What Do I Do If My DM Disappears? with Carlos Maza
A new podcast guest approaches! It’s journalist and video producer Carlos Maza! He’s joining Eric to answer questions about playing in TTRPG to process and escape *gestures around* all this, feeling frustrated by your current campaign, and what to do when you can’t get in touch with your DM. You also don’t want to miss the line in Carlos’ Wikipedia page that absolutely roasts him.
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About Us
Games and Feelings is an advice podcast about being human and loving all types of games: video games, tabletop games, party games, laser tag, escape rooms, game streams, and anything else that we play for fun. Join Question Keeper Eric Silver and a revolving cast of guests as they answer your questions at the intersection of fun and humanity, since, you know, you gotta play games with other people. Whether you need a game recommendation, need to sort out a dispute at the table, or decide whether an activity is good for a date, we’re your instruction manual. New episodes drop every other Friday.
Transcript
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ERIC: Hello gamers, welcome to Games and Feelings, an advice show about playing games, being human, and dealing with the fact that those games will involve other humans. I am your host and question keeper Eric Silver, and the game I hope is a The Last Starfighter/Ender's Game situation - which is to say the game is a test to see if the government would hire me to do that particular thing in real life to save the world - is Super Mario Sunshine. Because one, people would be paying me for my vacation. Two, I would be fighting climate change. And three, I'd have something to do on vacation. I can't just sit there, I get like itchy after like two days of just sitting on the beach. Hey, guest Carlos Maza, what do you hope? What game do you hope is The Last Starfighter/Ender's Game situation?
CARLOS: Oh, man. I guess it would probably be uh Hearthstone because I can just turn my brain off and go into number autopilot addition, subtraction mode, and do that forever. A close second would be Sudoku. Anything that requires me to turn off my brain and just input numbers I'm great at, and I feel like that's the kind of thing the government would want me for anyway. Essentially be a human machine.
ERIC: Those two are perfect because Sudoku makes me feel like you're doing a umm— oh god, what's the uh—what's the show on Apple TV+, where they split your brain in half between the working brain and the ra—the living brain, do you know what I'm talking about?
CARLOS: This is a show? I've never heard of this.
ERIC: Oh, well, it's on Apple TV+, so why would you—why would you have heard of it?
CARLOS: [laughs] That's why.
ERIC: Yeah, like Adam Scott's in it, and Christopher Walken is in, and John Turturro is in it. Basically, they split it—I—the only thing that's escaping me is the name of the show. But basically like, you go into this company, and they figured out a way to split your consciousness between your working self and your non-working self. And they kind of like have cloaked the work they do at this company and sort of just like this abstract idea of numbers. And I like the idea that it's like, give—they pull the black hood off of you and they're like, ‘Carlos, you're so good at pu—at doing Sudoku, just Sudoku and it's going to save the national debt.’
CARLOS: So I have to admit, when you were first describing this, I thought it was a game show. And I thought this is certainly a fever dream. A game show where they split your brain in between two different quadrants. But now I know the show you're talking about. I also cannot remember the name for some reason. Though I—I was grappling with the ethical dilemma of would I do it to myself? Let part of me just work in the office all day and mess with numbers. And given that I do that on my free time with Sudoku, maybe I just don't need to split the brain. Maybe I could just go into an office and work on numbers all day and be happy that way.
ERIC: I had to google Apple TV+ shows good Adam Scott. And I found it is called Severance.
CARLOS: Severance!
ERIC: Incredible show. Severance - incredible show.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Yeah. So I just like the idea it's like the government— yeah, you don't want the— you don't want to get your hobbies involved in the government.
CARLOS: Yeah, you can't uh— you don't want to make your passion into a project. And right now making numbers match each other is my project, so maybe I shouldn't do this for work.
ERIC: No. I—the only thing with Hearthstone which I think is a hilarious choice is again, once again, the black hood is pulled off of you and they're like, ‘Carlos, I'm agent— I'm Agent Molver, and we're gonna give you back all the money you spent on Hearthstone because it was a government program.’ Like that's pretty good.
CARLOS: That would be such a boon to my financial well-being, given how much that game has sucked out of me. But also if I can have the hours back, I would appreciate that too. I think I need that more than the money.
ERIC: ‘We're still working on a way to refund you for the time.’
CARLOS: That's fair, I'll—I'll do ti– that’ll be my retirement package when I turn 80.
ERIC: Yeah, the deep state actually are wizards who use cards to defeat each other. And that's why—that's what globalism really is.
CARLOS: I will say, the way that game has a hold on not just my attention, but the way that my brain starts thinking after a while is truly wizard-like. It does feel like being under some kind of an enchantment, so I—that would not surprise me.
ERIC: I— is there like a gambit for what Hearthstone is or is it just like—because you know Magic the Gathering is like wizards are doing the thing, is kind of like the meta-narrative.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: I—I've also played Hearthstone, but is it just like a Gwent situation where it's like a fun card game you play in a bar?
CARLOS: I think that the assumption is that you are one of the badass heroes playing a card game about—
ERIC: Right.
CARLOS: —Hearthstone in— like, very meta. Like you're playing a game about cards in the world, in an actual tavern, which I think is a cool idea. But as the game gets more, more complicated, I feel like the tavern thing falls apart, like in what tavern do you have a Death Knight summoning the dead to fight in a card game, and also the card game’s mechanics are so complicated, that no human could actually keep up with them in a real world? So I think it's a loose premise that is falling flimsier as the expansions go on.
ERIC: Oh, especially the expansions, like imagine this bar that needs to like change their decor or has like a month-long, like festival going on. It's like ‘hey, we're doing a music festival this month. Every— All of the drinks are music festival—’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Like, ‘I've been killing wolves for two years, let me sit here, please.’ And they're like, ‘no, you have to— you get double—you get double drinks if you do a magic spell.’
CARLOS: I—I gotta say though, as silly as the premise is, opening the game and hearing the like sound of tavern laughter and having some— a host greet you ‘welcome back to the tavern.’ It's like an incredibly effective way to keep someone - let's say someone who's up at like, 4 am by themselves - feeling like they're in community, even when they're not.
ERIC: Oh, for sure. And that's why the government’s giving you back the 5,000 American dollars you spent on Hearthstone. Carlos Maza, I'm so happy you're here talking about games and not anything else.
CARLOS: It's—what else could we possibly talk about?
ERIC: Absolutely not, there's nothing going on in the world, absolutely not. Carlos, where might people know you from, or people who don't know you, what do you do?
CARLOS: So I am— in my daytime, I am a political commentator/media critic and you may have known me from a series I did at vox.com for a while called Strikethrough. It was a video series about just sort of the way the corporate media fails and falls apart and is a nightmare, especially in the Trump era. So I did that for a while, and then I went independent a couple of years ago, and now just make my own videos about media and propaganda. But also I think just more broadly about the experience of being a human in a world that is slowly dying and seems to not stop dying.
ERIC: Exa—yes, that uh, real true. I got a—and a follow-up question. Hey, why do you escape into games?
CARLOS: I have no idea.
ERIC: Why is that something you feel like doing? Yeah.
CARLOS: I gotta say, I don't know if— I understand the general story is like people use games to escape. But I'm also a pretty full-time Dungeon Master in my free time and invariably—
ERIC: Hell yeah.
CARLOS: —my campaigns revolve around like fascist uprisings and the heroes they need to beat down, like high-elven nobles who are trying to take over the world. So I think it's less of an escape and more just my—my way of transmuting my frustration and aggression in the world into something that I can actually win or—or control. So it's, uh, less escape fantasy, more control power fantasy I think, for me.
ERIC: Very much so. Do you feel like the fact that you have examples and that like it makes you better at framing this is like, you know how like science fiction and fantasy is used as like metaphor for the real world because no one would believe it's actually happening there?
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Like the fact that you have examples, or you're like, I'm just gonna put this company into my D&D game, and then everyone's gonna be like, ‘wow, so crazy.’
CARLOS: 100%. I— there's a couple times where I've had to give like the big bad evil monologue, and the players have said, ‘you are too good at playing a fascist’ because it—it is truly— I think like if you look across all time, fascists have like four arguments that they use over and over again. So if you just like slightly reskin them to be about elves, instead of like the master race, you already have your speech done for you. And I think because I spend so much time watching Fox News, I like also know how to make it fun and exciting to watch, like I know how to do the pageantry of fascism. So—I—I enjoy being able to play into the dark side and like show how easy it is to replicate, but I more enjoy watching my players get irritated and then just like try to kill the fascists as hard as they can, and that's really fun to watch.
