Latest / Sessions Canceled / Plotting Out THE PLOT :Ep. 71

Transcript

Plotting Out THE PLOT :Ep. 71 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  All right, what's everybody? So the GM wrote one of the
• 0:18
  player characters characters at That was a sentence.
• 0:21
  The G1 of the player characters got written out of the story.
• 0:25
  That was a failure. We're keeping it in.
• 0:27
  We're doing it. One take wonders in this house.
• 0:29
  What up? Sessions cancelled.
• 0:31
  We're here. I'm here with Matt.
• 0:34
  I like your back story, Jim. What's my back story?
• 0:37
  The guy, The assassin. The guy the Yes, Yeah.
• 0:42
  Nailed it. I love my back story.
• 0:43
  Nailed it. I definitely.
• 0:44
  That opening joke was definitely smoother in my brain.
• 0:47
  And then it came out like a salad.
• 0:50
  Like a disgusting wilty salad with a day old, day old with
• 0:55
  several days old dressing and just of sadness, cheap iceberg
• 0:59
  lettuce. You.
• 0:59
  Wanna go great with that? This XP smoothie I've been
• 1:02
  keeping in the fridge for like 2 years.
• 1:05
  Car, you gotta eat it with a fork and knife.
• 1:07
  I hate that. I hate that so much.
• 1:10
  I hate everything you just said. God, yeah, it's just being met.
• 1:16
  So, I don't know, buckle up for stupid.
• 1:20
  It's gonna be a great time. It's gonna be a time.
• 1:23
  It'll be a time of days. It will be a time that has
• 1:26
  existed in the timeline of life. Yeah.
• 1:31
  Where else people should spend their time on Josh going to our
• 1:36
  ex account now? No, you tried.
• 1:38
  But you tried. You tried.
• 1:40
  It's Twitter. Second podcast platform first.
• 1:43
  You You went, you went for the segue.
• 1:45
  You just got the order wrong. And no, I refuse to call it
• 1:48
  anything but Twitter. I'm not calling.
• 1:51
  It anything else, everyone is refusing it to call it X.
• 1:55
  It's it doesn't You can't. OK.
• 1:57
  All right. Yeah.
• 1:57
  We're just you know what? We're going to spend some time
• 1:59
  on this out, OK? There is no universe.
• 2:02
  There is no place. There's no way to say, Oh yeah,
• 2:08
  I made a post on x.com and it rolls off the tongue.
• 2:12
  It just doesn't. There's no way to say it where
• 2:15
  it doesn't sound fucking stupid. It was so much easier to say,
• 2:19
  oh, I put out a tweet on Twitter.
• 2:21
  You didn't even have to say that.
• 2:22
  The word tweet was such good branding.
• 2:25
  All you had to say was I put out a tweet.
• 2:27
  You don't even need to specify where because everyone knows
• 2:29
  what the fuck you're talking about.
• 2:30
  You know what X changed them to. Matt, have you looked?
• 2:35
  They're called posts. They're posts now posts.
• 2:38
  Which all right. I don't know if you uh, I don't
• 2:39
  know if you noticed. But I'm Wait, isn't that the
• 2:41
  Facebook thing? You know?
• 2:42
  Huh. Uh huh.
• 2:43
  Yeah. Instagram and Facebook call the
• 2:45
  post. Yeah.
• 2:47
  Like tweet is probably in a Dick.
• 2:49
  Actual dictionary by now? Probably, Yeah.
• 2:51
  It's like it's actually look not to listen, not to suck the
• 2:55
  corporate overlords in Silicon Valley's cock off.
• 2:58
  Because as far as marketing and advertising goes, I think those
• 3:01
  people are basically like the second worst rung.
• 3:04
  The only people worse than marketing and advertising are
• 3:07
  like CEO's and stockhold stock traders.
• 3:10
  I I just that is a cesspool society I care not for.
• 3:14
  But my grandson says Fortnite and fidget spinners are fucking
• 3:16
  in. Go, go, go.
• 3:17
  He's yeah. I hate, I hate.
• 3:20
  No, I don't even care if they're rich.
• 3:21
  If you're a stockbroker who lives in a box, I still hate
• 3:24
  you. Because fucking trading stocks
• 3:25
  is just you're just a parasite on society.
• 3:28
  I don't know why I'm getting so into my my fucking values right
• 3:31
  now, but but all that being said, the word tweet is amazing
• 3:37
  marketing. It's very good branding.
• 3:40
  I hate to admit it, but it is because it's totally unique.
• 3:43
  You say the word tweet, you instantly know what everyone's
• 3:45
  talking about. We're all on the same page and
• 3:47
  you're in it. Your brain immediately thinks
• 3:49
  that blue ass bird. Well now it's all gone.
• 3:52
  Yeah, it's like you say x.com and everyone thinks you'd be
• 3:54
  porn. Yeah, it's like Google.
• 3:56
  Google is now like I Googled it is now a verb.
• 3:59
  Yeah, like fuck. Although Google actually loses
• 4:02
  money on the fact that Google is turned into a verb.
• 4:04
  But we won't get into that cuz that's the whole other side of
• 4:06
  business. It's the same reason.
• 4:07
  Clean. It's the same reason Kleenex
• 4:09
  actually hates that shit. But anyway, do you know Velcro
• 4:14
  is a brand? Do you know it's not called?
• 4:17
  Yeah, Velcro isn't Velcro. Velcro is the brand.
• 4:20
  The technology. The technology is called hook
• 4:24
  and loop. How can I?
• 4:26
  Yeah, how can Luke straps? Was this a Joe Rogan thing?
• 4:28
  I remember hearing this from someone.
• 4:30
  I mean popular it might have been, but I don't.
• 4:33
  This is a thing. Velcro is a bit, well, Matt
• 4:35
  Coleville. I think Ben should did actually
• 4:37
  once too. I don't know if that's where I
• 4:39
  heard it from. But it's a thing.
• 4:41
  Someone thing. Yeah, someone famous once said
• 4:44
  something like that. It's a whole, it's a whole last
• 4:46
  thing. Velcro is not a word, it's a
• 4:48
  brand. I didn't know that this has been
• 4:51
  a really stupid five minute diatribe.
• 4:53
  That's fine. What?
• 4:54
  What would a sessions cancel? It'd be, you know, be without
• 4:57
  one of these. I know.
• 4:58
  But usually we diatribe about things like, you know, fucking
• 5:00
  anime, video games. That was a really weird diatribe
• 5:03
  into marketing and websites and branding which none of.
• 5:07
  More, You know, I don't give a shit about any of that crap.
• 5:12
  Also, did you hear all the people who are like?
• 5:15
  Y'all just to go back to the X thing real quick just to end it.
• 5:18
  They changed the building like and they have a giant light and
• 5:21
  I guess all the people who in San Francisco which LOL living
• 5:25
  in San Francisco during these times like fucking they have to
• 5:29
  like you know they basically like all the people can't get
• 5:31
  any sleep because the light is constantly fucking shining in
• 5:34
  their apartments. Well Matt I have a I have a
• 5:36
  better add on to that story. They had to knock the sign down
• 5:41
  because he didn't have building permits for it, so it's not
• 5:43
  there. Oh, my.
• 5:48
  See, I like I was one of the people who was like Elon buying
• 5:51
  this. You know what?
• 5:51
  It sounds dumb, but I think it could work.
• 5:53
  I was kind of on board in the beginning too.
• 5:55
  No, I I 100% agree I was somewhat on board because I like
• 5:58
  the idea of someone who's a little bit of a psychopath
• 6:00
  owning a platform like Twitter because, you know, it's just, I
• 6:05
  don't know, spice thing. Like I was kind of on board but
• 6:07
  not. And now I'm at the point where
• 6:08
  I'm like, never mind, this was a bad idea.
• 6:09
  Now it's like. Because I don't remember if it
• 6:11
  was like one of my like super, like, you know, fucking Hee Haw,
• 6:15
  like red fucking uncles who were telling me like, yeah, who was
• 6:19
  like, you know, Elon has no fucking idea what he's doing.
• 6:22
  He can't run a company for shit. And I'm like, are you?
• 6:27
  Are you sure? So isn't he, apparently.
• 6:30
  Apparently it's true. Apparently a lot of his like
• 6:32
  companies running is not really because of him, It's because of
• 6:36
  the other people that he, like hired, apparently.
• 6:39
  That is what I've heard, obviously.
• 6:40
  God damn, I can't. Yeah.
• 6:42
  Yeah, I don't. I don't know who to believe.
• 6:44
  And I I don't know who to believe.
• 6:45
  It's one of. These things that I don't care
• 6:46
  to Google, No, yes, I'm sure. You tell me.
• 6:51
  Sure, why not? Yeah, that's where I'm at too.
• 6:54
  It's like anyway I could care less.
• 6:56
  The only thing I'm worried about is if if X, you know, if the
• 7:00
  whole X thing destroys Twitter, then I don't know where I'm
• 7:03
  going to move the podcast profile too, but I'll figure
• 7:07
  that out when we get there. There's like, five other
• 7:09
  websites. No, I know, We just got to
• 7:10
  figure out which one's important.
• 7:11
  Again, this is a dumb Why are we still on this?
• 7:14
  Anyway, let's actually get to the topic, because nobody cares
• 7:18
  about me being concerned about where to move the Twitter
• 7:20
  account to. So before we do all that, please
• 7:27
  hit the follower subscribe button on your podcast platform
• 7:29
  of choice, because those aren't going anywhere yet.
• 7:32
  Hopefully. I mean, we're on multiple
• 7:35
  platforms, they can't all die at once.
• 7:38
  Although Stitcher, Speaking of Stitcher died, so we're not on
• 7:41
  that anymore. I've heard that recently, which
• 7:43
  that's unfortunate cuz I actually used to use Stitcher
• 7:45
  before Spotify did you. Interesting.
• 7:47
  Yeah, yeah, I like that cuz I'm not surprised.
• 7:49
  It's I'm easy to use. I'm not surprised a lot of
• 7:51
  people didn't know about it anyway, So what the hell are we
• 7:57
  talking about? Well.
• 7:58
  What are we talking about? We're talking about, you know,
• 8:01
  this may come as a shock to some people or maybe not a shock, but
• 8:03
  this may be, you know, it's outside my normal weird house
• 8:06
  cuz I'm usually Mr. Mechanisms, you know, Mr. Mechanical
• 8:10
  Goodness. But today I want to talk a
• 8:12
  little bit about narrative. Structure strutting.
• 8:16
  Oh damn it. God damn it, Structuring your
• 8:19
  narrative in your game. Because I don't know, I had
• 8:23
  thoughts about it recently. Just because, as per usual, an
• 8:26
  event happened in my game and that's burned my thinking
• 8:29
  because that's pretty much always how it goes for me.
• 8:31
  Let me lean back in my chair real quick, grab some popcorn
• 8:34
  and listen to this. So what?
• 8:35
  What happened to your game? Yeah, Yeah.
• 8:38
  I mean, it's not, it's not a particularly crazy or long
• 8:40
  story, so it's not, it's not the usual fair.
• 8:43
  But yeah, basically my, my players, my players are down in
• 8:50
  the under dark. They're dealing with this old
• 8:52
  draft situation and you know, there's essentially this a civil
• 8:59
  war type. It's more like not a civil war,
• 9:02
  It's more like a rebellion against the tyrannical queen
• 9:05
  type scenario, right. So my players are sort of
• 9:09
  helping the rebel drought and the reason they're helping is so
• 9:12
  that they can, you know sort of usurp the evil queen, put the
• 9:16
  rebel drough leader as the new queen and then the drought can
• 9:19
  help them with their eventual final goal because they also
• 9:22
  needed this rare or that only the drought had or it really not
• 9:26
  only the drought had but it's it's an OR that was deep
• 9:28
  underground. So the drought and the durag are
• 9:31
  the only ones that really knew about it or used it.
• 9:33
  So blah blah blah blah blah. Point being, they're talking to
• 9:37
  the leader, the sort of the High Priestess who became the sort of
• 9:40
  leader of the Rebellion for various reasons.
• 9:43
  Doesn't matter, and Brett's character had asked.
• 9:51
  I guess I should preface this with I wasn't sure how I was
• 9:55
  going to do this, but I knew that I was going to bring this
• 9:58
  up in some fashion because way early on in the campaign when my
• 10:02
  players were like, I don't even know, maybe level 5.
• 10:05
  Keep in mind they're level 18 now.
• 10:11
  My players had fought this drought dude who was like a
• 10:14
  serial killer that had basically he became a serial killer
• 10:18
  because he got possessed by the Dredge, which are the sort of
• 10:21
  evil, big bad monsters in my setting, and they had killed him
• 10:25
  forever ago. And I knew that he was gonna
• 10:29
  connect back with the whole drow stuff at some point.
• 10:32
  I just wasn't sure when or how or whatever.
• 10:33
  So finally we get to this point. My players are talking to the
• 10:36
  queen or not the queen. My players talking to the
• 10:39
  rebellion leader. And Brett's character says, do
• 10:44
  you have anything that's connected to the evil Queen so I
• 10:47
  can use crying to see what she's up to?
• 10:50
  And I went, ah, my perfect moment.
• 10:54
  So I totally did this on the fly.
• 10:56
  This was not part of my plan, but I had decided that the dude
• 11:00
  they killed because drows are all like matriarchal and shit,
• 11:02
  right? The dude they killed was a
• 11:05
  consort of the queen, and she was going to marry him.
• 11:09
  So she had given him a wedding ring.
• 11:13
  And then so the dude, the dude who they had killed is the sis
• 11:18
  is the brother. This part I knew.
• 11:20
  This part I knew about like I had this part I had planned.
• 11:23
  The dude they killed is the brother to the rebel to the
• 11:26
  rebellion leader priestess. So it's her brother.
• 11:29
  So she had the wedding ring cuz he left without it.
• 11:33
  So she gave the wedding ring over for Brett's character to
• 11:36
  use crying and then explained oh it was my brother's blah blah
• 11:40
  blah. And then I think it was Sam
• 11:42
  asked, like, what his name was, and she said the name.
