Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Vox Machina Ep. 12 - Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Tips

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Join Matt Mercer as he walks aspiring GMs through some tips and tricks of the trade, then leads Dan Casey, Ify Nwadiwe, and Zac Eubanks through an entirely improvised one-shot!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the name your price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. So we're going to start here with a little overview of character creation. So for most RPGs, especially those in the fantasy realm, this will be a very familiar aspect, but there are many different game types that run different things, but usually the point goes you choose a race and you choose a class. The race defines your

your physical background, your family bloodline, and what attributes that adds to you. A class is essentially the job or the way you've lived your life going forward and what skills you've acquired because of it. So throughout the player's handbook, you can go ahead and turn through the first few pages. the first couple sections, you'll see there are certain races like the dwarf. Whom I love. Doors are awesome. Underrepresented. If everyone can turn to page 62. Exactly. It's nobody else happened. Technically, page 18. No, it's page 18. Doors are cool. They're sturdy. They're strong. They're a little brash.

They're, you know, if that's something you guys are thinking about as you're coming up with your character ideas, dwarves are fun for that reason. I'm going to breeze through these because you don't want you to spend 30 minutes on races. We have elves. Elves. You know Elves. Lord of the Rings. Elves are Cool. They have high elves, which are a little more haughty and well-learned. We have the forest delps, what is what they called? Or just think it's the basic. It's the idea, it's the older version. All right. We have wood elf, there we go, which are more of the Legolas style, you know, in the woods, hunting, being stealthy, and then you have the dark elves, which are the drow that are from actually the underdark where you guys have been fighting through it, though

you've not encountered any drow in the underdard. Half a drow. They're just blending in. Yeah, we haven't we counted half a drought? Like a stitch monster. Stisch monster. His monster was elving, not drowl. Oh, I thought it was a crowd. They're mostly bad. Yeah. Most of that.

Thank you. So there were also halflings, which you could say Hobbit, but I think the Dungeons' Dragon's version of halflings are a little more awesome, but kicking a little less. I just want to stay home and make little four members. We found what Lucas is. One of my favorite pictures in the book, by the way. Short.

The halfling on the mandolin? You got humans, which are cool and well-rounded, all across the board. You got dragon board, which have dragon bloodlines like Tiberius over here. A breath weapon, strong, charismatic. You have gnomes, which we have two gnomes in our campaign. They're the smallest of all the races. They're also probably the most nimble and the most naturally resistant against magic types.

Are they the shortest? They ought to be short tests. Short test. Yes, shorter than dwarves and halflings. You also have half elves, which we have quite a few of our campaign. Happened through some drunken evening between a human and an elf. Sick. Get a little bit of both sides.

Then you have the half-ork, which is half-human half-orke, generally a much larger, stronger, quicker to anger, ready for battle type. And then you have the Teaflings who are humanoid, but have somewhere in their previous bloodline some contact with demonic forces that left them with some essence of the hells in their bloodlines. Like horns, tails, yellow eyes.

I think Nightcrawler from X-Men, that's kind of what a teafling would look like, possibly the horns. So those are the races. So if you have some ideas, keep that back of your mind, write down it on your sheet, what you think would be a cool race. I think a new one is the gin.

Like there's like a gin race. Like there's like an air, a water, and a fire, an earth. Like an evil genie? Yeah, it's cool. Like the new, the new ad- awesome genie. Right, right.

And of course, the gyns. Those have the Goliats, which are half giants. We're not going to be born about tonight, because those are in the new Elemental Evil edition. That's what Grog is. They're a big, strong guys.

So keep in mind a race you want to play, which is cool. Classes we got. So we got Barbarian. Grog is a great example of Barbarian. Big, hardy warrior types that shun armor for just pure aggression and anger. They use rage as a means of destroying their foes, upping their abilities in combat, and preventing mental effects magically affecting them.

We have bards. Bards are vastly skilled across the board. They have skills of all types. Even things they don't know very well, they know a little bit of everything, kind of a jack-of-all-trades. They have some minor spell casting. They also can inspire other people with songs, speech, and help them. put them out with certain skill checks. Bard's pretty cool.

We got clerics, your healers. But you say healer. Like, I don't want to be a healer. Clerics also have access to really powerful divine magic. So while people may have to be, oh, clerics are you dumb you healed the party. They can also call down divine judgment, which is great. Also having a healer is really nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice being a healer. Let's a second. The hell, dude. We should have just worn the same shirt. We don't feel like you have to.

This is a one shot, you guys are gonna every one. We got druids, which do- All right, what could happen. Druids? I won't feel guilty about this one. Thanks, man. Hey, come on. First time in the game, done.

I take the physical challenge. Physical challenge, physical challenge. Druids also have some healing capabilities, they also have more nature-based magics. They're cool and they control nature. And can turn into beasts and creatures like that. Giant scorpions. Indeed.

We have fighters, fighters are just straight up, fighters, imagine what a fighter is. That's a fighter. They can use all armor and all weapons. They can generally get more attacks than other classes. They're generally like the marshal, the generals, the warriors, the pit fighters. They're just more rough and tumble,

let's just damage each other. We've got monks, monks crazy fast, punch and do awesome damage with their bare fists. They can avoid things, they can do multiple hits per round. They can use key points to inflict different types of attacks. Monks are basically if you want to be it-maned in the middle of the D&D campaign, pick a monk. And I believe the monk and sorcerer

are the only ones that have the point system. Yeah. You have paladins, bastion of good and right in the world. Paladins stand for law and wonder. And if anyone proves themselves evil, they will be destroyed and smited by the divine energies of their god. So they're generally pretty pious.

They fight for good. They fight for the underdog. They can, like a, just like that perk up there. Yeah. They can, they have good fighting abilities. They can wear and use most armor and weapons, but they also get a little bit of divine cleric-based magic and they can heal with the touch.

Total boy scouts. Yeah. Total boy scouts. We got Rangers, which is what Laura's character, Max Sally is. They have good either two weapon or arranged combat. They can pick a companion animal if they want to. It's how Trinket came about.

You know, definitely the Legolas of Lord of the Rings type. Arrow, arrow, everything's getting arrows, arrow. We got rogues, which is what Liam plays in our game. Rogues are all about stealth, stabbing in the back, finding weak points in their enemies and doing serious damage with precision strikes by distracting their enemies and finding where their weak points are. They generally don't have a lot of hit points or defenses, but if they can get in there sneakly, they'll do some serious damage. Then we got Sorcerer, which Tiberius is, which is a magical caster, arcane-based, whereas

a wizard is more of like the classic wizard. You see with giant spellbooks, load, and you know, Harry Potter style classes and that kind of learned magical ability. Sorcerers have it innately in their blood from their bloodline somehow, and their casting ability is kind of like an improvised thing they just learned and are good at. So imagine more of a less learned, less controlled wizard that mostly understands some magic naturally. Whereas the wizard is the well-learned spellbook type, more studious, have a larger breadth of spells to pick from. But the sorcerers a little more improvised and can use points to instill power with it. Last for not least, we got a warlock.

Warlocks are magical practitioners who draw their magic from making a pact with some otherworldly entity. It can be like demons or the nine hells, and they draw more hellfire and infernal type magic. They can make a pact with dark fay, which are basically like creepy Oberon-style, you know, fairy elf people from Mid-Summer Night's Dream, or the great old ones, like Cthuloo. Hi, Cthuloo, give me magic. What could possibly go wrong? go wrong. Those are the warlocks. So those are primarily your classes you get to pick. You choose a race and you choose a class. You guys have some ideas yet of what you might want to play tonight? Oh most definitely. Oh yeah. 100% but what do you want to play?

Dan what do you want to play? I'm going to be a dwarf and rogue. Ooh. Ooh. Oh, Rundle-tumpler. Not the block. All right, fantastic. How about you Zay? I am the snuggle lord. I am a warlock teafling and I am a warlocked. And I have a They derive my powers from all holy overlord of geek and sundry. Okay. The evil overlord. That would fall under infernal. Just feeling really metal.

I'm going to say that most definitively falls under the fiend pact. So you're going to go, Fee. And then what'd you go, Effie? I'm going to be off guard firefords. Fighter, dwarf, two-handed swordsmen, cut your face off, take your money. AKA true neutral. Oh. This is going to be a very fun short game.

We got this. Never made it out of that first tablet. Oh man, you guys. I set the place on fire. Wait, we're not there yet. We're not there yet. Hold it back, hold it back. Cool.

So for each of you guys, let's go ahead and roll out some stats for you. So what you do, to decide what you're attributes are for your characters, that basically says how strong they are, how hardy their physicality is, how fast they are. And you have strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. Those are the six stats. So for you guys, if you want to go ahead and take there are different ways rolling stats. People do a point buy system where you start with a certain base stat and you can buy based on points. For this, we're going to use my favorite system to do,

which is you roll 4D6. Oh, my favorite. To remain as desired. So I guess for those of you haven't seen how the dice work, there different dice values in the game. You have a D4, which is a four-sided dice. So it's a little caltrop, painful to step on. You got a D6, your typical six out of dice. D8, which is a little more pointing. That's an eight cider. You got a ten cider, which comes in two varieties. Regular or additional numbers. This is if you're doing percentage rolls, you know what the percentile dice numbers are. Pardon me.

A D12, which is only really used if you're a barbarian apparently. It's the saddest and the red-haired stepchild of D&D. D12. And oh yeah, that's right, you made us use it too. It's great. I'm happy. It gets more love. It needs more love.

D12 is more love. And the D20, which is the most to use dice in the game. Most all decisions are based on a 20 set of dice. We'll get into that in a little bit. So for the statistics, I need you guys to go ahead and take four D6, so four six set of dice. We'll start. We want to start?

I have those four right up front. Right up front. There you are. You roll them, drop the lowest number. Yatsy. Starting with a seven, awesome. So you can decide where you want to put your seven in any of those stats.

If your stats are super crappy, we'll roll again. No, we won't. Of course. No, not tonight, never mind. Yeah. But normally if your stats are super crappy. Play it where it lies. Yeah.

You can put wherever you want to. What's that for? 10 is an average score. An average person has a 10. Whatever set you'll see. C minus. What we generally do is roll all six. and then write them down, and then decide where you want to.

Which got over there, have you got? Eight. That's pretty good. 15 and 8. What you got, Dad. All right. Sorry, that counts is a six. Big 13, big 13 of the house.

Oh, that was, sorry. Big one, three. And then 16. Was that. All right. Apparently this was from a wild western, and they have a bull's head of six instead of, there you go.

There you go. All right. A little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little. A little bit of a 13 there. 13. All right. This is nothing. Okay.

We'll save for the purposes of this. We'll give you guys each if you want to. You'll go to. Roll five times. Five times, okay. All right, well. Okay, so roll five times, and then everyone,

you've been, on finally, this game. 17. There you go. All right, and then we choose where you go. And then you roll five times, you have five numbers, then take it 16. You can put it anywhere you want.

Well, I think you could say. Thank you for this. That way if anyone just rolls crappy, you don't want to do it too bad. Like, Dan. get that seven for a bit of character. Exactly. Dude, lower stats are some of my favorites.

Like, honestly, having something lower than 10, at least one is great. That's how Groghats' is intelligence to six, Tveris, of wisdom of four. Like, those are great defining characteristics of a character. Yeah, I generally have a charisma of eight, but I have that circlet, which is boosted me.

Boosted you to average from below. Everyone's going to play this game the way they want to, but I think if you're playing it for, like, the numbers and maxing out your numbers, and then, like, how can I deal the most damage when you're picking your skills, it's less fun. Like choose the things that are, that draw you to it as a character or personality or be really weak with powerful magic or be totally muscle-bound like grog with it and be an idiot.

That's why Typerius is so bumbly and sometimes and really does no shit. Because you're super into math, which I'm not. It's the first time out in the world. But go math. Yeah. Go math. That's your bag. Yeah.

Cool. So once you have your stats arranged from that point, you can start going to your characters. And we're going to go ahead and just make level two characters, relatively simple, for this first game. If you look to where your classes are, it'll have a hit point value as well. You'll be able to roll how many hit points you have. Everyone starts with at level one, max hit point value.

And I think, let's see, for the road. We have a D8. So you start at eight hit points. Oh boy. You're going to roll again. You roll one D8 to add to that for level two. Let me have to explain some of things. Sol this mystery. Okay.

So what is this? Two. Two, all right. A hot 10, double digits don't like to brag. Now, what's your constitution? Oh, that will, I haven't assigned them yet. Okay. But because I wanted to, you know, as a dwarf,

I get plus two to my constitution. True, exactly. Okay. Yeah, you get certain racial stat bonuses, depending on what race you choose. So what we'll do is, we'll do a couple of choosing things, and then I'll have you guys go over to help them with actually building the minutiae of the characters

while I go over the dungeon master section. Okay. Cool, cool. You had to bring race into it. I do. I know. That's the beat. Cool.

So just get the hit point roll out of the way too for you, Zach. Cool. As a warlock, you are rolling. A D8 as well. So you start with eight and then add this to it. Eight. Cool. 16. Nice.

You got a D10. 10. 10, and then I'm going to add. Five. 15 on you. Warlock has the most hit points. We'll see where everyone's constitution lies in a bit. So, stats, 10 is average, and then every two above a 10 creates a modifier.

So like at 12, that stat has a plus one modifier. At 14, it's a plus 2. At 16, it's a plus 3, 18, a plus 4, and so on. And what that modifier is, is it's the bonus you get to any ability or attempt you make towards something that falls under that stats category. Like you're trying to break through a door, you'd roll a D20 and add your strength. You know?

Or if you're trying to, like a lot of the reflex saving or the dexterity saving throws, based off your dexterity, you would roll D20 and add what your modifier to be for your dexterity. So those modifiers, based on your stat, are what affect your D20 rolls for most everything you do in the game.

Let's see. So those are, the stats. We'll get to skills. here in a moment, we guys will go over the specifics of that with them. But everyone should be at a proficiency bonus of plus two. You should see at the top left of your sheet. This is a proficiency bonus above your stats. Put a plus two in there.

Now under each class in your section, it'll have a section for skills. It'll say which skills you're proficient in under proficiencies. And I'll have you choose a few. What you do is in the character sheet you have these nice little bubbles here that you get to fill in next to those skills. which one's your proficient in. So you can go ahead and choose those, fill them in. Let's see. I think for now, if you guys want to go over

and help them get the classes a little underway of getting the minutia of that building process, I'm gonna jump into the next section. Cool. Oh yeah, let's do this. All right, so you guys, be free to go over there and help them. Okay.

You're gonna chat while we... Yep. Right. So keep a little quiet, we're gonna turn those mics down over there. We're going to keep on mind, I'm going to go over more of the actual dungeon basket. Who wants to pick who for their coach? I need all the help in the world.

Do you have like individual coaches? Who wants to be really disappointed at the end of the night? Me, me, me. Okay, help me. Which one do you is a castor with you? All righty, so let's move on to the next section here. Welcome to the role of a dungeon master or game master in this. So there are a number of things that you are required to be

when it comes to dungeon mastering. Largely, your goal is to be a fair judge. You take all the actions and the activities and the intent and the phrases that the players do, and you judge whether or not it was a good attempt or a bad attempt and modify a difficulty based on it. Basically, for most things that are actively a challenge in the game, you as the dungeon master decide

how difficult it is given the circumstance. It's a really, really weak door someone's trying to kick through, like the door's been dilapidated and rotting, you might say it's pretty easy. So you give it like a score of seven to 10 is a difficulty. And then whoever's trying to break it, it has to roll equal to or higher than that number.

If it's an iron reinforced door, that's gonna be a much higher number. So a lot of what you're doing is you're judging how difficult a challenge currently is versus what a player is trying to do. The player rolls and adds their modifiers, you decide how difficult it is in the back of your head, you can tell them if you want to, or you can keep it in your head,

and then roll off and see if it succeeds or not. And then based on if it succeeds or not, you tell the players what the consequences are of the circumstance. Really low roles can make for some hilarious botches. Really awesome roles can make for some great heroic moments. So you want to judge that aspect a lot. That's a lot of what your job is as a dungeon master.

You're also to rationalize the world around there. So, if we can keep the volume down just a little bit, guys. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. So, rationalizing the world around them. Now what I say about that is when they encounter NPCs, which is a non-player character, anyone that's not controlled by the players

and they have a conversation where they do something in front of them, that non-player character is gonna have a reaction. So you as the Dungeon Master or Game Master, you decide based on what they've done or what they've said, the personality of the character that you're playing, how they would react to that circumstance, favorably, unfavorably.

