Latest / Sessions Canceled / Objective Switch Ups: Ep. 68

Transcript

Objective Switch Ups: Ep. 68 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:10
  Up, Internet. The GM threatened to shove an
• 0:12
  unspeakable horror up the paladin player's ass.
• 0:15
  So session. God damn.
• 0:21
  It's going up your. Hands and if everyone's if
• 0:26
  anyone's curious what the hell I'm talking about, just look up
• 0:29
  the Unspeakable Horror DD5E and he has the Amorphous trait.
• 0:33
  He could fit in a one inch wide space.
• 0:34
  That's all I'm saying. Oh no.
• 0:38
  Yeah, it's kind of than I'll see you.
• 0:40
  Yeah, he's gonna, yeah, the unspeakable horror is gonna than
• 0:43
  I'll see you. He's a he's a pretty boy too.
• 0:47
  Yeah, how are how are all those bones gonna fit in a in a one
• 0:50
  inch, you know? What?
• 0:51
  I fucking know he's got the amorphous ability.
• 0:55
  I I don't like that that's your answer.
• 0:57
  What else? Do you like that's a valid
• 0:59
  answer? What else am I gonna say?
• 1:01
  I don't know, but I hate it. Welcome back.
• 1:06
  It's me, Josh, and I am here with Isaiah.
• 1:09
  Hello Bat, and say I'ma betrayed us.
• 1:12
  Abandoned. Abandoned forever.
• 1:17
  And we should have. We should.
• 1:18
  Our cold open should have been a fucking Grimace Shake joke.
• 1:21
  Because it finally ended. What?
• 1:24
  What even would be a like? I was.
• 1:27
  I'd just say it. We've Bat and Sam the Grimace.
• 1:31
  Shakes. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34
  Is it finally over, though? Will it ever truly be over?
• 1:37
  I don't. I, you know, I don't know.
• 1:44
  Because it's been over for like 3 days and I still keep seeing
• 1:47
  the memes. Exactly.
• 1:49
  And I just feel like it's tired, man.
• 1:55
  Shame. This is this.
• 1:56
  The Grim of Shakes are my fucking modern Ken player.
• 1:59
  I'm tired, man. Modern.
• 2:02
  What modern Ken Player. Oh, I that should have been our
• 2:09
  cult open. Ranting about modern Kent.
• 2:16
  Yeah, yeah, we should. We should have just hit
• 2:18
  recording while you were in the middle of a modern Ken Player
• 2:20
  rant. That would have been amazing.
• 2:24
  For those who don't know what the fuck we're talking about,
• 2:26
  Street Fighter Five. Street Fighter Six.
• 2:30
  There's a lot of Kens online and it's just it's gotten out of
• 2:34
  hand. But anyway, that's neither here
• 2:38
  nor there. Hey, I didn't bring up the
• 2:39
  fighting games this time. Isaiah did.
• 2:41
  True. None of this has anything to do
• 2:45
  with what I want to talk about, however, before we get to that,
• 2:50
  take a moment. Take a brief moment of your
• 2:52
  time, bless the sun gods, praise the sun, and then hit, follow or
• 2:56
  subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on and then
• 3:02
  swig your Estes fles. Sunny these All I'm saying is if
• 3:07
  sunny, it is not sunny. Sunny D should have had a promo
• 3:12
  with Dark Souls at some point where they just sold US to
• 3:15
  Slash. I'm just saying.
• 3:16
  Yeah, I agree. That would have been amazing.
• 3:18
  Maybe I would have. Maybe it could have gotten me to
• 3:20
  drink that shitty fucking orange juice.
• 3:22
  It is not good. Sunny D is not good.
• 3:26
  Anyone. Whoever said Sunny D was a good
• 3:28
  drink growing up, A you lied to yourself, B you lied to me, and
• 3:32
  C you can't lie to God. God knows it's shit.
• 3:35
  Stop lying, OK? It's true.
• 3:37
  It's true. You can't lie to God.
• 3:42
  Yeah, no, Sunny Deezer. Not even gonna They're just
• 3:45
  like, disgustingly sugary orange juice.
• 3:49
  Which is like, it's orange juice.
• 3:50
  It didn't need more fucking sugar.
• 3:52
  Well, just didn't taste authentic.
• 3:53
  It like. No, it's just you drank Sunny D
• 3:55
  and you drank orange juice. You went.
• 3:56
  Why did why does this feel like it came out of cardboard like?
• 4:00
  A little bit, anyway. All right.
• 4:08
  Actual thing, I guess. Animate.
• 4:11
  No anime. Speaking of anime, let me tell
• 4:15
  you, you know someone someone fucking put as a Gok underwater
• 4:19
  with a little led in it, so it. Just looks like a.
• 4:21
  Little Mermaid. It's the funniest shit.
• 4:24
  That is pretty funny actually. Actually.
• 4:27
  Speaking of anime, if you want to go see some stuff, some
• 4:31
  pictures from Anime Expo that went to check us on Twitter,
• 4:36
  there's a plug for you. It was a time.
• 4:40
  Time. I feel like we should have had A
• 4:44
  at some point. We should do a like our time
• 4:46
  back from Colorado, but for AX. Good, We need everybody here.
• 4:51
  We could, yeah. An option anyway.
• 4:55
  All right, all right, let's do this.
• 4:56
  Let's actually get to this. I got this.
• 4:58
  I can do this. Focus.
• 5:00
  Focus. So.
• 5:04
  I wanted to talk about alternate alternative, alternative.
• 5:12
  Yeah, alternate combat. Making a combat where the goal
• 5:19
  is not just kill big monster and get all their hit points to
• 5:22
  zero. I can't alternate cut
• 5:25
  alternative combat objectives. Alternatives would probably.
• 5:28
  Be. I guess, yeah, I don't.
• 5:29
  There's no, really. It's not really a good phrase.
• 5:31
  But point being. The idea that the goal of the
• 5:35
  fight is not just win the fight by defeating the enemy, you
• 5:39
  know, in terms of like just getting their health to zero.
• 5:43
  As most combats in most tabletop games this tends to be the case.
• 5:47
  I'm gonna be honest, this is generally less of a problem in
• 5:51
  games that are not, you know, grade based tactical style
• 5:58
  adventure games a la Pathfinder and D&D.
• 6:02
  And Shadowrun and such like games that aren't of that ilk.
• 6:05
  This tends to be less of a problem, Like you know you're
• 6:10
  not having a lot of combats in Apocalypse World where the sole
• 6:13
  objective is get enemy health to 0 sometimes, but nowhere near as
• 6:17
  often as you know D&D or whatever.
• 6:20
  But this will all still apply pretty generally to any game
• 6:25
  possible, because it's really just about giving players.
• 6:31
  Alternative goals and spicing things up by forcing them to
• 6:36
  sort of basically have to think differently.
• 6:41
  Because really, at the end of the day, the thing I've realized
• 6:43
  and as I I feel like you'll probably be on the same page
• 6:48
  here when it comes to people getting bored in a tabletop
• 6:56
  game. I've come to the understanding
• 6:59
  that it's not that different as getting bored in a video game,
• 7:02
  where the thing you're bored of is just doing the same thing and
• 7:07
  it not changing, right? Like the gameplay of a game can
• 7:12
  be amazing, but if all you're doing is the same thing over and
• 7:16
  over again, you're probably gonna get bored like, And when I
• 7:21
  say the same thing, I know. Obviously all video games are a
• 7:25
  loop. That's why you'll hear people
• 7:27
  refer to gameplay loop. But when I say doing the same
• 7:31
  thing over and over again, I mean like doing things in a very
• 7:35
  patterned way I guess is that's that's maybe not a good phrase
• 7:40
  either, but like, what's a good example?
• 7:45
  Damn, I've put myself on the spot now they help.
• 7:50
  A good example of like a non will kill something.
• 7:53
  No, no. Like, do you get what I'm
• 7:54
  saying, though? Like, the thing that tends to
• 7:55
  get you bored is this idea of I. Mean.
• 7:58
  It's literally the grind like. It's the grind, but it's a grind
• 8:02
  in a monotonous way, right? Like cuz you can have a game
• 8:05
  where it's grind Y but the grind is not necessarily bet like for
• 8:09
  example Monster Hunter, right? People like the grind in Monster
• 8:12
  Hunter because the. The grind is over and over
• 8:16
  again, but the actual combat of Monster Hunter often changes
• 8:20
  quite drastically based on what monster you're fighting.
• 8:23
  You know? So like if if all you fought in
• 8:26
  Monster Hunter was Rapalos and nothing else, that would be
• 8:29
  boring because it's the same monster over and over and over
• 8:32
  again for all eternity. But because you're fighting
• 8:34
  different monsters, it changes things up.
• 8:36
  And even though the core loop is kill monster, get items, and
• 8:39
  it's always going to be that the individual methods and like
• 8:43
  pieces to how you get there. Change based on what you're
• 8:48
  fighting and also what weapon you're using and other other
• 8:51
  factors like that. Also where you're fighting a lot
• 8:53
  of the time. So it's like tabletop is much
• 8:57
  has much the same problem where a lot of the time when people
• 8:59
  get what I've realized I've come to realize is when people get
• 9:03
  bored in tabletop it tends to be because what you're doing is the
• 9:09
  same thing over and over again in such a fashion that it feels
• 9:12
  like you're just doing a pattern.
• 9:14
  Where it'll be like, like for example, the most boring combat
• 9:19
  ever is attack. You do not hit Okay next turn.
• 9:23
  Attack you do hit okay next turn, attack you do not hit okay
• 9:27
  next. That is the most boring combat,
• 9:29
  right? Because you're just in a pattern
• 9:31
  of attack. See if I hit and like, that's
• 9:33
  it, right? So the thing that spices the And
• 9:37
  then if you extend this out to noncombat scenarios, it still
• 9:42
  works. Where if all the GM is ever
• 9:44
  asking you to do is like, I don't know, let's say you're in
• 9:48
  a dungeon and like, the only thing that the GM ever tells you
• 9:51
  to do is make a Perception check.
• 9:53
  And it's for like, it's just benign, like nothing exciting
• 9:58
  happens whether you fail or succeed.
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  The perception check, it's just like, ah, you notice a thing or
• 10:02
  you do not notice a thing, and like, it's just over and over
• 10:04
  and over. Same problem.
• 10:08
  You tend to have this issue less in non combat because the sort
• 10:13
  of free flowing narrative nature of like making a skill check in
• 10:18
  a non combat scenario. You know that's why like it can
• 10:23
  also get really boring if the like the rogue is like I'm gonna
• 10:27
  sneak in and the GM's just like make a stealth check, make a
• 10:30
  stealth check, make a stealth check, make A and like just keep
• 10:34
  doing that forever. And then, even if the rogue
• 10:37
  fails, it's just like, OK, well, nothing really changed.
• 10:40
  This one guy notices you all right?
• 10:42
  I stabbed him. All right, back to Mickey.
• 10:43
  Stealth check. Like, you know, it doesn't shake
• 10:45
  up the flow of things. Yeah, I mean, with that
• 10:49
  specifically, I know it's not really the point of this, but
• 10:51
  that is a good point that has brought up a lot of like,
• 10:54
  sneaking is boring because it's just, it's the same thing with
• 10:57
  like trying to find something, right?
• 10:58
  It's just perception or investigation over and over and
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  over again. Yes.
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  I mean, my two cents on the stealth thing is.
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  Unless you're the stealthy is doing some like, you know,
• 11:13
  fucking risk it for a biscuit nonsense or actual brain dead
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  maneuvers, only one stealth check is necessary.
• 11:20
  You know what I mean? Like.
• 11:21
  Yes. So yeah, the rule of thumb with
• 11:26
  honestly I think you could apply this to every tabletop game
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  ever. The rule of thumb is if the
• 11:30
  scenario has not overall change. Then you don't need another
• 11:36
  check, which is to say, if the rogue player is sneaking into
• 11:42
  the manner of the nobles and all they're doing is trying to move
• 11:46
  from room to room and looking around, then no, you don't need
• 11:51
  to give them a stealth check for every room, because the scenario
• 11:54
  has not dramatically changed in any fashion.
