WEBVTT 00:04.857 --> 00:13.265 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to Table Talk, a show where I chat with other creators in the TTRPG space about how they run their tables. 00:13.926 --> 00:31.624 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Danger Dancers, the GM and host of D&D Ark, and joining us at the table today is a player from the D&D 5E actual play podcast D&D 404, Dan. 00:32.785 --> 00:41.757 [SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you get us started by telling a little bit about this particular Dan, tell us about yourself, your history and TTRPGs, and about your show D&D 404. 00:42.218 --> 00:42.818 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course. 00:42.878 --> 00:44.641 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll give you the brief rundown on my life. 00:45.302 --> 00:51.490 [SPEAKER_01]: So high school, I did a lot of theater was very fortunate enough to perform in the French festival when I was in high school. 00:51.710 --> 00:52.311 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nice. 00:52.672 --> 00:55.836 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was if nobody's ever been in the French festival. 00:55.896 --> 00:59.901 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a big quest, but it's worth the quest to go over to Scotland. 01:00.082 --> 01:01.223 [SPEAKER_01]: I highly recommend it. 01:01.203 --> 01:06.893 [SPEAKER_01]: but study TV film and also majored in graphic design in college. 01:07.454 --> 01:10.199 [SPEAKER_01]: My specialty is usually making videos go viral. 01:10.620 --> 01:15.168 [SPEAKER_01]: But now I'm a player and music editor for D&D404. 01:15.789 --> 01:17.091 [SPEAKER_01]: We've been doing that for five years. 01:17.652 --> 01:21.759 [SPEAKER_01]: Our first campaign, the big draw is that we have never played before. 01:21.799 --> 01:23.262 [SPEAKER_01]: We were all streamers. 01:23.242 --> 01:25.949 [SPEAKER_01]: and decided to try out Dungeons and Dragons. 01:26.711 --> 01:28.616 [SPEAKER_01]: And Falmed our way through our first campaign. 01:28.676 --> 01:38.922 [SPEAKER_01]: So we are now five years strong and we have learned a lot, but are still very new, I would say, especially to the D&D community as a whole. 01:39.155 --> 01:43.041 [SPEAKER_00]: What was it like jumping directly straight into the deep end? 01:43.501 --> 01:45.524 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I got a great word to describe that. 01:45.564 --> 01:49.650 [SPEAKER_01]: It'd be cringy, very cringy. 01:50.271 --> 01:52.154 [SPEAKER_01]: It's part of the charm, for sure. 01:52.214 --> 02:00.085 [SPEAKER_01]: When you listen to the first episode of our podcast, the camping one and the last episode, it is so drastically different. 02:00.205 --> 02:08.858 [SPEAKER_01]: And when I listen back on my own voice and the things we were doing, I cringe so much because I didn't, I don't know what I was doing, you know? 02:08.838 --> 02:15.825 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to do this thing for shock value because I'm just trying to learn what I'm able to do in the game or just create reactions. 02:16.466 --> 02:24.574 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, so cringing might be the most abstract I would say a thing that I went into in the interview that I did immediately before this. 02:24.634 --> 02:35.706 [SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't interview with the show 5 GMs in a trench coat and one of the things that we talked about similarly, it's kind of a stumbling block that every show goes through when they're 02:35.686 --> 02:40.451 [SPEAKER_00]: a phrase that I've kind of latched on to is cringe is the cost of entry. 02:40.731 --> 02:41.792 [SPEAKER_01]: That's I love that. 02:41.812 --> 02:45.116 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm taking that one with me to be honest because it's it's inevitable. 02:45.296 --> 02:46.117 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't get away from it. 02:46.417 --> 02:46.978 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 02:47.298 --> 02:55.727 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't put yourself out there to go through that initial learning process, you will never get to a point of excellence. 02:55.747 --> 03:01.373 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just it's a crucible that everyone has to 03:01.353 --> 03:17.623 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, one of the questions you sent me before this was, you know, advice on my give people and you kind of hit on one I've been thinking about for a long time and it's just start not enough people to start what they want to do the quality will come later just get it going and get that stuff out the door, you know. 03:17.671 --> 03:18.473 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 03:18.713 --> 03:23.023 [SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of similar with D&Dark, most of the D&Dark team. 03:23.063 --> 03:27.132 [SPEAKER_00]: We were jumping in for the first time in this hobby. 03:27.172 --> 03:33.966 [SPEAKER_00]: It was everybody involved either, never played D&D before, or hadn't played in a long time. 03:34.027 --> 03:37.013 [SPEAKER_00]: It had never played specifically fifth edition before. 03:36.993 --> 03:40.458 [SPEAKER_00]: was my first time GMing anything more than a one shot. 03:40.899 --> 03:49.071 [SPEAKER_00]: It was most of the players first times interacting with either as a podcast or as a medium doing the thing. 03:49.091 --> 03:57.043 [SPEAKER_00]: It was basically just kind of a shot in the dark that we committed to real hard and immediately fell in love with. 03:57.023 --> 04:04.276 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was a similar thing, too, of listening to our first episode, compared to the finale of our first season. 04:04.316 --> 04:09.666 [SPEAKER_00]: It is a stark night and day difference in terms of production quality. 04:09.686 --> 04:21.647 [SPEAKER_00]: A big part of that, too, was before our mid-season finale, we were producing the show weekly and IGM and edits, and do all the sound design. 04:21.627 --> 04:27.038 [SPEAKER_00]: and it was a grind doing all of that week to week to week. 04:27.619 --> 04:33.191 [SPEAKER_00]: After our midseason finale, we switched to biweekly and that dramatically improved the quality of the show. 04:33.211 --> 04:35.195 [SPEAKER_00]: I could edit the show more cleanly. 04:35.235 --> 04:40.345 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't as top a time table to be able to get everything turned around on. 04:40.325 --> 04:46.620 [SPEAKER_00]: from what I understand your show still does produce weekly, but you have everything kind of separated there. 04:46.640 --> 04:53.997 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell me a little bit about the under the hood of how your show is structured and organized from a podcast perspective? 04:54.162 --> 04:59.629 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, he definitely talked to the right guy for that because I was the editor for campaign one. 04:59.809 --> 05:02.052 [SPEAKER_01]: So there are a few steps here. 05:02.553 --> 05:05.797 [SPEAKER_01]: So of course the first thing is you get together and you record. 05:06.618 --> 05:09.582 [SPEAKER_01]: Press that red button and you get the thing going. 05:10.183 --> 05:19.595 [SPEAKER_01]: After we record everybody's audio, we do what we call an assembly cut and that's kind of like the bread and butter to our podcast maybe specifically that can be a little different. 05:19.836 --> 05:23.140 [SPEAKER_01]: Another podcast as far as pace and style is concerned. 05:23.120 --> 05:47.237 [SPEAKER_01]: we take away a lot of fluff, we take away a lot of the actions and ideas that don't go anywhere and we focus a little more in making it feel like a fluid story and once that's done it goes to sound effects and then music design, of course we master the audio on top of that and it all gets pooped out the other side as a nice kind of Hollywood production podcast. 05:47.217 --> 05:50.461 [SPEAKER_00]: Very very similar pipeline to what we do. 05:50.521 --> 05:54.246 [SPEAKER_00]: I basically do three passes of each episode. 05:54.506 --> 06:14.372 [SPEAKER_00]: First one is an assembly kind of where it is just me cutting everything out, dropping markers for all of the dice rolls, any sound effects that I know I'm going to be using, things like that, marking anything that we need to do minor pickups for, if something got cut off from a technical glitch or whatnot, or if 06:14.352 --> 06:17.617 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to cut something together and I need something to smooth the transition. 