TTRPGs

So a bit ago I went on vacation to visit my daughter in Minnesota <snap> and while there my daughters friend invited us to go kayaking on a small lake. And there was a very specific thing that happened that inspired today’s writing exercise.

Exercise in world-building? I don’t know exactly what to call it but we’re gonna take a mundane experience and use it for fantastical inspiration. Or, you know, we’re just gonna be creative and have fun making shit up for D&D!

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we create lore out of thin air and we use real life as a writing prompt! And we salute our patrons for their steadfast support of whim and whimsy!

So, we’ve all heard that thing about “writing what you know.” Cool. But ain’t nobody said “write what you know exactly word for word with no embellishments or imagination.” Right? This is where we get to tell tall tales, stretch the truth, flesh out that shower idea – you know what I’m talking about. All the best ideas occur in the shower. Where you don’t have a your waterproof notebook to write ‘em down so you forget ‘em as soon as you get out.

This is an example of capturing lightning in a bottle. Which is definitely NOT hyperbole … okay, it most certainly is. 

First, I’ll tell you where the idea came from and then we’ll write out the little story it inspired. My daughter and I drive out to this lakeside community outside Minneapolis and meet her friend’s parents in the driveway of their awesome house. It’s awesome because it’s on this forested hillside overlooking this small lake that’s surrounded by other properties. Now, I’m from Southern California, so to me this actually looks like a big lake but I really have no sense of what makes a lake big or small. Here it is on Google maps, you tell me.

To get from the house and driveway down to the water where the kayak dock is, we have to traipse down several flights of pretty steep wooden stairs, going down through the trees and stuff clinging to the side of this equally pretty steep hillside. At the bottom there’s a tall wooden pier extending out maybe 20 feet over the water, about 3 feet above it. The kayaks are on these racks built into the hillside, and they’re stored horizontally and keel up. Keep the rain out, right? There are a pair of single seaters and a two-seater on the racks. My daughter’s friend and her dad are taking the two-seater and we’re getting the singles.

Her dad is super cool and apparently goes kayaking all the time. But it must have been, I don’t know, late in the season or something, or, come to think of it, he probably just doesn’t give a fuck about what’s coming next. He’s a braver man than me for sure.

It takes two of us to get a kayak pulled off the rack and carried over the pier and dropped into the lake. Yes, I wish I had photos or video of all this, but I just didn’t know I’d be telling you dear viewers about all this until it was much too late. Professional!  

So I’m dragging my end out onto the dock and I’m wondering when we’re gonna set the thing down so we can clean it out. Because it’s full of webs and I can see spiders crawling all over the place. But the guy just swipes once at the webs and then instructs me to help him lower it into the water and we drop it in the lake. And he says, “Hop in, I’ll hold it steady this oar.”

Now, like every sane person in the world, I have a bit of arachnophobia. A smidge. A skoash. And my brain is screaming but I find myself just climbing down into this horror show like I’m having an out of body experience. While I’m climbing down I’m trying to brush out more webs with my oar but that isn’t really working and I see a big spider dart away up under the front deck, you know, where my feet and legs are gonna go. I’m just sorta running on autopilot, kinda like that military mindset kicking in where you just gotta do this nutty thing that’s in front of you and everyone else is doing. 

To clarify, it wasn’t an actual out of body experience. I’ve had one of those, an actual out of body experience and it involved a heroic volume of tequila … but that’s a story for another time. And probably another channel.

So I’m trapped in this kayak, my daughter and I both in our separate little floating spider islands, and I’m trying to row and look for spiders at the same time. I literally watched a little one spin a web from the deck of the kayak to my knee – I was wearing jeans, I always wear jeans – cause you never know when a spider is gonna wanna climb on you – and as we paddle out further I keep trying to keep my feet from extending too far down into the kayak and I keep looking for that big one I saw scurry up inside there and it’s just like a waking nightmare.

My daughter and I knew we weren’t crazy because her friend, who’s in the two-seater with her dad, keeps yelping periodically and batting at spiders in THEIR kayak. And then we go on this two hour kayak ride, us and the arachnids, touring around this admittedly very pretty lake. And yes I discovered later that I got bit twice. Someone in the group said there weren’t any poisonous spiders in Minnesota but I suspect that’s BS.  

So that’s the experience that inspired this idea of a mythological fairy tale sorta thing, like one of those demi-god origin stories told by Native Americans or some bit of a Viking saga. I just saw this image of some crazy ancient dude in heavy dreadlocks sailing across a lake at midnight under a full moon in a wooden canoe type of thing full of spiders. And figured I should write it out ‘cause it could work as a good bit of lore or something.

Which we can write up now, just riffing on whatever comes out of the old noggin, stream of consciousness style – which is probably how most of us do our first draft stuff, right? All you need is that one image, that one idea, that one detail and from there, you just spool it out, see where the river runs. 

Now, we all have our own styles and influences and whatever, so what I come up with will certainly be different from what anyone else does and there’s no right or wrong, there’s just creativity and having fun and “just doing your thing”. 

So here’s what I punched out, while listening to some select tracks from the Brittania score that I wish I could play here while I read this but you know, that’s frowned upon.

Uhm-hartha Wynya-Shäkt, the father of many son-eating daughters, was cast afar in the rage of his wife, the Starkiller, the Siren’s Wrath, She Who Cannot Forget Nor Forgive. Uhm-hartha found himself stranded in the middle of a great moss forest, the trees so dense not a single ray of sunlight reached the ground. Wandering through the ever-twilight, Uhm-hartha finally discovered the edge of a lake, a lake full of shining light. 

Stood upon the rocky shore, he saw a star pulled down from the velvet heavens and drowned in the waters below. His wife, murdering the very stars in her rage at the world. He heard the cries of the people in all their many lands, their anguish at losing their skyward maps, their very way in the world rising like heat on the edges of his vision.

He knew he must put a stop to the Siren’s Wrath before the sky went as black as her gorgeous heart. 

And so he circumnavigated the rocky shore in the hopes of finding a path to follow. But he only found the twilit wood was itself an island in the starfall lake. He needs must cross the far waters and gain the other side. 

He spied an ancient, felled and hollow tree thick with moss and bramble, which he rolled over to find brimming with spiders and their eggs. He collected an offering of live beetles and bid the spiders if they would like to see a new world. 

Queens from the various tribes emerged from the scuttling morass of web and leg and presented their various markings of death and warning to the moss-cloaked man. A bargain was struck and the queens of arachnid bade the human find a staff from which the smallest of them might ride high in the night to witness this journey across the fallen rain. 

Uhm-hartha Wynya-shäkt watched another star yanked from its perch in the heavens and drowned and went into the woods to find his staff. When he returned he held aloft a gnarled and mossy branch into which he had rammed the cloven hoof of a stag’s carcass he’d found mouldering among the roots of a massive tree, sprouted with moon fungi and golden lace. 

The various spider queens of small and tiny stature took to the staff and Uhm-hartha dragged the makeshift canoe to the water’s edge and stepped inside. He pressed with the staff to push away from the rocky bank and a thousand spiders swarmed the mossy top of the ancient water-borne log. Those spider queens of the large variety scaled Uhm-hartha’s legs and arms and the giant queens unfolded their long legs and bristled up over his shoulders and together they crossed those shining waters, the grave of the dying stars lighting their wake. 

The reflection of Uhm-hartha Wynya-shäkt’s passage, the first Druid, can be seen in the night sky, that bright river of stars that divides the heavens and shows us our way when we are lost. 

