Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 14 Ideas on Being a GM

🎙 Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 14 — Ideas on Being a GM

This week’s episode takes a big swing at one of tabletop’s most intimidating roles: the Game Master. Chris and Paul kick things off in true Funkatronic fashion with tangents about YouTube terrariums, turtles, and just how weird (and sometimes terrifying) home ecosystems can get. From there, the conversation rolls naturally into the hobbyist mindset—how deep geeks will dive once they’ve found their niche, whether it’s Star Wars, Magic, or keeping an 80-gallon turtle tank clean.

The heart of the episode digs into GMing and storytelling. Mark shares updates from his ongoing Daggerheart “Beast Feast” campaign, including food-themed monsters like chocolate-covered wolves, salt eels, popcorn rats, and spicy ghost scorpions. Those stories set up a bigger conversation about the balance between combat-oriented and narrative-driven systems. The crew compares Daggerheart to D&D across editions, Shadowrun, and other RPGs—breaking down how different games serve different play styles.

From nostalgia for 3.5 crunch to the flexibility of 5E, the group reflects on what each system does best and what it asks of its GMs. They stress that GMing is a muscle—you don’t need to be Matt Mercer to run a table, you just need to start. Notes from Apocalypse World and Dungeon World highlight the importance of leaving blanks for players to fill in, while tips about session zeros and shared world-building show how to build player buy-in from the start.

The episode closes with practical encouragement for new and aspiring GMs: don’t fear doing it “wrong,” lean on your players, take notes, use tools (yes, even AI) to lighten prep, and above all, be a fan of your players. Because whether your dungeon is full of gelatinous ice cream oozes or mimic treasure chests, the best games are the ones where everyone leaves with a story worth retelling.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

You know, it's a good thing you hate recording.

SPEAKER_04: 0:02

That's right. Hey man, do not let any of my coffee any gems of of intellect and stupidity get lost.

SPEAKER_02: 0:11

To be fair, John suffers from a little bit of narcolepsy, so we're traveling to another dimension.

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

A dimension not only of plastic and paint, but of games. A journey into a wondrous land where people become real and cutboard cuts like a night. That's a sign post up ahead of your next stop. The funk cell.

SPEAKER_03: 0:49

Oh my gosh, what's another beautiful morning here at the Funkatronic Rex? Welcome to another episode of the Funkatronic Rex podcast. I am Chris, and to my right is Hello, I'm Paul. What's happening, dude?

SPEAKER_04: 1:02

How you doing this morning?

SPEAKER_02: 1:04

If I was any better, I'd be twins.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05

Yes, dude. It the classics never get old.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10

The gift that keeps on giving. Oh my gosh. At some point, maybe I'll, maybe, possibly, I'll explain what that means since nobody knows what that means.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23

I mean, I get it. But sure, an explanation. Uh no, uh, it's okay. We don't need to go too deep into it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29

No, that's for a future episode. Yes, exactly. Maybe keep them hooked. Maybe they'll figure it out. In our next segment, they'll divulge the secrets.

SPEAKER_04: 1:37

It's like radio. In our next segment, we'll talk about Paul's use of the phrase. Right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:42

It's like that uh there's a YouTube video series that I've been like totally hooked on. And uh I absolutely love it except for one thing, and it's that the the dude does uh uh terrariums. Terrari like like for uh lizard aquariums that have like life in them plants, yeah, yeah, turtles and lizards and stuff like that. Basically, yes, all that stuff, right? Yes, you would put a turtle in an in a uh terrarium. Uh but what he does is he's built it to be an entire like rainforest or section of rainforest, and he puts all kinds of creatures in there.

SPEAKER_04: 2:20

So he's had so he's trying to make like a mini echo ecosphere.

SPEAKER_02: 2:23

He's trying to do an ecosystem, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:25

Yeah, that ecosystem eco, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:27

So he has a bunch of ants in there, lizards. Uh he's recent he had a crocodile in there, he took it out. It was a small one, it was a it was a baby crocodile, but but it was still a crocodile, right? It was still like this big, which uh audio format, like two feet long, roughly.

SPEAKER_04: 2:43

Audio format, it's still this big. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So he made uh an ecosystem, like how okay, baby crocodiles are that small, are they? Or am I?

SPEAKER_02: 2:54

When he put it in, it was probably about I think about a foot. Okay. Maybe, maybe eight or eight or ten inches.

SPEAKER_04: 3:00

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_02: 3:01

And then it grew to be, you know, probably close to two feet in the few months that he had it in there. Um, he recently added for the first time mammals. Uh birds. He has two like uh small quail. They're like they're probably like this big, yeah uh baseball sized. Um so yeah, he he he keeps putting all these animals in, taking them out, putting them back in, that kind of thing, just to simulate like animals, the the diversity, the the forest.

SPEAKER_04: 3:33

Maybe like a migration thing, like you're gonna be here for a little bit, then you'll move on, you might get eaten. Exactly. Or whatever. I mean, if there's a crocodile on there.

SPEAKER_02: 3:41

There's always a bigger fish.

SPEAKER_04: 3:42

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 3:43

Um so he he does the show and he's added two more terrariums that are connected to it. So he has like, sorry, I'm I'm I keep going back. Uh no, no. He's got a terrarium downstairs. That was the first one. Okay. And that was the ground floor. That's what you would think when you when you hear the word terrarium, right?

SPEAKER_05: 4:02

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 4:03

Um, and then above that, he has a second terrarium that's connected through a tunnel through his.

SPEAKER_04: 4:11

So like those old school like hamster gerbil systems. So you would have like a little cage here, but significantly larger. Like way larger. Yeah, yeah. So an animal, like a cat, could go through because it has to be or whatever. Basically, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 4:24

Uh so he built that one to be the treetop one. And so there's almost no ground on it, right? No soil. Yeah. And it's just a bunch of like trees and things like that. That's where he put the uh what are they called? Hamster squirrels. They're like small little rodents that live in trees. Yeah. Um, and then he the th the last one he added, most recent one he added, is he added a uh aquatic terrenium. So it's it's like half aquarium. Yeah. And then there's like two islands. Yeah. Uh, and then that one's connected along his ceiling across the room. So he's it's it's two store a two-story home. The two, the water one and the ground one are in the same room, but there's a like a cave system that he built that connects them. And then the uh that's glass so you can see through it. And then the one above is in the floor above. Uh so anyway, so he he does these things. He it's it's a really interesting show. He he shoots the cinematography super well.

SPEAKER_04: 5:23

Is it is he like a nature, like nature scientist? I think it's like a is it a hobbyist thing?

SPEAKER_02: 5:30

It's definitely a hobbyist thing. Oh, okay. So he he he's talked about it a few times uh throughout the episodes and and in some side things where he started doing ants like ant farms. Yeah, yeah. Uh his channel is called Ants Canada because he lived in Canada and he liked ants, right? As you do.

SPEAKER_05: 5:49

Um, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 5:50

And then I think during COVID or right before COVID, he moved to the Philippines. Oh. Uh, and he when he moved to the Philippines, he started this project. And so vivariums is what he calls them. I guess they're they're bigger than terrariums. That's that might be the correct term. But yeah, it's just a hobby thing, and now he does it as a as a job, right? Like where he Well, if he has enough YouTube videos, he records YouTube videos all day long.

SPEAKER_04: 6:18

And I'm sure you could go on and like watch it live. Like does he do like a live looking at the video?

SPEAKER_02: 6:22

He did a test, people have asked for that a lot, and he did a test on that. So maybe he'll start doing that more often. But he's only done that once so far. Huh. Um, but what's the weird thing that he does? So gets you. Yeah, so what he does is throughout each episode, he he freaking loves his his cliffhangers. Every five seconds is another cliffhanger. Uh-oh. And so it's like W this week when I added the thing, it wasn't what I expected. It went completely off the rails. But here's how my Bavarian's doing, and here's how this is doing, and then here, and then this this crazy thing. But before I get to that, and so it's just like all of these, like constantly, like he's trying to hook you a little too hard. Yeah. Um, so I almost want to just put it on mute and just watch the video on mute. I don't uh because there he does say some really interesting things, but like his constant, it's like four or five cliffhangers in a 20-minute episode, and then the ends on a cliffhanger is like, come on, man.

SPEAKER_04: 7:30

You don't need to do it every time unless you have built your thing to have a like a commercial break, then that's what you want. You're like, well, then you can't.

SPEAKER_02: 7:38

Yeah, so far he hasn't done any any commercials or anything like that. Which is fine. I mean, I'm sure YouTube tries to shoehorn them in eventually, but I think in YouTube you could like well, program like saying there's the YouTube commercials, right, that are autoplayed, but he doesn't like if you watch most of the hobby tabletop hobbies, they have like their own sponsors and stuff like that. Especially magic, like all of the magic creators, they're like, and this episode's sponsored by this company and this company and this company, and and and then 10 minutes into the video, we'll start our actual content. Kind of like this, except instead of shilling, we're just randomly talking about you know ants, ant vivariums.

SPEAKER_04: 8:21

I think I think people enjoy both. I hope maybe maybe they enjoy the we're just the tangential. I enjoy both. I enjoy the tangentialness of the intros personally. I think it's great. Yeah, it's awesome. So what's okay, so what is the YouTube name again? Ants.

SPEAKER_02: 8:34

It's the Ants Canada Ant Channel.

SPEAKER_04: 8:37

Okay. But he does math. Ants Canada.

SPEAKER_02: 8:41

I it's super interesting. It's just fascinating in the fact that I like to put it on in the background while I'm working, and I and you know, you just have it playing, you kind of look over every now and then you see just this beautiful greenery, and yeah, living in the desert, it's like there's something that's green.

SPEAKER_04: 8:57

Oh my gosh. It just reminds me of. I mean, I think that it's very cool and fun of the hobby. Uh obviously, we work, uh, we don't work. Obviously, we uh broadcast out of the well, you know, some somebody works here. Uh tough crowd. You got you had a job recently. Oh yeah, ish. Um but we have all like we all have our geeky things, right? And you can really go down the geek uh rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_02: 9:23

I want to be clear, I have no interest in building vivariums or maintaining them.

SPEAKER_04: 9:27

But I love the fact that this guy has like like magic or 40k or something like that. Like everybody can like, once you latch on to, once you find your geek thing, Star Wars for me, a lot of times, you just go into it. And it reminds me of when I had uh a turtle briefly. I like turtles. I like turtles. I hate turtles. I mean, I I don't hate them. Wow. But uh I learned very quickly that um they are not all teenage mutants, they are not. And pets that are in a terrarium or aquarium or anything that's in like a cage or a box, not my bag.

