May 13, 2024 • 47 mins
In this episode of 'Hello, Adventurers,' hosts Jason Portizo, Joe McCall, and Jim Crocker present a comprehensive guide for RPG players and Dungeon Masters on strategically building their game library. They cover essential starting points for newcomers, recommended buys for progression, and explore specialized resources that enhance gameplay and creativity. The discussion is structured into phases for easier navigation, beginning with fundamental texts like the Player's Handbook and progressing to more nuanced and genre-specific materials. Key suggestions include resources for character development, effective game mastering techniques, and techniques for incorporating improvisation into roleplaying. The hosts stress the importance of thoughtful acquisition based on the player or DM's stage in their RPG journey and interests, also highlighting the value of third-party publications and other non-traditional resources that enrich the gaming experience.
Did we miss your favorite book? Tell us at helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadventurerspodcast.com/voice
Grab the books here! (affiliate links where applicable)
Player's Books:
PHB: https://amzn.to/4bfgOeX
Tasha's: https://amzn.to/3UEKTxj
Live To Tell The Tale: https://amzn.to/4bgeCDK
Eberron Rising: https://amzn.to/4bfWfPn
Toms of Heroes: https://amzn.to/44FyFsX
Deep Magic: https://amzn.to/3yg0jAN
Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: https://amzn.to/3yjF8h5
LOTR Box Set: https://amzn.to/4dFLnvZ
How To Win Friends and Influelce People: https://amzn.to/3JZQ4mM
Game Master's Guide to Proactive Roleplaying: https://amzn.to/3WIYvKN
DMs Books:
Core Set: https://amzn.to/3UXsu0b
Supplemental Set: https://amzn.to/44DpaKI
The Monsters Know...: https://amzn.to/3wwMflF
Lazy DM Guide: https://amzn.to/3WCKzSs
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount: https://amzn.to/3QJSARQ
Tome of Beasts: https://amzn.to/3yoYilv
Game Master's Guide to Astonishing Random Tables: https://amzn.to/3JVggPc
How to Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/182608/How-to-Write-Adventure-Modules-That-Dont-Suck?affiliate_id=2836000
Improv For Gamers: https://evilhat.com/product/improv-for-gamers-second-edition/
Hamlet's Hit Points: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/83450/Hamlets-Hit-Points?filters=0_0_0_10139_0?affiliate_id=2836000
Did we miss your favorite book? Tell us at helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadventurerspodcast.com/voice
Grab the books here! (affiliate links where applicable)
Player's Books:
PHB: https://amzn.to/4bfgOeX
Tasha's: https://amzn.to/3UEKTxj
Live To Tell The Tale: https://amzn.to/4bgeCDK
Eberron Rising: https://amzn.to/4bfWfPn
Toms of Heroes: https://amzn.to/44FyFsX
Deep Magic: https://amzn.to/3yg0jAN
Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: https://amzn.to/3yjF8h5
LOTR Box Set: https://amzn.to/4dFLnvZ
How To Win Friends and Influelce People: https://amzn.to/3JZQ4mM
Game Master's Guide to Proactive Roleplaying: https://amzn.to/3WIYvKN
DMs Books:
Core Set: https://amzn.to/3UXsu0b
Supplemental Set: https://amzn.to/44DpaKI
The Monsters Know...: https://amzn.to/3wwMflF
Lazy DM Guide: https://amzn.to/3WCKzSs
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount: https://amzn.to/3QJSARQ
Tome of Beasts: https://amzn.to/3yoYilv
Game Master's Guide to Astonishing Random Tables: https://amzn.to/3JVggPc
How to Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/182608/How-to-Write-Adventure-Modules-That-Dont-Suck?affiliate_id=2836000
Improv For Gamers: https://evilhat.com/product/improv-for-gamers-second-edition/
Hamlet's Hit Points: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/83450/Hamlets-Hit-Points?filters=0_0_0_10139_0?affiliate_id=2836000
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:22):
The podcast or role players and gamemasters that help level up your game.
We are Your dungeon master is JasonPortiso, I'm Joe McCall. I am
Jim Crocker. So today I'm goingto answer the question, well, we're
all going to answer the question thatwe get from new players a lot of
just like there's just so many booksout there. There's so many not only
from Wizards of the Coast directly,but there's tons of third party Like we
(00:45):
just covered a couple of our favoritethird party books. Will continue doing that
as well. But just like wheredo you start? And like you know,
player has been playing for years havejust like a library full of books,
but like you don't have to getthem all in one shot. There's
thousands of dollars in there. Soso today's episode is going to be how
to build your library in phases?And this is something I kind of started
(01:06):
mapping out for some brand new playersthat I've been meeting at the game store
and brewery games that I've been runningand a lot of them have never played
before. And then they play acouple of games, some of them after
even just their first game, theydive and head first. Some of them
come back for a second one.They're like, Okay, I guess,
yeah, I guess this is whatI'm going to do now. And then
it's always the same questions like wheredo I start? And then after you
(01:27):
start, what's next? And thenit's just a series of what's next,
what's the next bus next? Atto that, which is how I did
it. So I'm going to tryto just kind of spell it out for
you guys, how to do itin phases and what books are important to
get at what point in your career. And I'm going to address this for
both players and dungeon Masters. Sotwo different lists, but yeah, I
(01:48):
was thinking that when you said,okay, we're folks players, but no,
no, absolutely two different lists,but I kind of but I kind
of wrote them up at the sametime. So this episode is for like,
let's say, for example, likeand this is really me with like
with like high schoolers too, wherelike you know, you and your four
friends are all getting into this atthe same time. One of you has
got to be the DM. Sothis is kind of for for that group
(02:10):
that is now getting your all yourfirst books at the same time. So
what is what is each of youbuy they're The sad news of the DMS
is the players can also split theirbooks. Yeah, so sorry for your
wallet. Well, the players cansplit your books too. Oh yeah,
I guess your group before I wouldsay split everything. Yeah, way,
and and rotate your DMS too.But that's but that's the repisode. So
(02:31):
I got a couple phases here,so let's jump in. So are phase
one. I'm titling this bar forentry. This is just enough for you
to get started playing. It's ashort list for players. You want a
book called players Handbook. It's obviousbecause it is so you can you can
(02:55):
go lower than that, or thebasic rules, Basic rules, the starter
set. I would say it wouldactually probably be like the best starting place
for somebody that's that's not that hasn'tdone it before. Okay, so let
me let me let me match thisdown a little bit. Yeah yeah,
then that's what you you know whatI'm saying. Sorry, So that's excellent
(03:16):
for first time players who want todabble, or if you if you got
invited to a game and you're like, I've never played before, that's that's
your that's your phase zero. Saythat when I own my game store,
the basic set was the answer tothe question of like, you know,
guy in his like mid thirties walksin, yeah, says, you know,
(03:38):
my eleven year old wants to playD and D. I played back
when I was in high school,but I haven't touched it since then.
Where do I even start? AndI say, okay, you know,
you can spend one hundred dollars onthese books, or you can start with
this twenty five dollars box set,play a little bit of it. If
(03:59):
you love it, then you upgrade, which which is exactly where me and
my son, my son got start. Yeah, so what we'll call that
phase zero. Okay, that's enough. That's enough for you to know that
you want to move or the orit's the game store game, or it's
the brewery game. Yes, yea. So this is aimed at the people
(04:20):
who already know that they already knowthat there's things they're going to do,
and they want to start amassing alibrary that rivals their d MS. Okay,
okay, okay, so allright,so phase zero out of the way.
Phase one is going to be theplayers. Hample oah. Like I
say, it's it's obvious, becauseit is. It's it's it's everything you
need. There's enough actual gameplay,and I know people kind of like want
(04:41):
to feel like the players the basicpH B stuff is like boring races and
classes and subclasses and stuff, butthey're not. There's enough for you to
to gain for your whole career justin that book. Yeah, if we're
talking about like like the what's theword economics of that? Like, if
you're buying a fifty dollars book,right, is that what the going rate
(05:04):
is for a hardcover edition. Sothat's the that's the SRP, that's if
you buy it in the store.But let's just say let's just say like
that's what you're you know, andlet's just say you're playing once a month.
You're going to get a couple ofa few years out of that pH
B. So per game, youknow what does that cost breakdown to spend?
(05:29):
Yeah, yeah, and over thecourse store you figure, in addition,
will last ten years on average lookingat their at their history, ten
to twelve years. So you're talkingabout one hundred and twenty times divided by
fifty, So you're twelve divided dividedby five. You know, you'd be
stupid not to play. Yeah,a couple of bucks maybe per game if
you play only once a month,right, and you're the only one that
(05:53):
uses it, Yeah, you're you'resaving money with every session. Yeah,
exactly. To the I'm always lookingfor value, to the to the high
schools and middle high schoolers and middleschoolers who are, like, you know,
getting their group into it for thefirst time. Y'all can share that.
Yeah, you share it until untiluntil everyone needs their own copy and
put buy them as you need have. Billy's mom buy it because they're loaded.
(06:13):
You know his birthday is coming up. Yeah, and that you know
he gets a new bike like everyyear. They're loaded. Yeah. So
that's for players. Just start withthe Player's handbout. That is your phase
one for dms, your phase oneis also just the Player's Handbook. And
I know you're going to think,don't you mean the Dungeon Master's Guide.
No, I don't know. Yeah, you can scrape by with what you
find on the internet until until you'reyou're you are ready to be the DM.
(06:39):
Right, So I do also havethe Dungeon Master's Guide in phase one
because it just kind of makes senseto just get the corset. But if
Billy's mom's buying it then yeah,yeah, for sure. But like y'all,
you can all get away with justthe Player's Handbook. And I think
that's like one of the most wellkept secrets in this game is that the
Dungeon Master Guide isn't really necessary untilthe DM really wants to start focusing.
Because, as we know, ifyou need to know what your party's overland
(07:00):
travels bet is going to be,it's gonna be found in the player's hand
But it's gonna be found That meansit's gonna be clearly, it's gonna be
found only on this podcast. Idon't know how you feel about this,
Jason, but I mean my likelukewarm take, it's not exactly a hot
take. Is that if you're likea new DM and you only can afford
(07:21):
one book, get the Monster Manualbefore you get the damn Yeah, that
isn't I don't think that's a hottake. That is a lukewarm take.
Okay, that is that is theLucas of worms. Yes he has a
room temperature take. Yeah, thatthat's what I would say, But it's
it's it's something I feel like itneeds to be said out loud though.
Yeah, and then you're saying whateveryone is thinking. You're what you are.
(07:42):
Yeah, because you're you get waymore value out of that monster.
Man. Yeah, I am onlycalling that a lukewarm take and not a
not a cold take because most monstersare googleable, that's true. So,
like, you know, you canget away with that without buying it.
But I think I only read.Maybe this is my problem. I think
I've only used and read like maybeone or two chapters of that DMG.
