SPOILER!!! Honeydew feeds them all to Bartholomew SPOILER!!!
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Anyways sorry the video is late I had to blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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I am deeply sorry for forcing everyone to use this tactical combat ruleset that is not at all suited to a game full of people who donât really want to kill things, BUT I THOUGHT IT WAS HILARIOUS
When it comes to tabletop, something Iâm only mildly experienced in, Iâm still heavily influenced by a dude named Blackjack, who posted back on web 1.0:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815084411/shadowrun.html.com/users/blackjack/
http://web.archive.org/web/20011224233544/archive.dumpshock.com/bjcorner/index.php3
He was writing in the context of Shadowrun, which is an absolutely implacable ruleset attached to one of the best settings ever, but the essence of his stuff was using a kind of Michael Mann approach to tabletop. From a purely practical standpoint: killing people is messy, and not just literally. Everyone has friends, family, a community. Every dead body is the center of a series of ripples of rage and vengeance.
BJ likes killin, but he also likes not dyin. Besides, people have information, and information is usually the best way not to die. Dead people donât talk.
I think itâs pretty obvious that all our characters are exaggerated pieces of our own personalities. Thatâs one of the reasons we work so well together, even as we heighten the contradictions (to coin a phrase) for comic effect or just to see how far things go off the rails.
Though I basically do not care if anyone listens to this podcast because I am mostly doing it for something to do, Iiiiiiiiiiiii also sort of wish it were popular, if only to show people in this brave new Online Social Media Tabletop Roleplaying Advice & Entertainment world that thereâs a way to play D&D that doesnât involve professional voice actors and sophomore worldbuilding efforts.
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This story also represents my own personal bias against what I deem unnecessary violence. The group could have pumped the building full of cyanide and then blown it up after taking the loot. They could have gone in with silent APDS flinging assault rifles and taken everybody out. And as a GM I should tolerate their actions without bias. But I normally wonât. This doesnât mean you canât snipe off guards around a compound or HMG a gang headquarters. Sometimes you almost have to. But think first: Is this what my character would really do? And if he would, make sure you can justify it to yourself in several ways just to be sure. Sometimes you have to do really terrible things to live, just make sure youâre not living to do really terrible things. Unless thatâs what your character is all about.
In which case he wonât even make it through one of my gaming sessions.
Pretty good for 1996!
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At some point I went off the rails re:research and started making Honeydew more Zoriastrian-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off than just âVictorian conception of Zoroastrianâ and as I drilled down to the specifics I realized I had weaved a dense layer of justifications for playing him as a Big Olâ Fantasy Racist in this world of giant intelligent friendly talking spiderfolk.
That would have followed very naturally from the groundwork I laid in my head, but it would have been (more) obnoxious (than usual) and gotten real tedious real fast so I decided he had been living among other folk for a while and relegated most of that stuff to Thatâs Not Me Thatâs My Dad!!!
It is more fun playing him as someone who accepts and then pieces together his rationalizations for acceptance rather than someone who condemns and is a big old jerk until convinced otherwise, anyway.
Of course heâs still a jerk about specific religious practices but we all have growing to do.
Hello I am Shrug and I think about my dwarf too much and too seriously.
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Anyway I like to think the tone of our game is best summed up in garyâs âoh, hi!â or whatever after Tulpa first says hello as a kobold.
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Good summation lines:
âWeâre mushroom folk. You know how it goes.â
âYou canât put respect in a mouth!!â
âYou can live in my beard.â
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EPISODE SEVEN
Man that idea of a fair or bazaar with all these vendors from parts unknown peddling their mysterious foreign wares is just one of the very best fantasy tropes. So good itâs going to take a minimum of three sessions to play through it all!
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Iâm so happy with how much play weâve been able to fit into the tumford market festival
If I can speak openly as a DM about DMcraft the market festival serves three main purposes: Fun NPC encounters where I can let my Jack Vance influence show through (my notes for this part of the game are written in Vancian pastiche), I can give the group a preview of the outside world by letting the outside world inhabit Tumford for a few sessions, and I can have the players guide the action for a while
Itâs my hope that the festival makes the world feel bigger than it did before in an organic way.
a little inside peek at my game notes
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At one point in this Ven says âfollow the moneyâ. That turned out to be more literal than we imagined
I howled when you mentioned shire juice, hell yes
Weâve definitely mentioned shire juice before.
I just keep knockin these mufuckas OUT
I keep saying this, but this one might be my favorite.
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Wow my cat is loud.
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Ven playing the, uh, what was he playing? Pan flute
Anyway Ven playing prog on the pan flute with Bernie was just. An amazing picture. And then half-endorsing selling drugs!!! Now Thatâs What I Call Character Development
I like that Fatgris and BJ donât get along as well, thatâs a nice touch.
Iâm excited for Fantasy Maverick!!
What was the name of the song you played at the end while kvetching about dice towers? I assume that was the Tulpa recommendation.
Itâs a prog rock band we mentioned earlier called Camel but I think I cut that chatter. Album is called The Snow Goose or something equally stupid
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Also cut: the other 45 minutes of me yelling variations on IT TURNS FUCKING BROWN re: copy about other exotic wood types.
We usually end up starting kind of late.
I didnât cut, like, anything out of our snexploration episode
so you know where you can bring that It Turns Brown content and have it heard by the hungry masses
this podcast makes me so jealous that i am not currently getting to play dnd with my meatspace friends
we keep trying to do a meetup but its been a grip since our schedules aligned ._.
i need to catch up but this cast has a nice balance of funniness and playing, its nice to listen to an actual playcast that sounds close to how âŚactual play⌠sounds
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