March 27, 2025 • 48 mins
D and D can help with environmental education by creating immersive, story-driven learning experiences that engage students on a deeper level. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Andrew Thaler, who’s using Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) to teach environmental concepts in a way that feels more like play than a lesson. Through world-building, role-playing, and strategic storytelling, students aren’t just learning—they’re adventuring through ecosystems, facing climate-related challenges, and discovering how natural systems work in real time.
Environmental education is often limited to textbooks and lectures, but D&D turns abstract concepts into living, breathing quests. Whether it’s battling pollution monsters or restoring magical coral reefs, players develop a better understanding of ecological relationships and environmental issues while having fun. If you’re a teacher, game master, or environmental advocate, this episode will show you how fantasy and education can combine to create a lasting impact in and out of the classroom.
Campaign: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/505687/The-Last-Hunt-for-the-Jabberwock
SFS Articles: https://www.southernfriedscience.com/10-tips-for-running-a-dungeons-dragons-campaign-for-education/
https://www.southernfriedscience.com/twas-brillig-building-a-dungeons-dragons-campaign-for-adventurers-in-and-out-of-the-classroom/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
How do we learn about science?
How do we learn about our natural world,
our planet, our environment?
Environmental literacy is at,
I feel like it's at an all time low.
It is something that you
see on political posts,
you see on Facebook,
you see on Instagram,
anytime you put up
anything that has to do
with the environment, you
see a lot of ignorant comments
and comments that people just don't know
(01:00:21):
about the
environment, they don't know how
the natural environment works.
And education is really important.
We're gonna talk about
that on today's episode
of tools that we can use.
In this case, Dungeons and Dragons games,
where people can learn,
it's almost like that immersive
experiential learning
of the natural world.
Dr. Andrew Thaler joins us again today,
one of my favorite guests, because he
(01:00:41):
comes back all the time
with all these great
stories and these great projects,
is here today to talk about his foray
into the educational aspect
of Dungeons and Dragons for
teachers and for students,
you know, around the
US, around the world,
and that people can use all the time.
(01:01:14):
He's an experienced
Dungeons and Dragons master.
I believe this is what it's called.
I'm not familiar with the game.
On today's episode, we have a special,
special episode for you today.
We are going to be talking
about Dungeons and Dragons.
You're probably like, Andrew, why are we
talking about Dungeons and
Dragons on an ocean podcast?
(01:01:34):
Well, we got to talk about it because
we've got to learn ways
and tools to get not only
children but different generations in on
learning about the environment, beefing
up our environmental
literacy around the world.
And Dungeons and Dragons is a game that
is played by hundreds of
millions of people around
the world to be able to tell stories as a
(01:01:55):
community and to
understand what adventures
are like in storytelling by adaptation,
by changing it up and by improvisation.
Right?
And it's a very fun way of doing it.
I've tried to play it once.
We talk a little bit about what happened
when I tried to play it.
It was definitely out of my comfort zone,
did in front of a crowd, but it's, I have
a such a respect for the game and such
(01:02:16):
respect for the people who
come up with these stories
and are able to put this all together for
people, especially Andrew, who's worked
on this for over a year to be able to
provide educational tools around the
games and how students and teachers can
play these games and really understand in
the environment without
learning about the environment.
It's a great way and a
(01:02:36):
great tool to discuss it.
And I can't wait for
Andrew to tell you all about it.
So here's the interview with Dr.
Andrew Taylor talking about Dungeons and
Dragons for forest ecology.
Enjoy.
And I'll talk to you after.
Hey, Andrew.
Welcome back to another great episode of
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
Are you ready to talk
about Dungeons and Dragons?
Absolutely, I am.
(01:02:57):
Right.
Now, this is going to be a different
episode than what we normally do, but
it's definitely pertinent to I feel like
what's going on in society today.
We are talking about environmental
education in general.
We're going to be going away a little bit
from the ocean because the subject matter
of the Dungeons and
Dragons is about forests.
Right.
And so we're going to be
talking all about that.
(01:03:18):
But the importance of this as a tool to
get people interested in learning about
the environment and learning about just
how nature works and being able to
conjure up some stories in a very fast
paced environment and be able to say,
hey, this is a lot of fun.
But I'm also learning and
I get into it to nature.
So I can't wait to do that.
(01:03:40):
Andrew, you've been on the podcast a
number of times, but I get a new
listeners and listen, new listeners.
So why don't you just remind the people
of who you are and what you do?
Sure thing.
So I am Dr. Andrew Thaler.
I am a deep sea ecologist, a conservation
technologist and an ocean educator.
I do a lot of work on deep sea mining.
I do a lot of work on developing
oceanographic instruments.
I do a bunch of policy work.
(01:04:01):
I yell at mining companies.
I do all those fun things.
But today I want to
take you on an adventure.
And that adventure goes all
the way back to New Year's 2023.
And what was amazing about New Year's
2023 is that the actual holiday fell in
such a way that we had
(01:04:22):
like a five day weekend.
And so I being the insane person that I
am decided to call up a bunch of my
friends and say, hey, we had
this long five day weekend.
It's cold. It's it's
snowy. It's dark out.
I live in a log cabin with a giant
(01:04:43):
vaulted ceiling that looks
like a Viking long house.
Why don't we all get together and just
spend five days
playing Dungeons and Dragons?
That sounds kind of cool.
It was a lot of fun. And so I designed a
campaign just for just for
that that New Year's holiday.
And because I can't escape being an
educator, the campaign I designed was
(01:05:06):
built around the idea of for succession.
So as my players explored this
wilderness, they were noticing changes in
the forest and the changes in the forest
were dictating where the plot progressed
and where the adventure went.
And so as they were and obviously all my
friends are our
scientists of various stripes.
So as they're making observations about
(01:05:26):
the forest, these adventures growing
around them about what caused these
changes and why and how and
what they can do about it.
And what are all the different aspects
that are shaping this landscape?
So there is a there's an endangered
species that is missing from the forest.
There is a dam that was built that is
(01:05:48):
causing a swamp to retreat.
There are all of these environmental
factors that are kind of
reshaping the landscape.
And at the end of the adventure, I'll try
not to give too much away right off the
bat in case anyone
wants to actually play it.
But at the end of the adventure, you
know, we sat down and they said, hey, you
know, this would actually make a really
good classroom exercise.
This could be, you know, with a little
(01:06:09):
bit of work like teachers could use this
to teach things about succession and
forest ecology and especially a fire
dominated ecosystems.
So over the next year, this has kind of
been a passion project of mine to take
the adventure is called The
Last Hunt for the Jabberwalk.
OK, it is it is set in the Feywild, which
(01:06:31):
is kind of this like whimsical fairy
world within Dungeons and Dragons that is
centered on puns and kind of joyfully
whimsical tricksy kinds of things.
OK, not super serious, you know, not like
big high fantasy, more
like ridiculous whimsy.
So there's there's a colony of rabbits
and they're all talking in rabbit puns
(01:06:53):
and there's there's a city of frogs who
are worshiping a giant frog that turns
out not to actually be a deity, but just
a really big frog that keeps eating them.
So things like that. Yeah. But what I did
is I took this adventure.
I kind of distilled it down to the core
lessons we wanted to teach.
(01:07:15):
We wanted to teach about how fire
dominated forest ecosystems work.
We want to teach about the consequences
of building dams and what that means for
environment and then the consequences of
tearing a dam down and what that would
mean for an environment and for
communities that live around those dams.
We want to talk about invasive species.
(01:07:36):
And we want to talk about like building
resilient communities in the face of
changing ecosystems, changing
environments, changing climates.
And so, you know, after this first dry
run, I kind of spent a year rebuilding
the adventure from the ground ground up
around these kinds of educational themes
and in the process also developing lesson
(01:07:56):
plans to go along with them.
So the idea behind and things like. Yeah.
And so the idea behind the last time for
the Jabberwock is that a teacher could
pick this up and it's like a 12 hour to
20 hour campaign, depending
on how they want to run it.
And they can build it around an
environmental education course and they
can run their students through the
adventure and they can have their
(01:08:19):
students discover the ecological
processes that are shaping this forest in
a way that you can't do if
you're just doing a lecture.
So there's there's a mystery and there's
there's puzzles to be solved and there's
like access to histories that they have
to uncover and figure out why things have
changed and how they've changed.
And they all relate back
to real world examples.
(01:08:42):
And then it also ends in like kind of an
ecological debate about what are we going
to do to fix things?
It's a fire dominated ecosystem and the
fire is driven by a keystone species
that's no longer there.
And as they bring it's called last hunt
for the Jabberwock. So you can kind of
figure that one out if they bring the
keystone species back, the
(01:09:03):
forest begins to recover.
But then there's a new predator and you
know, the communities that are living in
the forest now have to
deal with the predator.
There's a dam and they can debate whether
or not they need to tear
the dam down or let it stay.
And that has implications for the animals
that live upstream and the animals that
live downstream and the
communities built around it.
And so you really get an opportunity to
(01:09:23):
talk about these kind of big
environmental questions that really
dictate how we think about making
resilient communities in the face of
environmental change.
And because it's couched in D&D because
it's couched in this kind of whimsical
forest world that's not directly related
to the real world, you can have those
conversations without kind of bringing up
(01:09:45):
a lot of the political
baggage that comes along with that.
Without bringing up a lot of like the
real world emotions so you can have those
talks and you can you can look at the
world without having to think about the
real world at the same time.
And then you can see the outcome. You can
see the consequences. So in the game,
they'll do those things. They'll make
those decisions and then they'll see how
(01:10:06):
those decisions reshape things and
they'll get to actually
experience what those changes mean.
Right.
So it took me about a year to spin this
up into something that I felt was a
functional thing for educators to use. We
did a lot of test runs with with local
teachers with some
local D&D groups as well.
And at the end of December of this of
(01:10:28):
last year, we published it on it's called
Dungeons Masters Guild. It's kind of like
a clearinghouse for D&D adventures.
It's licensed with Wizards of the Coast.
So it's all like official D&D stuff,
which is really, really fun.
And we've made it available for teachers
to download and try on
their own and test things out.
(01:10:50):
This is phenomenal. I love this. I love
this. And I know, you know, D&D has
become very popular with a lot of a lot
of different groups now.
I wanted you to talk about D&D a little
bit because and just sort of what it is
for the people who don't know because
like when I was a kid in the
80s, I grew up like Catholic.
(01:11:11):
We weren't allowed to play D&D. It was
about demons and dragons. And that was
that was a faux pas in my household. Like
we were not allowed.
It was like that was like a Ouija board.
You weren't allowed to mess with the
Ouija board. Of course we did. But that
you know, when I was
a teenager and stuff.
But that's how I think they're my friend.
I know. But that's you know, sort of
(01:11:32):
that's what what like a lot of I feel
like a lot of people went through when
when they were kids and like parents just
didn't understand what this D&D is.
You know, and as I grew up and started to
hear more about it more and more and more
people playing it, there was a little bit
of a dry one that I got to take part that
launched a podcast for for oceans called
do goings and see dragons.
