transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:11] Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of Mastering Dungeons, your favorite tabletop role-playing game podcast, where we do things like talk about game design and the business of role-playing games and the news. And I'm Shawn Merwin, and that right there is Teos Abadía. Hey, Teos, how's it been?

Speaker 2:
[00:29] Oh, it's been great. It's been fantastic. And you and I have big news because the day we're recording, not the day you're listening, we send something to our Patreon folks.

Speaker 1:
[00:39] And it wasn't the Saber's Victory last night over the Boston Bruins, although that is quite exciting.

Speaker 2:
[00:45] Saber that victory.

Speaker 1:
[00:47] That's right. I'm going to Saber it for at least two days. What we sent out to everyone was our first Patreon backer creation. And what that is, is a little game design stuff for people who back our Patreon. And what we did this week was two new giants, the Hill Giant Earthquaker and the Stone Giant Gem Master. I whipped those up. Teos did a pass to edit and do some development on them. And now they are in your inbox. If you are a Patreon backer of any inclination from the $3 Master of Dungeons to our Masters of the Multiverse. Because we want to give everyone a taste. Now moving forward, Teos, correct me if I'm wrong, but these will go to our top two tiers from this point forward. We thank our Master of Dungeons supporters for your support. You do help us record the show, pay for all this equipment, pay for the software, do all of that. But we want to give a little bit of extra to those folks that do the top two tiers. So going forward, those folks will be getting our Patreon backer creations.

Speaker 2:
[02:14] Yeah, absolutely. And this has come up before on our Discord where folks say, which everybody who subscribes gets access to the Discord, and folks would ask, are you guys making money from this show? And it's like, no. I mean, money comes in. But when you add up all the hours we spend, we're not there yet. We're getting closer. And so one of the things that we're hoping is this can get us to where we actually go, hey, we do this podcast and we make money on it, which would be really cool to be able to say. But first step covering it and really the first step was thank you to all the folks who joined in the last week and made this release possible and have gotten us to our first goal. So that's really awesome. And so we have a small giant thing for you this week.

Speaker 1:
[02:58] A small giant thing. And you also, many of you will now get your names newly mangled by me. And so hang in there till the end of the second segment to hear that madness. So we don't know what everything will be each time. We will try to theme it around whatever we're discussing. So we discussed the giant's adventure last time. So we made a couple of giants. This week, we're going to switch tact a little bit. And we're going to talk about the new dungeonsanddragons.com website. So that will be our main segment. And you may sound like, why? Well, for a lot of reasons. We cover marketing, we cover brand, we cover business. And all of that is covered. But we also cover game design. We're going to discuss a little bit about game design in that segment as we talk about the new D&D, dungeonsanddragons.com website. So hang in there for that. But we also take emails and comments and questions and thoughts and prayers and hopes and dreams from our listeners. And we call that our listener corner. And so we are going to get to a couple of those questions today. We are going to start with a YouTube question that came in via The Drew Boat. And he says, In your previous show, you mentioned the focus of what D&D does. What is 5th edition and 5.5 designed to do? Are we sure it even does that well? Or is it just oatmeal designed to not really mean much to any fit type of fantasy? Whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2:
[04:42] Oatmeal is actually a really great fiber-rich meal. You should be getting more oatmeal. So Drew, thanks for your question about nutrition. No, I'm kidding. Oatmeal is great. But we do. We know what you mean. We know what you mean. D&D has for a long time been positioned carefully, so it can be a lot of things to a lot of people. There's no question that that is one of the secrets of its success. This is why we have fun arguments. Like someone will say, why are you running horror with D&D? It's not meant for that. And then like all these DMs say, I'm having a great time running horror with D&D. Right. And it's not an nefarious or boring goal. It's a good goal for what is by far the world's most popular role playing game. Right. It is not pigeoning itself, pigeonholing itself to say, we only do tactical play or we're only for heavy role playing groups or only for gothic horror or only for inventory management. And how far into the dungeon can you go? It is meant to have a flexible core that serves a wide audience range well and allows each group to add their touches. When I look at what 2014 does and things like when we interviewed Rob Schwab on the show, what the designers of 2014 said, they were worried that that would be the last edition of D&D. And this was because of D&D's historic sales and the nature of our troubled role playing game industry. They wanted that edition of 5th edition to speak all of its fans, from the first editions to the most recent. So they built a fairly modular system, right? The idea is that things like feats were optional. You could remove backgrounds and it wouldn't really matter. And at its core was this really grounded game with flexible additive parts. And it did that really, really well. How well it took what was already the most popular role playing game and grew it to what nobody would have imagined was possible. So you couldn't have bigger success than that. From the perspective, not only of money, but of pleasing people, right? That money comes from pleasing lots of people who love playing fifth edition. 2024 5e is less grounded, less of this modular kind of system. It's more built for current fans, I think is fair to say. It leans into the most popular play approaches that we saw in 5e and reinforces those. Will it be more successful? I don't know. You know, we'll have to see. And there are a lot of factors that can drive that, not just how the game is written. But for sure, both all of 5e has been a fantastic game that remains incredibly popular and enjoyable.

Speaker 1:
[07:21] When you hear discussions of why did 5e explode like it did, everyone always goes to, well, Stranger Things, streaming, just the availability of information via the Internet, ways to learn different ways. What is often mentioned last or often left out completely is the fact that it was a rule system that spoke to a lot of people in a lot of different ways. We've talked about the diversity of the audience for role playing games and for Dungeons and Dragons. 2014 was able to recapture the imagination of folks that played third edition and previous. It also was able to capture the imagination of new fans equally. That is a very hard fence to walk on. That is a very hard balance beam not to fall off on one side or the other. And I can't say for sure that, well, the design team knew exactly what they were doing, being able to capture all of those things. There is luck involved. But the play testing and the design parameters that they wrapped themselves in showed that they went back to the beginning of the game and they went to several different kinds of audiences and said, does this please you? And they took great care in that. And that is an important part of why Teos and I are here today talking about Dungeons and Dragons as the phenomenon that it has become.

Speaker 2:
[09:07] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing that it may be hard to say, well, you know, I love this particular system, you know, like I spent a lot of time on Drawsteel with its very tactically focused game. And it's fun to hear James and Tercaso talk about how he's working on Crows and how he's not doing these things that he himself designed for Drawsteel, right? That is the life of a designer is being able to know and a good designer is being able to know why you did a thing in one time versus this other time. D&D has those same parameters, right? That same equation is going on. These designers are not designers that think, gee, how can I make the most vanilla thing? No, they're like, how can I make something really exciting that works in what D&D is and that applies all of these different things? And that's why you see systems, whether it's downtime or bastions or things like that, they work for all of D&D. A good system does that because it needs to apply across the audience or it will, you know, it'll be too niche and it'll draw away from D&D instead.

Speaker 1:
[10:07] Yeah. And that leads nicely into our next question from Oz Jeb via Discord. He said, nice discussion on ways to handle travel and downtime. I was surprised that you did not specifically mention montages, particularly as several games have mechanics and approaches for using montages to handle travel, shopping, crafting, et cetera. Notably, Blades in the Dark uses montages and flashbacks to allow players to describe how they prepared for a heist as they're playing through the heist. So just as a reminder, this question where we mentioned travel and downtime was a question that was really about quote, skipping the boring parts. So montages as a game mechanic, they're solid on their own, but they're also ways to skip the boring parts, depending on how they're used. So the question, however, really does help us focus on what is exciting or boring about TTRPGs to different kinds of GMs and players by talking about montages.

Speaker 2:
[11:09] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:09] So first of all, people.

Speaker 2:
[11:10] I just want to reinforce there, Shawn, that to that question, we could have said, here are all the things we love to do with, say, travel, but we were really focusing on that concept of what is boring, why skip, not what we do in our games and so on. And montage is one of those tools that's great to look at when you start looking at, okay, what do you do for travel, right?

Speaker 1:
[11:33] And that's why I wanted to look at montages specifically here. So what is a montage? Some of you may be like, I don't even know what that means. So it's a term really from film that uses a series of short scenes that are sequenced to condense time, space or information. So rather than having many long scenes about the growth of a relationship between two people, you just cut to very short, quick scenes showing that relationship either growing or falling apart. So you don't need to spend a half hour developing that. You can just see, oh, this couple, they went on their first date and now they are moving forward through and then we end at their wedding. We have understood that they have had this relationship and it's only taken 30 seconds for us to be told that. So, how are montages used in Tabletop Role Playing Games? They can be used as storytelling play. And this is similar to how they might be used in a film. However, we're talking about skipping the boring parts. If the players aren't really into storytelling and characterization, even asking for a montage can be boring to them. Even the 30 seconds that you take to say, Describe a scene with your character in it. And the player might be like, I want to hit an orc with my axe. And you're like, okay, tell me about a time that you hit an orc with your axe. And they're like, well, can I roll a 20-sider, right? So, montages can be great, but they can also be the boring part that people want to skip.

