May 27, 2024 • 29 mins
This episode features a replay from their previous show 'Curmudgeons and Dragons,' specifically episode 103 titled 'Jim's Top Five Tips for Preparing Your Session.' Jason and Jim Crocker discuss essential steps for DMs to effectively prep for their game sessions, covering reviewing notes from previous sessions, setting up play spaces, and understanding monster tactics. They emphasize the importance of being well-prepared to create engaging and seamless gameplay.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:20):
Hello Adventurers, the podcast for roleplayers and game masters to help level up
your game. I'm your dungeon master, Jason Portiso, and today we are
changing things up a little bit ina few ways. So first let's get
some housekeeping. For reasons too manyto name, we're going to be changing
up the release schedule a bit,and starting today, we'll be releasing just
(00:40):
one episode per week on Mondays.And this is going to give us some
time to prepare a little more wellthought out content and allow me a little
more a weekly time to get someediting done. I am definitely behind.
But speaking of preparing content and gettingediting done, let's get to what's going
on to today's episode. Our recordingschedule got little funny for this session and
we missed the date that I neededto get the episode out on time.
(01:04):
So instead of rushing out something thatI'm not proud of, or we're skipping
a week, I thought I thoughtit'd be fun if we did a little
replay crossover type thing, and wereplayed a past episode from our previous show,
Curmudgeons and Dragons. So this isa later episode when the host roster
was just me and Jim I'm ourco host Josie as well, but this
was recorded at a time when Josiewasn't available to record, so this episode
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is just going to feature of myselfand Jim. Joe wasn't part of this
podcast just yet, he was justa fan of the listener. But this
is one of my favorite episodes fromthat show, and not because Josie wasn't
there, but because it was sopacked with actual helpful content and value.
Like we say in the podcast world, but this felt like the direction of
the show wanted to go in,but I didn't have the podcasting experience to
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steer us towards that, And itwas episodes like this one that inspired the
rebrand into the show that we nowcall Hello Adventurers. And fun fact,
you'll see in the first few secondswhere the name for this show came from.
So all one hundred and thirteen episodesof Courmergences and Dragons are still available
on all podcast platforms, as wellas Curmudgeons and Dragons dot com. So
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if you're looking for more just contentfrom me and Jim and Josie and Jack
and Justin and Greg and everyone elsewho would helped host that show, those
are available out there. You cango check those out right now. But
for now, I like to introduceyou to our replay of episode one hundred
and three, Jim's top five tipsfor preparing your session. Goodbye, Adventurers.
(02:35):
Sometimes talking with friends feels like roleplaying, Sometimes it feels like combat.
Join us at the roundtable and rollan initiative. This is Curmudgeons and
Dragons. Hello adventurers, Welcome tothe Curmudgins and Dragons. My name is
(03:00):
Jason Portiso. Today I'm joined bymister Jim Crocker. Hey, how are
we doing, Jim? How youdoing, Bud? I'm doing pretty good,
Pretty good. I start a brandnew job next week. I got
a library job, so coming outof retirement. Huh yes, yeah,
keep you away using my bookstore skillsin the service of the greater good.
That's what we're that's what we're lookingto do, all right. Is it
(03:23):
a library job. It is alibrary job. Yes, yeah, it's
a library Okay, cool. Yeah, it's at the Montclair Public Library here
in northern New Jersey. I'll beworking like eighteen twenty hours a week something
like that. Nice part time jobto kind of fill in get me out
of the house and on my feet, which is something that I am have
been It is both something I needto do and something that has been requested
(03:43):
of me. So yes, Iwas just gonna say that sounds like Shannon's
idea, good man, So it'snice to have, I would I wonder
it's what it's like to have ajob. I have like seven. Still,
I literally don't know. I don'tknow how to count my jobs.
Let's put it that way, becausetechnically a few of them all fall under
one umbrella, but they all feellike very separate things. So would you
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feel better if I said I gotanother job? That would be that works?
Yeah? Okay, there, nowyou're up to well, you know
one, well, one outside thehouse job. I do all of our
inside the house stuff, so thatthat counts as we value. Also you,
I keep you very busy writing ourshow notes, so there's that,
(04:25):
so you know, thank you foryour opinion though, But you know,
well, I was gonna say this, this is a job I'm actually gonna
get paid for. So yeah,oh is that how we count jobs?
Okay? Then I have like one, I guess there's job gigs so yes,
oh gigs at a problem agat Butso today. So just does D
M Boys here, Josie's in.You can tell when it's like the middle
(04:45):
of a school season when Josie hasto take a few episodes off. Yes,
yes, I am recording with hertomorrow, so she's not gone.
She won't be gone for long,but she will be gone today and that's
what matters. She's decent student,so she like actually studies and stuff.
That's you know, I know it'sweird. I wouldn't have skipped a podcast
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just to you know, study fora test or anything. No, God,
no, that never. Yeah,she is the opposite as a student.
She's a total opposite as she isas a player. So all the
shenanigans of her in a D andD game, just like, she gets
it all out there and then forthe stuff then matter. Yeah, that's
(05:27):
good. That firewall is important tobeing a functional human being. So which
is the opposite of how I didschool, and that's why I don't have
a degree. But luckily I gotgood at things that don't need degrees.
So lucky me. Anyway, justas DM Boys today. So I had
an idea to kind of take theshow a little back to like before we
took that little break over the winterwhen we were doing like, you know,
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actual substantial content and not just readingstories over and over again. Listen,
I love doing the stories. Ithink they are as far as our
listener engagement and stuff, they're therethe most entertaining. I listened to them
a couple of times just too well, I have to listen to them to
make sure they sound good. Butlike I enjoy listening to them a couple
of times to make sure they soundgood. But you know, these are
things we used to do a lotmore of where we're trying to get into,
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you know, kind of teaching peoplesomething about the game. So I
had us right up a few littleBuzzFeed style like listical, you know,
two thousand and seven Internet, justa little little things, a little little
lists about the game. And soI got mine. We'll do that on
the next episode. And Jim's gota couple here, So we're going to
dive in. Jim, what isthe listical we're going to do today?