• 11:57
  And then you might say, well, what would be a dramatic change
• 12:01
  in the scenario if the rogue? Finds one of, you know, let's
• 12:05
  say the rogue enters one of the rooms and realizes there's a
• 12:08
  secret door behind the wardrobe, and they need to somehow get the
• 12:11
  wardrobe out of the way to get to the secret door.
• 12:13
  That is a That is a sufficiently like.
• 12:16
  That is a sufficient change to what's going on enough that
• 12:19
  would warrant another potential check to like the wardrobe or to
• 12:23
  like, you know, do some other crap or like use a spell or like
• 12:27
  That is enough of a shame. Actually, even that might not be
• 12:30
  enough, depending on circumstances.
• 12:34
  So yes, it's like don't don't making a million checks.
• 12:38
  This is again, this is a very this particular thing is like
• 12:41
  10. I feel like tends to be more of
• 12:42
  a problem of like expecting to need a check for every little
• 12:47
  fucking thing. And it's just like and part of
• 12:50
  the part of the way that other games have helped this problem
• 12:53
  is the idea of failing forward and making failing interesting.
• 12:56
  So you can't just keep making the same check because in D&D
• 13:00
  technically rules is written. You fail a check, nothing
• 13:03
  happens, you just don't get what you want.
• 13:06
  But like you could hypothetically try and like
• 13:09
  let's say pick the lock to the door and then fail the check and
• 13:14
  then you just don't pick the lock to the door and that's it.
• 13:18
  Nothing happens, nothing changes, you just fail.
• 13:21
  Whereas in other games they say if the rogue fails to pick the
• 13:24
  lock, change up the scenario. So if you're playing Dungeon
• 13:28
  World and you try to pick the lock and you fail.
• 13:31
  Then you say to the rogue, cool. You hear the the fall of
• 13:34
  footsteps coming down the hall directly towards you.
• 13:37
  Now what do you do? You're pushing things forward
• 13:41
  because now the the you know, the rogue is like, ah shit,
• 13:43
  somebody's probably going to come through this fucking door
• 13:48
  anyway. That was a really long winded
• 13:51
  way to get to the point of changing things up is really the
• 13:56
  spice of the tabletop world. And because.
• 14:00
  In Tabletop you have, you know, unlimited power as it were, and
• 14:04
  just infinite possibilities of your human brain and your other
• 14:08
  players human brains responding to your human brain changing
• 14:13
  things up is something you could do constantly, you know.
• 14:16
  That's one of the best benefits is like a video game can only be
• 14:20
  preset to certain patterns and can only respond to things in so
• 14:23
  many ways. You as the GM could respond to
• 14:25
  your player and if literally fucking infinite number of ways.
• 14:31
  And vice versa. So all of this is brought upon,
• 14:37
  as you might imagine, Isaiah from our one session that we had
• 14:40
  not too long ago. I will now describe to those
• 14:43
  listening just to sort of get us on the same page, my players had
• 14:47
  to basically the players are in the under dark, the drought are
• 14:53
  having something of a civil war between.
• 14:59
  What did they call them back in the back in the days of the
• 15:02
  revolution? What was it was the federalists
• 15:04
  and the what they called Federalists and?
• 15:10
  Something else, you know? Yeah, fuck.
• 15:12
  The point being, there are some drought who are supporting the
• 15:15
  queen and some drought who are not supporting the Queen.
• 15:18
  I'll be at the drought who are supporting the Queen May or may
• 15:21
  not be brainwashed. It's fine, you know.
• 15:24
  She may or may not be evil. Look, you know, they may be
• 15:30
  brainwashed, but they are also in the way.
• 15:34
  So, you know, maybe don't get brainwashed, loser.
• 15:38
  I'm just saying, you know, I'm just, I'm not saying, you know,
• 15:39
  I'm just saying, you know what I'm saying, Like.
• 15:41
  Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.
• 15:43
  Yeah, look, on one end it's like damn that sucks bro.
• 15:46
  But also if you get within 5 feet of me, you are getting
• 15:50
  repulsive shield off a 30 foot column, you know, like.
• 15:57
  But anyway, point being, my players were basically they were
• 16:03
  helping the the sort of rebellion, drought and they
• 16:05
  needed to defend a boat that had a bunch of supplies that they
• 16:09
  were trying to get the fuck out of there so that the, you know,
• 16:14
  the Queen's drought, the Queen's men couldn't burn, destroy or
• 16:18
  take all this place. So my players, literally when
• 16:21
  the fight happened, there was a boat on the map that they had to
• 16:25
  defend. You know, it had HP and A/C and
• 16:29
  all that fun D&D shit and some of the drought were going after
• 16:32
  it. One of the drought had a
• 16:34
  firebomb. Actually, a lot of those little
• 16:38
  drough, I believe all of them had one bomb.
• 16:42
  So if y'all had, yeah what the fuck Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:45
  I set it up in a scenario where if they got close and you
• 16:48
  weren't like. Because I knew that you guys
• 16:50
  knew what the objective was, right?
• 16:52
  So I was like, if if they just ignore it, that it's going down,
• 16:56
  like they're just going to fucking tank the shit out of it.
• 17:01
  So yeah, there was they, they had several things they could
• 17:03
  threaten with. Point being, players have to
• 17:08
  defend this alternate objective. And I think far as I could tell,
• 17:12
  Isaiah, you you could give me the two cents here.
• 17:15
  I think for the most part, everyone felt like that made
• 17:17
  things significantly more interesting and stressful.
• 17:21
  It's kind of the goal. Yeah, I mean, The funny thing
• 17:25
  for me was pretty much any any mission objective I had with
• 17:30
  Django is incredibly simple. It's just usually stand there
• 17:34
  and absorb damage and deal some punchies every now and again.
• 17:39
  So for me it was the stress came from 10.
• 17:45
  And Leah and Zafir, Bush objective, while Kai and I, you
• 17:51
  know, held point. Offend the objective.
• 17:54
  Yeah, so that that's where my stress came in because I was
• 17:57
  like, guys, please don't fuck this up.
• 17:59
  Like I I have faith in you, but don't you fuck this up.
• 18:04
  There was definitely, yeah, and there was definitely some
• 18:05
  sweating at one point. Yeah, I was, I was, I was Mick
• 18:10
  fucking sweating towards the end when the one fire bomb went off
• 18:13
  and did like. More than 1/3 of the fucking
• 18:16
  boat stamp health? Yeah, yeah.
• 18:19
  Same to say there was some sweating going on.
• 18:21
  I and you know, and I I think it's worth pointing out and this
• 18:24
  is something that's really important to keep in mind
• 18:26
  because I I think basically everyone should try and do this.
• 18:31
  You know, I was about to say as much as they can.
• 18:33
  That's not the right like do it a decent amount like do it often
• 18:38
  enough to sort of jazz things up because.
• 18:43
  A lot of player, it's true. A lot of players will you know
• 18:46
  as the GM. You're probably getting bored
• 18:49
  during combat is less of a problem for you as a GM because
• 18:53
  you have, you know, all these monsters at your disposal.
• 18:56
  That's true. Damned fucking busy.
• 18:58
  Yeah, like you have all this shit going on and you have all
• 19:00
  these monsters doing all these different things and things you
• 19:02
  have to remember. So it's less of a problem.
• 19:04
  But as a player, particularly if you're a player like me or
• 19:07
  Isaiah, who, you know, know the game really, really well.
• 19:12
  In at least in terms of D&D and other games too, it's like when
• 19:17
  you know the game really well, you know what you're probably
• 19:19
  going to do on your next turn, so you don't spend that much
• 19:22
  time thinking about it, and then while you're waiting for the
• 19:24
  other players, like figure their shit out, you're probably
• 19:26
  getting bored. So one of the ways that you can
• 19:30
  help with that a lot is changing up the objective.
• 19:33
  And like Isaiah said, by changing up the objective you
• 19:35
  will also sometimes give different players.
• 19:39
  Will have a different job for the objective, so you always
• 19:48
  want to throw these types of combats in every once in a
• 19:52
  while. But although conversely,
• 19:54
  sometimes your players are just going to want to punch dudes in
• 19:57
  the face, so obviously don't try and make every single combat
• 20:00
  have a secondary objective. Hi, hello me, I'm guy who
• 20:05
  usually wants to punch things in the face.
• 20:07
  Yeah, like, there is a point where you just, it does just get
• 20:10
  too, too annoying to just be like, yes.
• 20:13
  Oh, like we have to defend this thing.
• 20:14
  We have to move this thing. We have to capture that.
• 20:16
  But, like, and sometimes you do just want to be like, can I
• 20:19
  please just murder the monsters? You know, in the same way that
• 20:24
  sometimes you just want to have unambiguously evil villains so
• 20:27
  you don't have to feel bad when you kick them in the heads.
• 20:32
  Just never feel bad for it. Or just don't feel bad, but the
• 20:38
  thing I was going to say is the important thing to note with
• 20:44
  that combat that I did, but also just like for doing this type of
• 20:49
  alternate objective combat in general, much like people will
• 20:56
  tell you not to lock. The story objective behind a
• 21:01
  locked door, right? Like a single check.
• 21:04
  Do not hinge the entire scenario on the like, alternate combat
• 21:09
  objective, you know, So like, if you guys had failed to defend
• 21:14
  the boat, it wasn't like everything's fucked were fucked,
• 21:18
  right? Like I gave you guys a reward,
• 21:21
  which was more XP for defending the boat, which is now going to
• 21:25
  help you in the long run as you leveled up from it.
• 21:30
  But if you guys had failed to do it, it wasn't like I was going
• 21:34
  to completely lock you out, you know, of the city of like
• 21:37
  whatever the next situation was going to be or whatever.
• 21:41
  Because again, much like the don't put the story behind a
• 21:46
  single door that requires a single check, don't put, you
• 21:51
  know, the combat hinging on a single objective.
• 21:54
  If everything falls apart, if they fail that objective, then
• 21:56
  like, don't. Do it that way.
• 22:00
  Or used to lost the. I mean, yeah, yes, that's yeah,
• 22:06
  video games do this. But again, video games,
• 22:07
  different situations, so they could get away with a little bit
• 22:09
  more, but it can definitely be annoying still.
• 22:12
  But like, the other thing is, so you might say to yourself, it's
• 22:16
  like, well, what if the entire combat is hinged on like this
• 22:20
  single objective and I can't, Like, that seems to be the vibe.
• 22:23
  Well, tell me friends, have you ever watched?
• 22:27
  Oh no, what's the second Lord of the Rigs movie?
• 22:32
  The two. Towers.
• 22:33
  The Two Towers. Thank you.
• 22:34
  Yep. Nice.
• 22:36
  Nice. You ever?
• 22:37
  Watched The Two Towers. Fuck.
• 22:46
  Damn, I can't believe I just did that.
• 22:49
  I really was. I was about to say Return of the
• 22:51
  King, and I was like, not that one.
• 22:54
  My man was talking with so much bases.
• 22:56
  Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness.
• 23:02
  What I was gonna say, though, is Helms Deep.
• 23:06
  No, the battle of Helms Deep, right.
• 23:07
  The singular objective, Defend the Wall.
• 23:13
  The fellowship, as it were, fails to defend the wall.
• 23:16
  What happens? Well, now the situation changes.
• 23:19
  Now we have a new objective, which is get everyone deeper
• 23:22
  into this ort or whatever it was, whatever Helms deepest, I
• 23:28
  don't even remember. It's like a it.
• 23:29
  Was a Fort. ORT Right.
• 23:30
  Yeah. It's like, all right, get all
• 23:32
  the civilians deeper into the floor and try and hold out like
• 23:35
  the second layer, right? That's a good example where it's
• 23:37
  like, all right, well, the whole thing does hinge on this one
• 23:39
  objective. But if the players do fail, then
• 23:41
  you have to change the objective.
• 23:43
  And you could change it to 3-4 times.
• 23:47
  You know, like you could keep things could keep spiraling and
• 23:50
  spiraling and get worse and worse and worse.
• 23:53
  The important thing is just, you don't ever want to like.