Speaker 2:
[13:14] Or I did tell you, I told you I hit an orc with my axe.

Speaker 1:
[13:18] Right, exactly. That's all we need to know. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[13:23] Some DMs will say that kind of thing, like describe what the orc tribe was, which orc tribe was it, and where in the woods were you? And the player can be like, I don't know, you tell me. I wasn't there.

Speaker 1:
[13:36] Yeah. So, if players want that storytelling, they want to express their backstory, but you don't want to have them take 20 minutes to describe the clan that they're from. Just, you know, you could say, ask one of those questions that leads to a short scene, but also recognize you may have players that don't want to do that. Montages can also be used to determine the consequences without engaging in tactical play. A skill challenge can be a montage. Where you, this is a travel, this is the question about travel, right? This is, you're going from point A to point B. Talk to me about how you are able to get past this particular obstacle with one role. So that is a montage with a little bit of tactical, a little bit of game play, a little bit of rolling involved. But then you can just say, okay, you succeeded on your survival check as you tried to escape the pack of wolves that was following you. You failed, you lose this many hit dice. So it's short and tactical play with a consequence. Okay, in a lot of cases, it does skip the boring part. If you know that the fight is not going to have great consequences, you can shorten it to be like, yeah, you probably would have lost a few hit points. So I'll just take some of your hit dice away and we'll call it even. Did you use that in any points in your DMing?

Speaker 2:
[15:22] In a number of ways. And that's what's fun about things like say skill challenges that were in fourth edition is people think of them as many things. One of them is that idea of them being a montage type of approach where you do explain the things you overcame and how you present that can be different too. So Draw Steel, for example, has a montage system and what it does is it says up front and it really is leaning into that film technique, right? It is saying we are going to collaboratively build the best of shortcuts, you know, the cuts, I mean, filming sequences that capture what it was like to do this thing, whatever the thing is. So, you know, we're traversing some caverns. Great. We're going to do a montage. Here's what the caverns have. Areas of poison gas, deep drops with narrow ledges to skirt across. There are falling stalactites. There are, you know, any number of things. And now you say to the players, what did you do? And the player is building that scene that would be in the movie for those X seconds. So you're saying, well, I tried to handle the narrow ledges by using tying ropes around us. And I made this, you know, balance type check to get across. And the other person says, you know, I, you know, am brought up this spell power of mine, this ability that I have to block the falling stalactites. Right. And so you go through and you make these checks to see whether it worked or didn't. And that creates the scene. And so you're building that sort of montage by doing that. Right. And, and by the way, determining failure or success at that, right. Which then has repercussions based on how the story was set up, which is a fun system.

Speaker 1:
[17:04] One of the questions we've had to deal with in the past is, what do you do when a combat is dragging on? And sometimes people just say, just end the combat, just say you win and we're done. No, you could use a montage combat to say, all right, everyone take one more turn. You've won, but see how the rest of the combat would have gone based on this one rule. And if you succeed, you win with no consequences. If any of you fail on your spell, on your attack, there will be a consequence for that in terms of maybe lost hit points, maybe lost resources, something like that. And so it's a way again to skip the boring part in a way that still has consequences.

Speaker 2:
[17:58] Yeah. And in that way of skipping boring part, you know, something else that came up in this question was the idea of flashbacks. And there have been a number of skills. My first encounter with it was in the role playing game Spycraft. It had a way to say, no, I have that right. Gumshoe Games, Night's Black Agency, have preparedness. And there's a version in Time Watch. And in fact, in Time Watch, you can even travel back in time to get whatever you need and set up what you need. And those can create paradoxes, which is fun, too. But in all of these games, these tend to be games, Blades in the Dark is true as well, where what you don't want is players before they do a heist endlessly thinking about every gear item and possibility they must deal with and just taking forever to do it. You want them to just jump into the action. And so you're giving them these systems so that you can skip the boring part of planning and just do. And then when you need to spend that point or whatever the system does to say, you know, actually, I have that rope. I have the grappling hook. I have the timer that I can set into the explosive. And we just roll to make sure that we do. Or sometimes you just spend a point to do it. And that just lets you move forward because you're top secret agent or whatever it is. You would know this. You would do this.

Speaker 1:
[19:19] Right. I cannot tell you the one time I played Spycraft. It was at a convention and I was working at desk and playing at the same time.

Speaker 2:
[19:30] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[19:31] And I think it was like a three hour slot. And we like, we got the mission. Now it's the shopping time. And the people started like going through the books and how much money do we have to spend? And I got called away to deal with a problem. And I think I came back an hour later and they were still shopping. If I had been sitting there the whole time, I would have cried.

Speaker 2:
[19:55] Yeah. And even the designers of Spycraft, I've talked to them and the team at Crafty Games, they also acknowledged this and have played with a number of possible ways that if they did another version of Spycraft, they would get past that because yeah, it's too much, right? It just, and you're having fun on one hand, picking the items, but on the other hand, you all want it to end and it's a funny, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[20:19] Right. And it's not even, there have been some shopping scenes that have been fun. And, but the issue is the game play isn't necessarily, there are no necessarily consequences for things that you, extra things that you've bought or you bought something and you end up not needing it. Well, right. And so this sort of montage does, it's both a time saver and an attention saver to actually get to the part that many of the players will want to get to. And then you can go back and deal with the consequences of your ability to pick the correct item later.

Speaker 2:
[20:59] Yeah. And just to go back to what we did last week is to say, you know, all of this goes back to knowing you, what you want in your game and what the players want in your game, what are you skipping, what are you digging into, to what extent, right? Things like montages are ways to kind of condense it. And so you want to do that when it fits your game, not just always.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] Yeah. So thank you for those questions. We appreciate them very much. And now we're going to get to our news and commentary section, starting with Ravenloft and D&D. The horrors within details have been announced, but we are going to talk about those details in our main segment as we look at the new D&D Dungeons and dragons.com website. But we are going to talk a little bit about it because there was also a little bit of news about what is in D&D Ravenloft horrors within. Because Ravenloft fan Jeff Mueller, who joined us a couple weeks ago, notes on our Discord that Beetle and Grimm's just dropped their promo for their Ravenloft horrors within box set. So they break out the chapters of the books into mini booklets and they showed them all. So Teos, do you want to take us through what we learned based on Jeff's sleuthing?

Speaker 2:
[22:23] Yeah. So we know that the chapters are going to be number one, character options, then domains of Ravenloft, Taroka and the Mists through Innsmouth. Then there is a 2A domains of Ravenloft, Kalakiri through random domains. Then chapter three is Ravenloft Adventures, chapter four, creating domains of Dredd, and chapter five, Denizids of the Mist, and then there is an appendix. And so we can see here that this actually is a lot like Van Richten, slightly different but very similar to that in its makeup. Also noted is that the D&D Beyond Pre-Order includes a D&D Encounters Sithicus Adventure, and of course that new Ravenloft page on our D&D website, which we'll talk about later.

Speaker 1:
[23:08] Absolutely. Another thing we'll talk about more is D&D's new actual play, since that is focused on Ravenloft. But Wizards announced is returning to producing its own actual play in a big way with a new cast and big production values. The show is called Dungeon Masters and it is the new official D&D actual play anthology series where electrifying players turn official game content into a story worth remembering. Campaign 1 set in Ravenloft and will premiere April 22nd. And as I look at my date, that is the day this show drops. At 6:30 p.m., so Wednesday 6:30 p.m. I assume Pacific Time and that will release a new episode every Wednesday at 6.30.

