Latest / Sessions Canceled / Getting Your Players To Open The Dang Door: Ep. 176

Transcript

Getting Your Players To Open The Dang Door: Ep. 176 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  All right everybody. So we were good to go.
• 0:19
  We were in the middle of the dungeon and the DM spent no less
• 0:22
  than, I kid you not, about 3 minutes describing a door and
• 0:26
  then asked what we were going to do next.
• 0:28
  But like, he had spent so much time on the door that we figured
• 0:33
  something was going to happen, so we didn't really have an idea
• 0:37
  of what to do. Like we didn't want to sit for a
• 0:39
  trap, but it was actually just a door.
• 0:42
  And we sat there for like 20 minutes and he just gave up and
• 0:44
  went home. So sessions cancelled.
• 0:47
  Just came up and went home, just said fuck you guys, I'm out.
• 0:53
  Fuck this shit. I'm out.
• 0:57
  I'm. Gonna get the fuck up out of
• 0:58
  here. I'm gonna just give my stuff and
• 1:02
  leave. Excuse me, please welcome back
• 1:05
  to the Sessions cancelled podcast.
• 1:07
  It's me this time, Isaiah. I'm here with Josh.
• 1:12
  Am I here? Is anyone is anyone truly here?
• 1:14
  No, the answer's no, No, we're not.
• 1:19
  I wish and today I kind of wanted it to riff on something
• 1:27
  that we brought up a while ago and it has something to do with
• 1:30
  my last topic be or not more of my last topics be in the
• 1:32
  spotlight situation. And it was all sort of spawned
• 1:36
  from this thing that I just am doing now, which is, you know,
• 1:41
  casually scrolling on Reddit and being like, oh, that'd be a cool
• 1:44
  topic. It happens more often than I'd
• 1:48
  like at this point. Whatever works.
• 1:51
  So, yeah, we're going to, we're just going to talk about the
• 1:55
  that that post, they saw some of the the comments on it and kind
• 2:00
  of our personal thoughts on the matter.
• 2:02
  But before that, follow us on your podcast Platform of Choice.
• 2:06
  And if you could give us a bit of a donation on the coffee link
• 2:10
  in the description. We we got, we really got to
• 2:12
  change Brett's bed in the editor dungeon.
• 2:14
  It's getting a little stanky. It's getting a little stained.
• 2:19
  A little musty, Yeah, he also. Might say stained with what I
• 2:24
  will never tell. I, you know, he keeps saying I'm
• 2:26
  discheased and I at this point I think he's losing his mind.
• 2:30
  So we we, we might want to make that quick.
• 2:33
  I don't actually know what it means.
• 2:35
  I keep saying it, I don't know what it means.
• 2:36
  Yeah, look, he says a lot of things.
• 2:39
  Something about being in the hills.
• 2:40
  I I'm just confused more often than not.
• 2:46
  You get getting too obscure for me now too.
• 2:49
  There's no way I am because I made the joke literally
• 2:52
  yesterday. I I don't remember so I'll have
• 2:56
  to just take your all. Right.
• 2:57
  But you're going to have to do it.
• 2:59
  You're going to have to do the line.
• 3:00
  I believe in you. Don't fuck me.
• 3:03
  On this fuck me on. This Jesus.
• 3:07
  All right. Fucking dudes.
• 3:09
  But yeah. Jesus.
• 3:12
  Like I said, I was I was perusing the the reddits if you
• 3:16
  will, which at this point, hilariously is the least toxic
• 3:19
  social media that I use hilariously.
• 3:23
  Sort of, kind of. For me personally, it's the
• 3:26
  least toxic one I have it. It is actually a bit of a breath
• 3:28
  of fresh air for me. Fair enough.
• 3:31
  Because other than that, it's Twitter, Facebook and Blue Sky
• 3:33
  and and they're all toxic in their own unique, terrible
• 3:35
  little ways. Mainly it's just my older family
• 3:40
  saying most outrageous things I've ever seen in my life.
• 3:43
  And then going, you know, people can read what you say.
• 3:45
  You don't have to like vocalize every eternal thought you've
• 3:47
  ever had. You know that, right?
• 3:48
  You have that right. I, you know, we're really in an
• 3:51
  age where I, I used to think Diaries were really dumb and now
• 3:54
  I'm like, I think I get why they existed.
• 3:57
  No, dude, 100 fucking percent. The amount of times where I'm
• 4:00
  like, why would you vocalize that?
• 4:03
  Yeah. The like, you can have that
• 4:05
  thought, but the fact that you put it onto a public forum makes
• 4:09
  you look like a psychopath. And now you're going to defend
• 4:12
  to that point, the save face, which makes you look even worse.
• 4:19
  Yeah, craziness. Yeah.
• 4:21
  So, you know, Diaries maybe, maybe we should go back to those
• 4:26
  actually. Yeah, dude, I so there's a,
• 4:28
  there's a private there. There's like a privacy advocate.
• 4:31
  I've been retweeting a bunch on Twitter and literally yesterday
• 4:37
  I like just finished retweeting something they posted.
• 4:39
  And I, I saw a post they made and just blatantly wildly
• 4:45
  Islamophobic. And I was like, oh.
• 4:47
  Jesus. Oh God damn it, damn it, dude, I
• 4:50
  dude, it's that was tough. That shit, that was so tough.
• 4:54
  When that happens, you're like, Oh, no, yeah.
• 4:58
  Yeah, it's like, look, I don't cosign, I do cosign the privacy
• 5:02
  shit, but this, no, this is, this is not Yeah, I.
• 5:04
  Don't cosign. I don't cosign.
• 5:06
  It's all the Muslims fault or whatever.
• 5:08
  Yeah, no, absolutely not. I don't know.
• 5:13
  Controversial sessions cancelled opinion.
• 5:15
  Fuck bigotry. Yes, truly.
• 5:20
  Yeah, and you might be like, what?
• 5:24
  What got you so interested, Isaiah?
• 5:26
  Why? Why, what?
• 5:27
  What does the reddits have to offer you?
• 5:29
  I'll tell you I'm I'm going to read you the post.
• 5:32
  God, they gave us God damn. It I just think of every time
• 5:37
  Sam just goes no. It's a good one, It's so.
• 5:45
  Good. Oh Jesus.
• 5:46
  All right, so the post says title, so you open the door
• 5:50
  getting players to move forward, Bo says.
• 5:57
  I wonder how other GMs prod their players to decide on an
• 6:00
  action as opposed to just talking in circles.
• 6:02
  This is something I think of occasionally when players are
• 6:05
  given options, discuss them, and muddle around before taking a
• 6:08
  decisive action. I tend to need confirmation in
• 6:11
  an action I was deciding upon because otherwise we might end
• 6:15
  up discussing who should be opening the door for 30 minutes
• 6:17
  without actually progressing the plot.
• 6:19
  How do you all do it? And.
• 6:23
  Is is, hold on, is this person? I feel like I read it and then
• 6:29
  you just said it and then I'm still slightly it.
• 6:32
  Is this person the GM they're saying in this scenario?
• 6:36
  I think this person is coming from the the topic of being
• 6:38
  both. This is this.
• 6:41
  Is how do other GMs which resumes?
• 6:43
  They are GM and they're looking for advice, but they also in the
• 6:47
  third section talk about being a player.
• 6:50
  Right. I tend to need a confirmation
• 6:53
  that in action, I just, I, I was decided on because otherwise we
• 6:57
  might end up discussing who should be opening the door for
• 6:59
  30 minutes without the plopper. Yeah, OK.
• 7:03
  That third chunk is. I'm confused what they're trying
• 7:06
  to get out with that third chunk but the first bit I guess.
• 7:08
  I think they're saying like when they are a player, they need
• 7:11
  confirmation on an action that they were deliberating on from
• 7:16
  the GM, from the. GM.
• 7:17
  Yeah, that seems to be the most logical take on that.
• 7:20
  OK. And I thought this was
• 7:24
  interesting mainly because this has to do with two topics I
• 7:28
  spoke of, one forever ago and one about 3 or 4 weeks ago.
• 7:33
  One being the idea of like proactive players and agency and
• 7:40
  the other one being more labeled at general spotlight and
• 7:43
  framing. And the reason why I thought
• 7:52
  this was so neat is because we answered these questions from 2
• 7:57
  unique perspectives in both episodes, right?
• 7:59
  We we talked about it from our personal experience as GMs and
• 8:02
  our personal experience as players and sort of riffed off
• 8:05
  each other as to how we would have answered the questions at
• 8:08
  hand. But.
• 8:09
  Did we? Yeah.
• 8:13
  I know, member. Fair enough.
• 8:18
  But we we very specifically in like the spotlight episodes, you
• 8:20
  know, it was like, oh, I would probably do this.
• 8:22
  I would probably do that right. Oh.
• 8:23
  Oh, oh, the spotlighting. Yeah, OK, I remember the the
• 8:26
  spotlighting. Bitter.
• 8:27
  The agency one, it was like a, you know, we talked about
• 8:30
  proactive versus reactive players and you know, when you
• 8:34
  don't have proactive players and you can't expect characters to
• 8:38
  be proactive all the time, you have to just give them a piece,
• 8:43
  a crumb, if you will, a crumb. Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 8:49
  And the thing, like I said, the thing that interested me was
• 8:50
  that this provided a completely new, well, not not not
• 8:56
  completely new, but a, a separate perspective on the
• 9:00
  topic that we've talked about, we've kind of joked about, but I
• 9:05
  think is really cool. And a lot of it, a lot of the
• 9:12
  heavy lifting here didn't really have to come from the top
• 9:14
  comment on the post, which as a side gave one of the coldest
• 9:18
  lines I've ever seen for GM advice, which is the door is not
• 9:22
  the adventure. Gave me chills brother.
• 9:25
  Have you not heard people say that?
• 9:27
  No, I've never heard that before.
• 9:28
  I thought that was a unique thing.
• 9:29
  I love that. No, I've definitely heard people
• 9:31
  say that. Before, yeah, I thought that
• 9:32
  was, I thought that was an off the Dome take.
• 9:35
  Sad. Well, actually, I don't know if
• 9:37
  I've heard it exactly verbatim like that before, but I've
• 9:39
  definitely heard versions of that.
• 9:46
  But yeah, I mean, it's it's it's true.
• 9:50
  No, it 100% is true. It just like it's such a simple
• 9:56
  piece of advice that I wish I could have given to myself when
• 10:00
  I first started because this is a huge problem I had in
• 10:03
  Hellscapes and it took active breaking of bad habits to not
• 10:09
  have this problem in Lancer, you know what I mean?
• 10:13
  So. I mean, I, I, I think this
• 10:20
  particular problem is basically the biggest problem that any new
• 10:29
  GM will face. Like the number one issue to
• 10:32
  fix. Like the most important, most
• 10:36
  helpful thing to fix. I, you know, I'm inclined to
• 10:39
  because of you. Yeah.
• 10:40
  I I I rail against this in different 4I mean it depends on
• 10:46
  how it gets brought up changes a lot.
