Claim to Game Podcast
042: Beyond D&D - What Makes TTRPGs Click for Kids and Adults? With Martin Lloyd
Claim to GameJune 19, 2025
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042: Beyond D&D - What Makes TTRPGs Click for Kids and Adults? With Martin Lloyd

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#42 - A vast world of tabletop gaming exists beyond the familiar realms of Dungeons & Dragons. In this episode, Clint speaks with Martin Lloyd, a father, lifelong gamer, and game designer who created a game to play with his four-year-old daughter on a rainy afternoon and published Amazing Tales by 2019. This game requires no prep for parents and makes GMing so simple that a 4-year-old can master it. We explore how to introduce children to this remarkable hobby and how to engage and connect with our children in meaningful ways. Let's talk about what else there is to play!"

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00:00:00
>> Martin Lloyd: This is basically, everybody's in,

00:00:02
everybody's paying attention, everyone's focused. I'm not going

00:00:05
to say it's guaranteed quality time, but it's pretty close. But as soon as

00:00:08
they can talk. How long do I have to wait? When can I stop

00:00:11
playing role playing games with my kids? But with kids there's no

00:00:14
habit, there's no preconceptions

00:00:17
and they get into this, they get this really easily.

00:00:19
I've yet to meet a kid who's a bad role player.

00:00:22
>> Clint Scheirer: I have a confession to make. I am a

00:00:25
tabletop gamer. Nerd alert. Nerd

00:00:28
alert. I'm also a dad. Am, I the radest, baddest dad

00:00:31
a kid ever had. And I want to share my love of tabletop games with

00:00:34
my three kids. But the question is, when is the right

00:00:37
age to expose my children to the magic of

00:00:40
tabletop games? What is the right game to

00:00:42
play?

00:00:43
Martin Lloyd is a father, a gamer, a game

00:00:45
designer and a lifelong role player. He first came up with

00:00:48
the idea of Amazing Tales to play a game with

00:00:51
his four year old daughter when it was rainy outside. And

00:00:54
in 2019 he was able to publish

00:00:57
Amazing Tales. This game

00:00:59
requires zero prep for the parent and it's so

00:01:02
easy your 4 year old could j it.

00:01:04
>> Martin Lloyd: You got it, dude.

00:01:06
>> Clint Scheirer: Let's go make your claim to game.

00:01:42
You have a game called Amazing

00:01:45
Tales?

00:01:46
>> Martin Lloyd: I do, yeah. You do. I have it right

00:01:49
here.

00:01:49
>> Clint Scheirer: Hey, there it is.

00:01:52
It's a really fun art. I think the art really

00:01:55
tailors two children. My kids would pick up that book and start

00:01:58
looking through it right away, I think without any,

00:02:00
without batting an eyelash, without b, an eye.

00:02:03
And what I wanna know is, you know, you developed this

00:02:06
amazing game and the game is designed to be played

00:02:09
with children in their trusted adult. Whether it's a parent or

00:02:12
somebody else that they're trusting to go through this game in this

00:02:15
story. You know, it's got some really amazing

00:02:17
reviews. I went through the reviews on Driveruu,

00:02:20
RPG NWorld. I was looking at

00:02:23
Geek Native. There were other blogs and

00:02:26
podcasts that were just speaking its praises.

00:02:28
And the customers, they think it's, I'm gonna use the term the

00:02:31
bees knees. Bee knees.

00:02:34
Like it's pretty cool. And so

00:02:37
what I wanna know is why do you think it works so

00:02:39
well? What do you think the key reason

00:02:42
is that Amazing Tails work so well and has

00:02:45
been so well received?

00:02:47
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, I think, a big part of it is

00:02:50
it's really, really simple.

00:02:53
I think, I don't know if the 200 word

00:02:56
RPG contest is still a thing. But I

00:02:59
did put Amazing Tales, I got it down to 200 words and

00:03:02
put the full rules in for that once. So it

00:03:05
is really, really simple. And that means

00:03:08
that four year olds really can play it. So one of the things I used to say

00:03:11
in the advertising is rules so simple your 4 year old can explain them.

00:03:14
And it's true. People say to me, oh, that can't really

00:03:17
be right. It is. You can. And

00:03:20
I've seen people send me photographs of kind of 4 and 5 year olds

00:03:23
who are GG and

00:03:25
it's that easy.

00:03:27
So when you create a character, you to, you pick

00:03:30
four things your character can do. I think in the rules I

00:03:33
call them skills, but they are things your character can do. And that could be

00:03:36
anything from like fighting

00:03:38
monsters to someone sent me,

00:03:41
their daughter had made up a character for a Star Wars

00:03:44
type setting they were playing in. And she had that being a

00:03:47
queen was one of her skills. So she was

00:03:50
being a space queen or a space princess. That was her

00:03:52
skill.

00:03:53
>> Clint Scheirer: It must be nice to be queen.

00:03:55
>> Martin Lloyd: So you pick four skills of each. Get a different sized dice.

00:03:58
Because rolling different sized dice is fun. So you get a 6 and 8,

00:04:01
a 10 and 12. and then whenever you do something,

00:04:04
you roll the dice. If you get a three or more, you've succeeded.

00:04:07
if you get a one or a two, you have failed

00:04:10
and things get worse. And that things

00:04:13
will continue to get worse until you pass a roll. And that's

00:04:15
it, that's the whole game.

00:04:18
>> Clint Scheirer: And that's the way the cookie crumbles. So regardless of

00:04:20
the size of the dice, regardless of the sides on the

00:04:23
dice, it's one or two fails. Anything above

00:04:26
three or above success.

00:04:29
Yeah, I love that.

00:04:31
>> Martin Lloyd: And we do sometimes say, you know, if you get the biggest number on the

00:04:34
dice, then something super special happens.

00:04:36
>> Clint Scheirer: But that's an optional super

00:04:39
special instead of critical success.

00:04:42
I like that term.

