042: Beyond D&D - What Makes TTRPGs Click for Kids and Adults? With Martin Lloyd - Claim to Game

Episode Transcript
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>> Martin Lloyd (00:00):
This is basically, everybody's in,

(00:02):
everybody's paying attention, everyone's focused. I'm not going
to say it's guaranteed quality time, but it's pretty close. But as soon as
they can talk. How long do I have to wait? When can I stop
playing role playing games with my kids? But with kids there's no
habit, there's no preconceptions
and they get into this, they get this really easily.
I've yet to meet a kid who's a bad role player.

>> Clint Scheirer (00:22):
I have a confession to make. I am a
tabletop gamer. Nerd alert. Nerd
alert. I'm also a dad. Am, I the radest, baddest dad
a kid ever had. And I want to share my love of tabletop games with
my three kids. But the question is, when is the right
age to expose my children to the magic of
tabletop games? What is the right game to

(00:42):
play?
Martin Lloyd is a father, a gamer, a game
designer and a lifelong role player. He first came up with
the idea of Amazing Tales to play a game with
his four year old daughter when it was rainy outside. And
in 2019 he was able to publish
Amazing Tales. This game
requires zero prep for the parent and it's so
easy your 4 year old could j it.

You got it, dude.

Let's go make your claim to game.

(01:42):
You have a game called Amazing
Tales?

I do, yeah. You do. I have it right
here.

Hey, there it is.
It's a really fun art. I think the art really
tailors two children. My kids would pick up that book and start
looking through it right away, I think without any,
without batting an eyelash, without b, an eye.
And what I wanna know is, you know, you developed this
amazing game and the game is designed to be played
with children in their trusted adult. Whether it's a parent or

(02:12):
somebody else that they're trusting to go through this game in this
story. You know, it's got some really amazing
reviews. I went through the reviews on Driveruu,
RPG NWorld. I was looking at
Geek Native. There were other blogs and
podcasts that were just speaking its praises.
And the customers, they think it's, I'm gonna use the term the
bees knees. Bee knees.

(02:34):
Like it's pretty cool. And so
what I wanna know is why do you think it works so
well? What do you think the key reason
is that Amazing Tails work so well and has
been so well received?

Yeah, I think, a big part of it is
it's really, really simple.
I think, I don't know if the 200 word
RPG contest is still a thing. But I
did put Amazing Tales, I got it down to 200 words and
put the full rules in for that once. So it
is really, really simple. And that means

(03:08):
that four year olds really can play it. So one of the things I used to say
in the advertising is rules so simple your 4 year old can explain them.
And it's true. People say to me, oh, that can't really
be right. It is. You can. And
I've seen people send me photographs of kind of 4 and 5 year olds
who are GG and
it's that easy.
So when you create a character, you to, you pick

(03:30):
four things your character can do. I think in the rules I
call them skills, but they are things your character can do. And that could be
anything from like fighting
monsters to someone sent me,
their daughter had made up a character for a Star Wars
type setting they were playing in. And she had that being a
queen was one of her skills. So she was

(03:50):
being a space queen or a space princess. That was her
skill.

It must be nice to be queen.

So you pick four skills of each. Get a different sized dice.
Because rolling different sized dice is fun. So you get a 6 and 8,
a 10 and 12. and then whenever you do something,
you roll the dice. If you get a three or more, you've succeeded.
if you get a one or a two, you have failed
and things get worse. And that things
will continue to get worse until you pass a roll. And that's

(04:15):
it, that's the whole game.

And that's the way the cookie crumbles. So regardless of
the size of the dice, regardless of the sides on the
dice, it's one or two fails. Anything above
three or above success.
Yeah, I love that.

And we do sometimes say, you know, if you get the biggest number on the
dice, then something super special happens.

But that's an optional super
special instead of critical success.
I like that term.

There's no hit points or anything like that. So this is a game for
ages 4 and up. So
I don't know anybody who thinks it would be a good
idea as a parent to kind of kill your child's character at age
5. so there's no hit points,
so that's fine. So things get worse.
And it can be really exciting when

(05:03):
you failed two rols in a row. So maybe the monster,
first he catches you and then he's gonna devour you and he's
holding you there above his mouth and you've got to think of something
to kind of get out of that situation. That is plenty
of drama for ah, the average five
year old. You don't need to tell them they're down to like 2 out of 12 hit
points. @ that point it's like no,

(05:24):
if you mess this up something even worse is gonna
happen. so that works. And the other is the GM never
rolls any dice. so it's not adversarial.
So it's always just player facing the player, always on taking
the action.