Well, the first one we're goingto do is one that you actually asked
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me about because you thought I mighthave an insider too that maybe might be
helpful to you. And this isTop five Session prep steps excellent, yes,
and if someone's going to learn somethingon the show, it might as
well be me. Ideally hopefully youand maybe whoever else that that would be
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good. But I have ordered thesein in terms of, in completely my
opinion, worth exactly what you paidfor it, order of if you only
have time to do one, dothis first one, if you only have
time to do to do these firsttwo, so kind of in order of
what you've got time to do,in my opinion, and we can discuss
about why I think they should bein this order, and you know,
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and that sort of thing. Oncewe get them out right, Well,
that out of the way, let'sget into uh, let's get into the
lists. All right, here wego. So the first one that I
have on the list, number one, Top five session prep steps. Go
over your notes from last session.If you can only do one thing,
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this is the thing that I adviseyou to do. However, you're keeping
track, whether it's a handwritten bulletlist or a more thorough campaign diary that
you keep or a player volunteer thatis your scribe that you know or like,
if you have a shared Google docwhere everybody puts notes in and that's
how you build your session notes.However, you do that a video or
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audio recording if you're keeping track ofthe transcript on zoom, and that's what
you use to build your notes.If you've got an online session, if
you only have time for one thing, do that. I would say that
you don't need more than like tenor fifteen minutes maximum. But going over
notes from your last session is yourfirst and best way to get ready for
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today's session. Even if you're runninga one shot, which I know you
do a lot in the store jayyou run one shots, what you can
do with that, you should stillbe taking notes for when you're doing your
one shots, maybe not so much. Here's what the characters did, but
here's what you did as a DMnetworked. Here's what you did as a
DM that didn't and then you cango back over those. You can find
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pain points in your one shot whereplayers had trouble or where they just bulldozed
it, and maybe you need totoughen it up a little, especially if
it's a repeat for a new audience. Going back over those notes most important
thing you can do, I thinkbefore you do anything else, including any
other kind of prep for the actualsession, you're going to run. Yes,
this seems like a bar for entrytype of stuff and where you should
at least be refreshing yourself on whathappened last time. So but it is
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good to have it like like youlike, yeah, of course I need
to do that. I've used almostall of these methods for the for the
couple of games that we've been playing. And of course our playing method has
changed a lot in the past likeyear year and a half, not only
going from like full lockdown mode intonow we're playing in person at my house.
Yeah, but we went from playingover like we just kept trying things
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that just kept either working or notworking, or things that might just work
for our particular group better because wedo know each other irl. So like
we were using roll twenty for thefor the map, and then we're using
Albert Rodeo, and then we're usingjust going over Zoom and then just you
know, Discord for a little whileand using some bots in there. Then
we landed on Zoom, back onZoom for a while because I got one
particular app for Zooms I'll talk aboutin a second. And then once our
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schedule started lining up a little bit, now we were back to playing in
person, which means I gotta changehow we do my notes again. But
my handwriting is god awful, godawful. Josie's unbelievable, So she takes
notes when we play. But I'mmuch more a Google doc type of guy.
Sure, just to just know aunfiltered, just mash up of notes
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that hopefully I know where important thingsare. Yeah, making good use of
the highlight feature and trying to goover it when I'm done, because a
lot of those notes didn't mean anything. Yes, yeah, I mean that's
actual, Like when you're playing typestuff, how do you take notes and
stuff like that? However you dothat. I'm just kind of setting that
aside. I'm ecumenical on that atthe moment, other than to say you
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should have some kind of notes overwhat happens in every session. First thing
you do to prep for the nextsession, go over what you did in
the previous session. So that isthe most important thing as far as I'm
concerned. If you've only got tenminutes to prep for your session, devote
it to going back over your notesfrom the last session. Number two is
the obvious one, but it isa thing that folks don't necessarily do take
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a look at today's adventure, whetherit's a published module or your homebrew adventure
that you've written up yourself. Thenext best thing to do after going over
last week is to read a fewpages ahead to cover the areas the party
might visit and the monsters they mightencounter. You don't need to do a
deep read. You don't have to, you know, sit down and very
carefully go over it with a finetooth comb. But knowing what roots they
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can take and what encounters they mightrun into will help keep you from being
taken by surprise, and that's theimportant thing. Sometimes people will like read
the module once at the beginning andthen sit down and run it thinking that
they know it. And this iswhere you can run into problems where you're
like, oh my god, Icompletely forgot that there's that encounter with the
bandits on the road, and Idid not plan for that tonight at all.
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So just making sure you go backover that and just to make sure,
Oh what if they, like theysaid last time, they were going
to go right, but what ifin the intervening week they've decided no,
maybe we should go left instead.You should kind of have an idea of
the scope of what could happen inthat evening and look ahead to make sure
you know what's going on with it. The other side of that is like,
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well, I guess the bandits arecampl on the left side today.
I mean you can certainly do that. I mean tips about how to tweak
your adventures on the fly is that'salso useful DM advice that we certainly can
get into. But just making surebut you can't do that unless you know
what's going on if they go leftinstead of right. But you know,
oh, those bandits are on theright, I can just switch that over.
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That helps you deal with Not onlydoes it help you deal when they
do what you expect them to do, it's even more useful when they do
what you don't. Did that makesense when they do what you don't?
Yeah, I guess it did.Yeah, Yeah, I got it.
I got it. Okay, wegot there. It reminds me of somewhere
posted it was you look off tothe right, there's a castle in a
distance. The players go, Okay, I guess we're gonna go left then,
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and then it's a cover of theMiyazaki film A House Moving Castle.
Yeah, like, castle's over there. Now all right, yeah, but
no choice thing we talk about,Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, which
depending on how short your game isgoing to be, you know, maybe
maybe this is all we have today, but in a longer game it was
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a little more open story. Yeah, that's that's super important. And this
is the part where I have gottenmyself used to running one shots and now
I'm being asked to run you know, quote unquote real games. And this
is the part where I am whereI need to start stepping up and like,
no, take myself out of theother the five page print out and
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getting ready for day to day stuffwhere like, you know, it's I'm
gonna be running games where I don'tknow everything that's gonna happen. And that's
that's where I'm struggling now. Andby struggling, I mean I haven't really
tried yet. Yeah, but hopefullyhopefully sooner than later. And there's some
kind of indie games, more lucygoosey story games where you can sort of
see to your pants it you can'treally do that in five E. You
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got to have encounters ready to go. You got to have some rough idea
of where people are going to goand looking ahead to make sure that you're
familiar with, especially if you're usinga published module, what's going on.
That's an important part of prep tomake sure you're going to run a good
game. So shall we move onto number three? What do you got?
All? Right? Set up yourplay space in advance. And this
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is not this doesn't have to dowith actual story stuff or reading the module.
This is about the physical space thatyou're going to be having the game
in. And I include your digitalspace with that. So if you're playing
online definitely counts. Yeah, ifyou're playing online, you make sure that
you have the graphics for maps thatyou're going to use. You make sure
you have the tokens set aside inwhatever tabletop you're going to use, that
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those are ready to go that you'renot. I have been in games where
in the middle of the game someonegoes, oh shit, I need lizard
men and they're you know, rootingaround on their drive and making them into
a token and stuff like that.Have all that stuff ready to go will
be really helpful so that you're notspending time rooting around for them during the
session. If you're playing in person, set up your battle matt, set
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up your dungeon tiles, set upyour terrain, or at least have it
off to the side so that whenthat encounter happens, you can boom,
just drop it right on to thetable and you're ready to go, rather
than fishing through your big tackle boxfull of minis right to find some orcs.
