From Birthday Bash to Dungeon Master: Ryan Denora's D&D Odyssey

Joining the podcast is Ryan DeNora. Ryan, thank you for joining us today. You're very excited to have you on Legends, luton Lore. This is great. I've been looking forward to this for some time now.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk about some Dungeons Dragons.

Yes, we were talking about the love of D&D that runs in your family and how I learned about that at the weddings and how you tied that in, which was really fun. Talk a little bit about that, about you and your brother and your mutual love for D&D.

Yes, for the past five years my brother and I and our friends have been in D&D and as part of our best man speeches to each other at each other's weddings, we did include a little bit of Dungeons Dragons humor. For those in the know, it was pretty cool. I brought an inflatable 20-sided die to my brother's wedding and had him and his now wife roll the dice. It was pretty fun.

That's great. I love incorporating little things like that into every day. It's really enjoyable. So you've been playing for about five years. Tell me about what got you started, what your first experience was like and what drew you into playing D&D.

Sure, my very first experience was actually at a friend's birthday party in elementary school. His uncle, I guess, must have played and he brought in a terrain set and a bunch of minis and pre-made character sheets and handed them out to all the kids. We painted our minis and that was kind of the end of it for most of them, but I was like, wow, this was really cool. I went to some toy store and actually got a starter set, which I think they still make these, but it was essentially like a paper fold-out mat with a bunch of little tokens and a pre-made dungeon and you got like four different character sheets, like a pre-made human barbarian, like elf ranger, and I would play with my brother and my cousins. Years went by, totally forgot about all of that Around the end of 2017, my brother and a group, a handful of our friends were like you know what? Let's try to play Dungeons and Dragons again. We all love to play games, we all love fantasy stuff. Let's try it out. And so we ended up starting a campaign at the start of the new year of 2018. And that sort of went on and spun out into two different groups and added more players to each of them. And so, around the pandemic actually started a third group that I'm Dungeon Master of, so now I'm in three different campaigns. I play three nights a week and, yeah, so one group my brother is the Dungeon Master and for that one we did a four-year campaign. That started as the Storm King Thunder module but quickly spiraled into a completely original story.

Oh, very cool.

Yeah, the other group that I play in we kind of changed Dungeon Masters more consistently A friend of mine. We just actually finished Curse of Strahd, which took us about like two years, and we are currently in the process of starting the Salt Marsh campaign.

Nice, oh, very exciting.

And then the third group that I'm Dungeon Master is entirely homebrew. I've come up with an original story all by myself, no modules or books. It's been a lot of work but it's been like really rewarding having these new players, like experience my own and like I'm kind of discovering what it's like to be a Dungeon Master in my own way, and it's been a lot of fun.

That's really interesting, so I'll tell you. I want to dive into that, into that homebrew, for a second, but before we do that I will have to. I will tell you. You probably don't know this. So we played one of our groups played Curse of Strahd, and originally Catherine DMed the beginning to your Curse of Strahd. Yes, she did, and it was interesting because we had I think we had done one or two campaigns before that and my co-host, joe, was the typical DM and the books that he used were really well, had a lot of depth of information to them, and so he assumed that every book was like this and he's like let's do Curse of Strahd. Catherine loves vampires, she loves Buffy, so this would be perfect. She got the book and it was like it was like such limited information, what did I get myself into? So she didn't, she made it. She made it pretty far through, but she it was just, it was just too much and it was so much fun. So you have to ask her about her first drive DMing days.

Yeah, it's really cool how two different people could run the same campaign module but it could go in two completely different directions based on the players and the dungeon masters, like preferences and everything.

Oh, for sure, For sure. So let's, so let's dive into this. I know I know this isn't in my list of questions here, but let's talk about your home Brew. Tell me, tell me a little bit about how did it, how did it come about, what's the inspiration and and and maybe what's what's a little bit in store for your, for your, adventurers?

Sure, so we're actually reaching the sort of the end end game of the campaign. Currently we actually are playing tonight, later today. But the premise, rather, how it started, you know, I'm playing in these two other groups and during the pandemic my wife my now wife was, you know, like wow, DNG is so cool, I want to play too. I'm like you know what I'll, I'll come up with a story for you and some of her friends and her sister wanted to play with us, and so I kind of introduced them to the rules of the story and we started off really, you know, kind of light, laid back, relaxed, like both stakes, just kind of filling it out. And we've been playing since, you know, 2020. Now it's 2023, three we're almost four years in and it's escalated. You know the stakes and the scale of the story. They're essentially on a quest to find five magical artifacts before the evil wizard who was also after them, and the goal is, you know, if the wizard gets them all, he's gonna unleash his army of darkness, and the heroes need to stop them. And they've gone to different cities, each with their own trials. They went to a dwarven city on a volcanic island where they took place, they took part in a Colosseum type combat. They went to a elven fortress up in the tundra that was being controlled by a queen who was mind controlled by like a demon, and so everyone was her puppets and there was a lot of like mystery, of like what's going on? How do we stop this mind control? And they're currently in the third location, which is sort of the like melting pot of all different sorts of people, races of all different kinds, and it is a society that's run by a guild council, and it was actually meant to be the first place they visited, but of course, you know, with players, they chose let's go to the volcano island first, but this location is home to, like all the different sorts of guilds that they could have joined. They have joined as bounty hunters and the goal of this current part of the story is that they are working towards becoming a member of a guild so they could be participants in a masquerade gala at the end of the week, in which there'll be an auction that the wizard that their friends with suspects. One of the artifacts is being disguised as an item that they're trying to buy. So the whole goal is trying to raise money. So they're going on bounty hunts, they're selling their most prized possessions, they're gambling at casinos lots of different things. Yeah, so it's been fun and building towards the climax, as they have currently two of the five artifacts and one in their sights and, yeah, we'll see the enemies have one already, so there's one more left.