Well, that’s all kinds of messy, but it definitely captures that initial idea I had, and that’s all I need for now. I can noodle with this all I want. That bit at the end about this being the first druid, that just sorta popped up in the flow of things and I could really run with that. Obviously here I’m going for this kind of oral history, mythology vibe, kind of intentionally not paying attention to logic or details, really more going for flavor and that sort of weird thing myths and old fairy tales have of feeling sorta untethered to reality in anyway, untethered to logic. It’s like more about flavor than anything else. It’s a myth, so we don’t worry about technical or scientific details, or even details in general.  

This little thing can become part of my world-building, it could pop up in a short story, it could inspire a miniature paint scheme or a scratch build or whatever, who knows?

So, see if you’ve got a memory of some experience that you could use as a jumping off point in writing something creative. I mean, really all I’m saying is – go write something short for fun and don’t worry about the details, see what happens.

See ya! 

How’d you get into D&D? Your friend showed you this mystical booklet and weird esoteric dice you’d never seen before? You wanted to be Legolas and one day someone in the high school drama club invited you to a “role playing exercise”? 

Maybe you just had a good time watching Stranger Things and you jumped on this curious bandwagon of misfits and miscreants tooling around in these kinda cool tabletop game stores?

We’ve all got our stories about how we first encountered Dungeons and Dragons – and this one is mine. Oh, and this is also Tabletop Alchemy’s one year YouTube anniversary. I should have come up with something better to talk about.

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes it’s story time! And where we thank our patrons for their kind and generous support, much obliged!

All right, it’s 1981. I didn’t know what cool music was yet, my favorite book was Harriet The Spy and my favorite movie was Empire Strikes Back. I was in the fifth grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a Catholic elementary school smack dab in the middle of a desert.

One day my friend Alan grabs me at recess, all excited and tells me he’s got this new game we gotta try out. He’s got this red box in his hands and drags me over to the walkway in front of our classroom. The rest of the school is all out on the playground doing playground stuff in a hundred and ten degree heat. He slaps this box on the ground and opens it up. 

Now at this point in my life, I’ve played all the board games in our family closet, board games in my grandparents’ garage, I’ve played cribbage and yahtzee and uno and old maid and go fish, but inside this red box Alan has are thin booklets with wall-to-wall text in tiny font and what look like math tables and lists, there’s some graph paper in there and pencils and weird, hollow plastic red dice, they’re strange shapes but also they’re really cheap and crappy feeling because they have no weight to them. They’re like cheesy prizes at a ChuckECheese or something. Notably, there is no board nor any playing cards in this box.

And I’m like, “So what is this man?”

And he’s like, “It’s Dungeons and Dragons!” Like I was supposed to know what that meant.

But I have no idea what he’s talking about. Let’s take a moment to clarify what my setup here implies: I’m 10 and I’m in a Catholic elementary school. I’m also an alter boy at the church that owns the school. The only rock and roll songs I’ve heard are on my mom’s vinyl records of The Monkeys. I’m what they call “sheltered”, but I don’t know this. Nor does Alan. 

In contrast, Alan’s parents are literal Hell’s Angels bikers. Okay, that might be dramatic. They were definitely bikers, and there’s a 99% chance they belonged to a riding group, and there’s a tiny chance that group was the Hell’s Angels. But of course they’ve enrolled their kid in a Catholic school … so maybe they’re reformed Hell’s Angels. Or retired Hell’s Angels. At any rate, Alan’s parents were very cool and laid back, and he always had a pretty decent acquisition platform for the coolest toys. Like, he had the Star Wars Death Star play set as soon as it came out. And on top of that, he had all the cool Star Wars figures, and on top of that he had the holy grail – multiple stormtroopers in addition to all the best characters.

I had these two – the mailbox and the bug-eyed guy.

Anyway, there we are sitting on the concrete in front of our classroom and Alan is trying to explain to me how this game works. I’m not even convinced this is a game at this point. He’s telling me I’m gonna be this character, maybe a fighter or a wizard, and I’m gonna go into this dungeon place. And all I have in my mind is a dungeon cell from some 1960s tv movie or something. Why am I going into a dungeon cell?

I asked him where the board was and he says, with a straight face, there IS no board. He’s drawing something on a piece of that graph paper with one of the pencils. I didn’t understand what was going on. So roll this, he says, and gives me the d20. “You can fight a goblin,” he says. I don’t think I knew what a goblin was at that point. I might have. But I sure didn’t understand how we got from “here’s a piece of graph paper and a die” to “you’re fighting a goblin”. I try to explain to him that he’s not making any sense.

He starts flipping through one of the booklets and it looks like a text book to me – not even a regular text book but like something for college students or professors or something. It was literally impenetrable to me for the two minutes I had to look at it. 

I have a tendency to want to “get to the bottom line” quickly, like when I don’t understand something. And I just kept asking questions like “where’s my character?” as in “where’s my Monopoly top hat.” And how do I move. And he’s looking at this table in one of the books and saying things like “Okay, you gotta roll a 12 on that dice there.” And I’m like, “What? How do you know I have to roll a 12? And where’s the goblin?”

And then the school bell rings and we have to pack up all the papers and cheesy dice and booklets. Alan’s a little frustrated I think but you know, we’re ten, so, whatever, we just go back to class. I had no idea what the game part of the game was that he was trying to show me. I suppose he didn’t really understand everything about what he was doing either, but maybe if he’d like acted out how the game was played, maybe I would have got it. But, you know, that’s probably giving my ten-year old self too much credit. The whole thing just confused me.

But nevertheless, I went home and tried to explain to my mom what Alan had shown me at recess. And unbeknownst to me, there was something going on in the world that I was completely unaware of. I was ten, I didn’t watch the news. You didn’t either when you were ten.

So what I didn’t know was that my mom was already familiar with D&D. And after I told her about Alan and his weird new game that didn’t seem like a game at all, well, I was barred from hanging out with Alan from that point forward. I was fairly shocked by this unilateral response, it seemed totally outta left field and I didn’t understand. And there was one more surprise coming down the road too.

The next day I rode my bike the two miles to school like I did every day, but this time Alan and mutual friend ours confronted me by blocking my path on the sidewalk with their own bikes, and he was kinda pissed. I didn’t know what was going on and he’s telling me it’s all my fault and I’m like what’s my fault, dude, what’s going on? And it turns out that the school had forcibly banned Dungeons and Dragons from its campus. That very morning. And he was literally the only kid who had brought the game to school. I think he’d been called into the principal’s office you know, like the whole shebang, right? Read some kind of riot act, et cetera.

Again, I was pretty shocked and still did not comprehend why all this was happening but me and Alan, we weren’t ever quite the same friends after that.

Now, my mom watches these videos  – no, I don’t know why – and she’s heard me tell this story before. She and I had the appropriate rocky relationship throughout my teen years and we’re appropriately close now, so you know, this is just another example of getting some views at someone else’s expense. Everything gets funnier the older it gets. Like wine. Or cheese.

So, I never gave D&D a second thought after that, never even like heard of it again. My second, and technically my officially lasting encounter with D&D happened six or seven years later. In fact, this encounter was really with the fantasy genre itself, which up to that point I wasn’t even really aware of how big of a fan I was myself. I never got into the  – hold on, let me cast my cantrip of Protection from Fandom – I could never get through more than 10 pages of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. But, on the flip side, I was huge fan of Peter Pan, Robin Hood, and a guy I worked with at the public library during my first high school summer job gave me his extra copies of the first four Elfquest graphic novels, which I totally fell in love with and those were my introduction to the idea that there were such a thing as non-superhero comic books. 

I told you, I’m late to the game on most things, always have been.

