0:06

Welcome. Have

0:09

a good second to talk. Yeah.

0:13

That's what I'm talking

0:14

about. Gardan.

0:15

Oh, girl. This is these.

0:18

Official Dungeons and Dragons Podcasts

0:20

Podcast, I'm Greg Tido. Yay.

0:24

Thank you. That's Shelley over there.

0:26

Yay. Very

0:28

exciting for yes. This is.

0:30

I'm very excited for this. Another

0:32

wonderful

0:32

episode. Got an

0:34

amazing interview with

0:36

CJ McCullough, a table

0:40

top role player and

0:42

designer and educator and

0:45

so many amazing things.

0:46

World Builder. We're gonna

0:47

talk about their role on districts

0:50

you and all the fun stuff that is

0:52

going on with that show.

0:54

So exciting.

0:56

And then we also

0:58

have amazing how to DM with

1:01

a returning guest, Tejas Abidea.

1:04

Oh, my

1:04

favorite. Wonderful. You may know him as alpha stream

1:07

and or as a slump?

1:09

her

1:12

I can't wait for that. Yeah.

1:13

We're gonna talk a little bit about how to

1:15

DM spell GMR Honestly,

1:18

don't know. Still trying to figure out how to DM

1:20

the starter set. So this

1:23

is gonna be very interesting.

1:24

I think it's gonna be great. think we should

1:26

jump right in or figure that out. Yes,

1:28

please.

1:36

Welcome

1:39

to how to

1:41

DM. I have a fantastic wonderful

1:44

returning guest, Tayo

1:47

Sabadilla. How are you?

1:49

My friend? Shelley,

1:50

I'm doing extremely well. I

1:53

am calling you from space. For

1:56

space is a place according

1:58

to Reggie Watts.

1:59

Those both of your

2:02

major episodes that I listened to recently talking

2:04

about all about the spell jam resending, and then talking

2:06

about space jams. those -- Bell jams. -- I want

2:09

to listen to. Base

2:09

jams is a different thing.

2:11

That's what I what I say. I don't know. Spelled.

2:14

That's an excellent soundtrack too. I'm sure.

2:16

Probably not sure what it is. Yes. It's

2:19

just different. Sell jams. Yeah.

2:21

And Chris Funk is Portland. I'm pulling

2:23

Yes. So represent. Mhmm.

2:25

Do you know that Chris Funk dealt the

2:28

most damage I've ever seen at a DND

2:30

event?

2:31

No. This is an interesting bit

2:33

of trivia.

2:33

He he had a big decision at

2:36

the D and D descent event that took place

2:38

in LA. Yeah. And he

2:40

made what maybe would be would consider the unwise

2:42

but fun choice. And it an unbelievable

2:45

amount of damage to every player

2:47

So it's probably the most damage any person

2:50

has ever dealt in some kind of official

2:52

DMD game capacity.

2:53

What was it? Do you remember?

2:54

No. I I think I wrote it down somewhere, but

2:57

it was something, I mean, unbelievable. Right? It

2:59

was thousands and thousands of hit points of damage

3:01

across the whole world. What? What

3:03

It was a lot of damage. It was it was

3:05

it was definitely out of the hundred range. So Oh

3:08

my god. In the thousands, I don't know how many,

3:10

but it was a lot. I'll have to search my notes

3:12

for that treasure. Way to go,

3:13

man. I'm

3:15

gonna ask him about that next time we chat.

3:17

Hopefully, we can convince

3:19

him to curate a spell germs too

3:22

because it's amazing. Before

3:25

we dive in, I just in case this I

3:27

think everybody knows you probably.

3:30

Most people might know you as Elfa Stream

3:32

on the socials, but for those who

3:34

don't know you, you are a

3:36

wonderful resource, an expert

3:38

in all things D and D, but also

3:40

a freelance author, a developer.

3:43

You have a million projects in the works.

3:45

You're a podcaster. We will

3:48

promote all of these things in the

3:50

the projects that you have coming up at

3:52

the end, but also a

3:55

wonderful advocate in our

3:57

D and D community or

3:59

a healthier RPG. industry,

4:02

and that's very important. So we do appreciate

4:04

all of the work that you do and that you're putting

4:06

out there.

4:06

Thanks, Sally. A lot of good people

4:08

got me here, so I'm always trying to pay that back.

4:10

Well, you are gonna

4:12

pay back all of these listeners

4:15

who are wanting to DM

4:17

spell jammer and are like, what

4:19

the what? What's happening here?

4:21

This is a setting that is unlike no

4:23

other. So we're gonna talk

4:25

about DMing

4:27

spell jammer. And I think I

4:30

don't know. How do we even begin

4:32

with the basics? What do we do?

4:33

How do you have it? Well,

4:36

you know, I think the first thing that I think of

4:38

a spell jammer is that it's obviously like

4:40

an interesting different

4:43

setting. And whenever I'm doing something

4:45

that's different, I I like to think about

4:47

those differences and make sure

4:49

those come across because there's a reason I picked

4:51

this up off the shelf. Right? Like it was like, cool.

4:53

oh, ships and space, like space

4:55

battles, meeting bizarre

4:57

creatures, like all these kinds of things just

4:59

seem really awesome. and

5:01

so you want to make sure you do those things. Right? You

5:03

don't want to like bring in firewalled

5:06

and then have everybody sitting on a block of ice. Right?

5:08

You want to bring the things that make sense

5:10

in what it is. So I think that's a lot what

5:12

I'm excited to talk about today. It's kinda like what are

5:14

those things that make it unique

5:17

And I think the first one is that the genre

5:19

is super, super flexible.

5:21

Right? So if you

5:23

anyone who's looked at the bell jammer

5:25

five e setting, we'll get this immediately

5:28

because you have space clowns and

5:30

then you have like Don't remind me.

5:34

You have those scammers that are just

5:36

super frightening sharks and you have far

5:38

realm horror stuff with tentacles. So

5:40

and and then you have, like, Elven nations

5:43

and just all kinds of really interesting

5:45

aspects. So what that lets you

5:47

do is run any

5:49

kind of genre you want as sort of your

5:51

main predominant genre. Right? So I can

5:53

say, I'm gonna run high fantasy, sort of like

5:55

a DND default campaign, or

5:57

I'm gonna go a little more pulpy, and I'm gonna

5:59

really lean into the swash buckling and the

6:01

ship part and pirates and

6:03

things like that, or I can go into horror.

6:06

I mean, you can totally make Ravenloff

6:08

seam tame. Right? You could pull

6:11

from event horizon, right, with, like,

6:13

why is this base that we were supposed to

6:15

go to totally empty?

6:18

and why does it seem to shift through time?

6:21

It can be aliens. Right? We're on our way somewhere

6:23

in the derelict spacecraft sends a weird

6:25

sending spell. And

6:27

then there's this room full of weird egg

6:29

things. Oh, let's check that out. Right?

6:32

Comedy, you've got Autonomous, you've got

6:34

miniature and giant space hamsters

6:37

at your disposal. So, you know,

6:39

and you can mix and match that. So you can sort of say,

6:41

like, here's my predominant tone. And then here are

6:43

the things that I'm gonna every now and then to kind of

6:45

keep it interesting. And spell gander is awesome at

6:47

letting you have that full range of things. I

6:49

think that is so key

6:51

because a lot of people do get

6:53

hung up on, like, the one like, DNA

6:55

space. Or there's a it's

6:57

funny and it's wild and

6:59

it's weird and that was the impression

7:02

I had going into this at first

7:04

when we first started talking about spell jam or

7:06

coming back. And Chris Lindsey kept

7:08

repeating No, it isn't.

7:10

It can be, but it's not just that.

7:13

The adventure is very, very dark.

7:15

It's intense. It's this and that.

7:17

Like, I could not. I'm like, but there's

7:19

space whales in, like, these little

7:21

goldfish. No it is. Yeah. I mean Oh,

7:23

yeah. involve

7:24

any space novel,

7:26

movie you can think of, you can,

7:28

you know, you have the material

7:30

in in the spell jammer setting will let you

7:32

do that. Right? Those three books will let you

7:34

create that because it has all of

7:36

these raw parts. And it isn't really

7:38

declaring, you know, one way. It's not like

7:40

it's built with horror rules or it's built with

7:42

high fantasy rules. Like, it's pretty flexible

7:44

and open. Yep.

7:45

I think that's a really good point. Alright.

7:48

So we choose our genre. What

7:50

direction we want to take this campaign?

7:53

And

7:54

then what? Well speaking of direction,

7:56

another big thing is travel. Right?

7:58

Because spaces is enormous.

8:02

And a lot of what we can

8:04

do as a DM is decide

8:06

to what extent we're gonna make that

8:08

travel interesting. And

8:11

there are times when you wanna skip travel because you

8:13

just wanna get to the next thing that's in your, you

8:15

know, in your story, in your plot. That

8:17

makes sense. but you don't wanna

8:19

forget the cool things that make this setting

8:21

awesome and that made you wanna buy this and

8:23

run this. And some of that is

8:25

the concept of what's taking place. Right? So

8:27

travel and I'm not gonna go through all the rules because

8:29

they're right there. Just pick up the book. They're great. Right.

8:32

But but you are gonna have one

8:34

of probably one of the characters who is a

8:36

spellcaster will choose to

8:38

be the kind of captain and

8:41

operate the spell jamming helm, which is

8:43

sort of like a throne that you sit on and you

8:45

tune to it, and now you can fly

8:47

the ship. And not only do you fly the ship,

8:49

but you can sort of see your perspective

8:51

for vision can be anywhere within

8:53

the sort of air bubble that's around the ship.

8:55

which is really cool. Yeah.

8:57

And and you're moving the

8:59

ship on your turn. And that's really

9:01

awesome. It's a great way to kind of put

9:03

a spotlight on one of the

9:05

characters in in your

9:07

party because they now get to

9:09

play this Captain role and we'll have a really

9:11

important say and and things both in combat and

9:13

in exploration. So

9:15

one of the things we can do is

9:17

apply other roles. And

9:19

if you read, I think it's a venture two

9:21

or three of Spell Jammer

9:23

Academy. You will find

9:25

some ideas on roles and

9:28

also the DM's guild And even,

9:30

like, the five e compatible game, which

9:32

is a sci fi game using five e called

9:34

aspergenesis, these all have

9:36

roles that you can use those ideas

9:38

to further reinforce it. But

9:40

it can be as simple as saying, okay,

9:42

as my party is doing all these various things

9:44

in our campaign. So who is

9:46

taking an interest in maps and travel?

9:49

and maybe the crew starts thinking to them as

9:51

the navigator. And who develops

9:53

great relationships with the crew? Well,

9:55

maybe they're the quarter master or Bob

9:57

Swain. and so on. Right? You can sort

9:59

of assign

9:59

these nautical

10:01

military roles

10:03

to people, to gunner, weapons

10:06

master, whatever you wanna call it. Right? And

10:08

that gives people sort of an identity

10:10

and a role within the ship that can be a lot of

10:12

fun to play with. Yeah.

10:13

Definitely. I

10:16

do play a magic user in our spell jammer

10:18

campaign. Chris Lindsay is our DM,

10:20

and he has never once let me

10:23

a spell jammer. So

10:25

does he have MPCs doing

10:26

it? Well, I'll tell you, and I think

10:29

you'll appreciate it. At

10:31

first, it was flapJack. Oh,

10:32

yeah. Flap Jack's pretty sweet. Yeah.

10:34

It's thoughtful. I appreciate it.

10:37

I happen to believe that Chris

10:39

Lindsay does not love flumps. which

10:41

is a problem. It is a problem.

10:43

What you could do, but this is you you've

10:45

caught me in a catch train too because my

10:47

what I was going to say was just murderize

10:50

whoever is flying your ship. And now that I know it's

10:52

a fluff, I can't really have the daily

10:54

feeling of a fluff. Yeah. So

10:56

maybe be friend flap Jack and

10:58

convince Flap Jack the flumps to let

11:00

you take it out for a spin every now

11:02

time. So because I'm

11:03

a big in real life fan

11:05

of flap Jack. I couldn't help but have

11:07

that bleed into my character, and she

11:09

was actually like a huge flapJack

11:12

fan. And Yeah. the D and

11:14

D world. And I think she actually

11:16

made him feel a bit awkward,

11:18

and he actually doesn't like her

11:19

very much. Then,

11:22

you know, what if he challenged FlapJack

11:24

to who's the best pilot? I

11:26

bet Lindsay would bite at that. Now you can't let him

11:28

listen to this episode, but But I bet he would fall for

11:30

that trap. If you are like, you know, flapjack,

11:32

I bet you I can fly this better than

11:34

you and then you just keep making

11:36

that bet and flying the

11:38

ship. And

11:38

because Chris is not

11:41

as fond of flumps as clearly you and

11:43

I are, he would probably be open to the

11:45

idea of, you know, flam

11:47

flapjack getting

11:50

flum snapped

11:50

or, you know --

11:53

Yeah. --

11:53

and disposed in some way. So somebody has

11:55

to helm this ship, but I

11:56

love it. And that is the thing that can happen. Right?

