Mouthful of Blood: Hooks and Player Buy-In

In this episode of No Plot, Only Lore, DMs Josh and Kris dive into the messy, often unpredictable world of player engagement. The conversation starts in a surprisingly morbid place as Josh shares stories about his family’s paramedic background and their unusual desensitization to medical trauma—ranging from "cool" injury photos to eating dinner while watching surgery broadcasts.

Shifting from real-world gore to the gaming table, the guys discuss the challenge of securing and maintaining player buy-in. They explore:

• Reading the Room: Identifying the physical cues of disinterest versus the "focused fidgeting" of players with ADHD.

• The Power of the Hook: Breaking down Brennan Lee Mulligan’s iconic "mouth filled with blood" opening from Calamity and why immediate physical stakes work.

• Preparation vs. Improv: Why Josh’s DM screen usually just says "Goblins?" and how to handle players who choose "North" when you only planned for East and West.

• The Threat of Death: Discussing the transition from "padded room" D&D to high-stakes games where character death serves as a primary motivator.

Whether you’re a "soft" DM or a "killer" DM, learn why respecting player agency—and being ready to bullshit when they inevitably ignore your rails—is the key to a legendary session.

Transcript

You're listening to No Plot, Only Lore,

a podcast about games and the tables we

play them at. Your DMs tonight and every

night are Josh and Kris. You can find

us on all podcast platforms or check us

out at

noplotonly.com. If you like what you

hear today, please rate and review the

show and share it with everyone you've

ever met.

Welcome back to No Plot Only Lore

brought to you today by Rain. It is

raining outside my window and you're

probably going to hear some of it. We

really need to come up with a We need

sponsor deals, bro. Yeah, we need to

Well, I think first of all, we need to

like court sponsors. I don't know if

we've ever made it available to the

public that we are in fact willing to

[ __ ] ourselves out. Um, that's fair.

Um, I don't what what type of whoring

are you willing to do? Oh, uh, sexual,

intellectual, uh, emotional, whatever it

takes. All right. So, you heard it here

first, folks. Josh is starting an only

fans page. Um, is it going to be feet

picks?

Yeah. Uh, primarily, uh, my right foot

cuz it's kind of the least messed up,

but I am missing a toenail. So, um I

guess you're my

I kind of want to see it.

Yeah, I I didn't want to see your feet

until you told Yeah. I didn't want to

see your feet until you mentioned a

missing toenail and now I'm like ah

that's weird.

I don't know what to tell you. I just I

I I want money and so I will do weird

things.

My family is really weird about that

sort of thing. I I think mostly be

because my both of my parents are

paramedics. Um,

and when the kids got injured, it was

like an event. They would make sure that

we were okay. They would always make

sure that we were okay. And then my mom

would bust out a camera and start taking

pictures of the injury. Hey, that's

weird. Cuz it was cool. Like my brother

um sawed his hand while working at like

a fab shed and like cut off a part of

his finger and like the rest of his hand

was just hamburger. And he goes to the

hospital and is getting the dressing

taken off and my mom is just like

hovering around the doctor taking

pictures of it so that she could put

them on the internet. I have them on my

Facebook cuz I thought they were [ __ ]

cool. But I mean, they sound cool, but

like still that's a lot to deal with.

Yeah. Yeah. So, my family, uh, if you

have medical weirdness, um, we're

usually kind of like morbidly

interested.

Okay.

Yeah. Morbid

is not how I would describe it. Um,

that's that's messed up, dude. I don't

know what to tell you. those your

family's got some deep rooted issues

that need to be addressed. I didn't even

know it was weird until I was showing

somebody pictures on my Facebook of like

stuff that I had done recently. Like I

I'd gone on a vacation and we got down

to the pictures of my brother's hand and

she was like, "Oh my god, why do you

have

those?" I was like, "Cuz they're [ __ ]

cool." She's like, "No, they're not." I

was like, "Oh, maybe not everybody is

into the injuries the way my family do.

Yeah, that's that's a tough one to learn

about your family that late in life.

Like, oh, oh, no, we are deeply flawed.

Like deeply flawed or just like have

this

weird inner quality like an insulation

against trauma?

I Yeah.

Did I ever tell you about the like time

we were watching the operation with

supper?

No.

