Campaign Frames Special Episode

We argue that most setting books fail because they describe a world without telling players what they are actually here to do. We break down Daggerheart campaign frames as a practical session zero tool, audit Witherwild against real play, then steal the best ideas from newer frames while pitching a fresh modern “gate” concept live.
• why replacing a GM with AI is a bad idea and often not even cheaper
• campaign frames versus big setting books and why play style matters more than lore volume
• how we actually run a Daggerheart session zero and why we make characters together
• Witherwild retrospective on pitch, tone and feel, themes, and touchstones
• what makes prompts useful for player buy-in and future plot hooks
• quick reviews of newer frames like Castle High, fairy tale tyranny, gothic horror, and hexcrawl journeys
• custom mechanics that help rather than add bookkeeping, including travel structure and countdown clocks
• building a new frame premise around gates, powers, economics, and accountability
• session zero questions that force specificity, relationships, and stakes
Please like, share, comment. And, you know, just fill our invoice box with, hey, I want this campaign frame, do it.

Transcript

Parody Disclaimer And AI GM Rant

Richard 0:01

Welcome to Carl Plays Daggerheart. I'm Richard, a side character who's not that important to the process.

Karl 0:09

And I am Carl, the center of the entire process. No one needs a dungeon master. You can just use an AI robot.

Richard 0:16

Disclaimer, we didn't we are first a parody podcast. Don't take anything we take seriously in a second. Do not use an AI robot, I will fire you. And replace me with the cheaper human. With the token throttling costs of having someone co-host this, it is just cheaper to pay a grad student.

Karl 0:35

To pay a grad student.

Richard 0:36

Oh, yeah. If I needed a player and you're like, I'm gonna use AI. No, no, I'm just gonna fire you. And for the cost of the AI subscription and tokens I would need to replace you, I will just hire a struggling theater student at minimum wage. Actually, a lot of AI features, when you actually like look at the cost to use their models and tokens, it is actually cheaper to just get a minimum wage intern who just got fired by a boss trying to replace them with AI. Kind of like how those McDonald's self-service terminals simply cost more money than the employees who used to do that job do. Because they forgot that like maintenance is a thing and machines just break. And when they're broken, when a human being's broken, they can still mostly do their job. Like, if I break your leg, you can still take orders, right? Oh yeah. If I break the leg on the terminal, it simply stops functioning, and you then need a person to take orders. But if you got rid of that person from the terminal, then you're screwed. Like, if you have a pizza oven that makes the pizza from scratch, and like you have like a really specif let's like, oh, this machine prints out exact circles of dough, and the machine breaks, a human with a rolling pin, you could like have a very haggard human being still be able to successfully roll out that dough. If that dough machine is slightly off balance, or one of the rubber pizza things are gone, it just stops making circles completely. Oh, yeah. As somebody who worked at a pizza place that had one of those two white rollers, you dropped the dough in and it like auto-pressed it, versus just pressing it out in a pan, pressing it out of a pan is just more reliable.

Karl 2:18

Well, I mean, that's that's debatable. Our dough sheeters hadn't uh broken down in a long time.

Richard 2:26

However, every new component you add to it, every new piece of technology you add to it, the worse it gets.

Karl 2:34

That is true. I was I was one time imagining uh uh a dough dispensing machine, uh which would be you know, then you wouldn't have to have dough in the cooler, it would just sit in this dispensing machine, but then you know, more moving parts make it less reliable. You are you are correct.

Richard 2:49

Well, it's razor once again. Well, not just that, but like also as like how much of that person c the machine cost versus the person for like the profit ratio?

Karl 3:00

Oh yeah, so so it's like uh on on a like a somewhat different note. Um there's been companies that have tried to do 3D printed houses uh didn't save on labor costs and and make things more efficient. Uh but the cost of the machinery up front stops people from investing in the uh in the technology. And then uh the technology isn't improving yet. So some of these 3D printed houses, only a few years in, have like massive cracks and thin structural areas, uh, and they're not even safe to live in anymore. So uh, you know, just replacing people with machines, it's it's gonna be problems.

Richard 3:39

Oh, absolutely. My weird argument is I think people are overestimating how much human beings actually cost to do work for you. Like, uh I don't even remember what doodad we were talking about, but it's like, yeah, I bought this my new cheese grater for my workplace. I was a $60,000 cheese grater. I'm like, man, it's gonna take like four years before it's a lot cheaper to have an employee that you pay to just grape cheese.

Karl 4:05

Oh, we still need the employee to grate the cheese. We just have a fancier machine that makes it more efficient for the employee to grape the cheese.

Richard 4:12

But if you try and like replace the employee completely, it's the whole like there's a certain ratio where I'm just like, yeah, the tool that saves you labor actually costs you more than the labor would have, because we live in a dystopia. Hmm. Like, we live in a world where an electric spatula costs like as much as the person to spatula. But I don't know. What's new with you there, Richard?

When Machines Cost More Than People

Richard 4:36

Well, before we get into the new with us, just to like elaborate the special episode. So, people who are tuning in, we're going to be going over and making campaign frames today. We're gonna break down the process, look at some of the new upcoming campaign frames, and then build campaign frames live. I'm saying this early before we monologue for an hour, because imagine waiting for a DD game for an hour, and then it's just floor document stuff. I mean, I am not advertising this episode premise well, and I'm fine with that. Because I do think, like, the one person who's like, ooh, I'm deeply interested in their thoughts on campaign frames so I can swirl my brandy and scoff at them, will get full value out of this episode. I like to imagine most of our audience turn it on to swirl their drink and scoff at her bad takes. It makes me more comfortable monologue.

Karl 5:28

Uh yeah, imagine people swirling their scotch in in their nosing glasses.

Richard 5:34

And just being like, they're so terrible at this, uh. And then occasionally it's specifically Miyamoto from Nintendo being like, you're right, we do need a poor Kirby air ride to the Switch too. Hmm. Anytime we talk about something on podcast and it really happens, then it's because of us. We manifested it into willingness existence. Alright, so I believe you asked what was new with Miko.

Cat Health And The Price Of Care

Richard 6:03

I I did ask what was new with you. Alright, so to long time listeners, I have a cat. His name is Miko. We'd recently moved from a basement suite to a new apartment, and he wasn't eating as much as he was supposed to be. And was losing a lot of weight. Used to be a chonky boy, now he's like real skinny. So, I'm like, well, what's wrong with my cat? And I'm all worried about what's wrong with my cat, like you do. So the answer turned out to be that he's an old man and has acid reflux like a human being. The actual treatment is to take a half a peptidase T like a human being. And acid medicine, cut it in half, put it in a tree, and feed him to that for his acid reflux, he started eating again. And I'm like, please don't tell me that your stomach ache that you got is the same as my stressed stomach ache cat. Please have more complex medical problems. So, like, I'm thrilled. So he stopped throwing up and he's eating more, a bunch of his appetites back. And he's hopefully putting on more weight because the food is staying in the cat. But it just had this moment where I'm like, yeah, I guess cat's stomach acid isn't that biologically different, huh? And I'm like, oh, you want me to give it funny. Also, the idea that a vet gives me a prescription, and I'm like, oh, that's like twelve dollars at pharmacy. This is great. Human medicine prices versus pet medicine prices are wild.

Karl 7:26

Yeah, uh uh we have a cat because she's a little bit older. Um I I kind of feel like I wish they would like I don't know if I want to pay for her to get like properly diagnosed, but I think that she might have like arthritis in her back legs or something. Um and so it's like, yeah, once a month you gotta come and pay 85 bucks to get your cat a shot so that they will be in less pain. It's like I mean I should because that's humane, but at the same time it's like 85 bucks a month.

Richard 7:54

That's I mean, to be fair, that's four Subway sandwiches now. Remember, dystopia. Fair enough. Well, it's like I was kind of thinking it was funny, is like my union has health benefits, and I'm like, in theory, I can lie and say it's medicine for me and like actually get it reimbursed. Like this idea that like actually these are my arthritis shots, so you can get it reimbursed from your health insurance is kind of an amusing concept. Yeah, no, these are my doggy treats, so I'm gonna just go ahead and file for those. These are my calcium bites, okay? Uh dystopia. But yeah, other than that and being on a deadline for a project and being on a different deadline for another project, I'm doing pretty good. I remember that I live near water, so I went for a walk to a great lake yesterday, and then looked out over it, and it was awe-inspiring, and there was like a boat with a sit like a sailboat going by. I'm like, this is like this is like Hallmark Photo Good. Like, this is great. And then basically just caught up with my month's worth of co-phone calls with friends, so I can go back to being antisocial for like another two weeks stint of working.

Karl 9:20

Yeah, you gotta get your social time dealt with. Oh, absolutely.

Richard 9:25

Like I have to remind people I'm alive once in a while. But what's new in the Carlverse?

Karl 9:35

Uh well this week not not a whole lot.

Richard 9:38

Um like uh just not this week a whole lot. You proceeded to tell a story about someone entering an ambulance in front of you.

Social Media Addiction And Corporate Liability

Karl 9:53

No, uh, just just watching YouTube like like you do. Um But one of my uh they used to be one of my favorite content creators. They're they're called Beaver Fry. Uh they're uh they were a former Canadian lawyer from from from Quebec. Um they would do uh vlogs. They would do blogs about uh different legal cases and they would read all the stuff and go over their opinions. I kind of liked it. Um during the pandemic, he kind of got a little bit fixated on on government overreach. Uh, and then uh ended up moving ended up moving to the United States and becoming a full-time like becoming a full-time uh live streamer. Um and I don't really like his live streams because they're a little bit harder to get into. Um and uh they're not as polished, I guess. Because they're live. Um anyways, because I was watching him, I got uh recommended this other uh YouTube lawyer channel called Legal Eagle. Uh and he signed up to the show.

Richard 11:04

He showed up on Dropout TV. Uh like I saw him on episode of Game Changer recently. Oh, really? Oh yeah. Huh. The idea for the game show bit was that you had to say things that were as legally dangerous but not counselable as possible. Like you had to go up to the line of what you can say on TV without getting cancelled, and like the lawyers would give you a score of how close you got to saying content you can't say legally. Okay.

Karl 11:35

Um I appreciate it. He's kind of like he's kind of on the opposite side of the spectrum. He's very much so like um pro-government and he felt that the government was doing the right thing during the pandemic. Which, I mean, the truth is somewhere in the middle, I think. But regardless. Um, I was watching usually. But so I I was I was watching uh YouTube and and one of his videos came up because I haven't absolutely unsubscribed from either of these channels. Ah, and uh it was uh a video about a recent legal case in the States uh where uh Google and Meta were actually sued uh for damage was caused by social media addiction.

Richard 12:23

Good. Because they had slides going around saying we're trying to addict children to social media.

Karl 12:29

Exactly, exactly. Um but uh for whatever reason, I decided to take a look at the comment section. I almost never go to comment sections uh because um I mean I'm sure they're not all just toxic terrible people. Uh but but uh in this particular comment section, one person was like, oh, I'm gonna unsubscribe because think of the children is always drift. What? What what are you talking about? Social media addiction is uh is like a bipartisan issue. Like this You're not taking a political stance and saying people are addicted to social media. Or there's one person like, oh, you're addicted to social media, just change your life instead of blaming other people. It's like, holy, like, how insensitive can comment sections be?

Richard 13:22

Change your life is such wildly unhelpful advice.

Karl 13:28

That's what I thought too. Um but anyways, I was just A, I was interested in the fact that there does seem to now be legal precedence for these giant tech companies that get sued for damages from intentional social media addiction.

Richard 13:43

And then just had his big lawsuit, because it turns out you can't just steal all the books on the internet. Although now they're just stealing rare, like, artifact books and then slicing them so no one else can have the info in them after they scan them. So you know the thing Set Okayba does where he rips the blue eyes in half so it can't be used against him? That is actually happening in rare books right now. Yeah. That's at least in my youth, villains had the decency to be evil behind closed doors and smoke-filled rooms. Now they like vlog about their crime. So like, I'll just kicked a puppy. Like, I think we really need Nine Arch Dragon to just start face punching some people. Like, I just I don't know, man. Hot take, but I just think some people the correct answer is like Elon Musk just wasn't punched in the face enough. Like, no one was sma slapping him when he said overtly stupid shit. Because he doesn't have like his I said something stupid cringe reflex. He just does the stupid thing. Like when I watched Trump do his correspondence dinner livestream where he just bombed because he's so used to him saying it's a joke, and then the room does force laughter because he said it was a joke. Because he has Sekopans. So it's like he's just not funny. In any events, uh, so what's new with you is a dislike of corporate uh lack of corporate accountability, which is fair. Unless I misunderstood pro corporations not being accountable. Oh no no, I I I'm definitely on the side of of uh the people doing the suing because like you don't think it's the right of the free market for companies to addict children to their proc projects knowingly is not we really don't want government meddling in the free market, Carl, okay? It's not like they pick winners and losers as they're signing out billion-dollar no-bid contracts. Really, really the free market will stabilize itself with the invisible hand.

