I played in a public session once (it was hosted in a small gamestore) and our bard brought his own ukelele to play on. So every time he cast a spell, he'd play on it and sing something related. He literally came up with entire songs about our characters, who he'd never even seen before, ON THE SPOT. That guy was amazing.
Two things. A dimension rift for characters coming in and out sounds fantastic compared to what my little groups have always done. Instant lama transformation. The group is always with at least one or two lamas because if you don’t make it to a session, your character becomes a lama. Straight up.
That's hilarious, definitely more interesting than "sleepwalking" (having a PC basically be an NPC and be absent from interactions), although sleepwalking is good if your game is high difficulty and you need a solid class mix.
I joined an under dark campaign where everything was underground so an earth quake happened and i fell upon the party from a whole that formed from above. i later learned that i had been falling for three days.
That's awesome. I just made the new girl a possessed boss fight and she beat the shit out of my guys so badly that the fight came down to if one failed their roll, it would be over.
I was running a game once and had to introduce a new character. I had him stuck in the pit trap around the corner from the group in the dungeon they were clearing. Easy peasy!
I carry way too many dice with me to D&D sessions... About 50 of each... Even tough everyone I play with has their own case... But if someone forgets their dice, I have several sets to choose from!
I like collecting them!!! and in some of the collector's sets it came with exclusive ones... and those others were on clearance!!! and then I got some as gifts... and then my friend stopped playing and was going to throw his away and...It's not like I'm going to throw any away... oh... I see the problem I have now....
@@tthung8668 most comic book stores that also do tabletop gaming will have sets to sell. D20, D12, D10, D8, D6, D4, and a percentile. Read that as # of sides of a die. D4 = 4 sided die.
@@tthung8668 if you find a nice group, someone will have enough to outfit you for a session or two. If you want to get your own it really depends on which class you play (and the weapon you use) what exactly you need, but if you get a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20 and a D100 your good to go. You sometimes need a bit of patience because you roll more then one of them, but if you have a pencil and notebook (or can keep numbers in your head) one of each is fine Only if you really got into D&D and still like it I recommend getting more to roll them together (eg rogue with a weapon that uses a D6 for damage plus sneak attack can add up to 20 dice fast on higher levels)
But you don't have to argue about the rules or worry about players going off track! No worrying about people cheating, getting bored or just talking about things that aren't on-topic. It's brilliant for figuring out the game rules yourself and undertanding the difficulties of the players and the DM and understanding how they can try to reconcile some issues in odd circumstances.
@@zhangbill1194 okay, so since I posted that I hadnt thought much of dnd (save for a few dingo doodles vides) and randomly today I got back into dnd again. Perfect timing is perfect.
...... I think 3 hours is pushing it... that said, last match I hosted, I thought it would last 2 hours, 3 hours latter, I decided to stop the match at the half way point and pick it up next week.
We once played 3 days. We were just sitting in my basement, smoking a lot, drinking too much energy drinks and eating toasted sandwiches. One player got tired after a while and started to sleep on the spot. We just kept playing, while her character was studying and she was sleeping. She woke up several hours later and continued to play with us. We played for 20 hours until we made a break to sleep. afterwards we played for another 12 hours. Best weekend ever :D - dont know why you would complain about spending a lot of time with your hobby.
Well, we were young, had holidays and loved (still do) the game. But i know a group of people that are in their 30s who rent a big house in norway for two weeks each year. There they cook together, visit the country and play roleplay games every evening. Still sounds great.
Can’t say we did that long but me and my home group had a 13 hour session. One player left for work and came back and we were still playing. It stank something rank but it was a good time
Hehehe, that’s pretty cool. I think the trick is to make sure everyone in your group is indeed fine with the schedule, which they obviously didn’t do for Puffin Forest.
"Who has 16 hours!?!" Um, my friends and I used to do tabletop WEEKENDS, where we played (Pathfinder, homebrewed rules) for 14-16 hours, two days in a row. We kept this up for 4 months. Four. Months. Straight. Then we got busier, and had to cut back to only one full day each weekend, plus a half-day midweek. Kept that up for many more months. Our GM was a bit liberal with powerful magic loot though, and some of our homebrew rules were a bit generous, making up probably too OP for our own good rather early in the game. By the end of the campaign, we were level 18, had invaded and claimed an entire sector of the Underdark, owned most of a city on the surface, built a castle, had 2 shops with a half dozen employees where we bought and sold merchandise plus sold off our extra loot at a profit, and we basically controlled the thieves guild. Our wizard had been banned from the college though after an incident where he was possessed by a cursed magic item... I miss that campaign.
Yeah games like that are like mainlining essence of D&D. My friends and I have had a game of 5e going since we started highschool that is pretty similar to what you described, we're rules as written people, but we still run with lots of magic items, do some crazy multiverse spanning adventures, I'm talking regularly traveling between planes three to twelve times a session, all in a group that has fluctuated between 5 and 9 players through its lifetime and currently has been holding fast at 8. We would normally play 10 hour games on weekends and holidays all at someone's house, but I was sad figuring it was pretty much gonna end when we graduated. Here we are almost half way through college and we're still going, now online because of lock down, but still averaging 5 to 9 hours on weekends.
My father and his friends (now various relatives of mine) once had a d&d session that started Friday night, and didn't end until Monday morning when they had to go back to work. That's right, and I wish I was part of it
"How does my player get into the game?" "You know how when you're playing MarioKart and you fall off the track, this little turtle guy on a cloud (his name is Lakitu) picks you up with a fishing pole and sets you down on the track?" "Yeah?" "Well it's like that, only instead of a go kart, it's your character, and instead of Lakitu, it's Ben on his DM cloud"
I currently have a cleric that I'm playing and sometimes I just won't bother casting the spell because I don't want to have to keep reminding people. The most effective means I've gotten is taking my own d4s and just putting them right next to the other players' d20s, in the hopes that they'll just happen to pick up both when they go to role. Works better than you'd think.
"Remember the bless" was a huge statement in my DnD games, because +1 is such a minor, almost useless bonus and it's so very easy to forget. Even to the point of the cleric who cast the spell forgetting it. Never had that problem when we swapped over to gurps, a +1 in that system is huge. And its very easy for the support to just put more points into their support abilities and grant everyone bigger bonuses.
"is such a mino, almost useless bonus" . In my D&D group (3.5 edition), blessing is considered one of the most OP level 1 spell there is. It saved the players' asses so many times and always had a huge impact on battles. But my guess is that we are playing at a different player level than you. My players usually are lvl 4-9 and are often fighting with a few generic NPC at their side (they are usually playing in cities, or helping an army during a war).
3:26 I know I am very late, but what my group does is stack a d4 on top of the d20, so when we reach for a d20 to roll, we see the d4 and remember. Also if you have minute long spells (like bless I think) you can use a d10 and place next to the spell on your character sheet to remember how many rounds are left!
I'd love an 8-16 hour game. Imagine Band/Fat/Science/Chess/Scout camp, but you wake up and go to a main room of the cabin with a big fireplace, big table, lots of snacks and drinks, couches and the DM's throne at the head of the table. Then you game all day, taking stretch breaks after each encounter and a couple other activities here and there to break up the day (Like actual meals, and "Normal camp stuff". And you just take out the whole week for "Dice Camp". You might even have 12 hour sessions but then in the evening switch to board games for the last 4 hours.
Me and my group have a 8 hour game every 5 meetings for boss fights and huge plot developments and our normal playthroughs are around 3 to 4 hours and like every three months we play 12 to 16 hours just cause
I got roped into playing adventurer's league because they were offering a free chain golom mini to promote the AL and 5e. After I got my happy meal toy, I sat down to play a session. I rolled up a half orc barbarian noble, and the shenanigans started from there. Everyone was cool, and we even came back for future sessions and became somewhat of a regular group. It wasn't long though, before I had completely derailed the campaign, and got the whole party roped into putting on a stage musical with our downtime days. Everyone contributed, the cleric provided lighting and buffs, the wizard did pyrotechnics, the rogue scouted local craftsmen to supply merchandise, and I blew all the gold I earned from questing on hiring bards to cast buffs and preform. It ended up being a smash success, and slowly overtook the main plot. By the time we were done using our downtime days, we were all somewhat famous actors, with my barbarian as the lead. The DM started rolling dice to see if npc's would recognize us, and it ended up breaking the game when we were able to bribe enemy guards, in exchange for front row tickets to our next show. The point is, just because it's wizards sanctioned and everyone's a stranger doesn't mean you have to sacrifice roll playing. As long as you include everyone, you can have some fun, goofy experiences, and play the material as intended... for the most part.
That sounds way to close to a certain Twitch Stream i watch that colaborates with a lot of the main stream DnD groups on twitch who are also ambassadors of DnD..... Like exactly as the show ran an episode for a small segment. N i know you werent in the game cuz...yeah..... Really suspicious of this.
Haha, I actually play Dnd on twitch with a new group I'm with. We're really small though, so there's a low probability that you've seen it. The adventurer's league game was definitely not on twitch though, and was actually a couple years ago.
You didn't derail a campaign, your party invented one! I'm sure the GM doesn't mind playing along with shinnanigans as long as they are compelling, fun, and everyone involved is invested. The point of an RPG is to have fun, after all. It isn't necessisarily to travel a linear path through a series of scripted encounters. You can play videogames if you want that.
from personal experience its not the greatest sure its fun but after the 7-8 hour mark everyone gets tired ppl tend to forget things more often and mess around alot more which leads to nothing constructive getting done altho that may be my group feel free to give it a try but dont get your expectations too high
Everything neckro178 said is completely true, after the 8 hour mark our games usually devolved...like...a lot. :D Roleplaying was barely there and people are just too tired. It's not really worth it.
Try having to DM a game for only 20 minutes a day, with people that don't roleplay, ruin all your encounters with murderhobo ideology, constant metagaming, and then have everyone say your a bad DM, this and one more thing, I DON'T LIKE DM'ING!!
We've been getting constantly screwed over b/c we didn't go murderhobo. That person you let escape? He came back with 10 of his friends and ambushed you in your sleep. That wolf you let go out of that trap? It was a druid's animal companion who led an army of woodland creatures to slaughter you for tresspassing. That farmer you annoyed by asking for a discount? He's a level 20 retired adventurer who one shots your entire party. We Role Play constantly, which I thought was the most important part of the game aside from story. You don't roleplay, you don't get to play, I always thought. Not with ANY of my groups.
AFAIK AL is based around 4 hour sessions. So I'm not sure how your DM treats that. As a double session? If not then you are technically being cheated out of renown and downtime rewards, for example.
bradwolf07 I play in an Adventure League game. I really enjoy it. It's actually much easier as a DM. The main rule is if you want to do it, try it. May work, might not. That and no PvP. Cuts down on arguments. It's actually how I got my wife involved in D&D. And now she is a DM. She never played before AL. My only concern is with magic items. In earlier editions, you could make slight alterations to magic items. Case in point, I had a wand caster that turned a flying broom into a wand of fire bolt. I spent the required time and money to do it, all by the book. But in AL, I wanted to attach a hammer head to my immovable rod, and WoC Adventure League said no. So the DM doesn't have "complete" control. But we still have lots of fun. I recommend anyone watching this video to check it out. The WoC site has a list of all the AL games. Also you can try this app called Meetup. On Android and IOS. Or just go to meetup.com.
yeah mine does average of that once a week pretty good length i think and we get food but usually its something we can just eat while still playing like pizza.
I use a giant Eagle to introduce new players into the party at one point we had a person who was invited to the session and made their character a king(it was apparently a character they use in other games) and I was like Humongous Eagle rips off the castle roof picks you up flys of to a different continent and throws you at the ground then flys off
Jeez. 14-16 hours? That's great! My group tends to hangout throughout the day then leave our sessions for last. And that'll last anywhere between 3-5 hours.
Mine are whenever we find time (typically no more often than once every two months) and last no longer than 4 hours. I honestly can't wait until college when I can find a new group that actually gives a fuck (and has enough people).
Yeah thanks, luckily I'm already aware of a regular group at the college I'm going to, so now it's just a matter of "does my schedule align with it?" Bear in mind I'm double-majoring (Math+Computer Science), so that's a pretty large concern for me.
As both a player and DM for adventures league at my local comic store I can tell you that the regulars do all become friends and we look forward to each other's characters and or DMing styles. We're really friendly to new players too and everyone from kids to people in their 60s all meet up every Wednesday to enjoy this world in the forgotten realms together and to me that's pretty special.
Same for our Pathfinder Lodge here in Asheville. I play with a lot of the same people at the FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store) that I play home games with, so it's a great way to meet folks for a future home game (we jokingly refer to organized play as a "gateway drug"). Last night, we had a big "Critmas" party, with some organized scenarios, as well as a home-brew custom game designed by two of our most experienced DMs. I know some people have had their bad experiences with organized play, but it's a been a blast for the last three years that I've been involved and we constantly get new folks swinging by to try it out, so we must be doing something right....
100% I joined my local AL about a year ago after a multi-year hiatus from D&D, and since then I have made a bunch of good friends who all like playing. From that I am now in 1 bimonthy campaign(STK), another bimonthy homebrew game (alternating with the former) composed of folks who didn't want to adhere to the AL PHB+1 rule (which is super annoying now that xanathars is out) and can easily jump into any number of tier 1-2 games being ran each week. Also, if you want a great loot, ahem, adventure. Ask your DM to run white plume mountain. It is super fun and puzzly, and has astounding amounts of loot. (or, if you are a DM, treat your players!)
You definitely start to connect with players whose play style u enjoy over sessions and then end up in games together more deliberately hahaha, esp online AL
It's not AL, but I found the same thing with a drop-in game run at a local game store. We were all strangers at first but quickly began to mesh well and entwine our backstories and eventually became good friends and started hanging out outside of the drop in D&D.