00:04:43
>> Martin Lloyd: There's no hit points or anything like that. So this is a game for

00:04:46
ages 4 and up. So

00:04:49
I don't know anybody who thinks it would be a good

00:04:52
idea as a parent to kind of kill your child's character at age

00:04:55
5. so there's no hit points,

00:04:58
so that's fine. So things get worse.

00:05:00
And it can be really exciting when

00:05:03
you failed two rols in a row. So maybe the monster,

00:05:06
first he catches you and then he's gonna devour you and he's

00:05:09
holding you there above his mouth and you've got to think of something

00:05:13
to kind of get out of that situation. That is plenty

00:05:16
of drama for ah, the average five

00:05:19
year old. You don't need to tell them they're down to like 2 out of 12 hit

00:05:21
points. @ that point it's like no,

00:05:24
if you mess this up something even worse is gonna

00:05:27
happen. so that works. And the other is the GM never

00:05:30
rolls any dice. so it's not adversarial.

00:05:33
So it's always just player facing the player, always on taking

00:05:36
the action.

00:05:37
>> Clint Scheirer: It's a collaborative storytelling focus.

00:05:40
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeahah, that's a nice way of puting.

00:05:43
>> Clint Scheirer: Now when I, when you were talking, the GM doesn't roll any

00:05:46
dice. In some other games the GM does a lot of

00:05:49
things. The GM is prepping the

00:05:52
game, the GM is coming up with the scenarios,

00:05:55
the GM is making funny voices. The GM

00:05:58
is maybe not making funny voices but definitely

00:06:01
having to describe a lot of the story. How

00:06:04
do you feel that that weight, I think we

00:06:06
talked about it being the mental weight of running a

00:06:09
game. How is that balanced in this situation?

00:06:12
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, so I think

00:06:15
exactly what you say for sort of if you're playing with grown

00:06:18
up friends or teenage friends then

00:06:21
role playing games do put a lot of cognitive load on

00:06:24
the games master. particularly if you haven't

00:06:27
got sort of really good group dynamics.

00:06:30
So the games mustst have'supposed

00:06:33
to provide a scenario. He's often also supposed

00:06:36
to provide the venue and the snacks.

00:06:40
You should at least outsource all that stuff.

00:06:43
and then also be the one who knows all the rules and who knows what's

00:06:46
gonna happen next. And on the flip side of this

00:06:49
you have players turn up and kind of say oh I can't remember the name of my

00:06:52
character. And

00:06:55
that's always kind of disappointing. So you feel like

00:06:58
the games master is doing all the work and the players are kind of

00:07:01
there to be entertained. That's never very good.

00:07:04
What works really differently when you've got an adult and a

00:07:06
child is that games

00:07:09
mastering is a fairly intensive

00:07:12
business. Whatever age you're running for and if you're running

00:07:15
for your 4 year old or your 6 year old

00:07:17
then you're working quite hard to think of stuff that

00:07:20
they're going to like and that's going to keep them going and to deal with whatever

00:07:23
strange curveball they've just come up with.

00:07:25
>> Clint Scheirer: Look, a goose.

00:07:26
>> Martin Lloyd: But the key thing is for them it's pretty hard work

00:07:29
too. They're telling this

00:07:32
collaborative story, they're Trying to think about a character, they're trying to

00:07:35
imagine the world that you're describing. and they're

00:07:38
trying to do all that as they're going along. That

00:07:41
is hard work for a four or five or a six

00:07:44
year old. And to keep this up for 20,

00:07:46
25 minutes, which is kind of a good length for

00:07:49
a game of Amazing Tales. Ah, at that

00:07:52
age, that really puts a load on them. And the great

00:07:55
thing is that that means everyone's equally

00:07:57
engaged. So if you've

00:08:00
got, a small child and you have played

00:08:03
Snakes and Ladders with them or Ludo

00:08:06
or something like that, you know

00:08:09
how hard as a grown up it is to

00:08:12
stay engaged. Dad, wake up.

00:08:15
You roll the dice, you move the thing.

00:08:18
for your kid, this is super engrossing and

00:08:21
they're really into it and they'll be explaining to

00:08:24
you how they are really good at rolling fives.

00:08:28
Oh, but they need a four. And the thing they're really good at

00:08:31
rolling is five. You get all of that going

00:08:34
on. but for the adult or when you're

00:08:37
reading the storybook for the 20th time, it's

00:08:39
hard to be engaged. And the

00:08:42
kids can tell that they like

00:08:45
spending time with their parents, they like doing things together, but they can kind of tell when

00:08:48
you're tuning out a bit. so I think

00:08:51
what makes kids and adults really respond

00:08:54
well to Amazing Tales is that this is basically

00:08:57
everybody's in, everybody's paying attention, everyone's

00:09:00
focused. I'm not going to say it's guaranteed quality time, but

00:09:03
it's pretty close. That's one of the reasons I think kids love playing

00:09:06
the games is because it's really something you're doing together. And at the end of it,

00:09:09
you've got a story you could tell together. And, both sides can

00:09:11
say, well, that only came out that way because

00:09:14
of, both our contributions.

00:09:17
Everyone realizes that.

00:09:19
>> Clint Scheirer: Yeah, you know, two things that came to mind. That

00:09:22
time limit is gold because, you

00:09:25
know, even keeping adults paying

00:09:28
attention. I believe there was a TED Talk, study

00:09:30
done in TED Talks, International. Right.

00:09:33
Like these speaking events that people are trying to go to to

00:09:36
learn things and be inspired. They don't allow you to go past

00:09:39
18 minutes in those talks

00:09:42
anymore because the average attention

00:09:45
span, even for adults has gone straight down.

00:09:48
>> Martin Lloyd: That, makes a lot of sense to me. and yeah, I have to say,

00:09:51
I don't watch a lot of actual plays. I know some people love

00:09:54
them, but I find it really hard to stay with

00:09:57
them. and when I'M running

00:09:59
games I really try and keep for

00:10:02
adults I really try and keep turn short because I think if

00:10:05
everyone's turn is takingake three minutes and you've got five players

00:10:08
and I want to do something more than every 15 minutes,

00:10:11
I know I'm going to start tuning out.