• 23:58
  Totally lockout progress, which granted, when it comes to like a
• 24:02
  combat scenario, it's pretty hard to completely lock your
• 24:07
  players progress out anyway, so this probably isn't too big of a
• 24:11
  problem, but you know, it's just something to keep in mind.
• 24:16
  I guess the I guess the lockout would be like, we have to
• 24:20
  protect the Mcguffin. Oh, the Mcguffin broke.
• 24:23
  Oh, we can't. So we can't defeat the bad guy
• 24:25
  without the Mcguffin. How do we?
• 24:27
  Yeah, that would be a. It can suffer from like early
• 24:30
  Fire Emblem Syndrome where it's like, Oh yes, here's the Super
• 24:33
  special NPC don't let them die and then they get murdered and
• 24:36
  you just kind of go, did we just hit fail state or what?
• 24:43
  Did you, did you in that scenario?
• 24:46
  In fire room yeah you will hit fail state and just the game
• 24:48
  stands. It's like oh.
• 24:52
  Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, granted,
• 24:58
  you know you could do whatever the fuck you want, as we've
• 25:00
  stated, as I've stated multiple times in tabletop.
• 25:02
  So if you want to just go actually, let's just rewind to
• 25:05
  pretend like that didn't happen. You can of course still do that,
• 25:08
  but you know, people generally like to avoid that as much as
• 25:12
  they can. Yeah, that is something where
• 25:15
  people are like, you know, just do it forehead and then it's
• 25:18
  never as simple as just do it. Because everyone's like, well,
• 25:21
  if you do it once, then you set a precedent to do it again.
• 25:24
  If you set a precedent, then it's expect you know the it's a.
• 25:26
  It's one of those really annoying slippery slopes.
• 25:30
  Well, I think it's OK to do the the, the retcon rollback.
• 25:33
  So I can be like, oops, never mind, we didn't do that.
• 25:35
  You know, if if things get really, really fucky wucky, I
• 25:40
  think you just don't want to rely on it as like end all, be
• 25:44
  all, fix your problems kind of crutch.
• 25:46
  That's where it becomes a problem.
• 25:48
  Yeah. Who says he doesn't use it
• 25:49
  tactfully? I believe the fear is that
• 25:52
  people will the fears that the players will come to expect that
• 25:55
  as the like we made a fucky wucky please fix oh.
• 26:00
  Yeah, I mean, if you're handing the, yeah, if you're hand, it's
• 26:06
  a delicate balance because you as a GM might look at a scenario
• 26:09
  and say, OK, the players failed, but I know that this doesn't
• 26:12
  lock them out. What the players might think it
• 26:15
  does lock them out. And then they would ask, like,
• 26:17
  hey, can we wreck on that cuz we're locked out now?
• 26:20
  And then you as the GM have to sort of gently dance around like
• 26:23
  you are not in fact locked out. There are some other things you
• 26:26
  could do. And then you have to play that
• 26:27
  game in your head where you'd be like, do I tell them what the
• 26:30
  next thing to do is? Do I gently remind them of
• 26:32
  something? You get into that whole like?
• 26:36
  Do I tell them that the blacksmith told that they forgot
• 26:39
  that the blacksmith made a spare key?
• 26:41
  Do I mention that? Do I just say the blacksmith's
• 26:43
  name? Like do I say, do I just say
• 26:46
  there is another way you just have to you know you're
• 26:49
  forgetting so like that whole dance you have to play they can
• 26:52
  definitely get annoying. I'm not that's for sure.
• 26:55
  But if you I I think generally if you're going to do the like
• 26:59
  retcon rollback, I think that's mostly a keep it in the GM's
• 27:04
  control type of thing. You know, like I I don't really
• 27:08
  think that's something the players should like request
• 27:11
  unless they feel like exceptionally shitty about
• 27:15
  something. But the question is that you got
• 27:22
  any, you got any good examples of a a combat you ran with an
• 27:27
  alternative objective that you felt like, you know, in sucking
• 27:31
  ads? Oh yeah, actually I believe it
• 27:34
  was the. One of the last few combats we
• 27:38
  did, and it's a simple one. It's honestly, it's one of my
• 27:40
  favorites. New objective, Survive.
• 27:43
  You know what I mean? Survive a number of rounds or
• 27:47
  whatever. Yeah, you just you just like
• 27:49
  either you deal enough damage in general, like you just have the
• 27:52
  imaginary counter up, or you write it down somewhere like, oh
• 27:54
  and this round they dealt 100 and something damage.
• 27:56
  Once they hit like 500, then they're good.
• 27:59
  Is it it? After a certain point where the
• 28:01
  players kill something and they're like, oh thank God it's
• 28:03
  over, and then something else pops up and they're like, oh
• 28:05
  fuck, it's not over. It a keeps the drama up.
• 28:10
  BI think it's funny as fuck you should be funny.
• 28:15
  I mean it do be and it's it's always the reaction of like, are
• 28:20
  you fucking kidding me? You're like, no.
• 28:25
  I defeated exhaustion. Yeah, that's a good one.
• 28:31
  I've done this kind of it's the build a target as fast as you
• 28:37
  can. It's like a it's like a
• 28:39
  variation on on new objective survived where it's on the face
• 28:44
  of it, everything is just a bunch of sacks to hit points.
• 28:47
  That seems almost like it's unfair.
• 28:50
  But if you you know it with the crutch forewarning of like, you
• 28:53
  know if we kill this guy. Then all of his bad guys will
• 28:56
  fall. It's the Dracula thing, right?
• 28:58
  You kill Dracula, all of his minions die.
• 29:01
  So you'd think, you know, you'd have the players.
• 29:03
  Some of the players would say, okay, well, we have to we can't
• 29:06
  completely ignore the minions because they're going to tear us
• 29:08
  apart in two rounds. So we're going to have, you
• 29:10
  know, our heavy hitter in one of our tanks.
• 29:13
  I'm just sort of thinking about our party with Django as it
• 29:16
  right? Like Django gets up in
• 29:18
  Dracula's, Honestly, Kai gets up in Dracula's face.
• 29:21
  Leah goes to, you know. Dracula's ass, and then Django
• 29:24
  and Zafir hold the goons off long enough.
• 29:29
  Yeah, it's in that way that killed the priority target.
• 29:31
  Yeah, and that way the massive pool of hit points actually
• 29:34
  becomes way smaller. Yeah, what was what was the
• 29:41
  Survive scenario that recently? I'm trying to.
• 29:45
  It's been like 3 weeks since I did it, so I'm trying to over
• 29:48
  exactly what it was for. Oh, that's right.
• 29:53
  It was their their big encounter with Cash the Bandit.
• 29:56
  They're basically this this dude was a big part of Ant's
• 30:01
  character's back story. He's like a weird rock'n'roll
• 30:04
  bandit named Cash with a cue. And the players were told about,
• 30:12
  you know, there are there are bandits holed up at a logging
• 30:16
  mill and they're sort of stopping all production from,
• 30:19
  you know, lumber going out for repairs and whatnot.
• 30:22
  And they they just Dick first right into it.
• 30:25
  They were like, what's sneaking? Never heard of it.
• 30:27
  We're just going to run in and kick their asses.
• 30:29
  And I went, well, move cotton. Let's see how this plays.
• 30:33
  Your your players are not one for sneaking.
• 30:36
  No, no, my my players are. Stealth is always optional and
• 30:41
  it's never not. So they rocked up and the fight
• 30:45
  started and very immediately they were like, wow, we are
• 30:47
  getting our asses kicked, which I said yes.
• 30:52
  And it was, it was kind of just a ball of chaos, right?
• 30:57
  Like, I designed it to replicate a mosh pit.
• 30:59
  So the enemies are swarming them, crushing them in.
• 31:03
  They have no chance to move, they can't reposition.
• 31:06
  I I wanted it to feel as oppressive as possible, knowing
• 31:11
  right, that the they deal so much damage that it isn't
• 31:15
  actually that big a deal. The question is, is can their
• 31:19
  health hold out before? The enemies crumbles and it
• 31:24
  probably would have been easier. We had some wackiness going on.
• 31:29
  One of my players is playing a barbarian for the first time, so
• 31:32
  she just didn't know about Reckless attack, which was a
• 31:35
  fascinating time. I mean, yeah, yeah, because
• 31:41
  after about 6 rounds I was like, hey, hey Snubs, why are you Is
• 31:45
  there a reason you're not using Reckless?
• 31:47
  And she was said her exact words were what's reckless?
• 31:52
  And I just went, OK, understandable, have a day.
• 31:56
  And you know, the other players were like, you know, if you do
• 31:59
  this, you have, you have free advantage for the whole round.
• 32:02
  And she went, oh, I should have been using that.
• 32:03
  And I said, yeah, probably, yeah, that probably would have
• 32:08
  been for the best. And the objective for them was
• 32:13
  never to beat cash, although they could have, that was on the
• 32:16
  table because, you know, he was the priority target.
• 32:20
  But the idea was if once they made it to a certain point, they
• 32:23
  had to do like enough damage to the group and they had to put
• 32:27
  cash down to 2/3 of his health, eventually a plot device
• 32:31
  character would come in and stop the fight and the characters
• 32:33
  would be like, you know what? My fight boner's gone.
• 32:36
  So yeah, I just, I don't really want to do this anymore and
• 32:40
  thoroughly stumped the players, which it did.
• 32:42
  Fucking victory on that one. Did did they know that the
• 32:47
  objective was just to try and make it long enough?
• 32:50
  No, they didn't. And I I was I I purposely kept
• 32:54
  that sort of hidden, mainly because the the whole point of
• 33:00
  the encounter was for it to be like, oh God, when is this going
• 33:03
  to stop? You're you're going, you're
• 33:07
  going slightly against the wisdom I was going to browse
• 33:11
  which because I feel like if you're going to do an
• 33:17
  alternative objective. Because because people always
• 33:21
  just assumed that the objective is keel, I feel like you should
• 33:26
  give some kind of a hint or warning that like there is an
• 33:31
  alternative like point here there is something else you are
• 33:34
  supposed to do. Yeah, that's fair.
• 33:39
  And I didn't give them no warning about the danger of the
• 33:42
  encounter. I, you know, it was told very
• 33:44
  explicitly to them in and out of character.
• 33:46
  You know you are walking into a a metaphorical and very physical
• 33:50
  lions den. Prepare yourself for a hell of a
• 33:53
  fight. And I know I I didn't say it in
• 33:57
  so few words. There was a lot more in
• 33:59
  character. Like yeah, you should really
• 34:00
  think about what to do. This guy Cash is like, no, you
• 34:02
  know, no joke. But yeah, they just were like
• 34:06
  fuck it and they said send it and they sent it as hard as they
• 34:11
  could. Sort of.
• 34:13
  They could have sent it a little harder with reckless tech, but
• 34:15
  it's okay. We learn as we go.
• 34:18
  I don't know. I I still feel like I would have
• 34:21
  been inclined to give them some sort of something to hint at the
• 34:25
  fact that like if you can survive long enough, I don't
• 34:32
  know how, I don't know how, cuz it is you don't necessarily.
• 34:35
  You don't always want to tell them straight up, but indicator.
• 34:40
  Yeah, that I mean. The real struggle was they
• 34:43
  didn't know that the NPC was going to rock up, because the
• 34:46
  whole point was they had to save an NPC and the NPC in question
• 34:51
  had not shown up yet to them. Like, they knew that they were
• 34:53
  there, but they didn't know who it was or what what the
• 34:56
  importance was. So the fact that the character
• 34:59
  who turned out to be ant's character's father, you know,
• 35:02
  hog tied and gagged is like hopping up and down almost fell
• 35:06
  off a Cliff. Trying to get their attention
• 35:09
  and everyone turned and was like, who the fuck is that guy?
• 35:11
  And then you know, Ant's character had to go like, oh
• 35:13
  shit, asked my dad. And then the visible confusion
• 35:20
  on everyone, including the bad guys faces of what got them to
• 35:23
  be like now I'm bored. Now I don't want to fight me and
• 35:26
  we're kicking your ass in. He's just kind of boring now.
