Interview - Jonathan Buckmaster - Taking Initiative Podcast - D&D/TTRPGs

This episode i had the immense pleasure to interview Jonathan Buckmaster of the excellent Taking Initiative Podcast about their Cast, Origins, Ongoing Adventures and general support for DMs/Players as well as emerging podcasters.

Follow the Link to their website to get involved with their community and links to their episodes.

They are currently going through Storm Kings Thunder but have completed a first series of the iconic Curse of Strahd adventure module as well as special events and side quests with amazing supporting players.

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Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 5e rules, including the Tomb of Annihilation Module referenced are properties of Wizards of the Coast (WotC)

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Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Jonathan 'Bucky' Buckmaster - DM/Co-Owner/Editor

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker : 0:29

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. This week I have been joined by the wonderful Jonathan Buckmaster of the taken initiative podcast. Thank you for joining me today. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Unknown Speaker : 0:46

If you'd be so kind to give us a little bit of background of yourself and your tabletop role playing experience. Sure. So I've been doing the taking initiative podcasts for three and a half years now. I believe

Unknown Speaker : 1:00

Yeah, we started in February of 2017. Beforehand, both me and the cove Runner Runner owner of the podcast Josh, bro. We both work in the film industry. So we kind of navigated from coming from that background of film and heavy deadlines and a lot of things all going around to navigating to podcasting. So it kind of felt very natural to us in that way.

Unknown Speaker : 1:28

And kind of working through all the beginning kinks and everything of podcasting was in endeavour. But also we were very much up to the challenge given that I'm a film and TV engineer, and he's an editor. It just kind of worked out for us. So yeah, I've been doing this for about three and a half years. I've been a player in our first season of taking initiative. And now during the second season, I am the DM And additionally, we are both Josh and I are both the editors of the of the show. So that's your time we've taken initiative about your

Unknown Speaker : 2:00

experience of tabletop role playing prior to starting touch. So I started playing the first tabletop role playing game I played was definitely d&d, back in the 3.5 days when I was about 1314 years old and even back then Josh and I were still playing together.

Unknown Speaker : 2:16

I started back then, just as a small little home game with some friends really didn't know much about d&d. Josh had some inkling of d&d before I did because he used to play the old father's gate games. And when he proposed the idea to me, like hey, let's play this role playing game together. I didn't really know what to expect, but immediately fell in love with it. And we've been playing for what am I a 3132. Now so that long, 1718 years

Unknown Speaker : 2:46

of on and off for a while because things happen life happens school happened, as it usually does for everybody.

Unknown Speaker : 2:53

And

Unknown Speaker : 2:56

yeah, we've probably played about close to as far as I can. Remember.

Unknown Speaker : 3:00

Maybe like

Unknown Speaker : 3:02

five campaigns at this point. The first one being when we were like 12, or 13. And then after like schools and once we were all out of college, we finally all kind of gravitated towards the same profession, all kind of wound up in the same space where we all live in New York City.

Unknown Speaker : 3:19

And we decided, hey, we're all back together. Again, we haven't played Dungeons and Dragons in forever. Let's start it up again. So I sent a starting up a homebrew game just for fun that I ran for some friends of ours that ended up kind of falling apart before we started the podcast. And then once that game kind of filtered out, Josh decided, hey, I want to kind of pick up the damn spot and continue running the game. But let's just do it online. So we were like, sure. We all agreed to do that. And back when we started, it was only four of us. And we played online and I decided, Hey, I asked everybody like, hey, would it be an issue if I recorded the game? And everyone was like, No, that's fine. And then kind of the

Unknown Speaker : 4:00

A weird stroke of luck. That's how we kind of ended up in the podcast industry through friends of friends of friends that we ended up meeting and showing our show to and yeah, that kind of just evolved into this. It's it's Come on, and it's an amazing podcast for anyone that's yet to listen to an experience. You mentioned two seasons. And you mentioned we who else makes up the the cost of the T shirt taking initiative team. So the taking initiative team currently right now is me as the DM and we have five players which are Josh, Nick, Drew, Hannah and Morgan.