• 10:48
  But I have railed against this so many fucking times of like
• 10:53
  the players deliberating for 35 minutes about the door and you
• 10:56
  as the GM not just saying, OK, so you open the door right?
• 10:59
  Like yeah I think it is generally like might be #1
• 11:05
  biggest issue for new GMs. And like, you know, to those of you
• 11:11
  who might be new and don't really know what we're talking
• 11:14
  about, do they? Literally do this on Critical
• 11:19
  Role. Yes, yes.
• 11:20
  I mean, this is a meme through Critical Role.
• 11:23
  Yeah, well, it's different. It's similar, but different.
• 11:26
  The problem that we are describing to those of you who
• 11:28
  might not know is the door situation where AGM, where the
• 11:33
  players will come up to a door in a dungeon or a locked door or
• 11:36
  just some sort of door in general.
• 11:39
  And the GM will like maybe describe the door in one too
• 11:43
  many sentences. They might go into particular
• 11:46
  detail about the like color of the wood or the like iron
• 11:49
  framing of the door. And the players will go, well,
• 11:52
  this must be a thing. Is it locked?
• 11:54
  Is it trapped? Is it magic?
• 11:55
  Is it this? Is it that?
• 11:56
  Or because they spent this time describing the door, the players
• 12:02
  almost expect that something will happen if they wait long
• 12:06
  enough, right? As if the door is like this
• 12:09
  unique integral plot point to the overall story.
• 12:15
  And in truth the GM is just got a little excited in in
• 12:19
  describing the cool image they had in their head.
• 12:21
  And now it's a whole thing and it's been 20 minutes of nothing.
• 12:26
  It's a huge problem and it happens to everybody.
• 12:28
  It happened to me. I guarantee you probably
• 12:29
  happened to Josh. It almost certainly happened to
• 12:31
  Matt Sam, everybody, if you've been AGM, this has happened to
• 12:34
  you and it really drives you crazy because this is the, this
• 12:43
  is when the GM will just break the wall and it's like, guys,
• 12:45
  there's nothing, there's nothing going on like or they will go,
• 12:50
  does anyone open the door? That's my problem.
• 12:52
  That was what I always had the issue with was I would describe
• 12:54
  the door and I would expect, right, because this is the kind
• 12:58
  of player that I am that I will describe the door and I will
• 13:03
  almost expect someone to take charge in that moment and and
• 13:06
  sort of put the spotlight on themselves and like confidently
• 13:09
  stride up and go. I open the door and step through
• 13:12
  into, you know, fucking situations unknown.
• 13:18
  Yeah. But that's not how players are.
• 13:20
  It's not how most players are. It's not how you should expect
• 13:22
  players to be. So it just kind of leaves you
• 13:25
  feeling frustrated because it's almost like people aren't
• 13:30
  engaging with the story when in reality, you kind of you like
• 13:38
  set your own minefield and accidentally stepped on it,
• 13:41
  right? You you sort of put yourself in
• 13:43
  a weird writing corner. I mean, it's not AI, don't even
• 13:51
  think it's a corner or it's just people.
• 13:55
  The thing is, is like, see, you're, what you're describing
• 13:59
  is the idea that the players are are doing it because you sort of
• 14:05
  you describe the door a little too much.
• 14:07
  You, you gave it a little too much importance.
• 14:09
  And so it turned into like a weird fiasco.
• 14:12
  I've seen this happen without the door getting described at
• 14:16
  all. Like it's just this weird
• 14:20
  tendency of players, not all players, but a lot of players to
• 14:25
  just kind of latch on to something in a weird way and or
• 14:29
  deliberate on something that just doesn't need deliberating.
• 14:33
  You know? Like there's just this tendency
• 14:35
  and even someone who feels like they don't do it a lot like
• 14:39
  yourself, you do do it sometimes 'cause the last time we were
• 14:43
  playing fabulous, you guys did exactly that.
• 14:46
  What do we do it on? The deliberating about should we
• 14:50
  go straight to the town or should we go back to the city?
• 14:53
  Like, what should we do? And the whole time I was sitting
• 14:55
  there, I was like, I know I want them to go back to the city, but
• 14:58
  I'm not necessarily gonna ho hum about it.
• 15:02
  I'm going to let them kind of hash it out and just go from
• 15:06
  there. But like I, I didn't want you
• 15:12
  guys to go straight to the straight to Carol Broom,
• 15:16
  straight to the others town. Oh, see, I I thought I had a
• 15:19
  pretty good logic about that. Because the the ultimate logic
• 15:22
  that my character settled on was if we leave, we could come back
• 15:27
  to another ghost town because it's just the next town.
• 15:30
  Which I will admit I didn't necessarily consider and there
• 15:34
  is a reason that that's not the case.
• 15:37
  But I, I did the thing where I, I, in that particular scenario,
• 15:41
  I did the thing where the information was in my head and I
• 15:44
  kind of didn't consider that the information wasn't in your head.
• 15:49
  And ergo, I was like, oh, that is kind of a reasonable
• 15:53
  conclusion to come to that I didn't think about.
• 15:56
  So I kind of was letting it rock just to see where it would go.
• 15:58
  But you did spend a lot of time, like bouncing around, you know?
• 16:03
  Yeah, well, so like I said, I think I wanted to set my, my
• 16:07
  thoughts to the party, right? Because no matter what I sent
• 16:09
  the, the I sent the messenger bird out, right?
• 16:12
  So we were going to get an answer no matter what.
• 16:15
  And I figured the letter was going to give us a hint at to
• 16:18
  what we needed to do, right? I was like, if Josh wants us to
• 16:21
  go back, he will tell us he wants us to go back.
• 16:25
  And yeah. And then Sarah was like, get
• 16:27
  your ass is back here. And I was like, all right,
• 16:29
  that's what we got to do there. Yeah.
• 16:34
  It was partially my fault, like you guys overly deliberating
• 16:37
  because I kind of there was an element of information that I
• 16:41
  was like they in hindsight, I was like, of course they don't
• 16:45
  have that element. So I was probably making a
• 16:47
  little too many assumptions, but.
• 16:48
  Well, so I think in that instance it didn't feel cause
• 16:51
  like I, I've been in situations where the, the deliberation
• 16:54
  feels kind of pointless, right? But that actually felt like good
• 16:59
  problem solving and like narrative drama of like, well,
• 17:05
  we can go back and resupply, but if we're not here to defend this
• 17:08
  town and everybody dies, right? So like it, it ended up feeling
• 17:13
  like it made a lot of sense, narratively speaking, so it
• 17:16
  didn't necessarily feel as like, completely fucking pointless, at
• 17:19
  least to me. Well, yes.
• 17:22
  And I don't know, maybe we're going to bring this point up
• 17:25
  later, probably. But yes, kind of the reason I
• 17:27
  let it rock too was because sometimes it's OK to let it
• 17:31
  rock. Yeah, look, sometimes it's it's
• 17:33
  good to let your players waffle 100%.
• 17:35
  Yeah, sometimes there's a reason to, yeah.
• 17:37
  But this what we are describing right now is not necessarily
• 17:40
  that it's it's players wafling for because they kind of got
• 17:44
  inside their own heads or you got.
• 17:46
  This isn't the door. The door situation is implying
• 17:50
  that the waffling about is pointless.
• 17:53
  We're assuming it's pointless kind of from the jump.
• 17:57
  So yeah, it's a it's a slightly different thing, yes, because
• 18:06
  the joke about the inevitably when people bring up the door
• 18:09
  situation, they bring it up in a context of this dumb, pointless
• 18:13
  thing my players did right. That's almost always how it's
• 18:15
  framed. I So yes, in this in this case
• 18:19
  we're assuming bad. I fucking I I realized.
• 18:21
  I remember that I wrote this in my notes.
• 18:24
  In the case of the door situation, I'm usually the first
• 18:26
  person to just say I open the door, and in parentheses I wrote
• 18:29
  What can I say? Maybe my media literacy is just
• 18:32
  that high. And in other parentheses I wrote
• 18:34
  Keck. Shut the shut the fuck up.
• 18:37
  Don't even don't even hide dog. Come on dog, that's funny as
• 18:45
  fucking you know it. I can't.
• 18:48
  I really can't. Just.
• 18:51
  Dude, I'll never get over that fucking commenter.
• 18:54
  I can't. It's such a wild thing.
• 18:57
  It's it's really something. If, if only the public could see
• 19:02
  the absolute flaming that bread game, this person.
• 19:07
  I know, I don't know why I didn't post it but.
• 19:09
  Oh dude it was so funny I wished he had God.
• 19:12
  Damn it. That's just going to be one of
• 19:14
  those secrets. Yep.
• 19:17
  So proud of you, Brett. Anyway, ultimately what the door
• 19:23
  situation is, is it's an issue of framing and framing and
• 19:34
  focus. You might be like, is that the
• 19:36
  same thing? No, it's not there.
• 19:39
  There is a distinct difference and when we talk about it in
• 19:45
  terms of framing, the framing of the situation is sort of the
• 19:50
  generalized term used to to depict the scenario, the themes,
• 20:00
  the ideas they're in that make up a situation.
• 20:06
  The focus, the spotlight is just that.
• 20:09
  It is the focus on which the framing is made.
• 20:13
  So we have to go a little bit more broad here.
• 20:20
  And you might be like, well, how?
• 20:21
  What is what? Why does this matter?
• 20:24
  And. Wouldn't you say the focus is
• 20:25
  made from the framing? That's what I mean.
• 20:27
  That's sorry. You need the framing to create a
• 20:31
  focus. To create the focus, yeah.
• 20:34
  And yeah, I like, I just it comes in, it is specifically
• 20:40
  with the the thing that the top commenter said, which I agree
• 20:43
  with a lot. I want to read it out.
• 20:45
  Hey bro, I think the problem is actually one of poor framing.
• 20:50
  After many years of stopping the players at the door because I
• 20:52
  didn't want a railroad, I realized that I what I was doing
• 20:55
  was tricking my players into thinking that the door was the
• 20:57
  scene. Now in some cases it is, but in
• 21:01
  the example that most people are talking about, it's not and it's
• 21:04
  basically and basically no RPG doesn't make sense to frame the
• 21:08
  scene if there isn't 1. So what do we do instead?
• 21:13
  We narrate them arriving to the door and say, are there any
• 21:15
  final actions you do before you go through?
• 21:18
  And this conveys the player that the door is not the adventure,
• 21:21
  it is merely A checkpoint for the players above table.
• 21:24
  Incidentally, it also tells you the players that if you don't do
• 21:27
  that, then the door is the adventure.
• 21:32
  So. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:33
  I mean, I think this person put it.
• 21:35
  Perfectly. That was a delayed response.
• 21:38
  I had to think about it for a second, but yes.
• 21:39
  No, Yeah, yeah, it's, it's perfect.
• 21:41
  I think it's it is a perfect encapsulation of exactly what
• 21:43
  the problem is. Yeah, you don't.
• 21:45
  It's not the way you dislike. Fuck.
• 21:51
  Fuck. Any fancy language here?
• 21:53
  The way you describe the situation should not be.
• 21:57
  You walk down the hallway, there is a door here, and then you
• 22:00
  describe what the door look looks like.