It's a collaborative storytelling focus.

Yeahah, that's a nice way of puting.

Now when I, when you were talking, the GM doesn't roll any
dice. In some other games the GM does a lot of
things. The GM is prepping the
game, the GM is coming up with the scenarios,
the GM is making funny voices. The GM
is maybe not making funny voices but definitely
having to describe a lot of the story. How

(06:04):
do you feel that that weight, I think we
talked about it being the mental weight of running a
game. How is that balanced in this situation?

Yeah, so I think
exactly what you say for sort of if you're playing with grown
up friends or teenage friends then
role playing games do put a lot of cognitive load on
the games master. particularly if you haven't
got sort of really good group dynamics.
So the games mustst have'supposed

(06:33):
to provide a scenario. He's often also supposed
to provide the venue and the snacks.
You should at least outsource all that stuff.
and then also be the one who knows all the rules and who knows what's
gonna happen next. And on the flip side of this
you have players turn up and kind of say oh I can't remember the name of my
character. And

(06:55):
that's always kind of disappointing. So you feel like
the games master is doing all the work and the players are kind of
there to be entertained. That's never very good.
What works really differently when you've got an adult and a
child is that games
mastering is a fairly intensive
business. Whatever age you're running for and if you're running
for your 4 year old or your 6 year old

(07:17):
then you're working quite hard to think of stuff that
they're going to like and that's going to keep them going and to deal with whatever
strange curveball they've just come up with.

Look, a goose.

But the key thing is for them it's pretty hard work
too. They're telling this
collaborative story, they're Trying to think about a character, they're trying to
imagine the world that you're describing. and they're
trying to do all that as they're going along. That
is hard work for a four or five or a six
year old. And to keep this up for 20,

(07:46):
25 minutes, which is kind of a good length for
a game of Amazing Tales. Ah, at that
age, that really puts a load on them. And the great
thing is that that means everyone's equally
engaged. So if you've
got, a small child and you have played
Snakes and Ladders with them or Ludo
or something like that, you know

(08:09):
how hard as a grown up it is to
stay engaged. Dad, wake up.
You roll the dice, you move the thing.
for your kid, this is super engrossing and
they're really into it and they'll be explaining to
you how they are really good at rolling fives.
Oh, but they need a four. And the thing they're really good at

(08:31):
rolling is five. You get all of that going
on. but for the adult or when you're
reading the storybook for the 20th time, it's
hard to be engaged. And the
kids can tell that they like
spending time with their parents, they like doing things together, but they can kind of tell when
you're tuning out a bit. so I think

(08:51):
what makes kids and adults really respond
well to Amazing Tales is that this is basically
everybody's in, everybody's paying attention, everyone's
focused. I'm not going to say it's guaranteed quality time, but
it's pretty close. That's one of the reasons I think kids love playing
the games is because it's really something you're doing together. And at the end of it,
you've got a story you could tell together. And, both sides can

(09:11):
say, well, that only came out that way because
of, both our contributions.
Everyone realizes that.

Yeah, you know, two things that came to mind. That
time limit is gold because, you
know, even keeping adults paying
attention. I believe there was a TED Talk, study
done in TED Talks, International. Right.
Like these speaking events that people are trying to go to to
learn things and be inspired. They don't allow you to go past

(09:39):
18 minutes in those talks
anymore because the average attention
span, even for adults has gone straight down.

That, makes a lot of sense to me. and yeah, I have to say,
I don't watch a lot of actual plays. I know some people love
them, but I find it really hard to stay with
them. and when I'M running
games I really try and keep for
adults I really try and keep turn short because I think if
everyone's turn is takingake three minutes and you've got five players
and I want to do something more than every 15 minutes,

(10:11):
I know I'm going to start tuning out.

If you are running a long term campaign, treat each
one like a one shot, you know,
treat each one like a little episode or a movie
and you know the difference between an adult TV
show and maybe a children's TV show,
the timing is different. at least, at least by five to 10
minutes sometimes. They're not always the same length for each
program. So that, that makes sense to me.

