045: Organized Chaos - Behind the Screen of RPG Communities from Scratch - With Anthony - Claim to Game

Episode Transcript
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>> Clint Scheirer (00:00):
Anthony, the author of the Daily Dungeon Master
is back sharing the real life magic of how to
start organized crime.
organized crime, Whoops. I
mean, how to start organized tabletop RPG groups.
My bad. Whether youre thinking of starting a tabletop RPG
club, joining an official play program like the Adventures

(00:20):
League or Pathfinder 2E Society, or you just want to get
some more games going more consistently, stick
around, stick around. Let's go make your claim to
game.

(01:02):
Hey, welcome back Anthony. You're here for round
two episode two for you.
And what we want to talk about today is
organized play. there are a lot of
different ways that people can get into
organized play. However, you have a
unique, experience where you have created
organized play in different facets with people that you've interacted

(01:24):
with, different gamers that you've helped start up
their groups. And so I wanna come
in hot and ask, can you tell me a story of how
you first got involved first and organized play
and what motivated you to start Adventure League,
an adventure leagues group in, in the first place?
go ahead.

>> Anthony (01:43):
yeah. Oh my gosh. so, as I mentioned last one,
my wife and I used to be foster parents.

Okay.

>> Anthony (01:48):
And we specialize in teens.
and
I had two sons on my own, and then several teenage
girls, that we fostered for. And
long story short, my wife, I want to give her a night off
once a week, at least once a week. Just to give her a night off
and take the kids, go do something together.

What?

>> Anthony (02:09):
Ay, yeah. And just to
give her a break and you know, take. Kids
don't do something. So, there was a new game store that opened in
town and I really liked their concept, I really
like their vibe. Great vibe. And
so I said, hey, I.

Do you remember what it was called?

>> Anthony (02:26):
Yeah. Syndicate Games.

Is it still around Syndicate?

>> Anthony (02:29):
No, it's not, unfortunately. no, they closed down.
Yeah, big bummer. I said we like to come in weekly just to play.
And they said, yeah, here we got table space, go ahead. And
so we sat down and I was running, Tomb of
Annihilation. I was finishing it. I already been playing with some of
the kids at home. But it started with
me running this for just my foster kids and my
kids. And then they invited their friends

(02:52):
and their friends as friends and their friends as friends as
friends. Until, I was running the table with
the middle schoolers and I had other high schools
running the tables for the other high schoolers and there was like four
tables worth of People. And this woman comes in with her
kid, who is, a middle schooler. All my
middle school kids knew him. she goes, hey, are you the dad that

(03:12):
runs this? I stop. I kind of do this
whole thing where I'm, like, looking around. yeah, I
guess I am. And they said, cool, what do we need? I
said, can you bring pencil and paper? That's what they need.
Oh, they got that. I said, cool. Then we're good to go.
And so, you know, that was
accidentally how I started, the Adventures League

(03:33):
program in this little town in the middle of nowhere,
Nebraska. Eventually I said, you know what?
because I'heard of Adventures League, I found out, if you're not familiar.

With it, check out is Adventuresly.
Because there some people are like, I don't know what he's talking about.
And, you know, it sounds like you're just playing a game. What is
Adventures League?

>> Anthony (03:50):
well, as Puffin Foreresst had said, it's a bunch
of people playing the same campaign, in their own
tables. When I discovered that, I'm like, let me really
dig into this. And it was a really cool idea. And so what the idea
is that organized play, at least back then,
is you maintained a character and you had a
worksheet that goes along with your character sheet that talks

(04:11):
about what you did each session. You have a DM that signs
off on it every time you put who your DM is
and they're Wizards of the coast number. And
you had all this stuff, with it. And
you would be able to take that character to any organized
play event. So
this character, if you're playing through Tomb
annihiation, right, the current, or whatever the current,

(04:34):
module is that you're working from, and you're at this point in
the story and you're like, hey,
I'd like to play adventurously with you guys. You could take your
character with your documentation and show up and
say, hey, this is my character dm. This is
I'm at where I ended in the story. And you can play
anything before that. You just don't get the rewards,

(04:54):
or experience levels, whatever, until
that group catches up to where your character is. And then you
can start getting rewards again. But the idea was that you could take
this character to any table anywhere,
to play. Nowadays, it's a lot different. They
don't require the documentation
they ask you to. Where are

(05:15):
you at in the story? They can put you on a table that's close to where you
were in the Story. so they've taken away a
lot of the organized play there, but nowadays it's just turned
into more of a club_ay where it's like a bunch
of people playing the same module. You generally have
one person who's organizing it who makes sure that
everybody has the resources and whatnot that they need.

(05:36):
and that the
DMs get together and say, hey, what's going on at your
table? where are we at? Try to make sure
everybody's at roughly the same place. but it
turns it into, a tabletop
club. Right. that you're all just
playing the same thing.

Playing as well.
First off, you said that your DM hat, your
dungeon master has a number, like an
organized number.

>> Anthony (06:02):
Yeah.

How do you apply for that? How do you. Is it just online?

