Latest / Sessions Canceled / Useful GM Lessons From The Witcher Games: Ep. 178

Transcript

Useful GM Lessons From The Witcher Games: Ep. 178 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  And I have some unfortunate news.
• 0:16
  It seems our GM died horribly in the woods, taking a contract
• 0:20
  that he was not sufficiently high level 4.
• 0:24
  His innards are now strung between trees like Christmas
• 0:26
  lights. It's horrifying.
• 0:30
  Sessions cancelled and therapy is on.
• 0:37
  Wow. In my defence though, I did tell
• 0:40
  the GM not to follow that lesson.
• 0:43
  I I think we all did. We all said, bro, you just,
• 0:45
  you're not, you're not built like that.
• 0:47
  And he was like, no, I'm a Witcher.
• 0:49
  And we're like, no, you just bought some replica swords.
• 0:52
  You're not a Witcher. I'm a Witcher.
• 0:57
  No, your name is Steve. You work at the CVS.
• 1:00
  You. Work at the CVS?
• 1:02
  You just bought some replica Geralt swords on fucking Etsy.
• 1:05
  Please don't. And now here we are.
• 1:11
  We also found out lessons are real, which is crazy and a
• 1:14
  little terrifying. I you know, if I found out that
• 1:20
  the basically Wendigo was real, I'd never go outside again.
• 1:25
  It's even worse than the basically Wendigo lessons are
• 1:27
  like awful Wendigo monsters with druid powers.
• 1:31
  Yeah they like controlled hatred and summon animals and shit to
• 1:35
  murder you. They summon like demon.
• 1:37
  Wolves and shit, yeah, there's a whole lot of going on.
• 1:41
  Yeah, no, fuck that fucking if that was a thing they like, I
• 1:46
  don't know. I'd call in the military on
• 1:48
  every forest in the country. Like I don't even know.
• 1:51
  Yeah. Anyway, that's neither here nor
• 1:55
  there. The GM is dead, so you know,
• 1:57
  here we are. But we've still got tabletop to
• 2:00
  table table, tabletop to talk about, tabletop to talk about.
• 2:05
  That's a, that's a weird, that's a sentence, kind of a weird
• 2:10
  tongue twister. Yeah.
• 2:11
  A little bit. Anyway, it's my turn in the
• 2:15
  chair, which means it's annoying story time and also, or I mean,
• 2:22
  yeah, it's annoying story time and I have no, I had that's it.
• 2:29
  I, I don't know what, whatever. It's killing it, but.
• 2:32
  Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
• 2:34
  All I need, all you need to know is that what you have to do
• 2:37
  right now is hit pause or don't hit pause.
• 2:40
  You actually don't have to hit pause and hit the follow or
• 2:42
  subscribe button on your podcast platform of choice.
• 2:47
  And then we'll continue right after you've done that.
• 2:54
  Hey dude, did you hit the button?
• 2:57
  There it is. I'm waiting.
• 2:59
  We're waiting. OK, all right, continue.
• 3:04
  There is this guy, he's like a homesteader, frontiersman type
• 3:08
  guy who I don't know, I think is an absolute dork.
• 3:12
  And he does that on his videos where he will legitimately wait
• 3:15
  like 3 or 4 minutes in absolute awkward silence.
• 3:19
  And it's like. Did you hit subscribe yet?
• 3:21
  Bit And I, I, I watched him early on because I was on this
• 3:25
  like, weird kick where I was watching reviews for like,
• 3:29
  tools. Yeah.
• 3:32
  And then he became really weird and like, political and like, he
• 3:36
  was already religious, but like, he just got weird, weirdly
• 3:39
  preachy. And now he looks like really
• 3:41
  unkempt and shit. And he still does this bit.
• 3:43
  And I'm like somehow it's even more annoying now.
• 3:48
  I don't know, I think it's kind of a funny bit, I'm not going to
• 3:50
  lie. No no no, it's OK.
• 3:53
  When we do it, it's funny because it was like 35 seconds
• 3:56
  at most bro, I'm not kidding. It would go on for like 3 or 4
• 4:00
  minutes of absolute. Silence.
• 4:02
  I got to give my man props for that commitment.
• 4:04
  That's kind of crazy. I there, I'm not going to lie,
• 4:08
  there are a couple of videos where I just stopped watching.
• 4:09
  I was like, no, this is, this is this is ridiculous.
• 4:14
  It's kind of funny anyway, so as you know, Isaiah, I've been on
• 4:22
  a, on a wicked Witcher kick recently.
• 4:26
  What? No, I, I am, I am deep in the
• 4:28
  sauce. I, I finished season 4 of the
• 4:33
  Netflix show, which we don't need to, you know, get into
• 4:36
  right now. But I'll just say I'm not as
• 4:38
  much of A hater as most people. Hey.
• 4:41
  Look, I mean, they're not really get into young Hemsworth.
• 4:44
  Not a bad girl. I I don't know, I'll say it.
• 4:47
  Well, I, I, I just want more. A lot of people are hating on
• 4:50
  the show overall. It the Hemsworth, Liam Hemsworth
• 4:53
  was kind of the nail in the coffin.
• 4:54
  I think at the end or, or should I say Cavill leaving was the
• 4:57
  nail in the coffin. But people have been hate boner
• 4:59
  in the show since like halfway through season 2 at this point.
• 5:03
  And it's just been kind of getting more and more.
• 5:04
  Chaotic. I was about to get really toxic,
• 5:09
  thank you for stopping me. Really toxic about what?
• 5:13
  Because I was about to be like young Hemsworth was an OK girl,
• 5:16
  fight me on it, I'll win. I yeah, I I do.
• 5:20
  I look like I said to you, I think we both said the same
• 5:25
  thing. If we didn't have Cavill before
• 5:27
  him, everyone would be probably fine with you.
• 5:29
  With Liam Zensworth. Yep.
• 5:31
  Because, yeah, he does kind of work.
• 5:33
  I still don't think the voice works, but other than that,
• 5:37
  although I'm. Although now that I've heard
• 5:41
  four different Geralt voices, I'm less bothered by it.
• 5:46
  Right. 4-4 yeah, yeah. Audio game audio book show show.
• 5:53
  Kaville and young Hemsworth. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:55
  So, you know, anyway, so yes, I've been on this wicked Wistar
• 6:02
  kick. So after finishing season 4, I
• 6:05
  was like, I kind of, I've been wanting to read the books for a
• 6:08
  while. I was like, I kind of want to
• 6:09
  read the books. And then I was talking to my
• 6:11
  girlfriend and she's like, oh, have you tried doing it on?
• 6:13
  Because even though I'm a person who reads pretty regularly,
• 6:17
  although I will admit the last couple of years I've been
• 6:18
  slacking, but generally I'm a person who reads pretty
• 6:20
  regularly. I read really slowly.
• 6:22
  So I was kind of like, fuck, I do want to read the books, but
• 6:25
  it's like I'm trying to finish the book I'm currently on, which
• 6:28
  is not going great. And it's gonna take me yes.
• 6:33
  And it's gonna take me forever to like to get to get to the
• 6:37
  Witcher books and then actually take take me forever to read
• 6:39
  them. And my girlfriend was like, oh,
• 6:40
  well, try audiobooks. And I was like, OK, so I'm
• 6:42
  listening to the audiobooks. So I've just finished book 2
• 6:46
  today, the The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny being the first
• 6:52
  two books if anyone's curious. Just finished Sword of Destiny.
• 6:56
  But at the same time I was also kind of like, I kind of want to
• 7:00
  go back and play the Witcher 1 because I never beat the Witcher
• 7:05
  1. Because the first time I played
• 7:06
  that game I lost my save data when I was like a good chunk of
• 7:11
  the way through. Turns out I actually wasn't as
• 7:13
  far into the game as I thought I was.
• 7:15
  I was probably, I thought I was at like 75%.
• 7:18
  I was more at like the halfway point, but either way, I lost my
• 7:22
  saved data and didn't want to start it again.
• 7:24
  I was like, I kind of want to go back and play The Witcher 1 to
• 7:26
  see like how it is and to beat it because I remember not liking
• 7:31
  it that much. But I also remember not
• 7:32
  understanding the game very well.
• 7:34
  Like not trying to, you know the thing when you play a game
• 7:37
  sometimes and you don't try to understand the mechanics, so the
• 7:40
  game feels annoying. But once you sit down for a
• 7:43
  second and try to actually like analyze and understand how the
• 7:47
  mechanics work, you're like, oh, this is more fun than I thought.
• 7:49
  You know that kind of. So OK, I, I kind of have this
• 7:52
  thing where I was younger, I didn't, I did not like reading
• 7:58
  instructions as a kid. I was like a build like figured
• 8:01
  the Lego set out on your own. And if you if something doesn't
• 8:03
  make sense, then like grudgingly check the instructions.
• 8:06
  I was so deeply not that child, but OK.
• 8:09
  Oh yeah, no. So when it came to things like
• 8:11
  video games, I almost never read the instructions and just tried
• 8:14
  to figure it out by ear. Which meant that there was a lot
• 8:16
  of games where I would play it at six, wouldn't beat it because
• 8:19
  I just wasn't smart enough, and then came back later and then
• 8:22
  felt magically smarter when the the game's mechanics made more
• 8:25
  sense to me. Yeah, that's that's kind of a
• 8:29
  similar, not exactly, but somewhat similar to what I'm
• 8:31
  yeah, mean. So I have, I went back and
• 8:35
  played the Witcher 1 and I went from remembering not liking it
• 8:38
  that much to being I am now certified Witcher 1 Glazer.
• 8:44
  Like, Oh my God, I'm not even shitting you right now.
• 8:51
  I feel like the Witcher 1 gets kind of like it gets kind of
• 8:55
  thrown in the bin as like the ugly stepchild.
• 8:57
  But I think there's a lot of shit in that game that
• 8:59
  legitimately there's some really good ideas in there.
• 9:03
  And if they had continued with the style of game that The
• 9:07
  Witcher 1 was, I think it could have been a potentially
• 9:09
  interesting game if they didn't completely go down the action
• 9:13
  game route that the second and third game are.
• 9:18
  And so like, yeah, I'm just, I am, I've, I when they, you know,
• 9:24
  there's talk of The Witcher, not talk.
• 9:26
  We know what's happening. The Witcher 1 remake is
• 9:28
  happening. And I'm sitting here like, I
• 9:30
  want The Witcher 1 remake to be like a true to form of the
• 9:35
  original game remake, even though I know that's not what
• 9:37
  it's going to be. But that's what I would like
• 9:39
  'cause I think the ideas in that game, some of them, not all of
• 9:42
  them obviously could translate into an interesting modern game.
• 9:45
  But anyway, I digress. I started to I I liked the
• 9:51
  Witcher one a lot more now having actually beaten it.
• 9:55
  One of the things that made me really like the Witcher 1 is the
• 10:00
  design of the areas in the game and the design of the quest in
• 10:04
  those areas. Now I should point out there is
• 10:07
  a lot of backtracking in with the Witcher 1, like there's a
• 10:09
  lot of going back and forth between points that you've
• 10:12
  already been to because the game areas are not that big because
• 10:16
  it's it's a fairly old game. It released in 2007.
• 10:19
  No 2007, I think it was 7. I'm actually hold on.
• 10:24
  I'm going to double check real quick because yeah, 2000 I was
• 10:29
  right 2007. So the zones are not that large.
• 10:33
  So in order to like, you know, have content, there's a lot of
• 10:36
  going back and forth, but the way everything is interwoven in
• 10:41
  these small areas, these like open zones and the way that the
• 10:46
  quests all interplay with each other.
• 10:50
  I thought it was really interesting and, and made it
• 10:54
  made the game feel a little more like, made it feel a little
• 10:58
  cooler and a little more organic than a lot of like modern RPGs.
• 11:04
  Because you know, a lot of modern RPGs, it's like, here's
• 11:09
  the main quest and then there's the side quest.
• 11:11
  And like, you know, they they exist in these two bubbles
• 11:15
  because of the quest design of the Witcher one.
• 11:18
  There kind of was no distinction.
• 11:20
  All the quests were sort of intertwined and there was no
• 11:24
  main quest technically, like there is and there isn't, which
• 11:30
  I will, you know, I'll get into explaining more.
• 11:32
  So playing through that game, I was like, oh, this gives me some
• 11:37
  really interesting ideas about how to handle the idea of side
• 11:41
  quests in a tabletop game. Because I feel like a lot of
• 11:47
  people like the idea of the side quest, right?
• 11:53
  The idea of, oh, you know, the GM is going to have us do
• 11:55
  something that's a little different from like the mainline
• 11:57
  vibe or whatever. The problem is that a tabletop
• 12:02
  game is not a video game and a, a 10 minute side quest in a
• 12:06
  video game is like an hour or two of, you know, your time in a
• 12:12
  tabletop game, right? Everything just moves slower
• 12:14
  because you're coordinating with five people.
