This week we discuss integrity in the TTRPG YouTube space, choose new 5e adventures for 2024, and discuss whether the stun condition should be removed from D&D entirely?
Email your questions to [email protected]
Ben: @TheBenByrne
Dael: @DailyDael
James: @JamesJHaeck
Shawn: @shawnmerwin
Editor: @ZsDante
Topics:
00:00 – Intro
05:05 – AI Art False Accusation
09:52 – Integrity in TTRPG YouTube
14:32 – Choosing an adventure
29:55 – Max level cap
47:20 – High level campaigns
51:40 – Remove the stun condition?
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this was a great episode!
hope more youtubers are held accountable but also viewers stop treating youtubers as journalists when a lot of the time they are not
the discussion around levels was really good. im interested in the idea of levels existing but not as a reward. cant get my head around how thatd work so very curious
the personal level tiers were interesting. it usually feels like levels 1-3 are one level in most games ive played. theyre either rushed through or the game starts at 3. when stretched out, it's one of my favorite parts of the game, tends to make the party really depend on each other and discover our characters
Red hand of Doom is my favourite adventure to run and converts to 5e with so few changes.
From the mighty mouth of Merwin, "If you don't know what you're talking about, STFU!" Just. Perfect.
I think people who get bored, pout, etc because their character is out of the fight for 5-10 minutes is a selfish player. There have been several times I've been down for a few rounds, but I was still invested in the story and still very much interested in what the rest of my party was doing.
The Dragon of Ice Spire Peak is a chunked campaign. After defeating the Dragon the adventures in Leilon build at 3 2/3 levels with a beginning middle and end for 3 further adventures. Very well done.
My issue with the level cap in DND is that although the game goes to 20 they (wizards) they do not support they game. They only have 1 adventure that they have published that goes that high in the life time of 5th edition and thats just sad. I think thats why people want to see higher level play. i could be wrong though, just my thoughts.
I start running Ghosts of Saltmarsh TONIGHT.
Level Cap: the number used seems arbitrary. That is, D&D 5e goes to lvl 20, and Cypher System goes to tier 6. But a lvl 20 character is about equal in power to a tier 6 character. So in most cypher campaigns it takes longer to tier up than it does in D&D to level up.
I ran dragon heist for 3.5 years from lvl 1 to 12
Sadly, cynicism and pessimism usually wins out on social media. I get enough of that in my life without choosing to indulge in it on Youtube. I love listening to the Lorecast along with Mastering Dungeons, Sly Flourish, and others that have a less negative slant. Thanks for being here!
I prefer systems with no levels. Genesys is a good example.
Just did a puzzle monster in D&D, terrible results. 1 character died, almost total tpk, and everyone cried. Turns out that if your players aren't inclined to investigate what the enemy's weakness is, even if it is actually very obvious if they stop and think, they will just feel like the difficult fight is punishing them for wrong play.
Since I'm mostly running short adventures these days, I'm a big fan of the anthology books (Candlekeep Mysteries, Golden Vault, Radiant Citadel, etc.). For longer campaigns, you can just link the adventures or even mix and match them (don't know how? The books have good suggestions, but you can also grab from Stargate or Sliders or Star Trek or The Pretender or Quantum Leap or Dr. Who or a hundred other shows and other media that have some contrivance of visiting new settings or inhabiting new characters as jumping off points for anthology stories… add a rival group doing the same thing to add an additional through line… or not).
What an AWESOME conversation! The discussions prompted by the listener questions were amazing. I’ve moved past “10 Ways to Make Combat Run Faster” -type videos and really appreciate these deeper, more “game design-y” conversations. I’m also over “How WotC Screwed Up THIS Week!” videos and channels (I’ve been systematically purging them from my subscriptions and feeds) and that is another reason that I love your podcast. You all approach RPG news in a much more dispassionate way than so many others. I appreciate your much more even-handed approach. Between your podcast, Shawn’s and Teos’s, and Mike Shea’s, I’ve got everything RPG-related I need from this platform.
The Cypher System has a lot of interaction between turns. The GM doesn't roll – so, players roll to hit, or they roll to dodge. If you're being attacked, you have a lot of choices to make. There is also a lot of cooperation, because any task that you attempt can be eased if you have allies aiding in that task. Especially if players are inventive and interactive, then there is a lot to think about and do between your specific turn.
Thank you for advising caution and keeping each other accountable while still having strong opinions and going crazy on the internet. 😉
Happy New Year to The Eldritch Lorecast and shout out to Dante'! Your attention, effort, and bits of fun really make the Youtube experience fun!
On the note of campaigns that can start small but can expand out.