Have those guys set aside and readyto go. They can be right
there on the table as a preview, you know, to give the players
a look at what's coming. Oryou can have them behind the screen with
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you, or just you know,have a separate slot in your big mini's
case that is stuff I'm using thisweek, and at some point during the
week's sort of that all in thereso you can just pluck them out and
be ready to go. But basically, the less handling you need to do
during the session, the quicker youcan get right to a combat when it
is time to do that, becauseall of that handling of that physical stuff
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is something that can actually take upa lot of time if you're not ready
to go. I was looking ata couple of videos and the past like
a week or so, looking lookingfor ways to have a more engaging tabletop
experience because these these store games aregoing pretty well for me. And there's
another DM there that's running stuff onlike alternate weeks. Yeah, and I
have to win. I have Iknow it's sounds super competitive game, but
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like I gotta wins. It's nota game as much as it's like a
pageant, right you want to youknow, like like you want to be
the bell of the ball there.I get that, yes exactly. It's
also a good ways on like howto spice up my game a little bit,
and I found a couple of coolthings. But prepping the minis was
a big part of what these guyswere doing. Most of them are playing
at their home and they have awhole room dedicated for and as those kind
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of players that you know, youyou really want to be part of their
session, but maybe not married tothese guys because that's a whole wing,
that's the whole wing of their housegone. But you know what though,
like a lot of these like likea lot of folks I visit that are
like that, Like you know,one spouse has their room that has all
their D and D stuff and shelvesfull of books and bins full of minis.
But then you kind of go aroundthe corner down into the basement and
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you like look in the door andthere's like, you know, fifteen hundred
skeins of yarn and you know orlike you know, dress patterns or something
like that. The plants room exactly. Yeah, if everybody's got their dedicated
hobby space, then I think thatworks out best for everybody. So yes,
you can call that compromise, youcan call that bargaining. Everybody's on
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the same page because I will Iwill happily build Cara her own library slash
corgy sanctuary if I can get mygame room. But prepping their minis and
having them at the ready, allof them were kind of saying the same
thing where it's like, okay,you get your stuff ready for today,
and a couple of the decoys inthere as well, so that they don't
really know exactly what they're going upagainst. Because if they see you with
a table full of little goblins andbandits, then like, all right,
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because there are goblins of bandits today. But if they see like, you
know, three or four goblins,two or three bandits, a medium silver
dragon and a beholder, then theydon't know what they're up against. Yeah,
and four and five. Be someargument about which order you do these,
but I think four is more importantthan five, and four is reread
the player character sheets. It canbe easy to take the PC's abilities and
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backgrounds for granted and start to relyfully on the players to keep track of
all that stuff. But ideally beforeevery session if you can, but if
not, at least whenever they levelup, take some time to go back
and actually look over their full charactersheets to remind yourself what class ability is,
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they've got, what spells they've got, and what they can do that
might either shortcut your encounters if youforget that somebody can fly or has access
to pass wall or something like thatthat can just bypass a whole section of
an encounter that you've set up.Know that that's a possibility, and understand
that that's that they can do that. That's what going back over those sheets
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will help you do, and thinkabout ways as you do that to work
their background and history into the session, whether you're wedging that into a published
module somehow, or they're kind oftrying to shoehorn it in, or you're
using them to build out your Homebrewworld. If you've got Homebrew and you're
looking at that sheet as you're developingwhat you're gonna do. That can really
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help in creating content that is tiedto the characters and that engages them.
But it can get very easy toget kind of laser focused on doing your
thing and forget that it's important tokeep track of where they're at what they're
doing. I know some dms actuallylike to hold on to character sheets for
players. Not every player loves thatas a thing, but however you do
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it, you should always have accessto their sheets and be able to look
at them as they're updating them.And also just to make sure that nobody
is misinterpreting the rules or you know, accidentally giving themselves bonuses that they're not
untitled to, or you know,you know, it completely slipped their mind
that they can only attune to threemagic items. That kind of thing.
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That also keeping track of that inbetween and getting on that before it comes
up in a session also really helpfulto running the game. That's another aspect
of good prep I think. Yeah, and a lot of that assumes that
it's a fully pen and paper charactersheets too, which I think is important
for someone to do at some pointis to do all the math that goes
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into your character, or if you'replaying online, if you're playing on Roll
twenty, if you're using D andD beyond, just make sure that you've
got access to those sheets and thatyou're looking at them on the regular and
communicating with the players about anything yousee that you don't understand or that you're
unclear about. I don't know ifI have a witty retort for this one.
Okay, that sounds great, Jim. Number five last, but not
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least, And like I said,this may depending on maybe even the nature
of the particular session you're going torun that day, kind of be sort
of interchangeable with number four. Butthat is read up on monster tactics.
Take a look at what the creaturesyou might be using in those encounters can
do. Pull out your copies ofthe monsters know what they're doing, and
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the monsters still know what they're doing, and maybe something like you know your
Cobalt Press book of Layers that hassuggestions for running different versions of those monsters
beyond the kind of bog standard monstermanual approach to building them, to building
encounters out jump onto DM Academy ora dming discord that you're part of to
look for tips. Ask for tipson how to effectively run those monsters so
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that they're challenging and fun. Ifyou have tactics in mind in advance,
or better yet, you write themup, write a little battle plan,
just put it on an index cardso that you can, you know,
or post it and just tack itto the inside of your your DM screen
that says you know, they're goingto go after this guy first and then
do this, and here's their typicalstrategy, or think in advance about the
point at which they might decide thefight's not worth it anymore. That's the
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kind of stuff that if you arethinking about it in advance, it will
not only will it speed up play, but you won't get caught by surprise,
because a lot of the things thatwe see in DM Academy and even
some horror stories are I got neckdeep in this encounter and realized I was
over my head and I didn't likeI encountered this situation. I had no
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idea what the monsters should do next, and I feel like I made the
wrong decision. But if you havethat in mind and are thinking about it
in advance, you can adjust onthe fly. If those encounters turn out
to be too easy and go tooquickly or too challenging and you get bogged
down, or they're just starting tofrustrate the players. So having some ideas
about how to handle those situations inadvance super useful and you know, great
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prep. Yeah, I mean wewe show this book a bunch of episodes.
Now the monsters know what they're doing, more of the monsters know what
they're doing. He has one aboutlayers now too. Yeah. Yeah,
it's are Defending your Layer, whichis about layer actions and like bringing bringing
monster or rain to life. Yeah. Volos Guide's great for that too.
Volos is good for a number ofcoldbal press books are good for that.
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Disappointing that those are all third partybooks now that I'm thinking about it,
Well, at this point, thingsget better, get better. Wizards,
Okay, yeah, Bolos is Bolosis their their first stab. They did
it doing something that was beyond justhere's a block of stats and two paragraphs
about you know, what their personalityis. But I try something about how
they fit into the world. Eventhough I said it out loud, I
(23:18):
forgot I said it so Okay,so most of them are a third party.
Yeah, get a little better wizards, how about that? All right?
Certainly the best of them are thirdparty? Yeah yeah, but yeah,
this is this is huge, andthis is I don't know if I
would I might switch four and five, but I agree that it's debatable.
I would say to four, maybeon every level up or maybe every couple
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of sessions. Sure, rereading thecharacter sheets and repping your monster tactics while
you're setting up your plays base,or or while you're preparing for today's adventure.
That's okay, we're going up againstthe Cobols today. Cool, let
me read up on their like packtactics and gang war fair that kind of
stuff. And that's also a thingwhere like, if you know today is
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going to be a cryptal of zombiesfollowed by a cryptical of skeletons followed by
some ghouls, you don't necessarily needto read a lot of monster tactics on
that. But if you're using youknow, some kind of like weird demon
type that you've never put down onthe table before, that's the time where
it might be more important to readup on that. Like I said,
so you're not caught by surprise,so that you're not in the middle of
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the fight looking down the sheet andgo, oh wait, they can teleport.
Holy crap. I should have paidmore attention to that, especially a
monster that is more intelligent too,like a beholder, something that's that's going
to act a little bit more intentionally. Yeah, any any dragon, anything
vaguely human should be should have somesort of plan going into it, where
like you know, your skeletons,zombies and goules, they'll be like,
(24:48):
okay, well, how many attacksdo I get? Yeah, but yeah,
this is this is huge. Ithink I don't mind it being lower
on the list because you can kindof just do it once and just kind
of keep that, you know,to throw the post it notes in with
the monster manual, so that youjust kind of remind yourself and say,
hey, they like they gang upon one enemy, or they like to
split up, or you know anythingelse that that Keith and Man tells you
(25:10):
to do in his books. Yeah, but I will continue to show that
book. It is it is thatgood, is that important. I think
he has a new one coming outtoo. I thought I saw something on
the shelf and I recognized. ButI think I have all this stuff now,
all very good stuff. Jim,and it's and it's a lot of
like like, yeah, this ismostly just things DMS just all kind of
(25:32):
do, but just having it asit almost as a checklist. Yeah,
when you you know you you gota game coming up in two days,
let's let's just start working the listand being able to you know, use
your time properly. Yeah, becauseit can get easy or know how much
time you need. Yeah, becauseit can get easy to get into a
rut, especially if you're like runninga game out every week at the same
time, and you start to think, well, I don't need to prep
(25:56):
I'm running this every week, andthat that prep time can kind of get
squeezed as you you're doing other stuffor your dinner runs a little later or
something like that. And so Ithink having a you know a little bit
of an order of operations of ohcrap, i've only got five minutes before
people start arriving. What's the mostimportant thing to do? In my opinion,
it's roughly in that order. Andbut you know, but we have
listeners that can quibble with that oror suggest things we haven't put there at
(26:19):
all that they think might be moreimportant. Yeah, like la, like
number zero get your snacks ready.Well, that's that's social stuff if you
if you social, if you onlyhave two minutes to prepare, maybe throw
tho pizza rolls in the air fireand have them ready to go. Yeah,
I suppose that's. Yeah. Ifyou're a good DM, your players
are bringing you snacks. So ifyou're a good if they're coming to your
(26:41):
house, you can be a goodhost too, I guess. So listen,
we all we all bring snacks andsometimes we eat them on top of
our books. I was gonna say, like you said, you sent me
a picture of your game, andsomebody had a like half a cake on
top of their player's handbook. Imean, sorry, it was on a
plate. Everybody like it was notliterally a plaque on the player's handbook.
It was on a plate. ButI just, yeah, knows, that
(27:03):
was so so First, for somecontext, show one of my players took
one of my players took a pictureof the of our game. And I've
got not a huge table and there'sonly a DM with three players, and
you know, with everyone's DM screensand books and laptops and everything like that,
play it. You know, spacegot pretty scares pretty quick, and
you know we're we're all adults withit. We're all with adults with adult
money, and we like to goin on the snacks. This table was
(27:26):
more snacks than game. Like theseguys went all out. The the one
guy especially, you know he's gothalf the guys at the table have kids
and the Joe like but Nick inparticular, like he just when he can
get out, gets out and goesall in. So he shows up with
like a bag full of like gummysnacks and like he had a whole ass
cake with them, which was amazingby the way, and uh, he
(27:49):
takes a picture of our game justto be like, hey, look how
much fun. When happened, throwsand throws it online. I realized,
like there's a lot of snacks onthe table, like a lot a lot
of snacks on this table. SoI throw a picture, throw the pictures
you our little discord. And Jim'slike, why is there a cake on
on the on the book? Becausewe ran out of table? Was there
a cake on the book? Justwhy is there a cake on the bull?
(28:15):
Because he had to put it downthe book he wasn't putting on his
laptop got wipe off the book atleast he was eating it with a knife
and fork. There we go.Yeah, yeah, like a pizza,
right, Jim, Yeah yeah,and forget about that one. That's all
we got for today, guys,thank you so much for listening. We're
gonna put something. We might turnthis into a little bit more of a
of a blog article. We'll seeif we feel like taking all the extra
(28:37):
work that that takes. So keepan eye on Curmudgeons Dragons dot com and
we might put some of these upon there. But either way, we'll
put the list in the show noteswith some helpful links. Other than that,
stay tuned for the next episode.It's a lot, but I don't
really I don't really have anything,like, I don't have anything fun here,
go give us a followut on stuff. But if you're listening to us
right now, you already did so, thanks Jim. You're very welcome.
(29:00):
Interested to hear from anybody that hasopinions on our list here. Yeah,
yeah, let's let's do that one. That's that's our call to action today.
So if you disagree with the listsor if you have things that you
want to add, Curmudgeons and Dragonspod at gmail dot com is our email,
and that is Jim is Jim Crocker. If you want to send all
your your angry letters over or yourhappy letters, I'll take you either one.
(29:21):
That's cool. I can take itcool now. Now that's all I
got. Thanks much for listening,Jim, thanks for hanging out, you
Bet and the Thank you Adventurers.Thank you for listening to con Mudgeons and
Jackens. Please chat this with yourfavorite adventuress, leave a review on Apple,
and follow us on social media.All links can be found at Conmudgeons
(29:44):
and draggons dot com. Practice SafeAdventuring my Friends
Hello Adventurers, the podcast for roleplayers and game masters to help level up
your game. I'm your dungeon master, Jason Portiso, and today we are
changing things up a little bit ina few ways. So first let's get
some housekeeping. For reasons too manyto name, we're going to be changing
up the release schedule a bit,and starting today, we'll be releasing just
(00:40):
one episode per week on Mondays.And this is going to give us some
time to prepare a little more wellthought out content and allow me a little
more a weekly time to get someediting done. I am definitely behind.
But speaking of preparing content and gettingediting done, let's get to what's going
on to today's episode. Our recordingschedule got little funny for this session and
we missed the date that I neededto get the episode out on time.
(01:04):
So instead of rushing out something thatI'm not proud of, or we're skipping
a week, I thought I thoughtit'd be fun if we did a little
replay crossover type thing, and wereplayed a past episode from our previous show,
Curmudgeons and Dragons. So this isa later episode when the host roster
was just me and Jim I'm ourco host Josie as well, but this
was recorded at a time when Josiewasn't available to record, so this episode
(01:29):
is just going to feature of myselfand Jim. Joe wasn't part of this
podcast just yet, he was justa fan of the listener. But this
is one of my favorite episodes fromthat show, and not because Josie wasn't
there, but because it was sopacked with actual helpful content and value.
Like we say in the podcast world, but this felt like the direction of
the show wanted to go in,but I didn't have the podcasting experience to
(01:52):
steer us towards that, And itwas episodes like this one that inspired the
rebrand into the show that we nowcall Hello Adventurers. And fun fact,
you'll see in the first few secondswhere the name for this show came from.
So all one hundred and thirteen episodesof Courmergences and Dragons are still available
on all podcast platforms, as wellas Curmudgeons and Dragons dot com. So
(02:12):
if you're looking for more just contentfrom me and Jim and Josie and Jack
and Justin and Greg and everyone elsewho would helped host that show, those
are available out there. You cango check those out right now. But
for now, I like to introduceyou to our replay of episode one hundred
and three, Jim's top five tipsfor preparing your session. Goodbye, Adventurers.
(02:35):
Sometimes talking with friends feels like roleplaying, Sometimes it feels like combat.
Join us at the roundtable and rollan initiative. This is Curmudgeons and
Dragons. Hello adventurers, Welcome tothe Curmudgins and Dragons. My name is
(03:00):
Jason Portiso. Today I'm joined bymister Jim Crocker. Hey, how are
we doing, Jim? How youdoing, Bud? I'm doing pretty good,
Pretty good. I start a brandnew job next week. I got
a library job, so coming outof retirement. Huh yes, yeah,
keep you away using my bookstore skillsin the service of the greater good.
That's what we're that's what we're lookingto do, all right. Is it
(03:23):
a library job. It is alibrary job. Yes, yeah, it's
a library Okay, cool. Yeah, it's at the Montclair Public Library here
in northern New Jersey. I'll beworking like eighteen twenty hours a week something
like that. Nice part time jobto kind of fill in get me out
of the house and on my feet, which is something that I am have
been It is both something I needto do and something that has been requested
(03:43):
of me. So yes, Iwas just gonna say that sounds like Shannon's
idea, good man, So it'snice to have, I would I wonder
it's what it's like to have ajob. I have like seven. Still,
I literally don't know. I don'tknow how to count my jobs.
Let's put it that way, becausetechnically a few of them all fall under
one umbrella, but they all feellike very separate things. So would you
(04:04):
feel better if I said I gotanother job? That would be that works?
Yeah? Okay, there, nowyou're up to well, you know
one, well, one outside thehouse job. I do all of our
inside the house stuff, so thatthat counts as we value. Also you,
I keep you very busy writing ourshow notes, so there's that,
(04:25):
so you know, thank you foryour opinion though, But you know,
well, I was gonna say this, this is a job I'm actually gonna
get paid for. So yeah,oh is that how we count jobs?
Okay? Then I have like one, I guess there's job gigs so yes,
oh gigs at a problem agat Butso today. So just does D
M Boys here, Josie's in.You can tell when it's like the middle
(04:45):
of a school season when Josie hasto take a few episodes off. Yes,
yes, I am recording with hertomorrow, so she's not gone.
She won't be gone for long,but she will be gone today and that's
what matters. She's decent student,so she like actually studies and stuff.
That's you know, I know it'sweird. I wouldn't have skipped a podcast
(05:06):
just to you know, study fora test or anything. No, God,
no, that never. Yeah,she is the opposite as a student.
She's a total opposite as she isas a player. So all the
shenanigans of her in a D andD game, just like, she gets
it all out there and then forthe stuff then matter. Yeah, that's
(05:27):
good. That firewall is important tobeing a functional human being. So which
is the opposite of how I didschool, and that's why I don't have
a degree. But luckily I gotgood at things that don't need degrees.
So lucky me. Anyway, justas DM Boys today. So I had
an idea to kind of take theshow a little back to like before we
took that little break over the winterwhen we were doing like, you know,
(05:50):
actual substantial content and not just readingstories over and over again. Listen,
I love doing the stories. Ithink they are as far as our
listener engagement and stuff, they're therethe most entertaining. I listened to them
a couple of times just too well, I have to listen to them to
make sure they sound good. Butlike I enjoy listening to them a couple
of times to make sure they soundgood. But you know, these are
things we used to do a lotmore of where we're trying to get into,
(06:13):
you know, kind of teaching peoplesomething about the game. So I
had us right up a few littleBuzzFeed style like listical, you know,
two thousand and seven Internet, justa little little things, a little little
lists about the game. And soI got mine. We'll do that on
the next episode. And Jim's gota couple here, So we're going to
dive in. Jim, what isthe listical we're going to do today?
