Probably Bad 34: Kidnapping Jeremy Irons, Roll for Architecture, and Historic Crabs

D&DANIEL The interloper has not returned. D and Daniel is safe for now it's all thanks to our brave patrons but especially Hedwig and Carlo be vigilant

PENCIL Hello welcome to the probably bad podcast a podcast which is definitely bad i'm pencil

PAPER i'm paper and we have another guest by popular request

RUTSKARN is that one person or two people?

PAPER That's a secret but you were requested. Would you like to introduce yourself?

RUTSKARN Yes, Hi, I'm Rutskarn, Adam 'Rutskarn' DeCamp. I am on the spoiler warning show I create RPG content for Patreon. Currently, I am working on finishing up the game deniable assets.

PAPER That is much more impressive than our credentials.

RUTSKARN That's I mean, that's the thing about the internet is it's it's democratic, you could toil away doing one dumb thing for like 20 years, and then somebody like has one good five seconds on tick tock and hey...

PENCIL In lieu of all tick tock stardom.

RUTSKARN which I assume is forthcoming.

PENCIL Yeah, we can only hope. Today's probably bad RPG idea is... invite people around to play Pathfinder, once there have them roleplay being- have them role play being workers of the mapping Ordnance Survey seem confused when they raise objections.

RUTSKARN I'm of the opinion that there are not many bad RPG ideas. And I don't think this is one. I think that this has a gem of genius in it.

PENCIL Like, there's definitely some kind of urban fantasy, you're going around exploring these places. And then some supernatural thing or alien technology is there is maybe undermined by the fact that it's planning an ordinance survey, so it's likely just fields. So you do need to contrive a reason for it as a vampire in each random fields that you're investigating.

PAPER I mean, I can see it working quite well as a cover for like a monster of the week party. Where it's just like, oh, yeah, well, we're just mapping the location of this old church, maybe drawing some pictures if we've got like, there's also a buildings archaeologist in the party. We're definitely not dealing with undead underneath the church. We're just mapping it was just I think it was a cover. Oh, so for a generic fantasy party is that same way, we're just mapping the lich king's dungeon, we're not going to assassinate him. We're just checking what's in there.

RUTSKARN Right. It may be you dealt in safety, you know, you've got this this giant ballroom full of like kind of dark, occluded, very sharp objects lying around, you know, skeleton, which to me is a sign that perhaps that, you know, some of these entities can be raised. Some accommodations can be made to guests. Currently, there's no safety railing, preventing people from stepping on the assembly of garotts and buzz saws. So really bring things up to the modern age. It's been 400 years, you know, preserve preserve the historical significance of the area, but also just make sure that everything is up to modern standards.

PENCIL Yeah, I'm not a paladin. I'm just a health and safety inspector who's seven foot tall and wearing glowing golden armour.

Which isn't that just the fantasy version of a high vis vest?

Yeah.

RUTSKARN If you think about it,

PAPER I'm absolutely playing this character at some point, by the way. [inaudible] Paladin,

PENCIL every podcast we every episode of this we do it does end with people developing a new character.

PAPER I have a problem.

RUTSKARN So much. Yeah, yeah. So so so little time so many characters one needs to play.

PENCIL We need to do just like a one put like an RPG where as a whole party every member of the party is one of paper's characters.

PAPER I would love that. And just torture all my OCs

PENCIL - papers, i think this is-

RUTSKARN you need to have different like voice or intonation for each different character that you play, and then do the whole thing as though you're the GM and a bunch of separate players as though you've cloned yourself.

PENCIL Yeah, I can see i This seems like a perfectly reasonable RPG idea. it's one of the many rejected titles of our podcast.

RUTSKARN Yeah, maybe it's like 10-15 hour long, like three hour long sessions, recorded and posted on the internet.

PENCIL Yeah, I mean, like, you don't have to worry about scheduling issues because like, it's just you.

PAPER And I have nothing to do because all the museums are closed.

RUTSKARN Oh boy that is a problem.

PAPER Yeah, the thing I'm qualified to do is work in museums, and they're all closed until at least May. So I'm just here.

RUTSKARN Oh, no, I'm sorry.

PAPER Um, yeah going back to the idea.

RUTSKARN So come back to the idea.