SPEAKER_02: 10:08

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04: 10:08

Uh because I'm listening to this, and the only thing I'm thinking is how the bleep is he gonna clean that. Like, because cleaning that turtle cage was soul crushing. Right. It was so bad. Because after a while you're like, oh, it's a turtle. We try to do some stuff and clean it up and I'd be on top of it. Now I'm the one who's at home most of the time. I'm the one who's gotta clean it up. So when you walk by and you're like, what the what is that?

SPEAKER_02: 10:35

Well, in his in his specific case, he's you know, he's designed it to be a self-maintaining ecosystem. So the in terms of cleaning it, the way he cleans it is he adds the creatures that clean it, right? So he adds worms to break down the crap, and he adds, you know, these cockroaches. All the levels of it, the stuff up top, the work down to the bottom. What I worry about is like, how does he keep these things in? How does he not just like get covered in ants all night every night? Uh right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 11:06

Like you gotta have a you gotta have a really good seal on that. You know what I'm saying? Like, hopefully nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 11:11

He does not? No, he shows you the he doesn't like show you, but you see the door and it's it doesn't look like it's it's probably sealed reasonably well, right? But it doesn't look sealed to like what I would feel comfortable with. Like, I expect like a uh You're breeding wolf spiders in this thing. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_04: 11:32

What are we doing? Like, I want a submarine level like crankshaft like that, because that's gonna be vacuum packed. Oh my gosh. But no, that turtle uh uh aquarium, because it was a sea, not a tortoise. Tortoises are more land, turtles are more sea. So it was water, and oh my gosh, it just it was really it was just horrific. Yeah. And so eventually the turtle started out to be the size of a silver dollar, maybe like ping pong ball. Like something, yeah, something like that. And it grew to be it was it was crazy. I don't know how it happened. Um, the in-laws found it in their pool. Oh, okay. And they're like, Well, it's a do you guys want a turtle? Now, they asked the kid first.

SPEAKER_02: 12:14

Of course, as you do, as you do, and both you know, the wife and I are like, uh my uncle brought me home a uh a red racer snake when I was a kid. Yeah, that he found in the desert while hunting. And my mom hates snakes. I don't know how she let me pull that one off.

SPEAKER_04: 12:31

Right, right. Well, I didn't know.

SPEAKER_02: 12:32

I'm like, a turtle should be all right. She won't even watch videos with I tried to I tried to turn her onto the ants Canada thing because I thought she'd like it. But there he has put us he's put one snake in. Yeah, and he's threatened to put us another snake in.

SPEAKER_01: 12:48

I'm gonna put another snake if you kids don't be in the house.

SPEAKER_02: 12:51

When he added the the the um the rodents, the hamster squirrels or whatever they're called, uh he he he was like, at some point I'll need to do population control, and he cuts to his but his python.

SPEAKER_04: 13:08

Oh my gosh. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, long story short, like anything, like I love all the furry friends, cats, dogs, whatever, but if it's in like a cage or a a tank or whatever, not my bag. I look very quickly. I'm like, you know, I can you can uh the dog can go poop outside when the cats have a litter, like I know where it is, and I don't gotta clean the whole house to take care of it. Because that's what it felt like every time. Like I have to clean the whole house. Every time this thing had to go to the bathroom. I'm like, oh. Uh so bravo to that guy actually doing. That's crazy. For sure. Um and then but building a I was like, oh, I could do that. I could build an ecosystem inside the turtle tank. What would he like to eat? Or she. I couldn't I don't we didn't know. Uh, what would it like to eat? Like, should I put some fish in there, whatever? And then the turtle goes, oh, that was a bad idea. A crab. Okay. Maybe and then after all, I'm like, nah, we gotta there's a lovely, whatever uh, you know, uh Latin name for turtles are. Um gosh, I used to know this. Right. There's a society herptological maybe question mark. Well, it's they do mostly turtles, some lizards, but it's uh here in uh Phoenix, there is a society that takes care of them because guess what? There's a lot of people that get turtles and don't want to keep them for some reason. Because this thing got to be the size of a dinner plate, dude. Yeah, like it, like the tank, I had an 80-gallon water tank that I was cleaning just crazy. So I was like, call them on the phone, hey guys, we got a donation. And they're like, Yeah, just drop them off and bring all I took all the stuff, and I'm like, please go be with your friends. Go, go, and then of course the kid and the wife are like Well, of course, the kid was like, but the turtle, I'm like, dude. And the wife was like, it's okay. You'll be alright, cat. You go play with the cat in the dog. You'll live. Yeah, you'll live for the love of Pete. We do not need that. Of course, no, like, oh, let's get another dog.

unknown: 15:01

No!

SPEAKER_03: 15:03

I don't know, I don't want any more pets.

SPEAKER_04: 15:05

Not yeah. I mean, one dog household.

SPEAKER_02: 15:08

Yeah, Uno's good. And I'm happy with that. Yeah. I mean, our dog is pretty mellow, so I'm my dad loved rodents. We had rabbits and rats growing up. He loved rats. Like that's crazy. He would he would have his rat in his office, and uh he would take it out whenever he had to do work on the computer, and it would just sit on his shoulder while he worked all day long.

SPEAKER_04: 15:29

Like there's roommates in not uh roommates and friends in college had like what uh the lizards and the rats, and you just walk around with them on their shoulder.

SPEAKER_02: 15:36

The lizard, the lizard I kind of got, but the rat I'm like I had a lizard growing up, I really wanted one, and uh it I it wasn't for me. Uh maybe it was the the kind I got I wanted an iguana. So I got an iguana.

SPEAKER_04: 15:52

That was it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:52

An iguana. An iguana. Uh and I was expecting something like chill and slow and just like it's just gonna hang out. No, this thing was like a race car.

SPEAKER_05: 16:03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:03

It's racing around in the in the thing, and it wasn't nice. It bit me a couple times. Like, all right. Yeah, so yeah, my my parents ended up giving that one to you know, whatever society or whatever.

SPEAKER_04: 16:15

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 16:15

So or we had lizard, roast lizard, I don't remember.

SPEAKER_04: 16:19

Um, so yeah. That's crazy. Well, that's that's a fun little YouTube thing. It's awesome. That's nice. Well, as we as we tend gentle stuff, uh obviously what the hell are we gonna talk about this week? Have you gotten any games in Mark Ferrara?

SPEAKER_02: 16:34

Uh only dagger hurt. Well, we are obviously I play I play Magic every every Wednesday. I try to make it here unless there's you know family stuff going on. Um so I've I've played a little bit of magic here and there. Um but but yeah, the what's like the big talking point is is Dagger Heart. So we played our our two campaigns, the one that's the two campaigns and the new one that's coming up. That's right. Very soon. Very soon. Um so the we did the Beast Feast campaign. We did the third session of that one last week. And uh you know, it's it's I I'm still loving the system. It's still everything that that I wanted it to be. Um it's not as flexible as I I don't want to say as I expected, because I expect it's about as flexible ex as flexible as I expected. It's not as flexible as say the Genesis system is, and and what I love about that. Um yeah, we had a good session. It was uh it wasn't as I don't remember how much I talked about the second session. I think I I think I went through.

SPEAKER_04: 17:50

I think you definitely went through the setup in the beginning and how they're how that group formed uh and started. Like our sessions the you we talked about the comparison between our session zeros.

SPEAKER_05: 18:02

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 18:02

Uh and you did talk about some of their adventures and how you got that other player. No, no, no, that was one of your other other things that it was your favorite group. Uh oh, not my favorite group, but it was one of your more interesting ways to introduce a character, which is pretty cool. Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 18:18

That's probably my favorite campaign I've I've run in terms of like worlds I've built and stories that I've I've tried to tell.

SPEAKER_05: 18:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 18:26

Um so we so for those of our listeners that aren't familiar with the term campaign frame, uh in Daggerheart in the back of the book, there's uh several what they call campaign frames. And a campaign frame is a brief description of a setting that you can put your game in, and then a few mechanics that you can you can kind of uh build around it, as well as you know what the influences are and things like that. So uh one of the campaign frames that they introduced is called Beast Feast. And Beast Feast is uh for those that are uh familiar with it, there's a a show on Netflix called Delicious in Dungeon. I don't remember if we've talked about this, but yes, you did, yeah, you're like go check this show out.

SPEAKER_04: 19:21

It's it's a really cool anime, it's a very funny show.

SPEAKER_02: 19:24

Uh, and it's very influential and a lot of people love it. So they they ended up one of the people that was a fan of it, ended up building a campaign frame that's inspired by it. It's different, but it's but definitely very heavily employed.

SPEAKER_04: 19:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 19:36

Uh so they the whole concept of the campaign is you start out as your your play your players are not adventurers, they're not heroes, they're just everyday townsfolk living in a small town. And so, like, rather than having swords, yeah, uh a sword, they might have a uh a kitchen uh meat cleaver or kitchen knife. Rather than having a hammer, they might have a meat tenderizer, right? So everything's like stuff you'd find around town.

SPEAKER_04: 20:03

Uh is it all kitchen related, or can it be like, hey, you're a blacksmith and you have a hammer, or is it like trying to like if you fit something near a village kitchen, like they so the intention is for it to be a simple mundane item, but also another core tenant of the campaign frame is to make everything like food oriented.

SPEAKER_05: 20:24

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 20:25

Um, because the whole concept is uh this town is a small town that was built over the entrance of a giant cave system that for years and years and years there was a magical item or m something buried deep in this dungeon that uh has attracted monsters. And so all the monsters from all over the world come and they they go into this cave system and they they thrive down in this deep in this dungeon. Um, but it keeps the rest of the world safe because they're all being drawn here to the lure. Yeah. Um but something has gone wrong with the lure. And the the monsters are not all going into the caves anymore. Now they're starting to leak out and they're starting to be dangerous, and so uh as a result, you know, it's hard to get food. You know?

SPEAKER_03: 21:23

You can't you can't safely go out and hunt.

SPEAKER_04: 21:25

Right. If monsters are eating all the flora and fauna out there, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_02: 21:29

Yes. Uh-huh. It's hard to hard to do your farming because like the monsters are in the way. So yeah, everyone's hungry. There's not much food, it's dangerous. So what what's the town gonna do except send a band of adventurers down into the caves to figure out what's going on with the lure? And uh, but while they're down there, they they can't bring provisions with them because there's not any.

