Different Ways DM's Plan for Sessions in Dungeons and Dragons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ย. 2022
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How do YOU plan for your D&D Sessions?
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Missed opportunity to not have the “Throw it Back” Paladin interrupt the Ad-barian for the kickstarter about Divinity.
Man that’s… certainly a sentence.
Check your comments some one is spam your videos with scams
the last one is too real. especially when you're so used to everyone showing up late, but then of course the one time you slack, everyone shows up on time
Aint that the truth.
True so true.
Usually one or two of my players don't show up for most sessions. Then,last Saturday when I was having a sore throat and had to type out stuff,EVERYONE decided to join and for once they decided to roleplay while I'm trying not to rip apart my stupid keyboard that kept adding extra letters
Usually one or two of my players don't show up for most sessions. Then,last Saturday when I was having a sore throat and had to type out stuff,EVERYONE decided to join and for once they decided to roleplay while I'm trying not to rip apart my stupid keyboard that kept adding extra letters
Or they all get there early and are prepared to start immediately.
You forgot the "Murder Mystery DM"
"I'm just going to write down the basics, then let the players figure it out, because they will come up with something far more complex and convulted than I ever could."
I feel like I'm being called out rn
Honestly should have done that, but one of my players made an overpowered character, so she now gets to be the murderer. 😂 We're coming up with ways to keep that from the rest of the party so they won't immediately find out as she's picking people off.
Guilty as charged lmao. Except then I sometimes pull the rug on them by taking what they came up with, tossing in a bottle of paprika, and then twisting it.
Me
We actually had a 4 hour session that just consisted of 2 big bar fights...The first one we didnt ask for. The second we were like "hey that was fun, let's do it again!"
Reby? Is that you?
@@charroboo Maybe?
Of course. My party may not be crazed murder hobos, but even so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to do some insanity like that.
One tried to blow up a computer console. While in the room with it. Planning on jumping out the window to escape the explosion.....
All to make the bad guys think the building they couldn't see and could only hear via the comlink blew up....
Yeah.......
@@olimar7647 I once set a tavern on fire, as the DM.
@@fenixmeaney6170 why 😂
2:20
Tip for DMs go to your local pet stores
The ruined castles that are supposed to go in your fish tank make for real good terrain pieces
Haha yep. Fish tanks and fairy gardens have a lot of neat pieces you can put to use. XD
...too bad all of my D&D friends have moved to doing *online* sessions now. >.
after thought tip: Unless you like the smell of fish, don't get pre-owned/used.
@@faolan2174 I’m with you there ;_;
@@Ravenleaf182 And then there are the underwater encounters...
@@Alche_mist that is literally not really relevant with walking around with mats and miniatures smelling like fish in reality.
Brennan Lee Mulligan: My plans never get ruined.
Emily Axford, crawling her way out of hell: [maniacal cackling]
Love the shout out to Brennan Lee Mulligan. Dude is one of my favorite people of all time, whether it's his D&D games, improv, competitiveness, etc
I absolutely envy his improv-talent. Good god this guy is amazing :D
That one bit of “Matt Mercer” drinking Critter tears was absolutely golden. Legitimately laughed out loud. Excellent work 😂😂😂
"Who's ready for pain?"
Brennan Lee Mulligan: "My plans never get ruined."
Amy Vorphal: "I shall become the boatman."
Brennan: "....um.... yeah, okay, uh.... stories.... *brain reboots* "
😂 (Still one of my favorite Dimension 20 moments!)
Amy Vorphal is a menace to any d&d table and I love her for that
*SLIPPERY PUPPET*
Or Ally with the "can I roll a nat 20 and come back to life?" in Fantasy High
and that was after he already had pull a new final encounter out of his ass because the PvP he was trying to lead the players towards just wasn't going to happen
Can I get a link to that one
Brennan, whenever his plans inevitably _do_ get ruined: Thank God for those improv classes. Now I just need to paint a scene with words while I think of how tf to work around this.
When the PCs kidnap the Dwarven Princess
"The prepared but deep down knows the party won't follow anything he has prepared"
I relate so much to this 😭🙋♂
Yo same!
Just in the last three weeks, I've ran sessions where I had an npc tell the pcs to talk to the emperor of the nation they were going to in order to find another npc that could help them as that npc was off in a different part of the empire. One week the party decided to raid the imperial vault. The next week, they not only decided to sabotage a caravan going to a neighboring kingdom, but also talk to every npc in the capitol city other than the emperor to find this other person...
