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The Dungeon Master Guys, Episode 1

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It’s been a long time in the making, so long in fact that we forget who had the idea.  Suffice it to say that Dave, Newbie DM and ChattyDM thought it would be very cool to create a focused, high quality podcast for DMs, made by DMs.

We hope you enjoy it.

In this show:

  • Adventure prepping
  • Creating a cast-of-heroes type of campaign to allow players to switch PCs
  • Using failures to make your games more interesting

Mentioned in the show:

Music:

We are always on the lookout for questions (about being a D&D 4e DM or about GMing in general), comments and suggestions.  You can leave them here in the comments, email us, or call us at 305-349-3026, and we’ll be more than happy to feature them in a future show.

Enough text, on with the show!

The Dungeon Master Guys Podcast Episode 1 (31 minutes, 21 MB)

[Download MP3 | Podcast Feed | iTunes Link]

Special thanks to Kyle for creating our awesome banner. Next time: An actual skill challenge, played during the show with star RPG bloggers, and more!

Comments

  1. Awesome! I didn’t know this was in the works, but I’m thrilled to see it — what a perfect trio to lock in the same room for a podcast.

    Congratulations on your new venture. 🙂

  2. Nice podcast guys, first time visitor to critical hits. Really interested in future episodes of this one guys, keep up the good work.

  6. Great show guys. Hope for more soon.

    Dave – For me, the Mouse Guard ‘failure means complications’ hit me pretty hard (literally) a couple months ago, and now I look for them everywhere.

    See, I had locked myself out of my apartment. My wife was at work, 40 minutes away. The landlord was across the state, and the person who had a spare key (for emergencies) was in class. I had to break into my apartment (the landlord was cool with the attempt).

    The only window that was 1) unlocked, and 2) low enough to get into was over the kitchen sink.
    I managed to get it open with no problem, and with a little effort, was able to get into the window (I’m a big guy, I imagine this was pretty comical).

    Got so far as on to the sink, kinda standing, when I failed my athletics check, and fell.

    So, on the floor I go, I got lucky, so the chef’s knife I knocked out of the sink during my fall missed me. Clocked my head pretty hard.

    In BW/Mouse Guard terms, I failed my skill check. That meant I failed to achieve my intent, “To get into my apartment (unharmed/without damaging my apartment)”. I got into the apartment, but as a consequence, I walked around with a concussion for a week or so.

    I love that a game can model that.

    – exedore6

    .-= Dan Clery´s last blog ..on D&D Adventure Design =-.

  7. Great podcast!

    I love the way you guys did it as well, with your own pieces and a bumpers with interesting ideas in them

  8. Hey guys, I’d love to see a youtube (or similar) video that gives a “how to” for some of the tools & combinations of the tools mentioned.

  10. Thanks for all the great comments guys! (here, on Twitter, and elsewhere) What would be really great if you guys told us what topics you want us to cover, it would help keep the shows coming. Of course, we have plenty of ideas already, but hearing what you all want to hear about would be a big help.

    Dan: As I mentioned, I’m still easing my way into it. Chatty goes for it as often as possible. I’d say that I’d like to get more in that mindset, but if it means having an experience like yours first…

    Vinciente: We’ll see what we can do!

  11. I thought Chatty and Newb were spot-on. (Unconstructive, insulting negative feedback removed by ChattyDM). A solid B aside from that, though.

  12. Hey everyone, thanks so much for the great feedback (well except captain no-manners before me). We’ll strive really hard to make the show better as we learn the tricks of the trade. We’re having a lot a fun and we hope you’ll share the experience with us.

    As for the our friend “guest”, you sir just confirmed my thesis on geek bullies. I’d appreciate that feedback be at least constructive and civil instead of throwing easy words and insults. Otherwise, please don’t bother because we don’t know if you’re being rude on purpose or you can’t articulate your thoughts in a precise enough manner for us to know what being ‘Ass’ means.

  13. You know what? You’re right, and I apologize. I dashed off a quick comment after listening, and didn’t really think about how it sounded. I was a total a-s-s, and apologize, sirs. Please, keep up the good work, and I promise the next time you hear from me, it’ll be constructive.

    Any chance of having guest hosts from some of the gaming companies, forums, and blogs?

  14. Thanks for the apology.

    On our next show, we have a very respected publisher and DM coming and we will also feature some cool RPG bloggers. We hope to get all kinds of people to chime in.

    Let us know who you’d like to hear on the show and will see if we have the strings to pull them in 🙂

  15. I think you should get some of the bloggers on there, including some of the more contreversial ones. Turbulent Thoughts, Chgowiz, Dungeon Mastery, Grognardia, MadBrew Labs, and RPG Blog.

