I listen to more RPG podcasts than I probably should, but this is the only one from which I consistently take away something usable, inspiring, or thought-provoking. Generally it’s a bit of all three. Thank you 🙏

Great tips again Hank! We finished. Blood and Snow game that took 3 sessions last month, all people that never played ICRPG before. The final shot was the camera going up over their new discovered valley, showing greens, the river and the tribe that they led there starting their new settlement knowing that they will survive another year...

I love listening to this as I´m in the kitchen man Gets me cooking both a meal and a campaign at the same time Amazing

That throwaway line "RP growing between the cracks" is gold!

@25:30 reveal act 1 secret. Make the villain even more evasive with a very different motive. But it reveals 3-4 more errands that only the Party know to do because of the secret.

@23:00 reveal the bbeg as the real enemy - and he villain wants to get the party out of the way of their plans. Villains needs to also be so badass they cannot overcome them. Reveal because they are succeeding on errands

@20:00 montage the mundane, start your session with the “inciting incident” make it epic and wondrous. Immediately dangerous and allow people to start rolling against “the attack”

KZread has approximately one million videos on how to start a campaign, but this might be the first one I've ever seen about ending one. And very timely too, I've spent about a year in my campaign and I'm looking to wrap it up in about 4 months or so, yet in some ways it still feels like I'm waffling around in the beginning. Hopefully the tools in this episode and the last one can give it a bit more guidance and direction for the home stretch.

A personally curated loot table is a great idea. This way, the loot will always fit the character of your campaign, and be of importance to the story evolving. Of course, this way we may never find out what players would have done with some other item, resonating less with our campaign design during preparation.

@22:00 “errands” explore hidden and secrets. 3-4 troublesome tasks to investigate rumours. The objective is overall dangerous.

Mail bag day .I think if the player is looking for something. You take the next day to custome it. You can come up with items but is it what the players want . When you understand what they are looking for . You can manipulate it to the campaign or or player drive. Barbarian wants Armour, but the specifics are in the story arc. Location is great after you understand this. call me the middle

Epic episode, Hankerin!!!! I'll probably listen to it a few more times to let it all sink in. Also, when is someone going to come along and make an audio collection of all the Mainframe intros?

I'm getting real close to wrapping up my Curse of Strahd campaign, and will be utilizing much if this advice. 🛡️

MAIL BAG DAY 😎

For most campaigns, this is an excellent start. I love the brevity of the now-story. I will say that - for the right group and the right campaign - having some private history and even character secrets can be fun, with the first session beginning with the characters separate and strangers. If everyone's excited to have a campaign built around learning the secrets of the CHARACTERS instead of the secrets of the WORLD, then that can be incredibly rewarding. It's not easy, and requires higher player in-session commitment, but is very cool if you can pull it off. For any other campaign, what you've outlined here is the way to go. Create characters as a group, with at least some familiarity with each other (even if it's "you all got hired to work this job, and this is your first day"), and start session 1 by jumping straight into it. Talking in character and about your character is a heck of a lot easier when you've already been through it AS your character.

@evanhoffman7995

2 ай бұрын

I'm a big fan of characters already knowing each other. I've sat through enough awkward fumbling introductions in the tavern, I don't need to see any more. It's not the heist-movie "getting the gang together" montage people seem to think it will be, it's 4-6 strangers with every reason to go their separate ways, randomly deciding to kill and die for each other instead. Not for me. That said, the party doesn't need to be a fully-connected web, one or two connections per character ought to do it. A pair of university buddies meets up with one of their cousins and the guy he did time with; there's a group with reasons to stick together. There's still lots of room for them to get to know and learn to trust each other, but it doesn't strain the fiction for them not to part ways at the next town. Plus, it's easier for players to come up with one or two meaningful connections than one for every other PC.

@GregMcNeish

2 ай бұрын

@@evanhoffman7995 100%! I almost always coordinate with one other player to have a stronger pre-game connection, and we'll usually have a more in-depth one-on-one conversation to get comfortable with the characters and come up with a couple inconsequential in-jokes, quirks, or routines that we can pull out at the table to get into it. I was just trying to illustrate that it CAN be rewarding to play a "coming together" story IF it's what everyone is invested in. As you illustrated, if it's not done with intent, commitment, and care by players who are prepared to actually execute it (probably drawing on a bit of improv skill, formal or informal), it can suck pretty hard. It should be treated like a niche case, not the norm.

So who wants to start a cheese punk campaign?

@cadenceclearwater4340

2 ай бұрын

It can be set in the _From Ages_ 😊

@evanhoffman7995

2 ай бұрын

I shall play as Sir Wensley of the Dale, my quest is to reclaim my family's ancestral castle, the Rocque Fort. And to get that cheddar!

@ericsmith1508

2 ай бұрын

Whoever plays it, it better be live streamed, and they better be able to get Xavier Woods to portray Bobby Zimmerusky in it! 😅

@casterknot5094

2 ай бұрын

Cheesefunk

@cadenceclearwater4340

2 ай бұрын

@@casterknot5094 _Beware the Stinking Bishop!!!_

💯 on the now-story aspect

@evanhoffman7995

2 ай бұрын

I like to call it frontstory, and it's something I've promoted for years

As a philly native, I ask -- are you still looking for group members?

Personally I don't like loot tables. I build loot specific to the situation that it is found in. About half of it is tailored to the PCs.

Lol easy to digress when contemplating Jennifer Lopez...