Phandelver and Below can do this, as you can just play the 1-5 portion (i.e. Lost Mines) of it and then ask if they want to continue on and save Phandelver from further threats.
As someone currently running the alexandrian remix of dragonheist which adds a few more levels onto it and expands it into a medium length campaign and while I think the added depth and more space to more easily implement all the villains makes for a more cohesive campaign, if you want less commitment which can more easily be branched out into sequels if players want to, the original book is much better for that, I do still have plans for my group to have a sequel if they want to keep playing these characters, but I feel that would have been easier if we had played the normal story because if we had we probably would've finished around now.
On the level 1 hit point thing. There's a strong reason why I started giving all my players an extra 4hp at character creation. Let's them take an entire extra small to medium hit before they start worrying
The discussion on level cap was interesting but a small correction, mcdm game will cap at 10, but when compared to 5e levels are truncated, you basically start at level 3 and level 10 is roughly equal to 20
I like the way that the DC20 system (being developed by the YouTube creator TheDungeonCoach) gives you four "action points" that refresh at the end of your turn that you can then choose to use for both reactions and actions. This system essentially lets you choose if you choose if you want to react or if you want to save those points to use on your own turn.
BG3 supposedly ended the campaign where they did specifically so you would get spells like Chain Lightning but not things like Limited Wish.
As a DM, I'm often looking at the math. You got +1 to hit, or +1 attack, but the average monsters AC or HP just took a corresponding jump as well. It all comes out in the wash, so was there really a point?
But most of the people I've played with don't see it that way. To them, it feels like Effort in = Reward out. That feels fair and gives them control over their characters progression, that isn't what loot the DM happens to provide. They like flipping through new spells or new feats to find what they're going to take next, plotting out the advancement all the way to level 20 even if they're only level 5 and it's highly unlikely they're going to get to level 20.
Think about things in design terms, you start to think logically about a system and most people just deal with it a feeling level. It doesn't need to make logical sense, if it feels fun. And for many, it's fun to think about what you're going to do when you level up.
Shadowrun does the active defense rolls, in a few different ways, depending on edition. Still sometimes have to deal with disengaged players though.
Dragon Heist was the first ever campaign I DM’d!! Gonna definitely do it again, so we can stream it!
51:29 – THE JUDGE: No weapon forged can harm me.
BUFFY: That was then. This is now.
THE JUDGE: What does that do?
😂
It seems like an oversight that lesser restoration ends paralyzed but not stunned.
Going into the new year, the direction my gaming is going to be going in is simple. I'll be adapting all the kickstarted 5e and Cypher System books from the last two years that will start coming in the mail over the next few months for use with Fabula Ultima.
I've spent so much time looking up ways to homebrew 5e so that it kind of looks a little like Final Fantasy, and 2023 saw the release of a new rules light system that works just like all the classic Final Fantasy games.
Want FFX? Run Fabula Ultima with the Kaiju fight rules from the Ryoko's Guide pdf and whatever stands out in the Aetherial Exspanse book when you guys ship that pdf. Get ready to fight Sin over the swirling mass of souls that is fallen Zanarkand.
Want to visit the FFVII Gold Saucer? Run Fabula Ultima with the pro bending, street racing, and mech fighting mini games in the Avatar Legends Republic City book, and the ship rules from Sky Zephyrs.
Marching across the blasted wastelands that pop up in every FF game? The Web DM Weird Wastelands book has you covered.
There's so many good 5e products from third parties that are full of useful mechanics that can be carried over to great games that don't have the footprint 5e does.
I think the new MCDM RPG does a great job of maintaining interest and tension between turns with their initiative system.
the good news is that the ACCUSER has since apologized and promised to do a better job, and feels terrible the problems this this has caused the artist. and will refrain from tryin to be a reporter.
It seems like Shawn really wanted to say more about the AI art discussion.
Great start to the year with this episode!
Caught parts of the live Twitch streams from both this and the previous episode. I have to commend Dante for the snappy editing on both counts. All the cuts, transitions, intro work and the funny inserts on the Ellie’s best of year memories are masterful. It makes the YouTube version so enjoyable to watch. Dante truly is the 5th Beatle on the Lorecast.
To that end, it seems half the footage from this episode is missing. #ReleaseTheDanteCut. IYKYK. (Ben, Dael and Dante should get kudos and cookies for keeping things going.)
Regarding an adventure to start a campaign: a friend is mulling over using the quests and some encounters in the Essentials Kit for her first foray into 5E DMing. I think that’s a solid modular resource that illustrates some fun encounter design while still being approachable and hackable with her own narrative. I’m hopeful it turns out for her.
James got absolutely no representation in the 'This year on the Lorecast' segment so I had assumed they were absent this episode!