• 12:16
  You're doing all the math and everything manually when it
• 12:18
  comes to like the roles and all that shit, right?
• 12:20
  You need to keep track of the game rules itself manually,
• 12:25
  right? Whereas the video game helps you
• 12:26
  to do all that stuff. So the idea of the side quest
• 12:30
  goes from being like an interesting, fun diversion to
• 12:33
  kind of annoying a lot of the time because it takes up a large
• 12:37
  chunk of time. And if it doesn't have any
• 12:40
  relevance to like quote UN quote the main story of your campaign,
• 12:46
  sometimes it'll feel like maybe a waste.
• 12:48
  Especially if you do a if you're AGM and you set up a side quest
• 12:52
  and then your players don't like the side quest, then it's really
• 12:56
  going to feel like they wasted time, right?
• 12:59
  Oh yeah, Then we had to deal with that fuck head halfling
• 13:02
  that nobody likes. Then it's that's bad.
• 13:05
  This entire episode, Cardell is going to hear it and it's just
• 13:09
  going to be the FA sound effects over.
• 13:13
  The FA. The fuck and everything.
• 13:16
  It's like a like a hit sound effect.
• 13:18
  Oh. Yes, yes I do.
• 13:20
  Yes, we're just gonna trigger the shit out of Pardell on this
• 13:23
  one. It's it's gonna be bad dog.
• 13:26
  I mean, but you get what I mean though, right?
• 13:28
  No, I look, I, I, no, I absolutely do get what you mean.
• 13:31
  Yeah. Yeah, it, it, it, it can go from
• 13:35
  being fun idea to like a huge pain in the ass.
• 13:40
  And ultimately having a session or two of an, even if it's only
• 13:46
  like 2 sessions of a huge pain in the ass, just, it could
• 13:50
  really kill the momentum and the joy and the vibe.
• 13:53
  And, and I think there's a lot to be said.
• 13:56
  This is kind of this is a slightly different topic, but I
• 13:59
  think there's a lot to be said about the idea of ending a
• 14:04
  session in such a fashion that people have the energy and
• 14:09
  excitement to roll into the next session.
• 14:12
  You know, like having a degree of a finality to an arc or
• 14:17
  whatever is good, but there also needs to be enough of a door
• 14:21
  open to have that hype to roll into the next thing, that
• 14:24
  curiosity, whatever, whatever the hook for going into the next
• 14:28
  session next week is, you know, you, you kind of need that
• 14:33
  energy because that's what makes people sit down for another 4
• 14:36
  hours and do the thing again next week, same time or
• 14:38
  whatever. And if you have two sessions or
• 14:43
  so of a side quest and then nobody ends up liking the side
• 14:47
  quest, you could potentially, if you fuck it really bad, you
• 14:52
  could like, like bring a campaign to a screeching halt.
• 14:57
  You know what I mean? Like that's obviously an extreme
• 14:59
  case for that to happen, but like, the potential is there,
• 15:03
  you know what I'm saying? I, I had a really funny
• 15:07
  situation happened to me at one point where we were doing kind
• 15:10
  of side quest stuff. It was, it was related to the
• 15:12
  main quest, but it wasn't the main quest.
• 15:14
  It was in Hellscapes. And you can't get a little any
• 15:19
  more controversial at having a player die in the side quest.
• 15:23
  Oh, I mean, and I had AI had a moment where I was like, oh,
• 15:28
  shit. Like I OK, well, no, to be
• 15:30
  clear, I I didn't feel that bad about it A, because I knew the
• 15:35
  player was fine with it and B, because it was one of those
• 15:39
  situations where the players got someone died because of
• 15:43
  inaction, right? It was like a hey, you guys are
• 15:48
  on a we have to talk about it like the the enemies around the
• 15:51
  corner. What do you do?
• 15:52
  No one responds. Then I go, OK, do you do
• 15:55
  nothing? And they're like, we we guess.
• 15:59
  And yeah, it it was funny because the session after
• 16:04
  somebody was like, and then you killed.
• 16:06
  I was like, I killed that character.
• 16:08
  Died because you bifted to blame it on me.
• 16:12
  Yeah, yeah. And it was a funny back and
• 16:15
  forth. I mean, that is, yeah, I I sure
• 16:21
  controversial situation of a player dying in the cyclist
• 16:24
  that's not necessarily an auto like, Oh no.
• 16:26
  But yeah, I could see how that could could cause a mess
• 16:31
  potential. The potential for a mess is
• 16:32
  there for sure. Yeah, that.
• 16:34
  That was really the like. I was like, oh God.
• 16:36
  Oh fuck. Oh no.
• 16:38
  Yeah, yeah. So it's going to be a little
• 16:46
  annoying because I'm going to have to explain how the video
• 16:50
  game does it in order to fully get the point across here.
• 16:55
  So we're going to have to do some just talking about a video
• 16:58
  game for a minute here and it's a little long ended, but I, I, I
• 17:03
  promise if I can explain it well enough, it will help get the
• 17:06
  point across. I believe in you both.
• 17:09
  So most people know. In terms of the Witcher games,
• 17:15
  pretty much everyone only really knows the Witcher 3.
• 17:19
  A lot of people see that three number and assume that it's just
• 17:22
  like for funsies or something. I don't think anyone actually
• 17:24
  knows there were two other games.
• 17:29
  That's not true obviously, but it feels like that to me at
• 17:31
  least. So the first two Witcher games
• 17:37
  are not open world games. Like they're much more well
• 17:40
  known sequel. The first two Witcher games are
• 17:45
  what I, I don't think this is a term that's like widely used
• 17:50
  that much, but they're what I like to call open zone games,
• 17:55
  which is not necessarily a a great name or descriptor per SE,
• 18:01
  but I'll try and kind of explain what I mean.
• 18:06
  If you want another example of like open zone games, the Yakuza
• 18:11
  games are very much this. That's the other prime example I
• 18:16
  like to personally bring up. I've been trying to think of
• 18:20
  other examples and like, unfortunately nothing's really
• 18:22
  coming to me because I feel like it's not that common anymore
• 18:25
  these days. I guess Mass Effect one and two,
• 18:28
  actually, actually all three of the Mass Effect games basically
• 18:31
  are open zone games now that I just thought of that.
• 18:34
  Yeah, actually the Mass Effect games are a good example.
• 18:41
  You know, actually you want a really recent example that just
• 18:43
  popped in my head just now. Balder's Gate 3 is basically an
• 18:49
  open zone game. True.
• 18:52
  True, right? Like.
• 18:53
  Because you are limited to your ACT zones.
• 18:55
  Your ACT zones, the zones are quite large so it feels pretty
• 18:59
  open, but ultimately is not open world.
• 19:03
  So that actually might be a really good.
• 19:05
  That's probably the most useful modern reference, but
• 19:08
  effectively what I mean by open zone is rather than having a big
• 19:14
  huge map that you can move about freely after, you know, a
• 19:17
  tutorial section or whatever, most of the time, usually an
• 19:21
  open zone game is based around smaller interconnected areas of
• 19:26
  play, excuse me, that you can usually move between but are not
• 19:34
  connected in terms of consequences or progression.
• 19:39
  Which is to say, there will be zones like that.
• 19:43
  You know, you can get on a boat and go from one zone to the
• 19:47
  other, but the stuff that happens in them, one doesn't
• 19:52
  necessarily affect the other in terms of gameplay effect.
• 19:58
  They can sometimes affect each other in terms of story, Like
• 20:01
  the story progresses and things change.
• 20:03
  But if you think about like the zones and Balder's Gate, doing a
• 20:08
  bunch of quests or not doing a bunch of quests in Act 1 does
• 20:12
  not necessarily affect how you go into Act 2.
• 20:17
  And it doesn't have any kind of like really permanent effect on
• 20:20
  Act 2 again, other than the story progression stuff, which
• 20:25
  obviously is always going to be there.
• 20:26
  Whereas an open world game, you're essentially affecting the
• 20:31
  entire map by doing kind of anything, right?
• 20:35
  On a really basic level. If you think about, you know,
• 20:38
  you go to a cave and you kill all the monsters in The Cave and
• 20:41
  you get the treasure. You have removed the treasure
• 20:43
  from the map, you have affected the entire map.
• 20:50
  Often you will get cut off from the other zones of the game by
• 20:57
  story progress, or story progress will open up new zones.
• 21:02
  So for example in the Witcher 1, you start in an area outside of
• 21:07
  the city of Vezima, and then in the second act you go into the
• 21:11
  city. You cannot go back to the area
• 21:14
  of the first act, like you can't backtrack to that area, so they
• 21:20
  will often sort of cut themselves off Baldur's Gate
• 21:23
  again once you go to act 2. You can't go back to act one to
• 21:26
  the act one area at all. Broadly though, the important
• 21:35
  difference is that the zones are smaller and have like a set
• 21:41
  story progression to them that once you complete it, you then
• 21:45
  move on to the next zone. Whereas an open world game tends
• 21:49
  to mean that you can move around freely and you can progress the
• 21:54
  main story and break it up a whole bunch or in whatever way
• 21:58
  you want. Like it can be broken up in lots
• 22:00
  of ways. And what I mean by that is you
• 22:03
  can do a couple of main story quests and then even though the
• 22:06
  from a narrative standpoint, the story is like, Oh my God,
• 22:10
  Garrow, you have to do this thing right now.
• 22:12
  You could just go fuck off and do a bunch of Gwent stuff for
• 22:15
  hours and hours and hours because it's an open world game.
• 22:17
  So you could just freely leave most of the time.
• 22:21
  Obviously there'll be scripted times where you can't do that,
• 22:23
  but most of the time. So why is all this relevant?
• 22:27
  Why am I explaining all this? Because I think if you look at
• 22:32
  this idea of the open zone play, the open zone game, it can have
• 22:37
  an effect on how you design your quests and your map as you will
• 22:42
  for your campaign and can have some useful lessons.
• 22:48
  Again, Baldur's Gate is another good one to use as I think I
• 22:52
  even talked about the quest. But did we do an episode talking
• 22:55
  about the quest design in Baldur's Gate?
• 22:56
  Did I actually, did I mention, did I talk about this?
• 23:00
  I feel like I did I. Think we did?
• 23:01
  No. No, my.
• 23:08
  I'll have to look, but either way, Baldur's Gate does do this.
• 23:13
  Does do what I'm about to talk about a bit also, although I
• 23:17
  think maybe I would say not as much, not not quite as much as
• 23:24
  the Witcher, but anyway. OK, so now I need to explain why
• 23:27
  I think the Witcher one has really good quest design and the
• 23:31
  you know, what's useful there or what's useful what, what we as
• 23:36
  GMs can get out of it and use. So the basic structure is in The
• 23:43
  Witcher 1, the setup of each act, right, is you load into the
• 23:50
  zone as it were, and you don't have you, you get dropped into
• 23:58
  the zone and maybe there's a cutscene and something happens
• 24:01
  or whatever, but there's no quest marker that pops up over
• 24:05
  your head and says go talk to this guy, right?
• 24:08
  You load into the zone, you do a thing or whatever.
• 24:11
  You know, maybe like in the in the first act, as soon as you
• 24:14
  load in, you get attacked by a bunch of bar guests, a bunch of
• 24:17
  ghost dogs. After you do that, the game
• 24:22
  doesn't tell you where to go or what to do, so you start moving
• 24:26
  around and just talking to NPCS. You know, as one does in an RPG.
• 24:32
  You talk to NPCS, and as you talk to the relevant NPCS in
• 24:38
  question, you of course start to pick up quests.
• 24:44
  The game essentially has four different kinds of quests.
• 24:50
  There's the main quest, side quest, what I call prolonged
• 24:54
  quests, and Witcher contracts. Prolonged quests are just quests
• 24:59
  that you have to complete over multiple multiple acts.
• 25:04
  So like for example there's one quest line where you you want to
• 25:09
  become the best dice player in the world and you literally
• 25:13
  cannot complete that quest line until the final act of the game
• 25:16
  because the the best dice player you can play is only in the
• 25:19
  final act. So that's the like prolonged
• 25:21
  quest thing. The trick though with these 4
• 25:25
  quests is that the game doesn't actually tell you which quests
• 25:28
  are which with the exception of contracts.
• 25:31
  The Witcher contracts it does label as contract and then it
• 25:35
  says you know whatever monster you need to kill.
• 25:38
  But the other three are all displayed in exactly the same
• 25:41
  way and even the contract ones they look the same they just
• 25:44
  have the word contract next to them.