PAPER I mean, the the cover thing is very fun. But also just them actually being mapping people, either in a kind of, in the end of the world kind of type game, where it's like, you're just going about your day, and then things happen to you. Like, or like, there is a legitimate fantasy reason that you need to be doing these maps and just discovering the world, the beautiful world that your DM has built along the way because like, Ordnance Survey maps were developed. Because Britain, and specifically England was being attacked a lot. And they went, Okay, where are the weak points? Where do we put the guns? All of this stuff like that is a legit, like high fantasy reason to be making maps

Unknown Speaker Right, I mean, that's the thing about dungeons and dragons type and Pathfinder, I suppose that system. Like that kind of that whole family of games is interrelated, they have their strict limitations on how far a projectile can go magically and on what area effects so if you think about it, there's no less reason for this setting with fireballs to need to have an ordnance map and there is for you know, like a post like 16th century setting where artillery is used for defence

PENCIL Yeah, I really like the concept of people like you know, acknowledging in universe like very strict mathematical rules for how far fireballs can go and yeah, like sort of like the gelatinous cube of like a world that builds its tactics around the fact that all combat is happening in a series of five by five squares.

RUTSKARN you can have players meet like the grenadiers who were up there in the towers, louche wizards you know, like growing their beards long outside of regulations, you know, wearing their, their their kind of their pristine robes kind of skewed and halfway on, just like smoking their cigarettes staring off at the horizon, like what took you so long to get that ridge mapped out there that's gonna be crawling with enemy enemy wizards before the sun's down, I can tell you that much for free.

PAPER I want to suggest an idea to you. Ordnance Survey architects.

RUTSKARN So you're also building so essentially, this is a tower defence Pathfinder game.

PAPER Yeah, but also like, on the inside, like, we need to design this throne room for like maximum. imposition will be the wrong word, but like it needs to be maximally imposing, but also the minimum to minimise the chance of someone in the crowd magically assassinating the king.

RUTSKARN Right? You essentially have to like, so yeah, if, like, yeah, there could be a scenario where we're building a new like, out to see if you have players who are extremely interested in tactics, and extremely interested in like this kind of nitty gritty stuff, which I could find you a group like this, that would be no this, just have the premise be like the, it's the sort of thing where like the sanely privileged Emperor wants to build like, a winter city in a warmer part of the empire, where like, he and his retinue can go and party it up, but also where there's like, you know, maybe ball so once all the infrastructure, this is an insane folly, but we need you to develop it because we're pretty sure someone's gonna try to kill him. And we need you to plan a city that is proof against every possible method of like, magical, mundane assassination, including wizardry

PENCIL it's fantasy SimCity. Yes, I do game for kind of like, yeah, very tactical power gamer. He's awesome. But it's like in city.

RUTSKARN Fun, tactical power gaming issue where it's all planning for one fight at the end of the campaign, which is like, okay, sooner or later, somebody's gonna take a poke at this guy. Maybe you're not even there for that fight. Maybe I just roll it and I tell you if you want or not,

PENCIL we've successfully moved out of the actual combat and now it's just planning for the encounters.

RUTSKARN So like the ATM role playing. The Emperor is being especially officious and demanding and maybe dismissive. You know, maybe maybe an insult here. He really there it's a player's halfway through like, what if we went the other way on this?

PAPER Yeah like it's also a customer service simulator where you keep having to explain to the Emperor like no, you can't put that there because yeah, one one cloud of daggers and you're dead. Yeah, he keeps going

RUTSKARN like no I need a skylight. No, I need a skylight over and over again until you're blue in the face until you're finally like, you know what? You can get all the highlights you want, but I'll put one in your bedroom. How

PENCIL about that? Just trying desperately to explain to him that a movie setting up is flammable and everyone has fireballs.

RUTSKARN He wants a pit trap so that he can like dunk visitors he doesn't like into it by pressing like by pulling a lever and you're trying to explain to him that he's gonna have to walk across this pit trap every day to get to his throne because of the like. Tenochtitlan style causeway you've built him and he's just like, what it's fine it's just just don't build it so that it opens accidentally you're like okay,

PAPER there's no such thing as wear and tear right? It'll be fine.

RUTSKARN Yeah, no,

PENCIL I really I really like the sort of implied like follow up to this of you to heroes preaching to the villains like dungeon and they've just been killed by their own traps because they fill that dungeon with pit traps and Spike falls.

RUTSKARN I'm a firm believer in surprises. Yeah.

PAPER I have done that as a very early campaign encounter before where it's just like you're fighting the skeleton of this minor boss because they fucked up.