Speaker 2:
[24:00] I think two episodes come out at the beginning. So it starts you off with those two. Jasmine Bilar is the DM, which is super cool. She's awesome. I'm always I love that in any ACK Inc. game, you know, Jim Darkmagic won't remember how Jim's Magic Missile works, but Jasmine will. Right. And she is so sharp at D&D. It's really great to see her as DM. Then we have Mayanna Baron, Christian Navarro, Neil Newborn and Devorah Wilde, the last two were voice actors on the Baldur's Gate 3 video game playing your favorite Githyanki and Astarian, of course. Mayanna is playing Wesley, a grave domain cleric. Nice choice. Christian is playing Elluin, a winter walker ranger. That's one of the new ones. Neil is playing Krem, a reanimator artificer. That's from the upcoming book, I believe. Devorah is playing Zora, a shadow sorcerer, shadow sorcery sorcerer. The story premise is called Ashes of the Black Rose. I saw the D20 play channel is already getting ready to run a game of that too, so you can get in on that. So the story premise is a doomed land is being unmade. Its would-be saviors may not make it out. When a fractured band of unlikely allies finds itself trapped in a nightmare ruled by the infamous fallen paladin Lord Soth, our heroes must do whatever it takes to break three. And so there's this idea that the Ravenloft is undoing itself in some way. They are trying to escape, but the question is maybe not whether they can escape, but what they'll be forced to sacrifice to survive.

Speaker 1:
[25:36] The cast will also be at Fan Expo London August 21st and 22nd. The actual play has an interesting twist in that they will have play-along packs that will be released to inspire your games and translate to what you see in the actual play by bringing it to your table. Each week will provide ready-to-run encounters, quick play maps, inspired by the episodes as well as the preview of some of the monsters. These will be free starting with the first pack called Zombie Clot Encounter on April 23rd. The day after the show drops, you will get a pack. The packs will include a hook, a quick play map, and that early access monster that will be featured in Ravenloft The Horrors Within.

Speaker 2:
[26:29] Very cool. And it sounds like the first one is free, but then you have to pre-order Ravenloft The Horrors Within to unlock the rest. That's your understanding as well, Shawn?

Speaker 1:
[26:38] It is my understanding.

Speaker 2:
[26:39] Yeah. Looking at the product page, pre-ordering seems to have a digital pre-order bonus, which is the Mists of Ravenloft Digital Dice Set. Great. Dungeon Masters Ravenloft Blayalong Pack. That's what we just talked about. And then D&D Encounters, Shadows of Sithicus Mini Adventure. So you also get that, which is cool. I imagine they will sell these things separately. We'll have to find out. I'm you know, we've talked about before on the show that hard question of, do you offer exclusive things for D&D Beyond that you can't get elsewhere, especially if they're not available on PDF and so they only live in that world? You know, you create this dichotomy of site, not site. And we've heard Dan Ayub and others say they want, you know, they are emphasizing print play. And we heard even the D&D Beyond folks say how important print play is. But, you know, this kind of puts us back into that, no, buy from D&D Beyond corner, which I'm always a little uneasy with.

Speaker 1:
[27:38] We have a Legends of Greyhawk sighting on D&D Beyond. The Legends of Greyhawk Elemental Evil Rising is the series of three adventures that are now on D&D Beyond. You can uncover something follow lurking in the shadows of the Temple of Elemental Evil with these three single-session adventures approved for play in the Legends of Greyhawk Organize Play campaign and for use as compelling one-shots in your home games. What is included in this bundle? A short intro and DM's aid for all three adventures. Then the adventures, a village called Homelette, Darkness and Nolde and Ruins of the Moat House. These three adventures are for levels 1 to 4 taking place in the Viscounty of Verbebank set in CY576. You could also get more information on the Legends of Greyhawk campaign itself on the new landing page on D&D Beyond.

Speaker 2:
[28:45] Yeah, fantastic news. Really exciting to see this campaign provide its adventures there. So you can now run these anywhere and then you can jump into convention play and so on with your Legends of Greyhawk character. So really great. And these are great adventures. You wrote one. Eric Menge wrote another. Greg Marks wrote one. These are top notch authors writing these and Shawn, I'm kidding, top notch authors writing these. They're fantastic fun. I've played two of these three. They were excellent and super, super fun. Really great way to start in the whole storyline. The adventures that come after this, which I've run and or played, are excellent too. So you're you're you're buying in on the beginning of a really exciting story arc that is a lot of fun around the classic Temple of Animal Evil, which we covered not too long ago. This is really cool. And so I'm really excited. And I'm also glad to know, Shawn, that because these adventures have been played since more than a year ago, they actually there were some games going on. A plate play tests were taking place at Winter Fantasy last year, and then they started coming out around a year ago. So we know that because people have been playing and having just amazing fun, there will be absolutely no controversy about renaming someone's tavern that could possibly come out onto the Internet because we all know we're all just having a great fun time and there are no issues whatsoever.

Speaker 1:
[30:08] Oh yeah, two years of play, everybody at the table seemed pretty happy, everybody loved playing the game, and then people that don't play Legends of Greyhawk get to chime in. But we'll tackle that another day or possibly the next middle of never. And Daggerheart Hope and Fear has now been given a release date. Daggerheart's next expansion will be released on the 25th of August in Critical Role Shop and at gaming stores that are part of the Darrington Press Guild. It releases everywhere else on September 22nd, so about a month early if you get it from the online store or game stores that are associated. What else do we know about this, Teos?

Speaker 2:
[31:01] Well, it was sold via pre-order and last we checked, you can still order it via pre-order. And there is a deluxe version including a DM screen, dice, top of DM screen, fear tracker. Pre-orders come with a 20 percent discount to a Demiplane Nexus version as well. And Shawn and I have in the past covered that Nexus version is really sweet. It's really nicely implemented. The new Hope and Fear book has cover art by Matt Wilma and Dominik Mayer. These are the same artists that did the core books that are so beautiful. Dominik Mayer also did the recent alt covers for Forgotten Realms books. So fantastic, gorgeous art, though it's been shared for the Hope and Fear book. And you can play Daggerheart at UK Games Expo, Free RPG Day and Gen Con. I played it last week and had an absolute blast with a very cool thing that I can't talk about what it was, but it will be coming out before too long. And for Hope and Fear, a new unboxing video was also released on YouTube where they showed a few bits from it, which looks very cool.

Speaker 1:
[32:08] Apparently the dungeon crawler Carl RPG crowd funder has lit the Internet on fire in a good way. In just one day, they cleared $5 million. This crowd funder is being run by Renegade Game Studio. The campaign takes the series of books by Matt Dineman, where Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, have survived mining, transporting, processing and consumption of the Earth's resources by an alien corporation. And now they're being forced to compete in a dungeon crawl recreated from these resources for an intergalactic reality show program. Those first seven books of that series sold over 6 million copies. So there's definitely an audience for it. And the RPG is showing that this audience has also an interest in role playing game content, because they are blowing away every other role playing game Kickstarter you can imagine. We would be happy if it reached 5 million after a year of being out. And this was one day's worth.

Speaker 2:
[33:23] Yeah, it's at 6.8 right now, 28,800 backers with 25 days left. I, you know, this was one of these things where I hear this come up periodically, and then I talk to folks, and some people say, you know, they love these books, can't get enough. Others bounce right off of them. But there are clearly enough people that love them that this thing is just going wild. And congrats to Renegade Games. They have had an uncanny ability to, you know, land these big IP properties. And this one is clearly a really, really big success.

Speaker 1:
[34:01] The dice that were discovered in the United States, they thought they went back a few years. It turns out that they are probably 6,000 years older than previously thought. And I know because I was playing with them, Teos.

Speaker 2:
[34:19] I feel that way sometimes.

Speaker 1:
[34:22] Some days. So tell us, tell us about this story.

Speaker 2:
[34:24] I mean, you might have seen the kind of neat looking chipped D20 that we see from like Romans played with these, you know, and so that was sort of what folks were thinking were like the oldest dice out there. And now new research used an interesting approach to look at objects that have been found from Native Americans that they didn't know what they were. And using various techniques, this research came to conclude that these were actually dice used in games of chance or various other uses. And so more than 600 objects have been discovered as two-sided dice crafted by Native Americans. And this would say that dice are 6,000 years older than before. So twice the lifespan that we previously imagined, going back to 12,000 years ago, many of them are two-sided with engravings on one side. Unfortunately, we have no evidence at all of either their character sheets or their online VTTs, as those probably degraded over time.

Speaker 1:
[35:28] It's true. It's true. And some people might say, well, that's just a coin.

Speaker 2:
[35:34] Right.

Speaker 1:
[35:35] Except guess what they did not use were coins. So in that sense, these had to be crafted likely for the specific reason of odds, yes or no. And so we can then call them dice.

Speaker 2:
[35:54] All right.

Speaker 1:
[35:54] And we will go to our Creator Corner where we're going to start with the Human-Made Alternatives Guide. What is this, Teos?

