Latest / Sessions Canceled / The Compelling Narrative: Ep. 44

Transcript

The Compelling Narrative: Ep. 44 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:10
  The fuck's up internet. So the GM has drowned as
• 0:13
  players. And too many side quests and all
• 0:15
  the players gave up on life. So sessions, fucking cancel.
• 0:21
  No, wait. Josh you cars too early?
• 0:23
  We're gonna get D mods. Haha, YouTube can lick my
• 0:27
  grundle. Hey, dude, and no one will stop
• 0:32
  me. Right.
• 0:35
  But, you know, maybe in the future will pay someone to
• 0:37
  fucking edit the BP's in. Yeah, we have one, it seems
• 0:41
  bread. So yeah.
• 0:45
  It was a, we should just read the bad, the old Batman 60s like
• 0:51
  they're into the bet, the front cave.
• 0:55
  If we were, if we paid him to edit out the amount of times I
• 0:58
  cursed, if that would just be Brett's life, he would have no
• 1:00
  time left anymore, but we should be paid for it.
• 1:04
  Takes away to, I curse too much anyway, but I'll tell you one
• 1:08
  Crystal by 5. Like it bullshit up a look,
• 1:11
  there we go. Again.
• 1:12
  Anyway, Matt is here. I'm here.
• 1:15
  Isaiah is, here was Good. Sam is not here again, but he's
• 1:21
  dying. This time your Roux get it.
• 1:23
  He's sick or something. Anyway, said he got nurdles rot,
• 1:28
  which is pretty bad nerves rats. Probably the worst.
• 1:30
  It's also very big place father's.
• 1:32
  Huh. Those are very vague.
• 1:33
  I don't know what he actually means about it.
• 1:36
  Anyway. um, Damn, you derailed me.
• 1:43
  Be a good do Josh. What are we talking about today?
• 1:49
  Yeah, I know we're talking about man.
• 1:50
  I'm just trying to remember what I was trying to segue into it,
• 1:53
  but since we're just saying fucking man, um, I don't have a
• 1:59
  better title, and/or term for this.
• 2:01
  So I'm going to keep using the term that I don't like, because
• 2:04
  it's the best one I have. What we're talking about is
• 2:09
  balancing and or juggling. Dealing with whatever phrase you
• 2:14
  want to use really main story. Main narrative inside narratives
• 2:22
  and or Side Story again, I don't like this name.
• 2:26
  I'm hoping as we talk about this I'll think of a better phrase
• 2:28
  for it. Yeah.
• 2:33
  But arcs versus character that was not an invitation for us to
• 2:36
  Workshop. This we're just going to go and
• 2:38
  we'll figure it out but points per side quest.
• 2:41
  Yeah. Main quest for aside courses,
• 2:43
  the very basic premise of it. I just don't like that phrase
• 2:48
  because it It makes. The other state makes the side
• 2:53
  quest sound devalued, which is not the point.
• 2:56
  Your what somewhere Ardella screaming I have a feeling that
• 3:07
  a lot of this is just going to be story time.
• 3:09
  So everybody sit down for grab your tea and get ready for some
• 3:13
  story time because I hope you guys like some popcorn and have
• 3:16
  a feeling. This is gonna turn into us.
• 3:17
  Talking about a lot of You know, events from our games.
• 3:22
  Anyway, to to preface Where the impetus for this idea.
• 3:28
  Came from a very recently in our campaign as Isaiah will know,
• 3:34
  and Sam would know if he wasn't dead and or dying.
• 3:39
  Had some events occurred that were very much not planned, or I
• 3:45
  shouldn't say not plant. Well, no, well, they weren't
• 3:47
  planned prior. I thought about it at the store.
• 3:51
  Ah, The Pizza Store, no, not the pizza store that was also not
• 3:56
  planned, but my players just wouldn't let that one go.
• 3:59
  So and by players, I mean, Sam Sam wouldn't let that one.
• 4:05
  But, no, I some some some events have occurred in The Campaign,
• 4:08
  which You know, was not the sort of thing that I like, jotted
• 4:13
  down in my notes way ahead of time, right?
• 4:15
  I've been thinking about them only very recently last, I don't
• 4:17
  know, a couple of weeks or whatever and there was a part of
• 4:22
  me that well the events were going on.
• 4:27
  I was kind of like or not while they were going on but right
• 4:30
  before they are about to happen and I was thinking oh maybe we
• 4:37
  maybe I'm wasting time on something pointless.
• 4:40
  Like maybe I should just shouldn't do these because you
• 4:44
  know, they're not really serving any sort of They're not serving,
• 4:49
  it's not really serving any sort of grand narrative, Focus or
• 4:53
  whatever and it wasn't necessarily or and or isn't
• 4:58
  necessarily going to tie back to anything super big or whatever
• 5:04
  those I was thinking. Maybe Maybe maybe this is dumb
• 5:09
  and I'm wasting time. But I went through with it and
• 5:12
  then I kind of thought to myself.
• 5:15
  How do you decide? You know, you come across a
• 5:20
  scenario when you're jamming. This this is basically, this is
• 5:24
  basically not relevant to player side at all.
• 5:28
  It's an entirely GM controlled thing, more or less.
• 5:31
  It's like, how do you decide energy humming and your players
• 5:34
  are doing whatever your kind of main story thing?
• 5:37
  Is and then they come across something or one of your players
• 5:41
  wants to do something that's a Sidetrack from the primary
• 5:46
  thing. And you have to weigh as a GM.
• 5:51
  Is this worth spending time on, you know, a session or a couple
• 5:55
  of sessions or maybe a rather long amount of sessions
• 5:57
  sometimes depending on the scenario?
• 6:00
  Like, how do you value One versus the other?
• 6:05
  How do you weigh the scales? You know what I'm getting at?
• 6:08
  Yeah, King says insert pacing. Combination pacing pacing.
• 6:15
  Although I'm not thinking about it in terms of pacing
• 6:17
  necessarily. Um, yeah, I mean, there's a
• 6:20
  couple ways you can like, if you're if you have a side thing
• 6:23
  and you don't believe it's like super important like a side
• 6:27
  quest or whatever. You'd there's a couple things
• 6:29
  you either a, you could shorten it which I've done multiple
• 6:34
  times, y over prepped and over plan, something I was supposed
• 6:37
  to be a small invention like Adventure and then looking back
• 6:41
  at And going. Yeah, I need to cut some content
• 6:43
  like, fuck me. I wait, I wrote way too much, be
• 6:48
  you just make it a part of the main quest accidentally.
• 6:51
  Oh no, I mean, I see you have hurt.
• 6:55
  I yeah, you are see, you have a title one of the players.
• 7:00
  Yeah. I can I can personally attest
• 7:01
  for the, for the last two of those because that's literally
• 7:04
  something that I've done three times.
• 7:07
  Now, to make the side stuff, not feel like side stuff years ago.
• 7:11
  I'll just give a player's a reason to give a shit about it
• 7:14
  and that way they'll think like oh this is just the stuff we got
• 7:16
  to do. Now I'm not necessarily I don't
• 7:20
  mind the side stuff feeling like Side Story you know content it's
• 7:27
  just a case of is it a juicy enough orange to bother
• 7:32
  squeezing, you know? Is there enough lime juice in
• 7:36
  there for my margarita? Or is this a dry withered sad
• 7:40
  line? I mean if it's fun for you like
• 7:43
  running it, if you're not having fun baby the players are having
• 7:45
  fun enjoying it. Those are like the two main fat.
• 7:51
  If it feels too if you'd like as a DM, you can kind of feel when
• 7:54
  like the players are not engaged with whatever is going on.
• 7:59
  And that's when it's time to like either change it up a bit,
• 8:01
  you know, it's like all Orcs attack or whatever like and this
• 8:08
  is like one of the one of the weird things when it comes to
• 8:10
  like the whole like main story / player story or Side Stories or
• 8:14
  whatever the fuck you want to say arcs it does very much
• 8:19
  involved the players and if their players are like you wrote
• 8:22
  out this cool and like Adventure for the players and they're not
• 8:25
  involved with it. This is a novel your Aren't here
• 8:29
  to play in your novel. They're here to play the play a
• 8:33
  game and you're here as a DM to run said game.
• 8:36
  And don't forget your player to you can have fun.
• 8:40
  Just don't make it a novel and it's hard.
• 8:43
  Yeah, I get the balance act with that.
• 8:46
  I get that is very much. It can be a pain that well,
• 8:48
  interestingly I don't well two things, one when I'm talking
• 8:59
  about this, I'm kind of operating under the premise that
• 9:03
  your players are invested and or interested in your primary Arc
• 9:10
  already. Now I'm sort of operating in the
• 9:12
  fact that they have by, they have buy-in on the main thing
• 9:17
  already. Because if you don't have buy-in
• 9:18
  on the on the main thing, you're kind of you're in, like now
• 9:21
  we're in a different territory. Ori of like, oh my players are
• 9:23
  not interested in my primary Arc.
• 9:26
  What do I do? How could I potentially move
• 9:29
  this into some other places? They may be interested?
• 9:31
  That's kind of a different scenario.
• 9:33
  So I'm operating under the assumption.
• 9:35
  They are invested in the main dish, I'm giving them but every
• 9:39
  once in a while you want some side dishes also now that I'm
• 9:43
  thinking about it I think the best way to phrase it is
• 9:46
  balancing primary arcs versus branching arcs.
• 9:49
  Yeah. I think that's probably a better
• 9:51
  way to put it. Is that doesn't make One sound
• 9:53
  more important than the other, because that's what I'm trying
• 9:55
  to avoid. I don't want it to seem like one
• 9:56
  is more important than the other.
• 10:01
  But the other thing is is Matt, you're like, oh well if your
• 10:04
  players are having fun, I this is gonna sound maybe a little.
• 10:10
  I don't know if I said both. I said you and ye are people
• 10:14
  having it but I may be. This may sound a little
• 10:20
  masochistic, I don't know. Ah I don't value them in that
• 10:26
  way. A lot of the time I when I'm
• 10:29
  talking about Deciding whether to go down a sort of branching
• 10:34
  path scenario or not. I'm valuing it in like is it
• 10:40
  worth it? Is there a payoff that's worth
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  it? In the sense of You gotta kind
• 10:48
  of, get something out of it. I'm not thinking about it, like,
• 10:52
  will it be fine? So, go beat up the lizard men.
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  I don't really care. If it's fun to beat up the
• 10:56
  lizard, man. If there's no reason to, you
• 10:58
  know, I need a little bit of a pails, and that's more how I
• 11:04
  look at it and the reasoning just to justify my point.
• 11:07
  So I don't sound like a psycho. Yeah, the reasoning is because
• 11:12
  I'm sort of assuming I'm basically assuming when I come
• 11:18
  up with the idea that the idea is going to be fun by default
• 11:21
  and that that's not in question. Now obviously you're wrong
• 11:24
  sometimes but that's how it happens.
• 11:26
  When I when I thinking about it, when I'm coming up with it I'm
• 11:30
  assuming this will be fun and interesting and then if you're
• 11:35
  wrong, yeah, you deal with that later.
• 11:36
  But I always I always start with the assumption that it will be.
• 11:41
  and I think that just comes from the fact of I'm not going, I'm
• 11:46
  not going to bother. Even thinking about a branching
• 11:51
  Arc, if I'm not thinking it's going to be fun or interesting
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  from the get-go. Like I won't even put brain
• 11:59
  power to it. So assuming that first step now
• 12:03
  we're on the page of okay? I think it'll be interesting how
• 12:07
  I balance it versus our main story arc. and then, you know,
• 12:12
  how do we Play with the dials and yes, having it tie back into
• 12:22
  the main story arc is very good cheap for sure and a ghostly and
• 12:27
  a good way to get that pay off, got it.
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  It's the one I rely on the most, like it's gotten to the point
• 12:32
  where some of the like priori Arc shit I can't be accomplished
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  or can be accomplished as easily without it.
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  So, like, you know, a good example is like one of the
• 12:47
  players, which, what's a good? What do you know, Paladin's
• 12:54
  whole thing? At the beginning of the game was
• 12:55
  he was like, oh, my dad's, this legendary Bandit.
• 12:57
  I got to go find him. That's like my personal
• 13:00
  motivation. And then, with the whole, like
• 13:03
  Bandit Uprising thing going on, people were like, well, we need
• 13:06
  somebody That we can rally behind, right?
• 13:09
  Like, we have, we're outnumbered for sure, but we have better
• 13:13
  equipment and that might help us though.
• 13:15
  So, we need something to keep morale up and then the players
• 13:18
  are like, well, my dad's like a hero like to the common folk,
• 13:23
  right? Like you stole from all the
• 13:24
  organizations and like, you know, he paid himself a lot, but
• 13:27
  he also gave back to the community.
• 13:29
  So if we go like find him and bring him back, he can sort of
• 13:33
  act as our Flagship when we like do the big Like charge at
• 13:38
  Gondor, you know what I mean? And it wasn't like necessary to
• 13:44
  complete the things they needed to do, but because they did it
• 13:48
  and they brought him back and they like they found out that
• 13:51
  his brother was a was working for the bad guys and they got
• 13:54
  him to turn traitor. So he was helping them and
• 13:56
  feeding them info. Like they all it all.
• 13:59
  Sort of manifested is making the final Conflict easier, you know?
• 14:07
  yeah, that is, yeah that's I mean that's the way to do it
• 14:11
  certainly is having Having this having, your any sort of
• 14:15
  branching arcs become like ammunition or your main our
• 14:22
  narrative, the only, the only thing I think of there where it
• 14:29
  could potentially get ugly. Is if you're do that a lot, you
• 14:34
  get into that kind of weird spot where the verisimilitude breaks
• 14:39
  down because it feels like every human being.
• 14:42
  You know every character in this world is always driving back
• 14:47
  into this main thing that we're doing all the time.
• 14:50
  So you if you overdo it it'll get weird.
• 14:53
  You know, more could get weird where it's like oh I don't know
• 14:59
  what's like a weird example. Oh we found this.
• 15:03
  We found this one Merchant guy way out here in the Wasteland
• 15:07
  and as it just so happens. He's that other guy's brother
• 15:10
  that you were just talking to you.
• 15:12
  And you're like bro we're 50 miles from that other, dude.
• 15:15
  You're like, yeah, but there's some things you're like crazy
• 15:17
  how the fuck. Yeah, so there's always that
• 15:21
  danger, but if you're cognizant of that potential problem, And
• 15:28
  you're probably fine. I actually have had that happen
• 15:31
  twice now, we're like you told him a little too much?
• 15:35
  No. No.
• 15:35
  So like what I've done is, I went ahead, I very perfectly
• 15:39
  High, very purposely put characters, siblings across the
• 15:43
  map and it's like someone's like, oh yeah, you know, I mean,
• 15:47
  I don't talk much anymore and players like, oh, I'm sorry to
• 15:49
  hear that, and they'll go somewhere else is like, oh yeah,
• 15:53
  this guy sent us know. I don't talk to that fucking guy
• 15:55
  anymore. They're like, Oh is this the
• 15:58
  guy, you know? Yeah I mean if you do it on
• 16:02
  purpose though it doesn't feel the same, you know, because you
• 16:06
  probably thought about it more. I'm talking about the scenario
• 16:11
  where you you're trying to think of on the Fly Away to make the
• 16:16
  side quest. Tie back into your main
• 16:18
  narrative. Yeah.