• 11:46
  And like, I'm pretty sure it was Sam.
• 11:49
  I know Sam had the best reaction.
• 11:51
  She said the name. And I just hear Sam go, Oh, no.
• 11:55
  Yeah, cuz probably Sam. He he's a you know him and brat
• 11:58
  are the number takers. So he probably looked at his
• 12:00
  documents. He told the name.
• 12:01
  He didn't even have to look. He didn't even have to look.
• 12:04
  He as soon as I said it, he knew who I was referring to and he
• 12:07
  went, that's the guy we brutally had to kill because he was evil
• 12:11
  as shit. So there was this great moment
• 12:14
  as all the players were like, Oh no, now we feel bad.
• 12:18
  And so they had this whole moment with the lead, you know,
• 12:20
  the rebel, the rebel leader. Her name was Sherva.
• 12:23
  I don't know why I didn't specify her name before.
• 12:25
  You know, they had this whole moment with Sherva and
• 12:26
  explaining like why they had to kill her brother cuz he had
• 12:29
  disappeared and she didn't know why he had disappeared and he
• 12:32
  didn't come back. And the reason he didn't come
• 12:34
  back to was because he was, you know, possessed by the evil
• 12:36
  dredge monsters. So he was basically just fucking
• 12:39
  around killing people because he felt compelled to kill.
• 12:41
  But he turned into like a monster, basically.
• 12:43
  You know, he didn't. He was.
• 12:44
  He didn't really have his wits about him.
• 12:46
  But he had a he had a letter on him from her, and they found
• 12:50
  that letter. They kept it all this fucking
• 12:52
  time, got there. Well, they had it like at the
• 12:54
  house, like they didn't necessarily bring it with them,
• 12:56
  but they had it so they, like, knew there was something going
• 12:58
  on there. So it was this good, like
• 12:59
  wraparound moment, you know, and it wasn't even really important
• 13:04
  to the grand scheme of things, right?
• 13:06
  It was mostly just a moment just to kind of show how the
• 13:09
  different areas of the setting are connected, You know, It
• 13:13
  wasn't like vitally important to the sort of main narrative, but
• 13:17
  it was. It was.
• 13:18
  It got this great reaction. All of this is to say, I like
• 13:23
  how I said I wouldn't go on for that long.
• 13:25
  That lasted longer than I expected, but it.
• 13:29
  Was even time. That's fine.
• 13:30
  Well, you know, I mean, the recording software keeps time.
• 13:32
  So I could look. But all that is to say, it was a
• 13:38
  great little moment and it got me really thinking about how you
• 13:42
  can structure your narrative to invoke not necessarily that
• 13:49
  specific sensation, but just like emotion in general, right?
• 13:51
  Because people are always, like, maybe not always, but the people
• 13:58
  who really want to have that critical role style game, right?
• 14:02
  They're always trying to figure out how to get emotional
• 14:05
  reaction out of their players. They want to have the oh shit,
• 14:08
  it's him moment, right? Everybody wants the fucking the
• 14:12
  scene where they were sitting down at the dinner table and
• 14:14
  Percy realizes that the Briarwoods are also there,
• 14:18
  right? Yeah.
• 14:18
  Yeah. Everybody wants that, right?
• 14:20
  Everybody. Everybody's like that's like
• 14:22
  fucking. That's some peak role-playing.
• 14:24
  Yeah. So it's like, how do you
• 14:26
  actually execute them? And that got me.
• 14:30
  And, you know, so this whole little moment with Sherva and
• 14:32
  her brother and like the players had to kill the brother and
• 14:35
  blah, blah, blah, got it all sort of cooking in my head.
• 14:37
  And I was like, ah, And what I realized is, and I might be off
• 14:45
  base with this, but I I think, I think this is a valid
• 14:49
  assessment. So Matt, you you give me a yay,
• 14:51
  Renee. I think the best way or not the
• 14:55
  best way, the best reference to use when trying to figure out
• 15:00
  how to kind of set up your narrative or a tabletop game is
• 15:04
  to look at how books handle it. That book shows, but but books
• 15:10
  specifically. And the reason I say books
• 15:12
  specifically is because I think that's the medium that can share
• 15:16
  the most with the tabletop realm and is books need to convey
• 15:21
  everything through the writing, right?
• 15:23
  Shows, movies, video games. You have all the visual
• 15:27
  components. You could have a character walk
• 15:30
  into a scene wearing a specific outfit.
• 15:33
  Nobody needs to say a word, but everyone knows what that Like
• 15:36
  let's say you're you're watching a show and the show is ambiguous
• 15:41
  about what time period it is that the show is taking place
• 15:44
  and you're trying to figure it out.
• 15:45
  And then at the end of the first episode, a Nazi walks in with an
• 15:48
  armband. Your brain immediately goes, oh
• 15:50
  OK, it's World War 2. Now I know what's good now, Like
• 15:53
  now all this context floods into your brain, right?
• 15:55
  You can't really do that as easily with tabletop.
• 15:58
  You need to convey words in some fashion, so not 100%.
• 16:03
  I want to, yeah. I want to disagree a little bit
• 16:05
  on that. But I'll let you.
• 16:06
  Yeah, keep going. Keep going.
• 16:07
  Keep going. Well, yeah, I know what you're
• 16:08
  going to say. You could show like pictures and
• 16:09
  stuff, right? Basically because I was going to
• 16:11
  say I think it depends on if you're doing it like either.
• 16:14
  In the mind you're just sitting at a table like there you maybe
• 16:16
  you're using minis, but like there's no like art.
• 16:19
  If you're like someone like me that plays specifically on like,
• 16:22
  you know, World 20 or other like virtual table tops, pictures
• 16:26
  tell 1000 stories. And that's why I'm saying maybe
• 16:28
  like, yeah, books I feel like are good.
• 16:30
  But I think you can also very easily use movie and you know,
• 16:34
  television show references and help you to structure a
• 16:36
  narrative and structure your story, your campaign reference
• 16:40
  stuff. I I I think basically all those,
• 16:42
  all three of those mediums work. Probably books.
• 16:46
  You might be right with books, might be a little easier because
• 16:48
  it's like it teaches you. Reading books teaches you how to
• 16:50
  be more descriptive, which is great for DM's because there's a
• 16:53
  lot of overlap. That's like, I'm not saying, I'm
• 16:56
  not saying you can't use any other ones.
• 16:58
  I'm just saying the I think the the closest and most primary
• 17:02
  source can be books. I also think the way that books
• 17:04
  tend to handle, like character arcs and getting into a
• 17:10
  character's head, A lot of that will transition really well to a
• 17:14
  tabletop game, you know? I mean that's also just basic
• 17:18
  storytelling and like, you know, using natural white and narrow
• 17:21
  stuff like, you know, what's what's that one famous thing?
• 17:24
  They are the the Fry tag pyramid, the like, you know
• 17:26
  basic like. Story structuring 101.
• 17:29
  Like, I don't know what pyramid you're referring to, but.
• 17:32
  So the so the Fry tag pyramid is basically it's the simplest
• 17:35
  storytelling of another thing where it's like you you have
• 17:38
  point A is the introduction and then it moves up the mountain
• 17:42
  and then point B is the rising action.
• 17:45
  Oh, the rising action climax. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:47
  Climax. Falling action.
• 17:49
  Yeah. The end.
• 17:49
  Yeah, that. That's the Fry tag pyramid.
• 17:51
  Yes. That's like, it's a basic thing
• 17:53
  they teach you in English class. Like in high school.
• 17:56
  High school like. Yes, that could help you.
• 17:58
  That's definitely. And the three act structure is
• 18:01
  also really good. There's not only the narrative
• 18:04
  like books, but like TV shows. That's what I'm saying.
• 18:06
  Like there's, I think what I can't put my, I can't put my
• 18:10
  finger on. Would you think I'd be able to
• 18:12
  explain this better? Because I read quite a bit, but
• 18:14
  like, I don't know why I can't. I also read a lot of fantasy
• 18:17
  novels specifically, but. Watching I want to save with for
• 18:20
  your thing what you did in your game.
• 18:23
  I don't know if this is the professional or technical term.
• 18:26
  Term. Yeah, go for it.
• 18:28
  But what you basically did was a callback and you and it was a
• 18:31
  callback. But also it was improv.
• 18:34
  Yeah, well, I was gonna. I.
• 18:35
  Was back to a character and then basically being like, oh, it'd
• 18:38
  be cool if I brought this characters like thing connected
• 18:41
  with this this plot to the players.
• 18:44
  I haven't heard from since Level 5, so it's been a while.
• 18:47
  And then the fact that Sam had that genuine reaction of Oh no.
• 18:50
  Like fucking yeah I was I was gonna yes I was gonna get around
• 18:54
  to that. I I I but what what I'm the the
• 18:59
  main thing I'm I'm trying to say with the initial part of this is
• 19:02
  like there is something about the way novels are structured
• 19:11
  that I think feels like it will fit the best and I can't 100%
• 19:18
  say why. Something about the narrative of
• 19:22
  like movies and shows and video games like the writing style is
• 19:25
  just different enough that I feel like novels will slide in
• 19:29
  the easy. Specifically, like, obviously,
• 19:31
  you know, novels. Meaning when I say novels,
• 19:34
  obviously I'm talking about like fiction novels primarily, right?
• 19:38
  Like, obviously, if you're talking about like a biography,
• 19:40
  that's a totally different vibe. Or like a, you know, any kind of
• 19:44
  nonfiction is very different vibe, obviously.
• 19:48
  Yeah, I don't know. I can't quite put my finger on
• 19:50
  100%. I just feel like it's the best
• 19:54
  reference. And then you kind of move down
• 19:58
  the pyramid structure to the other thing.
• 20:00
  I think the worst reference is movies.
• 20:02
  I think movies are the worst, really.
• 20:04
  Yeah, no, I think. You can hold on, Let me explain.
• 20:06
  Hold on. Let me let me justify with
• 20:08
  saying I think the main reason. I think they're the worst.
• 20:11
  I'm going to say worse. I don't mean they're bad, I just
• 20:13
  mean relative to the pyramid, of the other things, I think
• 20:15
  they're the worst. Because movies have to have this
• 20:20
  really, really tight beginning to end because movies are short,
• 20:27
  right? Movies are the shortest of the
• 20:29
  mediums, right when you look at video games, books, TV shows.
• 20:33
  And then movies. Movies are the shortest.
• 20:36
  They have the least to work with and they have to keep things the
• 20:38
  tightest. And I don't think most of the
• 20:44
  time, I think trying to keep things hyper tight in the way a
• 20:47
  movie is written. I don't think it's going to work
• 20:50
  for a tabletop game because you want to leave opening in a
• 20:53
  tabletop game because it's this big collaborative thing.
• 20:56
  You want to have that extra room.
• 20:58
  And I think movies generally. Do that less now, obviously you
• 21:02
  can start getting to the topic of like, what if there's like 20
• 21:05
  movies in the series? Yeah.
• 21:07
  But then you just kind of become a TV show, right?
• 21:10
  Right. Yeah, I'll say with that.
• 21:12
  I think, again, I think it depends on the game.
• 21:14
  Like, if you're running a homebrew game, Sure.
• 21:17
  Like let's say you're running like one of these modules that
• 21:19
  come out that have like it's just a bunch of one shots and
• 21:23
  none of the adventures like you can run them back-to-back to
• 21:25
  back and then that. That's where I think the three
• 21:27
  act structure movies. Oh yeah, if you're doing the
• 21:29
  one, there's also a bunch of adventure league modules that
• 21:33
  they'll write three different modules.
• 21:35
  Each one are supposed to be run 4 hour sessions and you
• 21:37
  basically get a full fucking movie within three sessions in
• 21:41
  three different adventures and you're like fuck this is great.
• 21:43
  You know, it's funny. I'll be honest.
• 21:45
  You're not wrong. But the whole time I was
• 21:47
  thinking about this, I wasn't even considering one shot.
• 21:50
  So. Oh, shit, Really.
• 21:51
  That's. But you're not.
• 21:52
  Yeah, you're not. Wrong.
• 21:53
  That's true if you. If you even, yeah, one shot
• 21:55
  adventures like if you think about it those are like.
• 21:57
  Those are like a movie. Those are basically a movie
• 22:00
  where it's like, all right, get in, get the.
• 22:01
  Because even with my favorite is the the Adventure League stuff,
• 22:05
  they literally break it down into time for some stuff.
• 22:08
  So they're like, all right, so the intro should be about 30
• 22:11
  minutes. You tell the players what the
• 22:13
  fuck is going on, you do the introduction, you know, maybe
• 22:16
  they can buy some potions or whatever.
• 22:18
  And then the the next like chapter three hours, right,
• 22:22
  right. The adventure.
• 22:25
  I think the other thing too about a one shot, when you sit
• 22:28
  down to do a one shot, assuming your players are not being
• 22:31
  jackasses, all the players are sort of agreeing and
• 22:36
  understanding. We're doing a one shot.
• 22:38
  We don't have a lot of time, so we're not going to faff about or
• 22:43
  like try and deviate from the main thing.
• 22:45
  We're just gonna do whatever the main mission is, cuz that's what
• 22:48
  we're here to do. We've all agreed to do it.
• 22:50
  So a little more rail railroading, a little more
• 22:53
  focusing down a specific path everyone's fine with cuz you all
• 22:56
  agreed to do a one shot. You know what?
• 22:58
  I forgot to I probably should have told you guys this during
• 23:00
  our barbarian episode and it slipped my mind until
• 23:02
  afterwards. But I went, do you remember, you
• 23:05
  know that show by Gendy Tarkovsky?
• 23:07
  Primal the dinosaur one? When that show came out, I
• 23:11
  instantly had an idea for one shot and I ran it on Halloween
• 23:15
  and it was all barbarian one shot.
• 23:18
  I'm like, you guys are Cavemen. You're you know I'm like think
• 23:21
  of like like actually I I invoked the Primal show and then
• 23:25
  also Far Cry Primal and I'm like you guys, the first event.
• 23:28
  I'm like, you guys are really going to go out.
• 23:30
  You're going to collect some fruit.