>> Anthony (06:06):
It is on. It was online. wizard of the coast,
it's the number that you would use. they use the same system M
as for Magic the Gathering. It's actually the same number. It's a
Wizard of the coast whatever
member number or whatever they call it nowadays. You,
you would go in and you would record. you would
report your play on. They like

(06:26):
the store would create an event and you would put in your number.
You would give them your number. They didn't put it. And they'd
say, okay, so we have done official play
for Dungeons and Dragons or Magic, you know, whatever you're
doing. it was Wizard Play Network, I think.

okay.

>> Anthony (06:42):
which they still do the Wizard Play Network thing, but
it's really organized plays really gotten
away from that, which to me is, is much to its
detriment. u from what organized play used to be.

Paizo has the Pathfinder 2E Society, which I think
has a very similar setup where you get your number.
So this leads me to my next question. Right? You go to the table,
you go to a different store where Adventure League is
happening and they're playing through the same campaign.
If you're a person that has like your paper copy, I
know there's different ways that you can use D20 & D beyond and have

(07:13):
like a digital format of your character.
what happens if you. You've already
created your character at a certain level?
Ageta, what did you say his power level
is?

>> Anthony (07:25):
It's over 9,000.

You mentioned that if you go to an Adventures League
table and the people at that table are not
as far along in the stories, you. You
don't get any of the rewards or the levels or the goals
or the equipment or things that you did previously, how do
you inject yourself into that story? If you came to the table with
your character already leveled up and these other people

(07:48):
aren't quite as far.

>> Anthony (07:49):
Correct. basically, according to how League used to
run, which I'll refer to Adventure League, it's
just League. they, you could play through a story that you've already
played through. but, you wouldn't get any of
the level rewards or any of that stuff
to make it fair, because you've technically already gotten that
stuff. You've already gotten those rewards, you've already got

(08:10):
through that. And it takes a good player who
is not going to meta game.
Right'and? that's one of the understandings
of if you show up at a table and you're at a table where
you've already played through a story, you're not going to spoil the story for
everybody else. Right?

Yeah. Meta. Yeah. So I'm goingn. I have some listeners
that like, totally understand what metagame means. Yeah, the
listener who doesn't know what metagame means. you said it doesn't.
You're not spoiling the, the story for somebody
else. There's also other ways. You know, metacognition is
talking. Thinking about your thinking.

>> Anthony (08:41):
Yeah.

U.
So, so what are some ways that metagaming could
ruin a table if somebody already has gone through the
adventure? Like, can you give an example of how that would just really
stink.

>> Anthony (08:50):
This stinks. It's metagam is the idea of using
player knowledge instead of character. Player knowledge versus
character knowledge, right?

Yes.

>> Anthony (08:57):
and the idea is, you know, that in this next room,
there's a trap in the middle of the room that if you step on a
specific spot, it will set off a
trap. metagaming would be
walking into that room and say, I avoid this area
right here. And everybody's like, why are you doing that? and it's
like, oh, there's a trap there. Well, how do you know there's a trap there?

(09:18):
Your character would have no idea. ###eah right.
If you were at that point in the story, your character would have no idea. So you don't
want to spoil the story for other people. there was an
online. I cannot remember what it was for the life of
me. but there was an online, game
that you could play where you could take one
action. One action, and
whatever that action was usually resulted in your death. and I

(09:40):
love using this phrase, check inventory. So you
check inventory and Find out that you are wearing a shirt and pants and oh
wait, there's a bomb in your pants and it blows up. Right. So
what's the next thing you do for next, your
next action that you take? We're starting the game over.
I remove pants. Pants. What pants? You are attempting to use
knowledge from a previous existence. And I've used that

(10:00):
phrase for ages. My kids know what it means. I have to explain
to other people. But, but yeah's, that's the
metagaming. It'it's knowing it's your player knowing
that a troll is susceptible to fire and
acid. But you, but your
character would have.

No way of knowing you're able to go in. You're able
to, you know, just recognize that you're not going to share knowledge that you
already have.
The official process for officially setting up an
adventure group, is it just having
the Dungeon Master with their number
hosting the game and then uploading the progress
of the, you know, their characters and the people who

(10:37):
are playing? Is there anything else that you officially need to
do in order to set up an Adventures League
group?

>> Anthony (10:43):
Well, and that's where it gets interesting because you don't.
The only thing you're registering is that you've played.
Each individual player character was used to be
responsible for keeping track of what their character did, does.
Whatever. Adventures League play has evolved.
Like I said earlier, it's evolved away from that. I'm personally not a
fan of. I liked. Yes, there was paperwork

(11:04):
involved. Yes, there was a lot more work tracking things,
but being able to tell everybody at the end of the session, hey, everybody
check. Make sure you check your paperwork. Dungeon Masters, make sure you're signing
off on your players characters, what they
did today, what they got,
whether they leveled things of that nature.
and it was interesting because the idea is that if
you lose your paperwork, sure, you can continue

(11:27):
playing with that group because that group knows what you got and what you didn't
got what you didn't have. But
you can't take that character anywhere else.
Right. To play organized play. And I like that
because that was the way it was.
That's the way it made organized play what it was
organized play.

It. It held somebody accountable.

>> Anthony (11:49):
Exactly. And it made sure that you didn't walk into,
say, a game with a vorpal
longsword and the Superman. I'm here to
fight for truth and justice in the American way. The Superman.
Exactly. And the Superman. And,
and everybody's like, where'd you get that?
You're like, oh, I got it in this adventure.
Well, where's your documentation that you got it? And who

(12:12):
signed off on this? What DM possibly signed off on
this?

