This week, Adam and Tiana do a deep dive into the magic system for IP D&D. This covers the ethos of designing the magic, the magic types, and the cantrips created thus far for Arcane, Divine, Primal, and Martial. Check out the document linked below to get more information as we discuss magic, and feel free to leave your thoughts as comments! The Ma…

This week, Adam and Tiana dive deep into the weapons document to talk about how weapons behave in this new system, and how to make them unique. Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs The Weapons/Armor/Combat actions doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nIZqZ49ixjmUiW1HtgFNgnZ39wuiYHi--e…

This week, Adam and Tiana focus on redesigning the weapons and armor, with an eye to balancing accuracy in depiction with fulfilling the fantasy of the combat. Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs The Weapons/Armor/Combat actions doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nIZqZ49ixjmUiW1Htg…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk more about the new base classes they've been working on, taking a closer look at Acolyte and Rogue. As ever, this is all super loose and we're taking any and all suggestions in the Discord. Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs Document with the base classes:…

This week, Adam and Tiana dive into the write-up Adam did for two of the four base classes: Fighter and Mage. The ideas held here are super loose, and we want to hear other people's opinions too! Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs Document with the base classes: https://docs.google.com/…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about Tiana's idea about taking the class system down to four basic classes for the first few levels. It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see how it works out! Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqsBy Adam Power, Andrew Geertsen, & Tiana Ren Hanson

This week, Adam and Tiana take a break from looking at individual classes to take a broader view at the class design ethos as a whole. Both Adam and Tiana have ideas for how to dig deep into overall class design, but first, how did we get to where we are now? History and idea document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P1EQbgnXd7eFFffN_H9H6M2st6F…

This week, Adam and Tiana welcome Chris back onto the podcast to talk about fighting games redesigning the Monk. We discuss cultural expectations tied into the name of the class, how to think about martial arts as a whole, and why Tiana is now committed to playing a Monk in Baldur's Gate 3. Sugar Punch, Chris's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about the first "D" in D&D: Dungeons. What's the point of dungeons? What's the best way to use them in storytelling? To watch the Death Campaign live: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqsBy Adam Power, Andrew Geertsen, & Tiana Ren Hanson

This week, Adam and Tiana sit down to talk about monster design and some thoughts about combat in this revamp of D&D. We talk about swarms, ideas for how to categorize monsters, and build more of our design ethos as we approach the concepts behind how to handle combat and monsters. To watch the Death Campaign live: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen…

This week, Adam and Tiana tackle rebuilding one of the most basic classes in D&D: the Fighter. (After about a half hour of talking about video games.) Join us as we talk through the changes made thus far, and how we want to adjust more as we go. Fighter Write-up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NxGKfFZ6VAs-8jR9Lnyi86XV0xMbwigUy2M2lnQ9xGI/edit?u…

This week, Adam and Tiana take a look at the reworked character sheet Adam is working on for IP D&D. The goal is to have everything easily accessible and streamlined in a way that makes sense, while keeping the skills and information that are important to the fantasy of the game. How did we do? What you would add or take away? To watch the Death Ca…

This week, Adam and Tiana sit down with guest host Dane Filemyr to talk about Adam's rewrite of the Barbarian class. Dane plays Drausken in the streamed Death campaign, who is a multiclass Fighter/Barbarian using Adam's rewrite, so we wanted to get his take on the Barbarian fantasy, how he feels about Adam's rewrite, and whether Barbarian should be…

Welcome back from the holiday break, folks! This week, Adam and Tiana sit down to talk about their ambitious project: rewrite D&D to make it more of a passion project than the lackluster thing WOTC gave the world with D&D 2024. We have a lot to unpack and rebuild and discuss; please join us as we dive ever deeper! To watch the Death Campaign live: …

This week, Adam and Tiana look back over the year and talk about the lessons learned and the many games played. Time for us to head into hibernation for the rest of the year!By Adam Power, Andrew Geertsen, & Tiana Ren Hanson

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about Adam's favorite strategy manual: The Art of War by Sun Tzu. We talk about how to use the principles in that book to change the way GMs and players think about their roles in encounters and overall gameplay. To watch the Death Campaign live: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/g…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about upcoming plans in the ongoing Westgate Patron game, where the party is about to start building political alliances within the city. We use that as a springboard to talk about how to set up those sorts of situations for your players, and ways that players can engage within the situations. To watch the Death Campa…