ERIC: From like a little bit of media crit perspective, I feel like I have so many questions for you about like what's going on with like Wizards of the Coast, and the fact that Pinkertons still exist, which is just fucking wild. I don't know. I—yeah, I mean, the fa— I didn't— I wasn't—didn't even have this question prepped, but I want to know, like, is it wild that like our game companies now are using the Pinkertons instead of like the US government, what do you think about that?
CARLOS: It's really wild. I—I have not seen a company engage in as many unforced errors lately as Wizards seems to, like—
ERIC: Oh, especially in 2023, for sure.
CARLOS: I—they have—were given this like golden goose egg of ‘hey, this game that was kind of dying is now truly just the zeitgeist, like everyone and anyone wants to play D&D and throw their money at you and like you have all—this—this incredible intellectual property.’ And instead of just saying, ‘oh my god, this is so much more money than we ever would have gotten from this game in another timeline,’ they have chosen to do the most greedy, kind of deranged, almost mercenary-like— I mean just— it's just corporate shit, right? It's just like that—that no corporation can be—
ERIC: Right.
CARLOS: —happy with their product, they just have to squeeze until it dies. And it's really bizarre, it almost feels dystopian that like Wizards or you know, D&D that this franchise that is so happy and silly, is not immune to this kind of shit. Like it's a—there's— I think there's something particularly perverse about watching the evil toymaker.
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: Like it's so off-brand that you give a shit this much and are like being so cruel and money hungry and over and over again, it's just like, you just know that at the top of Wizards now - really top of any corporation - is like a couple of really rich people who are not engaged with the product or community in any meaningful way and are just like paying lip service. But it's just such a bummer man, like we—we should be living in the golden age of nerd-dom and like fantasy tabletop, especially for a game like D&D that is so anti-consumer, it's like you don't need anything to play this game. To ha— be having this conversation alongside it and like, alongside the Critical Role stuff and all the Amazon stuff, it's just uh—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: —it just feels really bonkers. It just proves that nothing good and pure can stay. Everything eventually gets rotten by the long arm of corporate capitalism.
ERIC: Absolutely. I mean, it's funny - I read like a book about the history of OSR, which was the company that Gary Gygax founded, that Wizards of the Coast eventually bought, and then Wizards of the Coast was bought by Hasbro.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And it's just like, he was fucking around too, but he wasn't like a dis– a lich businessman. He was just like a guy who didn't know what he was doing, which is not, like, better necessarily.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: But it certainly isn't like, patently evil and obvious.
CARLOS: 100%.
ERIC: And like they're just saying it in, they're also just saying it in their quarterly reports, their 10-Q just come out. For those of you who don't know, my wife is very— used to work in financing, so she tells me all about this stuff. Like that's just where they talk about what they're blatantly telling their investors what they're going to do. They just said like ‘yeah, we're gonna lay off 15% of our—of our workforce, we ju—we just have to do it.’ And I— if you say so, I guess. Yeah, it's like, they're not even cloaking anymore. They're just saying it in their quarterly and yearly investment reports.
CARLOS: Yeah, it's a—it's— if nothing else, it's a good moment to teach people who might not normally care about corporate capitalism or private equity, the way that this kind of thing happens. But no matter how pure your product is, over time if you have a big enough group of investors or shareholders, they will steer the company into ruin. And especially something like this, I feel like for any—any creative arts, where the beauty and joy that comes from like it being kind of low stakes and giving people lots of room to experiment and make things their own and like be in community with each other, it just—that kind of thing cannot survive under the pressure of an investor or shareholder meeting. Like eventually, the bad judgment to make as much money as possible will ruin your art, will ruin your fun, will ruin your joy. And it's a bummer because I think the reason D&D has stayed in the zeitgeist for this long is because it just has a super dedicated community of people who want to keep making shit for it. And like, you know, the game costs essentially $0 to play. So the fact that the company exists is because people are so loyal to it that they want to buy the new content that comes out, and like buy new dice and just be a part of it. It is, on its own, like a pretty healthy business model to just like really focus on giving people what they want, which is like cool stuff to self-actualize with. And so it just doesn't need to be this way. Like, I’d almost feel better if D&D was a bad product.
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: And I could be like, ‘yeah, gotta make money somehow, like, no other way around it.’ But it's a very healthy, intellectual product that survives off of like giving people some slack to experiment and play and make things their own. And so it's especially heartbreaking to see that even that cannot resist the pressure of like a couple of rich shareholders and investors who just do not give a shit about anything beyond making money on their— on their investments.
ERIC: Yes. I mean that's 100% true, especially because the three things that stand out to me as the unforced errors of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro in 2023. The middle one is the pivot towards IP.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: That's literally why the D&D movie exists. And we can talk about whether or not it's good or not. I thought it was a solid six. Amanda, my wife wa— uh, walked out because she was bored a third of the way through. And— but it's like they're blatantly saying it's like ‘we don't really care about— the publishing games business is bad and not growth—not a growth sector—’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: ‘—We're going to try to turn Dungeons & Dragons into Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings,’ said that explicitly in a investor—in an investor call.
CARLOS: Jeez.
ERIC: So yeah, so it's like, that's totally true. And then on the two end— the two book ends, with the open gaming license massive fuckup that happened at the beginning of the year and sending the Pinkertons to a man's house because he accidentally got some cards two weeks early, and not by his own by— literally by accident.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: What—you're just trying, it's like there are people in a boardroom saying, ‘how are we— these— we have to make an example of them.”
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And then that's where it is, so you're 100% correct.
CARLOS: It's almost like— you know, sometimes I struggle when I'm writing villains for D&D, because it feels like, you know, no character should be just so plainly evil and stupid and greedy like it's kind of uninteresting when a character is that way. You want your villain–
ERIC: Oh, yeah, yeah.
CARLOS: —to have like some compelling arc or motivation. And look at the real world like, no dude, villains are just boring and stupid and greedy like it's just— it's not that complicated most of the time. There's not some grand narrative of why Wizards is acting this way. It's like the most basic, boring, kind of heartbreaking answer is the obvious one. And the only real answer is to like, get access to a level nine wish spell and blink these motherfuckers out of existence, hopefully.
ERIC: Very true.
CARLOS: Just rewrite the fabric of reality.
ERIC: I—yes, it would be so much more palatable if like two years from now it was like, ‘oh, yeah, Chris Cox was a Red Death Wizard.’
CARLOS: Please.
ERIC: ‘Turns out he– he wanted to turn the end of the world. The D&D movie was a cry for help from the movie team, trying to tell them the same thing was happening,’ but no—
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: —he's just a CEO. He's just a guy.
CARLOS: At least if he’s a red mage then we have some chance of counter spelling that shit. But right now I'm like, I have nothing I can use except frustration.
ERIC: It’s a YouTube channel. That— we make content—
CARLOS: YouTube channel.
ERIC: That's working, Carlos.
CARLOS: There you go.
ERIC: I have one last question before we can get into the meat of the show here. I was poking around just because I wanted to get like a good sense of like your YouTube channel and like the stuff that you do. So I found your Wikipedia page and there's a line—
CARLOS: Oh, no.
ERIC: —in here that absolutely roasted you and I had to ask you about it.
CARLOS: Okay.
ERIC: Okay, so when you're early—there's an early life section. And here's this sentence. “Maza frequently played video games as a child,” and video games is hyperlinked of course.
CARLOS: Oh, no.
ERIC: “And his mother described him as smart but introverted.” And then there are three articles citing—
CARLOS: Let's go!
ERIC: —citing that full sentence. How do you respond?
CARLOS: Accurate, 100% accurate. When I was a—when I was a teenager, a young teenager, my parents famously sent me to a therapist because I had no friends and they thought that something was wrong with me.
ERIC: Oh, sure.
CARLOS: And the therapist just said, ‘he just likes doing Legos and being on his own,’ which is 100% true. There's nothing wrong—
ERIC: Damn.
CARLOS: I just am deeply introverted and like—
ERIC: You need to get that on a banner and hang that in your house.
CARLOS: Yeah, ‘fine, just likes being alone, just wants to be quiet for a bit and work on something for a long time.’ I am— it is absolutely true that like if you meet me outside of me making a video or like doing something for work, my default state is at a party very quiet, in my mind trying to theory craft a new D&D character and not being that talkative. So it's gotten better over time, I would say. The more public-facing my job is, the more extroverted I become. But certainly, my ideal state, my like cryostasis state, is me by myself playing a solo game, where I'm building a party and being like, this is all I need for right now. I am absolutely tapped out on human interaction. So true, I'm not gonna argue with that—that description. I'm surprised there are only three hyperlinks, I should add more to it.
