Over the course of twelve episodes, we have enlisted the help of all our listeners to create the first-ever crowdsourced and collaborative campaign setting – what we call Boomtown!

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to reveal the end of this very successful experiment… well, maybe not the end, but a very solid foundation from which to launch Boomtown.

For anyone who is new to the podcast, as well as for all the listeners that have helped us craft it, this episode puts it all into perspective and wraps it with a nice bow. Stay tuned for next steps!

1:50 Boomtown is here!

3:25 Boomtown is one of the few western settings available to set your 5e campaign in.

8:15 The Trivium, our Romanesque totalitarian Regime to the east of Boomtown.

14:00 Your starting Boomtown: Gallow Springs!

17:45 Our specific Economic Mechanics to make resource management matter in Boomtown.

25:45 Guns! How the idea of firearms really forced some mechanical and philosophical choices.

30:30 We nail down Unarmored Defense for all classes.

35:45 Making Critical Failures Matter – Misfires.

36:55 Our updated Skills for Boomtown.

39:15 Your starter adventuring party in Gallow Springs!

42:25 Our updates to magic that make it special and unique in Boomtown: Prophets and Technology.

46:15 Final Thoughts.

You’ve seen the trailer. You saw the #MinisMonday post… Tony’s birthday game where Chris and Dave teamed up to run our group through a tabletop wargame in our own custom Marvel Universe of 6-1-SHIT, where the heroes were brought to Battleplanet to fight the SECRET WARS!

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of our custom, simplified, Heroclix system that allowed for a game that reflected the scope of the Secret Wars: The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Heroes of Hells Kitchen, and our homebrewed heroes as they fought the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, The Masters of Evil, Doctor Doom, Ultron, and Galactus!

This is another in the long line of adapting wargaming to your table, regardless of your experience!

3:00 DM Chris provides the background for the game.

7:55 DM Tony’s initial reaction to the game.

10:00 The difficulty with introducing wargaming into your games and how to simplify it for everyone to enjoy.

14:45 We start breaking down the mechanics and set-up of the game.

18:43 The benefits of co-DMing.

21:50 An easy system to adapt to any table and any game.

30:20 A run through of the basic mechanics and set-up. We use Captain America as our example.

36:10 We discuss the difficulty of integrating our Journey System into the game.

43:22 Final Thoughts.

One of the easiest ways to make your campaign and your setting feel real, immersive, and unique is by taking away the certitude that magic is always going to act the same way. This mysterious, world-altering energy should not ever be completely understood by your characters, as the discovery of it is a big part of the fun.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to respond to a listener question about their homebrewed idea of making magic work differently in different areas of their world. They ask how we might approach it in our ever-growing, crowdsourced Boomtown campaign setting.

1:35 Our listener question from The OMG Father, Wyman!

3:15 Simple ways to approach making magic change, altering Difficulty Classes and Damage output.

4:15 DM Chris harkens back to the Green Lantern Corps and leans into our use of Components as trackable resources.

6:05 How DM Dave altered magic in the world in our recent Dragonlance campaign.

8:05 Making the zones of magic random, and DM Chris’ concern of specifically targeting arcane casters.

10:25 Motivating players to adventure by seeking tech.

12:12 Employing more narratively focused elements by having the player and DM work together to create something new.

16:45 Leaning into the resource management for spellcasting.

21:45 Allowing the tech to be utilized by any character. A Gunslinger with a Staff of Healing? Why not?

25:25 Good stories come from the characters having to struggle. Always beating the monsters is fun in a one-shot, but makes for a really boring campaign.

26:35 DM Tony asks what the tech looks like in Boomtown?

31:10 Charging up mundane tech… the Battery of the planet Oa and bringing in a usable Craft Item skill.

35:50 Final Thoughts.