Karl 16:04

Yeah, I mean social media has been a giant social experiment that uh you couldn't opt out of, basically.

Richard 16:12

Well, I mean, social media is so easy to solve. If the platform is responsible for the content on it, all the problems go away. That's it. If you're now legally liable for the Nazis on your platform, your platform will either disappear or you'll get much better at stopping Nazis. I mean, I suppose that's true. I wish that was a hypothetical. Why can't that be hypothetical?

Karl 16:38

I mean, the issues are a bit more complicated than that, and probably too complicated for us to go into our com on our podcast.

Richard 16:46

Because we are here to talk about it. I think it's pretty straightforward. Nazis are bad. Don't you agree, Carl?

Karl 16:52

Nazis are Nazis are bad.

Richard 16:55

I am fine with that being a take it out of context quote for me. Like if you mu your ringtone must be me saying Nazis are bad. I'm okay with this. You can tell from this insanely relatable monologue we just gave about actually with our target audience on this one, I think a lot of I think a lot of people playing Daggerheart are like, you know what? You're right. We should pay artists. Capital uh overrunning capital ego is bad, and people shouldn't be addicted to Facebook are probably not that hot of takes in this environment. Yeah, I don't think those are hot takes. But what is a hot take, however, is one of the best things to eat on a hot summer day is an Italian sandwich on Shimata bread.

Karl 17:48

Why is that? Is it because the sandwich is literally hot?

Richard 17:51

Yeah, like it was like a somewhat spicy Italian sub I had yesterday, and I'm like, this is just delicious. I it's just a perfect bearing. I just feel the need to mention that to the universe. If the only takeaway is it's hot outside, so I need like a high quality Italian sub. Yes. Objectively correct. Alright.

Why Campaign Frames Beat Setting Tomes

Richard 18:12

So to go into a bit of meta context, a few weeks ago on our other podcast, Deep Space of Dragons, we were talking about what kind of world building and settings would be make good adaptions to things. Which led to me aggressively and needing to publicly apologize for calling calling Carl's idea and genre he picked stupid. It is, but I was rude about it. However, this week to do justice to that, we're gonna look into the uh idea of a campaign frame and what kind of like touchstones and settings and things create engaging play experiences. And the idea is that for anyone trying to make their own campaign frame, they can either scoff at us while spoiling their whiskey. Or maybe learn something as we try and go through the process in real time. And I think we'll start by like going over some existing campaign frames and talking about them to see like how they work, but we'll start by going and widening the scope a bit. Campaign frames as a concept is something Daggerhurt does different than a lot of games on the note of campaign frame versus setting book. So campaign frames are typically in the like 5 to 20 page range. Like a campaign frame is typically smaller than an adventure when you print it out. Right. Where if we look at 5e, they didn't have campaign frames. They had full ass settings. The closest thing to a campaign frame is when they were putting out those early MTG crossovers before they did full books where they did like their plane shift campaign frame. Oh, also 5e at Gen Con announced that they're doing a Star Wars crossover and a World of Warcraft crossover. Because DD needs to get that universe beyond money. So I just fun fact. D Wizards of the Coast are the ones who put out the Star Wars tabletop RPG that's then folded, is then when license is changed, and for them to be like, oh, we're gonna make this an add-on for 5e is the most pointless ass thing, because there's just like 13 Star Wars sorry, not Star Trek, Star Wars TT RPGs already. Hundreds of homebrew, full-on module conversions, and the very idea, you're like, actually, don't you want to brand this Star Wars branded Wizards of the Coast 5.5e mod? I'm like that is the worst way to do it. The idea you'd probably have to buy a three-book set to play like Star Wars in DD 5E. Fills me with hate. Yeah, but seems on top of it.

Karl 20:54

You just don't need it. You definitely don't need that book to be able to play Star Wars. There's enough content out there you could just do it. Yeah for sure.

Richard 21:03

And you and also there's a lot of games that are like Star Wars inspired. Like if you want to find a TTRPG, like I can't I actually don't know what the difference between playing like Starfinder and Star Wars would actually be.

Karl 21:17

Yeah, and Starfinder is the like official Wizards of the Coast DD sci-fi spell.

Richard 21:23

Spelljammer is the Wizards of the Coast one. I think Starfinder still has But I think Star Wars. So I literally Google Star Wars T T RPGs and it's like a guide to the big four Star Wars T T RPGs. For things that do not need a tie-in. If something says a guide to the big four of something, there's probably enough of those. Probably. So the reason I bring this up is the idea that D itself, name brand DD, has really five Big quote unquote campaign frames. Of like campaign frames, it's like do you want to do Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Eberon, Grey Whatever, or any of the MTG crossover ones like Theros and Crap. Those typically involve like an entire book that's a common like a unique monster manual for an area with a few magic items and a few things. And almost always don't have adventures that go with them.

Karl 22:29

Right, so it's it's like this full hundred and hundred-plus page book uh that you can use as inspiration for your campaign, uh, and has so much new like fine detail, uh but doesn't actually tell you how to use the the concept of the code.

Richard 22:47

Yeah, like Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is 256 pages long. What's funny is what I actually ended up using that for is when I was running Waters Deep Dragon Heist, and that book didn't have enough about Waters Deep to really have people explore Waters Deep, so I just kind of put Ravnica instead. But I found like for books I actually used for 5e, which is funny because it's a specifically a Daggerheart episode, but it feels good for reference to monologue about it. Is I used a precap like I used like the Lost Mine of Fendelverse Adventure, the two Horde of the Dragon Queen books, the Yawning Portal Adventures to shove in when I need an adventure, and then the Sword Coast Adventures Guide to like tell me about the places that would happen in the adventure that didn't really come up. And then like the Xanthar's Guide for Random Other Side Quests. The Xanthar's Guide was really more a player book than a DM book, honestly. That it was. But I'm gonna throw it back to you. For D D campaign frames, basically, which are different, because we'll go into the differences in a minute. What tools were you using for 5E for like building around a setting?

Karl 23:58

Um,

DM Styles And How Players Use Lore

Karl 23:59

well, see, I've always uh planned my adventures uh slightly differently, um because um the generic D like I guess sword toast. Fabron forgotten wealth, I guess, is is the thing. Um it's it doesn't really like unless your characters are really invested in the the lore of the setting, it's like you've met my players. The lore almost doesn't matter.

Richard 24:33

Kinda. Uh like I said, you've met my players where to my players, for especially my first campaign, that was like their primary goal in life was the lore mattering.

Karl 24:43

Hmm. But the the lore that's more important is the lore that you build up in the story that you tell. Uh and you at the DM, you can try to uh tie in your lore with the the wider lore of the setting. Uh but by and large, I I generally uh if it says you go to water deep, I'm like, okay, then I guess to go to water deep, but I'm not going to look up what's all in Waterdeep. I'm just gonna make Waterdeep suit what I need for the campaign. Um because my players don't actually they're not asking questions about nations gods and and the the pantheon and or the I mean some players might ask about political strife, but again, you just mold that to suit the campaign, and and I try to use those questions to guide players. They get the information they want, but it guides them where I want the campaign to go.

Richard 25:37

Where my players were sociopaths and like needed to I my players are beloved. I want to be clear. But they would literally be like So, how does the political structure of this town fall? Like, I swear, I was under a constant quiz. I raised my own bar too high, is what happened. Because at one point they were literally asking, like see, my problem is me DM versus you, is if a player were to ask you, hey guard, who's your boss, who pays your salary, because I pay taxes, I play your salary, you'd be like, none of your business. And I'll be like, Yeah, how does that work? And I would answer it like an idiot. I would be like, well, you see, each area has an alderman who then works under the council of the regional c and then they're like, awesome, I want to get invested in this political thing. I'm like, I really need to stop bullshitting. Oh god, what have I done? Just can't leave all enough alone, can I? But all of this is to say, like, I've never ran Eberron. That's like one of my favorite examples. Like, I've read the Eberron book, I've never even tried to run it.

Karl 26:42

Well, so it's like I I guess to answer your question more accurately, um, I buy the an adventure anthologies, uh, and I almost use those as a campaign frame. You can read through all the adventures, uh, see what uh elements actually uh exist between them between those adventures and try to use those to link those together in a satisfying narrative. Um and so it's like to me, the like like you say, the campaign frames don't have adventures, and to me the adventure is so paramount that I actually build my frame around the set of adventures that I want to try and run.

Richard 27:21

And this

Session Zero As The Real Game

Richard 27:22

is what I really like about the campaign frames versus the massive textbooks. So what I like about the campaign frames in Daggerheart is I use them as my session zero guidebook in a way. And I did this to you, like our first episode our second episode, I think, was me doing this, where we literally go through like each bullet point on the frame as a group. Because what I found for these settings is the settings were so disconnected from what my players would actually do that like I'd be like, I'm gonna run uh Wild Mount Critical Role Inspired Session using the new Wild Mount Guide and then my play or not Wild Mount, um Taldori Guide. There we go. A different book. Right, right. But my players wouldn't build characters who had the objective of exploring Teldory. So our Taldori campaign didn't do any Taldoriing.

Karl 28:16

Yeah, there was even like my character uh was from Craghammer from the a city in the critical role setting. Um and I tried to get our party to go to Craghammer. Like I was like, yeah, let's go to Craghammer. Like, oh, let's do some other stuff first. Like, then we'll go to Craghammer. And it's like next session we go somewhere else. Are we going to Craghammer yet? No, we're gonna go here. It's like, oh okay, well, I guess.

Richard 28:40

My campaign ended up spending more time in the Fayewild than anywhere.

Karl 28:44

Yeah, exactly. And the Fayewild's not even the setting that they signed up to play.

Richard 28:49

So what's cool about the fr campaign frames is they all feel like their settings are designed for the adventure that takes place there, not the other way around. So it's like, say I want to run an Avatar the Last Airbender campaign. I don't think it would go to behoove me to like get a map of the four nations and run a campaign if I don't also pair it with what the adventure style of it is. So, like, for example, Avatar was a I a heroic fantasy. I go to it's it was like the most hero's journey, hero journeyest thing ever written. Right. Like to a point where we like watch him recap his hero's journey by going through another hero's journey to visit the seven elements. Uh, sorry, the seven chakras. Yeah, yeah. And like, yeah, it was like one of the most adventure stories to adventure story. Legend of Korra was like the first season was like urban terrorism. And then the second season was like, not that, it was just bad. And then the third and the fourth were about like, okay, now we're going opening the world back up and look at it was more about how has the world changed before and after. Right. But you would play those completely differently. So just say, oh, I'm running an avatar campaign, those two ways of running it, based on two different seasons of the same show, would be two completely different ways the campaign would play. So I'm like, let's do a heist. The setting for Waters Deep Dragon Heist wasn't a very heist-friendly setting. I was even interested in some of my players about it. A lot of it was about downtime, whereas like, hey, we have these new downtime rules to like build a business, establish ourselves, become part of the city. Turns out settling is diametrically opposed to thieving as a concept. Right. Because if you're trying to heist something, no heist movie ever has you like build a base of operations where you're heisting. Those are very different fantasies. Right. So the city wasn't really designed to do the thing your player showed up to do. Hmm. Where, like, Lost Mind of Pendelver, which told us next to nothing, was like, hey, you're on a quest to find a dwarven mine that has treasure in it. So from the first sentence, like, you are characters who are there to go in dungeons. Oh, look, on that tower, there's a dragon. Right. It's kind of funny that like every good DD starter kit will have a dungeon and a dragon in it specifically. It's in the name. But what I found for the campaign frames is like literally going through them with the group in a session zero and building all the characters together, even if people come with an idea, gets them much more on board and much more like overt, metagamey about what they're building their character to do specifically. Like, for example, if I had said at the start of the Water Steam Dragon Heist, I have built the city of Crimetopia. Everyone's a criminal here. And you're building characters to steal gold. The tone of feel of this is steal money. The pitch is you're criminals. To steal money. Like I do wonder if like building this like building a setting around a heist would work better than building a heist around a setting.

Karl 32:27

Well, I mean, I also. Like, I I haven't actually read Waterdeep, the Dragon Heist. Um, but I also just kind of feel like Where were the Heists? Right? And I do There There weren't actually any Heists in there, it felt like.

Richard 32:48

And here's also kind of a hot take. Waters Deep is an urban adventure. Because I remember like part two of it was like, and then you could do the massive super dungeon underwater steep. And I'm like, Right, right. A heist movie, a key component of heist movies, is often multiple locales. Right. So like the Keys from the Vault was a substantially better version of that. Because it was like, hey, we're gonna go places to Heist, because like hasting out the places is part of it.

unknown 33:20

Right.

Richard 33:21

It'd be a pretty bad Oceans 11 movie if they only did Chicago for the entire franchise.

Karl 33:28

Well, and so then that comes back around to like I was saying with my DN style where I so focus on the adventures and how they fit into the narrative I want to tell. Uh I actually successfully ran one of the heists from uh the keys of the golden vault. Uh and it like it was a great heist. It was fantastic for that specific adventure where they cased the joint, they found different entry points, they found different exit points, they found different clues on what was going on. It was there was multiple adversaries going for the same thing. It was just it was so much shorter and easier to digest than the whole campaign book. Um and I think that's that you're right, that these campaign frames, like even including all the adversaries and everything else that they have in there, it's only like 15 pages for this campaign frame.

Richard 34:22

And the thing too is like, like I said, I love it as a session zero guide. So 5e doesn't actually have good session zeros. Not as written. Because we've tried to have session zeros where I'm like, what kind of adventure do you guys want? Uh literally, like, here's four books I'm really to one. Which book do you want? What kind of characters are you thinking of? But they're not fun. I find the I actually enjoy the session zeros in Daggerheart, like a lot. Mm-hmm. I like when I ran it for my group, I like we did the session zero, then we jumped right into the game afterward to kind of like momentum it a bit. But weirdly enough, I think if you did a three-hour session zero and everyone actually like built locations on the map as you're supposed to, that's actually a fine first game of DD, weirdly. Yeah. I almost want to gamify it more. Like, I almost want to add to the campaign frames like some built-in dice rolls for like, hey, where are you from? Cool, roll some dice to see how crappy your hometown is. How crappy your hometown is. I'll get back to that as we go through, but this idea that, like, hey, open up this piece of paper and it'll be public information. And the thing is, some of these campaign frames, it's kind of weird, because it says just read the pitch, right? And then the overview before character creation. Like, no, I give them everything in the frame. Because even if I tell them overtly in the frame, oh, Steve is a double agent and will betray you. They're gonna forge like they will forget that, and it'll just be in the back of their brain, rattling around. Right. Like, I can literally be like, oh, by the way, Fader's Luke's father. And by the time they actually get there, they'll be like, I feel like I don't trust Fader for some reason. And someone will be like, I don't know, I feel like there's something about him that makes him a friend, but I don't remember what. Nothing like banking on people having lives and not accurately remembering every deal of your campaign every week. Quality may vary with that, but like.

Witherwild Retrospective Pitch Themes Touchstones

Richard 36:35

So I think step one is let's go through the Witherwild campaign frame together of what we've done so far and how you feel it's matched versus the campaign we've played. That's gonna be kind of how we start this. And then afterward, we'll bounce back and forth and we'll each build a new frame and possibly talk about some of the existing ones first. That's kind of my schema for this presentation. Yeah, alright, alright. Alright. So, looking at the SRD, it says the campaign frame is the f has to include well, each campaign frame includes the following sections, but they're all kind of somewhat optional. A pinch, suggestions of guidance on tone, feel, themes, and touchstones, the campaign's background, guidance for fitting communities, ancestors, class into the setting, principles for the GM and the player, unique setting distinctions, an exciting incident, special mechanics, and session questions to consider during session zero. I kinda use all of this as my session zero tool. Because I do think for Daggerheart specifically, do not let players bring their own characters from home. Make new ones. Just make them do it. Make them build connections. I've had friends try out the system and had disastrous results. And I'm like, yeah, because you didn't make them build the world together. They have to get used early to this idea that players also contribute to the setting. Right. Or else you lose a lot of what makes the system special, in my opinion. Like, if they're gonna play Joey McMeat Grinder, you could run Shadow Dark, another fantastic game, where, like, yeah, you roll up a character in three minutes and they're likely to die. But in a game where your character might it's to die to drop six times and get six scars and be forced to die could take like 30 games to happen naturally. Like, I haven't even run the math of how hard it is to die in Dagger Hur for real.

Karl 38:32

Well, especially if you're using the rules as written where you roll for the scar, you don't even necessarily get the scar. I mean, the higher level you are, the more likely you are to actually get scar. Uh but um it's uh definitely because it's so optional other than when you die at all. That's like to actually kill a person naturally and organically through scars, I feel like that's almost never gonna happen.

Richard 38:58

And from my experience running it, and the comments on this video can correct me and call me a stupid head later. I find that the test adventures they gave me that I template the adventures we wrote on, are like Dagger Hurt, you can fit two fights in a session max. I usually have one fight, or like a small intro fight and then a more serious fight later. It's funny because the book as original be like, here's your budgets for fights and things. Like, no, no, looking at the adventures you gave me, it's goblins jump you, and then you have to deal with a zombie attack at the end, or you deal with a party of politicizing, and then you play keep away with a thief. It's like literally using their level one examples, two fights a session feels like a kind of a max. So if you died every fight, you'd still have to die, like the fastest you could die, you'd it'd take three sessions to die against your will, if you're just the most unlucky creature who's ever lived. Like, I could not kill you in under three sessions unless you choose it.

Karl 40:01

Yeah, pretty much.

Richard 40:03

Because once you're out of the fight, you don't get back up till the fight's over, so. Alright, so the original pitch was the Wither Wild. When an invading nation attacks an ancient forest deity, a virgin overgrowth spreads throughout the land. How do you feel that's been going?

Karl 40:23

Um Well, so I don't I do feel like the description of the environment has kind of matched that um concept. Um But we I haven't encountered very many withered adversaries.

Richard 40:47

I think I haven't been clear about what the withered adversaries are. Because like the zombies in the first, like the plant monsters in many of the sessions were withered. So like every one of those stone zombie type things I've thrown at you has been a withered enemy. Right. The plant creatures were withered. But like, you've also been involved in a lot of like political enemies so far. Mm-mm. So I think you probably I Elroy encountered a lot more of them than Lyra did.

Karl 41:20

Hmm, that is true. Uh Elroy did spend more time just out in the wilderness where Lyra has spent a significant amount of her time actually in cities dealing with political issues.

Richard 41:33

And I think the cultists could have been withered. I don't remember if I made the choice or not. But making them withered in retrospect, I should have like made that the thing that was medically wrong with them.

Karl 41:47

We thought they were withered, yeah.

Richard 41:49

Yeah. Alright, so the pitch is Feinwick was once a place of great abundance and peace, dangerous to those unfamiliar, but with a cornucopia to those who spec his ways, when Haven invaded the wilds and forced land turtle spring, Dangerous Bloom knows the Witherwild, to Cold Annouth Resistance Lives of Wither Witherwild, you play unlikely heroes from Hundred Beginnings, who are reckoning with their newfound duty to save Fainwick's people from dangerous corruption. How do you feel that has been going?

Karl 42:15

Um that I do feel I think that's more accurate to how our campaign has been going. Um because like we've been talking about the pain race um and their plans to you know do whatever with the eyes of the owl that caused the problems, and Haven doing whatever they want to do with the eyes. Um and especially as we're building towards the next session of our Day Hurricane campaign where uh I I'm gonna be needing one of the main characters, uh, the Archmage that tried to frame Lyra for um killing the Spymaster. Um I definitely I feel like that we are following that uh pitch. I mean I don't feel like it gives a very clear um picture of what I was going to be doing doing to fight the dangerous corruption per se. Uh but I do feel like it does match what our campaign has done.

Richard 43:22

And then for tone and feel, we have adventurous, dynamic, epic, heroic, thrilling, uncanny, and whimsical. So off stream, we're talking about the like how do you get the tone and feel, how does it affect like how the campaign is run? So I will say when I hear things like adventurous, epic, heroic thrilling, means I'm more inclined to like encourage and dramatize roles to let you do really epic things. Like when you're like, oh, this is a campaign where like, oh, I want to jump off this eagle and punch a goblin while I land, I'm gonna let you. Right. And like, I don't know, in my brain, for the idea of like epic, that's like the massive expanse of armies and battles and things are less like what I was going in, more like the scale of climbing a Thunder Mountain kind of things. I'm not sure I really did much in the uncanny other than like one village. And I don't know if whimsical like I don't know if whimsical really describes what the pitch feels like it's doing here.

Karl 44:29

Like I'm whimsical Whimsical and Adventurous uh don't really feel like they actually for the campaign that we run and the pitch as stated, Adventurous and Whimsical uh just don't feel like they fit in as a tone and feel for the.

Richard 44:47

Yeah, because Adventurous leads me to feel like it should be encouraging players to explore and find things. But like I don't it's almost like there's a lack of MacGuffins. Cause I think of like traditional adventure stories, like literally the Iliad, the Odyssey, Lord of the Rings. Usually to adventure, to like go on an adventure, you have to have a destination, but not a route. Is kind of what makes it an adventure. Like the classic There and Back Again. But I didn't really like give you an endgame adventure very early. That's true. Because it was like, hey, you're investigating this person. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe if like I was clear from session one, you're trying to find this magic owl that might have worked.

Karl 45:42

Yeah, but I mean, we haven't gotten there yet in our overview of the Witherwild campaign. Oh yeah. But the exciting incident is basically uh go find out about the Fainrays, right?

Richard 45:53

Like, and then when we get to themes. Because tone and feel, I feel like a lot of them almost feel buzzworty. Right. Like, I'm not sure like how much I've matched the tone and the feel it was going for as intended. But also, this setting, with its like one-star complexity, isn't a very tone and feel-based adventure. Where like Age of Umbra, for example, is all about tone. Because it's their Dark Souls-esque, edgy, etc. I'm literally just like pulling that up on Nexus. So I'm using their actual keywords. Say some stuff while I look things up, do do well.

Karl 46:49

So uh for the for the themes of the Wither Wild, um, they have cultural class, unjustifying the means, grief, people versus nature, transformation and change, and survival. Um, and I I don't really feel like we've touched very much on grief as a theme. Are you kidding me?

Richard 47:10

Oh, I guess we went out of my way to make raises. That one I call bullshit. Cause like, no, no, no. Yeah, you're right, you're right. You have abandonment issues as a character trait.

Karl 47:22

Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. I I I I don't know how I I blazed over that.

Richard 47:27

But like, the reason I like pulled up the Age of Umbra one, which its touchstones being Dark Soul, Kingdom Death, Monster, Berserk, Seven Seal, Blasphemous, is their tone and feel is ancient, daunting, epic, grim, ominous, terrifying, tragic. I don't love that they both have epic as a keyword. But I agree, like I think the keywords for like the Umbra one that really strike out as being what makes these two different is definitely the ominous and terrifying versus the thrilling and heroic. Right. And then, yeah, it's themes of Apocalypse, Corruption, Darkness versus Light, Hope, Redemption, Survival. They both also have survival, which makes me roll my eyes a bit. Cause like I think the themes in Witherwild that I found more interesting while running it, and I put a lot more pressure on my other group versus yours for this, because I have multiple people. Right. Is having people versus nature, i.e., city slicking characters versus woodsy ones, and what the pros and the cons of both of those are. Right. Cause it's like, it's so easy with the rant I just gave for 20 minutes at the start of this episode about corporations technology being like, yeah, cities suck. But being eaten by bears also sucks. So like I've been trying really hard to not default to the Haven bad, Feinwick good, because people bad, nature good. Like, no, no, no, there's a balance. There's a reason we don't live in the woods right now.

Karl 49:10

Right, and then like the themes of Cultural Flash and Justified the Means uh are definitely um something that comes up in in right in that pitch when they're saying about dangerous corruption. Uh it's like are are they corrupt? Are they actually Are they actually meaning well and just doing evil? Um is it just a cultural misunderstanding and and it's something that people can talk out, you know?

Richard 49:42

But I do find survival and transformation and change haven't been particularly useful in this one. Survival in your RPG is not really a helpful theme if we're being honest. No, no, it is not. Like, weirdly enough, the people vs. Nature kind of says the same thing as survival, but better in that context.

Karl 50:05

I agree.

Richard 50:07

And transformation and change. The thing about it is like the idea that over this course of the story characters arc. My other group, I'm pushing at it a little more, because the idea is like I really encourage them to be very firmly aligned with one of these two groups, but then travel with people from the other way of life to kind of like change their point of view. At least was like my theory of how I could do that kind of change. Right. But like, that's kind of where I land at for themes, is like some of these seem like they're really useful. And I think for you as a player, did any of these like affect how you built characters when I once upon a time yelled out this list at you?