SPEAKER_04: 21:53

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 21:53

Everyone's starving, right?

SPEAKER_04: 21:54

Right. So we're they wouldn't know what to bring, anyways.

SPEAKER_02: 21:56

They're just so you've gotta you know eat that's right, eat what's in the dungeon. You gotta eat what's in the dungeon. So the entire game is built around killing monsters and then cooking them up and and eating them. Um my gosh. And so it's been a lot of fun to to design encounters for. So we the first the first session uh session zero, we went straight into play because that group is impatient. Uh and uh so I had to like just off the ground running pull some pull some stuff. And I hadn't even like run the actual official dagger heart yet. It would I had just done the beta. So I I just flipped through the page and I'm like, oh wolves sound cool. So I I introduced wolves. I was like, what am I gonna do to make them food oriented? I was like, oh their food, their fur is chock like chocolate colored, and they're like chocolate covered. I was like, yes. Yes, thus setting the tone for the rest of this campaign. Oh my gosh. So they the very first encounter was chocolate-covered wolves. As you do, you know, they're chasing the chocolate bunnies, and they were they were chocolate-covered, dire wolves. Oh, but instead of having bones coming out of their shoulders, they had candy canes. Oh this is all because I said chocolate colored and they heard chocolate covered.

SPEAKER_04: 23:19

So uh You know, sometimes those mistakes in improv become the cherishing the the the the moments you look back and be like, that was an amazing goof and spawned so much insanity. Yeah, like the improv line that took over. That's great.

SPEAKER_02: 23:34

So yeah, so the the first few sessions, the first session was a little rough. Uh I didn't have anything planned or designed, so it was just kind of off the cuff. They get to uh they get to the first room in the dungeon, they get to there's a a series of a chain of restaurants in the dungeon called berries. This is part of the campaign frame.

SPEAKER_04: 23:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 23:59

So now the monsters have opened up restaurants, or or is it just you know it's the denizens of the dungeon, whether they're old retired adventurers, uh sentient monsters.

SPEAKER_04: 24:11

Or somebody's open. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_02: 24:13

That the there is a rule that you're not allowed to eat sentients in the game. So you can't eat orcs or goblins. Right. Um, but I've been specifically designing the encounters to be much more bestial focused. Um so we did our second session and I had I had designed a couple of encounters. So we we started with what was it? It was uh oh, the umami springs. So they they wake up after camping in front of the the berries because there's a little campsite there that I I decided there was a campsite there. And uh they overhear somebody talking about the umami springs, and there's a a salt eel living in it. So they they travel to the umami springs and they fight the salt eel, and I'm describing everything as like uh you know the the seal br the eel breathes on you uh it it shoots out like a a steam breath, but it tastes really good. It's oddly satisfying. Uh so they fight that, that was just like a random encounter thing, and then they go to uh they're trying to get to their destination, they end up fighting a mimic on the way because part of what Daggerheart does, and and this is something that I think is good to talk about. Daggerheart really wants to give the players a lot of narrative control. They want it to be a shared story experience. Yeah. And so I'm I'm trying to do that with my players, but one of the players two two of the players are very new. The other two I've played with for 20 plus years. Yeah. Um and so two of the the two newer players don't really know the social con uh the unspoken social social construct about that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_05: 26:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 26:20

And so I ask one of them, you know, what do you what do you see in the what stands out to you when you walk into this room? Right, right. Well, there's a big there's a big treasure chest in the corner. And I'm like, Okay, that's not world building. That's not um so that's a conversation I need to have with him. Uh, but in the moment, we're we're early in the session and we want to we want to still tell the story. And and three of the four players are very combat oriented. Right. I actually should say two of the four players. One player, I I I'm still trying to place what what he he seems pretty, he's new. Right, right. So he seems pretty moldable.

SPEAKER_04: 27:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 27:05

Um but two of them, like, if they're not fighting in in a session, then it's a bad session. Now that being said, they they don't have not everything needs to be combat. Right. But like everything needs to be moving toward the next combat encounter, which is fine.

SPEAKER_04: 27:21

I get that. I mean, that is uh I mean that is kind of my background too, again. You know, I am uh I haven't role-played in forever, and the last time was 3.5. Like, let's be honest. So, and I was usually the GM, as I said. So most of the players and stuff like was this uh to reference that cliffhanger is like we're gonna have some fun, we're gonna adventure, but there's almost always going to be a maybe not a boss battle, but a a little skirmish, a little fight that hopefully opens up a next the next chapter or the next thing. Like, what's the conflict that we hit that the players can work through? And that conflict is usually literally a conflict, a fight. Sometimes they had to use their skills to get out of it, you know, sneak around, steal something, try to convince and roll their skills. But I definitely, and this is something that I think will be a challenge for me, is to kind of work on that skill. That, you know, all right, we're not murder hobos, right? Let's how do I, how am I gonna approach this game and this, you know, this system and this campaign in particular? Like, how do I, how am I gonna work on that? Right. Uh yeah, and like I said, not gonna lie, like that's that's kind of like, all right, let's not, let's not go murder hobo every time. Let's, you know, what what can we do? How am I gonna look how would this character look at this situation? Right. And that's gonna be new for me. So we'll see. I'm I'm crossing my fingers that I'm not gonna totally like, you know, there's a treasure chest and I attack the darkness, eh? And you're like, and you just like, Chris, what are you sorry? Sorry, sorry, redo. Can I hit the redo button? Let's rework through this. Nope. Uh you're stuck. You're stuck, that's it. Um but uh I mean that's good because if if there's four players and hopefully they kind of they can kind of balance each other out. If two are more combatty and then two are on the other side, hopefully it allows you to work around that and maybe push them toward the role-playing part, right? Hopefully. Uh you know, I I think I do think a lot of people have watched the or heard of and been influenced by the critical role stuff. And what's there's there's several YouTubes and podcasts out there that are gaming, right? It's critical roles, I think, the big one. I wish I could remember the other one. Um who's hosted by like one of the actresses that was in Daredevil or something like that. Uh oh. And and um Uh but there's like Deborah Ann Wall. That's it. Um so she's like host or part of it. Um and they've had the actor playing Deadpool in it, like on it. So I was like, oh, that was pretty cool. The actor playing Deadpool. Uh not sorry, the actor playing Daredevil.

SPEAKER_02: 30:12

Daredevil. Switch those two. Charlie Cox.

SPEAKER_04: 30:14

Uh yes, they had him on. He's like, that was cool. Yeah. You know, like I've never role-played. And it's like, well, it's kind of like acting. Kind like kind of let world with working within these systems. Right. Uh but yeah, like with the popularity of these shows, I think many people are like, oh, that's like, is that is that how you role play? I'm like, sure if you want to. Right? Is that how your system works? Sure if you want to. But those guys, again, as we say many times, they are trained professional actors. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 30:45

It's very different than a home table.

SPEAKER_04: 30:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 30:48

Uh, so yeah, I mean, it's there's no wrong way to roleplay. Um like it there are systems designed for every type. Yep. We we talked a little bit about you know some of the more narrative systems. Like, there's there's a role-playing game. Did we talk about Everyone is John? I don't think we talked about Everyone is John. So there's a one-page role-playing game. You can probably find it for free on the internet, um, called Everyone is John. Uh it's uh probably wouldn't be made today because it's a it's a little insensitive in some ways, but basically the premise is it's a competitive role-playing game in which case everyone plays as a personality of the same character. And so you're playing it the the premise is one person is the the game master, uh, or whatever they call it. Right. And then that person is pr presenting, you know, challenges and things like that to whoever's in control of John. And then whenever John is injured or whenever he uh achieves a goal or falls asleep, and to be fair, John suffers from a little bit of narcolepsy. So, you know, he if there's if there's more than a few seconds of downtime, he's falling asleep. And so you you uh there's a a bid for control that all the players can do, and so you bid uh a resource, and then whoever wins the bid gets control of John for the his next until he until there's another bid for control, right? And so um it's a lot of like one person is doing a lot of the role-playing, the GM is doing the thing, and then you'll have the other players play as NPCs and things like that. Um but it's it's a fun little like one-shaped, like, hey, let's do this for a night and just have fun. But my point is, is like there's a game for everyone. Like, yeah, if you want to play a competitive role-playing game that's very narrative focused, everyone is drawn, it's great. If you want to play something that's more tactically minded and very focused around like moving your dudes around the map and having super cool, interesting combats, right, but role-playing kind of on the side. Yeah, there's a ton of games for that. There's uh uh DD35, there's the war machine uh role-playing game. That's called uh Iron. What is it called? We we played it, I hated it. Um it was it was too tactical tactically minded for me, and also the DM we've talked about. Yeah. Um the but there's there's a bunch of systems for that. So depending on what you want, right? So what I tend to lean toward, the systems that that really appeal to me, are the ones that are narrative driven for me, but tactically minded for the the group, my traditional group that I usually play for. So the Star Wars role-playing system and Genesis, uh, the um Daggerheart. Yep, the game we're playing. This one.

SPEAKER_07: 34:08

This one now.

SPEAKER_02: 34:09

These games aren't really appeal to me because they have the the narrative chops for me. Yeah, but they also have the they have a bit more crunch, a bit more uh genessequa, as you like to say. Ah delicious. Uh I don't even know what that means. I'm probably using it wrong. Uh we always do, we always are. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04: 34:30

So, like, sounds like uh, and obviously it's to spoil, like we are we did our session zero, and coming up is our session one, like the first thing. So we're gonna start experiencing how Daggerheart works, even though the session zero does give you a good glimpse into its own.

SPEAKER_02: 34:49

I'm curious to see how it goes with the different group too. Yeah. Like how this group what we have.

SPEAKER_04: 34:55

But it sounds like Daggerheart for you and and is a you've you're you are finding a balance between that sort of maybe combat tactical-minded system and a narrative-minded system. Because basically, I mean, that's the two flavors. That's the chocolate and peanut butter that happen in role-playing games. Still a game, which is to me the the tactical combat, that's the game part, but then there's the role-playing, which is that narrative, like what story are we telling? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can find all the flavors sci-fi fantasy, cyberpunk, noir, whatever it is that you have an inkling to try. Yeah, I bet you there's a role-playing engine that is connected to that, right? Like you want to do like modern day magic, great. You want to do futuristic sci-fi magic, which is kind of what we're doing, ish, ish, you know, or whatever. Or you want to do uh Wild West.

SPEAKER_02: 35:48

Like there's I mean, it's it's no uh what's the game? Shadow Run. Oh, it's no shadow run.

