Interview - Dungeon Dudes - TTRPG/D&D YouTube and Actual Play Podcast

Today I talk with TTRPG Content Creator, Twitch Streamers, Podcasters and Kickstarters - Monty Martin and Kelly McLaughlin AKA the 'Dungeon Dudes'

We discuss the origins of their YouTube Channel, getting started as an Actual Play Stream/Podcast, their Kickstarter 'Dungeons of Drakkenheim' and so much more.

You can find Monty, Kelly and all of the Dungeon Dudes content via the links below.

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/dungeon_dudes

YouTube:
https://t.co/GKCFlcVSp4?amp=1

Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/dungeon_dudes

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/dungeon_dudes/

Website:
https://linktr.ee/dungeondudes
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2144996758/dungeons-of-drakkenheim

Please leave reviews on ITunes to help us to learn and grow as a Podcast

Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Monty Martin / Kelly McLaughlin - Dungeon Dudes

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Edited by: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: Tim Cunningham - www.Wix.com

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http://snydersreturn.squarespace.com

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Transcript

Snyders Return: 0:25

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guests today have emerged from the dungeons and shadows time and time again. peering through the haze they do not rest as they bring to us untold tales and valuable information to inspire and enlighten. Though they must be suffering from some form of delirium they have studied themselves today to provide us with top tier intelligence pertaining to the forever auto city of Drakkenheim bringing their wisdom and charisma from YouTube to land on our gaming tables like an eldritch storm of falling stars of the creative force of the dungeon dude's Monty Martin and Kelly McLaughlin, welcome both of you to the show.

Dungeon Dudes: 1:05

Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you. And Hello,

Snyders Return: 1:09

thank you for agreeing to join me today. We're going to speak on a couple of topics, most importantly, the kickstart you guys have got running. But before we get into content, a few things I alluded to there in the intro, would each of you mind letting us know how you got into tabletop role playing games, please,

Kelly McLaughlin: 1:25

for for myself, it was actually kind of a long road to get into tabletop role playing games. For some reason. There was this sort of idea I was from a small town and I was one of the nerdier kids in a small town and therefore, living in a small town being a nerd I was picked on for being a nerd. And for some reason, in my work, little childhood brain. It seemed like if I got into tabletop role playing games, I was already playing Warhammer. And I was already playing Magic the Gathering. But for some reason I said in my head, if I start playing Dungeons and Dragons, or anything like that, I will get picked on more. So I was hesitant to do that. Now, I started working in my teen years at a grocery store. And somebody in the back of that grocery store that that was in the department next to mine, invited me over for a game of vampire masquerade. So I only ever played one game of that. But I really enjoyed that. And I was like, Well, that was really cool. And so that was kind of I guess my first taste of it. And then it wasn't until I actually met Monty, that he started talking to me about d&d. And I at this point, I was an adult living in the city. And I was like, well, there's no point in not giving in fully to how nerdy of a person I am. I've done everything else that a nerd can do except play tabletop role playing games. So I dove in headfirst, and Monty and I spent many, many days discussing the various schools of wizardry that I could choose from and all the different classes and races and worlds of d&d. And then eventually, we sat down and started playing and it, it just kind of took over my life, I can't really explain the amount that I loved it. It's like, it's like I was always meant to be playing tabletop role playing games. And it satisfied all of these parts of me that I just needed. Like I went to school for film, and I wanted to be a writer, director. But I also wanted to be a storyteller. I wanted to create compelling characters. And I also wanted to kind of be an actor as well. So I was trying to find this avenue to fill all of these parts of me. And it turns out that playing d&d was actually the road that would end up leading me to fulfilling all of those parts of me. And from there, I branched out into things like I've dabbled in monster of the week and some other RPGs. I mean, we didn't start with fifth edition, I think we actually dabbled in a bit of Pathfinder. We play it a little bit of 3.5. And I'm trying to think if there was anything else, I've I've played some not really tabletop role playing games in the deeper sense, but I played a lot of those. I want to call them like legacy style board games where you have a character and you you kind of do level them up from session to session, but it's more of a straightforward board game style, like Arkham, horror and things of that nature. So I had kind of dove into all of those. And now I'm just in love with the whole genre. I'm trying to branch out even More I'm always looking for new RPGs to try. But my home is Dungeons and Dragons.

Snyders Return: 5:06

Den. Absolutely, Adam, quite a, quite a journey you've taken by the size of it and Monti, you were mentioned that what about yourself? How did you get into tabletop role playing games, please.

Monty Martin: 5:15

So, as a as a young teenager, in, in high school, I was already really into all the nerdy stuff. Much of the same Kelly I was playing Magic the Gathering, I was really into tabletop war games and miniature gaming as well. And of course, all stripes of video games and very much for myself, I had always thought of myself as a world builder and a creator and in many ways, a performer as well. I grew up in a small theatre town, here in Canada. And so the performing arts and that kind of creativity was always very close to me. And I gravitated towards those sorts of things. And so when I once I got online in the internet, I really started to discover more of the games that were out there. And so I think I would just started high school when I discovered dungeons and dragons and picked up the core rulebooks and was kind of the instigator that brought my social circle into the fold of that. And so we played a lot of d&d over those years. And then as I've moved around for school for work, and for various various reasons, I've always found myself in the midst of a social circle of really awesome friends that I've been able to share my passion for d&d with and that's kind of been my thing, you know, I'm someone that you know, I would rather have some friends over for some board games and some role playing games then go out to a club. So um, but you know, you can still have a couple brews and enjoy all that just as just as well. So for for me, almost because I was the instigator of my groups in the first person to sort of discover role playing games amongst my friends circle. My first games of Dungeons and Dragons were as the Game Master, I explored. And so around the time that I got into d&d was when third edition was just coming out. So I, that was my first campaign was for the original third edition. I love dungeon and dragon magazine through this period. And then as I sort of grew up with that, I went through playing all the other editions of d&d over the year since several other tabletop role playing games in the intermittent periods, every everything from things like fiasco and fate and savage worlds blades in the dark, but DND always is one that I come back to time and time again, because I think for me, at a very young age, I was very much kept captivated by lots of Irish mythology, because my my roots are in Ireland, my father immigrated from Ireland to Canada. And so that connection to that Irish and Celtic mythology is very strong in my roots, you know, tales of our theory and legends and all that sort of sort of swords and sorcery sort of stuff really kept captivated me from a very young age. And so the fantasy role playing has always just been a very natural extension of that.

