The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #12 – Erik Mona, Skid Maher, D&D Campaign Settings

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

The new Book Club book is announced! Plus, Erik Mona (Paizo) and Skid Maher (GCN) join the show to discuss epic D&D campaign settings, including Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Eberron, Planescape, Dragonlance and more! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/3bdUsq-DI_8 0:00 Intro 7:30 Greyhawk 40:30 Forgotten Realms 1:09:50 Elevator Pitch 1:33:40 Setting Prep 1:45:15 Beat McD Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at jointhenaish.com. Join Troy Lavallee, Joe O'Brien, Skid Maher, Matthew Capodicasa, Sydney Amanuel, and Kate Stamas as they tour the country. Get your tickets today at https://hubs.li/Q03cn8wr0. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit https://hubs.li/Q03cmY380. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Where's your playlist taking you? Down the highway? To the mountains? Or just into daydream mode while you're stuck in traffic?

With over 4,000 hotels worldwide, Best Western is there to help you make the most of your getaway. Wherever that is. Because the only thing better than a great playlist is a great trip. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western.

Book, direct, and save at bestwestern.com. Book, direct and save at bestwestern.com. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network. This is Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Oh, happy St. Patrick's Day, Mr. O'Brien. We're both wearing green. What happened? What happened? I know, it's like who got the memo?

Shut off that music right now or I'll have your jobs. What happened? What happened? I know it's a who got the memo Shut off that music right now I love it. It gets me fired up, dude. I want to hear it lose the music It's not going away. Okay. I think it's fading. It's fading. It's fading. Yes fading. We tried something new today was it was fun It's fun. It was fun. Oh, oh, that was on purpose. Okay, good. That was on purpose. Can you believe it? Everything we do here on this show is carefully designed.

It's a curated experience for you, the Naish. Welcome to Glass Cannon Radio. My name is Troy LaValley. This is Matthew Capetacasa. Hi everyone. And we are gonna take you through the world of the geekosphere. And we're going to talk about all things nerdy on this show. And you can call in and have your voice heard, whether it deserves to be or not.

That's our policy. Yeah. And we'll find out if it deserves to be or not right around the middle of your call Sometimes in the first five seconds feel free to say something that is off-topic and not relevant Other people have felt free in the past So Joe How's it going? It's going on in your life. man? It's going great, buddy. I'm good. Things are good.

How are those pills working for you in terms of extending the length of your penis? Okay. All right. Man, two on the nose. Aaron out my private affairs. No, I'm good. Dude, I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm getting on a flight tomorrow to Seattle.

We're heading to, Glass Cannon Live is tomorrow to Seattle. We're heading to glass cannon live is going to Seattle. So very excited to see, uh, the, the Pacific Northwest niche. Uh, I love the Pacific Northwest. Oh, me too. I love being out there. I just love when my, when, uh, we touched down in Seattle and you can just see the pine trees in the distance and the mountains on the skyline. It just, it's the best or on the horizon rather. It's the best.

So leaving tomorrow for Seattle, we've got a spirits and the evil spirits in the skyline, it just, it's the best, or on the horizon rather, it's the best. So leaving tomorrow for Seattle, we've got a spirits and the evil spirits in the wood. Are there evil spirits in the wood? Yes, Joe, the black lodge is out in those woods. Ah, I see. I see. Um, it's twin peaks. I'm referencing, sir.

Yeah. Yeah. Twin peaks, which I won't get a whole side. I want to sleep at night. Yeah. We did an entire, we did four episodes with David Lynch. Yeah. But I specifically didn't watch twin peaks because I'm too afraid.

Anyway, I, uh, I'm very excited to go to Seattle. We're going to the Neptune, uh, theater, um, Friday night. Uh, if you're around, want to grab a ticket, come see us. And then we're driving down on Saturday to Portland and doing a show in Portland on Friday night. If you're around, want to grab a ticket, come see us. And then we're driving down on Saturday to Portland and doing a show in Portland on Saturday night. So very excited for that as well. So yeah, really looking forward to this weekend.

Oh, bigger news, more important news, I think to the Glass Cannon Radio Nation. This is much more relevant. We picked a book for the book club. Oh yeah, we picked a book. We picked a book. So we're going to announce it in this episode. So stay tuned in a little bit. We're gonna tell you the next read.

But we're not announcing it yet. But we're not announcing it yet. So get ready to hang in there. Furiously type into the comments, what is it? I have to know now. And then when we say it, you can be like, that sounds terrible.

I don't wanna read it. But I'm very sad. Just so you know, we will announce it like an hour into the show, maybe in the second hour. And then by 6 PM today on the socials will just be a bunch of guys going, read it. Just finished it. Read it.

Read all the sequels. Read it in the sequels. I was truly staggered as I struggled to get through the first 25% of Dungeon Crawler Carl, how many comments I saw that were like, I just finished the fourth book. I was like, how? Yeah, but this is exciting.

Joe, you're going to read this book. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm very excited. You're going to read all of it. OK. Well, let's not go that far. I will certainly start it. You. So gonna read all of it. Okay. Well, let's not go that far. I will certainly start it

You're gonna read all of it Jared tell them what we have on deck for today cuz this is gonna be a phenomenal show My nipples are painfully erect at the thought of today's show. We are doing a show that it is all Dungeons and Dragons campaign settings. These are the fictional worlds that were designed and created for you and your friends to campaign in using the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.

Although in some cases they have been converted to other systems. We are talking about Forgotten Realms, Grey gray Hawk, Eberron, dark sun, all of those settings. And guys today, the, the topic is whoops, all settings because that's all we're doing. That's what we're talking about. We're coming out a couple of different angles. We're going to do things a couple of different ways. We have a couple of phenomenal guests that are going to join us. But yes, the overall theme today is the worlds that really kicked off in a lot of ways, the, the play of Dungeons and Dragons and that have a lot of sentimental value for many of us.

Yeah. For good and bad. Maybe you have critiques of them. That's good too. I do too. Maybe you- And we want to hear from you today. We want to hear that. So, you know, if you want to talk to us, you just need to be a subscriber. Then you can go to the glass can of radio stage, log right in there, raise your hand and we'll on Discord. Thank you. That's an important part of it.

Yeah. Come to our Discord and get on stage and we will call on you. Should we, should we get right into it? Should we get, should we bring out our first? Well, I do want to say one more thing by way of preview, which is that we are going to wrap up the show with a beat McD. So we've got a prize on the line. If you, and it's going to be D and D world settings trivia. This is going to be very general. It's kind of, it's going to be a wide range of kind of topics, but it's super easy. And, uh, and yeah, you can go head to head with McD today in

the final segment to see if you can win our prize, which is going to be our brand new stealth. We're calling it the stealth GCN hat. It's a brand new, awesome black dad hat that has the logo in black on it. It just looks cool. Black logo on black hat. It's our stealth hat. So we'll give one of those away to a winner here. And if you get every question correct, you're going to get the new GCN jogging pants with GCN on the bot on the rump. It's on your, on your Tushy. Love it. So sweet, sweet scene. Yeah. Yeah. And then what you,

you get the tramp stamp of the planet logo right on your, the smaller back and then the GCN logo on your pink jogging pants and you're ready to go out for a night at the clubs. All right. So, uh, let's, uh, let's get us started here. Uh, we have a big opener for this strong opener. So excited to talk to this guy. We, uh, so how to, how to intro this? for this strong opener. So excited to talk to this guy.

We, uh, so how to, how to intro this? Well, I'll say this. You can see if you're watching live on Twitch. Remember we're live every Wednesday at 12 Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific. If you want to join live, you can join us on Twitch, watch the show live. And there's a graphic on screen that gives you a rundown of the topics today. Well, leading off today is Greyhawk. And why?

Why Greyhawk exactly? Well perhaps our first guest can tell you why it's such a prominent setting and why it gets first billing in today's show. Joining us today is the man who in some ways could we say literally wrote the book on Greyhawk. He wrote books. He wrote books on Greyhawk. He wrote books. He wrote books on Greyhawk. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the Glass County Radio for the first time, Paizo Publishing's publisher, Mr. Eric Mona.

Dude! Hi, everybody! What's up, buddy? Hello, hello, hello. I'm so excited to be here. We're so excited to have Eric here for several reasons, which we'll get into in a second, but we also have a second guest. That's right. We got somebody else who's going to talk D&D settings with us all day today and you know

him, you love him. He's the greatest role player of all time. Our good buddy Skidmire is here as well. Look at this crew. Hello. My goodness. Look at this. Just 40, four 40 something guys just hanging out, shooting the shit.

Yeah. Talking Greyhawk. Talking? Oh God. Talking Greyhawk. But before we get into Greyhawk, I want to make a special announcement. You know, for those of you that are coming to Vegas for our 10 year anniversary in June, we're doing a little

retreat to celebrate our 10-year anniversary on the very weekend that we turned 10 from the release of the Glass Cannon podcast, the first episode of Giant Slayer. We've got another very special guest joining us in Vegas. That's right, Eric Mona is going to be at the retreat in Vegas. Oh my God. In Vegas. Oh my God. Mona. I am so excited. Talk us through this. So how did this come to be and what are you excited about doing at the retreat?

Well, I am very, very stoked to be invited. I've been following your journey from almost the very beginning and I am gonna be on hand. I don't know what we're going to do yet. I'm still working it out. Maybe a little Baron Munchausen. I love that game.

I got to play some Pathfinder. So I'm thinking four words, Joe. Tiny Murder Clown College. That sounds pretty fun. That's all it is yet, but that sounds pretty fun. So yeah, yeah. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to tiny murder clown college.

That's right, that's right. Remember guys, I have to- This is gonna be a huge party. I might start drinking again for this Las Vegas retreat. So sorry guys, I forgot. I gotta get you on Discord here. So just hop up on stage so they can hear you as well. Yeah, apologies.

Skid and Eric were not on the Discord, but Joe's taking care of it right now. Yeah, I'm working on it right now. They couldn't hear you guys on Discord. Oh, well. Yeah, well, we just forgot that one step, but. How about that? Hey, Twitch heard it.

That's fine. There's a lot of steps. It's like launching an ICBM missile every time. I understood. Hello, Discord. Hello, Discord. And I'm no help at all. I'm like, which button is the internet is my question to Joe every morning.

Yes. So for those of you that missed it on Discord, I think we can sum up Eric's joining us in Vegas with four words. Eric hit him with it one more time. Tiny Murder Clown College. Yes. What is Tiny Murder Clown College. Yes. What is Tiny Murder Clown College? Come out to Vegas and find out tickets still available.

Uh, at what is the, uh, it's glasscannonnetwork.com slash retreat. Is that right, McD? Is that where they can go to grab, uh, to find out about packages? Uh, I think that's what it is. Anyway, let's get into come to the retreat, come to the retreat. Yep. That's what it is. McD confirms. Let's get into the topic, that's what it is. Come to the retreat. Come to the retreat. Yep, that's what it is.

McD confirms. Let's get into the topic of the day. Yeah. Greyhawk. Greyhawk. Greyhawk. Let's talk about this. Eric, when we mentioned that we were, I mentioned to you in passing while we were at GaryCon,

that we were gonna, at some point in the future, we didn't have a date, do a show about D&D settings, you were like, I'd love to be there. And I know that you have a passion for Greyhawk. So talk to us about where this comes from and how Greyhawk first came into your life. All right. Well, Greyhawk was the first setting that I ever played for D&D, largely because it was in many ways the first setting for D&D. So when I first got the original AD&D adventure or rule books back in the day, there was an implication that there was a world behind that from Gary Gygax's original campaign filled in by some of the other players and GMs in the Lake Geneva area, early TSR. And so we got glimpses of that through books like Rogues Gallery that gave us stats

for like Big B and Morden Canaan and stuff like that. But around 1980 they published a little folio version of the setting which I didn't have. I was five. But by when 1983 came around I did get, and this is a miniature version from the 30th anniversary, but I did get this, the World of Greyhawk fantasy game setting. This was a box set. It came with a couple of books. You know, you got your your guide to the World of Greyhawk.