Unknown Speaker : 4:36

The first season was kind of bounced around with a lot of different players we had. We had our my ex girlfriend Donna, who was involved for a while we had Morgan who hopped in about halfway through, and we kind of finished out that game towards the end and this season, we kind of started with a group of five we went in and going we want this group of five to be static throughout the entire thing. So Hannah ended up joining us who was a friend of Morgan's beforehand and

Unknown Speaker : 5:00

It's been, it's been wild. It's been a wild and a lot of fun. And we all seem to enjoy it. So I'm gonna keep running it until everybody gets bored.

Unknown Speaker : 5:09

Well, I hope it keeps going and going and going. So, yeah, join it up to Episode 27 I believe of the season. Yes, our first season ended, I believe with 52 or 53 episodes this season so far. We're up to Episode 27. And we have recorded probably well up to like, God,

Unknown Speaker : 5:31

I don't even know a year's worth of backlog that we have been slogging through. Wow. Yeah. You mentioned sort of people coming in and dropping in and dropping out you've had some phenomenal guests. Come on to your show. Yeah, we've been very lucky with that.

Unknown Speaker : 5:47

I mean, who have been your your, I want to say favourites just that may have I mean, there are Yeah, there are really my favourites. But it was it's kind of astonishing, honestly, because I really didn't know many people in the

Unknown Speaker : 6:00

tabletop role playing community. Since before we started podcasting, I really didn't know that many people and Josh ended up kind of making a lot of connections because he's definitely the more he's the more approachable person between the two of us. He's he definitely actively goes out and like communicate with people and it's more of the networker. I've always been more I would say introverted in that way, I'm more than happy to meet new people, but I have a very introverted mentality and I I take some time warming up to people and and through kind of Josh, I ended up meeting the venture maidens who are now really good friends of ours. We met Lauren urban, who works for d&d beyond we met a lot of different people we were fortunate enough to at one point meet

Unknown Speaker : 6:45

a big chunk of the cast of critical role.

Unknown Speaker : 6:48

We haven't guessed it with them yet. That's a big help of ours but we we got to meet a lot of different people in the tabletop community but as far as the guests that we've had on the venture maidens are have been long friend time friends.

Unknown Speaker : 7:00

Are Celeste will we all love Celeste, I love having her on as a guest stage, all of them.

Unknown Speaker : 7:06

The lucky die. We ended up working with them as a network for a while until we kind of split apart in our own ways, but we still do actively talk to them because they are still good friends of ours. We really enjoy interacting with them. I loved having them on the show. volando encasing brought such a lot of energy to the episodes that we had with them on them. But yeah, any anytime we really can try to get our friends of ours onto the show, we'd love to try and do that. And even still, we even if we can't get people to come onto the show, we still support other podcasters out there as we put promos at the end of our episodes for other shows that we support.

Unknown Speaker : 7:46

This has really been like a massive, there's been so many people that I've been blessed honestly to meet. There's so many great creative and wonderful people in this community.

Unknown Speaker : 7:57

It's it's certainly done you well you've taken part

Unknown Speaker : 8:00

Both you personally in the taking initiative team in some of the big events related to d&d d&d d live 2019 the descent you ran

Unknown Speaker : 8:10

a game for that with using the new rule sets and things like that. How was that being part of a massive event? That was terrifying. Honestly, I was pretty scared going into that. There was so many big names around that we knew about. But when we were actively in the game, it felt just natural. I was friends with the people that I was reading the game for beforehand, even though some of them I hadn't maybe only met like once or twice. We actively talked beforehand we were all good friends and we all like that really got me comfortable going into the game I was incredibly nervous beforehand because that's usually my mentality going into every single game idea even every game during the podcast that I dm I go in nervous because I'm still wondering if I got everything correct and they got everything right.

Unknown Speaker : 8:56

But mentality has never gone away. But for that big

Unknown Speaker : 9:00

event I really needed to, I had to really stop and make sure that I had everything right before going in. And that I realised that the people that I was with were such a vibrant and fun group of people that once we started playing kind of that nervousness east and I got into what was happening and really letting the players drive what was going to be happening during the game, which ended up being such a fun experience. Everybody had such a great time.

