Dark Dice: DM Styles and D&D Scams - A Chat with K.A. Statz & Travis Vengroff
This week we take a short break from the story to chat about DM styles, TTRPG Tech, and some recent scams.
An interview with Travis Vengroff & K.A. Statz
Edited by Travis Vengroff
Mixed & Mastered by Finnur Nielsen
Links:
The Projector Scam Video (a deeper dive)
Unnatural Horrors: (PDF)
Check out the PDF for Shores of the Silver Thrum!
Music
"Darkest Nose" - Written and Performed by Travis Vengroff, K.A. Statz, & Eezo, Copyist Catherine Nguyen, Choir Recorded by Budapest Scoring
Lyrics
"Who has a cute little nose? Oh yes, You do.
Eezo is the best'est good boy, he's a muffin made of muffins.
The darkest nose, the best'est nose, the cutest nose, the boop'ist nose, the darkest nose."
Comments (6)
you are so cool, guys! I love your approach to DMing, and Dark Dice inspires me a lot <3 I wanted to ask, did you ever feel a little hesitant/scared to run high stakes sessions because you didn't want to upset the players? I'm trying to make the setting more pressing and urgent and create a sense of danger but I also really really don't want to kill any of the players' characters, at least not in early sessions...
We started the discussions with "hey guys, do you want to play a D&D game you will almost certainly die in?" - with the idea that the stakes were high and the ultimately goal was to entertain the people who hear it... Basically encouraging them to make terrible (in character) choices, and working with them to pick character flaws that could be brought up. :) Player buy-in is very important because some people strongly dislike the idea of losing their character (most do, actually) - but even in our home games, just about every session gets really close to losing someone every game due to foolishness ("it was trapped") or a miscalculation during a dangerous combat. The players have described it as always feeling like they are cheating death, which they enjoy, and has been kind of our style of gameplay, even before we started the podcast
I needed those lyrics, thank you. I got a few words listening, maybe more than I thought now that I see the complete text. Hope the choir got a chuckle before recording :)
Oh they did! haha... Most didn't speak English but they understood the words.
“Darkest Nose” - amazing! Thoroughly enjoyed that, thank you 😂
The ending melody is also repeated in some of our other songs, and once you recognize it it's hard to unhear, lol