Snyders Return: 8:22

So again, trouble many in storied journey you've taken Where did the the joining of, of YouTube as a as a force, become dungeon doods?

Kelly McLaughlin: 8:35

Well, I we actually, we've used to work at the same store. And this is actually really interesting that almost are like so many of the people we play d&d with all worked at this one computer shop. And we work there for for several years, if you've watched our live stream, Joe and Jill also worked there. They're the other two players in our live stream. And we went through a few different groups of players from that store. And then we ended up landing on a pretty consistent group that actually played several campaigns together. And from that, when we I think the moment that we decided to start dungeon dudes, I actually very specifically remember so I was trying to start a film production company, it was having very limited success. I had done a couple music videos and a few short films that went into festivals. And I was trying to find new cool things to do with my film school. You know, I remember finishing film school and I got a diploma and my teacher was like, here's a diploma. Nobody in the industry is going to care about it. But good luck. And so I didn't know what to do with that. So it was kind of like, congratulations, go fend for yourself. Which is the unfortunate part of film school is you can't really look go out there. Be like, hey, anybody need a writer director. So it was tough, but I was always looking for avenues. And I was, I was on the dungeons and dragons Facebook page. And I noticed that there was a bunch of questions. And Monty and I were both pretty consistent people on there for messaging and leaving comments. And I noticed that both Monty and I kept popping up answering questions for people, people would be like, how does this rule work? What's the best way to play this character? and time and time again, I noticed me and my good friend Monty answering these questions. And we were making this joke almost constantly. Every time that we would finish a night of d&d, one of us would say, Man, wouldn't it be cool if we could just like find a way to make d&d our job? And we would laugh and laugh, and then throw it aside and be like, Well, that was an unreasonable choke, that will never happen. And then one day, I just came to Monte and said, Okay, well, I'm, I'm trying to do stuff with film, what if we just turned on the cameras? and answered those questions that we keep answering. And then whenever we see those questions pop up online, we can just post our video so that instead of having to type out our answers over and over again, we have a video to answer those questions. Yeah. And Monty and I talked about it for a bed, and it was like, Okay, let's film four episodes on how to fill out a character sheet. And they're going to be really quick five minute episodes, we're not ever going to do longer than five minute episodes. And we're probably only going to make like 10 of these, and then nobody's going to watch them. And that was the start. And obviously, our videos got longer and more in depth. And we got more than a few people watching our episodes, it took a while. But I remember being really excited several months in when we had I think 100 subscribers and I, I was like, do I buy a bottle of champagne for this. And now here we are pushing 300,000. And things have changed a little bit. But I look back at that time. And it's just, it's just incredible that we've got just that small idea, that small, little conversation and those small little jokes of Imagine if we did this that ended up becoming something and I think that's really cool.

Snyders Return: 12:25

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say you do sort of camping out on impressive numbers with with over was you say approaching nearly 300,000 subscribers, me included, by the way? I know. It's good content, I can't fault you for it. So you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna support it and watch it. Thank you. Well, the links will What? Actually we'll do that we'll do the shameless self plug, where can people find you and your content online slash YouTube.

Monty Martin: 12:55

So Kelly, and I publish new videos every other Tuesday and every thursday@youtube.com slash dungeon dudes. So all of our content goes out through there. But then we also live stream on Twitch on Tuesday nights from six to nine that twitch TV, slash dungeon underscore dudes. But we do release our live plays as podcasts on most major podcast platforms. And those come out on on Fridays on YouTube as well. So it really has grown because, you know, we originally just started with posting one video a week on whatever topic that we did. And so we started to over the first year do guides to the classes in dungeons and dragons, fifth edition. And that was what really started to get us our initial traction was we were doing kind of really in depth guides, video guides on how to play a wizard how to play a sorcerer, how to play a fighter how to play a cleric. And over the course of that first year, we started building a following. And I remember us having this big backyard barbecue and we got to 5000 subscribers and the celebrations along the way. And it it really snowballed in a way that we don't think either of us ever imagined it would. Because, you know for there was the point where we're like, oh, you know, this is this is kind of letting us you know, justify picking up the latest d&d release. Let let you know we've got a good reason now to get down with ours guide to everything because we need to do a review for it. And and so as that as it expanded, we started getting more and more people asking us if they could watch us play d&d. And so that was where we reached out to Jill and Joe and started thinking about what are the what's the infrastructure required to live stream. I had some experience live streaming because I come from a background in in technical theatre, working as a stage designer and a projectionist. And so I had recently worked on On several projects over the past few years where we had already done live streaming for stage shows, that had happened in Toronto, so I knew what the infrastructure and equipment that was required, and I managed to piecemeal together the big most basic streaming equipment kit, because, you know, doing a in person live stream, just getting everyone might just get in cameras, when at that time when we had absolutely no budget whatsoever. It is getting the lighting, but we cobbled it together and we got it going. And the the stream started attracting a following from that as well. And we had some great support from our Patreon supporters that allowed us to grow it and improve it and learn more how to, to do those live streams, and just so much creativity came out of being able to do that. Yeah, absolutely. And

Snyders Return: 15:52

you mentioned there, your your string games, in fact, it's also a podcast. So moving from reviews, and sort of subjective looks at certain classes and things like that. Where did drakkenheim build itself from? And and and we're sort of moving into the the main reason why why I invite you on that the Kickstarter, which is sort of come out the other end of that. How, how did dragon Han come about?

