Tl;dm - A D&d Dm Podcast

Alan and Tyler get together to talk about taking your heroes to zeros... essions. What they are, why they're important, and suggestions for how to navigate them.

The duo discusses dealing with magic and creating benchmarks, amongst other topics.

The Dungeon Dudes (not trademarked, we'll never say that again) have both started playing in Wizards of the Coast's Adventurers League for 5E, and they talk about their experiences and the different facets of play that come forth when you leave your self-contained homebrew behind.

We sit down with James Dugan, a player in Alan's game, who co-created and DM'ed an entire adventure for the party. We hear what he thought going in, how it went, and what he took from it!

The TL;DMs have a special guest for their 16th episode: One Shot RPG network founder James D'Amato. James is behind some of the best and most successful tabletop podcasts out there: Campaign, OneShot, Critical Success, and most recently, the the Dungeon Dome livestream. The episode leads off with a reality check, as everyone talks about how their personal experiences might skew their perceptions of the gaming community as general. James also leads Alan and Tyler in a discussion on the idea of personal play--the parts of D&D and RPGs in general that happen outside the session. Whether that includes character creation, session planning, or just imagining your character on their downtime, James widens the concept of what "playing D&D" can be. They wrap up the episode discussing what systems are worth borrowing from or modifying to enhance or expand the 5e experience.

Tyler's campaign in the West just had a massive character death, one that shook the party to the core. And it felt fated, because it was all the dice's doing. Alan and Tyler talk through the experience of that death: what it meant for the characters, how it felt at the table, and as a DM how to handle the tricky business of having a character die in a way that feels honest and earned and satisfying for everybody. Especially the character's player.

The DM dudes talk about their most recent live play session, and use that as a blast off into discussing some useful tips for creating story and adventure in an improv heavy session. From there they discuss another recent session that Alan found... not to his taste. The pitfall of an unhappy player, truly D&D's oldest scourge.

Part 2 of our third Live Play session! Tyler continues to DM Alan and Jeff in a flashback side-quest to explore the roots of Jeff's Firbolg Jason Bigman and his new best friend, Pepperon Cini the "Dwarf". Their adventures take them deeper into the forest and truly into the rest of their lives. Once more, the magic of D&D and improvisation.

Welcome to another Live Play from the tl;dms! Tyler's game had a week where only Alan and Jeff could play, so Tyler improvised a flashback session by jumping back 500 years into Jeff's Firbolg's past. Alan put together a spitfire little Halfl--... Dwarf... named Pepperon Cini using Matt Mercer's Gunslinger archetype. And a rousing search for bat guano was had! Check out Live Play 6 for the other half of this D&D duo's adventure!

Alan and Tyler talk about their most recent sessions and how they each tried a different technique to pull in their players. They also read a 5-star iTunes review and promise more where that comes from! After the session updates, they talk about "squeaky wheels", players who aren't "that guy" but also seem to need a little more attention than the rest of your players, and how to properly keep them active without neglecting the rest of the table.

 A frequent topic in Dungeons and Dragons support forums, especially for DMs/GMs, is dealing with problem players at the table. Whether it's "doesn't play well with others" character build archetypes or simply disrespectful out-of-character conduct, the TL;DMs spend some time breaking down what to look out for and nipping early signs of problems in the bud. They explain why interpersonal problems are the responsibility of the DM to handle. After some tips and tools to help prevent "that guy" problems from snowballing, Alan and Tyler talk about ways to pull your players into the creative and world building aspect of your game. By leveraging your players' personalities and perspectives and allowing them to describe their world in character, Alan and Tyler argue that DnD can easily become a hugely rewarding collaborative experience.

Sometimes the parts that we cut from episodes about other topics are just good enough to warrant release on their own. In this bonus episode, Alan & Tyler talk about the Fifth Edition economy and some strategies they're trying out to make money feel valuable without distracting too much from the other aspects of DnD. What strategies do you use to ? Tweet at the podcast @TLDMpodcast and we'll gladly share your thoughts on the show!

