Up next in 10
Our hosts Joe and Matt were joined by frequent guest and DM for our Tavern Watch podcast, Phil Ulrich. Together they explored the storytelling aspect of TTRPGs. While they do enjoy the aspect of "math rocks go brrrr" TTRPGs bring to the table, the ability to tell a story collaboratively makes it more appealing to them than a typical game like Catan or Monopoly, though certainly both those games have their own stories to tell. We recount some of our favorite story beats from our own gameplay over the years, and discuss what using different systems like Daggerheart versus Pathfinder can lend to an epic adventure -- and an epic story.
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0:00
[Music]
0:09
Hello and welcome to Lore Watch round table free form discussion about lore in your favorite media. I am your host Joe
0:14
Pres, one of several lore focused folks from Blizzard Watch. And I've got my marvelous co-host with me today, Matt
0:20
Rossy. How you doing today, Matt? Uh yeah, good. I'm good. Good. And then joining us today is another
0:26
special guest. You may have noticed them or recognize them from every other podcast we do apparently. Uh Phil, how
0:32
you doing, Phil? Yep. I think I finally now accomplish the hat trick of being on every podcast Blizzard does. So, uh, good to be here.
0:40
It now means that you have been on all the podcasts where Corey has not. Put you slightly in the lead.
0:45
Has anyone ever seen me or Corey in the same room? H well, I've never seen you.
0:52
Exactly. The reason that we are have Phil here is we're going to be doing a off-topic lore
0:57
watch this week. Uh so one of the questions that we get a lot or at least that I see a lot asked in not just the
1:03
questions channel but also on our email and and the various avenues is about storytelling in tabletop space. And
1:09
while we can include that in the tavern watch uh which is another podcast that we do and if you are interested in
1:15
tabletop stuff please submit it there almost everybody tags it for lore watch. So, I figured what the hell uh we can
1:22
talk about it here cuz I do think it's relevant and I do think it fits into the theme here. So, and I think a lot of
1:28
this is born from I want to give Critical Role some credit here for it. Uh but a lot of it is born from the
1:36
release of Daggerheart recently, which is a very narrative focused game. Uh
1:42
basically the new kid to the the narrative focused storydriven game table space. Um, so yeah, we're going to be
1:49
talking about that today. And I do want to remind you that if you do have questions for this or any of our podcast, be sure to send those in. Uh,
1:56
you can hit us up on uh email. It's podcastbizardwatch.com.
2:01
Specify the show that it is for in the subject line as well as any special pronunciation of your name. And then if
2:06
you want to hit us up on Discord, we have two channels set aside. We have the Q and Podcast questions channel. And uh
2:12
if you are a Patreon subscriber, as a way of saying thank you, we have the Patreon Q and podcast questions channel where we tend to look there first for
2:19
any of your various questions. And if you want to make Liz do extra work, you can submit your questions on Patreon and
2:26
she will get them to us. So I guess let's start with how important story is
2:32
in tabletop for you guys. For me, I know it's a massive thing. Um, that's one of
2:38
the chief reasons I play tabletop games at all. So, we'll start with Matt. I mean, I feel like I could be facitious
2:45
here and try and play it off like, nah, I don't really care. But, I mean, the entire reason I started playing tabletop
2:52
role playing games was that I wanted to sit around with people and tell a cool
2:58
story about dragons and stuff. I mean, so kind of it it it's actually kind of
3:05
na charmingly naive of younger me that I was surprised that a lot of people didn't want to do the the story element.
3:12
Like I was like, but but what do we do? We just roll dice and stuff dies. That's why couldn't we just we could just use
3:18
the little soldier tabletop thing if we wanted to do that. Why don't we like I've got a name? I want to tell you all
3:24
about this guy. He he's he's weird. Uh and nobody nobody was particularly interested. and I had to I had to find
3:30
people who wanted to do that. So for me that's always been the the goal, Phil. Yeah, I agree. Like that's it's kind of
3:36
the whole point of specifically something like a tabletop RPG for me versus like um say a board game. Like
3:43
I'm fine playing a board game where you know I roll some dice, move little dudes around, the math rocks go quack. That's
3:48
fine. Yeah. Oron. Yeah. Or even like a war game or a minis game. Like those are fine. But uh like
3:55
if I want to specifically tell a a cool story with friends, I want I want that
4:00
as part of my tabletop game. I that's that's just part of the part and parcel of the experience for me.
4:06
Yeah. And for me it was again one of the chief reasons I got into tabletop to begin with. I've always been a
4:12
storyteller and I've always been interested in stories and the idea of an interactive story was very appealing to
4:20
me as a younger child, right? Like we while we had RPG video games and we had
4:26
stuff that like sort of told the story that you participated in, it was still binary. You won or you lost, right? Or
4:34
you, you know, finished the game or you didn't finish the game. There wasn't a whole lot of branching paths in those
4:40
games when I was growing up, right? So you weren't Yeah. I mean, and when they even had them, it wasn't really like you got to
4:46
see what happened. It was at the end of the game, uh, Ron Pearlman would come in and narrate very, you know, very grimly
4:54
about what happened, but you didn't see it. You know, it wasn't actually something you experienced. It was just
5:00
something the game told you about later. Yeah. And the idea or the concept of being able to actively affect the story
5:07
and push it along, I think was a very eye opening for me as well. So, and I'll
5:13
let Phil talk about, you know, his experiences of that or his thoughts on that. Yeah. I um so I played not a lot of the
5:21
I played some like computer RPGs growing up. A lot of what I played were like console console games, JRPGs, that kind
5:27
of thing. And it's like they told a story and it was cool and sometimes choices even matter, but when you got
5:32
down to it, like you by design cannot have the same infinite variety of choice
5:38
that you can have in a tabletop game. So learning that that existed was kind of
5:43
eye opening for me. Although um I guess maybe not at the early age I learned of it where I learned D and D existed in
5:50
like the third grade well before I had any well before I knew anyone who played it. So
5:55
yeah, there's that period of time where you're just reading a bunch of books. Yeah, I was there. Yeah, I have a um I
6:02
actually found out about it from a book about computer games that I still have because it was uh a a book specifically
6:08
on teaching you how to make uh how to make basically a dungeon crawl game for
6:15
uh various uh home microcomputers that could learn that could take basic. I
6:21
don't know how this ended up in my elementary school library because it was clearly for British microcomputers.
6:26
Um, but like the Dungeons and Dragons gets a shout out at the beginning of that book as a uh inspiration for this.
