justin_lewis:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm Justin Lewis and I'm here with Rob Van Auchen. I said that right, right?

rob:

Yes, you did.

justin_lewis:

Awesome. And today we are continuing our mini series on a specific homebrew project that we are making with Rob. And today's gonna be a little bit different kind of an episode. For those of you who are new to the show, this is the show where we help you learn how to craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions. of D&D 5e and soon to be 1D&D. That is the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

huge thing. Yeah. So today, usually we talk about different tips, techniques, practices. Today we're actually kind of going to get into the making of the sausage, as you will. I'm not huge on that phrase, but that's what we're doing, in showing you how to work on a homebrew project such as a one-shot or a mini adventure or an encounter. but also how to collaborate with someone. So that way as a DM, you're not just doing it by yourself. You can reach out to other DMS or even players and take some load off of your shoulders and make it more fun and connect with other people. So to catch you up, last time we started work on essentially a festival slash recruiting event from a guild slash Academy of Adventurers. Because in this organization's past, recent past, they've lost a fair number of their members and they are trying to replenish. So the adventure slash one-shot will take place in really any city we want to make this agnostic towards any particular setting. And really the point is to introduce your characters to this academy slash guild and have them do trials, tests to see if they get in. And then we'll see what else happens. Uh, so let's go away with it. And actually on that note, uh, Rob, I was thinking, why do we have to limit it to a guild or an academy? We could just in it, just say guild slash Academy, uh, up to the DM's discretion. Cause really there's not that much of a difference, you know, like

rob:

Absolutely. I love that. I think that's a great idea to kind of, or even give them a randomized table to kind of have that decision.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

But yeah,

justin_lewis:

exactly.

rob:

we want to leave the DM some room to wiggle, right?

justin_lewis:

Yeah, yeah. And it'll be awesome to, although I am particularly partial to Robric's Academy of Adventuring the Name, what maybe we'll put that as, you know, in one of those appendix tables of names for your academy slash guild. But I think going that route will probably be a lot better than making us choose, we'll just let them choose.

rob:

I'm a, as I've gained some years under my belt as a DM, I have learned to lean into, I've learned to embrace uncertainty. And some of my best moments were when I had no idea what I was going to do. And in those moments, I may have leaned on a random table of something like the affiliates, a table of names or a table of weird things that take place. And so I love providing random tables, anything from D4s to D100s to just, You know, you need something, roll the die, and you're off and running. And I try and make those tables as provocative as possible so that the DM has some wiggle room to kind of insert and do what they want to do.

justin_lewis:

I love that, I love that. So let's go over some of the comments that we'd both made starting at the top. Let's,

rob:

Sure. I also

justin_lewis:

sorry.

rob:

just for your listeners who can't see what we're looking at right now, and then first of all, this is a lot of fun, right? So this is my first collaboration with another DM of any sort outside of like my homebrew groups and whatnot. And for those who are listening, like our tools, like what we're using to collaborate currently has been, we've been using Google Docs, which is really simple and straightforward and free for everybody. And some of the templates that we've. have borrowed from are from the DMs Guild, where they have a whole section on creator resources. So if you're a young DM or you're a young game designer and you're looking to get started and writing stuff is part and parcel for your happiness in life, by all means head on over to the DMs Guild and check out some of their creator templates. And my other really great resource has been an organization called Storytellers Collective or Stoko. as you'll hear me refer to them as, and they have these great sort of learn at your own pace workshops where they provide some templates, but they also provide you really good advice. And so that's kind of been my growth as a writer. And so for those of you who are listening, it's all me, check it out. But anyway,

justin_lewis:

So that

rob:

back

justin_lewis:

was

rob:

to you.

justin_lewis:

Storytellers Collective, you said?

rob:

Yeah, Storytellers Collective has been, it's cool because they're relatively inexpensive for their courses and a lot of the ones that they offer are free. But it's kind of like here's a writing workshop in 30 days and they give you these sort of projects to do at your own pace over that course and they attach a Discord to each of them so that as you're working through them, even if they offered a course, you know, three years ago, you could still hop on a Discord and get some somebody who's manning the ship over there to kind of give you some feedback. And they have everything from like creating treasure, to creating loot, to creating puzzles, to how to write your first adventure, how to write your first encounter. And one of the first things I published was with them, and it got published in their anthology, which is nice, because they do these things every summer and every spring, and it's a nice way to get your name out there that's attached to sort of a bigger entity to kind of help you into the process.

justin_lewis:

Wow, that's awesome. I'm actually gonna have to check that out for myself.

rob:

I'm looking forward to that. I think they do one in the fall too. I've always contributed to the spring encounter and the spring one is challenging because it's like a one-page encounter and it's a lot harder than it sounds. You think one page? That's easy. You wind up chopping out so much of what you want just to get it onto the page. But I digress. Back to our one-shot.

justin_lewis:

Yeah. So, um, as, as I mentioned before, the kind of the, the way that the, the story goes in this, in this one shot adventure, uh, is the party members go to this city or they find themselves in this city. It doesn't really matter how they get there. They just, they're there and they discover this festival for joining this, uh, guild or academy. And originally we thought that there would be like mentors. that would be offering trials, kind of like an internship or apprenticeship. Rob made the suggestion that, uh, instead we switch it to doing six ability score kind of trials and things like that. Um, one thought that I had on that is we definitely need to be very careful in doing that. So that way the, the trials and feats aren't, aren't just dice rolls. Like, I get worried that, you know, the person goes and does a constitution trial and all they can do is just a dice roll over and over again. So I guess I want to think of how we can make it so there can be other ways they can like think through certain problems as a player to supplement, you know,

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

their

rob:

and that's

justin_lewis:

dice rolls.

rob:

a wise decision, actually. Sometimes I get so caught up in the mechanism that I sometimes sacrifice the gameplay for half a second, but that's why this collaboration's cool, because you're there to check me on those things.

justin_lewis:

For sure. No, and I feel the same way.