Who signed off on this? I didn't sign off on that.

>> Anthony (12:18):
Okay, exactly. so,
yeah, it is
Adventurers League. I liked
back in the day and age where
you had the organization. More of the
organization. it was
more of, the. Like you said, the
accountability. so

(12:40):
Adventurers League, like I said, it's turned more into
a, club than actual, organized
play. I still like it. I still like it. in
fact, I started my second group.
Well, not started. I inherited my second group,
on accident as well. I moved to where I am right
now, from that Nebraska location and found out the

(13:00):
store that had Adventures League. And I was like, great, cool. Let's do
this. So I show up and I'm like,
hey. I tell the organizer, hey, my name's
Anthony. I'm a dm. I
started my own AL group, where I
was last. I'd like to get involved. How
can I get involved? Et cetera. And he goes, well, actually, I'm

(13:20):
trying to step back from stuff. O.
Okay. And then I look and I see everything
about this Adventures League group is completely out of the
rulebook. Like, completely against the rulebook. Tables of
10 players. And I'm like, I twitching because I'm like,
Al says you can't have more than seven players plus a DM.

Admit you have fair guparents.

>> Anthony (13:40):
Okay. and they're not doing any of the paperwork. They're not
creating that accountability. I'm like, but
how can you call it Al if you're not following the
AL guidelines? and then they're all playing different
things, which Al is not. You can technically
all play different things and still be Adventures League. That's
fine. Generally speaking, if you have an organized
store with play, everybody's playing the same

(14:03):
module. It was one of those things. I was like,
oh, okay. He's like, I'm actually stepping back. Would you
like it? Like what? Would you
like to take over? Well, sure.
Are you going toa be okay if I do it my way? He's like, well, you might get
some pushback, but yeah,
I think they'd be okay with it.
So, I said I'd start with the newest

(14:25):
adventure that released that year, which was, Baldur's Gate Des
sent to Avernus. And, at one
point, I had. Cause this was pre
pandemic. I had nine tables
wor of players. including one table that
was. And I don't know how this ended up this way, but that's
how it ended up. nothing but 11 year old
girls. Yeah. And

(14:47):
again, I don't know how it ended up that way, but they brought their friends and stuff
like that. And there were other girls that wanted to play and they were
playing and there was a table full of 11 year old girls. They
were all like 11. Various
points of being 11, but they were all 11. And they were the
most adorable little group of murder hobos you would
ever meet. like to give you an example, one
said one's a barbarian and one was a druid. The druid says, I

(15:10):
wild ch champ into a crocodile. Okay, you wild shapeing the
crocodile. The barbarian says, I pick up the crocodile,
my friend who's a crocodile and throw it at the enemy.
And the dm, afterwards had this like thousand
yards stare look and I'm like, what was? He goes, it was uter
chaos. It was hilarious chaos. It was fun chaos.
But that was utter chaos. And I said, so how'you do
with it? He goes, they seem to have a good time. I said, then we're all in the good space.

(15:33):
We're all, we're all in a good place. That's a good thing.
That's what we're going for. And of course the pandemic
happened, and we lost a lot of players. I
very quickly had to set up a Discord server where we could
try to get everybody on, try to get
everybody back at tables, virtual tables.
Now, it worked. It didn't really
work. I had two tables survive, mine and

(15:55):
another. but you know, we played. It was okay post
pandemic. We came back and we ended up being six
tables worth. Five, five to six,
depending on the DM availability that day.
But, five to six, and then the worst
happens. the store shut down. so we
had to find a new home. Right. and we found a new home,

(16:16):
thank goodness. and I'm going to give them a shout out.
high ground Hobbies in Madison, Alabama. It
is one of, it is literally
the like every game store. This is
what the game store should be, right? This is what a game store should
be. Has great food, has gaming space,
has private gaming rooms that are

(16:36):
affordable. just everything. And
we moved into there permanently. When we moved in there, one of the
things we decided we were going to do was finish the campaign we were
running, which was the eberron Oracle of War.
we were going to finish that campaign and we were going
to because of the way Al had
evolved. We had all decided that maybe we want to

(16:56):
play something different. Which is how I created May. As
I mentioned last episode, my homebrew
sell Suria World, this big west marches
style. So we still call it league per se. It's
more of the. The term we
use for that group is league. But it's more
of just ah, a game D20 & D Game

(17:16):
club that basically inherited
that I kept going for the last six
years. Now this year will be six years.
congratulations. Thank you, thank you. actually I
step because I'm for the listeners. I'm actually
in the middle of a move which is why you'll
see this gap in my posts for my
website. I have a gap there because I am in the middle of a move

(17:39):
and sometimes as we all know things get tic.
but in any case, I recently
very painfully in my own mind gave the
reins over to the guy who was like my right
hand. And I said hey
man, you've got the reins now. I prepared
the store. I was preparing him. You know, he's like when are you going

(17:59):
to announce it? I said as last minute as possible
because I don't want to,
you know. Yah. but you know, I did it.
I kept this group together. and it evolved. You know,
players came and went. But
organized play doesn't have to be
Pathfinder 2E Society. It doesn't have to be adventurous league. You
can do organized play in a myriad of ways. And

(18:22):
that doing the West Mar Style campaign,
really highlighted our ability to do
that and evolve as organized play.