06:17.677 --> 06:32.479 [SPEAKER_00]: My second pass I will go through and clean up the timing of things a bit and then also put in music and sound effects and then I will do a third quality assurance pass where I get a 06:32.459 --> 06:44.325 [SPEAKER_00]: me make sure that everything is working and just very, very minor timing things or that's where I do a lot of like the volume mixing is in the third pass, the stuff like that. 06:44.345 --> 06:47.893 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of the general timeline for how we do it. 06:47.913 --> 06:50.940 [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like you guys approach your show very, very similarly. 06:51.123 --> 06:56.193 [SPEAKER_01]: We really do, it's made the process a lot better, especially now that we have an editor. 06:56.253 --> 07:02.805 [SPEAKER_01]: So now that we have an assembly cut editor, I can focus a little more on the music, it gives Tony more time to do the sound effects. 07:03.366 --> 07:07.073 [SPEAKER_01]: If nobody knew Tony does the sound effects, that's our guy. 07:07.053 --> 07:11.981 [SPEAKER_01]: and something you just said about timestamps and something sometimes need to rework. 07:12.081 --> 07:19.574 [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have a lot of time for that in campaign one, you know, kind of flying off the seat of our pants and just hit the wind at full force. 07:20.215 --> 07:30.512 [SPEAKER_01]: But now that we have the editor and we've kind of created that backlog and created a more consistent pipeline, we have more time now to do those things where we can be like, uh, 07:30.492 --> 07:32.736 [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of hard to understand what you're saying at this point. 07:32.776 --> 07:39.968 [SPEAKER_01]: You mind doing a redo of this take or maybe we accidentally said someone's name wrong, you know, and we can put those little things in at the end. 07:40.008 --> 07:40.630 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. 07:40.650 --> 07:46.119 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's doing the show by weekly as afforded us a lot of freedom and flexibility to be able to do that. 07:46.400 --> 07:50.827 [SPEAKER_00]: For the first half of the first season, I was basically putting out episodes of the show. 07:50.847 --> 07:55.335 [SPEAKER_00]: I would finish in episode the night of it's upload day. 07:55.315 --> 07:57.861 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was very, very tight turnaround. 07:58.001 --> 08:00.788 [SPEAKER_00]: I would rarely, if ever, be ahead. 08:00.828 --> 08:13.037 [SPEAKER_00]: Since we've adjusted our timing, it's been so nice being able to consistently have a small lead on things to be able to afford us, better, more higher quality things like that. 08:13.203 --> 08:29.929 [SPEAKER_01]: Consistency is really the key thing I've found and it seems like you've discovered something similar, you know, it doesn't really matter Truly what your upload schedule is as long as your audience knows when they can expect the damn episodes to come out. 08:29.909 --> 08:46.034 [SPEAKER_01]: and what that schedule is going to look like transparency is key, you know, just telling people if there are going to be delays, but making sure those come out at the same time and the same days, because when there's that chaos, it's kind of hard to follow as an audience member. 08:46.414 --> 08:53.124 [SPEAKER_01]: And I know because now I listen to podcasts and I get a little frustrated when podcasts are going all over the place and don't have a consistent schedule. 08:53.144 --> 08:53.605 [SPEAKER_01]: So, 08:53.585 --> 08:58.873 [SPEAKER_01]: 90% of podcasts fail because they don't get past episode 10, you know. 08:59.494 --> 09:05.203 [SPEAKER_01]: Once you've made about 10 episodes and you keep that going, you're going to learn a lot about where you've failed. 09:05.404 --> 09:15.019 [SPEAKER_01]: That might be a harsh way to put it and where you've succeeded and you can rework from there and keep going because if you just keep going, you're ahead of 90% of people out there. 09:15.218 --> 09:15.960 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 09:16.000 --> 09:27.486 [SPEAKER_00]: So to pivot the conversation a little bit, you actually did something for this interview that I haven't encountered before where you actually sent me a bunch of questions and discussion topics. 09:27.626 --> 09:28.468 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I sure did. 09:29.630 --> 09:32.913 [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to throw that back to you and honor some of those. 09:33.373 --> 09:52.411 [SPEAKER_00]: So among some of what you sent me was a lot of things that go into the storytelling aspect of D&D and a lot of like structural philosophical things like how you path stories, how you keep secrets, how you want to go about running the game. 09:52.911 --> 09:59.637 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's rapid fire through these topics that you sent me. 09:59.617 --> 10:00.398 [SPEAKER_00]: it to discuss. 10:00.859 --> 10:03.843 [SPEAKER_00]: I will drop my philosophy on that and then turn it back over to you. 10:03.883 --> 10:17.102 [SPEAKER_00]: So the way that I tend to structure stories and this is similar to how I write basically anything is I basically have a map with several mile markers along the way. 10:17.082 --> 10:24.251 [SPEAKER_00]: And the path in between each story beat is subject to change and is free form and is very loose. 10:24.411 --> 10:27.215 [SPEAKER_00]: I can get from point A to point B. 10:27.696 --> 10:29.298 [SPEAKER_00]: However, I get there. 10:29.778 --> 10:34.144 [SPEAKER_00]: But the start and end destination points are locked in stone. 10:34.464 --> 10:41.453 [SPEAKER_00]: So for running campaigns, I will do a lot of like at this location, I will have this event that happens. 10:41.433 --> 10:56.696 [SPEAKER_00]: and then how the players respond to that, how they get from there to the next one, entirely up to them, how they choose to solve the problem, I try to never anticipate what they will do because that is proven time and again, to be a fool's errand. 10:57.157 --> 11:04.167 [SPEAKER_00]: So I set up the situation they walk into and then however they go about it is entirely up to them. 11:04.147 --> 11:06.330 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's effectively it. 11:06.511 --> 11:17.047 [SPEAKER_00]: I know where all of the significant key points and waymarkers are, and then the path is entirely up to the players on how they get between each one. 11:17.568 --> 11:17.929 [SPEAKER_00]: Love it. 11:18.389 --> 11:30.468 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's I think that's a wonderful like, you know, a fundamental building block to D&D, because one of the biggest mechanics that increases fun is agency, right? 11:30.488 --> 11:30.829 [SPEAKER_01]: We all 11:30.809 --> 11:34.072 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll talk about agency and how we can increase her play or agency. 11:34.632 --> 11:42.900 [SPEAKER_01]: So that is always going to not only make it easy on yourself as a DM to know, okay, this is where I have to worry about the story beats. 11:43.300 --> 12:00.816 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to write everything in between because that's my player's job, but it also gives them a lot of freedom until they get to those beats to kind of play around, have fun, experiment, and sometimes I'll even lead to where you add things that you didn't think you were gonna add to the story 12:00.796 --> 12:01.597 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 12:01.738 --> 12:15.300 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of the best story moments in the show are things that I didn't initially plan for, that are rivets and inspiration that I take from what the players put down in place. 12:15.640 --> 12:21.029 [SPEAKER_00]: A big example is a thing that happens about like two thirds of the way through season one. 12:21.369 --> 12:26.618 [SPEAKER_00]: There is a huge 12:26.598 --> 12:42.063 [SPEAKER_00]: is effectively the inciting incident for what our second season is going to be based on and I had never set out with that idea in mind, but it was such a perfect setup and springboard that it's influenced so much going forward. 12:42.584 --> 12:45.028 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the sort of thing that 12:45.008 --> 12:52.771 [SPEAKER_00]: If you plan for it, it's not going to be as effective and your siloed into only what your brain can come up with. 12:53.192 --> 12:59.912 [SPEAKER_00]: So having the freedom for players to influence the story only improves things, at least from my history. 