11:58

Like, the the it's possible the party will say,

12:01

none of us wanna fly the ship. I wanna keep

12:03

doing all my full things that I do as

12:05

a character. have an MPC.

12:07

But those MPCs can then also be

12:09

grounds for relationships and kinda cool things

12:11

like that. Right? You you can you can get to know

12:13

the crew that's another one thing you can do. So, like, say,

12:15

there's, like, the people who just man the

12:17

weapons. Right? Yeah. And that's great. But

12:20

at least come up with one or two of them

12:22

that have interesting personality. So, like,

12:24

the Ballista crew that the

12:26

party will think of, you know, whoever it is

12:28

that is is is the the

12:30

main person on that ballista

12:32

crew. Right? And that can have a personality and

12:34

identity. And for all this, you can use the dance

12:36

skill that has really cool tables for detailing

12:38

NBC. So you can use that to to detail

12:40

them out. And that can give somebody

12:43

and and the party a fun relationship

12:45

to to work with. Right? especially if there's

12:47

someone who thinks themselves as sort of the weapons

12:49

person, then they can work with each of the siege

12:51

crews and have this person they think of.

12:53

You can also threaten them during battles,

12:55

which makes fun. Right? because now it's a Comino.

12:57

You know, Cindy, the the

12:59

catapult operator is, you know,

13:01

impressed by Hobgoblins and come

13:03

to the rescue. or

13:05

she can rescue you. So

13:07

those are fun things you can do. But the idea of

13:09

roles and the thinking about your crew and the places

13:12

that that the characters AquaBunch

13:14

ships is great. Yeah. Another thing I

13:16

love is messing with your air supply, and

13:18

I don't mean the band.

13:19

My first concert Really?

13:22

There you go. Nice.

13:25

I was poisoned rat.

13:26

Oh, yep. I definitely I saw

13:28

that tour as well. Oh,

13:29

yeah. So My taste was

13:32

all over the board. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Me

13:34

too. The

13:37

Air supply is super cool because

13:39

the way it works is whenever something

13:41

leaves a planet and it's big

13:43

enough or it's alive, it will bring a bubble

13:45

of air with it. And for a

13:47

person, it's like the size you are. So a

13:49

smaller, medium creature is like a five foot

13:51

square. A large one is ten

13:53

feet and so on. but a ship,

13:55

it's whatever or a large object, it's

13:57

whatever the longest axis is. That's how

13:59

big the

13:59

bubble is.

14:00

And so it's pretty easy to see and you can

14:02

check out the rules for the full part of it,

14:04

but what it means is that you've got a bunch of air,

14:06

in fact, that lasts a hundred and twenty days for

14:09

a ship. And so if you go to

14:11

a fresh planet and you get nice air

14:13

and you a hundred twenty days of fresh air.

14:15

Hundred twenty days later, it goes to

14:17

foul. Foul gives you the

14:19

poisoned condition. So

14:21

you wanna find a source of fresh air to

14:23

freshen that up. If you were to go another hundred

14:25

and twenty days, it's now

14:28

basically exhausted air. It's deadly

14:30

and you will have to hold your breath. And so you

14:32

can see the DMG's suffocation rules for

14:34

that, but it doesn't last

14:36

long. You will have a couple of minutes and

14:38

then a few rounds and then you'll

14:40

be dying. Oh my goodness. So

14:42

what that works well is not a thing

14:44

that you necessarily want to get to, like you

14:46

don't want your whole party set,

14:48

you know, suffocating. But

14:50

the threat of it can be a fun thing to play

14:52

with. So you can do things like, say, the ship that

14:54

has this nice air bubble, comes up to

14:56

an asteroid, the asteroid has

14:58

no air. So now they've gotta be like

15:00

an away team, right, and

15:02

decide who's gonna leave the safety of the

15:04

air bubble with their little personal bubble that

15:06

only lasts a minute. Oh, jeez. And

15:08

there could be a little pockets of air. Right? But you

15:10

can kind of play with that sort of exploration scene

15:12

to make a really kind of thing where, like,

15:14

really cool thing where you're going into you

15:16

know, this cavern in the asteroid

15:19

and then you you find the pocket of air and then you've got

15:21

to move a little longer and then find another

15:23

pocket. or you could

15:25

create something like a smaller

15:27

ship that they have. Sort of the idea of a

15:29

rowboat, you know, and that you've got Gallian on

15:31

the ocean and then you you don't take that all the

15:33

way to the beach. you take a small rowboat so they

15:35

could have a smaller ship and you can make up

15:37

those rules. There aren't any rules for that. So you could say

15:39

like, well, the air lasts twenty

15:41

minutes and then it becomes foul

15:43

another twenty minutes it becomes deadly.

15:45

So all those things give you some neat

15:47

ideas that you can play with to kind of ratchet up,

15:49

touch attention, and sort of

15:51

dictate the dynamics of

15:53

how everybody is moving around.

15:55

So just the amount of

15:58

people or characters breathing

15:59

the same air impact?

16:02

How much fresh air there is? Does

16:04

that change the one hundred and twenty days?

16:06

Or is it I

16:07

I think it's all based on the typical crew of

16:09

a ship. So if you were to double it, it

16:11

would, or you could figure out some sort of ratio like

16:13

that. But one thing that's interesting is if two

16:15

ships or two objects that have air

16:18

of different quality come together.

16:20

Uh-huh. The largest one wins. So you

16:22

can also do things like say

16:24

Oh look, here's this scary ship

16:26

that's loaded up with skeletons and other undead.

16:29

That's just scary because of what it is.

16:31

But if you also see that the air

16:33

is foul, and it's a bigger ship than

16:35

yours. Yeah. That's kinda That's rather

16:37

dangerous because the undead are probably immune to

16:39

being poisoned. Your crew

16:41

isn't. So now you're all suffering from

16:43

the poison condition and until you can

16:45

find better. And in fact,

16:47

if the ship had no air, you

16:49

would really not want to get close to

16:51

it. So

16:52

that kind of brings us to our next topic,

16:55

which is ship to ship

16:57

combat. Now first of all, can you

16:59

actually see foul

17:01

air? does it look different? Or we

17:03

wouldn't know until we're, like, getting

17:05

away from that. You know, that's the kind

17:06

of thing that depending on the scene,

17:09

you could side. Right? So as a DM, I

17:11

like to say there's no answer to that except

17:13

the answer that I wanna give. So I could I could

17:15

describe qualities about it. Right? There

17:17

are fumes or a film around

17:19

the edge of the air bubble would be cool, something

17:21

like that that looks nasty -- Yeah. -- or the lack

17:23

of an air bubble. Right? Those things I

17:25

might do when I want people to

17:27

know. Like, you don't wanna approach this ship. It will

17:29

remove your air envelope. Right?

17:31

So those kinds of things can be really interesting

17:33

and fun to play if you wanna give them tips

17:36

or call for a role if it's not such a big deal and they don't

17:38

have to know, then they could you could have

17:40

them make some checks and see if they figure it

17:42

out. Okay.

17:42

That is actually quite

17:45

terrifying to think about that. Your air

17:47

can be contaminated in that

17:49

way. Mhmm. But,

17:51

yes, the ship to ship combat.

17:53

That's a whole new thing

17:55

as well. Not only are

17:57

you characters fighting

17:59

other,

17:59

you know,

18:00

NPCs, foes, creatures,

18:03

monsters, but your ship can

18:05

also be getting pummeled.

18:06

Yeah. Yeah. And the good news

18:08

is ships have a lot of hit points. but it

18:11

can be a lot of fun to exchange

18:13

siege weapon fire, which is generally what these

18:15

ships are doing to one to to each

18:17

other. And the way it

18:19

works is fairly simple. Like, there are rules in the DMG,

18:21

which I reprinted in spell Jammer for.

18:23

Here's what this siege weapon does. Right? You fire a

18:25

ballista, and if it hits something, it does a bunch

18:27

of damage. If it's a cannon,

18:29

it does even more. And you usually,

18:32

the way it's gonna work is your rolling

18:34

initiative and on the captain's turn

18:36

the captain gets to decide where to move the ship.

18:38

And then you can kind of decide how

18:40

you wanna handle weapons. Do you want it to be on

18:42

the captain's turn sort of because they're

18:45

calling it? If you have a role like a weapon master, it

18:47

could be pretty fun to have it be on their

18:49

initiative that these siege weapons all

18:51

fire, you know. What I

18:53

usually don't do is give initiative

18:55

to the cruise. If a cruise

18:57

just gonna fire that ballista, I'll

18:59

just have it go on what I like to

19:01

call the ship's turn or on a weapon

19:03

master's turn or some MPC's turn that

19:05

that that, you know, is associated with those crews.

19:07

And just because it's fun to be like, fire

19:09

now, you know, and then then all

19:11

the ships weapons fire. There's

19:13

no facing, so the rear

19:15

weapon can fire as well as the front

19:17

weapon regardless of where the target is.

19:19

and spell Jammer. It's all pretty simplified, which is good

19:22

because that would be a pain to calculate. Yeah.

19:24

Seige weapons didn't have a really long

19:27

range. So one of the big questions to ask

19:29

yourself with any shift combat as a

19:31

DM is, what do I

19:33

want this combat to feel like? Do I

19:35

want it to be that

19:37

we immediately crash together and bored,

19:39

and it's a pulpy skirmish with, you

19:42

know, people swinging from

19:44

ropes. onto the other deck and

19:46

maybe fighting on the enemy

19:48

ship like maybe it's a cool mind flaring ship and

19:50

you're fighting through all the different levels of it

19:52

and exploring it. that can

19:53

be awesome. So

19:55

if that's the case, you don't wanna

19:58

start really far away because

20:00

then we're gonna be doing a siege weapon battle.

20:02

On the other hand, you want a c drop in battle,

20:04

then the further you start, the

20:07

less likely we are to actually board

20:09

one another. and the more

20:11

that we're gonna exchange fire round after round.

20:13

So there's an encountered distance

20:15

table in the rules and you

20:17

can use that and sort of

20:20

think through how close to be or

20:22

not. And the other thing is to

20:24

make the the cues, give

20:26

cues so the players know

20:28

the goal. and

20:28

the enemy's goal. So you

20:30

could say something

20:31

like, you know, give me a

20:33

check-in any half reasonable role that one

20:36

of them will make, will

20:38

say, you think this is this

20:40

famous pirate so and so who

20:42

never takes prisoners and

20:44

destroys ships everywhere they go. Okay.

20:46

It's a siege battle if we want it to

20:48

be. Right? Or you can just

20:50

see the intent. They're all getting the weapons

20:52

crews ready. Like, this is really a ship that wants

20:54

to use siege or fair, or you see

20:56

them all preparing to board you. And

20:58

then you can let the players decide

21:01

because we can always make a new encounter if they wanna

21:03

do something else. But but at least the

21:05

players know what we're providing to them. Right?

21:07

That's sort of way we dressed it up. And we have

21:09

that starting encounter distance, and a lot of that

21:11

will drive the action.

21:13

That's

21:14

really cool. Yes. We've had definitely an r

21:16

game, some ship to ship

21:19

combat. Definitely encountered some of those

21:21

mind flayer ships.

21:22

of the nautoloids. In the cool

21:24

Yeah. Salt Marsh. Ghost of Salt Marsh

21:27

has a bunch of different ideas

21:29

on how you can do ship combat.

21:31

It has full stat blocks

21:33

for for those types of ships. And you can take that

21:35

approach if you want and even have a ship

21:37

run on its initiative, which actually really like

21:39

the ship to just have its initiative.

21:41

and then the captain can move it on theirs, but the ship is firing on

21:43

its own initiative. Oh, that has

21:45

ideas

21:45

for customizing ships.

21:48

and

21:48

also some ideas on assigning roles and

21:51

things like that. So it's worth looking at

21:53

Salt Merchant, seeing what out of there do you

21:55

wanna borrow and use and the DM Scaled is

21:57

already full of all kinds of really cool

21:59

supplements that also give you

22:01

these ideas

22:01

for customizing ships and

22:03

then, you know, all kinds of stuff. Right? It sounds really fun. A

22:05

lot of

22:06

people inspired by this campaign

22:08

for sure. Yeah.

22:10

Well, one of the other cool things

22:13

about being out there in

22:15

space is exploration. So

22:18

we should talk about that. It's

22:20

one

22:20

of my favorite parts of spell jammer because

22:23

I when when I first

22:25

got into spell jammer, I actually thought it was sort

22:27

of silly and I didn't wanna buy it.