And so a lot of your experience is Dungeon Master is rationalizing that relationship back and forth. If they're really charismatic character that reads the NPC well and kind of sees that, they dress well, maybe they like a lot of money. And so they open the conversation about money and how they can be paid, that's gonna be a very favorable reaction. So if they're trying to convince the NPC to do something,

you might consider a relatively relatively low difficulty. If it's a progressive conversation and the player keeps bungling their words or rolling poorly throughout the conversation, that difficulty might get higher and higher by the end of the conversation for them to finally convince them to do something. So you're constantly gauging how well they're doing in a social encounter versus how easy it is for the NPC to believe what they're saying. Also you'll find challenges that are conflicting or versus where the player rolls versus an NPC.

example of that would be someone trying to deceive somebody to lie to somebody versus their insight and so what you do is the player if they're trying to lie to an NPC they'd go ahead and roll add their deception skill and then me as the dungeon master or you as the dungeon master would roll a D20 add that NPC's insight skill and if you haven't decided one you can make one up on the spot based on how insight-cle you think that NPC might be and compare the two if they lose they probably believe the player if they win they don't and it's your decision whether or not they want to show that card or go along with it secretly

knowing that they were lying and then hit up bite them in the ass later on. So you want to be a fair judge and rationalize the world around them and how NPCs react to what they're doing. One of the biggest aspects of being a game master or dungeon master, in my opinion, is understanding that you're here to tell the story and you're here to allow the players to be heroes. The reason you play this game is you want that heroic journey. And there are many people that enjoy games that are very versus, very conflicting, like Dungeon Master versus players,

trying to kill them, they're trying to survive. And that's totally fine too. Just make sure up front, you and the players discuss what kind of game you wanna play. Nothing's worse than having a player, sign on board, make characters, get a few sessions in and realize that they're now locked into a campaign that is very aggressive and very fight to survive

versus what they wanted was a very plain, happy, you know, fantasy experience. So make sure that you're very open with your players in the get-go, what kind of campaign you want to run. In my opinion, it's the most fulfilling if it's a collaborative experience, where you provide challenges, you provide difficulty, you provide high stakes, and there is that threat of death,

but you never want the players to feel like you're working against them. You want to be kind of an impartial judge and be firm but fair. Which is why it's so scary sometimes when they get close to a TPK, because I set it up a certain way, they played a certain way, and you let the dice fall as it does, or some cases it works in their favor. Like a longstanding boss fight prepared a lot,

but they happen to roll away well on and kill your beholder. Totally fine. Good for them. Who knows what's coming next? So present challenges, present difficulty, but never really with the intent to make the players feel like they're unfairly being beaten down and you're just trying to kill them off of some power-hungry

spree. Because it just generally ends negatively and badly. Also, in that same vein, you want to reward good thinking, guile, and good in character actions and role play. and punish reckless against character behavior. Good example was Pike as a cleric. Early in the game, she was, you know, beginning to be a little cruel.

And, you know, while she is a war cleric and combat in battle is not unfamiliar to her, cruelty was, and unnecessary cruelty began to fall into a negative point of favor with her deity, Sarenre, causing the holy symbol to begin to crack, and we're kind of seeing where that's going to play out down the road. Conversely, if someone does something really cool in character,

something that really kind of changes the dynamic, or has everyone else at the table going like, whoa, that's really great. And maybe you want to reward them with an inspiration dice, which is, if you've seen the inspiration mechanics, you can lend inspiration dice to players, which allows them to give a bonus to one of the roles they make. Our barred Scanlan can give those out as an ability.

But use the DM can also give those out if someone does something really cool. And if someone does something really risky, but really crazy dynamic, even if it seems near possible, let them try. Let the players try things that are crazy. They might have a really low chance of working, and they'll fail spectacularly.

And those will still make for great stories and great memories in that game. So let the players be heroes, present them with challenges, reward them for good in character decisions, and trying to track them from making out of character decisions that take and rob the fun from the other players as well. Everyone can play as they want to. And if you're running an evil campaign

or you have an evil character in a game that's starting to undermine their own. rest of the party, that can be interesting as long as all the players understand and are down with that type of experience. Once again, that's the conversation you have at the beginning about what everyone's trying to get out of the game. Then another job of the DM, and one of the other larger jobs is you build the world. You build the world, you help the players tell the story and you work together to find where the story is going from there. I'll get into more detail that shortly. But you, this is your tale.

You can either buy an existing module, which has a pre-built world, and you can customize it however you feel. You can play it stringently as to how the module is built. You can expand upon it, or you can do what I do with this, and just build everything from scratch and see where it goes.

It's a lot of work, and the DM is, it does have a lot more time they have to put into the game, but it's, in my opinion, one of the more fulfilling experiences you can have as a gamer, because you get to watch all these people play in your sandbox and build their own sandcastles, and it's kind of exciting to watch them flourish in your own creative space and play off of you.

So while I do complain occasionally, I don't get a chance to play too often. The experience I have watching other people, find these moments, they, you know, it's, to me, it's fascinating and very rewarding. So, I know it's a lot of front loading on this, but just trying to explain to you the gistice. So as a dungeon master, you want to be a fair judge,

You want to rationalize the world around them. Want to try and make sure the players have the opportunity to be heroes and have those heroic moments. Reward them for doing good, cool things, trying to track them from ruining other people's fun or doing things that are out of character and build a world for them to play in. So in these books, in an RPG book,

there are many rules about how to do combat, how to do social interactions, and you can read up on that. You can take a look at what's in there and understand, you can play these by the book, completely as they are inside. It's a great rule system, it works really well. But everything in here and all these books are guidelines. Anything can be changed, anything can be altered, anything can be customized to how you want it to be.

If you don't like how movement or actions work in the game, you can change it, however you see fit. And just notify the players, that's the case, of course. Otherwise they might feel a little, you know, take advantage of if they didn't understand the changes you made, but you can change and alter anything you want in the game. It's just guidelines for you to play off of. I know I've home brood a few things and occasionally aspects of being used to Pathfinder bleed over as well. But you just take it as it comes. The bottom line is as a dungeon master, as a game master,

it's your world and your word is law. People can't really argue with you unless it's a rules question that you didn't clarify before, in which case you kind of have to go in the favor of the player if it's something you didn't clarify. But for the most part, you play the part of the overall god of this world, and the players also have to respect that what you say goes. That's kind of that weird dynamic between the players and the DM. It's kind it's a respect mechanic. You don't want the players to lose respect for you because then they stop, well, partially enjoying it, but also they start feeling that antagonistic relationship, which can be a little stressful for both points.

So, customize the roles as you see fit. We home-brewed Percy's Gunslinger class over from Pathfinder because we just, when we converted it over, there was no equivalent. And so he made something up. And we're trying it out. It's work in progress. It's by no means perfect, but it seems to be doing okay. And it keeps it fun for him without completely changing the dynamic of the character he already created.

I know they'll probably release a Gunslinger equivalent in the future or something, and it might be vastly different from what he has. But we're gonna stick with this because it's what he's used to, and it's what he's built his character's personality and combat around. So yeah, just keep that mind. The next bit, and this is kind of a big suggestion point for a lot of you guys.

A large part of the DM's time has spent world building. I say world building, it's creating all the little details and the aspects of the world you want the players to play in. There are parts of that like creating a society, building towns and villages, designing dungeons and encounters, and all that crazy stuff all comes together into that world that you're creating. Shh, shh, shh.

I'll keep everything down a little bit. But you want to start somewhere, and it seems very daunting as a dungeon master, especially a new one to say, how do I, how do I create all this? How do I, where do I start? And that's a difficult question. Sometimes for your first couple games,

it doesn't hurt to look at a module. Go out and pick up one of the existing Dunnies and Dragons adventure books that outlines for you how a city would be built, how NPCs would be built, and how they would play out and respond to certain circumstances. It's a good way to train yourself to see how that process would look when it's finished. So if you decide to create your own campaign

or customize aspects, you know where to build off of. If you're building your own world, I'd recommend starting with a small society, a small village or a small town. You're like, okay, I'm gonna build a small town. Where's this town gonna be? What's the topography? Okay, it can be like the middle of a forest village,

I mean more natural base kind of farmer society. Or it can be your archetypical urban environment, the very thriving trade society. A merchantile run people. It could be a port town that sees a lot of trade, but also has that kind of travel aspect. It's a mixing pot of cultures. Or it could be just a small farm town

that's constantly under siege. But you want to start with some bastion of civilization. Some place where the players can meet other characters, find adventure, find quests, and find conflict. So you decide, okay, where do you want this small town to be? As an example, we'll say this is, no, we'll use the first town they started in the campaign. Stillben, still been I built out.

as a swamp town. It is a port town, but it's built in this clutch center portion of a large swamp to the far east of that continent. So you're like, okay, it's a swamp town. How big is it? You think about it, like how many people do you think live there? Let's say maybe 600 people. It's not a huge town. It's not very happy living conditions because it's very humid there. The swamp air itself is not very enjoyable to be around, so it doesn't have a huge population. But those that do live there consistently, they make a good living, because they can live through this whole horrible living

swamp experience and can make use of the train that comes through. So like, I have about 600 people or so. Then you start breaking down into what factions there might be in that city. Is there a thieves guild or an element of shadow in the town? Is there a merchant guild? Is there a builder's guild? Is there a sailors' guild?

Think of what type of work would be available in this town. And you start building factions based on that. When you have a faction, then you can start fleshing out NPCs or non-player characters that fit in that faction. Is there a Thieves Guild? How many people in the Thieves Guild? Would it have a leader? You don't have to worry about fleshing out every single member of the Thieves Guild, but consider like two or three main NPCs that might be part of that Thieves Guild. So you can say, all right, one of them will be, we'll say, a female Tiefling who's good with, you know, who's good with with longsorts.

She's training to longswords. Like, all right, cool. So you can just write up her name. Come up with a random name. You can look up online for a random NPC name generators. Write down her name. We'll say for this, she's taking her virtue name of Edge. We'll call her Edge.

So Edge, it's a female Teefling leader of the Thieves Guild. Now Edge, what about her, aside from being good with Longswords, dynamic aspect of her personality. Well, is she ornery? Is she very sly and charismatic? Is she the kind of person that lets everyone else do the dirty work and just stays in the shadows? Or does she like to be kind of the face man of the thieves' guilt?

Can I just decide some sort of a personality aspect to her? Those are many other types. You can go ahead and say, all right, we'll say she's charismatic, as some teethlings get a bonus in charisma. So she likes to be kind of the speaking mouth of the thief. So you'll say she's charismatic, she's well-spoken, and she does well in social environments.

A few quick notes about her personality, just remind you later on if she pops up and how she would play out. So you're charismatic. Then you think, and this is one thing that I think every NPC you should write down some aspect of. What do they want, and what do they fear? You can make a shit ton of really simple NPCs

with just the information of their name, what race and class they are, what they want and what they fear. And that's all you really need to branch out any conversation or encounter they go through. So for Edge, what does Edge want? Edge wants respect and money. As the head of the .

So, respect and money. As the head of the Thieves Guild, those are the two things that guide her. Yes. We'll get to that when you finish all the rest of this stuff. Oh, we're doing backgrounds now. Well, you can do backgrounds on your way then. We'll go through, it's fine.

Yeah, so do it. Do it the background. It's fine. So, she wants respect and money. What does she fear? She fears being exposed to the masses for her demonic blood, knowing that this is a suspicious town. You can go that route.

Or you could say she fears being discovered by her long-estranged demonic father. Or you could say that she fears being alone. And she surrounds herself by thieves and folk that fear her, because it allows herself to feel like she's in control of an aspect of her life. These are all different possible fears you can go with.

I'm gonna say she fears being found by her demonic father. And so those notes there, say she's a female teafling, she's a rogue with longsorts, she seeks money and respect, she fears being discovered by her demonic fault. These are all you need to now play that character, and you just put those notes aside. And if the players ever find their way in that town

asking around and discovering where a thieves guild might be, or to finding where they can find a fence to sell stolen goods to, or to find information about the CD underbelly of the nearby town of Stillben in this swamp, they might find different people willing to give them information depending on how their social roles are. If they're persuading well, or if persuasion doesn't work, you can intimidate the information out of somebody in which they scare someone enough to eventually give up a name,

and they'll say, Edge is the one you want to talk to. When they ask around and start finding more information about Edge, they could decide to infiltrate the Thieves Guild and find her personal. That might be a little aggressive, and you consider if a person breaks into a thieves guild, the Thieves Guild will take that as a sign of aggression and will probably meet them with battle.

If they instead try and find a member of the Thieves Guild and parlay with them, they could persuade them to speak to Edge on their behalf, in which case they might actually have the opportunity of speaking with her one-to-one and in not quite as aggressive circumstance. It can go any which way, and that's kind of the interesting part of being a dungeon master

You never know what the players are going to do. You set up these characters, you set up this world, and you kind of let them play, and all you're doing is reacting to everything they do, rationalizing how the world would react to what they're doing. So let's say the players are like, okay, they asked around, they found somebody who did some work with the Thieves Guild,

they intimidated some information out of them about Edge. You then find somebody you think may be associated with the Thieves Guild, and you pay them a lot of money and persuade them to go ahead and speak to Edge on their behalf, asking that she would meet with you at this inn at this time. The party then goes to that in-room and waits for a while. Over a short period of time, it seems like she's not going to show up.

Based on how you think she would react to that experience, I'd say she's curious enough that someone sought her out that she would want to hear what they have to say, because there might be money in it. Let's say the party has gained some renown in the local village, perhaps she wants to align herself with these upcoming adventurers. There's always money to be gained there. So you have her knock on the door,

the door as the party enters the door there's nobody there but at that same moment they hear the sliding of glass turn around notice that she slipped into the back window and is now leaning against the back wall with her arms crossed waiting expectantly for them to start the conversation since they so openly sought her existence so now they're in a conversation with Edge you can decide how to play their personality if you wanted to be as charismatic as you said before she would bow deeply you could say that she was happy to introduce herself while hearing some things about the party,

she's eager to understand what it is they might have to do with her. Let the party explain now what it is that they want from her. Then you decide, does it fall within the respect and money she wants? She could tell them, I'll help you with this circumstance as long as you pay me this much. Or conversely, I'll be with this as long as you can talk to so-and-so in the town and get them to drop this bounty on my head.

You know, you think of what things would fall into, her wants and needs the party could do for her, and in turn can help them. However, if they've talked around the town, they may notice that she has demonic lineage, and they might bring it up in conversation and see her reaction. She might be very good at hiding that aspect.

She might be able to say, oh, yes, I'm a T-fling indeed, but that is not of my own doing. The players can then go, huh, she seems uncomfortable. I'm going to roll an insight check on this. Then roll an insight check. They roll a D-20, adding the their insight skill. The DM then, you privately would go ahead and roll a deception

role, or persuasion role, depending on what you thought was the circumstance for that, versus their role, and let them know what they read off of her awkwardness. If they were really low, she just seems put off by the fact that you've never seen a teafling. If they roll really well, you could tell them that at the notion of teafling and demonic blood, she fidgets and looks over her shoulder, seemingly like she's afraid something's following her.

Then the party can press her in that regard. and begin to say things like, well, if you aren't going to help us, we have a warlock friend who does dealings with the infernal, and we know your name now. If there's someone chasing you, you know, we can call them on you unless you help us. Now it becomes, as opposed to a persuasion, it becomes an intimidation-based experience. And if they can manage to convince her to help out of sheer intimidation and fearing for what she doesn't want to happen,

she becomes an ally, although a much more tenuous relationship. So that's an NPC that I just made up right now and fleshed out. But really the basis you need for an NPC to build off any of those circumstances is a name the race and class What they want what they fear Those are some of the biggest things you need to go anywhere Everything else can be improvised in the spot like I said it's all reactionary as an as a as a DM which is great because once you set the world The players drive the story and you just react off what they're doing and rationalize how the world will react to it

I understand this a lot of information up front but I'm trying to get as much information into this talk as I can, because we have a limited time, and I've had a lot of questions today. I'm trying to get through for you guys. So I hope this has been helpful. We'll get the questions in a second, so I can answer things specifically to you.

That's an NPC you can create. You can create the same way for, like, a local cleric, a barkeep. You could be like his race, you could be a Dwarven Barkeep. He's not even a fighter, or maybe he once was a fighter, but he gave up the life. He used his winnings in some sort of a brawling ring when he was younger to buy this tavern,

and that's all I really does. But he's well connected and has information. What are his wants? He wants money. But he also wants to possibly purchase a tavern across the town that is failing that he thinks could expand his business. What does he fear?

Being closed down. Or possibly getting arrested because there's maybe some things he did in his past that were little shady that he hoped nobody would remember. So now when someone talks about Inkeep, there are many different ways they can take that conversation and many different little ideas you might have

as gives as to what they're seeking and what they're afraid of. And those are just cool little notes you make to yourself down the road that if they ever decide to enter that tavern and talk to that NPC, you look down and you immediately know where they stand, what they want, what they don't want, and how they can help or hinder the NPC or the players based on what they do. So that's building a very small town and a small NPC. You flesh out a couple and then you build off from there.

And it takes some time. You know, you can crank out a few NPCs and you can railroad it as much as you want to. if you don't want to spend a lot of time building a big sandbox game for all your players, you can play a pretty standard, straightforward story. You can decide the players are going to go to this tavern. The players are going to go to this home here. They're going to go to this one merchantile, this kind of textile warehouse where they're going to find a hidden underground passage that leads to an altar, to some forgotten God. In which case you can decide, no matter what happens, you can send the players that

Let them wander a bit and have fun, but let them know very early in, you hear that there is some shaky business going on in this town. People in the tavern are whispering about these murders that have been happening in the village. You're like, huh, they'll start asking about the murderers. That's when you can point them towards, well, we've only heard that these people have been

being killed one passing around this part of town, and they arrested one man last week when he was let go from the suspicions, and he lives at this house. Now the players are like, oh, we have to talk to the guy at that house. You leave him to that house. they go talk to the guy, the guy might be like,

I don't know what you're talking about. You press him for information, you find out that he used to work for this textile business, and eventually you can either drive, that he helped with these murders, or that he knows who is, and they work with this merchant tile. Then now you send them straight to this warehouse that contains all these, this cloth and textile woodwork

type materials. They may break inside, search the place, find nothing, but if they roll well enough, they'll find the trap door that leads down into the altar. So that was an example of a very, very thorough line to a story that you could drive them towards and let them play within that zone. If you have a lot of free time, you could build that.

You could build one storyline that deals with one of the local lords that is in danger of having his home completely taken by him because of debt. Or you can do another side story at the same time that has something to do with a local inn that their basement has recently had a sinkhole collapse underneath the bottom of it that opened up a cavern of a bunch of strange mutated rats that are coming out of some terrible smelling cavern.