13:00.095 --> 13:00.936 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely. 13:01.998 --> 13:24.330 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering how to even transition into my thought about this because we discovered something very interesting after campaign one and story pathing became something maybe slightly different than what we just discussed for us because after campaign one I remember we did campaign one and the story wrapped up really well, but I felt a little unfulfilled not that. 13:24.310 --> 13:45.407 [SPEAKER_01]: Tony did anything wrong or did a bad job just I started realizing you know a lot of the ways I thought things might go didn't necessarily meet expectations and it's because of the game of the campaign when we didn't know where you know what this world was going to be we ended up writing a lot of things that didn't pan out to anything because 13:45.387 --> 13:58.930 [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have that understanding and transparency up front because there's new for us, you know, and what story pathhing has become for us is, you know, a lot of people in cinema will talk about Mad Max as an example of this, right? 13:59.110 --> 14:03.517 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, with Mad Max, it's a kind of a double linear story path, right? 14:03.618 --> 14:05.100 [SPEAKER_01]: You go to the location. 14:05.080 --> 14:07.162 [SPEAKER_01]: You realize the thing is in there, you need it. 14:07.243 --> 14:10.466 [SPEAKER_01]: You go back to the start and the thing you need is back at the beginning. 14:10.847 --> 14:19.537 [SPEAKER_01]: And we realized moving into campaign two, that when we create every campaign from here on out, we start with a story path. 14:19.817 --> 14:24.162 [SPEAKER_01]: And what this one became, for example, is this is a web story path in campaign two. 14:24.783 --> 14:34.294 [SPEAKER_01]: And that means we have a central hub, but there are going to be a lot of things that we go out to other towns, other locations, 14:34.274 --> 14:34.895 [SPEAKER_01]: to the center. 14:35.336 --> 14:46.180 [SPEAKER_01]: Other story path examples are linear, semi-linear, you know, spiral, not sure what you'd call it, but like Atlantis, you know, delving down into the earth. 14:46.421 --> 14:47.143 [SPEAKER_01]: Like an iceberg. 14:47.604 --> 14:48.706 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like an iceberg. 14:48.726 --> 14:49.247 [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. 14:49.307 --> 14:50.089 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. 14:50.069 --> 14:57.597 [SPEAKER_01]: And what that did for us is it helped us imply not only character motivations, but story motivations. 14:58.217 --> 15:04.684 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you create a story path and you're up front with your players about, hey, you know, this is the genre of the campaign. 15:04.744 --> 15:07.827 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the type of story path we're going to experience. 15:08.348 --> 15:14.695 [SPEAKER_01]: It helps your players make informed decisions about how they want to run their character in this world. 15:14.775 --> 15:18.979 [SPEAKER_01]: Because then they know, oh, if we aren't doing this big trek, 15:18.959 --> 15:28.533 [SPEAKER_01]: up the mountain to this final destination, you know, maybe I won't add this story element into the story because it seems superfluous to that kind of plot. 15:29.053 --> 15:37.866 [SPEAKER_01]: And now it's given us all this very clear character direction and it's making the role play, especially if you'll much more vibrant in this campaign. 15:38.267 --> 15:47.059 [SPEAKER_01]: So that is kind of like the overarching idea and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on on that and kicking a story path and helping that inform you decisions. 15:47.123 --> 15:51.891 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that that structurally from the ground up is a huge thing. 15:52.191 --> 15:54.435 [SPEAKER_00]: We're actually kind of going in the opposite direction. 15:54.495 --> 16:07.455 [SPEAKER_00]: Our first season was more of a web where we had a central hub that we kept coming back to and branching out on doing minor excursions to other settings within short distances from it. 16:07.715 --> 16:10.600 [SPEAKER_00]: But it was very centralized in a small location. 16:10.580 --> 16:17.834 [SPEAKER_00]: Our second season, the premise of that one, it's going to be taking place in America in the 1930s and the player characters are all going to be cryptids. 16:18.575 --> 16:31.159 [SPEAKER_00]: And the literal path that I did from that is I took a blank map of the United States and I drew effectively a road trip path from one end of the country to the other. 16:31.199 --> 16:32.301 [SPEAKER_00]: So 16:32.281 --> 16:43.714 [SPEAKER_00]: We went from a much more centralized kind of web-based story and we are transitioning to a much more linear, long-distance track and epic very fun. 16:44.095 --> 16:59.453 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's affected a few things but I think the big thing that you hit on was a lot of it does come down to the prep and the discussions of what kind of story you want to tell and what kinds of things you are pulling from for your characters. 16:59.433 --> 17:16.176 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a little bit related to the story pathing, but I think can be a really good thing for just about any structure that I've started doing now when I run games is I ask everybody in addition to any like game specific questions, there are three questions that I now always ask. 17:16.156 --> 17:18.500 [SPEAKER_00]: What is your character's short-term goal? 17:18.981 --> 17:21.606 [SPEAKER_00]: What is your character's long-term goal? 17:22.066 --> 17:25.733 [SPEAKER_00]: And what kind of story do you the player want to tell? 17:25.793 --> 17:31.583 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like jumping into any game, knowing those three things, 17:31.563 --> 17:54.752 [SPEAKER_00]: helps you really shape and form a really interesting and dynamic character arc no matter what the size and scope of the story is you can have a really interesting character even if you're doing a one shot that long-term goal I think is a really good foundation for what is the thing that my character probably will not accomplish within this story what is the thing that they are trying to accomplish immediately 17:54.732 --> 17:59.019 [SPEAKER_00]: And then do I want them to succeed or fail on that? 17:59.180 --> 18:01.864 [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of lessons do I want them to learn? 18:01.924 --> 18:05.511 [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of story am I interested in trying to shape? 18:06.092 --> 18:14.226 [SPEAKER_00]: Which, that last one, not everybody's going to know that's not always going to be important to every player to have that planned and plotted out. 18:14.606 --> 18:14.707 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 18:14.727 --> 18:16.690 [SPEAKER_00]: But especially in the long term, 18:16.670 --> 18:39.724 [SPEAKER_00]: As a GM, knowing what my players are aiming for for what kind of story they want to tell with their character, what kind of arc they want for them, or just overall for the team, what story we want to tell together, helps me aton as a GM in planning and helping deliver on what the players are specifically looking for. 18:39.788 --> 19:02.607 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and a small word, but very keyword you said there is we, you know, this is the most collaborative storytelling medium I've ever been a part of and I think that's why people end up getting kind of sucked in, you know, because at the end of the day, we are constantly shaping and reshaping each other's stories by our own agency to do whatever we want in this crazy world. 19:02.772 --> 19:09.387 [SPEAKER_00]: That actually transitions very well into another topic that you send that you wanted to touch on and discuss, which was secrets. 19:09.807 --> 19:14.638 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's campaign secrets or character secrets, minor major or extreme. 19:14.753 --> 19:27.514 [SPEAKER_00]: I have experience on both ends of that going well and that not going well, so I have very strong opinions on how to approach secrets within TTRPGs. 19:28.456 --> 19:37.150 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of it comes down to that communication between players and GM, up-of-table outside of the game, of 19:37.130 --> 19:40.755 [SPEAKER_00]: what it is your goal is and what you're looking for. 19:40.795 --> 19:50.610 [SPEAKER_00]: I think secrets are seldom worth the risk that you take by having them, depending on how extreme they are. 19:50.630 --> 20:01.686 [SPEAKER_00]: And the more information that everyone at the table is armed with in advance, the more that everyone can play into it. 20:01.666 --> 20:13.000 [SPEAKER_00]: I think when it comes to character specific secrets, you will get a stronger result if the players are glued in to what you are doing. 