This week, Adam and Tiana are feeling TOTALLY NORMAL, NOTHING TO DISCUSS HERE, and talk about what a despot looks like. Dictators and despots can be incredibly intricate TTRPG villains, usable in a number of circumstances ranging from mustache-twirling to "doing the wrong thing for the right reasons." To watch the Death Campaign live: https://www.t…

This week, Adam and Tiana take a tool from politics and political coverage to talk about the best predictors for the survival of a TTRPG table. Because while we do our best to stay away from national politics, we do agree that there are politics inherent in table dynamics, and we want to give our listeners every chance to stack the deck in their fa…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about Big Bad Evil Guys and how to make them feel appropriately dangerous and scary. We've all been there: you spend a campaign building up to the BBEG, and then when you get into the final fight, they go down like a tower of cards in the first few rounds. How do we make that not happen? Let's talk about it! To watch …

This week, Adam and Tiana introduce the second secret ingredient. We've talked about it before in passing, but this time, we dive deep into why curiosity is the second secret ingredient and how it can elevate your games. Be curious, not judgmental. To watch the Death Campaign live: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https://discord…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about the lessons Adam learned from running two different sessions of Death: one on Friday for a private group of Patrons, and one on Tuesday for the livestream crew. No matter how long we've been playing or GMing, there's always something new to learn if we're willing to dig in! To watch the Death Campaign live: http…

This week, Adam and Tiana dive into a rewrite of the Ranger player class that Adam's been working on. The goal is to design to the Ranger fantasy, without being overly reactive to the 2024 changes to the class. The Google Doc with the rewritten class: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gCHFMjrHrnmmdlVeOJqFGaYVbxNY4flfQz-EeBcPlAE/edit?usp=sharing T…

This week, Adam and Tiana take a break from talking about the mechanics to talk about games currently in progress: the Death Campaign, currently playing out as a streamed game on Tiana's channel and two Patron games on Discord. We discuss the philosophies being explored, Sir Terry Pratchett gets a moment in the spotlight, and we talk about where th…

This week, Adam and Tiana finish their evaluation of the changes to the Player Classes with a deep dive into Druid 2024. We have access to the full book now, so there's a lot more to dig through and discover; come along with us as we wrap up our discussion on Player Classes! Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Discord! https:…

This week, Chris joins Adam and Tiana to talk about games he played last year that weren't D&D 5e. Along the way, we discuss design ethos, what we look for in games, and why so many systems work great for Persona. Sugar Punch, Chris's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SugarPunch Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join the Dis…

This week, Adam and Tiana continue their discussion about the changes to Player Character classes in the upcoming 2024 Player's Handbook. We're comparing two classes with a lot of similarities to see how they hold up in the new edition Sorcerer blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1769-2024-sorcerer-vs-2014-sorcerer-whats-new Wizard blog post…

This week, Adam and Tiana continue their discussion about the changes to Player Character classes in the upcoming 2024 Player's Handbook. It's charisma hour with Warlocks and Bards, two of the funnest classes to play! Warlock blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1756-2024-warlock-vs-2014-warlock-whats-new Bard blog post: https://www.dndbeyond…

This week, Tiana takes on the solo hosting role again and welcomes Sam Tillis to the podcast to discuss his journey to becoming a professional GM and how he handles the differences between games as recreation and games as profession. Sam's Links: https://linktr.ee/stillis.gaming Emissary link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/447790/emissary…

This week, Adam and Tiana continue their discussion about the changes to the player classes in the 2024 Player's Handbook. We discuss Paladin and Cleric, with our opinions about the changes Paladin blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1749-2024-paladin-vs-2014-paladin-whats-new Cleric blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1767-2024-cleri…

This week, Adam and Tiana continue their deep-dive into what's known so far about the 2024 player classes. While we planned to talk about two classes as before, we had a lot to say about ranger and our perspective on the design philosophy behind the changes. Ranger blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1759-2024-ranger-vs-2014-ranger-whats-new…

This week, Adam and Tiana continue their discussion about the changes to the player classes in the 2024 Player's Handbook. We discuss Rogue and Monk, with some digression into YouTubers and Star Wars. Rogue blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1752-2024-rogue-vs-2014-rogue-whats-new Monk blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1758-2024-mo…

This week, Adam and Tiana begin talking about the changes to the player classes in the 2024 D&D Player Handbook. We're working from the playtest bundles and the D&DBeyond blog posts, comparing the 2014 classes to the new changes. Barbarian blog post: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1750-2024-barbarian-vs-2014-barbarian-whats-new Fighter blog post: …