(10:35):
so as you were developing this, most
game designers, if they're good, which
you're good, they have playte
tests. Right. People are testing the game
and trying to figure out how the, how the
game works, and what doesn't work and
adjusting and you know, doing all that
pre work before you actually sell the game and make it

(10:57):
big. What did you find unique
or unexpected as you were going through the playtest
with either parents or children?

Yeah. To start on the design end I did
do quite a lot of looking around online, talking to people
who'd written other games for kids, talked to
them about their experiences and watched actual plays
online. And this was when
Google Circles was still a thing.
actual communities I could dive into and engage with.
And one of the things I got was there was this just this huge

(11:27):
desire on the part of you know,
if you are a role player and you have a small child,
your first question is how long do I have to wait? How long
do we have to wait before they can talk is too young. But as soon as
they can talk, how long do I have to wait? When can I start
playing role playing games with my kids'just? This thing
role players have. because it's a

(11:48):
great hobby, we want to share it I think.
and that leads to lots of people trying to play
games with their kids far too soon I think. Or
games that their kids aren't ready for.
So if you go on YouTube you will find plenty of
videos of dads trying to
get their three and four year olds to play full blown

(12:10):
Dungeonsons and Dragons, rolling
D20s and
like the kids there and they're present but they're not, you
know, but dad is kind of doing everything. It's almost always
that. and
I'm not sure that kind of shared experience is really Happening.
So that was one thing was this huge demand, but it wasn't

(12:30):
quite working. And then the other thing was just
taking things out of the design.
So, the very first
time I ran this game, I ran it for my daughter. She
was 4 at the time. And,
she found a magic treasure. ah,
her fairy princess Rose found a magic treasure. I think

(12:51):
it was a ring. I think it made her courageous. But it gave her a
plus one on a roll.
And even that in the end turned out
to be too much rules. So I was like,
oh, we've got a magic item. We should have a plus one. It's like,
don't need that, don't take that out. It's just
if she says, I use my magic ring, I and brilliant.

(13:11):
Roll your normal dice. If it comes at more than three, the
magic item made a difference. but
even just that little, having a plus one
wasn't necessary. It was too much rule.
This is maybe an insight into game design.
You can have rules for everything, but you probably
shouldn't. So the rules you choose to

(13:33):
keep are the ones that are going to
decide what your game is about. So if
you keep rules for chases in your game, to
name a very common subsystem, then I hope your
game is like Fast and Furious or something like that
that it chases is going to be a big thing.
Otherwise just take them out the same for like grappling.

(13:54):
So many role playing games. I have rules for grappling. Why do like, you could
just roll a normal attack, but no, somebody wants to be able to do like
20 different grappling moves. If your game is
like wrestlinge.

I was going to say pro wrestling the rpg.

If that's the game, I forget the name of it. I've played a pro
wrestling RPG and it was a lot of fun. But yeah, if that's your game, by all
means have a really extensive grappling system. But
otherwise, please don't bother.

You had mentioned, taking things out of the
game. I think of when I played Dungeons
and Dragons and I am not a Dungeons and Dragons hater. I
think it definitely brought me into the hobby about 10 years
ago. It was my gateway drug,
I suppose, to table.
Yeah, yeah. And there were just certain

(14:39):
things I didn't want to do. I didn't want to keep track
of, how much food my players had
as they were traveling across the desert.
I didn't want to keep track of, I
don't know, any of the minutiae, that normally I don't want to
think about, like, I have to think about that if I'm traveling across country
with my kids, I have to think about making sure we have food.

(14:59):
I don't want to think about that in a role playing game, personally.

Yeah, I think it's a lot to do with genre, you know.
So, yeah, Dungeons and Dragons always feels to me quite high
fantasy. Quite like you're not supposed to be worrying about how much
food you've got. if you're playing
something Game of Thrones esque
and you're somewhere out beyond the wall, and,
it might be quite interesting to start giving

(15:22):
people decisions to make about, okay,
there's you and there's the 10 guys you're with and you've only got
enough food for eight of you unless everyone's going to be hungry
and suffering. So then it becomes
interesting if you're making
people make decisions. But yeah,
generally you don't want to be thinking about
counting arrows or pennies or food

(15:44):
or any of that stuff.