(01:11:53):
And a great a great a great podcast has
been running. What I think he said, like
between 600 and 700 episodes. It's a lot
of it has been running since 2018.
Yeah, so yeah, once a week. And I think
it's phenomenal. And we know, you know,
people use it as an educational tool. But
can you just talk about what, like, just
(01:12:13):
for the audience who aren't familiar with
it, what D&D is and how it's really grown
over the last like few decades.
So at its core, D&D is really two things.
One is it's a set of rules. And it's a
set of rules that allows you to get a
group together and participate in
collaborative storytelling, in which you
can introduce random elements into that
(01:12:35):
story by rolling dice.
So functionally, what you're doing is
you're sitting around the table with your
friends, and you're telling a folktale.
And instead of just deciding where you
want the plot to go, you add dice rolls
into it that dictate how things progress,
that change the outcome of events that
create random elements into the story.
(01:12:56):
And then you have to adapt and respond to
that story. So you are role playing a
folktale of your own creation, in which
you are not in complete
control of the outcome.
I think that's that's really interesting
with the with the dice roll, because it's
almost like risk in the game, the board
game risk, where it's like, you think you
know what you're going to do, you're
going to take over a country, and then
all of a sudden, the
dice tell you different.
(01:13:17):
And I think that's the same way with with
Dungeons and Dragons, right? Like, you
think you're going to win a battle or or
pick something and venture the dice a
differently and you have
to you have to switch up.
Yeah, and so dnd actually evolved from
those tabletop war games. So, oh, really
risk and dnd share a lot of the same
bloodline that they've diverged quite a
bit. And, you know, combat, it doesn't
(01:13:39):
have to be central to dnd and we've
actually designed the last hunt for the
Jabberwock adventure, so that you can
complete the entire adventure without
getting into any fights
without using violence.
That's cool. You can you can use cunning
and you can be clever and you can solve
riddles instead. So that like it's not
doesn't have to be necessarily combat
focused because there is there is a
(01:14:00):
violent element to dnd.
And, you know, I love that a lot of
people love that it's a great part of the
gameplay. But if you're an educator,
maybe that's not the direction you want
to go if you're doing it with students.
For sure. That makes sense.
So that's that's the one half of dnd. The
one half of it is a set of rules. The
other half of dnd is the lore because dnd
is a thing that has existed for 50 years
(01:14:20):
and it has its own internal worlds and
its own internal stories and its own
internal IP, its own internal
intellectual property.
So things like beholders is big floating
multi eyed monsters that are terrifying
to dnd players and and Al bears, which is
a monster that's half an owl and half a
bear, which is my daughter's favorite
(01:14:41):
monster of all time.
And you know, characters like Vecna,
which are in stranger things now and it
kind of have transcended like just the
dnd world to be something that people are
more conscious and aware of. So there's
lore that goes around along with that.
And so that has, you know, the beauty of
working in a fictional world that's
(01:15:01):
already been created is that you don't
have to do all the world building for it
on your own. Like there's already this
creative pool that you can draw from in
order to tell new stories without having
to retell the entire
origin story of a world.
And that's why like you have for for your
story, you have like a structure already
built and you can go on to this site. And
(01:15:23):
is it just like a downloadable thing? Is
that what it is? Is it like now with with
websites and stuff? You just download
like a PDF and then you can print it off
or use a computer or
whatever you like to do.
Yeah. So if you go to Dungeon Master
Guild and look for last time of the
Jabber walk, you can you pay for the PDF
and you download the PDF. There is a
there is a sales threshold or once you
hit that threshold, they will allow you
(01:15:43):
to start making hard
copies, which is really nice.
We hit the first bestseller threshold
earlier this month. So we are now a
copper bestseller. It's all by metal
badges. So, so, so it's pretty exciting.
People are people are really getting into
the adventure and taking a look at it.
And I've already been in touch with
several teachers who have started
(01:16:05):
campaigns in their classrooms and their
kids are really starting to enjoy them.
One of the things we also did is we keyed
all the lesson plans to the actual like
next generation science standards and
common core standards so that if you are
a teacher, you can look those up in the
background and see how you can plug those
into your existing lesson plans as well.
And that's that's where it really counts
(01:16:25):
when you're talking about, you know,
putting them into schools is making sure
that you're following the right
guidelines, following the make sure that
they're hitting what they need to hit for
their core success with the first thing I
assume a teacher would ask is like, does
this fit within our curriculum?
Yes, and we've put a I say we it's I put
a lot of effort into making it as easy as
(01:16:47):
possible for a teacher who hasn't really
done a lot of D&D before to pick it up
and run it. So there's a bunch of
guidance in the back on how to run it as
a teacher, how to integrate the lesson
plans into the adventure where to slot
different things if they want to.
I will say if you're not, you know, if
you're not a student or a teacher, you
can still play the adventure. It's a
really fun adventure. You don't have to
(01:17:08):
use the lesson plans if you don't want
to. You can just run the campaign on its
own as a free freestanding thing.
But, you know, I really think the lesson
plans and the lesson plans are all about
we have one big lesson plan that dives
deep into into fire dominated forest
ecology that looks at things like the
Mount Diablo fire in California, which I
really love as an example for fire
(01:17:29):
dominated ecosystems because it's one of
the big California wildfires that didn't
didn't result in any
property damage or loss of life.
It was a pure natural area wildfire. And
so like you get to study the actual
succession without, you know, all of the
human tragedy that comes with that as
well. Yeah, definitely. There's lessons
on on building and removing dams. And
(01:17:51):
then, of course, because it's last hunt
for the Jabber walk and obviously has
something to lose Carol. There's a bit on
the Lewis Carroll poem as well. So you
can you can share the adventure with an
English teacher, too. It doesn't have to
just be environmental science.
And then one of the one of the things
I've done is we snuck smaller lessons in
there as well. Okay, so depending on how
(01:18:13):
deep you want to go, there's a whole
bunch of side quests that the students
can run depending on time limitations or
how excited about different things.
And so there's a little lesson on
invasive species. There's one on
displacing
communities when dams are built.
There's an adventure in soap making where
the students are going to spend a little
(01:18:35):
bit of the adventure trying to brew a
potion and slowly as they do it, they're
going to learn that they're actually
learning just the real way to make soap
out of lie and tallow.
Okay, I like that. I feel like those
those like like the side story. Yes,
would be a great like assignment after
you do the real one and be like, hey, you
know, you take some students you take you
(01:18:56):
do this side story
you do this side story.
And then you're like, you're like, you're
like, you pick a group and do it.
Exactly. I can get used to that. I love
that idea of this. Now, as you start to
when you start to post this and you start
to see teachers grab on to it, you know,
dragons still can be controversial and
certain circles that don't understand the
(01:19:19):
game and what it's really about. Right.
You just see the monsters and demons and
things like that. I mean, less so now
than it was when we were children,
certainly, you know, we I run I run a
campaign with our local public library.
So we've had for two years now have been
running the library D&D group.
And that's a family group. So we have
kids and their parents come in.
(01:19:39):
Originally, the idea was it would be
parents and kids playing together the
whole time. But you're a parent. I'm a
parent. You know exactly
what's about to happen.
Parents hear that and they're like, I can
drop my kid off for three hours and go
get dinner on my own. So we have we have
a I'll be I'll be at the bar. I'll be at
the pub. You guys you guys enjoy. So we
(01:19:59):
have a few parents that show up for the
game for the most part. It's kids and you
know, the age range is seven to 15, which
is perfect. And some older. We've had a
couple college kids come in during the
summer and just want to play. And so it's
great to have like multi generational
groups playing. Yes.
Because then you really get an
opportunity because how often do seven
year olds get to like play a game with
(01:20:20):
college kids in a way that they're
they're both just part of it in at the
same level. Yeah. Or in the case of our
seven year old children. Yeah, exactly.
They're working together.
They're working together to survive this
this adventure to learn about this
adventure. And I honestly I think every
serious campaign needs at least one seven
year old to just just throw a wrench at
(01:20:43):
everything. Throw a wrench at everything.
Come up with just the funnest stuff. The
weirdest things. Yeah. We had you know,
one of my favorite moments of any D and D
adventures. We had a seven year old. He
was playing a wizard and he was just
really into like
finding any potion you could.
And pouring it all over his weapons to
make a new weapon. And so he eventually
(01:21:04):
he eventually turns his wizard staff into
a giant rod of tungsten. And of course,
at that point, he's going to be like,
well, what's tungsten? And I happen to I
keep a tungsten cube in my car in case I
ever see a cyber truck.
And I want to be like, hey, can I throw a
rocket to see if it did? With consent.
(01:21:27):
I'm not encouraging you to throw things
at cyber trucks, but like, you know, if
you ever get a get someone bragging about
how tough it is, you pull out your
tungsten cube and be like, hey, can I lob
this at it? Yeah, let's see how it looks.
Yeah, tough it is. So I haven't had my
lucky tungsten cube with me. I'm like,
all right, well, here's here's this. And
we talk about like, metals intensity and
all that stuff, which is really cool.
Because one of the other kids at the
(01:21:47):
table, his dad's a black guy.
And he's like, I'm a blacksmith. Like a
real blacksmith, not a fantasy
blacksmith. And so we got to like, really
get into like, big ideas about metals and
what they really are and how they
function. Which, you know, that's the
kind of thing that comes out when you
just you let the kids go wild and you
have a very mixed table.
I feel like there's such a good place for
(01:22:09):
this in classroom. Yes, because like, you
know, I've got two teenage daughters,
they're 15 and 17. And the biggest thing
that they come home with is, I go to
school. What do you
think the response is? Fine.
No, boring. No, it was boring. Because
they just, you know, it's a lecture.
(01:22:30):
Yeah, it's essentially a lecture. You're
listening to one person talk about a
subject you may or may not be interested
in. Like, I remember biology, like, I was
not interested in human biology when I
went to high school, all my
projects were on animals, right?
On some kind like dolphin or whale or
shark or something like that. I had to
get special permission to do those. But
(01:22:51):
you know, like if you do it, like a D and
D type of exercise, you're including the
kids in it. Right. They're they have to
know the story. They have to know the stuff and questions are going to come in.
and questions are going to come up.
Well, they're not just knowing the story,
they're driving the story.
They're driving the story.
So functionally it's
experiential education.
(01:23:11):
Like the approach I take
to building a D&D adventure
is the same approach I take to designing
like an educational hiking experience
or designing like the
hands-on workshops I do
with ocean sensor systems
and going out in the field on boats.
Like it is at its heart,
it's all that same
experiential education policy.
It's just, you know, with D&D,
(01:23:33):
you don't have to organize a field trip.
Right.
It's like the cheap way of doing things.
Yeah, so they can get that experience,
they get self-confidence,
they get to drive the lesson
and they get to do the discovery,
which is the real point
of experiential education
is that like, you know,
I can tell you how a fire
dominated ecosystem works,
but it's way more fun to walk through one
(01:23:56):
and see how things change
as you get away from the fire scars
and see like figure out,
like as you explore,
what caused different
aspects of the forest to change
and make that discovery, you know,
discovery as play is a really great way
to teach big
environmental concepts as well.
Yeah, I love this idea, I really do.
(01:24:19):
So when teachers started to pick up,
like were the teachers that picked it up
familiar with D&D already?
Cause you said it's
like a beginner can do it.
Like if I was a teacher
and I just picked it up,
or even if I just picked it up
and didn't for a bunch of students,
I would be able to kind of follow it
and learn it and be able to do it.
I may not be as good as
somebody who's experienced,
but the teachers who
(01:24:39):
picked it up at first,
they were familiar with D&D,
they're already familiar with the site
and how it all plays out
and they've probably
run a couple of games
or been a part of a couple of games.
Yeah, so one of the
consequences of doing it
as a D&D property and like,
because Dungeons and
Dragons is so recognizable,
that is a very
compelling playground to work in.
Yeah.
(01:24:59):
But one of the consequences of that
is that you have to publish through
Dungeon Masters Guild,
which has a, actually one
of the best content sharing
royalty arrangements I've ever seen for,
in a established IP.
It's 50%.
Wow, that's huge.
Which is, I mean, that's unheard of.
And you get to use assets
from Dungeons and Dragons.
And, you know, a 50%
(01:25:21):
royalty is unbelievable
for something where they give you access
to the IP like that.
But because of that, you have to publish
through that specific venue.
And like, if you're not already familiar
with Dungeons and Dragons
and probably not
already a Dungeon Master,
you don't know what
Dungeon Master's Guild is.
Like, that's not something that is...
It'll take a little while.
It takes a little.
So absolutely, the first
teachers in engaging it
(01:25:42):
are very familiar with Dungeons and
Dragons to begin with.
Yeah.
And are looking for ways to integrate it.
And in some cases, they've
already found ways to integrate
other kinds of D&D
lessons into their classrooms.
So we're starting from there.
You know, unfortunately, I won't be able
to make it available anywhere else
because of that IP sharing arrangement.
Yeah, of course. Of course.
But we're hoping that other people pick
(01:26:02):
it up and give it a try.
And people who aren't familiar with D&D
pick it up and give it a try.
Well, I feel like now it's going to be
like once the people who do pick it up
start using, they've
already started to use it.
Now you're starting to get feedback. Yes.
You know, on the sort of the like
evaluation of how well it works.
You know, how do the kids respond to it?
You know, how do the teachers respond to
(01:26:22):
the kids responding to it?
You know, did they learn
that the material more?
Did they enjoy it? Do
they want to do more?
Then I think they'll start to talk to
other teachers in their
school like, what are you doing?
What is this? The educational start of
just like what this is all about.
And then the idea is that that'll start
to spread through through word of mouth.
I assume is that is sort
(01:26:43):
of the goal? Is that it?
Yeah, I ultimately that's
the goal, word of mouth.
And of course, Southern Fried Science,
which is, you know, my venue for
spreading everything.
A little site, a little site that
provides some information.
A lesser known ocean science website.
I think we have reclaimed our title as
the most widely read ocean science blog
in the English language.
I'll tell you.
It's the end.
You know, I think that's from attrition,
(01:27:04):
not from any success on our end.
Well, I'll tell you, though, but the
quality of articles
that come out of there.
I'm always happy reading those articles.
I always put them in my newsletter every
time I pop them in, you know, and it's
like, I'm like, this is a good one.
So yeah, so they're always great.
(01:27:25):
They're always informative.
They've driven a lot of podcasts before.
I'm happy to help.
Whether you're on it or not.
Sometimes I'm like,
oh, this is a good way.
I got to talk about this.
But then you also have like guest writers
and stuff like that.
That also put like, Angelo's been on it.
And obviously who's like,
Angelo is not a guest writer.
He is. He's an official writer.
Full on now.
Full on. Yeah.
(01:27:45):
OK. I love it.
Yeah, I really like what the last article
that David Shiffman and
Brett Favaro are doing,
which is they had a, you know, they had a
paper that they were having trouble
getting published in a scientific journal
or finally like, you know what?
We're done. We're done
trying to get this into a journal.
We're just going to
publish it as a blog post.
And I can guarantee you more people have
read it now than would have ever read it
(01:28:05):
in a scientific journal.
100%. Especially it's
on science communication.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And it's a what? A four?
It's a four part series.
Yeah. And yeah, I've
already started to read it.
And it's, I mean, it's so informative.
You know, these are two people who have
had a lot of very different communication
(01:28:26):
styles and different topics
to draw some information from.
And they have a lot of, they know a lot
of people that can inform them on
different aspects, too.
So I think those are
going to be really great.
We'll link to that as well as the
Dungeons and Dungeons Masters Guild in
there, too, so people
can get access to it.
So, yeah, so obviously Southern Fried
(01:28:47):
Science, we'll be able to get some
information on that.
Like, are you planning on publishing an
article, whether it be on Southern Fried
Science or elsewhere,
on sort of the, like, are you following
and keeping in touch with the
people who have downloaded it
to kind of get feedback on what's
working, what's not, that kind of stuff?
(01:29:07):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we've published
a couple of articles already,
kind of the initial sort of launch of the
project and sort of
lessons learned from that.
And I'm keeping, you know, it's a 12 to
20 hour campaign means it's probably
going to take a semester of
finding the time to run it.
And so we're getting
feedback as it goes in.
I'm sure there'll be a second edition
with lots of changes and corrections to
(01:29:28):
help people out and get feedback.
And, you know, I'm hoping long term that
we can, you know, do
this as a regular thing.
Every so often publish new adventures,
you know, get some more
marine science in there next time.
Maybe adventure to the abyssal plane.
I love it.
It's basically like Meg three.
Do a DC Mining campaign. You never know.
(01:29:49):
There you go. Oh, I like that.
Yeah.
I like that. No, that's amazing. And even
like not even just in classrooms, I feel
like a lot of the eco
clubs could be doing this too.
Yeah.
Probably get through more of the stories
because they can spend, you know, every
day of a week to just do like a campaign
or something like that
or a couple of weeks.
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, my daughter,
(01:30:11):
every summer she does a camp
at the local Audubon Society.
And after lunch, every single day of
camp, they have a little mini D&D session
where they talk about.
It's part of the camp.
Part of the camp. Talk about the animals
they've encountered and, you know, talk
about a little bit of ecology.
I think last year they were fighting a
croc that stole crocs because people kept
(01:30:32):
losing their shoes in the in the marsh.
Croc made of crocs. It was a giant croc,
but it wasn't like a giant the shoe croc.
Oh, that is so it had to
eat crocs to be exactly.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, and like integrated into the camp
and like part of their experience.
And it's wonderful to see because like,
(01:30:53):
you know, that opportunity to like still
be engaged, but it's like, you know,
you're not hiking through the woods,
maybe a little tired after lunch, but
it's a chance to continue to talk about
the topic in a
different way and in a new way.
And I also feel like it just, it helps
you develop that creativity.
Absolutely.
Right? Like D&D just in general helps you
develop that creativity. That's the one
thing I really respect of this is because
(01:31:13):
you have to adapt so quickly in a story.
It really makes you think. It really
makes you open up your
mind. It's almost like improv.
It is improv. Yeah. Oh, my improv skills
have gotten so much better since I got
back into DMing about three years ago.
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And so I think
it's really great for kids who, you know,
in a world dominated by phones, you know,
(01:31:36):
especially teenagers and tweens where
they're just looking
at phones all the time.
This is a great way to really get them to
interact, get them off their phones, get
them into something creative, you know,
and learn about themselves in terms of
how they can actually, you know, build on
storytelling and which we're going to
need in any kind of job that you do.
(01:31:57):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You have to have
good storytelling skills. That's awesome.
You know, one of the tremendous things to
see is that because, you know, Dungeons
and Dragons is 50 years old this year.
Yeah, it's crazy. So we have kids that
are sharing adventures with their parents
and their grandparents.
Wow.
And so there's this beautiful little
chain of connection
going across generations now.
That's phenomenal. That's just amazing.
(01:32:19):
And you know what? It's been 50 years and
it still takes 20 minutes to open a door.
You got to figure out something that goes
on. But like, so, so is this something
like, like, I know you have, you, you are
one of the guys that I know who, you
know, when you have an idea, you go full
(01:32:39):
fledged and you develop the idea over
time and it, and it, it obviously gets
better and better as it goes along.
I hope so. OpenCTD has done your
projects, you know, through the, like,
through Patreon, even like following
through Patreon and documenting that
process on here as well. The, the deep
sea mining, obviously that's something
that you're an expert in, but you've
(01:33:01):
continued to kind of really creatively,
like, get into different aspects of it.
You know, with the magazine and stuff and
coming on the podcast and your articles
and things with this project, you know,
obviously you're, you're going to develop
it even more through feedback. And you're
talking about doing maybe different
(01:33:22):
scenarios, different, different story
lines and stuff like that.
Like, how much time are you ready to
dedicate to this, to
this type of project?
So that is an interesting question. And,
you know, in addition to the kinds of
projects I do, I always have to do like
an ROI analysis of things to figure out
(01:33:43):
like where I need to invest my time
because in addition to being like a very
silly whimsical man, I
also have a mortgage.
So this was, you know, this was a nights
and weekends kind of project for the
last, for the last year.
And, you know, I'd like to see, I'd like
to see it break even before, before I
(01:34:04):
really focus on the next big project
that's kind of D&D focused.
I commissioned a lot of art for, for the
actual campaign so that, you know,
there's, there's visual aids to kind of
capture the spirit of the adventure.
Because I like commissioning artists and
paying artists to do
good work. Of course.
So there's no, no AI art in it at all.
It's all original art
from Aaron Anderson. Yes.
(01:34:28):
We designed a lot of maps. So that was
mostly me, but building
maps is very time intensive.
So once I hit the break even point, I'll
have a better idea of like what I can do
pushing forward in terms of like actually
generating these pretty consistently.
Like I'm always like I run a D&D campaign
at my library. I want run one with my
(01:34:49):
family and I have the podcast as well.
So like I'm steeped in it all the time.
I've got a million notes, but, but really
getting, you know, the, the hard part was
not the D&D campaign.
The hard part was making it work as an
educational tool. Yeah, of course.
And building out the lesson plans and
making sure that the adventure match what
we were trying to teach and was, you
(01:35:11):
know, adding to that lesson rather than
kind of distracting from it.
Yeah, no doubt.
So, you know, that takes a lot of work
and, you know, I think I probably
committed about a month of my time full
time to just doing the copy editing and
getting all the layout and everything and
doing some of the testing and
(01:35:32):
making sure it all made sense.
So it's not a small
chunk of time. No, for sure.
And it's obviously like it's, you know,
labor. The problem with labors of love is
that labors of love don't pay the bills.
I mean, is this something that like do
people who publish these, these manuals
on the guild is it, can it be a business?
(01:35:54):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like a revenue
generator for you, you think over time?
You know, I think the niche I'm working
in is so small that it probably won't
ever be a serious revenue generator. If
it breaks even, that'd be amazing.
Gotcha. Because, you know, if I can
predictably have these projects break
even, then I can commission new art and
invest the time into making the next one
(01:36:16):
without worrying too much.
