Latest / Bards and Barrels / S2 Ep. 10 - The Journey to a Home Brewed Adventure

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S2 Ep. 10 - The Journey to a Home Brewed Adventure · Bards and Barrels

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Bars and Barrels, the podcast for Dungeons and Dragons players, new and old.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Brett Miller, and I'm joined by my friends and co-hosts Phil Boone and Ross Struz.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be exploring the world of Dungeons and Dragons in each episode, sharing our experiences, offering tips and advice for those who play and run this classic game.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: So whether you're a new player just starting out, or a seasoned veteran looking to get some new perspective on things, Bards and Barrels has something for everyone.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: So sit back, grab a drink, and join us as we rubble for initiative and embark on this epic adventure.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: There it is, the opening cracks.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Synchronized cracks.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Took a lot of high coordination.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: While the intro is really a lot of pointing and counting down, and here we go.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here comes the crack.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You get behind the scenes.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Totally worth it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Totally worth it.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how's it going, fellas?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great night.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Great night for some DD.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, yes.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we have a fun episode for tonight.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: So this one is one that we are kind of living out as we're going to talk about it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh excited to look at this one.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um for those that have kind of been with us for this season.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we did a bunch of stuff on DMing, uh, some previous sessions here, and we kind of tossed this about to see if it would fall in that range or not.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there's enough takeaways for DMs and players.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we are gonna hit on taking a uh published campaign into Homebrew Land, basically.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, you finished up a starter set, what are you gonna do now?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think I think one of the things that we need to make clear to our listeners are like the different options that you have when you finish your first campaign.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So likely you're coming out of a starter set, so it could be uh Lost Minds of Fandelver, it could be Stormwreck Isle.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: What's the third one?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's another one out there, isn't there?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting weird looks, so if you know the third one, yeah, you will give us some shit in the comments.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: There is a third one, yeah.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: It got replaced, yes.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um Google really quickly.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So while they're looking to up that up, point being here, that you can go from that into another published campaign.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's some options there too.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can completely start over with your group, create new characters, and then roll into a brand new campaign.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: You also have the option of taking the characters from uh your beginner campaign and then continuing with them, giving you the option of building some more backstory.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, the nice thing is when you get into like a full campaign, your characters have the backstory from the starter set, which is kind of a cool way to do it too.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third option, of course, is you roll into homebrew world, is what, and that's what we're gonna talk about tonight a little bit.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have to be just right out of a starter set either.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So in the case of what we're getting ready to do, um, you know, those of you that have listened to us know we finished up a descent to a Vernus campaign as a group.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, six months ago, eight months ago.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's a while.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a while now.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Our buddy Matt's been running another campaign for us.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So in this kind of interim period, we've chosen to continue this campaign on.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: We want to see it through to level 20.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So now it's time to go off script, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're out of the book.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: We completed that section.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're level 13, so we got to get from 13 to 20.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's unusual for DD groups to actually finish a written campaign.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like a lot of groups trail off.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I think it's more approachable if you are finishing one of those early starter sets.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Those you can probably finish in a couple sessions.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would say so.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Depending on how long you play, how often you play, that sort of thing.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think they're designed that way, right?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time they go through level three or level five.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: And luckily, when you're only level three to level five, you haven't made that many major decisions.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's fairly easy to start over, change your character, swap it out.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: You can do a lot of different things when you're only at those early levels.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and even kind of rolling out of a you know, 13th level adventure onto something else too.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that we've talked about in our group is, you know, hey, since the world is changing in essence, kind of with what we're doing, are there some choices I could make that may be different about my character?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can I maybe retcon a little of that to make it fit into this new homebrew arena that we're playing in where that story is going?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously that's going to be a decision for your table.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna allow it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm interested to see.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know one of the characters in our campaign specifically had some ideas about maybe multi-classing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I and I think that that adds a certain degree of comfort to your table, right?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you've played through an entire campaign now, you've maybe taken a character, even though you have lots of levels to go, you maybe have taken them through a majority of the things that they can do, which I think is also why a lot of people trail off at this point, because now your level ups are a little bit fewer and far farther between, but as you get them, they're more and more powerful.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the flip side of this.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: But point being, you know, if you have a character like Matt in this instance where like he doesn't feel like his character can grow in certain aspects and you're allowing him to go back and maybe multi-class or something like that, that's really nice because then it continues the trend of playing the character you want to play, right?