You're Playing (these mechanics) Wrong!

0:20 Love the podcaster role players and game master has to help level up your game. We are your dungeon Master's Jason Portiso, Joe McCall, and Jim Crocker, and today we want to talk about how you're playing wrong. That's it, You're playing wrong. I'm playing wrong. I'm absolutely playing Rogerson. Jim. Are you playing wrong? Jim? Would I mean in that I'm not playing an active D and D game right now? Yes? I am. That's a that's that. That's the only wrong way to play is to not playing completely. I don't care what that Fred Savage movie tells you. So, Tody, we're talking about rules in D and D that get often looked over or just straight up played incorrectly or purposely forgotten to make the game a little bit easier and a little less crunchy. So we're gonna get into a couple of those things today. Joe, I want to kick this right off with you. This this episode was your idea. So I need to know what was bothering you so much that you called me to talk about it for an hour. Yeah, so this really stemmed this podcast, or this episode stems from a text message that I had sent to the two of you about something I was becoming increasingly frustrated with in the game. I ended up finding my answer mostly because we have an episode on it, because I asked you to do the research exactly like cool. It turns out I may have just been looking in the wrong place, so for me is pissing me off.

1:36 You know what, you could read a book into an episode, Oh there you go, yeah, or that you can find the answers at your local library. By that, I mean my my D and D shelf, my shelf for the D and D beyond app or somewhere else on the internet from where I was looking. So what did you need to find? All right? So I was trying to figure out how much the distance a party can travel in a day, specifically on horseback. So I'll pose that question to you. Do you know? First, do you know the answer to what distance can a party cover in a day without any vehicle with just on foot?

2:16 My answer is as much as I need them to for narrative purposes. But I'm sure there's an actual number. And that's I think what I had been up going with. I don't know, is it is it rough terrain? Do they have a road that is as having to foreinge as they go along or have they brought splies? So on average, do they have a ranger with them? Yeah, that's important. The ranger is important. But on average your party can cover about twenty four miles a day at a normal pace. You can go fast pace and you can cover a little bit more. It's really not even that much. But twenty four miles in a day. Do you now on horseback? Do you know how far a party can travel? We have very much established that I do not. It's the same distance. Oh yes, so so so that's the thing that that's a thing I knew from being like a longtime fan of westerns, right and western stuff.

3:08 The point of being on a horse, of being on horseback is you can go, like you can go a lot faster than a person on a sprint, not for very long, but they get tuckered out. But like you're on horseback all day a so that you can carry a lot more crap than you can carry yourself, and like you don't get tired. It's the horse that's getting tired at the end of the day, you know, and you're just riding along. So but yeah, but it's not that much like you can maybe push your horses to get a little further. Yeah, it's that's a good way to kill your horse. So yeah, yeah, so so it's it's the same distance if you had fresh amounts available, which is something you see again in westerns, right, Like they come into town and they switch horses. The exhausted horse pulls up to the to the pony express station and they've got a fresh one. It jumps right on and keeps going.

4:00 Yeah yeah right, And a lot of us think of like, no, it's always the same horse. It's not. It's not the same horse in those movies. Right, So yeah, to fool. Now they silver, they're all silver. There's like twenty eight silvers. Are you telling me that old westerns had been lines me this whole time? No? That No, a lot of them are telling the truth. They show them switching horses. They come into town and they go, we need fresh mounts, and then they get fresh mounts. The lie that John Wayne is not a grizzled tough guy, that he's actually just a Hollywood actor. Are you already telling me that this whole thing is just a veil that lies to me? Over and over again? The Witcher makes hay out of that, you know, sorry so to speak, you know, like it's a running yeah, that that wasn't an accident. You know. In the Witcher, it's a running joke that all of his horses are named roach. Regardless of whether it's the same horse or not. He just calls it road. Yeah. I think they actually covered that. It kind of treats this succession of horses like it's the same horse, even though everybody understands it's not. So yeah, then they have fun with it. The approaches always mean though it always he always bites if you read the Richard book, So yeah, so and then so I looked it up and I'm like, well, how long how far does an actual horse cover in a day? It turns out Gary Geigex or whoever came up with this rule originally, or I don't know if it's changed, Jim, maybe you might know if it's again, I only know five E.

5:32 But it's it's about twenty five miles, you know, maybe you could get to forty. But I was expecting it to be a lot more sure. I was thinking like, oh, they could cover so our came you've been covering like fifty miles a day. No problem because narratively, we need it to narrative. Yeah, and you know distance, right, and so it doesn't really matter, is the end. But so I was having trouble finding this do you know? So my next question is do you know where you can find this information in your books and your guns and dragons? Like it's almost certainly like three quarters of the way back in the dungeon Master's Guide, because that's where all that kind of stuff seems to be. It's not some appendix place. That's the first place I would think to look for.

6:21 That's the first place and the only place that I thought to look before I took through the internet and I was pulling out my hair and you guys taking for clarify, it was the only place you looked. We all knew it just got one and that one website Www dot Google. Oh yeah, buried like buried in the Ranger class description might be the other place. It's in the player's hand like that. Yeah, okay, it's sure, page one eight one in the player one of those technically one of those chapters between character creation and spells that nobody ever reads. It's chapter eight Adventuring. It's the second page of chapter eight Adventuring on travel, like and who knew? Who knew where you would find that? Sure? And I googled enough that that's I'm like, why can I find this in the Dungeon Master's Guide because that's where I thought it should be, So ass the coast. If you're listening, please move that information to the Dungeon Master's Guide because that's where I think it belongs. Yeah, I would, so, Yeah, that was that is my that is kind of what kicked off this episode. That's what was bothering me. So so we'll freeze call in and tell me what an idiot I am. So what's happening is that we have in the game that we're playing with you, we have to deal with a lot of overworll travel.

