Andrew: 1:13

Joining the podcast today is Elsie Farrell, who is a let's see if I can get all these things down now Storyteller, author, Game Master, Pet Parent, Resident of New Jersey, which is always good. I always count that on the plus side. What else? What else, Elsie? What am I?

Elsie Farrell: 1:39

missing. Oh gosh, I mean I think you can get most of it content creator for TTRPGs, but yeah, that's pretty much everything.

Andrew: 1:49

So you've been so in our conversations. You've been creating this homebrew setting for over 15 years now. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Elsie Farrell: 2:01

Sure. So the world that I'm currently working in, what my players and readers are familiar with, is the world of Veridys, which is actually a small river valley in this much larger multi-continent kind of planet called Andromara, and I initially started writing out Andromara in 2015. A group of my friends wanted to kind of really sink into a campaign, so I created the setting and, in my kind of young DM days, said here's a boat, here's a map, off you go, and then reaped the consequences immediately, so for good. I think that first campaign probably lasted about three years where they bounced around to different locations in the world and then that campaign came to a close and when I was looking at kind of doing my next thing, I really wanted to focus in on just one small area and kind of go really deep into the lore, instead of more wide. And that's how Veritas has really built itself out is especially over the pandemic, running so many different groups and many campaigns and longer campaigns in this world. It's kind of fleshed itself out.

Andrew: 3:35

Fascinating. So how many campaigns would you say you've run within Veritas, the world, in the world that you've created?

Elsie Farrell: 3:46

So probably three that had any kind of like lasting. And then, because of the nature of what I do as a professional DM, I'm running almost constant one shots in the world as well. So once or twice a week there's a one shot that's happening in the world.

Andrew: 4:06

So let's talk about that. So you, let's talk about your journey as a DM. And so you started out over. Well, you started your home over 15 years ago. Was that your start in DMing, or how did you get started in DMing? How did you get to where you are now? Because now you are a professional DM working with dungeons and drafts, so you've got that whole aspect. And then what kind of inspired you to start there and how did you move along that pathway?

Elsie Farrell: 4:41

Yeah, so I started DMing as a teenager, but my journey with D&D actually started much earlier. My dad played D&D in the. He started with other TTRPGs but played D&D in the 80s and 90s, and so my childhood was really built around listening to my dad DM for his group. That's what Saturday nights were. We're listening to my dad tell stories to his friends, and hanging out with my dad meant we had a D&D room in our house where there were home brew maps and dragon magazines and miniatures everywhere, very cool.

Elsie Farrell: 5:23

Yeah, I was given my first set of rule books and a dice set and the first three dragon lance chronicles at eight. So it was really yeah. So growing up, d&d was just part of my childhood and, as somebody who looks up to her dad a great deal, I wanted to be a storyteller like him. So in my earlier in my childhood and in my early teenage years I played D&D, but my goal was to be a DM. That was the end thing that I could do was I could be a DM like my dad. So when I was a teenager, I started finding friends who were into TTRPGs and I have a younger brother who also plays and he has a bunch of friends that play and we're close enough in age that there was overlap. So really, I guess from the time I was like 17, there was just constant. We had it, like I said, a D&D room in our house and it was just like on any given day of the week some game was being run out of that room between my dad, me or my brother.

Andrew: 6:33

That's amazing. That's great that you have all that in common with your family. It's got to be a great bonding experience and it's just nice to have those, not only, I guess, during the time I was having, but the memories as well. Going on to have that kind of connection with your family, to be able to share that, that's fantastic.

Elsie Farrell: 6:55

It's really incredible because I have memories. Like me, my dad and my brother went to GenCon 50 together, and so that is a memory that I'm going to cherish for the rest of my life. And we play we all still play together. We each run a different campaign and we play in one another's campaigns, but just like sometimes hanging out is dinner and then we paint minis after. You know, just constantly talking D&D all of the stuff that I do when it comes to my own, like home brewing or mildew writing, things like that Like I send them to my dad and I'm like, hey, what do you think of this? How would you run it? So, yeah, there's just a very, very D&D is very central to my family unit and it's been a big part of the bond that I have with especially my brother and my dad. But my mom will like sit down. She doesn't play but she sits and she's like I just like listening to you guys be passionate.

Andrew: 8:04

That's great, that's fantastic. So how did you transform this kind of family playing and playing with friends and family? How did you translate that into becoming a professional DM? How did that pathway look like for you?