Well, the first one we're goingto do is one that you actually asked
(06:36):
me about because you thought I mighthave an insider too that maybe might be
helpful to you. And this isTop five Session prep steps excellent, yes,
and if someone's going to learn somethingon the show, it might as
well be me. Ideally hopefully youand maybe whoever else that that would be
(06:56):
good. But I have ordered thesein in terms of, in completely my
opinion, worth exactly what you paidfor it, order of if you only
have time to do one, dothis first one, if you only have
time to do to do these firsttwo, so kind of in order of
what you've got time to do,in my opinion, and we can discuss
about why I think they should bein this order, and you know,
(07:18):
and that sort of thing. Oncewe get them out right, Well,
that out of the way, let'sget into uh, let's get into the
lists. All right, here wego. So the first one that I
have on the list, number one, Top five session prep steps. Go
over your notes from last session.If you can only do one thing,
(07:39):
this is the thing that I adviseyou to do. However, you're keeping
track, whether it's a handwritten bulletlist or a more thorough campaign diary that
you keep or a player volunteer thatis your scribe that you know or like,
if you have a shared Google docwhere everybody puts notes in and that's
how you build your session notes.However, you do that a video or
(08:01):
audio recording if you're keeping track ofthe transcript on zoom, and that's what
you use to build your notes.If you've got an online session, if
you only have time for one thing, do that. I would say that
you don't need more than like tenor fifteen minutes maximum. But going over
notes from your last session is yourfirst and best way to get ready for
(08:22):
today's session. Even if you're runninga one shot, which I know you
do a lot in the store jayyou run one shots, what you can
do with that, you should stillbe taking notes for when you're doing your
one shots, maybe not so much. Here's what the characters did, but
here's what you did as a DMnetworked. Here's what you did as a
DM that didn't and then you cango back over those. You can find
(08:43):
pain points in your one shot whereplayers had trouble or where they just bulldozed
it, and maybe you need totoughen it up a little, especially if
it's a repeat for a new audience. Going back over those notes most important
thing you can do, I thinkbefore you do anything else, including any
other kind of prep for the actualsession, you're going to run. Yes,
this seems like a bar for entrytype of stuff and where you should
at least be refreshing yourself on whathappened last time. So but it is
(09:05):
good to have it like like youlike, yeah, of course I need
to do that. I've used almostall of these methods for the for the
couple of games that we've been playing. And of course our playing method has
changed a lot in the past likeyear year and a half, not only
going from like full lockdown mode intonow we're playing in person at my house.
Yeah, but we went from playingover like we just kept trying things
(09:28):
that just kept either working or notworking, or things that might just work
for our particular group better because wedo know each other irl. So like
we were using roll twenty for thefor the map, and then we're using
Albert Rodeo, and then we're usingjust going over Zoom and then just you
know, Discord for a little whileand using some bots in there. Then
we landed on Zoom, back onZoom for a while because I got one
particular app for Zooms I'll talk aboutin a second. And then once our
(09:54):
schedule started lining up a little bit, now we were back to playing in
person, which means I gotta changehow we do my notes again. But
my handwriting is god awful, godawful. Josie's unbelievable, So she takes
notes when we play. But I'mmuch more a Google doc type of guy.
Sure, just to just know aunfiltered, just mash up of notes
(10:18):
that hopefully I know where important thingsare. Yeah, making good use of
the highlight feature and trying to goover it when I'm done, because a
lot of those notes didn't mean anything. Yes, yeah, I mean that's
actual, Like when you're playing typestuff, how do you take notes and
stuff like that? However you dothat. I'm just kind of setting that
aside. I'm ecumenical on that atthe moment, other than to say you
(10:41):
should have some kind of notes overwhat happens in every session. First thing
you do to prep for the nextsession, go over what you did in
the previous session. So that isthe most important thing as far as I'm
concerned. If you've only got tenminutes to prep for your session, devote
it to going back over your notesfrom the last session. Number two is
the obvious one, but it isa thing that folks don't necessarily do take
(11:07):
a look at today's adventure, whetherit's a published module or your homebrew adventure
that you've written up yourself. Thenext best thing to do after going over
last week is to read a fewpages ahead to cover the areas the party
might visit and the monsters they mightencounter. You don't need to do a
deep read. You don't have to, you know, sit down and very
carefully go over it with a finetooth comb. But knowing what roots they
(11:31):
can take and what encounters they mightrun into will help keep you from being
taken by surprise, and that's theimportant thing. Sometimes people will like read
the module once at the beginning andthen sit down and run it thinking that
they know it. And this iswhere you can run into problems where you're
like, oh my god, Icompletely forgot that there's that encounter with the
bandits on the road, and Idid not plan for that tonight at all.
(11:52):
So just making sure you go backover that and just to make sure,
Oh what if they, like theysaid last time, they were going
to go right, but what ifin the intervening week they've decided no,
maybe we should go left instead.You should kind of have an idea of
the scope of what could happen inthat evening and look ahead to make sure
you know what's going on with it. The other side of that is like,
(12:13):
well, I guess the bandits arecampl on the left side today.
I mean you can certainly do that. I mean tips about how to tweak
your adventures on the fly is that'salso useful DM advice that we certainly can
get into. But just making surebut you can't do that unless you know
what's going on if they go leftinstead of right. But you know,
oh, those bandits are on theright, I can just switch that over.
(12:35):
That helps you deal with Not onlydoes it help you deal when they
do what you expect them to do, it's even more useful when they do
what you don't. Did that makesense when they do what you don't?
Yeah, I guess it did.Yeah, Yeah, I got it.
I got it. Okay, wegot there. It reminds me of somewhere
posted it was you look off tothe right, there's a castle in a
distance. The players go, Okay, I guess we're gonna go left then,
(12:56):
and then it's a cover of theMiyazaki film A House Moving Castle.
Yeah, like, castle's over there. Now all right, yeah, but
no choice thing we talk about,Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, which
depending on how short your game isgoing to be, you know, maybe
maybe this is all we have today, but in a longer game it was
(13:16):
a little more open story. Yeah, that's that's super important. And this
is the part where I have gottenmyself used to running one shots and now
I'm being asked to run you know, quote unquote real games. And this
is the part where I am whereI need to start stepping up and like,
no, take myself out of theother the five page print out and
(13:39):
getting ready for day to day stuffwhere like, you know, it's I'm
gonna be running games where I don'tknow everything that's gonna happen. And that's
that's where I'm struggling now. Andby struggling, I mean I haven't really
tried yet. Yeah, but hopefullyhopefully sooner than later. And there's some
kind of indie games, more lucygoosey story games where you can sort of
see to your pants it you can'treally do that in five E. You
(14:01):
got to have encounters ready to go. You got to have some rough idea
of where people are going to goand looking ahead to make sure that you're
familiar with, especially if you're usinga published module, what's going on.
That's an important part of prep tomake sure you're going to run a good
game. So shall we move onto number three? What do you got?
All? Right? Set up yourplay space in advance. And this
(14:22):
is not this doesn't have to dowith actual story stuff or reading the module.
This is about the physical space thatyou're going to be having the game
in. And I include your digitalspace with that. So if you're playing
online definitely counts. Yeah, ifyou're playing online, you make sure that
you have the graphics for maps thatyou're going to use. You make sure
you have the tokens set aside inwhatever tabletop you're going to use, that
(14:46):
those are ready to go that you'renot. I have been in games where
in the middle of the game someonegoes, oh shit, I need lizard
men and they're you know, rootingaround on their drive and making them into
a token and stuff like that.Have all that stuff ready to go will
be really helpful so that you're notspending time rooting around for them during the
session. If you're playing in person, set up your battle matt, set
(15:07):
up your dungeon tiles, set upyour terrain, or at least have it
off to the side so that whenthat encounter happens, you can boom,
just drop it right on to thetable and you're ready to go, rather
than fishing through your big tackle boxfull of minis right to find some orcs.
