The LATCH System: sparking creativity through Richard Saul Wurman’s organizing principle
In this episode, Sara shares the LATCH system developed by Richard Saul Wurman, who coined the term “LATCH” in his 1988 book Information Anxiety.
We explore how the five organizational methods of LATCH (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy) can inspire creativity.
We also note how combining or overlaying multiple types of information organization can create hilarious results (hierarchical vampire caskets, reverse alphabetized stadium seating).
Why this matters:
Whether you think about it or not, the way you choose to organize information directly affects how others experience it, be it your next combat encounter or your record collection.
As dungeon masters, we often default to a mix of location and category (such as “in dungeon room L1 the party encounters 5 Giant Spiders”). What would happen to our campaigns if we switched up the way we organize?
When you are intentional with the way you structure your games, it allows you to be more intentional with the experience you’re creating for your players.
Episode Transcript
Keith 0:00
Hi, I'm Keith Hazen Diem,
Sara 0:02
and I'm Sara Shepherd.
And this is dungeons and documentation, a podcast in which we explore information architecture through the lens of Dungeons and Dragons. In this episode, we'll be talking with Sara Shepherd, my co host about the latch system, a system that uses five methods of organization to organize all the information in the world. So stick with us.
Keith 0:33
Alright, folks, Welcome to Dungeons and documentation. Today, I Keith Hazen-Diehm, one of your stalwart co hosts is interviewing Sara Shepherd, your other stalwart co host, about the LATCH system. Sara, welcome to the show.
Sara 0:47
Thanks. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm a big fan.
Keith 0:51
Me too. Me too. So tell me about the latch system.
Sara 0:55
The LATCH system was created back in 1989, by this man named Richard Saul Wurman, do you know him?
Keith 1:03
His name was not Richard latch.
Sara 1:05
No, it was not. And you might not know his name, but you definitely know what he's done. Because among other things, he wrote nearly 100 books, he also created the TED and TEDx conference series. So he was an author, he was an architect, he was a speaker, he was a graphic designer. And in 1989, he wrote this book called "Information Anxiety." The whole idea is that that there's so much information happening, you know, computers were coming onto the scene, there's too much to deal with, what are we going to do?
And in that book, he not only coined the term Information Architect, he created the latch system. And the idea behind the latch system is that information might be infinite. But the way that we can organize information is not it is finite. And in fact, he believed there are actually only five ways to organize everything in the world.
Keith 1:51
Would I be taking a leap to assume that one of them begins with an L one, an a one, a T, one, a C, and one an H?
Sara 1:58
You're correct.
Keith 1:58
All right. No, I'm getting it. All right. All right.
Sara 2:01
It's an acronym.
Keith 2:02
Okay.
Sara 2:02
So the last system represents his opinion, there's only five ways to organize everything. Latch, let's go through it. L is for Location, location, right, organizing information based on space. So a map, for example.
Keith 2:17
Okay, or like organizing your photos in your iPhoto library by where they were taken?
Sara 2:23
Exactly. Yeah. By Location. All right. A alphabetical? Alphabet?
Keith 2:29
Classic, everyone's favorite.
Sara 2:31
Yeah. It's less natural than his other methods, right? Because it's, it's based on alphabetizing. So you might get some strange results. If you were to go to your fridge and organized by the alphabet, versus for just the next one. I want to give it away.
Keith 2:43
Okay. Sure. Yeah. Well, and if you're organizing your iTunes library, do you use the T in the as T? Or do you skip the I mean, that's a problem.
Sara 2:54
You're getting into the nitty gritty of information architecture there.
Keith 2:58
Okay. So we have location, we have alphabet,
Sara 3:00
T is for Time that's organizing information sequentially. We see this with timetables, schedules, cooking directions, anything to do with time.
Keith 3:12
Sure. Yeah.
Sara 3:13
The fourth one, see is category. Category. We've all done it. That's sorting by groups, right? So you've assigned here's the vegetables. Here's the fruit. That's another point of debate, right? Where did the Where did the tomatoes go?