As one of his pals who he plays with, we've tried through another buddy's stream channel and it doesn't really portray how we wanna share the story and several other problems like technical wise stuff like camera set up and audio, etc. but we all wanna get into streaming our dnd games at some point so possibly sometime in the future lol
That's understandable. I asked because I look back at Matthew Mercer and his group of voice actor friends from Geek and Sundry's Critical Role series and I loved it. I think Ben and the gang would be hilarious to watch.
My only experience with the league was; 'You're roleplaying way too much and it's derailing this. Can you please back off a bit?' When I'd just gotten done taking *maybe* 3 minutes to ad lib a story for my character. Before we started playing. I 'went to the bathroom' and never came back. D&D with strangers has never turned out enjoyable for me...
It's a roleplaying game. Roleplaying is the objective! For me it really kills the fun if someone is too invested in the game as something to beat and master, instead of just playing a character.
@@DevinDTV But that's the thing. If you're playing with friends, then they probably do care, but if you're playing with strangers in the Adventurer's League, then probably won't.
I had one of those once... then we went home... and i was in the worst car accident ive ever... well come to think of it i guess by definition i didn't technically witness it. I had a concussion and have no memory of the crash or the walking to a strangers house for help at 5 am. My friend was on disability for 3 years. Game responsibly kids.
Had a 30 hour session over Christmas with cousins, stopping to sleep and with a few meal breaks in there. It was beautiful. I only do that kind of stuff like once a year these days, but it's a special moment.
Story time! I played a lvl one cleric that was proficient in animal handling. Playing the first time we went against a dire wolf and I thought I could tame it.... DM Nat 20'd and killed me completely and I had to make a new character. The DM kept that character sheet.
Oh my god recently I had been playing a campaign in the shadowfell with a group of people. An elf assassin in my group desided to pour a deadly poison on a blanket and hand it to this shop keeper. So I had her roll she rolled a FREAKING 20. Long story short I had to change things since she killed a main npc. Now I interrupt them when they do stuff like this. Just wanted to share. I was dm and the elf was my wife.
I don't play favorites and don't let my players be chaotic stupid, which is exactly what this was. I would've allowed it if it were a reference to the "smallpox blankets" card in cards against humanity, and if the NPC was kind of a dick, but a regular and main NPC I would not let that shit fly.
But why prevent them from doing as they like? I mean, you can just read them a story if you want them to follow a story along a fixed path, isn't having your own choices influence the game one of the reasons why games like D&D are so popular?
@@rb4121 It depends from DM to DM. A lot of people frown upon taking away those freedoms, however not everyone can think on their feet fast enough to figure out a way around essentially castrating an essential part of the story in one fell swoop, even in a lazy manor, let alone in a way that seems natural for story progression. Honestly, I'm fine with limiting player actions that way for the sake of a story as long as they still have the ability to make certain actions that can completely change a story. It's not railroading them into a singular narrative, they still have choices, it's just keeping them in check, just like most rpg games. You can do what you want, just not anything and everything you want because "Players should have freedom of choice".
@Leisure Yes, but not very quickly for many people. They may practice it on their own time, but in the mean time somewhat limit actions. I really don't understand the EXTREME prejudice of limiting actions of players. People act as if you have just committed some atrocity against all mankind just for daring to suggest that you don't allow them to do something that not only goes against the story but the universe as well. Yeah, D&D is a game about choice, I get that. But it's as much the DM's game as it is the players'. The DM should have just as much right to say no as the players do to ask to do dumb things, whether story related or not, imo.
I remember the first time I ended up in a 12 hour game. Before that point most of my experience was with 2 hour sessions back in high school between when class got out and peoples parents got off work to pick them up. Long games are messy, but they can have more funny stuff in them. One time someone had to roll 3 new characters because it was our first session and they managed to die twice. It was funny because both times were from drowning and once was in a sewer.
My longer game sessions were in high school. There was a group of 7 of us. We would have a sleepover at someone's house every weekend and play. Usually we would start around 8 and go till 4-6 in the morning. Best thing about it is the part at 2 am where everyone is on sleep dep and everything gets hilarious. Things that happen in this window make for great inside jokes later.
Yup. That always happens in my campaigns, largely because it’s people who are new to the game and treat it like a video game, so they end up getting trampled by horses after deliberately spooking them to get a carriage going, and failing both the rolls to avoid getting knocked over, the rolls to avoid the horse’s hooves, and the roll to avoid the carriage wheels.
I'm a new league player, the DM worked my character into the story. I was chained up in the dungeon. My group goes for 4 to 6 hours in the league. A lot of leagues are in a shop, so there are limits usually.
Ya, same with my AL, lucky enough to get a really enthusiastic DM that cares about story and narrative. but since it is in a shop we rarely get to play for more then 3hrs, I think 3.5 is the longest we've gotten. I dream of 4 hour long sessions - but I don't want to play 8hr long homebrew games anymore
I play in an Adventure League game. I really enjoy it. It's actually much easier as a DM. The main rule is if you want to do it, try it. May work, might not. That and no PvP. Cuts down on arguments. It's actually how I got my wife involved in D&D. And now she is a DM. She never played before AL. My only concern is with magic items. In earlier editions, you could make slight alterations to magic items. Case in point, I had a wand caster that turned a flying broom into a wand of fire bolt. I spent the required time and money to do it, all by the book. But in AL, I wanted to attach a hammer head to my immovable rod, and WoC Adventure League said no. So the DM doesn't have "complete" control. But we still have lots of fun. I recommend anyone watching this video to check it out. The WoC site has a list of all the AL games. Also you can try this app called Meetup. On Android and IOS. Or just go to meetup.com.
I've only been playing d&d for a short while with my friends, and i can say this about it safely a good d&d session is like a really good book, once you start its hard to put it down...
16 hour games arent as rediculous as people seem to think. Really theyre more like 14 hours after food but its just hanging out with some mates for a weekend once a month or two. I find it easier to do then 3 to 6 hour session's more frequently. But thats just me. Thanks for the video by the way ben you are amazing.
Random Rotors that makes more sense i mean 8 can understand a 16h game when its a bunch of friends getting together at a house with plans to do only this this weekend and then break for a month. Where as 3h games make sense when its at a set location on weekly basis. But still i dont think i could have the patience to do a 16h game in a weekend but a 16h story arc/campaign over 4-5 meetings in a month is much more manageable. I want to know who does a 2-5h battle and its not a boss battle do you have a bunch of people with combat disadvantage, brittle swords, and god armor who cant roll something above a 5 to save thier life.... or just a devil of a GM/DM?
amanda cabrera well alcohol plays a big part with patience, makes everything go smoother. But i prefer the 16 hour slogs simply for the fact you can get more done. There is no catch up ,stop then start. People dont forget there plans halfway through the week and when they come back wonder what in the sweet jesus they were doing. And yeah 4th ed had horrible combat, i had one fight just a street level brawl last an hour and a half. Just between hp amount of damage you do how hard it was to hurt people and the whole magical items being damn necessary combat became such a slow boring drawn out thing.
4e isn't the real problem. It just depends on how focused the players are on the game, more than anything else. And to some extent, how high the character's level is (which allows more spells and powers to choose from), and how much role playing the players do. I've seen an entire 4e combat take less than one hour. That was a fairly simple encounter where the players were focused on the game and had low level characters. I've also seen 3e combat take over 8 hours. That was a combat where the players were often distracted and talking about other stuff, so I couldn't really tell you how much of that time was actually spent playing. I haven't played 5e, so I can't speak to personal experience with that.
Rod H 5th ed combat is a hell of alot more streamlined. my experience is with 4th and 5th edition. Normal 4th ed normally goes for about half an hour to an hour with good luck and half decent roles at levels 6 to 9. Where as 5th edition combat ive fought in normally goes for about 20 minutes thats a challenging fight as well at about 6 to 9 level. Rarely have i ever had a fight last more then an hour. I got nothing against 4th edition in fact its what got me into dnd but once i started playing 5th ed i realised drawn out the combat was.
Hearing a DnD round last a bit over a 3 hours, i'm like ok. because i started to be a bit interested in DnD through The Unexpectables stream, which is like 3-4. So hearing 6 hour rounds, I can see but think those are a bit long. Then you mention 12 fucking hour rounds and then a crazy 16 hour one. That's insane, not unbelievable. But none the less crazy.
Longest session I've ever had was a 3 day marathon with breaks for vitals (Like food, drink, relievement, and sleep). We were trying to accomplish much in a relatively short time. At the time we were playing pathfinder and knocked out the entire Part 1 of a 6 part adventure during this time. Good times, good times...
John J It depends on the players alot. there are a lot of things you can do to speed up the game. Most of my players wait until its their turn and then start thinking about what they want to do....and then complain that battles take too long xD
I am a dm for my friends and we had so much fun we thought an hour passed, nope 8 hours passed and then we all get hit with exhaustion oncs we realized this, it is glorious (still happens sometimes even longer when it feels like only 20 min passed)
Sounds like a great idea to start with 3-4 hour ones, but once you play a few times you will probably see why 6 hours isn't really that long - it is inconvenient, though, if you have work, a lot of stuff to do after work, people with conflicting schedules and you have to find time to get them all together. The thing is, RPG sessions are pretty much stories being told between the players and the GM, and every story needs to have an ending. Think of an RPG campaign like you'd think of a TV series - sure, the season finale is at the end, but every episode has it's own arc and it's own ending. It doesn't just end in the middle of someone's dialogue - unless it's a really bad series. It's the same with a game session - if you want it to feel complete, you can't stop at any random moment just because your phone's alarm went off, and with players sometimes getting sidetracked (which is perfectly fine and what makes RPGs so great - the world is really open and you CAN go anywhere you want and there WILL be stuff there to do. The stuff to do might be "dying", though) 4 hours might simply not be enough to advance the plot as much as you want AND still give the players the freedom we all want them to have AND end the session at a moment that will feel like a good ending. Even Puffin pointed a few things out in the video - backstories are pretty much being ignored, people are focused on getting the job done etc. That way it's not surprising a session can be wrapped up in 3 hours, and it's great for people simply wanting to learn the rules, people who don't have too much free time and/or can't commit to playing every single week etc.but that's not the only way to play and with a great GM or even with a bunch of friends who really are fun an 6- or even 8-hour long session can feel too short.
let me tell you young whippersnapper. back when we played 2nd edition we would sit for a week in one session (with sleep and eating then right back to it) in one campaign (ofc it was a vacation week) and we continued that story for multiple apon multiple sessions afterwards. till they all died saving the world (despite being evil)
Disclaimer: I played AL online on Roll20 after joining one of the few AL discords around, so ymmv in game store games. Personally, I quite enjoyed AL. It's an easy and simple way to get into a game when you don't have a group, and even if you do have a group it's nice to try out a new character concept you've got in the downtime between group sessions; or just to hit that DnD itch. Downloaded the AL Player Guide, made a character, found a GM who was running a beginner game in a couple hours and just jumped in. It's true that the adventures are quite a bit more railroady and combat heavy, but there were still a lot of chances for RP. Funnily enough, after playing through some of the adventures I thought "Hey, this doesn't seem that complicated, why don't I try DMing it?" and so I ended up DMing it for a few people from my group who were interested. And indeed, they were fairly simple to run and it served as a great introduction to DMing! In addition, I actually do like the reward system of AL and how you can spend Downtime/Treasure Points to get things done in-between sessions, without much of a fuss. Sure, it involves a bit of hand-waving when it comes to things like "Wait, you made an entirely new coat while we walked from A to B?", but it's no big deal imo. I will be moving towards doing a bit of homebrew for the group after they finish the trilogy adventure I started with (for those who want to know, it's DDAL08-01 to -03), so we'll see how things go from there. I do think I'll try and make the homebrewed stuff similar to the module-style, 'coz I do enjoy the idea of having some minor plothooks/adventures to have the players choose from, but we'll see. Either way, TL;DR: Go and try it out, either online or at your local store if you can! It might be different, but it's not bad!
I learned D&D in Adventures League, and I love how simple everything is. It makes it so you can really focus on the game and not worry too much about specific complicated rules (Unless you're a minmaxer, of course) All I did was create a standard Dwarf War Cleric, went in to the adventure, and had a blast... ...reminding people to take their Bless bonus.
You must not have heard about Season 8! Lots of great rewards for all 3 "pillars of gameplay" (or w/e they're called): Combat, Exploration, and Social. There's almost always a non-combat solution to encounters, especially in new modules. I played the first 4 in sequence that take place in Waterdeep, good fun and progress ;)
I got started in AL once my friend's homebrew I was playing in ended..... abruptly, shall we say. I was looking for a D&D group, because I was having a lot of fun, and just so happened to notice that the comics/games store that I played 40K at had D&D on Saturday evenings. So one night, I stayed later, and asked to join in. They were super welcoming, and helped me roll up a character, and got me right in. I've been going (at least) weekly ever since, at one point going every night but Monday and Tuesday. I've had quite a lot of fun, and the nature of the modules provides clean break points for each session (we usually have ~6 hours to run a 4 hour module, which helps a LOT with the roleplaying - DM's usually only cut people off if they have a Shakespearean speech for every attack roll). I also got my start DMing with at the store. The modules are easy enough to find (and buy) online, and so by reading them ahead of time, I was able to prepare to run a game. Of course, I actually started running games with a module that I had played before after the DM we had ran a 2-hour module and had to leave for personal reasons. People were considering leaving, but I stepped up and said, "F**k it, I'll run something. Always been meaning to learn." and ran the module. I've been running and playing games ever since, even getting into some hardcovers (mostly TYP). It's all AL, so I just introduce and dismiss characters as needed, usually contriving reasons for them.
