วีดีโอ

Great video. Looking forward to the pdf!

thank you!!

Something something about technology and magic. Anyways, .. Years ago at a gaming shop playing Ravenloft, a few players wanted to some interesting .. aliens .. cause they wanted to try them out but really wanted one of those strange Ravenloft stories. One player wanted to PC a Halo elite alien with a double plasma blade. But this is Ravenloft ?! I pointed out basic advance infratraition equipment the effects the users' biomass by 50% and allows them to blend in with the local environment. More then a few player yelled asking what it is called ? I listed it as Hat of Disguise using the 2nd-level spell Alterself. Since they are bigger than a Wookie, we just had them go with the WotC3e half-dragon templet. As for equipment damage, Hp is the n/pc ability to roll with or avoid dodge direct impact contact, otherwise Acid Bolt does constitution dmg cause a Fort save of DC10 +dmg dealt or die from system shock from the plasma burns. Now Halo isn't DC/Marvel where they have size altering equipment, but for This Game Story, they do now. Side plot the alien learns human arcane shape shifting magic. 2.) This Is Ravenloft ?! and you are dropping Halo character races/ species into human gothic horror setting ? Human outpost colony is being over ran and through all the smoke the Ravenloft Fog rolls in and you have futuristic tanks and wreak aircraft outside from castle Ravenloft, we normally start with Mordshire west coast fishing village with early 1800's English manor houses. Where you have haunted ghost houses, werewolves from the eastern river county, strange sea monsters, not forgetting the wererats due northeast in the French renaissance . For aliens with no knowledge of earth's past cultures, it is a horror setting. 3.) Ran a WotC3e D&D/Star Wars game setting with wild west 6shooters. Jedi with a 6gun or the Riffle Man tv series. Plot twist the teenagers found out their schoolteacher is a Lich, all the adults know this already it isn't a polite topic to talk about. As for liches needing souls to prolong their undead, there is plenty unruly cattle rustlers to soul drain. High tech doesn't work well on the world, so it is all back to basics. As for the setting undead, planar energies seem to animate beings with unresolve issues to deal with. Spacecraft or simple computers have a difficult time keeping a battery charge or operational systems .. glich .. on random chart rolls. Tasers or battery charge energy range weapons are .. well, ... best find something else after 1d20 or 2d10 minutes. If your spacecraft doesn't land fast, it free falls crashes. Getting off the ground and out of the world energy fields is a very stressful crazy 6minutes of your life. The bicycle power electronics generator is more reliable than the computers operating the portable fusion generator. The trade off the world is avoided unless you really desire your spaceship to crash there.

My thought on using aliens is the small "scout" or survey ship, maybe 3 to 5 aliens, a single rifle, a few pistols, just self defense stuff,.or none, the idea is their tools, maybe a heavy laser boring drill, or a plasma thing that vaporizes rock, both super powerful improvided weapons, maybe the aliens improvise this, their simple table knife is like a dagger+1, etc. But limited and constrained. Not even soldiers or an invasion. Just scientists poking around. Or tourists or surveying contractors. Way more possibility with less over powering.

Great video, KR. It's true, in the old days this was common, most famously [SPOILERS] B1-Into the Unknown. I have used laser weapons and just had them to damage like a heavy crossbow. But I like your idea about limiting the power source better. Let it do a lot of damage, but it works on (insert your sci-fi power source here) dilithium crrystals, not available on the planet, and there's only 3 crystals left.

Oh Kevin I love this video, 😆 I completely agree with what you're saying, there needs to be a balance. Really like the sickness part, radiation damage. In a marvel comic I read many moons ago, they had a power suit that would drain your spirit or soul. Eventually if over used it would drain that person of their life force. I see it as exhaustion for 5e. Use at your own risk 🧐 Thanks Kevin you have a wonderful day!

WotC can burn in Hell. Elon has made Hero status for me. 1st edition all the way. Didn't need an update. Played it over 20 years with only needing to alter 3 rules.

I have never been a fan of Aliens in D&D, but to each their own. If you do put guns into you world, I would not make them more powerful than an equivalent wand - Laser Pistol = Wand of Lightning Bolts. MA and GW are great games to play if you want "Lasers and Lizards". (Just my own opinion) A grand quest could be the search for more ammo.

Just say no

Will Wonderdraft work on a Mac? The site says it will, but when I try to order, I am not offered a Mac option. Their customer service seems non-existent.

thank you!

I really don't like 1d4 side dice, they have a bad habit of rarely rolling up 4's. I normally go with 4d6 and x4 for % results. Exploding 1's and 6's jump jack the drama to the next level.

🥳🫂👍🏿

Oh, I'll be using on my next session...I really like the d4 odds....

If this works for people then awesome. But I’m not sure how I feel about this. I think as a player I’d much prefer a roll with my ‘most relevant’ character ability (GM can apply modifiers or difficulty). This way each character has their own chance of success (so it’s not all vanilla). For example, with the river crossing i would expect a Player Character has a greater chance than their hireling, torch bearer etc. Your ruling idea (random %) is definitely quicker but very arbitrary

It's such an important skill, to be able to roll (pun) with what the players want to do, even when there isn't necessarily a mechanic for it. The difference of die used could really help signal the off-road nature of the action - and that it's okay to try things, no matter if it's not on their character sheet.

I really like this even better than DC 5, 10, 15, etc. More dramatic! In B/X I am toying with using the Ability score as a check, lift a heavy thing, roll under Strength, in lieu of any skill, roll under wisdom or intelligence, so making these more meaningful than just bonues as in 5E or complex as percentages. And I am getting more into using specific die for different things rather than collapse all rolls to a D20. I think it immerses one to know that when a certain die comes out it means something.

Rulings are the game.

1 - Total Failure; 2 - Partial Failure, roll again (1or 2 Total Failure); 3 - Partial Success, roll again (3 or 4 Total Success); 4 Total Success. Too many rolls? That is the point, it builds suspense, especially when the players make the roll. That is how I do it, but I am an old school guy (AD&D 1e). The most important thing is only roll when it is needed - no rolling for rolling's sake.

Great video!

This video was a massive help.👍

Great video. I find Perilous Journeys to autogenerate very acceptable maps at what feels like 1-mile hexes. I can use that to illustrate the area around a dungeon, & the heroes can see what city or town they can use as a base. Then they’re doing fast travel between cities & hex crawling on the 1-mile map.

I created a flooded temple and gave the players a borrowed magic item that created a large bubble of air, so they were just walking around in it. But they could still be attacked by aquatic creatures, particularly those with tentacles, which were my main bad guys.

got a couple of these: - the elves come from the setting's sister planet, and after building a high civilization, a civil war torched the planet's atmosphere (think magical nuclear exchange). the few survivors resettled onto the main world. This happened thousands of years ago - a black plague-like global event about 30 years ago has left society half-empty and with the older generation psychologically scarred. the PCs are the next generation, and regularly encounter abandoned village where something else has taken up residence Im sure other catastrophes will have happened for the PCs to come upon the remains of

Environmental, look at all the recent forest fire smoke ? Lung damage leading to the need of asthma inhalers. If not for modern current off the shelf cold/flu medicine and vits pills. Winter could have hit people much harder with lung health problems. Other problems with forest fire ash fallout, the ash from toxic plants .. the natural plant toxicants may have been burn away but it leaves trace elements that are not good for you to breath either. UsA plain states wild west history talked about prairie grass shrub fires ash dropping and contaminating the local water. Then hardwood ash mixes with rains creating lye killing fish. May be a bit of an overstatement but I just stating what I heard over the years from so called experts.

Do this for real! I created a treasure book several years ago for my niece and nephew that had the secret on two (formerly blank) pages at the back that I glued together only at the edges. Worked great. It even used disappearing ink! Look for "erasable pen" and "friction pen". It's the heat that causes the ink to disappear. Space out the letters with normal pen then fill in letters with the same color erasable pen. Apply heat: the misleading letters vanish.

brilliant, stealing lots for my homebrew lore, history (& possibly future)

Someone suggested that the entire D&D setting is post apocalyse, magic items the remnants of a greater and lost civilization, magic the surviving knowledge, etc. Once I heard that it really clicked to craft a setting rooted in the idea that dungeons are tombs or caches or just lost places of a greater society, etc. So I suspect this may be hardwired into the game itself!

thank you, KR!

My phone did an audio glitch at the beginning of the video and I heard you present yourself as "Carrot King". Completely useless comment but I thought it was pretty funny.

Great, K.R., and good timing. We're coming to the end of my 5e Ptoluss campaign wher the catastrophe known as the Night of Dissolution will be the climactic event of the campaign arc. (Note that is story is largely homebrewed, the Night of Dissolution as written in pre-written adventures is different.) This involves another moon appearing in the sky whichh forever alters the way magic works, releases hordes of fiends on the world, and drought and famine just for fun. The PCs have already learn it wi be nearly impossible to stop this, and are readying to deal with the fiends after the event. Fun!

what do you mean, "that's what happpened to the dinosaurs?" *SPOILER ALERT*!! :)

Hey Kevin, this why I have always loved Blackmoor & Dark*Sun. Blackmoor one dilemma ends and another one begins, you have to stop the world from ending. Dark*Sun the world has already ended evil has won, now who do you do, mawhahahaha! Thanks for the video you have a wonderful day!

Great content. I would caution world wide cataclysms. I have had much more success with more localized (regional) disasters. Consider Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Drought / Famine for natural. How about civilization induced ecological collapse (crop failure). Besides direct effects of the events, they can trigger mass migrations that cause chaos. Think chain of events caused by the original disaster. The plagues of Moses actually follow a logical sequence up to the death of the firstborn.

Used a cataclysm that wrapped up my last campaign as one of the main points of world building (300 years ago this thing happened) for my most recent one with a different set of players. Feels real and lived in and impactful!

This has been great! The storylines have confused me and I thought maybe I was missing something. But listening to you go over it it just doesn't make sense! I was like oh thank goodness it's not just me 😂 there's also gave me a lot of great ideas to change it for my story. We ran water deep Dragon heist first with these characters so I am weaving that in. Thank you so much for this! You've helped me so much!

Great video! Excellent advice on not railroading players and getting them involved in the sandbox.

I try to have a living world in my games. Many things are occuring even without the characters notice & there is always so much to do.

My group would roll 4 dice for rolling attributes and drop the lowest dice. You would still get some occasional low scores, but it wasn't super often so it wasn't as big of a deal. I feel like that way was a good balance and it reduced the chance of rolling up a "worthless character".

Thank you I love all your videos

thanks!

In my sandbox science fiction game, I record each session, and then take my time between game nights to transcribe it into bullet points of all the highlights. Then I start the next session by reading these points off. People are busy: I never assume they can recall the details. I dislike the idea of putting people on the spot, making them feel embarrassed and uncomfortable trying to remember what happened weeks ago. It's like making them take a pop quiz at the beginning of each session. This way, when the game starts, I just jump into it, and spend a couple minutes bringing everyone back up to speed, myself included. It's practical. And to me, feels like a "Previously On..." montage at the beginning of a TV show. By the time I'm done, everybody has had chance to remember what happened before, and to think about what they want to do next.

You want the pirate fog hook, have the fog attack with advantage against the sleeping party, they are already prone and unconscious. Have the fog's job be to keep everyone asleep, and make them forget, while your villains pillage the town. Have them take crew for their ship and no one, or just the people in the room, can't remember the people taken. Watch the party jump to "false hydra" protocols. Have the kid who mucks the horse stalls ask if anyone left their bed rolls in the hay loft. See how long it takes the players to realize their magic ring and sword are missing. Halloween night we bit down so hard on that "False-False Hydra" until we deformed the bullet. I have never, in my whole life, had so much fun being told someone stole my gear.

A way to better keep track of sessions is this: Have an audio recorder set up that records everything said, then after a session is over a trusted notekeeper in the group transcribes/types up the important stuff from the recording & makes copies for everyone. As for a way to improve engagement/love for the world: Let each player (if they want to) design/describe their hometown in detail & work with them to incorporate it into the world. Some cases it could be used as part of a quest or something like that, like maybe each player's hometown has special festivals at different times throughout the year. Perhaps the BBEG or it's minions does something at each festival that the party is at. Leading the party to eventually defeat the BBEG for multiple reasons.

Exactly. The clock runs, the world turns and stuff happens whether the players act or not (truth be told though, some times the same side quest just gets triggered by a different hook at a later time. Change the names to protect the guilty. Waste not, want not)

You're right about the prophetic dreams. I've done that a lot in my current campaign and I feel like it's getting old. But the PCs are high level, and it just occured to me that they're using thing like sending spells all the time. If i need to get a secret or info to the players to keep the story moving, I can have an NPC use sending to give the PC's messages. Of course this isn't to steer the story, but to give them info they might need to pursue the path they've chosen, so they don't feel stuck.

I had a boss fight from rime frost maiden, his brain was in a jar on top a enchanted suit armor. Players used a knock spell to unscrew the jar. Boss failed his save and his brain rolled out and splat to the ground. Totally cool boss fight ending

Don't forget the DM is investing his/her time on preparing the game and running it dealing with whatever ideas the player scan think of unlike a computer. So the layer need to be aware that if they take the game in a side path that the DM did not prepare for or even think about, they should expe3dct that the pacing will change as a result. A 10 hour prepared intricate mystery saga or complicated political series of encounter sis a far cry of immersive thorough gameplay compared to a full 4 hour Ad libbed with all NPCs, dialogue, battle encounter challenges, skill challenges, problems to solve improved session is very very different in meeting expectations. Players need to realize if they want to take willy nilly on the spot directions for the session, then the response of the GM in providing the environment is much more limited compared to the highly prepared with improv addition session.

Letting your players brainstorm up solutions for a challenge is where the key to player agency lies. What's wrong with video games? I've found them very entertaining. Sandbox games are not a magic wand that make players invested. Being able to brainstorm up solutions is where it's at. Many sandbox games tend to lack direction, and are simply encounter after encounter that are not connected. They tend to lead to GM burnout despite player interest.

The thing they really put between towns on a log road was a coaching inn, every seven miles.