7:41 Yeah, there's there's towns and cities and settlements that are pretty far spread apart. We're in Wildmount. So if you have the Wildmount Book or if you are a critical role fan, the maps are available for the for the general continent that we're on, so it is a predetermined amount of space in between them. So now you have to kind of like figure out how we're going to travel from town to town and some of these are hundreds of miles apart. In fact, we just had a little side quest because we wanted to shave like two days off of our travel, so we went instead of going directly to where we needed to go, we went to a completely different place because they have teliportation stuff, and that's a whole different thing. So the part that made you start researching was the actual number, the numerical value of how much we can travel in a day, which then tells you how many days we need to be traveling. So with that knowledge, how should overworld travel work? So exactly that right, So you can travel on horseback or on foot, there's no difference. You can travel twenty four miles in a day. That's an average. If it's all rough terrain, maybe it slows you down. Maybe your DM or as a GM DM you can have you know, rolls determined. You know, you hit something and that slows your pace, but that's averaging that you're going to encounter rough train, easy terrain, hill, flat, you know, and all that that's your average at twenty four miles at a normal pace, you can go a little bit exactly.

9:05 So we lost of these these settlements are two hundred miles apart. That puts us on like a like a seven day travel So and you know, I want to hear your your thoughts on this too. So players have a plot point in City A, and then their next major plot point is in City B. And the overworld map that has already determined and the players have a copy of and like they know how far they have to go. It's going to take your players seven days of game time to get to City B. How do you run that? I mean, generally the way I am inclined to run it is to have a conversation sort of at the beginning of the campaign or maybe you know, when they leave the city in overland travel starts and say, does anybody give a crap about this? Like are you interested in, you know, meeting traveling merchants on the road and having encounters and like law and I explicitly always want to make sure that those encounters are not just like here's some cobalts in this encounter could happen anywhere. It should happen somewhere where you learn a little bit about the world by having that encounter in that place, whether it's because you meet people or you know it happens at a particular in that's at a crossroads that maybe you're going to come back to or something like that. You know, I try to have a point to it if I'm going to do it in but in general, I kind of like to follow the open world video game mode of doing it, which

10:35 is the first time you go somewhere and you're not sure where you're going and where you're not sure what you might run into. That's maybe when you have an encounter or two. That's when you have the ranger actually make their roles if you've got a ranger in the party, stuff like that. But once they've made that trip once or maybe twice, then you effectively kind of fast travel that you just say, okay, three days past now sure, yeah, you're back at the Gold Coast or whatever, and you can you know, you can catch a boat like you like you wanted to so, and that that's kind of generally how I try to do it. Oh yeah, I like, well you can have the do it the long way the first time in the fast travel next time. I like that a lot. Yeah, especially if you don't if you don't know, like like so in our campaign, a lot of these are roads, So it's not like you have to make a roll to like figure out what direction you're going in. But I do like that when when you don't right, if you're traveling through the wilderness, then then there should be right. It's going to slow your pace, especially if there's you have to get here within this amount of time or else you know something bad is going to happen, right, Yeah, the next thing I was going to say, yeah, and then you're rolling when see if you go in the right direction because you're traveling through a desert and you know north is north, your time, when your time on the road matters, then you can start to get into like, well are you going to take that long rest or you know, are you going to push through the level of exhaustion to get there on time? Stuff like that, and you know that then that's what it matters. And when it's interesting to actually

12:09 play through and just while we're at it too, the player's handbooks, so it actually gives you options. If you want to travel at a fast pace, you know you'll be able to cover thirty miles, so an extra six whole miles, which I mean can matter again again, especially if there's a time constraint an additional six miles a day, but you get a five negative five penalty two passive perception scores normal bases is the twenty four miles, like I said, and then a slow pace allows you gives you the ability to use stealth. So again to what we're talking about, like if you need to go somewhere stealthily without the King's men seeing you, know you, or spotting you, then you would go eighteen miles in that day. So that's another that's a six six mile that's penalty. So yeah, that's pretty stilly.

12:56 That's that's the rule is written again. So I've seen a few different ways for overland travel to be done. Now, of course my answer was I kind of meant it to be, you know, to kind of take a shot at show where it's like, okay, yes it's whatever I needed to be for narrative purposes. But there's I've seen three pretty interesting ways to handle overworld travel, depending on how you need it to run in your game. So if your major plot points are really I just want them to go from A to B, or if like okay, in today's session, I want to do things in both cities, you can you can mix these up too, so like if you really just need to get from A to B, you can do something along the lines of I think this actually might be in the rules as well. I forget, I can't remember what is real and what's made up anymore. But you just, you know, take the amount of days that's going to travel, and when they rest overnight, you just roll on the random encounter table. You know, extra above they're safe.

13:48 Extra below, we have a random encounter and then you just roll on the random encounter table. That's fine, if a little boring, but it works. And if they could have a little skirmish. If they're camping in the woods, they can find wolves, if they're camping off the road, they can find bandits. If you want to, like Jim said, I use this as a little bit of lore. They can find I know, a Toaln's guard from an enemy town or something like that. You can find ways of making it narratively what they should be encountering. The second way is to completely ignore it, which I don't think is right, but an interesting one that that I saw, and I've played this in my one shots because I need one shots to be I need them to hit their their city points, but I didn't want to overland travel to feel meaningless. What we did was I had them kind of role play out, even just one night on the road that they said they're we're gonna take a long rest. I'm like, cool, We're just gonna roleplay a bit during this long rest. And I kind of have them there their characters, you know, kind of get to know each other a little bit, comment on the things they've just done.

