Welcome back to the Tavern Adventurer.

Today, we talk about how to make a story and campaign dynamic with Garrett from two25games.com.

If you want Garrett back on the show, you'll have to let us know.

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Add the Magic of Sound to Your Gameplay

When you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout.

Monument Studios

Give Us a Rating and Review

You obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.

all right well thank you for coming on the show garret thanks for joining me and

tanner let's jump in with some really interesting questions first of all as an experienced dungeon

master what is your favorite class and why

my favorite class i think would have to would have to be dungeon master if that's

a class if we can

uh

count that as a class that would be

uh

my favorite

oh

i much probably prefer to be behind the screen

ah

than

oh

in front of the screen but if i have to be a player usually cleric

yeah

or bard is my go to since i'm a i'm a real life musician i kind

of like to role play that because i think i can i can do it okay

since i know how musicians think for sure

that's great do you ever actually

i like

like

that

bring an instrument to

i

use

do

yeah

we we had a series on the

m

two twenty five instagram for a while and i need to bring it back but it

was like how to introduce instruments to the game table in a tasteful way so it

would be like oh these are the instruments that you might want if your game is

within this unique flavor and of that was a music major in college and like music

ology was kind of my focus in there was like the study of instruments and the

study of cultural me and what not so i'd be like oh if it's an irish

flavor maybe you'd want maybe fiddles and bazookis and banjos and barons and everything or if

it's a middle eastern flavor maybe you want these instruments um so it's nice to be

to bring that to the table that kind of livens things up as opposed to my

player my my character

yeah

really strums the lute so well and i'm going to roll to prove that to you

it's kind of

yeah

it can be done

uh

in real

oh

time so it

uh

adds a different kind of

yeah

spit on things

you know the moment that they bring a bag

i like

pipe

that

in no it's over just

then we all run the sessions

yeah

yeah

done

that's

head out

at

it's over

yeah

no bagpipes or recording

that's

is

when

allowed

you just you know

there it's

total

oh

party

it's a

kill

nat

right there

it's a natural

ah

one

oh

every time they play it basically

one hundred percent

yeah

accordions and bag pipes are

hm

my

yeah

i don't like them personally

uh

that's

yeah

just a personal taste that's my hot take

h okay well that's a

yeah

great answer honestly i love clerics and and bards too i feel like

oh

there's a lot of flexibility there

yeah

okay next kind of warm up question for you if you could have one skill or

mechanic from d and d in real life what would you have

i would try and jump as many things into

m

perception as i could because i feel like me

yeah

personally

m m

in real life

m

i get so tunnel visioned about things that i miss things

a

that are around me

oh

or things that other people are doing like you've never noticed that

oh

no

yeah

no i've never noticed that but thank you for that out

m

um

oh

so if i could just jump all my cats into one

m

thing definitely i would be expert in perception

ah

all day every day it's not even

yeah

a contest no question about it

just like going along and suddenly

i hear that

you just realize what's

ah

important in life and you're like oh wait

it's

i

a

just

lot

perceived

less

that

poetic than that usually

yeah

it's like

yeah

oh i never noticed the door opened this way and that way or

ah

something real silly like

yeah

that you know or i never noticed this picture on the

right

wall but

yeah

but then you feel real stupid when i was like how have you never noticed that

and he's like i don't know because i'm not perceptive i guess

yeah i think i would do insight because i feel like i'm the same way but

with people you know like oh you were unhappy with me about that i didn't i

didn't know you know

that is true

but that is just

a person

me

in sight his perception

yeah

with with people so you know two sides of the same coin i think

right right

yeah

exactly um kind of tacking on to the first question we asked

oh

you said you know your favorite class is the d m well if you had to

personify your dungeon master style with a character what character would that be what would be

your dungeon master avatar

like a like a fantasy character or like a fictional character

well so if you had to essentially create a character like your players

yeah

do but that character had to represent your dungeon master style what kind of character

that's

would

an

that

interesting

be

question i like that question um m i think

oh

there's a player at my

yeah

table he's the second half of two

yeah

twenty five actually his name is chris and he

okay

plays in my campaign this tenarian world which is just whimsical as ever he plays a