Keith 3:26
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Sara 3:27
So it's interesting that when you go to apply any of these systems, you actually end up creating a discussion of like, what do we mean when we say, time? What do we mean when we say category, right? So you kind of have to explore. And then the final one, ah, is hierarchy. So that's like tallest to shortest, most expensive, the least expensive, youngest to oldest. Anything like that.
Keith 3:51
Alright, so let me get this straight. We got location. We've got alphabetical. We've got time. We've got category and we've got hierarchy.
Sara 4:01
Yep. Very good.
Keith 4:02
Well, that leads me to the next and possibly the most important question of this entire interview. Do you keep your tomatoes in the fridge or on the counter?
Sara 4:08
I don't put them in the fridge because I've heard that that takes all the flavor out.
Keith 4:13
Yeah, I heard that too. But then they ripen too fast on the counter.
Sara 4:17
Yeah, well, that's just the way it is.
Keith 4:20
Alright, so Richard latch brought us this system.
Sara 4:22
No, Richard Wurman.
Keith 4:24
Oh, right. That's right. Richard Wurman brought us this system, failed to change his name to latch. And what are the implications of this system? What are we? I mean, I feel like it's describing something that that makes sense. Yeah. What's the point of describing it? I guess.
Sara 4:40
So the point that Wurman was trying to get out when he talked about information overwhelm was that the way we choose to structure information is actually going to affect the way that it's perceived and experienced. So if you are an Information Architect, which all of us are in some way, we're all delivering something to the world.
Keith 4:59
Sure. And the very premise of this show...
Sara 5:01
Exactly, you should be thoughtful in considering how you want to present that information. And what's the end experience? So yeah, you could give someone directions to your house alphabetically. If you hate that person, and want them to have a terrible experience, right? Like, sure, that would be the intent, you actually can combine, which we often see, right? Sure, we'll see categories in a record store, followed by alphabetical social buying methods of the latch system is often done, of course, and it actually creates a better experience. So then it's up to you to determine the hierarchy of the systems that you're going to be implementing. So do we want to have our bookshelves organized by color? Because we want to have it pretty and never be able to find the books? Or do we want to have to be alphabetical and then maybe color comes in after the alphabets been established? And the A's can be color coded? And
Keith 5:54
I feel like that wouldn't look very good on on Instagram.
Sara 5:57
No it wouldn't.
Keith 6:00
I guess I'm curious, like, had was Richard, the first person to think of organizing something in terms of, you know, alphabetizing it or, you know, organizing it by category or whatever? Like, did he formalized this system based on what he saw? Or what exactly was his goal here.
Sara 6:18
So he was observing throughout history, how people organize things, and then trying to distill that into methods that would continue into what he saw as the digital future. Because back in 1989, it's like, whoa, okay, we're not actually going to see all these objects anymore. So having a system established is going to make our lives a little more easier, because people were already feeling like there was just too much going on in the world.
Keith 6:42
I mean, I gotta say, I find it a little comforting that I, you know, am adhering to this, this structure of information architecture, without even knowing that it's a structure of information architecture. And that's fantastic.
Sara 6:56
I mean, the thing is, most of us are adhering to it, we just don't take the next step to ask ourselves is the system that I've put in place actually optimal for the experience I want to have. So you might organize your clothing by color. But if you take a step back and realize like, actually, I should probably organize it by how often I wear these items. And then within that seasonal applicability, sure. And then you might arrive at a category that's like all season's most popular that goes in the front of your closet. But we fall into a habit of not evaluating what we're doing, right. Like, I have a sister in law, she comes to my house, and she reorganizes my fridge every time because I don't think intentionally about what I'm doing in my fridge. But she does. Like she comes in and she has a system. And I don't fix it. Yeah, we can interview her.
