Up next in 10
On the Tavern Watch Podcast, a mention of a crowdfunding campaign for Lodestar leads us to discussing areas where the community has picked up for Wizards of the Coast's slack on the Tavern Watch Podcast. While D&D's modern stewards often seem content to take a one-and-done approach to campaign settings (as opposed to multiple lines of products like in the past), the ever-creative community is stepping up to fill these gaps, leading to some fantastic third-party supplements. Lodestar seems to pick up where the Spelljammer release leaves off, while dark fantasy setting Dungeons of Drakkenheim and also-upcoming product Chapelwick are poised to fill a horror-shaped hole in the product lineup (although it's a more Soulslike approach to horror than the classic Curse of Strahd). If there are any third-party content creators out there who want to fill the void in my heart that used to be occupied by Dark Sun, I'm just saying, I would throw a little money at that. However, sometimes more familiar stomping grounds are nice, too; to that end, if you just want some rollicking fun in the Forgotten Realms, you can jump right into a free level 3 adventure from the upcoming campaign book for the Realms coming later this year.
If you need a good reason to do so -- we get it, scheduling is tough, everyone you know is tired, sometimes you need a little motivation -- you can check out StartPlaying's survey on relationships and roleplaying games, wherein 75% of the respondants said playing tabletop RPGs helps keep friendships alive, 57% said they forged core relationships through roleplaying, and 28% even found real-life love outside of their Bard's high-Charisma Persuasion rolls. There's also a good discussion of how to deal with dice derailing, or not derailing, the story that you and the other players at the table want to tell -- an especially timely discussion in light of the discourse about dice fudging that's circulating in online communities again.
Tune in for this and more games we’re playing, games we’re looking forward to, and liveplays we’re watching!
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:29
Well Bet traveler, welcome to the tavern. Did you know that this magical place is
0:35
where more than half of history's greatest adventures have begun?
0:40
Before those adventurers took their first steps, they watched and calculated who would join their party.
0:47
See that barbarian over there? He hails from the frozen lands. Strong, mighty,
0:52
and full of wisdom. I've closed many a nights with that one. They call
0:58
themselves Matt Rossy. To the right over there, that woman working on her tinkers and mechanical
1:04
devices, an artificer of great skill. She is cunning and quick, and I've seen
1:10
her bounce a fair share of narrative wells out of here before I could even step out from behind the bar. She's
1:15
known as Liz Harper. And that gentleman by the hearth with a pile of tomes. Rumor has it that he is a
1:23
powerful wizard full of arcane secrets. But around here, most just call him the professor. Me? I know them to be Phil
1:30
Orch. Oh, me. I'm Joe Perez. I'll be your
1:36
tavern keeper. Welcome to Tavern Watch. Hello everyone and welcome to Tavern
1:43
Watch where we talk about well, anything we want to that's t tabletop and or game related
1:49
cuz well, it's our show and we can do what we want to. Well, we also do what you want. I hope. Maybe. Oh, it's been a
1:56
weird weird month. Uh th this intro is sure going.
2:03
Yeah, sorry. Uh yeah, so I'm I'm Joe Perez, one of uh your sherpas on your
2:09
journey through the tabletop space. Uh and that there was Liz, our uh editor
2:15
and chief and and resident uh arcane uh trickster. How you doing, Liz?
2:20
Howdy. Uh I'm I'm here. I'm here. It's that life is great.
2:26
Uh, joining us as well as always is well, he's probably playing a barbarian. And if he's not playing a barbarian,
2:31
he's probably playing a barbarian, Matt Rossy. How you doing, Matt? I resent how accurately you know me.
2:39
And that last laughter there is joining us as our recurring fourth chair, Phil. How you doing, Phil?
2:45
Oh, I'm good. I think I don't get a class or a subclass. Yeah, we we we we we keep teetering between like you're
2:53
partially a wizard, but you're also kind of like a rogue. So like you're not really an arcane trickster because you're not doing it
2:58
maliciously or like to steal stuff, but you are occasionally giving people stuff that they shouldn't have. I look at my
3:04
Pokemon. Um he did just call me a rogue, which is a
3:10
little off brand for me, but I'll take Arcane Trickster. Arcane Trickster is fun. To be fair, the last the last time
3:15
we played a game where I ran for you that was D and D. You did play around. You played an assassin.
3:20
Uh I think I played a Phantom. I think I played one of the weird subasses that was maybe in Van Rton's guide. It was
3:28
Yes, I remember that character. Phantom is a good choice though. I love the Phantom. So, I guess uh we'll start things as we
3:33
traditionally do with I mean, what are you guys up to? Like what are you reading? What are you playing? Is there anything coming up that is there, you
3:39
know, that you're really looking forward to? Uh we'll start with Liz. Oh gosh, I'm mostly uh mostly watching things
3:48
right now. I have been uh you know, new Critical Role is out. I am some you
3:53
know, we've we're four episodes into the new Critical Role. I am already two episodes behind which is of course the
3:59
problem with Critical Role because you've got these big lengthy episodes and I think they're great. the new
4:04
campaign is going great, but also it's hard to keep up and if you fall behind even one, it's hard to catch back up
4:11
because, you know, you're talking about a 4-hour time commitment. I've been enjoying it a bunch, though. Um, another
4:17
thing I'm really looking forward to watching is uh Tales from Wood Creek, which is from uh Deborah Anne Wall is
4:25
the DM for that one, and it's going to run on the Dungeons Dungeon Dudes
4:30
channel. is kind of it's it's half D&D,
4:35
half escape room, half reality TV show and it's seems extremely creepy. It's
4:42
very on brand for the Halloween season that is coming out on the 31st, but they
4:48
released an early like a prequel episode kind of introducing you to some of the
4:53
characters, which was really fun. That's on the Dungeon Dudes channel right now. And Debbie Annewwell is just great to
4:59
watch her running a game because she's so enthusiastic and she's just it's it's
5:06
hard to imagine her doing terrible things to characters, but that does sound like what's about to happen
5:11
because she's just so nice. She's just so nice and friendly and cheerful. And I I'm running our next uh Tavern
5:19
Watch plays game and I I need to figure what that what that is happening. I think I I think I'm going to do
5:24
Brindlewood Bay if I can get everyone on on brand with me. So, I need to plan that and I've been reading about that
5:31
one. So, I just need to see if if I can get any players to come with me on on
5:37
playing, you know, teetering little old ladies solving mysteries that are in no way supernatural or unusual. But that's
5:43
that's really all I'm doing in the tabletop space right now. All right. What about you, Matt? Well, for starters, I've fallen down uh
5:49
yet another one of those wells you find on the internet. This one's about whether or not D&D 4E has got a gaming
5:55
systems license versus an open game license and do I have to retro clone it or can I just use fourth edition with
6:02
the numbers filed off? Um, so I've been doing that uh because I have this idea.
6:08
I I basically thought to myself what fourth edition D and D reminds me of a lot is fighting games. Um, and the
6:15
reason it reminds me of fighting games is because of the nature of fighting games where they have moves. They have
6:21
combos and moves and ultimates and so forth. Um, I don't know, you you probably know this, Joe. Um, Riot Games
6:27
just is kind of working on their fighting game, which is like a League of Legends brawler essentially. Uh, various
6:33
League of Legends characters who are fighting. And in watching the commercials for it, it kept hitting me this this would be interesting as like
6:40
it it kind of reminds me of stuff that we always thought Blizzard was going to do. and then they never did. Um, and I
6:46
started thinking about how would you represent this as a tabletop game? How would you do that as an actual RPG? And
6:52
then as I was doing that and falling down that well, I I tripped and fell into another one which was yet more
6:58
retro clones of the Marvel Superheroes uh RPG from the 80s. And yeah, uh there
7:05
were a lot more of them than I knew. And they're coming out more all the time. Like it's like every week there's a new
7:11
one. Uh, I just found out about this one's not that new, but um it's astonishing superheroes, which is it's,
7:20
you know, even it's slightly less of a ripoff than Phase Rip was, which is Phase Rip is just straight up the old
7:27
rules with new new names for things. Uh, this one has an updated karma system, so
7:32
it's a little different. Um, but yeah, I've I've been reading through that. Uh, yeah, and and then I I stumbled upon
7:38
Loadar. Have you guys seen Loadar? anybody? Doesn't ring a bell. Okay. Loadar is like I I don't know why
7:46
this exists, but it's it's got a it had a it had a a backer kit type thing. It's
7:51
actually on backer kit. Uh where they put out, you know, they wanted the 10,000 is British currency and they got
7:59
158,598 British pounds. So, we talk about what it is.