RUTSKARN Oh, yeah, absolutely. Or, or, like any really, when it comes to dungeons, you can get a lot of mileage. In fact, I have not yet reached the end of the track in terms of playing them with the assumption that this is an organic space that has simply existed for anywhere in from a year to 1000 years before the players showed up. I anything from like, there's currently an adventuring party there. Who's not happy about the fact that there's someone else pressing a claim on their stake. The to like the tomb is on the land of a noble who's going to show up as soon as you come out, present proof of ownership and demand all of the treasure that you are illegally removing from his property.

PENCIL Yeah, like because dungeons are one of those in the d&d sense, or one of those tropes that just don't really make sense.

RUTSKARN wrote an entire novel around it once, actually.

PENCIL Yeah.

PAPER Yeah, like I think, I think honestly, one of the best things in terms of like, my understanding of d&d dungeons I hate to say it is the first dungeons and dragons movie. they have to do a death trap puzzle, in order to prove their worth to I think it's Richard O'Brien

PENCIL not the character he's playing just to Richard O'Brien.

PAPER I mean, the character is very Richard O'Brien to be fair

RUTSKARN I think that there is a tribe of perhaps six people on the planet who could name more than two characters in the dungeons & dragons film and I think that that tribe does not include anyone who worked on it you think Jeremy Irons like if you if you corner Jeremy Irons is gonna be like, let's see who was in that movie. Like Who are the characters in that movie? There was Bilbo fumberling. Ah, Arya Stark. No, I don't i'll be honest. I'm not sure what movie you're talking about. Was I in it

PENCIL so what you're saying is we need to get Jeremy Irons as a guest on this show.

RUTSKARN If you've got Jeremy Irons, as a guest on this show, and like called his bluff with regards to remember literally anything about that movie, I would watch that show I would I would

PENCIL do an episode we kidnap Jeremy Irons and force him to recount the plots of the first dungeons and dragons movie.

PAPER So I think now that we've hit kidnapping, we should maybe move on to the question.

RUTSKARN All right, sounds good.

PAPER Okay, so all of our questions are anonymous, which I don't know I asked people for questions for you. I don't know what it says that they're all anonymous.

PENCIL Everyone is intimidated by your celebrity

RUTSKARN they don't want to be associated with me because they know what's going to happen in eight months, 130 days and 22 hours.

PAPER Are You gonna kill everyone that asked you a question.

RUTSKARN I'll be honest, I don't know yet. I just know what the fellow told me.

PENCIL In order to avoid becoming accomplices. Our first question is, what's the earliest edition of d&d You've played? And do you have any interest in going earlier?

RUTSKARN I have two contradictory answers. That one is the earliest edition of Dungeon dragons I've played is chainmail. And the other is that yeah, I would be interested in going earlier because that would mean playing like the primordial soup, ad hoc games that preceded chainmails fantasy adaptation, which then metastasized into dungeons and Dragons, you know, like stuff like, like, I remember reading that the first like, D&D, thing that ever happened even before Dave Arneson was doing is like a, like black marches or something like that was basically a Napoleonic War game that they added ad hoc. Like you're also playing the town council, in addition to playing these armies, and that sounds like fun actually.

PENCIL Yeah, I played second edition. Ravenloft. Yeah, the rules weren't very good is the issue.

RUTSKARN Second edition is my definitely my favourite edition of the Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder family.

PENCIL Yeah. Like, yeah, you can you can tell how the rules sort of, I'm not going to say get better, because they'll have 400 people yell in my inbox, but get

RUTSKARN i'll be one of them. Yes, well, what happens it gets more centralised is that it goes from something that is very like kind of scattered, and random. And every system is developed independent of every other system to simulate every contingency of adventuring to a unified system, which uses your understanding of one mechanic to allow you to effortlessly understand dozens of other mechanics.

PENCIL Yeah, like it gets more coherent.

RUTSKARN Yeah, I think that that's very noble. I think that that was necessary to make the game like the force it has become. I also think that it's not ultimately as interesting.

PENCIL Yeah, I mean, like, I did, like go for the second thing. I mean, like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Well, I wonder what the hell it means.

PAPER See, the I am very boring. And I've only played 3.5 And fifth edition,

PENCIL cancelled.

PAPER I remember being like, part of this is probably just my anxiety was somehow even worse at that point. But I remember just finding character creation in 3.5. incredibly stressful. I've been told that 3.5 was kind of over engineered so kind of intrigued to go earlier, just

PENCIL Three point five's -

RUTSKARN I wouldn't accuse 2nd edition Of being over engineered in a sense of being overly polished.

