Dungeons And Dragons Players Will Do Anything But Dungeon

We trade war stories about what makes a tabletop RPG adventure sing, then roast the modules that look great on paper but collapse under real group pacing. The big takeaway is simple: shorter, modular adventures and anthology books usually create better DnD and Daggerheart play than sprawling campaign tomes.
• cardboard crafting plans and the weird economics of “free” boxes 
• scheduling chaos and the reality of replacing players 
• what makes an adventure portable across systems 
• Daggerheart’s The Wish Thief as a clean, dynamic intro module 
• why Sunless Citadel drags and what old dungeons assume about play 
• converting set pieces like Forge of Fury’s burning bridge using Daggerheart environments and progress counters 
• Tomb of Horrors as system-agnostic misery and why White Plume Mountain works 
• why campaigns fall apart without weekly play and why players skip dungeons in a dungeon game 
• why Candlekeep Mysteries and Golden Vault style anthologies are easier to finish and easier to steal from 
• using Adventure League one-shots as varied, reliable campaign glue 
download the free DaggerHeart stuff. Like, I gave you heck for this in our podcast. Like, I don't know if I can do this. Like, you go on the website, the entire rule book on the SRD format, you can just click download, the event you can click download. It even comes with little standees you just cut out with scissors.

Transcript

Cold Open And Name Chaos

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Richard and Carl Present Deep Space and Dragons. Carl is spelled with a K. If you're watching Richard and Carl presents Deep Space and Dragons, you're on the wrong show. I'm Richard with an R and a C in there somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And I am Carl spelt with an L.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Technically true. Could you even do that without an L, like the C could be subbed out, the A could be subbed out with some like weird EU thing. The R could be like a V if we're fancy with it, but I think the L is stuck.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Nah, well, I mean, uh I I think that depends on the phonetics of your language, because in Japanese I'm more like Karu.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

That is fair and reasonable. Although, I'm pretty sure I'm just a dick no matter where you spend it. Ah, joking aside, and this is going to be fascinating, because I just sometimes ask what's new of Carl, and I kind of have a general idea of what to expect. Today I got nothing. So what's new with Carl?

Dumpster Cardboard And Box Economics

SPEAKER_01 1:05

What's new with Carl? Well Okay. So first um I I actually have a um I'm gonna start with a pizza store anecdote.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I thought you were about to start with disclaimer and talk about how not having a stance is a stance.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

No, no, no. Um so I was uh um I was watching YouTube and I saw this video about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

No, we are not sponsored by YouTube, but we are on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

And I was watching this video about how uh if you take cardboard, and he specifically used flower paste, but uh basically you can glue sheets of cardboard together and uh it actually becomes like strong enough uh that you can like build furniture and stuff out of cardboard. And you just like wrap it in paper machets to like hide any edges and then just like paint, sand it and paint it like you would just normal wood. Uh so I've been taking a bullet and trying this up for a while. Um I go to work one day, I'm like, hey, uh uh boss man, um would I be able to just like have a bundle of extra large boxes? And uh he's like, well, you know, you could just if you if you need cardboard for arts and crafts, you should just dig around in the recycling. I was like, yeah, well, I guess that makes sense. I can just dig around in the recycling.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I mean, um yeah, uh, I am so I know I'm not supposed to judge people in your day-to-day life, but I do. It's almost like I'm orderly paid to take a look at someone's work, take a pen to it, and decide how good it is. And I'm weirdly torn here, because the anti-capitalist in me is like those pizza boxes aren't that expensive. Worst case, you're like, alright, put like two dollars in the till and you can have them. So being like, no, no, for your arts and crafts, dig around in the trash. But also I like the planet, and recycling is a better if your plan is literally to use garbage cardboard, then using used cardboard as your garbage cardboard makes sense. So I think I'm just on the fence here. I have no strong stance, which is a stance.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

My thought was that um if uh if you're gonna make something out of cardboard like that, especially for a first-time project, it'd be better if all the cardboard was the same thickness and relatively the same shape, so you can more easily work with it to make the shapes you actually need. Right? And so I was like, yeah, you know, pizza boxes, not that expensive, so like uh maybe my boss will just let me have the pizza boxes. Uh, but obviously he said no. Uh and so because I'm privy to the same kind of information. I mean, uh anyone at my workplace probably could find it because they sometimes just like leave the uh Saputo invoices.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Oh, firm would disagree at the ability of people at your place to just figure something out.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Well, I mean, it's theoretically possible. I'll allow it. Um, anyways, the point of the matter is uh that the Saputo invoice was just on the desk, and so it's like I ask my boss at like 4.30 if I can have a bundle of boxes, and he's like, go through the recycling. I'm like, okay, I guess that's fair. Um and so then I just like walk over to the office in the middle of what I'm doing and uh just um go check this food invoice, and it turns out uh that a bundle of 50 extra large boxes is like $42.65.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Well, in that case. Yeah, uh, I mean, that's kind of what I was hoping for, but at the same time, it was like I was expecting it to be at least half that price. Like I didn't realize that the packaging, just the packaging for our food is almost a dollar box, like geez.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Although, counterpoint, so not a Richards story, but a Richards vaguely mentioned off-screen brother story. So he goes to a downtown suit shop to get a suit. Person comes up to him, he's like, This is my budget. It's like, actually, this one's above your budget. He's like, can After the person did that to him three times, he's like, Can I have a different associate who listens? So he gets this like nice suit, like nice enough to go to like a law firm suit, right? And then he checks the receipt, and they charged him four dollars for the bag the suits, and he's like, I just spent X amount of money, which is a reasonable amount of money in the hundreds. How am you charging me for bag? You should be classier than the suit shop. It's like, oh, I went and bought a car and they charge me for the bag the key came in. That's just insane. People be greedy. So, like, yeah. The idea that a nice store will also just charge you for the pack. We hit a world, which is some b a weird environmental bullshit scam I'm gonna rant on and then get cancelled. So we phase out plastic bags because they're bad for the earth. How did that let everyone start charging for packaging? Because now everywhere just charges for bags, and it's like, well, you took we took away the free one, so just carry your eggs in your hands. And it's like, how did How did capitalism win that? Like, even you go to the McDonald's self-checkout, and they're like, how many McDonald's bags do you want? There's a bill if you order too many. I'm like, no, there's not. It's like, oh, we're protecting the planet. I'm like, no, you still need the bag to carry the food. Were people ordering too many extra free bags? Because you can say no extra bags, you're allowed to do that. Anywho, I'm saying don't add a box surcharge to each pizza that appears separately on the receipt. You can fold into the price, but if you say packaging surcharge, I will hit you.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

No, no, no. I I don't think we have any plan to do a packaging surcharge.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Oh no, I don't know. Your mouse listens to our podcast, you might be like, ooh, packaging surcharge.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Could be, could be. Uh, but I I did actually end up uh jumping into the recycling bin and searching for uh boxes. Um for some reason, uh our Saputo decided that they would ship us um the the cases of pepperoni. Uh they're sort of like big long.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

I was about to say, just like a pause. When I put away stock orders, that would get me like 30 or so boxes that were relatively clean. Wouldn't you just like wait till you put away a stock order and pilfer the boxes as you go? So they never actually go in the bin?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Oh, I mean, the bin is relatively secure too. It's it's it's not bad.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Okay. I was just thinking about how I would do this in your situation. Like, wait a minute, I put away tons of these. I would just put all the boxes, just not break down one box and fill off all the other boxes and leave. Perfect crap.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Uh well, firstly, I rarely do the stock orders, and and secondly, um, the uh our our store separates recycling these.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

I do need to interject with one other comment first. So you know how like Starbucks and Tim Hortons have a bring your own mug and it costs you a dollar less? Sell TJ's reusable pizza boxes where they bring in their own pizza box and saves them a dollar on their pizza. And it's like a plastic box that you charge like 30 bucks for that only costs ten dollars to produce. It's a great place. Also, just the visual of someone showing up with a reusable pizza box is just really funny. Like the delivery person comes up, opens the box, and slides the pizza onto their table and takes the box back is really funny. Anywho, you may resume.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Well, I mean that this part of the story is pretty much over because it's basically uh our our pepperoni boxes um they you they used to have 10 one kilogram tubes in them, and then I don't know why, but Saputo decided that they would uh start sending us slightly smaller boxes that only have eight per box. Hashtag then they raised the price of the pepperoni and salami by 15 cents per kilogram or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Although I will say, TJ's pizza, not a direct sponsor. I mean they do pay you and then you pay the Patreon, so like super indirect. But I do like that you guys cut your own pepperoni, it doesn't come in the bag of pepperonis. That's it. I'm gonna say something nice about you today.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Anyways, uh under cheese pepperoni is delicious, is all I'm saying. Now the boxes are slightly smaller, but they seem to be like much more sturdy. And going through recycling, I was actually able to find a decent number of pepperoni boxes, and so now. I have a whole bunch of cardboard here at home to eventually I mean I started cutting it into the shape that I want for now, but it's just funny the direction you're going with your cardboard craftsmanship.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Because to me, the obvious solution is taking the Xacto Knife, cutting into strips, rolling those up, and making a scratching post.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

I suppose I could do that. Like a friend of mine who will rename Nameless for the sake of identity does all sorts of random cardboard cra uh crafts. And has made definitely like full cat scratching posts and thing emajiggers.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Because cats like cardboard. Our cat does need new scratching posts.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Like I got my cat a new one when I moved here so he could stand on top of his catchery and look down upon the inferior people. Mm-hmm. Which is all people. But yeah, cardboard craft's fun. I appreciate that you see I love how the story in the Carl versus I went to get cardboard. I got cardboard. Stay tuned!

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Exactly. Stay tuned. I will eventually have a follow-up to this story.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

This is gonna end with a cardboard sand blaster exploding.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

But uh the the second thing that's new with me uh is uh a little bit more tied to the topic of today's episode, uh, which is um I uh I had a you know a surgery related to vampires cursing my spleen.