half ling rogue named

oh

trouble and he's he plays him kind of

oh

like how one would play a bard but he's a rogue so he's just very whimsical

and he's very like to you now give his party members a hard time uh doesn't

really like combat

yeah

all that much but loves to watch and kind of play cheer leader or trip the

fighter on his way in to make a killing blow or something like that just to

yeah

just to keep

yeah

the labs going would be that would

yeah

be my my avatar is somebody that's whimsical um that just creates a fun story and

doesn't take things too seriously because at the end of the day we're playing make believe

with rules and my humble belief is that if that's taken too seriously

oh

it can lose fun really really quickly

yeah absolutely no one likes it when you're trying to have fun and someone

yah

turns it into a serious thing like comet like

right

not fun competition

yeah

where the goal is

yeah

not

oh

fun but it's winning you know over

exactly

everyone else yeah

yeah

hm

and if it becomes

ah

a game of numbers and a game of stats and you know minmaxing and things um

it's

yeah

great for some tables it's great for some play groups

oh

that's not how i roll i love to do the role play thing first numbers are

just

right

numerical mathematical representatives of what's happening in the story

yah

we can think of

h

as like players

right

instead

help things

of our characters

make sense

exactly but

yeah

when it becomes too much

yeah

about the numbers and not enough about embracing the characters and

yeah

embracing story structure and character development then it loses that kind of story telling focus and

at the

yeah

end of the day

yeah

yeah

that kind of why it exists and that's what it's all about

great

i had

go ahead

i had a sorry i had

yeah

best friend who i've been trying to get to play with me for like years and

years and he's like honestly man like dandy just seems

oh

like a meeting and an

ah

like when you know you're in maxine

ah

it's basically you know a meeting

m

yeah

there's like no difference but if you know you're focusing on the story it's different

and i think i mean minmaxing has its place i guess but i feel like

yeah

if one is to mind max one should go play sky room and not dandy because

if you want to be an

yeah

almighty powerful wizard go do that go play an

yeah

mo go play wild go play gold wars go play sky room at the table

oh

top the tabletop role playing game we like to role play and be people who are

not on a daily basis and embrace those personality traits that we wish we could

ah

n't real if

yeah a great way to but i mean i think that most other mediums

yeah

are more like like board games even are more natural

it

medium for just like sheer numbers right it's like why do we roll play that's

hm

why they moved from war games back in the day to d n d right great

point okay

exactly

so

ah

last

m

question

h

here

ah

m

biggest d m mistake

oh

that you've ever made and no men here we've all made them

ay

i

uh

would say it's

uh

it's kind of

yeah

a re occurring mistake for me and my biggest weakness

ah

and we talked about this last night

oh

we chris and i did a d m coaching session and i had to admit my

fault and

yeah

humble up a little bit um but i'm so quick to admit my faults i am

not perfect by any stretch of the imagination i'm just taking it one day at a

time like everybody else but i have a problem with remembering the things that i do

yeah

for instance like i have i have a story structure but i'll forget about the bard

in p c that i brought along like peter in the tenarian campaign at the table

top peter's this bard

yeah

that met my party in the kindred hearts party um and then i kept forgetting about

oh

peter and they'd be like what about peter and like oh peter it's been writing

ah

songs this whole time in the corner that's a

oh

good point

yeah

you brought up there chris thank you

yeah

or we have a drew it my my fiance's druid she has a raccoon named felix

that's her like her familiar her pet and i always forget about felix every session like

well what's felix doing oh felix is just an he's just eating grapes and just having

himself

oh

a good old time i have to make something up on the fly because

oh

i always forget about those little details i've got the big structure and i'm always concerned