• 25:49
  So it it doesn't say this is a main quest or this is the side,
• 25:53
  it's just you have a quest log of like shit people have asked
• 25:56
  you to do. The game does mark the quests
• 26:02
  that are currently achievable though, so you don't need to
• 26:06
  necessarily look around completely head like you're not
• 26:10
  running around completely like a headless chicken because it will
• 26:12
  tell you. It marks with a star the quests
• 26:15
  that are like actually doable right now.
• 26:19
  But because the main quest line is not explicitly marked, what
• 26:25
  you basically end up doing is moving around and doing
• 26:29
  whichever quest interest you in the moment, right.
• 26:33
  So you're like, OK, well, this quest wants me to go talk to
• 26:37
  Shawnee to help her with some weird like there's a, you know,
• 26:41
  she's trying to make a potion. All right, I'll go talk to
• 26:43
  Shawnee and see what she's up to.
• 26:45
  So you just kind of follow your whims because it doesn't
• 26:47
  explicitly say like main quest or side quest or do this first.
• 26:50
  It doesn't tell you any issue. The trick to the game though,
• 26:55
  the part that makes it really well made in my opinion, is that
• 27:03
  doing pretty much any of the quests in the game, any quest
• 27:09
  that you you feel like is probably is plot relevant.
• 27:12
  Like Oh well, this character is important.
• 27:15
  I bet their quest is is, you know, relevant to the plot.
• 27:18
  It probably is an ergo doing most of the quests in your log
• 27:23
  will turn into forward progression no matter what.
• 27:26
  So just bouncing around from quest to quest is gonna get you
• 27:31
  progress in some nature because either it's gonna, you know, you
• 27:37
  complete one quest to get an item from the character that you
• 27:40
  need for the other quest, or it's gonna have you go to an
• 27:44
  area of the map that you need to do for another quest anyway.
• 27:49
  So like, for example, there is one quest where a guy was like,
• 27:52
  oh, I need you to clear out this crypt.
• 27:54
  And then you go over to the crypt.
• 27:56
  And that crypt is also tied into another question you need to do.
• 28:03
  The other really useful part, maybe the most maybe the most
• 28:07
  useful part for us as GMs is that all of the not all, but
• 28:13
  many of the quests in the game are interwoven in such a fashion
• 28:16
  that completing 1 will help you make progress towards another
• 28:22
  that you might have been stuck on or you might have like hit a
• 28:26
  wall and stopped. So to explain what I mean or to
• 28:30
  give an example or see if 2 examples.
• 28:34
  So in the first act of the game, which I think arguably does this
• 28:38
  quest design the best, you have a quest to go talk to this like
• 28:42
  local, well respected town reverend dude.
• 28:45
  He's a priest of the Eternal Fire, which is a religion in the
• 28:49
  Witcher universe. You can pretty grab the burning
• 28:52
  horseshoe guys from. No, no, no.
• 28:56
  Oh, wait. Actually, it might have been.
• 28:58
  Where are those eternal fire priests?
• 29:00
  They might have been. Actually, now that I'm thinking
• 29:02
  about it, I'd have to go back and check the scene.
• 29:07
  But that may have been the the eternal fire.
• 29:09
  Yeah, you can pretty safely assume at it at this early part
• 29:17
  of the game based on story events that have happened up to
• 29:20
  this point, that talking to the Reverend guy is probably like
• 29:23
  your main quest, quote UN quote, to follow and finish the ACT.
• 29:28
  So you go to him and you're like, all right, well, he's
• 29:31
  probably important. So you go and talk to him at the
• 29:34
  same time, at the very beginning of this act, you'll pick up a
• 29:37
  Witcher contract to kill some bar guests that are like, you
• 29:39
  know, terrorizing the town, yada yada.
• 29:41
  Go kill the evil ghost dogs. If you go and talk to the
• 29:45
  Reverend, he'll ask you to go around the area and light these
• 29:50
  like shrines for him to prove that you're, you know, basically
• 29:55
  you help me and I'll help you type situation.
• 29:57
  So go light these shrines. When you go and light the
• 30:00
  shrines, every time you light one of them bar guests will
• 30:04
  spawn and attack you. So by doing the main quest with
• 30:08
  the whole lighting the shrine thing, you'll finish the
• 30:11
  contract with no extra effort. Like really easily because the
• 30:16
  contract is kill 10 bar guests and when you do the shrines
• 30:20
  you're going to kill like somewhere between like 10 and 15
• 30:23
  of them guaranteed. Rather than your other option
• 30:29
  which would be to run around the place at night time and hope for
• 30:33
  the barges to randomly spawn and attack you because they do like
• 30:37
  random spawn. You could just do this quest and
• 30:40
  complete the contract no problem.
• 30:45
  Oh, wait. What the fuck?
• 30:45
  The Bargesh look horrifying in Witcher 30.
• 30:50
  I don't know if I've seen. Him.
• 30:51
  I know there's a they look terrifying.
• 30:53
  Hold on, so those of you who aren't they, they look like if
• 30:57
  you mixed a mastiff in a Doberman together, it has no
• 31:01
  fur, just nasty muscular rotten looking flesh and no eyes.
• 31:09
  I mean I. Thought they looked kind of cool
• 31:10
  in the first game too to be honest.
• 31:12
  So I saw them in the first game, they just kind of looked like
• 31:15
  angry. Black greens, Glowing dogs.
• 31:18
  Yeah, they're green ghost dogs. Really.
• 31:20
  They do look worse. Yeah, I mean, the the no eyes
• 31:25
  thing is such a striking aesthetic that like it's kind of
• 31:28
  hard to go back to anything before that.
• 31:33
  But sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 31:34
  I just was like, I mean, what? They look like a nightmare fuel.
• 31:38
  Yeah, I mean, in the first game they're big glowing green ghost
• 31:41
  dog Doberman thingies. But yeah, so by doing, by doing
• 31:46
  the one quest, you just like seamlessly complete the other
• 31:50
  without, you know, a ton of extra work, actually basically
• 31:53
  zero extra work. Another example in a slightly
• 31:57
  different style is in the second act of the game.
• 32:00
  You need to collect these like 8 special magic gem things to open
• 32:05
  up this magic tower. Eight or nine of them forget,
• 32:07
  but you need to collect these gems to open up this tower.
• 32:11
  The main way you acquire most of the gems is to basically do a
• 32:18
  bunch of other quests in that area and you get the gems as
• 32:22
  rewards. So like there's a, there's a
• 32:25
  lady there, you're in this like swamp area and there's a lady
• 32:29
  who's sort of the like head elder of the swamp town.
• 32:33
  You do a job for her. She gives you one of the gems.
• 32:36
  There's another like camp off to the side of like logger dudes.
• 32:41
  You do a quest for them, they give you one of the gems or
• 32:43
  whatever. I I'm not I'm probably
• 32:45
  misremembering which quest reward what, but you get what
• 32:47
  I'm saying. Basically going the game is like
• 32:49
  go around this area, help people do stuff and then you will be
• 32:53
  rewarded for the the item you need.
• 32:57
  The game does not explicitly tell you this.
• 33:02
  It gives you a little hint with like a Riddle.
• 33:04
  It gives you a book that has like a Riddle style poem thing
• 33:08
  in it and that will give you like a hint.
• 33:11
  But between between the book Riddle and basically what you
• 33:18
  had to do, like between that and how you experience act one of
• 33:23
  the game, you can basically intuit that Once you get that
• 33:26
  quest to collect the 9 magic gems or whatever, you can intuit
• 33:30
  to yourself, Oh, I probably need to go around the zone and do
• 33:33
  other quests that will then help me to complete this quest.
• 33:40
  I think it's pretty clear how in particular that idea of the gem
• 33:43
  collecting thing could translate to a tabletop game, right?
• 33:46
  Ah, players, you need to go and help all these various people to
• 33:49
  acquire the item to then do the final thing, right?
• 33:52
  That's a really easy, that one's easy to translate.
• 33:59
  Would that all be with that explanation now being concluded
• 34:02
  there, How do we translate this kind of thing into actual design
• 34:08
  lesson for tabletop campaign? Also, as a little little side
• 34:17
  note, little comment before, before getting fully into
• 34:25
  utilizing this idea of, of the stealing, this idea of the quest
• 34:28
  design from the video game. I am specifically talking about
• 34:35
  designing quest for a, a linear, a more linear game, or at the,
• 34:43
  or at the very least a more like tightly focused smaller area
• 34:47
  kind of game. We're not really talking about
• 34:50
  running a sandbox game, because if you're running a sandbox
• 34:53
  game, then you're going to want to look at open world video
• 34:57
  games more, right? Like The Witcher 3 for example.
• 35:01
  To I mean. For inspiration, it's a
• 35:04
  different set up. It's a good point, yeah.
• 35:06
  Like I think it's worth noting that there is a, a distinct,
• 35:10
  very real dichotomy between closed ended design and
• 35:15
  open-ended design, right? Stuff like this is basically
• 35:19
  what I'm trying to do for Lancer, right?
• 35:21
  Where the the side quests sort of overlap and fold into the
• 35:25
  main quests as you know, characters that they meet who
• 35:27
  will come back again and stuff like that.
• 35:30
  Ultimately sort of culminating into ones that they can call
• 35:33
  upon in the main quest. But if I was going to run a full
• 35:36
  sandboxy game, I really, you really won't be able to do this
• 35:40
  in the same way. You can approximate it, but it
• 35:42
  won't. Yeah, it won't.
• 35:45
  Work to the desired effect, I think.
• 35:48
  I think if the key difference in my mind, if you want to do a
• 35:56
  sandbox style game is you almost want to intentionally not
• 36:02
  intertwine all the various quests together because that
• 36:09
  will make that kind of makes the big sandbox feel very small,
• 36:14
  right? So you want to take a different
• 36:18
  approach to it because the idea, you know, let's use the magic
• 36:24
  tower example. If if in the Witcher 3 you pick
• 36:32
  up a quest that's like you need to collect the 9 magic gems to
• 36:35
  open this tower and the gems are spread out across the entire
• 36:39
  world and totally random people have them for no obvious reason,
• 36:44
  that feels a little like narratively incongruous.
• 36:47
  Like why do these unrelated people have these things whereas
• 36:53
  in the Witcher what you know? What that reminds me of in Strad
• 36:57
  when we had to find the weird jade gemstones and like Bobby
• 37:02
  Asaga had one, that one guy had the OR the the the hags had the
• 37:09
  other, and then there was the random ass barkeep.
• 37:13
  So the random barkeep was Sam's idea.
• 37:15
  Was that a Sam thing? That was a Samism, yeah.
• 37:18
  OK, all right, never mind. Statement retracted I.
• 37:23
  Was gonna say, I was gonna say the cursor draw thing.
• 37:24
  I mean, I do kind of, it's sort of a similar idea with the
• 37:27
  cursor Stroud thing, but at least that was like a small
• 37:29
  interconnected area. So you can understand how these
• 37:33
  people may have found the gemstones, you know what I mean?
• 37:36
  But if you're doing like a full on sandbox game where you're
• 37:38
  like, you know, spanning many, many weeks of travel from point
• 37:43
  A to point B, it would feel weird to be like this magic
• 37:47
  tower in this random swamp needs these gems to open it.
• 37:51
  And one of these gems is held by a dragon in the mountain and the
• 37:55
  other one's held by a wizard in the South.
• 37:57
  And that like, they're just all over the goddamn place.
• 37:59
  That can feel a little weird. But by comparison, in The
• 38:04
  Witcher 1, the fact that the gems were spread out all over
• 38:07
  the place wasn't that odd because you were dealing with
• 38:12
  the swamp and the town next to the swamp.
• 38:15
  So you're like, oh, yeah, I could see how these may have
• 38:17
  moved around this area a bit. So yeah, it's like you want to
• 38:24
  take a different tact if you're doing a fully sandboxed game.
• 38:27
  I also think if you're doing a, a, a sandbox game, the idea that
• 38:35
  I'm just picking up a random quest from a random guy because
• 38:38
  this is the town we're in, it is more like, I don't know,
• 38:45
  acceptable. Sounds like a weird way to put
• 38:47
  it, but like you're expecting it as a player, you're expecting to
• 38:50
  pick up random job from random Joe S MO because you're, you
• 38:53
  know, you're doing the sandbox style game.
• 38:56
  So the idea of, well, that was a weird side quest we just went on
• 39:00
  is less annoying than in a linear than a more linear style
• 39:05
  game where sometimes the side quest can feel annoying.
• 39:09
  You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
• 39:11
  I mean, if you're trying to get a really concentrated, you know,
• 39:14
  distilled experience, literally speaking, diluting it with
• 39:18
  random bullshit go is not going to be good.
• 39:20
  I. Mean I I don't know if I maybe
• 39:25
  not random bullshit, but other bullshit.