Surgery Break And DnD Rescheduling

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I recall this. We were not allowed to give away your spleen as a prize. I'm gonna mention that every time because it's a little bit funny every time.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

And uh because I had to take like some time off, uh I my uh monthly D D campaign got postponed. Uh and in the night time off, one of my can my players uh they started working on the day that we were doing our campaign.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

I really thought you were about to say one of our players died, and this is how I was gonna find out. Because that is exactly how you tell stories. Oh, remember redacted that we used to hang out with weekly? Yeah, he's dead. Which sucked because I had to reschedule D.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

No, no, no. Um We were doing it on Sundays, and then he was working on Sundays.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

But for the record, I think Redacted's gonna outlive us both somehow.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

And then and then he started working at 6 a.m. on Mondays, and so it was like I was gonna ask him, I asked him, I said, hey, you know, we can't do it on Sundays anymore. Can we maybe do it on Mondays instead? And he's all like, oh no, man, I'll be too tired after the 6 a.m. shift. I was like, okay, fine.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Actually very reasonable.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

I kept kind of waiting to see uh if his schedule will change back after I started backup again, but I uh I eventually I just I just write this person's schedule, because that'd be funny. No, uh I I don't do scheduling very often. Uh that would be funny, but no, I don't do that very much.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

It's like, oh sorry, you can't play this game because I scheduled you to work. It's a thing that literally happened to me at my last job when I was running DD games, and I'd be like, but you control us.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Anyways, um but so then I'm I'm I gave up and I'm just I found some new players. Um, and I'm just about to like start up my DD campaign again, and then this other player is just like, oh yeah. By the way, Bothman, um I'm taking Sundays off again because I want to have a social life, is what he says. Reasonable. Well, it turns out that he wanted to join a different DD campaign, and now he was just like gonna actually tell my boss that he wanted Sundays off again. It's like oh.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Which, to be fair, like I have this really specific pet peeve. So food service jobs and customer service jobs objectively suck. But they're under this weird notion that they're also the only job for most that I've worked anyway, that are like, no, you cannot ask for specific consistent days off because we need you constantly. You don't. You can just give somebody weekends off. It's not that important. So it's like this, like, hey guys, to be team players, none of you get to have structured lives mentality. I'm like, the job already sucks. Who's r like, is it really that big of a deal if you have to move the scheduling around a bit more because people have locked in their hours for what they want them to be?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

I I rather appreciate my boss's scheduling. Um and he does actually often um listen to people, so it's like that the disco managed to actually get um get his Sundays off.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, because I'm like, I'm not calling him out specifically. I'm calling out the industry, being like, you need 24-7 availability to toast sandwiches. I'm like, I don't think they do.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Uh, but so then, you know, I'm a little bit like, uh, it's a little sad that he decided to join a different DED group campaign instead of rejoining mine.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Although I can see the logic of wanting to spend time with people who aren't your go-workers on your day off. I I could see like where this is coming from. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

I didn't do a very good job of keeping the hype alive for my campaign. I was just kind of waiting around for stuff to happen and then nothing did, and I just it's just weird timing that he happened to make this change right when I was getting ready to actually finally restart with different players.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Well, it's like I run like so many different groups, like my campus group versus my friend group versus da-da-da-da-da. And sometimes it's just different vibes, different groups.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

And that and then so he even he even goes so far as to ask me for advice on how to make his character for this new campaign, then he went and I'll join in and like whatever, I'll give him advice.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Oh man, it's funny because like so there's two ways you could look at it. Angle A, they're like, oh, I feel kinda bad I canceled him, so I still want to involve him in this thing that is a hobby of his. Or the other way is maybe like, mm-hmm, wow, he broke up with me as dating someone new is asking what to buy his ex do a girlfriend for Christmas on his ex is great. So you could definitely look at it from the two approaches of jilted ex or wants to be included friend.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Now, see, I I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you, because this this is the part of the story that that actually bothered me a little bit. Um about two weeks later, I hear him talking about now he's doing a DD campaign on on Mondays. And I'm thinking to myself, well, no, he specifically said he'd be too tired to do DD on Mondays because he works at 6 a.m. And again, I can make that sudden excuse because the second campaign is is an online campaign, so it doesn't actually have to go anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

I mean, I was about to say that verbatim, honestly, but so here's the thing about running games I've learned. So, as we're and longtime listeners are aware, I'm not a particularly good person. I believe that I b I firmly believe I am selfishly selfless. As a general rule, when I do nice things is to make my own life better. And I I sleep great with this knowledge. I slept delightful last night. Was up later than I wanted because I just tried my sleep schedule. But like For running tabletop games, I've learned that chasing players is the incorrect strategy. And instead I open up a window and people will quickly fill that window. So, like, my home game with my like seven or so players, that's a great experience. I'll shake them down a little bit because they're people I've known for like a decade. Right. But I'm like, a lot of the time I could just declare on any given Discord or room I'm in, hey, anyone want to try this game? And then the people who are more interested, not even the ones that are more experienced, the ones that are more interested, I just kinda run for, and I kind of just let my players feel expendable when in my like non-home game. Where I'm like, hey, I'm running it for colleagues, who's interested is who gets to play. Right. So it's like trying to shake down players. Part of me is like, is this player good enough to be worth me trying to get them to let me run a game for them? When like the ratio of DMs to players is like 30 to 1 or something stupid, and you could literally just go on Facebook and be like, DD Saskatoon, looking for players, and just meet new players and acquire meet new people and acquire new players that like lit when I make the statement, you could probably run a game by just yelling at a bus stop who wants to learn DD. Like, unironically, I feel like you could probably get eight people if there's ten people at that bus stop. So it's like Well, I mean My mentality is kind of like if someone doesn't want to play, they're just so replaceable to me now.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

The the the player has been replaced, and and I am actually starting up my restarting my DD campaign in the near future. Uh but I was just like I guess it seems like you would take more uh more of the angle that players are spendable. Um but I was just wondering whether or not that would offend you, or if you're it would have offended me four years ago.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

So, like, back when during COVID era, or I remember getting annoyed that people were like, mm, after my computer shift, you wanted to also play online games with me? Oh, that's too much work, I don't wanna. And like I remember being annoyed, be like, do you guys want to play? What's going on? But I just simply know more people now. Right. So it's like if my home group was being is like once a month, and it's a lot of people I want to catch up with anyway.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

And usually most games somebody can't make it. And I've just made peace with that fact of trying to schedule to make sure everyone's there isn't possible. Right. But like, because that gate group happens so infrequently when it feels like it, I just run other games at like libraries, game stores, or college campuses so I can like play more consistently. That makes sense. So it's like multiple groups is kind of my answer to this problem where I'm like, 'Cause I've definitely been like upset that a friend of mine's like when we look at redacted, who I mentioned, who will outlive all of us, but one time stared into the void as his characters move. Putting the energy in to make that person come in my game because they're a friend of mine is absolutely worse wasted calories. But if I was running an online game and I tried to get Carl into the game, and then Carl's like, oh sorry, I I'm too tired after work, and then goes to plays a different online game, I would be pissed. Because it's Carl. That would piss me off a little bit. To the point where everyone stopped doing online RPGs except you, so I run it for just you. Right. So like, there's definitely like it comes along a friendship scale almost of like, hey, how friendship is this person is how annoyed I am at this.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Well, I mean, I'm I'm only currently mildly annoyed, and not like you know, it's not like I'm gonna stop talking to them.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

I do actually have some advice going forward though. So

When A Player Joins Another Table

SPEAKER_00 21:41

one of the ways you can kind of like synthesize it a bit where like you have someone who's not playing, but you want to like still talk to them about stuff and things, be like, hey, I should throw a copy of your character as an NPC in my game and let you know what your character did in the setting. Like, gives you good small talk. Like, kind of like how I'm A giant statue of Philip in the game for Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Although, I mean that's a long-running inside joke with your other campaign group.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah, but that is how you make long-running inside jokes. Like I absolutely use Cedric as a shopkeeper in one of my campaigns once. Tick right effect. When I was trying to run uh the the the Tome of Annihilation. But before we get into that, do you want to ask what's

Trivia Heartbreak And A Weird Movie

SPEAKER_00 22:27

new with me? You don't have to. We can just get into the main topic. It's fine.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

I I was considering holding off on my second half of the story because it's somewhat relevant to uh to our topic. But no, I am interested in the most new other mature.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

It feels so vain to say that, but for our audience, I'm also the only person watching a clock and tried to like make our segments fall within vague-ish, time-ish blocks, maybe. So it's like, oh, it feels bad to be like you could ask me what's new with me, hassle, but I kinda need to do that for timekeeping reasons.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

You know, I am actually watching a clock. I'm sitting in front of my computer, uh, even though I don't need to.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Oh, then you just simply don't care what's new with me. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Uh, and I actually uh I think I mentioned on one of the I don't remember if I mentioned on this podcast or or our Daggerun podcast, but I I downloaded Windows Power Tools uh specifically so that I'd be able to enable something to be always on top, and that something that's always on top is my clock widget, which means that uh no matter what I had going on my screen, there's always a clock somewhere on my screen.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Oh, so you're fully aware you spent 20 minutes on this. Well, first, my roommate's heading out in his nice suit, and I want to out loud say it looks nice, have fun at your thing. And now that I've woven that into the episode. Alright. So, as you're aware, I'm kind of in my self-study, working on my thesis project semester.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

And this week I like programmed a playable version of the story Araby to kind of prove my point that like video gaming literature is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

And so I go to meet up with a classmate to do some studying on Wednesday. And this ends with us at Bar Trivia. Okay. And so we're playing this Bar Trivia, and we're on a hot streak because this week's topics were literature, video games, and comic books. Okay. So, but this particular bar trivia, we get to the final question, it's like we use Jeopardy rules. You can choose however many points you want to bid, and we're like, I'm like, if we bid this number and we all get it wrong, we lose. Uh, we don't lose because we're ahead on points. And then like, okay, let's do that. And then the other people went all in and got the question right and we lost. I'm like, if we had gone all in, we would have just simply won the game. And the question was, in the what novel does the protagonist go to the virtual space called the Oasis? Ready Player.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Is it actually called Ready Player One?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, and it took all one second to get the answer, and we just looked at each other like my friend just looks me dead in the eyes like, you failed us. You did math. I was gonna go all in. You failed us. We didn't win now, and it is your fault, and you suck. And then they drew a frowny face on my arm. However, Second Place gotta bring home a free frozen pizza, which is kind of sweet.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yeah, alright, alright.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

So we showed up.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

We had a free-frozen pizza to like split between the the the group or a free frozen pizza. Oh, it's my personal.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

I took it.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

So it's like a free large pizza frozen, which is funny because we had like our singular beer each, because I don't one beer, because beer Okay, here's why I drink beer now, and you'll all appreciate this. So beer is objectively a terrible beverage, right? I agree. Which means if you order one beer and struggle with drinking it, you only buy the one drink because you sip at it all night because it's awful. Now, had I ordered something tasty like an espresso martini, I would have ended up drinking that day. Because I would have ordered multiple drinks because they're tasty.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

I I suppose that is the reason why I mildly enjoy scotch. Right? Is you drink it slower.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

So that way you have a drink in front of you and you're working at it. But also, like, person A is like, who's like a hundred pounds lighter than me, and like a foot shorter is like, I'll take a dark Guinness, and I'm like, what is your most lemonade-y beer? It sounds about right. What's your most fruity beer? What's the beer that tastes the most like I'm ordering a cooler? So I literally had like a strawberry lemonade IPA, and I'm like, man, if you took the beer out of this, it'd be a good time sip. Yeah, okay. Oh yeah, and then Monday, as like a belated birthday present, one of my students and my cohort, we went as like a cohort troop to see the movie I Love Boosters. Okay. And I didn't know what I was getting into because so this isn't sympathy baiting. It's literally it I'm used to being the person who plans things, so for someone to unprompt be like, hey, would you like to do this thing with me? I don't really care what the thing is, honestly. I'm just happy someone who hasn't me planned something. Yeah. So if someone's like, hey, I have an extra ticket from work, want to see a free movie with me. I'm like, that sounds awesome. And they're like, hey, do you want to make it a cohort event? That sounds great. I love this part where this thing's happening, and I just have to show up and have a good time. So to pull a car will give a mini movie review. The first 15 minutes, I'm like, huh. This is some kind of comedy about stealing clothing. This is mildly amusing. And then it's like the art director goes mental and I'm like, this is amazing. Why is this so funny? It completely caught me off guard where I was like, expect I was expecting something substantially more grounded. So when we get to the stop motion skeletons, I was ill-prepared and greatly thrilled. Stop motion skeletons. I don't know, it's like. It reminded me of a movie like Hot Fuzz, where it's like the premise is taking itself seriously, and then it just starts snowballing until it gets truly absurd.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

So I like I went along and I'm like, I'm gonna enjoy this movie for an excuse to do something. I'm like, huh, I wasn't expecting to actually enjoy this movie. We love boosters. Or I love boosters? I don't remember what it was called, honestly. Something something boosters. Yeah, that does sound familiar. Yeah, Wii Love Boosters. No, it was I Love Boosters, sorry. I don't know where the Wii came from.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Okay, but so like when you say stop motion, do you mean like uh like 80s Robocop?

