, very rarely will I prep.
[Enzo]: I am an improviser through and through to the point where just this week, at my vowing that will, I improvised the vows that I said to my partner, mortifying to every individual that heard that, and then said, well, yet, know that tracks for Enzo.
[Dan]: What's funny is you're not the only person I know who's done that.
[Enzo]: Oh, thank goodness. I'm not the only fool out there. However, that makes me so worried for all of the other people that you know.
[Enzo]: Yeah, my style for GMing is very fast and loose. I have picked up the main influences as the fact that my husband refuses to fall asleep to anything other than the adventurers' balance arc, which if you have not listened to, I cannot recommend enough.
[Enzo]: Griffin McAurey is one of the highlight GMs of improvisation and saying, yes, absolutely, and also, and the master of no but
[Dan]: oh yeah the adventure zone was it wasn't the biggest source of inspiration for me when starting my show but I did a lot of research into various shows and tried to like take bits and pieces of okay what does this show do that I like what does this show do that I don't like what aspects of this do I want to take and bring into my own show and adventure zone was very informative absolutely
[Dan]: I, on the like prep work to improvisation spectrum, I'm somewhere in the middle, I probably lean a little heavier towards prep, but my general philosophy that seems to have worked out the best is how I've described it before I tend to have a very villain centric planning,
[Dan]: where I will know what the villains plans are and I will have a concept in my mind of what does this world look like if the party does not exist? That is basically what I prepping plan for. So then that way the world changing around the players is a complete unknown and mystery.
[Dan]: They are the rogue element and it leaves me enough wiggle room to keep myself on my toes, but know where every important NPC is at and how they are likely to react to. And he given wrench that they throw in my works.
[Enzo]: Totally. Yeah, I feel that so so hardedly.
[Enzo]: I think the thing that I've learned the most is that as a GM, I set up a sandbox that I put multiple different tracks down in. so that whichever way the players go, I, as the conductor can switch those tracks to wherever I need it to go.
[Enzo]: Now am I actively laying those tracks down in front of me while some grommet style? Yes, absolutely, a hundred and ten percent. However, I have at least a semblance of an idea as to where in the sandbox I need to put those tracks down to begin with.
[Dan]: Absolutely. The Wallace and Grommet analogy is one that I go to all the time.
[Enzo]: Oh, absolutely. It's so apt. Sometimes I'm having to build the tracks themselves in my hands before laying them out because sometimes the story has absolutely no need for any of the things that are coming up in the session. And I've had to improvise my way into finding out what the hell my players are looking for in the first place.
[Enzo]: But I love the idea that you brought up of having a villain-centered planning style because that is such a brilliant use of, okay, I need a driving force behind the story that everything else has to happen alongside.
[Enzo]: My planning style is I am going to have the open world and I have an idea as to what major forces are acting and allow my players to choose to align with any of those acting forces. And sometimes align with multiple of them in disparate acts.
[Dan]: I find that a lot of that does come down to the players who are at your table. When I was plotting stuff out, I was kind of asking and checking in with my table. How linear of a story do you want this to be and how loose do you want this to be?
[Dan]: And they pretty much unilaterally said, no, we want you to railroad us, please. do not give us too many choices and like my initial conceit and what I had originally planned out before they had requested that I steer them more strongly in specific directions was I was going to set up like
[Dan]: this is generally what's happening in the world and like these are the various areas that you could feasibly go to you let me know what direction you want to go and and I will reshape things accordingly and they said no tell us what order to do things in where to go
[Enzo]: Yeah, especially for actual play is my mindset behind it. If you're doing a home campaign, I mean, check in with your players see what they want more than anything. But no one wants to be on a roller coaster that doesn't have tracks.
[Dan]: Exactly.
[Enzo]: That's just a death race. And sometimes that can be fun. But by gods, you need to know that you're signing up for a death race, unless you're just like throwing caution to the wind.
[Enzo]: And that is something that I have had to, as a GM, really, really hone in on it, or is the power behind the session zero, talking to your players, setting ground space and expectations, so that everyone starts on the same page.
[Enzo]: Everyone can be coming from different levels of experience. But if you laid the groundwork properly, you are setting a graded space to build a foundation that allows you to build a wonderful narrative on top of. And that's the important part is knowing where to start.
[Dan]: Absolutely. In a approach that I'm going to attempt to take in our second season, that kind of threads the needle between the two, is a thing that one of my players who was GMing our home game did for us. It was fantastic.
