Hello and welcome to the first ever behind the screen DM chat
with me, the DM Rich. First of all, thank you so much
for listening to this. If you are listening to this,
this means I've either released it after a while that's been
sitting as like patron only access, or you're listening to
it because you are a patron. And if you are a patron, I must
say thank you very much. If we didn't have a crazy amount
of upfront costs at the start of the podcast, our RSS host fee
was something that was optional. But I really want it taken care
of because we have a website that just distributes it to all
sorts of different websites, like on our behalf.
And they have an annual fee of like 100 bucks, which isn't that
much. But because of the Patreon and
being able to do so much more, I've been able to get Christmas
gifts for the players. They all got their own dice.
That was so cool. As of right now, we're starting
in our merch line, but that might already be out at this
point because of the the patron support and there's probably
more to come. So once again, if you're
listening to this, thank you so much.
It all just goes right back into the show, so I really appreciate
it. I have no script prepared for
this. I have no plans at all.
I figured this would be the kind of thing that I'd be happy to to
answer questions directly from patrons about in the future.
But for now, I think I should probably just start with like
the basics. What is Dunspars and Grandpa?
How did it get started? What was my basis for setting
everything up the way that I did?
I think it really starts well, obviously with a love of Pokémon
and a love of D and DI Had been a player in some like.
I played 13.5 campaign in college.
I played a couple of 5E campaigns of D and DI have
consumed a fair number of like podcasts and shows.
I got a little into Critical Role.
I loved Harmon Quest. That was a really fun show.
Just seeing the animated kind of like got you into it.
I think they play Pathfinder on that.
I don't know, D&D is just a lot of fun and I'd always been a
player. This is my first time.
DM me to anything. After a while I stumbled upon
Boarding Party. Boarding Party is a YouTube
channel that is run by a bunch of friends.
I think they're in Arizona and I think they're roommates maybe?
I'm not sure, but I've found myself in a job where I had a
lot of downtime where I had to be looking around, but I didn't
need to be doing anything with my hands and I didn't have to be
listening to anything. So I would put in my ear, my
headphones and just listen to stuff.
And I found Boarding Party and I just binge through like the
first 60 or so episodes within a matter of months.
And it was really inspirational. I thought it was so cool.
They're playing their totally own original system.
Their characters are interesting and engaging.
And I think the number one thing for me with that show is that DM
Drew has so many like cool takes on making things original and
like the the hybridization of the Pokémon battle system and
the DND battle system. I think he just does it in a
super clever and creative way. Really inspirational, truly.
There came a point, I want to say it was at the end of 2020,
where in the Cali Rex game corner, which is like our twitch
community. Please join if if you'd like to.
There's invites. I in the video descriptions, I
believe and definitely in the link tree.
We have a dense bars and ramp on discussion forum.
For all I know you're already probably a part of that, but
just in case you're not, please consider joining.
It's a really cool community. Anyways, a group of like four or
five of us, just out of nowhere, one of our members was like,
hey, I'm going to run this one shot that's from Pokémon 5E, you
guys want to try it? And me and a few others were
like, yes, absolutely. So I hadn't looked into Pokémon
5E at the time yet, but we started playing it and the one
shot we did was Ox Parcel. We did like 3 or 4 sessions and
then we stopped because the creator requested that everyone
stop playing because he had a cease and desist.
It's kind of a complicated story and I don't, I'm not the
official source on it by any means, but he, the the creator
of 5 E was issued A cease and desist, not from Nintendo.
Everyone assumes it was Nintendo was actually Wizards of the
Coast. It was the D&D folks.
They were saying, hey, you can't do this.
In general, creating your own role-playing system and playing
it for your own leisure and releasing it in like free
content is not illegal. There's nothing wrong with that.
However, I think I'm just assuming.
I think where this guy got in trouble was he was distributing
materials to play the game, which is reasonable because he
put a lot of work into it and it was really well fleshed out and
he did. So that copied the 5E Players
Handbook style, which a lot of homebrews do That's that
happens. I don't know the legality of it,
but then it also included tons of official artwork from the
games and the anime, that being Pokémon, and it just kind of
blended them together. And I feel like maybe that's why
he got in trouble. I don't know.
Regardless, he asked everyone to stop playing the system.
So we stopped, which is really sad because we were having a lot
of fun. We should talk about that party
a little bit. One of our players was a like a
pyromaniac from Lily Cove City who not Lily Cove from Lava
Ridge and they had a Torchic named Turbo.
