[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to Table Talk, a show where I chat with other creators in the TTRBG space about how they run their tables.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Danger'd Andrews, the GM and host of D&DARC, and joining us at the table today is a player GM professional photographer and DM for Dungeons & Cappins, a Liam Weinstock.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you so much for swinging by the chat with me to get us started.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us a little about yourself, your history with TTRPGs and of course about Dungeons and Cabins?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I have been playing D&D for about like 10 years, 7 or 8 of those years have been as a DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started playing D&D at the beginning of high school when a friend back then introduced me to it while we were actually on a music department camping trip for like the orchestra and the band
[SPEAKER_00]: started this whole thing where it just, again, part of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I totally understand that I got pulled in tangentially in college, dabbled a little bit in pathfinder, a little bit in D&D, and started off with a couple of pathfinder one shots before I understood what the difference was.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they kind of worked my way through there, started with grant how it's honey-hiced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was kind of my first 4A into DMHING and had an absolute blast with that before going into Dungeons & Dragons 5E for full campaign stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember on the highest, I have last blamed that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, it feels like one of the perfect entryways into the hobby.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so simple, very easy to teach, very easy to learn, and it's such a fun, silly premise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's a good to-dipper.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we're talking about, like, for experiences, DMing, my was very rocky.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got into DMing a second slash year last year of high school, where there was a D&D club, and seeing that I was the only person in that, like, French circle, they knew who played D&D.
[SPEAKER_00]: They brought me on was like, you were the DM now,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started off doing what Brennan Lee Mulligan is doing right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's very unprepared and also just much stupid where I was like, I guess I can do 12 people at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a nightmare in a half, just come in a loan.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, ended up splitting the groups up and did like a biweekly game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when my second hurdle came where I did a home brew game, not necessarily knowing what was gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And moment that they were like, oh, okay cool, let's go up the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: That quickly derailed and I scrambled quickly
[SPEAKER_00]: a curse of strad.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's definitely a memorable for our six-period DMing, I'd say.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, then I DMed that group per like a few months, then COVID happened, and then I just kind of unfortunately, fizzled out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I made the, um, I guess bold is the generous word for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Choice of learning how to GM on Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, so DN Dark was like the first campaign that I had run.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had done a couple of one shots beforehand, but I was talked into it by a friend of mine, Grayson, who plays the invisible man, he talked me into making a podcast out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: A few of us had a little bit of experience, but we were mostly learning in real time doing the show, so I look back at the early parts of D&D arc, and comparatively we've come a long way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very easy to disparage your early works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like seeing the first season of an animated show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially like with a sitcom or anything, looking back at like the first season of the office, first season of Parks and Rec, a lot of those types of shows.
[SPEAKER_01]: They usually take a little bit of time to find their identity and footing.
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, I felt like we really locked in with our show by about episode 16.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's usually my recommended starting point for people trying to jump on and in.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I, similarly, I can really pinpoint and see my own learning points throughout early parts of the show where I was very siloed into my plotting and planning and much more linear in my approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a lot more confident in how I approach the table now at this point, which to throw it as a question back to you, how have you seen your own growth points and what your
[SPEAKER_00]: that is a really good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know from the first time I started DMing it was very much I stuck to the script.
[SPEAKER_00]: I maybe had some like cool NPCs that I would like insert in but it was very like rigid and obviously I've come a long way since then.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that I'm not a huge fan of running combat, I've learned to enjoy narrowing combat and facilitating it, but I know that over the years I have learned this more and more about myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am very much a roleplay heavy DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just love the narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see the game as collaborative storytelling.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that, I also encourage my players to have all the agency they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say like looking back at like the Kirsta Strong campaign that was not necessarily the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do I do see by shortcomings in that where I was very railroady and it was it wasn't necessarily the best of times.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean my players were having a good time but it was like I knew I was pushing rather than like introducing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, over the years I've, you know, come into my own style.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very, I like introducing new rules or like tweaking mechanics within the game that I'm like, I get by this is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want that to run in my campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's definitely something negotiating in that during Dungeons of the cabins, just but like, okay, what are some homebrew rules that I can integrate into the campaign without, you know, skewing everyone else's experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that, I'm just very much a roleplay intrigue and medium land.