Okay, so there was this show that was on

like TLC back when TLC wasn't like

aliens making Egypt or whatever, the

learning channel, and there was this

show that was called The Operation. And

it was just like they would walk you

through all of the steps of an

operation, including like um showing you

the operation as it was happening. And

for my family, this isn't a big deal. We

we ate while this show was on all the

time.

Okay. Um but the one that actually

caused like a reaction was the uh

contraceptive um surgeries uh

tupilations and vasectomies.

Okay. So

like getting those procedures done was

fine. Yeah. Not a problem at all. The

reversals the the reversal tubilation

basically the same thing as watching a

tupilation. You inflate the belly, you

get all the like fiber optic cables in

there. It's like really cool. The

reverse vasectomy, they have to find

where this like uh the cut is on the vas

deference. And to do that, they snip

open the sack and pop your ball out.

And my my brother watched this happen,

went onto his plate, stood up and said,

"I'm done." and left. Yeah. And your

parents were just like, "Yep, that makes

sense."

Yeah. All of us were. We were like,

"Yeah, don't that's gross." And then

continued eating. But

that's my family. She's Louise, my

friend.

H That's a You know, now that that is

unusual and uncommon, right?

Yes.

Um, it it still doesn't bother me at

all. And like that can sometimes lead to

some weirdness where like other people

are being grossed out about a thing and

I'm just standing there like it's

nothing because it's it is. Um, but then

I get like really weirded out about like

slimy things and bad smells. Oh, okay.

Like and and I don't know how many

people know this, but humans smell

really bad on the inside. So, like

anytime there's like actual trauma

happening around me, I'm like, yeah,

don't don't love that. Yeah. I mean,

like as as

a as a hunter who, you know, butchers

his own game, like, yeah, things smell

bad on the inside. Um, Star Wars wasn't

lying. Like, they smell worse on the

inside. Uh, pretty much everything does.

Yeah. Yeah. So, now that we've scared

away the vast majority of our audience,

like all six people. Yeah.

The vast difference, how do we uh how do

we get players

invested in what we're doing? God, if I

knew I would write a book and make so

much money. Um, and buyin is one of the

hardest things to get. Like I I maybe my

experience is like partially skewed by

the fact that I do play with like new

players so much

and the buy in I will say

like deviates or or or

diminishes very quickly. Um, right. The

excitement of the new experience quickly

gives way to like I don't want to say

boredom, but just

like borderline aimlessness

sometimes where they because they're not

like used

to tracking this whole thing in their

own heads and kind of

like biting onto the hooks that you

leave, they kind of

get I don't want to say demotivated, but

they get they get lost. lost. Um

disinterested sometimes is something

that I see. Yeah.

Um a lot of it for me like when when I'm

seeing that type of behavior, it's

usually physical. Yeah. Like you you can

tell how invested players are by the way

they're sitting. Mhm. And when you have

your players and they're like elbows are

on the table, they're leaning forward,

they're engaged in what you're doing,

you have an interest interested group of

people around your table. If they're

leaning far back, if they're playing on

their phone, if they're kind of staring

off into space, if they haven't

necessarily been paying attention and

you call on them and they're like, "Oh,

what?" Um, then you've lost them. And

getting that buyin back can be

difficult. I will say I also I also

struggle with this because like as a

player um you know I I am the people who

know me know that I'm working on getting

a formal ADHD diagnosis but for me

sometimes my most focused and invested

can manifest in ways that look like

disinterest. Um, like for me, it is very

important for me to have something to do

with my hands in order for my brain to

be fully engaged in what we're doing. So

whether it's like literally like

assembling Gundam while we're doing

like RP type stuff or

um just having

like like I had um a a a deck that I was

sle and then shuffling while we were

playing the other week and it's like

it's an unconscious movement for me to

just like shuffle and cut and shuffle

and cut, but it kept my hands doing

something so that my brain was freed up,

right? Um, and that may look distracted

to a lot of people, but like that was me

at my like toughest problem solving and

most paying attention that week.

I have something similar. I doodle.

Yeah. Like a lot of my uh like

jitteriness in the ADHDs comes out in

like drawing. And so if it if it seems

like I'm not paying attention, but I've

got a pencil in my hand and I'm making

little sketches, uh you have me locked

in. Yeah. And my body language will

still reflect that, right? Like I'll

still be on the table, right? Like my

I'll be leaning forward. I will still be

interested, but my face won't be looking

at you. It'll be looking at the paper,

right? and I will be doodling while I'm

trying to figure out the the problems

that we're solving. Yeah.