PENCIL Yeah. Yeah, I think 3.5s issue was just there's so much of it.

PAPER Yeah, I mean, we've talked before like use rope is not a necessary separate skill.

RUTSKARN That's certainly true. And you know, there's third editions got like the the hex blade, the spell blade, the spell sword, the sword mage. Probably others that I'm forgetting. Yeah, just like at some point, they exhausted every possible configuration of fantasy cheese.

PENCIL irony is use sword would be a potentially useful skill in architecture game we were suggesting earlier.

RUTSKARN Right. I think the important thing about the Pathfinder game is that you are playing experts

PENCIL Yeah.

RUTSKARN So yeah, you just add a new skill and use sword.

PAPER I feel like that game would be mostly like social skills. social stats that you would need. I'm not to say inspiration and intimidation.

i'm going to say you have to roll individually for each like, you know, rock you put in and what have you.

Okay, yeah, well, that will do wonders to pad out those moments.

PENCIL Yeah. If I haven't planned anything for this session, you just roll to lay brick 800 times. Ready sir. Let me ask you

RUTSKARN is overrated I'm just saying

PENCIL what you do is you walk in you just say architecture and then you start demanding people roll.

RUTSKARN We have time for a brief tangent show

PAPER yeah.

PENCIL Our podcast is entirely tangents.

RUTSKARN I was listening to a few of your backlog to prepare and one of them was the premise was of the game I think was a of an anonymous like you have a the players that have amnesia and the GM has amnesia. Yeah. So because it has been my blessing and curse to run every stupid game in every stupid context, I have run that scenario. And I wanted to give you a report on how that went.

PENCIL Okay,

PAPER okay.

RUTSKARN So essentially what happened was I was part of a charity marathon about like 10 years ago called anti Paladin, where we would do something like a week, five straight 24 hour days with rotating shifts of players while being streamed of tabletop role playing games for charity. And you run out of like actual prepared ideas, more or less within the first 24 hours if you're one of the main GMs, which I was. So somebody requested a horror game, and I wanted to run one, but I don't simply have a horror game. I don't even have a horror system really on hand. And I don't want to like make people create characters for something, and I don't have any ideas. So essentially, I have amnesia right now. And the players have amnesia, here's how we're going to start. Their players wake up on a spaceship going through like a spaceship. And they're mysteriously discharged from like, their, their, like oxygen, like life support tubes to discover a dark ship, and they don't know what's going on. The kicker is, they don't remember who they are or what's going on. And I also don't know who they are what's going on. Because I didn't have an idea. We're discovering the idea. So I created the mechanic, which was whenever they say they decide they want to be good at something, and they want to have that as a skill, which means they can roll like two dice. And for successes for it was i i forget what mechanic I came up with. They remember one detail about their life, they like remember one detail about who they were before. It's like it's dim recollection, like I like one of them found a surgical kit was like, Oh, I think I was a doctor. And I'm just great. This guy was a doctor good. Starting to. So I've started to put things together. Like I would just come up with weird things. The thing about this in mysteries and coming up with mysteries on the fly, when you don't know what's going on is you just say something and players start speculating. And you take the best speculations. You just kind of like, connect the dots yourself. And then they feel like they're not only you smart, but they're smart for figuring it out. And that's exactly how you want them to feel. Because then they don't look more closely.

PAPER that is genius.

PENCIL Yeah, I mean, I have I have done that before. I have done one RPG where a very important clue that became integral in the mystery. It was a time loop. And it wasn't originally intended to be a time loop. I just fucked up what times things were happening. And I decided to cover it by making it a time loop.

RUTSKARN mistakes are the best thing GMs can do. Yeah.

PAPER Yeah, you have the opposite end of of that particular spectrum, which is when your players misinterpret you saying ring of keys, and you suddenly create a magic item which unlocks doors

Ring of key? Ring of single key?

PENCIL Yeah, the thing is, my character had very low intelligence. So they never figured out they had a magic item that unlocked doors they just thought no one locked their doors anymore for some reason. And went to a grave...

RUTSKARN extremely good concept for a character

PENCIL Yeah, went to their grave never really finding what it was. We should maybe go back to the podcast. Oh,

RUTSKARN yeah, let's let's let's return to that.