• 16:19
  And then you've got oh yeah. Yeah, those are the scenarios
• 16:31
  that are can get like kind of wonky.
• 16:36
  I know, I know you mentioned like your thing with you
• 16:39
  specifically want to like a payoff, right?
• 16:41
  For some sort of side quests or renting?
• 16:44
  Yeah, that's the kind of matter. You could vet like the players
• 16:48
  being like, well, what do the players need at this time?
• 16:51
  Do they need money? Maybe they just want to fucking
• 16:54
  go after the lizard folk in their their cave swamp for the
• 16:57
  gold they have. Are they looking for Laura?
• 17:00
  Maybe they go to Wang Shi Tong's.
• 17:01
  Like underground, library and fuck with him for a bit like
• 17:05
  Yeah, I was just thinking about like, wow, what a nice little
• 17:08
  throwback. Well, I guess there's, yeah, I
• 17:10
  mean, it's, you can't gauge the player.
• 17:12
  See what they've, what their Miss obviously.
• 17:14
  If it's like, damn, you know what really helped me out a
• 17:17
  vorpal sword. And it's like, all right, Jethro
• 17:19
  settle down there. Like yeah, it's like if we need,
• 17:24
  like money for my eat Sharia, then it's like, okay.
• 17:26
  Well, gold is a very simple like thing or maybe they don't find
• 17:31
  gold, maybe they find, you know, fucking a deed to a giant prop
• 17:35
  You know, property land or some shit like a like yeah.
• 17:39
  Like yeah you always like vet the players.
• 17:41
  See what they want what they're after and it's somewhat
• 17:43
  reasonable to your game. No.
• 17:45
  Yeah I know and that kind of payoff is totally thing I've
• 17:50
  done before and if you're doing it in that sense, where the
• 17:55
  whole point, you know, the point of the side quest is just sort
• 17:57
  of, we need to get a little bump of something, or we need some
• 18:01
  more XP and stuff like that, you know.
• 18:03
  Yeah that's fine. And that definitely counts as
• 18:05
  pay. Off.
• 18:08
  But sometimes sometimes from for me, at least, I don't know if
• 18:13
  you guys agree with this or not. I don't know.
• 18:15
  I mean, I guess do either of you?
• 18:16
  I don't know. I guess I should say do either
• 18:18
  of you care about there being a payoff to like a side, you know,
• 18:23
  branching sigh dark scenario, like, does it need to have a
• 18:27
  payoff of some nature big or small or do you not care?
• 18:31
  That depends on what kind of branching path.
• 18:33
  Like side quest thing if it is it like A character Arc thing,
• 18:38
  then the payout might not be. Well I'm not gonna need a magic
• 18:41
  item but it'll be like character development.
• 18:43
  Yeah. If it's a side quest, where it's
• 18:45
  like, are we want to make this potion and the Alchemists gave
• 18:48
  us a list and now we have to go out and find it.
• 18:51
  Oh, we're doing the main quest to go to the church of smog and
• 18:54
  raag to you know steal the gem or on the way there's a force
• 18:57
  where all these fucking ingredients are at so we'll hit
• 18:59
  two birds with one stone like it's like it's yeah I mean
• 19:05
  that's what I'm saying. The payoff can be big or small
• 19:07
  can be pretty much anything. I'm just saying, do you think
• 19:10
  about that? Is that a relevant issue as you
• 19:14
  could because you could hypothetically, do a, you know,
• 19:17
  you could basically give your players a side quest that serves
• 19:21
  literally zero. Purpose know, if you want, like
• 19:25
  you could just be like, I'm bored of doing the.
• 19:27
  Main narrative was Branch off into something else just for
• 19:29
  funsies and then that doesn't really serve a purpose.
• 19:32
  You're just doing it for funsies.
• 19:34
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 19:36
  It's if the players want, if like, so the eats a real thing,
• 19:40
  right? That that has no real payoff,
• 19:42
  but if they're really passionate about it, I'll just be like,
• 19:44
  fuck it. Why not, like, you know what I
• 19:46
  mean? Let's, let's, let's see where
• 19:48
  this stupidity goes. But, yeah, I'm but that I know
• 19:51
  in you value it personally, that like, is it important for you?
• 19:56
  Because, no, but it's important to them, so, I'll humor it, you
• 19:59
  know? No, I'm saying.
• 20:00
  Is the idea of a branching Arc, has to have a payoff.
• 20:05
  Is that something? You consider when you are
• 20:08
  proposing them to the group when you're putting them in front of
• 20:11
  them. From a, I would say yes.
• 20:15
  Because I, I personally don't like the idea of doing all that
• 20:19
  work for nothing, even if it's a very small payout.
• 20:22
  Yeah, like, it would annoy me as a player.
• 20:24
  If we went to, you know, we've fought sword, axe the Eternal
• 20:30
  red dragon, and then after we beat him, you know, or after
• 20:34
  we'd like abandoned, the plot to go fight him, he had no
• 20:37
  treasure. He had no crazy.
• 20:39
  Magic Elemental Stone. You just like you killed Dragon.
• 20:41
  Congratulations. Hmm.
• 20:43
  Oh, here's some XP. That's your reward there.
• 20:44
  There's the SP for. It's like, yeah, but that's not.
• 20:47
  Okay. So XP, not enough.
• 20:49
  No. I mean, I can use an example
• 20:52
  from the three-year game where, like, Toma foes just gave out
• 20:56
  and I wanted the players to fight o blacks has like the
• 20:59
  little, like, who's aberrant that could like take over like
• 21:02
  they mimic Was bodies. A lot of people went missing in
• 21:06
  town, so they went to the tavern, turns out the whole
• 21:09
  Tavern were made up of 10 blocks.
• 21:12
  Turns out there was a basement where a mine flare was making
• 21:15
  Alexa's. And the re the only real payout
• 21:19
  was that a foreshadowed like oh there are there?
• 21:23
  You know there's you know mine flares and shit in the other
• 21:26
  dark. They're trying to fuck with the
• 21:28
  surface. That was it other than that?
• 21:31
  The players like oh cool, we get to fight nue monsters.
• 21:35
  And maybe in got I think they looted them.
• 21:37
  So we went with the so you're saying that was a case of of, no
• 21:41
  Society, no real payoff for, you know, Real Pit.
• 21:44
  Well, for me, it was who knew monsters.
• 21:47
  I get to throw out my pliers, okay?
• 21:49
  Just trying out new monsters, it wasn't like and suppliers.
• 21:53
  It was usually care. Oh, you're okay with it being
• 21:57
  kind of like whatever just for funsies I get I guess because it
• 22:01
  wasn't. It didn't take that.
• 22:02
  It literally took two sessions, it was a to session thing.
• 22:06
  Yeah. Same 2 hours.
• 22:08
  Yeah. But still two sessions out of a
• 22:10
  bit three-year fucking campaign. It was a sidequest, the players
• 22:14
  got some sort of, you know, I don't remember what the reward
• 22:16
  was but and it did for shadow eventually when they went to the
• 22:21
  underdark a little bit. But other than that it was
• 22:23
  mostly like, you know, damn forget the fights on Alright.
• 22:26
  Okay, so, yeah, so on your end of the table, you're like,
• 22:32
  you're okay. Just doing random deep doo-doo
• 22:33
  nonsense. Well, because this is the payout
• 22:36
  was the the small foreshadowing. That's why I'm saying, I even if
• 22:39
  even, if it's okay, Barry my new even though it is this, so tiny,
• 22:43
  there is a some, so there's some sort of pan, you could do rant.
• 22:46
  Like, if you're doing a giant can't like, I can, I go again.
• 22:49
  I don't recommend doing a three or game, but if you're doing a
• 22:53
  big long campaign having cycle I swear it's just like a just go
• 22:56
  fight some goblins or something or just you know there is going
• 22:59
  to be a payout and everything. Even if it's very small life oh
• 23:02
  you managed to save like a villager and maybe the DM will
• 23:06
  work that villager into like help the players out when they
• 23:08
  go to the next town or some shit like you know that I mean that
• 23:11
  example you just gave Matt. Matt I don't think I would have
• 23:15
  been happy spending time on Which one the the line sir.
• 23:20
  Yeah, with oblast in the, my players like that doesn't sound
• 23:25
  to me. That sounds like they're you
• 23:28
  know, like not that I'm saying nothing, I'm saying you're wrong
• 23:31
  or shouldn't have done it but like, on my end I would have
• 23:34
  felt like oh, I didn't I would have felt like I was sort of
• 23:37
  wasting my own time and or players.
• 23:39
  I'm and I wouldn't have felt great about great about that but
• 23:44
  so yeah, it sounds like you don't, you're not as concerned
• 23:48
  with Idea. As long as it's still like
• 23:52
  interesting as long as interesting.
• 23:53
  It's fun. Like I even I this is funny.
• 23:57
  Actually I drew a picture of a mine flare and broke it up into
• 24:02
  like really really small pieces, put them all into roll20 as
• 24:06
  their own little puzzle token and to get to the door where the
• 24:09
  mind flayers, I had the players all control and move the puzzle
• 24:12
  pieces to make the face of the mine flare on roll20 night and
• 24:16
  they thought that was like the coolest fucking thing.
• 24:18
  And I'm like that's awesome. That one.
• 24:22
  I hate fucking paint. I will say, is a pain in the
• 24:24
  ass. It was a big fucking puzzle.
• 24:28
  I'm like, I have to make 26 tokens fuck.
• 24:33
  I mean, that is yeah, a little bit, but it was worth.
• 24:35
  It was fun, and they remembered. And, yeah.
• 24:38
  And it was, it was a rare yet. It was totally random.
• 24:40
  Totally random thing. Yeah, totally random side
• 24:42
  quests. But again, as long as it was fun
• 24:44
  for the players fun for you. I think.
• 24:47
  And even if the payoff is Tiny, I think it's okay.
• 24:49
  I think it's the players will be fine.
• 24:52
  Yeah, because the reason I bring all that up is because I with
• 24:58
  what happened recently. My campaign actually literally
• 25:01
  the previous the last session we had Isaiah, what did you do now?
• 25:06
  It did nothing sole cause of a player getting deleted because I
• 25:11
  made a really strong care. I mean, Isaiah did make it yes.
• 25:14
  Oh, so to give it onto I guess I should explain, as I mentioned
• 25:19
  before the players. Three of the players in my group
• 25:23
  have three characters and then Sam has two characters and the
• 25:32
  tertiary characters for a bunch of plot Reasons.
• 25:35
  I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of but the tertiary
• 25:38
  characters. We're basically sent on a kill
• 25:42
  mission to kill their primary characters.
• 25:45
  That was their plan, that was the goal.
• 25:50
  So instead said, tertiary characters who are characters
• 25:54
  from another dimension, which I'm also not going to go down
• 25:56
  the rabbit hole of but just know that they come from another
• 25:58
  dimension. So they came into the primary
• 26:00
  material plane found the players primary characters and said,
• 26:04
  hey, we're here to beat your ass and kill you.
• 26:06
  Well actually technically they only wanted to kill Sam's
• 26:08
  character. They would have let the other
• 26:10
  characters live if they succeeded.
• 26:14
  And so I took these, you know, basically, I took these
• 26:17
  characters character, sheets, converted them into NPC, slap,
• 26:21
  stop blocks, adjusted them, very slightly boom, bang, boom.
• 26:24
  I basically ran a PVP session except I was controlling three
• 26:27
  player characters versus four player characters, which was it
• 26:33
  was a bit much. I'm not gonna lie.
• 26:36
  In terms of, in terms of ball in, oh balls to juggle it would
• 26:41
  it's a little bit much running three player characters at the
• 26:43
  same time, particularly in a in a pseudo PVP scenario makes it
• 26:53
  another layer of like, oh Jesus. Um, but all that being said, the
• 26:59
  center share characters basically There's this this
• 27:05
  interdimensional being that wants revenge on Sam's character
• 27:09
  or raisins and Patron is subset that he got betrayed.
• 27:16
  Yeah, his old patrons basically upset that Sam broke Sam's
• 27:19
  character broke up with him so he sent his assassins to kill
• 27:22
  him to kill Sam's character. And all that being said,
• 27:27
  basically, None of what's going on there is necessarily directly
• 27:35
  tied to sort of the main narrative Arc of things.
• 27:38
  Especially now that my Claire is my players currently have a very
• 27:42
  specific goal and this had nothing to do with that very
• 27:46
  specific goal. but, If? Basically the outcome,
• 27:54
  regardless of what the outcome of this scenario is going to be
• 27:57
  it's going to have interesting and you know, relevant effects
• 28:05
  on the the world in general which is why I ultimately
• 28:09
  decided it was worth going through with it because it's
• 28:12
  going to have sort of ripples later down the road.
• 28:17
  So I was debating doing it for. I was debating having it happen
• 28:22
  at all or having it happened the way it did for a while because I
• 28:28
  was feeling like, I was feeling like it was just going to be
• 28:33
  sort of a dead end once it was done, it wasn't going to be
• 28:36
  relevant or come up again in any way.
• 28:37
  And that's sort of to me, I was like oh that's kind of
• 28:39
  pointless. If this doesn't even come up.
• 28:41
  But then I thought about it and I was like, oh, there are
• 28:43
  actually ways that this could potentially come up and matter
• 28:47
  and I tied some other events into the scenario that I had not
• 28:52
  initially planned on tying in but I was like oh well this fits
• 28:56
  So I sort of made it work more and then felt more satisfied
• 29:00
  about the potential payoff and it hasn't it hasn't the see the
• 29:05
  the whole situation has not concluded yet.
• 29:08
  So there's another step that could be also potentially
• 29:12
  interesting. Although it's entirely up to my
• 29:15
  players. So yeah.
• 29:17
  Um my character want some my character wants us to take his
• 29:22
  job. Yeah, he wants to take Sam's
• 29:24
  patrons job. Yeah.
• 29:26
  Like when we first when I first played him he was kind of sass
• 29:30
  in the patron and when the patron like left he was like a
• 29:34
  man always looking for upward movement and just kind of walked
• 29:37
  away and he said it very, very specifically in front of Sam's
• 29:41
  character to be like what? me out for him and now that he's
• 29:46
  like, hey, boss says, I gotta kill you, I'm going to try but
• 29:50
  like Yeah. So it's it once, it's once it's
• 30:00
  concluded, my players are going to start it, you know, those go
• 30:03
  back to the thing they were doing before, but it will, it
• 30:08
  will be relevant in some capacity in some way, down the
• 30:12
  road. Oh yeah, I think, I think one of
• 30:15
  the best paint like, one of the most underrated payoffs is
• 30:19
  making friends. I know that sounds really dumb
• 30:22
  but the friends we made along the way.
• 30:25
  It is the right like - yeah, if you go, if you save random-ass
• 30:30
  nobleman number 25 and then you make your way to the town that
• 30:34
  random-ass don't win. Number 25 is from, and the
• 30:37
  players get like, I don't know. Let's just say they go into a
• 30:40
  dungeon and two of them get horribly murdered or than the
• 30:42
  third one has to drag their asses back down and then
• 30:46
  random-ass know. The number 25 goes, oh shit.