[SPEAKER_01]: I relate to that very heavily.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I do want to peek through your brain a little bit about what that conversation looks like on the back end of when you are having to run something that is kind of tied together with what these other tables are doing within the constraints of the event.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much does that home ruin rules conversation come into play between like both your table and the wider event?
[SPEAKER_00]: With that, all the VMs have their own specific home rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing that is like, you know, narrative changing, but like, I know Alec Plachman from the first week.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had a home rule where you either had to roll inside the die straight or didn't count.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was definitely a little bit like, huh, I never really thought about like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Me, I just roll onto the map and be like, that's the number.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think you, you might have noticed when I went to your table where I just asked like, okay, how are we doing crits?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we doing healing potions?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we doing all those sort of things?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, like with those like little things, like obviously a conversation needs to be had with Sammy, but like there's a little bit of wiggle room with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in terms of the broader rules, we stick to a set list.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gotcha.
[SPEAKER_01]: I imagine a big part of that too, I kind of felt like the general equalizer with a lot of the different tables, both from the player and GM side of things, for the event this year was deciding to use the 2024 rule set, which at the time was very, very new, so we kind of collectively had on both sides everybody, on unsure footing of trying to navigate like, okay,
[SPEAKER_01]: what are the differences with this new rule set and how do we navigate this space?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like being in that kind of space of uncertainty had some benefits as well as drawbacks on both sides.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like especially when we came to character creation, I don't know if you experienced that in your like session zero, but like we definitely had some marriages between the
[SPEAKER_00]: the background, we could integrate a necromancer, for example, like that's one of the things that we noticed in the first week during sessions here in character creation stuff, where I had my players asking me if you know classes like necromancer was still on the table, because that's not integrated into the new set of rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were definitely times at the camp where I made a rolling based off of like 5E rules and then when my players was like, actually I think this I'm like, oh, you're right, my bad I will say like I definitely prefer 5E myself and I think I'll continue running my games in 5E, but it was a good learning experience to say the least.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my first foray into the new updated rule set.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like ideas from the 2024 rule set.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think in general, I prefer the 2014 one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the power creep is kind of getting to a breaking point.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like the player characters are just a little bit too strong at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that might just be a personal sensibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I see where you're coming from.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like for me, my main thing which sounds weird coming from a DM is like a lot of it felt like, okay, this is the DM's discretion referred to the DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while that is well and good, that doesn't seem like a new system.
[SPEAKER_00]: That just seems like, okay, you can either go with this or refer back to
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a common criticism of like a lot of things that Wizards of the Coast has been putting out over the last several years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is they've been skewing as a design philosophy a lot more non-committally with the general caveat that all systems really come down to the GM's discretion and the players and it's a conversation from both of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it feels like what they're producing more and more is suggestions of
[SPEAKER_01]: themings of this new set or like this is what you might do, but it's really the GM's job to decide what the rules for this are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the magic of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, two tables are like, you know, all these variations you always have.
