The Necromancer's Game - TRUE Old School D&D for the modern era
Transcript
Here's my Viking. This is awesome. Hey everyone, this is me, Lance Meister, the undead Viking. I am here to talk to uh well, an old friend. Uh, Bill and I have It's one of those weird situations where right at the beginning of the big giant internet/Dn craze from many, many years ago, uh, we became friends online and we've never actually physically seen each other. However, we talk on the phone a lot, especially during Minnesota Vikings season since we're both long time longtime fans of the team. Uh, but also we talked about gaming and life and everything else al together. and we're here to talk about Bill's newest creation, uh, The Necromancer's Game, currently live on Kickstarter. Bill, how you doing, buddy? Good, man. Good. Good.
It's It's weird to be not talking about fumbling in the fourth quarter, so Yeah. H I mean I mean, well, let's just get out of the way. What you think of the draft? Give me Give me just quick quick quick Minnesota Vikings draft. Yeah. Feelings. Well, you know, I mean, I think both of us been fans since most of our whole lives. I mean, I I watched my first Vikings game as was as Super Bowl 4 uh and cheering to the Vikings and uh and of course they lost and then they you know they lost Super Bowl six and then they lost you know and it continued to lose. Um I actually wrote my first uh multi-page term paper about the Minnesota Vikings and them losing the big one. And then you know of course we followed them and talked on the phone about every time they've had a playoff game. I remember what was it four years ago they were ahead by 10 points with two minutes to go and we actually thought maybe we'd win and they ended up losing by four. So um you know it's just it's a it's a you know and I think you introduced your uh your kid to being a Vikings fan recently and and and prepped him for the heartache that it would cause us. Oh yeah. No, my son my youngest son Caleb uh yeah he he frets and worries about the Vikings constantly and I said well just get used to it. So yeah you have you get an ulcer kid.
Don't don't don't worry about it. Yeah. So, but we're not here to talk about the Minnesota Vikings. We're here to talk about the Necromancer's game live on Kickstarter right now. Fully funded, hit some stretch goals, I believe. Um, and this is this is your creation. And from what I understand, this is I mean, you've been playing D and D forever, right? Yes. About 77. Yeah. So, I mean, you got you're one of the few people that actually that I'm friends with who actually got into D and D before I did. I probably I can't track it down to an exact year, but I'm guessing it was around 79 was when I got into it. And but this is the game that when you sit down and play. How often do you play uh D and D? I play I play typically I play a live game twice a month. Um we play and Zeb it's Zeb Zeb and Helen Cook and Kurt G you know Kurt Gould used to work at Watsi and then a bunch of folks off the Nimmits. Uh depending on whether they're um at sea or not. Uh my daughter still plays with us uh bi-weekly and then and then several of our other friends play and so that's our our in our in-person game um is uh every other Sunday. We've got a game coming up this Sunday and we've been doing that for well many years. Um Zeb moved out here a few years ago and it was great cuz you know he moved told me he was moving to this gigantic metropolis called Paul's Washington and I started laughing and he I was like you mean that town of 8,000 people where I live and he had no idea I lived here. Oh wow. Yeah, we've been friends for 25 years and then lo and behold, you know, he lives like two and
a half miles from me now. Um and uh anyway, so that game we play uh twice a month and then the my online game I run I run a Wednesday afternoon game um uh for part as part of my Patreon and then with a few of my other friends uh that are regulars that I've known at conventions for years uh and things like that. And we play that um uh every almost every Wednesday. I'd say we typically make it uh probably an average of three times a month. Um on that one, you know, sometimes I've got conventions or I'm out of town or, you know, I've got someplace I'm going or or like today I've got an interview at 5 so we're going to knock off early um because we play in the midfter afternoons. All of them are east coast and I'm west coast and I don't have a day job. So, you know, so we we play to accommodate their schedule pretty well. But that one's neat because I've got about So my my in-person game I think we have 16 players. Um, I just can't imagine. But we'll talk about that. That's one of the reasons why you the way you play works.
So, yeah. My in my online game, I've got 12. I mean, that's just that's just an insane number of people. And there's it it's it's really it's really cool, though, cuz like the you know, the folks off the Patreon, I don't think they, you know, they you know, some of these guys pay a lot of money to be in that game. And it's it's it's uh uh so you know, you got to you got to have gota got to be on your toes, right? Yeah. I got you. So, so but this this this box set that is currently live on Kickstarter, the Necromancers game, that this is what you play when you're playing these groups of 12 to 16 people. Um, and I want to get I want to get into the the I want to get granular with with how your your system works, but obviously I mean if you've got people on Patreon giving you money just for the privilege of sitting down, you know, with the frog god himself, I mean, it it has to work, right? I mean, works with the large groups work really well. Um, you know, it's part of the the sort of the the sort of the genesis of this is, you know, back in the day, right? I mean, you know, it we had almost no rules. I mean, I'm talking about pre pre-players handbook, right?
And so there was there was some Arduin stuff out there and then there's I happen to know the guys from Caltech who did Balboa games if you remember Warlock. Yep. And uh some really early primitive stuff. Uh and you kind of cobbled together. Actually, my first DM was one of the guys from Delbo Games, guy named Steve Peterson. Not Steve Peterson of Chaosium fame, but a different Steve Peterson. He's been, you know, he was a computer hacker back in the 70s. But uh anyway uh so we had multitudes of these indie rule systems which was all that existed most of whom got sued out of existence by TSR. Pretty rad. Um and uh and so you sort of cobbled together your house rules cuz the white box by itself um without house rules I don't know anybody who who actually plays it. Like they all have house rules to go along with it because there's no rules for almost anything, right? other than how to fight and how to make saving throws.
And so, you know, everybody developed their own set of house rules. And of course, so, you know, as did I cuz I I was uh as soon as Steve went back to college, you know, I got elected DM. Uh and uh and so I was the DM for our home group, which was at the time maybe 12 guys, 11 guys and one woman, believe it or not, even back then. Um, and uh, you had to figure out how to adjudicate something like how do you cross that, you know, rickety bridge that has no handrailings on it or how do you get out of the way of, you know, the Indiana Jones roller ball trap thing because there were no thieves, remember, too. So that was like thieves were like the new back in that Balboa actually invented thieves. Um, but not all of them could detect traps, you know. So it was it was like a Vansian thief based system, which is kind of interesting. Um, I won't go down that rabbit hole. Well, I mean, and I remember hearing uh I remember you hear anecdotal things, but I remember um hearing like Gary Gyax like he just despised the thief glass just because it it it solved too many problems for the for the players where it was like instead of people using uh and I don't want to go too far into the weeds here, but instead of using intuition and trying to use your own brain to figure out a puzzle, it was like, well, I got a 15% chance of doing it. Oh, I got 11.
So, how I I disarm the trap, you know. So, actually, you probably like my thieves because they can detect traps, but they have to tell me what they're doing to disarm them. So, before we get before So, let's talk about let's talk let's talk about So, anyway, so the genesis of this is I had to develop home rules and so I developed my own home rules and we played those because we played all the time and I'm talking about from, you know, about probably 79 to uh to when I graduated from college in 80 80 to 88. Um, we played constantly, you know, and even in college, that's where I met Clark and that kind of thing. And we played like we were all in the same fraternity. There were six of us there, which we only had six players cuz there were just six of us who played in our fraternity. But, you know, we played probably four or five days a week. And so, they the rules kept changing and mutating a little bit because they had to get clearer and easier to use and faster to use and that kind of thing. And so what this book represents or what this box set's going to represent um is the kind of polished version of my house rules uh play tested for about the last three years by people like Zeb Cook um and my kids who are you know can figure out how to break rules on anything uh that facilitated that kind of white box style game. Um, and so one of the things, of course, I bought the players handbook, um, back in the day, you know, in 79 or 78, whenever it came out, and one of the things I thought that Whitebox lacked, and some of them were in Greyhawk and Blackmore and Eldrich Eldridge Wizardry, of course, was the number of classes.
And so I added the other classes out of those. And so I've got white box rules for bards and druids and paladins and rangers and that kind of thing. Um, the other thing I always sort of hated was the uh uh the experience points being where you'd have your fifth level thief, but he's really becomes obsolete by the time your cleric hits third level and your wizard hits third level cuz the knock and fine traps go away come in. And so I tried to balance the classes so that they were all equal um and they were all u equal kind of equal in power and abilities and then and also equal in experience points so everybody goes up at the same level and we spend a lot of energy making that happen. Um, and uh, well, I could take this a thousand different directions, but I guess the the biggest thing is for, you know, like you said earlier, you can run big groups with this. Everything can be resolved with two die rules maximum. Um, and then so it goes really fast and really smooth and the rules are really simple. There's not, you know, it's d20s and d6s. Yeah.
So, I want to stop you right there. Where's my d8? Where's my d10? Where's my d12? Why why why do you ditch those out of the game? You can use them if you want. And actually, if you go to Greyhawk, it has those rules in it. I just never used them. Um, and so you just I just applied modifiers. So like a two-handed weapon does D6 plus one and a dagger does a D6 minus one. And that sort of hearkens back to chain mail. Yeah. I mean, I do remember I remember like I mean, and this might be I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people are going to watch this are going to know what we're referencing, but I remember like the old basic set and I remember they had variable weapon damage rules in there where they basically said, "Oh, if you have a two-ended sword, it does d10 instead of just d6 and stuff like that."
And I remember as a kid thinking, well, why wouldn't you not use the variable weapon damage rules? It's like it did never made any sense to me not to. I mean, I guess the logic is a blow that causes a d6 will kill someone, right? And so, and then and you know, back in the day and in my game, giants giant giant creatures do 2d6 damage, right? Which is enough to kill two humansized creatures. And uh why do I do that? That's just all the way I've always done it. Um you could certainly apply the variable weapon damage to this and it wouldn't change anything. It's just not the way I've always done it. Okay. I mean, and I'm not I'm not trying to like I'm not trying to find problems with your system. I just at all problem. It's just it I just never liked it, so I didn't put it in. Well, that's the other thing, too. I always like, you know, like you'd have as as gamers, we tend to find loopholes, right? You you dig and you try to find a way to to break a certain thing. So, it's like, wait a minute now. I mean like and even even in with variable weapon damage rules. I remember it was always like a two-handed sword costs 50 gold, but this pole arm costs seven gold. So why wouldn't I just buy the pole arm? That's because you can hit somebody 10 feet away.
Yeah. It was all about the speed and the bartese. Oh man, the the list of the 27 different halbirds that you could use and and why a lot of the reason that I that I didn't include that and honestly and didn't put it in later cuz a couple people tried to get me to was again you go back to the simplicity thing and um you know you try to keep it as simple as possible because then you're you know a combat round with 15 people takes about three minutes in my game and I mean I mean I believe you because I mean I just I I've seen the videos. I've seen videos of you at a convention standing on top of the table, you know, walking up and down and like saying and just handling a combat that quickly, but it's it's so out of place, I guess, in in in today's games. And it's and I mean and and you you I guess you'd have to admit that you're removing a lot of the uh specialization that characters have, you know, now with with with either Pathfinder 2 or or you know, fifth edition where like you see these these massive builds. And this is not me saying, "Oh, that that's a horrible way to play the game. I don't want I don't want no judgment here, you know." Yeah.
PE people love that stuff, right? They love having that character and they build it up and they they have this creation. But maybe that's where I know you you we we talked earlier a little bit, you wanted me to talk about like why this game is different than other other games or other OSR games. And that's, you know, my games um and I I think you've seen videos of me in conventions, but anybody who's played with me a lot knows my games are not murder hobo combat games, right? I mean, if you're playing a white box or an O andD game, you're fragile. Uh, and you don't want to fight stuff cuz you don't get a lot of experience points for fighting stuff. You get a lot of experience points for solving things, accomplishing objectives, and for for gaining treasure. Um, you know, my my uh my kids one time at a convention ran with Eric Mona in one of those uh they call the delve or something, right?
Where they give you an impossible to beat monster and the object is to how long you can stay alive. And and they actually tricked Eric, stole the treasure and escaped the dungeon. And he's like, "But you wouldn't have gotten any experience points for that. My daughter's at about eight years old was like, that's BS." She goes, "We got out of there with our lives and we got the treasure and we should get no experience points." And he's like, "Fine, fine, fine." You know, he's like, you know, the monster completely, you know, but they just completely avoided it by kind of talking their way through it and um and tricking the monster. Um and so the you know the way that you one of the things that's a little different about this and one of the things I came up with really early on um when we were playing after a TPK basically every game right back in the day was okay well can you negotiate with stuff can you talk to stuff can you uh can you what about do monsters run away if they're scared you know um how does a player character run away if they encounter something that's too big for them and so I developed what I would I would say are extens extensive, at least for OD and D rules about morale and about parlaying. And by extensive, I mean they take one or two dice rolls, right? But they're but the rules are pretty they're in there and they're they're really useful. Um, and so negotiating and parlaying with creatures, assuming they're not truly chaotic, which would be like an undead, an intelligent undead or a demon or an evil priest or something. There's a good chance that the the ogre doesn't want to fight all six of you guys cuz he probably will kill you, but it might kill him and he's not sure. So, if you
guys give him 50 gold pieces, maybe he walks away. Um, maybe he just walks away because you guys got you have three elves pointing bows at him and he knows he's going to be in trouble. Um, and how hard is an ogre though, right? I mean, how hard is an ogre in an OD and D game? They're brutal. You got you have three hit points at first level, man. Well, yeah. I mean, and if the sleep spell works, great. But it's a 50/50 shot, right? And uh, you know, and so uh, if it doesn't work, uhoh. Um, but and an ogre might, you know, a dragon would be the same kind of thing, you know, and and so the parley rules and the and the morale rules are something that is a little new and different for white box games. The focus of the game being on, you know, rescuing the prince or the princess or or uh, you know, as opposed to slaying the giants that have them prisoner, um, stealing, you know, Bilbo stealing the cup from Smog's horde and getting out the back door rather than killing Smog. Um and and so things like that would be uh more the focus of the of the style of play that I have. And I' I've built a game that's where you are rewarded very little for killing things.
Um but you're rewarded far more for achieving objectives. Um, and I think there's an example on the Kickstarter that you, it's like a PDF you can open up, um, uh, that that has an example of play and how the experience points are awarded. And it, it illustrates pretty clearly the morale and the parlay rules and that kind of thing. And so, I I I I I've seen the PDF and I encourage everybody to go download that and and check that out. And also, I was one of the lucky few that got one of your predecessing copies of this where you you had that. Yeah. Yeah. Which which was a was a fantastic read. I mean, you know, obviously it's a smaller version of it. I I understand the appeal that cuz I'm I'm a I'm an OSR person. Uh you know, I I've been playing um and I've told you this before. I mean, like we don't even play a rule system. We play a rule system we wrote ourselves back in high school.
