Lords of the Dungeon 85: Character vs Player Motivation

·56 min·5 clips

Jess created a city built on a bridge filled with pig-faced orcs, candied scorpion tails, and a mysterious red light district.

The episode opens with the hosts—Jamie, Jess, Bender, and Aaron—recapping a recent Pathfinder game session. Jess, as GM, created a homebrew setting called Caldera, a city built on a massive bridge in the Warm March region, populated by diverse monstrous races like bugbears, hobgoblins, and pig-faced orcs. The players describe their characters as fish out of water, encountering strange elements like candied scorpion tails, a monster parts store, and a pig-faced prostitute. They discuss the city's rules, including mysterious 'soul binding' penalties, and the party's dilemma of whether to stay or continue their journey west. The hosts then transition to a listener-submitted question from Jeff, a new GM asking whether to run off-the-shelf modules or write custom adventures. Bender shares his experience starting with homebrew due to cost and emphasizes choosing a familiar theme to ease adventure writing. Jamie and others critique traditional D&D modules like Curse of Strahd for being dense and linear, praising indie RPGs like Mothership for their sandbox, easy-to-run designs. Jess and Aaron discuss blending modules with homebrew, such as adding custom NPCs or plot hooks. The conversation shifts to player vs. character motivation, using Jamie's character Brother Henry—a cleric who wants to leave the dangerous city—as an example. The hosts explore how GMs can use emotional hooks, like character backstories, to engage players without railroading. They also touch on metagaming for group cohesion and the importance of post-game discussions to improve gameplay. The episode concludes with promotional content and calls to action for the podcast.

As heard by us

A bridge-city game night turns into a practical case for making modules feel personal.

Lords of the Dungeon makes for a lively game-night listen, with laughter around the table and a memorable bridge city driving the talk. The setting stands out: a vast bridge over an immense river, crowded with shops, taverns, criminals, and odd residents, so the players always…

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Why you'd press play

You get module advice, a bridge city, and one very determined three-legged goblin.

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