hello and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast whether you're a dm or gm or a player my guest today has you covered if you are running the game and want to put boots on the ground that may be considered the high ground with cover or environmental obstacles if you or your fellow adventurers have discovered a scouting party or the enemy base what combination of skills tactics and abilities truly give you the edge i direct you to the sage of the tactical path mr keith amam keith welcome to the show
Keith Ammann:thank you very much thank you for inviting me
Snyders Return:is absolute pleasure i heard you recently time recording on dungeons and dragons and that helped inspire my attempt to chase you down sir i appreciate you agreeing to come on so before we get into your to your work and your blog and everything else would you mind giving us a little bit about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games please
Keith Ammann:i have been involved in tabletop rpgs since since my youth i was 10 years old when i got my first set of dungeons and dragons which at that time was the home's blue box basic set first edition i was 17 or 18 when i finally actually learned what i was doing and was playing a d&d with some friends and i pretty much played a d&d through the end of first edition right up to about the time of the release of the second edition and then you know that that meme of the guy walking by with his girlfriend and he turns around to look at the other woman that other woman for me was shadowrun and so i ended up pretty much leaving d&d behind at that point playing shadowrun almost exclusively through the first and second editions of that game then there was a period of time when i didn't really have much opportunity to play rpgs at all then i when i got back into it my friends were playing gurps and so i was playing gurps i started playing d&d again five years ago five and a half years ago now when my wife came to me and said i want to run a d&d game for some of my co workers would you be willing to be the dungeon master i said sure and i did not know anything about the state that d&d was in at that time i actually was going to my first idea at the time was to run a fantasy themed gurps game for them because that's what i knew and she said no they want to play dungeons and dragons so i said okay okay so i went to a game store around the corner from where i lived picked up the starter set i noticed that the basic rules were kind of limited in terms of character creation options and so i went ahead and bought the player's handbook and dungeon master's guide for fifth edition i was i was immediately very impressed by some of the changes they had made to the game the way they had streamlined and harmonised i guess you might say synchronised a lot of the mechanics so that you know attack rolls work the same way as saving throws work the same way as ability checks i really liked the innovation of advantage and disadvantage and yeah it just it felt like a much more accessible game to me a game that was much easier to jump into and i appreciated that right away and so i haven't really had the time or the opportunity or for many of these intervening years the money to branch out much into other role playing games fine and now that i've got some some royalty dollars from the monsters know what they're doing i've got an opportunity to check out some other games so as of time of recording i am looking forward to playing kids on bikes and alas for the awful see and a couple of others those those two in particular though i'd really like to give a shot to kids on
Snyders Return:bikes that's hunters entertainment is that right
Keith Ammann:i'm not sure i'd have to look at the sign
Snyders Return:sounds sounds great so you went through shadow run and gurps and step back into the streamlined fifth edition so where did the writing the blog and dungeons and dragons all sort of start to tie in when did that become a sort of combined thread
Keith Ammann:that came out of my experience my first experience running the last minute fan delver from the starter set spoiler alert to anyone who is who has not played that adventure yet and is going to i felt after the first couple of encounters the initial encounter and then the one in crag mancave that i had not really put my finger on the pulse of how the goblins in those encounters were supposed to act i felt like something felt off like something felt to me like i had missed something about how these goblins were supposed to act how they were supposed to be approaching the encounter from their side i have always been really interested as a game master in the epistemology of the game the interplay of what the players know and what the npcs know and what the monster adversaries know that to me is one of the most interesting sources of complexity in the game and i felt like i had not gotten into the heads of the goblins and i wanted to do that and i had noticed by that time that five e's approach to to game mechanics was very systematic and very very consistent from stat block to stat block to stat block it was really nothing like the approach taking the monsters in a d&d and so i had already gotten the idea in my head at that time that i wanted to start some kind of blog because i have been a writer and and i wanted to professionally i have been a writer in the past and i wanted to i wanted to push myself to write more and to to just work those muscles in a way that i hadn't been working them for a while and i don't remember honestly exactly how i came to the conclusion that this was what i wanted to blog about but i did make that decision and i started off the monsters know what they're doing with goblins because that was the one that was that was the thing that was at the front of my mind at the time and i mean it's all it's it's all been a roller coaster ride from there but uh but what i really wanted to do since i was trying to conduct these analyses for myself to to this exercise of getting into the monsters heads and figuring out how to play them in the most realistic possible manner given the already not realistic aspects of the game we're playing i figured if i'm doing it for myself maybe other people will be interested in it too and gain some benefit from it and that turned out to be a an on target prediction
Snyders Return:absolutely your your book has been probably on every dmws sort of reading resource list it's been hyped and supported by some some big names within not just table not just in db table tops joe megan hello i hope i said his name right apologies if not matthew dillard and a few others i've been
Keith Ammann:very gratified by the reception it's it's it's felt good
Snyders Return:yeah and so and the blog continues so i think a time of recording one of the most recent posts was about dog the dog hunt and
Keith Ammann:Yes, yes.
