i dont mean to be so offtopic but does anybody know a way to get back into an instagram account?? I was stupid forgot my account password. I love any tips you can offer me!
@Stetson Aidan I really appreciate your reply. I found the site on google and Im in the hacking process now. Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will get back to you later with my results.
@Stetson Aidan WTF IT ACTUALLY WORKED :O Literally hacked my instagram account after ~ 45 minutes by using the site. Had to pay 15 $ but definitely worth the price =) Thanks so much you saved my account!
You guys started talking about using divination magic to discern the authenticity of an item and the idea popped into my head of Antique Roadshow but with divination wizards
On this episode of "American Pickers : Sorcery Edition" our hero and collector, Gizzlegirl Thundercrotch legendary Gnome Illusionist uncovers a strange item that moves when no one is looking. Is it an enchanted artifact? A mimic? Tune in to your crystal ball Sundays at 10 bones past the raven pm!
'10 bones past the raven pm' makes me think of some kind of magical wizard's clock that runs on a timescale agnostic of all planes, so that somehow it's always exactly the same time regardless of what plane you're on. Now I need to add that to a campaign.
"Oh, this is a cursed sword. Very clearly Infernal in nature. If you look at the little mark here on the bottom of the hilt, this is an original Mephistopheles sword. I would not recommend anyone use this sword ever, but if you could find the right buyer, I would value this at 500 gp" and the little old halfling lady is all like "Oh my gods, I bought this from an ogre, and didn't think it was much. But thank you artifact roadshow. I'm gonna invest in my grandkids college fund now!"
I freaking love the idea of the magical auction. It is an awesome way to give out magic items while keeping them rare and is an open invitation to adventure. So going to use it in my game.
It really makes sense as well, given the ludicrous price some magic items can have. There's no way you'd find something that expensive in a random street shop, as the item would probably be more expensive than the entire street itself!
In my campaign, joining the Lords Alliance (once finally invited) was their ticket to the four times a year secret Magic Auctions. A main reason the party was willing to accept some outside authority over them was access to the auctions.
There was one time in a campaign I was in where the party got 2 alchemy jugs and a bag of holding, and the DM deecided to give the party a house and basically said we could do what we wanted with it. I took initiative and decided to convert it to a general grocer that specialized in mayonaise. Me and my DM did some rolls and determined that the city REALLY liked the idea of a mayonaise emporium. So we basically poured alchemy jugs worth of mayonaise into bags of holding, and bottled it on demand to the citygoers that would come in.
Fellow Texas dnd player here. I'm a first time dm, and this channel has been more of a help than any other source I've looked at. You guys are great and are extremely helpful. I'm running my first session this weekend and I feel very confident because of y'alls help. Thank you so much!
+JPruInc Great! My players didn't do anything I expected, and I was completely unprepared. I ended winging a lot of of it and created an even more interesting situation than I had planned. The players said they had a great time and seemed like they couldn't tell I wasn't ready for what they were doing. I credit all of that to this channel!
+Cody Smith That's the way of it. I find it's easier to craft memorable NPC's and environments, and then introducing your inciting event. After that, all bets are off. Make sure your NPC's have well thought out motivations and goals, that way your players can do as they like and you can react in a believable way. The hardest thing to get over is losing control of the story, but remember that this is your players story and you're narrating it.
Absolutely love some of these ideas. Starfinder came up with downtime activities for bonuses, but none of them have such world building or adventuring potential. I watched this video twice now because I'm taking notes that you two have inspired x3
There are some cool homebrew rules for building a stronghold or running a business to make good use of downtime activities. There's a 20ish page document called Fortresses, Temples, and Stongholds by Walrock (not Warlock) that adds some neat options for building and maintaining structures. My DM plans to implement this resource into our next game to get the players invested in their home base. Another homebrew we found is simply called Running a Business by /u/Burning_Titan that is just a single page of simple rules for running a business. Whereas the stronghold rules adds some cool rooms to use during your downtime, running a business only adds a means to make money (although there's bound to be interesting stories and quests to be borne of it).
Great video. I agree, good down time is critical to taking a good campaign and bringing it up to an awesome campaign. It really gets the players invested in the world.
You guys rock, me and my party are having a pc essentially do nothing but downtime (his choice, he wants to own everything.) this really helped me out with that. Stay awesome!
My players once went to a tavern in downtime. one player had previously invested in a vodka brewery and had on him a flask of the strongest vodka. (DC 15 Con or go unconscious). They waited for some npc s who had previously screwed in a business deal to arrive, and then challenged them to a drinking contest. When all the commotion died down, and and the crowd left, they slit the throats of the guys the knocked out, grabbed their money, and went and stole a psuedodragon that they wanted. (These guys they killed won the auction for The psuedodragon, it's why they hated them).
My DM created an awesome downtime activity the other day. Our paladin joined a fighting tournament and had to fight the reigning champ who was a badass monk. We got to learn more about the city that was hosting the tournament and also met the champion monk who might become a useful npc later when we want to gain passage trough the mountains.
im just starting to play my first D&D game in 5e, i already contacted my DM about nearly 90% of these things, and so far she's loved those ideas! Combat is cool, but the story is most important to me, and downtime activities help the story alot
I love your videos, they're such a good place to get my brain firing off ideas! A video talking about taking content from older editions (planescape, spelljammer, etc) and converting them to be 5e friendly would be amazing
I love the concepts of downtime activities and interacting with the world, and for most of my characters, it's their end-game. Sure, the bard may be content with exploring and til the the end of his days, but the transmutationist wants to make a business empire, or the diviner wants to rule the world. To me, it adds motivation for adventurers to do a lot of what they do.