Elsie Farrell: 8:25

the first, like seven to 10 years, it was just, you know, family and friends, and it was getting around the table and ordering pizza and playing. But it was really the pandemic. And I think conjunction with Dungeons and Dragons came out with their fifth edition, which was a much more digestible edition, I think, for people to get into.

Andrew: 8:52

At around the same time Stranger Things came out, so then a lot more people were suddenly yeah, so it was it became, became part of the dialogue that people were familiar with because it was, it was such a part of the such a part of the show. So, with all but yeah, with the show's popularity, I kind of dragged, dragged, d&d along with it.

Elsie Farrell: 9:15

Absolutely. And so you had Stranger Things and so you know D&D, which has always been a hobby with like the satanic panic kind of attached to it, really started to lift out of that, that misconception and that reputation.

Elsie Farrell: 9:32

At the same time you have Critical Role and Dimension 20 and all of these other actual plays happening, and then the pandemic happens and we're all home Right, and any D&D player will tell you, the biggest obstacle to playing D&D is finding the time on the schedule for everybody to show up and play D&D. Tell me about that. I can relate. Yeah, absolutely so. And all of a sudden we all had all this time, and then, between Discord, zoom, role 20 and D&D beyond, the tools to play virtually were so strong.

Andrew: 10:14

Yeah, everything really seemed to come together just just at the right time.

Elsie Farrell: 10:19

It really coalesced in a way that I think was very unique and I'm so grateful for it, because it was such a challenging time and D&D between listening to you know like Critical Role during the day and playing D&D and having the books to read and talking to people online and like it really kind of became that lifeline of it, was something to do and something to think about. That was a net positive, absolutely. And so, and through that, I ended up talking to a lot of people who weren't typically interested in playing D&D but suddenly they were like hey, I've always been kind of curious, I'd love to give it a try. So I found myself running multiple games a week for people who had never touched a set of dice before or had never seen a character sheet. So my schedule was filled with, you know, having video meetings with people and running session zeros and talking about.

Elsie Farrell: 11:17

Well, okay, imagine imagine yourself in this fantasy setting If you were a hero, what would your ideal hero look like? Right, and, and then just bringing these groups together and and just rolling dice digitally and playing games, and so then, as things started to kind of even back out and approach normality and we can go back to restaurants and things like that. I know I personally kind of struggled with the like oh, you can leave your house again. So that was a big.

Andrew: 11:55

I think it was a big adjustment for everybody. It's like wait a second. This is was normal but hasn't been normal for a couple years now. So it started. It was a very foreign experience, going going back out into the real world for sure.

Elsie Farrell: 12:10

It really was, and it was such an adjustment and I found myself really kind of reticent and not going out as much as I used to, right. And so I found out about this thing called Dungeons and Drafts, which is it's in? They've recently expanded. It started in Philadelphia, it's in South Jersey, it's in New York City, it's in Pittsburgh.

Elsie Farrell: 12:37

Basically, we go to local breweries. It's usually three or four DMs we set up for the night, people sign up for tables of typically four to six and we create your characters, we bring dice for you to roll with and we play D&D for like three or four hours. You get to hang out at a local brewery, you get to try their, their stuff and I mean Thomas and and Dez who came up with it Absolutely brilliant so, and it's been such a fun experience, and so I heard about it. I had a conversation with Tom, just kind of talked about what my general vibe was as a DM and, yeah, basically he gave me the go ahead and that was in March of this year and now I run a game a week for them. For the most part, that's been a tough time.

Andrew: 13:32

That is so cool. I love the idea of bringing, bringing Dungeons and Dragons, bringing tabletop role-playing games to more familiar environments. It's not, it's not your, it's not your parents' basement anymore. So it is. It's definitely become more, more of a cultural phenomenon. So how do you? So talk to me a little bit about more about getting those beginners, getting those people curious that that have heard of D&D and never played and really kind of want to want to give it a shot.

Elsie Farrell: 14:10

Yeah, so one of the interesting things about Dungeons and Drafts is a lot of the people that come to the table. You kind of get two groups. You get the groups that come to a ton of Dungeons and Drafts events, okay, and so you see them over and over again and they try different DMs, and you have people that come to the table and they have never played D&D ever. They might not even have the. They might have like the most vague idea of what it is. I ran a table last week where five of my players had never even touched dice. And then also on top of that, you know, for with Dungeons and Drafts, they're showing up and you have three or four hours to play a game, right? So there's, we don't have session zeros, there's not a lot of intro time, so as that's kind of like, throwing them into the deep end, almost like we're really just going straight into this.

Andrew: 15:04

It's like buckle up.