8:04
But that's the thing. It's just Spell Jammer. Yeah, it is just Spell Jammer. It's not like I
8:10
I understand wanting to do space fantasy in your role playing games. I I get it. Heck, we just played Starfinder last
8:17
week, you know? I I am totally down, but Loadar Loar is just Spell Jammer. It's
8:23
the boats, the flying in space. You're you're saying that like it's a bad thing, but you you we're we're living in
8:29
I'm not saying it like it's a bad thing. I'm saying it like it confused me for a long time. I thought this was a wizard's product.
8:36
Well, that's then that's because Wizards won't actually do spell jammer, right? Right. Like, so you
8:42
Well, forget doing it right. They don't do it at all. They did it like they released it and then boom. Um, we can go on and on about why that
8:49
happened, but it it just struck me as so odd that at this point yet again, like
8:55
the players and the community are putting out the products that that Wizards aren't.
9:01
Yeah. And so it really I'm not saying this is bad. I've been through it looks really kind of cool. Uh, I I am interested in
9:08
this product. This is not me saying enough, but it feels so odd to me that
9:13
they basically had like they were finally like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting for them to do something. You know, it makes me think someone's going
9:19
to have to make Dark Sun. Someone is going to have to do Dark Sun because, you know, Wizards isn't going to they're
9:25
going to release more Forgotten Realms books. And I have nothing against Forgotten Realms, but come on guys. Yeah, but I mean with if the Unear Arcana is anything to go by, we might
9:32
actually be getting some form of Dark Side. I don't know that it'll be what we want or the the you know what we expect a
9:38
Dark Sun game to actually be, but there seems to be somebody at Wizards is at the very least looking at that. But
9:44
yeah, maybe. Anyway, that's what I've been doing. Uh looking at tons of superhero RPGs that are retro clones, looking at fourth
9:50
edition, trying to figure out how to make it work for some idea I have. And then spending a ton of time looking at
9:56
Loadar. At first being confused cuz I honestly thought it was a Wizards product. I'm like, I didn't hear about this. When did this come out? Uh, it's
10:03
kind of like with I thought it was like the Exodus book which I still haven't managed to get my hands a copy of and I'm really upset about that. Um, but it
10:09
was like when the Exodus book dropped and we were all like what? Well, Exodus was also that was just a
10:14
third party book. Yeah. So, I thought this might have been that like the Exodus book similar but no
10:21
it's completely separate. It's not even it's not even people tangentially related like Exodus books was
10:27
tangentially related in that it is people who are working on a game for Wizards of the Coast. Um, great that
10:32
it's a video game they're working on, but nevertheless, it was it's got connections, whereas this doesn't at
10:38
all. But I honestly thought it was because it's like so so spell jammer. I'm like, why why did you not do another
10:45
Spell Jammer book or anything? I don't know. It's just it's just what hit me. Uh, I've
10:50
and maybe this will be maybe we can talk about this topic in a minute, but like there I think there's there's something
10:56
there that we can we can a little crack open a little bit, but I want to move on to Phil and see what Phil's been been
11:01
reading and what Phil's been looking uh looking forward to cracking into. Oh man. Uh, unfortunately I haven't been
11:07
reading a whole lot new right now. Um, I have um I do I will have some new books
11:14
in my hot little hands next week. uh my draw steel books, the physical books finally shipped um which has taken a
11:22
while even in the US uh because of the extremely small team at MCDM. Uh but my
11:28
books should be here next week. So I will finally have these two Colossal Tones. Um uh still running both uh Draw
11:36
Steel. I've got another session of that tomorrow. And we actually played another session of Fabula Ultima last night uh
11:42
which is really fun. kind of leaning super hard into JRPG tropes, which is always fun for me. Um, and I've watched
11:49
about 30 minutes of the first episode of the current season of uh uh Critical
11:56
Role because man, it's been a week. It's been a month. So, I've not had a lot of
12:02
time to sit down and watch gigantic actual plays or anything. Um, yeah, I think that kind of sums up what I'm up
12:07
to right now. Yeah. Cool. Uh for my part, I've actually been going back through the
12:12
Magic the Gathering settings for D and D. Um of which there are three. So you
12:18
have uh Theos, you have Ravnikica, and you have Stricks Haven. Ravnikica probably being one of the most
12:24
recognizable as like distinctly Magic the Gathering. Uh with Stricks Haven
12:29
being essentially Harry Potter without any of the transphobia. Um, it's it the
12:34
reason I'm doing this is because there's for the first time in a very long time,
12:42
there's an official magic novel coming out relatively soon in the next like few months and it's based around Stricks
12:47
Haven. It's called Omens of Chaos by uh Shannan Magcguire. And it's we haven't
12:54
had an official magic novel, an actual magic novel in it has to be at least a
13:01
decade at this point, if not more. Uh something that they sort of abandoned. You used to be able to get like boxes of
13:07
the stuff like you would get a box, it would come with like six packs in a book and like a a 20sided die for tracking
13:13
life totals. You don't get that anymore. It hasn't been that way for a while. And people have been asking, well, why have you abandoned stories? Why is everything
13:20
just done on web series and like these like poorly written articles or posts
13:25
that like never get any attention? And so they're like, "Fine, we're going to push out a book in 2026." And I'm really
13:32
excited for it because Stricks Haven Stricks Haven's one of my favorite settings both as a magic set and a D&D
13:40
uh world because it's D and D. It's little D and D book was so fun. That was just a great book.
13:47
And not only that, but it's it's it did what the original Forgotten Realms was supposed to do and what we haven't
13:54
really seen done since like the invention or introduction of Plscape in
13:59
any real value, which is it created a multiversal
14:04
junction point. It created an easyish to get to plane that all of the worlds
14:11
could link to. Anybody could go to Stricks Haven from any of the D and D worlds. It didn't matter where you were
14:17
from. It all linked in the same way that it links to all the Magic Planes. And so
14:22
it it was sort of like that that that really cool like yes it's supposed to be
14:27
like a high school/un university but also it's where people who normally
14:33
wouldn't get to interact with each other get to interact with each other and get to learn about the multiverse and
14:39
actually acknowledges the multiverse in more than just like going from point A
14:44
to point B. And I thought that was always really really cool. The characters were cool. The class specializations were cool. I again I
14:52
just love Stricks Haven. I love the aesthetic of it. I love everything about it and it's still one of my favorite magic sets that's ever released as well.
14:58
And I'm looking funny here. Go ahead. As this is going on, I'm I'm really This
15:04
highlights one of the places where you and I have a difference in that Theos is one of my favorite D&D books that came
15:10
out in the past 10 years. Yeah. And I think it is the best magic.
15:15
It's very good campaign. There was a good book, but I I haven't looked at Stricks Haven
15:22
because I think the the the Harry Potter thing really turned me off. I know it's not
15:28
actually Harry Potter, but when people describe me as Harry Potter, that's what turned me off and I just never got a
15:33
chance to get it. The thing is the sort of magic school just idea can be a really fun idea
15:40
because like what Joe is saying, you're mixing a a lot of things that wouldn't necessarily go go together. And it gives
15:46
you this builtin reason why why you're starting an adventure, why you're all gathering up and why you're here
15:52
together. And it just it offers so many possibilities for adventure. And it's
15:58
nice to have that that is not Harry Potter because Harry Potter has become so omnipresent and uh it's fainted. So
16:07
this is another thing that is great about Stricks Haven is it gives us this setting that has its own deep lore and
16:13
gives us a reason to bring all of our characters together and throw them in a melting pot. And one of the things I
16:18
think is really like to me it embodies sort of like the essence of D and D in that regard because one of the things
16:24
that everybody forgets about is that most of the time in like your your tabletop role playing games you're
16:29
starting party of adventurers are not adults. They're like 16. If you look at
16:35
like the old A and DDD books like when you actually rolled for your age your age ranges for all of the the species
16:42
that you could play were basically you're a teenager go out and adventure, right? like and like you don't deal with
16:50
any of that stuff. You just go and deal with high adventure and it's you know tries to be like that Lord of the
16:56
Ringses thing. Stricks Haven was just like no you you are starting this adventure as kids. You're first year
17:02
students. You don't know what's going on. Uh and I think that's really cool and organic cartoon for this.