• 30:48
  I did do you that one? I do know a guy at a church who
• 30:51
  could probably bring them back but like that's all I got like
• 30:54
  that. It if I do this for square are
• 30:56
  you know, are you referencing something specific?
• 30:58
  I said what now, I don't know what you are.
• 31:02
  No, I well I don't know what you missed out like we did die
• 31:05
  horribly this. I think you're missing a
• 31:07
  specific event that actually you guys remember when we got
• 31:09
  Fireball that level to Good Times, yeah it died under
• 31:14
  Baldur's Gate happen, a dungeon is wild.
• 31:25
  Yeah. Yeah, that is that is a Well, my
• 31:30
  brain just shut down on that one.
• 31:31
  That is like a relevant. Payout situation is the friends
• 31:39
  you made along the way. Yeah, all right.
• 31:43
  Go on. I didn't really think I was
• 31:47
  gonna say, well, because that's that's sort of my objective.
• 31:51
  One of the reasons why I throw so many NPCs and my players
• 31:54
  because every NPC, it has a level of utility and they sort
• 31:59
  of act as Non physical tools and items for the players to use,
• 32:05
  right? Like, they know they met this
• 32:08
  little kid. She's like nine.
• 32:10
  And one of the, like the, The Fringe cities in like in Reno
• 32:16
  like a like the last City before the fucking desert in Nevada.
• 32:21
  And she's like they her nickname is the sneak, right?
• 32:26
  Because she can go anywhere and get things because she's tiny,
• 32:28
  no, she's good forth. Even I I put her in front of Of
• 32:32
  them very specifically to be like, this is a character.
• 32:36
  If you need a thing, you might be able to use her to help you
• 32:39
  if you like make friends with her, you know.
• 32:43
  And, you know, it might not come off that way.
• 32:45
  It could just be out. Here's a fun little random
• 32:46
  encounter, but each every basically every single NPC.
• 32:50
  And one way, or another has been, like they have a very
• 32:52
  specific use. If you can tap into this use and
• 32:54
  make good enough friends with them, they will be basically
• 32:57
  invaluable for some specific situations that I've thought of
• 33:00
  mmm. It's it might not seem like it
• 33:04
  but it's one of those things where the it's the like down the
• 33:07
  road reward whether like ah thank God.
• 33:09
  We did that thing. Yeah.
• 33:11
  It's it's a it's NPC as valuable gear item.
• 33:16
  Yeah. You do that with every NPC, most
• 33:20
  of them. Like, you know, the NPC's could
• 33:24
  potentially teach like one of the NPC's.
• 33:26
  What are the shark? Siblings is a boxer, right?
• 33:30
  So, if one of my players was like, oh well, I want to get
• 33:33
  better at like fighting alone because they're a rogue that
• 33:39
  boxer character could teach them his passive ability.
• 33:42
  So like which basically says if if that that NPC is up against a
• 33:46
  wall or any sort of surface like if their back is facing it, you
• 33:51
  can't benefit. From advantage against them, to
• 33:54
  be like there, Mike Tyson rope-a-doping, sorry Muhammad
• 33:57
  Ali rope-a-doping them. So if like, if the player want
• 34:02
  to be like, oh can I learn that thing, you doing?
• 34:04
  Oh yeah, yeah, there's some down to like once we get some down
• 34:07
  time, here you go. You'd make some roles.
• 34:08
  And if you do it, you can get that school ability.
• 34:13
  Paladin's dad has an ability that I gave and called fire all
• 34:16
  like the fucking Pirates of the Caribbean when they shoot all
• 34:19
  the broadsides. And he could in theory, teach
• 34:23
  that to Paladin's character. And, you know, that character
• 34:26
  has more use than just the thing that he can, like, provide the
• 34:29
  parties important in DC, but like, there's also, this other
• 34:33
  thing, you know, he'll they like the first and PCs they met II
• 34:39
  very specifically, put them in like this little middle of
• 34:42
  nowhere settlement because it's like, if the players ever you
• 34:45
  know get kicked out of their settlement, here's a place they
• 34:47
  could go to it's off the grid, nobody knows where it is.
• 34:50
  You know what I mean? Like, Good luck, safe house.
• 34:53
  I I'm sensing a slightly judging tone.
• 34:56
  Matt, what are you having a thought?
• 34:59
  IND of well that not like super judgy.
• 35:03
  It's just like there's a part of me feels like not every NPC to
• 35:10
  have to get to the players. Have to get something out of
• 35:12
  them. If you can just make buzz like
• 35:14
  this is that's a whole another taught.
• 35:16
  Like you can just make Joe Schmo, he's just a farmer.
• 35:20
  Make the world like more realistic.
• 35:22
  If you make every NPC, like you get something out of him or
• 35:25
  someone, they have a purpose specifically for the characters
• 35:29
  for the, you know, campaign world that feels to video
• 35:33
  gaming, to me, it might. And I that that might just be me
• 35:37
  though. But don't be that's fair.
• 35:39
  But I think I sort of see it as everybody.
• 35:43
  You meet has some special to your information that they have
• 35:46
  that you don't and you can always learn from people you I
• 35:50
  mean, okay, so I kind of wanted to reward the players from
• 35:53
  trying to learn from the people around them, especially because
• 35:56
  the name of the game is rebuild Society with the community and
• 36:02
  to be sure like I said, most of them, not all of them, I've got
• 36:05
  150 and PCs not held at the other thing, but like, if 90 of
• 36:12
  them have like, if you play your cards right and your creative,
• 36:17
  they can help you in a few situations.
• 36:20
  You know, characters who are like, Merchants, right?
• 36:22
  If you like if you make friends with a merchant, they can give
• 36:24
  you a discount. That's their little purpose.
• 36:26
  They don't have to have something super specific but
• 36:28
  like some pretty Common Sense. Ones.
• 36:29
  If you make friends with a farmer, they can teach you how
• 36:31
  to farm stuff like that. All I'm saying is that the end
• 36:35
  of your campaign? If your players don't 100% every
• 36:38
  character and they don't all show up every single one of them
• 36:41
  to help at the end and do it, right?
• 36:43
  If it was a game scene, Show you help me plant my seeds.
• 36:52
  Now, I'm gonna help you kill fan, of course.
• 36:54
  Yeah. You know, it's funny of all my
• 36:57
  player immediately. My first thought of Mike who's
• 36:59
  Captain who says Avengers Assemble.
• 37:01
  It's Brett, it's Brad haire. Mr. Soldier, man.
• 37:04
  Yeah, he hundred percent is gonna do the Avengers Assemble,
• 37:07
  nice. That's that.
• 37:09
  And then also kind like going back like I got not charted, not
• 37:13
  just not trying to judge or be judgy, it was that.
• 37:17
  And then also every time Josh, you mentioned that the Players
• 37:20
  have three characters. I kind of do the soccer slap
• 37:25
  forehead thing. I mean it's not like they're
• 37:29
  playing three characters at once in fact they're never playing
• 37:34
  the three characters at the same time because they couldn't hmm
• 37:38
  are also. They have their primary
• 37:40
  characters, their secondary characters, our ancestors of
• 37:44
  their primary characters who I've only brought in a couple of
• 37:47
  times And then the tertiary characters were just different
• 37:51
  people from a different dimension.
• 37:53
  And the reason I had that happen was to sort of fill out a piece
• 37:57
  of the world and like the setting that wouldn't really
• 38:01
  have gotten filled out in any other way and because Sam's
• 38:05
  character got trapped in a different dimension and I wasn't
• 38:08
  gonna just do the solo Sam show. So I had to share characters.
• 38:14
  So I've said it before I do actually like playing multiple
• 38:17
  characters. You could do some really fun
• 38:20
  narrative shit with it, you can. Yeah, we actually LP did this
• 38:23
  thing in the fire l'm game where we act.
• 38:25
  We had, we did like a One-Shot. Basically Brett wanted to do a
• 38:29
  one shot in his character. Who was also, you know, we all
• 38:32
  the whole thing. If I'm them, all the main
• 38:33
  characters are royalty. So his characters Home Country
• 38:37
  in like their Kingdom, and we played like the, you know, like
• 38:43
  the Royal attendance. So, like the general, the
• 38:46
  captain at Arms, the Like the court wizard, the court spy
• 38:52
  stuff like that. And then our characters had to
• 38:54
  go do our mission and we were supposed to die.
• 38:57
  We were supposed to like valiantly sacrificed ourselves,
• 39:00
  but because the the, like our final stand took place in a in
• 39:06
  like, Holy Ground. It was like a big Temple to one
• 39:10
  of the three goddesses of the setting and my character who was
• 39:13
  a demon man who it is like a tiefling but like actually is
• 39:17
  part straight. Just like a devil.
• 39:20
  Not like that. My greatness.
• 39:21
  Like my dad was as a cambian. Specifically was an incubus but,
• 39:26
  uh, yeah. It's the idea of him being like,
• 39:29
  hey, I know you don't like me because, uh, orange but my
• 39:33
  friends are going to die. And you know what?
• 39:34
  You could let me die. I really don't give a shit, but
• 39:37
  my friends are more important that so help.
• 39:39
  And then Brett was like, Hey man, fucking roll for it.
• 39:42
  And I met 22 and he was like, yeah.
• 39:44
  You guys get you get like teleported away into like a
• 39:47
  space between spaces this like, little Demi plane where the
• 39:51
  world will pass super fast without you knowing it really.
• 39:54
  And then our actual characters found them and set them free and
• 39:58
  they helped us storm an enemy Kingdom to like get touched.
• 40:02
  They helped us storm that Kingdom because it had been
• 40:05
  seized, they help us like, take back the castle.
• 40:08
  It was super cool and we we actually did play both
• 40:11
  characters at the same time for about three sessions, and it was
• 40:17
  rough, but it was a fun kind of rough.
• 40:19
  It's the, you know, you're figuring shit out for the first
• 40:23
  time because my, it was Like my second game and it was certainly
• 40:28
  my first time ever playing more than one character.
• 40:30
  So I it was it was a time but I had a lot of fun doing it.
• 40:36
  Yeah, the the secondary character thing or tertiary
• 40:43
  characters. I think about it, you know, from
• 40:46
  a narrative standpoint, you can think about it a lot.
• 40:51
  Spoiler, minor spoilers for God, of War Ragnarok, I guess, but
• 40:56
  you can think about a lot. Like, when you play at Reyes and
• 40:58
  God of War, right? The, the parts of the story that
• 41:03
  you get and or participate in as at Reyes, there wasn't isn't
• 41:10
  really any way. Any good reasonable way that
• 41:12
  Kratos would have interacted with the with those situations
• 41:15
  right at the hole. How much spoilery do I want to
• 41:19
  get here? Tries right.
• 41:22
  You're gonna have to bleep this shit out.
• 41:24
  No. I mean, I'm not.
• 41:24
  Yeah, I'm not sure, I'm trying to like not spoil too much, but
• 41:27
  radius goes to a different place and meets a character and it
• 41:31
  wouldn't make sense for Kratos to have gone to that different
• 41:34
  place. And Kratos would not probably
• 41:35
  have act interacted with said character, is what I will say.
• 41:41
  So the Yugi. Stop it.
• 41:46
  That's trying to eat my headphones.
• 41:49
  So the the whole secondary character idea is is I think of
• 41:53
  it like that where oh I want to explore another part of the
• 41:59
  setting. But there's no reasonable way
• 42:03
  for me to do that with the current characters.
• 42:07
  So is there may be some sort of secondary characters that it
• 42:09
  would make sense. So for my game specifically,
• 42:13
  there was a war that happened in the setting but like that war
• 42:17
  happened like close to a thousand years ago.
• 42:21
  So obviously my the primary characters are not going to
• 42:25
  interact with that in any way but I still want the players to
• 42:29
  learn about it. So I had them basically have
• 42:34
  dreams of their ancestors who participated in said war and
• 42:38
  play out parts of the war so that then informs my players.
• 42:43
  Out that part of the world, the these different characters.
• 42:46
  And then you can also tie it back to the main characters and
• 42:49
  add different, you know, some layers and stuff.
• 42:51
  That's how I that's all it is. Sir me.
• 42:53
  It's a tool. It's a narrative tool and it's
• 42:57
  not it's not too cumbersome because they're only playing the
• 43:03
  characters every once in a while.
• 43:03
  And they're not, you know, they're not using them all the
• 43:07
  time or referencing all the time, and it's not like those
• 43:11
  characters are as complicated. and as their main characters
• 43:14
  are, you know, and and I gave them Sort of little mini
• 43:20
  templates to of like, kind of who the character is.
• 43:23
  I didn't totally decide for my players, but I gave them some
• 43:25
  like outline stuff. So it's it sounds wacky but it's
• 43:30
  not as crazy as it sounds. And I mean the tertiary
• 43:35
  characters might be done for good very soon.
• 43:38
  So they might be down to So, you know, it's not.
• 43:46
  Yeah. Don't don't assume, it's crazy.
• 43:48
  It. See if it was if it was My
• 43:52
  characters are plenty. My players are playing three
• 43:54
  characters all the time. Yeah, that's that weird.
• 43:58
  My goofy is out too, but that's not at all.
• 44:00
  What's going on? In fact, my players complained
• 44:05
  about not getting to play their main characters at a certain
• 44:08
  after a certain point. So yeah this is a thing that
• 44:12
  happened. Yes.
• 44:12
  Yeah. So I brought them back to their
• 44:14
  main characters and haven't gone away from in a while.
• 44:21
  I know like one of my players, he like he told me he's like in
• 44:25
  some games. Like he likes the idea of like
• 44:27
  the guildhall thing. We're like players and different
• 44:30
  character like players. Can play multiple characters and
• 44:33
  whatever your other characters just sitting at the Guild Hall.
• 44:37
  But yeah, yeah, I don't know if every time I hear about the
• 44:39
  interchanging character or something like that, it's always
• 44:43
  like I get the red flag in the back of my head.
• 44:46
  Why do you seem like those big is good?
• 44:47
  Like yours doesn't sound that bad.
• 44:50
  Like the way you're the new you say can like you said it's like
• 44:52
  a narrative tool but why do you see that as a red flag?
• 44:56
  Because then it's like so it depends on the type of game like
• 44:59
  I tried to, I try to have the characters.
• 45:02
  Everyone gets their moment and I try to incorporate and this is a
• 45:05
  thing that we can do for, you know.
• 45:08
  Like for when it comes to main quest for a side quest thing,
• 45:11
  like integrating the players Back stories or their
• 45:13
  backgrounds into the campaign. I try and do that a lot if I
• 45:18
  have a rotating cast. I can't really do that.
• 45:23
  I feel like it's just like, alright, gray, blob number for
• 45:26
  what? What the fuck is your deal?
• 45:28
  Well, that's kind of why that's kind of why I'm talking primary
• 45:33
  characters and then secondary characters because you just
• 45:36
  don't give as much attention to the secondary characters.
• 45:39
  They're, they're a little more are a little more simplistic on
• 45:43
  purpose. Now, if you're talking about a
• 45:46
  game, where the cast is constantly rotating, then you
• 45:50
  Just accept that the game isn't going to be about about that as
• 45:53
  much and just focus on different stuff.