Speaker 2:
[36:02] Yeah. This is a new site that is ttrpgresources.com. And the whole aim of it is to show you that you don't need AI to create games. It gathers a number of resources, including free public domain, creative commons and attribution sources. This is awesome. It's something that, you know, on our Discord, for example, folks have said, hey, I was going to use AI art. I want to change my Kickstarter over to not using it. What are the resources? This is exactly the kind of site that aims to do that. It gives you free image libraries, icon sets, much more ways to locate artists, find writing prompts, random tables, audio, puzzles, handout tools, a lot more. So ttrpgresources.com.

Speaker 1:
[36:44] Congratulations to the nominees for the 2025 Indie Groundbreaker Awards. This year, the Game of the Year nominees include Ethan Yen's Chain Link, The Time We Have, Spine, Little Wolves and What Should We Have Tomorrow. We've mentioned Chain Link on the show before, and it was also nominated for the most innovative game and the best graphic design. So, congratulations, Ethan and company, and congratulations to all the nominees. You can see a full list of nominees at igdnonline.com. Last but not least, the Legends of Eleanora charity livestream. Very good friend of the show, Robert Pasley, who created our cool Flumpf Convention badge banners, is playing in this game. The game will raise funds for the Pavlov Foundation, which supports geriatric cancer research and creative outlets for pediatric cancer patients. This will be taking, yep, sorry, pediatric cancer patients. The stream will take place on April 26th, which is a Sunday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern and includes many celebrity players. You can find that at twitch.tv/miniterraindomain.

Speaker 2:
[38:21] Very cool.

Speaker 1:
[38:23] That was our news and commentary section this week here on Mastering Dungeons. In our main topic this week here on Mastering Dungeons, we are going to talk about the dungeonsanddragons.com website, which has recently been updated. We want to look at it through many different lenses. Because not only is it a marketing tool, not only is it an information tool, not only is it a place where new people will come to learn about the game, it has to reach a lot of different audiences and provide a lot of different information. So we want to take a bit of a deep dive into it, to look at it from these various aspects. Teos put a wonderful image of which site is that? TSR Incorporated?

Speaker 2:
[39:13] Yeah, it's the original TSR website. I'll put an image on the YouTube for people to look at. I always enjoy looking back at these screenshots, in particular this first one, which is the very first website by TSR. It just has a bad image of a beholder, a background of the TSR logo in black and grey. It's hard to even read. And what they've tried to do is, around the different eyes of the beholder, put little things that you can click on. And then there's links you can click on or need because it's probably hard to do that. It was such a bad website that I actually, despite being a very nice person normally, I emailed whatever this contact page was that they had here to say, you really need to step up this website. And I got an email back from Shawn Reynolds, who apparently on the side was responsible for this website. And he was not happy with me. He used words. And I always laugh about that because Shawn Reynolds is a fantastic person. And I can just only imagine that at the end of a long day he got my non-helpful email. I don't think I was mean or anything like that. But it was very funny. And also here in our show notes, you'll see a screenshot. And I'll put it up on the YouTubes. But a picture of the RPG website with this weird red brick. I mean, it's just such a... Whoo, it's a thing. So yes, we're not going to talk about those websites. But it's fun to keep that history in mind.

Speaker 1:
[40:43] Yeah. That's a mid to late 90s website, both of those right there. So every once in a while, we as super fans, as hardcore players, as dungeon masters, as game designers, as people who are steeped in the industry, need to step back and look at the hobby and the industry through the eyes of a brand new DM or brand new player. How easy is it to get in the game without help? What tools are available to help me as this new player? Learn about the game. Learn about how to play it. Learn about what it takes to play it. Connect with other people who want to play. Where does someone go to learn how to play D&D? I knew that there was a newish website. I'm also teaching D&D right now in my class. We've just started the Dungeons and Dragons segment of our program. And I need to teach the people in the class that don't play D&D how to make a character. I also have to keep those super fans engaged. It is not easy. It is terribly difficult to try to figure out in the time that I have how to point someone in the right direction so they can take the steps they need to learn this. So I went to the D&D website thinking what tools are now available. And I saw the new website and I was like, I need to research this and talk about this in a lot of different ways. Did you check out the new website, Teos?

Speaker 2:
[42:35] I sure did. I had fun. And just like you, we are of like mind. I approached it as, you know, what if I don't know what I'm doing? Because in general, that's been, I think, what the D&D website has been for the past, you know, more than 15 years, right? Longer than 5e, there has been this return towards the more as a marketing and new player portal, generally, with exceptions. Whereas if we go back to third edition, particularly, that website was full. It was more like the D&D Beyond site has been at times, right, where there are articles, there are updates, there are in-progress reports on books. Third edition was full of that, right? It had downloads and it was, the expectation was if you're a D&D fan, you live on this site. And we've seen a departure from that over the years, right? To where it's not for the hardcore, it's actually more for the person who's trying to figure out what to do with D&D.

Speaker 1:
[43:38] Yeah. And the challenge of experienced players, experienced creators, dealing with new players is, we forget what they don't know.

Speaker 2:
[43:53] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:55] And one of the suggestions I was given on how to help new players get characters made, learn the rules, is pair them up with somebody who knows. Pair them up with an experienced player. And this was actually on the Eldritch Lore cast. And I said, that is a great idea and that is a terrible idea depending on the person who I'm pairing someone with. Because if I pair them with the right person, that's going to go swimmingly. If I pair them with the wrong person, that student will never come back to class because they will be terrified by this rabid D&D fan who is so enthusiastic and has all the best intentions in the world, but ends up just overwhelming and driving them away. And websites can do that as well, believe it or not. It can be overwhelming. It can be too much information or it can be the wrong information. So that's why we want to look at this website. How does it handle the different sections that it has? What information is it trying to impart? Because not only are we looking at it by what the new players need to know, we can look at it by what does Wizards of the Coast want people to see? What direction do they want people to look in? What are they pushing versus what might they not be? And I will say this now. I am a contractor for Wizards of the Coast. I am not a full-time employee. I had no input into what this website looks like. My opinions here are all my own for better or for worse.

Speaker 2:
[45:35] Yep, yep. Yeah, and I work with Wizards all the time and any number of other partners, and I, too, have no idea what the website would be. And it's fun looking at it. It's neat to just, and if you're at home, just go to dungeonsanddragons.com and just take in that first delight slash assault for your senses, right, as these scenes play out. It's really cool sort of effects. We get a Ravenloft page, and then it scrolls through to a D&D Beyond page with Player Way. It's got an image that's sort of the default. When you first get there, welcome to Dungeons & Dragons. It's got a dwarf jumping up, attacking a dragon, and there's all this fire around, really cool animations. There's the Dungeon Masters series. Clearly, they'll have this rotating series that will greet you here, which you talk about costs and what this will take, which is important business consideration. Someone has to be on this and maintain this. If they're working with an agency, it means paying that agency every time to say, well, swap out this thing for that other thing, even though we spent all that money on it, because now this is the new hotness. Then of course, there is the scrolling, where you can scroll below and see things, and there's the menu bar. So just that first look, that is important of what is it showing me? What are the options they've chosen to highlight? Then I can look at the menu and I can go down below. That's all very interesting.

Speaker 1:
[47:09] Yeah. And I need to reinforce what Teos just said. The reason that they pushed everybody toward the D&D Beyond website at first was because they had more control over that. It was less expensive to make changes there. They could get changes done more quickly there. With the highly graphical, highly mobile flashing sites like the dungeonsanddragons.com is now, it's harder to change, it's harder to design, it takes more money, it takes more time. So, you know that a lot of thought went into this because it's probably going to be much more static than you would get on D&D Beyond.

Speaker 2:
[48:02] Yeah, and interestingly, that has always been a question, right? Back when D&D Beyond was a separate company, okay, they were doing their thing and they were doing a lot of content, right? They had, you wrote an article series, they had James Haake writing a bunch, and they've had a number of people writing great articles over time. And that was because they were trying to get you to live on their website, which wasn't an official website, right? To the point, they did such a great job, as you said, that to the point where D&D actually said, you know, D&D Beyond is our main website, and they even removed the D&D website that people had used, and all that content vanished. And now this new website is back. And what's funny is, I went to the D&D Beyond website, I think this is a little longer than a week ago, but if you go to the D&D Beyond website now, it now has that sort of animation screen with a different sort of welcome to Ravenloft and character sheet. So there is some of that same thing, and that becomes one of those questions of like, we have two websites, if you do, you can have a slightly different goal for one, but the goal can start slipping because you don't want to not do what the other one did. And that's a question too, of how you avoid this confusion. Why are people coming to one site or the other? It's an interesting...