And all these can be just aspects that are in the town and all given points in time the players may find. And you let them discover that. So it takes a little more time and prepare that. But that's up to you as a DM as to how what your free time is and how much you can prepare for. You know, don't be afraid to, if you don't have a lot of time to railroad the players a little bit, as long as you make them feel like they're in control of it. And they are in control of it too.

And I've had a lot of games where I've prepared a bunch and the players decided to go this way. and completely, get around everything I prepared, and it turns into this big improvisation experience. And that can be very uncomfortable for a lot of people that aren't experienced a lot of improv. And that's where preparation comes in and kind of your comfort as a DM. I recommend if you're playing and DMing

or GMing a game for the first time, maybe run them through a story it's a little more linear, a little more direct, so you just get more comfortable with the experience, both combat with the players, more experience with how NPCs interact with them and being prepared for those circumstances. Then as you have more experiences at GM or DM, you can begin to be a little more free form with your storytelling setup and letting the players kind of play in that sandbox that is

the world you've created. So those are some guidelines for like a small village. The factions are fun to create because you can have factions that are allied, factions that are enemies, and that automatically leads in a really cool idea for some story hooks where you have, maybe the Thieves Guild has a huge rivalry with. with the Mages Academy. One believes that shadows is a real way to get business done in the local politics,

whereas the Mages feel that it's more of arcane understanding that both sociopolitical aspects can be controlled by the arcane. Maybe you have one place against the other, the players can choose a faction to align with, and there's a whole quest line that way, but now they've made enemies with the opposite faction, and now they're having to steer clear of their sight, or they can try and double agent for both,

but if that ends up going horribly, they now have earned the anger of both sides and might have to flee the town and never return. So these are all different cool ways that you can set up faction versus faction or faction working together to give the players a story and investment in the world that you're creating. Now from that small town you can build an even larger city. Meaning all those same elements I discussed you just expand upon it. You build more NPCs. You build an entire district that is shops and stores, maybe even a giant bazaar.

You can create a whole district that is just about worship of different gods and deities. And you have different temples assigned to each god. And you can use the gods that are in the book. You can create your own gods that have their own backgrounds and specialties and guiding principles and religions around that. It's up to you. But as you build a larger city, you have to consider how many different people and cultures it's now having to house and facilitate. So it's a little more of a time investment to build a city that much large, that much larger. But it's a really cool experience to then have the players wander to that to continue to discover.

Like the main city of Iman, which you guys have heard about a little bit of, and I'm sure we'll come back to soon in the campaign, you guys will have the opportunity to see it in person. It's a vast city, much like the classic Balders Gate or a Neverwinter. It's the central capital city of this entire region. and they've only maybe experienced a fifth of it after a whole, almost an entire year of exploring it. So there are a lot of examples of that urban expansion that they can go through.

And to be perfectly honest, I've detailed and fleshed out maybe about a third of the village with loose notes for all the rest. So if suddenly one of the players veered right again and decided to go all the way to the far northern slums, which I had nothing really specifically planned for, I can look through my notes and find out a handful of NPCs and some loose story elements that I made notes of about those northern slums, and I can kind of improvise based on those notes and where they want to go in the story

to still make it a fleshed out story. And if it's a really heavy story thread that they're following, I can just find a way to tie it back into the original thread I was trying to tell. And not necessarily guide them back on the path, but have it still fold into the same story they've been discovering. You never quite know where they're going to take you, and sometimes the players take you on a ride, and you just kind of have to go with it. You don't want to deny the players too much because you're all in this, for that storytelling experience, and they want to feel like they're guiding their own path. If you force them too hard against their wishes in the game,

then it feels more like the DM is playing the game than the players are. And that becomes a very tenuous relationship going forward in a campaign. The cool note is the players never know whether or not you're bullshitting or you had it all planned. So even if you go off the rails, as long as you have some notes or are at least acting like you know what you're talking about, for the most part, you'll be fine. I've had whole games that have gone by or I'm by the seat of my pants improvising, and I just don't know what's going to happen. And it works out in a really crazy way and finds a whole new story path.

And you just don't tell the players that that happened. That's a fun little aspect there. So we talked about urban environments. We've talked about cities a bit. And in those cities, you want to also be mindful of what ruling class there is. Is it an oligarchy? Is it a lordship? Is it a kingdom?

Is there an elected official? Is it a township? And that political structure will also be a very, very good way to build those factions below it as well. So the larger city is, the more elements of that social structure you have to consider in how many layers there are beneath it. Is it a very wealthy city universally? Is there a very, very high disparity between the upper class and the lower class? These are all really cool ways to flesh it out and give you ideas on where NPCs can be and where tension is in that society.

Also, remember, just because you're in a city doesn't mean there aren't dungeons. Castles and keeps have dungeons. Some cities are built on the ruins of older, older cities that may have underground cavern networks that have been long forgotten, or tombs that have been touched in years since a strange wave of necromantic energy began to rise, this from the grave and they need to seal it off. But who knows what lurks beneath there. Or like earlier that tavern I told you about that,

had a strange sinkhole. That's a really cool story arc to lead into an underground cavern network to something that may have caused the sinkhole. Something long forgotten beneath that inn that now threatens the inn or possibly the town its entire self. Don't be afraid to have players in a city environment to still find creepy, interesting, weird terrain

within that same environment. In Imann, the players managed to fall through a cistern into a deep, dark, underground cavern network that led them through an ancient ruined city, finding a hag that managed to make a proposition with them. Whereas for information, leading them out, she took a bit of Tiberius' luck. He still doesn't know what that means,

and it still floats above his head. I think he's forgotten about it. But a portion of his fortune has been stolen by this hag and still resides in that realm. So urban environments can be urban, but don't be afraid to explore avenues above and below. How are we doing? How we doing?

Pretty good. We cool. We cool. Cool a bit. I'm going to finish up here well fast with some other ideas. So those are cities. Those are towns. What makes them so special is in the D&D world

and in a lot of RPG worlds, outside of those bastions of civilization, is a very dangerous world. And you can change the world. it up however you see fit, but I find that it definitely makes for a better environment if the players understand that in the wild, you find things that are wild. There are creatures that roam free. There are monsters and beasts that call these places home and need to eat and survive.

There are intelligent entities that are building their own civilizations in the darkest depths of the mountains or in the shadowed patches of the local forests. And going outside of a town, most like travel Caravans need to have muscled support hired to come along the way. If you travel alone, there's always the possibility of bandits, ratsacking you on the road, or some sort of large hulking beasts, tumbling out of a nearby cavern structure and attacking the people. There's so many different ways that you can incorporate a dangerous wild world around these bastions of society, these little points of light. That makes the game feel more dangerous.

It heightens the stakes for the players whenever they have to travel, and it makes returning to a town that much more of a breath of fresh air. Then consider villains. Villains are NPCs that inherently have very selfish goals that are detrimental to society at large and or the players. Cavarn being the big bad of the recent arc. He is definitively one of the main villains, not the main villain of this arc.

You can create villains that are kind of one-offs like this. They eventually found Kavarn and they are. they killed them. You can create villains that are long standing and recurring. Like earlier in the campaign, the Dred Emperor was always present, but they didn't even manage to find him until the very end. But it was a recurring theme throughout to kind of build that tension about that villain. And not all villains get killed. Some villains, when they're damaged, they get the heck out of Dodge and return later, even more prepared and more ready, you know. But sometimes the players will be clever and keep them in there. And don't deny the players if they're really smart and prevent your

villain from escaping when he tries to. Because you don't want to, you want to reward the players, for being really smart. Remember, good villains are also very smart and usually have a pretty strong exit strategy if everything goes to shit. So villains are a really cool thing to flesh out their persona and their personality. You can look at a lot of great literary archetypes

that can expand on that for you. You consider the chaotic evil type villain, which is the Joker from Batman, someone who just loves the idea of violence and destruction and ruining the world around them for their own personal enjoyment and personal gain. You have the lawful evil villain,

more the Darth Vader types that work in a structure of law but use it to their advantage. They twist people's ideals of honor and society and relationships to put them in a position of power in which no one can really contradict what it may say goes. And through that, they maintain power and they maintain control over people around them. Then you have just generally evil.

You have all sorts of different types of evil archetypes you could play with in there. but have fun fleshing out a villain and having them be a sadistic or is controlling or as charismatic and enjoyable for the players to encounter as much as they hate them. You can have a vast variety from there. But recurring villains are a fun theme and generally up the experience more than just having a big bad every session that they go in and kill, get the loot and leave. It's fun to have that recurring element. I'm going to cruise through a couple points here for you guys so we can start getting to the these guys to playing here, or any questions they have for the story.

Story hooks. Story hooks are essentially what gets the players to start seeking the story. And there's a lot of great examples in the Dungeon Master's guide here, if you guys pick up a copy, that explains a lot of different ideals of how you can get the players invested in your story. I'm going to find it all fast back here, but essentially a story hook would be when they enter a tavern, they notice that someone in the corner is hunched over and eventually falls forward off their stool.

The party goes and inspects and finds out that they've been stabbed and are bleeding out. And they're dying words, they reach up to the player. They whisper a name. Like, oh, shit, that name, what does that mean? And someone in the room's like, that name of, the leader of this one temple of Pellor, the god of the sun, the god of light.

Okay, well, the players now have the idea that someone got murdered and their last words were the name of this person. Let's go find out what their relationship was. That's a story hook. Someone got murdered mysteriously and you only have a name to go off of. That's an example of a cool storyhook the players might be interested in pursuing. Some players might be, ha, fuck or died, whatever.

And that story hook goes away, but that's up to the players. And that's going to put them in the territory of being a little more neutral to evil than good players. So if they make good characters and they do stuff like that repeatedly, they might start pushing into the evil territory and maybe drawing the ire of other NPCs nearby that are good. If the captain of the guard rushes in it inspects, what happened to this man? And you're like, I don't know, he dies, like, eh.

I don't like the look of these people that don't care about the lives of others, going forward whenever they encounter the captain of the guard, he immediately mistrust the party. And they've already established that relationship negatively. So let's see what's some other good examples of story hooks they have here in the book. Pett-de-de-1 and 72. See if they got that up. All right, bear with me as I pin through. And there's a lot of great breakdowns for villains and NPCs and stuff in the players' handbook, guys.

If you're planning a Dungeon Master or a game, I highly recommend you read through. It's a really, really great resource. All right, seven to one. All right. So there are a bunch of cool, like, dungeon goals and wilderness goals, like foil of villains' evil scheme, destroy a magical threat inside a dungeon, acquire treasure, rescue a captive.

These are cool dungeon goals. They have a broken down into wilderness goals as well, like establish trade with a distant town, map a new land, find a natural resource, escape the reign of a tyrant. And you have other cool ideas for goals, defending a location from attackers, retrieving an object from a caravan,

infiltrate a fortified location, successfully travel through an obstacle course to gain recognition or reward. These are all very loose, very simple story hooks and goals that you can then weave a story around based on how you built your town and you built your NPCs. So don't be afraid to go ahead and grab a copy of these. This can kind of use this as an example if you're feeling a little lost through their story.

You can actually just roll randomly on these things and be like, all right, what are they doing today? Oh, well, looks like they're infiltrating a fortified location. Let me come up with some bullshit that, you know, justifies what they're doing. So you can technically DM a game randomly by just rolling off these and improvising from that point forward. That's a little more of an ad... Greetings adventurers. Spring has sprung here in Los Angeles and that means it's a brief period where it's only 75 degrees instead of 95 degrees. I'll take it. And that means I've been

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when you do get into battle or when players encounter creatures or monsters or villain characters they want to fight you then go into an encounter and you want to consider when you provide when you prepare for encounters you think where are they are they fighting in a dungeon are they fighting in a forest are they fighting in a swamp are they fighting in an open plane and you go through a book like the Dungeon Masters, or the Monster Manual, and find creatures that you think would live in that type of topography.

So if they're in an open field, you can think of more wild beasts or maybe clans of roaming orcs. If they're in deep, deep mountains, you can find creatures that burrow and naturally live in a more earthy-based terrain. You build encounters around that. There are some really great websites online that have encounter calculators, where you can basically tell how difficult an encounter is based on how many players are in the

party, what level they are, and you can build the encounter based on that. That way you don't end up accidentally making something that's too difficult or too easy for the party. You don't want to make everything too hard. Some battles can be fun and easy and really kind of have the players enjoy being badass and rushing into combat and just killing things really easily and being, ha ha, I ruined everything. That's great.

I'm powerful. Then you can have some battles that are pretty, whof, that was close, that was a good fight. And then occasionally you want to throw them a curveball and have something they really have to struggle through. So when they finish that battle, they really have to. take rest and realize we almost lost one or more people in that fight. And that makes the stakes that much higher at that point. But you don't want to constantly be hitting them with super hard battles.

You don't want to be making things consistently too easy because it isn't a fun challenge for them. And consider terrain for combat too. Not every battle is just you versus monsters. Sometimes there's a big cliff involved and the battle could be at a distance. Sometimes there's pits of lava in the middle. That becomes a danger or a tool depending on how you look at it during the battle. Sometimes, especially in urban combat. You have rooftops and alleyways in which you can use that

to your advantage to avoid things or push guys off a roof to fall and get hurt or fall onto things. You can be traps involved that you know or there that you can then push guys into. There's a really cool way of building encounters that are beyond just hitting things and doing damage, which is fine, too. Don't get me wrong.

Also, if there's a monster in the monster manual that you like, this is a really cool monster, but it's too easy. Like, the players are all level 10 and this is a level three monster. You can customize it. the monster. It can make the monster more powerful. Add more hit points. Raise the stats a little more. Give it a couple of unique attacks that you think would be fitting for it. If you don't like

the fact that the billet only really has like a bite and a stop attack, maybe you decide that this bullet actually grew up or was raised around some sort of arcane, natural arcane relic that infused it with a resistance to magic and the capability that it has like electrical charges around it. Now whenever anyone, whenever anyone starts their turn next to it, they get shocked. It's an electric bullet. That's kind of cool. Why not? You can customize and alter any aspect of any creature in the book. Once again, all guidelines.

You can go with the basis here, and it's a lot easier if you don't have a lot of time. But don't be afraid to customize and alter things to fit certain aspects of your world or your story as you see fit. It's great. I had the players in this campaign fight a proto-litch when they were level three or four. Liches will wipe the floor with pretty much anything. But I consider it would be cool to introduce that powerful undead aspect if it was just barely cresting out of its initial ritual to become a litch, in which case it was an

a very weakened state. So if they waited a day or two, that lich would have ruined them. It was still a tough battle, but they caught it when it was still kind of essentially birthing, which made it a very, very weak litch. That's not in the books, but I just took what was there and scaled it way back. And it made for a really fun encounter. So all guidelines, you can customize as you see a fit. And there are great communities online and people that create creatures and beasts and have suggestions or feedback for anything you create. Don't be afraid to reach out there. Once again, apologize. This is a lot of information up front for trying to squeeze this in for you.

Also, maps. You see in Critical Role, we do combat with maps that we draw up of terrain, and everyone has individual models and the creatures have models. That is not necessary. I've found it's very helpful for our campaign because we have eight players, which makes it very difficult for everyone to keep in mind spatial awareness

during the battle who's who and what they're doing and how close monsters are. I grew up playing Guns and Dragons and other RPGs without maps or models at all. It's all theater of the mind, all in the brain, which is a lot of fun. But when you get a certain critical mass of players it becomes unwieldy.

So the models became necessary for us. But what we're doing tonight when we play our game, it's gonna be no battlefield, no models, it's all gonna be just keeping it in your head and me letting you know what's happening and where you guys are. So don't feel like it's absolutely necessary to do that. I just find it makes it easier when you have more players.

And it's fun to draw maps. Sometimes it's a lot of fun to do that. Another question that's come up a lot. Experience points. So, monsters that are killed or defeated in battle give you experience points. They don't necessarily have to be killed to get that experience points.

The players still win the encounter, meaning they force them to surrender, or they manage to fight them to the point where they have to retreat. That is still a victory, and the players should still get the experience for that encounter. You may give them a bonus if it's a big boss fight

and they killed it, and they get free to rewards of it, that's cool. That's totally up to you as a DM. but you know if they still successfully complete an encounter they still get the experience if they flee from an encounter and the players technically lost the battle you can still give them a little bit of experience and they gain from that but it would be largely docked by that and that's totally up to you so that's combat experience what about role-playing experience that's arbitrary based on what you want to do as a DM you can just write down well that's cool they get 500 experience for that social encounter you

can make it up on the spot and I recommend keeping an eye on what level the players are and what the experience values are for each level, so you know how much they need to get to their next level. That allows you to kind of build a structure. Now, for me, to keep track of role-playing experience, it's an endeavor with eight players. So what I do is I have what I call a hatchmarks system, where whenever anybody does something in the game

that is a cool role-playing experience or they save a circumstance, I'll give them a hatchmark next to their name, or multiple hatchmarks, but it was really, really clutch and really kind of change. to the dynamic of the circumstance and save their bacon. Or if they failed miserably at something, but they gave it a really, really good try,

and it was a cool idea, I might still give them a hatchmark or two because it was a good shot. And so at the end of each game, I have a kind of an equation for myself, where I multiply their level by 25. So right now they're all level 10. It would be 250 experience, and I give them that many,

I multiply it by them a number of hatch marks they get. So if somebody gets three hatch marks in a game, right now, they would get an additional 700 150 experience points at the end of that session based on their role-playing experience. So that way I don't have to think too much about the math in the game. I just go, that's cool, hatchmark, hatch-mark. That was really cool. Hatchmark, hatch-mark, hatch-mark.

And then at the end of each session, I'll go ahead and multiply to the level about 25, and then multiply that by how many hatchmarks I've given them, and that's their total role-playing experience. That's worked well for me. It's not for everyone. But I think it's a good way to quickly add up those moments and make sure the players don't feel like you're slowing it down to keep track of it. who's done cool shit.