SPEAKER_04: 35:53

But uh is that game still around?

SPEAKER_02: 35:55

It's still around. There was a new edition that came out a couple years ago. Oh, that's great. Uh I played it. Yeah. Played the new edition. Uh it was awful. It was awful for me. I again it's it all goes back to the there's a there's a system for everyone, right? Like if you love having a game where the the new Shadowrun is even is way way lower on this totem pole than the old versions. But if you want something that's very minute and like gets into the nitty-gritty of like how to calculate things, and uh you know, you have a lot of levers to pull, different stats to manage in your character. Like the way that that uh an attack works in in Shadow Run is it's like you grab 10 dice, you roll those dice, how many of those are hits? Okay, now the defender is gonna roll 10 dice, and then how many of those are blocks? Okay, and then we have to subtract that from this and this and that, and then it's all of these different like checks and balances and calculations. One attack, especially in the older versions of Shadowrun, can take several minutes to resolve. Woo! Um okay, but but people love it.

SPEAKER_04: 37:10

But no, no, if you are if you are like that kind of it reminds me a little bit of that the Warhammer Sigmar, like I want to roll some dice, I want to get some numbers and try to crunch it, you know, crunch the numbers, get the odds in my favor. So if I do roll, I have created a uh created the dice pool that's in my favor, etc. etc. So I can work the system. Yeah, right. Uh I mean that's a lot of dice. Don't get me wrong, like when I played my 40k and singhore, like pretends a low amount of dice in that game.

SPEAKER_02: 37:38

Yeah, like I think I was I think there was one or two checks where I was rolling something like 16, 18 dice.

SPEAKER_04: 37:44

Judy Christmas. Okay, that's okay, come on now.

SPEAKER_02: 37:47

But that but that's part of what people like about that system, and that's fine. Uh wasn't for me. But but that but I I I acknowledge and recognize, you know, that it is what it does, it does you know reasonably well. Um I supposedly there's several flaws with the new version. I haven't delved delved too deep into it.

SPEAKER_04: 38:08

Um I mean so DD 3.5, which is my which sits in the way back machine of the memories.

SPEAKER_02: 38:18

That's your nostalgia game.

SPEAKER_04: 38:19

That's the nostalgia game, absolutely. And uh, like funny thing, like sitting up here, walk by the the stuff in the back, yeah, and I uh to get the water bottle here, and I stopped full stopped in front of the bookshelf. Some idiot.

SPEAKER_01: 38:33

Well, I would say some idiot.

SPEAKER_04: 38:34

Some idiot, but some like I bought traded in a bunch of. So my first thought was my first thought was oh my gosh, DD 5.5 is totally going retro. I I might need to buy this book just because like yeah, the design, the design and look of 3.5 is back. Oh my gosh. And you're like, I turned them in, Chris. Like, oh. Oh, that was Pa, why would you do that? Well, so for people that don't know magical and and and you know, I looked at the one right because I pulled it out here because I was looking through the magic of favoring, and I was just like, oh, memories, like that's flipping through it. Um where for in with your with looking at that, where does where would 3.5 sit within that like out of uh if 10 is like very combat oriented and like one is very narrative, right? Is is three where would three point?

SPEAKER_02: 39:29

3.5 is very much a crunch technical like combat-oriented system.

SPEAKER_04: 39:36

Yeah, because it did have like all those skills and like all the numbers you can write down to do stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 39:41

And it and it had very little support for the narrative and the role-playing. Yeah like it had it get you had the everything had a number tied to it, right? So yes, almost everything had something tied to it.

SPEAKER_04: 39:56

As opposed to a moment where yeah where you could imagine the situation and have the DM could have a little flexibility.

SPEAKER_02: 40:02

I did feel like every now and then that part of the advantage of of Dungeons and Dragons specifically, regardless of the edition, um, is it is reasonably flexible. I would say 3-5 isn't 3-5 is is the easily the crunchiest of all the Dungeons and Dragons systems, but it's not the most like combat-oriented tactical. Right. That award definitely goes to fourth edition. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 40:27

Um, fourth edition is like so they they definitely push toward that realm of we want to do that.

SPEAKER_02: 40:33

There was almost no role-playing support in in fourth edition, whereas 3.5 had had a bit.

SPEAKER_04: 40:38

Has five and five, whatever you want to call this, 5.5, 5.25, whatever. Whatever 5.22. 2025, yeah, or 24. Has have they pulled it, tried to pull it back a little bit more toward like a center line-ish?

SPEAKER_02: 40:51

Okay, five fifth edition is a good middle ground uh between the the pop the growing popularity of narrative systems and also the traditions of you know the what A, D, and D and 3.5 were built on. Yeah, uh Fifth Edition, I think, and I've said this several times on the podcast, is the best uh edition of Dungeons and Dragons. And a large large part of that is the reason I say that, and and of course that's subjective. Um your mileage may vary, but yes. My the reason that I say that is because it offers the most flexibility. Okay. If you want a crunch-oriented, like tactical, like let's get into the nitty-gritty of numbers, you can easily do that with fifth edition.

SPEAKER_03: 41:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 41:41

Um, the rules don't necessarily support every niche, like you know, you don't get into the the minutiae of bonus actions and two actions per combat and all that stuff, but but it does it, you know, it does offer quite a bit of that. And then but if you also want something that is more narrative driven, while it doesn't give a ton of tools for the role-playing, it's a little bit better than fifth edition or uh 3.5 edition, but not much. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 42:14

Um I mean 3.5 was around for a it felt like 3.5 was around for a long time. Like that edition lived.

SPEAKER_02: 42:23

Uh it was 200 to 2008, I think is when fourth edition came out.

SPEAKER_04: 42:34

2008? Fourth edition. It was eight or nine. Because I swear, well, because I was playing obviously in my gaming world, it was nineties, so uh eighty-five to ninety was the big heyday for me. And then a little bit there, but like that looking at that book.

SPEAKER_02: 42:48

Third edition was like 95.

SPEAKER_05: 42:50

I thought it was earlier.

SPEAKER_02: 42:52

No, it might have been 90. Might have been 98, 91. But it was like nine years between third edition and three five, and then three five was around for like eight or nine years, and then fourth edition didn't last as long because everyone hated it. Uh fourth edition came out in 2014 for sure. Yeah, I'm sorry, fifth fifth edition came out in 2014. So the fourth edition was roughly five or six years. Okay. And then uh fifth edition, like it's still it's still the only version of DD that's being published. They haven't released a new edition other than the new revised books. And the the revised books were released like 10, 11 years after the game came out.

SPEAKER_04: 43:36

So it's it's been going so it's probably the longest version that's without with some subtle changes. Three to three point five wasn't a big I think A D D might be longer still.

SPEAKER_02: 43:45

Well, the original A D D was forever.

SPEAKER_04: 43:48

I mean, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 43:49

Well, so I'm I'm saying like second edition. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the first edition was only a couple years.

SPEAKER_04: 43:54

Yeah. Uh but no, because that was that was the one I played. I mean, second edition. Ugh, A D D. Yeah. Hey, do you play DD? No, I play advanced DD. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Because I'm advanced in my no, no, I'm I'm not. It's just it's just what's out there, and that's what we played forever.

SPEAKER_02: 44:11

So fifth is great. I think fifth is is a solid. I I'll say it a million times on this podcast. I have nothing against fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. I think it's a great system. I think it's it's a really good system for people to kind of learn on. I think it's a better system than Daggerheart for new DMs for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 44:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 44:30

Uh Daggerheart puts a lot of uh weight on the DM to be able to improvise well.

SPEAKER_04: 44:35

It does. No, absolutely. I do think reading through uh okay, not reading, leafing through the book and the online rules and stuff and going through the session zero. I definitely think if you want to DM this, don't be scared about it. Just, you know, look at the book. If this speaks to you and you like how I mean, frankly, sometimes like I like I just uh I like I looked at the role-playing book not too long ago and I just bought it because I like leafing through it and the art was cool and some of the the like the stories, the short stories they tell inside those books sometimes. I was reading, I'm like, that was cool, I'm just gonna get it. Cause like support that game company, support this production. It was pretty cool. I'd probably never play it, but I still leave through it because the art is cool and speaks to you. Much like a miniature game, right? Does when you look at this thing, like, is that a cool mini? Yeah. There you go. Start there. Like, do you like that miniature? Um uh don't worry about the rules as of yet. Get in there because it hooks you.

SPEAKER_02: 45:32

Uh a lot of people are terrified of GMming. Um they're afraid of doing it poorly. And anytime someone says that, I tell them to say, Don't, don't worry about that. Like GMing is a muscle. It's it's something that you have to work at, it's something that you have to try, it's something that you have to exercise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 45:52

And again, don't don't hold yourself to those high standards of the YouTube stuff. Like, those guys have been doing that for years, like they they are like within that creative world, like that is a muscle that they have exercised for years. So being able to improv and work on stuff is takes practice. I mean, that's okay. My background is the technical side of theater and arts, but having worked and done stuff like that for many, many years, like it takes practice. So if you find a group of friends that like you know, DD sounds good, or um Star Wars Force and Destiny sounds good, or whatever, like if that tick scratches the itch just to get you going, dive in, randomly pick somebody, or somebody's like, hey, like I really I wouldn't mind trying. Go for it. Absolutely like jump in with both feet because everybody's hopefully people are new and experiencing this for the first time. You're gonna screw up, it's gonna be great, you're gonna make mistakes. But if you make those mistakes, you'll learn, like, okay, that was a funky session. How how what'd you guys think about it? How can we make this better? Right. And take notes, and then the next time you'll work on it. So eventually you will get better. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 47:00

Just try, just try, just work at it. Just the the the worst things that you can do is avoid it. Don't don't GM. Right. Because I think GMing is very rewarding. I think everyone should try it. Even if it's not for you, try it. Um as long as you support the the uh a couple of core tenets that I think every GM should aspire to, then you don't have to worry about being a bad GM. Um the the rules stuff, counterbalancing, all that stuff, that comes with time and and exercise. Don't worry about that. Yeah, yeah. Um the the core things, if all you need to worry about for to be a GM, you don't even need to know the rules. That's a lot of people are like, I don't know, I haven't read the book. It's fine. It's fine. Okay, your players will help you. There, I guarantee somebody at the table has read the book.