Yeah, I tend to just ignore the stuff that I don't want.
But it would make it a lot easier not having to look at it in the first place
in the rule book.

Well, there is this idea that sort of it's only a
proper game if it's got these things. so the first game
I ever wrote when I was about 16,
so that was a long time ago now,
had all these rules because it had rules for encumbrance
and movement and move it through difficult. Just because
I thought you needed to have those. I was like, it's not a proper game if it doesn't

(16:15):
have all these things.

Encumbrance is one that I also kind of turned a blind
eye too when, when I was playing D20 & D. However,
when I did Pathfinder 2E or Pathfinder 2E
2e or the Starfinder Playtest
for second edition that just came out with Paizo.
Encumbrance, was a thing and I actually had to make sure I
didn't bury myself with too much
equipment for every situation.

Yeah, the One Ring has a really nice, simple
system for encumbrance. it basically all you have
to track is your armor and your weapons. You
have adventuring kits, but that doesn't count. You just have your armor and your
weapons and it ties it to your hit points.
So it's really important about when you're getting tired. And
there's a genuine trade off to be made between having lots of

(16:59):
armor, but then getting tired much
quicker. The One Ring is a really
good example of what I'm talking about because every
bit of mechanic that's in that game
is relevant to the genre and the setting. It's all
chosen to really build up this kind of
Middle Earthy feel. That's what you have rules
for and things that don't contribute to that aren't in

(17:21):
there. And, one nice tip.
I heard the designer being interviewed and he said, yeah,
even what we called the various stats and things we would go through the
books looking for, what are the words Tolkien would
use for these things?

And this may answer the next question because you
said, less is more.
Keep it simple. Were there any strategies
that you built in when designing Amazing
Tales to help, kids think about
resolving conflict? is it just the
dice? Is it, is it just the dice or is there an
element of like, social interaction?

So in the basic game, it basically the
thing that you're always supposed to come back to when you're running the game is to say,
what do you do? Your goal as a GM is basically
to get to that question as fast as you can.
So you maybe a little bit of description, maybe set the
scene, but you want to get that question
on the table really, really fast. What do you do?

(18:17):
This happens. What do you do? This happens. What do you do?
And then listen to your kids
and what they come back with. They will have picked the four things
their character's good at, so they'll probably suggest those.
one thing they often say is, something like,
I roll my fighting dice or
can I roll this dice?

(18:38):
So I do think it's good to kind of go and prompt for like, no, what do
you do? And then we'll decide what dice that's going to be.

That's a struggle for than new gamers. New adult
gamers too.

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's. But with kids,
there's no habit, there's no
preconceptions. And they get into this, they get this
really easily. I've yet to meet a kid who's a bad
role player. One thing I suggest, it's not a rule rule, but
it's a suggestion, is if something fails, you have to
do a different approach the next time.
So if you say I fight the monster with my

(19:09):
sword fighting skill and that doesn't work,
then the next thing you have to do has to use one of your
other three skills. So the situation gets worse. Ah, the
monster, parries your attack and knocks you down. And
now he's going to, throw you in his cooking pot.
He's like okay, what other skills have you got that
works quite well and it works quite well with adults as

(19:30):
well. Now you have to try something
different.

Well, that's the real life skill, right?
Sometimes something works
and then sometimes that same strategy doesn't and
you have to go into your toolbox. Usually it's an internal,
you know, in your head toolbox or in your heart
toolbox. And you have to come back to the situation and do something
different. what is the challenge here and how can you fix it

(19:53):
or how can you get closer to this other individual? In our
house we, we have, ah, you know,
how do you help the other mentality?
I granted I have an eight, a seven and a, sorry,
an eight, a six and a four year old. And that does not always
work right off the bat. There is a little bit of
facilitation, like a real life game master
here trying, trying to get my kids to get along.

(20:15):
but yeah, that I love that, that you have to take a
different approach when something doesn't work. The
first time I heard from some.

Therapists who had started using Amazing Tales with
kids. And there's a whole bunch of
other products and therapies that have been brought
up around role playing games. But I got in touch with one
of them and there is a supplement to Amazing Tales,
the big Book of Amazing Tales.

Nice.