PENCIL Ideas are in fact, spreading into the world.

Hazel Hi, I'm Hazel, and I make a podcast with Liz called Bread and thread which you might enjoy. If you are a fan of food, or clothes, or other interesting parts of domestic history. We find out interesting facts about things like regional foods, ancient breeds of sheep, and pretty much anything domestic history. So if you'd like to know why it's illegal to import a sheet into Iceland, and what was presented by Queen Victoria to Harriet Tubman, then you might want to check out Bread and Thread. Find us at Bread and thread on Twitter or find us everywhere podcasts exist.

PAPER Yeah, let's let's have another question. Thoughts on pre Gen versus player made characters for first timers

RUTSKARN well. baked into this question is an assumption of system. If you're planning something FATE accelerated. Obviously, it's much easier to create a character on the fly by just starting with one or two details and adding things and playing something like Pathfinder that is essentially impossible. But there are also multiple like levels between absolutely starting with a fresh piece of PAPER and go all the steps like I think character make a few choices and making it your own versus like you give them a character that has a backstory or not. Um, and then there of course there you could, you could also, for first timers play some Durance, where their first character is one name and two sentences, and then it doesn't matter. Although if you're showing someone Durance for their first RPG better be really sure that we're interested in games like that, that that's a that's that's like a dark coffee, Bitter Brew kind of game.

PENCIL I think the kind of, I look, what I've done, sometimes with new players is sort of make a sort of generic, you know, strong character, smart character, social character, and so forth. And then they can sort of come up with the character, like personality and stuff. Yeah, because a lot of people I know are i'm going to say, drama nerds, and are very happy to come up with characters and personalities, but it's often the rules like especially more complex games. So I feel that is a good solution

RUTSKARN it's pretty much the answer, though isn't it, i mean, you- what the answer to this question is entirely on like, there is no first timer. There's someone's first time playing tabletop role playing games in which the character that they're that they've made up that they've written the backstory for which they love already, you just have that and having them play them. They've never actually had rules to go with that before. That's just something that they've done online with their friends. And then there's first timers in the sense of, they remember seeing Lord of the Rings once on an aeroplane, and they played Monopoly a lot in high school, but otherwise, they have no idea what's going on. And how, essentially, what I try to do is give players something interesting. Something which is cool, but something which does not overwhelm or paralyse them. And that is very much case by case thing.

PAPER Yeah, I mean, I've definitely run sessions for first time, like people who, again have a varying level of familiarity with the whole concept of like TTRPGs, where like, some of the characters were, I made them some of them the players made them and some of them it was like, Well, I will give you this this and this and then you go from there. It's yeah. Yeah, I think I think you're right. It's not it's not a really a binary you can set up.

PENCIL Yeah, it depends a lot on who your player is what game you're playing. What campaign you're setting up.

RUTSKARN Yeah, GMs really cannot afford to just level one size fits all prescription. Like that's that's that's what's important about GMing is that you can't have just your, your bag of tricks that you use your way of doing things which you apply to everyone that comes through your doors. If you really want to reach the next level, you got to start looking at your players as individuals, and understand how to give each one of them the best time. And when they come together as a group learning how to balance that.

PENCIL Yeah, like it's like if I can go from like wacky shenanigans to actual discussion RPG things. Like one of the things I really like about RPGs is that the audience, and the writers, for lack of a better word are the same people. And it's a lot, it's a lot easier to kind of make it much more personal for the people who will be taking part than it would be, say, a book or a film.

RUTSKARN And that's the only reason to play your own story instead of consuming, like the greatest fantasy novels ever written. Right?

PENCIL Exactly. And it means that yeah, it's a lot. On one hand, it makes it a lot harder to give personal. Like, it's a lot harder to give generic advice. Beyond the basics of like, you know, don't slap your players in the face and what have you. Yeah, but it also means that it's easier to make it in a way that is very specifically good for your group.

PAPER Yeah, like I think this is why I like forever DM syndrome is real and I've experienced it. But DMs should be players as well, because you get your best ideas in someone else's game or if you can't be in a game like watching something actual play or just reading a book. Like that's where the best stuff comes from and stops you getting into that rut.

RUTSKARN Very forever DM. I did the math recently on how much I've jammed in the past 15 years. And it was something depressing like over 2000 hours.

PENCIL That is an impressive amount of DMing

RUTSKARN I yeah, I mean that's that's I was the president of the role playing games club at UCI that had something to do with it. But also just, I like role playing games and I end up being the one to run. Run like dozens of systems. I don't even know if I remember half of them.

