May 24, 2024 • 35 mins
In this episode, the trio tackles fan queries from Reddit's r/DMAcademy. Topics include strategies for dealing with players who kill the main villain too early, the ethics of using loaded dice on players, and the endlessly amusing dangers of cursed items. With lively debates and practical advice, they cover how to navigate unexpected player behaviors and create fun, engaging game experiences. Whether you're a game master or an adventurer, you'll find valuable insights and plenty of laughs.
Send us your questions to helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadevnturerspodcast.com/voice
Send us your questions to helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadevnturerspodcast.com/voice
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Episode Transcript
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(00:23):
Podcast The Vocals and Game Masters,No Level Upper Game. It's Weird Master's
Tasso. I'm Joe McCall and JimCrocker. So today I was hoping we
can dig into the mail bag alittle bit. And I know we put
it out there for a bunch ofepisodes and we keep like asking you guys
to send the stuff, and weare we are fresh out mail bags empty.
(00:44):
Boys. We did it. Ianswered every question that that that that's
out there. Trying to wrap theshow up. No, we're gonna go.
We're gonna go fine, we're lookingon the hinde. We're gonna go
looking for trouble. We're gonna gofind find people who need advice and then
for some truously assumed shove it downtheir throat they wanted or not presumptuously assume
(01:06):
that we are the right ones toanswer it. Probably aren't, but we're
gonna pretend. Hey, fake ittill you make it. I'm gonna have
a good time doing it. SoI went over to rate it's our slash
DM Academy. This is something weused to do on Commug and Dragons and
sorted by hop posts for the monthand found a couple of things that I
thought were interesting. So we're gonnapretend but they're asking us. These are
(01:26):
always my favorite episodes to listen towhen I was not on the treasure because
I'm excited. These are cool tomake too, especially at the times when
and while Joycey was creating these episodestoo. There's a lot of times towards
the end where she couldn't make itas she got busy and busy with her
school. But but these these arecool for like, she has her own
school now, that's awesome. Yeah, And me as a as a very
(01:48):
new DM at the time, thiswas this was cool for me to learn
a lot. So let's let's let'slearn today, boys. So first one
I pulled up here is from userand touch Starsky them isn't there somewhere?
Post is titled so my players killedthe BBEG in their first time meeting,
And I'm sure this is something thathappens more often than most DAMS would like
to admit. Oh, I gotlots of opinions about this way. So
(02:12):
what was supposed to happen was theyfind in torturing an important NPC for information
he says some ominous stuff to themand teleports away, except one of the
players has something that grants them invisibility. They got to jump on them.
I swear I rolled three two's andnever rolled higher than a six. And
now he's dead. Clearly I didn'tmake him strong enough. I had his
dying breath say something ominous about powersat work beyond their comprehension. But like
(02:36):
he was supposed to be those powers. So do you have any advice on
making things work after this blunder onmy part? You do say the for
worst worth Is says in five Eit's a different gaming system, but I
don't think that matters to this.He was a Lich, he is a
Lich, and so now he justhow many so many d ten days he'll
(02:57):
get to show back up next tothose flags constitution because you didn't find his
his little soul box that you knowthat is real stuff is in. So
let's let's let's go about this.Let's go about this two ways, like
how how do we fix this particularsituation and how do we prevent it?
So to fix this one, Iactually agree with the top comment here,
So rather than telling you this withmy opinion, I'm going to read theirs
(03:20):
user of Philsov says, turns outhe was just a lieutenant for the real
big bad yeah who who is bothmore evil and hotter thirst year yes yeah,
introduced to him, introduced their silhouettemixt session. Praise the party for
completing this chapter or arc. Yeahyou don't, you like, like this
can be the thing. The thingthat can be tough to keep in mind
(03:46):
is that the players only know andnot even and even if the players know,
that's fine. Even if the playersknow that this is what happened and
that you you know, you kindof messed it up and they killed this
guy early, you just as faras the characters are concerned. You know,
the characters don't know that this isthe ultimate bad guy, and you
(04:11):
know, and like even like lifedoesn't work that way anyway. You know,
there's whole organizations and you know,people have like you say, lieutenants
and bosses and you know, thecousins that want to get revenge and all
that stuff. So there's no Imean, this is this is just a
speed bump, or it ought tojust be a speed bump after you get
(04:33):
over your initial Oh nope, nope, that was what I had in mind.
Now even you know, both thecharacters and the players themselves could be
could be led to think that thiswas the bad guy the whole time.
Yep, and like having bigger thingsat work was just never something that was
like meant for them to know yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(04:53):
I was just going to say theother thing you could do, I
don't know. Spoiler alert by theway, for the new Zack Snyder Star
Wars that's on Netflix. I forgetwhat it's called. It's it's the it's
Star Wars by but but Zack Snyderdoing it. The Moon or something like
that is Rebel Moon. Moon isthe first one, and then the second
one just came out, so somethingcan happened. They kill somebody in the
(05:15):
first one, they are revived inthe second one. You could just do
you revive players all the time.Yeah, they're unless like the party took
the body with them and burned itand then took that ash and like like
separate. You know, there's alldifferent ways that you could just have this
person be revived. Yeah, youcan have a whole a whole series of
(05:40):
episodes where they're trying to prevent thebody from being resurrected by the bigger bad
or the clerics of the Big Badand then when that inevitably goes south,
then yeah, I mean, nowhere that can happen off off screen or
right you find that you hear rumblingsof well, his followers are still now
they're collecting this rare flower that youcan only find on the on the mountain
(06:00):
in the north and what is thatabout? And do some research on that?
And yeah, there's there's a lotof different ways you can go.
And the Dean was smart enough toleave a little trail saying that there was
an ominous thing about powers that workbeyond your comprehension, and he was supposed
to be those powers. No,he doesn't. Right now, he doesn't
have to be. He did hispart by by getting the last of the
(06:21):
information from the APC torture. There'sways, there's ways out of this and
and I mean, and there isthe question of like just you don't even
necessarily need to like do anything otherthan Okay, the boss is dead.
What would the organization do? Right? What what does his you know,
(06:43):
how does his second in command,who maybe didn't like the fact that he
was so obsessed with these player characters, you know, you know what what
are they going to do now thatthey are in charge, Like you know,
I mean I kind of joked aboutthe cousin that wants revenge. But
somewhere somebody is going to be tickedoff the these guys you know, killed
him before his plans could come tofruition. So you know, like it's
(07:06):
you just pause for a moment.Say, you know, if if there's
an army and their general gets killed, like the army doesn't just go oh
man, that sucks. Okay,I guess we gotta, you know,
throw on the towel if anything,If anything, organizations like Scientology became even
more powerful after their leader died.Sure, you know, so like how
(07:30):
do you how would you even preventthis? If this is something you wanted
to prevent. Let's say, let'ssay that Big Bad really you really want
him to continue to be the BigBad and you don't want to go to
second command. Man, I thinkso there's a couple of things. The
first one is you don't have theplayers. You don't introduce him in a
way that compels the players to action, right by having them show up in
(07:53):
the middle of him torturing somebody theylike, you can't there's no way that
they're not going to jump in andthrow themselves right at him. You can
do that but have it, oryou could do that and just have it
so they can't get to him intime. You know. I almost think
of like a window right between them, like yeah, or like a wall
of fire, Joe. Yeah,I mean, that's a use that.