And she wrote a chapter for this which is about
using Amazing Tales in therapeutic
settings, or to help kids address
things. And it's quite interesting the
way she describes doing that because she talks about
needing to maybe do things that you wouldn't normally do as
a gm. So if you want to address a specific
issue that a child is having, then you sort of have to

(21:02):
push that button. And then
when it doesn't work, you have to push that button again and push that button
again until they kind of come up with a different
response. And then you can kind of
reward the response that, that was desired or whatever.
But that is not how I would suggest you sort of GM a
session if you're running it for fun. Yeah,

(21:23):
but the idea that you kind of okay, this thing that frustrates
you as a child is the thing that we're
now going to put in the game to see how you deal with
is quite an interesting approach.

What I've learned in my professional
job when I'm coaching individuals or managing
anybody, is that I like to talk a
lot, right? Like I wanna give
advice, I wanna keep speaking. I don't always
Leave, room for a pause
or silence. What is your

(21:54):
thoughts about that? Being able to, as a gm,
stop talking and let the players are, in this case, maybe the children
speak?

Yeah. Well, like I say, it's about getting to that question
about what do you do as fast as you
can and then shut up, shot
up. And they'll have an
idea, and listen to what your
kids say because it's often
they will say something that isn't quite what you're expecting, or they'll come
with something that's a bit left field, or they'll have not quite understood part of

(22:24):
your description. And so
it's good to really listen and not just sort of assume that you know
what they're going to do. That's their input to the story. That's how
they can contribute. So you've got to take that on
board.

You know, this is a scary question to ask a child,
but sometimes I'll ask the initial question, they'll give me an
answer. And then I, got this from Michael
Bungay Stainer, who wrote, the Coaching
Habit. He'll say, anything else,
anything else, and you could go down that rabbit hole
with a child. I think maybe, maybe farther than you want

(22:57):
to. but it's amazing when you
take more layers of that onion away. Ogres
are, ah, like onions. To use an analogy, the
question onion, you'll get a lot farther. It's almost like when
you were saying pushing the button, anything else, anything
else, you come up with some really interesting stories.

Another thing I like to do is, and I
suggest in the book, is to,
not decide everything up front and ask the players
what happens. You find,
the horrible monster that's guarding the treasure. What is
it? The kids
may well come up with something way more interesting than you

(23:36):
had in mindah.
so that sort of handing some agency
over to the players, is I think also great
that they can contribute and suggest
and you know, in the end, whatever it is, they're gonna roll the dice and have to not get a
one or a two.

That makes me think, I've read a book multiple times,
the Lazy Dungeon Master by Mike Sha.
also the Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.
And there's a phrase in there, and I'm probably butchering the
phrase, but it doesn't become
real until your players make it real.
And I've really tried to live by that,

(24:13):
where maybe I have an idea of what's in that treasure box.
But they may come up with Something way better and I just scrap
it. Never sees the light of day.

Yeah, I'm not familiar with that phrase, but
certainly I get the idea, you know, that once,
once players start engaging, really engaging with the
world, that you've put out there for them and once
they start to want to have some agency and to interact with it or maybe
add things to it. Yeah, then it feels a
lot more real. I find as

(24:44):
a player that I really like games where you get to have a bit of
a home base. So
you can be customizing things and adding things and
expanding it. And sometimes that's built into the
system. So,
Ven is one that comes to mind where you get a
castle basically that you operate out of.
And one of the things you can expl Bender experience points on is

(25:06):
improving your castle. so that's really nice and
it's fused into the mechanics. but
there's lots of other games, where you
just acquire a house or a castle or a
spaceship or whatever it is. and I
love those games. I really want to get into kind
of building my little base
and my setup and my

(25:29):
equipment and so on. and
that's, I guess it's sort of one of the ways I like sort of
feeling like my character is rooted in that world
as bit a bit more of a solid
presence.

What is the single most common mistake that you
see parents do when they're playing? Like we talked
about the dad trying to play D and d with their 4 year old
online. What are some of the mistakes that somebody
could run into?

Yeah, I don't want to talk too much about
mistakes because if you're playing the game
that's already a good thing. I don't want to say
there's a wrong way to do it in the right way to do it,
but I think when you're playing with
kids, it's important to
not say no. So, particularly for

(26:15):
the design of Amazing Tales, I leaned a lot into the sort of
improvisational. Yes. And kind of
stuff Amazing Tales doesn't
really. Well, it comes with sort of four suggested
backgrounds. So there's
fairies and talking animals, which is called the Deep Dark
Wood. There's beyond the
Stars, which is Space Adventures. There's

(26:37):
Magical Kingdoms Long Ago, which is your kind of
classic fantasy,
thing. and
kids. Oh, and pirates. Kids love pirates.
And kids kind of know
roughly what fits into each of those categories.
But, my all time favorite

(26:57):
character that my son came up with
is King Tyranno. Sneak. there is a picture of
him in the book. And
King Tyranno Sneak is ah, a robot
dinosaur. He has ah,
four arms because, when you are
five or six, the coolest thing you can imagine is not a
sword and a shield, but two swords and two

(27:20):
shields. Here he is. Is King
Tyranop.

Yeah, look at that.

and he is a ninja as well. Surprisingly
stealthy for a giant robot king. And he lives on
an island made of lava and all that kind of stuff.
so he doesn't fit into any of those worlds. But that was
exactly what my son wanted to be doing that day. was
the adventure with King Dyna Snakeak. So basically
by saying yes to all of that, we then ended up with this whole

(27:47):
new world and setting just for my
son. with
lava monsters, seas of lava with all these
kind of different robotic dinosaurs
hanging out in them. And
yeah, it was just a blast and absolute blast.
That again. and if you don't say yes to

(28:07):
things, if you say no, we're playing a pirate game. Think of a pirate.
then that's never going to happen.

Yeah. Being open to where they lead.

So all the pictures and things are there for inspiration.
There's now a fifth one. There's a fifth setting
in the big Book of Amazing Tales, which is Rescue City, which
is specifically for people who don't
want any violence in their games. so Rescue
City is's, a modern day
city. the suggestion is that your character would be a
police officer or an ambulance driver or

(28:39):
a doctor or a firefighter or something like that.
And Rescue City is a kind of place where disasters are happening all
the time.

Very unfortunate city.

Permanent, requirement for heroes to
come along and be heroic and solve problems and
whatever's going on. But these are problems that should not really be
addressed through violence.

That leads me to another thought.
So, some children
have. I like to think of it as a superpower,
and neurological functions
that are different than maybe the mainstream child.
I am very close to having adhd. I do not, I've
been officially tested for it. But I have
tendencies of being

(29:20):
distracted. I have obsessive
compulsive disorder. I have been actually,
diagnosed for something like that. Think
of people on the autism spectrum.
and maybe you didn't necessarily build it
into the game. but what would
you suggest if somebody was playing

(29:41):
with a child who has one of
these superpowers?

Pay attention. Ah, are they enjoying it? I think is the
key thing. And Watch for,
I guess if it's adhd, what's their attention span?
This is a game that you could play a meaningful game in five or ten
minutes. and if that's their
concentration span, then don't try and go
too much longer.

(30:06):
That sort of thing. I have had messages from parents
whose kids are on the spectrum saying this works
well for them.
but I'm not saying it's going to work well for every kid who's
on the autism spectrum.

So how has this changed to you
being somebody who creates games
for all different types of children? how has it
changed your games or your approach to
learning and creativity?

One of the things about Amazing Tales is it was a little
bit lightning in a bottle, Lightning in a bole.
I have written other games, they have not been this
successful. So I think there's an appreciation for
yes, you can kind of work out afterwards what worked and what made it
successful. And I did do plenty of
kind of research upfront. But

(30:57):
there is also that kind of
part of the success is luck. And I don't know
whether it's 20% or 80% or whatever, but
it's, it's a non trivial amount of
this is just down to luck. do you
have the right thing at the right time in the right way? How has it changed
me? I don't know. It made me a lot

(31:17):
more, maybe a bit more confident in my
GMG and playing just to kind of throw stuff out there and
go with it. And it's kind cool to know that you can sit down
with a bunch of kids and entertain them for half an hour and'll come away go. That
was amazing. Which is, which is quite
a nice superpower to have.

I might go run and play Amazing Tales right after
this. My kids are going to come home from school and
I might binge the book and then go
make an adv.

It's the length of time it takes to read a bedtime story. That was
kind of one of the design requirements was you had to be able to play a
whole game in the time it takes to get through a bedtime
story.