• 35:31
  Fair enough. I.
• 35:39
  Yeah, I don't know. That's tricky cuz like the
• 35:42
  reason, the reason I I feel like you always want to try and give
• 35:46
  some kind of a ring or something like that is cuz like I
• 35:51
  distinctly remember one of the times where I did not give you
• 35:55
  guys a warning and it went horribly, which.
• 35:59
  One was that. Sharknado.
• 36:04
  Where the objective was like the objective, there was get the
• 36:08
  fuck out, you know? But you guys were not that you.
• 36:14
  That was not clear to you guys. So it ended up being this weird
• 36:18
  situation where you're trying to, like, fight it way longer
• 36:21
  than you should have, and it got way messier than it should have.
• 36:25
  Yeah, I. Didn't convey the point there at
• 36:27
  all. Yeah, that that is fair.
• 36:30
  Although I think a big part of that was.
• 36:34
  Our general confusion with the map layout it the map seemed not
• 36:38
  as conducive to running I think a good version like so you you
• 36:44
  did that really well in the the fight against the Angers with
• 36:48
  the big force field wall. Yeah that's where like you would
• 36:54
  the the message of don't fight run made a lot more sense
• 36:57
  because it was like Oh well we can just knock the shield down.
• 36:59
  We just need to knock the shield down.
• 37:04
  And once that was once I hit the shield and you're like, oh, it
• 37:08
  cracks visibly. I'm like.
• 37:09
  I see. Yeah.
• 37:15
  OK. Yeah.
• 37:16
  I mean that's that's probably, yeah, I mean that's probably a
• 37:20
  portion of it. I I don't know I don't know if
• 37:22
  the the map is that vital like I also like my thought process
• 37:29
  becomes. Part of it I could have
• 37:32
  explained better. Is it like something like that
• 37:38
  hadn't come up before. Like there's I feel like there's
• 37:40
  a bunch of things. That's why I'm like.
• 37:42
  I don't know exactly what my method for trying to give the
• 37:47
  hint, hint, nudge, nudge would have been, but.
• 37:52
  I save for a character, you know, If you wanted to keep it
• 37:56
  up, you know, in character. The the the guy with the magic
• 38:01
  octopus pulling his cart could have maybe rocked up and been
• 38:04
  like you idiots. What are you doing?
• 38:05
  Run. And then we would have been
• 38:06
  like, ah, time to get the fuck out.
• 38:09
  I mean, yeah, Alki could have that's that's an option.
• 38:15
  Yeah, I feel like it. It's more it's like more fun
• 38:21
  when it's not as blunt, but. That do be that thing where it's
• 38:26
  like sometimes blunt is kind of the only option you.
• 38:30
  It is, I think at times, though the bluntness can sort of add to
• 38:34
  a situation like, Can you imagine how funny it slash
• 38:40
  interesting it would have been if in the giant fucking tornado
• 38:44
  of energy we just saw Alki's cart in The Tempest.
• 38:49
  And the fucking octopus is there and he's like y'all shooters
• 38:52
  rode and just get set flying into the ether.
• 38:55
  We would have been like, you know what?
• 38:58
  Maybe this is a sign from God. I mean, sure, Yeah, that's
• 39:02
  certainly a way to do it. Blunt.
• 39:09
  Be a blunt for the sake of the comedy of it.
• 39:13
  Yeah. I.
• 39:13
  Definitely I I think that's something that I I do a lot and
• 39:17
  I. I think my players like it.
• 39:20
  I feel like they do because they always, I always get a pretty
• 39:22
  good reaction out of it when something just on the face of it
• 39:28
  is. So of course happens like a
• 39:32
  character says something and like we'll follow up because
• 39:37
  they're the. I just think they were a
• 39:38
  character making like a cool badass statement and then went
• 39:43
  and sort of clarified the statement later on being like.
• 39:47
  It's like we're going to take him down.
• 39:50
  I mean, kill them. Like not, you know what I mean?
• 39:52
  You know, like I mean. Literally murder.
• 39:56
  Yeah. Slay them.
• 39:58
  I. Think there's an appreciation of
• 39:59
  that? It's it's it's the long, it's
• 40:02
  the the lost art of non Avengers humor.
• 40:09
  On of it what? Because a lot of like, you know.
• 40:13
  Humor, you see nowadays is like The Avengers style, constantly
• 40:16
  throwing quips out. And I think it's like a good
• 40:18
  example of making. I mean, it kind of is, but it's
• 40:22
  like it's a making fun of itself for the sake of making fun of
• 40:26
  itself, you know? Incredibly a blunt, yes.
• 40:31
  I mean, yes, there's something to be said there.
• 40:38
  Yeah, it was. Yeah, try, try and give players
• 40:43
  a warning. Don't do it all the time, but
• 40:45
  definitely try and throw them in.
• 40:50
  Also, you know, vary up even like you're already varying
• 40:59
  things up if you're doing like an alternative like combat
• 41:01
  objective, right? But like vary things up even
• 41:03
  within the variation or it's like you know.
• 41:08
  I say it's like, ah yes the you must survive.
• 41:11
  Like obviously you can't keep doing that one over and over and
• 41:15
  over again so like spice up the alternative objectives.
• 41:19
  Although I will say it's kind of tricky cuz like, so you have
• 41:22
  defend, survive I guess like choir and then like.
• 41:32
  Like, it's actually kind of tricky out of, like I say, do
• 41:35
  this. It's not easy necessarily to
• 41:37
  come up with the alternative objectives a lot of the time.
• 41:41
  No, it is definitely a difficult thing to because your brain
• 41:44
  wants to default to just kill the thing.
• 41:49
  It's you have so much other shit to think about as a Dungeon
• 41:52
  Master that often I feel like my brain is too focused on the
• 41:57
  narrative ramifications of the fight rather than the fight
• 41:59
  itself. As much as I want to fight
• 42:02
  itself to be cool. Right.
• 42:03
  Yeah. Well, yeah, I think the that
• 42:05
  that's that is part of the the the secret sauce to it is
• 42:11
  definitely have there be new whether they succeed or fail
• 42:17
  that there be for example you know the defend the boat
• 42:21
  objective with the drought obviously you guys got you know
• 42:27
  the the I get like I said I gave you the XP for succeeding.
• 42:31
  But also the, the drought having you see, you know, having seen
• 42:36
  what you did were like, oh, all right, maybe these guys are like
• 42:40
  cooler than we thought, you know.
• 42:41
  And they are, they are. They were more like, you know,
• 42:46
  they were more buddy, buddy with you because you were like a
• 42:49
  badass and like you saved the town.
• 42:50
  You did the thing, you know. And then the failure, right, the
• 42:54
  failure ramifications would have been.
• 42:57
  The drought looking at you and being like, oh, you guys aren't
• 42:59
  as cool as you said you were. That's a shame, right?
• 43:03
  Like that kind of thing. Yeah, it it it should, it should
• 43:07
  always you should, you should try and give it that like
• 43:11
  narrative punch where it's like, why are we trying to do
• 43:15
  something other than just kill the bad guys?
• 43:18
  You know, it's like and the other option too is like.
• 43:26
  Killing the bad guys could be a solution to something, but then
• 43:32
  you know that's not the primary. Like the goal is acquire the
• 43:38
  Mcguffin. Killing the bad guys is a thing
• 43:41
  you could do, but it's not necessarily the primary point.
• 43:44
  So if you want to try and dip a dodge around the fight then you
• 43:49
  can. It is worth pointing out though,
• 43:54
  which I just thought of right now.
• 43:57
  And dealing with when dealing with D&D or any other game that
• 44:01
  rewards you for, you know, kill equal XP by default.
• 44:06
  If you're giving your players alternative objectives and they
• 44:09
  avoid killing the dudes, give them the XP for the objective.
• 44:15
  That is definitely. I've done this in the past where
• 44:19
  it's like, yeah, they're going to kill these guys.
• 44:21
  They're going to get so much XP. And then they talk it out and
• 44:25
  you know, I I have definitely fallen into the did not give
• 44:29
  them XP for it, which is why after, you know, three years and
• 44:34
  some months they're still only level 14 when they probably
• 44:36
  should be 18 now. I I mean, I don't, I don't know
• 44:43
  if it would have been that big of a jump, but yeah.
• 44:46
  There were quite a few really big boss fights that they talked
• 44:49
  their way out of, yeah. Yeah, just by being like, why
• 44:53
  can't we be friends? And me being like, bitch roll
• 44:55
  for it and then someone rolls a natural 20 to a total of like 35
• 44:58
  and I'm like, well, I just can't like this now.
• 45:01
  Yeah, yeah. It's a thing where it's like you
• 45:03
  can't, you know, if I feel like, talked about this, but it's that
• 45:10
  thing where you can't. I can't, but shouldn't.
• 45:16
  You shouldn't pigeonhole your players into like 1 success
• 45:19
  method. It's important to be like, hey
• 45:23
  you know the quest objective is this, but how you get to that
• 45:29
  point, you know you have multiple option like the quest
• 45:33
  objective is acquire the Mcguffin.
• 45:35
  You could murder everyone in your path, You could sneak in
• 45:39
  and steal the Mcguffin. You could socially like talk
• 45:42
  your way and slide it. That's why a lot of people love
• 45:44
  cyberpunk. Games because you know, the
• 45:47
  mission will be like, steal this thing and then the group will
• 45:50
  look at each other and go, all right, well, we don't have a
• 45:53
  street samurai, so we're going to use our face guy to talk to
• 45:56
  the people. And then our other dude, our
• 45:58
  infiltrator, is going to sneak in and with the hacker, and then
• 46:01
  the hacker is going to do the fucking little boop on the
• 46:04
  camera. Well, the infiltrator covers
• 46:06
  that you. Know.
• 46:07
  Wait, wait, You want? Can you give me that again?
• 46:08
  Like, that's why that that kind of shit is fun is because you
• 46:11
  can tackle it the way you want. That's why also people really
• 46:15
  like when video games do that, like part of the fun of
• 46:17
  Dishonored, the fact that you can come at something like 800
• 46:21
  different ways. And Dishonored, you know, Deus
• 46:24
  Ex is another one that's got that vibe.
• 46:28
  Hopefully Baldur Skate 3 is gonna do that.
• 46:31
  I'm you it probably will. If it does it either, it will be
• 46:34
  one of the weirdest walk backs of of interesting mechanics that
• 46:38
  happen in over 15 years. Was that just?
• 46:44
  I don't know. What were you talking about?
• 46:45
  Oh oh, why can't I? Yeah, hold on folks.
• 46:54
  Where have we detected? No.
• 46:55
  Why can't I hear? Oh, I.
• 47:01
  Did you unplug your mic? I hit the mute button.
• 47:04
  God damn it, I've been talking this all night.
• 47:09
  For those that much. But I have been talking and you
• 47:12
  know, interspersively while you were talking and I just was
• 47:14
  like, oh, he's just talking over me now.
• 47:15
  I guess it's I'll just go fuck myself.
• 47:18
  How did I even? I don't even know how I did
• 47:20
  that. How did you do that I?
• 47:22
  Don't know what I hit. All right, for those listening,
• 47:24
  this is gonna that that whole 6 situations gonna sound real
• 47:27
  stupid. Sorry.
• 47:28
  Yes Sir, I don't. I had muted my audio somehow.
• 47:35
  Anyway, what were you saying? I don't even know now, dude.
• 47:40
  I was talking about like alternative objectives and games
• 47:43
  like Deus Ex and Dishonored letting you do that kind of
• 47:45
  shit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
• 47:46
  right. You were talking about Baldur's
• 47:47
  Gay Three. And I said if they don't do
• 47:50
  something like that, that'll be one of the biggest and strangest
• 47:53
  walk backs of game mechanics in like 20 years.
• 47:58
  Yeah, I mean, yeah, true, true. It'd be some.
• 48:03
  Fucking weird simian shit like. Yeah, no, only kill.
• 48:08
  It's like, but isn't this a game where I can play as a Bard who
• 48:10
  is, you know, kind of categorically not that good at
• 48:13
  killing and like, yeah, I don't give a fuck, kill only.