about what the players are doing that i forget to go in and be like oh

yeah that that m p c needs he's doing something for sure i promise it's not

important ight now let's go back to you what are you up to

yeah

uh

oh

h that's okay i mean no one expects you to to be the fabric of reality

even though that's essentially what you

oh

are when when playing d and d you know

yeah exactly

ah

that's kind of i guess

ah

the dem's job right you are god and you have

hm

to make this world come to life before your players eyes but also you're also a

human so you're

yeah

not going to do

yeah

as well as a literal god could so

yeah

just

oh

go with the flow and have fun

oh

as long as your players are having fun you're doing something

hm

right

yeah

exactly uh

totally agree

yeah

um go ahead tenner

no no that was a go ahead justin take off do

gotcha

it

for sure also i think there might be a little bit of lag so if i

interrupt you i apologize so much i'm really bad at that so

oh

i'll try and slow down my super fast

likewise

mouth but

i will i will try

thank

to

you adventure

keep some silence in there

thank you adventurer for joining us today on how to be a better d m if

you haven't

yeah

noticed yet we're not alone we are joined by garrett he is one half of two

twenty five games and you can actually find them we'll put their link in the show

notes but the first question i actually wanted to ask just because i'm a naturally curious

person where does the name two twenty five games come from

hit's a great question and one that

oh

we we get a lot has nothing to do with chris actually ironically

my

i started to twenty five and i was like chris

oh

i love your brain please join me and he said

oh

absolutely

my

i was waiting for you to ask so it was

yeah

a maid in heaven i love chris he's

yeah

awesome guy but

oh

two twenty five was my

my

college

yeah

apartment when i was in college and all of my really good friends we were all

roommates together and it was a party every

m

day not like

yeah

not like red solo cup

oh

college

yeah

party but like we would

yeah

be playing destiny and we'd be playing poker

yeah

night and then we'd be smoking cigars on the balcony and

ah

we just have a couple of drinks every now and then we will just spend all

day together and

m

for me like that meant the world growing up and not having that i mean in

west texas not everybody is into d and d but they sure do you love to

drink and shoot guns so

yeah

for me who is like that's not my vibe um to finally have

my

that community and finally have that that tribe it's a fun way to keep that legacy

going and as a way to say thank you to those guys out there um m

oh those those three guys just kind of keep that alive and keep that name going

and in spirit

kay yeah

that's beautiful

oh

well let's kind of dive into today's topic of dynamic storytelling and i guess i guess

the general idea of today show is you know what is a dynamic campaign and you

create one so first of all tell us what do you consider to be a dynamic

campaign and what would be the opposite of that

i think to me

yeah

whenever you say dynamic it means more life like realistic than static

oh

and i think the difference between the two would be a static campaign m a campaign

that can take place in any world if you put it in the context of greek

mythology or norse mythology or you threw it in middle earth or forgotten realms you

a

put it on the planet of arcis you plant it on tatton you an ut

my

and any

m

intellectual property any world any franchise that you want if it's still the same story and

it doesn't matter where it takes place your story is static and it isn't good enough

a dynamic campaign

kay

is where characters

oh

and the world come together in this perfect in this syncronous way and there's a energy

there that you can't have one without the other which is i think like star wars

you can't have tattoo ween without luke sky walker and you can't have luke skuywalker without

tattooween you can't have politrities without racus you can't have king arthur without

yeah

camelot those would be dynamic stories they're timeless

m

and when you can't again when you can't separate the two that's when your campaign goes

from

yeah

static and to oh my god this is an amazing story and i am so thankful

m

to be at this table

yeah i

hm

agree i think that when i think of i mean there's actually a podcast i was

i've been listening to

ah

for years and they did a campaign

m

at the start and i see this a lot with campaigns where lower levelled players

yeah

uh or campaigns tend to have a good amount of variety because you can't focus all

your time on these huge battles

oh

where everybody as got a billion different abilities and thing and so

oh

it's

hm

like okay simpler battles

oh

and then we got some role playing

yeah

and then we got some skill check you know they try and keep it very dynamic

and different but then later on in that same podcast when i didn't higher

m

level play i noticed that it just became a lot of battles and that because the

battles took so long you know they the role playing

m

in between just didn't feel nearly like differentiated enough right and so i felt a little

static to me at least

yeah and i think part of that and i don't i don't want to get ahead

of you know

ah

rest of the structure of the podcast

yeah

but if there

yeah

are battles and there is combat and there are fights

m

just because like you're like oh we haven't done combat in a while and i don't

want my players to be bored that's not a good enough reason to do combat your

players have to wait or you have to invent combats that matters to service the plot