Oh, that sounds very exciting. Yep, so tell me so. You was everyone in this group, relatively new to D&P.

Yeah, they all had never played before, except for one player who actually joined later on in the campaign, which was an experience trying to integrate a new player into a pre-existing campaign that had been running for a year and a half. He actually played second edition growing up, so he was a really easy integration because he already understood the time commitment, the role playing aspects, like most of the rules, though of course, a lot of them changed. It was interesting bouncing off of him like oh, like this works this way now. Like, oh, when I played, it worked this way, and you know it's minor things. He picked it up very quickly.

That's great, yeah. So for this group of relatively new, mostly new players, so D&D can be a little intimidating. There's a lot of things to remember depending on the type of character, especially classes like with wizards and things. There's a lot of mechanics to it. So how did you approach working with a group of newer players and how did you make it, like you say, ease them into a little bit? So how did you make it an enjoyable experience while still getting into the kind of the fun, role play and immersive aspect of D&D?

Yeah, so what I think is most important as a player is you gotta trust your dungeon master, and it's like don't worry so much about what the rules say and what you can do and can't do and the limitations more. Say what you want to do, and your dungeon master will tell you if that's possible and what to roll to see if you can achieve it. And so it's been like sort of a process of guiding them through all the different game mechanics. What I did have them do, though, is, when we started playing, I emailed them a PDF of the player's handbook and something that actually bought the player's handbook, and I'm like read as much as you can, but don't feel the need to read all of it, but what you should read is chapter seven, chapter nine and the intro, which are essentially like the core mechanics, like what's a D20, what is initiative, how does combat work, and then, like, once they got those core rules down, I pretty much directed them towards their class specific rules, because it was like you know, there's no point in teaching someone who's playing a barbarian how spell slots work, not at an early stage, like if they want to change characters. But yeah, so I was like okay, like you're playing a druid. What you need to know is how wild shape works. These are all different beasts you could be like this is what you want to focus on. And you're playing a fighter, okay, so you want to figure out how to maximize, like your, your, your accent, church and all that sort of stuff, and how, like, martial combat works, and so you know, that was the the main, like starting point. But, like as a dungeon master, it's really sort of just trying to get them to not feel like intimidated or afraid to like ask questions when we, when we originally started, I would sort of like leave them up to a location or a van, like okay, you're at the front of the castle, like what do you do? And they would kind of look at me and be like, well, what, what can I do Getting them to like break down that, like that wall and be like, oh, I want to sneak around the back, I want to knock on the door, I want to shoot a cannon, and you know the rules are important for combat, but the rest of the game is role playing and it's really you're only limited by your imagination.

Oh for sure, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, I completely agree it's. It's fascinating how I'm sure you've seen this with, with, with the group how, how they, how they've kind of progressed from from the early days, about, about. Really it's just not understood, not understandably. What can I do? What can what can I do? And now, probably the things they come up with are are pretty interesting. So what are what are some of, what are some of some of the more memorable moments of this, this particular campaign, and anything that comes to mind?

Yeah, I mean, I have so many memories from across all as a player and as a dungeon master. Speaking of the one that I'm done to master, though, fairly recently there was a pretty interesting encounter where I gave one of the players earlier on an item that functioned, as it is called, the amulet of Demi plane, which was a homebrew item I came up with that essentially allowed them to put a creature inside of a art of an item and then, like as an action, like send it back out, sort of like a pokeball, and if the creature was willing it was fine, and if it was unwilling they had to make a wisdom DC save. So they made friends. As a druid, they made friends with an owl bear early on campaign. It's been like their companion. And so this competent counter came up where they were fighting a umber hulk and I had, you know, beef did up with a bunch of like different abilities, not from the book, just to make it a strutter boss fight, and they were not doing super well. They were getting really low on all their spell slots and health. And so the druid decides okay, I'm going to send my owl bear out and then I'm going to capture the umber hulk in this Demi plane. And yeah, and so they I can't remember all the details about it went down, but they somehow were able to, like, give it some sort of disadvantage. Someone, like debuffed it, and then they use the item I failed the DC save, and so they captured this monster and then for like, yeah, then for sessions and sessions like what are we going to do with this thing? Like owl bear can't be out and about, he can't be in the city. Like we need to keep him in the, in the pokeball or or help scare the villagers. And so they debated a ton of different ways of doing it and what they ultimately decided on was the druid turned into a hawk, flew as high into the air as possible. We had a look up like what was terminal velocity, whatever, and they released it at the peak of their flight and it plummeted like thousands and thousands of feet and it splattered. And I'm like, yeah, you did more damage. You beat the monster. Wow, I never was thought to. I like, look up like all these different like, like what's like? Terminal velocity, what is fall damage equal at like it was going to be like 50 D sixes or something. I'm like, yeah, that's way more health than this thing has.

That's fantastic.

I love, I just love that you went through that whole calculation to one of our players is a math professor, so he made sure to make sure all the math was accurate. That's great.

I love, I love what, I love what. There's realism in D&D yeah absolutely, but I mean that's.

