Talking D&D with Mathew Bryan

Okay, so this is a genre from Red Dones Dineries and I'm here talking with a

another one of my favorite people in tabletop RPGs about their version of D&D,

you know how they got started, what version they prefer, you know what edition, and

what they'd like to see in their ideal version of D&D, GMMing, playing, stuff like that,

and this episode we're going to be talking to Matthew Bryan.

Thanks for joining us, Matthew. John, thank you very much for the invitation, always

happy to talk to you about anything Tim was able to live. Indeed, indeed, and now you've

probably got a much better memory for things like this to me, because as regular

listeners wonder, my memory is absolutely shocking, that Apple apps is a real killer

for like the memory cells, trust me. But when was it, what was the first game we

actually played together, because we've we've game together online like a

ferret over the years, haven't we? We have now, don't we have game together for

over 10 years, leave it on. No, I can't believe it. If my memory serves correctly,

the first time we actually had a game together was not actually D&D related, it

was Warhammer, it was the enemy within campaign. Yeah, Sean Connors was running it,

wasn't it? Yes, I remember. And Ambross, I think, may have been the player. Yeah,

I've got a very hazy memory of it, because I remember I played a dwarf Trollsfire.

Initially, yes. Yeah. And they believe you then transition to playing an elf. Yes,

that's right. Yeah. Where I played a human, a hunter. And ironically, I'm now actually

running that very campaign myself. Come full circle. Yeah, wheels within wheels. But we're

not here to talk about buffer, much as I would love to, because I'm always happy to talk

about Warhammer and Wolfrup. Obviously, we're here to talk about D&D and your

particular experiences and your sort of, if I can put the slightly flowery phrasing on

it, your journey through the world of D&D, you know, that sort of thing. So if you know

I'm asking, what addition of D&D did you first start with? So I'm a little bit of an

odd duck in terms of the chronology of D&D over time from its inception to now.

Okay. Is that one of the people who came into it when D&D as a brand, as a game, was

kind of on the downturn. So I came into it when they released every edition has been

controversial in some form or another. Oh, yeah, of course. So that's no surprise that

anyone has been around a while on tabletop. But I actually began my D&D journey, as you

said, with fourth edition. See, that's interesting, because I know a lot of, and I sort of joking

and referred to this in my, in my earlier sort of interview with Rob Bamford, fourth edition

as like the edition that Donald speak its name, because it's something of like the red

headed stepchild of like the D&D family really, isn't it? Yes, it's the one that they

tried to be, tried to move away the most from kind of what I guess, again, this depends

on your perspective, but kind of the common understanding of D&D between the people

who played it from the original game. This was the edition that tried to move the furthest

away from that and tried to embrace a different style. Yeah, and I mean, all joking aside,

I played a fair bit of fourth edition D&D when it came out. I've got most of the books

on my shelf for the edition. You know, when they did the, they re-released, I can't

more what it's called, but they did like smaller versions of the books when they did like

a sort of re-released and tied together version. I can't remember what they called it, but

I never got into that. But I've got a lot of the sort of, like the first books that came

out for it. And I played a fair bit of it. I've never run it, but I played a fair bit

of it at the time. And I thought, yeah, it's very different traditional D&D. It's got

some great things I loved about the system. It's got some bits that I didn't like so

much, but I was like, well, so's every other edition. And I never really understood

the hate for it so much. I think about a lot of it was just, it was very different to previous

versions, but I know a lot of people criticised it and they were like, oh, it's more like

a board game. There's no role playing sort of like built into it. I was like, well, if

you boil any of the other editions down to Latin mechanics, there's not a lot of actual

role playing in the mechanics themselves. Well, this is one of the things and we'll

touch more upon this later on, I guess. But when you read the EMG about D&D, it covers

what calls the pillars of play. And you've got the combat pillar, you've got the exploration

pillar, you've got the role play pillar. And these are sort of things that it talks about

and how you put a campaign together and how the game goes. And auth edition is no different

in the others, in my opinion, in the sense that it puts an overwhelming focus on the

combat side, the pillars of play, rather than this. So, you know, you can, you can have

role play any of the editions. Oh, yeah. It's not necessarily baked in to the mechanics.

As much as it could be. I mean, one of the, one of the sort of slight

missteps, I feel they're made with four edition, I don't know how you feel about this,

is, well, I caught the couple of missteps. The first thing it was when they tried to like

change the forgotten realms as a campaign setting to fit with four edition. And they did

it like a big sort of cataclysm and it like introduced things like dragonborn and stuff

love out, which weren't a thing before. And that felt a bit weird, because they were trying

to sort of twist the setting to fit into a new game. I do think four editions suffered

a little bit from not having like its own sort of, here's the big news, exciting setting

for four edition that we're going to do. Although, I've got to say, one setting, I think,

did transition pretty well, which I mean you are both fond of, is the Aberon setting.

Yes, yeah, I'd say overall, Aberon is my favourite of the D&D settings books. I think that,

I think there's a lot, um, potential in there, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, I've, I've got most of like the third edition books for it. I think, yeah,

I've got the fourth edition. And it's one of the few sort of books where I've bothered picking

up the book for fifth edition, because I don't really run or play fifth edition. But like you say,

I think the Aberon setting was something very new and so very exciting. I remember all the

initial excitement when it first came out in third edition. And I think for some reason,

I don't claim to know why. Whatever edition it's put into, it seems to work pretty well.

But again, I think I think that's possibly because the themes of Aberon are, and the,

and the kind of material that it draws from, it's so strong and evocative that it works,

regardless of the kind of mechanical framework you put it in. I think it translates well,

no matter which of the, the rule sets you're using it in, because the idea of the,

the background, the kind of history, and with the stories you can tell in it really work.

Yeah, I mean, I've got a bit, because obviously I've got a lot of retro clovens and stuff like that

and things like shadow dark and stuff like that. And whenever I get one of those,

genuinely one of my first thoughts is I could I run Aberon with this?

Yeah, yeah, could you, could you switch it out, put it everyone in there?

And for like, for saying that when Aberon was originally created, if I remember correctly,

it was like the winner of a competition that that was how it sort of came to be produced.

For saying like, I assume you remember reading the original competition sort of rules.

And one of them was like, you have to be able to fit anything that could fit in a traditional

AD&D campaign, sorry, D&D campaign. You have to be able to fit it into this setting,

but you know, you put your own spin on it. So like there's drought in it, but they're quite

different. There's a lot other bits and pieces in it that are quite different. And I think,

for saying that it was supposed to be so different from like the traditional sort of D&D campaign

setting, I think almost any sort of version of D&D, you can fairly easily with minimal tweaks.

Run an Aberon game in it, which I think is like a, a real like selling point to the setting

to make. So I could think that our shadow block, I could whip up a few hours rules,

I could run Aberon then easy. Yeah, exactly. It's the, it works well. It's, it's, it's,

it can stand on its own if it needs to, but it works, I can say, as a, as a fifth edition,

technical satisfaction, as a D&D setting, it's one of the stronger, in my opinion.

And I think that when you draw from the, the source material of Aberon to create your campaigns

and the characters, you really get a lot out of that. You put some lot of strong characters,

a lot of interesting narrative opportunity things that can happen during the game.

Yeah, absolutely. Great. So, if I can take you back to this sort of like first

fourth edition of the D&D game, I presume you were playing in it rather than running it.

Well, if we're going right to the staff, so initially, when I first encountered the game, I learned

sort of bits and pieces from listening to the Inquisitions Incorporated podcast actually.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a big penny arcade fan. I still am, but not as much, I don't really

pay attention as much to the PA stuff as I used to. We all have, you know, our lives have changed,

we've been things to move on. But, of course. But yeah, that's how I initially encountered it.

I listened to their podcast and I get an interest in fourth edition, and I eventually picked up the

books. If you don't mind me asking, how old were you when you sort of first started actually?

Again, I'm a bit of a little bloomer, John, so I would have been, it would have been around 2008,

so it would have been like 23. Yeah, see, that is one of the things that interest me.

It feels like a long time ago. No, no, no, it's so good. It's amazing how quickly time passes.