14:43 And I asked them specifically around the table, one by one, what are you doing to make this rest work? You guys? Are you guys are putting up camp for the night. What does your character do to put up camp for the night. And they'll get answers like I'm the one that's going to pitch to ten, I'm one's going to hunt for food. I'm the one that's going to check for edible berries. I'm the one that's going to check for animbal princes see if we're safe. I'm the one that's going to check that. I'll stay on watch for the first like two three hours, and then we'll switch. And I kind of looked to make them think about, Okay, in in my character design, what would this person do or thing because there's a lot of dragon burns on my tables, and how would that help us survive the night? Then I had them all go to sleep and they all roll either. So depending on what they're doing, that's going to depend on what that's going to tell me what kind of role they're going to make. If they're checking for If they're checking for food, it's survival, If they're checking for traps, it's going to be perception. If it's if they're just staying the night, and maybe it's constitutional se if they stay awake, something along those lines, that makes them all roll for it.

15:41 And depending on how I'm feeling that day or what level we're playing, the DC's in my head. I don't have to tell them that. And if more than half of them fail their DCS, we go straight to a deadly encounter. So it's it's it's a pretty low probability. But if they all screw up that bad, yeah, some really big things are going to find them. And depending on who fails, what could tell me what I want to throw at R and I kind of make it up on the spot and try we try to keep it narratively in that same vein that I just says, like, you know, is it is it just a couple of wolves or is there some brown bears with them too? So then and and that worked out pretty well. The few times that they have failed were actually interesting fights. Instead of just like okay, well you guys fall asleep and rolled like oh you guys encounter roll three goblins, It's like, okay, let's fight some goblins for no reason. I don't know where these guys came from. I didn't ask them their name. I just killed them, you know. But yeah, the other the alternate, the deadly encounter route is one that I would absolutely recommend. That was a lot of fun. So one of the other things I wanted to bring up while you're while we're on the overland travel is how do we feel about if we have to hand weave overland travel? How do we feel about that? Almost invalidating most of what are is good at. If you have a ranger in your party, now do you just not handwave of overland travel anymore? I mean you ask the player, I think is what you do. This is a situation where if someone is playing a ranger because they want to do all the rangery stuff and

17:15 they're like and they think that this is a fun part of it. Then yeah, then then you know, you pay more attention to overland travel. You take the time to do the you know, to actually mechanize it and have it matter and have the Ranger's actions have an impact on what's going on. And I think the important thing to do when you're doing something like that is to make sure that it's not just you know, can you avoid getting screwed, but you know the actions of the ranger in that overland travel should give the party some kind of advantage. You learn something, you get some kind of resource, you don't have to burn as many rations, stuff like this. And I think this is I mean, some of the this is is baked in already just to what the Ranger can do in terms of like being able to forage and stuff exactly. And that's kind of the point.

18:07 But but there may be a Ranger player who's like, you know, na, I just want to be drizzed and use two swords, man, I don't care about any of that, you know, like whatever, like like just you know, take us to where there's you know, like you said, to where there's more goblins so I can do my thing or they want they want to use that's why I'm a Ranger. Yeah, so using the video games cheminology, they want the quick travel button. Yes, exactly, Yeah, fast travel fact, because this is one of the reasons why Rangers are often oopooed on, where like it's like, oh you rangers. Rangers have a bunch of abilities that don't matter. It's like they don't matter. If your DM says they don't matter, that's correct. Also, that also doesn't mean to like make this whole table do you know, crunchy over world travel stuff, just because there's a Ranger at the table, you can kind of pick and choose what works, which is why I'm just coming back to.

18:56 And I really like what you said before about you know, kind of do it the hard way of the first time, you know, and this it might bog down the table a little bit, but it lets them know like the reality of what their characters are actually going through if you don't just handwave it. I think there's a way to do it and be brief. Be brief, you know, you don't need an encounter for every day that you are on the road, right, And that's where rolling comes in. So you can roll to see, like like, how well did you make your pace today? You know, roll to see if you hit some terrain up, okay, you got an extra day or like I've seen you know, on critical role. I think they do it like, oh, you're on a ship and you got you got some better wins today, so you actually take a day off of your travel because you went a little bit faster than what I think they did that like an airship or something. It's also one of those things where you can make a player feel cool about the character by what they don't have to do just because their character is there. Like if you've got a ranger with them, every time you fast travel between villages, you go, well, your ranger knows the way. He just guides you without any difficulty, you know, and so like they don't have to make a roll or something like that. But but you're reminding them that it is the you know, the ranger being good at this is why this is not a problem for them. And you know that's kind of a little just like a little bone you can throw them even if you're not asking them to, you know, kind of actively roll and use their abilities that way, sure, And the other way to handle it is is to not really worry about the overlay part of it. If you have a party, if you

20:26 have a long enough running game, and it's less about the overarching, big bad story and it's more about just having a game every week. This is great for like characters that have already kind of maxed out the level, or if you're already passed your main story point and you're just continuing on with these characters. It's like, hey, we're going to calculate this is a this is a ten day travel, and then for the next like ten sessions you get to do your little side quest one shots and then finally pick up where you're left off in the main story wise, you see this all the time in like adventure cartoons, media and likes like SERI shows. It's like, yeah, there's a huge over warking point. This is the Mandalorian. Like, yeah, there's a huge overworking thing where he's where he's got to you know, you know, get the babe to the thing. But every episode is like, oh, we have to complete the slow side quest because my ship broke down and I have to go get milk or whatever it is.