That was a fun like moment in terms of like players being creative. As a player myself, though in the campaign, I always think this one moment, that like really impacted me and our team as players. I was in a group where I was playing as a tree and druid, so we made a whole new race, like you know, and from Lord of the Rings giant tree person, and so I was the I was the only healer and the only lawful good member of a pretty much all chaotic evil party. And so, you know, we were a group of, you know, killing everyone that crossed our path kind of party, and we had just completed a assassination mission. We assassinated a political leader in Waterdeep for this entire thieves guild which, like, for some reason, we were trying to be part of. And so, as part of the deal they were, they decided to frame, they pinned the crime on a Eric Cochran who happened to be one of our party members brothers. He was an Eric Cochran monk. And so the party's like, oh, we got a break in a jail, let's kill all the guards, let's break this guy out. And so me, as the lawful good member, was like no, we can't do that we can't defeat a whole army of guards. We just, you know, completed this mission. Our names are cleared Like we should leave and they're like no, we're going in. And so I stayed back and my three other party members went in and they break into the jail and immediately things start going bad. They're getting overwhelmed by guards and so my character is like on the boat, like Okay, they're taking a while, Like I should go in and like help them out. So I come in for the save full health and like make this blockade and allow them to like make the escape with the prisoner. Now the guards, they start shooting fireballs and my character goes down and I'm the only healer. And not only does he go down? I failed my first death save and then I got a natural one of my second death save. No, I died and we were completely devastated, like we had been playing for a year and a half and my character is suddenly dead and he wasn't just, like you know, a guy that was dead, he was a giant tree person, so no one could like pick him up and carry him to like right Someone. And so this ended up being a really like pivotal moment in our group trajectory and, like because of this character's death, they completely changed their mentality, decided to turn on this and tar him and they said let's become heroes, let's strive to do the right thing, and actually like broke off a branch of my character's like tree and planted it and it became this like, symbol of the party of like like what would, what would? Yardbark was his name, what would Yardbark do? Like what was the right thing to do. And so it became like this guiding post. That like took the whole party from like murdering everyone to saving the world. And it was really cool and I ended up making a new character who was a prisoner that escaped with them and stowed away on the ship and yeah, that was like having an important, like character. Death could really change everything if the characters are invested enough.

That is that that's incredible. That's like that's, that's such a tremendous thing to happen to, to influence an entire party to really kind kind of re reexamine what what they've been doing with their lives and really make a complete 180 to go the opposite direction.

that's, that's yeah, it was really impactful like it because it was a lot of fun like being criminals, like you know, but sure. And then from that point on, we like went back to all these cities and like right at our wrongs, like made peace, how to make agreements, like did contracted jobs to like make things right and just made allies across the board. Yeah, and so that campaign ended up that was the one that lasted four years and actually painted a mural of like the final battle. I got it hanging in my office right now.

Oh, that is, that is I wish. I wish everybody on the podcast. Maybe we'll find a way, maybe. Maybe we can take a picture of and put on the discord server so yeah, I could upload it we can go there and take a look at it, because that's that is. That is super, super cool.

I love that they all have actually a little talisman with a tree logo like somewhere on their character art to like symbolize the moment you know that is.

That is super, super cool. Yeah, so wow, that's so how. So what? What was it like coming back to to D&D after after all those, after all those years? So you, you, you kind of got got your first taste of it as a kid and and really really hadn't come back to it. So so what, what were the? What were the intervening years like? So what what other? So you say you're into fantasy and things like that. So what, what other things? What was the kind of the thread that that went from from that experience to to then playing D&D again?

yeah, let's see. Well, I mean, I'm a huge, I love playing video games, that's always a classic and I like playing board games too. Not so much the. I didn't get it into tabletop again until more recently, but you know Katan is a big one risk. You know stuff like that. But I'm also an avid video gamer. I love games, like you know. Skyrim is great. I love Elden Ring, dark Souls, all those kind of games I'm also you know fun stuff like Nintendo, mario, zelda, of course, and then, you know fantasy series. I always like Bloor, the Rings, star Wars. I'm a big anime fan so a lot of my influence comes from a bunch of different series like across. You know that entire genre and spectrum. Yeah, influence from all over really that's.

That's super cool. How have you have you played Baldur's Gate 3? I?

haven't had a chance yet. I've been still making my way through Legend of Zelda, tears of the kingdom oh, both of those games are a huge time time sink. But a lot of my friends are playing Baldur's Gate right now. I know they have a lot of. I mean, it is D&D fifth edition. It's exactly the same game. Yeah, I've been really.

I've been really enjoying. I had to wait because I got it on PS5 so I was like a I had that one month wait after everybody got it on PC my friends with PCs have been playing it, but my brother, he have PlayStation 5 and my brother just downloaded it last night, actually awesome. Yeah, it's a blast. I'm really enjoying it. I think it's a great. It's a great way for for people to bridge the gap, I think, from from video games and and things like that, and and really get a feel for for what D&D can be like in a I say, real life, you know scenario. But to be able to visualize it right and and see exactly what's happening is very interesting yeah, absolutely so, so let's talk about this. Let's, because I'm always, I'm always fascinated. So you talked about, you, talked about your, your one, your one character. Is that your? Is that your favorite character? Or what's the what, what's your, what's your character? Creation process, like, so, so, maybe, maybe a different character, what, what has that been like for you? What do you, what do you think about when you are choosing race or species and class, like what's, yeah, how did what? What is there anything that inspires you? You know, talk about that process yeah, absolutely well.

So as for favorite character, the druid tree that I played, he definitely was one of my favorites, but it was actually the character I came up with to replace him. My following character after his death that became my favorite. He was a forge cleric, loxodon, which is an elephant person. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool yeah, and so what was really cool about the forge cleric was that it took a lot of the cool stuff from being an artificer, but you still got a lot of the cleric abilities and I had this really powerful the story that really kept me motivated, which was that his goal was to find these artifacts that would help him bring back this powerful weapon called the bonondod, which was basically a giant robot and that his ancestors had built and that all their souls had been infused into its like arcane core, and so he was like reconnecting with his ancestors, who were builders, and like he was like building a better future. And you know, he was just searching for all these different artifacts and each one would go into this like hammer that he had and bestow it with like an additional magical power. So he had a certain, an upgradeable. You know it was a custom item. My brother came up with that every time. I found an artifact like you get the fire artifact. Okay, now you could cast flame shield from your hammer and like, oh, you found the the air artifact. Okay, wind wall is now available for you as a spell. So he was like kind of like continued that being a hero mentality for the group as he came in off the heels of the dying. And what was fun with that campaign is that as it ended, we actually used it as a springboard for our current campaign, which is hundreds and hundreds of years later, a like space themed. We took it the spell jammer book that just came out and kind of like yeah, yeah, but what we did was we did this like in between epilogue, entirely role-playing, like it was like multiple sessions where we like set up what happened to our characters in the aftermath of the of like the end of the big climax of the first campaign, and so, like my character went on to like establish pretty much all of the scientific inventions that would shape the world of the future. So I felt like a lot of connection to him. But that's super cool yeah, but. I played a lot of characters I've done for my Chris Astrod group. I was a hex blade, warlock eladrin, which is the high, like the fey fey wild elf that has like different seasons, and then in my salt marsh campaign I make a sword barred yes, college of swords barred a forged or automaton.