(08:16):
There are other things you could usetoo, Yeah, I mean. And
and honestly, one of the thingsthat I have done and that it's okay
to do is to metagame in thatgood way that we've talked about metagaming,
Yeah, where you just say thescene like exactly, you have that encounter
and you say, this is goingto be a conversation between you and the
(08:39):
bad guy, and I'm telling youright now, you can't fight him.
This is not a fight. Youcan't kill him, but he's not going
to mess you up. This isjust like a scene in the movie where
you see each other for the firsttime, and maybe you can ask some
questions and we're going to role playthis a little bit, but at the
end of it, he's going tobe gone, and you can totally like
set the stakes for that before yousit down and do the scene. Not
(09:01):
everything like you don't always have tosay, you know, if someone says
I tack and you know, youcan say, that's not what we're doing
right now. And yeah, Imean we can complain about agency and you
know. But but you get toyou know, like every now and then
you get to have a scene that'syours, as long as you're not messing
(09:22):
with anybody mechanically yourself. So Ijust for me, right, I only
roll the two and a three fudgethe roles, like if you see it's
going badly one, your players don'tnecessarily know what you roll two is.
They don't know how much HP thisthis person has, right, this entity
(09:43):
has, So how do you knowjust because it drains HP? There's so
many different ways I can think of, you know, probably just off the
top of my head. It's asimilar crum you've got. You've got the
ring that's to teleport you away whenyou get down below fifty percent hit points
(10:03):
or something like that. And thenand not only that, then you have
created a puzzle of sorts that theygot to solved the next time they go
up against him, if they wantto actually take him down. Yeah,
as long as you play fair withit, as long as whatever it is
that you do to get him outof that, you're consistent, like the
next time they run into him ifthey have figured out a way around that,
(10:26):
and ideally you should be ready forthe actual flight at that point.
And part of the challenge is howdo we you know, how do we
keep him from getting away so thenwe can really beat him down. Yeah,
And so I'll be honest, somethinglike this happened in in my game
and I had I designed this thisNPC NBC Who's arrival of one of the
players, And I was like,this guy's super powerful. There's there's no
(10:50):
way. They killed him in oneround within three shots. And I was
like, holy crap. Which wasthe Knick's rival? Oh yeah, yeah,
so you killed him, but hewas on a horse, he had
a companion. Yeah, and sohe started a retreat and you were still
like firing things out. He killedhim, and I was always slumps over.
(11:13):
I thought, I don't think youdied. Oh yeah, but who
but whoops? But I left thatopen okay too, Like I didn't say
he died. But that's my wholepoint is like, one, it could
be the design of your maybe yourbb EG is not so the or B,
especially especially for new dms who aredesigning this for the first time and
(11:35):
who get into their head that ideaof that BBG, which I don't I
don't like that at all, Butthat's a whole separate It's a whole podcast
about having a having a good campaignthat has no BBG stank anywhere near it.
Like the way action economy works,especially in five E, people underestimate
(11:56):
how fast someone can go down.You've got five player characters all using their
actions, concentrating on that one guy. I think that's why I like legendary
step one action, legendary resistance andstuff, So it is so important for
reasons. But give him a retinueof guards. Never have the player go
up and you know, like likelike if your intent is not to have
(12:18):
them smoke him, don't have themmeet him alone. Ever. Yeah,
yeah, I definitely not a fullhealth Yes, with other spell slots for
a couple of hour barrows, thefirst mistakes were made. Yes, try
to prevent it if you can,and if you can't, just kind of
roll with it. Re comment ways, we gave you a bunch of different
(12:41):
ideas, and Joe learned a valuablelesson as well, I really did.
I learned it oil don't don't giveme tavelins, and there's and there's even
nothing wrong, and this can kindof be cool with you know, you
like your eyes go wide, youlean back, you go holy ship,
you guys, you smoked the villainthat I thought was going to be the
campaign villain. WHOA, that's amazing. I got to figure out what to
(13:05):
do next. And they all lookat each other and go, holy shit,
we're badass. Oh yeah, that'sawesome. That's definitely that's the rule
of cool right there. Exactly nextweek with a new big bat who's bigger,
batter and obviously hotter. Yes,exactly. The you have to like,
you know, I'm a big badYou can take that moment to help
(13:28):
them feel cool for having done thatunexpected thing. That's a good take.
Hello Adventurers, just stepping in hereto remind you guys that we're actively looking
for submissions for our Hello DMS episodethat gets recorded every month. Send us
your burning D and D questions theHelloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or
(13:48):
send us a voicemail by visiting HelloAdventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't
forget to begin your message with Hello, DMS. You can't wait to get
your questions to talk about them onthe show. Send us your questions today.
That's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, poor the voice at helloadventurers podcast
dot com slash voice. Now let'sget back to the show, all right.
(14:16):
Next one, I've got here,but this is from user unethical cash
Street. It's from a Reddit userwith a very reddity name. So I'm
gonna read the title. I'm gonnalet you guys react, and then I'm
gonna read the story. All right. The title is I'm going to use
loaded dice on my players. Nice. I love it, all right,
okay, cool, So before I'mcrucified, hear me out. Yah,
(14:39):
yeah, all right, I didread this one. I'm actually kind of
like this because the dice just arrivedand I'm really excited. I'm already lost
to minds of fandelvery. My playerswill be entering a room with three red
brands gambling in their hideout. Theplayers are disguised, so I'm going to
invite them to the game. Theplan is to have them play a variation
of twenty one where they roll twoD six try to get as close the
(15:00):
twelve as possible, one of theRed Brands will be playing with the cheat
dice and clean them out. I'llhave my players roll for investigation. If
they don't catch on, a fightwill almost definitely break out, so they'll
make their money back. And thensome I tested the dice and it's very
obvious by the way they roll thatthese are loaded dice. My players are
very laid back, and I'm feelingpretty safe about it, and I'm curious
(15:20):
your thoughts. Doesn't seem unfair tomake one of the NPCs a blatant cheater.
I think having the cheating character likemanifest itself into your actual gameplay and
you're rolling very loaded dice in frontof them. This only works if you
play I r L by the wayI'm going to assume work with dice rolls.
Yeah, well, and I thinkthat's probably part of it too,
(15:41):
is right that you're doing that.But I love this idea. This is
great. Is to kind of bringit into our world a little bit.
And now here's the thing. Youthink that because you know they're loaded and
you're watching them, you're like,oh, anybody would catch this, that
that these are dearly loaded dice?I wouldn't necessarily assume that. So if
(16:02):
the players miss it, you haveto say, hey, look at whoever
basically has the highest passive perception andsay, make a quick perception check because
something funny is going on here.Yeah. Yeah, if they don't catch
it immediately, if they don't catchwhat she does, say you want the
perception checks. But like I justkind of like be able to pick up
twelve a game for me boys,especially because like I'm looking uploaded dice.
(16:25):
Everything's coming up twelves for me today. Weird. I'm looking uploaded dice right
now, and like you know,your your normal you know, set of
seven dice for role playing game isgoing to have numerals right on the d
sixes, and every other gaming diceout there from YACHTYA to Monopoly is going
to have what's called pips on thedice. And if you just you know,
pull out a special set of twodice to have pips and not numerals,
(16:45):
that might be that might be redflag number one. So this this
story does a thing that that isa that is a problem that I see
a lot of dms getting into thecan kind of spin over into horror story
stuff. Or that that that commitssomething of a of a category error.