Snyders Return:So the work hasn't stopped. And the land Oh,
Keith Ammann:it stumbled. But I, you know, I, when I first started the blog, and this is advice I would give to any beginning blogger, before I posted a single article, I had already written 21 of them. And I set them on a release schedule to post automatically every single weekday. And then I wrote something every single weekday for a long, long time. And so I managed to have new content every day, long enough to establish a good track record and a good archive of work. Four years ago, I got a little bit tilted by a certain current event, and that pretty much wrecked my magnificent posting schedule, for all time. High not nearly as consistent, as I used to be much too much to my sorrow. But But yes, I am still writing it and trying to trying to keep it going as frequently as I can. It's, it's complicated these days a little bit, by the fact that I have a daughter now. And I spend most of my days taking care of her, which really reduces the amount of time that I have to write and since I'm actually writing professionally now that that usually takes first precedence first priority. But, but I am still at it.
Snyders Return:Yeah. And you know, family always comes first, I'm sure sure you'll put the family above the writing in whichever way the priorities work. But that you know, even with the as you say the the change in your personal circumstances, and congratulations on having a daughter you know, the quality of the content and the the the archive still exists for people to dive into the monsters know what they're doing is available. We'll phrase that slightly differently. Where can people find you? Where can people find your books?
Keith Ammann:Well, the URL of the blog is the monsters no.com. All together solid. The books are trade books, they are not released through the usual game distribution channels. They are published by saga press, which is an imprint of Simon and Schuster. And they are sold through independent bookstores bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble Amazon wherever. I don't know much about book selling in the UK. So I don't know what the what the main outlets there are. But for Canadian listeners, if there are any Indigo even I was even surprised at one point to find out that my books were available through target and Walmart, which was kind of interesting. So wherever there's a trade book distribution, people can find it and if people want to order it through their friendly local game stores here in the United States, they can ask their game store to order copies through Simon and Schuster distribution. Again, I don't know exactly how it works for UK customers,
Snyders Return:or UK I mentioned I'll be Amazon because that is a wide reaching institution, shall we say? And Waterstones, I believe your books, so plenty of places available and definitely somewhere you should go. Should you get the chance COVID restrictions and precautions apply Of course. So that's that the two of your books but we've only really touched on the first one. What caused the shift from the monsters know what they're doing to the almost players aid
Keith Ammann:that originated as a self published ebook that I wrote and sold through the blog. Initially, I had gotten some feedback from dungeon masters thanking me for helping me get them total party kills. And my response to that was that was not what I intended with this. My whole mentality behind the monsters know what they're doing is not to make the deadliest possible monster. It's to make the monster feel the most like itself. So, fighting a goblin should Feel qualitatively different from fighting a kobold. Fighting a goblin or a kobold should feel qualitatively different from fighting an orc or lizard folk or you NT. This is something that was always missing back when I played a d&d. And so it was really important to me to be able to add that element when I was dungeon mastering fivey. And I don't want to kill my players I am, I am always and forever. Fundamentally on my players side, I want to throw them challenges that they can handle if they work for it. I don't want pushovers. I don't want massacres. I want some good, solid, interesting, memorable combat encounters that are appropriate in difficulty to the amount of tension that is needed in the story at that time. That is my whole philosophy. And so what I came to realise, and I realised this both from the feedback from other dmws, and from playing with my own group, that a monster that knows what it's doing, can be unexpectedly deadly to players who don't entirely know what they're doing. And so, I felt like, I had a responsibility to educate players as well, in how they can make their player characters the most like themselves. And that includes giving them the tools to roleplay their characters expertise, you know, the fact that you are not entirely familiar with your wizards, spell repertoire, does not mean that your PC is not familiar with their entire spell repertoire. They think about it all the time. Like if you if you think of them as an independent individual entity with a life of their own within this game setting. They are there, this is their job. This is their vocation, their calling. They think about this stuff all the time. And they know when to cast scorching Ray and when to cast fireball. One is good for certain circumstances. And the other is good for other circumstances. And they know which are which. And so as the player you should, too. So I try to provide the tools for evaluating that and thinking about how you can make the best and most effective use of the features that your class has, and understand what they were meant to do in the first place. So that you have a keener sense of when the right moment to use them is.