One of our players was from the Kalos region, kind of similar to
Elodie kind of in personality and demeanor, maybe a little bit
more reserved and like less charismatic and she had a
Tinchino or Manchino, whichever 1's the smaller one.
I always mix those two up. We had another player, I'm
pretty sure, yes. We had a trainer from Sino who
was actually kind of a lot like Gimli.
They had an air on named Chad and I was playing a character
from Canto whose name was Benji. I put a lot of love into his
back story. Basically he was like the
grandson of Koga who was exiled from the the ninja tribe in
Canto because his mother, who is Jannon's sister I believe was
exiled because she had fell in love with a man from Joto.
So once that was realized when Benji was like 10, they kicked
him out and his partner was a Zubat named Fang.
I miss them a lot and I think that there's definitely a
possibility that I work them into the Duns Parson grandpa at
some point because I think it's such a such a cool character.
I'd I really fell in love with that guy.
Anyways, yeah, we played about 3 or 4 sessions with the 5E system
and I felt like that got me to the point, like we did that and
it was so much fun and I was so looking forward to having dozens
and dozens of sessions with this group.
And then it just stopped. And I was like, no, you can't
just stop. I can't.
That's not fair. So I started planning.
So between that experience that I had playing Pokémon 5E and
listening to Boarding Party, I started devising my own thing.
I went crazy. I started thinking of plot.
I started thinking of ways that I could kind of like take the 5E
stat system and more make it fit my needs.
Anyone who played five ES probably going to notice like a
lot. Not DND 5E, but Pokémon 5E that
is now now to defunct and no longer used.
They probably noticed that I have a lot of things that are
very similar to that format because it's just good.
It's just, I, I borrow a lot of things that makes a lot of
sense, especially moves and move descriptions.
I'll, I'll shake up their damage values and stuff and like their,
their DCS and whatnot, but it just makes a lot of sense.
Other things like stat generation, I've been taking a
lot more on my own initiative. I think what was going on with
P5E was like special defense and defense were kind of a
hybridization of like wisdom or wisdom or in like armor class,
like kind of combined. Then dexterity ties into armor
class and like speed is in the armor class.
So you kind of have to, I just come up with numbers that like
make sense to me. I don't know, I just kind of
look at it and it's like, well, this sounds good.
And like in my head, if I'm comparing these monsters to DND
monsters that are similar, then it just makes sense.
Intelligence is a stat that's usually just reserved for
psychic types and not even all psychic types have good
intelligence. But as far as like something
that you attack off of, it's not very common because Pokémon are
kind of like animals for the most part.
Again, unless they're psychic types and they have a lot of,
they're very smart, and then that's, that's a different
story. So I spent a few months in early
2021 coming up with my own kind of system that was very heavily
based on Pokémon 5E, but also with my own little stuff, and I
came up with A1 Shot. I'm not sure if a recording
exists for it. I don't know.
I definitely recorded it, not with the intention to release it
to anyone, but because I want to review it and see how things
worked. There's a lot of rule changes
that came out of that one shot and as a one shot it also took
three sessions. It took place in The Mirage
Tower that you can find in Pokémon Emerald on the desert
route in Hoen. I wasn't planning on setting the
campaign like a full out campaign in Hoen, but I think
just after that little three shot went over well, I decided
might as well stick with it. Right.
It was I came up with the plot line where the Rossborough
Archaeological Society sent some strapping young trainers to go
investigate The Mirage tower because it doesn't show up all
the time. It's like a mirage.
They saw it in the desert and they're like, oh, we need we
need people to investigate this and they have to be powerful
trainers because we don't know what's inside.
And I came up with a system or like the the plot was basically
like the the tower was kind of like an Ubliet of sorts.
It kind of it was a it was from far away in the past, like
thousands of years in the past and parts of it were like still
alive as if it was functioning thousands of years ago.
And then the rest of it was like decrepit ruins kind of.
It was fun. It was cool.
And the Long story short, the bit, the final boss at the top
of the tower was a clay doll that was monstrous.
And there's a lot of there a lot of little hints around about
there being lots of little like toy like ball toys and there was
like a little girl's story being told throughout it.
I wish I had more specifics on it, but it was a cool little
fun, fun three shot and I think it gave me a lot of opportunity
to change the rules and it let our players really get
comfortable with what I was going for.
I made sure to throw things at them that were not as common for
like the Pokémon world, that we're a little bit more mature,
a little bit more violent, maybe a little more serious, right.
So after we did that little adventure, I waited a couple
weeks to build the story and here we are.
