Dimension 20
Adventuring Academy
Season 2 Episode 2
See Me In Six Months (with Aabria Iyengar)
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Brennan: Hello one and all, and welcome to another episode of Adventuring Academy, the podcast where we talk about all things tabletop, and running these games. My name's Brennan Lee Mulligan, with me today, oh our guest, you won't believe it, you know her, you love her, she's all over the tabletop sphere, running awesome games, playing awesome games. She's the Chief Marketing officer for Dice Envy, she's about to appear in Pirates of Leviathan, the new D20 Side Quest as Myrtle, a.k.a. Myrtle the Bitch.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: You can catch her show Pirates of Salt Bay, for saving thrill you can also catch her on the Lost Mines of Phandelver on D&D's Twitch, she's about to kick of a campaign with Omega Jones, AKA Critical Bard this Sunday called Creature Collectors, please welcome to the program, my friend and yours, Miss Aabria Iyengar!
Aabria: Hello, I will never live up to that very cool intro. So I'm just gonna go, that was, that was it for me, I'm done. Whew!
Brennan: Hey, it's impressive because the person who put that together is impressive, that CV is some cool, cool projects! Aabria, thank you so much for being on the show with us today!
Aabria: I'm so happy to be here! Yay! Long time listener, first time caller.
(Brennan laughs)
Brennan: Aabria, talk to us a little bit about tabletop games and how you first got your start, what was your first gaming experience? What got you hooked on throwin' dice and playing characters at the table with friends?
Aabria: So, I wanna start of by saying a shout out to my junior year winter formal date, Shawn, who was like, "You know what you would love? D&D." And I was like, "No." He was like, "I love anime and D&D, and that's it." And I was like, "No thank you to both," and then cut to like a decade later and I'm like, "Oh, those are my favorite things, sorry about it." So, I didn't get into it until I was brought in as the girlfriend to a gaming group that was forming, with my now husband, and they were like, "Just be the cleric in the corner, I don't know if you're gonna like this or not, just give it a shot." And I think like two sessions in I was like, "Oh, I like this way more than all of you ever will, and I'm gonna go play it all the time." Like this is my identity now, I'm very sorry, and I just disappeared in an Aabria-shaped cloud, and the rest is just sort of history. Oh man.
Brennan: Full Wiley Coyote, like your outline in dust.
Aabria: Yup, just through a wall. I think the weird thing is, I treated it like, this is the first thing in a really long time, I grew up as an athlete, so I was in the nerd closet as a kid, like I collected comic books, and then was like, "Oh, social pressure's a thing, so I'm just gonna be a cool jock, and ignore all of the other stuff that I like until I'm an adult and no one can tell me anything." But this was the first thing I tackled in the same I way I tackle sports, so it was just about, "Oh, if you want to be good at this and live in it, just go get reps." So I started with our home group, and then went to two different gaming stores, over in Santa Monica, and Culver City, and would sit in on Adventures League, and then found a couple other friends on Facebook that played, and jumped in on that too And then jumped in on streaming, and yeah, my CV's kinda long because I just want to keep playing, and keep growing, and I don't know, it's just constant, I wanna improve, and I love telling stories, and it's not the end goal of reaching the point where you're like, "I'm a pro D&D player," but man, there's just something so satisfying in the practice of it.
Brennan: Well it's really, I'm not surprised to hear your answer that you brought a love and passion for this, because honestly, I remember, being an adult, when I was a kid, I was scared of jocks, and then you get older and you realize, honestly, both of those people have something deeply in common, which is an obsession with their interest, right?
Aabria: Yeah!
Brennan: So I think there's a natural progression, if you can get over that hump of the peer pressure when you're a kid, which for kids growin' up these days, I don't think exists as much as it did when I was, in a different time and era. But that desire of, "Oh, once I find my thing, I don't let go." That's beautiful, and that's part of the passion, I think, of being in these spaces is, you find this pass time, or this hobby that is just so, so fulfilling. And in terms of the different games that you're running, I remember the first time I was watching you play I was like, "Oh, this person, you can tell her passion for this," both from moments of comedy, moments of heartfelt storytelling, I was like, "I've gotta play with this person," which is very real. And we made it happen, I can't wait--
Aabria: And we did it!
Brennan: We did it! This'll probably be coming out as Pirates is already airing, so people may have already seen Myrtle in action, which was so much fun. We were talking a little bit before we went live today, and I wanted to talk a little bit because you and I share backgrounds as comedians, but also, I think, do love a dramatic turn in storytelling.
Aabria: Yes!
Brennan: And we were talking a little bit about adapting different tones and genres of fiction before the games began. Talk to me a little bit about your experience trajectory of, what were the tone of the early games you ran? And did you find your storytelling instincts taking you to certain kind of games or stories over others as you began? And did that change over time? And what are you into these days?
Aabria: Yeah, so I think my one blot against me in the D&D space is that I don't necessarily care for "Lord of the Rings". I've just never resonated with high fantasy, there's a lot of other people that will tell you in aggressive detail about why that is very obvious, but suffice to say, because I didn't grow up with all of that sort of coding, getting into DMing, my first real DMing, other than little one shots and Adventures League stuff, was I had a gaggle of 14-year-old boys that I tutored math for, and test prep for. And we were running "Storm King's Thunder" so I started, obviously running "Wizards of the Coast" modules, and they are all very informed by a lot of high fantasy sensibilities, and I was like, "Well, that kinda bores me, so let's do something else with this." And then "Storm King's Thunder" I think I ran pretty by-the-book and was like, "Oh, I wish I'd," it was the first campaign that I ran with the regret of, "I wish I'd put my spin on it," and yeah I had fun, 'cause was just the grossest depiction of a finishing blow that you can give to a 14-year-old boy, and that's all they want is that and a twerk joke, that was it, easy money, we love to see it.
(both laugh)
Aabria: But then when I started running "Dragon Heist" I was like, "Okay, heist is in it, so how do we get this closer to heist movies that I care about?" And going back and watching "The Sting" and obviously all the Oceans movies, and trying to bring modern sensibilities and modern bits of fiction into games is a thing that I super care about, and it's the thing I'm kind of actively working towards all the time. Like for Salt Bay, and hopefully by the time this comes out, I will have executed it in the game, if not, it's a big old spoiler, I'm just gonna say it anyway, I'm gonna do it.
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: I rewatched "The Dark Knight" recently, and I'd forgot how much I loved the Joker's introduction, with this sort of the successful completion of a heist and the henchmen picking each other off, and I want to bring in this sort of parallel scene of all the players at the table playing henchmen, picking each other off, and then whoever's the last one standing is sort of retconned as was always the main villain, and then will be the main villain for the entirety of the campaign and the arc. So, how do you do cool things like that, that sort of play with the genre and tone? And because we're living in a theater of the mind space, for the most part, more so now, less so when we can all be at the same table again, and play with actual battle mats and minis and stuff. But how do you treat theater of the mind as a feature and not a bug? If you can imagine anything, then you can play with space, and time, and tone, and how things fall, because you'll have weeks between sessions to put it together in narrative order in your brain so that you remember it in this story form.
Brennan: I love that so much. And I think that what you're speaking to is a sensibility that I definitely share, and I think a lot of people that have picked up the game share as well, which is interesting, because I think there's a key in your talking about here is the genesis of this game, but here's the purpose I would like to use it for.
Aabria: Yeah.
Brennan: And, listen, I've been playin' this game for 22 years, and even for me, there was an immediate thing of, the genesis of this game is in "Chainmail" and other war games from the 1960s and 70s, that are very Warhammer-esque, very large scale, tactical combat things. And when I picked it up, it was very clear to me, no this is an engine for storytelling, this is something that can let me live in a movie, right? Which is what I wanna do. And you're talking about that theater of the mind thing, and I think it's very interesting because there is, the work of a DM is to take these materials, and then go, "Cool, these need an interpreter to get my friends living in the movie of their characters. How do I make that happen?" And I think especially when you have that anachronistic element to it of, how do I make this more modern? Or, how do I do a different genre, or whatever in this? I think that's really important, because even with something like "Lord of the Rings" even with the friends of mine who really can speak in that vernacular, I think it's something that's very true that it's hard to stay in that high Ren faire.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: At a certain point, no matter how arch you're trying to be, you're still a person living in 2020, and something is gonna get a reaction from you that's gonna be like, "Hey, what the fuck?"
(both laugh)
Aabria: Exactly.