As as do I, you know. Yeah. and and so um but I understand the appeal of OSR systems and what I usually end up doing is whether whatever the OSR system is I buy it to steal from it, right? You know, just like that's a really good way to do that. So what I I look at this the Necromancer's game um I'm sure people will buy it and play it, but I I I want to get it and read it all. Um one cuz I collect things, but two I want to steal from it and I want to use the stuff that said that's a great way to run that. I want I want to incorporate into my really important I have a really important comment specifically on that. Okay. But my I want to hear that comment and then then and I'll let you I'll let you expound on that but and I want you I don't want you to forget it. But I also want to know but I got in like like say my son my son got into um my son is in middle school. He's 13 years old. He got into fifth edition D and D with his friends when he was 11. And you know, so he's been playing for a couple years, but say I've been playing fifth edition D and D for 2 to 5 years. How is the Necromancers game going to appeal to me as far as a system that I'm going to want to either read, play, steal from, or what have you, and then expound first your comment, answer that question. I I can wrap both of those into one response. Go for it. Oh, first of all, um the only thing in the necromancer's game that is unique to the necromancer's game, meaning the rules, um that would not, you know, wouldn't translate over to fifth edition or something like that are the character class rules. So, you could still apply
the parlay rules, you could still apply the lore checks, and I'll talk about lore in a little bit later. You can still apply the morale stuff. And then I was really careful to make the the entire third book, the game masters book, which is one of the bigger is one of the bigger of the three books. Um, so that it could be used with anything. And so what it consists of is a lot of game master theory and experience over the years of how to do things and everything else like the book of dirty tricks that I wrote or whatever. and all probably the most extensive encounter tables that anybody besides me has ever produced because of course I did mother of all encounter tables back in the day with white wolf and that was immense. But uh what I what we did was uh we did a lot of work about talking about different types of campaign styles, how hex crawls work, how dungeon crawls work, how other things like that work and and and some ideas of how to run those things. And then we did encounter tables um that are about 40 pages um that and then and the des and then examples of each type of encounter where maybe five they're dous so you got to roll your d23 times. So I guess there's one more kind of die roll in there. Um but only about you know four or 500 of those are encounters with creatures.
There's also you find an oasis in the desert or you find a castle in the mountains or you find caves in the hills or you find a a sinkhole in the in the plains. Uh and or or somebody randomly set a trap that you fall in. Mhm. Uh you know or things like that and then examples of all those things. Um and then likewise settlements. Um obviously focused on a hexrol type thing where the settlement size and what kind of stuff is in those settlements. So, I spent, you know, hund a couple hundred pages, I think, uh, putting together material that would be useful in any system. Um, and I think a fifth edition player, you know, 5e, the big difference in 5e and and zero, whatever, is uh sort of the the super builds on character classes than the how you die mechanics. And, um, you know, again, the the the character rules wouldn't translate over, but, I think everything else in the in the in the box set would.
Uh and further it's just sort of a different style of play and there's a lot of write up on how to do that which is you know how do you make it so you're not focused on just killing everything in your path. Um certainly you know idea building stuff that I think works really well for 5e. Um you know one a good a good example of it is in the expansion pack um which has a has this thing in it you know which is the draft map uh the caves of dustfell which is the the the it's a it's a vampire adventure. Surprise, surprise. Um, I think there's 23 encounter areas total and there's about four potential combat encounters, including, of course, the boss at the end, which is a big nasty vampire, right? But almost all of it is uh investigation. You'd almost think it's a Cthulhu game. It's investigation.
It's puzzle solving. It's finding clues. It's figuring out that there is a vampire, prepping to go find the vampire, and then solving your way through riddles and puzzles and secret doors and traps to get to the vampire's lair and destroy him before the blood moon rises. And you got 30 days or whatever to do that, right? Ah, time limits. It just, if I can say anything to anybody listening this, put time limits on on anything that your characters have to go through and do. Yeah, there's a whole write up in the in the DM guide or GM guide, I have to call it, because I can't call it DM guide. um a whole write up in the gym guide about about creating a sense of urgency and um and how I how to do that and some tips on how to do that and I I think I'm pretty good at that. Um and you know after I don't know how many thousands of games I run but um but uh that's I think that's there's a lot of stuff in there and I've played a lot of 5e because I played you know I was at Steve Winter and and Wolf Gang and and Jeff Grub and those guys group for a long time. We play tested the the the Strod adventure, you know, for 5e, for example, back about eight or nine years ago. Um, and uh, you know, so I I understand 5e and I think that uh I think it lends itself well I don't think particularly Pathfinder 3.5 lends itself that well to a lot of this stuff. Some of it would, but less I think than a 5D game. Um, because it's 35 and Pathfinder and and 3.0 know are really focused on, you know, smashing the hell out of a
monster uh for all your experience points comes from combat. And so unless you wanted to adjust that uh and and do it differently um then that that's it. The the other now the final note on this that I'd really say is as far as any game system goes is the necromancers game is really different than a lot of OSR games because it's heavily focused on a long-term campaign. Um, you know, I've run I've run, you know, my campaign with some of the same players now here in my home game for up to 15 years. Uh, and and uh and likewise our con my convention games, some of those players are actually three players. I think Ian McGardi, Jillian, and my son John um all have leveled out and had to start new characters. And I think Alberta Chulik is about to be there. I think her paladin is ninth level. So, she's done basically. I think she's got like one or two more sessions cuz at name level, you know, at 10th level, I make them stop playing, at least for now, cuz it gets kind of silly in an OD and D game. But the the you build a castle or build a temple or whatever you're going to do, and then you become an NPC. But the um the game really is focused on long-term play for OD and DD, which I think a lot of OD and D games are focused more on play a couple of times, get to third or fourth level, and then, you know, then you're going to get killed or, you know, you're done and you start up a new one and you do another another oneot. Um because the game's so lethal, and if
it's really heavily focused on combat, the monsters are going to roll some 20s and you're going to roll some ones, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's save or die, you know, stuff like that. Um, and uh, and my game is definitely focused on there's going to be combat. You're going to have to fight some stuff, right? And, you know, especially if you're, you know, a paladin or somebody that's got to, you know, what do paladins do? They kill evil priests or they kill demons, right? But, uh, but the, you know, the game is more focused on figuring out, you know, how to accomplish things rather than just just go out and stomp on stuff. Um, one of the cute examples I give is my home group now is friends with a tribe of cobalts and they've got like a a trade assoc, you know, they basically trade. They bring them metal weapons and the cobalts have given them like they get like baskets of scorpions and stuff and but then they see the cobalts and the cobalts are like, "Hey man, you know, they throw out the trading blanket and they, you know, they they but they made friends with these guys rather than attack them because cobalts aren't evil in my game. They're kind of, you know, humans think they are, but they think humans are evil." And so, well, there in lies the big question. Who's who's the most evil? Is it the person that goes into the hole to kill the things and take their gold, or is it the stuff that's in the hole? So, I mean, yeah, and that that dates back to that date dates back to, you know, I think it's Chaosium way back in the day with Monsters Monsters and stuff, right? When they put out those books in the late uh late '7s where you played the monsters and the the evil PCs were coming into your home and trying to kill you and steal your stuff. Yep. Um, and we played
that game and that's sort of where this in that inspired me on the way that I run games. Or the old the old computer game uh Wizardry 3 or four was the revenge of Vecna or whatever. The the the wizard that you killed in the first one uh crawled out of the dungeon that uh the seekers revenge for being slain all those years ago. Yeah, exactly. And so yeah, so the concept of a revenant or whatever, but but yeah, so that's I mean that did that answer the question? I mean I could talk about that. Oh, no. I mean, and between the two of us, we could talk for hours and I kind of wanted to. So, I mean, ultimately, what this is is that, uh, I mean, it's going to be a fantastic system. It's going to be a lot of stuff, cool stuff to read, and I have questions I want to ask for after this, and we're going to keep we're going to keep recording here. But, um, my biggest question, and this is this is strict like I'm running a crowdfund. I mean, I I've been working in the tabletop board game industry for uh you know, almost like 12 14 years now, and I've run dozens of Kickstarters. My biggest thing whenever I whenever somebody says, "Hey, I want you to be my project manager for this."
