Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 172 - PvP and David Carter of Crucible of Fate

Episode Date: April 23, 2023

On a very special super-sized edition of the Taking 20 Podcast I interview David Carter of the competitive D&D 5e tournament on Youtube called Crucible of Fate.  We talk about running PvP and the challenges of running a 5e competitive game show.  Thank you David for being so generous with your time and your expertise!   #CrucibleofFate #dnd #PvP #DMinterview #DMTips   Resources Crucible of Fate Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWJ5d0XblyYA7Sh6sWVhGFw  Crucible of Fate Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/crucibleoffate/  Crucible of Fate Discord server:  https://discord.gg/hjDAER9DWb Crucible of Fate Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Crucible_ofFate 

Thank you for tuning in to episode 172 of the Taking20 podcast. We have a very special guest on today's episode. If you're a regular listener, you know that I hardly ever do interviews. I'm very selective about who I interview because I want the people that I bring onto the show to be interesting and have perspectives to the table that you'll find valuable. I believe I've found one such person in David Carter. David is the DM of The Crucible of Fate, a player versus player RPG broadcast that's available on YouTube. In each episode, a group of six players play against each other to be one of the final three standing. Those final three move on to the next game of the tournament,

and the fallen must wait for an opportunity to redeem themselves in the future. David is an expert on player versus player gaming, and I wanted to bring him on and get his expertise. David, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Hey, it's a pleasure to be here, and now I feel like I've got a lot to live up to. I don't know about PvP expert, but I'll do my best to give you my point of view at least.

Yeah, obviously you're running a podcast and having watched some of the episodes, you handled the PvP a lot better than I could. So that's why I wanted to bring you on because it's an interesting topic on the tabletop RPG front of actually doing player versus player when so much of the game is built on player versus enemies. Yeah. And I wanted to try to bring something new to the Dungeons and Dragons

community and to the YouTube community. And I really had to put a lot of time and effort into thinking about how to do that. I found myself over COVID and my wife was pregnant at the time. So I had a whole lot of time sitting around doing a lot of thinking and Squid Game was on TV at the time. And when I was watching Squid Game, I was like, oh, this is such a great idea for a show and immediately i started thinking how can i bring this to dungeons and dragons and that's what kind of got things started that's that's very interesting i mean you're watching squid game and you thought hmm how can i bring this to dungeon of dragons but not have a whole kill people when they fail scenario crop up well that's precisely what i'm doing i mean uh yeah to make it innovative i mean i didn't want to just try to claw my way

to the top uh to be noticed just doing another live play right i mean there's so many talented storytellers and dungeon masters out there and players and just at the point I was in in my life and the people that I play with that just wasn't something that we were all ready to do together as a group and try to make a run for it and so I had a lot of time on my own to think about like, well, yeah, how can I do something unique and innovative and also be able to do it on my own? Yeah, I just started thinking about different ways to approach Dungeons & Dragons that has never really been done before, and I thought, Why not try to bring Survivor, Diplomacy, The Hunger Games, Squid Game, and D&D together? And that's kind of what I've tried to do.

And it seems to be really picking up a lot of interest lately. And the community is growing and people are starting to really catch on to the idea. Well, I love the idea because when you reached out to me and we started having conversations, obviously started watching the episode, I said, there is nothing else that I've ever seen like this on any channel. And of course, there's a ton of podcasts, live play in person, and of course, recorded Twitch streams and the like. But this is unique. You do put the players against one another. That is not something I've ever seen before. Watched the first episode and then immediately went, oh, wait, how many more of these are there? Okay, I start lining those up in my YouTube queue and start watching those.