(17:07):
There's a category error at work here, I feel like, and that is
like conflating what's going on in reallife and things that you want the players
to see and what's going on inthe game and what you want the characters
to see. And and there's anotherthing that this guy does that I that
drives me up a wall, whichis he says, well, obviously,
(17:30):
here's how the encounter is gonna gostart to finish to you know, all
the way through to the end.And that's not like no plans or lives,
you know, contact with the players, right, And he may be
like, you know, lavishly hintingthat he's throwing these these weighted dice and
stuff like this, and the playersmay not catch on that they're weighted,
(17:53):
or they may see it, butlike assume that it's like like that they're
just supposed to play along, youknow, or and this is the worst
case scenario, somebody might see thatand like really, no kidding, think
that he thinks they're so stupid they'renot going to notice it, Which is
(18:15):
a risk that you run when youdo stuff like this where you're trying to
kind of look like you're hoodwinking theplayers and not having stuff in the game
that the characters and may notice andthings like that and everything. I like,
like like years and years ago,you know, I kind of through
through a couple of kind of youknow, things that backfired in ways that
(18:38):
I was not expecting that I thoughtit was real clever because I was gonna,
you know, like like like tweakthe players. Somehow I've stopped doing
that and I don't do that,and I'm like, like I get I
get why people think this is gonnabe fun, but it just like in
my experience just doesn't never works outthat way. It raised a lot of
(19:02):
good points and does you have tohave the right relationship already with the players.
Yeah, I'm just going to readone of the comments here. This
is from redditor a maximum Fox eightythree that brings up a lot of the
same points you just borrow Gym's up. I think it's a great idea in
theory. I think there are somepitfalls worth being aware of in practice.
Doesn't mean it's not a great idea, just means you need to tast some
extra things into account. Number one, does this game have any precedent for
(19:26):
this sort of meta pseudo fourth wallbreaking mechanic because if so, one possible
outcome I can see happening is yourplayer is just being extremely confused by the
obviously loaded dice and are wondering ifcalling out the DM is something they're supposed
to do, or wondering if youmight be having a weird power tripping moment,
and things will get awkward if theystart asking questions about it. Yeah,
I can see it's working super wellif there's a high level of player
(19:49):
slash DM trust and you seem tobe mitigating that possible pitfall with the investigation
checks. So I mean it kindof just kind of goes down that for
a while, but it seems tobe along the lines of where you're where
you're going with this gym. Yeah, but has the very high potential to
just be just like a clever wayof showing something happening happening in game just
(20:11):
to make sure that the players aren'tmake sure you don't lose players trust over
it. It's funny because it remindedme of my bad acting and how that
it confused players in my game,and they're like, well, the way
like you your face was making thisface, and I was like, oh,
I was just I was just doinga voice and that's why my face
was making that. Sure, Ididn't know that we were that you were
(20:33):
taking like everything like you know,I wasn't in costume, I wasn't on
a stage, but we were rightthough that you weren't. Though they weren't.
They kind of misconstrued something. Andthat goes to your other point,
Jim, where it's like the youknow, where you think it's gonna go,
(20:56):
Yeah, it never does. Itnever does you think that they're going
to see right through it or they'regoing to see what you think they're going
to see. They're not. They'regoing to have their own interpretation of that.
So when now when I do voicesor role play at all of my
players, I'm very careful to belike, Okay, I have hundred be
in character. I can't kind ofyou know, call this in at all.
(21:19):
I can't roll my eyes, youknow, even a little bit if
that's not what this character would havedone in this moment when we do that,
and so I do kind of agree, like I think it's clever,
not clever, I think it's Ithink it could be fun oh, clever.
I think it could be fun ifyou have the right relationship and everything
with those players. And obviously ithas to be in person game, but
(21:41):
there's definitely you would have to weighout risk versus report on this one.
Yeah, I can't because how muchyou are loaded done clever. I can't
think of this as clever. It'sgimmicky. Gimmicky for sure. Yet Well
that's fine. Yeah, it justfeels like this kind of thing, like
like it just feels like someone who'slike this is a DM who's approaching this
(22:08):
like because he thinks this will befun for him and and and like hopes
that the players will come along.But clearly like he finds this idea hilarious,
right, but hasn't thought you know, in like there's no indication here
that like the table has said thisis something that they're interested in or you
(22:30):
know, like I would love thatmore information about like do they do stuff
like this all the time? Youknow, Like do they have a thing
where like when they show up atthe bar and they do a drinking contest,
you know, does the DM andone of the players each you know
take a mug of you know,a mugga root beer and whoever can drink
(22:52):
it the fastest, they they winthat thing. Sure you know where they're
like you say, kind of breakingthe fourth wall like this, I would
say any any sort of like fourthall shenanigans. If you're doing anything even
from like we mentioned when we werecalling my voice, acting on the last
mail bag and putting on costumes andor having like some some sort of like
like a coin or a pen thatif you're already doing that kind of stuff,
(23:14):
I think this is a wide openfair game. So so the core
of the question is is this okay? And I think that generally it's like
yeah, but yeah, And Imean one of the other things that you
one of the other ways that youdo this is you can kind of you
know, you know, put thesheets aside and everything, and you say,
okay, now we're going to playthe dice game, and as you
know, you shuck a shuck ashuckut and roll the dice is the DM
(23:37):
and be really like overt about youknow, when the player reaches for the
dice, say no, no,no, not those dice. You know,
you sweep you sweep those up andyou hand them a different set of
dice. Kind of thing you rollthese dice, then that can kind of,
you know, like like lampshade it, because like, no matter how
(24:00):
overt you think you're being, there'sjust gonna be times when they cannot read
your mind and they're not going totake it in the direction they have to.
They have to pick it up threedifferent times. Yeah, right,
Like that's like the rule of three. Like literally they have to like figure
it out three different times for themto actually figure it out and go,
oh, it's like a oh,it's like a thing. I'm pretty sure
(24:22):
you read that about your toddler.But that also does go for players too.
And then they break the fourth wallby punching you in the face.
Yes, that's what my toddler does. Kids scratched me, he drew blood
on me. It's like I havea cat claw claw bite. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, bared claw.All right, let's do one more of
(24:48):
these. I've got one from userNano the Awesome. This is called and
I feel like the title gives justkind of gives us all we need to
know. I'll read the whole thinganyway, and I'll do is read the
title and kind of rolled my eyesand just smiled because I like knowing that
other people go through this with theirplayers too. Thank you for giving us
(25:08):
content. The title is how doI convince my players that the beholder statue
that shoots them when they talk toit cannot be weaponized? That's great,
Yeah, classic, I think ifthey could either read this, but I'm
going to anyway. So I havea new group of players, some of
which are brand new to the game. Combine that with the campaign that is
(25:30):
somewhat self directed, and it ledme to needing a bunch of side quests.
So I pull out my Ractose Carnival. It's a carnival run by devils
with games designed to whittle you downso they can eventually kill you. One
of the tests involved a beholder statue. They had what is true beauty written
on it with a missing eye.If you put your hand in the eye,
it will give you a key.If you started talking to it,
(25:51):
one of the stalks shoots a beamand deals with one D four psychic damage.
Now, I mean, it's veryclear that it only shoots the person
who talked to it, and thedamage is trivial. But they took it
and keep trying to throw it atenemies, and it keeps shooting them.
I re emphasize every time it onlyshoots you, but they keep doing it.
It gets a laugh from the table. But last combat, multiple characters
(26:11):
spent turns either retrieving or talking tothe statue in combat. Even after that,
they were all talking about how toweaponize this thing, like the soul
knife rogue was talking about how howgood then the psychic damage was when he
just sneak attack for sixteen psychic damageat level four. Should I just let
them keep shooting themselves or do weneed to have a sit down with them
(26:33):
and be very clear it was aone time gag that cannot be weaponized.