Unknown Speaker : 9:31

And that was definitely one of the bigger highlights, I think of being in being a podcaster and starting out as a podcaster was getting that opportunity. And I have to thank Josh for that since he was kind of the one that set that whole thing up.

Unknown Speaker : 9:45

But yeah, that was definitely very nervous but fun, very fun in the end, and a joy to listen to I have to say, Oh, thank you. You've you've done so many sort of side sort of questions.

Unknown Speaker : 10:00

Projects post Assad was deemed by Josh, if you're right in saying, yep. And you play through, how do you decide which campaign you guys are going to going to run and move on to? So it really came up for Josh he that was entirely his decision. He, I believe he had the module or read about the module and wanted to be able to run it and kind of skim through some things and that was the one that he ended up ultimately deciding on it's it's more along the lines of what we were decide what to play the DM who wants to dm the game would obviously decide, hey, this is the one I want to run. Because regardless, we think that ultimately, we think that with our group of close friends, we would all have a good time, regardless of what module we were playing, because it's about the players bringing that life to the actual game. So for Josh, his decision ultimately, I think came down to what ultimately interest hit on interested him the most. And for him that was strong and he kind of threw us

Unknown Speaker : 11:00

For a loop right in the beginning, because we went into this thinking we were going to be playing last month and delver and then wound up being struck, which was a great diversion. But at the time, we all hated his guts. I'm open to looking back at that that was a great really a great narrative way to get into that campaign for me.

Unknown Speaker : 11:18

After probably about when we were I want to say close to halfway through strawed. We were talking about the next season and what we're going to be going to next and we decided that I would be taking over the DMC I kind of went through some of the modules of like, hey, what can I be interested in? Initially, one of the big interests that I wanted to run was out of the abyss.

Unknown Speaker : 11:41

And I kind of read through it and looked at a couple things but decided, hey, our whole first season was very

Unknown Speaker : 11:49

doom and gloom very dour, very stuck in a in a really bad situation and out of the abyss is very much that same

Unknown Speaker : 11:59

Yes.

Unknown Speaker : 12:00

Very similar vibe of just, you are trapped. Yeah, you're very trapped. You're you're kind of stuck in a scenario. There's evil and all these horrible things happening all over the place. And I think that I wanted to gravitate away from that kind of a game and that kind of a mood because it's not only about like what we're interested in as DMS, but it's also about what the players have done. And for Morgan and Nick and the newer members who, for Nick the curse of straud, the first season was his first like full d&d campaign that he ever played. So for him, I wanted to give the people who are newer players a different experience so that they didn't have to feel that doom and gloom being trapped all the time. They'd have something different to go off of and bring a different energy to,

Unknown Speaker : 12:48

to the podcast because we are also creative people. We are also performers and being stuck to the same thing every time can kind of get boring and kind of get stagnant. So to give people an opportunity to play

Unknown Speaker : 13:00

in a different world to play with a different mood, a different genre, I wanted everybody to have that experience because it would be more memorable that way.

Unknown Speaker : 13:08

Yeah, of course, a curse of straud isn't as an iconic module in the sort of d&d lore and history. And your character ven kind of goes through a very tough arc through the whole of that story. And there are many tough arcs and personal developments through that story, but yes, what can you say about your journey we've been through that first season so then was really the first character that I got to make now that i i guess quote unquote, technically an adult

Unknown Speaker : 13:41

like back when we first started and I was a player and I played in the smaller campaigns that we did I I didn't really play any characters that I was super attached to every character was kind of like a gimmick. Everything was kind of like a whatever.

Unknown Speaker : 13:54

But afterwards, I went to college for theatre. I was in acting school for a while I I kind of gravitated to it.

Unknown Speaker : 14:00

All these different things and now that we were in our like, upper 20s, lower 30s I've had a lot of experience to draw off of as a character and weave with that acting experience. I wanted to bring a character that I would be emotionally and physically invested into.