in the characters that way anything and everything you do in your story matters which is

why i'm not a fan of random encounter charts like oh we haven't done a little

roll for random encounter that

yeah

that does nothing to

oh

that just buys time

oh

if you're going to buy time then do

yeah

something else go to a tavern go invent an m p c on the fly that

matters and can't service the plot fighting goblins in the forest because you haven't fought goblins

in the forest for three sessions is

yeah

not good enough time and that's how you're going to get static and burnt out

yeah

really quickly both dim and the players

oh so kind of an interjection question m i think that is a very interesting viewpoint

so a lot of people myself included i use random and counter tables specifically for travel

because i have no idea how to make travel interesting uh without making it realistic and

so forth so how do you

oh

treat travel long distances short distances kind of the whole gammit yeah

that depends on the story well for my own sake

m

i never let travel be travel if they are traveling and now they see something on

the road whatever they see on the road or whatever comment they have needs to service

the plot um in some sort of way whether it's it's bandits on the road oh

well maybe these bandits are just these underlings to a bigger problem somewhere else and maybe

they have a letter

oh

on them he dropped that maybe is in thieves cant and now the rogue has a

purpose and now the rogue feels like

yeah

oh he's paying attention to me and he's paying attention to those little details like i

can read thieves can't right so but if it's gratulations you killed all the bandits okay

now what now we just keep going to the town it was just an obstacle it's

like it's running track and there's hurdles and you just have to jump over the hurdles

okay well the

oh

hurdles are just there for you to jump over they serve no real purpose other than

that how high can you jump so again i would say like for people who love

combat and kind of that more men max and i know that term gets like a

real bad

yeah

negative rap

yeah

but if you happen to have

oh

a real mind max table but heavy war gaming kind of kid table maybe that's great

in my experience and in what i do i plot and character development over combat every

day all day long so if there is combat it always has to service the plot

oh

so if they're going from

m

one town to the others three

ah

days pass

oh

you are now in the

m

town three days have passed

a

or on your way there you demon

oh

you hear

yeah

the rumbling of a demon in the forest and in chris and i are working on

this gogamesh campaign that i keep harking on and harking on and harking on but so

in the works

yeah

so in tenaria they went through the cedar forest where uhjardith lived but jardith is just

key word for baba is from the epic of gilgamesh who were trying to turn that

into a to a campaign so for for a plot reason that's a big plot element

there's a king demon in the forest and there's these little you know demon underlings with

him okay now that's that's a plot limit rather than you have these demons in the

forest

m

why i don't know or goblin in the forest why i don't know okay let's move

on

that's really interesting kind of continuing on that so actually tenor you ask questions i might

yeah sorry you go ahead

no yeah one thing i do like about your

yeah

answer garret is like you know you can

yeah

like you travel can

yeah

be mechanic that's interesting in a game if it serves a purpose

m

and that's kind of what i'm

hm

seeing a lot in this discussion is that dynamic

yeah

at least for a d

yeah

m yeah it's about variety but it's not variety for variety's sake it's variety

exactly

for for story's sake and so for example

hm

if it's like oh your characters are usually in typical grassy plains you know normal

m

temperate forests but instead they're up in

oh

a frozen mountain and they're hiking that then all of a sudden a bunch doing a

bunch of checks to make sure that they're

m

okay and that they're not getting frost bite or anything else that's interesting because one is

varied and too

yeah

it's

yeah

like oh they're actually it's

oh

showing in a mechanical way

oh

that they're doing

yeah

something hard right and not just for heart's sake it's you know it's changing it up

right

and that even i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off

go ahead

the lad kind of g in the way but

oh

it kind of reminds me of the mines of maria and i going up the mountain

in the snow there's tension there there's plot tension

oh

why because they're in the snow and they're in cloaks and these habits have their feet