6:32
They're talking and then they talked about, you know, but obviously you get together with your friends and you roll dice and you have a much broader and and
6:38
you have a much broader set of experiences and also story comes into it. I'm like story friends I'm into this
6:45
uh and then I would not play for about 10 years but it was always in the back of my mind that you know this this
6:50
activity existed where I could tell cool fantasy stories with other people. So I
6:55
thought that was um like I I came to it through computer through computer games but um yeah the two the two are both I
7:03
like them both but for very different reason. Yeah. And and the other thing that I want to talk about is too is if you are
7:10
just reading uh like back in the day like when we we first started playing this if you were to just read the D and
7:16
D book uh as like the the gold standard example it wasn't obvious necessarily
7:22
that it was an interactive story right like it doesn't tell you in the book the old books hey you're going to sit down
7:28
at a table and tell a story. Um it was here's an adventure, you can run it and
7:34
here's what can happen. And a lot of it seemed very, you know, war game adjacent cuz that's where it's DNA is from. Uh
7:40
but also very similar to video games. It took for me uh it was uh a gentleman by
7:47
the name of John Reese who uh invited a you know at the time I think I was 14 or
7:54
whatever. um and had only ever really played like pre-anned uh adventure stuff with like my cousins and my dad before
8:01
that invited me to a table and his custom world and introduced me to what
8:09
it is to have players have agency in the story that was being told like my family lineage in that game like had
8:16
a like it had an impact on the game world. It was it was fascinating and eye opening. And I think since then, since
8:24
those early days, games have made a more concerted effort in publications to
8:31
embrace the story very upfront, I guess, would be the best way to put it, right? Like if you crack open a Power by the
8:38
Apocalypse book or or you crack open uh you know, I I can't think of any, but
8:44
you guys can probably name a few examples. Dagger Heart being up there as well. It is all about saying, "Hey, yes,
8:49
there's Dice and mechanics and you can have fun and do cinematic stuff, but you're telling a story with the people
8:56
you're sitting at the table with. You know, you want to maybe focus on that a little." Mhm. I think maybe there's some of that.
9:02
You mentioned you It's interesting you talked about D&D's origin being war games and how a lot of the rules around
9:08
that are around specifically simulating things. And I think I think it's a anecdote from Brennan Lee Mulligan maybe
9:15
where he talks about people like hey D and D isn't that you know the rules at D and D aren't that great at telling a
9:20
story. Uh why do you still play it? And he has this thing where the rules are basic like he and his friends know how
9:26
to tell a story and the rules are the part that take care of the part they don't know how to do and then get out of
9:31
the way to tell a story which I thought was an interesting approach. And I kind of think that with like the, you know, the origins of D and D is basically Dave
9:37
Arnison's Blackmore uh game around the war mini around the minis war games that they were playing. I think some of that
9:44
is kind of interesting and that maybe some of the early rules kind of assumed that you were you knew you were telling
9:50
a story and then some of that kind of got lost along the way. Uh, I mean, and then then the more recent kind of crop
9:56
of games, like you said, PBD games, Forge of the Dark games, things like Dagger Heart and uh, Fabul Ultimate,
10:01
kind of bringing it back to specifically say, hey, don't just roll dice. That's
10:07
boring. I think too, a lot of times what they did for um, trying to teach people that,
10:13
you know, hey, there is some storytelling in this was the examples of play they used to have in the old books.
10:20
Yep. Um and the examples of play would be a lot about you know you rolled so so
10:25
so you hit but it was there was also like you know ah my sword melted and
10:31
people would be like you they would literally be showing you small bits of role playing and it wasn't like you know
10:37
like watching three hours of a of a a streaming show but it was you know here's a step by step of and you can act
10:44
you can react in character like it's an example. So, I think that it was always there, but it was definitely there was
10:51
definitely an also there's there's always going to be that element of some people are here just to to roll dice and
10:58
kill things and other people are here to h come up with a reasons why they're rolling dice and kill things.
11:03
Oh, yeah. My partner is very much in the category of wants to roll dice and kill things 99% of the time.
11:08
I I I still remember like this was when I was very young. Uh I like maybe 12 or 13 and it was one of the earlier games I
11:15
was in. uh friend of mine who was actually a good seven years older than me. Uh so saying friend of mine is kind
11:22
of pushing it but whatever. Uh he was running the game and it was basically his family like him, his cousin, his
11:28
brother and then they picked me up in a game store. Like you know that kid looks like he wants to play D and D. But we
11:35
weren't playing D and D. We were actually playing werewolf at this point. And you know was it maybe it wasn't
11:41
werewolf. All I remember all I really remember with this story is the following line. Uh there was a guy Stew and that's all he wanted to do in the
11:47
game was just kill stuff. And finally he's like when do we get strong enough to go after this this very powerful
11:54
thing. And the the DM without batting an eye looks at him and goes I'd have to literally put like 700,000 orcs like you
12:02
have to kill 700,000 orcs to to get that strong. And he goes put them in front of me. Like he not even breaking sweat like
12:09
you okay stack them up. Let's go. Um, there are there are people who are like
12:14
that, but there are people who are like that, but but actually can roleplay it. Um, and I've I've sometimes some of
12:20
those people are some of my favorite people to play with. Uh, just because Yeah, they'll they're here to tell a
12:26
story, but by God, they're going to mess you up on the rules if you let them. I'm going to look right at Joe now. I'm
12:31
looking directly at you. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz Joe is one of those people and and he's he's a delight to play with, but
12:38
he's not intentional. That's the thing. But but you've you've internalized the game mechanics so well that you you just
12:45
know them and you know the principles of them which is why you can forget them
12:50
because you know even if you don't know the system you know how games work.
12:56
So if there is anything you can push on to break this thing off so you can do
13:02
the thing you want to do, you will do it. I I'll never forget the the the
13:07
counter spell Olympics we had going that one game on the beach and counter spell
13:13
counter spell counter spell. You just counter spell the counter spell like just that. And the fact that you can get
13:19
a story out of that kind of thing is one of the things that tabletop can do that computers can't. A computer doesn't let
13:26
you roleplay a glitch into something cool like it just the game the game
13:32
crashes. You know, computer doesn't have the ability to actually go, "Oh, you know what? No, I'm gonna roll with this." Sure, they all dressed up like
13:38
chickens and broke into the castle, but no, I'm gonna see where they going with this. And meanwhile, the players are
13:44
furiously going, "Okay, what do we do? We're dressed up like chickens. How did anyone have an idea for once we were in here in in chicken suits?" No. Okay, I'm
13:52
going to start squawking to the high priest then. So, I I do think that that's one of the interesting things
13:57
about tabletop role playing as opposed to just playing pretend. Yeah. And I think that's
14:02
I think that bleeds into like one of the questions we get asked the most at least in the the stuff that our our wonderful
14:08
listeners have sent in about this in particular is you know as a DM and and
14:13