Brennan: And if you can't imagine Gandalf saying, "What the fuck?" you're gonna be disappointed in that moment, so why not embrace those certain anachronisms to bring yourself, I remember there was a funny thing, even back when I used to LARP all the time, that you'd see people in these gorgeous costumes, and then Adidas, like the shoes always had to stay the same because you're still running around, you're still, you know.
Aabria: Oh, that's great.
Brennan: Yeah.
Aabria: Oh man. But I do actually really like this idea, kind of jumping back to that, of how do we get people onboard with shared theater of the mind? And I think another big thing that I like and I think about all the time is, the fact that you have to, I guess, no, you have to, you have to use these sort of stereotypical shorthands to get everyone bought in as quickly as possible, and I think it's a thing that pops up in improv a lot too, when you're like, "All right, we have to establish a scene, I've gotta get as much information into my scene partner's head as quickly as possible." So then there's this whole world of confronting and thinking about stereotypes, and then the fun of subverting them, and I think that goes along with the LARPing, but in Adidas. And I'm watching A Crown of Candy now, and yeah, that idea of high fantasy with crazy stakes, but it's Pop Rocks fighting a chocolate bunny. I know they don't fight but, sorry, spoilers. (laughs) Spoilers.
(both laugh)
Aabria: But yeah, there's so many things you have to think about as a DM, about just being cognizant of the sort of shared mythos at the table, culturally.
Brennan: I think that's so, so true, and again, because people do speak in these shorthands, it's your job as a DM to make sure that everybody does have that similar shorthand. When we first did Fantasy High, one of the nice things about it was every single person at the table, other than me, had gone to high school, so those tropes were very familiar to everybody, and it makes a… (laughs)
Aabria: Did you not go to high school?
Brennan: I did not go to high school, but I've seen it on TV a lot, and so--
Aabria: It's the same thing. You're good.
Brennan: It's the same thing, you know, you osmose the basics. But, that idea of a shared shorthand, a shared language, when you are preparing a new game, a new world, a new setting, what have you, for your players, how explicit do you get in terms of sharing what your vision, 'cause I think, in world build, this is an example I use a lot, world building is way more than just the logistics of there are this many magical rune words. The logistical stuff is fine, but when I think of world building, I think a lot about tone, mood, and genre. How explicit, with your players, are you, in terms of setting those expectations at the beginning of a campaign?
Aabria: Oh man, I think I'm actively working on the idea, I'm in a campaign that's currently on hiatus called Kollok 1991 over on Hyper, and it's very much in the vein, it's a horror game. And it's very, yeah, just sort of weird, and different, and Twin Peaks-y, and the thing that I've learned so much from Zac as a GM is that this entire game hangs on, if we don't hold the tone, none of this plays. And I think that's something that, being sort of a goofier person in general, I never cared about until I realized that the things you can do when you choose to hold tone is so impressive. And to go back kind of more towards your question, I think the things I like to build up the most, it's the playing the if this is true, what are the next 18 things that are true? Me going back to my Anthro, well okay, we found this one, if the teacup is shaped this way, what does that say about the culture of tea here? There was a long Twitter thread I had a couple months ago where I violently overthought how tea works in Candlekeep in my brain, and had all of these 84 things that were true, that my players didn't give a shit about. But it was never about them. If they engage with it, that's amazing, if they don't, that's fine too. It's just knowing all that deep lore stuff, the things that, if it pops up, it makes you feel just like galaxy brain brilliant, 'cause you have an answer for this question. But if nothing else, it informs the next three things, and, "Oh, they asked about something I guess I didn't really think about 'cause I don't personally care about the fitness culture of Waterdeep, but my players apparently do. So if the other things that I did think about were true, how does that translate?" Because they're all closed ecosystems, and yeah, I don't know.
Brennan: Yeah, I think that makes total sense. And I think there's a lot of, that thing you said, which is, building block of the improv curriculum at UCB of if this unusual thing is true, what else is true? Following that logic is so super helpful, and I think it's also helpful when you have, you know, if you know the game that you're playing is gonna be more comedic, or you know it's gonna be based in horror, that helps you improvise through it because even though we don't think about it, all those genres, and tones, and moods do have rulesets to them. Like, even though I am always reacting in the moment as an improviser, if I know that the story that I'm in is a horror story, I will go to different reactions than I will if it's comedy, right?
Aabria: Exactly.
Brennan: Which is so fun, because sometimes you do wanna live in those stories, and tell those different kinds of tales. When you are going into these different stories, what is the genre or mood that you keep finding yourself coming back to in your storytelling? This is a question I really loved from a podcast I was on recently that is like, when you're looking at your work, because you've run so many, and played in so many games, do you look back on your body of work now and say, "Oh, there's a theme here, there's something that I like to visit in my stories."
Aabria: Yeah.
Brennan: Yeah, what is it?
Aabria: I think the biggest thing I always jump back to is the action comedy. I think it's 'cause, for me, I like it, it may not be my personal favorite genre, it's the thing my parents loved the most, and I think I always go back to, my parents, they can watch clips of me and stuff, they're just like, "I can't follow the ruleset, you're just yelling numbers out loud, it's fine, we love you baby and we're very supportive. Could've been in the WNBA, but I guess this is fine too."
(both laugh)
Aabria: But I always try to think of what would make them laugh, so I like this mixture of, because yeah, D&D and RPGs in general are very action-based, but this idea of the subversive comedic, that sort of not quite bathos, the undermining of straight action with comedy is my favorite thing, and it's the thing I always go back to, because it's easy to build a set piece for a one shot where you're like, "Okay, I wanna get to this one specific moment, with this one kind of fight that looks this certain way," but yeah, I just don't think, for me, a situation feels real if you can't make a joke in it. Yeah, going back to a weird thing I remember from my Spanish teacher in high school was that, you understand a language when you can start to make jokes in it.
Brennan: Whoa!
Aabria: Yeah, and I feel like that's true in almost anything. Once you can play in something that should be straightforward, you know you have a mastery of it.
Brennan: I love that, and I think too, one thing that is true about actual play is, a movie can live in a single tone or mood for its entirety, because at most, it's what, like two hours, right? If you have a 400-hour actual play campaign, and you are as dedicated to tone as "The Dark Knight Rises" after like 100 hours of like, "We are the light, we are the light on the wall," I would be tearing my fuckin' hair out. I would be like, "Someone crack a joke! We've been living in this world for so long." And I think too that there are, you know, there are some epic old classic movies that you do see, I'm tryin' to think of sort of Golden Age of Hollywood, whatever movies, that really did have, we are going to move from romance, to comedy, to suspense, to some noir vibe, back and forth, over and over, without ever necessarily leaving the genre that we're in. But I think that D&D campaigns are just, you are going to have a moment where someone says or does something and suddenly it's like, "No, I know that this was very serious, what you have proposed as a course of action is the goofiest thing I've ever heard in my life, and if we don't roast you right now, we'll never forgive ourselves."
Aabria: Yes!
(both laugh)
Aabria: I also love doing the one episode, in the middle, sometimes you can kind of remove it from continuity, but the blow off the steam episode. We just wrapped up the main arc of Salt Bay's thing where they finally defeated the big, big bad, and the payoff for that was that they got a "Love Boat" episode. So, in this sort of dramatic action narrative, you're gonna spend your honeymoon on a different pirate ship, but it's gonna be "The Love Boat" just Githyanki Love Boat, that's what we're doin' today.
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: Here we go. And yeah, having those moments, because yeah, like you were saying, APs are this weird mixture of, it's a 400-hour narrative, but it's also in these big episodes. So you can have a genre-bending episode where you're like, "We're gonna do this, it won't last forever, but enjoy it while it's here, and here's our love arc, and here's, you're on a pirate ship, but this one's haunted, so I guess we're doing a horror one, or "Pirates of the Caribbean" and it's gonna be stupid again 'cause Aabria can't hold tone."
(both laugh)
Aabria: So there's, just so good for that, and yeah.
Brennan: Oh, god I love that. There's a very fun, I'm tryin' to think how to put it, when you are diving into one of those episodes where it's like, even I feel like, didn't "Buffy" have a musical episode? It's like, yeah, let's jump and do a weird bottle thing, why not? There's something I wanna tell you about because you, as the DM for Pirates of Salt Bay, running a lot of games, one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently that is, the kind of pressure, especially we're talking about the ability to hold tone, is the degree of a Dungeon Master, and the role that's been put on you as, you are simultaneously the physics engine for this world, you're determining how hard or fast things go, how dangerous something is or isn't, and you're also determining what consequences are. Are there any, I've definitely had moments on camera, where I make a determination of like, "I think this is what the consequence of that would be," but that's all based on me, a fallible human being, and suddenly people go, "You think that's the consequence for what that would be?" And you're like, "Yeah," you know, it's sorta this weird thing where you have to be this ultimate authority for, "This is the fallout from what you did." Do you ever feel pressure, as a Dungeon Master, in being this arbiter of the nature of consequences, be they physical consequences of how actions manifest, or social consequences of how people would react? And how do you, do you think as a Dungeon Master, you need to be a particularly good observer, as you're saying, of anthropology, of sociology, and how people and groups react to things?