This was all after they had decided they wanted to challenge the emperor to combat for said information
My suggestion: have 2 weeks between sessions. Have the party decide what to do by the end of the first rest week, and spend the second week preparing for it.
That happened at the end of my first campaign. We had a 3 week break before challenging the BBEG, and I had the idea to call in the favor from the Orc Tribe to help storm the keep. The DM took a week to prepare that scenario, only for us to spring on him that the orcs were a diversion as we flew in through a window, directly to the BBEG’s throne.
That's 10000% me and my campaign.
Unless your players literally turn around 180° and run away from your adventure on purpose there's a pretty good fix for that:
Imagine the following. The evil cult stole the artifact from the palace and is now heading towards the temple on the remote peninsula.
The guards in the palace know about the theft (takes some convincing-shennannigans to get the info) and then the harbor master can identify that those cultists took off by ship. Now the players have to get on another ship following them, arriving at the peninsula after some misadventures including a kraken.
There's at least 3 major breaking points. If the players don't think about talking to the guards for some reason, they never learn about the adventure.
If the don't talk to the guards, or mistrust the harbor master or don't want to go by ship.
Think in scenarios.
Have a map of the region. Your NPCs with their goals and agendas and descriptions for the regions on your map.
Not trusting the harbor master? Well there's of course that old salty fisherman who also saw the guys.
Travelling by land? Well - if there's no kraken to fight, maybe there's a hydra - who knows. Or the swamp thing, depending if they follow the coastline or go through the swamp...
It doesn't take that more preperation - but is incredible more robust than a plotline the players can leave - accidentaly or on purpose at any point...
First session of my campaign: so prepared I made a cue-to-cue list, cross-referenced to the script I wrote, and had a tech rehearsal.
Seventh session of my campaign:
I have maps, stats, a vague idea where the story's gonna go, and a whole lotta improvisation
Meanwhile the first session that I ever ran was 100% improv because I just decided to start a campaign with a friend that one time. Somehow still ongoing.
Brennan Lee Mulligan: my plans never get ruined
**Ally Beardsley has entered that chat with their classic Nat 20**
That last one was totally unrealistic. No one pulls a Dorito out and puts it BACK IN THE BAG!! What kind of psychopath does that?
You check the phone while holding the dorito in your mouth, trying not to crunch it and drop it but can't help adding more and more pressure cause you want to nom it so bad.
@@Nempo13 You sir are a gentleman and a scholar
"My plans NEVER get ruined" - Oh, poor Brennan... I haven't seen all the seasons and I can't count the amount of times I've seen him shocked.
When you've Ally "Nat20" Beardsley and Emily "Controlled Chaos" Axford at your table, that's just something that happens.
As a DM for a campaign of 2 years, I can confirm that I've only ever had 1 session ever go to plan. It is still one of my proudest freaking moments.
It helped me, to think of adventures as less of scripts or plots and more of scenarios.
You have the point where your PCs enter the scenario a few key informations how to get to the end. The rest is merely descriptions of locations, maybe interesting items and different NPCs with their own plans and goals.
In that case the route the players take from Start to Finish, doesn't matter as much. Just make sure for them to either find key informations at some location or by talking to some NPC.
It doesn't matter if the rusty key is at the bottom of the well, or hidden in the chest in the old mine. Both areas are littered with monsters to overcome, both include searching. And it shouldn't also matter if they get the information where the BBEG is, from the huntsman they saved from peril, or from the note the dead traveling merchant had in their pocket...
The best is - you can salvage all the leftovers (locations and people players didn't interact with) and use them somewhere else.
Another thing I read is: Failing forward - regardless if the players succeed or not - let the story progress.
Situation: The ranger who should lead the party through the swamp got abducted.
Scenario A: The players locate the ranger in some remote swamp village. They sneak in, break into the hut the guy is kept, free him and leave. Conclusion: They are re-united with their comrade and able to move on.
Scenario B: The players get caught by the monstrous denizens of the swamp town and thrown in a hut. Where they find their lost comrade. Luckily one of the players has something sharp to cut the ropes. They can move on - but might have lost some of their gear, or the rest of the adventure get's harder, because they are searched by swamp-people hunting parties from now on...
