PREVIEW: GAME TALES for Mystic Apprentices

"You know, it takes a special kind of group of players to go to Barovia —"

"— and make it worse!"

We've filmed two video podcasts for the Mystic Apprentice tier that'll be releasing in August and September, the first is about that time I ran Curse of Strahd and it went TERRIBLY. And the other is about that time I ran Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and it went GOD AWFULLY.

Apparently it was important to me to start off by telling you all about the worst campaigns I've run; because these might've been the worst ever.

Extra Videos

Starting in August, we're launching two new video series here on the Patreon, the goal is to make content that gives more of an inside look into my table and my games, so if you're interested in an exclusive behind-the-screen look at that. The two series will be;

GAME TALES

Where Daði sits down with his players as they reminisce about old campaigns and how they effected the canon of their shared campaign setting. Or in the case of the clip above, how everything went terribly wrong.

We'll be starting with the stories of Curse of Strahd and Dragon Heist, but later on will feature both homebrew campaigns and official adventures.

This first recording session had a few mic problems, and one of the cameras was out of focus at the start so it'll start off a bit rough but oh my god have we learned a lot already.

Next up on the docket is investing in a second microphone for the guests to use instead of the lavaliers. And I want to adjust the framing more. And the lighting. Listen, there's a lot I wish went better, but I'm really happy with the storytelling in these recorded podcasts so we're not throwing them out, just gonna do better next time!

It won't have the same guests either, we'll pull in players who will have the most fun stories to tell from each given campaign.

DAÐI'S DIARY

The other series will be a "campaign diary" summary from me about the games I ran that month. I think it's going to be two a month, so it'll be one for Kingmaker and the other for Octavia, Short-Fuse or other adventures I'm running. They might also be split into separate episodes, I'm honestly not sure until we start making more of these.

We've already recorded four episodes of this, next up is editing them! It's a bit tough finding the time as we're on the final crunch for Echoes of the End where we just beefed up the combat a few weeks before release.

These videos will feel like an edited live-stream basically, more sort of conversational style filmed at my desk as I literally open my prep and talk about what I thought was going to happen and compare it to what actually happened.

But before we start summarizing previous sessions, the first few diaries will be summarizes of the currently running campaigns thus far.

Three Videos Monthly

That's the goal! Three Patreon-exclusive videos a month; x2 Diaries, x1 Game Tales!

And obviously we're still doing our regular Thursday uploads, occasional Monday livestreams, and hopefully more bonus videos like the one we just did on Hobgoblins.

Time will tell if all this is manageable or not, but I'm so excited for all this that GOD DAMN we're going to try!