not to change gears here too much but you know when you have moments like that
14:18
where your players start doing the unexpected how do you handle that in
14:24
terms of your story? And the reason I bring this up is I know at least one or two examples that Matt can bring up that
14:30
involve me being a little monster. Um, but I'm also curious for Phil too, like
14:36
your opinions on it because it's it is a very valid question. Like a lot of people when they're first experiencing a
14:41
tabletop game, they'll run a module, right? They'll they'll get a book, they'll be very excited. Back in our day, it was the old gold boxes or red
14:48
boxes. Um, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room in those, right? It tells you where
14:53
you want to go. It tells you the encounters. Um, it is a template and but
14:58
if it's your first time really reading it, it's hard to understand maybe that it's a template and you have to have like the gray area around these these
15:06
pin pricks of light. Um, but when you have players who deviate from that, how
15:11
do you integrate that into the story? How do you how do you handle that? Uh, how do you essentially do you
15:19
organically work that in? Uh, a lot of it really does kind of come down to
15:24
practice and I think some of that is a lot of I want to say newer DMs kind of
15:31
want to have and I don't think I don't think the product offerings from Wizard the Coast really help this want to run a
15:39
story uh as written and I don't think many stories survive first contact with
15:45
the players unchanged um learning to improvise with those changes learning to roll with it is just
15:51
kind of something you have to get used to. Um, I'll throw an example out there. I ran a uh over the last two and a half
15:59
years, I'd say we finished late last year, I ran a heavily modified version of um Descent into a Verdice. Kind of a
16:06
um one of the bigger, I'd say, uh 5e adventure uh modules. Um not a very
16:13
well-written one, but that's neither here nor there. um so heavily modified and we had kind of expanded the part out
16:21
uh especially in Balders's Gate because players want to spend time there. So we turned it into kind of a full-fledged murder mystery situation and they had a
16:27
lot of fun with that part. But at one point um they kind of knew where they
16:33
needed to go. They needed to find a specific like mini dungeon set in the city. And I was you know expecting them
16:39
to either take the frontal approach because that's kind of how they did everything or you know maybe try to stealth in or whatever. Um but earlier
16:46
that day they had had encounters with uh various government officials and one of them and one of them had been kind of a
16:52
like a manager of like basically sewer uh construction uh like noting various changes that kind
16:59
of tipped them off that this dungeon existed to begin with and they said hey um can we break down the wall they built
17:05
that essentially walled off this um dungeon and it would have been very easy
17:10
and very tempting to go no you guys can't break can't break through a wall that's crazy just go, you know, and try to herd them back onto the prescribed
17:18
path, which can be an approach, but if you do that enough, a, it doesn't start
17:23
to feel fun for you because all you're doing is saying no, and b, it doesn't start, it doesn't really feel good for
17:29
the players. So, learning to kind of think on your feet is a skill that actually has to be learned, I think, um,
17:36
through just getting out there and trying, you know, doing it. playing with people like Joe, who Matt describes as a
17:41
little monster, are perfect because people like Joe force you to think on your feet. They force you to adapt and
17:47
change what you want to do. Uh, in this case, I said, "Hey, if you guys can get the tools, you can bust through the wall." And then I just kind of looked at
17:52
the map, went, "Okay, where's a decent place to go put them partway through this dungeon for actually thinking of this, you know, solution." Um, and so
17:59
they kind of came into the dungeon backwards, and that was interesting getting to experience some of the traps in reverse, like activating things
18:06
before they had a chance to set them off, which was something they quickly figured out. Um, but I think they had
18:12
more fun that way. Just like it didn't it didn't really derail it. It still got them into the situation they were
18:18
supposed to be in. um they felt like they'd done something creative, something they wouldn't have been able to do within, you know, we keep bringing
18:25
them up, something you wouldn't have been able to do with like an old gold box D and D game uh on, you know, the uh
18:31
the radiant pool or whatever. But um yeah, I think pools of radiance. Yeah, pools of radiance. That's it. Yeah, I
18:37
like I really think the biggest the best answer to this is just you know get players like get players who will keep
18:42
you on hose and just practice just practice saying yes and or you know making them making them also contribute
18:50
uh ways they think their weird plans might work is also important. Um and just not being tied to a strict
18:57
storyline really helps a lot. This is where making your own stuff kind of helps as opposed to running pre-written stuff. Pre-written stuff is
19:04
great for learning the rules, but when you get into writing your own things, you can write uh you can write situations that you want to h that you
19:10
want to happen. You can write scenes. You can write, okay, I want them to find these five things, and here's my idea of
19:16
how they'll find them. But then if you've got your list, it's like they need to find these three clues to implicate the Duke and the murder. Um,
19:23
and then if they come up with something totally offthe-wall, you can look at your list and go, "Ah, they can find
19:28
this one here, and then I don't have to worry about this other thing anymore that they've bypassed because now they've they've wandered face first into
19:34
the plot anyway by their own means." So, um, yeah, I know that's I that's probably not the best advice, but just
19:41
do it, I guess. Get out there, practice it, try it. Uh, try thinking on your
19:46
feet. um is really the best way to learn how to roll with whatever your players
19:51
throw at you. Matt, um I was while while uh Phil was talking, uh the first thought that came
19:58
into my head to to springboard off what he was saying is it's an acronym that I
20:03
can't I can't use the unacronymed version on this show because we go for PG-13. Um but it's FAFO.
20:13
Yep. If the players want to do that, go ahead. Yeah, let's see what happens.
20:18
It's a bold strategy, but let's see how it works out for them. Uh, and this doesn't mean you have to punish them. It
20:24
just means give them enough rope to give you an idea of what's going to happen next. Uh, as I've gotten older and as
20:31
I've run more games, I notice that when I come up with stuff nowadays, I don't really have a plot. I have characters
20:38
and their motivations. I know what those characters are going to do. I know what they intend to do. I know what would
20:44
happen if the party never showed up. Um, but I don't know what the party's going
20:50
to do. So, I don't plan for the party to do anything. Or more accurately, I plan
20:56
to react to what the party does as the people I'm I'm using are going to react
21:01
to them. Um, if if the players strike up a rivalry with the person, like if I do
21:06
a big social gathering episode of the of the story and the players, you know,
21:12
getting into a frenemies deal with this guy, uh, I'll I'll steer into it. I'll I'll go into that and see where it takes
21:19
me. Uh I I want to credit like of all things uh a writer named Tom Moldive who
21:25
was an old old school D&D writer. Uh he he wrote a module called the lost city.
21:31
And what was really fascinating with the module was it was the first one that basically from page one was like do not
21:39
listen to me. If you have an idea of what you want to do here, ignore what I
21:45
wrote. Just take it out. Put in your thing. do whatever you want to do with
21:50
this. Here's I've even written like there's three concrete levels to this
21:56
dungeon that I have written, but there's 12 more levels that I have not written at all. And you know, here they are.