ERIC: Just three citations.
CARLOS: Damn.
ERIC: To make sure that sentence is ironclad. And then they pull the black hood off of you and say, ‘this is Agent Molver, you love being by yourself making Legos, that's why we're putting you in a—in a VR chamber, and you need to assemble the new infrastructure on the moon, it's just like Legos.’
CARLOS: Okay, what you're describing as ridiculous as it is, is like not that far from what I feel like every introvert loner kid’s fantasy. Which is that at some point, some powerful organization, whether it be Hogwarts or the CIA or something, picks you up and says ‘all the stuff that makes you a weird loner is actually very special. And now you're— you're the superhero.’ That's like every superhero fantasy I feel like—
ERIC: For sure, yeah.
CARLOS: –is a nerd becoming popular. So yes, I hope it's not running war games or anything like that.
ERIC: Right.
CARLOS: But I have to say, if you had told teenage Carlos like ‘your introvert ass self, has access to some superpowers that makes you special’ I would’ve been like ‘yeah, I knew that the whole fucking time, baby. I've been waiting for this moment, where have you been?’
ERIC: Yeah. That's why everyone's so jump-scared by all the blatant racism in Ender's Game. Like we don't remember that point. We're like, ‘oh, no, I just— I can't believe I was playing a video game, and then I get to save the world, that's incredible.’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: ‘And all—and all the girls at my militar— space military academy think I'm neat.’ Like, and then we're like, ‘oh, there's just lot— there's slur— there's so many slurs in this book.’
CARLOS: It cannot be overstated how much the like ‘you are the chosen one’ fantasy can make people ignore or overlook deep structural or racial inequalities. I would argue that the whole ideology of fascism is just that.
ERIC: True.
CARLOS: Just getting you to think that you're the special chosen one, you are the master race, you are the—the Übermensch, and so ignore all this other shit. So yes, all nerds are born with the same seed of disruptive thinking that can eventually become right-wing thinking. Hopefully, you just like grow up, become gay like I did, and snap out of it, or snap out of it in some other method. There are certain off-ramps, but yeah, mine was certainly like, ‘oh, this probably would not bode well for me, the chubby gay kid who is also the debate team captain, I should probably get off this train by now and invest in some solidarity.’
ERIC: Yeah. And it turns out—and then they pull the hood off, and this has been a VR simulation the entire time.
CARLOS: So many hoods.
ERIC: There's a lot—you— Carlos, you've been put in so many government black sites my—in this episode of this podcast, we've only been recording for 20 minutes. So let's get to the actual part of the podcast. Alright, Carlos we're gonna do games that are giving us feelings. This is where we talk about a game or some sort of game-related thing that we've been dealing with, and we're going to talk about our feelings about it. All you have to do is share your small experience with it, and you got to give it like an adjective like you're making a Live Journal post.
CARLOS: Mmm-hmm. I love that.
ERIC: You got to make sure each one has a feeling at the bottom. Do—would you like to go first, or do you want me to go first?
CARLOS: I can go first. Uh, so—
ERIC: Please, go ahead.
CARLOS: I have been, as a side gig, teaching D&D to young kids so—
ERIC: Hell yes.
CARLOS: —every week I teach a group of 8 to 10-year-olds and like run them through a campaign and—and play with the characters.
ERIC: Oh, super young. I thought you were gonna say like—
CARLOS: Super young.
ERIC: —13. That's awesome.
CARLOS: I have done the—the birthday parties for 13-year-olds, and that's great because you're just like —so awkward and anxious. And I feel like they— you know a nervous teenager really benefits from a game that just says, ‘do whatever the hell you want.’ I would say an 8 to 9-year-old has a different kind of game they need to play. And so I've gone from being like a high fantasy, kind of gritty magical realism DM, to a—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —-a literally anything fucking goes, whatever you want, let's roll with it and like kind of surrender the plot. And so I think my—my word if there would be a word is like ‘whimsical’ because I think it's forced me to be—
ERIC: Sure.
CARLOS: —much more hands-off in what is possible. Like at the end of this last session with maybe 10 minutes left, they just decided they wanted to build a steam engine and all explained how one of their skills would help them build a steam engine, and I let them all roll for it. And then we had like a big final fate roll to see if it happened. And what normally would have pissed me off, like this is not in the world, this is not— you know why are we doing this, became this like really fun mess around session. And I gotta say this— this probably like is good DMing in general, regardless of your age group. But—
ERIC: For sure.
CARLOS: —as someone who comes from video games and is normally so white knuckle grip onto rules and like what is the outcome and how are we advancing the plot. Being forced every week to just truly be an idiot and let kids do what they want and not push them to even really winning. Like if they want to spend the whole session just talking and being silly, letting them do it, has been weirdly liberating for me. There's lots of exhausting elements of it. Like, it's just difficult to tell a—
ERIC: Sure.
CARLOS: — story when things are constantly getting derailed. But if you view it less as a storytelling game, and more as a game to let people just express themselves and have fun with each other, it takes a really different feel. And I've really appreciated the opportunity to like have my plot derailed over and over again. And instead kind of behold the weirdness and, you know, quirks and anxieties and desires of these kids who are like still kind of figuring out what their voices, or learning how to like differentiate themselves from each other. I don't think— I'm not a very paternal person, I don't really have any like fantasies of— of having kids myself. It's my first time really interacting with kids of this age group as like you know, as a grown-ass adult. And there is something to be said about like, there's just something so feral and wild and eager about this age that—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: — I think I imagine they don't have a lot of opportunities to express, and it's really nice to see it and to get a small chance to be like, ‘yeah, truly whatever the fuck you say goes. Like you want to build a ship right now, you want to ride a dragon, you want to like, try to bend water with your mind? Like, let's just roll for it and see what happens.’ And so it's— I think it’s made me a better—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: —DM for adults too. To just like, learn to let go.
ERIC: I was going to ask you, because I know that you've done—I think about DMing in various contexts, like the amount of DMing you do for performance, which is where the majority of the stuff I do on Join the Party, and I know you've done that before. On the— with that incredibly stacked cast that you did at Caveat.
CARLOS: Thank you.
ERIC: I really wanted to go, we were out of town but Caveat is also our heart. I—so I want to shout that out and I hope you get to do that, you continue to do that in the future.
CARLOS: Me too.
ERIC: So I want to compare these three situations.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: One is DMing for performance. One is DMing with adults, either privately or for pay I can—those seem pretty similar to me.
CARLOS: Sure.
ERIC: And then this one of DMing for children. Like, can you compare the three? Like you've already kind of touched on it a little bit, but like, yeah, how do you need to reset your brain, like what are the intentions of what we're trying to make here?
CARLOS: I—I think the biggest shift is from one of collaboration to service. Like whether it's the—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —the public-facing game or the private game, like in both of those, the audience is very different. But my goal is the same, which is like I want to have fun with you, and I want to make us all laugh and have an exciting time. The private game, you have much more time to do what you want. And so you can invest in things like a really epic story, or things that are really, you know, big character and narrative investments that you can't do in a public game. In a public game you’re kind of just like, you got a couple of recurring bits and you’re making people laugh. But all those, I feel like I am playing with people who have a relatively similar intention to me and who I can trust to like hand stuff over and collaborate with. With kids, they just like— you know, you can— you can get mad at them. But at 8 or 9, their brains have not just really developed the parts yet that like really emphasize empathy and collaboration and sharing.
ERIC: Right.
CARLOS: And so you cannot really rely on them to understand when someone's having a moment and give them space or like to just listen to the story or trust that what I'm doing is going to pay off in three sessions, they just like cannot think that far. So your goal much then— really is you are the adult and the caretaker, and your job is to like get a bead on what they're asking for, what makes them light up and what makes them tick. And then kind of like fuck off on whatever you were trying to do because I don't think— in my experience, the kids do not remember that, you know the character they met four sessions ago that ended up betraying them and that there were hints along the way— like stuff that would really pay off for an adult who's paying attention, they just can't—
ERIC: Sure.
CARLOS: —grasp onto. And also, they're dealing with a million other things in their day. And they don't think of themselves as storytellers, they think of themselves as just agents of action.
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: So instead, you should just focus on, like, what makes this person feel cool, and if you can give it to them—give it to them and don't worry about balance, don't worry about, you know, optimizing characters, like they just don't care about that stuff. And so, you know, I went into it as a DM, I often feel much more like a group therapist or like a—
ERIC: Sure.
