Interview - Mellie Doucette - DnD Beyond / Cortex Community Manager / DM/GM

Today I talk with TTRPG Community Manager, Podcaster, Streamer, DM and GM - Mellie Doucette.

We discuss the TTRPG community, DnD Beyond, Cortex RPG, Lauren Urban, GM/DM Tips and much more.

You can find Mellie and all of her content via the links below.

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MellieDM
https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond
https://twitter.com/CortexRPG
https://twitter.com/FandomTabletop

https://twitter.com/OboeLauren
https://twitter.com/DungeonDrunks

Website:
https://www.cortexrpg.com/
https://www.dndbeyond.com/
https://www.twitch.tv/tabletop
https://www.talesofxadia.com/

Discord:
https://t.co/sh4iHxE7s4?amp=1

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: Mellie Doucette

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Edited by: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: Tim Cunningham - www.Wix.com

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Website:
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http://snydersreturn.squarespace.com

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Are you on DISCORD? Come hang out in our server! https://discord.gg/QgU5UNf Join us in the Snyder’s Return Facebook Group!

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Social Media:

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Email - snydersreturn@gmail.com

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Transcript

Snyders Return: 0:27

Hello and welcome to snows return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today breaks through outer layers of creativity and roleplay. Going beyond what us mere mortals can achieve, to shepherd us to safer gaming spaces full of respect and tolerance. She may not reveal the full plotters, but maybe that's the point to appear in the places in the space is like a spirit image capable of handling the pirates out there in her own particular fashion, but also supporting tenfold our efforts to take on the challenges, jewellery dragons, and hit the nail on the hammerhead. From total to total master of games. It is a absolute pleasure to welcome dungeon master Game Master streamer, and community manager, many deset many Welcome to the show.

Mellie Doucette: 1:17

Hi, oh my gosh, what an intro. I'm blushing.

Snyders Return: 1:21

It's, that's so your work. I've just rewetted definitely that's a

Mellie Doucette: 1:26

very dramatic rewarding 11 I feel like I need to clip that for myself.

Snyders Return: 1:30

I can I'm sure we can sort that out and I can send it to you not a problem. So Melia I mentioned a number of things in the intro and a lot of them we'll get to later in the interview. But how? How did you yourself get into tabletop role playing games, please?

Mellie Doucette: 1:42

Yeah, um, I feel like I have a similar story to most people, which is that, you know, I got into it because somebody needed a cleric. My sister was playing a game with her boyfriend is her first time playing and he was gonna DM this is back in the 3.5 days of Dungeons and Dragons. And they had a group together and they had no cleric. And you know, back in those days, you really didn't need a cleric in every party. And so they said, Hey, we know that you you love this kind of stuff. And also, you know, you love to be included in things like hey, nosy little sister. Do you want to come and hang out with these older kids? But you have to be a clear economic like, that's all I had to do. I mean, okay, well, did they know I was gonna be a terrible cleric who was going to extort them for favours in return for healing. But it was my first foray into playing tabletop games, and I immediately fell in love and I have not left since

Snyders Return: 2:40

amazing. I'm, I hope that was your first foray into extortion as well. But maybe that's on another podcast.

Mellie Doucette: 2:46

I mean, here's the thing. I was a very business focused child. I had some great opportunities in school to sell paper clips with beads on them, and I would take it I need money to get candy.

Snyders Return: 3:04

That's very enterprising. I have even more respect for you. Now. That's amazing. How how did you go from the interested 3.5 cleric, the little sister sort of just joining in with the oldest friends and siblings to playing on a on a more full time aspect? How did you get from there to effectively where we are today?