[SPEAKER_00]: DMs who disagree with rules, but they are taking written rules that are concrete and established to end deciding what to do with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there are plenty of virtues with the stuff that they're putting out more recently, too, and a lot of really cool ideas, but I know Daniel who plays the mummy in Diendark recently ran a spell jammer campaign, and that was his big complaint about the new spell jammer release was
[SPEAKER_01]: There weren't really any rules for how Vessel to Vessel Combat worked.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just kind of a general vibe and suggestion.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what the book kind of recommended was just don't just get the ships close enough together that you can board and then do just standard person to person playing field combat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he had to kind of Frankenstein together from
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was two E was when the first spell jammer came out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he put together that with the ghosts of salt marsh rules for ship combat and like a little bit of star finder rules and kind of patched together a functional ship to ship combat thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I know that that was a big gripe that he had was that the game didn't really provide a framework for how that should work and with a like space fairing thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like having Star Wars without the lightsabers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I ran into some of the issues when I was running like more futuristic campaigns, where I had like quickly either find third party systems that did like ship to ship combat, or I had to just do it myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's unfortunate, but what can you do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it comes with the territory, not to be like too negative about the medium as a whole.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, we still love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still an absolute blast in a great time and like I said there are with the 2024 release there are ideas that I really enjoy about it There's a lot of like little new class features that are some fun quality of life improvements and some fun ideas that they're exploring You could argue how well they're implemented, but I like the ideas that they're starting to toy around with
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, I fully agree with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are quite a few ideas that I do like from this little class features that give, you know, classes like fighters more to do than just hit things absolutely so to transition this back towards dungeons and cabins a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me a little bit about your process of getting involved with that?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that like being brought into the fold there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's a funny one, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: So originally I didn't come to them as a DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw an Instagram ad.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first I thought it was maybe a scam.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: then I went to the website.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw the people involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked them up and like, it was like, oh, okay, then I reach out to them and be like, hey, I really like what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you need a camp photographer because I like, I do photography and Sammy came back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, thank you for your interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not looking for a photographer at this time, but we'll keep you in mind for the future and then I put the matter to bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, I tried and then I have one of those moments where I just shoot up out of bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh fuck, that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, oh my God, duh.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I email them and say, hey, I'm not sure if you remember me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reached out about being a camper talker.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was wondering if there are other ways to get involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, are you looking for DMs?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the same way we responded, particularly, it was like, we're actually considering on expanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll get back to you on that when we have some more definitive news a few weeks later, we're looking for new DMs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: interview process, what my DMing style is like, what you think the role of a DM is the post to be in all that sort of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I got to meet with some DMs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to suggest some things for the campaign, introduce my own monster.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I mean, the rest is history.
[SPEAKER_00]: I DMs that first time, it was an amazing experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And evidently, I did something right, so they brought me back for a second year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Sammy had a lot of good praise for you in your style, and the season was a very invaluable member of the team.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you clearly made a very good, strong impression, and it's fun that you were able to bring for the contribute monsters and everything to what the plan was for all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: In that kind of given take,
[SPEAKER_01]: how much were you stylistically affected by doing that event?
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, what have you learned from the other GMs?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what do you think of your own style has kind of rubbed off on them?
[SPEAKER_00]: In hindsight, there were quite a few things from Premier League with how to like,
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like with some new perspectives in role playing and pushing an narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I remember the first week when Joey and Zach were head on head with the big bad and like seeing how they interacted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I did not think that at the time I had to drive from San Francisco to San Bernardino.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that gives me a whole lot of time to think, and I was like, ah, okay, but that I can see how I can integrate this into the finale for my party.
[SPEAKER_00]: And between like prepping for sessions and like running around taking pictures throughout the weekend, I never really had time to properly sit down and reflect on like, okay,
[SPEAKER_00]: But like there were definitely things that you know when driving back thinking about like it was a good learning experience for me and especially since full disclosure, this is the only D&D event that I have done I am primarily a like.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in that home DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm I'm looking into being in a lot of like working at some game stores to like, you know, be in a house team and then right now, but like it was incredibly daunting for me, especially that first year, me being like, oh, I'm a hobby DM for like eight years and then you have people like Johnny Stanton Joe we Zach who like they are established and they are known and I'm just like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will say like my experience DMing with them has definitely put those like insecurities to bed where I I realize this is a community there are people who are more established but like we're all here for the same reason we are here to have fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are here to tell an amazing story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not entirely sure what I have done exactly to rub off on other DMs, but like, if anything maybe like, this is not necessarily the hottest of takes, but I personally, I think that players should have agency in how they fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similar to like natural 20s like a map mergers.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you want to do this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have how do you fuck up?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic and you know, obviously it's a conversation to have with my players where I'm like, okay This is how I do failures.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not abuse it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to be an eventful DM, but I am going to like I'm going to give you a proportion of consequence for that failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of just like, I just miss No, you're gonna twist your ankle
[SPEAKER_00]: But in that, like, it makes things more fun and more fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything rubbed off on anyone, I would say maybe that bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, again, I think we're all focused on our own games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you over here, the like in my case, like I overheard like my on a monologue at some point and I was like, oh, that, okay, that's a good description.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll steal that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, obviously, like, you know, we debrief after a session or something like that, just see where everyone is at and how they've dealt with this or how they didn't like, you know, tried to flavor certain aspects of the game, but I will say I do like my how do you fuck up system a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great and that's very similar to a thing that Jordan who plays the Wolfman in our show does.