• 45:55
  You know, if you're doing sort of a West marches game, where
• 45:58
  you don't necessarily know every time, who your party's going to
• 46:01
  be and yeah, you're not gonna Del this deep into like,
• 46:05
  individual character backstories because that's just kind of the
• 46:08
  game you're playing. They just sort of take it as is.
• 46:11
  There's one game I know of called band of blades, which is
• 46:15
  a pack of blades in the dark heavily inspired by the black
• 46:19
  company books. And the premise is that you're
• 46:23
  in the band of blades and you're traveling across the country to
• 46:29
  kill like the undead queen or whatever you're like fighting
• 46:32
  out the like, Undead Army. And because because war is
• 46:38
  brutal and the undead or dangerous.
• 46:40
  Your characters will often get really, really badly injured to
• 46:44
  the point where they can't fight.
• 46:46
  So you will play a different member of the company, so you'll
• 46:50
  You have your main character who will be like the head captain of
• 46:54
  squad two. And then, once the, once the
• 46:56
  head, the head captain goes down in a really rough fight.
• 46:59
  You might play the medic of squad two for a couple of
• 47:02
  sessions. And then you'll go back to your
• 47:03
  main character or or one of the characters dies and you just
• 47:07
  permanently play. One of the one of the like like
• 47:10
  permanently play The Medic or permit play the Scout guy of
• 47:12
  your squad, and that's like a mechanic in the game.
• 47:16
  You're intentionally supposed to be going through different
• 47:20
  characters. And the narrative is not focused
• 47:23
  on any one individual. Dude, The Narrative is the story
• 47:26
  of the entire company. The entire team, And obviously
• 47:31
  you'll get little sprinklings every once in awhile of end.
• 47:35
  You know you'll learn things about individual characters
• 47:37
  every once in a while but it's kind of that idea of in like a
• 47:40
  war movie where each individual character is not so important as
• 47:46
  it is their entire Dynamic together.
• 47:49
  You'll learn little bits about each of them, but the thing that
• 47:53
  really matters is how they all work as a big group. and I have
• 47:58
  not played that game but I really want to because that
• 48:00
  premises super cool and I love the idea of having like three or
• 48:05
  four characters that I sort of moved between Yeah, I think it's
• 48:09
  under you and I spoke about the game a little bit.
• 48:11
  I think it is interesting. I like the idea personally of
• 48:14
  having like a sort of like a soft Loadout system right?
• 48:18
  Where they're like oh well we have to go in like we got to go
• 48:21
  in loud today so you know get my demolition guy, your ballistics
• 48:26
  expert. Yeah.
• 48:27
  And then the tunnel rat to start making saps to.
• 48:30
  We're just going to blow these fuckers to Kingdom.
• 48:32
  Come, You could also I think I think blades in the dark even
• 48:35
  mentions this somewhere in there.
• 48:38
  You could do the same thing in blades in the dark, right.
• 48:40
  Once you have a submission to play a second character, yeah,
• 48:44
  not even play a second character.
• 48:45
  Once you have a sufficient group of dudes, make the make Point
• 48:49
  characters in your gang, your second character, right?
• 48:52
  Like, if you remember, when we played one of you guys could
• 48:54
  have been like oh you know, you could have been like, oh, grants
• 48:58
  out of commission. I'm gonna play slice You know,
• 49:01
  and then you could play slices like a cutter God.
• 49:05
  I just be thinking about how bad I wanted Grant to trauma out at
• 49:12
  least once and it just never did.
• 49:14
  And I was just like why how come Sam Houston cute gets to keep
• 49:18
  troubling at? I want to have drama to.
• 49:20
  I think you I think you didn't, you didn't push your luck hard
• 49:23
  enough to get that trauma. I should have been more of an
• 49:26
  animal. I you forget, I use stress
• 49:29
  constantly. And I was constantly
• 49:32
  flashbacking and I think the problem is you didn't you didn't
• 49:35
  play, you gotta play risky. Hmm.
• 49:38
  Gotta play a little like intentionally dangerous so that
• 49:40
  you have to use resistance rolls a lot.
• 49:42
  That's like the big way to do it.
• 49:45
  Yeah, I guess that was rough right.
• 49:47
  Because I sort of anathema to the way Grant was built to be
• 49:49
  like a long-range. I don't particularly get in.
• 49:52
  Yeah, so yeah. It within my power though, I
• 49:56
  tried, I tried real hard trauma out in the game is just like,
• 50:01
  No, I don't, you did get unlucky or lucky depending on.
• 50:04
  Yeah, person Sam who got who rolled triple ones on a on the
• 50:10
  stealth skill that he was supposed to be super good at and
• 50:14
  we just sat there, like, your, let's see it in Emperor's.
• 50:17
  New Groove, when yzma and Kronk are like, wait, how did we get
• 50:20
  here first and drunks? Like, yeah, I don't know.
• 50:22
  Bye-bye, all mathematical accounts.
• 50:24
  It doesn't make any sense. They were that it was that
• 50:30
  right? I do, I do want to reel the
• 50:34
  fishing line in way back though. So I was because Isaiah was
• 50:39
  like, oh I always have not necessarily always but often for
• 50:45
  a lot of my NPC's, they have some sort of value to the
• 50:48
  players as sort of a mechanical piece of equipment, kind of
• 50:52
  thing. And I think the interesting
• 50:55
  thing there and I don't know if you were if this was a conscious
• 50:59
  thing you were mentioning or not.
• 51:00
  Isaiah. But Bye-bye, having having all
• 51:08
  of the NPC's tie back in as some sort of mechanical benefit.
• 51:14
  If we think about it in kind of a videogame e sense, like you
• 51:17
  rescue the blacksmith, you can upgrade your weapons, you rescue
• 51:21
  the medic you can heal it your base you know?
• 51:23
  Or if you think about it like Persona oh you increase your
• 51:27
  social link with the moon Persona you get more XP.
• 51:30
  You increase your social link with The the chick who play
• 51:33
  shogi, you get different battle, you know, you can get different
• 51:36
  Battle Tactics, you can use in fights.
• 51:39
  It's a good. It's a really that's a really
• 51:41
  easy way to make sure that any kind of branching side Ozarks
• 51:46
  always feed back into the main Arc.
• 51:48
  No matter what? Exactly, yes, because no matter
• 51:52
  how big or small, the individual Quest may seem be reward, is an
• 51:57
  NPC that has a very distinct value to the main focus of or to
• 52:03
  the party in some fashion. And you could even if you want
• 52:08
  base Your entire game around that premise.
• 52:12
  You can have your entire narrative be, you know, the dark
• 52:17
  King is going to come in a month once a month is up.
• 52:20
  The dark King is here your objective as characters.
• 52:23
  Get as many people as you possibly can to help you fight
• 52:27
  this dude. Before he shows up, because if
• 52:30
  you don't, you're just because if you get no one, you're
• 52:32
  guaranteed going to loose, you know, and then your whole story,
• 52:36
  your whole main Arc is going and doing different jobs for
• 52:39
  different people to get as much help as you Possibly can, and
• 52:42
  that's like, that's like a whole campaign premise, right there.
• 52:46
  And then the thing that's really fun about that is, if you're the
• 52:50
  kind of person where you feel like, oh, I get bored focusing
• 52:54
  on the same story, all the time that gives you a really good,
• 52:56
  excuse to come up with a whole bunch of sidequest stories, and
• 53:00
  just keep throwing them at your players, and changing the vibe
• 53:02
  up all the time, because it always feeds back into that main
• 53:06
  thing. The dark King is coming in a
• 53:07
  month. That's literally that was the
• 53:10
  entire first. Major arc of my game like the oh
• 53:13
  yeah, the Bandit is act, right? Yeah.
• 53:15
  So because it was literally like, you know, I said very
• 53:18
  early like once it became official, I made it very clear
• 53:21
  very early on. We are outnumbered and they are
• 53:25
  way more organized than we are. We are scattered guilds that
• 53:28
  like try to mediate each other so we don't end up with, you
• 53:32
  know, a post apocalypse World War for.
• 53:34
  Yeah, but they are a a organized collected band of psychopaths.
• 53:41
  Do not break. They do not need morale boosts,
• 53:44
  they are just insane. So the players going to like, oh
• 53:48
  well we need to go do this thing so we're going to go to the
• 53:51
  crazy Tron cyberpunk City to see if we can get some help there.
• 53:56
  Oh, you know we gotta we're going to try to rescue this
• 53:59
  dude's husband so and you'll be gotta fix the cryo machine.
• 54:02
  So let's go get that guy from Nexus and we'll bring him in and
• 54:05
  then you can go over to this place and go gambling for a
• 54:08
  little bit and that'll help us find paladins Dad like, That the
• 54:14
  ark was basically made of a million tiny sidequest that
• 54:17
  eventually coalesced into the Avengers.
• 54:20
  Endgame like our side versus theirs.
• 54:24
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 54:25
  That was that was 100% like that was the plan and I you know
• 54:32
  unfortunately I think I did Stretch things out a little too
• 54:34
  long because that are glass of her like yeah launch.
• 54:38
  That is like, that is the potential main problem.
• 54:43
  Yeah, I might head, I was like, mmm, 15 sessions maximum 80
• 54:48
  sessions later. Uh-oh.
• 54:54
  Yeah. I mean, I was like if I end this
• 54:56
  now, Some players would be missing their personal character
• 55:01
  stuff, but I'm kind of okay with that.
• 55:04
  But then I was like, no. I want to do that other stuff,
• 55:06
  too, because they're so you always tie them in.
• 55:08
  Yeah, yeah. That's that's basically what I
• 55:10
  did, right? It's like I was like, I if I
• 55:11
  wanted to I could be like I'm good but that I was like, oh
• 55:14
  wait there's other shit that I want to explore.
• 55:15
  I have some other interesting ideas.
• 55:16
  I want to throw up layers so I can.
• 55:18
  Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I was like so like yes,
• 55:20
  we're going to keep going hundred percent.
• 55:22
  Yeah, and the thing that's really good about that method.
• 55:25
  The the big Pro is Is you can kind of keep the vibe
• 55:31
  ever-changing. You know, one side quest is
• 55:35
  about delving into the undead crypt.
• 55:37
  Another side quest is about wandering into the forest to try
• 55:41
  and you know what? Sort of coerce or I can't.
• 55:47
  Wow my brain just shut down. Have peace talks with the FAE
• 55:50
  but what was the word I was looking for there?
• 55:53
  I don't know, I don't think coerce was the right course, was
• 55:55
  not the word I wanted. I don't know.
• 55:57
  Anyway, it doesn't matter on verse and verse, I don't know.
• 56:01
  No, it wasn't it Converse either.
• 56:02
  I was looking for a more political based word.
• 56:04
  But anyway, um, and then, you know, the next time, your Vibe
• 56:07
  could be 0. Go into this neighboring town
• 56:11
  and deal with the bad deal with the, like gang infestation
• 56:15
  problem. You can constantly keep the vibe
• 56:17
  going and changing and by doing so you as a GM, if you're the
• 56:22
  kind of GM, It gets bored from the vibe staying a certain way
• 56:25
  for too long. You could keep it interesting by
• 56:27
  just it's a new thing every week which is sort of the benefit of
• 56:32
  that monster of the week Style, Scooby-Doo type nonsense, you
• 56:37
  know, Scooby and the Gang are in Australia.
• 56:40
  Now Scooby, and the Gang are in Siberia.
• 56:42
  Now, Scooby in the be anger, in Russia now, they're in Africa
• 56:44
  and you're like, what the fuck? How do they get around?
• 56:47
  Just my question, but it's okay. We don't need to worry about
• 56:49
  that. I always this is not relevant
• 56:53
  but I always think about Scooby-Doo and the yowie yahoo.
• 56:58
  Yes, it's that little the best movies that movie.
• 57:00
  So imprinted on my brain, the weird Australian vampire, whose
• 57:04
  name. I just didn't believe.
• 57:05
  I thought they just made up some nonsense but the yowie yahoo is
• 57:08
  a thing. I don't I don't remember the
• 57:10
  number. They are you who know my Goblin
• 57:15
  looking thing, that was finding a picture.
• 57:17
  Look, I'm fine. Never saw that.
• 57:18
  But yeah, whoo. The only Scooby-Doo movies I've
• 57:21
  seen this was the original Zombie Island one.
• 57:24
  No, no anime an anime that's what I'm saying zombie.
• 57:28
  I was the animated one and then recently like last week, I saw a
• 57:32
  scoob - Scooby Doo knowledge is at like 5 percent.
• 57:37
  Oh Matt, you'll love this, dude. Hold on.
• 57:38
  All right, this is a detraction but this is important.
• 57:40
  That's gonna, you know, I never have asked a few people who's
• 57:45
  like, I know a little bit about Scooby-Doo, but I never got into
• 57:49
  it. I got into like the Them like I
• 57:51
  love. Hanna Barbera shit.
• 57:53
  Just we do wasn't the thing. I do.
• 57:57
  My buddies got me into the Hex Girls and I'm like, yeah, this
• 58:02
  is the movie, The Hex Girls come from.
• 58:04
  All right, I do know the that would they came from the, the
• 58:07
  which one did they? I don't think he forgets movie.
• 58:10
  No. No.
• 58:10
  They showed up in that will because they very specifically
• 58:13
  talking about like, oh, it's them again.
• 58:15
  Oh, that's right. But I know they show up in that
• 58:16
  movie. Yeah, yeah, yes I'll be doing
• 58:19
  the legends of him. Or good movie, love it.
• 58:23
  Yeah, just the yowie yahoo. If anyone wants to look this up.
• 58:26
  It's spelled exactly how you would think it's spelled y0.
• 58:29
  W. IE, y h8 y, aah.
• 58:33
  Oh, oh yeah, well Yahoo Anyway, what the, which caused the oh,
• 58:39
  yes. Could be doing The Witch's
• 58:39
  Ghost. That's where the Hex Girls came
• 58:41
  from. Yeah, it was a good movie
• 58:45
  anyway. That's okay.
• 58:46
  It's our work like that guys. Fucking died at the end of that
• 58:48
  movie, y'all ever that he literally got like pulled into
• 58:51
  it. All I got hell Dimension, he
• 58:53
  just fucking died. I got fucked.
• 58:57
  Valens die, I don't remember. Villains.
• 58:58
  Die, horrible would deaths and animated movies fucking great
• 59:04
  that time. What's-his-face got crushed by
• 59:07
  Diet wardrobe. And beauty of the beasts, like
• 59:09
  random. Good.
• 59:10
  Yeah, I'm here. Ah, skaar guy, eaten by lions,
• 59:13
  while by hyenas. While dying is burned to death.
• 59:17
  I think, my favorite one was Clayton.
• 59:18
  Getting hanged. Oh my God, that was rude.
• 59:24
  That's card daesh. Yeah, that's it.
• 59:26
  Was dark and Tarzan. Yell.
• 59:28
  I was like, wow. Yeah.
• 59:30
  And I kind of forgot about it. And I saw the like a clip of it
• 59:34
  again recently. And I was like, cool.
• 59:36
  Wait wait. Even worse the hat, like the
• 59:38
  fact that he got he hung himself accent or him splatting on the
• 59:42
  ground and games like I think I am.
