375 - Night's Black Agents

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Here is a final “spooky” episode for everyone! DMs Rob and Matt review Kenneth Hite’s Night’s Black Agents. It’s “Spies vs. Vampires” in a “mystery inside a thriller.” While it may not be the perfect system, (or the perfect system for Matt and Rob), it is an endlessly fascinating bit of TTRPG design. It may have some of the most interesting and useful campaign building tools of any rule book. While it’s maybe not for slacker DMs, if you like to prep your campaign using flow charts and story maps or if the phrase “dramatic villain response algorithm” fills you with glee, then NBA (Night’s Black Agents) is for you! Plus, Rob and Matt finally get to chat about GUMSHOE. 

Night’s Black Agents
https://pelgranepress.com/nights-black-agents/ 

GUMSHOE System
https://pelgranepress.com/2018/02/14/gumshoe/

Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice

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TEASER - MORE Lessons from Baldur's Gate 3!

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Two years late, but Matt has finally finished Baldur's Gate 3, which means we can talk about what you can take away from it as a game master! Here's a few tips and some advice about what to do, what not to do, what worked, and what didn't. Don't get mad at us.

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374 - Spooky Adventure Recommendations

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Happy Halloween! Do you need a last minute one-shot (or two or three-shot) adventure to get your players into the holiday spirit? DMs Rob and Matt have 7 or so adventures to fright and delight your role-players! 

Death House https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/Curse%20of%20Strahd%20Introductory%20Adventure.pdf 

Mothership - Haunting of Ypsilon IV 
https://www.tuesdayknightgames.com/products/the-haunting-of-ypsilon-14

Mothership - The Plea
https://goatinthewoodgames.itch.io/the-plea-a-trifold-module 

Pathfinder 1e - Carrion Hill 
https://paizo.com/products/btpy8baj?Pathfinder-Module-Carrion-Hill/1000 

Vaesen - Summer in December  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/331182/summer-in-december 

Delta Green - Observer Effect https://shop.arcdream.com/products/delta-green-observer-effect-paperback 

Rippers - The Last Lion  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/162471/rippers-resurrected-the-last-lion 

Rippers - https://peginc.com/savage-settings/rippers/

Teeth - https://teethrpg.itch.io/

Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice

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373 - A Gathering of Gamers with Matt Shoemaker

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Matt and Rob talk with historian, game designer, and GenCon expert Matt Shoemaker about his new book, Gathering of Gamers!

Free PDF: https://works.hcommons.org/records/kfcpx-xqb42

https://best50yearsingaming.com

Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice

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372 - The Joy of Mapping

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Maps. We love them. Love reading them , love planning adventures. Love seeing how things relate topographically.

Maps are knowledge. Maps are a form of power. Maps are also fun! Let’s talk about how to create them for your TTRPG games. 

Links:

Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice

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367 - Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City

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DMs Rob and Matt review what might be the best pointcrawl ever designed, Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City 2e. Forests of meat, underwater VOMEs, psychic cats, and not-quite-liches await your caravan as you transverse the prismatic heavy metal wastes on a definitely Dying Earth. It rules. It rocks. Check it out. 

Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e: https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/collections/wizard-thief-fighter

Just the PDF: https://wizardthieffighter.itch.io/uvg-2e

The sequel, Our Golden Age: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/exalted-funeral/our-golden-age-an-ultra-violet-grasslands-rpg-sequel

"Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022)," Traverse Fantasy, Marcia B. https://traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2023/12/plagiarism-in-unconquered-2022.html

Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice

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TEASER - Planecrash: Mad Investor Chaos and the Woman of Asmodeus

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What if Pathfinder was...rational? What if the ruling House Thrune of Cheliax embraced effective altruism as an economic and social policy? What if you taught the god Nethys game theory? What if hot women wanted to listen to lectures about intelligence-promoting alleles and arbitrage? Tune in for the answers to all these questions and more (and by more we mean this game's harems, torture, rape, and eugenics...so CW!) as DMs Rob and Matt discuss the worst and most influential Pathfinder game/fanfic you will probably never read.

366 - Ivory Tower with Mason Allen

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We talked to Mason Allen about his new game, Ivory Tower! Be a terrible immortal archmage in a fallen world and resolve your disagreements with committee meetings!

https://riftkidgames.itch.io/ivory-tower
http://sky.app/profile/riftkidgsmes.bsky.social
YouTube.com/@riftkidgames

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365 - We Went to GenCon!

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Matt and Rob report back to you, dear listeners, on what we learned from GenCon, the biggest collection of TTRPG enthusiasts/sweaty nerds in the world!

https://playstorypress.org/books/gathering-of-gamers/

Jon Peterson

The Cunning Folk

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TEASER - Tabletop Newsroom

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Listen to the full episode here! 

DMofNone is back from GenCon and over GenCon sicknesses for another edition of Your Kickstarter Sucks: Tabletop Edition (here are entries one and two). This time, DMs Rob and Matt are talking about Tabletop News, a crowd-funded video news show, that unlike our previous projects, actually delivered what it promised in a timely fashion.

Our discussion gets into the show's weird production, cringe tone, hiring practices, refusal to do "journalism", and strange metrics. Was it awful? Not really. Did they do some shady stuff? Tune in to find out!

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/@watchtabletop

Matt's TtN Metrics Data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14ON2dsDSU2TGb4NGT0GRFA2ZkUO7W8cM1W0jy-8wKhA/edit?usp=sharing

Read some better TTRPG news:

https://www.rascal.news/

https://www.enworld.org/

364 - GM Advice: Good Descriptions

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Matt and Rob talk about writing and presenting good descriptions -- what to do, what not to do, with lots of examples! NOT a writing course! No one wants to hear your gratuitous description of horse fetlocks, Robert Jordan!

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363 - Actual Prep: Sandbox (Part 2)

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Matt and Rob do some more campaign prep live, expanding on their sandbox, building more points, and then (the fun part) linking the nodes together!

Part 1: 362 - Actual Prep: Sandbox

Related Past Actual Preps:

The Best Starting Adventure (Part 1)
The Best Starting Adventure (Part 2)

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Music:

Pac Div - Roll the Dice

362 - Actual Prep: Sandbox

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Matt and Rob do some campaign prep live, this time with a sandbox. We get a little weird with it and only make it about halfway, so stay tuned for part two!

Past Actual Preps:

The Best Starting Adventure (Part 1)
The Best Starting Adventure (Part 2)

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TEASER - Someone in Camp Wishes to Speak With You

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Join Matt and Rob for an episode of actual design, where the GMs try to hash out a framework for encouraging interparty conversation and downtime interactions -- with as little input from you as possible. Want your players to argue? Build something? Make love? Fight? Let's see if we can't make that happen.

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Music:

Pac Div - Roll the Dice