Delta interviews Aldarron

[captainjapan]

As the title says, here's episode 28 of Wandering DMs:

youtu.be/N_u-sX2wivM

[captainjapan]

Who is this Paul Siegel fellow? Is he active on the forum? Can't wait to dig into his blog - www.paulsgameblog.com/

[Zenopus]

Thanks, I'll have to listen when I find time. Nice to see one of our members (delta ) interviewing another (aldarron )!

I've had Paul's Gameblog on my blogroll for years, IIRC I became aware of it via links from Delta's blog. Paul's not a regular poster here as far as I know, though he might possibly have an account.

[delta]

Thanks for the shout-out!

I'm pretty sure that my WanderingDMs partner Paul isn't active on this forum. (He started more as a B/X guy, but I've pulled him in the direction of OD&D with our mutual game mechanics. He also does a lot of custom horror/Cthulhu gaming, e.g., he'll be running 7 games of that at TotalCon in MA next February. I've never been a big horror game enthusiast, but I played in one of his D&D-themed horror games last year and it was the single most amazing game experience I've ever had.)

[grodog]

Oct 21, 2019 23:21:48 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Thanks, I'll have to listen when I find time. Nice to see one of our members (delta ) interviewing another (aldarron )!

Indeed---would be cool to see delta and Paul interview you, too, Zach

Allan.

[paulsgameblog]

I see my name has been invoked 3 times, and so I must appear! Glad you folks enjoyed the interview, we're looking forward to having more guests in the future. Happy to chat about all things D&D here, or on my blog, or anywhere really. Bit of an addict I suppose.

[captainjapan]

Oct 23, 2019 11:17:02 GMT -6 paulsgameblog said:

I see my name has been invoked 3 times, and so I must appear! Glad you folks enjoyed the interview, we're looking forward to having more guests in the future. Happy to chat about all things D&D here, or on my blog, or anywhere really. Bit of an addict I suppose.

Paul,

There are more than a few forum members with their own longstanding blogs. Delta and Aldarron's blogs are two of the most rigorous. I'd like to thank all three of you for getting together on this. Listening to Dan talk Blackmoor in a conversational style is very revealing. He's a fine writer, no doubt about it. And now, we get to hear for ourselves how he contextualizes his data points in his own head. It really is a different experience.

On an unrelated note, would you be willing to summarize how your Insanity Deck could be incorporated into an old school D&D game. Like, how is insanity tallied? Is it like hit points?I think you said you're next episode is horror themed, so will you elaborate on the deck in that episode? Or do you have an older episode about incorporating Insanity into D&D?

[paulsgameblog]

So, funny story - the reason I noticed my name being mentioned over here is that I'm keeping a close eye on my internet presence today as I've made several announcements about Insanity Cards this afternoon. Specifically there's a new mini version coming up for sale this Sunday, and purely digital version up on drivethrurpg right now. Apologies if this is getting too self-promotional. Long story short, lots of info over at paulsgameblog.com/insanitycards - including a quick promo video which shows a quick overview of how they work.

But let me address your specific question - how to use them in old school D&D. Ultimately the cards track your progress towards insanity via what you have in play at the table. You take sanity damage, you draw cards and are forced to play some. This makes them a little more suited towards one-shot games where you don't have to worry about preserving state between games. You just play the cards as they're dealt and let the instructions influence your character's actions as you go more and more mad.

The more involved case - campaigns - would require you to notate on your character sheet the state of the cards at the end of a session so you can reconstruct it at the start of the next. I have a pretty easy system of notation that I have in my head which I will likely post on my blog very soon. You would also have to decide how one recovers from insanity, assuming you want that option on the table. Depending on the version of D&D you're running, you might want to let certain cleric spells remove cards from the table or even completely wipe out a whole stack of cards. Cure Disease and Restoration are good choices for this. Or if like Delta and I you've removed clerics from your game, I guess you'll just have to create some custom curative magics to have similar effects.

One last aside - Delta and I have both recently discovered we like to have them on hand for the odd failed Contact Higher Plane spell. This spell comes with the roll for "chance to go insane" without any real guidance on how to rule that. We both now enjoy having an Insanity Cards deck on hand in such a case. If the player fails a roll, instruct them to draw a card and treat it as automatically at level 4 or 5, depending on how severe you want the effect to be. Level 4 insanities are typically hampering to being a helpful party member, where as level 5 insanities are usually so severe the rest of the party may decide that death is a mercy.

[delta]

And... Paul proves me wrong once again. Don't listen to me, listen to him. :-D

[captainjapan]

I'd like to second grodog. Do consider getting Paul and zenopus together to talk about the cthulhu mythos in basic, or the holmes to b/x rules transition, or anything really. No pressure.