I always say, "Cool. Why should person A back it now instead of waiting for it to come out later when they can maybe buy it at their local game store or get it somewhere else? Why should somebody, you know, back it now? I mean, besides the fact of like, hey, let's support this company. Let's let's let's get this thing created. I mean, the thing's funded. It's going to be made regardless. Where's where's my call to action now? Why why should people back it right now? Well, as you as I know you know um and not everybody necessarily knows, but Diamond Alliance is bankrupt and um and uh a couple of the other distributors are very they're carrying very few products anymore because the just with the you know inflation's gone up and everything else.
So the number one reason people should back it now is because every time we get another stretch goal more stuff goes into it, right? So the customer is going to get a better product. Um will it actually even end up in retail? Um, I'm not show I'm not sure. And there's the reason for that is real simple. Um, when we made the decision to print it in the United States, the print cost doubled. And I'm not sure I can actually sell this thing uh in to into retail uh without us losing money on each unit. So, it's going to be close. It sort of depends on how much we fund by. Um, if we have a big funding, then it'll we'll probably be able to reduce our cost some on the print side, but if I only print a thousand of them, it ain't going it ain't going to wholesalers and and and you're probably going to you're going to have to charge more for it after the fact anyway, you know. So, yeah. Yeah, we're going to and well, I already so I already adjusted that when we got when we got our print quotes. So, basically the the funding goal paid for the printing. Uh, as I tell everybody, pretty much it was it was and it doesn't quite I think our print cost is going to be about 29 or $30,000. Um, the B I didn't have the bid for the box yet. And if you're making box sets in the US, uh, you know, buckle up, buttercup, cuz Well, let me let me let me put give you a pause here. I mean, I was going to say, where is this being printed? I mean, I know people are going to ask, "What about the tariffs? What about, you know, if you're printing this in China?
Am I going to get are they going to get hammered after the fact? Did I just did I just construe from what you said that you're printing this in the United States? United States. We're printing it. So, we're putting it in with a with a printer. We used um we've used we used Wsworth for many many years and everybody has seen me do well not everybody anyone at the convention or you at least or somebody on video has seen me do a the party trick with the giant book. Oh, let me see if I can find one. Right. I don't I don't have one here. But if you take Slumbering Zar, you can grab it by the cover and just shake it and it's almost a thousand pages and it won't break. And so that's the printer we're using for this. Um the challenge with printing in the US is that US printers are set up really well for doing things like textbooks. And so um black and white printing is not any cost differential from color printing in the US. Color printing is very very very expensive uh in the United States. Um about 3 weeks ago or four weeks ago um we made the decision that we were going to print in the United States. Not necessarily because maybe the tariffs are going to go away or something. I don't know.
Maybe they won't, maybe they will. It's like playing Russian roulette. You don't want to go there. Um but uh um and people I'll get to in a minute. People think that D&D books are are not subject to tariffs. They they might be right or they might be wrong. It's it's at the discretion of the customs officials. So basically, you are playing Russian roulette if you do that. Um but I wanted to make sure we didn't have supply chain disruption. And it wasn't one of those things where I did 50 or 80 or whatever thousand, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of my customers money and then got in a position where I had to not deliver it. Um, and so I wanted to make sure we can deliver exactly what we say we're going to deliver. Um, and so I made the conscious decision to just bite the bullet, print it in the US, and knock our margins way down. And um, and that's really what's what happened, right? Well, I mean, and and all that says to me is that if in the like the situation we're in right now with with with our tariffs, I don't the price that I'm locking in now is the price that I'm going to have. So, I don't have to worry about it. That that's that's great news.
I mean, for me as a backer and for anybody who's back and the company we're using, the printing company we're using actually only uses US paper. So there is we we eliminate but we we picked them because we know their quality and I wanted no risk on on something bad happening you know 5 months from now or 6 months from now when it comes time to mail you your box set and I say oh by the way we can't afford to mail you your box set or oh by the way we got a bill from US Customs for $75,000 and I can't afford to pay it or something like that. And I think you know God help the industry right now. Um I know it's it's it's been rough right? Yeah. And you know, I printed in the US for years. Um, and when we shifted a color, I couldn't afford to. Um, and it's it's interesting. Steve Chanel and I used the same printer and and for years we've used the same printer. Um, and then uh and he was right and I was wrong, but um, you know, but well, I was wrong for years. I was able to keep our prices way down. Yeah. For years. Um, but it's just we're going to see inflation in the industry, I think. And um I think that companies that assume the risk of printing through China or the EU or something like that and assume could because of the instability are taking a big risk and I I you know I I don't want to take a big risk with other people's money because it's still other people's money until they until that book shows up in their mailbox. It Yeah. Exactly. All right. I mean, so ultimately, if you if after this I'm this is this is now I've got Bill kind of trapped, so I'm going to
ask him a bunch of questions about the industry and about stuff that I I I just want his take on. So, go check out last tidbits on the box set why you and so um it it really is usable in almost any system. There are unique mechanics that haven't been presented to other people before that I've read at least. Um and I've read a lot of stuff. I've probably got 15,000 books in my D&D collection. Um, there's some really cool adventures in there that I think are going to be inspiring. Um, there's massive support on my Patreon, which is free to join. Um, and I'll get Lance the links to that to put up if you want it. You can pay me money every month and you get other perks, but it's free to join and I post all kinds of stuff on there. Adventures, uh, rules, ideas that I run by the the people that are on it, uh, previews of stuff that haven't been seen yet, uh, new spells, new character classes, that kind of thing. Um, and so it's uh it's let me I'll just tell you real quick. I can tell you. It's called uh it's called the Frog Pond and it's it's easy to find and uh and I'll get Lance the links. Um you might even be on my Patreon. I'm not sure. Yeah, I am on your Patreon, but Okay, good. Yeah. And so there but there's a lot of free support and extra stuff that's going to be on that Patreon that goes with the game. Um and uh still live for another 30 days. I I extended this one so acknowledging that people might be a little short on cash right now. with the price of groceries and stuff like that. And um you know, so that's the reason I I spread it out a little longer than usual. So, you know, hopefully hopefully folks can afford to to buy in. Um we will print some and
I'll have some in the warehouse later. I'm not sure what the price is going to be yet. Depends on how we do, you know, and so like I said, if we if we get to $50,000, I can afford to pay the author. Oh, wait a minute. You're Wait a minute. You're the author. No. All right. Yeah. Well, so here this these are some things that I I'm interested in asking you just because it's it's and I know that a lot of this we've covered in our own personal conversations back and forth. I want you to try to limit yourself to maybe a minute or two of of an answer, but uh I want to I just I'm going to I'm going to tell you something and I want you to kind of like give me your thoughts on it and give me your impressions on it. But I mean let's let's let's let's talk about the big one. Okay. Shadow Dark. Shadow Dark. Oh, I mean it's it's a wonderful freaking game. And um I'm a huge fan. Do I have it here? I do. I got to show you guys something because this is worth seeing. I know what this is, but I'm excited. I'm excited for him to show it off. So, so Kelsey and I are really good friends and and I played at her games at conventions. She plays at my game at conventions and uh this year at Garycon, I made her a trophy that had a torch, right? And it was passing the torch and it was the queen of the OSR, Kelsey Dion, you know, from me, you know, 2025. And then, strangely enough, at the same because she always comes over for supper. Those of you who don't know, I'm allergic to a lot of stuff.
