Running Off The Rails Raymond O'Connor and Ariel Rascoe

Ray and Ariel discuss how to spice up the Find Familiar spell in dungeons and dragons. Familiars can often feel like a spell effect in our campaigns rather than fully fledged characters. Ray and Ariel were both inspired the hilarious fox familiar in Worlds Beyond Number to think up different ways DMs can create memorable familiars for their players.



Ray and Ariel present mechanics for familiar progression, discuss how to treat familiars as NPCs in your world, and come up with a few modifications to the find familiar ritual.



Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery’s Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences⁠

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Ray and Ariel discuss achieving prestige fantasies in D&D 5e. Why did the 5e Prestige Classes unearthed arcana miss the mark?



Then Ray and Ariel present mechanics for how they think that discovered and unexpected character paths can be successful in D&D 5e.



Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery’s Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences⁠

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

Link to Worlds Beyond Number: https://worldsbeyondnumber.com/



Ray and Ariel discuss their newest source of D&D inspiration, Worlds Beyond Number. Their first project, The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One is a captivating coming of age story. The story told by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii, Aabria Iyengar, and Lou Wilson invokes the wonder of Hayao Miyazaki movies and inspires us to bring a more curated experience to our games of D&D.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery's Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

Ray and Ariel continue their discussion on how to create puzzles ingrained in the setting of your world that your players will enjoy. They have each prepared puzzles to add some concrete examples for how to run puzzles effectively and published them in the RotR blog here https://www.runningofftherails.com/en-us/articles.  In this episode, Ray and Ariel work through six points that helped guide their puzzle design. They use these checkpoints to make sure that the puzzles are a meaningful part of their campaign setting, and their players have total agency in how they tackle them.

If you enjoyed the show today, please follow us on Instagram and Twitter for updates about giveaways, blog posts, new Youtube content, and new DM's guild content.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery's Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

Ray and Ariel discuss their problems with puzzles in the traditional D&D style. They talk through different ways puzzles can be more involved in the story of your campaign, while simultaneously not getting in the way of a good role playing session. The best puzzles can be the focal point of a fun and memorable session, but Ray and Ariel have both played in more sessions where the puzzle interrupted gameplay and even prevented the party from continuing the plot of the campaign.

In this episode, the goal is to dissect all the possible options for puzzles, and put them back together in a multi-faceted, thematic way. Ray and Ariel walk through a variety of types of puzzles and give examples that are more nuanced and less of a road block than puzzles you'll find in published modules. That way the adventuring party can enjoy the session by creatively solving the puzzle or leaving it for some other adventuring party to figure out while they move on to the rest of the story.

If you enjoyed the show today, please follow us on Instagram and Twitter for updates about giveaways, blog posts, new Youtube content, and new DM's guild content.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery's Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

Ray and Ariel look back on the year, share updates on Emery's Log of Legendary Resistances kickstarter, and discuss plans for the future of the podcast.

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RunningOffTheRails/

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery's Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails