DawnSomewhere

Dungeon Men, Part 2

During this episode, I forgot that Lawry couldn't read. I'm pretty sure that the character he's based on wasn't able to read either, but it was common for the player to forget, so the character wen...

Dungeon Men, Part 1

So after a month of inactivity, let's just hit it and start moving with all the content I had time to figure out!

I've been excited to get started on Dungeon Men, because the game wound up wi...

Chosen Ones, Part 21

Well I almost didn't get anything done this month at all, but here is the finale for Chosen Ones! It turns out, it was COVID making me so exhausted, and then once the respiratory symptoms ...

Forecast: Sick?

Hey, guys!

So my family is sick, and I have been fatigued to the point of blistering oppression for like two weeks. It might be because I'm sick as well, but I'm not sure. When it turns out y...

Chosen Ones, Part 20

The best way to approach horror is to be a little ambiguous about the details, and I think in this case I've got the idea pretty on the nose. But while ambiguity is good to make an atmosphere scary...

Chosen Ones, Part 19

All the heroes need to do now is return home! It's as simple as that, if anything were ever simple.

I enjoy setting a weird or unsettling atmosphere, but it's tricky, especially in a roleplay...

Chosen Ones, Part 18

We'll get one more in before the year is up!

Often, in a game like this, I find players can occasionally get too wrapped up in something an NPC said, to the point where if they're given contr...

Chosen Ones, Part 17

This one is just a minute or so shorter than usual, but the name reveal for Zubo's father felt like a good place to stop it! At least, if you get the reference - if you didn't, then it's a dramatic...

Chosen Ones, Part 16

Hey! An early one! Finally!

Even in good roleplaying groups, player characters are hilariously sociopathic. They never stop to really consider their body count unless you ask them to, and rea...

Chosen Ones, Part 15

Elvis goes insane, and truth to be told, like most good actors, he's probably just putting a lot of himself in his character.

With this episode, I originally planned on doing a bit of a spoof...

Chosen Ones, Part 14

Sometimes a GM is a little bit adversarial towards the players, but getting that correct is an extremely fine line. If they get defeated too many times, they become discouraged and may even give up...

Chosen Ones, Part 13

Our real game group actually quit playing "Chosen Ones" just a little before departing to the Earth Nation, so most of this material has been made up from the whole cloth. However, the "wait a minu...

Motivating Passive Players: Bumbling Bosses

This bit of roleplaying advice isn't as broadly useful. It has to do more with getting passive and risk-averse players to take some initiative and get involved more with the plot, but these things ...

Chosen Ones, Part 12

This is now roughly twice the length of any past arcs! And we've still got some ways to go because we have two more nations to see!

What I like about this episode is that, because I play Hero...

Chosen Ones, Part 11

The day of the Earth Fighting Championship is here! And Lawry doesn't play things straight.

I think it's fun when you can come up with an excuse for an enemy to lose that's unconventional, an...

Roleplaying Rules: Empathy and Sympathy

I've been reminded again I can put these on Patreon early!

This episode is more in the vein of writing and playing actual characters. It's about empathy, what it is, and how it helps shape al...

Chosen Ones, Part 10

The group is one step closer to pounding Bingle! Party plans are often unusual, but I like it when they work out and the group feels encouraged to come up with things that are a mix of unlikely and...

Chosen Ones, Part 9

To the Earth Nation our heroes go! 

I've done arena competitions with players in the past, and the lesson I've taken away from it is that those even tests of power can be a tad boring an...

Why Do We Play DnD? They're the Mechanics You Know

Most of you who play DnD know that we play DnD because it's something everyone is already familiar with. We don't have to drag out friends over to a new system or teach them anything new. This much...

Chosen Ones, Part 8

In "The Last Airbender", one funny element of Air Bender society they bring up is that the women and the men live separate from one another, on separate mountains. They're depicted like se...

Battle for the Table's Soul: The Golden Girls War

I plan to do a video a little more about mechanics, but winding up to that, I'm going to do some stuff related to why the mechanics work differently for narrativist and gamist groups. Specifically,...

Chosen Ones, Part 7

I think the "shipping wars" are my favorite part of the Avatar fandom. Not to be a part of them, but just at how seriously some people at the time took a relationship between kids who, if we were b...

Chosen Ones, Part 6

These are winding up being pretty long! No episodes of the past were based on actual campaigns rather than one-shots, and I have to be honest, the set up for this bit took a whole roleplaying day j...

Antagonize Your DnD Table: Insist on 3d6

Artisan asked if I would post the upcoming week's rant to Patreon early so that he and others can hear it, and honestly I probably should! I'll start a new tag for "Roleplaying Blog" and be more di...

A blog!

Hey guys! This is just an update to assure you I am not dead. I am merely dying from this obscene heat recently. The way I do my recording is I throw a blanket over my work space to damp o...

Chosen Ones, Part 5

It's a long one! I can't recall if the actual game took more than one session, but it's got a lot going on.

In the actual game, the party got less into the... unexplained elements of the mine...

Chosen Ones, Part 4

By this point in the game, we picked up a new player and the real game is now a bit on the large side, with five total players when everyone can make it. Bingle's survival is a bit difficult, as a ...

Chosen Ones, Part 3

A complicated drawback to having the premise of "this kid must escape the party" is that your players aren't always thinking like human beings. There's often one who's played enough DnD to assume a...

Chosen Ones, Part 2

Insomnia has been striking again, unfortunately, though the symptoms are a lot more mild than they have been. I think I grew complacent and slacked off too much on the house cleaning regiments.

Chosen Ones, Part 1

This arc has not been playtested by a live group! Though that may not remain the case indefinitely. Part of the reason is because it involves more working pieces and specific abilities, and the who...