You've mentioned this term a couple times like
tabletop club, RPG club.
You recently helped a high
school, teacher. High school teacher friend.

>> Anthony (18:41):
Yeah.

Start a D20 & D club in the high
school. How did that work? What were some of the unique
challenges of doing it in a public school setting as opposed to a
game store?

>> Anthony (18:51):
Oh my goodness. That was, that was a And that was
a monster all of its own. u to
overcome. first off, she had tried to start it up
last year. she wrote to for those who don't know,
wizard of the coast, and games,
workshop. Have an educator program where you write them
from your educator, email address
and say hey, we'd like to be. We'd

(19:13):
like to start a tabletop club. And they're like cool. They
send you a Care package full of stuff. and that's
how she got started. And all the students want to
do is play Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer, which is
fine. And magically gathering. Those were the things that they got sent. So
that was cool, right? Everybody was having a good time with that.
Well, this school year, school year

(19:34):
for 24, 25, my friend was like,
hey. Because I told
her, hey, I want to get involved. I want to help out. What can I do?
And she said, hey, I'd really like them to get to
learn other systems, not just Dungeons Dragons. I
said, that's awesome. That is cool. Let's do that.
So she started writing these other game companies.

(19:54):
and even game companies that are like, they don't make games
necessarily, but they make, like, accessories. she
got Chess x Chaosium.
Talsoan sent stuff, and sometimes they sent
materials. free Leaks Publishing was really
generous. Chaosiumed.

Love that company.

>> Anthony (20:11):
Yeah, Free Leagues and Chaosium were super
generous. and it
was just so awesome to see
these companies go. You want your students to
be interested in games? Let us give you our game
so you can try it out. And they
all sent care packages, or they're like, hey, we can't send a care

(20:31):
package, but we can give you a discount code, an educator discount
code off of anything you buy. So the club
will ended up, fundraising,
for multiple things. But one of the things they fundraise for to
get materials from these other game companies.
and that was amazing. I ended
up teaching them. I ended up running Dungeons and Dragons to begin
with, just to see. Just to meet the kids, get them

(20:54):
comfortable with me. and then
I ran. let's see, what else? Dread.
Have you ever heard of dread?

Oh, yeah, with the Jenga tower.

>> Anthony (21:02):
Yeah, that was almost a disaster because
my friend forgot the regular size Jenga.
You the normal Jenga. And she's like, I have a friend.
one of my other teacher friends has a giant Jenga.
I said, how giant? She's like, it's pretty big. And I'm
like, okay, I don't want a child to have a concussion. She
goes, no, it'll be fine. And this Jon tower got big.

(21:23):
And this one student pulled one. And I
watched in horror as the tower is falling. I'm like, no,
okay, this is happening. And thankfully, they were.

Character died.

>> Anthony (21:33):
Yeah. and their character dying. Exactly. But I was
like, I was like, watching this giant Jenga tower, like,
we're talking, like, each piece was like 18 inches long
type Jenga tower. And I'm watching in horro as this tower is
falling on this student. And I'm like, no. You know.
But, I taught them Dread. I taught them Tales from the Loop,
which was very interesting.

Watching, that's like Stranger Things esque, right?

>> Anthony (21:55):
Cor correctir. The weird 80s.
Yeah. I taught. They got really excited about Call of
Cthulhu. they really wanted to play that. But the one that they were
most excited about, that I had to learn myself,
was, Cyberpunk.
I ran Cyberpunk Red for them. But, I used
the, 2077 box set that
update. And they were into it.

(22:17):
They were like, this is so awesome. Let's
do this. and, I
did run D20 & D for them one other time, which was
around Christmas, because I like doing holiday,
themed adventures. even when I'm running
games with my friends, I do holiday
themed adventures. And one of my favorite ones to run for a new
group is how the Lich Stole

(22:39):
Christmas.
And the entire adventure is in metered
rhyme. Like the tagline is your a foul one,
Mr. Lich. Your flesh smells like decay.
For the crimes you have committed. There will be hell to pay when
the heroes come to save Christmas Day. That is
the tagline for the adventure. And for me,
I like those kind of things.

Y fun.

>> Anthony (23:00):
So I tell my players, I was like, if you do the shtick,
when you find out what the shtick is for this adventure and you
participate in the shtick, I will give you
dm, inspiration every time you engage in the shtick.

Yeah.

>> Anthony (23:13):
And they loved it. They got into it. They're
doing meter grime themselves. They or re figuring out meter rhy how they want to say
what they want to say. and I'm not going to spoil the
adventure, but, I recommend if you're going to run that adventure, run the
lowest level. Possiblell do the tier
one. Because the tier one big bad guy is
the best, in my opinion, of all of them.

How the Lich Stole Christmas.

>> Anthony (23:34):
Yes.

Can that be, Drive Throughu rpg? Is that an easy way?

>> Anthony (23:37):
Yeah. And there's actually more than one.
it is the one with the green Lich
on the front. It's the one on the DMs Guild or
drive thru RPG by Wizard
leave Studios. Wizard Leave Studios. I had to look
it up real quick. Wizard Leave Studios. That one.
There's another one out there that's like, looks like more of a Dr.

(23:58):
Seusses type cover. Not that one. You want the one with
the green.

Looking The Green Lich.

>> Anthony (24:03):
Yeah.

Very good.
So, okay, so you created, organized play
game stores. You've created organized play,
at schools with wild success. That is
so cool that all those game companies were
helping. I heard a study, and I'm gonna butcher this,
but it. I used to teach fifth grade, and back
in fifth grade, deodorant companies

(24:25):
would actually give free deodorant
to teachers who were teaching health. Because
there's a study that shows over 80% of the people who start with
a certain deodorant keep that for the rest of their life.

>> Anthony (24:37):
Yeah.

So it's like getting the kids on the Kool aids.

>> Anthony (24:40):
Oh, no.

Oh, yeah. So of course
Free League's going to want them to be like, yeah, go, go play, this
game. Because that might be the game that they just love and they stick
with.

>> Anthony (24:50):
Absolutely, absolutely. and I was actually kind of
impressed because what they sent was Talail from the
Flood, the alien rpg. And then one other. I can't
remember off top of my head. But, yeah, it was just
like, I was blown away. Chaosium was the
same way. And I give a big shout out to Chaosium because they're such a
great company. They're so generous and they'so. They engage
with their audience so well, in a way that,

(25:12):
most other game companies don't. and they're
free with their engagement. Like, they're just like,
you could engage in their director of game design or
their creative director and write this guy and say,
hey, I've got an idea. What do you think of
this? And they are re the first
ones to say, hey, cool. You may want to think of this or think of

(25:32):
that. Just really awesome people.
but, they gave us, Call of Cthulhu
r Quest and, Pendragon,
which is one I had never heard of before. which is.

You're playing King Arthur.

>> Anthony (25:45):
Hm.

Yeah.

>> Anthony (25:46):
Very nice. Yeah. So, a lot of cool ones out
there. my teacher friend, she even wrote some of the
smaller indie companies. They were big on sending
stuff. And she told them, she's like, hey, look,
my students, I try to teach them different games,
game systems. whatever
you give, we'll teach them. and these

(26:07):
game companies have been eating it up. I also do DM training.
That's another big thing with organized play. Because one of the
biggest things you always run into with organized play is a lack of
DMs. There's just a shortage
of people who want to DM M want to run the game,
which I am the lovingly
from Forever dm. I have the forever day. Me

(26:27):
too. And I do it because I love doing it.
Those chances I get to play I treasure. But I love
DMMing, GG and I have
a class I did for the high schoolers, called
how to DM101. And it goes over the basics for
dming and how to make it work and what it looks
like. and it is,

(26:47):
it got a lot of good reception. I mean we had probably
five students who came who wanted to do that instead of
play with the others. but they paid attention, they got involved and
eventually some, even some because it was a two parter. And
so some of the other students who are listening, half listening, they're
like, maybe I want to learn about this. And they started
coming over and of course the teacher was like, go

(27:08):
ahead, go learn. And we had
them, I gave them homework. I said,
based on what you've learned, I want you to write an encounter for me.
I once you to writeiting theounter. And not a full
adventure, just an encounter. And I want you to have it ready for
next time. Okay. And the encounter, I said I want
the encounter last no more than 20 minutes.

(27:28):
And they said okay, we can do that.
I said cool, it could be whatever kind of encounter over all
the different kinds. We went over whatever you want. And
you can preface it however you want. So the adventurers are,
hey, you know each other. This or this has happened. This is
what you know. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,
go, go, go. And I had them run it for each

(27:48):
other. So I had one dm, come up and
go, okay, in this encounter you're a bunch of adventure and everybody
use the same pre gen characters. in this
adventure, this is what you're trying to do. This is what your goal
is. Here's the encounter. Go. And
they did amazing.

Were they pretty on spot with the time of 20 minutes?

>> Anthony (28:08):
no, no. and
mostly due to the players. some of the players are total
chaos Gremlins, you know, which is fine. because one of the
things I actually talked about is how to deal with chaos Gremlins. They did
great. we did, ended up doing it in two parts. Two, different
days. that club met and that was really
important. We did the same thing

(28:28):
with our Adventures League group. We did a DM
training. we actually partnered with a LEGO store.
Not LEGO brand, but it was a
minifigs and more type store,
where they sold Lego and LEGO stuff, whatever. We partnered with
them, we said hey, if we can get
these minis to these minifigs

(28:48):
and stuff and some Legos to make terrain,
we will promote your store.
And in return you make a
deal where somebody can go in and buy one of your
minifigs and they can come over and play in our,
our LEGO adventure. And I took an
old adventure from Dungeon magazine, if you remember
that Bench magazine, a second edition

(29:11):
adventure. And I adapted it for 5e. It's a really cool adventure.
It's called Clars'sepulcher A little bit of role play, a
little bit of puzzle solving, a little bit of dungeon crawl with a really unique
BBEG at the end.
I did that completely with minifigs. People
would bring their little LEGO wizard or their little Lego fighter or
whatever have you and they built these
minifigs. And we actuallyuse,

(29:32):
we couldn't find something for a troll that was affordable.
Right. So one of the guys in the store
3D printed, and
I wish I had it available right now, but they 3D
printed a Lego troll.
They have a cave troll.