• 22:02
  And then you say to the players, what do you do?
• 22:05
  That's not what you want to do because that's going to get 35
• 22:07
  minutes of door deliberation. No, the way you describe the
• 22:09
  scene is you get to the end of the hallway, you see the door,
• 22:11
  you describe the door. You know that XY or Z thing is
• 22:15
  beyond the door, or you know that there's something important
• 22:17
  beyond the door. Or you phrase it in such a way
• 22:19
  that you apply, go through the door and then you say anything
• 22:24
  you want to do before you open it, right?
• 22:27
  Don't stop the description at the door because when you're
• 22:31
  describing it and then you stop at the door like he said, that
• 22:33
  the door sounds like it's the adventure or like it's important
• 22:38
  for some reason. Exactly, Yeah.
• 22:41
  When it often isn't. The the, the simple solution
• 22:44
  here is to UGMS, as much as you want to describe how cool the
• 22:49
  door is, this is probably a pretty cool door.
• 22:53
  You really have to fight that habit if the door is a door.
• 22:56
  I mean, you can describe it as a door, you can describe it as
• 22:59
  interesting looking, but you cannot leave that cliffhanger to
• 23:04
  the players and expect them to come to a decision because
• 23:07
  you've front loaded so much information about an irrelevant
• 23:11
  thing that that's where their focus is.
• 23:13
  It stops being the lich behind the door.
• 23:16
  Now they think there's a fucking 8 cubic tons of dynamite behind
• 23:18
  the door and it might be trapped.
• 23:22
  I mean, you can describe the cool door I'm the point I'm
• 23:26
  making is just do not leave. Do not end the sentence on the
• 23:29
  door because then you're implying that there's something
• 23:33
  up with the door. Like you can describe it as as
• 23:35
  detailed as you want. Just don't give them the option
• 23:37
  to interact with it. Like cut them off.
• 23:39
  That's what I'm saying, is it don't leave it at the
• 23:41
  cliffhanger. Tell them, OK, here's the door.
• 23:46
  Are you going through it 'cause if someone goes, yeah, yeah,
• 23:50
  probably, then you go, OK, we can move on.
• 23:52
  Or you just say and then you go through it.
• 23:55
  You don't really give them the option to to like get
• 23:58
  checkpointed because they will. You will.
• 24:02
  All right. The door is mystically opening
• 24:04
  and you walk through it like a like a stage change in persona,
• 24:08
  you know? Or just just I look, look, look,
• 24:17
  I'm going to say something that's perhaps a little
• 24:19
  controversial here. Just take control of your
• 24:22
  players characters for a second. No, look, I, I.
• 24:26
  Just just just say, just say Goramaru opens the door.
• 24:30
  Just like just sometimes it's just.
• 24:33
  Easier. No Look, OK, look, I'm I'm
• 24:35
  actually knocking dog you on this one.
• 24:37
  I agree. I firmly believe that the
• 24:40
  players will always have control of their conscious reactions,
• 24:44
  right? But they do not have control
• 24:47
  over in the same way that you as a person do not have control
• 24:50
  over your unconscious actions, right?
• 24:54
  If you a perfect example, if you get jump scared, that's not your
• 24:58
  conscious reaction. I'm actually taking it a step
• 25:02
  further. I am saying occasionally control
• 25:04
  the conscious action. No, no, I I know I was going to
• 25:07
  extrapolate into that, but like, OK, it's not out of this world
• 25:10
  to believe that if something jumps out at a character who
• 25:15
  very explicitly is not a hardened Monster Hunter that
• 25:20
  they're going to jump. So if you describe, yes, the the
• 25:24
  the skeleton falls from the ceiling and your character kind
• 25:26
  of like, yeah, that you're not making decisions for the
• 25:30
  players. You are explaining to them and
• 25:33
  describing to them the the tension of a situation through
• 25:38
  their reactions, not their conscious actions.
• 25:41
  That makes sense. In the same way that you would
• 25:49
  just if if a if a player got whacked in the face with a if a
• 25:52
  player character or a PC got whacked in the face with a
• 25:54
  dandelion, it's not out of pocket to describe that they
• 25:56
  sneeze. It's a very similar.
• 25:59
  And in that scenario, I think most people agree.
• 26:02
  I am saying you could go a little bit further though and
• 26:05
  actually just say what they physically do sometimes for the
• 26:09
  sake of keeping things moving and interesting, you know what I
• 26:13
  mean? Yeah, and like, look if someone.
• 26:14
  And that's the part some people might not.
• 26:16
  No, I mean, yes, like I said, I was going to shuffle into that
• 26:20
  in a situation where you do that right, If you just go all right,
• 26:23
  my character Goromaro just opens the door.
• 26:26
  Yeah, Most people aren't going to complain about that.
• 26:28
  Most players aren't going to. Because if there's no because
• 26:30
  it's it's innocuous. It's innocuous, yes, if there is
• 26:34
  no negative reaction, but like, it's like, OK, gore opens the
• 26:38
  door and then you get blown up with 8 cubic tons of TNT and
• 26:42
  you're like, well, what? What the fuck?
• 26:43
  I know I'm not going to open the door then, right?
• 26:45
  But if it's just you open the door, there's a Tavern, there's
• 26:50
  no I'll effect. There's no downside to this
• 26:52
  other than pushing the story along.
• 26:55
  And in that case it's fine. Let it rock.
• 27:00
  Yeah, the reason people don't want people don't want you
• 27:04
  taking control of their player, their their characters for
• 27:09
  something really consequential. Because part of the whole point
• 27:13
  of part of the whole point of, of tabletop as a as a hobby is
• 27:19
  being able to make those free form decisions, right?
• 27:23
  Like the one of the biggest appeals is unlike something like
• 27:26
  a video game, you have that ultimate decision making power.
• 27:29
  So yeah, don't do it if it's something consequential, but if
• 27:33
  it's just for the sake of keeping things moving so they
• 27:36
  can get to the more interesting thing, which is probably the
• 27:38
  fight on the other side of the door, then yeah, sometimes just
• 27:41
  fucking do it. Because not letting them
• 27:48
  deliberate here's here, at the end of the day, letting them
• 27:51
  deliberate over the door for 35 minutes is just not fun.
• 27:54
  It's just not. It's just not a fun time.
• 27:56
  Nobody wants to do it. They do it because they think
• 28:00
  there's something going on there, but they don't
• 28:02
  necessarily want to do it as players, you know what I mean?
• 28:05
  It's not like that's exciting. Yes.
• 28:06
  They don't necessarily believe that they have a choice because
• 28:09
  something bad will happen if they don't.
• 28:11
  Yeah, or they think the door is the adventure and then that the
• 28:15
  the deliberating is going to be rewarded in some kind of fun
• 28:19
  way, even though you as the GM are not planning that because
• 28:22
  you weren't expecting them to to deliberate over the door.
• 28:29
  So yeah, you know, sometimes in some while just take a little
• 28:34
  control, just a little bit, little tiny bit.
• 28:35
  Just a bit a smidge a crumb. And only for and I and I'll for
• 28:40
  very brief moments, like I don't say what your character's doing
• 28:43
  for the next 5 minutes. I say what you did for like 15
• 28:47
  seconds. You know what I mean?
• 28:48
  Like it's very, it's very quick. Yeah, I mean, it has to be.
• 28:54
  Because yeah, I mean, it's a don't get me off.
• 28:56
  It's a delicate line. You can get into a dangerous
• 28:58
  territory if you abuse that. Power for sure have I I I think
• 29:01
  I've told this story on podcast the like role to piss yourself.
• 29:06
  Yes yeah, don't do that. Don't don't make a player role
• 29:09
  to piss themselves. See, but that's not even like
• 29:14
  that's that one is particularly egregious because you're you're
• 29:21
  you're taking the control away from the player, but you're not
• 29:26
  only are you not moving the story forward, you're actively
• 29:29
  causing more meandering than was already happening.
• 29:32
  Yeah, I mean the. Second, you make dice.
• 29:34
  You, you, you tell someone make dice at the table.
• 29:35
  You're like, oh Jesus. OK, you're like, you're making
• 29:39
  the meandering actually worse. So it's like.
• 29:43
  Why? Why though?
• 29:46
  Yeah, that's that's never a good time.
• 29:50
  'Cause let me tell you, meandering is, I think the enemy
• 29:52
  of all campaigns ever. Like, I feel like a lot of
• 29:57
  campaigns die out because players are just not invested.
• 30:01
  Not because they don't care, but because things have gotten so
• 30:03
  meandering that they simply do not know how to get out of this.
• 30:08
  Like weird, like circular logic situate, like they're like
• 30:12
  trapped in the meandering and they don't know how to escape
• 30:14
  it. You know what I mean?
• 30:15
  Hey, that's a completely valid other issue like we talked about
• 30:19
  this last last episode where it it.
• 30:22
  It kind of extends from the door thing, right?
• 30:24
  Like when the greater? Scale don't have the information
• 30:27
  they need to move forward. They will try to talk it out in
• 30:29
  character and solve the problem that way.
• 30:32
  But, and this, this is a thing with my party, if the players
• 30:36
  feel like they don't have the right information, I noticed
• 30:38
  that the conversations will get very circular and Oh yeah,
• 30:42
  right. You don't want to, you don't
• 30:43
  want to have to do this. But we like, like we said last
• 30:46
  time, sometimes it's best to just do it is just go OK guys,
• 30:50
  we got to move on 'cause this isn't getting anywhere.
• 30:55
  And that's, look, I think that's a valid tactic.
• 30:57
  I think above board conversation is.
• 31:02
  Is is very useful. It's.
• 31:04
  So useful. It's one of the most
• 31:05
  underutilized tools in an arsenal.
• 31:07
  There's like this belief that you can't ask you the GMA
• 31:10
  question personally. Like your character doesn't have
• 31:14
  to look up at the sky and go, hey, God, can you help me out?
• 31:16
  Just be like, hey, Josh, I mean, what are we doing right now?
• 31:21
  That runs that, that that's, that goes back to my the episode
• 31:26
  of like, how much knowledge, how much meta knowledge do you give
• 31:28
  the players? Right?
• 31:29
  That's kind of what that is, right?
• 31:30
  A lot of GMs have this, this inclination that everything has
• 31:36
  to be in character knowledge. Everything has to be figured out
• 31:39
  in character. And so ergo, they don't want to
• 31:42
  have that above board conversation because that's seen
• 31:45
  as bad or like you're failing. Yeah, I it's.
• 31:50
  When honestly, a lot of the time what's really happening is just
• 31:53
  that you as the GM didn't didn't deliver them information they
• 32:00
  needed and so they got confuzzled and you're just kind
• 32:03
  of like reworking that confuzzlement, you know, like.
• 32:07
  Yeah, this is where I have to. This is where I have to push my
• 32:10
  glasses up like a nerd and talk about how much of a true gamer I
• 32:13
  am. I have never once been afraid to
• 32:15
  be like And you could ask Josh about this or I'll go Dungeon
• 32:18
  Master. I have a question.
• 32:20
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is No, you do, it's.