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

Like,

rob:

so

justin_lewis:

reverse.

rob:

if in my mind's eye, I picture any one of our six events structured around any particular ability score, and so... What that would look like is there's like a feat of strength trial or there's a trial of constitution and trial of dexterity. And the players decide they want to head over there and test their metal. One of the complications. I can think of a few actually We can kind of go back to our original idea with not necessarily a mentor, but let's make a really interesting NPC as the host of that particular trial and maybe that NPC is really accommodating or maybe that NPC is really antagonistic and sort of, you know, criticizes the players and thinks that they'll fail. And I'm thinking of like the old fashioned guy at the dunk tank, right? Who, you know, he sits there and you can't, you know, dunk me and maybe before they throw their dexterity role to knock the jester into the dunk tank, they have to roll a constitution or charisma save. And if they fail it, there's some kind of, they have to roll with disadvantage, right? So there is some kind of. push and pull there. It is a series of dice rolls, but it's also like this role playing opportunity to how does your character respond to the jester at the

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

dunk tank. Another complication that we could do is we could have opponents or other people that are applying or attempting the same trial and thus it's not just simply a matter of do I get the highest dice roll and defeat this particular trial, do I defeat the other characters dice rolls, right? You can also add an easy, medium, hard opponent. So there's one character who is going to roll a DC5. There's

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

another character who's got your DC10, but maybe the top character is a DC15. And so as you're trying to best these other opponents, that is the case. And then my third choice would be it's not just a dice roll, but it's more like a dice roll tree. so that depending on your role, there are various outcomes that sort of fork off and any one particular dice roll can steer you into a series of different mishaps or benefits. So I think those are probably three ways to spice this up that excite

justin_lewis:

for sure.

rob:

me when I think about them.

justin_lewis:

particularly

rob:

Back to you.

justin_lewis:

like number two and three, I think we could, and I see what you mean with kind of your comment, excuse me, your comment going back to the one page competition that you entered in. I see how this can easily blossom into something a little bit too expansive, you know, cause I'm like, yeah, we could just make this giant table of all these NPCs and. And I'm totally up for it, but I'm worried about, you know, like the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

poor sap on the other end of the paper. But I do like the opponent's idea, because like you said, it's a very good role-playing opportunity where you can point out and say, hey, this one particular guy seems to have your number, you know.

rob:

Yeah, and I think of course the opponent, I guess, sits better for certain trials, right? So the trial by strength, if we were to say, and we've spit fired a couple, but if we produce a randomized table, a D4 table, and one of them is a cart lift and one of them is a fight pit, the fight pit is a perfect example of how to incorporate the opponents, right? It is a little combat heavy, but the idea that, you know, there's four guys in a ring doing all sort of like little mini battle Royale. And one of them is the DC five strength and one of the DC 10, one of the, you could kind of see, but also like, um, you know, adding opponents, you could watch them interact with each other too. So like the heavy hitter can knock out the lightweight and then you're stuck with the middle guy and then. You know, what happens

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

again at the DM's

justin_lewis:

I really

rob:

discretion.

justin_lewis:

liked that. I really liked that. Speaking of the fight pit, the way, the way just how you described it, have you ever heard of Florentine football?

rob:

If not, tell me more.

justin_lewis:

So you'll have to look it up. It's like one of the craziest sports that for some reason is still around. It's, it's an Italian thing. And I think it's only like one city. There's like 10 teams or something. Um, but essentially it's football with, uh, and you know, football, like American football has different roles and stuff. Um, there are running backs, there are grapplers, there are strikers, meaning like pugilists, like punchers. Um, and you watch it and you see people trying to run a ball and then over in the corner you see two people just punching each other and then next to them there are two people grappling on the ground. It's like the weirdest mix of just every sport. They're like, let's throw in punchers to football

rob:

boxing

justin_lewis:

or whatever.

rob:

with...

justin_lewis:

Yeah, no, it's insane. But...

rob:

I feel like I feel a grand finale in my head now.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

You know, like a looking at sounding a

justin_lewis:

honestly,

rob:

lot like for learning football.

justin_lewis:

that might be like the good, like the big incursion. Like, you know, they're

rob:

Yeah, yeah.

justin_lewis:

at a certain point, they're just like, ah, we don't have time. So we're just going to throw everyone in this pit and everyone do get out,

rob:

Right,

justin_lewis:

which

rob:

right.

justin_lewis:

would

rob:

Or

justin_lewis:

be

rob:

even like

justin_lewis:

kind

rob:

a

justin_lewis:

of funny.

rob:

good old-fashioned royal rumble, you know. Oh

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

man, that's great. That's great. But again, I thank you for admitting that you see the scope of this kind of like potentially getting too large because

justin_lewis:

for sure.

rob:

I have suffered many a dropped project by continuing to build and build and build. And actually it was the, I go back to Storytellers trained my brain to, it's better to produce something small than never not to produce it all. And rather than continue to build and get discouraged for young writers out there and young DMs, you know, keep it keep it simple. Right. My most complex adventures started from something small, right.

justin_lewis:

Love that.

rob:

Better to really flesh out something narrow, I think, that you cast too wide a net and get lost.

justin_lewis:

Yeah. To that note then, I think with your kind of Bell's idea, maybe we might be better with just sticking with like the trials named Trial of Constitution and so on, especially if this is geared towards newer DMS. We're trying to kind of bring them in. And again, to your earlier point, I should probably with some of the tables that I've made, like simplify them down and then put them as like appendices or something like that. So that way

rob:

deeper

justin_lewis:

it

rob:

options.