00:10:13
>> Clint Scheirer: If you are running a long term campaign, treat each

00:10:15
one like a one shot, you know,

00:10:18
treat each one like a little episode or a movie

00:10:21
and you know the difference between an adult TV

00:10:23
show and maybe a children's TV show,

00:10:26
the timing is different. at least, at least by five to 10

00:10:29
minutes sometimes. They're not always the same length for each

00:10:32
program. So that, that makes sense to me.

00:10:35
so as you were developing this, most

00:10:37
game designers, if they're good, which

00:10:40
you're good, they have playte

00:10:43
tests. Right. People are testing the game

00:10:46
and trying to figure out how the, how the

00:10:49
game works, and what doesn't work and

00:10:51
adjusting and you know, doing all that

00:10:54
pre work before you actually sell the game and make it

00:10:57
big. What did you find unique

00:11:00
or unexpected as you were going through the playtest

00:11:03
with either parents or children?

00:11:05
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah. To start on the design end I did

00:11:08
do quite a lot of looking around online, talking to people

00:11:11
who'd written other games for kids, talked to

00:11:14
them about their experiences and watched actual plays

00:11:17
online. And this was when

00:11:19
Google Circles was still a thing.

00:11:22
actual communities I could dive into and engage with.

00:11:25
And one of the things I got was there was this just this huge

00:11:27
desire on the part of you know,

00:11:30
if you are a role player and you have a small child,

00:11:33
your first question is how long do I have to wait? How long

00:11:36
do we have to wait before they can talk is too young. But as soon as

00:11:39
they can talk, how long do I have to wait? When can I start

00:11:42
playing role playing games with my kids'just? This thing

00:11:45
role players have. because it's a

00:11:48
great hobby, we want to share it I think.

00:11:52
and that leads to lots of people trying to play

00:11:55
games with their kids far too soon I think. Or

00:11:58
games that their kids aren't ready for.

00:12:01
So if you go on YouTube you will find plenty of

00:12:04
videos of dads trying to

00:12:07
get their three and four year olds to play full blown

00:12:10
Dungeonsons and Dragons, rolling

00:12:12
D20s and

00:12:15
like the kids there and they're present but they're not, you

00:12:18
know, but dad is kind of doing everything. It's almost always

00:12:21
that. and

00:12:24
I'm not sure that kind of shared experience is really Happening.

00:12:27
So that was one thing was this huge demand, but it wasn't

00:12:30
quite working. And then the other thing was just

00:12:33
taking things out of the design.

00:12:35
So, the very first

00:12:38
time I ran this game, I ran it for my daughter. She

00:12:41
was 4 at the time. And,

00:12:45
she found a magic treasure. ah,

00:12:48
her fairy princess Rose found a magic treasure. I think

00:12:51
it was a ring. I think it made her courageous. But it gave her a

00:12:54
plus one on a roll.

00:12:56
And even that in the end turned out

00:12:59
to be too much rules. So I was like,

00:13:02
oh, we've got a magic item. We should have a plus one. It's like,

00:13:05
don't need that, don't take that out. It's just

00:13:08
if she says, I use my magic ring, I and brilliant.

00:13:11
Roll your normal dice. If it comes at more than three, the

00:13:14
magic item made a difference. but

00:13:18
even just that little, having a plus one

00:13:20
wasn't necessary. It was too much rule.

00:13:23
This is maybe an insight into game design.

00:13:27
You can have rules for everything, but you probably

00:13:30
shouldn't. So the rules you choose to

00:13:33
keep are the ones that are going to

00:13:35
decide what your game is about. So if

00:13:38
you keep rules for chases in your game, to

00:13:41
name a very common subsystem, then I hope your

00:13:44
game is like Fast and Furious or something like that

00:13:47
that it chases is going to be a big thing.

00:13:51
Otherwise just take them out the same for like grappling.

00:13:54
So many role playing games. I have rules for grappling. Why do like, you could

00:13:57
just roll a normal attack, but no, somebody wants to be able to do like

00:14:00
20 different grappling moves. If your game is

00:14:03
like wrestlinge.

00:14:05
>> Clint Scheirer: I was going to say pro wrestling the rpg.

00:14:07
>> Martin Lloyd: If that's the game, I forget the name of it. I've played a pro

00:14:10
wrestling RPG and it was a lot of fun. But yeah, if that's your game, by all

00:14:13
means have a really extensive grappling system. But

00:14:16
otherwise, please don't bother.

00:14:18
>> Clint Scheirer: You had mentioned, taking things out of the

00:14:21
game. I think of when I played Dungeons

00:14:24
and Dragons and I am not a Dungeons and Dragons hater. I

00:14:27
think it definitely brought me into the hobby about 10 years

00:14:30
ago. It was my gateway drug,

00:14:33
I suppose, to table.

00:14:36
Yeah, yeah. And there were just certain

00:14:39
things I didn't want to do. I didn't want to keep track

00:14:41
of, how much food my players had

00:14:44
as they were traveling across the desert.

00:14:47
I didn't want to keep track of, I

00:14:50
don't know, any of the minutiae, that normally I don't want to

00:14:53
think about, like, I have to think about that if I'm traveling across country

00:14:56
with my kids, I have to think about making sure we have food.

00:14:59
I don't want to think about that in a role playing game, personally.

00:15:02
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, I think it's a lot to do with genre, you know.

00:15:05
So, yeah, Dungeons and Dragons always feels to me quite high

00:15:08
fantasy. Quite like you're not supposed to be worrying about how much

00:15:10
food you've got. if you're playing

00:15:14
something Game of Thrones esque

00:15:16
and you're somewhere out beyond the wall, and,

00:15:19
it might be quite interesting to start giving

00:15:22
people decisions to make about, okay,

00:15:25
there's you and there's the 10 guys you're with and you've only got

00:15:28
enough food for eight of you unless everyone's going to be hungry

00:15:31
and suffering. So then it becomes

00:15:33
interesting if you're making

00:15:36
people make decisions. But yeah,

00:15:39
generally you don't want to be thinking about

00:15:41
counting arrows or pennies or food

00:15:44
or any of that stuff.

