Sean Merwin

And it just shows that companies, this is the new modus operandi for companies, right? It's like, okay, we have this unpopular thing to do. Let's just do it. And if nobody says anything, great, we got away with it. And if people speak out, we'll see how much they speak out. And if it gets to the point where it's going to hurt us, then we will start to walk it back.

Yeah, what if they don't, though? Keep it up. Keep it up out there. If you see something happening, without spreading false rumors, speak out, speak your mind. If the company changes, great. If the company doesn't change, like we see with people who are destroying our planet, then you know they have too much power because they don't care what you think.

They're just going to do the thing that they're doing.

But yeah, the Strong Museum is two hours away from where I live. I've been there once and it was awesome. And that was many, many years ago and it's only gotten better. They also have like a toy hall of fame and a video game hall of fame now where you can play all of these really, really, really old video games.

And it was quite an experience when I first went and it's only gotten so much better and I will definitely be heading there soon. Cool. Goodman Games is launching a DCC and 5E organized play campaign. This will be year zero for the program. They have held events at GaryCon and GenCon and will come to GameholeCon. So you can play a character on the 5e track or you can play the DCC track.

You can't cross the characters over, but you can play in both campaigns if you so choose. And this makes total sense to me because Adventurers League, as we already mentioned, is sort of all over the place and not moving in a coherent direction. They're refusing to just create a new campaign, which I think many people believe they should.

So that leaves other forces ready and willing to step in and create a coherent, fun, simple, thriving campaign. So we'll see how both the DCC and the 5E version of the Goodman Games Organized Play campaign does.

Last but not least, we talked about Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG getting off and running to quite a start. Well, it has surpassed all other role-playing game Kickstarters. It is now at $10.5 million.

36 000 backers and there's still a couple days to go so we'll see usually there's a little kick at the end so we'll see what heights it might reach it's incredible yeah demi plane already has uh a nexus for cosmere so you can go in and play around create a simple character and uh we'll see when the game comes out how it plays because that's always the big question

This week here on Mastering Dungeons in our main segment, we're going to do two things. We're going to do a 2024 5e mini review. Then we're going to cover some more regions from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. And Teos is double fisting the books there. He's even going to throw in a bonus book. But first let's talk about 2024. And this week we are going to look at weapon mastery.

First question, Teos.

What would you say the design goal is for weapon mastery and weapon mastery properties?

Yeah, I agree. I think it adds a tactical element to the game that maybe 2020, 2014 was missing, or maybe it wasn't, but we've certainly seen games come out since then, or versions of 5e that have come out since then that lean very, very strongly into this tactical realm. And so I think, despite your facetious claim that, right, we want to give something new in this book that's coming out,

It adds a tactical element to the game. Whether or not the tactical element was needed, that's a whole other question that will bear out through play.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, we'll see, because in 2014, there was no weapon mastery properties. Certain subclasses, as you say, Teos, certain classes, certain other elements of the game could bring this tactical play to bear. The battle master fighter could do certain things by spending dice and using different abilities.

But that wasn't something that could carry through to the rogue or the monk or those other characters.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So the 2024 Player's Handbook has weapon mastery and mastery properties. So each weapon has a mastery property, which is usable if a character has the weapon mastery feature. And who has the weapon mastery feature? Most martial classes. what are these properties then that can be used based on the weapon for those classes that have this feature?

We'll go through them real quickly here. Cleave. If you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack using a weapon with the cleave property, you can make a melee attack roll with that weapon against a second creature within five feet of the first that is also within your reach.

If you hit, the second creature takes the weapon's damage, but you don't add the ability modifier to that damage unless the modifier is negative. And you can only do this once per turn. Okay. So there are a lot of writers that go in there.

Yep. Which would then behoove you to both outside of the game, make plans that you can then use inside of the game to make choices. So it does that double duty of the quote unquote lonely fun. of planning and then the at-the-table fun of executing that plan. So in that sense, it's very reasonable and attractive to different kinds of players and different kinds of play. So Cleve, as I described,