[SPEAKER_01]: She GMs our home games and it's a thing that we have just started to do a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: We started it with specifically on Perception checks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we started to apply it in general, just because there's the typical wall that you kind of bump into with failed perception checks or not one perception checks.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of impossible not to medigame around that of like, well, obviously the information you're going to tell me from this not one is going to be unreliable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they kind of intuitively take the opposite from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that we started doing to get around that that she started doing and that I have stolen from her whole sale is.
[SPEAKER_01]: where they perception check in particular, if you roll a net one, you tell me what you think you see with a net one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I really like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not really consider perception checks with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I always look like, whatever I asked, like, how do you fuck up they're like, oh, I was looking in the sun, got in my eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, environmental things that are affecting how you perceive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not think about just tell me what you think you see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must deal with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a lot of fun and it gives you some really good ammunition as a GM and kind of gets around the like weird meta gaming of information there, but we've started applying that to other things and I love the combat how do you fuck up?
[SPEAKER_01]: I similarly have done for net ones coming up in combat.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of it was me getting tired of coming up with things and then after a certain point was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You tell me what happens with a net one and that had so much better results that I've started doing that more as a principal thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I agree wholeheartedly with that mindset and I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The players tend to be so much more punishing to themselves than anything that I would heat up and it's way more fair because it's their idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's also more reflective of what they want to get out of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's use like a
[SPEAKER_00]: I could tell you like, oh, yeah, you like your tongue while talking to the king.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, well, it does get the point across it's a little thought terminating, but what do you think you say to the king?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like they're running away from the pal's cards starting a intercontinental war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your players are literally telling you what they want and then you can just run with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: there's so much potential with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great mindset to have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then this is just a small observation that I had from seeing UDM very briefly in Dungeons & Cabins.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had as context for the listeners for the finale, we had the different tables with their various GMs rotated around briefly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we got
[SPEAKER_01]: little snippets of being able to interact with other GMs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I did not have a Liam as my GM from my table, but I very briefly had him swing by to play the big bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the setup for that was it was this God who was trapped in a mirror dimension that was breaking through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we were fighting different fractals and like aspects of this God that each of the GMs
[SPEAKER_01]: A thing that I immediately noticed when you came by, there were two things that have stuck out between myself and Jordan who was also at the table that we were chatting about in the aftermath, you would probably the single coolest description of a combat thing that I heard the whole week.
[SPEAKER_01]: and also you had a particular physicality that you brought to it that I noticed was pretty unique to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were very, very physical in your descriptions and you did a lot of like body language.
[SPEAKER_01]: You put your whole body and extreme gesticulation into everything that you were doing that really brought a good infusion of energy into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the one like mental image that stuck out for both myself and Jordan was your description of I think it was the big bad receiving a critical hit and then breaking and splitting apart into fractals and then collapsing back together was such a cool visceral image that stuck out in both of our heads.