• 32:22
  Never followed by anything. A Dungeon Master Monster here.
• 32:27
  No, it often, yes. No, it's often.
• 32:29
  My response to Isaiah saying is often oh boy, here we go.
• 32:34
  It's fine. It's every Dungeon master, every
• 32:36
  dungeon master ever had. Where I go I have a question.
• 32:40
  Yeah, he's conversely, conversely, a certain, a certain
• 32:44
  girlfriend of mine often asks that question and my response,
• 32:47
  my response in my head is this is going to be an odd question
• 32:55
  or no, actually, no. I have one of two thoughts.
• 32:56
  I'm like either this is going to be a somewhat odd question or
• 32:58
  it's going to be a clarification question.
• 33:01
  So for her it's like, OK, what I, what I expect from a player
• 33:04
  with me, it's he's going to say something completely insane,
• 33:07
  isn't? He's going to say some, yeah,
• 33:08
  he's going to say some out of package shit that I don't want
• 33:11
  to respond or deal with. Hey Dungeon Master, I reasonably
• 33:14
  undiscovered nuclear fission. Yeah, yeah, like how you know
• 33:18
  how like if I just like, no. Seriously, if I hit if I hit
• 33:24
  this piece of graphite with lightning, could I simulate
• 33:27
  nuclear fission and cause a free fission reaction and wipe out
• 33:31
  the lich and the town of zombies?
• 33:34
  I mean, honestly, it it the, the thing that you have to contend
• 33:40
  or not contend with is a strong word, but the thing you have to
• 33:43
  like acknowledge as AGM, right is like, this is not your job.
• 33:49
  You're not get well, OK, for most people, it's not their job
• 33:52
  to be AGMI. Do know that professional GMs
• 33:54
  exist. It's not your job.
• 33:57
  It's not your entire life. You have other things to do.
• 34:01
  Sometimes you may have just forgotten to tell them something
• 34:04
  you were supposed to. Or when you were writing up your
• 34:06
  notes, you just didn't think of an angle that the players
• 34:08
  thought of, right? Like just that's why you have
• 34:12
  the above board conversation in the moment, because that's
• 34:15
  affected 'cause really the thing about GM ING is you don't get QA
• 34:19
  testing, right? Whereas if somebody's making a
• 34:23
  video game, for example, you get cute, well, you should have QA
• 34:26
  testing. And usually through QA testing,
• 34:29
  you learn that, oh, the players of the video game thought that
• 34:36
  they had to like, I'm just going to use the Witcher here because
• 34:41
  I've been, I've been deep in the Witcher sauce lately.
• 34:45
  Oh, the players thought that they had to fight this enemy
• 34:49
  with a silver sword because he's described as like a weird
• 34:53
  monstrous man. But in actuality, we didn't
• 34:57
  intend for that. We just described it poorly.
• 34:59
  And QA testing shows us that people are getting confused.
• 35:01
  So we're going to rework that, right?
• 35:04
  You as the GM do not get that QA testing phase to do the
• 35:07
  reworking. So sometimes you'll just not
• 35:09
  have thought of a thing that the players have thought we're going
• 35:11
  to think of. Or you thought it was clear and
• 35:14
  it wasn't clear. Actually a great example.
• 35:16
  When we were playing Fabula, I had the the trial to get Noram.
• 35:21
  I had the two crystals on either side and I said they were
• 35:24
  color-coded. You guys latched onto the color
• 35:27
  coding and thought that was important for some reason when
• 35:30
  it totally was not. I I think that was a fair
• 35:34
  confusion on our part because the color coding, you know, you
• 35:36
  immediately think elemental, right, Right.
• 35:38
  I'm not even going to say it wasn't a fair confusion.
• 35:42
  I'm just saying when I was writing up the idea, I did not
• 35:46
  consider the color coding to be relevant other than for an
• 35:50
  aesthetic thing. So when you guys asked that or
• 35:52
  when you guys started saying that, I was like, fuck right.
• 35:58
  And sometimes that's what happens.
• 35:59
  Now granted, in that scenario I let it play out and it was fine.
• 36:02
  But yeah, I was kind of like, OK, I might have to correct them
• 36:06
  at some point if it keeps going poorly.
• 36:10
  No, it was a valid confusion and to be honest I don't know why
• 36:13
  that didn't occur to me. It was a weird one for me to not
• 36:20
  think of, but I did it so. Here, honestly, I think it's
• 36:22
  like hearing that now. I think it's interesting.
• 36:26
  Yeah, I don't know why I it just didn't.
• 36:28
  I missed it. I don't know.
• 36:29
  I. Didn't look it happened.
• 36:31
  I've done that before. It was a weird moment.
• 36:36
  God, I actually had my own color color own color coding puzzle.
• 36:41
  And basically the players had to there were like colored laser
• 36:47
  beams, right? And think of like a, a circle
• 36:50
  and the top hemisphere of the circle was a, a rainbow
• 36:56
  patterned like Obsidian wall. And then the bottom hemisphere
• 37:02
  at every clock hand number was a pillar that shot a colored
• 37:08
  laser. And or no, sorry, three of them
• 37:13
  were colored lasers. And then three of them they shot
• 37:17
  like like curtains of light, like things like Tron light
• 37:22
  cycle curtains. And what the, what the puzzle
• 37:28
  was or they they would have to point the curtain at the the the
• 37:33
  puzzle and that the like kaleidoscope color.
• 37:37
  It would, it would turn into a spectrograph where you would see
• 37:39
  like the different colors, I think like the, you know, the
• 37:45
  Pink Floyd thing. Yeah, exactly that.
• 37:47
  And then they would have to point the laser to the color
• 37:50
  that was separated out and they were like.
• 37:56
  God, you're losing me as you're describing.
• 37:57
  It right? If I showed you a diagram, it
• 37:59
  would make more sense. And they tried every they were
• 38:02
  like, can we hack the puzzle to solve it?
• 38:04
  I was like, no, you can't fucking hack the puzzle.
• 38:09
  I in my head, I thought it was like the simplest thing.
• 38:11
  I was like, OK, they're going to like point the, they're going to
• 38:14
  point the curtains at things. They're going to see that the
• 38:17
  oh, sorry, no, it was one, it was one curtain.
• 38:19
  And it was like the, the, the 6:00 hand was the one that like
• 38:22
  separated the colors up. They were going to point that
• 38:25
  thing and see the colors like separate out.
• 38:28
  And then they were going to point the colored lasers at it.
• 38:30
  But they were like, what if it's complementary colors?
• 38:32
  What if it's it's supplementary colors?
• 38:34
  What if it's opposites on the spectrum?
• 38:35
  I was like, guys, guys are killing me.
• 38:38
  I can't. I literally kept being like, if
• 38:42
  you're curious, ask questions. I this is I do this a lot.
• 38:45
  I will very specifically tell my players ask me questions above
• 38:48
  board. If you are confused, please ask
• 38:51
  me because I know I'm going to fuck some shit up and they're
• 38:54
  like, we don't, we don't know what to ask you.
• 38:55
  I'm like, I don't believe you. You're asking questions right
• 38:58
  now. You're just not asking them to.
• 39:02
  Right. Yeah, yeah, I mean as a player
• 39:08
  for it's like for fuck's sakes, just please ask the questions.
• 39:13
  Jesus Lord. Like I don't know how this is
• 39:14
  point, but yes, I the color thing being like the
• 39:19
  misunderstanding of the color thing is I feel like it happens
• 39:23
  a lot. Dude, colors.
• 39:25
  I think colors are players worse than you'll.
• 39:27
  Turn graduate level art students into fucking ignoramuses with
• 39:31
  basic color theory. That's a dude.
• 39:38
  I think we could have a whole. I think we could have a whole
• 39:41
  topic on the idea of puzzles and like.
• 39:46
  I don't like puzzles. Most people don't, but every GM
• 39:49
  does them. People who hate puzzles.
• 39:52
  Who GM will put puzzles? What is?
• 39:55
  Yeah, they just break up things, I think.
• 39:59
  I I think genuinely, and this is not a dig at anybody who does
• 40:02
  this. It's it's the.
• 40:04
  I don't want to work that hard, so I'm going to front load a
• 40:07
  little bit and build the puzzle because I know they're going to
• 40:09
  be stuck on this for an hour. It's going to take an hour or
• 40:12
  two. Yeah, that's.
• 40:12
  True. And I just get to sit back and
• 40:15
  relax and watch my players struggle a little bit.
• 40:17
  I think genuinely that is a huge thing.
• 40:19
  I'm saying this, I'm outing myself here.
• 40:23
  Fair enough. For me, it is genuinely just to
• 40:26
  break up the monotony. Like I just, I don't want every
• 40:31
  fight to or every problem to be solved with a fight, you know,
• 40:34
  So I just want other solution types in there a lot of the time
• 40:37
  or like other other things that require you to like pay
• 40:42
  attention and engage with the game, but not just the combat
• 40:45
  mechanics, which is like, you know, most games.
• 40:48
  So that's what it like. And my idea when I do do a
• 40:53
  puzzle is I try to Resident Evil my puzzles, which is to say it's
• 40:57
  not it's not really a brain teaser.
• 41:00
  It's like find the correct shape key for the funny shape statue
• 41:04
  type nonsense. You know what I mean?
• 41:05
  Like it's it's minor brain teaser.
• 41:07
  Like, I don't know. I mean, like when you guys did
• 41:10
  the the trial to meet the lighthouse keeper, right?
• 41:14
  And it was like there were symbols on the wall.
• 41:16
  You had to walk through the correct rooms in the correct
• 41:19
  orders and answer the questions. But it wasn't like deeply
• 41:23
  complicated riddles or like a visual puzzer.
• 41:26
  You know, it was just like Resident Evil style goofy brain
• 41:30
  teaser. Honestly, the thing that
• 41:31
  inspired that is the The Walking through the rooms in Devil May
• 41:36
  Cry 3. Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:38
  Where it says what walks on on 4 legs, then two, then three or or
• 41:44
  no it says or no it starts. On four legs, walks on 2 and
• 41:47
  then ends on three. No, that's the Riddle.
• 41:48
  But what what the thing says is like, I forget how it phrases
• 41:53
  it, but you had to go through the door that was like 4 lights,
• 41:55
  then two lights, then three lights.
• 41:56
  And it described like a baby, a man and then an old man.
• 42:01
  But yeah, so like that's kind of how I try to do it because yeah,
• 42:06
  I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to do like, you know,
• 42:11
  fucking what was, what's that one game?
• 42:15
  The Witness, Not the Witness. The what's that puzzle game
• 42:19
  everyone played the little I think it was the the Witness.
• 42:24
  Maybe it is the Witness where everything in the like, the
• 42:26
  entire map is just covered in covered in puzzles for you to
• 42:29
  find. Yeah.
• 42:31
  The Witness. Yeah, it was the Witness.
• 42:32
  Yeah. I'm not trying to do that level
• 42:34
  of crazy. You know what I mean?
• 42:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually, so we had, I, I
• 42:38
  played one, one shot once and I was so mad.