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Like yes, like they refused to use CGI in this movie.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And so then they they just have they clearly explained the off frame rate of stop animation uh sync up with real life.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

And it made me so happy. But yeah. TLDR, I enjoyed it because it went more insane than I was expecting by like a lot. And just looking here at the scores, it's like critics are like 70, 70, Rotten Tomatoes like 90, and usually that just means that like people who saw it didn't get the joke. Yeah, I had a great time with that one.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Alright, alright. I'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Because like when your shoplifting movie eventually introduces a teleporter, good times are head. But with that, let's get into today's top Yeah, I think that's all that's happening with me. It's like I'm doing a lot, meeting up with co-workers a lot and classmates a lot, so I can work on this giant paper. And then I'm off to Montreal next week. Haha, for a conference. Yeah, uh no, I'm exp uh presenting on Choose Your Own Adventure novels from a paper I wrote earlier in this year.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Uh, right, right, yeah, okay. So somewhat similar topic, but not digital.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Ironically enough, so the reason I got onto the writing my big paper on Inforum 7 is because I wrote my little paper on Choose Your Own Adventure novels, and I can recycle a lot of it.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Like, in classic Gogeta fashion, it's like, okay, I have my Choose Your Own Adventure novel, which is uh paper, which is Goku, and then all the work I did for my placement on Forum 7, which is Vegeta, and I'm just going to Vegito them into my final paper.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Not enough.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Man, not enough anime have straight-up character fusions. I think the only ones I can think of that have a straight-up character fusions are Dragon Ball Z, Steven Universe, and Digimon. And then people are like, what about Pokemon Fusion? It's like, no. It's somehow too cheesy a concept. Pokemon Fusions. But I digress.

What Makes Adventures Actually Work

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Alright, so this week we're talking adventures we liked from TTRPGs, possibly board games, possibly video games if we feel like it. And why we like these adventures, and possibly what we don't like about adventures. So I'm gonna start us off with like a blatant advertisement to our other podcast of where we play Daggerheart. So they put out for Daggerheart's one-year anniversary a introduction adventure called The Wish Thief. I

Daggerheart Wish Thief Breakdown

SPEAKER_00 32:04

kind of like both of Daggerheart's official introduction adventures a lot, but they kind of forgot to put out other adventures over the last year. So like there is no like official campaign.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Yeah, and so I like we were doing other podcasts then, and we and what's new with me was that I was getting ready to start my my D campaign. Uh, and then you asked me if I would if I could run Daggerheart, and my answer was no, because there's no campaign books for me to base my my sessions off of.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Right? Like I could literally hand you the exact adventure we went through because I put all those up on Itch and blah blah blah. But like I could see what like you'd want one to know what the completed arc is, and I'm still figuring that out as I go. But like so to start by like critiquing this Wish Fief adventure. I loved the keep away combat, the Who Dunits, the idea that like, as uh we talked about a bit in another episode of like the quantum state of Wodunit, where rather than picking who's guilty off the bat, so it can be boring when someone gets it first try, it's like narrative-driven Wodunit. Although I will say, this adventure's downside, it had a bit too many bits and bobs. Oh? So it wants me to cut out these gift prompt cards, like this game to subtly digital, it's deeply meaningful, etc. So you cut out these eight cards, then you cut out these 12 NPC cards, and you write the names of the NPC, and you flip over the NPC and you flip over the gift to like do the gifting order. That could just be half a page of tables. And I think cutting them out and handing them out to be filled out works less effective than just asking them. Because I feel like that adds a lot of bloat for no reason to go with the handouts or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

I I think that also kind of depends on your players. Um because uh I don't remember what the adventure was if what the adventure was based off of, but but I was playing a dragonborn named Shendu. Um and my butt Lord of the Dragon, I mean ironically. Oh yeah, okay. Um and and uh I had challenged the leader of this goblin encampment for the right to lead their encampment, and I was beating him up in a in a fight pit.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

You know what's funny is I referenced this earlier today earlier while monologuing. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

I called out to my one buddy player and I was like, oh Romeo, now and he just like completely froze. Um choice paralysis. Wasn't expecting anything out of him, wasn't expecting me to ask anything out of him, he was just enjoying the show. Um and so it's like when you have the expectation that you're gonna be reading information to what the the adventure's gonna be about, I guess uh you can be sort of more mentally prepared. But I do find that sometimes uh for Daggerheart, um you're asking me uh, oh, describe uh describe this or or what does this character look like or what's the feature of this city? Um and if I'm unprepared, then it takes me a little moment a moment to like kind of snammer through and be like, oh, I I thought you were gonna tell me.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Um what's interesting is it's like I think Daggerhurt's a good GM training tool because it does that. But also a lot of these are designed as like they call it in like corporate management popcorn, where like when you have an idea you just raise your head and throw in and you kind of like naturally bounce through people. So you don't have any people with you, which means I can't like cognitively offload and ask someone else who has an idea first while you think of it.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Right, yeah. I mean that's true. Uh I just um it does a little bit upend some of some preconceptions about D, or all tabletop RPGs. Uh, where if you have a group of more people and you have the time and resources to do it, actually handing out the cards um gives them a little bit more time to actually think about it and and process the question. If you know what I mean. Like I I can see what your point is that it would kind of bog down the game a bit, but I can also see what the point of of doing that instead of just posing the question open-ended.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Um I can cut this out and hand each player one of these cards. And I think I was raising this as a question, is because the way we did it is I just kind of rolled dice instead of like handing cards, and I gave you more than I would normally give out because it's one for player. Right, right. And then it was shuffling the stack of NPCs to see which person gave which gift.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

And then there's extra boxes if I want to add in more NPCs. If people have just decided other people were important, you could add them into the murder mystery. Right. So had you said the dude who gave me the quest looks really suspicious, I would like shuffle him in.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Um, I definitely really do like that that quantum state thing. Um and I I think that the um cards would be a a better way to help specifically D players, in my experience, uh transition to that more collaborative uh help me describe the scene.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Well, what I was thinking about doing though is I was thinking about cutting out the cards and be like, alright, it's a snack break, but talk amongst yourselves of which goes on each card. Everyone can grab a food in a break and like give them some time for that one.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

I yeah, I think that would also really help.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Because you know what people forget to do when running DD? Take breaks. Like specifically, like sketch structure in 15-minute breaks is actually a really good idea. Uh but uh advanced things, you go ahead. Where I was going with that is this adventure, and if we're talking about, oh, if you were to if this discussion's about if this like these adventures also, if they were to be adapted to any other system, would they still be a good adventure? I think this one, if you switched it out to DD mechanics or Shadow Dark Mechanics, or Fate Corps or what have you, I think it's still a well-structured adventure. It gives you an instant plot hook of you're a delivery person, which is a reasonable thing for low-level players to be. Brings you into a whodunit under the justification, like even players who are adamant anti-railroading, hey, your job is to deliver this ground to this room, would probably do that. Right. And then you get the whodunit, then you get the chase scene at the end. Like, I feel like it's a very clean adventure. And unlike the DD adventures that say two to three hours on them, but they really mean two to three sessions, this would actually happen in a session. Look at it, you, Sunless Citadel, a truly awful introduction adventure.

Sunless Citadel Love Hate Relationship

SPEAKER_00 39:20

The Sunless Citadel. So we both ran the Sunless Citadel probably th two or three times each by now, right? Like. I think I've yeah, I think I've ran it twice. I think I have too. I don't know why I keep running it. It objectively sucks.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Uh well, so the the DD book, Tales of the Army Portal, uh believe that's where it comes from, Race? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Um That's an adaptation of uh a collection of adaptations of older edition adventures. Um yeah, I don't I don't really know how these older sessions were run that they'd be able to go through uh no roleplay. Just no roleplay.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

No roleplay. Because yeah, there's like so many rooms. Also, I think part of it too is, and I've seen a lot of YouTube videos on this, so I love to give the rant that the reason people love 5e is no one actually knows how the fuck to play 5e. Because like I was talking to a friend who was like, your magical girl game was complicated to some other players, and I'm like, what do they normally play? 5e? I'm like, have they ever tracked encumbrance or daily lifestyle expenses in their lives? Do they track arrows? Do they know what an action turn is? How does exhaustion work? How does it when does an attack of opportunity tri like hey, are they w number one, do they have a spellcasting focus in their hand for their wizard? No. So like, 5e is weird that everyone thinks they know how to play it because they've like watched it or listened to it. But the number of people who've sat down and read the entire three books, that is like no one.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Yeah, the there are definitely a lot more rules uh to DD than people realize.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Uh it actually can be very complicated and like to the point where one of the things I like about Daggerheart is I haven't told anyone to read the rules. I just know the rules, so they can't unactuate me. I just haven't given them access to that information. I'm like, here's a character builder, can I have the official rule book? I'm like, well, it is a pre-download on their website, and I can give you a campaign link to give you full access to it, and I can just buy it to you and give it to you, and I have one on my shelf. But no. It's fine. You don't have to read it, it's okay. Don't worry about it. Where 5B everyone thinks they know how it works and you get shit like, well, actually my AC's 30 because my blade swinger, da da da da da. I'm like, huh, how are you holding a shield of your blade singer? That's weird. Oh hey, when you cast a shield spell, did you like have a spell slot? And that's weird. What hand's holding your material component then?

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Uh but so you uh brought it up. Alright, I was going somewhere with this.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Is the idea of the exploration turn has come up in a lot of YouTube videos and things. Where it's like, instead of letting everyone do infinite things in a room, each person only gets to do one thing in a room. Like you've seen me run a dungeon like this on roll twenty before where I roll dungeon initiative. And you each literally only get to do one thing in the room, and then you have to move to the next one. Or I start punishing you. And if you linger to too long, I roll tables for monsters to attack you. And the idea was that for these original dungeons, the threat of these random monster tables wasn't for more fights, it was players would take those seriously because their HPs were so crappy. That if I said to you, Oh, I want to look around the room, mm-hmm, I want to poke every f this tile with a five-foot pole, be like, alright, each time you do that, I'm rolling on this table for something to come murder you. Kind of like in Persona 3, the video game, if you hung along on a floor too much, the Grim Reaper would show up and chase you to the next floor. Yeah, okay. So it was this idea that, hey, if you fuck around too long, we kill you. Ooh, I've used two F-bombs. Uh-oh, I think we're getting into 18 plus territory. But Sunless Citadel is such a weird thing to me, because it's like I've never ran that in one sitting. I'd have to cut the I'd have to literally redesign it to only have three fights for that to even be possible. At least with five E mechanics or five point five E or five point special one D and D, whatever the fuck. Oh, absolutely. I don't know. This feels like a fun one to discuss though. What do you think about Sunlisted Citadel? Because there's obviously there's things we liked in it, or we'd stop running it.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Um, okay, so I mean I I like the um the setting of of the sunken citadel. Like it's just completely underground. Um the vampire tree is cool. The vampire tree is definitely cool. And there are certain elements about it, like the um the rooms where it's like if you're if you have combat and it's too loud, you'll attract more more enemies. Uh and then the I like the part where the book specifically warns you, yeah, if they attract too many enemies, this will be a deadly encounter, so like they better retreat. Um And a lot of players don't consider retreat to be an option.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Well, one thing I've kind of been doing lately, and you've noticed with Daggerheart 2, I've been doing more reverse metagaming, where I'll say something in character and be like, above board, this will happen. Because I find a lot of new DMs will like, if it's not in the read aloud box, won't inform players of what's going on. And I'm like, sometimes I'll let them break character a bit so it doesn't feel like I'm hitting them with gotchas.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Yeah, and I do think that that for something super deadly like that, you need to give them a little bit of warning. But at the same time, it's like I I appreciate the I I don't want everything to be sunshine and rainbows. Uh, so it's like every now and then you need something that's like an incredibly brutal threat that's like you guys better actually deal with this or get out of here.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

I think the one that got you was like it wasn't the dragon weirdly, because like you kinda knew the dragon was going to be. Like you knew the dragon was going to be a bit, not a fight. Like you're like, there's you're like, maybe I'll get stupid lucky and kill the dragon, but realistically, this dragon's slapping me off the cliff. I think the one that actually stressed you out was the wizard after you burned the town down. Cause that wouldn't have been a narratively satisfying place to die. You would have just like, oh, I'm just gonna die, and this child's going to get murdered in front of my eyes. Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

So, like, there's definitely like you need to keep the tension of, but I've definitely found I've gone more above board on, hey, especially if it's not a normal mechanic, and I operate under the assumption that my players are illiterate. Which is funny because among my players, I think there's like, in my home group, one doctorate, three masters, and two bachelors. Like, they're not dumb people. They're smarter than me. But they haven't read the rule book. There's no way they've read the rule book. So if it's something that like deviates from the rules, like, oh, you can run. I mean, to be fair, also most players are contrary, and so if you say it's a deadly encounter and you can run, they're not gonna run. You know this, right? Oh, that's true. They're getting TPK'd out of spite. That's why Dagger would have had the most player deaths in any system. Right. Even though they can choose not to die. They can just not die. That's just an option.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

But I I so I I definitely agree, um, so that a lot of these older adventures clearly assume uh a lot less um role-playing, or like you say, more of that uh exploration turn uh where each player gets one action or else I roll on the other.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

And another thing that's kinda interesting too is that I think in these older games, because we live in an ADHD culture, I don't think players were allowed to yap out of character. I think they were only allowed to speak in character. And you didn't get any of this five people trying to metagame in a circle and brainstorm not only the riddle, but what they would do up like I've had players sit there and try and play you were there, where they tried to play out the entire chain of cause and effect if they did something. Right? And if you like literally said you can only talk in character, then they can't do that because villains can be listening to their scheming.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Yeah, that was like the the one time I came to uh join a session uh from like you're in you're in Ontario, I'm in Saskatchewan, I came and I I joined it, I guess, uh started the session.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Man, I still have your miniature somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

And and the party was trying to have this political debate about who should they instigate as the leader of the mayor of the town, and uh my character is just like, yeah, we have an adventuring to go do, let's let's go do that instead. And then only half the party even decided to come on the adventure.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

So it's like I'm not saying it's better or worse that the they were written with that mentality. But if you think about it, if you're like, oh, these are being played by very quiet antisocial nerds who are only saying important information, then yeah, it would take three hours. Because roleplay was simply uh construed differently at the time. There wasn't a charisma stat. Like But like for Sunless Citadel, I really enjoy the idea of the Kobold and Goblin Civil War happening. But what I don't like is old adventures having a stupid number of creatures with no mass combat rules. It's like, oh yeah, there's 30 things. I'm like, no, no though, right? Like, if I were to adapt this for Daggerheart, there would be four goblins and four kobolds. And I'd give each one a name. Right? Like, or I would go with because Daggerheart uses horde mechanics and just be a horde of kobolds and a horde of goblins. And be like, oh yeah, like a swarm of rats, it's a swarm of kobolds. I'd probably actually just modify the swarm of rats that block, honestly, to be a swarm of kobolds. But like, yeah, there's simply too many things on that map, because they assumed in old school games that you weren't able to fight everything. That you would hide, sneak past, and like try not to fight. Fights were viewed more as traps than as like glory moments. Where I think because we have a culture raised on video games, their first thought when they see enemies is we can and we'll kill them. Hmm. Cause there I'm like we keep saying, there's no way you're fighting 12 encounters a day. Yeah. Absolutely not. What are you thinking, DD?

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Well, I tend to think, uh, I mean, again, it kind of depends on your party, but I tend to think that an adventure like the Sun's Citadel um does help break some of that mentality and help guide players towards um like I say, like I said in our Daggerhardt episode uh about the Dagarhardt camp the adventure that we did, the Stolen Wish. Um I really enjoy um combat encounters that have a non-combat objectives. Oh, yeah. And I I feel like the Sunless Citadel helps kind of prime people for the idea that when you achieve your objective, you can just bugger off and get away from the enemy that you're fighting because you've done your thing.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Yeah, where it's like five to six encounters a day with the research management being designed for that, and DD is wild. Because, like, I even when I'm running for just you, it's like two fights is too many to actually fit in a session with you. Like, I could get like you could fight the sharks and then you can escape the town. There's no third thing that's happening. And the thing is because it's only one player, it actually scales up like, oh, if it if it's too long for you, it's probably too long for my home group, too. Because you take an hour less because there's no other people.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

I just find it interesting.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

So Sunless C the Sunless Citadel is generally not a great adventure to run. But I do think people should read it.

Forge Of Fury Bridge Conversion

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Um, one of the other adventures that I actually did want to talk about, uh, also I don't think is fun to run as written. Uh, and it's the Forge in Fury. Um you approach uh Kundrikar. I think it's I don't know. John John. Um it's a it's a fortress built in a mountain. Um and there's orcs in the fortress.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

And the most comically high fall damage to the point where it's like so they just lose their character, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:02

I well, I I do believe that was the original intent with the adventure as written. Adapted to 5th edition. Uh 5th edition is generally a little bit softer.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Well, I will say for that, because I want to hamper on that cliff fall first. Is like my problem with the shift of 1e to 5e dungeons with like the expected character deaths, is in 5e, you'd have a player fall off this underfoot cliff and then other players go get them. But there's nothing there to like GM. Like you d I do not know what I would do if players, like, oh, we're gonna start climbing down this cliff to rescue them. Because there's no bottom of the cliff designed. Like, it'd be like if you clip through the wall in the fire temple and just fall into the void under the game. You're like, well, what do I do? I guess I need to put something here. Uh oh.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

Well, okay, so I actually I specifically want to talk about this adventure, uh, partly because uh as a recommendation, um, so it's like divided into four floors. Uh the fortress, um, the trophytes slash Durgars, uh, then the Dwarven Temple, and then the uh Dragon's Lair.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

I will say for that adventure, absolutely breaking it into one session per floor is what I consider to be the correct move.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Well, I mean personally, I just I just don't like the flow of that. Like, I just cut out the uh the second floor altogether because it just doesn't make sense to me uh that there would be a fortress, then an untamed wilderness of caves, and then a uh dwarven temple, and then another untamed wilderness of of uh dragon's lair. It's just I didn't like it. Uh but I think it's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 54:44

That's the most conventional image you've ever made on this podcast, by the way, is just uh I didn't like it. I'm like, yeah, that's flawless art like I really do like the fortress, the first one.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

And the thing that I like in particular is in fact the room with the big drop. Um because there's the enormous chasm uh with a rope bridge, and if the orcs are expecting you, uh then they're hiding behind statues and they're trying to snipe you while you're crossing the bridge, and if you get too far along the bridge, uh they actually started on fire, and you only have a certain amount of time to either cross or get back before you fall down the chasm. I've run this adventure like three or four times, and I really, really want to drop someone to the chasm. Um I never have because there's multiple entries to this dungeon, so people have gone around or found secret entrances or gone through other means. Um but my question for you is actually, um if you were converting to Daggerheart for this that room in particular, uh the chasm with the rope bridge and their statues to hide behind for the enemy so they can attack you as you're crossing and burn the bridge. How would you adapt that room specifically for Daggerheart?

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Interesting. So, as I've kind of mentioned in passing, DD to Daggerheart's not that hard of a conversion. There's uh I have a full Excel spreadsheet with tables for just straight up converting stat blocks, but really you can just find a monster that's the right tier and just throw that in the spot. So, like for the orcs, it's like, okay, if they're tier one players, just grab tier one archers and call them orcs. Done. But for like the puzzle. I think so. You know how we did that chase scene where it said the starting numbers on the scene were based on how the previous scene went? Yeah. So I do one of those where like. And I'm literally opening the one in the adventure because I have it printed off on my desk in front of me. I feel like I didn't having like trying to take technology out of running tabletop roleplaying games lately, making it so you can't look shit up. And like, so it talks about the dynamic counter where it's like failure ticks down one side of the one of the dice, and success ticks down the other, and success with fear ticks down both, and there definitely would be a cross dice for how far across you've made it, and uh fall to your death dice. So that way it turns into that skill stalage method of what do you do to XYZ, and then once the one counter goes, anyone on the bridge just falls and just has to make a death move. Mmm. You would just go straight to the death move, okay. Yeah, from that level of fight. I'm like, the height is so hard, we could ri roll 5d20s, but I'm just making you make a death move.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

So you you wouldn't turn it into uh an environment? Because that's kind of what I was. An environment would take me longer, but you're right.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

So if we were to make the flaming bridge environment, for example, I would have to find like a similar existing environment. But environments also will typically have those built-in counters, right? So it's like five- it'd be X number of successes to successfully clear the bridge, spending fear to burn the bridge, spending fear to summon archers. Yes, you could absolutely build that environment block pretty easily. Right. But like if I was just because I I'm me, I probably wouldn't even type up a conversion so much as I'd have the adventure in front of me. Right. And then just open up stat blocks as needed. Hmm, that makes sense. But you're right, a stat block for it. So one thing I was playing around with too is making stat blocks that are like entire done. So the idea is, instead of mapping out something like Strahd's Castle, you would have a stat block that's the number of successes, and each room is a success kind of thing. So if it was like you need to get to 20 successes, and each success is a room you've explored. So rather than going into each room individually, you say to the player, what do you want to do? Oh, I explore the castle. Alright, how do you help the exploration? Cool, you find these rooms. So it's like I deconstruct it from being a physical space to each room is represented by a notch on this table.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

Hmm. Well.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

Yeah, for something like that, like I'm just literally pulling up my environments right now. Cause you're right, like, wouldn't that be an environment? Yes. Yes, it would. But if you want to do it quickly, I would just make it two conflicting dice. Dice I.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

The plural of die is dice.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

Dice, you heard me. But yeah, I could take something like the castle siege environment. And then return it into a bridge. Or you know, weirdly enough, that cliff I like to use on you in the cliffside ascent, modifying that into this wouldn't be too hard.