• 48:16
  But I I should have just played it by Barry.
• 48:21
  Yeah, you know, it's important. It's yeah, that that's like a
• 48:25
  that's a big, I don't know, driving factor.
• 48:28
  The driving factor. You want to drive home, That's a
• 48:31
  sentence. You know, giving your players
• 48:35
  these alternative objectives and then making sure that they can
• 48:38
  come at it from different angles, cuz you know not to, not
• 48:46
  to, you know, beat the dead horse, but my player agency, you
• 48:55
  know. My player agency.
• 48:58
  That's, that's, you know, that's really what it is, right?
• 49:00
  It's like you don't want to force them down a narrow hole.
• 49:03
  It's like, oh cuz here's cuz here's the thing, right?
• 49:08
  Let's say you have, you know, you, I'm trying, I'm now trying
• 49:11
  to conjure up a bad example in my head on the fly, which is
• 49:14
  surprisingly different. It's like you say the players
• 49:18
  like, alright, so the objective of the combat is to like, you
• 49:25
  know, protect this item. But the only way to protect said
• 49:31
  item is if you are standing within 5 feet of it, Then it
• 49:36
  will, like, you know, not disintegrate.
• 49:38
  But if you move beyond five feet of the item, it instantly
• 49:41
  disintegrates. So your only option.
• 49:42
  It's like you Add all these, like really strict stipulations
• 49:45
  on how they do it. Then what you end up doing is
• 49:47
  kind of basically going back to a normal combat anyway, where
• 49:50
  it's like, OK, so I'm just doing the same thing over and over
• 49:53
  again like I was doing before. He just knew the way you
• 49:57
  described. That reminded me of the fucking
• 49:59
  D&D movie. When he's like, the way to get
• 50:02
  across the bridge is to take a step, but only on every even
• 50:05
  step. And then when you get halfway
• 50:07
  across the bridge, you take old steps, the same step, but only
• 50:09
  lateral steps. And then once you get past that
• 50:11
  point, then you do it but on even steps.
• 50:12
  And then fucking what's his name?
• 50:14
  Just steps on the wrong ones. Like I.
• 50:17
  And then the whole bridge could. Just yeah.
• 50:19
  It just collapses all the death glares he gets.
• 50:25
  The the bridge apparently started back farther than I had
• 50:29
  expected, it seems. Yeah, that is yes.
• 50:35
  That is the kind of convoluted top foolery you you generally
• 50:38
  don't want to do. Do you have any?
• 50:46
  I mean, I'm I mentioned a failure, so do you have any?
• 50:49
  I tried an alternate. Objective type combat and it
• 50:54
  just failed miserably. Or like players hilariously
• 50:57
  missed the point. Or something along those lines.
• 50:59
  I'm. Trying to think back, it's been
• 51:01
  a while since I've. Done.
• 51:02
  There must be. Gotta be something.
• 51:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there are.
• 51:07
  There are definitely a few where I was going for something, but
• 51:12
  it just didn't end up working the way I wanted it to.
• 51:21
  It's I guess it's not really an encounter, but it it was the
• 51:23
  lead up to an encounter. It was the way back, like year
• 51:30
  one for me when they were doing the the spooky warehouse slash
• 51:34
  factory with the crazy mushroom spores that were making them
• 51:38
  hallucinate. It wasn't really their fault as
• 51:42
  much as I was not clear enough. And when the players started
• 51:46
  getting confused on how the rules worked, I just started
• 51:49
  walking them back cuz it was becoming a headache.
• 51:53
  And you know this this is 3 months and to be D Ming my first
• 51:56
  game ever. So I kind of got frazzled and
• 51:58
  was just like fuck it, I give up.
• 52:01
  Yeah, I mean that's certainly, I mean that is pretty much an
• 52:05
  alternative, I'll bet. It's not strictly within the
• 52:08
  combat, but it's definitely like part of it for sure, I mean.
• 52:14
  What was the lesson there? You got a.
• 52:16
  You got a way to avoid that problem?
• 52:20
  Be more clear with the rules, up to and including just telling
• 52:25
  them the rules that they're struggling.
• 52:28
  At the time I was too focused on not spoiling the whole gimmick
• 52:32
  so they could, you know, easily fix it.
• 52:35
  And I got so wrapped up and not wanting to spoil it that I could
• 52:38
  tell they were starting to get real annoyed at some point like.
• 52:41
  If you go back, I do describe that as being an overall
• 52:44
  successful encounter, and I think it was because it it
• 52:46
  fulfilled its purpose of being creepy and the players not
• 52:50
  really knowing what was going on.
• 52:52
  But towards the end, before the boss and it being the third
• 52:56
  session of it, you know you can tell that people are getting a
• 52:58
  little burnt out on the weird wacky woohoo shit going on.
• 53:03
  Yeah, yeah, I mean if you're sensing, I I think if you're
• 53:06
  sensing player frustrated like if you were trying to.
• 53:10
  You know, you're like, I'm trying to spice up combat by
• 53:13
  creating a a combat where the goal is not just kill the dudes
• 53:19
  then, you know? And by doing so, you come up
• 53:22
  with some home brew, some other crap like that, you know, add
• 53:26
  some stuff in if you get if you sense that, like, oh, my players
• 53:31
  are getting really fucking irritated because they can't
• 53:34
  figure out or make sense of whatever my weird home brew rule
• 53:37
  thing is or whatever it is. Yeah, at a certain point you
• 53:42
  know it does suck if you have to you know give up the goat as it
• 53:47
  were. But yeah, just explain in very
• 53:51
  plain like if you have to and you know this is this is
• 53:55
  somewhat of a last resort but if you have to literally just read
• 53:59
  them verbatim what the mechanic is off the off the you know like
• 54:04
  like whatever. Wherever you wrote it down just
• 54:06
  read them in the mechanic verbatim so they could like.
• 54:09
  Get a sense of it because no amount of like cool reveal or
• 54:18
  like super awesome like secret hidden thing is going to be
• 54:21
  worth your players just getting fucking annoyed.
• 54:26
  It's just not worth it. Like they will have more fun if
• 54:30
  you just explain the mechanic to them and then they go OK, now we
• 54:33
  know what we need to do to like deal with it and because.
• 54:36
  Presumably if you designed the mechanic interestingly enough,
• 54:40
  then it shouldn't matter if they know exactly how it works,
• 54:43
  because it's still interesting. It's still something they have
• 54:45
  to deal with. You know?
• 54:47
  If it's the mechanic that literally, if it's the type of
• 54:49
  thing that hinges entirely on them not knowing, then you know
• 54:55
  that, yeah, that can be a little bit of a problem.
• 54:58
  And in those scenarios, I don't know, you might you might have
• 55:01
  to just accept the L. But for the most part, most of
• 55:06
  the time, you know you're going to come up with some, like weird
• 55:09
  home room thing in your dungeon or whatever, and the players,
• 55:14
  you know, get annoyed and frustrated and can't figure it
• 55:16
  out. And then you tell them how it
• 55:18
  works. It's probably still going to be
• 55:19
  fun because they still have to deal with it.
• 55:22
  They still have to respond to it.
• 55:23
  They can't. Just because they know about it
• 55:25
  doesn't mean they can ignore it, you know, That's that's really
• 55:29
  the crux of it. It's like.
• 55:31
  You know how the mechanics of the fucking Like, you know how
• 55:35
  the mechanics of Fire Emblem work in terms of the like, you
• 55:37
  know whatever beats whatever and then whatever other weapon beats
• 55:40
  whatever. You know that whole thing,
• 55:41
  right? Like, you know that exists in
• 55:43
  the game. You know how it works, but that
• 55:46
  doesn't mean you ignore it. And it's still fun and
• 55:49
  interesting because you still have to, like, respond and
• 55:52
  playing around it and strategize.
• 55:55
  There are some absolute maniacs to ignore weapon triangle and I
• 55:59
  wish I could sleep that well at night.
• 56:02
  I wish I could be so carefree is to be like what's this core
• 56:05
  mechanic? Never heard of it.
• 56:07
  What? How, How do you even?
• 56:11
  You just suffer and lose, lose guys or you just get really
• 56:14
  lucky. I I OK.
• 56:20
  I mean, it's just rock, paper, scissors, bro.
• 56:22
  I don't. It is.
• 56:23
  It is just literally just rock paper scissors.
• 56:25
  And I I do know people who are like, but I want this character
• 56:28
  to go here and it's like, but but they're an Arbor unit.
• 56:31
  They're they're going to there's a bunch of mages they're going
• 56:33
  to explode and they're like, no, no, no, they're fine.
• 56:37
  But but defense and resistance, two different stats for a
• 56:40
  reason. I OK, you're just going to
• 56:42
  explode then. OK And they explode now like Oh
• 56:44
  well that character died. Moving on.
• 56:46
  You're like wow. That is some major.
• 56:53
  That is some monkey behavior. Like I said, I wish I could
• 56:56
  sleep that soundly at night. Yeah, that's some what the okay.
• 57:01
  All right. You know, I just okay.
• 57:08
  Yep. User Dang, it lost my train of
• 57:18
  thought again. Say, say me, tell me you got
• 57:21
  something. You're leaving this show?
• 57:22
  I can't say. Yes, you can just come in with
• 57:25
  anything at all. I'm giving you the opening.
• 57:28
  Tell me you had a thought where you wanted to take things, cuz
• 57:31
  I've totally lost my spot. Damn shit.
• 57:35
  I think we've talked about this a few times, but one that I'm
• 57:40
  really excited to try out that I haven't been able to yet.
• 57:44
  I kind of did a little bit when they fought the giant
• 57:47
  teleporting T Rex, but like 9 or any only was the hit the weak
• 57:52
  point for massive damage. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:56
  I think that's a perfect use of an alternate combat scenario.
• 58:01
  That one's just kill. But that one is just kill is the
• 58:05
  thing like so that one kind of bugs me because it it it like.
• 58:13
  The final goal is still just kill, but you are spicing up the
• 58:18
  objective of just kill, so I'm like a little conflicted on that
• 58:24
  one. You know what I mean?
• 58:26
  Yeah, I think you know, if you do it shadow the closet style
• 58:30
  where you know, with some of them one hit is all you need.
• 58:34
  And the hit is almost guaranteed to hit because you're stabbing
• 58:39
  it in its weak spot. That's where I think the the
• 58:42
  difference lies is the the struggle is, you know, if it's a
• 58:46
  flying monster, maybe the wizard cast earthbine to keep it like
• 58:50
  brags to the ground and then maybe they try to force cage it.
• 58:53
  But it doesn't work. It's it's the struggle to get
• 58:57
  the thing to stop moving that really is what the combat's
• 59:00
  about, not so much as dropping hit points.
• 59:04
  Yeah, OK. Yeah.
• 59:05
  Because, yeah, if you do it that way, where it's not just about
• 59:08
  the hit points. Then yeah, you can.
• 59:13
  That is a lot of it, right? Like, you know, so many people
• 59:20
  criticize and say rightfully so, criticize.
• 59:24
  Like, you know, E&D monsters are so often just big bags of hit
• 59:28
  points. And you know, there's not, you
• 59:33
  know, the difference between fighting the dragon and fighting
• 59:35
  the goblin is just more hit points.
• 59:37
  And like, I I see what people are saying there.
• 59:40
  Granted, I think a portion of that is on you as the person
• 59:44
  running the monster to like do other stuff, but there is a
• 59:47
  degree of like, yes, the monster is a big bag of hit points.
• 59:51
  But yeah, when you're talking about the like, you're
• 59:56
  essentially saying, like, yeah, the monster basically has one
• 59:58
  hit point, but good luck hitting that one hit point.
• 1:00:01
  Then you're starting to get some interesting things.