[SPEAKER_01]: So from my perspective as a player those were the things that I clocked and noticed
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, like I mentioned that, like with with like the last, I mean, it's the last session of the camp.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I like I go all out like I I fucked up by me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's pretty bad if you touch.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like like simulating deaths, especially at my table where like falling on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that, I've got to feel that tomorrow, but you know, it's the last session I want to give my players by all and like it's those flavorings like with the like shattering with like different spectrums of
[SPEAKER_00]: I do love seeing, you know, it just in my periphery, how, you know, my fellow DMs, like interpret and embody their ideas of how this person acts, so yeah, like I, I will say though, like the epic style combat is a new thing for me, I would say that and like the constraint time was like the biggest curveball.
[SPEAKER_00]: up until like in terms of the cabins, I'm in that home DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we have like, you know, okay, we can only play for like four hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can only play for the X amount, but like it's an indefinite campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with this, you have to be off schedule.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to like reach this point otherwise, you know, everything falls apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was definitely new for me in terms of just time management.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, every lesson like jumping all over the place, I don't know, that's more than fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that actually segways very well into another one of my questions, which is just in terms of the challenges that the event presented to you and in the things that you've learned along the way, is there any information that you know now on the back end of this that you wish you knew before you started?
[SPEAKER_00]: going forward, I may run my section of the modules beforehand with like some close friends, just to see how it all comes together rather than like having a almost a head cannon of what I want to happen and then have that like completely fall apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: like I would probably run the game beforehand just to see how good is timing, how long should players spend any section or like what assumptions do players make and like could possibly go wrong as well like my like my my philosophy is it's what's between left and right the players will burn a whole straight through the fucking maze.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's partially the reason why I like, with my home bruise, I keep my planning very loose.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an overarching narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what I want to happen, but I also have contingency plans in case, you know, data side to burn a hole through the fucking maze.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are some of the best moments, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are the things that you can't plan for.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had the entire setup for our upcoming second season of D&D, spraying from one of my players, burning a hole through the world and causing a miniature apocalypse.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: We, like, a first specific in-show context, we had one of the Central McGoffins of the first season was the Necranama Khan, and at the mid-season finale, the players were able to get a hold of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: one of my players set up a long game scheme that partially worked mostly failed resulted in globally several holes and rifts into the abyss opening up all throughout the world with demons spilling out everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that became the setup for what season two is going into.
[SPEAKER_01]: It provided some immediate consequences for that campaign, but that became the inciting incident for the next one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you never know what kind of opportunities will come up from your players just running with the wildest ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I, with like both weekends, I was thrown the best curveballs with that with my players.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they actually, they definitely killed a few people, but like they delegated it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like in the first weekend when we were investigating a cultist stronghold in like trying to get rid of everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how the, how do you fuck up thing that works where they saw a room with a man to court into cultists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, them does minor illusion for a jackrabbit to dial up the mantle core.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were on that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say, how do you fuck up?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they explained that like, it doesn't just distract the mantle core.
[SPEAKER_00]: It puts him into a frenzy, a blood frenzy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that room essentially became a blender.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about like 30 cultists here, where all of them are like, oh, they're screaming in that room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the man's record just killed like 25 out of 30 of those cultists, where she's like, because there were so many people on the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did like waves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, blue team, go, renting, go, and they just died.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they started like resurrecting protests which had like canceled celebrity impersonators and all that sort of stuff where I think we had like a gnome fk junior
[SPEAKER_00]: It just say like extremely like outpocket things like I drink swamp water every time you attack and like I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second weekend was the exact opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the most diplomatic party I have ever encountered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Killin was at minimum.
[SPEAKER_00]: They taught like the first session where everyone was involved with the doppelgangers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They befriended one of the doppelgangers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, like I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say if give it a chance between stuff to write they'll borrow a hole to the maze, that's not a bad thing Yeah, he's a wonderful thing and that's why I love DMing so much It's because I come in with a certain narrative in mind and they see it and like they can either run with it or they can run with it
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the beauty of what this medium does best, I feel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a big part of why what I feel like my personal style has kind of developed into in terms of like what I plan and prep for.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a very villain centric mode of planning where
[SPEAKER_01]: I know what my big bad goals are and what steps they are taking to achieve it, and I generally in terms of my planning setup, what is the situation that the players are walking into?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then leave everything else up to chance, whatever happens from there happens, and
[SPEAKER_01]: what cascades from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know generally what the bad guys are trying to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll know generally what types of things they will pivot towards based on whatever chaos the player is introduced.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know the specifics and that's kind of come over time as like that's settled into a formula that has worked for me so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that the most important character in a narrative is not the hero, but the villain.