For sure. There are absolutely people who
make a living just publishing D&D
modules. You know, there are professional
dungeon masters who their entire career
is running D&D campaigns.
And that sounds like an awful lot of fun.
I wouldn't mind doing that.
Wouldn't that be great? I mean, you write
them already. It's like, let's just make
a business out of it.
(01:36:36):
Yeah. I mean, it is a lot of work. Like
those guys are full on creatives in a way
that like I, I mean, you've described my
workload. It's I'm not a, I'm not
consistently focused on any one thing
long enough, I think, to
pull something like that off.
But there are some great people out there
that are putting together some amazing
campaigns. And, you know, some of the
other guys on the podcast, on the
DooGongs and Sea Dragon podcast have
(01:36:57):
published other educational supplements.
So there is a scientific secrets of the
salt marsh where they've turned real
ocean animals into D&D monsters with stat
blocks and little like lessons about
their behavior and ecology around that
scientific secrets of ice wind Dale,
which is all Arctic animals.
(01:37:19):
So there are, you know, there are other
ways to do it as well. And there's some
great resources out there.
That's amazing. Like, can you send me
some of those links? We'll put absolutely
show notes so that people can get access
to them because I want people to really
understand, you know, the value of what's
been put in, but also like the value of
the education tool that can be whether
you're a teacher or not, you know, you
just want to play with your family or
(01:37:40):
something or your friends or your kids
friends like that, like that, I think is
a great is a great idea.
Let's let's switch to the educational
aspect of an just like environmental
literacy in general. This is a great tool
and it may not work for everybody.
Obviously, it's it's it's a niche where
people who play the games, which probably
(01:38:01):
we're talking like millions of people
play Dungeons and
Dragons, right? Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's the most popular tabletop
role playing game in the world. Yeah,
probably I wouldn't be afraid to say
probably hundreds of millions at this
point. Right. Right. So there's there's a
lot of people to do this.
And like, I feel as though over
especially those last decade, we've
really seen just the lack of
(01:38:25):
environmental literacy from people in
general. Right. And that's had some
serious consequences
politically from a policy standpoint.
We've discussed it a number of times
through the number every time I think
you're on we kind of discuss it. Where do
you see, you know, people like yourself
people like me, David Shiffman and
(01:38:48):
everybody else who's involved people who
have podcasts and YouTube channels and,
you know, Dungeons and Dragons games and,
you know, everybody is trying to do their
their education in their own kind of
circles and in their own kind of
networks, whether it be on.
Online, whether it be locally. What do
you think we need to do as a collective
(01:39:10):
to really start to nail down this this
literacy for people? Yeah, so I think the
broader issue that we're all kind of
touching on is this idea of nature
deficit disorder, which is, you know,
and I hate doing the kids these days
thing because it's obviously not the kids
(01:39:31):
fault. Right. We have built a society in
certain parts of the world, certainly
certain parts of the developed world
where children don't have the same access
to wild spaces that even we did growing
up, you know, dare I say 40 years ago.
Um, you know, I live in a very rural
area. I live in the wood. I'm like, if
(01:39:54):
we're doing video here, I'm in an actual
log cabin in the middle of the woods
right now. Like, you know, my daughter,
her made a wood. My daughter raises
chickens. Right. And I grew up in
Baltimore City and I still remember
having much more access to large, like,
state parts, large green spaces that I,
you know, even out here.
(01:40:15):
I don't think my daughter has nearly the
same access to because she can't just hop
on a bike and ride 20 miles away the way
we used to. You know, the roads are less
friendly. They're not designed with
pedestrians in mind.
Um, you know, we've, we've stretched kids
out into the suburbs in a way that like
suburbs are kind of like, like the
(01:40:38):
graveyard of green spaces because they
not only do they deprive people of green
spaces by overbuilding and developing on
them, but then they also make it much
harder to get to the existing green
spaces because they sprawled you out in
these kinds of, you know, massive housing
complexes of private property.
Someone as someone who's worked, I've
(01:40:58):
worked as a private consultant for quite
a number of years and the amount of fight
that we had to do with developers on
keeping green spaces. Oh, yeah. And
making them large and just like on a just
a tree, like just a tree, keep a tree in
this one area. Yeah. But then we can make
so much more money if we take this tree
down. Like, it's, it's unreal. The
battles that you have to do in these
(01:41:20):
suburbs, suburban areas. Yeah. Well, and
you know, you know, something like
Dungeons and Dragons adventure is not a
replacement for access to the woods, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
activity. It means it means it means multiple living spaces,which meant that it meant lots of living spaces, but it
is, it is in its own way a green space
that they always have access to. So it is
it. This provides a different tool for
engaging with nature. And, you know, you
know, one of the kind of tragic thoughts
that occurs to me every couple of months
(01:41:40):
is that like you know, Rachel Carson came
out with Silent Spring about d Verizon.
in the decline of brand populations. Her,
the central thesis was that we don't hear
bird songs as much as we used to anymore.
Uh, and that, that struck such a powerful cords thatmathis
And that struck such a powerful chord
that it fundamentally created the
environmental movement.
(01:42:00):
And I think about today, if you told kids
we were hearing less birdsongs,
would they, and not just kids, adults,
even more so adults,
if adults today heard,
"Oh, we're hearing less birdsongs in the
spring," would that be
something that has the same level
of emotional resonance, or are we so
disconnected just from the
idea that we should be hearing
nature all the time, that it wouldn't
(01:42:22):
like hit the way that
Silent Spring hit in the 60s?
Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, there's that
sort of point of
reference that we have. You know,
there was a paper that was written a
number of years ago where they talked
about the people who
saw coral reefs back in the 60s have a
different idea of what coral, the people
now have a different
idea of corals compared to the people
(01:42:43):
that they saw in the
60s. And, but we don't know,
it's the frame of reference, we just
don't know what it looked
like, even our our generations
changed since since then. So if you play
if you play Last Time for
the Jabberwock, shifting
basslines is in there. And it's not in
there in an explicit way,
it's there in an implicit way.
As you meet different characters, they've
experienced the forest
through different time frames.
(01:43:05):
And so some people will say that the
forest is amazing and
doing great right now. And some
people will talk about how great it was
20 years ago. And you know,
it's D&D, you can have thousand
year old characters, they'll talk about,
you know, what it looks like 1000 years
ago, and the players
have to piece together like, what was the
natural state of this
forest, because the baseline has
shifted depending on who the observer is.
(01:43:27):
It's amazing. It's such a
such a good tool. It's such
a fun, it sounds like such a fun idea.
It's awesome. I've only
played it once. I wasn't
comfortable playing it took me out of my
comfort zone. I remember that
we kind of we kind of hacked
a game of cyberpunk into it at the same
time, because we were texting back and
forth while you were playing on stage.
(01:43:49):
But it was it but it's it's one of those
things I have a lot of respect for the
for it, because it's it's it
it does it puts you in that creative
mode. And if you're not ready for it,
you're not ready for it.
Right. But I think as you play it more
and more, and just kind of make sure that
you can like for me
is like, you got to be
a, you got to be and obviously, this was
in front of a stage of
people. So it's a little bit more.
Yeah, you got thrown into the deep end.
(01:44:10):
You didn't just play a game of Dungeons
and Dragons. You played a game of
Dungeons and Dragons in public on a
stage, having heard about
it an hour and a half ago.
It was a little, it was a little bit
quick. But now with that said, with that
said, what you did is continuing on
today. Like true. You laid a foundation
that has has transcended.
I mean, it's it's a D&D podcast has been
(01:44:34):
running for six years now. Yeah, yeah.
And I like it was fun. I had a good time.
But I should say that Melissa Marquez
learned just as fast as I did. And she
kicked butt in the storytelling compared
to what what I was doing. It was it was
she got into it. And she was she was
great. We were joking about it. But she
did a phenomenal, phenomenal job.
(01:44:55):
So she's a natural born storyteller. I
mean, her the children's book, she's been
putting out her excellent. My kids got
all of them. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
unreal. It's there. They're there.
They're a lot of fun. I love this, this
aspect. So this is something that's going
to continue on for a little bit. This
story is already up there. People can
download it. We're going to put the links
in the show notes that people can get
access to it. Andrew, it's always a
(01:45:17):
pleasure to have you on, you know, he's
like, Hey, do you want to talk about D&D
on the podcast? Like, yes, I think what I
actually said is please for the love of
what of whichever D&D you believe in. Can
we talk about something not American
politics? Yes, I just want to talk about
something different. Yes, let's put on a
positive stage. And to be honest, I've
been talking a lot about it on the
(01:45:38):
podcast. Oh, yeah, political. And so now
it's nice to just be like, Hey, look,
there's, there's a need for different
educational tools to really increase our
environmental literacy. This is a great
way of doing it. Obviously, hundreds of
millions of people are playing it around
the world. And this is
something that we can tap into.
And so I highly recommend that people
(01:45:58):
support not only Andrews efforts in this,
but also the ability to, you know, grow
environmental literacy through this D&D
game. So he just said the title one more
time. So the title is the last hunt for
the Jabber walk, a Feywild adventure and
ecological succession. There's also a map
pack if you want full size maps for the
(01:46:18):
players to play on if you do playing D&D
with miniatures. And I'll give you a link
with a discount code in it
too. So you can go to D&D.com.
Get a little bit, little bit off the
price. Take care of the absolutely. This
is awesome. Alright, Andrew, thank you so
much for joining us. It's always a
pleasure. And can't wait to talk to you
next time. I'm looking forward to it. All
right. All right, thank you. Thank you,
(01:46:40):
Andrew, for joining us on this episode of
the how to protect the ocean. It's always
great to have you come on because you
always do these creative projects that,
you know, are not like regular projects
that we see around the world. You bring
them to us every single time. And it's
always unique. It's
always fun. And they're always
like, I gotta say like genius. They're
brilliant in terms of getting people to
(01:47:00):
understand and make yourself aware of the
environment and beefing up our
environmental literacy for people which
we know is really low right now. And so I
love the fact that you're using Dungeons
and Dragons as a game, not only with your
family, but not only at your local
library, but you use it, you know, on a
podcast and that gets published to like a
lot of different listeners for anybody
(01:47:21):
who wants it. We'll put that link to the
Dungeons and Dragons
game and the podcast. And
you know, now you do it for teachers so
that they can pick it up and grab it. So
I highly recommend that people go and
grab if you're interested in playing
Dungeons and Dragons. And if you've
played Dungeons and Dragons before, you
know where to go. But I'm going to put
the link in the show notes below this
episode. If you're on YouTube or if
you're on Spotify, this can be in the
(01:47:41):
show notes. If you're listening to this
on any kind of podcast app, or you can go
to speakupforblue.com and the link to the
show on our website is on the show notes.
So you can go right there and you can
download it. This is a fun way to learn
about the environment.
It could be expanded.
It's a great way to learn and I think
(01:48:09):
it's just a fun way to enjoy it. So go to
the show notes, download it, try it out. I'd love to hear what you think and so would Andrew. Let me know in the comments below. And also ifyou want to get a hold of me, you can do so at Instagram. The handle is at how to protect the ocean. So you can go just DM me on Instagram.