Karl 50:50

Um, not really. Uh I I had a character concept, um, and then I gave you a whole backstory, and then I let you kind of figure out how that backstory would fit into the narrative you were trying to tell.

Richard 51:08

Um session zeros are there a stronger way to build this game.

Karl 51:18

Uh then with with Lyra, I was creating a replacement character that would replace my Leroy that had died. Um, but she was already in the story. Um so it's like I used some of the time that I that Leroy and Lyra spent together um to kind of inform what my character would be, but it wasn't really about the settings, it was more about the interactions between the characters. Fair.

Richard 51:53

And then for touchstones, for this particular one, I'm gonna have to remove a touchstone and then add a touchstone for how I think this actually goes. So the touchstones as written are Princess Mononoke, Legend of Zelda, Dark Crystal, and Nausica Valley of the Wind. From your player point of view, do you feel like that is an accurate description of how the campaign has gone?

Karl 52:21

Uh so I mean, the only one that I I really question personally, like I I'm not overly familiar with Nasaga and the Valley of the Wind, but I I kind of feel like that's more on the whimsical side than the other three. And that's which have not been very whimsical.

Richard 52:42

So Princess Manoke really feels like how this could be run if you had the players that were into that strategy. Like, oh, the romance between Wolfgirl and Gun Guy is the nature spirits attack. Like, yeah, I can see that. Yeah. What I don't see is any Legend of Zelda in this whatsoever. I mean, that's That's fair. So I think what is missing from Legend of Zelda is A, I don't think you can use Legend of Zelda blank as a touchstone at all. I think you have to pick a Zelda game.

Karl 53:21

That is also definitely true. But there's a huge difference between Wind Waker and uh Orcarina of Time. Like they're just they're not even close.

Richard 53:29

But if we assume they mean either the original Zelda or Orcarina of Time. Let's assume they mean those two. They're not really about culture clash and justifies a means, grief, people versus nature, or transformation and change. No. They're not. Like, Breath of the Wild gets a little closer, but still doesn't quite get there. Instead, what the actual touchstone is, is it's the Forgotten Realms. It is. Nice try. You know I'm right. Okay. Don't tell me this is the Studio Ghibli campaign till you're blue in the face, but this was clearly written to be the DD setting. I would say that Forgotten Realms is a closer touchstone. Or s- I would have liked something a little more man versus nature-y, or a little more like spirit. Like I would swap out Zelda with Okame in an instant. Where you plays the wolf god Adamarasu fighting you like. Something like a little more like spirity would make sense than Zelda. But I think I might also be being Pendantic, but I think I can be Pendantic when there's four touch zones. Right. If I feel like one of them is just like doesn't really fit. So I'm not gonna go too much into the overview because we did a full podcast on the on this, but we have the it lists the Feinwick, and it lists Haven. And in the Feinwick, it lists Wicklings, but I always miss that term, because like hot take. Blending the name of like the group and the country into one paragraph, I can see like I definitely refer to them more as the people of Feinwick rather than the Wicklings. Because a wickling isn't in bullet, and I'm a simple creature. Right, right, right. And then Haven, like the godless gate, called Haven, uh, Fate Divinity surrounding Shunosh the Granite Orphan, like I've used a lot of that. Like, I've given the full speech about the god they killed, the dust, the serpent sickness, the archmate. Like, every bolded term they have in the overview, I have used verbatim.

Karl 55:56

Yeah. So like I said, the adventure that we're running right now, our next session, I assume I'm gonna be meeting the archmate phyllats. Who is one of the bolded terms of the overview.

Richard 56:10

Yeah, who is literally holding the reaping eye in their hand.

Karl 56:14

Another bolded term from our overview, with the other one being the sewing eye, which they haven't stolen yet.

Richard 56:21

Yeah. So like I feel like that's pretty straightforward of hey, that's where like most of the campaign has come from with the overview. So then we go into the communities section, and I'm not gonna go into a huge detail, but like I like them putting specific prompt questions. These are part that I think really makes the session zeros click. Is having these specific questions to tie into your character. Because for Leroy specifically, I did ask you, like, you once trade important knowledge for something terrible. What did you impart and what did you gain in return? How did your family make their wealth? Have you injected or rebased their core set of ethics? Like, I did ask you these questions specifically. Who did you lose to serpent sickness? Not all of it came up, but it was like specifically asked to you.

Karl 57:18

Yeah, I mean, like those questions as much as I say my character wasn't really informed by the setting, those character those questions did actually uh help immerse Leroy into the setting, as opposed to just being the concept that could slot into any adventure.

Richard 57:35

And also it does a popcorn effect when you have a group. Because once you have one person say something, it kind of like gives people things to play off each other. Right. Because if you're like, oh, my family are drug merchants in Haven, it can inspire someone to be like, my character is a drug smuggler, or like my character is a cop who hates you. Right. So it's funny, is all the frames feel the need to say all communities are available, or none of the frames in either of the books tell you you're not allowed to use things, which is reasonable. That slot is definitely there for homebrewers, but I firmly believe let your players use stuff in the core rulebooks, guys. I would never be like, hey, you bought Daggerheart Hope and Fear. You can't use those new classes. No. I refuse. My setting doesn't allow magic, okay, guys? Isn't it really a good way to run an RPG if I'm being honest?

Karl 58:36

Well, yeah, because a significant portion of TTRPG is the freedom and expression. So taking away options is never good.

Richard 58:47

And a lot of times I'll be like, hey, if you have to mod the game to a certain point, like I was ranting about 5e Star Wars later, just play it another different game. Ugh. Ugh, being a Jedi in 5e being a thing you can make on DD Beyond and then show up to Adventures League with your Jedi and arguing it should be legal because it's an official 5e product. It's just a recipe for disaster. As someone who runs local games, I hate it so much. Oh, do I hate the idea of Worlds Beyond DD Adventure League? Ugh, gross. Anyway. Then we get to the ancestories. Which this one is like a it's less a prompty than the communities for uh Witherwild specifically, and instead is like here's some ancestories of how the setting can tie to them a bit. Clanks made of this based on where they're from, funguses doing this, after the Worldwild, some this have horns and things, like just many families of Galappa and ribbons who live in the bogs of Bainworth were deplaced when the army invaded. I think that one's actually done some stuff in my campaigns. People love ribbons. That's true. People love playing a ribbon. And then the decent. Oh yeah, two and a half players have been ribbons in my well, more than that, actually. Like, a decent I'd say like ribbot is easily the most played race. And the ribbot character in the prefabs is the most picked free prefab, fastest picked prefab every time.

Karl 1:00:29

Uh well, I'm part of that is because they're awesome. Ribbits ribbots are awesome, but they're also uncommon in terms of other TTRPGs. Uh so it's it's something that's more interesting for sure.

Richard 1:00:43

I also think the setting might play a factor, like, hey, you're in a place called the Wither Wild, like, I'm gonna be a frog.

Karl 1:00:49

Uh that's true too.

Richard 1:00:51

Like, I'm surprised no one ever has picked for my campaigns the monkey class in the woods. I'm like, that feels like a really good strategy. I also get a lot of fun rules because a mushroom person speak to dead in network of mushrooms is just cool. Yeah. And then we have the classes, which is like how your care like this one's just like, how is your character connected to the natural world? And then they talk about like wizards are more haven-y and sorcerers are more wickwildy. And I think that's come up a few times. Like, there's a little block here about Syndicate Rogue and how there's spies in these communities. I think I've used a bit of that, but a lot of the like classic session, like I was saying, is just how can I make I feel like it's more like you're pointing out exceptions, not the rules of what makes it play different in this setting. Right. Like it's like, yeah, if you're a warrior, were you in the Haven Army? Then we get to the player principles, GM principles, and these ones are like less consistent across the frames. Cause we have make the invasion personal, treat death with importance, and embrace vulnerability. And I'm like, I don't know, man, if saying that whether what the thing that makes this our campaign unique is me telling you to embrace vulnerability is really what's happening. Yeah, no, I I don't really I've been doing a lot to make the invasion personal. Whether intentional or not. Yeah, and uh to clarify for our listeners. We are looking at this in retrospect, and I'm not saying I deliberately looked at these things and it chose to do them. It's more like what have I coincidentally ended up doing? I'm not claiming that I've memorized the frame and am specifically making the invasion personal. This is more a retrospective.

Karl 1:02:53

And then uh treat death with importance is I'm kind of like 50-50. Uh Leroy's death is one of the main driving forces of my carton character.

Richard 1:03:05

Uh and and uh the uh I think as a player principle, it's terrible for this game engine, honestly. Yeah? So treat death with importance in a game where no one freaking dies. Right. So it's like taking a life should not be done without consideration, desperation, and consequences. Okay, but like, how much mustard can I put on a death scene, really? Because it's like, remember those they've lost and those they've slain. I'm like, but they won't have lost anyone.

Karl 1:03:40

Oh yeah, because that would require them having made meaningful connections with NPCs, which as we've established in our this frame doesn't have NPCs.

Richard 1:03:49

Like, specifically, like, it doesn't give any that would make sense to lose. Right. Which I think if you really wanted to make a campaign frame that treats death with importance, you would have to have one of your mechanics be about having NPCs. Like, for example, that mechanic I put in about those catfolk, they can either give you advantage or take a hit point for you. Right. I think like specifically having NPC mechanics can really help the death with importance. Or putting in a campaign role, like when you go down, you always take a scar. Right. Because I do think that bullet point as a player principle is more like general role-playing advice. Yeah. And there is no mechanical incentive to embrace vulnerability in this setting. There is nothing about how this setting is written that embracing your character's vulnerability does anything. Find your character's humanity and showcase it where you can. They should be vulnerable during quiet moments as they are vicious during violent ones opening to their allies, even if they close themselves off to everyone else. You need a mechanical incentive. So there's like a lot of cards that are like have a chat with your friend, gain an extra hope type stuff. If I really want my players to do this, I don't think a bullet point in session zero is gonna really do it for me. I agree. Now, if I had like a campaign mechanic that was a fire emblem support system of have a scene with a player, and if you open up and I believe you opened up enough, I give you uh you now get plus one to your help thumb rolls or something. Like, there's ways you can do it. I just like being nitpicky, because we are going to go into and then get nitpicked ourselves afterward.

Karl 1:05:46

Now the GM principles, yeah. Like Do you do you feel like you've been following these GM principles? Yes. Contrast. That's yeah, I would say so. We have the Haven versus the uh Fainwick and the Knight versus Dane.

Richard 1:06:09

Well, even little things like the room full of cat spirits being calm and peaceful after going through the lightning volcano exploding you.

Karl 1:06:22

That's definitely definitely been uh particularly this last last session going through the the Twilight Path. It's like wow, that was and like origins too.

Richard 1:06:35

I do try to be like, hey, your camp you're from is on fire. Hey, bad things are hap-like, I try and like make bad things happen that are tied into backstories and things. But also, when your players create or invested in their character's backstory, to then have something to threaten, does require a certain amount of player buy-in. Like they need to make a place and make NPCs and remember they exist if you want to threaten them with them. Right, right. Which I think I do an adequate job with. And then offer alternatives to violence is just really good GM advice in general.

Karl 1:07:17

Yeah, I don't think that's something that's specific to this this campaign frame.

Richard 1:07:21

Like I see why it's here though, because my party instantly wants to be anti-Haven at the first opportunity because they're represent the white man. Right. Straight up. It's hard to be something called an empire and not immediately like fuck these guys. So, like reminding them that give PCs opportunities to mend all rudes, heal the rift between these factions. Yeah, I really do try and have good people on both sides, which is ironic because I'm pretty anti-fascist in general, and I do believe Nazis don't have good people on good sides, and they're good first if they stop being a Nazi. But for the sake of this fantasy, let's assume people are morally complex and can be ch have their viewpoints changed in positive ways. And then create multidimensional allies and adversaries. I think I've did fine. I'd say so. Because like I try and give everybody a motivation. And then the distinctions. First, the weeks of day and night can go directly to hell. That's a bad distinction. Oh has it gained me anything for the suffering it gives me of people saying how many days is their premium form of communication? Hmm.

Karl 1:08:40

No, I don't I don't think it's really. It just seems like an additional mechanic to for you to track that hasn't really had like that. Show off showcase the difference between day and night. But that's also the paint the world in contrast, which you're doing much more engagingly.

Richard 1:09:07

Right, because it's like the week long would imp for the week long to matter, that means you have to do a week of travel. But because travel is montaged, it's like, does it really matter? And yeah, all it does is like irritate the shit out of me, honestly. Like when I was running this at the start, I'm like, oh neat, and then I'm like, no, no, this is just bookkeeping. Where I have to remember between sessions whether it was day or night, and then everyone will always say how many days have passed. Yeah. And I'm like, I have not gained what it would be worth, where you're right, if it was just showcase the difference between day and night, rather than the weeks of day and night. Ugh. All of my hate.

