Mr Sark

You should have ideas for settings and situations that the idea of sharing with your friends gets you excited. Then you should pick a game that generally aligns with some of your ideas and will hopefully stimulate MORE insanity. Learn as many of the rules as possible so you get an idea of what the authors intended, then tweak them until you feel comfortable playing with them. Maybe a lot, maybe none! Just remember that there is structure required for the game to work, but it shouldn't be a pain. This is why tabletop RPG's are so awesome. They are like Lego sets with pictures on the box of recommended builds, but they're YOUR Legos, you can do whatever the eff you want with them.

Sparklett fielded this one nicely. I have reacquired most of my books going back to 1st edition, which I never played, I just pored over the books. The only original I have (courtesy of The Devil) is my Top Secret S.I. box. I DO however have the same Lord of the Rings paperbacks that I read over and over starting in 4th grade. Complete with pencil graphs and color tests so that I could draw my own poster-sized versions of the maps.

I've just been reading updates about it, I haven't jumped into the Beta. I don't actually hate 4th, I just think with the time constraints on our group, and the limitations of playing in a studio, it isn't the best version for us. Excited to see what the next iteration of D&D looks like!

Not going to lie, I have no idea. People have obviously sent stuff through to us, but I don't know if that's to some PO Box in Koreatown somewhere, or if it's to the Earwolf offices directly. I'll ask tonight, we're recording a couple episode! I can tell you my favorite color is the blue you see in glacier ice.

No, but he'd be a real pain to make go away if for some insane reason you weren't in love with him.

Had never seen the dude before, but I'm definitely using his name in a campaign at some point.

Glad you're digging the show! There are exciting possibilities that I hope you'll be hearing soon. The major forks in the road are pretty easy to spot and I try to have at least a plan or two in either direction. Sometimes this is just an idea, other time it is complete with maps and NPC's. The hardest thing to deal with is a player's decision that creates a major fork in the road. The time you are mentioning was pretty mapped out. I was almost positive that the team would get into trouble and need to *abandon ship. Because they are my friends. So I had a loose idea of a stow-away / locked-in-the-brig situation in the event that they stayed on the ship, and a much more detailed plan surrounding the castaways and the Collector outpost. I'm not too big on corralling the party to keep them on point which leads to unexpected adventures as well as aimless wandering if I'M not on point (like the last few weeks of Elevators & Dragons). *I didn't plan on them damaging the Dreadnought so bad that it would have to jump to avoid sinking though...

I was sure this entire Collector sequence would have been concluded weeks & weeks ago, but it keeps going like the Energizer Campaign. Only recently has the party discovered that The Necromancer's forces have a use for male subjects other than deck-hands. The hooked-up-to-tubes-and-have-your-XXXXXX-XXXXXX-into-the-XXXXXXXX is the fate that the party dodged early on. PLUS in order to start the game there was some deus ex machina employed to get the group together too

Your take on our silly rules is right, if we really wanted to keep botches as they are in 2nd, it would be 1's on attack, 20's on stat checks (sort of). Or 2nd edition take is a bit different, more forgiving actually. Back in the day we only applied botches to attack rolls in 2nd which are still lowest = worst, highest = best (double damage even for us!). But 4th's stat checks allowed for so many more entertaining botches we just kept it. When we switch back it'll just be botches on attack, and if someone really over-rolls a stat check I'll just describe it a bit more dramatically.

Yeah we are definitely far enough out that we could look back at paths not taken. The only catch is time (as I answer your question 2mo later). I'm only able to spend enough time during the week to keep a couple options open for the adventurers, and plot out courses for unexpected decisions. Hopefully sometime we can expand the show a bit with some of this side episodes! Grats on your new game!

We weren't until Sarah fed everyone's character info into the Wizards-of-the-Coast-AI-Skynet-Master-Control-Thinking-Machine and printed out fully fleshed out character sheets. We're currently shifting back to our mangled version of AD&D 2nd ed., as we are more familiar with it, it is more podcast-friendly (imo), and the books smell better

Got some catch up to do in here... We don't see any behind-thescenes stats for the show, and there isn't money in it for us (yet) so we don't really have much of a barometer for who's listening and how many of you there are. I think the crew would make for a pretty entertaining panel imo. Maybe next year? I was there this year for work-work, and met several Nerd Poker fans, which was cool!

They haven't tried getting anything OUT of Stargoyle, but when they do they will find that that is a one-way trip But it may be a good way to dispose of something small and dangerous. Would a massive explosion damage Stargoyle? Or is he truly made up of a tiny singularity that crushes things into oblivion? Someone will have to stuff a bomb into his gut to find out for sure

Depends on the situation. There are rolls I fudge and there are rolls that stick. If it's really important and I'm going to make it stick, I like to make THEM roll it even if technically the DM should. Makes for some real tense standing-around-the-table-cheering/crying-moments. Don't be afraid to fudge the occasional roll though, this shit is supposed to be fun!

Negative! Some folks have posted it correctly in the forums but it is based off of Larry Niven's book 'The Integral Trees'. Niven's book may very well be based on some of the ideas in Cosmos as it came out a few years after Sagan's series!

More of a parallel-quest than a sidequest but yeah. This campaign is actually a series of large parallel quests like this. First thing I come up with is WHAT is happening and WHO is resposible. Then I flesh out the mechanics of the WHAT. Once I have those details usually fun little ideas start popping to further flesh out the WHAT and for fun side events that may or may not be related connected somehow. I prefer there to be connection generally, otherwise playing the game starts to feel like GTA or Fallout where you lose track of what you were doing. Then I map it our like a flowchart so I don't lose track of where everything is going. This is usually a pretty simple chart of the macro-decisions that face the adventurers. Like "Which planet should we visit next?" for example. To be honest the player's freedom is a bit deceptive when viewed from further back!

Just picture a dick. Since that is what I always draw, no matter what apparently. I just got a little sketchbook that I'll start putting things down in though. Just for moments like this

Ah Dark Sun. I loved Dark Sun. I'll probably dig up PDF's for any stuff like this that I don't already have. Read it over. Then make real broad-stroked tweaks that barely conform to existing rules. XD When we do it though I'll definitely chat about or post what the changes are!

Good heads up! I actually looked into this yesterday so you & I are synched up a bit. Not a ton of time for rule research but I'm trying to do a-mechanic-a-week. After reading it I think I may still pass on this rule. I get what they're after with some classes being able to hold aggro, but it feels too MMO. I prefer letting the players figure out how to keep a baddies attention. Whether it's well-delivered insults, or they are just rolling well and kicking ass. Then I like to *try* (with varying degrees of success) and role-play what the enemy would do. Just feels more organic to me. But that's just my opinion!

Gerry & I went into a side-studio for about 30m so he could brief me on the broad strokes of Sir Richard, and so I could give some campaign specific backstory, plus some fun tidbits he could use once he was back in. He chose the missing hand. But it isn't my place to divulge Sir Richard's secrets. In time I'm sure he'll share his story

We'll just transfer the characters over. Seems daunting but that's the beauty of pen & paper for me. Flex it to your own ends. Bend it until it's fun Possibilities are literally infinite. Would be a shame to trash a campaign because there isn't a page on Dragonborn in the old books!

I have no idea how the donations work. I'm still trying to pretend that this isn't being recorded. Money stuff is Earwolf's biz. We're just nerds rolling dice Appreciate the love though! Will your promo guy bring the fans and then gently fan us while softly humming Enya? That would be delightful.

I posted this a couple eps ago but I see questions about it here too, so I figured it could live here as well. This was in response to a question about improvisation vs pre-planning.

LOL. The holy trinity. Lady-On-A-Horse-On-A-Bear. In the air. Separate but the same.

Haha I know! This was actually just the result of an extreme hustle to get Gerry back in the game when he was available, resulting in a character that was more fully realized in Gerry's mind than he was on the page. Followed up by no-time to polish the character up between the couple sessions that he's been back. Gerry had actually described what his deity was like when we worked him in, but we hadn't lined it up yet with the books :/ Ah well, this stuff works itself out eventually. Silly oversight