You got your glossography. Everything you need is in here. There's like 50 countries. What is a glossography? I know, right? You there's vocabulary words. The glossography has got encounter tables. The glossography has got information about the gods and the rulers.

I mean, this came out a long time ago, so the organization is very, let's call it first edition-y, you know? Yeah, yeah. We need to change the word source book back to glossography. I do. I think so. I think so. And did you get the new Delta green glossography? That would be great. I like that. And Greyhawk is just like very infused with that early spirit of Dungeons and Dragons,

you know, as informed not to get too nerdy, but as informed by Appendix N in the Dungeon Masters Guide, which is a list of the pulp fantasy that the original creators of D&D were mostly riffing on, and I really dig a lot of that stuff. And so Greyhawk's, like, pure sort of 70s paperback fantasy, which has ties all the way back to the pulp era, it doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a crashed spaceship in there. There's some outwardly comedic adventures that you can play, but then there's a crash spaceship in there there's there's some commute

outwardly comedic adventures that you can play but then there's also super super hardcore adventures Greyhawk is based around site-based adventure modules so there's not necessarily a grand narrative you're not always saving the world it's like here there's a mound and there's lizard men in there and they're bad. You should kill them and crush their eggs or whatever. And so you kind of make the story yourself. And that appeals to me a lot. Each country in this book has like, I don't know, three paragraphs,

two paragraphs of text, like each one of these little things in there is a. Kind of let me zoom in on that for a second. Look at that. You know, and so only one paragraph. But how will I know how their economy and trading laws? Well, I'd like to. Well, there is literally a in the glossography. There is a map that talks about all of the imports and exports from the various countries.

So like the weird thing is it doesn't necessarily spell it out for you in the way that a modern campaign setting might where everything you need is at your fingertips. Everything you need is kind of in here as long as you're willing to fill in the gaps. But there are answers, you know, and so that it's like a puzzle in some ways. It's a it's like really forces you to be a DM because it doesn't answer all the questions. It sets up all these interesting things and then it's your job to fill in the blanks. And I think that's part of the reason why a lot of us who started with Greyhawk and

have loved it, it feels so personal to us because it's a lot of our own stuff kind of in the gaps. And that's to me what D&D is all about. So I absolutely love the world of Greyhawk. Yeah. And you got to work on it as well. You did a lot of writing for Greyhawk at one point. Is that right? So what was some of the projects you were on and kind of how did those come about? Or what was cool about getting to work on that? Well, the cool thing about my background with Greyhawk goes back even before my professional career. When TSR canceled a Greyhawk source book called, Ivid the Undying in the early

nineties, they put the manuscript up on America Online. And that was the thing that finally got me to jump online, you know, in 1993 and download that book. And when I did that, I hooked in with a whole crew of other Greyhawk fans. Greyhawk was the most popular discussion forum on AOL back in the day. I think much to TSR surprise and perhaps chagrin because they had just canceled it. But all of us were really excited to finally be like, Oh, it's not just us. There's a community here. I got hooked up with a group of creators. We did an E-Zine called the Orth Journal. And from that, I became a continuity consultant for TSR.

And from that, I ended up, I'm skipping a bunch of steps, but I ended up writing a book, a co-writing a book called The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, which launched the Living Greyhawk Campaign, which to this day is one of the biggest massively multiplayer offline games ever created during the launch of third edition D&D. I wrote a version of Castle Greyhawk, the famous dungeon of Gary Gygax. Right. They came to me near the tail end of third edition and said, hey, we're revisiting all these adventures. We've got a project called Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. Would you like to write

it for us? And I said, what you really should do isawk. Would you like to write it for us? And I said, you know, what you really should do is get Gary Gygax to write that for you because it's his campaign. And they said, yeah, no, we don't want to do that. And I said, all right, I'll write it. But I am going to have to have a sidebar in there that's like this is the fake Castle of Greyhawk. This is not the real, you know, but but there's always been a difference between the Greyhawking Gary's campaign and the published Greyhawk. So there would already been a couple of versions of that that campaign setting or sorry, that that dungeon.

They just finished crowdfunding Trollord Castle Zagig like last week, which is Gary's version. So I wrote that with Jason Buhlmann and James Jacobs and met Gary years later. And I said, will you sign my book? And I pulled out his dungeon that I wrote and for him to autograph it. And it was probably the most sheepish question I've ever asked anyone. And he signed it really graciously. And he wrote to Eric a doppelganger. And then Gary got so I thought that was pretty cool. And then when I edited Dragon and Dungeon magazine, I jammed

as much Greyhawk in there as humanly possible. Some people might say too much, but you know. No, absolutely. So. So, yeah, so they they canceled Greyhawk at one point, and that's because Gary was out of TSR, right? Well, it limped on for several years where they were just like repurposing our PGA adventures into Greyhawk, and then it had this bloom

during the early 90s and this from the ashes era, largely done by this freelancer named Carl Sargent, who was just one of TSR's best writers, but it was too little too late, you know? And so it finally got canceled at mid-90s. Let's talk a little bit about the world or what's cool about it. I mean, you've already mentioned that sort of the setup is like,

there it is. The setup is sort of like site-based adventures, like you said. Or it's a little bit more sandboxy than say something that like maybe Dragonlance, where it is, you know, there's an epic kind of quest storyline that's kind of developing. Um, but I mean, what is the world like? You know, I, it's also worth mentioning, uh, wizards just chose gray Hawk as the default setting. You get

in your new dungeon master's guide for 2024. So I was reading that rundown. I mean, what about the setting really jumps out to you, Eric? To me, it's a world informed by the genre conventions and the rules of first edition AD&D. You know, alignment is a thing. There's good and evil. And very importantly, neutrality, trying to kind of balance those forces. There's magic, you know, artifacts, there are adventurers, adventuring is a thing. But at its base, it's modeled on medieval, you know, fantasy. And so there's peasants, and there's inequality, and there's, you know, it doesn't strike me as a particularly safe place. And in different parts during its development, it's been particularly unsafe.

That last gasp was kind of a dark fantasy approach where evil was really on the ascendance. And so I think it's got, those elements are baked into the cake. It's not a setting, it's a setting where you can just, because you went into the wrong room and a big stone block fell on you, now you're dead.

And that's just the way it is, folks. This is a tough world. There's death and there's risk and there's danger and there's evil. And I know that sounds sort of generic and you'd say, well, that's true of all D&D settings and to some degree it is. But again, I think it's built on that mindset of these dungeons being kind of meat grinders. And like, if that's just the what is a world that is based on the scientific rulebook of this is the you know, the instructions for the universe, what does it actually look like?

And that's what I've always found particularly appealing. Right. Because it just started just as Gary's dungeon. It was only a dungeon for a long time. Yeah, and then you know, a little forest to then the city of Greyhawk as well. So that's kind of the main center of it. And then they have other interesting things. You know, one other thing I should mention about what I think so many of us love about Greyhawk.

And again, this is the small version, but this is the map. I love that map. And this was done by an artist called Darlene. And it's just, I don't, it's simple. It's beautiful. It's got a lot of handwritten calligraphy. I have a rug of that map. Awesome. Awesome.

And one of the cool things is, you know, you might say, well, Greyhound's not the first campaign setting. That's actually Dave Arneson's Blackmore campaign world. And I would say to that, I would say, ah, indeed, they co-opted that and put Blackmore in Greyhawk as well. So you get that. Don't worry, they put it all the way there on the edge of the map. And I did a thing when I was doing Age of Worms Adventure Path and Savage Tide Adventure Path on Dungeon, and I'm like, people were pilfering from Greyhawk

at that point, you know, like it was like, oh, we'll have a little temple of elemental evil here, and we'll have this other thing. And I'm like, all right, well, I can do that. You know, we already did that. So I stole the Isle of Dredd and put that in Greyhawk. You know, it's all multiverse, fellas, you know? There's a little something for everybody.

They bleed into each other. Joe, what were you gonna ask? I'm sorry. I need to go way back because I, sorry, just a clarification of terms. I don't know what you mean when you say site based adventures. Okay. So think about an adventure that like a pathfinder adventure path, right? Where it's like, we're going to tell a story and that story is going to have things that

get put in at the beginning and then they're going to come back. And then at the end, hopefully you've got a nice character arc and the NPCs have character arcs and sometimes the bad part of that is like. Well we've got to keep you on the rails a little bit you know we want to kind of that we're telling a story a lot of the older adventures it's not so much a story there's a background but it's like here's an ancient tomb. an ancient tomb, go raid it and do whatever you want. And yes, there may be NPCs and little subplots within the dungeon. And of course, you can add all that stuff. The story emerges as your characters are going from the location, I'll say dungeon, but it's not always a dungeon, you know, but then you go back to the town. And then that story part is often coming from the interactions between the players and the GM rather than from the text of the adventure. So it's more about getting you to a place and then letting you kind of explore in.

Whatever you see that you just want to check out. Yeah, pretty much. And you know, you can lean into your own character motivations or do whatever, right? Of course, there's that. But there's not so much like a story. But you don't have the strange aeons like you all wake up in an asylum.

Pretty rare. And you don't remember how you got there. Start solving this great mystery of how are we? It's more likely to be like, you stand at the mighty doors of the looming Mari castle. There's a strange pattern in the floor that you seem to have seen before, but you don't know what it means. How will you enter these unopenable doors? And then you're like, use an axe?

You know, whatever. But like it's not, the GM's not leading you to a conclusion or to a climax of a story. You were cooperatively telling a story that emerges through the events of play. I think it's probably the best way. And also I wanna highlight something else you said, which I don't recall having played a lot in Greyhawk. I don't really remember what I was playing in the early 90s when I was playing second edition

AD&D, but I played in your game at Garycon this year where we, Skid and I had the privilege of playing in your game as one of the circle of eight. That's right. I played big B, Skid played. Oh, wow. Who'd you play, Skid played. Oh wow. Who'd you play, Skid? Nystul. Nystul. Skid played Nystul and we were 20, you know, I was 18th level, I think you were 16th

or 17th level wizards, right? Yeah. And one of the things you said right off the bat, and then it really played out in the theme of the adventure and you just mentioned it again here, is that importance of neutrality, which I don't think is really, that's not really a common theme in the adventures that we play. The way that we always think about it is there's good, there's evil, there's shades of gray. We

love playing in shades of gray on the Glass Cannon Network. We like having that sort of like moral quandaries. Not everything is so black and white, not everything is so easily discernible. We don't all necessarily enjoy being like, oh, we're a bunch of paladins fighting the evil dark lich. Like, that's not usually our MO. But we never specifically talk about how a character can be motivated to make sure that good characters are not overwhelmingly taking over the policy and procedure of the world.

Which is kind of an interesting element of Greyhawk that you set out right out of the gate and as you gave our characters their kind of explanations of what their motives are. I remember one of my characters liked one of the other wizards, but was worried that his goody-goody sort of vibe was going to get the council into hot water or create imbalance in the world, which I was like, this is really interesting. So it gives power to neutrality, which typically I think I felt was like a null result, but that's not really what it's meant to be. Yeah. I mean, I think that was very much a Gary Gygax thing. The circle of eight that you mentioned are characters like Big meant to be. I mean, I think that was very much a Gary Gygax thing. You know, the Circle of Eight that you mentioned

are characters like Bigby, Mordenkainen, Tensor, all those wizards whose names are in the spells, which is also an interesting connection. You know, I ran two four-hour games based in that concept where people are playing the Circle of Eight at GaryCon, and I was thrilled to have you two join me on one of those. But I would go around and sort of say, hey, what, you what do you know about a DND second edition hopefully more than me. What do you know about the circle of eight and what do you know about grayhawk in relatively few people had the kind of encyclopedic.