Speaker 1:
[49:18] Yep, that's one thing I want to talk about as we get further in, is what is the interaction between the two sites? What's the goal of one site? What's the goal of the next? So let's talk first about the opening screen. Teos already sort of described the animation. One of the first buttons you see is Discover. And if you click Discover, you have a couple of choices. One is called The Feeling of Play. The other is called Your Inner Hero. And so when you click on The Feeling of Play, you get a flashy image of text that says, You and your companions step into a cavern of jagged stone and echoing silence. The hairs on your neck rise, a shadow shift overhead. A beholder floats forward. It's many eyes watching. What do you do? All right. So right there, one of the things that you want players to understand is the game loop. You don't want to be pedantic about it like I am and say, Well, first you set up the scene and then you do that. But it's you are getting a narrative that affects you personally, and then the question, what do you do comes up. In this case, you have a choice of four things. You can say, I fight it. You can say, I study it. You can click, I talk to it, or you can click, I run away. So what do you do, Teos? Fight it, study it, talk to it, or run away?

Speaker 2:
[50:54] It's a beholder. I'm a new character. I choose, I run away.

Speaker 1:
[50:58] You run away. So it says, you notice a hidden passage and your party dashes to escape. Then a little icon comes up that says, does it work? And you have to click that. And I was like, oh, cool. We're going to have a die roll, right? We're going to have something that, because that's what the game is. It's right. It's narrative. It's what do you do? It's you make your choice. And then there's a die roll involved to see if you succeed or fail. And so I was like waiting for a die to roll across the screen. I was waiting for something. And it just says, you know, you get away. And then I went to another one and I clicked and it said, you, you know, you, it runs away from you if you fight it. And I was like, oh, you never fail. I don't know how I feel about that. But again, I am not the audience for this.

Speaker 2:
[51:56] Right. Yeah. And the good thing about this is they are giving you a light taste of, you know, I get to make choices. Different things happen. It doesn't quite show consequences, but different things happen. And then what it's you can play again and try a different thing, which might be actually the most disappointing thing to do. You can go back to the home page. You can create your hero or continue to journey to play on D&D Beyond is what it tells you. So at least it's a very clear funnel attempt, right? This idea of the funnel bringing people in and through to the experience. So yeah, it's maybe imperfect, but it's a hard task and you're trying to avoid having a giant choose your own adventure on your website.

Speaker 1:
[52:39] Right. Yeah. And that's where I need to stop and remind myself, this is not for me, right? I am the person who should not be selling this game in this instance, because I, my first inclination is, make it more, make it more, make it more, show more. And we don't need to show more to most people. We need to just get that experience across, show it in action and then say, are you ready for the next step? Now the next step, oh, go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[53:12] No, I was just, I think it's going to say the same thing, which is what we, you talked about how you could click on two different things. That was the first thing you could click on, to discover the feeling of play. But there's also the, your inner hero.

Speaker 1:
[53:26] Yeah, so your inner hero is asks the question, what if you could shape your own destiny? In Dungeons and Dragons, you can. The choice is yours. And then there is a icon that says, an icon that says, discover your D&D class. And you click it and you become an adventurer. So that whooshes past and it says, danger appears. How do you respond? And you have four choices. Do you respond with magic and knowledge? Do you respond with weapons and strength? Do you respond with strategy and cunning? Or do you respond with belief and insight? All right, Teos, what do you respond with?

Speaker 2:
[54:12] Well, so I did belief and insight.

Speaker 1:
[54:15] Okay, so if you click that, you get three more options. So we have four main options first and then three options underneath that. So four times three, Teos, the last I checked is 12. Do we see where this is leading?

Speaker 2:
[54:31] Yes, yes we do.

Speaker 1:
[54:32] These are classes, yes. Teos chose belief and insight. You get three more choices. Do you call upon the divine for help? Do you wield the power of nature or do you inspire courage as you smite evil?

Speaker 2:
[54:46] Well, I as an environmentalist, of course, had to click on wield the power of nature.

Speaker 1:
[54:51] Well, then Teos, you were told that you should play a druid.

Speaker 2:
[54:56] Ooh, there you go.

Speaker 1:
[54:58] Yep.

Speaker 2:
[54:58] Perfect.

Speaker 1:
[55:00] And you get a link that says go deeper into D&D Beyond. And if you click that, where should you go?

Speaker 2:
[55:10] I would think that I'd go to D&D Beyond.

Speaker 1:
[55:13] Where in D&D Beyond?

Speaker 2:
[55:16] That quick play character builder that we covered recently.

Speaker 1:
[55:20] Okay. Yeah, it takes you just to the My Characters page, where you would then have to click Create a Character, and then you would get to the choice of make your own, make a pre-made, do the quick build, or go to the full build.

Speaker 2:
[55:40] How do you feel about that?

Speaker 1:
[55:43] I want one more page in between those two. I don't want to be, and I say this thinking as a new user. That page is still a little more busy than I need it to be. I'm still a little lost on that page if I haven't used it 10,000 million times. I want to go right to the pre-made, or not pre-made, but right to the quick, and I want to make those choices.

Speaker 2:
[56:14] I agree with you because one of the things that happens with users is you start looking. So this web page, and usually start at the top left, and you look a little bit to the right, and then a little bit down. So what do you see? Well, you see a menu of everything that D&D Beyond offers at the top. So you might just go elsewhere. Then you've got to play anywhere, anytime, download the app, which would also get you into a place that's great to go, but not yet. And then you have the My Characters, which may make you think something's wrong if you don't see the create a character piece. So yeah, I can see that. I'm with you. I subscribe to your newsletter.

Speaker 1:
[56:52] Now, I say this as somebody who's had to deal with programmers critiquing other people's websites without knowing all of the ins and outs of resources, of time, of money, of directives of all those things. So I may be totally wrong, and this may be the best possible site it could have been based on all those factors. But now we see that transition from the marketing set, you know, funnel, as Teo said, side of everything into the actual place where you are interacting more directly with the rules that the same audience that is experienced and dedicated and very user focused needs to live as well.

Speaker 2:
[57:48] One thing that's interesting is if you're at that web page and you scroll down, you get to this Discover, which is try it out, that was what we did the first time, create your hero, which is what you did the second time, and continue to journey on D&D Beyond. And when you go there, it clicks you, it sets you to a page that has character creation method, very eye-catching, three graphics, standard, quick builder, pre-made. That's almost a better page for what you're talking about. That makes more sense than taking you to your characters, which for some reason that other link did.

Speaker 1:
[58:26] Yeah, it's a very small thing, but it can be the difference between somebody clicking one more time, and then maybe clicking one more time after that, and maybe clicking one more time after that, or just saying, I don't know what to do on this page, I'm out. So, that is the big welcome to Dungeons & Dragons new person. Let's let us show you what this is about. Is it enough?

Speaker 2:
[59:00] No, because people are going to come here for a lot of different reasons, right? They're going to want to see the various expressions of the D&D brand might have brought them in here to begin with, right? You could argue that somebody could come in here saying, I watch Stranger Things, I want to become a DM, or I want to come here and find other players, or I want to even understand what a D&D session is like. Can I watch someone play it and break it down for me? I heard there's this great Baldur's Gate video game, right? Any number of things like that, you could see, there are a lot of reasons why you might come to this page.

Speaker 1:
[59:39] Yeah, and so now we're getting into some interesting marketing slash user experience slash, I don't even know what the word I'm looking for is, territory, where we're trying to convert as many people as possible. Now, convert to what? That depends on the goals, right? Are we trying to convert them as just signing up in D&D Beyond? Are we trying to convert them to download the app? Are we trying to convert them to buy a subscription? Are we, yeah, all of those things. Are we trying to convert them just to get them into Discord? That becomes the question about what you want. Now, I wanna go a little bit further in because as you scroll across, we start with that Discover. Give me one second as my page loads.

Speaker 2:
[60:34] Which while you're doing that, I'll say the page load time is always a thing that's tough, right? Do you go with a quick load website that works so easily, you know, any computer supports it or not? And I did an interesting thing where, partly because I noticed my system was running a little slowly. And it was really kind of interesting to me. I, you know, looked at my system and how it was processing. And on the D&D website, in just running off that off my web browser, it was using somewhere between 1.2% of my CPU to 15% of my CPU, just being on that D&D website with its various graphics and things it's doing. My guess is on return trips, it's maybe lower. You know, there are enough cookies or cached information, but it was pretty high rate. But what I really noticed was I clicked on the link to the Ravenloft page. My CPU usage shot up to 40% and stayed there, even though that website wasn't doing anything new. It was just eating up 40% of my CPU. And that's one of those tough things that like, I've got a pretty good computer, you needed 40% of my processing. So, you know, something's kind of going on there. And those are challenges too, right? When you're trying to feed in these graphics and they're endlessly revolving. Well, if they consume enough, you know, memory or CPU, that is a problem to people bounce away from that.