And no, I'm very much enjoying those episodes as they come out. Good, good. No, I'm glad to hear that. And just a warning for everyone, episodes one and two, I mean, they're fantastic and I had a great cast on them, but we were really working out the kinks of the show. So around episode three is where it started to look like my vision for the show. And everything from three on, we've just been steadily making improvements from a production value point of view. you. I mean, as you know, and I'm sure all of your listeners know, when you're playing Dungeons and Dragons, you really, well, I hope that my dungeon master or when I'm the DM is going to take the backstories of the players and their characters and try to intricately weave them through the story arc that they've created or, you know, that they've bought to make the players feel connected

to what's happening and engaged so that they're, you know they've bought to make the players feel connected to what's happening and engaged so that they're really enjoying time together and then getting to be immersed in their character. Any DM that's kind of stumbled across any PvP action in their party, it's usually not a good thing unless it's carefully planned out and proved. When it comes up organically, sure, it's nice to add some tension, but you never really want things to spin out of control because what's the point of that? You're not going to go anywhere. With Crucible of Fate, there is a story there.

So all of the episodes that are taking place, there is a grand narrative that kind of forms around the host, who is this demon prince named Theramgul. And so there are things happening in my homebrew world. And he has his own motivations. I mean, I don't want to give too much of them away. Sure. But he's been given this opportunity to run this show to harvest souls for a patron of

his. But he's using the opportunity to make some advancements for his own power plays. And so I'm just filtering people through the crucible. And in a way, it's kind of making me a lazy DM because I've got this theme park, like the opposite of Disney World in a demi-plane of the abyss that I call the Abyssal Stair. And all the monsters are there. There's 20 different monster rooms. Oh, wow. And I think the lowest CR is a 13,

and they go all the way up to around 20. And players have to engage with those. And when they first start the show, they're level three. So you can imagine how level threes against a CR 20 goes. It can be quite spectacularly funny at times. And then they go against 20 trap rooms which are all quite deadly as well and then they'll end up doing like a pvp room and so that's kind of how each episode works while um while they're in the the crucible we just get little tidbits of their backstories

but i'm not investing too much time in any one particular character because they could go bleh. Sure, they open up the wrong door, Balrog basically turns them into oatmeal, and there's no point in going into their backstory because, well, their soul is now property of the Game Master, for lack of a better term. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. If they open the wrong door, it sounds like basically the players may have to not just compete against each other, but also work with each other. Is that right?

Yep. So I've got quite a few house rules. The show is built on the back of D&D 5e. I try to stick as close as I possibly can to rules as written. And when I've got to make some calls, I do it as fairly as I possibly can in consultation with the players. I mean, it is a competitive environment. There is some cash on the line, so I'm offering up $1,000 to the winner. It's not so much though about free exploration and opening the wrong door, just because I'm sure all of your listeners know when you start getting into exploration mode in dnd things can kind of crawl a bit and that doesn't always make for an exciting game show with each game as soon as uh the game is picked i have people roll to randomly see which room it is so that they can't do much preparation beforehand. And then they're kind of thrown right into the lair of the creature or right into the escape room or right into the PvP room so that the action kicks off right away.

You said it was the Abyssal Stair, was that right? Yeah, so the Abyssal Stair is one of the demiplanes of the Abyss in my homebrew world. It's a place that if you don't know where you're going, if you can't visualize it, then it's just this stairwell that continuously goes down, down, down, deeper, and it doesn't go anywhere. You really have to learn how to navigate by interacting with the denizens.

But that's more for like my homebrew world setting that I'm writing and then for my players in my homebrew game. The contestants in Crucible of Fate, they're kind of locked in to the Fate's Hand Tavern, which is a tavern down within the Abyssal Stair. It's not much of a tavern though there's no food or drink but you know if we had all these guilty pleasures down in the abyss it wouldn't be much of an abyss right good point and i've got to make sure i have people suffering in every possible way that i can and um so yeah six at a time i invite people on to the show. It's high stakes, competitive, open invitational Dungeons and Dragons 5e game show. I have filled up all of my spots except now I'm planning way into November

now for like the final episode. And you know things come up for people, they drop out. So I'm still accepting applications because I never know how many people I'm going to need over the next eight months or so. But yeah, they come on six at a time. We do 20 episodes in round one for a total of 120 contestants that are going to get put through the meat grinder. At the end of round one, after this initial 20 episodes, we'll be down to 60 contestants. And starting round one, they're all level three. Every time they survive a game within an episode, they come back to the tavern, they level up, they have an opportunity to do these things that I call intermission actions,

