Dimension 20 – The Dice Pool

Actual Plays

My experience with actual plays comes from an unexpected angle. D&D is for Nerds by the Australian Sanspants Radio network was the first one I listened to. I had heard tell of Critical Role but, even then, it intimidated me with its sheer length and the fact that it was in a visual medium. Listening to podcasts while out walking or commuting is one thing, sitting down to watch a four-hour episode is something entirely different. Although, during lockdown and the long period where I was working from home and didn’t go out much I did start to get into Dimension 20 on Dropout.tv. Honestly, it was the clips on Tik Tok that got me started on that. I’m glad I did get a Dropout subscription, in fact; it’s still the best value streaming service I’ve got. Anyway, The D&D is for Nerds nerds put together something much more manageable in length, that I could listen to on my pod-catcher of choice. It helped that it was funny and that I quickly developed an appreciation of the characters and the world that they inhabited. I don’t listen to these so much anymore. In fact, I don’t listen to a lot of actual play podcasts these days. I am far more likely to stick on a show about TTRPGs instead. I have introduced two of my favourites in the past, in a blog post. But here’s another, Talk of the Table is a production of Many Sided Media, who also produce Bitcherton.

Talk of the Table is presented by Brian Flaherty and Elliot Davis. These guys are RPG professionals and creators in their own right (Elliot Davis has a game on backerkit right now! Go check out, The Time We Have) but they use this platform, normally, to interview other creatives in the industry, whether they are game makers, artists, actual play performers or something else related to the hobby. Some of those I have enjoyed recently were episodes where they interviewed, Mörk Borg design genius, Johan Nohr, TTRPG video essayist and creator, Aaron Voigt, and Blades in the Dark forger, John Harper. Flaherty and Davis have a pleasant, approachable style and a genuine and excited interest in the works of their guests. It makes for a great “podcast hug,” as Blindboy Boatclub would put it.

My First Dungeon: The Wildsea

The Cover of the Wildsea Corebook by Felix Isaac

Anyway, listening to this show made me aware that they had an actual play podcast called My First Dungeon on their network. So, I thought to myself, I could listen to these guys playing RPGs, probably. It turned out they had a few seasons available when I went looking. These include seasons of DIE (which I will definitely be going back to listen to,) Orbital Blues, the sad space cowboy game, and Paint the Town Red, their most recent offering. But the one that caught my eye was their relatively recent season of the Wildsea.

If you have been around for a while on the blog, you might remember that the Wildsea was one of the games I was hoping to play before the end of this year. This vain hope has been utterly dashed at this stage of the year, but I am still interested in running it at some point. I have been reading through the book, on and off for a few months. What I have discovered while doing this is that it’s got a lot to it! There are so many different parts that go up to make each character, and each one of these parts brings with it a whole plethora of aspects and there’s a lot of new terminology to learn and the world is so wild and different… So, it has felt daunting to even know where to start with it.

Now, there’s one thing I think a good actual play can do, and that is teach the game. If they do it well, they can even tell a compelling story at the same time. Or maybe the compelling story is what helps you to learn. I feel like Dimension 20 had that effect on me when it came to learning to play 5E better. I knew it pretty well before I started watching those shows but by the time I had consumed like two or three seasons, I had a much more intimate knowledge of minutiae like spells and abilities that I did not previously feel I needed to have a keen grasp of as the DM. So, I went into My First Dungeon thinking I might, at the very least, get that experience from it. And you know what? I did.

From Session Zero of the Wildsea campaign, I was taking the elements I had only read about, the things that had seemed quite abstract, and I was applying them to the frame of the characters and the basics of the world.

From Session One, I already felt like I had a pretty good grasp on the way the mechanics worked. Tracks, aspects, dice pools, advantages, cut, twist: I understood them at a more than intellectual level.

And here’s the other thing about this series that grabbed me from the get-go, I liked these characters! I was invested in their rolls and the ways in which they used their aspects to express themselves and to succeed. I appreciated the players’ willingness to play to their characters’ weaknesses as well as their strengths, and the way they used the mechanics to bring about their failure when they thought that was narratively appropriate or necessary.