• 59:45
  So if you think it was worse than him, like collapsing and
• 59:48
  crushing all of his bone know, I think to hangings were
• 59:51
  suspiciously showed the shadow of it.
• 59:54
  Well, that and like you could clearly see, right?
• 59:57
  If he like, cut it and fell like, oh she fell, but the fact
• 1:00:00
  that like he was thrashing so badly.
• 1:00:03
  He had it wrapped around his neck and even turn something we
• 1:00:05
  wouldn't know. There he goes.
• 1:00:07
  You know? Like yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Well, that was the point. Like if they did that and didn't
• 1:00:11
  wrap around his neck and then he just fell to his death, like,
• 1:00:15
  like that would have been just as bad because he still was
• 1:00:17
  Tarzan. Was like, no wait, stop not
• 1:00:18
  hanging. Yeah, the hanging Buckingham is
• 1:00:20
  our brutality to it. Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  It's just like yeah, you know what everyone else is saying.
• 1:00:27
  It's the way they did the shot too.
• 1:00:29
  Yeah, I think it's also like in Disney, we've seen a few on a
• 1:00:33
  liveing via gravity we ever seen a, dude.
• 1:00:36
  Be a hand. Like there's something that just
• 1:00:40
  breaks that mold. And when it happens you at, you
• 1:00:42
  know, me as like a six-year-old, which is my home.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah. Like like Gaston on a lives via
• 1:00:48
  gravity. Yeah, the guy from Hunchback of
• 1:00:51
  Notre Dame, he falls into a pit of lava.
• 1:00:54
  Don't that dude fuck. What is his name?
• 1:00:57
  The bishop or some shit. Something frollo, but all that
• 1:01:01
  is all I can fire is a banger. Video, where the guy's like,
• 1:01:08
  sir. There's a Gypsy Woman outside
• 1:01:09
  with no shoes on. He's just like, bring me her
• 1:01:14
  free. We're really.
• 1:01:16
  No, no, no. Anyway, none of the person on
• 1:01:19
  his editing. Wiki feet pics.
• 1:01:25
  It's not my joke. I stole it 100%.
• 1:01:27
  But gotta you guys are excited for the Hercules movie, where
• 1:01:31
  it's going to be based on Tick, Tock memes.
• 1:01:33
  God, I fucking hate the modern era.
• 1:01:35
  What did you just fucking say? Any who is no?
• 1:01:38
  Josh Dobbs? I don't know.
• 1:01:48
  Is going to be based on Tick-Tock musicals because
• 1:01:51
  according to the one of the Disney ABS you know that's how
• 1:01:54
  kids are learning about musicals nowadays through Tick-Tock.
• 1:01:57
  So why not just do the whole Hercules movie like that.
• 1:02:01
  Bring me the homicidal rage. Yep.
• 1:02:03
  Yep. It's like they're going to
• 1:02:05
  they're going to ruin that one. And also I heard they're going
• 1:02:08
  to be doing Lilo and Stitch soon and I'm like oh boy my
• 1:02:11
  favorites. Can't wait to see them ruin it.
• 1:02:16
  I thought I loved it. Hey man, say they ruin Lion.
• 1:02:20
  King is just like the same thing, like, fucking fast
• 1:02:23
  forward. My brain.
• 1:02:24
  Just wait, what are you just play this?
• 1:02:25
  I like to top the live-action line control live-action.
• 1:02:28
  Sorry the 3D animated one because it's definitely not live
• 1:02:32
  action, but it's like what if we read this movie on like times
• 1:02:36
  for Speed? He took the red one.
• 1:02:46
  Sorry, I have an opinion, but I'm kind of a hypocrite, because
• 1:03:07
  I do get stuck on YouTube shorts.
• 1:03:09
  But like, there's a difference. Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  It's a different there is yes that is a time difference.
• 1:03:14
  Like you can get into this right now because it's domini
• 1:03:16
  relevant. But there's a difference anyway.
• 1:03:19
  Are we good? Are we good now?
• 1:03:20
  Can we move on with our lives? Maybe, maybe it's good because I
• 1:03:25
  don't remember the funds are talking about prior to this.
• 1:03:29
  This is the, can you be serious for a minute?
• 1:03:30
  30 seconds best I got. It's like, I have to kill you
• 1:03:34
  stop being stupid. It's like I can keep going, but
• 1:03:36
  I'll let you continue to do. Exactly what is that?
• 1:03:39
  Do you remember? What the hell we were talking
• 1:03:40
  about main store? Our In Branch branches, besides
• 1:03:44
  really what we're talking about specifically before we were
• 1:03:47
  fighting right now. Do we damn it?
• 1:03:50
  Well, I know like one of the things you were saying talking
• 1:03:52
  about the payoff and then we went through all the APC stuff
• 1:03:55
  and that's like, I mean, I guess when it comes to side stuff,
• 1:04:00
  like me, like me and I say were, but you like, the, the arcs like
• 1:04:03
  you have the main story arc, and then you have side arcs inside
• 1:04:06
  Arch, that's where like, you have character arcs where it's
• 1:04:09
  like, hey guys, can we go find my lost dad?
• 1:04:11
  Now, A just we just built a beat like you know I don't know, one
• 1:04:15
  of the one of the eight demon Lords.
• 1:04:17
  We got to beat we like take a break for a minute so I can go
• 1:04:20
  find my long-lost dad. Yeah.
• 1:04:22
  Sure why not? You know, I can do stuff like
• 1:04:24
  that. Or yeah.
• 1:04:25
  It's like let's get into that one because I, you know,
• 1:04:32
  conflicted feelings about the what to call it be the character
• 1:04:39
  backstory specific. Branching Arc, you know.
• 1:04:44
  Yeah. Because You know, it's one of
• 1:04:48
  those things players come up with a back story and most
• 1:04:52
  likely players want the backstory to come to fruition in
• 1:04:55
  some way or another. And the best way to do it often
• 1:05:00
  is tying your characters or your players Back stories into the
• 1:05:06
  main quest. Basically guarantees, you're
• 1:05:08
  going to get something out of it.
• 1:05:11
  But sometimes it doesn't always work and sometimes you end up in
• 1:05:13
  this situation where you kind of have to go and do like something
• 1:05:19
  that's, I don't want to call it a side thing, but something
• 1:05:21
  that's not as relevant in order to sort of satiate that
• 1:05:25
  character's desire for that thing.
• 1:05:28
  And I don't know, I'm really conflicted about the character
• 1:05:32
  backstory specific sidequest because on one hand, that is
• 1:05:38
  often where you get the most out of a player character, in terms
• 1:05:44
  of who they are, but on the other hand, a lot of the time,
• 1:05:54
  it can feel like a really awkward derailment.
• 1:05:59
  And I don't know how to reconcile it because also, by
• 1:06:04
  the way, I just realized I sent those pictures of the wrong
• 1:06:05
  chat. Matt, there's the pictures.
• 1:06:07
  I was trying to send. I said that vampires.
• 1:06:11
  It's the big blue guy in the background and he just looks
• 1:06:13
  like a vampire. Yeah.
• 1:06:14
  But he's a big buff. Cool vampire.
• 1:06:16
  He's the yowie yahoo and you put respect on his name.
• 1:06:19
  I don't know. He looks like a giant blue
• 1:06:21
  goblin vampire. He looks like he looks like a
• 1:06:25
  wife from gargoyles. No.
• 1:06:26
  No, he's oh no. I goofed.
• 1:06:28
  No. No.
• 1:06:28
  He's what? It's from Fantasia.
• 1:06:30
  Oh, yeah, I guess. Anyway, point being true.
• 1:06:36
  Nobody turn a ball, lack. I like her.
• 1:06:40
  I see a Funko Pop of chernabog at my job.
• 1:06:42
  He's do deleting looking well, that's the thing Lieutenant.
• 1:06:45
  Do you like the big ones are easy?
• 1:06:46
  Like a small one. He's a normal sized one.
• 1:06:49
  Anyway. Not relevant right now.
• 1:06:52
  So yeah, the the, the the player backstory sidequest scenario.
• 1:06:58
  I don't know. Like a good example.
• 1:07:01
  Mmm. All right, this is gonna sound
• 1:07:05
  like I'm shitting on. Okay, we had the critical role
• 1:07:09
  we had the episode where we talked about Percy and grog
• 1:07:12
  already. Those mean, Isaiah, this is
• 1:07:15
  gonna sound like I'm shitting on Grog again.
• 1:07:17
  I don't mean to, it's just a good example.
• 1:07:18
  Alright, what is Travis Willingham done to you?
• 1:07:20
  Nothing. I like Travis the difference,
• 1:07:22
  right? But the difference is the way
• 1:07:26
  Percy's backstory when and the way grogs backstory with her
• 1:07:31
  sees was integrated with the whole main plot.
• 1:07:35
  So it felt really cool. And the payoff is really big and
• 1:07:37
  we got a lot of the character frogs back story with his uncle
• 1:07:41
  was pretty brief and felt like kind of a weird like non-canon
• 1:07:46
  anime filler episode. You know early.
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, I really didn't like that part of critical role and I end
• 1:07:55
  it was it felt very forgetful also.
• 1:07:57
  Like I don't really like that, much about it.
• 1:08:00
  Well, thanks guys are just as hell wasn't.
• 1:08:03
  I was just so so it's actually funny.
• 1:08:04
  I actually really liked the calves Dak bit because that
• 1:08:07
  actually felt more natural to me than the Percy thing.
• 1:08:12
  Because it's that thing, right? Where Grog was pretty acutely
• 1:08:16
  aware of the Titan, Stone Knuckles.
• 1:08:19
  And it wasn't that thing where it's like, guys, we have to go
• 1:08:21
  do this thing and they're like, oh God, we need like, we're
• 1:08:24
  these crazy special magic items and gragas like big fuck.
• 1:08:28
  I know where those are. I like where it's like, I'm a
• 1:08:31
  fucking uncle. Has one of them?
• 1:08:32
  It's that the right? It's like, it felt One felt
• 1:08:37
  like, oh yes, this is like, this fits for ad&d story.
• 1:08:41
  The other one fit for more of like a, this random sample.
• 1:08:46
  No, just like, like Being like, Oh God.
• 1:08:50
  It's like the I know how to get into the building.
• 1:08:52
  How I gotta talk to my ex, you know what I mean?
• 1:08:55
  It's that. Yeah, it's a, I felt more
• 1:08:56
  relatable to me. Wait.
• 1:08:59
  You're saying crowd felt more? Relatable.
• 1:09:02
  Yes. We both were again.
• 1:09:04
  They're kind of two different store like grogs backstory that
• 1:09:07
  the very little back story that I know of is basically done.
• 1:09:11
  Like he complete it like it's it done.
• 1:09:14
  He met Pike all that shit happened and now they're best
• 1:09:17
  buddies. That was it.
• 1:09:18
  Percy's backstory like it was still like unfinished, like his
• 1:09:24
  whole deal was like I have to kill the people that killed my
• 1:09:26
  family Grog told deal like Grog never had a thing where he's
• 1:09:29
  like, you know what? If you know he's like I have to
• 1:09:33
  go kill. Kev back, I have to go kill my
• 1:09:35
  uncle. Fuck that guy in particular.
• 1:09:37
  No, I didn't. I didn't really like a kurta.
• 1:09:41
  Grog until it was like, oh, he's now an obstacle in my way neat.
• 1:09:45
  I can, finally, I can take him down but it was.
• 1:09:48
  Never a thing where Grog was going to go after that are see.
• 1:09:51
  That was his whole character that was his old thing of.
• 1:09:54
  I have to get revenge. I have to go after the people
• 1:09:57
  that killed my family. I have to get my home back.
• 1:09:59
  So it's kind of hard to like judge the to when one is
• 1:10:06
  relatively very simple but it was over technically it with
• 1:10:11
  this was done. Yeah but see that's the thing.
• 1:10:13
  That's why I that's why grogs felt less The impact was lasted
• 1:10:18
  felt, I felt less invested, I felt less interested in it
• 1:10:21
  because it was just when it came up, frog was kind of like, oh I
• 1:10:26
  guess we should go do that. Yeah, as opposed to Percy being
• 1:10:29
  kind of driven and write the way you like a whole like 20
• 1:10:33
  episodes that grogs started and ended felt kind of abrupt Sort
• 1:10:43
  of happened. I was like, okay, absolutely.
• 1:10:46
  I think I should specify. I personally I like Percy's Arc
• 1:10:48
  more. I think the bride word are
• 1:10:51
  probably still my favorite batch of episodes in CR, but I grogs
• 1:10:56
  just felt relatable, right? It's it was it was quick dirty
• 1:11:00
  and you know it did feel a little unsatisfying right?
• 1:11:03
  Like they killed Kem deck and then they just fucked off and
• 1:11:06
  did the next thing. Yeah, but there was a certain
• 1:11:08
  level of like Unapologetic realism in that, right?
• 1:11:12
  Right. Like you know if you're doing
• 1:11:14
  the X thing it's like oh God we got to talk to my ex you show
• 1:11:17
  up, you talk to them, you get the information you need, it's
• 1:11:19
  really awkward. And then you leave feeling kind
• 1:11:21
  of unsatisfied and more emotionally exhausted than when
• 1:11:24
  you got there, there's, you know, there's like a level of
• 1:11:27
  like, oh, that's a mood bud. You know what I mean?
• 1:11:30
  And the he have that thing was technically, that was like, that
• 1:11:33
  was part of a, like, a bigger questline like their main quest
• 1:11:37
  was. All right, we have to kill the
• 1:11:39
  dragon. How do we kill the dragon?
• 1:11:40
  Oh, we gotta find the items. Okay, how do we find?
• 1:11:42
  The items o. We gotta go to this town, where
• 1:11:44
  one of the guys who happens to be your uncle has one of the
• 1:11:46
  items. Right?
• 1:11:47
  And it's like, oh well. Okay, so it's just working
• 1:11:50
  backwards from like the objective.
• 1:11:53
  Yeah, and that's true. I did.
• 1:11:54
  I did forget that it did have some relevance to the main plot
• 1:11:57
  via the getting the knuckles. Yeah, I think really the next
• 1:12:01
  episode. They made that big trap in the
• 1:12:04
  town to fight the black dragon. Yeah but it just in terms of
• 1:12:10
  Like I get what you're saying is a in that one feels a little,
• 1:12:14
  like I don't more believable in a weird way.
• 1:12:17
  But yes, in terms of for my game I'm running.
• 1:12:25
  If I were running the game, I would feel not great about the
• 1:12:31
  Grog scenario and good about the Percy scenario.
• 1:12:35
  And because of the conflicting feelings on those two things, I
• 1:12:40
  am a Inflicted about just that whole like subset of of I don't
• 1:12:49
  like subset of narrative in your games in games where we have to
• 1:12:54
  go. Do my characters backstory now
• 1:12:57
  or the dri or more specifically, I as a GM when I get into that
• 1:13:01
  mental space of like, oh, I have to pay attention to this
• 1:13:03
  character's backstory. Now, even though I wasn't really
• 1:13:05
  thinking about it, I didn't really have a good plan but it's
• 1:13:09
  been a while so I feel like I should.
• 1:13:12
  Okay. How do I integrate this?
