Hook and Chance

Every rule should engage. That's the episode. Playing D&D can feel like you're constantly getting buckets of rules tossed in your face, and you're trying to sort out which ones matter. Then there are rivers of homebrew. How could we possibly know what's good, and what's trash? With the question "Does it engage?", which is what our incredible guest Heavyarms is here to help with. He's created some of the most useful supplements we've ever touched, including The Armorer's Handbook and The Alchemy Almanac among others.

It's always tempting to use monsters like the rust monster because they seem iconic. Classics. Gotta try 'em at least once. The problem comes when we mix the original punishing design principles of D&D with the modern character and story first playstyle that we love so much. Now they just feel like an annoying trap that steals from me. In this episode, we adapt the Rust monster to the way we like to play games.

So we've got dimension-surfing cyborgs with cultural values, motivations, and personalities. Now we have to plan for the inevitability that some frantic adventurer is gonna wanna throw down. But as they're currently presented, we're a little underwhelmed by their combat dynamism. Advanced beings from a plane of law, and they're throwing javelins at us? In this episode, we aim to create encounters with Modrons that engage, confound, and allow for triumphant victories.

Modrons capture attention and imagination—bio-mechanical beings from an alien plane, with reality-bending inspirations. But when we start unpacking the lore, we can't figure out how or why to use them, how to roleplay a modron, how they behave, or what they really want. So in this episode, we answer these questions by tweaking the concept while staying true to its roots.

These magical minions add so much to a character. They're tiny strategic powerhouses that possess pure condensed roleplay potential. They're the dark matter of RPGs. Yet the same problems pop up again and again with these critters. They're easily forgotten, it's hard to get others invested in them, we keep leaning on the one gag that got a laugh until they're just a punchline, or with a massive amount of backstory, they start to take up too much game time. This episode is about creating just enough familiar to make them shine.

Chimeras are legendary creatures that have invaded folk's imagination since the ancient Greeks cooked them up. An epic three-headed beast conquered by the son of a god. Juicy. But have you ever been a part of an uninspired Chimera fight? Yes, they're deadly, but after a couple flyby triple head attacks, things get stale. In this episode, we talk about building up to a Chimera reveal and spicing up combat to engage every player at your table.

There are many games with near-infinite themes, genres, flavors, new ideas, and fresh inspiration. It's an exciting world of possibility, and we'd love to play them all. Of course, there's only so much time, money, or x resource that we have to try these new games. Unfortunately, this stops us from even beginning to explore different systems. This episode aims to give you the same nudge we needed. The GMTim, with his experience as a professional DM running dozens of different systems, presents a few based on our favorite genres, and we discuss their merits as we try to figure out what to learn next.

Hags offer so much potential as ruthless negotiators, incredibly clever antagonists and uneasy allies. But like many of the most brilliant monsters out there, their plots can be hard to actually conjure up in our games. And not just that, but the classic hag tales are ones in which someone a little foolish enters a bargain we all know they shouldn't have. So we need the ability to come up with clever plots that our players don't automatically dismiss. This episode aims to give you the steps to do just that.

Warlocks inspire a lot of wonder, right out of the gate. They've got an incredible story hook baked right in, and one can sit there considering how terrifying they look for ages. But where we've fallen down before is really making that hook pay off. This episode explores the themes and potential stories that warlocks offer us, and how to play them to their heights.

Hold Person is wildly powerful and feels pretty cool when you get to snag a baddie with it. But it's one of the classic save or suck spells, meaning that either nothing happens, or something absolutely awful happens. This means dice start flying out of pure rage at the table when your barbarian is stuck in place during a climactic throw-down. Well, we demand better from our spells, and we hope you enjoy our exploration in making this enchantment feel as gripping as it sounds.