The Bar Brawl Tale

David and Ben talk about how you can get a brawl happening in a bar without your players going murder happy.

From how to split a scene into two encounters to why it’s okay to do so we dive deep into brawling in public.

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The Tale of Fear

We talk of fear checks and how some really dislike them, bringing a full top to bottom examination while giving a few ideas on how to make them much more awesome than a pit trap.

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The Herding Players Tale

This week Joshua asks David and Ben why his players are floundering after giving them an open sandbox to work with.

Discussion erupts around ways to move the story along and ways of presenting story that players care about.

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The Modified Tale

We look at Special Modifications this week and find that there is a surprising amount in such a small book.

We have a bonus sized episode for you to make sure we at least got through the start of the character stories.

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The Art Tale

We look to the art of Fantasy Flight Games to glean inspiration for adventures and even campaigns.

Work coordinated and curated by Zoe Robinson has been an inspiration during her time at FFG, and this is our tribute to her work as she departs to Blizzard.

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The Challenge Tale

Two listeners asked us about skill challenges in Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars system and we decided to give our thoughts on it.

From outlining what they are for those unaware, to ways the advantage and threat skew how you can use them.

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The Stowaway Tale

We were asked how to make being on a ship more then just piloting or shooting the guns. We come up with a few ideas that expand on your normal star ship scene and give some breadth to your scene creation. Continue reading “The Stowaway Tale”

The Grand Combat Tale

We talk about montage scenes in your game and mass combat in a way that makes every roll matter for your campaign and the fantasy world writ large.

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The One Rogue Tale

We saw the Rogue One trailer and then recorded an episode about it. We go from some of the initially cool things we see and how we can frame narratives around a briefing to the act of defiance that rebellion actually is.

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The Lead By Example Tale

We look at Lead by Example and poke it with sticks, trying to find interesting ways of playing the new specializations along with some ideas on how to use the new special abilities.

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The Conflicted Max Tale

We talk with Max Brooke about how to use the Dark Side in your Star Wars game.

How do you make it more nuanced, and not just good vs. evil? How do you deal with people that don’t respect the force and player force users that aren’t major nemesis?

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The Return of Max Tale

We interview producer and writer Max Brooke of FFG about confict in Force and Destiny.

As we lookinto a few gaps we’ve seen and stumbled over he’s able to help us greatly with our understanding.

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The Villains Tale

David’s back to talk about villains with us and how to make them just the big bad nemesis for your players to knock over.

We go from Babylon 5 to Die Hard for examples and many places in between.

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The Keeping the Peace Tale

Ben and Joshua talk about Keeping the Peace and how the themes of the guardian career can be used in your game in shaping the whole party as well as the individual characters.

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A Son of the Monkey

Ben and Joshua discuss setting a scene and how the FFG system is tailor made for better improvisation and cool ways of adding to it from both sides of the GM screen. (who uses those things as screens?)

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The Scavenging Tale

Ben and Joshua look at the star destroyer on Jakku and let their minds go wild with possibilities for creating a campaign and integrating the history of the galaxy.

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The Whole Party Tale

David and Ben talk about making a party and not just a bunch of characters, how this requires more then just a few lines and some deep thought.

Then Ben challenges them both to make a party that is going to show up in Meet the Party soon.

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The Minion Tale

We talk about minions so you can use them better in your games and about how to do devious and wicked social minion encounters.

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The Firewalled Tale

We talk about slicing in the context of ShadowRun and looking at it in a very Gibsonesque fashion.

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The New Legends Tale

David likes the Vong, Joshua loves cool ideas.

We talk about using the odd ideas from legends to have a cool game and how to use them in a general sense at your table.

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The Tale of Crisis

Ben likes breaking things and making the players figure out how to fix them.

Joshua is leery, but offers some great advice for how to deal with having crisis in your game and making them interesting.

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The Converted Tale

We talk about converting adventures to your table, starting with The Temple of Elemental Evil and going through to making Onslaught at Arda I work for you and not throwing in unknown characters.

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The New Path Tale

David’s players went to Bandomir.

This is a problem because he has no idea what to do and the session is the day after recording. Ben chimes in with a few ideas and in doing so they find a great truth for all GMs.

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The Mentored Tale

We take a look at mentors and how to use them in the game.

We look to a few of the different aspects that a mentor in game can take and a few story lines that can work out very well.

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The Awakens Tale

We talk about The Force Awakens and how you can take several of the lessons from it and put it at your table. From how to deal with a Big Bad to how to move time along in a believable fashion.

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