SPEAKER_04: 47:58

There's always gonna be at least one that really gets into that uh and really enjoys reading it and has read all the stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 48:04

Absolutely. Be a fan of your players, yeah, be a fan of their characters, you know, make sure that that whatever you're doing paints them in the coolest possible light. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um the second thing is don't get emotional and don't uh about like whether or not you're feeling targeted or they're not um don't don't try to like pigeonhole your characters into your story. Right. It's it's everyone's story, right? Like it's it's as much their story as it is whatever story you're trying to tell. If you if we've we've talked about this, if you want to tell a set story with a start and finish about your bad guys, write a freaking novel.

SPEAKER_04: 48:54

Uh if you want to Or play like something that's very con like like leaning toward more of that combat, or so you can build your encounters toward that combat. And again, some groups love that.

SPEAKER_02: 49:05

Some groups want to say they want, and and to be fair, my Beast Feast campaign is this that group is very similar in that they don't really want to explore, they don't really want to like roleplay that much. They'll roleplay, they enjoy it, but like what's the next fun encounter? What's the next thing we're gonna they anytime there's any like moment of quiet, they look at me and they're like, Okay, what's next? And it's like, you guys tell me what's next, man.

SPEAKER_04: 49:32

Yeah, like I'll fill in the blanks. Like, you guys like give me, uh, I think much like in the improv world, like it is an exchange of ideas and stories, which to go back to what happened in our session zero, is that idea of while we were creating our characters and asking those questions of each other and of ourselves, we had moments of maybe epiphanies might not be too strong, but moments where we all kind of had a like, ah, ooh, like, and you definitely went, yeah, we're keeping that cool. Like cool moments. And that's like the rule of cool. We had a moment where we all went, that sounds great, oh, that's cool. And then the next player would ask a question and we'd all go, ooh, ooh, and then someone else would be like, Well, what if maybe if so if I did something before, like led into that, like, ooh, like so? We all had moments of excitement and buy-in while we were doing this session zero. And I'm, you know, obviously, since it's a bit and we're only doing this once a month, uh uh all you listeners out there, try to save that energy, hold that energy in you, write the notes, and keep it in your head so when you return back to your gaming table, you can kind of continue along that same moment. So you jump in and it's like watching back in the day when you watched a show every week. Yeah, right? Back in the day, you had uh, you know, Ace Inch of Shield pops up for some reason because that's what the kid and I and I were watching. Yes, I know. It's a it's a great bubblegum marvel show. Uh okay, it's not so great. It's it's fun. It's a bubblegum marvel show. No, no, no. Uh but it's it's Marvel. Marvel uh uh, but every episode back when we were watching it would come on, and then we'd have to wait a week.

SPEAKER_07: 51:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 51:10

So the wife and I would be like, Well, that was fun. Ooh, what do you think's gonna happen? So we would talk about it. Same thing with we're watching Squid Game right now. The we would just watch an episode.

SPEAKER_01: 51:20

We would try not to go through it because there's not that many episodes, damn you.

SPEAKER_04: 51:25

Uh but we'd watch one. And like, what do you think's gonna like talk about? What was gonna happen next? Oh, if this character does this, oh, I don't know. What do you have? This, I don't know. And though, so that when we watch the next episode, we have a little, a little excitement, a little buy-in, right? Right, which is I think very, very cool. Uh, is a cool go-to-get goal to reach for in these gaming groups. Because that's one of the things that I loved about them is the fact that we you made friends. Well, hopefully you are playing with friends, or if there's new people, you create a camaraderie around the table. And I said we've talked many times, the idea of playing these games is that hanging out with people who are your friends or will become your friends. And then you can experience these stories together so that later on, as I said way back when, like I still run into my high school friend, and we both kind of snicker. There's one or two catchphrases that we just say to each other, we just snicker because it's we instantly go back to that moment where it's two o'clock in the morning. Right. And I did something kind of funny and weird, and they all went, oh my god! And it just sent us off this weird track, and we had a great moment. It was yes.

SPEAKER_02: 52:31

We had one of those moments in our Beast Feast campaign in the last session where uh so uh so they they end up getting to the they were sent on a quest to go find ghost scorpions and harvest their their uh venom, their spicy venom.

SPEAKER_04: 52:47

I was about to say, are they spicy?

SPEAKER_02: 52:48

So that a spicy pace could be made to keep the monsters out of the village.

SPEAKER_04: 52:54

Um this world is so wacky. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:58

Yeah, we they on the way there they fought uh swarms of popcorn rats. Okay. Uh whenever they killed the rats, their backs would pop into a bunch of popcorn. Um they that almost sounds like a horror movie, admittedly, but yes. All right, great, great. It was wild. Um but they fought the the ghost scorpions, and uh they were I'm describing them, or I they I say, okay, you guys enter into a cave, it's full of really tall grass. Like the grass is like four or five feet high. Yeah. It's super tall. And uh one's like, Do I see the scorpions? It's like, okay, roll roll a thing. And they rolled, and they're like, okay, you see like what appears to be a scorpion till like bobbing just above the grass. One of the players goes, Wait, how big are these scorpions? Is this the I was thinking like we're gonna fight swarms of scorpions. Yeah, but you're saying these are big scorpions? And so, and then that that led us into the joke where where it's like, oh, I'd say they're they're probably you know, they're huge scorpions. What? Like like like a foot long? No, like like huge, like the size of a small bus. Yeah, magic or scorpion. Yeah, which so the to to to explain the joke. Oh my gosh. The joke is our we've talked about the the old GM that I used to play with and uh how he was very competitive and yeah, yeah, not not always the best at telling stories, right? Um, but we still got to play, we still had a lot of great memories. Like, again, he may not have been the best GM, but he was the GM we had, and he did a good enough job for us to get together and and create great memories.

SPEAKER_04: 54:48

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 54:49

Um, so again, if you're worried about being a bad GM, even a B even a bad GM is a good GM as long as you guys are getting together.

SPEAKER_04: 54:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 54:57

Exactly. Um, and so one of the fights that he had is infamous uh for is we were he says, okay, you see a huge toad. And so they're everyone's fighting the huge toad. You know, huge toad. Yeah. And he says, okay, it eats one of you. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what?

SPEAKER_03: 55:24

Wait, what? How huge is huge? Yeah, yeah. Time, time, ref. Can I get a judge?

SPEAKER_02: 55:31

Like, I'm thinking maybe like the size of a boombox, right? Like, that's a huge toad. That is a huge toad. That's huge. No, he meant huge as in the mechanical definition of huge in Dungeons 3-5 Dungeons and Dragons, which is a nine-square toad. So it's each each square occupies, you know, three to five feet. Right. Uh, five feet is the official distance. So this toad is like 10 feet long.

SPEAKER_04: 56:03

Takes up a 15 by 15 foot square, basically. Yeah. And it just yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 56:09

Yeah. But this whole time we're fighting this thing, we're thinking like, okay, this thing's like the size of, you know, get like a coffee table. Maybe like this guy, right? Like, that is at biggest, right? Like that's cute. No, that's the size of a small bus.

SPEAKER_04: 56:25

It's the size of a Volkswagen, dude.

SPEAKER_02: 56:27

Oh my god. A very uncomfortable place.

SPEAKER_04: 56:29

Um that is so again, like going to that idea of like versus you know, combat driven versus narrative driven. Sometimes when you describe stuff, uh, and this is good for me too, is like when you say huge, is there a what is the reference? Right. Like uh you could have a huge house, but you could also have a huge skyscraper. Right. So you can have a huge sword or you can have a huge torch. Like so painting a good picture is a good thing. Exactly. So using your words. Words are important, you know, bust out that that's the source sometimes. Um, but running, I mean, I think this might be a cool thing to chat about a little bit. Uh, since you are like running and GMing the daggers session that we're that we're about to start.

SPEAKER_02: 57:16

Yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow. We buried the lead long enough. Yes, yes, the Ants Canada Ants Channel would be so proud of us. Tomorrow, so tomorrow we're getting together for session one of uh our campaign. You want to know how much prep I've done? Uh none. Uh I need to do a little bit of prep. I will say, um, so one of the things that I did that I've been doing for um, I think we talked about it briefly. Yeah. Uh, but I did it for the Beast Feast campaign, and I'll I'll probably do it for our game too. Um, I've been using chat GBT to to generate encounters for me.

SPEAKER_04: 57:56

You know, so funny thing you should mention that. I think so, as a as a writer, because you know, my main job is sound design and composition, so it's still creative, but I also have been writing forever, ever and ever and ever, which uh helped, which is one of the reasons why I was the GM. Like I was the guy who's writing all these stories, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as a funny side note, like as I was working on this character for Daggerheart, I'm like, ah, this could be a fun short story. This is maybe uh maybe I look at it a little bit having fun with it. I'm okay with it.

SPEAKER_02: 58:28

I used so I came up with I hope that you you turn our our session into a short story.

SPEAKER_04: 58:36

Next crystal shard, big next big fantasy pulp fantasy. Let's go. Um, so I was looking at this and write it down ideas, like cool names for for things. Because you're like, Chris, you came up with some cool places during our session zero. What are those names? Like help it wasn't like that's your assignment, but like if you come up as a player, since this is your land, this is your hometown, right? What's the name of your hometown? It's it's what's the what's a good way to phrase it? You uh I think you get like more buy-in when that person, when me as a player goes, Well, I'm from Phoenix, as opposed to you're going, well, you're from this town and you've done this, right? You have created.

SPEAKER_02: 59:14

It feels you feel big a more you feel more connected to it, right? Right. Both you as the player feel more connected, and and as a result, your decisions as a character, as a player character, uh are going to have more weight.