22:03
Here's where they are. Here's a here's my suggestion for what should be there. Roll with it. Do as much or as little as
22:10
you want. You can present this as a straightforward dungeon crawl or you can
22:15
explore the the hidden internal politics of this lost city, whatever you want. And I remember reading that and then
22:23
playing paranoia shortly after that really told me, "No, I've been trying to
22:29
tell a story, but that's not my role necessarily to tell a story. My role is
22:34
to expediate a group telling a story." Like I provide tools and sometimes those
22:41
tools are big chunks of the narrative in the setting, but in the end it's it's not necessarily about what I want to
22:47
see. It's about what they all decide to do. And if you can get that mentality,
22:53
it makes it a lot easier. You can throw out your your sacred cow or and here's the other thing. This one will actually
22:59
reference Joe. If your players decide that they're not going to go to the the
23:06
big magical city that you've set up with for the next six or seven adventures in the campaign, just take the stuff you
23:13
were going to do in the city and put it on a a pirate ghost ship and they'll
23:19
they'll still do it. It's like they're essentially getting the exact same experience. They're just getting it on a
23:24
pirate ghost ship. And they didn't know that this was going to happen in the city. So you can just yank out whatever
23:30
you have prepared and put it somewhere else. Take like half an hour and try to file the serial numbers off a little
23:36
bit. But yeah, in the end it's one of those things where the illusion of
23:42
choice is very real. There's only so much they could actually decide to do that you can't just oh yoink. Okay. You
23:49
know, now if they decide we're not going to do any of this. We want to go into the mountains and start a yak farm. You
23:54
can go okay. And then, you know, okay, the the monsters that were going to eat that village, they're attacking the act
24:00
farm now. You know, I I feel like sometimes we overthink it. Like, we get too caught up in, oh no, I must preserve
24:06
my original vision. Just just take your original vision and put it over here now. Now it's you you were going to be
24:12
doing Spider-Man, but the the artist decided he wanted to draw Conan. So, now Spider-Man's fighting Conan villain. You
24:19
know, it you can do that. And the fact that they actually did that in comics always amazes me, but never mind. Um,
24:25
not related other than as an example, I I just feel like sometimes people are too afraid to to like first off they're
24:32
too afraid to just run up their own stuff. Mhm. Which, you know, cuz you're starting out, you don't know really know what
24:37
you're doing. That's cool. I get it. I I was there. But when you are working with
24:42
other people's, you know, pre-written stuff, it's still you running it. You don't have to do any of it. It's like uh
24:50
you were talking earlier when when Phil was saying that you know the people just kind of understood that they were there to tell a story like in the case of
24:56
Blackmore which by the way is is Gonzo. That's a messed up setting. I have I
25:01
still love it. It's it's you know at one point he put a character named the egg of Coot in and if you know what those
25:09
initials are you'll understand why it's the egg of Coot. And yeah, I love love
25:14
love Blackmore. But Blackmore is if you think of it in terms of people understood, okay, we're going to tell
25:20
our own story. So everything here is part of that. You can you can do that with a published module of any kind. If
25:25
you're running Ravenloft, you don't have to to have Strod do the things
25:31
that it says he's going to do, but you certainly can. But you can also change it to make, you know, players. This is a
25:38
20-year-old character, 30-year-old character, 40 year old character. Yeah, this this guy's origin is pretty well
25:44
established. If I make some changes to it, it's not to disrespect it. It's to
25:50
get people engaged in a story that isn't one they already know. There's there's lots of flexibility to this in my
25:55
opinion, and you just have to let yourself find it. Yeah. And I think part of the the struggle with that, especially for newer
26:01
people coming into the game, is what they choose to pick up first and how it presents it. And again, like we've
26:09
talked about modern publications compared to older publications and what do you guys feel has been a
26:15
publication or something that has really laid that out like really given the
26:20
tools or at least pointed the direction of, hey, go tell your own story, right?
26:26
Cuz I know some people can feel penned in by the world that they're in. Um, I mean, this is a pro common problem with
26:31
D and D, right? Like Forgotten Realms is so stocked, I guess would be the best
26:37
way to put it. There are so many like iconic stories when you have Ed Greenwood writing like tons of novels,
26:44
RA Salvador writing tons of novels, you know, of characters, named characters in
26:50
this game setting, which kind of is just a natural evolution of of players again telling their own story, so to speak. uh
26:57
newer players coming in can feel like they're obligated to sort of operate in
27:03
those same confines. Uh but at the same point, like you just pointed out, they
27:08
may not feel totally comfortable creating their own world from scratch and just using the rules. So, is there a
27:15
game system or a book out there that does a really good job of kind of like walking that line? Uh I'm going to I'm going to shout out
27:21
two here. Um, they're both more recent products, so they're things that, you know, people won't have any problems finding if this is an interesting style
27:28
for them. Uh, one that I think plays in the kind of fantasy space, but that also
27:33
runs completely counter to the way D and D runs things is, uh, Chris McDall's Mythic Bastion Land, which I've kind of
27:40
been gently beating the drum of in Blizzard watch in private channels, but um, so Mythic Bastion Land kind of
27:47
extends the setting of McDall's other games, so you don't really need to know any of that. Um, it's essentially set up
27:53
as a hex crawl. Um, which is a style of play where complet I'd say completely
27:59
the opposite of here is a set story line that you want to try to guide your players through. It's pretty much here's
28:04
a world that your players are in. The story is there for them to go seek and a lot of how you react to that is based on
28:09
what they want to do. Um, but it also guides you through um setting up
28:15
characters which is very quick. Um, it's about five dice rolls to have a complete character. Um, but then also the GM is
28:22
advised to set to basically stock a hex map with these thing called myths. Uh, you have, I want to say six of them by
28:29
default that are somewhere on the map. Uh, the players know their goal is to seek these myths and to resolve them, whatever that means to them. Um, and
28:36
each of the myths has um, you know, it has omens that you can stumble across that send you in the right direction.
28:42
There are some of the myths almost seem kind of harmless. In fact, they change the world in interesting ways. Um, some
28:48
of them almost kind of tell a story on their own that the players are just kind of adjacent to and can kind of insert
28:53
themselves into. Um, some of them are more straightforward, like one of the myths is just a wyvern. One of the
28:59
things it likes to play with is like, you know, fantasy creatures like goblins and orcs and wyverns have gotten kind of
29:05
um p I'd say in other fantasy games. So, this kind of takes the like the approach you might see in like um especially
29:11
draws on Arthur and legends and games like Pen Dragon. It's like what if there was one wyvern? Um, and you and like
29:17
it's it's an actual like flying poisonous lizard monster. How does that affect the world around you? What do the
29:23
players choose to do about it, etc. Um, so I really feel an approach like Mythic
29:28
Bastion and like other HexCrawl games. Uh, Forbidden Lands is another one that I would like to that I'd think of. um
29:34
where like the story is there and your players can go find it and go make it themselves and you really are like Matt
29:41
said just kind of a um a facilitator of that story. You're helping them tell the story they want to tell which I think is
29:47
really a good way to think of the DM's role rather than uh rather than an author you're a facilitator. Um the
29:53
other one is I will shout out new kid on the block Daggerheart. Um, it can be uh
29:59
we both we've all acknowledged it can be intimidating to write your own setting from scratch, but it can be equally intimidating to step into a world like
30:06
the Forgotten Realms or Dragon Lance that are just so chalk full of years and years and years and years of stuff and
30:12
characters and adventures that even that can feel a little like you don't have room to play. Um, there's a feature in
30:19
the back of Daggerheart and I actually think thirsty sword lesbians also does this. Daggerhart calls them campaign
30:25
frames. They're not they're not full-on campaign worlds full of characters you already know. Um and they're not uh
30:31
here's three facts about a world, now draw the rest of the owl. Um they are each about 10 pages. They give you
30:38
enough to kind of get a feel for the world, get a feel for like how this would play differently from a standard
30:43
standard fantasy setting or if it does at all. A couple of them are pretty bog standard. Um here's like some mechanical
30:49
changes that you could introduce. Here's things players should think about when they're making, you know, their backstory in this campaign. It's like
30:55
just enough to get started and adopt it as your own. Um, and that is, I think,
31:00
one of the neater features of Daggerheart. And like I said, I'm barely certain Thirsty Sword Lesbians does
31:06
this, too. They have a few, um, more detailed settings in the back, and then they also have ones that are just like,
31:12
here's a paragraph that we thought would be a cool idea for a setting. We didn't fill it out, but if you want to
31:17
springboard off this and go. So, um, I would especially like to shout out those I guess that became three games there at
31:23
the end. So, Matt, um, I'm trying to tow a line between getting to indie and so that
31:30
I've be it becomes what what is he talking about or too mainstream so yeah, everybody knows about that. So, I'm not
31:37
going to I'm not going to mention Pathfind. Um, but I will mention Aegon. And I don't know if either of you have
31:44
played Aegon or or even looked at it. I have I have both editions of Aegon on my shelf. Yeah.
