Episode 5 - Questing and Quarrels

Jace from Black Tower Stories talks about his experience with Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). He started playing in high school and got his friends into it. They primarily play D&D 5th edition because it's easy to get into. They enjoy the open-endedness of the game and meet weekly to play. Jace also runs tables at conventions and finds 5th edition to be the best system for that setting due to its flexibility. He encourages Dungeon Masters to try running games for strangers as it provides a different experience. Jace's one-shot adventure, "A Festival at Peril," was inspired by ideas from friends and is designed to be open-ended but still controlled within a specific timeframe. Despite not following the intended path, the players had a great time and even formed a conga line of advantage. Jace enjoys the unpredictable nature of the game and appreciates the unique decisions each player makes. Welcome to Dungeons and Darkrose Season 2, Episode 6, Questing and Quarrels. We're with Jace from Black Tower Stories tonight. This is Jace with TheJaceBurner on Instagram and Black Tower Stories on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook and Twitter. We have our D&D stream every Tuesday at 7 p.m. Central or you can catch it on YouTube every Thursday afternoon. Hello, welcome to Dungeons and Darkrose. I'm Aksis and I'm Alex. We're two Dungeon Masters for D&D 5e here to talk about the chaos of our adventures and the coffee that gets us through it. Hey Aksis. Hey Alex and Jace. Hi, thanks for having me. Of course, thanks for being here tonight. We really appreciate it. So, we would like to talk to you tonight about so many things, both your Black Tower Stories, your convention playtime, and I want to know how did you first come to D&D? Like, when did you start playing? Well, I started playing D&D back in like 2004, freshman in high school. Me and my other nerd friend found a starter box for the basic rules for 3.5 edition out of Barnes & Noble and so we bought that, played the entire thing up until like level 3 and then it ran out and we realized, oh, we have to buy a bunch more books and we're freshmen in high school and have no money, but we decided to rope in all of our friends to all high school to start playing D&D. I love that. I was that kid in high school too, except I had no friends to play with, so. We were lucky. We roped in all of our Yu-Gi-Oh card playing friends. It was like, oh, let's do this other expensive hobby. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Hey, right? Games keep kids off the streets. I'm all for kids in high school playing, you know, any expensive game, so. So what system are you playing now and what does D&D look like for you now? The first system that we always play is 5th edition because it's the easiest kind of thing to do. We do play other, like Fate or Vampire the Masquerade or there's Cairn, but 5th edition is definitely the one that's easiest to get into and quicker to start up a new campaign, so that's the one we play. As far as the games, they're very open-ended. We want all the role-playing possibilities you can, mostly because combat in 5th edition is kind of stagnant. There's not a whole lot of options when you're doing those kinds of things. Right. How often are you guys meeting? Like, because I know some tables meet once a month. My table meets every week, so. We have our Tuesday game that we do and we stream. That's every Tuesday, so we're lucky enough to be playing that game fairly consistently for, like, three years now and luckily it's all, like, online. So you Discord, you can have friends in Montana and Alabama. We can get together at a single time frame, but like an in-person game, I've got one that I run that's every other Saturday. That one is way harder to get on schedule. Like, we miss so many sessions because two people had to cancel, there wasn't a place to play that weekend, or something came up for someone else last minute. Right, just real life gets in the way all the time. I know that that has happened for both me and Axis as well. Yeah. We actually met you at a convention and you mentioned that you've used many different platforms. Which one do you think is the best? Is it Masquerade? Is it D&D? For conventions, I definitely think 5th Edition is as good and as popular as it is for a reason, because it's so easy. At a convention, you typically have a wide variety of people coming in and playing. I've had plenty of times where there's people who have zero experience or they've only listened to podcasts, they've never played before. Or you have the veteran who's only played 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons and this is their first time ever playing in a giant setting. But 5th Edition is so flexible and kind of up for interpretation that you can just let them play how they want to play and let the rules interpret themselves. For other systems like Pathfinder, that's very crunchy and it'd be very hard to set up someone's character on the spot and have it balanced enough and how they're going to understand all the different things they can do. So definitely 5th Edition is what I want