• 39:29
  In in well, the random insofar as you know, we have to go
• 39:33
  fight, fight, you know, Orgel Org the lich and then randomly
• 39:36
  Granny needs her, you know, whatever or or medicine from the
• 39:41
  pharmacies and you're like, wait, what?
• 39:42
  Why is relevant? Why are we doing this?
• 39:44
  Yeah, yeah. So with that that in mind, how
• 39:52
  do we translate this this idea to to something that's actually
• 39:57
  useful? So I, I put these bullet points
• 40:00
  in a specific order and I'm now reusing.
• 40:01
  I want them in a slightly different order, so I'm just
• 40:05
  going to move them around on the fly here so.
• 40:09
  I think one thing at the top here that can be really helpful
• 40:13
  is if you're running this linear, again, we're assuming
• 40:19
  the linear style game, or at least the tightly focused
• 40:22
  smaller area style game. Don't call out the side quests
• 40:30
  as side quests, right? Like don't, don't make it feel
• 40:38
  like a weird random tangent. Because if we're really focused
• 40:45
  on this prime, like this primary narrative, and then another NPC
• 40:52
  asks the players to do something and then you as the GM make it
• 40:56
  very explicitly clear, Oh, this is just like a side thing.
• 41:03
  You're basically shooting it like you're shooting the idea in
• 41:06
  the foot right from the jump and potentially wasting prep because
• 41:11
  the players are just devaluing it immediately.
• 41:14
  Now, you might not literally say the words side quest, but don't
• 41:19
  give them the idea that it is a side quest, right?
• 41:24
  Make it make it feel interwoven with what's going on still.
• 41:29
  But make it, you know, make it clear that it's not, maybe it's
• 41:36
  not as imperative or it doesn't need to be done right away or
• 41:40
  like like you can adjust the priority of it.
• 41:42
  But if you explicitly have an MP, like if you have an MPC,
• 41:47
  goes go, oh, I need you to save my daughter from the woods.
• 41:53
  But you know, I mean, whenever you can though, right?
• 41:57
  Like don't, don't phrase it. I mean, that would be a
• 41:59
  hilarious thing to say. But like, don't make it too
• 42:04
  explicitly a side quest because it kind of it breaks down the,
• 42:10
  the, the illusion, I guess, a little bit.
• 42:13
  It makes it feel clunky. I don't know what the word I'm
• 42:18
  fishing for here is, but you don't, you don't want to make it
• 42:26
  immediately apparent that you're, you're, you're giving
• 42:32
  the players something to do that in your mind is inherently like,
• 42:36
  not as important. Does that make sense?
• 42:39
  Right, Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
• 42:41
  The the idea being like you, you need to treat these aspects of
• 42:44
  the game of of Co equal importance.
• 42:47
  Otherwise it kind of negates the value that this is an interwoven
• 42:52
  experience. Yeah, well, yeah, like devalues
• 42:55
  it right from the jump, which is weird.
• 42:58
  It's funny. I actually so I when I had the
• 43:02
  idea for the when I was coming up with the idea for this
• 43:06
  episode, I went back. I went back because I was like,
• 43:09
  I think we did an episode talking about the idea of side
• 43:13
  quests previously and we did actually, but not in the same
• 43:17
  way. It was something and it was
• 43:22
  actually it was me that brought that brought the topic up full
• 43:25
  time last time too. It was more last time I was more
• 43:31
  talking in the context of having like your primary narrative and
• 43:37
  then having these little like offshoot branch narratives that
• 43:40
  form out of it, but then eventually either come back
• 43:44
  around or at least have some effect on that primary
• 43:47
  narrative, right. And I was in that context I was
• 43:50
  talking about like just talking about.
• 43:55
  I was more talking about the idea of the story diverging in
• 43:59
  slightly weird directions every once in a while, which is not,
• 44:03
  in my mind, not exactly the same thing as explicitly a side
• 44:07
  quest. In this context.
• 44:10
  I'm saying it is a side quest, but make it feel still like it's
• 44:16
  relevant and interwoven in some way.
• 44:18
  And it doesn't need to be big either, right?
• 44:20
  It can be something as simple as, you know, we need
• 44:25
  information and the farmer's like, listen, I'll tell you what
• 44:27
  you want to know, but you got to help me out first, right?
• 44:29
  It could be something as simple as that too.
• 44:33
  And because effectively, when you're doing a, a a side quest
• 44:39
  as AGM, one of the main reasons you're doing it probably is you
• 44:45
  had an idea for something and you wanted to do it.
• 44:49
  But where the where the like main narrative of his is at
• 44:53
  currently doesn't make sense for the idea you wanted to do.
• 44:57
  So instead you throw in this little side quest thing to to,
• 45:03
  to do the fun idea that you have and not make it interrupt the
• 45:07
  main narrative. So you have the idea for the
• 45:11
  rescuing the farmer's daughter, but you don't know how to make
• 45:14
  that work with whatever the characters are currently doing.
• 45:17
  So you go, oh, OK, the players need information.
• 45:19
  The farmer has the information. He asked them to help his
• 45:22
  daughter. Boom, bang, boom.
• 45:23
  Effectively, it is a side quest because saving the daughter is
• 45:27
  not that imperative to the grand scheme of things.
• 45:31
  But you wove it into that main narrative.
• 45:35
  But again, you didn't, you didn't call it out as a side
• 45:38
  quest because that makes it feel inferior and like unimportant,
• 45:43
  which is not really what we're trying to do Now.
• 45:49
  Flipping back up to the top of my list since I did it slightly.
• 45:52
  Decided to do it in for order. Keep your side quests in the
• 46:00
  same vicinity of the main quest. Bro I yes.
• 46:08
  Let it out, let it out. Yes, I am so sick and fucking
• 46:13
  tired of having to go on a marathon like And he's thinking,
• 46:20
  even if I like the quest, even if I'm having a good time, I'm
• 46:23
  still going to be mad that we had to go on this cross country
• 46:27
  jaunt, do some random bullshit, you know what I mean?
• 46:31
  Yeah, I do, yes. Yeah, I mean, that's it.
• 46:36
  Again, if if you were doing a sandbox game, right, let's
• 46:40
  imagine 2 scenarios here to to illustrate my point.
• 46:47
  In, in in the sandbox game, the player's primary objective
• 46:53
  perhaps is, well, we want to find this magic artifact that's
• 46:58
  going to make us rich so we can like have a sweet keep or
• 47:02
  whatever. And then along the way, they run
• 47:05
  into a wizard guy who's like, hey, there's these ruins in the
• 47:09
  mountains that might have some really interesting loot.
• 47:13
  Might you help me go investigate?
• 47:15
  And I'll let you guys keep everything except for the one
• 47:17
  thing I'm looking for. The players go, OK, well, this
• 47:22
  random dungeon the wizard wants us to go in probably doesn't
• 47:25
  have the relic we're looking for, but maybe it's worth it
• 47:29
  for, you know, the loot or whatever.
• 47:31
  That's kind of the sandbox mentality.
• 47:33
  The wizard wants us. We were going West.
• 47:35
  The wizard wants us to go north. And let's take a little detour
• 47:38
  and go north to do the same idea in the linear style of game.
• 47:46
  All right, we're looking for this magical relic thing.
• 47:48
  We got a lead. We're going West.
• 47:51
  They bump into the wizard. The wizard says, hey, you know,
• 47:54
  I heard you guys were going to this dungeon already.
• 47:58
  There's something there I also want.
• 48:01
  Could you help me find it in the dungeon that you're already
• 48:03
  going to? Right?
• 48:06
  That's the difference there. Oh, dude, yes, that is perfect.
• 48:09
  That the while you're there, that is the shit that I love.
• 48:12
  Yeah, I will say so there was and then we've we've made jokes
• 48:17
  about this. I'm sorry.
• 48:18
  I Cassandra, we've, I know we've made jokes about the, the
• 48:20
  Cardell side quest before, but amongst the side quests that I,
• 48:25
  that I, I kind of had to be like, guys, wait, voice of
• 48:27
  reason. We, we found this magic spear
• 48:31
  stuck in a tree and it belonged to like a St. or something.
• 48:34
  And, or something. It was annoying because we
• 48:38
  weren't allowed to keep the cool loot that we found and we were
• 48:41
  not actually given a replacement for the cool loot we found.
• 48:44
  But at the very least it was like, well, it, that spear
• 48:48
  probably belongs in that town over there.
• 48:49
  So let's just bring it over there.
• 48:50
  You know what I mean, right? It's like as far as annoying
• 48:53
  goes, this is OK. Yeah.
• 48:57
  And then what? What the.
• 49:01
  Because someone, someone might hear me say that and go, OK, but
• 49:05
  in that case, are you not just removing the choice for the
• 49:08
  players, Right. What the choice becomes then is
• 49:13
  because in the sandbox game, it's like, all right, either we
• 49:17
  keep going West or we go north to the mountains to find this
• 49:20
  this weird dungeon that the wizard was talking about.
• 49:23
  That's the choice in the sandbox game.
• 49:25
  In the linear game, you design the dungeon 'cause they're going
• 49:30
  to the dungeon no matter what. You design the dungeon in the
• 49:33
  West, and what you do is you add extra rooms, extra bits to the
• 49:38
  dungeon that they don't have to go to in order to complete the
• 49:42
  dungeon, right? Maybe to get out, maybe to get
• 49:45
  out of the dungeon or to get what they want.
• 49:47
  They have to go to the bottom of the dungeon to find this relic
• 49:50
  and then they can leave you put an extra 2 floors that go
• 49:56
  upward. And that's where the thing the
• 49:58
  wizard wants is. So then the choice becomes once
• 50:02
  the players go to that dungeon, all right, we told the wizard we
• 50:05
  were going to look for this. Are we actually going to do
• 50:07
  that? Or should we say fuck it?
• 50:08
  Or they get into a bunch of fights and they go, guys, we
• 50:12
  can't get what the wizard asked for.
• 50:13
  Like we're going to die if we trying to get into like if we
• 50:15
  try and explore any more of this dungeon, we got to get out of
• 50:17
  here, right? So the, the, the, the, the, the
• 50:21
  scope of the choice and the style of the choice adjust like
• 50:25
  it changes slightly, but like there's still a choice being
• 50:29
  made, right? The players are still making a
• 50:30
  decision on do we explore more? Do we find the thing?
• 50:35
  But it's all in the same vicinity.
• 50:40
  And that makes it significantly less of a headache.
• 50:43
  And obviously doing the thing that the wizard asks you to do
• 50:49
  is still a detour. But a detour that takes you, you
• 50:55
  know, to a couple extra rooms in a dungeon is a way bigger
• 50:59
  situation than the detour that takes you 3 days N into the
• 51:03
  mountains. And then you have to unlock the
• 51:05
  dungeon and then you have to fight the boss.
• 51:06
  And the, you know, like the scope of detour is very
• 51:09
  different there. So yeah, try and keep that.
• 51:16
  Again, don't explicitly point it out as a side quest, right?
• 51:20
  Just simply have the MPC wizard be like, hey, I'd like you to
• 51:23
  help me with something and don't, don't call it out as a
• 51:28
  side quest thing. And then have it in the vicinity
• 51:32
  of what the players are already doing.
• 51:36
  And down to my next point, have the side quests so that they can
• 51:42
  flow into the main quest. So continuing on the wizard
• 51:48
  example here, the players help the wizard out.
• 51:52
  They find, you know, the wizard finds the the scrying orb that
• 51:57
  he wanted in the dungeon. The players find the relic that
• 52:00
  they wanted. They both leave and then the
• 52:03
  players go, OK, cool, we found the relic.
• 52:07
  Now we have to try and figure out where the next piece of the
• 52:10
  relic is. You know, maybe it's broken up
• 52:11
  into parts or whatever, I don't know.
• 52:12
  It doesn't matter. The wizard goes, oh, well, I
• 52:17
  could potentially help you with that.
• 52:18
  You know, this thing you help me find is a scrying orb, and it's
• 52:22
  quite powerful. If you give me a little time to
• 52:24
  figure out how to use it, I might be able to find the next
• 52:26
  piece of that relic. Right?
• 52:28
  So then the side quest, it was a side quest, but it flows into
• 52:34
  that main quest. And they don't have to do it
• 52:36
  because if they don't help the wizard, you as the GM go, OK, if
• 52:40
  they help the wizard, then the wizard's going to help them out
• 52:43
  in return. If they don't help the wizard,
• 52:45
  this is the way that they're going to get a new lead on the
• 52:47
  next piece of the relic, right? I'm going to come up with an
• 52:49
  alternative option. So it's fully optional.
• 52:55
  There's a choice to be made. Because ultimately, at the end
• 52:57
  of the day, we want to always make sure that players are
• 52:59
  making choices because that is the crux of the entire hobby is
• 53:05
  players making choices and and having the freedom to do so.