17:08
You can blame the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon for it. Uh, which by the way I actually did unabashedly love as a kid.
17:14
But I don't I don't think it's the fault of the cartoon existing that that's where the trope is. But no, no, no, it's not. I'm being
17:20
But at the same time, that's it's a really good example of how comfortable they were with that idea. This is a
17:27
cartoon that came out from 83 to 85, three seasons. Um, and it's a cast of kids. They're all fairly young kids, and
17:33
they're just thrown into a monsterfilled world. If you take a couple seconds to think about it, it they could very well be in
17:40
Stricks Haven. There's no reason they couldn't. They all have weird magic powers, even the Cavalier. Yeah. Um, so yes.
17:47
Well, and the thing is like even make me think about it, but Stricks Haven has things that aren't magic related, too. It's not just a
17:53
magical school for magic users only. There are people that don't have magic that are there that are learning things.
17:59
Like, it's that's what I like about it. But I think we've talked about that quite a bit and I think we're going to
18:05
we're going to move on from there. Uh so I want to go circle back to something that Matt talked about a little bit
18:11
earlier is a little bit of an op-ed piece here because I think it's it's important. Um one of the things we've
18:17
been seeing more frequently is like with uh you know the the the set that the
18:24
setting that Matt was was bringing up being essentially Spell Jammer. Yeah. Loadar. With Loadar, it's filling a
18:31
niche that isn't being filled by the original property holders. And we're seeing more and more of that, especially
18:37
as Hasbro and Wizards take a more selective direction with their game
18:43
books and what they put into their game world. We saw it with fifth edition. Fifth edition, while it did go multiple
18:49
places, always veered towards the basic forgotten, right? You were on the Sword
18:55
Coast. You were you were doing things there. That's where they wanted to focus everything. And while other books like
19:02
Stricks Haven or Theos or or the other stuff existed, they were never a focus
19:07
point. And so you would get a book release and then nothing more. Um, yeah, they do a ton of one and done
19:14
with and in fourth edition like we were talking about with like Dark Sun, there was a whole series of books and when
19:20
they went when they went to a plane or they went to a different section, there's a whole series of books that fleshed it out and gave people the tools
19:26
to run it and you don't see that as much anymore and I think it's interesting the number of people stepping up to fill
19:34
that gap. So, I don't know like what other projects have you guys seen that sort of fill that void?
19:40
There's one Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I can actually think of one right away. Um, so the last time that I can think of
19:46
that we had not a Strod related piece of content, but a full-on Raven Loft uh
19:52
setting uh was way back in uh Whiteolf on Aren't you? And Whitewolf had to do it. Yeah. Um
20:00
White, sorry. Whitewolf did all the horror imprint stuff. Literally all of it.
20:06
Exactly. Um and then of course we got Curse of Strod. fairly popular uh from
20:11
uh you know probably a thing to cover another time. This thing where they don't actually do settings, they just do entire campaigns
20:18
with no room to swerve, but that's another thing. Um and also that one is basically a reprint of a 1979 module.
20:24
But um I would point at Chapel Wick, which is on Kickstarter right now, which
20:30
actually my wife just backed because she wants to run it. um is doing horror where Dn D is not. Um
20:40
and is this the one that's referred to as a Souls like Souls like cosmic horror? Uh yeah, it's got uh Bloodborne as one
20:47
of its major inspirations. Yeah. Um so, but it also has it's got like the regular horror. It's got a lot of cosmic
20:52
horror stuff in it. It touches on properties like Bloodborne, etc. So, it's not quite the same as a Ravenloft,
20:58
per se, but it is like, you know, Blizzard or God, Blizzard, wrong one. uh
21:04
Hasbro who did the did this one and done with uh Curse of Strod never went back
21:09
to look at the rest of Raven Loft never even acknowledged any other like horror things like that again there's so much
21:16
more to Raven Loft than Bovia but um they've kind of they say here's our one
21:21
horror campaign enjoy um and then there's like you know third-party things
21:27
like the uh the kind the setting that the dungeon dudes are also have like a couple books out for
21:33
uh Vengeance of Dragon. Dragonheim. Yeah. Uh and then Chapel Wick. Both are two uh third party
21:40
products that are kind of um bringing back horror as a uh horror or dark fantasy as a as a D&D setting option.
21:50
Yeah. What about Matt Liz? Do you got do you got one that uh that I have one, but I can't remember the name of it. I was just looking at it.
21:56
There was a was a crowdfunding thing I was just looking at. Uh, it was for a game that basically takes D and D and
22:03
tries to make it like what if D and D but apocalypse world. Like what if it
22:09
was powered by the apocalypse D and D? What if it was um, you know, oh bloody heck. Uh, man, I hate when my brain does
22:16
this cuz it's a very it's the heisting game. You guys know the heisting game. The one where you go you do do heists.
22:22
Blades in the dark. 11. Thank you. Yeah. Blades in the dark. It's like 11.
22:27
Oceans 11 is not a game exactly, but you know, hey, Pigeons 11 is a game that we have
22:33
played. So, Pigeons 11. I thought you said Oceans 11. Okay. But no. Yeah, it's basically right next to each other on the
22:38
keyboard. They took D and D and they basically just ran it through uh one of the light
22:43
rules narrative RPGs and they like all the classes, everything. And they crowdfunded it and it got crowdfunded.
22:50
It it made its m it made 10 times what they were asking for. And I'm sitting here going, why do you need that? Cuz
22:57
you could pretty much just do that with D and D if you wanted to. But I realize it's because people want this to be
23:03
easier. Like it's really hard right now to know what level they want D and D to
23:09
be at. Like D&D still has a pretty heavily in minis inspired tactical grid
23:16
thing. It's still right there. Um you move this many feet, you can what can you do within that space? you know, this
23:23
ability has a circle like it does. This ability does a a thing out from you. And it's it's not really it it can be
23:31
narrative difficulty. You know, it can be difficult to narratively run theater of the mind, whatever you want to call
23:36
it, a D and D game. It is not always as easy as you might like. So, and I say
23:42
this like it's just D and D and doing this. I mean, I like Pathfinder a lot, but let's be upfront. Pathfinder can be real hard to run.
23:49
Yeah. But I mean, we're not talking about just like the ease of running though, right? Like that's not really funny. The ease of the ease of creating
23:55
a narrative game with it which can be confusing for people and some people want to simplify it and they're doing
24:01
it. I think that's a little bit. Yeah. Which is fair and and I think that that there are definitely tools that are
24:06
making it easier but in this particular case the question really is things that are carrying on settings that D and D
24:12
has abandoned. Oh, there's also one for uh the Mistara by the way. Yes. And I was going to that that's a
24:18
really good one as well. Yeah, that's the one I I try not to mention too much because then my heart gets sad. Uh
24:24
because I I loved the Mystar books. I loved the entire BECMI
24:29
uh Dungeons and Dragons box sets. I thought they were great back when everybody else was was was on a&D. I
24:36
held on to those things for like years. I didn't give up on those things till Aaron Olston died. Uh because he was
24:42
writing the Gaziteer sets, which you can still buy, by the way. They're they're out there. You can get them. you just
24:47
you can go to drive through RPG and they'll print you out one. Um I I loved
24:52
that stuff and so people are like no why why don't you ever do Mistara? They've never done Mistara since third edition.
24:59
It's never gotten a revamp. It's never gotten brought out again by Wizards. So now people are actually doing it.