16 hours is crazy. My group's sessions range from 3-6 hours, max 8 but we play weekly (sometimes twice a week) so we still progress faster than a monthly group. We play on roll20 which automatically rolls attack dice and damage dice together and we use a magical thing called plot smoke most of the time to explain player absence.
I play in an Adventure League game. I really enjoy it. It's actually much easier as a DM. The main rule is if you want to do it, try it. May work, might not. That and no PvP. Cuts down on arguments. It's actually how I got my wife involved in D&D. And now she is a DM. She never played before AL. My only concern is with magic items. In earlier editions, you could make slight alterations to magic items. Case in point, I had a wand caster that turned a flying broom into a wand of fire bolt. I spent the required time and money to do it, all by the book. But in AL, I wanted to attach a hammer head to my immovable rod, and WoC Adventure League said no. So the DM doesn't have "complete" control. But we still have lots of fun. I recommend anyone watching this video to check it out. The WoC site has a list of all the AL games. Also you can try this app called Meetup. On Android and IOS. Or just go to meetup.com.
i do like the idea of adventure's league, but for me, im one of those players who likes to manipulate the enemy instead of just using brute force all the time, find better ways around certain situations, try out new things that have less practicality than what most people would generally do. Adventure league doesnt really offer those chances for me to use my creativity like that, its quite rail-roaded and everything seems to be very mechanical and unnatural, it doesnt have that natural feeling like casual games do.
back in the day, when i played at game stores, i had many toons die because of some small mistake. it felt like the gm was only going to let their high lvl friends talk, and anyone else can just die. no one was going to help me, no one wanted to make the scene cooler, i just got killed. i stopped showing up.
I played a homebrew game similar to D&D before going to my first actual D&D session at an Adventurers League game. It was basically how it was said in this video, although most of them were one shot games (No Foolish Matter and the story of the Red Plumes, for anyone who cares.) I went every week for many months, and most of the players didn't know each other, and the ones who did made their characters know each other. That meant as the players played together and got to know each other, the characters did too, which is a feeling that is impossible to emulate with a group of friends. The DM was extremely good too, he referred to everyone in their character names, and was patient with the new players who had to be told which dice to roll every time. I was playing a dragonborn sorcerer who had an imaginary friend named Tobias. Everyone was really confused in the beginning, but they all started going along with it, and we had little roleplays when someone would come back after a few weeks "Why hello there Saldrakim, how's Tobias?" "Ah he's good thanks!"
Crafting Menace The biggest weakness with AL is when you have totally random people play together. If you can get a fairly consistent group in the modules, it really makes it more fun. Our store has several hardcover games running at any given time, and those groups play for months at a time together, which makes it much easier to roleplay. The DMs for the hardcovers typically invite consistent players from the weekly modules, which ensures a core group every week, with 1-2 people varying based on schedules.
That's cool, but I've been playing for years and past exp tells me to stay away from the shorter session groups. Normally if the session is that short, the DM or other's are half invested at best. You'll learn that most D&D players fall into a handful of specific types of players. At these shorter session groups, You'll find the players that only show up to play and you're just there to help them play the game or either the players that get bored and quit before ever completing a section. If your unlucky, you'll find the player that has zero control in his personal life so he escapes into D&D but can't stay out to late. Those players can actually be very cancerous to the group in many little ways. They poke 50 little holes in your group(ig or irl) before you realize the self destruction. You might think I'm talking out my ass but you'll notice the 'types' of players too if you play with enough people.
Interesting, but the thing that I like most about rpgs is the story and, in the case of games I run, the realism. "You're suddenly with the group" strikes me as a bit much. At least a description of meeting the new character and asking them to join seems in order. I do like the fact that the players are there to play the game rather than just goof off (which my players constantly do). The longest session I was ever in (and I think I ran it, but can't remember) was 12 hours and that was a rarity for my old AD&D group. Combat didn't take quite as long for us back in the day as everyone knew what they were doing as well, and paid attention. I just finished up a Pathfinder campaign and combat was agonizingly slow.
We had a dnd game in the College Lobby that operated on a Drop in drop out basis due to class and scheduling. The justification was we had a wagon train due to the amount of players (8 minimum, 12 I think was the largest amount.) and characters (Dm let people make 2 in order to fill some party rolls when people don't show up/ keep interest.)
Right. You had some justification for the characters being there an already knowing each other. Not just "You're walking through the forest and suddenly someone else is in the party." It makes sense for the story and sounds like it was a good idea. I ran a game that took place in a small town wherein everyone had lived their lives. That could have worked the same way.
Well in D&D adventurers League he didn't mention but they use the faction system basically it's more of your faction has sent you to do this this and this that's how people drop in and out it's basically your faction is like an adventurers Guild and they send whatever Ventures are available at the time
To be honest, fuck realism. DnD is about telling a story, and anyone that's ever written can tell you that everything exists for the convenience of the plot. Having long, drawn out sequence to introduce new characters is just way too disruptive and doesn't follow the conservaiton of detail at all. Why should we spend 3 hours on the excuse for why there's a new character when most of that time isn't even establishing them? You can put it on the player to come up with an excuse as to why they quickly joined up with the group in under 60 seconds OOC, but not everyone's that creative. It's OK to just handwave stuff, anything really, that's taking up time but not making the experience better. You can do that to combat itself too if you want. If the PC's aren't going to be realistically threatened by kobolds, unless you're certain the players want to have fun stomping something just handwave it away. Say they kicked their asses and move on. Combat in DnD/Pathfinder is often a slog, yeah, but since I play mostly on Roll20 I use their handy automation tools to both speed up the math behind everything and to cull the decision paralysis that often takes up the majority of combat. If you want to attack someone, you click the Attack button and pick your target, you either hit or you don't and then you deal damage and if you crit it'll calculate that too. Characters that have lots of options like casters can have a list of all their shit right in front of them, and when they click that button it posts exactly what it does while also rolling all the relevant dice and showing me what saves I need to be looking at. As a GM, all these tools are an absolute godsend as I don't need to know fucking jack shit about any of the monsters running about, I just make the dumb ones run up to the nearest person and bash them with sticks and have the smarter ones use their wizbang neato stuff without needing to remember EXACTLY what will happen.
Lol, this sounds like how Bethesda streamlines Elder Scrolls or Fallout for newer generations. No roleplaying, no complicated choices or stories. Just point me where the combat is ! :P
Meh. The problem I have with Adventurer League modules is the forced storyline. My first pregen game, there was an old mage turned into a sheep. The players were supposed to use the scroll he handed them to talk with animals, and he would let them know the dire situation. They were then supposed to help. Lo and behold, the one guy in their party (the Drow) was given the scroll to read, talked to the sheep... and refused help. Sounded dangerous and pointless, he said out of character. In character, told everyone that the sheep just happened to be carrying that scroll probably as a practical joke, and nobody rolled a high enough insight to fight him. I ended up having to just say, look, if you don't help him, we have no game. Pregen, sorry. My last League game, I played a cleric. Near the end of the fight, I went to the back of the room to examine the snake head statue. Turns out it had some cursed stones in it's eyes, so I decided to guard it because duh. WELLLL the npc with us was written to run "past" us after the fight and into the snake head. I was like, wait, so the guy tries to run in? Naw man, I'm def stopping him, and I got the strength and spells to do it. DM was like, sorry, but it's story. Can't derail a pregenerated story. Okay, I said, I guess I'll just LET the npc run to his obvious death despite knowing it will kill him (not meta gaming, my character would not have allowed it.) THIS is why I don't like those games. The truth is, you never really know how your players are going to ruin/screw up your story. That's all part of the DnD experience when running a game. When playing a pregenerated campaign, you (as a player) must accept that you're just there for XP, gear and showing off stats. Nothing more. Otherwise, the DM will have no choice but to force the story down your throat, and that's not fun for anybody.
12 hour sessions as a player would be amazing, but as a DM that would literally kill me. I can barely think after DMing for like 5 hours, 12 would be six levels of exhaustion followed by instant death.
it's quite easy if you add something invaluable : breaks. Something like 15 to 30 minutes break every 2-4 hours allow you to do great game lenght far more easely.
When I played 3.5 with a group of friends our sessions went for 12 hours too. Noon to midnight on Saturday, did it for 3 years. Absolutely amazing time and I wish I could go back to those days.
@@xFlareLeon They still roleplay and follow a story. Its just that they cant expect to play with the same people each week. Think of it like an IRL dnd mmo. each week an instanced set of encounters. You could play a bunch of games with one DM then travel to a different country that also plays AL and continue the story there.
WOW: Players that actually read the rules. That's Nirvana for a DM and why I broke up the last campaign I had been running (which was running for 2 years but then they stopped reading the rules and would just wing it or when their turn came they would sit and talk for 5 min even though I told them you have 5 sec to decide and would beat them on the head with the monsters OHHHH to have players that actually read the rules.....)
and write down the color code so no one can annoy you about cheating. i use this method when i have many attacks in a round, i use 1 color d20 and dmg dice for the first attack, another color d20 and dmg dice for the next, etc, have what the colors mean and i write down the results when it isnt my turn, and i usually have a whole page written down. i just agree not to fudge later and always use them in the order they were rolled. but that is when every pc has 7 or more attacks every round plus 20 attacks of oppertunity, etc. i also tell the players what the enemy ac is so that they can just tell me how much damage theyre doing and over how many hits. then we get to rp out what each hit or miss looks like.
D&D 5 is really fun, but the rules for organized play in D&D AL could use a lot of improvement. I like the rules of the Pathfinder Society way more. They are not perfect, but at least there is no fighting over magic items, and the GMs get a propper reward for their time, among many things. You should try it some time.
Well, my first game were like session 3 or 4 hours (Not sure). When I started to play with my friend (The GM) and others guys (Friends of the GM that now have become my friend), our sessions was 24 hours. We weren't playing all the time (we took break to eat, sleep and play board games/video games). It was really fun to do and I will love to do it again, but my life is saying fuck you.
My record is 20, AD&D 2ed, circa 1995. After which we left and went to a water park (and mostly slept). I'll add for flavor that a friend of ours got sunburn under the soles of his feet, and that was HILARIOUS
Adventurers league sounds like my least favorite bits of DnD pushes to the forefront. No role play, no meaningful character motivations, all combat, and short sessions
Marc Alcatraz Not to mention how the minute you start to become powerful, do you have to make a new character from the ground up. And how you're not allowed to roll your stats to keep everyone from being too strong.
mods are 4 hours, (this video got that part wrong), but you can always play 2 or 3 in a row with the same group for those marathin sessions. and there is in fact plenty of role play. BUT there are limits. No, you cant roleplay haggling with every single merchant for every single item you want (OMG, dont you just hate when someone tries this?), and no one can spend .75 hours "roleplaying" a meaningless encounter with the tavern wench while the other players get bored and go outside to pet the dogs. Again, who wants to play at a table where some idiot insists on doing this every single session? And organized play is not about being combat-centric, but in organized games like Adventurers League and Pathfinder Society, they get 3 combats finished IN ADDITION to roleplay in 4 hours, for the reasons mentioned above, plus the fact that there are no 15 minute rules discussions/ arguments with the dm over how 1 spell /feat/class feature works, slowing combat to a crawl and wasting everyone's time at the table (OMG, dont you just HATE that?) Everyone knows exactly how their class features work, and any vague bits have already been adjudicated by the people who run the campaing (WOTC staff), so combat goes MUCH faster and smoother than any home game Ive ever played in since I started playing in 1985. For reals, I was amazed my first time at how fast and efficient combat was, and how well most of the players actually knew the rules. However, IF meaningless time wasting arguments of minutiae of the wording X ability/spell is to your liking; IF you insist on roleplaying for 17 minutes with the alchemist fire merchant who has nothing to do with the actual game story arc ("But that's what my character would do!!") ; IF the idea of not having to remind other players that its their turn/ what part of the game you are on because they wandered into the dining room to watch The Mandalorian while you were "roleplaying" with the town crier; IF the thought of completing a tactically complex combat in under 40 minutes (!) without that one guy we all know arguing AGAIN with the DM about how he THINKS his one ability works (WOTC staff said 4 years ago that it officially doesn't work that way Karen) while everyone else wanders off to raid the refrigerator, THEN perhaps organized game play isnt for you. BUT, if any of these things sound like they just might be fun, then you might want to give it a try ;-)
@@AFanOfCinema once i got used to not rolling stats, ill never go back. because no one can cheat, like SURE you rolled that character legit Mark, your paladin just HAPPENED to roll 18 str and cha when no one was looking (it happens, weve all seen it happen). It also makes it so no one ends up with a weak unplayable character, and no one gets a character so powerful just due to lucky rolls/cheating that they dominate every combat encounter, making the game less fun for half of the other players.
Have had alot of weird stuff in D&D and adventure league has led to the rise of my Barbarian Dragonborn Inquisitor who’s job is to find criminals and punish them, he earned the title of The Castrater in our first session, I was unable to come back for more sessions, but the party still remembered him, he would see monstrous races as less than the normal races so he would eat goblin jerky, he castrated a thief for stealing from a church, and he went back on his word with a bugbear chieftain cause again, lesser than the humans and other civilized races. And he stayed Lawful evil throughout that one game I got to play cause according to the laws of the lands we were in, I broke no laws and was well within my right to do so.. though our sorceror, who went from one of those trident fish people to a blue tiefling due to his Wild magic, also turned my black dragonborns scales a permanent light blue.. that led to some hilarious scenarios.
