This Saturday, Hovey, Patrick, Yanini, and I spent a couple of hours attending District 100’s amazing Advanced Club Officer Training. ACOT is available to any officer who has spent at least 1 year in the role for which they seek to be trained and is focused on a deeper dive into the specifics of each role with less time dedicated to the basics that need to be mastered first. Here are a few “lessons learned” from each member who attended, along with credit to their trainers:

Hovey – SAA Training – Bill Harmon, DTM

• Don’t Forget to GRIN:
  • Greet – Send a private chat to each guest and welcome them in the chat; be sure to let them know they can privately chat you with any questions at any time.
  • Recognize – Announce and welcome your guests at the top of the meeting.
  • Invite – Invite the guest to join the club.
  • kNow – Have a virtual Guest Book, or just have them chat you their email and/or phone so your VPM can follow up.

Patrick – President Training – Judie Bicknell, DTM

• Make sure you have a plan with concrete steps to take in order to achieve your club goals. The Club Success Plan can help with this.
• Add an open forum section to the board meeting agenda where officers can propose ideas. This ensures that their voice is heard and that they feel like part of the team and are contributing to the team. As the club president, speak last and/or only if no other club officers are speaking with respect to offering ideas for the club.
• Share the Distinguished Club Program Tracking form with club members at a club meeting so they can see where the club is at.
• If a club member attends a Club Executive Committee meeting and proposes an idea and it’s possible for the club to do it and if the club wants to do it, ask the club member if they want to be involved in the idea and/or Chair it.
• Ask club officers who may be without a club and/or club officer related project at the moment if they will help another club officer who is working on a club and/or club officer related project. Have club officers who are working on a club and/or club officer related project reach out to the club members at large to see if any of them can assist with the project. This also creates more engagement in the club among the club members at large.

Loni – VPPR Training – Alicia Curtis, DTM

• Instagram could be one potentially valuable outlet for PR, considering the highly visual nature of D&T club meetings and content.
• Meetup could be a second valuable outlet with many Meetup groups focused around roleplaying or improvisational speaking/acting; Meetup costs (approx. $60/month) are covered by District 100.
• We can submit upcoming events and details about successful events through the D100 web site.
• Having a custom URL (ex. dungeonsandtoast.com) and a custom web site (i.e., not freetoasthost) can make clubs seem more polished.

Yanini – Secretary Training – Iona Rodricks, DTM

• The Secretary prepares the agendas (weekly and executive committee) and distributes it.
• The Secretary should learn to prepare the agenda (does not have to be the Secretary all the time).
• Assign roles at least 4 weeks in advance to prepare members for their roles.

Dungeons & Toast is pleased to welcome special guest Kelli Butler, AKA “Kelli the Opera Geek” at our meeting on Friday, December 10th. She will be speaking about the differences between in-house games and games streamed for a wider audience. There will be a Q&A session after she speaks.

Members and guests are also invited to don their weird apparel (hat tip Michael C.) for the first annual Ugly Holiday Sweater Contest.

We hope you will join us for this special event!

#D100

GMs often struggle to differentiate their NPCs from one another. (We once joked that somehow all our GM’s NPCs seemed to have British accents.) In this video, voice actor Darren McStay demonstrates a number of vocal characteristics that can be layered to create distinct-sounding characters. A few of these characteristics include texture (breathy vs. dry), air placement (throat vs. nose), and tempo. Why not experiment with a few of these characteristics to add additional interest to your game world or player character?

“Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”

John Maxwell

Now our newly elected Club Officers have titles, positions and goals to achieve. However, this is not their guiding purpose or their overall mission. Our Club Officers are united in their love of roleplaying, storytelling and many other hobbies that fall under the umbrella of geekdom. Their passion is to share the love of their hobbies with one another through the vehicle that a Toastmasters’ club has to offer.

We have a great team at the helm to continue making this a reality into the new year.

If there’s one thing Toastmasters pride themselves on (psst – there is more than one), it’s change or — more specifically — growth. It’s this growth mindset that brings us together every week to work on our craft, whether in a speaking, leadership, or evaluation role. In Dungeons & Toast, this outlook translates into players and game masters who constantly strive to better themselves, both through practice and introspection. Our Quest Master Greg S. recently penned an article about his own evolution as a Game Master, the way his perspective and execution has changed over the years. You can give it a read below.

The creator of the video below, Josh Sundquist, is missing one leg. Rather that let that limit him, he uses it as the basis of some amazingly funny costumes. Toastmasters helps us learn to go outside our own comfort zones, and play to our strengths; this short video seemed to fit both of those really well, while being both creative and hilarious.

Put a spell on your players! Broken Peach offers a prime example of how to do this and bring your game to life with the incorporation of atmospherics: music and costumes, in this case. Engage in a little hocus pocus to add a trick or treat to your adventures!