Knowledge of grayhawk but almost everybody heard of like big be and more than canine and so that that connectivity to the original game I think is really important and really interesting and I think another thing that that you highlight there with the focus on neutrality is that some of the most important characters and NPCs in the Greyhawk setting aren't necessarily good guys and so the idea of having like the big good guy group of wizards not actually be good guys, but maybe be foils or Antagonist for your player character. I think it's a little more interesting to me than you know Like oh elements there's here and he's got a plus one sword to help you on your your quest or whatever So you could still do that, of course, but maybe there's ulterior motives going on with that gift from Morgan Canaan.

Great. Joe, we should take some calls. Yeah, if anybody's interested, I don't want you to feel like you're locked out of this. If you have any questions for Eric or you wanna talk Greyhawk at all, raise your hand. Come up and talk to us. Bloom, you got something you wanna add in, throw in?

Question about Greyhawk, Bloom? Yeah, hi. I use the Greyhawk setting often because I play a lot of old school games. I play mostly Pathfinder and then I'll run a couple one shots or something in old school settings. I think with that neutrality and site-based adventure or something that old school settings. I think with that like neutrality and like site-based, you know, adventure or something that like a lot of people have to keep in mind is in these old school games, you gain your XP from how much gold you take out of the dungeon and not just like, you know, fighting monsters, you get very little XP from like accomplishing tasks and fighting monsters. So the characters in like the old school settings and like Greyhawk also are not necessarily going to be good

guys. They're like naves, dungeon delvers, you know, they're kind of breaking the law. And they often have the roads to rust upon them later. Like if you are running like, you know, against the slave lords, against the giants or something like that, usually start off, it's like, hey, these guys, you know, happened to do something good for us and like they're pretty strong. So like maybe we can get them to do something else.

And I really enjoy Greyhawk, especially the earlier settings because it is kind of bare bones. I love the Glorian and and the Pathfinder setting, but I try to read the Inverse World Guide like a hundred times, and my eyes will just glaze over, and there's so much I know about it. And sometimes I'll stop my players and be like, all right, you need to know this bit of information before we go on.

So I like that about Greyhawk where, you know, you can have these maybe, you know, this is the publisher of Piso, right? He's not talking about my parts of the book that are putting him to sleep. It's only the other people's kind of a snooze. Like compared to like the Forgotten Realms and stuff like that. I really enjoy the inner sea. I feel like it's put together very well. I love the Pantheon that goes along with it. Yeah, Pantheon's great.

Yeah, you know, there's just so much, especially when you're running adventure past that your players don't, you know, where they will never know. Like if you're going to be in like Rizia, you're going to be in Sandpoint. They're not going to be really dealing with Chelleax. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting you bring those two up because Galarian is a combination of many of the writers who worked on it at the time and Sandpoint and Verizia are from James Jacobs's kind of home campaign and that got meshed in and then Chelleax was from mine.

And so, you know, indeed there's not a lot of connectivity there originally, but then through Corvosa and stuff, we started to draw some connections between those things. I mean, Galarian is the other side of the spectrum, right? It's like, no, here's like a full history and all that. Galarian is what happens when the kids who got this when they were seven spent 30 years working on it and then decided to do something a little bit more modern.

But there's a lot of Greyhawk in Galarian's DNA because because it's the setting we all grew up with and there's some themes. And there's even some parallel, like almost I'd go so far as to say, homages in Golarion that are directly inspired from Greyhawk. Like the River Kingdoms, take a page from the Bandit Kingdoms, for example, in Greyhawk. So a lot of concepts are kind of similar in some ways. Skid and I are big fans of the River Kingdom. We always love the idea of all these small bandit lords running their little fiefdoms is so fun. Bloom, thanks so much for the call.

Thanks for kicking us off. Thank you, Bloom. It is an interesting take to think about how important that removing gold is, and then that sort of makes the main sort of baseline adventure kind of a bad person, right? Like, Right. It's that old school mindset. Like Eric was talking about the appendix end. Like I've read a lot of books on the appendix end. You're talking about Conan. You're talking about Fafard and the gray mouser. These are people who just wanted the gold, man.

Yeah. Get that gold out of there. A lot of altruists in that band of adventures, that's for sure. Conan wasn't a good guy, you know? He did what he had to do. And yeah, I love those novels. Quick question for me, Eric. I don't want to get too deep into this right now, but I'm hearing a lot about Greyhawk

and its accessibility and the ability to just have a little bit, a little snippet here and there and you fill in the blanks. What is the scope, generally speaking, of something like Greyhawk compared to what we're going to talk about next, something like Forgotten Realms? Is it actually much smaller? Are there less nations or is there just less written about each? I think there are fewer nations in total, but also Greyhawk had a shorter publication cycle than Forgotten Realms did, so Forgotten Realms was able to kind of say, alright, here's the main campaign area, the Sword Coast or Faerun or whatever, but also here's Karatur, the Asian part, and here's Al-Qadim, the Arabian part, and here's whatever, Chalt, the part that gets us in a lot of trouble every time we publish it, you know, and Maztika. And Greyhawk didn't quite get that.

So I think in some ways Greyhawk is a little tougher fit if what you're looking for is like every human culture is represented there. That's not necessarily the case. There's an implication that there's like an Asia and if you want to play a ninja character from Oriental Adventures or whatever back in the day, you could do that. But it's more, it's a little bit of Mesoamerican, and then Scandinavia up in the top. I'm papering over a whole bunch of other depths, of course. But it's a little bit more like taking a snippet of a world and going deep on it rather than trying to be like everything to all people. CB That answers my question. Let's get one more caller on Greyhawk before we move on.

Mr. Morningweave, is that what it was? Mr. Morningwood. Mr. Morningwood. What's going on? Great name, Mr. Morningwood. M-O-U-R-N, Jared. M-O-U-R-N, come on. I've been a funeral director for many years.

Oh, great. It's a humor of a 13-year-old. Known for your senses of humor. So it's a humor of a 13 year old. Known for your senses of humor. Known for your senses of humor. Wow. Yes, up top, real quick, before I ask my question, I just wanted to say, I've been trying to say this

for literal years. In 2019, I went to the original Texas show in Dallas. Oh, nice. Oh, God. You gave me a, Joe, you gave me such a genuine hug when I met you. Because I had not taken a day off and literal months, years almost to come see the show.

And Skid, after the show, you actually helped me stay a little bit longer so everybody could sign a poster. Yeah, I think I actually remember talking to you because... Yeah. Yeah. I remember talking to a funeral director like after that show. That was a different funeral director. Tons of funeral directors come to Gladeway. I ask in shows. We haven't run into a lot, so stood out. Well, I just wanted to express my appreciation and it's actually because of y'all that when

the pandemic happened, I moved to New York City to help out and live here now. Oh, awesome. It's been a joyous thing listening to you through all these years. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Awesome. So, but my question is for both Eric and Jared. I have been playing 5E, but mainly Pathfinder for these last years since I discovered y'all back when.

What is an older system that you think I should, that I should try as a beginner to an older system, if that makes sense? It doesn't quite to me. You're saying what's an older system you should try? You mean a game system? Yeah, like a tabletop system. Yeah, like among the old D&D systems, I would say. Where's a good entry point?

I have the A, D&D, 2, 3, B, I get what you're saying. Well, of course, of course you should mainly play pathfinder remastered from Piso publishing short break from that a short break. Then I can recommend, um, I can recommend all kinds of old school systems. I really love the people at Goodman games. They do something called dungeon crawl classics. Their system and their adventures are really beautiful, wonderful things that really, I mean, the whole point of them is to get the old school feel of those

old Greyhawk adventures that Eric was talking about. Um, there's also a game that I haven't played, but is getting a tremendous goodwill from a lot of people online called shadow dark, uh, which is another old school dungeon crawler. I want to play it so bad. Very, very focused on the dungeon crawl. There's not going to be a lot of like outside the dungeon adventures because it even has a mechanic for when your light goes out,

like how much lantern power you have. So those just off the top of my head are two really great old school systems. This isn't an actual system, but it's more of an homage. Mork Borg, I think is great. We had a great time playing that and it really simplifies a lot of these mechanics and concepts so you can just get to playing very quickly.

You create characters by rolling dice. You're done character creation within an hour for everybody. And then you just started venturing right then. Um, and that, and, oh man, and it kind of, those adventures, similar to what great, um, Eric was saying about Greyhawk. The adventures sort of write themselves based on the rules of the book. You kind of roll dice to see, uh, the world state and what you're heading into. And you only have a few days before basically everybody dies.

So like it has a fun ticking clock that's really fun to keep game sessions quick. Eric, did you have any thoughts? Yeah, I'm going to push up my nerd glasses here for a second and add one other recommendation. I think Shadow Darks a really good recommendation. I also haven't had a chance to play it yet, but the people I know who have really, really enjoy it, my understanding is that they're riffing off of the sort of basic expert sort of what they call the Beckme system, which were the, this is a whole different tangent, but that's like D&D instead of AD&D, right?

So that might be worth a look. The one that I would recommend, so here's one I'm not going to recommend. And that's just going back to first edition A, D and D and trying to absorb that and read it. Someone who has grown up with modern book organization is going to go nuts with that first edition stuff. It was almost like a stream of consciousness. And you can kind of get into the groove a little bit and you start to kind of like it, but it's its own thing. It's a pathless land. But there is a more streamlined version of that system called OSRIC, O-S-R-I-C. And that is much better organized, but it is still fundamentally the original

AD and D rules. So if you're curious about AD and D, but you're you kind of most of your backing is in modern games like Pathfinder 5e. I might look to Osric to get a better sense of what the rules were actually like, because I think the way it's organized is more playable than AD and D. Awesome. So much, tiny murder clown. And most of all, Tiny Murder Clown. And I appreciate all of you all for all your... Most of all, remember to have fun! Thanks for the call, Morning, and thanks for the kind words.

Really appreciate it. All right, let's move it on here. Thank you, Morning Wood. And get into the Forgotten Realms, which is, of course, a massive system that I know just the tiniest bit about. And that's why we wanted to have Skid on as well today. Again, this came up during a glass can of radio. We should talk about D&D settings someday. Really motivated by Jared buying an Eberron book.

And Skid talked to me the next time we talked, was like, I want to be on that show. So Skid, I asked you what you wanted to talk about, and you said Forgotten Realms. Talk to us about what Forgotten Realms means to you. So Forgotten Realms came around, it originated in the pages of Dragon Magazine for whom our own Eric Mona used to work, which I still think is very cool. So Ed Greenwood, the creator, creator, like this was his sort of lifelong

sort of gaming setting that he'd been playing in himself. And it would be mentioned in these articles and everything. And I always loved Greyhawk. I really loved Greyhawk. But it always felt to me that like some of those details weren't expressed the way that they seem to be in some of the stuff about Forgotten Realms. The other thing is too, is early Dungeons and Dragons art tended to be uneven. It was a little uneven in quality sometimes. It ranged from uneven to just fucking weird like Errol Otis. And so, yeah, no, there's Errol Otis. Yeah, exactly. It was that. Can we

see that one more time, Eric? I didn't see it. Yeah, this is what I'm playing right now in my free time. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of dripping stuff and mushrooms. Some of it looked like it was scrawled on the back of a napkin. Yeah. Which it probably was like at the time. So I was intrigued, like when they, when they it's like, we're gonna release this new setting. There's like this sort of complete setting. It's just like, I was very excited. I thought like, I think it was like 88 or something. It was just like, it finally got released.

And I was so excited. And around that time, the quality of the art, generally the TSR was putting out with their products was improving. And like some of the like later printings of things like the Monster Manual and the Dungeon Master's Guide, like some of the stuff, it's like Jeff Easley was doing the covers of some of those things. And I actually bought a couple of his prints at DragonCon this weekend. I got the cover to Unearthed Arcana.