Mellie Doucette: 3:33

Yeah, I saw me I got into it. Obviously, just like jumped both feet in, I started to spend all of my part time work money and, you know, paperclip bead money on d&d books. And like getting it to me, like I have to share this with my friends. But it was so hard to teach people. So I could get a couple people into it. But things wouldn't really last very long. And he's always kept coming back to it and trying some other games. And just like, eventually, we're going to make this happen. And so I'll just keep on trying. And then fifth edition for dungeon, the dragon started. And I was like, Oh my gosh, is so much easier to teach. So I again, tried and failed to get something going that was regular, I could do small things or things that would last for a few levels and then taper off. And then this incredible website called DMVPN started. And I joined like the day that I found it turns out that was still in its beta phase. And I was just like, Oh my God, look at this character sheet. It does all these things for you. This is the answer. This is fine. Like gonna make it so we can do this and do it easily. And I was in I was 100% in you know, you had Adam Bradford, who had created it one of the creators of it, who was just constantly communicating with users in a way that I was like, Oh my gosh, this. This is like a totally like, like, I trust these people. I really want to be a part of this community. And then that turned into, Hey, I've been this really I've been a power user essentially, you know somebody who has is here all the time knows how it works helps other users. And I became that as I was starting to run tonnes and tonnes of games with more friends and acquaintances and getting some stuff at stores. And then it became, oh, hey, I want to we're looking for more moderators for dating to be on. And I was like, Sure, volunteer modding. I'm basically doing that anyway, that I'm just a user, I might as well have a title. So I did that. That was with Lauren urban, the community manager at the time is amazing. She's such a, like, great soul, and just passionate, amazing person. I love her to bits and pieces. And just a little bit into that she was going to be at a con. So she was looking for some extra help on the social media side and said, Hey, Millie, like, you know, do you want to come do this and really trust, like your approach with people? It was like, Yeah, great. Sounds fun. So I did that. And then that became that I was kind of helping her directly and a part time position, which then kind of grew and grew then got asked to be the cortex, Community Manager when they were getting close to release last year. And it was the best time is March 2020, that I was asked that you want to be full time and do this cortex stuff. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, yes, I was supposed to get laid off from my job in catering. Like, this is the best timing, and that just kept growing into doing a lot of lively stuff with cortex. And then when Lauren moved on to idol champions being asked to kind of go into her place on DDB on side. So doing more stuff over there. And it's just that's been where it's been since then. So it's literally just, I like this thing. I'm going to participate and be here in the community and be nice and helpful. And suddenly, wait, I have a full time job and I'm playing games as a part of that job. What is my life? See, I've got a Cinderella story and I it is kind of magical. But that's how it happened.

Snyders Return: 6:52

is magical. And Lawrence amazing. She is my DM hero inspiration. Yeah, I'd love to be more like Lauren in that respect. But that's that's a personal personal ad. So having sort of gone up the ranks kind of levelled up in d&d Beyond is is that technically worked levelled up through d&d Beyond to become sort of the community manager working alongside and then as long as placement once you moved on. How have you seen the community tied to fifth edition d&d as a as an entity and d&d Beyond change? As we've gone from the beta phase, where you first took that heavy plunge? Shall we say, cannonball may be into it to where we are now? Sort of several years down the d&d Five, Eli? Yeah,

Mellie Doucette: 7:47

I mean, credit to just everything with fifth edition, you know, just the system itself to critical role that really exploded, like, lively was already a thing, but like Critical Role exploded, live play into becoming more of a thing. And that made it more easily accessible for other people to make money doing it, which has been great for the community, getting all of these voices, to be able to do stuff and able to be seen doing it, like you can go and see streams of people that are like you playing this game, that for a long time, you know, didn't seem like this is something that was for everybody. And now it really like it's always been, but it's so clear now that it's for everybody, like it's so much more inclusive, and we see the way the fifth edition has developed, as the community has grown. And as it's been shown that, yes, we can do better, we can be more accessible, we can be more inclusive, that also the books have done that, you know, we we start to see pronoun use in books, we start to see that they're, you know, redoing stuff in cursive Straud. Because what they had done originally, you know, wasn't quite the way that they should be portraying certain types of people on hey, we can go back and we can still keep, you know, the soul of this work that we want like this, this adventure, and this excitement of this stuff. And we can do it in a way that includes everyone and is kind to everyone, and makes it feel like hey, we are all playing a game together. And it's supposed to be fun as the number one and everything else kind of comes after we're all having fun together. So getting to see that change and grow as you know, as lifelike became more of a thing as deemed to be on made it so easy to just get people who've never tried it to give it a try. And then seeing the explosion as well. Not just in the time that 5g has been around, but sort of in the last, you know, decade and a half of more indie games and more small scale. Here's, you know, this 50 page book. Here's this one page here are these smaller games. So there's a flavour for everything that you could possibly want to play. There's something for everybody. I had this great conversation with my parents over our last holidays here in Canada have They tried d&d as teenagers and they hated it. They have all these jokes about my dad was Joe, the cleric. And he was just trying really hard to die, because they weren't having a great time with it. And I'm like, I'm so sad to hear that I would love to give you a better time with that, or with another game, because there are tonnes of games. And yeah, my parents may not be into this thing. But they could be into, you know, it's open, they could be into Pathfinder, it can be added to fate, they could be into cortex, all of these different games exist. And I feel like the farther we get down the road, and the more people we bring into this space, the more room there is for more of these games to also be successful. And also start bringing in new community members to continue to expand the number of games to continue to expand the community. And it's just this cycle of the more games and the more creativity and the more ideas we have, the more people will feel welcomed, and like they belong in this space. And that's what we've seen and I'm just to be a single cog in that process is kind of the coolest thing.

Snyders Return: 11:03

I'd say you're, you are a rather significant singular cog in that process. To be fair, don't don't undersell yourself. Or you'll, you'll be back to paperclips and beads. And we don't want you mentioned there trouble some life plays that we can all sort of engage with find something of ourselves or for ourselves out there in various social media platforms via Twitch YouTube or or others. Podcasts, for example. So I'm going to come back to life plays in a moment. But you mentioned there about sourcebooks? Because strahd was one you mentioned, do you have a favourite FFIV published adventure? Are you more homebrew?