Snyders Return:And you mentioned the saw the combat encounters you create for your your own group do play regularly able to play on a fairly regular schedule,
Keith Ammann:I'm fortunate to be able to play very, very regularly. I have two groups that meet weekly for sessions have two to two and a half hours. total of four campaigns. Unfortunately, I'm only able to be a player in one of those four campaigns I am I'm pretty much the eternal dm. But recently, I've had the the fortune to be able to play and not just be behind the screen.
Snyders Return:Well, since you do see both sides of the screen, what is your what is the sort of settings or what are your favourite settings for your dming and we'll maybe touch on your character build as a player in a moment. You know,
Keith Ammann:I don't have a single favourite setting. And I haven't really had an opportunity to develop one in large part because the adventures I have been running to date for the last five and a half years have all been official published adventures. I've written some homebrew side quest material for my players to insert in my main campaign, but I haven't had the opportunity to do any real world building you fivey yet it's all been Forgotten Realms and I have some issues with Forgotten Realms, none of them so serious that I'm not willing to play in it. But there are definitely things I would do differently if I were building a world from scratch I would like the geology to make a little more sense you know the geography let you know make make the mountains and the deserts less arbitrary. I would definitely like to have a world that is less lore saturated and has a little more terra incognita in it if you know what I mean. I would I'm much more interested in the political interplay between states and other, you know, Kingdom like Empire like nation like bodies, and you have Forgotten Realms doesn't give you much of any of that. I'm also the they're really not clear on whether the youth guard barbarians are tribes or chiefdoms. They're they're sort of a mishmash of elements of each. But it is good, classic project what you want on to it, high fantasy. And so as an introductory setting, it's fine. I, you know, I don't feel so strongly about its flaws that I'm not willing to run these adventures in it. But I am looking forward to the opportunity when we're done with my main campaign not just to play these other TT RPG systems, but also to play d&d in us in a scratch setting a homebrew setting that feels a little more like something I would create. Because, you know, I have, I have always been in a friendly, quiet competition with my best friend Julian, who was my first Dungeon Master. Because he has just such an amazing, fertile original imagination. He comes up with stuff from I don't know where and it, it really is magical. It is true high fantasy. And I admire him so much for being able to do it. And it is just not a kind of creativity that I have. My creativity is the creativity of the remixer. I take existing elements and try to put them together in more interesting ways or with new interpretations, new spins. And where I can't compete on Raw originality, I go for verisimilitude. I want it to feel like you're living in it, which is also a major impulse behind the monsters know what they're doing. I want you to feel like you're living in it. And they're living in it and everything you encounter is living in it and going on and doing its own thing, even when you're not there looking. And that is the kind of world that I would like to create for my players.