20:13.440 --> 20:17.606 [SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to character secrets, there's kind of a few different ways that you can approach it. 20:18.166 --> 20:26.897 [SPEAKER_00]: A good way that I've seen this framed is open secrets, 20:26.877 --> 20:35.354 [SPEAKER_00]: So an open secret is a thing where the player characters themselves may or may not be in the know about what's going on. 20:35.735 --> 20:37.318 [SPEAKER_00]: But the players themselves do. 20:37.719 --> 20:44.953 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you have a character who is secretly aware wolf, the other players already know that, but the characters have not figured it out. 20:44.933 --> 21:01.423 [SPEAKER_00]: The players can then lean into the fun dramatic mystery of that for the characters to resolve, and it won't be a surprise to anyone at the table, but everyone can narratively and dramatically lean into the information that their characters do and don't know. 21:01.403 --> 21:08.733 [SPEAKER_00]: If it's a semi-closed secret, the player knows and the GM knows, but the rest of the table does not. 21:09.054 --> 21:13.340 [SPEAKER_00]: The player and the GM can collaborate on that, work together with that to get that reveal. 21:13.701 --> 21:22.113 [SPEAKER_00]: You still get the reveal for the table, but you have that worked in from the ground up to work with the story and narrative. 21:22.633 --> 21:24.576 [SPEAKER_00]: A closed secret. 21:24.556 --> 21:34.283 [SPEAKER_00]: is a thing that only the player knows and is the most dangerous version of this that usually goes the most wrong. 21:34.303 --> 21:35.346 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, certainly. 21:35.366 --> 21:39.477 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure if I would ever allow it, who's secret myself from my games. 21:40.452 --> 21:47.183 [SPEAKER_00]: At best, it is usually in consequential, at worst it can be very damaging to the story. 21:47.203 --> 21:51.510 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen kind of both extremes of that. 21:51.971 --> 21:54.435 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, I can see the reasoning, right? 21:54.455 --> 21:57.600 [SPEAKER_01]: I can see where a DM might be excited to be like, 21:57.580 --> 22:05.874 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I want something that I don't know and I want to be surprised sure, but I think you just lose out on so much of that collaboration when you do something like that. 22:06.335 --> 22:19.858 [SPEAKER_01]: Everything you said is resonating very heavily with me right now because this has been a learning process for us as well because when we decided, okay, we're going to do a web story structure, which means we should involve a lot more secrets than we're used to. 22:19.838 --> 22:38.910 [SPEAKER_01]: We immediately started learning on the fly a lot of these lessons you're already spitting out right in front of me and I immediately discovered the second we started playing probably like episode three or four I went man this player has something that directly relates to my character. 22:38.890 --> 22:56.987 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we should just talk about it and make a better story and we can give each other little hints and nods in the right direction that might push each other's narratives in a better way and we could if we just waited and expectations will take away a lot of your joy in the indie, of course. 22:57.108 --> 23:00.274 [SPEAKER_01]: But when you wait for the best perfect moment, 23:00.254 --> 23:01.836 [SPEAKER_01]: to like release your secret. 23:01.856 --> 23:09.246 [SPEAKER_01]: I think most of the time it'll fall flat because by the time you've waited for that perfect moment, it might not even be relevant anymore. 23:09.547 --> 23:10.848 [SPEAKER_01]: It might not have the same punch. 23:11.369 --> 23:13.111 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that moment might not ever come. 23:13.252 --> 23:14.573 [SPEAKER_01]: And it might never come. 23:14.593 --> 23:15.975 [SPEAKER_01]: You're absolutely right about that. 23:16.616 --> 23:28.472 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I found that we've become more open about describing our secrets, although we want them to be semi-closed or the DM and the player, create the inner workings of how that plays out 23:28.452 --> 23:34.399 [SPEAKER_01]: It's become such a great tool to give each other nods on, hey, this is the theme of my secret. 23:34.459 --> 23:38.603 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is a very clear idea of what this secret's about. 23:38.984 --> 23:51.878 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll leave the reveal for the reveal, but that'll help you maybe make decisions on how we're going to interact with each other to, you know, help each other achieve our goals and create a very interesting narrative. 23:51.959 --> 23:52.640 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 23:52.660 --> 24:03.396 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that I'm currently doing in a home game where I'm a player for that, one of the players on D&D arc is running a curse of straw game for a different group that I'm a part of. 24:04.057 --> 24:19.941 [SPEAKER_00]: And a thing that we're doing for that game that I would highly recommend that everybody try, it won't necessarily work well for every campaign, but it's been the most fun version of 24:19.921 --> 24:41.473 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a semi-closed, semi-open way of going about it with the set of that we're kind of approaching and going for is that being in the midst of Barovia in curse of strad, your characters when they enter Barovia and are a part of the myths, it affects your memory and so we're operating from a sense of minor amnesia. 24:41.453 --> 25:08.254 [SPEAKER_00]: and what Jordan, who's the DM for that one and who plays the wolf man in season one of D&D arc, a thing that she had us do was send to her one truth about our character, one lie about our character, and one half truth or rumor about our character, and then she randomly sent those nuggets about our characters to a different person on the team. 25:08.234 --> 25:09.336 [SPEAKER_01]: I cannot believe this right now. 25:09.376 --> 25:13.704 [SPEAKER_01]: I have to interject because Tony did the exact same thing for our podcast. 25:15.107 --> 25:15.487 [SPEAKER_00]: Great. 25:15.868 --> 25:16.429 [SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy. 25:16.509 --> 25:16.990 [SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy. 25:17.010 --> 25:17.611 [SPEAKER_01]: You bring this up. 25:17.932 --> 25:19.114 [SPEAKER_01]: Same exact process. 25:19.174 --> 25:20.136 [SPEAKER_00]: That is so funny. 25:20.757 --> 25:21.719 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man, but that's been. 25:22.200 --> 25:28.993 [SPEAKER_00]: It's been the most dialed in to each other's characters that I've seen in a table setting. 25:29.013 --> 25:29.213 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 25:29.193 --> 25:34.922 [SPEAKER_00]: We gave us all an active investment and like a mystery to try to unravel about each other. 25:35.002 --> 25:41.512 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're all very invested in each other's characters because it's been gamified trying to figure out. 25:41.992 --> 25:44.596 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, who's info do I have? 25:44.636 --> 25:46.679 [SPEAKER_00]: And how accurate is it? 25:47.441 --> 25:50.425 [SPEAKER_00]: Do I have all the lies? 25:50.405 --> 25:52.167 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man. 25:52.307 --> 25:58.734 [SPEAKER_00]: That's such a fun way to play for anybody who hasn't tried playing that way highly recommend doing that at least once. 25:59.055 --> 25:59.415 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yes. 25:59.835 --> 26:00.897 [SPEAKER_01]: It might be the best way now. 26:00.917 --> 26:01.357 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. 26:01.377 --> 26:01.918 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm loving it. 26:02.218 --> 26:06.903 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know much else to say about it because you made a lot of similar discoveries that I did as we've been playing. 26:07.544 --> 26:12.049 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that investment though, the investment becomes maximized because now it's a puzzle. 26:12.109 --> 26:16.013 [SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm trying to put pieces together about your character and you're doing the same for me. 26:16.033 --> 26:17.475 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, man, it's good. 26:17.506 --> 26:18.107 [SPEAKER_00]: It's great. 26:18.568 --> 26:32.110 [SPEAKER_00]: Continuing down the list of topics that you sent me, shoot the monk as a GM philosophy and gameplay thing, huge, great bit of advice to explain to anybody unfamiliar with the concept. 