• 42:42
  I was so angry because I I made a combat heavy character and I
• 42:47
  had talked with the GM about this fucking one shot for weeks
• 42:52
  and like what my build was going to be.
• 42:53
  I was so excited and they didn't fucking tell me there wasn't
• 42:57
  going to be any combat in. And I was so furious when my
• 43:01
  super cool fucking fighter character was completely
• 43:05
  worthless in that fight. When someone like a skill jockey
• 43:08
  rogue was like actively just dominating and they made us do
• 43:12
  the fucking Pokémon Red and Sapphire ice maze puzzle where
• 43:20
  it's like you can when you step on the ice, you keep moving
• 43:22
  until you hit something and then you.
• 43:23
  Slide. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:25
  And I didn't play, I mean, I played emerald.
• 43:30
  It might be have been an emerald, but I don't remember.
• 43:33
  And I was just like, I, I'm stumped.
• 43:34
  I've got no idea. I don't like, I didn't come into
• 43:38
  this one shot expecting to have to use my brain this much.
• 43:42
  So I don't know what to do. Was this 5 E 2?
• 43:46
  Yep. Oh you bet your sweet bippy it
• 43:50
  was. Yeah, I mean, that's annoying
• 43:53
  and it. Confused the magical dog shit
• 43:55
  out of me and yeah, and literally I remember I, I, it
• 43:58
  was either Snubby or Siffy who was like, isn't this the fucking
• 44:02
  Pokémon puzzle? And I, I just was like, what?
• 44:09
  What? And then once I started thinking
• 44:11
  about it, it was like, oh, wait, no, this is a pretty simple
• 44:13
  logic puzzle, but OK. Yeah, that puzzles, man.
• 44:18
  God damn. We're, we're so wildly off
• 44:20
  topic, but it's fine. I I expected tangent.
• 44:24
  We have drifted. It's it's literally the, the,
• 44:26
  the Jim Carrey thing where it's like, I didn't expect that, but
• 44:29
  I expected to not expect it doesn't count.
• 44:35
  Where was I? I don't know.
• 44:43
  I mean, going back to the, you know, the idea of, of speaking
• 44:49
  above board, I I think something worth really hammering home
• 44:52
  other than that I brought up earlier is, and this might seem
• 44:57
  obvious, but it isn't. Each party is not going to react
• 45:02
  to these situations the same way a party with me in it.
• 45:06
  Again, I'm typically someone who just wants to push the plot
• 45:10
  forward. So I will open the door, but you
• 45:13
  can't expect that from players and you really need to, like
• 45:17
  most things, the GM tailor the experience to your party.
• 45:23
  You hear people say this a lot and it's true.
• 45:25
  You have to tailor your experience to your party.
• 45:28
  If you know your party, you are a bunch of min maxing munchkins,
• 45:32
  you're going to have to prepare for that.
• 45:34
  And that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to match
• 45:36
  their min maxing, but you might have to emotionally prepare for
• 45:39
  the fact that your fights are probably going to go a lot
• 45:42
  better for the players than they are for you.
• 45:44
  You know, you just got to accept that.
• 45:48
  So understanding that that above board conversation is going to
• 45:56
  be likely and almost necessary if you're going to have moments
• 45:59
  like this in which is to say, you know that you can't
• 46:01
  necessarily stop them because of your own personal habits or
• 46:04
  something that you personally want to do.
• 46:05
  Like willfully, you got to be ready for that.
• 46:10
  And to the players, you absolutely need to be prepared
• 46:16
  to just ask questions. You know if if Josh's advice is
• 46:21
  read more books. My advice to every player and
• 46:26
  GM. Read more games but you know.
• 46:28
  Is just to ask questions. It doesn't matter if it sounds
• 46:31
  stupid. It doesn't matter if you're
• 46:33
  afraid that you're not like you. The GM will think you're not
• 46:35
  paying attention if you ask questions, even if it's a dumb
• 46:39
  question, you will let your GM know that you are in fact
• 46:44
  interested and you are in fact trying to solve the issue at
• 46:46
  hand. Because when you give the GM
• 46:49
  fucking crickets, that is the worst thing you can do.
• 46:55
  And and if AG Ms. getting mad about you asking questions or
• 46:58
  annoyed, that's some, that's some shitty Mcshitty there.
• 47:02
  Yeah, don't be doing that. Yeah, I mean.
• 47:03
  Within reason. If you if you can't remember
• 47:06
  what the like, what you have to do.
• 47:08
  If you can't remember, you have to bring the magic item to the
• 47:10
  king. The GM is going to get a little
• 47:12
  mad at you if they've said it 8 times, right?
• 47:15
  But if you're if you're trying to ask something like GM is the
• 47:20
  door trapped? It probably isn't.
• 47:23
  You know what I mean? Like and if they don't want you
• 47:25
  to think that it's trapped, they're going to tell you
• 47:28
  they'll. Probably just say no it's not,
• 47:30
  you're good. Yeah, if the GM wants the scene
• 47:32
  to continue past the fucking door and the door's not trapped,
• 47:36
  they just want you to open it so you could fight the lynch,
• 47:40
  They're just going to tell you because the GM is not an is not
• 47:44
  an AI. It's not the the computer that's
• 47:46
  running the game for you. In Baldur's Game, GM got places
• 47:51
  to be and got shit to do. You know what I mean?
• 47:54
  The announcer of Baldur's Game three or as sexy as she.
• 47:56
  Sounds. She's got all the time in the
• 47:59
  world. She's not real.
• 48:01
  And her voice actor? Well, she's real.
• 48:03
  I was gonna say the voice actress is real.
• 48:05
  Have you seen? Her gorgeous, but the narrator
• 48:07
  isn't. She's real, yeah.
• 48:12
  I mean, the GM has stuff to do. Also the the GM has stuff that
• 48:16
  he wants you to interact with. Probably that's that's really
• 48:19
  what I mean. Like the GM has laid stuff out
• 48:21
  for you as per their job. They want you to experience it
• 48:24
  in a reasonable time frame, which is to say before next
• 48:27
  fucking session if you want to see that.
• 48:30
  I'd like you to open the door before next session.
• 48:35
  Given that we have just confirmed that it's probably
• 48:38
  mutual on both sides of the table, just ask.
• 48:41
  For us, just ask. Yeah, and the I don't are
• 48:51
  players afraid to ask is that the problem?
• 48:53
  I don't even really know. I feel like with my party, I
• 48:57
  feel like they're afraid to ask. I don't know why they're afraid
• 49:00
  to ask because I've never like, hopefully I've never made them
• 49:03
  feel uncomfortable for asking a question like a genuine
• 49:06
  question, but it just seems to be a thing.
• 49:10
  I will say too, in terms of the idea of the above board
• 49:13
  conversation, sometimes also the IT won't even really need to be
• 49:21
  a conversation. It will just be a case of you as
• 49:25
  the GM start to learn the kind of players you have and you'll
• 49:28
  just simply be like, all right, they're probably going to do X
• 49:32
  or Y in response to this. So I'm just going to, I'm just
• 49:36
  going to tool it a little bit like like if you know that you
• 49:41
  have players that are not going to take that initiative a lot
• 49:43
  for like, or maybe, you know, you just have a group that's
• 49:48
  like really overly cautious, then you will just have to once
• 49:52
  you start to really lock in and, and, and realize that you'll be
• 49:55
  like as AGM. OK, I, I'm going to avoid overly
• 50:01
  describing, you know, I'm going to avoid describing doors too
• 50:07
  detailed. I'm going to be really specific
• 50:09
  where I put their characters like attention or, or where
• 50:12
  their characters quote UN quote like eyeballs are looking.
• 50:14
  I'm going to be concise on, you know, pathways and stuff like
• 50:19
  you start to understand your players and then you can tool
• 50:22
  your behavior to match them better.
• 50:25
  Basically match their energy. Your freak is at a certain level
• 50:29
  and their freak is at a certain level.
• 50:30
  You want your freak to be in in simpatico as much as humanly
• 50:34
  possible. If you want to bust out the
• 50:36
  metal whip and everybody else just wants like fuzzy brain,
• 50:43
  fuzzy, fuzzy cost. What are they called cost?
• 50:47
  Thank you, fuzzy. What the fuck?
• 50:52
  I forgot the word handcuffs. Oh my God.
• 50:56
  And they just want the fuzzy handcuffs.
• 50:58
  Then you know, you gotta, you know, you gotta figure out, you
• 51:00
  gotta be in the middle somewhere.
• 51:04
  Yeah. Listen, it is so easy.
• 51:09
  It is so easy to to take any tabletop discussions and turn
• 51:14
  them into sex analogies because there's so many parallels.
• 51:18
  It's so. Easy, dude.
• 51:19
  It's crazy. It's crazy.
• 51:21
  Real rich coming for me, but I can't say I've thought about it
• 51:24
  that hard. It's so easy if you just start
• 51:27
  thinking about the like how you frame the sentence.
• 51:30
  It's it's real simple. Not not that that's relevant to
• 51:36
  anything. I just, I just think it's funny.
• 51:38
  No, I mean fair. I mean, it's because tabletop
• 51:41
  games are are, you know, quintessentially built on
• 51:44
  relationship between, you know, 4 to 8 people all spending
• 51:49
  several hours in a room together, you know?
• 51:51
  Like it gets, it gets real intimate with the the oil, Yeah.
• 51:57
  With the oil. Why'd you say it like that?
• 52:00
  What do you mean I haven't? Solved the sexy sailors in
• 52:04
  there, Dude, It's wild how I know.
• 52:12
  I have friends who don't watch, who don't know anything about
• 52:15
  tabletop games, and they watch fucking Tales of a Box.
• 52:18
  They see their shorts. Yes, that's great.
• 52:20
  And they'll be like, oh, you play D&D, do you know what this
• 52:23
  is? And it'll be the fucking oil
• 52:25
  thing. And I'm like, yeah.
• 52:26
  Yeah. Like, yes I do.
• 52:27
  Yes, I do. And they're like, is this isn't
• 52:30
  what they play in the game is like, and you're like.
• 52:32
  Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah.
• 52:38
  I mean, sometimes you're fighting goblins.
• 52:40
  Sometimes you're talking about oil.
• 52:42
  Oil. I look, I had a 5 1/2 minute
• 52:48
  conversation last session with my character's with the spirit
• 52:53
  possessing my character's sword and him asking her if she's
• 52:57
  making friends with the other deities that he's got poker bald
• 53:00
  in his prayer. Breeds like you just have weird
• 53:03
  things happen and you just got to accept.
• 53:06
  That weird scenarios come up. Can I just say I love, by the
• 53:09
  way, that we can get back on a topic after this statement, but
• 53:12
  I love the scenario when player characters are doing buck wild
• 53:16
  fuck crazy shit and then they explain to NPCS what they're
• 53:20
  doing and then the NPCS are like, the fuck you mean?
• 53:23
  I love that shit. I'm so funny.
• 53:25
  I've noticed and I'm I'm starting to get really meta with
• 53:28
  it. With Garo, I say things like no
• 53:31
  questions at this moment, please.