21:15 That's why basically Mandlorian in two seconds. Do you know where that happens? A ton is Avatar the Last Airbender. Yeah, that's all where you know, Aang's got this whole thing, this whole destiny he has to fulfill. But you know, we've got to deal with the like you've dropped into this village per day and there's a there's a you know, a face stealer there, and you've got to deal with that face stealer because you're not just going to leave those people, you know, to the victim to the face stealer, even though it's not part of your overarching plot. It's you know, that's kind of a that series just in general, is a masterclass for how to do that. You know, have an overarching plot that everybody's aware of all the time, but those individual stories and the people you meet are still important. Jokes on you, My players would be like, we don't have for this, We need to go and that's your table. That's that's that's things you suss out to your table too. Do we want to just go do on a B line for the main story role or are we just here to play a game every week and you know you can throw weird things at us. Yeah, no, and sometimes when you get encounters on the road, it's because you're going too fast. I ever prepared for the thing that you're going to, and I just there needs to be a communication where if you make it clear to your players, if you, guys, spend a day or two here in this town, I'm not going to hose you by saying you get to the capital too late or whatever. You know. So so this is something if you you know, but if you don't want to do it, that's cool. We'll just roll on. So so for overland travel, if you're if you want to be exact, you can go to the players and book chapter eight on adventuring. You can get all of the

22:45 rules on travel and pace and everything else. But you don't have to just because it's written in the book. You don't have to do that. There's tons of options to handwave it to to your own measurements. Let's if you fifty miles a day, guys, that goes for everything in the book, by the way, Yeah okay, yeah, yeah, So so just kind of put a button on this whole thing, because we have other things you want to get to, so ways to make overland travel matter. I might be going to say more interesting, just to make it like a thing, so that doesn't just sound like you're going from one room to the next and sudden they're two hundred miles away. If you are going to calculate it, it is twenty four miles in a day, and ways to make that make ways to make that matter. You could do something like make the time matter.

23:27 Something's going to happen in six days, but it's an eight day travel, what do you do right? Or or it's gonna happen in five days and it's a five day travel. I hope nothing goes wrong. Things like that. You have mishaps on the road, you can hit difficult terrain and things like that. If you are if you want to do the travel part fast but still have encounters, you could try the random table method or the deadly encounter method that I mentioned before. And if you have a range join your party, you find ways to engage with that player and make the Ranger parts matter. Rangers have a lot of class features that do deal with overworld travel, and if you're just handwaving overworld travel, you are kind of in validating half of what makes a ranger ranger and just have a chat with that ranger player and make sure that's okay with them and it is not. Find a way to engage those parts kind of covers it. Yeah. Cool, Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions the Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions to talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com or a voice at helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now let's get back to the show. So before we even get

24:59 into Jim's think, I want to say that when Joe approached us with this episode idea, He's like, I want to do an episode on things that people forget even exist. He's like overall travel, and I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about. And then Jim comes in with a whole page full of notes on the thing that I wanted to talk about. So we're going to tackle this one kind of together, and then I'm going to give this some quick stuff in the end. So, Jim, what is the thing that you and I want to remind everyone exists? Well? When Joe sent that text message to us, I was inspired, if you will, to write my own page full of a notes on inspiration. Which is a thing that is to be fair. It's a little loosey goosey in the way they handle it in the actual rules, which I like, which I think is which I think. I think of all the things that could be exact and written now in granular little rules, I like that this is not one of them. Mm hmmmm hmm. But it's one of the things they added to fifth edition that I really really liked. That I think is just, you know, unquestionable, a good, you know, a good and wonderful thing, especially for new players. It gives you a little bit of control over which roles you think are important. The constant struggle that we face in D and D is the fact that that D twenty is totally linear. Right, you have a five percent chance of rolling this you know, any given number at any time, and there's not a lot that you can do.

26:25 You know, if you roll a three to make that not a three, you know, no matter how important that is. And inspiration is one of those things that puts some tools to maybe mitigate that a little into the hands of players. And I think that's fittastic. So what exactly is inspiration let's start Let's start there and kind of make sure that everyone's on the same page. So inspiration as a mechanic they have added to fifth edition that allows a player to essentially bank an instance of advantage that they can use at the time of their choosing, and you can use it to mitigate disadvantage because as we know, no matter how many instances of advantage you have and how many instances of disadvantage you have, those will cancel each other out, so that you're making just aread with flat role. So if there's a time where you've got disadvantage and you really really don't want to have that disadvantage, you can spend inspiration to give yourself advantage to cancel that out. If there's a time where it's really important to make that role, you can decide you're going to spend your inspiration to give your self advantage, which of course means you roll two D twenty for whatever check it is you're going to make, and you take the higher of the two, and we start to get into the slightly loosey goosey part of it that we talked about, and the thing but that I think Jason, I think you and I would both frame it as you have some freedom to say how it works in your campaign, which I think is great for what you want it to be, because it is a wonderful tool to reinforce the kinds of behavior that you want to reward at your table,

27:56 the kind of stuff you want to see players doing. And I mean, you know, I've got the text from the Player's Handbook right here which says your DM will tell you how you can earn inspiration in the game, you know, kind of one of the one of the other things that's cool about it that's actually canon that's written into the rules is that if you see another player do something that you think is super cool, you can hand them your inspiration if they don't have inspiration currently. And so that also for tables where the system might be you know, whoever makes the DM laugh gets inspiration, and there's one player that's just a cut up and that is just constantly cracking the DM up. And so they tend to get inspiration more than the other players do. That gives them a chance to divvy it out to other people so that they can you know, so you can even that out, which I really like. Yeah, that also encourages like player to player interaction.

28:55 That's great. Can I hoard my inspiration as a GM that does not currently use inspiration because the person that I learned from didn't didn't use it our late great friend Walter Wilson. You cannot hoard it. It's it's not something that accumulates, Okay, So I can keep either have it or you don't. And and the way that you kind of the control over it that you have as the DM is to determine how easy it is to recharge it. Right, if you're inclined to like kind of let players be a little more you know, active with it, and to kind of let them put the thumb on the scale a little, you can have a thing where you know, you can use inspiration and then two rounds later you do something that recharges it and use it again in the same encounter. I tend to try to keep it to be a you know, kind of a one encounter thing and then have it be behavior that happens sort of like between encounters that that allows you to recharge it. But you can kind of set up whatever system you want that you that makes it as you know, you can be as generous or a stingy with it as you like. I have to start using this.