That's awesome.

>> Anthony (29:50):
A large Lego. I mean this thing stood this tall,
like really like hand span tall. And it was
perfect because there was trouble in the adventure, with a club in
the whole nine yard. It was adorable. and I
being the one organizing this, guess who had to
prime and paint it?

This guy.

>> Anthony (30:07):
so I had to do that for four different tables. Cause we ran four
tables worth of people coming for this event. And it
was a blast. It was an absolute blast. and it was
really successful. We had the new DMs. We trained the
DMs we had out of
those DMs. I have two of
them that still, that still run games for me.

So two things that come out of that, right, like the
recruiting of players and DMs. It
sounds like a lot of this is organic. Like if you
I'm not going toa say the field of dreams that everybody, you
know, if you it they ro club or it's always
butchered.

>> Anthony (30:42):
If you build it, you will
come.

A lot of it people just if you have it, they
come. And if they're
interested in running it, you provide an
opportunity for them to learn how to do it
confidently.

>> Anthony (30:57):
Correct.

Like with the, the kids, that's so cool that you gave them
homework and that they had to create the, you know, the
actual encounter and that they were, they're
building the soft skills that if they ran an entire
adventure, might feel very big.

>> Anthony (31:10):
Yeah.

So you're building like a scaffolding, in a, teacher's
mind. That's pretty cool.
what about the schedule? You know, typically, I
think the most common schedule, I hear for most, most
games is once a week. others meet like
every other week, once a month. Like, what's a good schedule for
organized play to keep things running smoothly?
And do you, do you rotate

(31:33):
DMs? Like, do they get, you know, like,
hey, it's your time on, your time off, or do they just run
the entire adventure because it's their baby?

>> Anthony (31:41):
Very good. Very good questions. I'm going to start
with the rotating VMs. Back
in the day of, Avernesus, I had, remember, I
had nine tables. so I had to have nine
DMs. And I had, whenever I had new people
come, an entire table full of new people. I had to have one of my
backup DMs pick up that table.
I had one DM, run the, For those who are not

(32:04):
familiar, there's an adventure that takes place in a tavern.
They ran the beginning
ofate the Baldur's Gate
encounters six times.
Oh, six times.
And they were getting burned out. And rightfully
so. so when we started the next adventure, which was
R in in the Frostmaide, you know, going from really hot to really

(32:26):
cold, I told myself, I'm not doing that
anymore. I'm not going to get my G
burned out. So I recruited DMs, and I said, I want
every table to have at least two DMs.
So when one DM is starting to get burned out and they're starting to like,
they're like, man, I can't do this this week.
Hey, cool backup dm. M, you're the man go. Or

(32:46):
woman, as case where you are it. and they
swap and the burn DM can play
or just take a vacation. I was the one DM
that rarely, if ever had a backup dm.
mostly because I like doing it. But my group,
would eventually, and this happened
later. my right hand said, anthony,

(33:06):
you need a break. I. I said, no, I'm
fine. They're like, no, you are obviously frazzled
putting out fires every week. and we'll talk about that in a
second to schedule a second, but you are obviously getting frazzled. This
is, it's okay. We'll keep the store from burning
down. We'll hold down the forth you need a break. And they
had a month. They gave me a month where I wasn't allowed to even come

(33:27):
into the Storics unless I was bringing a character sheet to
play. Right. O.

Okay.

>> Anthony (33:31):
which I was like, okay, you know what?
Maybe I did need a break. And I really did. And it was really
great of them to do that. one of the other things I did that I
instituted with my organized play is, what I called
a DM day, where
I would run a game for the
DMs, right? And I would. It's just
the DMs that league would take a break and just the DMs would

(33:54):
come and I would run a game just for the DMs.
And that was huge. Giving them all a chance to
play. Giving them all a chance to do their thing. And that really
helped with DM burnout. Because DM burnout is a thing.
It is totally a thing. in fact,
there is even me, I have forced
vacations. There's a vacation I took, once a

(34:14):
month to. Or not once a month, once a year.
That, is actually a, D20 & D retreat
that I go to. Roll for Joy, is the name of
it for the Holy Rollers. And I go to this
one. It's a faith based one, but it's a bunch of
people, that play D20 & D and they go to this retreat
location and we play D20 & D for like three or four days
and it's a blast. And I get to play and I get to do these

(34:37):
things. and last,
one, I brought my adult son. Ah, with me. he
had a blast. Who was a great father's father. Son
bonding time. But, no,
you got to be mindful of DM burnout. So rotating
DMs hugely important. Having a backup DM,
having other DMs that can say, hey, I need you to step into this

(34:58):
table because this DM's going to be gone. Or this
DM's got life. Life happens TM.
Which leads me to the other question you asked, which was about
schedule. honestly, I find
weekly works best. just
because everybody, if you put a
time in a place where you're going to be like, hey,
every week at this time, this is when we meet. And the thing of it

(35:19):
is, is with Adventures League, the way it
worked and the way the campaign, I last
was running the Seluria campaign. It was really
cool because if you were there, your character'there
if you weren't there, your character'not there. Right. Because at the
end of every session, for the organized play,
for at least the west marches. The idea is

(35:39):
at the end of every session, no matter what's going on, you
go home, back to the home base, the town of
Geeltar. Right. and you go to that. It was
really, interesting to have people go
back to town. They have tavern time where all the players from all the
tables get to mingle and talk about the things they found.
But while the DMs have our meeting to say, hey, this is what

(36:00):
happened, we need to update some stuff in the materials.
The weekly thing is very helpful. But the biggest thing,
it's not just weekly, it's consistency.
Consistency saying that at this day, this
time is when we meet. and so for us it
was weekly on Sundays from 3 to
6pm you know, that was our

(36:21):
time for us to play. and that's when it is.
And so the store can advertise it and say, hey, every week we meet
for the Rocket City Adventurers, league
or whatever we are calling it.