• 23:32
  Yeah, you know, go out hunt the mammoth, bring the meat back to
• 23:36
  your home and survive. And that was basically the one
• 23:39
  shot. And they like again, one of the
• 23:40
  players almost died hunting a mammoth.
• 23:42
  They almost died surviving trying to get back to their
• 23:45
  their, you know, the cage dwelling and then and then I
• 23:49
  threw in a, you know, a fire breathing Tearx boss at them.
• 23:52
  At the end it becomes nice and I I think I ended up killing a
• 23:56
  player, but he did the thing where he's like, he's like, can
• 23:59
  I, can I Drax and like kill the thing as it like swallows me or
• 24:03
  like stabbing me? I think he ended up actually
• 24:05
  getting the last killing, but he died in the process.
• 24:07
  So I'm like, yeah, fuck it, why not?
• 24:08
  It's cool. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah,
• 24:11
  you're definitely, yeah. It's funny cuz when I was
• 24:14
  thinking about narrative structuring, I was really
• 24:15
  focusing on that like long term campaign idea.
• 24:17
  So yeah, when it comes to. Yeah, long term campaign, yeah,
• 24:20
  I think definitely. Now you know what I think a show
• 24:22
  like. Yeah, well, you know what else
• 24:24
  is the The other thing that the reason novels, I think, really
• 24:26
  fit really well is because novels are by far you can put
• 24:31
  the most meat in a book, right? When it comes to story meat, you
• 24:35
  can get so much more information via a shit load of written words
• 24:40
  than having to spend an hour filming a really long show or
• 24:44
  making a video game, right? That's a ton of work and shit.
• 24:46
  So a lot of the time it's like huge investment if you're trying
• 24:49
  to make something really long, which obviously it happens, but
• 24:51
  like, it's a big investment. But novels?
• 24:53
  You could just type and type and type and type.
• 24:55
  You know what I mean? Like you could be the the, you
• 24:57
  know Brendan Brandon Sanderson or George R Martin ended have
• 25:01
  you 1000 fucking page novel. You know, like I didn't miss
• 25:03
  shit, you know, like. And it's like that that
• 25:06
  ludicrous length, that ludicrous length in a lot of times really
• 25:10
  lines up with the tabletop feel, you know?
• 25:12
  Yeah. Fuck, what was the I was There
• 25:17
  was one other thing I was going to say.
• 25:20
  Damn it. No, I was, I was going to ask
• 25:23
  you because I have a couple of things like I wanted to bring
• 25:25
  up, but like I I know this happens.
• 25:28
  Are you when it comes to like structuring, narrative
• 25:30
  structuring. Are you also talking just like
• 25:32
  how would you set this up like for a campaign like if you're
• 25:36
  you're starting out your new deal.
• 25:38
  Like it was like one of the first things I think actually.
• 25:42
  So this I got a from Matt Coleville.
• 25:45
  Be my own like understanding of storytelling growing up and also
• 25:50
  listen you know listen to the slide flourish guy.
• 25:53
  It's always about the fronts or the villain.
• 25:57
  Where are the movers and shakers of like anytime.
• 25:59
  When I started like the three-year game, my first thing
• 26:03
  that I started was like who's the bad guy?
• 26:06
  Who's the bad guy who's going to like, you know, do the like and
• 26:09
  then the you make the players and then eventually the players
• 26:11
  become also part partially movers and shakers because it's
• 26:14
  their story. Well, so you always want to
• 26:16
  start with who came first, Who's the bad guy who like?
• 26:19
  Well, it's not fucking for the players to react.
• 26:22
  To it's not necessarily who came first it's who started it
• 26:28
  because the the thing that's really important to to think
• 26:31
  about and and yes that is basically what I'm talking
• 26:33
  about. If you're a new day I'm and
• 26:34
  you're trying to figure out what you want to do with longterm
• 26:36
  campaign. I am not saying write everything
• 26:39
  out like a novel. That's a bad idea.
• 26:42
  But don't. Don't fucking do that.
• 26:43
  Don't do that. Never do that.
• 26:44
  But yes, the idea of starting with the villain, the reason you
• 26:49
  do that, and I'm. I'm stealing this from Matt
• 26:51
  Cole. I think I've heard other people
• 26:52
  say this too though is heroes are reactive.
• 26:58
  Villains are proactive, right? A lot of people say that, yeah.
• 27:02
  Because if nothing bad happens. Then the hero doesn't need to
• 27:07
  protect or save anyone. Then they're just going to stay
• 27:09
  at home and, you know, fucking milk the cows because nothing's
• 27:13
  bad happening. So they don't need to do
• 27:14
  anything. Villains are proactive because
• 27:18
  they're selfish and decide I want to do something bad, right?
• 27:23
  So a hero doesn't go, I'm going to save the world and then
• 27:27
  there's no one to save it against, the villain says I'm
• 27:30
  going to destroy the world. And the hero goes, hey, whoa,
• 27:32
  wait a minute buddy, Now we can't be doing that now.
• 27:35
  That's the big thing. So that's why you always start
• 27:37
  with the villain, because they're the one who kicks
• 27:39
  everything off as if you don't have the villain there.
• 27:41
  Nothing's kicked off. That being said, the villain
• 27:47
  could be like in the beginning, your villain could just be the
• 27:52
  goblins down the road, like it doesn't need to be anything
• 27:55
  crazy, you know. It just needs to be something
• 27:57
  that the players have to react to because if your players are
• 28:00
  being proactive and like. If you flip it on its head and
• 28:04
  the players just roll up and say we're going to go out in the
• 28:07
  woods and kill those goblins, and the goblins haven't done
• 28:09
  anything, then your players are just murderers.
• 28:11
  They're just murderers for no reason, right?
• 28:15
  And then they're not. They're they're evil.
• 28:17
  They're not heroes. Now, that being said, if you're
• 28:20
  trying to do an evil campaign that might work, that's a whole
• 28:23
  other. Situation.
• 28:25
  I'm not necessarily going to get into that, but I will say I
• 28:28
  really should do an evil campaign episode at some point.
• 28:30
  We can't bring it up. I know.
• 28:32
  Well, cuz I've done a couple of them, so I'm like, I really
• 28:34
  should, yes, If you are running an evil campaign though, yes,
• 28:37
  your players are going to be should be much more proactive
• 28:41
  than you would be in a normal campaign because yeah, they're
• 28:43
  the front. They're good.
• 28:44
  They essentially, yeah, they are the problem in a lot of ways.
• 28:47
  Not 100%, but definitely more so than normal.
• 28:51
  But yeah, I I am basically talking about like figure out
• 28:53
  your villain, Figure out your kind of end goal, like where you
• 28:57
  want things to line, where you want everything to culminate.
• 29:02
  Figure out your big notes, your big chapters, as it were, you
• 29:05
  know, going back to the books and shit and sort of wait, what
• 29:14
  was the wait? What would you ask me
• 29:15
  specifically? I feel like I lost my own.
• 29:19
  I lost myself. We're talking about like new Dms
• 29:21
  like doing this. I.
• 29:22
  Know, but you asked me a question, villains.
• 29:26
  You did shit. Somebody rolled back the tape.
• 29:30
  Fuck, how would you? I don't know.
• 29:32
  How would you? Did you ask?
• 29:35
  Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think I really asked the
• 29:37
  question. No, you said.
• 29:39
  You said. Do you mean something?
• 29:42
  Damn it, I don't know. Whatever.
• 29:44
  Doesn't matter. Yes.
• 29:45
  What you were explaining that yeah that's that's really you
• 29:48
  know that's that's what I'm getting at is is Oh yeah.
• 29:50
  Do you mean when you started? Like where do you start or like?
• 29:52
  Yeah, where do you start? How do you figure out what you
• 29:54
  want? Like, you know, what are the
• 29:56
  major things you need to figure out?
• 29:57
  What are the major like Mpc's. The funny thing is is like, I
• 30:02
  think a lot of people get intimidated by a lot of this
• 30:04
  stuff because you say to a newer DM, who are your major Mpc's?
• 30:11
  And the new DM thinks that they need to have a fully fleshed out
• 30:15
  character to answer that question.
• 30:18
  But I think what a lot of people don't realize is, I'm all right,
• 30:22
  everybody, everybody, get real close, all right, I'm just
• 30:25
  talking to you now. Just talking to you.
• 30:26
  All right? Your major MPC, all they could
• 30:30
  say is the blacksmith guy and that's it.
• 30:34
  And you figure it out later. That's the secret.
• 30:39
  I know I've blown everyone's mind.
• 30:40
  You don't need all the information you really don't
• 30:42
  like. If someone says to you who are
• 30:44
  the major Mpc's you want to appear and you go the blacksmith
• 30:47
  guy, the guard captain guy, and the king, good, You have it
• 30:50
  figured out. You have a thought.
• 30:52
  You're going somewhere. You know what I mean?
• 30:53
  Like it doesn't figure them out. You know, get more fleshed out
• 30:57
  when you need to get more fleshed out.
• 30:58
  But you do not need to have a thick, meaty Reuben sandwich
• 31:01
  right at the beginning. You could just have some bread
• 31:03
  and some cheese. It's OK.
• 31:06
  I don't know why I did the sandwich and not do but here.
• 31:11
  Like for my game I knew I was like OK, cool villain, weird
• 31:15
  interdimensional, oopy, goopy monsters that can take the form
• 31:18
  of basically whatever the fuck they want and also sort of take
• 31:21
  over other things. Cool Dredge done.
• 31:24
  I think I had a name for them really early on, just cuz I knew
• 31:27
  I liked that. I knew I wanted to have like,
• 31:28
  kind of the ocean vibe and dredge.
• 31:32
  I liked a lot because I don't know if I mentioned this before,
• 31:34
  but the name just came from, you know, when you dredge the bottom
• 31:36
  of the ocean, that's when you pick up all the nasty shit from
• 31:39
  underneath. That's where the that's where
• 31:41
  the name comes from. Because the Dredge live in the
• 31:44
  Manitide and the Manitide is not necessarily literally an ocean,
• 31:48
  but it has a very aquatic theme and vibe to it.
• 31:51
  So they're the Dredge because they're the nasty parts of the
• 31:53
  under the Ocean case. Anyone was curious where that
• 31:56
  came from, So I knew I was like, Yep, villain dredge.
• 32:00
  Cool. Major characters, Weird.
• 32:02
  Spooky guy who tells the players their prophecy.
• 32:04
  Cool. Got that one down.
• 32:05
  I didn't have any idea who he was going to be or anything
• 32:08
  about him. He ended up being less important
• 32:10
  than I planned. But that's okay no gods around.
• 32:14
  So the only, like, godly information they're going to get
• 32:17
  conveyed is the Manitide itself, because it's sort of kind of
• 32:20
  like vaguely sentient, but not really.
• 32:24
  And then I knew I wanted the like council that runs the city.
• 32:28
  And then I knew I wanted the sort of lead protector guy of
• 32:33
  the like special counsel SWAT team.
• 32:36
  And I had he, he I had nothing. I didn't.
• 32:39
  I had no clue what that character was going to be until
• 32:41
  like session 10. I think.
• 32:43
  I like, I knew he was going to be in there.
• 32:45
  I just had no clue how. So yeah, start with all those
• 32:50
  little boops and bops. Where do you start?
• 32:52
  Like obviously villain. You just said that.
• 32:54
  What else do you generally start with, I guess when it comes to
• 32:59
  overall narrative or just that session?
• 33:02
  No overall narrative Session one hasn't happened yet.
• 33:06
  You're still setting up the meat and potatoes?
• 33:09
  Yeah, usually. Again, start off with the
• 33:10
  villain, then I go with, all right, where the fuck are we
• 33:15
  setting? And then I kind of from there I
• 33:17
  can generate, you know, what kind of story am I?
• 33:21
  Am I talking about? What kind of narrative am I?
• 33:23
  What kind of. Oh, yes, yes, that's I I did I
• 33:26
  that's that's why I'm right. Yes.
• 33:27
  What kind of story are you going for?
• 33:29
  Yeah, I think that originally with the three-year game, what I
• 33:34
  thought was going to be the story and then what ended up
• 33:36
  happening throughout the campaign just changed.
• 33:38
  Because originally my idea, and I don't remember if I think this
• 33:42
  was an originally from a dragon Lance thing where I wanted the I
• 33:47
  wanted my setting to be like more nature based and more like
• 33:51
  there was a war between like elves and Dragons.
• 33:54
  And I hinted at that a little bit early on in my campaign.
• 33:57
  And then midway I just gave up and said fuck it because the so
• 34:02
  much other shit was going on and I changed a bunch of stuff and I
• 34:06
  was like, you know what, there's no point in me bringing this up
• 34:08
  anymore. So I just changed that and then
• 34:10
  just had like the big war, the dragon cult and all that stuff
• 34:17
  because I thought like originally when I wrote out the
• 34:18
  campaign, I was like the main bad guy, the invincible over.
• 34:22
  I changed. He's a high elf guy.
• 34:24
  It was basically a high elf, like paladin, like wizard guy.
• 34:30
  I'm like, it'd be cool. Maybe he's like, wow, he's
• 34:32
  bringing back the Dragons or something, cuz the the Dragons
• 34:35
  like we're like sealed away from because of the elves.
• 34:38
  And they come back, they're gonna try and destroy the world,
• 34:41
  all that shit. I can't that late in the
• 34:43
  campaign. Why did they try to destroy
• 34:45
  nature? Why did that not end up being
• 34:49
  like, where do you think you kind of like, I don't want to
• 34:52
  say fell apart, but like sort of lost the midway when I just
• 34:55
  became more invested in the players like and this is the
• 34:58
  other thing. So once you set up like your the
• 35:01
  world and all that and like you got your villain, you got the
• 35:03
  basic gist story, then that's when you look at the players,
• 35:08
  what are they playing and what is their back story and how can
• 35:11
  you tie that into your world. I was more invested in my
• 35:14
  players stuff. Oh, I just.