• 53:34
  Yeah, 'cause I think because the idea, like you have to imagine,
• 53:38
  like in real world context, the player characters are like
• 53:42
  fucking Green Berets, right? Like they're going out into the,
• 53:47
  like the depths of villainy, going to war, killing 50 people
• 53:52
  and then coming home and being like, hey, guys, how you, how
• 53:56
  you doing? How's anybody gonna pass me the
• 53:58
  beer, Yo? And like, there's just no
• 54:01
  scenario. Like, could you imagine, could
• 54:04
  you imagine like a Navy SEAL who killed like a terrorist leader
• 54:08
  comes back and is explaining to you, a completely normal person,
• 54:12
  about how that went down? Like, there's no scenario where
• 54:15
  you're not gonna be like, what the fuck, dude?
• 54:18
  Yeah, it. Was it was like fucking on
• 54:21
  Monday. It was Goro being like, all
• 54:22
  right, So we went underground and we found the people that
• 54:24
  everyone thought were extinct. No questions yet, because it
• 54:27
  gets weirder. And then while we were down
• 54:29
  there, we, we negotiated a peace deal between the people that you
• 54:33
  don't think exist and the above worlders of the separate
• 54:35
  religion who maybe extincted them and now they're not
• 54:37
  fighting anymore. Don't worry, it gets weirder.
• 54:39
  And then one of them got corrupted and turned evil and
• 54:42
  then she woke up an evil snake deity.
• 54:44
  Don't worry, it gets weirder. And then we almost killed that
• 54:46
  evil snake deity, which was wild 'cause it like reached like a
• 54:49
  giant sandworm. And then this tiny ghost child
• 54:52
  showed up and disappeared. The sandworm evil snake deity
• 54:56
  and the weird ass Lantern. And we have no idea where they
• 54:59
  went. Now you can ask questions like.
• 55:02
  Yeah, now you may proceed. Yeah, it is.
• 55:07
  It is just as funny for me as it is for you.
• 55:09
  I guarantee you. Just PC things.
• 55:12
  It's just PC things, Yeah. I, it, it's something that I
• 55:16
  unfortunately don't get to have happen very often in Lancer
• 55:19
  because like the idea of being a cool mech pilot is like a, you
• 55:25
  don't have to be the chosen one for that.
• 55:26
  There's like a bunch of these dudes running around like to be
• 55:28
  a Lancer you got to be the coolest of the coolest or
• 55:30
  otherwise you're just a pilot. But like.
• 55:31
  Right, right. The Lancer guys are like elite
• 55:33
  SWAT guys, yeah. But.
• 55:35
  But they're not quite going to like they're not quite James
• 55:40
  Bond. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:42
  Because like even even in AC, the idea that like that, that
• 55:45
  clearly we're riffing on here, like AC pilots know each other.
• 55:49
  They have like companies that they work at.
• 55:51
  Like there's enough of them to be like, oh, there's for there
• 55:53
  to be a massive leaderboard. You're like, oh shit, you're a
• 55:56
  Lancer. That's pretty cool.
• 55:58
  Versus like, oh, you know, you're like a ship pilot.
• 56:00
  But it's not like, yeah, you know, they're not worshipping
• 56:02
  the ground that you stand on. You're just like, yeah, you're,
• 56:05
  you're like a green Beret. You're like, you're a cool guy.
• 56:08
  You're a cool guy. You're not a guy who just like,
• 56:10
  killed a a low key deity. Yeah, or in the case of D and
• 56:16
  DA, straight up D&D, probably. Now our players did cut the leg
• 56:19
  off the giant city sized evil death robot and people were
• 56:23
  like, we didn't think that was possible.
• 56:25
  That's kind of wild. So they are getting a little bit
• 56:27
  of that right now, but they really had to work for it.
• 56:32
  They had to work. It's not really the same.
• 56:34
  Kind of. For me, it was Tuesday that most
• 56:37
  D&D adventures get to deal with. Got it.
• 56:43
  Yeah, it just again once it wild it off target.
• 56:45
  It's so funny. Yes, once again, where were we
• 56:50
  in the notes? Where were we at the very end?
• 56:52
  Basically, yeah. I mean, I wrote like a page nap,
• 56:56
  some 2 pages ish of notes. Not that much.
• 56:59
  We kind of ripped through a lot of it.
• 57:03
  I feel like I'm all right. Well, you just keep keep going.
• 57:07
  I mean, yeah, we, like I said, we pretty much hit everything.
• 57:09
  It's it's the idea that you have to rely upon the framing of the
• 57:14
  scene and understand intrinsically the shit that it
• 57:17
  goes on within the scene. Not just that you're focusing
• 57:20
  on, but what comprises the scene is really what's going to help
• 57:23
  you not have this problem. And admittedly, that will
• 57:27
  involve breaking some bad habits that every first time GM Oh.
• 57:33
  Yeah, this is, this is a painfully common bet.
• 57:36
  I mean, this is, this is a, the idea of, I mean, we're, we're
• 57:42
  talking about meandering around the door, right?
• 57:45
  Which is really kind of a microcosm example of the wider
• 57:49
  example, which is just poorly framing the scene and then not
• 57:57
  being able to to keep the momentum and push things forward
• 58:01
  because of either the poor framing or just an an
• 58:06
  unwillingness or unawareness of how to get the focus back to
• 58:10
  where you want it to be. This has like this this idea,
• 58:15
  this problem I feel like has a damn near 100% hit rate on terms
• 58:19
  of every GM has to go through like fixing this habit.
• 58:24
  I I, I would say it's natural growing pains like.
• 58:28
  Yeah, I mean, it might not be 100% like I'm sure there's some
• 58:31
  people that skip past, but it's got to be, you know, 90th
• 58:34
  percentile type. Like, unless you know about this
• 58:37
  problem going in, which is something hopefully we are we're
• 58:39
  solving with this episode, unless you know that it's
• 58:42
  something that's going to happen, you're going to, you're
• 58:44
  going to step on the rake 100% because it's the it's natural,
• 58:47
  right? You as, as one of your goals as
• 58:52
  a dungeon master game master, master ceremonies, whatever you
• 58:54
  want to be is to, you know, you want to do the Matt Mercer
• 58:59
  thing. You want to describe the cool
• 59:02
  sweeping vistas like fucking Tolkien, but you get lost in
• 59:06
  your own sauce, and then you don't realize that the players
• 59:09
  don't have your meta knowledge on what to pay attention to, and
• 59:12
  if you have attentive players, they're going to pay attention
• 59:14
  to fucking everything. You you also don't want to as an
• 59:20
  as an early GM, you have the natural inclination to not want
• 59:23
  to force them to do anything right, not push them in a
• 59:27
  particular direction. You don't, you don't want to
• 59:30
  say, oh, player X your character walks through the door without,
• 59:35
  without them agreeing to that, right, Because a lot of people
• 59:39
  are, you know, afraid of taking over that taking that control
• 59:46
  from the players. The thing that most GMs don't
• 59:49
  realize until you've had a lot of until you've had a decent
• 59:52
  amount of practice, is that you taking control like an author.
• 1:00:00
  Will often end up making more fun for the players and
• 1:00:05
  ultimately making things fun for the players is kind of the the
• 1:00:08
  the key objective, like the ultimate goal.
• 1:00:11
  So prioritize that, yeah. I mean, I, you know, it's funny,
• 1:00:16
  I just watched the OSP Storytelling through Tabletop
• 1:00:19
  Games podcast episode they did. And something that that really
• 1:00:25
  stuck out to me is people who want that cinematic feel have to
• 1:00:30
  understand that all of the people who are streaming those
• 1:00:33
  big cinematic games are professional actors.
• 1:00:39
  They are used to following, you know, improvising or following
• 1:00:42
  this not there's a script, but you know what I mean, right?
• 1:00:44
  Like their narrative beats? They aren't even necessarily
• 1:00:48
  professional actors. This is The funny thing.
• 1:00:50
  You can get that like I've, I've watched some games that are just
• 1:00:54
  with a bunch of streamers, right?
• 1:00:58
  And what what really is going on there is not Even so much about
• 1:01:03
  their skill set. I mean, their skill set helps,
• 1:01:06
  right? Obviously if you're a streamer,
• 1:01:08
  you have practice kind of putting on a show, quote UN
• 1:01:11
  quote. But I think the thing that
• 1:01:14
  people don't really think about is that when all of the
• 1:01:17
  streamers sit down to play on a live game, they all know we're a
• 1:01:27
  we're being watched. So we have to do our usual.
• 1:01:30
  We're putting on a show thing, right B, this is probably part
• 1:01:34
  of our job because, you know, either the GM is paying the
• 1:01:38
  players or somebody's someone's it's on somebody's channel who's
• 1:01:41
  paying other people or there's an agreement, there's a split
• 1:01:44
  revenue or whatever. It's part of the job.
• 1:01:45
  Or maybe it's just like a you come on my show, all gone,
• 1:01:48
  you're a show thing, whatever it's, you know, it's sort of
• 1:01:50
  part of their job. So they're they're locked in
• 1:01:56
  like if you say to somebody who doesn't play tabletop, oh, I
• 1:02:02
  can't hang out or I can't do XY or Z, like we have to play D&D.
• 1:02:06
  They're going to be like, what the foot?
• 1:02:07
  What just don't just don't just come with me instead, like don't
• 1:02:11
  play D&D. And you're like, well, and it's
• 1:02:12
  hard to argue. The streamer says, oh honey, we
• 1:02:16
  can't go out tonight because I have to play D&D on XY and ZS
• 1:02:20
  Channel and you know, we're we're doing this thing.
• 1:02:23
  She knows that's part of the job.
• 1:02:25
  So she's like, oh, OK, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:28
  Like there's a different. There's a different level of
• 1:02:31
  like commitment and not just not even just commitment, but like
• 1:02:34
  understanding of what they are doing.
• 1:02:36
  You and your friends sitting down are not doing the same
• 1:02:39
  thing. Like it's a different thing.
• 1:02:40
  You're, you're playing the same game and like you're doing the
• 1:02:43
  same fun bits, but you're not, it's not your job.
• 1:02:47
  You're not all being watched. You're not trying to frame it
• 1:02:51
  like the, the, the, the, what's the word I'm looking for?
• 1:02:58
  Framing is coming to mind. But yeah, the expectation is
• 1:03:01
  different. Yes, the expectation is very
• 1:03:03
  different. And so even if they're not
• 1:03:06
  necessarily particularly professional performers or
• 1:03:11
  anything like that, they, they know that the stakes are
• 1:03:15
  different, right? They are aware of that, or at
• 1:03:18
  least they should be. And here's the thing, if you go
• 1:03:21
  to watch an actual play and it feels bad, probably part of the
• 1:03:24
  reason is because they're ignoring those stakes and just
• 1:03:27
  acting like it's their regular old home game and that nobody's
• 1:03:30
  watching. Now, of course, that's not
• 1:03:32
  saying that. Listen, some people throw up the
• 1:03:34
  regular old home game on YouTube and just say if somebody watches
• 1:03:36
  that does, and if somebody don't, they don't.
• 1:03:38
  And some people don't care. That's fine.