22:30

and my players bought it and said, you will now run this. And I

22:32

said, okay. But I read this, and I was like,

22:34

this is actually kinda cool. And I started using

22:37

it. I realized that spell jammer

22:40

was sort of like the show I was

22:42

watching then Star Trek Next Generation, where

22:44

every week we could visit a different world

22:46

and I could use anything

22:48

in my entire DND bookshelf

22:51

and in fact other games as well

22:53

and make worlds out of that. Right? So

22:55

I could have desert world

22:57

one week and pull Dark Sun monsters,

23:00

which there are some in the in the

23:02

monster books for five

23:04

e. And or I

23:06

could say, like, you know, I'm gonna hey, I'm

23:08

gonna make it a jungle world or a

23:10

jungle continent, and I'm

23:12

gonna use part of a tomb from tomb of

23:14

annihilation or even an encounter

23:16

from tomb of annihilation. Right? I'm

23:18

gonna make a world where the PCs

23:20

are tiny, and so I'm gonna use

23:22

Stormkin's thunder to put in giants. Right?

23:25

and and, you know, just borrow a piece out of

23:28

that. I'm gonna take tyranny

23:30

of dragons because everybody in this planet war

23:32

ships dragons. and so on. So your

23:34

entire bookshelf can just be used to

23:36

fuel your sort of

23:38

weekly and now we end up in the world of blah

23:40

blah blah Right? And and that's neat.

23:42

It can also be what you just drop in as

23:44

encounters. Right? You're you're flying through wild

23:46

space. You see an interesting looking

23:48

plan it gleaming in the distance. You wanna check it out? Oh, here's

23:50

what it is. Right? So I

23:53

love that aspect of exploration and

23:55

different wild space encounters.

23:58

It's worth mentioning the ships move so

24:01

quickly, so you can fly

24:03

when you're not near other objects.

24:05

when you're you move your normal

24:07

listed ship speed. When you're not

24:09

near another object, you can move

24:11

a hundred million miles in twenty

24:14

four hours. a hundred

24:15

million

24:16

miles. Yeah.

24:18

And so that means that

24:20

in a day, you could go from Earth to

24:22

Mars in our world. Mhmm. And

24:24

in over a week, it could get to Saturn. Okay.

24:26

And so that gives us a nice latitude.

24:29

That's a nice speed to say that

24:31

you know, in a couple weeks, getting through

24:33

a system, a wild based system,

24:35

which gives us good time to stop

24:37

along the way. Like, pick up

24:39

some air from one place, you know,

24:42

explore a planet, come across an

24:44

asteroid, a derelict ship, things like that, and that

24:46

can be a really nice experience that's happening

24:48

in your campaign in any particular system.

24:50

And then if you leave the system, you

24:53

eventually get to the astral

24:55

sea which I think Chris described

24:57

pretty well in in in your earlier segment,

24:59

Chris Lindsay did. And then you

25:01

can go into another Wild Space System

25:04

after that. So campaign wise, I like to

25:06

think through plot arcs where I think through okay. Here's

25:08

what's going on in my story. Maybe, you

25:10

know, we're up against an evil

25:12

astral elf tyrant. And

25:14

when we visit an exciting desert planet, we

25:16

see the damage that the tyrant has

25:18

wrought. It's affected this place

25:21

too, And then we have, you know, star trek kind of,

25:23

like, deadly desert creatures in the

25:25

gladiatorial arena type thing.

25:27

And then another campaign could be more

25:29

like alien. And that's

25:31

where we have, like, the derelict spacecraft, you

25:33

know, that causes us to

25:35

investigate it. And then we have to figure out where these aliens

25:37

come from and what else is going

25:39

on here. Start campaigns

25:41

can sort of work like a job board

25:43

approach where your organization is sending

25:45

you to strange new worlds every week.

25:48

to check-in on what what is their catalog

25:50

at that point. You could

25:52

take any kind of interesting society.

25:54

Like, you could take all of patron ideas that

25:56

are in, like, Ebron book or Tasha's and say,

25:59

okay,

25:59

you know, this organization

26:01

has this interest and so they

26:03

send you to these places to to follow-up

26:06

on things. or a Star Wars

26:08

campaign. Right? We're like starting or

26:10

joining a rebellion that's in

26:12

place. The first ever adventure

26:14

for spell jammer second

26:16

edition way back when

26:18

had a beholder death star.

26:20

So you can

26:23

certainly use that idea because it even exists an

26:25

official dinty. Yes.

26:26

Of course, it should.

26:28

Yeah. So,

26:29

like, your this

26:30

really does literally open up

26:33

the entire world. for

26:35

you. I love that approach to just

26:37

visiting all of these different

26:38

worlds. It's so fun. You can really just

26:40

do anything with spell demonstrates. Complete freedom

26:42

for the DMV creative and

26:44

And thing is, like, if you mess it up

26:47

well, next week, you can go somewhere else. So

26:49

There you go. If you

26:50

accidentally blow up that planet, it's

26:52

okay. There's

26:53

others. mistakes were made. Oops.

26:55

See. That is

26:58

awesome. So we we have kind of

27:00

talked a little bit about

27:02

some of the weird and wild

27:04

and wonderful beings that you

27:06

may encounter in the world of spell

27:08

jammer. Mhmm. I'm on

27:10

the Plasmoid fan club. Yep. That's

27:12

my character. Very good.

27:15

So yeah. Plasmoids

27:17

are probably the most normal

27:20

among them.

27:21

What do we

27:23

do? How do you what do

27:25

you

27:25

what do you like,

27:27

the there's you

27:28

open up booze, monster, menagerie, and then

27:30

how does your brain just zero

27:32

in? How do you know where to go

27:34

with all these creatures? I mean, there's

27:36

so many that that I'd like to just

27:38

sort of think of like, alright, I'm gonna

27:40

pace myself. I'm not gonna what I

27:42

don't usually do is say take someone to

27:45

Rockabral, which is a a base that is included in

27:47

thispelled memory set -- Yeah. -- and just show

27:49

everybody everything. Because

27:51

while actually speaking setting wise,

27:53

there are probably representatives of everything

27:55

there. It'll just overload all the

27:57

players. So no matter what

27:59

my story is, I'm gonna dull these

28:01

out over time. The cool

28:03

monsters, the cool races, all of

28:05

that. I'm gonna space it out. And there are, you

28:07

know, differences between the ones that they could choose

28:09

as player characters if they want to. like

28:11

plasmoids and adenomes, and then things

28:13

like the McCain who are traitors. And those

28:15

are not a player character ancestry.

28:18

they are a monster. Right?

28:20

So those creatures are are things that

28:22

they can meet over time.

28:25

And anything that they don't choose to

28:28

play. Like, if no one is a gift, then now

28:30

that's fair game to really have it be a cool

28:32

moment when they meet the gift for the very first

28:34

time. Yeah. And the

28:36

cultures are so interesting and the

28:38

the the the cultural opportunities

28:41

between things like the the gift

28:43

who often favor

28:45

large explosives. Right? And carry

28:47

gunpowder and and rent themselves

28:49

out for battle. You know, you

28:51

can really play with that first time

28:53

and sort of have an iconic experience and then play against

28:55

type later in the future. Right? And

28:57

sort of open up what that is. You

28:59

can also do things like if we're going

29:01

to a planet, You know, I can

29:04

certainly have Thrykerine, and I

29:06

can say, alright, there's a Thrykerine

29:08

nation of these Mantis type

29:10

warriors can roll in the DMG

29:12

to just figure out the personality

29:15

and say that that's sort of what that

29:17

nation is like. Right?

29:19

And then applied us to sort of a

29:22

cultural overlay for the people

29:24

that they're meeting, which works for those kinds

29:26

of Star Trek's scenarios. And then you can have

29:28

the individuals be different from that make

29:30

it interesting. But that lets you sort of use

29:32

those rules that are in the DMG to flesh out

29:34

an entire kinda nation or or

29:36

region of a planet. god.

29:39

With all this, it's really fun to kind of

29:41

know that you don't know initially

29:43

necessarily if someone is friend or foe.

29:45

Yeah. And that's gonna make these

29:47

interactions interesting. Always

29:49

a key to NPCs.

29:51

If they do things that are helpful for the party,

29:53

then the party likes them. Right?

29:55

Right. The autonomic that says that they can work

29:57

on your ship and improve it. Right?

30:00

Yes. Please do that. That's why our

30:02

characters are gonna be super excited

30:04

to see, you know, how you

30:06

can make them an away shuttle that they can

30:08

use to explore places with no air,

30:11

like absolutely right? Yes.

30:12

We know how important that is

30:15

now. So

30:17

I I mean, there are just so

30:19

many fantastical creatures in here, I

30:21

would just want them all. Yeah. As

30:23

a

30:23

danger against there. I

30:24

mean, I always find that that campaigns

30:26

even when they run for a year

30:28

or more. I can't cover all of it.

30:30

Right? But Yeah. So

30:32

Choose your favorites. Don't be afraid to

30:35

to go with what you love the most.

30:37

Right up front, you will always come up more ideas

30:40

later. but but get those neat things out there and then you can

30:42

have them recur when when the players like it. I

30:44

mean, that's the golden rules. If your players

30:46

liked it, you do more of that. Right? And

30:48

so You can always bring them back.

30:50

And then leave the the

30:52

least favorites for later because maybe you won't get

30:54

to them.

30:55

That's true. Yes. prioritize.

30:57

Prioritize your content. Yeah.

30:59

So

31:01

I one of my favorite things about

31:04

spell jammer is the rock of bral.

31:06

What a wacky little place

31:08

that is? I Yeah. Chris Lindsey and

31:10

I just had so much fun one day.

31:13

He had the PDF when he

31:15

was just like, where do you wanna go

31:17

today? And just explaining and

31:19

showing me all of the different locations that

31:21

were there, it really felt like our

31:23

own little version of, like, a Rick

31:25

Steve's show, like, whoa. Okay. Well, so you

31:27

have -- Right. -- you have twenty four hours

31:29

on the rock of what are you gonna

31:31

do?

31:31

You know, there was some

31:33

problems created. Yeah.

31:35

No. It existed in second

31:37

edition. and it's been improved

31:39

upon in fifth edition. And it

31:42

is AAA huge

31:44

asteroid city that was founded by pirates. It's got a

31:46

little bit of a rough edge to it.

31:48

Yes. And it now has a sort of

31:50

royalty that has been over time

31:52

crowned there. and and and

31:54

there there's plenty of nefarious schemes going

31:56

on with the royalty and different camps

31:58

and groups and so on. And

32:00

you can place that asteroid anywhere.

32:02

officially in the rules, it can be wherever you want. And

32:04

so that gives you a lot of flexibility to have

32:06

a big place where everybody does

32:08

actually know about spell jamming.

32:11

And I love that as of home base

32:13

or recurring stop that you can have in a campaign.

32:15

It's important to have those. I think it's

32:17

definitely important

32:18

in this campaign.

32:20

Yeah. Yeah. So how does

32:22

how does it get used in your campaign?

32:24

We haven't

32:24

been back. We

32:25

started a water deep and just

32:28

kept we haven't we don't we

32:30

don't even know. So it can be a great

32:32

source of information and and, you know, a sort of

32:34

single stop like that, but all that can be place

32:36

where when your characters need anything they go, let's go

32:38

back. We did. That's true.

32:40

We did. That we have visited the market

32:43

there. and we did we did have about twenty four hours

32:45

there, caused a little trouble and

32:47

took off

32:47

again. But Before it yeah. Before

32:49

people remember you. Yeah. Homebase is

32:52

important though. They're thinking there's

32:54

most large areas.

32:56

If you choose could have a

32:59

small place that knows about spell

33:01

jamming. And this is the way that sort of

33:03

second edition would treat things. And fifth edition

33:05

doesn't really talk about this, but previous

33:07

editions, so to say like water deep,

33:09

you know, spell jammers will come

33:12

nearby, and then they'll dock the ones

33:14

that float. they'll cut or they'll land in the

33:16

water, and then they'll come up as if there are no

33:18

more normal ship -- Mhmm. -- and dock

33:20

as if they were just, you know, a

33:22

seagoing vessel. So some people

33:24

in the know would know, oh, that's

33:26

a spell jam or other people go, oh, that's a

33:28

fancy looking, you know, gallium you've

33:30

got there. So you can

33:32

do that as well. Right? Find places

33:34

that know of you or maybe

33:36

there's a wizard's tower that is, you know,

33:38

on a star chart, things like that. so you can

33:40

establish other bases. The

33:42

astral sea is awesome because it's got like

33:44

crumbling ruins that never age,

33:46

you know, that are just so incredibly

33:49

ancient. Right? And cleaning

33:51

a place like that out and making a base can

33:53

be a really safe place that they

33:55

can establish the characters can be in charge of it, can decide how

33:57

they customize it, and then can return to it

33:59

whenever they need to place a refuge. The

34:01

other option is your ship can always

34:03

be your home base. True.