Unknown Speaker : 14:21

And ultimately is where ven came in. I then was definitely that one character that I will remember very, very fondly for probably the rest of my life. Because I put a lot of myself into that character. But additionally wanted to go with the idea of having a character that has already lived a life and is going into this game having experience already, and it's a difficult thing to try and pull off. Because when you think about like, Oh, this person's lived for 100 200 years, they have experience, but how does that constitute being a level one character, but you can have

Unknown Speaker : 15:00

But then his experience doesn't necessarily come from combat and fighting. He's his experience throughout life was mostly just normal things. He was a commoner for such a long time, he was just a typical guard, he had very low level skills to be able to defend himself, but he wasn't really an adventurer. And making that shift and transition to becoming an adventure was a big portion of his backstory. And getting into the topic of backstories. When I ended up creating then I wrote a very, very long backstory, which sub diems are okay with and others are not. And I recommend that if you're going into a game, and you want to write a very long backstory for your character, always just double check with your dm to make sure that that's something that they're interested in, or if that's something that they're not going to look into, but you can always do it for yourself just because you want to and that was ultimately why I wanted to do it. As I wrote.

Unknown Speaker : 15:57

When I was in college, and I did acting, we did these things called

Unknown Speaker : 16:00

Character charts, where we would write long form stories about the moment the character you're playing is born to the moment that that character is right before the play would start. So it would be a long form like 1011 page long synopsis of an entire person's life within that time. So for vets, that's exactly what I did. I wanted to have he was I believe I made him 75 years old in the game as a half elf. I wanted that 75 years of life to be a synopsis, and I wanted to give that life. So going into that I having been a DM before, and as someone who also loves backstories, long backstories whatever backstories you want to give.

Unknown Speaker : 16:43

I created a backstory for Ven, but from his perspective of what he actually sees, so a lot of things were intentionally left vague, a lot of details were kind of blurred or not fully described, so that when I handed that story over to Josh, Josh

Unknown Speaker : 17:00

would be able to brainstorm and really think about where can I fill in these gaps with information that would be relevant to the game and I think he ended up doing that very, very well by tying an entire chapter of the module that we didn't even have to go to to my characters backstory.

Unknown Speaker : 17:19

And for vet to me then will always be that like, even though I played characters before him ven really feels like my first character he feels like my first true character like the one I really said I want to play this character to the best of my ability and really bring help bring life to this show by being being this character. It shows how heavily invested you were and then and it comes through the audio superbly backed up by obviously the the audio work you guys do in the background.

Unknown Speaker : 17:49

shifting the focus slightly to the campaign, the storm kings Thunder campaign that you now dm, have you received that kind of backstory from the players

Unknown Speaker : 18:00

All the while showing tracks like when you do character creation. So it's it's been interesting. This is definitely one of the more interesting backstories that I've kind of dealt with, with these this five because I specifically asked them, Hey, I all of them are gonna write backstories regardless, and they all ended up writing backstories in very different ways. Josh wrote it in his way. He's usually very,

Unknown Speaker : 18:24

his backstory is usually very simple, just kind of details. This is the details of my character. This is the type of person he is and like, about like a page long of like, here's the information that you would need for my character. And for him, the character comes out

Unknown Speaker : 18:41

during the game, during the actual playing of the game, that's when his character comes out. Nick, I don't want to spoil anything about Nick's character because his Funny enough, the next game that we play is actually going to be all about his character. He ended up giving me a lot more than he did for Kent.

Unknown Speaker : 19:00

From the first season when he played Kendrick would

Unknown Speaker : 19:02

that character started out as a joke at Birchwood and kind of evolved into really something I don't think any of us expected to be.

Unknown Speaker : 19:13

With that experience that he gained from the first season, he kind of brought that to the second season and wanted to make a character that had more, was more grounded and had more experience beforehand. And I'm very, very excited to get into his character's backstory. Hannah, I didn't know what to expect because she was brand new to the show. I had only really spoken to her maybe once or twice before the game started.

Unknown Speaker : 19:40

And she ended up giving me a backstory that ultimately made me realise she's an incredible writer. First off, like right off the bat, like I was immediately emotionally invested into her character as soon as she handed it to me. It wasn't very long, but the detail and the way she wrote it, you could immediately tell who this character was, and I appreciated that so much

Unknown Speaker : 20:01

Drew gave me a lot of details to work with and left a lot of things fake, which was very helpful for his character who as well is a very aloof taxi monk.