And so I usually get a kitchen when I go to conventions and cook dinner. I do dinner and a show for my players, stuff like that, you know. Anyway, so she presented me with this and probably almost nobody has seen it yet. This is the first press with a different cover of Shadow Dark and that was what she wrote. So, um, honestly, Shadow Dark has taken the universe by storm. The mechanics are excellent. Um, I think it's, uh, again, it's an OSR game. It's and it is pretty combat focused. Um, but I think that, uh, what she's done, and it couldn't happen to a nicer young woman. She's excellent. and uh and I met her years ago when she got my signature on her rap and copy before she was in the industry and that kind of thing. And I'm I'm super proud to know her. I I think that uh she is is just a wonderful human being and she's doing great things and she's she has captured the universe.
I mean, she's selling watsy like numbers with that book. Um, and so part of my motivation, this was supposed to be a Kickstarter a month and a half ago, but she she called me and said that she was emailing me the press package for the Western Reaches. I called Zach and said, "Stop. We're not launching." And uh and then um you know and I said, "We're delaying to at least two weeks after Shadow Dark's over." And uh and we did. And of course, that was smart. We would have sold, you know, all 10 units of the book if it was running during the Shadow Dark campaign. Um, but part of the reason I structured the game and the box set the way I did was that about twothirds of my box set is compatible with Shadow Dark. Oh, nice. There you go. If you're if you're a fan of Shadow Dark. Yeah, I'm a huge fan. And um uh my uh my son is is uh is Sneech the Goblin, you know, in her games and their friends and um and uh uh you know, and and uh yeah, she's she's done great stuff. And I like I said, I'm not, you know, no shame in it at all. And I told her the same thing. My making so my game master's guide and my monster manual are completely usable in Shadow Dark.
I mean, there you go. I mean, if anybody watches this and you you you love Shadow Dark, that's a reason alone to to to back what Bill's creating here. Uh, I mean, have you ever have you um are you uh is there any is there any mechanism I guess that that's within Shadow Dark that either a you that you wish you had come up with or is it something that you want to that that you maybe you're you're porting over to the Necromancer's game? Absolutely. And um I already told her I was shamelessly stealing this about a year ago. Um, I deleted the continual light spell from my game. Um, and got rid of information vision and uh, and so uh, even most monsters can't see in the dark, right? Just like shadow dark. And I thought that that was a genius mechanic because it creates, particularly in an old school D&D game, uh, it creates a kind of a a physical situation that adds scariness and hazard and terror to the game. uh which is you got to have light where you can't see. And um and so sure, your wizard can turn invisible and sneak up on stuff, but he can't see. He can't see unless there's light, right? Um and I thought that was a genius mechanic and I flagrantly borrowed that from Shadow Dark as a rule. Um and uh I thought it was a good rule and I'd never seen it done that way before, ever, you know.
Yeah. I mean, and and just if you're watching this, you don't know, it's torches last an hour of real game time, like and and so you you you keep a timer. Um Oh, and I mean, I actually just have one of these. Like, if you have one of these, you can buy these little lights that last for one hour that you can you can have and you can actually have them play while you're playing. I thought that was absolutely genius. Um I I sort of like the way she does her spell system as well. um the you know where the you know you roll you roll success you roll a difficulty class check or whatever to use your spells you can use them as many times as you want until you fail. I didn't do things that way. I'm still a Vancian guy tried and true. But um in her game uh I play a wizard and so I liked it. Um I felt like it made the it made the wizards a little a little more powerful. Um but uh which is maybe a good thing in an OD and D game because you know you're you're sort of a one-trick wonder with the wizard.
But uh so just so people understand when he's saying Vansian um you have to go back to Jack Vance novels and like if you ever think of like the whole you memorize your spells and then you you use them. That was something that Jack Vance put created in Go read Jack Vance if you haven't read Jack Vance. Go read Jack Vance Dying Earth. Brilliant book. Um, the other thing I liked about Shadow Dark is that that she came up with um and and this this I've always done as well, so I wouldn't really take it from Shadow Dark, but the sort of the mundane magic items that you know, why would a why would a farmer want a plus one sword? Well, he wouldn't. He'd want a plow that work twice as fast or things like that. So, there's a lot of I've got an entire section in my treasure tables um of mundane magic items. And Shadow Dark does sort of the same thing. It's a little different. I mean, I I I've always had that. it was the blanket of comfort that lets you regain two hit points instead of one hit point a night or you know, you know, something that repels insects or, you know, they're all minor little use things, but I've always had those in the in my games, but they add nice little flavor to to some of them are downright useful. There's like the there's the candle that dispels foul odors, and you know, if you encounter trogodites or ghasts, it'll it'll nullify that. So, it's a really, you know, but but it's one of those things where the, you know, the the farmer puts it in their outhouse like a F freereeze candle, you know, but you can use it to fight with with trogodites or with uh stuff like that. So, those are some those are some overlaps with with shattered arc that I thought were good.
But the light thing is really the that was just that was the coolest rule I've ever seen somebody come up with that shockingly I've never seen before. Yeah, I know. I I agree. It was it was it was pretty amazing. Yeah. uh 35 years of DMing, man. And I've never seen anybody do that. Well, I mean, it's just so common place, right? You just assume you can see and and and and a lot of people just there's a lot of rules people just would handwave away because they were just upkeep and and and it it kind of maybe were barriers to the fun, right? I mean, I wanted I wanted to search the room. Why is this why is this so difficult? I mean, I remember one of the one of the best things. I mean, strangely when you shouldn't say anything really good came out of COVID, but when I played online and you're using like a situation like Roll 20, you're allowed to like put like different light on the the people's pawns and so what they could see was what they could see. And so when somebody was like, you know, 80 feet away fighting an ogre and they're like, "You got to shoot this thing." It's like, I can't see it. It's it because my my on their screen was just like a 30-foot globe of the light that they had. They couldn't help that. But but we just handwave that stuff away when we're playing the game. We just don't we don't ever think of it because we the upkeep of it the the the keeping your your frame of mind in that situation. It's difficult. Yeah. Uh here's a here's here's one for you. Um and this is this is more philosophical.
