The Road Ahead Tale

We talk about what 2018 has brought to the show and where we’re planning to take Heroes and Tales in the next year.

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The Charming Combat Tale

We talk about how big can one social check be in a combat action, especially one that has gone on quite long. From there we talk about types of actions that are easier to adjudicate and give some fun examples of how charm can be used to deflect combat from happening.

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The Present Player Tale

People aren’t always paying attention and can be distracted by a great many things, we talk about when it starts impacting their participation at the table as well as others.

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The Adding a Player Tale

We look at the difficulties in adding a new player and their character in the middle of an ongoing campaign and making it as seamless and as rewarding as possible.

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The Secret Society Tale

Secret societies show up in more places than we’d normally think. They are a very valuable story telling tool and we explore them in a fashion that makes them easier to use.

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The Group of Individuals Tale

We talk about a topic from the discord regarding mixed groups and how to make it feel that everyone is in the story, instead of just given simple tasks to do. From magic users and Genesys to how to get force users to constrain their powers, we have ideas.

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The Villainous Tale

We talk about villains in your game, from introducing them, how much different types of adventures bring a villain out to the players, and so many places in between. We have advice and tales of when things didn’t go right.

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The In Character Tale

From policing what or why your character would act a certain way to figuring out ways to make sure your split party compartmentalizes we have ideas on how to get your players and characters to identify closer to each other. We talk about how to metagame with a much freer conscience and a few simple ways GMs can gently push their players forward from planning to action.

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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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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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