Aabria: Um, yes. Sorry.
(both laugh)
Aabria: That whole big question, just yes is the answer. No, first things first. I have done a musical episode in an RPG, highly recommend, it's wild, but give it a try if you haven't. But yeah, I think I started off with all of the anxiety around finally committing to being a full-time, I wear my DM badge very proudly now, and it's been that way for about a year-and-a-half, and I think I was so nervous in the beginning about making sure all of those consequences felt fair. I definitely feel stronger and more comfortable with social consequences. Physical consequences, those feel a little more obvious, like you do this, physics and Newton says this is the reaction. Social consequences, I feel like I've worked really hard to make that make sense and telegraph it up top, so the table has agreed in other ways, sort of implicitly that this is the fallout of how this interaction set will go. But, I'm also very lazy, and I've now learned that when you play with a table that you love and trust, you can also offload DM things to them too. So I like to do the, "Okay, someone failed their something check, or attack," I'll give them the beginning of how it didn't work, and then ask someone else at the table, "How's it even worse than that though?" And I really enjoy offering other people at the table, "How did this go better than the player that originated the action intended? How did it go worse? What's one thing that the camera sees that none of the main characters see?" and offloading the consequences to the group, and taking their reading on what their priorities are, and how they care about the game, and where they see things going via sort of this passive, "Well what do you think? Yes, it's that, and also what I said, we're both right, ha ha."
(both laugh)
Brennan: I love that. And I feel like too, there's something in what you said that is, I think a big part of the responsibility of a DM, which is guiding players through failure. 'Cause success is kinda easy, you're just hyping up somebody who already feels good about their great roll, and just hammering home, "Yeah, you really did kick ass." Guiding people through failure is really interesting because for every, players are doing two things, they want to live in a story, and stories are only meaningful if the heroes of that story experience failure and loss, and have something to overcome, right? But on the other hand, there's also a degree of these games which is escapism, and people kind of want to succeed, and they don't want to fail. And you talking about turning it over, like, "How does this failure work?" Reminds me of a great piece of advice I got, which is, the thing that stings about failure to people isn't pure failure, it's that it creates cognitive dissonance with the competent image of their character in their head.
Aabria: Yes.
Brennan: And the great part of that that I loved was, it was like, so, when you're narrating a failure, just make sure that the failure confirms the character's self-image. So if the barbarian misses on the attack, don't go, "You missed, you're weak, you don't connect." Be like, "You wildly overextend recklessly roaring, and the person is able to see that, you overly telegraph through your barbaric rage and swing wide and miss," so the person's like, "Yeah, my dude would fuck up like that."
Aabria: (laughs) Yeah.
Brennan: Which I thought was a great piece of advice. How do you, what do you see your role as being when you're guiding people through failure? And what are your go-to moves to help soften that blow, if indeed you choose to soften it?
Aabria: Yeah, oh man, going along with that, I also love the, I like wrestling a little bit, I'm not super well versed in it, but I love a good no sell. So I love a big barbarian raging battle master hit, and then they just, the bad guy just takes it and doesn't care. Like, you hit, you're great, this is a bigger thing than you expected, and building up those sort of, I always think of the easiest and most obvious job of a DM is that cut scene of the, they do something mechanically and then you give it back to them in this scene. So, giving them a cut scene, yeah, that confirms how they understand, and moves them through, yeah you're not gonna be successful all the time. I think a thing I really like to do, and try to stress at my tables, is that you are more than the actor and puppeteer of your character. It's collaborative storytelling, so I am not just the world, and you are not just your player, you are also the DM. We are building, the thing we are gonna try to drive to by the end of this campaign is that we told a story together. And by helping people sort of dissociate from, I am my one character in this individual moment and will take all of my failures personally, and as a sign of personal incompetence, or weird table vibes, knowing that if you were sitting down and writing the script of this, you would put that main character through hell because you know that that's the forge that burns and creates the biggest high at the end. So like, don't be afraid of that for your character. But I do think it takes some coaxing, and coaching, as the DM, to say, "Okay, what's about to happen is gonna feel really bad on a personal moment, so how do I help lift you out of your brain right now and say, your character's gonna fail, they may die, they may stay dead." So asking them sort of about what's happening with the rest of the world. Handing them, I literally use the phrase, I talk about what the camera sees all the time, I think it's a thing in LA, or just in culture in general, because we think of things in the very film and TV lens, that using that helps people sort of think about it like a story, and not about a memory. And yeah, it kinda lifts them from it.
Brennan: I think that's, this actually brings us to our first audience-submitted question.
Aabria: Ooh!
Brennan: Thanks for submitting questions, and gang, you can always do that on our Dropout Discord server, and mods and people should put up the link for that. This first one is from Artemis Prime, thanks, Artemis Prime. And the question goes to what we're talking about: "How can I actively involve my players in world building? I'm running a homebrew Final Fantasy campaign for some friends and want to let them know that they have agency to paint little bits of the world that it's taking place in, while not letting them take over completely. Please help, also thanks."
Aabria: Yay!
Brennan: Yay! Well, thank you, Artemis Prime. Yeah, how do we, so, I've done this in the past of giving people domain, it's not that there are hard limits, but almost like expectations, like, "I expect you to be able to improvise this." You know, when we did The Unsleeping City, Lou Wilson and Siobhan Thompson played our old-timers, people that had been heroes of The Unsleeping City for a long time. And I sort of said going into it, "If I introduce something in the campaign, you guys probably are firsthand familiar with it, 'cause you've been around for a long time, feel free to improvise familiarity with things that I bring up, and feel free to improvise details," and one of them was, literally there was a detail that was improvised by Siobhan Thompson about a magical train line and where it went to that unbeknownst to her was gonna be a later battle set location. And Rick Perry went in and changed the train line on the train to be the number that Siobhan had said in the earlier episode. So I think, giving domains for people, is a great way to help your players worldbuild. When you're, so for the long-running campaigns that you've run, are there moments you can remember of real player success in contributing to world building? Or contributing to that idea of, this detail that someone else offered up in improvisation, I snatched up as the DM and ran with it in a later plot hook, or arc, or whatever?
Aabria: Oh, yeah, definitely. I super agree with you, I just wanna confirm and reaffirm that, yeah, lean on your players with their expertise. A thing I love doing is asking in the sort of like, before you introduce your players, I'm not a huge fan of coming up with pages and pages of backstory for your character, because I love the ability to integrate it into the things that are presented in situ, as we play. But I love giving that, "What's one weird, what's your character's quirk? If everyone's gonna do an impression of your character, what's the thing they latch onto?" And then figuring out a way to bring that and make it true, and justify it. So every now and then you'll have a player that does a weird voice, and you're like, "Okay, I guess that's how everyone from here sounds now." Or they super don't, and you're wild for that, like you're the Madonna in Detroit that has a British accent for no reason. But yeah, I like picking that weird thing that they care about, that weird hill that they're gonna die on, if you present me a hill as a DM, that's real forever, and like Rome, I will build a city on seven hills, and that will be our game.
(both laugh)
Brennan: I love that. There is almost something threatening as a DM about like, "Oh no, I'm gonna ‘yes, and’ you. Whatever you said, I will be on top of that saying ‘yes, and’ to that." There's a great example, Brian Murphy, former guest on Adventuring Academy, and cast member for Dimension 20, DM for Not Another D&D Podcast, is great with this, because he gave--
Aabria: The pod.
Brennan: Yeah, who gave Emily Axford, who is another Dimension 20 player, and also College Humor, and Murph's, Emily and Murph are husband and wife, they play on Naddpod together, and Emily made this incredible PC Moonshine Cybin, I guessed it as her character's brother, Deadeye Cybin, in a small arc on the thing. What a tangled web.
Aabria: Yay!