Lots of good rpg advice here.I love the idea of trading hit points for Biting the Bullet. I wonder, if you do t too much might there be a negative effect like a temporary loss of constitution? I was also thinking, concerning levels, why not level up 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 15 and have a chart for such things as a bad break or good fortune that takes into consideration those years of adventuring inbetween? This would be the fast track to playing to a capped level in 6 sessions. Thanks for all the good advice.
I'm running Descent into Avernus, and I get people think it's a bad adventure, but as someone who loved the Hells, and the Blood War in general, I think it's great
Try pre-conditions before full conditions – I have a couple which are "dazed" = a lighter condition of "stunned", and "off-balance" = a lighter condition than "prone". Of course, the original conditions exist but a precondition usually occurs first (with exceptions of course). The lighter conditions are usually easier to overcome on a character's turn but still impose penalties similar to the original condition.
One way I got my players active and reducing the negative feeling in combat.
I made a magic item that let player character fuse together gaining access to each others features, which kept them involved as they kept looking at their own sheets and suggesting features the would help the active player.
Part of me has considered trying to make feats or similar rules to let my players get active in each others turns to see of it may help
Have you guys or anyone else for that matter, ever ran a campaign from levels 1-5 and then take a break. Have the players play another mini campaign from level 1-5 but it’s a evil campaign, after the mini campaign is over, the group goes back to its first campaign and the group start to find that out events of the evil campaign have had ramifications and as they level up from 5-10 that the players are actually plotting and planning against the evil campaigns characters and visa versa, the evil group now run by the gm is plotting and planning against them? Seems like a fun idea, and the players could potentially draw an emotional attachment to these evil characters, having known more of their intimate goals and personal motivations that drove them to this conflict.
The best advice I've seen for tier 4 play, is its not about what the players can do, it's about what the players should do.
Tiers 1-3 players are powerful individuals in an area (that expands as they level), but they're still just pieces on the board. In tier 4 they start setting the board.
46:31 – (apologies for dragging everything back to BG3 but…) this is literally the reason Swen gave for capping at lvl 12. After this point, there are so many variables it becomes really difficult to write for. Obviously a video game that needs to be coded and designed, voiced and rendered etc, it's more difficult. But even still, an adventure book has to be coherent and clear – and I suppose at a certain point, the party can change the playing field so strongly that writing that is a challenge. Even the latest Planescape Adventure skips over some of these levels to make ultimately make the characters powerful enough to face the finale without them breaking the game first.
Heroic Resistance
When you fail a saving throw against a condition that doesn't directly deal damage, you can spend a number of hit dice equal to your proficiency bonus to succeed instead. Roll the hit dice spent and take the total rolled as damage. Once you use this ability you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
(I'm trying to get the wording so that you can use it on a stun or charmed save, but not against a fireball. You wouldn't want to use it to reduce a massive, 60 point hit from a legendary monster and bring it down to to 12 or something. Definitely needs workshopping)
Been thinking about the whole skipped turn thing. I think this is a matter of perspective. At higher level play, a turn might take as long as 3 rounds of level 1 play. The amount of time waiting is not a problem for the normal play loop; the thing the player hates is the feeling of losing something they would have had. Ie, no one really calls foul if they spend a round removing a status on another player that an enemy just put on; this is a wasted turn, but they feel they did something.
Plus a stunned player still has skin in the game; able to take hits. It is only boring if you have 580 hp and the enemy only does 5 damage a round. There is a bigger problem of a round of attacks not mattering in a standard 5e encounter, I think.
Re the discussion at 1:00:00 & systems that encourage engagement off turn,
DC20 has a 4 Action system that allows for a Player to take multiple Reactions that can aid allies/hinder attackers.
The cost is that any Reactions they take off turn is one less Action they can take during their actual turn, at the end of which, all 4 Actions are refunded.
The problem I find with a lot of design in RPGs these days is that the designers are making a lot of the player's choices for them. We know a lot of people like to go over the 10th level, and we know that a lot of people don't, but instead of leaving that up to the players, designers throw on the level limit, and now they automatically limit those people from having an interest in their game. You see it a lot with trends too. Advantage and disadvantage mechanics, for example, were thrown into a lot of games because of their popularity in 5E and not because it was a particularly good fit. The best mechanics are the ones that give the GMs flexibility and don't burden them.
My simple answer to keeping players engaged is by turning the players into my helpers. They roll my monsters, attack rolls, saving throws, etc. They roll my luck rolls, etc. I also use this throughout the game, even outside of combat, but it's a tool I use and assign as I see fit to manage the flow of the game. You cannot code that it into the mechanics, at least not totally. This is why I dislike games that force ad GM to change the mechanics or ignore them to keep the flow of the game going.