But yeah, it's one of the things that interested me, not the only thing, but one of the things that

interest me, and why I wanted to do these interviews, and I'm going to try and do them with a number

of different people, is because I think everyone sort of started that journey into, like,

table, and I said this one, I was talking to Robert, like, D&D is like the gateway drug

into tabletop roleplay for a lot of people. Like, even if you're not involved, like, most people

have heard of D&D to some degree or another, you know, so it's like this. Especially in the last

decade or so, it's really come more in the public eye. Oh, yeah, especially with them,

obviously, like, the rise of, like, nerd culture, and shows like, stranger things, and stuff like that.

With the roles, kind of, rise from a switch stream to a, to a verbal brand, yeah.

Yeah, we've, we've got, like, the animated series of, based on the games now, so yeah,

it's really sort of taken off to most people are aware of it. But it interests me how, like,

say, a lot of people go involved at different points. So you say you, you sort of started fairly

late off, you know, in your 20s. I sort of, I sort of started looking at, I was interested in my

sort of early teens, but didn't really sort of actually take the plunge into, like, a few years later,

because I was playing Warhammer for a bit, and then I sort of got involved in that tabletop roleplay

that later on. But I find it interesting how, like, different, like, the some people obviously

were like, ah, I was, I came out of the womb rolling a D20, and with a copy of the first edition,

like, DMG took to my arm. When I, when I, when I was born into this world, I ruled my first hit day.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's some people who, like, you know, maybe their parents

played the introduction very young. They've played in a club at school, whatever. And some people

who sort of came into the hobby later on. So it's sort of, it's, I find that quite interesting,

because it, it just made me wonder whether what stage of your life you get involved in tabletop roleplaying,

whether it collos your experience of theatre. And I think the edition can make it, can kind of

call your expected, your experiences as well. Yeah. And, and the, the design ethos of, of the game

itself, like, kind of the inspirations behind it, I've changed over time, I think. Okay, so this,

this first edition, so this first game of fourth edition that you played it, can you recall anything

now, like, all these years later, about what took place, what, the highlights of that sort of

first game that you played it, like, how long it ran for, you know, what was the sort of main vibe

of it? Yeah, it was some, I, like, many people, I played one of the star sets for the edition,

a local gaming club. Okay. A bunch of random people and a friend I knew from work.

Um, um, you, you, I've known me before, John, um, from what we met is, like, my sort of

elius online was regal the dragon bomb. Like, that was, that was the, how you knew me by before you,

before we, we became our first name basis. Before we breached into, to real left terms.

But yes, um, that is a reference to my first D&D character, which is fourth edition. So,

I played a dragon bomb by a bird. That was my very first D&D character. And we played

Keep on the Shadowfell. Oh, yeah, yeah. Um, we had the bunch of people. And that was the first

experience. So I had a kind of like, I came to fourth edition with very little expectations

on knowledge of the system of the setting. So it was, I was a bit of a blank slate initially.

See, sometimes I wonder whether that's like the best way. I know it's more difficult now,

because everyone sort of earned it, like you say, what we said earlier. But I do wonder if that's

one of the best ways to get into gaming, because you don't come with any sort of baggage associated

with like editions or anything like that. You just sort of turn up and you're like, I'll let's see

what this is about. I, I do think so. I do think so. It's better, it's better for the game, I think,

and it's, it's better not to tell a new player too much about how the game's been to be,

because that I think that restricts how they think about it, because as someone who came,

came to it, fresh myself, and I was much younger, and, um, and I've run games or people have never

played it before. Um, you can tell the difference between a new player and a veteran player, how they

approach things. There's some kind of pre-established understanding of all things work. And sometimes

that's good. And, and a lot of times it can actually counter intuitive, because it, they self-sensor

their choices in a way for what they're going to do. So we could talk about the German sound,

as we're talking about me as a player initially, but we'll get into that later if you wish.

But yeah, keeping the shadow fell, it's my very first foray of the edition. And I remember

one of the funny things about my Dragon Ball Barbarian is we discovered he was only

barely more intelligent than the zombies that we were going up against. And I mean like,

I could barely understand, you know, writing. Right, okay. Well, you, you mentioned

German there, and obviously I know that you, you play in as well as German games. So from the moment

you sort of, you started playing in that very first sort of fourth edition game, how long, but

roughly was it before you were like, right, I'm going to take the plunge, I'm going to, I'm going

to run a game myself. And it was a couple of years. Um, I was in, how I ended up starting to

jamming is I was playing in that game for a bit until it concluded. And that's one of the things

I found interesting is, um, fourth edition game, keeping the shadow fell, it's in, it's like kind of

enclosed setting. It's not really tied to any of the kind of famous D&D settings. It was

this whole thing. So it wasn't until later on, until fifth edition that I started to learn more

about history of the game, because they were, they were releasing with those sort of settings

out the gate. But yeah, we played that and it was a couple of years, maybe two, maybe three before

I started hearing myself, which actually began because as, as you're more than well familiar as

John, as a veteran yourself, is some games just die. Yeah. Some games just start up and die. So

there was, so there was a fourth edition game that was being run by an experienced GM and it got

maybe two sessions in and then fell apart. Right. And the people that I was gaming with still

wanting, really wanted to play and they, they, they, they joyed it and they, they didn't want it

to end there. So I volunteered to start running a fourth edition game for them. So given those

circumstances, you sort of like had to learn how to jam like on the quick basis. Yeah, I had to learn

GM, but I had a lot of advantages that some of the GMs don't and I, and I do recognize that

is because one of the things that I really enjoy and again, something to consider for your

podcaster is like, in the early days, like we're talking like first, second, and maybe even to third,

like, again, this is before my time. So this is stuff that I've picked up from other people.

Is there, there was, there was a little internet. Of course. And you had kind of your shared groups,

your gaming groups in your towns and cities, but the sort of knowledge about the game was much

more localized. So it was much more of a siloed experience in learning the game. And I

talking to really old, as it was, baby, baby. But like, people who have been around since the

beginning of day and day, like their understanding of the game largely comes from those days of learning

it in college, on a club or through friends before the internet was really a thing. So they,

they had to learn it via that small pool people and kind of the house rules and the

approach to the game came from indoors isolated areas, which is why now in the modern day,

there's so much variance in the opinion of how to run and what a D&D game should be because I

think it stems from that in those kind of heady, mythical days where like, well, this is how we run

our games back in our own time. This is how we had fun. Like, well, for me, I had the internet,

so I was able to learn it like directly from, was it the coast? I was able to read about it for

many different areas. And that's kind of like the advantage I had is I had a, I had a better

access to sources to run it. I had to run it pretty quick. Yeah, I mean, just to sort of like

members I was seeing even older than actually. I still remember the first, the very first time I saw

like a polyhedral dice was when I was at junior school and a one of our teachers sort of bought

in some polyhedral dice just with the idea of that we were going to use them for like maths

problems, you know, you roll some random numbers, you do like a maths problem with those numbers.

And it was literally the first time I'd seen any dice that wasn't a D6, like, you know,

like in a board game like Monopoly or whatever. And I remember that sort of scene looks, they're all

like, you know, like the sort of the gem dice, you know, like the sort of transparent colored dice.

And I remember I was just thinking, what are these like weird things that the teacher's

boy. Whereas now, like, you know, like different types of dice, it's as common as anything,

but like you say, when I was in junior school, we didn't have the internet. There was no,

I was too young to be going down local game stores and stuff like that. I didn't really even know

we had a local game store at the time. So when this sort of stuff was bought in, it was all sort

of fresh and new and exciting to me, which I think is one benefit of not having all the internet

and all these resources. But as you say, you sort of like, you have to learn everything through

trial and error, whereas now I do think the internet and like blogs and podcasts and stuff like that

are a great resource for anyone who wants to then have to go in cold now with search like people

who want to get them off the knob. Very much so. Very much so. Just to share with me, John, as well,

like I didn't really encounter any of the D&D dice except the D6 until I started playing for

the edition. But I was, I was quite familiar with the D6 dice from playing a little warhammer.