Keith 7:43
So the question is, do you continue after she's fixed your fridge? Is it easier to find things in your fridge? Or do you have no idea where to find anything? Because her system and your system are completely different?
Sara 7:54
No, it's good. I just wish she would tell me what her system was because I can't continue to implement it. I have like a worksheet I could put on the front of my fridge and make sure everybody signs off if they're putting anything is in or out, you know, initial here. Yeah, yeah, that's another that's where systems fall apart. We don't have documentation about how you're supposed to put the eggs. And they're gonna end up on one of three racks.
Keith 8:13
So this is where Richard comes into play, where he would take this system that your sister in law has reorganizing your fridge, and he would formalize it, describing it essentially, not necessarily reinventing the system, but just formalizing the system so that you can then continue to, to follow that since
Sara 8:31
Exactly,yeah. Now, you know, most of us who work in a job will understand that as process right, like, sure, is the process we've all agreed to, that you have to adhere to. So that our big system, which is the organization can continue effectively.
Keith 8:46
Well, great. I mean, this is a great place to start with for this podcast, because I feel like you know, as we look at people's, especially if we as we look at sort of informal information, architecture structures, this gives us a little bit of a basis for understanding and formalizing that so that we can then convert it into a Dungeons and Dragons tool.
Sara 9:05
Yeah, I mean, I think it's revolutionary. You just jump into the second half.
Keith 9:09
Yeah, yeah, sure, we can go right for it.
Sara 9:23
Okay, so have you ever played a premade adventure? And I mean, not like, Have you ever run as a dungeon master or pre written adventure of any length, whether it's a whole book or just like a something you've gotten online?
Keith 9:34
I haven't run a full campaign. I've run one off adventures, some of which have just been, you know, like, I've got five people around who want to play d&d, and we want to play for a day, and some of which I've incorporated into other campaigns.
Sara 9:47
And do you remember how that was structured? Within the LATCH system?
Keith 9:52
Speaking generally, time.
Sara 9:55
Time and location, right, like I'm in location. Sure. Yeah, definitely. Like I think We are seeing more, more time these days like into the Fae wild that's time based. But before that, like it was 100%, almost location based, you have your room number, like l 10. You've got your map, and then you've got your description for that room number. Sure. And that's the standard that so many people have followed within Dungeons and Dragons, like the official stuff, but also online if you go and see people's pre written adventures that they're sharing.
Keith 10:26
Sure. And that's what I do for my own adventure if I'm drawing a map, and I want to, I mean, if I'm, if I'm making a dungeon, and I want to, you know, itemize what's in that I always go by location, yeah, give each number a room number and make my notes on it.
Sara 10:39
And I don't think that that's necessarily bad. But I do feel like having played Dungeons and Dragons for a while now, it creates that sort of like, feeling like, what's the next room? Okay, we go into the next room, what's the next room? Right? And so that's like, someone has just chosen the L. They're only doing location. And now like you mentioned, sometimes it is time. So now we're seeing this other layer, you could add into your games. Sure, which is like, okay, independent of the location, at some point, an event will happen. And that's going to add this layer of like realism. Sure. So we can see that when we start to combine methods of organizing our campaign it creates it creates a better experience, right?
Keith 11:23
Sure. Yeah. For instance, you know, yeah, just pops to mind. Like, if you are delving into a goblin fortress, and you find two goblins in the front room, and you have a big battle with them. What about the goblins? You know, three rooms back? Yeah, yeah. Like, they're not just gonna sit around. While they're like here, this pitch battle going on in their front room, they're gonna pop out and do something about it.
Sara 11:45
Yeah. And how long will it take them to get there and they have like a secret passageway, and then you can expand your map because of that, shell or like, you know, I like to think of like a steam vent on the ground and every 10 minutes, it's like releasing this burning steam from the underground smelter, things like that. So it's like, okay, regardless of when they enter the room, is this sort of happening in the background? Sure, like the tides coming up, you're gonna run it, they're gonna get trapped in the cave. It's high tide.