30:06 So this, this is something I've been using a lot recently because I mostly forgot it is even a thing that exists because my DM doesn't use it. Thanks show. But it lets me, like you said, set the expectation of the type of behavior that I want to see and have a way to directly reward it. And then the players can see as being rewarded, and just like children and dogs, I get to train them. You don't use a stick, right. I actually made for because I run so many public games now. I made laminated cards with cool little designs on them as say DM inspiration. You know, use this for one reroll and I get to actually hand them a physical thing that says here you earned this, as to say this inspiration sponsored by Hello Adventurers podcast. The next patch I make will the little QR code on them. So in my pregame talk, I tell players, so let's use for example, I run games at a at a game store, and I games at breweries, which allows me a couple of different freedoms that I don't have at the game store that does not that does not sell alcohol. But the breweries, the age of the players is probably a little bit, not that different, a little bit I get. I get a lot more at twelve or fourteen year olds at the game tables than I do with the breweries. But my little pregame spiel is I, you know, kind of tell them what we're expecting today, how long we're expecting to do it, you know, some general game stuff. So then we are using inspiration today. This gives you advantage. You want this, you want to get these? How do you get these? If you character does something that I think is just awesome and out of the box and something that I genuinely did not expect you to do, I'll give you inspiration for it.

31:40 In fact, just this past Monday, my players had an encounter with a pack of bully rugs, and the ranger can't speak with animals, love bullyugs, human earth fun. She can't speak with animals and talked her way out of the fight, and that wasn't supposed to happen. I was ready to have this fight. I had miniatures printed for this thing. And and as she completely just like goes through it, rolls super high on her persuasion and I even set it at like like an eighteen in my head for level three and she nails they she nails the role, and I'm like, yeah, they kind of back off. I guess I let her have it. And I'm like, you know what, you take inspiration for that too, because I would not have ever thought of that. And then the classic example is if you make me genuinely laugh, if you're if you're that type of player, this is that kind of game of fortune. We were playing a horror game and there wasn't a lot of room for that this week. But made me genuinely laugh, then then yeah, I would absolutely give you inspiration.

32:31 I want to encourage that behavior. And the group that I'm dming for is called Dungeons and Drafts. Then their whole point is to run D and D games at breweries on slow nights. We are there to drive sales, yep. And we're and we're not shy about saying it is like, listen, we're here to support the brewery today, So if they buy me a drink, I can absolutely be bribed as a DM on that particular day, you buy me a drink, I'm gonna give you advantage. And some players take advantage of that. Yeah, yes you do. Guy. I got fourth and just games and I wasn't driving all that yet. I wasn't driving that day, so that was great. I was driving this week, so I capped at it two or three. And that's one of the things I love about it is that, like like you say, you can be as loose about it. You can be if you do something quote cool unquote, we'll give you inspiration or it can be you know, one of the things we talked about when we're talking about with overland travel was one of the things like where you have everybody at the campsite and you say, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? One of the ways you can kind of reframe that is, okay, how do you use your class abilities to help set the campsite up? And you know, you give a good description of a couple of sentences when you get them, you give them inspiration and to maybe take a moment every now and then to do those scenes that otherwise might be you know what we might think of as like free role play or something like that. That's when you can set up inspiration, and you can also offer inspiration to have people go out on a limb

34:06 or put their character at risk a little bit or something like that. You know, you know, you can say, well, I know that you're inclined to just hunker down and stay in tonight, but if you go walking around town, I'll give you a point of inspiration so that you've got it, you know, while you're walking around, in case you get jumped or something like that. Yeah. I think this is something that needs to be and your level of generosity with it is is going to differ from table to table and from from game to game, especially with and I'm just gonna use my example again because I'm running very different games as one offs when with mostly new players. And this week I happened to run a horror game and I had to reward it for different things, and I was a little stingier with it than I would have been on a cillier game. The next game I'm running is designed for first time players, and I'm going to just hand these things out like their f I almost envision it again as somebody that doesn't use it, but it is considering it as say, you have a party that just wants to fight and kill everything, but you kind of want as a GM, you want a little bit more role play involved in it because it helps stretch out the sessions and everything else. You don't have a million enemies just ready to go. So if you want to encourage more role playing, if they give you a good role play scene or something like that, then you can award inspiration for that. Hey, that was that was really great.

35:30 Heause role play kind of thing. Or you can go the opposite way too, for those for those groups that talk their way out of every combat. Sorry, you can almost aage for not doing that. Yeah, you guys. You guys go back and forth between the two extremes a little bit, and it always it Actually, it's really funny. It's one friend and it's depending on whether he's there or not, because he's very good at being like, well, hold on, we're gonna we're gonna talk our way out of this becomes by really three four months, so I we're good. So it's a good balance. So I don't need to use this no, but yeah, okay, that's the thing. You don't and you know you absolutely don't. You can still have. But one of the one of the first things you said in that in just what you were just saying there is that I want to see these players role playing more. And Jim and I just know I'm gonna I know you guys rack up me for for using dog metaphors, but this is this is the this is the high value treat that you use to train your dog and to you into the behavior you want to see.