Brennan: But, what's so great about Murph and Emily's collaboration is that Emily started as this character from The Crick, she was a Crick Elf, which are, like we're saying, not this high fantasy thing, these down home, Southern elves, who she had a possum animal companion, and it was very banjo strummin' elves. And Emily spent the first chunk of the campaign improvising all these incredible details about The Crick, and when they went there, Murph, like a steel trap had taken all of these bits, and now they are true. It's one of the best examples of collaborative PC, DM world building. And again, seeing, of course a PC needs to have ultimate authority over their homeland that they're from, and when you get there, it's like the coolest thing in the world for the DM to have “yes, and”ed that.
Aabria: Right? (sighs) Oh that's so cool.
Brennan: I love it.
Aabria: I'm obsessed with making everything Southern right now, I love "Lovecraft Country" and I wanna run "Curse of Strahd" but make it like a slow, sultry Georgian gothic horror story, and I'm just, yeah, make everything Southern, and that's fine for me. So I'm gonna go back and listen to this, this feels like this is relevant to my personal interest, thank you.
(both laugh)
Brennan: It's great! Well, it's very funny too, because I think it's one of those things where people, I think sometimes people romanticize a devotion to the canon, and I think that's almost always destructive because your faves usually didn't do that themselves. So, it's funny to hold, like Tolkien, for example, as the gold standard for fantasy, because specifically what Tolkien set out to do was create a new mythos. So if you wanna be like the guy, don't do the guy's thing. He went and did the new thing, go do the new. He was like, "There should be a mythology for England," for whatever this, and mythologized Hobbits as these little country squire English people that are pretty identical to how he lived his life. Like a bunch of snacks during the day, smoking pipe weed, sounds like what that dude was about in his personal life, right?
Aabria: That's right!
Brennan: So yeah, then you look and say, "Okay, so if you're an American DM living in 2020, why not mythologize the subject of your own real life and create the fantasy version of that?"
Aabria: Exactly. It stresses me out when people are weird about iterative creation over generative, like I have to make this whole thing up, whole cloth, and you're like, "It's gonna be descended from a lot of ideas that you've had over your life, so don't be weird and hung up about it." Yeah, I agree.
Brennan: Yeah, exactly, and also, not to get all, again, like philosophy about it, but, having the idea of I am going to create something wholly original from my mind, and you wanna be like, "Oh your perfect mind, that's not influenced?"
Aabria: The hubris! (laughs)
Brennan: Hubris! Hubris! Your brain is, the world's already touched it, the world's got its grubby hands on your brain, there's no getting away from that. No, I love that. But yeah, and I think that's something really, really fun is to invite those fantastical elements, and morph them with your own lived experience because that's how you get something really personal and really fun with your players. I love this question so much, and I think too, something that can be really fun as well with world building is again, inviting expertise from, Lou Wilson runs a great home game that I'm a part of called The Ankiels, which is a wilderness exploration, we're on an expedition to the top of this mountain range, it's very fun wilderness-themed campaign, and it's really fun because I'm playing a ranger character in it, and there's a lot of collaborative stuff about biomes, and wilderness stuff, and I happen to be a weirdo about animal factoids and know a lot of them. So there's a lot of fun collaboration there where it'll be like, there'll be something of like, "We're in this part of the forest with this thing here," and it'll be like, "Okay, do we see signs of game around?" And it's like, "Okay, if this is a very lifeless place, the idea that there's gonna be big apex predators around here becomes less 'cause what are they eating?"
Aabria: Yeah.
Brennan: And following, and it's fun to throw out PC knowledge like that and have it be reaffirmed by the world, a fun thing.
Aabria: Heck yeah.
Brennan: Heck yeah, we love it. Let's go ahead and move onto another fun question, so this is a great one too, 'cause this one's from Meg, thanks Meg. And obviously this is an adjustment that not everyone's gonna be, but Meg's question is, "What has been the biggest adjustments to DMing remotely? Have any tips for transferring a game that used to be in-person to virtually?" Thank you Meg for the question. That's right, Aabria was in Dimension 20's first attempt at going remote with Pirates of Leviathan, I was very nervous, and I had no reason to be. It was immediately super fun, and it was like we were all at the table together, but Aabria, 'cause I know that Salt Bays is done remotely, and was done remotely even prior to quarantine coming into effect. What are some, do you find that there's a big difference for you between running a game remotely or in-person, or not?
Aabria: I think the biggest one is the problem, and this is a mixture of running it remotely, plus sociopolitical context of being in quarantine, that attention gets scattered very easily. Like, it's now being at a table with a bunch of people like me with ADHD, and the holding of focus and attention on a moment becomes so much more important because you don't have the ritual of being at a table and looking down at the same thing, and also having that affirmation and reminder of, "What are we doing right now? Oh, I see it, there's two minis that are right next to each other, so I bet they're kissing or fighting." It could be either, it could be both. At the same time, I don't know.
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: My games are very weird. But yeah, that idea of holding attention and being really flexible with your players about reminding them in a lot of different ways, instead of just saying, "Just as a reminder, you're in the middle of this scene, this is what it looks like." Finding other ways to sort of refresh table memory is probably the biggest thing when you're dealing with remote games and theater of the mind is that people's minds wander, so you're gonna have to keep rebuilding the theater, and building the set in different ways. So if you described the scenery when they first got there, remind them with, what's the smell in the room? Or, once again, all the cool things of feature, not a bug, of playing remotely is, if you have it in you, add some visual and audio cues. If you have access to a soundboard, throw in a cool sound effect. I will occasionally, I don't do it as much for my steam games, but in home games I like to 'cause I have a little more time, and I'm very bad at technology. I will, as a DM, change my background to the NPC I'm playing to remind people of who I am, 'cause I can't do voices for shit. Like, I'm workin' on it. See me in six months, but I can't do it now, so they'll all just sound like Aabria. But if I have a picture of an angry elf, you know I'm being that guy that you've talked to a thousand times. (laughs)
Brennan: I love that so much. I also love, that's a perfect attitude. I feel like a lot of questions we get from young starting DMs are like, "I don't feel good at this skill, there's a skill I haven't mastered yet," and that attitude of “see me in six months” is the perfect attitude. Please put that on a cushion, a shirt, a mug, that is the right attitude to move into this space with for everyone who's excited about running games for their friends, 'cause it is an amazing gift, and you do find yourself, I've been doing this for a long time, and I keep finding, we're getting ready for another Dimension 20 Side Quest right now, and I'm just gonna be real with you, so nervous, because it's a type of story that I've never done before, and I'm like, "Oh, this is a challenging genre," and if you're not, I think the best thing is to walk hand-in-hand with, this challenge makes me nervous, and also, see me in six months.
Aabria: There you go!
Brennan: Yeah, exactly, oh I love that.
Aabria: All you need to, yeah, practice makes, it sounds really stupid and really cliche, but you just gotta do it, and keep doing it, understand that even failure is fine. In the same way that we talked about failing forward at a game, you fail forward as a person, and you learn. That's the biggest thing that you can add on to a failure, if they missed with the swing, what did they learn about the battlefield as they got distracted from a killing blow, even though they shoulda had it? Give them something else, and that's true for people too. If I can be super honest, the first hour of Pirates of Leviathan, where I'm sitting next to a table full of people, you're crushing 1000 NPCs, everyone's got a cool voice, and I'm like, "I just put on a lot of eyeliner, Okay, here we go.” (laughs) :I don't do voices, but I'm gonna do my best." I think it's really humanizing to know that everyone, even your faves, and if you've never heard of me before, I'll be your fave eventually, don't worry about it.
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: They all, everyone goes through that anxiety, and you just push through it, and you get to the other side of it, and you grow and learn. And maybe you're not where you hoped to be, but you're farther than where you started, so just keep goin'.
Brennan: Oh, that's so fuckin' beautiful. You're, by this point, you're already everybody's fave.
Aabria: Oh my god, thanks.
Brennan: Oh my god. Truly. No, I think that's so true. And it's true, I think, every time you sit down with a group of people, you're always trying to do your best. But I think, it's really hard, it's easier said than done. But I'm so grateful for those nerves as well, because there's a certain sadness if you're not feeling those nerves anymore.
Aabria: Yeah.
Brennan: Be grateful for the nerves, 'cause it means you care, it means you wanna do a good job. And when those nerves go away, that's a bigger problem I think, because it means you're no longer being challenged by what you're doing. So I think, be grateful for those challenges when you move into those spaces, and if you're playing with people you want to impress, which is certainly how I felt sitting down at Pirates of Leviathan as well, it's like, "I want these people to think I'm funny and cool." (laughs)
Aabria: I think you're great.
Brennan: Oh, I think you're great.
Aabria: Oh!