Monty Martin: 16:20

Well, there were a few initial sparks of creation and discussion between Kelly and I, over what, what to do. Prior to dungeon doods Kelly and I had played an urban based campaign, which we lovingly now call the city campaign, which actually involves a time loop. It was a lot, it was a lot of fun. It was one of our favourite favourite campaigns that we played. And we had a lot of fun memories from that campaign, which actually use Monte Cook's Talas as a template for that campaign. And for me, I, we're also very big collectors, we enjoy playing with terrain, and miniatures. And we had recently just received the Dwarven forge city builder sets of their other painted 3d terrain. So we knew that we we really loved sort of urban fantasy. And I had this sketch in my notebook from many years ago, where I been inspired by talks of doing mega dungeons, and I had been iterating different ideas of like how to break the formula of a standard mega dungeon. And I had conceived of this idea that of just like, abandoned or ruined city, and the city is actually a dungeon as a way of kind of breaking that that structure out. And so when we were when we were thinking about what we wanted to livestream, the the, we had the conversation about, you know, should we just buy cursive straud? Should we just play whatever the latest campaign that had come out at the time, we decided that we wanted to do something our own, and we weren't sure if we were going to do something that was, you know, we thought at the beginning, we were just going to maybe do six live stream episodes and just do it as an experiment. But that that quickly changed. So I figured that doing a sort of exploration based site based adventure into a dungeon in a ruined city would be really cool, because that way, if it worked, we could continue with it. But if it didn't work, no sweat. And so there was a variety of influences that we kind of pulled on for that. Both Kelly and I are huge fans of dark fantasy and cosmic horror. So there was a laundry list of influences that went into conceptualising the world in I think, in particular, things like Darkest Dungeon, and the Dark Souls games, but also structurally, I'm a huge fan of Fallout New Vegas and the ways that the plots of the of those games evolving factions really stretch out in different directions. And we you know, we love kind of that grim and gritty fantasy that you see in things like Dark Souls or even Warhammer Fantasy and things like that. So all of those influences were kind of percolating in our minds. And the biggest kind of thing that I wanted to do, conceptually, was one of the things that I always struggle with, with with, especially fifth edition is, you know, that five minute workday syndrome where the adventures only go in and as soon as they as soon as they finish, one combat encounter are one thing they immediately you know, open up the portable hole or open up the rope trick or open up the Lehman's tiny hut and take a long rest. And so I wanted to have some Sort of conceit in the campaign that the players were not allowed to rest in the city, they weren't allowed to take a long rest in the city, they always had to go back to a safe place to rest. And so that was where the ideas of follow up became really interesting, because I kind of had this idea of like, What if there was some kind of magical radiation that was all over the entire city that just made it you could go there for a couple hours, but it was just too dangerous to your, your health that you couldn't actually rest there. And, of course, in there's a lot of other, you know, fantasy worlds where some sort of magical rate or there's some sort of magical disaster that causes you know, blasted land or, or a hellscape or something to go off. And, and because, you know, the follow up games have nuclear weapons and craters and things like that, that well, the best fantasy equivalent to that is probably some kind of Meteor. And so that's where it kind of all came sort of full circle. And that's where especially the the idea of cosmic forces and HP Lovecraft really started to sink in. there's a there's a whole bunch of other literary inspirations from the works of Terry Pratchett and nk jemisin. And Ursula Kayla Gwynn are beyond just Lovecraft are huge influences. There's, I like to say that there's no author creates without influences. And you can really, though, it's always so pleasant reading the comments in our videos where people are like, is that a reference to Terry Pratchett? Is that a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Wait, is that a reference to doctor who like, like, so I really enjoy that kind of element. And it's a fun way to engage with the fan. So that's where kind of the the world started to expand outwards, and working really closely with Kelly and the players and creating this world and bringing this all together. It kind of really was this process where we kind of got to discover what the world was. It really wasn't until about halfway through the original campaign that I even decided for myself as the dungeon master. What actually what the meteor was, and we still haven't revealed that yet. So it's a it's a big secret, but it's a testament to just kind of how you can world build and discover the world as you go, which is really rewarding. Yeah,

Snyders Return: 22:20

definitely. I mean, it's up to so dungeons of dragons home 52 videos released. shadows and untold have 31 and 20, respectively. And Kelly, you you've been on the other side of the of the gym screen, the DM screen, as Sebastian Crowe and Wilhelm wolfsbane. What's it been like playing in the world that the Montes is carving and terrifying you with in that sense?