36:30 So's not just dog. You can do that with children as well. When I have company come over and Davy puts himself into his little dog bed or you know, dog, he puts hi stuff into his little dog bed that I assume he has. It just doesn't bite gel yes, which is even funnier that my dog's name is Davie. When you have a dog with a human name, things can get really confusing when you're when you're saying you're training them. So but yeah, when I when he starts doing the behaviors that I want to see him do, he puts himself in his bed and doesn't jump on people. You know, we give him the treat that he likes the most. We save those for my special occasions and giving out advantage. The only thing you can do that is more enticing than that just handing out free magic items, Right, We're not doing that. Yeah, that's just not going to happen. One of the other things that's and it's I also wanted to just kind of interject because before you refer to inspiration as a reroll, and there may be people going, wait a minute, it's advantage, but the DMG is actually pretty specific about saying spending inspiration after the role is a viable way to use it. It is written into the rules that if you want to allow that at your table to have it effectively be a rerole essentially, you know, if that second role is higher you can take it. Then that is totally valid. It's canon. It's you know, written into the rules, and that's the way I always play it because then that nothing feels better for players than turning a whiff into a hit. Yes, every now and then, like once or twice. In my decade of

38:05 running Fifth Edition, I ran hundreds of Fifth Edition games. When I owned my game store, and a few times someone would roll that one on the first roll, right, and then they go, oh man, yeah, no, I gotta spend inspiration, and then they'd get that twenty and there's like nothing that is more so good awesome. Play table just freaks out when that happened. I feel that feels great. Yeah, fearing that, you're like, you get a little like like you start to you know, you tear up a little at the thought of h yeah, that's just something similar happened at our table. The last time we played was our our rogues a halfling and forgot about halfling luck, Like, hey, you're halfling, right, yeah, but it's that kind of halfling luck. So if you roll it one, you can reroll it. He's like, I do right, Yeah, he was about to spend a luck pointing to the lucky That's right, that's he was going to waste. You don't need to do that, Yeah, And I'm happy to let that player spend inspiration to reroll a third time. You know, that's if you want to, you know, you know you want to, you know, use it, but you know, burn burn it right up. The other thing that I love about it is that kind of Jason, like to sort of spin off from you talking about using it to buy, like giving inspiration for buying drinks or something like that, is that it's not just role playing or being cool about your character.

39:31 You can also use it for like whoever does the recap of the last session at the beginning of the game, they get a point of inspiration. You I'm the keeper, you know, But like like whoever fills out the whoever fills out your your whiteboard for the order of initiative or something like that, they get a point of just a great, great purpose reward for in character and you know, good player, behave. That's called social engineering, Jim. If we do it out of the game, that makes it sound not exactly, but you know, the good kind. This is a social engineer.

40:20 No, no, don't like that. Don't like that. But it's it's a little positive reinforcement. So yeah, so to put a button on this one too, so DM inspiration. The very fast version is you can just give advantage or reroles however you want to play it to your players for doing the things that you want them to do. So be as creative as you need to be with that. Maybe start with whoever can make you laugh or whoever does something just in the in the very subjective realm of just doing something cool, and you can be as generous or as stingy as you want, and you can make you can make them feel like something they really have to go earn, or you can make them feel like, hey, this is a loose table. We can just you know, just just keep being cool. We can keep getting these. Don't don't yourself in the foot by giving out too much. That don't be a jerk about it either. Yeah, go back a three episodes to our last horror story and you'll see what we're talking about. But that's that inspiration is supposed to work. So this episode is almost long enough for me for me to call it. But I'm gonna throw a couple of extra ones out there. These are some some bonus things that often get misplayed. I'm taking this from an article from the gamer dot com. This is from an article called twelve Dungeon and Dragons Rules Everyone Forgets And while I was searching for things to talk about other than inspiration, those are the ones that I think deserve the most discussion, with the exception of maybe one of these, and we'll get to that in a second, but we'll have a whole different episode on that one. But just in the air, twelve D and D rules that are often forgotten. So we'll do just a quick blurb on each one of these and just encourage you to go

41:50 look these up and make sure that you're playing these correctly. Yeah, the Gamer, the gamer dot com or TheGamer Yes, they're not sure how yes them of course to this article be in the show notes as well as well as a much longer one that is called the Forgotten Rules Index. And this is other forgotten rules with links to the actual rules themselves. I'm having a link to that one too. But the one we're going to talk about is this our article from the Gamer. So coming in number twelve is inventory management, making sure you actould have a place to put all your stuff because it's kind of weird to be carrying seventeen swords. Make sure you sell your old inventory or get rid of it somehow. Bag of holdings should be a cool item to be sought after, not an automatic conclusion. That is inventory management.

42:32 Long rests. Everyone forgets that you can only long rest once every twenty four hours, and abusing long rest is a way to completely destroy. You don't need to sleep for eight hours very long rest. Yeah, it's one of those it's only supposed to be like six. Well, but you also don't you don't need to actually sleep. It just needs to be like downtime, like you can you know, sleep with some of it, but it doesn't have to be the full. Yeah, it's supposed to be the other you're bandaging your wounds and prepping your spells and that kind of stuff. That's why all that happens during that time. The other thing people forget about long rests is that as the DM, you are always allowed to say there is not conditions that allow you to take a long rest here. So if people are trying to do the like one encounter a day thing, you can just say no, no, no, no. It's going to be at least four encounters before you find another place that will be suitable for a long rest.

43:23 And you should not feel any guilt or you know, let anybody buffalo you in the rocks. Yeah, well I spent all my spells thoughts on that first encounter. Sucks to suck you. You do want to communicate that you're going to do that, you know, don't count on having a long rest until at least four encounters. Here, guys, I'll tell them that the wait res dungeon's going to work. Yeah, so I'll let them find out number ten of spell components. So a couple of things that with spell components. This just came up. Yeah, So a your verbal and somatic components can be taken away from you, whether by being gagged or muted or having your hands tied or removed, depending on the type of game you're play. But the for the idea, yes, the material components are things that you really should be forging for if you if that's the type that you need.