It's nice to know that I am not alone in my unprepared procrastination. I used to try to be prepared but my players are chaos incarnate and I gave up on it very quickly.
I always start my campaigns super prepared, but inevitably I am reminded why I stopped bothering quite so much by half way through the last one 🤣
I usually front-load the work and then cruise on that for a while waiting for the party to catch up to where I had planned to, and fill in BS where needed when they go astray from my plans. Which is to say I fill in a lot of BS.
I just get a map from a friend some general ideas in my head and if there is a boss fight I write down its hp bar ahead of time (oh and stats)
Then I wing every single thing
My players are the same. I once had a party with FOUR wild mages... It got pretty... Wild...
I only have a basic outline for where I hope the party will go during a session. Even then I'm mostly on the spot improving stuff. It's been at least 8 sessions and they're still hanging out in the starter town. (Though one of those sessions I spent the entire time trying to get one of the pcs to go sleep like the rest of the party so we could continue on to the next day.) Hopefully this next upcoming Thursday I can get them out of the starter town.
I have the benefit of over 30 years in the same game system(s), so my weekly prep is usually about half an hour of setting the timeline and jotting down stat blocks for a few encounters.
1:46 felt like a personal attack, hits a little too close to home. I intentionally set up encounters for them to ESCAPE from and they say "I don't know what retreat means" and somehow manage to win, so I just try to have fun anymore
That's indeed a thing I also struggle with, well depending on the game we play. In D&D and other fantasy systems it's players knowing they are the 'heroes' of the story and able to overcome any challenge...
The only things I came up with was to use so many enemies nobody of sane mind would even think of challenging them. Players, unfortunately aren't part of the set of 'people of sane mind'...
What works, kinda (but feels a bit cheaty) is for the monster they aren't supposed to kill (yet) to be immortal.
It's completely different in, for example Call of Cthulhu. Fighting isn't an integral part of the game. It's a thing to be avoided, as it's incredible deadly. (That's by the way the main reason for the bad rep CoC got back in the day, as DM's set up their Call of Cthulhu games, just like their D&D sessions, and were surprised when one unsepakable horror was able to wipe the floor with a bunch of librarians, private investigators and stage magicians...)
I had planned for an epic chase across the city when a main enemy escapesthe characters, adding reinforcements along the way and having large obstacles and challenges. HOWEVER, the one enemy did not infact escape to start the chase and the whole rest of the session was just improvised.
A DM is never late. She arrives precisely when she means to.
As the spouse to the DM that I have watched be the Prepared, the Unprepared, the Normal, the Late Night Thought, the Veteran, the Inspired, AND the Real Life DM... Yeah, there's also the "Secretly got this idea from something my players said" and "I'm in complete denial about the upcoming derailment of my plans."
DM Expectation: The viscount will mention the shadow assassin even though there's no way he could possibly know that's who attacked them, then request the party go on a long, treacherous journey into the Death Chasm in a clear attempt to kill them off. The players will clearly know that he's in on the plot based on the slip up, but just in case they don't, they'll probably get suspicious about why he wants them to go to the Death Chasm, which is notoriously lethal and no one returns from. He'll get increasingly upset and threaten the party if they don't go in order to start conflict. If the party confronts or attacks him on the spot, his guards will join in. If not, he'll apologize and invite them back to 'explain everything' at his private residence later, and will be waiting with a band of shadow assassins to ambush them. After that, they'll find notes in his residence to lead them to...
Player reality: "Thank goodness you were able to defeat the shadow assassin and return safely!" Yeah, no problem, 'told you we were strong. Haha! Okay, what's next? "Since you can clearly handle yourselves, I need you to delve into the Death Chasm. It's the only way we'll find answers to this mystery! Others are too afraid or have failed, but I trust you will succeed and save this poor town." Death Chasm? The one that's famously killed everyone that's gone into it, and even the famous heroes of the town who defeated the lich died in? Didn't the kindly priest of The Goddess of Aid and Truth tell us not to go near there or trust people in the town? No wonder--they must be lying about the Death Chasm to keep us away, like in Scooby Doo! Aw sick absolutely my dude we're there just point the way. We're gonna be the heroes who defeated the Death Chasm! I bet we'll get statues! Oooh and if the heroes died in there maybe there will be loot...