Kelly McLaughlin: 22:49

You know, it's it's actually really great working with Monty as a dungeon master. First of all, as a fellow creator, there's this really funny line that we have to ride where Monty and I work best when we're coming up with ideas together. But also Monte has to put curtains down on some of the information so that I'm not spoiled of the surprises as a player. So I do feel like there's this this great part where I get to know the history and the lore of the world I get to, to inspire ideas for adventures, but then what ends up happening along the path on those adventures is usually something that Monti gets to fill in as we go and that's that's really exciting for me. The second season more specifically, the first season started with almost all Monty. But the players ended up adding so much to that world. And that's something that I actually really respect in Montes Montes design work is you're gonna notice we tried to do this with with our Kickstarter as well. But if you watch the first campaign, the choices that the characters make, and the stories that are important to them, are what actually drive the narrative of dungeons of dragons. It's not about some evil wizard trying to conquer the world. It's about three people and the tangled web that they wind up inside of, and how their personal goals are affected by what's going on in the world. And so what was really rewarding it says somebody who loves to design characters and loves to tell interesting character stories. I've said this many times that my favourite part of d&d isn't really like the combat or the mechanics. It's, it's taking a fantastical character that I've designed and kind of putting them through some some crap that they have to like, figure out like, where are they going to end up and what is going to affect them and what emotions are going To be driving their decisions. And I actually like making mistakes with my character. I like having a character who maybe gets in over their head and ends up too emotionally attached to a situation and makes a bad choice because it was what that person would do in that moment. And Monty really gives his players the room to explore that. And then, I mean, the one thing that I don't think I was prepared for, even though I totally should have seen this coming is he definitely made some of the worst decisions that we made, come back and bite us. So it got towards the end of the first campaign. There's a moment where my character, Sebastian Crowe's whole thing was, he's up. He's basically a problem child. He being a sorcerer, I was like, what does it mean to be a young sorcerer? Well, he probably blew things up by accident. And everybody was like, well be careful of that kid, he'll set your house on fire just by looking at it. So that was kind of the vibe. And so he grew up with that. And so he really wanted to prove that he was more than that, that he could be a hero. And by the end of the first campaign, it really is a question of did he actually succeed? Or did he just cause way more problems? And that's debatable. So it is really fun to explore that. And when we got to season two, it was actually really fun. I remember this car ride, I think we were coming home from origin. Yeah. Or maybe heading to the car might have been both. Yeah, but but that was like an eight hour car ride there and back. And we were just about to wrap season one. And Monty. And I just brainstormed all of the the concept of season two, we came up with all of these cool ideas, we said that basically Season Two would go beyond the walls of Dragon home and start to show what the effects of Dragon home were on the larger world. And I really felt like both of us got to dip our toes into the creation process on that one. And then obviously, as we came to work on the book, something that I realised is that the only things that have actually been decided, are the paths that manticore carved in season one. But there was a whole bunch of the city that was still left to explore. And so I got to put myself into a lot of that as well and Monty and I got to work together to to flesh out more of the world. And so, now dragon Haim is this, this kind of monster of both Monty and my imagination, filled with all the things we love in the cosmic horror genre and the dark fantasy genre. And I just feel like together, we've been able to create some some really cool stuff that neither of us could have come up with apart

Snyders Return: 27:53

the toy Monty, we're gonna jump in.

Monty Martin: 27:55

Yeah, I just wanted to jump in and echo. You know, for me, as a dungeon master, I love to play off the contributions of my player characters. And I really view the process of one as, as that comes out of a place of a lot of CO authorship, collaboration and trust. And so Kelly, Jill and Joe are so much a part of the way that this this world in the story has developed, and are and it feeds into some of our goals for the book itself of that our dragon home campaign was so player driven, the players really were the ones making the decisions and feeling the consequences for those actions. And so we wanted that to echo in what we produced for the book itself, and really be a bit of a toolbox that someone could could expand on from that, to create this sort of nonlinear unpredictable narrative. Because for me, as a dungeon master running the original dragon, I'm campaign and the current one, I was constantly surprised and floored by the decisions that my characters would make. And sometimes the choices that would happen in the moment, I would just have to stop, like there's a few, there's a few times where you can watch the episodes where I'm just, it's clear that I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Because they have surprised me so much. And for me, the way that I prepare my games, and the way that I create my worlds is very much a scenario based sort of thing. So I can actively respond to those sorts of things and, and improvise based on that. And so I'm very fortunate to have players that are that are also very good at improvising. And so we can kind of pick up what each other are laying down and be like, yeah, yeah, we're doing this energy just even in our recent shadows of dragonhide episodes. Because these are fresh in my mind. The the kind of investigative horror element has really come alive. And it's been really interesting to see the players embrace that and so we've kind of had more of a like a horror detective. Over the past couple episodes of our live stream show, which has been a lot of fun to explore, because we see the way the characters are work so well within that, and how they respond to those sort of, sort of events. So So and especially throughout this whole process of running the campaign, having constant conversations with Kelly, Joe and Joe, but where they wanted to go with their characters with what sort of goals that they had, what they imagined that their stories would go, that has manifest then as making it a personal story in this world, so that is something that I am so grateful for, and so rewarded by as a as a as a Game Master. Because Yeah, it's very easy to just be like, Alright, folks, here's tonight's dungeon. Here's tonight, set these battle, this is the story, you're going to do this, this, this, this and this and this, and I find that it's so much more rewarding as a as a game master to be surprised. Because the players get to be surprised all the time. They don't know what's going to happen next. And when you don't know what happens next as a Game Master, it's it can actually be very exciting to

Snyders Return: 31:06

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you mentioned it a couple of times. Moving on to onto the book and the Kickstarter, other the promo video for the Kickstarter, with the Darkest Dungeon inspired take. And it has Sebastian veio and Pluto in it. Really, that that just that was me hitting back this project