CARLOS: —like a field trip leader. Which is, I want to ke— make sure that we're all staying within the bounds of respecting each other and trying to listen and hopefully moving something along. But if you tell me you want your field trip to be—we spend two hours in this cave painting the walls, then that is what we are doing because I am of service to you. And it's less fun in a traditional way, like I don't get to really play cool characters or create really difficult combat scenarios and watch them succeed. But it is fun in the sense that like, I had been surprised at what I've been able to adapt to, and still find beats to make them like care and react without having really—
ERIC: Oh, really.
CARLOS: –any control of the reins.
ERIC: Cool. I also like the idea that you're like writing down backstories for all these like goofy characters like ‘they don't know, but I know.’
CARLOS: Truly.
ERIC: It’s like Sir Finglebottom, he has a really rich inner life, and he would have turned if this had happened.
CARLOS: I think I make the most amazing NPC you could ever want to encounter, like a—a massive magical drag queen. And they're just like, ‘we just do not care, we want to talk to the goblin again.’ I made the mistake of giving them an imp in a bottle as like a random magical item. And the way that we have burned—
ERIC: Oh, no.
CARLOS: —hours of this campaign, talking to the imp in the bottle— the imp now thinks that they are all gods, accepts gifts from them, like worships them all, like it's become the entire game. And who gives a shit if we don't get to the final boss.
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: They will remember the imp for like the—the remainder of the year and that feels like a success. To get a kid to feel really excited and enamored about a fake thing like that is really difficult to do as an adult. Especially as an adult they don't really know that well. And so if you can pull it off, that to me feels like a bigger win than a great combat encounter.
ERIC: I don't think that's different than like private games, or just trying to make each other laugh. You know, I think that like, just making content might have like burned our brains a little bit, because like, we're not— you're not even doing it necessarily for your players there. You're doing it for like an unseen audience—
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: —or a seen audience who's directly laughing at what you're saying. But it's like, you know my—if I was playing a private game, and there was— I should have put an imp in a bottle there, to see just like if they would do it. And you know honestly, like, when I do an imp— when I do a character who shows up four sessions later, who turns on them, half of my players are like, ‘who is this? ‘
CARLOS: 100%.
ERIC: So it's like, and it's—it's— I don't know. Like I think the thing you're explaining— I'm realizing the premise of my question was a little flawed that I feel like the—the pri— it's like private games and public games are just the only two things regardle— you just do what—you're just trying to make everybody laugh at the table, instead of like an audience consumption product that theoretically needs to be cogent.
CARLOS: Yeah, it's nice—the reason I got into D&D really is because I was making these like public-facing videos about politics and I felt so much pressure—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —to execute it perfectly and be really likable, and be really, like not fuck up and not have any factual errors. And what drew me to D&D is like, if I mess up, no one has any idea and the game just keeps rolling.
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: And so you know, as much as I love doing it, I've been kind of wary about doing any kind of public-facing D&D stuff. Because I don't ever want to feel the perfectionist pressure to tell a great story. And yeah, you're right, that the beauty of the private game is we're all agreeing to be like idiots with each other. And it's really low stakes—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —in that way. And if you have nice players, or generous players, or players who you know, heaven forbid have DM’ed before, they are there to not pro—protect you from failing, but to help you when you fail and be like ‘cool, I will—I will now pick up this story.’ And that's—that's sort of the sweet spot, the beauty of it.
ERIC: Yeah, just like kind of, I want to let go of my problems, while the 8-year-olds don't have problems.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: It's like I want to be on the same plane.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Hell yeah.
CARLOS: I think the—the 8-year-olds do it instinctively, the adults are trying to get back to a space where they can act like idiots and not leave that e—encounter feeling like, ‘oh, god, I acted like an idiot.’ Tha— the kids leave with no self-consciousness at all about what they've done, where the adults sometimes need reassurance like, ‘hey, that was really great, I'm glad you took that time for your character like that was a great scene.’
ERIC: Same. Same, me too. Me too. I—
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: —also need that all the time.
CARLOS: Oh, I—I have now made a rule where at the end of a session, I get to just ask my boyfriend ‘was that good? Can you tell me that was good? Please tell me that was good.’ And it's a— it's—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: DMing is a very emotionally and artistically vulnerable thing. So yeah, you need a lot of it.
ERIC: Yeah. It's like, I—I spent a lot of time teaching, like I was a high school English teacher for a little bit. And I was also like a camp counselor. And there's something about DMing that it's like you're doing that, but imagine you're also juggling the entire time. And people have seen videos of jugglers, the best jugglers in the world.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And they're like, ‘mmm, but yeah, but that guy with long hair who wears the vest, you know, he—he can juggle 10 swords at the same time, and you're juggling 4—4 bowling pins.’
CARLOS: Yes. The only thing I can equate the feeling to is when I was in college and I would go to debate tournaments and spend like 10 hours debating in front of an audience. That— the feeling after you're done, which is like all of your adrenaline is tapped, and you just completely emotionally crash and cannot talk to anyone, it's the same thing. And you're right and so like, I am operating at the absolute max of my capacity, and all you really know is how I fare compared to other people who are really good at this and like have more time to do it.
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: It's a—it's really vulnerable. You do just need someone to at the end of it, pat your head and be like, ‘that was really great. I'm glad that you did it’ because otherwise, you just—I think you kind of burn out or start to just like spin out into self-doubt.
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: So yeah, having— DMs need to have post-session check-ins and feel emboldened to ask your players—
ERIC: 100%.
CARLOS: —’was that good? Did you like that? Are you still my friend?’ That's a very reasonable thing to want to hear afterward.
ERIC: If you can add on, like, ‘I can't believe you did that, I would not have been able to do that.’ That's just the fucking, the cherry on top, is to do that.
CARLOS: We need it.
ERIC: A hun— I am 5000% in.
CARLOS: Yeah, it's so scary when you're just kind of on your own improving and to have players just say, ‘I didn't see you sweat. Like I—like I'm—I'm shocked and I could not have done that.’ Because in your mind as a DM, all you're thinking is ‘they see that I'm fucking up. They know I'm making this up. They know that I'm spinning out right now.’ So even if you can see the DM sweat, just say ‘DM, you really kept your cool, you're a master,’ that's like kind of all we want to hear.
ERIC: Yeah, 100%. Very much so.
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ERIC: Hey, it's Eric and I got Gatorades for everyone! Here’s red, and yellow, and blue, and dark blue, and light blue, and purple-blue. Man, that's a lot of blues. And they all taste totally different. So everyone stay hydrated out there, please. Or I'm gonna have to call your mom and tell her that you know, you weren't following the rules and that would be a real problem, because then your mom would be mad, and then you can't play the Nintendo for a week. So just drink the Gatorade. If you like supporting what we're doing here, it has been really wonderful. These guests have been great, Carlos is such a great guest. Support the wonderful independent content we're doing here at Games and Feelings and join the Patreon at patreon.com/gamesandfeelings. And shout out to producer-level patrons, Polly Burrage, Kelsey Duffy, and Peyton who have their preferences of who they want to win the NBA Finals, but they're being very nice about it to other people who want the other team to win and they're it—everyone's having a good time. It is our favorite time of the year here at Multitude. It's the annual summer survey, you can look up in the sky and see that the sun is wearing a pair of sunglasses, and it's cool, so it's survey time. This is your chance to give feedback to Multitude as a whole and each of the shows in the collective that you listen to. Tell us how we're doing. Tell us where you want us to do live shows, tell us about new merch ideas, and all of your deep-seated feelings about podcasting. We're all podcasting fans here, so we really want to hear them. The survey takes like 10 minutes tops. It works great on desktop and mobile and ends with the biggest collage of pet photos that we've ever had on the survey. The results of the survey really helps us chart a path for the future. Your answers and suggestions were the seeds that grew into the Multi-Crew Digital Live Shows, the Discord, ad-free episodes, and new shows like this one - Games and Feelings - and Tell Me About It. So go to multitude.production/survey right now to fill out the survey. We're accepting answers until June 9th, so fill it out as soon as you can. That's multitude.productions/survey or click the link in the episode description. You hear our voices all the time, now it's time to hear yours. We are sponsored this week by Quest Chest from Bookwyrm Games. Bookwyrm makes modules and R— and tabletop RPG accessories. And right now they're running a Kickstarter for a Quest Chest. That's a system-agnostic, tabletop RPG module packed full with physical props, puzzles, narrative voiceover music, and more. The Quest Chest contains a full module with several sessions' worth of content. You can run the first four sessions independently or tie them together, since there's a narrative through-line linking them all together. Oooh, ah, oooh. There's also physical props that include wax-sealed letters, metal coins, maps, even scented candles and tea. The chest also comes with digital components like fully narrated voiceover. I heard that Thomas Lennon was part of it, like the actor from Reno 911. Custom music and fully stated-out encounters in four D&D 5E, Path Finder, and Powered by the Apocalypse for levels 1, 3, 5, and 7. So go to bookwyrmgames.com to back this project, or buy the previous two Quest Chests. You can also purchase dice, accessories, and even Dungeons and Dragons candy. That's B O O K W Y R Mgames.com. bookwyrmgames.com. And now, back to the games.