SPEAKER_02 59:58

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

Yeah. And when their new book comes out in August, I would not be surprised if there's just bridge. Oh, wait a minute. I'm an idiot. So, one of these things is called Raging River. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. Which I used on you in our first session. Yeah. Which you have to do a progress counter, failure, triggers the undertow action where they have to make a reaction, they fail, they move towards the river. Yeah, you would just use this and chain up the difficulty of it to be much more lethal.

unknown 1:00:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

Yeah, yeah, okay. I mean for for me, if anyone fell down to the the chasm, I mean There is a fall damage written in the game, so you could just be fair with the fall damage. No, the water water wouldn't actually save you from a fall that height, but I would say that they fell into the water and survived. Uh, and then they would just be on one of the other floors. Uh because the because of the way the dungeon is designed with the lower floors, and they're actually could be connected that way. Um so I I personally wouldn't kill my players, but I've always wanted to split the party in in that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Where like uh Daggerhead particularly, I kind of enjoy the the bridge gives way. You have three options. You can either risk it all and roll to see if you die or live, go on a blaze of glory, or you can just choose to not be dead and hit the bottom of the river. Yeah, yeah. And I kind of like the idea of this blaze of glory where it's like, no, you're still falling down, but you have one turn to bring someone with you. Okay. So, like, it's like, oh, the bridge collapses, five of you are falling. You could be like, I use I'm gonna have a blaze of glory, I'm gonna throw my comrade across the cliff as I fall to my death. It's just an awesome moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:53

That would be a pretty awesome moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

But yeah, I gave you a complex thing with this double countdown thing. We're like, or wouldn't you just use the raging river traversal? Oh yeah, this one. This is a swift moving river without a bridge crossing, blah, blah, blah. It's just it's just a bridge right here.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

Well, so I mean in this particular instance, I think we've talked about it once or twice before, uh, but I I kind of wanted to highlight the idea of uh the advent the environment stat blocks. It's one of the one of the things that makes the Pega Heart different from D. Uh, and I was just interested to see, firstly, if that was where your first what your first thought would be.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:31

And secondly, uh, oh yeah, like I think the reason I went with a different direction is because I had the other rulebook in front of me of doing like the two dice counters. But like, for example, there's environments, but there's also events that go under environments. Where the rules for that crown keep away were an event block, which is the same as an like functionally the same as an environment, where the environment was they're playing creep away with the crown.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:02

But yeah, like there's a few environments that would have been really easy to turn into this in retrospect, like the mountain pass one where the eagle grabbed you.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:09

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

Would not be hard to make that instead of going up, you're going across. Right, right. And then the literal raging river would be like real easy to change into that.

Tomb Of Horrors Versus White Plume

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

To the point where I don't even know if I'd have to.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

You don't even I don't there certainly are adventures in uh the Tales of the Yawning Portal.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:32

Um, here's a funny one about Tales of the Yawning Portal. So there's DD's infamous uh Doom is the Doom Vault the There's the remake which was Toleman of Annihilation. I'm trying to remember what. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

Doom Vault is called is uh Dead and Day, and the Doom Vault is is just the absolutely ridiculously massive, like portals, dungeons, and like that. I don't I love that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

I'm trying to remember uh blanking on the name of the But there's the Tomb of Horrors and the Tomb of Annihilation. I always get those two mixed up. Thank you. Tomb of Horrors. So I've run the Tomb of Horrors twice. Okay. And I usually cheat because they'll be like, oh, you just lose. I'm like, no. No, though, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:23

Right, because there's like a statue that's just like there's a sphere of annihilation, so if they decide to check out the statue and put their hand in there, they're dead.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

Or there's one that's like, if you pull the switch, it just teleports you back, you're just in it infinite loop forever until you die of starvation. Like it wasn't a solvable puzzle.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:41

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:41

So I've ran it and I wove it into like my long-running campaign. I used it as like a level 18 location.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

I made it, I think I used it as like the lynch as like the Gith Queen's castle. Mm-hmm. And what's funny about it though, is it's so mean and so poorly designed that the level of your characters are irrelevant. And your mechanics of the game are irrelevant. So to convert it to Daggerheart, you just change the enemy at the end. Because there's not really enemies in it. That's true. And because Daggerheart uses challenge ratings rather than DCs. You just kind of keep the number. Like, the numbers are close enough where it's like you basically can use most DCs as is in Daggerheart and just adjust them ever so slightly to like, okay, the players are this level, I'll set it to a DC of 15 or 17. But yeah, most of that dungeon's just a dick move. So ironically, you could just kind of run it as is with no issue in any game system. Cause it always kinda sucks. But you know which one is similar that it's more puzzles than fights that doesn't suck? White Plume Mountain is beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

So I was just gonna say each one of these dungeons in the Tales of the Awning Portal are split into several different sections. And the individual sections are often great. Yeah. But the dungeon as a whole ends up being just a long slog. Um and so like White Flame Mountain is kind of divided into the three different categories, uh, the different weapons.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

Uh I can't even remember what all three of them are. Wave. Whelm and Black Razor, the player killer. Yeah, yeah, Black Razor. I had Welm. I had a Manticore eat Black Razor and then Tail turn into Black Razor and cut off a player's head.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

You were there. Oh, the insta the insta-kill. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

I went mad with power at that moment. Um.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

But White Blue Mountain is is absolutely um each each section of White Blue Mountain is great.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:16

Um here's my favorite thing I've ever done with White Blue Mountain. I had a second I had two DMs, other DMs. It was for our club. And what I'd successfully did was we had three parties of four each go through a different route, and then teleport them all together at the end. Okay. So then each group afterward could talk about their adventures.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:41

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:44

So running that dungeon with multiple parties going through it, but then the Doom Vault with its hundred rooms, that's just a campaign. You'd just be like, the campaign's the Doom Vault.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

I agree. Oh, the Doom Vault. So many cool sections and ideas, but it's just such a swab to get through the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:07

But like. Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at, is like. These dungeons. I don't know, the Doom Vault though. I did use it. Like, I wrapped it up early, but I did use it for like four weeks of my own game.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

And like, I don't know, man. If if you go into it and be like, I am editing the Doom Vault to just be the campaign is the Doom Vault. There's a lot of cool shit in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

Well, so again, the Doom Vault is divided into various sections. Uh, and in this case, actually, the sections are connected by like magic portals, and you need to find the right keys to get to the right portals. Um, if you just cut out a bunch of sections and just have the portals link up differently, you can still get that that vibe and feel of this massive dungeon with the keys you have to find to get to the different sections. Like you can get all of that flavor um without having to go through the entire Doom Vault. And I kind of I kind of like the modularity uh of these um these older adventures where there's like different sections and you can just easily cut out sections and and adapt it to whatever uh your campaign needs. I personally I love the Tales of the Awning Portal, uh, but I don't don't think it's wise to try and run any one of those dungeons uh in their entirety in one go.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

Oh, firmly agree.

Campaigns Get Too Big To Finish

SPEAKER_00 1:09:45

But the thing is, like, I've tried to run the Tome of Annihilation campaign. And it just kind of bloomed out so much that we weren't running DD frequently enough to remember what the hell people were doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:57

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

Because some of these campaigns. So DD, they've done the math, and the average campaign only makes it to like level six and seven. Right. And it's like, yeah, I see why that happens, because like you want people to like be investing tracking things, but unless you're running it weekly, they're not gonna remember the NPC four weeks ago. And on it, quite frankly, I'm not sure I am either. So, like, let's go to a different game, for example. So, in Shadow Dark, it is very, very streamlined. It's like a revamped one E D basically. Yeah. Character takes about 30 seconds to make. There's like two class features on it and a weapon. You roll for spell you're you don't have track spell slots, you just roll, and if you fail to roll, you lose that spell for the set. It's a very elegant game system. But it's like, oh, this is clearly the dark fantasy system. You're gonna die. Right. The starter adventure for it has this underground labyrinth. It's a game that tracks your torches in real time, so like lighting matters. No one has dark vision ever. But their intro adventure is going into this labyrinth where there's a mad Minotaur and trying to grab treasure and leave. Okay. What's weird about it though is my players immediately are like, oh, I climb to the top of it and look down in this maze, and like the game's not really preparing for that obvious contingency. So 100% of the time, my players instead of exploring the adventure, first try and circumvent the adventure in its entirety. Yeah. And like, there's a few good traps and things in it that are really interesting. But like, Shadow Dark worked better when I ran extra-dimensional spaces instead of its own intro adventure. And I just find that funny that I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna not use what comes with this Grimdark game, and instead use this much lighter, more fun adventure that's like designed to be less dark and serious, using them like stripped down game at mechanics of Shadow Dark, and it worked really well. But I'm like, hmm. My players don't have that grind in them.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:09

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:10

Like, no matter how, like they I run into this problem all the time. I'm curious if you do, where players don't actually want to play the game they tell you they want to play. I'll be like, let's run a heist campaign, and they're like, cool, I'm a bakery shop owner.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:28

Well, so the the player that I was complaining a bit about at the start of the of the episode here, um, I I played with him before, and uh he uh he wanted to be like a a gunslinger of some sort in a different campaign. Oh, I hate that. And so we uh we looked through uh homebrew uh character options and and we actually found a gunslinger, and it looked like it was uh everything that he had asked for. I would just give him the Map Mercy Gunslinger. But so then we're playing the campaign, and the DM drops uh a cursed sword, and uh the gunslinger player picks up the cursed sword and decides that the uh the curse is more interesting than his entire class, and decides to just use his cursed sword instead of using any of his class features. And so I've definitely seen a lot of people uh who follow that kind of mentality where they they tell you exactly what they want, uh, and then you offer them something else that they're like, oh wait a second, I didn't want what I thought I wanted.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

Well, it's kinda like I got a lot of pushback when I switched off by V to Daggerheart. Daggerheart has rules, like the stress mechanics and social mechanics, to make political crap more interesting than DD does. DD is just you charisma check. That is it, that's the entire social mechanic, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:02

But that that stress mechanic definitely adds you're not gonna like it's very hard to kill someone with stress, but it does actually reduce their resources in a meaningful way, uh, that is an alternative punishment for the role-playing.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

So, like we think about the Who Done It I ran on you last week. You were able to use a fair variety of approaches. You're like, okay, I'm gonna look for evidence on this person, I'm gonna talk to this person, I'm going to kick this dog. I never kicked the puppy, although I should have, because it would have been the culprit then. But like, when we think about the way my home group plays, Daggerheart makes more sense for the way they play than 5e does. Because when we talked about, oh, they're trying to put someone in charge of an election. Having mechanics that they can use different stats other than charisma, and then hit them with stress, and like because like, yeah, you're not gonna take damage running an election, but you're absolutely, I could stress you out from it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