So I was a fan of “fantasy” but I never quite thought of it in that way. But one day I was in the mall bookstore with a buddy of mine – yep, the classic 80s Waldenbooks – and I spotted a book on the shelf and the cover art just grabbed me. This cover art right here.  And my buddy mentioned something about Dragonlance being based on Dungeons and Dragons. I devoured that first Dragonlance trilogy and then it was time for DnD. My bookstore buddy showed me a couple of his Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks and I was hooked, right away this time. I went right back to the mall, to another classic store called the Gamekeeper and I got the Players Handbook, this one, which I know now is the 2^nd printing with the better cover. And I got the 2^nd printing Dungeon Master’s Guide soon after.

I’ll be honest, at the risk of alienating some of you dear viewers. Hey, we all have our aesthetic preferences, what works for you or works for me doesn’t have to work for everyone. If my buddy had shown me the 1^st printing covers of those books and those were the only ones available, there’s a pretty big chance I would have not been interested. No shade on the artist, I just really like Jeff Easley’s work. And Larry Elmore’s stuff of course, and he did the covers for the Dragonlance trilogy.

In fact, I remember later seeing the covers for DnD 3^rd edition when I got out of the Army and I thought they were so cheesy looking I didn’t even consider buying those books. Oh, allow me: I’m a terrible person I know, I’m just a hack that judges books by their covers half the time.

Anyway, I was saving up my ducats from paycheck to paycheck from the movie theater where I worked – one day I’ll share some stories from that whole adventure, it was definitely my favorite job – but I’d buy another DnD rule book as soon as I could afford one. I hadn’t actually played the game yet but I was just all in, making characters and reading the rules and stuff. Eventually I found out a guy I worked at the movie theater was a dungeon master and he invited me to a big game he was setting up for new players with the intention of starting a campaign. Or something like that. So I jumped at the chance to play.

And it was pretty much a total fiasco. There were too many players, and it took like 3 hours just to get everyone’s characters set up and when we finally started actually playing, it was just a huge boring mess. It took like half an hour just to get to your turn in combat right? So I never went back to that group, BUT, that experience of interacting with the game in some fashion, was enough to give me a grasp of the basic gameplay process and that coupled with the facts that I didn’t know anyone else who played and my own personal leanings, led me right into wanting to run games myself.

I ended up recruiting a couple of new players from other guys I worked with at the movie theater and I ran a couple of very small sessions in people’s garages late at night after work and shortly after that I joined the Army, and I shipped all my DnD books to Germany with me. I ran a small campaign for a couple of months during my stint overseas and when I got out, during the summer of 1992, I stumbled across Shadowrun 2^nd Edition. And a group of us, including my buddy from the bookstore, all decided to go to what was my first tabletop gaming convention, here in Los Angeles. It still runs every year, it’s called Strategicon. The one activity I engaged in during that convention was a “learn how to play Shadowrun” event, and the GM who ran our table was so good at describing things cinematically and clearly that I was just blown away and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I ran Shadowrun for our group for a year straight. It was super fun. 

And playing Shadowrun is how I found out about miniatures and how much I didn’t know I needed them. I found that I really liked painting them and using them for the game. And as most things are doorways to others, TTRPG miniatures became a gateway to the discovery of wargames like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k and, you know, the slippery slide had begun. I progressively got into lots of other hobby stuff too, but those are tales for another time.

And that’s how I got into D&D and the hobby in general. Which I guess further led to this very moment right now, where I’m telling you all about it. Which, yes, seems, in hindsight, like a ridiculous thing to be doing. I don’t know why this would this would be interesting, but hey, maybe there should be a two-drink minimum for all my videos. That’d help, right? 

Anyway, I guess let me know how you discovered your first tabletop hobby game. Especially if it involves scholastic book bannings of some kind.

See ya!

I was born in San Francisco and my dad was born in Oakland. So I grew up rooting for the Oakland Raiders football team. That’s American football, just to clarify. And there probably couldn’t have been a cooler sounding “fantasy-ish” type of team name, right? Coupled with their cool as hell emblem – I mean, c’mon, it’s a ——ing pirate! – and their just badass colors – silver and black – there was no better football team for me have grown up watching. 

Now, that team has moved cities a couple of times and at one point they almost became the Irwindale Raiders. And their words were gonna be “We do not sow.” And Irwindale sounds about as close to Icewind Dale as we’re ever gonna get in real life, right? So I was down for that move. I mean, I don’t watch football … I don’t really watch any sports, surprise surprise, but we’re all about names today. I think the poor Raiders are now in Las Vegas, which makes sense I guess. All pirates and scoundrels basically end up in Vegas at some point in their career, right? Las Vegas Raiders … nope, no ring to that at all. 

Also, Las Vegas sucks and is a blight on humanity. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a necessary manifestation of the human shadow self, but good lord the vibes in that place are the opposite of soul-enriching.  

But there’s just something fun and visceral about names and naming stuff, especially for stories, and for tabletop games, which are story-adjacent, right? For me, coming up with names is one of the most fun things to do. And I have a couple of techniques I use help with the whole name-generation process. And nope, none of these involve ChatGPT or fantasy name generators.

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we share tips and tricks and other things to help us all have more fun gaming. And writing. Basically telling stories, right? And we thank our patrons, who probably need a cool group name of their own. One more item on the to-do list. Your support is much appreciated.

All right, today I thought I’d share some of the things I do when coming up with fictional names for fictional places and fictional people and fictional items in my fictional fantasy worlds and stand-alone stories. These ideas I think can be great for writers as well as gamers and Dungeon Masters.

There are three main activities I do when trying to come up with names. And while, as I mentioned, I don’t use ChatGPT or fantasy name generators, three tools I do use are 1) a thesaurus; 2) as thick of a baby name book or I guess nowadays as thick of a baby name database – as I can find, and 3) Google translate.

Now, these things I’m gonna tell you about, I just kinda really like doing. They’re fun for me. You may not like this kinda stuff at all or you may well find ChatGPT and/or fantasy name generators perfectly fit your vibe. Rock on, that’s totally cool. Whatever works, works.

So this first technique I typically use for location names. Of course, you can certainly mix and match all of these methods to come up with any kind of name. But yeah, for this first method, I grab my favorite thesaurus. I’ve got a physical copy and a Kindle copy and it’s called The Synonym Finder. Any thesaurus can be a good tool for this but I find generic sites like thesaurus.com quite a bit lacking, so I stick with this thing.

A convention I use a lot is putting two words together to make the name of a place or location. And I’ll just start writing down lists of words. I typically have a theme or feeling in mind but the cool thing about this list generation is that it’s basically stream-of-consciousness. So ideas and trends that you gravitate toward will start to form as you go.

So I might be looking for a village name. Maybe I think of the word “vale” which is kind of a common fantasy location type of word, right? So now I’ll want to make that place “Something” Vale. I might start listing colors. Scarlet Vale. Crimson Vale. Indigo Vale. It doesn’t matter what these sound like, or if they’re good or stupid or anything, we’re just letting thoughts flow, laying words down to see what comes out. Of course “Shadow Vale” is gonna come up. Typical fantasy name right, Shadow Vale, very generic but it’s got a vibe. So now I’ll dig into the thesaurus – the – the – this is really hard to say, the, thesaurus. Say that fast, the thesaur- oh my god, that is uh, that’s tough. That’s a doozy.  So now, I’ll dig into thee thesaurus. See, I knew I could do it.