I have been playing since 1980. I had a game group 20+ years ago and we played 2nd edition. We normally, on average would start a game at 9-10 am and play to 3am. All crash at my house, wake up the next day by 9-10 and played till midnight or so. We averaged 14 hour game sessions twice a week for 2 years
Wow that sounds miserable. I uavnt gosne to my local place for al yet but I have been around a few times they did it. They had probably 4 or 5 tables, no one was being overly rowdy and there were dividers to separate games. Looked pretty chill
for some of us we don't have friend who play. I'm kind of stuck with Mondays being my ONLY day outside of work and parenting where I can get away to play and its either AL or a game store homebrew and they both have problems. it would be my dream to find a group of committed friends who want to play and just have fun. not go to a game store and listen to the magic tournament using the other 20 tables and having to attempt to strain and hear the dm explaining something. I just want friends to go and have a beer and play dnd. but I cant find anything
I'd love to play for so long, as long as stuff gets done. I've only experienced murderhobo shenanigans once, and while it was fun, it was hard to get back on track with what was planned. I love a good side adventure that compliments the main story of the campaign, but I would've just wanted to get on with the story.
I like it how he's one complaining about playing D&D for so long when he was the one that went to those sessions fully expecting it to take at least 12 hours
4th edition? Pffftt. Newb. I used to sit down with my Pop's friends when I was 8 and we'd play the first edition rules. Old school red dragon cover. But the longest sessions were in Rifts RPG by Palladium. 12+ hour sessions with a bunch of guys from the air force base I lived near. -Disclaimer- I'm being funny here, don't crucify me. Just jokes, folks. I did really play 1st edition back in the day though. Super fun to be a kid in a group of adults playing an RPG. I wasn't even that annoying, if you can believe it.
But he's not. He is just socially awkward talking about a subject that tends to be socially awkward. NEET is quite an insult. Its like calling someone a high school dropout who can only get a job at mc'donalds and will not progress beyond what some teenagers have, in a society that is much more strict than what i presume yours to be (which to most of the world is not a bad thing, that life is making a living and doing what you need to do to. That is better than not contributing as far as the US is concerned.)
I do like the concept of adventurers league, but it has some serious flaws, at least in my eyes: First, as you mentioned, it´s mainly focused on the mechanics, roleplay doesn't mean too much, which for me means missing out half the fun. I had prepared a cleric and thought about some things to RP with him, but when I did the DM was mainly like "Ok here´s your inspiration, are you done now?" and I get why this would be the case for AL. It´s meant to be a streamlined experience for everyone you get over with in just a couple of hours. We played DDEX1-5 which is planned to last for 4 hours, which is ludicrous. Our DM estimated 6 hours, which was merely enough without any but two 5 minute breaks and a minimum of RP going on. It felt so rushed and railroaded all the time. But what threw me off even more was the narrow set of rules that apply to the AL. For example: We were fighting a group of kobolds and when the slaying was done I asked if their daggers were any good, because I wanted an additional dagger or two for my character. The DMs answer was: "Yeah, you could take one for the rest of the adventure, but it'll disappear after this session because it's "not in the treasure!"" What?! I mean I get it that you should not be handing out magic items at will due to the concept of drop in/drop out and the comparability of two sessions ran by two different DMs and I would even understand it for valuable common items, but a dagger for like 2gp worth? Come on! Lastly when we had been through 3 combats in a row with 4 out of 6 characters at level 1 we were finally out of pretty much everything. Spell slots, hit die, consumables, everything was gone, so we really needed to rest. We chose a quiet dead end inside the temple we were in, barricaded the door with the corpses of slain kobolds and organized a watch. Even though all of this effort we had an almost 10 minutes discussion with the DM about how "there is no rest mentioned in the adventure" and "other groups can run the dungeon without the need to rest". Just to make this clear: At that point (and retrospective as well) there was no time pressure and no threat around. He just insisted to deny us a rest because he deemed it unfair in comparison to other groups. Heck, other groups go into this dungeon with 6 level 4+ characters, of course they can deal with the situation differently. I did enjoy the session, but I clearly learned that AL is not for everyone and it is most certainly not for me. I play D&D out of fun, not as a competition with others or to produce the "best character possible" but the most fun one, both for me and the rest of the table, which is a priority not valued in the AL, at least from my experience and just to make this clear, I do not think that every DM in the AL is as stubborn as my DM was, but if you´re in for the RP, the AL is not for you.
Think of al as trying a dm to see if you like that play style. I try to fit my characters to the group but sometimes I would rather find another group.
Some people just want to roll the dice as their roleplaying and feel cool, like a charisma character that doesn't charisma- but hey, the dice says they got a nat 20 so they don't need to talk! It doesn't make much sense to me either. They don't want to earn their victory, they just want the praise???
seraphilight I mean me I roleplay based on my role. Depending on my DM, I do my roleplay and then role with advantage or disadvantage (nothing too) based on how my roleplay was on the current situation(you better not stutter) Or I roll my dice and THEN I roleplay based on my score.
Personally, if you have something good then always try it first before the roll thing, though I do think rolling first can be fun. Some things don't need to be rolled. If you ride in on a bloody dragon or hand the defenseless king the head of the bodyguard he just called for you should never need to roll intimidate for instance. Believable lies don't need to be rolled for. Deception should only ever be rolled if someone decides to insight even. But what you do is still roleplaying. One DM, first campaign with them think they were so impressed someone actually made decent lies for deceptions they didn't make me roll. Some people really can't do improv well, and lying or other charisma stats require more of it than just saying whatever is on their mind. I have a friend who kinda freezes up when they have to lie and just accepts they're gonna start a fight to do what they want. Others are so bad with words they refuse to even try apparently? That was an actual argument I got from someone in a discussion about the charisma stat. Basically said they were bad at it so they needed to roll. One of my favorite DMs on youtube had a player decide he'd be the face of the group, built his character for it, then was surprised he had to do more than roll. DM asked him simple questions and I don't think the dude could even handle a shopping trip. Reason he's my favorite DM is he wouldn't let the dude roll if he couldn't even make a half-baked attempt. The slightly above average charisma dude took up doing facework. (Also, personal side-note, persuasion is nice and all but it's a crap stat compared to deception and intimidate. Intimidate is for when deception fails after all ;). DM once insisted we should totally have a persuasion character in the group. We ignored him and went deception/intimidate as it's always the preferable choice. My current character has all 3 char stats, but persuasion will never be as fun as deception. Persuasion is like trying to put a bandaid on a bad choice, deception is telling them the droids they're looking for aren't here, and intimidate is kicking messengers down wells.)
I'm currently playing a deepGnome Rogue antropologue in our current game of Tomb of annihilation and one of my player was like "we're getting the rogue who's going to loot everything for himself, yay T_T" turn out my rogue is a neutral good rogue that went the rogue way because he was too physically weak to defend himself and go adventuring, so he needed to use dirty fighting techniques to defend himself and I am currently the leader/face of our group because reasons. It's not hard to RP, just make a character that inspire you and roll with it, play him like just as if he was alive by himself and actions/ideas will come all by themselves.
Yep, exactly. Don't make a fanciful version of you, make a person and they'll play themselves essentially. Just remember to give them a driving force, and it's okay if you don't know every aspect or something you wrote down doesn't work. Also, that player needs DnD 101 of greedy rogue pcs- they don't loot everything, as that's just a dumb player. They take 120 gold, pocket twenty then split the rest evenly between everyone including themselves again. So netting 20+ gold. If they want to get downright devilish they take their cut before distribution, leave an unequal share, then tell the party they won't take their cut because there's not enough -but they already took more than their share ;) Party will prolly find out eventually, and it creates good rp later on. Peeps need to remember it's just numbers on paper. You don't keep the gold, you keep the memories and experience and friendship. If they're hung up over a handful of pretend gold they need help.
Nooo as soon as you said tomb of annihilation I had to immediately stop, my group is running this now and I'm trying to avoid spoilers, I don't know how important the information would be
Can't say I've played in an Adventure League game (not sure what kind of game the group I play with is anyways), but if you have all the player-related books, and have crazy ideas, like a minotaur artificer, then a strict AL group with PHB+1 might not be for you.
I played in a public session once (it was hosted in a small gamestore) and our bard brought his own ukelele to play on. So every time he cast a spell, he'd play on it and sing something related. He literally came up with entire songs about our characters, who he'd never even seen before, ON THE SPOT.
That guy was amazing.
Were you playing with Sam Riegel?
That man is blessed by Apollo
That's the best bard i ever heard off
Please say he played spongebob squarepants background music while you were traveling
So you just happened to play with an actual bard
Two things.
A dimension rift for characters coming in and out sounds fantastic compared to what my little groups have always done. Instant lama transformation. The group is always with at least one or two lamas because if you don’t make it to a session, your character becomes a lama. Straight up.
THAT SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AWESOME
That's hilarious, definitely more interesting than "sleepwalking" (having a PC basically be an NPC and be absent from interactions), although sleepwalking is good if your game is high difficulty and you need a solid class mix.
To be honest, all our group has is a god hand that picks us up and puts us down into the world.
In my game one of my pcs is a necromancer and raised up an undead rhino, for the sole purpose to string up other pcs that couldn’t make the session.
I'd make it like Dark Souls and say they phased out of reality and would need to be summoned again when possible due to timeline complications.
The best way me and another guy where introduced mid game was "You hear a voice falling from the sky". He literally dropped us into the game!
I really want to use this now haha
I joined an under dark campaign where everything was underground so an earth quake happened and i fell upon the party from a whole that formed from above. i later learned that i had been falling for three days.
That's awesome. I just made the new girl a possessed boss fight and she beat the shit out of my guys so badly that the fight came down to if one failed their roll, it would be over.
Clever gm, clever.
I was running a game once and had to introduce a new character. I had him stuck in the pit trap around the corner from the group in the dungeon they were clearing. Easy peasy!
"enough dice to outfit a small army.".... DON'T JUDGE ME! You don't know me!
(die spill out of bag)
MY POINT STILL STANDS
I carry way too many dice with me to D&D sessions... About 50 of each... Even tough everyone I play with has their own case... But if someone forgets their dice, I have several sets to choose from!
I like collecting them!!! and in some of the collector's sets it came with exclusive ones... and those others were on clearance!!! and then I got some as gifts... and then my friend stopped playing and was going to throw his away and...It's not like I'm going to throw any away... oh... I see the problem I have now....
@@tthung8668 most comic book stores that also do tabletop gaming will have sets to sell. D20, D12, D10, D8, D6, D4, and a percentile. Read that as # of sides of a die. D4 = 4 sided die.
@@tthung8668 if you find a nice group, someone will have enough to outfit you for a session or two. If you want to get your own it really depends on which class you play (and the weapon you use) what exactly you need, but if you get a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20 and a D100 your good to go. You sometimes need a bit of patience because you roll more then one of them, but if you have a pencil and notebook (or can keep numbers in your head) one of each is fine
Only if you really got into D&D and still like it I recommend getting more to roll them together (eg rogue with a weapon that uses a D6 for damage plus sneak attack can add up to 20 dice fast on higher levels)
I wish I could play D&D for 12hours . But it's a lonely 12 playing as DM and players.
Jonathan Rutley isn’t that just called writing a book?
But you don't have to argue about the rules or worry about players going off track!
No worrying about people cheating, getting bored or just talking about things that aren't on-topic.
It's brilliant for figuring out the game rules yourself and undertanding the difficulties of the players and the DM and understanding how they can try to reconcile some issues in odd circumstances.
I wish I had friends to play with.... I wish I had friends... 😶
@@DrkValCain cant help you with the friends part, but you can go on r/lfg if your looking for a RPG group
@@zhangbill1194 okay, so since I posted that I hadnt thought much of dnd (save for a few dingo doodles vides) and randomly today I got back into dnd again. Perfect timing is perfect.
God a 16 hour session is the dream.
I play 12 hour games once a week. It's heaven. My PCs wish i DMed more.
6 hours sounds like the perfect session length, I feel like after 6 hours, most campaigns would devolve into madness and murder hobos
...... I think 3 hours is pushing it... that said, last match I hosted, I thought it would last 2 hours, 3 hours latter, I decided to stop the match at the half way point and pick it up next week.
I wish unfortunately most people I play with don't have the stamina for more than 3 hours.
My party unfortunately likes to play 2 - 3 hour sessions. 16 hours is the dream? Talk about anything over 4.
We once played 3 days. We were just sitting in my basement, smoking a lot, drinking too much energy drinks and eating toasted sandwiches. One player got tired after a while and started to sleep on the spot. We just kept playing, while her character was studying and she was sleeping. She woke up several hours later and continued to play with us. We played for 20 hours until we made a break to sleep. afterwards we played for another 12 hours. Best weekend ever :D - dont know why you would complain about spending a lot of time with your hobby.
Most people would be sick by doing so.
I mean, it must be really fun, but you might get tired of it if you do it *_straight_* for 3 days.
Well, we were young, had holidays and loved (still do) the game. But i know a group of people that are in their 30s who rent a big house in norway for two weeks each year. There they cook together, visit the country and play roleplay games every evening. Still sounds great.
Can’t say we did that long but me and my home group had a 13 hour session. One player left for work and came back and we were still playing. It stank something rank but it was a good time
We call that an "Analog Lan Party" lol
Hehehe, that’s pretty cool. I think the trick is to make sure everyone in your group is indeed fine with the schedule, which they obviously didn’t do for Puffin Forest.
"Who has 16 hours!?!"
Um, my friends and I used to do tabletop WEEKENDS, where we played (Pathfinder, homebrewed rules) for 14-16 hours, two days in a row. We kept this up for 4 months. Four. Months. Straight.
Then we got busier, and had to cut back to only one full day each weekend, plus a half-day midweek. Kept that up for many more months.
