Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D still acts first in all of our rounds of gaming. Imagine a table full of gamers. Each one of them has a character with multiple options available to them. Now think of all of those characters in the same scene with a giants, a dragon, and a band of ogres. How do you keep all of those characters straight and make sure that everyone gets to take their turn? We roll for initiative, and let the dice tell us who gets to take what turn and when. We’ll explore how 5e D&D works, as well as variations that exist in the game.

Rai returns for a finale. We sort of talk about games, but mostly we just talk. 

Today Monica gets together with Heather (her wife) to discuss one of their mutually shared core principles of game design: participation makes the game. If you remove players from play, you are denying them the chance to experience your game. We break down what this means as well as provide good and bad examples of designing for character creation, incapacitation, elimination, and replacement. We also discuss constructive self-entertainment vs. disruptive behavior and techniques for different designs and different styles of play. 

Today I'm joined by friend and colleague Alex Guerrero to discuss how video games utilize narrative and setting design to create a sense of wonder and mystery - and how you can bring that to the table in your own tabletop RPGs!