34:05

And the more that you allow players

34:08

to kind of update it,

34:10

you can use rules like in acquisitions

34:12

incorporated to

34:14

update your ship,

34:16

add to it, add features to it, and

34:18

that can make it really neat. Right? If you've got your

34:20

quarters all set up and you've got maybe you add

34:22

an extra level to it, or even over time upgrade it. Right? Like,

34:24

one of the fun things in ship battles is sort of

34:26

deciding, like, I don't know that we wanna destroy that ship.

34:28

I think we want that ship. Right? Like -- Yeah.

34:30

-- and then that becomes your home. Yes.

34:34

Yeah.

34:36

Very cool.

34:36

So what I'm

34:38

hearing is

34:41

spell jammer is a just

34:43

a very large canvas for

34:45

dungeon masters to create their

34:47

masterpiece on. There is

34:50

so much customization

34:52

that you can do here. Literally, the

34:54

whole world is open to

34:55

you. Yeah. And

34:56

just like species, right, ships is

34:59

another fun thing that we can do over time. Like, you know, don't let

35:01

them see every single ship that's out there. It's

35:03

fun when they see their

35:06

first, like, hammerhead chip or their first Scorpion one

35:08

with the claws that, you know, can grab,

35:10

like, yeah, or not a Lloyd. Right? They

35:12

can grab you as well. Like, those kinds of things

35:14

are neat. and so paste

35:16

that out and put in different types of

35:18

encounters so they get all, you

35:20

know, impressed by everything that shows up. And what

35:22

the next thing to come out, oh, what

35:24

other candy do you have, you know, behind

35:25

your Yes. That seems to be

35:27

the hardest part for me. What would

35:29

be as a DM is parsing

35:31

it out and not just throwing

35:33

like, oh, this is a baseball and

35:35

a nodule shape and a star

35:37

moth and all these elves are doing terrible

35:39

things. And oh, but let's stop stop

35:42

at the happy beholder and

35:43

meet Luigi first because

35:45

why not? I mean, that's a perfect

35:47

example. Right? Your bartender is a

35:49

beholder. know ITPKED my party in

35:52

spell jammer second edition with a

35:54

beholder? No. It was

35:56

lawful good. and it was their

35:58

quest giver, but it did not speak common.

36:00

And so they landed on this

36:02

asteroid falling a star

36:05

chart map and it appeared and it spoke

36:07

to them. They immediately made to

36:09

attack it. So I rolled initiative. It won.

36:11

It tried to speak to them. And again, they

36:13

couldn't understand it. then

36:16

they attacked it. And then the next round,

36:18

it began to TPK them. And it was

36:20

two rounds later. Everybody was dead. We

36:22

rolled up new characters and find them. This had been their

36:24

quest giver, and we all had a good laugh about

36:26

that. Oh, no. Well, you know

36:27

what? They're the ones that made you run

36:29

spell jammer.

36:30

So Gonna give them. too rare.

36:32

Yeah. That's true. That's what they get. That's what

36:33

they get. I know. I'm very

36:36

thankful

36:36

to them. Yeah.

36:37

For sure. a

36:39

note on the star charts, when

36:41

I first read about the star charts, I

36:43

got all excited because for some reason I thought it

36:45

was like astrological charts. And I

36:48

when we went to the Rockabral,

36:49

Jelly grew wanted to get her her chart done.

36:52

And

36:52

Chris Lindsay was, like,

36:54

I

36:55

where what I don't even know how to

36:57

do that. I can't even role play this. I don't know what you're talking

36:59

about. Like, I'm going to the star chart place. I

37:01

just need to know, like, the place in

37:03

time of my birth. Right? and then --

37:06

Right. -- they

37:06

he was like, it's not that.

37:07

That's not what a star chart is. I was just

37:10

like, mad that

37:11

Chris Lindsay wouldn't

37:12

read my chart.

37:14

Me and me and me. Come on, man. But anyway,

37:16

that was just an aside. Well,

37:19

Tayo's, as usual.

37:20

as usual This is amazing

37:22

and filled with inspiration

37:24

and thoughtfulness and your players

37:26

are so lucky for you. Thank

37:29

you. What kind of it? There's still there's still it's

37:31

even cooler than I thought it was, even more

37:34

exciting. And

37:36

really, just an absolute

37:38

playground for anyone who wants

37:40

to create their own world

37:43

within this world for players who want to create

37:45

really fun, exciting players, are characters.

37:48

There's so much to do here. This is only

37:50

scratching the

37:52

surface, but so many good ideas, so thank you. Yeah. I'll I'll ask

37:54

for

37:54

in return is a flapjack fan

37:56

club t shirt that should be an official wizard's

37:58

-- Oh. -- shirt, I believe.

37:59

Yeah. iron ablaze

38:01

Jellyville has was the

38:03

self proclaimed president of the fan club. I think it was like a like,

38:06

not an official

38:07

fan club, though. flip

38:10

Jack was not having it just a little tip.

38:12

If you meet him, he's

38:14

really, like, not that into selfies.

38:16

into healthy and so

38:17

humble. High praise. Very

38:20

onward.

38:20

So but

38:22

if people want to give you high

38:25

praise for all of the work that you are

38:27

doing and just find out more about what

38:29

you're doing and learn about your future projects.

38:32

Where should we

38:34

send them? You

38:34

can find everything about me at alphastream

38:36

dot org. From there, you can find

38:38

a whole blog series actually that

38:40

I wrote for roll twenty.

38:42

about spell jammer reviewing the official books. And

38:46

then I will, at some point in the future,

38:48

have a sort of

38:50

spell jammer is ship to

38:52

ship combat type project

38:54

that I can't talk about yet, but it will

38:56

come out at some point, and that'll be through

38:58

my website. there

39:00

is a YouTube series that I'm launching

39:02

called success in RPG's

39:04

that helps creators identify what's

39:06

successes in the RPG industry and that success? Thanks. Yeah. It's

39:09

been a lot of fun to see people

39:11

like the first two episodes. I

39:16

will be some of my monsters will be

39:18

in the fleece mortals monster

39:20

project that MCDM is doing.

39:22

Amazing. And they'll be another monster project that I'm really excited

39:24

about next year. The

39:26

Mastering Dungeons podcast, you can always find

39:28

me there. We've been having

39:31

a great time discussing the one d d playtest that we're

39:33

super excited about. And

39:36

then I have a Patreon where I do

39:38

things like

39:40

talk to all the supporters about what kind of fun things

39:42

we can do in the latest that I'm about

39:44

to really turn on is they

39:48

voted on the idea of

39:50

my next adventure being an Oceans Eleven type heist

39:52

involving you or all the player

39:55

characters are flumps. in

39:58

the indoor dark. Amazing.

39:59

I'm looking forward to it. I think

40:01

it's gonna be really wacky. And so,

40:03

yeah, everybody who's part of the

40:05

of the Patron will get

40:08

to help craft that, and and I'll also

40:10

weave that into the success in RPG's

40:12

videos as sort of the design side

40:14

teaching. So Always appreciate folks

40:16

that find me on alpha stream dot

40:18

org, or Twitter, alpha stream

40:20

as well.

40:22

Amazing.

40:22

So there's always there's no shortage of projects

40:24

that you're working on and contributing to.

40:28

And again, our little

40:30

hobby is better because you

40:32

are in it. So Love it.

40:33

And I love all the work you guys do, so

40:35

thank you for that. Thank you. I

40:37

appreciate

40:37

it. Thanks everyone and now go DM's

40:40

Belgium and tell us all

40:42

about it.

40:46

That

40:50

was

40:54

Wow. Do you know now? Do you think

40:56

you're gonna sell the astral sea? I

40:58

do kind

40:59

of feel like wouldn't it be

41:01

fun to incorporate a little

41:02

spell jammer into anything? I

41:05

can't paint, like, why couldn't the kids I DM for just blast off

41:07

into space and then

41:09

have a little

41:11

something something and then come back down to

41:14

wherever. You know what?

41:15

We haven't talked enough about this, but Amy

41:17

Vorpole wrote an amazing adventure that's

41:19

in candle key mysteries. that

41:22

spoiler

41:23

alert may be a jumping off

41:25

point for exactly what you're talking

41:27

about. Okay.

41:28

You are Exactly right. And I

41:30

may need to revisit that. Let's

41:32

revisit that and

41:33

then run it for

41:36

kids. Kids

41:36

and D and J's. They

41:38

love it. That means it's something. But

41:41

now we're gonna talk

41:43

to another amazing individual

41:46

about all of their fun stuff. So -- Yes. --

41:48

let's get CJ McCullough on the

41:50

horn. Let's welcome

41:52

CJ

41:53

McCullough to Dragon dog.

41:55

Yay. What

41:57

is CJ?

41:59

CJ, I love

42:02

you. The

42:03

author of CJ fans in our

42:05

studio audience today. They were chanting when

42:07

when you arrived and the I

42:09

used to say all

42:12

are starting. Jacob,

42:14

the hype people are out

42:16

today. Very

42:17

excited to welcome you, CJ. You're

42:20

a a

42:22

game designer, storyteller performer, you're on an amazing show

42:24

called The Stricts You, which we heard

42:26

about a few

42:28

months ago, from your

42:30

DM, so very excited to delve into that.

42:32

But welcome. I'm so

42:34

excited. Yes. Thank you.

42:34

I'm super excited to be here. Thanks

42:37

for having me. And, yes, stricts

42:39

you my heart. Okay. How's that

42:41

been going?

42:42

It has been going just

42:43

absolutely really

42:47

like, amazing. Amazing. I love

42:49

it. Like, at time of recording, we

42:51

have our episode tonight, and then,

42:54

like, we'll be continuing

42:56

posting, like, I think until mid

42:58

October. So just kind of every two

43:00

weeks, and it's just it's it's

43:02

really it's really invigorating.

43:04

Honestly, that's kind of the best can

43:07

use.

43:07

That is an amazing way to

43:10

describe this. And I know, as Greg

43:12

said, it's been a minute since we

43:14

heard about stricts you.

43:16

So why don't can you tell us how you got

43:18

involved in this project?

43:20

Yeah, I

43:20

would love to. So

43:23

in terms of just like,

43:25

how I got, obviously, dragged on to it, not even

43:27

more proactively. I just

43:30

received, like,

43:32

a message from Lexi because we and Lexi had met through Twitter,

43:34

and I had, like I'd reach out

43:36

to them, like, hey. You're cool. Do you wanna,

43:39

like, do projects? together and, like, she's like,

43:41

yeah, I do projects together. And just from there, it was like a

43:44

back and forth with, like, Lexi coming on to my

43:46

show or,

43:48

like, me playing a game with Lexi and then, like, Lexi like,

43:50

messaging me, like, out of the blue

43:52

one day, like, hey, do you wanna, like, do you wanna

43:55

be on, like, project. It'll be, like, like, an all black game

43:57

and I'm, like, immediately. No

44:00

hesitation. I just it's, like, yeah. Sure. Like, yeah. Of

44:02

course. Like, I I knew no information

44:04

about it. I

44:06

mean, nothing, and then all of a

44:08

sudden, Lexi throws me into a,

44:10

like, group DM, and we all just

44:12

hit it off,

44:14

like, immediately. is the

44:15

sign of a good dungeon master that can that knows the

44:17

type of group that's gonna gel

44:19

so well together. for

44:22

sure. What were you

44:23

kicking and screaming about? What what was not exciting

44:25

about -- Oh, no.

44:26

I was just not kicking and screaming. Oh, I

44:28

got you. -- like like

44:30

I I say dragged because it was more of, like, I knew nothing going into it

44:32

and I was, like, okay with that. Oh,

44:35

you you didn't know

44:37

how to Was this your

44:39

first foray into Dean's No. I just

44:40

like I it's just

44:42

that Ordinarily, would

44:46

someone, like, ask me to play a game. It's like, hey. Like, here's

44:48

here's some information on it or, like, this

44:50

is what you could expect. So with with

44:52

Lexi, it was of, like, hey, do you wanna do

44:54

this thing? And I immediately was like, I didn't ask any

44:56

questions. It was a little short Yeah.

44:58

It's just me because I was like, do you wanna do

45:00

it? Yes. Yes. I

45:02

do. Mhmm. Mhmm. Like,

45:04

they like, she just happened to

45:06

say the right words any given

45:08

day, honestly. And I was like, yeah.

45:10

Okay. I don't need anymore information, please. Like, I'll

45:13

put the blindfold on myself.

45:15

ah i trust

45:17

you

45:17

I trust you. And then I just I I when we were

45:19

talking Alexa, I loved hearing this concept, but can you talk a little bit about

45:21

your character as it pertains to to

45:24

strict suit? Yeah.