We're in we're in the midst of the of the campaign.
I offered, so I, I gave, I required that the players use
prebuilds that I designed to kind of get them involved into
the campaign. And they, the prebuilds that I
offered them were, they were all level 5, I believe, which is
where they're at, you know, episode 19.
That's about what level our players are now.
Actually, they finally caught up to that point and they were all
either based on the one shot characters from Pokémon 5E that
I played with Benji or they were based on boarding party.
So in fact, I could even pull that up right now and I could
share with you some of the the details about those lost
characters, those ancient lost characters.
So yeah, so Benji was an option and Jacob actually played Benji
and Benji had a goal bat. Benji never had a goal bat in
the original campaign, but I they were level 5.
I was like, it sounds about appropriate to get a goal bat.
So for all of our players, everyone has had experience
playing a role-playing game like this, except for Jacob.
So I don't know if it's because Benji was like a dex heavy
character, that ledge like Jacob to kind of create Schmidt to
also be kind of dex heavy. I'm not sure, but maybe that's
something to do with it. Maybe it doesn't.
But he chose to play Benji. Also, not surprisingly, CJ chose
to play Gray, who was the the air on trainer in the P5 E
campaign. But I gave them a layer on here.
Yeah, that also ties in 100% from Sino rock types.
Yeah, it turned out really well. The same kind of King Tanker's
attitude translated straight from from Gray into Gimli.
Did someone play? Yeah.
So Melissa played the the the Manchino trainer Delphi, the
call ocean from the from the one shot that I did with P5E and
they they picked a different character, Cindy and solely like
their their archetype is kind of more Magee.
You know, they're a little bit more offensive where I think
Delfy and Mccino were a little bit more supportive, but that's
kind of fun to experience that Connor and Turbo, that was the
the Loveridge trainer with the Torchic.
They were not chosen. And then my last two characters
were from boarding party. So one of them was the character
CJ from that show and he has a totodile.
I made it a crocodile in the one shot.
It's a crocodile by the point that I'm listening to it.
But if you know, I'm not going to spoil anything too crazy, but
I will spoil their starters and their evolutions.
If you want to listen to Boarding Party, no one decided
to play CJ. And then Phoebe is a character
in boarding party as well. And they started with the swine
up and it evolved into a pilot's swine at certain point.
And Grace chose to play as Phoebe with Nubster, the pilot's
wine. So those are the characters that
we did for that one shot. It was a good time.
If if it does exist on recording somewhere, I might dig it up and
post it, but who knows. It was kind of clunky.
There's a lot of moments where we were, you know, making up
rules as we went along. We were reclining things.
I think we were using full type effectiveness.
So you might notice that like, for example, if you use a ground
type move on a layer on in my version of this game, it only
does double damage, not quadruple.
I think we were keeping double superfective and double
weaknesses, which is it makes a huge difference in like the D&D
context. But and then, yeah, so we did
that and then I gave the players free reign to make their own
characters and that's what they did.
Grace had a couple ideas. She came to me with this current
design for Elodie and Mill, Surrey.
She also had kind of like a rural kind of country girl with
a mareep. I think that would have been a
cool character to investigate. It might be a character that I
plug into the show at a certain point just 'cause I thought it
was neat. But I think at the end of the
day, we thought the fairy type Baker was was a really cute
idea. I'm pretty sure that Jacob just
had the idea for Schmidt just this whole time.
I, I don't think that took much thought.
And same with Gimli. I was at CJ gave me the
impression that he every time I plays DND, he does, he plays
this character. He plays someone who's very
strength heavy, who's very short, who has a big beard.
And I was like, OK, if that's if that's your comfort zone and you
have fun with that, then please. Like by all means.
And I'm not sure where Cindy came from.
I don't think Melissa had a whole lot of other ideas to
pitch, but Cindy was the was the decision.
I am not sure if I revealed to them that would take place in
Hoenn or not. I don't think I, I, I told, I
told the players that they would end up in a situation where they
were all in the same place, but they could be from whatever
region they wanted to be from whatever they thought would be
more fun to world build. And coincidentally, like we got
to the point where I was thinking like, Owen's a cool
place to explore. What if they started not from
the starting town, but from like the middle of the map like Lily
Cove? And that's kind of where my
train of thought went with of making the story.
I also wanted it to take place in the future from the games so
that it's still familiar to any listeners who have played in the
home region games. But it's it's novel in the sense
it's like 15 years in the future.
So I wanted to to make a little bit of a distinction there.