things like short rest, they can cast spells against other players, they can invite people into the parlay circle, which is like a secret conference room where they can scheme with one another against the other contestants. And I put everyone in the waiting room and then I just bring people into the show like one or two at a time so that they can talk in private. The audience gets to see it all, but obviously the contestants have no clue what's happening during the intermission actions until it's their turn. So they can get a pretty nasty surprise when they jump into the next game and all of a sudden people are turning on them and literally stabbing them in the back. There's all these elements to it. You have to know

how to play D&D. You have to be clever about how you create your character, which has to align with your strategy from levels three all the way to level 20 and how you think you might approach other classes. And then there's the player-to-player interaction. You have to not make everyone dislike you as a person and as a player, not only as a character. Survivor style, you don't kind of get voted off the island, you know? Only in this case, being voted off the island means that you're probably going to be asphyxiated and backstabbed and front stabbed while we're at it. And hopefully

it's in that order, you know? Well, if somebody who was listening to this wanted to compete, how would they submit their character idea or how would they apply to be on the show? So if you go to crucibleoffate.com, the rules and the format of the show are all there on the rules page. Character creation is pretty straightforward. I've got a list of source books that are allowed. There are some that aren't. I wanted to kind of keep it to the core D&D books,

so some of the expansions that go into, you know, the magic, the gathering setting and the critical role stuff and Eberron, that's not included. It's mostly the core books. You make your level three in D&D Beyond, send me the link and send me a one or two page backstory. And yeah, just read through it. My pantheon is up on the Crucible of Fate website as well. So it's great when people incorporate my deities and align themselves with a particular domain or ideal of one of the deities or their avatars, just to add a bit more of a connection to my world. So far, to be honest, I haven't excluded anyone. I want this to kind of be the everyman's show. So you don't have to be a Hollywood voice actor.

You don't have to be professionally trained or anything like that. I just want people who have the courage to appear on camera and to be competitive in D&D, which is not something most people are used to. And that's it. Other than kind of limiting the source books that you allow, are there any other techniques that you use to keep the game balanced? Yes and no. I'm sure a lot of people out there that know the rules much better than me, especially from a mechanical and mathematical point of view, would say that 5e is completely unbalanced for pvp and i certainly don't make any arguments against that but i can make it equally unfair for everyone and that's what i try to do i've explicitly stated the source books that are allowed so anyone can make a character

using those uh races and classes and then once they get into the show they know that we're following 5e rules as written the way that i try to keep things fair so i don't have any sort of um like an aggro system for the monsters so the way that i attack people is that i roll randomly and all of the roles are shown on the screen all of my attack rolls all of my damage rolls there on the screen, all of my attack rolls, all of my damage rolls. There's no fudging of any dice whatsoever during Crucible of Fate, so the audience gets to see everyone's rolls. And that way, if I roll a one, then the character who is associated with die roll number one, well, the creature's coming after them. Depending on your class and the creature's coming after them depending on your class and the creature and your knowledge of dnd you may know what's coming and you might not like it and so then i have given every

contestant a welcoming gift which is a free magic item off of a random magic item table B from the DMG. So everyone gets to roll a D100 and they get a gift from Theram Ghoul because he's a gracious and generous host, of course. Of course. And we will call him that so he doesn't suck us down in there and try to compete in the competition. Well, he does try to remain quite courteous. He's quite calm and collected with all of the contestants unless they go after him and then you see a different side of him. But I also give every contestant six fate spheres. And these are a homebrew item that I came up with for the show that just help to balance the insanity that comes with Crucible of Fate. And what most of them are getting used for in round one is when I roll the

die to see who gets attacked, if they don't want to be the one to take the hit, then they can use a Faith Sphere to make me re-roll. And so then I re-roll. And so Faith Spheres can be used to make me re-roll any die that I roll at any point in the game, whether it's an attack roll, a damage die, anything at all, they can use it to make another contestant reroll. They can make a contestant roll with advantage, disadvantage. They can make themselves roll with advantage. You can use a fate sphere to negate the use of someone else's fate sphere. And you can also use them to make the creature come after you. So kind of like a taunt, which so far I've only seen barbarians do when they're totem barbarians and they're at high hit points. Yeah. I can't imagine a wizard going, yeah,