Snyders Return:Yeah. And I agree that there are definitely issues with the Forgotten Realms settings and a few other things and, but going for verisimilitude, as you've mentioned, as a player, how have How have you created your character to sort of fall into the world of your, your DMS table
Keith Ammann:well and my dm is running the yawning portal. So it's not. It's not just, you know, Forgotten Realms now. It's like Forgotten Realms from 20 years ago. So I didn't really, for that campaign, create a character that was going to have a deep inner life. I was interested in experimenting with the mechanics of the artificer class, which was a class that I hadn't had a lot of contact with. When I tried the unearthed Arcana play test version of the artificer. One thing I had been frustrated by was that it seemed almost impossible to use it to create an alchemist that really felt like playing an alchemist. And so when it came out in published form in Hebron rising from the last war, I thought, okay, I want to see how the published version differs from the play test version. And so I've been playing on the hustle kimia He who is a Kailash ight, Alchemist, son of the master of the braziers guild in kaylin port, who is a the sign of his family and a bit of a waste straw and a bit impractical. And who has basically been disowned and kicked out of the family for not taking his responsibilities seriously enough. And who is now wandering the world trying to find more information to study about alchemy and discovering to his frustration that a, he already knows more than most of the people he's encountering, and be he's running out of money really fast. So he's got to find some way to, to get enough cash in hand to support himself while he experiments and studies and also has to get a proper alchemy kit because he didn't have the money, he didn't have the starting funds to buy a full alchemy kit. Happily over the course of this adventure, he not only made all the money he needs, he also found a complete alchemy kit and scooped it up. So things went things turned out pretty well for him. But that is the that's the character that I have been playing lately. You know, again, he's, he's, he's he's not a level one to 20 kind of character. But he served for the campaign and I got to play around with the mechanics of the artificer some the next character I intend to play. Julian is going to be running a game starting soon. And I'm thinking of playing a an Aladdin fighter in that one. I think that one I might, I might try to make a little more 3d. And I have a couple of interesting character ideas in the back of my head. That if I ever if I ever find the right campaign, I'll bring them onto the stage. We'll see if that ever happens. But they're the ones that I'm saving for the the campaign that's going to be for the long haul.
Snyders Return:Hmm, then oh, that's fair enough. So you mentioned there a legend? Have you looked into or picked out a favourite season? Are you just gonna roll with that as the character develops through the through this story?
Keith Ammann:I think I'm gonna let him vary. I think I'm gonna let him vary according to his mood.
Snyders Return:Nice, nice. I think it's an interesting mechanic and allows so much versatility of play style, the flexible the variation of each season presented. So you're speaking to me on this podcast, and you play home games do you get to play with with other podcasters? And do you do any other live stream sort of cyber stuff?
Keith Ammann:I have not played on any live streams. I'd like to I think that'd be cool. Anyone who wants to invite me potentially available? But no, I haven't I haven't really had that opportunity. You know, one of the one of the side effects of being a new parent, just when you actually become successful is unfortunately you don't have a whole lot of time to forge all those relationships with all the people who might give you the opportunities to do that kind of fun stuff. And it's a that's that's a bit of a FOMO thing. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of people who I would love to have the opportunity to collaborate with or just to play with, and I wish I had the time to build Those relationships and unfortunately I just haven't had it. I did, I did get invited to do the guest spot on Dungeons and Dragons, which was a lot of fun. And I played in a game grant Ellis ran at one point I don't recall whether that game was actually streamed or not. may have been, but I've had the good fortune to play a one shot game mastered by Dave Walters. Wow. But yeah, other than that, not a lot of not a lot of opportunity to put my face on a bunch of people's computer screens.
Snyders Return:That's fair enough. But would you say you're busy? You know, professional writer, full time parent. And with the blog and everything else that's going on? I can, I can understand the work lifetime DND balance can be somewhat restricted.
Keith Ammann:Also, I'm 51 so maybe they don't want my old man face on there. I don't know. No,
Snyders Return:I mean, I know it was only already what do we need?