That's a really condensed overview of dungeon mastering. They've asked me a lot of questions via Twitter, and that's kind of what I've built this up for. So I apologize for you guys. Thank you for being patient. We're going to take a couple questions from the chat room, and then we're going to go ahead and start the game here in about 15, 20 minutes or so.

Okay. So, I said, I hope it's a lot of information for you guys, but dungeon mastering, it's a lot of fun. It takes some time. You have to kind of set aside some time. I say generally it takes about an hour of gameplay per hour of preparation. So if it's going to be a six-hour session,

it might take anywhere from three to six hours to set up for that properly, but it doesn't have to be that long. That's just me being super thorough, which I'm obsessive about. But yeah, be open to improvise, be open to let the players play and let them guide you sometimes in an off direction. And have fun. Let the players be heroes. Let them try anything.

Just know that if what they're trying is really ridiculous, they have a really, really low chance of succeeding. And most of the time they'll fail, and it's spectacular failure, and you're all laugh about it. If they succeed that role, that is an epic fucking moment that you're all going to remember because that player pulled off that, like, you know, third act, amazing maneuver that just completely changed

the dynamic of the story. And that's really what this game's all about. I still remember and tell stories from our campaign like it was something we all personally did and experienced. It's really weird. It's weird. I love it, but it's weird. I love it.

Playing the game is great. Learning the rules is great. Dungeon mastering is a lot of fun. It's scary at first, but I guarantee you with a little bit of time, it's really rewarding, and it's really, really not that hard at all. So yes. Let's answer a few questions in the chat room, guys. We'll see if we can chime in on this. We'll think about 10 minutes of this,

and then we'll jump into the game. game with you folks. Once again, thank you for your, thank you for your patience. Say you are we ready? Yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty stoked for the characters. Yeah, I'm excited. Got some good stuff going. Some very good stuff. Yeah. Actually as a note to remind you guys, too, one of the cool things about fifth edition, two things they did. One, they got rid of a lot of the floating modifiers that previous editions had. Like, you know, Pathfinder was one.

It was a great system, but I found in battle, especially with a lot of players, you'd be like, all right, so I get plus one to hit and damage from the blessed spell, but then the bar gives it one plus two to hit and damage. Or, you know, just just hit, no, it's hit and damage, okay, then you're giving a plus one from that ability, but only more than 10, 10 feet in then. Don't forget enhanceability. Right, have a hands ability.

Don't forget a handsability. Hey, hey, don't forget, hey. It's a plus seven to hit, plus nine to damage on that. The Hunter's mark. Hunter's mark. Oh, we still have that problem, but that's Laura. Yeah.

But that became an issue with a lot of big battles, I found, especially with eight players. So they've simplified that in this addition. Most modifiers to hit and damage are pretty consistent. You don't have a, most, a lot of crazy things What they do have is advantage and disadvantage. If an experience or a circumstance in the game puts you in an advantageous position, you

get to roll 2D20s and drop the lowest. So you get the higher of the two rolls. If you have disadvantage, you have to roll 2D20 and drop the highest, which is rough. So that's a really simplified way of kind of playing spells that give you the advantage or give enemies disadvantage in that circumstance, which is great. Another big thing to consider for Fifth Edition is, and you guys went over a little bit backgrounds. Not necessary. Players that are new to the game

might find it very interesting, but when you ask about your character's background and what they've done, where they come from and how that builds them as a character, you can completely come up with whatever you want to. You can say they came from this background, they did these things,

and this is all in my head, and how I plan the character. Some people either are having a little bit of writer's block with their character, or they don't know where to start, or they just don't have a lot of experience. It's a great section in the new players' handbook about backgrounds, which you could choose

where your character comes from, where they grew up. They could be a folk hero. They can be a charlatan. They can be an acolyte. They can be a soldier from a war-long past. They can be an entertainer. And that gives them bonus proficiencies

and their skills that pertain to their background. And it gives you examples of certain personality traits that you can choose or randomly roll from. For example, you go to the background section of the player's handbook over here. You can find, where is it? Actually, Dan made his character with his background this way. So we can just hear about his background.

All right, so let's go about your background, Dan. All right. And he did roll a dice to randomly generate it. I did. I rolled it. I generated it randomly. All right. The appropriate page. So I'm salty Pete, the first made of the obsidian Helen, a sailor by trade.

A scoundrel by nature. The captain gambled with the ship, so I fed him to a long-baked squid with a razor-sharp teeth. Spent times on pontoon, cigarette boats, skiffs, hoaring, snorting, and deploring across the land. I'm married to the sea, but my best friend is a hamlet crab named Terrence. The only leftover I have from the Helen is her flag, which I wear like a cape. Nice. I make many friends over a buttery glass of Chardonnay, sailor's choice. But I've lost many more. If you step to me, you best come correct.

I want a quiz to regain the Helen. I play for pink slips. Yes. Looking for clues to the bottom of a glass. Oh, you best. That's your ass I did. And now I fell in with a failed warlock named the snuggle lord. That's great. And all that was based on randomly generated information in the background section.

He clearly flushed it out, which was incredible. Added some flesh. That's amazing. But it gives you a great basis to build off of. I assume you were the sailor. Yeah, I went for the sailor archetype. It's super cool because I really like stuff like that back when I used to do campaigns, because it gives you a great basis just for,

you know, if you're not sure what you want to do with your character, it gives you good branching off points, and then you can just sort of add meat to that skeleton. Yeah, well, it's also one of the questions I hear from like people who haven't played the game before when you first start with character creation is like, well, where are the rules on what I can be? And kind of trying to get them out of that,

there are no, there are no, what do you want to be? Believe in yourself. This is like, this gives them a little set of rules that they can kind of grasp onto desperately for like their first game. Oh, go ahead. Well, we'll never forget one, I'm eating chicken.

I never thought when that happens. I was gonna'em chicken. Some of my favorite characters that I've played with have all been people who decided what they wanted to be first and then picked a race and a class around what they wanted to be. So our good friend Paradox really wanted to be a, like a roadie who, he wanted to be a roadie, essentially like a traveling circus who was like the curtain guy

for all these bands and he, so he made a monk who had ropes and he had a whip and all of his abilities he would grapple people and tied people up with his ropes and that was like wait he and he based he had an idea first and then built the character around it so because the system is so flexible you can it'll allow you to be pretty much anything you want to be yeah so I mean one of the things that like in Pathfinder there's like you can make like a Geisha dancer who like did damage with fans so you can pretty much be whatever and then figure it out if it's not in the books you can create it

You couldn't build it. We made the gunslinger off path under here for that. So it's totally open. And the backgrounds are a great way. Like they have a whole section for personality traits and you can roll for a personality trait or multiple. And ideals, so things that really drive your character

in their life, bonds, things that really hold them, you know, be a loyalty or to an ideal beyond that. And then flaws, which I love. A character, like right here, I rolled the two as a sailor. I'd say anything to avoid having to do extra work. It's a great flaw for his sailor. Probably not great for his work ethic, but you know. But those are really useful things.

The background is a really cool addition for those who want a jumping point for building their character's personality. Let's answer a few questions in the chat while we're going about this. Mnus asked, how do you handle magical items? How do you handle magical items? Very carefully. Very carefully.

The Venture Master Guide actually has a really good breakdown in the magical item section about the cost and rarity of magical items. I'm going to pull it up here real fast. There's common magical items cost between 50, to 100 gold pieces, and it says character level, first or higher. Uncommon, also first to higher, but around 100 to 500 gold pieces. Rare magical items are from fifth level or higher,

and around 500 to 5,000 gold pieces, then very rare and then legendary, which get higher and higher from there, legendary being 50,000 gold pieces and more. And so that helps you kind of gauge how easy or harder it is for players to find something of that level. And each one of the magical items in the book tells you if it's rare, uncommon, any of those type

of circumstances. However, it gives you a range. So you as the GM or DM, you decide, based on how powerful the item is, how much it's worth, if the players wanted to sell it or buy it. And generally, you consider if players are selling magical items, they're selling lower than they would buy it from. Like any sort of pawn shop type thing,

they might get a quarter of what it's worth at a store, but if they're really charismatic and they're really good with their persuasion rolls, they might be able to get more money than that. Or conversely, lower the price of items they want to buy. So you want to make sure you don't want to give out too many items throughout the campaign quickly, because the players other get too powerful,

and then any items you give them down the road seem not as interesting or flippant. I like to run a campaign that has occasional upgrades. It's a little slow trickle with bursts of good item use. That way when they do find something truly magical, it's a, oh, nice, as opposed to, oh, this is another boots, who wants the boot? I already got like three, let's see you have that, you know.

It becomes less interesting and less special to me. So I like to trickle them out and keeping tabs on what players have, what they're missing, and then eventually kind of incorporate, aspects that they can upgrade their characters with down the road or they can create them for themselves there are rules for creating magical items if they're have an arcane practice to their class we're we're sponsored by a by a store in game too you are sponsored by Gilmore's glory is good so those you know you've not been there

yes oh my god I forgot we're sponsored by eventually you all have the pleasure to meet Gilmore you are fantastic he's a little sweet on me fancies he's a little sweet in general NSF Thurmont asks, To what degree do you allow, encourage the players to contribute to the world's lore? All right, so how much do I allow the players to contribute to the lore?

For their character backgrounds, I like for them to contribute a lot about where they come from and what their stories are. Everyone's backgrounds you see in the opening videos, they wrote themselves, and then I take those and I incorporate that into the world that I'm creating. And occasionally, they'll cross paths with aspects of their personal history, and in the future will as well.

Some of them will just be breezing through encounters. Some of them will actually find moments in the story that will directly be part of their personal goals. That will, maybe we shall see. But I like the players to incorporate aspects of their history, but beyond that, I don't want them to flesh out too much of their current or future aspects of the world,

because to them that takes out some of the mystery. What I think is great as a player is knowing where you came from and not knowing where you're going. So like for instance, Tiberius... A lot of you asked about my mending wheel. With the player part. Because I've used that a bunch. And the mending wheel is like part of something that Tiberius's,

personal request is about that I wrote and gave to Matthews. Like two years ago. Like, yeah, it's like over two years. Wow, it's been wow. But I said here this is what his goals are. This is why he's traveling with this group of people. And that is like, when I found that, thing he doesn't make it you know very difficult but it doesn't make it easy

either like when when we came across it there was this MPC is witch right and you heard me mention her earlier and we had this interaction where he was it was about something else our main quest that we were doing and she he said he was describing her place and she said something something wheel just and was listing things I was like I was like wait a minute that's one of my things I think I wrote about him And I, then as a Tiberius was inquired about it, then that became a conversation between me and the NBC,

and I had to, I still, does that apply now? Is that, is that gone? No, that's not gone. The piece of fortune you handed over? I had to negotiate some of my fortune, which I still don't know what that means. No, that's going to fuck us so hard one of these days. But I had to give that to the witch NPC in exchange for the wheel of mending,

which is like a very important thing in my quest. And it's been helpful for everybody. It's been very helpful. It's great. It's been great. One of these days, though, you're going to like get a, really, like, you're going to like roll in 20 and something terrible. The cool thing is I didn't describe what the wheel did.

I named what they were and Matthew then decided if it, A, if it was existed, B, what it did and what it could have, you know, how it worked all this stuff. So that's, it's, it's, it's, it's, having, having details, but having the DM, giving the DM discretion to decide how it plays out is really awesome. Yeah, because I'm surprised. And it's something that, it's something that, I'm expecting to see and I'm still surprised. And like for instance, the city you came from, Draconia.

Right. The society, you've given me a lot of information about how you grew up there and kind of how you saw the society and then you sent me that outline and now I'm taking what you had come up with and I'm fleshing it out and building it into the world and then running with that essentially. So Tiberius' memory serves right to what his experiences was with Draconia. We'll see how that continues going forward when he eventually returns to his people.

And I did something similar with like my four tribes of the Ashari. You know, I've got the fire tribe and the Earth tribe and the Air Tribe and the Water Tribe. But from Keyless perspective, I'm from the Air Tribe. I don't really know a whole lot about the other ones. They're there. So I gave him the idea of the tribes and the backstory that they exist. And now he's plushing it off. Yeah, I don't know what the people who came to my parents' castle wanted.

They were looking for something. And then like I gave him details on what? they were doing, but not necessarily what it was all about, because I don't know, but he knows, because he gets to figure that out. Yeah, it's fun. Laura and I spent three hours in a diner fleshing out our family history.

That's so cool. That's great. Then you ran into your, the strange father and his new family. That was so great. My answer to their father was like a big part of one of our main quest. It was insane.

It was very frosty. Yeah. It's very frosty, yeah. Sky Falls One asked this specific about Trinket. I'm just going to generalize the question. How do you handle player-controlled allies and their level progression? Are they part of the character who controls that ally,

such as Trinket being the bear, a familiar or something? Or do they have their own independent leveling guide? For this system, and it's different from system to system. In this system, that companion, Trinket, is part of the Ranger class, the Beast Master, that the Lord went into. And Trinket's progression is tied towards. her progression. As her level gets higher, Trinket will have more hit points. Trinket will gain

better bonuses to his attacks as her proficiency bonus gets higher. So Trinket will advance pretty much alongside VACs. You're not wearing your shirt? You need to always just wear that. That shirt is going to get a ten-a-old. I'm usually very good about that. It's been a long week. I always say that. But yeah, so player-controlled PCs I got companions, those are tied to the class. as far as NPCs that I control that aren't part of the party, those I keep tabs on separately entirely. So we get a few more questions.

Don't off if he's armed. Don't know. He needs that. That's really nice. Just some real chill larping. Put it down. How will he make himself happy at night? Drop it.

Drop it. That's the good hand. Well, while we're waiting, I'd like to address like a couple of things that I've been tweeted at about role plays. Dotic weapon. And what I think about role play and how I'm super hardcore about it. I always tell people who's kind of like wants,

like my friends who are like, I have no idea what that is. And I was like, the best I can explain how I will play is, as soon as I sit down and as soon as he says the narration and we get into it, I immediately just pretend I'm like 12 years old again. And I'm this guy, and this kid, and I have my, or 10 or 11, I don't know age anymore. 10, 7. Where imagination is the strongest, where I put on my sheet and wrap it around, that's my cape,

and I have my flashlight, and that's my lightsaber, where the hell? And I go outside and I play until my mom comes to, you know, have dinner or whatever. Like, and I'm dirty as hell when I come back inside. That's how I think everybody's done that. We've all been kids. Oh, that was like two weeks ago for you. I'm just saying. Also, when I play.

Worry Mandarin. D&D. That's where I go. It's just when everybody's not thinking about any kind of thing other than having fun, that's my best advice to just kind of. role play. I'll say something that actually came out. I was very, very proud of this.

This came up recently in some conversations. We were talking about the nature of playing a game like this and about risk. And as a player, wanting to be adventurous and wanting to do things that you wouldn't do in real life. And one of the essential things that a good DM that you get to learn with a good DM is the DM is not there to kill you.

The DM is there to turn you into a hero. By the way, I have been playing this wrong. No, I just... You play awesome, shut on. Because, no, because we had this conversation. He's like, we were gonna die and like, he doesn't want to kill us. I literally was like, I was like, I was like, don't understand.

Mercer's trying to kill us all the time. And he's like, he wants to make you a hero. I'm like, what? Who hurt you? I'm like, that means everything. I've been such a dick. But he's hilarious. Some DMs do want to kill the players.

Some DMs, which is fine. I mentioned earlier this, which is fine, as long as the DMs, and the players agree upon that at the beginning. They're like, this is the relationship. I'm trying to kill you guys, good luck surviving. Like, Tomb of Horrors, this is a perfect example. Guy guys going, fuck all y'all, you're gonna die. That's where that stem is from.

And for some people, it's a lot of fun. But for this game, you know, death is very real, challenges there, and I present circumstances that depending on what you guys do may or may not end in success or death. But I'm not trying to outwardly kill you. No, no, maybe. To try to outwardly kill you.

Yeah. Just on like, inner-in-sought you to die inside. Just like, obviously it's had some effect on you. I mean, yeah, just, you know. He's God, it's scary. No, it's just like, you know, an armored, fucking enchanted horned beholder motherfucker. Yeah, sure.

He's not like totally trying to. We say fear the wrath of God. If a giant sky dot, God appeared, like, tomorrow and like just pulled out a D20 and rolled in and looked at you, you freak out. That's a really scary thing to happen. But if it is, but is that good point where, like, I should have been like more, I shouldn't have been so fearful.

Well, it's just a, it's a different way of like looking at the situation. I'm really thinking he's no. I know because he gets that look. I know. God. That's part of the fun. Smile is so terrible. I think I play specific, I court death on purpose.

I, the way I look at this is either this month or next year, my character is going to die. I know that's going to happen. And I would never grab a rope and jump off the side of a flying device to save my actual sister. Yes, I would. That's a terrible statement. Yes, I would. But I don't think that I would leap off of things to my detriment constantly, and like that's how, I get to be, this is the whole reason we're doing this is because we're 12

and we get to pretend we're the hero, so I'm constantly trying to... I fully expect you to kill me someday. Yeah. D and I'm gonna feel horrible. DAD has a lot of life lessons in it. We're all going to die someday. YOLO! Exactly.

We're all three ranks in YOLO. I'm going to tune of your proficiency for that. efficiency for that. You can be careful as you want in the game and you get through a certain point where you have to have those hero moments where you just, you take that high risk, high reward line and it makes for great moments, great stories.

I know, you're being racist. Hey, shush, say that again. Say that again. Being careful is great and working your way through a situation carefully is fantastic, but you reach a certain point in a game where you have to let yourself jump into those high risk, high reward circumstances, because not only is that

what you don't get to do in your day to day life, but those make the best stories, success or failure. There might be serious ramifications for failure, but God damn if you won't be talking about it for the next two to three to ten years for that one time that you did this and it failed and your character got smashed in this horrible way. And two years after your party would, you know, clamor to the gods, your lost character's name whenever they charged into battle against a great foe. Like that's that's kind of storytelling that you don't get unless someone takes a risk like that.

By the way, when one of us dies, we're all going to fucking ball our eyes out. Oh yeah. If we all, but no, it's sad. But like, Scanlon and the stained glass window will live with me forever. I'm gonna feel really bad laughing from the back of the room when that. You'll hear that.

That's great. You're wearing a unicorn suit. So I'm gonna do two more. Two more questions, sorry. First one, I can't remember who was asking you, but I've seen it a couple times. They're asking about DM player characters, your opinion on DM PCs.

DM PCs, if they're a very good DM can be fine. I, honestly, the main reason I became a DM was because my first DM had a PC, who then somehow got all the best loot and was a pallid in second edition, but also somehow had the Samurai kit, which I don't know if that could be a paladin. So he was dual wielding magical katana's

and whenever an upgrade came up that he randomly rolled on the table, went, oh cool, I'm taking that. Dude, I don't even have a magical weapon. He's like, I'll fight you for it. I'm like, oh, good paladin. Fuck this shit. I make the own game.

So, no. Like you for it, bro. Sorry, Ray. I love you, but that was a terrible game. But, you know, so I think if it's a good DM you can, but the problem is, as a dungeon master, you know behind the scenes. You know where it's going, you know what's coming, you know what you're going to fight, you know what you're going to fight, you know what's going to drop, you know so much

that having a player character almost defeats the purpose. Almost, clearly. Clearly, it defeats the purpose. There are circumstances where it might work with certain creative types, but I think it robs you with the fun of actually being a player in the game if you're also the DM. Conversely, it makes other players like.

Deliberately so we don't see what you're doing. Conversely, the other players feel removed then because now they have this strange magical god entity that also is fighting alongside them that has the benefit of knowing what's coming. Sort of a tangent to that question. How do you feel about another player playing someone else's character by proxy

when that other player's not there? I think that's totally fine if the players agree upon it. I tend to just NPCs. players, if not there, or try and find a story reason as to why they can't be available so it doesn't rob them of the experience. But that is totally a viable thing as long as the players agree to it. Or if the person was like a real ass last game and they're not there, you're like, you know what, fine, you control the character. See how they like that? They may be. But for the most part, if players are okay with that, and they're somebody at the table that they trust to understand what the character would do and play them properly, then,

fuck yeah, I go for it. What? Great. Matthew, that's why I'm going to be showing up next week. Okay. I will be here. I'll roll play for you. Okay. So for the last question, I want players on my table to be more, this is Comic-Haldon, by the way, at my table to be more immersed in the story,

like instead of saying to me, so I tell them to go west, are there any tips on stimulating people? To rephrase it, how do you encourage people to role-play more and get into character rather than simply just direct commands at each other? Right, right. So to give people to role play, For one thing I want to mention, it's not necessary. If you want that in the game that's different.

Bullshit. There it is. It's a role-playing game. It's in the title. Come on. Let me clarify. Hold on. Go ahead.

Go ahead. Some people don't have the comfort level or have the social confidence to be able to jump straight into character. And so for them, it's much them it's more comfortable to play it that way, where they can kind of, in essence, remove themselves from the character and control them almost like a video game and say what they're doing as opposed to actually performing it out. And there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, that's almost a baby step version of them eventually becoming comfortable with

fully immersing themselves with the character. So I don't think that you should be down on somebody who plays that way necessarily. If you want to immerse them more as a DM, it's an invitation. You mentioned the players, guys going forward, I would love for us to be a little more into this circumstance. If you're feeling comfortable, please, you know, feel free to speak in character, or sometimes if they're down for it, but they have a hard time committing, put the law down.

Anything you say in this game is in character if it's conversational. Yeah. To where if they turn to somebody at the side and be like, yeah, but then you stab him in the back, like, I'm sorry, what did you say? And you start treating everything as character conversation, then they are put into a circumstance

so they have to treat it like that. May not be comfortable at first, but just like getting into the very, very, very cold water in a pool. At first it sucks, but over time they get used to it and they don't realize that they're there anymore after a while. It just becomes natural. But for you as a dungeon master, you really have to, it's an invitation, a comfortable invitation. Please come with me on this. I'd love to have you be more involved in this. And it's your job as the dungeon master to also bring your NPCs to life in the way you want them to role play. And when you ask them a question,

don't ask it out to the whole group. Pick somebody in the group that NBC is looking to and go, You, what are you doing in my tavern? I was just passing by. I thought I could have a drink. Yet your eyes seem to belie some sort of strange negative connotation. You carry a blade out of it scabbard. What is it you want with my belongings? Nothing. My father gave it to me.

I was just thirsty, passing through. Okay. My father's name was Arthus. He was a potter, and he asked me to come to you and ask for your allegiance to our clan. That's all you had to say. Come have a seat. We'll discuss this clan's allegiance.

You're a very nice fellow. Can I also have a drink? For a gold piece you can. Here's two. Here's two. I'm rich. I see you speak tavern well. So like that's a circumstance where you kind of put them on the spot and they kind of have to react to it.

And like I said, it might be weird at first, but they'll eventually get into the deal. That's my suggestion. It might not always work. Some people just aren't comfortable with that and you have to be okay with it. You do setting really well too. Like when we would play the lights go down, the candles come out. The music turns on. That's one thing I do miss about this situation is it's hard to adjust the lighting based on circumstances

We're working on it, man. All right, we're working on it. We're getting there It used to be in a dark fantastical cave Okay, we're working on it is Travis's dining room But we put a nice tablecloth on the tape. Can't you also use like those things? I'm DMing for my eight-year-old son and his kids I haven't done this yet, but the book talked about The DM book talks about like rewarding them with inspiration dice So can't you like as a carrot, you know, just start anytime anyone shows just even the bear's glimpse of role playing like that got boom, inspiration dice to you. Yeah, I mentioned a little earlier and I'll expand upon that like on top of

making sure people get bonuses and little bumps for cool experience moments if someone does something really cool in character You as the DM can award them a D6 as an inspiration dice an inspiration dice and they can only carry one in any given point in time But at some point later in the game if they have to make a D20 role like an attack or a saving throw or a skill check, they can add the D6 to their final number to give them the extra little hero push towards succeeding at something. And so it's another cool out of kind of carrot on a stick bait to step a little harder into their character

and really play out that role. Good point, G. Mm-hmm. Well. Capital. We may have time for one more quick one, because there was a lot of questions coming through, and then we'll jump into the game.

I was looking for. I looked like it was about it. I will say, while you're looking for a question. For both me and Matthew and Marsh at Boxer Reaches. When's there gonna be another shirt? Are you guys planning on doing another? Or planning to do more shirts. Geek and Sundry is putting up their actual store soon.

And so we're gonna be probably slug those three. I would like to take this time to say that we do have shirts for sale right now that support Geek and Sundry's overall Twitch channel if you'd like to purchase some. They are the HR emote, human resources stapler for whenever you say something inappropriate, like penis. There you go. You have a shirt for that. Well, I mean, in this context, yeah.

Oh, I guess so. We're playing a board. Depending on where you put it. Oh, sure. Yeah. In the scabbard. Just like, oh. Anyway.

So I want to question. I want to address. Someone asked suggestions on running a complex system for a bunch of new players, which is this challenge, even sometimes in our game still. But it's one of those circumstances where you have to be patient. And honestly, you can simplify the rules. When I say you can customize anything in this book,

you can leave out a lot of the rules and just keep it very simple. If you don't want to have, if you think a movement, an action, or a bonus action is too much, get rid of the bonus action and just consider things, find another way to work it in. Or if you want to keep it a little more free form and just kind of, you know, keep it open to, you know, it puts a little more work on you as the DM to do so, to rationalize what they're doing and make it so doesn't seem so broken, but you can just minimize a lot of the rules. You can cut out half the skills if you don't think they're necessary. You

can get rid of feats. You can get rid of backgrounds. You can have the spell lists if you want. If you want to narrow it down, you can go through and just trim and trim and trim until you think you have a nice simpler system for everyone to start with, and then you can start rolling out the more expanded aspects of the system. So, and don't feel like you have to verbatim head in everyone. This book can be, read it all, learn it all, let's go. You can go ahead and Pick the few rules you think are important to play the game, teach them to your group, and then just start with those and then slowly as time goes on Let them research and discover more as they go on and learn together. Oh Yeah, to what you're saying too

What Matthew, what you he would know how to stress what Matthew has me to do is like for all you casters out there If it's if the spell isn't in the book Ask your DM if like you can craft them I've the Matthew if it has it doesn't exist. He's let me make spells. That's what glacial blasts. It doesn't exist here, but I was like, hey, I want to do this thing that doesn't quite, isn't strips here. So you can ask your DM and he can figure it out with you. I, of course, always give him way too Opie stuff. He's like, no. And then he gives me a better, an actual spell. Everything I build is like literally me just handing him a slip of paper going, huh?

Huh? And the players, as they submit custom things, they have to understand that, you know, you do your best to balance it. And if they try it out a few times and it's still kind of overbalanced, it might be scaled back a bit because you're still trying to find what works. And you can't really tell how balanced something is until you try it. But that's kind of the relationship you established with your DM if you want to customize and create things in your own. Is like, can I do this?

Sure, but make it like this. Okay, let's try that. Play a few games. Yeah, it's a little powerful. We're going to scale this back a little bit and don't be like, come on, you said it was okay. Be like, okay, cool. Yeah.

Also, I want to, earlier talking about customizing monsters for encounters. It's either in the DM guide or in the monster manual. There is an algorithm in there. to properly scale a monster up and down to fit the needs of the dungeon.

I don't know where it is in there. So that's a tool that they do allow you to have. It's in the book, it's in the monster manual? I think so, yeah. I think so. I wasn't tried. I remember flipping through it, and it was in one of those.

But I just want to mention that. It's in the Facebook Terms of Service. I agree. For section A dash B. All righty. Should it be like, trade places so that some of us are sitting next to them. We're not us, are right?

We're not spectators. We're just spectators. But I didn't know if we wanted to like. We may just be help. Yeah, help. They don't want to die. We might need the Olympic scores again. Phone of friend.

Let's ask the audience. What do you use inside? All right, so let's go ahead and begin. And I'm going to preface this, letting you guys know that I have nothing prepared. This is an entirely improvised session. I'm curious to see. where it goes. This is a perfect example of flying by the city of your pants.

It's going just like how you rehearsed. Whose line is it anyway, Matt? What? Point. This is a prop base skill. Garrett, top, stunters, and dragons, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, God. I know. I have her.

Wow. That's good Michael. All right. So, Dan, we saw your wonderful character. Yes. Your sailor dwarf. Salty Pete. Yep.

Salty Pete. I'm going to let him go first. Okay. Actually, yeah. So you guys. Yo, this is Ophigar Fireford. I'm a cell sword. Ex-pit fire.

I'm slow to trust and quick to kill. Money talks, bullshit walks. I'm saying, y'all know, I'm in it for the money, and I play a mean flute. It's sharpened at the end, so if you get too close, I might stab you in the neck. But just know, I'll do anything for a buck. Anything.

Anything. What's your going to take? again can't wait for sax's lot of saltie Pete I have a great snuggle Lord I am a charismatic charlatan from as a warlock teafling individual a hailing from the land of simpleton's I became bored with my homeland after impregnating all of the impregnatable and I started to pledge my loyalty to the overlord of a faraway land and set off to do his evil bidding I'm not really evil though but overlord himself asked me to do a lot of very evil things

At least that's what the voices tell me. Along the way, I learned that I was more of a lover and not a fighter. So I lied to these two assholes about the pleasures that await them at the overlords chat room. They are dumb-dums and fell for it. And now act as my personal bodyguards. Basically, in short, I convince everyone with intimidation and my great charisma, but I'm very broken and weak physically on the inside. weak physically on the inside.

Actually, I'm hearing some voices from Overlord right now. I believe we're at 3,162 subscribers in the chat. I told you the chat room was real. And if the chat room could respond with the keyword snuggle lord, I heard from one of Overlord's minions that the The giveaway is not working. The giveaway is not crap. And there's nothing that Snuggle Lord can do about it

in his current situation. So much for your prices. So we're gonna ask that the great fellow lad Knightbot pull the winner for us for the giveaway. I don't know what the hell does dude talking about, but he paying me yourself. I brought a lot of money. A lot of money with me on this trip.

That's all. Great, great. So you promised them what awaits them at the Snuggle Lords or the other Lords? Basically the seven versions of the chat room. Okay, got you. Yes. All right. And so we'll, okay, all right, all right. So here's all we'll start. The ears are turning. Snuggle Lord. Upon your chance meeting one evening in a darkened drunken tavern, a dark and drunken state. Upon spinning tales of your backgrounds, your ears perked up at the promise of not only great riches, but great, soulful, gratifying angelic entities promised to you

from the realm beyond this overlord, this overlord that keeps a very, very carefully hidden temple of worship, not too far from this city. No more than two and a half days travel on horseback. You mentioned to them that there is a place, a grand place where this temple could be found, and deep within resided the secret of contacting and being taken into the riches, the eternal vault of what is the overlord. Upon this agreement, a small bit of change was exchanged. You managed to finagle the local stable

out of a couple horses and found your way traveling before daybreak. You ride and ride and ride for the next two days. An awkward series of camping circumstances allow you to find you don't have a lot in common based on conversation other than the love of money and the love of this promise they give you. And the further you travel,

the more and more the baneful eye of mistrust begins to fall upon one snuggle lord. As the beads of sweat are down your face, but you know the city is mounting soon, there will be a time where you can prove to them that in some way shape or form they've helped you find what it is you're seeking and you can possibly kill them

before they have the chance to take you out. Nevertheless, as the second sunrise here, hits, you crest over the last of a large, hilly landscape, the high grass brushing past your boots as you push through these grasslands, and you see upon the fabled city of Rochmar. Rochmar, not really that fabled, it's a small farming village, but he seems to be talking it up as this grand city. So there's a moment of disappointment as you look over and see what may be anywhere from 60 to 70 houses to hovels to a slightly dilapidated farmland.

A bit of confusion hits you, and you look over to your great snuggle lord as he puts his hands up and yeah it was over the voices well I mean I miss translate them sometimes you miss translate there's 60 fucking hovels mm 600 six it like one you dropped the zero well it's an accident great it won't happen look for you a great dude I like you do I get a lot like you're great hands off the key you'll smudge it I feel like we're guests on jazz I'm killing right okay Hey, you pay me right now, he is dead. Whoa, whoa.

You can't kill you right now. I told you. Whoa, whoa, wow, guys. I kill him. I kill anybody for the money. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? No, how much money you got right now?

Let's find this. Let's find this Overlord. Did I really have to pick the two d- Dumbest assholes to be in my group? I mean, really. Oh. I'm getting so tired of this outer monologue. Let's point this, it's gonna be in one of these 60 hovels. Let's find it.

Alright, let's do it. What are we looking for again? Excuse me. You're the one who's supposed to know. We're looking for your mythical chat room, whatever that means. As far as I know, said something about virgins, about riches, about ladies. You see, that's all I hear about rich. I'm looking for Helen, who's a ship.

It's more her metaphorical lady. But I'll take any port in a storm. Hey, Frodo, you give me that boat. I kill them right now. give me that boat I kill them right now we'll talk you know all right I like boats man she as the tides of care to relationships quickly seem to turn as your head torts the time of work you notice and you've traveled here once before and and oh well you understand that as secretly beneath where this hidden chat room is

is is really a cash of of money that your previous employer hid amongst other and probably murdered most of your other allies before he managed to escape from his clutches. And probably the only person of your band of roving Thebes and the discreetance to not fall to the shattered blade, you know that his riches are held there. And you know that there are a number of traps

set within this dark underpassing. And you know that once you can just get there safely, you can probably make it out alone. And so just hold tight to your position and this should be fine. As you ride up to the outskirts of town, you can't help but notice that, strangely, what was once a bustling farming town, seems fairly empty. The nearby grass seems to have turned from a brightish, healthy green to a dull, crackled brown, gray.

The farms themselves, the lands have turned dark and cracked. The landscape appears to have been untended to for many a month. and aside from a couple of scratching sounds and the distant calling of crows overhead as they flutter off into the distance, there doesn't seem to be much of a sign of life in this village. As you begin to step into the village proper, there is a small thorough affair that leads

from the main area towards the center part of town. As you ride in slowly, the clomping of your horses, hitting against the rock and dried dirt beneath your feet, you catch what looks to be a handful of individuals gathered around to the center of town. Maybe no more than 150 feet away, you see four figures, all different heights dressed in ragged, rags and clothes.

That seemed to have been met with some sort of hardship and long nights without any sort of cleaning agent. They gather around in a circle over what looks to be a well. Lo there, what are you looking at in not that well? As soon as you say that loudly, the heads suddenly spin to you. you, creepy, look amongst themselves, and they all begin to scatter away from the well. Can I make, can I give him some money to like go check, see what's in that well?

You can give me money to do anything. Here's some shillings, uh, they're, uh, dude. It's a local currency. Okay. All right, man, I mean, maybe you just wasted your money because I was going to check to see if there was money in this well anyway. Let me look down here. I wasn't here right now. So as you approach, the figures have scattered off

into what looks like two different alleyways on the opposite side of this small thoroughfare. You glance over the edge. And the first thing that catches you is this, this very, very acidic smell. This pungence that hits your nostrils. That seems to, it's like long, long rotting citrus combined with almost an iron-like scent.