What do you see as the true role of the game master? We're not going to use, you know, the horrible DM cuz it What do you see as I mean, uh, storyteller, uh, facilitator, uh, obstruction, like somebody actively trying to to to slay the the the the adventures? I mean, a combination of all those things. So, what what do you see that as? I think I think I mean, my style is very much storyteller. Um, and and so, you know, and I like presenting I like making people think and I like making people, you know, uh, you know, I get teased by one of my players who is totally a murder hobo player uh, that plays at conventions that, you know, he asked me before, is there going to be combat in this adventure or is it a menest, you know, and and so I think to I believe I I'm I personally prefer a storytelling type game. Um, you know, there's obviously there's got to be some of that adver adversarial stuff, especially with Boston or Nate. I always call them named monsters. Um but uh the their name is in a different color than everybody else.
It's it's yellow instead of instead of white, you know. Yeah. Or or they're bolded, you know. Yeah. Name monster. Um you know, but those are because those are your those are the DM's player characters, right? But um but I think I mean phil philosophically I believe the DM's role primarily is as of a storyteller. And so I'll provide a scenario and then they tell me what they do and then having to react to that um is the hardest part. And so, you know, you want them to go right, but they just don't. They go straight or they go left, you know, and and so having to having to, you know, facilitate what they do to make the game fun for them. If you railroad them, they they aren't having fun at that point. You know, you might as well be playing a solo game. And so trying to be a storyteller and trying to adjust to the story that the players want to be the story because they're participants in the story as well. And so, you know, when I tell stories about uh, you know, conventions, right? You know, with my daughter's priest, you know, where they got sticks to snakes thrown in the middle of their party and, you know, and and the snakes are going to all poisonous and they're just it's going to be a TPK cuz there's like 32 poisonous vipers running around this party attacking the party and my daughter goes, "I cast snake charm." And I was like, "You don't have snake charm memorized." and she holds her holds her character. She goes, "Read it and weep, you know, and then and then she lawnmowers my dungeon." Well, I mean, my daughter was the my daughter was the main story piece of that whole thing.
She just turned the snakes around, killed all the evil priests, and then, you know, she and Dennis a stair just went through the dungeon kicking doors open and murdering everything in the room. And if she couldn't murder it, she would turn it, right? Yeah. Um and uh but you know the players have to be uh complicit is the wrong word but they have to be a participant uh in the story as well. And so being your being the DM your role is to adjust to the stories that the players want it to be. And I think that's the that's the key thing. What gives them their sense of we won even though there's no win or lose in D and D other than maybe dying is losing but you know we won. What gives them the we won thrill? what has them high-fiving at the end of the game and that's that they participated in the story that you set the basis up for and they got to participate in that so they own it as well. They have ownership and I think yeah and I agree. I mean and I don't I don't mean to, you know, interview myself here but it's it's tough. It's tough sometimes when you like when you when you have a like, oh, this is gonna be my really really cool encounter and then the players come up with either like some lucky dice rolls or they come up with a clever way to defeat it and and your mind says you you've created this like I want this to happen from this encounter, but then they've gone a different way and it's tough as the person running the game to like give it up and to say okay and and and and you pulled it off, right? Right. I mean, it it's difficult. And I mean, I'm I will fully admit after running D and D for
decades. I fall into that trap still where I'm like, well, maybe he's got eight more hit points so I can make sure I get this one spell off. That'll be really cool right now. And and it's it's difficult to give the players the win. Yeah. I played I played in a Pathfinder game years ago and I was playing uh I had I had I I was playing a sorcerer and I had lots of disintegrate and pass wall spells and no one could figure out why I took them cuz they were kind of a dumb spell. I guess based on the, you know, they're not optimized or whatever. And we get out there and the DM describes for 10 minutes he's flavor texting this big door with these demons encrusting over the thing like, you know, some sort of Harry Potter uh like, all right, I disintegrated. And he's like, what? He goes, okay, what gets a save? No, it says right here in your book, you know, no save for inanimate objects. And so he spent like 10 minutes describing this thing and I disintegrated. And he's like, [ __ ] you know, and he was completely at a loss because then, you know, we go back in this room and into this treasure. I'm like, "All right, I pass wall that way.
I pass wall that way. I pass wall that way." And we finished a Pathfinder adventure that was supposed to take eight hours in about 2 hours cuz I just drilled the hole through the dungeon. He had real difficulty responding, figuring out how to keep it going. He was just like, "Oh my god, what just happened?" And that stinks though, right? I mean that and that's that whole like rules as written like mentality that a lot of people get into and I and I and I I I realize that there's a balance there that you're supposed to find. you're supposed to uh come up with, you know, a a way to both allow somebody to be clever, but also like not I don't know like you hate to say ruin it, but I mean because that that like you probably felt amazing in that moment, right? Right. But but it's no different than in my you know keep pity me because I play with Zeb and Helen Cook and Jillian you know and so Jillian's my daughter but but and they're all smarter than me. Um, hell, we got we were playing rap we the current group was playing rapid ethics at the during the day the the the in-person game and so they they you know level nine on rapid is the big evil temple right so they they pop this thing open the demon appears you know the the paladin goes in combat with the demon they see the evil priest mobilizing behind it's like I rock to mud the ceiling of the temple I was like all right and uh you know it bur buries all the evil priests, buries all the
treasure and stuff, too, but destroys the temple cuz she brought the mud out of the ceiling, right? Yeah. You know, and uh and it was like, damn, you know, I was all geared up for this big, you know, boss fight with the level nine priest and you know, and and uh uh no, no, they're just all dead. And um and you got to deal with the type two demon now. But Whoopee, you know. Yeah, Whoopi. Yeah. I mean, 15 eighth and ninth level characters or a seventh through ninth, I guess. Yeah. Um but yeah, they they you know, the Paladin and the fighters splattered it in two rounds, right? But it was um you know, but it was like, okay, well, that's what they did and they won. You know, they accomplished the objective. They got a lot of experience points for destroying that evil temple. They didn't get all the but they, you know, because it was buried under, you know, 5 million pounds of dirt, but uh but um I mean, sometimes it gets too there's there's just too many rules though, right? I mean, and and that's I mean, and this is this is something we'll retread on a lot of statements that have been made by much more eloquent people than myself. I mean, but like as a as a person who runs the game, like being up to date in on like every single spell, every single situation, every single power, every single character ability, and then being able to somehow still create a challenge for those players once they get to a certain level. I mean, like you said, you know, you get to name level, you you you build a keep out in the wildlands and you become an NPC and you start over or you can stay up PC, you just can't go adventure and basically you're the
patron of the new set of player characters. I mean, that works too. Um, but yeah, it's uh yeah, it really is. I mean, in OD, you know, I don't know anybody who really plays OD and D above about ninth or 10th level. It just it does get kind of silly cuz you know, you fight six bows, you know, you know, it's not going to work. No, I mean, well, it's like that old um Oh, man. I forget what I forget the the short story. I think it was a Clark Ashton Smith story, but where the the big giant conqueror like just defeats everything and it's like it's like a it's like a six- page story. I wish I knew remember the name of it, but then eventually he comes to like the the wizards like conclave the their thing and he's like, "Oh, you know, it's like and now I will destroy this one." And like the one like old wizard kind of pokes his head over the over the thing and he animates all of the stone dragons that protect it and just walks away. Yeah. And then they never hear of the conqueror again, you know, because Exactly. Exactly. Harry Potter books took something from that story because with the with the the Gollums outside on Hogwarts, but I I remember I I know the story you're talking about. I can't remember what it is. I' I've got I've read the collected works. Hell, my the reason I call myself Saga is because of the Hyperoreia, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just And I agree. It's like once you get to a certain level, that's winning, right? You you survived. You got you got uh uh All right. Here's a good Here's a couple of rapid fire questions. Do you think people um do you allow uh resurrection and raise dead in your campaigns or when you're dead, you're
dead? Yeah. Raised dead. Yes. Um I think it's important because you die a lot in Is there a penalty? Is there a penalty for her? In my in my games, you lose one point of constitution. That's every time. The classic old you, you know, that was I think that was like the old school one where it was just like you lose a point of con every single Yeah. And just uh All right. Um uh I know I know the answer to this question, but why are wandering monsters important? Wandering monsters are important because they create senses of urgency. the uh they you know the uh everyone always jokes about and this one actually I got to say this one because it's funny in one of my decks of dirty tricks there's a there's a spell it's the spell I'm about to mention that says no one's used this spell since 1981 and that spell massmorph because it eliminates wandering monsters for 12 hours. It's a it's a fourth level wizard spell and it's a great spell because you I I can't even remember how does it eliminate wandering monsters party in the trees or rocks or something. Um, and it's an undetectable illusion. So, it's a we camp for the night. Nothing eats us. We camp for the night. A Yeah. I mean, I I always had the people that would do the um the rope trick, right?
