Hey Mike, its always great to meet fellow TH-camrs in person. Great to hear that you enjoyed the convention. And of course, thank you for running some great games! The City of Arches was my favorite, but Shadowdark and our 4 standard issue characters we kept cycling through were good times too, lol. But yeah thanks for signing my copy of the Lazy DM Guide and hope you get some mileage out of my puzzle book. See you again next year??? Cheers!
40:30 A great example of this sort of thing in fantasy literature are the Thieves' World anthologies (edited by Robert Asprin). A whole bunch of authors wrote short stories set in the shared world of the city of Sanctuary. Each author had a character (or two) that they controlled - their PCs if you will - and were allowed to let them do pretty much anything apart from killing off another author's character (but imprisonment & torture, stealing from them, killing their sidekicks, etc. were mostly fine). As the books progressed you had these characters responding to events in other authors' stories from the previous volumes. The stories got quite dark at times!
I AM COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH THE TERM *POOL TABLE GAME MASTERING*. I have been championing this kind of part-sandbox, part-"linear" (a terribly misleading name when done right) kind of campaign forever and never had a good word or term for it. "Pool Table Game Mastering" is it. And, even without referencing Deadwood, there are plenty of wonderful analogues one can use for things like pockets, balls, the cue, and the stick...which I won't go into here but I absolutely am having fun with already! Thanks Mike! On a separate note: I'm absolutely going to try and bring RPGs to my daughter's school. I'm not fishing for the grants or anything. I'm just glad of the resources you've directed people to. I think it'll be a great thing to give time for. Best, JW
OMG. I just spent 20 minutes writing a follow up that I then cut and pasted so I could use it as a blog post and a video script. THAT'S how in love with this description I am. Suffice it to say, I think "pool table game mastering" is exactly what ANY DM/GM should be aiming for if they're trying to maintain player agency while also telling a particular story from beginning to end.
Pool Table Game Mastering and Deadwood - YES!!! Such a great show. While I was putting together notes for running adventures in Paizo's Darkmoon Vale (Curse of the Kobold King and other adventures) I started to overlay Deadwood characters onto the NPCs in the town of Falcon's Hollow. I started considering how player actions would affect relationships and happenings about town.
Sssssssshhhhhh! Don’t let them know the Con is good! Then it’ll get too big! I jest, lol. It was great to meet you. I was the shaggy long haired guy who handed you a zine after the youtube and ttrpgs panel 😁
TableTopNotch has an excellent campaign they've been running directly inspired by Deadwood, called Brunkhollow. All the NPCs and PCs have a really strong set of motivations, and you can really see the pool table GMing come into play there as all the characters interact!
Something that helped me with pool table DMing is the concepts of Fronts from Dungeon World. Helped me understand each faction or major player in my campaign, so when the players inevitably do something I hadn’t thought of, I felt more prepared on how the world would react.
Pool table GM'ing is a great way to describe "Create a detailed world and have people interact in it." It also is a good way to explain how people will change as they experience the world.
The Monstrous Menagerie sounds like a Monster Manual and all of the "Ecology of..." articles from Dragon Magazine crossed with a PBS Nature documentary and the DMG Magic Items tables!
I've been using WANTS, NOT-WANTS, and SECRET or INCONGRUITY for NPCs and factions (picked this up from a Deficient Master vid). The secret/incongruity is a hinderance to their "WANT" or driving them toward their "NOT-WANT". This has helped my lazy gm'ing so much - "Pool Table Game Mastering" is a great name for it.
For several years now Forbidden Lands has been my favorite RPG bar none. Erik Granstrom who wrote the history/setting for FbL said it was largely built on Deadwood. I immediately went and got a year sub to HBO just to watch Deadwood. I don't think it grabbed me the same way but I need to watch it all again as it keeps coming up in RPG discussions. May look for the dvds. (I squeezed in GoT and The Wire while I had the sub.😉)
I was so bummed when I found out you were going to be there because I live in Madison but I was out of town that weekend😢 hopefully you come next year!
Also vis a vis the "pool table DMing" is that each story arc or session you pick a couple of different balls/NPCs from the table and bash them together for a new and different set of interactions. A little bit like the different mix of Icons at each session for DragonAge.
39:04 soap operas sound like “pool table” style story creation too. Limited locations, writing reading to character interactions with limited directions in sight beyond a few episodes. Characters smash together all the time
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
![เจ็บที่ยังฮัก - ม่อน วรวิทย์ [ Official Mv ] จอนนี่มิวสิค](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KALIGSRSjFs/mqdefault.jpg)
So great seeing you at Gamehole, Mike! It really is a special convention. And huzzah for Dwarven Forge!
"Negotiated with the Sly Flourish board" 😂
Hey Mike, its always great to meet fellow TH-camrs in person. Great to hear that you enjoyed the convention. And of course, thank you for running some great games! The City of Arches was my favorite, but Shadowdark and our 4 standard issue characters we kept cycling through were good times too, lol. But yeah thanks for signing my copy of the Lazy DM Guide and hope you get some mileage out of my puzzle book. See you again next year??? Cheers!
Thank you! It was great to meet you!
"Order a salad" and "drink water" is sound advice for any convention attendee!