justin_lewis:

is

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

a lot more

rob:

again,

justin_lewis:

simple.

rob:

I don't see anything too wrong with a random table of D8, even D12. I just keeping in mind the rookie DM who, like myself,

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

once upon

justin_lewis:

no yeah.

rob:

a time, wanted to do everything and

justin_lewis:

100%

rob:

thus

justin_lewis:

Yeah

rob:

decided, I'm going to have eight trials of constitution. in my fair and make them go through every single one of them.

justin_lewis:

So I think then what we might do is I'll simplify the table down. I'll keep the table in the appendix. I'll simplify it down to just four, and then say everyone does two events no matter what, no matter how many players you have. And then if they want to do more, they can see the appendix.

rob:

Actually, you just sparked something that I remembered or forgot, I guess. You just reminded me to circle back to this. On our cover page or on our insert page, it's always nice to provide would-be consumers with the levels for the anticipated party and the amount of time. So, for example, this might be a four to six hour event or game. with level one to five players, something like that. So our trial should reflect the difficulty of the anticipated player party. And

justin_lewis:

For sure.

rob:

anything above or below that would be at the DM's discretion to enhance the difficulty checks and things of that nature. But I guess in my head, I'm picturing this as a level four adventure or encounter, we should say, for a party of four to six. That sound right to you.

justin_lewis:

Level 4. When you say level 4, what do you mean? Like,

rob:

I'm

justin_lewis:

the

rob:

sorry,

justin_lewis:

party's at level 4?

rob:

I misspoke, a four hour adventure for levels one through four,

justin_lewis:

Ah,

rob:

levels

justin_lewis:

gotcha.

rob:

one through five. Sorry.

justin_lewis:

No, yeah, that makes sense. I would definitely say, um, three to four hour is what I would put it as, especially

rob:

Perfect.

justin_lewis:

for the newer DMs, just so that way they're not like, Oh gosh, I have to do this for four hours instead. We can be like, nah, you can stop it. You can stop it too. If you guys are having fun and you know, that box is checked. Um, you know, I think that's

rob:

And

justin_lewis:

a good idea.

rob:

what I really love about this idea is that it's really a collection of encounters, right? And for those of you listening, we started as we're gonna write an encounter. And then we were like, well, maybe we'll write an adventure. And we've kind of done something in the middle. And this is really episodic. So if you...

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm Justin Lewis and I'm here with

Rob Van Auchen. I said that right, right?

Yes, you did.

Awesome. And today we are continuing our mini series on a specific homebrew project

that we are making with Rob. And today's gonna be a little bit different

kind of an episode. For those of you who are new to the show, this is the

show where we help you learn how to craft better stories for yourself and

your players as you DM sessions. of D&D 5e and soon to be 1D&D. That is the

Yeah.

huge thing. Yeah. So today, usually we talk about different tips, techniques,

practices. Today we're actually kind of going to get into the making of the

sausage, as you will. I'm not huge on that phrase, but that's what we're

doing, in showing you how to work on a homebrew project such as a one-shot

or a mini adventure or an encounter. but also how to collaborate with someone. So

that way as a DM, you're not just doing it by yourself. You can reach out

to other DMS or even players and take some load off of your shoulders and

make it more fun and connect with other people. So to catch you up, last

time we started work on essentially a festival slash recruiting event from a guild

slash Academy of Adventurers. Because in this organization's past, recent

past, they've lost a fair number of their members and they are trying to replenish.

So the adventure slash one-shot will take place in really any city we want

to make this agnostic towards any particular setting. And really the point

is to introduce your characters to this academy slash guild and have them do

trials, tests to see if they get in. And then we'll see what else happens.

Uh, so let's go away with it. And actually on that note, uh, Rob, I was thinking,

why do we have to limit it to a guild or an academy? We could just in it,

just say guild slash Academy, uh, up to the DM's discretion. Cause really

there's not that much of a difference, you know, like

Absolutely. I love that. I think that's a great idea to kind of, or even give them

a randomized table to kind of have that decision.

Yeah,

But yeah,

exactly.

we want to leave the DM some room to wiggle, right?

Yeah, yeah. And it'll be awesome to, although I am particularly partial to Robric's

Academy of Adventuring the Name, what maybe we'll put that as, you know, in

one of those appendix tables of names for your academy slash guild. But

I think going that route will probably be a lot better than making us choose,

we'll just let them choose.

I'm a, as I've gained some years under my belt as a DM, I have learned to lean into,

I've learned to embrace uncertainty. And some of my best moments were when I had

no idea what I was going to do. And in those moments, I may have leaned on a random

table of something like the affiliates, a table of names or a table of weird things

that take place. And so I love providing random tables, anything from D4s to D100s to

just, You know, you need something, roll the die, and you're off and running. And I

try and make those tables as provocative as possible so that the DM has some wiggle

room to kind of insert and do what they want to do.

I love that, I love that. So let's go over some of the comments that we'd

both made starting at the top. Let's,

Sure. I also

sorry.

just for your listeners who can't see what we're looking at right now, and then first

of all, this is a lot of fun, right? So this is my first collaboration with another

DM of any sort outside of like my homebrew groups and whatnot. And for those who are listening,

like our tools, like what we're using to collaborate currently has been, we've been

using Google Docs, which is really simple and straightforward and free for everybody.