You glance over, and currently, you can only see maybe a few feet into the darkened well. It's too dark for you to see anything beneath. However, you are, as you are a dwarf, you have dark vision. And in the low light circumstance from the noonday sun, you're able to look down and see that the brash liquid,

what would be a normal watery well, instead is very thick and viscous in the way it slowly moves. And for what you can gather, the water is disturbed, or recently has been disturbed. That's good. Are there any, like, shiny trinkles there? There might be some coins sitting there. at the bottom.

Big clitoring through the thickness. I think there might be coins in there if you want to jump in and see what it is at the bottom. So go roll your 20. Add your perception skill. So what about perception? Get plus two? 19.

Nice. He's hoping it's nice. You take a moment and you curl your fingers around the outside of the stone well. You place your head down. And while the scent is not pleasant, the need for gold is stronger. And with a little bit of light trickles through,

you can see. what looks to be a semblance of a step or something within the well that catches your eye. And indeed, you see a handful of gold coins. I don't know how long they've been there. Tossed in either by as a wishing well or something more. But there are apparently some coins within the liquid. I learned a few years ago you just can't be sticking in any kind of water. You know, your hand might get bitten up.

Maybe I might throw a piece of rope in there, see if it disintegrates. If not, that gold's mine, I saw it first. You will die from touch it. The old rope test. Classic. See, my man... Nature's litmus. My man Sam over here to know about that rope test.

Yeah, I throw a rope in there. Who's Sam? My man Money Sam over there. It's Salty Pete, but sums me nickname. All right. So as you go through your pouch, you pull out a small wrapping of... of natural rope, you're gonna lower it into the liquid.

As it hits the surface, there's no hissing sound or immediate reaction it seemed that you just kind of lowered the rope. A few feet in, let it sit for a second. As you pull it up, you notice the rope itself has a very black color to it. And as you pull it up, you can see it there is a very, very slight dissolving reaction on the rope itself.

Yeah. Can't get my money. You might be able to jump in, get a hand, in full and we'll pull you up and you could survive that maybe I mean it's hip rope your hand is stronger I mean you all right you're a big dude usually when two people are trying to convince me to do something they not trying to do it that mean I shouldn't do it so we're gonna talk about this water how we gonna get inside it and get that money all right well you're the seafarer with water

what do you do with I know a brackish liquid when I see it this is nothing I've seen before. No molasses, no Swapwater. This is nothing the like I've seen before. But I never bucked down from a challenge. With a quick as I thrust my hand in there to grab the coins. All right. There are about seven or so feet below

from the top of the wells. You're probably, as a dwarf, a dragon needs to help. I need a little half that little buddy. Yo, it's all right. I'm highly acrobatic. Yo, man. You make you be a funny one. My mother. You got me excited thing to you about to grab that money.

You got nowhere near my money. I forgot to be stumpy Adams. With the aid of someone else, you could probably get in there if you want. Would you be so kind just to dangle me? Oh yeah, you know how dangle you. It's a dwarf thing. So, as Ofkar grabs you over the ankles and slams you over the front of the well, you dangle down, your fingers just reaching in towards the liquid,

you grab at the coin. grab at the coins. It's very, very cold, the liquid. But it warms quickly as the strange tingling sensation begins to rapidly in case your hand as the feeling begins to go numb. Your hand gathers a handful of coin, and I want you to go ahead and make an athletics check.

All right. Don't fuck this up. Oh. And hit the pencil. You walked it up. You walked it up. Get the pencil, Mr. 14. 14.

14. Okay, so you feel the sweat beginning to pour it on the side of your head, your muscles are tense, but as soon as you see that gold vanish from beneath the liquid, you know it's in the proper hands, you pull it up out of the well without much issue, you come up to the surface, hand clutching the gold in hand as you open your fingers,

you look and see, indeed the coins are as clean as the day they were. Almost like just being in that well, took any sort of tarnishing material off of the coin itself. Also looking down, you notice that your hand has gone from numb to burning. Oh no, he meant! Give my money. Hold!

Give my money first. Take the money out of his hand putting in myself. He's on the ground. Throw some dirt on it. Throw some dirt. I kick some dirt all on your hand. You take two points of acid damage. Oh, God.

The corrosive liquid eventually subsides the horrible corroding of your hand, but not without its impact. All right. Thank you for helping me out. I throw you a gold piece. Oh, thanks for the tip. Yeah, you know. I'm sitting on my horse laughing my ass off.

I'm so glad now that I teamed up with these dumb because this is going to provide me with so much entertainment on my trip. You know we can hear you, right? You're saying it loud. We know what you're saying. We speak, Colin. Hey, uh, how about you?

What would it take to pick up this stungle lord and dip his head? Just just the tip of his head. What about the gold face you just gave me? Yeah. Just dip his head in just a little. little bit. Listen, I want to find this chat room. Let's find where those scampering scamps got off to. All right, but after this I'm dipping your head in the juice, man.

All right, so, glancing over, I want you all three of you to go ahead and make a perception check. Okay, so what do I roll? Roll a D20, which is the most round of the dice, and add your perception skill to the number you roll. 14. 15, 16. We are not clever. 15, 50 and 60. All right. So, you, we didn't see for a long time. The salty air seems to have taken its toll in your eyes are still a bit fuzzy. As you take the rubbing to them to try and get a proper view, the two of you immediately see that in one of the nearby buildings, a door is slightly ajar. And the moment that your heads turn toward it, the door shuts almost reactively. Weird. Before we go check that out.

Did you see something? Yeah, yeah, a door shut and it smelled like some money. Oh, great. Let's find out. As you approach the door, you go and reach for the knob as you give it a turn and it tense push if the door is not opening. It looks like the knob itself is either locked or being held,

and the door is held in place. Well, it looks like somebody might be trapped in. Let's bust down this door, man. I can pick the lock. Oh, all right. The war is over, and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust.

Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.

See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. You know that feeling when you hear one interesting thing and suddenly you want to know more. Well, that's the idea behind my podcast, something you should know. Every episode starts with a question you've probably never thought to ask, like why people do or don't like you, why certain habits stick, or what everyday advice is actually wrong. I'm Mike Carruthers, and I talk with scientists, authors, and experts, and I keep it practical, surprising, and fun to listen to.

If you've got a curious brain, come try one episode of something you should know on the podcast app you're listening to right now. Your choice. I don't want to take this experience. I think I'm gonna try and bust down this door first. I'm at it. Leading with your shoulder. Go and make a strength check.

Do you just roll out of your 20, add your strength modifier. Uh... I can't... Did you pull something? Oh! You pull something. You get a nice running start. Foot goes right into the door.

It solidly hits you and sends you falling right back onto your ass, nearly knocking the wind out of you. Go ahead and pick that lock firm. Look, for him. This must be a powerful dog. Strong reinforced wood and iron. All right. I'll let Mrs. Butterworth and the lefty try this one.

I'm going to take my thieves tools out and try to pick the line. All right. You got a movie 20 and then add your dexterity close to the other. Uh, one. As you step over. This is going to be the worst boss. Pushing. Pushing your Dwarven ally aside, you pull back your sleeves, pull out your fine masterwork

thieves tools, and jostle for a moment, and you hear that wonderful sound, that click, which displays the unlocking mechanism. As you pull back, you realize that wasn't the mechanism, that was the end of your lock pick, breaking in the lock. Oh, Christ. How you dumb dumb's doing down there? Oh, great. It's a powerful portal.

Oh, man. I didn't think it can be traversed. We should go around to the box. Find a window. Oh no, I'm going to deal with this house real quick. Can I grant your synergy bonus, whatever that is? I'm going to see if there's something in my dungeon near pack that can light this house on fire. Classic will smoke them out.

I actually think that's a really good idea. Let's burn it. All right. That's a good idea. That's a good idea. Oh, just check it out. Wait till I look in my Dungeonneer pack. See what's up here.

As looking through his pack, you, Snuggle Lord, know that you, as a fiend-packed warlock, have the ability of use a cantrip called thaumaturgy. That's what I was looking for. That allows you to do all kinds of slightly things, but especially you can create fire. Pretty much within torchlight or a small handful of fire on command.

So I was looking through his pack. I'm gonna let him keep looking for a little bit more. Because it humors me. Fair enough. Did you find anything there, little buddy? Yeah, I got a Tinder box in here. Swipe last. Before he can finish a sentence, I cast the fire onto the house.

That's how you do. I don't know. Are you serious? You could do that in a little long? Oh, while sitting on my horse and smirking in. Smirking and smugly. With a flick of his face, a spark emerges from his fingertips and a burst of flame collides with the upper echelon of the upper portion of the rooftop.

The thatched dried out. Thatched roof begins to immediately burn brighter and wider and wider until about half the roof itself has caught flame. Part of the wood surrounding the upper beams of the front panel where the door is apart also began to catch, and you start hearing some subtle coughing the interior building. Gotcha.

All right. Yeah, so now we're going, I will go punch his horse in the face and then we'll wait by there. Classic Dwarven maneuver. So no one who's fixed on horse punch. Oh yeah, I'll go ahead and punch his horse right in the face as he laughs. Go ahead and roll D20. Add your attack bonus. Oh, damn, damn, damn.

Goodness gracious. You strengthen your proficiency. So, that'll be a... That'll be 11. 11. Horse is pretty easy to hit at the best point. Go ahead and roll a D4, add your strength modifier. All right, D4.

Tapitate. 4 plus my strength. What is it, my strength? Your strength modifier, yeah. So that's seven. Seven. Wow! Make sure you have socks your horse across the face.

As you're laughing, mid-lap, the laughs, the laughs, put his pull from it as you go, ha, as your horse falls immediately over onto its side, sending you tumbling, from the horse. Quiet feet from it, on your side, face in the dirt, coughing for a moment as your dwarf friend, rips his hands,

off-gar, kind of chuckles over you. Poor horse. Has the fire weakened the structure enough for us to basically jump in to the building? Into the inferno. I have fire resistance spell. That's true. All right, so looking at it, you can see

the flame is starting to get it. And you can notice the door. is trying to be opened, but whatever lock mechanism has been jammed. Sorry, that's a flammie. You're, boom, boom. Pretty sure this is about to be manslaughter. I was inside of the door. I'm going to try and help this dude out.

So, because he'll think I'm the hero in there. Yeah, thanks for putting my horse dickhead. Like, it's all about perspective. I had a plan. Oh, you should have seen your face. He's going to punch me. Oh, it's my horse. Yeah, just...

Yeah, look at your horse laying there like a... Yeah, you punched a horse! What is wrong with you? Nothing. He went from... There's not a damn thing that's wrong with me. Now let me help this dude out this house that I lit on fire. I lit on fire.

You couldn't do shit! Whatever, I'm gonna help him out this house real quick. It's a strong daughter. Take a strength check again. Oh, burn the people in their home's classic dwarf mood. Um... That was six. As you go charging head first this time,

turns the door to headbutt through, a second time you land on your back. However, whatever the impact you did, manage to jostle free, whatever pit apart, your lockup stuck into, the door suddenly swings open, smoke billows out into the midday sun, and you see a cloaked individual, probably about a little bit shorter than you in height,

comes rushing out, coughing, outward, just trying to get a breath of fresh air. No! Are you okay? I saved you. Who sent your house on fire, man? Oh shit. Yo, your house got set on fire.

He's not doing made of mithril. You looked really weird. Why couldn't you just say hello? You looked weird. We tried to get in. We couldn't. Go ahead. You look weird.

Deception check. Oh, of course now I do good. I roll 19. 19. Okay, the individual pulls back the hood. And what you can see, it was it was a kind of ragged gray essentially a cloak that was placed over with them. You can see their pants are kind of torn,

and when the face is revealed, it's an extremely malnourished female halfling. She looks like she's seen some rough roughties. She could probably pass for mid-20s or so, but due to her current state of health, she looks much, much older. I feel like a real dickhead. She finishes coffee.

She goes, thank you, thank you for saving me. I appreciate the assistant. Well, to be fair, I mean, he did fall on his ass twice, and he punched a horse. Yeah, well, that horse is just collateral. This is all conjecture and hearsay. The horse, actually, I'm going to give you the full story. The horse is blocking my way to help you out this house.

Is I'm the ass horse all in my way anyway? Is there a way I convince her that I'm the only person here she should trust? Sure, we'd tell her. I'm like, look, look here, a little girl. Like, these guys are idiots. You don't want to talk to them. Just talk to me. Like, look me in the eyes.

Talk to me. Let's talk this through. Like, what's going on? What's up with you? Yeah, trust the guy who looks like Lord of 80s himself. And this guy over here. Persuasion. Come on, Tifling.

Okay, so what, okay, now, how do I add these numbers together? What is it, persuasion? Persuasion. It's high, it's high. Plus four. So 21. 21. Okay, she lands to the other two dwarves.

Her both kind of general stature and nature, two rather ragged-looking, swarthy gentlemen, looks to you with your, Immediately, dangerous-looking, teethling face, but there's something about your voice and the way you spoke to her that is strangely welcoming, especially in the chaos of this house nearly burning down around her.

She reaches out and kind of touches your hand gently and goes, I thank you, certainly. We've been lost in this region for over a month now. We're looking for food. We're not from here, but when we came to this village, it was empty, everyone was gone. No bodies, no one killed, just missing, just vanished. But it seems the further we get from this place,

there's something that draws us back to it. We get thirsty, we get hungry, like there's a curse to it, that won't let us leave. Oh, well, humming, that's just you, uh, that was the rapture from the Lord Bahamit, just raising up all his dragonling followers and all that such and things. Again, he is not to be trusted, he's an idiot.

Yeah. What, tell me, where are you drawn back to us specifically? Well. It's hard to say, we're continuously brought towards the center of this village, there's a large platform where it looks like there used to be more of a presentary stage where a small event or at least townships would discuss. But right now, there's something that keeps calling us back to that place. You sit up tense there to survive in the meantime. Don't trust the buildings abound. I can show you. That would be great.

Yo. I'll pretend to be your friend until we get there. Why would you say it? Why are you saying that outside? Why do you see this? Fucking serious. Show some discretion. You really want a friend, don't you? It's fine, it's fine. How does this work every time? I don't know, man.

I think it's the demon horns using demon powers and stuff. You know, I need to go to church on Sunday. Come, come follow me. And she kind of turns around, she puts her hood up, and she darts down the alleyway to the right of the burning building, peeping away from the flames

that are now beginning to completely envelop the structure. Oh, excuse me. Sorry about that, by the way. Yeah, yeah, that was an accident. An accident by nature. Who do? Why do you keep bringing this up when nothing happened, man? Anyway, did you have any gold in that house?

Like, is there any money in that house? What homeowner are yet? Bigger and better things. Don't worry about the house. You all can keep walking. I'm going to go get that hot gold, man. Keep your eye on the prize, man. Yeah, we got to look at this juice anyway.

Tell her to take us to the juice. We're going to the tent. Oh, all right. Juice is a common dwarf in turn for tints. It's slung. As you keep walking along, she's darting ahead, keeping an eye out. She turns around and goes, but by the way, Lily. Oh, you have a name.

Or a favorite flower. One or the other. Name? That's my name. What's up? I'm off guard. You know, I'm a, I'm a cell sword ex-pit fighter. Put your money where your mouth is.

slow to trust quick to kill money talks bullshit walks and I reach extend my hand out for some dwarf dab Cheap she that's the top classic half-link they always miss it up It's all good. It's all good I am salty Pete but some call me Sam Alright Sam you can call me salty So okay it is all right I get the idea of this You probably are without a father figure. From the look in your eye, you can call me dad if you want. Yo, you get creepy, man.

Oh, that's, I'm snuggled, though. That's fine. I'm sure he's a great guy. Oh, close one. As she continues now with an awkward side lance. Keep pair of children, you know this. I'm so sorry. I got it all out. Like, there's nothing left.

As the alley opens up into this central, essentially a small square to this village, you can see what she was talking about. There was an elevated wooden platform, although it is partially collapsed in the center. It looks like there was something heavy was laid on top of it and it eventually gave way or something heavy smashed it from up top.

And around the outskirts of this, you see what look about six or seven tents and kind of a very small ramshackle tent city. They've been made from scraps of cloth that have seen have been scabaged from nearby houses or a storage facility. but as you approach she gives out of voices Sterling! Sterling, we have guests, please! At which point one of the tent opened up and you see what looks like an elderly woman,

human-ish from what you can see in the distance, looks at, like, oh, is that right? How would, are they here to help? And just... I think so, I think so, and she rushes up and helps the aluminum out of her hands. Yes, yes, we're here to help! At which point, a secondary tent opens next to that and a large burleigh half-ling He steps out. Older, looks to be kind of the one temporarily in command of this small group of people. He steps out. So you're here to help you, sick.

Hi, mister. We're here to help. Yeah, if you got the money to pay, you know what I'm saying? Big money. Hey, so I'm going to let you know. I'm a sell sword and ex a pit fighter. Slow to trust. Quick to kill. Money talks, bullshit walks. Let's kill somebody. We've got to get you a fucking business card. Yeah, really, dude. Love that Dwarven dialect. The gentleman kind of steps forward and

looks at the three of you. Don't be from out. He sort of just stares at you. As you're waiting, the young halfling girl, Lily, comes up and pats you on the hand again, kind of alleviating the tension. Oh, too slow. No.

The man takes a step before. This time, you can see definitely posturing a presence of masculinity and control of the situation. Looks about the three, and he goes, All right. So if you're here to help, show me what weapons you've got. Oh, my favorite point.

Show me mine. I'll show you yours. Or vice versa. Sorry, the soldiers, that'll be trained. You're idiots. So, uh, so I pull out my two long swords. So you know, I got two longswords. I use them at the same time. I like to call this one, Regina and this one, Linda.

You get it right, left. Ha ha ha. I'm hilarious. And then I got this crossbow right here. I use it with one hand. It'll bust somebody in the face. Any questions? No, I have no questions.

That's very nice. I didn't know that name. That's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah, just after right and left, no any... Nah, yeah, you know, I like making jokes up. It's good to pass the time when you're cleaning your weapons.

I've got several blades, a short bow, and my trusty cape, which can come in handy in case of emergency. I... I... nearly have this little axe. It's no big deal. It's not really a big deal. And a crossbow, I'm not really that good in a fight. All right. These guys, though, they're good.

Great, you can use them for whatever you want. What a sec. And you're the leader? Yes. You need to the employer. Yeah. Right. Same difference.

Here's what you need to know. We've been stuck in this place for at least two weeks now. We're within a way out here. Little to eat. No way is coming. Whatever darkness has taken root in this small town, I've come to believe, has infiltrated the water, has infiltrated the ground beneath us, the very earth itself.

As far as I can tell, each night when we sleep, the dreams and the nightguess get worse and worse. I dare say if this continues for long, I'm able to lose my own sanity and I want to keep my daughter safe for me. So, all the cash I have, more than a simple 120 gold, will be to you to distribute as you as you see fit. Turn that down. As the elderly woman goes, I'm sorry and she puts her small violin away. As her mind slips. I was really enjoying the music. It's quite fine.

No, yeah, you speak in my language right now, and I'm ready to do anything. Well, let's hear... I'd say you're right about the water. Yeah, yeah. The water is strange. First off, it's the juice, obviously. They're drinking the juice.

They ain't got no other kind of water. The juice making you crazy. So we need to go up there and maybe you can use. there and maybe you can use some arcana and look at that juice in there and see what's up with it. And we can get this money. I think we should check the area around the stage and see if there's an opening or somewhere that we can get beneath. Yeah, let's try that. I'm also a little concerned about your hand.

It's fine. You're not like getting into your thoughts. Listen, I'm sorry I don't exfoliate like you tieflings do. I'm just, you know, like no weird things going on up there. No, just the thought of getting. getting my shit back and me shit together. No, we're cool, we're cool. Yo, so do you want your shit back or your shit back?

That accent funny as well. Oh yeah, my accent. Dwarves, am I right? Yeah, I'm sorry. You gotta come up to the mountain, with us mountain dwarfs. We hill folk are a different breed. Yeah, yeah, man, this is the mountain dwarves.

We keep it real. I'm terribly sorry, but I swear their muscle goes a lot farther than their brains do though. Best be for the coin I'm paying for this, but we'll see. You can prove your earth. Follow me. It leads you over towards the central stage

in the middle of this open area. You can see now the stage, upon closer inspection, it hasn't collapsed. Has it been smashed. It looks like the central area beneath it is, it's been pulled down. There is an actual, what looks like a small, almost like the top of an ant hill.

Like it's slowly sinking into what appears to be some sort of a funnel that disappears beneath the surface of the earth. Well, well, not look. unsettling at best. A little scary. Just throw your other hand down there and see what happens to it. I'm going to try a different tact. I'd like to gaze into the abyss with me dark vision.

All right. So you have to kind of step underneath the large wooden platform, kind of move through the broken portion of it. You can see where elements of it are jamming in this kind of gravelly sand texture that formulates this small funnel. It's roughly about 12 to 15 feet across. cross, and part of it does spill out into the opposite side of this open area. As you kind of glance towards the edge, you feel the sand kind of give a little bit under your foot.

Go ahead and make a dexterity check. Oh, thank you. A saving throw. So that would just be... The saving throw, which should be at the top of the chat. A hot nine. As you look over and step, you find the sand begin to slip from underneath you. You reach up to try and grab one of the wooden platforms to keep yourself stable. However, Your other foot that you had your weight on also slips as the sand dirt seems to give from you entirely.

As you hit your side, you feel it actually beginning to cave inward and pull you deeper, deeper into the small recess of the ground. You're now up to your waist being pulled underneath the surface. You guys watch him being sucked in. A little help. Damn! Damn! Get in there. Oh, God.

Oh, God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's in there. That's deep. I must have. There must have me. I'm jumping inside.

I'm jumping inside. I'm jumping inside. As you leap, which at this point, you're just past your face and nose under the sand. You leap onto and grabbing onto the sides of his head, just as it passes those past his eyes. As you grab it, you now plant your feet to pull what you're used to when you get a nice firm foothold and pull.

There's no firm foot hold. Your feet going to the sand and you just continue going underneath with him until eventually you yourself are completely submerged and disappear beneath the surface of the surface of the sand. beneath the surface of this. Now leaving you alone, staring at this now slowly stopping funnel of cascading sand. Oh shit.

What I'm gonna do? Well, fuck it, I'm going to jump in after them. Oh, this is stupid. This is stupid, stupid, stupid. Yeah, I'm gonna jump in after them. All right, you run and you leap. And with a impact sound, your teafling self dips and immediately disappears beneath the surface.

There's a few moments of very scary breathlessness. This all of a sudden suffocation hits each of you. The darkness. You're unable to see. you're unable to move and there's just this constraint of earth pressing around you and for a good five to ten seconds you begin to come to terms with your mortality as if this is your final moments on this plane. Well this sucks so far.

Then you feel this strange lightning sensation in your feet almost at the pressure is getting to alleviate and with that you now fall you're falling in darkness. No! Oh! No! Unfortunately there is no light source down here at all so you don't know. don't even have dim light to work off of as pure darkness. However, I want you all to make an acrobatics check

with disadvantage. How do I echo locate? So roll 2D20 and drop the highest. Wait, what? Roll 2. Roll twice and use the lowest one. I rolled 2 and a 3. Also, I got an 11.

Okay. I rolled a... Wait, so what do I add that to? Acrobatics, so that'd be plus 1. I rolled 17. 11. All right. So you both impact on soft sand and in the immediate point of impact,

you just instinctively have learning how to fall and tumble. You manage to go with the momentum and step out of the way of that impact, minimizing the damage. You each take, actually you take two points of damage. You take one point of damage. You, however, go face first into the top, taking a significant amount of impact to your spine, your neck, and your shoulders.

You take four points of damage from the fall and are now head buried like an ostrich in the top of the sand pile with your legs and arms dangling like, Look at me out! I got sandburn on me, man. Oh my gosh. Get me out of the ground over here! Look at them!

Just damage! Don't get them yet. Let's look at it. It's a dead damn d'war. You don't hate d' wars! It's not very hard. You yank him out at this point. It is nearly pitch black.

in this air, and you can barely see a couple feet in front of you. But you can hear immediately there is this kind of distant sound almost like the ringing of very, very gentle bells. It seems very out of place and perpetual, and the tone shifts and overlaps. Yo, y'all hear that. You hear that money clinkling? Now, that's some money clinkling right there. That's not that.

I don't think that's money. Find crystal lamp. You have a thing straight for a second. You have a cling to get in a clinkling. You have a clingling. You know, I think this is money clinklingling like. Oh. This is a great idea. Run straight towards it. Why don't you? Just see, go run right to it.

It's probably money. Last time we did something like that, we ended up in a hole and your head was upside down. That was a great moment. I mean, it's moments like this that make memories, you know what I'm saying? I'm gonna see that when I go to sleep later. Yeah, oh. So the rumor is it's mostly sand. Does it seem like there's still anywhere? You know, you have a torch or any sort of light source?

Yeah, I have a torch. Got a torch in my donger, and ears pack. I love your theme songs. You light a bit torch as the light source squeeze out to the room, you can see. There's a large, large dome of sand that is slowly caved in from the top surface of this kind of small cave in. However, about 30 feet down, it comes to rest,

and it looks like some sort of a slightly toppled stone structure that has been breached on this side, almost like there was something deep under the ground that has crumbled inward and the sand has slowly poured into it. Also seems to be the source of the strange ringing sound, this faint ringing. I'd like to investigate the stone object and use stone cutting to see if I can... You're using that stone cutting? You know I know the stone cutting.

Yeah, yeah, and I give them Dwarven Dap because that's some Dwarven stuff right there. That's that Dwarf it up for a pie. That's that DOO shir right there. Oh, look at me. I'm a halfling. Get real. I know, yeah. Well, tell this your two are.

You're quite useful in your situation. Yo, yo, hey, uh, uh, my man snuggle. Look at the rock. Ah, you can't tell me shit because you're not a dwarf. Yeah, man, you can't tell me shit. Are your hand? Because you've been burnt. Yeah.

And get some. Oh, yeah, your hand's looking really good right now. You're not like yourself, confidence. Now, let me look at the store. I know. Red roll investigation. 15. Do I add anything for stone counting?

I was having to be advantage in the rolls. You can roll a second time. Sure. All right. I'm sticking with the 15. All right. So as you step up to the, what looks like the little bit of this.

The stone outcopping that's kind of slowly peering out of the earth. It looks like this is the upper corner of a stone chamber that has crumbled in a little bit, and you're now peering into it from an elevated position outside of the chamber. Looking at the structure of the stone, the way it's built, carved, and wedged together to form the almost brick-like pattern of its making, it's definitely not dwarven and make, but it looks very old. And it looks like the material itself is almost like a sandstone. And a lot of civilizations that long existed before proper stone cutting techniques were used,

or stone can be moved from nearby mountains or underground territory, or even the dwarven stone cutting techniques were spread across the land. This was a very primitive way of building subterranean structures. You gathered this interior is probably very, very old, well over 1,000 years. And as you peer down into using the torchlight, you can see down into the chamber,

it's rectangular in shape. There appears to be a trough with some sort of liquid that kind of is an ovaloid shape around, a raised platform in the center, and in the center of this platform atop of it, you can see a very, very dull blue glow from this crystalline kind of spherical orb that is resting on it. That's just giving off this very, very faint blue light. And the further you walk towards it as you inspect the interior from the top of the hole in this stone structure, you hear that musical ringing sound get louder and louder as you step towards

it. Gotcha. How big does the crystal look like roughly in size, shape, and weight? About, say the baseball size, it's about that big around. Okay. Where's you can tell them this, it's about 25 feet from you currently. Can I check the room for traps? You're welcome to if you want to step up to the corner.

Yeah, you better do it quick because that's a big-ass crystal. It looks like it's worth a lot of money. I really want to check for traps before this guy. Yo, you better, just hurry up and check you, man. Because I'm about to run in there. Plus perception. It's plus three. All right.

Oh, please. Not that music. just me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here? Are you a fan of True Crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries? The show that jumped started all of our love of True Crime. I'm Ellen Marsh.

And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host, I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Perception. Okay, 22. 22. As you kind of step towards edge of the corner, you can see the sand that is spilled under the room allows you a small, decline to step into the room if you'd like to. As you get to the edge of the sand, you glance at the nearby panels and you can see there are small language runes that are carved into portions of the floor, many of which seem to be just situationally part of like a hieroglyphic storytelling aspect the whole room, but the language you don't understand what languages do you guys speak or not? Common and dwarven. I have no idea. We're gonna say you don't know it

because it gets mystery about. But you do notice that there are a handful of ruins across the floor, primarily at the north, south, east, west type portions of the stone flooring surrounding the crystal and where that small water trough surrounds it. On the outskirts of that water, on those positions, those two, those four corners, the ruins are deeper carved into the stone and seem to almost have a quartz-like texture to them, almost like there was something, quartz set into the stone flooring. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Totally clear, you should run down in there and see what, you know, see what that's all about. Sounds great. I've got an idea. Does any of you have something similar to the size of that third gen? Oh, it's a good idea. Yo! I'm going to get a lighting start. You said like you're taking ideas from some type of law that may not exist on this plane, and it sounds like a dumb-ass idea.

No, no, it's gonna be great. I trust me, it's gonna well. I'm pretty sure I've heard this tape. many years ago and I don't think it works out too well. This is anything but derivative. I don't know what you're talking about. You've heard the tale too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there will be a giant boulder that will come rolling down towards your face.

I don't think it will work. Yo, how about this? Rope test 2.0, okay? So we're gonna get a rope and we're gonna throw it on the flow. We're gonna throw the rope on the flow. And then if anything happens, we know. No, it's a trap. If not, I go and get my new gym. As long as you throw the rope, I'm okay with this plan. Swerve. All right, I'm gonna come from piece of warp.

More classic slag. Oh, love it. It works for anything. Oh, kitten masturbation, classic. Oh, you have to see it to believe it. Sounds like these bells. Classic dwarf. All right, so as you step down into the room,

into the room, you take a little bit of the rope, you cut it off with one of your swords, you take it and you toss it towards one of the small quartz like ruins in the ground. It hits and comes to rest over the small central quartz type room. A few moments pass, no reaction. Then the room shudders for a second.

You feel the entire structure kind of shake with a sudden impact. A little bit of the sand comes down and settles to rest for a moment. Before you start seeing certain blocks on the opposite sides the room begin to glow. As they glow, they begin to drift out of the walls, almost suspended in the air, and beginning to lock together in different places until eventually it forms a haphazard humanoid figure

in a matter of second. What is that? Oh, my goodness. This is definitely not in the wild. Oh, this is some weird, like, some, like, what? You took the words out of me mouth. Oh, damn!

At which point, this hulking humanoid form, probably now standing at close to eight and a half, nine feet tall, made of these sandstone blocks that have been pulled from the wall. Handsome, unmoving, the crystal in some of the room flashes with a vibrant blue light as it does in the center of this chamber where the eyes in the mouth of this humanoid would be a similar blue light suddenly flicks on, like it's been given sudden sentience.

At which point, this large sandstone golem type entity begins to charge towards you. Roll initiative. No! So you roll at E20 and add your initiative modifier. We fought some goldoms before. That's all I add? Yeah.

Alright, so... 20. 16. Six. Oh. Nice. I like to call that the ringer baby. Foughten clean up.

All right. So we're gonna say at the top of the round. Salty, you got first up. You got first up. Oh, great. You're still on the outskirts of the room now. The only person's really stepped in at this point are the two of them.

You're kind of still up at the corner. So you see it kind of charging more towards these two. But you have the top of the round. So up to you. I'd like to slink off to the right, draw my short bow, and try to shoot an arrow at the crystal. OK. Cool.

So as you kind of slide down the Sam Decline, you come around the edge, pull out your short bow. Let it fly. Go ahead and roll for an attack. He's showing his legitimate D&D weapon. 11. As you release the arrow, the shuttering of each footstep of the Golem itself, it's very upsetting. And in the chaos, you let go the arrow missing by a mere inch. As it disappears into the darkness, you hear it.

You ain't no elf, man. You ain't no elf. I know. I wake up every day. I'm ashamed. Where's your weapon? That takes you to rest inside the chamber, kind of off to the right where the rest of the party is. Next step, we have snuggle order. It's moving towards you. It's running towards me really fast. I look around me and I freak out and go, oh, shit!

And I cast that thomiturgy. Tomaturgy and make myself appear to be a massive giant-like individual with a booming voice and I intimidate him and go, You are beneath me, you foul creature. Yeah, make him punch you first. For a moment, this frightened, shaking, teafling individual grounds himself and this kind of greenish energy begins to build around his body as it does, his physical form seems to almost rise two to three feet.

His shoulders broadened, his face grows dark, his eyes begin to spark with a fiery red light. The voice booms out throughout the hallway and the entirety of this room structure catching you off guard. Go ahead and roll an intimidation check. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Oh, no.

Okay, well, I could be okay. Eight? Eight? Yeah. Total? That's with a plus six. Oh. Neither the speed, gate, or power of the golem

seem to have slowed to continue. a barrel towards you. This is a bad idea. You got this. You just made him bigger. You just made him bigger. Oh no. It's funny.

I swear to get in there. All of my earnings from this, like that dude, that dad, that bad father, obviously, I'll give you all of it. Just take care of this. As you're saying this, the Gullum reaches for before you finish your sentence and goes to grab you. Uh, what's your armor class? Uh, studied leather and 13 is my armor class. Okay. You take

You take five points of crushing damage As the hand reaches Crushes down on your shoulders And body lifts you off your feet And you're now considered grappled Motherfuckus That's got a hand

Oh there you He picked him up He just grabbed him Oh no So if I'm swinging with two weapons do I roll twice You do use a bonus action For a second attack

You just don't add your strength modifier to the second attack Oh, that looks awesome. So that's going to be 18. 18, okay, roll the second attack. All right. Oh, and because I have the two-weapon fighter, I still get to add the strength modifier.

Oh, you do, awesome. See, you get to do both, nice. Oh, that one is 12. 12. 12 misses, unfortunately, but the first attack does ring true. Go ahead and roll damage. All right. You missed an eight.

You are not missed an eight. That's a missed. I swing four plus strength. 11. 11 points of damage, nice. So after it grabs and picks up the teeth, and you can see the fingers actually crushing it as it's screaming. You pull weapons out, swing one that manages to pass under its arm,

the second one, goes straight into its torso and carves out a portion of the stone. Even though the sandstone is a very hard surface, you manage to find a portion between the bricks that jammed together and actually carves a chunk of brick out of the side of its torso. You can see the structure kind of ship, a little bit on one side and now it's kind of standing a little off kilter, but it's still solid in its current physical form. But well done, you cut a sizeable part out of it. Brings this-

A still-still-de-crust, you dumbest, do something! That's some extra buddy one. I'd like to reload my bow and take another shot. You go ahead and fire again? Is he trying the same thing again? I can't see anything. There's a giant rocks. Fucking hand covering my face. 13. 13?

As you swing and release, this does hit the crystal, but at a certain angle that causes it to just lay off. It is a spherical. It did. It's a spherical object, unfortunately, it deflects coming piercing very well. Got close, but not quite enough to get to it.