• 1:03:40
  But like, if you're going with the intention of, like, trying
• 1:03:42
  to get eyeballs and potentially, you know, going up in viewership
• 1:03:45
  or at least keeping a steady viewership, then yeah, there's a
• 1:03:48
  different expectation. And can you do that kind of vibe
• 1:03:55
  in your home game? Like, yeah, potentially, but you
• 1:03:57
  got to have that buy in from everyone.
• 1:03:59
  And like, the expectation needs to be set up.
• 1:04:02
  It's not just going to happen. It doesn't just happen, right?
• 1:04:04
  Like, that's the thing. Critical Role didn't just
• 1:04:07
  magically happen. There had to be long talks and
• 1:04:09
  discussions and planning and all this crap.
• 1:04:11
  Like they had to when they went on Geek and Sundry.
• 1:04:15
  They had to decide to go on Geek and Sundry and there was
• 1:04:18
  probably contracts and all this other shit, right?
• 1:04:20
  Like it didn't just happen out of the blue.
• 1:04:21
  Like, oh, we'll just record ourselves and see what happens.
• 1:04:24
  Like that's not what happened there.
• 1:04:25
  No for sure. You know, and I think some
• 1:04:28
  people think that's how it works or feel like, or they get that
• 1:04:31
  impression. I don't know.
• 1:04:34
  No, I mean, that's that's kind of what I was trying to say is
• 1:04:36
  like you can't expect that that level of attentiveness and
• 1:04:44
  spontaneity from your home game. So you have to make up for that.
• 1:04:49
  I mean you you you can expect it if that is the expectation that
• 1:04:53
  was set. Right.
• 1:04:54
  But it typically isn't right like.
• 1:04:56
  But it typically isn't, yeah. And and if you're just think
• 1:05:00
  you're going to sit down with your group and not give them
• 1:05:04
  that sales pitch and expect them to just do it magically, no.
• 1:05:09
  Yeah, I mean 100% no, right. Like in the same way that we
• 1:05:12
  just earlier said, like, you know, you're AGM, you have a job
• 1:05:15
  and a life and all that shit that you need to do.
• 1:05:17
  Look at players like they're here to relax and and and have
• 1:05:20
  fun. It's it's basically the same
• 1:05:24
  idea as setting up expectations of like the tone of the game,
• 1:05:29
  right? Like how comedic are we going to
• 1:05:31
  be? How serious are we going to be?
• 1:05:33
  How graphic is it going to be more horror or going to be more
• 1:05:35
  like heroic fantasy? Are we going to do like how, you
• 1:05:39
  know, how are we going to get really R rated?
• 1:05:42
  Are we going full PG? We doing a Ghibli movie?
• 1:05:44
  Are we doing Hellraiser? You know, like it's the same
• 1:05:47
  idea of like those set up that expectation to a degree, give
• 1:05:52
  them an amount of and you know, it may vary, you know, how much
• 1:05:56
  of that expectation set up you do, but something to do
• 1:06:00
  something. You know, I, I do really want to
• 1:06:03
  try, I think we've said this before, but I do really want to
• 1:06:06
  try the like AD and D like you have to be very specific about
• 1:06:12
  your actions and what you do and how you do it.
• 1:06:18
  You got to find the right game. You do, yeah.
• 1:06:20
  I mean like I don't know if we we talked about it a couple of
• 1:06:23
  IV doesn't really do. There's too many insta solutions
• 1:06:27
  for too many problems like. There's yeah, there's too many.
• 1:06:31
  Fuck you, GMI, do what I want type buttons.
• 1:06:33
  Yeah. Now with even less conversation.
• 1:06:39
  I think, I think shadow dark, a lot of the reason that people
• 1:06:46
  have gotten really attached to shadow dark is because it does
• 1:06:49
  that. It is trying to mimic that kind
• 1:06:52
  of AD and D style of like you need to be very precise and you
• 1:06:55
  can't just roll to solve all your problems necessarily and
• 1:06:58
  shit like that. You know, I think that's why a
• 1:07:00
  lot of people have gotten attached to Shadow Dark.
• 1:07:02
  Fair enough. I think.
• 1:07:03
  I mean, we are kind of doing it narrative first.
• 1:07:05
  Games I think are our peak for this because that's sort of what
• 1:07:09
  it says on the tin, right? Like you'd have to narrate first
• 1:07:13
  and foremost what you are doing and the mechanics will come
• 1:07:15
  after that. Yeah, yeah, to a point.
• 1:07:19
  I mean, there's, it's still a little different, but it's.
• 1:07:24
  It's a step. Yeah, well the thing about that
• 1:07:28
  old AD and D style is it really the players have to understand
• 1:07:34
  that their character sheet is not their end all be all tool,
• 1:07:39
  right? Because most modern games treat
• 1:07:41
  the character sheet as like the character sheet is your one and
• 1:07:45
  only window to interact with the game.
• 1:07:48
  Like this is your method. Whereas the game back in the day
• 1:07:51
  didn't make that assumption quite as much.
• 1:07:55
  So I think establishing that with the players and being like,
• 1:07:58
  just because it's not on the character sheet doesn't mean
• 1:08:01
  it's not out of the question. Like, you know, there's a degree
• 1:08:03
  of think about what you can do as a person and shit like that.
• 1:08:08
  Dog, I try to get look, this is a call.
• 1:08:11
  I try to get my players to think like this all the time.
• 1:08:14
  It's why I'm so big about ask questions, ask out of character
• 1:08:17
  questions like we've been saying for 20 minutes, because you as a
• 1:08:21
  character in game, we'll know more about the setting and shit
• 1:08:25
  going on than you the player, as you have to.
• 1:08:29
  So I can provide the information that you, your character has.
• 1:08:32
  You just have to know what that information what what you.
• 1:08:34
  Want to ask? Well, and yeah, like I said, the
• 1:08:41
  the reason your players are struggling it with it, I think
• 1:08:44
  is because modern games have shifted that perception quite a
• 1:08:48
  lot. And so it's hard to break out of
• 1:08:52
  that. I suppose.
• 1:08:55
  Like it, like basically it's a style change.
• 1:08:57
  Like stylistically the game is played, you know, or just the
• 1:09:01
  hobby in general has shifted. And then, you know, 10 years
• 1:09:05
  from now it'll shift in a different direction.
• 1:09:07
  Like, it's just kind of like the flavor of the week right now,
• 1:09:09
  you know? What one of my favorite
• 1:09:11
  applications of that ever was it was Critical Role campaign one.
• 1:09:16
  When they were, they were in one of the crazy fucking underground
• 1:09:19
  temples they were in and the walls were lined with metal and
• 1:09:23
  and Talison was like, OK, so like I would invent her.
• 1:09:26
  I've got like magnets and shit. Can I like, line my coat with
• 1:09:30
  magnets so that my coat's not in my face while I ready my rifle?
• 1:09:34
  And Matt had to look at him with like, I guess you have magic
• 1:09:37
  magnets and shit. Sure, this is fine.
• 1:09:39
  Like had no real bearing on what was going to happen.
• 1:09:43
  But he was like, what makes my sense for my character to have,
• 1:09:45
  I don't know, magnets and shit. Yeah, Perfect encapsulation for
• 1:09:49
  that. Yeah, well, and that's why
• 1:09:52
  that's literally why D&D has that big long list of random
• 1:09:56
  useless crap, right? The adventurer items or the
• 1:09:59
  adventurer, whatever adventuring gear.
• 1:10:01
  That's why that list exists for stuff like that.
• 1:10:04
  Because in the older versions of D&D being like, ah, my character
• 1:10:09
  has a bar of soap. If I use the bar of soap to
• 1:10:13
  lubricate the switch on the trap, so that's when someone
• 1:10:17
  tries to step, they will fall and bring their full weight down
• 1:10:20
  and be unable to get up and be crushed by the pillar.
• 1:10:23
  Like that used to be a thing that people did, you know what I
• 1:10:26
  mean? Whereas 5 E, we don't really do
• 1:10:30
  that anymore because I mean, there's a whole bunch of
• 1:10:34
  reasons, but yeah, basically the game just doesn't play like that
• 1:10:36
  anymore so. Hey look, I was I was a 3000
• 1:10:39
  year old war machine that made very good use of a sack of
• 1:10:41
  flour. Right, and every once in a while
• 1:10:45
  people will do stuff like that, but that used to be like a lot
• 1:10:47
  of the game, like finding a random fucking stick like a a
• 1:10:51
  good quality 10 foot pole in old DND was like hell yeah dude, you
• 1:10:55
  know what I mean? So yeah, it's just a, it's just
• 1:10:59
  a difference in play style that we are currently existing in and
• 1:11:03
  it will eventually fade. I mean, I think we're gonna
• 1:11:06
  start seeing more Shadow Dark style games quite soon to be
• 1:11:09
  honest. God, I hope so.
• 1:11:12
  I have a feeling I think it's gonna start a thing.
• 1:11:17
  And have another that would have a a new wave of RPGs.
• 1:11:21
  Yeah, it's made in the dark. Or that's actually pretty good.
• 1:11:25
  Made in the dark. Isn't that?
• 1:11:28
  Isn't that what the Blades in the Dark games are called?
• 1:11:30
  That's called forged, Forged in the dark shadow.
• 1:11:33
  OK, so Shadow Dark would be crafted in the dark?
• 1:11:37
  Something like that. Shadow Forge about that.
• 1:11:40
  Shadow Forge. Oh, that's a pretty good one
• 1:11:42
  too, actually. I'm just saying, listen, Shadow
• 1:11:45
  Shadow dark author hit us or you know, I'm.
• 1:11:48
  Just. Yeah, I, I think that'll start
• 1:11:54
  to become more of a thing. I, I not just because of Shadow
• 1:11:57
  Dark explicitly, I think other games will do a similar thing
• 1:12:00
  too. But I think Shadow Dark is
• 1:12:02
  really gonna get that ball rolling for sure.
• 1:12:06
  I could be wrong. We'll see.
• 1:12:07
  Honestly, I I kind of hope that we get more stuff like Fabula,
• 1:12:13
  just like the way the game is built in, the way the game feels
• 1:12:16
  that that that is the. Way.
• 1:12:19
  Like the general vibe, the way a lot of the stuff works, like I
• 1:12:27
  would like to see games with with no, you're not based on
• 1:12:29
  Fabula with some of fabulous DNA in it.
• 1:12:31
  The way that they treat the gear, the way that they treat
• 1:12:36
  like the player characters and like building your class now,
• 1:12:39
  like I know the build your class thing is not necessarily new,
• 1:12:41
  but I think the really cool synchronicity that Fabula gives
• 1:12:45
  you is kind of unique. Not exclusively unique, but
• 1:12:48
  unique enough. I'm going to be honest, I'm not
• 1:12:50
  totally clear on what you mean broadly speaking, but fair
• 1:12:54
  enough. I don't know, I, I, I don't know
• 1:12:58
  if I'm explaining this particularly well, but.