44:08 So, like when we've been coming across some loot, like with with gems and stuff, I always tell those I'm a barbarian, so what do I care? But I tell the casters like, hey, guys, take look your spells, see what you need. Grab the things that you need, and if we don't need them, then we can sell them. Especially at higher levels, your spellcasters are going to need like diamonds worth a certain amount of gold or certain gems and a lot of a lot of the components you can not exactly handwave, but like something spellcasters should do at every town is hey, I'm going to go shop for components, and you know you can kind of be like, yeah, you spend ten gold and you get, you know, all the components. So you spend a couple of gold and get for wizards and artificers and the ones that are getting stuff that you can buy druids and rangers. They need a lot of nature stuff. So yeah, so they send during a long rest that that's something that they'd be doing during the long rest. Now that is good for spell components that are not consumed or even consumed and are not really worth much of anything. So like we're not gonna we're not going to say, okay, you four drownd and you find diamond dust worth three and your goals. You're not going to do that. And also that was a really good survival. Also, your material components that are not consumed and do not have a cost attached to them can all be replaced by your spell casting focus. So that's another one that gets that gets that's that's that's kind of what wan't get in here by putting this on the list. Wizards can have their their wand or even their book itself, or like we're just something that is is there. There are Arecaine

45:38 focus Clarity usually have their holy symbol, you know, artificers have their gun or whatever they have. I think certain certain warlocks to like Warlock of the Tome. I think they the Tome. I think that their tone acts of book itself. Yet as there, I'm fairly certain that's right. But I've not played one. But then spell components that are consumed or have a cost attached to them, it's usually both those cannot be substituted by a spell casting focus, so you are going to need that diamond dust for revivified that spell components. Number nine is concentration. Not so much of this one gets forgotten, but it often gets misplayed. A couple key things with concentration number one, if you take damage, make sure you're taking that concentration role and seeing if you keep concentration. That's a big one that gets It's not so much that I forget that you have to do it. I forget that they have concentration up and I need players to be like, oh right, I need to do that. I have had DMS in one shot that I played in If I'm keeping up a concentration spell, they hand me a rubber band to put on my wrist, yeah sure, or a little table tent or something, yeah yeah, something that. But putting you on the player reminds you a little bit more than putting it in front of them. So they there's ways to remind people of concentration, and a really interesting one. And I never even considered this as even being a thing. It's not that I didn't think it wasn't true. I just never even thought of it. If you hold your action to cast a spell, you need to hold concentration until you

47:13 actually get to pull it off. So if you're acting first in combat and you say, okay, well I want to hold my action to cast this spell after the barbarian goes, and that's totally fine, but I have to maintain concentration that whole time. So if you have already cast a concentration spell that you're holding until you banish somebody else, and then you're going to hold your action because there's another group of enemies that are coming down into the cave, there's concentration on one or the other. You couldn't you couldn't hold your action. Didn't realize you can hold your action to cast a spell to cast cap, I can hold my action to do it something else, do anything else. But yeah, so like if you're at the top of the order the barbarians at the bottom, and you really want to give them I can't think an example, tom My head. But you want to cast something on someone else that's way down in the order, and you you got to maintain concentration that whole time, so like you know, all the goblins around you, we'll see you muttering into yourself. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's a really good exactly, Yeah, that's a really really good missed a lot and all of these lists because I googled a bunch of these lists and I just happened to like this one the most. That was a huge one that came up is maintaining concentration while you're holding your action to cast. This surprised there's not more Reddit threads on that. I found several. Actually, this one, I think we I'm going to bring it up because I thought it was super obvious, but maybe two newer players. Is not a bonus action is like a little extra thing that you can do that does not take up the time of an action. We still only get one one bonus action per turn apparently other tables, so that that's not ever been something that I have come across being a problem. But is reactions on your list? Reaction

48:43 is not on my life? That should I think reactions should be on the list instead of a bonus action. Yeah, no, I know because even again citing from memory, we had some we have some newer players at our table, and and there was some confusion on bonus actually okay, yeah, you're right, you're definitely yeah, But reactions, that's the one that it's like, oh, you get your attack of opportunity, Yeah, you go ahead and swing that. It's like, well, what do you mean I can't counter spell now right? Right? Or how come I can't use what hellish rebuke? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, because it's a reaction yep. Yeah, and you already took atactive opportunity And that comes up with with sports druids too, because they get to use their reaction actively and use that of that halo of spores effect. Yeah. That was a weird one too, because the first time that that one of our players used it, like hey, yeah, it takes my reaction and we're like, what are you reacting to? And it just it just takes. It just basically uses they get to use their reaction to do this thing on their turn. I don't, but then they don't get a reaction. Number seven is one spell per turn, one leveled spell per turn. Cantrips do not count towards this, So if you cast something as bonus action, you cannot cast a leveled spell as an action, but you can't cast a cantrip. Isn't there some exceptions to that to that rule, Like the entire point of d D is that what the what your class abilities do is allow you to break the rules that everybody else has to follow. So almost certainly there is some high level caster abilities that let you make around that specific circumstances of sorcers we may have covered.

50:16 General is one leveled spell perturn and that should be your you know, the thing you have in mind as a spell caster. Yeah, so like you know, misty stepping and then fire bolt totally fine, Misty stepping in the fire ball no good. Number six creatures provide cover and this is great if you're playing with miniatures, because then you have a little bit more of a of a tactile view of where things are actually standing. If you're standing in a line. And that doesn't mean allies, that means any creature. So if you're in melee combat with anything, and then the archer, you know, you have a goblin in front of you, and then the goblin archer wants to shoot you, they have to shoot around their friend, right And the fact that's going to provide you with cover. That also means if you were next to an ally, you can have cover behind that. And that actually I thought that was only if you are a size smaller, but that's actually for anybody, No, for anybody, So even I got that wrong.