We’ll look up “shadow” and start writing down interesting synonyms that catch our interest. I just start noting words I like or feel like might be inspirational, they may not necessarily be something fitting for a location name, but you know, it’s just cool to note things down that are interesting in the moment. I like shade, haven, bield – now that’s a weird one, but I could see that being used in a town name or something like that – and of course I like the classics here, specter and phantom, and this is another weird one that just sorta makes me wanna take note: mien, and then cast and guise, these could come in handy for artifact or item names, maybe. I like the sound of artifice, and stalk has some interesting connotations and this one, chase, coupled with the previous mention of trail, even though intended I think as verbs, I totally saw a trail named “Something Chase”, like, “That bastard fled down Orickson’s Chase, after him!” And Orickson’s Chase is some kind of cliff-sided overgrown edge-of-the-mountain trail that descends into a valley of deep forest or something. 

These are good ones here too, augur, nebulous, murk – that could be another great location name, like Bugson’s Murk or the boat disappeared into the weeping moss of the Greensteel Murk. It’s a swamp or something, right? We’ve got gossamer and phantasm and chimerical, which of course comes from chimera, and arbored, that’s a good one, and umbral – which umbral was definitely the inspiration for my fantasy world’s God of Magic and Mystery, Umbrael. 

So I might just jot these words down and then start coupling them with other words to make names, either for places or items, even people. Shadow Bield sounds kinda cool … it’s not quite right, but you get the point. 

So this is just one example. Here’s a page outta one of my notebooks, so you know, you can see I just sorta run with stuff. Like here I went with a bunch of variations on Hollow and Croft. And then over here I went on a “garde” riff for a bit. So yeah, I just have fun with this. 

Now on to method number two. Okay, for this one I’ll use a baby name site or books, whatever, and I’ll look up names from different countries, I’ll look up surnames and bastardize them with weird fantasy spellings, you know, swap out I’s for Y’s, typical stuff like that. I typically approach these conjurings from a phonetic point of view too, so that sounding them out is kinda how they’re intended to be pronounced. 

But, as I mentioned in the Silver Bayonet warband video, I really like to look at that meanings ascribed to all these names. I don’t always care what they are, but a lot of times, the meaning can generate more ideas. Now because I’m doing this for fantasy type worlds, I’ll almost never use a name straight up, but I’ll come close now and then. This is all inspirational in nature rather than literal. Most of the time.

So, as a quick example, let’s google “baby names Persian”. Any initial search for the term baby names will bring up a stack of sites to choose from, I’ll just choose one and we’ll see what we get. I guess we’re going with thebump.com and yeah, you’ll probably start getting some ads for baby products, this is the internet, after all. So here we go, let’s look at “unique” names just to see what comes up. Right off the bat, I dig this name Cyrina, that’s got a pretty fantasy sound and spelling to my American ear. And the meaning is cool too, “throne or sun”. Simple, I’ll jot this name down and then maybe look at some boy names too. I like this Cye, nice and simple, and I like Pedram too. Pedram means successful, rock, stone. So a strong stout kinda name, maybe for a character like Perrin in The Wheel of Time. But it could also play against type and a character with this name has to learn how to live up to it. We can check the unisex names, take something like this Roshan, I don’t know if I pronounced that right, and swap that letter A for a Y and there’s a perfectly cool fantasy name, right? Roshyn. I like that one.

Let’s look up say German surnames, see what we get. Whoa, huge lists here, there’ll be all kinds of name inspiration we can take from this. Right at the top, Abendroth, that’s great, I’d use that as is. I like this “droth” bit, I’d keep that in mind and start pairing different prefixes with that syllable. This is all personal aesthetic of course, you just riff on what jumps out at you. But there are lots of nationalities and languages you can do this with, a fountain of inspiration just waiting for you to check out. 

Again, I prefer this to random fantasy name generators. It might just be because of the extra work I’m putting into the creation of a name that makes it start to mean something to me or I don’t know. Fantasy name generators are totally fine and can create some cool sounding names too, I just feel like I get stuff that’s either too random or too similar from those types of things, again, that’s just me. I like looking at names and thinking about them and the characters they inspire or finding just that right spelling or sound for a particular character I already know the background of.  

Okay, the third activity I’ll do, I use for all kinds or types of names. Meaning like names for people or places or cities or landmarks or special items, artifacts, et cetera. I really like using Google translate for seeing what other languages do with specific words I’m choosing based on their feeling to me in English. Then riffing on the word spellings or mashing up words and concepts. Again, this is mostly inspirational and what I’m working towards is a name that sounds cool but evokes a certain idea or theme or feeling. Sometimes I’ll just start making lists of possible names for the thing or person in question. 

For example, let’s jump over to google translate and let’s punch in “falling light”. I think I’m gonna go with this term for the overall name of my world. Connotation-wise anyway. The end result that I settle on may not have anything to do with an actual translation of “falling light” but it’s a starting point, right? So now I’ll just run the drop-down through different languages and see what the words look and feel like. Ooh, I like this word – is it “vallend”, “fallend” from Dutch, I just like it as a word, I’ll use that somewhere. How about Latvian? Oh, kritosa, that’s cool. Maybe I do that letter Y swap and go with Krytosha for something. What if I change light to steel, falling steel. So that’s pronounced kreetosh tarosh, so I could see having some kind of magic weapon, like a warhammer or dagger called the krytosha tarosh. What if I check for water in Latvian. Udens. The warhammer Krytosh Udin, it holds the energy of the raging waterfall within it’s rune-inscribed obsidian head. 

See, stuff just starts flowing and we just start riffing. It’s super fun.

A couple side benefits to just having fun riffing on names is one, you’ve got a bunch of future references, that’s always handy, and two, while you’re looking for that “just the right name” for whatever, you’re almost guaranteed to come up with names or maybe just words that start to inspire other locations or characters or things. I’ve learned that this kinda stream of consciousness, rambling list-making is kind of how I come up with a lot of stuff. And it usually just starts with me needing to go make up one name for one character. 

Stream of consciousness, free-flowing thoughts, iterative generation, this is all pre-production fun stuff, the idea stage of projects. And always to me the most fun. It’s gathering the clay to put on the ceramic wheel so the shaping can begin. The best part of all this, to me, is the lack of restriction. Just picking out cool stuff that catches your eye. Later, you can start to dial all that cool stuff in to whatever specific use you’re trying to fulfill.

So, go generate some cool names for people and places and, you got it, magic items! And if you have other techniques you dig for name generation you like to use, share ‘em in the comments below, so we can all get in on the action.

See ya! 

You guys are making your way up the crowded street, cobblestones wet under a soft rain, the sound of bells and cries of seagulls coming from the harbor ahead. You spot the distinct golden sails of the Queen’s ship amongst the forest of masts in the distance. Your target, the galleon that ugly thieves’ guild enforcer swore holds the shipment of dream dust you’ve been after for weeks.

Is there a lotta people on this street?

Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s late afternoon, it’s fairly crowded, traders and dock workers, merchants and city folk doing their thing.

Excellent! One should never let a good opportunity go to waste. Uh, do I happen to see any uh rich folk walking around?

Ugh. The ship is right there!

Roll a Perception check.

Well this day keeps getting better and better, that’s a 21!

Sure, you see one or two figures that sorta stand out, they’ve got maybe a little retinue of guards and there’s one wearing a pretty extravagant set of robes, very expensive, and his attendant holds a silk umbrella up to keep the drizzle off him.

A silk umbrella. In the rain. Yeah, that’s my mark!

Gah! I knew it, I knew it!

He looks wealthy, no doubt, and his four guards kinda support that notion. Do your thing.

Let’s go baby, go! Uh, a one?  A nat 1?