I think you need to There hasto be a reason, Like it's there's
a font of power under the statuethat can't be moved. There's it's in
an area, there's an area ofeffect spell that is part of it,
like that they can they can't figureout. Or it can just be a
(26:56):
cursed item. This yeahthing like that, because there's if there's AOI you're a
font of something like they can theycan disarm itright, like a cursed item
is a cursed item, and likeI don't I don't think it's a mechanical
thing. I think they're just tryingto be Okay, well if no,
but if if it's cursed item,they want it. They want it to
be a curse item so they cantake it and bring it with them.
Yeah, they can. That's what'shappening. So the question is do you
(27:18):
stop them or do you just letthem keep shooting themselves. I mean,
this is one of those things wherelike, I guess they're having fun with
this. It sounds like sounds what'shappened to Blast, But this is like,
I mean, this is the DMputting like like a dumb joke thing
in and the players are like callinghis bluff and you know, one outing
(27:45):
trying to one up him on it, and this like like this just feels
to me like a campaign where thisis not the first time this has happened,
and it will not be the lasttime that something like this has happened,
you know, because like he putsa he puts like a goofy joke
thing in there, and rather thanthem going oh haha, goofy joke thing
and then getting on with the game, they have made it the focus of
(28:10):
the game. That's why I don'twhen I when I run superhero games.
I don't let anybody play Deadpool,like exactly this kind of thing. This
is real easy. And it's likelike if you if you feel like you
can't, just say, guys,cut it out. It doesn't work.
(28:30):
You just have it run out ofjuice. Whatever magical woo woo powers those
psychic blasts, you know. Itjust you know, like they look at
it. Oh, this time itonly does one D two you know,
the next time it only does asingle point. And then they look at
it and just it goes and thennothing happens. Just have it run out
(28:53):
of juice. They'll get bored withit, and and and they'll set it
aside and they'll look for whatever thenext dumb running joke that is more interesting
them to them than this campaign.That that's your problem right there, is
that the running joke is more interestingto the table than the actual content of
(29:14):
the campaign. I mean that that'sthe underlying problem here. I promise that
was the beholder statue. The problemis that they find that beholder statue more
interesting than whatever else it is that'sgoing on. Sure, that's that's a
totally fair analysis of it. Yeah, I'm very much of the you know
and this this probably has a lotto do with the the shorter games that
I run, But like, ifthey're having fun, they're having fun,
(29:36):
and what are we what are wehere to do if not to have fun?
Yeah, but everybody's got to havefun. And if if, if
that just becomes tedious session after sessionof you sitting while they're while they're refusing
to engage with the story that you'veput in front of them, that is
totally fair. I mean it becomesits own that's its own problem my way.
But you know, having it goonf for like, having having them
(29:57):
even continue to try it over andover again for a one entire combat sounds
hysterical and like a second time whereit doesn't work, dates start to realize,
okay, this is like after awhole second combat, it's like,
guys, I don't think we cando this even funnier. And then like
several sessions go by, they go, wait, I've got just the thing,
and they try it one more time? Is that themselves? For two
(30:18):
damage peak comedy and then throw itout. I also, this is also
one of the other things where becausewe don't have the whole story, we
haven't been at that table is like, is it no kidding the whole table
that finds this hilarious or is itlike a couple of cutups three that are
life five or something exactly. Youknow that like have decided that this is
(30:41):
the funniest thing ever, and thatby doing this all the time, they
don't have to listen to somebody else, you know, get into like,
you know, interpersonal conversations with charactersbecause they're not interested in that. The
story does say it gets a laughfrom the table. Multiple characters spend their
turns retrieving or tall to it.So not all of them, It doesn't
(31:02):
say all of them don't, right, but I'm saying like so, so
he says at the table and themultiple characters, it could be five.
It's still a social social situation situationtoo, and so you know that's part
of it. Is like if ifthere's five of us, four of us
are laughing. I'm laughing too,you know. Now if there was two
people kind of bringing down the wholeno, like ruining their action economy because
(31:26):
they think this is funny and therest of the tables is getting pissed about
it, I think I feel likethat'd be a different post at that point,
there'd be a different tone. Well, unless I feels the only one
being really annoyed by this is DM. Yeah except that, except that,
like I mean, the DM isfocused on that and not necessarily whether the
other people are into it or not. He's focused on the people that are
(31:48):
trying to you know, like likethis is the thing where you just say
no once and then you put itto bed. It doesn't have to like
like this is only been an ongoingthing because he finds it funny too sure
or did yes exactly? There yougo, Yeah, that's it. The
(32:10):
joke has gotten old even for himnow. So I like the whole letting
it run out of juice thing usedup its mojo. Hopefully, the answer
supposedly should be like let them tryuntil they get bored. It's as they're
not getting bored, so make them. Make them get bored of it,
or give them a new give thema new shiny toy that'll that'll annoy you
next. I I kind of likewhere the table turn in. If they
(32:35):
move it, it turns into areal beholder. Yeah, they say,
give them a concert. They talkedto it too much, and now it's
a real beholder who has a lotof questions for the going to iye tyrant
or something that's the one that theylike come into existence from the dream the
other beholders. Yeah, but we'llfind out soon. Yeah, I'll just
I'm just gonna follow this to thisthis user on reddit and wait for the
next question. Yeah, so thatis that's my favorite post from dm Academy
(32:59):
for this month. I'd love toanswer your question, so I will open
our mail bag back up so youcan send us your questions to you Hello
Adventurers podcast at gmail dot com orask us yourself at Hello Adventurers dot com
slash voice. How would you?How would you deal with these things?
And what's your what's your most annoyingfirst item that your players try to try?
The Shenanigan ice weaponize? Yeah?Does it be weaponized? Just yeah,
(33:22):
I guess true. Yes, youcan absolutely have out of combat Shenanigans.
Yeah. What's the dumb piece ofcrap you put into your game that
they decided was more interesting than theactual campaign? It was a It was
a door person for me. Ohsorry, I wasn't supposed to love Listen
you make fun of door like,well, I don't want to spoil that.
(33:42):
While talk about it loft, healthyair. But door Door is one
of my favorite characters. I ohno, no, no, not no,
not door a door person. I'mtalking about the campaign that you're in
with me. Oh yeah, yeah. We went like someone who guards the
door to a building pretty much.Yeah, okay, the guy who answers
the door. I was like,fantastic. Yeah, we went away off
the rounds. He was like,but one of the funniest sessions you ever
(34:07):
head, so that we're going totalk about for a while. So like,
if everyone agrees to it, that'sfine. If everyone's having fun,
then I no getting everyone decides that'swhat the game is about first, right.
I only thought that impressed the wholesession that night, and I hadn't,
so I didn't find out until thenext time we played that I had
not. Actually, you know,well, surprise we're doing We're doing something
(34:30):
else now. But I'm gonna wrapthis one up for the day. Guys,
thanks for taking care of these withme. I love doing any kind
of advice episode. I love doingthem, so please send us your questions
again. It's Allow Adventures podcast atJamail dot Tom. Hello Adventures dot Tom.