• 35:16
  And eventually I and again throughout my my campaign recap,
• 35:21
  shit, I like. I was so burnt out and
• 35:24
  eventually I got to this point where I was doing the bad GM
• 35:27
  thing of like I was trying to run the players through my novel
• 35:31
  towards the end, when I should have been focusing on having a
• 35:35
  good game that not only did the players enjoy, but that I was
• 35:39
  having fun with. And it's a thing that I, you
• 35:43
  know, looking back on it, it's like maybe if I took a break
• 35:46
  earlier or maybe if I just, you know, cut more content than I
• 35:51
  did, I probably wouldn't have run into that issue.
• 35:55
  But eventually towards the end of the campaign, I felt like I'm
• 35:58
  just running the the players through a novel and not, yeah,
• 36:01
  not an adventure. And by the end, basically the
• 36:04
  the next time I do one of these recaps, I the whole fail.
• 36:08
  Wild stuff. All that shit, like with the
• 36:10
  forest and the Dragon City, all that was me running the players
• 36:14
  through my novel. And like here and there the
• 36:16
  players had it like they were, they were off.
• 36:18
  Like they would do, like, you know, fucking around downtime
• 36:21
  stuff. Like I felt like I was shoving
• 36:24
  the players forward. Like, all right, we got shit to
• 36:26
  do, let's go, let's move. Sorry.
• 36:29
  And I think after the the next bit, the ending is when I
• 36:33
  brought it back to being an adventure and not running the
• 36:36
  players through a novel. Because it is a thing that Dm's
• 36:40
  do a lot, and I feel bad saying this, but it is a bad trait.
• 36:46
  You're not running the players through your novel.
• 36:48
  You should be running players through an adventure.
• 36:51
  Yes, You know story isn't fun and stories matter, but if the
• 36:54
  players aren't invested in it, they're not, then you did a bad
• 36:58
  job. No one cares about the the, the
• 37:00
  story. Well, I mean, there is the story
• 37:02
  to make it a. Heavy, odd here in that, like
• 37:08
  yeah, I mean yes, don't, don't come at it with the mentality of
• 37:13
  you know you're going to hit all your story beats, blah blah
• 37:15
  blah, because you can't control the players actions exactly.
• 37:18
  So there's no way to know I'm guilty of that, Yeah.
• 37:21
  But. But I do think it's worth
• 37:23
  pointing out, if you are like, if you are doing that, let's say
• 37:30
  you you are, you end up in a position where you're like, oh,
• 37:33
  I am kind of running my players through my novel, but your
• 37:36
  players are into it and they're going along and they're cool
• 37:39
  with it, then you couldn't just kind of keep rolling, you know,
• 37:44
  like, yeah. It's not getting hair, yeah.
• 37:49
  It doesn't have to be a problem, yeah.
• 37:51
  I feel like it's more of a problem when it comes to home
• 37:53
  games than than like a module. I don't think we're doing
• 37:59
  because you could use anything. You can be too pushy with the
• 38:03
  module too. I think you can, but I think
• 38:05
  more people are in line to just change it.
• 38:08
  Like I like just change it because it doesn't make sense.
• 38:10
  Like Sam did with us for a furnace.
• 38:12
  Or like my buddy Joe did with Eisendale.
• 38:15
  Or. Yeah, but just because you're
• 38:16
  changing it doesn't mean you're not.
• 38:18
  You're just writing a new novel to put your players through like
• 38:20
  you could. I think you could still end up
• 38:22
  in that place. It's writing a new.
• 38:24
  I guess I should specify by is the the the author changed how
• 38:30
  the adventure went because of the players.
• 38:33
  It wasn't the novel. The the novels had a different
• 38:35
  idea for when he wanted to do the chapter and midway through
• 38:38
  the chapter ripped it and added a new one.
• 38:41
  No, no, I I I get. I get what I got feedback from
• 38:44
  his, from his writing staff, and it was like, that is a better
• 38:48
  idea. I'll do that.
• 38:50
  I know what you're saying. What I mean is I I don't think
• 38:54
  one, because what you said was, oh, I think it's less likely to
• 38:59
  be an issue with a module. I don't think it's any less
• 39:01
  likely to be an issue with the module.
• 39:03
  I think you could do it in a home game or a module.
• 39:05
  I think the reason it happens more with home games is because.
• 39:11
  The the the writer is the GM, so they're more, they're more
• 39:15
  personally invested in their thing.
• 39:18
  So it tends to happen more because they don't want to give
• 39:21
  up on their baby, whereas the module is less their baby, so it
• 39:24
  tends to be less a thing. But you could totally run a
• 39:26
  module in a fashion where it's just hyper Railroad central, you
• 39:29
  know what I mean? Like, yeah, I've been, I've been
• 39:31
  in a couple sessions like that and it sucks.
• 39:34
  Yeah, like it's so you told her. Like the water deep thing I
• 39:37
  mentioned. Water deep thing.
• 39:39
  The water deep. Dragon heights, eventually.
• 39:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it was super railroaded
• 39:44
  and it was a bad DM. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:49
  But now I agree with you. It's probably because the DM is
• 39:52
  It's your baby. The board people.
• 39:54
  Yeah. But there's again, God, we're
• 39:56
  just gonna plug Matt Coleville all day.
• 39:58
  There's a video he made years ago.
• 40:01
  The Railroad where he's the Lanier.
• 40:03
  Yeah, yeah. No, It's called lore versus
• 40:04
  writing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 40:06
  yeah. Yeah.
• 40:06
  That video, it opened up my mind to like someone who's a much
• 40:12
  more experienced storyteller than I am of like, you know,
• 40:17
  Lord. And this is, This is why I'm
• 40:19
  kind of like when I joke with you and Isaiah sometimes about
• 40:21
  I'm like, just change it, Fuck it.
• 40:23
  Lord doesn't I do? Like like yeah Lord.
• 40:26
  Like it like you're. Yeah, writing and lower building
• 40:30
  are kind of like. Somewhat different.
• 40:33
  And you, like the lure can always change.
• 40:36
  You can always change something to either make sense or if your
• 40:38
  players are involved, you're like, ah, fuck it, because you
• 40:41
  don't want to like again, tie the players and sync the players
• 40:44
  down into like, you know, I got it, yeah, you.
• 40:49
  Work with the players. It's a cool collaborative
• 40:51
  effort. It doesn't have to, yeah, And
• 40:53
  nothing, nothing exists until it hits the screen.
• 40:56
  Or in this case, until it hits the, you know game table, right?
• 41:01
  Just cuz you wrote it down in the background.
• 41:03
  Yeah, it doesn't exist until it actually hits.
• 41:06
  It doesn't exist until it interacts with the players.
• 41:08
  Cuz until that point it's just some information you wrote down.
• 41:10
  It's not a thing yet. I'll give you, I'll give you an
• 41:13
  example. It's one that I had no, no idea
• 41:16
  for and I just kind of improv, not even improv.
• 41:19
  I just I never thought of it. In strict saving.
• 41:22
  OK, I gotta. I gotta, I want to backtrack a
• 41:24
  thing after this, but OK, go ahead.
• 41:25
  OK. Yeah.
• 41:27
  My, no, sorry, my my players. One of my players is on the
• 41:30
  student council and he's also the captain of a sports team.
• 41:34
  So like one of the, you know, Magic school sports team.
• 41:37
  And so he's like saying he's like, so you know, we're playing
• 41:40
  all these practice games. He's like, can we do like some,
• 41:42
  can we compete against another school?
• 41:44
  And then me sitting there being like, Oh yeah, there are, there
• 41:48
  should be other schools in this place.
• 41:49
  Yeah, fuck. Yeah, because it's like the the
• 41:52
  setting builds it out. Oh, stricts Haven.
• 41:54
  It's the only college. Oh, it's all magical.
• 41:57
  And it's like, wait a minute, no, there probably are other
• 42:00
  schools. The fuck am I?
• 42:01
  I believe the magic like sort of.
• 42:04
  I believe the explanation for their only being stricts haven
• 42:07
  is because it's interdimensional.
• 42:09
  So everyone from all the other places comes to this one place.
• 42:11
  That's why it's the only one. But yes, that's why the idea
• 42:14
  that there would be others is like it's pretty reasonable.
• 42:16
  Yeah, now I'm like, Oh yeah, there are other.
• 42:18
  Now they're going to be playing against other schools and stuff
• 42:21
  that I have that I make up on the spot because like looking at
• 42:24
  like the plane of Stricts Haven, I'm like, yeah, rackle keep.
• 42:28
  There's probably a school there and Grackle Keep You have
• 42:31
  Stricts Haven and you have Gix Haven and you have Mix Haven and
• 42:35
  you have Rex Haven. And it's like, are these schools
• 42:38
  also magic schools? It's like, no, only stricts.
• 42:41
  Yeah, right. We absorb all the magic.
• 42:43
  So I want to I want to backtrack to a thing a little bit.
• 42:46
  As you mentioned players backstories.
• 42:48
  I think this is a really important thing that I I heard
• 42:51
  someone say forever ago and this this does this ties into whole
• 42:55
  like how you should try and structure out your narrative
• 42:57
  because you might go OK I have my Mpc's I have my big moments.
• 43:01
  I have kind of idea of where I want the ending to go.
• 43:03
  I have an idea of where I want it to all sort of begin that.
• 43:06
  By the way, that's the most important part of the whole
• 43:09
  shebang is deciding how you start, how you kick things off.
• 43:14
  Is that will really. That sets a tone.
• 43:19
  But the you've done all your shit, right?
• 43:23
  You have all your shit on your side of the table.
• 43:24
  And then your players, they they all slide the paper across the
• 43:28
  table to you. That says my back story.
• 43:32
  You as a GM go, oh fuck, what do I do with all this crap?
• 43:36
  And you're like, I don't, I don't want to read all this.
• 43:40
  Some of these people wrote 30 pages, right?
• 43:43
  Yeah. Here's the secret.
• 43:45
  Also, if you write 30 pages, bro, chill.
• 43:47
  Fuck it. Stop it.
• 43:48
  But yeah. Tell some of my players I'm
• 43:51
  like, you're like, real it. Is.
• 43:53
  But if you write, if you write too much, I will literally not
• 43:56
  read it. Yeah, yeah, I give me like. 223
• 43:59
  paragraphs maybe like bullet point stuff for me, the
• 44:02
  important bits, So I'll know it's important anymore.
• 44:06
  That's true. But let's say they don't, right?
• 44:09
  How do you as a GMUO, what do I do with this?
• 44:11
  I already have all of my big story beats I want to hit, and I
• 44:15
  don't know how to fit these in. Here's what you do.
• 44:19
  Look at that piece of paper. You take all the proper nouns.
• 44:23
  You circle all the proper nouns. Circle them, underline them,
• 44:27
  highlight them, change the color in the Google doc, whatever you
• 44:30
  got to do, circle all those problem, that proper nouns, and
• 44:34
  delete all the rest of that garbage.
• 44:35
  We don't need it. All you need are the proper
• 44:38
  nouns and someone might go, wait, what do you mean all I
• 44:41
  need are the proper nouns? Think about it for a minute.
• 44:43
  Your player hands you a back story and they tell you who
• 44:45
  their mom is and who their dad is and where they lived and what
• 44:48
  their dog's name is and all these all these people in their
• 44:51
  life. But then they also give you 84
• 44:54
  pages about how they slayed a mighty dragon.
• 44:57
  None of the crap about the dragon matters.
• 44:58
  But what does matter is if you put your kit, If you take that
• 45:01
  character's mom and suddenly, hey, mom is being threatened by
• 45:05
  the goblins. Actually the goblins captured
• 45:06
  your mom. Boom, done.
• 45:08
  Integrated. Just take all the proper nouns
• 45:11
  out and throw out the rest of that crap.
• 45:13
  Because most of it you don't need.
• 45:15
  That's the secret. And then you integrate all those
• 45:18
  proper nouns and this is actually going to segue.
• 45:23
  This is a good segue. Now thinking about it, I wasn't
• 45:25
  planning this but this is this works is Matt what you mentioned
• 45:29
  you mentioned I was like the thing you did was a callback
• 45:31
  right. Paul backs integrating
• 45:36
  backstories all that crap that there's that.
• 45:40
  There's a beautiful little key to all that by the way.
• 45:43
  Actually, great example of just using the proper noun again
• 45:46
  going back to critical role. Oh, hey, the Briarwood showed
• 45:49
  up. Matt Colville or Matt Colville.
• 45:53
  Matt Mercer said nothing else. He was just like the Briarwoods
• 45:56
  are here at the dinner table and Percy's player Towson
• 45:59
  immediately goes No knee, right? Like I that's all you gotta do.
• 46:03
  I did mention it. Yeah, that's all you gotta do.
• 46:05
  But. You don't make a big deal.
• 46:07
  You don't do the the Marvel thing of like you say the thing
• 46:10
  and just pause for like, you know, claps.
• 46:12
  You're like like audience reaction.
• 46:14
  You just say it like it's normal and you keep going with the
• 46:18
  conversation and then the player will pick up you like no, no,
• 46:20
  no, no go. Mr. Jim, go back.
• 46:22
  I need you to go back. One SEC, please.
• 46:24
  It's funny. That's another.
• 46:25
  You said an important word, Matt, you just brought up
• 46:27
  another bullet point. I'm gonna but first.
• 46:30
  So call back the idea of this thing.
• 46:37
  Reuse your Mpcs. Reuse and reimplement your MPCS
• 46:44
  as much as you can, because by constantly bringing back the
• 46:48
  same characters, first of all, your players are more likely to
• 46:51
  get attached to them if you keep bringing them up over and over
• 46:54
  again. Second of all, third of all, I
• 46:57
  don't know. Whatever.
• 46:58
  Your players are going to have more of a grasp of who the
• 47:03
  character is if they keep seeing them over and over and they're
• 47:05
  going to care more. They keep seeing them over and
• 47:08
  over and then if they have more of a grasp and care more about
• 47:12
  that character, they're more likely to utilize that MPC.
• 47:16
  And if they're more likely to utilize them PC, that's where
• 47:18
  you as a GM get to do more lore dumping.
• 47:22
  That's how you get your lore in there you just go, the character
• 47:25
  says boop boop boop right don't. When you run into Cuz a lot of
• 47:30
  time in the game you'll come to this crossroads.