25:04
There's like two people working on different projects there. Yeah. And I I think there's there's elements of that too, like and you
25:11
mentioned with again with Loadar, the space stuff gets brought up a lot because there was a whole healthy space
25:17
section of Dn D in third edition. Uh and it was it was present in second edition,
25:23
maybe not as prevalent, but like Well, it started in second edition, right? It did. Yes. And and when Plscape came out, it
25:29
actually got a boost because then they they tied the two together, which they tried to do in fifth edition. to the fair. They did try to make both Plscape
25:36
and Spell Jammer connect, but they didn't. They did a all Plscape book and then they didn't. Yeah. But I mean the players are or
25:43
craving it and you can see this with the third party content that's being created uh with the the uh re resurgence of like
25:50
Spell Jammer, the resurgence of um the other one that I thought was interesting
25:56
was uh Starfinder, the original like the original original um or sorry Starf
26:03
Frontiers, excuse me. Um Oh yeah. Then they brought the Star Frontiers races back and then they just Yeah. No,
26:08
but they never brought the setting back. But we've seen people try to third party and bring it back which I think is always interesting.
26:13
Lince was the one who who twigged on to it before anybody else on at this podcast. I think about the really bad
26:19
job they did with the haty. Well that's yeah sometimes they make some major missteps but that's I don't
26:26
know that that's necessarily the scope of this particular question or or interaction. So I'm going to move over
26:31
to Liz. I know Liz has been playing maybe not as long as rest of us, but is there anything you've seen in the third
26:37
party space that feels like it's something that is filling a gap that Wizards has abandoned or that Hasbro has
26:42
abandoned? Well, I feel like, you know, I'm I'm really familiar with 5e, which is that's
26:48
the past decade of Wizards of the Coast. And it feels like this is kind of one of
26:53
the strengths of 5e is that it is a system that can support lots of
26:58
different things. And it's, you know, again, just from the past decade that I've been following the game, it feels
27:04
it feels par for the course that Wizards releases, oh, here's a source book with something kind of different than stock
27:11
fantasy sees. Here's another source book. So, here's Spell Jammer. Here's Theos, here's Stricks Haven, you know,
27:18
and you get a book and then you can adapt that to anything else. But that
27:23
feels normal. But one of the big strengths of D and D of 5e is that it's
27:29
a system that's not super hardcoded to play in um in the Forgotten Realms in
27:37
any specific setting. You can it's a very flexible set of rules that you can put anything to. And because it had a
27:45
good licensing agreement, you had all of this third-party content. It doesn't
27:50
matter if Wizards of the Coast is making it. You can find any kind of niche content that's 5e compatible that you
27:57
want. If you want horror, you can find it. If you want sci-fi, you can find it. It's all out there because it's so easy
28:05
to adapt 5e. And Wizards of the Coast, they seem to be really good about putting out one book and okay, here's
28:11
the book where you can do this. Okay, here's the book where you can do this. And not expanding on it, which leaves so
28:17
much room for the community. And I think that's part of what has made the D&D
28:22
community really great is that there's so much room. There are so many spaces
28:28
that the community can fill and has eagerly done. Yeah. Well, that's not to say that D&D
28:34
hasn't been busy uh with their own slew of things like you've stated. And I think that leads us back right into our
28:39
news topics. And well, I think we're just going to start cracking right on with it. one that I think is not surprising to
28:46
anybody here, but might be surprising to people at home. You may remember the that D and D was going super hard into
28:52
their virtual tabletop experience called Sigil. Well, seems like that might not
28:57
be the case anymore. Uh, as it has exited maintenance mode and full development has stopped on it. Now,
29:04
Phil, you threw this in here. Uh, why did you why don't you fill us in? Uh, pretty much exactly what it sounds
29:10
like. Um, the sigil tabletop was the uh the depressing looking playing
29:15
experience of everyone sitting around a table staring at their laptops that had powerful enough graphics cards to run this 3D Unreal application. Uh, Sigil
29:23
was a was their 3D VTT. This was the the future, we were told, and this was going to be how people played Dn D. And then
29:32
uh and then it was just put into maintenance mode because it turned out it was uh hard to run, weirdly clunky,
29:38
did like putting full development on this was probably way more than Hasbro was willing to invest in Wizards of the
29:44
Coast, I would guess is the what happened behind the scenes. And I think they laid off pretty much the entire team except for like one guy.
29:51
Um and it was put into what we were told kind of an indefinite maintenance mode. Well, after their third their third
29:58
quarter uh reports with Hasbro this uh past week or two, I think it was this
30:03
past week, uh there was an announcement posted on D&D Beyond that said that they are closing the chapter on Sigil. It is
30:11
uh not even going to be in maintenance mode anymore. It's just going to exist um up through the end of October 2026.
30:18
uh you can uh you can you can continue to use it until then, but at 2026
30:24
everything in it is gone. If you used a master trial, if you used a master tier
30:29
subscription or a paid subscription DND Beyond at any point to access Sigil, you got six free months out of it of
30:35
subscription to D&D Beyond. So, there's that for you. And if you pre-ordered the digital uh stuff for Sigil and you got
30:42
the Sigil exclusive gold dragon miniature, you get a new set of digital dice for D and D Beyond. Um
30:51
so it kind of appeared. It didn't make much of a splash as far as I can tell. And now they're just going to quietly
30:57
take it out back and old yeller it. Um, so yeah, this is this is one that I I kind
31:03
of I I'm snarky about it a lot, but I actually feel really bad for people that
31:09
essentially invested in this, invested their time, invested their money, and I of course feel bad for the developers
31:14
who got, you know, fired. That that's also bad. Um, but
31:19
I think I feel like it wasn't a bad idea to do a virtual tabletop. And I feel like that's the lesson that they want to
31:27
take. But it's it's not that a virtual tabletop is a bad idea. It's that you tried to make it a video game at the
31:33
same time. Well, not only that, but you're trying to do it at the same Sorry. Go ahead, Liz. It feels like they started development
31:39
on this kind of back when Balders's Gate 3 first came out and it was such a huge
31:44
hit and they're like, "We want that except you can play your tabletop campaign in it." And that's that's a
31:50
difficult that's a big ask. Yeah. Look at Never Winter Nights. I was just going to say there's a precedent for that though cuz Never
31:56
Winter Nights was actually very good at it and like you could they actually gave you campaign tools in third edition to
32:03
run uh basically to make campaigns and run them fully in Neverwinter Knights
32:08
complete with turnbas and initiative trackers and combat stuff like that. People are still doing it.
32:14
Yes, people are still doing it. Not just people. I say people like it's just random players and stuff. It's not.
32:19
They're making official releases to Neverw Winter Nights to this day. They just released a whole bunch of going
32:25
back to to what do you call it? Uh going back to Icewind Dale module and it's licensed. It's not the original
32:31
developers, but it's licensed by Hasbro. They're still doing that. And can you imagine if they adjust?
32:37
Are you sure about that? Yeah, absolutely. They they're releasing stuff to this day. They absolutely are.
32:44
They've licensed it out. I forget the name of the company. I can go look this stuff up if you want. Yeah, I because I
32:49
that that doesn't really necessarily seem accurate anymore cuz like but that neither here nor there. Uh the point
32:55
though is or at least for me is that it always felt weird that they were trying to enter the virtual tabletop space uh
33:02
when there were already a ton of third parties that were already doing it very well. And it always seemed a little
33:10
weird to me that you like why wouldn't you just hook your wagon up to that and make licensed deals instead? you offload
33:18
the development cost, you offload the cost. I understand the the mentality is, oh, but then you're not reaping all the profits, but at that point, you're still
33:25
reaping a ton of benefit because like you have Fantasy Grounds, you have Roll 20, you have all of these other ones
33:33
that that are capable of doing it. Heck, Tabletop Simulator has a rather robust
33:39
community of D&D assets for creating and running D and D games. So, like I would
33:45
be very interested uh to see like why the decision was made when all the rest
33:50
of us are like this doesn't seem like it'd be that good. I don't know. Regardless, but that's not the only
33:56
other thing that they're doing or not doing. There are some good news. There's at least some good news for the
34:02
Forgotten Realm stuff coming out. Uh, we've talked about The Heroes of the Forgotten Realms, which was going to be
34:10
releasing, I think it's relatively soonish, or at least pretty soon in the horizon. The full book was previewed at
34:16
the New York City Comic-Con. Uh, and the if you were there, you could go ahead
34:22
and, uh, spin through it and take a look at it, and there are some very blurry images available. Uh but we also found
34:28
out that the eight subasses essentially from the Unear Arcana uh have made it to
34:34
the print of the book. They are official. Uh so you have everything from your uh big subasses from your college
34:42
of the moon uh bard to uh uh the knowledge domain cleric to oath of the
34:48
noble genius paladin winter walker ranger can scan of the three rogue spellfire sorcerer blading wizard which
34:55
is one that I've been super excited for and then the banneret fighter uh so it's
35:01
really really cool and the banner fighter may not sound familiar uh but that's the purple dragon knight
35:07
uh which is an old third edition prestige class that got brought back as a subclass. I don't know what you guys
35:12
think about this. I think it's interesting that Carlac's on the cover.