• 1:13:13
  Can I make this feel satisfying or is it just going to feel like
• 1:13:16
  a shitty sidequest that nobody cares about and when I say
• 1:13:19
  sidequest I do meet it in like a semi demeaning way and that and
• 1:13:22
  this time right? Because if you don't make it
• 1:13:24
  good then it feels like just also I would cost.
• 1:13:28
  Yeah I have a hard time with those and I'm trying to think if
• 1:13:31
  I've even had A successful example, I mean, I can throw out
• 1:13:39
  a couple random examples. Like, I last campaign, I had a
• 1:13:43
  character, whose their whole deal was like, Hey, I come from
• 1:13:47
  like a somewhat Assassin's Guild and we live on this bike, winter
• 1:13:52
  Island. So the players went there and
• 1:13:54
  they went to the island. It was like a three session
• 1:13:56
  thing in this campus trick saving campaign ever player
• 1:14:01
  who's like, hey, in my You know, ancestor be a general and I have
• 1:14:06
  to go find his magic item that is lost and it can be somewhere
• 1:14:09
  in the Mad Mage dungeon. No problem.
• 1:14:13
  Like if you can integrate magic items, sometimes the characters
• 1:14:16
  you can degrade like locations and PCs you awake.
• 1:14:20
  What if the one of the bad guys happens to be like, although
• 1:14:23
  connected to the character somehow I go, you are my father,
• 1:14:25
  you know, like that. All right.
• 1:14:31
  But wait was that has that? Are you saying that was an
• 1:14:34
  example? You ran.
• 1:14:37
  He are the things I mentioned. Yeah, I mean that was all very
• 1:14:41
  brief. So I do okay.
• 1:14:45
  I was expecting you go a little more detail there.
• 1:14:46
  But all right I guess I mean well I'm just trying to just
• 1:14:49
  list off a couple things because like it all boils down to like
• 1:14:53
  yeah make supporting characters that you can tie into you know
• 1:14:58
  your players every time magic items you know they go to either
• 1:15:02
  grow in power with the characters like Joe he is old
• 1:15:07
  deal is he has a magic item that's going to level up with
• 1:15:10
  him and it's tied to his backstory Like the other one I
• 1:15:15
  named. Is that what I named?
• 1:15:17
  I think so, yeah. Oh no, that's not the one now.
• 1:15:23
  I'm sorry. Yeah, I do don't.
• 1:15:25
  I don't want to say it. Don't say it.
• 1:15:27
  Yeah, I know Joe's the, he's doing Wukong.
• 1:15:30
  He's doing the, the mold conquered that Montes?
• 1:15:32
  That's right. That's right now, he's got the
• 1:15:34
  monkey staff and that's going to evolve with him as he loves up.
• 1:15:37
  And the game, does story stuff and the yeah.
• 1:15:42
  Like, I think magic items, like tying them, the players are, you
• 1:15:46
  know, either it's like, oh, I have to locate this loss Relic,
• 1:15:48
  or, oh, this magic item powers Up with me it's like no big
• 1:15:51
  items grow with carrying game. That's a pretty good example.
• 1:15:54
  Feels kind of myth why I just I just in terms of Giving
• 1:16:01
  attention to a character's backstory.
• 1:16:03
  That feels kind of but it works. Yeah.
• 1:16:06
  But I want it to be a little more impactful I want it.
• 1:16:09
  That's why I like it in tied to the characters growth.
• 1:16:13
  I was on that more impactful than that, it's just like oh
• 1:16:15
  here's this magic weapon. You found that also grows with
• 1:16:17
  you is like not narratively, that's very whatever.
• 1:16:21
  I don't know that is. Op.
• 1:16:22
  Is that super narrative? We did the same thing with me.
• 1:16:30
  With Cyrus and his crazy magic Greatsword.
• 1:16:32
  That his dad in it, like it was a cool item that leveled up with
• 1:16:35
  him, but it became like incredibly plot relevant when
• 1:16:39
  the character was going to take lethal damage and it like
• 1:16:42
  blocked the attack. It's not was like a really good
• 1:16:45
  like a very memorable moment that I even today I'm like oh
• 1:16:49
  that's fucking awesome but it's not a quest.
• 1:16:53
  Or an arc specifically focusing on your character.
• 1:16:59
  Like it's not all your candy scenario which is really what
• 1:17:02
  happened like about. Yeah I mean well if you have it
• 1:17:05
  if it's like the loss Relic or let's say you have like a broken
• 1:17:09
  sword handle and I have to rebuild it, you know, this is
• 1:17:12
  my, you know, great ancestors or whatever and you go on the main
• 1:17:16
  quest and you just happen to find pieces here and there,
• 1:17:18
  that's a static Quest. Does a side character art Quest
• 1:17:22
  that has happened? Alongside the main quest.
• 1:17:27
  Yeah. But this is what I mean about me
• 1:17:30
  feeling conflicted because if I were a player and I had some
• 1:17:35
  like weapon tied to my backstory and whatever sense.
• 1:17:39
  And then you know part of the main story, we acquire the piece
• 1:17:45
  to the weapon like cool. Now my the weapon that's like
• 1:17:49
  related to my backstory as relevant now because I can use
• 1:17:51
  it or whatever I would I feel a little disappointed though if
• 1:17:55
  because I want my backstory to be like this is what I mean
• 1:18:02
  about being conflicted because as a player I kind of want my
• 1:18:04
  backstory to become a central like I want to be the main
• 1:18:09
  character for a little bit. I want to be the Percy for a
• 1:18:14
  period of time and then once that's over I'm good.
• 1:18:17
  But then as I'm thinking about it, on the GM side of things.
• 1:18:22
  If you want to make your character, the main character
• 1:18:25
  for a while, there's a good chance you have to kind of
• 1:18:28
  ignore or skirt around or change what you were doing originally.
• 1:18:35
  Yeah, because it's impossible. Not impossible.
• 1:18:39
  It's very difficult to integrate.
• 1:18:42
  Every characters backstory into the main now.
• 1:18:45
  Got ya, know, not everything, you start out small, it's and
• 1:18:49
  then like, taking elements. Less.
• 1:18:52
  I mean, even if you're just hate like, just in general, taking
• 1:18:55
  for disparate characters and trying to get all of them worked
• 1:18:58
  in is really, really hard. So the next best option is,
• 1:19:04
  okay. Well, we'll focus on them one at
• 1:19:07
  a time at different parts. But then again, you get into the
• 1:19:12
  situation, this is Jim where you like but I don't care as much
• 1:19:16
  about that. I care more about my main thing
• 1:19:20
  that I'm trying to have the players go through.
• 1:19:23
  And then this is where I come in and say this is a novel.
• 1:19:26
  This is a DND Adventure, I'm not talking about argue.
• 1:19:29
  That was no this isn't this isn't, this isn't me poking at
• 1:19:32
  you in general. This is just a generalized like
• 1:19:34
  because there are so many Dean D.
• 1:19:36
  Subreddit like Green Tech stories about this shit and it's
• 1:19:40
  Like DM's who don't integrate player back story at all in
• 1:19:44
  their campaigns and they're just running through the DM Zone
• 1:19:47
  story and it's like, you got to do a little bit, a little bit,
• 1:19:50
  even if it's like, small nuggets, an NPC or some lore,
• 1:19:56
  they hear. Like if a character is playing
• 1:19:58
  like a Dragonborn Dragonborn or special in your setting for some
• 1:20:01
  reason and they find out something that I like oh turns
• 1:20:04
  out Dragonborn are connected to fuck I just you know fuck
• 1:20:08
  always. I'm up.
• 1:20:10
  Oh, he's always there if I come up with the Bahama and Baphomet,
• 1:20:15
  you know, it's like oh well, Baja Med is like important to
• 1:20:18
  the world. They learned like a little bit
• 1:20:19
  about the hugest. I did it again.
• 1:20:21
  I did it again. Fuck Muhammad.
• 1:20:24
  Ya Muhammad. Yeah.
• 1:20:25
  That's the other good bottle Muto.
• 1:20:27
  Yeah. Like wait.
• 1:20:29
  Baphomet and bombardment Steve one.
• 1:20:32
  They're not related. No I know.
• 1:20:34
  But I always fuck up the names because they sound somewhere.
• 1:20:38
  Interesting. I've never I've never had that
• 1:20:39
  but that's interesting. Okay.
• 1:20:41
  Oh yeah. I remember I bet we'd be and me
• 1:20:45
  and Josh come from Final Fantasy.
• 1:20:47
  So true, Big Daddy. Bahama is a it's hard to fuck
• 1:20:50
  down, huh? Laughing bitch. but yeah, now a
• 1:20:55
  little bit like if you don't do it at all, like, I'm not, I can
• 1:21:02
  see as no. No, I gotta stop here.
• 1:21:04
  I'm not talking about driving my players, down the single
• 1:21:08
  Railroad and only doing what I want.
• 1:21:10
  That's not what I'm saying. And I'm so I'm feeling a little
• 1:21:13
  accused here. Well, no, I'm not, no, because I
• 1:21:16
  lie. If I was gonna say that I would
• 1:21:18
  have, but I'm not saying that I'm not said pointing at you.
• 1:21:21
  And being, like your railroading, the players down
• 1:21:23
  your triple character other dimension.
• 1:21:27
  Now, I'm not saying that like the point I'm getting At is in a
• 1:21:34
  linear game, which I guess I should have said earlier on, but
• 1:21:38
  obviously all of this, this entire thing is predicated on
• 1:21:42
  the Assumption. You're running a linear game is
• 1:21:44
  if you're running a more sandboxie game than a lot of
• 1:21:46
  this is sort of takes care of itself, by nature of just how, a
• 1:21:50
  more sandbox game goes. But when you're running a linear
• 1:21:55
  game you have kind of a point A to point B that you want your
• 1:21:57
  players to eventually get to. And if you're running a linear
• 1:22:00
  game presumably they want you to leave them down that path
• 1:22:05
  because often players want you to tell them what to do as much
• 1:22:10
  as people love to say that they don't a lot of time players
• 1:22:13
  actually do want you to tell them what to do because
• 1:22:16
  otherwise they don't they just faff about doing nothing and
• 1:22:19
  they say there. What's that?
• 1:22:20
  They'll sit in the sandbox while waiting for the I rode like
• 1:22:23
  yeah. And so what I'm saying is I have
• 1:22:31
  the linear thing that I'm sort of presenting to the play.
• 1:22:34
  I have the main Arc that I'm presenting to the players and
• 1:22:38
  then they want to have their back story arcs.
• 1:22:44
  But I'm always conflicted on whether I really want to give
• 1:22:47
  that a lot of time or not, or if it's even really worth going
• 1:22:51
  down or, you know, and also some players care more than others.
• 1:22:56
  Like some players will make a backstory and be like, I don't
• 1:22:59
  really want want or care if this does or does not come up.
• 1:23:05
  I'm not like, Point is I don't have a firm answer and I've
• 1:23:10
  never done it successfully. I don't think that I can
• 1:23:14
  remember. I've never had a, I've never had
• 1:23:17
  a Percy situation that I can think of.
• 1:23:21
  I mean I think that the whole thing with row getting his
• 1:23:23
  lightsaber worked really well. I like that a lot.
• 1:23:27
  It wasn't particularly long but I thought that was awesome.
• 1:23:34
  It's all right. Wait to you.
• 1:23:36
  I thought I was completely satisfied.
• 1:23:38
  Personally, as a player Tech, that one was a little phoned in.
• 1:23:44
  Maybe you saw it that way. I thought was cool well because
• 1:23:46
  I didn't I didn't I didn't plan that one ahead of time very
• 1:23:50
  well. I kind of planted the seed on
• 1:23:53
  the Fly and if I had planned it ahead of time better, it would
• 1:23:58
  have Worked out smoother. But you know, it happened
• 1:24:08
  eventually. I don't know.
• 1:24:09
  I kind of I find that a certain level of like, AB hoc, we'll
• 1:24:15
  figure it out as we going. And I expect it.
• 1:24:20
  I don't I feel like if there are no wrenches in the plan for the
• 1:24:27
  backstory stuff, it just sort of feels like.
• 1:24:30
  Yeah. It just feels kind of like
• 1:24:31
  filler. You know what I mean?
• 1:24:32
  Like, you can if the players can be like, okay, never going to
• 1:24:35
  hit this. a certain level of Randomness or things just going
• 1:24:41
  awry I think is good and it like it's sort of enhances the see
• 1:24:47
  the situation for me at least and players.
• 1:24:50
  A lot of faffing about like why are you laughing?
• 1:24:53
  They love. That is one of my players
• 1:24:56
  recently told me he's just like Matt.
• 1:24:58
  Why did I'm like bam? The three and a half, your game.
• 1:25:01
  Took a long time. He's like yeah, we were faffing
• 1:25:03
  about a lot though. It was fun.
• 1:25:05
  I'm lucky. As far as the like, is it worth
• 1:25:09
  it goes? I don't think I'm a very good
• 1:25:13
  case study for this because I'm sort of the If my players are
• 1:25:17
  having fun, I sort of I have fun by proxy because I like my
• 1:25:21
  players having a good time. Even if they are characters are
• 1:25:23
  having a doleful time. As long as there is enjoying the
• 1:25:26
  situation as a whole. I I find it.
• 1:25:30
  It's easier for me to play into it and improv and bounce off
• 1:25:33
  ideas. If I feel the same level of
• 1:25:36
  enthusiasm, there's times when I'm doing my own plot stuff,
• 1:25:39
  where I feel like you know, the players feel like okay once we
• 1:25:44
  finish this plot stuff by here, His backstory stuff will kick in
• 1:25:47
  and then I can do that. And then that all, you know, is
• 1:25:49
  sometimes I feel almost like at a loss because I'm like, well, I
• 1:25:54
  know that they do seem excited to do the stuff they're doing,
• 1:25:58
  but there's like a, there's like a spark that's missing, you
• 1:26:02
  know, Yeah, II. Think the The primary problem
• 1:26:12
  here is that the answer is just on a case-by-case basis.
• 1:26:16
  Just why it annoys me because I don't have a good answer that I
• 1:26:19
  can apply on a broader scale. so yeah, you always run into Little
• 1:26:32
  snafus Yeah, you do it but I think if it was a clear-cut
• 1:26:39
  every time I feel like it would be less fulfilling right, like a
• 1:26:44
  good one of the joys of running a game is sort of figuring out
• 1:26:48
  what your players, find important, what they enjoy more
• 1:26:51
  than other things, you know? Well, you guys remember the, you
• 1:26:55
  know, the the great joke story and usually started off as
• 1:26:59
  being. All right, we're going to do the
• 1:27:01
  Shadow Monks backstory stuff now and then it just got Not so
• 1:27:06
  derailed and we never went back shit happens.
• 1:27:11
  Yeah I don't I don't mean I don't mean I would I want to
• 1:27:15
  have an answer that I can apply to just constantly apply but I
• 1:27:18
  would I like to have broad rule sets that I can use.
• 1:27:24
  To a lot of things. And this is not something that I
• 1:27:28
  have found a broad rule set, that won't work for me, at
• 1:27:31
  least, not yet. I may find one in the and I
• 1:27:35
  think it also just annoys me because I fucked it up.