Unknown Speaker : 20:13

And he really, I think that like the backstory he gave me ended up, really reflecting on how little detail he needed to create a character that has a lot of life and has a very unique style to come into d&d. Well, I don't think a lot of people have actually looked into and his character has really shined in a lot of the later episodes of really playing off of the aiding action and not so much being the physical fighter not being the one on the front that's going to do things, the one that's going to try and help the party succeed, but in a different way. And then Morgan Morgan has definitely been the most interesting backstory because her backstory still has it.

Unknown Speaker : 21:00

ended, she's still been writing it. Um, she created a Google Doc that over time she's just been adding and adding and adding and adding to and I think it's funny because she ended up making fun of me a lot for writing a 10 page backstory, but I think hers is on like page 20 or 25 at this point. And I'm like, all right, I mean, I'm gonna read all this because I'm interested in the character. But I just found that very funny. But ultimately, like she's been kind of, in a very similar way to Josh has been learning the character as she's been going along and describing in more detail, what her character has been doing and what surreal has been doing and learning and how she's been adapting and all that.

Unknown Speaker : 21:38

Well, yeah, for me as a DM I love backstories I love reading any information you want to give me and I also love it when a lot of details are left intentionally vague, because I love being able to brainstorm and at the end of the day, d&d is really just collaborative storytelling. And being able to do that from your backstories right from the get go, I think is very beneficial to creating a good experience for everybody.

Unknown Speaker : 22:00

It certainly helps sort of build that background and and draw the listener into the stories of these characters that you tell so well every week.

Unknown Speaker : 22:13

I have to be honest. One thing you haven't mentioned is where we can sort of find your podcast and information about you in the show. Yeah, you can find our Twitter is the handle for the Twitter is at TI underscore pod. Morgan in the podcast, she typically runs the Twitter so if you want to talk to Morgan or you want to get into information about updates or what's going on with us, you can go to at TI underscore pod on Twitter, or if you want everything else you can go to our website at taking initiative podcast comm there you can find the link to our iTunes, you can find the link to basically any social media that we have.

Unknown Speaker : 22:49

You can get all the information for that there and anything that you would need you can get there. You can also join our discord we are all we have a discord with taking initiative and are actually our friends over from Earth.

Unknown Speaker : 23:00

on a roll, we've been longtime friends with them and we kind of share the same discord and go back and forth with each other

Unknown Speaker : 23:05

that you can find all the details for the discord also in the at the website. Yeah, that's where you can find the show. All right, well, the link to the website will be in the description below with the podcast. So make sure you go down and check that out. And we should the coast have been pumping out content, new source books, new campaign books and all that sort of stuff. Is there. Is there any way that you'd be interested for sort of d&d to take or have you got your eye on the next campaign after this one or So currently, right now, the as far as the modules that they've released in the ones that I've played, I have done we've done cursive straud we're doing storm kings Thunder now. We've done I'm currently running a out of the podcast I'm running a waterdeep Dragon heist game that potentially might go to Dungeon of the Mad mage. We are also currently with our friends at DND is for nerds and another friend of ours we are running boulders gate to send

Unknown Speaker : 24:00

To a vernis, which is going to be a very, very interesting game. And as just as a side thing I've done out of the abyss and then on a stream I did with the nerd immersion channel. And Ted from the nerd immersion channel. We did princes of the apocalypse A while back. As far as what I would love to see next.

Unknown Speaker : 24:18

A lot of the content like I, one of my favourite things that I think they put out so far was probably more than comments some of those, because I was very excited to hear that they were going to be bringing Morgan kind of into this because him being a planar traveller, we were finally going to get some insight into what happens outside of the material plane, and and kind of pulling more of like, hey, let's look at the astral plane. Let's look at the abyss. Let's look at the nine hells. And I love that and I wanted to learn about those things because I feel like so many people just kind of stick it to, hey, let's stick to like typical fantasy of what's happening in in the material plane and what's happening in that world, that all these other aspects of planar travel and what can be happening in other different settings really creates such a diverse and different expense.