DM who has 3 more events, some intrigue and a new contact to talk with the party as well as the other side of the city for them to explore, and absolutely 0 prep for a Death Chasm dungeon: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-
Indeed, as a gm myself I have gone through all of these and in the future I shall go through them again -_-
Yup, I have definitely gone through all of these types myself as well, though I definitely trend more toward the Prepared and the Late Night Thought.
My favorite is the "secretly got this idea from something my players said" you suggested, when I get to do that. My players are always saying "Don't give him any ideas!"...half the time they are just guessing what I had already planned and blame the person that suggested it when it happens. The other half the time I'm plugging it in later in the adventure because I liked the idea and they never see it coming.
@@RaethFennec It is D&D. Players expect to be sent into 'Death Chasm'. Call it 'Unicorn Vale' or 'mount gender bender' and they will avoid it like the plague.
I’m a late night DM. My creativity comes to me at the most unpredictable times LOL.
My best advice to DMs is to make sure you are actually having fun, as soon as prepping for a session becomes a chore, take a break. Most people are totally cool with rescheduling a session if you need a break. I find that my best sessions are when I had fun prepping and I feel the inspiration kick in. 💯
Absolutely, me too! I'm often just laying on my couch at night, staring at the ceiling and letting my mind wander, when the best DnD ideas come to me.
And as long as you keep in mind that the purpose of your prepwork is to give your friends a good time, it rarely feels like a chore!
I'd call my method "The 100 tweaks" where my setting has been started over a few times, and each time we start over, I changed something to try and be better than before. In my case, it's resulted in me from running the plotline of the first Kirby game, to something almost entirely different, while still being set in the Kirby universe. [I needed a template and this one has kept my players wanting more.]
I did that too. My 2 previous campaign are no longer canon because they brought conflicting informations about what I wanted to change or implement in my world. Sounds sad but I don't care much actually. They were pretty bad anyway. Though I like to reuse some old PCs or NPCs from time to time.
So, wait - you play the same adventure multiple times? With the same players? Interesting.
@@robertnett9793 I mean, I'm a bit of a novice, and we've had to start over after chapter 1 a good few times, but each new venture has me improving my skills as a DM. I try to at least add 2 or 3 new details so my players are always on their toes. I might even *remove* former details so they cant see it coming as players (Not to their detriment, just for their enjoyment.) I only have two players, and they're my closest friends.
As some context for what Chapter 1 entails, it's trying to get Whispy to lower defences he has around Dedede's castle [giant and sharp roots that'll impale you,] Getting a magic marple from Fololo and Falala at their fortress [To avoid special mirrors that produce weaker mirror copies of those without the marbles, and hostile to the same people,] battling Kracko so he cant zap you on your way into the castle, and then K.O.ing Dedede, which lets you take 50 GP and an uncommon magic item from his treasury, or just 150 GP. Sorry for the long reply.
@@mr.reborn5518 Ah. Ok. It does serve for you as a learning experience then. Or to polish an adventure / campaign you want to publish in some way.
Well, that's indeed understandable. And good on you, that your friends are willing to help you with this.
Also - every table is different, every group of people enjoy different things to do, so any advice like 'never do X or always do Y' rings hollow (save for some extreme cases).
That said, in my experience setting that high standards for yourself puts you under a lot of pressure. There are people who flourish under stress - but it's also a quick way to burn yourself out.
Also as you describe it, it feels a bit like dwelling on the same mistake over and over, which might be fine if you have to have a certain product in the end (aka if you want to publish an adventure for example).
But it might be worth while to recognize what didn't work out in your last adventure and avoid the pitfall in the next one, instead of iterating over the same idea until 'perfection'.
So your story can move on, you and your players experience new adventures and you learn on the way. Nobody starts being perfect. And nobody ever achieves perfection. And - that's the important part: Nobody needs to achieve perfection.
The Basic: Uses the campaign modules as written.
The Frankenstein: Cuts and pieces different parts of the campaign modules into something new.
The Homebrewer: Makes up own meticulously fleshed-out campaign, couched in an array of fantasy tropes and over-the-top plot contrivances.
The Inverter: Runs a game of Curse of Strahd, but the players are servants of the Count and are doing various quests assigned by their master to screw over the Heroes.