• 1:00:03
  I think that's something that makes Dungeon World particularly
• 1:00:08
  fun, is that? Monsters never get that high in
• 1:00:16
  terms of their health values, but like the strongest thing in
• 1:00:22
  the game from what I remember is I'm pretty sure called an
• 1:00:29
  Apocalypse Dragon and that thing has like 30 health or something
• 1:00:38
  like that. Like it's not that high of a
• 1:00:40
  number when you know the dragon has thirty health, but you're
• 1:00:47
  still rolling D 10s D twelves to hit 26HP, so it's 26HP and five
• 1:00:58
  armor. So every attack you subtract 5
• 1:01:00
  from your damage, unless you have something that ignores
• 1:01:02
  armor, like armor piercing or a certain piercing value.
• 1:01:08
  You go, OK, so then how the fuck is this thing dangerous in any
• 1:01:13
  way If it has 26HP and it's like, well, it's dangerous
• 1:01:17
  because it's fictionally it's a dragon and it's got a thick hide
• 1:01:22
  and all this other shit. So you know, one way you could
• 1:01:25
  run it is like smog, where you don't get to hit the 26HP unless
• 1:01:30
  you hit it in the belly. So if you just start plinking
• 1:01:33
  arrows while it's flying around, he's just going to lull at you
• 1:01:35
  and then light you on fire. And that's what makes a lot of
• 1:01:41
  shit interesting in Dungeon World is because a lot of
• 1:01:44
  monsters don't have these crazy high hit values or these crazy
• 1:01:49
  high HP. What makes things interesting is
• 1:01:52
  like, oh, you're not going to be hitting them as often.
• 1:01:55
  But when you do get that hit in, boy does that shit feel good,
• 1:01:59
  you know? And you as the GM are supposed
• 1:02:02
  to take the I forget. I think they call them
• 1:02:06
  qualities. In Dungeon World, you're
• 1:02:08
  supposed to take the qualities and sort of basically just have
• 1:02:12
  the monster do shit based on those qualities.
• 1:02:16
  Like there aren't necessarily like a specific move tied to it,
• 1:02:20
  you're just supposed to look at it and go, OK, so like for
• 1:02:24
  example, if I look at the apocalypse, I look at the
• 1:02:28
  Apocalypse Dragon, it says breathe forth the elements.
• 1:02:32
  You go, OK, it's a dragon. It has a breath weapon.
• 1:02:35
  That's probably what breathe forth the elements means.
• 1:02:37
  There's no specific thing that tells you like it has a breath
• 1:02:40
  weapon. Breath weapon does X amount of
• 1:02:41
  day. It just says breathe forth the
• 1:02:43
  elements. You're supposed to make of that
• 1:02:45
  whatever you want. The other thing it says is act
• 1:02:49
  with perfect foresight. So you go, OK, so the the dragon
• 1:02:52
  is so smart and so intelligent and has lived such a long time
• 1:02:55
  or whatever reason you want to come up with that it's like damn
• 1:02:58
  near got precognition. So if the players are just gonna
• 1:03:01
  like, the players can't just sneak up on it and stab it in
• 1:03:04
  the booty cheeks cuz it's gonna know they're there.
• 1:03:07
  You know, like play it, you know, play it intelligently.
• 1:03:12
  And yeah, what essentially ends up happening is you're like, oh
• 1:03:17
  basically it's a built in alternative objective because
• 1:03:20
  the alternative objective is get past this Dragon's bullshit so I
• 1:03:25
  can actually hit him and. I don't know exactly how you do
• 1:03:31
  that in D&D, given the way the combat system works and stat
• 1:03:35
  blocks and all that stuff, but it's a thought.
• 1:03:39
  I mean true, I mean the. The hit point for massive damage
• 1:03:42
  is in that direction for sure. Yeah, I mean you'd have to, I
• 1:03:47
  think you'd have to do the hit point for massive damage thing.
• 1:03:50
  You'd also have to be incredibly blunt in game.
• 1:03:55
  And be like, look, you cannot hurt this thing.
• 1:03:57
  Be like scales are made of, like adamantite or some shit, you
• 1:04:00
  know what I mean? Just give it something wild,
• 1:04:03
  like you can't hurt it with physical time.
• 1:04:05
  How do you? We know we fucking tried.
• 1:04:07
  We tried a lot. And you know what we found out?
• 1:04:09
  It doesn't fucking work. But there's a big stupid crystal
• 1:04:13
  thing on its head. Get it down.
• 1:04:16
  Aim for that. Kill the fucking thing if you do
• 1:04:18
  that. And the players are still like,
• 1:04:21
  I'm a badass. Watch this.
• 1:04:23
  Spins arrow plinks off the scales.
• 1:04:27
  Shit, you know, Yeah, Yep. Even if they were looking
• 1:04:31
  natural 20, you're just like, cool.
• 1:04:33
  You did a whole lot of damage of nothing.
• 1:04:36
  Yeah. Yeah, you did.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, you did nothing. The problem though, then there
• 1:04:41
  becomes is that same thing before.
• 1:04:43
  If it's like don't do the same thing over and over again.
• 1:04:45
  Don't just do. The hit point, the critical spot
• 1:04:48
  for massive damage over and over and over again.
• 1:04:51
  Yeah, yeah. Because and we're back at square
• 1:04:55
  one. True, we were talking about
• 1:04:58
  firing before, and this is kind of relevant.
• 1:05:02
  Nothing is funnier when you're playing Fire and Lum and you
• 1:05:04
  have a general unit which is the tankiest unit in the game.
• 1:05:09
  And it goes up against like an assassin or a sniper tight like
• 1:05:13
  something that does ridiculous damage.
• 1:05:14
  If it crits and you see the crit animation go off and it hits and
• 1:05:17
  it just says no damage, nothing. Is like.
• 1:05:21
  Borderline or gas makers watching it just go.
• 1:05:24
  No damage. You have to laugh at them.
• 1:05:26
  And then you just look at it and go, I'm sad now, no.
• 1:05:30
  No, you're happy because you're the one who took no damage.
• 1:05:33
  Oh. Oh yeah.
• 1:05:34
  Well, I was thinking about the other way, but yeah.
• 1:05:37
  No, no, no. The other way is you sit there,
• 1:05:39
  just go. It's over.
• 1:05:42
  All my life has come to this and I've failed and the character
• 1:05:45
  dies and then you have to reset the entire chapter.
• 1:05:48
  And that probably took you about 45 minutes just to get to that
• 1:05:50
  point in the chapter, cuz it's a massive fucking map.
• 1:05:54
  Yeah, I've been there. I remember.
• 1:06:01
  I remember. So have any?
• 1:06:05
  You have any? Tips and tricks Signing counter
• 1:06:10
  of this name for the goal is not just ill monster with big HP.
• 1:06:16
  Yeah, I mean, I think I've sort of talked about it.
• 1:06:20
  Don't do what I did, although mine was more of a a calculated
• 1:06:23
  risk of be clear of what you want.
• 1:06:27
  Do not mince words spell out what you want from them because
• 1:06:31
  the play, especially if you're playing something like D&D.
• 1:06:34
  The players are going to be hardcoded to kill and only kill
• 1:06:37
  right. So you have to be you got to
• 1:06:40
  really spell it out for them. This is not a kill encounter and
• 1:06:45
  it can be as like you know the spell out can be if you if you
• 1:06:48
  want to sort of obfuscate it a little bit to see if they figure
• 1:06:51
  it out and they don't have the man come in on the flying
• 1:06:54
  carriage and be like run you idiot and then have him fly off
• 1:06:58
  into the sunset. I'll let team rocket blasting
• 1:07:00
  off again that way you sort of cement it.
• 1:07:04
  And if they don't get it from there, well, then maybe maybe
• 1:07:07
  their characters weren't meant for this world.
• 1:07:09
  You know what? I'm saying maybe they were
• 1:07:11
  supposed to. Yeah, I I yeah, I mean, that's
• 1:07:16
  all true. Another thing I just sort of
• 1:07:18
  thought about what you're mentioning is another way,
• 1:07:21
  another way to dine these types that encounter this type of
• 1:07:26
  encounter sentences are hard is. You know, even if they do just
• 1:07:36
  kill all the enemies, they still don't get what they want.
• 1:07:40
  You know, like the fight might be a fairly easy fight where
• 1:07:44
  they could just kill all the dudes, but killing all the dudes
• 1:07:48
  doesn't actually achieve what they were trying to achieve.
• 1:07:50
  And now that. And then, like, afterward,
• 1:07:53
  they're just sitting there. Like now I'm sad.
• 1:07:56
  True, yeah. If the whole thing is is, you
• 1:07:59
  know, to bring Critical Role into this, there's a bit in
• 1:08:01
  campaign too. Where the objective is to fight
• 1:08:05
  a dragon but not kill the dragon.
• 1:08:08
  Because Travis Willingham's character is trying to reforge a
• 1:08:13
  magical sword of ice and needs the ancient white dragon to
• 1:08:17
  breathe on the the like either RAW or or the the sword
• 1:08:21
  fragments or something. And they got a GTDFO after that
• 1:08:27
  and that was a pretty cool one to be like well there's an
• 1:08:29
  ancient dragon. And they're like level 12 or 13.
• 1:08:34
  So you know, they could maybe they kill it because it's the
• 1:08:39
  weakest of the Ancients, but like.
• 1:08:41
  Yeah, unlikely chance they kill it.
• 1:08:44
  Yeah. But I was even talking like
• 1:08:46
  they're fighting something they could reasonably fight.
• 1:08:50
  But the objective is, you know, oh, we need to like, distract
• 1:08:57
  the enemy for long enough, for example, or something.
• 1:09:00
  Like, let's say we're defending the town that's being raided by
• 1:09:03
  goblins. We could reasonably beat the
• 1:09:06
  fuck out of the goblins and just kill them, but we need to keep
• 1:09:10
  their attention for long enough that, you know, the citizens
• 1:09:15
  could do something else before they make a break for it or
• 1:09:17
  something like that. You know what I mean?
• 1:09:20
  And then if they do just choose to kill the goblins, what they
• 1:09:24
  find I was like, oh, we didn't buy enough time, we didn't like,
• 1:09:26
  we didn't make enough of a distraction.
• 1:09:29
  And then another wave of gobbles just rolls in.
• 1:09:31
  Then everyone just gets steamrolled, you know?
• 1:09:34
  It's like, it's like the point of the fight was to make a big
• 1:09:38
  ruckus and distraction, basically.
• 1:09:40
  Yeah, so people shit on this module a lot, and while I think
• 1:09:46
  criticism of it is fair, I don't think it deserves as much of the
• 1:09:50
  lack that it catches and it's a or the Dragon Queen.
• 1:09:57
  Right. Because the first real
• 1:09:59
  encounter, right, and it's literally the second game,
• 1:10:01
  starts as you rock up, you get to town, ancient blue dragon is
• 1:10:04
  attacking and you get to the Fort and they say, oh, you know,
• 1:10:07
  we have a bunch of civilians that are, you know, out of the
• 1:10:10
  Fort. We need you to go save them.
• 1:10:13
  And you know, a new player is probably going to be like, oh,
• 1:10:17
  save them. So just like kill all the
• 1:10:19
  Cobalts, right. And the answer is no, it's you
• 1:10:21
  have to actively go to the different districts of the town
• 1:10:24
  and find the Npc's and bring them back to the Fort 1 by 1.
• 1:10:28
  And you can like I've I've done quite a bit of the I had to
• 1:10:31
  because, you know, I was running it for two people and I was
• 1:10:34
  trying to figure out if it was even fucking survivable with two
• 1:10:36
  people. And with the right build And I
• 1:10:39
  don't even mean like a super meta gamey power building build,
• 1:10:43
  but with like the right two classes and I threw in an NPC
• 1:10:48
  cleric just to heal them, you know, because it was their first
• 1:10:50
  ever game. It is doable to save them, but
• 1:10:53
  it's fucking hard. Yeah, you gotta.
• 1:10:58
  You really got a big brain it and take advantage of everything
• 1:11:00
  you get. Yeah, well, I think the thing
• 1:11:03
  that's interesting about that is killing everything isn't even an
• 1:11:09
  option there, right? Like you could beat up all the
• 1:11:13
  Cobalts you want all goddamn day long.
• 1:11:15
  You still have to get the civilians from point A to point
• 1:11:17
  B, and beating up cobolts doesn't just magically make them
• 1:11:22
  go from point A to point B. And you can't kill the dragon.