It's funny that you mentioned 13th warrior. That scene were they do the "Viking prayer" Makes me want to play a Viking bard that uses oration as his performance type.
This is probably my overall favorite part of D&D or any Tabletop RPG. It too often is overlooked and simple just happens. Would you gentlemen consider sharing more examples of what you do, maybe some of the rulings you have made or other thoughts on the topic? You could go so far as to put a document together :) Wonderful video, thank you!
Yeah I think downtime activities also allow for greater contrast between different encounters and locations. If your downtime activities are lacking in flavor or downright being boring than the combat encounters will suffer because the players will eventually get acclimated to the excitement of combat and then just get bored. Another idea for a downtime activity that I'm using in my current campaign is that one of the characters is a follower of a new god, and thus has to spend time going around preaching about him, and gaining followers. Eventually he's going to start a church and then have to run it as the sort of pope figure.
Exactly what has happened with the Sorcerer Acolyte in my group, just hit level 2 and has started their quest to praise Dr. Roy, the god of snow and knowledge.
I’ve got a goblin bard in the party I’m running with a custom charlatan-acolyte character that goes around convincing people of his BS religion. I plan on having his god come into being for real at like 14th level. But since the religion changes every time he talks about it, the god will be really chaotic and confused and angry at its existence
In the new videos you have posted since your campaign, I feel like the level of conversation has gotten quite a bit deeper. I like your past videos as well, but these are really getting me to think about the game in new ways. Keep up the good work!
Great video. Seemed like a boring topic, at first glance, but you guys always have great, insightful conversations. Always gets the wheels turning, thinking of new ideas.
playing a pathfinder game with 2 new players in our group, we just started looking for one player's kidnapped mentor by visiting local bars and getting everyone there drunk, fun to relax after a couple tense battles
You could always have a Game of Thrones situation where during your downtime, you try to set up a plan while you adventure (or make it the adventure) where you try to higher your place and prestige in the city
I love downtime in my campaigns. My DM encourages it by having down time every game session. I wish the rules in the DMG and PHB would have more info on roleplaying outside of combat. Possibly more skills, definitely more info on buying a castle or starting your own business, or just simply buying a home and investing in a community. More information on how a player could use their out of combat time would greatly help the D&D franchise.
You guys keep talking about Spelljammers, would love to see you play a bit of that out. also would like to see how you worked the converting from 2nd to 5e for that. cause i looked into it, and i kind of really got lost.
Man i wish i could sit down and have a conversation with you all about this topic. Im surprised you didn't mention doing one on one sessions with your members when theyre on downtime activies.
For downtime I like to do small encounters with NPC's I've made one of which is a former character of mine Flibbers Fallbottom. High end lvl wizard Alchemist. And when the players roll his number on the encounter table in town, he randomly appears before the party and offers them a random concoction from the list of potions and poisons in the DM book in the form of holding out a large box of potions and telling people to have one. Flibbers will show up in town, dungeons and even in the middle of battle he comes running in shouting "Potions! Anyone want some potions!" It's all random, and you have to identify the concoction, because you never know if Flibbers gave you poison, or a potion of fire giants strength.
Our party opened a museum of monsters in the biggest city we could find. Fun scenes with hiring a curator, skilled taxidermist, opening day events, special exhibits, etc. We cared about that city more than we would have when it was attacked by duergar, that's for sure.
On the Stronghold idea. We went into a town that had an abandoned haunted mansion. The town didn't want us to mess with it, but we knew we had to search for an item there. Being 12th level, we had a lot of money, so we decided to just buy it outright. We cleared it out and made it into our stronghold. It actually made a good spot for our campaign to end as several players had to leave. :)
5:50 I think the appropriate term is *Client* not "vassal" owing to it's a one time transactional relationship in which the Lord is giving your party *patronage*. He's not asking you guys to swear fealty.
In the Curse of Strahd campaign, my DM and I have a downtime activity thing going on where my Drow is creating a secret cult in order to raise enough faith for Lolth to 'maybe' help her escape. I've just been pouring resources into this side venture and it's great.
fun story: one of my characters, an artificier, by the name of Wolgang Van Weber, brought a small forge to help rebuild a village attacked by a army of goblins and orcs. He ended up with being the Ceo of a commercial empire, made out of various shops, and adventuring to find the finest materials. But as you can guest, his company was hijacked, and in one for your adventures, he got back his business.
I'm working on a rogue assassin who's a poison brewer, and his poisons are all made during downtime, so I decided to rewatch this video to get some other downtime activity ideas, great stuff ya'll! (Also, totally stealing that fight club idea if I get a plausible opportunity).
Ive had a player take over an old keep (In Middle Earth) and he built it up over many sessions. To make castle management easy I added a loyal npc that would act as the Castle Manager and advisor. The player then chose his own officers amd soldiers, he hired workers to build walls and even had farms anf mines. At some stage he was invited to join the union of (then friendly) Isengard, Rohan and Gondor in defending their lands as his castle was close to isengard. It was super fun.