That was one of my very first four ways in the tabletop, you know, LDART, how and

Space was player for those out there who were fans. But yeah, that's how I started off from tabletop

much before I could afford it. But yeah, I'm just the same. Like I had never seen the D4 or

a D20 until that point. Yeah, I mean, I remember sort of when I was younger and like I said,

I sort of started off with, you know, warhammer fantasy battles and stuff like that. And then I

remember sort of hearing a bit about D&D, but it was like in the days when because obviously

D&D was mainly like an American sort of phenomenon. But at the time we didn't have like, you

know, you couldn't go into like a bookstore or like get a D&D book like you can now or whatever.

So I sort of went in via like woofrup at the time because I was like, oh, this is connected

with warhammer. It's something I already know. Yeah. It seems to be one of these like roleplaying

games I've heard about. That seems like more of my vibe than the big sort of battle games.

Yeah, that's definitely a lot of that. It's sort of adjacent things between, yeah,

sliding to D&D. Okay, so this, so this, if you know what I'm asking, this, this first game that

you GMed, how did it go? Did it run for a while? Did it, like you said, did it fizzle out?

Because games do sometimes. Technically, it's still ongoing. Is it? After a decade or so,

yeah, technically it is still ongoing because people have moved away. Things have changed like

much older, but there's still a desire to finish it. We were getting close to like the third

and final act of story. What is interesting about it is that I've say I had to learn to GM,

that was my first orad to GMing with fourth edition. And I based it on what I knew, which was

the setting that came with keeping the shadow fell. So it came with that, but as time went on,

the support for that dropped off because they were realised, which is realised that fourth edition

wasn't doing it for them and they were repositioning to release a new edition as they do many times,

as they've recently done last year. So support for that dropped off. So I found myself in a position

eventually where I had to start home brewing my own stuff into it. So I started splicing my own

ideas into it and taking adventures that have been published for fourth edition and either

scaling them down a bit to the players level or scaling them up. And where we left off is we were

about to go, again, I don't know how much detail you want for the podcast in terms of that.

In terms of that, I can edit it afterwards, go for it. So like the, in a kind of, give you a very

brief context is they had discovered, this is my home brew stuff, they discovered that there was

a kind of a multi-versal situation going on in that the big villain of the campaign. He was called

the first mortal, actually. Some guy from long time ago, they don't really know his backstory yet,

but they knew he had been going, he had been trying to take over the world in a kind of,

not only ambition, as it's very generic, John, I'm sorry, but that's just, that's what we go for.

It's your first game. There's nothing wrong with that. There are archetypes for a reason, man.

But what was interesting and what I took inspiration from was in the background fourth edition,

is the Raven Queen was implied to be immortal and repulsored, replied to be originally a mortal

who became a god. That's correct. And one of the players was playing a comic of the Raven Queen.

So I sort of focused on, that's going to be one of the key sort of supporters for this campaign,

in terms of players, that's going to be a key person. So what the Raven Queen had done

is they had using their manipulation and time space had created a tapestry of parallel worlds,

parallel instances trying to find one where people come out on top. And this is the

kind of the story is the player who was playing the Raven Queen character was in that one,

which was the one doing the best. They found out that there was all these other variations

that were being killed off and pruned if you want to take for the Marvel thing by the villain.

And I tied every character's backstory and things to the main villain in some form to

tie it all together. But what my homebrew thing was is in defense of what's been going on,

is the pantheon in this world to try and save their followers and conserve their kind of

godly energy is they pulled back their forces, their palindic flurics into their own realms.

Which has been done and actually I found out later on how she has been done in a few books

and other settings where the gods have disappeared, which is, I think, Kryn.

Yeah, yeah. So I didn't know anything about Dragonlands, guys. So I don't, it was a couple right,

it was just me, it was just me winging it. But yeah, they pulled it back and what the villain had done

is he had created this kind of prison outside of time space to capture all these palindic flurics

again, this is the first game, Joe. And he had been prisoned them in there to, like,

safe in their energy and to sort of take from the gods so he could, like, deny them the worship

was also power and so forth. Yeah, weaken them. And part of the, when you're asking,

the players had found out about this prison and they were attempting to, I'm circling back to

them, I point them out, the adventure was over. Is that they, they discovered about this prison

and they were going to try to do a kind of jailbreak and get them out of there to balance things

out a bit more to, you know, switch the scales around. But they had found that there was an

entrance to this prison that had been hidden by a Demulich, which was involved in this whole

story. And this is all the homebrew stuff. So I had taken one of the big villains from the D&D

that I had known about in the reading the books, which was, and I'm pretty going to mispronounce

this. It's Asurak. Yeah, Asurak, yeah. Because he was the patron of one of the players as the

wallok. So you see, I tied it all in with the players. And he didn't know that for at least half of

the game. That's where he gets from leaving his backstab to me. But yeah, so like, that was how I

tied in. And Asurak had a lot of famous stories and locations about him. So I used that because I

wanted to show them some classic D&D adventures. And when I say classic, because obviously my entrance

D&D was fourth edition. So to me, fourth edition is the go-to at that point. So where we got to

is we were going to go through the Tomb of Horrors, which is what he had built. And some things

had been changed around, because obviously I had started homebrewing it. And it was like they were

trying to find an entrance to the prison through the Tomb of Horrors. Okay, yeah. That makes sense?

That's a circle background is I was using that because that was a high-level adventure that I

had, because I'm going to use that for this purpose. But yeah, that's, that was my jamming. I didn't

use a published setting for quite, I didn't use like one of the classic published settings

for quite a while. I have run multiple games by this point. So you say that like technically that

game is still going on. So did it stay fourth edition throughout? No, you know, she did transition

to fifth edition eventually. Yes, but I still kept the adventures and the plan to be consistent

with the story. So the conversion of fifth edition isn't too bad. So if I'm asking, what was it

that eventually prompted you to make the transition to fifth edition? Was it just because it was

the new edition? Was it because the support was waning for fourth edition? What was it?

What it ended up being is I was playing in some fifth edition. Oh, when fifth edition came out,

eventually got the opportunity to play in some games. And I really enjoyed it as a player.

Yeah. But I didn't know how, how it, how I would do as a GM in that game. It was very different.

To me it was very different from fourth edition. Of course. I know a lot of, I know a lot of

talk to a lot of other people over the years that to them it's very similar to first and second

and third edition. Like there's a, in a way to them it's more familiar than it was to me. Yeah, I mean

I think it was obviously from the sort of like Wizard of the Coast house, bro. After they sort of,

after sort of fourth edition didn't go down well. They obviously tried to step back to something

which was more familiar to sort of D&D fans. Yeah. So, so how it, how it played out is I,

I proposed during a break in the normal campaign if they wanted to try fifth edition, the same

players who I run a fourth game for because they were interested in playing it and I was interested

in it. So it seemed fair. So we made characters and I run a game and again this was, this was a

complete homebrew because this, this, this game was just for me to learn how to GM it,

to see how it fared. So it was, it was just a, we did them. I kind of, I, I went from a very

different style to how I GM the other game as well to see how that would play out. So before

in the, in the game, my original game, it seems a lot of first game tropes like I made the players

like the central part of the story like I tied everything tightly around them which obviously

is double edged sword because if, if someone of them dies then like how do you, how do you then

deal with the fallout for a major character death? Of course, yeah. Whereas in the second game,

fifth edition, I essentially said it into, into a fantasy city and they were part of a organization,

essentially a mercenary group. Okay. That, that was living in this city, the city, what was

interesting with the city is the city used to belong to a family of giant and in this kind of

homebrew world the giants had been kicked out scattered and humanity had taken over but it was

still a giant city architecturally secrets. And there had been a war between a, a, a group of

mages and some gods again. I think I found out this is actually a very common thing in, in,

in fiction. So it's, I would like have just a rip it off everything here and I do rip things off

books but that was actually my idea. I think it's not, there's nothing, these ideas that sort of,

it's my opinion that these ideas just stick around in like fantasy, like these tropes,

that they become tropes for a reason. There's something about them that really grabs

around my generation. So as far as I'm concerned, if, if something's proven that it's successful,

why, why not rip it off for you for your home game? If you just, if you're running a home game,

there's like not for publication or anything like that. The real like advantage as far as I

say, you can mercilessly like take inspiration and rip off like stuff from anywhere,

anything that you think works. And it, yeah, you, and as, as, as the GM side of me, I'd tell

any of the GMs to do that exactly, rip off everything you can. What, be honest about your sources,

like you're just, obviously, it's your own. But yeah, take, take, take, learn from the best.

But yeah, in, in that game, I was also trying to learn how to sort of encapsulate themes

and make this more political this game because it was more high fantasy than the ones. So I was like,

it was like the factions within the city, recurring characters and the mercenary group,

which they were like, I had like kind of an internal renown system, so as they made completed

jobs, like they earned more renown. And that was really interesting actually because

how the players, again, I'm jumping around a bit in terms of like player to GMing side, but

like how players relate to what I found was like having a recurring set of characters,

they formed stronger relationships with them. It's one of the best scenarios in that sort of

learning game was when one of those NPCs was in danger. Yeah. And they, and they just went,

they just, it wasn't planned, but they decided they were going to go and get them.

And I like Audama from Battlestyle Galactica. I've never seen that. I'm going to get my men. They

were determined to go after and get this person back. And one of the best sessions of the game was

them tracking them, tracking what, like you know what happened and going after them. So that was a

real lesson for me is, is recurring characters are an important part of a of a role playing game.

Not just indeed, but I mean, I entirely agree with that. I mean, that's something I found

that in the, getting me within that running a minute for all from because the first sort of

two and a bit books, there's a lot of traveling around. So you're not really in a single place

for a long period of time where you cannot build up this relationship with NPCs or whatever.

Then for the book run a minute, they've been in like Middenheim, fell at the city of Middenheim

for like ages. They've, we had like a player as like a priest of all the Rick and all Rick's,

like the big religion in Middenheim. They've like saved the city. So like, people know them as

the people who saved the city, you know, they've, they've got various positions at court. They know

like all these people speak to and it's interesting how that's changed the way they are playing it

because if you know that like you're passing through generic fantasy village, you're like a river

boat. You're probably never going to come back here again. There's a certain amount of like, wow,

whatever happens in this village, you know, it doesn't matter because next week we're going to

be somewhere else entirely. Whereas when you're actually inhabiting the same space for a certain

amount of time, last week when we had a scavenor assassin tried taking out like the play characters

and one of the play cards got poisoned and when he sort of like, when he'd been healed up by the

party doctor, the first thing he said is he was like, oh shit, what if the assassin's gone after my

wife? I'm going to have to go and like, check on my wife. And like, stuff like that doesn't happen

if you're just like passing through like generic village. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's kind of like on

tour. You don't really get to, very much so difficult for them to care about what's going on around

them. Yeah. The way I look at it in a sort of real world, I don't like it. You know, like, when you

go on holiday somewhere, wherever it may be, you can go on holiday, you can enjoy where you've

gone to. It can all be great. You can soak up the culture, do whatever you want. It can be great.

But you know, at the end of that holiday, you're leaving that place. So you'll behave

you there for good or ill will probably be different than when you get like back to where you live

because you know, you've got to live there with whatever your behavior is like where you live.

That's where your heart is. Exactly. So we've talked about playing and jamming. So a question

I'm going to get. I don't know. I finished what I was going to say. Go for it. I'll just

because I was saying why how it ended up transitioning. I don't think I finished. I got, I was

sort of leading into why how it transitioned. So, so I run that game and the players really enjoyed

the game, even though it was complete. It was very different to the fourth edition game.

And feedback I got is that they really, they preferred the character, the way the characters

were designed and the way they played in that game. Okay. To their fourth edition characters.

Like they felt it was easier to understand. There was a lot less, a lot less to read because some of

the things in fourth edition, like the abilities like were just lots of text. A lot of them were

simplified and a bit more intuitive and a lot of the mechanics had been streamlined, such as

like the disadvantage and advantage of things that fit the dish. And I found from the

found from the jamming side. I kind of agreed with them, especially from running encounters.

It seemed to last a lot less. Like in terms of actually time, session time, they took a lot less

time. In any game of D&D, once you get up to a certain level, they start taking a big

chunk of the session if you get into it. But I agreed with them that you could get through a lot

more in a session in fifth edition, what we found from playing that kind of game. So the decision

was made together to then convert our original campaign. Since I've been homebrewing stuff

anywhere, I was effectively just taking out the rule system and plugging it into the story. So

we got to the end of one of the adventures. And I think it was, yeah, so I think I ran a slightly

modified, what was it called? It was, it was one of the deck of many things. Is it cursing? Oh,

Gadmore Abbey? They'll look this up, John. I've got my, I've got the adventures here.

Slate, not the snout, I wasn't the slaying stone. It was like, it was the curse of Gadmore Abbey,

which was a fourth edition come, fourth edition adventure module. We played that. We finished that.

Oh, madness at Gadmore Abbey, that's what it's called. That adventure involved the deck of

many things. Again, a classic thing that I wanted to demonstrate to the players. So that was a

fourth edition adventure. I had modified it a little bit for the campaign we were running. And

that's the last one we did as fourth edition characters. And then we switched over.

So presumably, as someone you have to go through the process of effectively

redoing the characters for the no editions. How did you find that in terms of like

the ease of doing that? Because obviously the systems are very different.

They are. Some of them were much more easy than others. For instance, we had a barbarian.

That was pretty straightforward to transition over into fifth edition.

Same with we had a wall lock I mentioned. That was pretty simple. Even though the wall lock

is more interesting, I think in fifth edition, like there's a lot more things you could do.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Like the theme of the character is it was a fiend packed.

Like it was smoothly kind of went over. The one that was the kind of the hardest was the

cleric because a lot of the abilities the cleric had in fourth edition weren't there.

Like a lot of the special abilities. So it kind of was like we had to smooth that over a little bit

to make it make sense. Yeah. It was only doing different things.

I honestly it wasn't too bad. They weren't that there were still quite lower level at that point

in terms of like I think I think they were around level seven or eight by that point.

I have to check my notes but yeah so they were pretty low. So in terms of what you get in fifth

edition you tend to have a you tend to have a smaller set of abilities than you did in fourth

you tend to do because of the way the because of the way the fourth was made. You had all the

encounter abilities, the daily abilities and the utilities. You kind of had a bigger stack of things

you could do. Yeah so in terms of GM or in playing would you say that you play more D&D or

you GM more D&D? Honestly John it's gone through phases. It has gone through phases.

Initially I was more of a player than a GM and then once I started GMing I don't know if it was

the same with you but like once you get the taste for it you kind of like you want to do more of it

and you want to try different systems you want to try different settings you want to so you

kind of get the kind of taste and you want to run a bunch of games so it kind of like when I first

started GMing the fourth edition I wanted to GM more games not just D&D and I wanted to learn

how to be better at it and I wanted to see how different people approach it and as I was part

of like kind of the online community you know like understanding how other people came at it

what their preferred styles and figuring out what I enjoy and what I'm not like that interested

in or what what my strengths and weaknesses are and what things I can improve on and that was

really an interesting time in the first four days into you know figuring out what what I enjoyed

doing what I didn't enjoy doing what things that D&D is really good at and what it's really bad at

so and initially I was a player then I had a kind of heavy GMing stint I'd say for a couple of

years and it's moved out to where I was alternating so I've played with you for many years John

so I'd have like you know maybe two games where I'm a player a week as an example then one

game where I'd be GMing yeah I mean at that weekly game that the heedy weekly game we all

yeah I mean I think I think for myself because I've always said I was taking like sort of pre

mainstream internet days for me it was just sort of like oh well I had the book and I was trying

to persuade a few of my friends who were like into the water I'm a miniatures game to like

try the role-playing game so I ended up as GM by default so I was the one I was interested in it

and I had the books and obviously it was a long before you could go and discord and

game with people across the globe so it's like whoever lived in your town that was your potential

pool of players exactly those were the people you're going to be able to game with yeah and then

we had a period where we had like a small group of friends and we sort of alternated like running

games so that was the first time I got to sort of like play a fair few games and now obviously

with discord and most of my games are sort of online now I've got to stage off see I'm sort of

running a game every Friday at the minute so alternating that will for games and obviously be

playing in your harnesses blades in the dark game so it's sort of even now now so I got like a