I told you to put that die in the dice jail!

Dang it!

Okay, so you sidle up the merchant’s group, slip between the guards and at just that moment, the merchant looks down at your hand stuck in his robes. He looks from your hand up to your face, you guys lock eyes. You get the feeling you might be … in trouble.

I get the feeling you’re stalling. Little bit.

All right. Role for initiative, as the merchant grins at you and whips back his embroidered cloak to reveal a torso wrapped in black bandages and a hole the size of a cannonball where his heart should be. His four guards are whirling and turning about, bristling with freshly drawn steel!

Welcome to D&D, where most of the time, we’re just making shit up.

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we just contradict previous videos and just … make stuff up! Except for thanking our patrons, that’s always sincere and we never make that up. Cheers!

All right, this is just sort of a bunch of random small tips for new DMs on how to get comfortable with living on the fly when you’re running a DnD – or any tabletop rpg – session.

There are of course lots of reasons for this, but a main one is to keep from railroading your players in uncomfortable ways and to not sweat how your players navigate the world. Playing dnd means playing in a truly open world and your players can theoretically do anything they want at any time. And so can you.

There is one thing I hope everyone can take away from this and it’s a concept championed by the super awesome Hankerin Ferinale on the Runehammer youtube channel. It’s one that I initially felt truly hesitant about, but in practice, I’ve found him to be right. And that’s the notion that you can be honest with your players about essentially not knowing what’s next. If, and when, that happens. If you’re in a spot that’s way off any map or notes you have, you can just … tell ‘em. You guys are all playing a game together and decent individuals are not gonna fire you as their Dungeon Master just because you let ‘em know you might be discovering the world along with them. 

I did truly sorta bristle at this idea at first. And I don’t think you wanna overdo it, or, over share your inherent position of con man but once in a while it’s okay to break the immersion by letting your players know you might need a minute to, you know, come up with what’s next. I typically feel like I want to maintain the illusion for the players no matter what, that whatever they’re doing or wherever they’re going already exists in some way outside of ourselves. But of course the reality is we’re all just making something new moment to moment. 

We’re just making shit up. 

And that’s literally the core activity of this entire category of games. So, the moral is: don’t stress, just have fun. 

Do you have to already be a good bullshit artist to DM or GM a game? Not at all, you can learn as you go. There’s this thing with writers, the notion of being a “plotter” or a “pantser”. Pantser means flying by the seat of your pants. Or writing by the seat of your pants – much less cool but you know.

Plotters are folks who maybe start their writing projects with full outlines or synopsis. Synopses? Synopsises?Whatever, they like to map out a story structure or plot before writing a single word of actual story. And a lot of times in my life I’ve wished I was a plotter, but for better or worse, I definitely lean more towards the panster way of things. Check my 401k if you think I’m kidding. 

Let’s say you’ve got an adventure going, you’re running something someone else wrote or you’ve got your own notes and maps laying out all your points of interest and plot points and NPCs, et cetera. And you’re thinking “what the hell is this dude jabbering about? I’m not making anything up, I got all these piles of information right in front of me.” And I’m sure you do. I’m also 100% sure that at some point your players are gonna do something or go somewhere that takes them off the rails, you’re gonna have to – say it with me now – make shit up.

Sometimes I feel the best, most accurate allegory for what a Dungeon Master is doing while running a game is summed up in this Wallace and Grommit clip.

That’s what DMing is to me. So there’s no reason to freak out if your players don’t talk to Mister X to get the map to Location Y. If your players ignore Mister X, they are probably gonna run into Mrs. Z, and when they do, lo and behold, she’s got this strange map.

Or, you know, you’ve described for your players the ruined monastery at the top of the mist-shrouded mountain just outside the town. The one the townsfolk have been complaining about because of the ghost and the ghoulish … ghouls running around in the the courtyard, wreaking havoc on the local flora and fauna. And then your players snare themselves in a scuffle with the town bully and his drinking buddies and there’s a chase and all of a sudden you’ve spent 3 hours making up different locations in this town for your players to go crash through and fight in.

And of course, underneath that monastery on your map is your multi-level dungeon, completely prepped and ready to eat your players alive. It’s full of bad guys and traps and most importantly, treasure! There’s no way you’re gonna let that location go to waste. 

So when your players disregard every hint and NPC that begs them to go and end the ghost haunting the monastery and instead decide to follow some throw-away news item you conjured up as flavor detail in the local paper – do medieval villages have local newspapers? No, probably not, but this is fantasy. Leave me alone. 

When your players go walkabout investigating the rumors of that made-up criminal enterprise working out of the basement of the local tavern, well, when they sneak into that basement, they find it empty, aside from the barrels of ale and sacks of dry goods … and that one weird iron door set in the furthest corner of the room. Of course, that door now happens to lead to a multi-level dungeon full of bad guys and traps and most importantly, treasure!

Now, it might just be that I possess a certain skill that you simply don’t have. Right? And that skill is called “painting oneself into a corner”. I often excel at that kind of paint work. Because I like to riff on open-world descriptions, I often put things into the players’ minds that to me are just off-the-cuff flavor text but to them, are subtly shiny clues and hints. But it’s all good, wherever they go, my job is to make sure there’s something for their next foot to land on when they take a step. 

Maybe DnD is really just one big trust exercise.

Anyway, conjuring up images and things does come relatively easy to me. That’s not to say they are logical or have any sort of depth to them, I typically have to work to make my made-up nonsense make sense for the players. And you might be saying, “hey man, conjuring up images is NOT relatively easy for me!”. And that’s okay too, you don’t have to imagine fresh stuff all the time, you can rip stuff off from movies and books and video games, you can just swipe to your heart’s content. You’re not infringing on copyright or copping out or failing at Dungeon Mastering when you’re making stuff up on the fly. You’re just playing a game with friends. You’re giving players ambiance and things to consider. 

And something else that comes up quite a bit is that your players often end up becoming an unwitting source of inspiration for you. They’re gonna say things and do things that you didn’t think of and those things can immediately become part of your imagined scenarios and world. Even when you’re working with written material, you should always keep in mind that you can change any of that written stuff at any time in any way you feel like. Obviously you’re hopefully working towards giving your players a good time, so it’s not like you’re gonna change that orc in room 23 to a dragon that’s ninety times more powerful than your players … I mean, unless you sorta want ‘em to run away in a different direction, you know, there’s that.

Everything’s on the table when you’re running a game. It’s up to you to tailor your imagination to what you think your players enjoy and you just gotta pay attention to how they react to what you’re laying down for ‘em. 

You could technically run an entire combat encounter without ever rolling a single die for your monsters. Now, don’t call the rpg police on me, jeez. You could just make up whether the monster hits or not, you could make up a number for how much damage they do, you can make up some weird power they have or some weird action, you could literally do all that on the fly. Now of course you want to fit what you’re making up into the structure of the game rules so the players have ways to engage and interact fairly with everything, sure. I’m just saying, we can acknowledge the bottom line here. That running a DnD session or a Blades in the Dark session or a Pathfinder session or a Shadowrun session, or a whatever rpg session is truly, at it’s core, just making shit up.

I’ll point out one caveat here, and this is just sort of par for the course, whether you’re making stuff up on the fly or running a prebuilt adventure: whatever is put out to the group becomes part of the imaginary world, and consistency is something to be cognizant of. So when you move that multi-level dungeon from the mountain monastery to the tavern basement, you basically gotta make a note of that detail, cause now that’s officially where the dungeon is. Cause now you’re made up nonsense is part of a consensual group hallucination. That sounds self-explanatory when discussing something huge like a dungeon location but it’s the smaller details that are more difficult to keep track of and some note-taking is definitely in order during a game. Just for items or details that are of particular interest to the shape of your imaginary world and it’s characters.