• 1:27:38
  And or not done it multiple times, it's quite the sticking
• 1:27:43
  point more than anything, which is kind of why I was thinking
• 1:27:47
  about it in the, in what happened in our most recent
• 1:27:51
  session is because it's been a sticking point for me for so
• 1:27:55
  long. So that I thought about and I
• 1:27:58
  still go, I'm still even now going back and forth on if I
• 1:28:02
  handled it in the correct way or not.
• 1:28:05
  You have any example of beside Rose thing of like backstory
• 1:28:08
  stuff that you feel like you maybe could have pushed more or
• 1:28:12
  something. That you feel may be bad for not
• 1:28:17
  for not pursuing. Yeah the entirety of our current
• 1:28:20
  campaign. The whole day ever like a whole
• 1:28:24
  thing. Well, I mean is like the whole
• 1:28:26
  thing's gone on and I haven't really utilized backstory many
• 1:28:32
  your characters. You always start now?
• 1:28:36
  I mean I can but it's a little late.
• 1:28:40
  Oh no. It'sit's do it.
• 1:28:41
  It's never too late. No, it's a little late Matt
• 1:28:43
  because I'm not running this game.
• 1:28:44
  Much longer. Oh, because I don't have the
• 1:28:50
  energy to don't like I'm trying. I am on the course of wrapping
• 1:28:54
  things up. I mean you could always hammer
• 1:28:58
  it in like yeah. Like I'll feel like a real quick
• 1:29:02
  job. It's and that's just fist that
• 1:29:05
  just feels also watching this is the fuck this is the one thing I
• 1:29:07
  forgot to mention the beginning. I want to mention the biggest
• 1:29:11
  thing when it comes to these type of deal like integrating
• 1:29:14
  like player backstories and the story, the story arcs backs,
• 1:29:18
  whatever you work with the player or the player works with
• 1:29:23
  you, like talk to the player, get ideas from the Player y'all
• 1:29:26
  they'll give don't give you what, like cool ideas.
• 1:29:30
  They'll give you what they want, what?
• 1:29:31
  But you shouldn't probably do like vent from them their
• 1:29:36
  desire, not only the players. They are probably the best pool
• 1:29:39
  of ideas. You can grab besides your own
• 1:29:42
  mad imagination that. Yeah, that and that applies.
• 1:29:46
  Well early on it's a little tricky for me to do that now
• 1:29:51
  because The Funnel of events is shrinking down quite drastically
• 1:29:57
  and it's getting excited because it's like that thing.
• 1:29:59
  Where once the tension ranked Those are trying to say their
• 1:30:05
  Branch detention ratcheted up to a certain point.
• 1:30:09
  It's like that open world game thing where oh we're on the
• 1:30:13
  final quest. We're gonna go kill the bad guy
• 1:30:15
  step through the portal and end the game and then you as the
• 1:30:18
  player go, hold on. I'm gonna go do a bunch of
• 1:30:20
  sidequest first. I know the world is going to end
• 1:30:22
  in five minutes but I really want to do the side quest for
• 1:30:24
  the next five minutes, I'm just gonna do those, okay?
• 1:30:27
  Are you can do that, a lot of anime do that shit to where it's
• 1:30:30
  like? All right guys we're about to go
• 1:30:31
  fight, Smokin wrong. The shadow dragon of death, but
• 1:30:35
  first let me go. Tell the, let me go tell that
• 1:30:37
  girl. I've been hitting on the entire
• 1:30:39
  show about my actual feelings. We get it.
• 1:30:40
  You are like, you could do that for like the second to last
• 1:30:43
  thing before the big house. I'm kind of a badass.
• 1:30:46
  That's kind of a small example, though.
• 1:30:47
  Like trying to be like, hey, let's explore my entire back
• 1:30:50
  story. Now, in the last two sessions
• 1:30:54
  you can also do it epilogue style, right?
• 1:30:56
  Like once the main point ends, the players can like, now that
• 1:30:59
  we don't have the end of the world, over our heads, we can
• 1:31:02
  have the time to like, okay, you can do Things epilogue, that's
• 1:31:04
  true. Yeah, that's good idea.
• 1:31:07
  I think especially in your situation where you feel like
• 1:31:09
  you're running up against a clock, that belongs to the way
• 1:31:12
  to go because you've literally thrown off all restrictions you
• 1:31:15
  view. This is your this is just sort
• 1:31:16
  of the Victory lap, you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:19
  Like like I'll give you exact. Like I wish one of my players in
• 1:31:24
  the 30 game in his back story, he wrote that his parents were
• 1:31:28
  killed by a kraken. And for the longest time I've
• 1:31:31
  had like I had the map Prepare the encounter prepared
• 1:31:35
  everything of the players going and fighting cracking and then
• 1:31:38
  it never fucking happened throughout the entire campaign.
• 1:31:42
  And that is one of the biggest, like, big regrets that I'm like,
• 1:31:45
  fuck. Because it never like it was
• 1:31:47
  never a good time. It was never a right moment.
• 1:31:50
  During downtime stuff, players had other shit to do and
• 1:31:54
  eventually it just never came up and it was always like a big
• 1:31:57
  thing that I regret never doing and to make up for it.
• 1:32:01
  I ended up just having the player.
• 1:32:03
  I meet their grandparent and be like, oh, I, you know, your
• 1:32:07
  parents were killed and like at least have some sort of, like,
• 1:32:11
  family connected thing, but they never got over the Kraken and
• 1:32:14
  I'm like, fuck. Yeah.
• 1:32:15
  That feels like, yeah. Well, the thing too is, like, if
• 1:32:17
  I was a player and you were like, yeah, well, you just talk
• 1:32:23
  to your grandpa real quick. I would feel a little like, hey,
• 1:32:26
  I almost wish I from my perspective, I would be like I
• 1:32:29
  almost wish I didn't do anything.
• 1:32:31
  Is it feels I don't know like doing something really my new.
• 1:32:36
  My brain is almost like and just don't do anything that point,
• 1:32:40
  but that's just that's me. And I'm probably other people
• 1:32:43
  wouldn't necessarily agree with that and yeah, those are all
• 1:32:48
  options. I'm just saying in response to
• 1:32:51
  Isaiah's question like yeah, I think the current campaign I
• 1:32:56
  could have utilized that way more and just sort of, didn't
• 1:33:01
  it? Cuz I just had ideas.
• 1:33:06
  Rolling in as things went on. And now it's kind of at the
• 1:33:09
  point where I'm like, well might as well rounded up. oh, like I
• 1:33:19
  said, I have no, I have no good examples that I can think of
• 1:33:30
  Yeah. Oh, what happened with the sword
• 1:33:32
  thing? Like the lightsaber like that
• 1:33:33
  one. I remember you.
• 1:33:34
  I think you guys have mentioned that on the campaign and well do
• 1:33:38
  know like how Isaiah's character got the lightsaber.
• 1:33:42
  Oh, he went to the planet ilum and found found the other half
• 1:33:46
  of a crystal to sort of complete his sword and ilum is the planet
• 1:33:51
  that in episode 7, the first order turned into the circular
• 1:33:57
  base star. Lower base.
• 1:33:58
  Yeah. Oh shit.
• 1:33:59
  LM is that planet? So they went there to complete
• 1:34:03
  the sabre because that's one of the that's Elam is the planet in
• 1:34:06
  old Star Wars. Actually I think this is still
• 1:34:08
  the case in like Star Wars lore, ilum is the planet where all the
• 1:34:11
  lightsaber crystals come from, or the majority of them come
• 1:34:14
  from. Yeah, so I had him.
• 1:34:16
  Go back there. Found a temple.
• 1:34:18
  Get the crystal bubble ball as well as discover.
• 1:34:21
  Basically, the players ran into the first order and they're
• 1:34:24
  beginning stages of building Starkiller base.
• 1:34:29
  Because Mike, the campaign was taking place between 6:00 and
• 1:34:31
  7:00. Hey, the problem was that the
• 1:34:36
  way the way I push them towards that objective felt kind of ham
• 1:34:43
  like shoehorned in like Isaiah's character, found the other, like
• 1:34:47
  a path of the Crystal and then use that as sort of a navigation
• 1:34:51
  tool. He found any kind of random
• 1:34:52
  place though and use that as a navigation tool to find the
• 1:34:55
  other half. My man, so it's just felt a
• 1:34:57
  little it And if I had thought about it more like after we'd
• 1:35:04
  after that camp, after we stopped playing, I had thought
• 1:35:08
  like, I had more ideas afterward that I was like, oh, this would
• 1:35:13
  have been a better way to do it. That would have been a better
• 1:35:15
  way of doing that. Would have been like, I had way
• 1:35:17
  a whole bunch of ideas of like better ways to implement that.
• 1:35:20
  I don't know why. At the moment, just nothing came
• 1:35:23
  to me. And I just kind of threw it in
• 1:35:24
  there really quick, just because I didn't want to ignore it.
• 1:35:27
  So it's just ended up being kind of like, uh, well, it's
• 1:35:32
  something. Yeah, I mean, it it seems like
• 1:35:39
  what I'm hearing is it seems like a you you when you're
• 1:35:41
  building campaigns, you have all these ideas for for Like really
• 1:35:46
  cool shit that the campaign will hold as far as the main story
• 1:35:49
  goes. But you almost like You build
• 1:35:53
  everything and then you turn back around and there's all
• 1:35:55
  those players shit and you go, oh, shit.
• 1:35:57
  Where do I put this? Yeah, pretty much kind of where
• 1:35:59
  it seems like you're doing. Yeah.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah. I build the Lego castle and then
• 1:36:03
  I have extra pieces and don't know what to do with them.
• 1:36:05
  Yeah. I mean the only advice I can
• 1:36:10
  give for that is make sure that you're staring at those pieces
• 1:36:15
  while you're building the castle like and leave gaps.
• 1:36:18
  And yeah, so the problem with looking at the pieces while I'm
• 1:36:23
  Ring. It is that a lot of the time I
• 1:36:24
  build a lot of the ideas up preemptively before the campaign
• 1:36:27
  starts because I like to have a lot of Big Ideas solidified or I
• 1:36:33
  start a campaign. So I don't have those pieces at
• 1:36:37
  all when I'm thinking about it and then by the time I get
• 1:36:41
  rolling. Now I have the pieces and I have
• 1:36:43
  to try and shove them into what I've already thought of.
• 1:36:48
  So I do. Yeah.
• 1:36:49
  They I mean, the answer is what Madsen is I have to try and kind
• 1:36:51
  of keep gaps. Soooo and door.
• 1:36:56
  Be more. Be a little more open ended
• 1:37:01
  easier said, than done. Oh my God.
• 1:37:06
  It can be difficult because I always, like, I don't know, man.
• 1:37:10
  I don't know how everyone else does this, but when I'm planning
• 1:37:13
  planning planning is a very strong word.
• 1:37:17
  Well, I'm thinking about in the shower, a campaign I wanted.
• 1:37:21
  Yeah, right. Like yeah, I don't know,
• 1:37:23
  planning is a strong word. Um, What I'm like thinking about
• 1:37:27
  ideas. For the next campaign, I'm going
• 1:37:30
  to do a lot of how I solidify my ideas in my mind, is sort of
• 1:37:38
  like a director planning out, really cool scenes.
• 1:37:41
  They want to do and you know, you know, it's like you ever
• 1:37:44
  seen, you know, when you watch a movie and you get to a certain
• 1:37:48
  scene and you can tell you're like, oh, this entire movie was
• 1:37:53
  made for this scene. Right?
• 1:37:55
  Like you could tell the care, the director had the idea for
• 1:37:58
  this one scene and then he made the rest of the movie around it
• 1:38:02
  in. I mean, You know, you ever had
• 1:38:05
  that sensation? Yeah.
• 1:38:07
  Right. Like hey I mean Avengers
• 1:38:10
  endgame, I think is a pretty good example, right?
• 1:38:12
  Is, is oh, oh, yeah, and game is all about serving that final
• 1:38:16
  fight, right? Like that whole movie is for
• 1:38:19
  that, and infinity war. That whole movie is for the
• 1:38:23
  snap, seen like it all, serves that one purpose.
• 1:38:25
  So it's like, that's kind of how I think about campaigns.
• 1:38:29
  A lot of time. I will solidify these scenes.
• 1:38:33
  I'll be like the point is to Get to these right here and they're
• 1:38:36
  gonna be super sick when I get to him.
• 1:38:38
  But if you do but then I do that at a bunch of times and then
• 1:38:43
  with a then there's not necessarily the space in
• 1:38:45
  between. And then I go, oh, I have run
• 1:38:49
  out of room. Yeah, I mean more the other
• 1:38:52
  thing I do is I'll leave space in between and then I'll have
• 1:38:57
  my, I'll have my scenes that I I'll have my big parts that I
• 1:39:00
  know, I want to get to and then I get to them.
• 1:39:03
  And then I have the space in between.
• 1:39:04
  I go. Oh no I don't know what to do
• 1:39:07
  now I have no ideas. There's a blank.
• 1:39:09
  There's a blank emptiness like the train tracks.
• 1:39:11
  Just stop. And I'm like I'm gonna put
• 1:39:15
  tracks of there eventually. I don't know what they're gonna
• 1:39:18
  be though. You know I mean I definitely
• 1:39:21
  don't because I do do something similar when I'm planning ahead
• 1:39:25
  for arcs and stuff. I'll have these like scenes in
• 1:39:27
  my head but it's a very loose like I want them, you know.
• 1:39:32
  It's the Luke and Vader fighting over the Reactor Core kind of
• 1:39:37
  shit or it's like, okay I want the players fighting in this
• 1:39:41
  area and I want the bad guy to do a monologue.
• 1:39:44
  I will very specifically leave the minutiae out because II like
• 1:39:52
  it. Maybe try.
• 1:39:52
  I mean, it's yes, as the one thing it's like, you know, every
• 1:39:56
  DM plan, you know what? As soon as they hit the players
• 1:40:00
  like goes to chaos. Yeah, it's the same thing.
• 1:40:03
  If you plan for, you know, mooc my my maker to fight Vader and
• 1:40:10
  then all know, it turns out his dad and then the rest of the
• 1:40:13
  party show up When they weren't supposed to in the fight, you're
• 1:40:16
  a whole. Luke - Luke, I am.
• 1:40:18
  Your father moment is through out the window.
• 1:40:23
  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess I don't tend to run into that
• 1:40:28
  problem as much or whatever reason.
• 1:40:31
  I don't know. There's like a good example it
• 1:40:33
  from literally, the current campaign, the whole part of you
• 1:40:37
  guys. Getting a job.
• 1:40:40
  From a weird dude. A mysterious dude, dude.
• 1:40:43
  Turns out to be an angel, angel leads you to talk to Zeus like
• 1:40:46
  that whole quest line that just recently happened, I had that
• 1:40:49
  planned before the campaign started Like I knew that was
• 1:40:54
  going to be a big major Point somewhere along the road.
• 1:40:57
  Like I had that superset in my brain.
• 1:41:01
  And I mean it when I got to it I knew exactly what I wanted to
• 1:41:05
  do. Did exactly what I wanted and
• 1:41:07
  like more or less. It worked out the way I wanted.