a nice sort of even experience of like playing in GM in now but as you were saying nearer of the

start obviously like your jobs change your workload change and at free time becomes like a fairly

finite resource as you get older and you've got more responsibilities so I think the sort of the

days when I was like living with other tabletop gamers and we were literally I mean at one point

we were playing a game of like a world of darkness game like every night of the week and then

a weekend we'd just be like all Saturday we'd just be like rather than nothing but like a world of

darkness let's get let's get let's get that game going yeah a lot long gone of the days when I

can sort of do that because obviously like you know now you've got jobs and responsibilities and

whatever but I do enjoy sort of having the time to like plan my games and also when I was playing

all these games you got to a certain point where you were like playing in like so many games that

you're but it almost overloaded you a little bit whereas now because I'm doing I'm probably doing

less games now but I'm looking forward to them all yeah you know you're not you're not pushing

yourself to you're burning out a little bit even though you're enjoying it like I get with you

me and like yeah you're just switching between games systems and especially when you're playing

a games where there's a period of time where the online game scene really start kicking off

where you'd be playing with people from different time zones and and the GM would be running it

like 1am I remember I remember those days sometimes oh yeah I certainly remember a few times

like playing D&D like fifth edition with like people in America and it was up to in the morning

and like by the end of the session I was just like virtually falling asleep at my keyboard

and yeah which I would get a bit too a bit too long to do the two for that sort of thing now

and I would say go back to what you said about like the smaller pool of people yeah like I never

had that because I joined later but I did get I did get kind of an understanding of that from

as as D&D and tabletop became more known in the public eye and like through different friend

groups and works places I've worked over the last 10 or so years like people would be like you

you know how to run these games don't you I'm like yeah yeah yeah I know how to run these games

they're like could you could you like show us how to play could you and and that would be a thing

like once I once did when she became a known person for this people would come up to you asking

to run games for them oh yeah I mean we we had at one point in the the company I worked for we

had like you know I can extend auditors to assess the various processes you do and I was I

couldn't what I was wearing like some vaguely like D&D themed like hoodie or something like that

we're like a like a D20 on it or something like that and one of the auditors of sat down chatting to

me and he's like is that oh nice did you play D&D and I got chatting to him and he was chatting

about some campaigning runs for like some of the people he works with and whatever and you think

when you're at the point where just like having a D20 on your your clothing means that people are

like oh yeah D&D I recognize that as like a thing you know for someone you've never met before

it's really sort of embedded itself in the public consciousness in a way which I think 10 20 years

ago we would never have expected it to do yeah up then and I also want what I would like to say

and touch on is that because I'm very fortunate um it was all started with fourth edition I played

a lot of games since then and I've had the fortune of playing with a lot of great people and GMs

and I really got into going to the conventions as we hung out John Maytimes now and one of the

things I I became aware of is if if the hobby wants to grow and you want to bring your people in

you have to be willing to teach and you have to be no willing to you know give your time over

to bring your plays in so whenever someone would ask me to run a game I've always been open to

try and teach them and to help them come into the hobby if it's something that they enjoy you know

not everyone's going to be for everyone but I always try to find time because it was done for me

people have shown me how to play games I've had the fortune of playing with some really talented

GMs which is yourself and you know I treasure those memories and experiences so I always try to

this is just my personal I try to give back to the community by helping new people come in

and hopefully we'll bring new players in and GMs because we're always need more GMs yeah and and

and it helps sort of help the guide them but not tell them that there is a there's like one true

way to do this they helped also give them that freedom to do it their own way

as as you know I uh but for a number of years I did like the games on demand that UK games

explode which bit of a plug for that phenomenon in the UK and go into it it's like two hour

taste of games you you basically get a ticket you rock in there they're gonna oh we've got these

five GMs but each of them has got like five or so games available they've got two hour taste of

game yeah you get to put it at table you play a game for two hours it's like low commitment

pre-gen characters normally happy days I did that for a few years I've not done it for the last two

years mainly because of them because of my health and because it is like it is tiring you know

it's a commitment in time as well you pretty much say it's a big convention you pretty much

and I know there's some years where apart from maybe half an hour to like quickly run around the

the trade hall I was just running games or I was asleep and as we said earlier I got to stage where

especially with my health as well I was starting to sort of like get like really burnt out on it

and like eat each year I when I was trying to prepare my games I don't know if it's any two hours

it doesn't I've been like a really detailed game but I was just like oh I've already kind of done

like a space like Star Wars heist scenario I don't really want to do that again and um

how do I say my wife would be just like oh well why don't you just take some of the scenario

we always just run before and I was like well because I kind of want to do something new because it's

a new year I don't just want to keep reusing out so I want to challenge yourself but at the same time

you don't want to make it hard for you yeah so I've not done it for the last couple of years but I'm

hoping maybe if not this year coming but like so the year after basically just go as like a

paying pucks obviously the benefit of one of the benefits of running all your games is you know

you get you ticket free you get your hotel free exactly but it's like a lot of work

but um I think I'd say if not this year coming maybe the next year I'll probably go as like a

paying punter and then I can just like turn up if I want and be like oh do you want an extra

gem to like run the odd game or two but I'm not like I don't feel like obligated and locked down

to like running like 15 games do you like understand by yeah exactly so I know games on demand

the quite often when I was working it with we'd have people who are like I can't run loads of

games over the whole thing but is it all right if I just turn up and run like a random game

if it's additional whatever and obviously they'd always be like oh yeah great because that means

one of the other people who's been running loads games they can have a bit of a breather we will

will still be one and I think I'm going to do that sort of more as time goes on or maybe maybe

even look at sort of just booking in like one or two sort of like longer form games you know as

as they do yeah and sort of do it like that so I actually have some time to like enjoy the

convention and I'm not saying like running the the games on demand wasn't enjoyable because it was

and like you say I do think it's a a good thing to try and like give a bit back to the hobby but

you just enjoying different things about it yeah well I think I and obviously I know I'm not like

an ancient sort of like Methusel but as I'm getting older I am sort of slowing down a bit I

can't be like all right from the cracker dawn to like midnight I'm going to be running the

thing but games now you know like and he's my and he's my mouth man naps now that's what I need

and he spent you spend your time or why is the answer and also I'd like to turn up and like

playing some games because aside from the very first year I went and I mean you and I played

in some games together aside from that year I've not actually played in any games really

over the convention because I've been too busy running games if I've played in the game it's

because I've like I've had a bit of time off and I'm like I'll wear a player short for this

like taste the game can you jump in and fill in which isn't really the same sort of thing oh it's

been something that's outside of the normal hours of the convention like something that friends

are running and you're already ready for sleep at that point yeah and I'd like I'd like to be

able to do that just to like to turn up maybe run a couple of games or like you say like run

something like an off the books game for like a few people and then just like playing a few games

myself you know book into a few games maybe try out some new systems that like I don't have

at home you know but yeah so you you mentioned obviously conventions we've just been talking about

so did you go to a lot of conventions yourself when I very first started going to cons I barely

knew anybody from I didn't really know anyone from the tabletop community in terms of like my

local games I just knew the guys I would learning fourth edition with and the people from the game

that I told you that failed after a few sessions and I just I think we had met this we had met we've

been we've been played together online John I think I remember exactly when the game was but it

was around about that time that I went to my very first con which was the export yeah so I

barely knew anyone now I just kind of turned up on my own and wanted to see what these things were

about this was would have been around any now again feels ancient yeah that was it wasn't

it was something I opened the experience because then this was pre fifth edition yeah and off

the dish was the game that I knew to bring it in D&D term back to D&D and and that's when I

started to learn how controversial this edition was when I started learning games and the people

who played the the encountering more people at the convention to played from the very beginning

of tip top actively yeah and I mean obviously I think the the sort of convention experience when it

comes to tabletop is very different so I'm not saying it's worse but it's very different you know

if you sat around with a group of your friends like playing a D&D game I would I would recommend

