Inspiration Point

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 To watch the Death Campaign live: https://www.twitc...

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 the games are going from here. To watch the Death Ca...

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://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs

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 Discord! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs

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: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1753-2024-wizard...

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.com/posts/1768-2024-bard-vs-2014-bard-whats-new D...

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 Death Campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen...

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-cleric-vs-2014-cleric-whats-new Death Campaign live on...

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 Death Campaign live on Tuesdays at 6 pm Pacific:...

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-monk-vs-2014-monk-whats-new Death Campaign live on T...

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: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1746-2024-...

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 the conversation! Alandra's itch.io page: htt...

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://ttrpgsafetytoolkit.com/ Check out Dan and Tiana on The...

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 to offer your opinions! https://discord.gg/gYSp3vcr...

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/gYSp3vcrqs

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 Discord to offer your opinion! https://discord.gg/gYS...

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://discord.gg/gYSp3vcrqs Tiana's channel where...

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/gYSp3vcrqs

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/1Alwm8ghRSKMFnOEP941VcYERXMxKadL3Df0WYmjKXsE/edit Join our Discord to co...