00:15:46
>> Clint Scheirer: Yeah, I tend to just ignore the stuff that I don't want.

00:15:49
But it would make it a lot easier not having to look at it in the first place

00:15:52
in the rule book.

00:15:53
>> Martin Lloyd: Well, there is this idea that sort of it's only a

00:15:56
proper game if it's got these things. so the first game

00:15:59
I ever wrote when I was about 16,

00:16:02
so that was a long time ago now,

00:16:06
had all these rules because it had rules for encumbrance

00:16:09
and movement and move it through difficult. Just because

00:16:12
I thought you needed to have those. I was like, it's not a proper game if it doesn't

00:16:15
have all these things.

00:16:16
>> Clint Scheirer: Encumbrance is one that I also kind of turned a blind

00:16:19
eye too when, when I was playing D20 & D. However,

00:16:22
when I did Pathfinder 2E or Pathfinder 2E

00:16:25
2e or the Starfinder Playtest

00:16:28
for second edition that just came out with Paizo.

00:16:31
Encumbrance, was a thing and I actually had to make sure I

00:16:33
didn't bury myself with too much

00:16:36
equipment for every situation.

00:16:38
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, the One Ring has a really nice, simple

00:16:41
system for encumbrance. it basically all you have

00:16:44
to track is your armor and your weapons. You

00:16:47
have adventuring kits, but that doesn't count. You just have your armor and your

00:16:50
weapons and it ties it to your hit points.

00:16:53
So it's really important about when you're getting tired. And

00:16:56
there's a genuine trade off to be made between having lots of

00:16:59
armor, but then getting tired much

00:17:01
quicker. The One Ring is a really

00:17:04
good example of what I'm talking about because every

00:17:07
bit of mechanic that's in that game

00:17:10
is relevant to the genre and the setting. It's all

00:17:13
chosen to really build up this kind of

00:17:16
Middle Earthy feel. That's what you have rules

00:17:18
for and things that don't contribute to that aren't in

00:17:21
there. And, one nice tip.

00:17:24
I heard the designer being interviewed and he said, yeah,

00:17:27
even what we called the various stats and things we would go through the

00:17:30
books looking for, what are the words Tolkien would

00:17:33
use for these things?

00:17:35
>> Clint Scheirer: And this may answer the next question because you

00:17:38
said, less is more.

00:17:40
Keep it simple. Were there any strategies

00:17:43
that you built in when designing Amazing

00:17:46
Tales to help, kids think about

00:17:48
resolving conflict? is it just the

00:17:51
dice? Is it, is it just the dice or is there an

00:17:53
element of like, social interaction?

00:17:56
>> Martin Lloyd: So in the basic game, it basically the

00:17:59
thing that you're always supposed to come back to when you're running the game is to say,

00:18:02
what do you do? Your goal as a GM is basically

00:18:05
to get to that question as fast as you can.

00:18:08
So you maybe a little bit of description, maybe set the

00:18:11
scene, but you want to get that question

00:18:14
on the table really, really fast. What do you do?

00:18:17
This happens. What do you do? This happens. What do you do?

00:18:20
And then listen to your kids

00:18:23
and what they come back with. They will have picked the four things

00:18:26
their character's good at, so they'll probably suggest those.

00:18:29
one thing they often say is, something like,

00:18:32
I roll my fighting dice or

00:18:35
can I roll this dice?

00:18:38
So I do think it's good to kind of go and prompt for like, no, what do

00:18:40
you do? And then we'll decide what dice that's going to be.

00:18:43
>> Clint Scheirer: That's a struggle for than new gamers. New adult

00:18:45
gamers too.

00:18:46
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, yeah. So I think it's. But with kids,

00:18:49
there's no habit, there's no

00:18:52
preconceptions. And they get into this, they get this

00:18:55
really easily. I've yet to meet a kid who's a bad

00:18:57
role player. One thing I suggest, it's not a rule rule, but

00:19:00
it's a suggestion, is if something fails, you have to

00:19:03
do a different approach the next time.

00:19:06
So if you say I fight the monster with my

00:19:09
sword fighting skill and that doesn't work,

00:19:12
then the next thing you have to do has to use one of your

00:19:15
other three skills. So the situation gets worse. Ah, the

00:19:18
monster, parries your attack and knocks you down. And

00:19:21
now he's going to, throw you in his cooking pot.

00:19:24
He's like okay, what other skills have you got that

00:19:27
works quite well and it works quite well with adults as

00:19:30
well. Now you have to try something

00:19:32
different.

00:19:33
>> Clint Scheirer: Well, that's the real life skill, right?

00:19:36
Sometimes something works

00:19:38
and then sometimes that same strategy doesn't and

00:19:41
you have to go into your toolbox. Usually it's an internal,

00:19:44
you know, in your head toolbox or in your heart

00:19:47
toolbox. And you have to come back to the situation and do something

00:19:50
different. what is the challenge here and how can you fix it

00:19:53
or how can you get closer to this other individual? In our

00:19:56
house we, we have, ah, you know,

00:19:59
how do you help the other mentality?

00:20:02
I granted I have an eight, a seven and a, sorry,

00:20:04
an eight, a six and a four year old. And that does not always

00:20:07
work right off the bat. There is a little bit of

00:20:10
facilitation, like a real life game master

00:20:13
here trying, trying to get my kids to get along.

00:20:15
but yeah, that I love that, that you have to take a

00:20:18
different approach when something doesn't work. The

00:20:21
first time I heard from some.

00:20:23
>> Martin Lloyd: Therapists who had started using Amazing Tales with

00:20:26
kids. And there's a whole bunch of

00:20:29
other products and therapies that have been brought

00:20:32
up around role playing games. But I got in touch with one

00:20:35
of them and there is a supplement to Amazing Tales,

00:20:38
the big Book of Amazing Tales.

00:20:40
>> Clint Scheirer: Nice.