Speaker 1:
[62:05] Yeah, it would be interesting to see on a mobile device to how it works.

Speaker 2:
[62:09] Yeah, I have looked at it briefly, but not in any great length.

Speaker 1:
[62:16] So side scrolling there are or if you wait long enough, it will automatically scroll to the right. And you first get the new series Dungeon Masters. So we talked about in our previous segment how streaming and actual plays were a big part of the spread of D&D's popularity in the mid 2010s. And so it's great when you don't have to do any work and get a bump like we saw with Critical Role, like we saw with Stranger Things. But Wizards of the Coast is now highlighting, it's the second thing you come to as you scroll, that there's this new show. So they are definitely investing not just in the company, right? With all the new folks they've hired, with the new website, they are taking the time to do this show and have pretty good production values on it. So this is the, all right, I've come to the site, oh, now I know sort of how the game is supposed to play. I can make a character, I can do this thing. How does it work? Well, now we're going to be given this as the second thing we see. Here is a show that you will be able to watch. We have, we only have right now the trailer for the show, which is only about 30 seconds long, which may be good, may be bad, I don't know. But you can see that the company recognizes this, the importance of actual plays, and the importance of them controlling the message that these acts, that this actual play does. Otherwise, you could just say, go watch any old actual play.

Speaker 2:
[64:06] Right.

Speaker 1:
[64:08] What do you think?

Speaker 2:
[64:10] A lot of things. Website wise, I think that it's good that it hits you up with, you know, something interesting here. Click on this trailer, which will hopefully tell you everything you need to know in visual form in case you can't read because your attention span has been destroyed by modern devices. It does say new. What? It says new episodes weekly on Wednesday at 6 30 p.m. Pacific Time or D&D's YouTube channel. So, you know, the critical stuff is there. And if you scroll down, it says, what is it? It takes you to cast pictures so you can get excited about that, presumably. And then down below shows you sort of grayed out that there will be these free, claimable encounters and stuff. So I think this is all really good. Zooming out a bit to the show itself, I find a lot of recent actual plays, it's like everybody knows, everybody involved in the show knows how exciting it was to see the best part of, say, a critical role episode. And they're trying to have that happen every second of an actual play. And I get why, because that's great entertainment, in the same way that if you watch the community episodes where the Dungeon Master does all the roles and directs all the action, because that's exciting for TV, right? But what happens is it creates, it's not even just about like the Matt Mercer effect of unrealistic play, it just doesn't feel like what the game actually is because it's so acted, so exciting, so interesting, so my backstory mode ever, it can just feel a little unreal, you know? It sort of exists in a sort of separate bubble from normal game play, and what I like about a lot of the actual plays that I did catch on to at Ginkgo or things that were sort of more from the earlier eras, you really felt like they were real people playing, and they are being silly and funny in measured ways and real ways, rather than feeling like I must act this and give you the dramatic moment now that my character will bring to life, you know? It's just something about that. So, you know, but I could, of course, be wrong. What do I know about what is going to get clicks and hits? And maybe you want the biggest stars and whatever. For me, what I would like here on this website is an actual play that teaches me to play the game. And so I would like it to be very real, be very everyday, almost like, and they did link to it somewhere on this web page, the the NFL team that was playing D&D for the first time.

Speaker 1:
[66:49] Right.

Speaker 2:
[66:49] That's very real, right? They're being silly and funny and trying to figure out whether they even want to play this game. And that's almost a better introduction to help you understand. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it's it's it's very translatable, very identifiable for a random person to come and go like, oh, oh, this is what it's like to be new. This is how I'll learn. These are the skills I'll develop. That's how you play.

Speaker 1:
[67:12] I agree with everything you said, except this is also for a different audience. This is also for an audience that the new Ravenloft book is coming out and they are using things. I want to know if I want to buy this book based on these subclasses, which some of these players are playing, based on the monsters that the game master's using, based on the lore in which. And so there's that element to it. And trying to serve many audiences with one thing, as we talked about it in the first segment, D&D 5e did it. But it's a very difficult thing to do. And so, we'll talk later about other media that is highlighted on this. So next, as we scroll across, we come to Community. And the site gives us links to the D&D Discord and to the Start Playing site.

Speaker 2:
[68:20] It's also interesting, the Community piece has, to the left of it, Debra Anwalt playing D&D in an escape room, which to me is not Community.

Speaker 1:
[68:33] Well, that's the million dollar question is, it is not, but it also shows something that a new player might be familiar with, which is an escape room, in a D&D way. So it's definitely not come to this Community, but it is a sort of learn to play, see what you can do with your friends sort of thing. That's the best justification I can give for it.

Speaker 2:
[69:14] Yeah, it has these interesting community highlights. So yeah, so it's this sort of like you see, Deborah and Wall play, which, okay, maybe that's Community. Then you have a social bar and a Community, so bar with icons for social things like going off to Instagram or whatever. Community, Discord, Twitch, Reddit, and then Community highlights. And there are two separate boxes which you can scroll each to two options. You can watch the Forgotten Realms one shot, this very produced actual play they did before, or learn about Dungeons and Dragons Fan Expo London, oh, and Universal Fan Fest Nights. And on the other side, Need a DM, Start Playings Got You, D&D and Discord. And the whole time I thought when I clicked on Community, I was going to get to Organized Play, I was going to get to Virtual Weekends. And that didn't happen, right? Nothing here told me, hey, there's an Organized Play program. Now, maybe they'll add D&D Encounters once that really fires off, but I would have thought that would have been here because Community is Store, Community is Conventions, right? Legends of Greyhawk we talked about, our main segment just released. That is a great way to build Community. You can run that in a coffee shop. Where is that? It's not here. And I feel like this Forgotten Realms one-shot, maybe that's super fun, but I don't see that as Community nor that awesome Deborah on Wall video, which I really love. It's got the Dungeon dudes. So it's really super fun to watch, but to me, that's not a Community piece.

Speaker 1:
[70:49] Yep. As I said at the start of the segment, it's interesting what they chose to include. And it's also interesting what they chose not to include. Now, they, again, as I've said so many times, they is a term that we don't know who they is because they might be one individual person making this decision. It might be a small group. It might be a committee. We don't know who put the final word in on what these things need to be.

Speaker 2:
[71:19] If you click on that start playing link, it is a nice link that is how to find a great professional dungeon master. So, you know, which is also, you know, click on start playing fine games. But it does talk about things that consider your budget, do a one shot, communicate your expectations. It's some pretty reasonable as pages go, a pretty reasonable place to link to. It's not just the search engine, but a guidance thing to think about. And then you can click on it. But I would love to see those virtual weekends there. I, you know, there's, to me, it's no different a partner level between start playing and virtual weekends, but also things like, you know, all the games you can play at PAX and at Gen Con. And like that, to me, community should be, where can I play? Where can I find people? And you should cover a broader thing than what's here.

Speaker 1:
[72:10] It also mentions the D&D Beyond roadmap as somewhere under this community section. So you click in, it takes you to the D&D Beyond article where it says, this is the roadmap that we're going to follow for D&D Beyond. And there's also Adventures from Our Partners section, which takes you to the roadmap for the partner content that they have up on D&D Beyond, which we've talked about. And I thought this was so interesting that even before there really is a place where it's like, go here to buy books, there's, hey, look what our partners are doing. Which, which to me was odd, but also refreshing that they just sort of.

Speaker 2:
[72:57] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[72:58] They sort of.

Speaker 2:
[73:00] Well, yeah. And yeah. But also this isn't community, right? This is what I would have thought would have been in the TRPG section. It is great to have these things. And I like the way it's created a sort of interesting, you know, the latest from across the D&D multiverse, what will enhance your play, what to look forward to. Those are neat ways to ask. But but yeah, huh, interesting.

Speaker 1:
[73:21] And then we get to inspiring. And this is just a history of the additions for the last 50 years. And so you can click across this timeline of original D&D, first edition AD&D, et cetera, et cetera. Do they mention basic D&D in here?

Speaker 2:
[73:39] Yeah, at the all the way to the left, you will know. No, just OD&D, which is interesting. Yeah. So then it's AD&D. Yeah, they don't have everything. It's interesting. I guess what they're trying to do is say, look at the long history we've had, right, creativity for over 50 years. But I would have taken that stuff from community and put it here. You can still have this as well if you'd like. But but to me, this is, you know, if I'm looking at that top level bar, Discover, Community, TRPG, Video Games, Movies and Streaming, Dungeon Masters, Actual Play, when I think about, hey, I'd like to buy something or I want to know what the products are, I would be going to TRPG and showing me the cover of OD&D or, you know, Forgotten Realms Adventures. That's fun in the inspire as a little bit. But but I want to know what I have for offer. And that's what was up above in community. And so it feels a little misplaced. But yeah, interesting.

