Sean Merwin

then it can't stand so now all its attacks if it's a martial cast if it's a martial creature are made with disadvantage and all attacks against it are at advantage etc etc so it turns into a problem yeah yeah i heard somebody i can't remember if it was on our discord or in my home game but uh someone was talking about

So here's my solution. You know, third edition and fourth edition, I loved playing and DMing tactical battles. I loved that chess match and I loved trying to give players, tease them to take the most optimal thing, but they had to give up something or they had to think their way around the situation. Loved it.

Fifth edition, I was very happy to get away from that tactical play, go to more narrative play. So here we go. We're getting back into the tactical stuff. My solution for this might be for my home game to limit the number of times they can do this. a thing. Right.

Exactly, exactly. This is an encounter power. Or maybe even twice per encounter you can use your weapon mastery. Because then it gives them the option to do it at the exact right time without doing this spamming of... The loop, yeah. What are your thoughts overall on weapon mastery and what we've seen here?

Yes. And one of the reasons I think that we saw the 2014 five E rules and the players handbook sales do the ever upward sales growth rather than falling off is because the play that the rules brought to players, especially new players was quick and fun and fast and witty.

I agree. And not for every group, but in general, in general. And I feel like we're moving in a direction where the rules are not going to draw in new players the way that the 2014 rules, maybe they wouldn't have any way. But I fear that direction. And these weapon mastery feats are great for a subset. I fear they're not great for the greater play audience.

Well, we will get rid of weapon mastery and we will bring up this wonderful world of Greyhawk. We have been going through the Greyhawk Gazetteer and talking about the Living Greyhawk campaign. And we are in the midst of going through Greyhawk region by region and talking about these regions as both a part of the world and as a trigger for bringing fun adventures and fun encounters into your game.

But we had a question first and I wanted to make sure we address that. So this comes from Gareth via YouTube. Gareth asks, when you say you were a triad member of a region, what exactly did you mean? I may have missed the explanation, so a link to where you talk about it would be great. I don't remember the exact place that we talked about it, but it was several times along the way.

when we started talking about Greyhawk, where we talked about this. But we'll sum it up very quickly here.

There you go. During Living Greyhawk, the world was divided up into regions, and those regions were overseen by a group of three volunteers. Generally, each volunteer had a different role. One was the writing director who was responsible for creating the adventures that went out to players of that regional adventure campaign. The second person was generally the community manager type person.

They would talk with the people in the region or people coming to the region, answer questions, do fun things like in-character contests and things like that. The third person was generally in charge of regional meta organizations or regional organizations

rules and those meta organizations were generally groups that sprung up to fulfill a specific role within the story of the campaign so you might have guilds you might have fighting companies you might have uh knighthoods and those sorts of things uh you could spy those you could join some of the groups would be like secret you had to be invited to them or have an opportunity an adventure that would let you join the special you know whatever precisely

So when everything was working well, those three triad members were working in lockstep to create an amazing experience for the players in that region or the players of the adventures from outside the region. What it generally turned into was one person running everything and then other people running trying to help, whether the person refused the help or was not good at marshaling resources.

Triad members became very susceptible to the burned out condition. And at one point... At one point, I was the only Triad member in a region. So I was doing all of the above and trying to bring people in to help. And sometimes, like any organization, it had its problems. And that's why...

Yeah. Yep. So that's what a triad member was. It was a volunteer who was in charge of a region in some capacity or another. So thank you for that question. I hope that answers it.

Very, very true. Speaking of these regional groups, we are going to dive right in and continue our look at Chapter 4, the Gazetteer of the Finesse. We ended with Keoland, over which I was a triad member, and now we get into Cat, which I believe was represented by, was it Eastern Canada?

So what is Ket's deal? Ket is a feudal monarchy with a semi-hereditary rulership matrix. The leader of or the ruler of Ket is called the Begraph. Begraphs have this monarchical power, but they do answer to other power groups, including religious leaders and merchant clans. Teos, geographically, what are we looking at?

Yep. So it's a very, very small area, and especially the area that's habitable is very small. It's got the Yetil Mountains on one side, it's got the Barrier Peak Mountains on the other. And right in the center of it all is the Bramblewood Forest. which then makes it even less normal plains, fields, places to grow crops.

But its position makes it very valuable as goods and services pass through from the backloonish West and the lands that everyone left. during the Twin Cataclysm to get to Eastern Plinius. So mercantilism is a big part of Cat, as is religion. Because there is only one faith in Cat, and that is Al-Akbar. And so it has a very Crusades feel in its history.

Very much so, almost to the point of uncomfortableness in some cases. So in its history, it has this backloonish feel to the point where one of its leaders back in history allied with Ayuz in order to repel invaders, but make gains in other areas. And that's when they invaded Bissell and took over parts of Bissell while everyone was distracted by fighting Ayuz.