35:17
Um it's like you know guys and Minsk. Yeah. Uh it's Minsk Carlac and that's the Black Staff of Water Deep by the way.
35:25
Kelvin that's Kelvin runs the current Black Staff. The current Black Staff. I don't know who the current one. Uh,
35:31
some of these are interesting, but man, uh, imagining a scion of the three rogue
35:36
in a heroic party is kind of wild, right? Cuz that is the dead three are the three
35:42
referred to there. You know, the villains from both when you get down to it. Painball and that's me. I work for them.
35:49
Yeah. Um, interesting choice. Banner at Fighter will be interesting to see what the final version looks like because it
35:55
was it was in it was in one of the earlier books in, you know, the non2024
36:00
version of 5e and it was bad. Oh yeah, super tied to Cormier. Um, which is a
36:07
Forgotten Realm setting, which is cool, but the class was just super super super bad. The purple dragons are Cormier's
36:13
military essentially. They're like honored guard whatever. So it made sense, but they didn't ex Yeah. And then it went through so many
36:19
changes in the in the in the Unearther canas. There was one where they leaned harder into the purple dragons but also
36:24
took it away from Cormier and you had like an amethyst dragon companion which was a wild take on it and then
36:32
they kind of backed that out in its entirety and went okay no it's the banner now and it's just a support fighter they can be from anywhere. So,
36:38
um, which I think is interesting because like this and, uh, in in particular the College of the Moon, uh, bard are very
36:46
support focused classes. And we've, we've talked about this before, you don't see a lot of that in D and D that
36:52
isn't just straight up healing. And so adding actual subasses that are not
36:57
healing focused that give you other options like the College of the Moonbard being able to like I don't know teleport
37:03
or to grant allies movement abilities like stuff like that is really cool cuz
37:08
it lets you again it's more heroic less even though even if it is a little bit
37:13
of that that tabletop war game route but like being able to use my magic to I
37:19
don't know give Phil an extra move to get out of harm's way is always seemed very D and D. So, like I really like
37:25
that. I think that's really neat. I got to say, um, looking at this, the thing that got that interested me was the idea that you could give other
37:31
people your second win. Yeah. Mhm. Which was a thing that they tried to do in with the first version of
37:38
it, but it was also very bad cuz it's like you got your one second wind and it and like your party got like a really
37:45
bad copy of second wind at the same time. It was like you rol you you rolled for a second wind and then like someone
37:51
got like 2d6 recovery but this thing was so late the 2d6 was not was barely a
37:56
drop in the bucket. Plus it was tied to your second wind. Yeah. They had to wait for you to heal. Yeah. Like if you use second wind,
38:03
everybody else got a benefit from it. But if you didn't use it because why would you? You're not damaged. He is. Um
38:09
you know it's So at least this one sounds like it might be interesting. Um although they do also have a dragon
38:15
apparently still. Oh, did they get the dragon back? Instead of fighting with your dragon and
38:20
then at seventh level being able to ride it, you gain a few. So, I guess they've replaced it with team tactics. Yeah, they've replaced the dragon with
38:26
team tactics. Okay, well, that's cool. I'm I'm interested in that. I really want to see what the noble genie paladin
38:33
looks like, too. I just think that's kind of a cool concept for a paladin. Yeah, I mean, I would play it. I would play a genie
38:38
paladin. A genius paladin. Uh, yeah, it's it's I'm very interested in this book. It's
38:45
one of the few ones that they'll be putting out that I am actually probably going to snag day one. Um, so I'm going
38:52
to go through some of the other stuff here cuz again there's been a bunch of stuff going on. Uh, the Scion Unear
38:57
Arcana returns for another round of testing looks like. Um, what's the short version of that one, Phil?
39:03
Uh, the short version is the Scion U which we think is maybe a sign that they're going to be doing Dark Sun uh
39:09
because it's the psionic class is uh got a second round of testing focusing on feedback from the first one. Uh they
39:15
previously had psionic modes which were like a weird stance type feature. Those got cut entirely but the parts that
39:21
scored well got put into the subasses that use them. Uh all the subasses got updates more than we can really cover
39:26
here. Uh they get uh cantrips more frequently. The scion does now. And they're more flexible in how you can get
39:33
and also how you can spend psionic energy dice which is kind of the the universal resource for sc for psionic
39:39
subasses and for the scion itself. So um just another round of testing. looks kind of still looks a lot better now I
39:46
think. So, excellent. Uh the survey by start playing has shown that there's positive
39:52
mental health and relationship effects from uh playing tabletop RPGs uh in
39:57
which it looks like they surveyed a thousand players found that mental health, friendship, and even romantic relationships were often facilitated by
40:04
playing role playing games. I feel it's very much akin to I judge people on how they treat service staff. I absolutely
40:10
judge people on how they treat the the town uh the town hall the town people in a D and D game.
40:16
It's true. That's weird. That's one of the weird things is like how often in tabletop people are like I'm just going to kill
40:22
him and take his stuff and it's like he he's the shopkeeper. He what what I've never understood this. It happens in
40:28
video games too, but in in your tabletop game it's weird because everybody else is watching you, man.
40:34
The rest I'm playing a paladin over here. I can't just let you murder this guy. I always hear about these kind of
40:40
player stereotypes. I've literally never encountered it at a table and it feels like it would be the start of a post on
40:46
the RPG horror story subreddit if you do. I I haven't had it in years, but I
40:51
remember when I was like much younger, like like 17, 18 years old, we had one guy who was so bad that he ended up
40:59
getting killed and he the thing is that the DM obviously just killed him. Like
41:05
he had like people show up and just kill him and he left in a huff and air. He was like, "Okay, can we never invite him
41:10
again?" Like seriously, like this this guy is crazy. Um, so I've had it happen,
41:15
but not very often. But when it does, it's like, "What did why what possible benefit do you get out of this? He's a
41:21
shopkeeper. He doesn't He doesn't have anything that great. He's We're all third level." Well, it's okay because at least the Go
41:27
ahead, Liz. On the flip side, it also feels like you get a lot of people who are like, "Oh,
41:32
random NPC. What's What's your name?" And then and then you're playing the GM and you're like, uh, his name is Cory.
41:39
His name, this is Cory the shopkeeper. And and then, you know, they make best
41:44
friends with the shopkeeper. And then the party adopts the goblin. Play a shopkeeper NPC who is your who is
41:50
your party's best friend and they're, you know, adopting him. I ran a campaign sometimes.
