Season 2, Episode 7

The Penetration Episode!

How to get through to the players at your table who aren't really into the whole role-playing thing, and perhaps treat your DND table like a video game.  Lots of tips and tricks to engaging even the most douchey of players!

Show Notes:

• The next edition of DND
• If it isn’t fun, it’s probably the DM.
• If you’re the DM, it’s probably your players.
• To summarize, if you’re playing a game with five other people and not having fun, it’s almost certainly not the game system.
• Chad signed up to be a DNDNext playtester, did you?

Tips to Try for Player Penetration:

• Show them maps, pics, letters, etc. Visual Aids.  
• Even if they don’t care about the story, everyone reacts to an awesome dragon pic.   
• "Holy fuck that's a badass dragon."
• Keep the story simple, but more importantly, keep the story clear.
• Picture a day in the life. Not everything is warring factions and dragon attacks. What do people do when there’s nothing going on?
• You don’t have to explain this to players unless they ask, but it helps to answer questions and get a clear view of your world.
• Reward contribution and creativity heavily.
• Center your story on the PCs individually, instead of on your own story.
• Center your story on loot grabbing and important items.
• Optimizers will love the bonuses that they’re working towards; roleplayers will love the journey.
• "You gotta go reunite me with my hilt, bitch!  What's this hilt?  Fuckin pewter?"
• Encourage skill feats as opposed to attack/damage feats.
• If a player likes to optimize in combat, reward them for optimizing OUT of combat.
• Challenge your combat monkeys
• The more they get invested in combat, the more they’re going to get invested in other stuff.
• They’ll want to boast!
• Don’t dwell on lack of  role playing , remember DM's do not take things personally.  Get over it!
• Be subtle when enticing role playing from munchkins.
• Ask for specifics in a backstory, not just generalizations or wide-sweeping stories.  Gladly give them time to prep this answer if need be.
• Let them world-build.  Optimizers have an great time making stuff.  Ask about places in their past, then put them in the game.  
• Make sure players know they have permission and leeway to create in your world.

Gadgets of the Podcast:

• Encounter: The ambush into the setting sun 
• T-shirt Idea: the dice are trying to kill me
• Character Concept: the revenge-bound aborigine, Suanzi
• Player Tip: Re-skin your mechanics 
• DM tip: take a break during sessions

Big Thanks:

For music, once again big thanks to the Diablo String Orchestra and The Kobolds! Also big thanks to super-fan Joshua Bentley, who provided some more great voice work for us.

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What do you think?

Welcome all our new listeners to the family of ExemplaryDM! Give us reviews in the comments below, hit us up on Twitter @ExemplaryDM, or shoot us an email at exemplary d m at gmail dot com

The First Exemplary DM Art Contest

The Contest:

Create an original work of art that depicts one of our Top 10 Worst Character Concepts from Season 2, Episode 6.  That's it!

It should be obvious from the picture which of the Top 10 Worst Character Concepts you are showing.  So yeah... you kinda do have to listen to S2E6.

The art can be a full body shot, a portrait, a Spielbergian movie poster, an impressionist masterwork, or a macaroni noodle arrangement.  Just as long as you can email us a quality picture of it, we'll accept it.

Rules:

• Any digital still media. We don't care whether you create it with charcoal, photoshop, MS Paint, ASCII code, machinima, photography, candy art, insane scribblings, stained glass, or body shaving.  We really hope you make it pleasant to both look at and to imagine the creation of.  
• Minimum resolution is 1600 pixels squared.  (It doesn't have to be square.)  If it is bigger than a 1000 pixels, we'll have to resize (constraining dimensions).
• It has to be original.  Don't shamefully or shamelessly steal someone else's art or idea.  
• It has to be free of copy-written material.  A Star Wars parody is fine as long as it doesn't actually include any licensed Star Wars images.
• The extent to which you follow the criteria of the contest, make laugh and create something awesome will determine the winners.  
• Email it to exemplary dm at gmail . com.  Email as many as you like, as often as you like, up until the deadline of March 1.  We'll announce the winners in the first podcast episode after April 1, 2012.
• By emailing it to us, it becomes the shared property of Exemplary DM, ya da ya da, we get to use it on our website, album inserts, toilet seat covers, and tattoos. And no, we don't make any albums or toilet seat covers.   If you'd like to withdraw your submission, do it before we announce you the winner, got it?
• It can't be pornographic (which I know rules out half the submissions) because we wouldn't be able to show it on our non-adult-rated site.  

The Prize:

• You get your art, with full accreditation, displayed on our blog, which gets tens of unique visits per millenia.   
• You get eternal fame and glory, plus a mention on twitter.
• You get four thousand experience points, which can be applied towards your geekiculum vitae. 
• You get to show it to all your friends at your DND table and make them jealous of your newfound podcasting immortality.

Seriously, what more do you want?  

If you have any questions, email us.

Season 2, Episode 6

This episode focuses on the Delve game format, a concept that has been pushed forward by DND 4th edition but is good for any gaming system.  The idea is to have a combat-only, role playing-lite three-battle night that focuses on education for new players, ground-breaking for experienced players, solid experience for new DM's and fun for everyone.

We're like GLaDOS

As in, yes, we're still alive.

And yes, we've got plenty of ideas for a whole slew of podcasts.  If podcast ideas were cats, we'd be widowed spinsters.  With lots of cats.

And we've been playing DND recently too, campaigns and delves alike.  Check out some of our picture tweets.

And we've been enjoying pleasant repartee with our tweety friends, and confirming more people who know Chamberlain. (suck it, Chad! -w)

We did actually record most of an episode last month, but then realized that we didn't cover our mic while enjoying a pleasant autumn night's breeze.  #doublefacepalm

But, like we told Exemplary DM super fan @countjoshula, we are "just doing it at our pace. We are both busy busy sexy busy people."

And this is true.  If anything, our podcast has been defined by doing things our way, at our timing.

And we like the results, so we're going to keep doing things our way.  Thanks for sticking around, reading this, following us and listening to our catalog.

Season 2 Episode 6 coming soon, promise.

Season 2, Episode 5 - Listener Feedback Episode

It's our one-of-a-kind Listener Feedback episode, where we read the best feedback of the summer from our awesome Legion of Listeners!

Why did we do a Listener Feedback episode?  We had a bunch of it.  No kidding!

Season 2, Episode 4

In season two, episode four we wrap up a three-part series of houserules gathered from far and wide.  We thank you for all the good feedback and we've got more to read for future episodes.  If we haven't read or responded to your emails yet, don't worry, we will!  We try not to dedicate too much time in any given podcast to reading listener email and try to keep things topical.

Season 2, Episode 3

Season two, episode three is part two of three of our house rules series.  Beforehand we discussed the new WotC 4e rendition of the TSR classic Gamma World game.  As a loyal gamer in the post-apoc genre, William joins Chad in a discussion on Gamma World, who can enjoy the new version and what we can bring from the new Gamma World "green" box to our DND table.  Also, has anyone heard anything about Daggerdale?  Looking for user feedback and reviews...