(08:05):
There's not a time. Having beena player in one of your games for
years now, I believe that's adifferent podcast. We're not supposed to be
committed certain sound effect. Yeah,all right, you go. Uh that's
your Phase one. Players get thePlayer's Handbook. Dms also get the Player's
Handbook, and maybe if you've gotthe extra scratch, maybe grab the DMG
(08:26):
and you can you can round outthe whole Core three set while you're at
it. I'm calling the I'm callingthe real Phase one just a PHP,
and I want to call it aPhase one point five. You can get
the whole core set in a boxset if you canceled it cheaper. Yeah,
a couple of times a year,at least once a year, maybe
twice a year, and I thinkAmazon has obviously, like while we read,
while we were just talking at thetime of this recording, the the
(08:48):
Player's Handbook is on sale by twentysix bucks yep. So like, just
keep an eye on the sales thecourt, the Core set, the Core
like, yeah, the box setthat comes with the Dungeon Master screen.
I think a couple of years agoI picked that up for it was on
sale and I got it for nothing, and I think I got the whole
thing for like maybe fifty bucks.Yeah, yeah, the sale. There
(09:09):
are sales that happened. The pricething here. They went as low as
eighty bucks recently, So keep aneye out for it, and of course
support your friendly local game store wheneverpossible. Phase two we're going to call
this so if phase one with barfor entry, phase two we're going to
call the Essentials. These are thingsthat I think that every player and DM
should have. And the box setWatzi the essential, not that box set.
(09:33):
So for players, once you havethe Player's Handbook, I want to
just reach out from that a littlebit. I would say add Tasha's Cauldron
of Everything as being the next player'sbook. You may be thinking, you
know, grab the whole corset.If you're just going to play and you're
not going to DM for a while, there's really not much in those other
books for you. And the nextsuper player centric book is Tasha's. Tasha's
(09:56):
came out with so much stuff thateven Jim called it five point one edition.
Yeah, it was, it was, there was that much in there.
It's got updates to existing classes andsubclasses. Like so the Player's Handbook
version of the Beastmaster Arranger is prettyawful. It's fun and it's playable,
but it's not great. Tasha's BeastmasterArranger it was awesome and I played that
(10:16):
in one of our first campaigns showsand it was it was great. So
there's enough different stuff there to warranthaving both books, plus having new new
subclasses, and I believe it actuallyhas the official stuff for the Artificer in
there. Uh so there's an entirenew class. It's got some of the
stuff that you would otherwise need togo kind of dip into other campaigns,
(10:37):
like you know, Artificers out ofEbron and stuff like that. Warforge and
Artificers were an Ebron, which iswhy I have the Ebron book, but
yeah, that's in a later phase. DMS Phase two is to not only
finish out the core three if youhaven't already in phase one, and to
pick up the supplemental trio. Soif the core trio is your player's handbook,
(10:58):
Dungeon Master, guyde and Monster Manual, the supplemental Trio is Tasha's Cultron
of Everything, Xana Thar's Guide toEverything, and what used to be it
was a Volos Guide to Monsters wasthe one before Monsters in the Multiverse,
which completely replaced Volos, and there'sdefinitely box sets of that. I got
the a nice limited white edition whichlooks great on my shelf, which is
(11:18):
how I owned some. I actuallyowned three copies of Tasha's. I bought
it when it first came out andI wasn't like getting I wasn't like super
into alternate covers at the time.Then I got the box set when Monster's
the Multiverse came out because that wasthe only way you can get it at
the time, and I got thealternate version of that, and then my
funding local game store actually got alternateart Tasha's for a decent price that I
(11:41):
didn't mind spending. The issh ofmoney on. So that's how good Tasha's
is. I have three copies ofit. So yeah, players, pick
up your copies of Tasha's and DMS, finish out your core trio and add
in your supplemental trio. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you
guys, and we're actively looking forsubmissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets
(12:03):
recorded every month. Send us yourburning D and D questions Helloadventurers podcast at
gmail dot com, or send usa voicemail by visiting helloadventurers podcast dot com
slash voice. Don't forget to beginyour message with Hello DMS. You can't
wait to get your questions to talkabout them on the show. Send us
your questions today. That's Helloadventurers podcastat gmail dot com or the voicemoing at
(12:26):
helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice.Now let's get back to the show.
Phase three is when we start gettingfun. I'm calling this section get good,
G I T g U D Getgood for Dungeon Masters. We'll do
DMS first this time. There aretwo of these books and others in the
(12:50):
series, but these two in particular, and we have been championing Keith Amon
on this show and on my nonpast episodes and Curmudgeons as well. Honestly,
like, I can't believe how muchhe's done for our games. I
ran into somebody at the grocery storethe other day and I was just talking
about Keith the mom Have you heardthe good word? So you can go
(13:11):
and find these blogs called the MonstersKnow what They're Doing. But there's also
print versions of it as well,So if you're building out a physical library,
actually grab the books that the MonstersKnow what They're doing and the follow
up More Monsters Know what They're Doing. I've got both them sent my shelf
over there, alongside his other booksjust for the d M. These give
you like kind of like battle tacticsand like how a monster would think,
(13:33):
Like I had to look up theone on Albert's and you know they like
how had I not read this,like I would probably have them be a
little bit more intelligent and maybe targetthe caster or target something like that.
They're not that smart. They justgo for the closest thing to them,
and if something hits them, theirattention gets diverted the way and then and
then for smarter creatures too. Theygive you a lot of strategy that maybe
you hadn't thought of, like,oh no, they guess they would,
(13:54):
they would think of this difference.Yeah, they would see this. So
for simpler stuff like Alberts and mimics, like you know, that's a little
shorter article, but for like youknow, Archay and he can go,
he goes. Really that's that's pages. So what phase are we in there
for DMS? This is phase threethat get good. So if the first
two phases are designed to get youthe rules and get you enough to get
going, this is where you startgetting tactics and getting good at the game
(14:18):
itself. So those would be myfavorite ones to pick up next because these
are monsters that you're already familiar with, and I can just fight a little
bit better and make your encounters,if not better and like as far as
difficulty level, because they'll be fighting, you know, intelligently, but even
just more believable. Yeah, Andthat's one of the things I think sometimes
people look at those books and mayget the impression that it's like they're specifically
(14:45):
geared towards making those encounters more deadly, Like there's some kind of like gotcha
thing going on in there, notnecessariarily and and and there can be some
of that, but I don't thinkthat's the main intent behind that at all.
It's it's to make them interesting,to give them some variety, to
get the players thinking about different waysto approach stuff, and and to also
kind of inject the idea that like, you know, well, I mean,
(15:09):
the monsters do know what they're doing. They think about right now,
think about what's going on and whattheir motivations are, and what their own
motivations are, and that's exactly yeah. Yeah, So I think I think
it helps the d M or GMconceptualize right and have it almost jump off
the page, right is because becauseyou know, running games, it can
(15:31):
kind of Okay, here's an account, Okay, this is how many HP
it has, is the damage itdoes. Here's the average damaging roll the
dice, And you know, itkind of gets you can get boring,
you know, and get it canget it become a slog. So at
least this sparks that like, ohokay, wait a minute, there's a
little bit more to this thing.This end. And the other thing that
(15:52):
I love about it is that reallyyou read through that and you start to
even if it's not what he's talkingabout in any individual article or or kind
of you know, really driving atbut you also start to think of like
different ways encounters could end, becauseone of the things he talks about is
like, Okay, here's the thingthat's going to make them run away,
(16:12):
or here's the thing that's going tomake them, you know, decide that
maybe they want to negotiate with youinstead of you know, getting into a
knockdown, drag out fight. Andthat's one of the challenges in D and
D kind of because of the theway that combat sort of tends to work
and what we're also like, thisis one of the bad habits we learned
from video games, right, isthat every fight is you fight until all
(16:36):
the bad guys are dead. Andone of the things one of the real,
you know, kind of services thatthese books perform is they give you
different ways to think about how thosefights can go, not just in a
different not just tactically, but youknow, resolution wise. And I think
that's one of the things that's great, I think, really great about them.
I think he looks at their intelligenceand Okay, this this thing is
(17:00):
intelligent enough to know when it getsto a certain level or something happens,
it's going to run away, orit's going to try to bargain, depending
on you know, what the natureof it is. It's really interesting.
So again, just giving it likea making you think more about the motivation
of any given monsters. A fightagainst an owlberr should feel different than a
(17:22):
fight against an arch mage. Andyou know, before I started like taking
these arts to heart, every fightkind of felt like a fight against Jason
Portiso because I would fight with thesame tactics and just with the stat blocks.
Yeah. Like recording this podcast,Yeah, sure, that's the monsters
know what they're doing. I'm alsogoing to include a book that we covered
(17:44):
on our Third Party book Club,The Lazy Dungeon Master's Guide. Yeah.
I think this is the right phaseto get that. Definitely, by this
point you should have a couple ofgames under your belt and you should be
able to appreciate the time saving differencesthat that book introduced to you. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know,you're a big I mean to me,
(18:07):
you can also maybe get this thisone in the second phase if you
really are like, man, thisis difficult, if you're really having maybe
if you've been elected the forever dM by your friend group, and you're
like, I don't know how toget my head around prep and and you're
like designing a little bit more orrunning in a an environment, not running
a just a module. I'd saythat's really the point where where you're no
(18:30):
longer running a set module or aset campaign. Sure that's been already written
out and decided for you as aGM. If you're designing some of those
encounters and stuff, Lazy DM guideis great, yeah, because maybe it's
going to help streamline that. Maybethat's the first one in this phase,
then it could be again, itdepends on where you are in your quote
(18:55):
unquote journey. Sure everybody kind ofhits that different course. That's the Dungeon
Masters for players. There is akeith I mo On book for us as
well, the Guess Book Will Liveto Tell the Tale, And the same
way that he breaks down monster tactics, this one is geared towards the player
classes and kind of like breaks theminto categories. And it's not like,
Okay, if you're Paladin and dothis, if you're this, you do
(19:18):
this. Because this is actually applicableto other game systems because it breaks those
classes down into categories, so likeyou know stuff like like like tank front
end of the DPS. You know, terms that you're a melee fighter,
yeah, familiar called rolls in fourthedition exactly. And if you're you know,
any sort of like any really anykind of video gamer that involves fighting
(19:42):
and multiplayers and stuff. These areall terms that you're used to here.
So it's like a more it's likea more literary RPG bot dot net short
rpg bo will take his step bystep on That's what I mean. It
kind of like optimize like Max yeah, right or mid Max's Yeah. I
agree, they're not super interesting,but so but this kind of helps you
(20:03):
optimize your your character more so itgives you, uh, it's it's your
tactics, like okay, if you'reif you are filling the role because like
you know, let's let's say,let's see a cleric for example. I
think cleric's a great example. Clericcan be a tank. Cleric can also
be crowd control DPS palatte. Itmight be a better example. In our
(20:25):
game, our cleric is our rogue. Yeah, because he thinks he's a
boy. I mean, because there'sa material difference between this is what you
do to deal the maximum amount ofdamage every round and okay, we've read
every spell so that you don't haveto like and those are kind of two
I mean maybe I like, Idon't think, yeah, I love that.
(20:52):
Well, where else going with thiswas that, like, no,
let's say Paladin for example, Like, Paladin can absolutely be a tank.
They can, they can run fullplate armor and everything. Powdin could also
be like explosive damage. I know, huge DPS PLoud Ins maybe aren't the
best of crowd control. So likeyou can have a Paladin be your frontline
DPS or your tank, and thenthis book will kind of go into Okay,
(21:14):
if you're taking the role of thetank or the damage sponge or whatever
you want to call it, hereis some things to keep in mind if
you are taking this role, andthen Palding can also be the explosive damage,
so you're also okay, sometimes you'retaking this role and if you are
taking that role in this particular battle, here's some things to keep in mind.
Okay, And it's very generalized byrole, not by specific class,
(21:40):
So you decide where you are andin your party makeup. You know,
if you have a cleric and apaladin. Also, the cleric or the
barbarium might even be your damage spongewhile your paladin is doing your explosive damage.
So in this particular part you makeup or is you know, principally
interested in being like a backup healeror something and do that too. So
yeah, so in one particular party, makeup and if it's worth only three
(22:03):
person party, and then you gotto you gotta fill multiple roles. You
or in this seven person party thatyou play on on opposite weeks, you're
playing a very different role. Andyeah, it's so it's it breaks it
down like that, and I thinkthis is why it's it is specifically geared
towards players, that that book isnot necessarily for dms, but it is
written with the same level of analysisthat the monsters know what they're doing is
(22:23):
written in Okay, So we werealways champion Keith a mon's material, and
I think both players and dms inthis phase can benefit from that. Phase
four. Now we're getting to somefun stuff when calling this branching out.
So now we've got for the players, we've got the player's hand, but
we got Tasha's and we've got liftto tell the tail. Dms have all
(22:47):
the core books plus lays and DMSguy plus monsters know what they're doing,
and like this is enough to likenot only just run your game. This
is enough to run a good gameyep, like and I mean like a
particularly good game. So they hadwe go out from that. So for
the players, I have campaign bookswith player mechanics, so things that have
(23:08):
things for players. We mentioned Eberonbefore, so like you know, Waltashas
has stuff for artificers in that book, does not have anything for the Warforged
race. And I'm looking at therest of my thing here, I think
I forget where turtles come from.But like you know, not everything is
printed in every book, So nowwe can kind of like add more classes
(23:30):
and races and subclasses to your arsenal. Obviously, if you're getting a campaign
book, only read the player mechanicsparts unless your DM instructs you to read
more. It's going to be mylittle disclaimer here. You might be buying
more book than you might be using, which is why I have in such
a late phase. Yeah. Yeah, I call those the sandbox books because
(23:52):
there's like kind of stuff for everybody, and the outlines of you know,
kind of the skeleton of what youneed to but you know, and maybe
a few specific encounters, but it'swhat you need to run a game in
that world in that world. Yeah, and it's a great halfway point between,
like you say, you know,we're just gonna go curse Astrade,
(24:12):
start at the front of the bookand work our way to the back of
the book, you know, AndI've got an idea for a whole campaign,
and I'm gonna do everything from scratch. Those sandbooks box are books.
Those sandbox books are a great steppingstone between those two things. Yeah,
And I've got that on both playersand dms. And what's funny is that,
(24:36):
like between the player and the DM, you'll you'll read the whole book,
but each of you probably reading lessthan half. Yeah, the the
players even less. So. Oneof the other things that I like about
that is that if you get Tasha'sand you read about artificers, there's no
context for that. Yes, butif you get one of the Sandbox books,
it's gonna say, here's how artificersfit into the world. And as
(24:59):
a player, that ca you.Then you've got like some hooks for doing
background things and you know, youknow, I'm gonna put it because we
know what you know, sharn Isand the morn Lands and stuff like that.
That gives you a lot You've gota lot more to go on in
terms of, you know, buildinga story behind that character. Then if
you're just kind of dropping it intoa world that your dungeon master is kind
of making up as they go along. Yeah, and if you want to
(25:22):
like them a game in that world, having characters that take parts from that
world is just going to make themjust seat that much better. There's the
what's the Giants book called? Ohyou're talking about? That's like fizz Bands,
but for giants exactly. Big BBig Be's Yeah, Big B Glory,
Big B Glory of Giants is agreat example. And Fiz Bands was
the other example I was thinking ofthat. There's a dragon book that they
(25:44):
do, Yeah, yeah, That'ssband'sTreasury of Dragons. Both of them have
like very little as far as likeencounters and modules built in. And I
have it, Yeah, I forgot. It's all the way. It's right
right, just right, just whereI can't read it from here. That's
the alternate cover. Yeah, theythey set aside alternate covers for me at
the game story. But there's likethese those books in particular versus something like
(26:07):
Strat or Ebon that has more likeencounters and like a whole like a whole
game that you can run through.Fizz Bands and Big b will be more
like here's just like a bunch ofstats and just like go have fun with
it. Oh, they give youeven more than that though. They talk
about world building and role play dragons. I was including, I was including
(26:27):
that its very very but also likethen that's the DM stuff, and on
the player stuff, there's also likenew subclasses and new feats and like some
really cool stuff. And I thinkone of the things they go over is
again in fizz Bands is like thebest how to how to create a god
(26:48):
dragon race dragon bard. There yougo, just words are scared of those
guys that are born as dragons?Yeah, the dragon births. So it
gives you in from on playing dragonboard too, Yeah, yep, yep,
especially within that within that part ofthat world. But I think books
like that would be the next goodone to get the cauldron of everything like
(27:10):
that as well. You know that'sprobably Jim, you probably know the most
about the cauldron. No, no, then what is it? What's the
what's the one that's the deck ofmany Things? The Book, the Book
of Many Things, Book of manyThings. Yeah, that's like your favorite
book. Jim's opinion aside, thatbook is dope. Yeah, but there's
not the same thing. That bookincludes many things and you can leave it
(27:33):
out of your game gym. Butthere's like other really cool stuff in that.
But it's verbe heavy. Yeah itis, yes, yeah, it's
it's a lot more like fistbands thanit is like ebron. Yeah, there's
a lot more like feats in thatone. Uh oh yeah, no,
no, it's there. There's dozensof ways to destroy your campaign. Sure,
is that it? Right? Yeah? Yeah? And then the book
(27:53):
itself. Thanks. So I'm goingto say that books like that are going
to be the next ones to getfor both players and d ms. And
you're reading different parts of the samebook. And also this is the part
where with DM discretion and approval ofcourse, And that's what I'm just gonna
for a lot of these. It'sgonna from here on out is going to
have that kind of asterisk next toit. So, and I have in
my notes in all caps with DMapproval third party player books where you can
(28:18):
introduce new mechanics and new classes,new subclasses, new feats, and things
like that. Obviously, your DMis gonna have to check it out first
and make sure it's going to fitin their game and that it's not broken.
In my experience, if it hasbeen printed by a reputable publisher like
Cobyl Press, it's usually not brokenand usually pretty good in the game.
But you know your DM's world mightnot fit with stuff like that. So
(28:41):
just reading off of my shelf righthere, Deep Magic from Cobyl Press,
Blumes one and two is all newsubclasses, even non magical hold classes.
There's new subclasses for just about everything. And there's some really cool stuff in
here. In fact that once myBarbarian inevitably dies, we're gonna be talking
to see if we can pull somethingfrom that job and other books like Oh,
the Tone of Heroes and The Tomeof Magic also from Cobyl Press,
(29:06):
and then the Deep Magic books.So for players that would be the next
step there. Of course, checkit out with the DM, maybe pruise
the book together before you spend somemoney on it, and then the dms.
In addition to the Sandbox type books. This would be the time to
get more third party DM centric stuff, and these are usually a lot less
(29:26):
game breaking because they're usually just morejust more already balanced things you can just
put into your game. You canget real wild wild in this category.
You can. There's disguise the limit. So the examples that I have here
and what I think are must haveall of the tone of Beasts from Cobyl
Press. This is basically just likeexpanded monster manuals, but with monsters that
(29:47):
are just like, I'm not sayingthe monster manuals boring, just you know,
we've kind of seen them by now, but the ton of Beasts,
there's some just there are some justincredible monsters in there, just really well
designed. Yeah, and they dothat really cool thing. Well, they'll
then a monster and every single monsterhas like three variants to us that I
really love about that there's kind ofdifferent approaches that you can take to them.
There's also a Layer's book that goesalong with which on the past three,
(30:11):
so that would be bundle those togetherif you can. We mentioned the
game Master's Guides on past episode thisweek, good times start getting those.
You can really just get any ofthem at the time this recording, I
see five on my shelf. Ithink I have them all. I think
might be a villain's one that Idon't have. Yeah, but that's the
one I'm saying. I think itjust came out, but they see to
come out with one every year.So so you know, the Book of
NPC is the Book of Astonishing RandomTables, the Book of Legendary Dragons that
(30:37):
was a fun one. Random Encountersthat's a good book too, and there's
one four Traps and Puzzles as well. I would say. The minute that
you so we could probably even goback some on those, particular those game
Masters books. The minute you startdesigning your own encounters and stuff, the
minute you might need how to writeadventure modules that don't suck, you can
(31:00):
probably start getting some just kind ofwhere I have this face. Yeah,
it's after the Lazy DM Guide,after monsters know what they're doing, and
we haven't gotten two adventure mosinles thatdon't suck yet. Oh geez. I
thought I thought we had already.I thought we had been in places where
we're making our own we are,we're building with it now. And that's
where I'm saying that I think thesebut even that I think can get segmented
(31:22):
into levels and phases because don't needit all at once. No, So
I think I think this is thetime after you have your your lazy DM
guide, But this is where youstart branching into writing more of your own
stuff, because we're still like,we're still looking for mechanics and stat blocks
at this point. It's at ournext point that we can branch out from
that, which we'll get to nowphase five. This is my last phase
(31:47):
here. I'm calling this beyond gamebooks and for dms. That does include
how to write a venture modules thatdon't suck that we just covered on the
last episode. So now you're you'rewriting games. You've got more than enough
stat blocks and mechanics. You havemore than enough to pull from as far
as things that are for the gamespecifically, and now you got to figure
out how do I do this better? And how do I do this in
(32:10):
a way that serves the story,and how do I do this in a
way that feels like a fantasy game. So how to write a venture modules
that don't suck I think would fithere because now we're all philosophical type of
stuff and for players now we wantto start branching out our characters. We
have more than enough mechanics to pullfrom. Where do we get inspiration for
our characters themselves and how they roleplay and how they interact with the world
(32:34):
and with each other. So Ihave a third party book there, and
actually, Joe, if you cangrab that for me, it's one that
has a ton of like posted stickon the top of it. This is
the ultimate RPG character backstory guide.And there's a couple of these in the
same series that really similar covers.This book I thought was going to be
a little bit more like, youknow, step by step how to write
out your backstory, but this isjust more like vibes type of book.