41:56
Yeah. I ran a campaign for my wife and one of my friends and the my friend's kid and the kid decided he was going to
42:02
adopt a cobalt that was attacking them. Yeah. And by the end of that players do that
42:07
that cobalt was now their friend who saved them from an encounter because
42:12
they all went down and the cobalt was rolling 20s and I was like I'm the one doing this. I'm killing my own encounter
42:20
with this cobalt. Oh god. Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Yeah, they named him. They named him so
42:26
I didn't have to. So I was like, "All right, since you came up with the name, I'll just run with it." But yeah, people will do that. They will decide this this
42:33
cobalt is my friend. The cobalt's literally like the cat trying to bite people. This article and survey though is
42:38
specifically not necessarily what they do with those. It's that our interpersonal relationships are improved
42:44
via this this method, which I think is really interesting. It helped my friend and his kid
42:49
like straight up. That was the first time they bonded over anything because he was a stepchild. I'm sorry I should have mentioned This is a way to
42:56
socialize in a way that is socializing and you have some structure you have and
43:01
you can it's totally acceptable to reach out and act in ways that you might not
43:07
normally do in real life. This is a great place to explore and to try things and have conversations that might be
43:13
difficult to have in real life. So, I think tabletop gaming is a great way to
43:19
learn or practice social skills and to learn empathy and learn how to work with
43:25
people and teamwork and leadership. There are so many skills you can learn by playing a tabletop game. And it's I
43:33
mean it's fun. This is not we're playing games, but there's tabletop gaming in
43:39
particular more than computer games. Certainly you it's something you have to do with friends. You mostly have to do
43:46
with friends and yeah that makes that makes a big difference. That makes that makes all the difference because you're
43:52
you're playing with your friends. Plus I don't have to go bowling to
43:57
Fair enough. Uh okay. There's always the risk you're going to step on a d4 though if you're playing
44:02
tabletop games. So there is a there's some danger. Yeah. The chance the chance of dying by rolling dice in real life is never zero.
44:09
Never quite zero. Um there's there's more stuff going on around the world here that we just want to cover real
44:15
quick. Couple more. Uh Darington Press has just launched a Kickstarter for Daggerheart, which is uh class card
44:21
packs, which look like they're going to be 25 bucks each. Um so that is alive
44:27
and well. Go ahead, Liz. It's uh that's only going on for another
44:32
day or two if you're listening to this. Um, they're just CL. So, when you buy Dagger Heart, it comes with a pack of
44:38
cards for each class, but maybe you have other players who want to play. This is just this is just the cards. So, just
44:46
the cards for a different class. And the cards contain most of the rules. So, if you just wanted the cards and maybe you have a PDF of the game and don't need
44:55
everything, you can buy packs for specific cards. And I personally think this is going to be a great way for them
45:00
to add classes in the future. You can say, "I'm let me just buy a card pack for a new class and I have all I need to
45:07
know about that class." Who knew booster packs were a good way to expand your game? Yeah. If you buy if you buy the if you
45:13
back this on Kickstarter, you actually get a digital copy of the core rules with it free. Yeah. So, this is
45:19
Yeah. Super easy. Yeah. And it's nice for everyone at the table to have reference materials, but trying to get every player at your table
45:26
to invest in a $50, $60 book is a big haul. But if you can say, "Hey, buy this
45:32
$25 pack of cards. It's got everything you need to play your class. You don't have to share with anybody else. You get a copy of the rules in PDF." That's a
45:39
cool concept. I like this. Yeah. Yeah. It should also be mentioned that at least now these these cards are
45:44
actually physical. Yes. As opposed to just having a sheet of them in your book that you can print out and then cut.
45:50
Uh these literally now you will just have them, which is a lot sometimes stuff like that. It's cool in
45:55
concept, but it doesn't really work as well um on the page. And that's why it's
46:01
good that you'll actually have them in the card format where you can figure out how to use them more effectively. It
46:06
took me a while to get the way that they worked class stuff and dagger hearts. So, I think that this is a good thing
46:11
for them quite frankly. And I mean, if you if you buy the dagger heart physical edition, it does come with card packs or
46:19
probably there maybe a version difference that comes with card packs for every class. It's kind of it's kind
46:24
of baked into the design is having these sort of cards. Yeah, they weren't there in PDF.
46:29
And to be perfectly clear, the cards are essentially everything you need to play a character class. So that's why they
46:34
are important. It's kind of a different way to do a character sheet. Ultimately, it gives you all of your skills. It's all of your skills and abilities. I
46:41
would think you would still want your character sheet because that's going to give you things like your armor and your
46:46
health and things like that. Some other rules are on the character sheet, but you can just download character sheets and print them. And then the cards have
46:53
all of your class stuff, all of your class options for every level of the game, all in the pack. And that is $25 a
47:00
pack. That's still a commitment to the game, but it's not like buying, you know, a a full $60 printed rule book.
47:08
Yeah. Uh, speaking of other things going around in the community, you may remember that uh Starbreeze uh the was
47:16
the studio that makes the Payday series uh had been developing what they were calling Project Baxter uh which is a
47:23
co-op D&D game uh for quite a while now. Well, that's that's done. Um they've
47:30
they've stopped the development. It has been cancelled. Uh and we're not sure why. if it was something to do with them
47:37
or if this was another uh call from Hasbro to uh claw back certain things uh
47:45
like we've seen them do in the past like cancel cancel some some integration. Didn't Starburst lay off a bunch of
47:51
people? They did too. Yeah. As part of this they laid off 44 people um split between staff and
47:56
contractors and also wrote off the equivalent of $27.2 million development costs.
48:02
Yeah. Which terrifyingly I think that might I think that right there might be the key takeaway is that
48:08
they'd already spent $27.2 million and this thing didn't even have a name. Yeah.
48:14
Or much uh I Yeah. I don't know if this was what I don't know if this was Watsi or if this was uh cuz there are
48:21
we don't know what what came first essentially. Yeah. But uh that that's gone. Uh it was
48:27
a co-op which was going to be cool but also it had been announced that it was going to be another live service game. I'm just not wild about that that
48:32
concept. So yeah, I don't think I mean it sounded half good. It sounded like half interesting and then you're
48:39
like also it's live service and you're like oh okay I've played the occasional live service game that I didn't hate but
48:45
I I'm worried about this already and then you know nothing nothing and then it's gone. So
48:50
yep. And also they're supposedly opening a new game studio in Montreal which is the coast is doing this. Yeah, they're
48:56
supposed to be opening one to do in-house uh in-house development of D and D uh video games, which is part of
49:02
the thing. Like Joe said, this may just be them like pulling pulling licenses back in house so that they can do more
49:08
things. Yeah. It's very reminiscent 2007 with the whole Atari thing.
49:14
Like I don't know if guys remember that for like several years there weren't any D and D games because Hasbro and Atari
49:19
were fighting over the rights. So, uh, and then one oldie but a goodie, uh, Gersps, which has been around forever
49:25
and, uh, we often joke about is one of the more complicated games to play, uh,
49:30
is getting a fourth edition or sorry, GPS fourth edition is getting a revised edition, uh, which was, yeah, maybe
49:37
announced, but probably mostly leaked, Phil. Yeah, they um they kind of
49:42
apparently at gamehole con which happened within the past couple weeks. They apparently Steve Jackson Games
49:47
announced uh this and detailed it to people with the con and then released nothing anywhere else. Um someone had to
49:54
ask about it on their forums go hey I heard through the grapevine there was going to be a revision to the fourth edition. What's up you guys? Um and they
50:02
did in fact confirm it. Um it is not a new addition. This is not a not even a
50:07
revision on par with the D&D edition revision. Um they say a lot of them are changes to physical layout and design to
50:13
make it easier to use and read at the table. Um but then at the same time and this is my favorite in uh one of their
50:20
top priorities is to preserve page page number references so that whether you're using you know any like no matter what
50:28
version of products you're using with four fourth edition gers the page like
50:33
if it tells you to look on page uh you know 33 uh of the fourth edition book no matter what version of it you're using
50:39
it'll be on page 33. Um, so that's kind of cool. And they said there's a little rewriting, but it's to remove quote
50:45
particularly offensive or unclear passages not to change rules.
50:50
So yeah, they even said, didn't they even promise there's no rules changes? Yeah, they Yeah, they they have a post
50:57
from their forums with Yeah, it states in multiple places that there are no rule changes. It is not like I said,
51:04
it's not a 5e level uh 2024 level revision. It is strictly usability. Uh
51:11
yeah, the takeaway is better, more readable layout, different arts and quotes, fewer controversial words, accepting indefinite pronouns for
51:17
economic reasons, more than 25 pages of best of rules, skimm from 21 years of system growth, incidental glitch
51:24
cleanup, and promise of no rules changes or page reference changes. What's weird about this is this is not the first time they've done this.