Speaker 1:
[74:39] The next section is Exploring Digital. And it has a games section. And the first game that they show when you log there, when you access this part of the site is Warlock. OK, it's the game that they have coming out. That makes sense. Gives a description of what it is. Oh, you can have it on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox. OK, cool. And then I saw there were three others. And I played the game of what other things by highlighting under Digital for Games. And I thought, well, obviously Baldur's Gate 3. So I click and there's Baldur's Gate 3. And I'm like, what other digital things? So I click one more and it's the Battlemarked Demio Crossover thing and I'm like, OK, cool. What is the last, what? I can't even, they're not going to do like, I didn't even, I just had, and it was Idol Champions of the Forgotten Realms. And I was like, yeah, that's a thing. Is that still?

Speaker 2:
[75:39] It's still a thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:41] It's still a thing. OK, cool. And it just made me wonder, like, how were those chosen and what, what are you trying to capture through these different things? Obviously Baldur's Gate 3 makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[75:56] And I think it's as simple as you and I know we've covered many times that these quarterly discussions to shareholders. Video games is this huge investment. It's a big part of the franchise strategy. And while Warlock is sort of the obvious one thing we've got for the future, that's kind of, you know, you've got to fill in the space and make it seem like there's a little bit more there. So you put more, even if reality is it's Baldur's Gate and Warlock as the real things that are going on.

Speaker 1:
[76:25] But you know what's not there is Exodus.

Speaker 2:
[76:29] Yeah, I wonder if because it's not D&D, but I bet they thought about it, right?

Speaker 1:
[76:35] Yeah, I just, it's just.

Speaker 2:
[76:37] But it is a role playing game they provide, but it's the renegade. So, you know, it's, oh, whew.

Speaker 1:
[76:42] It's curious, it's curious. So then we scroll down one more and we get to cinematic.

Speaker 2:
[76:48] They could have had all of the older video games that have been re-released, but that's probably just to call back to people who have nostalgia and already know about them. So it's probably okay to skip.

Speaker 1:
[76:59] But the nostalgia for me was the previous one where it showed all the old games. It's like, oh, I remember playing first edition, and oh, maybe I could continue. I could play. That was so much fun. So if you're getting nostalgia there, you might as well nostalgia down here. Next we get cinematic. And I did the same thing. I'm like, cinematic. Well, obviously the first thing they show is Honor Among Thieves. Makes perfect sense. What else can they show for cinematic? Because we've got other stuff that's been talked about, but nothing that's been released. And so I click over and it's like, okay, Stranger Things Season 5. All right. I guess you probably, if you already know about D&D, you probably already know about Stranger Things, but maybe not. So you can click over there. And then for the life of me, I could not come up with the last one.

Speaker 2:
[77:46] Yeah, me neither. All right.

Speaker 1:
[77:48] When I saw it, I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. It was the Secret Level episode, Role for Discovery. And I'm like, okay, that's cool too. And, but you could just see they're like, they're getting ready for these next things. They're preparing to share new stuff. So that was sort of, any other comments?

Speaker 2:
[78:14] Yeah, one thing is, you know, when you look at the top bar, okay, TRPG was weird. Video games made sense in terms of what it is. Movies and streaming. So we, that's where we saw these venture into cinematic quests as the little cool looking icon next to the videos. And those three trailers you talked about. First is, I don't know where I can watch Honor Among Thieves. And I know that's hard because it changes. But some link to where I could reliably purchase this video would have been helpful because this movie is amazing. And being able to buy this movie and watch it would be really good to have. And then it said streaming. And that's where I go, well, you know, actually that Deborah and Walthing could actually fit here or any number of other things. Right. It says movies and streaming, but it doesn't really deliver on streaming unless we're just talking about streaming television. Then you should just say movies and TV. But I think that it's worth saying that if what we want is entertainment, maybe that's where those actual plays should be as well. I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[79:25] So overall, I was excited just to see a new site that was obviously thought through. The art is amazing. The usability is, for me, fairly good. So kudos, I think, in general, to the thorough nature of what they tried to cover here without overwhelming a new person, while still serving an existing audience.

Speaker 2:
[80:03] Yeah. No, I agree with that. It is one of the better websites that I've seen for this type of approach. Now, what it's not doing... You know, it's interesting to go to D&D Beyond, for example, and say, well, what's on D&D Beyond, right? And you obviously have all of the, like, your maps, my campaigns, characters, right? But, and that's easy to think, well, that's where I want it because there are those tools. But you know what the D&D website didn't tell me is that these things exist, right? The D&D website didn't say, you can make your characters, you can build campaigns that gather characters, and you invite people to, you can share content through your campaign. You can, there is a thing called maps, and here's what it does, right? None of that was on there. The Avery Discord bought any of that. And there are things I wouldn't add because it complicates things, but these are all things that aren't captured. The idea of looking up the free rules, right? The SRD, right, that you can create for D&D isn't covered. And when we go to the community section of D&D Beyond, that's where you see things like the D&D Beyond forums, organized play sections, the Find Players Lookup box, right? Legends of Greyhawk information, right? There's hilariously no Adventurers League on the drop down for D&D Beyond, but I think you and I know why. And then, of course, there's the Marketplace. And none of those things were linked to the D&D site. And I think those should be probably under this TRPG and community area. And it's worth finding a little place to put them in there. And maybe even that, you know, D&D Beyond is giving you all these articles that can be interesting, right? Whether it's on a lot of times these days, it's on partner type things. But sometimes we've seen articles that are really cool ideas on how to use different products and breathe life into them. You know, you wrote a series on how to write adventures. But even in recent times, there have been some interesting blogs here that would be really cool to showcase. And you might not know that that's what D&D Beyond is giving you, because if you come in new to this site, you think it's just where you go to make your character. And so it could have a place here.

Speaker 1:
[82:18] All well taken. The new site also leads us to a landing page for all of the new Ravenloft stuff. So if we go to dungeonsanddragons.com/ravenloft, we get all of the news that we delivered in our new section, or most of it. So if you didn't listen to our new section, we will give it a skim here. The main page gives you the elevator pitch for this, Ravenloft Horrors Within. Tonight, your party's greatest nightmare is the one you create. Bring fear to the table with Ravenloft, the horrors within, the complete horror toolkit. With everything you need to create personalized horror campaigns and strike fear into the hearts of your players, pre-order now. So the landing page does its job, good stuff. And then we get to explore. What can we explore here? We can explore the domains of dread, the dark lords or denizens of the mist. And each one is a little summary of what is a domain of dread, why are there 16 of them. The dark lords talk about the rulers of these domains, what their story is in general, which is they rule these domains, but they're prisoners themselves. And then the denizens of the mist, we get to know that there are new adventures and new monsters that will be presented in this book.

Speaker 2:
[84:01] And there's nice art there for each of those options from the upcoming book that's neat. We then get a watch section, which brings us back to that actual play that we already talked about. Then the unlock playable content area, which shows grayed out, coming soon type things, but you'll eventually be able to flip through all of them and see that all those exist, which certainly builds the case for pre-ordering when you see all these theoretically neat things that you're gonna miss out on otherwise. And then the section Haunted Heroes, again, really gorgeous art from the upcoming book. And this just simply lets you flip through the various classes that are here, the Grave Domain, Cleric, College of Spirits, Bard, Reanimator, Artificer, Hollow Warden, Ranger, Phantom Rogue, Shadow Sorcery Sorcerer, Undead Patron, Warlock. So you can look through those and see the character art. You can't click on them, but it does show the images of them and the names.

Speaker 1:
[84:59] Then it tells you where you can get the ultimate horror toolkit. So it's the bundle that you can get, which will give you both the digital and the physical copy of the book, as well as a physical Taroka deck, the DM screen, a map pack specifically for Ravenloft, all the options from the Play Along pack, which we've talked about, the D&D Encounters mini adventure, Shadows of Sithicus, and then the digital dice set. I'm waiting for the physical version of the digital dice set, Teos. Where can I get that?