Our GM was a bit liberal with powerful magic loot though, and some of our homebrew rules were a bit generous, making up probably too OP for our own good rather early in the game. By the end of the campaign, we were level 18, had invaded and claimed an entire sector of the Underdark, owned most of a city on the surface, built a castle, had 2 shops with a half dozen employees where we bought and sold merchandise plus sold off our extra loot at a profit, and we basically controlled the thieves guild. Our wizard had been banned from the college though after an incident where he was possessed by a cursed magic item...
I miss that campaign.
Yeah games like that are like mainlining essence of D&D. My friends and I have had a game of 5e going since we started highschool that is pretty similar to what you described, we're rules as written people, but we still run with lots of magic items, do some crazy multiverse spanning adventures, I'm talking regularly traveling between planes three to twelve times a session, all in a group that has fluctuated between 5 and 9 players through its lifetime and currently has been holding fast at 8. We would normally play 10 hour games on weekends and holidays all at someone's house, but I was sad figuring it was pretty much gonna end when we graduated. Here we are almost half way through college and we're still going, now online because of lock down, but still averaging 5 to 9 hours on weekends.
@@thothrax5621 that’s amazing! I started a campaign with my friends and I’m glad to hear that dnd can endure graduation and keep going.
My father and his friends (now various relatives of mine) once had a d&d session that started Friday night, and didn't end until Monday morning when they had to go back to work. That's right, and I wish I was part of it
Your fathr plays dnd? I'm jealous now
Did they just actually take a long rest?
"How does my player get into the game?"
"You know how when you're playing MarioKart and you fall off the track, this little turtle guy on a cloud (his name is Lakitu) picks you up with a fishing pole and sets you down on the track?"
"Yeah?"
"Well it's like that, only instead of a go kart, it's your character, and instead of Lakitu, it's Ben on his DM cloud"
Oh my gosh, I died laughing at the bless bonus part of this video because it's so true.
I feel every support player has at least three people they need to remind when they throw up bonuses.
Same with Bardic Inspiration!!
I currently have a cleric that I'm playing and sometimes I just won't bother casting the spell because I don't want to have to keep reminding people. The most effective means I've gotten is taking my own d4s and just putting them right next to the other players' d20s, in the hopes that they'll just happen to pick up both when they go to role. Works better than you'd think.
"Remember the bless" was a huge statement in my DnD games, because +1 is such a minor, almost useless bonus and it's so very easy to forget. Even to the point of the cleric who cast the spell forgetting it.
Never had that problem when we swapped over to gurps, a +1 in that system is huge. And its very easy for the support to just put more points into their support abilities and grant everyone bigger bonuses.
"is such a mino, almost useless bonus" . In my D&D group (3.5 edition), blessing is considered one of the most OP level 1 spell there is. It saved the players' asses so many times and always had a huge impact on battles.
But my guess is that we are playing at a different player level than you. My players usually are lvl 4-9 and are often fighting with a few generic NPC at their side (they are usually playing in cities, or helping an army during a war).
1:13 😐you wanna swap places
BECAUSE ID KILL TO HAVE FRIENDS WHO CAN PLAY THAT LONG
Lol same, my group usually goes for 8hrs maybe longer if it's a bad place to stop.
ON 4TH EDITION
Yeah, our group only did 2 sessions of 4 hours so far, in 4 months or so? >.
My group changed from once a week too once every 2 months!!
@@moonlightriver1607 At this point I just feel like it is better to stop. Once a week is a minimum for me.
pfft only 16 hours, try 50 hours... *cue D&D Vietnam flashbacks*
The.. The Kobold bodies, all lying in pieces... THE HORROR.
*distant screams and sound of dice hitting a wooden table*
"It aint me!It aint me!"
At what point did the players start hallucinating vividly?
Bluecho4 it helps with the immersion
3:26 I know I am very late, but what my group does is stack a d4 on top of the d20, so when we reach for a d20 to roll, we see the d4 and remember. Also if you have minute long spells (like bless I think) you can use a d10 and place next to the spell on your character sheet to remember how many rounds are left!
I am also very late, but thanks for the awesome tips. Those are great ideas.
I'd love an 8-16 hour game. Imagine Band/Fat/Science/Chess/Scout camp, but you wake up and go to a main room of the cabin with a big fireplace, big table, lots of snacks and drinks, couches and the DM's throne at the head of the table. Then you game all day, taking stretch breaks after each encounter and a couple other activities here and there to break up the day (Like actual meals, and "Normal camp stuff". And you just take out the whole week for "Dice Camp". You might even have 12 hour sessions but then in the evening switch to board games for the last 4 hours.
Tf is fat camp? No offense or anything I've just heard of it
It's a more crude term for a summer camp for overweight kids to lose weight.
Oh
I do have those long sessions monthly. You feel like it isn't enough for certain games, and that it's too much for others.
Me and my group have a 8 hour game every 5 meetings for boss fights and huge plot developments and our normal playthroughs are around 3 to 4 hours and like every three months we play 12 to 16 hours just cause
I got roped into playing adventurer's league because they were offering a free chain golom mini to promote the AL and 5e. After I got my happy meal toy, I sat down to play a session. I rolled up a half orc barbarian noble, and the shenanigans started from there. Everyone was cool, and we even came back for future sessions and became somewhat of a regular group. It wasn't long though, before I had completely derailed the campaign, and got the whole party roped into putting on a stage musical with our downtime days. Everyone contributed, the cleric provided lighting and buffs, the wizard did pyrotechnics, the rogue scouted local craftsmen to supply merchandise, and I blew all the gold I earned from questing on hiring bards to cast buffs and preform. It ended up being a smash success, and slowly overtook the main plot. By the time we were done using our downtime days, we were all somewhat famous actors, with my barbarian as the lead. The DM started rolling dice to see if npc's would recognize us, and it ended up breaking the game when we were able to bribe enemy guards, in exchange for front row tickets to our next show. The point is, just because it's wizards sanctioned and everyone's a stranger doesn't mean you have to sacrifice roll playing. As long as you include everyone, you can have some fun, goofy experiences, and play the material as intended... for the most part.
That sounds awesome... Lol
That sounds way to close to a certain Twitch Stream i watch that colaborates with a lot of the main stream DnD groups on twitch who are also ambassadors of DnD.....
Like exactly as the show ran an episode for a small segment.
N i know you werent in the game cuz...yeah.....
Really suspicious of this.
Haha, I actually play Dnd on twitch with a new group I'm with. We're really small though, so there's a low probability that you've seen it.
The adventurer's league game was definitely not on twitch though, and was actually a couple years ago.
Petronio39 is it possible to get a link to your twitch ?
You didn't derail a campaign, your party invented one! I'm sure the GM doesn't mind playing along with shinnanigans as long as they are compelling, fun, and everyone involved is invested. The point of an RPG is to have fun, after all. It isn't necessisarily to travel a linear path through a series of scripted encounters. You can play videogames if you want that.
Can we switch places? You appear to be oversessioning, while I'm struggling to even find a group that will agree to a simple two-hour session.....
Did you end finding a group?
@@SadGodKamina Yes
Wholesome story ends well
I have the same problem
I agree I need to find me a group as well.
i need to try that 12-12 thing
from personal experience its not the greatest sure its fun but after the 7-8 hour mark everyone gets tired ppl tend to forget things more often and mess around alot more which leads to nothing constructive getting done altho that may be my group feel free to give it a try but dont get your expectations too high
IT'LL BE DUHBEST.
SESSION.
EVAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything neckro178 said is completely true, after the 8 hour mark our games usually devolved...like...a lot. :D Roleplaying was barely there and people are just too tired. It's not really worth it.
same here. the best we've ever got is 8 hours
LIGHTWEIGHTS!!!
When you say reality rift, what you really mean is Truck-kun
Try having to DM a game for only 20 minutes a day, with people that don't roleplay, ruin all your encounters with murderhobo ideology, constant metagaming, and then have everyone say your a bad DM, this and one more thing, I DON'T LIKE DM'ING!!
lol why were you then?
20 minutes? That's 1-2 turns of combat, that makes no damn sense.
We've been getting constantly screwed over b/c we didn't go murderhobo. That person you let escape? He came back with 10 of his friends and ambushed you in your sleep. That wolf you let go out of that trap? It was a druid's animal companion who led an army of woodland creatures to slaughter you for tresspassing. That farmer you annoyed by asking for a discount? He's a level 20 retired adventurer who one shots your entire party. We Role Play constantly, which I thought was the most important part of the game aside from story. You don't roleplay, you don't get to play, I always thought. Not with ANY of my groups.
No metagaming
You need to PUNISH anyone who meta games!!! Severe, swift, brutal, unforgiving punishments for metagaming!
i'm still waiting for your game group to raid the comments of these videos, letting loose all kinds of havok
Yes please
Havoc too
My group does 8 hour sessions. We have a break in the middle somewhere to make some food, but for the most part it is all session.
AFAIK AL is based around 4 hour sessions. So I'm not sure how your DM treats that. As a double session? If not then you are technically being cheated out of renown and downtime rewards, for example.
bradwolf07 I play in an Adventure League game. I really enjoy it. It's actually much easier as a DM. The main rule is if you want to do it, try it. May work, might not. That and no PvP. Cuts down on arguments. It's actually how I got my wife involved in D&D. And now she is a DM. She never played before AL. My only concern is with magic items. In earlier editions, you could make slight alterations to magic items. Case in point, I had a wand caster that turned a flying broom into a wand of fire bolt. I spent the required time and money to do it, all by the book. But in AL, I wanted to attach a hammer head to my immovable rod, and WoC Adventure League said no. So the DM doesn't have "complete" control. But we still have lots of fun. I recommend anyone watching this video to check it out. The WoC site has a list of all the AL games. Also you can try this app called Meetup. On Android and IOS. Or just go to meetup.com.
yeah mine does average of that once a week pretty good length i think and we get food but usually its something we can just eat while still playing like pizza.
Im kinda jelous
our group used meal breaks as short rests
I use a giant Eagle to introduce new players into the party at one point we had a person who was invited to the session and made their character a king(it was apparently a character they use in other games) and I was like Humongous Eagle rips off the castle roof picks you up flys of to a different continent and throws you at the ground then flys off
"Most players are running around with enough dice to outfit a small army."
Well, I've officially been called out.
In college, in the 80's, 8-12 hour games were the norm. And yes, a 12-12 session was more of the norm. But that was then.
Jeez. 14-16 hours? That's great! My group tends to hangout throughout the day then leave our sessions for last. And that'll last anywhere between 3-5 hours.
Praise the Beef pretty much what my group does
Mine are whenever we find time (typically no more often than once every two months) and last no longer than 4 hours. I honestly can't wait until college when I can find a new group that actually gives a fuck (and has enough people).
Join an adventure league
dnd.wizards.com/playevents/organized-play
Stereotypical Nerd good luck with finding a better group for D&D
Yeah thanks, luckily I'm already aware of a regular group at the college I'm going to, so now it's just a matter of "does my schedule align with it?" Bear in mind I'm double-majoring (Math+Computer Science), so that's a pretty large concern for me.
As both a player and DM for adventures league at my local comic store I can tell you that the regulars do all become friends and we look forward to each other's characters and or DMing styles. We're really friendly to new players too and everyone from kids to people in their 60s all meet up every Wednesday to enjoy this world in the forgotten realms together and to me that's pretty special.
Same for our Pathfinder Lodge here in Asheville. I play with a lot of the same people at the FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store) that I play home games with, so it's a great way to meet folks for a future home game (we jokingly refer to organized play as a "gateway drug"). Last night, we had a big "Critmas" party, with some organized scenarios, as well as a home-brew custom game designed by two of our most experienced DMs. I know some people have had their bad experiences with organized play, but it's a been a blast for the last three years that I've been involved and we constantly get new folks swinging by to try it out, so we must be doing something right....
100%
I joined my local AL about a year ago after a multi-year hiatus from D&D, and since then I have made a bunch of good friends who all like playing. From that I am now in 1 bimonthy campaign(STK), another bimonthy homebrew game (alternating with the former) composed of folks who didn't want to adhere to the AL PHB+1 rule (which is super annoying now that xanathars is out) and can easily jump into any number of tier 1-2 games being ran each week.
Also, if you want a great loot, ahem, adventure. Ask your DM to run white plume mountain. It is super fun and puzzly, and has astounding amounts of loot. (or, if you are a DM, treat your players!)
You definitely start to connect with players whose play style u enjoy over sessions and then end up in games together more deliberately hahaha, esp online AL
It's not AL, but I found the same thing with a drop-in game run at a local game store. We were all strangers at first but quickly began to mesh well and entwine our backstories and eventually became good friends and started hanging out outside of the drop in D&D.
John Lance South Carolina ?
Ben, would you ever consider doing a live D&D TH-cam stream with you and your pals? Don't know if this has been asked before.
No, he can’t. They don’t know about his TH-cam yet... THEY MUST THINK HE IS A REALLY IMPORTANT BUSY PERSON.
Wil Garrett he could use the site roll20
As one of his pals who he plays with, we've tried through another buddy's stream channel and it doesn't really portray how we wanna share the story and several other problems like technical wise stuff like camera set up and audio, etc.
but we all wanna get into streaming our dnd games at some point so possibly sometime in the future lol
That's understandable. I asked because I look back at Matthew Mercer and his group of voice actor friends from Geek and Sundry's Critical Role series and I loved it. I think Ben and the gang would be hilarious to watch.
Animaze115 I don't like roll 20 that much. Maybe I've never had a good experience to really like it
16 hours? I'm struggling to get 2
For real
Everybody in the comments is like "I wish I could play a 16 hour session" and I'm just here like "I wish I had friends" :'-)
Hey there, I know I am 10 months late but I would like to be your friend if you are still looking for them.
Mood...