Keith 12:11
Of course, the tricky thing with that is that every group that I've ever played with spends twice as much time sitting around and talking about what they should do next as actually walking through the dungeon.
Sara 12:23
Yeah, I feel like next. That's a subject for another episode, too, is like, how do you track time within a d&d campaign? Because of course, like, Yeah, okay. I have a tide table. Yeah. And my group, like, we just spent 20 minutes eating pizza and yelling at somebody. Does that mean it's high tide now? Yeah, probably not.
Keith 12:41
So you're proposing then that you would organize, and you're speaking specifically about a dungeon here, not necessarily like a larger campaign?
Sara 12:49
Well, it could also be a larger campaign, because even when I've done a home brew, I still default to location, I'm like, okay, when they get to this island I've made up, then the event will be triggered, sure, triggered by the location. But I think I'm not really proposing that that's wrong. I'm just proposing that if we can think about doing it a different way, it can actually spur our creativity, it can make unexpected things for our party can kind of create a different experience. And I would argue that actually, the experience of playing a game that's organized like, hierarchically would feel different than this dungeon crawl feeling that we're all very familiar with.
Keith 13:30
So what would that look like? Then?
Sara 13:32
Like, okay, if it was a dungeon that's organized by hierarchy, like what if the first rooms like a ballroom, and the final room, however many rooms later is like, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller? It's organized by size? The final room is the size of a Rubik's Cube.
Keith 13:50
Hmm.
Sara 13:51
And then the party has, like, do they have a shrinking potion? Maybe they like turn into a mouse and go into the room and just like creates another challenge that you would never think about, right? Like, yeah, like, how would I organize an island by category? Oh, uh, druids come in and they've like, moved all the plants. So it's poisonous and non poisonous on one side. What side does the party land on?
Keith 14:11
Oh, sure. Sure,
Sara 14:12
Or alphabet. Like I had this idea that you get, you give your players a curse? Maybe you librarians really mad at them, and they have to cast their spells in alphabetical order.
Keith 14:24
That's hilarious. Yeah, I think that'd be great. So what do we want to do for this episode? Do we want to try and build like an adventure? That's categorized hierarchically and just sort of see what that would be like and in an entire
Sara 14:39
Yeah, yeah, we're alphabet alphabet. I could like when I was I made download on this episode page. It walks you through the LATCH system with some prompts. But alphabet was the one I had the hardest time thinking of examples. So yeah, I would love to do alphabet or category or hierarchy. So choose one of those, you know, actually do two Yeah, so we can start at the big going and then involve a second one.
Keith 15:02
Yeah, alphabet is I've actually been working with an alphabetical categorization a little bit. I hadn't really thought of it before. Just now, but I've been trying to build campaigns and connected text, which is just a wiki style piece of software. So you just you essentially build your own wiki. And you can link from one page to another, just like any, you know, wiki that you find online. But when when you try and pull up the index to actually like find something, it's all alphabetical. That's something that I've been sort of frustrated with, originally, but have gotten more used to it, the more that I've been using it.
Sara 15:38
Okay, and do you find that when you suddenly view your stuff alphabetically after like a break, you're like, Oh, I forgot I made this NPC and maybe I can work her in?
Keith 15:46
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I've also been building it, I've been building everything that I'm, you know, every adventure that I've written, since I started using it, I've just written in the same wiki. So I sent so I have, you know, every every NPC from every, you know, piece of every campaign that I've that I've written, which I haven't been using that long, so it hasn't been it's not a huge list yet, but it's all just in this big categorization list. alphabetical, and definitely, there are some, some NPCs it's like, this was the wench in the, in the bar or whatever, that that they didn't actually pay any attention to, and just completely walked by. But now I can, you know, maybe pull her out and use her in some other piece. And I've already written her.