So, go run a game. And make stuff up. Or don’t. Use somebody else’s made up stuff. Just have fun and don’t stress too much. 

See ya!

Groggy, you come to your senses. Your head hurts like you had too much schnapps the night before. You’re lying on your back, staring up at a circle of torchlight high above, something dangling down from it. This chamber is full of shadows, but you smell lamp oil and smoke, noting two or three torches burning in the corners of what … looks like … a library?

There are other figures groaning awake near you. You hear the rustle and creak of old leather scraping on cracked stone. You notice a bit of movement, try to focus through the dull ache in your head as the last few feet of what might be a rope ladder snakes up into that circle of torchlight, which seems to actually be some kind hatch in the vaulted ceiling thirty feet above you. 

And looking around with a bit more clarity, it dawns on you that this chamber there appears to have no windows and no doors. What do these other figures stirring in the room see when they look at you. Describe yourself for the party.

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy where we’re doing our first Part 2! Yep, I told ya I had some further ideas at the end of episode 25 – jingle jangle. Nope. Just trying to workshop new trademark-able call outs, and that ain’t it. And yep, I’m calling these videos episodes. Does it make sense? Not at all. Does it make me feel like I’m a producer. 100%. It’s also just a handy file-naming structure for keeping stuff organized in the old Mac. But now I can also thank my patrons for supporting the show! That’s got a nice ring to it. Thank you very much.

Oh, and further and, let’s hear from today’s sponsor.

All right, I hope that wasn’t too cheesy. 

All right, enough shenanigans, let’s get to it.

Let’s talk about what can make a good first session adventure for players – or a DM – that are brand new to DnD. Really brand new to tabletop RPGs in general. We talked in episode 25 about removing every possible obstacle from a brand new player’s path to the table and now I want to suggest something way more controversial. 

Your first adventure for brand new players should be 100% railroaded!

All right, that’s a bit on the facetious side, but I think it’s mostly true. Technically what I want to say is “strategic railroading” is perfect for brand new players.

In the past I’ve started new players with an in medias res opening to the session and as you heard in the intro, wherever they start there ain’t no windows and there ain’t no doors – and consider this dismaying observation. 

If you’ve been to Disneyland or Disney World, I’m sure you’ve enjoyed the Autopia ride, right? Where you get to drive these cool little mini cars and a single track runs down the middle of the lane between the car’s wheels, so while you do actually get to steer the car, you don’t get to go road-raging across traffic. And you get to apply the gas and the brakes, you know, to an extent. This is the kind of railroading I’m talking about.

Another useful metaphor is the lab rat and the lab rat’s maze. 

When you design your map with these metaphors in mind, you’re basically designing a linear level as opposed to an open world level. I mean, open worlds don’t really have “levels” but you get what I mean. I design a pretty straightforward path, but of course include some areas where new players can “choose a direction”, places where they can make decisions, et cetera.

Here’s a map I made a while ago for just such an adventure, specifically for a group of players who’d never played DnD before, or any tabletop RPG for that matter. They start in chamber A and there’s only one way out of that room, these stairs that descend. That stairwell leads to a trap door that opens into a hallway, and so when the players arrive here, they have their first in-game decision moment – head south to check out this closed doorway at the end of the hall or head north to where they can see the corridor has a blind turn. For first time players, this is plenty for them to deal with. 

Side note, it’s pretty funny how I always spend so much time building maps in Photoshop or whatever that are typically only gonna be seen by … me. We’re gonna ignore what that might say about my narcissistic state and chalk it up to having fun being creative. Don’t judge me! 

The key to this first adventure is to not overwhelm the newbies with too many choices. Don’t take away their agency, just give ‘em some simple walls to play within. You don’t set the first graders loose in Disneyland all on their own, you set ‘em loose in the McDonald’s playhouse. 

Actually, never do that either, those things are gross.

Your players will have all kinds of fun making choices and fighting monsters and investigating small contained spaces with a very simple story for their first game. They’re gonna be learning game rules and character abilities and just getting to know what playing an RPG is like during this time. I think it’s important they’re given a clear goal and then have time to explore whatever aspects of DnD come up, from combat to exploration to role play. 

And an in-story or in-game time limit is probably a good thing to incorporate as well, something to give them a sense to urgency that drives them toward whatever that goal is. This is a pretty typical bit of DM advice from across the internet.

For this little adventure here, which I called Gravesgarde, the player characters wake up on the floor of an underground library. They’ve been shanghaied and thrown down here and a vaguely sinister bishop, talking to them from the ceiling trap door, informs them they’ve been “volunteered” by the city watch for this little quest. There’s an escaped convict hiding in the catacombs below that needs catching and the bishop would much prefer to have the convict returned alive with the macguffin they stole intact, but the macguffin is too important to let fall into anyone else’s hands, so if that convict cannot be caught, well, in four hours, he’s set to unleash a torrent of the cathedral’s holy witch-hunting spiders to clear out the whole place of anything living. And if the characters succeed in subduing and returning the convict, they’ll be granted a generous sack of gold along with their freedom. If not, good luck with the eight-legged freaks.

So the players have a goal: find and capture a runaway, and a time limit: four hours. I usually give a little description of these nightmare spiders, each as big as a wolf, sort of crowding around the bishop and the trap door with their spiky hairy legs and too many eyes, just to impart a bit of squeamishness about what failure is gonna look and feel like. Then the trap door slams shut and the players are on their own.

Down in the catacombs, which turn out to be the ruins of an ancient church that apparently the town’s cathedral has been built over the top of, I’ve placed a simple trap for the players to encounter and made sure there are some spots where they can make some decisions, like these doors here or here, et cetera. But as you can easily see, no matter where they end up going, they can only ever end up at the end of the maze. And they can’t go backwards. I mean they could, but they already know there are no windows and no doors behind them.

This map might look too small for a typical game night, and it almost certainly is for regular players, but for a group of total noobs, this is more than enough. And I would say that another thing to consider is the real-world time your session takes. A dnd session for brand new players that lasts only 2 or two and a half hours is way better than a session lasting five plus hours. I mean unless you can gauge they’re really into it. Because new players are contending with not only playing the game but also learning the game, their mental fatigue is likely to climb much faster than normal. And in my opinion the end goal of this first adventure has nothing to with the adventure itself, the end goal is to hopefully have these new players wanting to play again, simple as that. 

I only have like four combat encounters in this whole map, and those are only dealing with one or two adversaries at a time. There’s a dark mantle in here and a couple of skeletons in these little rooms and there’s the main convict they’re after, which they’ll encounter somewhere in this area. That convict turns out to be possessed by a demon, and the demon is what the bishop actually wants in the end. So the convict is basically the “big bad guy” of this little adventure. 

Putting your new players in a simple sorta lab-rat style maze like this gives you and them the time and freedom to learn the basics of DnD and have fun without being stressed by too much information or too many choices. Always remember that when you understand or are familiar with something, things you don’t even think about at all are all brand new and unknown to someone who’s new to that thing, and they’ll need some time to absorb the new concepts and all that stuff, even the most basic ones.

So, we all know the saying right? Keep it simple, stupid, that’s what I say to myself every day and every day, I fail in some way to do that. Keeping things simple can actually be more difficult than it sounds. It’s kinda like writing, shorter is better, but shorter is almost certainly more difficult.

So, go make a maze for new players and see if you can lure some new folks into it with a piece of expensive cheese. Or, you know, maybe some wine. And always have fun.