I know it's not for everybody but I would recommend that everyone try at least once even though

it is different because you do end up by the very nature of the beast you end up playing with

different people you can try different games you get a wider exposure to different aspects of

the hobby I think it's really it's I've had I've had 99% positive experiences right I always

recommend that people try a convention because it's great way to learn about a game that you've

heard about yeah it's a great opportunity to meet for a GM excite it's a great opportunity to

chat with other GMs and see how they do things and it's a great way to learn it's a great learning

opportunity for GMs making new friends like I said I've been very fortunate to meet the people

over the years there and a bunch of gaming friends and we're still talking to you to this day

yeah I mean I would say the the one downside to sort of being a bit older and sort of running

games even is that even though we've got more sort of ability to roleplay with more people now we

have like less and less time to actually do it and kind of there's quite a lot of people like

obviously yourself like Rob that I'd love to game with more but as always yeah we should yeah

but as always getting like people schedules to like sync up is it is a bit of a nightmare because

we're all doing different jobs we might be in different time zones we're all we're all working

different hours different places different transport arrangements it can be a bit difficult

as you think it's the final boss or do you do oh yeah that is it's the hardest thing to get

I mean if you get a weekly game going you're in you're in a good place that's not the dream isn't it

you know is that a weekly game game I mean I mean I've like I've sort of cheated it with my

woofer up game because I've got like I run a game every Friday but it's like two different games

like alternate weeks and that's that seems to be like a good compromise because like people were

like yeah I can make every other week whereas if you say to someone like oh can you every Friday

can you like set aside four or five hours of your time for the foreseeable future I mean

let's face it it's a big commitment is it adds up all the time yeah like I said we've we've

managed to get a weekly game going for a number of years now and yeah I mean we think about hundreds

of hours played in several campaigns now no no no no we're D&D so not really in the scope of

the D&D discussion but we have we have covered a lot of time yeah and we should do a fifth edition

so you think it's for me and I'm no fifth edition not hate to buy any means I know like I'm

I tend to prefer as a GM like more of so like in old school sort of like retro clone or something

like that yeah but I'm no hate it it's not my preferred edition to run as a GM but if like

someone out there so I like I know it's a good GM and they're like oh we're going to run a

fifth edition game do you fancy it I'll play it great I've played fifth edition I've had fun

playing it because I think largely for me now the sort of role playing experience is more about

who you're doing it with and obviously if you've got a really crappy game system that can sort of

take the shine off it but if you if you've got even an out of rich game system where you work a

great group of people you're role playing with you've got a good GM that can really sort of like

polish and put a shine on like the the most basic of systems yeah because you're also you're

working together as well and it's when it when you've got the right people around you it feels

collaborative and having a good time even if even if the sessions where again you're finding the

game frustrating times you know it's not just not a problem of D&D but like you know if you're

finding the game is not doing doing what you want for you at that time like if you were the

right people that just take the edge off yeah I mean I don't know about you but we're talking about

obviously like pressures of work and scheduling and stuff like that I find for me like one of the

most sort of irritating and irks and things about role playing at the minute it's not really

role playing it's just like they say the the blades in the dark game we're doing at the minute

with the analysis running great game I'm really enjoying our life yeah I was looking at

else yeah I think the analysis is a great GM the thing that irks me about games that is that

sometimes as you know like you've had a long day at work you you've maybe like struggled to get

back in time because a lot of public transport or whatever you get back and you've managed to like

shove some like food down yourself and you're like oh I've got up and you've got like an hour

before the game starts right shove some food down myself I'm absolutely cream-crackered after work

and it irks me when I turn up and I feel like I've not really bought my A game to the game yeah

I know it's a bit of a ridiculous thing you know we always put more pressure on myself as

another people do at the end of the day but it always irks me when I feel like you know I didn't

really have a lot of the energy and I wasn't really like bringing it for that game

there's even though you love the game and you love playing the people you feel you feel like

you're not bringing you're not contributing as much as you're like yeah I think I can say in

this balance of time like some sessions you'll be you'll have more of that energy than others

so I think it balances out you know in terms and I've had a like I'm some I had a few rough patches

where I've you know I've struggled tenders wise and I've had things going on that's just made me

like turning up like just before the session starts or I've been getting to the session so

like I know exactly what you mean like I feel just like you do like that you want to always be

bringing that you're best to the game yeah it's a lot of people's time I want to respect that time

and of course I do keep I do keep that in mind if I even if I don't say it during the sessions

because we're doing the game by always I always respect people's time and never take it for granted

yeah and I think you mentioned I could be in like a collaborative thing at the end that I think

at the end that everyone's trying to take part in the game enjoy each other's company enjoy the game

you know enjoy what like grateful and enjoying like the gems put the time into like creating it

so and I so I have to remind myself even when I'm like oh you know I don't really feel like

about my A game tonight because I was a bit too tired it's been a heavy day at work that like as

long as everyone had fun in the session including the GM obviously at the end of the day

and we all enjoy each other's company that's great yeah even if it doesn't feel like we did much

in the session most of all that fun doing it does it matter at the end of the day

that's one of the social aspects of the game that I really enjoy yeah but in terms of the

A game and tying it back to what you mentioned before about like in terms of was that more of a

player and GM like what's what's what's about the more thingy most kind of time spent earlier on

is I had two spikes of gemming yeah and where I really really was gemming a lot of games one was

around 2017 and this was we took between two zones and eight two thousand seventeen two thousand

nineteen was one of the big spurts of gemming because why one of my friends wrong way where I live

they had built a tabletop garage they'd gone they'd gone a little like they'd had a bit of money

and they decided they were going to turn their garage into a tabletop space so they had surround

sound system in there they had an overhead projector they had like 3d models printed they had maps

all this this kit but but they didn't really want a gem right okay so there so we had a couple of

people so I got invited to it I got invited to play one of the games this one else was running

in that space and that's how I got involved with this group and eventually like my sort of term

my sort of time to jeep my sort of time to GM came up and I was happy to do it and I thought well

this is an opportunity he I've got all of this stuff that I wouldn't normally have access to I'm

not really merely a miniature guy or like you know I have no problems going completely see it

with mine so like maps and stuff I don't I don't see it's an necessity but they are helpful

so I was like okay I have access to all of this stuff that my friend is now generously giving

me the opportunity to do for my jamming so I like I doubled down in my prep and trying to bring

the most out of it and I ran two games for the same group will maybe play two changing in and out

one was a Star Wars game using the fantasy flight oh yeah so I had so I had like on the projector

I had like every session had like the Star Wars crawl yeah she would have we should have the yellow

right and it would like talk about the session and what's like like a big a big lead in and I had

the miniatures the ships the space maps like and it was great like you know I was trying to bring my

best and as learning experience because I said John we've never had miniatures and any of the

games that we've played in together but this was like me trying to make the most out of this space

yeah and that was a lot and that was a lot of fun and I know fantasy flight a game has kind of

fallen off a little bit in the last few years like because of the it's kind of how scope of this

discussion but like fantasy flight I haven't really supported the game for quite a while now

but that game was fantastic and then as many you mentioned it before it was one of my ever-on

game style the first time a GM Debraon was in that space and again I really wanted to bring my

air game because I wanted to had a mixture with a split of new players and old okay so I wanted to

I wanted to have stuff for both so I wanted to really use Debraon as a way to showcase the strength

of tabletop games and the indeed show it at its best but also give something for the veteran

players to make interesting spins on things like subvert expectations a little bit to try and

give them something fresh and like one of the best compliment I had for that game was one of the

older players it said that like he he loved coming to each session because I would bring something

new to the game that he'd never seen and even when I subverted the the tropes of D&D it was never

done in a way to punish the players it was always something new that everyone the setting I'd

used to sort of bring out yeah and and and put it on show so work for example John the

most first sessions in D&D start at like a tavern or like with like in a village or it's a very

low key affair is the low level players they're not they're not famous they're not particularly

powerful in terms of the universe right but I was like nope none of that were everyone everyone's

and everyone's noir it's high it fantasy it's intrigue it's like bold moves so I went for the hot

you know start to a campaign and the first session them in in the middle of a fight on an airship

that was crashing into a forest nice that was like session you know me I'll have to crash that was

like that was like a big foul fantasy fan and like Japanese so it was like I'm going I'm going

straight away like where'd we're going full speed and it was like and it was for the for the new

players they were just like they were like panicking like what you know like oh my god what the hell

and for the veteran players they were like well this is this is a lot you know how to be like

yeah this is session one um but yeah it was it was a hot star and there was because more

first sessions are quite light but I went I'm okay I'm gonna pack a lot into this like first

session so like as the campaign went on they will they started learning things about what what

was going on in that first session like why was it what what because they were attacked effect

of the initial like as the kind of inciting incident of the game they were attacked in the airship

was crashing they're like why were they attacked and like the people on that airship like the manifest

who they were and what they were doing and why they were on that ship like that put that that

echoed through the game so they let more and more context about what the situation was and why