And you failing roles causing you to be stressed out and like the worse the election goes, the less resources you have. Is like reasonable. But my players are what are like adamant, like, no, no, DD's the better game. I'm like, it's really not, because you're not playing DD. You actively refuse to play DD. I show you a dungeon and you ignore it. In a game that's about resource management, none of you have ever managed a resource. Right? Like, the number of things I've had of like, oh, like I literally just gave up spell preparing because people would take spells and be mad that they weren't wouldn't have their spell prepared to do the thing they were going to do. And it's like they're like, oh, I don't I've had a player go like, oh, I don't like how Dagger Heart doesn't give me as big a variety of spells. I like the strategy preparing spells. I'm like, I literally had to remove that rule. Yeah. Because I you guys would try and force extra rest to change spells in the middle of dungeons. And then complain your spells didn't do what you wanted them to do. Like, I literally had to change the rules of the game to make it match what you wanted to have, Abbott. And none of you know that I changed the rules, because none of you read the rules. But like. So here's a funny

Daggerheart Versus DnD Intro Design

SPEAKER_00 1:16:34

one. So, Lost Mind of Pendelver's first adventure versus Daggerheart's intro adventure that start identically. Oh? So Lost Mind starts with you're in a cart and you get ambushed by goblins. Okay. The first session of Daggerheart, and the adventure's name eludes me right now. Also started with you're driving a cart and you get jumped by assassins. Yeah, okay. What I find fascinating between the two is the Daggerheart one, they have the objective of stealing your cart, because you're off to get like a stone enchanted. And in 5e, they're just trying to kill you for fun. Having been a victim of me running both those sessions for you, I think I've ran them all solo for you, too. How do you feel about the Daggerheart quick start, uh the Sablewood adventure versus just the first session of Lost Minds of Fendelver. The goblins ambush you, you follow a person back to a cave, you fight a goblin.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:40

Um, well, so funny enough, uh, the very first session we ever ran. You died in the nightbush. Yeah, a few bad rolls, and I just died. Um and you know I kind of like that Daggerheart is more forgiving in that it's like even if you had the bad roles, and if you quote unquote died, um it'd be the first session, so who is gonna choose Blaze of Glory or just one of my players specifically is going to, despite me.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:13

I know the exact player who's gonna choose it. But the average person in the first fight of the game, you go down, it's probably not choosing death.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:21

Right, so it's like the the fact that it would be fairly simple to um just not TPK a party in Daggerheart, where in Wells Mines of End Elder, uh, it was like I immediately got TPK'd and almost didn't even want to play D after that because of like that's just ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:42

You died so fast, I had to like triple check the rules to be like this doesn't seem right. Yeah. Like I remember writing my early sessions, like, for example, Magic Missile. Man, so 5E does some stupid shit that pisses me off. So they explain spellcasting roles and saving throws, and then immediately gives you a spell. The first spell it gives you doesn't use saving throws or spellcasting roles. And I was trying to figure out how spells work, and I couldn't, because the first spell I'd ever seen didn't follow the rules of spells. First Pokemon attack they give you is Stealth Rock and Future Sight, and you're like, how the hell does Pokemon work? And it did have the text I needed. No where a magic missile doesn't just say the phrase this spell automatically hits and ignores these roles. Just assume you'll figure it out. Yeah? Oh, I'm so mad about that to this day, because I'm like, why would I assume the spell automatically hits? If you don't tell me it. Yeah. But like. So yeah, they I don't know. They both start with an ambush, and then one goes on a cave exploration, and then the other one goes to a town, and then does like a tower defense mission. Also, the Sablewood Messengers is probably the adventure I've ran the most out of any game ever. Because it was my one Daggerhardt adventure.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:12

So, I mean, like you said, there aren't very many Daggerheart adventures out there yet. Uh but the ones that we have played uh often seem uh inherently more dynamic than comparable DD adventures. Um that's this seems to kinda be the way. Uh I I think the newer adventures that are actually written with 5B in mind are a little bit better at being more dynamic.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:45

Although I have a hot take about that. The newer 5e adventures are more dynamic but less creative. Oh? So it's like they're so used to ripping off themselves that it'll be like, hey, play this adventure. Almost every 5e adventure is a rewrite or a remake of an adaptation of a pre-prior 5e adventure or a prior DD adventure. Like, for example, Tome of Annihilation is just, oh, we turned the Doom Vault into an adventure with Dinosaurs. I think a lot of the pre-made DD adventures, like the newer ones particularly, are so large in scope that they don't get finished. Right. Like, here's my hot take, because I wanted to talk about this adventure anyway. I love Ravenloft, and by Ravenloft I mean Strahd's Castle, and I've never used the rest of Ravenloft except to set up Strahd's Castle.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

I will like I definitely I tried playing through actually uh a Strahd's Castle campaign. Um all of the extra stuff where it's like try and find the different swords and and the um tarot cards. The tarot cards, yeah, the tarot cards were like there's just a whole bunch of weird extra stuff, and I was like, I thought we were here to go to Strahd's dinner and mess them up. Like, I didn't realize there was so much more going on here.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:27

And how much of the more did you end up doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:31

Well, we didn't even make it to Strahd's Castle because the campaign fell apart apart before then, like I think we got the the first, like the sword, maybe?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:38

Because yeah, on DD Beyond forever ago, they put like a for Halloween how to run Strahd's Castle in one night guide. Okay. And that's pretty much how I always run Strahd's Castle, is it's like I ran it over Dis. I don't know if you were in the Strahd uh Curse of Strahd Castle when I ran over Discord and Roll 20. Oh last I was not. But I literally went, take the intro from it and the session zero adventure, and just run the castle, and it took like six sessions because it's Strahd's Castle. But like there's like a 50 location X map in there. Yeah? Like you could easily run Cursed Strahd for a year. But Strahd himself's stat block is not strong enough to justify running Cursed Strahd for a year. Because I had them go directly to the castle. And like I tried to make him scary and intimidating, and they just kind of called him an incel and lapped in his face.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:30

Um one of the other things to note though is that uh the uh DD experience system is completely whack.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:40

It just doesn't work. I just use milestone.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:42

Yeah. Um, so if you're using milestones, DD's or Straub's castle is not going to be able to be run. Like, you run it for a year and your characters are just gonna be ridiculously overpowered uh by the time they reach it. Um if you run it using experience, then their actual progress is gonna be painstakingly slow, and they might actually still be the appropriate level when they reach there, because the experience system just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:11

And it's like the stat block on Strahd himself. Strahd is not nearly strong enough to need extra steps to kill. Like I've looked at the numbers, like, well, if you kill him, he goes back to the coffin. It's like people are so genre savvy now, though, that they'll just they just know that. Like. No one's gonna be like, ooh, Strahd came back, I don't know how we kill him. Right. Like, there's no riddle, no puzzle, and like you don't need the special things to kill him either. And like my Cursed Strahd campaign was great. I just find it funny that like these 5e campaigns, I'm like, oh, I kept one chapter. Two chapters, and then threw the rest of the book out.

unknown 1:24:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:53

And like Lost Mind of Fendelver, ironically, they're like, this will start your campaign. I'm like, no, that's a full last campaign. Like the first Lost Mind of Fendelver where I just had to take c uh castle collapse and I ended the session there. And then tried to do Horde of the Dragon Green Rise of the Buddhita. Curse is like Lost Mind by itself is probably an appropriate length for a campaign, honestly. Yeah. Well, like I made it to the end of Water Steve Dragon Heist, and they're like, now you can get book two, the level five to twenty super dungeon. I'm like, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:23

Uh well, but one of the books that is absolutely fantastic is The Mysteries of Cam Camp of Mysteries.

Why Anthologies Beat Setting Books

SPEAKER_01 1:25:31

Oh, absolutely. You already mentioned the Joys of Extra Dimensional Spaces. Um I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:37

I ran that with four different game engines. Like, I ran it with Shadow Dark, I've ran it with Fate Core, I've ran it with Five E, and I've ran it with Daggerheart. I didn't have to do shit to convert it to Daggerheart. I don't even know if I changed a single number in that thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:55

But that is just like, oh man, that's such a good single session uh low-level adventure. Even if you're a higher level, it's still so much fun to explore that the extradimensional space in the book.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:10

Also, the idea that you keep the house in the book as a prize is such a good prize.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:16

Yeah. I I definitely agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:19

It's like, what'd you get for clearing the dungeon? To keep the dungeon. Also, I will say, kind of a hot take. But one of the reasons I use a lot of 5e adventures, even if I'm not using 5e, is because they're just so easy to steal. Oh? I just typed in Choice of Extraditional Spaces PDF and got it. Took no negative effort for me to pull this back up again.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:50

Uh, here I am sitting with my physical book, and then you're just like, yep. I have a to be fair, I've given Fivey enough money. That's that's true. I I don't know if I'm actually gonna buy any more DD books because I just I have enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:05

Well, that's what I was kind of saying about the pacing, is like I will never play through them all. Also, this is a weird hot take, but I enjoy running adventures I've already ran the best. That is the entire point of our podcast, is it lets me practice adventures to then run them with some familiarity of it already. Because I'm good, but I'm much better if I've memorized you know how much of a flex it is to have the adventure mostly memorized? Like, I'm pretty sure I can run the Sablewood adventure from memory. Like, I'd still need some stat locks for monsters, but like 99% of it I could just do from memory pretty well. Right. Which makes although to be fair, that's why my players are so spoiled. Is I have like if someone goes off script, I could just pull out something else I've ramped. Before and then disguise it. Like how Pokemon X and Y's first forest was a one-to-one tile remap of Viridian Forest.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:09

Uh so in terms of uh the Candle Heap Mysteries, uh there are 17 adventures in here, and I've managed to run 10 of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:19

It's pretty good. I think I've gone through all of Tales of the Yawning Portal. I think I told you my strategy for my first campaign that actually made it to level 20 was I had Horde of the Dragon Queen, and whenever they ignored Horde of the Dragon Queen, I threw them in a Tales from the Yawning Portal adventure.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:37

I've definitely run at least portions of every adventure in Tales of the Yawning Portal. Oh, I've got to never completed any of them, like there's only seven adventures in Tales of the Yawning Portal, which again goes to underscore the point that the older dungeons are just so much more massive, and it's just better to take different chunks of them and put them in your story than to try and run the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:10

Is surprisingly effective. Like, Tales of the Awning Portal works better as a Shadow Heart supplement than a DD supplement. Because Shadow Heart, uh, Shadow Dark doesn't have charisma. Really? Like Shadow Dark is closer to 1E, so it actually runs these 1E dungeons better.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:29

You do have to switch out the monsters to fit the different game rules, but yeah, I I did actually I'm I do really like mechanically mysteries, highly recommended. Uh, particularly Joys of Extra Dimensional Spaces. Like you say, it's that's a super fun adventure, easy to adapt to pretty much whatever system you're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:50

Um man, do I like one of my best advice is to take these tales from the Ion Porto adventures and just steal specific traps out of them. Like the frictionless hallway with the illusionary wall behind. It's just fun. The super tetanus.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:05

I I do love the super tetanus. Super tetanus is great.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:11

Right? And then like so, yeah. For when it comes to adventures, it's mostly DD, because it's like a lot of other systems that are more rules-like that I've ran don't really have or need adventures. Like, I've ran literally, I think I can't I think it was like called Toon World or something. It was like a Animaniacs type TTRPG. Okay. And I just ran a Laph Olympics. And their adventure was like running a Laph Olympics of here's three Olympic events with your cartoon characters.