(32:58):
And I had a friend who borrowedit and she gave it back to me
with that It is just covered inpost and notes. That's wild, And
I thought you did that. No, no, no, no. My
my one of my players, Marydid this for me, and she just
dove into this book and absolutely lovedit. And I think this is one
of the reasons why she loves playingas much as she does and comes up
with just these wild character backstories.She's got this even color code for me
(33:20):
by like stuff that's for d Mand world building, Like there's a there's
a an exercise in here on howto design a holiday or a festival,
and like how how it would fiteither into the world itself or into just
your character's backstory. No, maybejust the one character, No, the
only total in our group is celebratingon one day. And what would he
be celebrating. What's what's the holiday? What's the festival the or the customs
(33:43):
for it? Is this a happyor sad holiday? Is it? Is
it? You know? Stuff likethat. So there's there's just really cool
just like player player centric, backstoryvibe type of stuff in this book.
I would not get this before youhave all your mechanics set up, but
this is kind of how you justlike get your characters that much more believable
and lovable. And this is somethingthat we've touched on before where like your
(34:07):
five E type of player versus yourone E type of player is going to
be probably a little more attached totheir character and we see a lot less
character debts than we did forty yearsago, and stuff like this, I
can kind of make your character thatmuch more attached. I think it's kind
of cool. Then just some generalinspirations stuff. This is for players and
dms, the fantasy books. Youshould have a copy of Lord of the
(34:28):
Rings. You should have a copyof the Hobby. You should have you
know what, what's the whatever thehot fantasy series is right now? Hot?
Take go ahead? You ready?Yep? Tried to read the Hobbit,
could not do it? Yeah,two or three times? Rough,
It's not for me. I'll watchthe movies. Sure, So you can
have a copy of the Lord ofthe Rings on a DVD. Do they
still have DVDs? Are the kidsstill watching DVD's? They are? They're
(34:51):
streaming it, okay, stream ownit on whatever what other whatever streaming device
you. Streaming is like buying aDVD, except when the rights get revoked,
you lose what you bought, whichis why they started buying DVDs again,
buy the dvd. The other greatthing about a Blu ray player is
that you can reassemble your DVD libraryat like thrift stores, Goodwill and stuff
(35:15):
like that, like for like twobucks of pops. Oh my Blu ray
played DVDs? Yeah yeah, yeah, well okay, back to a corner.
Jim and Jim and j somewhere aroundyour second skills job. But yeah,
so any kind of like fantasy mediathat will inspire you to to emulate
(35:37):
characters. And I'm not saying youhave to go play again off of,
but it's like no getting ideas forhow Wizards worked in that world and using
concepts from that in your game.It's funny. I keep so as I
scroll through like Netflix and stuff,and I'm reading like, you know,
synopsis SYNOPSI movies, I'm like,oh, this is this whoever wrote this
(36:04):
place? Dungeons is Oh? Ofcourse, like like, oh, whoever
wrote this movie? This came fromDungeons and Dragon. There are so many
things. I'm like, this isa campaign. Yeah, it's incredible.
The later Marvel movies, once theystarted getting bad, are D and D.
If you stop thinking about bad Marvelmovies and start thinking that as good
D and D movies, they geta lot better. Yeah, really good.
But I haven't watched it yet.But the new David Harbor hellboy,
(36:28):
I was like, oh, Ihaven't seen it. I think this is
a Dungeons and Dragon short. Thelast book I'm putting on this. This
is both for both players and ds, and this might be my hot take.
This is not even a game book. This is not a fantasy book.
This is not having anything to dowith the hobby in itself. This
is the reason I put this onhere is to kind of shape how we
role play. And whether or notyou use it for yourself in your everyday
(36:52):
life is up to you. Buthaving your characters interact with each other and
with NPCs in a more believable wayto have your social account go a little
bit more, you know, goa little bit better. And this goes
for both players and NPCs. ButI have on here. It's this a
classic book, and I hear thisin a lot. I have read it
myself. How to win friends andinfluence people. Oh yeah, this is
(37:13):
like your your how to be socialone on one type of book. Don't
use the book to the point whereyou become manipulative, because this book absolutely
cand of be taken to an extreme. And that's why I'm hesitant to even
say that I've read it, becauseit's got a little bit of a got
a bit of a history to itwith the wrong kind of people. But
the concepts are real, and evenif you don't use it in your real
(37:34):
life, that's up to you.But having your characters kind of know like
how to you know, if you'retrying to persuade somebody, like what are
you perspueading them with? Like ifthe character you're talking to you hasn't want
something and I know, and ifyou can ascertain what they want and get
this to where where you're now yourpersuasion encounter is now you know, something
that could be grounded in real lifeand not just die rolls. I think
(37:57):
this is a great way to haveyour characters in act with each other and
NPCs just a little bit more interestingly, and to my mind, if we
hear from any listeners on this,that's the thing I'm mostly interested in is
what are the you know, booksthat were not explicitly here's how to be
better at role playing, books thatyou found influenced how you played, how
(38:22):
you designed stuff. Because I couldcertainly see, you know, like books
on like maybe screenwriting or a playwriting class or something like that being the
kind of thing that you might,you know, realize this is going to
really help with my role playing.And I'm super curious what for other people,
like, what are those things thatwe never loved that as being valuable?
(38:43):
I love that as a category toput in Phase five, and I
would just if someone has titles togive me, I would actually have one
for d MS and I haven't readit yet. It's on my list to
get sure. But it's Hamlet's HitPoints. We heard about that. That's
a great book. Yeah, soI really really want to read this.
So it takes Hamlet, right.Have you read this, Jim, So
(39:04):
I'm very familiar with it. It'sby Robin D. Laws who's a long
time game designer who's written tons andtons of stuff like not. He was
one of the authors of the fourthedition d DM Guide two, I want
to say, I think, buthe's done some writing for D and D
stuff, mostly known for his he'sthe designer, kind of code designer of
the Gumshoe system. But that bookis great because, yeah, it's not
(39:27):
just Hamlet, but he also usesI think it's Doctor No, the James
Bond movie, and Casablanca as thethree examples that he takes to describe how
the story works. And you know, and like like like rising action,
falling action, basically like yeah,yeah, that thing you said where like
he's like, okay, if you'regoing to turn Hamlet into an RPG adventure.
(39:51):
Yeah, here's what you need toknow, and here's how you break
it down and onto that and itturns and the and it kind of looks
at it from the other way too. It's like, how do we get
our adventure to feel a little bitmore like movies? Like? How do
we tell those? How do wemake it a little more dramatic? How
do we tell those stories that feela little more real in that way?
Right? And it's like, okay, the the the most simplistic way right
(40:15):
first and foremost is like every storyhas a beginning, a middle, right
like, and then you get intoyour like, well, your third act,
this is what's going to happen inyour third a kind of thing.
And again I have not I havenot read this short. It is on
my left. I think I boughtit for my my now adult son for
Christmas. Yes, how weird doesthat feel? He's like that we have
(40:37):
to buy tickets for graduation? I'mlike, no, thank you, not
if I've read it and it's great, completely endorse that recommendation, yet,
will throw Is that a phase fivebook? You think? That's a yeah,
that's very much book that's getting intothe nitty gritty of like, you
know, Robin's professional career is asa dramaturgist, which is to say,
(40:58):
someone who you know azes plays andbreaks them down, and you know,
like that, that's what his degreeis in. You know, he's parlayed
that into a career as a youknow, an amazing long time well respected
you know, not just someone whowrites and designs games, but who you
know, thinks a lot about themand how they work and stuff like that,
(41:19):
and that that book is a realdistillation of cool. You know,
all those years of experience. I'mgoing to buy that today. Actually,
I'm going to leave a link tothe drivether Repuge on the I Shual.
I'm go to leave links to allthese books in the in the show notes.
But at the time of this recording, if you buy the soft cover
on the driveth Repug for him,it's hit points. You can get the
PDF for free. Yeah. Cool. Any other Is there anything that you
(41:40):
guys really hoping that I would havesomewhere on this list? Maybe not in
any necessary There's one thing that there'sone thing that I want to drop in
that's a little bit of a kindof a little bit of a side thing,
but that I think is really interestingand fun, which is there's a
book called Improv for Gamers, theauthor of which is guthor is named ca
(42:00):
in twelves and it's published by EvilHat Games, where the Pope the folks
who do the Fate system as wellas some game games like Apocalypse World and
Monster of the Week and things likethat, And that is a book full
of short exercises adapted from like improvclasses that you can do that might take
(42:22):
like just five minutes to like warmup for a game and kind of get
everybody in the spirit of getting intocharacter or you know, like I love
this. Yeah, Like if youknow you're going to do a humorous adventure
today, you can do a quicklittle exercise that kind of gets everybody in
that mindset and it's you know,it's a little bit of it. You
kind of got to have people thatare that are gained for it, right,
(42:43):
that are willing to do that kindof thing, because some of them
may involve getting up from the table, some of them may involve being a
little silly, But if you havethat kind of group, it can be
they're great like bonding exercises and kindof getting into the spirit of being in
the game and applicable across the boardfor everything from D and D to more
you know, kind of like someof the hippie story games that I like
(43:06):
to play, you know, butbut but really really neat book with a
lot of cool stuff in there,but definitely very much a like probably not
the kind of thing you're necessarily gonnado if you're at you know, like
sitting down to a table at aat a group hub or something like that.
But if it's a group well,my first thought was to bring this
to those games. Yeah, okay, maybe maybe then you get those first
(43:29):
times and just kind of exactly becausethey walk in and they're so nervous.
Yeah, and if I can,like, you know, have my vetter,
especially if I have like some ofmy Ringer players there, and like
I can have them like just likeset the bar and like you know,
kind of bringing all the way aroundthe table to the new nervous guy and
like be like, listen, thisis how silly we're going to be today.
And you're like, you don't haveto you don't have to do it,
(43:50):
but like, you know, justknow that this is that this is
what is acceptable for us. Andif you want to get a little silly
with us. We'd love to comealong. Yeah, this is this is
awesome. I'm I should look atthis the whole time that you're talking about.
I'm buying this one today as well. And I think there's like a
second edition of it recently came outand stuff like this. That great,
great book. Can't recommend it.That was great? Yeah, anything else
somebody missed? Oh we nailed it. Okay, cool? Yeah, I
(44:13):
think so let's recap this whole thinglike our list. Yeah, yeah,
so recap the whole thing for players. Your Phase one is the Player's Handbook.
Phase two is to add Tasha's Cauldronof Everything. Phase three is to
add keith a Mon's Live to Tellthe Tale. Phase four is to get
any applicable campaign books or sandbox booksas Jim calls them, with player mechanics,
(44:34):
and any potential third party player bookswith DM approval. And Phase five
the open RPG backstory Guide, somesort of fantasy media like Lord of the
Rings and how to Win friends andinfluence people. And we've also added improv
for gamers for dungeon masters or gamemasters that you're going to want to start
with. Also, the Player's Handbook. In phase two you can round out
(44:57):
the core trio and the supplemental trio. Phase three you can get the monsters
know what They're doing and the LazyDMS Guide. Phase four is third party
books with stats and mechanics, anykind of sandbox book, cobol pressed,
Home of Beasts, any of thegame Masters guys books, any kind of
like random or not a random andany kind of book that has like stats
and random tables, things like that, and finish off your collection with how
(45:21):
to write in venture modules that don'tsuck. You also want to keep some
fantasy media around. Also keep acopy of Head to Wind friends and influence
people, and I'll also get theimprov for gamers for DMS. And if
so, for those of you whokeep asking me, how do I build
my library? How do I getstarted on this? I think step by
step that'll kind of get you caughtup to where I'm at, because I
(45:43):
think, I think, I thinkeverything that I own is somewhere in those
categories. And I have a couplemore things that I didn't that I didn't
list that are I know some thingsare specific to one shots and that some
things are for other games that Iknow, you don't have to go get
the Pathfinder Core book to go playD and D. But I've had a
lot of older editions stuff that Ilike to collect, and there's a lot
of very specific things that have onmy shelf. But like if you pick
(46:06):
up, you know this, thisshould be well over the course of like
at least a year or two orfive, like I've been collecting about four
years now. It depends on wherecircumstances, your pace, where you're at,
you know, or if you justlike having things on until you get
there. If you're just like havingthings on a shelf, you know,
you and and you're blessed with withwith with some extra expendable income, you
(46:27):
know, then you can you cancomply faster. But like you know,
get to miss in phases as youneed them or as you want them.
I'm not gonna say you spend yourmoney, but I think I think we've
packed a lot of value into thisone today. So we're gonna we're gonna
wrap this up. So let's wrapthis thing up here, and and you
listening, if you have any booksthat we may have missed, or any
books that you love, or anythingthat you you know, you think might
be bought early. I want tohear your opinions on this. What books
(46:50):
do you have that you think areessential to a library and at what point
did you pick it up? Soyou can send that all over to full
Adventures podcast at gmail dot com orjust tell us yourself helloadventures dot com slash
voice. So I think that'll that'llactually wrap it up, So Jim,
Joe, thanks so much, thankyou and thank you for listening. This
has been Hello Adventurers. We areyour host, Jason Portiso, Jim Crocker
(47:12):
and Joe McCall producer, editor,an engineer Jason Portiso, music by an
experior artwork, actors and Roderick.You can reach out to us with any
feedback suggestions by emailing Helloadventures podcast atgmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a
JTP audio production. Goodbye Adventures
The podcast or role players and gamemasters that help level up your game.
We are Your dungeon master is JasonPortiso, I'm Joe McCall. I am
Jim Crocker. So today I'm goingto answer the question, well, we're
all going to answer the question thatwe get from new players a lot of
just like there's just so many booksout there. There's so many not only
from Wizards of the Coast directly,but there's tons of third party Like we
(00:45):
just covered a couple of our favoritethird party books. Will continue doing that
as well. But just like wheredo you start? And like you know,
player has been playing for years havejust like a library full of books,
but like you don't have to getthem all in one shot. There's
thousands of dollars in there. Soso today's episode is going to be how
to build your library in phases?And this is something I kind of started
(01:06):
mapping out for some brand new playersthat I've been meeting at the game store
and brewery games that I've been runningand a lot of them have never played
before. And then they play acouple of games, some of them after
even just their first game, theydive and head first. Some of them
come back for a second one.They're like, Okay, I guess,
yeah, I guess this is whatI'm going to do now. And then
it's always the same questions like wheredo I start? And then after you
(01:27):
start, what's next? And thenit's just a series of what's next,
what's the next bus next? Atto that, which is how I did
it. So I'm going to tryto just kind of spell it out for
you guys, how to do itin phases and what books are important to
get at what point in your career. And I'm going to address this for
both players and dungeon Masters. Sotwo different lists, but yeah, I
(01:48):
was thinking that when you said,okay, we're folks players, but no,
no, absolutely two different lists,but I kind of but I kind
of wrote them up at the sametime. So this episode is for like,
let's say, for example, likeand this is really me with like
with like high schoolers too, wherelike you know, you and your four
friends are all getting into this atthe same time. One of you has
got to be the DM. Sothis is kind of for for that group
(02:10):
that is now getting your all yourfirst books at the same time. So
what is what is each of youbuy they're The sad news of the DMS
is the players can also split theirbooks. Yeah, so sorry for your
wallet. Well, the players cansplit your books too. Oh yeah,
I guess your group before I wouldsay split everything. Yeah, way,
and and rotate your DMS too.But that's but that's the repisode. So
(02:31):
I got a couple phases here,so let's jump in. So are phase
one. I'm titling this bar forentry. This is just enough for you
to get started playing. It's ashort list for players. You want a
book called players Handbook. It's obviousbecause it is so you can you can
(02:55):
go lower than that, or thebasic rules, Basic rules, the starter
set. I would say it wouldactually probably be like the best starting place
for somebody that's that's not that hasn'tdone it before. Okay, so let
me let me let me match thisdown a little bit. Yeah yeah,
then that's what you you know whatI'm saying. Sorry, So that's excellent
(03:16):
for first time players who want todabble, or if you if you got
invited to a game and you're like, I've never played before, that's that's
your that's your phase zero. Saythat when I own my game store,
the basic set was the answer tothe question of like, you know,
guy in his like mid thirties walksin, yeah, says, you know,
(03:38):
my eleven year old wants to playD and D. I played back
when I was in high school,but I haven't touched it since then.
Where do I even start? AndI say, okay, you know,
you can spend one hundred dollars onthese books, or you can start with
this twenty five dollars box set,play a little bit of it. If
(03:59):
you love it, then you upgrade, which which is exactly where me and
my son, my son got start. Yeah, so what we'll call that
phase zero. Okay, that's enough. That's enough for you to know that
you want to move or the orit's the game store game, or it's
the brewery game. Yes, yea. So this is aimed at the people
(04:20):
who already know that they already knowthat there's things they're going to do,
and they want to start amassing alibrary that rivals their d MS. Okay,
okay, okay, so allright,so phase zero out of the way.
Phase one is going to be theplayers. Hample oah. Like I
say, it's it's obvious, becauseit is. It's it's it's everything you
need. There's enough actual gameplay,and I know people kind of like want
(04:41):
to feel like the players the basicpH B stuff is like boring races and
classes and subclasses and stuff, butthey're not. There's enough for you to
to gain for your whole career justin that book. Yeah, if we're
talking about like like the what's theword economics of that? Like, if
you're buying a fifty dollars book,right, is that what the going rate
(05:04):
is for a hardcover edition. Sothat's the that's the SRP, that's if
you buy it in the store.But let's just say let's just say like
that's what you're you know, andlet's just say you're playing once a month.
You're going to get a couple ofa few years out of that pH
B. So per game, youknow what does that cost breakdown to spend?
(05:29):
Yeah, yeah, and over thecourse store you figure, in addition,
will last ten years on average lookingat their at their history, ten
to twelve years. So you're talkingabout one hundred and twenty times divided by
fifty, So you're twelve divided dividedby five. You know, you'd be
stupid not to play. Yeah,a couple of bucks maybe per game if
you play only once a month,right, and you're the only one that
(05:53):
uses it, Yeah, you're you'resaving money with every session. Yeah,
exactly. To the I'm always lookingfor value, to the to the high
schools and middle high schoolers and middleschoolers who are, like, you know,
getting their group into it for thefirst time. Y'all can share that.
Yeah, you share it until untiluntil everyone needs their own copy and
put buy them as you need have. Billy's mom buy it because they're loaded.
(06:13):
You know his birthday is coming up. Yeah, and that you know
he gets a new bike like everyyear. They're loaded. Yeah. So
that's for players. Just start withthe Player's handbout. That is your phase
one for dms, your phase oneis also just the Player's Handbook. And
I know you're going to think,don't you mean the Dungeon Master's Guide.
No, I don't know. Yeah, you can scrape by with what you
find on the internet until until you'reyou're you are ready to be the DM.
(06:39):
Right, So I do also havethe Dungeon Master's Guide in phase one
because it just kind of makes senseto just get the corset. But if
Billy's mom's buying it then yeah,yeah, for sure. But like y'all,
you can all get away with justthe Player's Handbook. And I think
that's like one of the most wellkept secrets in this game is that the
Dungeon Master Guide isn't really necessary untilthe DM really wants to start focusing.
Because, as we know, ifyou need to know what your party's overland
(07:00):
travels bet is going to be,it's gonna be found in the player's hand
But it's gonna be found That meansit's gonna be clearly, it's gonna be
found only on this podcast. Idon't know how you feel about this,
Jason, but I mean my likelukewarm take, it's not exactly a hot
take. Is that if you're likea new DM and you only can afford
(07:21):
one book, get the Monster Manualbefore you get the damn Yeah, that
isn't I don't think that's a hottake. That is a lukewarm take.
Okay, that is that is theLucas of worms. Yes he has a
room temperature take. Yeah, thatthat's what I would say, But it's
it's it's something I feel like itneeds to be said out loud though.
Yeah, and then you're saying whateveryone is thinking. You're what you are.
(07:42):
Yeah, because you're you get waymore value out of that monster.
Man. Yeah, I am onlycalling that a lukewarm take and not a
not a cold take because most monstersare googleable, that's true. So,
like, you know, you canget away with that without buying it.
But I think I only read.Maybe this is my problem. I think
I've only used and read like maybeone or two chapters of that DMG.
(08:05):
There's not a time. Having beena player in one of your games for
years now, I believe that's adifferent podcast. We're not supposed to be
committed certain sound effect. Yeah,all right, you go. Uh that's
your Phase one. Players get thePlayer's Handbook. Dms also get the Player's
Handbook, and maybe if you've gotthe extra scratch, maybe grab the DMG
(08:26):
and you can you can round outthe whole Core three set while you're at
it. I'm calling the I'm callingthe real Phase one just a PHP,
and I want to call it aPhase one point five. You can get
the whole core set in a boxset if you canceled it cheaper. Yeah,
a couple of times a year,at least once a year, maybe
twice a year, and I thinkAmazon has obviously, like while we read,
while we were just talking at thetime of this recording, the the
(08:48):
Player's Handbook is on sale by twentysix bucks yep. So like, just
keep an eye on the sales thecourt, the Core set, the Core
like, yeah, the box setthat comes with the Dungeon Master screen.
I think a couple of years agoI picked that up for it was on
sale and I got it for nothing, and I think I got the whole
thing for like maybe fifty bucks.Yeah, yeah, the sale. There
(09:09):
are sales that happened. The pricething here. They went as low as
eighty bucks recently, So keep aneye out for it, and of course
support your friendly local game store wheneverpossible. Phase two we're going to call
this so if phase one with barfor entry, phase two we're going to
call the Essentials. These are thingsthat I think that every player and DM
should have. And the box setWatzi the essential, not that box set.
(09:33):
So for players, once you havethe Player's Handbook, I want to
just reach out from that a littlebit. I would say add Tasha's Cauldron
of Everything as being the next player'sbook. You may be thinking, you
know, grab the whole corset.If you're just going to play and you're
not going to DM for a while, there's really not much in those other
books for you. And the nextsuper player centric book is Tasha's. Tasha's
(09:56):
came out with so much stuff thateven Jim called it five point one edition.
Yeah, it was, it was, there was that much in there.
It's got updates to existing classes andsubclasses. Like so the Player's Handbook
version of the Beastmaster Arranger is prettyawful. It's fun and it's playable,
but it's not great. Tasha's BeastmasterArranger it was awesome and I played that
(10:16):
in one of our first campaigns showsand it was it was great. So
there's enough different stuff there to warranthaving both books, plus having new new
subclasses, and I believe it actuallyhas the official stuff for the Artificer in
there. Uh so there's an entirenew class. It's got some of the
stuff that you would otherwise need togo kind of dip into other campaigns,
(10:37):
like you know, Artificers out ofEbron and stuff like that. Warforge and
Artificers were an Ebron, which iswhy I have the Ebron book, but
yeah, that's in a later phase. DMS Phase two is to not only
finish out the core three if youhaven't already in phase one, and to
pick up the supplemental trio. Soif the core trio is your player's handbook,
(10:58):
Dungeon Master, guyde and Monster Manual, the supplemental Trio is Tasha's Cultron
of Everything, Xana Thar's Guide toEverything, and what used to be it
was a Volos Guide to Monsters wasthe one before Monsters in the Multiverse,
which completely replaced Volos, and there'sdefinitely box sets of that. I got
the a nice limited white edition whichlooks great on my shelf, which is
(11:18):
how I owned some. I actuallyowned three copies of Tasha's. I bought
it when it first came out andI wasn't like getting I wasn't like super
into alternate covers at the time.Then I got the box set when Monster's
the Multiverse came out because that wasthe only way you can get it at
the time, and I got thealternate version of that, and then my
funding local game store actually got alternateart Tasha's for a decent price that I
(11:41):
didn't mind spending. The issh ofmoney on. So that's how good Tasha's
is. I have three copies ofit. So yeah, players, pick
up your copies of Tasha's and DMS, finish out your core trio and add
in your supplemental trio. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you
guys, and we're actively looking forsubmissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets
(12:03):
recorded every month. Send us yourburning D and D questions Helloadventurers podcast at
gmail dot com, or send usa voicemail by visiting helloadventurers podcast dot com
slash voice. Don't forget to beginyour message with Hello DMS. You can't
wait to get your questions to talkabout them on the show. Send us
your questions today. That's Helloadventurers podcastat gmail dot com or the voicemoing at
(12:26):
helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice.Now let's get back to the show.
Phase three is when we start gettingfun. I'm calling this section get good,
G I T g U D Getgood for Dungeon Masters. We'll do
DMS first this time. There aretwo of these books and others in the
(12:50):
series, but these two in particular, and we have been championing Keith Amon
on this show and on my nonpast episodes and Curmudgeons as well. Honestly,
like, I can't believe how muchhe's done for our games. I
ran into somebody at the grocery storethe other day and I was just talking
about Keith the mom Have you heardthe good word? So you can go
(13:11):
and find these blogs called the MonstersKnow what They're Doing. But there's also
print versions of it as well,So if you're building out a physical library,
actually grab the books that the MonstersKnow what They're doing and the follow
up More Monsters Know what They're Doing. I've got both them sent my shelf
over there, alongside his other booksjust for the d M. These give
you like kind of like battle tacticsand like how a monster would think,
(13:33):
Like I had to look up theone on Albert's and you know they like
how had I not read this,like I would probably have them be a
little bit more intelligent and maybe targetthe caster or target something like that.
They're not that smart. They justgo for the closest thing to them,
and if something hits them, theirattention gets diverted the way and then and
then for smarter creatures too. Theygive you a lot of strategy that maybe
you hadn't thought of, like,oh no, they guess they would,
(13:54):
they would think of this difference.Yeah, they would see this. So
for simpler stuff like Alberts and mimics, like you know, that's a little
shorter article, but for like youknow, Archay and he can go,
he goes. Really that's that's pages. So what phase are we in there
for DMS? This is phase threethat get good. So if the first
two phases are designed to get youthe rules and get you enough to get
going, this is where you startgetting tactics and getting good at the game
(14:18):
itself. So those would be myfavorite ones to pick up next because these
are monsters that you're already familiar with, and I can just fight a little
bit better and make your encounters,if not better and like as far as
difficulty level, because they'll be fighting, you know, intelligently, but even
just more believable. Yeah, Andthat's one of the things I think sometimes
people look at those books and mayget the impression that it's like they're specifically
(14:45):
geared towards making those encounters more deadly, Like there's some kind of like gotcha
thing going on in there, notnecessariarily and and and there can be some
of that, but I don't thinkthat's the main intent behind that at all.
It's it's to make them interesting,to give them some variety, to
get the players thinking about different waysto approach stuff, and and to also
kind of inject the idea that like, you know, well, I mean,
(15:09):
the monsters do know what they're doing. They think about right now,
think about what's going on and whattheir motivations are, and what their own
motivations are, and that's exactly yeah. Yeah, So I think I think
it helps the d M or GMconceptualize right and have it almost jump off
the page, right is because becauseyou know, running games, it can
(15:31):
kind of Okay, here's an account, Okay, this is how many HP
it has, is the damage itdoes. Here's the average damaging roll the
dice, And you know, itkind of gets you can get boring,
you know, and get it canget it become a slog. So at
least this sparks that like, ohokay, wait a minute, there's a
little bit more to this thing.This end. And the other thing that
(15:52):
I love about it is that reallyyou read through that and you start to
even if it's not what he's talkingabout in any individual article or or kind
of you know, really driving atbut you also start to think of like
different ways encounters could end, becauseone of the things he talks about is
like, Okay, here's the thingthat's going to make them run away,
(16:12):
or here's the thing that's going tomake them, you know, decide that
maybe they want to negotiate with youinstead of you know, getting into a
knockdown, drag out fight. Andthat's one of the challenges in D and
D kind of because of the theway that combat sort of tends to work
and what we're also like, thisis one of the bad habits we learned
from video games, right, isthat every fight is you fight until all
(16:36):
the bad guys are dead. Andone of the things one of the real,
you know, kind of services thatthese books perform is they give you
different ways to think about how thosefights can go, not just in a
different not just tactically, but youknow, resolution wise. And I think
that's one of the things that's great, I think, really great about them.
I think he looks at their intelligenceand Okay, this this thing is
(17:00):
intelligent enough to know when it getsto a certain level or something happens,
it's going to run away, orit's going to try to bargain, depending
on you know, what the natureof it is. It's really interesting.
So again, just giving it likea making you think more about the motivation
of any given monsters. A fightagainst an owlberr should feel different than a
(17:22):
fight against an arch mage. Andyou know, before I started like taking
these arts to heart, every fightkind of felt like a fight against Jason
Portiso because I would fight with thesame tactics and just with the stat blocks.
Yeah. Like recording this podcast,Yeah, sure, that's the monsters
know what they're doing. I'm alsogoing to include a book that we covered
(17:44):
on our Third Party book Club,The Lazy Dungeon Master's Guide. Yeah.
I think this is the right phaseto get that. Definitely, by this
point you should have a couple ofgames under your belt and you should be
able to appreciate the time saving differencesthat that book introduced to you. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know,you're a big I mean to me,
(18:07):
you can also maybe get this thisone in the second phase if you
really are like, man, thisis difficult, if you're really having maybe
if you've been elected the forever dM by your friend group, and you're
like, I don't know how toget my head around prep and and you're
like designing a little bit more orrunning in a an environment, not running
a just a module. I'd saythat's really the point where where you're no
(18:30):
longer running a set module or aset campaign. Sure that's been already written
out and decided for you as aGM. If you're designing some of those
encounters and stuff, Lazy DM guideis great, yeah, because maybe it's
going to help streamline that. Maybethat's the first one in this phase,
then it could be again, itdepends on where you are in your quote
(18:55):
unquote journey. Sure everybody kind ofhits that different course. That's the Dungeon
Masters for players. There is akeith I mo On book for us as
well, the Guess Book Will Liveto Tell the Tale, And the same
way that he breaks down monster tactics, this one is geared towards the player
classes and kind of like breaks theminto categories. And it's not like,
Okay, if you're Paladin and dothis, if you're this, you do
(19:18):
this. Because this is actually applicableto other game systems because it breaks those
classes down into categories, so likeyou know stuff like like like tank front
end of the DPS. You know, terms that you're a melee fighter,
yeah, familiar called rolls in fourthedition exactly. And if you're you know,
any sort of like any really anykind of video gamer that involves fighting
(19:42):
and multiplayers and stuff. These areall terms that you're used to here.
So it's like a more it's likea more literary RPG bot dot net short
rpg bo will take his step bystep on That's what I mean. It
kind of like optimize like Max yeah, right or mid Max's Yeah. I
agree, they're not super interesting,but so but this kind of helps you
(20:03):
optimize your your character more so itgives you, uh, it's it's your
tactics, like okay, if you'reif you are filling the role because like
you know, let's let's say,let's see a cleric for example. I
think cleric's a great example. Clericcan be a tank. Cleric can also
be crowd control DPS palatte. Itmight be a better example. In our
(20:25):
game, our cleric is our rogue. Yeah, because he thinks he's a
boy. I mean, because there'sa material difference between this is what you
do to deal the maximum amount ofdamage every round and okay, we've read
every spell so that you don't haveto like and those are kind of two
I mean maybe I like, Idon't think, yeah, I love that.
(20:52):
Well, where else going with thiswas that, like, no,
let's say Paladin for example, Like, Paladin can absolutely be a tank.
They can, they can run fullplate armor and everything. Powdin could also
be like explosive damage. I know, huge DPS PLoud Ins maybe aren't the
best of crowd control. So likeyou can have a Paladin be your frontline
DPS or your tank, and thenthis book will kind of go into Okay,
(21:14):
if you're taking the role of thetank or the damage sponge or whatever
you want to call it, hereis some things to keep in mind if
you are taking this role, andthen Palding can also be the explosive damage,
so you're also okay, sometimes you'retaking this role and if you are
taking that role in this particular battle, here's some things to keep in mind.
Okay, And it's very generalized byrole, not by specific class,
(21:40):
So you decide where you are andin your party makeup. You know,
if you have a cleric and apaladin. Also, the cleric or the
barbarium might even be your damage spongewhile your paladin is doing your explosive damage.
So in this particular part you makeup or is you know, principally
interested in being like a backup healeror something and do that too. So
yeah, so in one particular party, makeup and if it's worth only three
(22:03):
person party, and then you gotto you gotta fill multiple roles. You
or in this seven person party thatyou play on on opposite weeks, you're
playing a very different role. Andyeah, it's so it's it breaks it
down like that, and I thinkthis is why it's it is specifically geared
towards players, that that book isnot necessarily for dms, but it is
written with the same level of analysisthat the monsters know what they're doing is
(22:23):
written in Okay, So we werealways champion Keith a mon's material, and
I think both players and dms inthis phase can benefit from that. Phase
four. Now we're getting to somefun stuff when calling this branching out.
So now we've got for the players, we've got the player's hand, but
we got Tasha's and we've got liftto tell the tail. Dms have all
(22:47):
the core books plus lays and DMSguy plus monsters know what they're doing,
and like this is enough to likenot only just run your game. This
is enough to run a good gameyep, like and I mean like a
particularly good game. So they hadwe go out from that. So for
the players, I have campaign bookswith player mechanics, so things that have
(23:08):
things for players. We mentioned Eberonbefore, so like you know, Waltashas
has stuff for artificers in that book, does not have anything for the Warforged
race. And I'm looking at therest of my thing here, I think
I forget where turtles come from.But like you know, not everything is
printed in every book, So nowwe can kind of like add more classes
(23:30):
and races and subclasses to your arsenal. Obviously, if you're getting a campaign
book, only read the player mechanicsparts unless your DM instructs you to read
more. It's going to be mylittle disclaimer here. You might be buying
more book than you might be using, which is why I have in such
a late phase. Yeah. Yeah, I call those the sandbox books because
(23:52):
there's like kind of stuff for everybody, and the outlines of you know,
kind of the skeleton of what youneed to but you know, and maybe
a few specific encounters, but it'swhat you need to run a game in
that world in that world. Yeah, and it's a great halfway point between,
like you say, you know,we're just gonna go curse Astrade,
(24:12):
start at the front of the bookand work our way to the back of
the book, you know, AndI've got an idea for a whole campaign,
and I'm gonna do everything from scratch. Those sandbooks box are books.
Those sandbox books are a great steppingstone between those two things. Yeah,
And I've got that on both playersand dms. And what's funny is that,
(24:36):
like between the player and the DM, you'll you'll read the whole book,
but each of you probably reading lessthan half. Yeah, the the
players even less. So. Oneof the other things that I like about
that is that if you get Tasha'sand you read about artificers, there's no
context for that. Yes, butif you get one of the Sandbox books,
it's gonna say, here's how artificersfit into the world. And as
(24:59):
a player, that ca you.Then you've got like some hooks for doing
background things and you know, youknow, I'm gonna put it because we
know what you know, sharn Isand the morn Lands and stuff like that.
That gives you a lot You've gota lot more to go on in
terms of, you know, buildinga story behind that character. Then if
you're just kind of dropping it intoa world that your dungeon master is kind
of making up as they go along. Yeah, and if you want to
(25:22):
like them a game in that world, having characters that take parts from that
world is just going to make themjust seat that much better. There's the
what's the Giants book called? Ohyou're talking about? That's like fizz Bands,
but for giants exactly. Big BBig Be's Yeah, Big B Glory,
Big B Glory of Giants is agreat example. And Fiz Bands was
the other example I was thinking ofthat. There's a dragon book that they
(25:44):
do, Yeah, yeah, That'ssband'sTreasury of Dragons. Both of them have
like very little as far as likeencounters and modules built in. And I
have it, Yeah, I forgot. It's all the way. It's right
right, just right, just whereI can't read it from here. That's
the alternate cover. Yeah, theythey set aside alternate covers for me at
the game story. But there's likethese those books in particular versus something like
(26:07):
Strat or Ebon that has more likeencounters and like a whole like a whole
game that you can run through.Fizz Bands and Big b will be more
like here's just like a bunch ofstats and just like go have fun with
it. Oh, they give youeven more than that though. They talk
about world building and role play dragons. I was including, I was including
(26:27):
that its very very but also likethen that's the DM stuff, and on
the player stuff, there's also likenew subclasses and new feats and like some
really cool stuff. And I thinkone of the things they go over is
again in fizz Bands is like thebest how to how to create a god
(26:48):
dragon race dragon bard. There yougo, just words are scared of those
guys that are born as dragons?Yeah, the dragon births. So it
gives you in from on playing dragonboard too, Yeah, yep, yep,
especially within that within that part ofthat world. But I think books
like that would be the next goodone to get the cauldron of everything like
(27:10):
that as well. You know that'sprobably Jim, you probably know the most
about the cauldron. No, no, then what is it? What's the
what's the one that's the deck ofmany Things? The Book, the Book
of Many Things, Book of manyThings. Yeah, that's like your favorite
book. Jim's opinion aside, thatbook is dope. Yeah, but there's
not the same thing. That bookincludes many things and you can leave it
(27:33):
out of your game gym. Butthere's like other really cool stuff in that.
But it's verbe heavy. Yeah itis, yes, yeah, it's
it's a lot more like fistbands thanit is like ebron. Yeah, there's
a lot more like feats in thatone. Uh oh yeah, no,
no, it's there. There's dozensof ways to destroy your campaign. Sure,
is that it? Right? Yeah? Yeah? And then the book
(27:53):
itself. Thanks. So I'm goingto say that books like that are going
to be the next ones to getfor both players and d ms. And
you're reading different parts of the samebook. And also this is the part
where with DM discretion and approval ofcourse, And that's what I'm just gonna
for a lot of these. It'sgonna from here on out is going to
have that kind of asterisk next toit. So, and I have in
my notes in all caps with DMapproval third party player books where you can
(28:18):
introduce new mechanics and new classes,new subclasses, new feats, and things
like that. Obviously, your DMis gonna have to check it out first
and make sure it's going to fitin their game and that it's not broken.
In my experience, if it hasbeen printed by a reputable publisher like
Cobyl Press, it's usually not brokenand usually pretty good in the game.
But you know your DM's world mightnot fit with stuff like that. So
(28:41):
just reading off of my shelf righthere, Deep Magic from Cobyl Press,
Blumes one and two is all newsubclasses, even non magical hold classes.
There's new subclasses for just about everything. And there's some really cool stuff in
here. In fact that once myBarbarian inevitably dies, we're gonna be talking
to see if we can pull somethingfrom that job and other books like Oh,
the Tone of Heroes and The Tomeof Magic also from Cobyl Press,
(29:06):
and then the Deep Magic books.So for players that would be the next
step there. Of course, checkit out with the DM, maybe pruise
the book together before you spend somemoney on it, and then the dms.
In addition to the Sandbox type books. This would be the time to
get more third party DM centric stuff, and these are usually a lot less
(29:26):
game breaking because they're usually just morejust more already balanced things you can just
put into your game. You canget real wild wild in this category.
You can. There's disguise the limit. So the examples that I have here
and what I think are must haveall of the tone of Beasts from Cobyl
Press. This is basically just likeexpanded monster manuals, but with monsters that
(29:47):
are just like, I'm not sayingthe monster manuals boring, just you know,
we've kind of seen them by now, but the ton of Beasts,
there's some just there are some justincredible monsters in there, just really well
designed. Yeah, and they dothat really cool thing. Well, they'll
then a monster and every single monsterhas like three variants to us that I
really love about that there's kind ofdifferent approaches that you can take to them.
There's also a Layer's book that goesalong with which on the past three,
(30:11):
so that would be bundle those togetherif you can. We mentioned the
game Master's Guides on past episode thisweek, good times start getting those.
You can really just get any ofthem at the time this recording, I
see five on my shelf. Ithink I have them all. I think
might be a villain's one that Idon't have. Yeah, but that's the
one I'm saying. I think itjust came out, but they see to
come out with one every year.So so you know, the Book of
NPC is the Book of Astonishing RandomTables, the Book of Legendary Dragons that
(30:37):
was a fun one. Random Encountersthat's a good book too, and there's
one four Traps and Puzzles as well. I would say. The minute that
you so we could probably even goback some on those, particular those game
Masters books. The minute you startdesigning your own encounters and stuff, the
minute you might need how to writeadventure modules that don't suck, you can
(31:00):
probably start getting some just kind ofwhere I have this face. Yeah,
it's after the Lazy DM Guide,after monsters know what they're doing, and
we haven't gotten two adventure mosinles thatdon't suck yet. Oh geez. I
thought I thought we had already.I thought we had been in places where
we're making our own we are,we're building with it now. And that's
where I'm saying that I think thesebut even that I think can get segmented
(31:22):
into levels and phases because don't needit all at once. No, So
I think I think this is thetime after you have your your lazy DM
guide, But this is where youstart branching into writing more of your own
stuff, because we're still like,we're still looking for mechanics and stat blocks
at this point. It's at ournext point that we can branch out from
that, which we'll get to nowphase five. This is my last phase
(31:47):
here. I'm calling this beyond gamebooks and for dms. That does include
how to write a venture modules thatdon't suck that we just covered on the
last episode. So now you're you'rewriting games. You've got more than enough
stat blocks and mechanics. You havemore than enough to pull from as far
as things that are for the gamespecifically, and now you got to figure
out how do I do this better? And how do I do this in
(32:10):
a way that serves the story,and how do I do this in a
way that feels like a fantasy game. So how to write a venture modules
that don't suck I think would fithere because now we're all philosophical type of
stuff and for players now we wantto start branching out our characters. We
have more than enough mechanics to pullfrom. Where do we get inspiration for
our characters themselves and how they roleplay and how they interact with the world
(32:34):
and with each other. So Ihave a third party book there, and
actually, Joe, if you cangrab that for me, it's one that
has a ton of like posted stickon the top of it. This is
the ultimate RPG character backstory guide.And there's a couple of these in the
same series that really similar covers.This book I thought was going to be
a little bit more like, youknow, step by step how to write
out your backstory, but this isjust more like vibes type of book.
(32:58):
And I had a friend who borrowedit and she gave it back to me
with that It is just covered inpost and notes. That's wild, And
I thought you did that. No, no, no, no. My
my one of my players, Marydid this for me, and she just
dove into this book and absolutely lovedit. And I think this is one
of the reasons why she loves playingas much as she does and comes up
with just these wild character backstories.She's got this even color code for me
(33:20):
by like stuff that's for d Mand world building, Like there's a there's
a an exercise in here on howto design a holiday or a festival,
and like how how it would fiteither into the world itself or into just
your character's backstory. No, maybejust the one character, No, the
only total in our group is celebratingon one day. And what would he
be celebrating. What's what's the holiday? What's the festival the or the customs
(33:43):
for it? Is this a happyor sad holiday? Is it? Is
it? You know? Stuff likethat. So there's there's just really cool
just like player player centric, backstoryvibe type of stuff in this book.
I would not get this before youhave all your mechanics set up, but
this is kind of how you justlike get your characters that much more believable
and lovable. And this is somethingthat we've touched on before where like your
(34:07):
five E type of player versus yourone E type of player is going to
be probably a little more attached totheir character and we see a lot less
character debts than we did forty yearsago, and stuff like this, I
can kind of make your character thatmuch more attached. I think it's kind
of cool. Then just some generalinspirations stuff. This is for players and
dms, the fantasy books. Youshould have a copy of Lord of the
(34:28):
Rings. You should have a copyof the Hobby. You should have you
know what, what's the whatever thehot fantasy series is right now? Hot?
Take go ahead? You ready?Yep? Tried to read the Hobbit,
could not do it? Yeah,two or three times? Rough,
It's not for me. I'll watchthe movies. Sure, So you can
have a copy of the Lord ofthe Rings on a DVD. Do they
still have DVDs? Are the kidsstill watching DVD's? They are? They're
(34:51):
streaming it, okay, stream ownit on whatever what other whatever streaming device
you. Streaming is like buying aDVD, except when the rights get revoked,
you lose what you bought, whichis why they started buying DVDs again,
buy the dvd. The other greatthing about a Blu ray player is
that you can reassemble your DVD libraryat like thrift stores, Goodwill and stuff
(35:15):
like that, like for like twobucks of pops. Oh my Blu ray
played DVDs? Yeah yeah, yeah, well okay, back to a corner.