Um for

me, like I I've never really had a

problem getting initial buy in from my

players. And I think the the biggest

reason for that is like I bring a lot of

energy to my tables,

which is a difficult thing to do if you

don't have

practice with like improv or theater or

performance or sales, right? Like the

amount of energy that I bring to this

podcast is not the energy that I bring

to my table. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Like I I I show up and it is immediate

and like my voice is much louder when I

hit the table. I usually stand. So

there's like

some presence that happens there. If

everybody is sitting and one person is

standing, then attention naturally goes

to the person who is up above everybody

else. Sure.

Um and so like initially it's very easy

for me to to get like that that buy in.

Keeping it can be a challenge especially

with larger groups. Um and I do

traditionally play with larger groups

than is suggested by the players

handbook. Yeah. Um so like that that is

a thing that I occasionally run into.

Um, the best thing I have ever seen

anybody do to immediately grab a table,

uh, came from Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Okay. And it was when he was doing the,

uh, Calamity event for,

um, the other people, Critical Role. Oh,

okay. Yeah, sure.

Um, and he said, and I have the quote

here, "I need you to describe your

character and tell us your character's

name, but I would love for you to do

that with the understanding that your

mouth is filled with blood." Yeah.

Is just so [ __ ] evocative. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like you immediately

understand your character's stakes.

Yeah. Right. My mouth is full of blood

[ __ ]

Yeah. like that there is probably some

context here that I am missing. Yeah, I

should probably find that out right now.

That's such an interesting way to do it

too because like on the one hand like

yes you want to do like the traditional

like hey why don't you introduce your

character to us but at the same time

like these are experienced people like

they're they're not your average

everyday role player and so to get like

I understand the the desire to just get

things going you know like just get the

the car down the road or whatever the

the phrase is but like yeah it's it's

such

a cool kickoff to do that. I don't

obviously like not everyone can do that,

but um No. And it's one that is really

hard to utilize effectively. Yes. Cuz

like it it relies on surprise. Yes. in

that you are placing the characters in

media res

where they don't understand what the

situation is and you have to trust that

they are going to try and find it. Yeah.

Um but it also like one of the biggest

things that I find for player buyin is

making sure that stakes are personal.

Yeah. Right. like getting in your

session zero ideas about who your

character is going to be and your goals

and what it is that you want to

accomplish. Like all of that ties into

those personal stakes, but also like

this opening with your mouth filled with

blood sets a very immediate and personal

stake of a [ __ ] I'm injured. Yeah. I

don't know what's going on and I need to

find it. Yeah. Right. So, there's

mystery already in it. There's a

personal stake that could very well

result in your death. Like it's very

rare that your mouth is full of blood in

a good way.

Um maybe maybe it is a good way. I don't

know. Like is the dude a vampire? Could

be. Um delicious delicious blood. Yeah,

I get it. Yeah. Well, who who hasn't

occasionally woken up with their mouth

full of last night's meal?

What a horrible way to phrase that.

Yeah. And like that is also like

strangely evocative because like day old

blood really smells bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just going back to our weird like gore

conversation.

Um, so yeah, like I I found that to be

one of the the best ways to introduce a

like character to the world and get an

idea of who that player and character is

going to be because you put them in a

situation where they immediately need to

make important choices.

Yeah. Like I So I'm about

to start a new campaign. We are we are

wrapping up one that's been going on for

quite a while and everyone at the table

sort of agrees they want to take like a

fresh swing at things. So, um our normal

DM is taking a break. I'm going to be

stepping in and I've decided to

uh go to uh Gamma World. Um I'm gonna

I'm gonna start a Gamma World campaign

for well yes uh for a variety of

reasons. Um, a big one is that, uh,

nobody at the table has ever played

Gamma World before. Um, okay. And like I

don't have a good reason for going there

other than like I haven't been in a

while and it just seems like a fun thing

to do. But, uh, I'm going to have to get

buy in

into this alien setting almost

immediately, right?

Yeah. Do you have a plan for what your

opening scenes are going to look like?

No, that's the best part. I got to

figure this out as we go. So,

um yeah, this is going to be we'll call

it an experience. It's going to be a

real like test, I think,

of whether or not I still got it, you

know?

I wouldn't worry about that necessarily.

Like, oh, I am though. Like, well, one

of the things that I've always kind of

found interesting is like the the

mythology of the preparedness of the DM.

Yeah. Right. Like if you peek behind my

screen, you're going to see like all of

these charts and like well thoughtout

notes and spreadsheets and flowcharts

and [ __ ] What you're going to see is

that I have written the word goblins

with a question mark after it and

literally nothing else.

That that's my whole [ __ ] plan. just

goblins question mark. Yeah. And and

like if any of my current, you know,

friends or or uh people at the table

listen to this show, like they are going

to see how much of what I'm talking

about when it comes to like how to DM is

just me bullshitting and stealing from

front of them all again.

He's so easy to steal from. He puts all

of his stuff out in public. Yeah, it

makes it real easy to just be like as

good as him kind of

definitely not as good as him in like

for me. No, I I recognize where I am. Uh

definitely not at his level, but I don't

have a weird philosophy degree. So,

yeah, exactly. We don't we have no

stakes in this. Yeah. Um, but like

improv is important, especially when

you're trying to incorporate your

players stakes. And I we'll talk about

this a bit more in the next episode, but

like when your players throw you a

curveball

they're usually letting you know that

that's the direction that they want to

go. Yep.

And you have to be prepared to go that

way. Yes.

like you don't have to go that way

necessarily. You do have to be prepared

to go that way.

I will say like I've always been of the

firm belief that like there's no such

thing as a curveball. There's just

like unreal like unagnowledged uh

desires like it's not really a curveball

if you had been paying attention.

Yeah. Does that make sense?

Yeah, like I think a really good example

of that was my like first session of my

Australia campaign where I offered a

binary choice. Yeah. Go east, go west,

and my players looked at an empty field

and went, "Cool, north." Yeah. I had

nothing planned for north. I had stuff

planned for east and I had stuff planned

for west. And so I just kind of like

cobbled together an amalgam of those

plans on the fly, right?

But that is kind of what I'm talking

about, right? Like you need to be

prepared for when they make a choice.

And I should have seen that coming.

Yeah. Right. Like if I give you a binary

choice, but there's an option that

doesn't have a direct impediment. I have

to be prepared for you to take that

direction. Well, and what's funny to me

is that like you think you gave them a

binary choice, but you really didn't.

Like no, you

expressed two options out of an implicit

four and by like hiding those other two,

it just made them more desirable.

Gone southeast. I guess I guess I guess

but like but like by thinking rationally

like it's like okay well here's the

compass. I'm going to tell you two of

the directions on the compass which

makes the other two insanely appealing.

Like why didn't you mention those?

Yep. And that is what it because I know

I know a compass has four four points,

you know, like what's he hiding behind

the other two? Yeah. What I'm hiding is

my lack of preparation. Thank you. Well,

like Yeah. Part of it was that it was a

brand new crew and I was doing a bit of

early railroading. Yeah. Yeah. Just to

like get things going and like get a

swing for like how the game works. Yeah.

Um, but we had a player who was a bit

more experienced and kind of a [ __ ]

goblin and was like, "Cool, let's do the

thing that he didn't give us an option

for. See how that works." That what's

funny to me is I at no point was I ready

to blame the inexperienced or like the

experienced person. My thought was like

these inexperienced people don't know

what they don't know. They didn't know

that like railroading was a thing. So,

they're like, "Well, uh, maybe he just

forgot to mention that. Let's go this

other way." you know. No, the the new

players were all perfectly happy to go

east or west. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

funny. Just this one guy who'd played a

couple of times before was like north.

And everybody was like, I guess north,

but he didn't say north.

But like you you have to respect the

player's actions, right? Like there

there's never a time where you can hear

what your players are telling you and

then just be like, "No, that's dumb.

That isn't what I planned for, so we're

not going to do that." I mean, you can.

It's not a good idea. No, but

like respecting what the players have

chosen to do means that they are going

to remain invested

in the thing that you're doing because

they believe that their choices have an

influence. Yeah. And they should like

they absolutely should believe that

whether or not it's like strictly true

or just an you know an illusion you'd

prefer that they continue to believe in.

But like yeah they they want to have

agency. So it almost never is true,

right? To be fair, right? Like again my

my plans just say goblin question mark

and if you go anywhere, pick any

direction, goblin question mark is all

I've got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you are

going to meet a goblin no matter what

direction you are picking.

Yeah, it's all goblins, folks. Just

goblins all the way down.

Goblins all the breakfast. Yeah. At the

same time, like when you're doing your

world building and stuff, that gives

them the opportunity to explore things

that you haven't already created, right?