    Thanks (and sorry) again!

  16. Loved the first show! I have just downloaded Masterplan based on your recommendation, and the “failures” thing was a really interesting way to look at skill challenges.

    But I have to complain about one thing: you expect us to wait an entire month for the next episode !?! 🙂

  17. @Guest: Chgowiz and Wyatt Salazar are definitively on my personal shortlist of people to have on the show, although both would tell you that beng controversial was never on their resume. I’m sure the others will also have great guests. I’m not worried that we’ll run out of people soon.

    Hmmmm, I should send Nick Logue an email.

    @noisician: Why thank you. You made this awesome day ever cooler! Glad we could give you new ideas. And yeah, we’re sorry, but the RPG podcast board told us that we had to limit the awesomeness and share with others. So once a month for the time being. Until we become podcaster milionaires and do the show both on iTunes and Youtube. 🙂

  18. Hello all.
    Just wanted to chime in and thank everyone for the nice comments. It’s a huge relief to know that at least we didn’t launch with a bomb on our hands. 🙂
    I’m glad that you, the audience, liked it; and I’m especially glad that the people I’m involved with in this project are so great to work with.
    Thanks again!
    .-= newbiedm´s last blog ..Reader Voicemail: Presenting Your Adventure =-.

  20. Nice work guys, love having a podcast like this that’s for the GMs and not tied to 1 system. Wish you many future podcasts! =D

  21. Great new podcast.

    I’m a Pathfinder player and I like to see elements that are useful for my games even though you are playing 4e – I thought you handled it masterfully.

    I’ll be listening.

    Thanks

  23. I loved the podcast, guys. This is exactly the kind of useful, practical, nonlengthy podcast I’ve been looking for. I look forward to more.

  24. This was a great podcast guys and I can’t wait for more episodes.

    @Dave I’m always looking for better ways to prep, but I have an aversion to technology (mostly because you need to find a power outlet and laptops can be pricey). I end up using the old-fashioned pen and paper way because I feel I can organize my thoughts better and my laptop isn’t always accessible or acceptable in the place I’m at (i.e. work). Masterplan looks pretty sick though, might have to give that a try.

    @NewbieDM The hall of heroes thing is pretty cool, might have to give that a try. 🙂 I feel the same way you do, my players and myself don’t have much time to meet and we all got shit to do, so I feel like if someone wants to switch I can’t say no. The way I’ve been doing it is through glorious deaths, changing sides (teaming up with the bad guy), or simply fading into the world (I’ve decided…..I want to be a tailor!). It keeps up the world without breaking the illusion.

    @ChattyDM “The whole adventure becomes a skill challenge.” That blew my mind, right there. After hearing this I’m really itching to try some kind of skill challenge adventure thing. It sounds ridiculously awesome and fun!

    As far as suggestions/questions for your next podcast, there are two sticking points for me. The first would be music. I personally love good music and I feel like there should be music always playing during my games. Dramatic moments, battles, lost in a dark dungeon, exploring a long forgotten ruin, experiencing love, etc… All of these situations can be further enhanced through music. The problem is how to streamline it. Time is your enemy, lol. Nothing will be happening at the moment you want it to or things can completely go off track, so how do you make your music adjust to you without having to break what your doing? I’ve been separating playlists for themes (heroic, scary, love, general, town, forest, cave, etc..) which seems to be working alright, it just gets kinda clunky when multiple themes are going on or when moods are switching. How do you guys handle this? Do you even play music? What kind of movies/games/whatever inspire the music you use? I’m currently using a mashup between LOTR, Pirates of the Caribbean, various music from games, and some from visual novels (Umineko has excellent battle/scary/dramatic music, btw(An example if you like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR6PYrjEzcQ )). Oh, all of these have no lyrics or unintelligible ones, general opinion is that lyrics distract.

    Second would be my combat. I use unique monsters and try to keep things interesting, but where I seem to keep falling short is things to do in combat. It’s boring and I’m not really sure why. Part of it I think is my terrain, it’s usually pretty cut and dry. I want to put some interesting things in there (some cool terrain stuff in DMG1 and 2), but I’m having a hard time finding reason for it to be there, other than ‘magic’. How do I spice up my combat and/or terrain within reason? Part of me thinks combat intuitiveness should be up to the players as well, are they making it boring (lol)?

  25. Great stuff, guys! I’m not a big D&D player so it was fascinating to listen to such a diverse range of approaches to structuring your games as GM, both how you do it on the social level with your groups and how you integrate those changes into the system stuff. I also really enjoyed the format, where you each have your own personal essay, if you will. I do enjoy a general open discussion, but the way you did it ended up being more focused and yet allowed for enough input from the other co-hosts. Good stuff.