to play at a convention. It's way easier to run. I can't imagine running 3.5 at a convention. There is just so much customizable. I just can't imagine running that at a convention. When I had first started in high school, it was 3.5. There's like hundreds of books for that system. I took a small break and came back. I got roped back in by playing Pathfinder because it was so similar to 3.5. But I was only a player. When I decided, hey, I want to try to run some games, I ran a single one-shot with Pathfinder systems and I realized this is incredibly hard for me to know every single rule that I need to know. I'm just gonna run 5th Edition. It's way easier. Yeah, I feel like I've heard more how whenever 4.0 came out for D&D, a lot of people went the Pathfinder route if they already hadn't. I think that's why nobody talks about 4.0, other than the fact that it's a cursed system that nobody likes. I actually stopped playing right when 4.0 came out, but it wasn't because of the system. It was actually because they changed the art style in the books and I didn't like it. Hey, you know what? Some things turn people off. There's nothing wrong with that. What made you want to run tables at conventions? I mean, there's a lot of different places to run them. You could do them at high schools, libraries. You could find volunteer locations. Why conventions? I'd only ran games for friends and this was entirely an idea to an exercise to just get better at being a dungeon master for games. When you're playing with the same people over and over and over again, you get complacent. You know exactly how they're going to react and you can know how to modify your story for those particular people. And so for a convention, I chose that because the DFW Critter crew, they're running games and they needed volunteers. This was the perfect opportunity for me to try. I'd never done a one-shot for strangers, so this is the chance. I'm going to do this. And I made my one-shot. I ran it. It was a nervous wreck the entire time, but everyone had a great time doing it. This was fun. I had to think on my feet. It's something that if you've only ever DM'd for the same people, I think you should try to run a game for strangers. Yeah, I think that's where a lot of people get hung up. They want to do all of the writing and all of the world-building and the storytelling. And I keep telling even the people over at Axis Gaming who want to try their first time DMing. I just tell them, set a game, three hours. If that, just do it as a one-shot and don't overwhelm yourself. So what I'm hearing is that we might have been your very first convention table. It was actually the Fan Expo, I think, in November before that. That was the first one I did. So I decided you were the second convention, so you were technically the sixth game I've ever ran a one-shot for that was for strangers. I mean, I had no idea. I truly thought that this was something you did, like, all the time because that's the kind of game you ran. I really appreciate that because I think I told you after the game, I run that one single one-shot. I run it, that's the only one I run. And it's different every single time because it relies so much on what the players want to do and no players ever make the same decision. How did you come up with that as a one-shot? Well, the title of it is called, like, A-Festival at Peril. And that idea is because I ran that one-shot for some friends at a convention at A-Fest, like, two years ago. And it was something I threw together pretty quickly and I asked some other friends, what's some really cool NPCs? If you could run into an NPC or you could make an NPC, what are they? They throw some ideas at me. Like, all right, I'm gonna just put them in this one-shot and they're gonna be dinosaurs. So, like, there you go. And that's just, I have several opportunities in there for just to be open-ended for the players to go wherever they kind of wanted to. And that was it. I just need something open-ended and kind of open-world but still very controlled because it has to be in a certain time frame. Because you guys ran that game with me, it's not meant for two players. It's meant for four to six. So there is a scaling. But it's happened more than once where I've only had two players. So, like, I just need to scale this. It means it's gonna go by faster. I gotta say, that session was one of my favorite sessions only because we had a conga line of everything lined up at one point. The conga line of advantage. I've never seen that in all my years. I've never seen it from someone else. I've never seen it. It makes perfect sense. Everyone just get a line and get advantage. Whoever dies first. And it was me. Until someone falls down. Yeah, we're all just gonna beat on each other in this line. I think I have some pictures of it that I can post this episode. I took photos of it too. That was exciting. Yeah. Like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen and I'm all for this. Well, and we did not. You've said that it's an open-ended story and it's meant to be an open-ended story. But you did disclose to us later on that we did not follow the path you essentially wanted us to follow. It's