The Chimefall Ceremony: Homebrew Project Building with Rob Van Auken Part 2

How to Be a Better DM: Dungeon Master Tips for the DM Newbie, the Hobbyist and the Forever DM

justin_lewis:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm Justin Lewis and I'm here with Rob Van Auchen. I said that right, right?

rob:

Yes, you did.

justin_lewis:

Awesome. And today we are continuing our mini series on a specific homebrew project that we are making with Rob. And today's gonna be a little bit different kind of an episode. For those of you who are new to the show, this is the show where we help you learn how to craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions. of D&D 5e and soon to be 1D&D. That is the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

huge thing. Yeah. So today, usually we talk about different tips, techniques, practices. Today we're actually kind of going to get into the making of the sausage, as you will. I'm not huge on that phrase, but that's what we're doing, in showing you how to work on a homebrew project such as a one-shot or a mini adventure or an encounter. but also how to collaborate with someone. So that way as a DM, you're not just doing it by yourself. You can reach out to other DMS or even players and take some load off of your shoulders and make it more fun and connect with other people. So to catch you up, last time we started work on essentially a festival slash recruiting event from a guild slash Academy of Adventurers. Because in this organization's past, recent past, they've lost a fair number of their members and they are trying to replenish. So the adventure slash one-shot will take place in really any city we want to make this agnostic towards any particular setting. And really the point is to introduce your characters to this academy slash guild and have them do trials, tests to see if they get in. And then we'll see what else happens. Uh, so let's go away with it. And actually on that note, uh, Rob, I was thinking, why do we have to limit it to a guild or an academy? We could just in it, just say guild slash Academy, uh, up to the DM's discretion. Cause really there's not that much of a difference, you know, like

rob:

Absolutely. I love that. I think that's a great idea to kind of, or even give them a randomized table to kind of have that decision.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

But yeah,

justin_lewis:

exactly.

rob:

we want to leave the DM some room to wiggle, right?

justin_lewis:

Yeah, yeah. And it'll be awesome to, although I am particularly partial to Robric's Academy of Adventuring the Name, what maybe we'll put that as, you know, in one of those appendix tables of names for your academy slash guild. But I think going that route will probably be a lot better than making us choose, we'll just let them choose.

rob:

I'm a, as I've gained some years under my belt as a DM, I have learned to lean into, I've learned to embrace uncertainty. And some of my best moments were when I had no idea what I was going to do. And in those moments, I may have leaned on a random table of something like the affiliates, a table of names or a table of weird things that take place. And so I love providing random tables, anything from D4s to D100s to just, You know, you need something, roll the die, and you're off and running. And I try and make those tables as provocative as possible so that the DM has some wiggle room to kind of insert and do what they want to do.

justin_lewis:

I love that, I love that. So let's go over some of the comments that we'd both made starting at the top. Let's,

rob:

Sure. I also

justin_lewis:

sorry.

rob:

just for your listeners who can't see what we're looking at right now, and then first of all, this is a lot of fun, right? So this is my first collaboration with another DM of any sort outside of like my homebrew groups and whatnot. And for those who are listening, like our tools, like what we're using to collaborate currently has been, we've been using Google Docs, which is really simple and straightforward and free for everybody. And some of the templates that we've. have borrowed from are from the DMs Guild, where they have a whole section on creator resources. So if you're a young DM or you're a young game designer and you're looking to get started and writing stuff is part and parcel for your happiness in life, by all means head on over to the DMs Guild and check out some of their creator templates. And my other really great resource has been an organization called Storytellers Collective or Stoko. as you'll hear me refer to them as, and they have these great sort of learn at your own pace workshops where they provide some templates, but they also provide you really good advice. And so that's kind of been my growth as a writer. And so for those of you who are listening, it's all me, check it out. But anyway,

justin_lewis:

So that

rob:

back

justin_lewis:

was

rob:

to you.

justin_lewis:

Storytellers Collective, you said?

rob:

Yeah, Storytellers Collective has been, it's cool because they're relatively inexpensive for their courses and a lot of the ones that they offer are free. But it's kind of like here's a writing workshop in 30 days and they give you these sort of projects to do at your own pace over that course and they attach a Discord to each of them so that as you're working through them, even if they offered a course, you know, three years ago, you could still hop on a Discord and get some somebody who's manning the ship over there to kind of give you some feedback. And they have everything from like creating treasure, to creating loot, to creating puzzles, to how to write your first adventure, how to write your first encounter. And one of the first things I published was with them, and it got published in their anthology, which is nice, because they do these things every summer and every spring, and it's a nice way to get your name out there that's attached to sort of a bigger entity to kind of help you into the process.

justin_lewis:

Wow, that's awesome. I'm actually gonna have to check that out for myself.

rob:

I'm looking forward to that. I think they do one in the fall too. I've always contributed to the spring encounter and the spring one is challenging because it's like a one-page encounter and it's a lot harder than it sounds. You think one page? That's easy. You wind up chopping out so much of what you want just to get it onto the page. But I digress. Back to our one-shot.

justin_lewis:

Yeah. So, um, as, as I mentioned before, the kind of the, the way that the, the story goes in this, in this one shot adventure, uh, is the party members go to this city or they find themselves in this city. It doesn't really matter how they get there. They just, they're there and they discover this festival for joining this, uh, guild or academy. And originally we thought that there would be like mentors. that would be offering trials, kind of like an internship or apprenticeship. Rob made the suggestion that, uh, instead we switch it to doing six ability score kind of trials and things like that. Um, one thought that I had on that is we definitely need to be very careful in doing that. So that way the, the trials and feats aren't, aren't just dice rolls. Like, I get worried that, you know, the person goes and does a constitution trial and all they can do is just a dice roll over and over again. So I guess I want to think of how we can make it so there can be other ways they can like think through certain problems as a player to supplement, you know,

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

their

rob:

and that's

justin_lewis:

dice rolls.

rob:

a wise decision, actually. Sometimes I get so caught up in the mechanism that I sometimes sacrifice the gameplay for half a second, but that's why this collaboration's cool, because you're there to check me on those things.

justin_lewis:

For sure. No, and I feel the same way.

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

Like,

rob:

so

justin_lewis:

reverse.

rob:

if in my mind's eye, I picture any one of our six events structured around any particular ability score, and so... What that would look like is there's like a feat of strength trial or there's a trial of constitution and trial of dexterity. And the players decide they want to head over there and test their metal. One of the complications. I can think of a few actually We can kind of go back to our original idea with not necessarily a mentor, but let's make a really interesting NPC as the host of that particular trial and maybe that NPC is really accommodating or maybe that NPC is really antagonistic and sort of, you know, criticizes the players and thinks that they'll fail. And I'm thinking of like the old fashioned guy at the dunk tank, right? Who, you know, he sits there and you can't, you know, dunk me and maybe before they throw their dexterity role to knock the jester into the dunk tank, they have to roll a constitution or charisma save. And if they fail it, there's some kind of, they have to roll with disadvantage, right? So there is some kind of. push and pull there. It is a series of dice rolls, but it's also like this role playing opportunity to how does your character respond to the jester at the

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

dunk tank. Another complication that we could do is we could have opponents or other people that are applying or attempting the same trial and thus it's not just simply a matter of do I get the highest dice roll and defeat this particular trial, do I defeat the other characters dice rolls, right? You can also add an easy, medium, hard opponent. So there's one character who is going to roll a DC5. There's

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

another character who's got your DC10, but maybe the top character is a DC15. And so as you're trying to best these other opponents, that is the case. And then my third choice would be it's not just a dice roll, but it's more like a dice roll tree. so that depending on your role, there are various outcomes that sort of fork off and any one particular dice roll can steer you into a series of different mishaps or benefits. So I think those are probably three ways to spice this up that excite

justin_lewis:

for sure.

rob:

me when I think about them.

justin_lewis:

particularly

rob:

Back to you.

justin_lewis:

like number two and three, I think we could, and I see what you mean with kind of your comment, excuse me, your comment going back to the one page competition that you entered in. I see how this can easily blossom into something a little bit too expansive, you know, cause I'm like, yeah, we could just make this giant table of all these NPCs and. And I'm totally up for it, but I'm worried about, you know, like the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

poor sap on the other end of the paper. But I do like the opponent's idea, because like you said, it's a very good role-playing opportunity where you can point out and say, hey, this one particular guy seems to have your number, you know.

rob:

Yeah, and I think of course the opponent, I guess, sits better for certain trials, right? So the trial by strength, if we were to say, and we've spit fired a couple, but if we produce a randomized table, a D4 table, and one of them is a cart lift and one of them is a fight pit, the fight pit is a perfect example of how to incorporate the opponents, right? It is a little combat heavy, but the idea that, you know, there's four guys in a ring doing all sort of like little mini battle Royale. And one of them is the DC five strength and one of the DC 10, one of the, you could kind of see, but also like, um, you know, adding opponents, you could watch them interact with each other too. So like the heavy hitter can knock out the lightweight and then you're stuck with the middle guy and then. You know, what happens

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

again at the DM's

justin_lewis:

I really

rob:

discretion.

justin_lewis:

liked that. I really liked that. Speaking of the fight pit, the way, the way just how you described it, have you ever heard of Florentine football?

rob:

If not, tell me more.