00:20:40
>> Martin Lloyd: And she wrote a chapter for this which is about

00:20:43
using Amazing Tales in therapeutic

00:20:46
settings, or to help kids address

00:20:48
things. And it's quite interesting the

00:20:51
way she describes doing that because she talks about

00:20:54
needing to maybe do things that you wouldn't normally do as

00:20:57
a gm. So if you want to address a specific

00:21:00
issue that a child is having, then you sort of have to

00:21:02
push that button. And then

00:21:05
when it doesn't work, you have to push that button again and push that button

00:21:08
again until they kind of come up with a different

00:21:11
response. And then you can kind of

00:21:14
reward the response that, that was desired or whatever.

00:21:17
But that is not how I would suggest you sort of GM a

00:21:20
session if you're running it for fun. Yeah,

00:21:23
but the idea that you kind of okay, this thing that frustrates

00:21:25
you as a child is the thing that we're

00:21:28
now going to put in the game to see how you deal with

00:21:31
is quite an interesting approach.

00:21:34
>> Clint Scheirer: What I've learned in my professional

00:21:37
job when I'm coaching individuals or managing

00:21:40
anybody, is that I like to talk a

00:21:43
lot, right? Like I wanna give

00:21:46
advice, I wanna keep speaking. I don't always

00:21:49
Leave, room for a pause

00:21:52
or silence. What is your

00:21:54
thoughts about that? Being able to, as a gm,

00:21:58
stop talking and let the players are, in this case, maybe the children

00:22:00
speak?

00:22:01
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah. Well, like I say, it's about getting to that question

00:22:04
about what do you do as fast as you

00:22:07
can and then shut up, shot

00:22:10
up. And they'll have an

00:22:12
idea, and listen to what your

00:22:15
kids say because it's often

00:22:18
they will say something that isn't quite what you're expecting, or they'll come

00:22:21
with something that's a bit left field, or they'll have not quite understood part of

00:22:24
your description. And so

00:22:27
it's good to really listen and not just sort of assume that you know

00:22:30
what they're going to do. That's their input to the story. That's how

00:22:33
they can contribute. So you've got to take that on

00:22:36
board.

00:22:36
>> Clint Scheirer: You know, this is a scary question to ask a child,

00:22:39
but sometimes I'll ask the initial question, they'll give me an

00:22:41
answer. And then I, got this from Michael

00:22:44
Bungay Stainer, who wrote, the Coaching

00:22:47
Habit. He'll say, anything else,

00:22:51
anything else, and you could go down that rabbit hole

00:22:54
with a child. I think maybe, maybe farther than you want

00:22:57
to. but it's amazing when you

00:23:00
take more layers of that onion away. Ogres

00:23:03
are, ah, like onions. To use an analogy, the

00:23:06
question onion, you'll get a lot farther. It's almost like when

00:23:09
you were saying pushing the button, anything else, anything

00:23:11
else, you come up with some really interesting stories.

00:23:14
>> Martin Lloyd: Another thing I like to do is, and I

00:23:17
suggest in the book, is to,

00:23:20
not decide everything up front and ask the players

00:23:24
what happens. You find,

00:23:27
the horrible monster that's guarding the treasure. What is

00:23:30
it? The kids

00:23:33
may well come up with something way more interesting than you

00:23:36
had in mindah.

00:23:39
so that sort of handing some agency

00:23:42
over to the players, is I think also great

00:23:45
that they can contribute and suggest

00:23:48
and you know, in the end, whatever it is, they're gonna roll the dice and have to not get a

00:23:51
one or a two.

00:23:52
>> Clint Scheirer: That makes me think, I've read a book multiple times,

00:23:55
the Lazy Dungeon Master by Mike Sha.

00:23:58
also the Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

00:24:01
And there's a phrase in there, and I'm probably butchering the

00:24:04
phrase, but it doesn't become

00:24:06
real until your players make it real.

00:24:10
And I've really tried to live by that,

00:24:13
where maybe I have an idea of what's in that treasure box.

00:24:17
But they may come up with Something way better and I just scrap

00:24:19
it. Never sees the light of day.

00:24:23
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, I'm not familiar with that phrase, but

00:24:25
certainly I get the idea, you know, that once,

00:24:29
once players start engaging, really engaging with the

00:24:32
world, that you've put out there for them and once

00:24:35
they start to want to have some agency and to interact with it or maybe

00:24:38
add things to it. Yeah, then it feels a

00:24:41
lot more real. I find as

00:24:44
a player that I really like games where you get to have a bit of

00:24:47
a home base. So

00:24:50
you can be customizing things and adding things and

00:24:53
expanding it. And sometimes that's built into the

00:24:55
system. So,

00:24:58
Ven is one that comes to mind where you get a

00:25:01
castle basically that you operate out of.

00:25:04
And one of the things you can expl Bender experience points on is

00:25:06
improving your castle. so that's really nice and

00:25:09
it's fused into the mechanics. but

00:25:12
there's lots of other games, where you

00:25:15
just acquire a house or a castle or a

00:25:18
spaceship or whatever it is. and I

00:25:21
love those games. I really want to get into kind

00:25:23
of building my little base

00:25:26
and my setup and my

00:25:29
equipment and so on. and

00:25:32
that's, I guess it's sort of one of the ways I like sort of

00:25:35
feeling like my character is rooted in that world

00:25:38
as bit a bit more of a solid

00:25:40
presence.

00:25:41
>> Clint Scheirer: What is the single most common mistake that you

00:25:44
see parents do when they're playing? Like we talked

00:25:47
about the dad trying to play D and d with their 4 year old

00:25:50
online. What are some of the mistakes that somebody

00:25:53
could run into?