And some of the templates that we've. have borrowed from are from the DMs Guild,

where they have a whole section on creator resources. So if you're a young DM or you're

a young game designer and you're looking to get started and writing stuff is part and

parcel for your happiness in life, by all means head on over to the DMs Guild and

check out some of their creator templates. And my other really great resource has been

an organization called Storytellers Collective or Stoko. as you'll hear me refer to them as,

and they have these great sort of learn at your own pace workshops where they provide

some templates, but they also provide you really good advice. And so that's kind

of been my growth as a writer. And so for those of you who are listening, it's all

me, check it out. But anyway,

So that

back

was

to you.

Storytellers Collective, you said?

Yeah, Storytellers Collective has been, it's cool because they're relatively inexpensive

for their courses and a lot of the ones that they offer are free. But it's kind of

like here's a writing workshop in 30 days and they give you these sort of projects

to do at your own pace over that course and they attach a Discord to each of them so

that as you're working through them, even if they offered a course, you know, three

years ago, you could still hop on a Discord and get some somebody who's manning the ship

over there to kind of give you some feedback. And they have everything from like creating

treasure, to creating loot, to creating puzzles, to how to write your first adventure,

how to write your first encounter. And one of the first things I published was with

them, and it got published in their anthology, which is nice, because they do these things

every summer and every spring, and it's a nice way to get your name out there that's

attached to sort of a bigger entity to kind of help you into the process.

Wow, that's awesome. I'm actually gonna have to check that out for myself.

I'm looking forward to that. I think they do one in the fall too. I've always contributed

to the spring encounter and the spring one is challenging because it's like a one-page

encounter and it's a lot harder than it sounds. You think one page? That's easy.

You wind up chopping out so much of what you want just to get it onto the page. But

I digress. Back to our one-shot.

Yeah. So, um, as, as I mentioned before, the kind of the, the way that the,

the story goes in this, in this one shot adventure, uh, is the party members

go to this city or they find themselves in this city. It doesn't really

matter how they get there. They just, they're there and they discover this

festival for joining this, uh, guild or academy. And originally we thought

that there would be like mentors. that would be offering trials, kind of like

an internship or apprenticeship. Rob made the suggestion that, uh, instead we

switch it to doing six ability score kind of trials and things like that.

Um, one thought that I had on that is we definitely need to be very careful

in doing that. So that way the, the trials and feats aren't, aren't just dice

rolls. Like, I get worried that, you know, the person goes and does a constitution

trial and all they can do is just a dice roll over and over again. So I

guess I want to think of how we can make it so there can be other ways they

can like think through certain problems as a player to supplement, you know,

Yeah,

their

and that's

dice rolls.

a wise decision, actually. Sometimes I get so caught up in the mechanism that I

sometimes sacrifice the gameplay for half a second, but that's why this collaboration's

cool, because you're there to check me on those things.

For sure. No, and I feel the same way.

Yeah,

Like,

so

reverse.

if in my mind's eye, I picture any one of our six events structured around any particular

ability score, and so... What that would look like is there's like a feat of strength

trial or there's a trial of constitution and trial of dexterity. And the players decide

they want to head over there and test their metal. One of the complications. I can

think of a few actually We can kind of go back to our original idea with not necessarily

a mentor, but let's make a really interesting NPC as the host of that particular trial and

maybe that NPC is really accommodating or maybe that NPC is really antagonistic and

sort of, you know, criticizes the players and thinks that they'll fail. And I'm thinking

of like the old fashioned guy at the dunk tank, right? Who, you know, he sits there

and you can't, you know, dunk me and maybe before they throw their dexterity role

to knock the jester into the dunk tank, they have to roll a constitution or charisma

save. And if they fail it, there's some kind of, they have to roll with disadvantage,

right? So there is some kind of. push and pull there. It is a series of dice rolls,

but it's also like this role playing opportunity to how does your character respond

to the jester at the

Mm-hmm.

dunk tank. Another complication that we could do is we could have opponents or other

people that are applying or attempting the same trial and thus it's not just simply

a matter of do I get the highest dice roll and defeat this particular trial, do I

defeat the other characters dice rolls, right? You can also add an easy, medium, hard

opponent. So there's one character who is going to roll a DC5. There's

Mm-hmm.

another character who's got your DC10, but maybe the top character is a DC15. And

so as you're trying to best these other opponents, that is the case. And then my third

choice would be it's not just a dice roll, but it's more like a dice roll tree.

so that depending on your role, there are various outcomes that sort of fork off

and any one particular dice roll can steer you into a series of different mishaps

or benefits. So I think those are probably three ways to spice this up that excite

for sure.

me when I think about them.

particularly

Back to you.

like number two and three, I think we could, and I see what you mean with

kind of your comment, excuse me, your comment going back to the one page

competition that you entered in. I see how this can easily blossom into

something a little bit too expansive, you know, cause I'm like, yeah, we could just

make this giant table of all these NPCs and. And I'm totally up for it,

but I'm worried about, you know, like the

Yeah.

poor sap on the other end of the paper. But I do like the opponent's idea,

because like you said, it's a very good role-playing opportunity where

you can point out and say, hey, this one particular guy seems to have your

number, you know.

Yeah, and I think of course the opponent, I guess, sits better for certain trials, right?

So the trial by strength, if we were to say, and we've spit fired a couple, but

if we produce a randomized table, a D4 table, and one of them is a cart lift and one

of them is a fight pit, the fight pit is a perfect example of how to incorporate

the opponents, right? It is a little combat heavy, but the idea that, you know,

there's four guys in a ring doing all sort of like little mini battle Royale. And

one of them is the DC five strength and one of the DC 10, one of the, you could kind

of see, but also like, um, you know, adding opponents, you could watch them interact

with each other too. So like the heavy hitter can knock out the lightweight and then

you're stuck with the middle guy and then. You know, what happens

Yeah.

again at the DM's

I really

discretion.

liked that. I really liked that. Speaking of the fight pit, the way, the way

just how you described it, have you ever heard of Florentine football?