Yeah, I did. I did a live stream about a month
ago and one of the top questions
that I got that I talked
about that I went on Reddit and had over
10,000 like, views and like
hundreds of comments too. It's like, what's the one
thing that kills a game?
And it's a lack of consistency.

>> Anthony (36:52):
Schedule.

Schedule. And it was like, if anything, keep it at
the same time, same date. And if you don't have a quorum
of enough people to play, play
somethingh so that people get in the habit
of playing games. that was, it's funny,
number one suggestion.

>> Anthony (37:09):
It's funny you say that because I have that in a couple of my professional
games where if we don't have so many of the
players, I'm like, hey, do you guys want to play something
else? And one of my games, my longest running campaign
that I ran, was, if we weren't playing the
main campaign I was running, through, What's that
book of anthology adventures, Keys from the Golden

(37:29):
Vault. It was the heist campaign.
They were all trying to steal
something. Ocean'Eleven everything. The house,
Always. And so they had the heist
characters, and we call the heist characters even though we're done with
the keys from the Golden Vault. But we have one last
adventure they want to run because one of the

(37:50):
things that they stole that they nat twied their way
through was this vault of another thief.
They had to steal from another thief.
And they littered her place with counter
traps and stole
everything. Like, literally robbed her
blind with NAT 20s that were just.
And this is RNG, you know, the random number generated in roll

(38:12):
20 and DND beyond kept throwing NAT
20s on everything they were doing. And I'm
like, according to the adventure, the DC is like this.
And they just keep blowing that DC out of the water. And I'm like,
okay, well, one of the things they stole was a treasure map
to an island. So I have this entire adventure
that I'm planning for the heist characters that they're like, we're going to take a pause on
the. This current campaign we're running and go back to the heist

(38:35):
characters, and we want to see what's on that island.

The side quest has become the quest.

>> Anthony (38:40):
Exactly, exactly. So,
yeah, and I'm very big on doing that.
Hey, there's only three of us. There's only four of us.
What do we want to play? We can't play with. We don't have everybody.
a big popular one for my groups is call a Cthulhu. They're like, yeah,
let's do some Eldritch horror. something like that. But, yeah,
getting together to play something.
because, you know, we do this

(39:02):
because we love it, right? We do this because we want
to. and that's one of the big things with organized play. And
that I want all of your listeners to know
is 99 times out of 100, when you
go to a store or join an organization like Adventures
League or Pathfinder 2E, Club or whatever
it is, the people who run these things

(39:22):
are volunteers. They're not paid
employees. I sure as heck
wasn't. and there
were perks to being there. There were
perks of being the organizer, being one of the people to do it,
usually. But the biggest one
is the fact that we are volunteers. And we

(39:44):
do this because we love it. We do it because it's fun.
And one of my biggest rules
is, hey. And this covers a
myriad of situations. Just don't be a
jerk, right? Just don't be a
jerk. Be chill, man.
And as long as you're not being a jerk to everybody
else, then we're fine. and, I've had a couple of

(40:06):
situations where I've had to step in and
ask a player to leave because they
couldn't, abide that, for one reason or
another. so, you know, that's a thing.
But the consistency.
The consistency. Same day, same time, same time, same
channel.

The kind of thing, yeah, you know, with
the.
Have you ever had to deal with player conflict?
there's so much conflict when human beings
together and we talked in the last episode about
for kids, it's really great because it helps them work through
real world conflict in a safe environment where they can
learn these great skills. but that some of the conflicts that come

(40:45):
up during games is like player conflict
with rules. You know, that rule wasn't the right rule or
this, you know, rules, lawyeringe, the hand waving.
ah, people not liking the hand waving. Some people want to play rules as
written. Ye, you know, how do you keep the environment
safe and fun to keep people from being jerks? You know,
like what is the number one way you can cut it

(41:05):
off at the head before it becomes a problem
or before there are any problems?

>> Anthony (41:10):
Number one, Session zero. Yeah, session zero
is very important for that. But number two, and I cannot stress
this enough, a poster with
these are the rules we abide by. If you can't abide by these rules,
you can't play. And every store I've been
has a set of rules posted like if you're going to play at this
store, this is what you do. And it has been one of those things

(41:30):
where somebody is getting all bent out of shape and I point to
the, the rules and say,
hey, you know, this is what we
do. and like I said, I've had a couple of times where
players are not
being acting,
according to social convention, we'll say right, and
one player I've had to ask to leave. I had

(41:52):
another player storm off because they didn't like the results of their
own actions. and they never
came back.
I hate to say this but in those situations,
kind of good riddance,
you don't want that kind of attitude. You don't want that kind of
that vibe at your table. so

(42:13):
it's very big that you maintain a positive
atmosphere even when things are looking grim in
the story, even when things are looking dire.
Don't assume people are trying to be jerks if somebody's.