Unknown Speaker : 25:00

Based on what you want to do it, and what I would love to see more of in another set, which I think would be a lot of fun, would be exploring more in more detail about the shadow fell and the Fei wild and kind of learning about those parallel planes that exist alongside the material plane. Because the game that I was actually running before the podcast started was actually going to tie in both the shadowfall and this fe wild into this very interesting story where a dark entity within the shadow fell was going to try and merge the shadow fell with the material plane and kind of break that boundary that exists between the two and the party would have had to try and stop.

Unknown Speaker : 25:41

But we have a lot of resources currently right now of beings that would exist in the shadow fell the Fei wild and I think that really delving into more detail about the both of them and really saying like, Hey, this is what waterdeep looks like in fate rune. Here's what waterdeep looks like in the shadow fell can really help people create both much

Unknown Speaker : 26:00

Dark darker setting for themselves. And also if they wanted to go for a while, a more weird and chaotic experience, I think, or even tying all of them in together starting out in the material plane and really gravitating towards either one. I've always been fascinated by those, the way that those planes interact with one another and kind of mirror each other in like a one a very Doom filled horrible, horrible land and the other a chaotic and, and huge, natural, like burst of energy from the other. And I think that having a campaign guide or not necessarily campaign guide but more of just a guide to tell you, here's what life is like and these two places would be a lot of fun and be able to create a lot of really cool experiences. Like a another DMS toolkit a bit like the ghosts of saltmarsh where Scott who's for the DM Yes, very much something like that. So you mentioned there, mourn Kenyans, homophobia and the shadow fell and and others who sort of

Unknown Speaker : 27:00

putting you on the spot a little bit, which within the monsters really sort of Have you really wanted to use in a game and haven't had the opportunity yet. As you flick through the pages and you get 00 in on one particular thing, I need to introduce this at some point.

Unknown Speaker : 27:17

I think one of the really, really cool ones that I saw lately, I think is actually in Morton, kind of some of those. It was actually like, the first one that I flipped open to and saw was the astral Dreadnought. That thing is a monster that is a literal 100% beast of a monster and it is horrifying. And it in itself, I think can create such an elaborate and interesting campaign. If you've never seen the actual Dreadnought it, it is this massive entity that when it swallows beings or whatever it swallows, they essentially get transported to a pocket dimension

Unknown Speaker : 28:00

So I think that like it would make such an interesting idea of, of, of a life or civilization that exists within that pocket dimension ultimately coming to realise that that whole civilization exists within a monster. So short you your campaign only begins when you technically die. More or less well, it doesn't kill you when it swallows you. It just teleports you to that plane of existence. But if you don't explain that to the players, and they say exactly why this it's, it's an interesting and fun concept. Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker : 28:30

One I truly hope you explore in the future if I'm honest. Now, you said I hope so too.

Unknown Speaker : 28:36

It's a great pitch and I definitely listen to Josh don't listen to this. If you're actually listening to this. Don't listen.

Unknown Speaker : 28:44

Well, we'll see. We'll see.

Unknown Speaker : 28:46

When you turn the tables on you at some point, Yeah, probably. Well, maybe he's gonna favour that he'll slide in and catch out with I'm sure he does.

Unknown Speaker : 28:57

We mentioned before some

Unknown Speaker : 29:00

The fantastic people you've met and worked with and things Is there anyone you still have other than critical role that you mentioned earlier? And you still have that sort of wish list to collaborate with or even dm for in a in a private sense.

Unknown Speaker : 29:16

See my initial go to was I've always dreamt of having Matt Mercer obviously running game for me, but the spot size the critical role crew.

Unknown Speaker : 29:27

Who would I want to have as a DM honestly, funny enough? One person we have been waiting on forever to dm us is Nick in our own game. He because of all these games and everything that we've been doing, and then being in the games with us, he finally decided to take the plunge and be a DM and he dm for his fiance and a few other people. And we found out about it and everybody has told us that he did such a great job that now the entire podcast is all looking at him like

