I think the main difference between Aabria and Mark’s hacks is Aabria’s is about presenting multiple solutions, whereas Mark’s is presenting multiple _problems._
It's really cool: Mark presents multiple challenges which the players need to decide how to tackle (in what order, with what tools). Meanwhile Aabria provides the tools to solve the problem and the difficulty is in coming up with the best solution out all that are presented.
I think my favorite thing about Brennan's DMing style is that he never says "No, you cant do that." He works with the players to find a way to have them do the cool thing they want.
I think a thing Brennan also does to make combat more interesting is dynamic battlefields. He achieves this mainly through having a truck ton of enemies and having terrain that shifts and changes. This type of thing is best exemplified in A Crown of Candy, and it’s something I see Brennan doing more than any other DM.
One of the things I love avout his combat is there also tends to be secondary and tertiary objectives. So if someone's having a bad combat day or feels as if they can't hit (flying enemy against melee fighter with low HP who doesn't want to risk getting knocked out on a leap) there's something equally as important for them to divert to
Something Mercer does, which I LOVE, is he invites roleplaying into battle mechanics. It's so easy for people separate battle and roleplaying, diminishing attacks to quick fuctions. For some people, it feels like pressing a button and getting it over with. The best example is early in Campaign 2, where he pushes Marisha to explore how Beau would fight, and Liam would carry that energy into describing how Caleb used components. Battle shouldn't feel like checking a few boxes and hoping no one dies. It should be time spent continuing exploring character.
Also don't forget how these things help the GM and make the game fun for the GM. Mulligan's dialogue helps him to keep in mind what the op4's motives and morale in the fight are, the on deck reminder helps Matt to keep track of how much spotlight the different players are getting to make sure that everyone gets a chance at cool scenes and so *he* doesn't skip over someone in the initiative; for Aabria's method consider that if as the GM the only obstacle you have for your players is 'kill bad guy' it's easy to get bored or frustrated when the players are being more or less successful than you anticipated, it is fun for the GM to think of creative ways the combat could facilitate or obstruct player/PC goals, as you stated, it's just more fun on the DM side of the screen and less stress.
Throw in environmental factors as well. It's amazing how much something like a simple rain shower can elevate an otherwise-mundane combat into something special.
That's some great advice. Always throw in something the melee players can use too. A chain to cut to drop a portcullis, some stalagmites to push people into, or just a rope to swing from can make them feel like a action movie character.
@@thestranger954Was about to say this!! Adding stuff around the area that players (and enemies) can use to make the combat encounter go in their favour or more interesting is so fun!
@@thestranger954The bard was feeling underpowered in a group with a pair of fighters and a paladin, until, on a ship battle, he landed the final blow against the enemy captain by swinging across on a rope and stabbing him with a rapier to score the killing blow
Glad you included Mark Hulmes in this list. Aerois was a phenomenal campaign that featured a whole variety of different combat encounters. I feel like Mark's style evolved as that campaign went on and he grew to include features of other video game combat systems into his combats like Metal Gear and some of the recent Final Fantasy games.
the game Lancer is great for this. they have several simple goals. like defend an area, escort, area control. ir really help players if there is a stated rule or goal.
Love the video, I am in a campaign now with a DM who almost always has something else going on in combat and it has made it a lot more exciting. Last big fight was trying to get away from a town in an airship, so we could either try to get rid of the grappling hooks, attack the archers, or try shenanigans to make the getaway easier.
I've had a few dungeons planned where it's just room after room of combat and I don't know how to make it more interesting/give it more variation. These are some good examples of things I can try for future sessions
You might be able to train your players to ask questions about the room even if the map art doesn't represent it. That way you can make things up on the fly and even reward them with opportunities for environmental shenanigans
Definitely - if you want some idea's of out of combat, the following is how I approach it. Getting things interesting is about improv, and planning. Improv is dealing with the chaos of the moment - the Preperation isn't so much about specifics, but about setting frame works to work from. Frame works can be general design asthetics about a city (architecture styles) so that you have something to build off of to get consistency. But that also gives you something to build off of in future descriptions. Take for instance a dungeon with a gelatinous cube - if you start off with a dusty, moss filled cavern that has the signs of old battle in the form of old dried blood and cob webs, at some point you can describe: "As you enter the room, you notice an aproximately 10 foot wide, clean, dust and moss free path winding through the room and heading out. It looks as if someone came and pain stakingly removed the mosses, blood stains and cob webs while forgetting to get rid of the fallen rubble, and such". This type of description creates the space for player interest, and worry. It establishes the excitement of an established player that knows what is up - or the wounder of a new player. And we can even do this in more mundane ways - like a cave system that is infested with giant spiders, allowing the party on a reasonably high perception check asked for out of the blue: They find some gold ore - they might have to work it out of the wall, or it might be some cast away rubble that was left when workers abandoned the mine. Either way - it's a reward out of the blue. The key to this is - establishing enough description that the players know what is up fairly early on in a setting or scene, and then establishing details with limited amount of sentences that draw attention, and ultimately rewarding curiosity from time to time with indirect or scene relevant rewards. What ends up happening is rooms don't just act as stages for combat - but become places to explore. That dusty worn chest with planks suffering from dry rot aren't just something to be ignored - but something that can be magically repaired, and investigated. The real trick is - finding that balance between too much exposition, and not enough. I find usually sticking to about 3 sentences is good - if it's important, more is ok, and if it's not very important - skip the details. The beauty in this as well, is, as your players get used to this - they will get a feel for what you are suggesting COULD have a reward, and will go after it.
A couple things to help with the room after room of just combat: 1. Give each room a world building purpose, any room large enough to have a proper fight in is too expensive to dig out for no reason, even a large natural cave/cavity will be put to use by someone/something. Make sure you have a kitchen, a store room, a valuables room, a sleeping area, a dining room/cafeteria/banquet hall, a vault, ect and NOT a 30tile cube with plain stone walls and the only contents are 5 goblins and an oger. (This also lets your players make assumptions about what can be found in these rooms, gold is unlikely to be in the pantry, but arrows are probably in the armory, and the noble's incriminating letters are probably in his desk in his office or bedroom.) 2. Give each room in the dungeon a mechanical purpose loosely grouped as loot/reward, danger, pathway, arena, distraction, filler. (A dungeon is any collection of rooms where the players are likely to encounter obstacles, not just litteral dungeons, a jungle path to the sacred temple is a mechanical dungeon) Once you know what a room is supposed to do for your players, it helps inform what you need to put in it for them to interact with. Danger could be traps or a basic encounter, loot could be a vault of gold or the office of the noble is hiding his ledger. A good dungeon is likely to have a mix of these room types and not just be 8 dangers and 1 boss arena. 3. D&D is fundamentally a resource management game, be it action economy, potions, spell slots, ki points, HP, or in game time. The entire point if the dungeon is to deplete party resources so they don't face the BBEG at full strength. Just putting a bunch of fights in the way can do this, but traps, environmental hazards, and locked doors are equally capable of burning up a party's consumables. (A druid wildshaping to fery the party down a cliff is still a burnt wildeshape, and took way less irl time than a combat would have) 4. Make your rooms tactically interesting. If your combat is functionally fought on an infinite flat plane then the only positioning problems are relative to eachother. A 100x50 room is boring, a 100x50 room with columns 2 tiles in from the walls every 3 tiles now provides cover and breaks to line of sight, add rows of benches and you added half cover and difficult terrain, put an elevated platform at 1 end with a lecturn and you have a tactically involved fight in a grand church. You can also make the terrain dynamic, with the most basic example being a rising water level such as incoming high tide, a flash flood, or a drowning trap. 5. But ultimately, the easiest thing to do change is what you say, meaning the descriptions of enemies and attacks being better than (you hit him with your great sword, the goblin misses with his crossbow), and to add dialogue to combat. (What is the last action show/movie you watched that had no dialogue in any of its fight scenes, or even just 1 fight scene without dialogue)
I love how of all the places you could have gotten a picture of Matt from, you went with the thumbnail image from when he was on Try Not To Laugh from Smosh with Sam
from what I've seen in Critical Role, one of the things that engages the players the most is the "flavor" they're encouraged to give to their moves. Being all huge nerds at heart, either them or Matt add super cool descriptions to their attacks that make them more excited like "yeah i'm doing this super cool move!!!!" and makes them even RP them further. The How do you wanna do this is probably the best thing he does with combat because they're always celebrated and they can be so so cool and cinematic
great summary, two more points: 4th ed DMG was one of the best DMG's ever published, for this vid, some cool additions were tactical squares that represented hazards or boosts when on or near them, arcane glyphs, mechanical turrets (that the thief can disarm), acid etc. Runehammer's old Room Design videos are terrific, he has a triple T concept, Threat, Treat, Timer, boons, buffs and de-buffs that make the environment way more interesting and fantastic.
Thank you for this! I have trouble designing combat encounters that my players enjoy, largely because combat is frankly the least interesting part for me as a DM. I unintentionally modeled my combat after my first DM who was my DM for a couple years, who was the "roll to hit, that hits, how much damage, okay, he's still up" type. I dreaded combat. I appreciate this!
When designing combat encounters, I try to use a rule of three: can you find three reasons this fight has any meaning to your players? Some examples include a cool loot item, helpful exposition, opportunities for character growth, innovative new mechanics, new opportunities for side missions, they're saving someone they care about, etc. If you have three, the odds are good that all your players will have some form of investment in the fight, no matter their playstyle.
The DM of the campaign I am playing right now is quite fun to watch during battles, because he isn´t limited to just roling a dice and telling the damage, he actually gets up and kind of impersonates the fight, showing the movements the NPCs are doing as well what our characters would be doing that would hit or miss. Seeing him acting through what would be the movements of the characters involved is always welcome to help us visualize how the combat would be going rather than just a flat out roll of the dice followed by a shallow description. Also one thing he allows is for us to actually show exactly how an movement would be executed by our character by our view, me playing a fighter+warlock/hexblade (Making a bow of dark energy to act as my weapon), whevener I go to cast an cantrip, since the bow is my focus for the spells i make the spells be shaped as arrows with little gimmicks, like for example chill touch being this ethereal arrow with a little skeletal hand as the tip, or frostbite being a arrow made out of ice with a chilling fog emerging from it, or even eldritch blast being 1 or multiple purple arrows made of energy shooting towards 1 or multiple targets, and it is always nice when i give such descriptions first and see his reaction like "You are going to remove my healing now aren´t you?" because he knows what spells they are connected to.
Yeah, drawing attention away from just number crunching makes a lot of sense. Timers, secondary objectives, story relevance... stuff that adds tension. This reminds me of of one nice mechanic from another ttrpg: Waves from Legends of the Wulin/Weapons of the Gods. They are basically impactful actions that are announced early and only complete a turn later (kind of). In those games it's actions that change the combat stage, like creating an area of fire with oil or creating an area of earth spikes. The initiator of the wave rolls the dice and sets the DC, other players can try to break the wave by beating the DC with their action. For me this seems like so much potential! The BBEG finishing a player? Wave. 1 turn time to prevent it. Destroying an important key for a portal home? Wave. Sounding an alarm? Wave. Sudden changes that have big impact, but can still be prevented!
A challenge for me has been encouraging players to think outside the box as some of them are old school DND players so they automatically jump to "hit the thing until it's dead".
Great vid! I have to say as having been part of a few different groups with the same (awesome) Dungeon Master it also shouldn’t all fall on the DM to make combat exciting, the player choosing to be active and involved can’t be understated. Where one group I was in combat was always a nearly silent numbers crunch (no fault of the DM) then a different group we were all heavily involved (not overstepping or interfering) and it made all the difference! Not player hating because the “quiet group” was still really good (I definitely made arguably better, more strategic decisions in combat with them) but when your whole party is actively involved and inspire each other those are the most memorable moments (even if I would try to swing from chandeliers any chance I got if for nothing else, just for the wow factor!)
Id love if you brought a selection of books and/or classes with deeper development on tips like "every scene should at least develop characters or move he plot forward". Writing tips in general are great, but a selection for tabletopRPGs specifically would be amazing. Improv stuff like the "yes, and" and so on
Brett from world of Io does cool stuff in his fights, his players remarked that they feel a bit like MMO bosses at times, dynamic arena with periodic area attacks and things that can be used to affect the fight, boss mechanics that players can scan and then address or sometimes remove. Also he has great banter with the hilarious players from what ive watched
I usually add a gimmick to each important combat encounter. For example last session my players had to run from the besieged castle. The way they wanted to go was to go to the one of two gates, the east one to be more specific, with the bridge. But it was too dangerous to go straight through one army and too dangerous to go around (cause of the besiegers). They decided it was best to go to the top of castle walls and use them to reach the gatehouse. The encounter had 3 major dangers. One was the defenders who wanted to man the walls so there were constant reinforcments to fight with. Second was the way the party chose to go. There were two. One was a long wall and the other was through another gatehouse. The longer was just more enemies while the gatehouse had a boss. The third danger was the gimmick itself. Players had to spend bonus actions from time to time to analyze the battlefield. By doing that they were able to predict where the arrow barrage was gonna hit. The walls map was littered with boxes and baricades to hide behind while both defending and attacking party tried to shoot at one another above the castle walls and therefore possibly hitting the party. My players really liked it and I am glad they like the sessions I prepare.
having watched plenty of Dimension 20, including The Ravening War and A Court of Fey and Flowers, i think Aabria is the best at building on the foundation Brennan laid for me in terms of GMing ; there's something really fun about being this huge enabler and shyt-stirrer😂
One good way to keep people from feeling bored is to keep things feeling dangerous. If combat feels dangerous (which most combats should), players are much less likely to lose focus for fear of their or their allies' deaths. This combined with immersive gaming techniques will have your table on the edge of their seat even when things are seemingly slow.
One main thing that all dms need to understand, if not all players as well. Combat is role-playing, a encounter is a encounter, if you punch the mayor youve more than likely turned a civil encounter into a combat encounter. Dnd is a game about encounters, you should treat you're combat encounter no different than any other encounter, all aspects mentioned here should be present. Environment, complexities, and most important narration. As the dm its our job to be the players eyes and ears, if you have bored players, chances are they're both blind and def. Easiest and cheapest way to fix this is narration. You could say "the wolf bites, and misses" or you could say, "the wolf lunges forth nashing its teeth towards you, barely missing youre face as its hot breath heats you're cheek, and you heat its jaws clamp shut a inch from youre ear." Environments as well can be narrated. But a true experience will incorporate all these aspects, mercer might have Environments that look neat, but, hopefully, (havent watched much critical roll) still narrates the battle. Puzzles and gimic battles, depends on your situation. If every battle is a puzzle, it will run dry, think about it this way, combat itself is a puzzle, now adding a different element makes it a complex puzzle, now you add a puzzle on top of that.... if used sparingly its interesting, when every battle is a gimic though, your players will stop being impressed sooner than you'll know, if you ever know. The thing to keep in mind, critical roll and these other "professional" games, they are not real dnd, these players are there to entertain not be entertained. So when you use mercer and company, its not real, some techniques are, but a good dm uses all these things in combination, and focuses on his players, not his audience.
I typically don't play martial classes so I'm CONSTANTLY trying to find any option other than combat. I don't find it boring but after playing d&d for as many years as I have (over 2 decades) it's far more enjoyable to rp around combat and still "defeat" the encounter therefore still getting my beloved XP's and levels. I'm trying to talk my friends into playing a 5th edition campaign so I can DM and use milestone leveling to keep our collective decades of meta-game knowledge from cheapening the campaign storyline
I think that Mark Hulmes also makes his problems multistep. During the Lightfall Campaign, the antagonist leads a siege on a very important city. The PCs have to both fight the villains, while making sure that the city's morale doesn't crumble over the ~8 rounds of combat. This was accomplished by killing enemies, rousing the troops with heals/passives and putting out the-literal-fires due to siege weapons. When the PCs failed a step, there were more intense reactions to the associated issue, as breaking the walls would allow for the BBEG's Goons to have access to more reinforcements during the Final Showdown.
i think my DMs solution is to make the combat itself interesting. He has a real skill for making every major fight a nailbiting fight for survival without getting us killed, ever. Its not something to just get through when its actually a challenge to get through it
I use a system I call either "alternate combat" or "specialized combat", which is based on combats turn based play and dice rolls, but the ultimate goal and outcomes of dice rolls are much different. I mostly use this system for gambling interactions, but sometimes something else comes up that I use it for.
I straight up think taking up terrain building as a hobby has made my combat encounters a hundred times better. Even if they simply add cover or elevation. It really does add a lot though. Our best one so far actually was on the side of a cliff as the party was trying to climb up. They were attacked by flying dinosaur men, but they actually did no damage to the party (coincidentally). They were trying to grab them and drop them from the top of the tower to instakill them. No one took any damage but it was the most harrowing encounter we've had so far.
I've been bouncing around your videos so i'm not sure how new it is, but the loading wheel is much less distracting. I like the countdown for the sections, but for some reason numbers counting down just draws my attention too aggressively.
Sadly I think 5e has some kind of boring monster design as well. One thing I think is pretty important is adapting monsters and giving them cooler abilities and capabilities rather than using vanilla monsters
Using creative license is a good idea in general with DnD. Consider everything to be framework, not the final result, and you can do some cool stuff. After all it's all about creativity. Whatever your imagination can come up with. Obviously you don't want to overdo it or you might unbalance a fight one way or another, but there's so much potential.
@@Lucifronz yeah, you are the DM at the end of the day, the game is yours and you should tailor it to your liking. But at the same time I feel like 5e relies a little too much on the DM. In the sense that I think it could have some more robust rules and systems in some areas, as the DM already has to worry about so much. I really do think monster design is one of this edition's biggest flaws. Thankfully we can always modify the game or use alternatives. Recently MCDM released a monster book called flee mortals with really fun monster designs, for example.
Another thing is intractable objects. A gas vent and a stray fireball can do big damage. oh no the explosion damaged the cave watch out for falling rocks. Having terrain hazards like ice or swamp that slow the players and prevent them fron reaching the backline of archers. A narrow bridge. A damn. You dont even need to have a plan for world objects just put them on the map and the players will make use of them
The onjectives are the most important thing. Maybe you don't care at all about defeating the demons, only about preventing the demons from killing the princess. Or you need to survive the enemy attacks long enough to open a portal and escape (like in Subway Skirmish from Unsleeping City. Though it's actually a bad example of how to do that kind of encounter, as the actual mechanic for the escape was weird and counterintuitive).
Yeah, that sounds like a DM who's trying to keep a bunch of variables straight in their head and/or deciding how the PCs actions just effected the combatants and other NPCs in their world.
Another thing about Matt's encounters is he was used to doing experience-based level-up before, so he does a lot of combat and his players are always down since they used to get exp for it. A group of players that had no reason to try to gain exp from combat (milestone system) might be much more prone to thinking combat is useless, even if the encounter may be pretty cool. My experience using encounter tables has told me that much about my own party (and I used custom encounter tables for some cool monsters, too). Also, my party overall seems to prefer social intrigue over dungeon delving and combat, so that definitely influences that a lot. They really do like combat with high stakes, at the end of an arc, though.
@@Mico-Xiyeas I feel like a lot of tables already do that, though. I haven't had a single wolf encounter that didn't end in "can we harvest their fur"?
@@DrShnig does the fur have any interesting uses and utilities available to them though? The fur might be used in part too craft a magic item. The bone from the wolf requires to be cracked, broken, and taken from its body to harness transformative powers from it as part of a potion or something Maybe it can be used to grant coverage from blizzarding cold that causes disadvantageous effects such as slowed speed (level 1 exhaustion) or for stealth if you craft a those big things snipers put over themselves when they lay down For each encounter I come up with a few random possible uses or craft ideas on the spot to get them thinking. I think this may be part of why my players are usually more engaged in combat despite session based, they utilize my homebrew crafts to. But they do like social to combat still
Huh. I thought this would be about like techniques for well balanced encounters or something, but it's not. It's sort of the storytelling / player handling approach to stale fights - yknow, use them sparingly, make variants, put dialogue in the fights, that sort of stuff - whereas from reading the title, I'm thinking about like difficulty ramping, forced approach variation, stall-proofing, that sort of thing, ways to make the fights not stale in the first place, to ensure combat itself is engaging and rewarding. I suppose that's what's meant by "hacks" here.
Also if combat isn’t exciting for you or your players? Consider another game system that maybe supports a better combat system. 5e was killing my enjoyment of TTRPGs, because combat was so uninteresting. Other TTRPGs offered more fleshed out roleplaying and exploration support, and significantly more engaging and balanced combat that not only revived my love for the hobby, but brought it to new levels. Bonus: most of them are made by pretty awesome companies, not by sucky companies like WotC/Hasbro that try to screw over everyone from D&D Beyond to content creators to ripping off players.
I love playing dnd with my friends but every time we do combat it’s so boring. We have two people in our group who love to mid-max their characters just for combat and then two other friends who like dnd for the roleplay and story who don’t mid-max. It’s gotten to the point that the three of us dread combat because of how long and tedious it can be. It also doesn’t help that our dm half the time just wants to push us into combat because he prefers fighting rather than story telling.
1:20 I disagree. A combat isn't "just filler" if it doesn't tie directly into the story or plot of the game. Quite on the contrary, when my party and I stumble upon something and unexpectedly for the DM pursue it, and end up engaging someone/thing in combat that isn't a part of any major thing, and doesn't necessarily tie in with anything major, it ENLARGES the world. It makes it feel like the world we venture in, is vast and alive.
That projected text ad verbatim over the video is super-distracting. Not sure whether you want to emphasize what you're saying, but if so, to me it's doing the opposite: I'm so distracted by it that the message doesn't come across at all.
I'm sure you've gotten this feedback before and maybe you're worried about copyright or something,but some audio examples of what you're talking about rather than just video in the background would make it much easier to see what these DMs are doing and what works about it. Only having muted video of the DMs makes it feel like these videos assume the audience is intimately familiar with what you're talking about, which almost defeats the point of the video in the first place!
I think I clicked on this video just to make myself angry. 5E D&D has bad, boring, tedious combat - and perhaps, instead of studying the habits of people who have managed, through the careful application of expertly honed procedures (which newcomers to the hobby have no hope of replicating), to elevate the system above its own limitations... perhaps instead we should just play better games. I don't even think that a majority of the people who play D&D today enjoy combat very much to begin with, because they want to play a role-playing game, and not a tactical kriegspiel. They want cinematic combat scenes that drive a story, not AC calculations and line of sight. This audience that I'm describing needs to be playing games that facilitate story-driven conflicts, be they physical conflicts or otherwise - games like Apocalypse World, Feng Shui, Blades in the Dark, etc. But even for the crowd that actually DOES want to engage with a simulationist wargame, 5E D&D just isn't built to do it properly. Going back to 4E D&D (a game I cannot fully endorse because it has serious problems of its own) would be indisputably better for that specific goal than playing 5E, if for no other reason than because 4E disincentivizes and/or forbids players from repeating the same actions from one turn to the next. That single difference alone makes even the blandest 4E battle inherently more engaging and exciting than the most bombastic stuff that 5E can manage. But even then, there are better-still options that could be achieved essentially by hacking straight-up tactical board games like Gloomhaven, CLANK!, or BattleLore, instead.
I don't understand people who hates rules or gets bored of combat. The game is designed to revolve around it. Without it, it's not a game anymore. It's just a bunch of people talking in weird voices while telling a so-so story. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to dedicate 4-5 hours every week of my life doing that. I got shit to do.
The very premise of this title is flawed. If something you’re doing is boring, you shouldn’t be doing it at all. Modern D&D having boring combat means it’s a bad system and hacks to obscure that fact are nonsense. We shouldn’t be playing games that aren’t fun.
I think the main difference between Aabria and Mark’s hacks is Aabria’s is about presenting multiple solutions, whereas Mark’s is presenting multiple _problems._
It's really cool: Mark presents multiple challenges which the players need to decide how to tackle (in what order, with what tools).
Meanwhile Aabria provides the tools to solve the problem and the difficulty is in coming up with the best solution out all that are presented.
I think my favorite thing about Brennan's DMing style is that he never says "No, you cant do that." He works with the players to find a way to have them do the cool thing they want.
He also has players that don't try to do things that are disruptive and bounce off him. Not all players are this good.
“You can certainly try.”
I think a thing Brennan also does to make combat more interesting is dynamic battlefields. He achieves this mainly through having a truck ton of enemies and having terrain that shifts and changes. This type of thing is best exemplified in A Crown of Candy, and it’s something I see Brennan doing more than any other DM.
One of the things I love avout his combat is there also tends to be secondary and tertiary objectives. So if someone's having a bad combat day or feels as if they can't hit (flying enemy against melee fighter with low HP who doesn't want to risk getting knocked out on a leap) there's something equally as important for them to divert to
Brennan designs some incredibly dynamic combat encounters, only for Emily Axford to come in and tear them to pieces in the blink of an eye :D
😊😊
THANK YOU ! People are starting to recognize Pointy Hat as a top DM, this guy puts the best DnD videos on this platform fr !
His channel is great and this one is turning out to be another great channel to add
Does pointy hat do actually do actual plays
Love seeing Antonio get some acknowledgement. He’s got some very good ideas.
Something Mercer does, which I LOVE, is he invites roleplaying into battle mechanics.
It's so easy for people separate battle and roleplaying, diminishing attacks to quick fuctions. For some people, it feels like pressing a button and getting it over with.
The best example is early in Campaign 2, where he pushes Marisha to explore how Beau would fight, and Liam would carry that energy into describing how Caleb used components.
Battle shouldn't feel like checking a few boxes and hoping no one dies. It should be time spent continuing exploring character.
Also don't forget how these things help the GM and make the game fun for the GM. Mulligan's dialogue helps him to keep in mind what the op4's motives and morale in the fight are, the on deck reminder helps Matt to keep track of how much spotlight the different players are getting to make sure that everyone gets a chance at cool scenes and so *he* doesn't skip over someone in the initiative; for Aabria's method consider that if as the GM the only obstacle you have for your players is 'kill bad guy' it's easy to get bored or frustrated when the players are being more or less successful than you anticipated, it is fun for the GM to think of creative ways the combat could facilitate or obstruct player/PC goals, as you stated, it's just more fun on the DM side of the screen and less stress.
If you want tactical combat, integrate cover, elevation, and ranged enemies into your encounters.
Throw in environmental factors as well. It's amazing how much something like a simple rain shower can elevate an otherwise-mundane combat into something special.
That's some great advice. Always throw in something the melee players can use too. A chain to cut to drop a portcullis, some stalagmites to push people into, or just a rope to swing from can make them feel like a action movie character.
@@thestranger954Was about to say this!! Adding stuff around the area that players (and enemies) can use to make the combat encounter go in their favour or more interesting is so fun!
I also love doing obvious things to interact with. Toss some red barrels on the mat and players get real excited.
@@thestranger954The bard was feeling underpowered in a group with a pair of fighters and a paladin, until, on a ship battle, he landed the final blow against the enemy captain by swinging across on a rope and stabbing him with a rapier to score the killing blow
Bryan Murphy is absolutely amazing when it comes to designing encounters qs they are innovative, unique, and fast paced. Love him as a DM
I think these tips are widely applicable to systems other than D&D, which I like
Glad you included Mark Hulmes in this list. Aerois was a phenomenal campaign that featured a whole variety of different combat encounters. I feel like Mark's style evolved as that campaign went on and he grew to include features of other video game combat systems into his combats like Metal Gear and some of the recent Final Fantasy games.
the game Lancer is great for this. they have several simple goals. like defend an area, escort, area control. ir really help players if there is a stated rule or goal.
Love the video, I am in a campaign now with a DM who almost always has something else going on in combat and it has made it a lot more exciting. Last big fight was trying to get away from a town in an airship, so we could either try to get rid of the grappling hooks, attack the archers, or try shenanigans to make the getaway easier.
Hehehe sounds like he took a leaf out of Brian Murphy's Galaderon Saga finale in NADDPOD
He doesn't watch NADDPOD which in a way is good because now I am DMing and I can just steal from Murph over and over. @@dweep9546
Bryan Murphy is my absolute favorite DM so I'm happy to see him included in this video.
Murph is probably my favourite DM. Love that guy
surprised and glad you told peeps about PH's method! Honestly a cool, rapidly growing creator who's got great potential
I've had a few dungeons planned where it's just room after room of combat and I don't know how to make it more interesting/give it more variation. These are some good examples of things I can try for future sessions
You might be able to train your players to ask questions about the room even if the map art doesn't represent it. That way you can make things up on the fly and even reward them with opportunities for environmental shenanigans
Definitely - if you want some idea's of out of combat, the following is how I approach it.
Getting things interesting is about improv, and planning. Improv is dealing with the chaos of the moment - the Preperation isn't so much about specifics, but about setting frame works to work from. Frame works can be general design asthetics about a city (architecture styles) so that you have something to build off of to get consistency. But that also gives you something to build off of in future descriptions. Take for instance a dungeon with a gelatinous cube - if you start off with a dusty, moss filled cavern that has the signs of old battle in the form of old dried blood and cob webs, at some point you can describe: "As you enter the room, you notice an aproximately 10 foot wide, clean, dust and moss free path winding through the room and heading out. It looks as if someone came and pain stakingly removed the mosses, blood stains and cob webs while forgetting to get rid of the fallen rubble, and such".
This type of description creates the space for player interest, and worry. It establishes the excitement of an established player that knows what is up - or the wounder of a new player. And we can even do this in more mundane ways - like a cave system that is infested with giant spiders, allowing the party on a reasonably high perception check asked for out of the blue: They find some gold ore - they might have to work it out of the wall, or it might be some cast away rubble that was left when workers abandoned the mine. Either way - it's a reward out of the blue.
The key to this is - establishing enough description that the players know what is up fairly early on in a setting or scene, and then establishing details with limited amount of sentences that draw attention, and ultimately rewarding curiosity from time to time with indirect or scene relevant rewards. What ends up happening is rooms don't just act as stages for combat - but become places to explore. That dusty worn chest with planks suffering from dry rot aren't just something to be ignored - but something that can be magically repaired, and investigated.
The real trick is - finding that balance between too much exposition, and not enough. I find usually sticking to about 3 sentences is good - if it's important, more is ok, and if it's not very important - skip the details. The beauty in this as well, is, as your players get used to this - they will get a feel for what you are suggesting COULD have a reward, and will go after it.
A couple things to help with the room after room of just combat:
1. Give each room a world building purpose, any room large enough to have a proper fight in is too expensive to dig out for no reason, even a large natural cave/cavity will be put to use by someone/something. Make sure you have a kitchen, a store room, a valuables room, a sleeping area, a dining room/cafeteria/banquet hall, a vault, ect and NOT a 30tile cube with plain stone walls and the only contents are 5 goblins and an oger. (This also lets your players make assumptions about what can be found in these rooms, gold is unlikely to be in the pantry, but arrows are probably in the armory, and the noble's incriminating letters are probably in his desk in his office or bedroom.)
2. Give each room in the dungeon a mechanical purpose loosely grouped as loot/reward, danger, pathway, arena, distraction, filler. (A dungeon is any collection of rooms where the players are likely to encounter obstacles, not just litteral dungeons, a jungle path to the sacred temple is a mechanical dungeon) Once you know what a room is supposed to do for your players, it helps inform what you need to put in it for them to interact with. Danger could be traps or a basic encounter, loot could be a vault of gold or the office of the noble is hiding his ledger. A good dungeon is likely to have a mix of these room types and not just be 8 dangers and 1 boss arena.
3. D&D is fundamentally a resource management game, be it action economy, potions, spell slots, ki points, HP, or in game time. The entire point if the dungeon is to deplete party resources so they don't face the BBEG at full strength. Just putting a bunch of fights in the way can do this, but traps, environmental hazards, and locked doors are equally capable of burning up a party's consumables. (A druid wildshaping to fery the party down a cliff is still a burnt wildeshape, and took way less irl time than a combat would have)
4. Make your rooms tactically interesting. If your combat is functionally fought on an infinite flat plane then the only positioning problems are relative to eachother. A 100x50 room is boring, a 100x50 room with columns 2 tiles in from the walls every 3 tiles now provides cover and breaks to line of sight, add rows of benches and you added half cover and difficult terrain, put an elevated platform at 1 end with a lecturn and you have a tactically involved fight in a grand church. You can also make the terrain dynamic, with the most basic example being a rising water level such as incoming high tide, a flash flood, or a drowning trap.
5. But ultimately, the easiest thing to do change is what you say, meaning the descriptions of enemies and attacks being better than (you hit him with your great sword, the goblin misses with his crossbow), and to add dialogue to combat. (What is the last action show/movie you watched that had no dialogue in any of its fight scenes, or even just 1 fight scene without dialogue)
I love how of all the places you could have gotten a picture of Matt from, you went with the thumbnail image from when he was on Try Not To Laugh from Smosh with Sam
from what I've seen in Critical Role, one of the things that engages the players the most is the "flavor" they're encouraged to give to their moves. Being all huge nerds at heart, either them or Matt add super cool descriptions to their attacks that make them more excited like "yeah i'm doing this super cool move!!!!" and makes them even RP them further. The How do you wanna do this is probably the best thing he does with combat because they're always celebrated and they can be so so cool and cinematic
great summary, two more points:
4th ed DMG was one of the best DMG's ever published, for this vid, some cool additions were tactical squares that represented hazards or boosts when on or near them, arcane glyphs, mechanical turrets (that the thief can disarm), acid etc.
Runehammer's old Room Design videos are terrific, he has a triple T concept, Threat, Treat, Timer, boons, buffs and de-buffs that make the environment way more interesting and fantastic.
love that Destiny was the "really grindy game" lol
It is literally just grinding. That’s what makes it an awful game.
Thank you for this! I have trouble designing combat encounters that my players enjoy, largely because combat is frankly the least interesting part for me as a DM. I unintentionally modeled my combat after my first DM who was my DM for a couple years, who was the "roll to hit, that hits, how much damage, okay, he's still up" type. I dreaded combat. I appreciate this!
When designing combat encounters, I try to use a rule of three: can you find three reasons this fight has any meaning to your players? Some examples include a cool loot item, helpful exposition, opportunities for character growth, innovative new mechanics, new opportunities for side missions, they're saving someone they care about, etc. If you have three, the odds are good that all your players will have some form of investment in the fight, no matter their playstyle.
@@roguebarbarian9133 Thank you! This is great advice. I'll definitely try out implementing it.
The DM of the campaign I am playing right now is quite fun to watch during battles, because he isn´t limited to just roling a dice and telling the damage, he actually gets up and kind of impersonates the fight, showing the movements the NPCs are doing as well what our characters would be doing that would hit or miss. Seeing him acting through what would be the movements of the characters involved is always welcome to help us visualize how the combat would be going rather than just a flat out roll of the dice followed by a shallow description.
Also one thing he allows is for us to actually show exactly how an movement would be executed by our character by our view, me playing a fighter+warlock/hexblade (Making a bow of dark energy to act as my weapon), whevener I go to cast an cantrip, since the bow is my focus for the spells i make the spells be shaped as arrows with little gimmicks, like for example chill touch being this ethereal arrow with a little skeletal hand as the tip, or frostbite being a arrow made out of ice with a chilling fog emerging from it, or even eldritch blast being 1 or multiple purple arrows made of energy shooting towards 1 or multiple targets, and it is always nice when i give such descriptions first and see his reaction like "You are going to remove my healing now aren´t you?" because he knows what spells they are connected to.
Yeah, drawing attention away from just number crunching makes a lot of sense. Timers, secondary objectives, story relevance... stuff that adds tension. This reminds me of of one nice mechanic from another ttrpg:
Waves from Legends of the Wulin/Weapons of the Gods. They are basically impactful actions that are announced early and only complete a turn later (kind of). In those games it's actions that change the combat stage, like creating an area of fire with oil or creating an area of earth spikes. The initiator of the wave rolls the dice and sets the DC, other players can try to break the wave by beating the DC with their action. For me this seems like so much potential! The BBEG finishing a player? Wave. 1 turn time to prevent it. Destroying an important key for a portal home? Wave. Sounding an alarm? Wave.
Sudden changes that have big impact, but can still be prevented!
I'm currently prepping to run Curse of Strahd and this has given me a lot of fun ideas on how to make Strahd interact with the players! Thank you!!
Antonio’s take on Combat/Sports is awesomeee! I personally use it too for years and it’s very dynamic 🙃🙃
A challenge for me has been encouraging players to think outside the box as some of them are old school DND players so they automatically jump to "hit the thing until it's dead".
Great vid! I have to say as having been part of a few different groups with the same (awesome) Dungeon Master it also shouldn’t all fall on the DM to make combat exciting, the player choosing to be active and involved can’t be understated. Where one group I was in combat was always a nearly silent numbers crunch (no fault of the DM) then a different group we were all heavily involved (not overstepping or interfering) and it made all the difference! Not player hating because the “quiet group” was still really good (I definitely made arguably better, more strategic decisions in combat with them) but when your whole party is actively involved and inspire each other those are the most memorable moments (even if I would try to swing from chandeliers any chance I got if for nothing else, just for the wow factor!)
Im so happy mark got recognition in a video like this hes one of my favorite dms
Id love if you brought a selection of books and/or classes with deeper development on tips like "every scene should at least develop characters or move he plot forward". Writing tips in general are great, but a selection for tabletopRPGs specifically would be amazing. Improv stuff like the "yes, and" and so on
Great take on the different styles. Nice work!
1:08 was a great "on deck" joke😂
Brett from world of Io does cool stuff in his fights, his players remarked that they feel a bit like MMO bosses at times, dynamic arena with periodic area attacks and things that can be used to affect the fight, boss mechanics that players can scan and then address or sometimes remove. Also he has great banter with the hilarious players from what ive watched
I usually add a gimmick to each important combat encounter.
For example last session my players had to run from the besieged castle. The way they wanted to go was to go to the one of two gates, the east one to be more specific, with the bridge. But it was too dangerous to go straight through one army and too dangerous to go around (cause of the besiegers). They decided it was best to go to the top of castle walls and use them to reach the gatehouse. The encounter had 3 major dangers. One was the defenders who wanted to man the walls so there were constant reinforcments to fight with. Second was the way the party chose to go. There were two. One was a long wall and the other was through another gatehouse. The longer was just more enemies while the gatehouse had a boss. The third danger was the gimmick itself. Players had to spend bonus actions from time to time to analyze the battlefield. By doing that they were able to predict where the arrow barrage was gonna hit. The walls map was littered with boxes and baricades to hide behind while both defending and attacking party tried to shoot at one another above the castle walls and therefore possibly hitting the party.
My players really liked it and I am glad they like the sessions I prepare.
Would love to see you referencing Anthony Burch, my fav DM
having watched plenty of Dimension 20, including The Ravening War and A Court of Fey and Flowers, i think Aabria is the best at building on the foundation Brennan laid for me in terms of GMing ; there's something really fun about being this huge enabler and shyt-stirrer😂
Matt from tabletopnotch is another absolutely fantastic DM.
My fav D20 campaign is Mice and Murder. Taking DnD and making it into a murder mystery with minimal combat.
One good way to keep people from feeling bored is to keep things feeling dangerous. If combat feels dangerous (which most combats should), players are much less likely to lose focus for fear of their or their allies' deaths. This combined with immersive gaming techniques will have your table on the edge of their seat even when things are seemingly slow.
Aabria also keeps combat exciting through a liberal use of the most hecking cute smile ever. Watching Aabria DM just makes me happy
Adore her ❤❤
super relatable
*scribbles note* Buy Aabria mask.
I like the new circle countdown 😊
hey man great video!! can you post the link to the battle map book ?
Oh yes thank you! I will add it now. New I forgot something!
I always tell people when they are up next.
I allow the party to avoid combat as much as possible.
Great advice. (Also we have a similar cat tree in our living room!)
Please keep making more deep analysis videos like this
One main thing that all dms need to understand, if not all players as well. Combat is role-playing, a encounter is a encounter, if you punch the mayor youve more than likely turned a civil encounter into a combat encounter. Dnd is a game about encounters, you should treat you're combat encounter no different than any other encounter, all aspects mentioned here should be present. Environment, complexities, and most important narration. As the dm its our job to be the players eyes and ears, if you have bored players, chances are they're both blind and def. Easiest and cheapest way to fix this is narration. You could say "the wolf bites, and misses" or you could say, "the wolf lunges forth nashing its teeth towards you, barely missing youre face as its hot breath heats you're cheek, and you heat its jaws clamp shut a inch from youre ear." Environments as well can be narrated. But a true experience will incorporate all these aspects, mercer might have Environments that look neat, but, hopefully, (havent watched much critical roll) still narrates the battle. Puzzles and gimic battles, depends on your situation. If every battle is a puzzle, it will run dry, think about it this way, combat itself is a puzzle, now adding a different element makes it a complex puzzle, now you add a puzzle on top of that.... if used sparingly its interesting, when every battle is a gimic though, your players will stop being impressed sooner than you'll know, if you ever know. The thing to keep in mind, critical roll and these other "professional" games, they are not real dnd, these players are there to entertain not be entertained. So when you use mercer and company, its not real, some techniques are, but a good dm uses all these things in combination, and focuses on his players, not his audience.
I typically don't play martial classes so I'm CONSTANTLY trying to find any option other than combat. I don't find it boring but after playing d&d for as many years as I have (over 2 decades) it's far more enjoyable to rp around combat and still "defeat" the encounter therefore still getting my beloved XP's and levels. I'm trying to talk my friends into playing a 5th edition campaign so I can DM and use milestone leveling to keep our collective decades of meta-game knowledge from cheapening the campaign storyline
Oh shoot looks like we have another great channel to add to the community. Great vid keep them coming
Is that thumbnail with Matt from when he was on Smosh? lol
I think that Mark Hulmes also makes his problems multistep. During the Lightfall Campaign, the antagonist leads a siege on a very important city. The PCs have to both fight the villains, while making sure that the city's morale doesn't crumble over the ~8 rounds of combat. This was accomplished by killing enemies, rousing the troops with heals/passives and putting out the-literal-fires due to siege weapons. When the PCs failed a step, there were more intense reactions to the associated issue, as breaking the walls would allow for the BBEG's Goons to have access to more reinforcements during the Final Showdown.
i think my DMs solution is to make the combat itself interesting. He has a real skill for making every major fight a nailbiting fight for survival without getting us killed, ever. Its not something to just get through when its actually a challenge to get through it
I use a system I call either "alternate combat" or "specialized combat", which is based on combats turn based play and dice rolls, but the ultimate goal and outcomes of dice rolls are much different. I mostly use this system for gambling interactions, but sometimes something else comes up that I use it for.
I straight up think taking up terrain building as a hobby has made my combat encounters a hundred times better. Even if they simply add cover or elevation. It really does add a lot though.
Our best one so far actually was on the side of a cliff as the party was trying to climb up. They were attacked by flying dinosaur men, but they actually did no damage to the party (coincidentally). They were trying to grab them and drop them from the top of the tower to instakill them. No one took any damage but it was the most harrowing encounter we've had so far.
I love the destiny 2 gameplay for grindy combat 1:04 😂❤
Subbed. Excited to see what else you've got.
Hey new to the channel and love the content! Great advice! btw what's up with the timers that show up sometimes in the top left?
The best DM’s steal ideas
I've been bouncing around your videos so i'm not sure how new it is, but the loading wheel is much less distracting. I like the countdown for the sections, but for some reason numbers counting down just draws my attention too aggressively.
Sadly I think 5e has some kind of boring monster design as well. One thing I think is pretty important is adapting monsters and giving them cooler abilities and capabilities rather than using vanilla monsters
Using creative license is a good idea in general with DnD. Consider everything to be framework, not the final result, and you can do some cool stuff. After all it's all about creativity. Whatever your imagination can come up with.
Obviously you don't want to overdo it or you might unbalance a fight one way or another, but there's so much potential.
@@Lucifronz yeah, you are the DM at the end of the day, the game is yours and you should tailor it to your liking. But at the same time I feel like 5e relies a little too much on the DM. In the sense that I think it could have some more robust rules and systems in some areas, as the DM already has to worry about so much.
I really do think monster design is one of this edition's biggest flaws. Thankfully we can always modify the game or use alternatives. Recently MCDM released a monster book called flee mortals with really fun monster designs, for example.
Another thing is intractable objects. A gas vent and a stray fireball can do big damage. oh no the explosion damaged the cave watch out for falling rocks. Having terrain hazards like ice or swamp that slow the players and prevent them fron reaching the backline of archers. A narrow bridge. A damn. You dont even need to have a plan for world objects just put them on the map and the players will make use of them
These are all great ideas. Thank you
One time i just skipped combat entirely and homebrewed the Gabowl sport from Wakfu, it was pretty fun lol
Can you show currently run campaigns or tabletop style of DM’s or Sykes of playing? Pros and cons?
10/10 video keep it up!
“really grindy video game” shows destiny 2. so true. so true.
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Okay. Great video.
I noticed that you used some footage from the Between the Sheets interview of Matt Mercer. Do you have the full interview?
I do not, just a few clips.
Awesome recommendations!
The onjectives are the most important thing. Maybe you don't care at all about defeating the demons, only about preventing the demons from killing the princess. Or you need to survive the enemy attacks long enough to open a portal and escape (like in Subway Skirmish from Unsleeping City. Though it's actually a bad example of how to do that kind of encounter, as the actual mechanic for the escape was weird and counterintuitive).
Goat has posted once again
Loke battle maps are awesome
Concise and useful
One of my dms always eem to pause for 10 plus seconds after every turn just looking around to the point I'm having to say alright who's up next
volunteer to take over the initiative counter as a player, it helps to share the burden.
Yeah, that sounds like a DM who's trying to keep a bunch of variables straight in their head and/or deciding how the PCs actions just effected the combatants and other NPCs in their world.
good video, but the percentage/counter for each section is too small now. the original timer countdown worked better i think
Another thing about Matt's encounters is he was used to doing experience-based level-up before, so he does a lot of combat and his players are always down since they used to get exp for it. A group of players that had no reason to try to gain exp from combat (milestone system) might be much more prone to thinking combat is useless, even if the encounter may be pretty cool.
My experience using encounter tables has told me that much about my own party (and I used custom encounter tables for some cool monsters, too). Also, my party overall seems to prefer social intrigue over dungeon delving and combat, so that definitely influences that a lot. They really do like combat with high stakes, at the end of an arc, though.
Maybe combat needs more incentives in a non-combat XP system. Like craft, materials you can harvest from them, etc. like ghosts have ectoplasm.
@@Mico-Xiyeas I feel like a lot of tables already do that, though. I haven't had a single wolf encounter that didn't end in "can we harvest their fur"?
@@DrShnig does the fur have any interesting uses and utilities available to them though? The fur might be used in part too craft a magic item. The bone from the wolf requires to be cracked, broken, and taken from its body to harness transformative powers from it as part of a potion or something
Maybe it can be used to grant coverage from blizzarding cold that causes disadvantageous effects such as slowed speed (level 1 exhaustion) or for stealth if you craft a those big things snipers put over themselves when they lay down
For each encounter I come up with a few random possible uses or craft ideas on the spot to get them thinking. I think this may be part of why my players are usually more engaged in combat despite session based, they utilize my homebrew crafts to. But they do like social to combat still
@@Mico-Xiyeas Good tips, I'll be sure to use them!
@@DrShnig yw! Btw what I meant in session based was session based leveling, didn't type the level part
“Really grindy video game” proceeds to show a clip of Destiny
Why did you use the picture of Matt from the Smosh don’t laugh challenge?
Huh. I thought this would be about like techniques for well balanced encounters or something, but it's not. It's sort of the storytelling / player handling approach to stale fights - yknow, use them sparingly, make variants, put dialogue in the fights, that sort of stuff - whereas from reading the title, I'm thinking about like difficulty ramping, forced approach variation, stall-proofing, that sort of thing, ways to make the fights not stale in the first place, to ensure combat itself is engaging and rewarding. I suppose that's what's meant by "hacks" here.
Balance! That's the word. I thought this was going to be about combat balancing.
To create much more dramatic combat for your players, let the monsters restore as much hp as long players take time to 'think' at theyr turn :D
Also if combat isn’t exciting for you or your players? Consider another game system that maybe supports a better combat system. 5e was killing my enjoyment of TTRPGs, because combat was so uninteresting. Other TTRPGs offered more fleshed out roleplaying and exploration support, and significantly more engaging and balanced combat that not only revived my love for the hobby, but brought it to new levels.
Bonus: most of them are made by pretty awesome companies, not by sucky companies like WotC/Hasbro that try to screw over everyone from D&D Beyond to content creators to ripping off players.
I'm cackling at the fact that destiny 2 was the example😂
I love playing dnd with my friends but every time we do combat it’s so boring. We have two people in our group who love to mid-max their characters just for combat and then two other friends who like dnd for the roleplay and story who don’t mid-max. It’s gotten to the point that the three of us dread combat because of how long and tedious it can be. It also doesn’t help that our dm half the time just wants to push us into combat because he prefers fighting rather than story telling.
I've watched several videos of yours and just realized I'm not subscribed. TIME TO FIX THAT
Easiest way is to play a game with better combat
1:20 I disagree. A combat isn't "just filler" if it doesn't tie directly into the story or plot of the game. Quite on the contrary, when my party and I stumble upon something and unexpectedly for the DM pursue it, and end up engaging someone/thing in combat that isn't a part of any major thing, and doesn't necessarily tie in with anything major, it ENLARGES the world. It makes it feel like the world we venture in, is vast and alive.
Yeah I agree with you, and not only that, combat is fun and sometimes its just fun fighting an interesting monster.
@@sanserof7 It certainly can be :)
Pointy hat W
That projected text ad verbatim over the video is super-distracting. Not sure whether you want to emphasize what you're saying, but if so, to me it's doing the opposite: I'm so distracted by it that the message doesn't come across at all.
I'm sure you've gotten this feedback before and maybe you're worried about copyright or something,but some audio examples of what you're talking about rather than just video in the background would make it much easier to see what these DMs are doing and what works about it.
Only having muted video of the DMs makes it feel like these videos assume the audience is intimately familiar with what you're talking about, which almost defeats the point of the video in the first place!
Yeah Aabria being "the distractor" isnt...good, especially when she carries the same mindset to her as a player, and being "look at me guys I'm funny"
I don't know what "dont" means.
Algorithm Comment!
Filler for dnd is the most important part. Story is important but you are role-playing and having fun cause it's a game. So filler is good
Without any examples from the DM's referred to here, I'm not sure how people can best use these tips?
The timer in the top left corner is very anxiety-inducing. Please just get rid of it completely. I don't get what it's even supposed to do.
I think I clicked on this video just to make myself angry. 5E D&D has bad, boring, tedious combat - and perhaps, instead of studying the habits of people who have managed, through the careful application of expertly honed procedures (which newcomers to the hobby have no hope of replicating), to elevate the system above its own limitations... perhaps instead we should just play better games. I don't even think that a majority of the people who play D&D today enjoy combat very much to begin with, because they want to play a role-playing game, and not a tactical kriegspiel. They want cinematic combat scenes that drive a story, not AC calculations and line of sight. This audience that I'm describing needs to be playing games that facilitate story-driven conflicts, be they physical conflicts or otherwise - games like Apocalypse World, Feng Shui, Blades in the Dark, etc. But even for the crowd that actually DOES want to engage with a simulationist wargame, 5E D&D just isn't built to do it properly. Going back to 4E D&D (a game I cannot fully endorse because it has serious problems of its own) would be indisputably better for that specific goal than playing 5E, if for no other reason than because 4E disincentivizes and/or forbids players from repeating the same actions from one turn to the next. That single difference alone makes even the blandest 4E battle inherently more engaging and exciting than the most bombastic stuff that 5E can manage. But even then, there are better-still options that could be achieved essentially by hacking straight-up tactical board games like Gloomhaven, CLANK!, or BattleLore, instead.
All of these DMs use combat for combats sake. Most fights don't move the plot forward and barely any of the combat is for character development.
Is there some weird consensus that internet DMs = best DMs?
It's more that good DMs = good DMs
This is a comment
I don't understand people who hates rules or gets bored of combat. The game is designed to revolve around it. Without it, it's not a game anymore. It's just a bunch of people talking in weird voices while telling a so-so story. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to dedicate 4-5 hours every week of my life doing that. I got shit to do.
I mean there's systems where people do just exactly that, so it's not hard to think some might also do it in DND lol
"D&D hacks", and it's just basic game design.
The very premise of this title is flawed. If something you’re doing is boring, you shouldn’t be doing it at all. Modern D&D having boring combat means it’s a bad system and hacks to obscure that fact are nonsense. We shouldn’t be playing games that aren’t fun.
The best thing? To play a different system