45:25

Yeah. So it's actually really funny that

45:28

I'm being asked about this because I am

45:30

the not only self identified,

45:32

but, like, I'm the foil of the

45:34

party for the most part. So I play Amicus Wilson, a Forage cleric,

45:36

who is very tall. That's

45:40

the joke. She is six foot five

45:42

and a tiefling, and I love her -- Oh. --

45:44

with my heart.

45:48

Right? Yeah. god. I

45:50

it's our brother all day, but

45:53

she wins. That's

45:55

her podcasters love

45:58

to hear. know, literally.

46:00

Wait. Go pick your kid up from school.

46:03

No. That's here.

46:07

Mhmm. Yeah. she is like, she's named Amathus

46:09

after the purple skew of her

46:11

skin. Mhmm. And in terms of, like,

46:13

her relationship to the party and to strict skew, she's

46:15

a transfer student. So

46:18

as I've I've said so I host

46:20

the talk back for the strict. So it's

46:22

the week after, like,

46:24

the episodes come out. So today

46:26

being Wednesday, like next Wednesday, I'll be, like, sitting down

46:28

with a couple of other castmates and talking

46:30

through, like, hey, what was our

46:34

favorite moments? like, what did you what went through you designing this

46:36

character? And when it comes to

46:38

Amicus and being the, like, the

46:40

transfer one of the two transfers of the group, I

46:42

say a lot of

46:44

the time is, like, the audience stand

46:46

in because she doesn't know

46:48

anything about, like, this like, Stricts

46:50

Haven University.

46:52

nice.

46:52

That makes very easy to be

46:54

the the giver of information. Yeah.

46:58

That's that's when

46:59

you said she's a transfer student, I did I

47:02

felt like that's a very deliberate choice,

47:04

like being the transfer student. But was so

47:06

was that the

47:07

intention? this role could exist? So I well,

47:10

most of us I thought all

47:12

of us basically talked about, like, hey, a

47:14

lot of our characters have things that, like,

47:16

we know. And I as, like, a college student was

47:19

a transfer student. So the first thing I

47:21

was, like, because I wanna do this. Right.

47:23

Also, I love being lost.

47:26

That's a good attitude.

47:28

I like called

47:30

the get lost

47:31

game, where

47:32

the

47:34

lost drive until you don't know where you are. Okay. Because it's

47:36

gonna be your way back. I'd yeah.

47:38

Is that

47:39

was that pre

47:42

cell phones and

47:43

It was freemium GPS. Yes. Did you have to

47:45

fill out your AAA triptic map or, like, unfold the

47:47

map across your dashboard, like, old movies?

47:49

It can be

47:50

fun,

47:52

man. I

47:52

like this concept, CJ, of being

47:55

the transfer student, because

47:57

one of my biggest I'll

48:00

never get over this insecurity with DND is

48:02

I don't me, Shelly, I

48:04

do not know as much about

48:07

D and D lore as the people I

48:09

generally play with for the most

48:11

part. And just the other

48:14

day, we were fighting something and

48:16

I used necrotic damage, and the

48:18

DM was like, yeah. So this

48:20

creature is immune to that. And I feel like,

48:22

well, I bet everybody else knew

48:24

that except I didn't I

48:26

didn't realize that. So I

48:28

do like to have the idea of playing

48:30

a character that's like, hi, I'm new

48:32

here. Like, I've this is my first

48:34

fight. Like, I I don't know just because

48:36

it makes me feel more protected as

48:39

a player. I don't know.

48:41

It's also obviously a great

48:43

idea when you you are playing with with

48:45

an audience, you know, to keep them up to date and

48:47

make sure that they also feel

48:50

invested and and educated on the storyline.

48:52

I don't know. Just an aside

48:54

about player

48:54

and security. Where did where

48:56

did where

48:57

did MFS come from? So

49:00

amicus?

49:02

I think amicus at first was, like,

49:04

not to this is this happens

49:06

a lot. It was, like, a joke.

49:09

like, was at one version of Amatist was

49:11

like a character that was non serious because

49:13

I didn't know what I wanted. But

49:15

I think I had said, like, I, like,

49:17

remember looking back into the messages. I'm saying, I'm

49:19

gonna play character called Will the Smith.

49:22

Like like yeah. Like,

49:24

just kind of me throwing out jokes. be like, okay. Well,

49:26

that means I wanna play a Forage cleric. Like, I

49:28

wanna play, like, someone that makes

49:30

weapons because I think that's cool.

49:32

And then after just kind

49:34

of, like, ruminating for a little bit. I ended

49:36

up I ended up thinking, like

49:37

well, okay.

49:40

I know I wanna play Forage Care, but,

49:43

what do I want this character to represent for

49:45

myself? Or how do I

49:47

want this character to be

49:49

kind of like perceived in a

49:51

game that, like, is about, like, kind of the black experience.

49:54

And just in

49:56

general, like, Joy.

49:58

And eventually, I

49:59

came

49:59

onto Amathus, which was a name from, like,

50:02

you know, what character that I never got to play? Then I

50:04

was like, okay. Well, I like

50:06

this name. And then,

50:08

Amethis, I think the me naming

50:10

her Amethis made me go, okay.

50:11

Well, purple. That's might as well

50:14

just might as well, like, go with

50:16

the bits And then I and then kind of

50:18

personality wise, I think for me, Amicus

50:20

represents a lot of,

50:22

like, my passion as a

50:24

game designer. and kind

50:26

of, like, amethis is very

50:28

intense. Mhmm. And I I say

50:30

this a lot because

50:32

amethis is very driven, which, like,

50:34

I can relate to. However, AMETHIS is also very disciplined. Like,

50:37

AMETHIS gets up in the more every

50:39

day -- Mhmm. -- and prays to her weapon

50:41

and, like, works out to make

50:44

sure that she can, like, literally submit the best

50:46

tools. And it's it's one of those things

50:48

where it's like, you know, me with some someone

50:50

with, like, ADHD, like, I

50:53

I have a lot of problems with discipline. So let me

50:55

play something a little bit more different and see how

50:57

much I can see how, like, far I

50:59

can get with that. That's helpful.

51:00

Yeah. Yeah. That's one thing that DND

51:02

and and all roleplaying kinda does is

51:04

be like, I'm gonna borrow

51:06

this persona and see if I can

51:09

train something from it or or, you know,

51:12

just explore different

51:14

possibilities.

51:16

Yeah.

51:16

yeah Is

51:17

this typical as to how

51:19

you would come up with your

51:21

character ideas? Or I'm always curious,

51:23

like, where people generate

51:25

the ideas

51:26

for the characters they're drawn to? Yeah.

51:28

For the

51:28

most part, I usually think about something that

51:31

I like and then kind of

51:33

like work from there. I

51:35

think it's twofold. I think I think about something that

51:37

I like, something that I enjoy, maybe, like, from

51:39

a media that I've consumed or something that's, like,

51:42

really got that I've been like, hyperfixating

51:44

on recently. And then I think, like, what class do I

51:46

wanna play when it comes to, like, d and d for the

51:48

most part? And then I kind of take

51:50

those two things and just kind of

51:52

see what can be built from there.

51:54

Yeah. And then how

51:54

much of your background as

51:57

a game designer influences

51:59

how you play or the types of characters you play? Do you

52:02

try to just, like, create

52:04

I don't know.

52:05

Like, break characters? Or

52:08

are you just curious about

52:09

combinations? In

52:10

terms of, like oh,

52:13

I'd say that Well, my,

52:16

like, my game designer

52:18

brain influences everything I do.

52:20

Yeah. Has been a

52:22

lot of time just thinking But

52:25

in terms of, like, creating

52:28

characters, I think I

52:30

often I think I

52:32

often come to a point of

52:34

saying, like, what is this character? What is what part is the need of this

52:36

character? And I think that also that Matt usually

52:38

does shine through my game design. Like, what am

52:40

I putting

52:42

in here? so that I can see so what

52:44

I will want to do or what I'm doing

52:46

during gameplay

52:48

and two, like, how

52:50

is this gonna be perceived by everyone

52:52

else? Because, like, in

52:54

actual place, perception matters a big

52:56

part of the time. And even,

52:59

like, during like even during home

53:01

games, I think, like, I there's a there's

53:03

a lot of, like, hey. Like, what am I what am I

53:05

shooting for here? Like, what what am I want here? Like,

53:07

what am I trying to make? How

53:09

can I be as intentional as possible

53:12

with my choices here?

53:14

And also,

53:14

how can I have fun? Right.

53:16

It's fun

53:18

to to flip it on its table there

53:21

too. Yeah.

53:22

Yeah. So

53:23

I I mean, when we were talking to

53:25

Lexi about about strixie, I just loved the

53:27

took something that was, you

53:29

know, established lower instructs even from

53:31

edge of the gathering and then filter through

53:33

D and D and then

53:36

completely new spin on it using, you know, the historically black

53:38

colleges as an as an experience as a

53:40

background under the magical

53:42

university umbrella. How how

53:44

did that work

53:46

together with your your kind of

53:48

character game design brain, but then

53:50

also importing all of the the ideas

53:52

that she wanted to kinda get across and

53:54

instruct you.

53:56

I I

53:56

as I

53:57

think a lot. I think a lot about actual

53:59

plays. I think a lot about, like, character stuff. I think I'm

54:01

like, I I it's it's it's it's

54:03

the thing I love. So in

54:05

terms of, like, when it comes to, like, the way

54:07

that I approach things and the way that, like, strict

54:09

Q goes about things, it's a very

54:12

collaborative and beautiful and Lexi

54:14

lets me creaming her d m's

54:16

at four AM. It's been

54:18

collaborative. All caps. I'm like, hey, what about this?

54:20

Mhmm. Like

54:22

she's really good at facilitating a lot of

54:24

the things that, like, we like, Lexi is really gonna

54:26

facilitate a lot of, like, conversations and

54:28

the things that we want. And I also

54:31

it comes to the thoughts that I have about, like, the

54:33

campaign I like, I'm it's it's very much

54:35

an open process.

54:39

because I one of the times, I had

54:41

noticed that, like, one of the players was, like, kind of

54:43

struggling with something, and I had DM ed Lex here. I

54:45

had said something like, hey. Like, what

54:47

if we did this or what if, like, a lot of the

54:49

things that we do center around, like, one question

54:51

because that tends to be how I, like,

54:53

go about my, like, yelling or kind

54:55

of, like, storytelling. And Lexi kind of, like, bounced back

54:57

and forth, and it was, like, really yeah. And it was, like, a very

54:59

short conversation, but

55:02

I I know that,

55:04

like, moving forward from

55:06

there, we did kind of as

55:08

a group end up doing a lot more thing.

55:11

So, like, if somebody says something, it

55:13

gets listened to. And that's kind of, like,

55:15

my favorite part of the ShriX. Like, every idea

55:17

is a good idea. And if it's I can't

55:19

even say if it's not a good idea because every idea is

55:21

a good idea. That's just I mean, like,

55:24

that's just the that's the truth of the

55:26

matrix. It's the ultimate yes and.

55:28

Right? It's like, okay. Let's let's incorporate it

55:30

and figure out how I like that.

55:32

Mhmm.

55:32

Mhmm. I feel like this is good.

55:34

This is a good lesson for

55:36

the show is. for dungeon masters

55:38

in training and even for players to

55:41

see how good

55:42

groups work together and support

55:44

each other. I love

55:45

the idea of you running that talk back. How

55:47

did how did that come about and

55:50

or, like, what have you learned by

55:52

by being the interviewer of your fellow

55:54

party mates

55:56

afterwards. It

55:56

actually came back because a a

55:58

good friend of mine, Navarre, she

56:01

could know a podcast said something to me.

56:03

And I was like, that's like, I love that. That's really

56:05

a good idea also because I

56:07

already do podcasting. it

56:10

was a very natural, like, once someone said it

56:12

to me and once I said it to the crew, it

56:14

was it was very much of, like,

56:17

Four days later, yes, let's get this going. Like,

56:19

we're going to do this. That's

56:22

cool. Yeah.

56:24

And something that I

56:26

learn every time I, like, do a show

56:28

where I talk to someone on about

56:30

any topic, especially when

56:32

it comes to, like, teacher RPG's

56:36

is that, like, you get so much

56:38

robust not

56:40

even just content, but, like, conversation.

56:43

get a lot of robust conversation in

56:45

terms of, like, you you get to go

56:47

beyond to, like the first

56:50

question I'll say, like, hey. Like, what did this

56:52

mean to you? And then somehow you end up down, like, a small this

56:54

actually has happened. Somehow you end up

56:58

role play about how your characters will break

57:00

up with other fictional characters

57:02

like via

57:05

text, of course.

57:07

Post it now.