I love to hear your thoughts on this. And
don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube
channel. Hit that notification bell so
(01:48:30):
you get every episode Monday, Wednesday
and Friday. And as well, you can go
subscribe to your favorite podcast app or
go to speakupforblue.com forward slash
podcast to see every episode or watch
every episode and listen to every episode
of this how to protect the ocean podcast.
Thank you so much for joining me on
today's episode. I'm your host, Andrew
Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to
you next time and have a conservation.
How do we learn about science?
How do we learn about our natural world,
our planet, our environment?
Environmental literacy is at,
I feel like it's at an all time low.
It is something that you
see on political posts,
you see on Facebook,
you see on Instagram,
anytime you put up
anything that has to do
with the environment, you
see a lot of ignorant comments
and comments that people just don't know
(01:00:21):
about the
environment, they don't know how
the natural environment works.
And education is really important.
We're gonna talk about
that on today's episode
of tools that we can use.
In this case, Dungeons and Dragons games,
where people can learn,
it's almost like that immersive
experiential learning
of the natural world.
Dr. Andrew Thaler joins us again today,
one of my favorite guests, because he
(01:00:41):
comes back all the time
with all these great
stories and these great projects,
is here today to talk about his foray
into the educational aspect
of Dungeons and Dragons for
teachers and for students,
you know, around the
US, around the world,
and that people can use all the time.
(01:01:14):
He's an experienced
Dungeons and Dragons master.
I believe this is what it's called.
I'm not familiar with the game.
On today's episode, we have a special,
special episode for you today.
We are going to be talking
about Dungeons and Dragons.
You're probably like, Andrew, why are we
talking about Dungeons and
Dragons on an ocean podcast?
(01:01:34):
Well, we got to talk about it because
we've got to learn ways
and tools to get not only
children but different generations in on
learning about the environment, beefing
up our environmental
literacy around the world.
And Dungeons and Dragons is a game that
is played by hundreds of
millions of people around
the world to be able to tell stories as a
(01:01:55):
community and to
understand what adventures
are like in storytelling by adaptation,
by changing it up and by improvisation.
Right?
And it's a very fun way of doing it.
I've tried to play it once.
We talk a little bit about what happened
when I tried to play it.
It was definitely out of my comfort zone,
did in front of a crowd, but it's, I have
a such a respect for the game and such
(01:02:16):
respect for the people who
come up with these stories
and are able to put this all together for
people, especially Andrew, who's worked
on this for over a year to be able to
provide educational tools around the
games and how students and teachers can
play these games and really understand in
the environment without
learning about the environment.
It's a great way and a
(01:02:36):
great tool to discuss it.
And I can't wait for
Andrew to tell you all about it.
So here's the interview with Dr.
Andrew Taylor talking about Dungeons and
Dragons for forest ecology.
Enjoy.
And I'll talk to you after.
Hey, Andrew.
Welcome back to another great episode of
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
Are you ready to talk
about Dungeons and Dragons?
Absolutely, I am.
(01:02:57):
Right.
Now, this is going to be a different
episode than what we normally do, but
it's definitely pertinent to I feel like
what's going on in society today.
We are talking about environmental
education in general.
We're going to be going away a little bit
from the ocean because the subject matter
of the Dungeons and
Dragons is about forests.
Right.
And so we're going to be
talking all about that.
(01:03:18):
But the importance of this as a tool to
get people interested in learning about
the environment and learning about just
how nature works and being able to
conjure up some stories in a very fast
paced environment and be able to say,
hey, this is a lot of fun.
But I'm also learning and
I get into it to nature.
So I can't wait to do that.
(01:03:40):
Andrew, you've been on the podcast a
number of times, but I get a new
listeners and listen, new listeners.
So why don't you just remind the people
of who you are and what you do?
Sure thing.
So I am Dr. Andrew Thaler.
I am a deep sea ecologist, a conservation
technologist and an ocean educator.
I do a lot of work on deep sea mining.
I do a lot of work on developing
oceanographic instruments.
I do a bunch of policy work.
(01:04:01):
I yell at mining companies.
I do all those fun things.
But today I want to
take you on an adventure.
And that adventure goes all
the way back to New Year's 2023.
And what was amazing about New Year's
2023 is that the actual holiday fell in
such a way that we had
(01:04:22):
like a five day weekend.
And so I being the insane person that I
am decided to call up a bunch of my
friends and say, hey, we had
this long five day weekend.
It's cold. It's it's
snowy. It's dark out.
I live in a log cabin with a giant
(01:04:43):
vaulted ceiling that looks
like a Viking long house.
Why don't we all get together and just
spend five days
playing Dungeons and Dragons?
That sounds kind of cool.
It was a lot of fun. And so I designed a
campaign just for just for
that that New Year's holiday.
And because I can't escape being an
educator, the campaign I designed was
(01:05:06):
built around the idea of for succession.
So as my players explored this
wilderness, they were noticing changes in
the forest and the changes in the forest
were dictating where the plot progressed
and where the adventure went.
And so as they were and obviously all my
friends are our
scientists of various stripes.
So as they're making observations about
(01:05:26):
the forest, these adventures growing
around them about what caused these
changes and why and how and
what they can do about it.
And what are all the different aspects
that are shaping this landscape?
So there is a there's an endangered
species that is missing from the forest.
There is a dam that was built that is
(01:05:48):
causing a swamp to retreat.
There are all of these environmental
factors that are kind of
reshaping the landscape.
And at the end of the adventure, I'll try
not to give too much away right off the
bat in case anyone
wants to actually play it.
But at the end of the adventure, you
know, we sat down and they said, hey, you
know, this would actually make a really
good classroom exercise.
This could be, you know, with a little
(01:06:09):
bit of work like teachers could use this
to teach things about succession and
forest ecology and especially a fire
dominated ecosystems.
So over the next year, this has kind of
been a passion project of mine to take
the adventure is called The
Last Hunt for the Jabberwalk.
OK, it is it is set in the Feywild, which
(01:06:31):
is kind of this like whimsical fairy
world within Dungeons and Dragons that is
centered on puns and kind of joyfully
whimsical tricksy kinds of things.
OK, not super serious, you know, not like
big high fantasy, more
like ridiculous whimsy.
So there's there's a colony of rabbits
and they're all talking in rabbit puns
(01:06:53):
and there's there's a city of frogs who
are worshiping a giant frog that turns
out not to actually be a deity, but just
a really big frog that keeps eating them.
So things like that. Yeah. But what I did
is I took this adventure.
I kind of distilled it down to the core
lessons we wanted to teach.
(01:07:15):
We wanted to teach about how fire
dominated forest ecosystems work.
We want to teach about the consequences
of building dams and what that means for
environment and then the consequences of
tearing a dam down and what that would
mean for an environment and for
communities that live around those dams.
We want to talk about invasive species.
(01:07:36):
And we want to talk about like building
resilient communities in the face of
changing ecosystems, changing
environments, changing climates.
And so, you know, after this first dry
run, I kind of spent a year rebuilding
the adventure from the ground ground up
around these kinds of educational themes
and in the process also developing lesson
(01:07:56):
plans to go along with them.
So the idea behind and things like. Yeah.
And so the idea behind the last time for
the Jabberwock is that a teacher could
pick this up and it's like a 12 hour to
20 hour campaign, depending
on how they want to run it.
And they can build it around an
environmental education course and they
can run their students through the
adventure and they can have their
(01:08:19):
students discover the ecological
processes that are shaping this forest in
a way that you can't do if
you're just doing a lecture.
So there's there's a mystery and there's
there's puzzles to be solved and there's
like access to histories that they have
to uncover and figure out why things have
changed and how they've changed.
And they all relate back
to real world examples.
(01:08:42):
And then it also ends in like kind of an
ecological debate about what are we going
to do to fix things?
It's a fire dominated ecosystem and the
fire is driven by a keystone species
that's no longer there.
And as they bring it's called last hunt
for the Jabberwock. So you can kind of
figure that one out if they bring the
keystone species back, the
(01:09:03):
forest begins to recover.
But then there's a new predator and you
know, the communities that are living in
the forest now have to
deal with the predator.
There's a dam and they can debate whether
or not they need to tear
the dam down or let it stay.
And that has implications for the animals
that live upstream and the animals that
live downstream and the
communities built around it.
And so you really get an opportunity to
(01:09:23):
talk about these kind of big
environmental questions that really
dictate how we think about making
resilient communities in the face of
environmental change.
And because it's couched in D&D because
it's couched in this kind of whimsical
forest world that's not directly related
to the real world, you can have those
conversations without kind of bringing up
(01:09:45):
a lot of the political
baggage that comes along with that.
Without bringing up a lot of like the
real world emotions so you can have those
talks and you can you can look at the
world without having to think about the
real world at the same time.
And then you can see the outcome. You can
see the consequences. So in the game,
they'll do those things. They'll make
those decisions and then they'll see how
(01:10:06):
those decisions reshape things and
they'll get to actually
experience what those changes mean.
Right.
So it took me about a year to spin this
up into something that I felt was a
functional thing for educators to use. We
did a lot of test runs with with local
teachers with some
local D&D groups as well.
And at the end of December of this of
(01:10:28):
last year, we published it on it's called
Dungeons Masters Guild. It's kind of like
a clearinghouse for D&D adventures.
It's licensed with Wizards of the Coast.
So it's all like official D&D stuff,
which is really, really fun.
And we've made it available for teachers
to download and try on
their own and test things out.
(01:10:50):
This is phenomenal. I love this. I love
this. And I know, you know, D&D has
become very popular with a lot of a lot
of different groups now.
I wanted you to talk about D&D a little
bit because and just sort of what it is
for the people who don't know because
like when I was a kid in the
80s, I grew up like Catholic.
(01:11:11):
We weren't allowed to play D&D. It was
about demons and dragons. And that was
that was a faux pas in my household. Like
we were not allowed.
It was like that was like a Ouija board.
You weren't allowed to mess with the
Ouija board. Of course we did. But that
you know, when I was
a teenager and stuff.
But that's how I think they're my friend.
I know. But that's you know, sort of
(01:11:32):
that's what what like a lot of I feel
like a lot of people went through when
when they were kids and like parents just
didn't understand what this D&D is.
You know, and as I grew up and started to
hear more about it more and more and more
people playing it, there was a little bit
of a dry one that I got to take part that
launched a podcast for for oceans called
do goings and see dragons.
(01:11:53):
And a great a great a great podcast has
been running. What I think he said, like
between 600 and 700 episodes. It's a lot
of it has been running since 2018.
Yeah, so yeah, once a week. And I think
it's phenomenal. And we know, you know,
people use it as an educational tool. But
can you just talk about what, like, just
(01:12:13):
for the audience who aren't familiar with
it, what D&D is and how it's really grown
over the last like few decades.
So at its core, D&D is really two things.
One is it's a set of rules. And it's a
set of rules that allows you to get a
group together and participate in
collaborative storytelling, in which you
can introduce random elements into that
(01:12:35):
story by rolling dice.
So functionally, what you're doing is
you're sitting around the table with your
friends, and you're telling a folktale.
And instead of just deciding where you
want the plot to go, you add dice rolls
into it that dictate how things progress,
that change the outcome of events that
create random elements into the story.
(01:12:56):
And then you have to adapt and respond to
that story. So you are role playing a
folktale of your own creation, in which
you are not in complete
control of the outcome.
I think that's that's really interesting
with the with the dice roll, because it's
almost like risk in the game, the board
game risk, where it's like, you think you
know what you're going to do, you're
going to take over a country, and then
all of a sudden, the
dice tell you different.
(01:13:17):
And I think that's the same way with with
Dungeons and Dragons, right? Like, you
think you're going to win a battle or or
pick something and venture the dice a
differently and you have
to you have to switch up.
Yeah, and so dnd actually evolved from
those tabletop war games. So, oh, really
risk and dnd share a lot of the same
bloodline that they've diverged quite a
bit. And, you know, combat, it doesn't
(01:13:39):
have to be central to dnd and we've
actually designed the last hunt for the
Jabberwock adventure, so that you can
complete the entire adventure without
getting into any fights
without using violence.
That's cool. You can you can use cunning
and you can be clever and you can solve
riddles instead. So that like it's not
doesn't have to be necessarily combat
focused because there is there is a
(01:14:00):
violent element to dnd.
And, you know, I love that a lot of
people love that it's a great part of the
gameplay. But if you're an educator,
maybe that's not the direction you want
to go if you're doing it with students.
For sure. That makes sense.
So that's that's the one half of dnd. The
one half of it is a set of rules. The
other half of dnd is the lore because dnd
is a thing that has existed for 50 years
(01:14:20):
and it has its own internal worlds and
its own internal stories and its own
internal IP, its own internal
intellectual property.
So things like beholders is big floating
multi eyed monsters that are terrifying
to dnd players and and Al bears, which is
a monster that's half an owl and half a
bear, which is my daughter's favorite
(01:14:41):
monster of all time.
And you know, characters like Vecna,
which are in stranger things now and it
kind of have transcended like just the
dnd world to be something that people are
more conscious and aware of. So there's
lore that goes around along with that.
And so that has, you know, the beauty of
working in a fictional world that's
(01:15:01):
already been created is that you don't
have to do all the world building for it
on your own. Like there's already this
creative pool that you can draw from in
order to tell new stories without having
to retell the entire
origin story of a world.
And that's why like you have for for your
story, you have like a structure already
built and you can go on to this site. And
(01:15:23):
is it just like a downloadable thing? Is
that what it is? Is it like now with with
websites and stuff? You just download
like a PDF and then you can print it off
or use a computer or
whatever you like to do.
Yeah. So if you go to Dungeon Master
Guild and look for last time of the
Jabber walk, you can you pay for the PDF
and you download the PDF. There is a
there is a sales threshold or once you
hit that threshold, they will allow you
(01:15:43):
to start making hard
copies, which is really nice.
We hit the first bestseller threshold
earlier this month. So we are now a
copper bestseller. It's all by metal
badges. So, so, so it's pretty exciting.
People are people are really getting into
the adventure and taking a look at it.
And I've already been in touch with
several teachers who have started
(01:16:05):
campaigns in their classrooms and their
kids are really starting to enjoy them.
One of the things we also did is we keyed
all the lesson plans to the actual like
next generation science standards and
common core standards so that if you are
a teacher, you can look those up in the
background and see how you can plug those
into your existing lesson plans as well.
And that's that's where it really counts
(01:16:25):
when you're talking about, you know,
putting them into schools is making sure
that you're following the right
guidelines, following the make sure that
they're hitting what they need to hit for
their core success with the first thing I
assume a teacher would ask is like, does
this fit within our curriculum?
Yes, and we've put a I say we it's I put
a lot of effort into making it as easy as
(01:16:47):
possible for a teacher who hasn't really
done a lot of D&D before to pick it up
and run it. So there's a bunch of
guidance in the back on how to run it as
a teacher, how to integrate the lesson
plans into the adventure where to slot
different things if they want to.
I will say if you're not, you know, if
you're not a student or a teacher, you
can still play the adventure. It's a
really fun adventure. You don't have to
(01:17:08):
use the lesson plans if you don't want
to. You can just run the campaign on its
own as a free freestanding thing.
But, you know, I really think the lesson
plans and the lesson plans are all about
we have one big lesson plan that dives
deep into into fire dominated forest
ecology that looks at things like the
Mount Diablo fire in California, which I
really love as an example for fire
(01:17:29):
dominated ecosystems because it's one of
the big California wildfires that didn't
didn't result in any
property damage or loss of life.
It was a pure natural area wildfire. And
so like you get to study the actual
succession without, you know, all of the
human tragedy that comes with that as
well. Yeah, definitely. There's lessons
on on building and removing dams. And
(01:17:51):
then, of course, because it's last hunt
for the Jabber walk and obviously has
something to lose Carol. There's a bit on
the Lewis Carroll poem as well. So you
can you can share the adventure with an
English teacher, too. It doesn't have to
just be environmental science.
And then one of the one of the things
I've done is we snuck smaller lessons in
there as well. Okay, so depending on how
(01:18:13):
deep you want to go, there's a whole
bunch of side quests that the students
can run depending on time limitations or
how excited about different things.
And so there's a little lesson on
invasive species. There's one on
displacing
communities when dams are built.
There's an adventure in soap making where
the students are going to spend a little
(01:18:35):
bit of the adventure trying to brew a
potion and slowly as they do it, they're
going to learn that they're actually
learning just the real way to make soap
out of lie and tallow.
Okay, I like that. I feel like those
those like like the side story. Yes,
would be a great like assignment after
you do the real one and be like, hey, you
know, you take some students you take you
(01:18:56):
do this side story
you do this side story.
And then you're like, you're like, you're
like, you pick a group and do it.
Exactly. I can get used to that. I love
that idea of this. Now, as you start to
when you start to post this and you start
to see teachers grab on to it, you know,
dragons still can be controversial and
certain circles that don't understand the
(01:19:19):
game and what it's really about. Right.
You just see the monsters and demons and
things like that. I mean, less so now
than it was when we were children,
certainly, you know, we I run I run a
campaign with our local public library.
So we've had for two years now have been
running the library D&D group.
And that's a family group. So we have
kids and their parents come in.
(01:19:39):
Originally, the idea was it would be
parents and kids playing together the
whole time. But you're a parent. I'm a
parent. You know exactly
what's about to happen.
Parents hear that and they're like, I can
drop my kid off for three hours and go
get dinner on my own. So we have we have
a I'll be I'll be at the bar. I'll be at
the pub. You guys you guys enjoy. So we
(01:19:59):
have a few parents that show up for the
game for the most part. It's kids and you
know, the age range is seven to 15, which
is perfect. And some older. We've had a
couple college kids come in during the
summer and just want to play. And so it's
great to have like multi generational
groups playing. Yes.
Because then you really get an
opportunity because how often do seven
year olds get to like play a game with
(01:20:20):
college kids in a way that they're
they're both just part of it in at the
same level. Yeah. Or in the case of our
seven year old children. Yeah, exactly.
They're working together.
They're working together to survive this
this adventure to learn about this
adventure. And I honestly I think every
serious campaign needs at least one seven
year old to just just throw a wrench at
(01:20:43):
everything. Throw a wrench at everything.
Come up with just the funnest stuff. The
weirdest things. Yeah. We had you know,
one of my favorite moments of any D and D
adventures. We had a seven year old. He
was playing a wizard and he was just
really into like
finding any potion you could.
And pouring it all over his weapons to
make a new weapon. And so he eventually
(01:21:04):
he eventually turns his wizard staff into
a giant rod of tungsten. And of course,
at that point, he's going to be like,
well, what's tungsten? And I happen to I
keep a tungsten cube in my car in case I
ever see a cyber truck.
And I want to be like, hey, can I throw a
rocket to see if it did? With consent.
(01:21:27):
I'm not encouraging you to throw things
at cyber trucks, but like, you know, if
you ever get a get someone bragging about
how tough it is, you pull out your
tungsten cube and be like, hey, can I lob
this at it? Yeah, let's see how it looks.
Yeah, tough it is. So I haven't had my
lucky tungsten cube with me. I'm like,
all right, well, here's here's this. And
we talk about like, metals intensity and
all that stuff, which is really cool.
Because one of the other kids at the
(01:21:47):
table, his dad's a black guy.
And he's like, I'm a blacksmith. Like a
real blacksmith, not a fantasy
blacksmith. And so we got to like, really
get into like, big ideas about metals and
what they really are and how they
function. Which, you know, that's the
kind of thing that comes out when you
just you let the kids go wild and you
have a very mixed table.
I feel like there's such a good place for
(01:22:09):
this in classroom. Yes, because like, you
know, I've got two teenage daughters,
they're 15 and 17. And the biggest thing
that they come home with is, I go to
school. What do you
think the response is? Fine.
No, boring. No, it was boring. Because
they just, you know, it's a lecture.
(01:22:30):
Yeah, it's essentially a lecture. You're
listening to one person talk about a
subject you may or may not be interested
in. Like, I remember biology, like, I was
not interested in human biology when I
went to high school, all my
projects were on animals, right?
On some kind like dolphin or whale or
shark or something like that. I had to
get special permission to do those. But
(01:22:51):
you know, like if you do it, like a D and
D type of exercise, you're including the
kids in it. Right. They're they have to
know the story. They have to know the stuff and questions are going to come in.
and questions are going to come up.
Well, they're not just knowing the story,
they're driving the story.
They're driving the story.
So functionally it's
experiential education.
(01:23:11):
Like the approach I take
to building a D&D adventure
is the same approach I take to designing
like an educational hiking experience
or designing like the
hands-on workshops I do
with ocean sensor systems
and going out in the field on boats.
Like it is at its heart,
it's all that same
experiential education policy.
It's just, you know, with D&D,
(01:23:33):
you don't have to organize a field trip.
Right.
It's like the cheap way of doing things.
Yeah, so they can get that experience,
they get self-confidence,
they get to drive the lesson
and they get to do the discovery,
which is the real point
of experiential education
is that like, you know,
I can tell you how a fire
dominated ecosystem works,
but it's way more fun to walk through one
(01:23:56):
and see how things change
as you get away from the fire scars
and see like figure out,
like as you explore,
what caused different
aspects of the forest to change
and make that discovery, you know,
discovery as play is a really great way
to teach big
environmental concepts as well.
Yeah, I love this idea, I really do.
(01:24:19):
So when teachers started to pick up,
like were the teachers that picked it up
familiar with D&D already?
Cause you said it's
like a beginner can do it.
Like if I was a teacher
and I just picked it up,
or even if I just picked it up
and didn't for a bunch of students,
I would be able to kind of follow it
and learn it and be able to do it.
I may not be as good as
somebody who's experienced,
but the teachers who
(01:24:39):
picked it up at first,
they were familiar with D&D,
they're already familiar with the site
and how it all plays out
and they've probably
run a couple of games
or been a part of a couple of games.
