Hello adventurers. Welcome to want to play D& D. We have a very special guest today with us. He is going to be going over a few talking points for you first time players that are interested in Getting into D& D because that's what we're here for We have his royal eminence. It's His [00:03:00] recluseness and the dungeon maester to the stars Prince recluse Welcome Prince Howdy, howdy.
Nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Wasn't expecting such a grand entrance, but I, I greatly appreciate that. I don't necessarily know if reclusive, is a, is a character trait, but I guess it's in the name, fair enough. Yeah. Thank you for having me. This is awesome to be here.
Yeah, no problem. I appreciate you joining us. I wanted to, as we said, we'll go over a few things that may help some of our first time players get, acclimated to D& D and D& D, of course, being Dungeons Dragons. Yes. Is it is D& D the only Tabletop RPG that you have DM or? Oh gosh, that I've DMed.
Absolutely. It's the only one that I've played probably. There are of course, offshoots here and there, and there are the kind of self contained [00:04:00] pre pre composed, pre made dungeons and dragons like tabletop type board games and things that I've done. But as far as the. Open style creature on the story system that is D& D or I haven't done Pathfinder.
I haven't done Starfinder. There's a couple others out there that are equally as good, but I haven't had any experience with those, unfortunately. Yeah it seems, not it seems, but nowadays there are quite a few tabletop RPGs that are dropping, that are trying to keep up with Dungeons Dragons Pathfinder being a close second, I would say.
There's a company that started cranking out shoot the namescapes here right now, but they were cranking out like My Little Pony and GI Joe, like RPGs and like really, really hitting those, those IPs and trying to make a name for themselves. Yeah, [00:05:00] that's there's a couple areas with that.
I think recently we're seeing a large amount of new role play tabletop role playing systems coming out ever since the. OGL, Open Gaming License debacle with Wizards of the Coast about two years ago or so where they tried to lock it down and that infuriated the entire community and so a lot of people banded together to create their own open source open source is probably not the right word, but open tabletop role playing game systems for the community that were fed up with it.
very much. What's been going on recently with Wizards of the Coast, so a lot have spawned recently, but there have always been some. Pathfinder's been around for quite a long time, although, whereas Dungeons Dragons is in their 5th edition currently, Pathfinder is, I believe, in 2. 5? But they've been around a long time.
Very similar style game. [00:06:00] And there's, there are some superhero ones as well, but a lot of things you might see, like the IP branded ones could be things like from Cobalt Press, which is essentially producing licensed IP modules for D and D 5e. So while they're not necessarily their own system, they are their own self contained.
Pieces that are using the D and D five E rule set. Okay. Now, yeah, you said some superhero tabletop RPGs, I know Marvel really just launched their latest one and I haven't seen a DC have, I think they're going to reprints with their there's, I saw a Kickstarter with their old RPG and I think it was like a reprint of the original one that they've made.
Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Now's the time to do it. It's never been more popular than it is now. Oh yeah. Now I know you, I [00:07:00] heard you mentioned that some Dungeons and Dragons board games. Yeah, there are things like there's a Baldur's Gate one, which God, I'm going to get the names wrong and it's going to kill me, but there's essentially I don't know if you've ever heard of the games, like betrayal Betrayal at haunted haunted hill haunted hill.
Thank you things like that. They've got dnd branded versions like that. I know that there's a either balder's gate or avernus style Betrayal game that I played recently, which was pretty good. But yeah, they're all it's I wouldn't say that's playing D and D I'd say that's playing a board game with D and D skin on it.
Okay. I was going to ask, do you think it would help if some first time players touched on those first? Does it lend any kind of aid to actually playing the tabletop Dungeons and Dragons? [00:08:00] Yeah, I'd say that's a good point. That's a good starting off point. Especially. If the entire group has never played Dungeons and Dragons, if you've got a handful of friends that want to get into Dungeons and Dragons, but none of them have ever actually stepped their foot in a campaign, then yeah, those would be an absolutely great place to start off because it's going to give you a structured way to get into it.
You're still doing the role playing. You're still making the same type of moves you would make in a campaign, but Has to be the GM and has to, or DM GM inter interchangeable. Nobody has to be that game master and create the world and dictate what's happening and come up with that stuff on the fly.
It's all pre planned for you. Everybody is just following the instructing instructions. And, stretching their role playing muscles and seeing how they feel about it. And if they like it, then a D and D campaign is a great next step. If they turn out that [00:09:00] level of role playing and game playing is not really what they're into, then perhaps D and D isn't, I know this is not the podcast for this, but it's okay.
Sometimes for D and D not to be for some people. Yeah. Some people just, it's not for them and that's okay. But I think most of the people that think it's not for them haven't played it. But if you play it and it's not for you, it's okay to walk away from it. Yeah. I think I'd rather you figure out D& D is not for you, than end up being a bad D& D player.
Oh, absolutely. You know what I mean? A hundred percent. Yeah, there's a saying that No D& D is better than bad D& D. Okay. I haven't heard that one, but yeah. I, a lot of times it's better to just not be playing at a table than to be at a table that's going poorly, or you're just not having [00:10:00] fun in.
And, but you feel you have to continue for whatever reason. It's better just to make your piece of the talk to your group if you can talk to your DM if you can, but if it's not working out for you and they're not willing to cooperate, your best bet is to just go because, if you're not having fun, then that's probably coming through in the gameplay and other people aren't going to have fun because of that.
And it just brings things down. So it's okay to walk away from a game if it's not working out for you. Yeah, I get that. Okay. In my experience, I found it quite difficult to like, to find a DM, like from what I can tell, everybody wants to play Dungeons and Dragons, but nobody wants to DM Dungeons and Dragons.
100 percent what, what kind of interested you in DMing? But [00:11:00] that's a great question. Considering I am definitely not the most experienced DM by any stretch. But essentially what got me into DMing is first and foremost, I'm not, I'm not going to local gaming centers and finding random groups. I've got a group of IRL friends that, some cycle out here and there, but essentially I've got a group of IRL friends and we all play with, unfortunately my best friend in that group.
Is the, what's known as forever DM. Nobody ever wants to DM. He's the one that's going to DM every game because he's comfortable with it. He's good with it. And we all want to play. He wants to play. He's the only one who's going to DM. That's just the way it worked out and it got to the point where I'm like, all I've played enough games plus I wanted to take on the challenge of DMing.
DMing seems like [00:12:00] it would be fun But also mainly this guy needs a chance at being a player I can tell he wants to be a player and not always know where the story is going So I just offered it up. I was I didn't think I was ready to do it I was horrifically nervous about it But, for my friend to be able to play, I decided, you know what, I'm going to give it a shot.
And it's not as bad as, or intimidating as it seems. And it's actually quite fun. It, I'm a bit of an over prepper and a perfectionist, so it's difficult for me at times. But yeah, it's definitely fun, but it was just, a matter of necessity of providing my friend the ability to be a player instead of the forever DM.
And that got me into DMing. Okay. When you put it in those terms it sparked a memory for me. Cause I had a friend who was [00:13:00] a forever DM and it was this was when we were in middle school and we were Always create new RPGs and before they even creating them.
Now I remember we had a Jurassic park RPG that we, and he would always DM and he, we did a star Wars campaign. We did the Jurassic park one that I mentioned we did an X Men one that we created and it was just everything that we were into, we would create. A RPG for it. And he was always the DM, but I never put it into terms until you said the forever DM.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a big thing. There are plenty of forever DMs out there that would die to be a player, but no one's going to let them do it. Hey, if you're out there, help out your forever DM and just give DMing a shot because they are probably dying to be a player. But [00:14:00] that's funny because were you.
Were you helping create the systems or was the DM, the forever DM creating the systems? I think we primarily just used the DND system. Yeah. And just adapted it to the flavor. Yeah. It was just homebrew with new IPs thrown on it. So that's pretty cool, especially for middle school, but yeah, I was going to say if the forever DM is creating the systems that you're then playing sure, but if you're helping them create the systems, the systems, it's your turn to DM.
It is your turn. Let them be a player. You do it is nowhere near as intimidating as it feels. It does feel intimidating because I'll be honest. I've thought about DM and before, and I just. I don't know. It's like some people that I've sat at the table with, I try to figure out how would I handle like those people, like [00:15:00] someone who knows more than I do, or someone who is only there because their friend drugged them to the table, or, how would I handle those people?
And I feel like I wouldn't handle them like I wouldn't handle them in a great way. Yeah, yeah, that's tough, especially dealing with randos and unknowns because, there's, it's really helpful if you are doing it with groups of people that you know, that you know well, but nonetheless, even if it's people that you don't know well, the first and foremost thing to do is there's two things.
Number one is just have a discussion with the people that are playing, because at the end of the day, and this is true for any D and D game, unless it's some sort of weird sanctioned tournament thing or whatever, but any home D and D game, it doesn't matter what version of D and D you're playing.
It doesn't matter what IP, any of that at the end of the day. [00:16:00] It is the DMS game. If one of the players is super familiar with a rule mm-hmm . And the DM does something that goes against the rule, that's the DMS game. If he wants the rule to be the way he wrote it, great. If he wants to change it to the way that it is in the books, that's up to them to determine.
So the players need to understand that it is the dms world, it's the DMS game, they can bring up points of contention, but at the end of the day, DM has final say and also the other point. Which is personally, I feel like it's something that's been talked about more and more recently, but I think it's always been a thing is having what's called a session zero.
Yeah, which is a session before really the campaign gets going where you just have a rough getting to know people talking about your characters, maybe a little bit of getting into the game and the story, but just a session zero where everybody gets the nervous feelings out and understands [00:17:00] that they're all there to have fun and play the same game and address any concerns people might have.
Things like that and so also for new players out there session zero or the first session of the game is the first Is when you need to start bringing up any concerns you have. If you have things that you don't want to go into areas of a story that you're not comfortable with, like topics, things like that, that's the time to bring them up because if you don't bring them up until 30 sessions into a campaign and it's too late, always bring them up.
But at that point, it's a bit different. So yeah, always, it's good to have a session zero and make sure everybody's on the same page before you get too far into a story. Okay. I know that our first one we skipped session zero. We went into a one shot. One shots are, one shots are a little different.
That's fair. Okay. Okay. Cause I had spoke to our first time player prior to our, the one shot. And [00:18:00] I want to say, I did ask, is there anything that he's not comfortable with, but I may have not. I have to go back and watch the interview. But if I didn't I'm going to add that to my questions 100 percent forward.
Yeah. Is there anything that they're not comfortable with? Cause, cause while it's the DM's job to create the story. And I understand that we're technically going to be talking about new players, but this, generally new players won't be DMing, but you never know if you've got a brand new group of people and never played DM D and D somebody's got a DM if you're DMing, not only is it your job to, to create and facilitate the story and all of that, but it's also your job to.
And this isn't supposed to be intimidating, but to maintain the enjoyment and the comfort level of all the players in your campaign. So while yes, every player [00:19:00] should just be up front and tell you, what their issue is and anything they may have a problem with 98 percent of the time, that's not going to happen.
People are too scared to bring up something that they've got a problem with in a group of people, especially if they don't know them. Yeah. And so it's your job. You don't have to ask directly and there, we don't have the time for all of it, but there's plenty of resources online that, that will provide you with different ways to bring those things up to a party.
Like different role play questions you can ask them for their character or something that gives them the opportunity. To say, Oh, I'm not comfortable with this thing or to indicate, I'm, I don't really want to speak about the things a lot of people aren't comfortable with. But, but essentially there's, there's areas that may be triggers for some people and it's good to try and get those out of the way.
And it's A lot of new players aren't going to know that [00:20:00] they're supposed to tell you that. And so you've got to figure out a way to, to respectfully bring it up in a way that they feel comfortable saying, Oh let's not go there. And then, all right, steer clear of that in the story.
Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine some things that a lot of people who, going into this fantasy type setting. You wouldn't want that to encroach upon some real world trauma that they may have. Yup. Yup. And that would, I can understand how that would absolutely ruin an experience for a first time player.
Oh yeah, 100%. So session zero would be beneficial or at least a pre chat to establish some things that are off limits, so to speak. Yeah. In fact, you remember I wouldn't call this one of my DM credits because we played for a day, but, the one campaign we tried to run and before [00:21:00] that I sent that whole survey about when can you play, what are you good with any are you, do you want it to be more combat focused?
Do you want it to be more rope role play? Have a role play heavy. Any areas you don't want to, you don't want to go to that type of thing. And if you can make it anonymous for people, you're going to get more truthful answers. Because sending an email is a lot different than being at a table with five faces looking at you going, and what are you afraid of?
Yeah. So yeah, it's just, once again, it helps if you know the people you're playing with, but even if you don't. That's the time to find out who they are. I get you. Agreed. Let's see. If you were to start a campaign with a group that's never played D& D before is there anything in particular that you would recommend that they pick up?
Absolute have to have. I know Dice. [00:22:00] Dice is one of them. Not even. To be alright. To be fair, it depends on what's going on. Mm hmm. Because Nowadays, you can play D& D with absolutely nothing. Okay. If you have a computer. I guess I should, I should preface, preface that. Not allowed.
Not, actually, no, back that up. Not even a computer. As long as you have a phone with an internet connection. I guess if we're getting, nitty gritty. You can play D& D. That's all you need. Now if you want to have fun with it, yes. Get about 15 sets of dice. Thank you. Four dice trays, go nuts.
That's that's the way I do it, but I'm a bit ridiculous when it comes to those things But no fruit in all seriousness Somebody who wants to play D& D that has never played D& D doesn't know where to begin personally [00:23:00] my suggestion if you're the type that likes physical items I would pick up a player's handbook.
You can get them online. You can get them on Amazon, wherever you can get them in digital formats. But if you like the physical aspect of a book, which I'm a big fan of, even though I use the digital, I have the physical go to your local game store. I guarantee there's one, not too far from you and pick one up there.