57:09

You you're calling you're calling me out

57:11

like this. It was that was my response and

57:13

everyone yelled at me. I said, I said, amethyst

57:15

will break up with someone, like, over text or what's, like,

57:17

boom, and over, like, no. If You're

57:20

staying true to the

57:22

character? Yes. It was mad

57:24

at me. I was like, you guys need to

57:26

relax. Who uses their

57:27

phone anymore? I have a

57:30

friend who he would break up with people by taking

57:32

a walk, and they would look, they were

57:34

always side by side, and he

57:35

never had to, like, look her

57:37

in the eye. But

57:39

he would break off with people. But

57:41

he would

57:41

take them on a walk around a

57:44

lake. That's, like, three miles. And we

57:46

were, like, this is a terrible idea. Like, what do you do at, like, bile two?

57:48

You've already broken up. Just, like,

57:50

time it to the

57:50

end of the mile. It's like, oh my god. This

57:52

is a really great conversation. Yes.

57:55

And then, like, by the way, we're

57:58

breaking up. Right. I don't wanna do this

57:59

ever again. This was great. But No. But

58:02

let's let's

58:02

now we're kind of stuck here on this loop for

58:04

another mile and a half, but

58:05

yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, a text feels

58:07

a

58:07

lot better

58:10

than a three mile breakup

58:12

block. A three mile

58:13

breakup block. Did any of

58:15

the

58:15

characters say that that

58:17

was how they would It

58:19

was a three mile technical work. So so

58:21

far, we have, like, basically, like, half

58:23

of us down.

58:26

I say text in Dante,

58:28

my favorite character I

58:31

i yeah. My

58:32

favorite, like, other scripts

58:35

character, we'll take someone to basically

58:37

a dot, like, breakfast --

58:40

Mhmm. -- and then kind of, like, break

58:42

break break them down

58:44

slowly, whereas you know, amethis is like, hey, like, we can't do this

58:46

anymore. Yeah. It's

58:48

so

58:49

fun. I have

58:50

you know, being married for almost

58:52

two decades now, it's like, man, I don't even

58:54

know how I would

58:55

break up with somebody at

58:57

this time. Right? It's a wild

59:00

question. Pathology has changed so

59:02

much. Right? Yeah.

59:03

Maybe text is normal.

59:05

I don't know.

59:06

I Maybe you create your own YouTube channel just to break up with someone.

59:08

So A special Snapchat

59:10

filter.

59:12

You're single.

59:14

you're singled out in DSD, you're just, like, looking past a really original

59:16

-- Yeah. -- spending. Like Yeah. I

59:18

mean, I know there were, like,

59:20

those stories about

59:22

people's significant others changing their their relationship

59:24

status before,

59:25

like, they had been privy to. There's

59:27

a lot of terrible ways to

59:29

do it. But I'm

59:32

at I'm sort of interested in this idea of

59:34

getting to know your

59:36

d and d character by ask

59:39

asking them or asking yourself real

59:42

world questions like this. Like, what would Amathus

59:44

what does Amathus eat for breakfast? So we

59:46

know Amathus gets up real early

59:49

and works out and Is

59:51

it like

59:51

a high protein? Or

59:53

are you fasting? What No.

59:56

I think interest Really likes well rounded

59:59

breakfast. Yeah. emethus apparently and, by apparently, I mean, someone else was like,

1:00:02

hey, this feels right and I agree. Emethus

1:00:04

likes to

1:00:06

cook. So we'll it's

1:00:08

definitely, like, waking up and, like, seeing what's

1:00:10

in the fridge and, like, you know, if if

1:00:12

there's not a lot of groceries, it's, like, what can I make

1:00:14

from this? But if, like, if given the choice and

1:00:16

time which will be every time because

1:00:19

she makes time for

1:00:22

it. she's gonna have, like, fruit, eggs, like, some meats,

1:00:24

like, maybe something, like, rice or

1:00:26

something, like, eggs or rice or just,

1:00:28

like, kind of, like, and

1:00:31

a and, like, half a plate of vegetables just

1:00:33

like as well rounded or sometimes it's

1:00:36

good. Mhmm. because, like, you know,

1:00:38

you can't can't be your best if you, like, if

1:00:40

you're not enjoying yourself. You know, that that

1:00:42

means -- Yeah. -- too. Do you

1:00:44

think

1:00:44

amathist would be

1:00:46

the the type of person that if somebody came

1:00:49

over unexpectedly, would Anmuth

1:00:50

just like just start pulling

1:00:53

out the snacks?

1:00:55

hundred percent. Yeah.

1:00:56

I'm kinda good. She well, Amathus

1:00:58

is a cleric. Right? He said, yeah. That

1:01:00

kinda I feel like that tracks kinda

1:01:02

nurturing.

1:01:02

Yeah. Kinda nurturing. It's so well, I've actually one

1:01:05

thing that I feel like I don't talk about

1:01:07

in mouth anywhere, which it

1:01:09

never comes up. is Amethis' relationship

1:01:11

to Clariqdom? Because it's more

1:01:14

it's more closely related to what you

1:01:16

think as as a Paladin rather

1:01:18

than just kind

1:01:20

of, like, I serve a God. Because like I

1:01:22

said, she I think what me and,

1:01:24

like, she talked about was that, one, she's kind

1:01:27

of, like, blessed with, like, the

1:01:29

blessing of the Forge, which I think is like

1:01:31

a cleric thing. Mhmm. And so at

1:01:33

childhood, she just kind of,

1:01:35

like, has that. But following that up, the things that

1:01:37

she prayed to is not either a god

1:01:40

nor like I don't know if they're an

1:01:41

option. But these

1:01:44

two, like, her weapons

1:01:46

and not and herself and the future

1:01:48

that she can have, as a

1:01:50

cleric, and the future weapons that she ever

1:01:52

will make. Cool.

1:01:54

I

1:01:54

know. Right. That's really I like I like

1:01:56

exploding that idea of what a cleric is

1:01:59

because I'm not a very spiritual person myself. to

1:02:02

role play someone who is can

1:02:04

be sometimes fun, but sometimes I'm just

1:02:07

like, I wanna I

1:02:08

wanna have the skill set and the and the character archetype

1:02:11

without having to have all that baggage of, you

1:02:14

know,

1:02:14

you know saying that

1:02:16

that they pray all the time.

1:02:20

Yeah.

1:02:20

Yeah? You can

1:02:21

Okay. Sorry. No.

1:02:24

I I Go, please. Oh, good. I talked so much.

1:02:26

Literally, anyone could solve me at any point.

1:02:28

But I think, like,

1:02:31

same game designer brain for me of

1:02:33

going back to the root of it. I think when it comes to that and what makes it easier for me is I think

1:02:36

about it as rev recs.

1:02:38

Mhmm. Like, what does it

1:02:40

mean to

1:02:42

believe in something? What does it mean to kind of take from that? Like, how does

1:02:44

religion usually manifest? It's it's people wanting

1:02:46

to believe in something. You see that

1:02:48

a lot through history and I think kind

1:02:52

of like not only to believe in can that

1:02:54

of, like, oh, it's impalignant,

1:02:56

but to believe and to reveal

1:02:58

something kind of, like, I feel for me,

1:03:00

you know,

1:03:02

I if they don't think so I'm wrong, don't tell me, is

1:03:04

to reveal to be able to revere, like,

1:03:06

your weapon or this thing that you're in

1:03:09

was just kind of like it was so beautiful to me. I was like,

1:03:11

I love this. I'm doing this. Yeah.

1:03:13

To review

1:03:14

our craft too, like, I like that too.

1:03:16

Like, that that's it's it's something like making

1:03:18

the weapon. It's not just the weapon itself.

1:03:20

Right? It's it's the fact

1:03:22

that that Ematist created it

1:03:24

where

1:03:24

does that inspiration come from?

1:03:25

That's the idea that

1:03:27

that is what she's referring

1:03:28

to. Or or it sounds

1:03:30

like -- Yeah. --

1:03:32

yes. everything that goes into

1:03:34

it before, after, and

1:03:36

anything that will come. Now I

1:03:38

wanna

1:03:38

make, like, a lack of creativity, like,

1:03:41

I Eric of inspiration. I know.

1:03:42

It's a cool interpretation. You

1:03:45

can interpret whatever your

1:03:48

god is. I

1:03:50

like that.

1:03:51

Very yeah.

1:03:52

It's inspiring. Like,

1:03:54

can we talk a little bit

1:03:56

about we've mentioned you as a

1:03:59

game designer a few

1:03:59

times.

1:03:59

So can we talk a little bit about

1:04:02

your what your

1:04:03

tabletop game design history

1:04:05

and and what all

1:04:07

that looks like? Yeah. So

1:04:09

I've been in the space, I

1:04:11

think, for, like, a year now.

1:04:13

And one of the outside

1:04:15

of, like, I was, like, I wanna do a

1:04:18

podcast. The second thing that I did, when I joined the

1:04:20

table top space for

1:04:22

me was was game

1:04:24

design. And I think a lot of it came

1:04:26

out to like,

1:04:28

I I think about game I think about,

1:04:30

like, my game design journey in a lot of steps. because

1:04:32

that first step for me, I think, was, like, spending eight or nine hours

1:04:34

on, like, d and d beyond and,

1:04:37

like, homegrown a bunch of weapons

1:04:39

for my, like, my game. And

1:04:42

I think, like, for me, what it came down to is I I was at

1:04:44

a point in my life in which, like, I was doing a

1:04:46

lot of the same things. I was getting a little,

1:04:48

like, burned out from kind of, like,

1:04:51

specifically playing, like, with the same people that I

1:04:53

was with. Like, I need a lot of variety in my

1:04:55

life at that point. Mhmm. And I think one

1:04:57

of the first things I did

1:04:59

in streaming was playing a a different game. Like, I don't even remember what

1:05:01

game it was. It was like like some powered by

1:05:04

the apocalypse

1:05:06

game. with, like, a group of friends

1:05:08

who I still who I still know and,

1:05:10

like, create with now. And

1:05:12

I think, kind of, like, it was that

1:05:14

point of, like, hey, I I've reached

1:05:16

a current, like, plateau in, you

1:05:19

know, me spending too much time

1:05:21

on day beyond, and I need something

1:05:23

else to kind of, like, satisfy my brain

1:05:25

or my curiosity or all of these thoughts that I have

1:05:27

that I need to kind of

1:05:29

put onto paper. And

1:05:33

then it and I and I think it kind of it started

1:05:35

I can say for sure. It started, I think, like,

1:05:37

sometime after my birthday, September sixth,

1:05:40

I'm amerigo. tell you when that appears to be thank you

1:05:42

only a week or so ago. A week ago,

1:05:44

but a, you know, belated birthday wish

1:05:46

is better than no

1:05:48

birthday wish. I

1:05:50

had, like, I had,

1:05:52

like, started writing out a game of, like, hey, what

1:05:54

if superhero what if, like, you lived

1:05:56

in a world in which, like, superheroes

1:05:59

We we which, like, superheroes

1:06:01

existed, but you were normal.

1:06:04

And that was, like yeah. Right? It's it's,

1:06:06

like, so fun and funny. I think I

1:06:08

do exist in that world. Right?

1:06:10

It feels sometimes when we

1:06:12

talk to designers here, it feels

1:06:14

like that.

1:06:16

Right? Like, You know what you do

1:06:18

it? Yes. No. Literally. And

1:06:20

that was that was my first game that I'd

1:06:22

ever, like, penned it to

1:06:24

paper or keyboard to scream.

1:06:26

And from there, it was just

1:06:28

me saying, well, what do I what do I

1:06:30

kind of want in need in this moment?

1:06:33

and how can I make that happen? And what will

1:06:35

allow me to what would allow me

1:06:37

and other people to

1:06:40

make a a fun story for three to four hours or something. So

1:06:42

I just kinda I slapped them on a

1:06:44

website and I just kept yelling

1:06:46

about games. And a year later, I've

1:06:48

made, like,

1:06:50

ten games with, like, six in the,

1:06:52

like, ten micro RPGs with,

1:06:54

like, six in the backlog. Yeah.

1:06:59

Wow. Jeez. That's

1:07:01

Yeah. Everyone everyone yells

1:07:03

everyone's like, you do too much and I'm like, look,

1:07:05

I have this is this is what I

1:07:07

have fun doing. And like

1:07:10

and I I don't I don't know what

1:07:12

other people do. I truly don't. I I like I

1:07:14

read I read a lot of things, so that's I'm lied to

1:07:16

you. I do know what other people do. Whenever I

1:07:18

get a huge bundle, I actually like to go through and read all of

1:07:21

the games because for me, it's somewhere

1:07:23

between, like, knowing what other

1:07:25

mechanics people do and

1:07:28

knowing, like, What about like, what are their ideas are people doing? Like, what what what

1:07:30

do what do they what does it what's what thoughts are inside

1:07:32

everyone else's brains? I'm dying

1:07:34

to know. Yeah. Well, and then

1:07:35

those are the building blocks that you

1:07:38

kinda have in your head

1:07:40

and this works for for all types of

1:07:42

creativity. Like, a filmmaker who doesn't

1:07:44

watch films, isn't isn't

1:07:46

feeding that brain at all. Right? And so a game

1:07:48

designer doesn't read or play other games.