Keith Ammann:What do we need for our stream? Huh? How about another middle aged white guy? Yeah, that's that's exactly what
Snyders Return:unfortunately, I'm starting to fall in Well, I'm approaching the middle age I'm definitely definitely the white guy. But I mean, your your Turner's floor is love run Dungeons and Dragons was was a joy to listen, listen to and I loved it. So thank you. And that's such a great podcast so it was great to hear to learn about more about you and your publications and and enjoy the podcast as well. So I really enjoyed it. So that's a bit of an advert for them, and a hell of a chunk out for you because it was really great there was so with you having sort of written out all of these different aspects of the different monsters and all that sort of stuff in thinking back and going back what has been your or what is your sort of favourite monster, not necessarily as a from a DM perspective, it could just be something you've encountered as a player but what is the the monster or NPC that you've come across and thought that this this is my favourite.
Keith Ammann:I am always going to have a soft spot for the goblins you know you'll always remember your first but also because my my insight into how they should act was so surprising to me. Like once I realised that that was really a light bulb going on moment when I realised what you can do with goblins. So I'm always going to have a soft spot for them. I'm always going to have a soft spot for both acts. Because always the boat AK came along. Just when I needed it. I was doing one of my side adventures, one of my homebrew side quests for my main group. And they had just encountered and it was guard tribe that they were trying to recruit to help them fight off a warlord who was trying to conquer that entire region and instal himself as King. And there had to be I needed I needed some kind of MacGuffin, I needed something that they would have to do for this tribe in order to win them over and convince them that they were worth following and I had just gotten Volos guide to monsters I mean literally like within the last week or two before that and I set out I need something that is appropriate for their level that's going to be something menacing something they have not heard of before that they have not encountered before just something they won't know what to do with and the boat act just slotted right into that filled that bill perfectly. And I really like the kind of damned if you do damned if you don't aspects of its of its features. You know it's it's like fighting a boat act is like fighting a fire. You know, you got to put it out but getting close to it is dangerous. What do you do you know you you have to just yourself as best you can and then charge in there. And yeah, that was that was a lot of fun. The, the Zorn when I was writing the monsters know what they're doing the book and filling in some of the monsters from the monster manual that I had not blogged about. So the zone is a monster that is only ever going to appear in the book. It's never going to be on the blog, it's exclusive content to the book. But when I realised some of the implications of the Zorn's powers, it was so bonkers and so much fun to imagine what what that thing would do. There there are some crazy things that Zorn can do in a fight. And I find them just absolutely delightful. The GIF were one that I have not blogged about but have written about for what is going to be the successor volume to the monsters know what they're doing. And I was I was happily surprised to find out just how interesting the gifts are as because they fight completely differently depending on whether they're on defence or offence.
Snyders Return:Yeah, that's fair. That is I had a sorry a moment there was a gift with two F's or gifts with th nose. Yeah. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Very different. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And they are such a unusual command to come up with. I don't think many people would have dropped those into into their d&d game. So and you mentioned their Volos which you so insane about the love for the the Goblin as a race as a NPC in an enemy and using them vote flows does does well with the law but it never I don't think it really explains what that how to apply that which is I think where your books or steps in and fills in the that unknown gap perfectly?
Keith Ammann:In some cases it does. I think it's very good about that with kobolds. I think that it's very good about that with hobgoblins. I think it is much less good with that with orcs and Knowles but with with kobolds in particular, it does a really good job of that. I think
Snyders Return:so. And you mentioned they're the successor to the monsters now what they're doing when was the sort of projected timeline for for that,
Keith Ammann:right now as we record the tentative release date for that is November 2021. So this coming fall.
Snyders Return:All right. So that's something definitely to look out for. For for DMS and gems even because while your your books more pertain to Dungeons and Dragons, how to run a creature be it for Pathfinder, or any of bioses rune quest or any of the other systems that has these sort of design and also has these these creatures or monsters. That understanding of how to get the best, as it were, out of the worst you can find in the wilderness is is definitely a skill that dams and gems can take on board. So you sound incredibly busy. You have released work for the for the DMS guild or available on the DMS Guild, you've written two books, you're writing the third in sort of the sequence. You're a parent full time writer. Why is it when you do get the chance? What is it you do to relax? What is your sort of downtime activities?