I'm 18 months late but it as long as you have a pulse you can still make friends
My only experience with the league was; 'You're roleplaying way too much and it's derailing this. Can you please back off a bit?'
When I'd just gotten done taking *maybe* 3 minutes to ad lib a story for my character. Before we started playing.
I 'went to the bathroom' and never came back. D&D with strangers has never turned out enjoyable for me...
It's a roleplaying game. Roleplaying is the objective! For me it really kills the fun if someone is too invested in the game as something to beat and master, instead of just playing a character.
3 minutes is kind of a long time to go on a diatribe about your backstory that no one else cares about to be fair
That sounds like my kind of group. Roleplaying makes up way to much of D&D for many players imo. I guess it's because of Critical Role.
@@DevinDTV But that's the thing. If you're playing with friends, then they probably do care, but if you're playing with strangers in the Adventurer's League, then probably won't.
@@poptartburrito3948 DnD has been way more about role play before critical role came out lol. It's I the name it's RPG
"who spends 16 hours on a game?"
damn you never heard of world of warcraft?
you've never heard of how people create a tabletop RPG campaign?
Adrian Bittman Lleeeaaaaroyyyyy. Jennnkinnnsss
Lol
I played gta5 for two weeks strait no sleep and a room full of shit and piss bottles
Adrian Bittman, Im too busy with Elder Scrolls. Please tell me what this Word of warcraft is.
ROTFL!
I once had a 20 hour game. Holy shit we got tired.
Fistminer bless your souls
I had one of those once... then we went home... and i was in the worst car accident ive ever... well come to think of it i guess by definition i didn't technically witness it. I had a concussion and have no memory of the crash or the walking to a strangers house for help at 5 am. My friend was on disability for 3 years.
Game responsibly kids.
Had a 30 hour session over Christmas with cousins, stopping to sleep and with a few meal breaks in there. It was beautiful. I only do that kind of stuff like once a year these days, but it's a special moment.
Story time!
I played a lvl one cleric that was proficient in animal handling. Playing the first time we went against a dire wolf and I thought I could tame it.... DM Nat 20'd and killed me completely and I had to make a new character. The DM kept that character sheet.
Every -dog- dire wolf has its day.
PUFFIN! We're waiting for the story (ies) about the 16 hour session (s). GIVE IT TO US!
Oh my god recently I had been playing a campaign in the shadowfell with a group of people. An elf assassin in my group desided to pour a deadly poison on a blanket and hand it to this shop keeper. So I had her roll she rolled a FREAKING 20. Long story short I had to change things since she killed a main npc. Now I interrupt them when they do stuff like this. Just wanted to share. I was dm and the elf was my wife.
I don't play favorites and don't let my players be chaotic stupid, which is exactly what this was. I would've allowed it if it were a reference to the "smallpox blankets" card in cards against humanity, and if the NPC was kind of a dick, but a regular and main NPC I would not let that shit fly.
But why prevent them from doing as they like? I mean, you can just read them a story if you want them to follow a story along a fixed path, isn't having your own choices influence the game one of the reasons why games like D&D are so popular?
@@rb4121
It depends from DM to DM. A lot of people frown upon taking away those freedoms, however not everyone can think on their feet fast enough to figure out a way around essentially castrating an essential part of the story in one fell swoop, even in a lazy manor, let alone in a way that seems natural for story progression.
Honestly, I'm fine with limiting player actions that way for the sake of a story as long as they still have the ability to make certain actions that can completely change a story. It's not railroading them into a singular narrative, they still have choices, it's just keeping them in check, just like most rpg games. You can do what you want, just not anything and everything you want because "Players should have freedom of choice".
@Leisure
Yes, but not very quickly for many people. They may practice it on their own time, but in the mean time somewhat limit actions.
I really don't understand the EXTREME prejudice of limiting actions of players. People act as if you have just committed some atrocity against all mankind just for daring to suggest that you don't allow them to do something that not only goes against the story but the universe as well.
Yeah, D&D is a game about choice, I get that. But it's as much the DM's game as it is the players'. The DM should have just as much right to say no as the players do to ask to do dumb things, whether story related or not, imo.
I remember the first time I ended up in a 12 hour game. Before that point most of my experience was with 2 hour sessions back in high school between when class got out and peoples parents got off work to pick them up. Long games are messy, but they can have more funny stuff in them. One time someone had to roll 3 new characters because it was our first session and they managed to die twice. It was funny because both times were from drowning and once was in a sewer.
Cody131Coops that is the reason i miss it lol you just never know whatll happen
My longer game sessions were in high school. There was a group of 7 of us. We would have a sleepover at someone's house every weekend and play. Usually we would start around 8 and go till 4-6 in the morning. Best thing about it is the part at 2 am where everyone is on sleep dep and everything gets hilarious. Things that happen in this window make for great inside jokes later.
Yup. That always happens in my campaigns, largely because it’s people who are new to the game and treat it like a video game, so they end up getting trampled by horses after deliberately spooking them to get a carriage going, and failing both the rolls to avoid getting knocked over, the rolls to avoid the horse’s hooves, and the roll to avoid the carriage wheels.
I'm a new league player, the DM worked my character into the story. I was chained up in the dungeon.
My group goes for 4 to 6 hours in the league. A lot of leagues are in a shop, so there are limits usually.
You are chained in a Bard's Sex Dungeon??? Oh the dream of owning one on my Half Orc Bard who sleeps his way through the adventure.
It's called mordenkainen's magnificent mansion or just magnificent mansion. It's a level 7 spell
Ya, same with my AL, lucky enough to get a really enthusiastic DM that cares about story and narrative. but since it is in a shop we rarely get to play for more then 3hrs, I think 3.5 is the longest we've gotten. I dream of 4 hour long sessions - but I don't want to play 8hr long homebrew games anymore
I play in an Adventure League game. I really enjoy it. It's actually much easier as a DM. The main rule is if you want to do it, try it. May work, might not. That and no PvP. Cuts down on arguments. It's actually how I got my wife involved in D&D. And now she is a DM. She never played before AL. My only concern is with magic items. In earlier editions, you could make slight alterations to magic items. Case in point, I had a wand caster that turned a flying broom into a wand of fire bolt. I spent the required time and money to do it, all by the book. But in AL, I wanted to attach a hammer head to my immovable rod, and WoC Adventure League said no. So the DM doesn't have "complete" control. But we still have lots of fun. I recommend anyone watching this video to check it out. The WoC site has a list of all the AL games. Also you can try this app called Meetup. On Android and IOS. Or just go to meetup.com.
I really want to get to a shop but they are all 2 far away lol
Shout out to Eric you sound cool.
I've only been playing d&d for a short while with my friends, and i can say this about it safely
a good d&d session is like a really good book, once you start its hard to put it down...
16 hour games arent as rediculous as people seem to think. Really theyre more like 14 hours after food but its just hanging out with some mates for a weekend once a month or two. I find it easier to do then 3 to 6 hour session's more frequently. But thats just me. Thanks for the video by the way ben you are amazing.
Random Rotors that makes more sense i mean 8 can understand a 16h game when its a bunch of friends getting together at a house with plans to do only this this weekend and then break for a month. Where as 3h games make sense when its at a set location on weekly basis. But still i dont think i could have the patience to do a 16h game in a weekend but a 16h story arc/campaign over 4-5 meetings in a month is much more manageable.
I want to know who does a 2-5h battle and its not a boss battle do you have a bunch of people with combat disadvantage, brittle swords, and god armor who cant roll something above a 5 to save thier life.... or just a devil of a GM/DM?
4th edition combat is how
amanda cabrera well alcohol plays a big part with patience, makes everything go smoother. But i prefer the 16 hour slogs simply for the fact you can get more done. There is no catch up ,stop then start. People dont forget there plans halfway through the week and when they come back wonder what in the sweet jesus they were doing.
And yeah 4th ed had horrible combat, i had one fight just a street level brawl last an hour and a half. Just between hp amount of damage you do how hard it was to hurt people and the whole magical items being damn necessary combat became such a slow boring drawn out thing.
4e isn't the real problem. It just depends on how focused the players are on the game, more than anything else. And to some extent, how high the character's level is (which allows more spells and powers to choose from), and how much role playing the players do. I've seen an entire 4e combat take less than one hour. That was a fairly simple encounter where the players were focused on the game and had low level characters. I've also seen 3e combat take over 8 hours. That was a combat where the players were often distracted and talking about other stuff, so I couldn't really tell you how much of that time was actually spent playing. I haven't played 5e, so I can't speak to personal experience with that.
Rod H 5th ed combat is a hell of alot more streamlined. my experience is with 4th and 5th edition. Normal 4th ed normally goes for about half an hour to an hour with good luck and half decent roles at levels 6 to 9. Where as 5th edition combat ive fought in normally goes for about 20 minutes thats a challenging fight as well at about 6 to 9 level. Rarely have i ever had a fight last more then an hour. I got nothing against 4th edition in fact its what got me into dnd but once i started playing 5th ed i realised drawn out the combat was.
i subscribe to you after watching 10 of your videos then 20 minutes later you upload a new video... NICE
Hearing a DnD round last a bit over a 3 hours, i'm like ok. because i started to be a bit interested in DnD through The Unexpectables stream, which is like 3-4. So hearing 6 hour rounds, I can see but think those are a bit long. Then you mention 12 fucking hour rounds and then a crazy 16 hour one. That's insane, not unbelievable. But none the less crazy.
I’ve had a session like that myself before, it was fun, but after it I felt like I was gonna die. Never gonna do another one.
Longest session I've ever had was a 3 day marathon with breaks for vitals (Like food, drink, relievement, and sleep). We were trying to accomplish much in a relatively short time. At the time we were playing pathfinder and knocked out the entire Part 1 of a 6 part adventure during this time. Good times, good times...
John J It depends on the players alot. there are a lot of things you can do to speed up the game. Most of my players wait until its their turn and then start thinking about what they want to do....and then complain that battles take too long xD
I am a dm for my friends and we had so much fun we thought an hour passed, nope 8 hours passed and then we all get hit with exhaustion oncs we realized this, it is glorious (still happens sometimes even longer when it feels like only 20 min passed)
Sounds like a great idea to start with 3-4 hour ones, but once you play a few times you will probably see why 6 hours isn't really that long - it is inconvenient, though, if you have work, a lot of stuff to do after work, people with conflicting schedules and you have to find time to get them all together. The thing is, RPG sessions are pretty much stories being told between the players and the GM, and every story needs to have an ending. Think of an RPG campaign like you'd think of a TV series - sure, the season finale is at the end, but every episode has it's own arc and it's own ending. It doesn't just end in the middle of someone's dialogue - unless it's a really bad series. It's the same with a game session - if you want it to feel complete, you can't stop at any random moment just because your phone's alarm went off, and with players sometimes getting sidetracked (which is perfectly fine and what makes RPGs so great - the world is really open and you CAN go anywhere you want and there WILL be stuff there to do. The stuff to do might be "dying", though) 4 hours might simply not be enough to advance the plot as much as you want AND still give the players the freedom we all want them to have AND end the session at a moment that will feel like a good ending.
Even Puffin pointed a few things out in the video - backstories are pretty much being ignored, people are focused on getting the job done etc. That way it's not surprising a session can be wrapped up in 3 hours, and it's great for people simply wanting to learn the rules, people who don't have too much free time and/or can't commit to playing every single week etc.but that's not the only way to play and with a great GM or even with a bunch of friends who really are fun an 6- or even 8-hour long session can feel too short.
I've gone 36 hours playing D&D 3.5 that was one of the best session I've ever been to
3:33 The fact that the volume noticably lowers when you start yelling makes it hilarious.
let me tell you young whippersnapper.
back when we played 2nd edition we would sit for a week in one session (with sleep and eating then right back to it) in one campaign
(ofc it was a vacation week)
and we continued that story for multiple apon multiple sessions afterwards.
till they all died saving the world (despite being evil)
Killaim That sounds like a dream to me.
Damn, that’s awesome.
Disclaimer: I played AL online on Roll20 after joining one of the few AL discords around, so ymmv in game store games.
Personally, I quite enjoyed AL. It's an easy and simple way to get into a game when you don't have a group, and even if you do have a group it's nice to try out a new character concept you've got in the downtime between group sessions; or just to hit that DnD itch. Downloaded the AL Player Guide, made a character, found a GM who was running a beginner game in a couple hours and just jumped in. It's true that the adventures are quite a bit more railroady and combat heavy, but there were still a lot of chances for RP.
Funnily enough, after playing through some of the adventures I thought "Hey, this doesn't seem that complicated, why don't I try DMing it?" and so I ended up DMing it for a few people from my group who were interested. And indeed, they were fairly simple to run and it served as a great introduction to DMing!
In addition, I actually do like the reward system of AL and how you can spend Downtime/Treasure Points to get things done in-between sessions, without much of a fuss. Sure, it involves a bit of hand-waving when it comes to things like "Wait, you made an entirely new coat while we walked from A to B?", but it's no big deal imo. I will be moving towards doing a bit of homebrew for the group after they finish the trilogy adventure I started with (for those who want to know, it's DDAL08-01 to -03), so we'll see how things go from there. I do think I'll try and make the homebrewed stuff similar to the module-style, 'coz I do enjoy the idea of having some minor plothooks/adventures to have the players choose from, but we'll see.
Either way, TL;DR: Go and try it out, either online or at your local store if you can! It might be different, but it's not bad!
I learned D&D in Adventures League, and I love how simple everything is. It makes it so you can really focus on the game and not worry too much about specific complicated rules (Unless you're a minmaxer, of course)
All I did was create a standard Dwarf War Cleric, went in to the adventure, and had a blast...
...reminding people to take their Bless bonus.
Ant Bolinger What i do not like about AL is the forced built in battles to progress.
You must not have heard about Season 8! Lots of great rewards for all 3 "pillars of gameplay" (or w/e they're called): Combat, Exploration, and Social. There's almost always a non-combat solution to encounters, especially in new modules. I played the first 4 in sequence that take place in Waterdeep, good fun and progress ;)
I got started in AL once my friend's homebrew I was playing in ended..... abruptly, shall we say. I was looking for a D&D group, because I was having a lot of fun, and just so happened to notice that the comics/games store that I played 40K at had D&D on Saturday evenings. So one night, I stayed later, and asked to join in. They were super welcoming, and helped me roll up a character, and got me right in. I've been going (at least) weekly ever since, at one point going every night but Monday and Tuesday. I've had quite a lot of fun, and the nature of the modules provides clean break points for each session (we usually have ~6 hours to run a 4 hour module, which helps a LOT with the roleplaying - DM's usually only cut people off if they have a Shakespearean speech for every attack roll).
I also got my start DMing with at the store. The modules are easy enough to find (and buy) online, and so by reading them ahead of time, I was able to prepare to run a game. Of course, I actually started running games with a module that I had played before after the DM we had ran a 2-hour module and had to leave for personal reasons. People were considering leaving, but I stepped up and said, "F**k it, I'll run something. Always been meaning to learn." and ran the module. I've been running and playing games ever since, even getting into some hardcovers (mostly TYP). It's all AL, so I just introduce and dismiss characters as needed, usually contriving reasons for them.
Just signed up for my first D&D Adventures League today. Ive never played before and I'm really looking forward to it.
how’d it go?
How did it go?
Do you need to sign
communist dog you don’t, most of the time you can just show up
16 hours is crazy. My group's sessions range from 3-6 hours, max 8 but we play weekly (sometimes twice a week) so we still progress faster than a monthly group. We play on roll20 which automatically rolls attack dice and damage dice together and we use a magical thing called plot smoke most of the time to explain player absence.
I play in an Adventure League game. I really enjoy it. It's actually much easier as a DM. The main rule is if you want to do it, try it. May work, might not. That and no PvP. Cuts down on arguments. It's actually how I got my wife involved in D&D. And now she is a DM. She never played before AL. My only concern is with magic items. In earlier editions, you could make slight alterations to magic items. Case in point, I had a wand caster that turned a flying broom into a wand of fire bolt. I spent the required time and money to do it, all by the book. But in AL, I wanted to attach a hammer head to my immovable rod, and WoC Adventure League said no. So the DM doesn't have "complete" control. But we still have lots of fun. I recommend anyone watching this video to check it out. The WoC site has a list of all the AL games. Also you can try this app called Meetup. On Android and IOS. Or just go to meetup.com.
i do like the idea of adventure's league, but for me, im one of those players who likes to manipulate the enemy instead of just using brute force all the time, find better ways around certain situations, try out new things that have less practicality than what most people would generally do. Adventure league doesnt really offer those chances for me to use my creativity like that, its quite rail-roaded and everything seems to be very mechanical and unnatural, it doesnt have that natural feeling like casual games do.
I agree, feels same for me as DM and Player
back in the day, when i played at game stores, i had many toons die because of some small mistake. it felt like the gm was only going to let their high lvl friends talk, and anyone else can just die. no one was going to help me, no one wanted to make the scene cooler, i just got killed. i stopped showing up.
if you play a 16 hour session, that's a great session!!!
Quality over quantity.
amen to that
Well.. Unless it is all combat.. And when it drags on... You know it is all combat, all the time..
We just gave characters that dropped in and out frequently severe narcolepsy.
LOL. I'm imagining your group weekend-at-bernie's-ing it with AFK characters on the regular.
"Free" I don't know what game stores you go to where Adventurer's League is free. Everywhere I go/went to, they charged to do AL.
I played a homebrew game similar to D&D before going to my first actual D&D session at an Adventurers League game. It was basically how it was said in this video, although most of them were one shot games (No Foolish Matter and the story of the Red Plumes, for anyone who cares.) I went every week for many months, and most of the players didn't know each other, and the ones who did made their characters know each other. That meant as the players played together and got to know each other, the characters did too, which is a feeling that is impossible to emulate with a group of friends. The DM was extremely good too, he referred to everyone in their character names, and was patient with the new players who had to be told which dice to roll every time. I was playing a dragonborn sorcerer who had an imaginary friend named Tobias. Everyone was really confused in the beginning, but they all started going along with it, and we had little roleplays when someone would come back after a few weeks "Why hello there Saldrakim, how's Tobias?" "Ah he's good thanks!"
Crafting Menace The biggest weakness with AL is when you have totally random people play together. If you can get a fairly consistent group in the modules, it really makes it more fun.
Our store has several hardcover games running at any given time, and those groups play for months at a time together, which makes it much easier to roleplay. The DMs for the hardcovers typically invite consistent players from the weekly modules, which ensures a core group every week, with 1-2 people varying based on schedules.
About to work on some GM prep and then I get a notification for this. It is fate.
Uh. I know a Brian Campbell who runs our games. This is so wierd haha
fk sessions under 4hrs, I'd honestly leave the party as I would feel that the campaign is moving to slowly and is a waste of time.
That's cool, but I've been playing for years and past exp tells me to stay away from the shorter session groups. Normally if the session is that short, the DM or other's are half invested at best. You'll learn that most D&D players fall into a handful of specific types of players. At these shorter session groups, You'll find the players that only show up to play and you're just there to help them play the game or either the players that get bored and quit before ever completing a section. If your unlucky, you'll find the player that has zero control in his personal life so he escapes into D&D but can't stay out to late. Those players can actually be very cancerous to the group in many little ways. They poke 50 little holes in your group(ig or irl) before you realize the self destruction. You might think I'm talking out my ass but you'll notice the 'types' of players too if you play with enough people.
Interesting, but the thing that I like most about rpgs is the story and, in the case of games I run, the realism. "You're suddenly with the group" strikes me as a bit much. At least a description of meeting the new character and asking them to join seems in order. I do like the fact that the players are there to play the game rather than just goof off (which my players constantly do).
The longest session I was ever in (and I think I ran it, but can't remember) was 12 hours and that was a rarity for my old AD&D group. Combat didn't take quite as long for us back in the day as everyone knew what they were doing as well, and paid attention. I just finished up a Pathfinder campaign and combat was agonizingly slow.
Yes. I understand that. It also takes literally less than a minute to actually make it more than just another strategy game. Pass.
We had a dnd game in the College Lobby that operated on a Drop in drop out basis due to class and scheduling. The justification was we had a wagon train due to the amount of players (8 minimum, 12 I think was the largest amount.) and characters (Dm let people make 2 in order to fill some party rolls when people don't show up/ keep interest.)
Right. You had some justification for the characters being there an already knowing each other. Not just "You're walking through the forest and suddenly someone else is in the party." It makes sense for the story and sounds like it was a good idea. I ran a game that took place in a small town wherein everyone had lived their lives. That could have worked the same way.
Well in D&D adventurers League he didn't mention but they use the faction system basically it's more of your faction has sent you to do this this and this that's how people drop in and out it's basically your faction is like an adventurers Guild and they send whatever Ventures are available at the time
To be honest, fuck realism. DnD is about telling a story, and anyone that's ever written can tell you that everything exists for the convenience of the plot. Having long, drawn out sequence to introduce new characters is just way too disruptive and doesn't follow the conservaiton of detail at all. Why should we spend 3 hours on the excuse for why there's a new character when most of that time isn't even establishing them?
You can put it on the player to come up with an excuse as to why they quickly joined up with the group in under 60 seconds OOC, but not everyone's that creative. It's OK to just handwave stuff, anything really, that's taking up time but not making the experience better. You can do that to combat itself too if you want. If the PC's aren't going to be realistically threatened by kobolds, unless you're certain the players want to have fun stomping something just handwave it away. Say they kicked their asses and move on.
Combat in DnD/Pathfinder is often a slog, yeah, but since I play mostly on Roll20 I use their handy automation tools to both speed up the math behind everything and to cull the decision paralysis that often takes up the majority of combat. If you want to attack someone, you click the Attack button and pick your target, you either hit or you don't and then you deal damage and if you crit it'll calculate that too. Characters that have lots of options like casters can have a list of all their shit right in front of them, and when they click that button it posts exactly what it does while also rolling all the relevant dice and showing me what saves I need to be looking at.
As a GM, all these tools are an absolute godsend as I don't need to know fucking jack shit about any of the monsters running about, I just make the dumb ones run up to the nearest person and bash them with sticks and have the smarter ones use their wizbang neato stuff without needing to remember EXACTLY what will happen.
3:15 Make sure you read what the darkness spell really does before you cast it.
Lol, this sounds like how Bethesda streamlines Elder Scrolls or Fallout for newer generations. No roleplaying, no complicated choices or stories. Just point me where the combat is ! :P
And random peoples.
BoyVOL if there are People ;)
bethesda didnt even create an es game in years
@@thegreatandmightyseff7214 8 years ago.... damn
You killed Ferrus Manus, your opinion is invalid.
2:16 Looks like my report card
Meh. The problem I have with Adventurer League modules is the forced storyline.
My first pregen game, there was an old mage turned into a sheep. The players were supposed to use the scroll he handed them to talk with animals, and he would let them know the dire situation. They were then supposed to help. Lo and behold, the one guy in their party (the Drow) was given the scroll to read, talked to the sheep... and refused help. Sounded dangerous and pointless, he said out of character. In character, told everyone that the sheep just happened to be carrying that scroll probably as a practical joke, and nobody rolled a high enough insight to fight him. I ended up having to just say, look, if you don't help him, we have no game. Pregen, sorry.
My last League game, I played a cleric. Near the end of the fight, I went to the back of the room to examine the snake head statue. Turns out it had some cursed stones in it's eyes, so I decided to guard it because duh. WELLLL the npc with us was written to run "past" us after the fight and into the snake head. I was like, wait, so the guy tries to run in? Naw man, I'm def stopping him, and I got the strength and spells to do it. DM was like, sorry, but it's story. Can't derail a pregenerated story. Okay, I said, I guess I'll just LET the npc run to his obvious death despite knowing it will kill him (not meta gaming, my character would not have allowed it.)
THIS is why I don't like those games. The truth is, you never really know how your players are going to ruin/screw up your story. That's all part of the DnD experience when running a game. When playing a pregenerated campaign, you (as a player) must accept that you're just there for XP, gear and showing off stats. Nothing more. Otherwise, the DM will have no choice but to force the story down your throat, and that's not fun for anybody.
Ben: Who would play for that long?!
Me: Me.
12 hour sessions as a player would be amazing, but as a DM that would literally kill me. I can barely think after DMing for like 5 hours, 12 would be six levels of exhaustion followed by instant death.
it's quite easy if you add something invaluable : breaks. Something like 15 to 30 minutes break every 2-4 hours allow you to do great game lenght far more easely.
It works if you do more role playing and "less" adventuring,
When I played 3.5 with a group of friends our sessions went for 12 hours too. Noon to midnight on Saturday, did it for 3 years. Absolutely amazing time and I wish I could go back to those days.
Adventurers league killed the fun for me, I enjoy the role play, and just the whole “you’re there now” mechanic really doesn’t do it for me
If you're not playing D&D to roleplay, then it's literally just tossing dice and doing math. Why bother with the flavor text at that point?
@@xFlareLeon They still roleplay and follow a story. Its just that they cant expect to play with the same people each week. Think of it like an IRL dnd mmo. each week an instanced set of encounters. You could play a bunch of games with one DM then travel to a different country that also plays AL and continue the story there.
WOW: Players that actually read the rules. That's Nirvana for a DM and why I broke up the last campaign I had been running (which was running for 2 years but then they stopped reading the rules and would just wing it or when their turn came they would sit and talk for 5 min even though I told them you have 5 sec to decide and would beat them on the head with the monsters OHHHH to have players that actually read the rules.....)
Alo Puffin, how are you on this fantastic day or night?
This is a tad early, but i hope you have a great Christmas, if you celebrate it
Only 16 hours? On 4th edition no less? Weakling.
I've run a 12 hour session and it was honest hell all of us were tired, my Homebrew sessions are around 8 hours or until we are tired
The solution to your bless+d4 damage die problem is simple, use diffrent colored dice...
and write down the color code so no one can annoy you about cheating. i use this method when i have many attacks in a round, i use 1 color d20 and dmg dice for the first attack, another color d20 and dmg dice for the next, etc, have what the colors mean and i write down the results when it isnt my turn, and i usually have a whole page written down. i just agree not to fudge later and always use them in the order they were rolled. but that is when every pc has 7 or more attacks every round plus 20 attacks of oppertunity, etc. i also tell the players what the enemy ac is so that they can just tell me how much damage theyre doing and over how many hits. then we get to rp out what each hit or miss looks like.
D&D 5 is really fun, but the rules for organized play in D&D AL could use a lot of improvement. I like the rules of the Pathfinder Society way more. They are not perfect, but at least there is no fighting over magic items, and the GMs get a propper reward for their time, among many things. You should try it some time.
Quairon Nailo I agree, wizard of the coast have to put more afford into AL. The whole PFS system is a labor of love, you can feel it.
I love long sessions. We get a ton of food and drinks and play until people drop. Just 2 weeks ago, we played for 11 hours.
Well, my first game were like session 3 or 4 hours (Not sure). When I started to play with my friend (The GM) and others guys (Friends of the GM that now have become my friend), our sessions was 24 hours. We weren't playing all the time (we took break to eat, sleep and play board games/video games). It was really fun to do and I will love to do it again, but my life is saying fuck you.
role-playing always takes a lot out of me pretty quick, so I can barely imagine going for six hours, let alone eleven.