Monty Martin: 31:27

the second I watched that loved it. So highly recommend people watch that on a loop because that's that's awesome. The team behind it is just so amazing. The everyone that contributed to that was it was just mind blowing there, there is a team. Mario Spota is our as our art director for the book and for the project. And he and he headed up up that but also the, with Hannah parrot with who is working behind the scenes to keep everything to bring all these pieces together. And then we had a team of about half a dozen other artists and our animator Giuliano Castro, who brought that all together. So it was a huge collaborative effort to to bring that on. And we were really, really pleased because our partner, our partner, and publisher, and bringing dragon time together has been ghost fire gaming. And that has allowed us to really focus on the creative elements of the project, because they've, they've helped us so much in the organisation in the structure and, and connecting us with such brilliant people. So a huge shout out to them in helping this this whole thing come alive. Because Yeah, that the animated trailer was was an absolute gift. And we we worked on writing the initial scripts, and we saw the initial storyboard and saw the art pieces as they were coming in. But then there was a meeting a few weeks ago when the ghost fire team showed us the final trailer and just it was I goosebumps, it was so awesome to see the final product.

Kelly McLaughlin: 33:01

It's so different, handing in a script for something and being like, here's some words on a page that we think sound cool. And then when we saw the animated we like the script had the dialogue, but it also had little notes like in this frame show like Sebastian putting potions in his belt. But like I wrote that, but I didn't know what it would end up looking like. So when I saw the trailer it was it was so much cooler than what I thought we had created. which is which is kind of how this whole book is going is like Monty and I are just like, here's the manuscript, and then we keep seeing art pieces. And we're like, yeah, that's cooler than what we even imagined it was going to look like so amazing.

Monty Martin: 33:44

And at one point in the process, early on, Mario's was doing the concept sketches for the the the really major buildings and dragonhide like the the inscrutable tower of the Amethyst Academy, and the cathedral and, of course, castle dragon. And he sent a he built a whole 3d model of castle dragon. And at that point, we were actually finishing the manuscript portion of castle dragon. And what Mario's had drawn was amazing. But the layout was a little bit different from the way we'd originally imagined it. But it didn't matter because what he had done, what he contributed was so incredible that we were like, Alright, we're going back in and making sure that the manuscript makes this art makes sense. And so we added to it and expanded the castle because working with the artists, working with more people and sharing our world with the artistic team has been an opportunity to revisit so many of our old ideas as this whole thing comes to life.

Kelly McLaughlin: 34:45

I just want to add one last thing to that one thing that I thought was hilarious is in our original manuscript castle dragon in the original story. Castle dragon is one of the last locations so in the show, we go in and we fight the Final big epic battle in the throne room. But we don't really go many other places in the castle. So when we were doing the book, it was like, Okay, well, people are probably just going to head to the throne room. So we don't need to detail what's in the towers or what's in these different locations. When we saw the artwork, we were like, well, it would be a shame not to fill these towers with things. So we actually ended up going back and it ended up being one of the biggest sections of the book because we just felt like we had to fill it. And that was really cool, I think.

Snyders Return: 35:31

Yeah, definitely. And so with this book and this amazing artwork and everything coming together, what else can people expect when they back your? Well, it's over$550,000 back to already but when people sort of see that that trailer see that the great content What else can they expect in the Kickstarter when they back

Monty Martin: 35:54

the basic logline is that what we produce for dungeons of Dragon it is it is a complete is a complete adventure for characters level one to 13 for fifth edition, with a an implied setting. So the way that I like to equate this is just as adventures like Curse of strahd and Tomb of annihilation occur in burrow via and choke respectively. And the adventure gives you everything you need to know to run about that setting. So if you know nothing else about the world, you've got everything you need in there to run it. And then you could if you wanted to homebrew from from there. It is a nonlinear adventure where the characters clash with explore the ruins of a fantasy city that has been struck by a meteor and is now fought over by five rival factions and inhabited by monsters inspired by cosmic horror. And the the key element of this that is everyone is kind of clashing over is the delirium crystals, which have been left behind in the ruins that power, powerful new magic, but also contaminate and corrupt the landscape and, in fact, those who handle them recklessly. And so the adventure itself is one where the characters when you create characters for dragon time you choose a personal quest. So we've created 12 different personal quests, but we have also given guidelines for the dungeon master and the players to create their own. And then so the personal quests all have milestones for the players to achieve depending on the nature of the personal quest, because not all of them are created equal. Some personal quests are to retrieve an heirloom from your family home. Some personal quests, though are to assassinate one of the leaders of the factions. And we even have a personal quest where you can secretly be one of the long lost heirs to the throne and want to rebuild the kingdom of westmar itself. So the the scope of the personal quest vary, so there's lots of room for different character concepts within there. And the way that they're designed is that by bringing the personal quest as your initial motivation to explore the ruins of the city, all the personal quests kind of get you in tangled with the various factions in in certain ways and and wrapped up in the in the conflict between them and so the the design goal with that is to kind of ease you in gently to exploring the city. So the the first couple levels of the campaign are just very exploration based, you know, go go here and retrieve this last item. You know, this faction needs your help rescuing someone who's lost in the ruins. But then every adventure site comes with consequences and decisions that eventually snowball out of out of control and tell the players have to decide which faction are going to be their enemies and which factions are going to be their allies. And so all five of the factions can be your best friend. Or you might be having a climactic encounter where you and your allies stormed the stronghold of another faction and take them down before eventually securing enough enough resources that your your characters and whichever factions they're allied with are strong enough to explore their really dangerous locations and track and hide like the castle in the crater.