Slash Voice to Leave is a voicemail. That's gonna wrap it up,
Jim, Joe, thanks for hangingout. Yeah you bet, Thanks for
your question. Yeah, I thinkwe're done podcasting for the day. We're
(34:52):
gonna go home, so I'm gonnawrite home. Guys, thank you for
listening to Hello Adventurers. We areyour host Jason. He's a Jim Crocker
and Joe McCall producer, editor,an engineer Jason Bertiso music by an experior
artwork by Kristin Broderick. You canread out to us with any feedback or
suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast atgmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a
JPP audio production. Good Goodbye Adventurers.
Podcast The Vocals and Game Masters,No Level Upper Game. It's Weird Master's
Tasso. I'm Joe McCall and JimCrocker. So today I was hoping we
can dig into the mail bag alittle bit. And I know we put
it out there for a bunch ofepisodes and we keep like asking you guys
to send the stuff, and weare we are fresh out mail bags empty.
(00:44):
Boys. We did it. Ianswered every question that that that that's
out there. Trying to wrap theshow up. No, we're gonna go.
We're gonna go fine, we're lookingon the hinde. We're gonna go
looking for trouble. We're gonna gofind find people who need advice and then
for some truously assumed shove it downtheir throat they wanted or not presumptuously assume
(01:06):
that we are the right ones toanswer it. Probably aren't, but we're
gonna pretend. Hey, fake ittill you make it. I'm gonna have
a good time doing it. SoI went over to rate it's our slash
DM Academy. This is something weused to do on Commug and Dragons and
sorted by hop posts for the monthand found a couple of things that I
thought were interesting. So we're gonnapretend but they're asking us. These are
(01:26):
always my favorite episodes to listen towhen I was not on the treasure because
I'm excited. These are cool tomake too, especially at the times when
and while Joycey was creating these episodestoo. There's a lot of times towards
the end where she couldn't make itas she got busy and busy with her
school. But but these these arecool for like, she has her own
school now, that's awesome. Yeah, And me as a as a very
(01:48):
new DM at the time, thiswas this was cool for me to learn
a lot. So let's let's let'slearn today, boys. So first one
I pulled up here is from userand touch Starsky them isn't there somewhere?
Post is titled so my players killedthe BBEG in their first time meeting,
And I'm sure this is something thathappens more often than most DAMS would like
to admit. Oh, I gotlots of opinions about this way. So
(02:12):
what was supposed to happen was theyfind in torturing an important NPC for information
he says some ominous stuff to themand teleports away, except one of the
players has something that grants them invisibility. They got to jump on them.
I swear I rolled three two's andnever rolled higher than a six. And
now he's dead. Clearly I didn'tmake him strong enough. I had his
dying breath say something ominous about powersat work beyond their comprehension. But like
(02:36):
he was supposed to be those powers. So do you have any advice on
making things work after this blunder onmy part? You do say the for
worst worth Is says in five Eit's a different gaming system, but I
don't think that matters to this.He was a Lich, he is a
Lich, and so now he justhow many so many d ten days he'll
(02:57):
get to show back up next tothose flags constitution because you didn't find his
his little soul box that you knowthat is real stuff is in. So
let's let's let's go about this.Let's go about this two ways, like
how how do we fix this particularsituation and how do we prevent it?
So to fix this one, Iactually agree with the top comment here,
So rather than telling you this withmy opinion, I'm going to read theirs
(03:20):
user of Philsov says, turns outhe was just a lieutenant for the real
big bad yeah who who is bothmore evil and hotter thirst year yes yeah,
introduced to him, introduced their silhouettemixt session. Praise the party for
completing this chapter or arc. Yeahyou don't, you like, like this
can be the thing. The thingthat can be tough to keep in mind
(03:46):
is that the players only know andnot even and even if the players know,
that's fine. Even if the playersknow that this is what happened and
that you you know, you kindof messed it up and they killed this
guy early, you just as faras the characters are concerned. You know,
the characters don't know that this isthe ultimate bad guy, and you
(04:11):
know, and like even like lifedoesn't work that way anyway. You know,
there's whole organizations and you know,people have like you say, lieutenants
and bosses and you know, thecousins that want to get revenge and all
that stuff. So there's no Imean, this is this is just a
speed bump, or it ought tojust be a speed bump after you get
(04:33):
over your initial Oh nope, nope, that was what I had in mind.
Now even you know, both thecharacters and the players themselves could be
could be led to think that thiswas the bad guy the whole time.
Yep, and like having bigger thingsat work was just never something that was
like meant for them to know yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(04:53):
I was just going to say theother thing you could do, I
don't know. Spoiler alert by theway, for the new Zack Snyder Star
Wars that's on Netflix. I forgetwhat it's called. It's it's the it's
Star Wars by but but Zack Snyderdoing it. The Moon or something like
that is Rebel Moon. Moon isthe first one, and then the second
one just came out, so somethingcan happened. They kill somebody in the
(05:15):
first one, they are revived inthe second one. You could just do
you revive players all the time.Yeah, they're unless like the party took
the body with them and burned itand then took that ash and like like
separate. You know, there's alldifferent ways that you could just have this
person be revived. Yeah, youcan have a whole a whole series of
(05:40):
episodes where they're trying to prevent thebody from being resurrected by the bigger bad
or the clerics of the Big Badand then when that inevitably goes south,
then yeah, I mean, nowhere that can happen off off screen or
right you find that you hear rumblingsof well, his followers are still now
they're collecting this rare flower that youcan only find on the on the mountain
(06:00):
in the north and what is thatabout? And do some research on that?
And yeah, there's there's a lotof different ways you can go.
And the Dean was smart enough toleave a little trail saying that there was
an ominous thing about powers that workbeyond your comprehension, and he was supposed
to be those powers. No,he doesn't. Right now, he doesn't
have to be. He did hispart by by getting the last of the
(06:21):
information from the APC torture. There'sways, there's ways out of this and
and I mean, and there isthe question of like just you don't even
necessarily need to like do anything otherthan Okay, the boss is dead.
What would the organization do? Right? What what does his you know,
(06:43):
how does his second in command,who maybe didn't like the fact that he
was so obsessed with these player characters, you know, you know what what
are they going to do now thatthey are in charge, Like you know,
I mean I kind of joked aboutthe cousin that wants revenge. But
somewhere somebody is going to be tickedoff the these guys you know, killed
him before his plans could come tofruition. So you know, like it's
(07:06):
you just pause for a moment.Say, you know, if if there's
an army and their general gets killed, like the army doesn't just go oh
man, that sucks. Okay,I guess we gotta, you know,
throw on the towel if anything,If anything, organizations like Scientology became even
more powerful after their leader died.Sure, you know, so like how
(07:30):
do you how would you even preventthis? If this is something you wanted
to prevent. Let's say, let'ssay that Big Bad really you really want
him to continue to be the BigBad and you don't want to go to
second command. Man, I thinkso there's a couple of things. The
first one is you don't have theplayers. You don't introduce him in a
way that compels the players to action, right by having them show up in
(07:53):
the middle of him torturing somebody theylike, you can't there's no way that
they're not going to jump in andthrow themselves right at him. You can
do that but have it, oryou could do that and just have it
so they can't get to him intime. You know. I almost think
of like a window right between them, like yeah, or like a wall
of fire, Joe. Yeah,I mean, that's a use that.
(08:16):
There are other things you could usetoo, Yeah, I mean. And
and honestly, one of the thingsthat I have done and that it's okay
to do is to metagame in thatgood way that we've talked about metagaming,
Yeah, where you just say thescene like exactly, you have that encounter
and you say, this is goingto be a conversation between you and the
(08:39):
bad guy, and I'm telling youright now, you can't fight him.