51:30
Nope, I remember. Yeah, they did versions of third. Yeah. Yeah. the third edition they did the exact same thing with layout change and
51:37
everything. Um I think in that one they actually did change some page number which makes sense that they're now
51:42
saying we won't do that again because people got mad. People will get real mad about things like that. So yeah, it's
51:49
it's wild to see Steve Jackson game still lives kind of in its own universe. Yeah, they're uh well they're kind of
51:55
big in the they've Yeah, they've kind of been doing their thing forever. Um, and they have recently also majorly entered
52:02
the indie RPG space by uh absorbing Possum Creek Games and bringing on Jay Dragon as I think one of their heads of
52:09
design now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, they are clearly making a push into the indie space, but
52:16
I mean they're they are technically an independent game company. I mean, nobody else owns them.
52:21
They've been making games for like what 30 years. They actuallyaused, didn't they cause like the FBI to raid them at
52:27
one point because their side game was too realistic? I think it was the NSA, wasn't it, Joe? I think it was. Yeah, somebody raided them.
52:33
Yeah. So, the only indie game studio I know that's been raided by the feds. Well, for now. Anyway, uh I think
52:40
I think that that is going to do it for the news. And I did want to get make sure we got to a question today because we haven't really gotten a lot of them.
52:46
Uh and I want to encourage more. And I figure answering the question might actually encourage you all to send some more in. Uh, and this one comes from our
52:54
Patreon supporter, Tatsmi. Uh, which thank you very much, Tatsmi, for your continued support and all the questions
52:59
you send in. You are a true boss. U, there's the story the GM wants to tell,
53:05
the story the players want to tell, and the actual storyteller, the dice. Have you ever had a dice roll completely
53:11
derail the story, and did it make it better or worse? How do you, as a DM handle the situations where the story
53:18
the dice want to tell is counter to everything you and the players want to do? That is a very good question and I
53:24
have I have my answer but I'm curious to hear what you guys think. We'll start with Liz because Liz hasn't talked much this uh this episode.
53:30
Um so I can't think of any specific examples but I think this is the core reason why you don't want to hold too
53:37
tightly to a story. I mean, um, you may have a story you want to tell, but it's
53:43
better to have an outline of a story because if you're the DM to have an idea
53:49
of possibilities because the players could push this in a lot of different directions. And players similarly need
53:56
to not hold too tightly to the details of what they're doing because the dice
54:02
could tell a different story. You have to be willing to roll with it. You have to be willing to go with it. And the
54:09
reason we are here using dice in the first place, the reason we're playing with different people and not reading a
54:16
novel or writing a novel is for that element of surprise because people are
54:21
going to do things you don't expect. The dice are going to do things that you do not expect. And winning the game, unlike
54:29
say in a computer game, winning the game is not necessarily winning in a tabletop
54:36
game. You can roll a one and majorly mess something up. And that can be super
54:43
fun. That can be so fun failing a role as long as the table can embrace that
54:49
and as long as the GM can embrace that. And cuz there are fun stories to tell in
54:56
failing to do something or in having to change your plans on the fly because the dice said no. But the point of tabletop
55:03
gaming is you don't know what's going to happen. So as long as you can sit there
55:09
and not hold too closely to the story you think you're telling and let things
55:14
go out in weird and different directions, that's great. That's great. And I think problems come here when you
55:21
know a player has like this is my character and I'm going to stick to my character no matter what and my character is a Batman type who doesn't
55:28
want to play with others and I'm just I just want to go it alone instead of you
55:33
know falling into what's happening at the table. So you can hold too tight to a character or a GM can hold too tightly
55:40
to the story they want to tell and that kind of ruins that collaboration collaborative aspect. It makes it so,
55:46
oh, we need to uh we need to win this dice roll when the thing is the dice are
55:54
kind of your are kind of they're telling the story and you're going with it. So,
55:59
you've got to be really you've got to be willing to literally roll with it and that's what makes it so fun.
56:04
Uh Phil, um I was trying to think of a of a specific example of this happening while Liz was talking and I completely failed
56:11
to come up with one. Um, I think I think part of part of how part of the thing I
56:17
would part of my my best tip for handling this, I guess, would be to um take something to heart that RPGs always
56:24
say and that no one ever really um uh I guess pays much attention to. Don't roll
56:32
unless it unless it truly matters and the stakes like the outcome is not
56:37
already set is what I would say. Um cuz a lot of players are conditioned I think
56:43
and I'm going to point the finger here at 5e to want to roll for a lot of things for everything whether like like for everything like
56:50
whether the stakes are there whether the whether it's you know even if the outcome should be set in stone just
56:57
because they're conditioned to roll dice to make checks. Um if there is something
57:04
that I would I would say that Liz is correct. Don't hold too tightly to a story. We're here to play to find out what happens, not to tell a story. Cuz
57:10
if you just want to tell a story, sit around and tell a story or write a novel, please. Um, we are here to play a game. But if there are things that
57:17
should happen, if it would make no sense for it not to happen that way, um, and a
57:23
dice roll has the potential to derail it, and you all agree at the table that that would be a completely silly outcome, don't roll the dice. Don't let
57:30
the dice dictate that. um if there's a story beat that it would make no sense not to hit if this dice roll fails um
57:37
don't don't take that chance. Don't don't bring fate into it here. Now, on the flip side of that, I do think that
57:43
if the stakes are high and the outcome is uncertain, um yeah, just roll the dice and then roll with it because you
57:49
are playing to discover what happens. You don't necessarily have a preset
57:55
story. And I think uh on the DM side of things, the the the the biggest tip I
58:01
would give here is to plan situations, not plots. Like you are you are not
58:06
writing a novel. You are not writing a screenplay. You are creating a situation in which things are happening or have
58:12
happened. And you are unleashing players, the greatest agents of chaos into it and just kind of seeing what
58:19
happens. That's really what you're all there to do is to kind of see what happens. Um, and so in these cases, like
58:25
don't think of it as derailing. Think of it as the dice raising a possibility that maybe you or your players didn't
58:30
anticipate and that wasn't set in stone and that could be something cool that
58:35
none of you thought of and now you've got to work at it. It's it's like it's like a little practice for your imagination. Uh, okay. So, but was your
58:42
completely fumbled the spell in this crucial situation? How did that happen? What happened? And what is the outcome?
58:49
What's is is what's what's the cool outcome? Yeah. Uh, I mean, I'm going to chime in here because Phil basically
58:55
said exactly what I was going to say too, which is storytelling is fun when
59:01
at least for me, like in that moment where if it's high stakes and the the result isn't written in stone, that's
59:08
when dice rolling becomes important. And moving away from using dice for everything, I think is really, really
59:15
important. If you go back and listen to a bunch of the games that we've run, one of the things that you'll see is like we
59:21
won't make people roll for something, it'll just happen or if it makes sense. Like as a DM, one of the things that I
59:27
do is if you can justify how you can do something or why something would happen,
59:33
I'm okay with just letting it happen. It's it's like the concept, and I think Matt and I have talked about this before, it's also absurd that a highly
59:43
trained, seasoned warrior who, you know, an epic level uh hero, a level 20 hero
59:50
would miss on a level one goblin, right? Like thematically, it doesn't make
59:55
sense. you'd have more Lord of the Rings moments where that person is just mowing through these lower these lower minions,
1:00:02
but then when he gets to the boss battle, that's when the dice start rolling because that's when the the dice start mattering. Um, so for me, I
1:00:10
haven't had a lot of of places where it completely derailed the story because as
1:00:15
a DM, I make it a point to if you are rolling dice, it's because this is an uncertain moment that needs a resolution
1:00:23
that isn't finished. And then whatever that resolution is, I will continue off of from that story. Um, case in point
1:00:31
with the fact that when I ran Otherworld for the the site, we had in the campaign
1:00:37
prior to that with the players that I had prior to that, they decided that they were going to make really weird
1:00:43
choices. And then when it got to the the time of actually rolling dice, the dice
1:00:49
determined that they had woken up an Eldrich horror, like an old god, the mother of all monsters. And so what that
1:00:56
did is that informed the rest of that campaign and then what happened in the other campaigns, but the dice told that
1:01:03
story and it was an uncertain whether or not they were going like what was going to happen with it. But everything
1:01:08
leading up to that point was driven by player choices. So, that's the way I look at it and I think we'll round it
1:01:14
out with Matt here if he has any opinion on this or or a story anecdote to to regail us with.