I've been kicked off and what they were caught up in over time so rather than the first session

not being significant it was very important for them and the things that they remembered about

it and things that they wrote down like that really over time paid off so anyone who really

actually paid attention like I made sure to reward that as things went on because they were able

to then connect the dots because it was because it was a very big espionage portion of the game

and I could talk more about the every so I don't want everyone to know that that's that's fun

feel free to put everyone I mean I've been known to start a game with an airship crash myself from

time yeah it was it was great it was great you know and and so the the veteran players really

enjoyed it because it was like okay this is this is exciting this is not boring this is we're doing

stuff here like these are big swings we're making here and that and again that's set a torn for

the rest of the game like things this is going to be it's just not going to be a standard game

yeah things are going to happen and I carry that on I tell you too I've always fancied like

like an hebra on game like sort of like you said like a hot sort of start straight away yeah obviously

for those of you I know you'll know this Matthew but for people aren't really with hebra on

there's a sort of certain level of like magic tech in hebra on I think it's safe to say yeah it's

like again I don't I don't have people listen to this like I don't know their experience

everyone but yeah there's like a level of magic that's quite common so that's like every day

magic so but the kind of like the real dangerous stuff that's harder to find so there's like kind of

a it's almost like two tier there's like the basic stuff everywhere yeah it's pretty common

but like the real juicy stuff you do still have to go find that and one of the one of the elements

I always sort of like loved when I picked up a lot of the third edition books was they they out

I don't know because I know you and those Matthew but they have a they have a thing called the

lightning rail where it's like a high speed train with like bound sort of elemental like rings

that the sort of speed the train along and I've always fancy like starting a game where basically

that the players are like passengers on a train and then there's like some like mad train

heist that goes on so like literally the game starts with like the people trying to like rob the

train and like derail the train and so I've just like throw the player characters into that and

let's see what they do yeah see see how they react yeah so I'm down to it hey let's say if we

could if we could get a shot if we could get a shot just to sync up I'd do it in a heart second

then yeah but yeah so when you mentioned like your prep earlier on for jamming I know there's

various levels of prep like I quite enjoy what mean your harness reflectors are the quiet

full of the hobby way you sat down you making your notes and whatever in terms of prep like how

much prep would you say you you do when you're gonna like GM session you know it's it's evolved

over time I definitely in the beginning try to over prep like I try to think about everything

the players might do and have like something in mind of like how I deal with it or how what would

happen like almost like almost like a video game you know it's reactive like I'm thinking in a

reactive sense so like if the player does this I will do this I will present this problem and

definitely try to think I was very much focused on building balanced encounters and like not being

too punishing but it's evolved over time whereas I'm usually thinking um shot shot medium and long

term okay so like I have it I have an idea of where the games going like in terms of like like

the major players um antagonist themes like I have an idea of what they are and where the games

going and what the end point is probably going to look like but I'm not hard-solving it because

again part of the game is it's going to change of course this this is just to give me like a sort of

like a scope and a vision and to sort of like I like to like to push the themes of the game

as I like to keep those consistent because I think consistency and authenticity in a game

that's that's one of the best sort of juicy parts of this of the story side of it you can keep

those and and keep people engaged like those things are rewarded over time so in the short term

it's like for the you know next session what's what what what the player is doing what do I need

for that session yes what's what's what's what's the situation who's involved and that that's

the kind of thing I'd prep and I have a couple of encounters for those for the big sort of three

things that I think could happen or again I don't panic over if they do something completely

different on left field because what I would do sort of in between sessions I'd have a couple

of things that I can pull from if I need to like a couple of like if I want to throw in a surprise

or something unexpected that I have a prep doors over time but they're ready to be like picked up

and put in any time I want so yeah that's that's sort of like optional things that you can drop

in when and if you need them yeah that's that's me learning from like making inspiration from

things I like and using the material to how I want to run the game so having those prepped for

those kind of since you know those kind of moments you know I'm like an assassination squad or

like an interesting night if you're playing a fantasy game that has a quest that they're involved in

like that's kind of like a subplot you can throw in as an example and and for medium term plans

these are sort of like okay I'd like to think of the story and sort of arcs okay so where is like

where's this kind of story I've got to stop when you're going to begin how can I tie that in to

the players backgrounds if they provide any and the themes of the game and sort of indicate

looming threats because what I like to do I like to foreshadow things yeah I like to I like things

that are going on that don't seem important and the players can ignore them like again I'm not

going to punish them for ignoring them but if they're paying attention to those things those things

will come back around later on yeah I mean it's something I like doing in games where I'll have

like stuff that's going on so just to use a ridiculously like stereotypical example oh there's

there's like an orc chief who's trying to like raise up an or back to attack a city or whatever

and they might hear rumors about that and there's no impetus for them to particularly get involved

if they don't want to be but once that has been established like that thing is going on in the

background so if the player characters don't get involved I roughly know what's going to happen

if they don't do anything so as the game goes on if they don't get involved they might start coming

across like oh we've come across these few villages that have been destroyed by the orcs because

he's no one stopped him he's got his all called together you know and so it's not like punishing

them specifically but it feels like he creates an illusion of there is stuff going on in the

background whether you're involved with it or not it makes the world feel more alive it makes

feel like there's other other interested parties that are doing their own thing in in parallel to

it doesn't take anything from the game like to put those in there I only add to it I think

okay so we've been chatting for a while so that I'm also going to ask

in terms of the prep I know there's like a plethora of sort of online tools and things like

that an offline tools now in terms of your prep how do you actually like store your prep

just don't ring down in an open year putting a word document nobody do store I have a couple

things I do I use my google drive yeah which is where I store a lot of my kind of archive notes

so I have what I have is like during the session I'll have like an air four piece paper this is

where I write things that I've either introduced that I didn't plan to through the players choices

and actions it will be interesting things you might have uncovered or NPCs because one of

things I prep ahead of time I try to for my good for my good GM is I'll have like a list of

example NPC names and things that I can draw from very a lot of people do this in a pinch because

it gave a good name take a bit of practice and I just I'll just map that name is used and then

what I'll do about after the session is I write it up on my google doc and I categorize it by a

session and I'll write things been introduced anything that I want to carry forward into the

following sessions that's going to be ongoing and I have like another document that I maintain

the longer campaigns where I have like an NPC kind of master list yeah where I like I write things

about those NPCs important things sometimes secret things that the players don't know about them

or set villains that that that I've been operating in a story that they don't know about

and get ready to bring them in I know my prep is kind of a medium scale to some and also people

like very much more detailed they do like you know they have like notarized recordings

they do online I don't really do anything that I do maintain like a sort of campaign or thing

and I've got got a lot of them to the left to be here on this session where I have my notepad as

well which is where I write down things about when I'm in a combat I might write down things that

might come up might be relevant later oh yeah I mean even though I sort of store most of my stuff

in like obsidian notes I've always got like a notepad sat there during the session so I thought

some random thing happens and I'm like right I want to remember that I can just quickly scribble it

down and answer the question yeah so I have an effort for like the session but I have a notepad

which when I'm running a combat if I'm not doing it online like I use the notepad to do like

fact it's stuff like and I write notes in there it was the combat if something like you know

like they steal something off off one of the enemies or one of them gets away that kind of stuff

and then I eventually go onto the main notepad as well okay so one of the last questions I'm

trying to ask everyone we do this these interviews where is if you had a magic wand and you could

conjure up the perfect version of dnd for you in particular what what would that version of dnd

look like you know what would what would be different what would be the same compared to like

the versions that you play at the moment and that is that's a big question perfect no no restrictions

high money issue now like I say it's it's you've got the magic wand you you just have to think it

you can summon up that the perfect version for you as either a jamer or a player your choice

what we what would I don't see what you might have to get into specific systems but what would

that version of dnd look like what what would Matthew's perfect version of dnd look like you know what

it would the rule set doesn't necessarily matter for the game since as long as you have in a great

time of course but I say for me I'd probably go with I probably go with fifth edition