Unknown Speaker : 30:00

Neck when you're going to run a game for, you know, the people you do a podcast with when you're going to do that. And we've been slowly waiting to see when he can get something prepped to run for us. And I'm very, very excited to see how Nick runs into dm because him as a player is, it's very interesting to see him as a player because he was the first one to come into this with very little to no experience of d&d. So a lot of the common tropes and the common things that people do with spells or classes are things he is completely unaware of. So he brought very different energy to characters that are like, Oh, this is a very stereotypical thing to do for this character, but I'm going to use this spell in a very different way that you may not think of, and I would love to see that kind of like creativity and that not like jaded by years and years of d&d playing B as a DM. But outside our own podcast, oh my god. There's so many people that we know

Unknown Speaker : 31:00

Gotta get it. I did think about that. Well, which which of them would you like to dm for? Who would you like to not put onto the course that's my favourite presenter scenario too, and, and take them on an adventure of your creation or your design. So I don't think it's anyone in particular, I think that I, in general, I have always my dm table. Hands down. I'm always I'm very, very inclusive. If you want to play d&d and you want to have a fun experience, I will run a game for you no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, I will run a game for you. And a lot of times I've seen people who could benefit from the the joys of d&d, have experiences with it that are less than good. And for me, I personally would love to give people who have had bad experiences with DND a second look at what DND can really be.

Unknown Speaker : 32:00

And when I dm games I always put first and foremost I put the players fun first because everybody in the game is supposed to have a good time. That's the purpose we play this game. The reason we play d&d is because everybody has to have a good time playing. If we're not having a good time, then what are we doing? So being able to give that experience of this is what d&d is supposed to be. This is what a fun experience is really like giving that to someone who didn't have that experience growing up or didn't get that experience. And even though they tried it out, and they were like, this isn't for me, because of an experience that happened during the game or it's just something that wasn't them. I would love to dm for that person.

Unknown Speaker : 32:39

And I'm sure having listened to this, you'll have you'll be inundated with requests.

Unknown Speaker : 32:47

You mentioned the neck in particular taking the plunge and other people.

Unknown Speaker : 32:52

What What advice would you give to new players new DMS the fun to sort of get engaged with the game

Unknown Speaker : 33:00

Maybe are a bit tentative or as you said, Maybe you've been burnt in there first, first experience.

Unknown Speaker : 33:06

First and foremost, whether you're a DM or a player, the number one thing is communication. always communicate with your dm communicate with your fellow players. It's very, very important that before you start a campaign and you sit down to play a very long campaign, you know, the expectations of what's to come You know, what everybody expects the type of game you're expecting. A open line of communication is the best thing you can have with dm and players and I will flat out say not every player is going to mesh with every single dm not every single party is going to blend together and that's fine. Everybody may be expecting different things. But thankfully, in this day and age, we are truly blessed by how tabletop role playing games have skyrocketed in popularity. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people out there that want to play tabletop role playing games and you will be able to find

Unknown Speaker : 34:00

There is now a massive community of people online, all looking to play role playing games and all looking to have a fun experience. So first and foremost communication in gaming is very important.

Unknown Speaker : 34:12

Secondly, on top of communication, listening, always make sure you listen to what people are saying make sure you listen to your dm. Make sure you listen to what other players are doing. It may seem sometimes in game where the game heavily focuses on a specific player for a certain moment of time or the DM is kind of going off and telling something for a while. Always be attentive and always listen to what's going around you the DM has sculpted a world for you to existence. And I think that listening will help you ingrain your character into not only the world that they're creating, but also ingrain yourself within the party dynamic that you are trying to create with the group of you. As the DM always making sure you're listening to your players listening to what what

Unknown Speaker : 35:00

Going on what they're experiencing, being able to pick up cues of what you want to bring them later on. Having communication and listening ultimately will create such a great experience for d&d players and DMS all over the place. Because I think that having that open line of communication

Unknown Speaker : 35:20

helps.

Unknown Speaker : 35:22

When my current role my trying to go at this, having that open line of communication really helps to bring life to your game and really bring out not just

Unknown Speaker : 35:31

it brings out a lot of creativity. I guess that's what I'm trying to say that that brainstorming experience of being able to build a world together, not just locking it down to what you'd want it to be but really listening and adapting and growing with the players creates these brings way more life to your character brings life to the world. And I think that that is what makes d&d so fun.