• 53:09
  I actually I wanted to ask you. Yes.
• 53:12
  So I, I, I think we both had campaigns where the, the thinly
• 53:20
  veiled main quest dressed up as a side quest of the collect a
• 53:24
  Thon, you know, collect the Infinity stones or whatever,
• 53:27
  right? How would you do something like
• 53:31
  this in ways of handling that? Because I think everybody has
• 53:34
  thought about doing it at one point, but there's really no way
• 53:37
  of for it to feel like a main quest when it's a collect a
• 53:40
  Thon. Or do you think that can even be
• 53:45
  done in this, in this sort of more fluid, interwoven kind of
• 53:50
  way? Re rephrase the question
• 53:56
  slightly, I think I know what you're saying like but.
• 53:59
  The idea of like making choices and, and what you were just
• 54:01
  saying about the, the wizard's tower, the, you know, the side
• 54:07
  quest being interwoven with the main quest in so far as you're
• 54:10
  helping the wizard, you've made the choice to do that.
• 54:12
  You didn't have to do that. Now you're given a piece of that
• 54:15
  thing or, you know, you're given something that helps you later
• 54:18
  on when the goal specifically is to collect all of the plot
• 54:23
  devices. Do you think that can be done in
• 54:27
  a similar way that doesn't feel really forced, I see.
• 54:31
  Or is that sort of like a, it's just going to feel a little
• 54:36
  campy inside Questi and there's not a whole lot you can do about
• 54:39
  it? I'm not really looking for a
• 54:41
  right answer. I'm just kind of thinking,
• 54:42
  wondering what you think about that because it is something
• 54:43
  that I've, I was, I have been thinking about while we've
• 54:46
  talked about this, having a specific campaign in mind that I
• 54:50
  was in. I mean, ultimately the idea of
• 54:56
  collect the Infinity stones to make the to make the ultimate
• 55:00
  gauntlet, like, yeah, I I think that style of premise is going
• 55:08
  to feel like to a certain degree is going to feel like a bunch of
• 55:13
  side quests sort of all stitched together by a loose concept,
• 55:16
  right? That's kind of the point of that
• 55:20
  style of campaign though, right? That's kind of the objective.
• 55:24
  But if you want it to feel like it's not a bunch of random
• 55:30
  things all like if you want it, if you imagine a cork board,
• 55:37
  right? And in the middle of the cork
• 55:39
  board, you have the the Infinity Gauntlet.
• 55:42
  And then spreading out from the Infinity Gauntlet, you have all
• 55:46
  the stones. And the stones are all connected
• 55:50
  by a straight line from the gauntlet to the stone, right?
• 55:52
  And it's just straight line out in a circle around it, right?
• 55:56
  Or in like a Pentagon, I guess in the case of the Infinity
• 55:59
  goblet in like a Pentagon around it.
• 56:01
  And there's no, there's no interconnectedness between any
• 56:04
  of these stones. They just all shoot out from the
• 56:05
  middle. That if you want to do that to a
• 56:11
  certain degree, that is the that is the style of game you're
• 56:16
  asking for. If that's the kind of like
• 56:19
  premise you're working with. If you want to connect the sides
• 56:24
  of the pentagons between the Infinity stones, right?
• 56:28
  So you have you have the lines going inward to the gauntlet
• 56:31
  itself and you have lines between all the stones on the
• 56:34
  outside completing the Pentagon shape.
• 56:36
  If you want to sort of complete that Pentagon, I think the best
• 56:40
  way to do it, I mean, step one is to make it narratively make
• 56:46
  sense, right? So don't have the stones be in
• 56:53
  the hands of totally random disconnected people, right?
• 56:57
  Like don't make it like, oh, the one stone, a death knight has
• 57:03
  it, and the other stone, this wizard in the sky has it.
• 57:06
  And the other stone is held by a hill giant, right?
• 57:08
  Don't do that. If you want them to feel more
• 57:10
  interconnected, say go OK, the five stones are held by the five
• 57:18
  previous generals of the evil guy who had the gauntlet
• 57:22
  originally, right? OK, so now we have like a story
• 57:25
  interconnectedness. Each of the generals went off to
• 57:29
  their own specific areas for XY and Z reason.
• 57:33
  OK, as you collect a stone from each and you could do it.
• 57:41
  Let's assuming the players could do it in whatever order they
• 57:43
  want right as you collect each stone.
• 57:47
  I would then go, OK, I as the GM am going to do some behind the
• 57:56
  scenes shenanigans where I'm going to go, OK, no matter which
• 58:03
  stone the players grab first, once they grab that first one,
• 58:09
  the next story bit that's going to happen to lead into the next
• 58:12
  step is going to be this no matter what, right?
• 58:15
  It's going to be they get the first stone, this new bad guy
• 58:19
  shows up. That's going to happen no matter
• 58:21
  what and then adjust. So if they get the reality stone
• 58:27
  1st, I'm going to have it be this type of bad guy.
• 58:28
  If they get the if they get the time stone first, it's going to
• 58:31
  be this type of bad guy, right? Adjust the bad guy who shows up
• 58:35
  based on which one they want to do first, but you're always
• 58:39
  going with the same kind of premise of somebody needs to
• 58:43
  show up to then prompt the next step of things, right?
• 58:47
  That is how I would make it feel a little more interwoven is
• 58:52
  through that narrative sense of it, it feeling justified and by
• 59:01
  having having events, having like guaranteed events that
• 59:06
  change based on the player choices but are guaranteed at a
• 59:09
  certain degree because you as the GM need to have you know, a
• 59:14
  specific thing happen. Does that explanation make
• 59:18
  sense? No, yeah, I get it.
• 59:20
  I think that is a pretty eloquent way of handling that.
• 59:22
  I honestly, it's something that I, I, I didn't really have an
• 59:25
  answer to, frankly, because again, having done those games,
• 59:29
  they always feel weird and little clunky and at some point
• 59:33
  like, I don't know, boring, you know what I mean?
• 59:36
  This is the. Thing, at some point you want to
• 59:38
  fight the Death Knight because it's a Death Knight and not
• 59:41
  because you want his shiny thing, right?
• 59:43
  Right. I mean, here's the.
• 59:44
  Thing because he's doing evil shit.
• 59:46
  That style of premise is going to feel a little bit like wonky
• 59:54
  no matter what. Like, oh, we're just doing a
• 59:57
  random string of events. It's going to feel like a random
• 1:00:00
  string of events kind of no matter what, right?
• 1:00:02
  Like you can't completely avoid that.
• 1:00:04
  But if you wanted to completely avoid that problem, don't do
• 1:00:08
  that style of premise. You get what I mean?
• 1:00:12
  Yeah. Like just do a different premise
• 1:00:14
  for the campaign completely. I'm curious though because you
• 1:00:19
  said you were thinking of a specific campaign.
• 1:00:21
  Like what? What was coming to mind?
• 1:00:24
  So it was a it was the one that went thermonuclear at the final
• 1:00:27
  stretch. And basically what the
• 1:00:33
  unofficial point of the game, like we had this like, you know,
• 1:00:36
  save the Prince, save the Kingdom, you know, evil
• 1:00:39
  technologically advanced Kingdom on the other side of the border.
• 1:00:42
  Got to fight them. But then it turned into like,
• 1:00:45
  well, you got to go to these Dragons and you have to kill
• 1:00:47
  them or or like Devil May Cry style, take their souls to
• 1:00:51
  create weapons so that the bad guy doesn't get them and then
• 1:00:55
  insta wipe the party. And like there was that and we
• 1:01:02
  had to find it like these ancient spirit a game got it.
• 1:01:04
  It got really complicated and to the point where I I kind of was
• 1:01:08
  like, why wasn't this the main objective?
• 1:01:12
  Because at least I feel like I could have prepared for that.
• 1:01:14
  But now it just feels like we're doing all of this shit and I
• 1:01:17
  that IA really don't want to do and the like, you know, the the
• 1:01:23
  the fighting the Dragons thing, cool, awesome, sick, but like
• 1:01:27
  make the Dragons the villains, not this, you know, Oh, piece of
• 1:01:35
  candy trail to get some weapons. It it it felt like it was an
• 1:01:39
  attempt to do the vestiges of divergent thing, but like right
• 1:01:44
  with campaign 1, the vestiges were kind of a side questy
• 1:01:50
  thing. It was like.
• 1:01:51
  A side note, Isaiah is talking about Critical Role campaign one
• 1:01:54
  just a real. Quick like the the vestiges were
• 1:01:59
  kind of a side quest, right? Like I don't know the Matt
• 1:02:04
  specifically, you know, they changed this for legend of Ox
• 1:02:07
  Machida, but like, I don't remember Matt specifically
• 1:02:09
  saying the only way to beat Thordak is with the vestiges,
• 1:02:13
  right? It was like, Oh well, we have to
• 1:02:16
  survive his fire breath and there's one magic item that can
• 1:02:19
  do that and that happened to be a vested.
• 1:02:21
  But like them, you know, assembling the Infinity gauntlet
• 1:02:25
  of holy artifact weapons was not the point.
• 1:02:27
  I. Don't remember.
• 1:02:30
  It felt like, I think you're right, yeah.
• 1:02:32
  Point of our campaign. So if I if I'm hearing you're
• 1:02:37
  right, you, you felt like it became a grocery checklist of
• 1:02:43
  of. Disconnected stuff, yes, and
• 1:02:49
  like, admittedly I benefited from it, I got some cool magic
• 1:02:52
  items, but it still felt weird and.
• 1:02:56
  It still felt too much like a grocery list.
• 1:02:58
  It felt too much of the grocery list.
• 1:02:59
  Yeah, like, it's to the point where we were, we literally were
• 1:03:01
  like, OK, so we can go talk to the Sapphire Dragon, or we can
• 1:03:07
  figure out what to do with this other guy who may or may not be
• 1:03:10
  an enemy. So like, maybe we should do the
• 1:03:11
  Sapphire one first because at least he probably won't fight
• 1:03:14
  us. And then we didn't take his soul
• 1:03:16
  the first time around, right? We didn't like kill him or do
• 1:03:19
  anything. We were like, oh, he's a homie.
• 1:03:21
  We'll just like let him chill. And then we came back and he was
• 1:03:24
  dead. And then the villain had, you
• 1:03:26
  know, his soul gem or whatever emblazoned on his armor.
• 1:03:29
  And we were like, well, that guy's fucked.
• 1:03:33
  Which also didn't feel great because then it was like, why
• 1:03:35
  did we take the time to befriend this guy if he's just going to
• 1:03:37
  get murdered horribly and we can't like, I guess maybe that
• 1:03:41
  is the point. The like the emotional trauma of
• 1:03:43
  it, but not when it's an objective man like.
• 1:03:49
  I mean it is it is that delicate balance.
• 1:03:54
  A lot of video games have this problem too, right?
• 1:03:56
  Like I mean Ubisoft games are fucking notorious for the shit
• 1:04:00
  where? Yeah.
• 1:04:02
  They design the open world map, and the point is supposed to be
• 1:04:06
  that like, oh, you can go anywhere and there's stuff to do
• 1:04:09
  and there's interesting things. But ultimately what ends up
• 1:04:12
  happening is it just feels like a weird grocery checklist.
• 1:04:15
  And instead of organically running around and running into
• 1:04:23
  things, what you actually end up doing is just, oh, I need to
• 1:04:27
  kill five more notorious targets in this area.
• 1:04:30
  OK, let me go down the list, right?
• 1:04:33
  That's what ends up happening. It it loses that organicness to
• 1:04:37
  it. And yeah, in the tabletop game
• 1:04:38
  that is it's very easy to end up in that place.
• 1:04:43
  You have to be careful. And, and again, like I said,
• 1:04:49
  that campaign premise is going to have a little bit of that
• 1:04:54
  element regardless. So if you're really worried
• 1:04:57
  about it, just avoid that premise.
• 1:04:59
  That's that's the ultimate key, you know?
• 1:05:02
  Yeah. But I do think, I do think you
• 1:05:04
  can design it in such a fashion that it feels a little more
• 1:05:08
  interconnected and like it feels more.
• 1:05:15
  It feels more like each step has weight.
• 1:05:18
  Because that's part of the problem too, is that if it feels
• 1:05:22
  too much like a grocery list, each individual step is not
• 1:05:27
  going to feel that impactful. And then what you'll end up
• 1:05:31
  doing is having many, many sessions of doing stuff that
• 1:05:35
  doesn't feel very impactful. And then that kind of starts to
• 1:05:40
  kill the momentum after a while. Oh yeah.
• 1:05:44
  Especially. In mind, this is the same
• 1:05:45
  campaign that humble the dust because magical disease that
• 1:05:49
  magic cannot heal, right? Right.