[SPEAKER_00]: The villain is the one who incites.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do not have a hero's journey without a disruption of the hero's day today life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like I look at my world and see what is wrong with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that or I reverse engineer where I see, okay, well, what does my villain want to do aside from just a world destruction and world domination?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's that's boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the rule that they're goal here?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I work backwards and be like, okay, so they don't like the government.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't they like the government?
[SPEAKER_00]: They screw up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are they corrupt?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then boom, I have a whole society ready to to go and you know, it can go both ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also operate on the philosophy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no such thing as a perfect society, and if there is, or there appears to be, something is deeply wrong underneath the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the Star Trek, the next generation episode, where you have this utopia, where there's no crime, and all that sort of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the moment someone does something wrong, death penalty, even stepping on the grass, death penalty.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that kind of like everything seems fine, but something's terribly wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I want my players to have a moment where the question is the feeling right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that gives for not just like introspective playing, but like, is a terrifying RP moment where, like, you find yourself agreeing with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you can pull that off, it is unreal.
[SPEAKER_01]: How good that feels.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I take is one of my biggest personal victories with the campaign for D&D arc.
[SPEAKER_01]: was an exchange that I had with one of our patrons after the finale where they said in their reaction and response to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good thing that the player characters were the heroes in this because I would have sided with the bad guy 100%.
[SPEAKER_01]: That got me, he had a point and was right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's I took that as a big personal victory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like even in like you know, oops, all bits, Dean team, okay, it's like elections up a vantris.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have compelling villains.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, I don't have it wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a time in a place for like the mustache twirler.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's for places like, you know, um, any haste.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it can be fun to sprinkle those in amongst more serious villains to give you that contrast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do, like, misdirects, but they did with the, for season of Fox Mockinger, where, like, it has to be the advisor with, like, the snake-like voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like there's a time in place where I must that's rolling villain, then you can do really fun things with it, but it should not be the main villain in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's, I love a good Mr. Act.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of my favorite tactics is to hide a big twist behind a small twist.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my biggest inspirations is Final Fantasy X.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had the SNES cartridge of at the time Final Fantasy 3 growing up and it was well-worn.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of my favorite pieces of media tried and true and the big thing that I love about it that's so unique to that game.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the joke things that I've heard as like a one sentence descriptor of the game is Final Fantasy 6 is Star Wars, but halfway through the Emperor is killed
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second in command villain who is the in your face mustache trolling one that like, okay, this guy's obviously the minion and this evil emperor, who the evil emperor has been the big bad of the past five games.
[SPEAKER_01]: So clearly, we know what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The evil emperor's got to be the big bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all right, we've set aside, we've fought and we've dealt with second in command mustache trolling minion.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then the mustache trolling minion takes over the game wins and then you have to basically put the pieces back together from after the apocalypse.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love using multiple different types of villains concurrently to skirt expectations and having the second in command be the actual
[SPEAKER_01]: It can sometimes be an obvious go, but I love when you can pull off that kind of subversion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm, let's, I'm a slipper subversion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially, you're able to pull that off.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always a joke in my party where like, we have a little guy and PC.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they think he's going to be some like fucked up over a border, something like that and like new taking notes.
[SPEAKER_01]: which you brought up Star Trek earlier as a point of inspiration.
[SPEAKER_01]: What types of media like Star Trek do you pull from that inspires you for these kinds of stories?
[SPEAKER_01]: What things are near and dear to you that are your big like?
[SPEAKER_01]: core pillars of inspiration.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say what my first homebrew campaign was based on and like what I've kind of modeled my other campaigns on it is the cycle of a wrong series by Edward W. Robertson.