26:32.591 --> 26:39.542 [SPEAKER_00]: Monks have the ability to deflect missiles and projectile type attacks like that. 26:39.842 --> 26:44.610 [SPEAKER_00]: So the advice of shoot your monks effectively boils down to 26:44.590 --> 26:49.341 [SPEAKER_00]: Let your players do the thing they are good. 26:49.361 --> 26:55.937 [SPEAKER_00]: That ability will never come up if you specifically avoid engaging that so that the player never gets to use that ability. 26:55.977 --> 26:59.646 [SPEAKER_00]: Then why did they pick that character in the first place? 26:59.626 --> 27:07.846 [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, there is something to be said about challenging your characters and playing into their weaknesses to push them, or sure. 27:08.046 --> 27:17.348 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you never let them show off the thing they're good at, then there's no purpose in them playing that character and having strengths to begin with. 27:17.395 --> 27:19.277 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you said you said most of it right there. 27:19.297 --> 27:39.960 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even remember where I heard this from who the person was that said it, but I'm sure this is something that's been passed down for quite a while now through generations of Dungeons and Dragons players, but this goes for not just, you know, abilities, but your languages, right, your languages, your stats, things like that. 27:39.940 --> 27:46.395 [SPEAKER_01]: I have found that the most rewarding when I create opportunities for my players to succeed. 27:46.756 --> 27:55.215 [SPEAKER_01]: And in those moments of success, I have experienced some of the most joy I've ever seen out of my players in their eyes and their smile. 27:55.195 --> 27:57.459 [SPEAKER_01]: and I can't go back. 27:57.539 --> 27:58.240 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an addiction now. 27:58.280 --> 28:03.449 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just want to give him joy as much joy as possible when playing this silly little dice game. 28:03.529 --> 28:13.547 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you could just find ways to do that and not get caught up and we will talk about, you know, a lot of people will talk about adversarial DMing and how harmful that can be. 28:13.627 --> 28:20.258 [SPEAKER_01]: Not that there aren't maybe good ways to do it once in a while, 28:20.238 --> 28:31.879 [SPEAKER_01]: our players abilities and expectations, then it's all chaos, you know, there's no time to be the hero for just constantly subverting every single skill and attribute. 28:32.179 --> 28:38.290 [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't, I don't have anything else to say about that, but you, you definitely hit it on the head there where you want them to feel empowered. 28:38.431 --> 28:39.833 [SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, why would you play it? 28:39.813 --> 28:40.674 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 28:40.734 --> 28:44.338 [SPEAKER_00]: That is a compliment that I do have to give to Ben. 28:44.639 --> 28:53.889 [SPEAKER_00]: He plays the Frankenstein monster in Season 1 of D&D Arc, and he is currently GMing our interstitial campaign, which is using the Dark Souls TTRPG system. 28:54.290 --> 29:02.479 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a thing that he dialed into very quickly and is very good at, is letting our characters do the things they are good at. 29:02.459 --> 29:06.684 [SPEAKER_00]: I stumbled backwards into playing our party's tank. 29:07.245 --> 29:12.712 [SPEAKER_00]: I built a very social character in a set up that doesn't lend itself to social checks. 29:12.812 --> 29:31.555 [SPEAKER_00]: We, there were very few characters and opportunities at all to socialize, but one of the things that I had accidentally jumped into was having a character who had zero offensive capabilities, but was a very good damage sponge. 29:31.535 --> 29:36.247 [SPEAKER_00]: early on in combat, he was doing the typical DM thing of this character attack me. 29:36.367 --> 29:38.592 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to attack back the character that attacked me. 29:38.933 --> 29:40.938 [SPEAKER_00]: This person did a crazy amount of damage on me. 29:41.058 --> 29:42.141 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got to take them down. 29:42.181 --> 29:46.692 [SPEAKER_00]: And part of this was just a quirk of how I built the character. 29:46.672 --> 29:54.485 [SPEAKER_00]: I have no way to incentivize your attacking me, but I can take the hit and no one else can. 29:54.525 --> 30:01.758 [SPEAKER_00]: So the game very quickly for me turned into how do I convince the enemy to attack me? 30:01.778 --> 30:05.204 [SPEAKER_00]: And I started playing effectively like a fly. 30:05.384 --> 30:10.553 [SPEAKER_00]: I was a very taught heavy and annoyance character, and the game became okay. 30:10.533 --> 30:20.464 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to annoy the enemies into attacking me and make myself so much of a nuisance that even though mechanically I'm not a threat to them. 30:20.504 --> 30:31.195 [SPEAKER_00]: In order to get me to shut up, they need to attack me and get rid of me, and now I'm taking the hit while everyone else who is more of a glass cannon can focus on dealing the damage. 30:31.796 --> 30:36.000 [SPEAKER_00]: He locked into what I was doing there very quickly. 30:35.980 --> 30:41.770 [SPEAKER_00]: and did a very good job of meeting me where I was at and letting me get away with that. 30:42.371 --> 30:45.858 [SPEAKER_00]: So that is a big point of praise that I have for him for how he's been GMing that. 30:46.379 --> 30:47.621 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, everybody listen to Dan. 30:47.801 --> 30:50.887 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, listen to me, Dan, but also listen to this Dan because that is a good advice. 30:51.147 --> 30:51.728 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. 30:53.193 --> 30:58.759 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the biggest skill you could possibly have as a player in Dungeons and Dragons is adaptability. 30:59.479 --> 31:07.848 [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing is ever going to go as planned and that goes from a story role play perspective just as much as a mechanical perspective. 31:08.348 --> 31:22.002 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you can adapt to what your friends are giving you at the table, even if it's not how you pictured it going in your head, you're going to have so much more fun playing this game than you have any other game in your life, I promise. 31:22.218 --> 31:23.039 [SPEAKER_00]: absolutely. 31:23.320 --> 31:34.399 [SPEAKER_00]: I would say adaptability and communication are the two biggest most critical things for this, which transitions to another one of the topics that you brought up in PvP. 31:35.080 --> 31:40.309 [SPEAKER_00]: I think I guess that can only work with appropriate communication and adaptability. 31:41.150 --> 31:44.916 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll let you go ahead and take the lead on this one and then I'll follow up. 31:44.936 --> 31:48.242 [SPEAKER_00]: So what are your thoughts on general PvP? 31:48.526 --> 31:54.038 [SPEAKER_01]: So this is a very fresh one for us because we never really dealt with it in campaign one. 31:54.079 --> 31:58.729 [SPEAKER_01]: We just happen to have a party dynamic that didn't lead to those kind of scenarios. 31:59.150 --> 32:04.442 [SPEAKER_01]: But we learned very quickly, I think it's around episode seven of campaign two. 32:04.422 --> 32:11.992 [SPEAKER_01]: So Kylie, our new actress, she plays Vivian and I play Borem du Marais, and I'm kind of a shithead at the start of the game. 32:12.212 --> 32:19.442 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm kind of doing things at my own pace, my own rhythm that benefit me and Anna, necessarily the others. 32:19.522 --> 32:28.253 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going off doing things and she comes to get me and she in the middle of this role play is like, hey, can I intimidate Borem? 32:28.233 --> 32:34.140 [SPEAKER_01]: And we all thought it was like the most wonderful thing because she started yelling and her character hadn't done that before. 32:34.180 --> 32:37.784 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was also a moment of, well, my character respects people that are blunt. 32:37.804 --> 32:39.006 [SPEAKER_01]: This makes sense. 32:39.566 --> 32:40.588 [SPEAKER_01]: And we allowed it. 32:40.668 --> 32:41.389 [SPEAKER_01]: We went for it. 32:41.729 --> 32:44.192 [SPEAKER_01]: But there was a moment afterwards where I went hang on. 32:44.252 --> 32:47.135 [SPEAKER_01]: There is still mechanically here. 32:47.195 --> 32:53.683 [SPEAKER_01]: There is still a precedent that needs to be set where if I think my character would not 32:53.663 --> 33:00.815 [SPEAKER_01]: act in a certain way, then it's against my agency if we just allow each other to make checks whenever we want. 33:01.035 --> 33:06.604 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're very easy, quick ruling, and we'll talk again and again about communication and transparency. 