Elsie Farrell: 15:07

Absolutely, and so it's my job as the DM. I do a couple of things. The first is I know their character sheets. So because for them and for anybody who's picking up a character, like typically what I do is everybody sits down, I, for a game of six, I have nine or 10 character sheets and they get like 15, 20 minutes to kind of pick through I'll ask them what their play style is and try to kind of help direct them. Typically, if I have a beginner player, I'm like, please, for the love of all that is holy, do not pick the wizard, you're not going to have a good time and just kind of like, sit with them and, you know, help them, help guide them to a character that I think is either going to go really well with the story that I know I'm telling that night or that I think is going to match the type of hero that they want to be, or villain, depending on the flavor of what we're doing.

Andrew: 16:12

Yeah, absolutely.

Elsie Farrell: 16:15

And but so I'm very familiar with the characters.

Andrew: 16:19

So for example.

Elsie Farrell: 16:21

Yeah, so like when I have I know I have a dragonborn paladin, I know that they have a breath weapon. When I have a person who's playing a hill dwarf, I know that they have stone cunning. So I can kind of prompt them or remind them, like, like hey, you're the rogue, by the way, you can take you can take hide, disengages, a bonus action, and then you get sneak attack next round and that's really going to boost the attack damage that you're able to do. So it allows me to kind of guide them as the DM, like hey, you know you actually have these abilities, and also really let them know, like I don't expect you to know these abilities.

Elsie Farrell: 17:05

I'm not expecting you like it's my job, and I tell them that when they sit down, I'm like it's my job to let you know what you can do, sure, and and figure out what you can. But you know, we're going to work through this together. D&d is about collaborative storytelling. Together, we're going to tell a kick ass story.

Andrew: 17:25

My job is to help you tell an amazing story, so that's really helpful that you, you have an understanding of what their characters are. So, yeah, so you can, you can really kind of lead the conversation. So instead of them coming coming to the table with a character they created and you're trying to learn four or five people's characters, suddenly, yeah, you know, you know all the characters backgrounds already, so I that's probably very helpful for for somebody unfamiliar with D&D to be like, oh, I can do that, that's cool, so I can. I can really see how that would be, that that that's almost, that's almost. Instead of a session zero. You kind of created everything ahead of time. That's fantastic, yeah.

Elsie Farrell: 18:10

It's. It's definitely helpful because, again, like you just said, like we don't, we don't have that session zero. So that time where I'm usually sitting down with a player and getting to know their play style or what kind of direction they want to go to, or you know, even with a lot of the virtual games I run, I have their character sheets up on D&D beyond I have the whole party up and I can put between them and see what they can do. So this kind of acts as a intermediary step.

Elsie Farrell: 18:40

And then another really big thing is a lot of times there's a couple things the panic for players when they realize, like when you say, make this kind of check right and they don't know where to look for that I have become like a flight attendant when it comes to character sheets. I'm like turn to page three, go to the top left, top right, like this is where you're going to find that stat, you're your skills and your skills are in alphabetical order, so you want to go under. I and really kind of like, when I ask for a role, I make sure that I'm also telling them where to find that number and what they're rolling, and so I try not to leave them guessing with what it is, what mechanic they're trying to do, and then you just tell them off the bat, because that I always feel so bad for a player when you say like, oh, do make an attack role. And you see that moment of panic where they're like where do I, where do I find that?

Andrew: 19:44

Right. And I see that I see that a lot, even even in our games, even even after, even after we played for years. They're like wait a second. Which which? Which dice which die? Is that?

Elsie Farrell: 19:56

It's because it's so many rules and, depending on where you get your character sheet from, things can be in different places and you know, as soon as you level up, numbers change. So and then the other thing that I do is if I see that there's a little bit of analysis paralysis happening at the table where everybody's kind of talking but they're not really sure what to do or what they can do, especially for a new player, they don't realize exactly how open world D&D is. That it's like no, you can literally do anything. Sometimes I'll make suggestions. So if there's a wall that they have to get over, I can go.

Elsie Farrell: 20:38

If you've got a rope or a grappling hook, you can use that. You can try to climb the wall. You can summon a rhinoceros because you have the spell and you can try to bust through the wall. You can try to acrobatic over, you can climb a tree, like. I'll give three or four suggestions, some good, some bad, they don't know which is good and which is bad, but trying to give them a couple suggestions just to sort of plant the seed of like these are the options that you have and you can work within those options or you can do something else, and 95% of the time the players do something not listed, which is great, that's what you want. But at least giving the options kind of starts the thought process of the more complex problem solving that you just sometimes you just don't know that you can do it if you're used to a board game.