Kelly McLaughlin: 39:13

There is also if we're looking at what else people can expect in this book. We wanted to really play around with what delirium might be used for and something that was really fun for us is there's a bunch of new spells and magic items and monsters. Now the monsters we've created a lot of bespoke monsters that are really horrible, cosmic horror, dark fantasy inspired, but we've also put in kind of sort of templates that you can really turn any monster from anywhere into a dragon high monster by giving it some delirium contamination. And then on top of that, one of the really cool aspects that I love is a lot of the spells that we've created, there's something called contaminated spells. And there's also spells that help you battle against the haze and contamination. But those are all spells that don't just get added to a spell list necessarily. You have to discover them, study them and learn them. There might be people in Dragon Hime who are researching these spells, and you have to find their spell books or either learn from them or kill them and steal their work. But that's part of the adventure. And I think that's really cool is a lot of people will ask questions like, Well, can this type of person use this spell to circumvent the contamination in the hates? The answer is on the outside of the campaign. This is a brand new thing in the world, people are trying to figure out but nothing has been successful. So most of the common spells that you would use to deal with situations don't actually work against contamination in the hates. But that's on purpose, because that kind of puts up that invisible wall where at the beginning of the campaign, you're kind of wandering around the outskirts of the city. But going deeper in is terrifying, until you start to study and learn what the NPCs and other people in the world know, and start to piece together the puzzle of solving the problem of the haze, so that you can delve deeper into the city. And then of course, you can unlock powerful potent spells where you can actually give yourself levels of contamination, to cast spells that are more powerful than they would normally be like a third level spell like lightning bolts, we have a spell called ride the Rift, which if you use delirium as a casting focus and have learned this spell, it's a lightning bolts. That also does, I think it does a little more damage than a normal lightning bolt. And you can teleport anywhere along the line of the lightning bolt as well. So there's we've kind of taken some spells and amplified them, but you can cast them at a cost. And so there's a lot of these elements built into the book that I think will be really exciting. And if you don't want to run dragon home, but you just want cool rules for contamination, mutation, new spells that use those rules, new magic items that use magic crystals as kind of the building factor of those items, you can just grab all of that and use them as you wish in your campaign as well.

Monty Martin: 42:27

Yeah, the contamination system is something we're really proud of, because it went through a lot of iteration. And you can actually, as you watch the original campaign and shadows of Drakken eim and our untold tales, you an actually see the development rocess that it went through. nd it started out as religious hat the radiation of the haze ould cause characters to become xhausted, and they gain xhaustion levels. And we and as nyone who's played fifth dition knows exhaustion is ctually pretty punishing, it's pretty rough thing that you now, you can kind of stand etting one level of exhaustion, ut as soon as you get two or hree, you got to get out of here. And so we made eldritch ontamination as kind of a hack f exhaustion, so it works the ame way you gain six levels of t, except that instead of when ou get six levels of xhaustion, you die. But with ldritch contamination, you ransform into a monster. And so hat is actually one of the ways hat we explain this is where ll the monsters in Dragon came rom. Because you think of the eople that didn't get out. hat's what that's the their ate. And the contamination has chance to cause a mutation as ell, which we have one of the e have tables that you roll on hat some of the mutations are ctually beneficial, you have a hance to have arcane blood and ave more spells to regenerate our wounds. Some of the utations cause all your hair to all out. So it it it creates a it of a risk versus reward ecause the first couple levels f contamination. Originally, we ent through this process where hey were quite punishing, like xhaustion. But it's it's ctually very possible for haracters to continue dventuring with even two or hree levels of contamination nd that not well that they'll till feel the effects of that. f they get a beneficial utation. They might be like, h, this is alright. But then of ourse, that's the risk because ou might always fall prey to a reature that causes more ontamination, and then you're ut and the only way to remove he contamination is through a pell that care that characters an learn early on, that then equires them to recuperate fterwards and rest afterwards. o unlike, you know, there's any, so it's unlike a disease r a poison where you just, you now, get rid of it and it's ike it never happened. You do ave to deal with the epercussions of those decisions nd Play, play carefully. And hat, and that's all there to ake sure that the player haracters have to engage with he factions and have to get heir help get their support. ecause the factions can do hings like give you a flare gun hat if you need help, they'll how up as reinforcements, or ive you mounts or give you agic items that you'll be able o use to help you escape or ven tell you, hey, we actually ave this safe hideout in the ity that you can go to, if ou're really in trouble. So hose sort of interactions are hings that we want to emerge ynamically in an interesting ay. And so all these mechanics f the haze and contamination nd the magic items and the elirium are all meant to kind f just create this powder keg round the factions and ltimately deciding what is the ate of draft and I'm going to e, do your player characters hink that this new magic is wesome, and they want to xploit it and use it? Well, hen you might want to be riends with the Amethyst cademy. But do you think that t is an abomination that needs o be destroyed? Well, maybe ou're all sign up to work with he silver order. So all the actions kind of have their own pinions on all these things, hich means that even the layers get it depending on how hey feel about it can it can ravitate to those factions or aybe that'll inform the ecisions on who are their nemies. Yeah.

Snyders Return: 46:23

That's there's so much going on there that so if someone such as myself, we want to pick up the book want to engage with these factions want to potentially take some contamination? Not sure. Going on to onto your Kickstarter page, scrolling down from that, that sort of promo video and down? What sort of tears Can people come in at to really support the project and get their hands on this, this incredible content that you you've created?