I love that backwards design like
who am I doing this for? Instead of this is
what I'm doing now. Match the game, it's who am I doing this for?
And let's match the experience to who I'm doing this for. It.
That's just so cool. Try to come up with a 10
word phrase that really nails
down the core message of what you do.

(32:14):
it can't be less than 10 words. Some people come at me and they're like, well,
I did it in seven. No, it has to be 10 because that forces
the economy of words.

Just came up with eight, I think.

add some articles in there.

It's all about what you leave out, though.

All right. If you were to give us
10 words in a phrase that could
help people understand tabletop RPGs, kids
RPGs, anything that you feel is super
important for somebody who's listening, the listener, to take away
with them and integrate into their own games.
What would that be?

Let's see. Listen to your
players. That's four, say yes.
That gets us all the way up to 6. Have
fun. And, cut
things.

Yes, I like that last
one.

Maybe I cut things in a bit earlier.

Yeah, Here, I'm gonna recap it. It says
you said, listen to your players. Say
yes, have fun, cut things.
Is there anything we're missing, Martin? Is there anything else
that you feel you want toa talk
about before we leave?

Maybe a couple of things. So, yeah, and I think
this is. I'm going toa mention
this from a sort of designer frustration point of view.
but you mentioned Guy earlier and the group I played
in with Guy and a few others. we
always made an effort to play the game as it was written in a
rulebook. Like, someone's gone to the trouble to write

(33:42):
this game. We're gonna go to the trouble to play it properly
was our approach. So if there
was a subsystem for chasers, we'd have a chase and we'd find out.
But we tried to play the game that was there and to lean into
whatever it was trying to do.
I often come across people who
say, oh, I've got amazing tales to play it with my kids.

(34:05):
And then they'll send me an email and they'll say, and, along
the way, I thought you might like to knowice. I've added rules for hit
points. And, I've put a thing in
so that the monsters roll dice now.
And, I've added a D4 and a D20
and we can have critical hits.
And,
I don't mind people doing that as long

(34:27):
as they've tried it first
the way it was written. So from a designer's point of view, it's kind of
frustrating that someone's come in, looked at my game and gone, you know what? I'm just going to
make it like all the other games without even trying what you've
done. Now I'm Going to fix everything.
but then I sort of reflect on that as a player and I'm like, you know
what? All these games I have on my shelves
have similar things and there are

(34:50):
mechanics in there like, oh, that just looks like too much complication.
so a good example might be if you've come across
Cubicle 7's Imperial Maledictum game, which is
a Warhammer 40K thing. Your party is supposed to
have a patron and they have rules for factions
and that kind of depends on who your patron is and what your career
is and so on.

(35:12):
it would be really easy to play the game without any of those
things, but it is
probably. They put a lot of thought into that. So it's
probably better to do that, to actually say, know
what? Before we throw all these rules out, let's put them all in.
And, let's see if it's fun to say, well,
actually I'm really well connected with the Adaptus
Ministerum so I can get this easily.

(35:34):
Whereas, oh, you, they won't even let you in
the building. and to have those kind of dynamics in the
party. So,
yeah, play the game that the designer
wrote, then start changing stuff.

Why do you think people do that? Changing it?
What's your thoughts?

Part of it's just habit, I think.
like I was saying about kind of there are things you expect games to
have, or maybe not
have. so
people say, oh, well, this game hasn't got any hit points for the
monsters, but that's a thing. So it would probably be
better if it did. So I'll just put those
in. So part of it is, I think, just

(36:13):
people wanting to make things look like the thing they're familiar with.
Part of it is maybe just not
wanting to learn new stuff or push or
lean. Take the time to understand a thing and lean
into it. It does, we found,
require a bit of a group effort, maybe a bit more of an effort than
some groups are willing to make. Because

(36:34):
if you have a group who are very much in the GM is going to
entertain us mode and then the GM
says, this game comes with a bunch of funky
mechanics'yeah. Your
session'going to go a lot better if everyone makes the effort to try
and understand how those work. If your
group you're playing with isn't going to do that, then,

(36:54):
yeah, that's going to be tricky.

Maybe suggest playing a different game or
doing what's normal maybe.