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I also think too, it keeps you from being pigeonholed into maybe so Avernus descent into a vernace is primarily set in the nine hells.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been building this character that does really well when you're in the nine hells and all of a sudden you're just not there anymore, half of the stuff that you might have or have kind of built into just may not make sense.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So there's gonna be some of that that just has to change.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: But on the flip side of that, sometimes you have character features that will work better with a change of change of scenery.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that Isaac would agree with you on that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: My character as well.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Most of my stuff is fire damage based.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: In the nine hells, fire damage doesn't do a whole lot.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really excited to get out of hell and go somewhere where it actually will make a difference, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm kind of in that boat.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm on the opposite side of that boat, really, with my character who does a lot of radiant damage, a lot of like holy damage.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be interesting to see how he how he performs outside of that world.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So uh other monsters and things like may have resistance to like various degrees of damage.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I got lucky because in hell they're they're very they're they have zero resistance to radiant damage like that.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I I feel like my character is almost a little OP'd in the setting we were at.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be interesting to see how that feels coming out.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're looking at going into a homebrew, what does that look like?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna get started going off on your own?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: No book involved.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a little daunting.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so full disclosure, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think anyone in our group has necessarily, we just certainly have not ran a true homebrew, um, specifically as the going to be the DM for this group.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I definitely have not.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've not even played in a homebrew.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So initially the idea of this seemed daunting, but we've been playing together as a group for a couple years now, with as long as it took us to get through these things.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: We've built a good party, we've spent lots of time developing these characters.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: It truly, as we've grown in this campaign, has become a group storytelling experience.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, Ross and I uh have spent some time kind of putting this world together.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is it going to look like?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: How is it gonna change?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and ideally, you know, I have a few ideas of where it's going.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have maybe some endgame ideas too, but they're really just almost like post-it notes of like, hey, you know, it'd be cool if this happened.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not sure how we're gonna get there yet.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But and I think some of that too is just layering in things like visions or dreams that you guys had in the initial campaign we did back in the furnace.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to pull pieces out of that, things that did already happen in the campaign to build out some of this homebrew piece.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the things that we've started doing just as our group as a whole is building out more of our characters, adding depth to their backgrounds, adding personal relationships, uh where what have they been doing in the in between time between the finishing up of the previous campaign heading into the new one?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: What are they doing?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Who have they been interacting with, and having more of a breadth to the character heading into this um expanded universe?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's gonna work out really well since you guys have spent some time doing that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, to kickstart this, what we're gonna do is have single, like individual sessions.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll meet with each player, we'll actually go through you know what has transpired between when you got out of Avernus and saved El Torel to when, if, how you all get back together because the world is dying.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I I I think at this point it it makes a little sense to just explain to everybody our process a little bit, Phil.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So so one of the things very early, and we're talking like eight months ago now, when we ended that last campaign.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't listened to our review of Descent into Avernus, go listen to that.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of our early episodes.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's really good.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: You get an a feel for our characters in there.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but one of the things that happened at the end of that campaign was there without giving anything away, like plot-wise, in that, if you haven't played it, although if you go listen to that, you know, spoiler alert, but whatever.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was a line that Zariel told us after we had completed this, where it was, uh, you've made an enemy out of Asmodius.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so the the first thing that we really did was we asked everybody, Hey, do you want to continue this story with the current players?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we all kind of agreed, yeah, you know, there's a little bit of a cliffhanger.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel like we really tied up all the loose ends because Phil did a great job of like laying some other threads in there as we were playing.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, we went into total like creative mode.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like, okay, what what are we gonna do now and where does this go?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and how do we take that threat seriously?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I love your analogy of the post-its because that's exactly what it did.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: What I feel like you did was I sat there and just started throwing you all the ideas that were popping in my head, and I could just see you type, and then I'd say like three more things and type a little bit more.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was like it it was a lot of fun to do that.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had to compile notes because I had like notes written in this notebook, I had notes on my computer, I have notes on sticky notes I don't even have added yet.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like it really is.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a I was like just strategic planning, you know, like to take it back to work, but it's something like that.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, you know, what's the vision?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of knew loosely what the end game might be, and then that we wanted to take the world and like hit it with a bat and you know, knock the whole thing sideways.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: How can we completely like upend everything that has happened?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one of those things, it's kind of like when you're watching a movie and then and you have like the original and then you have the sequel.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, how do you make a sequel when the original was a lot of fun and it was so good?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's where we struggled a little bit because there were there were threads even into some like written campaigns that we considered.