So he's a robot that sings nice, that's pretty, that's pretty, damn cool but what's funny is that my first ever character was very uninspired.

It was a human barbarian and that was pretty much all there was to him. I was so unattached to him that I actually asked the dungeon master to kill him off in a dramatic fashion. So I can make a new character. Because what what I'm, what I'm getting to is actually, when it comes to character creation, the three major aspects class and race. It's actually the third, I think, is most important, which is background. Yes, I find that when you make a character, the most important thing to consider are what are your characters like? Goals and motivations? Like what's their morals? Like are they? Do they have, like any sort of like regrets or fears in their past? Like they're like deep or like maybe an irrational. Like do they have a big secret that they're hiding from the rest of the party? Like, have they made a mistake in their past? Or, like you know, do they care about what people think about them? And like what's their motivation to stay with the party or what? do they think about, like authority and like kings and nobility, like do they hate them? Do they, do they respect them? Do this your character have a family and what's their relationship with their family? And like if they had one wish, like what would it be? And like all these different things really help figure out, like who your character is and I think, more than than class and race, like that's what gets you invested in a story, at least for me, like and then, as from a dungeon master perspective, coming into that, like you know, you don't want a character's entire history written out, you don't want like a whole story, like paragraphs and paragraphs, but like if you have that like first chapter of your story, like the prologue, like where you came from, because your character didn't wake up in the bar. You know, that's the beginning like their story starts before then, but then I could take all these like historical events that happen to them and use them as plot hooks to like, inspire them and motivate them to take actions like if, if you, if you were an orphan, if your character was an orphan, maybe as a dungeon master, I create an orphan character who has a quest and you feel sympathy for them and you want to help them. Or if your parents were killed by a dragon, maybe that same dragon is now terrorizing a city and that's a reason why your character maybe won't help out that city, because they're that scared of the dragon that they're not ready to face their fears. And yeah, I mean background. It's it's such an understated like aspect and like the background, like in the book, like you get a couple of abilities, but that's not the part that really matters. It's like it's the story more than anything. And I think class is important too, but it's mostly for combat. You know it's important to find something you'd like, like, do you want to be a spell casser or like a martial combat guy, like my barbarian? I realized I really want to cast spells. So, barbarians, not for me. I was not feeling it at all yeah yeah, and you know race races mostly for flavor, you know, again, you get a couple abilities from it, but you know, outside of that and more informs your dungeon master, like how to make your world like, for example, in my one group there's two characters who are tieflings. So we just said like, okay, yeah, tieflings are as common as dwarves and elves, maybe even more common, because it's just you know, and it's not weird or anything, and it kind of like helps just flavor the world more than anything else. I don't really like also from the book where they kind of lock you into like oh, this race gives you a bonus in dexterity or a bonus in this. Like I kind of have let my players like you could put those bonus stats wherever you want them because you shouldn't be locked into like certain classes based on your race. If you want to be like a super big, tough gnome, you should be allowed to do that why not right?

yeah, absolutely yeah it's interesting, I love. So I, yeah, I, I, I I get what you're saying. It's a, it's a really interesting perspective, I feel like. I feel like race species is kind of like who you are, class is kind of like what you can do, yeah, but but yeah, but that background is like why is your motivation and why you, why you are doing those things?

why are you on the adventure? Like what's right? Why are you fighting every day and like do all these things, like you need to have a reason, you can't just be. Otherwise you end up being like a murder hobo, like my first group, and you're like oh yeah, we're just here to fight things and it doesn't get you very far in the world no, it doesn't, yeah, yeah, it's I love it's funny, like at least for me.

So my one of my current, my current character is a mountain door fighter and and it's like I love how how you like you say you can't take a prologue, so you don't, you don't have to write the entire backstory ahead of time. But I but it was funny, we were in this, were we're, we're on this iceberg, we are, we walked into this room. It was one of our first combats and it was. It was a room full of cobalts and I I determined that my character had had some, some story in his background when he hated cobalts. Sure, like they, like they, they had, they had killed All of his family, but but one person and like that's how he's, he's here, but yeah, but he like destroyed their village, like cobalt's destroyed their village. So he's got this, he's got this chip on his shoulder against cobalt and I'm like he just he just really hates cobalt. And so it's interesting how you can, you can write your story as as the campaign goes on as well, and really flesh it out.

Absolutely like the. The campaign is your character story. You don't need to have it all figured out beforehand. I was like nuggets of information like like just give you the motivation and direction to figure out, like how to get into your character and where they're gonna go, and all that.

Absolutely so in your, so in in when, when you're, when you're DMing this, this group again, I want to go back to all of your, your, your fantastic kind of group of of newbies to Dnd. So Another, another challenge that that a lot of people can have Coming into D&D is the whole role-playing aspect of it. So how? Because I think it's one of the best parts. I think it really makes the experience very immersive. So how, how do you go about? How'd you go about Getting them comfortable in in role-playing? I mean, did, did everybody know each other? Or?

Um, to varying degrees. Yeah, one kind of like was familiar. Yeah, it's, it's tricky, you know it's when you, when you're with the group people you know really well, it definitely comes a lot easier to bounce off each other. You have rapport, you know. You kind of like you know you kind of like know what your what kind of jokes hit and what kind of jokes don't. But you know you can kind of navigated it. At first it was a lot more, or rather a lot less, role-playing and now that we've become more comfortable, closer friends and everything got to know each other. You know we're in the stage where we're doing voices and we're, like you know, having more dramatic moments. Yeah, as far as like getting everyone like immersed in that, it's not something that comes right away. It definitely takes a lot s and the mentality for a player and for a dungeon master, probably coming from two different places, but I tend to focus on the same little Bit for both, from both perspectives. I'm gonna just, like you, kind of find like the key motivating factor or like a phrase that gets you like into the mindset. That's like if I'm playing my character or if I'm dungeon mastering and I'm playing a dozen characters, I'm like, okay, like what's like that phrase that like makes me think, oh, I'm this person and, like you know, for Like I have this like really like solemn, kind of like loom wolf kind of character and so. I'll make my voice real deep and get myself thinking like, alright, yeah, alright, yeah, I'm up, I'm here by myself. No one else matters, you know, and kind of like, start saying these freezes a couple times in my head. It gets me start thinking that way, which, especially as a dungeon master, when you have to improv a lot, especially- you don't know what your players gonna throw at you. That helps, like make sure you say the right thing and not like get caught off guard. As for like players, like I would say you know it's, don't feel, try not to feel like intimidated and like don't feel the pressure to like do a voice. Voices aren't for everyone. I think it helps a lot if you can do a voice to get you in that mindset, like it helps you separate you from your character, because that's something I struggled with early on was like oh, I want to to, you know, get that magical item, but my character wouldn't care about that magical item. So I need to separate myself from my character because as a gamer, you know you want, you want a lot of cool things, you want to get all the stuff, but maybe you want to clear the level.

Yeah, I want to level the bad guy.

I want all the magic items but you know I'm not gonna be like I don't know what I'm gonna do with my magic items. But you know, if my character is the lone wolf and wants to, like you know, Do his own thing, you know he doesn't care so much about the you know magic sword. Maybe he's like I'm happy with my normal sword and, yeah, I. It's definitely tricky for newcomers to get into role playing but it definitely, I think, comes down to you know, letting yourself just Not confined by rules or like how you should be, or you know there's no right or wrong way to play or to role play. You know, other than like Certain, you know there's there's courtesies and matters that you don't want to talk over people.

But that's that's different.

That's not so much like getting into role playing, right right. But yeah, you know, I think Focusing in on your motivating factors is the best way to To make yourself feel like you are that character, like what do they want, and like kind of Keep your, keep your eye on the ball, like what do they want? How do they want to get there?

Excellent. So how do you, how do you as the dm, how do you make that easier for the players at your table? So so, so, welcoming them and getting them, getting them comfortable, is there anything that you do as a dm to to help them feel more at ease and and and and comfortable, kind of doing the role playing and maybe creating a voice for, for their character?

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things that, like I find, help out. I think In all three of my groups, as a player and as a dm, there's one thing we always do is, you know, say we're gonna start at 7 30, but the first 30 minutes are almost always like, hey, what's going on? Like let's catch up, how are you doing in your life, have school, how's work, has your family? And just kind of like you know, you know what's going on, like catch up and like you know, do that, you know Get yourself comfortable with talking for one and, just like you know, hanging out and then, once everyone starts to settle in, you know, get everything off their mind. They've been thinking about like let go of any, like work stressors or you know Anything that's going on, like, okay, everyone's good, everyone's good in mind, okay, let's start playing. And then I always cue, you know the same recap music. I have, like you know, one little jingle or song that I play, a different one for each group, and then I start the recap and like say, okay, last time we played, we did this, we did this, we did this. And I'm like, okay, now we're gonna jump into it. And um, it's usually, I find, as a dungeon master, best for me to like Take the reins and get them started. All often like say like uh, you know, as you wake up, uh, you know, you get a? Um, a message from the, from like the innkeeper, who says you know this, that and the other thing, and you have to go here and sort of like get them started, push them on their way. Um, especially when they're really like newcomers later on, especially with my other groups where we're a lot more experienced, you sort of just like start role playing immediately, kind of remember where we left off. Um, and, yeah, just like, getting everyone into that mental space is a huge part of it. Music is big and also having art. I love to draw my characters, I draw all my players' characters, and being able to see like a visual representation of your character helps you like oh, that's me, that's who I am Like, it gets you into it, and so I always like when we start up. I have like a landing page of a little like graphic of, like you know, the title of the campaign and everyone's character is lined up and that's what we stare at while we do the recaps. Everyone's like, okay, we're here, we're into it, and you know it gets them all ready to start acting. You know acting and improv.

So do you? Are your games in person online Like how do you? How do you? What are all the games? So in three games, are they? What's the? What's the? What's the game? Play like.

So they're all we play. I play all my games in role 20. That's just what we started with and I think it works really well for a lot of custom like map making and character sheet making. But we do all of our video chat and discord because it's it's just one of the best video services there is. But, especially recently, we've been really trying to make an effort to play in person. Fortunately, in all three of my groups everyone is on the East coast, so it's not impossible to get together. But you know, obviously it's difficult to get everyone on like a schedule. So we tend to say, like, okay, three months from now let's pick a date that's going to be the date We'll pick a house whose house it's going to be at. We try to rotate and then, wherever we're at in the story whether it's a boss battle or just a shopping trip in the city, like that's what we're going to be doing and then as a dungeon master, I try to like you know, try to like weave the story so we kind of land on something exciting and kind of plan like, okay, this is going to be the big encounter, so I can order the minis online and stuff. And yeah, I mean playing in person is just, it's just the best way I roll. 20 is great. Playing online is effective. It is a. It's the way I play pretty much every week. It is the way I play every week. But when you get together, you know it tends to be like when we play online we play for like maybe two hours, sometimes three. In person We'll play for like seven or eight hours and you just get into it. Everyone. You feel the energy of everyone in the room. You have your minis. I've gotten into building terrain recently. I've been like cutting out Having a relay yeah, it's buying trains expensive, so it's definitely easier to make it yourself. And you know I, I'm an artist, that's my profession, so I've been. I get like cardboard from packages and I'll use like masking tape and tape it together and make different like structures and paint it. I recently had a sewer campaign not a campaign on a quest where they had to go into a sewer and clear it of oozes that were polluting the water system. Okay, cool. What I did was I took solo cups and cut them in half and then kind of like built cardboard ledges and these are my sewer canals and I basically built like 10 of them that I could use interchangeably like modular, so that I can make them into like a long pathway, and then they could like separate. And then I, for my oozes, I bought a bunch of Play-Doh and those were my ooze tokens, and so each different color Play-Doh is a different. And when we were done I gave them to my friend's kid and like here, now they have Play-Doh there you go.

That's great, I love it.

Yeah, but playing in person is a lot of fun and if you could ever make it happen, it's just like it's the best way to do it.

I completely agree. Yeah, we're. We're mostly the I'm in one group right now and we are. Yeah, we're entirely online, mainly because we're all East Coast, but we've got one down in Virginia. Yeah, we've got some with kids, so it's not as easy to get together. So, but yeah, we have come together on a couple occasions and it's just. There's just. There's just something really magical about about being in person and playing, playing that game. I completely agree.

Especially when you're role playing, you like you feed off of each other's energy and like it just comes a lot more naturally.

Absolutely so. So who, who are some of your influences on on your journey in D&D? What things have, what things have influenced you people, shows, books, you know what. What has kind of guided you through your journey and and what kind of impact have those things had on had on you?

Yeah, so one of the biggest ones easily has to be a critical role of of sort of of course right.

Of course.

I've seen every single episode of campaign one, every single episode of campaign two and I'm currently 20 episodes into campaign three. I'm a huge fan. And my history with with that show specifically is funny because, as an anime, fan. I grew up watching these. These people, these actors, play voice cast. You know voice act. My favorite characters in all of these shows and then as I got into D&D. I was like I found out, I'm like, oh, they play D&D too. They have this campaign. Oh it's, it's Matt Mercer and Travis Willingham. And oh my God, I grew up watching these guys and now I get to watch them play D&D and it's so cool to just like watch their campaign. I've taken a lot of inspiration from Matt Mercer as a dungeon master for sure. Like he's incredible. I you can never really match his talent. But even just like taking I like stolen little stolen. So inspired by like little like encounters he's made, especially when it comes to like coming up with like alternate ways to like complete an encounter, like sometimes you'll involve a puzzle on top of a monster, I'm like, ooh, I like that, let me take that puzzle. And it's just been like also the Vox Machina animated TV show. Oh yeah, so good. I'm a big animation fan, so it's just been so cool to like see the story that I've already watched and enjoyed be told in another way. And I've been able to like share that with my friends who, frankly, don't have the time to watch 200, 140 episodes four hours long each one. I only have the time because I could just put it on the background while I work and it's just easy listening and stuff. So I'm kind of rewind when I miss something. But yeah, that's probably the biggest one. Besides that, yeah, just like little things from different shows I've watched, I'm a big fan of a series called One Piece. I just recently got a live action adaptation on Netflix that just came out this past week Super Fond. I love they. Have a lot of really cool powers that I've sort of taken and changed into either like magical items or like enchantments. I like took some story beats from there, kind of woven them into my own thing in a different flavor. Yeah, and those are probably my big two. But you draw from everything in life and it's hard to like, it's hard to not take stuff from life and put it in your game.

Right, right, I'll tell you I am. That's super cool, I love that, and it's so interesting how you can pull from so many different sources. We were. I'm super excited. You might get jealous of this, I am, so we're going to. I don't know about you, but Catherine and I are going to New York Comic Con.

Oh awesome. I used to go every single year, but I haven't been since COVID.

Yeah, so this year the whole cast of Critical Role is going to be there. Oh, are they really? Yes, and I'm doing the photo op with Matt Mercer. I'm like, I am so, so like excited.

I'm incredibly jealous. That is very cool.

Like they have. They have like a photo op with the whole cast of Critical Role, but it was like so expensive.

I'm like oh yeah, I don't think.

I can justify that. But, like Matt Mercer, totally, that's just. It's just. I'm just so, so jazzed. I'm really looking forward to it, but they are, it's interesting. So so let me ask you this question. So so, critical Role can be both very inspiring and intimidating. Yeah, because because you so, so for, so for, for a DM, somebody who wants to DM, if they've watched Matt Mercer, like you said, there there's, there's no way, yeah, there there's no chance that that your everyday person is going to be at the level of Matt Mercer. So how would you if somebody, if somebody, came up to you and said, hey, I'd really like to DM, like what, what would your advice or or what would you? How would you guide them into into kind of being being in that role?

Yeah, I mean, I think you know they're professional actors, like even as a player, you shouldn't really, you could aspire to be like them, but it's just like they're on a different level. Yeah, I think that you know for a starter in DM, one of the biggest things that I've kind of learned in my experience is um, when you're putting together a campaign, it's important to come up with your story, your lore and your characters and stuff, but don't get yourself bogged down with preparing everything. There's no way. I don't even know how Matt Mercer does it with all of his notes and stuff, and you know the terrains he builds are beautiful, but it's like there's kind of no point in creating this rigid experience of every single encounter, every single NPC. It's good to have a couple names on the board, a couple interesting shops, but to have everything figured out beforehand is not only are you going to drive yourself crazy, but you're going to make your story really rigid and sort of railroad your players, which isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes you want to hit a certain narrative beat. For example, in my group I needed my players to get to a certain island. They were on a boat and they were like oh, actually we're going to go to a different island, and I didn't have that island prepared. I was like I didn't write that part of the story yet because you can't write everything down, right. Okay, so what I did was they suddenly encountered a kraken, and these level six players had no way of defeating a kraken, and so, essentially, I shipwrecked them and they fought a hard battle. They did the best they could. They exhausted all their spell slots. I had no intention of killing them. This wasn't a fight they were supposed to be, but I had their ship get wrecked, they all got passed out, and then they awoke on the island I needed to be on. I was like, oh, you're on this island where the story continues. That's one way to do it, but I definitely prefer the sandbox approach, where your players guide the story, they say where they want to go and you follow with them and improv off of that. I think I was telling you before I had built these three locations for this campaign, where the artifacts are going to be located, and I was like okay they'll go to the city. That's the closest and has all the guilds in it first, but instead they decided to go to this island, and a completely different thing. But that was part of the fun. I had to think on the fly and make certain encounters a little bit easier and certain encounters a little bit harder, as they got to different ones than I planned, and that's my point. There's no point in. You don't want to plan everything, you just want to figure out what they want to do and riff off of them. So that sewer encounter I was talking about before when they finished it, they came out of the sewer and their characters smelled like sewage, and so we want to go clean ourselves off. I'm like, okay, what can they do? I invented on the spot a spa resort that's in the city. There just happens the B1. They hadn't passed it before. It was tucked off to the side, and so they go there. And so I'm just like improving this entire session. Like, okay, you get in and there's a water elemental that is a shower, the water kind of like a washing machine, just like kind of cycles around you. You close it clean and then you go to the pools. Well, there's clerics. There's clerics by the pools and they're blessing the water. And now, with your short rest, you'll restore your spell slots too, because that's the magic power they've infused into it. And there's a food court and you know, oh, you could buy this wine. And if you drink this wine you'll get like a charisma boost for the next hour. You'll get advantage on charisma checks. And so just like came up with this whole and this ended up lasting the whole session. They were just like at the spa, like enjoying themselves and like there you go, that's great Random guests and gathering intel on like things I did have planned. Like they found out about you know something that was happening in a nearby city that they could explore next time, and so that's sort of like, yeah, that's like my big. As if you're a new dungeon master. My advice is to don't bog yourself down by figuring everything out. Get your core story beats, get your like big antagonist. You know your couple main characters and key players, but you know you don't have. You don't need to have a full backstory for every single one. You don't need to have every single encounter figured out. Your players will tell you what they want to do and you just got to be ready to improv and play off of them.

Yeah, I, that's. That's. That's a very good point. I've I've DM'd a little bit. I'm getting ready to DM some time, maybe this year. They, they, they came out with the, with the updated minds of Fan Delver as the Fan Delver, and below the shattered obelisk, which which sounded, which sounded similar to similar to your, your homebrew. When they're there, there's these broken pieces of the obelisk that the guy is trying to to assemble. So I'm going to I think I'm going to DM that for for some people and we'll see how how that goes. But so that's some great advice for somebody wanting to DM. So so what's your advice then for somebody that says, like they, they, they want to play D&D, like how do you what? What would you tell them to do before session zero? Like what's some maybe maybe they're not ready to play, even, maybe they're just interested in D&D want to get a feel for what it's like. So what are some things that somebody, somebody interested in in in role, in role playing in general in D&D, what? What are some things that they can do to kind of get a feel, get a flavor for the game, to see if it's something they, they might want to do?

Yeah, I think definitely. If you're a player that wants to like get into D&D, the first thing I would do is like check out some stuff like critical role. dimension 20 is really good they're a lot more relaxed, a lot more comedy oriented I you know, figure out like what kind of fantasy or sci-fi or any sort of like fiction that you're into, or even nonfiction, like you can make a totally nonfiction campaign. It kind of comes down to like it's the DM and the player have to play off of each other, like you want to kind of find a dungeon master or you know a friend who likes the same things you like. As a dungeon master. You kind of want to mold your campaign about what your players are interested in. I think you know, for example actually I don't think I've said this before the campaign I did, the one that I am dungeon mastering. When it started I based a lot of my characters and like little things off of off of a TV show that I knew that a handful of the players had watched and enjoyed it. It was a show on CW called a crazy ex girlfriend, which is it's like I love it too, it's so much fun. And so, yes, rachel Bloom, exactly yes. So Rebecca was my bard character. She wasn't my character but she was my NPC. That like kind of drove a lot of the story and one of the early like low stakes quest was she kidnapped Josh, the blacksmith's dog and they had to go save his dog and then it turned out that she ended up being a werewolf and it kind of took a swerve from there into another direction. You know I had a Matthew McConaughey be my town sheriff and his name was just Matthew McConaughey. I didn't change it at all, I even for his little 20, I just took an image of him from what's that movie that he's in the, the one where he's got the cowboy hat, not important but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't just give my name of my brain at the moment, but yeah, as a player, though, I think you know it's, don't be afraid to experiment. You know just some of the best games like comes from like just deciding that you want to do something and let the DM figure out how to handle it. You know, like they're in charge of figuring out the rules and navigating how everything works, Like you should just go in and you know, have fun, like joke with your friends, Like and yeah, and look, I was trying to say like find someone who'd be willing to create a story that suits your interests, Like a friend of a friend, actually for his wife. I have a couple of friends who also play D&D that I don't play with personally, but he told me that he created a sort of a short form campaign that was entirely based on RuPaul's Drag Race, where they gave them all custom classes, all like custom everything. But like you know, and then I've actually seen Dimension 20 did an entire campaign. What was it? Dungeons and drag queens. Really cool, really funny. But that's like what it's all about. It's like it doesn't have to be high fantasy, it doesn't have to be Lord of the Rings, it doesn't have to be Star Wars, it could be whatever you want it to be. And I think, if you're a new player or a new DM, finding that common ground theme that everyone latches onto makes it just easy to like explore and experiment and be free and joke and just like have fun and that's really what it's all about. Like don't worry about the rules, You'll figure them out. And if you change the rules, that's fine too. Like there's certain rules. I'm just like I don't like that rule, we're not going to do that rule. Like we're going to do it my way because it's better this way. Sometimes the rule of cool is the best rule.

I completely agree. Yeah, we've had this conversation on the podcast before about how, even when you're looking through all the material on what race or species to create or what class you want to be, those are not hard and fast rules. If you want to play the opposite of what is a typical, you know, tiefling or something like that, there's all sorts of things. You're not bound by any of those rules, Like the mechanics of the game, sure, but beyond that it's really you could be or do anything you want. Like for one campaign I recreated Bonnie and Clyde as characters. It was just like why not? It's?

just because it's fun and it gives you something to latch on to. Also, it's like exactly yeah, I think, like you said you know, outside of combat because combat's where it matters Like you can't really mess with the game balance. Like action economy, bonus, action, spell, slots, like you know, all that is play tested and like I mean there are in five editions now. They've tested it that many times to make it as good as it is. You know, and you could homebrew stuff. You know I love I love finding homebrew things. Like one of my characters right now while I'm playing is a completely homebrew class. It's called a weave knight and it's essentially a paladin but instead of being a religion focused, it actually is arcane focused. So he kind of, you know, goes off of an intelligence modifier and his whole, the whole premises that like, rather than having like divine power, like bestowed upon them, as a paladin you are able to tap into what's called the weave of like arcane energy and utilize that. So you're kind of like a, like a wizard, but also a sword fighter and it's kind of everything I've ever wanted from a class, because I've played almost all the classes now in some form or capacity and I've found, like paladins are cool. They're one of my like. I really like characters you could spell, cast and fight, Right. I don't want to do the religion side of things because that doesn't interest me personally, Right, so I'm like, oh, arcane focused, like that's the one. So I'm really enjoying this class so far.

That's fantastic. Where?

did you find that, Gosh? My brother helped me find it. If you're Google, weave knight, it was a. I should give them credit if I'm shouting them out. It was a user on Reddit. Let me pull it up now. It was by the name of one second here, Chronicle of Heroes Excellent. They have a bunch of different homebrew classes and subclasses that I've kind of pulled from, but yeah, I mean from all across the board. Griffin Saddlebag is a great one I use for items specifically. Okay, I think they have a book too, but it's just like a whole compendium of just magic items, totally original. I'm constantly pulling from their archives for things to give my players that suit them. On a more personal level, because when you have an item that you get attached to, that's not too. Like I was saying before, my Forge Cleric elephant guy had his hammer. That was his hammer. He wasn't going to trade that for any special hammer that he wanted, and so it leveled up as he got cool artifacts and that's how you get to making your own. It becomes part of your area.

That's super cool. I love that. So we're running out of time, so I want to. So let's talk about you for a second. So tell everyone about kind of what you do personally, and we've talked a little bit about your artwork, so tell us about what you do and what you've been working on.

Sure, yeah. So professionally I'm a video effects artist. I work on a lot of different TV shows doing special effects, screen screen graphics, motion graphics but I went to school for animation actually. So I have a, and before college I just studied painting art in general all through my life, and so I have a pretty varied artistic background and I love to use all that in different ways. I design all my own character art, for all my characters that I play, as for all the players that are in my group and then, as well as my fellow players in the groups we play together in. I also do logos for people. You know all that fun stuff on the side.

Speaking of what you did the Legends, loot and War logo, that's right, that's right. Looks amazing yeah.

And then you know, like I said, I've been experimenting with painting my own minis, making my own crane. I've dabbled in making my own music but that's gonna get too too far Making my own maps for you know the players to play on in. World 20 and stuff, or rather in other programs that I import into World 20. Yeah, art's totally my background, so all anything that's involved on the creative side of like the Dungeons and Dragons world is like something I'm interested in.

And where can? Where can people if they want to check out your work? Where can they? Where can they see it?

Yeah, so you can follow me on Instagram at rdynoradesigns that's the letter R-D-E-N-O-R-A-D-E-S-I-G-N-S designs, or on my website, ryandenoracom, where I have all my video work, my artwork, my graphic work, pretty much everything I've done outside of my things. I can't talk about my NDAs.

But yeah.

I mean, you could find you know, outside of D&D. You could find my work on Netflix. I worked on. The Beef is one of our more recent shows. Emily in Paris Sesame Street is a big one, oh cool. Amy Schumer's Life in Bath yeah, lots of fun stuff. I'm kind of all over the place. Lots of different shows, lots of different genres. But as far as D&D goes, check out my character arc that I'm most proud of.

Awesome. That's great. I've seen a lot of it and I'm a big fan. Thank you. So that's great. Everybody should definitely go check it out.

Yeah.

I can't thank you enough for being on the podcast today. This was a great conversation. I love different people's perspective on getting into the game and playing the game and DMing, so this was a lot of fun, thank you Thanks for having me Thank you so much for your time today.

It's been a blast. I love talking about Desert Dragons.

I could talk forever about it. Yeah, tell me about it. So let me ask this question how many sets of dice do you have? Are you addicted to dice?

I've donated a good amount of them to my players in my own group, but I currently have five sets for myself.

Well, that's very, I'm impressed.

Yeah, and I have a couple special D20s. One of my players actually bought us all D20s for our very first in-person session and that was really lovely. It was really nice and actually made his own dice bags that he gave us to. Oh, really, he died the clock himself and put little logos on them. Oh wow, yeah, I have a lot of creative friends. I guess that's fantastic, yeah, so that's a nice little treasure I got there.

I love it.

Yeah.

All right. Well, thank you again, ryan. I really appreciate it. Yeah, looking forward to seeing you at the next family wedding or family event, absolutely.

And I'd love to come on and talk again sometime, maybe get my brother on here too. I'm sure he has a lot to say from his own experience.

Absolutely yeah, that would be great.

Yeah.

Excellent, well, thanks again.

All right, have a good one, thank you.