Andrew: 21:31

It's very true, but I mean, like you said, the possibilities really are endless. What you can do, you're only limited by your imagination. And I think it's funny to see how, as campaigns have gone on, how the creative problem solving kind of expands over time, because initially it's like, well, you're not entirely sure, and by the end of it you're coming up with the most convoluted plan for the most complicated way to climb a wall. Absolutely, it's so funny, so I think it's got to be really. I think it's a great exercise for anybody to work on problem solving skills and creative thinking playing Dungeons and Dragons. I think there's a lot of benefit that it has outside of the world of gaming and all my research for the podcast I've seen I've seen a lot of different things. How have you gotten any of that feedback from players in your games as to kind of kind of what impact D&D has had on them? Or what kind of responses have you gotten from your beginner players after session one? What is kind of their reaction after they've had their first taste of D&D?

Elsie Farrell: 23:07

So I think the reaction I get a lot of the time is just, that was really fun, which I mean it sounds kind of almost silly to call that out to be like, oh, I had it, like, oh, they had a good time and that's, that's the valuable feedback. But for D&D, like it is a very complex game and it has a steep learning curve. So if you can get somebody to after three hours go, I really had a good time, I enjoyed myself. That to me that is the win.

Elsie Farrell: 23:39

And then also when sometimes I have players ask me questions about like, well, how do you think this NPC would have reacted to this thing that we did? Or what do you think my character would have eventually done with this thing. And so already seeing that like that buy in and that take away from a one shot and a piece of paper that they picked up three hours before, that's to me that's amazing and that makes me hope. Like, okay, cool, maybe you'll either come to another event or you'll find other friends that want to play and you guys will run something together. Or, you know, maybe you know, just planted that seed for a, for an awesome new hobby.

Andrew: 24:21

Do you? Do you see a lot of them? Do you see a lot of the first timers coming back, or? Or do they, or do they kind of roll in and out, with, with, with other first timers? What's what do you? What do you see is that kind of Interaction when they, after they, played their first game.

Elsie Farrell: 24:38

So we get a lot of. We get a lot of returning players, which is awesome.

Elsie Farrell: 24:44

I've had players. Yeah, I've had players that have come and sat at my table multiple times. It was funny. Last night I ran a game and I had a player that had run the one shot that I was doing. He had run it two weeks ago with me and so he came over to my table and he was like oh guys, this is a really good story, you're gonna have a lot of fun. And then wandered back off to the other GM that he was sitting with that night.

Elsie Farrell: 25:10

That's great so yeah, which is just as a storyteller, is just so awesome. And you know, he played my one shot three week two, three weeks ago, and so for him to still be like remembering it enough that he was able to walk up and I didn't have anything set up and he was like, oh, it looks like you're doing this, you're running this, this game again, like, oh yeah, that was so much fun.

Andrew: 25:37

So it's just it's, it's just.

Elsie Farrell: 25:41

it's so awesome and it's so much fun and it's great to see players return and my favorite thing when we get the the table breakdown is seeing that somebody's on their sixth or seventh or 10th event and they just keep coming back to play with us.

Andrew: 26:00

That's fantastic, that's I there. There are, I completely agree with you. There there are so many memories that get made at the tables and it's it must be really gratifying as a, as a dm, to really get that, get that Feedback from, from players who have played, played with you, to really know that you made that kind of impact on on them. So that that's that's such a such a fantastic feeling to to have, I'm sure. Now, do you run your? Do you run your your one shots within, within your, within your world, or is it or is it a dnd environment? What's is it? Is it Veritas or is it something else? That you do it when you do the games at the breweries?

Elsie Farrell: 26:44

And so they're all in Veritas.

Andrew: 26:45

Oh cool.

Elsie Farrell: 26:47

Oh that's.

Andrew: 26:47

That's even better, because it's something you've put your heart and soul into and and they're and they're really giving you that feedback that they're having a great time and loving what you're loving what you've done.

Elsie Farrell: 27:00

It's, it's so amazing and it also helps me deepen the lore of the world in a way that as a writer writing novels, you don't get that opportunity like when I'm writing a novel, it's me and the characters and the setting and we're figuring it out together, but it's all in my head, so it's all one perspective and me just trying to, you know, move stuff around as I as I can.

Elsie Farrell: 27:29

When I'm DMing, I'm dropping characters in and I get to see what they're doing, how they're interacting, and it lets me breathe life into these settings and look at settings and characters in a much more dynamic way that sometimes, as a writer, you're looking at a scene as a like okay, I need, I need the blocking of the scene to go like this, I need the arc of the scene to look a certain way. But when I have players interacting with a eccentric academic and archaeologists and they're asking all these questions and they want to know about her history and what she's researching, it's it really prompts me to deepen that character and also it gives me a chance to create more dynamic characters that, just because they are acting a certain way in in this, in the series and the novels, a different character interacting with them in a different way is going to bring out a different dynamic to the characters, so they're more fleshed out, they're more well rounded and dynamic.

Andrew: 28:42

So talk, so talk to me about this. And now you've been, you've been developing this, this campaign setting, for for years now and now. So you've written, and you've written a novella which was which was really good.

Andrew: 28:57

I really enjoyed it. Thank you, I've got many, not many questions, but I've got a few questions. But how, how, how, how do you blend the, the world you've created? Because it's a dynamic environment, when, when you've got people playing in it. So so how do you, how do you balance that dynamic environment to, to what you're writing in the novella? And you're also working on a novel which comes out in February, I believe. Is that correct? Yes, february 13. Excellent, so tell us, tell us about the novella, tell us about the novel and and tell us then how, tell, talk about the balance between the, the, the books and and the dynamic world that that players are a part of.

Elsie Farrell: 29:46

Yeah, absolutely so. The whole thing with the novels started when a friend of mine who has played in almost every campaign that I've run in this world I turned to him one day and I said you know, I really think I'd like to try. I've talked my entire life about telling stories, writing books. I think I really am going to buckle down and do it. And he said you have an entire world you've already created. He's like it's right there. Yeah, use that.

Andrew: 30:17

Absolutely Fantastic, fantastic starting point.

Elsie Farrell: 30:23

And it never occurred to me, so it really did not occur to me.

Andrew: 30:29

Well, thank God we have friends to point that out.

Elsie Farrell: 30:33

Absolutely. He's mentioned in the acknowledgments quite a few times. So I started kind of looking at, well, what story could I tell in this world and this, when I run a couple different campaigns? I had these different areas kind of fleshed out and came up with that story. And as I was writing the novel I was also running one-shots.

Elsie Farrell: 31:06

And so what I would do is I would come up with an area and then I'd be like, well, I'm really kind of curious to see what this would look like if people were running around in it. So let me take this setting and run something there and see what the characters make of the setting and see what sticks out to them and what they engage with and which NPCs that they find interesting. And so it really became this like I got to see what elements of the world people were connecting with. So in the novel there's a short scene with a man who drives a ferry, and I ran an entire encounter where a bunch of my players almost sank his boat and during a rainstorm they paid him to take them out and his boat almost sank and there was a whole rig of morale. But as you know, as D&D players are wants to tend to do. It's very they touch an NPC's lives in a good way.

Elsie Farrell: 32:19

Usually it's chaos, but it just let me kind of flesh out these different elements and then, as I was working on this larger novel, which is book one in what is going to be probably at least a five book series, wow, all right.

Andrew: 32:39

That can be busy for a while.

Elsie Farrell: 32:43

Yeah, yeah, but the? So in the indie author industry there's a lot of kind of rules over like how much you need to be producing content, and so I was like I kind of need, I need an introduction into my world. I need something that, as I'm trying to get people to connect with me as a writer, I need to be able to point them to something so they know what my style is going to be. You know you're out there in your marketing yourself, but I wanted to be able to give something. So last summer I kind of took six weeks and I wrote the novella and just kind of trial by fired the whole process. So the novella is going to be a tie in in book two or three. So the characters- in the middle.

Andrew: 33:36

You may not have got to wait to book two or three to find out what happens.

Elsie Farrell: 33:39

Yeah unfortunately that's no fair. So you know, and it's kind of so, the plan is there's going to be a series of novellas that tie into different important locations in the world and then the protagonists from the novels will visit those locations and interact with those characters over time.

Andrew: 34:03

That sounds really interesting, so let's start off. So the light keeper is the novella, so give us the brief synopsis of who the light keeper is and kind of what. The don't give anything Because I don't want to give anything away either. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm dying to read more, so give us the brief synopsis. Who is the light keeper?

Elsie Farrell: 34:30

So the light keeper is a woman named Lenora, her family, they are the keeper of the Elandra Beacon and essentially what their job is is they keep ships out of this particularly dangerous cove. And so Lenora grew up with this responsibility. Her parents were the light keepers before her. She took over and her parents have passed and she can't leave her beacon. She has a small cottage, she has to be completely self-sustaining and every night she has to keep vigil over her cove, make sure the light is lit and make sure that no ships cross into their cove. And then one night she encounters a woman who walks down the beach and kind of changes everything for her and makes her realize how lonely she is and kind of tests her sense of duty. And this other character is going through a parallel journey at the same time, but through a different set of circumstances.