Do you want to move or do you stay where you are? I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to move back. I'm going to move closer by 10 feet to the crystal. Okay, so you shift up. You're now at the outskirts of that liquid moment surrounding it. Yeah. It's only about five feet wide, so you can look at your point. You stop there.

That ends your turn. You're up, Snuggs. Okay, can I use the Hellish Rebuke on him? You can. Am I allowed to do that? You can. That's the Hellish rebuke. There's the ability here.

Pull it up all fast, because I had to find many teethlings. There we go. Hellish rebuke. That's a reaction you can make in response. So you actually could have done that lap, like as he's crushing you, which we'll say you do right now. So as he's crushing you, you do that as a reaction to me, you point your finger and the damage

stop it's gonna try to stop it so it's being crushed like you point your finger at it's arm the wet willie as you awkwardly finger the sandstone golem's brick structure it fails at saving a throw so it takes 2d 10 fire damage what I'll that finger go ahead go ahead and roll so ten cider twice 10 cider okay It's a habanero sauce, red-willy. It's a spicy finger blast. Two and four.

So six points of fire damage, as your finger enters the portion between the bricks, there's a burst of flame, and it looks like an impact of some sort of internal arcane explosion, causing the sutures between all the different bricks. So shake for a second. You see dust and sand settle between the portions of its torso that are holding its limbs to it. A pretty sizable impact from an unexpected position. So that was your reaction. Now what do you want to do for your turn?

Okay, great. Okay, so the cant trips can be used every... Many times as you want. Do some more of that fire stuff. I don't know. That must a spell. It'll be great. Two more that finger stuff.

Use it. I'm gonna use the poison spray on him. Okay, okay. See if that does anything. Yo, you try to poison some magic stuff. Ah! I'm learning. Sounds to its greatest weakness,

Pison. All right, so. All right, so, you bring your hand out towards the creature. You release this sudden burst of poisonous gas. I'm panicking, assholes. I'm freaking held up by the top of my head. This is really excruciating pain. I may have made a poor decision.

I don't know. I'm just doing something. As the cloud swarms around the entity, it does not seem to be affected by the presence of poison as its physical form. It does not fall into the category of a natural living entity. However, you can use your movement to try and break free of the grapple. So I try to run away. You try and break out.

You try and break out. So go ahead and you can make either an athletics or an acrobatics role. Your choice. Oh, um. Acrobatics. All right, go ahead and roll in at acrobatics. Okay, that's 12.

12? All right. You managed to just squeeze out of its grip, land on your feet and get back about five feet. It's still right in front of you, but you're no longer in its friends. Slipprey bastard. Slipp. Ah. Okay, so as its turn, it's going to do frenzy punches.

It's going to do an attack on both of the of you. Oh, this giant fist, it clenches its fingers together into two giant hammers of sandstone. Come up! Oh, damn, no, I can't take this kind of punishment. That's gonna be a 16 against you. My armor class is 16.

It just manages to impact. So as one fist goes, bov, hitting you right in the bread basket. You can feel the armor absorbs a lot of the blow, but it still nearly knocks the wind out of you. Oh, the basket. You take seven points of bludgeoning damage. God damn.

And the sheer impacting force. of the blow as it pulls its fist back, it back hands towards you. Of course, yeah, you need the back hand. That's gonna be an eight. What's your armor class? 13. 13.

You'd whoosh, ducked beneath the arc and swings wildly, missing your entire. All that luck being wasted on you, man. That hurts. Of course, it's your turn now as you recover from the blow. You got this, you got this. Oh, nobody punched me in the test

and lived a tail of tail. So I'm gonna go ahead and slice and dice. All right, Regina! I swing up for... His right hand sword. 21. For Regina, and... His right hand sword!

I just love color commentary. And Linda! And with Linda, I swing for 19. Both hit, go and roll damage on both strikes. Oh, yeah! So, um... Regina smacks for five. Breddammed.

Linda smacks for 11. Nice. So you bring both swings down simultaneously, streaking an X-mark strike across its back. As you do, you carve a sizable rock from the side of its back. As the stones tumble off of its torso in the kind of its shoulder area, it hits the ground and they just turn to dust upon impact of the ground. You can see now within the sandstone in the center,

there is kind of a crackling arcane energy, almost like a spider-like electricity that is holding its form together. That is the same color as the stone in the center. center of the room. Do you want to move it all? You're going to stay where you are. I think I'm going to stay there and actually use an action search to swing at the innards of this beast. Okay, go ahead and roll another attack.

Oh, I don't know what that's going up in this beast. That is going to be 14. 14. 14. With this accident, sure, strike you go and you bring your sword down. As your sword gets within a few inches of the back, a bit of that blue energy arcs out hits the blade, causing your hand to recoil instinctively. You drop the weapon for a second from the sheer,

like shock of it, realize what you've done and reach out and pick it up again. It manages to knock your attack out of use, unfortunately. Y'all, go for the crystal. I think the blue stuff ain't worked. You think? That brings us up to the top. Salty, you're up.

All right. Do it again. I know I said it was stupid last time, but go for it. I'm going to believe in myself. I'm going to sprint towards the curve. crystal, leap through the air, doing a flip, grabbing it, and taking it out of its one. The flip was just...

All right. Go ahead and make an acrobatics roll. I got a one. This tie is terrible. This is hot garbage. You have got another guy. You got another guy. Pushing off the back wall of the room.

You go into a ninja sprint, leap to the air over the mode of brackish liquid around the orb. You reach out and realize you're about... and realize you're about a foot and a half too high. You reach down for it, pass it through your fingers. You tumble over and land back first into the other side of the moat. Splash the liquid all over your back and torso. You tumble off, slide across the other side of the room,

slam hitting the opposite side on the wall. On your back, your feet, ass up. Ass over tea kettle. Never believe in yourself. You are considered prone, and you take three points of acid damage from splashing in the liquid. Oh, God. It's not a lord, you're up.

It's my heart trait. Believing in yourself is a lie. It's coming, Boring. It's not in that section. Wait, is it a... I almost got it. I love! Friends!

It's a... I did cast a spill called friends! Oh no, I can't. No, I can't. I can't do it because he's hostile to me. Um... I cast five. Cast fire into the weak spot on the back to see if fire does anything to disrupt the energy that's inside What's failure you're using for that?

The umaturgy. Tomiturgy. Okay. As you focus for a second, you raise your hand up in the air using your demonic heritage to call forth some infernal fire that bursts for a second in the center of where that electricity is. It sparks up and then is snuffed. No seeming effect. Yeah. Can, am I allowed to move after that? You can move back.

I move a couple steps back to you. It was like, oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, you carefully step away. It takes a swing at you as you step out of its range. That is going to be an 11. I'm trying to leave and misses you. So as you step out of the way, it comes down with a giant fist, hammer blow style.

You side step out of the way as it cracks some of the stone on the ground. And we all take a second to laugh at how great that salty just did was, because that was amazing. It was pretty great. Ofka, yeah. I mean so much. All right.

Am I close enough to the crystal to run towards it? You can. You probably take an attack from the creature. Alright, yeah, run towards it safely, not trying to do any fancy flips or anything like that. Yeah, so as you rush past, it swings out at you. That's going to be a 14, I think you said your AC 16. Yeah. So you just, it glances off your shoulder, you take the blow, but keep pushing forward with the sheer force of your dwarven physical self. As you leap just over the liquid, I'm just going to make you have a quick athletics roll.

All right. I roll 24. Come on. You leap across three point landing. Gobee. You stand up the orbiter in front of the room. You want to grab the orb you said? You want to grab the orb you?

You pull it off the pedestal. Make a Constitution saving throw. Classic slime. I roll a god damn 24 as you clutch the orb you can feel for a moment the electrical energy surging through your forearms into your body and for a second your muscles tend and you feel like your physical form is being slowed down but you shrug it off for a second

as you're clutching it in your hands right now you're looking at it you've pulled it off the pedestal as you pull off the pedestal it leaves a couple of trails of sparks off the top that kind of stretch out between the pedestal and where you're pulling the orb off. You look back and the entity currently is looking like it's slowing and its physical ability to move around once it's in your grasp, but it is still turning around towards you

kind of looking, noticing that you've now grabbed something that is inherently connected to its physicality. All right, then I break it and say, I own you. Oh, great controls. 14. 14. 14. All right.

You take the orb, you spike it on the ground and you spike it on the ground and you see it crack upon the impact. It doesn't break, but a big solid crack suddenly spiders through the entire interior of the orb. As it rolls off and kind of as the liquid on the outskirts, you can see that electrical center in the center of the sandstone gallum gallum flicker. flicker and flash with light and you see one of its arms it's the ground behind it and scatters into dust and sand it's still keeping its form together and it's kind of like lurching towards you with its other arm rearing back for some sort of an attack but it looks like it's having a really hard time holding itself together that's gonna end your turn salty you're up salty you gotta put your hand in the juice again you got to put your hand in

juice get that off you gotta be serious uh believe believe salty no it never works So if I'm not mistaken, I can expend a hit die to regain some health. Is that true? You can during a rest. Not in the middle of the combat, unfortunately. All right. You got this, baby. I've got, I think I have three hit points.

Five or three. Somewhere in. I think I'm at five. So the, sorry, the orb is in. It's currently, he slammed it in the ground. It cracked and it rolled into the moat on the, kind of, to you be on the right side of the building right now. Oh, come on.

All right, I'm going to take my cape, wrap it around my arm. Okay. And just run and scoop it. Okay, so you use half your movement and get up and you rush towards. You can get just to the outside of it. You can see the little bit of the blue interior. You reach down inside and you pull it up. I want you to go to make a Constitution saving throw.

Uh-oh. You got this. Salty! Not using that. I guess. I kind of believe in you. Salty. Oh, you shouldn't have done that.

It's only a seven. See? No, so as you pick up the orb, you grab it as triumphantly in your hand, you can see the liquid itself not touching your skin for once. However, there is a surge of electrical energy into your body, and as you grasp it, you feel the muscles in your arm and shoulder and back all tense up. You find yourself held in place, unable to move. Guys, little help.

That brings us to... Snuggle Lord, what you got? It's the orb! Break that orb, man! It's the orb! I pull out my crossbow. Oh no! No, anything, my best!

You do it? That's what the gypsy woman said! You have other spells? Not really. Then I picked terrible spells for this. Your first level spells, you have three you should have. What's your melee weapon? Eldridge blast.

I have a hand axe. Elchiplas. You have Alchblast? Do you have Alchblest? No, he doesn't have Alchblash. No. He has a... All this vote I picked are all based on me lying to people.

Exactly lying based on. I am worthless in a battle. Okay, I'm gonna smash it out of... I'm gonna run up and smash it in his head. Please know. I'm not... I'm not... Don't worry, don't worry.

I'm obviously now... about his hand. He's already lost a lot of use of... I know. The skin is gone. Like, it'll be... It doesn't matter. You're not gonna masturbate with that thing anyway anymore.

I never did. I take it. I don't make this... The Lord's teetling form, darts in the shaded interior of the room, runs across, go ahead and just making acrobatics check roll fast, if they leap across the mode. Oh, sever his wanking hand, classic dwarven moves. Oh, classic teetling betrayal.

Okay, all right, 19. 19. You leap over without an issue. You actually tumble and roll on the ground as you come up, use the inertia to swing your axe in a white arc down towards his hand. Roll an attack. Yeah. Okay, so I'll drink to your name, man. What do I add?

What do I add on these for tech? You beat a 14 armor class. You hit. Okay, so still the character holding up the whole arm. Go ahead and roll damage for the axe. What do I use the damage? This is gonna suck. One D6.

We can't. We can't. That's zero. All right. One. One. Oh, no. That's really tech.

One's all you needed. One. The crystal was already heavily damaged. You bring the axe down. It shatters the crystal into 100 pieces across the room. I want you to go ahead and roll another damage attack on his hand. Yeah. Fucking great.

How many two points did you have lunch? Five on a good day, three more realistically. Low roll, low roll, low roll. One, one. Five. Five. That's up, I'm mate. So as the crystal shatters, you can see the golden form which is coming up behind you with a giant piston-like hand,

suddenly just vanishes into dust and sparks as it scatters across the ground. The axe swings through and you're extremely excited at the impact as you look up and see what is a fingerless half-hand now bleeding profusely. You look better now! Everybody's a fucking comedian! Which is the last words you say before you fall unconscious in the ground from a severe shock. and blood loss. I should. I miss me blood.

We did it, oh, God. Oh, man, I really like that dude, man. He's fine. He just lost the fingers. So as he's now unconsciously ground, bleeding out, is he going to try to help him, or you're doing it? Yeah, I'm going to try and resurrect him in some way.

All right, go ahead, go and make a medicine check. Do you have a medicine kit or anything like that? Yes, yes. Yes. Thumbatry. All right. a medicine check honorize the wound are you trying to say stop the bleeding the thaumaturgy is that what you're trying to carterize my stump by screaming

you could stick a dagger into the end of that he needs thematting yeah yeah or that spicy thinker so so so so you're saying I should roll 17 for medicine 17 okay we'll say you between the two of you working together to get to bring out like you know some some material you rip off part of a cloth you had and start sort in your bag you saw it torture you to go ahead and carterize the wound eventually So you stop the bleeding, you wrap it up, and you wait a few moments. He comes to slow consciousness, sore, worse for wear,

but alive, nevertheless. Oh, you did good. I did it. I beat the goal of. I did. You did all of it. It was all you. I'm going to do.

It was all you. It was all you. He does. Just want to get you guys an invoice. That gym that you guys destroyed was probably worth like 500 gold, so you're both are in debt. You're still getting paid.

We're still getting paid. We just go back to the bad father, he'll give you your money. Yeah, yeah, you totally gave up your share, so it's between me and Salty Sam. Oh, you remember that. You don't notice, as you're on the ground said, looking around, the brackish liquid that surrounded it, it seems to have lost a lot of its darker kind of viscous aspect, and now it's kind of clear, smooth, pure water. I'm going to plunge my mangled paw into that clear. your ass water.

Oh, it is cold and slightly helpful in soothing the pain, and you're glad for once since you've arrived here to see some water that is not absolutely terrifying. Thank God for that. Yeah. It's good. It's good. Oh, man, so do you want me to pick up your fingers?

Yeah, that'd be fucking great. All right, so I put his fingers in my pad. Go ahead and make a perception check. Finger scouting mission. Where are the other three? Perception, a tin. You find two fingers. God knows.

The rest are buried either somewhere in the remains of the sand creature or somewhere else in the room, but after a good five minutes of scouting, you managed to find two of the digits. All right. You can still rock on, though. Yeah. It's all you need. This is all like half. Serfs up.

As you guys slowly find your way back up. to the top of the pile of sand that led you into this chamber, you look up and you can see there's a small bit of light and you hear a voice echoing through going, Hello! Hello! Yeah, we are down here and all the trouble seems to be gone.

Hello? Yeah, well... You could say that. We're kind of okay. All right, hold on! And eventually over a few minutes, you see a small rope being let down. Oh, that's what I like to see. You know how you like those ropes.

Well, man, when they pull you... back up to the surface, you find yourself in the center of the town, and everyone's gathered around with what seems to be a slightly more positive demeanor to them. As you guys all get up, Lily runs up and kind of gives you all an immediate hug and says, thank you. I felt it lift. I felt the darkness of my mind disappear. Whatever you did, it worked, you've lifted the curse. Please, please, please, please. Don't shower us with all of your riches and food and foul, foul women. This guy is delirious from finding a bowl.

If you must, if you must throw all of those. things at us as some sort of reward for the good deed we've just done. That would be wonderful and great. All of them kind of look at each other and you can see there's a few other people now stepped out of the tent. Some of them almost leprous in the way they're bandaged. Just go, uh, and the old woman goes, uh, we haven't much in the way of food, um, but we've pulled our resources and she looks to the halfling male, but apparently the father figure to Lily who says, A promise is a promise. And he reaches back and he pulls out a pouch. You can see his hefty fill of coins and looks to who to plop it to.

immediately. It's over here. He's leaving away in the back. He's not going to catch it. He's not going to catch it. Oh, great. Make foot of the cripple. Yeah, all right.

You know, Lily, I just want to say, I really like these moments we shared together. I think that we make a good team and I'd love for you to continue on this adventure with us and so we can get to know each other. The sandstones on this one. It's like, you know, it's like an adventure day, you know. You know? Make a persuasion roll against her father. Uh-oh. Uh, nine.

She looks, look at you with a smile of hope looks at her father who goes, Oh man, I saved your town. And you've been paid for it. All right, all right. What about this? We want the crone with the violin. She looks ecstatic at the prospect that somebody even somebody even noticed her playing.

It was, Oh, can I? Can I? Looks back to her over there. Certainly. I'll get missed off. Are you sure you what? I love music.

Play something but oak. She grabs in her tent and pulls out a small sack, throws it over her shoulder. With the other hand, she pulls out this tiny, crappy-ass violin that looks like it's seen better days on the road and begins to play against the side of her shoulder, this withering, wait, we now have the saddest fucking traveling

group of misfits I've ever seen in my life. Hey, let the dude with the nubs have his. Classic. Yeah, you got all the money. You got all the money. That's great. He's without fingers. I've got nothing out of this.

I've got seven. Lucky number. And with that... We're glad you're keeping it positive, my friend. And with that, the legend of these journeymen continues forward into the annals of history. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotic's detective agency as they take on their biggest case yet.

This high-flying action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every twill they can fight. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? All will be revealed in. Sonic the Hedgehog presents the Chaotics Case Files. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

When the Chaotics are on the cake. Look, we all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Horowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little bum. Liast, but truly happy, say, confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. For over 10 years and over 700 episodes, Happy Say I Confused has broken movie and TV news every single week.

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