• 1:05:52
  Really just chop in the shit out of everyone's khakis.
• 1:05:56
  Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's
• 1:05:57
  especially, it's especially frustrating if you have players
• 1:06:02
  who don't play particularly like who move kind of slowly, right?
• 1:06:07
  Don't necessarily gun it through the narrative or like, or or
• 1:06:12
  maybe aren't that familiar with the game.
• 1:06:14
  So like the mechanical side of things takes a little, you know,
• 1:06:16
  whatever. There's multiple reasons.
• 1:06:18
  But if you have players who move a little more slowly and the
• 1:06:23
  individual items on the checklist don't feel that
• 1:06:26
  important, those two things combined can like really wear
• 1:06:30
  the players down to the point where they're like, what are we
• 1:06:33
  doing? Why are it it it gets very
• 1:06:34
  spinning your wheels at a certain point?
• 1:06:37
  Yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:06:38
  That's perfect way of of putting it.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah, but if you can manage to make each step feel more
• 1:06:43
  relevant, that can help. It's not a, it might not solve
• 1:06:48
  it, but it can help. My last, my last sort of lesson
• 1:06:56
  taken from The Witcher is always have forward progress of some
• 1:07:04
  kind. And what I mean by that is in a
• 1:07:11
  video game, right, you don't necessarily have a choice.
• 1:07:15
  You can choose to not do the side quest, but generally in a
• 1:07:19
  video game if you choose to not do the side quest, the game just
• 1:07:23
  the the game world just doesn't react right.
• 1:07:26
  Nothing happens in a tabletop game though if the players
• 1:07:33
  choose to do the side quest or choose not to do the side quest.
• 1:07:39
  Push things forward no matter what.
• 1:07:41
  And if if said side quest you have, you keep it in the
• 1:07:48
  vicinity of your main quest. Like I said before, then perhaps
• 1:07:55
  the choosing not to do it and the forward progress that
• 1:07:58
  happens from the players choosing not to do it perhaps is
• 1:08:02
  interrelated or influences the main quest.
• 1:08:06
  So that way it basically what that ends up doing is a, making
• 1:08:10
  the world feel like it's moving and, and, and real and you know,
• 1:08:13
  stuff's happening and B, it signals to the players.
• 1:08:20
  You can choose to do it. You can choose to not do it.
• 1:08:23
  You can interact with, you can finish the side quest, not
• 1:08:25
  finish the side quest, but you're making a choice no matter
• 1:08:28
  what. And the choice is relevant, is
• 1:08:30
  having an effect, right? Things are things are happening
• 1:08:34
  no matter what. So what you're doing as players
• 1:08:38
  matters, right? And again, it's a little bit of
• 1:08:43
  a weird compare. It's a little weird to say that
• 1:08:46
  I got this idea from a video game because again, in a video
• 1:08:48
  game, the world will just kind of stand still for you.
• 1:08:50
  But what the reason that I got this idea from The Witcher 1 is
• 1:08:56
  because doing doing a bunch of the quests gave me a sense of
• 1:09:03
  progress almost always, even if the quest wasn't super
• 1:09:09
  important, like even doing the basic Witcher contracts, a lot
• 1:09:13
  of the time I would feel like I had a sense of progress because
• 1:09:17
  I would be like, oh, I need to go to a specific area to find
• 1:09:23
  this specific monster. And then you go to the area and
• 1:09:26
  you're like, this area looks important for something, right?
• 1:09:30
  And then you kill the monster and you do the contract and
• 1:09:32
  you're like, I should keep this area in mind.
• 1:09:34
  And then you go back and you look at a different quest and
• 1:09:37
  it's like, go to the crypt and you're like, oh, the crypt I was
• 1:09:42
  in when I was killing the ghouls.
• 1:09:43
  OK, so that area is, oh, I know where that is now.
• 1:09:46
  Oh, OK, let me go right there. You know what I mean?
• 1:09:49
  So no matter what, I felt like I was always like making moves,
• 1:09:53
  making progress, figuring shit out.
• 1:09:55
  I almost, I, I don't think ever actually, I don't think I ever
• 1:10:00
  got to a point in The Witcher 1 where I was like, I don't know
• 1:10:03
  what to do next. I feel like I've hit a weird
• 1:10:05
  wall. Like I felt like it was always
• 1:10:07
  clear when I got to the points where I was like, I'm not sure
• 1:10:12
  which quest I'm supposed to do. I was pretty confident that if I
• 1:10:16
  did a quest, any quest at all, I would get some sort of progress
• 1:10:20
  no matter what. Because the way they were all
• 1:10:23
  woven together, I was like, if I just do something, shit's going
• 1:10:27
  to happen. And so the the sort of lesson
• 1:10:32
  there in a tabletop sense is the players do something, shit's
• 1:10:37
  going to happen. And sometimes doing something,
• 1:10:39
  quote UN quote can be refusing to do the thing right.
• 1:10:43
  Like the players refusing to help the wizard is still doing
• 1:10:47
  something right. It's still making a decision,
• 1:10:49
  ergo is still forward progress, ergo things keep rolling.
• 1:10:54
  You you want to avoid that idea of the players get presented a
• 1:11:00
  side quest, the players ignore the side quest, and then the NPC
• 1:11:03
  just stands there with their thumb up their ass just locked
• 1:11:07
  in time stasis, right? Like that's not that's weird.
• 1:11:12
  That doesn't work at a tabletop game that feels off.
• 1:11:15
  It's just like you want to avoid that as much as possible.
• 1:11:19
  Maybe the MPC fades away into the background and doesn't come
• 1:11:21
  up again. That's fine, but you don't want
• 1:11:23
  them to just stand there, you know what I mean?
• 1:11:26
  Oh. So let me ask you, because I
• 1:11:29
  feel like I've run into this problem and I, I don't know that
• 1:11:32
  I am unique in the, there might be a fear of like, if I push
• 1:11:39
  the, the game forward, like, you know, you're my harder, my, my
• 1:11:46
  hard work goes to nothing. What would you recommend for
• 1:11:50
  people who might have that like fear, for lack of a better word,
• 1:11:56
  of, you know, losing something, losing their work, losing
• 1:11:59
  something like. You know what do you mean?
• 1:12:01
  What do you mean by hard work like?
• 1:12:03
  You know, like, oh, I've said all these these points up, have
• 1:12:06
  this now this NPC is here. And I know the answer is just
• 1:12:10
  you're not losing your hard work, you're just advancing it.
• 1:12:13
  But it doesn't always feel that way.
• 1:12:17
  I mean, look, you know, you got to be a little realistic about
• 1:12:20
  it. If if you got really invested,
• 1:12:24
  if you came up with a side quest and you got really invested in
• 1:12:27
  the idea for the side quest and you got really invested in the
• 1:12:30
  MPC and your players choose not to like interact with it, really
• 1:12:35
  you're going to be a little bit disappointed, right?
• 1:12:37
  Like that's just, that's just the, the case.
• 1:12:41
  There's I don't think there's any avoiding that problem.
• 1:12:44
  But once you get over the disappointment a little bit and
• 1:12:48
  you're like, I really want the players to do that quest, you
• 1:12:51
  then have to say to yourself, OK, first thing is, all right,
• 1:12:56
  so the players chose to ignore the wizard.
• 1:12:59
  I really like the wizard NPC. So what do I need to do with him
• 1:13:05
  to make it so that he's still around and I can still, you
• 1:13:09
  know, play with my toy, right? Use him because the players
• 1:13:13
  didn't do his quest. They didn't do his side quest.
• 1:13:15
  But it's not like he just disappears.
• 1:13:19
  So what kind of actions, what kind of prep, what kind of thing
• 1:13:23
  do I need to do to make it so he's still around?
• 1:13:27
  All right, that's, that's the first part I would say.
• 1:13:29
  And then in terms of the, the side quest itself, I mean,
• 1:13:35
  there's a a lot of people have said the advice of, oh, just
• 1:13:40
  reuse your prep, right? Oh, I prepped the dungeon that
• 1:13:43
  the players didn't go to. Suddenly that dungeon's in a
• 1:13:45
  different place. And that's fine.
• 1:13:48
  I I personally think that's totally a valid thing to do it,
• 1:13:51
  yes, if the players didn't go to the dungeon, use the dungeon
• 1:13:54
  somewhere else, that's fine. But if you want also kind of an
• 1:13:58
  addendum to that, say to yourself, OK, I was really
• 1:14:03
  interested in the players doing this side quest.
• 1:14:07
  What about the side quest did I find interesting, right?
• 1:14:12
  Was there a really cool monster I wanted them to fight?
• 1:14:14
  OK, move that monster into a different part of the game and
• 1:14:19
  justify it a different way. Right?
• 1:14:21
  Was there a puzzle I thought was going to be really fun?
• 1:14:24
  OK, put the puzzle somewhere else.
• 1:14:26
  Did I just really did. I like the idea of them having
• 1:14:30
  to scrounge through a dungeon to find this, like, tiny little
• 1:14:34
  artifact. OK, design a similar premise.
• 1:14:39
  You know what I mean? Like design something similar,
• 1:14:41
  basically. What got you excited?
• 1:14:44
  And then come up with a the next thing they do design in the same
• 1:14:50
  vein as the thing that got you excited.
• 1:14:53
  It doesn't have to be identical, but similar idea or maybe
• 1:14:57
  identical depending on the situation.
• 1:14:58
  Like I said, if they didn't go to the dungeon at all and they
• 1:15:02
  never saw the dungeon map, then just reuse the map, right?
• 1:15:06
  But right. If they interacted with it a
• 1:15:09
  little bit but didn't do everything you wanted, then OK,
• 1:15:14
  take the parts that you wanted and figure out how you can
• 1:15:16
  retool those. You know, that's what I'm
• 1:15:19
  saying. Because as AGM, part of your fun
• 1:15:25
  is is always going to be, oh, I have this cool idea, let me
• 1:15:30
  throw it at my players. Let me prep up this thing,
• 1:15:33
  right? That's always part of how GM fun
• 1:15:37
  like that's that. That is one of the main fun
• 1:15:40
  points for being AGM. So being aware of what part of
• 1:15:45
  what element of this did I find fun, Where was the fun and how
• 1:15:49
  can I use that fun? Does that make sense?
• 1:15:54
  Yeah, I know. I get you.
• 1:15:58
  Because yeah, it it, it for sure.
• 1:16:00
  It's a thing that, you know, you dangle the, you dangle the
• 1:16:07
  carrot in front of the players and they simply do not bite.
• 1:16:10
  That's real no matter what. And here's oh, actually a little
• 1:16:16
  addendum I think too is when you're coming up with the idea
• 1:16:20
  for the side quest and you're like, OK, if the players do the
• 1:16:24
  side quest, XY and Z will happen, right?
• 1:16:29
  Also, as you're prepping, keep in the back of your mind what
• 1:16:33
  happens if they don't do it right?
• 1:16:36
  Like plan for the contingency in the back of your mind for the if
• 1:16:41
  they don't, what you know what, what is the next step if they
• 1:16:44
  don't, right? Essentially this is like the
• 1:16:47
  Apocalypse World fronts idea, right?
• 1:16:49
  When you prep a front in Apocalypse World, you say to
• 1:16:51
  yourself, OK, if the players never show up, what happens?
• 1:16:56
  Where does this front go? Right?
• 1:16:58
  That's how you prep the front. The side quest is kind of the
• 1:17:02
  same thing. If the players do the side
• 1:17:04
  quest, this is what they'll run into.
• 1:17:06
  If the players don't do the side quest, what am I going to do
• 1:17:09
  next? What's the response?
• 1:17:11
  And make sure that both sides, both ends of that prep are
• 1:17:15
  interesting to you. You know, like don't, don't put
• 1:17:20
  yourself in a situation where the players doing it, doing the
• 1:17:23
  side quest has a really interesting outcome and the
• 1:17:26
  players ignoring the side quest has a really boring outcome.
• 1:17:29
  Try to make them as equally interesting as is humanly
• 1:17:32
  possible. To give you a perfect example
• 1:17:35
  actually, because I don't know if you noticed, but all of the
• 1:17:40
  stuff I'm talking about I just did in our fabulous campaign in
• 1:17:44
  the last session, the last two sessions.
• 1:17:47
  Yeah. So to explain for listeners
• 1:17:51
  sake, you know, you guys as the players show up to this town and
• 1:17:57
  the players basically are on a mission to, to, to kill this
• 1:18:02
  lich dude or at least to capture this lich dude because he turned
• 1:18:07
  an entire town into a zombie wasteland.
• 1:18:09
  He killed everyone in the town, yada yada.