33:07.286 --> 33:10.331 [SPEAKER_01]: The easy conclusion we came to was, well, let's just talk. 33:10.371 --> 33:12.955 [SPEAKER_01]: Anytime this comes up, our rule is. 33:12.935 --> 33:17.040 [SPEAKER_01]: You asked the player, hey, could I do this check against you? 33:17.080 --> 33:19.203 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that would work in this moment? 33:19.643 --> 33:21.526 [SPEAKER_01]: Be, Tony stays out of it completely. 33:21.586 --> 33:24.169 [SPEAKER_01]: So both of our agency is met on both ends. 33:24.530 --> 33:26.933 [SPEAKER_01]: Then see, it just makes both of us feel respected. 33:27.173 --> 33:31.118 [SPEAKER_01]: And if we want to do it, right, if not, no harm no foul, then we don't do the thing. 33:31.438 --> 33:32.840 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not a big deal at all. 33:33.280 --> 33:36.244 [SPEAKER_01]: I think PVP can be done, of course, at the right tables. 33:36.384 --> 33:38.487 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a matter of communication. 33:38.585 --> 33:39.446 [SPEAKER_00]: great points. 33:39.726 --> 33:48.774 [SPEAKER_00]: And I agree completely as far as like actual player versus player combat, I consider that a separate thing entirely from. 33:48.794 --> 33:52.357 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like contested skill checks and things like that. 33:52.838 --> 34:02.006 [SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time how we approach that is we kind of I stay very hands off and it comes down entirely to like character against character roleplay. 34:02.046 --> 34:08.592 [SPEAKER_00]: The stats tend to not come into play there. 34:08.572 --> 34:11.478 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, can you make an intimidation check against me? 34:11.498 --> 34:18.713 [SPEAKER_00]: And that kind of thing I think just speaks largely to their skill as players. 34:18.853 --> 34:23.022 [SPEAKER_00]: I really respect and commend how much they tend to lean into that. 34:23.623 --> 34:24.184 [SPEAKER_00]: But 34:24.164 --> 34:42.939 [SPEAKER_00]: I think you hit the nail on the head where it comes down to communication and it also, like, one of the big things and where the danger of PVP comes into play is how much personal attachment and investment you can get when you tie your identity to your character. 34:42.959 --> 34:46.646 [SPEAKER_00]: I talked about this a little bit with my interview with Myon Barron. 34:47.568 --> 34:47.708 [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm. 34:47.688 --> 35:01.258 [SPEAKER_00]: where as long as you can avoid the character bleed and you can keep the inner character conflict separate from being above table and you as players are on the same page, then that kind of stuff can work great. 35:01.599 --> 35:07.131 [SPEAKER_00]: The moment that it starts getting personal, I think is when you got a 35:07.111 --> 35:18.110 [SPEAKER_00]: As far as play versus player, combat goes, I would be hypocritical if I said I wasn't a big proponent of that, but it has to be something that is planned for and accounted for in advance. 35:18.130 --> 35:18.671 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh totally. 35:18.991 --> 35:31.212 [SPEAKER_00]: At some point in season one, everyone except for the Frankenstein monster, functionally acts as a boss fight for the rest of the party to deal with. 35:31.192 --> 35:43.603 [SPEAKER_00]: but that is something that everyone generally has awareness going into leading up to the thing where we know it's coming and have kind of worked out in advance the narrative ramifications and consequences of it. 35:44.103 --> 35:47.866 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a thing that it's built into the story and so it's expected to happen. 35:47.906 --> 36:00.237 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is on board with it and it's set up in a way that it isn't lopsided and 36:00.217 --> 36:07.633 [SPEAKER_00]: That wasn't my initial intention, but it just kind of worked out that way that everybody gets to be a boss fight except for the Frankenstein monster. 36:07.713 --> 36:10.520 [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, that's just a very fun concept in general. 36:11.161 --> 36:13.065 [SPEAKER_01]: I need to find a way to work that in my campaigns. 36:13.787 --> 36:19.339 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think all it really boils down is it like if I'm trying to think of like the simplest way to put it. 36:19.319 --> 36:25.087 [SPEAKER_01]: players and just people in general want to be surprised, not blindsided. 36:25.588 --> 36:32.117 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you can find a way to just set their expectations, nothing's going to feel like a blind side. 36:32.418 --> 36:34.341 [SPEAKER_00]: That is such a great way to put that. 36:34.701 --> 36:37.385 [SPEAKER_00]: I will be stealing that and using that going forward. 36:37.425 --> 36:37.926 [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you. 36:39.348 --> 36:40.990 [SPEAKER_01]: We're all about sharing on this podcast. 36:41.331 --> 36:42.272 [SPEAKER_01]: This is what we do. 36:43.433 --> 36:50.222 [SPEAKER_00]: As tacky as segue as it is, speaking of sharing, one of the other things you want to talk about was custom character loot and loot tables. 36:51.023 --> 37:04.682 [SPEAKER_00]: Not necessarily a loot table thing, but I really enjoy having tailor-made special items for individual characters that will complement what they're doing for. 37:04.662 --> 37:11.150 [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to pull off in a lot of cases, and in a longer running campaign, it's a lot easier than in a shorter one. 37:11.790 --> 37:19.560 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's one of my favorite things to do as a GM, and that's one of the things that was a priority for me going into the finale of season one. 37:20.040 --> 37:30.973 [SPEAKER_00]: Was I made sure that everyone had a legendary weapon that fit with who their character was and augmented the thing that they did best. 37:30.953 --> 37:34.640 [SPEAKER_00]: it was such a fun thing the way that they all delighted in it. 37:34.780 --> 37:39.389 [SPEAKER_00]: One of my players is straight up getting a tattoo of their item. 37:39.970 --> 37:43.536 [SPEAKER_00]: So that filled me with so much happiness when I heard that. 37:43.737 --> 37:47.023 [SPEAKER_00]: I felt so accomplished by that. 37:47.644 --> 37:51.371 [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't really have much to say other than do it. 37:51.551 --> 37:52.152 [SPEAKER_00]: It's great. 37:52.132 --> 38:07.153 [SPEAKER_01]: do it always always please do it this is definitely a very short topic more of just a hey take it with you dms so i use uh in film we use rule thirds you know it's a very visually pleasing thing but for loot i use rule thirds as well 38:07.133 --> 38:17.485 [SPEAKER_01]: where I always do kind of a 33.33-repeating percent amount of random loot tables, custom items, and custom loot tables. 38:17.906 --> 38:33.124 [SPEAKER_01]: If you go listen to one of the most infamous episodes of our podcasts, I think it's episode 43 of campaign one, there is an item that we got in a random loot table that did something crazy and we got one of the best reactions we've ever 38:33.104 --> 38:36.370 [SPEAKER_01]: There are some things that can't do it randomly with tables do. 38:36.751 --> 38:50.456 [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, like you said, you want to empower your players but more importantly, you want to let your players know that they're story matters and that their decisions and the choices they made for their character in their story affect the world. 38:50.737 --> 38:54.083 [SPEAKER_01]: And so when you're giving these custom items that matter, 38:54.063 --> 39:04.618 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not only a not-of-respect, you know, player to DM, DM to player, but it's also just a fun, amazing empowering thing, like a badge, right, to show that you affected the story. 39:04.638 --> 39:12.129 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the last thing is just every few levels, nobody wants to get like bagpipes when you're not a bard, you know? 39:12.329 --> 39:13.491 [SPEAKER_01]: And you got no bards in the party. 39:14.032 --> 39:14.973 [SPEAKER_01]: Add a loot table. 39:15.173 --> 39:18.518 [SPEAKER_01]: I always add this every like maybe 10 sessions, 39:18.498 --> 39:21.103 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll add a custom table for each character. 39:21.123 --> 39:22.426 [SPEAKER_01]: It'll be like, oh, you found a chest. 