If not, tell me more.

So you'll have to look it up. It's like one of the craziest sports that for

some reason is still around. It's, it's an Italian thing. And I think it's

only like one city. There's like 10 teams or something. Um, but essentially

it's football with, uh, and you know, football, like American football

has different roles and stuff. Um, there are running backs, there are grapplers,

there are strikers, meaning like pugilists, like punchers. Um, and you

watch it and you see people trying to run a ball and then over in the corner

you see two people just punching each other and then next to them there are

two people grappling on the ground. It's like the weirdest mix of just

every sport. They're like, let's throw in punchers to football

boxing

or whatever.

with...

Yeah, no, it's insane. But...

I feel like I feel a grand finale in my head now.

Yeah,

You know, like a looking at sounding a

honestly,

lot like for learning football.

that might be like the good, like the big incursion. Like, you know, they're

Yeah, yeah.

at a certain point, they're just like, ah, we don't have time. So we're

just going to throw everyone in this pit and everyone do get out,

Right,

which

right.

would

Or

be

even like

kind

a

of funny.

good old-fashioned royal rumble, you know. Oh

Yeah.

man, that's great. That's great. But again, I thank you for admitting that you see

the scope of this kind of like potentially getting too large because

for sure.

I have suffered many a dropped project by continuing to build and build and build.

And actually it was the, I go back to Storytellers trained my brain to, it's better

to produce something small than never not to produce it all. And rather than continue

to build and get discouraged for young writers out there and young DMs, you know,

keep it keep it simple. Right. My most complex adventures started from something small,

right.

Love that.

Better to really flesh out something narrow, I think, that you cast too wide a net

and get lost.

Yeah. To that note then, I think with your kind of Bell's idea, maybe we might

be better with just sticking with like the trials named Trial of Constitution

and so on, especially if this is geared towards newer DMS. We're trying to

kind of bring them in. And again, to your earlier point, I should probably with

some of the tables that I've made, like simplify them down and then put

them as like appendices or something like that. So that way

deeper

it

options.

is

Yeah,

a lot more

again,

simple.

I don't see anything too wrong with a random table of D8, even D12. I just keeping

in mind the rookie DM who, like myself,

Yeah,

once upon

no yeah.

a time, wanted to do everything and

100%

thus

Yeah

decided, I'm going to have eight trials of constitution. in my fair and make them go

through every single one of them.

So I think then what we might do is I'll simplify the table down. I'll keep

the table in the appendix. I'll simplify it down to just four, and then say

everyone does two events no matter what, no matter how many players you

have. And then if they want to do more, they can see the appendix.

Actually, you just sparked something that I remembered or forgot, I guess. You just

reminded me to circle back to this. On our cover page or on our insert page, it's

always nice to provide would-be consumers with the levels for the anticipated party and

the amount of time. So, for example, this might be a four to six hour event or game.

with level one to five players, something like that. So our trial should reflect the

difficulty of the anticipated player party. And

For sure.

anything above or below that would be at the DM's discretion to enhance the difficulty

checks and things of that nature. But I guess in my head, I'm picturing this as a

level four adventure or encounter, we should say, for a party of four to six. That

sound right to you.

Level 4. When you say level 4, what do you mean? Like,

I'm

the

sorry,

party's at level 4?

I misspoke, a four hour adventure for levels one through four,

Ah,

levels

gotcha.

one through five. Sorry.

No, yeah, that makes sense. I would definitely say, um, three to four hour

is what I would put it as, especially

Perfect.

for the newer DMs, just so that way they're not like, Oh gosh, I have to do

this for four hours instead. We can be like, nah, you can stop it. You can

stop it too. If you guys are having fun and you know, that box is checked.

Um, you know, I think that's

And

a good idea.

what I really love about this idea is that it's really a collection of encounters,

right? And for those of you listening, we started as we're gonna write an encounter.

And then we were like, well, maybe we'll write an adventure. And we've kind of done

something in the middle. And this is really episodic. So if you wanted to play,

if you had an hour to play with your party and you wanted to do one trial, you could

do that. I didn't think you could play D&D for an hour, but I was listening to some

other live action plays, and it can be done. And I actually tried it. I did one hour

games. I did about six to seven of them, and it wound up being a really fun activity.

So you could do this episodically, or you could sit down for like, you know, the

long haul and try and get the entire encounter done at once. But this could very

easily fit into a larger module, a larger campaign. What I think is really cool about

this is that we've built in a lot of flexibility. So if you have a campaign going

and you find that your characters are a few levels behind, but you don't just want

to grant them the milestone, you want to kind of have, like, give them some reason

to level up, this is a perfect way to have them do that and exercise some skills.

And also, it's not just a bunch of combat roles, right? I love the combat events. in

my D&D games, but sometimes I find that they can just be a little dry. This is challenging

your players to use their other skills in fun and kind of different ways, right? So

you might have to use your animal handling ability. You might have to use your stealth

at some point, right? Like, so this is kind of, kind of cool. I'm digging it.

Awesome. So I think, gosh, there was something else I was going to bring up.

Do you think it would be important, just curious, for those DMs who do want to

fit this into a larger campaign, now that I'm saying it out loud, I'm thinking

maybe we should just leave it up to them. But do you think we should? like

clearly define or at least give some suggestions as to what benefits they can

derive from being in the guild slash academy. Like you get these resources

and this like that, or do you think we should just leave it up to the DM?