justin_lewis:

So you'll have to look it up. It's like one of the craziest sports that for some reason is still around. It's, it's an Italian thing. And I think it's only like one city. There's like 10 teams or something. Um, but essentially it's football with, uh, and you know, football, like American football has different roles and stuff. Um, there are running backs, there are grapplers, there are strikers, meaning like pugilists, like punchers. Um, and you watch it and you see people trying to run a ball and then over in the corner you see two people just punching each other and then next to them there are two people grappling on the ground. It's like the weirdest mix of just every sport. They're like, let's throw in punchers to football

rob:

boxing

justin_lewis:

or whatever.

rob:

with...

justin_lewis:

Yeah, no, it's insane. But...

rob:

I feel like I feel a grand finale in my head now.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

You know, like a looking at sounding a

justin_lewis:

honestly,

rob:

lot like for learning football.

justin_lewis:

that might be like the good, like the big incursion. Like, you know, they're

rob:

Yeah, yeah.

justin_lewis:

at a certain point, they're just like, ah, we don't have time. So we're just going to throw everyone in this pit and everyone do get out,

rob:

Right,

justin_lewis:

which

rob:

right.

justin_lewis:

would

rob:

Or

justin_lewis:

be

rob:

even like

justin_lewis:

kind

rob:

a

justin_lewis:

of funny.

rob:

good old-fashioned royal rumble, you know. Oh

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

man, that's great. That's great. But again, I thank you for admitting that you see the scope of this kind of like potentially getting too large because

justin_lewis:

for sure.

rob:

I have suffered many a dropped project by continuing to build and build and build. And actually it was the, I go back to Storytellers trained my brain to, it's better to produce something small than never not to produce it all. And rather than continue to build and get discouraged for young writers out there and young DMs, you know, keep it keep it simple. Right. My most complex adventures started from something small, right.

justin_lewis:

Love that.

rob:

Better to really flesh out something narrow, I think, that you cast too wide a net and get lost.

justin_lewis:

Yeah. To that note then, I think with your kind of Bell's idea, maybe we might be better with just sticking with like the trials named Trial of Constitution and so on, especially if this is geared towards newer DMS. We're trying to kind of bring them in. And again, to your earlier point, I should probably with some of the tables that I've made, like simplify them down and then put them as like appendices or something like that. So that way

rob:

deeper

justin_lewis:

it

rob:

options.

justin_lewis:

is

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

a lot more

rob:

again,

justin_lewis:

simple.

rob:

I don't see anything too wrong with a random table of D8, even D12. I just keeping in mind the rookie DM who, like myself,

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

once upon

justin_lewis:

no yeah.

rob:

a time, wanted to do everything and

justin_lewis:

100%

rob:

thus

justin_lewis:

Yeah

rob:

decided, I'm going to have eight trials of constitution. in my fair and make them go through every single one of them.

justin_lewis:

So I think then what we might do is I'll simplify the table down. I'll keep the table in the appendix. I'll simplify it down to just four, and then say everyone does two events no matter what, no matter how many players you have. And then if they want to do more, they can see the appendix.

rob:

Actually, you just sparked something that I remembered or forgot, I guess. You just reminded me to circle back to this. On our cover page or on our insert page, it's always nice to provide would-be consumers with the levels for the anticipated party and the amount of time. So, for example, this might be a four to six hour event or game. with level one to five players, something like that. So our trial should reflect the difficulty of the anticipated player party. And

justin_lewis:

For sure.

rob:

anything above or below that would be at the DM's discretion to enhance the difficulty checks and things of that nature. But I guess in my head, I'm picturing this as a level four adventure or encounter, we should say, for a party of four to six. That sound right to you.

justin_lewis:

Level 4. When you say level 4, what do you mean? Like,

rob:

I'm

justin_lewis:

the

rob:

sorry,

justin_lewis:

party's at level 4?

rob:

I misspoke, a four hour adventure for levels one through four,

justin_lewis:

Ah,

rob:

levels

justin_lewis:

gotcha.

rob:

one through five. Sorry.

justin_lewis:

No, yeah, that makes sense. I would definitely say, um, three to four hour is what I would put it as, especially

rob:

Perfect.

justin_lewis:

for the newer DMs, just so that way they're not like, Oh gosh, I have to do this for four hours instead. We can be like, nah, you can stop it. You can stop it too. If you guys are having fun and you know, that box is checked. Um, you know, I think that's

rob:

And

justin_lewis:

a good idea.

rob:

what I really love about this idea is that it's really a collection of encounters, right? And for those of you listening, we started as we're gonna write an encounter. And then we were like, well, maybe we'll write an adventure. And we've kind of done something in the middle. And this is really episodic. So if you...