Episode 568-With Keith Ammann

The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week, Patrick and Tracy ring in the new year by welcoming Keith Ammann, author of HOW TO DEFEND YOUR LAIR.

About HOW TO DEFEND YOUR LAIR: The world is a dangerous place—especially when you’re up to no good. Whether you’re a rampaging monster, a calculating mastermind, or the current possessor of the Golden MacGuffin, someone’s going to come at you. Probably more than one someone. You can’t know when, but you can choose where. You need to be ready.

You need a lair.

In How to Defend Your Lair, gamemaster Keith Ammann pulls back the curtain on an underrated but crucial part of any tabletop roleplaying game: the theater of battle. Say goodbye to encounters in randomly generated dungeons and hello to a game in which where the fight takes place is just as important as who is doing the fighting.

This book teaches you how to use real-world principles of building security and area defense to create strongholds infused with flavor, informed by narrative, and complex enough to force your players to think strategically. You’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of both defenders and potential attackers, creating spaces that are strong enough to keep out ordinary intruders…and to provide thrilling challenges to extraordinary ones.

Including more than a dozen fleshed-out sample strongholds, How to Defend Your Lair is a crucial resource for any RPG gamemaster who wants to push players to think about how to solve problems before running at them head-on.

About Keith Ammann: Keith Ammann has been a Dungeons & Dragons player and DM for more than thirty years. He has been writing his fifth edition D&D–focused blog The Monsters Know What They’re Doing since 2016. He lives in Chicago.

This week’s picks:

• Keith: Crusader Kings 3 (Game)
• Tracy: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
• Patrick: Dragon Age: Absolution (Netflix)

Links:

• Keith Ammann on Mastodon
• Tracy Townsend on Twitter
• Patrick Hester on Twitter
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2023 Patrick Hester

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