This is not a fight. Youcan't kill him, but he's not going
to mess you up. This isjust like a scene in the movie where
you see each other for the firsttime, and maybe you can ask some
questions and we're going to role playthis a little bit, but at the
end of it, he's going tobe gone, and you can totally like
set the stakes for that before yousit down and do the scene. Not
(09:01):
everything like you don't always have tosay, you know, if someone says
I tack and you know, youcan say, that's not what we're doing
right now. And yeah, Imean we can complain about agency and you
know. But but you get toyou know, like every now and then
you get to have a scene that'syours, as long as you're not messing
(09:22):
with anybody mechanically yourself. So Ijust for me, right, I only
roll the two and a three fudgethe roles, like if you see it's
going badly one, your players don'tnecessarily know what you roll two is.
They don't know how much HP thisthis person has, right, this entity
(09:43):
has, So how do you knowjust because it drains HP? There's so
many different ways I can think of, you know, probably just off the
top of my head. It's asimilar crum you've got. You've got the
ring that's to teleport you away whenyou get down below fifty percent hit points
(10:03):
or something like that. And thenand not only that, then you have
created a puzzle of sorts that theygot to solved the next time they go
up against him, if they wantto actually take him down. Yeah,
as long as you play fair withit, as long as whatever it is
that you do to get him outof that, you're consistent, like the
next time they run into him ifthey have figured out a way around that,
(10:26):
and ideally you should be ready forthe actual flight at that point.
And part of the challenge is howdo we you know, how do we
keep him from getting away so thenwe can really beat him down. Yeah,
And so I'll be honest, somethinglike this happened in in my game
and I had I designed this thisNPC NBC Who's arrival of one of the
players, And I was like,this guy's super powerful. There's there's no
(10:50):
way. They killed him in oneround within three shots. And I was
like, holy crap. Which wasthe Knick's rival? Oh yeah, yeah,
so you killed him, but hewas on a horse, he had
a companion. Yeah, and sohe started a retreat and you were still
like firing things out. He killedhim, and I was always slumps over.
(11:13):
I thought, I don't think youdied. Oh yeah, but who
but whoops? But I left thatopen okay too, Like I didn't say
he died. But that's my wholepoint is like, one, it could
be the design of your maybe yourbb EG is not so the or B,
especially especially for new dms who aredesigning this for the first time and
(11:35):
who get into their head that ideaof that BBG, which I don't I
don't like that at all, Butthat's a whole separate It's a whole podcast
about having a having a good campaignthat has no BBG stank anywhere near it.
Like the way action economy works,especially in five E, people underestimate
(11:56):
how fast someone can go down.You've got five player characters all using their
actions, concentrating on that one guy. I think that's why I like legendary
step one action, legendary resistance andstuff, So it is so important for
reasons. But give him a retinueof guards. Never have the player go
up and you know, like likelike if your intent is not to have
(12:18):
them smoke him, don't have themmeet him alone. Ever. Yeah,
yeah, I definitely not a fullhealth Yes, with other spell slots for
a couple of hour barrows, thefirst mistakes were made. Yes, try
to prevent it if you can,and if you can't, just kind of
roll with it. Re comment ways, we gave you a bunch of different
(12:41):
ideas, and Joe learned a valuablelesson as well, I really did.
I learned it oil don't don't giveme tavelins, and there's and there's even
nothing wrong, and this can kindof be cool with you know, you
like your eyes go wide, youlean back, you go holy ship,
you guys, you smoked the villainthat I thought was going to be the
campaign villain. WHOA, that's amazing. I got to figure out what to
(13:05):
do next. And they all lookat each other and go, holy shit,
we're badass. Oh yeah, that'sawesome. That's definitely that's the rule
of cool right there. Exactly nextweek with a new big bat who's bigger,
batter and obviously hotter. Yes,exactly. The you have to like,
you know, I'm a big badYou can take that moment to help
(13:28):
them feel cool for having done thatunexpected thing. That's a good take.
Hello Adventurers, just stepping in hereto remind you guys that we're actively looking
for submissions for our Hello DMS episodethat gets recorded every month. Send us
your burning D and D questions theHelloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or
(13:48):
send us a voicemail by visiting HelloAdventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't
forget to begin your message with Hello, DMS. You can't wait to get
your questions to talk about them onthe show. Send us your questions today.
That's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, poor the voice at helloadventurers podcast
dot com slash voice. Now let'sget back to the show, all right.
(14:16):
Next one, I've got here,but this is from user unethical cash
Street. It's from a Reddit userwith a very reddity name. So I'm
gonna read the title. I'm gonnalet you guys react, and then I'm
gonna read the story. All right. The title is I'm going to use
loaded dice on my players. Nice. I love it, all right,
okay, cool, So before I'mcrucified, hear me out. Yah,
(14:39):
yeah, all right, I didread this one. I'm actually kind of
like this because the dice just arrivedand I'm really excited. I'm already lost
to minds of fandelvery. My playerswill be entering a room with three red
brands gambling in their hideout. Theplayers are disguised, so I'm going to
invite them to the game. Theplan is to have them play a variation
of twenty one where they roll twoD six try to get as close the
(15:00):
twelve as possible, one of theRed Brands will be playing with the cheat
dice and clean them out. I'llhave my players roll for investigation. If
they don't catch on, a fightwill almost definitely break out, so they'll
make their money back. And thensome I tested the dice and it's very
obvious by the way they roll thatthese are loaded dice. My players are
very laid back, and I'm feelingpretty safe about it, and I'm curious
(15:20):
your thoughts. Doesn't seem unfair tomake one of the NPCs a blatant cheater.
I think having the cheating character likemanifest itself into your actual gameplay and
you're rolling very loaded dice in frontof them. This only works if you
play I r L by the wayI'm going to assume work with dice rolls.
Yeah, well, and I thinkthat's probably part of it too,
(15:41):
is right that you're doing that.But I love this idea. This is
great. Is to kind of bringit into our world a little bit.
And now here's the thing. Youthink that because you know they're loaded and
you're watching them, you're like,oh, anybody would catch this, that
that these are dearly loaded dice?I wouldn't necessarily assume that. So if
(16:02):
the players miss it, you haveto say, hey, look at whoever
basically has the highest passive perception andsay, make a quick perception check because
something funny is going on here.Yeah. Yeah, if they don't catch
it immediately, if they don't catchwhat she does, say you want the
perception checks. But like I justkind of like be able to pick up
twelve a game for me boys,especially because like I'm looking uploaded dice.
(16:25):
Everything's coming up twelves for me today. Weird. I'm looking uploaded dice right
now, and like you know,your your normal you know, set of
seven dice for role playing game isgoing to have numerals right on the d
sixes, and every other gaming diceout there from YACHTYA to Monopoly is going
to have what's called pips on thedice. And if you just you know,
pull out a special set of twodice to have pips and not numerals,
(16:45):
that might be that might be redflag number one. So this this
story does a thing that that isa that is a problem that I see
a lot of dms getting into thecan kind of spin over into horror story
stuff. Or that that that commitssomething of a of a category error.