1:07:50

You know, you're not getting

1:07:52

that kind of constant you building blocks similar

1:07:55

to eating that then you can,

1:07:57

you know, digest and make something and

1:07:59

hopefully really awesome

1:07:59

and new. metaphora fell

1:08:02

apart when I realized what happens after you eat

1:08:04

something. I'm like, wait, that's not what this is. But

1:08:06

It's kinda like the editing

1:08:09

process. The process. But I love that. I think that's

1:08:11

really cool. And I think I love I played

1:08:14

a a couple of, you know, more micro

1:08:16

RPGs that are,

1:08:18

you know, that that in

1:08:20

some ways, they're almost like mini settings that have

1:08:23

very specific rules. And I just love that the the hypers specificity of

1:08:27

that is so interesting

1:08:28

because you know exactly what you're

1:08:30

gonna play that that session. Yeah. And, like,

1:08:32

my and a lot of

1:08:34

my, like, what not, like,

1:08:37

creative philosophy, I guess, or in

1:08:39

of no. What I to do is, like, explore the

1:08:44

not only the mundane, but, like, the the minutia of

1:08:46

things -- Mhmm. -- of, like, what would it look like if you were a

1:08:48

magician who wants this. This is

1:08:51

very specific. You are correct. it

1:08:54

look like if you were a magician, like, wanting to commit

1:08:56

crimes, like and then what does

1:08:58

crimes mean in that context? And then

1:09:01

I ended up making a game

1:09:03

called magic and misdeeds. which I I have so much

1:09:05

fun playing because it's like yeah. Yeah. You can just say

1:09:07

you're a magician, but, like,

1:09:10

what's your stage name?

1:09:12

Like, Yeah. How how much magic do you like

1:09:14

do you like magic or do you like to to to crime it up more? Are you like sneaky

1:09:16

or just like

1:09:19

persuasive? And it's like, Things

1:09:21

like that bring me a lot of joy to be able to think

1:09:23

about. And and it's one of those things that I think, like, pervades

1:09:28

through not only, like, my game design,

1:09:30

but, like, my my tabletop, ness, like, my playing, my DM ing,

1:09:34

all of it. Yeah. Yeah.

1:09:35

And that's why I think DND fans should also

1:09:37

play other games like the

1:09:39

ones you're describing because Again,

1:09:42

it adds to the flavors a little

1:09:44

bit. And -- Yeah. -- for some,

1:09:46

Devil's Dragons can be so open ended

1:09:49

and so able to do so

1:09:51

many different things that it when you're starting

1:09:53

out, you're not really sure what to play or how to

1:09:55

how to do anything. And I think what these somewhat more specific games do

1:09:57

is just push down

1:09:59

that path And

1:10:02

you're like, oh, that sounds interesting. And then you have all the mechanics

1:10:04

and all the choices like you were just talking

1:10:06

about that kinda are in

1:10:07

a specific

1:10:09

theme. And then after you

1:10:10

play that, you can then bring some of those ideas back to

1:10:12

your D and D play if you if you so

1:10:14

choose and this is that much more enriched

1:10:17

because of it. I

1:10:18

agree wholeheartedly. Like, it

1:10:20

can be I loved the idea of my

1:10:22

whole heart. It's literally not metaphorically the first game

1:10:24

that I play and, you know, I

1:10:26

will be playing for a long time after that. But there is someone

1:10:28

once said to me and it and I and I had

1:10:30

to sit with this because I after

1:10:33

you've played for so long, you're like, oh, yeah. Like, this game isn't

1:10:35

that hard. But in re like, realistically, there

1:10:37

are a lot of things you have to

1:10:40

learn to be

1:10:42

able to play DMD effectively. and that can be so difficult as

1:10:44

a first time player. I remember, like,

1:10:46

being a first like, sitting down,

1:10:48

being a first time player

1:10:50

and, like, someone who's, like, okay, a saving

1:10:52

throw. And I'm like, okay, what's that? And it's like, well, here's, like, you have

1:10:55

to have your soil saved, DC. Okay. How do I calculate that?

1:10:58

Okay. Well, after even after you learn that, your spell

1:11:00

might have seven different effects of, like,

1:11:02

now you're paralyzed, but that's different

1:11:05

than restrained. And

1:11:08

it's, like, there's a huge learning curve that you

1:11:10

kind of have to take in and involve, like, I'm I'm okay with that sort of thing, not

1:11:12

everyone is. And I think

1:11:14

just like sometimes you want to

1:11:17

be able you sometimes you want someone to be like, hey, there's

1:11:19

four things on here. You do this, and we have a good time. And that, you know, that it

1:11:21

can be it can be a

1:11:24

great, like,

1:11:26

to get

1:11:27

you into more tabletops. Yeah. And a

1:11:29

pilot cleanser too in between Long

1:11:31

time and beyond. Yes.

1:11:34

Right? I didn't have go ahead, Shelley. Oh, no.

1:11:36

Go

1:11:36

no. Finish that sentence. I just I

1:11:39

forgot even what

1:11:39

I was gonna say. So go

1:11:41

for it. Palak cleanser. Sorry. I just goes I

1:11:43

checked out definitely check out your

1:11:46

website,

1:11:46

Scholastic

1:11:47

Dragon. Because is

1:11:50

it scholastic dragon dot com?

1:11:53

might

1:11:53

as well give, like, the

1:11:55

proper hand side. I think you it. Slastic dragon. Anyway, your

1:11:58

games are all

1:11:59

on there. And

1:12:03

they're so they're it's

1:12:05

so cool. Like, there's they're

1:12:07

also

1:12:07

different. Yeah. And there's

1:12:09

just like, oh, like, a

1:12:12

little short game to just, you know, drop in

1:12:14

here or play, you know, something for, like, two people. But I love the one about letter writing.

1:12:16

Yes.

1:12:18

that one was one that I I

1:12:20

thought to myself, I wanna make something

1:12:22

short, but I also want someone

1:12:25

to have had the tools to, like,

1:12:27

start world building world building is something that's very

1:12:30

important to me. Yeah. And in

1:12:32

that game specifically, I mean, it's

1:12:34

called through the water in which,

1:12:36

like, the premise is basically, like and

1:12:38

and I went and I thought, like, what would what would what would someone be able to, like, create a world

1:12:41

without, like, thinking too

1:12:43

much about it? you

1:12:45

have to literally write a letter about, like, what world you're in

1:12:47

and then, like, send it through a water. So like, you'll go

1:12:50

find the water, like, did

1:12:53

you find the water? Where is this water?

1:12:56

creek? And I think, kind of,

1:12:58

like, once you get a starting

1:13:00

point you

1:13:03

can do so much.

1:13:04

Yeah. And, like,

1:13:05

I'm looking at was looking

1:13:07

at the guidelines and

1:13:09

it it each letter must end with a question from the writer to the recipient. The subject or titled

1:13:11

letter must contain by the means by

1:13:14

which you send a letter. It's

1:13:16

like, so

1:13:18

simple, but, yeah, intentional. Yeah. And I was

1:13:21

when I was going through your games, I think because this

1:13:23

is kind of top of mind for

1:13:25

me because of DND has a school program that's launching

1:13:27

now. It's -- Okay. -- created teaching

1:13:29

kits, but there's things in

1:13:32

here that I feel like would

1:13:34

be really good activities to do with

1:13:36

kids. too.

1:13:37

That, like, or, like, fun classroom activities just, like, if you ever

1:13:39

wanna, you know, continue doing way more than you probably

1:13:41

have time to

1:13:44

do. But like, this letter writing

1:13:46

thing, I think, would be super cool for the kids to do, like, pick up partnering the class and

1:13:48

just it's great writing practice.

1:13:50

But again, in such a fun

1:13:54

way that

1:13:55

you wouldn't really that you're actually writing.

1:13:57

Right. I mean, you

1:13:58

could do

1:13:59

that now with

1:14:00

if if if are in a D

1:14:02

and D club or something like that, but be, like, a letter from

1:14:05

one -- From your character. -- group. Yeah.

1:14:07

One of your characters to an

1:14:09

NPC or to a a fact a fellow character.

1:14:11

Right? Yeah. What would that mean? And then you get to practice all those

1:14:13

skills, but it also feels like we're still playing

1:14:15

the game. It would

1:14:17

be really cool

1:14:20

if, like, in

1:14:20

a game of Dean, I guess, for adults

1:14:22

too. But like I said, I got kids in school on the brain right now. Right. But what if

1:14:26

it's like, okay, everyone.

1:14:29

Everyone

1:14:29

write a letter to another character, but from some from

1:14:31

a surprise. Like, it could just be like,

1:14:34

oh, this is, like,

1:14:37

in the baker letting you know that your order is

1:14:39

ready or it could be like a long lost relative that you didn't

1:14:43

know and has a

1:14:45

treasurer for you to uncover or whatever. Like, it would just be a fun

1:14:47

way to get, like, the

1:14:50

kids to be able to

1:14:53

tell a

1:14:54

different part of the story and impact some

1:14:56

of the game

1:14:58

with other characters. I

1:14:59

don't know. Now wanna

1:15:01

play with kids again. You're inspired by that season? Yep. I was just about the

1:15:03

same. I love the the the idea generation is

1:15:06

all that I'm about. It's

1:15:09

funny that it's really I don't bring this one up because it usually doesn't come

1:15:11

up. I actually am an educator. I

1:15:16

was briefly a substitute teacher and I also

1:15:18

have a master's degree in higher education. Okay. I

1:15:22

must have been senses. that

1:15:24

about you. Yes.

1:15:25

But, yes, I am an educator. A lot of the things that I do

1:15:27

are very intentional for that reason

1:15:31

of. not only, like, education, but at least in inspiration or, like,

1:15:33

having it being able to, like,

1:15:35

start something properly.

1:15:37

properly Mhmm.

1:15:39

Mhmm. Have you ever

1:15:40

used don't use the dragons or role playing

1:15:42

games? Well well, as you guys, it must

1:15:44

be hard as a sub. Yeah. So

1:15:47

you'd be, like, literally, the coolest stuff

1:15:49

ever. So, like, you Every kid

1:15:51

would be, like, oh, please.

1:15:53

Yeah. We're gonna play I have

1:15:55

not, but my friends talk

1:15:57

about it a lot. They

1:15:59

are like

1:15:59

they're like a full

1:16:02

blown teachers who do, like, middle

1:16:04

in high school and, like, use young,

1:16:06

young, younger -- Right. -- elementary.

1:16:08

There we go. I figured it

1:16:10

out. you think the other students. The other

1:16:13

Small. Small people. Small.

1:16:15

Small. Yeah. But they've done it

1:16:17

before. They've, like, taught, like, their fellow, like,

1:16:20

teammates things when we were in

1:16:22

college, like, using table jobs. They

1:16:24

worked really well for

1:16:26

them. I'm sure it would

1:16:28

work. for me as well.

1:16:30

Yeah. Anyway, there's

1:16:30

a there's there's so

1:16:31

much good inspiring content

1:16:35

on your website. It was -- Yeah.

1:16:36

-- fun to do a little deep dive there. I wanna

1:16:38

talk a little

1:16:38

bit more about world doing because you have

1:16:42

my Yes. a couple of times too. really I'm writing,

1:16:44

you know, a fantasy novel now

1:16:46

that has a lot of built

1:16:49

world behind it. And, of course, everything that's going on

1:16:51

with DND. So how do you approach that

1:16:55

type of discipline,

1:16:58

I guess? I love world building

1:17:00

so so so much. I love telling people

1:17:02

about world building, and I love,

1:17:06

like, trying to

1:17:07

help help folks doing world building.

1:17:09

A lot of my world

1:17:11

building comes through a lens

1:17:13

of like being a marginalized

1:17:15

person and like it's a whole

1:17:17

like and having the understanding of, like, world building can

1:17:19

be and this is this is probably

1:17:20

the hardest

1:17:23

part of it. World Building can be anything

1:17:26

that we want it to be, which, like, is like it starts

1:17:29

off the whole

1:17:32

thing. But a lot

1:17:33

of my world building and a

1:17:35

lot of the things that I try to tell people

1:17:38

comes from the lens of something called, like, radical

1:17:40

imagination, which

1:17:42

I learned

1:17:42

in grad school at first, and my

1:17:44

friend brought up to me, like, recently, and it,

1:17:46

like, kick started, like, it it gave

1:17:49

me words to be able to, like,

1:17:51

say things. But basically, what that, like, what the idea of, like, radical

1:17:53

imagination is and, like, it my

1:17:55

version was, like, a

1:17:58

a subset is, like, being able to picture a world in

1:18:00

which, like, you have the things

1:18:02

that you want to

1:18:03

see or you're able a

1:18:06

world that you can, like, dream

1:18:08

of a world that

1:18:10

you can use as kind of like AAAA

1:18:16

ground to be

1:18:18

who you

1:18:18

want or see what you want or have what you want. And while that sounds very,

1:18:24

like, broad, if

1:18:26

you think about it in not only the terms my a I

1:18:28

feel safe or a world in

1:18:30

which I don't have to, like,

1:18:34

get online and see really really mean things about,

1:18:37

like, just my existence or like

1:18:39

or like I where I don't

1:18:41

have to, like, debate my own identity

1:18:43

or just like a wide variety of things. And while it may look

1:18:45

different for maybe you or literally anyone

1:18:48

else thinking

1:18:50

about their world, to be able to think about, like, what

1:18:52

do I what do I wanna see in

1:18:54

the world? Is a very easy starting

1:18:56

point? Or, like, what what

1:18:59

did you that you would want

1:19:01

to change. Because I think that that helps a lot of things.