Andrew: 35:51

Actually it really is. I loved it Kind of the parallel that I drew to this story from another story. I thought of Belle and Beauty and the Beast. When she talks about I want adventure in the great wide somewhere in the song and that's how I feel she sees something beyond the provincial life of her solitude there at the cottage and the beacon and sees that there's more and grows the fire within her to learn about. That grows more. And it was such a great story. I really enjoyed reading it and sadly I guess I have to wait till book two or three to find out what happens from the end of that story. So I'm excited.

Elsie Farrell: 36:48

Thank you. So it's such a pleasure to me to hear that you read it and enjoyed it, because, again, it was such a just dipping my toes in the water and trying to figure it out and trying to figure out how Amazon Kindle worked and I didn't want. When you self publish, when you publish traditionally, you have a team. They do the marketing, they do the editing, they do the layout, they design the cover, they do the whole kit and caboodle for you you basically you edit the draft and they do the rest. When you self publish, when you're an indie author, you do all of it.

Andrew: 37:31

I can relate from running the podcast. Everything is your one man operation. It's one woman operation in your case. So yeah, it's not easy. So that's. I love the cover art. So who was that?

Elsie Farrell: 37:47

Was that your design?

Andrew: 37:49

Yes, I love it. So, from the cover art to the story, I really liked it. So these characters are these? Were these characters in your, in your homebrew world, or were these new characters for the novella?

Elsie Farrell: 38:07

They were new characters for the novella, but now I have models and one shots that run adjacent to that world and that Cove so I've run players through through adventures where they can meet those characters. I would in the forest nearby.

Andrew: 38:29

That's. That's yeah, I would. If you, if you run it online, I would. I would love the opportunity to to play in that world. I'm I'm very eager to learn more about it. It sounds very interesting. I love there was, there was, there was really so much depth to, to the novella. It really it really felt like a. It felt like a novel, even even even in its in its short form. I felt like there was I really connected with the character. Sorry to keep on going about this, I just, I, just really I was. I became a fan. I really enjoyed the characters. I really, even even within the few short pages, I really felt like there was a lot of character development, a lot of a lot of background to them. I it was. It was really well, well conceived and well put together and I'd love, I'd love, to get the chance to, to play in that world as a, as a PC, as a player character. So please, if you, if you do have the, if you do run one sometime, I would, I would love to play.

Elsie Farrell: 39:45

Absolutely, we will set something up.

Andrew: 39:47

Fantastic. So so how? So tell me, how has or has, in general, has the, has the playing, the, the, the one shots, the modules, the campaigns, everything that you've run in your world. How has that? Has that shaped your writing at all Like? Has it? Has it changed things that that you were working on? Or how, how, how the two kind of worked work together?

Elsie Farrell: 40:19

Yeah, so basically I run the two on slightly altered not altered but slightly different timelines. So when my players are going through a one shot, they're typically going through an area about six months to a year before the protagonists in my novels would encounter them. Got it? I say Interesting. So the protagonists in the novels Sidra and Theodora they're going to be moving through Veritas as the book series continues, and so the players when they play in my one shots they're really helping me kind of fill out what those areas are and what they look like, and I really am hoping that if any of my players become readers, as they read they find some Easter eggs from whatever they've caused because they're going to be in there.

Andrew: 41:21

Sure, that'd be great. I love that time.

Elsie Farrell: 41:26

Yeah, I'm, I'm to me. I want very much to be a writer. I love being a writer, but D&D and tabletop role-playing games to me that's. That's the base. That's where I'm gonna wax the little poetic here.

Elsie Farrell: 41:44

But I think that storytelling is communal. It's something that as human beings for thousands of years, like we've gathered together and told stories together and I think that that's the way stories are supposed to be told is communally. So as a writer, that community isn't, it's present, but it's present in a very different way, where you write something, you put something out and then the community comes after. But with D&D you're building that story together, and so to have the opportunity to create a world where I get to do kind of that community storytelling and and have that back and forth dynamic and then write in that setting is such a gift and it's something that really I think helps me take my storytelling to another level and I think it also gives me a lot more empathy and sympathy to my different characters that maybe they would have just been a person on a page, but because I have the other interactions kind of in my mind, it gives me a little bit more depth to work with.