    As for wanting do it more than a month, I would recommend against that. First, you will find it very hard to find the time and second for some of the listeners, it may become too much. There are a lot of podcasts out there and only so many free listening hours in the day (let me tell you, I do a lot more dishes these days ;)).

    Chatty, I would strongly recommend that you take a look at Beat to Quarters, Neil Gow’s RPG that takes place on the seas during the Napoleonic Era (think Master & Commander). Your Skills Sessions concept sounds very close to the way adventures are structured in that game and there may be some tricks and wrinkles in there that you would find interesting.
    .-= walkerp´s last podcast episode ..episode 9 – Luke Crane on FreeMarket =-.

  26. Great cast.

    With regards to flavor text, NewbieDM mentioned cutting it down. One tip I picked up somewhere was to keep the flavor text down to about 100 words.

    I really appreciate the way that NewbieDM summarizes his points at the end. It really reinforces the lesson.

    This is a very useful podcast, I look forward to more casts and more guests in the future.

  27. I’m behind the times, I know….

    I’m just listening to episode 1 a month after publish.

    I recently read the rules for Mouse guard and equally recently started a D&D 4e Group that I will be DM’ing and I really like the idea of doing 4e skill challenges with the twist-modified challenge mechanic in Mouse Gaurd – our first game session is later this, time will tell if I can pull off the scene setting!

  28. Even more behind the times than Silvester I’m afraid, but I’ll keep up now.

    I’ve been doing modified skill challenges since I saw the base mechanic. I did not like the absolute success/failure of an encounter being based on just a few dice rolls, so I included various levels of success and failure that modified further encounters.

    Say the party needs to complete a skill challenge traveling through the wilderness to stop an enemy force from attacking a town… if the party gets all successes, they find their way so well and travel so quickly that the enemy force is still assembling, they have a chance to kill the leader while he has few guards, and basically stop the attack before it starts. No successes, they missed the force altogether and catch up to them during their attack on the town, with a fair amount of damage already done.

    If they get some successes and some failures, they’ll encounter the attacking force as a complete unit but with a variety of advantages or disadvantages based on the ratio of successes to failures. With only one failure, perhaps they come on the force camped at night and before they have their guard routine worked out – easier to sneak into camp for an assassination, or to take out the guards and kill quite a few of the enemy before they rouse and defend themselves. With only one success, they come upon the enemy on the march and are caught away from cover in open terrain. Somewhere in between, the terrain would favor one side or the other in different ways.

    I also use a sort of ongoing skill challenge when my group is traveling in enemy territory and trying to avoid patrols. Based on contested stealth and perception rolls that could be modified by especially clever precautions by the players, the party may run into a patrol (which may surprise them), avoid it entirely without even knowing it is there, or find it without being spotted and have the choice of ambush or hiding. The experience is the same either way for this since the patrols are immaterial to the actual mission, so avoiding them is ‘defeating’ them. They lose out on minor loot, but also don’t expend resources.

    In another case, the party was undergoing a skill challenge to determine which of three wizards in a town was their shapechanging enemy. Getting information about the wizards could be done directly or indirectly, and different choices could have different effects. They approached another of the wizards directly, and with some roleplaying and a good diplomacy roll got him as a contact for making certain kinds of magic items – one of which was eventually instrumental in arranging an ambush on their target. They intimidated the neighbors of one of the wizards into providing information, and so the neighbors warned that wizard that someone threatening was asking questions about him. If he had been approached directly later it would have been a lot harder to get anything useful out of him, and if he had ended up being attacked, he would have been thoroughly prepared for it.

    I hope that helps you get the Mouse Guard style of skill challenge, though this is a bit different in that mine are mostly pre-planned options.

  29. Wonderful cast, I’m only half way through this episode and already darn impressed. You’re making me want to craete something like this for Aussie gamers.

    In terms of Prep:

    I tend to flesh out only the basics of the towns – names, major npcs, and a few odd aspects that I can talk about if the team visit. Same with npcs and all sorts of other stuff.

    What I have found useful is a list of default personas or template characters, and a list of names and personalities. It makes it quick to grab a name/personality combination for a person the team just met, and then have a basic stat card for the person in case.

    Otherwise I like to see the motivations of the players change the path or the story, in a way so strong that often their goals (or anti-goals) shape the story they play in. Like they are secondary GMs themselves. Of course that makes for all sorts of conflicts and you need to have some story threads in prep in case they decide to do nothing.

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