Keith Ammann:Ah, I think about the days when I had downtime, um I Oh, boy. Yeah, I don't have a lot of downtime. I have been playing Hades lately. I watched critical role I yeah, I I log back on my couch and wish I had the energy to do more. Um, I have been very interested in photography and look forward to one day being able to pick up my camera again. Um, yeah, just I am I am not maintaining the world's best work life balance right now. Or I should say I'm balancing work and life, but they're both on the same end of the scale. And so the question is what's on the other end Yeah, it's a you know, I mean I gotta be honest it's it's it's not super easy. And you know how there are there are some people who are drained by interacting with other people and other people who are energised by it. Playing d&d game mastering d&d takes something from me. But it also gives a lot back. And I really, I don't want to make it sound like, I don't look forward to the games I play every week, I absolutely look forward to the games I play every week they sustain me those those, you know, relationships with my friends, and being able to collaborate on this stuff with my wife, who is in every campaign, she's with me in every campaign I'm playing. And she also did the illustrations for the monsters know what they're doing and will be doing the illustrations for the successor volume. And, you know, she's just, she is my spouse, she is my partner in you know, domestic life and creative life. And every minute I get to spend with her is is a gift. And it's, you know, that that is
Snyders Return:beautiful. That's what that is beautiful. It's beautiful to be able to have. And her illustrations are fantastic, by the way. So just a
Keith Ammann:thank you. I'll
Snyders Return:tell her, I didn't want to let opportunities slip past they are a fantastic. So thank you for sharing that that rather personal moment where, you know, I appreciate that. So we'll bring it back to to the business, I will get you back into work mode. And we'll remind people where they can find you and they can find your content and when we can on see more from you.
Keith Ammann:The blog is the monsters no.com I am on twitter at Keith aman ke i th a m m a n n. My books are available wherever you can buy trade books, independent bookstores bookshop.org Barnes and Noble Amazon Waterstones. I have few products on the DMS Guild. And yeah, that's it. And I have a few products on the DMS Guild.
Snyders Return:Links to all of that will be in the description below this podcast. So be Be sure to scroll down and follow those links. Is there anything else outside of tabletop role playing games or, or even in it that you want to sort of mention now that we haven't touched on during this interview?
Keith Ammann:Now not grinding any axes at the moment?
Snyders Return:At the moment, we'll keep them to one side or maybe go up against it. And I've got probably two hours worth of questions to ask you. You
Keith Ammann:know what I'll I will I will add something.
Snyders Return:Oh, please.
Keith Ammann:Just that I really look forward to coming out the other side of this COVID-19 crisis. And getting to see some of the fantastic industry people whom I've met in person again at the con circuit. Because I got to meet some really wonderful people at gamehole con and Pax unplugged last year. And I cannot wait for the opportunity to do that, again.
Snyders Return:We hope that COVID-19 is on his way out or heavily diminished and be able to all meet up as you say in person and carry on with life to a certain extent as it as it was before. But Casey, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. I'd love to have you back on the show in the future, if you'd be willing. If are my own agile play, podcast keeps going maybe have you on as a guest if you're still looking for opportunities, but I'm sure people will be willing to definitely have you on someone who's released. The books that you have and have the knowledge you have and all that sort of good stuff. And just the good personality you are I'm sure people will be looking to have you on.
Keith Ammann:So I got a question for you. Yes, please. In American Games, people always use RP English accents to represent the lofty nobility. Oh, yes. In your games. What do the people with the American accents represent?
Snyders Return:Oh, that's a loaded question.
Keith Ammann:If it's someone comes in sounding like me like what kind of character are they? Are they the, like the smuggler Cove or
Snyders Return:by voice alone just just working off your voice I will pitch you as a sort of confident I don't know Harper's agent or or something like that someone's able to carry themselves knows what they're doing quite confident I tend to pitch the ideas very stereotypical the sort of Al Capone style your guy, I kind of somewhere that sort of encompasses everything from just like the khaki road type. The Chicago kind of crime boss kind of
Keith Ammann:you know, all right. All right, I'm gonna go take over the gentle arm now.
Snyders Return:Oh, please, please. I hate cold is a an interesting place to start. So, definitely want to check out there. But yeah, no, it has been an absolute pleasure to get the time to speak with you. And I truly hope we get to speak. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon. And we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you