Yeah, so one of the
consequences of doing it
as a D&D property and like,
because Dungeons and
Dragons is so recognizable,
that is a very
compelling playground to work in.
Yeah.
(01:24:59):
But one of the consequences of that
is that you have to publish through
Dungeon Masters Guild,
which has a, actually one
of the best content sharing
royalty arrangements I've ever seen for,
in a established IP.
It's 50%.
Wow, that's huge.
Which is, I mean, that's unheard of.
And you get to use assets
from Dungeons and Dragons.
And, you know, a 50%
(01:25:21):
royalty is unbelievable
for something where they give you access
to the IP like that.
But because of that, you have to publish
through that specific venue.
And like, if you're not already familiar
with Dungeons and Dragons
and probably not
already a Dungeon Master,
you don't know what
Dungeon Master's Guild is.
Like, that's not something that is...
It'll take a little while.
It takes a little.
So absolutely, the first
teachers in engaging it
(01:25:42):
are very familiar with Dungeons and
Dragons to begin with.
Yeah.
And are looking for ways to integrate it.
And in some cases, they've
already found ways to integrate
other kinds of D&D
lessons into their classrooms.
So we're starting from there.
You know, unfortunately, I won't be able
to make it available anywhere else
because of that IP sharing arrangement.
Yeah, of course. Of course.
But we're hoping that other people pick
(01:26:02):
it up and give it a try.
And people who aren't familiar with D&D
pick it up and give it a try.
Well, I feel like now it's going to be
like once the people who do pick it up
start using, they've
already started to use it.
Now you're starting to get feedback. Yes.
You know, on the sort of the like
evaluation of how well it works.
You know, how do the kids respond to it?
You know, how do the teachers respond to
(01:26:22):
the kids responding to it?
You know, did they learn
that the material more?
Did they enjoy it? Do
they want to do more?
Then I think they'll start to talk to
other teachers in their
school like, what are you doing?
What is this? The educational start of
just like what this is all about.
And then the idea is that that'll start
to spread through through word of mouth.
I assume is that is sort
(01:26:43):
of the goal? Is that it?
Yeah, I ultimately that's
the goal, word of mouth.
And of course, Southern Fried Science,
which is, you know, my venue for
spreading everything.
A little site, a little site that
provides some information.
A lesser known ocean science website.
I think we have reclaimed our title as
the most widely read ocean science blog
in the English language.
I'll tell you.
It's the end.
You know, I think that's from attrition,
(01:27:04):
not from any success on our end.
Well, I'll tell you, though, but the
quality of articles
that come out of there.
I'm always happy reading those articles.
I always put them in my newsletter every
time I pop them in, you know, and it's
like, I'm like, this is a good one.
So yeah, so they're always great.
(01:27:25):
They're always informative.
They've driven a lot of podcasts before.
I'm happy to help.
Whether you're on it or not.
Sometimes I'm like,
oh, this is a good way.
I got to talk about this.
But then you also have like guest writers
and stuff like that.
That also put like, Angelo's been on it.
And obviously who's like,
Angelo is not a guest writer.
He is. He's an official writer.
Full on now.
Full on. Yeah.
(01:27:45):
OK. I love it.
Yeah, I really like what the last article
that David Shiffman and
Brett Favaro are doing,
which is they had a, you know, they had a
paper that they were having trouble
getting published in a scientific journal
or finally like, you know what?
We're done. We're done
trying to get this into a journal.
We're just going to
publish it as a blog post.
And I can guarantee you more people have
read it now than would have ever read it
(01:28:05):
in a scientific journal.
100%. Especially it's
on science communication.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And it's a what? A four?
It's a four part series.
Yeah. And yeah, I've
already started to read it.
And it's, I mean, it's so informative.
You know, these are two people who have
had a lot of very different communication
(01:28:26):
styles and different topics
to draw some information from.
And they have a lot of, they know a lot
of people that can inform them on
different aspects, too.
So I think those are
going to be really great.
We'll link to that as well as the
Dungeons and Dungeons Masters Guild in
there, too, so people
can get access to it.
So, yeah, so obviously Southern Fried
(01:28:47):
Science, we'll be able to get some
information on that.
Like, are you planning on publishing an
article, whether it be on Southern Fried
Science or elsewhere,
on sort of the, like, are you following
and keeping in touch with the
people who have downloaded it
to kind of get feedback on what's
working, what's not, that kind of stuff?
(01:29:07):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we've published
a couple of articles already,
kind of the initial sort of launch of the
project and sort of
lessons learned from that.
And I'm keeping, you know, it's a 12 to
20 hour campaign means it's probably
going to take a semester of
finding the time to run it.
And so we're getting
feedback as it goes in.
I'm sure there'll be a second edition
with lots of changes and corrections to
(01:29:28):
help people out and get feedback.
And, you know, I'm hoping long term that
we can, you know, do
this as a regular thing.
Every so often publish new adventures,
you know, get some more
marine science in there next time.
Maybe adventure to the abyssal plane.
I love it.
It's basically like Meg three.
Do a DC Mining campaign. You never know.
(01:29:49):
There you go. Oh, I like that.
Yeah.
I like that. No, that's amazing. And even
like not even just in classrooms, I feel
like a lot of the eco
clubs could be doing this too.
Yeah.
Probably get through more of the stories
because they can spend, you know, every
day of a week to just do like a campaign
or something like that
or a couple of weeks.
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, my daughter,
(01:30:11):
every summer she does a camp
at the local Audubon Society.
And after lunch, every single day of
camp, they have a little mini D&D session
where they talk about.
It's part of the camp.
Part of the camp. Talk about the animals
they've encountered and, you know, talk
about a little bit of ecology.
I think last year they were fighting a
croc that stole crocs because people kept
(01:30:32):
losing their shoes in the in the marsh.
Croc made of crocs. It was a giant croc,
but it wasn't like a giant the shoe croc.
Oh, that is so it had to
eat crocs to be exactly.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, and like integrated into the camp
and like part of their experience.
And it's wonderful to see because like,
(01:30:53):
you know, that opportunity to like still
be engaged, but it's like, you know,
you're not hiking through the woods,
maybe a little tired after lunch, but
it's a chance to continue to talk about
the topic in a
different way and in a new way.
And I also feel like it just, it helps
you develop that creativity.
Absolutely.
Right? Like D&D just in general helps you
develop that creativity. That's the one
thing I really respect of this is because
(01:31:13):
you have to adapt so quickly in a story.
It really makes you think. It really
makes you open up your
mind. It's almost like improv.
It is improv. Yeah. Oh, my improv skills
have gotten so much better since I got
back into DMing about three years ago.
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And so I think
it's really great for kids who, you know,
in a world dominated by phones, you know,
(01:31:36):
especially teenagers and tweens where
they're just looking
at phones all the time.
This is a great way to really get them to
interact, get them off their phones, get
them into something creative, you know,
and learn about themselves in terms of
how they can actually, you know, build on
storytelling and which we're going to
need in any kind of job that you do.
(01:31:57):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You have to have
good storytelling skills. That's awesome.
You know, one of the tremendous things to
see is that because, you know, Dungeons
and Dragons is 50 years old this year.
Yeah, it's crazy. So we have kids that
are sharing adventures with their parents
and their grandparents.
Wow.
And so there's this beautiful little
chain of connection
going across generations now.
That's phenomenal. That's just amazing.
(01:32:19):
And you know what? It's been 50 years and
it still takes 20 minutes to open a door.
You got to figure out something that goes
on. But like, so, so is this something
like, like, I know you have, you, you are
one of the guys that I know who, you
know, when you have an idea, you go full
(01:32:39):
fledged and you develop the idea over
time and it, and it, it obviously gets
better and better as it goes along.
I hope so. OpenCTD has done your
projects, you know, through the, like,
through Patreon, even like following
through Patreon and documenting that
process on here as well. The, the deep
sea mining, obviously that's something
that you're an expert in, but you've
(01:33:01):
continued to kind of really creatively,
like, get into different aspects of it.
You know, with the magazine and stuff and
coming on the podcast and your articles
and things with this project, you know,
obviously you're, you're going to develop
it even more through feedback. And you're
talking about doing maybe different
(01:33:22):
scenarios, different, different story
lines and stuff like that.
Like, how much time are you ready to
dedicate to this, to
this type of project?
So that is an interesting question. And,
you know, in addition to the kinds of
projects I do, I always have to do like
an ROI analysis of things to figure out
(01:33:43):
like where I need to invest my time
because in addition to being like a very
silly whimsical man, I
also have a mortgage.
So this was, you know, this was a nights
and weekends kind of project for the
last, for the last year.
And, you know, I'd like to see, I'd like
to see it break even before, before I
(01:34:04):
really focus on the next big project
that's kind of D&D focused.
I commissioned a lot of art for, for the
actual campaign so that, you know,
there's, there's visual aids to kind of
capture the spirit of the adventure.
Because I like commissioning artists and
paying artists to do
good work. Of course.
So there's no, no AI art in it at all.
It's all original art
from Aaron Anderson. Yes.
(01:34:28):
We designed a lot of maps. So that was
mostly me, but building
maps is very time intensive.
So once I hit the break even point, I'll
have a better idea of like what I can do
pushing forward in terms of like actually
generating these pretty consistently.
Like I'm always like I run a D&D campaign
at my library. I want run one with my
(01:34:49):
family and I have the podcast as well.
So like I'm steeped in it all the time.
I've got a million notes, but, but really
getting, you know, the, the hard part was
not the D&D campaign.
The hard part was making it work as an
educational tool. Yeah, of course.
And building out the lesson plans and
making sure that the adventure match what
we were trying to teach and was, you
(01:35:11):
know, adding to that lesson rather than
kind of distracting from it.
Yeah, no doubt.
So, you know, that takes a lot of work
and, you know, I think I probably
committed about a month of my time full
time to just doing the copy editing and
getting all the layout and everything and
doing some of the testing and
(01:35:32):
making sure it all made sense.
So it's not a small
chunk of time. No, for sure.
And it's obviously like it's, you know,
labor. The problem with labors of love is
that labors of love don't pay the bills.
I mean, is this something that like do
people who publish these, these manuals
on the guild is it, can it be a business?
(01:35:54):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like a revenue
generator for you, you think over time?
You know, I think the niche I'm working
in is so small that it probably won't
ever be a serious revenue generator. If
it breaks even, that'd be amazing.
Gotcha. Because, you know, if I can
predictably have these projects break
even, then I can commission new art and
invest the time into making the next one
(01:36:16):
without worrying too much.
For sure. There are absolutely people who
make a living just publishing D&D
modules. You know, there are professional
dungeon masters who their entire career
is running D&D campaigns.
And that sounds like an awful lot of fun.
I wouldn't mind doing that.
Wouldn't that be great? I mean, you write
them already. It's like, let's just make
a business out of it.
(01:36:36):
Yeah. I mean, it is a lot of work. Like
those guys are full on creatives in a way
that like I, I mean, you've described my
workload. It's I'm not a, I'm not
consistently focused on any one thing
long enough, I think, to
pull something like that off.