[SPEAKER_00]: I
[SPEAKER_00]: love it so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the world building is amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The magic system with like ether and ether is amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I tried to integrate it into my campaigns at one point and it just it was almost too hard worth the effort to try to like categorize all of the spells of D&D to fit into these one or two categories because some of these do not even pertain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I
[SPEAKER_00]: When I first started out DMing, it was pretty much a carbon copy of the book, down to like the characters, the book, the story, like all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And through the years, it shed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I right now I have my own thing that is now kind of inspired by Edward W. Robertson's work.
[SPEAKER_00]: where like, if you switch your eyes, you can see the dynamics.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see like, oh, this heavily religious nation seems very familiar.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, I would say that and some like exercises I like to do also like heavily inspire me where I, you know, go on Pinterest, I see like concept art or in like environmental art and try to create the narrative around it, especially if it's like, you know, supernatural things like floating rocks or like megafauna or
[SPEAKER_00]: What is happening here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this the case?
[SPEAKER_00]: Same thing with music.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when I was driving down to DNC or Dungeoning the cabins, I was listening to Lavey's Fradial for like a solid hour just like recreating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is an amazing scene Will it happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe will it happen in the way that I envision it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably God
[SPEAKER_00]: But I find that not to be that guy, but I find inspiration everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing my MA in history right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of my campaigns, how I do my campaigns is I democratize them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a list of premises ranging from my fantasy to low fantasy and give them out to my players and they vote on what premise they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the same setting but at different points in that setting's history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I integrate like what I learn in my studies from like the methodology to like the like right now I'm studying strategies of colonial erasure in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a nation that you know has this one narrative but that is not that's it's either a very very closely cropped picture that doesn't give you the full
[SPEAKER_00]: someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see inspiration around me everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, at the risk of sounding pretentious.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I completely understand that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pull from so many different sources that I've trying to go through it in my head.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a wide net that it's a little pointless listing out and like trying to pinpoint what the central one's like.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a few like particular
[SPEAKER_01]: my general strategy what I will tend to do is I will settle on either a set piece or an encounter concept which usually will be the set piece first of like what's a fun setting or like visual that I can kind of anchor a moment of the campaign around okay what's a fun game that I can extrapolate from that and like what is the thing that I will build around that so like
[SPEAKER_01]: for Big Ben, for example, in D and Dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, okay, I know, obviously we're in Victorian London.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got to have the iconic clock tower there.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I do in there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, with Big Ben, where my brain goes to the media that I've seen for that is the great mouse detective, had like the fun Big Ben sequence of going up through the tower, dealing with all the gears and
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll use that as like a visual motif and inspiration for how I build around this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll have this vertical dungeon crawl through these gears and cogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so I'll have falling has to be a big part of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I make sure that the risk of falling happens constantly?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'll I'll have everybody be hunted down by specific creatures through there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm pulling from other media of like a
[SPEAKER_01]: Part of it was a timeliness thing because Alien Romulus had just come out and we had just done our Halloween special where we played in the Alien TTRPG.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to have a stalker type enemy so I used sloths because they're very similar to Xeno morphs in how they're set up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it became great mouse detective and Alien mashed up together is what this
[SPEAKER_01]: area is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll usually start with the set piece and then pull from wherever my brain goes to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got another section of the game that is like, oh, this is like that one party mission from dishonored.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll make a little social thing there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or for like the Frankenstein bit of building a body is kind of like crafting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let me look at whatever crafting mechanics I can cobble together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: But
[SPEAKER_01]: that's usually where I tend to stem from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, with Silk Song that came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw like 60 hours into that game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, just in Acts 1 and 2 alone, same thing with like Hollow Knight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have a period of my world's history where like an empire falls.
[SPEAKER_00]: I draw heavily on Hall night and silk song just in terms of like figuring out, okay, how do these empires fall?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the insight?
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, how can I make it interesting and interactive with the players?