• 1:18:12
  So the players have this mission that they're on and basically
• 1:18:17
  the organization that they work for and also a a friend and PC
• 1:18:21
  of theirs, you know, ask for their help.
• 1:18:24
  So that's why the players are there currently.
• 1:18:28
  Upon arriving at their destination, two other NPCS have
• 1:18:32
  asked them, hey, since you're there, could you also help me
• 1:18:37
  with this other thing? Because you know, I, I could use
• 1:18:41
  this help and you're already in the location, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:18:44
  This is the whole, you know, keeping the side quests in the
• 1:18:47
  same vicinity. The the 11 of the side quests is
• 1:18:53
  this elf fellow who's like hey, I lost this relic of my clan can
• 1:18:59
  you help me get the relic back It's somewhere in this town.
• 1:19:02
  I don't know exactly where and I can't do it alone.
• 1:19:05
  Can you help me So the players agreed to help the elf dude and
• 1:19:09
  they're like, all right, yeah, let's do it come with us.
• 1:19:11
  We're going to figure this out, yada yada yada.
• 1:19:16
  Players are investigating the town.
• 1:19:17
  They found the sword blah blah blah.
• 1:19:18
  They're working on that situation right now.
• 1:19:22
  Had you guys said Isaiah, had you guys said to your egg the
• 1:19:30
  elf dude, no, you know we're not going to help you.
• 1:19:33
  Like fuck you, dude. Like we don't give a shit about
• 1:19:35
  your problem. I had a plan in the back of my
• 1:19:38
  head for, OK, if they don't help him, what is he going to do the
• 1:19:44
  NPC and what potential ramifications will that have
• 1:19:50
  down the road for his clan And that whole situation, right?
• 1:19:54
  I had that milling about in the back of my head.
• 1:19:57
  I didn't necessarily commit anything hard to paper because I
• 1:20:00
  wanted to leave it. I wanted to give myself wiggle
• 1:20:04
  room based on how you guys responded as a group.
• 1:20:08
  But I was thinking about it. I was keeping in the back of my
• 1:20:10
  mind, if they just say absolutely not, not doing that,
• 1:20:13
  fuck you, where's it going to go from there?
• 1:20:16
  You know what I'm saying? Were you considering how
• 1:20:20
  standoffish your AG was? Were you aiming for that answer?
• 1:20:26
  No, no, no, I made him. I made him standoffish and a
• 1:20:31
  little douchey because I felt like it made sense for the
• 1:20:36
  character in question and his his background and because of
• 1:20:41
  prejudices in the setting and stuff, right?
• 1:20:44
  Like he's an elf, the elves are sort of pushed to the side in
• 1:20:49
  the setting, right? So that was sort of it.
• 1:20:52
  It made sense. But also whether you agreed to
• 1:20:58
  help him or not, I wasn't that worried about it because I was
• 1:21:03
  like, you guys are going to run into the thing he's looking for
• 1:21:11
  probably no matter what. And then you're going to make a
• 1:21:14
  decision based on that anyway, you know, So I didn't, I was
• 1:21:19
  leaving it totally open-ended on how you responded to him.
• 1:21:22
  And I wasn't hoping for one particular outcome.
• 1:21:25
  It was just, it made the most sense to have him be that way.
• 1:21:28
  And it, it was going to work no matter what, whether you helped
• 1:21:34
  him out or not. Because again, because I gave
• 1:21:38
  myself that wiggle room, got it. So I, I definitely wasn't, I
• 1:21:42
  wasn't, I wasn't assuming or hoping from one for one response
• 1:21:48
  to the other, you know, I, I, I managed.
• 1:21:52
  And admittedly, sometimes this works out and sometimes it
• 1:21:57
  doesn't, right. Sometimes as AGM, you try to
• 1:22:00
  leave yourself that wiggle room and you don't.
• 1:22:03
  And then you get a little too invested in a particular outcome
• 1:22:07
  and then you get a little disappointed, yada, yada.
• 1:22:09
  You know, that just happens sometimes.
• 1:22:11
  But when you can hit that nice equilibrium of I'm OK with
• 1:22:19
  either outcome and I've given myself wiggle room in my prep
• 1:22:24
  for how either outcome turns out, If you can nail it, that is
• 1:22:31
  ideal scenario. And like, you know, feels good,
• 1:22:34
  man. Like, no, no other way to put
• 1:22:36
  it. Just shit feels good because it,
• 1:22:42
  it kind of it, it frees you up as AGM to not expect a
• 1:22:49
  particular outcome or not try to push for a particular outcome.
• 1:22:53
  Because I don't know about you, but I've definitely been in
• 1:22:55
  scenarios where I get a little too invested in one outcome or
• 1:23:01
  the other. And then when the situation
• 1:23:06
  comes up in play, I, I basically influence the players towards a
• 1:23:13
  particular answer and push them a little too much into a
• 1:23:16
  particular answer because I got a little too invested in that
• 1:23:19
  particular outcome. You know what I mean?
• 1:23:24
  So I have. I know I'm talking.
• 1:23:27
  About. I have a a different problem
• 1:23:30
  where I have times where I will introduce to one option or the
• 1:23:33
  other and my players will force 1/3 option on me.
• 1:23:39
  Yeah. For example, I, I told Brett
• 1:23:42
  that we, we kind of cooked him last session.
• 1:23:44
  But like Brett, me being like, well, when he goes to the party,
• 1:23:48
  either this will happen or this will happen.
• 1:23:50
  And then he's like, I'm not going to the party.
• 1:23:54
  I, yeah. And there's me like there's like
• 1:23:57
  teeth marks on my desk. Teeth marks.
• 1:24:03
  Yeah, I mean, that can be frustrating for sure.
• 1:24:09
  The unexpected third option or the unexpected 4th option or the
• 1:24:14
  unexpected fifth option, Right, 'cause sometimes you prep
• 1:24:17
  yourself quite a few options and the players somehow still manage
• 1:24:20
  to find the one you weren't thinking of.
• 1:24:22
  Every time without fail. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:25
  But you know the the that could be annoying.
• 1:24:33
  The positive element. The the good side of that is to
• 1:24:38
  look at it and go, well, the players have now thrown me a
• 1:24:42
  curveball, which means I am now just as surprised.
• 1:24:47
  I'm, I'm now I'm as surprised as they are.
• 1:24:51
  And we are both operating in unexpected territory.
• 1:24:55
  And that can often be fun. So let's just roll with it.
• 1:24:57
  You know what I mean? Because you know, it can be easy
• 1:25:03
  as AGM to get get really comfortable in I know what, you
• 1:25:11
  know, in the position of, I know what's going to happen, They're
• 1:25:14
  going to do this, then they're going to do that, then this is
• 1:25:16
  going to happen, right? It's easy to get into that
• 1:25:18
  rhythm, particularly if you've been playing with a similar
• 1:25:21
  group or if you're playing with people that you know
• 1:25:23
  particularly well. It's easy to get into that
• 1:25:26
  position where you can kind of assume how they're going to
• 1:25:28
  respond. And then, you know, it gets a
• 1:25:32
  little, it gets a little boring on your side of the table
• 1:25:35
  because there's no surprises. So it can be frustrating when
• 1:25:40
  they hit you with that third, fourth or fifth option you
• 1:25:42
  didn't expect, but it can also add a little spice to things
• 1:25:46
  when you're like, oh, well, it was all right, let me let me see
• 1:25:48
  where this goes. Right.
• 1:25:52
  So I, I guess what I'm saying is when you're in those scenarios,
• 1:25:56
  just lean into the, oh, I didn't expect that.
• 1:25:58
  Let's see what happens, Vibe, you know, just just roll with it
• 1:26:01
  as much as you can. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:26:05
  Which again, can be easier said than done sometimes, but you
• 1:26:10
  know you do your best. Yeah.
• 1:26:14
  I mean, sometimes it works, sometimes it gives you a a
• 1:26:17
  coronary. Yeah, sometimes you have a
• 1:26:19
  stroke and sometimes it works. Yeah, it's a mixed bag.
• 1:26:22
  Whatever it's. I mean, that's kind of GM in
• 1:26:26
  general. I That's also why I I personally
• 1:26:32
  like to gravitate towards games where responding to that
• 1:26:37
  unexpected 5th outcome is easier and snappier.
• 1:26:44
  You know? Like in a game like DND,
• 1:26:49
  sometimes responding to that 5th outcome is not easy.
• 1:26:54
  But if I'm playing Apocalypse World, not too bad, you know?
• 1:27:00
  Yeah, it's true. Is would you say that Fabula is
• 1:27:04
  easier or more difficult to to respond like that?
• 1:27:11
  It's kind of in the middle. Most of the mechanics of Fabula
• 1:27:17
  lend yourself lend lend itself to a situation where you can
• 1:27:22
  respond decently well on the fly for things.
• 1:27:25
  But particularly when you're dealing with conflicts, you
• 1:27:29
  know, when you're dealing with fights, those can be hard to
• 1:27:32
  throw, like throw shit up on the fly because Fabula really,
• 1:27:38
  really expects you to design encounters for your group
• 1:27:44
  specifically, right? Like both the both the core book
• 1:27:49
  and the bestiary and all that shit basically says, you know,
• 1:27:57
  Fabula, the design that is in the book itself assumes a kind
• 1:28:03
  of group average. Like the players can do roughly
• 1:28:06
  this much damage, they have roughly this much healing, they
• 1:28:09
  have roughly, you know, this many ways to remove a status
• 1:28:12
  effect, blah blah blah. But the game acknowledges most
• 1:28:15
  groups are not going to fall into the average or are not
• 1:28:18
  going to perfectly fall into the average.
• 1:28:20
  So you as AGM are expected to custom tailor conflicts that
• 1:28:24
  work for your group. And what that means ultimately,
• 1:28:30
  you know is, is saying don't make conflicts where your
• 1:28:36
  players have no chance of winning, but also don't make
• 1:28:39
  conflicts where your players just have all of the perfect
• 1:28:42
  options to shut the enemy down, right?
• 1:28:44
  Try to try to design for your group in particular.
• 1:28:48
  And so because of that idea of designing for your group, doing
• 1:28:55
  conflicts on the fly or adjusting on the fly, that can
• 1:28:59
  be hard. But the rest of the game outside
• 1:29:03
  of the conflict space relatively fine.
• 1:29:07
  Like not too crazy. I'll tell you, prepping,
• 1:29:15
  tripping fights in Fabula is by far the most I.
• 1:29:24
  It is so stressful sometimes. No, it is so stressful.
• 1:29:29
  I mean boss fights in particular 'cause that shit can get really
• 1:29:34
  like pretty complicated, pretty like you have to really design
• 1:29:39
  bosses in such a fashion where their abilities, if you want it
• 1:29:44
  to feel, you know, properly challenging their abilities like
• 1:29:47
  really interweave with each other well and and aren't
• 1:29:50
  immediately shut down by something that one of the
• 1:29:53
  players has to conflict. Prepping.
• 1:29:56
  Prepping in that game can sometimes be quite difficult,
• 1:29:58
  which is which is why the game tells you only really prep
• 1:30:05
  conflicts, like basically only do fights when the fights are
• 1:30:11
  narratively, narratively relevant.
• 1:30:15
  That's that's why that game tells you to do that, because
• 1:30:18
  the prepping of the fights can be quite stressful, which is
• 1:30:21
  also why I in the campaign have been trying to like tone the
• 1:30:25
  fights down like do less, because I am realizing that that
• 1:30:30
  is a problem or or not a problem, but that is part of how
• 1:30:34
  you run that game. That's kind of why I was I was a
• 1:30:37
  little curious last session when we actually had a full on fight
• 1:30:42
  with the zombies. I figured that we would have had
• 1:30:44
  more of like a used checks to get away thing.
• 1:30:49
  So that was based on roles. Oh yeah?
• 1:30:56
  Wait when? When you say based on like they
• 1:30:58
  didn't actually have a health number or?
• 1:31:00
  No, no, no. Like basically the worst you
• 1:31:02
  guys roll. Like rolling worse affected the
• 1:31:07
  outcome so like you had a full on fight 'cause you rolled
• 1:31:11
  poorly is basically what I'm saying.
• 1:31:14
  Got it. 'Cause if you remember Senna
• 1:31:16
  crit fumble, that was her fumble, yeah, not her fumble,
• 1:31:21
  Yeah. So, yeah, that was part of the
• 1:31:25
  reason. Like I have, I have some, I have
• 1:31:27
  notes, I have some stuff set up in the background.
• 1:31:29
  Basically, the worse you fail, the more likely you get into
• 1:31:32
  fight. And also potentially if you fail
• 1:31:34
  by a really, really bad amount, it's going to be a more
• 1:31:38
  difficult fight that kind of situation.