• 47:32
  You'll be like, okay, the players need to find someone to
• 47:36
  reforge their magical sword. Well, I could have them go to
• 47:42
  the magical blacksmith guy, the giant that lives up on the
• 47:46
  mountain, but they haven't seen him or know anything.
• 47:50
  They don't even know he exists yet.
• 47:53
  Or I could just have them go back to the blacksmith that
• 47:55
  they've already talked to before and then he can say, yeah, I can
• 47:59
  fix it for you if you go get this special material from the
• 48:03
  magic giant blacksmith, boom, problem solved.
• 48:06
  Right, Reintegrate. Keep reusing characters.
• 48:09
  Now obviously there's a there's a fine line here because you
• 48:13
  know if you if you if you Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny, the
• 48:19
  situation where. The where the I mean you can
• 48:25
  obviously if you do a bad day to make it a joke then it then it's
• 48:28
  a joke. But like, if you do the thing,
• 48:29
  obviously it was also a joke in Pokémon, but like if you do the
• 48:32
  thing where this same NPC keeps on magically showing up over and
• 48:36
  over and over again, just conveniently for no reason,
• 48:40
  Obviously that is going to get stupid and annoying unless
• 48:43
  you're doing it for a joke. Yeah, but a place where it's
• 48:48
  reasonable to reuse a certain character and do it Like, don't
• 48:53
  reintroduce another NPC. When you have a perfectly good
• 48:56
  NPC sitting right there, you don't need to buy a new pair of
• 48:59
  shoes. You have a perfectly good pair
• 49:01
  of shoes right there. Why would you buy new ones?
• 49:03
  Don't waste the money, right? Don't waste your brain power on
• 49:05
  coming up with another MPC if you don't need to.
• 49:08
  And then if the characters come back to that MPC, then you can
• 49:10
  make that and you can do more funny lines with the MPC or
• 49:13
  whatever, or play out of the MPC more and all.
• 49:16
  Suddenly the players learn more. And then the players learn that
• 49:19
  at MPC has, you know, divorced his wife.
• 49:22
  And then he also has a puppy. He really likes the race that he
• 49:24
  got recently and all these little things.
• 49:27
  You could keep throwing them in because the players keep talking
• 49:29
  to the character. It's a, it's a that's.
• 49:35
  A great way to share like info on your world to apply, well
• 49:38
  info. But it's also a it's a like, I
• 49:41
  don't know what the word is, but again this is the thing that
• 49:43
  books do a lot, right? Like books will have like this
• 49:46
  character keeps being like we're always staying in contact with
• 49:50
  them. You know, there's definitely a
• 49:52
  it's like a I don't know, I don't know what the phrase I'm
• 49:56
  trying to say is. But yeah, it's a good way to
• 50:00
  introduce things. It's a good way.
• 50:02
  It's really, I think the main thing, I think the main reason
• 50:04
  it works really well is it gets your players to give a shit,
• 50:08
  right? Because if your players know
• 50:09
  that every MPC they meet, they're going to meet once and
• 50:12
  then never speak to again, then they don't care.
• 50:14
  You know, they're going to be like, ah, yeah, that's great.
• 50:17
  Lord Farnonius of the Great and Elven Glade, we're not going to
• 50:20
  see you again in 5 minutes. So we literally don't care any
• 50:23
  about anything you're saying, but if they live in the realm of
• 50:26
  Great Lord Farnonius? Yeah, then you're gonna.
• 50:29
  See, like most most of my players in the three-year game,
• 50:32
  like the most attached Mpcs were the ones they were literally in
• 50:36
  almost every other session with like, you know, the the Drake
• 50:40
  dog that was basically another player.
• 50:44
  Jeff the Tabaxi Who was their fucking bodyguard at the keep?
• 50:47
  Nurse Joy, who was their fucking friendly cleric NPC?
• 50:50
  Because none of them are paling like, Yep, Yep, I mean.
• 50:53
  And same thing in like Stricts. Yeah.
• 50:56
  And in Stricts Haven right now. One of the biggest issues I
• 50:59
  realized literally the first session was like, I introduced
• 51:02
  the players to like 15 fucking Npcs and I was like, man.
• 51:09
  This is not good and throughout now I've been playing for a
• 51:12
  year, the players got the gist, but there will be times where
• 51:15
  they're like like, who's this guy again?
• 51:18
  It's. Like, yeah, it's your classmate.
• 51:19
  It's like, yeah, but they've grown attached to the Npc's.
• 51:22
  Like there's a, there's a little halfling sorcerer girl that my
• 51:25
  players fucking love to get their favorite NPC, Rosie.
• 51:29
  She's basically like, you know, hyper, hyper, like, you know,
• 51:34
  loves monsters, basically. You know, kind of like, what if
• 51:36
  Rebecca was a fantasy character? But not it's not as insane or
• 51:42
  violent or violent. Or violent, actually, especially
• 51:45
  the violent part. What if Rebecca was in Violent.
• 51:48
  Indeed, Yeah, I. Mean.
• 51:51
  Yeah, the fucking goth vampire fucking girl.
• 51:53
  You fucking is you know Druid. Yeah.
• 51:56
  I think the way to go about that problem where you're like oh I
• 51:59
  have 60,000 fucking. Because it's true in like a
• 52:02
  school setting you are going to have like a bunch of classmates
• 52:04
  2 men into. I think the best way to go about
• 52:07
  that is to make sure that when the end PC is introduced,
• 52:12
  they're introduced with a moment.
• 52:15
  You know, like like if the if they get introduced to the goth
• 52:19
  vampire girl because like they go to a party and they find her
• 52:25
  in like one of the back, you know in the back room of the
• 52:28
  party, like making herself blood soup on like the stove.
• 52:34
  You know, like that's one of those things you're gonna be
• 52:36
  like, hey, what you what you doing?
• 52:39
  Making soup, it's like that stands out.
• 52:40
  It's gonna stand out cuz like weird vampire girl making a soup
• 52:42
  when everyone's partying, right? So like, give that, give the NPC
• 52:45
  a moment. I think that's one of the best
• 52:47
  ways to do it. But it can also be tiring if you
• 52:50
  have a lot to go through. So you have to kind of, you
• 52:53
  gotta kind of feel it out and just paste it as you go.
• 52:55
  Like there's not really. A formula, yeah.
• 52:58
  Cuz there are also some Npc's like professors and stuff that
• 53:00
  the players don't fucking see every day, so.
• 53:03
  There's like there was like they're, they, they, the players
• 53:06
  all work at a cafe at their local library.
• 53:09
  So they're like, oh shit, we gotta go talk to, we gotta go
• 53:13
  talk to her work manager. And then they get there and I
• 53:16
  show them the picture and everything and they're like
• 53:18
  three of the players are like who I'm like get your work
• 53:21
  manager. You guys known her for like a
• 53:23
  year and a half and working here for like, ever?
• 53:26
  And I'm like and I also love Discord because I have literally
• 53:29
  just a channel. Just for Npcs and art.
• 53:32
  And it literally has their name, what their job is, what they're
• 53:35
  doing, what they, what fucking. So they have, they have all the
• 53:38
  information. My players, yeah, definitely.
• 53:41
  They're just. For gore or they're lazy.
• 53:43
  They don't go to the Discord and there's like, let me type in the
• 53:46
  fucking character's name. They're probably lazy.
• 53:49
  Yeah. So half my players, so like like
• 53:52
  who? And they're like, Oh yeah, she's
• 53:53
  a durer car. And like, God damn it, yeah, I
• 53:57
  literally have a big, I have a big folder, it says, like, I
• 53:59
  have one big folder, it says allies and one big folder it
• 54:01
  says enemies and 12 a bunch of Mpc's that there are, you know,
• 54:04
  allies and enemies that they've run into blah, blah, blah.
• 54:06
  So like similar vibe. Yeah, I just do it in roll 20.
• 54:11
  But like, yeah, yeah, but to. Be fair again, trick savings.
• 54:14
  There's there's so many fucking Mpc's, so I can't, like really?
• 54:18
  Yeah, well, that's what I mean. You gotta kind of pace it out.
• 54:20
  That's what I actually added to this technically, no, Matt.
• 54:23
  How dare you? Yeah, yeah, you gotta pace it
• 54:26
  out a certain degree. There's no magic formula.
• 54:29
  Yeah. But you said a thing somewhere
• 54:32
  along the road there that that jogged a note thought yeah
• 54:40
  saying something and then not explaining it.
• 54:44
  Yeah this is a huge thing. There's some of my like there's
• 54:47
  a lot of books that do this and a book.
• 54:49
  So I'm reading through as you know Matt I'm reading through
• 54:52
  the black company books right now and the author of those has
• 54:55
  this habit and some people might find this annoying.
• 54:57
  I think it's it's like a genius the they have he has this habit
• 55:02
  of he will just drop statement what what what?
• 55:07
  You're good. You're good, OK?
• 55:09
  He will just drop statements and Nuggets of information randomly
• 55:13
  while you're reading and not give any context or explain
• 55:17
  because the characters know what each other are talking about,
• 55:20
  but you as the reader are like, I don't know what that is, but
• 55:23
  it doesn't matter. All you know is it's a thing and
• 55:26
  the characters know what it is and you go OK and just keep
• 55:28
  going. No one says anything well, so
• 55:32
  like a great example is something that the characters
• 55:34
  talk a lot. A lot is the characters know a
• 55:39
  bunch of different language. The many of the members of the
• 55:41
  Black Company know a bunch of different languages because
• 55:43
  they're sort of well traveled individuals.
• 55:45
  And anytime they're trying to like not anytime.
• 55:48
  But a lot of the time when they're trying to talk with no
• 55:50
  one else paying attention where where I'm at in the series,
• 55:53
  they're in like a totally different country.
• 55:55
  So they will, they will say, they will sometimes say like,
• 55:59
  oh, Croaker says, blah blah blah in the language of the Jewel
• 56:02
  Cities so that only Mergen could understand him.
• 56:06
  And I still I am five books deep, Six books deep.
• 56:11
  I don't know what the Jeweled Cities is.
• 56:14
  They just say the jeweled cities, Jeweled cities.
• 56:15
  It is the language of the jeweled cities.
• 56:17
  They say it over and over and over again.
• 56:19
  They occasionally mention oh, he's like some like a character
• 56:22
  might be from the jeweled cities.
• 56:23
  I do not know what it is. It has never been explained
• 56:26
  because it doesn't matter. The only thing you need to know
• 56:28
  is they have a language. They're from that place.
• 56:30
  They speak this. It's a thing that these
• 56:32
  characters speak that a lot of the other characters don't.
• 56:35
  And the important thing is, by dropping these little Nuggets
• 56:38
  and then not saying anything, it makes the world feel more real
• 56:42
  and more fleshed out. Yeah, this is this.
• 56:44
  Reminds me. The instant thing I thought of
• 56:46
  was the fucking Kessel Run with Han Solo.
• 56:48
  Yes. You don't need to see the Kessel
• 56:50
  Run. Oh my God, no.
• 56:51
  It's good. And then the fucking I and you.
• 56:54
  Literally. I actually like the solo movie.
• 56:56
  I do, too. I Except for the Kessel.
• 56:58
  For the Kessel Run. Yes.
• 56:59
  Except for the No. Say that.
• 57:01
  Yeah, it was. Oh my God.
• 57:03
  Fuck you fucking. Clan worms or some shit?
• 57:05
  No. Not only was the Kessel Run kind
• 57:07
  of dumb, but also, I didn't want to know.
• 57:09
  I'm. Yes, I agree, Matt, because I
• 57:11
  also did actually kind of like the solo movie.
• 57:13
  It's cool. To have like, Lauren shit or
• 57:15
  yeah, there was fun tidbits in there.
• 57:17
  Yeah, tidbits like that aren't explained.
• 57:20
  And that's like, you know, I don't even know.
• 57:23
  It's just didn't. We just didn't need it.
• 57:24
  We just didn't. Need it?
• 57:25
  Yeah, yeah. You can have like an NPC.
• 57:27
  It's like, yeah, I pulled the dagger out of the Bloodstone of,
• 57:30
  you know, graphic or you're like, yeah, Bloodstone, Yeah.
• 57:35
  Yeah. And then the player.
• 57:36
  Yeah. Right.
• 57:37
  Exactly. And then the players immediately
• 57:38
  go, what's the Bloodstone of the NBC just like walks off there.
• 57:41
  Like, wait a minute. Yeah, No, Yeah.
• 57:44
  Because that's because the reason.
• 57:47
  And some people might say, but that's dumb, That's not how,
• 57:49
  Like, why would you do that? That's how it works in real
• 57:52
  life. Yeah, You don't have to explain
• 57:54
  everything. Like think about it.
• 57:56
  Think about how many times you've been like talking to
• 57:58
  someone or overhear somebody talking and they mentioned like
• 58:01
  a town you've never heard of and they keep talking to the person
• 58:05
  and they just keep going and you're like totally lost because
• 58:07
  you're like, wait, what are we talking about?
• 58:09
  What? Because it's.
• 58:11
  Mine. That's how real it is.
• 58:13
  Mine is all my coworkers are obsessed with One Piece and I'm
• 58:17
  the one person who hates not. I don't hate it, One Piece.
• 58:21
  I just. I'm annoyed by it.
• 58:22
  You don't watch it. So they'll be telling me all
• 58:24
  this shit and the story and where it's going and what's
• 58:26
  happening, and they'll just say NPC like NPC characters.
• 58:29
  They'll say character names I have no fucking reference to.
• 58:33
  I just smile and nod like I understand.
• 58:35
  But I don't. And how many times And it's.
• 58:37
  I mean, I don't know. I I feel like in America this is
• 58:40
  probably a more common like, what's the word?
• 58:45
  This is probably culturally more common in a place like America.
• 58:47
  But I'm sure other countries have this too, where like how
• 58:50
  many times have you been walking around and two people are just
• 58:53
  like casually talking in another language you don't understand
• 58:56
  right next to you and they're just going and like you're not
• 58:59
  going to stop them and be like, excuse me, can you speak English
• 59:01
  please? Like, you know.