Kelly McLaughlin: 46:53

Yeah, so we have I actually really like the tears that we've created for this Kickstarter, I think that there's they're really reasonable. And I personally actually think that you get quite a bit for for a lot of the the price points, I was actually shocked when we revealed the price points at first. I was like are those are those rights, but they are and I love that they are, you can get the PDF for $25. So if you are just playing digitally, and you just want to run the campaign, the PDF will include all of the maps and all of the all of the content that you need to run. You can go up one tier, which I believe is the $55 tier which has the hardcover copy of the book, but it also has the beautiful fabric map that we are going to be including and that that is a beautiful fabric map of dragonhide which I just absolutely love. It's such a beautiful artwork.

Monty Martin: 47:57

And then that was done by john Stevenson really awesome mapmaker in Illustrator, he he took the original map that I had made, you know, cobbled together in Photoshop and with a map generator, and just totally breathed new life into it. So John's amazing work on that. It's just been so it was like, wow, this is alive to see when we first saw that.

Kelly McLaughlin: 48:23

Yeah. The tear up from that. So the PDF is the rap princess plunder. The step up from that with the physical copy of the book, and the fabric map is the Crimson countesses collection. Then you have the$85 tear loss, the Norse trinkets, which includes all the aforementioned stuff, but also a tactical map pack. So you can just slam these maps onto your table for key moments in the campaign, or some of the more reoccurring scenes like the city streets or sewers. And then also there's the delirium dice, which is, you know, a free well a set of dice, but it comes with a nice little pamphlet that actually has sort of a tongue in cheek sort of warning about what the effects of delirium are. So be careful handling your delirium dice. And also there are these card decks and in the loss of Norse trinkets, you got to choose one of the card decks. The card decks are either the Eldridge contamination deck which has the different rules for the levels of contamination and also the mutations that you can get. So you can hand those out at the table so that your players can easily remember when they're not doing well. The magic of dragonhide Deck which includes the magic items, the artefacts and the spells and contaminated spells. So that's the $85 tier, the Lord of the feast spoils which is $125 includes all of that now you get both card packs, and it includes a beautiful Dungeon Master screen that Monty and I are really thrilled about it has a panoramic view of Dragon Haim on the back. And on the inside it has all of the kind of nitty gritty rules that you don't want to be flipping through the book for like the tables for eldritch contamination the tables for magical anomalies, mutations are random encounter rules and how they work. And like the names of all the major NPCs a bunch of information is on there. You also get some really fun stuff like the minis of five of the main monsters from the city, as well as some some collectibles like the enamel pins, which have the faction logos on them. And a rap Prince plushy the rap Prince was a favourite villain from our season one of our live stream campaign. So if you've never seen it, you get a cute plushie. If you have seen it, you know exactly why you want the rap Prince mushy. And then finally, there's our $225 tier, which includes all of the above mentioned, plus an extra set of metal dice that come in a beautiful wooden case that has the dungeons of Dragon high logo carved on the top, and you get two copies of the book, The the physical book, the regular edition, and the special edition cover, which is going to be made of some slightly nicer material with a beautiful kind of reminds me a little bit of like the special edition covers we sometimes see with the Wizards of the Coast stuff, but very much a cosmic horror vibe going on there. And that that's for the $225 tear. So those are all the tears that you can back at a lot of goodies. And what's great is of course, there's a couple collectibles, which I personally love I was I was definitely the one who was like more collectibles, because I love that stuff. But if you don't need the collectibles, there's some great content in here that actually just makes it easier to play at the table. Things like tactical maps, the fabric map, the card decks, the DM screen all of these are meant for ease of use at the table and just to make it more streamlined so that running this campaign should hopefully be as as fluid as possible for you and your game tables.

Snyders Return: 52:20

Definitely. Kelly you mentioned so many fantastic things sort of involved with the Kickstarter there one thing that probably should mention as a matter of import, when does the Kickstarter close when does when does this fantastic project close out the the option to back

Monty Martin: 52:38

is so the the Kickstarter start launched on June 28. And it will wrap up on Saturday July 31 2021. Yeah, at

12: 52:50

12am Eastern Time.

Snyders Return: 52:53

Nice. So links to that will be in the description below and I highly recommend people go across and check out the Kickstarter page. Some much going on with that project. Maybe a question on the same topic but a slightly different one. What do you guys do for downtime between the streams, the videos, your home games and everything like that?

Kelly McLaughlin: 53:13

Wait, we're supposed to have downtime. No, it's been a busy busy couple of months. But you know, we do have our other hobbies. I paint a lot of Warhammer I paint more than I play I do play occasionally. My partner here is also actually an avid many painters well. So we we kind of have our little painting setup, we love to paint minis, we we play the odd game here and there. Other than that, you know it's it's summertime in Toronto right now so I've been trying to get outside and enjoy enjoying nature as much as possible going for walks in the parks nearby. Other than that, though, video games is a big part of my life video games, film and television I obviously I went to school for films so I really enjoy checking out new movies obviously big fan of some of the classic things right now like Marvel and Star Wars and all of that but also just a big fan of checking out almost any horror movie that comes by me so they're not all great but I will watch any any horror movie from C ranked all the way up to triple A ranked and that's that's how I like to spend my time I'm working on some video games right now and just trying to relax when I'm not doing dungeon dude stuff and and hoping to start my own home game again soon once once I'm able to. And actually I was working on a homebrew world. But 50% of the ideas for my homebrew world have now gone into the dragon handbook. So I've kind of scrapped my homebrew world and told my group that when we come back we're just gonna run dungeons of dragonhide. So I'm actually excited to see what a new group of players does with this world because I want to see what a campaign looks like when they join a completely different faction and make completely different mistakes. Yeah,

Snyders Return: 55:17

you playing Anything else? are you sticking to d&d? Have you got anything else in the pipeline to play?