(17:07):
There's a category error at work here, I feel like, and that is
like conflating what's going on in reallife and things that you want the players
to see and what's going on inthe game and what you want the characters
to see. And and there's anotherthing that this guy does that I that
drives me up a wall, whichis he says, well, obviously,
(17:30):
here's how the encounter is gonna gostart to finish to you know, all
the way through to the end.And that's not like no plans or lives,
you know, contact with the players, right, And he may be
like, you know, lavishly hintingthat he's throwing these these weighted dice and
stuff like this, and the playersmay not catch on that they're weighted,
(17:53):
or they may see it, butlike assume that it's like like that they're
just supposed to play along, youknow, or and this is the worst
case scenario, somebody might see thatand like really, no kidding, think
that he thinks they're so stupid they'renot going to notice it, Which is
(18:15):
a risk that you run when youdo stuff like this where you're trying to
kind of look like you're hoodwinking theplayers and not having stuff in the game
that the characters and may notice andthings like that and everything. I like,
like like years and years ago,you know, I kind of through
through a couple of kind of youknow, things that backfired in ways that
(18:38):
I was not expecting that I thoughtit was real clever because I was gonna,
you know, like like like tweakthe players. Somehow I've stopped doing
that and I don't do that,and I'm like, like I get I
get why people think this is gonnabe fun, but it just like in
my experience just doesn't never works outthat way. It raised a lot of
(19:02):
good points and does you have tohave the right relationship already with the players.
Yeah, I'm just going to readone of the comments here. This
is from redditor a maximum Fox eightythree that brings up a lot of the
same points you just borrow Gym's up. I think it's a great idea in
theory. I think there are somepitfalls worth being aware of in practice.
Doesn't mean it's not a great idea, just means you need to tast some
extra things into account. Number one, does this game have any precedent for
(19:26):
this sort of meta pseudo fourth wallbreaking mechanic because if so, one possible
outcome I can see happening is yourplayer is just being extremely confused by the
obviously loaded dice and are wondering ifcalling out the DM is something they're supposed
to do, or wondering if youmight be having a weird power tripping moment,
and things will get awkward if theystart asking questions about it. Yeah,
I can see it's working super wellif there's a high level of player
(19:49):
slash DM trust and you seem tobe mitigating that possible pitfall with the investigation
checks. So I mean it kindof just kind of goes down that for
a while, but it seems tobe along the lines of where you're where
you're going with this gym. Yeah, but has the very high potential to
just be just like a clever wayof showing something happening happening in game just
(20:11):
to make sure that the players aren'tmake sure you don't lose players trust over
it. It's funny because it remindedme of my bad acting and how that
it confused players in my game,and they're like, well, the way
like you your face was making thisface, and I was like, oh,
I was just I was just doinga voice and that's why my face
was making that. Sure, Ididn't know that we were that you were
(20:33):
taking like everything like you know,I wasn't in costume, I wasn't on
a stage, but we were rightthough that you weren't. Though they weren't.
They kind of misconstrued something. Andthat goes to your other point,
Jim, where it's like the youknow, where you think it's gonna go,
(20:56):
Yeah, it never does. Itnever does you think that they're going
to see right through it or they'regoing to see what you think they're going
to see. They're not. They'regoing to have their own interpretation of that.
So when now when I do voicesor role play at all of my
players, I'm very careful to belike, Okay, I have hundred be
in character. I can't kind ofyou know, call this in at all.
(21:19):
I can't roll my eyes, youknow, even a little bit if
that's not what this character would havedone in this moment when we do that,
and so I do kind of agree, like I think it's clever,
not clever, I think it's Ithink it could be fun oh, clever.
I think it could be fun ifyou have the right relationship and everything
with those players. And obviously ithas to be in person game, but
(21:41):
there's definitely you would have to weighout risk versus report on this one.
Yeah, I can't because how muchyou are loaded done clever. I can't
think of this as clever. It'sgimmicky. Gimmicky for sure. Yet Well
that's fine. Yeah, it justfeels like this kind of thing, like
like it just feels like someone who'slike this is a DM who's approaching this
(22:08):
like because he thinks this will befun for him and and and like hopes
that the players will come along.But clearly like he finds this idea hilarious,
right, but hasn't thought you know, in like there's no indication here
that like the table has said thisis something that they're interested in or you
(22:30):
know, like I would love thatmore information about like do they do stuff
like this all the time? Youknow, Like do they have a thing
where like when they show up atthe bar and they do a drinking contest,
you know, does the DM andone of the players each you know
take a mug of you know,a mugga root beer and whoever can drink
(22:52):
it the fastest, they they winthat thing. Sure you know where they're
like you say, kind of breakingthe fourth wall like this, I would
say any any sort of like fourthall shenanigans. If you're doing anything even
from like we mentioned when we werecalling my voice, acting on the last
mail bag and putting on costumes andor having like some some sort of like
like a coin or a pen thatif you're already doing that kind of stuff,
(23:14):
I think this is a wide openfair game. So so the core
of the question is is this okay? And I think that generally it's like
yeah, but yeah, And Imean one of the other things that you
one of the other ways that youdo this is you can kind of you
know, you know, put thesheets aside and everything, and you say,
okay, now we're going to playthe dice game, and as you
know, you shuck a shuck ashuckut and roll the dice is the DM
(23:37):
and be really like overt about youknow, when the player reaches for the
dice, say no, no,no, not those dice. You know,
you sweep you sweep those up andyou hand them a different set of
dice. Kind of thing you rollthese dice, then that can kind of,
you know, like like lampshade it, because like, no matter how
(24:00):
overt you think you're being, there'sjust gonna be times when they cannot read
your mind and they're not going totake it in the direction they have to.
They have to pick it up threedifferent times. Yeah, right,
Like that's like the rule of three. Like literally they have to like figure
it out three different times for themto actually figure it out and go,
oh, it's like a oh,it's like a thing. I'm pretty sure
(24:22):
you read that about your toddler.But that also does go for players too.
And then they break the fourth wallby punching you in the face.
Yes, that's what my toddler does. Kids scratched me, he drew blood
on me. It's like I havea cat claw claw bite. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, bared claw.All right, let's do one more of
(24:48):
these. I've got one from userNano the Awesome. This is called and
I feel like the title gives justkind of gives us all we need to
know. I'll read the whole thinganyway, and I'll do is read the
title and kind of rolled my eyesand just smiled because I like knowing that
other people go through this with theirplayers too. Thank you for giving us
(25:08):
content. The title is how doI convince my players that the beholder statue
that shoots them when they talk toit cannot be weaponized? That's great,
Yeah, classic, I think ifthey could either read this, but I'm
going to anyway. So I havea new group of players, some of
which are brand new to the game. Combine that with the campaign that is
(25:30):
somewhat self directed, and it ledme to needing a bunch of side quests.
So I pull out my Ractose Carnival. It's a carnival run by devils
with games designed to whittle you downso they can eventually kill you. One
of the tests involved a beholder statue. They had what is true beauty written
on it with a missing eye.If you put your hand in the eye,
it will give you a key.If you started talking to it,
(25:51):
one of the stalks shoots a beamand deals with one D four psychic damage.
Now, I mean, it's veryclear that it only shoots the person
who talked to it, and thedamage is trivial. But they took it
and keep trying to throw it atenemies, and it keeps shooting them.
I re emphasize every time it onlyshoots you, but they keep doing it.
It gets a laugh from the table. But last combat, multiple characters
(26:11):
spent turns either retrieving or talking tothe statue in combat. Even after that,
they were all talking about how toweaponize this thing, like the soul
knife rogue was talking about how howgood then the psychic damage was when he
just sneak attack for sixteen psychic damageat level four. Should I just let
them keep shooting themselves or do weneed to have a sit down with them
(26:33):
and be very clear it was aone time gag that cannot be weaponized.