Nice. And then I also got here, I got the cover to the aforementioned Oriental Adventures. Nice. Yeah. So the art started to get a little more representative. It felt a little more kind of professional and more, it kicked off my imagination more.

And then with Forgotten Realms, Keith Parkinson, like he did these books. So these are my original books. Like I still have these. Whoa, there it is. Amazing. Yeah, look at that. I just think it's so gorgeous. And that's also the cover of,

that's also the cover of Dark Walker on Moonshade. Yes. It's a Forgotten Realms novel. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, it just felt like, you know, with all of these like kind of stories that had been sort of trickling out like over the years, finally get like a boxed set of the setting. And I just love like the, I don't know, the box was like attractive, like everything,

like the maps. I remember we had the maps, you know, came with the big giant fold out maps, like we put them up like in my attic or like where we'd play for a long time. And yeah, just some of the, it just felt like a more kind of fleshed out coherent world. And I remember just like pouring over the Cyclopedia like with my players, with my friends and kind of planning for what would come next for the characters. And there was a kingdom called Tethyr along the southern part of the Sword Coast and it's sort of anarchy. I think the king, the monarch had died and so it was like people

vying for the crown and stuff like, oh, you can like set up like little kingdoms, like they can take over Tethyr, like that sounds awesome. And then one of the, I think my friend Edis, he had the idea, he's like, yeah, we could set up to sort of solidify our hold over the culture. We can start a national sport to kind of get people on the same page together called Tethyr Ball. Yeah, that's great. So, but then- Well, there was a long way to go for that joke, but in the end, it was all worth it. I think we can all agree it was all worth it. And then what really nailed it down for me emotionally was Baldur's Gate, because when

Baldur's, the Baldur's Gate video games came out, having them set in that setting that I was already felt so like invested in and the two things kind of converging to make it that much more real for me, I just loved it. It also feels like you're saying this Greyhawk, the feel of Greyhawk is a little grittier, it's sort of like the Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber stories that Gary Gygax liked so much. Forgotten Realms felt more like high fantasy. Like Gary Gygax, he didn't really like Lord of the Rings, for example. And this felt more like the sort of high fantasy that I liked growing up. It's just like it felt, right? You know.

Quick question, Skid. Do you think it makes any sense at all to not like Lord of the Rings? I mean, I don't. I will point you. I've cited this article that he wrote in Dragon Magazine years ago, an opinion page, an opinion column that he wrote about why he doesn't like Lord of the Rings. And frankly, it's all bullshit. Sorry. That guy, that guy, gags wrote, is that what you're saying? Yeah.

You know, who else didn't like the Lord of the rings was Michael Moorcock, who was big in the appendix end and who was, I love Michael Moorcock. But I also love the Lord of the rings, but I will say this. It took me many, many, many years to come to have the Lord of the Rings, but I will say this. It took me many, many, many years to come, to have the Lord of the Rings come across to me. I, you have to hit it at the right time. Um, and it's not easy literature either, you know? Um, so if you're a dummy, stupid dumbo, no brains, if you're a stupid dummy with

no brains, you're not going to be able to enjoy the Lord of the Rings. Yeah, no, I get it. Well, that's the thing. It's like this column. It's just displays sort of a misread of a lot of the things. I wish I had it up now. I could quote some of it. But it's because he said like the whole thing is like is just an allegory

for Britain's experiences of World War Two. And it's like, no, it is. You know, it's not. And Tolkien, Tolkien went on record saying it wasn't like 500 times. Like he kept going, this is not a I am not talking about the wars. I am not. I am not C.S. Lewis. Do not put right. Yeah. You would call the police on Gary Gygax for saying that.

I'm sorry. Well, they did call the police on Gary Gygax to some degree. So I think you have to read a little subtext to that article, which is, please, please, please don't sue us because we stole a whole bunch of your shit for our game, whether I claim to like it or not. So a little bit of that was, I think, a little tap dancing. Yeah, he was trying to distance himself out of the ring. So it's like, oh, it's like they made us sort of put the halflings in and all that.

I didn't want to. Right, right, right. Yeah, sorry, I didn't wanna open up a can of worms. I just wanted to have Skid's head blow off for a second. No, that's okay, but let's talk about the Forgotten Realms just for a little bit longer. So first of all, I love that you're too- And also, hold on, real quick.

If you wanna talk about Forgotten Realms, raise your hand, we'll get you in here in a second. Let's talk about the actual setting. Yes, Jared, go ahead. Yeah. So first of all, really good point about the art and the maps and the video games. I think as game master all the time, I'm trying to explain something to my players. And I'm just talking to them or sending them emails when really you should send

like one picture, you know what I mean? Like the illustrations, the visuals do an enormous amount toward getting some, something across to people. And the early forgotten realms products did that really well and they looked really, really fucking cool. Now my question to you, and I don't know that you need to be the one to answer, or I'm not trying to make you defend the Forgotten Realms, but a complaint I hear a lot is that the Forgotten Realms is so kitchen sink, meaning it combines so many different things that it ends up feeling

a little generic or vanilla. And this is probably somewhat a reaction to the fact that Wizards, wizards kind of just adopted it as the default setting for, for a while now. So, uh, what do you think when you hear that or does, does that, does that sound right or sound, sound full of shit to you? What do you think? No, I think it's, I think that's fair. I mean, because when you have a situation like that, when you have so many different artists and so many creators.

Kind of working in the same playpen, it's harder to find like a coherent kind of truth about the setting that way. There's just all these different sort of hands like at work in it. And that's one of the things that I like about Greyhawk is that the scope just feels more focused. So you're saying it's like they don't want to have represent the entire variety of human experience in this world. It's just like we're just focusing on this one thing. Whereas in with like forgotten, and this is something I liked at the time, which is just like, oh, we're incorporating like the chara tour and some of this other stuff.

It's just like we're sort of knitting it into the setting too. And it's like, got, you know, to the point where you did have like basically everything that you would want. And so as a setting then, yeah, it does get, it does feel a little watered down as a result. Yes. I'll agree with that. Okay. Right on. Yeah. And part of it's because as they, you know, keep updating it, they're like, and also, Aarakocra are a thing you can play and cat people and they live here. Um, so, uh, yeah, it ends up feeling like kind of everything

in the kitchen sink a little bit. What are some of the specific places or things that you, that you've gamed in forgotten realms or that you, uh, that you really like about the setting? I, I mean, I just love like, I love Waterdeep. I love some of the. Yeah, just the Sword Coast. It's mostly because the thing is, is like my group kind of fell apart

pretty soon after that setting got released. And so like most of our adventures that we actually played were in Greyhawk. So the most of the playing that I did in the forgotten realms was through the video games. Mm hmm. Right. OK, right on. So it's like, um, like, um, there's a great setting. And this was Baldur's Gate to is like set a lot in on. How would you compare water deep? I've never adventured in water deep, but I played the board game a lot.

I had a good time with that. I love that game. I like that board game too. Yeah. It's a very, lots of water. Yeah. It's a very well done board game. How do you compare water deep to a Galarian city?

Like, is there one that it's sort of like, uh, like in size scope, uh, politics, anything like that? Like, is it, is it smaller than how you imagine Absalom? Is it the same size? Is it? I'll jump in. It's, it's, yeah, it'd be maybe comparable to Absalom, right? It's like the biggest city in the forgotten realms.

And is the largest city, Waterdeep? I think, I think probably don't check that guy's centerless thing. Don't check anything that I say. Okay. It's the biggest joke. It's rude to fat-seck someone. Joe quit fighting with me. It's the biggest city.

I swear. And, uh, and, and, and one thing I liked that they kind of retconned about, or that they added into it in recent years is that it's technology level is a little higher than the rest of the forgotten realms around it. So when you're in it, it feels a little bit more Victorian. There are like handsome cabs going by. Really? People might have a top hat or a frock coat instead of, you know, some sort of burlap sack like they'd wear in the gray hawk setting.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's interesting. These things sometimes don't, sometimes because they want to leave it open for players to do DMS, to do whatever they want. They, they don't really dial in too specific because they want it to be all things to all people. Right. But, um, but if you want like a really, really big city with a lot going on with like a criminal underground and you know, a mage school and all of the things that big fantasy city would have water deep has those things. Uh, let's, uh, let's, let's get a caller in here. Let's, uh, get Toby, uh, up to, uh, to join us here. Uh, Toby is a regular caller.

What's up, Toby? What's up. Hey, what's up, man? How's it going, man? All good. Did you want to talk forgotten realms? Yeah, absolutely. Love forgotten realms.

Um, what I was going to bring up is I, um, I, I wanted to defend, uh, kitchenink a little bit, which Eric Mona has been doing already in the chat. But what appeals to me about it is that this was brought up earlier in Greyhawk, where I think every setting that you play should be something that you create alongside your players. So each setting itself becomes your unique instance of this sort of reality, this multiverse. Now I understand sometimes that the content load can feel a little much, you know, everything going on at the same time and the sense of discovery falls away a little bit

because everything already has an explanation. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's up to the DM and the players or the GM and the players to sort of make it your own sense of the magic. Is it more psychedelic like a Morkok or is it more Conan? I'm a big fan. I love high fantasy, but I like my players to feel like they're adventurous. I don't want the world to necessarily understand what magic is like. I don't want everything to have a complete explanation. I want them to sort of lift themselves above the masses and become the heroes or the villains that they can be in this world. I think Skitt brought this up in a Legacy of the ancients as well at some point.

So you're basically saying you like to leave sort of a lot of things unsaid or unspoken or, you know, leave parts of the map kind of blank and a kitchen sink is a little better for that than something where every single say building has been outlined in detailed, right? It's a toolbox because you can, you can take those lore bits that are already there in the kitchen sink and then apply them or reshape them. Let's say one of your players wants to play Dragonborn, right? But they don't like the limitation of Dragonborn living up to 80 years or whatever.

You tie them in your own world to actual draconic blood, make them avatars or Bahamut or whatever you want. You know, that's, that's what I feel the kitchen sink allows you to do. Or if you want to play, uh, by leading into the law far more. But I would also like to hear your opinions on this. Well, I think you're saying a whole, you're, you're kind of talking about a homebrew. Now you're saying I take whatever it says, Dragonborn are in the setting and I make it whatever my player wants. And I think that's, I think that's great. I think that's a homebrew now. You're saying I take whatever it says Dragonborn are in the setting and I make it whatever my player wants. And I think that's, I think that's great.

I think that's a good thing to do. I think the thing that is when you have a more detailed setting is when you want to homebrew, you feel like you're contradicting something in the lore rather than making up your own. So that's, that's something that, you know, with, with Greyhawk that felt like you really felt more permission to just do your own thing, I guess, than you do in some of these other settings. But I will say I ran a five E D and D for like two and a half, three years.

And we just did forgotten realms. And the reason was all the books were just default forgotten realms. And that way I never had to contradict anybody about anything, you know, like if they, if it was in one of the rule books, then yes. Okay. Yes, that's there. Sure. So I was never going like, actually in my setting, the philosophy is, you know, I wasn't like trying to like school them on how it was supposed to work. It was just out of the box. This is the setting. Um, uh, let's, uh,

let's get one more call and then we're going to, uh, move on and talk about some other settings that also kind of come under the, the D and D landscape. Uh, old Blackie is, uh, uh, has their hand raised. Oh, Blackie. Howdy, howdy. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing great.

Thanks for having me on. Love the show. First time, long time. Awesome. Thanks for calling in. Appreciate it. What do we want to talk about? Blackie. I just wanted to, well, What we want to talk about. Thank you, old Blackie.