Brennan: But yeah, you find that, and I think that's a good place to be, in that middle ground of not being too hard on yourself, but holding yourself to a standard. And I think moving from that place is the best of both worlds. There's also something you said about too that I wanted to hit on as well, when you're playing, to answer the question of, you're playing remotely, how do you make that is, making your games accessible. If you are playing with people where everyone's at their home, they have their devices in front of them, they're looking at the screen that has Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram on it, it is okay to allow for a little bit of that, and especially because you brought up ADHD. One thing I like to bring up is, not everyone's cues are gonna be the same for what means someone is distracted. I've been playing in a game for 11 years with a dear, close friend of mine. If he is on his laptop during the game, that does not mean he's not paying attention, that's something he needs to do to settle himself, soothe his nerves, stim out, and I think that you need to have individual relationships with people, based on the way that their beautiful, unique, human mind works to know that not every symbol is universal for this person has checked out, or is not paying attention. People have different things that they need to do for themselves to keep their focus going. I have this tiny little piece of plastic pizza that I play with on like 90%--
Aabria: Yay!
Brennan: Of the shows that we do, 'cause it settles me out and makes me have an easier time focusing and staying in the moment. So I think, allow for those things at a table, especially remotely, as your table navigates a new setup for the first time. That is a big, important thing to do. I wanna jump, we got a bunch of great questions, I wanna jump into some more of them. This is a great one, this one's from Emily, thanks Emily. Emily asks, "What kind of things do you usually cover in a session zero?” What kinda things do you usually cover in a session zero? Great question. For those that don't know, session zero, that's the pre-session before your first official session of the campaign. Some people use that for character creation, or other things. But it's always a good idea to use that session to get people on the same page. Aabria, what's goin' on in an Aabria Iyengar session zero?
Aabria: Yay. Aside from the obvious things, safety tools. Safety, those are my favorite, and I feel like I shout it from the mountaintop, but if nothing else gets accomplished in a session zero, for me, and with me, especially if I'm running something at a table, if it's my session zero, you will understand all of the things available to you, either in a live game, or remotely, to make sure that we have a dialogue open. Communication is 1000% of having a good time at a table. So, knowing that there's a lot of different ways, based on what your emotional state is at any given moment to reach out and make your feelings understood to both me as the DM, and sort of the arbiter of pace and content, and to the rest of the table to make sure everyone's checking in with one another, especially with games where everyone's bought in on a tone that will darker, and will deal with more interesting things, like the mental side of, I don't know, evil, or even romance and light stuff like that. We've gotta figure out a way to have all these conversations, so, I always play with X-Cards, it's really easy, I tend to play all my games off of Zoom chat, so we keep the Zoom chat open, sorry, Zoom, or Discord, and then keep the chat open on the side so everyone can have a constant dialogue. If we're in a heavy scene, I usually am typing. I think there's people that have reached out to me on Twitter that were like, "Oh, I think I saw you typing at some point during a heavy scene." I'm like, "Yeah, I'm checking with my players." I'll just add a little O with a question mark to say, "Hey, I can't tell if, because you're in Los Angeles, you are gonna put this on your reel, and you're going for an Oscar, or if you're actually crying right now. So I'm just gonna ask and you can let me know." (laughs) And they can either respond on-screen or in the chat, and then I know if it needs to be, needs to have the gas let off on it, or if it's a hard stop.
Brennan: True story, when we were filming Pirates of Leviathan, we were using Skype to record it, and the chats don't get recorded in the screengrab we used for the season, which is heartbreaking, because the chat going on during the filming was the funniest stuff I'd ever, the peanut gallery was on fire for the entire six episode run of Pirates of Leviathan, so funny. Love having the chat open. I think everything you're saying is 100% correct, and I think the reason these safety tools are important to set up at your table is that, and I think when you're setting up your safety tools at a table, one thing I want to emphasize is even with groups of friends, and perhaps even more with groups of friends where there's a lot of trust, 'cause friends can assume like, "Hey, we're close, we don't have to X, Y, Z, other thing." One of the things is that if you are running, think about 400 hours of improv, something's gonna come up where someone has hurt feelings, even if it's not related to necessarily even problematic content, it could be someone being like, "Hey, I feel like I got overlooked in this session," or, "I feel like X, Y, or Z, other thing happened, I feel like this moment got eclipsed," or, "I feel like," or it can be like, "Hey, that subject matter made me uncomfortable, but I didn't feel like I could bring it up because it wasn't something I thought to bring up when we had our session zero." I think, I used to do this a lot when I was coaching improv, the ability to fix a mistake, or address a mistake is a million times more valuable than sinking time and effort into never making a mistake.
Aabria: Yes!
Brennan: Setting up rules for how we have a conversation when the inevitable comes up where someone becomes uncomfortable. It's gonna happen, if you're playing for years together, something's gonna happen where someone goes, "Hey, oh that subject matter raised an issue for me, it was a red flag, something that I didn't really enjoy." That is gonna happen. So, I think the best thing you can do is be like, "Hey, when these moments occur, here's a permission for us to talk about it, here's how we're gonna talk about it," I think is the best path forward for a gaming group, because again, the ability to address a thing, like you were saying in the beginning, communication, it's all about communication. Hell yeah.
Aabria: I'm not gonna take full credit for the chat, but I was very invested in making sure the Leviathan chat was happening on the side, mostly because I hadn't played with most of the people at the table, and I wanted to establish a cadence of dialogue, so if I needed to say something above game, that we had built the pattern of, we will talk here. And it'll be mostly shitty little make 'em ups and side jokes that we don't wanna disrupt the normal game with, but building a cadence of that was deeply intentional, for what it's worth.
Brennan: I love that, and that's so, so important. One thing I love too, a friend who's an indie game designer, Jay Dragon, ran an actual play for my friend M Grant's game Wickedness, and one of the things that they set up was, "Hey, these are the safety mechanics for the game, we're gonna do an actual play, it's gonna be like a six hour actual play, we are required to use one of these safety mechanics by the end, in fact, you must." And what I loved about that was it took it from being this thing where, in your head, as a player, you're like, "Okay, did that cross my barrier for a safety mechanic or whatever," but being like, "We will have failed if we have not used one of these safety mechanics by the end," gave a certain permission of, “Oh, we actually should use one of these throughout the course," because I think that sometimes safety mechanics, people will be like, "Oh, if I've done something that has triggered a need for one of these, I have committed a grave, a grave," and it's like, "No, just cause for conversation, let's talk about it," right? Which I think is a very healthy way to move forward with those. This next question comes to us from Emma, thanks Emma. This is actually about the same topic that we're actually on right now. "Have you ever had players use safety measure you instilled beforehand, like the X-Card, a safe word, et cetera? How do you handle that situation while making sure that everyone is safe? Is there anything you recommend to GMs for ensuring everyone is comfortable and doesn't experience triggers or anything of this sort or dealing with that scenario?" We just were talking about this. Yeah, it has come up, I feel like, maybe not in Dimension 20, it's come up before. And I think, again, it is an opportunity to address a player's need at the table. And again, I would say too in the phrasing here, it's like, "for ensuring everyone's comfortable, doesn't experience triggers or anything of this sort," again, I would say that that phrasing, it's about how you address it when it does happen, not putting this pressure on yourself of I will never hit anyone's trigger, mostly because you don't know what everyone's trigger is. Someone might have a trigger that is not something obvious, and you should create space for them to bring that up in the game, because it might not be something that is obvious, or occurs to you naturally going into it, so it's better to have those systems in place for how to talk about it if and when it does happen.
Aabria: Absolutely, and I usually play with, usually it's a Google spreadsheet that's lines and veils. For those of you don't know, lines are things that we all agreed as a group will never come up in the game, things that you just don't wanna see, they won't be there, we all know that we're not gonna do it. Veils are things that can exist in the world but you don't necessarily want them on screen. So it's like, exit, pursued by bear, the bear eating happens off camera, but we know that bears eat people in this world. So, because I leave that as a living document, there have been more than a couple times where something new was added to the list. As it was coming up, someone was like, "Oh, ding, that's a line for me today, I don't know why, spiders are a no-go." So yeah, having those sort of things up and live means that it's not a problem. I think as a DM, you just have to react in the same way, I don't know if you've ever been around a really young kid that when they trip and fall they'll fall and then look at you to see if they should be crying or not kind of idea, and you just kind of go, "Yeah, that's fine, this isn't a big deal, you've expressed a need and a desire, and I'm responding to it, and we're moving forward." It doesn't have to be a big thing. "You don't want this, so therefore it's not there." X-Cards are super easy with that because, at least at my table, they come with the idea that it won't be discussed, you just said no, and we're done with it. So, I also play with color codes, so red, yellow, and green. So if there's content, or a scene, that's particularly intense, I'll have people check in with the color that they're at, and that usually becomes more of a dialogue. If you're having this really dramatic, romantic scene and one person slides into yellow 'cause they're having a bad day, and they're like, "I can't really do this," it can become an opportunity to build dialogue, usually outside of the term of on camera, if we're talking about an actual play, but you could just talk about it if you're at a home game with friends, and pump the brakes. Yeah, having a lot of those things out there means that when they're used, they're just a part of the game, and you don't have to make it a big thing 'cause it's just part of the wide world of communication in the game.