Well, I think, yeah, so I like, so in my, what I would imagine doing is that we would

give them like a setting or a backdrop for this. And I think because now we're going

to kind of open that up from a guild, an academy, it could be a den of outlaws, it

could be the king's guard, it could be a multiple of things now, right? But I think

the benefits should be in kind of like the background for this. So Being part of this

group or surviving these trials would mean a boon in some way, in terms of getting

resources or maps, patrons, fame, glory. If you're playing a campaign of intrigue, maybe

you've built some kind of intrigue mechanism, intrigue point into your game so that your

characters have some kind of fame that they can then spend these points for favors

in some, you know. place and I like that if you're doing like this as an outlaw den

and you gain something like an underground kind of trial set of trials then you gain favor

with some like underworld bosses or you know you're able to kind of manipulate some

crime lord in some way or if you're gonna do this as a tournament in front of the king

and the queen to see who's like you know top dog in the in the kingdom you gain access

to like the King's treasure vault or And again, that's like a really flexible thing.

Like King's Treasure Vault didn't like, he's gonna fund my next adventure or I'm gonna

now steal from the King's Treasure Vault.

Yeah.

I'm so sorry. Or that they maybe outfit you with that long awaited suit of armor that

you've been dying for. And that's another carrot that the DM might consider, right? Like

if you're playing with a veteran group and things are getting a little flat, what

is it that they want that they've been playing for so long? Do they wanna resurrect

a character? Do they want to get a sword that's... bit beyond their level right now.

Do they want to map to a place that's been long forgotten? And these are things that

you can dangle over them if they decide to engage with these trials and go through

them. There's a multitude of reasons that players might want this. And I think it's

cool to stick maybe a couple of them in the background. Again, everything's always

up to the... For sure, because I'm the dungeon

Hehehehehehe

master. For those of you listening, I've got a shirt on that says, because I'm the dungeon

master. That's why.

I love it. Um, I think you're right. And I think we should maybe in the notes

somewhere, describe, like as the DM, feel free and add any boons or rewards

at the end. I do think that maybe we should like dangle the carrot, especially

for players that are maybe gold oriented. Um, we say something like the, the

absolute winner of each trial. Like the top of the top, the very, very best

gets 500 gold pieces, something obvious, simple that, you know, would be kind

of a general motivator for a lot of players slash characters. Um, but that

there is a probability that they won't get it just because there's so many

contestants and things like that. But, um,

Yeah, gold is the universal motivator at

Yeah.

the gaming table. But I would also encourage DMs to really talk to your players and know

your players. So if you've got a player that is, I have a particular character I'm

fond of, he's a member of the Order of Scribes, and all he wants to do is collect

every spell. Even if he can't cast it, he just wants to be able to collect every spell.

And if you have that player at your table, then maybe one of the carrots is a scroll a

really rare spell written on it. Or if you have a druidic character who loves fauna

or animals, maybe the character is an owlbear cub. Maybe they've been dying for a

familiar and oh my gosh, that's the prize. You know, so every great game starts with just

a communication between the DM and the player. And obviously I think we should build

in some rewards for each of these. But DM should absolutely feel the flexibility to

deviate from whatever we put on paper just to make their game better.

I agree. I agree completely. Kind of switching, what's it called? Tax here.

I wanted to get your opinion on the description I wrote for kind of the

general trials. I described and for the listener, the way I described it

was you go into this kind of central square area where there's lots of booths

set up. It's kind of like a general farmers market festival. And in the

very middle is. like a brightly colored tent with sign above it that says the

guild slash Academy's name. So in this case, Robb Riggs Academy of adventuring

or, you know, however you want to do it. There are two lines entering. One

seems to be just general common folk and one seems to be candidates or contestants.

And you get in line and you enter and you get to a booth and there's a

lady at the front who kind of looks bored with her life and says, what do

you, you know, what uh what trial

Name and occupation.

are you entering exactly

Ha ha ha.

and she directs you and as you enter this tent it's kind of like a harry potter

effect um where the tent is like huge in inside and the commoners all have

kind of seats where they can see the different trials and you're directed

into different compartments within the tent where you do your trial i wanted

to see what you thought about that rob

I think it's great. I think it's wonderful. I think we should also build some like outdoor

spaces. But I love this idea of like tent as well. It almost has like an extra-dimensional

space, right? Like it's a sieve

Mm-hmm.

and it's way bigger on the inside and it's almost like this bizarre of places and

it's a mixture

All

of

right.

heady smells and raucous voices. And I think that's cool. And I like the two line

thing. I think I overlooked that because now that I'm hearing you say that, I just love

that idea of like, you know, here are some spectators, but here are the you're going

to be competing against. And it's a great way for like the players to like, you know,

get shouldered by the bully

Mm-hmm.

or see the meek character that they might later want to bail out unbeknownst to them

with a plant by the, the professors in an attempt to see which of the characters had

the most kind of humanity, right? Like,

Yeah.

uh, something like that, you know, there's a million things that would be cool here to

do. So I, I'm totally digging the two lines and I think the description is, is awesome.

really cool.

And actually, now that you bring up that, I think in the contestant line might

be a great place to, if your characters haven't met, it might be a great

place to have them kind of bump into each other, make small talk and be like,

oh, what are you doing here? And just kind of be friendly. Or like you said,

have them talk to a bully and accidentally make an enemy or something.

Um, that might be my favorite idea right now because so I off camera off record, we've

talked a little bit about, um, I think I sent you an email about my, my problems with

one shots. I love one shot, but they're often very contrived in terms of placing the

players together. Cause sometimes the players don't know each other. Uh, sometimes

they're playing online. Um, and so it's almost like we always have to force the players

to kind of like be best friends right away, just so that we can have this adventure

together.