Karl 1:09:49

Yeah, I I definitely feel like that's more of a GM principle than an actual worthwhile distinction.

Richard 1:09:55

Yep. And then serpent sickness, yeah, I think I've done a good job of making that important.

Karl 1:10:02

Considering that I had a mile of serpent sickness anthrax that I used to just basically destroy a city.

Richard 1:10:11

I will say for the ladies' veil, I've been calling it all sorts of things. It's definitely become the red petal plant or the red petal blue. It's funny that I've Crimson Ladies Veil is supposed to be the important one, but like I feel like the Ladies Veil part has just kind of been lost from my Venacto. No one's at fault here. That just kinda happened. Hmm. I think I've been calling them Crimson Lilies. I mean, they do what they're supposed to do for the story, though.

Karl 1:10:42

Right. But the name doesn't really matter.

Richard 1:10:46

The MacGuffin. Mm-hmm. And then the Wither Wild itself about the corruption. I think when I do it, I do it well. Like the withered beings, the animals, the vines around the statues trying to murder you. I'm proud of that one, by the way. The plants animated the petrifying people. I think that was a good mix of those two plot points. I think so.

Karl 1:11:12

But then, you know, the more that you focus on the political aspects of the corruption of the land, the less that the Wither Wild itself becomes important.

Richard 1:11:23

And then, like, the some wicklings believe this power was gifted to drive Haven away. I've touched on that a little bit, but that kind of comes down to where the players go with it. Yeah, that's true. The gods thing I've done great. No notes. That's fun. Random minor deities for random bullshit makes me happy. We have Soju, the god of rivers. Like, life is good. Ironically, the list of the ones they gave me, I very rarely use. But conceptually, I've been throwing in spirits all over the place.

Karl 1:11:59

So, uh, the the gods that you have used in in this story so far, they're just are they gods that you just looked up, or are they gods that you made up on the spot or made up on the spot. Often I'll have players name them. I mean, that just makes sense. Um, like I say, particularly with the Pantheon, um, unless your players really buy in, like in older editions of DD where you actually had to have a deity, uh, it was part of your character creation. Uh, I guess the Pantheon made more sense, but uh in modern TTRPGs, I just I really feel like people they're only gonna care about the gods that are doing bad things or the gods that specifically come down to help them.

Richard 1:12:46

Yeah.

Karl 1:12:47

But you have to bring those into the story yourself.

Richard 1:12:50

So that's kind of where I'm at, is like I'll give a place setting and then just like describe a local god, and if a player feels like going into it, we just kind of make one on the spot. Like, for example, if we look at one of these ones, like Quilla Ga our Whispered Sweetness for a story end, a quiet guide who presides over the deaths who passes thorny bushes and prior, additionally she doesn't receive many visitors. But the Wellwell's corruptive growth has made her job harder and upended her quiet existence. That would work much better if someone was like, Can I pray to the god of bushes? Right, like so I've been kind of like leaning into these local deities a little more. And then the last three things that are left on this example one are the inciting incident, which we've gone to in length, that it gave me three characters to work with. And it has sustained a level one to six campaign with just these three characters doing their thing. Right. And then the party was sent with this Have and it like the actual inciting incident part, because I like started with a different campaign, like I started with their like Sablewood Messengers and pivoted into it, is a little off, but I do have to often remind players there's a fane wraith, they have an eye. I mean, they're after the other eye, etc. etc.

unknown 1:14:09

Right.

Richard 1:14:09

The corruption mechanic has never mattered, and I think that's a me problem. Like, unless my players actively are tracking it, I will just forget.

Karl 1:14:22

Well, yeah, and and the corruption mechanic, in spite of it being a DM thing to track, it's like you're also relying on the players to be like, oh, is this and an adversary wither? How many wither tokens do I have? Uh it's like you're you're asking your players a lot, I think.

Richard 1:14:41

And then like at the end of each session, clear all the tokens, gain equal amount of fear. If they die with tokens on their sheet, their body's permanently taken over by the Wither Wild. Like, that one's interesting, because it's like if I was actually doing it, my earlier complaints about players' death not having enough. Because you place the token and you basically make a scar roll. And it clears the tokens. But if they die with the tokens on them, they come back as like a zombie. I don't know, it just doesn't really I think it's a me thing more than anything. They just haven't been paying attention to that. That might be true. But also, like everyone would just.

Karl 1:15:23

It also doesn't come up. And it doesn't it doesn't actually come up that often because it's only on severe damage. Um like, especially seeing as you can reduce damage with armor results, like how often do you even take severe damage? Like Yeah.

Richard 1:15:42

And then the final sessions we have, I think sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah, especially with just how the game works. Like, you're so much more likely to use armor to not take severe, especially if there's a downside. And then our session zero questions were dangerous animal that comes out, unique trait, superstition, your characters witness something. Those are the kind of things that like I take little notes of during session zero. Those are just helpful to make the session zero more fun. That makes sense. So that is the uh a rough overview of how the campaign frame has worked in practice. Mm-hmm. And like looking at the homebrew guides campaign frame, just a quick summarize title, concept, how complex, pitch, tone and field, themes, touchstones, overview, classes, player principles, GM principles, distinctions, inciting incident.

Karl 1:16:41

And then custom mechanics and such and zero questions.

Richard 1:16:45

So,

New Frames Lightning Tour And Takeaways

Richard 1:16:47

to move on to our main feature event of sorts, I'll start with like a little monologue about the hope and fear frames without going into too much detail of them. Because what we have to do this originally was after we finish this campaign, what campaign do we want to do next? And the original core rules are like Age of Umbra, Dark Souls, Five Banners Burning, Game of Thrones E and Fire Emblem E. Right. The Badlands, Monster Hunter, Steampunk, Wild Wild West shenanigans. And I feel like I'm forgetting one. Oh yeah, just straight up Delicious and Dungeon. And the Steampunk one no one ever talks about. It's called Beast Feast. Like, you look at the Beast Feast frame. It is funny for some of these where they're like, here's our touchstones. And it's like Delicious and Dungeon, Monster Hunter World, One Piece. Get one piece out of here.

Karl 1:17:57

So I'm sorry, these are the uh campaign frames that are in the original book?

Richard 1:18:01

Yeah, the original book. Just to talk about. And then the new book came out with its new frames, which is Castle High, which is their Hogwarts. I don't want to say Hogwarts. I think they went out of their way to not say Harry Potter because it's so problematic. Right. They absolutely went out of their way to not say Harry Potter. And good. Fuck Harry Potter. But like, as a general rule. That one for the Castle High one, I do not think anyone's playing that with me, and I don't think it's the frame style fault. So, what are your thoughts on the Castle High setting?

Karl 1:19:02

My thoughts on Castle High?

Richard 1:19:03

Yeah, we'll just kind of go like your thoughts of going over a couple of them. Modern fantasy world teenagers attend a boarding school in the clouds, sneak out of class to fly brooms, explore floating islands, and save their friends. Not Harry Potter.

Karl 1:19:17

Well, so on the one hand, uh so when I've been thinking about what uh settings that I think would be interesting, um I have been trying to uh consider the story that was told that I've seen in that setting, and the the setting itself, and what actually makes the setting interesting versus what about the story complements the setting. Um so it's like a lot of settings, the power system is the setting. Uh, and then the setting itself, it's just the generic blank canvas that the story then builds upon. Uh I feel like Castle High, uh, because you have all these the sky artifacts that let you fly and you're going and exploring these islands, uh, I feel like that's actually a very interesting setting, regardless of what story you might tell there, and it has has a lot of potential for a story to complement what the setting already gives.

Richard 1:20:21

Yeah, I think my problem with not the setting, but with the types of groups I run, is I just think the magical school trope just isn't gonna grab my players specifically.

Karl 1:20:32

And I do not mean that way they'll do the they'll focus way, way more on uh exploring the islands and flying around the skies rather than actually uh doing the schooling.

Richard 1:20:45

I think it's the opposite, and that's the problem. Oh? I think they're gonna immediately draw too many parallels to the transphobic wizard school. Okay. And just kind of be annoyed that they're playing the setting. Because they're gonna they're gonna want it to be Harry Potter, which isn't even a touchstone on here. And be both annoyed that it is and isn't. But it's also the coming of age, too. Like, for this campaign, I think it's really important you build teenagers. Right. This one the themes are much more on point than some of the ones we made fun of in the first book. Coming of age, curiosity and rebellion, friendship and loyalty, magical versus modern. Other than that last one, I think oh, the last one actually makes much more sense when you're teenagers, though. Mm-hmm. Cause then your characters get to be more modern. Right. And like I would just be like, I definitely lean more towards Owl House than anything else on that list. Right. But I'm like, yeah, like adventurous high schoolers who take magic classes, explore Sky Is a search for missing classmates. It's so YTV ass coded. Yeah. But a lot of my players are into the fantasy RPG. It's it's like it goes too far away from like the Lord of the Rings they think they're playing, even though they're actually playing Monty Python. But I love the design of this frame, because I think it fits in such a unique niche that it's like, yes, this frame does set up a very specific kind of campaign. And to like go into some of the like notes I like versus some of the notes I'm like, eh. Things I really like in this frame. The touchstones. I think there's a few too many, but the points are good. Right. The community prompts, the ancestry prompts, the class prompts. I do think the classes prompts was necessary in this one, where they're like, oh, syndicate rogue really means more about rival schools, not actual mafia. Was probably a necessary point to bring up. Right. And then they'd be like, oh, druids can't fly at level one. So you can't turn into a bird right away. So you'll have to use your sky shard until tier two. Or you can work with the GM to let you fly right away. So like the classes notes are mostly like, hey, in a flying setting, why would you actually want to fly is a very valid point. So I think that one, the classes section is more interesting than I've seen in a few, because like, no, no. If you're a beast bound ranger in a flying setting, you're probably gonna want to fly on your hippogriff. Here's how you do it. Right. And the same for ancestries, we're like, all the ancestries are here. Also, flying characters are relevant. Right, right. And then the player principles are all very on point on this one, I think. Cast snippels, wear sneakers, do your homework, fly for your life, feel like a kid, seek out answers. Like, it's so easy to use, like, run a Nancy Drew or a Scooby-Doo out of this. I might have even put Scooby-Doo as a touchstone, honestly. I feel like you're doing a lot of Scooby-Dooing. Probably. Or more Nancy Drewing than anything. And then distinctions are like, here's your school. We're not gonna give you a map of a school, but here's how your school would work. Here's the rooms that you find in a school. The missing kids table and like mounts and route like this campaign frame probably goes on longer than it actually has to.

Karl 1:24:45

Well, I do feel like they put um I don't know how much they stripped away from the With the Wild campaign for the SR SRD. Um fortunately I haven't looked at um the frames from the original book. Yeah. But these campaign frames that they put into their expansion material um definitely uh have way more content than the SRD campaign.

Richard 1:25:12

Well, I made a quip about it where it's like, this book is like a Xanathar's guide. Extra classes, extra spells, extra this, that. But like instead of listing things as optional GM mechanics, like Xanathar did, like optional downtime this, that, they put all the optional mechanics into the frames themselves. So, like, things like flight mechanics, less lethal mechanics, like these like mechanics chunks are written not just for this frame, but like as a here's a mechanic you can use for whatever you want to use it for. Right. And like, here's just how you would make like an adventure table kind of thing. But this frame, like I said, I feel like this would be a great campaign, but here's my hot take. A school setting campaign should really only last, I would say eight sessions or ten sessions. I think every session should be a semester, and you should go through your four semesters and graduate, and then level up at the end of each session. I think you run through it faster, because I do not think you need to do like I'm thinking about shows that like I'm inserting as touchstones, like The Owl House went four seasons. You don't really need six seasons of high school.

unknown 1:26:36

Right.

Richard 1:26:37

Looking at you, Glee, calling you out. So this frame strikes me as a mini-series more than it strike like, because once everyone's gone through their coming-of-age arc to become adults, you're done, you clap, you close the story. Right. Harry Potter did not need to be seven books. Harry Potter could have been four books to start in high school, it would have been fine. And if you want to make this seven books, you kind of have to start your characters younger, weirdly. Yeah. At least that's my hot take on that campaign frame.

Karl 1:27:11

Like I said, I do feel like that has a lot of uh potential to be for a story to complement the setting. Uh, but the setting itself is interesting regardless of the story you tell.