not really designed for you to go and talk to a bunch of NPCs in the town just because it's designed for a larger amount of people. They tend to make more decisions on a pathway. So, with it being two people in a town, they obviously have to talk to people in the town and figure out information. We should have burned the town down. The poor farm? The town or the farmers? Both. Absolutely both. Again, he wants to watch the world burn. Literally. I'm a pretty aware after the session that he is the probably the second most violent cleric I've ever seen. Oh yeah. It's ironic that I was playing a life cleric too. Yeah, he went after that poor farmer and his whole family. Well, you know, you shouldn't be acting suspicious whenever a bunch of vigilantes show up on your door. Don't be suspicious. But in that session, I do think that being flexible is really important though because with two people, the entire story changes. I can't have you go fight a bunch more things because action economy and resources in fifth edition are important to focus on. That way you just don't walk into a meat grinder all of a sudden. Axis, you've tried to cast a spell in the combat and I never want to say no to a player. Right. I want you to have the opportunity as best you can. Of course you wanted to raise a zombie because chaos. Yeah. But like it's a minute casting time and that wouldn't make sense. But like I want you to cast it because that'd be really cool. So we did. I made up a check on the spot. It's like, here's a check. Here's a downside to it, even if you succeed. But you got to do this cool thing you wanted to do. Absolutely. And I had no problem with that. I had completely forgotten that it was a minute cast time. I was like, oh, so if I cast this, I'll be casting it the entire fight. By the end of the fight, you'll have it ready. Right. Read your spells, kids. Yeah. I have absolutely no excuse for not remembering the cast time. We have a necromancer in our Friday night game. Not now, but we did. Right. And you helped him build that character. Yeah, I did. And I was really good at it. You said that you have done some conventions. What is your favorite convention story? Is it as a DM or as a player? I would say my favorite story is only as a DM because I also don't play in a lot of games at conventions because I actually get fairly burnt out on D&D because I do play a whole lot out of conventions. Oh, I know that. Believe me. And when I play in the one shot at a convention, I usually play the really fun quirky characters. So as the DM, it's your brain is on hyperactive and just constant focus mode because there's a ton of information. So I really like just the DM part like you. The conga lamb advantage is probably my favorite thing that ever happened at one of these things because it was just so out of the ordinary. I had another session later on that same convention where they ridiculed a dinosaur until it died. Wow. They confused it. They ridiculed it and eventually it just died. Like, that's so weird. So sad. It was a T-Rex. Oh, okay. Oh, all of the shorthand jokes that could come out of that. And in my head, I see a triceratops. That's why it's sad to me. The big mean one on that one. I can just see a bunch of bards just vicious. There was a bard who had insulted it and that was what wound up almost killing it. Yeah. But it tried to run away because it was confused and frightened and insulted and they just killed it. It's like, oh, I think I probably would try to run away too. At these tables, it sounds like usually it's a pretty good time. And we've talked about how conventions really are such a great time because people want to be there. But have you ever encountered a situation at a convention table where you either had to stop the story because there was something happening in the table that was not okay? Or have you had an issue at the table itself? At, luckily, conventions, you have people who want to play D&D. So usually everyone's very cognizant about their surroundings, not overstepping and being extremely rude to people. But with the different styles of players you have coming in, I mentioned there was someone who'd only ever listened to podcasts and had never played D&D. They were very much a loud, center of attention, boisterous person who loved to talk. And they're playing a bard. Once they're playing, they were talking constantly. And I could see from the face of the expressions of everyone else that everyone else was kind of settling back and feeling like they're overshadowed by this one person who just kept overstepping. And so I would, instead of just telling this person, no, you're not going to do that anymore. I need you to settle down. I would just direct my focus specifically to other players to really hype them up, give them opportunities to bring up their volume so this person's not as overbearing. And eventually, everyone got higher and this player got a little bit lower. And so they're all more even. But it's just the different conflicting play styles that happens at conventions. You have to be able to account for that. Right. Yeah. And it sounds like you did that successfully. I mean, I think that would be a big