Andrew: 43:05

That's great. Yeah, it's. Yeah. It must be interesting to see how, like I said, how those players interact with your world, and I definitely agree it would give you a much better understanding of, or deeper feel for, who those characters are. They're not just two dimensional, they really become three dimensional characters when you've got an actual person playing that part or interacting with that part. So let me ask you this question. So, speaking about people interacting with your world, so tell me some of your most memorable moments of players in your world. What sorts of things have happened that really stick out in your mind over the years of managing this world?

Elsie Farrell: 44:02

So, oh gosh, there's been so many, so I think, and some of them are connected to the world themselves and some of them are how the world affected the characters. I think that's it. There's such an interplay. Sure, the fairy master is a big one where, you know, as a writer, typically it's just a guy who drives a ferry, right, like that's his job, and instead, as I'm writing, I had players who almost sank his ship, almost took his livelihood from him. They almost died in the process. It creates and the implications of you know, this is a fairy master along one of the main trade routes in the world. So what does that do? The local economy is particularly interesting for Dungeons and Dragons or for a novel, but it affects people.

Andrew: 45:07

Your actions have consequences.

Elsie Farrell: 45:11

Absolutely. Or I had players who kind of left they, turned over one stone too many and kind of started burying into a depth of lore. That speaks to the fact that Veritas is not the first iteration of the place that they're in, that there was an age before yes, interesting and seeing yes and seeing them kind of interact with that and grapple with that. I love putting moral quandaries in games and I think that it's something that connects players and giving them that moment of having to make a tough choice can be really really powerful, and especially in communal storytelling, because my favorite moment as a DM is when I'm not doing anything, when I'm sitting back and I'm listening to the players talk to one another, and the longer they're talking without me getting involved to me, the better that success. So I love those storytelling moments where I'm sitting back and they're just talking to one another. I remember one of my parties. It was a particularly roleplay heavy group and the story was two of the characters had come from a religious temple and the one was on a kind of like a religious mission and the other one was serving as his bodyguard and for the start of what they were doing, everything that they were kind of encountering was. It might have been a little bit challenging, but for the most part they were able to clear it and overcome Right. And then they started getting kind of deeper and deeper into the world without realizing that they're slowly getting in over their head, because they still had that beginner's confidence that low level characters often have, where it's like I've got a sword and I can see that I can hit stuff with it. So, and the two of them and the rest of the party, they got attacked by these higher level bandits and their attempts at there was like a strategy that they had that broke down very quickly and the religious character almost died. He was rolling death saves, and so that had a couple implications. It had the implication for the party as a whole, where it's like we had tactics and those tactics broke down in character and so we need to address that and how all of the characters would feel.

Elsie Farrell: 48:09

Right, there's the realization that this world has much bigger things going on in it than we might necessarily be ready for.

Elsie Farrell: 48:18

And then there's the that character's realization that you know that staring death in the face, and then his partner who was supposed to protect him and didn't. So all of these things from what to me was a like, almost like a fill-in. They were traveling and I needed them to just kind of see that the road was dangerous and it became instead this really intense role play interaction and it kind of colored the way that they handled the next couple sessions and how they did the mission that they were on and fulfilled their quest, because there was more reticence, there was more talking, there was a lot of emotion and just kind of them trying to figure out their relationship with one another. And I took that and in the setting itself, that kind of changes the way that people who travel through that area might think about that space, because if this is what that party goes through, what are other people who are experiencing something similar going to go through as well?

Andrew: 49:37

Wow, I'm just so fascinated by the depth that exists in Veritas. It's just I'm really itching to explore now. I'm like what's going on here? So what was your inspiration for creating Veritas? I mean, I know you and your family have played D&D, but was there something that kind of sparked your imagination or what got you started down that road?

Elsie Farrell: 50:11

Honestly, it was just that sense of I had made the world way too big before, and so I kind of took the map of the world that I had created and just went what is an area that no player has touched yet? And that was the area. And I was like, okay, it originally had a different name and I was like, all right, this is the area that they're going to go in and I'm just going to kind of build this out as deeply as possible. So, honestly, it was a very where the rest of the world was kind of just sort of that dallying, like oh, I guess I'll do this here, and that there, like sitting down in Veritas, had a lot more intention and a lot more like what do I want to see in fantasy stories, what would be interesting to me, and how would that kind of what would that interplay kind of look like? So there is, you know, I am a very I'm a very horror. I love horror stories, horror movies, horror books, same. So there's a lot of deep, dark woods.

Andrew: 51:31

Yeah, yeah.

Elsie Farrell: 51:33

So a lot of woods, a lot of ruins, a lot of. I was really into Tomb Raider as a kid Cool.