In this followup from Live Play 3, Alan's PCs in the Eastern Campaign find themselves in the courtroom for their trial. Facing charges that they are definitely culpable for, the gang decides to plead not guilty and try their luck before judges and gods. Of course, this involves donning Southern Lawyer characters and a lot of mugging to the courtroom. Truly, Dungeons and Dragons can be whatever your table wants it to be. Also, true to our word, here is a shout out for Becca's Twitter: @Becca_Barish

Way back in the second episode of TL;DM, Alan discussed an early D&D session of the Eastern Campaign that made him feel like a giant fireball of dungeon master failure in which the party broke into a house looking for evidence and came up empty handed. In this recorded live play that session finally gains importance as the party finds itself facing charges for the crime--something they had long forgotten about. The wake up call is sudden as the party is whisked off to an arraignment and found in possession of stolen goods. Suddenly finding themselves out on bail with four hours to prepare for trial, the team must make the rounds and figure out their defense to the accusations of the court. Of course, no courtroom scene is complete without procedural drama and stereotypical southern lawyer accents, so cue the soap opera announcements and Foghorn Leghorn impression, so check out the Live Play 4 episode for the actual proceedings!

After a long recording break (hooray for backlogging!) the TL;DMs return to talk about how and why to use variant and homebrew rules/mechanic systems in Dungeons & Dragons. Since it's been a while, they spend the first few minutes catching up on what's been going on in their games over the last few sessions--and realize that there have been more than a few big developments. Then, it's off to the races with the pair discussing a topic that's been hot in the D&D online community recently: the Mearls Initiative variant. Tyler and Alan break down the pros and cons of the system and touch on Colville's Initiative version-- a variant of Mearls' variant. The rest of the episode continues with discussing other initiative options and solving a problem specific to the TL;DMs' game world: rests. Of course, no custom rules conversation is complete without a foray into magic item creation. What are your homebrew and variant rules? What custom magic items have you made? What are your thoughts on alternate initiativ

Tyler continues his underground session: Alan figures something out midgame that is really really hard to pretend Soak doesn't notice. Eon and Mark's true colors start to come out, and the party confronts a villain and fucks it up. The party gets in way over their head and is forced to retreat.

In our first live play episode, Tyler takes the reins to continue his dungeon crawl in the sewers and ruins under Fossden. The characters are surprised to discover that death seems to not be a final frontier for them, and they get revenge on a group of corrupt guards that almost killed them the session before. There's also a considerable amount of butt stuff. Maybe not a lot, but certainly enough to warrant... consideration. What's ghouler than being Ghoul?

Alan and Tyler talk about making travel feel important and worlds feel big in Dungeons and Dragons without gratuitous unplayable DM monologuing--or worse, accidentally enticing your players off on a tangent that has nothing to do with anything. The TL;DMs also talk about playable races, the power level of certain racial traits, and why certain races get banned from play. They also get a little deeper into the races of Serranea specifically and why they're like that. They both reveal some of the goofy one-shot ideas they have planned for the non-canonical side campaign. Alan also made his wife cry in the monster campaign--a recap of the story is available in the links below.   References in this episode: One-Punch Man - Pretty funny show, and probably decent source material for character and monster creation Elves - Hated by basically every other race and monster in DnD, and in the Forgotten Realms specifically. What did that do? Tell us. Final Monster Campaign Session Recap - Shout out to Kelley Greene, Alan'

Tyler and Alan welcome Jeff Murdoch, the player behind the mischievous Mark McGrath--perhaps the most alias-ridden character in Serranea.   The trio talk about the character relationships in Tyler's campaign and go a little in depth on what's been going on interpersonally during the adventure in the sewers of Fosstin. Since Mark is Jeff's first time playing a caster, they use Bard as a means to talk about some spells, and some mechanical elements to the drugs that Tyler introduced to the Shiran group. Jeff also gets a chance to ask some questions about the world at large and the overarching narrative between the two campaigns. He's also curious about how much power a DM should be able to have over player characters and permanent consequences. Matt Colville also comes up. Again. And Alan has absolutely no problem with him. The segment "Made Up or Pre-Planned?" also returns.

Tyler and Alan recount some fun dungeon delving moments from the two campaigns, and then segue into discussing dungeon design, the role and creation of traps, and NPC generation.   They also talk about the balance between how much of their D&D sessions are prepared and how much is improvised, with a game that has been dubbed "pre-planned or made up?"