It is a huge, wide and varied hobby
and I think that's what I love about it is
that there are games literally for everything.
more games now than I will ever manage to play. When I got into this
in the late 80s, early 90s,
it was just about conceivable that you could be like, I will play
everything at least once.

(37:21):
one session of every W playing game has ever been published.
but that is clearly no longer possible.

What else? You said there were a few things.

Work on being a good player. I think it's There's so many
books written. Ah, or well, not so many. There's quite a lot of books
written about how to be a good gm. I'm not aware of any books
that have been written about how to be a good player. which is
weird because if you've got five of you around the table,
80% of you are players,
well, 100% of your players. But four of you are responsible for

(37:51):
player characters. There's only one game master. Work on being a good
player, sharing the spotlight, passing things around.
Take some responsibility for knowing the rules that apply
to your character. If you're playing a mechanically heavy
game, don't turn up
and say, what's the name of my character again?

Martin's number one pet beef.

That's just soul destroying. If you're the game master, I am
dead inside. I've created this whole world. I've written a
scenario, I've got ideas
and yeah, what else would I talk about? I d talk
about genre being important. So that hangs in with
the design thing, the start like what you put in and what you leave
out is important.

(38:32):
does your game have rules for personal
relationships? Some of them do. And those,
those then become very different games to the games that don't and
do things deliberately.
I think like quite a lot of people. I like quite
a cinematic style of GMing. So I'll often describe
what the camera panning in or set a scene
kind of as if I was describing a movie I was watching.

(38:54):
But you can take that a little bit further and think kind of, you know, what kind
of thing am I making? What kind of pace is this going to
be played at? and that sort of thing. So I run
a Dungeons and Dragons group for my son, and his friends.
He's 14 now. We had a session the other day
where I was like, you know what? I know that only one of them has seen
Fury Road. So this is where we're

(39:14):
going. We're have like, we're going toa end
up with the monsters chasing people around on
chariots and that kind of stuff. And we're going toa do the whole
thing. And as it turned out we ended up one of
their characters got captured and we ended up with
them sort of dangled in front of
the two bears that were pulling the bugbears

(39:35):
chariot as the kind of carrot on a
particularly nasty looking stick
so it could hurtle after them.
and it all got really quite Mad Max. and that
was great. And afterwards they said wow, that would have been such
a good movie. That scene at the end. That would have.
That whole fight would have been such a good thing in a film. It's like

(39:56):
yes, that is exactly what we were going
for. So yeah, don't be shy of
leaning into that kind of thing and shamelessly stealing
from movies.

Martin, thank you for being on today.
If people wanna learn more about Amazing
Tales or anything that you do,
where can they find you? Where they, where can they find your
works?

Yeah, so the website is
amazing-taless.net
so
www.amazing-talails.networks.
i am no longer on social media
pretty much. I think that's not a decision I
regret.
you can also search for it on Amazon. that will turn it

(40:38):
up. Studio AH2 as a distributor. They
will sell it to you direct if you would rather not give Mr.
Bezos any money. Drive through RPG as well. You
can get PDF copies on drive through RPG and there's a whole load of free
stuff there as well including a quick start which includes the whole
rules and there's a set of about
30 scenarios you can get which are

(40:58):
all one page things. those are free to download as
well but there is a suggested contribution to charity.

I'll make sure that I put that in the show notes so people can check
it out and support the great thing that you've created. So
awesome. Well, thanks again Martin. Thanks for being here. I'm so
grateful that you gave me your time and hope to
interact with you in some way, shape or form. Even though we're halfway across the
world.

From each other, I'm available and let's stay in
touch.

Thanks again Martin for creating a way that parents and
children can go beyond D20 & D and connect playing tabletop
role playing games. Don't forget to look in the show notes if you wantna
grab your own copy of Amazing Tales. I promise your
4 year old will thank you.

I'm good at this.

Please hit like or subscribe if you liked what you heard today. If you
listen on Apple podcast or Spotify. Give us five stars.
Leave a review and may you keep having fun as you
tell amazing stories or amazing
tales through tabletop role playing games.

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042: Beyond D&D - What Makes TTRPGs Click for Kids and Adults? With Martin Lloyd

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}042: Beyond D&D - What Makes TTRPGs Click for Kids and Adults? With Martin Lloyd