Mm-hmm.

I love the idea of the sort of organic, we're all waiting in line to do this thing

and we're edgy, we're on nerves and maybe you wanna find a buddy or maybe you just wanna

build your team up really quickly and it gives the players an opportunity to interact

organically in the first 10 or 15 minutes that you're sitting at the gaming table and

right as they're starting to talk and get to know each other and where you're from

and hail and hearty, nice sword kind of conversation. That's when. the lady at the

booth, you know, name and occupation. You know,

Yeah.

I think that's awesome. I love that, I love that. Anytime you could build some kind

of like authentic organic interaction, is always gonna, I think, milk the best role

playing out of the people at the table. So kudos.

I agree.

That's why you have the podcast. Ha ha ha. Ha ha

No,

ha.

I have a podcast because I was dumb enough to buy a microphone and pay a certain

amount of money a week to do it. Kind of even deepening what you were saying,

I think it might even be useful to allow them to kind of meet each other and

be like, and next to you, you see so and so and have the player start talking

and then like randomly have like a small group of bullies, like maybe equal

to in number or maybe one more than like the party trying like butt their

way to the front or something and, and in a sense galvanize the, the idea

of the bullies are the enemies and then the players are all on the same side,

whether they, you know, whether they intended to or not and kind of force them

to have like a, a unique uniquely common enemy. I think that might be useful

too.

love it. I love it. That's got to be like the next thing we write on paper because

I don't want to forget it.

Excellent.

Yeah, and they could all be characterized by like, you know, people of privilege, maybe

they're from royal blood or something, and they just

Yeah.

want to storm to the front of the line or, you know, give them some commonality. They're

all wearing like, you know, deep red jurgens or something like

All right.

that. And one

Yeah.

of them has to be a cackling bonehead.

Yeah. And, and they're all, ironically, they're all mimics of the, like

each

Yeah.

party of the bully group is like the same

Right.

class as

Oh, I

one

love

of the,

it. Yeah.

so they're like

There.

doppelgangers almost.

Villainous pantomimes of the party itself. Right.

Exactly.

So if you've got a barbarian, it's a one to one. I love that

Exactly.

because then when those players go through the trials and they see their equal, you know.

And I had this one idea for like dexterity as being like the good old fashioned log roll

where you both jump up on a log and you're pedaling. And it's like best

I love

out of

that.

five falls or something like that. And

Yeah.

now you're standing on a log with this person and they cheat by throwing some oil

on the log or something like that.

ball bearings like everyone

Yeah,

does.

yeah. I don't know.

I love that.

I think that's great.

That is a really good, the log

We have fun

roll.

here.

Yes, yes indeed.

Very cool.

Excellent. So then I think what needs to happen is we need the trials fleshed

out a little bit more, which each of us can do kind of on our own.

And again, I don't want to put this out there and you can absolutely shoot this idea

down. But and again, I'm not sure when this will air, but maybe your listeners have

some ideas for a trial of strength or intelligence or constitution. Maybe we poll

the audience if you have an idea.

That

Maybe

is

they

a

could

really

email

good idea.

it to you. Yeah, we'd love, I think I'd love to hear what some of the constituents

are thinking out there. And. Just, I guess, to lay it out, right, we are planning

six trials based around the primary ability scores that are fundamental to most RPG games.

If you have a concept for a trial of strength, a trial of dexterity, intelligence,

constitution, charisma, wisdom, I think we'd like to hear it. Does that work

I

for

love

you?

that.

All right. You can make that happen in like an email or something. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll put that in the newsletter. Uh, see, I'm not entirely sure how it works

when they respond to the newsletter, but

Okay,

I'll

Google

put

Doc

it in the

or

newsletter.

something.

Yeah. I'll see.

Google.

One thing I thought also might be cool is to kind of do a competition and

like get all the submissions for one specific trial, maybe like the trial

of intelligence or something like that, and then put it as a poll of like

the ultimate showdown of trials out of these two, which one's better, you know,

and.

Very cool, yeah, yeah. I like that

thing

a lot.

that's a good idea off

Yeah,

the right that time

that's cool. That just kinda came, so I didn't wanna put you on the spot, but thanks,

I'm

No,

glad

that's

you were

a really

accepted.

good idea.

Yeah.

That's a really good idea. So I think then each of us will work on individual

trials with the caveat that they might get superseded by an even better

trial from the audience. And then I think what we need to decide is kind

of the incursions at the end. And for the audience, Rob has written down

a small table for kind of some possible incursions. So one is a scouting party

of ogres, orcs, or wolves, and things like that.

You're under the

Another

mill kind

is,

of invasion.

exactly. Another is a small green dragon, which would kind of be the harder

end of the spectrum. And then another is like an offshoot faction from the

academy slash guild ambushes the fair, kind of like, hey, we're still here.

We're, you know, like. were the cool part and you can't replace us. Another

one is a Seismonaut. Is that what it's supposed to?

Yeah, I invented this monitor here. And again, I'm not committed

Ah!

to it. It was just trying to think of something, a seismonog or a seismonaut, right?

Yeah, I

Emerges

love that. So

from

it's

the ground.

essentially like a giant worm, right?

Yeah.

Or something. Excellent. So just a big monster that happens to come into

the city. I think those are excellent options. And actually, we might put

that to a poll for the audience as well.

Yeah, and I also liked your earlier idea too, that sort of like Battle Royale kind of

obstacle course

Yes.

that kind of combines everything to kind of make the players, the party kind of combined

together as a team to do this one final thing, which I think works probably the best

if we're doing the opponent's route.

Mm-hmm.

Right, but again, I want the DMs to have that flexibility to say, yeah, I really wanted

this to be sort of like a. a school slash academy setting. So I'm gonna stick with the

opponents or this was really just a break in the larger campaign and I'm gonna use this

incursion at the end here to get back to my main storyline or maybe your players

had just a bunch of lousy roles and lost all of their trials and you want one final

thing to kind of galvanize them as a group and to kind of make them feel like winners

by the end of the encounter in some way, shape or form. I think that... giving the DM

that flexibility is a cool idea.

I really like that. So as far as kind of assignments go, it sounds like each

of us, here, let me write this down so I know.

We're going to start

And you

with

chime in. Go ahead.

trials. We'll each polish

Yes.

the trials.

trials and then

options

sub assignment

for...

for me is putting them on the newsletter.

Thank you.

tips.

Yes, tips, writing some tips. And then.

I think it would be good if each of us came up with some NPCs, like specifically

the bully types. So that way, if the DM wanted to, they could use them.

Yeah, and to kind of keep us from going too crazy, if we're gonna do like the NPC counter,

right? I think we should probably come

Mm-hmm.

up with four to six, I think is probably fair.

Exactly.

And then. kind of like an independent mission of mine to come up with a couple of

interesting NPCs to run each of these trials, but I can go on the back burner for

now.

No, I like that idea and kind of funnel that into polishing the trial itself.

Um, as in furnishing it with, you know, NPCs. And I do like the idea of like

possible. Rewards for, for doing particular ones better. Like maybe with this

one, you actually get a potion of healing or something like that. Um, but

Yeah, and I did some offbeat things like we could totally homebrew. Uh, you know, you

win the potion, uh, you're in the trial of strength and here's a, here's a strength

potion, right? Or if you're strong, you're probably not very charismatic. So here's a

potion that will make you care. You know,

Right, right.

we'll come up with something, uh, akin to that. I think it'd be cool. Maybe we'll

just chuck in a bunch of random tables at the back end.

Here's the one-shot and then here's an even longer list of appendices.

Right.

Let's see.

Very good.

Is there anything, oh, the table of, well, I guess that's appendix. Another

table, lol. I think that's like everything really that we need as far as like

assignments, unless you see anything else.

No, I think we're still on point, right? So we have a pretty good template and we've

been talking a lot behind the scenes here about what direction we wanna go in. I

like the idea of maybe stripping away the idea of guild slash academy and just kind

of offering suggestions to the DM and letting them choose. Because as we were talking

and came up with like the Outlaw Den and the King's Tournament, I was like, those

are really good ideas too. So this encounter or collection of encounters as it's starting

to become is a solid supplement for new DMs and veteran DMs alike to kind of walk their

way into kind of like teaching their players how to play the game. I think this

is awesome. This is really cool. I'm happy to be a part of it.

I love it. And honestly, it sounds like a really fun encounter, and I'm

excited for when, Rob, you get to host it for us, which would be cool, if

you're still up for that.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Excellent.

Hopefully you guys can play. You guys are

Yeah,

always the

yeah.

DM. You're the perma DM, right?

Yeah, yeah, that would be fun. Um, yes. Another thing I was just thinking

of just kind of off the top of my head, two things, actually, it would

be nice. So many, so many appendices, uh, in one of the appendices, maybe we could

describe how this might be translated into like different settings, specifically

thinking of like, like a, like kind of like a future tech setting, um, making

it so that this would be you know, like not high fantasy, but kind of similar

to Eberron. It like,

Oh yeah, yeah.

yeah, some of the things I was thinking of, like, how would we make it so

that

Yeah.

this wouldn't be just, you know,

Right,

superseded

the

by

Renaissance

technology

Fair,

or whatnot?

right? Not

Yeah.

just the Renaissance Fair, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, cool, yeah, we can add some.

And then some options for like, here's how you would make it like a Halloween

type theme or like a Christmas. Cause that would, I think that would be kind

of fun to be like, Oh, this is the Yuletide festival and it's being supplemented

by Robb Ricks Academy of adventuring, you know, and

Right. Hosted by, yeah. Ha ha ha.

all that. Exactly. And then the second thing I thought maybe another appendix,

gosh, another appendix, or maybe we could just point them to the Wild Beyond

the Witchlight. just kind of different things to fill the fair with, other

than in case their adventures are like, what kind of meats do they have here

or something like that. But I think those are appendix

Yeah,

talk.

appendix C-wording,

Yeah, yeah, so.

right. What's cooking randomized table?

Exactly, exactly, which is actually

What's

kind

that

of making me

smell

hungry.

randomized table? That's

I love that.

right,

I love that.

that works perfectly.

Well, thank you for coming again, Rob. Appreciate all your support

Pleasure.

and really making this fun and easy. Again, this is my first time collaborating

on something like this and my first time building an encounter or one shot

in kind of a formal matter that, you know, we're looking to publish it. So it's

really cool to see the process and think about like. the end user, so thank

you for sharing your expertise.

This is my pleasure. Thank you for sharing your time and your wisdom with me. I look forward

to continue to build this thing. I wish I had a good timeframe for it, but honestly,

I want to just produce the best product that we can and we'll take it one step at a

time. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on the show. Hopefully, we'll

do it again.

Yeah, agreed. And for listener, everything you need to connect with Rob as

well as catch his other adventure that he has published, which is the Lorecraft

Collection. I always miss up that last aft or aft.

No worries.

The Lorecraft Collection was you can purchase on the DM Guild, we'll put

the link in the show notes, but actually the link is betterdungeonmaster.com

slash Robrick and make sure to check out all his stuff. It's great, but

thank you for being here and we'll be back next time with another awesome

episode. Until then, let's roll initiative.