• 59:03
  Don't. Don't be a Karen.
• 59:04
  Don't fight. Particularly in America, I mean,
• 59:06
  yeah, particularly in America. How many times are you, you know
• 59:09
  you're you walk around all the time here and people speak
• 59:11
  Spanish like constantly. You know, I mean cultural,
• 59:13
  country. Like, I mean, I have a here, I
• 59:15
  have a great actual real life story of me being one of my one
• 59:19
  of my coworkers being the player character and me being the MPC
• 59:22
  who was like what? Or yeah, or sorry, other way
• 59:24
  around. I was the player character who
• 59:26
  didn't understand. He was the NPC talking about
• 59:28
  something I was working. I was working at this restaurant
• 59:32
  and I we go downstairs to the freezer and it was me and the
• 59:34
  one other busboy and the the one of the chefs and they start
• 59:38
  talking to each other in Spanish about something like about what
• 59:43
  we need to do. I don't remember what the
• 59:44
  context was, but they start talking to each other in
• 59:46
  Spanish. And then they finish talking and
• 59:48
  the chef goes back upstairs. And then my coworker looks at me
• 59:51
  and he's like, all right, let's go.
• 59:52
  And I'm like, what? What are we doing?
• 59:54
  He's like, what do you mean, What do you what?
• 59:55
  Boney just said I'm like I. We just, we just explained
• 59:58
  everything. I was like, I don't know what
• 1:00:00
  you just said. And he looked at me for a
• 1:00:01
  second, was like, what do you mean?
• 1:00:03
  Oh, oh, yeah, right. You don't speak Spanish.
• 1:00:05
  I was like, no, no, I do not. So he just like, yeah, and he
• 1:00:11
  explained it to me. Context.
• 1:00:13
  Yeah. It was really funny because he
• 1:00:15
  just looked at me. He's like, all right, let's do
• 1:00:16
  it. And I'm like, do what?
• 1:00:18
  What are we doing? I was so lost.
• 1:00:21
  Start falling out of a bag. Yeah, I was like, what is
• 1:00:24
  happening? So yeah, he explained it to me.
• 1:00:27
  But like, that's totally a real thing.
• 1:00:29
  So in your in in your tabletop game, like do that shit like
• 1:00:34
  drop Nuggets like a great. You know another a great example
• 1:00:37
  is my players when they were down in the in the in the under
• 1:00:43
  dark and they were dealing with the drought.
• 1:00:46
  One of the drought said to them, all right, we're going to have
• 1:00:49
  to wait here for at least one cycle because we need to help
• 1:00:53
  these these people in town with something.
• 1:00:56
  And I didn't explain what one cycle is.
• 1:00:58
  I never said the drought, just said we have to wait one cycle
• 1:01:01
  and then went off to go do something.
• 1:01:03
  And I never said anything to my players.
• 1:01:05
  And at one point my players were talking to each other and Sam
• 1:01:09
  being Sam, you know, he figured it out, he was sitting there.
• 1:01:12
  He and he, he turned the other players and said, oh, we have to
• 1:01:15
  wait a cycle. I assume that means a day.
• 1:01:18
  And it did. That's what it meant because the
• 1:01:19
  drought don't say day or night because they don't have a day
• 1:01:21
  and night cycle. So I was like, what would they
• 1:01:23
  say? I was like, well, cycle makes
• 1:01:24
  sense, right? Like just the word cycle as
• 1:01:26
  opposed to day or night because they don't have a son.
• 1:01:30
  And then at one point Sam and character goes, hey, how do you
• 1:01:33
  guys know what time it is? Because I didn't explain that
• 1:01:37
  either. I was like, you know, I just
• 1:01:38
  said, oh, there's a cycle. But I didn't explain how they
• 1:01:40
  tell. Right.
• 1:01:42
  I I had an answer, but I didn't say anything.
• 1:01:43
  So then Sam's character went, how do you guys know what time
• 1:01:46
  it is? And then the drought character
• 1:01:47
  went, oh, I'll show you. And the reason I came up with is
• 1:01:50
  there's fungus that grows on the roof of the caves and the
• 1:01:53
  fungus. When it's daytime in the above
• 1:01:56
  world, the fungus is dimmer and then as it gets darker in the
• 1:01:59
  above world, the fungus lights up.
• 1:02:01
  So it looks like stars looks like stars on the ceiling.
• 1:02:04
  I'm trying to remember in actual like forgotten ROMs, the men's
• 1:02:08
  who brands. Yeah, I'm sure they have some.
• 1:02:09
  Lord, I. Think they have something where
• 1:02:11
  it's like there's a giant Lily. Oh, God, I'm going to kill.
• 1:02:14
  I don't remember what it's called, but there's a giant
• 1:02:16
  stone that goes from floor to ceiling.
• 1:02:18
  This thing's basically the size of the skyscraper.
• 1:02:20
  It's a giant gem. And the gem is bright red during
• 1:02:24
  the day and then as it's, you know, night time similar to what
• 1:02:28
  I said. Yeah, basically.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah, similar, but instead of fungus, it's John Crystal and
• 1:02:33
  but the thing. But what's really great about
• 1:02:35
  that, right, is like the fact that Sam asked in character.
• 1:02:39
  Sam is now just that little bit more invested because he asked
• 1:02:44
  himself, because anytime you get your players to be like, what's
• 1:02:47
  going on, that means they give a shit.
• 1:02:49
  They're paying attention. So leave those little Nuggets of
• 1:02:52
  empty knowledge. It's a huge, like, it's honestly
• 1:02:55
  it's like one of my favorite I I will have characters say shit
• 1:02:59
  all the time and just I know for a fact the players probably
• 1:03:04
  don't know. Like, I remember another great
• 1:03:05
  example was my players went to this little town outside the
• 1:03:09
  main city. And one of the one of the people
• 1:03:14
  they were talking about mentioned they were like, Oh
• 1:03:16
  yeah, yeah, the stag of the lake and just like kept and just kept
• 1:03:20
  talking. And then my players had no
• 1:03:23
  fucking clue what that was not as they were like, OK And then
• 1:03:27
  they saw the stag and they were like, oh, Oh well that's
• 1:03:30
  interesting. And then once again, I think it
• 1:03:33
  was, I don't remember if it was Sam or Brett this time, but I
• 1:03:35
  think it was Sam again was like, oh, I bet the stag is this other
• 1:03:38
  character from before. And I was just like, I yeah,
• 1:03:40
  yeah, it is. But yeah, it's like, The funny
• 1:03:47
  thing actually is the stag idea came from Brett because Brett
• 1:03:51
  was playing not his primary character and he mentioned that
• 1:03:55
  this on this other character is playing.
• 1:03:57
  It was like, Oh yeah, sometimes active.
• 1:03:58
  I interact with the people in the town of Starwater and I was
• 1:04:01
  like, oh, thanks for the idea there, Brett.
• 1:04:06
  Yeah, just like Chuck these fucking Nuggets out.
• 1:04:09
  And the reason that is I I will admit that particular little
• 1:04:13
  trick is maybe not necessarily narrative structuring so much as
• 1:04:16
  like a world building thing, but it can lead.
• 1:04:19
  It can tie back to the narrative, right, by having.
• 1:04:22
  They could also now go go first. Sorry, I was just gonna say by
• 1:04:25
  having Npc's who know more about what's going on than the players
• 1:04:29
  do, right? And then makes the world more
• 1:04:32
  real and grounded. Yeah, there's yeah, it feels
• 1:04:35
  like there's more shit going on. Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Which is really are not real and grounded, but it makes the world
• 1:04:41
  feel like it's an actual living, breathing the world.
• 1:04:43
  Yeah, it's that. There's shit going on, stuff's
• 1:04:45
  happening. There's things you don't know
• 1:04:46
  about. That's why I like certain Npc's.
• 1:04:50
  I God, I I hate that I'm gonna reference fucking this guy.
• 1:04:54
  But you know, there's a 17%. Whatever 17.8%. 7.8 he.
• 1:05:02
  You know, he had a really good analogy when it comes to Npc's
• 1:05:05
  and I really you like this as well, where it's like you have
• 1:05:08
  like, you know, you have the bad guys, you have your quest
• 1:05:11
  givers, all that shit, you have the bad guys.
• 1:05:14
  But then you need like, you know, so I I feel like you need
• 1:05:17
  like the farmer Joe, Joe Schmo to make the world feel like it's
• 1:05:20
  actually like lived in and real and stuff.
• 1:05:22
  Yeah, you gotta have and. And, and, and and This is why
• 1:05:25
  it's like I kind of like a while ago pushed back a little bit
• 1:05:28
  against Isaiah where he was like, yeah, every NBC has a
• 1:05:31
  quest or they have a reason to be there or whatever.
• 1:05:35
  Or they have like some sort of meaning that the players can
• 1:05:37
  gain access to. And I'm like, isn't that fucking
• 1:05:39
  tiring? And there just be like Joe
• 1:05:41
  Schmo, the farmer who's just living out of here, like, he
• 1:05:46
  doesn't want any involvement. The players can talk to him.
• 1:05:48
  They're not really going to gain anything.
• 1:05:50
  But it's like, oh, it's like. You know, the world is alive,
• 1:05:54
  Shit is moving, things are happening.
• 1:05:56
  Whether other quote, UN quote, people are affected by the
• 1:06:01
  things that we do. Yeah.
• 1:06:03
  I mean, like the fact that I gave my players a neighbor and
• 1:06:06
  he's just kind of there. He's just their neighbor.
• 1:06:09
  They don't like they haven't talked to him in a while, but
• 1:06:11
  like he's around, you know, funny, he's their neighbor.
• 1:06:14
  He said hi once. I think he watched the cat one
• 1:06:16
  time. You know stuff like that.
• 1:06:19
  Yeah. No, yeah.
• 1:06:20
  It adds to that. It adds to my favorite, the
• 1:06:24
  verisimilitude, my favorite word to use all the time.
• 1:06:34
  So the other so and then that ties in nicely because the other
• 1:06:37
  thing is since we're on the MPC train and another thing that can
• 1:06:41
  really help and this again is sort of a world building thing
• 1:06:45
  but can cross over into the the sort of main linear narrative
• 1:06:50
  depending on how you use it. Oh, I just.
• 1:06:55
  It just occurred to me I meant to say this at the beginning and
• 1:06:58
  I forgot. Yeah, go for it.
• 1:07:01
  Any this whole situation I'm talking about and I think me and
• 1:07:04
  Matt are on the same page, even though I didn't specify this,
• 1:07:06
  but like this all assumes you're kind of doing a linear story
• 1:07:10
  campaign. When you get into the realm of
• 1:07:13
  like Sandboxy or Hex Crawley or a little more like Monster of
• 1:07:18
  the Week style game, you're not really going to structure a
• 1:07:24
  whole narrative as much as you're going to do little
• 1:07:28
  focused episode style stuff. You know, like I'm not really
• 1:07:33
  talking about that realm because that's sort of a different
• 1:07:35
  thing. And that has been what me and
• 1:07:38
  Matt are talking about because I think we're just on the same
• 1:07:40
  page. But I did mean to specify that,
• 1:07:42
  like, yeah, if you're doing the sandbox hex crawl game this is a
• 1:07:45
  lot of this is probably not going to apply in the same way
• 1:07:48
  or it'll apply, but you'll have to use it differently.
• 1:07:51
  Particularly stuff like coming up with a primary villain and
• 1:07:55
  then having him do a thing. You're probably not going to do
• 1:07:57
  that as much. You'll do little mini like
• 1:08:00
  isolated versions of it, you know?
• 1:08:03
  Yeah, in between there. Well, it's like think of it like
• 1:08:05
  Avatar. There's the overarching story of
• 1:08:08
  defeat, the Fire Lord, but then there's all the little tiny
• 1:08:11
  adventures that happen. That's what you can do with the
• 1:08:13
  sandbox game where it's like we got to travel here, Here's we're
• 1:08:16
  having, we're diving this adventure, however, but the main
• 1:08:18
  thing is that we got to find all the rod of seven parts or
• 1:08:21
  whatever, You know, I don't know if you even have to have the
• 1:08:23
  defeat the Fire Lord, though. I think you can have a sandboxy
• 1:08:26
  game that's literally just little episodic stuff, and it
• 1:08:29
  doesn't necessarily culminate in any crazy way you could Yeah,
• 1:08:32
  you know you. Don't have to, I I know.
• 1:08:35
  I don't want to say it feels better, but like it is.
• 1:08:38
  It gives the players a more real.
• 1:08:40
  It gives you a. Final just like it's like, why
• 1:08:42
  are we traveling to all these different places?
• 1:08:44
  And it's like, you know, yeah. And you want to give them some
• 1:08:46
  sort of reason having that overarching like narrative
• 1:08:50
  thing. Well, I think the other thing is
• 1:08:51
  it could be self motivated like a good, like a great example.
• 1:08:55
  A lot of people do the sandbox thing.
• 1:08:56
  Why are we traveling around and doing all this?
• 1:08:58
  Because your characters want to get rich, you know, right.
• 1:09:01
  Like that's a that's a thing that.
• 1:09:07
  That's a method I think people don't always think about.
• 1:09:09
  That being said, it does require a little more effort and work on
• 1:09:15
  your player's part. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:17
  Which is part of the reason Side note, part of the reason evil
• 1:09:20
  campaign can be a little bit harder.
• 1:09:21
  It's for the same thing. Yeah, cuz it's like, all right
• 1:09:24
  you guys, you're all evil. What do you want to do?
• 1:09:26
  One guy, I want to take all over the world.
• 1:09:28
  Other guy, I want to build a massive army and destroy and
• 1:09:31
  conquer the other lands. Other guys, I wish to summon our
• 1:09:34
  powerful octopus God that would kill everyone on the planet,
• 1:09:38
  including my teammates. Yep.
• 1:09:39
  What? What?
• 1:09:40
  Who said that? Yep.
• 1:09:42
  Yeah, Octopus. God, not me, the good cleric.
• 1:09:44
  Yeah, I mean that's a that's a problem I ran into.