PENCIL i feel like we're We're mostly giving actual good advice. Over the last two questions.

PAPER This is what happens when have someone that knows what they're talking about, like no, like no offence to tell who is like a guest that we've had before. But we now have like an RPG professional. Yes, somebody suggests setting the table on fire or something.

RUTSKARN I would love the title professional in any other context.

PAPER Um, so one more question is what's your favourite part of world building?

PENCIL My favourite part is come with a lot of very complex background information that players will neither know nor care about and set on fire without noticing.

PAPER Right, this is why I have a separate Tumblr just for my d&d setting. So just I need somewhere to put everything just get it out.

RUTSKARN A disciplined GM means that you'll inevitably come up with backstory and details that you think are really cool, which will never have you'll never have a good reason to share with the players. I've never met a discipline GM.

PENCIL Yeah, the question. Yeah, like, I think the first thing if you don't bring them up, or you try and shoehorn in your entire 30 minute monologue about the origin of the gods as your players try and flee the room. yeah the problem with worldbuilding as I like sort of building the big scales of things of like, gods and cosmology and stuff. And then I had to, like make it so adventures happen in it, which is a very important part of the plot. But

PAPER see, I like to make my plots like follow logically on from various world building stuff. Like, I'll go in and be like, okay, but this, this society has wears their hair like this for this reason. And someone doesn't want that for this reason. And oh, there's a plot.

RUTSKARN Two answers to this. One is that so I actually have got three answers if that's permissible.

PENCIL Yeah.

RUTSKARN I guess I have three favourites. In terms of like in rough order of like, when they come up first. So my favourite type of campaign to run when it comes to like fantasy dungeon dragons. That kind of game is one where I create a context. I don't really create an overarching storyline in terms of like something that players are intersecting with, like an ongoing crisis. I like to create one crisis that hits the players like a sack of bricks immediately. I want the whole campaign to follow from the resolution. So it's like yeah, okay, so what do you do if you become outlaws? So what do you do if you discover an incredible fortune in the middle of nowhere, which will be very valid if you can get it back to civilisation. Like, like, like some calamity like that, which I where I can just watch what happens when the players interact with this world. So I like my, I guess my first favourite part of world building is creating the sandbox, the context that's going to react to that kind of crisis. Like that, that's going to be like a coming up with like all sorts of pit traps and like sort of fertile opportunities and stuff stuff players can use. Second favourite part which is the part which is towards like more towards the end of the process is when I take like the big broad stroke things i've created and use them to create little things that I think will make players love or make them interested. Like the exampl being like Okay, so if I have the this aesthetic detail, like where this empire is really harsh and fierce, and where criminals are punished. And then I take that aesthetic, get down, I refine it into like, I take that fundamental detail. I refined that into the detail of like, on the high road, there's a bunch of hands like nailed to posts that are like the hands of thieves. And then I take that further to little detail, which is like my favourite detail, where like there'll be walking road and there'll just be like this poor old widow. hunched and stooped just like waving cheerfully at them carries the basket of hands to nail up because that's like, who else is gonna do that job but they just give it to like some some town widow. Yeah, you know, she's Oh, I'm just happy for something to do. I can't spend any more money. My I got the arthritis in my wrists. Yeah, all right. Well, I'll go nail the hands up death to thieves. Then the last favourite part is the world building I come up with after the fact either during in session or after, like between sessions, to expand upon a detail that players thought was interesting. inevitably becomes more important than everything else I came up with.

PENCIL Yeah, it gives a more serious answer, than my original like, I don't a lot of like, world building in the i do general world building what exists in the world, and then I do improvise quite a lot of it's just based on where the players go. And I like that idea of like a world that sort of slowly developed, like, okay, we can go over there and like, okay, there's a city there. And then the city is just slowly like given a name on personality, so forth. And

PAPER when I do too much, improvisatory world building, I end up with things like, well, the capital city is called suddenly crabs, because I thought that sounded funny in Latin. And now I need to come up with an elaborate reason that the capital is called suddenly crabs. and then you play in that setting for three years

PENCIL I don't think they're ever worse than the crabs.

PAPER Well, no, it was a historic it was historic crabs.

PENCIL They're no longer sudden.

RUTSKARN This is a historic crab.