Brennan: Hell yeah, just keepin' those channels open, and staying communicative.
Aabria: Yes. Yas.
Brennan: Jorge Ochoa asks, “How should handle custom spells and abilities, things players or DMs create for their campaigns?” Thanks, Jorge. Yeah, Aabria, are you throwin' a lot of homebrew into your stuff? Or when it comes to custom spells and abilities, how much mechanical spice are you throwin' into stuff when you're running it?
Aabria: I realize now that I guess I don't do this very often. I'm usually always game if a player comes to me with, "Can I reskin this to work this way?" Yeah, I guess I don't generate a ton of my own content like that, but I'm super for it. I think it's just a matter of the way any kind of play testing works is, you kind of give your players their head, and if it seems unbalanced, have a conversation about, "Okay, that destroyed my dragon immediately. No, okay, it does half the damage next time, holy crap."
(both laugh)
Brennan: I agree, there's adjusting, you can make those rulings as a DM, you can go back in and Nerf something a little bit later. You're not bound to it, you can go back and be like Bad Dad who's like, "We're not goin' to Disneyland anymore," be like, "I'm taking your toy away!" You can do that.
Aabria: Overwatch patch notes. Patch notes, it doesn't do that, it cannot do that or my game is ruined.
(both laugh)
Brennan: It's so, yeah, it's such a funny thing too, one thing I say is I think people get really worried about homebrewing stuff. There's a couple things that I would say here, number one, your stuff does not have to be as balanced as the stuff in the official rule books, because those official rule books are gonna be sold to thousands upon thousands of people. So, one incrementally unbalanced thing, scattered over tens or hundreds of thousands of games, is going to, in the long run, be really unbalancing. You can make a decision, because if you're just putting it into your homebrew campaign world, if you know that the character who's getting this magical item is themselves underpowered, that magical item can be more overpowered, because you're correcting an imbalance in the game that already exists, right? I think that's something you can have a lot of fun with in those, and I also think too, if you go read a lot of forums online, I see people all the time being like, "This is broken, this is busted, overpowered, it's too powerful," and I just wanna say, there are powers that exist within the game of D&D that are really good, and if wizards had never published rage, or had never published the spell fireball, and someone released that as homebrew, every person on the internet would crawl outta the woodwork to be like, "It's busted, they gotta Nerf rage."
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: It's just good, it's just a good power, things can be good.
Aabria: Hell yeah, and I think the most damaging things I've ever had in my games are dumb goofs that I've given. I usually give dumb items to my players, like I gave the Salt Bays a cake knife that you cut it, and it makes the thing cake. And we had to have a conversation outside, I'm like, "You cannot kill my big bad by eating it. Please don't eat him!"
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: Okay, it doesn't work on sentient things anymore. Leave it to your table--
Brennan: I love that. That's great, I love it, I love it! Aabria's like, "I'm not sure if I homebrew stuff that much, oh, I do have a knife that turns stuff into cake."
(both laugh)
That's a pretty homebrew magic item, I gotta say. That is so, god I love a cake knife.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: But yeah, I think sometimes too what you have to allow also is, so I have an 11-year long home game. We have--
Aabria: Holy crap, that's awesome.
Brennan: Thank you. It's so fun, we are now playing remotely again, which means that for the first time in years, we're playing every couple weeks, when before we were only playing around the holidays when we could get back together. So, our archer, these are all so old edition of D&D that's even crunchier, and gets more bizarre and absurd the higher level you get. So I gave this character a magical bow that had no max range on it, because in 3.5, for every range increment, you just get a minus. So I was like, cool, this legendary archer, as she's firing it's like, "Okay, there's no max range limit or whatever, but you know, it doesn't matter because at a certain point if she fires at something eight miles away, it'll be minus 40 to the, you know, it'll be something crazy, so it's fine." I then discovered that there is a spell in 3.5 that removes range increment penalties.
Aabria: Oh no!
Brennan: Oh no! And I had this moment where she was like, "So, I'm gonna take this spell." She took one level of sorcerer to take this spell, and it's like a first level archery spell or something like that, and was like, "Cool." And I was like, "How long does this spell last?" And she's like, "It lasts one round." And I was like, "Okay, and how many spell slots do you have?" And she's like, "I have three." And I was like, "So, once per day you can fire 30 arrows anywhere in the world." (laughs) And we literally had this discussion where I was like, "Do I Nerf this?" And I was like, "You know what? The wizard can cast wish four times a day, you can fire 30 arrows anywhere you want, because you don't know who's standing there." So you have to be like, “Okay, how's the wind goin'? Here we go, 10 arrows." These are going to land, and it's like, we realized even if the wizard scrys on a place, it's like cool, the arrows still take three-and-a-half hours to get there, person has maybe moved by that point out of that square, so you can't, so all we know is that in a certain amount of time, these arrows are going to--
Aabria: Oh my god. That's amazing, but then you can have this American scraper where they both are on a ledge, seeing into the future where this arrow will be in two-and-a-half, and just do it. Let them build, yeah, I just love this idea of, if your players are clever enough and motivated enough to build the wildest edge case, you give it to 'em. Like, "All right, you earned it. This is wild, you killed the moon I guess. Sure."
Brennan: Yeah. Exactly, you killed the moon. Why not? And that's actually one of the, the character did shoot the moon in the last session.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: You have to shoot the moon, you've gotta shoot the moon. But it's very funny because I describe the scene of the wizard of the party standing next to the archer, and being like, "Actually we could use you, if you have an arrow on the moon, we can scry on the arrow, and then be familiar with the location, and then teleport to that place on the moon." And so, he was taking an arrow out, and the archer lines up the shot, and I describe her pointing way far away from where the moon was and the wizard being like, "The moon's there," and her having to be like, "It won't be by the time the arrow gets there," and then firing an arrow at escape velocity from orbit.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: And you go--
Aabria: That's amazing.
Brennan: It's like, listen, is this crazy demi-god level power? Sure, they've been playing for 11 years. Give it to 'em.
Aabria: If not now, then when?
(both laugh)
Aabria: Yeah.
Brennan: So, so much fun. I love it. Here's a fun question from Dan, thanks Dan. "How do you go about making secondary objectives for your players in combat besides just kill the bad guys?" Thanks Dan. Yeah, I think this is a great question, 'cause it addresses a larger issue too, which is just combats are also scenes, what do you do to make sure that your combat is also adding to the narrative? Aabria, what are your go-tos when you think about, what do you try to add to your battle so that it's not the classic D&D thing of two sacks of hit points just taking turns depleting each other in a room with no other narrative stuff going on?
Aabria: Yeah, I think the really lazy answer is that I will usually ask at the top of combat what people's objectives are, 'cause I'm almost always at a table with someone, or if I'm the player, I am usually the player that cares about combat the least. So I'm like, "Well, what are you tryin' to get done? What do you care about right now if you're not here to punch that giant sack of hit points?" And yeah, it's usually a save, destroy, or infiltrate. So, if you're in a location, what else can you do while you're there? Are you investigating every room before you go in? If that's a weird anxiety that you wanna be prepared for this battle, what can I give you to lure, I love luring people away from battle, that's my jam. Like, all right, if you are gonna be fighting my big dragon that I have mapped a lot of personal feelings on, and she also looks like me when she's a human, so I care about her a lot, how do I sucker like half of this party outta doing something entirely different so this fight isn't balanced?
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: And I think that's usually the moment where I try to give players what they want for like character arc stuff in the middle of a fight, so they have to make that character pull choice of doing what's great for the group or doing what's right for me.
Brennan: I love that. I think one of the best things to overcome with combat is this idea, because there is this ritual, formal thing in D&D of saying, roll for initiative, and in some cases now, we're gonna break out the minis, and there is this attitude that you're almost playing a different game when combat starts.
Aabria: Yeah!