Have those guys set aside and readyto go. They can be right
there on the table as a preview, you know, to give the players
a look at what's coming. Oryou can have them behind the screen with
(15:28):
you, or just you know,have a separate slot in your big mini's
case that is stuff I'm using thisweek, and at some point during the
week's sort of that all in thereso you can just pluck them out and
be ready to go. But basically, the less handling you need to do
during the session, the quicker youcan get right to a combat when it
is time to do that, becauseall of that handling of that physical stuff
(15:52):
is something that can actually take upa lot of time if you're not ready
to go. I was looking ata couple of videos and the past like
a week or so, looking lookingfor ways to have a more engaging tabletop
experience because these these store games aregoing pretty well for me. And there's
another DM there that's running stuff onlike alternate weeks. Yeah, and I
have to win. I have Iknow it's sounds super competitive game, but
(16:14):
like I gotta wins. It's nota game as much as it's like a
pageant, right you want to youknow, like like you want to be
the bell of the ball there.I get that, yes exactly. It's
also a good ways on like howto spice up my game a little bit,
and I found a couple of coolthings. But prepping the minis was
a big part of what these guyswere doing. Most of them are playing
at their home and they have awhole room dedicated for and as those kind
(16:37):
of players that you know, youyou really want to be part of their
session, but maybe not married tothese guys because that's a whole wing,
that's the whole wing of their housegone. But you know what though,
like a lot of these like likea lot of folks I visit that are
like that, Like you know,one spouse has their room that has all
their D and D stuff and shelvesfull of books and bins full of minis.
But then you kind of go aroundthe corner down into the basement and
(17:00):
you like look in the door andthere's like, you know, fifteen hundred
skeins of yarn and you know orlike you know, dress patterns or something
like that. The plants room exactly. Yeah, if everybody's got their dedicated
hobby space, then I think thatworks out best for everybody. So yes,
you can call that compromise, youcan call that bargaining. Everybody's on
(17:23):
the same page because I will Iwill happily build Cara her own library slash
corgy sanctuary if I can get mygame room. But prepping their minis and
having them at the ready, allof them were kind of saying the same
thing where it's like, okay,you get your stuff ready for today,
and a couple of the decoys inthere as well, so that they don't
really know exactly what they're going upagainst. Because if they see you with
a table full of little goblins andbandits, then like, all right,
(17:45):
because there are goblins of bandits today. But if they see like, you
know, three or four goblins,two or three bandits, a medium silver
dragon and a beholder, then theydon't know what they're up against. Yeah,
and four and five. Be someargument about which order you do these,
but I think four is more importantthan five, and four is reread
the player character sheets. It canbe easy to take the PC's abilities and
(18:10):
backgrounds for granted and start to relyfully on the players to keep track of
all that stuff. But ideally beforeevery session if you can, but if
not, at least whenever they levelup, take some time to go back
and actually look over their full charactersheets to remind yourself what class ability is,
(18:30):
they've got, what spells they've got, and what they can do that
might either shortcut your encounters if youforget that somebody can fly or has access
to pass wall or something like thatthat can just bypass a whole section of
an encounter that you've set up.Know that that's a possibility, and understand
that that's that they can do that. That's what going back over those sheets
(18:52):
will help you do, and thinkabout ways as you do that to work
their background and history into the session, whether you're wedging that into a published
module somehow, or they're kind oftrying to shoehorn it in, or you're
using them to build out your Homebrewworld. If you've got Homebrew and you're
looking at that sheet as you're developingwhat you're gonna do. That can really
(19:14):
help in creating content that is tiedto the characters and that engages them.
But it can get very easy toget kind of laser focused on doing your
thing and forget that it's important tokeep track of where they're at what they're
doing. I know some dms actuallylike to hold on to character sheets for
players. Not every player loves thatas a thing, but however you do
(19:36):
it, you should always have accessto their sheets and be able to look
at them as they're updating them.And also just to make sure that nobody
is misinterpreting the rules or you know, accidentally giving themselves bonuses that they're not
untitled to, or you know,you know, it completely slipped their mind
that they can only attune to threemagic items. That kind of thing.
(19:56):
That also keeping track of that inbetween and getting on that before it comes
up in a session also really helpfulto running the game. That's another aspect
of good prep I think. Yeah, and a lot of that assumes that
it's a fully pen and paper charactersheets too, which I think is important
for someone to do at some pointis to do all the math that goes
(20:17):
into your character, or if you'replaying online, if you're playing on Roll
twenty, if you're using D andD beyond, just make sure that you've
got access to those sheets and thatyou're looking at them on the regular and
communicating with the players about anything yousee that you don't understand or that you're
unclear about. I don't know ifI have a witty retort for this one.
Okay, that sounds great, Jim. Number five last, but not
(20:41):
least, And like I said,this may depending on maybe even the nature
of the particular session you're going torun that day, kind of be sort
of interchangeable with number four. Butthat is read up on monster tactics.
Take a look at what the creaturesyou might be using in those encounters can
do. Pull out your copies ofthe monsters know what they're doing, and
(21:03):
the monsters still know what they're doing, and maybe something like you know your
Cobalt Press book of Layers that hassuggestions for running different versions of those monsters
beyond the kind of bog standard monstermanual approach to building them, to building
encounters out jump onto DM Academy ora dming discord that you're part of to
look for tips. Ask for tipson how to effectively run those monsters so
(21:26):
that they're challenging and fun. Ifyou have tactics in mind in advance,
or better yet, you write themup, write a little battle plan,
just put it on an index cardso that you can, you know,
or post it and just tack itto the inside of your your DM screen
that says you know, they're goingto go after this guy first and then
do this, and here's their typicalstrategy, or think in advance about the
point at which they might decide thefight's not worth it anymore. That's the
(21:49):
kind of stuff that if you arethinking about it in advance, it will
not only will it speed up play, but you won't get caught by surprise,
because a lot of the things thatwe see in DM Academy and even
some horror stories are I got neckdeep in this encounter and realized I was
over my head and I didn't likeI encountered this situation. I had no
(22:10):
idea what the monsters should do next, and I feel like I made the
wrong decision. But if you havethat in mind and are thinking about it
in advance, you can adjust onthe fly. If those encounters turn out
to be too easy and go tooquickly or too challenging and you get bogged
down, or they're just starting tofrustrate the players. So having some ideas
about how to handle those situations inadvance super useful and you know, great
(22:33):
prep. Yeah, I mean wewe show this book a bunch of episodes.
Now the monsters know what they're doing, more of the monsters know what
they're doing. He has one aboutlayers now too. Yeah. Yeah,
it's are Defending your Layer, whichis about layer actions and like bringing bringing
monster or rain to life. Yeah. Volos Guide's great for that too.
Volos is good for a number ofcoldbal press books are good for that.
(22:56):
Disappointing that those are all third partybooks now that I'm thinking about it,
Well, at this point, thingsget better, get better. Wizards,
Okay, yeah, Bolos is Bolosis their their first stab. They did
it doing something that was beyond justhere's a block of stats and two paragraphs
about you know, what their personalityis. But I try something about how
they fit into the world. Eventhough I said it out loud, I
(23:18):
forgot I said it so Okay,so most of them are a third party.
Yeah, get a little better wizards, how about that? All right?
Certainly the best of them are thirdparty? Yeah yeah, but yeah,
this is this is huge, andthis is I don't know if I
would I might switch four and five, but I agree that it's debatable.
I would say to four, maybeon every level up or maybe every couple
(23:41):
of sessions. Sure, rereading thecharacter sheets and repping your monster tactics while
you're setting up your plays base,or or while you're preparing for today's adventure.
That's okay, we're going up againstthe Cobols today. Cool, let
me read up on their like packtactics and gang war fair that kind of
stuff. And that's also a thingwhere like, if you know today is
(24:03):
going to be a cryptal of zombiesfollowed by a cryptical of skeletons followed by
some ghouls, you don't necessarily needto read a lot of monster tactics on
that. But if you're using youknow, some kind of like weird demon
type that you've never put down onthe table before, that's the time where
it might be more important to readup on that. Like I said,
so you're not caught by surprise,so that you're not in the middle of
(24:26):
the fight looking down the sheet andgo, oh wait, they can teleport.
Holy crap. I should have paidmore attention to that, especially a
monster that is more intelligent too,like a beholder, something that's that's going
to act a little bit more intentionally. Yeah, any any dragon, anything
vaguely human should be should have somesort of plan going into it, where
like you know, your skeletons,zombies and goules, they'll be like,
(24:48):
okay, well, how many attacksdo I get? Yeah, but yeah,
this is this is huge. Ithink I don't mind it being lower
on the list because you can kindof just do it once and just kind
of keep that, you know,to throw the post it notes in with
the monster manual, so that youjust kind of remind yourself and say,
hey, they like they gang upon one enemy, or they like to
split up, or you know anythingelse that that Keith and Man tells you
(25:10):
to do in his books. Yeah, but I will continue to show that
book. It is it is thatgood, is that important. I think
he has a new one coming outtoo. I thought I saw something on
the shelf and I recognized. ButI think I have all this stuff now,
all very good stuff. Jim,and it's and it's a lot of
like like, yeah, this ismostly just things DMS just all kind of
(25:32):
do, but just having it asit almost as a checklist. Yeah,
when you you know you you gota game coming up in two days,
let's let's just start working the listand being able to you know, use
your time properly. Yeah, becauseit can get easy or know how much
time you need. Yeah, becauseit can get easy to get into a
rut, especially if you're like runninga game out every week at the same
time, and you start to think, well, I don't need to prep
(25:56):
I'm running this every week, andthat that prep time can kind of get
squeezed as you you're doing other stuffor your dinner runs a little later or
something like that. And so Ithink having a you know a little bit
of an order of operations of ohcrap, i've only got five minutes before
people start arriving. What's the mostimportant thing to do? In my opinion,
it's roughly in that order. Andbut you know, but we have
listeners that can quibble with that oror suggest things we haven't put there at
(26:19):
all that they think might be moreimportant. Yeah, like la, like
number zero get your snacks ready.Well, that's that's social stuff if you
if you social, if you onlyhave two minutes to prepare, maybe throw
tho pizza rolls in the air fireand have them ready to go. Yeah,
I suppose that's. Yeah. Ifyou're a good DM, your players
are bringing you snacks. So ifyou're a good if they're coming to your
(26:41):
house, you can be a goodhost too, I guess. So listen,
we all we all bring snacks andsometimes we eat them on top of
our books. I was gonna say, like you said, you sent me
a picture of your game, andsomebody had a like half a cake on
top of their player's handbook. Imean, sorry, it was on a
plate. Everybody like it was notliterally a plaque on the player's handbook.
It was on a plate. ButI just, yeah, knows, that
(27:03):
was so so First, for somecontext, show one of my players took
one of my players took a pictureof the of our game. And I've
got not a huge table and there'sonly a DM with three players, and
you know, with everyone's DM screensand books and laptops and everything like that,
play it. You know, spacegot pretty scares pretty quick, and
you know we're we're all adults withit. We're all with adults with adult
money, and we like to goin on the snacks. This table was
(27:26):
more snacks than game. Like theseguys went all out. The the one
guy especially, you know he's gothalf the guys at the table have kids
and the Joe like but Nick inparticular, like he just when he can
get out, gets out and goesall in. So he shows up with
like a bag full of like gummysnacks and like he had a whole ass
cake with them, which was amazingby the way, and uh, he
(27:49):
takes a picture of our game justto be like, hey, look how
much fun. When happened, throwsand throws it online. I realized,
like there's a lot of snacks onthe table, like a lot a lot
of snacks on this table. SoI throw a picture, throw the pictures
you our little discord. And Jim'slike, why is there a cake on
on the on the book? Becausewe ran out of table? Was there
a cake on the book? Justwhy is there a cake on the bull?
(28:15):
Because he had to put it downthe book he wasn't putting on his
laptop got wipe off the book atleast he was eating it with a knife
and fork. There we go.Yeah, yeah, like a pizza,
right, Jim, Yeah yeah,and forget about that one. That's all
we got for today, guys,thank you so much for listening. We're
gonna put something. We might turnthis into a little bit more of a
of a blog article. We'll seeif we feel like taking all the extra
(28:37):
work that that takes. So keepan eye on Curmudgeons Dragons dot com and
we might put some of these upon there. But either way, we'll
put the list in the show noteswith some helpful links. Other than that,
stay tuned for the next episode.It's a lot, but I don't
really I don't really have anything,like, I don't have anything fun here,
go give us a followut on stuff. But if you're listening to us
right now, you already did so, thanks Jim. You're very welcome.
(29:00):
Interested to hear from anybody that hasopinions on our list here. Yeah,
yeah, let's let's do that one. That's that's our call to action today.
So if you disagree with the listsor if you have things that you
want to add, Curmudgeons and Dragonspod at gmail dot com is our email,
and that is Jim is Jim Crocker. If you want to send all
your your angry letters over or yourhappy letters, I'll take you either one.
(29:21):
That's cool. I can take itcool now. Now that's all I
got. Thanks much for listening,Jim, thanks for hanging out, you
Bet and the Thank you Adventurers.Thank you for listening to con Mudgeons and
Jackens. Please chat this with yourfavorite adventuress, leave a review on Apple,
and follow us on social media.All links can be found at Conmudgeons
(29:44):
and draggons dot com. Practice SafeAdventuring my Friends
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