PENCIL Yeah, my favourite part of world building is the historic crab, which is mandatory in every setting.

RUTSKARN you don't Know who your historical crab is going to be? Or why the crab was historic. that's the fun part.

PENCIL Every player has one token, and when they meet an NPC, they can spend that token to declare that NPC is the historic crab.

RUTSKARN I do actually believe that player should have the ability to determine at least one NPC that you don't give a shit about is very important. And the last time that happened for me was the chicken.

PENCIL I mean, players definitely do have the ability to turn around an NPC you don't give a shit about as important and they will do it whether you want to or not.

RUTSKARN I guess what I'm saying is you need to have the grace to accept that and lean into it.

PENCIL So I had a minor mook in a world of darkness game I was playing. And they try to attack the players. When they get into the bad guys thing. They rolled six dice for the attack on all six, were ones, and then they got a one on their chance dice, which for those who don't know, World of Darkness is as much as you can conceivably fail. So they explode themselves immediately. And the players like, loved this sort of random incompetent moves so much they ghost kept coming back every so often, to take another jab at it. And in total about my planning. He just kept rolling massive failures every time he tried. We just got this story of this sad, sad assassin ghost who has no idea what he's doing.

PAPER Have you have you really been the DM unless your party has adopted some random incompetent off the street.

PENCIL So there you go the party got quite attached to their random incompetent ghost assassin.

RUTSKARN I won't go too much into the story, but ended up with a very, very, very, very minor NPC campaign that I'm currently running. At some point acquired the nickname hometown buffet dog. At that point, like you can't really at that point, the character has to be important because that people love that nickname. Like I you guys assume don't have the hometown buffet.

PENCIL No, sorry.

RUTSKARN Um, well, no, I'm very clear. That's not an export. It's just like it's a buffet restaurant, very poor quality. And it's like this character who is an aristocrat, I guess I will go somewhat into the story. Like before this, like random like dim witted aristocrat character got really through just kind of me shuffling things around and got promoted to like, the inner circle because this is like a court game. It's like a Versailles. Like you're all trying to like gain political capital game. I just said, yeah, he kind of got lucky. I mean, and everybody knows he got like, it's like a dog who found his way into a hometown buffet, and you just come in and find like, the whole place is a huge mess. And he's just, like, really bloated. And you want to be mad at him, but you're really just like, Oh, boy. That's that. Sometimes just having that like Hulk for a character, it really gets players invested.

PENCIL Yeah. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed that actual RPG advice episode of our podcast.

RUTSKARN I can only apologise

PENCIL I'm sorry. [crosstalk] Okay, no talking apparently. Thank you. Thank you for thanks for being a guest

PAPER here if you have a question, or a complaint, I guess about our good advice. You can send it to us on Tumblr or email probablybadpodcast@gmail.com. If you want homebrew and bonus episodes which April's one's going to be something. You can go to patreon.com/probably Bad RPG ideas. And I assume you have something to plug Rutskarn.

Rutskarn awkwardly okay. You can follow me at Rutskarn that's ru T SK Arn. No doesn't mean anything. And I would I would really like to plug deniable assets but it's not on Drive Thru RPG yet. So I essentially be saying, please look for a game called deniable assets in a few months. It's a cyberpunk villain role playing game where the character beats a bad ending because they're cyberpunk villains and who wants to have happy endings? If you have any complaints about this that i've said here, or any like niggles with my RPG theory, you can reach me at at ca MPsterafter.com. Oh, and I guess I guess if if you if you're going to a convention or something people have had some good times with the unofficial Highlander 2 the quickening role playing game, which I am the author of in which was on my which is available on my website, chocolate hammer.org.

PENCIL Yes, sorry, my brain stopped working there.

Rutskarn It might be because you just heard the words Highlander 2 unofficial role play

PENCIL that is very possible

Rutskarn the one rule of it is that the players cannot have actually seen the film Highlander to the quickening.

PENCIL Yeah, I feel like it'd be a good film to have sort of guess which of these actual plot points or which ones are making up but we're

PAPER not far off

We should end the podcast first. Oh, we have new merch on red bubble. We are probably bad on red bubble. I forgot to plug this last time we have new merch. So give us some money please. As I said I'm unemployed until at least may realistically

PENCIL Our new advertising campaign of just begging.

PAPER Thank you for listening and remember to have a probably bad day. And remember to have a probably bad day.

Rutskarn have a Probably a bad day. Was I supposed to do it?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai