The Plotting Tale

Your players do weird things and will deal with situations out of the order in your head. We talk about some of our experiences with players going left when we’d have expected them to go right, and give a few ideas on how to deal with it otherwise.

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The Going into Business Tale

Ben has players that through paying attention to all the little throw away ideas he had have found enough parts to go into business for themselves as an arms manufacturer. This boggled his mind, so he asked Rissa for advice. Also there are tales of a wookiee rescue and commune.

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The Player Guidance Tale

Sometimes players get analysis paralysis and it gets frustrating for both the GM and the players alike. We have a few strategies to lessen the effect of it at the start of a session when the last session seems so long ago

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The Backstory Tale

Ben is joined by Heroes Kristine and Leslie to talk about character backstory and motivations. From informing the characters actions to providing hooks for the Game Master to propel the story along we dive deep in these concepts.

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The Lost in Space Tale

We talk about challenges we’ve had as GMs to get players engaged with the stories we’re trying to tell and some of the solutions we’ve had for when the players actively try to derail your plot.

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The Murder Mystery Tale

Rissa and Ben set out to talk a little about making careers in Genesys, that idea was a red herring apparently as they fall into the trap of making a whole murder mystery one shot for you to use.

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The Forgotten Skill Tale

From discipline to astrogation many skills are forgotten by the whole table. We talk about several ways to make them more valuable for you and your players.

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The Player Choice Tale

This week we start with a Minotaur stepping on the gas and it gets weirder from there. We talk about how you can plan for players being unpredictable and how you can recover from them doing something completely unexpected.

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The Expanding Narrative Tale

Ben and Rissa talk about bringing meaning to your scenes and items. From making the blaster your gambler is carrying mean something extra to the framing of a dead body at the start of an adventure. We have ideas and tips for bringing your players into being more descriptive and making those descriptions matter.

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The Driven Tale

Ben and Rissa talk about the differences in approach that character driven and plot driven campaigns can take and are generated for your players.

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The Traditional Tale

We start talking about the different sorts of force traditions there are from the Gand Findsmen to the Dathomiri Witches and try to come up with ways to make it matter in your game.

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Trouble Brewing Introduction 5 – Brandon

To kick off season 2 of Heroes of the Hydian Way, each day this week we’re going to introduce you to a member of the team. Today meet Brandon, one of this season’s players.

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Trouble Brewing Introduction 4 – David

To kick off season 2 of Heroes of the Hydian Way, each day this week we’re going to introduce you to a member of the team. Today meet David, one of this season’s players.

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Trouble Brewing Introduction 3 – Leslie

To kick off season 2 of Heroes of the Hydian Way, each day this week we’re going to introduce you to a member of the team. Today meet Leslie, one of this season’s players.

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Trouble Brewing Introduction 2 – Kristine

To kick off season 2 of Heroes of the Hydian Way, each day this week we’re going to introduce you to a member of the team. Today meet Kristine, one of this season’s players.

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Trouble Brewing Introduction 1 – Ben

To kick off season 2 of Heroes of the Hydian Way, each day this week we’re going to introduce you to a member of the team. Today meet this season’s game master Ben.

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The Character Finding Tale

We talk about finding the stories that specializations want to tell and learning to find the ones that are there and not always forcing our own onto the career and specializations.

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The Cheese Wheel Tale

Ben, Rissa, and Leslie were talking about the absolute cheese that is in Star Wars and related products, how it’s baked into the essence of it, and discuss many ways to add it in and vectors to add some tension breaking levity to your adventures

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The Player Mayhem Tale

We talk about the players who shoot first and may remember to ask questions after they’ve looted the bodies. We get ideas on how to make the experience broader with them and how to try and how to make their actions matter to the stories you’re telling.

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The Investigation Tale

Ben is getting ready to run Mask of the Pirate Queen, Rissa runs a bunch of investigation and mysteries for her players. Rissa gives insights from her many adventures and what has worked and what hasn’t.

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The One Shot Tale

This week we’re excited to welcome James D’amato from the One Shot Network to talk about improvisation and some strategies to make it easier at the game table when players throw you for a loop.

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The Captured Character Tale

A scenario that’s always hard to setup is getting player characters captured. We talk about how to make it more intuitive for the characters to be captured, how to deal with a near total party kill, and how to make it so the players get the idea to be captured ‘all on their own’

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The Thisspiasian Tale

We started to talk about playing different species for your games and how to make it matter for your players. From how NPCs interact to how to set expectations at the table

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The Closing Tale

Episode 200, you’d think we’d talk about something profound. We talk about one of the most profound things you can actually do for your campaign. How to end it. Three hosts talk about the different kinds of endings we’ve seen and give some advice for GMs on how to make it satisfying.

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The Challenging Player Tale

The topic of difficult players came up in discussion in the Tales twitter DMs. This brought up the different sorts of ways players and GMs can not see eye to eye on ideas and drew us to this episode topic.

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