• 1:09:47
  That's one of the reasons I I've mentioned this before, but
• 1:09:49
  that's one of the reasons Blades in the Dark is a game that sort
• 1:09:52
  of requires extra effort from players.
• 1:09:56
  Because that game assumes that your player characters are self
• 1:10:00
  motivated individuals doing crime for their own particular
• 1:10:04
  reason to try and get ahead. They say I thought it was the
• 1:10:08
  payday thing, where it's like you guys are a team and you guys
• 1:10:11
  are. Y'all, No, no, you guys are
• 1:10:14
  evil. But like, you're fucking young.
• 1:10:16
  It's like you guys are working together.
• 1:10:18
  No, no, you are a. Team No, no, you are a team.
• 1:10:20
  But what I'm saying is Blades, but you are a team working
• 1:10:25
  together and doing crime. But what I'm saying is that
• 1:10:27
  Blades wants the player characters to figure out what
• 1:10:31
  they want their goal to be as a team and also sort of on an
• 1:10:36
  like. So for example, the group might
• 1:10:39
  be like, yeah we're part of this.
• 1:10:41
  We made a crime group because we want to try and get rich and
• 1:10:44
  then the individual players will go.
• 1:10:46
  When I get rich I'm going to buy this big house and another
• 1:10:50
  player might go when I get rich I'm going to own a Leviathan
• 1:10:53
  ship. And the other player would be
• 1:10:54
  like when I get rich I'm going to make this like you know,
• 1:10:58
  amazing new invention. Like they all have their own
• 1:11:01
  reasons why they want to get rich and then the group effort
• 1:11:03
  is get rich. And then the idea is that the
• 1:11:06
  players need to be self motivated in the sense that you
• 1:11:11
  know you can't. Criminals can't be reactive by
• 1:11:15
  definition, right? To be a criminal you have to
• 1:11:17
  proactively commit the crime because the cops are reacting to
• 1:11:20
  the crime, right. So in in a Blaze game you have
• 1:11:24
  you like kind of have to be self motivated and so it's kind of
• 1:11:29
  hard for newer players or players who are not used to like
• 1:11:35
  deciding their like Blades basically says hey players, you
• 1:11:39
  decide your missions yourself. The GM does not decide the
• 1:11:43
  missions for you and a lot of players have a hard time with
• 1:11:46
  that. And an evil campaign, I mean
• 1:11:49
  Blades in the Dark essentially is an evil campaign.
• 1:11:51
  So you know, that's a lot of the struggle is like, oh you have to
• 1:11:55
  decide your own mission and players go, I don't know how to
• 1:11:58
  do that. I'm used to the GM telling me
• 1:12:00
  what to do. Yeah, right.
• 1:12:02
  That was a tangent. Shit, going back to the NPC's
• 1:12:16
  important thing with NPC's, I feel like it's important.
• 1:12:18
  I don't know, maybe some people disagree.
• 1:12:19
  I think this is super important. Consider and think about how
• 1:12:24
  different NPC's will have different opinions and world
• 1:12:30
  views on things because of their culture and background, and ergo
• 1:12:35
  are not going to respond to the same things in the same way,
• 1:12:40
  right? Like the Drough characters are
• 1:12:43
  not going to have the same opinion of you know, like let's
• 1:12:49
  just take mass game for example. The Drough probably don't care
• 1:12:53
  as much about the invincible overlord cuz he lets it.
• 1:12:56
  I know, I know, they were connected.
• 1:12:57
  But let's pretend they weren't for a minute.
• 1:12:58
  The drought. All of them.
• 1:12:59
  Just just the one house, right? Right.
• 1:13:01
  So the rest of the drought don't care.
• 1:13:02
  Cuz he's not bothering them. He's on the above world.
• 1:13:04
  He ain't coming down here, right.
• 1:13:06
  So their opinion on the situation is whatever, dude.
• 1:13:08
  Let him do whatever the fuck he wants, right?
• 1:13:10
  But obviously. Fuck those people.
• 1:13:11
  The town that the invisible Overlord just burned down have a
• 1:13:15
  little bit of a different opinion on the situation.
• 1:13:18
  Yeah, you know, it's like, and also not all the Mpc's.
• 1:13:26
  I think players get into a trap a lot of the time where they
• 1:13:29
  assume that every MPC that tells them information is telling them
• 1:13:33
  the truth or a fact. Not all the Mpc's are going to
• 1:13:37
  have the information, right? A great example this is this is
• 1:13:41
  sort of a like focus, a really focused example for my game.
• 1:13:46
  But it works. The normal people in my setting,
• 1:13:50
  if you say, hey, random Steve off the street, are there gods
• 1:13:55
  and random Steve off the street goes no, of course not.
• 1:13:57
  They're all dead. And then you go, OK, cool, My
• 1:14:00
  players found out that was a fucking lie.
• 1:14:04
  But it wasn't a lie. It's just random Dude.
• 1:14:06
  Steve on the street didn't know that there were actually some
• 1:14:08
  God still alive, right? As far as he knew, his
• 1:14:10
  information was, they're all dead, and he had reason and
• 1:14:13
  evidence to believe they're all dead.
• 1:14:15
  So don't always you know, you can't always assume that all the
• 1:14:17
  NPC's have all the information just because they're an NPC and
• 1:14:20
  they might tell you something that might not necessarily be a
• 1:14:23
  lie, but might just be lacking the necessary info to fill you
• 1:14:27
  in. So it's like, always consider on
• 1:14:30
  the GM side of things, what would this character know and
• 1:14:34
  how would this character react based on their background?
• 1:14:38
  You know, like, again, not only will the Drow be like, I don't
• 1:14:42
  really care about the Invincible Overlord, the Drow also might be
• 1:14:44
  like the invincible who Yeah, great because he hasn't bothered
• 1:14:48
  them. So they'll be like, I don't know
• 1:14:50
  who you're talking about, dude. Yeah, probably most citizens
• 1:14:52
  wouldn't have known, but probably some of the leader
• 1:14:54
  houses the, the, you know, the degree.
• 1:14:57
  She would not be like, yeah, yeah, well, even then though,
• 1:15:00
  even they might not even, you know what I mean?
• 1:15:01
  Like, it could be a situation where it's like you talk to the
• 1:15:05
  drought queen and she's like, I mean, I sounds like you guys are
• 1:15:09
  having a bad time up there on the surface world.
• 1:15:10
  Real shame, you know. Like, or most of the time,
• 1:15:13
  because it's, you know, drought. They're probably like like, he's
• 1:15:17
  not invincible. He's like looking, look at us,
• 1:15:18
  he's invincible. It's like, well, fuck it, If he
• 1:15:21
  comes down here, we'll fucking sacrifice.
• 1:15:24
  Yeah, right. That's the other thing too,
• 1:15:25
  right? Like Mpc's might be like, we can
• 1:15:27
  handle it. And you, you, you as a GM are
• 1:15:29
  like, no, they can't, but they think they can't.
• 1:15:32
  I can there. Exactly.
• 1:15:33
  Yeah. And that's a whole other way to
• 1:15:34
  like, sort of that's a way to convey the sort of different
• 1:15:38
  angles of your narrative. And like, what's going on is
• 1:15:40
  really be like, hey, just because you guys, as the players
• 1:15:44
  are focused on this one thing, everybody else might not be so
• 1:15:46
  much. They might have other things.
• 1:15:48
  They're worried about life. You know.
• 1:15:52
  Yeah, I was about to give a real world.
• 1:15:54
  Never mind. I was about to give a worldwide
• 1:15:55
  comparison. I was like, now that might be
• 1:15:58
  too close to home. Never mind.
• 1:16:00
  I had a thought and I was like, yeah, it like it's just a it,
• 1:16:07
  Yeah, that I think that's a that also helps with the fleshing out
• 1:16:10
  of the world, right? Because you're you're showing
• 1:16:12
  that there are different cultural backgrounds going on.
• 1:16:15
  Ergo, they have different opinions on things.
• 1:16:20
  It was the same when the, you know, the three-year game when
• 1:16:23
  the players would go to their their main hub city.
• 1:16:26
  You know, the all the people around there have a different
• 1:16:29
  opinion on the invincible overlord.
• 1:16:30
  Oh, he's bad. And then they go over to the
• 1:16:32
  dragon land and they're like, you know, he's kind of too bad.
• 1:16:35
  He's not too bad. They go to the elf city and
• 1:16:38
  they're like, you know, he's not really doing it too well for the
• 1:16:41
  elf people. He's kind of giving us a bad
• 1:16:42
  name, but you know, he's not the worst leader we've had.
• 1:16:45
  It's like okay, Well, fucking he's not really our problem.
• 1:16:49
  I'm just. Saying, Yeah, yeah, basically
• 1:16:51
  they go to the draft city. They're like, who's that?
• 1:16:53
  Who's that? You know, literally Bob Who?
• 1:16:57
  Yeah. You got any other bullets you
• 1:16:58
  wanna hit? Sir, I do wanna make cuz I know
• 1:17:01
  how much I say I hates this, but I do wanna stress the importance
• 1:17:05
  of fucking prepping and like outlining shit.
• 1:17:09
  Like I don't understand how he keeps a lot of shit in his head.
• 1:17:15
  It's not good. You gotta get that shit out into
• 1:17:17
  a page. But like.
• 1:17:19
  Definitely sit there and think about your think about the the
• 1:17:21
  narrative. Think about your story.
• 1:17:22
  Think about like when should you tie in certain players back
• 1:17:25
  story and like, plot it out and look like.
• 1:17:29
  Certain Mpc's like where do you want it to?
• 1:17:31
  Aware. What kind of how do you want it
• 1:17:33
  to sort of wrap? Yeah, how do you want the
• 1:17:35
  campaign to go or where do you want this player to show up out,
• 1:17:38
  you know, having certain scenes in mind?
• 1:17:40
  Like I again because I'm very story based and visual based.
• 1:17:44
  I'll have like a scene randomly pop into my head.
• 1:17:47
  I don't, I think you've mentioned this too, where you're
• 1:17:49
  like, I want the scene to happen in the campaign, but it's not
• 1:17:52
  one of going to be like one of those.
• 1:17:53
  Like, Oh my novel, it's like, no, I just want the scene and I
• 1:17:57
  want to see the players react in it or I want to scene and the
• 1:17:59
  players will be there for it. I might be able to guess what
• 1:18:02
  the players will do but I'm you know until they get there I'll
• 1:18:06
  never know. Yeah, I I, I think when you're
• 1:18:10
  planning a scene, particularly a scene that you know is going to
• 1:18:15
  push your narrative forward, really all you're planning is
• 1:18:18
  who's going to be present and what vital information is going
• 1:18:23
  to be conveyed. Those are the only two things
• 1:18:25
  set in stone, right? You know that.
• 1:18:29
  You know the Invincible Overlords Lieutenant is going to
• 1:18:32
  be present, and the Invincible Overlords Lieutenant is going to
• 1:18:35
  inform the players that he is about to burn their village
• 1:18:38
  down. And those are the two things
• 1:18:39
  that are set in stone. Everything else, like how the
• 1:18:42
  players react, or like how he rolls up, or like if there's a
• 1:18:45
  fight, all that stuff is mostly sort of wishy washy vagary.
• 1:18:50
  The only thing you need to push the narrative forward are the
• 1:18:53
  concrete things. Yeah, right.
• 1:18:55
  Like and that's where you. That's why.
• 1:18:57
  Because you know if you're doing a game, a game that has a a
• 1:19:00
  linear story, which we both you and me are currently, you have
• 1:19:06
  to, you have to have points where the narrative is pushed
• 1:19:12
  forward in a specific way. Like you, you have to right.
• 1:19:15
  Like you can't just leave everything 100% wishywashy.
• 1:19:19
  There needs to be certain concrete things that happen to
• 1:19:22
  to move things forward. The players meet X character and
• 1:19:25
  then the players find Y magic item and then the players find Z
• 1:19:29
  location, right? Like you.
• 1:19:30
  There's certain things that have to happen to move it forward.
• 1:19:33
  That's the only way you're going to get any kind of like linear
• 1:19:36
  story going on. But all the crap in between,
• 1:19:41
  just keep it nice and loose. Just keep it loose baby.
• 1:19:43
  Just free flow. Just let the vibes hit.
• 1:19:46
  Yeah, it's the what's the George Armand thing, the planting
• 1:19:50
  seeds. You plant seeds and you have
• 1:19:52
  the, you know, A to you know what's A to C, but you don't
• 1:19:55
  know what B is. It's fine.
• 1:19:56
  You'll figure it out eventually. Or A-Z, you know, or or the
• 1:19:59
  players will figure it out for you.
• 1:20:01
  Or the players will figure it out for you.
• 1:20:02
  Yeah, it's it's like like one of the things I I immediately,
• 1:20:06
  like, thought of when I started like talking about this is, you
• 1:20:08
  know, that scene from V for Vendetta where he's setting up
• 1:20:10
  all the. Diamond Scene.
• 1:20:11
  That movie? Oh no.
• 1:20:12
  Oh fuck, dude. It's great.
• 1:20:14
  I'll watch. So no, I do not.
• 1:20:15
  So there's a scene where he's literally setting up, like, you
• 1:20:18
  know how you know, you ever see the videos of people setting up
• 1:20:21
  chains of dominoes and then they knock them all down?
• 1:20:23
  There's really what you're doing.
• 1:20:24
  When you're like prepping and trying to outline stuff and
• 1:20:27
  like, write shit down, it's mostly to help you feel like
• 1:20:29
  you're prepared and you're prepped.
• 1:20:31
  You're setting these little dominoes and then eventually
• 1:20:34
  you're just waiting for the players to knock the dominoes
• 1:20:36
  down and get from one to the other to the other.
• 1:20:40
  And eventually the dominoes will fall and they'll build out.
• 1:20:42
  And you know, spoilers for the movie.
• 1:20:44
  You know he sets the dominoes up and knocks them down and then
• 1:20:47
  they they spell V. Of course they do.
• 1:20:50
  Yeah, it's slowly building these little Nuggets at a time.
• 1:20:55
  One at a time. Yeah.