[Dan]: A lot of the world building is stuff that I'm collaborating with the players on to establish. And the idea that Jordan, who plays the Wolfman and Dien Darken, who was the GM for our home game, a thing that she did that I am stealing for our second season is
[Dan]: before the game started after checking in with all the players getting their character backgrounds and everything. She made a little character journal for each of the players with eventually plot relevant information that was specific and unique to each player so that We could be the ones coming in with prior knowledge.
[Dan]: We could be the ones to expose it and set up. So that way when we do bump into a suspiciously familiar NPC, we could be the ones to say, oh, I know who that probably is.
[Enzo]: Yeah. giving your players the tools to have agency in game. That is so important. And I think that that is something that I learned very specifically from ten candles.
[Enzo]: Because ten candles at the start of every scene, every player goes around and gives a truth that cannot be undone by another player and that sets the groundwork for what is to come. that gives so much more vibrancy to the world.
[Enzo]: When you give your players the agency to say, this is what I know is true about the world and I am putting it in place. And I have taken that idea and I have used it for every game that I have ever played or run since. It is such a powerful tool of the toolbox.
[Dan]: Oh, absolutely. It's such a great perspective to approach this with.
[Dan]: That leads pretty cleanly into another question that I had for you, which is in the various systems that you've run since you've done several that aren't necessarily just five E. What are the lessons that you've learned from each system and how is that kind of colored, how you approach TTRBGs in general?
[Dan]: Like, for example, what you just said with ten candles of letting the players have the agency to establish the reality of the world.
[Enzo]: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I have played so many different TTRPGs by virtue of having so many different systems that I have had to work with for I am a game designer and went to school for it just our recently graduating from it.
[Enzo]: And one of the courses was in group. We had to run a TTRPG for each other because we had to know how to work and design one and then we had to make one as a final project. So I had to run quite a few for a variety of my coworkers.
[Enzo]: That and being friends with people who are also game designers in the space makes for, you know, play testing things and running different games and trying to see what I like to find works for me.
[Enzo]: Blades in the dark does an incredible system scenario of planning and reverse. So it puts the action forward and all of the preparations that your characters have done has already happened and you get to call out what you have already prepared when you need it. I use that very heavily and a lot of my systems.
[Enzo]: the versatility that Pathfinder has given me of choosing action economy and how to spend it in certain aspects instead of having to go back to the baseline of five e because that is most people's touchstone is your movement action bonus action reaction.
[Enzo]: being able to say you have a certain number of things you can do on your turn. Spend those actions as you see fit on any of the list of things that you can do, much like you would for something like pandemic, or you would for a variety of other cooperative tabletop games that do not revolve around roleplaying.
[Enzo]: utilize that system very heavily and using that as a game designer and as a game master helps to tie together a lot of ideas that your players would otherwise want to be able to do, but I limited to by the system as it stands as it is written.
[Enzo]: The ideas that I have pilfered from break is that he is absolutely fucking ridiculous as you possibly can. go hot wild because the bigger your swings, the better they're going to become eventually.
[Enzo]: You're not going to hit the mark every time. It's impossible. But much like the style that I make jokes in, I will continue to joke until I hit something good and then I'll refine that. So take big swings.
[Dan]: Oh, absolutely. And like the bigger the swings that you take, the more interesting things can develop a pretty significant place that my brain jumps to when hearing that in like about two thirds of the way through the plot of our first campaign with D&D arc, our barred causes a miniature apocalypse.
[Dan]: And that is essentially the jumping off point four season two is dealing with the fallout of that.
[Enzo]: We love player, cause the apocalypse.
[Dan]: Yep, never even remotely on my radar until he messaged me with a plan that he was trying to approach and basically said, hey, this is kind of the direction that I want to go in for when we get to my arc and I kind of want it to end result in this and this is my plan here.
[Dan]: And it just it immediately fed into what my idea for season two would be. Never in a million years could I predict it to that. But it's probably one of the strongest arcs that we have because it does push things so far in that direction and there are some like incredibly big swings.
[Dan]: It's also the arc that went the most off the rails.
[Enzo]: But hey, that's what happens. You take a big swing and sometimes things go with it.
[Dan]: Oh, absolutely. And that is I would say to its benefit rather than to its detriment.
[Enzo]: By all means, most of the best moments in a TTRPG that I've ever played are the things that happen because of a huge risk taken or a out of the blue idea that sudden spark of inspiration that just hits you as a hang on.
[Enzo]: What if we did this? Now, does that often devolve into hours of planning that goes nowhere? Yes, absolutely, a hundred and ten percent.