SPEAKER_04: 59:29

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So I took those I I took that to heart and I really I started writing them down, uh working on uh names as I'm sitting there doing other you know other stuff, working on this podcast, or just like just doodling stuff. But I would put these ideas and I put some of them into Chat GPT. Right. And I was like, well, what is this? And I was like, here's a name. What like give me a and I the description, like uh blah blah blah. It's influenced by like the northern tundra of Canada, Greenland. Like, give me a feed. And a vibe. And Chack T T B went blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I was like, oh, that's that's a good starting point. But what if, right? So as a writer, while I am I thought these guys were the bad guys.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:11

They're they're just Canadians.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:13

Yeah. No, no, no. But this this is what happens when Canada goes bad. I mean, right? I mean, you don't want to piss Canada off.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:21

Have we talked about how I feel about Canada? Oh, that's another whole other show. Canada Canadians are evil.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:28

Canadians are terrible.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:28

They're the worst. But I put them in and I was like, this is I legitimately do not like talking to people from Canada. Oh my gosh. Like, and this is a recent thing in the last few years, but like, yeah, I I actually I used to be like, man, I'd love to move to Canada someday and be uh surrounded by all those trees and the mountains, and it'd be so beautiful. Yeah. And then you know the the world starts going to hell. It's like, yeah, let's get out of let's get out of the US. Yeah. Canada would be great. Let's I want to live in Canada. Years and years and years. I want to live in Canada. People are everyone says people are so nice. Everyone apologizes all the time. Uh and then and then I get a job in technical support. Oh, and I have to help Canadian customers, and they are the worst customers. Them and Australians. Okay, consistently.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:21

You are always the as we as we all know, working in customer service or slash retail, like you are not, you're not always catching people at their best. No. So which is always rough. So, but I get it. And it's I get it. It is small business support.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:36

You know, these are this is people's livelihoods that's tied to it. So I don't blame them for being emotional, but it's like it's one thing to it's it's one thing to be desperate, it's another thing to be right, right? And yeah, you don't need to spread that. Yeah, come on. They they tend to be very demanding, rude.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:01

And dude, you're making us Canadians look bad, bro. Come on now. Not my fault. No, like I mean, come on, people. Like be if you're on tech support next time, just yeah, try to take a breath or support because the person on the other end is it's just it, it's their job and they're they want to help you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:17

And and again, I've met plenty of wonderful, amazing Canadians. Like there's a few out there. It's not all Canadians that are bad, but it's like, you know, you know what it is? You know what's funny about it? Um, my wife, every now and then, I'll go into like binge watching various TV shows, and one of the TV shows she started binge watching a couple years ago, it was like right after COVID. Um was I don't remember what it was called, but it was some show about a guy in Canada that owns a uh like a car, uh-huh. A used car thing where he like rebuilds used cars and buys and sells used cars.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:00

Um is this like a reality?

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:01

It's a reality show, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:02

All right, so not a scripted, so reality show. He's like a used car salesman, but he rebuilds and refurbishes cars.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:08

Okay, yeah. Um and I sat down and watched it with her a few times, and every time I'm watching it, I'm like, this guy is such a Canadian customer. And and that show really kind of like it, I I wouldn't, I won't say like spotlighted the the what I'm referring to, but it like it's interesting to see. Like, oh yeah, he's he's very very demanding. He he's always looking for the edge, he's always looking to come out ahead. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just that's been my consistent.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:44

If if that's who you run into all the time, yeah. Well, it's like you know, like humanity is uh uh uh the vast swaths of humanity. There's always the common denominator, right? It don't matter if you're Australian, Canadian, or Mexican, or European or whatever. I mean, jerk faces are everywhere, sadly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:01

Meanwhile, I watch uh you know a bunch of YouTube videos uh of of the Canadian Magic Gathering players, like Loading Ready Run is the the first big popular uh magic show that that started streaming. And loading ready run, those guys are all amazing and they all look incredible. And I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know there's a dark side, they're Canadians after all.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:26

Right, there's a dark side in there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:28

Canadians, they're all super awesome, they had it really well. They all seem super rarity.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:34

It's all the maple syrup they drink. That's it, just sweetens them up.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:38

In the end, what it all boils down to, and this this goes for everything, we're all human beings, right? They're right, there we all come in different shapes, sizes, colors, personalities, emotional differences. Yeah, there's good eggs and bad eggs, and every society we're all humans. We all live on Earth. Yep, we're all weird mammals with too many fingers.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:05

Wait, oh you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is why we're all drawn to playing role-playing games so we can experience. Well, I don't, you know, I want to see what life is like on that side. I want to what is what does a forest elf think of? I want to walk, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:17

Oh, so thinking sorry, we're tangenting again.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:21

Oh, yeah. Uh I have to have a tangent sound effect if you're gonna be able to do water elves like oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:27

So one of the things that I've done, uh it's not directly gaming related, but it is gaming adjacent. Is um are you into anime at all?

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:36

I not I mean, not really. It is. I am anime adjacent. I know of and I have like recognized some of it, but it's usually just the big names.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:46

So there's a a show that my friends were like, you've gotta watch this. Yeah. Like, this is a really good show. And and it's been a long while since I've watched an anime show that's like really like been. I really loved Delicious in Dungeon. That was a really fun anime. Um, but it wasn't like it wasn't like as incredible as you know the shows that I grew up on, right? Like, you know, you you look at Full Metal Alchemist, you look at Neon Genesis Evangelion, you look at all of these shows that are like those are the pinnacle, right? Right. In terms of uh in terms of me, right? Um one people are like one bench man so amazing. I watched it, it was incredible, it was a ton of fun. It wasn't amazing, right? It didn't like make me move me or make me think or feel. Um which a lot of those old animes did.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:40

Uh it was definitely fun and entertaining. I loved it, yeah. Um, but but it it was lacking something. The first show uh I've watched in a long time that's actually made me feel uh first anime that's made me actually like think outside of the anime, think outside of the episode that I'm watching. Yeah. Uh is uh free run beyond Journey's End. So Free Run? Free Ren. Free Ren Beyond Journey's Edge. End. End. Okay. So the the what it did is this show made me want to play a freaking elf as a player character in a campaign for the first time. Like I'm I'm so it's so cool. So the show is uh it's set in a fantasy, high fantasy world. Okay. Um, and it's very, very, very, very, very inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and that kind of thing. It obviously they don't they don't use Dungeons and Dragons uh names of things necessarily, but uh Free Ren is a mage. She is Free Ren the Mage, and then there's uh there's other characters that introduce them as I'm so and so the the priest, I'm so and so the warrior, right? Right. So like it is they're they all have role-playing classes, every adventurer. I'm such and such the monk, yeah. Right. So so it is very role-playing inspired. And uh the show is about uh the character Freerin, who is an elf, and much like traditional elves that we think of, elves live basically forever, right? And they uh in this world they don't age and they live ex extremely long lives, longer than any other race. Um, but most of the elves have died out, there's not very many of them left. Um, and the world is is I don't want to say plagued, but it's it's had constant problems from demons throughout throughout its history. Um and so the show picks up at the end where Free Ren has finished her adventure with her party, her priest, her fighter, yeah, her hero. Uh and they have slain the demon king. They have s saved the world from the the high-level threat that is the demon king. So they have killed the big boss.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:14

They they they they finished the campaign. Yeah, that's it. Campaign's over. They turn the page.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:19

The the show picks up with them showing up and everyone celebrating the that they defeated the demon king. And they said, We're gonna have to get together in 50 years and and remember this day. So they in the middle of the first episode, they fast forward 50 years. And 50 years later, Freerin shows up at the town that that we start the show, the episode in, and she goes looking for Himmel the hero, her friend, uh that she just adventured with, you know, not too long ago as an elf. She's lived for kind of you know, probably thousands of years. She's nothing. Yeah. Uh, and so she she goes in, she finds Himmel, the hero, and he's this tiny old man now. He he was 30 when they finished, he's 80 now, right? Um, so he's he's an old man. He's he went from being the pretty boy, the cocky pretty boy, to being this little old man with a cane and a beard, and he's bald. Uh, and and so they get together, they celebrate, and uh, and then they fast forward 30 more years. So now we're 80 years from when the episode started. Okay. Himmel's passed away. Yeah, he's died of old age. Yeah. So everyone's, you know, mourning him and that kind of thing. And so, or maybe it's not 30 years, but fast forward a bit and he he passes away. Um and so Free Ren, basically the story is what does Free Ren do next? Now that her adventuring party is starting to die off from old age. What do you do after the what do you do? And so afterwards, yeah. She ends up starting a new adventure, she picks up some new, some new young upstarts as she goes along. And uh the show is very slow-paced, it's incredibly slow. If you're looking for a high-flying action adventure, you're looking for neon Genesis Evangelion, you're looking for full metal alchemists, this is not it. Okay, this is a slice of life anime that's just like we're just going through these the life of these adventurers, and we're just doing these cute little cutesy things. Um, and like most of the combat that they resolve in in the at least at the beginning of the the season, is like done through like smash cuts for like a second of a pop. Right. There's almost no no action in the show. Battle's over. It's mostly traveling and and uh and experiencing doing little tiny jobs, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:57

So basically, it's it's the story of walking to Mordor. Basically, just we're just on a long hope, but much more heartwarming.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:04

Yeah, exactly. And so, and so it's it's super cool. And in part, and the whole premise of the story, and the reason that you get invested in it, is Free Run's been alive for an unfathomable amount of time. She um she you find out that her history goes back a lot further, and like it's actually really cool how like it's it's a little Mary Sue ish, how much she's tied in. Yeah. But in the grounds of the show and the way that they handle it, it's done really well. Um and the where was I going with this?

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:46

So the well, seeing how an elf lives, like you're like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:50

So if you live forever, part of it is is like they'll show up in a town, and uh she's like, Well, we're gonna have to find jobs. We're gonna be here for if we're gonna be here for 10 years, we're gonna need to find jobs. Yeah. And then the the girl that she's traveling with is like, we are not staying here for 10 years. Yeah, I don't we are gonna be here for a week, and then we're moving on, and then we're moving on because I'm a human and I don't have 10 years to devote to this place.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:21

Um that's true, because when you have that kind of overview, much like Lord of the Rings elves, you know, it's like you like, I'm around for thousands of years, bro. Yeah, you humans are a very short blip.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:32

Exactly. Like this is the first show, like we've thought about it and we've considered it, right? But Lord of the Rings, even though they talk about it, they never really explore it. Yeah. Where how does a being that lives forever, close to forever, uh how do they view the rest of the world? And so it's a really cool, interesting take. So the whole point of the show, that's what I was getting at. The whole point of the show is her trying to appreciate how humans view the world. Because she traveled with Himmel the Hero and that party of adventurers, and they left such an impactful mark on them. Right, right. For even for being in her life for such a short time, and also seeing her impact on them, right? Uh, it really kind of moved her, right? And so she's she's exploring to learn more about the human experience and the human uh human nature, yeah. And so it's it's super cool how they do it. Uh, it does get a little bit more action-oriented toward the end of the season. Uh, and some of those those fight scenes are so cool.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:44

Now, where can we find this?