Richard 1:27:21

Yeah, I do think I would run into the problem, like I said, my millennial players would probably give me more pushback because it's like too far from the type of RPG-ing they want to do. Because this one's really close to being a different game engine. Yeah. Like when you say, hey, instead of DD, let's play Castle High, you're moving more into like Monster Hearts territory. But this would work great for drop ins and shops and things. Like, it would work real well for if I was had three GMs running it at the same like game shop and they all took place in the same school and had three different adventures going. Like, you could do like that'd be a great experience. Yeah. Not that we're here to rate them, but.

Fairy Tale Tyranny Reign Of The Were-Dragon

Richard 1:28:07

Then we have the reign of the were dragon. How do you feel about this one? It's tone and feel epic. I'm sick of the word epic. Seen the word epic too many times in the tone and feel category. Fairy tale-like, grim and hopeful? I'm gonna let you get away with fairy tale-like and grim. Don't know if I can give you hopeful and grim in the same tone and feel box. And note, I'm not reading this as me judging Darrington Thress or the book, as me as a GM, what I can actually take from these words and do something with.

Karl 1:28:44

Um, Reign of the Ware Dragon, just as a as a a brief overview of what I think about it, is that um you can use it as a basis for your campaign, but I do feel like as a setting itself, uh the story is gonna do more work than the campaign. Oh, yeah.

Richard 1:29:07

Like to keep like my Megro Zune at Tome and Field. Uh Castle High is the first one where I feel like Adventurous is actually correct. Right. Adventurous melodramatic, playful. That feels right for that.

Karl 1:29:23

I I do feel like uh epic fairy tale like and grim are like I am also a little bit the word epic is cheapened by how often they use it in their campaign frames. But I do kind of feel like that's that is a tone and feel that this rise of the wear or reign of the rare dragon is going forward.

Richard 1:29:43

I kind of disagree. So when you think of an epic, like the actual like definition of an epic An epic is a long story about a hero grand event or something very big and impressive. Literally old Greek epos. Epic story. The Odyssey is an epic. Blue People Avatar is an epic. Like an a Lord of the Rings is definitely an epic. Yeah, okay. This is inspired by 90s Disney movies. None of those are epics. Fair enough. Like, if we look at the touchstones of The Little Mermaid, the Black Cauldron, Conan the Barbarian, the Sword and the Sorcerer, the Wolfman, I none of those are epics. They're fairy tales. However, fairy tale and grim are perfect. Brothers Grim is wherever the Grim term comes from.

Karl 1:30:43

Like But hopeful uh is definitely like, hmm, I really feel like that's not.

Richard 1:30:52

Like, I might go heroic. Yes. But like, yeah, I can't call this one really an epic. Like, you can't call Beauty and the Beast an epic, and I mean that in like a as a GM running it. I think of what an epic camp. My campaign one was an epic, right? Like they ended up bringing four armies to fight five dragon gods in space. Curse of Strad was not an epic. It was Kill a Vampire. Uh my critical role attempt campaign, absolutely not an epic. Not even a campaign, really. It's just a bunch of random crap that happened. It was one more tangent away from being always sunny in Philadelphia. But like, for the campaigns I've run that feel like epics. They are definitely like Horde of the Dragon Queen feels like an epic. None of the anthologies really do. Except maybe like the Doom Vault. Being a 20 dungeon room, like an epic you see a bunch of horses march up on the pistons. In my opinion. And actual definitions. But in my opinion.

Karl 1:32:08

Well, yeah, in in general, I feel like this the story you tell is gonna do way more heavy lifting than the setting itself. The setting itself is just kind of generic, I think.

Richard 1:32:21

Because yeah, we get to the community questions. We get to the ancestry questions. This one talks about transformations as like part of the story, which is fair. Transformations are new in this book. That makes sense. Right. Give some specifics about druids, seraphs, guardians, etc. The player principles of like embrace your destiny. Destiny makes actually much more sense as a theme. Because that is recurring in Disney that everything from the Lion King, and by Disney I mean the things they've stolen. Let's be f ⁇ ing clear. Right, right. Right. Like they're like Black Cauldron, like, yeah, no, no, everything Disney stole was a folktale they stole. By stealing it. However, this idea of like embrace your destiny, destiny feels more appropriate here. Heal and uniting the realm, alright, fair enough. Make it personal can't be a bullet point in all your frames, or it goes in your core rulebook. I agree. However, the category is make it personal, it's very specific prompts in that category. So, like, when there's like what however subordinate is done to you to put you on your path. That's fair. That's reasonable. Right. Remember who the villain is. Who's maleficent? It's maleficent. The villain is maleficent. The villain is maleficent. Maybe Jafar if you want to add a spice to it. Note, I did not mean that in a racist way. But Disney absolutely stole from a thousand and one Arabian One Arabian Knights was that one?

Karl 1:34:05

I think it was a Thousand and One Arabian Knights.

Richard 1:34:09

And so did Wizards of the Coast, which is funny, because like oh, there's a whole thing about Wizards doing classes and sets that go into other cultures and people forgetting the first set they ever did was that. Anyway, so for the player principles and the GM principles, the Embrace Your Destiny feels like the one that's the most interesting and tying in very personally to the villain. Right. And then like the GM principles of like make tyranny over present, reveals crack in the regime, build to the ult uh inevitable confrontation. Like, yeah, yeah, if you've seen Disney movie, you're fine. Right. These are all fair and reasonable points. And then distinctions are usually like the here's some fun facts about the setting. I do find the build in building table funny. Yeah. Like the idea of the players less about the table, but more of a series of prompts to try and actually write the villain's backstory. That as a mechanic I enjoy in this frame. That one I will wholesale s steal a wholesale borrow slash steal for the frame I'm going to pitch at the end of this monologue. Building the campaign Big Bad together is a great strategy. That's good stuff. Right. Right. Then they're talking about the knights, the ascendant, da da da da da. Like, there's enough here you could definitely make a campaign out of it. I agree. And then like I just don't I don't really see what it's doing different than the Forgotten Realms. I think the big things it's doing different is the building the villain and the deliberately hitting fairy tale story beats. Yeah, okay. Like Forgotten Realms is you're a nobody in this fantasy world. This one is you're a somebody in this fantasy world. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. You get to say, My name is you kill my father and prepare to die. Like. The Princess Bride probably should have been a touchstone in this, honestly. Yeah? Even though the villain wasn't magical. The idea behind it of like this villain ruined your life, so you like went on an adventure and built a collaborate quadre of friends to overthrow the villain. Like, if you want to play Tangle, this is how you do it. But you get to be like a little more Roger than life than you normally would in the Forgotten Realms, is kind of my feeling on this one. Fair. Like I would really try and arc out heroes' journeys for people. Because they talk about like the Astromancer's revelations of you get secrets and the pre- you get destiny and your dad is a cloud talking about lions. Like, those are the kind of things I would definitely lean into. So I do think it's different. Compared to like what we're Witherwild we're doing right now. I do think this, if we had used this instead of Witherwild, this campaign would have been stronger. Like I think the character you had pitched to me would have probably done better in this setting.

Karl 1:37:38

Yeah, I I think you might be right about that too. Um but like I'm just I don't know. I I I personally the Witherwild and Castle High, I think are more interesting and engaging settings on their own. Uh but there is a lot of potential for very interesting storytelling in the rise the reign of the rare dragon. Yeah.

Gothic Horror Design Notes Done Right

Richard 1:38:03

And then Dark Heart of Andalora. I would just run this. The one that has Curse of Strahd as a touchstone in it. Touchstones, Bloodborne, Castlevania, Curse of Strahd. Gee, I wonder what this campaign's about. Supernatural, Vampire Hunter D, Helsing, The Witcher. So when I did run the Castlevania campaign, like when I ran Curse of Strahd, because they're the same thing. Right. That one is amazing when you plan it out and be like, alright, we're doing 12 sessions and you need to kill Dracula. Beautiful. Right. Almost no notes, honestly. This one's toned in things of gothic, grim, heroic, intriguing, monstrous, mysterious, romantic, spooky, thrilling. Get heroic out of here. Castlevania and Curse of Strahd are not heroic stories.

Karl 1:39:03

No, they are not.

Richard 1:39:04

I think it's actually really important for like this theme of story. Battle Not the Monsters lest you become one. So that's one of their themes. Battle Not with Monsters, or else you'll become a monster. Isn't heroic. Helsing is not heroic. Castlevania is not heroic. You're not ever playing a hero. You're playing an a bitter asshole who becomes a hero, and those are different. Right. Like, would you describe Sam and Dean Winchester as heroic? No, not particularly. Because they're usually spite-driven. Yeah. So that's kind of my little rant. I love ranting on the tone and feel part. But like. Most of it nails it, though. Monstrous, mysterious, spooky, thrilling, gothic. Gothic is doing a lot of work. Underline, capitalized, stamp that. But like, no, Geralt of Riv Geralt of Riviera. Geraldo. Uh, the off-brand cobalt that was pretending to be a witcher in one of my campaigns. Anyway. Is absolutely not heroic, specifically. You actually have to pay him. Right. However, that little rant aside. Yeah, this one's like. Straight up, I'm like, oh yeah, like we talk about the Tyrant Emperor. We talk about how it's like a volcano-driven Bavaria. Like, ah man, like, it's not even pretending to not be what it is, and I love it for it.

Karl 1:40:45

Yeah. And then obviously they include the section of transformations in this campaign pitch as well. In this campaign dream as well.

Richard 1:40:52

Absolutely. I kind of enjoy, like, even the ancestors are like, I'm a seraph of holy power. And they're like, you harbor a secret doubt about your faith, what is it? Yeah. Or it's like, I'm a ranger. Someone's face twisted in terror seared into your memory. Who isn't and why? I'm like, yeah, these prompts are like, hey, I'm good to be a lawful good cleric. No, you fucking ain't. Your display of power once converted a group of people to the church. What did you do? And who did you inspire? And I'm like, yeah, like, this is like clearly the fantasy this is running is very straight up. Right. I mean, be the hero as a player principle. Yet again, I think their wording is wrong. I think it's more be an active participant. Right. Because it talks about you can't rely on them to do the work, get your hands dirty. Yeah, tell them no, you have to be part of the adventure, isn't fair. Yeah. Hunt down darkness, including mortal and monster. That's fair. Embrace the unknown. Fair. Be proactive. There we go. Put your heads together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Portray a vibrant world twisted by shadow. Feed the fears, keep monsters mysterious. Show and tell, let players be correct, tempt the players with dark bargains. All good notes. I really like the GM principles on this one. Mm-hmm. Particularly the Let the Players Be Correct. As when we did the murder mystery one. I love the idea of them solving a mystery and changing the ending to be what they do.

Karl 1:42:37

I am almost sad that I didn't end up choosing the puppy as the as the culprit when we did that episode.

Richard 1:42:45

But like, conceptually being like, the janitor's the wear rabbit. I'm like, yeah, done. Like, 100%. But yeah. And the exciting incident is pretty much what you'd expect from here. Not to like go spend too long on these frames, but we do need to get into the building our own parts.

Karl 1:43:10

I mean, at this point, I was I was thinking that uh I mean maybe maybe we tease people too much, maybe we uh ramble too much about what we do is that's with us. But going through these campaign frames that are pre-established has been is helpful in helping people find campaign frames and uh inspiration. And perhaps we could do the custom campaign frame building on our next one.

Richard 1:43:33

We should probably do a little bit of a lightning round just to kind of brainstorm a bit. Because you're the recap, we'll finish the recap and just kind of yap about it for a bit. So Dark Hearts custom mechanics. How do you feel about campaign frame specific weapons?

Karl 1:43:52

Um I don't I think that makes the DM's life more difficult.

Richard 1:44:03

So I have some really specific thoughts about camp uh custom weapons and campaigns. Okay. So if I'm adapting an anime, like the One Piece demo I showed you, you kinda have to have custom weapons. The reason I say that is custom weapons are less obnoxious than custom mechanics. So if you want to, like, I don't know, say I was making a Ruby campaign frame. And I need to give people a scythe that's also a gun. It is a lot easier because of how weapons are designed in Daggerheart to be like, this uses two hands, it deals one DA plus four, its burden's two-handed, its features you can switch its range from close to long range. Once that's written on their sheet, you don't really need to know it. Hmm, fair. And I understand the idea that if you want to add in specific flavor things to your setting, this is a relatively non-obnoxious way to do it. Like them adding in the Castlevania whip in this setting. Or the wooden stake. I don't think they go far enough with some of these, though. If you're gonna put in custom weapons, you almost want to make them like a little more custom. Like, I'd make the wooden stake specifically say gains bonus damage equal to your tier to monsters. Like, I would straight up be like, here's a silver sword that works against spectral things, and here's an iron sword that works against physical things, right? Like, I would almost tailor them a little more. Because all of these are just fine in any session, except maybe the holy shotgun. I don't even know if I'd give players a holy shotgun in this campaign frame, honestly. I might not.