My record is 20, AD&D 2ed, circa 1995. After which we left and went to a water park (and mostly slept).
I'll add for flavor that a friend of ours got sunburn under the soles of his feet, and that was HILARIOUS
Your Dm is a damn saint. Shower them with gifts and never ever rules lawyer against them.
Those were the days!
Is that the usual experience when playing on those groups? If it is I will try it...
Adventurers league sounds like my least favorite bits of DnD pushes to the forefront. No role play, no meaningful character motivations, all combat, and short sessions
Marc Alcatraz Not to mention how the minute you start to become powerful, do you have to make a new character from the ground up. And how you're not allowed to roll your stats to keep everyone from being too strong.
Pretty much
mods are 4 hours, (this video got that part wrong), but you can always play 2 or 3 in a row with the same group for those marathin sessions. and there is in fact plenty of role play. BUT there are limits. No, you cant roleplay haggling with every single merchant for every single item you want (OMG, dont you just hate when someone tries this?), and no one can spend .75 hours "roleplaying" a meaningless encounter with the tavern wench while the other players get bored and go outside to pet the dogs. Again, who wants to play at a table where some idiot insists on doing this every single session?
And organized play is not about being combat-centric, but in organized games like Adventurers League and Pathfinder Society, they get 3 combats finished IN ADDITION to roleplay in 4 hours, for the reasons mentioned above, plus the fact that there are no 15 minute rules discussions/ arguments with the dm over how 1 spell /feat/class feature works, slowing combat to a crawl and wasting everyone's time at the table (OMG, dont you just HATE that?) Everyone knows exactly how their class features work, and any vague bits have already been adjudicated by the people who run the campaing (WOTC staff), so combat goes MUCH faster and smoother than any home game Ive ever played in since I started playing in 1985. For reals, I was amazed my first time at how fast and efficient combat was, and how well most of the players actually knew the rules.
However, IF meaningless time wasting arguments of minutiae of the wording X ability/spell is to your liking; IF you insist on roleplaying for 17 minutes with the alchemist fire merchant who has nothing to do with the actual game story arc ("But that's what my character would do!!") ; IF the idea of not having to remind other players that its their turn/ what part of the game you are on because they wandered into the dining room to watch The Mandalorian while you were "roleplaying" with the town crier; IF the thought of completing a tactically complex combat in under 40 minutes (!) without that one guy we all know arguing AGAIN with the DM about how he THINKS his one ability works (WOTC staff said 4 years ago that it officially doesn't work that way Karen) while everyone else wanders off to raid the refrigerator, THEN perhaps organized game play isnt for you. BUT, if any of these things sound like they just might be fun, then you might want to give it a try ;-)
@@AFanOfCinema once i got used to not rolling stats, ill never go back. because no one can cheat, like SURE you rolled that character legit Mark, your paladin just HAPPENED to roll 18 str and cha when no one was looking (it happens, weve all seen it happen). It also makes it so no one ends up with a weak unplayable character, and no one gets a character so powerful just due to lucky rolls/cheating that they dominate every combat encounter, making the game less fun for half of the other players.
I one had a game that ran from 12 noon, to 7 am. We drank so much red bull I think my heart stopped for a minute
The Amazing Mollusk What I heard was "I became a Litch."
Creepy undead skeletal wings.
I can't believe people still drink that caffeine filled can of piss.
Mr. Badguy yeah its pretty much two whole cups sugar poured into water
Have had alot of weird stuff in D&D and adventure league has led to the rise of my Barbarian Dragonborn Inquisitor who’s job is to find criminals and punish them, he earned the title of The Castrater in our first session, I was unable to come back for more sessions, but the party still remembered him, he would see monstrous races as less than the normal races so he would eat goblin jerky, he castrated a thief for stealing from a church, and he went back on his word with a bugbear chieftain cause again, lesser than the humans and other civilized races. And he stayed Lawful evil throughout that one game I got to play cause according to the laws of the lands we were in, I broke no laws and was well within my right to do so.. though our sorceror, who went from one of those trident fish people to a blue tiefling due to his Wild magic, also turned my black dragonborns scales a permanent light blue.. that led to some hilarious scenarios.
Hi I just wanted to say that I love your vids!
I have been playing since 1980.
I had a game group 20+ years ago and we played 2nd edition.
We normally, on average would start a game at 9-10 am and play to 3am. All crash at my house, wake up the next day by 9-10 and played till midnight or so.
We averaged 14 hour game sessions twice a week for 2 years
0:06 As an Eric who wants to host DnD games, I immediately said "Hello!" back here.
When are you gonna tell us the story of your even worse bio chemistry job?
Ahhhahaha! I'm a "no
That was just the problem with your game store
Wow that sounds miserable. I uavnt gosne to my local place for al yet but I have been around a few times they did it. They had probably 4 or 5 tables, no one was being overly rowdy and there were dividers to separate games. Looked pretty chill
for some of us we don't have friend who play. I'm kind of stuck with Mondays being my ONLY day outside of work and parenting where I can get away to play and its either AL or a game store homebrew and they both have problems. it would be my dream to find a group of committed friends who want to play and just have fun. not go to a game store and listen to the magic tournament using the other 20 tables and having to attempt to strain and hear the dm explaining something.
I just want friends to go and have a beer and play dnd. but I cant find anything
The adventure league I've been has been together for 4 years. It's almost always the same people since day 1
I haven't really done anything fun outside of D&D since my friend started his campaign. Apparently, this is my life now.
I'd love to play for so long, as long as stuff gets done. I've only experienced murderhobo shenanigans once, and while it was fun, it was hard to get back on track with what was planned.
I love a good side adventure that compliments the main story of the campaign, but I would've just wanted to get on with the story.
Whenever I use guidance or bless people just forget about it. Good to know someone else knows the pain
I have played several bards and never had anyone actually use a bardic inspiration I pass to them.
Me and my group tend to play fr 9 at night to 4 of 5 AM
I like it how he's one complaining about playing D&D for so long when he was the one that went to those sessions fully expecting it to take at least 12 hours
4th edition? Pffftt. Newb. I used to sit down with my Pop's friends when I was 8 and we'd play the first edition rules. Old school red dragon cover.
But the longest sessions were in Rifts RPG by Palladium. 12+ hour sessions with a bunch of guys from the air force base I lived near.
-Disclaimer- I'm being funny here, don't crucify me. Just jokes, folks. I did really play 1st edition back in the day though. Super fun to be a kid in a group of adults playing an RPG. I wasn't even that annoying, if you can believe it.
When I first joined a group everyone said they totally loved playing but they would LITERALLY NEVER PLAY FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR.
haha the joke at the end is that Puffin Forest is a NEET
But he's not. He is just socially awkward talking about a subject that tends to be socially awkward. NEET is quite an insult. Its like calling someone a high school dropout who can only get a job at mc'donalds and will not progress beyond what some teenagers have, in a society that is much more strict than what i presume yours to be (which to most of the world is not a bad thing, that life is making a living and doing what you need to do to. That is better than not contributing as far as the US is concerned.)
I didn’t know this was a thing omg I must try this before jumping in both feet first
I do like the concept of adventurers league, but it has some serious flaws, at least in my eyes: First, as you mentioned, it´s mainly focused on the mechanics, roleplay doesn't mean too much, which for me means missing out half the fun. I had prepared a cleric and thought about some things to RP with him, but when I did the DM was mainly like "Ok here´s your inspiration, are you done now?" and I get why this would be the case for AL. It´s meant to be a streamlined experience for everyone you get over with in just a couple of hours. We played DDEX1-5 which is planned to last for 4 hours, which is ludicrous. Our DM estimated 6 hours, which was merely enough without any but two 5 minute breaks and a minimum of RP going on. It felt so rushed and railroaded all the time.
But what threw me off even more was the narrow set of rules that apply to the AL. For example: We were fighting a group of kobolds and when the slaying was done I asked if their daggers were any good, because I wanted an additional dagger or two for my character. The DMs answer was: "Yeah, you could take one for the rest of the adventure, but it'll disappear after this session because it's "not in the treasure!"" What?! I mean I get it that you should not be handing out magic items at will due to the concept of drop in/drop out and the comparability of two sessions ran by two different DMs and I would even understand it for valuable common items, but a dagger for like 2gp worth? Come on!
Lastly when we had been through 3 combats in a row with 4 out of 6 characters at level 1 we were finally out of pretty much everything. Spell slots, hit die, consumables, everything was gone, so we really needed to rest. We chose a quiet dead end inside the temple we were in, barricaded the door with the corpses of slain kobolds and organized a watch. Even though all of this effort we had an almost 10 minutes discussion with the DM about how "there is no rest mentioned in the adventure" and "other groups can run the dungeon without the need to rest". Just to make this clear: At that point (and retrospective as well) there was no time pressure and no threat around. He just insisted to deny us a rest because he deemed it unfair in comparison to other groups. Heck, other groups go into this dungeon with 6 level 4+ characters, of course they can deal with the situation differently.
I did enjoy the session, but I clearly learned that AL is not for everyone and it is most certainly not for me. I play D&D out of fun, not as a competition with others or to produce the "best character possible" but the most fun one, both for me and the rest of the table, which is a priority not valued in the AL, at least from my experience and just to make this clear, I do not think that every DM in the AL is as stubborn as my DM was, but if you´re in for the RP, the AL is not for you.
Think of al as trying a dm to see if you like that play style. I try to fit my characters to the group but sometimes I would rather find another group.
We played for 7 hours without even starting what the dm had planned...
Wayyyyy back when, we'd go camp out in the woods for whole weekends with just our 1st ed. books
(ok, and a lot soda and hot dogs)
what's the point in playing an RPG if you don't RP, I mean, it's the main element in ROLE PLAYING games
Some people just want to roll the dice as their roleplaying and feel cool, like a charisma character that doesn't charisma- but hey, the dice says they got a nat 20 so they don't need to talk!
It doesn't make much sense to me either. They don't want to earn their victory, they just want the praise???
seraphilight
I mean me I roleplay based on my role.
Depending on my DM, I do my roleplay and then role with advantage or disadvantage (nothing too) based on how my roleplay was on the current situation(you better not stutter)
Or I roll my dice and THEN I roleplay based on my score.
Personally, if you have something good then always try it first before the roll thing, though I do think rolling first can be fun. Some things don't need to be rolled. If you ride in on a bloody dragon or hand the defenseless king the head of the bodyguard he just called for you should never need to roll intimidate for instance. Believable lies don't need to be rolled for. Deception should only ever be rolled if someone decides to insight even.
But what you do is still roleplaying. One DM, first campaign with them think they were so impressed someone actually made decent lies for deceptions they didn't make me roll.
Some people really can't do improv well, and lying or other charisma stats require more of it than just saying whatever is on their mind. I have a friend who kinda freezes up when they have to lie and just accepts they're gonna start a fight to do what they want. Others are so bad with words they refuse to even try apparently? That was an actual argument I got from someone in a discussion about the charisma stat. Basically said they were bad at it so they needed to roll.
One of my favorite DMs on youtube had a player decide he'd be the face of the group, built his character for it, then was surprised he had to do more than roll. DM asked him simple questions and I don't think the dude could even handle a shopping trip. Reason he's my favorite DM is he wouldn't let the dude roll if he couldn't even make a half-baked attempt. The slightly above average charisma dude took up doing facework.
(Also, personal side-note, persuasion is nice and all but it's a crap stat compared to deception and intimidate. Intimidate is for when deception fails after all ;). DM once insisted we should totally have a persuasion character in the group. We ignored him and went deception/intimidate as it's always the preferable choice. My current character has all 3 char stats, but persuasion will never be as fun as deception. Persuasion is like trying to put a bandaid on a bad choice, deception is telling them the droids they're looking for aren't here, and intimidate is kicking messengers down wells.)
I'm currently playing a deepGnome Rogue antropologue in our current game of Tomb of annihilation and one of my player was like "we're getting the rogue who's going to loot everything for himself, yay T_T" turn out my rogue is a neutral good rogue that went the rogue way because he was too physically weak to defend himself and go adventuring, so he needed to use dirty fighting techniques to defend himself and I am currently the leader/face of our group because reasons. It's not hard to RP, just make a character that inspire you and roll with it, play him like just as if he was alive by himself and actions/ideas will come all by themselves.
Yep, exactly. Don't make a fanciful version of you, make a person and they'll play themselves essentially. Just remember to give them a driving force, and it's okay if you don't know every aspect or something you wrote down doesn't work.
Also, that player needs DnD 101 of greedy rogue pcs- they don't loot everything, as that's just a dumb player. They take 120 gold, pocket twenty then split the rest evenly between everyone including themselves again. So netting 20+ gold. If they want to get downright devilish they take their cut before distribution, leave an unequal share, then tell the party they won't take their cut because there's not enough -but they already took more than their share ;) Party will prolly find out eventually, and it creates good rp later on.
Peeps need to remember it's just numbers on paper. You don't keep the gold, you keep the memories and experience and friendship. If they're hung up over a handful of pretend gold they need help.
I love blessed and yet... i hate reminding everyone every 20 seconds
Nooo as soon as you said tomb of annihilation I had to immediately stop, my group is running this now and I'm trying to avoid spoilers, I don't know how important the information would be
he doesnt even talk about the adventure, mostly the DM style and how the players plays
What Derrek wrote. You can watch the vid cause it doesn't spoil anything.
he doesn't reveal any plot, unless you think that walking through a forest is a spoiler, it is spoiler-free
Sweet thanks guys, now back to the video
Can't say I've played in an Adventure League game (not sure what kind of game the group I play with is anyways), but if you have all the player-related books, and have crazy ideas, like a minotaur artificer, then a strict AL group with PHB+1 might not be for you.
I recently started going to an adventures league and it’s really fun actually!