Kelly McLaughlin: 55:22

You know, I I've dabbled in a bit of monster of the week. And I recently picked up the alien RPG and have been reading through that haven't gotten to play it yet. But I'm, I was originally starting to think of running just the the pre written stuff that came with it. But I'm starting to imagine what it might look like if I just took the alien RPG and did my own sci fi story that wasn't set in the universe of aliens, but that used a similar tone and vibe. And I'm I'm starting to think that maybe the alien RPG might lend itself really well to just sci fi horror in general. And I'm starting to wonder if, if I've written a bunch of notes on a homebrew world for that. And I'm starting to think of whether I want to just run that for fun. Or if I want to maybe someday turn on some cameras and see what happens and start a second stream where we do a sci fi horror that might be vastly different than what we're currently doing. But I like the idea of showcasing other RPGs because we are a d&d channel, but I think it's important that people know that there are other games out there. And that those those games can actually add a lot of value to your role playing in general I playing monster of the week actually taught me a lot about being more free forum as a dungeon master in d&d, because monster of the week is very much very improv and it works on the on the the powered by the apocalypse system, where it's just your dice rolls determine you can do basically anything, and your dice rolls will determine if you succeed or fail. And that's really all there is. It's like, real high enough, you did it roll low enough, something terrible happens. And then I as the as the game master, if they roll low enough, I'm like, Alright, now the consequences to your action and willed and I just have to kind of make it up on the spot. And that actually taught me so much that when I returned to d&d, and I started dming, I didn't feel I just felt much more free to explore my improv capabilities. And when I'm reading the alien idea, I think the the alien RPG teaches me a lot about how to just throw I guess, skill challenges and opposed challenges into the mix more often. Because the alien RPG does a lot of like, using your skills to try to crack open the door before the alien gets yet. And that also kind of reading through it and understanding it. I was like, I can adapt this to the rules of d&d and make that better. So the more RPGs you play, I think the better you become overall at just running games.

Snyders Return: 58:15

Yeah, totally agree. What about yourself, Monty What does your time downtime consist of? For

Monty Martin: 58:21

for me, oftentimes, it just is spending lots of good times with my partner. We are really looking forward to patios being back open and heading out to we love food. So I think that that is you know, just even having the opportunities to have friends over for for dinner and board games and all those good times on my own. Much like Kelly I love like painting my miniatures collections, or spending time with some video games, I'm really into civilization six and valentime. So spend the end, which is perfect, because those are both games where I can turn on an audio book, I'm tearing my way through the Dresden Files right now. And so put on audio book, slap on a video game or slap some paint onto a miniature and just tune out for a little while or just spend a lovely evening with my partner we've we've kind of exhausted a lot of our movie options on our end. So I am looking forward to meeting you know, as I as I mentioned earlier, I come from a theatre background and I have been missing the live theatre. This is normally around the time of year when the Toronto Fringe Festival is happening. And I have a long standing love for the theatre festivals in in Canada. And I really, really hope to be able to go to some of those again when they when they get going again because for me I find that inspiration can come from so many places and I do find that oh, I think it's very good. common these days for many game masters to get inspiration from movies and video games, but I think that books are a much more fertile ground for ideas as especially in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. And I found that for me, audio books are almost the the magic, the magic bullet, because the audio book is so close to the medium of what it is to be a game master because it is descriptive it with, with, with Sonic language going out. So that idea i think is is one of my one of my best tips that I give to game masters. I think one of my favourite ones to lead off with is say, you know, fire up, fire up the podcasts and fire up the audio books and and get listening to things that are narrative in nature and in structure. I think, you know, a lot of people love interview podcasts and of various types but I love history podcasts especially. And, and I find that things like studying history and learning more. It I guess it sounds really geeky to say that one of my favourite downtime activities is learning. But it really I do find that for myself. I do like to have my brain engaged in some way. And you know, even for me playing, playing Val Heim, I was like thou, I'm your Viking warrior. And so I ended up putting on Neil Gaiman's Norse mythology and ordering some mead from a local meatery. Because I was just like, I'm really into this, I just want to learn a little bit more.

Snyders Return: 1:01:48

And every day is a learning day. And active learning is obviously the best type. Because Because you're looking to take in the information. Thank you. So I have so many more questions that we'll have to if you'd be willing in the future come back on for another video. Because there is so much that I'd love to touch on but we probably be here two plus hours. So thank you both for for joining me. You know the dungeon dudes. YouTube channel has helped me in my understanding of dungeons and dragons and my dming style. And I bought your book because because of that, because of the awesome content the paying you so much with with. Of course, Jalen Jo couldn't go without mentioning value and Pluto. But yeah, if if you'd be willing to join me in the future, I'd love to have you back on on the

Kelly McLaughlin: 1:02:43

path. Absolutely. This is a pleasure. Yeah, we're always always happy to I mean, it's just fun to hang out with, with fellow enthusiastic people who enjoy the role playing games. And really, I could talk about talking about these things all day. So anytime,

Snyders Return: 1:03:01

I will take you both up on that offer. Until we get to speak again. It has been a pleasure links to the dungeon dudes, the Kickstarter and all their content will be in the description below. Please check them out, please come back this Kickstarter, like I have. And thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snow'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