i

like are are their toes about to fall off frost bite like what's about to happen

why are they doing this this seems really risky and that adds that risk in there

so again if service is the plot it adds tension especially if you have them roll

those survival checks and what i was like oh oh yeah you're your foot got a

little chilly there as you climb this mountain and oh well

oh

i got to go to the long term injury section of the d m g and

figure out how to how to assess this or whatever right

yeah and and that kind of makes me think of you know how do you the

next question i would ask is how do you create a dynamic world because obviously most

campaigns they take place

ah

in a pretty typical fantasy setting

ah

you're going

m

to have typical towns typical you know castles

yeah

you're not going to have too much

oh

variety there and people are going to rely more on

oh

the n p c's and maybe

yeah

the combats to add

oh

variety but in terms of a dynamic world

oh

how do you think you can make that

that's an interesting

oh

question and i want to prompt that question with this

oh

question i want you to answer this question

yeah

for me and that can help i think that's going to answer your question

m

what's the difference are you familiar with done and start worse by chance

yes

okay so what

oh

would be the difference between aracus and tattooeen

oh

both are desert

gosh

planets but what's the difference

that's actually really good

yeah

that's a good point honestly

yeah oh

they're very similar in terms of actual um climate i guess you could say the difference

what what kind of the players are making of them right because a racks

m

it's like oh this place you got the spice that everybody is

ah

going crazy for it's got a lot of political intrigue whereas tatueen it's filled with a

of people who aren't interested

m oh

in it at all and they're just trying to get out and it's more you know

m

cut throat um yeah that's actually a great point that you could take any kind of

environment and depending

oh

on the objects the goals and the characters you put in it it almost becomes an

entirely different place h

i think you just

m

answer that question all on your own where if you're again if your story can fit

in any world your story is not good enough but at the same time if your

world feels like world like it just feels so plain and bland and it feels like

forgotten realms

yeah

it feels like dragon lance or whatever and i'm not trying to bash wizards worlds or

anything but

hm

if it feels just like you re skinned all the gods in all of the places

to new names but it feels the same then that's

m

not dynamic enough that's a static world and you might as well just play in forgotten

realms bcause the source book's a already there um m for instance

uh h

in the two twenty five game world story lose which we've been world building on world

building wednesdays on our twitch channel for a couple weeks now chris and i will have

some guests on there every now and then too um m it's what i call shreckmeats

yeah

peaky blinders so it's very whimsical and very you know

m

all these very fairy tail kind of stuff you have the big bad wolves and you

have these picksies and you have this and the other except there is a god and

there's this whole back story about there's one god and he has three

my

sisters the triumverant and they overthrow the god because god sucks and they try

yeah

to be so good that they aren't it's kind of like a mom who gives their

kids everything they

yeah

want and they have no discipline so the mom kind of sucks that's kind of the

vibe that this is going for and now the world is kind of in this misshapen

place where the pixanelli are these pixy empire and their kind of like the italian mob

and then you have the

oh

the wilfavian empire and they're like the irish

ah

mob so you've got these two mob families um

oh

at battle with each other because the yare

yeah

who is kind of a thinly veiled church structure very you know very holy very hierarchical

okay

they band wild magic and they band a substance called moonshine magic moonshine man excuse me

so with this moonshine

oh

manna anybody can drink in they take a roll on the wild they take a take

a walk on the wild side as we say

uh

game where

uh

they roll on the wild chart the wild magic chart and whatever happens happens

oh

um now it's like the picanelli work with the are but they've got the

m

mob family kind of doing the black market stuff

oh

but they also have to work with the wolf avin because they have wolf spain

a

and wolf spain plus the pixy dust is what makes the moonshine manna so the enemy

of my enemy is my friend so

m

even though they don't get along they have to get along and now

oh

our players are put into this political climate so all of that to say

yeah

not this isn't advertisement for story lose but all of that to say um

yeah

if you want your world to be dynamic and you want it to have a unique

flavor you have to start with a theme i think the theme of story ellis

yeah

is political intrigue and really it's just political inter political intrigue

yeah

and religious religious rivalry because there's people that love the old god there's people that love

the triumphant these people that love the yarrow who is the new god on on story

ellis god incarnate so which one is the real god and now it's everybody's got their

own theological beliefs and differences in the midst of that

oh

now there's all this who's got control of the wolf spain who's got control of the