You know, rope trick and then and then climb up into an a weird space of nothing. And And that's all about the mass morph spell. And uh the uh and rope trick, of course, I don't have in my game, but uh but mass morph or I guess Leoman's tiny hut, which you can't use anymore. these you can call it tiny hut I guess but I I never I always thought it was kind of dumb. Um but the the the I escape spells are important to avoid. Wandering monsters don't generate cash and they don't generate uh they all they do is generate risk, right? And so you know you got to teach your players to run away. You got to teach your players to negotiate. Um and uh the other thing I really use my wandering monster tables for a lot is hex crawls. And so I don't necessarily know what's in each one of those hex's, right? Yeah.
But this is another map from the this is actually one that I I generated by using my tables that's in the that's in the box set. Um they find a treasure map and then they have to travel 140 miles to this dungeon that they're trying to get to. And so I randomly rolled encounters up throughout the thing and it could vary from, you know, milit, you know, insects that will sting you like beehives to a chimera in one case. Um, and you really want to fight a chimera if you're a third level character. Well, probably not. No, I mean, and because it just it it bogs down Well, it uses up your healing. It uses up Yeah. uses up resources and probably kills a few people. So, but there's, you know, they if they if they speak to the badger that they find the badger's den using a speak with animal spell, uh the badger can warn them about the chimera and, you know, if they decide not to just, you know, murder the badger or bypass it, um they can uh you know, they can find out about the chimera and duck out of the way to avoid its island that it's on or whatever. And so that's again, it goes back to the gathering information and knowing what's around you uh and avoiding things that aren't going to give you much gain. And so the wandering and I also use wandering monsters as a as a story building tool. You know, rather than you travel two weeks to get here, well, you know, while traveling, you encounter, like I said, a badger that warns you on a chimera or a pack of wolves that if you throw them some meat and talk to them or whatever, they'll help you find a shortcut through the woods to go see the the oracle that you're seeking because they know where she is because she's nice to them. Um,
yeah. I mean, it's it's stuff like that that and it also makes the world like that that um what's the what's the word? Uh I can't remember the actual like the big long word, but it makes the world seem real, right? I mean, it makes it seem organic and not just uh this is my encounter for day one. This is my encounter for day two. Uh ver similitude. There you go. That's the word I was thinking. There you go. So, there's a nice there's a there's a cocktail party word, but it also kind of makes it where they can go back and now maybe they're friends with that hill giant that they decided to become friends with. And uh you know, so every time they stop back by they bring him a half a dozen sheep and they have a safe place to sleep for the night. Yeah. Because uh All right. And then the last one, um, like if you could if if if you had the ability to like step in like like the the frog god and and step into every single uh I mean the world is the YouTube and the world is rife with this is these are the things you're doing wrong when you run a game of Dungeons and Dragons or whatever and this is what you should avoid or whatever. if you could if you could just, you know, step down from your your your froggy throne and just give one and I you don't have to make it succinct, but one piece of advice to somebody who's like getting ready to start running their very first ever uh D&D session. What would you tell? Honestly, um if just don't stick too hard to the rules because if you're rolling dice and you're having fun, then you're winning, right? Right. I mean,
that's that's I don't care if you play Pathfinder 1 or Pathfinder 2 or Monsters Monsters or uh Call of Cthulhu or the Necromancer's Game or Shadow Dark or or Swords and Wizardry or OD and D or AD and DD or whatever it is. If you and your players are having fun, uh you know, make it fun and and if the rules make sense, then use the rules. If the rules don't make sense, don't use the rules. you know, if the guy has to make a spot check to see the falling star that's falling out of the sky and landing, you know, and making a crater, um, then there's something screwed up with that rule. If they, you know, if you, if the the thief is doing a, I don't know, what do they call it now? Invest. It's not search anymore. It's investigation check. Yeah. Investigate or whatever. Yeah. Doing an investigation check. uh to detect that the trap which has a giant scythe blade hanging over like a sword of damic his head you know when he ought to be able to clearly see it just let him clearly see it um you know it's I I I I again in the game master's guide I've got a dissertation on this about you know m these are rules these are rules are guidelines if it makes sense just let it happen you don't need to roll it's it's it's when do you roll dice and when do you not roll dice and so just that's awesome when know when you should roll and know when you shouldn't bother. No, you should. Yes. No one to hold them, no one to fold them. And if you if you don't think it would require a die roll, don't make them roll a die. I mean, that's cuz it a it bogs things down. B, it creates situations where
um something really dumb happens because the you know the the uh I don't know the the elf with his really good vision doesn't see something 5t away. Why? Yeah. And you just don't have to roll. You just That happens. Okay. You know, and likewise, you know, oh, I'm gonna try and jump the 100 foot chasm. All right. You know, but no, but I rolled a 20. No, you didn't. Cool. You You made it 25 ft. Yeah, you're And actually 5 did a great job with that. I got to give them kudos. They made it so natural 20s on skill checks did not always succeed. And I think that was the first time, you know, third and and fourth edition uh and uh 3.5 all had that. Natural 20 is always a success. Okay. Well, I try to leap the Grand Canyon. I ruled a 20. I leave the Grand Canyon and that that made no sense. No, it really didn't. I applying number one piece of advice I'd give somebody trying to run a game. And what what what kind of advice would you give somebody who's been running games for, you know, 25 years?
Um, well, I mean, if you're having fun and you like the way you do it, just keep doing what you're doing. I mean, that's the big thing. And if you don't like something, change it. I mean, it doesn't you don't have to. Again, I always look at rules as guidelines. And so if you, you know, if it says, well, you must make an investigation check to detect a trap, but it doesn't make any sense. Don't make them, don't make them roll. The uh it's it's really no different. I think a lot of people get too bogged down in rules. Um, and one of the reasons I don't like a lot of rules is specifically because you get bogged down in rules and then you're not really telling a story. You're you're doing rules. You're just running a spreadsheet and letting I mean, don't get me wrong, I love games with rules. I'm a avid World War II tabletop miniatures guy and there's a lot of rules. There's no role playing. Um but that's a different kind of game and and so you know if you want to play a tactical role if you want to play a tactical war game, play a tactical war game. And and even if you're playing D and D as a tactical war game. Hell, that's how it started. Yeah, exactly.