2014 version so that's the one that I think is the most comfortable with and that I think I'd be

able to navigate the best at this point in time no slight on the newest version just don't have

the experience with it to make that kind of all for me um I think I think from I mentioned before

of my friends having sort of converted garage I think I would for me the perfect game is something

similar to that in the sense that it would be a group of friends come together sit around a table

together and play the game but with a bit of spectacle I think having the miniatures the maps

the music like that adds to the game when combined as long as you have the players who are engaged

in it and they're interested in it think that to me that would be the perfect game like a weekly

getting together everyone's excited to play everyone has that buy-in they're putting the A game

as we mentioned before into it and possibly I think at this point in time if I picked a setting

if it's if we're keeping it strictly D&D I think it would be Eboron would be the choice because

I'm going to gushed about it already um that's the thing I've been able to to bring up the best

stories with people I've played with in Eboron so I think that would be my choice

um I'm opened up to send the future I might encounter something else as of right now that would

be my perfect game um and hopefully it it would run for a couple of years and then it would

though the key thing I think the perfect game is it has to end with a satisfying conclusion forever

yeah I agree because most games start strong but landing that conclusion having that game which

stays with people over the years really I think is that that's the key for the perfect game

yeah and I mean one of the I agree with you about the satisfying conclusion and one of the things

that we talked about lifting inspiration from other places one of the things I saw I can't

remember who was I saw it on like some sort of blog or something where they were saying what they

do in their game is when they let wrap up a campaign they they do like think when they go to

their players and they're like oh so give us like a sort of brief description of like what happened

to your like characters up like a year after the events of the game I don't think like an

epilogue yeah yeah and obviously like you know you don't really have to censor it because like

the game's done so they're not going to do anything to like ruin it and it just gives the players a

nice way of sort of not like a happy ending but but sort of giving like a nice sort of satisfying

conclusion to their sort of characters and they can sort of freestyle it a bit and that that's

and then I've definitely left it for the games I run where I'll be like I also did describe

how you carried the sort of like retires or what they're doing with their life after the events

of the campaign and it's just a nice little sort of bookend to the campaign yeah see how they

how they move on from the events of what happened in the game okay and that's and that's and

that's one of the frustrated things about tabletop games is when you have a game that you really

enjoy either as a player I was a GM and you like you you're enjoying the people you're enjoying

the setting you're enjoying the story and then whatever is in the game stops breaks apart

just fans because because you want it you want to reach that conclusion and you want to

want to hit that you want to have a nice clean ending and sometimes you never get that

because again for everyone game I've been talking about it's I had to put it on pause unfortunately

yeah and I still love to finish it because it there was so much in that game that we all loved

yeah then it just it feels like it feels like there's something there that still needs to be done

you know the game's not even though we've had to start for real life reasons like the game's not

over like the stories that that story there needs to continue yeah I mean I think one of the the

best pieces of German advice I've been given I can't forget it go to me but you know someone saying

if you've got a good idea don't save it for later on in the campaign like use it as soon as you

can because as you've said real life things going on scheduling etc you never know how long your

game's going to last and it's it's a real shame if you're like oh I've got this great idea I'm

going to save it for later on in the campaign and then like you never get to that later on and

you're like oh we never got to do that cool thing you thought of so I've always so tried to go

without like if if there's an idea I've got obviously a cool idea try and sort of bring it around

or use it as sort of as quickly as you can in the game so it actually gets used you get to see it

I absolutely agree it's a great piece of advice John yeah you should you should put all your best

ideas out yeah and if it turns out they're not as good as you thought they were then you learn

from it you know and then to the ultimate spy you let it down the line okay so last of all then

if if someone came up to you I'm saying that they're thinking of getting into like D&D or they

wanted to get into D&D what would you all advise me to them as a GM or a player like they

you're choice yeah well you know I first thing that first thing I do is reassure them that whatever

you wherever your ability at the game is you think it is you're relaxed because there's no

barrier for entry really like the game's open to anyone who wants to try it community is largely

welcoming you should you should absolutely do it really absolutely so it's so bad as I said if

if someone was asking to run a game I might advise to be slightly different yeah no no no negative

but like it would be different in the sense that important things are to make sure everyone's

having fun at the table to let the rules help you make the game on the way you want it to but don't

swear it if you need to change things on the flight like it's not meant to restrict you it's

meant to support you and if it was D&D specific advice we were giving I'd be like the game is

going to give you a lot of help from running combat and for the mechanics but in terms of like

in terms of the puzzle side exploration side story side that is going to some of that you're

going to have to bring in from yourself and other things because yeah like I said it supports

you it's weighted in more than one direction I think yeah I mean I think for myself as someone

who like probably GMs more still than they play I think the the sort of advice I've given to most

GMs would be like you know if you think a session's not gone 100% as well as you thought it was

going to do don't beat yourself up when necessarily about it don't expect yeah and I've done this

myself and don't expect yourself to be like running perfect games when you first go in because I

think as GMs we're largely like our own harshest critics because we can run a game the players

kind of had a great time everyone can enjoy it and we come away going oh yeah but I don't feel like

I did it as well as I could have done and it's not well as long as you had fun while you were running

it and the players all had fun that that's all anyone can ask for you know so that that's the advice

almost I think it's GMs like you know don't beat yourself up too much about it if the session's

not perfect because sessions are rarely 100% perfect you know because we're all just like

you move in to try to run a game exactly I also think I never my ethos is never never punish

the players for my own mistakes so if I if I've done something and I know it's I've you know

I've done something that's going to negatively impact the game and misread a rule like it took

the game in a direction that they didn't want to go in but I felt like yeah it gave me the day

you know like and I realized I shouldn't have done that like very very open enough for an

about it have an adult conversation about it and be like okay here's here's what I think

here's how we should move forward together you'll feel like I have to like force something

onto the players that and I think I think as a GM it's like it's very rare you'll make a mistake

that's so horrendous the like you can't just be sorted out by having like a quick conversation

with the players and going like oh look my bad I made this mistake yeah how do you think we should

I think if this is out we should sort out or have you think this is out we should sort it out

and I think if if you're honest with your players as you were saying then most of the time they're

fine with it because we all know that like everyone's just trying to do their best really aren't

they like no one's perfect and sometimes people will interpret things differently to how you

and them of course it's always about communication so that's one of the advice is always try to have

opening open and clear communication with each other and you're willing to talk about things even

if it seems confrontational like it's better to be open about any issues you have then let them

like well that's when that's when problems can happen okay well Matthew thank you very much

for talking towards in this episode pleasure to chat to you any time is that is there anything

that you would like to plug or any sort of shout out if you'd like to give it at this point

I just say anyone who's thinking of getting into D&D you should definitely give it a try

I hope you can always use more players and we've always definitely could always use more GMS

never feel like the way that you've viewed the game is wrong you may tell you that because

from my experience and how I came in like the opinions about D&D and other typical games very very

there isn't one true narrative yeah and I think inevitably whenever you get into any hobby where like

people are sort of very passionate about it as people are about the type of RPGs that people get

very passionate about their version and again that's partly why I wanted to have all these conversations

with different people because we've all got our own version of D&D effectively which is how we prefer

to run it how we prefer to play it whatever and same with other role playing games and it's very

easy to get very passionate about your version of the game to like the exclusion of all the stuff

and like I say when we're talking about fifth edition I'm not really a fan of running it as a GMS

it's just not like my particular vibe but but the same token I'm not going to say like oh it's a

terrible game because I don't really enjoy GMS in it and likewise I can say if someone else was

going to run it I'd still jump in as a player I'm happy with that and you've had fun playing it

so you can say it's not doing it for you on the other aspects yeah yeah I don't really need

to plug at this at this point in time but again I just say thank you John for taking the time

tonight and thank you to all the GMS out there including Hannes who have run games for me in

us always appreciated and hey well thank you very much we'll stop the recording here