Advanced Gamemastery: The Grok Threshold 

That might explain the indeterminate accent.

@@cavalier973 I suspect that's just a speech disorder he's handling pretty well.

My players loved my Jaquayed dungeon ... A video on this should be essential

1. Yes, some Jaquaying videos would be great 🙂 2. A few weeks ago, the Wandering DMs had Jennell Jaquays on as a guest. They mentioned the Jaquaying principles series from The Alexandrian and asked if she'd had a set of techniques like that for her dungeon design. She hadn't had them as an explicit list or anything, but she was able to hit a number of them off the top of her head when just mentioning things she found make for interesting dungeons.

You're welcome! I'm sure with the passion you bring to the setting, you're getting the most important part of it right every single time!

I think Threat Clocks from Apocalypse World work pretty well. They help control pacing, and you can tell at a glance if you've got too much or too little competing for player attention.

It also helps that the creator, Keith Baker, actively encourages making it your own. He goes as far as declaring his own novels non-canon. Everything in every book is treated as inspiration, not mandatory lore.

When you get a chance to run it, check out the EP fan adventures I have on my site: thealexandrian.net/rpg-scenarios

You should check Keith Baker web page, he answers a lot of questions and has lot's of ideas for the setting

He is in your head ... but don't worry he's mostly Benign ...

The maps are from Blades in the Dark and Numenera. The "ship's wheel" is the Faerunian calendar, which was made by one of my players for our Dragon Heist campaign.

@@TheAlexandrian Amazing. Thank you for the reply and all your great work.

A friend of mine ran a Star Wars game a few years back where Darth Vader died in a TIE Fighter crash in the first session. She said it really rammed home the idea that the game was not beholden to canon, and it went well for her group.

That's the map of the Ninth World from Monte Cook's Numenera!

One key thing here is "starting." If your goal is to tackle Waterdeep but you're feeling intimidated by Waterdeep, maybe you start the campaign in Ardeep Forest. Gives you space to immerse into the broad elements of the setting before getting deep into a section of the world incredibly dense with lore. Which isn't to say you shouldn't go with Waterdeep if that's a chunk you're interested in and feel comfortable getting on top of.

It depends on how you do prep. If you are starting in a place that it's not that much covered by the setting, you are going to do a lot of heavy lifting (you probably don't have maps or named NPCs)... but you are going to know about things like, how is the culture? which creatures live here? what's the history of this place? what are the important places? If you play in Faerun, probably the players are already expecting starting in the Sword Coast, or the Ten Towns... but it can also have that weird effect you have on Marvel comics... New York is the most important place on the whole multiverse, because the volume of superheroes that live there. If you start in a place the players aren't that familiar with, they have to discover the place... and that doesn't mean the Gods are different or that you can't have a wizard of Thay. Heck, you can even say that default generic Mesoamerican fantasy IS the point of Maztica on Faerun. Kara-Tur is not that subtle. Al-Qadim is an arabian tales rip off, but that's the strength of the setting.

@@TheAlexandrian If the location you'd start in is Ardeep Forest, then I'm on board indeed! It's close enough to the setting's heart to convey the Sword Coast vibes. Likewise, if the mass of material on Waterdeep is too daunting but you still want to start a game in an urban environment in the Realms, any major town from, say, Amn, Cormyr or Sembia would do fine in my opinion. In that case reading a couple pages from your favorite FR Campaign Setting edition (the section on the nation you're in, the particular paragraph dedicated to that city) should be sufficient. The key point here is as follows. If that city feels like a generic city **from the Realms**, you're doing it right. It doesn't matter that it lacks the level of detail and local color that you'd get from running Waterdeep by the book. As long as players recognize the mark of the Realms - Harpers and Zhents bashing at each other, Shar devotees plotting against everyone else, Red Wizards smuggling dangerous magical wares, a cameo by Drizzt & friends... -, they'll get the Realms feeling they signed up for. If however it feels like a generic fantasy city or even a well-detailed home-brewed city merely pretending to be in the Realms, then you're doing it wrong. This is why I'd advise against starting too far from the "core" areas, where the distance implied in "too far" isn't strictly a geographic notion. It more appropriately translates as "how likely is it that iconic elements of the setting show up here? how easy is it too integrate them in that starting position?". I must admit, since I'm not familiar at all with Eclipse Phase, your Carpo example sounded like a complete backwater to me. Perhaps that gave rise to a misunderstanding. Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking video, and for replying; an opportunity to pause and give some structure to a loosely defined intuition is always appreciated.

@@estebanrodriguez5409 It all depends on players' expectations. If players signed up for Mesoamerican fantasy, then Maztica is the obvious starting point in the Realms, sure. But Maztica is certainly not what people have in mind when they think about the Realms (and besides there may be better-suited systems and settings for that particular genre). So, if players signed up for a campaign in the Realms, spending multiples sessions in Maztica - especially the defining first ones - may not be what they expected. Think of it this way: -"When the pandemic is over I plan to visit the United States". -"Cool, where exactly in the States?" -"America Samoa. The entire archipelago, two weeks".

@@Magean0 Going with that analogy, it's very diffirent to visit Seattle, San Francisco, New York or Las Vegas... they are part of the same country but they are very different places.