Jim and Jim and j somewhere aroundyour second skills job. But yeah,
so any kind of like fantasy mediathat will inspire you to to emulate
(35:37):
characters. And I'm not saying youhave to go play again off of,
but it's like no getting ideas forhow Wizards worked in that world and using
concepts from that in your game.It's funny. I keep so as I
scroll through like Netflix and stuff,and I'm reading like, you know,
synopsis SYNOPSI movies, I'm like,oh, this is this whoever wrote this
(36:04):
place? Dungeons is Oh? Ofcourse, like like, oh, whoever
wrote this movie? This came fromDungeons and Dragon. There are so many
things. I'm like, this isa campaign. Yeah, it's incredible.
The later Marvel movies, once theystarted getting bad, are D and D.
If you stop thinking about bad Marvelmovies and start thinking that as good
D and D movies, they geta lot better. Yeah, really good.
But I haven't watched it yet.But the new David Harbor hellboy,
(36:28):
I was like, oh, Ihaven't seen it. I think this is
a Dungeons and Dragon short. Thelast book I'm putting on this. This
is both for both players and ds, and this might be my hot take.
This is not even a game book. This is not a fantasy book.
This is not having anything to dowith the hobby in itself. This
is the reason I put this onhere is to kind of shape how we
role play. And whether or notyou use it for yourself in your everyday
(36:52):
life is up to you. Buthaving your characters interact with each other and
with NPCs in a more believable wayto have your social account go a little
bit more, you know, goa little bit better. And this goes
for both players and NPCs. ButI have on here. It's this a
classic book, and I hear thisin a lot. I have read it
myself. How to win friends andinfluence people. Oh yeah, this is
(37:13):
like your your how to be socialone on one type of book. Don't
use the book to the point whereyou become manipulative, because this book absolutely
cand of be taken to an extreme. And that's why I'm hesitant to even
say that I've read it, becauseit's got a little bit of a got
a bit of a history to itwith the wrong kind of people. But
the concepts are real, and evenif you don't use it in your real
(37:34):
life, that's up to you.But having your characters kind of know like
how to you know, if you'retrying to persuade somebody, like what are
you perspueading them with? Like ifthe character you're talking to you hasn't want
something and I know, and ifyou can ascertain what they want and get
this to where where you're now yourpersuasion encounter is now you know, something
that could be grounded in real lifeand not just die rolls. I think
(37:57):
this is a great way to haveyour characters in act with each other and
NPCs just a little bit more interestingly, and to my mind, if we
hear from any listeners on this,that's the thing I'm mostly interested in is
what are the you know, booksthat were not explicitly here's how to be
better at role playing, books thatyou found influenced how you played, how
(38:22):
you designed stuff. Because I couldcertainly see, you know, like books
on like maybe screenwriting or a playwriting class or something like that being the
kind of thing that you might,you know, realize this is going to
really help with my role playing.And I'm super curious what for other people,
like, what are those things thatwe never loved that as being valuable?
(38:43):
I love that as a category toput in Phase five, and I
would just if someone has titles togive me, I would actually have one
for d MS and I haven't readit yet. It's on my list to
get sure. But it's Hamlet's HitPoints. We heard about that. That's
a great book. Yeah, soI really really want to read this.
So it takes Hamlet, right.Have you read this, Jim, So
(39:04):
I'm very familiar with it. It'sby Robin D. Laws who's a long
time game designer who's written tons andtons of stuff like not. He was
one of the authors of the fourthedition d DM Guide two, I want
to say, I think, buthe's done some writing for D and D
stuff, mostly known for his he'sthe designer, kind of code designer of
the Gumshoe system. But that bookis great because, yeah, it's not
(39:27):
just Hamlet, but he also usesI think it's Doctor No, the James
Bond movie, and Casablanca as thethree examples that he takes to describe how
the story works. And you know, and like like like rising action,
falling action, basically like yeah,yeah, that thing you said where like
he's like, okay, if you'regoing to turn Hamlet into an RPG adventure.
(39:51):
Yeah, here's what you need toknow, and here's how you break
it down and onto that and itturns and the and it kind of looks
at it from the other way too. It's like, how do we get
our adventure to feel a little bitmore like movies? Like? How do
we tell those? How do wemake it a little more dramatic? How
do we tell those stories that feela little more real in that way?
Right? And it's like, okay, the the the most simplistic way right
(40:15):
first and foremost is like every storyhas a beginning, a middle, right
like, and then you get intoyour like, well, your third act,
this is what's going to happen inyour third a kind of thing.
And again I have not I havenot read this short. It is on
my left. I think I boughtit for my my now adult son for
Christmas. Yes, how weird doesthat feel? He's like that we have
(40:37):
to buy tickets for graduation? I'mlike, no, thank you, not
if I've read it and it's great, completely endorse that recommendation, yet,
will throw Is that a phase fivebook? You think? That's a yeah,
that's very much book that's getting intothe nitty gritty of like, you
know, Robin's professional career is asa dramaturgist, which is to say,
(40:58):
someone who you know azes plays andbreaks them down, and you know,
like that, that's what his degreeis in. You know, he's parlayed
that into a career as a youknow, an amazing long time well respected
you know, not just someone whowrites and designs games, but who you
know, thinks a lot about themand how they work and stuff like that,
(41:19):
and that that book is a realdistillation of cool. You know,
all those years of experience. I'mgoing to buy that today. Actually,
I'm going to leave a link tothe drivether Repuge on the I Shual.
I'm go to leave links to allthese books in the in the show notes.
But at the time of this recording, if you buy the soft cover
on the driveth Repug for him,it's hit points. You can get the
PDF for free. Yeah. Cool. Any other Is there anything that you
(41:40):
guys really hoping that I would havesomewhere on this list? Maybe not in
any necessary There's one thing that there'sone thing that I want to drop in
that's a little bit of a kindof a little bit of a side thing,
but that I think is really interestingand fun, which is there's a
book called Improv for Gamers, theauthor of which is guthor is named ca
(42:00):
in twelves and it's published by EvilHat Games, where the Pope the folks
who do the Fate system as wellas some game games like Apocalypse World and
Monster of the Week and things likethat, And that is a book full
of short exercises adapted from like improvclasses that you can do that might take
(42:22):
like just five minutes to like warmup for a game and kind of get
everybody in the spirit of getting intocharacter or you know, like I love
this. Yeah, Like if youknow you're going to do a humorous adventure
today, you can do a quicklittle exercise that kind of gets everybody in
that mindset and it's you know,it's a little bit of it. You
kind of got to have people thatare that are gained for it, right,
(42:43):
that are willing to do that kindof thing, because some of them
may involve getting up from the table, some of them may involve being a
little silly, But if you havethat kind of group, it can be
they're great like bonding exercises and kindof getting into the spirit of being in
the game and applicable across the boardfor everything from D and D to more
you know, kind of like someof the hippie story games that I like
(43:06):
to play, you know, butbut but really really neat book with a
lot of cool stuff in there,but definitely very much a like probably not
the kind of thing you're necessarily gonnado if you're at you know, like
sitting down to a table at aat a group hub or something like that.
But if it's a group well,my first thought was to bring this
to those games. Yeah, okay, maybe maybe then you get those first
(43:29):
times and just kind of exactly becausethey walk in and they're so nervous.
Yeah, and if I can,like, you know, have my vetter,
especially if I have like some ofmy Ringer players there, and like
I can have them like just likeset the bar and like you know,
kind of bringing all the way aroundthe table to the new nervous guy and
like be like, listen, thisis how silly we're going to be today.
And you're like, you don't haveto you don't have to do it,
(43:50):
but like, you know, justknow that this is that this is
what is acceptable for us. Andif you want to get a little silly
with us. We'd love to comealong. Yeah, this is this is
awesome. I'm I should look atthis the whole time that you're talking about.
I'm buying this one today as well. And I think there's like a
second edition of it recently came outand stuff like this. That great,
great book. Can't recommend it.That was great? Yeah, anything else
somebody missed? Oh we nailed it. Okay, cool? Yeah, I
(44:13):
think so let's recap this whole thinglike our list. Yeah, yeah,
so recap the whole thing for players. Your Phase one is the Player's Handbook.
Phase two is to add Tasha's Cauldronof Everything. Phase three is to
add keith a Mon's Live to Tellthe Tale. Phase four is to get
any applicable campaign books or sandbox booksas Jim calls them, with player mechanics,
(44:34):
and any potential third party player bookswith DM approval. And Phase five
the open RPG backstory Guide, somesort of fantasy media like Lord of the
Rings and how to Win friends andinfluence people. And we've also added improv
for gamers for dungeon masters or gamemasters that you're going to want to start
with. Also, the Player's Handbook. In phase two you can round out
(44:57):
the core trio and the supplemental trio. Phase three you can get the monsters
know what They're doing and the LazyDMS Guide. Phase four is third party
books with stats and mechanics, anykind of sandbox book, cobol pressed,
Home of Beasts, any of thegame Masters guys books, any kind of
like random or not a random andany kind of book that has like stats
and random tables, things like that, and finish off your collection with how
(45:21):
to write in venture modules that don'tsuck. You also want to keep some
fantasy media around. Also keep acopy of Head to Wind friends and influence
people, and I'll also get theimprov for gamers for DMS. And if
so, for those of you whokeep asking me, how do I build
my library? How do I getstarted on this? I think step by
step that'll kind of get you caughtup to where I'm at, because I
(45:43):
think, I think, I thinkeverything that I own is somewhere in those
categories. And I have a couplemore things that I didn't that I didn't
list that are I know some thingsare specific to one shots and that some
things are for other games that Iknow, you don't have to go get
the Pathfinder Core book to go playD and D. But I've had a
lot of older editions stuff that Ilike to collect, and there's a lot
of very specific things that have onmy shelf. But like if you pick
(46:06):
up, you know this, thisshould be well over the course of like
at least a year or two orfive, like I've been collecting about four
years now. It depends on wherecircumstances, your pace, where you're at,
you know, or if you justlike having things on until you get
there. If you're just like havingthings on a shelf, you know,
you and and you're blessed with withwith with some extra expendable income, you
(46:27):
know, then you can you cancomply faster. But like you know,
get to miss in phases as youneed them or as you want them.
I'm not gonna say you spend yourmoney, but I think I think we've
packed a lot of value into thisone today. So we're gonna we're gonna
wrap this up. So let's wrapthis thing up here, and and you
listening, if you have any booksthat we may have missed, or any
books that you love, or anythingthat you you know, you think might
be bought early. I want tohear your opinions on this. What books
(46:50):
do you have that you think areessential to a library and at what point
did you pick it up? Soyou can send that all over to full
Adventures podcast at gmail dot com orjust tell us yourself helloadventures dot com slash
voice. So I think that'll that'llactually wrap it up, So Jim,
Joe, thanks so much, thankyou and thank you for listening. This
has been Hello Adventurers. We areyour host, Jason Portiso, Jim Crocker
(47:12):
and Joe McCall producer, editor,an engineer Jason Portiso, music by an
experior artwork, actors and Roderick.You can reach out to us with any
feedback suggestions by emailing Helloadventures podcast atgmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a
JTP audio production. Goodbye Adventures
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