please get in melee with me for the love of everything good and holy. Finger of death. Yeah, no, I'll take it. No problem. Oh no, I got it. problem oh no i got it yeah yeah bring it uh and then the last use of the fate sphere is to initiate a social role and the use of the social role is to allow high career classes like your bards or paladins and sorcerers and those kinds of things to use their persuasion or deception um or even someone can use intimidation to make another contestant do whatever they want so it's kind of like a charm spell in a way but you're using a fate sphere to then use those charisma related skills to influence other players so i think the the fate spheres really allow players to use them in a variety of ways that can alter the course of the game.

But they only get six throughout the entire campaign. And for someone that continues to survive, that means, well, in theory, five full episodes. Because by the end of five episodes, we should have our champion. So they need to be very judicious with their use of it that way they have something hopefully to survive the late game yeah and something that i'm probably gonna maybe change up for a season two hopefully there is a season two is that most of the facers are getting used up in round one to avoid the big monsters' attacks. So it ends up being more of a game of Russian roulette in a way rather than kind of another use for those.

So a lot of them are getting burned up. So I might just say you can only use two per game, and that way there's some automatically saved. Because then we also see people, well, I'll use a Fates Phrase, then I'll use a Fates Phrase. Okay, well, I'm using a fate sphere. So then you just get the string of fate spheres that you used until someone runs out

and they have to take the attack, which anticlimactic. So we're still working out some bugs. And people are really starting to be vicious with their fate spheres, which is what I wanted. In a recent episode, I had someone roll a natural one on a death save.

And so they took two and they're like, okay, I want to use a fate sphere to reroll that because I can't afford to have two death saves. And then someone was like, well, I'm using a fate sphere so that you keep your one. Yeah. Once you get used to the world of Crucible of Fate, that was kind of like, oh. Oh yeah, that's beautiful. That is a fantastic moment. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how I tried to keep the game fair. That is a fantastic moment. Yeah, yeah. So that's how I tried to keep the game fair. Keep it rules as written, random rules to see who gets attacked, and then the fate spheres.

And I have zero ego when I DM. My ego got smashed into a pulp a long time ago. I open the table to all of the rules lawyers at the table or away from the table, which I call the eyes of truth. So even once a show has been released, players might email me that night and say, hey, Dave, I noticed that there was a mistake here if they didn't mention it during the game, which I encourage them to do. We spend a lot of time looking up rules and then we edit that all out. I say to all my players, look, if you see something going wrong, you have to tell me. If you want a fair shot at winning here, you have to open your mouth and let me know that you think there's a problem. If you don't say anything, I don't catch

it, then it's on you. We'll still write all of the rules mistakes on the screen for the show and then put them in the video description if we miss them. And that's why I call the audience the eyes of truth, because they're always watching. They make sure that everything stays fair. And I've had twice now where we finished filming an episode after reviewing it that night i realized oh shoot this person shouldn't have died because of x y and z and i bring them right back on the following week because we film an episode in over two saturdays and i give them another shot yeah that's fair that's more than fair so i think i'm maintaining a reputation for being a very fair, patient dungeon master, which is what I want. Excellent.

Now, you mentioned crucibleoffate.com. Where else can listeners, if they wanted to watch episodes, where should they go? YouTube is where it's at. I had mentioned Twitch, but so far I haven't used Twitch because I'm just not ready to live stream yet. And I don't actually know if I ever will. We might start doing live streams on Twitch for things like contestant interviews and those types of things after the fact, but the episodes are all on the YouTube channel. Here's what I feel like is the first of my difficult questions that I want to ask. You know, you've got plans for season one and possibly extending into season two.

If your dreams came true, where would you want Crucible of Fate to go in the future? I'm aiming big with Crucible of Fate. The whole reason I started this is when my son was born, I started writing him a letter of, you letter of how happy I was to have him and how I wanted to be a good role model for him. And I didn't want anything to prevent him from chasing his dreams. And I started thinking like, well, am I doing that? I've had a great career. I was a military officer and now I'm a government employee and I've loved my career. But my passion has always been gaming and Dungeons and Dragons. And I think I have let my fear get in the way of writing. Well, I published an RPG way back in the day called Alpha Omega, but some things went wrong

with that company and I took a pretty big kick in the nuts that stuck with me for about 10 years. But it's time to get back on the horse, you know, and I can't let fear of rejection, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, all of these things I deal with every day, every episode. But I just want Ronan to see that you can't be the one to prevent you from achieving your goals. Because if you can't even get there, why should anyone else take the time to listen to what you have to say? Well put and well said. Because one of the things that my listeners hear very regularly is, and I'm going to clean it up, F your fear. In every way, shape, form you can. F your fear in every way, shape, form you can.

Yes, it can be scary to chase your dreams like this, to step out, to put yourself out there, to write a module, to want to join Crucible of Fate, much less run it. But use that energy and make it part of who you are so that you throw even more of yourself into it. So I think that's fantastic. Thank you very much. And I'm sure you've been through it too. I mean, the fact that you record yourself doing gaming related stuff, you know, it takes guts to put yourself out there because you never know what people are going to say. And the Internet, shockingly, isn't known for its friendliness. What?

Yeah, I know. When did that change so to get back to your question step one was just get the show done step two for me which is probably a couple years down the road is take what happened with crucible of fate use that along with all of my homebrew notes that I'm sure every dungeon master in the world has, get it cleaned up, get it done, get it to an editor, get some artwork made, do a Kickstarter, get it published, and get my world setting out there. And I've kind of been through that before, like with Alpha Omega, so I kind of know how that all works and that's just a matter of time and elbow grease and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. After that, I want to see Crucible of Fate animated because every episode

is an amazing story. I mean, you have six strangers coming together. They have to socially figure out how they're going to work together what the hierarchy is who's going to actually show leadership because you have to be the one I mean you're sharing the same experience as your character you are a contestant on a game show just like your character is so if you want to be the brave knight that stands up to the super bad creature well you have to make your character do it and I encourage people to role play that on every one of their turns as well. Most of the games only last five rounds or so. So it's about 30 seconds of chaos. So you get these introductions to the contestants, introductions to the characters, a little bit of an interaction with the demon host, Theram Ghul,

the characters, a little bit of an interaction with the demon host, Theram Ghul. These parley, circle, casting spells, schemes, everyone kind of like gearing up and preparing for the game. And then they just go in for 30 seconds of sheer chaos. And usually one person's left on the battlefield, either turned to a pile of ash, bleeding out or covered in lava or acid. And then the other five come back to the tavern and just kind of recover from the trauma they just endured. Again, have a short rest, cast some spells, interact with one another, go right back into the crucible again for another 30 seconds of sheer terror, come back out, same thing. And then they go in and they have to fight each other in the final battle. So as these relationships are being built throughout the episode, they get destroyed in the final battle. So as these relationships are being built throughout the episode,

they get destroyed in the last game and only three people survive. So it is drama every episode. And what I didn't expect to come out of Crucible was community. Despite it being a competitive game, the community that is formed around it in our discord server which i'll also send you the link to because i encourage anyone to join it it is one of the nicest friendliest discord communities i've ever seen and the people that have helped build it and that run it are amazing they're all former contestants it's so lively people are running one-off adventures on there we do pvp combat nights just to give people a chance to practice pvp and uh you know then they go in and they duke it out almost like martial artists that train together and then they have to fight one another right i mean you just you have respect for one another you go in you get it done and then you come out

and you shake hands again getting back i get really wound up when I talk about Christmas. That's quite all right. Yeah, I want to make an animated show because Critical Role has been a shining example to me. Matt Mercer, all the crew that he's got there, they're so passionate about D&D and they're just doing their thing and people are attracted to it like moths to a flame. And now they've got the animated series that are coming out season after season. And it's amazing.

