Kelsey Dion
speaker
131 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard Sep 2024
Kelsey Dion’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Because I don't think at the end of the day, having a fight about how to adjudicate a really specific style of grapple is a lot of fun for most of the people at the table, maybe for like one person at the table, but...
it's to try to move that kind of thing along and um create some genuine suspense that the players themselves are feeling not just the characters in the game but the players are feeling a little bit of actual pressure on themselves too yeah yeah yeah i think the torch is kind of like the prime example in the game and it's the one you definitely call out in the game but what other sort of like time constraint based sort of things are there that that we might encounter
Yeah, the whole game actually plays in rounds. It plays in, you could say, a loose initiative order. It doesn't have to be super strict, but it's interesting. You'll notice that all spell durations are listed in rounds, not minutes or an hour, really. Sometimes an hour, very, very rarely. And that means an hour of real time.
So when you're playing in rounds, it helps, I think, to give everybody an action that they can do that's sort of equal in potency. It helps you track things like durations so much more easily. And yeah, the whole game is actually, it's funny because people ask, how long is a round? And I'm like, how long does it take you to play a round around the table? That's how long a round is.
So there's no concrete amount of in-game time pinned to it, which is both kind of strange to get used to, but then I think once people lean into it, they're like, oh, this makes sense. A round is literally how long it takes us to go around the table.
Yeah, and if you fight real slow, I mean, roll your dice as fast as you can if you want to fight fast.
Oh, I hope you try it. I think it's the mechanic that people are most skeptical of, just from what I've seen. They're like, well, I don't think I'm going to like that. And then it also is the mechanic that people have the biggest change of heart on when they actually try it in their game, which makes me happy. So I'm glad people actually give it a shot.
Yes.
You have to pass the torch when it's your turn. Just, like, don't drop it on the table and melt your miniatures. Yeah, link about ten candles in.
It'd be very... I think it's really very fun, and it's actually a lot easier to track than marking off a torch each round, like we would do in some classic D&D versions, because I always forget to do that and... You're already tracking enough round by round things to begin with, like random encounters every few rounds, spell durations lasting certain sets of rounds.
So I like just kind of doing the set it and forget it thing with a torch. Sometimes at conventions, I'll slightly randomize how long the torch is by a minute or two so that canny players can't just be like, it's been exactly an hour and then I'll keep it hidden forever.
And players can ask and I'll say, oh, it looks like your torches may be about half burned down, but it adds a lot of tension to fun games like con games that are just one shots and stuff.
It makes some, Oh no. And it's, it's definitely true that if you're using a slot system, you're moving a little bit away from what's realistic. You're like, why does one glass vial take up an entire slot? And then a torch takes up, but it's, You know, you're sort of mechanizing it, right?
It's like, no, it's much better if it plays faster than if you're trying to calculate the different weights and volumes of all these specific little things because no one's really going to do that because it's annoying. Well, some people do, and they like to, so I can't fault them.
It has to do the kind of thing, too, where I acknowledge that real time is passing in the game, so I have to design the systems around not making it cumbersome for you to, like, calculate things. Otherwise, that would be kind of mean. Like, ha-ha! You have to calculate what you're carrying, but the torch is going down. This is now math class. This is a class.
Right. And while you're being timed, right?
We need to add that in for maximum attention.
It was like watching it happen to someone else for a while. I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. And I was like, am I delirious? Because before you launch a Kickstarter, you guys know that it's a little frantic. And you might not have slept that well for a day or two leading into it as you're finalizing everything. And about the second day in, I hadn't slept for maybe four days.
I had caught a few hours here and there. And I was like, is this really happening? Or is this me being exhausted? So it was wild. And, you know, I always project how well something's going to do pretty conservatively because I don't like to be disappointed. But I really under projected this time. Really, really. So.
Well, it brought a lot of attention that was definitely a little bit of a tidal wave. I think it was at a point where I was like, I'm just going to have to deal with all these emails later. And really isolating what needed to be done in the moment and trying to rise to the occasion. Yeah.
Showing 41–60 of 131 · page 3 of 7
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