I'll be having several moments of downtime during my campaign because of how big it'll be, which would include (not be limited to) various forms of study; I'll be crossing each proverbial bridge as I get there. Hopefully, the moments of downtime will buy enough BTS time to continue developing what will be needed since it'll involve pretty much all of existence as a whole; certain plot points will require waiting if you're wondering.
down time activities... I once played a wiz / bard in 3.5 ed. that spent his time enchanting random stones with + (Everytime I start singing: Cast Major Illusion *Illusion of self at 5ft cube standing on ground where the stone is placed with the sound of my voice singing as I sing. ) + (Everytime I start singing: Cast: *Targeting "Any creature which stands before the illusion." the cube that is surrounding the stone *Suggesting any creature within that area to "Go abroad and spread my fame") ---- All this was approved by the GM. It cost a crap ton of XP but I made about 37 of these stones and dropped them around towns and areas that were heavily trafficked. I was pretty good at perform as well so everytime I tried to do my perform skills it activated the stones and created this fascination effect, that held any creature captive long enough for the other spells to take effect, and they would then spread my fame. --- The GM had all sorts of creatures running around in his world telling of Circu the Wandering Bard, I was a performer world famous and adored by millions. Money was no object wherever I went I got all the wenches, and my notoriety allowed me to accomplish a great many things, such as convincing the BBEG that he should just turn himself in and stop his evil ways because clearly I was working the case, and he had no chance of winning.
Honestly, downtime is the best part of DND for me, both as a DM and player: It lets the player pursue their life goals in a way that can't be done in just dungeons. It lets them create the hook for the next quest, as well as helps the DM understand a character much better.
How would you guys work in space into a game for downtime activity if the other players aren't particularly interested?(from a players stand point) I would enjoy some downtime activity to build on my characters social and economical strengths.
I let my players choose a hobby that would not affect gameplay. Maybe in many lvls they could get some benefit. One of my players said they wanted to quilt "you know like the thing with the two sticks". We laughed and said you mean knitting? We had a month off and did a gift exchange. He thought himself how to knit and gave his person a knitted dice bag. I loved that.
One of my part-mates is investing in inns around the land. He buys 51% of what it's worth, keeps the current owner in power and gains an earning per day (not alot but that's just the DM rule) oh and he hired aarokokra to send money and supplies between real estates
and in today's auction are some items from an estate sale. meloth the mad went a bit too much off the rocker and at the age of 71 decided he no longer needed a spell or magical item to fly or forgot to use them and swan dived from the top of his tower to the paving stones below. so the first item on the docket is this lovely magical set of spectacles fashioned from gemstones that lets you see through solid objects. lets start the bidding at 2 platinum and 3 gold.
Fun fact: In the 13th Warrior, they're each speaking their own language; Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, since they're mutually intellegible and all stem from Old Norse (Danish).
Liam Mather start with modifying existing spells to get a feel for how things work and keep the DM involved but above all come up with something and try it out in game while being open to making changes if it ends up being broken in practice.
So much easier to role play joining a fight club than it is to actually join a fight club. "No holds barred!" "Gotta get punched in the face, sometimes!" Ha!
in my campaign my character is actually someone who's gotten to 20th level but got bored, so wished away the levels, left some of the gear that his party could use and left with the basics plus legendary weapons only he knew how to use, which have been scattered so he's now reclaiming them, and so he starts with a couple of benefits, he knows abyssal, a succubus and him got into a relationship but she actually loves him... apparently there's some lore that makes you a really powerful vampire if that happens and I can't find it... and so she ended up teaching him abyssal, his team went to the 9 hells where he learned infernal, he knows basic underdark, stuff like retreat, and learned celestial while parlaying with gods, now he's locked in a cell awaiting judgement for something he's not sure happened like how they say it happened but he's level 1 now and can't break the lock because he's dex based... can't wait for somebody to rescue him
Listening to you talk about the concept of just buying magical items as if they're off the shelf I thought about turning the issue around. After the characters just convert all their unwanted magical item loot into gold...into the hands of whomst does all that magical loot end up, and what do with it? How will charcters feel when in the next module they have to face a band of orcs who are armed with a bunch of +1 swords the players had found in a dungeon a few adventures ago. How about when they bust in on the boss battle, and when almost defeated the boss whips out some item the characters themselved has debated keeping but decided to sell. Have the characters end up being treated like war profteering arms dealers by the people.
Op Shoshoi The first thing you should do is just make modifications to pre existing spells and over time you should start to learn the ins and out of how to make cools spells that aren't broken.
I love social interactions and non-combat roleplaying (these were also vital to the success of some of my first Shadowrun missions.) The problem I have with down time in tabletop rpgs is that it almost always splits the party, so that most of the time players are waiting for somebody else to finish haggling prices or trawling for rumors or whatever until it's their turn to do whatever they wanted to do in town, and getting bored in the meantime. Do you have advice for mitigating the waiting and boredom?
Try shifting rapidly between players. Give them 5 minutes each before skipping to what the next player is doing. If player 1 wants to socialize and gather rumors while player 2 is crafting something. Give player 1 a short 5 min conversation, then have player 2 do the first crafting roll, before giving player 1 a new 5 min conversation, giving player 2 crafting roll number 2 etc. This way the players get a better sense of how things are happening simultaneously.
Switch things up to make it feel like it is happening simultaneously and keep everyone engaged. Similar to running seperate combat encounters at the same time amongst a split party
What if the players accidentaly buy a magical murder weapon?!? Complications with framing, investigations, and murder in the town. What if you have a on-night-stand while in town and now have an angry lord hunting you for that! So many possibilities...
My well thought out and planned campaign about a colonial proxy war with a Mind Flayer pulling the strings on both sides, is still known as "The Boat Campaign" because the players spent the first 2 months of weekly sessions filling their downtime interacting with each other-- while I rolled each days weather, every day, on a 7 week trans-oceanic ship ride that was supposed to be the session 0 and start of first session.
It is so much fun sitting back and watching your players just role play amongst themselves. I love it! We've had entire sessions of it. I didn't have to do anything but play an NPC occasionally.
Hey guys, I was wondering if you could go over setting up non-combat challenges for low-tier PCs (Lvl1-10). I always end up either making them way too hard or really easy to bypass. Thanks! Also, just wanted to say that I found you about two days ago but I have basically binged your shows because the way you talk about D&D is exactly the way me and my friends do! The only difference is that you know WAY more. Thank you!
Welcome to the club, I did the same thing when I found the channel a few months ago. I'm no expert, but I find that my problem and a problem that many of my DMs have had are to keep it easy to verbalize what the puzzle is, visual aids can help, but ones that you can just describe are easiest to cut your teeth on, also, if you can, make it so that the PCs can experiment and try a few different answers. Hope that helped a bit, last bit of advice, when in doubt, head to the forums, there are a lot of people online who would love to help with tons of experience.
I'd like to play a warhammer 40k campaign where after my warp use goes completely wrong, i get possessed and like... burn children alive or some shit. Like, become the new antagonist in whatever way.
I think this video is a good example of your typical videos. It feels more like a brainstorm, which is really good if you are here to get some ideas but you never really discuss topics in the depth that I would like. For instance, how would you pull off an enterprise? yes medieval companies were cut throat, so how would you express that, what are obstacles what do they need to do?
One obstacle that the business could run into is a local guild. The guild, seeing that there is a new person in town, would come in and suggest that they join if they want to do business. This could be costly to join (regular costs) with the typical assets that a guild would provide (protection, contacts, contract negotiations, etc) and problems (guild enemies, politics, authoritarianism, production/sales goals, limits on what can or cannot be done, etc). If they should choose not to join, this could earn the enmity of the guild and lead them require additional guards to protect them from seemingly random thieves/raiders/destructive individuals, being blacklisted, or priced out. Guilds were the biggest and often the best for businesses, merchants and crafts people to join in the middle ages and could often reflect that in their dealings with non guild folk - and they are just one of the many things that the folk would have to deal with.
I love this. I found the Downtime by Unearthed Arcana was a downer. I was expecting immersion ideas but what we got was number/dice dumps. I mean, its great for those games where you just rush through downtime and want to move to next campaign phase or arc, but for the higher immersion/roleplay, yeah it was disappointing.
Thanks for watching! Want more Web DM in your life? Get our podcast here: www.patreon.com/webdm
i dont mean to be so offtopic but does anybody know a way to get back into an instagram account??
I was stupid forgot my account password. I love any tips you can offer me!
@Maison Heath Instablaster =)
@Stetson Aidan I really appreciate your reply. I found the site on google and Im in the hacking process now.
Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will get back to you later with my results.
@Stetson Aidan WTF IT ACTUALLY WORKED :O Literally hacked my instagram account after ~ 45 minutes by using the site.
Had to pay 15 $ but definitely worth the price =)
Thanks so much you saved my account!
@Maison Heath You are welcome :)
You guys started talking about using divination magic to discern the authenticity of an item and the idea popped into my head of Antique Roadshow but with divination wizards
"Artifact Roadshow" ! :)
On this episode of "American Pickers : Sorcery Edition" our hero and collector, Gizzlegirl Thundercrotch legendary Gnome Illusionist uncovers a strange item that moves when no one is looking. Is it an enchanted artifact? A mimic? Tune in to your crystal ball Sundays at 10 bones past the raven pm!
Victor Alteria I was literally about to comment that!
'10 bones past the raven pm' makes me think of some kind of magical wizard's clock that runs on a timescale agnostic of all planes, so that somehow it's always exactly the same time regardless of what plane you're on. Now I need to add that to a campaign.
"Oh, this is a cursed sword. Very clearly Infernal in nature. If you look at the little mark here on the bottom of the hilt, this is an original Mephistopheles sword. I would not recommend anyone use this sword ever, but if you could find the right buyer, I would value this at 500 gp" and the little old halfling lady is all like "Oh my gods, I bought this from an ogre, and didn't think it was much. But thank you artifact roadshow. I'm gonna invest in my grandkids college fund now!"
I freaking love the idea of the magical auction. It is an awesome way to give out magic items while keeping them rare and is an open invitation to adventure. So going to use it in my game.
Do it!
It really makes sense as well, given the ludicrous price some magic items can have.
There's no way you'd find something that expensive in a random street shop, as the item would probably be more expensive than the entire street itself!
In my campaign, joining the Lords Alliance (once finally invited) was their ticket to the four times a year secret Magic Auctions. A main reason the party was willing to accept some outside authority over them was access to the auctions.
There was one time in a campaign I was in where the party got 2 alchemy jugs and a bag of holding, and the DM deecided to give the party a house and basically said we could do what we wanted with it. I took initiative and decided to convert it to a general grocer that specialized in mayonaise. Me and my DM did some rolls and determined that the city REALLY liked the idea of a mayonaise emporium. So we basically poured alchemy jugs worth of mayonaise into bags of holding, and bottled it on demand to the citygoers that would come in.
The only thing I can picture now is Grog (Critical Role) buying carts full of jars of mayonnaise.
can u make beer in a alchemy jug
@@phizzhead53 Yupp! 4 Gallons a day.
FANTASY COSTCO, WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE GOT A DEAL FOR YOU
You are realy make the best D&D content on TH-cam.
Greetings from Germany
Thank you! Hello from Texas!
WHAT?!?!?!?! YOU GUYS ARE BASED OUT OF TEXAS?!?!?!?!?!
JPruInc where in Texas?
the U.S
Tobias Messner wanna play in my game lol?
Fellow Texas dnd player here. I'm a first time dm, and this channel has been more of a help than any other source I've looked at. You guys are great and are extremely helpful. I'm running my first session this weekend and I feel very confident because of y'alls help. Thank you so much!
How'd it go?
+JPruInc Great! My players didn't do anything I expected, and I was completely unprepared. I ended winging a lot of of it and created an even more interesting situation than I had planned. The players said they had a great time and seemed like they couldn't tell I wasn't ready for what they were doing. I credit all of that to this channel!
+Cody Smith That's the way of it. I find it's easier to craft memorable NPC's and environments, and then introducing your inciting event. After that, all bets are off. Make sure your NPC's have well thought out motivations and goals, that way your players can do as they like and you can react in a believable way. The hardest thing to get over is losing control of the story, but remember that this is your players story and you're narrating it.
Where at in texas? Its where I am at, and we only play on fridays. I need more D&D.
"... frosty brew, spend a gold, squeeze a bum"
possibly my favorite quote ever
Absolutely love some of these ideas. Starfinder came up with downtime activities for bonuses, but none of them have such world building or adventuring potential. I watched this video twice now because I'm taking notes that you two have inspired x3
There are some cool homebrew rules for building a stronghold or running a business to make good use of downtime activities. There's a 20ish page document called Fortresses, Temples, and Stongholds by Walrock (not Warlock) that adds some neat options for building and maintaining structures. My DM plans to implement this resource into our next game to get the players invested in their home base. Another homebrew we found is simply called Running a Business by /u/Burning_Titan that is just a single page of simple rules for running a business. Whereas the stronghold rules adds some cool rooms to use during your downtime, running a business only adds a means to make money (although there's bound to be interesting stories and quests to be borne of it).
Can I get a link?
A link would be great
Dude! That seedy guy Wizard for the 1st lvl adventurers was perrrrrrrrrrfect! I love you guys so much!
Great video. I agree, good down time is critical to taking a good campaign and bringing it up to an awesome campaign. It really gets the players invested in the world.
Did he say "squeeze the butt" ? I hope he said "squeeze the butt".
I think he say "squeeze a bum" so more or less the same thing.
Squeezing bums is a time honored downtime tradition!
yes it is...long since the beginning of tavern crawls has the time honored tradition of bum squeezing been ongoing.
no he's talking about grappling homeless people
The first rule of Bum Squeeze Club is: you do not talk about Bum Squeeze Club.
Thank you for this video. It is probably the most thought provoking of the downtime videos I've watched.
You guys rock, me and my party are having a pc essentially do nothing but downtime (his choice, he wants to own everything.) this really helped me out with that. Stay awesome!
Dude,i'm loving watching you guys.There is so much information that is going to help me in my campaign!
I really like the content you guys put out. Been watching since last fall. Keep it up.
Thank you for your viewership.
My players once went to a tavern in downtime. one player had previously invested in a vodka brewery and had on him a flask of the strongest vodka. (DC 15 Con or go unconscious). They waited for some npc s who had previously screwed in a business deal to arrive, and then challenged them to a drinking contest. When all the commotion died down, and and the crowd left, they slit the throats of the guys the knocked out, grabbed their money, and went and stole a psuedodragon that they wanted. (These guys they killed won the auction for The psuedodragon, it's why they hated them).
My DM created an awesome downtime activity the other day. Our paladin joined a fighting tournament and had to fight the reigning champ who was a badass monk. We got to learn more about the city that was hosting the tournament and also met the champion monk who might become a useful npc later when we want to gain passage trough the mountains.
im just starting to play my first D&D game in 5e, i already contacted my DM about nearly 90% of these things, and so far she's loved those ideas! Combat is cool, but the story is most important to me, and downtime activities help the story alot
Sounds like you're taking the right path to being a well round role-player.
I love your videos, they're such a good place to get my brain firing off ideas!
A video talking about taking content from older editions (planescape, spelljammer, etc) and converting them to be 5e friendly would be amazing
I love the concepts of downtime activities and interacting with the world, and for most of my characters, it's their end-game. Sure, the bard may be content with exploring and til the the end of his days, but the transmutationist wants to make a business empire, or the diviner wants to rule the world. To me, it adds motivation for adventurers to do a lot of what they do.
It's funny that you mentioned 13th warrior. That scene were they do the "Viking prayer" Makes me want to play a Viking bard that uses oration as his performance type.
Thanks! Im a really new dm and this video made me realize how important that downtime was to fleshing out my world.
Am I the only one that wants to see what's on that notebook?
I'm usually either updating my résumé or drawing dick and balls.
This is probably my overall favorite part of D&D or any Tabletop RPG. It too often is overlooked and simple just happens. Would you gentlemen consider sharing more examples of what you do, maybe some of the rulings you have made or other thoughts on the topic? You could go so far as to put a document together :)
Wonderful video, thank you!