I think you need to There hasto be a reason, Like it's there's
a font of power under the statuethat can't be moved. There's it's in
an area, there's an area ofeffect spell that is part of it,
like that they can they can't figureout. Or it can just be a
(26:56):
cursed item. This yeahthing like that, because there's if there's AOI you're a
font of something like they can theycan disarm itright, like a cursed item
is a cursed item, and likeI don't I don't think it's a mechanical
thing. I think they're just tryingto be Okay, well if no,
but if if it's cursed item,they want it. They want it to
be a curse item so they cantake it and bring it with them.
Yeah, they can. That's what'shappening. So the question is do you
(27:18):
stop them or do you just letthem keep shooting themselves. I mean,
this is one of those things wherelike, I guess they're having fun with
this. It sounds like sounds what'shappened to Blast, But this is like,
I mean, this is the DMputting like like a dumb joke thing
in and the players are like callinghis bluff and you know, one outing
(27:45):
trying to one up him on it, and this like like this just feels
to me like a campaign where thisis not the first time this has happened,
and it will not be the lasttime that something like this has happened,
you know, because like he putsa he puts like a goofy joke
thing in there, and rather thanthem going oh haha, goofy joke thing
and then getting on with the game, they have made it the focus of
(28:10):
the game. That's why I don'twhen I when I run superhero games.
I don't let anybody play Deadpool,like exactly this kind of thing. This
is real easy. And it's likelike if you if you feel like you
can't, just say, guys,cut it out. It doesn't work.
(28:30):
You just have it run out ofjuice. Whatever magical woo woo powers those
psychic blasts, you know. Itjust you know, like they look at
it. Oh, this time itonly does one D two you know,
the next time it only does asingle point. And then they look at
it and just it goes and thennothing happens. Just have it run out
(28:53):
of juice. They'll get bored withit, and and and they'll set it
aside and they'll look for whatever thenext dumb running joke that is more interesting
them to them than this campaign.That that's your problem right there, is
that the running joke is more interestingto the table than the actual content of
(29:14):
the campaign. I mean that that'sthe underlying problem here. I promise that
was the beholder statue. The problemis that they find that beholder statue more
interesting than whatever else it is that'sgoing on. Sure, that's that's a
totally fair analysis of it. Yeah, I'm very much of the you know
and this this probably has a lotto do with the the shorter games that
I run, But like, ifthey're having fun, they're having fun,
(29:36):
and what are we what are wehere to do if not to have fun?
Yeah, but everybody's got to havefun. And if if, if
that just becomes tedious session after sessionof you sitting while they're while they're refusing
to engage with the story that you'veput in front of them, that is
totally fair. I mean it becomesits own that's its own problem my way.
But you know, having it goonf for like, having having them
(29:57):
even continue to try it over andover again for a one entire combat sounds
hysterical and like a second time whereit doesn't work, dates start to realize,
okay, this is like after awhole second combat, it's like,
guys, I don't think we cando this even funnier. And then like
several sessions go by, they go, wait, I've got just the thing,
and they try it one more time? Is that themselves? For two
(30:18):
damage peak comedy and then throw itout. I also, this is also
one of the other things where becausewe don't have the whole story, we
haven't been at that table is like, is it no kidding the whole table
that finds this hilarious or is itlike a couple of cutups three that are
life five or something exactly. Youknow that like have decided that this is
(30:41):
the funniest thing ever, and thatby doing this all the time, they
don't have to listen to somebody else, you know, get into like,
you know, interpersonal conversations with charactersbecause they're not interested in that. The
story does say it gets a laughfrom the table. Multiple characters spend their
turns retrieving or tall to it.So not all of them, It doesn't
(31:02):
say all of them don't, right, but I'm saying like so, so
he says at the table and themultiple characters, it could be five.
It's still a social social situation situationtoo, and so you know that's part
of it. Is like if ifthere's five of us, four of us
are laughing. I'm laughing too,you know. Now if there was two
people kind of bringing down the wholeno, like ruining their action economy because
(31:26):
they think this is funny and therest of the tables is getting pissed about
it, I think I feel likethat'd be a different post at that point,
there'd be a different tone. Well, unless I feels the only one
being really annoyed by this is DM. Yeah except that, except that,
like I mean, the DM isfocused on that and not necessarily whether the
other people are into it or not. He's focused on the people that are
(31:48):
trying to you know, like likethis is the thing where you just say
no once and then you put itto bed. It doesn't have to like
like this is only been an ongoingthing because he finds it funny too sure
or did yes exactly? There yougo, Yeah, that's it. The
(32:10):
joke has gotten old even for himnow. So I like the whole letting
it run out of juice thing usedup its mojo. Hopefully, the answer
supposedly should be like let them tryuntil they get bored. It's as they're
not getting bored, so make them. Make them get bored of it,
or give them a new give thema new shiny toy that'll that'll annoy you
next. I I kind of likewhere the table turn in. If they
(32:35):
move it, it turns into areal beholder. Yeah, they say,
give them a concert. They talkedto it too much, and now it's
a real beholder who has a lotof questions for the going to iye tyrant
or something that's the one that theylike come into existence from the dream the
other beholders. Yeah, but we'llfind out soon. Yeah, I'll just
I'm just gonna follow this to thisthis user on reddit and wait for the
next question. Yeah, so thatis that's my favorite post from dm Academy
(32:59):
for this month. I'd love toanswer your question, so I will open
our mail bag back up so youcan send us your questions to you Hello
Adventurers podcast at gmail dot com orask us yourself at Hello Adventurers dot com
slash voice. How would you?How would you deal with these things?
And what's your what's your most annoyingfirst item that your players try to try?
The Shenanigan ice weaponize? Yeah?Does it be weaponized? Just yeah,
(33:22):
I guess true. Yes, youcan absolutely have out of combat Shenanigans.
Yeah. What's the dumb piece ofcrap you put into your game that
they decided was more interesting than theactual campaign? It was a It was
a door person for me. Ohsorry, I wasn't supposed to love Listen
you make fun of door like,well, I don't want to spoil that.
(33:42):
While talk about it loft, healthyair. But door Door is one
of my favorite characters. I ohno, no, no, not no,
not door a door person. I'mtalking about the campaign that you're in
with me. Oh yeah, yeah. We went like someone who guards the
door to a building pretty much.Yeah, okay, the guy who answers
the door. I was like,fantastic. Yeah, we went away off
the rounds. He was like,but one of the funniest sessions you ever
(34:07):
head, so that we're going totalk about for a while. So like,
if everyone agrees to it, that'sfine. If everyone's having fun,
then I no getting everyone decides that'swhat the game is about first, right.
I only thought that impressed the wholesession that night, and I hadn't,
so I didn't find out until thenext time we played that I had
not. Actually, you know,well, surprise we're doing We're doing something
(34:30):
else now. But I'm gonna wrapthis one up for the day. Guys,
thanks for taking care of these withme. I love doing any kind
of advice episode. I love doingthem, so please send us your questions
again. It's Allow Adventures podcast atJamail dot Tom. Hello Adventures dot Tom.
Slash Voice to Leave is a voicemail. That's gonna wrap it up,
Jim, Joe, thanks for hangingout. Yeah you bet, Thanks for
your question. Yeah, I thinkwe're done podcasting for the day. We're
(34:52):
gonna go home, so I'm gonnawrite home. Guys, thank you for
listening to Hello Adventurers. We areyour host Jason. He's a Jim Crocker
and Joe McCall producer, editor,an engineer Jason Bertiso music by an experior
artwork by Kristin Broderick. You canread out to us with any feedback or
suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast atgmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a
JPP audio production. Good Goodbye Adventurers.
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