Unknown Speaker : 35:54

It definitely bring in the best out of people when you get together and play these tabletop role playing games.

Unknown Speaker : 36:00

And that is invaluable and solid advice that if only could be echoed throughout

Unknown Speaker : 36:08

podcasts and advice and there was so many avenues for advice online and YouTube and discord and help us and I have to say that what you said there really sort of should be at least first or second

Unknown Speaker : 36:26

of the advice you have given to you and take on board.

Unknown Speaker : 36:31

Your time as a podcast and a podcaster must have told you a great deal as well. What about the sort of

Unknown Speaker : 36:40

new

Unknown Speaker : 36:42

podcasters that are coming through? Have you got any advice you would like to give them about how they should present themselves or pitfalls to avoid that you've learned in your experience? So I think one of the big things that a lot of podcasters suffer from is not doing what they want to do.

Unknown Speaker : 37:00

And when you're going into something like this, it takes a lot of preparation. It takes a lot of thought. And it takes a lot of effort. And I think before you get into doing a podcast, really think about what you want to do, what is the type of content you want to put out there? What is your ultimate goal of what you want to display for people to listen to? Because at the end of the day, what we do, we do because we enjoy it, we do because we enjoy this game and we're playing a game and we're putting it out there for people to listen to when if they want to and to join us on a journey that we have fallen in love with and hope that others fall in love with as well. So I think that before going into a podcast to really think about what is it that you want to do because there are so many different types of podcasts out there right now that the one that we do between having six people, every single time we record a session, we have six different tracks we have to edit and that is very, very time consuming. So if you can have the time and the resources to be able to

Unknown Speaker : 38:00

To make that happen, I say go for it. If there's a lot going on in your life, and you want to create this podcast that has all these different tracks, and all these different players and all these different things, maybe sit down and think like, how can we make this happen? How do we make sure we take the time to be able to do this thing that we really want to do. So Time management is very, very key when it comes to creating a podcast. Also, thinking about the content that you want to put out, making sure that you are ultimately doing the thing that you want to do. You don't want to do something that you're going to get bored of, or do something that you aren't really attached to, because you will lose interest very, very quickly. So really thinking about what is something that's going to go in the long run that you are going to be attached to and be able to focus on, and also something that feasibly fits within your time restraints of can I make this thing happen? Am I able to do this? Am I able to factor in all these different details of what I want to do? Because I will say, as someone who's been editing a d&d podcast for the past three and a half years

Unknown Speaker : 39:00

It is a lot of work. And it is very time consuming. But we do this because we love it. We love the story and we love playing this game. And we we hope that people listening get some enjoyment in the way that we have playing it.

Unknown Speaker : 39:13

I'm sure they do. Absolutely. And everything we've spoken about has been invaluable. And I appreciate you so much for coming on and spending. I appreciate you having me. This has been a lot of fun.

Unknown Speaker : 39:25

Well, I hope we can potentially do it again. Either

Unknown Speaker : 39:28

you myself or more members of the team should the opportunity. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker : 39:34

So once again, thank you for coming. If you wouldn't mind just recapping where guys, people can find your podcast and your content. You can find us on Twitter at TI underscore pod there you can see all the updates and news and things that we put out. And also anything that Morgan feels is d&d worthy of being posted. You can go there and talk to Morgan if you want. Additionally you can go to our website at taking initiative podcast calm there, you'll get

Unknown Speaker : 40:00

Links to our iTunes page or any other podcast page we are available on basically every single podcasting service under the sun. So you can look up taking initiative and chances are you will find us

Unknown Speaker : 40:11

unfortunately won't be able to find me on any of the social medias because I am not on them. But if you come to our discord I am on there sometimes and I will talk to people from time to time. So you can also find the details to our discord on our website as well taking initiative podcast calm. Yeah. And that's it. All right. Well, thank you very much for your time once again, and I look forward to speaking to you again in the future. I look forward that too. Thank you so much, much. Okay.

Unknown Speaker : 40:48

Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of us or to get in contact with us, you can find us on Twitter at Return Snyder. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook,

Unknown Speaker : 41:00

And also if you wish to support the channel on patreon@patreon.com slash nice return music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai