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great content, thanks

Great video as always! Just talking about the game and the prep is always helpful. I need to speak about what I've planned but the people I could talk about it are my players so... it's great to see someone else wondering the same things lol. Right now I'm prepping for our next game tomorrow and I'm kind of anxious because I plan for a big attack against the settlement the PCs are at (I've never done a battle of this scale in Symbaroum yet). And I actually hope they'll go down so they'll be captured. But I also want that, if they're very smart about it, they could still succeed. So it's been tough to try to balance this encounter, playing way too many scenarios in my mind. And I don't know if I need to nerf my big bads or the opposite haha. Because I don't want the players to feel I'm being unfair. Very tough balancing act!

That's a great video about the system, thanks for sharing. You got a sub!

Merci, c'est toujours super intéressant ce genre de vidéos ! En tant que MJ qui prépare et écrit beaaaucoup trop j'aime voir comment les autres Meneurs préparent et s'organisent.

Hi there ! Just wanted to drop by, to say thank you for all your great videos and great work ! I have purchased and adapted your "playing with goblins" adventure to fit in my own campaign, setting it in the Urrbukturr goblin tribe, with Njegg and Gabba Gross'patte, a few months after the Copper Crown adventure, something like two years ago - and it still has consequences in our game universe today. It has added so much flavour to our universe, so : thanks a lot ! I also really enjoy all your GM prep videos, which are as interesting - as a fellow (French) GM - as they are entertaining. You also have a great storytelling craft going on, and I really like the direct and sincere atmosphere you create with your videos. I think the Symbaroum universe offers a great setting for really epic adventures - but despite its incredible lore, atmosphere, and worldbuilding tools, it is sometimes hard to manage, and therefore it's always great to have feedback from people who have already run some of the adventures, to avoid some common mistakes (like "Why should we care for Anaeda", or "Why should we seek Symbar if it is as cursed as it seems to be") ! So once again, thanks for sharing your work and thoughts, and please continue your great work ! Cheers !

Leave a comment if you have problems dealing with Big Bads in Symbaroum.

That is a nice thumbnail but it's missing the typical clickbait "facepalm" people on youtube use 🤣

Thank you! I really enjoyed your Insight into this fight

Thanks you very much for sharing your experience with the campaign. I find it super valuable as I am just starting my group with the promised Land and want to lead into wrath of the warden

Ciao, ad oggi dopo averlo giocato e masterato con amici ed Online posso confermare che Symbaroum è anche il mio D&D, detto questo buon game a tutti !

Blades in the Dark is my D&D 😎

Cheers ! Vidéo particulièrement intéressante au niveau de la préparation. En effet tu as de quoi faire pour plusieurs sessions on dirait. Tu ne prépares jamais de dialogue ? Pour les scènes importantes j’aime bien le faire. Pour savoir quoi dire et comment le dire, à la façon du personnage. Au moins quelques répliques. Par exemple lorsque mes joueurs on défait les sicaires du soleil, ils se sont rendu chez Lasifor ou Kargoï était en pleine discussion avec le maire. Il a eu un petit échange avec les PJ et j’en ai profité pour glisser quelques éléments de background plus quelques menaces dissimulées, chose que j’aurai eu du mal à faire « on the fly » si je n’avais rien préparé. Autre question: Fundiber utilise un rituel ? Ils sont sensés lutter contre toute forme de magie non ? C’est pour ça qu’ils ont tué leurs sorciers. C’est une modification délibérée de ta part ou j’ai raté quelque chose ?

I rather like the pace at which you speak. Your English is excellent. Thank you for your videos.

Love your content Leopold! I watch every video. Cheers! ☕

You should look up the system Ars Magica. It isn't a D20 system, but it has all of the positives you say of this game. It is basically a "mage's coven simulator" designed by the guy who made 3e DnD before he was hired by Wizards. It's also not setting specific (though it is primarily designed around a fantasy version of medieval Europe).

Just added a like and sub because it seems interesting + I'm from the country where the game was made. I'll watch it later for sure (did look here and there, seems interesting)

Quebec, no thank you.

My game ended in a TPK. Sucked. Everyone decided afterward that we’d move on to a different game. I was very disappointed.

Very nice castle.

If you want a good chase rules look into Blade Runner

Lovely discussion! Merci beaucoup pour tous tes efforts! I am a big fan of laying hints for some of the big elements of the Throne of Thorns campaign as seeds into the imagination of the players that they can use to orient their behaviour or anticipate conflicts. Running the Throne of Thorns campaign definitely benefits from having read all the books beforehand to be able to expose the PCs to people or conflicts that will become important later. Your list of NPC names and idiosyncratic prompts is a great idea. I will definitely steal that idea. Also completely agree about the "encounter rut" about reducing encounters to a combat encounter. We need to encourage something a bit more complex than that, I think. With respect to pacing within a session; I agree that pacing is something important for a GM to master, and is really important when it is done properly. But I think it is also very difficult to a degree proportionate to how much a GM is prepared to allow their players to determine the course of the story. There is definitely a sweet spot for preparation: the need for something flexible; the need for enough information to put the players into the scene with enough information that allows them to feel what it's like to be there; and perhaps an encounter that uses either the environment or the lore in an interesting way. I agree that the session has a life and spirit of its own. Each session needs to have some kind of dramatic accumulation. Not always the same pattern, but we need to be moving to something that is either the resolution to a problem and so moving the story forward; or else a dramatic cliffhanger and surprise or otherwise setting up for a particularly special set piece encounter. I find that I regularly overestimate how far the party will get in the adventure. Maybe that is a problem with pacing on my part, or maybe the players are spending more time with details and assessing their relevance. The good news, is that this kid of "overprep" can still be useful, but it could also be time and energy wasted. I do try to make sure that I associate encounters, even combat encounters, with the acquisition of information about the story, or tactical information about the place that can help them in subsequent combat encounters. I try to make new information always feel useful, if for not other reason then to help the players stay connected with the story by asking themselves questions and trying to figure out what is going on. And good questions about having meaningful but contextualized skill challenges/tests for a specific scene. I almost feel as though the GM needs to take a peek at PC's character sheet and provide a narrative/description laden context that touches on something specific with which the player can identify, connect with, and get excited about, that also touches on a mechanic the player can anticipate. I really like the idea of the set of challenges that could arrive in a Feast scene as an exercise. Lots of opportunities for different kinds of encounters that players can choose to focus on. Lots of potential, but certainly adds an extra level of pressure on the GM to increase tension with the right kind of pacing while also providing players with a way of finding an exploiting their niche. I have a feast scene tucked somewhere in my notes, involving such things as identifying deception, identifying anxiety, identifying desires, identifying goals, identifying vulnerabilities, identifying resilience, identifying relationships. PCs would use the Feast Scene encounter to gain intelligence about the other people there, along with conflicts and objectives, and find a way to situate their own conflicts and objectives with the NPCs. But you're right, this can't be three hours of introductions with NPCs, the pace needs to be better than that. So a die roll with the right elements at stake is quite beneficial. Great ideas as always!

Hey, j'adore la question de la mort ! Obligé de répondre de façon mystérieuse bien sûr. Mais de toute façon tu n'as pas la réponse. Ça dépend de qui trouve et de ce qu'il en fait. Tu peux montrer des futurs possibles, façon Dr Strange. Et j'aime beaucoup l'idée pour entrer sur Yeferon aussi. Mes joueurs n'y sont pas allé donc je n'ai pas eu à me poser la question.

Dude, I love your content. Greetings from Chile!

Hello, I am inspired by your channel. Its still pretty new to me so I am slowly going through each video. Symbaroum is my favourite ttrpg and as a GM your prep videos are really valuable to me I am glad to see you are making more :) lots to look forward to

Intéressant et impressionnant!

Great prep session. Lots accomplished in an hour, and appreciate your reflection on the details of ambiance and narrative links as well.

buenos consejos, tomé nota de algunos, para poder aplicarlos a mis juegos :) gracias!!

Very interesting. Cheers.

T'as vraiment pas un accent Français lol, t'es de quel coin au Québec?

As always, set the speed to 1,25 or 1,5! I’m slow in English. :)

For combat my fix is: Missiles, Melee and Magic. Party tells me what they do/attack with and that determines the turn order. Players fire bows/thrown weapons then enemies do that. Players swing axes, then enemy does, magic casters go off last. For a social fix: I ditched charisma, replaced it with a trust mechanic to be spent like currency and sometimes a dice roll. Convincing an NPC to do something might just require trust, if it's contested by an outside factor, dice roll. Trust is generated by taking quests, completing quests, and good roleplay. Rulings over rules for me.

I love their dark and gritty world, I love how much limits the magic gets, I love the freedom of its system mechanics.. But goddamn, the rules are written poorly. The description of almost every ability leaves so many questions, and the balance is impossible to adequately play as is - there are builds that allow a level 0 newbie to one-shot a boss-type enemy.

Hello Jericho, I largely agree with you that rules are best when they resolve conflicts with too many values to micro-manage (like combat). I have a similar approach to resolving negotiation as you do: let the folks talk it out, and the scenario should largely be affected by the arguments presented by the PCs and the interests of the other party. Exceptions would be, of course, if PCs are trying to use deception, intimidation, or are really trying to get the other party to go outside their interests. A particularly compelling argument should succeed without requiring a die roll at all. Furthermore, in game terms, such an encounter could earn the party 1 xp as well. Even though a die was not used to resolve a challenge, a die roll *would* have been necessary but for good choices and strong role playing by the players, which is the sort of thing that the machine should be rewarding. Incidentally, one thing lacking in Symbaroum, in my opinion, and which I am thinking of house ruling in, is something akin to the inspiration die from 5e. I like having an immediate tangible reward that I can give to players who come up with creative solutions to problems that make use of and strengthen the lore/environment within which the encounter is situated. I don't think an inspiration die would be terribly disproportionate in Symbaroum, and would be worth 1 xp as the cost of rerolling any die: so an immediate reward of some value that is proportionate. I'm not a fan of random encounters in the sense of something rolled by the GM at the table to flesh out on the fly, but I do appreciate a list of possible encounters and encounter seeds that I can mull over and customize while planning a session. I like the examples of dangers in the Davokar, but to be honest, I think I would have preferred something a bit more complex. I found the dangers to be a bit... thin. Maybe I am being too picky. I am grateful for the tables that were provided, and there are some good ideas in there, but the examples seem a bit underwhelming based on how prominently the Davokar features in the setting. I feel like the list could be fleshed out a bit, but I'm having a hard time coming up with new items to add to the list. Right now, I'm looking at compounding things to increase the costs of regular adventuring: bad weather to slow movement, spoil food, and impose penalties due to cold; creatures and plants that dispense poison and corruption, disease, and corrupted terrain to give them a sense of going through their resources quickly and needing to pay attention to how they are going to plan out periods of rest; overall giving the PCs a sense of their margins of error having been noticeably diminished. But even then, it feels a bit flat, like I'm missing something. Chasing is also something that feels flat, as you point out. I am toying with making chase scenes a bit more interactive and requiring choices by players. Perhaps the existing contested die rolls could be supplemented with points that the PC/NPC involved in the chase would accumulate and could then spend to either add complications to the chase (obstacles, slip and fall, someone comes to the assistance of one party or another). Die rolls without decisions by the players seems like an unfinished mechanic. But chases should not drag out, as you say, and should be resolved quickly. Not easy to come up with the right mix of speed, complexity, and tension without burning out the GM! I do like the abilities that have both in-combat as well as out of combat elements, and wish there could have been a bit more. I"m thinking of the tactical surveying ability of Tactician, and the benefits to motivating a group of people in Leader. This kind of approach provides some nice utility to powers that could otherwise be limited to combat situations.

I pretty much buy anything you recommend, so yes, I would buy those cards 🤣

I am also very much into the narrative elements of the hobby, but I feel like I go even further than most people in the space, since I don't like to look at the events in the game just through the lens of the capabilities of the characters. Which is why I kicked rolls to check if a character can do something are absent from my own system design. Games like Everway and Fiasco have been hugely influential for me, but I did not went diceless like those system, I had to invent the wheel anew on how I use dice in a different manner than most systems do. I totally agree with you on that fire thing, the same goes also for plant life, especially wooden creatures which for some reason are treated very often like their are vulnerable to fire, but are just as difficult to be inflamed as and human would be. Guess most game designers never went on a LARP or just on a camping trip hand have no idea how fire works. Regarding social rules are similar something people seem not to grasp how social interaction work. My approach is to handle them more like a haggling system, that you have to offer something to gain something. There is no way to simply get people to do what you want with just a roll. Give them an incentive, and then the NPC is interested in that or they are not. Again, that approach of looking at social interaction through the lens of the capability of the character is just horrible in my opinion.

Hello Jericho, Quelques points intéressants que tu as soulevé, dans le désordre: Alors d’abord je tiens à préciser que je ne connais pas d’autres systèmes de jeu. Symbaroum est le premier JDR et certainement le dernier que je maîtriserai. Les règles de fuite & poursuite… C’est la première chose qui m’est venu à l’esprit quand tu as parlé des règles dont on avait pas forcément besoin. C’est assez révélateur… Ça veut bien dire qu’elles ne sont pas bonne. 3 tests [agi <- agi] réussi, comment faire plus ch*ant ? :D Je ne les ai utilisé qu’une fois et j’ai compris que ce serait la dernière. Le storytelling est intéressant, les cartes d’événement de Chtulu je ne connaissais pas, à voir. Je devrais bientôt avoir une poursuite (Dolani), je ne sais pas encore comment ça va se passer. Pê des tests pour esquiver des personnes dans la rue ou des caisses de marchandises, un truc du genre. Un test de force pour voir si le PJ a le souffle court. Pê Dolani va grimper sur les toits pour rendre la poursuite épique. Bref, tout sauf les règles officielles. :D Après il vaut mieux des règles mauvaises que pas de règle du tout. Libre à chacun de les utiliser. Sur ce point, je préfère le narratif. Ensuite les dialogues et conflits sociaux. Partie intéressante que voici. On ne peut pas résoudre les conflits sociaux par un jet [per <- vol]. Le jeu perdrait tout son intérêt. Et dans le même temps, il y a quand même un truc assez… je ne sais pas comment dire, cassé, dans tous les JDR je pense. Si le PJ est un associable ou juste pas très malin, mais que le joueur a un super argument dans un dialogue, ou qu’il se montre lui-même très fin, tu ne vas pas lui dire « ben non, dsl, ton personnage à 5 en persuasion » Donc c’est assez paradoxale. D’un côté le PJ n’est pas sensé être très loquace ou subtil, de l’autre ton joueur amène un super argument sur la table… Je fais un peu comme toi je crois. Je fais faire un jet de dés [per <- vol] uniquement dans certaines situation, quand le joueur fait une boulette par exemple. Mais globalement, si l’argumentaire est bon, le dialogue se suffit à lui-même. Pour les dégâts de feu, là par contre, embrace the broken. C’est un jeu. Une arme enflammée enflamme la cible, ça me va. Une torche, pê pas. De même qu’une flèche peut percer une armure de plates… Ben oui en vrai c’est pas possible, mais là pourquoi pas. Il faut garder l’aspect fantastique. Ça ne me dérange pas, je ne cherche pas le réalisme à tout prix. Pour finir je suis d’accord avec ta conclusion, « rules as helper », c’est très bien. Les règles ne doivent pas diriger le jeu mais aider. Le fun doit diriger le jeu. Cheers

A lot of good stuff here. It's always good to watch your prepping videos and this was a comprehensive one. Thank you.

Very interesting remark about the difference between in person and online gaming at the start. I hadn't thought of that, but I must agree with you. When you're playing online via a VTT, as a GM you're required to do so much more than just GM the game and there is a lot of technical stuff to do (both as prep and during the session). Like you I'm not a very technical person, so it is somewhat taxing (and at times hindering even) to do all that all the while and in addition to running the actual game itself. I believe that is the biggest reason why I feel so beat after most online sessions as a GM. Great insight, Leo, thanks!

Great to see you again! I just use Word/Google Docs for my notes. The links in the description are missing.

They have a 5E version now right ? best of both worlds :)

Best primer on Symbaroum I've seen.

I have been listening alot to Symbaroum's world setting and stories, and it has been extremely inspiring. The art is amazing, very dark gaelic themes with Eastern Europe feel. I have been very inspired by it and by the "openness" of the story especially with feeling that players can dive to create and shape the story, instead of just "playing in the world" like most D&D campaigns feel to me.

it seems a bit too low/gritty fantasy for me

Very creative encounter, I enjoyed listening to you retelling it.

As a player (and reader of other gm comments compared to my gm), an enemy is "strong" and smart as the gm knowledge of the spirit of the game.

I think your ruling on weapons is RAW (unless they have artifact weapons). Only artifact weapons count as magical in Symbaroum.

Hello, Perso j'avais rajouté "têtes multiples" aux ténèbres rampants comme bonus pour avoir bu l'eau vile. Le combat n'a finalement pas eu lieu, mais je pense que c'est un bon moyen pour gérer le problème du "single boss". Pas mal l'idée d'assombrir les tokens pour simuler l'obscurité. Moi je me serai contenté d'assombrir la scène. Le jeu du chat et de la souris aussi c'est intéressant.

Welcome back. I do hope everything is ok with you and your people. I love your additions to the modules and hope to see your notes and additions in the future. I’m about 16 sessions in (Sleepless Path, Best Kept Unspoken, Blooming Vale, Mark of the Beast). I used a bunch of your content to prep the group for copper crown and WotW. Thank you

Welcome back! You asked about what kind of content we’d be interested in. Maybe you’ve already done this, but I’d be interested in hearing your take on how running the Adventure Pack modules went. What did you like? What did you change? Were there any pain points GMs should be aware of? Always appreciate that kind of advice from someone that’s run an adventure previously. This might be a bit out there, but at the moment, I’m exploring how to think about creating narrative arcs for player characters. There’s plenty of advice out there for how to craft character arcs for protagonists in, say, a novel. But roleplaying games are improvisational by nature, so what would an attempt to create character development look like? If you’ve had thoughts about this, I’d be interested to hear them.

Looking forward to hearing about the big battle - I like specific scenarios