#1 - DM As Cast
Welcome to 'DM as Cast' where I am going to answer some random questions I have gotten and offer up some notes and behind the scene thoughts. I am open to questions and ideas of course but initial plan is to talk first about some of the tools I use when running 'Die as Cast' game sessions. This will be a random collection of long, short or multi-part insights, experiences, new ideas, purchases, new resources, old resources and generators as I experience them.
For 'The Die as Cast' I lean heavily on these tools because I end up improvising quite a bit but also have had to discipline myself to take serious notes since the things I improvise become 'canon' and it seems listeners are quick to point out that I called that particular elvish gladiator or this chubby bat familiar 2-3 variations of the same name.
Part One-During Game Tools
In addition to DAC (which records once a month, several sessions at a time) I run two FG games a week and I -now that I have climbed the FG learning curve- have become totally spoiled. "Spoiled" in the sense that I do not have to remember things like Concentration for spellcasters, resistances, Guidance or Bless effects etc. Even though we are playing 'manually', I will often take a minute and recreate the battles in FG based on the fact that it tracks all of those things and means I can focus on the gameplay itself, even if I may have to spend some times adjusting things manually.
As much as I enjoy the published modules they seldom cover all the wild ideas players come up with. I use these two websites/generators interchangeably because they are perfect for creating things on the fly, usually things like NPC traits, names, appearances as well as taverns, shops, etc. I have also gotten into the habit of immediately saving things generated in a screen shot or into OneNote to aid me in note keeping after the fact.
Note: One of my private games is what I call 'RandomBrew' where the adventures, the treasure, the world itself and even the PCs stats, race and class were generated randomly, (I'll elaborate in a future post) so I lean heavily on these two to generate much of the raw fodder and building blocks for the depths in the various game worlds.
I also use these two websites relatively equally, depending on the moment, my whim. Both of them allow a wide range of captured information, ideas and plans which can then be searched and sorted and linked to. Both require some set up and planning and constant tweaking and there is some structural customization of the information in Notion that is much more accessible than One Note though One Note has a distinct advantage in that you add hand drawn things very easily, you can 'print' webpages very easily and I prefer the layout simplicity since each OneNote is its own 'book.'
Kobold Press has created tons of great alternative adventures, monsters, magic and campaign material. During the game I will keep the map open on a tab and search into the website extensively as needed to reference things to make sure we stay 'on track.'
That will get us started so stay tuned for additional sporadic entries and feel free to comment or send in questions via email or on our Discord chat.
