Taking 20 Podcast

Having discussed whether GMs can cheat, Jeremy focuses the lens on how players cheat and recommendations for how GMs can handle the table when players cheat.  Please provide feedback to feedback@taking20podcast.com.

Are Game Masters beholden to the same rules that players are?  If it would result in a dramatic story beat or important campaign moment, is it okay for GMs to change prewritten adventures, change monster hit points and abilities in the middle of the battle, or even change the dice rolled behind the screen?

How viable are spells that give the victim a single saving throw before taking them out of a fight, campaign, or existence?  Should you use these spells against PCs?  What alternatives are there?  In this episode we discuss these questions and much more about the spells and abilities where you make the save or it sucks to be you.

Why would GMs play unholy antagonists and Big Bad Evil Guys like morons?  In too many prepublished adventures, intelligent undead like liches, vampires, and ghasts are played as rash, unthinking, bumbling buffoons.  Jeremy presents alternate ways of thinking.  He gets into the mind of an ageless creature and hopefully gets your thoughts going on how to role play these rare, intelligent, monsters.

We'd all love to DM/GM for a 4-person party but it is rare.  More often we'll have 6 players or even 8-9 who want to play in a campaign even if we only start off with 4.  How do you handle these huge parties or small parties of less than 4?  If you have a small party, how do you add capabilities to the party with NPCs?  

What is the difference between roll and role playing?  How should players and GMs approach the balance between the two?  Thank you Trevor in San Antonio for the topic idea!

The ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome obstacles is a critical skill needed for GMs and players alike.  In this episode Jeremy discusses techniques of improvisation utilizing the basic tenets he learned performing improv comedy, allowing GMs to keep the story on track and players to support their game partners.

Players using their knowledge to make decisions for their characters is always bad, right?  In this episode, Jeremy talks about the good and bad of metagaming and even cites examples when the DM inadvertently or purposefully provides metagame knowledge to the players.  Come visit us at www.taking20podcast.com

Tired of shopkeepers with no name?  Ready to make your character stand out from the ocean of numbers on the character sheet?  In this episode we discuss how to make your characters or NPCs feel like real, fleshed-out people by giving them goals, motivations, foibles and flaws.

In what will hopefully help role players, we explore positive and negative character arcs.  How do you give a character an arc to follow?  Using examples from popular media, we look at how arcs can progress.  Finally, we talk briefly about how to support arcs for your fellow players' characters.   Come see us at Taking 20 Podcast.com

With the safe alignments out of the way, Jeremy now addresses how to roleplay the evil alignments and Chaotic Neutral.  Thanks for listening and come see us at www.taking20podcast.com  to listen to provide feedback and suggestions for future episodes!

Alignment - the much-maligned aspect of many modern RPG systems.  In Part 1, Jeremy discusses his theory on alignment, when it matters, and tips for roleplaying Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral and True Neutral characters.  Part 2 will release on Wednesday this week. Agree or disagree with any of these points?  Email me at feedback@taking20podcast.com .  I'd love to hear fro...

With a mishmash of homebrew topics remaining, none of which warranted a full episode, Jeremy throws them all into the cooking pot and makes an episode out of it.  Topics covered include getting player help for worldbuilding, the 3 Hex method, and lessons learned about adding new rules to existing systems. For more info about the 3 Hex method, see this great article . 

This episode of full of questions.  What do you need to ask yourself when making a world?  What decisions are potential pitfalls?  What does the world buidling subreddit have to do with any of this?  Why is Jeremy still asking questions? Resources Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America World Building Questions

"Hey, what's in that cave over there?"  An innocent question that can make a DM sweat.  You didn't prepare a cave dungeon.  Not to worry, my friend.  Thanks to John Fourr over at RolePlayingTips.com, you can whip up a 5 Room Dungeon on the fly that will make your players giggle with delight and they'll have no idea you were making it up as you go. Resources Johnn Four's Roleplaying Tips

Everything you didn't want to know about the 3 Act Structure and why Jeremy loves it so much!  He discusses how to frame an entire plot around this useful story framework, the action that takes place, and what signifies the transition points from one act to the next. Send us some feedback at feedback@taking20podcast.com!

Episode 17!  Another prime number!  Jeremy talks in depth about using common plot structures such as Freytag's pyramid, 3 Act Structure and the 7 most basic plots.  He may also briefly rant about why everyone loves the play Romeo and Juliet. Come see us on www.taking20podcast.com! Resources Story Design By Layer by Nick Palmer

In this week's episode, Jeremy talks about embracing low-prep or even no-prep game mastering.  He uses offline and online generators to generate a brief sci-fi one-shot idea.   Books: Book of Random Tables Book of Random Tables 2 Book of Random Tables 3 Book of Random Tables 4 Dungeons for the Master The No-Prep Gamemaster The Lazy Dungeon Master The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Table Fables...

This episode starts a series for GMs about Homebrewing adventures.  We cover borrowing plots from mythology, music, movies, and other media.  He talks about adding organizations with earth analogies.  Finally, he demonstrates the techniques by making an adventure based on The DaVinci Code and the movie Megamind.

We all play RPGs in different ways and for different reasons.  How can you, kind GM, juggle these different personality types and goals into a cohesive gaming group?  Are there personality types that aren't conducive to good gaming?  Can Jeremy write one of these not in the 3rd person that doesn't ask questions?

Scared of the Number 13?  Don't be.  On this episode, Jeremy talks about the critical relationship between a GM and players and how communication is key.  He also talks about some techniques GM can employ to make the players and their characters feel important and part of the greater game world.

Ah, the murder hobo.  Bane of GM existence, right?  Not necessarily.  Jeremy talks about what needs to be done (if anything) about murder hobos in your campaigns.  He also goes over some basic carrots you can dangle in front of players to encourage role playing.

Advantages and disadvantages of prebuilt adventures vs designing your own homebrew adventure.   Have an episode idea?  Send it to me at  Feedback@Taking20Podcast.com

DOUBLE DIGITS and I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING! Jeremy this time talks about building characters around tropes, concepts, pictures, party roles, and statistics.  Finally, Jeremy discusses the things your character simply must be, regardless of the personality he/she has.

Jeremy ventures into NPC territory now, discussing how to make your NPCs multidimensional and realistic.  We talk about how to make NPCs memorable and how to give them primitive character arcs.   EPISODE RESOURCE:  https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/81le54/a_suggestion_on_adding_depth_to_npcs/