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:45

It's on Netflix right now. It's not a Netflix exclusive. Delicious Dungeon is published by Netflix. Um, but this one is currently on Netflix. And my I know it's on Crunchyroll as well. Okay. People have told me that. So it's cool. I mean I love it's a neat show. It's it's very slow. It's not for everyone. My wife hated it at first. She was like, this is too when are we gonna do something interesting? But then, but she watched a couple episodes and she was like, by the end of it, she was like, when's the next season coming out? I need more of this.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:18

You know, it's interesting because stories like that, when you take a character that can have such an overview, uh, and then you turn them and explore the human condition, basically. Yeah. What does it mean to be human? We do have, we think we have super long lives, but do we? Like, what do we have? What is what is our effect on the world around us? Which is why I think stories about vampires are very popular because uh you have this thing that was once human and now is immortal, basically. How does that change you and how does that affect your view of the world? You know, it changes your viewpoint, but then you still have to interact with humans, which are very short. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:57

Yeah, 80 to 100 years, 10 years is is an eternity for us. Like, like what were you doing 10 years ago? Right? With that, that's 2015. Yeah, yeah. I've been playing, I we we talk about all the time. We've been playing uh role-playing games for 20, 30 years. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:15

Like that's so long, that is forever.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:19

Yes, but in in the view of someone that lives for a thousand years, right, like 30 years is nothing. Right. It's it's literally three years for that person. Right, because that's where they go by comparison.

SPEAKER_04: 1:16:34

It'll be like, well, when we celebrate 10 years, they're like, Well, I mean, I've celebrated a hundred years, like this is my hundredth anniversary, and we're like, What? Right? Yeah the idea of like having the thing, and that's that is cool. I really piques my interest, honestly, for a show like that, uh, and stories like that. So I'll check that out. Because I I some of my writing and stories that I think about is that like, how does someone how does it change you when you live that long or approach that long? What is the idea of immortality? I mean, is that a good idea? Like, like how would it would you go crazy? How do you inter interact with this world that to you honestly is like never-ending change, change. It just keeps moving. And you're like, well, I'm still, it's been a hundred years, but to other people it's uh, you know, to you it's been 10, but to other people, like uh you've watched four generations of people go by. Right. You know, uh that I think what like shows like that, like ponder and ask questions of the viewer, hopefully, as you watch the story. But you might not realize it. So afterwards you're like, oh, huh. I think it and some people might disagree. Um, Squid Game kind of did that in a slightly different way. It's like, what does it mean to be human? Right. How do we look at other people that are from different levels of life, both both uh financial, social, whatever? Uh how, you know, how do we look at them and how do they look at us? How do we interact? And what happens when we put all these characters in a crazy situation?

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:07

Uh, and then that from those interactions we explore the idea of being human, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:14

I interrupted our whatever we were talking about for that tangent. I don't remember what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:20

Well, I think we were going on like uh look thinking about you were you were talking about the world building and writing your novel. Right. Well, yes, no, just writing some short stories, but using ChatGPT and so on. That's what it was, chat GPT. Um, and creating these names. Now, as a writer, I think chat GPT Chat GPT can be a good tool. Right. Um, but to me, I the fear I have of that is be as opposed to being a tool like, oh, we could just use it to expand our imaginations, it becomes a crutch or the only thing we start leaning on. So those muscles, as you say, those muscles that we use to have conversations in the real world, frankly, that we use to play these games, those muscles I think can be affected by that because we don't have to do it. We just go, chat TPT, look at this. Now, if we go, I have come up with this an idea, chat TPT, give me an outline of a couple of towns that would work around this mountain. And if they go, and it goes, I'm gonna take that, but I want to take it out and extrapolate from that, right? Just I think chat GPT is great for an outlining, spitballing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:32

So if you're throwing stuff at a wall and see what sticks and what I agree, I agree wholeheartedly. And so, like the only reason I'm able to use Chat GPT to build these encounters, one, I I've been doing this long enough that I know kind of how I want to implement the encounters. Right, right. So really I'm just using it for a balancing tool. Yeah, right. Like I want to make sure my encounter there I had it generate five encounters for the Beast Feast campaign, and uh I used four of them so far, and the way I used half of them, two of them, is I twisted them. Like I used what it generated and applied it to the situation. I didn't use it as it had spit it out because I'm again because I've I've been doing this, I've I've exercised that muscle, and I know kind of what I'm looking for in that encounter. Um basically part the the big reason I'm doing it for for Daggerheart specifically is Daggerheart right now, because it's still such a brand new game, yeah, there's very little in terms of monsters that exist. There's no monster manual. Right, right. Um, so I'm very limited in terms of what I can pick from. And especially when I'm doing a story that's about like, you know, uh you want to eat all the monsters. How do I build an encounter for that? Right. Um, and how do I keep it varied? And so it spits out these random monsters, but then I can twist them and I can mold them to make them my own.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21:06

Giving you a kernel, a kernel or story hook that you can use to be like, oh, I like this part of it, not using the whole thing as rote. Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:14

Like all the bandit leaders and cultists that are in that in the core book of Daggerhart. I can't use those. They can't eat those. Nope. So I mean, nope, nope, they can't. So so I have to use I either have to create it myself, which unfortunately I don't have the time to do. Yeah. Or I can use some use a tool like ChatGPT, and I can say, here's the SRD, here's here's the free rules document that's been posted. Okay. Upload this to ChatGPT, write me an encounter, and it kind of it spits out stuff that's not perfect. It it has a lot of D D rules that kind of flow in. Um, but I can I can kind of twist it a little bit and I can say, okay, I want this encounter to be about this. Okay. And I want this to be the core tenants. I want there to be an uh an undertone of like food in everything. Right. So so create me uh a monster that has like a flavor-oriented bit to it, has has flavor flavor. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:18

Flavor flavor!

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:19

Flavor flavor, uh, and and write that for me. And so the reason I wanted to talk about it is I agree with you. I think chat GBT is not something that we as humanity need to be reliant on. Right, right. Um, and it's not something that we should abuse. And I'm not saying that in in that like I'm terrified of the robot overlords, even though I am all hail the robot overlords. Um that being said, I I want it to I I want to encourage the the new GMs out there or aspiring GMs or the experienced GM, like some GMs like myself that are that are like I want to play D D. I just don't have the time to create a world. I don't have time to create encounters or or plan a session. You don't have to anymore. We have we have a tool that we as GMs can use to fill in the gaps and make that that prep work significantly shorter. You still have to do you still have to do some work, um, and it's still up to you to creatively either give chat GPT the correct creative prompting or uh creatively twist what it gives you to lock into your games. And so I I wanted to encourage GMs out there to try it, to to go into Chat GPT or or whatever whatever AI program that you prefer. Um this is not a chat GPT sponsored podcast. Uh it is sponsored by the robot overlords, so I'll hail the robot alert. I'll hail, I'll hail. Um go go try the tool. Yeah. See if it works, see if it works for you. Try to see if it can my my purpose in bringing it up is if it can get you to a table with your friends to create memories and create memorable jokes about you know school bus-sized frogs and and bring you guys together to just play your favorite role-playing game. Do it. Yeah. Like that's winning. Absolutely. I would much rather you use that tool and and play more games than sit there and listen and be like, oh, sounds like Chris and Paul are having so much fun. That does sound like fun. And I would recommend too the idea of that. And meanwhile, we get to create NPCs that are some of the best NPCs we I got to create the uh the town alchemist. And she's the best, right?

SPEAKER_06: 1:25:05

It's awesome. She talks like she's one of the characters from a multi-python screen. Oh my gosh, I love it. Yeah, wonderful.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:20

I can't wait. I can't wait. But I I agree. Using ChatGPT to help you brainstorm and outline it. I really thought that because I've obviously it's been forever, uh, the idea of having a session zero where you sit down kind of as a group um and create your characters together. So you have that you you are building the camaraderie from the get-go. Right. As you look around, because I know like I usually play a like a ranger type or a wizard type. Like that's the two things I lean toward. And then Mike took uh I shouldn't say took Mike really liked the idea of playing a like sorcerer kind of guy. I'm like, okay, all right, so we might have one, and then uh another guy, like another player took something similar. I'm like, okay, so where should I, where do I land uh as we talk about our characters and where you're from? And I'm like, I still want to link to this. And then you went, well, there's these ideas, and I was like, oh, that sounds like fun. Okay, let me look at those cards, like a war mage versus this mage. Like you can still be maybe not a sorcerer. Again, you're not a to coin the term, uh, Jedi, space wizard, but you maybe you're a little you're the other side, you're the buck learner one, you're the the the yin to his yang. And I'm like, okay, that is also scratches the itch, right? Um, but building those session zeros together, you don't necessarily have to have like the world, you know, created, right? Sitting down at this session zero, I thought was really fun because you were listening to us and we and you asked some questions. And that's a really good part about being a DM during that session is asking these questions, but what about this? Oh, what's that from? Oh, that's a cool connection, but how? Uh, so you facilitated that, and then as we build it up, we're like, well, are we all from the same area of this planet? Right. Or not. Like, oh, I'm from because I'm like, my character is from the north, and I'm heading this way, and you're from here. So maybe this we ran into uh I was escaping and doing this, and I ran into your character here and your character here. Um, so allowing the players to help with that world building, right? You can start with a small, like maybe a small island or a small section, a city, a town, uh, a deserted rune that you've, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:38

There's a core tenant of the game Apocalypse World, we've talked about several times, um, that I really took to heart and I think I think really applies here. And honestly, like if you're an aspiring GM and you want to up your GM game a little bit, um, and just kind of acquire some more tools. The Dagger Heart book's great for it, but it's like 10, 15, 20 bucks for a PDF. Uh, go download Dungeon World or Apocalypse World and read, just read through the uh the the GM sections. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:15

Um one of the theory.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:17

Dungeon World or Apocalypse World. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:19

Okay. It's the same system. Apocalypse world is the original, um, but it's it's set around like Mad Max role-playing. Nice. Uh Dungeon World is inspired by it's it's like, okay, what if we took Apocalypse World's system for note and then we applied it to Dungeons and Dragons world in storytelling. And so um, but but the point is the the core tenant that that I think that I one of the biggest takeaways that I have from it is um whenever you're building a building a world, yeah. Create the world, but leave blanks.

SPEAKER_04: 1:28:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:57

Don't fill in everything. Right. Leave. Like imagine for a minute, like one of the things that I've done when I would when I've run Dungeon World is I took index cards and I wrote the names of places and then a little did a little doodle, like the the lonely mountain, right? And and I'd draw a little little outline of a mountain, right? Something super crude and quick. And I put that down on the table. Okay, the mountains here, this is where you guys are at. Yeah. All right, where you where are you guys trying to head? Oh, we're trying to get to um you know the land of the lost forgotten, right? And so I write down the land of the lost forgotten. I say, okay, what's in there? And they get they say it, and I do a little doodle that kind of recommends it, and say, okay, that's you know, southwest from the lonely mountain, or or whatever, or maybe you guys tell me that it is. So I put that, you know, to the lower left of that index card. And so now you have a visual representation. Yeah, but it's just two index cards, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:54

But what's between the two? And what's between the two?