00:25:55
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, I don't want to talk too much about

00:25:57
mistakes because if you're playing the game

00:26:00
that's already a good thing. I don't want to say

00:26:03
there's a wrong way to do it in the right way to do it,

00:26:06
but I think when you're playing with

00:26:09
kids, it's important to

00:26:12
not say no. So, particularly for

00:26:15
the design of Amazing Tales, I leaned a lot into the sort of

00:26:17
improvisational. Yes. And kind of

00:26:20
stuff Amazing Tales doesn't

00:26:22
really. Well, it comes with sort of four suggested

00:26:25
backgrounds. So there's

00:26:28
fairies and talking animals, which is called the Deep Dark

00:26:31
Wood. There's beyond the

00:26:34
Stars, which is Space Adventures. There's

00:26:37
Magical Kingdoms Long Ago, which is your kind of

00:26:39
classic fantasy,

00:26:42
thing. and

00:26:46
kids. Oh, and pirates. Kids love pirates.

00:26:48
And kids kind of know

00:26:51
roughly what fits into each of those categories.

00:26:55
But, my all time favorite

00:26:57
character that my son came up with

00:27:00
is King Tyranno. Sneak. there is a picture of

00:27:03
him in the book. And

00:27:06
King Tyranno Sneak is ah, a robot

00:27:09
dinosaur. He has ah,

00:27:11
four arms because, when you are

00:27:14
five or six, the coolest thing you can imagine is not a

00:27:17
sword and a shield, but two swords and two

00:27:20
shields. Here he is. Is King

00:27:22
Tyranop.

00:27:23
>> Clint Scheirer: Yeah, look at that.

00:27:26
>> Martin Lloyd: and he is a ninja as well. Surprisingly

00:27:28
stealthy for a giant robot king. And he lives on

00:27:31
an island made of lava and all that kind of stuff.

00:27:35
so he doesn't fit into any of those worlds. But that was

00:27:38
exactly what my son wanted to be doing that day. was

00:27:41
the adventure with King Dyna Snakeak. So basically

00:27:44
by saying yes to all of that, we then ended up with this whole

00:27:47
new world and setting just for my

00:27:50
son. with

00:27:52
lava monsters, seas of lava with all these

00:27:55
kind of different robotic dinosaurs

00:27:58
hanging out in them. And

00:28:01
yeah, it was just a blast and absolute blast.

00:28:04
That again. and if you don't say yes to

00:28:07
things, if you say no, we're playing a pirate game. Think of a pirate.

00:28:10
then that's never going to happen.

00:28:14
>> Clint Scheirer: Yeah. Being open to where they lead.

00:28:17
>> Martin Lloyd: So all the pictures and things are there for inspiration.

00:28:19
There's now a fifth one. There's a fifth setting

00:28:22
in the big Book of Amazing Tales, which is Rescue City, which

00:28:25
is specifically for people who don't

00:28:28
want any violence in their games. so Rescue

00:28:31
City is's, a modern day

00:28:33
city. the suggestion is that your character would be a

00:28:36
police officer or an ambulance driver or

00:28:39
a doctor or a firefighter or something like that.

00:28:42
And Rescue City is a kind of place where disasters are happening all

00:28:45
the time.

00:28:46
>> Clint Scheirer: Very unfortunate city.

00:28:48
>> Martin Lloyd: Permanent, requirement for heroes to

00:28:51
come along and be heroic and solve problems and

00:28:54
whatever's going on. But these are problems that should not really be

00:28:57
addressed through violence.

00:28:59
>> Clint Scheirer: That leads me to another thought.

00:29:01
So, some children

00:29:04
have. I like to think of it as a superpower,

00:29:07
and neurological functions

00:29:10
that are different than maybe the mainstream child.

00:29:13
I am very close to having adhd. I do not, I've

00:29:16
been officially tested for it. But I have

00:29:18
tendencies of being

00:29:20
distracted. I have obsessive

00:29:23
compulsive disorder. I have been actually,

00:29:26
diagnosed for something like that. Think

00:29:29
of people on the autism spectrum.

00:29:32
and maybe you didn't necessarily build it

00:29:35
into the game. but what would

00:29:38
you suggest if somebody was playing

00:29:41
with a child who has one of

00:29:44
these superpowers?

00:29:45
>> Martin Lloyd: Pay attention. Ah, are they enjoying it? I think is the

00:29:48
key thing. And Watch for,

00:29:51
I guess if it's adhd, what's their attention span?

00:29:54
This is a game that you could play a meaningful game in five or ten

00:29:57
minutes. and if that's their

00:30:00
concentration span, then don't try and go

00:30:02
too much longer.

00:30:06
That sort of thing. I have had messages from parents

00:30:08
whose kids are on the spectrum saying this works

00:30:11
well for them.

00:30:14
but I'm not saying it's going to work well for every kid who's

00:30:17
on the autism spectrum.

00:30:19
>> Clint Scheirer: So how has this changed to you

00:30:22
being somebody who creates games

00:30:25
for all different types of children? how has it

00:30:27
changed your games or your approach to

00:30:30
learning and creativity?

00:30:35
>> Martin Lloyd: One of the things about Amazing Tales is it was a little

00:30:38
bit lightning in a bottle, Lightning in a bole.

00:30:42
I have written other games, they have not been this

00:30:44
successful. So I think there's an appreciation for

00:30:48
yes, you can kind of work out afterwards what worked and what made it

00:30:51
successful. And I did do plenty of

00:30:54
kind of research upfront. But

00:30:57
there is also that kind of

00:31:00
part of the success is luck. And I don't know

00:31:03
whether it's 20% or 80% or whatever, but

00:31:06
it's, it's a non trivial amount of

00:31:09
this is just down to luck. do you

00:31:12
have the right thing at the right time in the right way? How has it changed

00:31:15
me? I don't know. It made me a lot

00:31:17
more, maybe a bit more confident in my

00:31:20
GMG and playing just to kind of throw stuff out there and

00:31:23
go with it. And it's kind cool to know that you can sit down

00:31:26
with a bunch of kids and entertain them for half an hour and'll come away go. That

00:31:29
was amazing. Which is, which is quite

00:31:32
a nice superpower to have.

00:31:34
>> Clint Scheirer: I might go run and play Amazing Tales right after

00:31:36
this. My kids are going to come home from school and

00:31:39
I might binge the book and then go

00:31:42
make an adv.