39:22.586 --> 39:24.711 [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody roll your own personal die. 39:24.751 --> 39:29.200 [SPEAKER_01]: And it'll get something that is specifically off of their classes loop. 39:29.220 --> 39:36.615 [SPEAKER_01]: And if they roll high, they get a more impressive item if they roll low, it's less impressive, but it still relates to their class. 39:37.076 --> 39:39.882 [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of the rule third die use in my campaigns. 39:39.862 --> 39:42.184 [SPEAKER_00]: that's a really fun way to go about that. 39:42.685 --> 40:05.507 [SPEAKER_00]: To shift gears a little bit, since you brought up a pretty famous episode of your show, I want to pick your brain a little bit about your show as a whole and for any listeners who would be new or who are unfamiliar with your show, are there specific episodes like that one that you would point to as a really strong representation of you all in your show? 40:05.567 --> 40:06.848 [SPEAKER_00]: And since it does go 40:06.828 --> 40:10.814 [SPEAKER_00]: for a very long time, you're well over a hundred episodes. 40:11.254 --> 40:19.025 [SPEAKER_00]: Are there specific on ramps that you would point people to as really good starting points for newcomers to jump into? 40:19.045 --> 40:21.288 [SPEAKER_01]: There are two things that come to mind for me. 40:21.388 --> 40:25.554 [SPEAKER_01]: The first one is if you're a newcomer, just start at campaign two. 40:26.175 --> 40:27.857 [SPEAKER_01]: Just go right to campaign two. 40:27.837 --> 40:37.931 [SPEAKER_01]: We have Kylie, she's voice actress, she's doing amazing job, and she's doing what we were doing campaign one where she is very fresh to this learning has no idea what she's doing. 40:38.292 --> 40:42.477 [SPEAKER_01]: But now we have all the bells and whistles as far as the quality is concerned. 40:42.778 --> 40:47.084 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the audio, all of the sound effects in the music, it's very fleshed out. 40:47.725 --> 40:53.693 [SPEAKER_01]: So, truly, just start a campaign too, and you'll be able to follow the story very easily. 40:53.673 --> 41:02.646 [SPEAKER_01]: But if I had to pick, and I've talked about this a few times in bonus episodes in our podcast, but episode 36 of campaign one. 41:02.746 --> 41:04.068 [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of my favorite episodes. 41:04.669 --> 41:09.215 [SPEAKER_01]: You can probably just start there, and you'll still be able to understand what's going on in the story. 41:09.255 --> 41:15.985 [SPEAKER_01]: But the reason why that's such a special episode in campaign one is because at the start of arc three, 41:15.965 --> 41:20.271 [SPEAKER_01]: We have gotten what every party dreams of they officially have their name. 41:20.371 --> 41:22.955 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some people start with that, but we discovered our name. 41:23.035 --> 41:24.518 [SPEAKER_01]: We are the bloodshard bandits. 41:24.538 --> 41:27.662 [SPEAKER_01]: That is the name of our party going forward, our adventuring party. 41:27.722 --> 41:33.631 [SPEAKER_01]: But more importantly than that, it's the episode where you can feel us all get it. 41:33.951 --> 41:36.555 [SPEAKER_01]: As new players, all of a sudden, we're locked in. 41:36.655 --> 41:38.438 [SPEAKER_01]: We understand how the role play works. 41:38.538 --> 41:39.880 [SPEAKER_01]: The mechanics. 41:39.860 --> 41:45.247 [SPEAKER_01]: and everything just flows so wonderfully of the humor's amazing. 41:45.287 --> 41:47.130 [SPEAKER_01]: The story is very thoughtful. 41:47.210 --> 41:51.355 [SPEAKER_01]: The music and the effects are all cohesive. 41:51.395 --> 41:59.746 [SPEAKER_01]: It is probably my favorite episode because of that, because I can you can feel the drastic difference of your other players that were fumbling at episode one. 41:59.786 --> 42:03.191 [SPEAKER_01]: And oh my gosh, look these guys got sucked in their hooks. 42:03.611 --> 42:04.332 [SPEAKER_01]: They're there. 42:04.312 --> 42:05.153 [SPEAKER_00]: That's great. 42:05.434 --> 42:09.679 [SPEAKER_00]: For our show, I usually point people towards episode 16 of season 1. 42:10.621 --> 42:15.427 [SPEAKER_00]: What my line is at this point now is I usually point people to our bonus content. 42:15.908 --> 42:21.355 [SPEAKER_00]: We've done a bunch of many campaigns as Halloween specials or interstitials, things like that. 42:21.716 --> 42:25.561 [SPEAKER_00]: So I usually point people to one of those because they are low investment. 42:25.641 --> 42:32.310 [SPEAKER_00]: It's usually like three, four episodes with the exception of our 42:32.290 --> 42:48.156 [SPEAKER_00]: Our bonus stuff is usually three, four episodes, self-contained story that you don't need much more context for, and what I tend to say is if you don't gel with our sense of humor and you don't like our mini campaigns, you won't like our bigger campaigns. 42:48.136 --> 42:53.485 [SPEAKER_00]: That's usually where I point people to to start for our actual full campaign. 42:53.885 --> 43:09.631 [SPEAKER_00]: Episode 16 is usually where I point people to start because it in and of itself is not and especially out there or special episode, but it's the beginning of our first character centric plot arc and the arc that it's attached to. 43:09.651 --> 43:15.460 [SPEAKER_00]: It is where the show became what I wanted it to be from the outset. 43:15.440 --> 43:21.635 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not to disparage the first 15, but a lot of that was setting up exposition. 43:21.695 --> 43:30.938 [SPEAKER_00]: It was us getting our bearings, getting the players leveled up to a decent degree, kind of slowly establishing the world and us kind of finding our footing. 43:30.998 --> 43:31.980 [SPEAKER_00]: So, 43:31.960 --> 43:34.346 [SPEAKER_00]: that's usually where I point people to start for that one. 43:34.366 --> 43:40.241 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that we try to do and I really commend Jordan for this for the artwork. 43:40.582 --> 43:47.640 [SPEAKER_00]: She tries to do a unique thumbnail art for each big character centric plot arc that we do. 43:47.620 --> 43:55.110 [SPEAKER_00]: So there is usually a visual representation of, all right, this is the wolf man's arc, because there's a big ol' wear wolf in the thumbnail. 43:55.370 --> 43:57.914 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the mummy's arc, there's a big ol' mummy in the background. 43:57.974 --> 44:02.399 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the one where we've got Dr. Jekyll, there's Jekyll and Hyde in the thumbnail. 44:03.140 --> 44:07.006 [SPEAKER_00]: And so she'll do custom art for each of those, and she's fantastic at that. 44:07.306 --> 44:17.239 [SPEAKER_00]: We do that to try to make it visually distinct, break stuff up for the the listeners, and also have like a clear visual indicator of what part of the story we are on. 44:17.219 --> 44:37.877 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and yes, we do certainly similar ours is much simpler than that, but we have a campaign specific logo every campaign and we just change the color for every arc and choose a color that matters for that arc and it's an easy way for our fans to be like, oh, I love the green arc, that's a shadow fell arc, it's my favorite, you know, makes it easy to talk about. 44:37.857 --> 44:49.675 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, I love and really appreciate when shows do that and we're very lucky that we have a good artist as one of the players and like core foundational pillars of our group. 44:50.316 --> 44:55.363 [SPEAKER_00]: And she cranks out spectacular art for us on a regular basis. 44:55.424 --> 44:59.730 [SPEAKER_00]: So very, very lucky to have her on the team to be able to do that. 44:59.828 --> 45:01.010 [SPEAKER_01]: And that is so, so cool. 45:01.331 --> 45:07.402 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that Wolf art is the one that draw my eye immediately and you do something similar to us. 45:07.422 --> 45:12.131 [SPEAKER_01]: Wolf sometimes try and link titles to popular culture like the wolf among us is a really good one. 45:12.592 --> 45:13.153 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. 45:13.374 --> 45:16.099 [SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of fun coming up with the titles for these. 45:16.079 --> 45:40.213 [SPEAKER_00]: I it's actually my philosophy for our titles changed as the show was going when we first started out I was very inspired by a lot of the like rhyming word play that Scooby-Doo titles tend to do as I was trying to emulate that early on and then at hit a point where I was just enjoying more having thematically resonant titles. 