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:56

And so then we write another index card and say, Okay, well, between Between these two is this. Right. And we'll build this map out of index cards during the session.

SPEAKER_06: 1:30:05

That's cool.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:06

And you know, we're just filling in whatever is relevant.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:10

Exactly. It's kind of like little when you're well, I still love playing them. It's kind of like uh when you played Mad Libs as a kid. Yeah. Right? Like just read the stuff, leave some of those blanks so that when you get there, you can ask your players questions, uh, or maybe just think out loud, right? Like what's I I don't know, what does it look like? What do you guys think it looks like? Uh and then hopefully as you're doing this, the players also buy in and they go, All right, I'm not gonna say there's a treasure thing in every room. They go, what would be a cool thing? What would be interesting for us to experience, right? Right. What would be cool to happen?

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:48

Uh even if it's just like uh, you know, if if I'm asking a player then, what I'm expecting, not expecting, that's the wrong word. What I'm hoping for is like, even if something is mundane as like it smells like flowers in here, or it it has uh this warm glow that makes me feel very comfortable, right? Um, or or it's uncomfortably cold, right? Right just something simple is is all I'm looking for. Like the rough hewn walls seem really close, and you're like, oh now if you wanna if you want to dig into it a little bit deeper and and you know and and you feel inspired in the moment, you're just like, well, there's these weird carvings around the walls, and the carvings remind me of you know Thanksgiving dinner or whatever. Um then that's fine. Like like and then as a jam, I can kind of build on that. Yeah. Any of those. I can take those and I can twist them, and I can say, okay, it's uncomfortably cold here, yeah, because this place is inhabited by an ice cream monster, an ice cream ooze. Yeah. Uh, and the ice cream ooze is uh, you know, is threatening the people in this area.

SPEAKER_04: 1:32:02

It's a strawberry gelatinous cube.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:04

Exactly. Uh or or or maybe you know the the warm, comfortable comforting glow brings people together and and more people are showing up in this room than is normal. You meet some some faces here, and then we we create some NPCs together, right? Right, like it gives us opportunities to build on the story and tell something more interesting. So if if your GM asks you, what stands out to you in this room? Don't say a treasure chest. Yeah. By the way, the treasure chest turned out to be a mimic, of course. Of course it did. And and all, and to that end, uh, like before before we even got up to it, they're like, What are you doing? It's probably a mimic. Don't even go to it. Don't touch it! Don't touch it! But I gotta open it. So he opens it, it's a mimic, he fights it. The the other two the other parties just standing there watching, they're like, I'm not getting involved in this. This is on you, bro. He needs to learn his lesson. Uh and then it's awesome. And then, like, he he finishes the fight. And it was a populated area. I described there with other people around, and so they're like, if if it was if it was an actual treasure chest, don't you think one of these people would have opened it? Yeah, and so he finishes the fight, and and I'm like, okay, MPC walks by and he says, Ah, he opened the the what was clearly a mimic, huh? What an idiot.

SPEAKER_04: 1:33:31

What an idiot. Oh my gosh, it's awesome. Well, I think we're getting close, dude. Is there anything like uh as we're talking about like this GM stuff, uh wrapping, kind of wrapping up, closing it up? We're talking about and think of looking ahead to our dagger heart session tomorrow as a GM, like some thoughts that you've if you want to share any, as you work on this new campaign we're about to open up tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:59

Uh I mean, mostly I just kind of like wrote down a lot of things, little notes that of things that we had talked about. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, if if somebody gave me a a name, I made sure to write that down and underline it. Right. Um, you know, I tried to write down little things that people were saying about their characters and how they related to each other. Great, great. Uh in the world building section, I I would just kind of like write down the things as we were talking about them, uh, the things that stand up. So, like uh land, some places are safer, but closer to crystals are more dangerous. Natural crystals mutate natural life around them, uh, creating monsters and half half ancestries tend to be more common in this world. Uh, and that was partially because a lot of our players, you know, ended up. Do you have their halfsies? Doing halfsies. We have a giant, giant slash turtle, a monkey slash, uh, it's not demon, but demon.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:55

Monkey demon and a monkey.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:57

Monkey slash goblin. Right. Um, so we've got a couple couple halfsies in our party of five. So so yeah, we're we're kind of like leaning on that. And um yeah, I don't remember what I wanted to bring up on this. I think it was just kind of like to look through if we if we were talking about the worlds, just to kind of reference if we needed it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:22

But well, as a kind of closing up the podcast here. There's a couple of things as a GM or DM, uh to say, hey, look at this, look at this. I know we've probably said them already, but like one or two things like jump right in, don't be afraid, don't be scared. Yeah, try it. Just get in there. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:43

Just try it, and and you may not like it at first, and that's fine. Yeah, you may not like it at all. Maybe GMing isn't for you, but like the worst thing you can do is sit in fear of doing a bad job. You will do a great job.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:56

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:56

Like, even if you make mistakes, and even if you don't stick to those tenants that I mentioned earlier, uh you you're still getting together with your friends. Exactly. You're still telling a cool story and uh, you know, hopefully everyone has a good time.

SPEAKER_04: 1:36:14

And that's and that's the important part. And there's plenty of Cheetos and Mountain Dew to go around.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:17

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: 1:36:18

You know, can't forget the the sustenance.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:20

Um and ogre sling knives.

SPEAKER_04: 1:36:23

Okay, yes, can't wait to find mine. Uh well, I think that's been awesome, dude. I think we had some cool things and ideas about like GMing and getting people out there. Uh don't be afraid. Uh I like your idea because you had notes. Having a notebook that you just as you as we in the session zero, which I again I think that's a really cool idea, during that session, take notes and ask questions and provide support for your players to explore and get ideas. You could be like, all right, maybe, maybe not like maybe not that far away, but like, let's maybe pull it back. Try this idea, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:01

Um and look at other role-playing games. I mentioned I I mentioned Dungeon World, I mentioned Apocalypse World. If you're if you're a if you're the forever DM of your group and uh or or you just like GMing and but you wanna you wanna try new things or or become a better GM, maybe uh look at other books, look at other systems. Uh, even if you guys don't play those systems, a lot of times you'll find tools and things that you can use. Exactly. Uh, like I said, Apocalypse World. I've I've never actually run an Apocalypse World game, ran Dungeon World a few times. Um, but the Apocalypse World book is one of my most treasured possessions as a GM because it has so much good stuff, uh, so many good tools and and ways to think about you know running a cool game. Uh Daggerheart's also super good for it. Like, honestly, like uh I can't wait for us to get more more books in stock. But the the Daggerheart, one of the things that I that I love about Daggerheart uh from a GMing perspective, even if I stuck with just D, is the campaign frames. You know, I wrote down all of these, all these notes from our world building. Um, I I really want to, and I don't know if I'll have time before tomorrow, but I really want to sit down and write a campaign frame for the world that we built together. Yeah, and have and have that codified, right? Like have something a sheet of paper that I can hand you guys and say, here's our description of our world, here's what it means, here's what it means to be different things and to do different things in this world, and here's and then if we ever wanted to tell a new story in this world, we have a a reference sheet to go off of. And that's that's a tool that you know, or or even as we're playing through the campaign, I can look back at that sheet and I can say, that's right. Right. These are these are the things that inspire you.

SPEAKER_04: 1:38:54

Maybe we're straying too far from our core ideas, and you can you can push them and change them because you can always like, is this a good change? You know, are we pushing it in the wrong direction, right direction?

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:07

Are we still telling the story we want to tell?

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:08

Exactly. And as I like to say, you know, don't hesitate to like beg, borrow, and steal from all of your favorite favorite stuff you've read, uh, other games that you've played, because movies TV shows. We all do it, and it always makes a fun thing because somebody's gonna be like, I get the you know, I get the reference. Ooh, that's kind of fun. But then you twist it and mess with them.

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:28

So don't drag I've talked about the Dragon Apocalypse World many times. That is a straight one-to-one ripoff of the story from Final Fantasy XIV, one of the expansions. Yeah, yeah. It is just like if my players ever sat down and they played through that that expansion in the game, they'd be like, wait a minute, this is very similar. And it's like, yes, it is. Ding ding. Uh, but but you know, it it also diverged a lot. It started as a one-to-one copy, but because through playing it and through telling the story and telling the story we want to tell, it evolved into its own thing, and it diverged pretty far from the way.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:07

Yeah, but it's not unlike uh an interesting thing is like, for example, the Office TV show started as a BBC show.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:14

And then it came to America. And I think America. Right, came to America. The first episode or two were almost a carbon copy of those episodes. Right. Because they wanted to that's the foundation. They wanted to start there. But as they as the writers and the actors, as the show grew and just uh took on its own life, you see it starts to diverge and become its own thing. So don't be scared to grab some stuff because you have a group of players around you that are going to add their own unique ideas to it and just add a little seasoning to that soup. Yep, and it'll become your own thing. And you'll love it. Exactly. And it'll taste great, hopefully, less filling. All right, dude. Well, everybody has had fun listening uh to yet another awesome episode of the Funkatronic Rex podcast. Uh, if you have, don't hesitate to leave a comment, um, like it, subscribe it, do all the things. Uh, let us know where you're listening so that other people can find us out there on the interwebs. Of course, we are also an actual store here in the Phoenix area. Uh, we have apprentices on the web, www.funkatronicrex.com. Got it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:41:27

And then there's Discord. Yep, check us out on our Discord. Chris and I are active on there. Ask us questions, poke us, whatever, whatever you need to do. Um, we are here. We want we want to continue building and facilitating this super awesome community. Yes. Funkatronic Rex built around. Uh, also, if you have the financial means, if it's something that's comfortable for you, if it's something that you are able to, please consider supporting our Patreon. We try to put out some super cool stuff for you guys out there every month. It helps Chris and I helps to ensure that Chris and I can continue to bring you these podcasts. So if you enjoy the podcast, uh definitely consider doing that if it's something that you can do.

SPEAKER_04: 1:42:07

That's awesome. All right, y'all. Well, we're gonna wrap it up. We will check you guys next time. Audio to be ghost, loading.