Love the Aabria Iyengar clip (and your shoutout to her on the pod) (and just her in general). Re Rule of Cool, have you seen any of Dimension 20’s “Dungeons and Drag Queens”? There are some really great moments where Brennan Lee Mulligan stretches what the players are technically allowed to do (giving re-rolls, magical darkness vs. darkvision, etc.) to let these incredibly cool story moments happen, which is especially wonderful for a group of new (and queer) players who go from “brand new to D&D” to “fully and deeply immersed in the story they’re creating together” in the span of a few hours. I’m struck anew by how Brennan deliberately makes the game accessible and fun and welcoming for these players.
I think Brennan does a really interesting job of balancing Rule of Cool vs making players play by the rules in challenging circumstances - the difference between his Dm style in something like Dungeons and Dragons Queens vs how he ran Critical Role's Calamity mini campaign (still one of my favorite DND campaigns/stories ever)
Definitely—I think he has a good sense of where his players are and an ability to shift DM style based on what will suit each table. (Hard agree re Calamity!)
I am so desperate to hear your thoughts about how the Baldur's Gate 3 and it's zeitgeistyness plays into all of this & as a video game, as a pathway into dnd for yet another new audience, and as a highly developed and vast world building project beyond the scope of most other games out there
ALSO now that I'm thinking about it how much the popularity of BG3 revolves around the romancing of the characters and explicit sex. BG3 certainly isn't the only game to have romance and sex as a main feature (thinking of the Witcher 3 for example) but it does seem to have hit at a particular moment for both Romance and DND. Thinking about the ways in which that could be tied not only to dnd's choices around rules vs storytelling but also the rise of Romance as a genre in other formats (books, shows, movies).
Love the Aabria Iyengar clip (and your shoutout to her on the pod) (and just her in general). Re Rule of Cool, have you seen any of Dimension 20’s “Dungeons and Drag Queens”? There are some really great moments where Brennan Lee Mulligan stretches what the players are technically allowed to do (giving re-rolls, magical darkness vs. darkvision, etc.) to let these incredibly cool story moments happen, which is especially wonderful for a group of new (and queer) players who go from “brand new to D&D” to “fully and deeply immersed in the story they’re creating together” in the span of a few hours. I’m struck anew by how Brennan deliberately makes the game accessible and fun and welcoming for these players.
I think Brennan does a really interesting job of balancing Rule of Cool vs making players play by the rules in challenging circumstances - the difference between his Dm style in something like Dungeons and Dragons Queens vs how he ran Critical Role's Calamity mini campaign (still one of my favorite DND campaigns/stories ever)
Definitely—I think he has a good sense of where his players are and an ability to shift DM style based on what will suit each table. (Hard agree re Calamity!)
I am so desperate to hear your thoughts about how the Baldur's Gate 3 and it's zeitgeistyness plays into all of this & as a video game, as a pathway into dnd for yet another new audience, and as a highly developed and vast world building project beyond the scope of most other games out there
ALSO now that I'm thinking about it how much the popularity of BG3 revolves around the romancing of the characters and explicit sex. BG3 certainly isn't the only game to have romance and sex as a main feature (thinking of the Witcher 3 for example) but it does seem to have hit at a particular moment for both Romance and DND. Thinking about the ways in which that could be tied not only to dnd's choices around rules vs storytelling but also the rise of Romance as a genre in other formats (books, shows, movies).