picks dust and how are the picknell working with the yarrow but also trying

yah

to stab him in the back and also trying to the enemy of my enemy is

my friend very god they're very

m

good fellows the irishman kind of vibes

yeah

which is not something

oh

you see in every world which is what makes that dynamic if i went into forgotten

realms and i just renamed everything and it was like this is my world that's not

it's not nothing you got to make it something new start with a theme

oh

take elements from other existing things and combine it and even if you watch people bigger

than me and i'm not big i'm just saying if people way bigger than me like

oh

bandon sanderson and his talk or that he does it by

my

u um he just combines things

oh

he's this combiner he takes this and this makes this takes like the high stuff and

a

the mist

oh

and he makes miss born and boom there's miss

yeah

born so that's an that's coming from him so do what he says i'm just repeating

what he's saying just combine stuff

m

and start with a theme

oh

if you want your theme to be whatever well start with that theme and then how

is that going to play into your world

seemed really long

i couldn't

winded

agree

but

more

i hope

yeah

that i hit the i hope you got

m

what i was trying to say

yeah

nailed it

sweet okay then i did my

sure

job

for

to day

sure so if i can kind of summarize it sounds like one of the key aspects

of making a campaign dynamic is not only making excellent characters so making the setting a

character and even the story to a degree kind of a character and having those three

character groups interact and affect each other change each other right

absolutely it's this holy trinity of story telling like you have your setting you have your

ah

heavier characters and you have your players

oh

one of those is out of wax

ah

the story is going to fall flat they

okay

all

yeah

have to be perfectly aligned and if they're not it's like an equilateral

m

triangle if one of them is not the same something is going to happen something

oh

is going to go wrong if it's your said angle that you

oh

can play in any world if it's your players well i don't know get new players

oh

or teach them it's okay to teach it's

yeah

totally fine to coach and to show the way

oh

if you if this is the vile you're going for and that's the importance of a

sesso zero so

yah

in a hero's journey

hm

a journal for five t t r p g is published by two twenty five we

have a session zero section that goes by like okay what are your expectations of this

what is this what we're all on the same page that yeah

yeah

we're all going to be talented stories where i'm not here to just

oh

kill goblins i'm here to tell a story and you're goin to lead the story and

i'm just a player in it and we're here to do this together

oh

co operatively um and if your m p cs

ah

are flat well okay you've got this cool world but why why is the population of

the world so lame don't make it lame make it dynamic make

m

it cool make it unique

yeah

yeah

flavor it

yeah

with certain flavors

oh

that it needs to be flavored with

yeah it kind of makes me realize that the hardest thing because because we have dem's

obviously we have well it feels like we have more control over the theme

ah

the setting the plot to some extent right

m

yeah

but the thing that's most out of our control is the players

oh

and so kind of kind of launching off of how you were saying that we need

balance

oh

for each of those one challenge i've always had is whenever there's a player who feels

like

oh

they and how they play their character are static because technically they can play however they

want this is just fun game

yeah

but you also are like oh they'd have more fun if they were more dynamic

ah

now they played you know their character can go from bad to good or good to

bad or oh they can a bad streak and they can lose something important but then

they can also

yeah

get something important later on i don't know

and

how

they absolutely

how

yeah

do you encourage

should do that

that you know

so i think if anybody's

ah

playing d and d nine out of ten people playing dan d have heard of a

hero's

yeah

journey not not the journal not the not the two twenty five journal but like the

joseph campbell

uh

circle of like

yeah yeah

oh

the ordinary world going on a journey

yeah

and i personally what i do is i sit there with the back

oh

stories and stuff and i go okay how is this going to happen because

oh

d ming is also here's for all

yeah

the players who have never deemed before here's a little spoiler alert here here's the secret

it's the illusion of choice always whether you go to the tavern or you go to

the book store that m p c is going to be either in one place or

the other and they are going to have something for you

yeah

to do so it's not one way or the other now you can play

yeah

it one way or the other like oh if only they'd gone to that tavern that's

not how i do it because

yeah

i have a structure so on that circle like okay here is like the red hair

in is in the story i was campaign and he's playing tige who is this this

ferbolbuard i say here's

yeah

here's his ordinary world what journey is he going to go on that makes it that

he comes back to the ordinary world at the end with with the elixir coming back

as a different person evolved

yes

okay

and it's all about the character journey if the character journey happens in your dynamic world