Yeah I think downtime activities also allow for greater contrast between different encounters and locations. If your downtime activities are lacking in flavor or downright being boring than the combat encounters will suffer because the players will eventually get acclimated to the excitement of combat and then just get bored. Another idea for a downtime activity that I'm using in my current campaign is that one of the characters is a follower of a new god, and thus has to spend time going around preaching about him, and gaining followers. Eventually he's going to start a church and then have to run it as the sort of pope figure.
Exactly what has happened with the Sorcerer Acolyte in my group, just hit level 2 and has started their quest to praise Dr. Roy, the god of snow and knowledge.
I’ve got a goblin bard in the party I’m running with a custom charlatan-acolyte character that goes around convincing people of his BS religion. I plan on having his god come into being for real at like 14th level. But since the religion changes every time he talks about it, the god will be really chaotic and confused and angry at its existence
As a fairly new player, I often have trouble thinking of ways to engage in down time. These were some very good tips!
I so wish I could play in one of your campaigns.....
In the new videos you have posted since your campaign, I feel like the level of conversation has gotten quite a bit deeper. I like your past videos as well, but these are really getting me to think about the game in new ways. Keep up the good work!
Great series. I just started my very first character. A swash buckler Goblin Pirate. Please do more of these videos.
Don't you worry! Thanks for watching!
My downtime in my games consist of drinks and drunks
Make a drinking game out of downtime activities! Though that will proly just lead to more downtime drinking...
+JPruInc lol
JPruInc how would you encourage other downtime activities than drinking?
What do you mean thats not what dnd mean?
Great video. Seemed like a boring topic, at first glance, but you guys always have great, insightful conversations. Always gets the wheels turning, thinking of new ideas.
playing a pathfinder game with 2 new players in our group, we just started looking for one player's kidnapped mentor by visiting local bars and getting everyone there drunk, fun to relax after a couple tense battles
My backround on my phone is a picture of Jim.
I think he looks like Ryan Reynolds
You could always have a Game of Thrones situation where during your downtime, you try to set up a plan while you adventure (or make it the adventure) where you try to higher your place and prestige in the city
Good as always. Thanks for the knowledge and ideas to improve our campaigns. :)
Glad to help in any way we can!
I love downtime in my campaigns. My DM encourages it by having down time every game session. I wish the rules in the DMG and PHB would have more info on roleplaying outside of combat. Possibly more skills, definitely more info on buying a castle or starting your own business, or just simply buying a home and investing in a community. More information on how a player could use their out of combat time would greatly help the D&D franchise.
You guys keep talking about Spelljammers, would love to see you play a bit of that out. also would like to see how you worked the converting from 2nd to 5e for that. cause i looked into it, and i kind of really got lost.
You didn't have an establishing shot in your relatively long intro, so I was scared Jim Davis wasn't in this one
We always have Jim! He's the DM! And yes, I totally mugged for time in the intro. No regrets!
Man i wish i could sit down and have a conversation with you all about this topic. Im surprised you didn't mention doing one on one sessions with your members when theyre on downtime activies.
A merchant wizard on a ship, that sounds like a campaign on its own!
For downtime I like to do small encounters with NPC's I've made one of which is a former character of mine Flibbers Fallbottom. High end lvl wizard Alchemist. And when the players roll his number on the encounter table in town, he randomly appears before the party and offers them a random concoction from the list of potions and poisons in the DM book in the form of holding out a large box of potions and telling people to have one. Flibbers will show up in town, dungeons and even in the middle of battle he comes running in shouting "Potions! Anyone want some potions!" It's all random, and you have to identify the concoction, because you never know if Flibbers gave you poison, or a potion of fire giants strength.
I love all of the art in the background
Cool video as always!
I was wondering, it would be interesting a video about the most useful or must have non combat magic and non magic items.
Our party opened a museum of monsters in the biggest city we could find. Fun scenes with hiring a curator, skilled taxidermist, opening day events, special exhibits, etc. We cared about that city more than we would have when it was attacked by duergar, that's for sure.
On the Stronghold idea. We went into a town that had an abandoned haunted mansion. The town didn't want us to mess with it, but we knew we had to search for an item there. Being 12th level, we had a lot of money, so we decided to just buy it outright. We cleared it out and made it into our stronghold. It actually made a good spot for our campaign to end as several players had to leave. :)
I think that the tables for downtime have some positive links to story, and help to cover a baseline before launching into a noncombat side story.
5:50 I think the appropriate term is *Client* not "vassal" owing to it's a one time transactional relationship in which the Lord is giving your party *patronage*. He's not asking you guys to swear fealty.
In the Curse of Strahd campaign, my DM and I have a downtime activity thing going on where my Drow is creating a secret cult in order to raise enough faith for Lolth to 'maybe' help her escape. I've just been pouring resources into this side venture and it's great.
fun story: one of my characters, an artificier, by the name of Wolgang Van Weber, brought a small forge to help rebuild a village attacked by a army of goblins and orcs. He ended up with being the Ceo of a commercial empire, made out of various shops, and adventuring to find the finest materials. But as you can guest, his company was hijacked, and in one for your adventures, he got back his business.
Are you guys going to do anymore monster ones anytime soon? Those are my favourite
More are coming!
I'm working on a rogue assassin who's a poison brewer, and his poisons are all made during downtime, so I decided to rewatch this video to get some other downtime activity ideas, great stuff ya'll! (Also, totally stealing that fight club idea if I get a plausible opportunity).