But if you want a role playing game, then play a role playing game. If you want a tactical war war game, play a tactical war game. And neither one's right or wrong, but like I think Pathfinder is a tactical war game. I don't think it's a role playing game. Um I I can certainly having played a lot of 3.0 and 3.5 um that's absolutely a tactical war game. Fourth edition too. It became that became that could be Yeah. Fourth edition was almost a board game. But um but you know you you get guys like Casey Kristofferson or somebody like that and you give them that many rules and the next thing you know their unkillable eighth level barbarian sorcerer thing is moving 200 feet per round smacking everything within 10 ft with whirlwind attack or whatever it was and then you know ending up on the opposite side of the the table where the monster can't even strike back and I I I mean I there was some broken stuff man. Oh yeah.
Yeah. We all had our moment where in Pathfinder where, you know, our our warrior with mighty blow and two-handed elven curved blade was was rolling a critical hit 11 through 20 and you know just with five attacks around. It was just a Ginsu just a just a just a spinning death monster. Yep. That was basically a 3.5. His his his barbarian thing his conglomeration was just gnarly. And so, but again, it didn't make any sense, you know. It was like, okay, well, he moves 100 feet, you know, and attacks everything within 10 feet. And, you know, his has weapon specialization in whatever one of the pole arms was that did the most damage. And and it was like he ended up getting, you know, he walked through a uh, you know, an army one time getting like 50 attacks and it was like, you know, I was like, oh my god.
A great power fantasy moment, but ultimately just kind of like, what are we doing here? You know what I mean? Like I mean it's just we were playing champions at that point. Yeah, exactly. I still remember I still remember I I ran I was in a game with a guy uh I'm not going to use any names. Uh not that this guy would ever watch this video, but uh I still remember I he said well no he ruled against like I want my I wanted my D and D character to do X Y or Z and and I said well I said that doesn't make any sense. Why can't I do that? It says here in the rules and he says because he said because it's stupid. I mean, it's dumb. And I was like, well, that's but it's in the it's in the rules. And then he and this was probably the wrong thing to say, but he but this it stuck with me ever since. He he handed me a dungeon master's guide.
He said, well, how about you take this and take your players handbook and you go into the room over there and play by yourself and see how much fun you have. Right. Exactly. Like he's like, "My job here is to adjudicate and and and it's dumb that that that your character would do that." And he was kind of a kind of a dink for saying it the way he did, but it stuck with me. It was like one of those things where it's like it that's dumb. Just because the rules say that it should work like that, we should probably not have the have the rules work like that. Well, that's where I'll I'll say the cliche saying, but I I think that if so so actually it really dawned on me right now what I would say to somebody who's been running games for 30 years is adopt the concept of rulings, not rules. And that's the cliche OSR statement, right? Is rulings, not rules. But um because I think Gary Gagak said it one time years and years ago, but it was uh but it really is a good way to look at things is ruling, not rules. And and uh I'm not sure I need to explain that in great No, I mean I mean ultimately the way this is sickly say it is it's just like and I've heard a lot of people say if a player says I should be able to get this and the the the game master says this, you you decide this is how it's going to work and we're moving forward and and you and you just make your case for it and if I think it's reasonable then I'll say okay. And more often than not tell the player yes. I mean honestly I mean I I I've firmly believe that, you know, I've I've definitely gotten into a situation where people said, "Well, I think my character would know this." And I was like, "Yeah, you're right. Your character would know that."
On that note, one mechanic I didn't talk about is the lore mechanic. Yes, I was going to ask you that before we left. So, tell me about sort of the So, so we never had skills and feats and all that other stuff back in the day, right? But everybody always wanted to know, would my character know this? And of course, the standard answer back then is roll 86, right? And so, you know, and if you're if you're smart, maybe you have a better chance. And if you're dumb, maybe you have a worse chance. Or if it's if your paladin's trying to roll the big rock in front of the tomb, you know, maybe he that would be something that he would know how to do, right? Or the dwarf would is trying to detect a trap because they have stonework stuff. Um, so I have a uh well-defined with a couple hundred examples mechanic, and you can see this in the PDF sort of how it works. The one that's free on the Kickstarter. Go download it and look at it. But uh we have a mechanic called lore. And so for example uh bards are very good at knowing lots of stuff but they're not necessarily expert at knowing any individual thing. Uh whereas like a wizard can you know has really good lore about things wizardy and but they don't know anything about heraldry or that kind of thing. And it sounds complicated but it's really simple. It's just a d6 rule and it's modified by you know uh whatever makes sense. So, like if you're trying to uh if you're trying to acrobatically cross a rope bridge, maybe it's a lore check against your dexterity. And if it's your deck is 13 or higher, you get one better on it. And if your decks is seven or lower, you get one worse on it. And it's again resolved
with one die roll. And that's the and there's it's it's it is vague a little bit in the game on purpose because it's up to the DM and the player to decide whether they know anything about uh farming though, you know, a hobbit might, you know, for example, or a you know, but a paladin probably wouldn't. Um, you know, and so or druid certainly would. Um, you know, so again, I wouldn't make the druid roll. I'd make the hobbit roll and I wouldn't let the paladin roll in that case. Um, so there's uh and the the utility of bards, I finally figured out a way to make bards viable because they're bad wizards, bad thieves, and and uh and bad fighters, right? Is you give them lore on everybody, so they have all lore. Nice. And so, you know, if it's wizard lore, they have it. It's not as good a good good a chance as the wizard would have. Um, if there's a druid lore, they have it. It's not as good as the druids would be. typically one point worse on a d6, but they have they get to roll in all lore skills. Um because they're, you know, they're, you know, jacks, they they know they they drink and they know things, right?
Yeah. I mean, jack of all trades, master of none, as they say. Absolutely. Absolutely. And uh yeah, actually Jillian basically they they always they always, you know, I give a little bonus experience points to the MVP of the playing session. You know, they get like an extra 50 experience points or something. I think the bard wins about threequarters of the time because the ranger misses his tracking role, but the bard rolls a one and makes it, you know, nice. And uh it's been there's been a lot of uh a lot of jokes about the rangers in both of my groups that are my regular groups because the rangers just are they're just the dice rolls are just abysmal. We we had we did this big quest for this wizard a little while back and the rangers roles in the wilderness lore checks were so bad that when the wizard they finished the quest and they succeeded they brought this wizard back the thing that the artifact that she wanted all she gave me a minor magic item she gave the ranger an arrow of direction lost in the woods you know like a one in four you know four and six chance of success and he'd roll he'd blow it like every time um And uh it just it became a running joke about the the Rangers get lost in the woods. And it it's happening in both groups. Nice. The Ranger just always gets lost.
All right, so if you're watching this and you made it this far, thank you so much for listening to Two Old Men uh talk about the game they love. Um please go check out uh the links will be down below. Check out the Necromancers game uh live on Kickstarter right now. We'll be live for the next uh 3, four weeks, correct? Yep. Yep. Another 35 days or something, I think. All right. So, and then um go check that out, D. It's always good to catch up with you. Um Skull, go bikes. And uh yeah, just take care of yourself. Yeah.