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like we could have easily have gone into like Tyranny of Dragons or something like that because it set it up very well to do that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: But we decided that with the other pieces you had laid that it didn't quite make sense to do that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, Phil, with all of these open-ended questions of where you could go, what you want to do, what are some of the resources resources that you've used to kind of hone in on how we're going to follow out into the great unknown?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good question, Brett.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um the the Dungeon Masters Guide actually has some information in the beginning of it about it's truthfully kind of about world building, um, but there are some pieces or some components in there that were helpful in determining where to go.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my favorite resources that I actually just got recently is uh the Game Master's book of Astonishing Random Tables.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I used it just for some kind of specifics within the campaign.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're truthfully looking to maybe not even continue a campaign, but really world build, I would highly recommend it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's got all sorts of tables to build, like a Pantheon if you need it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um we dipped a little bit out of um the standard uh Wizards of the Ghost, D D esque Brooks, and looked into a little bit of stuff from Midgard, a Midgard setting.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um that is by uh Cobalt Press or Freelay Cobalt.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's by Cobalt.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um so still a little bit still repurposed.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh some stuff from there too to kind of bring it into this campaign.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a lot of material out there that's available.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of it has come from just discussions too that I've had with different people in the group, too.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Without giving too much away about some things that I know about the world that that you're creating here, one of one of the things we ran into was uh we were looking at pantheons of gods and and we we wanted to to throw some curveballs there.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that we felt like when we went back and we looked in the players' handbook and we looked in the Dungeons Masters guide, like we were trying to make some one-to-one comparisons of of how we wanted to match some things up, and it didn't quite work.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: We made it work with what we had at the moment, but that's like when that Midgard rolled book came in because it gave us so we we went beyond Wizards of the Coast, we went and got some other published uh books and went now.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Here's some options that make a lot more sense based on what we're trying to do.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I think one of the suggestions I would totally say if you're world building, do not limit yourself to sticking to Wizards of the Coast.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like feel free to pull from anywhere and everywhere you can to build your world.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: And luckily for us, we had a baseline to start off of.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: We all had played in uh in the material plane, in Fey Rune.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: So all of our characters have a baseline background of the existing normal quote unquote normal D on DD pantheon of gods, of locations on the material plane.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: They know where Baldur's Gate is, those types of things.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the other so other controversial tool that I use is AI.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you just need help connecting the dots, and I'm like, hey, this is my idea.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we ended.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do I make this connect?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of helped fill in some of the gaps.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's not perfect, it'd make a lot of changes, but it gave you ideas.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the draft generator for your story, which is which is excellent.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a good tool, and I'm gonna use it.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just another another tool in your tool belt.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not writing everything for you, you still get to make it your own.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if I didn't like it, or I'm just like, nah, give me more details about that, right?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like this doesn't make sense, and it helped me iron out some good ideas.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the cool thing is is because of how they've done like some of the learning with AI, like when you ask it questions, it already knows like some of the base D things without you having to like prompt it to know that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's kind of creepy sometimes.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you ask a question, it's like, oh, you actually know that.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And since I'm working on DD stuff, I'm most definitely using bar because it's active.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I didn't even think about that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's excellent.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: So with going off on our own, we've also talked a lot about different ways to switch up what we're doing.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, possibly having different DMs step in for little one-off side quests.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think Ross touched on this briefly earlier.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, as much as I love DMing, sometimes I just want to play too or do something else.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things we've tossed around and we're gonna do, we're gonna see if it flops or not, but we're gonna have multiple people DM this campaign.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I will know the full-ish extent of the story, or at least I have all the post-it notes.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: But ideally, the goal is to have individual people run like side quests that still impact the campaign.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll actually end up having the people roll multiple characters.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this also creates like an opportunity maybe to bring in guests into our campaign as well.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some friends maybe that want to play with us but can't commit to an entire campaign.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then in essence, you know, we'll use those characters, they'll go off on a side quest, someone else will DM the whole side quest, and then whatever that comes back as will play into the overall campaign.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit of this was inspired by the gentleman up in Canada who's been running his 40-year campaign and how he's been the DM for the entire length of that, which is which is outstanding, and how he manages that is unbelievable because he has like dozens of people in that campaign that he tries to manage.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: How you I don't want to see what his like Google Drive looks like because that's character lineages and everything.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, that would be insane.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: But point is like when we we were very inspired when we when we heard that story about him, but we were also like like Phil said, we want to play, and like some of us also want to take a turn DMing.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a cool way, like you said, to mix people in.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have some other people that like we talk to about these things all the flipping time too.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like it's a way that where if if we want to work them in, we can work them in.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a way for us to play different characters within this overall campaign, and it's a way to get other DMs and even just players within the campaign, give them an opportunity to DM as well.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the exciting things about going off on our own is if something doesn't work out, we can change it.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's not a hard rule of where we have to go to.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things I'm most excited about because I feel like one of the things that I always fell into is uh felt I felt like when we were going through a specific section, like I needed to know the description.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like if the book had a description, I needed to know it, or you know, what happens if this person's out and I gotta substitute it in.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have very little as far as hard details like that prepared for this because I just don't I don't see I don't want to be married to that.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've always found those like detailed descriptions to be hard, hard to use without just reading them off.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not my voice.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: It disrupts the flow.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the problem that I have.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the things that at least when I DM that that's hard for me sometimes is like I I want to be super creative, and I and I'm very jealous of you starting this out, and I'm so happy you let me help you build this because it's like that that's something I love to do, is like just wing it, like you walk into a town, and then I'm just building as we go, kind of thing.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: It it's hard when you play a structured pre-written campaign because even though you don't want to railroad your players, you still sometimes railroad your players, like you're putting people in their path that gets them from point A to point B.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas you know point A and point B, but there's the distance between those could be a lot farther away now, and you just kind of wing it.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: As long as I keep you on the general path, go for it.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very jealous of that.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh Ross's creativity has been apparent through what we've been working on.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things when we got together was um, as we were brainstorming ideas, is he actually had his character, his player character in character, write letters to the other characters in the campaign.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it was that was something that we didn't even plan on.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was like at the end of the day, we had like, I don't know, I asked you if you needed to go and we had like 45 minutes.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wait, what if we did this?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it just so happened there were a couple Christmas presents that came into play.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, my wife just got this, and let me go get this, and this will be really cool.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the only thing I never I'm not gonna go that deep.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, it's just those like little things, and then we haven't really done anything with like props to other players yet.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the first foray into that, but the best part is that then you started getting responses.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So Brad's player character has written a letter back.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard that there are other letters in the mix that haven't been published or delivered.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's a fun like in between the campaign, like getting everybody geared back up to restart this campaign.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you know the best part of it?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I know what they mean, what the letters mean that I sent, and I know Phil Phil obviously knows what they mean, and then like your replies just make me smile because of parts you're on track and parts you're off track, and it just this is what would really happen because that type of communication is not perfect, so there would be different interpretations, and it's amazing, and that's part of story building, it's great.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it was well, it was so Matt's character got his letter and something happened, but only he knows at this point.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, like there's that like fun storytelling aspect of it, too.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't know what's going on.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best part.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, like that's that's what this allows us to do, and it's it is gonna be, I feel like it's just gonna be a very different experience than what we had when we were playing in the published works.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's gonna be amazing.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I expect our Discord channel to probably have a lot more action.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: The the hilarious thing through this is like seeing the communication between us uh as we're doing this side story building is one of the things when when you and I wrote those, like like there were runes involved, I'll say that.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like people are focusing and translating those, which is what we wanted.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: But there are other pieces within that that I hope they hear this because to see if they remember what the other pieces mean.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think anybody's mentioned that yet.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, geez.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta go back and look at it.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we're very excited to get back into um our main campaign that we've been running for the past, what is it, three years now, four years, something like that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a while.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's probably close to three years.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the guy in Canada has got us beat by like 37 years.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's probably at 43 now.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, whatever.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a ways to go.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: But we are not experts on setting up our own homebrew by any means.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have any thoughts, tips, tricks, please share them.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: We would love to hear them.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Drop us a comment on Facebook, send us a post on Instagram.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just let us know.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: We would love to hear them.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, so yes, absolutely.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Please give us ideas because that's that's gonna help us kind of flesh things out and we're always willing to see uh see and listen, read other opinions and things like that.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think another important note to have here is we are planning on recording this campaign for everybody to listen to.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're not gonna drop it as we play it.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be down the road a little bit, but I think if you want one little exciting nugget, the title of this campaign is Ragnarok Fall of the Gods.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that Phil and I came up with.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: So get excited about that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna come when we do get to that point.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: We'll probably do like a one-on-one with Phil so he can explain a little bit more before we get into it and things like that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: But but get excited, be prepared for that down the road.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Alrighty, that is gonna do it for this episode of Bards and Barrels.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: You can listen to past episodes on of the show anywhere podcasts can be found.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: And hey, want to stay in the loop and not miss the latest from us?
• 23:30
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• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you soon.