00:31:43
>> Martin Lloyd: It's the length of time it takes to read a bedtime story. That was

00:31:46
kind of one of the design requirements was you had to be able to play a

00:31:49
whole game in the time it takes to get through a bedtime

00:31:52
story.

00:31:53
>> Clint Scheirer: I love that backwards design like

00:31:56
who am I doing this for? Instead of this is

00:31:59
what I'm doing now. Match the game, it's who am I doing this for?

00:32:02
And let's match the experience to who I'm doing this for. It.

00:32:05
That's just so cool. Try to come up with a 10

00:32:08
word phrase that really nails

00:32:10
down the core message of what you do.

00:32:14
it can't be less than 10 words. Some people come at me and they're like, well,

00:32:17
I did it in seven. No, it has to be 10 because that forces

00:32:20
the economy of words.

00:32:21
>> Martin Lloyd: Just came up with eight, I think.

00:32:24
>> Clint Scheirer: add some articles in there.

00:32:25
>> Martin Lloyd: It's all about what you leave out, though.

00:32:27
>> Clint Scheirer: All right. If you were to give us

00:32:30
10 words in a phrase that could

00:32:33
help people understand tabletop RPGs, kids

00:32:36
RPGs, anything that you feel is super

00:32:39
important for somebody who's listening, the listener, to take away

00:32:42
with them and integrate into their own games.

00:32:45
What would that be?

00:32:46
>> Martin Lloyd: Let's see. Listen to your

00:32:49
players. That's four, say yes.

00:32:52
That gets us all the way up to 6. Have

00:32:55
fun. And, cut

00:32:58
things.

00:32:59
>> Clint Scheirer: Yes, I like that last

00:33:02
one.

00:33:03
>> Martin Lloyd: Maybe I cut things in a bit earlier.

00:33:06
>> Clint Scheirer: Yeah, Here, I'm gonna recap it. It says

00:33:09
you said, listen to your players. Say

00:33:11
yes, have fun, cut things.

00:33:14
Is there anything we're missing, Martin? Is there anything else

00:33:17
that you feel you want toa talk

00:33:19
about before we leave?

00:33:21
>> Martin Lloyd: Maybe a couple of things. So, yeah, and I think

00:33:24
this is. I'm going toa mention

00:33:27
this from a sort of designer frustration point of view.

00:33:30
but you mentioned Guy earlier and the group I played

00:33:33
in with Guy and a few others. we

00:33:36
always made an effort to play the game as it was written in a

00:33:39
rulebook. Like, someone's gone to the trouble to write

00:33:42
this game. We're gonna go to the trouble to play it properly

00:33:46
was our approach. So if there

00:33:49
was a subsystem for chasers, we'd have a chase and we'd find out.

00:33:52
But we tried to play the game that was there and to lean into

00:33:55
whatever it was trying to do.

00:33:59
I often come across people who

00:34:02
say, oh, I've got amazing tales to play it with my kids.

00:34:05
And then they'll send me an email and they'll say, and, along

00:34:08
the way, I thought you might like to knowice. I've added rules for hit

00:34:10
points. And, I've put a thing in

00:34:13
so that the monsters roll dice now.

00:34:16
And, I've added a D4 and a D20

00:34:19
and we can have critical hits.

00:34:22
And,

00:34:24
I don't mind people doing that as long

00:34:27
as they've tried it first

00:34:30
the way it was written. So from a designer's point of view, it's kind of

00:34:33
frustrating that someone's come in, looked at my game and gone, you know what? I'm just going to

00:34:36
make it like all the other games without even trying what you've

00:34:39
done. Now I'm Going to fix everything.

00:34:41
but then I sort of reflect on that as a player and I'm like, you know

00:34:44
what? All these games I have on my shelves

00:34:47
have similar things and there are

00:34:50
mechanics in there like, oh, that just looks like too much complication.

00:34:53
so a good example might be if you've come across

00:34:56
Cubicle 7's Imperial Maledictum game, which is

00:34:59
a Warhammer 40K thing. Your party is supposed to

00:35:02
have a patron and they have rules for factions

00:35:05
and that kind of depends on who your patron is and what your career

00:35:08
is and so on.

00:35:12
it would be really easy to play the game without any of those

00:35:14
things, but it is

00:35:17
probably. They put a lot of thought into that. So it's

00:35:20
probably better to do that, to actually say, know

00:35:23
what? Before we throw all these rules out, let's put them all in.

00:35:25
And, let's see if it's fun to say, well,

00:35:28
actually I'm really well connected with the Adaptus

00:35:31
Ministerum so I can get this easily.

00:35:34
Whereas, oh, you, they won't even let you in

00:35:37
the building. and to have those kind of dynamics in the

00:35:40
party. So,

00:35:42
yeah, play the game that the designer

00:35:45
wrote, then start changing stuff.

00:35:47
>> Clint Scheirer: Why do you think people do that? Changing it?

00:35:50
What's your thoughts?

00:35:51
>> Martin Lloyd: Part of it's just habit, I think.

00:35:54
like I was saying about kind of there are things you expect games to

00:35:57
have, or maybe not

00:35:59
have. so

00:36:02
people say, oh, well, this game hasn't got any hit points for the

00:36:05
monsters, but that's a thing. So it would probably be

00:36:08
better if it did. So I'll just put those

00:36:11
in. So part of it is, I think, just

00:36:13
people wanting to make things look like the thing they're familiar with.

00:36:16
Part of it is maybe just not

00:36:19
wanting to learn new stuff or push or

00:36:22
lean. Take the time to understand a thing and lean

00:36:25
into it. It does, we found,

00:36:28
require a bit of a group effort, maybe a bit more of an effort than

00:36:31
some groups are willing to make. Because

00:36:34
if you have a group who are very much in the GM is going to

00:36:36
entertain us mode and then the GM

00:36:39
says, this game comes with a bunch of funky

00:36:41
mechanics'yeah. Your

00:36:44
session'going to go a lot better if everyone makes the effort to try

00:36:47
and understand how those work. If your

00:36:50
group you're playing with isn't going to do that, then,

00:36:54
yeah, that's going to be tricky.