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ERIC: That was incredible. Carlos, thank you that wa— that was great. I will quickly say mine, which is my birthday was two days ago.
CARLOS: Hey, are you Taurus?
ERIC: Thank you uh— yes, I'm a Taurus.
CARLOS: Let's go.
ERIC: I want to—
CARLOS: My best friends are Tauruses.
ERIC: Hell yeah, dude. The—what I love about Tauruses is that it's so funny that Tauruses are in the spring because I just want to be under a blanket at all times.
CARLOS: 100%.
ERIC: And when my birthday comes then I'm like—it's the start of not being able to be under a blanket season.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And I always find that in so— so ridiculously in— in combat with each other.
CARLOS: You're so right. I— my image of Tauruses in my mind is like on a couch with 18 blankets, a fireplace, and like grapes being lowered into their mouth, just like the kings and queens of luxury and—and nesting.
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: And it is important that it happens right at the beginning of like fuck around and go out season. As an Aries, I do al—I feel very in tune with like when I am—it's my birthday, people are getting feral on like charging into the wilderness again and like starting to hang out outside. But you're right, the Taurus season is—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —Tau—Taurus should be like November or October, like the beginning of hibernation season.
ERIC: October, yeah, yeah. We—we had our wedding uh— I just got—I got married last October and we did it literally on October 15th to change our anniversary to October instead of July.
CARLOS: Really smart.
ERIC: Because we're like, no, we want to be on— we want it to be fall. We want to be under blankets. This is when the good stuff happens.
CARLOS: That is really smart. I think my boyfriend and I's anniversary is like October 7th and it feels incongruent to us. I'm just gonna force our wedding to be—
ERIC: Hell yeah.
CARLOS: —in like April, or March or May.
ERIC: Hey, everyone should move their wedding to when they feel their most vibesy.
CARLOS: Yeah, great idea.
ERIC: I also didn't know that like October was like, the most popular New York State wedding season. I thought it would— all of it is still the summer. So it's like, ‘oh, yeah, we'll totally—we'll do it right in the middle of October.’ And then all the venues were like [scoffing noises]. And we're like ‘what?’ And we're like ‘we didn't know, we didn't know it was— it was this popular.’
CARLOS: That is really surprising. I wonder why it's October?
ERIC: I feel like if you're gonna have a summer wedding, you're gonna do it somewhere else, like not in upstate New York or whatever.
CARLOS: That's very true.
ERIC: Anyway, this is because we're adults talking about games, we're talking about this instead. So the thing is that I want to talk about is I feel very like, grounded in that—so my birthday came up, and I really like getting presents for people. I think it's a good way that's like - I know love languages are bullshit - but also it's like, I like doing it to other people. I— it's a good way— I feel like I'm good at it. It's a good way for me to like demonstrate to people that I know about them and I care about them. And my family always like asks me ‘hey, what do you want for your birthday? Tell me exactly what it is and I'll buy it for you.’ I'm like, ‘please, please just think about me for two seconds and get me a present, please.’ My brother has gotten very good at this and my parents still are not, are not good at it at all. So recently I got some— I got presents lately and man, I just feel— not one I feel like my—my friends are and are getting to be very good gift givers. But also I feel very good about myself that my interests are so obvious that someone can get me the presents. So I ended up getting a lot of games-related presents, one of which was like a two-tone N64 controller.
CARLOS: Ooooh.
ERIC: Because I recently bought myself like a Grape 64 with like a– because I never had one as a kid. My first console was a Dreamcast. So then I—I've been accruing controllers lately and I have like stands and I love my GameCube so I got myself like an Orange Spice GameCube controller. And like yeah, I got this—this two-tone one was really won—was awesome that Amanda got me. And I don't know, I was just feeling really grounded and like going into 32, I was just like, I'm glad I know myself well enough and people know me well enough that like it's not a mystery of what to get me.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And I—I kinda— I'm happy about that.
CARLOS: That's so great. I feel the same way, I—I just turned 35 and my apartment like this, I don't really love a lot of material possessions but the things that I absolutely fuck with are plants, like you can see next to me. I just have like a whole bunch of tiny plants—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: —which I feel like is very— yeah.
ERIC: Oh, that looks incredible. You got to take a photo because I mean— because Amanda super into plants as well, please.
CARLOS: Oh my god ha—happily. And then the other, you’re right, is just like little gamer shit. Like it's so nerdy—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —-but I just love having like little chests to keep my D&D dice things in or like little figurines for battle maps and stuff like that. Like it—it's the kind of thing that I think a teenager or maybe somebody in their 20s would be embarrassed to have out. But this is a huge part of my identity. I spend a lot of time and effort working on this like creative thing. And so I want stuff in my apartment that mirrors it. I have a—a fan of mine made a sketch drawing of my first ever D&D character, and I have it just like hung up on my wall.
ERIC: Hell yeah.
CARLOS: Because yeah, who— if anyone finds that shit uncool or like, cares that you have a—a hardcore interest, like that person is themselves deeply uncool and not someone you want to fuck with anyway.
ERIC: Yes, 100%. Also, everyone knows fan art is the greatest thing anyone could do for us.
CARLOS: Truly.
ERIC: The fact that we do this, if you can draw and you draw the thing I say in words, you are a fucking god to me. I will lay down all of my crops to you.
CARLOS: 100%. The reason I DM is because I can't— I cannot draw for shit. So if you can turn—
ERIC: Yes [laughs]
CARLOS: —the—there's no more loving gifts than like, hey, I heard what you— I—I—I read your thing and I made you art out of it. When I—I ran a campaign for my siblings, and they got an artist to make a drawing of all their characters and then gave it to me framed—
ERIC: Oh my god.
CARLOS: —and it is like to this day my coolest possession, a memento thing that we did together and also their way of saying like ‘it was real to us,’ that makes me like emotional to think about. It's the best thing.
ERIC: Yeah. Caldwell Tanner, who was on the episode recently from— uh incredible artist and also a player on Not Another D&D podcast. He is an incredible artist and also good, very funny. And I'm like you're the Avatar, it's not fair that you know how to do all of these things at the same time.
CARLOS: Yes.
ERIC: It's incredibly rude.
CARLOS: If you're listening and play D&D and you can draw, please draw sketches from your campaign and give them to your DM, it will make them cry.
ERIC: Always, always, extremely, yes. So grounded is—is the feeling— is the feeling that I have.
CARLOS: That's great.
ERIC: Um, thank you. Thank you. Hey, Carlos, you want to answer some questions from real people—
CARLOS: Let's do it.
ERIC: —about real games?
CARLOS: Let's do it.
ERIC: Let's fucking do it. Alright, we have a good question here. I want to shout out, this came from the Join the Party Discord, but they gave me permission to read it on Games and Feelings. And uh, Carlos I encouraged people to write in with like advice names, like a real Sleepless in Seattle situation.
CARLOS: Love it.
ERIC: But if uh— so, I think that everyone wrote in with one, but we're also allowed to give them name— fun names as well—
CARLOS: Great.
ERIC: —to layer on top. So this is from ‘Our DM is a Ghost?! Not—Not Clickbait.’ “A couple of weeks ago, our DM kind of went missing. He said he'd be on a call and then never joined, and then didn’t answer calls, texts, or messages. Just for nuance, we ended up reaching out to his family later, and they told us that he was dealing with a pressing personal situation. Up to this point, he's been a fantastic DM, always quick to respond and let us know way ahead of time about schedule changes, so it was completely out of character to just disappear. So we ended up thinking it was urgent that ended up taking his time and energy. The first week, we just ran a PVP arena fight to the death—”
CARLOS: Hell yeah.
ERIC: “–because we’ve been joking, which of us were actually the hardest to kill.” Very funny, very true—
CARLOS: Hell yeah.
ERIC: —that's a good one. “The following week, we got—some of us were sick, so we just canceled. And this week, I'm kind of wondering what to do. I feel like our party is a great group, we have fun and work together as a team. And to me it at least feels wrong to say, ‘well, it's been fun, but see you never.’ I've never been in this situation, and unsure what direction to go. Do we just transition to other tabletop game things like board games and card games? Do we start looking for another DM? Any suggestions or advice are really appreciated.”