Ive had a player take over an old keep (In Middle Earth) and he built it up over many sessions. To make castle management easy I added a loyal npc that would act as the Castle Manager and advisor. The player then chose his own officers amd soldiers, he hired workers to build walls and even had farms anf mines. At some stage he was invited to join the union of (then friendly) Isengard, Rohan and Gondor in defending their lands as his castle was close to isengard. It was super fun.
Downtime is something most campaigns I'm in that's skipped over. And creating your own spells? I'd love to be able to do that!
Thank you very much.
I'll be having several moments of downtime during my campaign because of how big it'll be, which would include (not be limited to) various forms of study; I'll be crossing each proverbial bridge as I get there. Hopefully, the moments of downtime will buy enough BTS time to continue developing what will be needed since it'll involve pretty much all of existence as a whole; certain plot points will require waiting if you're wondering.
down time activities... I once played a wiz / bard in 3.5 ed. that spent his time enchanting random stones with + (Everytime I start singing: Cast Major Illusion *Illusion of self at 5ft cube standing on ground where the stone is placed with the sound of my voice singing as I sing. ) + (Everytime I start singing: Cast: *Targeting "Any creature which stands before the illusion." the cube that is surrounding the stone *Suggesting any creature within that area to "Go abroad and spread my fame") ---- All this was approved by the GM. It cost a crap ton of XP but I made about 37 of these stones and dropped them around towns and areas that were heavily trafficked. I was pretty good at perform as well so everytime I tried to do my perform skills it activated the stones and created this fascination effect, that held any creature captive long enough for the other spells to take effect, and they would then spread my fame. --- The GM had all sorts of creatures running around in his world telling of Circu the Wandering Bard, I was a performer world famous and adored by millions. Money was no object wherever I went I got all the wenches, and my notoriety allowed me to accomplish a great many things, such as convincing the BBEG that he should just turn himself in and stop his evil ways because clearly I was working the case, and he had no chance of winning.
Aaaay!!! Safari LTD's chimera! I just stumbled upon their stuff and I'm planning to get a few for bosses in my campaigns
Honestly, downtime is the best part of DND for me, both as a DM and player: It lets the player pursue their life goals in a way that can't be done in just dungeons. It lets them create the hook for the next quest, as well as helps the DM understand a character much better.
How would you guys work in space into a game for downtime activity if the other players aren't particularly interested?(from a players stand point) I would enjoy some downtime activity to build on my characters social and economical strengths.
Roll to enjoy memes between adventures.
I let my players choose a hobby that would not affect gameplay. Maybe in many lvls they could get some benefit. One of my players said they wanted to quilt "you know like the thing with the two sticks". We laughed and said you mean knitting? We had a month off and did a gift exchange. He thought himself how to knit and gave his person a knitted dice bag. I loved that.
One of my part-mates is investing in inns around the land. He buys 51% of what it's worth, keeps the current owner in power and gains an earning per day (not alot but that's just the DM rule) oh and he hired aarokokra to send money and supplies between real estates
Love your video tips. Can you do one on what to do once a pc had died to make the next session fun but memorable?
and in today's auction are some items from an estate sale. meloth the mad went a bit too much off the rocker and at the age of 71 decided he no longer needed a spell or magical item to fly or forgot to use them and swan dived from the top of his tower to the paving stones below. so the first item on the docket is this lovely magical set of spectacles fashioned from gemstones that lets you see through solid objects. lets start the bidding at 2 platinum and 3 gold.
Norwegian. They spoke Norwegian in The 13th Warrior. :P
Great video; thanks for sharing some ideas! Gonna use a couple. ;)
You can always play dnd in dnd
Fun fact: In the 13th Warrior, they're each speaking their own language; Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, since they're mutually intellegible and all stem from Old Norse (Danish).
One of my players took over a bar once. It was pretty great.
Could you possibly elaborate on spell creation/crafting in a video?
Liam Mather start with modifying existing spells to get a feel for how things work and keep the DM involved but above all come up with something and try it out in game while being open to making changes if it ends up being broken in practice.
So much easier to role play joining a fight club than it is to actually join a fight club. "No holds barred!" "Gotta get punched in the face, sometimes!" Ha!
in my campaign my character is actually someone who's gotten to 20th level but got bored, so wished away the levels, left some of the gear that his party could use and left with the basics plus legendary weapons only he knew how to use, which have been scattered so he's now reclaiming them, and so he starts with a couple of benefits, he knows abyssal, a succubus and him got into a relationship but she actually loves him... apparently there's some lore that makes you a really powerful vampire if that happens and I can't find it... and so she ended up teaching him abyssal, his team went to the 9 hells where he learned infernal, he knows basic underdark, stuff like retreat, and learned celestial while parlaying with gods, now he's locked in a cell awaiting judgement for something he's not sure happened like how they say it happened but he's level 1 now and can't break the lock because he's dex based... can't wait for somebody to rescue him
Will you guys be at GenCon? I just discovered your channel and really enjoy your in-depth discussions.
Unfortunately, we will not be there. :(
Thanks for watching!
so..... a warlock seeding rumors on how to make a pact with their patron could easily be a downtime :D And get their patron more minons
Listening to you talk about the concept of just buying magical items as if they're off the shelf I thought about turning the issue around. After the characters just convert all their unwanted magical item loot into gold...into the hands of whomst does all that magical loot end up, and what do with it? How will charcters feel when in the next module they have to face a band of orcs who are armed with a bunch of +1 swords the players had found in a dungeon a few adventures ago. How about when they bust in on the boss battle, and when almost defeated the boss whips out some item the characters themselved has debated keeping but decided to sell. Have the characters end up being treated like war profteering arms dealers by the people.