I also took some liberties in, you know, hammering out some
nuances that weren't present in other media, like how the
government works. And even though I don't have
fully fleshed out, but like obviously the Elite 4 is some
sort of organization that handles stuff, right?
Obviously the champion has a role that they have some
authority in the way that the the the civilization runs,
right? It's never gone into detail in
my as far as my knowledge in the anime or the games, but I just
felt like there has to be some sort of governmental structure
there. So I just kind of divided up the
region into quarters, put the Elite 4IN the quarters.
I changed up the Elite 4A little bit too, just for some variety.
And then the champion, right? I, I wanted to make the player
character from the games, the champion of the region.
And I just feel like May's just much more popular and very
recognizable and just kind of more interesting than Brandon
Brandon's cool. He's got a cool hat, but I don't
know, I, I feel like Red is already in the world.
You know, I, I thought that May could be really cool to, to take
place there. So yeah, they chose their
starters. I I've been making all the
character sheets. I've been taking some input.
If someone's like, hey, this looks weird or like, I don't
agree with this, but it's happened like once from the
players. I think for the most part,
everyone's kind of on board with the stats that I've been I've
been doing. Yeah.
I felt like, you know, everyone kind of memes on the you all
meet in a Tavern style of starting games in, in Ford Ford,
like DND and tabletop role-playing games and like,
it's a meme because it, it's good.
I think it's a good way to start things off.
I don't think it really makes sense in in the Pokémon world
necessarily, especially because one of these characters is quite
a bit younger than the other ones.
So I wanted to get them into a situation where they didn't have
to interact, but they would kind of be forced into interacting at
a certain point. I was like, what what could
happen? Lily Cove in the games is like
pretty open, like there's a lot of buildings, but like then I
guess in in the Pokémon games in general, the cities are pretty
open because your your character is like kind of oversized and
chibi, if you know what I'm saying.
But that's besides the point. I wanted to fill it with stuff.
So I was like, Hey, what about like a festival?
What about like a a summary Beachy kind of festival?
So I threw them all into there and then the question was like,
how do I get them united in a task?
And I was like, well, maybe if they all brought something that
was important to them and they got it stolen, Well, I think it
works. I think it worked out OK.
And then that gave me time to kind of, as they were dealing
with retrieving their lost items, they could kind of see
what it's like to go down a route, right?
Travel isn't really something I've been focusing on in this
campaign very much. I feel like if you know, I'll do
like one or two encounters per route.
But if, if it's annoying for there to be an encounter that
the party doesn't really want to have, I don't really want to
force them to have it. You know, I'm saying like I want
to introduce things and challenge them every now and
then, which I think I do so far with the campaign, But I don't
see the point in just ruling encounters every time you hit
the route because I just, I don't think that's fair to the
players necessarily. You know, if they want to grind
by like all means they can like seek out encounters.
I think that's fine because that's, that's what you're in
Pokémon games anyways, right? You walk on the route and if you
want to catch something new, you go in the grass.
I kind of want to give them that opportunity to do that.
I don't know if that's not true to the DND ways, but that's,
this is what I was thinking. So that's what we did.
I wanted it. So there's also another trope as
far as DND goes where it's encouraged to introduce your
party to an aspect or something that represents the big bad evil
guy as soon as possible, right? Like in the first session.
And just to make them feel powerless, so that as they
become more powerful with throughout the campaign, they
actually feel like they can put up a fight.
I think that's just kind of game design in general.
That's like Mega Man X, right? You start Mega Man X and you
plow through this first level. You're like, hey, this is an
easy baby game. And then you're forced to lose a
fight, right? I think it's kind of similar to
that, except I don't really want to lose, make them lose because
it's not a video game and the stakes are higher.
So I want to introduce an ominous new organization where
the players could only recognize initials, an acronym that
describes the organization. There were a lot of good
theories that that floated around.
And at this point that now that I'm recording this, the name of
the organization has been revealed.
So I will say it spoilers if you don't know what it is, but it is
Neo Rocket Galactic. I think, you know, it's a dumb
name. The players acknowledge that
intercession. It's a pretty dumb name, but I
think it's appropriate for the world that we're doing.
I always thought that Team Rocket was just kind of the
coolest kind of classic. Kind of team at least
represented in the games, they're, they're just like,
they're just capitalist kind of criminals and who who steal
people's Pokémon, which is like they're, they're very down to
earth kind of in the criminals in this sense.
And I wanted to fuse them with Galactic because Galactic is
crazy. Out of all the teams in the
games, they have the wildest ambitions.