Brennan: And I think that's a good head space to try to get out of and remember, "No, no, no, these are the same people that have the same quirks, that make the same mistakes, they get emotional, that act reckless, and this fight should ideally matter in the story." Now, am I gonna sit here and say that every single home game I've ever played, every single combat has deeply mattered to the story? No, sometimes ya boy phones it in. But--
Aabria: (laughs) Same!
(both laugh)
Brennan: But, in an ideal circumstance, your combat is advancing the story, just like scenes or narratives would be. There's a combat, one of the opponents is masked, halfway through the combat someone rips the mask off, "Oh my god, it's someone's long lost X."
Aabria: Yup.
Brennan: I realize X was standing for a variable, but it could also be someone--
Aabria: But it was also, yes.
Brennan: My ex! What are you doing here?
(both laugh)
Aabria: We were together for like two weeks, are we exes? Awkward. (laughs)
Brennan: Well, I guess fuck me, I already called you my ex out loud, so now I look like a weird, clingy asshole.
Aabria: I just don't like putting a label on it, hi-yah!
(both laugh)
Brennan: That's another great instinct is that ability to add banter and role playing into your combats so that you are, again, having fun in those moments. I think every DM knows that thing of, yeah, narrate the killing blow, give people a scene based on the mechanics, but I think you can add a lot of those other elements too, and I think one of the things as well is adding elements that maybe straddle the narrative mechanical divide, but that are not just purely combat abilities. Skill challenges, are we fighting in a burning building? Is there a risk, is it a game of chicken where it's like, "Hey this building is burning," one or the other has to leave at a certain point or we're all gonna die, right? I think there's a lot of fun tools at your disposal to make combat feel narratively meaningful and rewarding. And again, I think too that, your characters' goals are probably not kill these monsters, they probably have wider goals. So one of the things for you is, okay, if this combat isn't the ultimate, unless it's Inigo Montoya fighting the six-fingered man, if this combat isn't their ultimate objective, how can I stitch this combat as a meaningful obstacle, or a meaningful hurdle in between them and their objective so it has stakes for them? I think that's really--
Aabria: Can I add one more thing on?
Brennan: Please!
Aabria: Sorry, I keep making these questions four-and-a-half hours long. I regret nothing!
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: One of my favorite action set pieces that I think about, or I try to think about, frequently when building encounters in-game is, do you remember the weird wheel fight in the second "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie? Where they're fighting on the top of it, but Jack's inside of it, and they're all fighting over the key to Davy Jones' chest. I love the one weird goal, where fighting is happening, but someone, or the group, has weird stakes. So I did a one shot once where the group's gardener, they just love flowers, I was like, this entire, massive ice fight is happening in a meadow where you find this one orchid you care about. Don't let it get smooshed. And now I had arguably the biggest DPS character who's honestly just using all of their power to push the fight away from a flower that they couldn't pick 'cause they needed minutes to scoop it out. So it was this character playing a tower defense thing of a little flower in the center of the map, and just having weird goals that get people bought in, and then the fact that it's a weird and kinda funny fight meant that other characters, when they were getting over like, "I don't feel like killin' mooks anymore. I'm gonna get in on this flower game," and then everyone kind of learns to play however they wanna play in a weird space. (laughs)
Brennan: That's so fun, that is so fun. And guaranteed, every PC who was in that fight remembers the flower fight.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: Because that's also what it is too is, with some exception, a character spends a lot of times using, especially if they're starting at low level, with the same sort of suite of abilities, and after a certain point you're like, "Hey, I know what it feels like to get sneak attack on somebody, I've gotten it before, I get it." When you add these complications into your battles, you scratch that itch for someone where they go, "Oh, I know my character's abilities backward and forward, how do I take this amalgam of feats, and features, and spells, and bend them to the task of protecting a flower?" which they were not designed with the ability to do. That's such a gratifying puzzle to give your players. In my head, the second you said that, I was thinking of the player characters I've made in the last year and being like, "Okay, so I'm gonna set up a zone of silence around the flower, darkness around the flower, people can't find the flower. I'm setting up, now I have this," immediately it's like, "Ooh, that's so fun!" So fun.
Aabria: There was a lot of thunder waves to knock the fight over, so we were shifting the whole group, so we actually ended up putting the fight on sheets of paper, so the papers would get shifted over on the map. So it would just happen half a foot over to the right, it was just very, very fun.
Brennan: Oh god, like an old Hanna Barbera cartoon where the fight is just a dust cloud with fists and legs (laughs) coming out of it. Oh, that's beautiful.
(Aabria laughs)
Brennan: That is beautiful. This is a, here's a great question here from Bernie, thanks Bernie, "What are some common and uncommon character creation faux pas, rules of etiquette being breaches for character creation?" So I will weigh in and set the parameters on this question as, faux pas being a breach of etiquette, I don't think there are any, the only faux pas I can think of are decisions that a person would make from a lack of gaming experience that are going to inhibit them having a good time. I don't think that there should be a lot of external pressures. If a person has a dream for a type of character they wanna play, they should be able to live that dream. But there are decisions that people make just from not having played before that you can tell, "Oh, you are setting yourself up to play a character that you will probably not enjoy when you actually get to the table." I'm trying to think of classic examples of this. Yeah, Aabria, when you first started playing, first of all, how long were you a player before you jumped into DMing? And then, did you have early characters where you were like, looking back, I could've tweaked or altered that to make a more playable experience for myself?
Aabria: Yeah, it took me about six months to go from player to DM, and I was doing one shots, and I was like, let's go!
Brennan: I could've called it, I knew it. You're just like Murph, it's people that are like, "Cool, fun, fun, fun, so yeah, I'm gonna be running this."
Aabria: Yup. I got like three bad rounds of one shots and I was like, "Hold on, can I just see?"
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: "Okay, I'll see ya next week, I've got this. Don't worry 'bout it."
Brennan: Some people are called. Some people are called to the service of the greater good and they run games, I'm tellin' you.
Aabria: To answer your question though, I think the thing I did early on, my very first character was, I made a cleric, and I just speced into be the best healer I can be, sort of agnostic of things I would care about, like I didn't realize I was going to enjoy the social aspect of D&D so much, so I built a character that had zero charisma and didn't do any of the things that I wanted to do as a player, which is talk to NPCs and lie good, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Brennan: I think that makes sense of, A, making a character that's too focused on the mechanics first, which, let me tell you, is not even a beginner mistake, I've made that mistake recently because I get to play so rarely that I get excited about builds. And then I go, "Who the hell is this person? Who's this person?" Which I would actually say is a reason sometimes for, as a DM, you don't wanna be pushy, but you can offer gentle guidance as to, if you know what your story is going to be about, you know that there are gonna be certain NPCs, certain plot elements, don't be stingy with offering that stuff up, 'cause that can help guide a person into making narrative-first characters that I think people will usually enjoy more in the long run. And again, I would say one of the biggest ways that people can make characters that they end up not enjoying is, even if you have a build you really like, if you make a character that is not stitched into the fabric of the world at all, that can create a feeling of isolation where you don't feel close to the other characters, you don't have anything in common with them, and I think you can sometimes be like, “Okay, this is a rootin' tootin' high shenanigans pirate adventure, and I've made an extremely grim, dark, dower, unfun character." Or even you can go the opposite direction of a character who has this big, huge quest and backstory, and then you make a huge backstory, and then the adventure starts and suddenly you're like, "Well this has nothing to do with the gleaming orb that I have with me that I have to return to the Temple of the Four Elements."
Aabria: (laughs) Yeah.
Brennan: You're like, "Well, maybe you should," so I think finding those, weirdly I feel like there's a great golden mean, there's a middle ground where it's like you have a character that has specifics, they have quirks, they have a personality that will be fun for you to play, but there's also a lot of rough edges, there's unfinished stuff about them, because, you know, if your character has no reason to wanna adventure, why will they adventure? If your character has too specific of a reason to want to adventure, why would they go on this adventure?
Aabria: This one, yes! Oh, yeah, I couldn't agree more, people that come in with and I'm like, "I'm gonna do my best, but this is more than I wrote for my whole campaign, so, okay." (laughs)
Brennan: I think sometimes something that people get away from too is, there's bad, I wanna say Hollywood development brain of, people need specific motivations. Let me tell you a little secret of human nature, people usually don't have specific motivations for a lot of the stuff they do.
Aabria: True.
Brennan: Imagine if you talk to someone and you're like, "So what brought you to LA?" And someone's like, "My father was killed by a studio executive." And you're like, "Holy shit, that's a very specific answer. I was expecting, oh I don't know, I'm thinking about doing the acting thing." That's great for an adventurer of, "Yeah, I'm an academy trained wizard, I flunked out, and now I'm figuring out what's next," that's a great spot to start in an adventure.