Got comic books, they've got minis. And I think that the stories that I have to tell and that the players are going to tell in their trials in the Crucible are going to be worth watching. to tell in their trials in the crucible are going to be worth watching so when we get to the end of season one and we're down to the final six people or the final person they are going to have a story to tell absolutely yeah it's going to be uh amazing so that's the end goal is an animated series that sounds like a fantastic plan and fantastic path forward and people are being really supportive uh you know the the community they're helping in every way you know whether it's with their time or with the the bit of money that they can afford it's just helping me improve things step by step you know like i just purchased a bunch of terrain today because of a

donation of one of my community members. And so now things will look a little better. And it's just all these like little baby steps. And once people get involved, they tend to really be passionate about seeing it succeed. And I'm really grateful for all their help. It's great when you get a community built like that, especially the ones that support each other. And of course, like you said, support the broadcast and the Crucible itself. If I may, you mentioned about running games, PvP, and how that is unusual for a lot of Dungeons & Dragons games.

But if there were some newer GMs out there that were thinking about allowing PvP in their existing campaigns or one-shots or whatever, what tips would you give them for running player versus player? So session zero is key for so many things. And I think if you skip session zero with your players, you're setting yourself up for failure. So whether that's deciding the type of campaign you're going to play, the themes that are going to run through it, all of that is important for session of campaign you're going to play, the themes that are going to run through it. All of that is important for session zero. Everyone's got to be on the same page. And when you start talking about PVP, that's especially important to deal with right up front. So do you want to have evil characters in your campaign compared to some lawful good paladin. I know that's a cliche example,

but I mean, it's cliche for a reason. You can allow that tension within a campaign without worrying about breaking your game. If your players are on board knowing we've signed this social contract with you, we know you're putting in the work to be a dungeon master. We're not going to screw up your plans, but allow us the freedom to be a dungeon master. We're not going to screw up your plans, but allow us the freedom

to express ourselves through our character and their alignment and kind of push their morality and their reactions to the limit, even if it comes to blows in the game. But knowing full well that they're not going to let it ruin the campaign and ruin the game. That's if you have a mature group of friends that know the game and want to explore the role playing. Because I found when I was younger, it was all about treasure and gold and killing monsters. Now it's about the social interactions, the moral choices we make throughout the game, and the impact on the world around us. And the impact within the group is going to flow out like waves into your game world. And that tension, I think, can be really exciting. And players and characters should be given space to explore that without destroying their DM's game.

in space to explore that without destroying their DM's game. I was the same way. When I was a young tyke being introduced to the D&D Redbox, which dates me a little bit because I'm old as the hills. When I started, it was about the gold, the conquering, the killing. But as I've gotten older and as my hair on my beard and mustache has turned gray, it's more about the story. It's more about the backstories and seeing character arcs develop and seeing them pay off or maybe not in the most tragic of ways. You've built a new audience member by introducing me to A Crucible of Fate

because what I am so looking forward to is yeah, episodes one, two, three, and so forth. These early ones are fantastic. You get to know some of these characters and some of these players, but I am really looking forward to round two, round three, round four, as some of these, you've seen these characters grow. You've seen their, maybe you've gotten hints to their backstory and, oh, this is the one who is, the only reason they're competing is because they

want to gain some sort of ability to save their child or make some sort of massive change or prove their parents wrong or whatever it turns out to be. And seeing that story unfold throughout the rounds is something that I am very, very much looking forward to. that I am very, very much looking forward to. Oh, great. I'm glad to hear that. And that's what I'm aiming for. And even in this competitive game show, I try to weave as much of what I've built to the backstories of the applicants

if they give me enough backstory to do that. And some of my players who are are much more i won't say strong in role playing willing to give me something to kind of bite on right like a reverse plot hook uh i'll go with it you know i've had one of my players show up uh being a paladin from the material plane from one of my nations on the on the surface saying that he's here to hold the host accountable for a whole variety of crimes that he's committed you know kidnapping extortion murder and all this stuff and so theram goal the host loves that and then i love it as the host of the show because it's it's interesting and you know someone else in their backstory said a big powerful wizard had destroyed their village

so they're down here trying to find this wizard well guess what that wizard is one of the creatures of the 20 that he gets to face off hopefully maybe I don't know if he if he doesn't roll the right room then he may never meet his adversary, but maybe he will. And that'll be really interesting. So as much as they give me, I try to give back to them with what I've got here. And yeah, like you said, round one's exciting,

but level three, people die like that. I mean, I'm shocked, shocked at the resilience of a group of six level three players against some really powerful monsters. People have pulled amazing tricks out of their ass. Some of the class abilities have really shone. I mean, I had a level three fighting an adult black dragon. He was stuck in a sphere of darkness. The player was, the contestant stuck in a sphere of darkness. The player was, the contestant was, in a sphere of darkness. The black dragon, I rolled,