51:14 Number five sun like sensitivity. This is the reason why some classes seem really really really good on paper, right, and then you get them into practicality. It's like, oh, I need to carry an umbrella everywhere I go. Or yeah, it's like drought, you want to play drought drows awesome. I you know, I have some backup ideas just in case my my barbarian dies and I kind of I wanted to try a cobalt. They have some like sensitivity. Also. I'm sure there's some kind of sunglasses. I feel that there are goggles of night of dark vision, goggles of skin, so you know, the you have sp F two hundred on. Yeah, what do we got covered? Yeah, well that's something you know, talk to your DM. But but that is there that in mind. Yeah, that is there to kind of balance out some of these classes that have a lot of advantage because Drawur awesome. Yeah, Droughur is so cool that they're probably the best elf to that alfinest. Yeah, I was gonna say, except maybe Aladrimad is a droughtist, but mechanically they're they're one of the better elf classes. Shut up, Joe. So number four, this one comes up a lot, a lot, a lot, and we think we all know the answer to this, and the actual answer was so surprising to me. Number four is an initiative tie. If you tie for initiative, Joe, what happens? So I always go by decks, But it's actually between the up to the players, isn't it. Yeah. So if there's a tie among players and the players decide who goes first, that's the two that's the two of you walking into the door at the same time realizing you can't go abreast. That's after you start no, no, no, I

52:45 insist after you, sir. That's if it's among players, if it's if there is an enemy in there as well, the DM decides. But it's really just like, uh, who's probably gonna go by deck score and then if that doesn't happen that you do die do it? I do it by initiative bonus, I do it buy. Whoever has the highest initiative bonus goes before the decide situation. That's usually what I default. Okay, it was a DM decized thing. Yeah, I like going by something I can measure this way. It's not just like it's like, oh, I'm going to go first. Obviously I like there to be a reason behind it. But the players can can start planning their attack. They could be a tactical thing.

53:27 Well, who's going to go first? So time for advantage. The rules are, it's up to you. You don't have to go by decks. Three is movement. This is This is something that gets mixed up with new new players a lot. You don't have to move all in one shot. You can you can move attack, move back to where you were, you can move to your action, move somewhere else to your bonus action, and move somewhere else again, as long as it stays within your total. And this is something that the Balder's Gate game handles really really well. Two is invisibility. It doesn't just hand you your stealth. It doesn't just hand you the fact that then one can proceed you. You can still be heard, you can still be used to be smelled by creatures with you know, particularly keen sense of smelling wolves. That's actually a part of the wolf stat blocks. They have advantage on perception checks involving smell. But it really just gives you advantage and your enemy's disadvantage on perceiving you. You can still be really kind of seen. It's just really hard. Yeah. Yeah, And again while we're at it, stealth and the past with that a trace is that is that on your list? Because it is not. That's one again.

54:30 They were like, I'm just gonna stealth, Like, well, I'm gonna hide like way behind what right, Like you're in there, You're in a room, there's nothing. Yes, and this is something actually this is on this list, but let's let's just get into that real quick. So again, in my in my store level one shots, one of my characters that I have as a pregen is a thief, and the bonus action high was something that was getting abused just entirely too much. Those they never got hit because I wasn't. I just wasn't gonna bother with them. And then you know, then the question became okay, hide behind what, and I just started giving them places they couldn't hide it. Yeah, just keep in mind that this is a like if we're talking about dungeons and dragons. This is a storytelling game. So it's important to have that. Have that ready because you will run into players who say, like, oh, bonus ac can hide, like okay, hide behind what, like describe them at least right like, well, Okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna one of the slain enemies. I'm gonna lay down under. Yeah, and that might be a good reason to give an aileration, but yeah, yeah, and you know, and the feast whole thing is to stick and move.

55:34 But you know, I don't want to validate half of what makes the thief a thief. But yeah, sometimes we get it's so caught up and though I think in playing and winning that we forget that this is a narrative driven I love I want that on a T shirt and the number one on here is death seaves a couple of things that new players may not always know, and we may even get backwards. Sometimes once the character goes unconscious as you're HP, they have to roll dead seas on their turns. Three failures, dead, three successes, and you stabilize, you're still unconscious. You get one hid point right, No, no, you won't get them on that twenty not twenty. You come back at one HP, but three successes, you're still at zero. You're still unconscious. You're just not in danger of dying. Now. One is two failures. That one is two failures.

56:16 That's not instant death as some people think you which you would think like if that twenty is an instant backup and then a natural one would be instant death, and it's just not. This just not the case. So it is you pop back up at one or it's two death fails. Right. Also, if you get hit while you're while you're conscious critical, being prone while prone and unconscious is an auto crit which is which would be two death fails. So those the twelve D and D rules everyone forgets. According to the gamer dot com And again the link will be in the show notes. But I hope you guys learned, like a lot today. I learned all bunch. I learned way more than I thought I would. You know, there's some crazy stuff from that in that player's handbook. We got to start reading it. It's a This thing's full of real page turner, is what it is. Yeh. But but Jim, thanks so much for for bringing up inspiration as well. Joe, thanks for bringing up over world travel. We're going to drop some fun things in the show notes. I don't really know where we're gonna drop yet. But what is a rule that you never really knew how to get around or really or what's the rule that you were playing wrong for longer than you probably should have and then have you epiphany one day to start playing it right. I want to know, like I want to know what took you the longest to learn? What? What do we learned by doing wrong? So you can send your stories about that too, Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com, or tell us your story yourself at helloadventures podcast dot com, slash voice and leave us a voicemail like the If you like what you say, it is putting them on the show. But I

57:46 think that's all we got today. I think that's plenty of plenty. That's st on think of a studying about Jim Joe. Thanks so much, Thank you and thank you for listening to Hello Adventures. We're your host Jason Portiso, Jim Crocker and Joe a Call producer, editor and engineer Jason Portiso and music by Nick Spurrier, artwork by Kristen Broderick. You can reach out to us with any feedback for suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast at gmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a JTV audio production. Goodbybe Adventure