31:49
Agon Aegon to me is fascinating because the basics of it are literally this is
31:55
Greek myth and not like this is Greek myth in the you know here's the monster
32:01
man here's the you know days and demigods you can use this as a monster manual when your players want to start killing gods. It's it's just you know
32:09
this is like all the stuff that about mythical storytelling and I when I say that I mean literally the storytelling
32:15
of the myths given form and one of the conceits I've really like about it is
32:21
that your character gets pllopped down on an island and so if you've read the Odyssey you kind of know where we're
32:27
going. Um weird stuff can be happening. There's all sorts of different ways you can interact with it. Uh there it just
32:35
it is really good at giving you the basics and then letting you like leap
32:42
off into where would this take you? What are you doing? Like why are you here?
32:47
How does how do you stop the this whatever's happening from happening or help it if you want to help it? Uh there
32:54
there's just a lot to it that I really enjoy. it it's one of those like it's kind of I don't want to say it's similar
33:01
to Blades in the Dark because in a lot of ways it's nothing like Blades in the Dark but it still kind of has that same
33:06
feel where the narrative feels like it's it's guiding you but you're also guiding it. One of the things I love I will
33:13
actually say this about Blades of the Dark for for people who want to get into like actually doing their own brainstorming and their own stuff.
33:18
Blades has a really great mechanic uh where you basically you you get to cut
33:24
to prep work you did. Oh, the flashback mechanic. Yeah. Yeah. The flashback mechanic where you
33:29
get to cut back to to prep work you did after you've you know your group has started doing the whatever thing they're
33:36
doing, the heist or whatever. And then you can cut back to the part where you were all getting ready to go do this
33:42
thing. And since you now know some of the stuff that's in here, you can look really smart, like your character
33:48
planned for this. Um, and that's just it is something I really like as a tool to
33:54
to let players cope with stuff that might otherwise seem hard to cope with. And as a game master, that's one of the
34:01
biggest problems, isn't it? It's like I think I've said this before, but it's super easy to kill all the characters if
34:08
you want to. Oh, yeah. If you want to kill the party, it doesn't take okay, 300 more orcs show
34:14
up. I mean, it's not it's not that hard. The the the hard part is doing a
34:20
narrative satisfyingly to the point where if someone dies, nobody feels like
34:26
they got cheated, like it feels like it was an earned part of the story. Um, that's that can be tricky. And games
34:33
like Daggerheart or um Masks is another one that you know I've I I begged and
34:39
pleaded and whined until we finally got Phil to run it. Um Mask is one of those ones where you can just throw people in
34:46
and they will you just come up with your character and you're literally creating elements of the game world as you do,
34:51
which Daggerheart also does. Uh Daggerheart very much if you decide well
34:57
my character is a my character is going to be a flying angel robot. Now suddenly, okay, your character is a
35:03
flying angel robot. What does that mean? Is does your the god your character thinks they worship exist? Or are you
35:10
carrying a god around inside of you? Like the last remnant of this this now
35:15
essentially gone deity? Are you the only little conduit of its power left? The
35:20
only dreb of it? And and uh when we ran when we ran Drag Art the first time,
35:27
that was the thing that I was really keen to see. Um, and there are other games that do it. Monster of the Week
35:32
does it. Monster of the week. Actually, one of my favorite Monster of the Week campaigns. Uh, I got to play a character
35:37
who was basically what if Buffy had Hellboy's fist like that. That was, you know, what if
35:43
Hell if Buffy was wandering around with a big, you know, concrete f off hand,
35:49
except this one was made of silver. And, you know, you if you know Celtic myth, you know where we're going with the big
35:54
silver hand that punches monsters. Um, but that because I came up with that,
36:00
the guy running the game had to like, you know, okay, what is that? He had to help, you know, the two of us together
36:06
had to come up with what that was. It helped build the world. If you bring players in and games, the games that can
36:13
help you do that. Um, any game can if you if you're willing to, but there are
36:18
some that are really good at doing it. Um, I am going to say, uh, I hate doing it because it's such a everyone knows
36:25
this game, but but Pathfinder Second Edition does a really good job of letting you make as many changes as you
36:30
want, like of really showing you you don't need this campaign setting. You don't need these people. All you need is
36:37
this. Mhm. Uh, and there are examples of play are really good. And I think in general, it's a better approach. Uh, I haven't
36:44
gotten to like 13th uh 13th Age. Yeah. 13th Age did this, oddly enough.
36:50
And and and I have the I still have the original uh SRD from it. And I I
36:56
honestly don't understand why it isn't more widely known cuz it was really good
37:01
at just saying, you know, if you want a campaign here, we've got one, but if you
37:06
don't, uh don't feel like you need it. And if you would like to branch off from
37:12
it, you can start in our stuff and then just go over here and now you're not in our stuff anymore. Like you sailed out
37:19
of it, you know, there there's all other places in the world and you've just gotten on a boat and now you're in a different place.
37:24
Uh so yeah, there's there's actually quite a few games, but Oh, yeah. I'm just going to stop now because I'
37:30
I've ranted for quite a bit here. Oh, no. You're you're good. But I mean, I'm going to throw I'm going throw a couple of mine in there as well. Like
37:37
recent recent ones that I've been reading I think that have been very very
37:42
good for this one. Uh I'm going to give a shout out to Urban Shadows, right? We've been talking about this a little
37:47
bit in the background. Um it is definitely a game built for longer term games, which is why we probably won't
37:54
won't play a version of it on uh Tavern Watch just because of that because it's a game that really wants a longer
38:00
campaign with it. But it does a very good job of giving you here are the
38:05
tools that make a city. Here are the tools that make a setting. Here are the factions that can live inside of that
38:11
city and doesn't really give you the city. It doesn't give you the specifics
38:18
of it. It gives you all the tools around it and literally calls out that the
38:24
story is the is everything. The story is the currency. The story is the experience. The story is the power. and
38:31
everything is built around that concept. And it does a really really good job of just like explaining that upfront and
38:39
giving you something that feels like it's a framework that you can work within, at least in my opinion. And I
38:45
actually had uh my partner at the shop who is very used to like Pathfinder and
38:53
Dn D. I had him read it and he had a very similar thought. He's like, "Oh, I could do a lot with this." And I'm like,
38:58
"All right, cool." same wavelength. Uh the other one is a little bit of an older game, also powered by the
39:03
apocalypse. You might sense the theme here, folks. Um is the Sprawl because it
39:09
does the same thing. The Sprawl is God, I love the Spraw. The Spraw is so good. The Sprawl is
39:15
cyberpunk. The Sprawl is very easily adapted into Shadow Run. Uh as a matter
39:20
of fact, I believe one of the original oneshot Shadow Runs that I ran for Tavern Watch Yeah. Yeah, you did. You did. We did the
39:27
sprawl and we did because they they have like weird esoteric and Eldrich uh playbooks and it's really easy to adapt
39:34
for it. Very very well done. Hard to find a physical copy of it right now with the PDS are still up online. Uh but
39:40
it does the same thing cuz the sprawl can be anything. The spraw can be literally any city. It really embraces
39:45
the idea of of Gibson's Neurommancer where it's like, yeah, he's naming these cities, but it could literally be
39:51
anywhere, right? It doesn't matter where they are. Um, and I think it does a fantastic job of it. The other one is
39:57
one that I am looking to run for uh the tavern watch, and I've talked about this
40:02
a little bit, is actually outgunned. So, the way that Outgunned is set up is
40:08
entirely storybased, and it does have a dice mechanic for the players only, but
40:14
everything about it, every tool, every resolution, even combat damage, all of it is
40:22
narrative. And while they do have settings, uh, because that's one of their their things is all about like
40:28
literally capturing a cinematic experience, like their first expansions books were like, you know, here's a
40:34
bunch of different movie settings. Go forth. Um, but everything about it is like, okay, players are going to be
40:41
engaged in this in this movie. They're the actors. They're the ones delivering
40:47
the lines. Roll with it. Let them let them take that stage. let them take the
40:52
spotlight. They are the stars of the show and you get to react to them. And I
40:59
I tend to like games like that because it it tends to be like you said, it it
41:04
really emphasizes like what Phil was talking about, the idea that the players are there to tell the story and you're there to facilitate
41:10
it, but you also need to understand as a player like especially in those games
41:16
that you help shape that story just as much as they do. not just react blindly to what they do. And those three games
41:24
really do a good job of laying that out for for people that are going to run them. And I think that's really
41:30
important, at least as far as I So, we've we've talked about the importance of storytelling in the games. We've
41:36
talked about systems or or ones that we think that do a really good job of bridging the gap between here's an
41:42
already fleshed out world and here's a blank slate. personal opinions or or
41:48
personal stories. Is there a moment that you've had and this again is another question that comes from our our
41:54
listeners often. a situation that you have that particularly stands out to you
42:00
as a and we've already talked about them, but something that maybe stands a cut above them of wonderful improv where
42:07
your players fully bought into what was happening in the world and the story and
42:13
really you watch that story blossom live in front of you. Start with Matt. Uh or Phil, either one.
42:19
I was gonna say I've got one and it also doubles as a plug for Tavern Watch.
42:24
Um, I've I've talked to people before about how much I really enjoyed the middle section of our Tavern Watch plays
42:31
game of masks. Um, there is a section in the middle where um, your characters had
42:38
all just had like their first encounter of the oneshot and like I kind of I
42:43
didn't really know what would happen from here, but then I think everyone went back to Joe's character's mom's
42:50
house for dinner. The lab. Yeah. And like, yeah, and I literally just shut my mic off and let
42:56
you guys like tell stories with each other for close to 30 minutes. I just made sure my notes were up to spec for
43:03
the last part of the game. Um, because masks, like many PBTA games, had given
43:08
you guys the tools you needed to get into characters and build a little world around them and build, you know, build
43:15
parts of the world that were important to your character in such a way that at that point, you all were just interacting with each other and telling
43:21
stories. and I had just kind of, you know, I just kind of pushed you there and said, "Okay, go." I didn't really
43:26
have to do a whole lot from that point. Um, and that has been one of my favorite, even though it was just a just
43:32
a oneshot, that has been one of my favorite parts of running any tabletop game. Um, the other one that I will give
43:39
is from that um from that uh Balders's Gate Descent into a Verurn uh campaign
43:44
was the part where the murder mystery got delayed a little bit uh because several seats on the um on the Council
43:52
of Dukes in Balders's Gate opened up and my players decided that they were going to run a successful political campaign
43:59
um for this one halfling they really liked. So, um, in our version of the Forgotten Realms, there is a halfling
44:06
named Milo Honeywell, who is one of the dukes of, uh, Boulders Gate. Um, this
44:11
came completely out of the blue for me, just how much they would attach themselves to this NPC. And unlike all
44:17
the stories you hear of like parties forcibly adopting goblins, like they decided they wanted to improve this
44:22
Havlings's like stature in society. And I was just like, yeah, okay, we can do this now. um you guys can check back in
44:29
on him between you know um your other adventuring duties and like they they
44:35
stayed attached to this guy such that they got back from hell um having redeemed an archangel and went okay but
44:41
what's Milo doing? Is is he is he still there? He didn't get assassinated while we were gone, right? Like I would not do
44:47
that to you guys and then rolled a dieice and then said no he's fine. But yeah, so just players players taking
44:55
off with their own story. um uh is my just I have anecdotes about that and
45:01
they're just just my favorite parts of some tabletop RPGs because it really does feel like the facilitator role has been fulfilled to the point where like
45:08
they can now tell stories and you can step back in when they're ready for you. But they'll do their own thing in the
45:13
meantime and I just think that's really cool. Matt, my problem is I have a lot of them and I'm I'm trying to think of I'm gonna
45:20
tell one that that's kind of it was an early game and I wasn't the DM, I was a player and it was an example of
45:26
something that kind of shaped how I ran games later. Uh there was an old like
45:32
original first edition Shadow Run adventure just named Harlequin.
45:38
Yep. And uh the DM of the the story the game
45:43
runner the game master of this particular session came to me and said okay I I need someone to come in and
45:49
play in this game and you're you're more experienced than the people I have in my party already. Uh uh we lost a guy and I
45:57
I need to replace him. So c can I get you to come in? I was like yeah all right. Uh I like Shadow Run. What's
46:02
going on? He goes, "I want you to let me completely make your character and just
46:09
go along with stuff that I've come up with." And I'm like, "Okay, sure." It
46:14
goes, "There's going to be a point where you get to decide what this means, what
46:20
what's actually happening." And he didn't tell me any more than that. He just told me that uh we start off and
46:25
for like the first I'd say for the first five or six uh sessions, we weren't even doing the Harley Quinn adventure. We
46:31
were just doing other stuff basically getting to know you jobs, you know, uh,
46:36
you know, stealing from ass technology and, you know, that's you don't want to steal from ass technology and get caught
46:42
because they will they will sick demon monster dogs on you and stuff. It's don't don't mess with ass technology.
46:47
Um, stuff like that. And we had a a a really cool party full of like really
46:53
interesting characters. Like we had the the the the guy who was basically an orc
47:00
who did um like drones and piloting vehicles and so forth, whatever. That's is that a rigger in Shadow Run?