I attacked this poor guy who was like helpless, breathed acid on him. And lo and behold, he passed his deck save and he was a shield master. So he took zero damage. Wow. So it was just like, all of these moments keep happening where I'm just like, this is crazy.

Like the dice know we're trying to make a show and make it interesting. And they're on board. That's fantastic. One of my players loves to say that dice don't lie. They really can make for magical moments at the table. Yeah. moments at the table. Yeah. And I've designed every aspect of the crucible to make it as excruciating as I possibly can for the contestants. You know, they don't know the people they're competing against. They really are kind of on their own to build friendships and to survive,

or I shouldn't say friendships, limited time partnerships of convenience. They can go to the gift shop that I've built and the gift shop, they can buy any equipment from chapter five from the player's handbook. I've also included all of the items from the sane magic item list that is floating around on the internet out there.

I apologize to whoever created that. Thank you very much for making it. Or they can buy my homebrew items. And when they buy my homebrew items, they have no idea what they're getting and they don't need to pay gold for it. They have to roll a number of times on what I call the wheel of consequence. So they have tier one items, tier two and tier three. Tier one, they have to roll once, tier two twice, and so on. And when they roll, it could be something like minus two strength permanently, or you are suffering the effects of the slowed spell permanently, or it goes on from there, poisoned. And so in a PvP environment, being poisoned,

It goes on from there. Poisoned. And so in a PvP environment, being poisoned, having disadvantage on all of your ability checks and your attack rolls, I mean, that can be just absolutely self-destructive, right? I'll say life-limiting. How about that? Yeah, that is a good choice of words for sure. On the other hand, one of those Tier 3 items I've given out so far was a plus 3 Vorpal Greatsword. So that could come in handy.

Oh, yeah. That has a use or two. So they're taking risks by going to the gift store or gift shop. They could get really good. Well, all the items are good. I wouldn't fool someone to have to roll on the wheel and then give them a junk item. Although there's some cursed ones in there, but curses can be fun be fun absolutely uh yeah so gift shop is its own brand of stress the environments where you're fighting a beholder she's i don't know a nagpa which not a lot of

people have heard of but what a great uh enemy to fight i've thrown them up against a balor just some horrific monsters where they're on the edge of their seat the whole time trying not to die. And I always use the analogy of, there's no way you're going to kill this monster. So you just need to be like the guy in The Walking Dead, where everyone's running away from the zombies and he turns around and shoots someone in the leg. And they become the zombie lunch and you you get away that's kind of what you have to do in hunter versus or hunter and hunted and then the escape rooms people have no idea when they appear out of the portal and they're in a room i give a description of everything that they can see

and what everyone sees on camera but they have no idea how the game works so they're stressed out usually takes them a round or two to figure out the room and they're probably being damaged or in some other way possibly eliminated and yeah then in the pvp you don't know unless you've actively made alliances you have no idea who has. And from what I'm told, sitting in the waiting room for half an hour while no one is talking to you is not a pleasant experience. I would imagine that would be nerve wracking. So everything is designed to cause stress. But everyone's also told me that it's one of the most exciting, if not harrowing, D&D experiences of their whole career because the pressure and stress is just maxed. And I never expected when people were going to start dying.

