Craig Shipman makes an offer – VOICE MAIL

Craig Shipman

Brett and Sean – attached is an idea.  Let me know if it peaks your interest.

If you want to see me running the game here are some vids:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYOGZIpC-07NtWr-xBm8zm9aV3oA4HPM7

I’m excited to record with Brett for my podcast on February 9th.  You guys rock – keep up the good work.

Voicemail from Kyle

DM Cojo on Playing Pretend

Brett and Sean,

As I listened to you discuss the concept of “playing pretend” in RPGs, I found that I definitely agree that when we were kids, there was less need for us to be prompted by the game mechanics to act out what our characters did or said.  I agree, that many adult gamers or gamers new to the hobby can struggle with this. 

Your discussion made me realize that as an adult gamer, I have gravitated towards games that include some mechanics that promote this kind of narrative/pretend play.  Although I’m not into the more free form story games…I like when a simple game mechanic can drive the narrative at my table.

One example of this is the “Mighty deed of arms” mechanic in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.  That mechanic encourages narrative/pretend play by having the warrior or dwarf describe whatever cinematic melee action they want to attempt.  Then they roll a “deed die” with their attack die.  If the deed die comes up 3 or higher…their deed succeeds.  The higher the roll, the more successful their action is…and the deed die scales up with level progression, so higher level characters roll a larger deed die, but the target is still 3+.

Another game that does this well is FFG’s Star Wars narrative dice system.  The fact that players not only achieve successes and failures, but also narrative “advantages” or “threats” really pushes players to narratively describe additional elements of game play…thus, more interactive “pretending.” 

I find that my games are so much better when the players and GM put some imaginative pretending into their play, and definitely appreciate game systems that embed that into their mechanics.

Thanks!

DM Cojo

Deploy the love…I mean lore from Stephen Dragonspawn

Greetings my sexy BSers. Still enjoying the podcast and I’m wishing you another great year.

This topic is very timely and apropos, as I am writing my own home brew fantasy setting and I want to use the Fantasy Age system.  You brought and presented many valid ways to impart game details within the game. I’ve used a few of the same techniques, but I will admit that I haven’t used the “hired guide or sage” approach in a long time. I will have to bring this into play when I run my game. 

You boys mentioned that some systems allows players to add to the world or the scene. Fate is one, as well as Savage Worlds with its bennies, Star Wars & Genesys (destiny & story points respectively) which allows players some control the immediate environment or narrative. Expanding the use of those tokens/points to allow players to add to the world can be a great way to inspire the GM if they hadn’t fleshed out a particular element of the setting, but I believe that allowing this should be used sparingly to avoid adding something that could contradict facts that the GM may have already written but hasn’t shared yet. 

Such player input may be best used at a session zero when everyone at the table discuss the upcoming campaign and agree that this is part of building the world. This may not be needed if your game is set in a published game world such as Eberron or Star Wars, but can certainly still be used as this is your own game…this would not be an infraction and thus the BS Gaming police need not get involved. 

Thank you for producing such quality content. Keep up the BS.

Have a gay day.

Regards from Stephen Dragonspawn

Matt H. – Pre-Written Adventures vs Homebrew

Hello again Brett and Sean,

After listening to you guys for a while now it sounds to me like you both have your own preferences as far as running adventures of your own devising (aka Homebrew) or running from pre-written adventures goes. Forgive me if I’m mistaken but it seems like Brett tends to run his own homebrewed adventures while Sean likes to run something pre-made. I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on each approach, pros/cons, why you might prefer one over the other, etc.

As a newer GM I started with the 5th Edition D&D Starter Set adventure (The Lost Mine of Phandelver) which my first group played for a couple of sessions before suffering some turnover in players caused me to switch to making up my own adventures for a while. Once I had a solid group that could meet regularly and reliably I switched back to D&D’s premade adventures and we’ve played through Tyranny of Dragons, Tomb of Annihilation, and most recently Dragon of Icespire Peak.

It could be because I was so new to the hobby when I was attempting to make my own adventures but I frequently found myself feeling overwhelmed. I’d spend way more time coming up with concepts, working on balance, and wondering if it was going to be any good. With a pre-written adventure I find myself way more at ease. I won’t feel bad if things don’t work out well as I can just blame the adventure rather than myself and all I need to do to prepare is read ahead a bit. However, I am starting to feel like I am missing out on some aspects of the game by sticking to the script of a pre-made adventure. Character development feels practically non existent and it seems as though the players have little choice but to follow the path set out for them.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

Hopefully when this all blows over I can make it down to a Con to be properly knighted by Brett and become and true DM.

Thanks again,

Matt