• 1:11:27
  So even if you eradicate, even if you genocide every cobalt in
• 1:11:31
  existence, you still have to move the civilians from point A
• 1:11:35
  to point B and try and protect them from the whole dragon
• 1:11:38
  situation. That's dragon cuz you're not
• 1:11:41
  killing the dragon. That's not fucking happening.
• 1:11:43
  At least not the level you're at at that point.
• 1:11:46
  I said the very beginning, right?
• 1:11:47
  You're level one. Yeah.
• 1:11:49
  This was like, yeah. So, yes, I have.
• 1:11:51
  I and I have heard people mention that too.
• 1:11:53
  And I I do think that's a that's a pretty good way to do it where
• 1:11:56
  it's like you could just keep killing and killing and killing,
• 1:12:01
  but you still need to do something else to like, actually
• 1:12:06
  get what you want, you know? It's like you're playing Blades
• 1:12:07
  in the dark. It's like, all right, we need to
• 1:12:10
  steal this device. Cool.
• 1:12:12
  Murder everyone in the building. It's like, well, you still have
• 1:12:15
  to get it out of the safe, so. You know, there's still that
• 1:12:20
  whole problem. It's like, also you killed
• 1:12:24
  everyone who knows the password. So like, I don't know what
• 1:12:29
  you're doing now, but you better figure something out.
• 1:12:33
  And yeah, I I had, I have heard. It's, it's funny because a lot
• 1:12:41
  of the D&D modules actually try to do something like that.
• 1:12:49
  Like early on at the adventure, where it's like, oh, you're
• 1:12:52
  supposed to run away, or you're supposed to avoid this, or
• 1:12:54
  you're supposed to like, not necessarily just averness,
• 1:12:57
  right? But it they all kind of failed.
• 1:13:03
  My pop wall, Yeah. Some pie I've been seeing.
• 1:13:06
  Right. Well, yeah.
• 1:13:07
  So that's what I'm talking about, right.
• 1:13:08
  So to explain, so in in averness for those listing the FIR, the
• 1:13:13
  literal first encounter of the game is.
• 1:13:18
  You come into this Tavern and you're looking for like an info
• 1:13:22
  broker or some shit, right? I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever.
• 1:13:26
  Some MPC chick and you go to talk to her and she says it's
• 1:13:32
  basically she's like, yes, I can help you, but only.
• 1:13:39
  Dudes after me. Yeah, yeah, there's dudes after
• 1:13:41
  me. And I can only help you if you
• 1:13:42
  get these assholes off my back. And then you, as the players
• 1:13:46
  have to be like, all right, I guess we could try and do that.
• 1:13:49
  I didn't, you know, we weren't expecting this problem, but OK
• 1:13:53
  And then a bandit captain and seven bandits show up at the
• 1:13:58
  Tavern and come upstairs to kill the chick you're talking to, the
• 1:14:02
  NPC you're talking to. And at level one with four
• 1:14:06
  players, a bandit captain and seven bandits is like.
• 1:14:11
  Comically. Overkill.
• 1:14:12
  Your chances are not. You can do it, but your chances
• 1:14:15
  are not great like. You do need to be actively power
• 1:14:19
  game you. Kind of need to be power game
• 1:14:21
  also. Like your roles need to be good,
• 1:14:23
  their roles need to be bad. You know, like you need a good
• 1:14:26
  fucking. The stars need to align to a
• 1:14:29
  certain degree and. For reference, it is so fucking
• 1:14:35
  challenging. Josh's character got knocked out
• 1:14:38
  round one before his turn, even rough into like the bandit
• 1:14:41
  captain does that much damage. He just walked up and slapped
• 1:14:43
  the shit out of zigzags and almost slapped the shit out of
• 1:14:46
  Mattingo in one round. And I think it's only cuz
• 1:14:48
  mattingo foot was a fucking paladin.
• 1:14:51
  Yeah, he slapped the fuck out of us.
• 1:14:52
  And so we don't know this for a fact, but the conclusion we came
• 1:14:57
  to as a group. And what we did end up doing was
• 1:15:02
  basically, there's a bunch of Mpc's around in that Tavern when
• 1:15:07
  the dudes attack. So we're pretty sure the point
• 1:15:10
  is that you're supposed to try and get all of the Mpc's to help
• 1:15:15
  you out and fight with you. Because all those several of
• 1:15:18
  those Mpc's have stat blocks, one of them's a veteran, one of
• 1:15:22
  them's A Druid, and other ones like a spy or something.
• 1:15:25
  So they all have like notable stat blocks that they can fight.
• 1:15:30
  At least they can fight at that low level.
• 1:15:32
  So you know, what we ended up doing was getting our man, as we
• 1:15:36
  call him Walsenpai, our. But the wall on our team and he
• 1:15:41
  started, you know, doing significantly more damage than
• 1:15:44
  anyone else because he's a veteran and he had packed
• 1:15:46
  tactics so he could go in there and start bonking bandits.
• 1:15:49
  And I think we got the druid on our team too, because we
• 1:15:52
  basically just offered to give them a bunch of money.
• 1:15:54
  I don't even remember where we got the money.
• 1:15:56
  It was our starting money. No it.
• 1:15:58
  Wasn't no, no. So that's right.
• 1:16:00
  It wasn't our starting money. We were like, we're good for it.
• 1:16:05
  We no, no, no, no, we. We had money. 10s old up front.
• 1:16:09
  Yeah, but we'll pay you more if you help us.
• 1:16:12
  I don't know. We had money of some kind for
• 1:16:14
  some reason. I don't remember exactly why,
• 1:16:16
  but we had money. Point was, we offered them money
• 1:16:18
  and we're like, please help. So the conclusion that we all
• 1:16:21
  came to as a group is presumably that's what you're supposed to
• 1:16:24
  do in that fight. But the module does not make
• 1:16:27
  that clear in any way. And as far as I'm aware, there's
• 1:16:32
  nothing like the. The module doesn't say anything
• 1:16:35
  explicitly to the GM, like, oh, have these Npc's help the
• 1:16:38
  players, I it just. Assumes what it basically says
• 1:16:44
  is if your players offer them money, they will help.
• 1:16:49
  It doesn't say that you should or you should think about this.
• 1:16:51
  So it's more like kind of yeah. Yeah.
• 1:16:56
  Yeah. So that's the kind of thing or
• 1:16:57
  it's like I see what you're trying to do.
• 1:16:59
  Wizards of the Ghost, you're you're trying to get at this at
• 1:17:02
  a point. But yeah, a little more clarity
• 1:17:07
  or like like something to sort of explain also why I think
• 1:17:13
  that's a big part of this too, is why what is the point of
• 1:17:18
  having the alternative object? And that wasn't even really an
• 1:17:21
  alternative objective per se, right?
• 1:17:23
  Like the objective was kill all the bandits still.
• 1:17:26
  So that's their standard fight. But there was this side
• 1:17:29
  objective of like, you need to get people to help you to do it,
• 1:17:33
  but like, why? What is the point?
• 1:17:37
  You know, the game doesn't explain.
• 1:17:39
  I think what they were trying to do is set up a sort of teaching
• 1:17:44
  moment where. Because you're going to go into
• 1:17:48
  Avernus in that adventure where Wheeling and dealing is kind of
• 1:17:53
  like a standard thing that devils do.
• 1:17:56
  I think they were trying to teach you that.
• 1:17:58
  Like, hey, you should consider Wheeling and dealing sometimes
• 1:18:02
  in order to get the shit that you want, you know, or to get
• 1:18:05
  help with something. Because Avernus is going to,
• 1:18:07
  like, want to do that a lot. And if you can, you know, trade
• 1:18:11
  devils, the fucking hell coins or whatever, you know, you might
• 1:18:14
  be able to get something going. I think they were trying to
• 1:18:17
  teach that, but that's just me speculating mostly.
• 1:18:23
  Yeah, that we do not know that for a fact.
• 1:18:24
  Yeah, we don't know that for a fact.
• 1:18:25
  And there were some moments like spoilers for Avernus.
• 1:18:30
  But you can talk to, I just want to say, Daddy Maganello, what's
• 1:18:36
  his character? Oh, Archon.
• 1:18:39
  Archon the Cruel. You can meet.
• 1:18:42
  I mean, that's. Fair.
• 1:18:42
  Yeah, right. You could talk to him.
• 1:18:44
  Meet Archon the Cruel, and you're you can't.
• 1:18:47
  There's no fighting. This man's like he's got.
• 1:18:50
  There's Archon and his two boys who are comically OP and his pet
• 1:18:54
  dragon. And as as Sam put it, it says in
• 1:18:57
  the module an infinite number of white Abby shy.
• 1:19:02
  A literal infinite amount of Abby shy.
• 1:19:04
  So like. They admit no words about it.
• 1:19:08
  So you literally can't fight him, so you have.
• 1:19:11
  Have to try and work some kind of a deal with him, which I
• 1:19:14
  think we sold Matingo's soul to our cut the Cruels I.
• 1:19:18
  Think what he did. We were like, if you help us, we
• 1:19:21
  will give you Matingo's soul. And then we didn't.
• 1:19:26
  Yeah. Paz became the archduke and in
• 1:19:31
  Lord was like fuck you. Yeah, so it's like my house now.
• 1:19:35
  There was a thing there. But yeah, again, assuming the
• 1:19:39
  band in encounter was supposed to teach that, I don't really
• 1:19:42
  know. And then another example of that
• 1:19:45
  was the Strad encounter with the hags.
• 1:19:48
  Yeah. Where it's like, clearly the
• 1:19:50
  point of that is the the alternate objective is get the
• 1:19:54
  fuck out of there. Like this is not now is not the
• 1:19:56
  time, right? And they're trying to teach you.
• 1:20:00
  That you shouldn't always square up with everyone in cursive
• 1:20:03
  Strod because certain people are just going to absolutely dunk on
• 1:20:07
  your day. Like that Bishop dude who's like
• 1:20:09
  a Dave in disguise, for example. Yeah, right.
• 1:20:13
  But again, they didn't really get the message across because
• 1:20:19
  if you go online, literally everyone has a story about the
• 1:20:23
  dumb shit they did when they encountered the old bone
• 1:20:26
  grinder, which is where the three hags live.
• 1:20:29
  Literally everyone has a dumb story, including us, the
• 1:20:33
  bagining baby. And if you would like to go see
• 1:20:35
  that story, look up our clip of the bagining because we talked
• 1:20:38
  about it like way, way while. Yeah, yeah, we talked about it
• 1:20:42
  forever ago. I made a clip of it, the
• 1:20:44
  bagining. It's a good time, but.
• 1:20:47
  Everyone I've seen, maybe not everyone, but I've seen so many
• 1:20:51
  people have ridiculous stories about how they encountered the
• 1:20:54
  hags at Old Bone Grinder and then just did some comical D&DS
• 1:20:59
  bullshit to get out of it and it just did not.
• 1:21:04
  The message was not conveyed. I feel like old bone grinder
• 1:21:09
  makes or breaks players like. You know you're a fucking big
• 1:21:13
  brain if you can make it out of old bone grinder at Level 3
• 1:21:16
  without taking a single hit point of.
• 1:21:18
  Damn, I mean like it just causes goofy nonsense.
• 1:21:21
  And and at first I was like, maybe it's just us, But then
• 1:21:24
  I've seen videos of people talking about it and read it
• 1:21:26
  post some people talking about, I'm like, Oh no, A lot of people
• 1:21:29
  come up with weird goofy shit for this scenario because, like,
• 1:21:35
  I don't even know. Like, I don't.
• 1:21:36
  Funny thing is, I I say like, oh, wattsy, you fucked up.
• 1:21:39
  You weren't trying like you didn't get the point across.
• 1:21:41
  I don't necessarily know though, what would have in that
• 1:21:45
  particular encounter, like how would you have made that one
• 1:21:47
  better? Let's just speculate, you know,
• 1:21:52
  like, like you can do so like some.
• 1:21:58
  I would say make it clear that it's hags who run the place.