I mean, I call myself the killer DM for a reason. I'm killing three PCs every show. I just didn't know that there was going to be a community that would sprout up and grow around the show. So I didn't think I would get attached to either the players or the characters and the opposite has happened. And so every episode I have to kind of say, I'm really sorry, you know, Johnny or Sally, I'm really sorry about your character i didn't mean to finger of death them or breathe fire and do i think the most damage i did do a level three character was like 93 one time yeah someone took a hellfire orb from a death knight at level three

so yeah that's uh that's roll credits on your life at that point. Yeah, so the guilt is real, man. Actually, that does bring me into one more PvP question that I do have. You mentioned the guilt that you feel when a player dies to a very powerful monster or a player attacks another player. I guess, what tips would you give my DM listeners who are going to start doing PVP because of this, because they've watched your stream and they think it's a great idea. What tips would you give them as far as the way to adjudicate PVP and maybe dealing with the survivor's guilt afterwards? Make sure everyone knows what they're getting into.

If you know what you're walking into and you've agreed to it, then everyone's on the same page. So again, the whole like session zero thing, just be clear about what's happening and make sure everyone understands. For me, following rules as written is really helpful because as long as you take it nice and slow and no one's cheating and or abusing the rules then um there's nothing to get emotional about here you know we're playing a game it's not personal it's just what everyone's come together to do for each episode i remind all my players look guys we're just here to have fun it's a different brand of fun but you've agreed to do it yeah we're gonna follow the rules so uh may the best competitor win but yeah i think

clarity do things by the book you got to be objective don't get emotional and um i'm gonna be offering all my players at the end of round one the opportunity to back out to say look this might be more than what you guys plan for Not everyone wants that kind of stress in their hobby. It's totally okay to withdraw and just say, you know what? It sounded cool, but it's a bit too intense for me. Well, one question I always ask everyone I ever interview is, what piece of advice do you wish you'd heard before you ever started playing or running RPGs? Oh, wow. There's so many going through my mind as I recall everything Matt Colville has said over running the game.

Great, great channel. I've listened to everything he's said multiple times. I've listened to everything he said multiple times. Don't over plan because your players are probably going to spend an hour and a half talking about a chair. I'm sorry. I have lived that. Oh my gosh. I have lived that, David.

Oh, so much. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I have lived that, David. Oh, so much. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Don't over plan is a big one because the tangents that just go down and the things they fixate on, it's incredible sometimes, which I guess is a sign of being a decent GM is that when they're paranoid about everything in your world, then you're doing a good job. Don't over prepare. Trust yourself. If you've written the material yourself, you know it. You might not think you know it, but you know it. Like any final exam or test, if you haven't read the

textbook, you're probably not going to do very well. So take the time to study the rules. I treat the rules very seriously. I read the books over and over and over again. I write down every episode. When I make a mistake, I write it down and I try not to make it again. Excellent. Well, do you have any parting thoughts on Crucible of Fate or publishing live play or just DMing tips in general? Don't be afraid. Like you said, I really like your phrase, F your fear.

I mean, that's perfect. I listen to a lot of motivational stuff by some real hard asses. I don't claim to be one myself, but like Jocko Willink and David Goggins, these ex-military, tell it how it is. I found their podcast to really help me not make excuses anymore. For a long time, I was like, oh, I hope I get my opportunity one day. Well, guess what? No one's going to hand you your golden ticket. You have to put the work in. You have to make it happen.

The stars are not going to align. You're not going to roll under your level in a divine intervention. And some god is going to help give you your published book or your YouTube show. If you feel like you have something to share with the community, then share it and don't make excuses and don't let anyone else tell you it's not good or not good enough. If you believe in it, then do it. But you either got to put up or shut up. Well said. And that's a great way to wrap it up. David, first and foremost, thank you so much for the time tonight. I appreciate you staying up a little bit late and answering some questions

from a goofy podcaster. And Crucible of Fate is fascinating to watch. And I can't wait to see how it unfolds in the future. Well, thanks very much for having me, Jeremy. It's been a pleasure talking to you and I'm glad you're a fan of the show and I just hope to make it better and better for everybody. So thanks very much for the opportunity to talk about it. Check out the resources in the description of the episode for links to Crucible of Fate on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Head over to crucibleoffate.com to watch and support

this clever and unique take on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that we can all enjoy. Tune in next week when I'll talk about one of my favorite creature types, oozes. Until then, I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production.

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