40:30 A great example of this sort of thing in fantasy literature are the Thieves' World anthologies (edited by Robert Asprin). A whole bunch of authors wrote short stories set in the shared world of the city of Sanctuary. Each author had a character (or two) that they controlled - their PCs if you will - and were allowed to let them do pretty much anything apart from killing off another author's character (but imprisonment & torture, stealing from them, killing their sidekicks, etc. were mostly fine). As the books progressed you had these characters responding to events in other authors' stories from the previous volumes. The stories got quite dark at times!
I AM COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH THE TERM *POOL TABLE GAME MASTERING*. I have been championing this kind of part-sandbox, part-"linear" (a terribly misleading name when done right) kind of campaign forever and never had a good word or term for it. "Pool Table Game Mastering" is it.
And, even without referencing Deadwood, there are plenty of wonderful analogues one can use for things like pockets, balls, the cue, and the stick...which I won't go into here but I absolutely am having fun with already!
Thanks Mike!
On a separate note: I'm absolutely going to try and bring RPGs to my daughter's school. I'm not fishing for the grants or anything. I'm just glad of the resources you've directed people to. I think it'll be a great thing to give time for.
Best,
JW
OMG. I just spent 20 minutes writing a follow up that I then cut and pasted so I could use it as a blog post and a video script. THAT'S how in love with this description I am. Suffice it to say, I think "pool table game mastering" is exactly what ANY DM/GM should be aiming for if they're trying to maintain player agency while also telling a particular story from beginning to end.
Gamehole Con Rocks! I travel all the way from Seattle to attend.
I feel every gamemaster has had that moment of, "My bad players. My dumb ass forgot to do X for this session" moment lol.
Every. Single. Time.
I was the guy that ambushed you when, I think, you first arrived at the convention 😅 so glad to meet you!
It was a pleasure to meet you in person and play some DCC. May all your Mighty Deeds succeed.
Thank you! My voice was so shot at that point.
@@SlyFlourish I'll look for your name on the lists at future cons.
Glad that you enjoyed Gamehole Con. good description of the convention. Hope you come back again and I hope to get a chance to meet you next time.
Pool Table Game Mastering and Deadwood - YES!!! Such a great show.
While I was putting together notes for running adventures in Paizo's Darkmoon Vale (Curse of the Kobold King and other adventures) I started to overlay Deadwood characters onto the NPCs in the town of Falcon's Hollow. I started considering how player actions would affect relationships and happenings about town.
Sssssssshhhhhh! Don’t let them know the Con is good! Then it’ll get too big!
I jest, lol. It was great to meet you. I was the shaggy long haired guy who handed you a zine after the youtube and ttrpgs panel 😁
Thank you!
Good to hear about your Gamehole Con experience. Eventually, I'll get to that one
TableTopNotch has an excellent campaign they've been running directly inspired by Deadwood, called Brunkhollow. All the NPCs and PCs have a really strong set of motivations, and you can really see the pool table GMing come into play there as all the characters interact!
Love your tips, Mike
Something that helped me with pool table DMing is the concepts of Fronts from Dungeon World. Helped me understand each faction or major player in my campaign, so when the players inevitably do something I hadn’t thought of, I felt more prepared on how the world would react.
Pool table GM'ing is a great way to describe "Create a detailed world and have people interact in it." It also is a good way to explain how people will change as they experience the world.
Thank you for bringing focus to the Teachers. I hope they make their 40k audio book stretch goal.
The Monstrous Menagerie sounds like a Monster Manual and all of the "Ecology of..." articles from Dragon Magazine crossed with a PBS Nature documentary and the DMG Magic Items tables!
I've been using WANTS, NOT-WANTS, and SECRET or INCONGRUITY for NPCs and factions (picked this up from a Deficient Master vid). The secret/incongruity is a hinderance to their "WANT" or driving them toward their "NOT-WANT". This has helped my lazy gm'ing so much - "Pool Table Game Mastering" is a great name for it.
For several years now Forbidden Lands has been my favorite RPG bar none. Erik Granstrom who wrote the history/setting for FbL said it was largely built on Deadwood. I immediately went and got a year sub to HBO just to watch Deadwood. I don't think it grabbed me the same way but I need to watch it all again as it keeps coming up in RPG discussions. May look for the dvds. (I squeezed in GoT and The Wire while I had the sub.😉)
I was so bummed when I found out you were going to be there because I live in Madison but I was out of town that weekend😢 hopefully you come next year!
They recently announced Monstrous Menagerie 2 coming to Kickstarter.
Also vis a vis the "pool table DMing" is that each story arc or session you pick a couple of different balls/NPCs from the table and bash them together for a new and different set of interactions. A little bit like the different mix of Icons at each session for DragonAge.
39:04 soap operas sound like “pool table” style story creation too. Limited locations, writing reading to character interactions with limited directions in sight beyond a few episodes. Characters smash together all the time
Thanks
So bummed that I missed it this year!
Why are traps, interactive objects, and hazards not part of a monster manual? Some should have a CR if part of an encounter.
Do you ever come to or plan to come to conventions in Ohio?
Mike,
Eldritch is pronounced phonetically. “El-drich”, not “el-drik”.