1:19:03

Because let's let's, I think, even thinking about

1:19:05

in terms of, I guess,

1:19:08

like districts being

1:19:10

able to say, like, what

1:19:11

if I existed in a world in which, like, I

1:19:13

didn't have to like, what if I existed in a

1:19:15

world in which I can go to college and I didn't

1:19:17

have to think about, like, crippling debt. or what

1:19:20

if what if what if, like, I was

1:19:22

driving down the road. I'm like, I could

1:19:25

just cast a spell. and then, like, going

1:19:27

from there because it creates

1:19:30

such a robust and

1:19:32

beautiful world

1:19:36

building process because I

1:19:36

like to ask a lot of people questions. I like

1:19:38

to ask, like, what do you wanna see? Like, what does this mean to you? Like,

1:19:40

where does that go? Because I think

1:19:43

a lot of people get stuck

1:19:45

on the very minute details of road building of, like, oh, what's

1:19:47

my water system gonna be like

1:19:50

like, what's what's the

1:19:52

politics? instead

1:19:55

of instead of thinking, what do I wanna see?

1:19:57

Because I think it then kind of,

1:19:59

like, flips on a head and allow

1:20:01

you to come at it from a

1:20:04

different perspective. Just thinking, I have

1:20:05

a great one because in my

1:20:08

home game, so

1:20:10

nowhere that anyone can too, and

1:20:12

it's really nice sometimes. But, like, I one of the

1:20:14

places I've created with my players, and I've asked them, is to

1:20:17

think about what does community

1:20:19

mean for you? What

1:20:21

does community mean for me? And what if you existed in

1:20:23

a community? What if you existed in a in

1:20:27

a whole city that just cared

1:20:29

so deeply about each other and and, like, cared

1:20:32

about, like, your well-being

1:20:34

and community. And you could,

1:20:36

like, walk outside

1:20:38

and knock on your neighbor's door and they would be like, yeah, come on in, like, grabbing dinner. Like, we don't even know you, like,

1:20:41

that's what this

1:20:44

is about.

1:20:44

How beautiful

1:20:46

would that be? And how would that influence everything

1:20:48

else? Because, yeah, I could talk about money, but, like,

1:20:50

what if we just talk to what if

1:20:52

we just what if we explore the idea

1:20:55

of, like, vibing. Vibing? I

1:20:57

absolutely vibing. I love that.

1:20:59

I think there's

1:21:01

you know,

1:21:03

you haven't used this term, but it reminds me a

1:21:05

lot of how Ajay George and

1:21:07

a lot of the people around

1:21:09

Radian Siddal were describing that setting

1:21:11

as being solar punk. where

1:21:13

it was like, we're just

1:21:15

also be supportive and

1:21:18

a home

1:21:19

base that feels safe

1:21:23

without any of the the kind of grim, dark

1:21:25

stuff that Fantasy can sometimes

1:21:27

lend towards. And all the

1:21:29

amazing stories that can be told

1:21:31

with that lens, you know, that

1:21:33

sounds just

1:21:34

very similar.

1:21:38

Yeah. And

1:21:40

I I feel like I have to say a lot

1:21:42

of the pushback that I tend to get when I tell people this is they'll they'll

1:21:46

respond with the question of Well, do you just want happy stories

1:21:48

or, like like, no

1:21:51

no problem ever?

1:21:53

And the answer

1:21:56

is no. because having like,

1:21:58

being able to ideate what you want does not

1:22:00

automatically,

1:22:00

like, take a lot

1:22:02

of things off the table.

1:22:05

It's also why I care

1:22:07

very, very deeply about safety tools and, like, like, the creative process.

1:22:12

because a lot of what

1:22:14

me telling people and me myself trying to

1:22:17

create things that,

1:22:19

like, are more I guess

1:22:21

self indulgent might be the word also

1:22:23

allows me to be able to say like, well,

1:22:26

what can I leave

1:22:28

out what what doesn't

1:22:30

need to be here? How can I

1:22:32

not how do I not repeat tired old tropes? Like, god, this

1:22:34

like like slavery and fantasy or just like like,

1:22:39

some other very very sad thing because you can

1:22:41

create a lot of things without just

1:22:43

kind of, like, replicating the wheel or

1:22:45

even replicating the wheel in a good

1:22:48

way. Like, one of my favorite shows

1:22:50

is transpire. They don't do any of the, like, bad isms

1:22:52

or phobias

1:22:55

that is necessary. but it is a

1:22:57

grim, dark, sad, I love I love it. One time I've I

1:23:00

tweeted, like, I'm too

1:23:02

happy. Let me go listen

1:23:04

translator. And they're like, you're right. But

1:23:07

you can still have conflict.

1:23:09

You

1:23:10

can still have

1:23:12

storytelling. with this being the premise

1:23:14

that it doesn't necessarily have to be and this is no knock on Boulder's Gate. But, like, you

1:23:16

know, the city of Boulder's Gate

1:23:18

has always thought of as being, oh,

1:23:21

this awful place and, you know, denim of scum and villainy. And that can

1:23:23

be super fun, you know, in small doses, but it's like having

1:23:25

that premise of like, no. The

1:23:27

the setting itself is

1:23:31

not awful by default. Yes. And I

1:23:33

think that that can sometimes

1:23:35

be really liberating.

1:23:38

Yes.

1:23:39

I think

1:23:40

it's interesting because

1:23:43

you'd

1:23:43

say with world building sometimes

1:23:45

people get bogged down in the

1:23:47

minute chart. But I also

1:23:50

think with world building, a

1:23:52

lot of

1:23:52

people are

1:23:53

more literal and, like, it's

1:23:56

more like visualizing a map of

1:23:58

this is my world. And hearing you both talk about, like,

1:24:00

you both talk about

1:24:04

not, like, just open concepts of your world

1:24:06

as opposed to, like, in my world, there are seven churches,

1:24:09

there is a

1:24:12

mountain range, there is a stream that

1:24:14

runs between it, you know. So it's I let the idea of how

1:24:19

starting with, like, what

1:24:20

what do I wanna see in this world? What do I

1:24:22

wanna feel? What is the vibe of the world and all as

1:24:24

opposed to? It's

1:24:27

just in it. a different mind shift. I

1:24:29

think for some people when it comes to world building,

1:24:31

it's not just like what is

1:24:34

that you what is

1:24:35

the map of your world? What does it look like? It

1:24:37

is. It's all about who inhabits this world?

1:24:39

How do they think? How do they

1:24:41

feel? What is the day to

1:24:43

day? Mhmm. And I love maps. I love

1:24:45

maps too. They're necessary

1:24:47

for this. But You

1:24:49

could certainly

1:24:50

get into the details. But what

1:24:52

I've found is that there's a lot of world

1:24:54

building that people

1:24:54

can do that will

1:24:55

never see the light of day.

1:24:57

Yeah. Like that you can

1:24:59

spend, you know, tens

1:25:02

of thousands of words describing your

1:25:04

world and the history and and

1:25:06

all that stuff. But

1:25:08

that's kind of meaningless unless

1:25:10

it comes up in the story. Right? And

1:25:12

so -- Mhmm. -- we're in the game session

1:25:14

as as as the case may be. Right? And

1:25:16

so you kinda wanna have these broader, strongly, this

1:25:18

is the way I've been approaching and maybe more as a lazy DM. But you have

1:25:21

to have these broad strokes of like,

1:25:23

okay, themes and theses, and

1:25:26

then we're like, alright, fill in the details whenever necessary

1:25:28

as long as they all connect

1:25:30

back to those original themes. Does

1:25:32

that make sense,

1:25:33

CJ? Is that what you're describing? Yes.

1:25:35

a hundred that's actually it's literally what I do with, like,

1:25:37

all of my campaigns. I like,

1:25:40

even if the

1:25:42

broad stroke is, like, Fantasy circus, which

1:25:45

is actually that it is it is it

1:25:47

is my next show, literally, not

1:25:49

metaphorically. Yeah. Like fantasy

1:25:52

sad fantasy circus.

1:25:54

Me and my players, me and whoever I'm playing with are then able to say, well,

1:25:56

okay. Like, what does this mean? What am

1:25:58

I doing in the circus? And I think,

1:26:00

like, Sure.

1:26:04

I'll call it a little late. Like, I'd love to be at

1:26:06

a lazy DM. The less work I have to do is great,

1:26:08

but more flipping

1:26:11

that and saying, the more that I

1:26:13

can inspire the people around me to want to create themselves is so much

1:26:16

better than

1:26:19

just me, like, putting in nine

1:26:21

churches and saying, like, there's twelve mountain ranges around you. Like, yeah. Sure.

1:26:24

That's cool. But,

1:26:27

like and I don't want

1:26:29

people to have to do homework. I I get it. Like, I I'm a I'm a GM because I like to be because

1:26:31

I like to write

1:26:35

these things down. but something that I'd always

1:26:37

try to and it it literally has seen through all my work. Something that I always try to do

1:26:40

when

1:26:40

it comes to

1:26:43

me creating or me making a

1:26:45

game or me being a GM is to look at the person

1:26:47

in front of me and say, like, how can you have like,

1:26:49

how how can you put something that

1:26:51

you enjoy in this

1:26:53

because that's what's gonna gate you through

1:26:55

this. That's what's gonna allow you to do this. One

1:26:58

of my friends who I've been playing with literally since

1:27:00

college because

1:27:02

I play with a different friend group now, like,

1:27:04

after college that I do during college

1:27:06

and she comes from, like, that arrow.

1:27:09

She's in both eras. They're in both eras. I have

1:27:11

said to them like, hey, I'm gonna

1:27:14

be doing a lot. but

1:27:16

none of that has to impact to you. What

1:27:18

do you wanna see in this? Like, what I know you like vampires. So how can you implement that

1:27:21

into this? Or, like,

1:27:23

I know that you want

1:27:25

to take some of your culture here. Like, can you

1:27:27

throw in there? you have like, a of they never

1:27:32

do anymore. they think about they get to

1:27:34

sit in the moment and think about, like, oh, what do I wanna throw in here? How do I, like, not only improv

1:27:36

or, like, how can I write

1:27:38

a few notes down? And then, like,

1:27:42

make it

1:27:42

how can CJ make it more robust afterwards? You

1:27:44

just have to give me a little bit and

1:27:46

we can take it a mile because I think

1:27:49

that then creates a symbiotic, like,

1:27:51

collaborative relationship of not only world building, but, like, just

1:27:56

fun play. That's

1:27:58

what

1:27:58

this is all about. Right?

1:27:59

This is all about people getting together

1:28:02

around the table in front of the

1:28:03

camera and

1:28:06

making stuff up together

1:28:07

a yes ending all the way through.

1:28:09

Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. I

1:28:11

love all

1:28:11

that. Yeah.

1:28:12

no This is

1:28:14

exciting. I love everyone

1:28:16

should, in fact, check out

1:28:19

your website, scholasticstragen. But Sure.

1:28:21

Dot card dot co, but I'll let you I see you. say the rest

1:28:24

of your Deets,

1:28:29

I

1:28:29

guess, all of the social media stuff. I

1:28:31

I'm blanking on words today.

1:28:34

My bad. Words. Words. so

1:28:38

so hard, but sometimes

1:28:40

the hardest. But, yes, hi.

1:28:42

Hi. Thank you for having me.

1:28:44

Just sincerely thank you for having me.

1:28:46

This is very awesome, very exciting. to anyone

1:28:48

that's looking for me. You can find me

1:28:51

on Twitter to talking YouTube at scholastic Dragon.

1:28:56

One word scholastic, like,

1:28:58

the book Fair, Dragon, like, the mythical creature, but Dropped the o on

1:29:00

Dragon. If

1:29:04

you want to watch The Strix

1:29:06

u, the all black HPCU inspired DMT five e campaign at

1:29:08

the illustrious Strixhaven, you can

1:29:10