Speaker 2:
[85:38] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about that. I think we talked to the D&D Beyond folks about that, where they said if you can figure out how to make spelljammer dice that explode into ships when you roll a crit, they'll make them. But yeah, I'm sure they'll be dice partners anyway. We fear not. But the ultimate bundle is a lot. This is where you get into that question of where D&D's revenue is coming from and what's good long term strategy. It's 150 bucks for that ultimate bundle, and that is a big price. It is getting towards Beatle and Grimm's type territories, of course, you can also get. And the what I always worry about is it can create a sense that, hey, we're getting all these awesome sales from D&D Beyond. That's what we care about. But there is a reason D&D seeded, licensed out to Beatle and Grimm's because it's great to have a cut of that money. But what your focus was, was wide, right? Like we talked about our first segment, you're trying to bring in lots of new players and that's your sort of focus and not Wales, right? Not the people with the most money, despite our K-shaped economy. You're trying to reach out to everybody to build lifelong fans that will buy at any level, but be part of that vibrant community, be part of that expression of D&D. So things like the Baldur's Gate Video Game comes out and it's an enormous success because all these people think of D&D as having had a touch point in their lives. And so there's a dance. Can you have both? Sure, probably. But you have to be a little bit careful that you don't so focus on D&D beyond to where you've forgotten your gaming stores or what it's like to just pick up that hardback book and play.

Speaker 1:
[87:36] Yeah, which of course you can do. I love this idea of the Play Along Pack. I think it makes the actual play more watchable for a wider audience. It's not just new folks. It's not just experienced folks that want to see the stuff. But it gives you a reason to get invested before the book is out. And I am getting something I can play right now with my players, even though the book does not come out for two months. Get. Yes, I want that.

Speaker 2:
[88:23] Yeah, I will see how that cadence plays, right? I also think back on, say, the D&D Encounters season, second season of D&D Encounters during fourth edition. That was for Dark Sun. It began just before the books released, but the majority of the season was played while you could have the books. And it was really neat to see people get excited about the fact that this world was so different and get up and go and buy that book from the store and then sit back down. And when you're playing only previews for a long time, you might then decide you've had your fill and actually don't want to buy it. I don't know that that'll happen, right? But I wonder to what extent the delay of a couple of months, where the season, right? When we look at that road map and we're talking about, wait, what's the timing like? The idea that, well, the season begins when things are available on the streaming show and these advance packs, does that build great excitement to everybody who wants to buy it? Or does it sort of make you then start looking forward to the next thing? Because what ends up happening is by the time the new book comes out, Ravenloft comes out, everybody's switching gears to talk about the next season. When I think what you want is a lot of energy for that book release.

Speaker 1:
[89:45] Yeah. And I think that in order to get this, other than the first play along pack, in order to get the play along pack, you will have already purchased the book.

Speaker 2:
[89:56] Maybe. Yeah. Or at least for the second one, but it isn't free. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[90:00] Right. And there are several. It looks like there, I think there's at least eight and possibly more. So the people that get that play along pack content, may be using it in their home games, but it's only small bits of it and they've already bought it.

Speaker 2:
[90:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[90:21] When the D&D encounters season starts, as far as we know, that will be right around the time that the book drops. So that will be more in line with what you're talking about with the Dark Sun 4th edition where people will play it for the first time in the game store and be right there when hopefully the books are available, the map packs are available, all of that stuff's there.

Speaker 2:
[90:48] Yeah. It's going to be really interesting to watch and what I do see, I may sound negative at times, but what I do see is the D&D team being very intentional about all of this. I think smart questions are being asked. There are so many, hopefully someone listens to our show and thinks, man, there are a lot of ways you can do this. This is complex. This is difficult to chart a course and I think they are doing a really good job with it. I'm excited to see how it plays out and what we all learn from it. They'll learn, we'll learn. And you know this website will evolve and if there's one thing I can say is incredibly, incredibly likely, one day this website will be gone.

Speaker 1:
[91:33] Except you will be able to pull it up and show what it was.

Speaker 2:
[91:38] Yeah, we'll have a, take your screenshots now for the future show. Yep.

Speaker 1:
[91:43] Cool. Well, thank you all for listening. I hope that was informative and fun and enlightening. We want to thank our patrons, especially all our new patrons out there, for supporting us. Did you have anything to say, Teos, before we head into the closing?

Speaker 2:
[92:00] Just that, you know, next week, stay tuned as we talk about some classics. Against the Giants, I'm holding up.

Speaker 1:
[92:06] Against the Giants. That's right. We'll dig into the past adventure module that inspired Storm King's Thunder. So thank you to our Master of Dungeons supporters. We really do appreciate you helping us out here, keeping this light going that you used to see, me at least. Thank you to our Master of Realm supporters. And thank you, especially to our Master of the Multiverse patrons. Some of you will be getting your name mangled for the first time, starting with Agile Monk of Fantasy Companion Workshops, Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios, Craig Bailey, Rudy Chainsaw Basso, David Basti-Ensen, Derrick the Bearded GM, Steve Bissonnette, Merrick Blackman, Boss John from Duality Press, Calvin Bridges of Alos, Brobo Balin, Kevin Criswell, DeadInertia DM, Evil John, Evan at Nimbleco, Kevin Davis, Will Doyle, Andy Edmonds at nerdronomicon.com, James Fisher, Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios, Ted and Guyana of Frog Helmet Games, Ben Heisler and Paige Leitman, Simon the Hunter, Sean Hurst, Hyperlexic, The Jaunty Mantis TTRPG Podcast, Mark and Mary's Gaming Compound, The Mighty Jerd, JR of the Twilight Perspective, JT. Evans, Brian King, Jim Klingler, Gail Kiermendi, Will Lane, Leftria, Chad Blench, Paul Mata, The Mathemagician, Jaron from Mathis Arcanum, Eric Mengi, Anna B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography, Trey Macklemore, Michael, John Mickey, Sean Molley, Falcon Neal, Tom Nelson, Creator of the Deck of Player Safety, DT Norris of DTN Dragons, Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo, Philip and Lindsay, Frog Prince at Tentacles, Squelching Wetly, Post Fiction RPG Audio, Ricardo from Might Adventure, Robert Pasley, have a good time playing this weekend, Robert. Vladimir Prenner from Croatia, Joe Rosso, Ozymandias Rex, Runner Rick, David Wrightout, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Andy Chakny, Krishna Simons, Tim Smith, Spark from Dunor Games, Jeff Stevens at jeffstevensgames.com, Josh and Lee Wanika of the Tabletop Journeys podcast, Talos the Stormlord, Jeremy Talloman from Masters of Alchemy, Trace, Ryan Trouk, Joe Tyler, Marcelo de Valesquez de ValiantDM, VedwoclesG, James Walton, Graham Ward, Jason Ward from Accidental Cyclops Games, Javier Waziak, Waterford Wizard, Chris Webster and Zee Walt Winfrey. Thank you all so much for your support. We will be adding more names to this list next week. If you would like to support the show and also get some really cool gaming content, you can go to patreon.com/masteringd&d. If you can't help us out monetarily, that's okay. You can also help us by going to wherever you listen to this podcast, giving us a review, a rating, give us those five stars, go to YouTube, youtube.com/atmasteringdungeons and give us comments and likes and subscriptions and all of that. Teos, what have you been up to and where can people find it?

Speaker 2:
[96:06] I have been cracking sons, so you can't find that yet. But I do hope to have this week my breakdown that I finally concluded of all of the new 2026 monsters and how that changes the math overall. So look for a blog post for that and a video as well. Hopefully, I get that out this week. Depends on how much cracking of sons I do, but we'll see.

Speaker 1:
[96:32] Well, a lot of sun cracking will be happening in this household as well. And yes, and so you can find me and the show on the social medias at Shawn Merwin or at Mastering D&D. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Teos. What are we going to do now?

Speaker 2:
[96:55] Well, you know, I'm going to build up my own website for Against the Giants, where I go into my fanfic. You can download all my fanfic for all the different giant types and why I love each and every one of them so much.

Speaker 1:
[97:10] And I'm going to set in front about what I did wrong on the two giants that we've given away for free and wondering, why didn't I design them a different way?

Speaker 2:
[97:19] No, they were great. You have to love your work, Shawn.

Speaker 1:
[97:22] I do love my work.

Speaker 2:
[97:24] That belly attack alone. Worth the price of admission, if you ask me. Shawn put in a thing where when you go up to attack this giant, he sends you flying with his belly, possibly interrupting your attacks. I that's.

Speaker 1:
[97:41] You didn't like the the stone giant acne.

Speaker 2:
[97:45] I didn't think of it that way. Now I like it more. That's beautiful. See? See, we draw upon what we know.

Speaker 1:
[97:51] That's true.