See ya! 

All right man, you ready to play some D&D?

Are you talking about Dungeons and Dragons?

Yeah! D&D! You said you wanted to try it, today’s the day.

Yeah, I was just tryin to be trendy man.

You got anything better to do?

Well, I was gonna go on a –

On another singles hiking trip when you hate hiking? That doesn’t count, man. C’mon, I got three other players lined up, one of them’s bringing pizza! You wanna be like a wizard throwing some fireballs or you wanna be a badass warrior like The Hound in Game of Thrones?

Well, I do like Lord of the Rings, so I guess it’d be cool to like cast magic spells or whatever.

Awesome! Okay, just fill this out and we’ll start rolling some dice. I sent you a link.

Yep, got it. Is this like a uh … what is this, a tax form?

What’s better than a full, 100% usable, perfectly tuned, perfectly organized, perfectly designed OEM product? Well, if you’re me, the answer is … half of one. 

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we ignore the inevitable onslaught of the digital age and discuss things as if time were standing still. We’re going analog!

So you’ve got a new player or you’ve cleverly duped a bunch of your friends who’ve never played ttrpgs into playing some DnD. Or, you know, you’ve kidnapped some folks and forced them to roll some dice at crossbow point. Hey, whatever floats your boat, ain’t nobody here harshing your vibe.

However you’ve reached this point, nothing changes the fact that onboarding new customers is typically the most difficult thing for most commercial endeavors. So what can we tabletop gamers learn from slick salesmen and women and the retail and commercial service industries? 

Maybe we can settle this right now. There’s a thing that we all know called opportunity cost.

One tip we can take from them is that our goal should be to make the process as smooth and speed bump-free as possible. And you do that by removing speed bumps. Duh.

Now if you just hand someone new to DnD or tabletop rpgs in general a stack of rule books, you’re probably just gonna freak them out. This is a situation that warrants the ol’ boiling a frog trick. You want them in the soup before they know they’re gonna be soup. I musta been drunk when I wrote this, I knew I was missing a bottle of Cynar. What? It’s got an artichoke on the bottle.

Basically, the less someone knows about what goes into making the soup, and the less they have to work to make the soup themselves, the less trouble they’re gonna have attending dinner.

Here’s what I’ve done in the past to introduce new players to the game as simply as possible. Via light conversation, I get a bead on what kinda character they might wanna play. I ask softball questions like:

“Do you like the idea of casting magic spells or stabbing guys with swords?”

“What character would you play if you were in the Lord of the Rings movies?”

“Do you like the idea of healing or protecting your fellow party members?”

“You wanna sneak through the shadows picking pockets or pop off with a bow like Robin Hood?”

I can’t believe I just said “pop off”. 

Essentially I just want to find out what base class they gravitate towards – fighter, wizard, cleric, thief – without even mentioning the word “class”, I don’t bring up any of that minutia with them at all. 

I will ask them if they’d like to be a human, a hobbit, an elf, or a dwarf and just sort of leave it at that, unless they ask further about other races. And that’s it. I just make sure we all agree on a day and time and I just let them be until then. Basically in their minds, I want them thinking they’re just coming to hangout for some beer and pretzels. 

The point here is to do everything you can to not overwhelm them with too much information. I wanna alleviate as much work or even choices as possible. At this stage anyway. Remember, I’m talking about getting people into the game that have no inkling as to what DnD is like. And all we want is to get these folks to the table, which is the actual battle we’re fighting. We gotta think like used car salesmen here, just remove every conceivable obstacle you can think of. Offer to provide those pretzels and beer. Or energy drinks, or dark chocolate, or whatever they like – I don’t know you’re friends, you know them, just make sure the bribes accurate. And make sure wherever you play has access to a bathroom. That sounds dumb, but it’s a consideration that sometimes just doesn’t get considered because it sounds dumb.

Now, you only need a couple things to run a game of DnD. We need dice and we need players at a table. And those players need characters. There is one other thing you need but we’ll talk about that later. At this point, I know what everyone is gonna play, even if they don’t. On the day of the game, I run a very quick, like 30 minute session zero to setup their characters. And I start with this.

It’s a very simple half page character sheet. I print these out two to a page, cut them into half sheets and hand one to each player along with a cheap mechanical pencil.

Now I know some of you are yelling at me that I should just be sending new players to DnDBeyond, and hey, you might be right. But in a few real world instances, I’ve found that even DnD Beyond is a bit much for someone completely new to tabletop games, or in particular rpgs. So this is just what I’ve done in the past and it seemed to work pretty well. I also kinda don’t want them distracted by using their phones or tablets. I’d much rather have everyone hanging out in the same real world space, if you know what I mean. At least for this first session.

Remember, first impressions are … I don’t know, there’s some kind of saying about first impressions right? First impressions are hard to change, maybe. If our new players don’t have a good time or stuff takes too long to get going or they get too confused, the chances of them wanting to play again start dropping. No pressure, right? 

At the table I walk everyone through filling out their sheets together, starting with their character’s name, race and class. Again, I just tell them to put down fighter or wizard or thief, et cetera. And then I give everyone three six-sided dice and we roll up stats. I just tell everyone to roll the dice six times and jot down the totals on a sticky note. Which, yes, I also give them. Sharing is caring. When they’ve got their six numbers, I coach them on placing the highest numbers in their class’s key stats, just now mentioning how something like Strength is good for fighters, Intelligence is good for wizards, et cetera. I kinda give like one-liner descriptions of what each stat sorta represents, like Dexterity is how physically coordinated a character is and Constitution is how much a character can drink before they pass out. Just try to make things relatable at this point, which means for brand new players, referring to real life sorta things. 

Now, you might argue that actually rolling stats is a speed bump that could have been glossed over with either just pre-made stats or some kind of simple point buy or allocation formula, and you’re probably right. I’ve just found that, typically, rolling the dice at this point is usually a pretty fun thing for new players. It gets them into the mindset of rolling dice and calculating results, it’s a fun tactile thing to do that isn’t just writing stuff down and, what to me is the key feature here, this is what starts to make each character feel personal and unique to each player, you know, cause they rolled those stats with their own two hands, their own dice, they got their own results.

Rolling up stats is also a time-honored, classic tradition of tabletop rpgs, right, and I just want my players to have that experience, even if they never play again. But as you noticed, I don’t go with any of the more custom ways of rolling these totals, like my favorite which is rolling four dice and dropping the lowest number. Going with a straight three die roll per stat is kinda harsh but it also just gets rid of any extra math and extra explanations I’d have to do, which both take up time and can become needlessly confusing – so it is a little bit of gloss on that speed bump, if you will.

Glossy speed bumps. I gotta hire a writer.

After stats and their associated bonuses are notated on their sheets, all you have left is some gear and spells. For magic users, I would have already found out what kind of magic they find cool, you know, back when I was lobbing those softball questions. 

“Oh, you like the idea of casting magic spells. All right, what kinda magic do you think is cool? Do you like the idea of manipulating objects like Hogwarts students or do you think reading people’s minds is cool or do you just wanna blow stuff up?” 

So I’ll just hand them spell cards for some cantrips and a first level spell that I’ve already picked out for them. If I don’t happen to have commercially printed cards or whatever, I’ll typically find spell descriptions online and screen cap them and text them to the player.

For the non-magic users, it’s pretty easy: “Do you like hammers, axes, swords or bows and arrows?” I’ll rattle off a few weapon stats for them to jot down and that’s it, we’re ready to play.

Now, some of you may not agree that all the info needed to play a game is on this compressed character sheet and you, again, might be right. But for me, this works totally fine for a first session with newbie players. If they end up having a good time and want to play again, they’ll find a full fledged character sheet pretty cool and interesting having played a game and they usually have fun filling it out on their own.

So I did mention there was one other thing aside from players, characters, dice and a DM that’s necessary for playing a session of DnD, and that would be the “adventure” itself. I’ve got some specific ideas on what kind of adventure to run for brand new players but we’ll save that for next month’s rpg-topic video.

So, go dupe some dummies into playing DnD. That was completely crass and uncalled for, I just couldn’t pass up the alliteration. But you know what I really mean – go find some players who’ve never played DnD and see if you can trick them into sitting down at a table. Maybe that table’s in a bar, whatever works.

See ya at the pub!

You hear the soft snick of the lock’s tumblers falling into place. The leaded glass French doors swing silently open and the rest of the party follows the tiefling rogue into the library. Moonlight streams in through the mullioned windows on the southern wall, riming the furniture and tall bookshelves in silver, making the polished mahogany gleam in the general gloom.

“I search for the stolen scroll.”

“I check for traps!”

“Check for secret doors!”

Okay. Roll an Investigation check.

Obviously a player making a low roll on an Investigation or Perception check is going to have an inkling that they’ve failed to succeed, and inevitably they’re going to feel like they’ve missed something. But if you can get your DM poker face down – and, let’s face it, that’s the best kind of poker face – you might be able to help maintain some game immersion and satisfy that craving for discovery even when reacting to low dice rolls. 

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we just talk about quick tips for new DMs, even if they’re common knowledge and your host is beating a dead horse. 

No horses were harmed in the making of this video. At least not physically. Metaphorically, that’s another story.

And where we also thank our patrons for hitting that tip jar and we thank you, dear viewer, for viewing and commenting and all that fun stuff! You guys know I read and respond to all the comments, right? It’s one of my favorite things to do. 

So let’s talk about this one tabletop rpg game mechanic that’s always bugged me just a little bit. Not the mechanic itself so much, but rather how using it sorta inevitably breaks immersion. I guess really all mechanics break immersion, so I guess that’s not really what I’m getting at. This mechanic has a tendency to kind of break immersion in a protracted sense within a player’s mind. The ubiquitous Investigation check. And to some extent the Perception check. 

There are whole videos out there on the differences between the two and when to use one versus the other, et cetera, but we’re not getting into that today. Mostly because I have trouble parsing that out myself sometimes.

Anyway, the gameplay that typically leads to an Investigation check, like whatever’s happening just prior to the call for one, is usually an interesting or engaging bit of scene setting. At least for me. And a good chunk of rpg gameplay is all about discovery, right? For me, discovery is one of the coolest, if not THE coolest, aspect of, well, not just games but real life. Discovering things, unraveling mysteries, seeing what’s on the other side of that mountain, or what’s at the end of this tunnel, it’s all about that intrinsic human drive to explore, to find something new. To discover something. And Investigation checks are like a little poppers of discovery potential. 

So your players are getting into a scene you’ve set, and then there’s this call for a game mechanic that carries an implicit notion that the player may well miss discovering something cool based on the roll of a die. And that’s fine, that’s part of this type of storytelling. The unpredictable nature of the story created by the RNG of die rolls is one of the core features of TTRPGs, right?

But Investigation checks are fun to make because they’re all about discovery. The thing that’s always bothered me about these checks is how a player will know or feel they’ve missed something when they miss a DC – or target number, for those of you not into DnD. It’s a bit of an inescapable metagame type thing. There’s just no real way to avoid it. And there’s always that delineation of the successful roll – beat the DC, find the secret door, fail the roll, find nothing.

So I’ve started using a technique for checks like these that is A) almost certainly not new at all and B) might be something you already do, whether consciously or subconsciously. My goals with the technique are to A) hit that “discovery” dopamine generator as much as possible, even when a player fails a check, and B) sort of bondo over this hard break of success slash fail.  

Bondo is what they use to fill in and smooth over like dents in cars and stuff … 

Anyway the technique is a very simple concept. You ready for it? Here it comes.

Bulleted lists. Eh? 

Well, I call ‘em ABLs! Ascending bulleted lists. Does that make it sound more impressive? No? What are you, nuts? Who asked you anyway?

Let’s say your players enter a library in a gothic hotel looking for something or someone. They’re on a quest and the last clue has led them here. You rattle off a brief atmospheric description of the chamber. Inevitably, someone’s going to ask something that calls for an investigation check. They roll an 8 and with their bonuses it’s a 12. I glance at my ABL and I know right away how many bullet points – or details – they’re gonna get. Now let’s say I had set 15 as the DC for finding the hidden bookcase door. So this player has technically failed the check, and now I proceed in a non-committal way, with something like “All right, the first thing you notice is the decadently thick carpets on the floor, they appear to be very expensive imports. You also note a hint of candle smoke in the air.” And so on. 

Here’s what my list looks like for this particular scene.

the carpets are thick, plush and imported 

there’s a faint smell of candle smoke 

one window is half-open 

the heavy desk is very neat and tidy, with stacks of organized paper, a writing quill and ink pot placed just so, but the bowl of sand has been tipped over 

one book in the darkest corner sticks out, as if it’s about to fall off the shelf 

And my little numbers there are target numbers. So a player gets all the details that fall below their dice roll result.

Everyone always notices something with their investigation check, it just depends on the strength of their roll how important or specific the details of what they notice are. I mean, maybe for a nat 1 I would just explain that they’ve become preoccupied with that pesky boot lace that won’t stay tied. 

Making ABLs like this serve a secondary purpose by helping me generate more details for specific locations or NPCs, and the more I know about a space or an NPC helps my ability to create a convincing setting and overall immersion. And often writing these details down can spur even more plot ideas or NPC attributes or backstory or whatever.

Now one issue this brings up is “prep”. Like what about checks that occur in spaces I haven’t either prepped or just have no reason to have extra detail pre-planned. I mean, let’s face it, in every session a DM is winging it more often than not. Just having this idea of tiered discovery gives me a general notion of how to proceed with my off-the-cuff improv. So while I’m never gonna come up with a whole list of things on the fly, I do have a mental framework to lean on. Just looking at a dice roll result will instantly let me know if I should give the player one, two, or three details, just as a rule of thumb. And doing that let’s me delve more into the scene as well because I immediately imagine myself in the space and just sorta describe what I imagine I see. Or hear. I always try to keep in mind the notion of the five senses and will try to hit things that aren’t just visual, like smell, sound, tactile surfaces. Even taste if it’s appropriate.

Back to that DM poker face. If you get good at that poker face, after some time, your players will either barely feel like they’re missing something on a roll higher than 10 or on the contrary, they’ll just start constantly feeling like they’re missing something. And that can be just as rewarding for you as any other result, ‘cause you can mess with ‘em all you want at that point.

Of course, one thing you should definitely avoid is having any singular NECESSARY clue or pivotal bit of information gated behind a, well, behind any DC or target number. If a piece of information is absolutely necessary for the completion of a quest or whatever, that info has to be made available somehow. Only put things that are not absolutely necessary behind a die roll.

Anyway, I’d really love to hear how you guys run Investigation checks. What tips or tricks do you use to make them engaging or fun or just not entirely binary metagame-y results. And if you’re a player and your DM’s done some cool stuff with Investigation checks, I’d love to hear about it. I truly am curious and always looking for new awesome ideas on how run the game better.

So, make an ABL. See what it inspires.  No, you don’t have to call it that.

See ya!