Mellie Doucette: 11:46

I do run a lot of homebrew. But I like to take, you know, inspiration from Adventure, I take monsters from it. One adventure, I actually was like, Okay, this is my stuff I want this one I'm going to run it is the first book, I'm actually going to run out of the pages, which was Baldurs Gate descent into the furnace. Because it is about you know, people who are probably not the best people and then getting put into situations where they have to make interesting choices. And they're really kind of brought up against their worst selves and their best selves. I ran it with two different groups, we unfortunately got cut short from the pandemic and have, you know, to get back into it yet. But literally, they went in completely different directions. Week one is Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy, they're very dramatic, and like intense, and oh my gosh, like the chills I get some times and the other group is Taco Tuesdays. They are very wild and funny and ridiculous. And I found immediately that I was so bad at running out of a book, because I would just immediately be like, oh, I want to do this other thing with this person's vaccines, like tie this in and do this. So I really, I we haven't let boulders gate in either of them. And we're like, you know, 12 to 20 sessions into each. But I will eventually get through and it is delightful. And I love all of the pieces that you can take and build into backstories and expand on and especially at the beginning, you know, there's the guide of how to get everybody together as a group, and they all have a dark secret that they share. And like what role did everybody play in this thing that happened? And being able to take that and be like, okay, cool, this is the thing. And, you know, in the first session, it's like we've all agreed that this has happened and what these roles are, let's play through that night. Let's play through what happened. And then you know, we'll cut into some action and and it was just so fun. So I've taken that into a lot of other games that I've done, where it's like, okay, what is the setup here? What are we all doing? Okay, we're gonna start immediate read on that. And we all know what the decisions are going to be but it's about playing them and making them exciting. That has been such a big part of my jamming since I started Baldurs Gate so like, I love that book. I think it's great. I didn't the concepts are super fun. And like all of the details that come in highly recommend so cool.

Snyders Return: 14:00

It is very cool. And I I agree it's an it's an amazing book and each of the published source books have so much as you say to draw on even in your in your sort of homebrew games as you will have you had and this sort of leads onto the low play stuff. Have you had a moment at your table that has really affected is perhaps the wrong way but but touched you and maybe it was a a moment to being to players maybe it was between a player and an NPC or maybe it was just something that happened within the game that just kind of moved you that's that's the expression me.

Mellie Doucette: 14:36

I feel like I have have this, you know, quite a lot. I mean, I would definitely refer to on DVD on we played through the whole supplement from the Veterans guide to Ravenloft. And there were so many moments in that that I got I was wrecked. Amy Dalen Michael gal was Joestar just murdered me emotionally It's fantastic. But the one thing I always come back to is one of my favourite TTRPG games, which is 10 candles, which for those listening who aren't familiar, it is a shorter VGA. It's built for, you know, single session play. And the idea is that, you know, the world is going dark, and you are playing in a room that is dark, you've got 10, tea light candles, and they're gonna be 10 scenes. And at the end of each scene, one of those light tea lights is going to be extinguished. You have some cards with your character traits that you will literally be burning with fire. And you are telling a story of how these characters die their last, you know, attempts at survival, and the last glimmers of their hope and what happens. And it's very, very cool design, it starts off where the GM has very little narrative power. And as the game progresses, the narrative power moves away from the players. And over to the GM, so has this interesting thing, but also at the end, just with that final candle, and everybody knowing that they're going to die. So everybody's like working towards really exciting moments. I had a few or had one character reveal at the end that they'd actually decided that they were on the side of the monsters, which in this case was that all of the plants had gained sentience, and we're moving around and killing people in the dark, which is so fun. I love evil plants for some reason, but they decided they were actually on the side of the plants. And like it was this ninth scene, final like betrayal. And it was like, Oh, we all were just like flabbergasted. And then that got followed up with, okay, they died because they're like taken over by plants, this other person died because of that trail. With one person left, there was one last desperate attempt at survival. And they're doing this one final rule, see if they can do it. And there's one candle right in front of this player illuminating their face and all of us are in darkness. So she told us after that we were just in darkness. And it was just her alone. It's what it felt like. And then when she failed, and we described this ending, and we blew up the candle, and there's a recording that you play at the end. Like the silence We were like I had chills. I was like ready to cry. We just sat in silence for like 10 minutes after processing. And that was an experience. I will never forget 10 Candles if you have not tried it, and you can play in person with somebody. Oh my god, please, please check it out. It is incredible. Oh my god. I got chills thinking about it

Snyders Return: 17:33

gave me chills. And yeah, no amazing. It's not the first time I've heard a I was gonna say glowing endorsement. And that somehow seemed like a kind of the her of 10 candles. And you get to play many sort of indie slash non mainstream air quotes. Tt RPGs you know, you're committed to d&d Beyond and cortex, which we'll touch on soon. You mentioned that 10 Candles fate you mentioned before as well do you get to play many systems away from your sort of main job

Mellie Doucette: 18:07

role. I mean, I I definitely try to as far as like learning these systems and jamming them, it can sometimes be hard to find the time I do have like a bunch of games that I've gotten over the last year that I'm like planning to run very excited to run, like when it's finally post pandemic, and I can have people at my table again, because I love that physical presence. But I do take any opportunity to like play something new. So I've been very lucky to. I recently played the avatar legends Quickstart friend of mine ran a game of that it was super fun. She also ran a Call of Cthulhu game for us, actually, Yesterday is my very first time trying that. And I had such a blast with that of super fun. And in one of my d&d games actually, I should put d&d in quotes here, because it is a group of a GM so we all GM, and it is a continuing story, we call it fate bound. And these characters that we play, are all tied by fate to some mysterious cause. And we are getting pulled through different worlds and planes of existence. And every adventure that we go on is kind of its own thing. But these players are all these characters are always there. And one of us will be the GMs we rotate through GMs. And we also rotate systems. So we play d&d Most of the time, but we've also had blades in the dark, we've had tales of Equestria. For one of them, we turned into ponies, I've run cortex for it. So it just it can switch and we can try different things and we're all GM so sometimes we've just like pause in the middle and like talk mechanics and like all this seems like it's gonna really impact the story going forward. Let's all chat about this. But it's incredible because you can try these different things and we also get all these different GM styles with the same character. So like what is this character like if you give the blade some dark character sheet, what are they like if you throw them into 10, candles, like all these different things that you can do? So that's a really fun opportunity to just try new things. And I just, again, any opportunity I have, I will usually if I have the time, I will say yes, I want to play. save me a seat. I want to try it. I always want to try something

Snyders Return: 20:19

new. No, amazing. I you mentioned the cortex. And I think it's only right that we sort of step onto that. So Adam Bradford, you mentioned the front end beyond creative cortex, we can banks if memory serves. Yeah, so

Mellie Doucette: 20:33

Adam, Adam was sort of the force behind phantom acquiring cortex prime, which had done a Kickstarter that was successful and Cam banks who is the creator of Cortex prime and he is also developed on previous cortex editions. So people might be familiar with you know, cortex plus, you might be familiar with Smallville, the role playing game supernatural, Marvel heroic role playing cam also developed for and cortex prime is basically taking all of these disparate qualities of the other cortex games, and putting them into one book where it's like, here's a toolbox, we have a core mechanic for you, it is really simple and easy to apply. And then here's a bunch of mods, and you get to pick which ones you want to use to create the flavour of game that you want to create. And you can do so many different things with it. In the game handbook itself, it is like, you know, 190 or so pages of create your own. And then there are three settings at the end that are here, ones that are ready to play. So there's hammerheads, which is this like action oriented game, but without combat where it is, you are disaster crisis response team, and you are going to, you know, help rescue people from disasters, try to mitigate damage and all those kinds of things, and you deal with a crisis. So you get to do action without hurting people. And then you've got idle on Elfo, which is my favourite is like a Greek mythology inspired fantasy setting where you are these chosen who have the ability to summon powerful mythical creatures that are like kaiju sized, and there's, you know, intrigue in just high fantasy heroic stuff, which is super, super duper fun. And then you have trace 2.0, which is actually a remake of a previous cortex property trace, which is a police procedural kind of thing or a law, procedural, but with this idea of your people trying to take down a corrupt system and rebuild it to serve your community in your neighbourhoods. So just kind of a, a twist on that, that really kind of suits more than sort of a modern audience of a procedural type of drama. So you have these three different very different things. And then you have a giant toolbox to Hey, what do you want to make, because you can make a taxi kind of more tactical game, you can make a really a horror game, you can make very sci fi, you can make something that's about running a business, like what kind of game you want to make. With cortex, you can do it. So it was an easy sell. For me. I was like, Yeah, I love it. This is great.

Snyders Return: 23:15

Well, in case someone is inspired to go and pick it up, first of all, where can they pick it up? And secondly, would you mind giving us a quick sort of price a guess of how the cortex system works, because many people are familiar with d&d, but cortex may be familiar, please,

Mellie Doucette: 23:31

absolutely. So you can get it right now digital edition at cortex rpg.com, which will get you like an online Compendium that you can search and there's tool tips. Plus, you can also just download the PDF from that. So you'll get both of those, the physical edition, you might be able to find it at a local game store, but our warehouses are actually empty. So all of the copies of the physical that exist are out there, we're going to do a second printing. So you don't need to like panic and be like, oh, gosh, we need to these are limited edition, we're gonna make a second printing. But you know, the world right now at the supply chain, it may take a little bit longer, but that will be coming. And if you do find a physical edition, there's a code in the front of the book to get a digital edition as well. So that's always included. And you'll also see that with our upcoming till Zevia, which we'll talk about later, that will also have a code in it. And the cortex, system B base mechanic that you have is that your character, journal, your character file, your character sheet, what you refer to it as might change, depending on the type of game that you're playing, is a collection of a thing we call trade sets. So they are just a set of traits that are similar. So they're grouped together, and each of them is represented by a dye a size of dice. So for my D for D 68, D 10, D 12. Those are all of the die types included in cortex. And whenever you're going to do something in the game, some action that hey, we don't know what's going to happen, you know, or this might be interest thing depending on what happens, or this is being contested, that's when you're gonna pick up dice, you don't always have to pick up face. And you're gonna pick a dye out of each of those traits sets. So if you, for example, cortex always has one trait set called distinctions, which is like an elevator pitch of your character. And for some examples of some other trait sets of these tales of Zedillo, we've got attributes, which are very classic, you know, RPG, you know, your strength, agility, influence, that kind of thing. And values, which are, you know, what do you care about what motivates your character. And so you're going to build your role and the narrative of your role by grabbing a dye out of each of those traits sets and say, Well, I'm motivated right now, by glory. And I'm going to use my influence attribute to make a impassioned speech. And then I have this distinction about being a noble heralds kind of idea. These are the things that are contributing to me being successful here. So I grab all those dice, and I give them a roll. And it's a rolling keep system. So when I look at the states that I've rolled, I'm going to take two of them, I'm going to add them together, if you only have to add two days together, I appreciate that because I'm terrible at math. But two days together, that's what you have for your total. And then if you haven't extra days left over, that becomes something that we call the effect dye. And effect dye is how effective was the thing that you tried to do and we don't care what number was ruled on it, you know, you could have a D six die, and you roll a six on it, but you're not using it in your total, we don't care that it rolled a six, we just care that it is a D six. And the size of the die tells you how effective was the action, you just took a D for you just scraped by a d 12 is like this is the best, most exciting, awesome result that you could have had in this narrative. And that's the base, you basically take those dice, you're gonna roll them the GM rolls difficulties. If you don't like the GM rolling difficulties, there is a mod for static difficulties. But I will say but the GM rolling always out in the open and always in this way that's very interactive with players is a really, really fun part of the system. And it is a game where, you know, the GM has the same like basic rule set as the player if we're playing the same game, we have slightly different abilities. And the goal is for us to come together and tell a really fun story, fun narrative together. So it's okay when things go really badly. In fact, it's probably good when things go really badly, because everybody the tale is gonna be having like a good time telling that story. And that's one of things I love about cortex is it's a very collaborative, it's very narrative based. You'll, you'll notice I mentioned earlier, you know, Smallville, and supernatural and there's also been Firefly. And now we've got Telemedia, which is the Dragon Prince role playing game, it is a game that is very well suited to kind of sitting around a table and bringing something to life that you could see up on a screen like that you're making a TV show, or a movie by sitting around a table together and telling this story. So it is a little bit less about minute, you know, my action is to swing a sword, and more like my action is to use my sword fighting skills to overcome this person in one on one combat, like that would be a roll. It wouldn't even be you know, you have to make a rule for every sword swing, which I love tactical games like that. But it's very different very narrative based. So if you're looking for a game where it's all about, what is the story that we're telling, and what a real interested in doing with the story, it's a great game for you because again, you can take a bunch of mods and you can completely change the flavour. We've had a couple of really fun YouTube or will Twitch originally but they're up on YouTube now. episodes where we've gotten to me and Cam have had guests on to build their own cortex game. And we have had everything from a almost Roller Coaster Tycoon esque we are building something here game and then we're opening it to the public and we're dealing with all of that in space game to another gate and that was Louisa pearl. And then Daniel Radford coming on and building a this is the you know, Housewives of Orange County meets high fantasy and it's all about status. And you know, sending out some adventurers to go and do things for you and having the subterfuge and trying to you know, take that opposing noble down a few pegs. So you can have so many things and then everything in the middle. So it's like what do you want to make? Okay, make it have fun.

Snyders Return: 29:45

That's amazing. I will make I will do my best to find them and put a link to your YouTube stuff below. But going on to two sort of live shows and live videos. Tell me more about the decathlon.

Mellie Doucette: 29:58

Yes. So right now We are doing idol on Alpha to Kaplan Seidel alpha as I mentioned before, one of the settings in that cortex prime game handbook. My personal favourite, I run it once before for streaming. This is my second time doing it, we have a great cast. I'm jamming. And I have cam banks who again, design the game and design idol on Alpha, you know, no pressure for me. D'Angelo, Mario, latika keys and Sam deliv. They are all incredible. We started with a live session zero, which they were kind of like, we're gonna do a live this is a little bit like we haven't done that before. But I was really passionate about Jake's, I want to be able to like point to a video where you could go and watch. And we're going to show you how to build a character and idle on Alpha, you can like watch along and build it using the book. And then also showing how a session zero could run one way that you could do a session zero cuz I love session zeros. And I think it was great fun, I was so happy afterwards, they were like that was the best sessions, you're one of the best session zeros I've had. And we came up with all of these ideas I could not sleep. The next night, I was very happy because we were actually we on Thursdays, this past Thursday was a holiday. So we pre taped of your pre taping literally the next day. So I did not have to wait long to use all of these exciting ideas. I was very happy for that. Because it was just like all of these ideas coming in, that developed what I was gonna do at the game, I only had a vague idea, which was, hey, all of these city states in this setting are described to kind of be somewhat at odds, they all have alliances, but they also all have an enemy. So all 10 of them coming together is not typical. So we're going to do that we're going to say that this is decathlon and somebody is hosting it. And you're going to be here. What happens when you have 10? Peep 10 groups of people, and they all have at least one other group of people that they don't like, what's going to happen? And what do you want to bring into that and they all brought really cool things. So we are going for that all of November. We've got another episode, Thursday, the 18th. And then the following Thursday, last Thursday of November. So it's just a nice tight three episode story. You can check it out, live on Twitch Thursdays at Twitch tv slash tabletop. And then also our YouTube will always have the VO DS which is cortex RPG dot site slash YouTube. Took me a second to make sure that was right.

Snyders Return: 32:23

Down here via the link.

Mellie Doucette: 32:25

Yeah, exactly links in the doobly doo. But yeah, it is it's already very fun. We are only two episodes in. And these people are fantastic. They are such great generous, clever role players. It's so fun. And it's one of the joys that I have of doing this show on cortex with rolling keep because we get to change it up because cortex isn't just one setting or one genre. So we do the short run things we say it's three or four or five episodes. Here's our cast for this one we're going to play. Okay, what are we going to play next time. So it kind of hits those things for me what I like to change it up. I don't like to stay in one thing for too long. And I get to do that with this, which is just incredibly fun and then just pulling in all the people were like, I'd love to play with this person. Can we get this person? Yeah. Okay, cool. So I get to just have a blast.

Snyders Return: 33:16

Amazing and going from your favourite part of the core rulebook that people can pick up to? Should we say a prominent IP in terms of Sadia, the Dragon Prince? What's it like to bring those stories to life using the cortex system? The quickstart guide it's been out a while but

Mellie Doucette: 33:41

yeah, yeah. So till they do the Dragon Prince role playing game, which is an official RPG for the show on Netflix, which you should check out if you have not checked it out. Because it is delightful. It's been amazing yet you can get the free rules primer 12 ready made characters to free tales that are fully illustrated, all for free right now on the site. And if you preorder, you'll be able to also access the alpha of our digital tool sets. So that's like you'll have the pre made characters with digital sheets you can roll on and build dice pools it honestly like d&d Beyond like just kind of cuts the like learning time. It's already a game that's pretty easy to learn but just having that sort of visual and that physical aspect by the games I've run with it have just been so great. Yeah, till the end it's been amazing. Wonder storm is very involved in the best of ways they are. They they love the things that we're doing, to the point where like, they they want to kind of give us more things. They're like, Oh, we love we want to put like most of the we're not going to get be able to get to the show or at least not get to it right away. Want to put this in the book. We'd want you to have kind of the first look at a lot of this lore. We want to know Make this a kind of must have this almost like almost like, Oh, here's this Bible for the show. It's the RPG book. So that's been amazing. They are such creative partners they like they always have such interesting ideas, exciting ideas. And then getting to see can banks, the obviously Creative Director for cortex and also the game designer for Tanzania, and Dan Telfer, the Narrative Designer for tales of labia seeing their work, and then seeing our editors, like, go over it with a fine tooth comb and just make it like, beyond me, like I see this stuff before the editors get it. I'm like, Oh, that's great. And the editors get it. I'm like, Oh, my god, that's amazing. They're so talented. The unsung heroes of RPG world, the editors, and then our art director and Layout Designer, going in and bringing in this original art that brings like, it just really brings the show into the game. And vice versa, as well. And their layout as well. Their layout was nominated for any, if you look at the cortex Prem game handbook, and you flip through like the layout is, to me when I first saw it, when I was first coming out of the cortex team, I was like, this is the best layout I've ever seen. For an RPG book, there are these examples we that they're shown are incredible. And like T T Live caller, who is the art director, layup designer, they they said, Well, if I don't, I struggle with learning these games, so I'm making diagrams for me. And I'm hoping that it helps everybody else too. And I'm like it does, because it makes it so much easier. And so there's lots of that coming in. And when you see these final pages come in from T with just this incredible layout with this incredible game and this incredible art. It's like, oh my god, thanks for bringing this into the worlds like this, for bringing the Dragon Prince fans into the world TTRPG we're ready to RPG fans who aren't from the dragon friends into the Dragon Prince, because it's a game that like, yeah, you're gonna get a lot more innovative, you are a fan of the Dragon Prince. But it's also just a fantastic fantasy version of cortex, if you just want like, I want to play fantasy in cortex tails is at is going to hit all of the, it's checking all the boxes, I I could easily file off serial numbers be like, This is my original fantasy world. Here you go. So it's incredible. Being a part of that and getting to kind of like, see how the sausage is made, and then seeing and be able to then bring it to a community and say, Hey, Dragon prints fans, I'm one of you. I love this show. And I get to tell you all of this really cool stuff that I'm excited about, and I hope you're excited about which has been great. They've been so kind to the Dragon Prince fans. They're a great community. And then also bringing that to tabletop people being like, look at this thing that we're making. Do you know Dragon Bird says, I can help you with that. And I can help you with this game. Like let's hang out. It's just delightful. And I'm very excited. We've got our release set for q1 of 2022, which is so close. And I cannot wait for people to get this book be able to expand their worlds and be able to like make their own characters and do so many more exciting things. It's it. It's honestly a fantastic book.

Snyders Return: 38:19

Definitely. Well, we've I've run the primer for a friend's podcast. And as you say the artwork it just sets the imagination on fire and helps bring the stories to life. Yeah, it's beautiful. Beautiful. mentioned there you've you've run games, the iLoad and alpha and various d&d games and things like that. How often do you get to jump the other side of the screen and join us players over here that may or may not see all the moving parts behind the screen?

Mellie Doucette: 38:54

Yeah, if you would ask me like, two years ago, never I've never a player asked me a year ago be like occasionally. But these days it's pretty even. I mean, I've been jamming a lot on rolling keep I've been the last four games left four seasons, I think I've been jamming. But next month cam is going to be jamming a tails and say the holiday special. I get to play in that. So we're excited for that. And outside of streaming. I do get to play and a bunch of things where people are like I haven't used one shot because that's all I have time for these days. Don't come play. Or I have a camp a d&d campaign a part of that. Just hit one to 20 I've never hit 20 Hit a d&d game, but we did. I got cool art permission but I get to play in that one which is incredible and the DM is fantastic. And then I've wonderfully been able to be a part of a bunch of charity streams over the last year which has been really fun getting to like play a game that I love for really good causes is is really something else and it's been very fun to be able to do that. So, lately I've actually kind of like been in like 5050 like jamming lots but also getting to play, which is a, I never thought that dream would come true, let alone everything else that's happening. Getting to play as much as a GM never said very happy.

Snyders Return: 40:17

I have to say, I'm slightly biassed, but my favourite character uses all Chela. I'm just saying, I love all the

Mellie Doucette: 40:23

show. She Yeah. So for free, this was your familiar dragons duel, which is a fantastic game show where you come with a partner and you play games to find your character's stats. It's so fun. It's, you should definitely check it out. It's very fun to walk through fun to play. And me and any gallon went on and we ended up creating old Silla, who is an aged Tortall pirate just with a very specific brand. And she is very fun to play. She says I've never played a fighter before. She's my first Fighter character. So I had very much fun with that she's samurai. And it was honestly such a blast, we get to play in this game where there were objectives we had to be to get points to level up. So it's very fun trying to like combine strategic decision making in the metagame with role playing decisions that felt really true to the character. And so playing old cello was just an absolute blast to play to you as a blast. And just playing with like, that whole crew was like, incredibly fun.

Snyders Return: 41:33

Sticking with the either side of the screen thing, someone who wants to build up your level of confidence, your DMing DMing style or, or just adapting their playstyle any tips are mainly asking for me.

Mellie Doucette: 41:50

Um, I gotta tell you, when I first the first thing, IgM slide was the first season I don't want to alpha that we did. And I was terrified, I was like, I'm not gonna do very well at this, I'm just gonna, like, try it. And you know, hope that I don't get fired. And thankfully, people did react to my style well, so it's very, very happy for that. Um, the biggest advice that I have for anybody is probably just to not worry as much I say that as a person who worries constantly but like, it's okay, I had to remind myself constantly, it's okay to like, pause and look up a rule. It's okay to pause and get to the right place in your notes. It's okay to do those things. It's okay to rewind and go back and be like, Actually, wait a second rewind, because this would be cooler if we did this, which I do a lot. as well. Just being open to your players. I feel like cortex has helped me do this more. I like to think I was doing it, you know, decently. Before that. Especially I will say another shout out to warn urban because in a game I got to play under her amazing DMing was this this great thing I hadn't done before, which is I rolled a natural one. And she said, Okay, why is this a critical failure? What happened? Specifically? Like, why did your insight check? Get a one? Because usually that just be like, oh, yeah, you fail to keep moving on. But it gave me an opportunity to do something that was like, Well, you may be able to tell us on the outside, but like, I can tie in something interesting internally with a meta that then other players are now okay, well, this is something that we can play off of, even though we can't read their mind. You know, we can sort of try to pull those strings. And so then I immediately started doing it in my own games. It created the best things like why did you roll one of this acrobatics? Like what happens and they just pull things from their backstory that they haven't been able to do before? And then everybody else is like, Okay, I want to like I want to get that out of you. I want to make you talk about that. I want to explore this. And I think that in general. So like that and then throwing more things at your players being like, Okay, what what happens here? Okay, take the narrative for a second. Okay, what do you find? You went looking for something? What did you find? I don't know what you're looking for. Tell me and I will go off of it. I think that's really fun. Not all GMs enjoying that, but I like doing that I just let my players tell me and I will make it work. Again, not for everybody, but I do recommend it as well. I think that something that I learned through cortex is using a camera and being able to show things that the players don't see or the characters don't see but the players are now aware of. So now again this is similar idea to the backstory thing with that one. But instead it is okay I'm showing you something where you know the villain is doing something and you now know as players exactly what it is. Your characters have no idea. Now they have a bye Now they really want to get to a point where their characters can know that they kind of have some direction that they know that they're going in. So I love doing stuff like that I highly recommend using a camera and being like, so like we see as the meta as players. And just in general, any of them that you can bring into a meta where players know something of their characters down actually works really well. I know a lot of people are worried about metagaming. But being able to be like, we know at this table that you and you were switched at a young age. And your characters may or may not know that, but we as players and the GM, all know this. So now every scene that we have with you, too, is loaded. It's tense from knowing that we didn't do anything to like make that tension happen in the scene. But just that knowledge that irony. So seriously, play with meta, it's really fun. I do recommend it. You can have tonnes and tonnes of fun with it, your players will lean into those opportunities, because it lets them play those backstory, things that they've written that they usually don't get to play as naturally. Try it. See if you like it.

Snyders Return: 46:09

I love it. Having played and I don't know if you've had the chance city of mist, which uses that similar sort of outside camera perspective. You can see the bad guy or the bad person hidden in the shadows, but the characters are just coming around the alleyway and things like this so that, as you say it loads that tension. And if anyone listening is wondering why we're singing loans, pray so much. Go and listen to the dungeon drunks amazing d&d podcast, highly recommend the link to that will definitely be in the description below. Melis, I mean, we've covered a lot. And I haven't written any notes because I've just been enraptured by you. But is there anything we haven't touched on? So far? Anything you want to bring up? Before we bring this interview to a close?

Mellie Doucette: 46:54

Oh, boy, um, I would just say, you know, explore, try lots of different things. I mean, yes, I play lots of d&d and lots of projects, because those are sort of this part of my job. But like I was talking about earlier, like, I don't turn down opportunities to try new things. I have so many books, or other systems that I read, I watched games being played in your systems. You know, like, I had not really much interest in playing kids on brooms and then misfits magic on day 20 happened, I was like, I'm gonna go buy this right now. I need to play this. So you know, look for things that are that are outside of your current wheelhouse. Because you're gonna find people who are doing them and playing them. And you might find something that you're like, oh, man, this is the game or Oh, I like that mechanic. I want to use that. I find that that's the best way to get ideas and to expand, you know, your your palette of gaming, and you don't have to play everything. You don't have to enjoy everything that you play, but trying something that's outside of that safe zone that you've created a these are the games that I like, you might be surprised. I was surprised by Calcasieu over the weekend, and how much I really liked that. It's always something to discover. And don't be afraid of that discovery.

Snyders Return: 48:14

Definitely. Well, speaking of discovery, where can people go and discover you were what Where are you on the social medias?

Mellie Doucette: 48:21

Yes, you can find me on Twitter at Millie DM. And as well, I mean, if you follow at cortex RPG or at d&d Beyond, you'll also find me appearing on things over on those channels and also in the discord for those channels, such as discord.gg/ d&d Beyond, or cortex art projects, RPG dot site, slash discord are two places that you can find me you can hang out with me, we can chat, especially on the cortex side. That's a smaller community and the people, they're always talking about game design and creating games and new ideas. So you'll see me over there a lot, because I'm really excited by those conversations. So join us, we would love to have you in all of those spaces.

Snyders Return: 49:07

It would be a pleasure to join you there as well. Many it'd be great to get you back on the show for future interviews, or maybe even a one shot of me alien or city Mr. One of these other systems, you have a chance to try Yeah. But you've been such a fantastic guest. It's been a real pleasure to have you on the show. So thank you so much.

Mellie Doucette: 49:28

Thank you for having me. You're just such a great host.

Snyders Return: 49:32

It's all it's all you. It's all you. Thank you, I refuse. Thank you very much. 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 serve 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