Karl 1:45:57

Um, like for for me, it's like, yeah, I wouldn't mind creating a custom weapon for a player. Uh but the idea that um someone might want one of these weapons, the custom design for a different campaign, and then they're like, oh yeah, I found I found it in this book. I don't know. The the more spread out uh the content is through the different campaign frames, and like the harder it becomes to find the I guess official content and when people ask for it, you know?

Richard 1:46:32

And the thing is, if we look at these frames as in, this is specifically what session zero is, is I read out all the things on the frames to my player, possibly even the things they don't know about, and include what their thoughts are, customizing it. The idea behind putting custom weapons is actually to prompt them to be like, hey, I'm letting you know there's a holy shotgun. If you tell them that, that is because you want someone to be a holy shotgun player. Right. So, like, for example, the blessed brass knuckles. You might go, yeah, some of the cust it's like this campaign has some extra weapons added to it. You can go with some blessed brass knuckles, a repeating crossbow, a wooden stake. That's more like to build vibe than anything. Right. So that's where I'm at is if you're trying to go outside your genre, custom weapons is the least obnoxious way to do it. Because custom domain cards would be a giant pain in the ass. I don't think this particular frame actually needed this at all. Cause I think this just being in the book under additional weapons was fine.

Karl 1:47:47

Right.

Richard 1:47:48

Call me old-fashioned, but like, I don't think the holy shotgun's what I'm going for here. Or really even the repeating crossbow. And the stake doesn't do anything special to vampires.

Karl 1:48:07

That's just bad.

Richard 1:48:11

And like, yeah, so that's kind of my takeaway is that these custom weapons don't quite go far enough to justify it. Weirdly enough, Beastfeast had a bunch of custom weapons that were like jankier, crappier weapons. Okay. So Beast Feast's custom weapons were a sharpened rake, a butcher axe, an iron skillet, a pitched fork, a cooking knife, a rolling pin, a fishing rod, a slingshot. Those ones I and like the starting magic weapons are like enchanted mobs, scissors, enchanted broomstick, exploding potions, kite, whisk. I think like those ones do a lot more to be like, oh, these are stupid, which help inspire your character. Mm-hmm. Because I'm like, yeah, in the setting you can use a barrel lid as a shield, I think is more impactful than A in this vampire setting when you can use this anti-vampire weapon. Yeah. Well, also, like I agree about that. Things I r Note, this is a frame I love, which am I like, I don't think this needs special weapons. I understand the desire to do it. But I kind of enjoy this idea that you prep the session by going, what is the monster? What does it want? Where can you find it? How can you defeat it? And like this one's like really handing players the formulation structure of how to actually like do this every week. And like this idea of the hunt being not every major foe needs a monster, but the structure of the hunt of arrival, investigation, escalation, confrontation, epilogue. Right. Like this would be easy to put out a hunts for. Yeah. And then. Yeah, so I found a lot of this like. How do they literally give an example of how you would build the session? I'm not gonna say no notes on this one, but this one does a lot right.

Hexcrawl Hope And Journey To Horizon

Richard 1:50:23

And then our last one is their most complex one, which is their journey to the horizon. After a thousand-year cataclysm. So, my first thought for this was, oh, it's Fall Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Right. Which is not on the list of things they said as an inspiration. But the game where you go around with your lantern repelling darkness and have to stop at magical trees to fill the lantern while trying to figure out how to end the miasma. There's a lot there. So, this one is epic and adventurous. It actually is those things.

Karl 1:51:02

Yeah, I agree.

Richard 1:51:04

The idea of going embarking across doing this at like them saying this is inspired by Dragon Prince Fallout. Fall Fantasy 7? Why Fall Fantasy 7? That's incorrect. Anyway. Zelda Breath of the Wild, kinda, kinda. War of the Rings, absolutely. So this one, how what were your thoughts on this one before I start yapping and going through it?

Karl 1:51:42

Well, so unfortunately I have been been a little bit busy, so I didn't actually get a chance to even really glance over this one. Um but this one is far more about the the journey than the actual destination, right?

Richard 1:51:59

Like it's Oh yeah, like it straight up has hex crawl mechanics.

Karl 1:52:06

This is another campaign frame that I do feel like uh the setting does a lot of work, uh, and the story that you tell will complement the setting. The setting like I I I think conceptually from what I'm seeing here, that it's like this is another great campaign setting where it gives you enough information to build your own campaign, uh, and your story will complement what the campaign is going for. You know. Oh yeah, like this one has some six story beats in it, like and it's like I kind of appreciate I can I kind of appreciate uh the um hex crawling mechanics, and like the the additional travel mechanics uh is something that uh 5th edition and 5.5 edition of DD is like they're basic the actual travel mechanics are basically non-existent, and I just like basically end up almost fast traveling people because there's not really much interesting to do with the travel mechanics that are actually in the in the rules, where this campaign frame has some interesting and meaningful exploration mechanics.

Richard 1:53:20

And they also have a time clock, too, of like their doom counters and things and the encroach like this has a lot to like in it, honestly. Mm-hmm. And it's one of those things where I'm like, if I actually want to do a level 1 to 10 campaign, and it's like there's three sessions between each level up or four sessions. This would definitely be the one to do it.

Karl 1:53:44

Yeah, I think so too.

Richard 1:53:45

Because literally, like, I I feel like every session would probably just be advanced through a hex or two. Mm-hmm. I wonder how much I'd metagame to my players for something like this. Part of me would almost like be super open with the random generation. Like, part of me likes to do things like, and I don't know if this is unique to me as a DM or not, but if there's something like a table of, let's just pick one of these tables here. Roll for the habitat in the area, I kinda like, hey, as you walk forward, roll a d20. And then I can, like, blame the table for the torment it causes them. Cause like, oh, good job, you rolled shadow blighted death lands. And as you enter in them, you're hit by extreme weather as you're hit by a s uh lithium storm. The cliffs fall off you. And every night a shadow blighted battlefield vomits forth on dead armies to fight each other. You have to sneak around, like. Man, this is some good stuff. But to kind of like loop to what the rich episode was originally was, and I'll try and keep this to a concise five minutes each, we won't do a random question this week.

Live Pitch Building A New Frame

Richard 1:55:01

Given what we've monologued about, I'm gonna pull up the different categories, and without thinking about it too much, I am gonna have you like pitch the basics of what your frame would be, just for the sake of conversation. Of what a frame could be. So. Um, give me a pitch. Just a paragraph opening pitch of what it could be. Doesn't have to be polished, doesn't have to be perfect.

Karl 1:55:29

Okay, so uh we'll say fifty years ago, the first gate appeared. After this appearance, roughly 10% of the global population developed a strange illness which became known as minor intolerance. While 1% of the population awakened superhuman abilities. In the midst of this chaos, dangerous creatures began pouring out of the gate. Due to the high cost of replacing traditional military gear, these awakened civilians soon became the only economically viable way to combat this threat.

Richard 1:55:55

Interesting.

Karl 1:55:57

They eventually drove these beasts back. I'm cutting you off.

Richard 1:56:00

I moved into overview territory.

Karl 1:56:03

Ah, okay.

Richard 1:56:04

So, totally So to like give us a gates happened, gave an illness, people awoke with abilities. The only economically viable way to survive in the world now is to go into these gates to collect things. There's some keywords I'll probably light loop back to later during this exercise. So tone and feel. You're allowed five words.

Karl 1:56:33

Well um I guess uh I'm hesitant to say noir, because noir takes itself a little bit too seriously. I mean I kinda wanted people to take it seriously, but kind of not at the same time. But noir. Let's take noir.

Richard 1:56:52

We can open that to negotiation later.

Karl 1:56:56

Supernatural investigations. Because Epic goes. Alright. Because you're yeah. Um there could be some elements of heist. Uh and uh I guess I don't know, I guess they're not really not necessarily tone and feel, but dungeon-based economy was the last one I put down there.

Richard 1:57:20

You know, I'd go like economical. Or like finan like I feel like economics is weirdly like a tone and feel, like while streaming financy, grounded, practical. Yeah. Kind of the things that come to mind. Because yeah, like for some of these tones and feels that have worked versus don't. Definitely it's like the more specific words help a lot. But like, there's definitely that level of like, what can you roleplay? Like the tone and feel for uh Weatherwild being adventurous, dynamic, epic, heroic, a lot of that didn't really work for that setting because there wasn't a whole lot there. But the tone and feel for Beast Beast, for example, is absurd, comedic, fun, creepy, lighthearted, silly. You're playing Delicious in the dungeon, yeah. It's great. Right, right. So, give me like two or three themes here. And I like to find that the blank versus blank themes work really well for me. Or the blank and blank themes.

Karl 1:58:30

Well, so um freedom versus accountability and uh progress versus security were the were the two kind of themes that that came to mind for what I was imagining.

Richard 1:58:45

I do enjoy freedom versus accountability. That's pretty good.

Karl 1:58:49

Well, and then like the progress versus security, um, one of the ideas for inciting incidents uh that I would have would be uh what sorts of technology uh have arisen, and then um how do the governmental bodies and the guilds and even just normal people respond to that technology and the dangers it poses and the advantages that it that it confers. Alright.

Richard 1:59:14

Because yeah, part of it's definitely like keeping these themes definitely like the one to two to three word themes are the ones that work strongest. Like to use the beast these uh uh beast beast themes, circle of life, friendship and loyalty, nature's bounty, overcoming fear, violence and peace. Violence and peace is an interesting one for something about killing things and eating them. But like circle of life, I think is really important on that one. So I do like this idea of like the accountability versus da da da is actually a pretty solid way to go about it, in my opinion. We'll skip the big overview, because it's time consuming. But are what are like four like two or three bullets, like things that are key terms you think would be important in this?

Karl 2:00:08

Uh I'm not dead center on mana intolerance, but that just seemed for for solo leveling as a touchstone. Let's do touchstones first.

Richard 2:00:18

My bad. Give me your five touchstones. Um I do enjoy though that uh uh Delicious and Dungeon 1, their beast beast, really only needed one touchstone.

Karl 2:00:34

Um the solo leveling is is the big one. Um Hunter Hunter was surprisingly applicable. Um I'm not a fan of the secret society in modern modern era. Um but Bleach also has a surprising amount of overlap with what I'm going for.

Richard 2:00:59

Yeah, like when we had this chat a bit off-screen, I feel like where I would go with it is I kind of if we're just going three, because some of these only have three touchstones. Although the newer ones seem to have more touchstones. I have feeling that it'd be solo leveling, hunter hunter, and darker than black. Yeah, okay. Darker than black, I don't know if you're familiar with the actual premise of Darker Than Black was. But the opening sentence was literally a new breed of covert agents known as contractors prowl the underworld after the heaven gates and hellgate open, giving them supernatural abilities.

Karl 2:01:40

That does sound like it would be pretty much exactly a a touchstone.

Richard 2:01:53

At the same time, people who possess various special abilities emerge, kept secret from the masses, these individuals known as contractors, abilities gained at the expense of their humanity, various nations around the world use them as spies and agents, vaulting in violent battles. The story fall each of them has a kind of like the Hunter Hunter, they have to pay a reminumination or feature after they use their abilities. That's the one I'd probably throw in as your third.

Karl 2:02:21

Yeah, that would make sense.

Richard 2:02:23

Doesn't quite have the portals, but like has the setting concept going on. I think so. And I think like a theme that was missing is this idea that normal people given extraordinary powers. Because I think a key point of that genre is you're just a dude who just gets these powers. So you didn't train as a wizard, specifically. That's kind of like the power fancy of the whole genre is you didn't work hard to get this power, you just kind of got it. What can you do with it? And even Hunter and Hunter to a certain extent's like, hey, here's the power you got. What clever and smart things can you do with it? Not that God didn't do push-ups later, but he also just kind of started with push-ups. And then, can you think of a non-anime touchdown? Because most of these try and have like a video game or something to mix it up a bit. Uh think of a non non-anime touchdown.

Karl 2:03:28

Or Mongwa, to be fair, or Mongwa, because well, I mean, so um a part of the whole point of this exercise for me is that I've I've read several of this style of story, uh, and the stories are not good. They're not not noteworthy. Uh, but there's elements of what's going on in the background that the story doesn't really adequately explore that I'm like, if you explored that, it would be interesting. And so then it's like, I don't know, I kind of have a hard time thinking about it.