• 1:31:42
  And I, I pre planned that by having a bunch of stat blocks
• 1:31:45
  ready to go that I could throw together in groups and just
• 1:31:49
  launch at you. Basically I because, you know,
• 1:31:55
  basically I what I did the way I prep random encounters.
• 1:31:58
  This is already what I do anyway.
• 1:32:00
  So like I will grab a bunch of SAT blocks I like and be like,
• 1:32:06
  all right, these are going to be used for the random encounters.
• 1:32:09
  And then I will pre make groups either in my head or sometimes
• 1:32:13
  I'll write them down, depends. I'll sort of pre make group
• 1:32:16
  dynamics. I'll be like, all right, two of
• 1:32:18
  these and three of these or whatever, boom, boom, boom,
• 1:32:20
  that's the fight. And then when the random
• 1:32:22
  encounter happens, I'll just pick from my list of potential
• 1:32:24
  groups, you know what I mean? So for that particular section
• 1:32:31
  of the game or the set for the section of the game that you
• 1:32:34
  guys are currently in, I have a bunch of groups of like
• 1:32:37
  potential fights. And then if you get in the
• 1:32:39
  fights, I'm going to pick from the list go, all right, we're
• 1:32:40
  going to do that one. And because they're because the
• 1:32:45
  random encounters or semi random encounters in the situation that
• 1:32:49
  you guys are currently in, I don't care if they're a little
• 1:32:51
  easier or a little harder or whatever.
• 1:32:53
  Like I don't care if they swing a little bit at the edges.
• 1:32:56
  I'm not designing them perfectly because, you know, narratively
• 1:33:02
  it makes sense. If they're a little easier or a
• 1:33:05
  little harder or whatever like that, that's fine.
• 1:33:07
  You get what I'm saying? Yeah, having the the built in
• 1:33:10
  swinging is a definitely active tactic.
• 1:33:13
  Well, it's just, it's not even like it's not Even so much a
• 1:33:18
  tactic. It's like it, it, it makes sense
• 1:33:21
  from a narrative perspective in terms of where you guys are.
• 1:33:26
  And it also makes my life a little bit easier by not having
• 1:33:31
  to stress it too much. You know that's.
• 1:33:34
  Kind of what I mean, like it's, it's, it's in the idea of I'm
• 1:33:39
  not going to like worry about it too much.
• 1:33:41
  I'm throwing these together. I'm expecting some swing.
• 1:33:44
  You're kind of accounting for, you're sort of doing your own
• 1:33:52
  sliding scale difficulty by not worrying about it too much and
• 1:33:55
  just being like, they'll get whatever they roll, you know?
• 1:33:59
  Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, basically
• 1:34:00
  kind. Of what I mean when I say it's
• 1:34:01
  an effective tactic, you know? And I was kind of, I, that's
• 1:34:06
  kind of what I did running D&D too.
• 1:34:08
  So like I, it's a, it's a, it's a method I've already tested out
• 1:34:15
  be it, albeit Fabula, I think expects of you a little bit.
• 1:34:24
  Fabula expects even tighter combat design than 5 E does.
• 1:34:30
  So it's a it's a little more, little more work, little more
• 1:34:35
  stress with Fabula, but still doable.
• 1:34:40
  Yeah, I oh, I'll say as a, as a closing little thought on
• 1:34:48
  Fabula, just as a game. That game has definitely been
• 1:34:54
  more stressful to run than I thought it was going to be.
• 1:34:59
  For sure, I've got that feeling. Yeah, there was.
• 1:35:05
  There's elements of it that I didn't.
• 1:35:07
  I don't know if I didn't realize or I just didn't quite think.
• 1:35:13
  I didn't quite account for the level of stress.
• 1:35:19
  I don't know it. Yeah, it's definitely been a a
• 1:35:22
  harder game to run than I expected to be for sure.
• 1:35:28
  But that's mostly on me, I think.
• 1:35:31
  I, I think I just misinterpreted.
• 1:35:34
  I don't think it's necessarily totally on the game.
• 1:35:36
  No, I mean, I think it's a, it's a, it's growing pains, right?
• 1:35:39
  You're like, you only really know how a system works when
• 1:35:43
  you've run it. So being like this was more
• 1:35:49
  complex than I would have previously given it credit for.
• 1:35:52
  That just kind of tracks. It's, it's not, it's like, it's
• 1:35:56
  not more complex. It's more, I don't know.
• 1:36:04
  I, it's, it's a little hard. It's I, I can't have what, what
• 1:36:14
  is the word I'm looking for? It's like there's a little I I'm
• 1:36:17
  a little more the the prep process is a little more
• 1:36:22
  involved than the game presents it initially.
• 1:36:30
  Like, as you're reading through the Brook, it gave me this set,
• 1:36:35
  this feeling that the prep would not be that heavily involved or
• 1:36:41
  that difficult. But I think the game made it
• 1:36:46
  sound almost a little like too easy, you know?
• 1:36:52
  Yeah. I mean, we, we definitely.
• 1:36:54
  Kind. Of I don't know if we
• 1:36:55
  necessarily gave it the plug and play treatment, but yeah, we may
• 1:36:58
  have toned down a little bit the the complexity of some of the
• 1:37:04
  aspects of the GM side of the game.
• 1:37:07
  Yeah, well, there's just, there's just ultimately it comes
• 1:37:09
  down to there's more moving parts than you think there are
• 1:37:14
  on that first read through. Because particularly when you're
• 1:37:19
  dealing with like monsters and stat blocks and stuff, there's a
• 1:37:22
  lot more, there's a lot more moving parts that can go into a
• 1:37:26
  monster than you'd think. And then that unlocks all these
• 1:37:32
  layers of like, oh, but what about this?
• 1:37:35
  And then what about that? And then what about, oh, well,
• 1:37:36
  that that changes this. And like it, it, it snowballs a
• 1:37:39
  little bit and you go, huh, OK, there's more going on here.
• 1:37:44
  And there's like, that's a lot. This is This is a lot.
• 1:37:46
  Particularly once you realize how how the the enemies of the
• 1:37:56
  game can combo with each other and interlock with each other.
• 1:38:03
  Like there's, there's a way that you set up monsters where
• 1:38:10
  abilities like combo together and create like snowballing
• 1:38:15
  effects that can that really make them effective.
• 1:38:19
  And if you don't, if you don't, keep that in mind, you can
• 1:38:23
  unintentionally, particularly if you're designing your own
• 1:38:26
  enemies right, you can unintentionally make like a
• 1:38:28
  monster that has a bunch of abilities that are effectively
• 1:38:33
  worthless because you didn't combo them with the rest of the
• 1:38:38
  stat block to in such a way that they're actually useful.
• 1:38:43
  But if you don't, you don't necessarily realize that until
• 1:38:49
  you've run a like running counters a bit and and you start
• 1:38:52
  to see the combos, like the combos start to reveal
• 1:38:57
  themselves as you run the game. And you're like, oh, OK, I can
• 1:39:00
  see how this would work with that.
• 1:39:01
  No, that would be kind of an interesting effect.
• 1:39:03
  You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of, it's true
• 1:39:07
  on the player side too. It's just on the player side,
• 1:39:10
  it's a lot easier for you to see those combos because you're only
• 1:39:14
  dealing with your character by itself, you know what I mean?
• 1:39:18
  So you can go through all of your player options and, and you
• 1:39:21
  can kind of sit there and do the math between sessions or
• 1:39:24
  whatever and it's a lot easier to see the potential.
• 1:39:28
  Whereas when you're jamming, it can be sometimes tricky to go
• 1:39:32
  from monster to monster and, and have that in mind.
• 1:39:38
  I, I don't know that I'm doing a great job explaining to this,
• 1:39:41
  but yeah, it's a, it's a thing. It does a very good job of
• 1:39:49
  invoking that JRPG vibe for sure.
• 1:39:54
  But if you're not conscious of it, it's very easy.
• 1:39:58
  Basically, it's really easy to slip up and make completely
• 1:40:01
  worthless enemies that you thought were going to be cool
• 1:40:05
  and are fucking hot garbage. Like it's really easy to do that
• 1:40:08
  if you're not paying attention. I think even if you are paying
• 1:40:12
  it like I I've. You could do it by asking.
• 1:40:14
  We've all. Had those I think we've all had
• 1:40:16
  like this is going to be sick and then it isn't and then
• 1:40:18
  you're like, oh. Shit, but it it's a little more
• 1:40:24
  prominent with fabulous is what I'm realizing.
• 1:40:27
  Like it's happened to me more so I'm trying to as as the campaign
• 1:40:34
  goes on, I'm trying to be especially as we get to higher
• 1:40:36
  levels and enemies get quite complicated.
• 1:40:39
  I'm trying to like keep that in mind.
• 1:40:42
  You know, it's it's kind of like to give a comparison.
• 1:40:47
  It's kind of like that thing in DND where if you have a class
• 1:40:52
  and or, or, or you multiclass your character and you have too
• 1:40:57
  many things layered on top of like a bonus action.
• 1:41:01
  And then what you realize is, oh, these abilities are now
• 1:41:04
  worthless because I have too many other things to prioritize
• 1:41:08
  that take up my bonus action 1st.
• 1:41:10
  And I'm not going to have enough time to do the prioritized
• 1:41:14
  abilities and then do the follow up ability.
• 1:41:16
  So now my bonus actions become kind of no void and I just have
• 1:41:19
  to do this one ability 1st every time, no matter what.
• 1:41:23
  And like, you know what I mean? Like that kind of idea where you
• 1:41:26
  unintentionally fuck up your own action economy.
• 1:41:29
  It's it's it's similar to that anyway, this is not a fabulous.
• 1:41:37
  I mean, it's a slightly relevant to fabulous episode, but not
• 1:41:40
  entirely a fabulous episode. But yeah, I'm not going to re go
• 1:41:50
  over them. But like I said, those sort of
• 1:41:53
  lessons to take, you know, I use the Witcher's example, but
• 1:41:58
  there's lots of other video games.
• 1:41:59
  But the idea of how to make side quest flow a little better into
• 1:42:05
  your main campaign, you know, try it basically is what I could
• 1:42:10
  say. And also actually, as a more
• 1:42:15
  broad point, if you're playing a video game and you find a
• 1:42:20
  particular element of that video game really interesting, try and
• 1:42:24
  think about how you can translate that into a tabletop
• 1:42:27
  game. Because a lot of the time that
• 1:42:32
  will just make your, I mean, it just makes the game more fun.
• 1:42:34
  If you, if you're playing a game that you like a lot and you're
• 1:42:38
  like, oh, this element of the like the design is really cool.
• 1:42:41
  How can you steal? It is a good mentality to have
• 1:42:45
  in the back of your mind. There's a lot you can learn from
• 1:42:49
  video games in particular because I think, you know, video
• 1:42:54
  games and role-playing games are intrinsically linked, right?
• 1:43:00
  Like 1 a lot, particularly when you're talking about RPGs,
• 1:43:06
  right? When you're talking about
• 1:43:07
  role-playing games, like role-playing video games, that
• 1:43:12
  genre of video game comes from tabletop RPGs, like
• 1:43:16
  intrinsically, right. Final Fantasy was made as a
• 1:43:21
  homage slash clone of D&D, right?
• 1:43:25
  Like, one comes from the other. So using the medium of video
• 1:43:29
  games to like steal ideas, I think is really helpful to make
• 1:43:33
  your like, make yourself a better GM.
• 1:43:37
  Not all video games, obviously. Call of Duty probably doesn't
• 1:43:39
  have that much useful information for you, but you
• 1:43:41
  know, there might be something in there.
• 1:43:43
  You never know. Maybe there's a particular
• 1:43:46
  narrative beat in the Call of Duty game that you think is
• 1:43:49
  really interesting. I don't know.
• 1:43:50
  Quite a few actually. Call of Duty had for like up
• 1:43:52
  until recently had pretty good stories.
• 1:43:55
  Yeah. I mean, it's not a kind of story
• 1:43:57
  I like, but I've heard that. So yeah.
• 1:44:02
  Anyway, anything you want to throw on the end here?
• 1:44:04
  Nah, man, I think you're good. I think we hit some pretty cool
• 1:44:06
  beats and I am going to be thinking about this moving
• 1:44:10
  forward because I'm kind of running into a bit of a problem.
• 1:44:14
  Kerfuffles in the campaign, yeah.
• 1:44:16
  Yeah, also, everyone go play Witcher 1.
• 1:44:21
  Just just go play Witcher 1, it's better than you think.
• 1:44:26
  You have to get used to the weird combat, but once you get
• 1:44:28
  used to it there's fun to be had.
• 1:44:33
  And then after you do that, also go give us a follow on social
• 1:44:37
  media stuff if you would be so inclined.
• 1:44:42
  Bye bye. Goodbye friends.