Shane comments on the forums about Brett’s new approach

On Brett’s New Approach to running downtime and preliminary narrative in his game, I do this a lot and it does work. I run a back channel through slack for any of my players that want to work with downtime or want to setup their background as more than just a paragraph on a character sheet. One of my players is participating in a play by post solo game that run extemporaneously with the rest of our campaign. This process allows my players to switch out characters and know what they have been doing in between appearances and to keep XP up with the other players that prefer to run single characters. In short, if your players are up for it you can make this work. Oh and for when the need arises there is a dice roller app in Slack.

Laramie, fan of the show, comments on Brett’s new approach

AND ANOTHER THING!!

First off, I love Random Encounters, but you should REALLY edit down the comments of some people (read: me). I talk too damn much, and now all your listeners know it too.

Second FIRST OFF: Listen here you so-and-so. I’M cheating on you, but YOU listen to Colville about gaming? At least my other podcasts are about myths, fictions, and mostly hockey. It’s not my fault your hockey coverage sucks! (Sidebar, if anyone wants to talk hockey…)

“Seriously”. A few years ago (us being mid 30s) we ran a probably 5 year long sandbox game, ending around level low-to-mid teens. We all had fun with it, and it was a rotating cast, as everyone has a real life. But, it was “like back then”. If that’s what players want, it’s absolutely doable.

As far as how long should a game be? We just finished session 20ish (about 3 hours each) of my BarrowMaze game. I sent out an end of the year email “Is this still fun? Do you want a different campaign, different system? Rough guess on the map, you’re about 10% done with the dungeon…etc” email. Everyone said they are still having fun, so off we go. I did have one player quit about 5 session in, having missed 4 of them we had a nice adult talk about maybe this isn’t the set up for him, no hard feelings, and he agreed. Maybe this will turn into another 5 year game, if Bretts friends want in.

Downtime and technology. I run much like discussed. Since we play from 2100-midnight, to maximize play time, we play online. We use Fantasy Grounds and Google Hangouts for video. But for downtime, we have email chains, and rapid fire side plots with just one person sometimes slide over to Hangouts text. Which plays into Sean’s point about be written being “here it is”. Well, Sean… “it depends”. I’m running Barrowmaze, which is a HUGE megadungeon. The session before last ended with being in town, and the start of a series of downtime emails. There are current side stories with letters home, families, parents, in town interactions, romances, commercial dealings, other adventuring parties, all sorts of things. And the downtime spilled into the next session, which I assumed would wrap up and back to the hole. NOPE! Side quest into the blizzard covered forest. 3 hour session, and back to downtime, with NO dungeoneering. So, pre writens can be more than that, and I’m not a great GM.

1 million more of my words to noodle on.

Cheers

Idahogamer comments on Folklore Foes

As with most of the other comments it does not matter to me when the episode comes out, AS LONG AS IT DOES!! I am new to the podcast and I am current since August now I am just going through all of the 2019 episodes. My one question that I had after the podcast and watching the videos from Zee Bashew’s. What are some of the Apps, websites, online sites etc… Does everyone use, there seems to be a bazillion out there but what are the trusted or should I say better ones that everyone uses. Thanks to an older episode I found out about Roll 20, I had no idea that was an option and this has given me, a new hobbyist, an opportunity play more.

Thanks to everyone for letting me join your community.

Mike from Idaho

Bruce_C comments on Folklore Foes

Another cracking episode.

On ‘Folklore Foes’ I love incorporating monsters from folklore and legend. I’m actually working on self publishing DCC funnel adventure that incorporates some local legends (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Annis) Of course in many cases D&D and other RPGs ‘got there first’ with their own take on these creatures but it’s fun to research the original legends and try and go in a slightly different direction.

On ‘Averaging damage dice’ : I’m all for making the game your own (no such thing as bad wrong fun etc) but I’ll be having none of that crap at my table, thank you very much! As a player if I’m down to 9 HP and you drop ‘Oh this does 8d8 damage, lets just call it an average of thirty six’ I’m going to want you to roll some dice and hope like hell you come up with eight 1s!