• 1:13:00
  Well, I think you're being a little too vague, so I'm not
• 1:13:02
  really sure what you mean. Like in terms of like what I
• 1:13:09
  mean, other than like, OK, the class design and like a synergy
• 1:13:14
  between abilities and stuff. Like sure, that's one little
• 1:13:16
  micro element of Fabula. But like I'm, I'm not seeing
• 1:13:19
  what you mean on a broader scope when you say a design A game
• 1:13:22
  like Fabula. I, I, I don't, I don't know how
• 1:13:27
  else to put it. Like I, I, I really like the way
• 1:13:29
  that Fabula doesn't like equipment and loot.
• 1:13:31
  I like how it feels to like craft items.
• 1:13:34
  I think it's really neat. I just want more games like
• 1:13:40
  that. Like, I don't know, like I want
• 1:13:42
  more. More games built in the style of
• 1:13:43
  Fabulous. Ultimate OK, I, well, I, I just,
• 1:13:53
  I can't. I can't, I have nothing.
• 1:13:55
  I have nothing to add without any further specificity.
• 1:13:57
  So fair enough. Sure.
• 1:13:59
  I mean, we'll see. I'm probably fabulous.
• 1:14:01
  Hacks are going to become a thing, so there's that.
• 1:14:06
  Yeah, I, I know Paladin gave me like a it's, it's called the
• 1:14:09
  like low fantasy, but what it really was was like dark
• 1:14:13
  fantasy. It was like urban fantasy.
• 1:14:16
  Yes, yes, that's, that's a, that's a supplement of the game.
• 1:14:19
  I'm saying there there probably will be hacks using the system
• 1:14:25
  itself. I I have a feeling that will
• 1:14:26
  probably happen, or something akin to it at least.
• 1:14:29
  I'd like that. Call them song in the Ultima.
• 1:14:36
  I don't know, that one's harder. Fabulous final sauce we saw
• 1:14:43
  there? Nevermind.
• 1:14:46
  I'm not going to think about this too hard.
• 1:14:49
  I've just if I just call them like Ultima style games, I think
• 1:14:51
  would be a perfect. That doesn't.
• 1:14:54
  That doesn't have a cool marketing spin to it though.
• 1:14:57
  I don't know, the word Ultima is pretty cool.
• 1:15:00
  Yeah, it's a bit like you could need a phrase like Forged in the
• 1:15:03
  Dark or Powered by the Apocalypse, you know?
• 1:15:05
  I I guess. What do people have a name for?
• 1:15:08
  All those fucking 5E hacks out there.
• 1:15:11
  Not. Really right, It's called like 5
• 1:15:14
  E likes or 5E hacks. There's.
• 1:15:16
  So there's so many of them, so many of them.
• 1:15:22
  Dude I can't I I I feel so dark. RPG.
• 1:15:26
  And Lupo talks about 5 E right now.
• 1:15:30
  Or like even when when when Magnum talks about him too.
• 1:15:34
  'Cause you're like, I just don't care.
• 1:15:36
  I just don't. Care.
• 1:15:36
  Yeah, like Magnum's really excited talking to me about
• 1:15:38
  fucking BG 3 and I'm like, I just don't.
• 1:15:41
  Give a hey wait wait wait wait a minute what up?
• 1:15:43
  BG 3 is different. Specifically his builds like I
• 1:15:45
  just don't care about. Builds I don't just like I
• 1:15:47
  don't. Yeah, builds I don't.
• 1:15:48
  Know talk to me three years ago, I'd be so excited, but I just
• 1:15:50
  don't care, right? BG 3 is a banger but yeah I
• 1:15:54
  don't I don't care about the builds conversation.
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, yeah, if you say if he was talking about a Lancer build,
• 1:16:00
  I'd be all over it. But Ivy, me.
• 1:16:06
  Yeah, I I have, I have not even like thought about or looked at
• 1:16:09
  5 E really since I don't know, since the last 2024 book came
• 1:16:13
  out, which is what, the Monster Manual.
• 1:16:15
  Yeah, Yeah. So.
• 1:16:17
  Yeah, I mean the the the only time I.
• 1:16:19
  Well, we were actually. We talked about the UA stuff a
• 1:16:21
  little. Bit we did.
• 1:16:22
  I still have that. There's been some fun stuff with
• 1:16:24
  the. UA that thing for Mr. Rex, that
• 1:16:25
  thing I backed like. Oh yeah, he's.
• 1:16:28
  Finally coming out and I'm like I don't give a fuck about.
• 1:16:33
  This you're like, I don't know, I have nothing to do with this.
• 1:16:35
  So expensive. It was like 200 bucks and I've
• 1:16:39
  never, I mean, I'll probably use the DM screen, but I'm never
• 1:16:42
  gonna use this anymore. Listen, if you, you just gotta
• 1:16:48
  like, if you run 5E again, you just have to like hack the dog
• 1:16:52
  shit out of it you. Know I, you know.
• 1:16:56
  I've I've thought about that. I was like, I could see myself
• 1:16:58
  running 5 E again but I'm going to just like RIP apart all the
• 1:17:02
  bits that annoy the shit out of me basically.
• 1:17:04
  You know what I can do? Because it's based on like a
• 1:17:05
  like a Middle Eastern kind of place.
• 1:17:07
  I can use the world building shit to make the planet at one
• 1:17:11
  of the NPC from and Lancers. That sounds cool.
• 1:17:15
  That's oddly specific, but you could, yes.
• 1:17:17
  I kind of like the Arabian Night.
• 1:17:19
  It's like a dark Arabian Nights feel that the thing had kind of
• 1:17:23
  cool. I just, I just meant that's an
• 1:17:25
  oddly specific use of the book. Oh.
• 1:17:26
  Yeah, I mean like I'm going. To use it for this one planet
• 1:17:30
  and this one NPC in my 1 kit. Yeah, look it, it's never going
• 1:17:33
  to come up, but at least I can use it.
• 1:17:36
  Sure. Who knows though, maybe you'll
• 1:17:38
  read it and you'll be like damn I kind of want to run 5 E.
• 1:17:41
  Now maybe, man, maybe that happens.
• 1:17:43
  It might. That happens I.
• 1:17:45
  Remember they had some cool rules for like curses and shit
• 1:17:47
  that I was like oh that sounds neat I.
• 1:17:50
  Also feel like run just run just run.
• 1:17:53
  Shorter 5 E campaigns I think would help a lot too.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah, but I I still too mad at the rules changes like, and I
• 1:18:04
  know they're really niche rules changes that I'm mad at, but
• 1:18:06
  they make me really mad. So I don't know.
• 1:18:07
  Maybe I don't know. I don't know which ones you're
• 1:18:10
  referring to specifically, but I don't want to go down this
• 1:18:13
  rabbit. We've had episodes on it just to
• 1:18:14
  like removing of interesting narrative rules, like more basic
• 1:18:18
  options. Captain Hunter's Mark, it's like
• 1:18:22
  this, shit like that. It's basically like irrational.
• 1:18:24
  That's such a broad. That's such a broad overarching,
• 1:18:27
  like you're being so general like sure, I guess.
• 1:18:32
  Brother, we had a whole episode on it.
• 1:18:35
  I know, but you basically just said I don't like the vibe.
• 1:18:38
  I don't, but that's not helpful. All you need to know is why I
• 1:18:43
  want to run the game. The vibe's not Immaculate.
• 1:18:45
  Vibes are also. Just run 2014 that like fucking.
• 1:18:47
  I could, I could do that. I could do that.
• 1:18:50
  I might do that. You know what?
• 1:18:52
  I'll I'll roll I'll run the 2024 rules for every class I like,
• 1:18:55
  but Ranger is specifically limited to the that one revised
• 1:18:59
  Ranger UA that I really like. Oh my God, just say the one
• 1:19:04
  player I want to play Ranger. Well, that's fine, but you only
• 1:19:07
  get one type of. Ranger, you get one?
• 1:19:08
  Yeah. Oh, God.
• 1:19:13
  All right. We have run out of stuff to talk
• 1:19:15
  about. We've been faffing for 10
• 1:19:16
  minutes, so I. I feel like there's shit in your
• 1:19:18
  nose that you did it. Am I?
• 1:19:20
  Am I tripping? No, I hit them all.
• 1:19:21
  Wait, what? Here's something about ominous
• 1:19:23
  stalactites and shit in here. Whatever.
• 1:19:25
  It was another, it was a, it was another example about the like
• 1:19:28
  the different door. What?
• 1:19:31
  Just the idea of like, you might have a cool image in your head,
• 1:19:33
  but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to spend a bunch
• 1:19:35
  of time on it. Oh OK, you also mentioned
• 1:19:38
  something about a massive girthy door or somewhere we.
• 1:19:41
  Didn't do that. What was that contest?
• 1:19:45
  Yeah, in this situation that you absolutely need to describe the
• 1:19:48
  coolest, girthiest, most awesome door that's ever been a
• 1:19:51
  partition. Best option is simply to give
• 1:19:53
  the players some meta knowledge. Once you're finished, simply ask
• 1:19:56
  who's the 1st to enter the so the the cool yet completely
• 1:19:59
  mundane door. Who's the 1st to enter through
• 1:20:02
  the cool yet completely mundane? I mean, yeah.
• 1:20:04
  Look, I told you I write my notes for myself to laugh like
• 1:20:07
  I, I put jokes in my I. Know, but then you don't like
• 1:20:10
  read them. I mean, I gave you the my
• 1:20:15
  intense media literacy and then kept following it.
• 1:20:17
  Like sure. I mean, yes, the coolest,
• 1:20:24
  girthiest mundane door ever. Yes, just tell your players, all
• 1:20:28
  right, you're going through the door.
• 1:20:29
  Anything else you want to do first?
• 1:20:33
  That really that is, that is what it comes down to in a a lot
• 1:20:38
  of the situations. Also, I'm going to give myself a
• 1:20:41
  high fire for using the phrase partition correctly there.
• 1:20:45
  Partition. What partition?
• 1:20:47
  Yeah, that's ever partitioned. Yeah, the doors are partitioned.
• 1:20:50
  That's ever separates you from something.
• 1:20:51
  That's ever partitions. I I see.
• 1:20:53
  I. See.
• 1:20:55
  OK, all right, we're basically done.
• 1:20:58
  Please follow us on your podcast platform for choice.
• 1:21:01
  We'd appreciate it Riced. And yeah, I mean, to recap any
• 1:21:06
  finishing thoughts, just framing is important.
• 1:21:10
  Talking to your GM out of you know, above board is important.
• 1:21:13
  And don't fall into the loophole the the pole, the pratfall of
• 1:21:19
  describing the door. That's not necessary.
• 1:21:23
  Yeah, be more direct, keep things moving, keep the pacing
• 1:21:27
  going and framing. Frame things in such a fashion
• 1:21:34
  that is clear what the next step of the adventure is.
• 1:21:40
  Yeah, don't make it ambiguous. Ambiguity is the death of
• 1:21:46
  campaign. Oh God, it really is I Oh,
• 1:21:55
  nevermind. OK, I was about to start like
• 1:21:57
  another roll of thought. I was like what am I doing?
• 1:21:59
  Right now we're we're, we're ending this vision now.
• 1:22:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.
• 1:22:03
  Peace, motherfuckers.