unknown 1:30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:49

But you pretty much just improvise the entire thing. Like I was using the fake core system that I had tweaked to be a Hunter-Hunter game engine. Okay. And for my Hunter-Hunter one-shot, I just did a Hunter exam. But like for combat and things, I just used the character creation tools in it to like make NPCs that functioned identically to the players. And I didn't really plan out anything other than okay, a hunter exam needs to have three arbitrary tests, we'll have them run through a city, we'll have them do the thing, we'll have them do the other thing, and then we'll do a tournament at the end. Right. But like, I didn't really need it. DD's funny. Where it's like, you kinda need a dungeon for DD. Even though my players seem to do everything in their power to not go in these dungeons. Then they're then happy once they're in the dungeon. It's like they feel like they win if they can skip going through the temple. But it's like, imagine you're playing Legend of the Zelda, you're like, I have a way to skip the temples directly to the bosses. You lose a lot of the game by doing that. Looking at you, Breath of the Wild. Looking at you, Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild's not even my top five favorite Zelda games. But it was a stand on Iggin. It was. And it deserved it. It was a game where you could use a fire sword to keep warp in the cold, chop down a tree, and ride the tree down the river to get to a shrine. Like it had a lot of really cool mechanics. But it was no Majora's Mask. Uh Majora's Mask. Anyways. But yeah. That is a lot of dungeoning I wanted to talk about. Do you have any others you want to go into before we move into our random questions?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:38

I mean. Not in particular. So actually, how many adventures from Chantal Keep Mysteries have you run? Uh, like four, I think. So, like, did you uh have you run like the Shem Shimei's bedtime rhyme where they get locked in the Flyer Fice fly cellar?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

I don't think I've ran that one. Oh man. You know what actually is an adventure worth talking about, though? Prisoner number nine. Prisoner number nine. Was that what it was called? The one the like the actual because Waters Deep Dragon Heist wasn't a heist, so they made an actual heist campaign.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:19

Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta go grab the. I gotta go grab the book. I haven't actually run that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:25

I'm gonna go grab the book so I can simply read the synopsis and that one I've ran twice, because it's like an actual, like you can disguise yourself as Cooks to break into a blaze adventure. So that one got had a lot more of the heist fantasy.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:43

Yeah, I'm so far I've only run one of the heists from the Golden Ball, um, which is the one where they go to the university and try and steal a stone that's actually the egg of an elders horror.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:57

So here's my hot take. If you're just randomly combining adventures, if you have Candleme Mysteries and Tales from the Golden Vault, those connect so well together if you're a team of like combat archaeologists. Because if you're trying to steal things to bring it to the library, like if you change out the quest reward for all the Golden Vault ones to like a cursed book and your group of like combat librarians, that's actually a sick campaign. I've like drafted the idea of splicing those together to be a full Until 20 campaign. But like I like that one for the same reason. I think there's a theme that we both enjoy collections of short adventures rather than full campaigns, because the full campaigns it's so hard to keep people in track.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:44

I definitely agree. Uh like I really liked the idea of Dragon Deep or Water Deep Dragon Heights. Uh, but like you said, the players weren't actually that interested in the story.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:00

And I also found that, like, the game missed a lot of lore. Remember, I had to take like I spliced in the entire Rabnica book because people were asking questions like what buildings are in this city and what NPCs are in the like they wanted the city more alive because we put them in the city. So I just kind of made this made Waters deep Ravnica so I'd have more lore. Because the book itself was like, there's many guilds here. They're like, oh cool, can I go talk to a guild member? And I'm like, Bh. What kind of guilds are here? I don't know. Yeah. Like I that's the campaign that hurt hit me the hardest for me not knowing things. It's kind of like to successfully run Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Temid, to actually run it well as a full campaign, I needed the Sword Coast Adventures Guide. Because they simply they put cities in but didn't map them. Like I remember complaining about this to you specifically, where they're like, I'm outside Baldur's Gate. What's in Baldur's Gate? Don't know, it's not in the book. They assume you wouldn't check out Baldur's Gate. In what world do your players go outside Baldur's Gate? And then don't go in, especially if you're like, oh, they're not allowed in, there's guards outside. In what world are they not doing that?

SPEAKER_01 1:36:29

Yeah, I did. There was one adventure in the Camp Scheme Mysteries that actually sends the players to Baldur's Gate. Um, it's like the only section it it describes is the market where you're supposed to find the book. Um and it was just like Fortunately, I had players that were uh willing to more willing to work with me, but like you just have to make up so much about one of the biggest cities in the in the lore of the of the system.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:00

But also, kind of like it's not even the player. Normally I blame the players because I'm a bad person, as I open the podcast with. But the players to assume that if you the DM says here's Baldur's Gate, it's fair to assume, if you're a player, that the GM wants you to go in the city. Like, it is weird for the player to be like, oh, the GM clearly doesn't know the city he sent us into for this quest. Right? Like, that's just insane. So, like, the Sword Coast Adventures Guide having like a map of Baldur's Gate, and even though it doesn't, like, give you specifics, it gives you at least enough to like do something with. You know, hot take. If I was making 5e, I wonder if the idea should have been like, you know, instead of large adventures, we treat it like an atlas and be like, here's Baldur's Gate, and it's just a bunch of side like ten adventures in Baldur's Gate kind of thing for all the key locations.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:00

You know, I personally would have actually really, uh, really liked that.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:05

I'd still be playing D if the adventure books were literally like, here's a geographic location with ten adventures in it. Every if every book was a candle keep for that region.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:18

Because Candle Keep Mysteries was great. Uh most of the adventures that I've seen in the Golden Vault have been super interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:27

Um, it's like I tried to run Saltmarsh a while back, which is like a Greyhawk campaign. And it's more like here's a series of adventures that happened in this area. Although Saltmarsh has this giant flaw of being a naval campaign where you don't take up have anywhere to really take your boat to, which was a choice. But it's like DD also suffers from magic syndrome of they're wasting a lot of resources to create content that doesn't work with each other. Because they'll be like, hey, do you want to play Dragonlance? They'll be like, no, fuck off. Hey, do you want to play Dragonheim? Hey, do you want to play Starfinder? And I'm like. If you may if you committed to a setting and kept making content for that setting, you flesh out the setting to be more usable.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:22

Well, yeah, like uh they then they also did like the various um Magic of the Gathering campaigns.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:31

Crossovers. And those books had the same problem that sh uh Daggerheart has right now, where it's like, hey, I have a Ixladan campaign. Or let's go Strixhaven. Here's my Strixhaven campaign rule book. Can I have some adventures that happen there? Yeah. It's so wild to me to sell someone a setting book and not adventures with it. I don't like I'd wish for something without batteries.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:07

In any event, our podcast recommendation, buy the anthology books because most of them are actually quite a bit better than the campaign books.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:17

Oh, and my definite official one is download the free dagger heart stuff. Like, I gave you heck for this in our podcast. Like, I don't know if I can do this. Like, you go on the website, the entire rule book on the SRD format, you can just click download, the event you can click download. It even comes with little standees you just cut out with scissors. You print at the local library if you want it printed. Like, I they really can't make this much easier. But their new book, they put 10 more pre-fab characters in with it. So I think they have a prefab character of every class. My only thing with Daggerheart is it's harder to run a long camp. Like, it's easy to do a one-shot. Right. It is harder to do a full campaign. Because not everyone can pull a me and just be like, okay, I'll just tell Carl to go somewhere, pick a environment block, pick another one, pick a fight, and we're good.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:08

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:11

But like, yeah, the anthologies I agree. Taking them, looking through them, also there's so many indie RPGs and indie adventures that, like, I I feel like a corporate shill here, because I'm like, well, there's Daggerheart, there's Shadow Dark has tons of adventures, but like there's an infinite number of adventures people put out, and I feel bad for saying this. I don't have the ability to check every adventure everyone's ever printed on DM's Guild.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:39

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:40

Actually, here's kind of one to talk about.

Adventure League One Shots As Filler

SPEAKER_00 1:41:43

Both me and you have gone on Adventurers Guild and downloaded a bunch of Adventure League adventures. Specifically because they're one-shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:53

The only adventure league adventures I downloaded were the Tyranny of Dragons, which complements the uh Ford of the Dragon Queen. How did you feel about those? I love them, actually. Um I used them as I I had a dream for a campaign, and I made it substantially far through it, but I had a dream for a campaign where you would link all the adventures in uh Tales of the Yawning Portal together.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:19

Um and uh I think we had very similar dreams, because I did a lot of that in my Rise of the Dragon Queen.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:26

The the filler that I used in between the main Tales of the Awning Portal dungeons were the one-shots from uh Tyranny of Dragons. Um because although the the cultists in there are specifically for the Dragon Queen, it's just so easy to substitute them to be different cultists uh working towards like the Doom Vault ended up being um the Lich's phylactery. And the cultists throughout the Tyranny of Dragon Adventure League adventures uh were trying to work were working for the Lich that runs the Doom Vault. Um that was my campaign. Which is sick. And I've I definitely found that those uh Adventure League adventures um they're very short, uh, but they're incredibly varied in what you're trying to do. Like there's some kind of mysteries, there's some like exploration, there's some uh infiltration kind of things. Like it's I I definitely think the particularly that one was where it was really worthwhile. Um, but I suspect that at least origin the OG by the say adventure league modules are would be a worthwhile investment for anyone looking for an anthology style one-shot collection.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:51

Yeah, I've definitely like, so I've especially when my players so my players will go wherever the hell they want, right? And there's definitely been times where I'm like, okay, I don't have an official adventure that fits. Let's see what they have on the DMs guild to try and figure it out. Like I've looked up, like I definitely found like a Feywild adventure on there or a Gith adventure, and like look like what highly rated adventures there are to fill in those gaps. So like the Adventure League adventures are definitely similar to the Daggerheart ones of Because my players are gonna be themselves, I can underwrite these adventures. Cause there's How long do you think that group would take to go through the Sunless Citadel? Just guess guess a number of sessions you think that three to four hour hour adventure, the Sunless Citadel, took my group to go through.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:47

Uh I'm gonna say at least ten. Six.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:52

Oh, okay. So the adventure league ones that are literally designed to like be played at a small local game store as a drop-in with minimal explanation over the course of three hours are correct for my seven-hour sessions. Like a two-hour adventure is a ten-hour adventure if I let it. But I'm just as bad as my players, because like they'll say something and then you've seen how I play. You're like, oh, I'm gonna go to the volcano. And I'm like, I just enable you the entire way through. I don't even try and prevent you from making this more difficult on me. Uh you're like, oh, can I have a fishing rod? I'm like, yes. This will be great. That was great. But yeah, like and then Lost Mind of Fendelver. I really touched on the first session a little bit, but as a five adventure thing, DD's best engineered thing by a wide margin.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:49

Lost Mind's a Fendelver?