[Enzo]: Occasionally, those moments turn into skipping an entire arc. Hi, Hacks.
[Enzo]: I love you.
[Enzo]: I'm sorry.
[Enzo]: I made one decision that skipped an entire arc that my GM had planned, like a full month of planning and sets sessions just out the window in a single moment. pulling from the deck of many things in my home game and then rewriting history four times in a row.
[Dan]: A notorious campaign enter.
[Enzo]: Oh, no. This was a campaign like switch level. We rewrote an entire year out of game in a session and it was just so delicious. Oh, I was so happy and sorry, Johnny.
[Enzo]: Sorry.
[Enzo]: I am one of the greatest nemesis to all of the GMs that I play with. And the same situation that my GMs feel toward me, I feel toward my players of, oh, you're gonna wreck my shit so bad. Oh, God's, alright, how am I gonna deal with you?
[Enzo]: And I love it.
[Enzo]: I am also in a very unique place of I mainly run for children.
[Enzo]: My whole day job is running D&D mostly, but TTRP Jesus' hole and eventually hopefully getting into Lark for kids anywhere from six to eighteen.
[Dan]: I want to unpack that a little bit. One of the things that we chatted about before hopping into this call was you mentioned that you were trying to start an after school program that was art based. So I really want to hear about what that looks like, what your plans are for that and what that experience is like and what that brings for you.
[Enzo]: Absolutely. I want to shout out to Brooklyn Game Lab.
[Enzo]: They were the job that set in motion the track for me to take on games as a legitimate entrepreneurial track for the rest of my life. I started off as a game master for them running things.
[Enzo]: It's an after school and summer program that teaches kids game design and it is an incredible, incredible system that they have and they have so many different programs and so many different aspects to them that they have built upon in this ten years that they have been active and so much love and my heart for all of the people that work there.
[Enzo]: I still even though I have moved across the country have dear friends that I love and I'm still in contact with through that. I have never made closer friends with any other job than I have working there through gaming.
[Dan]: That sounds like an absolutely amazing group.
[Enzo]: Yeah.
[Dan]: He's at Brooklyn Gaming Lab.
[Enzo]: Brooklyn Game Lab for any of you parents of children in the New York area, BGL dot NYC, totally shameless plug for a company that I do not work for anymore.
[Enzo]: But it's one of those things that I wish that I had growing up as a kid, the space as a young nerd to be a young nerd and to grow up surrounded by nerdy adults who cultivated that curiosity and that creativity to then foster into, oh, this is something that you can do forever.
[Enzo]: you're never going to stop learning or growing, you can continue to do so even through play. And that is something that we have lost as a society is the joy of play from youth up through adulthood and beyond.
[Enzo]: So that is my base concept to raise young nerds to be better adults, to raise better adults. And then give a space for adults to grow and learn and become the better adults to raise better kids.
[Enzo]: I am looking to create a foundation, a place, something. It is so nebulous in concept because I want it to be an all ages larp essentially.
[Enzo]: the title that I have for it right now on the business plan that I have created is Enzo school for adventuring.
[Enzo]: And it is intended to be a real life skills, real trades, application inside of a ludic space where you step into an adventurer's guild, a physical location that has all of the trappings of fantasy to create immersion intentionally
[Enzo]: and then by working on those skills and trades inside of the space or bringing to the space the skills and trades that you have been doing outside of when you have been there and showing up with them leveling up creating a mechanic or a system in place to feel accomplishment and to successfully gain
[Enzo]: more things to feel grounded in that space in order to make luck accessible because a huge barrier of entry is the props and the costumes and things that create that idea of a physical representation, fizz rap for short.
[Enzo]: The Fizz rep is the biggest barrier of entry and if I can as a business provide a space to provide that while people are engaging in it so that people have that ground level of, oh, I can show up in my everyday wear and still feel like I am a part of the fantasy.
[Enzo]: I want to be able to give a modern day fantasy for people to engage with and to enjoy and to get to experience the play of because that is where I find the most growth and the most willingness to grow is through play.
[Dan]: Absolutely. And I know ten year old me would be all over that. And I think the approach that you take and the mindset that you have when you're setting up your system goes leaps and bounds farther than any of the physical representations that you could have.
[Dan]: The one large experience that I had was just a single one day hour long session that was part of a theater thing that I was doing in high school. And as far as like our physical props and everything, it was pool noodles, first swords, first bees, first shields, and slips of paper for magic spells.
[Dan]: And that was all we really needed with the scale and immersiveness of the story that we were telling. It was so quick and easy to be able to like completely immerse and invest ourselves in what was happening with nothing more than those simple tools.