• 1:22:05
  You know, yeah, that maybe have an NPC at the beginning and be
• 1:22:08
  like they were old bone grinder, the three hag sisters.
• 1:22:11
  They will turn you to a frog, you know, like.
• 1:22:14
  Yeah, so the the the NPC warning, that is definitely one
• 1:22:19
  I thought of of being like, yeah, no, those are hags or like
• 1:22:23
  rumors going around, cuz you do go to a town before that.
• 1:22:27
  So like there's some rumors about like, Oh yeah, somebody
• 1:22:29
  like there's some wacky shit going on an old bone grinder.
• 1:22:34
  The other thing is like Dark Souls, it somehow of have some
• 1:22:39
  kind of environmental storytelling where it's like you
• 1:22:43
  walk up on old bone grinder and maybe you find, I mean, you
• 1:22:48
  could be really blunt about it and be like there's skeletons
• 1:22:50
  impaled through the ass on sticks, you know, like.
• 1:22:54
  The good old maneuver. Yeah, yeah, you could do the
• 1:22:57
  Vlad, the Impaler, that's a solid one.
• 1:22:59
  Or I don't know, like what are something hags are known for
• 1:23:02
  like? You know, the the, the, the
• 1:23:06
  bones of children. That's like about some adult
• 1:23:09
  bones. Yeah, you know maybe a Locket
• 1:23:13
  with a families like with a family portrait in there and be
• 1:23:16
  like you see two children and two adults and the lockets like
• 1:23:19
  two kids and the parents. Or like a giant.
• 1:23:24
  One of the flying mortar and pestle they have is.
• 1:23:27
  Like around. That's a good one.
• 1:23:30
  Babies. People turn to stone.
• 1:23:33
  Pegs. No, but I can imagine they've
• 1:23:37
  got like a spell or something, you know, you could you could
• 1:23:41
  just be like out like their their specialty is making weird
• 1:23:44
  concoctions that turn people to stone.
• 1:23:45
  I don't know, you can just sort of do it with it, what you want.
• 1:23:48
  Fair enough. Yeah.
• 1:23:49
  I like, I don't know exactly. Yeah.
• 1:23:52
  What the I don't know exactly what the, like environmental
• 1:23:58
  storytelling would be, but I feel like, you know, Watsy could
• 1:24:00
  figure out. Like use actual hag lore to
• 1:24:04
  indicate some shit going on. Have the I mean shit.
• 1:24:14
  Even the fact that when we walked into old boat now, I
• 1:24:16
  don't know if this is. I don't think this was a thing
• 1:24:19
  that Sam did. I think this is part of the
• 1:24:21
  module, But the fact that when we walked in we only saw one
• 1:24:24
  person, not 3. Oh yeah, each each hag is on a
• 1:24:27
  different floor of the. Well, the two were upstairs and
• 1:24:30
  the one was downstairs. So you come in, you're like, oh,
• 1:24:33
  it's just some nice old lady. You know, I feel like if you
• 1:24:37
  walk in and there was 3 old ladies making pies, you'd be
• 1:24:41
  like, wait a goddamn minute, you know what I mean?
• 1:24:44
  Like like something. I feel like there's got to be, I
• 1:24:50
  mean, Jesus Christ, even if on the outside of the building or
• 1:24:54
  like you walk into the cook that like cook room and there's a
• 1:24:57
  picture hanging on the wall or like a painting of the three hag
• 1:25:01
  sisters. You know like yeah, be a little
• 1:25:06
  be a little. Cuz obviously the people who
• 1:25:08
  wrote the adventure module aren't gonna can't just like
• 1:25:10
  literally sit over your shoulder and tell you they have to rely
• 1:25:14
  on the GM to be able to do it. But some kind of box text that
• 1:25:17
  would like that the GM could read to really help indicate
• 1:25:22
  shit like that and and this is, this is another way of saying
• 1:25:26
  this is something you could do with your players if you're
• 1:25:28
  running a game it you know. Indicate if you don't want to do
• 1:25:33
  the blunt maneuver then tell your players you know like
• 1:25:36
  indicate to your players like if you want to have a you know, I
• 1:25:43
  mean a classic one is you don't you want your players to run.
• 1:25:47
  You don't want them to stay and fight.
• 1:25:49
  So it's like they kill a couple of dudes and then another wave
• 1:25:53
  comes and another wave comes and you just clearly showing.
• 1:25:58
  Like, show them that, oh, there's like a damn near
• 1:26:01
  infinite number of dudes we have to leave.
• 1:26:03
  You know, like, that's a really, that's like a classic one.
• 1:26:08
  But yeah, make sure to throw in. If you're trying to have an
• 1:26:13
  alternative objective, then make sure you throw in indicators for
• 1:26:17
  like, what that alternative objective is supposed to be.
• 1:26:22
  Or if you don't want to spring shit on them.
• 1:26:24
  Or at the very least, at the very least, throw in indicators
• 1:26:28
  that tell the players, oh, we're supposed to do something else.
• 1:26:34
  Like we're not sure what the other thing is, but we're
• 1:26:36
  supposed to do something else, you know?
• 1:26:39
  And then you can at least get the brains of cooking.
• 1:26:42
  Because at the end of the day, that's really all this is,
• 1:26:44
  right? This is spicing things up by
• 1:26:46
  changing the norm. Getting your players to think
• 1:26:49
  and breaking them out of their usual MMO rotation habits of
• 1:26:53
  just you know I do this move, then I do this move action for
• 1:26:56
  this bonus action, this boom bang boom.
• 1:26:58
  You know cuz particularly I mean when you're getting to like high
• 1:27:01
  level D&D bro, let me I'm gonna alright this me me to you.
• 1:27:07
  Other GM's running high level games.
• 1:27:09
  If you're playing 5E your players that they're gonna have
• 1:27:13
  an MMO rotation, they're gonna have the rotations they do.
• 1:27:16
  They're going to have that shit down pat.
• 1:27:18
  They've been playing for 15 levels.
• 1:27:20
  They're going to have a system. You've got to break the system.
• 1:27:23
  Don't let them do it. Look, I'm being called out right
• 1:27:25
  now. I mean, you have the most
• 1:27:28
  rotation of any of my current players for sure.
• 1:27:31
  Like, I ain't even going to lie. But that's just by virtue of, I
• 1:27:35
  think, your class ditch. That do be sort of artificer.
• 1:27:41
  Like, but all of you guys have like.
• 1:27:46
  Like Sam with the fucking the ways.
• 1:27:48
  Like, all right, so cunning action then I smite and then I
• 1:27:51
  cunning action. You know like fucking move,
• 1:27:53
  smite cutting action out. You know like you all have this
• 1:27:57
  like do boom bang boom boom bang boom.
• 1:27:59
  You know shit like that. And it's not a bad thing.
• 1:28:03
  I'm just saying it's going to happen.
• 1:28:05
  So you have to give. You have to I don't want to say
• 1:28:10
  force but you are kind of forcing you have to force your
• 1:28:13
  players to like change things up.
• 1:28:15
  By throwing different things at them, I mean, again, using the,
• 1:28:18
  the drought, protect the boat, you know, protect the supply
• 1:28:21
  boat. Example, Sam had decided he was
• 1:28:26
  going to do a specific thing on his turn.
• 1:28:29
  And then one of the drought threw a firebomb and lit the
• 1:28:32
  boat on fire. And then suddenly he had to use
• 1:28:34
  his turn to put the boat out, you know, so like disrupted the
• 1:28:38
  system. That's just one.
• 1:28:41
  That's just one small example. I mean, shit, even when you guys
• 1:28:45
  were fighting, fighting Cowgirls, the Shadow Dragon,
• 1:28:49
  when he bear, when he burrowed into the ceiling, you know, it's
• 1:28:52
  like, oh, all of a sudden. Whatever I was gonna do, I can
• 1:28:55
  no longer do now. That shit don't matter no more.
• 1:28:59
  Yeah, yeah, It's all about adding that spice, baby.
• 1:29:04
  A little spice to your life. You know, you gotta look at your
• 1:29:07
  sessions and go, you know what? This needs some.
• 1:29:13
  Adobo, get a little Cezanne on that chicken boy.
• 1:29:18
  That's really what it's about. Add the Cezanne to your games.
• 1:29:22
  I'm. About to put that on a shirt.
• 1:29:27
  I love the one of the three white guys like you gotta use
• 1:29:32
  other ones as son. The Puerto Rican is just like
• 1:29:35
  I'm sorry I don't speak for them.
• 1:29:38
  Well, I mean, I look. We've been in my house.
• 1:29:41
  We always have sis on in my house.
• 1:29:42
  True. Put it on the chicken a lot,
• 1:29:44
  actually. It is impressive how much sauce
• 1:29:47
  so and I've seen reliably at your house.
• 1:29:49
  It's always. I've never not had it in my
• 1:29:51
  house. Hell yeah, dude.
• 1:29:56
  Fuck. All right.
• 1:29:59
  I probably had something else I was gonna say, but that's enough
• 1:30:03
  for me. Gotta think, you want to add on
• 1:30:06
  the tail in there? I didn't write notes down for
• 1:30:09
  today because I just didn't get a chance, so.
• 1:30:12
  Yeah, I mean, you know, a XAX, The hell of a drug.
• 1:30:18
  I'm still recovering. I I yeah, I slept like a
• 1:30:21
  collective, like 20 hours this weekend.
• 1:30:24
  And I'm just like, what the fuck is sleep?
• 1:30:26
  I need more sleep. Yeah, I've been sleeping.
• 1:30:31
  My knee still comically blown out.
• 1:30:35
  Oh, I shouldn't have recovered. I'm happy one of us is
• 1:30:39
  recovering. I had a knee brace on since
• 1:30:42
  Thursday. To be fair dude, I was at work
• 1:30:45
  and I was one of my coworkers was showing me something and I
• 1:30:49
  shifted my weight and I heard a pop in my knee and just went
• 1:30:52
  like, you know what? I'm just going to sit down on
• 1:30:54
  the ground real quick. You go to like.
• 1:30:56
  I'm just, I'm just going to die. Yeah, I this is a this is a
• 1:31:01
  magical suffering like. Anyway, you have anything else
• 1:31:09
  to add? We haven't talked about it much,
• 1:31:14
  but the like race to the item slash get the item is a really
• 1:31:20
  good one. You know the the like not
• 1:31:22
  exactly the Indiana Jones, but let's say there's a fight start
• 1:31:26
  they did in critical role with the when they fought the the
• 1:31:29
  Sphinx and they had to put the Sphinx's name together with the
• 1:31:31
  tokens. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:33
  That's a good one. That was a fun one.
• 1:31:35
  Have someone interact with a thing, acquire item.
• 1:31:39
  Yeah, yeah. That's true.
• 1:31:42
  I've had, I've definitely had that happen in my game where it
• 1:31:46
  was like, oh, the car needs to be.
• 1:31:48
  It's, you know, in Mad Max Fear Rd. when they're repairing the
• 1:31:50
  truck while they're driving, they got knucks underneath the
• 1:31:53
  truck. Yeah, yeah, it's that.
• 1:31:56
  Yeah, yeah. That's very, that's very post
• 1:31:59
  apocalypse, yeah. All right, Well, you know what,
• 1:32:07
  everyone? In fact, if you got this far, if
• 1:32:08
  you got to the end, you know what I want you to do?
• 1:32:11
  I'll watch another episode. That'd be nice.
• 1:32:14
  Watch another show and prepare yourself, because next week is
• 1:32:18
  the long-awaited Monster Manual Smasher Pass with yours truly
• 1:32:23
  baby. It's true.
• 1:32:25
  It's true. So get excited for episode 69.
• 1:32:30
  Yeah, you fucking nice. Also, you know, follow us on
• 1:32:36
  Twitter if you'd like to Yeah, yes, the Twitters.
• 1:32:41
  And if Twitter burns down, you know we'll we'll let you know
• 1:32:44
  where the new website is. I don't know.
• 1:32:46
  But yeah, we will. Maybe we'll go to Instagram.
• 1:32:48
  Oh God. Instagram.
• 1:32:52
  Yeah. Baby.