Richard 2:04:08

Well, it's an interesting note for like the GM principles and player principles. This idea that like, how does that's kind of where you would put in a lot of the work in the touch in the principles, being like, what are the parts of the world outside of the characters that's worth exploring? What are these politics? What are like how has the world changed? Like, that's kind of like where you prompt your players into which directions you want them to explore in. So I do think a lot of what you put there, like, would go into the principles, this idea of like economic like the idea that it's like modern-day economics-themed adventuring. And this idea that you're just a dude, you now have a power, and you're in this setting, and you're not the main character. And I think that you're not the main character is important to how you're building this frame. Like, I think that'd be one of the themes is you are not the main character, just spelled out outright.

Karl 2:05:06

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that that is basically because, like I say, all of the the stories, the main characters that they follow are generally just like boring, one-dimensional.

Richard 2:05:16

We didn't get into Colossus of the Drylands, but its themes are Breaking Cycles, The Burden of Heroism, Faith vs. Doubt, Greed, and Ordinary People Accomplish the Extraordinary. Hmm. And that's the one that's their touchstones of Shadow of the Colossus, Red Red Redemption, Deadlands, and On the Shoulders of Colossus. And their tone and feel is awe-inspiring, dusty, eerie, gritty, larger than life, terrifying. Oh, look at that! Their tone and feel. I have no notes. Good job. Colossus of the Drylands.

Karl 2:05:47

Hmm. You know, uh Breath of the Wild doesn't isn't exactly like the the overworld theme, tone and tone and theme, it doesn't exactly match with what I'm going for, because I part of what I am going for is that, like say, the modern economics and and techno uh contemporary technology. Uh but uh the different dungeons hidden around the world that you can go and explore to look for treasure. Um I mean, I don't know. That's I guess that's kind of the only real parallel.

Richard 2:06:22

Yeah, I don't think I'd give you that one from like yeah. Well, part of that one is that they're shrines because the programmers are lazy, not because they're shrines. And what I mean by that is if they had the ability to make it that actually these shrines are physical buildings on the map that like you could go down a staircase into they would have done that. Like when they did the second Breath of the Wild, Breath of the Wild 2 Electric Boogaloo, they're like, no, no, we're gonna put more underground runes and things. I'm like, yeah, that felt more like a cop-out than like actual lore. I think I gave you the Persona analogy once, though. But like, I'm not sure how much that one fits, but that one does like blend more of the fantasy readle. But like it's definitely hard to think of a TV show that's like this. I don't know, sliders.

Karl 2:07:21

I mean, yeah, I I kind of. I mean, the only thing about sliders and uh for reading a more old school reference, Quantum Leap. Um the thing about those is that they can never go back to the original world.

Richard 2:07:36

Is it bad I nearly want to say Rick and Morty?

Karl 2:07:44

I mean, I I don't want to be that kind of uh goofy and satirical, but yeah, Rick and Morty is also uh would be has a lot has a lot of touching point touching points that I would actually like to incorporate. Hmm. But uh what's the what's the next section to go

Ancestries Money Guns And Session Questions

Karl 2:08:09

through?

Richard 2:08:09

So my next section, which is kind of an obnoxious one for your concept, and I'm curious how you'd handle it because I've been fighting this this one the whole time. It might not be the next one in sequence, but the next one I feel like bringing up. How would you handle ancestries?

Karl 2:08:25

Um so my my primary thought was that a um most most characters in the world would be human. Because that's it's set in sort of the real world, I guess. Um but uh firstly, uh humanity is quite uh like the custom ancestries where you just take different aspects of different ancestries, it's like humans are quite varied. And so it'd be like, yeah, you can just be a human with whatever traits you want, basically. Um but then secondly, uh there would also be a concept that not all of the creatures in the portals are evil. Uh, and so if you wanted to be a more exotic ancestry, you could be one of the portal people trying to uh transmigrate because they don't want to be in the portal anymore.

Richard 2:09:23

I mean, I know how I would have handled it for yours, which is different than how I'd handle it for mine, because I mentioned when I was working on like a warring states romance kind of frame, that I would go with uh build your own yokai kind of system. Right. I think for yours, what I'd probably do, because like you gave this plot point already, is I would do the when everyone awakened, their their ancestry changed based on something in their DNA and backstory. Like when the awakening happens, you woke up a frogman.

Karl 2:09:57

Yeah, I mean that is also definitely a very viable option.

Richard 2:10:00

But then it kind of puts you more into the My Hero Academia, the boys, super X-Men kind of direction. And I don't know if X-Men, like, because X-Men's theme is racism bad, homophobia bad, transphobia bad. Somehow people have missed that. I know people accuse X-Men of being woke, and I'm like, are you an idiot? That was the point. Right. But like, yeah, for me it'd be like, I'd even have it that, like, when they go in the portal, that's when their ancestry turns from human into what they are. Like, when they step in, they become a dwarf. Is probably how I would do it. Is your ancestor you look like a normal human until you activate your abilities, and in which moment at that time you become XYZ. Hmm. Yeah.

Karl 2:10:55

That would probably be a good way to go about it.

Richard 2:10:58

Man, I hate that one of your closest matches might actually be that terrible Will Smith movie Bright. Oh, I I hate watch that entire movie.

Karl 2:11:13

Again, uh a terrible story in a very potentially interesting setting.

Richard 2:11:18

Buddy cop. Like, man. The worst part of that, oh man. But like, there might be something in there tomorrow. Because I do enjoy taking like good eye concepts out of like the good out of the bad is always amusing to me. But like, you're not quite doing like a torchwood or doing a like fr uh fringe type thing of like you're not doing a Mandalorian with this, not really. No. And if you want to do a Mandalorian, you can get that Star Wars 5e Crosso for some reason. I hate it. Like part of me wants to be like as part of a focus of episode, like, since they're doing that, how would you do Star Wars and Daggerhard? And then I went, no, that's stupid, and it makes me mad. I should not do things that make me actively displeased.

Karl 2:12:18

Yeah, that is definitely true.

Richard 2:12:23

And it's not an Arnia. It specifically isn't an Arnia. Yeah. But I almost want to put sliders on. Like, I feel like that's closer to what it's going for. Good old sliders. Kinda! Yeah. But I digress. So to wrap this up, because I know like we're running out of recording time here. We've talked a bit about heritage and classes, like you can pretty much use whatever, because it's your fantasy setting. The principles and GM principles are more about like going back and forth between these worlds and how it's affected and trying to like grind ground it into things. Because you've mentioned like Jen Wu's backstory was one of the few good things about that as a character that he was raising money. So like loop through the distinctions, and we won't go too hard into like distinctions and inciting incidents. And we won't even touch custom mechanics, but I don't think there are any.

Karl 2:13:29

Like I mean, the only the only custom mechanics that I would add, and they only necessarily custom would be uh like countdowns for uh uh gate overflows, I guess.

Richard 2:13:41

I mean that would be like if we're inspired by the journey to the light camp campaign frame they had going. Tables of where the gate shows up, what level like rolling for random gate generation would probably go in there.

Karl 2:13:53

Right, and and then having like countdowns, like I say, for what happens if you if no one finds the gate or clears the gate within a certain amount of time. Uh would probably go in the custom mechanics section, but probably guns. I don't think there would be a whole lot. Probably guns, like probably guns. You're definitely allowed to have guns. It's just at scale.

Richard 2:14:13

Yeah, I think it's a good thing. Colossus of the Drylands had like a basic chunk of guns as like one of their mechanics. And yeah, there are tools of the trade bar for like they had revolver, rifle, shotgun, lasso, small revolver, dynamite. So you could pretty easily be like handgun, rifle, and basically just do that. But I think the big one I want to like wrap this up on is definitely for me. What are the session zero questions you would use for this? These questions to read it right out of the homework guide. These are new questions specific to the campaign frame that should be asked during session zero. These questions should both help situate your PCs in the setting and prompt groups to articulate how they want to address or handle important thematic or content elements of the campaign. For inspiration, look up both the session zero questions for the campaign frames in the court rulebook and in the background connection questions in each class's character guide.

Karl 2:15:24

One of the questions would be um how has uh the man in tolerance affected you or your family? Uh because the a significant portion of what people either pro-gate or anti-gait, but a lot of the anti-gait people would be people who were affected by the the man in tolerance. Uh, and that would inform their motivations and how they act, so that would be a good, like, how how has Who have you lost to Man and Tolerance? Kind of like the surf and sickness, I guess. Okay.

Richard 2:15:58

You know what's what I'd probably ask your players is how big is your bank account? I guess you need a custom mechanic for money, honestly. Like it would literally be I'd keep to handful of bags and chests, but it would switch to like how much those roughly convert to when left from the dungeon to US dollars.

Karl 2:16:14

Hmm. Uh but then another another one might be um uh who is your favorite famous awakener? I gotta think of a better term for them.

Richard 2:16:27

I think I could I would definitely ask them like, how poor are you?

Karl 2:16:32

Not how rich are like how poor are you? How has the mana intolerance affected affected your character? How rich or poor are you? Uh who is your favorite celebrity awakener? And then they would get to create a character that is out there doing what they're gonna show up from time to time.

Richard 2:16:54

Name a famous place in our world that we lost to a gate over film.

Karl 2:16:59

Mmm. Yeah, that's a good one too. I mean, I'm not exactly dead set on this exactly being the actual.

Richard 2:17:13

But this was largely for like the sake of now that we've yapped about it, how would we apply it?

Karl 2:17:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think those are pretty decent session zero questions.

What We Play Next And Listener Prompts

Richard 2:17:26

Alright, and with that, thank you everyone for tuning in. New campaign frames might miss might mysteriously show up on Ish.0 at some point from as a result of this episode. Please like, share, comment. And, you know, just fill our invoice box with, hey, I want this campaign frame, do it. And we probably will. We're pretty weak willed. If you just yell at us, uh, actually, I think that Sky High is the perfect frame, and I don't know why you're not running that campaign. We're weak to peer pressure, we'd probably do it. Like, if you just tell us to play a campaign, call it tell us we're fools and we should run this campaign frame and pick one. We probably will. Hmm. I am very weak willed. But I do want to like pick a frame and start making adventures for it, so I think I'll end this with the question that kind of prompted all of this to you, my co-host. After going through all five of the new frames and I think I worked in all of the first frames during your QA part at the end. What frame would you like to play as our next campaign from level one to ten? Hmm. And you don't have to say the correct name, you just have to throw me enough keywords that I can figure out which one you're talking about. Let's not be unreasonable here. Do you need me to list them?

Karl 2:18:42

Well, I mean, I like I said, I really like the uh the hex crawl mechanics. Uh so if if I were going to go with a pre-existing campaign frame, I would want to do the the uh the journey campaign.

Richard 2:18:56

Alright, and then if I were to make you run me a campaign, I would probably make you run. Get the exact words here. I think you'd do a great job GMing Colossus of the Drylands. I think giving you a wild, wild last kill giant monsters one would go really well for you. I think you'd do a good job. I also think you do a pretty good job at the Disney one, despite you being like, oh, this is kind of bland.

Karl 2:19:25

Well, I like I say, I I think the setting is isn't really doing a lot of work. It's it's more the lore that I find characters generate more interest. The lore that characters generate, characters are more invested in. You have to do a lot more work as a GM to get people invested in the actual lore of your campaign setting if it's not like drastically different from a generic fantasy setting.

Richard 2:19:49

Man, though, I'd have a field day making a 1 to 20 adventure in Journey in the Horizon. You know, I think I'd cheat a bit though. I'm pretty sure I'd actually only do like half the number of adventures and just let the random tables do the stuff between it. Like I'd probably write like I'd probably write 20 adventures and then be like, yeah, at the end of each every two adventures level up. But between each adventure, there should be two to three hex crawls. That's probably how I would do it, is like I'd put in key plot beats and make those adventures and then blend it with the features that are already there. But yeah, let us know what you think.

Romance Frame Tease And Sign Off

Richard 2:20:32

Thank you for tuning in. And they have Digital Only, a romanticy campaign frame coming out, which I am thrilled to discuss because I really want to know what if there's like an evil ex-girlfriend mechanic. Sorry, ex-partner, let's be inclusive. Because, like, I I'm gonna be honest, that's the one that has me the most excited to run, because it's the most unhinged. Like, this idea of being like, yeah. This is absolutely just a trashy romance novel that I'm running as a campaign, just feels like a unique kind of beautiful torture to inflict on my players. Yeah. That it does. And with that, thank you for tuning in. I don't know, eat a leafy green if you're not allergic. Okay, bye.

Karl 2:21:16

Bye.

Richard 2:21:18

Uh yeah, it would have been great to like actually build them in stream, and then I yapped for too long. That's not me.

Karl 2:21:25

I mean, it's okay. The the going through those existing campaign frames is also a valuable experience, especially for people who don't have and are not going to pirate the uh material we were going over.

Richard 2:21:38

Fair and reasonable.