47:07
I don't remember what they called him. Uh but we had that guy. We had the the troll decker who didn't know how to
47:13
fight. So the the giant eight and a half foot tall armored guy who was completely
47:19
useless in fights. Um, and and there was like me and I was playing like Bob Bob
47:26
the, you know, average human exmilitary guy who just showed up and shot things
47:32
and, you know, didn't didn't have any cyberware cuz I couldn't afford it. So, I was kind of just there. And then then
47:41
the game master has like assassins drop into my house trying to kill me, lots of
47:47
them. and they're all elves and all these elves are trying to kill me. And so he goes, you know, he he gives me
47:54
this the the the room to come up with it. And I'm like afterwards they were like, "Why' they attack you?" And the
48:00
the the uh troll, one of the things the troll did was medicine for us, too. We also had like a mage, but I can't
48:06
remember what their deal was. Um anyway, he's checking me out and he's like, you
48:11
know, he he he's like, "What do I see? Do I see anything interesting?" and he just looks at me and I go, "Yeah, one of
48:17
my ears comes off and there's like a pointy ear under it." And you find out that my character is an elf. Cuz I'm
48:23
like, "Yeah, why not? The the elves came to kill me because I'm an elf and I don't remember it." And suddenly the the
48:28
adventure Harley Quinn turns into a completely different thing where instead of people trying to find Harley Quinn's
48:34
secret daughter, it's I'm Harley Quinn's secret daughter except I'm a guy. But
48:39
then it turned out that they had surgery for that. So, this was also a somewhat progressive game for the time period.
48:45
Uh, yeah, it just it gave me the it put me in the driver's seat, and I'd never
48:51
been in the driver's seat before, you know, like I'd never had that that power at a storytelling, you know, when we're
48:57
doing a game. I never had that power to like actually decide, you know, we're going to go over here now. We're going
49:03
to do this. Like, we spent a lot of time in Portland because that's where the Elf
49:08
Empire was. So instead of like the thing where you go there briefly, we had like three
49:14
sessions where, you know, it basically turned out that I, you know, how I why I had amnesia. Uh, and it was me like I
49:21
would riff and then the game master would riff and then other players started riffing. Like the troll went and
49:27
looked up information on the the the paladins of tier 10 gear or whatever it's called and he was like, I think you
49:34
were one of them. I had no no intention of that being the case, but I ran with it. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.
49:41
So, yeah, I've never forgotten it just because I had I had that driver's seat thing. I don't I'm not saying players
49:48
should jump over the they should always be pushing themselves. Uh we just did
49:53
one we recorded a Rebel Scum uh game yesterday as we're recording this and
49:59
one of the things I tried really hard to do was not push my character forward too much. like because I I can be a bit of a
50:05
handful as a player and I was trying pretty hard to not do that. So I only I
50:10
only spoke when necessary. I only did what I thought he'd be able to do. Like he's not sneaky. So I don't you like
50:18
everybody else came up with the plans. I didn't come up with any plans. Uh just because you don't want to like you don't
50:24
want to be too much. You don't want to like keep it so other people don't get to jump in. But you do want to be part
50:29
of it. you want to be, you know, have agency and have your character's actions. I think that the masks game
50:35
Phil talked about is a really good example of that where each character really was affected by the other
50:41
characters, you know, they they they actually had goals and and relationships and like it
50:49
was like a group of friends. They actually did like each other and each of them differently like you know this
50:55
person's like this, this person's like that. So yeah, it just it feels to me like that's that's a good way to
51:01
approach it is, you know, they call it collaborative storytelling and we don't ever really think about what that means.
51:07
It's like you're in a band. It's like the Beatles wasn't all, you know, John Lennin and it wasn't all uh Paul
51:14
McCartney and it wasn't even all, you know, George George Harrison. It was definitely all Ringo all the time.
51:19
Absolutely. And and you know, Ringo is God, but I'm sorry, but I do like Ringo.
51:25
Uh, regardless, it's it's what everybody brings and you have to like be open to bringing your own stuff and also open to
51:32
supporting someone else when they bring theirs. Uh, so that's that's the story I'm going to tell even though it's not when I was running.
51:37
No, I think that's I think that's good. I mean, mine I'll throw out a a little bit of a a quick one. My D and D world
51:45
has been in existence for 30 years. Um,
51:50
very first one I ever started running, maybe went like that. uh very first one I ever started running, my very own uh
51:57
campaign setting, my very own universe, all that stuff. Uh every player group
52:03
I've ever run has had a impact on the game. They basically their legacy,
52:09
whatever they choose to do, I have been trying to push that forward. And every
52:14
single group I bring into this, there's these like epiphany moments where they realize that that's exactly what I'll
52:21
let happen. Because a lot of times the Forgotten Realms is the Forgotten Realms, right? It's largely unchanged by
52:29
what you do inside of it. Like you may save the big bad, big things are imposed on you more than
52:34
you create them. Yeah. And instead in mine, it's Yes. big things happen, but your what you choose
52:42
to do and what you how you react to it shape the world. like a couple standout moments. One of my players was a druid
52:49
that by the end of the campaign, she absolutely hated humans. Like she could
52:54
not stand humanoids anymore. Um she just seen all this want and destruction. She just couldn't deal with it anymore. So
53:01
she decided to go as far north as she could uh to a place where essentially
53:07
there was just wildlife and maybe a few frost giants. and she started a grove
53:14
and that grove got bigger and bigger and then she started to miss the company of intelligent beings beyond just the
53:21
animals. So she started awakening all these creatures around her and this was generations ago and now there is
53:28
literally a city in the north that is just full of essentially awakened
53:34
animals that have been there for generations. And once they're awakened uh by the old spell, their offspring are
53:41
awakened as well. like they're not just like a bear, two bears having cubs. They're not just cubs. They're kids.
53:47
They have like human intelligence. And seeing like one of my player groups
53:52
stumble upon that and their journey and like seeing that epiphany moment like we've never seen this. And then getting
53:59
them to hear the story of it in game of you know uh Evelyn the the druid who you
54:06
know founded the grove, see her statue in the middle of it. uh you see the the
54:12
like that that entire like city and populations and entire playable races or
54:18
or heritages that are born from this player's actions blew their mind and
54:25
that was the first time I had seen that group uh which is the one right before I ran uh Otherworld for Tavern watch that
54:33
was their epiphany moment and they realized everything they do has consequences but they get to tell the
54:40
story that they want to tell and it opened up so many wonderful uh avenues
54:47
for them which is how like you know when I ran for Otherworld like there was why there was the uh the Raven Mother had a
54:54
temple on the prime material plane. Uh there was a reason why uh Highgate
55:00
actually was completely rebuilt when it had been devastated the time prior. Uh
55:06
it was it was really fun for me to see sort of that experience and it never
55:12
gets old for me when anytime I'm running a game and I and like Phil said the the the ability to turn off the mic or to
55:18
sit back and just be an observer to let them have their moment and let players
55:26
understand that they can tell the story and use the game mechanics to reinforce
55:31
that story is just golden. And so the root of the question is how do you you
55:38
know how do you deal with when players, you know, sort of just kind of do whatever. That's the goal, right? It's
55:45
not a deal with it's that's the goal. The goal is to get them to be so invested in what's going on, to want to
55:52
tell their story, to tell their story that they just walk back from like you can walk back from the table if you
55:58
really needed to and it would still go on without you. And it seems counterintuitive,
56:03
but it just means that you can then be that facilitator and everything that
56:08
happens, it's more organic. It's just and when things are more organic, everybody is more invested. It's just
56:15
absolutely the way it works. But we're running out of time and I'm just going to go to our final thoughts here. All
56:22
this to say that while storytelling and things like we talk about on the show like comics and movies and video games,
56:30
they are important and fun, they all sort of have predetermined goals or end
56:35
points on their journey to get there. And even when we talk about our tinfoil hat theories with WoW, we're not in
56:42
control of that story, right? We're speculating on what somebody else is going to decide to do. we're essentially
56:49
socially uh not socially engineering, but like trying to look into the psyche of the people writing it and figure out
56:55
where things are going. But when you sit down at a table with a bunch of like-minded individuals, and it should
57:00
be like-minded individuals. Your session zero is important, folks. Uh you can go listen to our travel and watch about
57:05
session zero. Uh it's just so much better in my opinion. It feels better
57:14
because everybody gets to tell the story and affect the story and have input on the story and it can change and morph
57:21
and become something that you never intended it to do because it has that element of the human touch to it that
57:29
the other media can't have because you're generally just an observer even if you are participating in it. Like
57:35
Balders's Gate, absolutely fantastic video game, has a set number of predetermined outcomes for everything
57:42
and you can't change that, right? What do you What are your guys final thoughts on it? Bill, talk.