CARLOS: Woof, this is a tough one. Heartbreaking, I do have an idea, I—I think.
ERIC: Please.
CARLOS: So I think that I always have really fun when for whatever reason, the narrative— the main narrative needs to be put on hold, is to play through a scene in one of the characters' backstories so uh—
ERIC: Oh, yeah.
CARLOS: —it helps them that it does feel like it is advancing the plot in some way or fleshing something out. But it's also low stakes, and it's like no matter what you can't die at the end of this because your character still survives. So I think a solid pitch would be to have the group take turns essentially DMing minor scenes from their backstory. Either one where they’re— they are involved in as a player, or they're just like, you know, ’this thing happened to me, I want to play through what it is.’ The defense of a town, or the discovery of something that helped you find your power, and anything like that. It helps you flesh out your character a bit. You are in control of it as the DM, so you don't really have to worry about your character getting merced or anything like that happening. It gives the other players a chance to run a new character from your background or like play a slightly different class. And then it has the secondary strength of letting you know which of the players is like particularly good or capable of DMing if they decide they want to take over or even just continue one of those one shots as like a mini background campaign. If you don't want to do D&D for this, another thing that I’ve found really useful is, have you ever played the game The Quiet Year?
ERIC: Yes, The Quiet Year is great.
CARLOS: So I—I stole this idea from the McElroy brothers Adventure Zone podcast, but they did a thing before one of their seasons where they just played a year of The Quiet Year and that year became sort of like the core lore of their campaign like how did this campaign—
ERIC: Yes, and the McElroy's took that from Austin Walker running it in Friends of the Table.
CARLOS: No way.
ERIC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Avery Alder on—on their own is incredibly talented and I love that game a lot. I think that would also work really well. This is you— you literally have activated one of my trap cards that I'm now turning over.
CARLOS: Let’s go.
ERIC: And now I'm using Mirror Force. The only thing with this, and I think actually this would work here, is that A Quiet Year is supposed to be temporary. It's not actually supposed to be world-building. It's about a— creating a civilization and over one year they get wiped out at the end. So I think that this would work really well for that specifically, if you want something to feel like a little more ephemeral - is the word—the word I was looking for, ephemeral - that doesn't directly deal with the thing and like is tangential but does not start to lay things down. Because I think that the whole point of The Quiet Year is you go hard in it, and then you're supposed to go hard in it, and then it's supposed to disappear. Like you know like a sand— like a sand art.
CARLOS: For sure, it's—it's a really good way to, like, get people who don't think of themselves traditionally as world builders to build a really rich world. And even if you don't want to actually play The Quiet Year and have the wipeout mechanic, just the ide— just the mechanic of like, ‘we each take turns adding something significant and potentially harmful to this’ and then adapting to each other. It's like a really— I—I find it to be an incredibly useful shortcut for creating the sense of history in a world. And so—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: I think, you know, if—if you're thinking that DM is gonna come back, it's like, you're right, there's like a very low stakes like this town gets wiped out anyway. But if not, you already have yourself kind of like the beginning of a new campaign or a spin-off, that still feels like it's in the same world of the first one. So I think stalling out in D&D can be a really fun creative tool to be like, what other branches do we have here that we can keep going, that doesn't feel like a force or hard reset?
ERIC: Yeah, I love world-building games. I didn't even think about that because I personally am a massive fan of it. There's also like, oh, Did You Say Street Magic, which is one about like really trying to flesh out a world. I've created a few which are kind of like hacks of that, that you can use directly for putting into your campaign, I can link in the episode description. Carlos, you literally activated my trap card—
CARLOS: Let's go.
ERIC: I wanna talk about this all the time. It happens. Yeah, I created like three short world-building games directly for putting into campaigns. And you can just buy that for $5 it's— as a PDF, it's super cheap and support local— local game designers in your area. I—I wonder yeah. I think that the fundamental question here is, do you think this guy is going to come back? Or wha— or how long it’s going to take? Because I think like, there's nothing wrong with just starting something else, because it's like the question asker included a lot. I—I'd ask some follow-up questions about what's going on with the DM and I kind of threaded in a lot of the understanding from the party, that like he didn't abandon them, there's just like a lot of emergencies and he could not use brain— brain power—
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: —to get on Discord and talk to us. So if you want to like respect his artistic or Dungeon Master work here, I can see putting it aside, and then not wanting to deal with it for the time being. I think you touched on something that's really important is like, I really think one of you can step up and run games.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: I really think so. And then like you could—this could then start to be like an anthology thing, where someone brings a rules-light game and they're gonna run it for everybody. Or they—you— they teach a new game, and it's like GM-less. So all of you are doing something together.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: So all of you are kind of like expanding your— your brain space. But also like, I promise, hey, everyone come in really close. Everyone, I'm gonna come in really close here. It's not that hard to run a game of—to run a tabletop RPG. It really isn't that hard, I promise.
CARLOS: It’s not. Yeah.
ERIC: Especially not— Dungeons and Dragons is like one of the hardest ones. Do anything else, it's fine.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And uh—I—there's a lot of trepidation I think in question askers question, that like, no one wants to do it. But like let— make everyone do it and see if someone catches the bug. Carlos, as someone who kind of stepped into it, like, how do you empower someone to realize that they can actually run a game?
CARLOS: I think you know, as— as a DM, I would probably communicate to them that I have prepped less and less for my sessions over time. I feel like everyone's you know, first mistake is they think you need to have every possible branch pathed out. And truly, you just need to know where you're trying to get to, and then basically, everything else is gravy, you're just—you're— it doesn't matter how you get to that landing spot, you can just like enjoy the journey. So I would say that, but you know, the—the— I think it's hard for anyone to believe. Like having someone hear ‘you don't need to prep’ just sounds, like, impossible and like, like its own kind of trap card. So I would just say, think about how badly when you're playing you want the DM to succeed and how willing you are to help them and know that everyone feels that way about you. That no one is playing D&D to watch the DM fail.
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: So if at any point, you feel like ‘I didn't really prep for this, or I don't know what to do now,’ you can just tell the players, ‘hey, I'm kind of at a dead end, I'm not sure what to do. What do you think should happen?’ and hand off a bit of the writing. And if your players are nice - and this group sounds like they're quite generous and adaptable - they will just say, ‘cool, how about this? Can I talk about—can I investigate this? Can I ask a question about this?’ You—you will be surprised how—I think in D&D, but in generally, how positively someone responds when you say, ‘hey, I'm stuck, I could use your help, could you please help me?’ And that is like the most powerful DM tool—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: And uh, players should be doing that anyway. But if you prompt them, you'll be surprised how much people want to come to your aid in those moments and how much that kind of lowers the stakes of D&D.
ERIC: I've actually never done that, because the majority of my play has been like recorded, so I always feel like I need to be prepped and like part of the reveal is like amazing my players, so that that feeling will come through to listeners and audience members. Have you— you've just said, like, ‘hold on, I gotta figure that— I gotta figure this out, like, can you help me out?’
CARLOS: I think the safer way of saying it is, ‘I think I want you to write this next part of the story’ to a player. And—
ERIC: Damn. Damn, Carlos. Shit.
CARLOS: And you know, the risk of that obviously is that– is that they say like, ‘alright, I find a nuclear bomb and detonate it.’
ERIC: Of course.
CARLOS: But if you have a decent player, they're not going to do that.
ERIC: But you can just say, like, ‘we're not doing that.’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: You can– and then we're like, ‘no, come on, please.’
CARLOS: Yeah, just be cool. But I think most people are—
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: —playing, waiting for their chance to shine. And so if you give them the fucking pencil and say, like, tell me what happens now. It— I think reminds everyone like this game truly exists because of our cooperation and good faith. And so—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: —in the same way that like, kids are more danger averse when you put them in dangerous playgrounds, like if you put them around sharp objects, they become more safe.
ERIC: Ohhh.
CARLOS: Letting a player know, like, ‘hey, no guardrails right now, you get to decide what happens’ will make players much more aware of like, ‘right, I am responsible for driving the story forward, and it's not just the DMs job.’
ERIC: Hell yeah. That's—that's wonderful. Yeah. I feel very like self-conscious about needing to—about doing that. And I think that's such a good idea. God, I should do that. I should just straight up do that more often. Just like, ‘hey, you made such a strong choice, you get to just say what happe— you just get to say what happens next.’