• 1:20:57
  And and it's, it's, yeah, it's points on your flow chart,
• 1:21:03
  right. It's the major points of
• 1:21:04
  interest, but the path from from point A to point B.
• 1:21:10
  Has lots of open endedness to it until until you get towards the
• 1:21:17
  end, because I do think, yeah. As you get towards the end, I do
• 1:21:22
  think it's okay to really like tighten the bolts down and say
• 1:21:26
  to your players, hey, this is what we're doing, we're getting
• 1:21:29
  near the end, we're going to focus on this bit, these bits.
• 1:21:33
  There's not going to be a lot of other side crap going on.
• 1:21:35
  So like don't be starting any new nonsense in the background
• 1:21:39
  or big projects or anything like stay in the zone because that's
• 1:21:42
  what we're doing. This is where we're at, you
• 1:21:43
  know, it's like it's it's literally the thing in in the
• 1:21:45
  video game. I I did this to my players last
• 1:21:48
  session, straight up I was like hey, the point of no return
• 1:21:51
  like. Yeah, yeah, it's the thing with
• 1:21:52
  a video game says to you once you talk to this NPC, or once
• 1:21:56
  you drop, you know go, once you start this quest, you won't be
• 1:21:59
  able to come back. Like this is the final arc so.
• 1:22:02
  Get all your shit done. Now.
• 1:22:04
  I literally said that to my players.
• 1:22:05
  I was like, this is the like, we're pretty, we're in the,
• 1:22:07
  we're in the end game, we're in the final arc.
• 1:22:09
  We're going to wrap our crap. So, like, don't be don't be
• 1:22:13
  faffing about. Don't call grandma.
• 1:22:15
  You're not calling grandma. There's no time.
• 1:22:17
  Like stay in the zone. I I will say also because I
• 1:22:21
  don't know how, how you've had, you know you have everything set
• 1:22:23
  up, but I will just say as a something that I did in
• 1:22:26
  three-year game that I'll reference, I'll reference later,
• 1:22:29
  let the players be, don't just end the campaign at the players
• 1:22:33
  getting the level 20 like everybody else does.
• 1:22:35
  Let them be level 20 for like a session or two.
• 1:22:37
  Or hell, let them be level 20 for the ending fight.
• 1:22:40
  I mean, and then they. Get there, Yeah.
• 1:22:42
  I think my players, my plan is my players are going to be level
• 1:22:44
  20 probably for the last dungeons worth.
• 1:22:47
  Yeah, into the final. They get to try out their
• 1:22:50
  fucking super Omega powers and they're like, yeah, we're level
• 1:22:52
  20, we did it. We finally, and most people,
• 1:22:55
  most people don't play at level 20.
• 1:22:57
  So let let them have some fun, you know?
• 1:22:59
  Yeah, let them plan mega beams. My plan is once I'm thinking I'm
• 1:23:05
  probably going to make them level 20.
• 1:23:07
  So the final sort of Arc of things is my players are going
• 1:23:11
  to take a big massive caravan and March up to Mount Olympus.
• 1:23:18
  And I'm thinking once they start the March through the like,
• 1:23:21
  basically there's a wasteland between the city and the
• 1:23:23
  mountain. And so they're taking a huge
• 1:23:25
  caravan from the city to the mountain up to the top to fix
• 1:23:29
  this sort of teleporting, teleport magic machine thing so
• 1:23:34
  that they can get to where the bad guys are spaced out, you
• 1:23:37
  know, more or less. And I'm thinking they're
• 1:23:40
  probably going to hit once they start.
• 1:23:41
  Once the caravan gets rolling, I'm thinking they're going to
• 1:23:43
  hit 20 from there and basically that Lay out the rest of that
• 1:23:46
  shit. They're probably going to have a
• 1:23:50
  good, good, good chunk of sessions at Max for a while.
• 1:23:55
  Um, yeah. But yes, I I think tightening, I
• 1:24:00
  think tightening down the bolts on that, on that last arc is
• 1:24:03
  fine. It's fine, yeah.
• 1:24:05
  Is it railroading? Yeah, a little bit.
• 1:24:07
  But it's sort of like necessary and consensual railroading.
• 1:24:11
  It's fine to railroad at certain points.
• 1:24:14
  Not it's a necessary point. Yeah, you know the meme.
• 1:24:17
  Like players wait in the sandbox for the railroad.
• 1:24:19
  Like fucking yeah that. Yeah.
• 1:24:20
  Well, yeah. And that's it.
• 1:24:21
  The other thing too is. Just because you're getting to
• 1:24:24
  the last arc and you're sort of railroading them down a specific
• 1:24:26
  path, you're still giving them the freedom to solve the
• 1:24:30
  problems in various ways. Like you're not telling them
• 1:24:34
  there's only one way to solve this problem that's that's the
• 1:24:37
  part you want to avoid. But you can railroad them down
• 1:24:40
  the path, and then when they get to the end, they have to make a
• 1:24:43
  decision. Right?
• 1:24:44
  Then you're still letting them have their their.
• 1:24:48
  Their agency in the situation and because it's a tabletop game
• 1:24:51
  and not a video game, they have a damn near infinite number of
• 1:24:55
  choices. Because you as the GM have can
• 1:24:58
  react to a damn near infinite type of situations and also be
• 1:25:04
  open to like weird solutions at the end of things.
• 1:25:09
  Because I said to my players I was like, hey, my players
• 1:25:13
  recently, not, I said and MPC informed my players recently.
• 1:25:18
  You can destroy the dredge permanently forever comma.
• 1:25:22
  However, if you do that you're going to throw yourselves into
• 1:25:26
  eternal oblivion. So you know it's kind of a one
• 1:25:30
  way St. at which .1 of my. I think which point Brett went.
• 1:25:35
  Well, Brett's character went. Is there is there any way to
• 1:25:39
  avoid the whole eternal oblivion thing And then PC went?
• 1:25:42
  I don't think so, but you could try Bud and Bret's character
• 1:25:46
  went. OK, that's distressing, he went.
• 1:25:48
  Yeah, you know, and me as a GM. So they're saying there's a
• 1:25:53
  chance. Right.
• 1:25:54
  Well, that's the thing. Me as a GM, I'm sitting there,
• 1:25:56
  I'm like, there might be a way, maybe, but I'm sort of open, you
• 1:26:03
  know, For now, I'm just telling you what, you know, what the NPC
• 1:26:06
  told you. And he doesn't necessarily have
• 1:26:07
  all the information you're looking for, you know, like be
• 1:26:11
  open to, you know, like, oh shit, what the players give you,
• 1:26:15
  yeah. Yeah.
• 1:26:17
  And and I have some from Brett saying that I have some other
• 1:26:20
  ideas but I'm not going to say anything because he's going to
• 1:26:22
  listen to this. So you know, not going to spoil
• 1:26:23
  nothing because and also just to end on one little little tidbit
• 1:26:29
  like fucking yeah, fucking your players will give you great
• 1:26:33
  ideas. Use them, they'll they'll give
• 1:26:36
  you good ideas that can use to help you know better, come up
• 1:26:39
  with a better story or change it.
• 1:26:41
  Like what is it? My one of my players, as he's
• 1:26:45
  trying to he was trying to buy, you know from Fisman's the the
• 1:26:49
  dragon hide belt. The new they finally gave the
• 1:26:52
  monk a magic on that'll let them increase their fucking like
• 1:26:54
  attacks and key by plus one shit.
• 1:26:57
  So they finally added one in. And so he was trying to like get
• 1:27:01
  one for another character in our party.
• 1:27:02
  I'm like OK, yeah, I can write some narrative stuff down.
• 1:27:05
  But then he gave me the idea he's like, you know, I think
• 1:27:07
  it'd be really cool if like strict savings like the whole
• 1:27:10
  thing is the founder Dragons. There's these five all powerful
• 1:27:13
  magical like dragon beings Like maybe they like donated skin
• 1:27:17
  like some skin or some scales to make the belts.
• 1:27:20
  Yeah. Because it's called, it's called
• 1:27:21
  dragon hide. So it's like fucking true.
• 1:27:24
  Yeah. And I'm like, huh.
• 1:27:25
  You know what that's a good idea.
• 1:27:27
  And so I did that and the players found this like you know
• 1:27:30
  ancient dungeon by you know these like Knights that work for
• 1:27:35
  the the you know the strict saving Dragons and at the end of
• 1:27:38
  the dungeon you know the fucking link like open the you know
• 1:27:40
  chest da da da. Inside was a belt, a multi
• 1:27:44
  colored dragon hide belt with all the colors of all the
• 1:27:47
  fucking the Founded Dragons. And the player was like like he
• 1:27:50
  because he's like you know, he's like that was my idea.
• 1:27:52
  I did that right, Yeah. Yeah, and and you know, as long
• 1:27:56
  as as long as the as long as the weird, like the idea that the
• 1:28:07
  player is feeding you is not disruptive to your like sort of
• 1:28:10
  overall narrative, then yeah, there's no reason not to
• 1:28:13
  integrate it. Obviously if your players say,
• 1:28:15
  ah, the bad guys were you were lovely fuzzy unicorns the whole
• 1:28:19
  time, then you're going to be like, you know.
• 1:28:21
  No, they were not. But like, yeah, if it's, if it's
• 1:28:24
  a if it's a thing that you could slide in there, then like, yeah,
• 1:28:27
  yeah, no reason not to. But you know, there was more to
• 1:28:35
  that sentence, but I lost it, so it's fine, I.
• 1:28:42
  Don't think any other any other big bullets you need to hit?
• 1:28:45
  Oh no. I think I pretty much talked
• 1:28:47
  about everything I wanted to talk about.
• 1:28:50
  OK, yeah, I think the the the big, yeah, the two big takeaways
• 1:28:55
  for me, the two big like tools for me is definitely like, make
• 1:28:59
  sure you're always reusing. I don't like the word reusing.
• 1:29:05
  Make sure that the Mpc's you've introduced stay integrated into
• 1:29:10
  the story so that your players get more attached and feel more
• 1:29:14
  invested. And always make sure and just
• 1:29:17
  throw out those fucking Lord tidbits.
• 1:29:20
  At random and just let him rock. Plus, you know, I think the best
• 1:29:24
  part about throwing out the Lord tidbits is that if your players
• 1:29:27
  do ask, you get to do the thing where you go, well actually, and
• 1:29:30
  you push up your GM glasses and flip out your big binder and
• 1:29:34
  notes and start reading, right? Like, yeah, yeah, that's the
• 1:29:37
  gold. That's when you're allowed to do
• 1:29:38
  it. That's the that's when you're
• 1:29:40
  allowed to just read all the nonsense you wrote down is when
• 1:29:43
  your player goes, what's this thing?
• 1:29:44
  And you go well, well, I've got just the answer for you, bud.
• 1:29:49
  But if your players don't ask and you just start doing that,
• 1:29:53
  you're just being annoying to happen.
• 1:29:56
  Get some help. You know, A final note.
• 1:30:05
  I don't think you'd like to drop like a like a nugget of wisdom.
• 1:30:10
  Outline prep, not steal. But like, you know, outlines are
• 1:30:15
  player backstories. Yeah, outlining.
• 1:30:17
  So fucking important. I think the important note the
• 1:30:20
  the the important note though outline.
• 1:30:22
  Don't, don't, don't write a novel.
• 1:30:26
  Yeah, yeah. Don't write a novel, like
• 1:30:28
  outline and leave space. Leave space.
• 1:30:30
  Yeah, leave space in between the bullet points.
• 1:30:32
  Yeah, you can always change shit and add shit.
• 1:30:35
  I I Lily, I still do that now as prepping when I'm prepping
• 1:30:40
  because like again, strict saving.
• 1:30:41
  They give me the bullet points and then I can take them and
• 1:30:44
  change them or add whatever. Yeah, outline it and I can add
• 1:30:50
  stuff in between each bullet point they give me, so it's
• 1:30:52
  great. Yeah, big fan of the outline,
• 1:30:55
  myself. Big fan, Big fan.
• 1:30:57
  One day we'll convince Isaiah. One day.
• 1:31:00
  One day, Hopefully one day, literally, will make his life 10
• 1:31:04
  times easier. Because the fucking.
• 1:31:07
  Yeah, you know, honestly, I don't even entirely understand
• 1:31:10
  why he's so resistant to the outline.
• 1:31:15
  What was his? What was this reasoning last
• 1:31:17
  time? He's like he likes keeping it
• 1:31:19
  all in his head. No, I don't think he likes it.
• 1:31:22
  I think that's just what he does.
• 1:31:23
  Like, I don't think it's a I don't think it's a preference
• 1:31:26
  per se. I thought it was his preference
• 1:31:28
  like. I I I the vibe I got was he's
• 1:31:31
  just sort of like like note taking.
• 1:31:35
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:31:36
  Yeah, like he's just, he's just resistant to to writing the
• 1:31:39
  outline for some reason. I just don't.
• 1:31:42
  Don't be Isaiah. Just do it forehead like.
• 1:31:44
  I mean, pretty pretty much. Pretty much.
• 1:31:50
  I'm not going to say that. But yeah, yeah, you know, yeah,
• 1:31:54
  I'll say it. I didn't.
• 1:31:57
  All right, Well, if you've made it this far, give us, give us a
• 1:32:02
  follow on Twitter. That'd be nice.
• 1:32:04
  Be a big fan. Please.
• 1:32:07
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:32:11
  OK, dude. All right.
• 1:32:16
  One last thing before anything just to you know, just because
• 1:32:20
  we we mentioned we mentioned him a lot this episode, just to and
• 1:32:23
  also to date the crap out of this episode if anyone new Dms
• 1:32:28
  want some new monsters, Mcdm's Flea Mortals PDF came out
• 1:32:33
  finally and let me tell you it's it's a ride.
• 1:32:37
  Some of the shit in there is is funny.
• 1:32:39
  Wait, is it Is it out? Yeah, fully.
• 1:32:42
  Yeah, it's fully out. Yeah.
• 1:32:44
  Yeah. Flea Mortals.
• 1:32:45
  Yeah. It's, it's, it's a cool book.
• 1:32:46
  Really cool. I just wanted to add that last
• 1:32:51
  bit in the end. Peace out.