But there are some great people out there
that are putting together some amazing
campaigns. And, you know, some of the
other guys on the podcast, on the
DooGongs and Sea Dragon podcast have
(01:36:57):
published other educational supplements.
So there is a scientific secrets of the
salt marsh where they've turned real
ocean animals into D&D monsters with stat
blocks and little like lessons about
their behavior and ecology around that
scientific secrets of ice wind Dale,
which is all Arctic animals.
(01:37:19):
So there are, you know, there are other
ways to do it as well. And there's some
great resources out there.
That's amazing. Like, can you send me
some of those links? We'll put absolutely
show notes so that people can get access
to them because I want people to really
understand, you know, the value of what's
been put in, but also like the value of
the education tool that can be whether
you're a teacher or not, you know, you
just want to play with your family or
(01:37:40):
something or your friends or your kids
friends like that, like that, I think is
a great is a great idea.
Let's let's switch to the educational
aspect of an just like environmental
literacy in general. This is a great tool
and it may not work for everybody.
Obviously, it's it's it's a niche where
people who play the games, which probably
(01:38:01):
we're talking like millions of people
play Dungeons and
Dragons, right? Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's the most popular tabletop
role playing game in the world. Yeah,
probably I wouldn't be afraid to say
probably hundreds of millions at this
point. Right. Right. So there's there's a
lot of people to do this.
And like, I feel as though over
especially those last decade, we've
really seen just the lack of
(01:38:25):
environmental literacy from people in
general. Right. And that's had some
serious consequences
politically from a policy standpoint.
We've discussed it a number of times
through the number every time I think
you're on we kind of discuss it. Where do
you see, you know, people like yourself
people like me, David Shiffman and
(01:38:48):
everybody else who's involved people who
have podcasts and YouTube channels and,
you know, Dungeons and Dragons games and,
you know, everybody is trying to do their
their education in their own kind of
circles and in their own kind of
networks, whether it be on.
Online, whether it be locally. What do
you think we need to do as a collective
(01:39:10):
to really start to nail down this this
literacy for people? Yeah, so I think the
broader issue that we're all kind of
touching on is this idea of nature
deficit disorder, which is, you know,
and I hate doing the kids these days
thing because it's obviously not the kids
(01:39:31):
fault. Right. We have built a society in
certain parts of the world, certainly
certain parts of the developed world
where children don't have the same access
to wild spaces that even we did growing
up, you know, dare I say 40 years ago.
Um, you know, I live in a very rural
area. I live in the wood. I'm like, if
(01:39:54):
we're doing video here, I'm in an actual
log cabin in the middle of the woods
right now. Like, you know, my daughter,
her made a wood. My daughter raises
chickens. Right. And I grew up in
Baltimore City and I still remember
having much more access to large, like,
state parts, large green spaces that I,
you know, even out here.
(01:40:15):
I don't think my daughter has nearly the
same access to because she can't just hop
on a bike and ride 20 miles away the way
we used to. You know, the roads are less
friendly. They're not designed with
pedestrians in mind.
Um, you know, we've, we've stretched kids
out into the suburbs in a way that like
suburbs are kind of like, like the
(01:40:38):
graveyard of green spaces because they
not only do they deprive people of green
spaces by overbuilding and developing on
them, but then they also make it much
harder to get to the existing green
spaces because they sprawled you out in
these kinds of, you know, massive housing
complexes of private property.
Someone as someone who's worked, I've
(01:40:58):
worked as a private consultant for quite
a number of years and the amount of fight
that we had to do with developers on
keeping green spaces. Oh, yeah. And
making them large and just like on a just
a tree, like just a tree, keep a tree in
this one area. Yeah. But then we can make
so much more money if we take this tree
down. Like, it's, it's unreal. The
battles that you have to do in these
(01:41:20):
suburbs, suburban areas. Yeah. Well, and
you know, you know, something like
Dungeons and Dragons adventure is not a
replacement for access to the woods, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
activity. It means it means it means multiple living spaces,which meant that it meant lots of living spaces, but it
is, it is in its own way a green space
that they always have access to. So it is
it. This provides a different tool for
engaging with nature. And, you know, you
know, one of the kind of tragic thoughts
that occurs to me every couple of months
(01:41:40):
is that like you know, Rachel Carson came
out with Silent Spring about d Verizon.
in the decline of brand populations. Her,
the central thesis was that we don't hear
bird songs as much as we used to anymore.
Uh, and that, that struck such a powerful cords thatmathis
And that struck such a powerful chord
that it fundamentally created the
environmental movement.
(01:42:00):
And I think about today, if you told kids
we were hearing less birdsongs,
would they, and not just kids, adults,
even more so adults,
if adults today heard,
"Oh, we're hearing less birdsongs in the
spring," would that be
something that has the same level
of emotional resonance, or are we so
disconnected just from the
idea that we should be hearing
nature all the time, that it wouldn't
(01:42:22):
like hit the way that
Silent Spring hit in the 60s?
Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, there's that
sort of point of
reference that we have. You know,
there was a paper that was written a
number of years ago where they talked
about the people who
saw coral reefs back in the 60s have a
different idea of what coral, the people
now have a different
idea of corals compared to the people
(01:42:43):
that they saw in the
60s. And, but we don't know,
it's the frame of reference, we just
don't know what it looked
like, even our our generations
changed since since then. So if you play
if you play Last Time for
the Jabberwock, shifting
basslines is in there. And it's not in
there in an explicit way,
it's there in an implicit way.
As you meet different characters, they've
experienced the forest
through different time frames.
(01:43:05):
And so some people will say that the
forest is amazing and
doing great right now. And some
people will talk about how great it was
20 years ago. And you know,
it's D&D, you can have thousand
year old characters, they'll talk about,
you know, what it looks like 1000 years
ago, and the players
have to piece together like, what was the
natural state of this
forest, because the baseline has
shifted depending on who the observer is.
(01:43:27):
It's amazing. It's such a
such a good tool. It's such
a fun, it sounds like such a fun idea.
It's awesome. I've only
played it once. I wasn't
comfortable playing it took me out of my
comfort zone. I remember that
we kind of we kind of hacked
a game of cyberpunk into it at the same
time, because we were texting back and
forth while you were playing on stage.
(01:43:49):
But it was it but it's it's one of those
things I have a lot of respect for the
for it, because it's it's it
it does it puts you in that creative
mode. And if you're not ready for it,
you're not ready for it.
Right. But I think as you play it more
and more, and just kind of make sure that
you can like for me
is like, you got to be
a, you got to be and obviously, this was
in front of a stage of
people. So it's a little bit more.
Yeah, you got thrown into the deep end.
(01:44:10):
You didn't just play a game of Dungeons
and Dragons. You played a game of
Dungeons and Dragons in public on a
stage, having heard about
it an hour and a half ago.
It was a little, it was a little bit
quick. But now with that said, with that
said, what you did is continuing on
today. Like true. You laid a foundation
that has has transcended.
I mean, it's it's a D&D podcast has been
(01:44:34):
running for six years now. Yeah, yeah.
And I like it was fun. I had a good time.
But I should say that Melissa Marquez
learned just as fast as I did. And she
kicked butt in the storytelling compared
to what what I was doing. It was it was
she got into it. And she was she was
great. We were joking about it. But she
did a phenomenal, phenomenal job.
(01:44:55):
So she's a natural born storyteller. I
mean, her the children's book, she's been
putting out her excellent. My kids got
all of them. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
unreal. It's there. They're there.
They're a lot of fun. I love this, this
aspect. So this is something that's going
to continue on for a little bit. This
story is already up there. People can
download it. We're going to put the links
in the show notes that people can get
access to it. Andrew, it's always a
(01:45:17):
pleasure to have you on, you know, he's
like, Hey, do you want to talk about D&D
on the podcast? Like, yes, I think what I
actually said is please for the love of
what of whichever D&D you believe in. Can
we talk about something not American
politics? Yes, I just want to talk about
something different. Yes, let's put on a
positive stage. And to be honest, I've
been talking a lot about it on the
(01:45:38):
podcast. Oh, yeah, political. And so now
it's nice to just be like, Hey, look,
there's, there's a need for different
educational tools to really increase our
environmental literacy. This is a great
way of doing it. Obviously, hundreds of
millions of people are playing it around
the world. And this is
something that we can tap into.
And so I highly recommend that people
(01:45:58):
support not only Andrews efforts in this,
but also the ability to, you know, grow
environmental literacy through this D&D
game. So he just said the title one more
time. So the title is the last hunt for
the Jabber walk, a Feywild adventure and
ecological succession. There's also a map
pack if you want full size maps for the
(01:46:18):
players to play on if you do playing D&D
with miniatures. And I'll give you a link
with a discount code in it
too. So you can go to D&D.com.
Get a little bit, little bit off the
price. Take care of the absolutely. This
is awesome. Alright, Andrew, thank you so
much for joining us. It's always a
pleasure. And can't wait to talk to you
next time. I'm looking forward to it. All
right. All right, thank you. Thank you,
(01:46:40):
Andrew, for joining us on this episode of
the how to protect the ocean. It's always
great to have you come on because you
always do these creative projects that,
you know, are not like regular projects
that we see around the world. You bring
them to us every single time. And it's
always unique. It's
always fun. And they're always
like, I gotta say like genius. They're
brilliant in terms of getting people to
(01:47:00):
understand and make yourself aware of the
environment and beefing up our
environmental literacy for people which
we know is really low right now. And so I
love the fact that you're using Dungeons
and Dragons as a game, not only with your
family, but not only at your local
library, but you use it, you know, on a
podcast and that gets published to like a
lot of different listeners for anybody
(01:47:21):
who wants it. We'll put that link to the
Dungeons and Dragons
game and the podcast. And
you know, now you do it for teachers so
that they can pick it up and grab it. So
I highly recommend that people go and
grab if you're interested in playing
Dungeons and Dragons. And if you've
played Dungeons and Dragons before, you
know where to go. But I'm going to put
the link in the show notes below this
episode. If you're on YouTube or if
you're on Spotify, this can be in the
(01:47:41):
show notes. If you're listening to this
on any kind of podcast app, or you can go
to speakupforblue.com and the link to the
show on our website is on the show notes.
So you can go right there and you can
download it. This is a fun way to learn
about the environment.
It could be expanded.
It's a great way to learn and I think
(01:48:09):
it's just a fun way to enjoy it. So go to
the show notes, download it, try it out. I'd love to hear what you think and so would Andrew. Let me know in the comments below. And also ifyou want to get a hold of me, you can do so at Instagram. The handle is at how to protect the ocean. So you can go just DM me on Instagram.
I love to hear your thoughts on this. And
don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube
channel. Hit that notification bell so
(01:48:30):
you get every episode Monday, Wednesday
and Friday. And as well, you can go
subscribe to your favorite podcast app or
go to speakupforblue.com forward slash
podcast to see every episode or watch
every episode and listen to every episode
of this how to protect the ocean podcast.
Thank you so much for joining me on
today's episode. I'm your host, Andrew
Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to
you next time and have a conservation.
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