And sometimes you're going to make [ __ ]

up that changes the entire direction of

the game. Hopefully. I I I love those

moments for sure.

At the same time, like my favorites I I

do.

Okay, I will say like sometimes I just

want to

like do the thing that I had planned to

do because I'm feeling annoyed and lazy

that day or whatever, right? Like it

happens.

Um do I begrudge anyone who like decides

to take the weirdo route? No. But, you

know, every once in a while you're just

like, "God damn it. Can we please just

get through my planned adventure?"

Yeah. Well, especially if you're playing

out of uh published stuff, right? Trying

to improvise around it gets so much more

difficult because there's so much that

you have to try and keep in mind. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't read ahead

that far, you can absolutely shoot

yourself in the foot. Yeah. Um and like

obviously

We're going to have people of the

opinion that you should just read the

entire adventure before you run it, but

those people are [ __ ] nerds and don't

have lives. Um, yeah. Abs, absolute

dorks. Just the worst. No, I I read

adventures for fun. So, like I do not

like I'm not going to do that.

I absolutely have mostly when I'm like

not when I'm planning, but when I'm

planning to plan, I guess, right? Well,

not I'm just like putting together ideas

and brainstorming for what my next

session is going to be. Sometimes I'll

like crack open a pre-written adventure

and just kind of like flip through it

and see what they've got going on in

there and like get ideas from it and

stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah,

it's I'm never I'm never going to read

one like front to back, cover to cover,

cuz that's the worst way to read any

textbook in an adventure is just a text.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, yeah. I don't know. Any other like

last minute ideas on player investment,

getting people into it?

Um, I I will say I find that like player

investment can be

Like you do need to keep in mind it it's

going to vary wildly from like group to

group not just like from like well yeah

people obviously you have to read

people's personal like investment levels

you know um some people are I I had a

group once where the way I was able to

get buy in from half the group was to

kill someone almost immediately.

Um, and

then the stakes felt more real to them

because I guess they were just like

tired of playing safe Dungeons and

Dragons. Um, and so now they were like,

"Oh, like this is real because real bad

things can happen." Also now like we got

to do it for Jimmy or whoever. Right.

That's really interesting because like I

I have

seen the transition to like a safer like

padded room version of D&D over the

course of the years. And like I'm I'm

guilty of this too because I am very

narrative driven. Yeah. In my games. So

like I don't want to kill off player

characters on the regular, but that

sense of danger is really important.

And one of the things that I played off

of quite heavily when I was doing

organized play stuff was the threat of

me being a killer DM, right? Even though

I'm a giant [ __ ] softy. Yeah. Like I

had kid gloves on at all

times, but like people would come into

the store and be like, "Hey, are we

going to be doing like organized play

this week?" And I'd be like, "Yep, I'm

gonna [ __ ] kill y'all. TPK this week.

Be ready for it.

And that would get people hyped, which I

always found kind of weird. But yeah, I

do get it where it's like the the

consequence of your actions and again

like those personal stakes, right? Like

is my character going to die this week

is a very personal stake. Yeah. I did

have, you know, like the campaign we're

in right now, I had a character die. Um,

it caused obviously you remember like

our whole podcast started with that

character dying and the like buyin slash

emotional distress it caused with the

group where like it kind of became a

problem for a bit, right? Like Yeah. Um,

especially cuz you just like showed up

and dragged your DM for a while and then

your DM was like, "Hold on a sec."

Yeah. and and you know like frankly I

don't think we've like he and I like

will ever see eye to eye

on how you resolve that as a DM versus

how I would have but like that's

fine you know

yeah different play styles yeah I will

say like it kind of made me buy in more

with my current character

cuz I'm like, "Okay, well, fine. If

you're going to be pedantic about stuff,

I guess I have to pay attention more."

You're a lot less likely to punch the

corpse riding on the dragon's back, I

guess.

But not like completely unlikely, you

know. No, you're you're never you're

never more than 10 steps away from

punching the corpse on the dragon's

back. Let's be fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's Yeah, that's just that's just my

mo. Okay.

Hey, thanks for making it all the way

through this episode of Noplotonly Lore.

If you're looking for more, you can

always find us at

noplotonlore.com and on all the very

best podcast platforms. If you like what

you heard today, please share, rate, and

review the show to feed my never- ending

need for attention and validation.