that's a story worth telling

m

one hundred percent of the time every time if you do that for

m

each of your characters and do that for yourself as like the plot because i mean

you have your plot

oh

and then you have your sub plots would be like your character development somebody's long lost

grandfather comes back and they say oh it's been so long and then

oh

oh who now they feel like you read their stuff and they feel value as a

player now they're more invested and if they're invested in their acting now and their role

playing everybody else is going

a

to feed

yeah

off that energy so again the way that the table works now kind of from a

meta perspective if we're looking

yeah

at the tap itself and

yeah

not so much of the game um everybody's feeding off each other's like role playing energy

nd that excitement in that gumption and everybody is going to buy more into it hopefully

um if that's what your players want and that should be established in session zero so

i'm going to assume that everybody does that and i'm going to assume that that's the

way it's going to go

m

because it should have been discussed beforehand if that was going

m

to be an issue

ah

excellent

yeah

well i hate to cut

yeah

all of us off but we have gone the the allotted

my

thirty minutes which is insane to think because that went so fast garret it was

that did

awesome

duffle

haven't

by

you hear it and talking

yeah

honestly i had two challenges one just sitting back and listening and just enjoying it that

their challenge was not asking all the questions and things like that so listener if you

want garret to come which i'm sure you do you're going to have to reach out

to him on his his social meeta which you'll tell us in a second and just

thank him for coming on the show you also have to reach out to us and

thank us for having him on the

m

show and we'll get him back and well we'll do another one of these but garret

how can our audience reach out to you support you and see what you're up to

i mean first off thanks for having me on the show this is awesome

okay

i mean i'm super passionate about storytelling

yeah

and about this stuff so it's super cool to have like to be able to have

this discussion with others who really enjoy the topic

yeah

but you can find two

yeah

twenty five at t w o two five games g a m s except for on

twitch where games is spelt with two s s because i'm a dumb dumb and have

to wait six months get that one s so

uh

that would be two twenty five games and that's where

yeah

we do our podcast the investigation check that's where we do home brewing history where we

look at historical events and home brew those characters events um that's where we do world

building wednesdays and that's just where we house all our programs and all our shows and

stuff so i hope you can leave us to follow i hope you

yeah

follow us on instagram where we post all our our pictures and all our kind of

what's going on in the world at twenty

oh

five and again to you both tanner

oh

and justin thank you all

m

so much for having me on it was an honor and a privilege and i thoroughly

enjoyed it and thank you again

no honestly so great to have you

likewise a

appreciate that

yeah so for tanner garrett before we say so long to our adventurer listener last words

from both of you

i'll i'll go because garret i think would probably a better final thought

m

but

oh

honestly for dynamic dynamic campaigns it's so much

oh

it's not about

ah

variety because otherwise you'll just have a billion tabs

yeah

open for every game right

yeah

i think i realized that

oh

today it's much more about okay

ah

can you make it so that there are there's enough there's variety

m yeah

that matters

yeah

can you make it so that they have highs and lows so that they're invested in

the various aspects of your campaign instead of just one or two you know and

yeah

i think that that's what really matters

yeah

absolutely i couldn't agree more to that and i would say there's no right way to

d m and there's really no wrong

oh

way to d m it's whatever brings you joy whatever brings the table joy and as

long as everybody's having fun you're doing it right because at the end of the day

it's it's a game even though it kind of feels like story telling guide lines more

so

oh

than a game in my humble opinion

yeah

but it's meant to be fun and as long as you're having fun that's all that

matters you can take everything i said as as gospel and script scripture you can take

everything i say and throw it in the tray

oh

as long as you are having fun then you're doing it right good job you have

my my support good for you you did it bravo

oh

uh h

excellent so listener adventurer make sure you have fun we'll be back next week with another

episode but from all of us here how to be a better d m and from

garrett we'll see us and let's go ahead and roll initiative