I just wanted to, well, I just want to say this is the only time I'm going to get to ever say old Blackie in a conversation. Old Blackie and Morningwood together again. In subsequent radio shows, you'll be able to call me up again there, Jared, and you'll get to repeat yourself. I just, yeah. So I love, uh, for, I love the Forgotten Realms

and I've been playing in it since it like first released ages ago. I just wanted to follow up on an interesting thread in the chat here about Fori. So in the fourth edition of the game, they basically destroyed the whole world. They had this big stupid thing called the Spellplag and they killed some gods and

switched others out. And I think the, and I say this for the game developers listening, the thing that was really awful about that whole experience was they just arbitrarily advanced the timeline a hundred years as well, which was just like the end of a campaign that we had been playing like since I think 1992 or something like that. And so it was just kind of jarring and arbitrary. There are some elements to the four forgotten realms that I think all of our players really liked.

You know, Nethriel coming back after a 10,000 year hiatus and the shadow fell and you know, changing the very center of the map was cool. But there were some things that I just found gross. And I might be the odd guy out here, but bringing in races like the Dragonborn and all that sort of thing was just kind of like unsettling to kind of like old school players. For me, when I'm DMing

and we're starting to make new characters, you know, I need people to give me a good reason why they want to play a half, a half elf. So, you know, a dragon born was just a little bit of a stretch. Anyway, we, uh, so I think you guys would be interested to hear that we've returned to path finder, um, but we actually play pathfinder two

in, uh, my dagger falls settings. So, you know, Forgotten Realms is about Pathfinder 2 rules and that seems to be kind of a fun balance. The only downside which kind of Jared was talking about is, you know, the materials, you know, the gods are a little bit different, so using Hero Lab online, you know, you got to kind of jury rig things together, but overall love the forgotten realms. Uh, but I really liked the pathfinder two system. That's what I have to say. Interesting.

So thanks for the call. Old blackie. Thank you. Old blackie. So when, when, when a game developer says, okay, now we've killed off these gods and things are different. Does that really bother people? Because you know, you can still just play with the old gods, you know, you can still

just make it I Think people you're the one running the show I think people put a lot of stock in the in the world state as published by the publisher I feel they do they do and I wonder if that's correct, you know Eric if people do want to play with the canonical Forgotten realms gods might I recommend the book Faiths and Pantheons by Eric Mona in Airtel, LA. It is your definitive guide to the third edition free spell plague Pantheon of the Forgotten Realms. I had a chance to write this, co-write with Eric this

book and I was like the staff Greyhawk guy, you know, and they're like, you want to write this for God knows book? And I'm like, yes, but also, oh my God, no, there's so much continuity and everything. I love that. I think part of what happens with the spell plague in the shift in fourth edition is there was a mindset at Wizards and I was working there around that time. And I think there was a mindset that continuity was like an expense, that only a small number of people cared about. And if we could divorce ourselves from having to care about any of that stuff, we could start fresh and focus on all the awesome stuff that today's D&D fan wanted. And so I think there was a little bit of hubris that went into that decision to move the

timeline and it left a lot of players behind and not just players who were like, well, I don't want Dragonborn in this setting that's never had Dragonborn. I mean, the brands got Dragonborn, so there's going to be in the main setting, I guess. But also, like, they kind of killed their entire novel line by doing that, because all of the ongoing characters are now dead. They're all dead. In the modern version of the campaign setting or elves or something. Luckily, they still were able to get Drizzet back because he's an elf. But I think that was a huge mistake and I think it alienated a lot of people. There's this sense in the industry of like, oh, a new edition we've got to do. It became known as like a realms shaking event, like

the original Time of Troubles. Even Greyhawk had that with the shift to second edition where it's like, Oh, all monks and assassins and half works are now dead. And you're just like, what? I don't want that. But that's what the brand wanted. And so there there is this discongruity discongruity between what the company needs and wants and what the players need and want and balancing that at a time of an addition shift is really, really tricky. And I think the fourth edition Forgotten Realms shift might be the best example of the worst approach to that, at least in terms of what it is.

That's really interesting. That's really interesting. And yeah, thank you. Thanks for bringing that up. That's interesting conversation I will also say quickly as you can see I don't have much to add to these conversations I'm not really well read on these settings, but I Got back into D&D and Pathfinder right at the time right around 2010 right in that range

I started playing again and fourth edition was out and I grabbed fourth edition and the first thing that I remember is Hating Dragonborn like I got to that page. I was like, what is this nonsense? I don't know Open the door to now so many D&D parties like it's a rabbit person and So many D&D parties like, it's a rabbit person and a cat person and a living tree and not a human among us. I'm an onion. It just goes with ridiculous stuff. Yeah. That'd be crazy to publish a game like that. Well, look, everybody likes what they like.

I get it. I get it. But I, and I see why people want it. I think Troy and I agree on this too. We talked about this, you know, 10, 15 years ago, we were just like, I just don't get like you lose so much of the mystery and fear and awesomeness around dragons. When you're just like, I could just be one now. To me, I was just like, it didn't bother me so much. I feel like anything can work depending on the context and who's playing.

And, you know, I get, I totally get that reaction when you see the dragonborn. I also think that in my own mind, I think it's a double standard because I also loved, uh, you know, the ability to have, uh, you know, tieflings and, uh, Nephilim and stuff like, you know, where you have, I know some people hate that you can have partial like demonic blood or, or, or fiendish blood and hellish blood or whatever, like, and I think that's really cool. So it is, I think it's hilarious and awesome that anytime you talk about,

you talk about half orcs or half elves or tieflings, you're bringing sex into your tabletop role playing game and you're implying sex. And, uh, you know, I just think that's always very interesting that the way a companies have to kind of handle that. Um, uh, we're going to move on here. We, we, we, we need to get to so much more fun stuff, including what we're, uh, a segment that we'll get to in one second called elevator pitch But before that let me pitch to you. Actually, this isn't a pitch. This is a decision

We have the next book for our book club So Eric, we do a thing here on glass Canada radio called book club where we will pick a book Everybody reads it we give everybody one month and then we come back on the show. We talk about it callers can weigh in etc We did our first book back. I don't know, six or seven weeks ago called Dungeon Crawler Carl. It was the first lit RPG, lit RPG, that's what they call it, right? That genre, I had never read it before. Maybe not the first, but definitely the most popular.

I'm saying it was the first one that we did on this show and the first time I've ever heard of the genre. So we read that, everybody called in, weighed in, gave their heard of the genre. But, uh, so we read that everybody called in, weighed in, gave their thoughts, et cetera. And now we're ready for another book. We don't always have a book back to back to back ready to go, but now, now we're ready. So, uh, Jared, why don't you, why don't you tell you brought this to me. I gave it a quick glance and was like, I'm in this looks right out my eye. Let's try it. Yeah, tell them what we're doing next. So this is a really big fantasy novel. I think it came out last year or the year before and

Everybody is raving about it. Some of you may have already read it. That's great. You can be part of the conversation We are gonna be reading the Black Tongue Thief by Christopher Bullman. Oh We are going to be reading the Black Tongue Thief by Christopher Buhlmann. Ooh. The Black Tongue Thief. That's it right there. You can see, Joe, show them the length. Show them the length of the book. See that is manageable, everybody.

Very manageable. I'll open it up right here. It's just shy of 400 pages. Just shy of 400. That's a breezy read, everybody. And from what I am gleaning so far, it is kind of a dark fantasy, but with a lot of humor. And Bullman is an author.

All of my fantasy fan friends are talking about. So I think we're all really going to enjoy this. But if anybody hates it, please call in. Yeah, it's going to be great. I'll probably have negative opinions. I often do. It's so rare for me to like a fantasy book these days, but because I'm a grumpy old man, but this I'm very much looking forward to.

And the other reason I said yes when Jared pitched it to me is I got this from my local library. So check your local library because this is popular enough to be in your library. So check it out and read it. In one month, we might need to tweak it to about five weeks based on our schedule, but in about that time, we'll come back on and talk about it. When we do Glass Cannon Book Club,

we're probably not gonna pick obscure books. Hopefully it's in your library if we're picking yet. Sure, but I mean to me it's always like when especially when you're picking fantasy and sci-fi if it's not like a classic it might not be in there you know you want to double check it. It's true, you're absolutely right. This one was in there multiple copies at multiple local libraries that I saw through my card catalog so yeah it's uh check it out. Hopefully, hopefully President Trump helps libraries. I feel like that's going to be a big... It feels like an area of focus that he would be interested in.

Yeah. Yeah. Big reader. Big reader. Big reader. Love to see that. Not to change the subject, but I really like the cover design on that. It's got a very, very retro looking...

It's very cool. Yeah. It looks like they're riffing on specifically. It almost has like, to me, my first thought was like never ending story kind of. You just have these like two adventures on kind of like a black and white and they're walking through these like massive cliffs between these massive cliffs to some unknown thing in the distance and it's all kind of black and white. I love it.

I think it's really cool. The font choices and the limited color palette remind me they're riffing off of, let me get super nerdy. I just came back from a paperback and pulp collector show like hell yeah. So they're riffing off of a thing called gnome press from the fifties that published a lot of this stuff the first time. So Conan was in there and that I really am going to put myself out on a limb and saying that they're specifically trying to make that book look like one of those

old gnome press kind of the Arkham house of fantasy and science fiction. Cool. Yeah, pretty cool. So one more time for our audio listeners. It's called The Black Tongue Thief. The author is Christopher Bullman. B-U-E-H-L-M-A-N. B-U-E-H-L-M-A-N. Search for it, read it, and then come and talk to us about it. All right, let's get into a segment that we're calling Elevator Pitch. We knew we only had so much time for this show. Obviously, obviously we could do a two hour show on Greyhawk. Obviously we could do a two hour show on Forgotten Rats. You could do a whole podcast on it, of course. But look, we're just sort of focusing on this today and touching on these topics and giving everybody a little bite-sized taste. So elevator pitch is going to be, I want to hear everybody around the horn here, Jared, Skid, Eric, and McD, we're going to get involved. I want to hear everybody give me a quick pitch on these other D&D settings that I have never played in.

A quick pitch of like, what is it, if you were pitching it to your players, how would you do it quickly? What grasps the spirit of the world in the setting? And we'll see, you know, how these go and then we'll talk about them for a little bit. So we're going to start off with Jared. I want to start off with Jared out of the gate. This whole thing came up because you book bought a book about Eberron. So give us the elevator pitch for Eberron. So, uh, elevator pitch for Eberron. I also recently read an Eberron novel, which I'm not sure if that was the best decision, but I did finish it. Um,

an Eberron novel, which I'm not sure if that was the best decision, but I did finish it. Um, ever on, I think it's truly a great setting and, and you're on the pitch is, Oh God in heaven. All right. So look, uh, modern fantasy is not just Tolkien, right? I mean, when you talk about modern fantasy, you're talking about, uh, his dark materials maybe, or the final fantasy video games or anime like full metal alchemist ever on acknowledges those things are part of fantasy and creates a fantasy world that includes stuff like that to create like a a setting where imagine a fantasy world but the timeline is moved up 200 or so years, 300 years in the future.

So it's not a medieval fantasy world anymore. It's an industrial fantasy world. So there's all this technology that runs on magic. Like there are trains and there are airships, two things that are very cool and role playing games, trains and airships. But there's also, um, you know, light bulbs like electric lighting, but it's all done through magic long distance community, long distance communication, kind of like radio all done through magic. And there are all these guilds. They're actually called the dragon

marked houses that run all of these businesses and have monopolies on them and are constantly vying against each other to get contracts and beat each other out and make more money and crush the other one. So the politics of the world is the default start point for the game is a five years, four or five years after a giant 100 year war that spanned the entire continent. And it ended, the war ended when someone magically nuked a country in the middle of the continent. And no one knows who did it,

but the middle of the continent is now like this magical wasteland cause someone magic nuked it, right? And created this thing called the morning. So you start out in a world that's kind of like post-World War I or maybe post-World War II where all of these nations have called a truce, but tensions are really high. They called a truce because of this magical nuke

that happened, but they're still scheming against each other. There are spies, you know moving back and forth There are the Dragon Marked House as I mentioned It really feels like a kind of a 20th century pulp noir fantasy world And I'm not even getting into the incredible like types of creatures you can play

You know It adds to like the playable races war forged who are like these robots that were built to fight in the war, but now they have no war. So what is their purpose or changelings who are like the perfect spies because you could play a playable race that can just change their appearance at will like shape shifters. You've got 10 seconds. Okay. And I'll just say, this is the greatest setting for people who are like, I want to play call of Cthulhu, but my players will only play Dungeons and Dragons. I want to play, you know, a Blade Runner, but my players will only want to play Dungeons and Dragons. I want to play Star Wars, but my players will only play Dungeons and

Dragons. This setting covers you and lets them play Dungeons and Dragons while you play something different. Okay, that's it. That's very cool. Good job. That's a little over time, but we'll allow it. I gave a max of three minutes, so that was great.

I didn't know this would be so gamified, Joe. It's not gamified. It's just we actually have to keep it going for the show. Yes, fair enough. I do have one. Man, I had a... Oh, here's my quick question for you. How would you compare technology setting feel vibe Eberron compared to Duskfall from Blades

in the Dark? The way you described it seemed a little similar. How would you describe the differences or similarities there? I mean, as written, Duskfall is more Victorian, right? The blades in the dark city is more Victorian and Eberron is a little bit more 1930s, 1940s. Oh, like you said, industrial versus Victorian. All right, that answers the question.

But I mean, you know, there's wiggle room in there, obviously when you're playing your game, you know, if you wanted to feel a little bit more Victorian, there's no reason you couldn't. It has airships, that's kind of interesting. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Good summary. Let's go to let's go to skid skid. How about you step up to the plate here? What setting do you want to give us an elevator pitch on? This is another these are all D and D settings. There's just so many. What is another D and D setting you want to pitch? All right. Picture this. A world, a post-apocalyptic fantasy world wrecked by magic.

As a result, magic is mistrusted and rare, but psionics are rampant. This is the world of Athos, the dark sun setting. I just love this because I love, obviously, I love post-apocalyptic stuff. I've always said that medieval Europe is basically a post-apocalyptic landscape and this goes really hard into it. It's based on a lot of it at the imagery of the artist Brom who was great. He did the covers for a couple of the Book of the new Sun books that I loved really really like Really really hardcore really gritty Do you have? There's there's a lot of like a gladiator like think there's there's slavery. There's there's want

It's full of like deprivation and hardship Halflings in the game are cannibal savages. And in fact, I believe and I've never been able to play in it, but I believe what I remember is that new characters in the game by rule start out at second level, because if you were at first level, you couldn't even survive in this setting. That's so cool. So that's that's my pitch is nice. Nice. One minute and 20 seconds.

Good elevator pitch. Good elevator pitch. It sounds very gritty, like very gritty, real grid. I mean, it's dark sun, but it does sound, it sounds dark. Like, um, is it's a tradition, like the dying earth kind of fantasy stuff, which I also love. So. Gotcha. Um, okay, very cool. Let's, uh, let's do another one. And if anybody wants to call in or revert back to any of these, we're going to try to make time for that by keeping these elevator pitches short. McD, are you? I just want to throw, throw something in there, Joe. There are Pathfinder 2e conversions of both Eberron and Dark Sun made by fans.

So, uh, if you'd rather play in the Pathfinder system, you can still play these settings. Okay, go ahead. Sorry. Awesome. McD, are you ready? You could just like hop in on Discord if you want and we'd love to hear a pitch from you. An elevator pitch on a D&D setting. You got something? I do, buddy. This one will take us both back. It's my comfort food D&D setting because I grew up playing A, D&D basically with my dad, right? Like old modules like Castle of Amber and Secret of

Bonehill and all that, which felt like it was cool. It was generic fantasy. It was very vanilla. But then I read the Dragonlance novels and the Dragonlance books. I mean, Joe, we've played through at least the first part of Dragons of Despair. I couldn't tell you how many times we restarted that. Just kept restarting. Just kept restarting that module. And here's the pitch on it. You could, I mean, I'm not sure how this converted to 5E. I mean, I'd hate to make somebody play AD&D second edition. I don't know what that would do to somebody's brain now.

But what you get out of it is you play with pre-builtbuilt characters You you know like you you're you're playing the characters from the dragon lance novels And that's how that oh cool her path is meant to be played through right? Oh, I didn't know that yeah I love those characters. I mean after you read so many of those books they really you know Very three-dimensional and awesome characters. 100%. And as someone who always plays a cleric, it's fun to play in a world where clerics are revered. No clerics.

Well, no, no, no. After Dragons of Despair, you get the Disks of Whatever and you restore clerics to the world and then you can actually play as a cleric. And clerics are powerful and the most powerful and revered and scared, you know, people are scared of one cleric in the Golden Goldman name. Goldman. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's my pitch. Take it way back. Go ahead. Play some AD&D Dragon. One minute, 50 seconds. Well done. Under two minutes.

Yeah, that's that's really I that's McDermott. Literally gave me you didn't even give me Dragon's Bottom Twilight. You gave me the first book of the meetings, Sextet, I remember. You were like, you should read this because this is when like the characters like first meet each other. And I remember looking at that book. I was not a reader, like in middle school. I was just like, all I wanted to do was play sports and video games. Like I had no interest in, I was like, look at the size of this book

and how tiny the writing is. I was like, this is ridiculous. And I started reading the meetings and what is the name of that first novel? I feel like I can't. Dragons of Autumn? No, that's the Chronicles. Dragons of Autumn, Twilight, that's the Chronicles.

That's the Chronicles, the first meetings, somebody, that's the Chronicles. That's the Chronicles. The first meetings, somebody will have it pop up in a second here on chat, I'm sure. But anyway, that book was awesome. And then I ended up reading it. Kindred Spirits, buddy. Kindred Spirits, that's it. Kindred Spirits. Tannis and Flint getting up to business.

Tannis and Flint! That's right. All right, good stuff. Eric, I was having an issue with your mic a second ago. Can you? All right, great. We can hear you great now. Perfect.

I just wanted to double check. Last elevator pitch. Eric Mono, the floor is yours whenever you're ready to begin. Are you an Apex Dungeons and Dragons player? Are you jaded and bored with things like living gods and crashed spaceships and dungeon levels patterned off of Alice in Wonderland? Is that all getting a little tired for you? Well why not go into the great beyond?

Why not venture into the land of Planescape? Planescape is the 90s campaign setting from TSR, wherein they went into the outer plains in a major, major way. And it was kind of similar to Dark Sun at the time. One of the first D&D settings that was, I think, really competently art directed and designed as a place where you could inhabit and live. So there's the slang called the can't that's fairly corny but also kind of fun, patterned off of Victorian criminal slang. There's planes with giant metal cubes crashing into each other, and

there's planes where a sigil, the great city, is on the inside of a torus. We all know what a torus is. It's like a donut, and it's rotating around a big giant and possibly tall spire that is like a spine of all of the planes. It's the great wheel cosmology writ large. Have a drink with a demon. Play chess with an angel. Smell the farts of a Demodand. Whatever it may be that you're excited about. Planescape kind of takes things to the next level. It's crazy. It's goofy. It embraces some of the weirdest elements of Dungeons and Dragons, like the geometrical shaped Modrons are a big part of modus factions that you can join up that have philosophies that kind of take alignment even further. It is the end game of Dungeons and Dragons essentially. And on top top of that if you are if that's too overwhelming

if literally an infinite number of infinite planes is too much I mean you are an apex D&D player at this point so it shouldn't be but if it is you can just use these planescape things like for example the several appendices of different creatures that they put out over the years of monsters like, you know, look at that Tony Dieter, Leitzi art. I mean, amazing, amazing art. These are great resources, even if you're not venturing off of Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms or whatever, and you just want to have cool summoned creatures or creatures from the outer realms or whatever.

Planescape is your answer. Definitely spell jammer aside, the weirdest campaign setting that TSR ever did and certainly one of my absolute favorites. Whoa! Amazing. Two minutes and 57 seconds. Just under the wire. What a professional. Well done, Eric. That was, I think that was the best pitch. If we're talking about a pitch, you really, you were really selling it. Yeah

Yeah, I'm just selling the setting. I'm selling your sense of your own identity. Yeah exactly Are you so awesome that you need my? This is that was so fun. Thank you guys so much Let's take a call or two before we before we move on anything else you guys want to add into these settings that we just pitched or any other, I don't know, settings that you want to pitch yourself? Asteron, do you want to come up to the stage here and chat with us? Hello. Hey, how you doing?

Hello. Hey. Good. How are you guys? We're doing great. Man, this is, I'm having a great time. What do you want to add here? Well, I don't know. I spent most of my time in forgotten realms. My favorite setting is definitely ever open Oh, I'm waiting for that in it. I love the magic tech of it but I love one of the novels was that in a country called Dargul and

our guru is like what opprac is in and glaring, but it was done like so well. Like it was like gobbledoids and ogres and what not. They broken off and set up their own country. Yeah. So you know how lately a lot of games, uh, you know, I'm sorry, Astro, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but lately, you know, uh, finally wizards has gotten on board with like goblins and orcs, you know, maybe not just being evil creatures, right? Uh, ever on, uh, ever on kind of was doing

that before anybody else. Like ever on like all the way back in their early 2000s was like the alignment, throw it out. Goblins have their own society. You know, they, they are not necessarily just evil mooks to destroy. So, um, that is an interesting thing about ever on it. Kind of did that early. Uh, Adam West had something to say. Adam West, 49 13. If you want to come up and chat, Adam,

if you want to come up and chat. Adam? Hi. Hi. Wanted to do the pitch for PlaneScape, but Eric Maude did a way better job than I would ever do. So thanks, Eric, for that. I also had a first inspiration for the planar travels from reading the books of Pathfinder and just the idea of going to shop with Ifritz on a plane of fire or traveling the River of Souls through the Astral Plane and hopping the outer realms, going to see the realms of gods. So that was a campaign setting that I couldn't quite do myself earlier and I'm eager to do soon.

Awesome, yeah, sorry. It's a little hard to hear you on your mic, Adam, but yeah, another vote for Planescape there and for- Planescape. That's a Planescape's the way to do your psychedelic campaign for sure. If you're in a more cock, you should play Planescape. Also the setting for maybe the best Dungeons and Dragons game ever made. Yeah. The video game. Yeah. PC game, right? Video game. Yeah.

Uh, what is it? Is it Planescape? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I see, I know that name. I didn't realize that that was so funny. I never put that together. That's a D and D setting. Um, uh, RT Nick's, uh, if you want to come up, let's, let's take a call from RT Nick's. A lot of people want to get in here and I'd love to just get a few of you before we have to move on.

Uh, RT is not answering. Oh, wait, are you there? Your mic is muted on your phone. If you just unmute that real quick, we should be able to hear you. Hello. Hello. There we go. What's up, RT? Hello. Hey. Hey. Long time, first time. Welcome.

So yeah, I'm going to throw myself into the same pool as I was going to stump for Planescape, but Eric beat us to it, of course. Wow. Yeah. A lot of Planescape love. All right, people. I ran a Planescape campaign in the mid 90s for several months. And one thing that Eric didn't, I don't think he mentioned that was actually something. So when Jeff Grubbs' Manual of the Planes came out towards the end of first edition, and even before that, like the outer planes, all that area was really just kind of a playground

for super, super high level characters. And one thing that was great about Planescape was it kind of, it made it so you could, there was a place that low level adventurers could actually do stuff in the planes and not die instantly. The whole kind of cosmopolitan nature of sigil and the way that, you know, like you said, angels and demons having a drink at the bar together. It wasn't an automatic instant death kind of a situation for players, which was great. And then another thing that I was actually always kind of a fan of is

because you're, you've got super easy access to the different domains in the outer planes where the gods reside. And it was always so like when dungeon magazine, uh, you know, which was the magazine TSR did where people could send in their adventures and get them published anytime somebody would have heard of publish something that anytime somebody would publish something that had to do with like a historical setting, like an adventure that maybe had like a Celtic flavor or a Greek flavor or something like that, kind of hard to stick those into a homebrew campaign usually. But I mean, if you were doing Planescape, you know, you could just travel to the domain of whatever deities

and kind of set it in the area there because you had people that lived in the domains of those deities on the outer planes called petitioners, which are basically like the dead souls of people who went to that deities realm. And it was great for that. Cool. That was excellent. Yeah, I don't know. It's just, it was just, it was such a, that was a very formative period for me, like the campaign that I ran for that. And it was also a great way too to bring in characters from a bunch of different settings. Like the campaign I was running, we had a character from Dragonlance in there, we had a character from Darksun in there, and then a couple of like planer natives. So it was really the most kitchen sink of kitchen sink settings in a way.

Awesome. Well, thanks for the call, RT. Man, all the callers calling in for Planescape. It was either Mona's pitch or I'm missing something with Planescape. People love Planescape. Feline Machine, why don't you come up and say your piece? We're going to move on here in a second. I'm very excited for this next part.

Feline. Hey, guys. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing fantastic. I'm a big flanescape guy myself, but I'm gonna throw in the hat for Spelljammer because what if every race, every country, in every setting had a secret space program? Now that is an elevator pitch. You only needed 10 seconds and I'm in. They fought dope ass wars in space and also the elves were Nazis.

You could hate elves, you could hate people that hated elves and you didn't have to feel bad even a little bit. Spelljammer was incredible. That was my first big setting that I ran for years and years and years. It was such a blast. They went out of their way to describe physics in game, like fantasy physics. It was nonsense. All the planets were crystal- Flogiston, right? They talk a lot about Flogist- In rainbow gasoline called Flogistan, yes.

Yeah. Yeah, and you took portals between the different realms. It was the most ridiculous thing ever, but I loved it. And they had all this like implied history that they would reference. They would talk about the Inhuman Wars. And they never explained it It was just a thing that happened and they sort of implied that Giants had spaceships and you're like wait what?

They had giant giant stone space like galleons made of rocks Fucking cool man. Imagine a giant stone spaceship lands and then the 25 foot tall people get out of it That's a good campaign right there Yeah, sure good one thing the one thing I'll add on to a plane scape that I don't think anyone had mentioned yet It was my favorite thing about it was when you went to the outer plains You had to follow the rules of the plane in order to actually travel had to follow the rules of the plane in order to actually travel. Like you would go nowhere if you didn't sort of play along

with what the plane wanted you to do. So I just thought that was the most fascinating thing. You kind of had to like- Can you give me one example? Yes, Bytopia. It is like the plane of gnomes. So they're like, it's all about hard work. Like if you're not on your feet doing work,

you literally get left behind by the rest of your party. It was the most ridiculous thing. So we had like a character who was just like, I'm lazy. So he'd hop in the back of a cart and he'd get left behind. He'd wake up after a nap, like, wait, where'd everyone go? Yeah, that's that's cool. All different all different rules. Thanks for the call, feline.

All right. Awesome. Well, that was really fun, guys. Thanks for doing that. You crushed it. And obviously, we could go deeper into these settings on different days and different themes. You know, we'll we'll talk more about this stuff as we have different theme shows. But let's for right now talk about settings prep. So this is this is a segment that comes up from my own experience. as we have different theme shows. But let's for right now talk about settings prep. So this is a segment that comes up from my own experience.

And I want to throw this out to you guys, get some of your thoughts. And if we can get a caller too, and that would be great as well. I am gonna, so you mentioned earlier, Corvosa, Eric Mona and Corvosa, who was behind Corvosa in terms of writing, say the gazetteer for Corvosa? Do you remember Corvosa in terms of writing, say, the gazetteer for Corvosa?

Do you remember who created that, who wrote that, who contributed to that? It was primarily James Jacobs, our creative director on the narrative side at Paizo, and the guy who wrote the first adventure for Rise of the Runelords, Pathfinder number one, from the beginning. I think I'm having this right. I believe that the... Yeah, the Curse of the Crimson Throne is set in Corvosa. And so I was getting'm having this right. I believe that the, that the, um, yeah, the

curse of the Crimson throne is set in Corvosa. And so I was getting ready to run this adventure path. And so I grabbed the Corvosa gazetteer, uh, and I devoured it. And I, I mean, it's whatever 60, 80 pages long, just about this city. And it is not the kind of thing that I'm interested in reading. And as I was reading it, I just couldn't stop. It was so good, so deep, so well explained, and I got immersed in the world. This is all to say that when I started my campaign for Curse of the Crimson Throne, I kicked it off by, and Skid was there, by basically beginning what I had no intention to be, but which ended up becoming a more than 90 minute, now it's two hours, now we're going over two hours, lecture on just introducing this world.

Because if you want this setting really, because if you want your players to understand and build characters that are enmeshed in the factions of the city that understand what it means to be a Varisian here versus what it means to be a Chalaxian here, two very different definitions of how you're going to be treated, how you're going to be responded to, how whatever. I wanted everybody to kind of understand all this depth. Well, I realized more than halfway through my lecture that this was a mistake. Like people were, eyes were glazing over, nothing was sinking in and people came to play Pathfinder. They didn't come to get a history lexter on this city. And so the question that I bring up here is, let's say you're really

excited about running a game in dark sun. Let's say you're really excited about Eberron. I mean, Jared, this is something you actually want to do, like coming up. Like you want to run a game in Eberron. Yeah. You have to describe, I feel like a lot of detail to players who are going to create characters in a given setting that has different rules for technology different rules for

for you know for races and Classes and stuff like that that are all renamed and and done differently What are some tips you would give to how do you? Introduce a new setting to a group of players and I'm not talking about the elevator pitch where you get them to buy in. All right, I'll try it out. I'm talking about actually making characters and starting the set session so that they can, how do you get them hooked in early without spending too much time lecturing about what makes the setting unique?

Jared, I'll kick it to you first. Any thoughts on this? Okay. Uh, well, I would love to hear what Eric and Any thoughts on this? Me first. Okay. Well, I would love to hear what Eric and Skid have to say, but I guess obviously based on what you just said, I think it's right. You don't give them a long lecture about history or culture or the differences in career. Currency.

I was going into what each gold is called this. Silver is called this. You don't need to give them a complete rundown of the political factions. That's not going to work. Um, a couple of things I wrote down were make a list of movies, TV shows, books, and video games that are like the setting you're going to run. Show them that, uh, skid hit on it earlier talking about the forgotten realms, show them pictures, show them illustrations. Um, if you can give them the books, like and let, don't force the books on them.

Don't show them things in the books. Just give them the books ahead of time and let them look through them, right? And you know, more on them than they'll get it. But, and then one other advice I have is, I think no player really minds if you limit their choices a little bit. So if you want it to be a really dark, sunny, dark sun game, maybe you go, Hey,

we're using these classes and races. We're not using these, right? Like, so there are not going to be any, like make a choice of these three, right? Like, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe there's more, but you know, we're not doing gnomes cause gnomes aren't dark, sunny or whatever. And nobody minds that nobody, I don't think anybody gets irritated at that because players have so many choices anyway. They're always overwhelmed. So you can narrow down the choices to things that you think are really thematic. And then finally, then you just have to show them like, don't explain too much. Just run an adventure that kind of

really shows off what this setting is like compared to other settings. That's a tall order, but I would say always when you're doing these things, get to playing as soon as possible and just show them because they'll get it when they play it. They'll be like, Oh, I get this now. You know, doubling down on the, uh, on the art war historian on Twitch chat says, surround them with art from the setting. And I think that that's a good way to put it is just splaying out art all over the table. Or if you do it order of the Amber die style,

literally hang tapestries from the walls that give the vibe of what you're seeing. Cover the windows to the outside world with images of what you're about to play. Cover the windows to the outside world. Lock the doors. Pots on the floor for shitting in. You can't leave until you understand this whole setting. Take their phones. Eric, any insights on this?

Anything that you'd like to add to how do you bring a new setting to a table and get playing as soon as possible, but still feel like you're doing justice to the world? on this, anything that you'd like to add to how do you bring a new setting to a table and get playing as soon as possible but still feel like you're doing justice to the world? I think it's a great question and it's something I've had to deal with fairly recently because I just started a new D&D campaign. I wanted to play some of the old adventures. I showed it earlier. We're playing one of the very earliest adventures, this one in search of the unknown, which is technically set in what would become the Mestara setting but that didn't really exist at the time So they also said you could put it in Greyhawk in like one sentence and that's all I needed So I took that idea and then mixed it with another

Thing that I got actually I hate to keep sort of being like Gary Gygax had all the answers Maybe not but in some cases, he really knew what he was talking about. And in one of his two books that he published, either Mastering the Game or Dungeon Mastery, speaking of things I got at the library when I was like nine, there was a theory that he espoused in there called the bullseye method of setting design. And it was take a look at your setting and in this case where you're going to set your campaign and you need the most detail on the stuff that's at the center of the bulls-eye and you can think about this in terms of a map right and so if it's set in the city of greyhawk you need to know a lot about the city grant maybe you don't you need to know a little bit about the kingdoms immediately around it because they're going to have some contextual interaction and then the the further you go out, you can paint it a little lighter. It's, you know, the Bacchus lands off to the side. That's kind of like the Arab lands. Oh, okay, I get that. Maybe eventually the campaign goes there, but until it does, you do not need to

go into the 10,000 year history of that empire or whatever. So what I did 10,000 year history of that empire or whatever. So what I did is the thing said, you can set this adventure here in the Timberway Forest in Northern Radek. And so I just cut out this portion of the map and shared it with people and gave them just a quick rundown of local stuff. What's going on?

This used to be part of the great kingdom. They recently signed a treaty with these barbarians to the North, but it's a tenuous truce and the land in between, Radek, which was once the northern extent of the Great Kingdom. The barbarians is this sort of no-man's land called the border lands. You're escaping from a town and you need to go up in there. You need to come up with a reason why you're fleeing town and why you want to take up at this mysterious keep on the borderlands up there. Here are a couple of the human cultures. Here's a handful of gods. There's like 100 gods plus and Greyhawk. But I only said here's four or five like relevant ones. And it kind of helped channel people towards stuff that was going to be more relevant to the campaign. So think about what players do. They go to they go on adventures. They go back get healing they get a little religious instruction they have to buy equipment so you need to really late lavish the most detail. I'm the things that the players are actually gonna interact with so if you're spending a bunch of time talking about the economy and what electron pieces are called or whatever up front then there's just too much overload you know if

instead during the first time they buy something that's when you mention all the coin has an image of the old king of the great kingdom of Erdi and that you know that's that's because this used to be a dependency of the okay I get it so you sort of slowly unraveled yeah I think it's that whole show it's that that whole show. Don't tell like Jared was talking about. Show them what the themes are like. Show them what the setting is like. You could do that through art. I think that's a really interesting idea,

but you can also do it through play. And I think players have they haven't made that investment yet in your campaign. They've invested this. I'm going to sit down with you and play for four hours, but they haven't kind of fallen in love with what you're selling and you've got to do that gradually, I think. So you do need to prep more than what the players are ever going to interact with, of course, but don't over prep. I think over prepping is a huge mistake in RPGs because it makes you feel like, oh, well,

I wanted them to go to the lighthouse because I spent all my weekend working on the lighthouse, but they're not interested in the lighthouse at all. They want to go to the barn. I'm going to force them to go to the lighthouse. That's not going to really work. So I think you need to do a light touch and then in between sessions, try and fill out the things that you that they've shown that they're interested in. Yeah. And then you wing it. Do you ever, you know, one thing I did with that Corvosa Gezzatier is I cut out using, you know, like PDF, literally extracting pages. I cut out like a smaller version of it

that I sent to some of the players ahead of time. Would you like, if you were gonna play in Eberron, Jared, would you send the players an Eberron book like weeks before you ever got together? Or would you not send them a book and get them in person first and just start chatting in a session zero? I think the players all having the book is a good idea. But again, you can't force it on them and you can't go in expecting that they read anything. You know, I think that giving them the book, showing them the book to have them get the general impression is a good idea, but that's what they're going to do. They're going to get the general impression, which is often that's enough, you know, just

having them have kind of a general idea of what it is. Yeah. Yeah. The trickiest part to me is when you have completely different classes and completely different races, ancestries, right? Like that's when it's like, uh, so what does this mean? Uh, you gotta go. I think that sending the book ahead of time is important for stuff like that. Uh, just to go back a second, I liked this apple tart on Twitch. After you gave the lighthouse analogy, Eric said, quote, it's a very tall circular barn with a big light on the top.

That's dungeon mastery. That's dungeon mastery right there. Okay. Let's get into our last segment here because this is a big deal. This is going to be fun. We love doing beat McD when we get a chance to do it. Eric, Skid, you can take a front row seat to this. What we're looking for now is anybody to raise their hand to enter the contest to compete

against McD in D&D settings trivia. I mean, this is going to be very general and not super specific from what Jared says about the questions that he's asking. He says they're pretty surface questions, they're pretty easy is what he says. They're so surface. And if you were paying attention to the entire episode here, some of the answers have already been revealed.

So. Oh wow, really? Okay. This is one a caller can actually win, I believe it. Okay, great. You can beat McD this time, I believe it. Okay. Great. I can beat McD this time. I know it. I'm grabbing dice here as I see people weigh in. So yeah, get your hands up there. And okay, this is great. We got a lot of entries this time. Oh, people think they know settings McD. You might be in trouble. Okay. Maybe I should

have made it harder. All right, let's let's I'm going to roll a die here and pick somebody. Okay. It's going to be bent paddle is the way that die rolled bent paddle. Can you hear us? Hey, can you hear me? We got you. Welcome to beat McD. How's it going?

It's going great. I did not expect you to choose me because I know very little. Oh, great. So why'd you raise your hand? That's disappointing. Do you want to step down? There's no shame. We'll have you on the show again.

I'll step down and I'll let someone in. You're going to give it a shot? We have our first four friends. I feel like every time we do beat McD, the person we pick is like, by the way, I'm clueless. Let's go. Wow. We had our, our first forfeit. Uh, gee, did he forfeit?

Well, you know, he said, I'll step down and let somebody else that knows more. That paddle that you are a great man. That is, that is a strong, strong person. Yes. We'll have you on the show again. A picture of McD in the background going, yes. And then going, shit. He's up one nothing. He's up one game to nothing already. Okay. Okay. Let's, um, McD actually McD's already in the soundproof. Uh, he's soundproofed.

He can't hear us anyway. Uh, All right. Let's go to somebody else. Let's go to gray wolf, gray wolf 85. Yeah, we had a lot of people who disconnected when they weren't picked. That was funny. Gray wolf 85. Can you hear us? Yes. Hello.

Hello. Are you ready to beat me D? I'm so not ready, but let's do it. Okay. Let's, let's give it a try. All right. So here we'll go through the rules. We can't have another forfeit, Gray Wolf, so I guess you're the guy. All right, yeah.

I'll go through the rules with you. OK, there's five questions. All right, after Jared finishes asking the first question, I'm going to start the timer. You have 60 seconds to answer as many of these five questions as you can correctly as possible. Jared will read the questions. You will get a chance to answer. You may pass five questions as you can correctly as possible. Jared will read the questions, you will get a chance to answer. You may pass on any question you want and then return to it later.

Once the 60 seconds is up, you're done. Then we're gonna bring up McD and we'll see what, how he does against you. If you're able to beat McD, you would be the first to beat McD, he hasn't lost yet, and you will win yourself a GCN stealth black hat. Do we always do McD second? I thought we did McD first and then the... No, McD second. McD second. And we also don't tell McD what the target number is. Don't tell him what the person got ahead of time. So we just want him to go in blind and see what he can do. All right. Let's get ready. Uh, Jared, whenever you're ready, uh, gray gray, are you read or I'm sorry, gray Wolf, are you ready? Yes. All right. So once Jared,

you finished reading the first question, I will start the clock whenever you're ready, Jared. All right. Question one, what was the first ever D and D campaign setting created by Dave Arneson and published in 1975. Forgotten realms. Incorrect. The filers and preservers are types of magic users in what campaign setting? Ah, gray hook. Incorrect. What campaign world has been the setting for the video game's pull of Radiance, Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gates? Oh, wait. Campaign world?

Yeah, what campaign setting? Uhhhh...okay. Uhhhh...I wanna say Forgotten Realms again, I know that's a D&D. Correct! We're gonna give you that one. I want to say, just say your answer. Mask of Red Death was an Edgar Allan Poe inspired subsetting for which D&D campaign setting? Oh. Uh. That's an excellent question.

I'm going to pass. Time. Damn. All right, just one gray, just one, unfortunately. Gray Wolf, very bad. That was very bad. Sorry. Yeah, you didn't have a mastery of the subject matter. That was clear.

No, not at all. You could still win. You could still win. You could still win if Medea has some. You could still win if McD has some sort of life-oldering aneurysm. All right, let's bring McD up here. Let's bring McD up. If he can see, yeah, he's coming in now.

Let us know when you're here, McD, when you can unmute your mic. And great, I keep calling you great gray because of great gray squid. Gray Wolf, just hang in there for a second. McD, can you hear us? Yo, buddy. Yo, buddy.

Okay, we are ready to rock. McD, you're in trouble, daddy. We are ready to rock. You're not gonna win this time, pal. All right, here we go. Jared, ask the first question whenever you're ready. Remember, McD, you get one minute, and you can pass if you want and return to an answer. Here we go. I'll start the clock after Jared finishes the first question.

Question one, what was the first ever D and D campaign setting created by Dave Arneson and published in 1975? Um, is a setting called Blackmore Blackmore? That's correct. Great question to defilers and preservers or types of magic users. And what dark sun is correct question three, what campaign world has been the setting for the video games? Pull of radiance, never winter nights and Baldur's gate.

Forgotten realms is correct. Mask of red death was an Edgar Allen Poe inspired sub setting for which D&D campaign setting? Huh. I mean, I'll context that one. Ravenloft, right? That's correct. And you're going to get this one. Tasselhoff Burfoot was a member of what race native to crin the world

of the dragon lance campaign setting. Oh God, what were they called? They were called um, uh, kinder. No, I'm going to care. I'm going to, I'm going to say that's right. That's a five out of five. Wow. Well that's back to back. Five of fives for McD. Very impressive. I was kidding, McD. I was kidding. Gray Wolf got, did he get one? He got one right. He got one right. So no one's ever going to beat McD.

No one's ever going to do it. Thanks for the attempt, Gray Wolf. Please. Hey, you never know. You never know. Thanks for- You never know. You never know. Jared said thanks for calling in. I took him at his word. Hey, you never know. You never know. Thanks. You never know. You never know.

Jared said surface level. Well, thanks for calling in. I took him at his word. Yeah. Yeah. Some of those were not surface level. You didn't think they were easy? Eric thought they were easy.

Eric, did you think those were easy? Can I give you like three really quick, actually hard setting questions? Yeah, go. Let's do it. So McD, around the era of Greyhawk and Blackmoor, TSR published another campaign setting that was not for Dungeons and Dragons, and it eventually was republished in a game called Empire of the Petal Throne. What was the name of that campaign setting?

Oh, dude, I've got it. Yeah, I guess anyone can answer these if you don't. Tecumel. That's right, Tecumel. I've heard of that. I've seen that logo. The famous centerpiece of the Planescape setting is a city known as Sigil that hovers over a plane that in second edition was called the Outlands. What was the name of the Outlands in first edition AD&D?

Whoa, dude. No idea. That's really hard. Limbo? Was it limbo? Wait, no. Hold idea. That's really hard. Limbo limbo. Wait, no, hold on. It's. Oh, he's got something. Everybody shut up.

Wikipedia. No, no, I was no. Yeah, I was thinking wild space. It's not. It was called the plane of concordant opposition. Concordant opposition. I've heard of that. Opposition.

Jared asked a question about Kendr in in Dragonlance. I'm gonna ask a question about a Evil race in Dragonlance called Draconians. No, everyone was slightly different What was unique about? What happens to a Draconian when it reaches zero hit points? They turn to stone and they explode Yeah, that's right. They do. You got turned to stone, right? Thanks for the people up. Yeah. One last question, I guess, since we're on the topic of Kendra. This is great.

Kendra are particularly well known for a very specific kind of slingshot slash pole arm slash quarter staff. That is sort of the cultural weapon of their people. What is the name of the weapon favored by Kendr? Oh, no clue. But what a great question. It is a great question. I know it makes a scary sound when they whirl it around.

They use that as defense. Hmm. It is called a. Gosh, I forget what that is. It's called the something, something sling. Close, not even close. The answer is the who pack. It's a who pack.

Who pack. I would not have gotten that. There you go folks. There's your hard trivia. I'm putting who pack in all of my campaign worlds. That would be, there is hard trivia. Yeah, we had a few people in chat that said, yeah, those were easy questions. A couple uh, that said, yeah, those were easy

questions and a couple of people that were like, you thought those were easy. So it was really kind of back and forth. It depends on how much, you know, guys, I have to make them easy. No, I know. He keeps five out of five being them against you. If one of you would step up and actually compete, maybe I'd make it a little harder to have a little bit. And well, the other thing we could do is make it a little bit more, maybe we could make it a little more, do a little bit more, what's the word I'm looking for?

Not, screening, maybe do a little bit more screening. Yeah, vetting. A little bit more vetting, yeah. Do you actually know about this stuff or not? We'll ask them ahead of time. You should have to pass them some sort of like, multiple choice quiz to enter in. Like I had to do one I tried to be on

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Yeah, like Japanese. There you go. There you go. But yeah, just the idea of saying like, hey, raise your hand. We'll put the staff on that. If you want to compete in this, I think is,

it can be tricky. I'm gonna just tell the staff, create a quiz. People have to. Let me just tell the staff. Tell my friends. You're telling them. You're talking to the staff right now. You're not staff.

You're not staff. You're our host. Guys, we got to go. This was so much fun. Eric Mona, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for taking the time and being on Glass Cannon Radio. Hell yeah. It is an absolute pleasure to have you guys here for the us. Thanks for having me. Skipp, thank you so much for taking the time and being on Glass Cannon Radio.

Hell yeah. It is an absolute pleasure to have you guys here for the whole show. That was great. We look forward to having you again on any kind of different topics we could talk about. It's always a joy to get your guys' insight and thoughts on these TTRPG or just general nerdy subject matters. It's really fun. Yeah, thank you guys. This is so fun. Thank you guys. This was so fun.

Thank you guys so much. We can't wait to do it again sometime. Alright, that's going to wrap it up for us for Glass Cannon Radio this week. Thanks everybody for coming by, hanging out, chilling with us. McD remains undefeated! So, so exciting. He's the man! You'll never beat him! You're not strong enough. And don't forget The Black Tongue Thief. Don't forget The Black Tongue Thief by Christopher Bowman.

Pick it up, read it, and let's hang out with us for Book Club. One month from now. One month from now. All right, take it easy, everybody. We'll see you again soon, I hope. Bye. Bye. It's time to make your membership official.

Start your 30-day free trial today and become an official member of the Naish at JoinTheNaish.com with the promo code GCN30. That's JoinTheNaish.com and use code GCN30 to gain access to exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes and content you can't find anywhere else once again It's join the nation calm and use code GCN 30 at sign up to get your first 30 days for free Tell your friends come join yourself and see what everybody's talking about when you join the nation today Thanks for watching!