Oh! Did you do a video specially about owning an activity?
level 20 bum squeezer here, gimme dat tush
Oh noes! I roll 17 on my stealth check to hide my bum.
"those aren't the only spells" and "write your own"
any tips on a system for that?
Op Shoshoi The first thing you should do is just make modifications to pre existing spells and over time you should start to learn the ins and out of how to make cools spells that aren't broken.
I love social interactions and non-combat roleplaying (these were also vital to the success of some of my first Shadowrun missions.) The problem I have with down time in tabletop rpgs is that it almost always splits the party, so that most of the time players are waiting for somebody else to finish haggling prices or trawling for rumors or whatever until it's their turn to do whatever they wanted to do in town, and getting bored in the meantime. Do you have advice for mitigating the waiting and boredom?
Try shifting rapidly between players. Give them 5 minutes each before skipping to what the next player is doing. If player 1 wants to socialize and gather rumors while player 2 is crafting something. Give player 1 a short 5 min conversation, then have player 2 do the first crafting roll, before giving player 1 a new 5 min conversation, giving player 2 crafting roll number 2 etc. This way the players get a better sense of how things are happening simultaneously.
Switch things up to make it feel like it is happening simultaneously and keep everyone engaged. Similar to running seperate combat encounters at the same time amongst a split party
What if the players accidentaly buy a magical murder weapon?!? Complications with framing, investigations, and murder in the town. What if you have a on-night-stand while in town and now have an angry lord hunting you for that! So many possibilities...
My well thought out and planned campaign about a colonial proxy war with a Mind Flayer pulling the strings on both sides, is still known as "The Boat Campaign" because the players spent the first 2 months of weekly sessions filling their downtime interacting with each other-- while I rolled each days weather, every day, on a 7 week trans-oceanic ship ride that was supposed to be the session 0 and start of first session.
It is so much fun sitting back and watching your players just role play amongst themselves. I love it! We've had entire sessions of it. I didn't have to do anything but play an NPC occasionally.
Okay, downtime fight club... does that mean XP for time in the fight club? And I mean even for the healer.
Amsterdam is my ideal downtime activity.
but but but... the dragons not gonna just kill itself yah know.
My party one time aquired two containers that had unlimited alcohol inside, so we started a brewery
Hey guys, I was wondering if you could go over setting up non-combat challenges for low-tier PCs (Lvl1-10). I always end up either making them way too hard or really easy to bypass. Thanks!
Also, just wanted to say that I found you about two days ago but I have basically binged your shows because the way you talk about D&D is exactly the way me and my friends do! The only difference is that you know WAY more. Thank you!
To clarify, I'm mostly talking Zelda style dungeon puzzles mostly. However, if there are other related things I would love to learn more!
Welcome to the club, I did the same thing when I found the channel a few months ago. I'm no expert, but I find that my problem and a problem that many of my DMs have had are to keep it easy to verbalize what the puzzle is, visual aids can help, but ones that you can just describe are easiest to cut your teeth on, also, if you can, make it so that the PCs can experiment and try a few different answers. Hope that helped a bit, last bit of advice, when in doubt, head to the forums, there are a lot of people online who would love to help with tons of experience.
all of the videos linked in the description say "not available"
What do you guys think of the Downtime UA?
They had an Unearthed Arcana this week about this.
Downtime for my players always ends up being see how much you can drink before the dice fuck you over
Is there any way to submit a question? How do you handle a rogue that wants to craft poison?
I'd like to play a warhammer 40k campaign where after my warp use goes completely wrong, i get possessed and like... burn children alive or some shit.
Like, become the new antagonist in whatever way.
I want to make a bard hex blade warlock that owns a ranch cause he loves his owlbear and wants more and money which means different animals also
I think this video is a good example of your typical videos.
It feels more like a brainstorm, which is really good if you are here to get some ideas but you never really discuss topics in the depth that I would like.
For instance, how would you pull off an enterprise? yes medieval companies were cut throat, so how would you express that, what are obstacles what do they need to do?
One obstacle that the business could run into is a local guild. The guild, seeing that there is a new person in town, would come in and suggest that they join if they want to do business. This could be costly to join (regular costs) with the typical assets that a guild would provide (protection, contacts, contract negotiations, etc) and problems (guild enemies, politics, authoritarianism, production/sales goals, limits on what can or cannot be done, etc). If they should choose not to join, this could earn the enmity of the guild and lead them require additional guards to protect them from seemingly random thieves/raiders/destructive individuals, being blacklisted, or priced out. Guilds were the biggest and often the best for businesses, merchants and crafts people to join in the middle ages and could often reflect that in their dealings with non guild folk - and they are just one of the many things that the folk would have to deal with.
Sad that I'm not the first one to think of a magic item auction in D&D.
I love this. I found the Downtime by Unearthed Arcana was a downer. I was expecting immersion ideas but what we got was number/dice dumps. I mean, its great for those games where you just rush through downtime and want to move to next campaign phase or arc, but for the higher immersion/roleplay, yeah it was disappointing.
the most used spell i created in my capain is slap of the pimp
13th warrior!!!
do you save a whole session for downtime activities or you just make it happen in between adventuring sessions?