fear of mine. I've wanted to run. Well, I've run tables in conventions in the past. But I think that would be a fear now of having an issue at a table. It sounds like you handled it really well. I'm very much a support player. So when I'm playing, I definitely want other people to feel really important. And I'm much happier on that side, helping everyone else feel important. So as a DM, it's very natural. I was like, everyone should be having fun, especially since as a DM, it's not about me. It's about the story and you guys enjoying yourself. If you're having fun, I'm having a great time. I think Alex sells herself short on that regard because we play a Friday game and I am playing a bard. And I, by nature, am a very boisterous player. And she does a really good job of zeroing in on other people who want to take their turn. Meanwhile, I'll just say, whenever you're done with them, I have something that I'd like to do as well. You just sell yourself short. She would be. Well, thank you, Axis. I appreciate that. Don't tell anybody I said anything. This will get edited out, don't worry. We'll ruin your rep. So with those kind of situations, how do you adjust on the fly, not only in your story, but also with those moments where you also have problems on the player side of things? Does that all just kind of flow into the same mechanism or what's your process there? I believe that you should have a very strong understanding of how the rules work for every game you're playing and how your story is supposed to go. And that's a reason why I play the one one shot over and over again, because I know exactly every aspect of that story, where if someone wants to change something up, I can make it somewhat fit and keep the story flowing. And that's why a pre-made module is so hard, I think, to run. And it was mentioned on a previous episode, you have to know that entire book in order to run it thoroughly all the way through. And I really don't want to read the entire book. But with it's a story in my head that I know every aspect by memory because I made it, adjusting is way easier. And I've always been more of an improv and light prep to a heavy prep and no improv type of DM. We're the same. Actually, you inspired me. I did a one shot for my players at the beginning of the season, and I really we had just played with you at the convention. And I took almost your model of kind of just having one or two elements or even two or three elements. And I created basically a one shot that I called The Hunt. Oh, God. And yeah, it ended up being really funny. And I TPK'd the players, but it was not my fault. It was totally their fault. No, it was my fault. But I did. I used your model that was kind of like this off the cuff, you know, two or three simple elements that I know that like made it this open world thing that I could just adjust on the fly. It was it was cool. And I've used it a couple of times now, actually. And there was only a couple of us for that one, too. Right. There was only two for that. But then I ended up using it at Ladies Night and turning it, I ended up turning it into The Royal Hunt because I had four players. So I had to make it a bigger game. Oh, yeah, that's good. If you have a good base, building off of that is so much easier than trying to make something brand new every single time. It's like, oh, I have four players now. I got to adjust all of this. Like, no, just scale it up. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And that's what I ended up doing. So. So tell us more about Black Tower Stories. So Black Tower Stories is our little small tabletop media group, I guess we would call it. We stream our D&D game that we're playing now for three years on there. We started back in June of 2021. So we just passed three years. And that whole idea came off of we just finished a three-year campaign off stream that we failed at recording because none of us knew how anything with technology worked. Hey, Google's your friend. We have to figure out a way of recording it this time. And I just said, why don't we just stream it? It could be bad, but it'll let me record it at least. And we'll always have that to refer to. And so that was the idea. Little did they know, I also just wanted to stream things on Twitch and have cool layovers and introduction videos and have all that. So Black Tower Stories is just we're playing a D&D game. Finally, we can record it. And now I have a place where I could do interviews of my own. We can do Baldur's Gate streams. We could stream some Diablo 3. We could do all this other stuff in other game systems that's not just D&D. See, I got to make friends so I can do that stuff too. You have to stop killing everyone first. I know. It's counterproductive. So does Black Tower Stories also have an element where you're, you know, creating stories? The Black Tower Stories is, well, the name is just something that my friend Eric had come up with way back in high school for, it was a wizard's tower. That was a black tower that would just teleport randomly throughout different campaigns he was running. So he just made it called the Black Tower Stories because it's all the stories that I've compiled into this