Andrew: 51:46

That was.

Elsie Farrell: 51:48

Yeah, my first D&D character was named Lara Croft. She was a rogue.

Andrew: 51:54

Amazing that's I did real quick because I'll I said this in our, I think, in our last episode how how much our real life experiences kind of kind of play into our character creation. And like so many, like my favorite, it was so funny. So we were interviewing somebody out of a friend of ours and her first character in middle school was named Calphalon, because she was. She was into cooking at the time and that's funny and one of my favorite, yeah, I thought it's just like that.

Andrew: 52:35

That kind of stuff I just, I just love. And one of my favorite characters was a blind, a Tabaxi monk named Draufganger, which is German for daredevil. So I I based it on the daredevil comic book character and also my cat Didi. But, but I love that, I love that that's that's where your, your, your character came from. It's just that's that's. Those are the kinds of things that I just love so much that we can, we draw from our own experience and put that into our, our characters, and I and I can tell you've done the same thing with, with, with your homebrew world you, you put a lot of yourself into that and it's, it's just so tremendous, thank you.

Andrew: 53:19

Let me ask you this question as we kind of wrap up here. So, so what, what would be your, what? What's kind of your advice for that person that comes up to your table that has never played before, has kind of an idea about D&D? But so what do you? What's what? What advice would you give to that person who wants to play but has never played before and really doesn't know even what to kind of expect, walking into a D&D game?

Elsie Farrell: 53:50

Sure, I think that the biggest advice that I give anybody coming to a table, new or experienced, is be generous with the people that you're playing with. So I think that generosity at a D&D table is what creates powerful stories, it's what creates immersion, it's what allows us to to really engage with one another and the environment. So, just, it's okay to not know the rules, right, it's okay to not know which dice to roll, but coming in and and being kind, and if you see that a player wants to try something, what's it's that? Improv that yes, and see, see what you can do to help make that happen.

Elsie Farrell: 54:45

Whether you're the DM or another player, I think you know, like, like you were saying just a minute ago, we put ourselves into these characters and into these environments and we do that with the hope of being able to do really cool things and tell really good stories with this part of ourselves that we've externalized.

Elsie Farrell: 55:08

And how amazing is it that we get the opportunity to help our friends get to do really cool things with this externalized part of themselves? And so that's my biggest thing. I'm like, if you, if you come in, you come to the table, you're generous with the people that you're with and you're here to have a nice time and a fun time, then it's going to be great and you're going to love it. The rules are secondary. The dice rules are secondary. It's about that collaborative storytelling and it's about letting all of us take that piece of ourselves and do something really cool with it and help one another do that too in that process. So that would be my biggest piece of advice is to come to the table and just be generous with the people that you're playing with.

Andrew: 55:53

I love that so much. Elsie, thank you so much for your time. I want to make sure we cover this one more time before I let you go. And the the light keeper is is the novella which is available on Amazon. I will. I'll make sure we put the link in the show notes as well, so anybody that's interested in in checking that out. What is it? It was, I think at the moment it was 99 cents. What's the? What's the normal price for the book? It's typically 2.99.

Elsie Farrell: 56:21

Okay.

Andrew: 56:21

Yes, I scored it for 99 cents and I was like yes, so even 2.99 is a steal for this novella. It's fantastic. And what's the? Do you have the name of the first book?

Elsie Farrell: 56:33

So the name of the first book, I think by the time the podcast comes out it'll be revealed. So the first book is veils of the wayward and it comes out February 13th and that'll be on yes, and that'll be on Kindle and physical copies. It'll be available both ways.

Andrew: 56:50

Fantastic, I'm. I am looking forward to it. I will. I will definitely be buying a copy of that for sure. Actually, is there anything else you'd like to share, Any other, anything else you'd like to promote? Or? Or, what else can we, what else can we help you with?

Elsie Farrell: 57:05

Sure. So if anybody is interested in playing in the world of erudas, I release modules through my TTRBG company on Onyx Lunacy RPG. So I have a module coming out next Monday, another one coming out in October, I released one in June. So a lot of these stories that I'm telling in the world of erudas. If somebody wants to play them for themselves, I'm writing modules so that they can do that. So if you follow me on Instagram, you can find out more.

Andrew: 57:35

Absolutely, and, like I said, I'll put the link to that in the show notes as well, so so everybody can get to it really quickly. Elsie, thank you again so much. This has been such a great conversation. I really appreciate your time and hopefully, hopefully I'll be writing your book soon.

Elsie Farrell: 57:52

Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful. Thank you, thank you.