• 1:41:10
  So you know good but yeah it was very like that whole little that
• 1:41:18
  whole quest line was like very set in stone in my brain.
• 1:41:23
  And then but yeah, the the in-between B often.
• 1:41:28
  Yeah, it's like either either. I haven't set in stone to the
• 1:41:32
  point where then I don't get myself wiggle room or I leave
• 1:41:35
  weird gaps. And then the gaps are often kind
• 1:41:37
  of awkward. Honestly.
• 1:41:40
  I that would stress me out. So much to be like this has to
• 1:41:44
  be this like I don't think I said anything in stone up until
• 1:41:48
  it happens. The idea of being like I have to
• 1:41:50
  make sure that these pieces of line just Just right to make
• 1:41:53
  this outcome happen. That keep me up at night.
• 1:41:56
  I can't I couldn't do that. Well, the thing about the piece
• 1:41:58
  is controlling, how the pieces aligned is, you often get cool
• 1:42:02
  outcomes. You know, you do, if you can, if
• 1:42:06
  you can sort of, you can keep the plan together enough, right?
• 1:42:13
  Because Matt's right? No.
• 1:42:14
  No GM plan ever survives first contact with the players.
• 1:42:18
  So the fact the idea that it's like okay, they've completely
• 1:42:23
  shattered every idea I had for this is this now. a lost cause
• 1:42:31
  And I can just figure it out as we go, or it's like I have to
• 1:42:35
  sort of have these broken puzzle pieces of my hands and try to
• 1:42:38
  like put them back together as fast as possible.
• 1:42:40
  So the players will like re-engage with it, be like,
• 1:42:43
  okay, maybe we won't break it this time, you know, I guess I
• 1:42:47
  think my methods pretty simple on that is just if the players
• 1:42:51
  shatter everything leading up to it, then I just find a new way
• 1:42:55
  to reconstruct the puzzle pieces.
• 1:42:56
  So they ended up where I wanted anyway.
• 1:42:59
  You know, if it's something, I'm really attached to like make it
• 1:43:02
  work. yeah, I mean if it's something that you're like I
• 1:43:06
  need like the really early on I had this idea of of the players
• 1:43:16
  like Doing the de spooky dungeon with the like weird lechon
• 1:43:21
  monster. And I knew for like, I needed
• 1:43:25
  them to be in that building tripping balls on like mushroom
• 1:43:30
  spores and getting spooked to shittin back.
• 1:43:34
  But I didn't like I there were some ideas on why how I want
• 1:43:38
  them to go there like that that that's Tony Stark character,
• 1:43:42
  either them like finding him because, you know, his company
• 1:43:47
  is where Paladin got the engine from like you stole it Andrea.
• 1:43:52
  I steal I was abandoned. So we just took it or like the
• 1:43:55
  the Gator Man gharial would be like, hey, I own this building
• 1:43:59
  because I also like employ Moreau, like there was a few
• 1:44:04
  Avenues to how I could get them there.
• 1:44:06
  So I didn't feel like I'd have to worry about making sure that
• 1:44:10
  they followed the breadcrumbs. Exactly.
• 1:44:13
  But I was pretty confident that like no matter what they'd end
• 1:44:16
  up here somehow. Yeah, yeah, I mean that sounds
• 1:44:21
  like you're just doing what I'm doing.
• 1:44:24
  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I do do it from time to time.
• 1:44:26
  I just like it's very rare though where I'm like I need it
• 1:44:30
  to be this way. Yeah, I don't even necessarily
• 1:44:33
  do it that often. Just often enough that I've
• 1:44:37
  gotten like it at it, I guess. Oh, oh. but at as, as we've
• 1:44:46
  established to the detriment of like player backstories, So, you
• 1:44:52
  know, with that, what you will, I guess?
• 1:44:58
  So if you're playing my game, don't give me a big backstory.
• 1:45:00
  Fuck off. I'm not gonna look at it, such
• 1:45:04
  you don't just gonna, I'm just gonna give you more backstory,
• 1:45:05
  Tokyo, I didn't do that to be fair in my defense, with my most
• 1:45:09
  recent game, none of my players gave me any kind of real heavy
• 1:45:11
  backstories. So yeah.
• 1:45:15
  That's right. Players, it's your fault.
• 1:45:17
  God saying, I think for me, that was intentional, I was like,
• 1:45:25
  there's no point in me writing. Complex one.
• 1:45:29
  Yeah, but I mean, I there isn't but there was intentional or
• 1:45:32
  not. Yeah, I'm just saying it was the
• 1:45:33
  thing that occurred like nobody. Nobody gave me any sort of deep
• 1:45:39
  intricate crazy backs or anything, you know, it was all
• 1:45:43
  pretty. I'm pretty General shit.
• 1:45:49
  I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just stating it happened.
• 1:45:51
  So Ergo my problem of thinking about how to dealing with
• 1:45:56
  integrating backstory like her side quests for character
• 1:45:59
  backstories is made more difficult because I was not
• 1:46:03
  given a lot to work with also What is it more difficult?
• 1:46:08
  Because I sort of feel like for me it's because I don't have any
• 1:46:12
  real threads to pull on like the only character who I feel.
• 1:46:14
  Like I had any real threads to sort of tug on was your
• 1:46:18
  characterize, it like was for Django.
• 1:46:22
  Sort of, yeah, I guess but that's sort of the, that's the
• 1:46:24
  benefit of telling GM like you got this.
• 1:46:28
  Right? Because you can sort of you can
• 1:46:30
  sort of tailor it to what you want.
• 1:46:31
  Me Jengo being like an amnesiac and I'm sort of speaking this
• 1:46:36
  because I also have experience having a player who's an
• 1:46:38
  amnesiac, you can sort of you don't have to worry about being
• 1:46:42
  like Oh what if they don't, you know, what is this characters
• 1:46:45
  have a dad, or doesn't they do now if your character doesn't
• 1:46:49
  matter, not having a dad than you could have a dad, that's
• 1:46:51
  just how it is. You know, that's not, that's
• 1:46:52
  not. What was going on though?
• 1:46:54
  Like all the characters had established stuff.
• 1:46:58
  It's just you guys as players didn't tell me a whole lot like
• 1:47:03
  a little bit, you know, like we know a little bit like, severe
• 1:47:05
  has some parents, he doesn't get along with Kai, used to live out
• 1:47:08
  in the Grove, he left for because he wasn't really jiving
• 1:47:12
  with how he lived there. But like, no, no, like no
• 1:47:15
  strong, no strong statements in the back, in anyone's back story
• 1:47:20
  that I could really tug on as like a thread for like a big
• 1:47:23
  Quest or an art. Yeah.
• 1:47:26
  That's what I'm saying, though, right?
• 1:47:27
  Is it, because Django's is Is sort of up in the air.
• 1:47:30
  It doesn't have to conflict with any of your plans, right?
• 1:47:33
  Like I know, well, sort of, that's kind of why I said
• 1:47:36
  Django. I.
• 1:47:37
  So I'm saying, Django. I did have something to tug on.
• 1:47:41
  You know, like I did have stuff to use and I did, oh, I feel it.
• 1:47:45
  I feel like I did. I mean, not a crazy amount but
• 1:47:48
  it, you know, they were shit there.
• 1:47:54
  And as far as like, Leaving it totally open so I can do
• 1:47:58
  whatever I want. Is you, um, sometimes that's
• 1:48:04
  where you getting that funny thing where sometimes a player
• 1:48:06
  will like not give you a lot of backstory and they'll just be
• 1:48:09
  like, yeah, do what you want with it and you go.
• 1:48:11
  Okay. But sometimes the player doesn't
• 1:48:13
  give you a lot of backstory and then you do what you want with
• 1:48:15
  it and then they go oh I don't like that.
• 1:48:17
  You go. Hmm, well I don't know what to
• 1:48:21
  do now. I have made some pretty strong
• 1:48:23
  statements. I can't happen because he's
• 1:48:30
  only, I think it's sort of the only thing I could say is just
• 1:48:36
  keep in touch with that player and be like, hey, what are you
• 1:48:39
  thinking about this? Is there anything?
• 1:48:41
  Any ideas you have any critiques and trying to give me a
• 1:48:44
  part-time job over here? Yes, it's called being a GM.
• 1:48:49
  Be an G item is sort of a part-time job.
• 1:48:50
  There's a lot of thinking you got to do while you're doing
• 1:48:53
  your actual job. Yeah but I could like to think
• 1:48:55
  of it as being a manager of sorts you have to admit it.
• 1:48:59
  Yeah like you know scheduling you know deal with scheduling.
• 1:49:03
  Make sure everyone shows up on time Be sure, everyone knows how
• 1:49:06
  to do their job and or their characters quote unquote.
• 1:49:10
  Yeah. I mean I have I have on several
• 1:49:17
  occasions bit like texted moon or Paladin a bit like what do
• 1:49:23
  you think of what do you like? What do you think would happen
• 1:49:24
  this session? You know you can just say my
• 1:49:26
  players. What do you know is anyone's
• 1:49:28
  use? Yeah, I don't know, I say
• 1:49:31
  players. It's okay.
• 1:49:33
  Just say airplane. Well, you know, the players did
• 1:49:36
  stuff like this so like fair enough.
• 1:49:42
  You have players G? I will text them to be like,
• 1:49:45
  what do you think about if you have any like problems with
• 1:49:47
  that? Is there anything?
• 1:49:48
  You want to add? Now that like you might have the
• 1:49:51
  juices flowing? You might like think of
• 1:49:52
  something that I either I didn't bring up or you had thought
• 1:49:55
  about previously I mean in my specific example I was assuming
• 1:49:59
  the player was coming at you but yeah fair enough.
• 1:50:04
  Well that's what I'm saying. Like you sort of you keep in
• 1:50:06
  touch with them so they don't come at you and be like I don't
• 1:50:08
  like what's going on, you know. Yeah, or hell.
• 1:50:11
  I like if something particularly like arrowing happens, right?
• 1:50:19
  Like a character, losing a limb heroin, or finding AA was an
• 1:50:26
  attempt at a joke. It did I just didn't even hear
• 1:50:28
  it. I know.
• 1:50:29
  I know it didn't work like Or what do I play?
• 1:50:35
  The the like the bird person. She's like her like Native
• 1:50:39
  American tribe. She found out that her parents
• 1:50:41
  were dead the whole time. Like they died pretty shortly
• 1:50:45
  after she had been kicked out. So when she found out I was like
• 1:50:50
  is that are you cool with that? Like you know it's not if you're
• 1:50:54
  not we can wreak on this after the fact.
• 1:50:56
  You know they oh wait that was something.
• 1:50:58
  So she say that she had Parents and then you killed them.
• 1:51:03
  Or yeah. So she was like I haven't seen
• 1:51:05
  my parents in a while. I don't like them, they kick
• 1:51:07
  like they they didn't back me up.
• 1:51:09
  It's been 10 years since I've been home.
• 1:51:12
  Hmm. So when when that's pretty good
• 1:51:15
  drama bomb. Yeah.
• 1:51:16
  When she got back and she at her and her brother had like they
• 1:51:20
  had reconciled but they were talking.
• 1:51:22
  She was like, so how is Mom and Dad in?
• 1:51:24
  Like he was kind of like, well. Not really like anything, right?
• 1:51:30
  You know, like how they're doing.
• 1:51:33
  Well, they're not doing anything.
• 1:51:35
  Yeah, it just, it was, it was really cool seeing, right?
• 1:51:38
  Because they wouldn't he brought her back to like their old home.
• 1:51:44
  There was like a shrine at the back with like with their
• 1:51:47
  feathers, because you know, they're the whole thing is like
• 1:51:49
  they're like weird Phoenix people but their feathers just
• 1:51:52
  they don't ever stop giving out light heat.
• 1:51:55
  I'm as they all sort of do that thing that fire doesn't.
• 1:51:57
  Or you can see, like, a little glowing veins unlike a burning
• 1:52:01
  log. Mmm.
• 1:52:03
  So they just they just sort of exist as these ever-present
• 1:52:06
  little lights and their big feathers because, you know,
• 1:52:10
  they're they're, you know, long so they act they almost look
• 1:52:12
  like incense and she got to like read bond with her brother over
• 1:52:18
  the like the morning of their parents and they said some
• 1:52:22
  prayers and sang old songs. Their father would sing to them
• 1:52:27
  so it was like a All like moment that albums bridged, this gap
• 1:52:30
  between two characters and it only cost the lives of two other
• 1:52:33
  characters Holocaust. Don't count incredibly violent
• 1:52:45
  Yeah, I'm thinking about, I wanna put a, my characters hurt.
• 1:52:48
  Her her surrogate. Dad went missing and was
• 1:52:52
  presumed dead. And they went somewhere, just
• 1:52:56
  they went to like their ship City and they found his mask and
• 1:53:00
  they're like, where did you get that?
• 1:53:02
  It's like, oh yeah, one of our boys picked that up.
• 1:53:05
  We kind of It's this group was just kind of giving away all
• 1:53:09
  this shit that they didn't want anymore and, you know, all the
• 1:53:12
  yokels up on the ships that he will buy anything that's like
• 1:53:15
  exotic or vintage. But I found that cool mask and
• 1:53:18
  then they just sit there like, oh, Oh no.
• 1:53:25
  I'm being like a Don't know if he's alive.
• 1:53:33
  All right, I'll have to Allah. I'll think about it and then
• 1:53:39
  probably ignore everything y'all said.
• 1:53:41
  But yeah, alright, well, we'll wrap that up after Isaiah's
• 1:53:49
  harrowing Tales of how he murdered a player's parents.
• 1:53:54
  Actual parents, Isaiah's killer I am a killer but haven't killed
• 1:53:58
  any parents. Anyway, yet, if you've likes
• 1:54:05
  what you heard it the follow enter subscribe button and your
• 1:54:10
  podcast platform of choice. If there is a rating, please
• 1:54:13
  give a rating, a good one. A good one would be nice, a bad
• 1:54:15
  one would be that nice. Also, if you'd like to keep up
• 1:54:18
  to date, pause on Twitter's the angry Bluebird app because at
• 1:54:22
  the moment, it's still exists, despite Elon Musk greatest
• 1:54:26
  efforts. And and I feel like I'm
• 1:54:30
  forgetting a thing but yeah, that's fine.
• 1:54:35
  Man, I really feel like I meant to say something else.
• 1:54:39
  You know what I learned today here?
• 1:54:44
  I mean, yeah, I guess if you guys want no, no, it's fine.
• 1:54:47
  What are you hearing that? We were already said everything.
• 1:54:50
  I wanted to say, you have this when you were like I'm
• 1:54:53
  forgetting something and I'm like, you have a final thought,
• 1:54:55
  Matt sent traumatize your players.
• 1:55:01
  Yeah, I was just going to eat your broccoli.
• 1:55:04
  He broccoli and broccoli is good.
• 1:55:06
  I don't know. I like ask for consent.
• 1:55:08
  Traumatize your players that can you top that?
• 1:55:13
  I don't think I can top that now disappointed but work with the
• 1:55:17
  work with you players, they integrate their back stories in
• 1:55:19
  the campaign. They are to do what I do.
• 1:55:22
  Ignore your players or or do ye are just opinions.
• 1:55:27
  Yeah.