CARLOS: Yeah. I—if they roll really well, be like ‘you tell me what you find out about this thing.’ It's kind of like A Quiet Year, right? Like you're—you're saying—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: —you for a moment have complete control and I need to react to the call that you make. And we already do that instinctively, when people say like, ‘how do you want to do this?’ to let someone describe the killing blow. You're essentially saying like—
ERIC: Exactly.
CARLOS: —’you tell me what this looks like.’ You can do that much more loosely, and it makes the players feel like their decisions matter in a way beyond just what their character does, but like you are a shepherd and steward of this world in the same way that I am. We're all co-writing this together right now. It's really nice.
ERIC: That's really cool. I'm gonna— I'm totally gonna mull that over. ‘Your DM is a Ghost,’ I think one of you can step up, I think if you want to keep the seat warm for him, if you think he's going to be able to come back in an extended period of time, do what Carlos suggested, play out other things. Another cool suggestion is go to a different part of the world and go play somewhere else. But if you want to stay in the same world, something related in a very sort of like Westeros/Essos sort of situation—
CARLOS: For sure.
ERIC: —in Game of Thrones is kind of— is—is very fun. And then Pedro Pascal will show up, which is kind of fun. But yeah, no, I love that a lot. But if not, I think one of y— y'all should try to step up and play—play something else.
CARLOS: Yeah, I think it’s less the DM is a ghost and the DM— more the DM is your spiritual ancestor waiting for you to make them proud. Take up the reins.
ERIC: Yeah, exactly. You can go into—once again, another Avatar reference, that's two so far in this episode, you can see all of the DMS that came before you—
CARLOS: 100%.
ERIC: —and they're all here to help you. I love that. Carlos, I have another question here. Do you have any experience with pre—using pre-written settings?
CARLOS: I've done a bit. I— I understand why younger, or like less experienced, DMs are drawn to them to have everything written out. My experience with it has been I tried to run Lost Mines of Phandelver, the like starter kit set. And then I tried to run a Curse of Strahd campaign.
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: Which I found to be like very difficult and overwhelming. And eventually just like used the basic premise but derailed and wrote my own campaign around it. I personally find that it trips up my DM style, because it makes me start to think of what I'm doing in terms of right and wrong, like am I straying off of this path, which makes me significantly more self-conscious than the like, I just know where we're going and I'll figure it out kind of thing. So I almost recommend it in the sense of like, you need to experience it to realize it doesn't quite work. I'm not saying this is true for everyone, like maybe some people really just prefer having stuff pre-made and planned out. But I personally find that trying it made me realize I never want to try it again, and I only just want to like trust myself and trust my instinct. Sort of the flip side of that, the less generous reading is like, it's not fair to your players, because ultimately, they cannot really steer you off of the path that you're taking them on. Like you give them a list of options—
ERIC: Yeah, I agree with this.
CARLOS: —but if they say ‘we don't want to go into this fucking mine,’ and you are holding on to a book that says The Lost Mines of Phandelver, you're kind of at an impasse and uh—
ERIC: What are you supposed to do, yeah.
CARLOS: So I— yeah, I tend to prefer the more freedom-oriented approach, but I do think you need to try to run a booklet campaign to feel frustrated enough to be like, I don't want to do this ever again. I know better than the people who wrote this campaign and what is fun.
ERIC: Yeah, okay, so then wonderful. We're going to answer this question which you already kind of pre-asked. This is from ‘Stuck in the Book,’ he/him. “I've been running a 5E game for friends the last few months, loosely based on the Theros setting from Wizards of the Coast-” Theros is like their Greek Mythology—
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: — kind of inspired thing. “I don't usually use pre-gen settings because I get creatively claustrophobic, but I did this time because all the players wanted it. The campaign is by no means bad, but over the last few months, it stopped being creatively fulfilling for me. I've loosely brought up starting a new game for them a few times, but they never really had strong opinions about it. I've gotten to the point where I'm trying to wrap this arc up so I can start something new. But the idea of continuing this game makes me take 1d4 psychic damage. My players are iffy about learning a new system, so I'll stick with it - albeit with a lot more homebrew. The question is, how do I start a good and comprehensive question about my players about this? I don't want to feel like I'm forcing them to end something they enjoy. But I can't keep going with it, or I'll get stagnant real quick. Oh, help me great game geniuses.” I think you al— Carlos, you already started touching on something. Let's go all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. It's funny how Wizards of the Coast, the premise of these books are like, ‘I work at home base, so they are perfect.’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And I don't— I'm not saying that they're saying it explicitly. But I think that's the implication of needing to buy a book from them. That like the good thing, the best version of this comes from home base and has the big sign on it that says ‘official,’ right?
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And I can see, I—I never use pre written stuff because I thought the whole point was me making up some fun stuff and making people live in it. You know?
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: So yeah, I think that we've touched on a few things already, but like, yeah, how do you start a conversation where you as the DM feels creatively unfulfilled, but your players are kinda like, ‘no this is fun.’
CARLOS: Yeah. I mean, the important thing to remember and this probably goes about saying is like, the DM is a player, you're entitled to fun and to enjoy what you're doing. So if your players want it, and you don't, you get to just say like ‘this isn't for me.’
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: I think sort of the way you would approach it would be to tell the players like, ‘hey, I'm thinking about starting a new arc. I want to end this in a way that feels fulfilling, what do your characters really want?’ Because I feel like sort of the easy way out of a boring setting, or a boring mechanic is like, the only unique really exciting thing is what are the character's motivations? So in a way, it's kind of like saying, you tell me how the story ends. But getting a sense of what would make each of the characters feel fulfilled, or what they want the sort of like ultimate test of their arc to be, will make them feel like they are writing something that is homebrewed, as opposed to you are. And it will probably be more fun, because once they have decided what they want the general arc of it to look like, you get to decide literally everything else, the mechanics, how it happens, the pacing, the characters. But I guess my short answer is trick them into writing you out of the book. Say ‘how do you want this to end, what do you want it to look like?’ and that way they can't be—they can't complain, right? They have what they want, which is the setting, but they need to decide how the story concludes. So that way you are forcing a conclusion, you are forcing one that is based in their characters, which kind of happens divorced from the setting. And because they are saying what they want, you now have kind of permission to leave the book behind a bit and say like, ‘alright, well, this book does not account for your character arc, so we get to leave this behind a bit.’ And then you know, if they're really unwilling, I think it's your job to be like, ‘I'm just not having fun. I would like to wrap this up—’
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: ‘—in a way that accessible. But also, if—if this is really not working, then maybe this— we don't need to play this out to the very end.’ If that happens, it sounds like it's more of a friend issue than a—than a book issue. Like they have to respect that—
ERIC: Seriously.
CARLOS: —you're putting a lot of work into it, and it's not fun for you, you get to just call it.
ERIC: Yeah. Something that I've —I've thought about a lot lately are like, we're— because we're all playing tabletop RPGs, you think that like we're all copacetic and like, ‘well, if you had a problem, you'd say it out loud.’ But I guess— but that feeling of being— of needing to say it out loud, the feeling of like thinking you're going to break the piece by not saying something out loud is something that's so ingrained into the types of people who want to play a cooperative game together. So it's like, it seems like your players are like a 6 out of 10 on doing this.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Because I—le—let's play out maybe what this scenario was like. The DM was like, ‘hey, are you guys enjoying this?’ And then the players were like, ‘yeah, it's going great.’ And I— all one ha— all one thing has to happen, it's not like you're gonna be like, ‘hey, I'm not having fun’ and then someone's like, ‘shh, no, we're finishing this.’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Like, I don't—I can't imagine that's going to happen. So I 100% agree with you, Carlos, and I think that all you have to do is say, ‘guys, I don't want to do this anymore.’ And don't surprise them. You can do it at the end of a session, do it on an off day. So it's not like instead of doing the thing you were supposed to do, we're going to talk about feelings instead.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Just— you just got to do it and then I think they'll probably be okay with it.
CARLOS: Yeah. I think framing in terms of like ‘can you help me, I am struggling to find the fun in this. Can you help me come— some of this more exciting?’ Again, the—’this sucks’ is way harder for someone to respond to because they think they feel defensive especially if they wanted to play this setting. And—
ERIC: Yes.
CARLOS: —’can you help me, I need help. I'm not so sure what to do, what is the version of this that we can all enjoy?’ is way more accessible. And I think sort of— this is sort of grim, but to your larger point, a lot of couples say that when they've been having a very long rough patch, just saying ‘should we break up,’ and ‘should we talk about do we want to break up?’ like, snaps things back into focus and order, like being— just naming the scary thing we're afraid of helps you be much more brave about considering alternatives. So it does sound scary, but I do think that in the same way, telling your close friend like, ‘hey, I feel let down by you,’ can create all this room to like discuss how things might be different and how things might grow. Just saying like, ‘I'm just not digging it, I want to know if there's something else we can do instead of this,’ can really spur a bunch of like productive, collaborative creativity, even if it does feel scary.