[Dan]: So I think as far as the mindset that you're approaching it with, it is exactly the right frame of mind to be in. And I think there's so much good that a program like that can do.
[Enzo]: Absolutely.
[Dan]: Keeping an eye on time, I know we're about to run up to your out time. Before we run out, is there any other miscellaneous topics that you want to touch on before you've got to get going?
[Enzo]: The importance of play
[Enzo]: and Ludic space is something that I absolutely love that I studied in school that I want to bring to the forefront of discussion especially in TTRPG and especially outside of TTRPG.
[Enzo]: Play can happen anywhere.
[Enzo]: play as much as you can because a game is only defined by the Ludic Space that it occupies.
[Enzo]: There are sixty-two different definitions for a game mechanic because it is such a nebulous concept to have to identify and to wrap your head around.
[Enzo]: A game can be anything.
[Enzo]: you can play as much as you want and the importance of doing so is giving yourself the opportunity to not detach from reality, but to define a space inside of it that does not need permission to exist.
[Enzo]: It is the school yard playground sort of aspect of life that we don't engage with enough that we lose out of childhood. that we should try to at least find semblances of elsewhere.
[Enzo]: The importance of laughing and joyously engaging in play with people around you is something that I am trying to do in every waking moment that I have.
[Enzo]: If I'm not playing a game, I am preparing to go to a rehearsal, which is what I'm heading to after this. And if I'm not doing that, then I'm preparing for the Renaissance fair that I am teaching ancient games. And if I'm not doing that, then I'm having a metal breakdown because there's not enough time in today.
[Dan]: Well, I sympathize with that big time and that is a such a fantastic note to end on. So before we get going, drop any and all links you want to plug, remind us again where we can find your shows and your works and anything that you want to advertise before we wrap up here.
[Enzo]: Absolutely, thank you so much. On Spotify and Apple podcasts, you can find darkest days podcast at that. We are working on episode two for production.
[Enzo]: We have unfortunately lost our vocal cut editor, but we have made some incredible leaps and bounds with our pilot that I am just so happy that we have out.
[Enzo]: We have the entire first season recorded and we're looking to very very, very slowly put these out because we're a bunch of volunteer people that are trying to get things done and you know, I can't ask any more of them than the free time that they have available to go and put toward back. So if you are looking for more, we appreciate your patience.
[Enzo]: But I mean, if you want to throw us money so that we can pay everybody to keep doing this. I'll never say no.
[Enzo]: worldsofenzo.com is where you can find my TTRPG, GMing, you know, sort of scheduling stuff. I run games for a living and have a platform that you can use to go ahead and if you want me on as a GM at your own risk.
[Enzo]: Also, Instagram, at Enzo, what the hell I have all of my own personal situation set up there and affiliate link now because that's a thing with CalSamell who is a LARP weapons accessories, armors and online retailer.
[Enzo]: I have an affiliate link for them for ten percent off your entire order. If you want to do that and find some real cool LARP gear,
[Enzo]: I totally may have had swords at my valuable that we all used. Our gender neutral knights of honor as our wedding party quote-unquote was very enthused about the sword's idea and we used it to great effect.
[Enzo]: Otherwise, you can find me on Discord at Worlds of Enzo. And I think that's about all I have to plug because I have a very, very limited social media presence. I am perpetually offline.
[Dan]: You and me both, I find life is a little bit better lived that way.
[Enzo]: It is a blessing and sometimes a curse, but yes.
[Dan]: It is very much both of those things, but I'll go ahead and let you go because I know that we're like right up against your time. So thank you so much for being here.
[Enzo]: Thank you so much for having me on this amazing conversation that we've been able to have in the discussion that we've been able to create for this.
[Dan]: Thank you again for the conversation. This was fantastic. So one more time, everyone. I've been danger to Andrews, the host and GM of DN Dark. This has been Enzo, and this has been Table Talk.
[Dan]: And I hope you enjoyed what we brought to the table.
[Dan]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Table Talk, created hosted and edited by myself. Danger Day & Jers, with Arkham by Jordan Nelson.
[Dan]: Our guest this episode was Enzo. Links to their work can be found in the episode description.
[Dan]: If you're interested in being a guest on this show, reach out to us at dndarkpodcast at gmail.com. Our theme song in Outro was created by Jeremy Volucci.
[Dan]: Check out more of us works on Instagram at Jeremy Volucci, under score, wreck of time. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time we have a guest take a seat at the table.