45:40.565 --> 46:05.982 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we had a similar progression where something started silly, but then ultimately we landed on whatever the most impactful moment is of the episode the thing you remember the most is what the title should be about and then from there we kind of go into oh, maybe we'll make it pop culture themed or we'll make it you know similar to another title if you ever have Tony on here, please please ask him about rock to push 46:05.962 --> 46:10.806 [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I don't know if I even need to say much else about that, but that is where our favorite titles to this day. 46:13.128 --> 46:15.991 [SPEAKER_00]: So just keeping an eye on time. 46:16.051 --> 46:18.573 [SPEAKER_00]: Are there other miscellaneous things? 46:18.653 --> 46:21.116 [SPEAKER_00]: I know we didn't get through all of the topics that you sent out. 46:21.396 --> 46:33.707 [SPEAKER_00]: Are there any others of those that you want to make sure that we hit on or any other miscellaneous things about your show about teaching RPGs in general that are important to you to hit before we wrap up. 46:33.957 --> 46:54.261 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so looking at some of the topics you had on here and something that I think might be more important to talk about, it would be lessons I've learned, which there have definitely been a lot of the first lesson that I learned just playing Dungeons & Dragons in general, but obviously through our podcast, sometimes you just need to shut the hell up. 46:55.102 --> 47:00.410 [SPEAKER_01]: It's very enticing to get a quick end, you know, and answer yourself in moments feel included. 47:00.450 --> 47:07.301 [SPEAKER_01]: But I have personally found that there's a much greater payoff at less time wasted, too, if we're getting functional about it. 47:07.862 --> 47:15.895 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's a much greater payoff when you let other players live their moments and watch them experience those important character moments. 47:15.875 --> 47:35.841 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're quipping every like every second of the podcast, you know, it sometimes it takes away from the gravity of it all and so it's not to be like, hey, stop talking all the time, you know, it's just fine times to interject, but learn to be able to shut up and let someone have their moment is one of the biggest things I can say as a player that I've learned. 47:35.821 --> 47:44.182 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, completely agree with let players have their moments and for players to the GM, letting the GM have their moment, too. 47:44.383 --> 47:46.488 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, is crucial. 47:47.029 --> 47:51.180 [SPEAKER_00]: It's very, very easy to undermine. 47:51.160 --> 47:56.771 [SPEAKER_00]: the severity of the situation or to downplay the big bad or things like that. 47:57.011 --> 47:59.195 [SPEAKER_00]: And it can be very fun to get those digs in. 47:59.496 --> 48:05.007 [SPEAKER_00]: But you have to allow for some moments for your GM to let them get their big monologue in. 48:05.067 --> 48:09.475 [SPEAKER_00]: The GM is just as much a player at the table as the players. 48:09.495 --> 48:10.217 [SPEAKER_01]: 100%. 48:10.377 --> 48:12.241 [SPEAKER_00]: So allowing for stuff like that. 48:12.842 --> 48:13.523 [SPEAKER_00]: And 48:13.503 --> 48:19.272 [SPEAKER_00]: Choose your timing appropriately if you are going for an emotional whiplash. 48:19.673 --> 48:23.238 [SPEAKER_00]: It can really detract from heavier emotional moments. 48:23.939 --> 48:25.923 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's worth it. 48:26.584 --> 48:37.080 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest laughs that we have in our entire show comes right after a player character death and it is extremely emotional whiplash. 48:37.060 --> 48:54.985 [SPEAKER_00]: As a one-off moment, it's one that I was deeply conflicted about at the time, but I left in because it is probably the single funniest thing that happens in the entire show, but you really have to like pick and choose and judge carefully if it is worth it to get the joke in. 48:54.965 --> 49:03.839 [SPEAKER_01]: Certainly, I think ultimately it just comes down to the more time you spend with each other, the easier it is to pick up on those moments, and when those times are right. 49:04.500 --> 49:10.510 [SPEAKER_01]: But the only other thing I would say about it, because I think you said it very well already is 49:10.490 --> 49:17.660 [SPEAKER_01]: you are not going to buy into your DM's NPCs and the villain in the world, why should they buy into your story? 49:18.000 --> 49:19.462 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it goes both ways. 49:19.823 --> 49:38.708 [SPEAKER_01]: And we need to remember at the end of the day, you know, after everything we've talked about the day, talk about communication, transparency, respect, even if like your character might spit at a moment, sometimes it's cool to sit back and let your character go, whoa, that was cool, give another character a moment of respect, and like 49:39.059 --> 49:49.529 [SPEAKER_01]: Either wingman be their roleplay wingman and show them that their moment is cool because that just leads to more immersive storytelling, I would say across the board. 49:49.850 --> 49:50.993 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely. 49:51.057 --> 49:53.259 [SPEAKER_01]: Man, that was a lot of wonderful stuff. 49:53.379 --> 49:57.403 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you so much for bringing me on and sharing a lot of your own insights. 49:57.623 --> 49:58.784 [SPEAKER_01]: I have learned a lot. 49:59.085 --> 50:04.910 [SPEAKER_01]: I think you'll always be able to take a few things away during these conversations, and certainly have. 50:04.930 --> 50:05.671 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely. 50:06.192 --> 50:13.118 [SPEAKER_00]: I learn something new from every one of these conversations that I have, and I want to throw the thanks back to you for coming by to chat with me. 50:13.158 --> 50:16.862 [SPEAKER_00]: This has been, we've covered a lot of ground, and this has been great stuff. 50:16.842 --> 50:18.429 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is my favorite kind of chaos. 50:18.851 --> 50:20.578 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing all your insights. 50:20.618 --> 50:25.620 [SPEAKER_01]: You wisdom your humor, of course, and could have blast. 50:25.769 --> 50:26.210 [SPEAKER_00]: All right. 50:26.230 --> 50:31.436 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, before we close out, can you remind our listeners one more time where they can find you and your show? 50:31.616 --> 50:31.876 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. 50:32.116 --> 50:46.573 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you do venture over to the D&D 404 podcast, the ND 404, I play Minutes Pebble Walker of the Ivory Boulder, Zay, Tiny Little Minitor Ranger, and Bo Ram Dumo Ray. 50:46.773 --> 50:54.122 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Bob. 50:54.102 --> 50:55.223 [SPEAKER_01]: That's really all there is to it. 50:55.283 --> 51:04.355 [SPEAKER_01]: We just have this fun hobby podcast we do on the side, all of us that, you know, makes life worth living for us, playing once a week with each other. 51:04.495 --> 51:05.536 [SPEAKER_01]: So go to listen. 51:05.837 --> 51:06.397 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 51:06.477 --> 51:08.520 [SPEAKER_00]: And those links will be in the description. 51:08.700 --> 51:11.464 [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you again one more time for coming by to chat with me. 51:12.144 --> 51:16.650 [SPEAKER_01]: Dan, do another Dan has been a damn good, damn time. 51:18.132 --> 51:34.437 [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, well, one more time everybody, I'm Danger Dan Jers, the GM and host of D&D Ark, I've been chatting with Dan from the D&D 404 podcast, and this has been Table Talk, and I hope you enjoyed what we brought to the table. 51:38.315 --> 51:41.420 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Table Talk. 51:41.440 --> 51:43.784 [SPEAKER_00]: Created, hosted, and edited by myself. 51:44.245 --> 51:47.711 [SPEAKER_00]: Danger Dan Jürfs, with artwork by Jordan Nelson. 51:47.731 --> 51:51.778 [SPEAKER_00]: Our guest this episode was Dan from the D&D 404 podcast. 51:52.098 --> 51:54.062 [SPEAKER_00]: Links to his work can be found in the episode description. 51:54.523 --> 52:01.234 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're interested in being a guest on this show, reach out to us at dndarkpodcastatgmail.com. 52:01.214 --> 52:04.505 [SPEAKER_00]: Our theme song in Outro was created by Jeremy Volucci. 52:04.525 --> 52:08.700 [SPEAKER_00]: Check out more of his work on Instagram at Jeremy Volucci underscore wreck of time. 52:09.021 --> 52:13.215 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time we have a guest take a seat at the table.