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: So yeah, I totally agree with you. Sometimes you just got to say the scary thing and trust that everyone is an adult and can handle it.
ERIC: I like the thing you said, which is, I can see such a clear difference between ‘are you enjoying this?’, or ‘I'm not having a good time, can you help me?’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Cause one is your opinion, and the other is ‘I have— here's my opinion, we need to change this.’ And that's—those two questions are so different, and you got to make sure you're asking the second one and not the first one because you get the answer to that particular question.
CARLOS: Yeah. You're, in the question, reminding your players that you are committed to doing something with them, like you do like them, and you do like playing with them, you just need them to take a bit of the lead. And if you're the DM, I think sort of the—the problem we all fall into is like, we just think that everyone's fun is solely our responsibility. And it's just not.
ERIC: Yes, oh my god.
CARLOS: You do a lot of the work, but if people are not having fun, it is because they are not contributing to a game that they're enjoying. And it is very difficult to maintain fun if it all falls on one person. If you are constantly in the job as a DM of saying like, ‘go here next, do this next,’ and the players have no motivations or are not like driving the story in some way, it becomes very not fun, it feels like— like work as opposed to passing the ball back and forth. So in every respect, I think you are empowered as a DM to be like, ‘hey, I am also giving my time here. I'm putting a lot of work into it.’
ERIC: Yeah.
CARLOS: ‘I would like you all to put some work into it. Here's the thing that I'd like you to put some work into.’ And it can be really nice for players to remind themselves that their DM is a human who's putting a lot of work into it and like who gets to have feelings about the game too.
ERIC: Yeah. And you have the perfect fall guy, it’s the fucking book.
CARLOS: It's the book.
ERIC: Just blame— blame Wizards of the Coast! They're gonna stumble into a new PR problem, let's avoid buying the book.
CARLOS: Yeah, it's the Red Mages at Hasbro who are just like ruining our fun right now and we need to come up with some ritual to banish this shit.
ERIC: ‘Hey, the C—CEO Chris Cox, he's actually been trying to blow up the world so I'm trying to boycott buying their stuff, that's the best I can do.’
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: Man, it would make everything so much better, if all of the worst things going on in our world right now is like ‘oh, yeah, the Red Mages, yeah, I guess we should—we should probably boycott that, for sure.’
CARLOS: Yeah. I just want everything to be linked to one evil entity that we can all ignore. But unfortunately, I think capitalism works much more messily than that.
ERIC: Exactly. ‘Yeah the Me—the Met Gala theme was Red Mages, and I just didn't want to go, I just—’
CARLOS: Wait, that would actually—
ERIC: ‘Like, I know he has— I know the Red Mage has a cat, but I—you know, it still makes me feel weird.’
CARLOS: I'm not a Met Gala person, but if they announced that their theme one year was just like, ‘Lich’ or ‘Dark Arts,’ I would absolutely be on Twitter all day just watching—watching and ranking the costumes. That would get me bad.
ERIC: I—Well this— this year's theme was Karl Lagerfeld, who's just like worked for Coco Chanel and like massively fat-phobic, terrible person.
CARLOS: Yeah.
ERIC: And then you're just like wow, Doja Cat went as a cat because he, Karl Lagerfeld had a cat.
CARLOS: That’s rough.
ERIC: It's just—it's so banal, it's like ‘no, actually, Anna Wintour’s theme is ‘Lich’, so we're going to push back on that a little bit.’
CARLOS: Could you imagine?
ERIC: She doesn't want to die, she wants to end death - and that's bad.
CARLOS: What if like Anna Wintour’s theme was just like ‘Multiclass.’ I would absolutely lose my mind. If it's just like ‘can you serve martial and magical in one look?’ I would freak out. I mean even just on Drag Race, like if we just had one runway on Drag Race that was like front liners, I would lose my fucking mind.
ERIC: It's the D20 Ball!
CARLOS: Come o—oh my god. Could you imagine?
ERIC: Carlos, I— we have to end the episode or we're going to talk about this for another hour.
CARLOS: Yeah. This is— the trap cards are going off anywhere.
ERIC: Jesus Christ. Bussy Queen starts making D&D-like analysis YouTube videos, like come on!
CARLOS: This—yeah, we're having a fever dream right now. We need to pull ourselves back from the brink.
ERIC: That's the only way to get us on Paramount+.
CARLOS: 100%.
ERIC: Is if—if All Stars ended up being like Dungeons and Dragons themed, that'd be pretty tight. I like that.
CARLOS: Oh my god. I'm trying to think of like all the dumb puns now and my brain is gonna turn into mush, so yeah, we should get off of this.
ERIC: Carlos, you could write, you could be giving those jokes to Ross Matthews, that would be perfect.
CARLOS: The hilarious Ross Matthews reading my jokes, I can't imagine.
ERIC: ‘So Ross, what's your AC?’ ‘Oh, I don't know. I go to AC and I hook up with a bunch of guys.’ ‘Oh, Atlantic City? No, that's not what I was talking about.’
CARLOS: Wait, that's really good, you just came up with that?
ERIC: And that’s just off the cuff! Hire us, hire us!
CARLOS: Yeah, you—
ERIC: We'll do it!
CARLOS: Just get us on retainer and start drafting now. This is gonna happen for sure, we're manifesting it. This is what I'm using my wish spell on.
ERIC: World of Wonder definitely listens to this podcast, so they’ll definitely be hitting us up, absolutely.
CARLOS: Can’t wait. Hire us.
ERIC: Hire us. [laughs]
CARLOS: She’s gay.
ERIC: Jesus Christ. I mean, listen, Ru— we can talk about RuPaul's Drag Race - that counts. At Games and Feelings ri— we've already established—
CARLOS: It's a game.
ERIC: —from a lo—Jasper and I had a long conversation about Love Island and Survivor. RuPaul’s Drag Race counts as Games and Feelings.
CARLOS: Absolutely a game.
ERIC: So you can come back and just talk about it.
CARLOS: Good, I'm—I'm here when you need me for it. I've got a fucking tome that I can read from.
ERIC: Jesus Chri—yes, we will ge—we’re— I think we're gonna have like— we're already planning like a sports episode, but I think we should plan out like a reality competition episode. So we can talk about Drag Race and Top Chef and all that stuff. So we'll definitely have you back for that 100%.
CARLOS: I'm so in, so in.
ERIC: Let's go! Carlos, I— we're already planning for the future, so while they're waiting for the— for the fucking D&D Rusical, where can people find you on the internet?
CARLOS: You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @gaywonk. G A Y W O N K, or you just follow my YouTube channel and it's just my name Carlos Maza, M A Z A.
ERIC: Incredible. We'll obviously have those links in the episode description. You can follow me on Twitter at El_Silvero, E L underscore S I L V E R O, my name if I was a Lucho Libre wrestler. Make sure to follow Games and Feelings on Instagram and Twitter. On Twitter were gamesnfeelings because Elon Musk is terrible. And— but we have the full ‘and’ on the Instagram, where you can see all the wonderful graphics that comes out. We also want to give a shout-out to Jasper. He's back from his wedding and his— from his honeymoon, but he got stranded in Utah, so he couldn't make it to this episode. But he's out here and Jasper will be back as soon as possible. Yeah, remember, if you want to submit questions, just do it at the website, there's a form for it, it's super easy. And these are all questions from real people with real games questions. Carlos, thank you again for coming on. I really appreciate being able to talk about— We're gonna just gonna talk about the— the alt-right on the next episode.
CARLOS: Come back to reality.
ERIC: RuPaul was a gambit, just to make you talk about fucking Fox News for the entire time.
CARLOS: That's fine. As long as a spoonful of D&D and drag medicine to— or sugar to make the medicine go down, I can do that.
ERIC: Yeah, we'll tal— we'll talk about challenges they should do for 10 minutes and then we'll talk about like Newsmax for the rest.
CARLOS: What’s happened to our brains?
ERIC: No, it would be terrible. And as always, there is no instruction manual for feelings. Byee!
[theme]
ERIC: Games and Feelings is produced by Eric Silver and edited and mixed by Mischa Stanton. The theme music is Return to French Toast Castle by Jeff Brice. And the art was created by Jessica Boyd. Find transcripts for this episode, and all episodes at our website, gamesandfeelings.com. Until next time, press X to enjoy the podcast.
Transcriptionist: KA
Editor: KM
Proofreader: SR