Obviously assume the best of somebody.

>> Anthony (42:25):
Yeah, exactly. And one of my other rules
is, and this is part of the rules posted in
session 0 is DM's rule. Ruling
is law, period.
Like if you don't agree with what the DM has to say,
that's fine. Come to me as the organizer
and I'll hear you out. But chances
are I'm going to side with my

(42:47):
DM. There's a reason I
have. As DMs, I vetted these people. I
know these people, and I have made sure that they are gonna be the
kind of people that are gonna rule fairly.

Yeah. You know, that's,
I'm gonna jump to
the question I really want people to hear,
and the question is, give me
one moment. When you were running Adventures
League, or if it was the school club that made you
stop and say, this is why I do

(43:18):
this. Cause you said, we do it because we love it. Right. A
lot of people are volunteers. They're not getting paid for the work of
prepping. They're not getting paid to work with conflict.
They're not getting paid to, like, paint miniature
trolls from a shop that 3D printed it
for a LEGO adventure. Which is so cool.

>> Anthony (43:35):
Yeah.

You know, give me an example. The. The example
you want people, the listener, to leave with. that
really made you feel. Yes. This is why I do
this.

>> Anthony (43:45):
It was a moment where, it was actually
my hail and farewell, for those military
listeners, my goodbye party.
and I said, hey, can I jump in and play
or run or whatever? If you don't want me running, that's
fine. they're like, have you in the saddle for one last
ride? Let's do this. You know? And
so for that adventure, we

(44:07):
did an epic where it's multip. Multiple
tables playing the same thing from different
angles. there was two tables. they were
assaulting a hobgoblin mine. One was taking the front
entrance and getting the vast majority of, like, the cronies and
the front line soldiers, and one group to go
in for a surgical strike to the main bad

(44:28):
guy and literally hold the
line. Fight him, of course, but hold the line
for the other table to finish their fight
and get to the main group or, get to the group with a
surgical strike to help them take down the big bad.
Right. And at the end,
they lost a third of the characters that went
in. They had a

(44:50):
33% loss. And in this, they were low enough level,
they still don't have the ability to raise the dead.

Yeah. Ah.

>> Anthony (44:56):
And so they're looking at this like, we lost a
full third of everybody that came into this. But
the thing is, even the players that lost their characters,
there was this moment where somebody
said, you know what? Even though my character died, it was
worth it. They said, we
didn't die purposeless. There was a purpose

(45:17):
to our death. There was meaning behind our death. We
died doing something important. And these
hobgoblin slavers we died doing something
cool. And what's cool is the Discord server where we host for
everything for this, group actually has a channel called
the hall of Heroes. That's. And it's the
character name, race, class, all that jazz. But
then it says how they died

(45:40):
and why they died. Right?

Yeah.

>> Anthony (45:42):
and that right there, that hearing that
was like, this is why I do
this. For watching those character development
moments where even when a player
character dies, the player can say, no,
this was cool.

It's moments of the heart. That is so awesome.
And I love the idea of a Hall of. Hall of Heroes.
That's totally going into my Discord server.
before. Before too long.

>> Anthony (46:09):
Yeah.

All right, Anthony. I'm going to bring it back. I'm going to bring it
home.
before I do, is there anything else that you feel would
be a shame if our listener didn't hear you say
it?

>> Anthony (46:21):
look for an organized play. It's always
fun to have your home group, but look
for organized play. You end up
with forging so many more friendships, more
relationships. in a world where we are
constantly connected, get disconnected. forging those
friendships and those relationships. Join organized

(46:42):
play. It is worth it.

All right, now, as I always do, I want
that 10 word phrase. The activity from Eric
Newsom, NPR News. Give us
10 words, no more, no less. That helps
us remember and consider everything that you've talked about
when considering starting or joining an organized play.
What is your phrase?

>> Anthony (47:03):
Oh, absolutely. This one was actually really easy for me, and I was
thinking about ahead of time. Playing together is
always better than playing on your own.

Playing together is always better than playing on your own. It's a very
different experience playing on your own. Yeah, solo
RPGs are a thing. I think National Solo
RPG Day is in October this year. And
u, there's some really cool people trying to make that a big online
event, but it is just different. There is
nothing quite the same as playing with other people.

>> Anthony (47:31):
It is U.

And I can't wait to try some organized play. I might. I might jump
in sometime to. To. To get some firsthand
experience. Well, thanks for being here, Anthony. Thanks for your time
today. super cool, dude. I can't wait to have you on
again.

>> Anthony (47:44):
And I'd love to be on again. Thank you. Take it easy.

Playing together is always better than playing on your
own. So go find some organized play. Let's
play. I mean, unless you like solo RPGs, and in
that case, you can just stay alone.
Please, hit like or subscribe if you enjoyed what you heard today. If
you listen on Apple Podcast or Spotify, go ahead and leave the

(48:07):
CTG five stars and a review. And
may you keep having fun as you continue to have a great time with friends
and tell amazing stories through tabletop role playing games.

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