[SPEAKER_00]: Disease, you know, like that is just a nice mishmash of like all the things we love in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, it's my campaigns tend to be such a hodgepodge of just my personal hyper fixations.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that feels like the way to do it exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Keeping an eye on time, we're starting to come to the end of the questions that I've got prepared for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just want to throw it back to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any other little bits of wisdom or advice you would have for anybody wanting to try to GM for an event like Dungeons & Cabins
[SPEAKER_01]: things that you've learned along the way that you would impart to somebody just starting out and stepping into the role that you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just you heard how I got involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw something that I really believed in and I just reached out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shocked my shot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Granted, I made it all of the first
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, yeah, just reach out and see what happens, it's like, I mean, I would suggest either looking for something that is coming out that is like new and also like look outside of like your immediate space and see what opportunities there, but also don't forget your backyard.
[SPEAKER_00]: because, you know, more often than not, you'll, you'll be surprised and there may not be a we're hiring, but like, it's a nice poll to be like, hey, come to our store.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have an in-house DM, just explore.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's generic as fuck, but like, yeah, there really is something to be said about taking that leap of faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think having some persistence behind it, too, is a big part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me think of, as part of my bachelor's degree, we had to get an internship.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I was looking for places to intern with, I was reaching out to a bunch of places, but I had one primary one that I really wanted to get.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I managed to get my internship there because I gave them a call once a week for two and a
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they finally said, all right, we get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got an opportunity for you to come in and start in turning here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can slot in in this spot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was able to get my internship that way just from having the faith to call and reach out and the persistence to keep going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the persistence is key here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's one thing to say like, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they're not looking for something right now, that does not mean that they are just looking for something later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you get rejected, do not treat it as a shut-in-locked door.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not auditioning for a movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will still be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to clarify for my internship, I kept calling and getting no response.
[SPEAKER_01]: if you are told no in a case like that, there is a certain amount of understanding when to cut your losses and move on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, keep that in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that's not to say like, oh, we're not looking for something right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'll try again next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's not what I would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I said, I would first look at, you know, who's in your backyard?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can you get involved in there?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then from there, you can grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is just casting your net.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's great advice for life in general, not just TTRPGs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then last thing before we wrap up, are there any other miscellaneous things that you want to touch on any topics we didn't cover or things that you want to make sure don't get left on said before we wrap up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's one thing I was talking with Joey Hayak the other week about getting involved in the D&D community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just to add on to that advice and to impart the advice that they gave me for DMs looking to get involved, understand what you are about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't much easier to put yourself out there if you know the ABCs of who you are as DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: where I did not like an itemized list of every character, but like I know that I may roleplay heavy DM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that I like to run campaigns with political intrigue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are things that, you know, like if you cast your net, the right fish are going to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moved in the knot, you'll get happy players, rather than a player who's like, wait a minute, this is just strictly roleplay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looking to do combat.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is great advice to end off on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you again for coming by and chatting with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: To wrap things up, can you let our listeners know where they can find you if they want to look into your photography or your projects, anything like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so for my photography, I'm mainly on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_00]: I go by the handle, you see why stock photos and for my D&D content, which granted, uh, I'm just starting that account.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't really have any content to speak up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tag Dice Pot DM.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: One more time.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I really appreciate you coming by and chatting with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you for reminding me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a wonderful chat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thank each and every one of you for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: One more time, everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Danger Day Andrews, the GM and host of D&D Ark.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been chatting with Ilyam Weinstock and this has been Table Talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope you enjoyed what we brought to the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Table Talk, created hosted and edited by myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Danger Dan Jurves, with artwork by Jordan Nelson.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our guest this episode was a Liam Weinstock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Links to his work can be found in the episode description.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're interested in being a guest on the show, reach out to us at dndarkpodcast at gmail.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our theme song and outro was created by Jeremy Voluci.
[SPEAKER_01]: Check out more of us on Instagram at Jeremy Voluci underscore wreck of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we'll see you next time we have a guest take a seat at the table.