one building. Supposedly, it's in the campaign we're in. We've just never seen it, but it is in that same world. But the idea is it's just all of our stories from every game we're playing are the Black Tower Stories. That's awesome. I love that that element is consistent for you guys and that it just, it stays there and then it has a great story now behind the name of your media company. Yeah. Homebrew is a lot easier. It's more flexible by the pre-made modules are hard to run because I want to ad-lib something and my ad-libbing as a player does not work with a pre-made module very well because I'm going to go talk to literally every NPC that you've mentioned off the cuff. I'm going to cast sending to them so I can see what they're doing when we're nowhere near them. And I want to see what's in the other town. I don't care if that's not where we're supposed to go. I mean, look, you can homebrew anything even in a pre-made module. I put an aboleth in Barovia. Yeah. So, you know, that's what happens when you ad-lib out of nowhere and open the book to the first fish creature you find. A is for aboleth. That's right. All right, we'll go with that one. So that leads us into our homebrew of the week, which I did make you a homebrew. And when we talked briefly, you like coffee, but, you know, you like kind of the smell of coffee, not so much drinking a cup of black coffee. So I wanted to make something fun, as I always do. And I made you a maple bacon cafe milkshake. Yes, it is all the sugar. It is all of the dessert all at once, right? Plus bacon. And who doesn't love bacon? Meat candy. Yes. And in this one, you can actually make meat candy. So what you're going to do is you're going to have a cup and a half. Of course, you want a blender, please. It's going to make this a lot easier. A cup and a half of vanilla ice cream or French vanilla ice cream. If you want to just go with coffee ice cream, that is also acceptable because it's kind of interchangeable here. Because if you're using vanilla ice cream, you're going to use instant coffee. But that's where you get to dial it up or down. You know, if you don't want that huge coffee flavor, you're just going to use a teaspoon of instant coffee. If you really want a blast of coffee flavor, you're going to add a tablespoon anywhere in between. And then you're going to also add in between a half a cup and three quarters a cup of milk. If you really, really want strong coffee for those of you out there that like your coffee and like a good punch in the face at the same time, you instead of milk, you can use coffee in this and it'll still blend up just the same. Then you're going to add, if you're trying to be health conscious, maple extract. If you want all of the extra sugar, you're going to add at least a good tablespoon or two of maple syrup because you really want to get that maple flavor in there. And I would adjust your maple flavoring to match your coffee strength. If you have more coffee, add more maple because you don't want to hide that maple in your coffee. You're going to blend all of that up. You're going to put that in your cup. You're going to add a little whipped cream on top and then you're going to sprinkle it with crunchy bacon. And I actually like putting bacon down in the bottom, too. It's kind of like when you go to that mermaid coffee place and you get the caramel one with the crunchies in the bottom. Kind of like that. You can... You want to run that by me again? Your coffee crunches? Well, they have like, like little crystallized caramel bits. That is an abomination and it is a lifestyle I cannot get behind. Please continue. That's because you like black coffee. So you can add like bacon into the milkshake or into the bottom of the cup before you put the milkshake in there. But definitely add it on top because it's amazing and that salt content is going to make all that sweet just kind of cut through there and make those flavors really intense. You can also, if you're feeling really adventurous, add some booze, your favorite booze to there. And you can candy your bacon. I encourage you to look up a recipe. I do mine with maple syrup and brown sugar, and then I just stick it in the oven until it becomes crispy and sticky and wonderful. And then I just cut it up. So that is the Maple Bacon Cafe Milkshake for you, Jace. I'm hungry and thirsty. We're going to give people diabetes with this one. You know that, right? I don't think the bacon is going to make its way to the coffee. No, just make a whole slab. Okay, then. Jace, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. We are so grateful to have you and we can't wait to play with you again. We're actually going to be at Anime Fest and Game Fest coming up at the end of July. I hope to see you there if you're going to be there. Oh, I'll be there. Yeah. Hey, then we can play again. Yeah. So if you guys are coming out to Anime Fest and Game Fest in Arlington, Texas, come see Jace with Black Tower Stories and Axis and Alex with Dungeons and Dark Roasts and Axis Gaming. It's like, did you forget the name? Yes. I figured you could just cut out. I will edit this to make it sound great. Yes. Thank you, Jace. Thank you, Az.