SPEAKER_00 1:45:51

Yeah. I've ran it so many times, and it goes pretty well. Because it has enough. They flesh out the area enough that the players aren't railroaded, but all the directions lead them where they're supposed to go. The dragon that flies away to come back later is always a good taunt. The black spider is exactly a good enough villain. And it's like it's the most DD ass feeling DD adventure. Or, like I was kind of saying, it's a lot of stuff they put out, they're almost trying too hard to like not be D in their DD. It's like a Marvel movie where it's like this has clearly been focused grouped too far. Yeah, that's right. And they don't really know where they're going with it. Like for example, the Acquisitions Incorporated book. Just is just a different game. Like, why are you even DD?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:52

I've played through a couple of trenches from that. Um but yeah, the uh merchant mechanics were just weird, and I don't think we we hardly even use them, we just played the actual.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:04

Yeah, and then like the Radiant Citadel, and like it's like, oh, we're gonna go full sci-fi with this. I'm like, who's this for? Just play a sci-fi game. I know that's like terrible advice, but it's also great advice because I'm like, no, no, you could just not. You're allowed to just not. It's a completely valid option.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:24

Well, yeah, like D uh is written and primed to be a fantasy setting.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:33

It's written and primed for you to go through dungeons. That's the thing that breaks me. Is the amount of effort people put to not go through dungeons in their dungeon game. With dungeon as the first word on it. The entire game is coming up with excuses to get people to go into dungeons. Like Candle Keep Mystery is literally we put the dungeons in books. Go to these dungeons. Yeah. Yeah? Rise of the Dragon Queen is like go to five dungeons to get five MacGuffins. And I find the further you get away from going into a dungeon, which for the record a heist is just go into a dungeon and not get caught.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:16

And just a lot of effort seems to go into like not exploring dungeons. Like that's what I was saying with the Curse of Strahd one. I'm like, you know what people want to do? They want to go to the vampire castle dungeon. And when you tell them actually go do something else like but castle vampire. Why would we?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:37

That's definitely how I felt.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:41

For sure. Oh yeah. But like too much dungeon's too much dungeon, though. Like, the I trapped them in the Doom Vault for like an N IRL three months. Right. Like, after that, I'm like, okay, no big dungeons for a while. I think we're good. But with that, any closing thoughts on because we mostly just talked about DD and Daggerheart adventures because they seem the most applicable to this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:13

Well, I mean, those are the ones that I personally am the most familiar with. It is.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:18

It's good to have something we can both talk about, because I'm gonna be like, here is the intro adventure I played for synth uh synthetics heart saga. You'd be like, oh neat.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:33

Right. So I mean, yeah, no, like I say uh our podcast, we definitely prefer the shorter um one-shot type style anthologies of adventures so that you can just fill in the your main campaign with uh smaller dungeons wherever needed to break up the pace or drop clues or clockbooks for people like the

SPEAKER_00 1:50:00

And if you like Carl needs some daggerheart adventures if you want to try that game, they're all on our itch.io. You can just have them, they're free. That one I don't mind self-probling as much because we just give them to people. Fair enough. But moving on to our random questions.

Random Questions And Closing Bits

SPEAKER_02 1:50:22

I love random questions.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:23

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:26

Random questions are so much more interesting than regular questions.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:30

Ah, I do enjoy regular questions too. Okay, this one's pretty good. What is the most obnoxious thing you order at fast food or cat or coffee shops? Like what is the thing you go in and you order and you know it's obnoxious to order it?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:58

Well yeah, I'm not really sure. Uh like I used to go to a fish and shift restaurant called for Joey's Only. Yeah, they have pretty good fish. Um and we went there at supper. We went there at suppertime, and uh the meal would come with a like a cornbread. I I don't like cornbread, I don't know what it is. I don't like cornbread. Um but so I was like, hey, can I have like extra fries instead of cornbread? Um and they're like, oh, well that would be an extra charge because we're busy right now and and uh it's we have to prepare your plate special. And it's like, oh, well then I guess I'll just get cornbread. But I don't know, that's not really like obnoxious, but at the same time, just like when you go in at a busy time and you make a special request like that, um don't get upset when your special request is missed.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:59

Like yeah, and then for me it's so I always order like no sweetener and like the ice coffees I pick up for my brother and things.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:11

And I don't think that's particularly obnoxious, but when I was doing my placement and I had to do coffee runs, I'd have to go in and order one of those like 10-pack takeaway coffees. And I felt bad every time because it'd be like, hi, I need you to assemble this cardboard box and fill it with coffee. I know you're busy like with all these customers, but bulk order like ordering ahead didn't work because they still wait till they saw me before they start preparing, and I'm like, what? Do you guys not like prepare it in advance? And I'm like, okay, I'm being obnoxious here. But like they would see me lock eyes and then start it, and I'm like, why am I pre-ordering?

SPEAKER_01 1:52:53

Why indeed?

SPEAKER_00 1:52:56

So I think my my obnoxious order is me. I'm just kind of obnoxious.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:01

Um I don't know. I do all I do also frequently order things plain. I I like going to restaurants uh where I don't have to order things plain. Like like I love Wendy's bacon eaters because I don't have to order it plain. Uh and it's like I really enjoy um like a every now and then I enjoy like a McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese, but I have to order it plain. And then I feel bad complaining when I when I get it wrong, but it's also like Is it that obnoxious? Like I thought it would just be easier than you know putting all the other stuff on.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:42

Part of it is about volume too. So whenever I order something with mods, because Jeremy can't eat tomatoes, I will order both items without tomatoes, so that way their odds of screwing it up go down.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:53

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:54

Because the most obnoxious is definitely when somebody orders multiple things at once, and each one's slightly different. Like if it's four hamburgers in one plate, is more annoying than four plane hamburgers.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:07

Right, right. And like as a service worker, you know, spelling pizza, um I uh I definitely experienced that where it's like someone orders four half and half pizzas and each one is like modified and is like I've seen some very obnoxious orders. Um but I I try not to be obnoxious when I'm ordering, so alright.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:37

And then here's a fun random question. What are you trying to get better at right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:46

What am I trying to get better at right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:50

Uh well, I mean, I guess the number one thing would probably be computer programming. Um but there's a lot of different like skills that I could outsource. Um like I I had a long time ago I built a light table so that I could uh do my own art for computer programming. Um and I even went out and I bought some like nice pencil cranes that I'm gonna learn how to do color blending eventually. Um but like I said, that there's so many different potential skill sets. Uh one of them, like you could outsource individual parts. Uh, but I'd really like to get better at computer programming and then also the graphic design map of it with physically drawing my images.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:36

Excellent. So mine's gonna be the opposite what you expect. Because I'm in school, which means I'm getting better at my discipline no matter what. But what I'm actually trying to get better at is eating less sugar and going out for more walks. Like, I am trying to get better about not eating as much garbage. Like the raccoon that I am. Cause like, it's like I'm not really trying to get better at digital humanities, because that's my job. Like, I've read four books this week. But like, I am trying to actually care about my diet, cuz no one's gonna do that for me. And no one's been paying attention to what I've eaten since I was 15 years old. So it kind of falls on me.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:23

That does definitely fall 100% on you.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:26

But like a lot of people like view weight loss and things as like a willpower situation. Where I'm like, no, no, it's a skill to build. Like, healthy habits are a thing you actually have to work on to have. You don't just have them or don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:40

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:42

And then let's see.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:47

I think we have more results. One thing I wish I was uh one thing I wish I was I was better at uh so that they would just either I'm not I I wish that they would just either uh accept or reject my submission for that uh right. 129 days am I that good or that bad? I I don't know, like what's going on here?

SPEAKER_00 1:57:11

Yeah, as someone who usually has like 20 things in submission, eventually just get numb to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:17

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:19

Because at this point it's like like I was saying, like I get like one rejection letter a week because I've sent out like a hundred things. But occasionally I get acceptances, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:29

The Strange Horizons, that's where I submitted my story to. I mean, I wish I was bitter enough at writing uh that I actually just like got accepted faster, I guess. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:40

I don't know. Like the thing is, if this makes you feel better, my friend on the New York Times bestseller list is still waiting for his rejection letter. Oh yeah. So you could just say to yourself, oh, I'm as good as this guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:52

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:53

Anyways, you have one more random question. Uh yes. What is a better date activity? Kissing in Paris or kissing in a tent in the woods?

SPEAKER_01 1:58:05

Um I think kissing in Paris has more uh inherent romance romantic chemistry.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:21

So I So this is my hot take for the my answer to this one. I think for spending time with your significant other, camping is actually a more one-on-one time. Like if you and your significant other, just the two of you, go to like a nice spot in Bam for something. I do think that's fundamentally more romantic because there's less other shit going around. Right. Whereas like going to Paris I think is a better trip, but I think it's less romantic in my world. Because it's like, I I don't know, I feel like I'd be sensory overloaded by being in Paris. And it becomes less about them and more about Paris. But that's my answer. Where to be fair, most people be like, Paris, duh, idiot. Why is this the contest? One of them's a nice vacation, and the other one there's bugs.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:14

Uh yeah, well, I mean for me it's like it's specifically this like kissing in a in a tent. It's like uh like, I don't know, going going to Paris and like having a nice dinner and like having it, you know, making out and on top of like the Acker Tower or something. Like that sounds like a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:33

See, I think in my brain I'm taking the tent as a metaphor, not literal. Where I'm like, no, no, I'm thinking like in front of a lake in the wilderness under the moonlight. Like in my brain it's like the nature aspect, not like the actual nylon of the tent. I mean, I think we're allowed to disagree on the stance for sure, because I think mine's a hot take and likely the incorrect answer. I just felt the need to justify it a bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:02

Well no, if you're considering it more as uh nature versus uh city. Versus city, it's like, yeah, no, I th I think nature is gonna be a much more quiet and relaxed and it's like my actual answer is this is a tacky answer.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:22

But honestly, I think the most romantic place I've been is actually the stupid Manitou Hot Springs when no one's there. Like it's like a nice lake, a good view, a nice hotel, no one's around. Like, that's pretty great. Like, that's like my mixture of both worlds. Like, this is a good option.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:40

Yeah, Paris probably would be far too busy.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:44

Uh although I do find it funny to be like, you know what's romantic? Saskatchewan. It's such a fun phrase to come out of my stupid mouth. I stand by it though. Like, I did the romance package at that hot spring, so it was actually a fantastic experience. Because it's like, oh yeah, no one is there. You get all the luxury of being in a nice hotel with no other human beings. It's great. Yeah. It's kind of like how the West Edmonton Tamall water park is surprisingly romantic if it's just you and your date there because no one else is there because it's a random Tuesday in September.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:20

Uh, except for the one time that they had half the slides closed because they didn't have enough people there. That was sad.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:26

That is depressing. But thank you all for submitting your random questions. And remember, if we see you on the street with a carl tattoo, you get nothing but our respect.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:37

And remember, you know, self-care, stay hydrated, you know, stuff like that. Watch your sugar intake. Good plan, good plan.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:48

Bye. Bye.

Turning Novels Into A Campaign

SPEAKER_00 2:01:50

I'm so bad at promoing my book, which was the entire point of this. I'm like, eh. I think my dagger heart adventures are actually better written. Although, random question for you before I let you go. So I have my two fantasy novels. I could just turn those into a Daggerheart campaign. Like, I have a bunch of like literally a map drawn in locations and events and plot hooks and things. Do you think that'd be a good campaign for my first two books, which you've totally read?

SPEAKER_01 2:02:20

Uh, okay. Um.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:28

It's an interesting idea. I mean I kinda wanna just recycle it because I'm writing newer, better books. I'm like, well, I could go back and turn my two first two books just into an entire setting for an RPG. Like, I could probably do a full level 1 to 10 dagger heart campaign out of the Waltz of Blades pretty easily.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:50

Yeah. Yeah, no, I I do think that would be an interesting setting.