1:01:19
I mean, I don't find dice rolls disruptive to my story because my story is kind of like a suggestion I wrote to
1:01:27
myself. Uh I I I come up with stuff. I I don't run a lot of pre-made modules. And
1:01:35
when I do, I change a ton of stuff cuz I want to make sure that, you know, if you own that book, you're not going to still
1:01:40
know just what everything to do. Uh, I'm just one of those people. So, for me, it's much more likely that a player is
1:01:46
going to disrupt things because they're just going to do something I don't expect, like immediately try to mind
1:01:53
control the uh the villain of the story on upon first almost meeting. Not even
1:01:59
first meeting, first almost meeting. And I I just rolled with those things. I
1:02:04
roll with somebody decides, "Hey, I want to do something weird and I roll with
1:02:10
it." If the dice, like if we're ever in a situation where a dice roll failing is going to just mess up the story so bad
1:02:17
that it's unsalvageable, I immediately come up with a way that it won't without preventing people from
1:02:25
tasting what they what they rolled. Um, one example going back to um, of all
1:02:32
things the one of this the games I ran for for this site was um, I had to like
1:02:40
cobble together something really fast because people were doing something different than I intended. Um, and so I
1:02:47
basically made a Goldilocks and the three bears thing and Mitch immediately rolled so well on it that there was no
1:02:54
conflict. Everybody just talk to the bears. I'm like, "Okay, you get to instead of
1:03:00
having a combat encounter with these bears, you just make friends with them and they tell you how to get to the
1:03:05
magic boat you're looking for." And it was all very, you know, just let it happen. Like it it's not a problem. just
1:03:12
I feel like sometimes people are too attached to not just the story they want whether they're players or or DMs. It
1:03:19
doesn't matter. But they're they're too attached to the idea of what their character is or what the story is.
1:03:25
There's got to be room for weird things to happen. There's got to be room for um
1:03:30
counter spell war. That wasn't even a dice roll that was bad. It was just everybody deciding to use counter spell
1:03:36
over until one guy tried to cast a spell. Liz counterpelled it. He tried to
1:03:41
counter spell this his counter spell. Joe counterpelled it. Um, some other NPC counterpelled it. And I think Mitch
1:03:47
jumped in with a counter spell at this point. I didn't even know he could cast it. And it was just like, what is
1:03:53
happening with all these counter spells? I I just went with it. you just go with what if you if you go into it thinking,
1:04:01
okay, here's my my suggestion of what's going to happen if they decide to do
1:04:06
something entirely different or if if somebody rolls so bad on a dice roll
1:04:12
that it's going to end up completely ruining the narrative, just make it not
1:04:17
ruin them. Uh you can take whole sections of your story out, move them, change the the place. Like I moved
1:04:24
everything that was going to happen in the city to a flying boat and it was the
1:04:30
same stuff. I didn't have to change anything. I just used the same encounters, but now they were on a
1:04:35
flying boat. Instead of going from the city to the various other dimensional planes they ended up going to, they just
1:04:41
flew there on the boat and it was fine. I feel like sometimes people are just too convinced, oh no, the party is dead.
1:04:48
That breaks everything. No, the party is dead and now the god of death is like, what did you do? What did you do? Why
1:04:54
are you all dead? You're not supposed to be dead. All right, I'm going to have to put you back. You better actually save
1:05:00
the day because man, this is a personal issue on mine now. I have to expend my own power to keep you from being dead.
1:05:07
And that's just not cool. So, you know, take two. Boom. Uh, that's that's me.
1:05:12
That's how I run games. I I I feel like my role isn't necessarily to tell the
1:05:17
epic story I want to tell. It's to give the players a framework to tell a story.
1:05:23
And the dice are the the mechanism by which we don't have, well, I shoot him
1:05:30
while he's at a bulletproof tabletop. You get a bulletproof uh tank top on. You can't kill the dice tell you whether or not you hit it. Removes Nobody's
1:05:37
Nobody's mad at you anymore. They get mad at the dice. And the dice are inanimate objects. They don't care how
1:05:43
you feel about. So yeah, I I just I get where you're going with this. I think the answer for me would be to always
1:05:50
have a flexible mindset and let let the dice guide the thing to where it goes.
1:05:55
Yeah. And it's also very easy for newer like Phil said, newer DMs to fall into the trap of rolling for everything. Um
1:06:01
Oh yeah. And and I think we've we've always said and this is what I'll end with. Remember at the end of the day,
1:06:06
even with dice rolling, the rules are just a suggestion. At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of
1:06:13
everybody participating in the game, whether it is the players or the storyteller or GM, whatever you want to
1:06:20
call them, to make sure that everybody, including the person running the game, is having fun. If everybody is having a
1:06:26
good time and agrees that this is what was should happen or or is happy with what things went, you've done your job.
1:06:32
At the end of the day, it's a game, not a job. There's a there's a story I remember from uh one of the people I
1:06:38
watch on YouTube who talks about gaming who's like, you know, just because the player decides say, I'm going to roll to seduce the dragon, doesn't mean the
1:06:44
dragon has to get seduced. Mhm. The dragon, you know, it's an it's an ageless being of unfathomable reptilian
1:06:52
power. It might find it amusing like if he rolls really well, oh well, that's clever. But it's not going to just
1:06:58
necessarily fall in love with this talking mouse, you know? No, it would be like seriously be like if a mouse walked up to you and started going, "Oh, hey,
1:07:04
baby. You're a mouse. You know, I I'm not in love with you. Sorry, but you're cute. Here, I'll put you in this cage
1:07:10
with a nice wheel you can run." The other thing is to just not have a dice roll if there isn't a chance of success or failure. I do like sometimes
1:07:18
having dice rolls to determine the amount of success or the amount, you know, sometimes that's fun to be like,
1:07:25
but like let's say a hero is trying to climb a wall and it's like a sixft wall and you're like a level 10 adventurer.
1:07:33
You shouldn't have to roll an athletics check to see if you can get over this 6ft wall because you're you're a hero
1:07:40
and you're going to you're going to get over the wall. Maybe maybe roll that athletic check to see if it's graceful or not,
1:07:46
but you're going to get over, right? Or something like that. Exactly. Exactly. But you're not going to say, "Oh, you rolled a one. You've
1:07:53
fallen and broken your leg because that just isn't a fun story to tell to be
1:07:58
stymied by, okay, here's a fence that I can't get over. the entire party is
1:08:04
stuck here because we made a series of bad rolls and yeah, you know, so if
1:08:10
there isn't the dice educate the story and educate the decision-m, but you
1:08:16
don't have to say, "Oh, we're going to roll for everything and we have to roll." Because some things heroes can just do. And like Matt was just saying
1:08:22
about seducing the dragon, you know, just because you roll, even if you roll a natural 20 on persuasion, that doesn't
1:08:31
mean you can seduce a dragon because a dragon may not just dragons just aren't into you, dude. Dragons were not
1:08:38
necessarily into a dragon's just not that into you. I would I would interpret that as maybe like maybe the dragon finds you amusing.
1:08:46
I just I I'm sorry, but that's perfect. That should be a clip. That needs to be a clip. When you do a clip,
1:08:52
that's gonna be the dragon's just not that into your dude. Well,
1:08:57
but that's the thing is the dice are telling the story, but you're also telling the story. And you don't you
1:09:04
don't have to hold to anything so tightly that the dice can't be involved,
1:09:09
but you can't bow to the dice completely and everything we're going to roll for and everything. If you roll a 20, you're
1:09:16
definitely getting it. You know, it's it's cooperative. It's a cooperative game with the GM, with the players, and
1:09:22
with the dice. And part of that is deciding when do you even roll dice. You don't have to roll dice for everything.
1:09:28
Well, hopefully that answers your question, Tatsmi. Thank you very much for sending that in. But I think we're going to call it there. Friends, as a
1:09:34
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