57:47
Oh, I was going to let you go first this time. Um because I didn't have my guess, man.
57:53
Uh um you don't have my thoughts together. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, BouldersGate is an interesting
57:59
mention just because there are so many ways that the story can go. Um, and so many little elements, so many little
58:05
things that can happen that are weird and it kind of generates its own story. Um, which I think is something there
58:12
that maybe comes closest to tabletop RPGs for me is um, generating stories
58:18
that aren't necessarily even the main story, but just like things that people take away from from the game. um which
58:25
is just uh just one of the prime experience, one of the prime reasons I love tabletop
58:30
RPGs is the stories it generates that maybe weren't the story you wanted to tell, but the story that the story
58:35
people come away with, the story that sticks with them. Um and that's just one of the reasons that I love this hobby so
58:42
much and I really want to help more people get into it and more people tell more cool stories with their friends. Uh
58:47
play games that let you tell cool stories with your friends. There's my there's my final uh takeaway for you. All right, Matt, your turn. Um, one of
58:55
the things that I I I really love about tabletop, um, at the end of the day is
59:00
it's kind of like it's it's it's an awful lot like you're playing a you're doing a round robin. Like if you've ever
59:07
written a round robin with other writers, uh, you basically you write 200 words and then you pass it on to the
59:13
next guy who writes 200 words. Imagine doing that character by character, line by line. And that's kind of one of the
59:19
things you can do with tabletop. I mean, and this is not I am not in any way, shape, or form trying to take away from
59:25
people who like to just go in and smash things and and kill monsters. Uh, I think that can be a lot of fun, and I've
59:32
played I've played in D and D games where that was essentially my role. Um,
59:38
but I always like it when a campaign can start that way but can eventually move
59:45
into something where you're telling stories just because you've been playing the characters long enough that they've
59:51
developed their own personalities. And I like it when you can start that way, but I also like it when games
59:57
develop into it. I I think any game can do this. Uh there are certainly games that are more set up to do it than
1:00:03
others, but you can have a long running, you know, first edition advanced
1:00:09
Dungeons and Dragons campaign that you're still playing because you're an OSR fanatic or what have you. Um and
1:00:16
that can can be absolutely jam-packed full of role playing. Uh I just think I
1:00:22
think ultimately the cool thing about the personal stories isn't just that you
1:00:27
know yes technically you know Balders's Gate 3 as an example or you know Wrath of the Righteous there they have a lot
1:00:34
of endings and you'll never see all of them like it is physically impossible for you to play the 10,000 hours you
1:00:42
you'll you need to do to get all of this. Um yeah it just the average player
1:00:47
isn't going to see them. But the game does have a limit because it is not a
1:00:53
human brain which can lie. Uh a human brain can when faced with your players
1:00:58
doing something that you did not see coming and that you do not know what to do. Can just go okay act like this is
1:01:05
what you intended. Stay calm. Like let let them explore that cabin. What's in
1:01:10
that cabin? I have no idea. Mitch wanted to go in the cabin. I shouldn't have put a cabin there, but now Mitch did it. Uh
1:01:17
yeah, there's three talking bears in the cavern. Uh and they, you know, the next
1:01:23
20 minutes becomes discussion time with talking bears. And that gave me time to
1:01:29
come up with something else. The back and forth of that is something that is unique. Like nobody knew going like
1:01:35
going into Balls Gate 3, somebody wrote everything you see going into the thing
1:01:40
I just described. Nobody wrote that because there nobody knew that was going to happen. I I foolishly put a thing
1:01:48
down in the world forgetting the old maxima that once you put it down the players can use it once you've
1:01:55
established that it's there. Like Phil talked a bit about the the weird habit that players have adopting like a cobalt
1:02:03
or a goblin or what have you. You like you guys know the thing it's you know
1:02:08
you you mentioned that there's one there's one orc over in the corner who's missing a leg. Next thing you know, the
1:02:15
party has adopted, you know, Gong. They've got him a nice wooden leg they built for him. They're they're getting
1:02:21
him to an orc moot so he can meet up with other orcs. They've they've they've
1:02:26
totally adopted this guy. I I used to hate that. And then I saw my wife and my
1:02:32
friend Kern and Kern's stepson. I ran a a game for them and they just they
1:02:38
decided they were going to adopt one of the cobalts. And next thing I know, I I'm I'm letting them run the Cobalt and
1:02:46
the Cobalt is critting his mind off. Every time that Cobalt does anything,
1:02:52
it's a critical hit. I'm just watching. They can't roll like this for their own characters to save themselves. But but
1:02:57
when when Skippy the Cobalt comes up, boom, death and destruction, he he
1:03:02
becomes like an unholy killing machine. I'm like, apparently the power of friendship really did unlock his hidden
1:03:08
potential. That's that's become a story we still tell. Like we still talk about Skippy. Um he wasn't actually named
1:03:15
Skippy, but I didn't have a name for him. He was just random Cobalt number four. You know, he was just he was there
1:03:21
to get killed on their way to solve the mystery and they instead brought him
1:03:26
along and and made him uh a party member. And by the end of that, it was
1:03:32
like it was more like a three shot. We did three games. by the end of those three games that he was actually he
1:03:38
current stepson literally abandoned his character to play Skippy and I yeah okay
1:03:44
sure yeah yeah that there you go run be free level one cobalt that I was
1:03:54
going to let them smear on the ground to demonstrate their their character strengths now he's a trusted party
1:04:01
member okay that's that's fine I I think that that you know I think what we're all kind of saying is don't be afraid to
1:04:08
let your players do stuff and don't be afraid to do stuff in reaction to that
1:04:14
stuff because that is one of the strengths of being there is that you can do that
1:04:19
whereas even a game like Balders's Gate 3 which is an amazing game um it doesn't
1:04:25
have that level of flexibility just because it it has to have everything written and stored inside it and and we
1:04:33
don't we can just go okay yeah go with it let's see what happens you know so
1:04:38
that that's mine that's my 20 cents I guess at this point oh I think that is going to bring us the
1:04:45
time though so for all of you that have been asking those particular questions uh hopefully that that gives you a
1:04:52
little insight and and gives you a little bit about the importance of storytelling in in TTRPGs and and what
1:04:58
we feel about it uh and if you do have questions for this or any of our podcast
1:05:03
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1:05:09
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1:05:14
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1:05:19
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1:05:26
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1:06:06
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1:06:11
next week, folks. [Music]