They want to make a new universe.
Like what the heck? I thought Team Magma was crazy
when I played AB version. Galactic is like a whole other
level. So I was like, what if we
combined like the realistic kind of mafia aspects of Team Rocket
with the the otherworldly ambitions of Team Galactic?
I just thought that was neat. I don't, I think there's only
been one instance where a team, an evil team in Pokémon has like
truly reformed and that was Plasma and they called
themselves Neo Team Plasma. So I was like, hey, Neo Rocket
galactic, we'll see how it goes. I, I think I've, you know, a big
part with forming the evil team. I had to decide if you listen to
anything like Matt Colville related or Matt Mercer related,
2 great DMS by the name of Matt. That's really weird.
They'll always encourage you that like when you're making a
character, you have to determine what their motivation is.
So I was like, cool, I can make an evil team, but what do they
want? What do they want to do?
So I that was like probably the first thing I did.
I figured out what is this evil team doing bothering the players
or just like the players are so far kind of just finding
themselves in the way of this evil team.
But I think more and more they're becoming more connected
in ways. In the first session, I wanted
them to feel helpless in a situation and for something very
bad to happen to one of them, which was Cindy lost her
grandparents, right? So I think that's the first
little story thread and then also the thing where they're all
on vacation, but oops, you can't go home because the government
says that there's been a terrorist attack, right?
For my first time, D Ming I I'm not going to say this was the
best way to to corral a party together, but I, I think it
serves the purpose. I think it's interesting enough
and all the players are engaged enough that it is successful so
far. We'll see how it goes as far as
like when they do have random encounters, they just roll a
dice and I have encounter tables for each route.
Sometimes I don't have a fully flushed out encounter table and
I'll just do like one through 10 and I'll just double it, right?
I just think of Pokémon that I think would make sense being
there. And you might have noticed that
I don't restrict it to Gen. three.
The first Cot encounter was Goomi.
I wanted a cool little reward for rolling a 20 on the first
route. I do the the 20 roll on every
route is something kind of significant.
And lo and behold, the first encounter was a 20 and Cindy
caught it. So it's super cool.
I love Cookie and the story of like catching cookies.
Really neat for her. Cindy's character as well.
So that's just kind of what I've been doing for for every route
is a little it just classic DND encounter table.
Of course, I consider what's on the route in the games, but I
also want to give a lot more variety because I don't want to
just be like, oh, you're in the grassland.
There's going to be Oddish like I want there to be some more
interesting situations. So that's what we've been doing.
I am certainly wholeheartedly stealing boarding parties, gym
kind of way to do it. I know that there's been other
role-playing groups that do gyms kind of in a group style, and I
might do that for like one or two gyms just because I think
that might be interesting. But in general, I'm straight
ripping off boarding party. It's like a small personal
challenge that's a lot more battle focused because at least
for Dunsparts and Grandpa, the most of the campaign isn't
particularly battle focused. It's more more story and like
exploration kind of stuff there. There's occasional little boss
battles, but it's not constant encounters like it is in a gym.
So the focus is kind of on the strategy and the tactics of
doing that. Yeah, no secret.
I've I've stolen that from boarding party for sure.
You know, because in in Pokémon media, it's like so many
characters aren't trainers, right?
There's so many people that like live with Pokémon or maybe don't
and just have other normal ass like adult kind of lives.
And I want that to be potentially an option for the
players because like the way that the, the stuff that they're
getting into, they're going to have to do battles, especially
if they want to get their gym badges.
But like, you know, not everyone is the player character in the
Pokémon games. Obviously everyone in on the in
the, you know, everyone at the table is a player character for
our party. But what I'm trying to say is,
is that like, it's different than the video games.
I want to make it more like that more closer to the DND side of
things. This has been a pretty good
ramble. I wouldn't mind doing one of
these every now and then. Please submit questions to me.
There should be a question form and it's like one of the first
posts on the Patreon is like ask questions to people.
Please, please if you're listening to this ask me
something I I would love to answer it.
I am happy to just kind of ramble about my process and do
that in little bite sized chunks every now and then for for this
bonus content. But I would love to directly
answer what you are wondering about.
I guess that's all I have to say.
Thank you so much for listening. I'll do another one of these
soon, hopefully after I get some questions in.
I would I would love to get some more of these done.
I'd like to do this regularly, like, you know, a couple of
months or so we'll see how it goes.
But again, thank you for your support and I guess I'll, I'll
talk to you another time. Thank you.