Sara 16:30
Yeah, okay, great. So let's pretend that we have, maybe you already have an idea for our campaign, you could throw it in and our main method is alphabet. And then we could have a sub method which could be hierarchy. It could be fun. And again, just be an encounter if we don't want to do a whole campaign. Sure. Like I'm immediately thinking of a gladiator style fight. Okay, so it's a format we've all experienced.
Keith 16:53
Yeah, you fight the weakest guy first and then you go up to the strongest guy is that what you think?
Sara 16:58
Yeah. Or like the the bad boss you know, like that. The Beholder under Waterdeep. He has a gladiator part of his dungeon. So it's kind of like a trope. We expect to be fighting maybe a couple rounds but it's an alphabetical alphabetically organized gladiator fight.
Keith 17:17
right so you fight the B Beholder first before you fight the G goblins
Sara 17:23
Yeah or like the seating you know people think they purchased the best seats because a but actually a is the back row because this person said it reverse alphabets z is the front and then some nobles are really mad when they realize that they're sitting in a one yeah, this was like this like you know when I'm thinking of a campaign and I'm feeling stuck it's interesting to use the latch system to like turn it upside an idea upside down.
Keith 17:47
Sure.
Sara 17:48
And sometimes it's like making the worst encounter possible through this brainstorm will result in a better you don't have to talk about the stadium seating Yeah, but it's funny I don't know like it's funny to me and it's like oh, they're really mad that the Lord changed the way he reversed the alphabet and now the nobles are in the nosebleed section. We can talk about the monsters though you know that's kind of expected though a what's an a monster? Shoot like copies of the books in front of us
Keith 18:19
Yeah, I mean if I had my if I had my monsters manual in front of me I could just turn to page one because it is after all alphabetical okay,
Sara 18:27
and that I think is problematic I wish the monsters manuals category actually isn't...
Keith 18:32
It is category it's alphabetical with sub categorization for instance, every giant is under g g giant that makes sense same with dragons every dragon
Sara 18:42
Okay, all right. I take back what I said Yeah, that's a fine system. It's not so fun for like, I guess you could randomly turn to a page and be like, okay, they're gonna fight
Keith 18:50
Oh, though, it would be interesting. I mean, especially from a dungeon master's viewpoint, trying to build a campaign to just have a have your monsters listed by say challenge rating so you could just go through and you know, actually read through I think it is listed in the book. By challenge rating somewhere you can go through there's an index of challenge rating dungeon masters, but it's kind of hard because you look at it and then you have to flip back and but from a from a from an adventure building standpoint. In terms of nuts and bolts, you know, do I want to kill my players, the first room they step into, it would be more useful to have that lined out by challenge rating. Although then once you've built your campaign and you're trying to reference your monsters, it's a lot nicer to have them alphabetized so maybe even just reworking monsters manual into like a digital library so that you can switch categories would be or switch from category? to alphabetize to Yeah, hierarchical. You could do large to small monsters. Yeah. Well,
Sara 19:57
I feel like that's the reason why these online tools are out there that are like planning an encounter by challenge level. And of course, they're limited by what they can have. But it would be great to say, Okay, I want challenge ready 1/4 I want the category to be swamp. And I want one big monster and I think that does because I'm sure
Keith 20:13
it does. Yeah, I just never had the had the inclination to go look for it because I'd never thought about the latch system before. This is great.
Sara 20:20
Okay, can I I'm going to throw a challenge at you see what you come back at. Okay, so we have a typical, go in and kill the vampire. That's your that's your hook. And now apply one of the latch, I'm gonna give you want to you want to pick one to killing a vampire? And how would you change how that encounter change because of how you've chosen to organize it? We've done alphabet. So how about hierarchy?
Keith 20:48
Okay, well, so you could go. I mean, you could go hierarchical in terms of the challenges you face, which is a pretty standard setup, although you could, as you mentioned earlier, you could flip it around, right? So the vampire opens the door. Yeah, the vampire opens the door. Now you have to fight them. And then you fight the boss vampire. And then his his little buddy vampires show up and you have to fight them. And then a big swarm of thralls shows up and you gotta fight them. In order to get out of the mansion.
Sara 21:18
I'm actually imagining like a hierarchical display of coffins like big, smaller, smallest. It's so cute. It's like Goldilocks.
Keith 21:26
they just like pop open as you beat the previous ones. Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing about that is, right, normally you're saving, especially if you're a caster. Well, I mean, if you're any, any class, you save your abilities for the big boss. So if you fight the big boss first and you dump out all your spell slots, then next thing you know, you've got 20 thralls coming at you.
Sara 21:47
What are your players gonna do? Yeah, and your players are so used to the idea of like, okay, the big boss is at the end. Yeah, sure. So when the vampire opens the door, they're like, Well, this must not be the real vampire. This must be like a guy in the costume. Yeah. So that's like an added level of surprise, right? You flipped the hierarchy,
Keith 22:05
right? Or surely we're not supposed to fight this guy right now. Because why would you start with fighting the big boss? Yeah, they will be friendly. Yeah.
Sara 22:13
And then theydie. All right. Time is tricky.
Keith 22:18
I feel like there's something in the vampire. I don't think time is tricky. In fact, I think it's easiest. Because time, you know, when you're organizing a d&d campaign time, you can just equate to levels, right?
Sara 22:29
Yeah, I guess. But like, what if you want to say, okay, the this dragon is going to lay her eggs at the next new moon. So you need to be at the layer by that time. And I've done that stuff before my homebrew and then I'm back to that problem you were talking about before, which is how do you track time? When you're a player?
Keith 22:46
dicking around
Sara 22:47
How long are they shopping for? I don't know, okay, you spent five days haggling for the best price? Right potion?
Keith 22:55
Right? Well, I mean, the classic one happened. The classic method, right is to just make the new moon happen whenever it makes the most sense for it to happen.
Sara 23:05
Yeah. And I guess like, if you want if the goal of organizing by time is to create an impetus to not have a shopping episode, then you would use that to say, Oh, you look up into the night sky. And notice that it's a waxing crescent, you have only but three days to reach the Dragon's Lair.
Keith 23:24
Sure, there's no time for shopping, right? For anyone that's confused by what a shopping episode is. That's how our group tends to refer to those two hour sessions where you just sit around looking for items and shops and haggling with people.
Sara 23:39
I want a new pet.
Keith 23:42
Yeah, no, I mean, I think that that's useful. But also, if you don't stick to the timeline, then you can make the thing happen in a more impactful way. Right. For example, I just ran an adventure where I had the party was exploring a mansion, which was the first floor was abandoned. But there is an occult ritual going on in the basement where they were summoning a demon. Well, it's most exciting if the demon gets summoned when they walk into the room where there's summoning the demon, right. It's less exciting if the demon gets summoned while they're upstairs, or they're not quite done summoning the demon yet and they just kill all the cultists.
Sara 24:22
Yeah, that's true. I mean, like, then I was like, Well, how long have they been summoning for? Because we were on the first floor for like eight hours.
Keith 24:29
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's that. But okay,
Sara 24:32
I guess I'm going to take a step back. When we talked about the LATCH system. The idea is you think about intent before you choose your system. Sure. So the intent is I don't want my players dicking around, I'm choosing time, and that's going to structure how I present the information. So I enter the first level of the abandoned mansion. Oh, you hear distant chanting right like so you're adding in these flavors that are time based. Keep them the clock's ticking. The sun is beginning to drop below the hills. Darkness is coming over. Okay, so it's fun to like think about, oh, if I alphabetize this encounter, I have different ideas. But also, it's interesting to know, hey, what's the intent of this encounter anyway? Like, why am I including the abandoned floor instead of just dropping them right into the summoning chamber? Yeah, if there's no risk or perceived risk that you won't get there in time.
Keith 25:29
Right, right. I mean, mostly it was to make it more creepy.
Sara 25:33
Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah. Add this creepiness factor. They don't want to rush to the basement because they don't know what's in this floor. And yet, you've added this texture of like, you better get down to that basement, because there's summoning in the demon.
Keith 25:46
Sure. Well, they also disrupt, they also didn't know that there was a demon being summoned in the basement.
Sara 25:50
So well, you didn't organize by time.
Keith 25:53
No, yeah, no, right. In that example, I actually organized it by location, right? They didn't the demon doesn't get summoned until they get to the basement.
Sara 26:01
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But it's interesting. Like, even as I'm thinking about it, you add a level of tension for your players when you mix these two. So you've got this unusual location, the creepiness, and the tension of feeling like they need to get down and disrupt a ritual Sure, creates the player tension. It's like, oh, God, you go first. Right? It's like the haunted house?
Keith 26:26
Well, and you could, I could have thrown in more time elements, right, like I could have had set one in that particular instance, they had chose to run away from some guards that were at the front gate of this mansion, rather than fighting them, they're moving through the top half of the house in initiative. So it could have been very easy to add a time element of like noises coming from the basement or something like that. And, and the, the longer they're spending looking around, right, the more sort of ominous things are coming up from underneath them.
Sara 27:00
Yeah, it would be interesting. So this is where the overwhelm starts. For me. You're managing initiative, managing the guards. How do you even remember to put in that flavoring? It's like, I'm almost imagining there's a session planning sheet that has like a time going down? What are the time elements? And then across? It could be what are the categories? Sure. And what's the alphabet? Like, you know, alpha can be even what's the NPCs and your players because it's just too much to keep track of,
Keith 27:33
you know, this brings to mind an interesting idea. So I used to play poker with some friends from work, we play Texas Hold'em. And we do you know, like a $5 buy in, and you get you a certain amount of chips, and you play until everyone's at it chips until one person's chips. Sure, well.
Sara 27:58
There's these thing's called chips see...
Keith 28:00
But the thing that we that this group did, so that it wasn't just like one game that wound up with only two people playing for two hours at the end of it, is we set a timer. So every 15 minutes, the buy in the ante would go up, it would double, right, so the game gets higher stakes as you go. And that sort of creates a pressure to just finish the game. Yeah. And
Sara 28:21
how did that feel as a player?
Keith 28:25
I mean, as a player, I wasn't very good.
Sara 28:29
I felt bad. It felt bad for you to lose the money.
Keith 28:33
But but, you know, when I lost all my money in the first five minutes of the game, it meant that I got to play again in an hour. So you know, hang out and shoot the shit with people for a little bit until you know, you can start playing again because like the game has has progressed. It also like it incentivizes you to play more aggressively.
Sara 28:57
Yeah, I almost like I played d&d once with nine players. It took an hour to get back to me during the combat. Yeah, I almost want to have a timer like a one minute timer, right. Like because it's supposed to be six seconds during combat. Yeah, this is what are you gonna do? Yeah, yeah. Just sitting around. Well, I don't know what's she's Hold on.
Keith 29:19
I don't think I want to use my third level slot.
Sara 29:24
Just hurry up. Yeah. No, actually, I feel like it's in the dungeon master's guide. They had this little note from Chris Perkins. It's like, just just throw some dice. Yeah, if your party is dicking around, just throw some dice because they're gonna get worried. Why are you throwing in? So it's like, yeah, you're rolling dice. Maybe you have a timer. Yeah. Move it along.
Keith 29:41
Yeah. Shout out to Chris Perkins. That's a great idea. I like that
Sara 29:44
because of his brain.
Keith 29:49
Dungeons and documentation is a production of Keith and Sarah's free time, or theme song is by Ian post. This episode produced by pebbles Voltaire and Oslo Cobblepot. underwriting provided by Shepherd creative enterprises LLC. This episode was produced in the crypt of the smiling lips. For more information and show notes visit dungeons and documentation.com or dungeondocs.com.