Aabria: Oh my god, just a bunch of adventurers on their gap year, love it.
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: Oh, they're just gonna find the treasure, and themselves. I want that now.
Brennan: Exactly, leave yourself open, let yourself have a found family, exactly.
Aabria: I also wanna recommend, just also as we're transitioning out of this question, to add mechanics in your session zeroes, and as you're all coming together. I think a big way to help keep characters connected and figure that out is to do something external to build relationships between them. Like I have a deck of cards, it's called Decuma, and they have setting things that you answer as a group, and build the world out together, or relationship stuff. So you're answering these questions that tie you, and build connective tissue between you, so even if you don't have a ton of backstory motivation, at least you're like, "Yeah, but we dated one time three years ago, and I'm just trying to see, is this still something? And for right now that's good enough for me, and we'll see about the pirate ship later.” And let that be enough, and then you can figure it all out as you go. (laughs)
Brennan: Oh, it's so, so good. Yeah, and it doesn't take much to provide that kernel, and then it starts to build in-game, which is, that's the best part is, when you start forming memories of a character dynamic from within actual play sessions, it becomes so, so powerful. I feel like we have time for one more question, we'll try to jump in here. This one is from Charlie Foxley, thanks Charlie Foxley. "Absolutely love the show. You've all inspired me to try creating my own campaign based on one of the worlds of a popular card game, City of Guilds, hint, hint. My question is, how much preparation is too much prep when trying to explore a role with such vast canon lore on its own? It's my first time ever doing this, and it's kind of intimidating to say the least. Thank you in advance." Well thank you for the question, Charlie. Aabria, what's your relationship with prep? How do we feel about prep here?
Aabria: I love to lie and say, "I don't prep a ton, 'cause I just improv it, and I'm light and flexible." I prep so much. (laughs) I think the only, for me, before every season of Salt Bay is probably 10 to 12 hours of, "What are we doing? Do I remember what happened before? What are the things that are tiny plot points that might come back in later?" But I think the only real answer to this is, do as much prep until you think you're psyching yourself out. If you're doing it out of fear, stop prepping, it'll be fine. If you're doing it 'cause you're like, "I love this lore, and I will eat it with my cake knife for like 48 hours," I'm not gonna tell you and your fabulous brain that that's too long. Do it as long as you want, just don't let it freak you out, like the slavish holding to lore, and being held to that standard will get in your way more than it helps. I make stuff up all the time about things that I knew about a world I'd built, but I forgot in the moment, so I changed my answer. So don't worry about it.
(both laugh)
Brennan: That's my bad secret too is that, part of the reason that I rarely, if ever, run modules or published equipment is, the idea of being provably wrong about something, it scares the crap outta me. Whereas it's like, this is like having no boss, it's like, "I don't have to check in with Jeremy Crawford, no," I only check in with me. So if I come up with some off the, I think the audience of Dimension 20 would be like pitchforks and torches outside of my house if they knew truly how much stuff I said with confidence in the moment and was truly just out of the hat like, this is true now. (Aabria laughs) But I think that the key with prep is, and I think we can be clear about the types of stuff that DMs need to prepare. In the abstract it's like, yes, the story, the narrative, but concretely, it's usually what monsters am I gonna use in fights or what rules are gonna come up? If it's gonna be a big aerial jumping battle, find a good jump calculator online, you can Google them, they're great. Rules, stat blocks, if they're going to a new place, names of places, names of people, some of the stuff those people are doing. And then, props, maps, from a dungeon map to a larger area map. So, I think the key here is, there is, once again, a golden mean between being under prepared, which we've all been in a session where it's like, "Ooh, I don't, you guys get to town." "Wow, what's the town like?" "Buildings, boy, structures, all over."
Aabria: (laughs) I've definitely done the this forest is old, old as balls.
(Brennan laughs)
Aabria: It's full of trees, (moans) big ones.
Brennan: Big ones, okay? Fully. But on the other hand I will say that, we're all human beings, and for the most part, prep is happening in your free time, especially if you're doing it for your home game. It is the lucky individual who gets to prepare worlds during working hours. So for the most part, I think that there is a degree of being kind to yourself, and over game sessions realizing, what is the return on investment? After a few sessions of your game it's like, okay I made up all this hidden lore about this wizard's guild, and then I remembered that my party is a cleric, a fighter, and a rogue, and there's no wizard, and no one gave a shit, nobody even has an intelligence above 10, and they hate the arcana and they don't like it. You learn what your players' interests are, and I think you can zero in on that stuff, right? I also think, this is a move that I pull in home games now, when I'm running them. Because my players understand that Brennan's also running a bunch of other games for Dimension 20 while this is going on, I will straight up be like, if they pull a move, 'cause also they're high level and can teleport, so it's like, "Hey, we're gonna teleport to the bottom of the ocean to this city we read about in one of your lore books," and I'm like, "Great. I need 15 minutes." (laughs)
Aabria: Yes!
Brennan: Call an audible, just be like, "Give me 15 minutes, I gotta just take a second because there's gonna be stuff here I wasn't prepared for, but if you give me a second, I will be prepared." That's not a bad thing to do. Nobody hates an excuse to walk over to the hummus and chips and take a breather.
Aabria: True. And yeah, especially in home games where there's no performative pressure. If you need a break for whatever reason, you call that bad boy. And also, along with what Brennan is saying, it makes perfect sense to, don't think that your prep work stops when your campaign begins. You're gonna learn what your characters actually give a shit about as you play. So get broad strokes before you start, and then as they hone in on what they care about and what they think the game is, you can follow that, and chase it, and throw out, don't be afraid of occasionally having to throw some railroad tracks out just in front of your players, we all do it, it's a good skill to have. Like, "Yes, this is always where I wanted you to go. I prepped for it the whole time, and you'll never know." So, feel free to improvise, feel free to call for time when you need it, and prep for the things that your players care about as they learn to care about it.
Brennan: I think that's such profoundly useful advice of, yeah, it is that GIF of Wallace and Gromit, of the dog putting the railroad track in front of the thing while it's going. And that's the thing, it's like, whether you built it at the table, I think that's the biggest thing to get out of your head about is that, the things you create in one of those spheres have more value or authority. Whether you made it up at the table, or you made it up on Monday in your prep time, it's just as valid. You and your players are the authors of this world, wherever you made it up, it still counts. And also, I have bad news for you, if your players are anything like the players that myself and Aabria play with, odds are they are going to love the random shit you made up on the spot a million times more--
Aabria: The bastards.
(both laugh)
Brennan: 100%. You're just scene painting, you're like, "You're in a tavern, there's the barkeep, whose name I already know, and there's the mysterious stranger, and he's the plot hook, and here's this other stuff," and you paint one little thing of, "A young cabin boy is lugging a heavy chest upstairs," and they're like, "Who's that boy? Why's that chest so heavy?" and then you're like, "No, please don't," and they're like, "I help him with the chest. ‘What's up, boy? You're a cabin boy? We're in a tavern on land, what cabin are you a boy of?’"
Aabria: Yup.
Brennan: God damn it, I slipped up my words and then, it's too late.
Aabria: NPC pets are my favorite thing, where they're just like, "You're ours now," and you're like, "It's 'cause I did a voice." This is why I refuse to learn voices, it's 'cause any time I do it they're like, "You have to do this forever now," and I'm like, (coughs) "Okay."
(both laugh)
Brennan: It's so funny, people hype up the Dungeon Master, this role, I am the head of the table. No, it is a full genie scenario. You are the servant at the table, 100%. Yes you have vast cosmic powers, but it is, the PCs can be like, "We adopt this dude, now you do this voice forever," and you're like, "I'm damned, I truly am a damned soul, I don't know what I did. Now this is my life." (Aabria laughs) Shout out, Gilear. (Aabria laughs) It's fine. Sad elven dad. Gang, an hour-and-a-half flew by, all of the thanks in the world to our wonderful guest Aabria Iyengar, Aabria thank you so much for being on the show. Go and follow Aabria on Twitter, Instagram, @Quiddie, Q, U, I, D, D, I, E. And see her amazing shows and actual plays online. Aabria, thank you so much for being with us today.
Aabria: Oh, thanks for chattin', this was so fun! Oh, I love talkin' shop.
Brennan: Oh I love to talk shop. Thank you all at home for watching, and we'll catch you all next time on Adventuring Academy!
Aabria: Yay!
Brennan: Yay!
Aabria: Bye.
Captions extracted by: gluegunshots
Edited by: gluegunshots