00:36:55
>> Clint Scheirer: Maybe suggest playing a different game or

00:36:57
doing what's normal maybe.

00:37:00
>> Martin Lloyd: It is a huge, wide and varied hobby

00:37:02
and I think that's what I love about it is

00:37:05
that there are games literally for everything.

00:37:09
more games now than I will ever manage to play. When I got into this

00:37:12
in the late 80s, early 90s,

00:37:15
it was just about conceivable that you could be like, I will play

00:37:18
everything at least once.

00:37:21
one session of every W playing game has ever been published.

00:37:24
but that is clearly no longer possible.

00:37:28
>> Clint Scheirer: What else? You said there were a few things.

00:37:30
>> Martin Lloyd: Work on being a good player. I think it's There's so many

00:37:33
books written. Ah, or well, not so many. There's quite a lot of books

00:37:36
written about how to be a good gm. I'm not aware of any books

00:37:39
that have been written about how to be a good player. which is

00:37:42
weird because if you've got five of you around the table,

00:37:45
80% of you are players,

00:37:48
well, 100% of your players. But four of you are responsible for

00:37:51
player characters. There's only one game master. Work on being a good

00:37:54
player, sharing the spotlight, passing things around.

00:37:56
Take some responsibility for knowing the rules that apply

00:37:59
to your character. If you're playing a mechanically heavy

00:38:02
game, don't turn up

00:38:05
and say, what's the name of my character again?

00:38:09
>> Clint Scheirer: Martin's number one pet beef.

00:38:11
>> Martin Lloyd: That's just soul destroying. If you're the game master, I am

00:38:14
dead inside. I've created this whole world. I've written a

00:38:17
scenario, I've got ideas

00:38:20
and yeah, what else would I talk about? I d talk

00:38:22
about genre being important. So that hangs in with

00:38:25
the design thing, the start like what you put in and what you leave

00:38:28
out is important.

00:38:32
does your game have rules for personal

00:38:34
relationships? Some of them do. And those,

00:38:37
those then become very different games to the games that don't and

00:38:40
do things deliberately.

00:38:42
I think like quite a lot of people. I like quite

00:38:45
a cinematic style of GMing. So I'll often describe

00:38:48
what the camera panning in or set a scene

00:38:51
kind of as if I was describing a movie I was watching.

00:38:54
But you can take that a little bit further and think kind of, you know, what kind

00:38:57
of thing am I making? What kind of pace is this going to

00:38:59
be played at? and that sort of thing. So I run

00:39:02
a Dungeons and Dragons group for my son, and his friends.

00:39:05
He's 14 now. We had a session the other day

00:39:08
where I was like, you know what? I know that only one of them has seen

00:39:11
Fury Road. So this is where we're

00:39:14
going. We're have like, we're going toa end

00:39:17
up with the monsters chasing people around on

00:39:21
chariots and that kind of stuff. And we're going toa do the whole

00:39:24
thing. And as it turned out we ended up one of

00:39:26
their characters got captured and we ended up with

00:39:30
them sort of dangled in front of

00:39:33
the two bears that were pulling the bugbears

00:39:35
chariot as the kind of carrot on a

00:39:38
particularly nasty looking stick

00:39:41
so it could hurtle after them.

00:39:44
and it all got really quite Mad Max. and that

00:39:47
was great. And afterwards they said wow, that would have been such

00:39:50
a good movie. That scene at the end. That would have.

00:39:53
That whole fight would have been such a good thing in a film. It's like

00:39:56
yes, that is exactly what we were going

00:39:59
for. So yeah, don't be shy of

00:40:02
leaning into that kind of thing and shamelessly stealing

00:40:05
from movies.

00:40:06
>> Clint Scheirer: Martin, thank you for being on today.

00:40:09
If people wanna learn more about Amazing

00:40:11
Tales or anything that you do,

00:40:14
where can they find you? Where they, where can they find your

00:40:17
works?

00:40:17
>> Martin Lloyd: Yeah, so the website is

00:40:19
amazing-taless.net

00:40:22
so

00:40:22
www.amazing-talails.networks.

00:40:26
i am no longer on social media

00:40:29
pretty much. I think that's not a decision I

00:40:31
regret.

00:40:35
you can also search for it on Amazon. that will turn it

00:40:38
up. Studio AH2 as a distributor. They

00:40:41
will sell it to you direct if you would rather not give Mr.

00:40:44
Bezos any money. Drive through RPG as well. You

00:40:47
can get PDF copies on drive through RPG and there's a whole load of free

00:40:50
stuff there as well including a quick start which includes the whole

00:40:52
rules and there's a set of about

00:40:55
30 scenarios you can get which are

00:40:58
all one page things. those are free to download as

00:41:01
well but there is a suggested contribution to charity.

00:41:04
>> Clint Scheirer: I'll make sure that I put that in the show notes so people can check

00:41:07
it out and support the great thing that you've created. So

00:41:09
awesome. Well, thanks again Martin. Thanks for being here. I'm so

00:41:12
grateful that you gave me your time and hope to

00:41:15
interact with you in some way, shape or form. Even though we're halfway across the

00:41:18
world.

00:41:18
>> Martin Lloyd: From each other, I'm available and let's stay in

00:41:21
touch.

00:41:21
>> Clint Scheirer: Thanks again Martin for creating a way that parents and

00:41:24
children can go beyond D20 & D and connect playing tabletop

00:41:27
role playing games. Don't forget to look in the show notes if you wantna

00:41:30
grab your own copy of Amazing Tales. I promise your

00:41:33
4 year old will thank you.

00:41:35
>> Martin Lloyd: I'm good at this.

00:41:37
>> Clint Scheirer: Please hit like or subscribe if you liked what you heard today. If you

00:41:40
listen on Apple podcast or Spotify. Give us five stars.

00:41:43
Leave a review and may you keep having fun as you

00:41:45
tell amazing stories or amazing

00:41:48
tales through tabletop role playing games.