This week, Tiana takes on the solo host role and welcomes Alandra Hileman onto the show to talk about tips and tricks for running mob combat in D&D 5e. We use examples from Phandelver and Below, a campaign Tiana recently wrapped up, to discuss ideas for making the juggling act behind the GM screen as smooth as possible. Join our Discord to continue…

This week, Adam and Tiana are joined by Dan Waszkiewicz, Handler of The Redacted Reports, to talk about running a horror game. We talk about tone and themes, along with some safety tools that we think are essential to the experience. Join our Discord to offer your opinions! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs Dan's preferred safety toolkit: https://ttrpg…

This week, Adam and Tiana take a break from discussing TTRPGs to discuss a game franchise we both hold dear: Dragon Age. There's a new trailer released (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F3N4Lxw4_Y), and we have OPINIONS. Check out the upcoming Death game run by Adam with Tiana as a player at https://www.twitch.ttv/vanalosswen And join our Discord t…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about the session zero Adam ran for the new Patron games, including going over his table rules and the general conceit for the upcoming game. The streamed version of Death can be found here! https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen Join our Discord to offer your opinion! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs…

This week, Adam and Tiana discuss the recently-finished Patron game, Gnarled Frontier. Adam reflects on the lessons he learned as a GM from this campaign, and goes over some of his Roses (high points) and Thorns (challenges/learning opportunities). Join our Discord to offer your opinion! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about the social interactivity of TTRPGs at the table, the importance of playing to the audience (seen or unseen), and how curiosity can build the experience of everyone. Join our Discord to offer your opinion! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqsBy Adam Power, Andrew Geertsen, & Tiana Ren Hanson

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about ways to elevate the spellcasting experience and how to bring in the fourth component of a spell: roleplay. While we don't think every spell needs in-depth roleplay to make it better, we do have some thoughts and suggestions for how to use spells in a less RAW way to make the experience more dynamic. Join our Dis…

This week, Adam and Tiana are thrilled to announce that Adam will be running a livestreamed D&D 5e game on Tiana's personal Twitch channel. The live session zero will be June 11th, with the campaign running through the summer. We're excited to give our listeners a sneak peek into what's coming down the pike. Join our Discord to stay updated! https:…

This week, Adam and Tiana continue digging into the five principles of design, using subclasses we designed for this project. Do you have thoughts about what we've done? Want to try the subclasses out for yourself? Let us know at the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqsBy Adam Power, Andrew Geertsen, & Tiana Ren Hanson

This week, Adam and Tiana look at principles presented by Treant Monk for handling design choices. There's a lot of thought that goes into game design balance, but we think Treant Monk had a good set of thoughts with the series of questions we go into. Continue the conversation in the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about character voices and do a short exercise to play with voice. We can put so much of what makes a character who they are into the way we choose to speak as them, and it's a lot of fun to dig into that kind of thing. Continue the conversation in the Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs…

This week, Adam and Tiana reflect on the Patron Westgate game we played the day before, and what it taught Adam in terms of GM control and how to let go. At the core of it all, punitive punishment AND mercy are forms of control that GMs need to examine and grow beyond. Join the conversation in the Discord: https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs…

This week, Adam takes Tiana through a series of D&D 5e rules questions used on the YouTube channel Jorphdan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qfhVN64AiA&t=100s) to see how well she knows more obscure D&D 5e questions. Take the quiz yourself, and let us know how you did in our Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs…

This week, Adam wraps up taking Tiana through a campaign planning document he assigns to his D&D students in his day job. We've been having a good time diving deep into the core concepts of creating a campaign, so grab a notebook and start noodling your own ideas! The document Adam uses: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Alwm8ghRSKMFnOEP941VcYERX…

This week, Adam continues taking Tiana through a campaign planning document he assigns to his D&D students in his day job. We'll be diving deep into the core concepts of creating a campaign over the next few weeks, so grab a notebook and start noodling your own ideas! The document Adam uses: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Alwm8ghRSKMFnOEP941Vc…

This week, Adam begins taking Tiana through a campaign planning document he assigns to his D&D students in his day job. We'll be diving deep into the core concepts of creating a campaign over the next few weeks, so grab a notebook and start noodling your own ideas! The document Adam uses: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Alwm8ghRSKMFnOEP941VcYER…

This week, Adam and Tiana talk about a part of the Dungeon Master's Guide that isn't commonly used: Chapter 8, Diseases and Poisons. While diseases and poisons touch our real world in some interesting ways (*cough cough*), we're interested in how they can be used to tell a story. Come join us! Join our Discord to continue the conversation! https://…