Finally, I think that each of the players in this actual play brought this game to life together. All of them put a lot of effort into building not only their characters, but also the shared world, through dialogue and backstory and by narrating the outcomes of their actions or negotiating with the other players for the best Twists. They do all this while maintaining a seemingly instinctive focus on the overall themes of the game, past lives, secrets of the lost world and secrets of the characters themselves, resurfacing.

I’m sure editing and production have a lot to do with this, too. If every table had an editor we could make it feel like our narrative beats and adherence to theme were foremost in our minds at all times. But seriously, I have to give a lot of credit to producer, Shenuque Tissera and Brian Flaherty who did the editing and sound design, while also being one of the players! There’s additional music and SFX courtesy of Artlist.io too. The voice effects and leitmotifs for the various characters are incredible and really work to spotlight individuals when that’s needed. Interestingly, this is a core part of gameplay in the Wildsea that has gone unmentioned on the show, as far as I remember, at least. Focus, “a sort of narrative spotlight,” according to the book, is a basic element of the Wild Words Engine and it is there to make players remember to pass the torch on to other players. I am sure the main reason it’s not mentioned is that these pros don’t need the reminder and that the sound design, editing and production are to such a high standard that it renders the concept unnecessary. Speaking of sound, there is also a musical surprise in every episode that I won’t spoil…

Here’s the full cast:

Firefly (GM): Elliot Davis

Go check them out!

Failure is failure

Nobody wants to fail, right? We frown on failure. We take it personally, even when it is no fault of our own. It is hard not to feel that way. It might even keep you awake some nights, remembering how you fucked up that one thing and someone blamed you for your failure, even though it was largely a matter of chance. It sucks, but here’s the thing, your brain will never let you forget that one time you messed up. You will almost certainly never make the same mistake again if it’s something you can avoid, right? You will avoid similar situations, you will learn to do the thing properly or you will let someone qualified do it.

But this is not the case in D&D and other similar games. If you roll a 12 and add your +3 bonus and you miss that guy with his 16 AC, that’s it. It’s over. There is nothing you can learn except that you better roll higher next time or hit him with Magic Missile. This feels so much worse than regular failure. This is failure with no upside. There is not even a fun narrative element to it, really, unless you shoehorn one in.

So, how do you fix this? I think the answer is pretty simple actually, and it was brought to my attention by Aabriya Iyengar and Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Adding interest to failure

In the latest season of Dimension 20, Never Stop Blowing Up, the gang are playing people stuck in an 80s action movie. They are not playing D&D this time. Instead they are using a version of the Kids on Bikes system that they have previously hacked for Mentopolis and Misfits and Magic.

I really enjoy the system and it suits the seasons they use it in really well. In particular, the exploding dice element of the mechanics makes a lot of sense for a show called Never Stop Blowing Up and it makes for some brilliant cast reactions when it happens.

But the mechanic I am interested in here is the Turbo Tokens they receive when they fail at an action. In the base game, they are called Adversity Tokens and they represent the lessons learned from failure and contribute to real swings of momentum during high-stress situations.

Kids on dragons

So, I am going to try it out in D&D. Not sure what name I will give the tokens yet. I might just start with Adversity Tokens and see what the players end up calling them. The idea I have is to use them the same way as they do in Kids on Bikes, basically. They will earn one token each time they fail at something, whether it’s an attack roll or a stealth check or an effort to wow the crowd in the inn with their musical genius. That way, failure won’t feel quite so bad and they will be able to spend them later to effect other rolls. I think a +/- 1 modifier for each token spent is appropriate. They will be allowed to spend them to add to or subtract from any roll happening in the situation they are involved in. So they could add a bonus to their own attack roll, help out a fellow PC when the chips are down or subtract from an enemy’s saving throw or attack roll for instance. I foresee some interesting behaviours when it comes to the saving and spending of these. I am thinking I might need to cap the number of tokens a player can have at 10, although I doubt they’ll be able to save up that many of them really.

What do you think, dear reader? Have you ever tried doing something like this in D&D. If so, how did it go?