Frankenstein of a DM here, loosely basing my campaign on the Tyranny of Dragons module (with Tiamat as overarching BBEG). Got one player whose character (a half-elf wizard) has three Witchlight Carnival visits in his backstory, though no Feywild visits followed any of them. And I figure that since ToD is supposed to take place just long enough BEFORE the events of Curse of Strahd, at some point I can arrange for the player party to socialize with the legendary Wizards Three (Elminster of Toril, Mordenkainen of Oerth, and Dalamar of Krynn) just for a bit of levity if I'm feeling benevolent enough to offer mostly-easy EXP.
@@ladycordelia17 Same. Am starting up a campaign of Tyranny of Dragons with 5 main Chromatic Dragon villains based on the Chroma Conclave from Crit Role serving under Tiamat, with each being from a different Module (ex. Iymrith from Storm King's Thunder).
@@ladycordelia17 Nice, like how you're tying everything together.
Literally had my first session with all new players and me as a new dm, meticulously planned out a 2-shot introductory campaign to introduce the different mechanics, setting up defenses and defending a town from a goblin raid party.
The literal first thing the players did was turn around, rob the mayor's office, used their folk hero background to extor- i mean persuade the villagers to give them money and broke into the mayor's home in search for goodies xD
I’m a brand new DM and have only been a player for about 6 months, but really wanted to test myself. So I’m running what was supposed to be a one session haunted house for Halloween. I prepared very well, knew the party would not do anything as planned, and have been moving encounters and treasures around the entire time. Tomorrow night is the third session I’ll DM for them in the “one session” haunted house and there will likely be at least one more after that. I have felt a little bit like each of these DMs throughout the process and can honestly say I love it and can’t wait to start a full campaign in a few months!!!
The more I DM, the more I realize how much I can get away with by just winging it. 😅😂😅😂
For awhile now, I've been planning my second-ever DM'ing experience, aka my second time DM'ing a one-shot. It's for my niece and nephew, to see if they end up liking D&D at all. And I will be a mix of prepared and aesthetics DM........ if I ever finish preparing 🙃 I just have like 3 battle maps left to prepare and we'll be ready to play.... is what I've said for the last three months...
Man, it’ll be the morning of the day we scheduled a session and I’ll just say “yeah, something along the lines of _________ happens, the rest I’ll either wing it or they’ll do it for me”. Works 90% of the time, but only because I have checkpoints thought out
My method is have goals I hope to accomplish, and see if the party actually does it or not. Examples include introducing plot threads, potentially having an encounter with the BBEG (Strahd in my case), or arriving at certain areas.
I rarely get all of them accomplished in a session, but I put multiple goals down on paper and then see if the party ends up going for any of them.
And sometimes you get a side quest to Blinsky's Toys because the barbarian heard about it and wants a toy.
I need to DM next
Waaay too accurate. We started a group so I was Newbie for a while. Now I've graduated to Unprepared 🤣
OOF that last one though..... too real... I'm late to most sessions so the one time I arrived early, everyone was late and were shocked to see me already there and set up. They apologized and asked why I didn't send something in the group chat and I just said "I am the LAST person, to throw stones about being on time. You're adults, you know when session is, even if you're late, you still showed up."
Matt drinking Critter Tears now gives me life.
And he gets a free refill after every session!
My friend is our DM and she is definitely the prepared. I would wing it, I’m so disorganised, I’m very happy she’s the DM and not me, lol
I feel the "prepared, but no one will follow the plan" DM! I was running a Call of Cthulhu session out of a book where the baddie was making a monster in his basement. The players were supposed to go through the front door, find the secret room in the basement, confront the baddie and his creation. That didn't happen. From the second they saw the baddie drop a severed arm and walk into his house, they ran over with dynamite (I was a newbie and forgot the damage was insane, so I let the priest player talk me into giving him a bandalero of dynamite. Rookie mistake that derailed everything.)...and within minutes, the house was rubble without anyone having gone inside, session over.
The 'Brennan Lee Mulligan' was golden
I love your videos so much. They are always so funny and sometimes teach me some stuff. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the reminder to plan for my session that is happening tomorrow.
Brandon one reminds me of his campaing goal to make everyone fight against each other... foiled by evil friendship
Brennan and Matt... 😂
Too Perfect 😂
What has neither flesh, bone nor nail yet has 4 fingers and a thumb?
A glove.
I'm totally the inspired one. Every major plot point in my campaigns always started with me going "Yoooooo" and then just building everything else around it
I just DM’d my first game Friday, it was the perfect mix of fun and chaos to completely exhaust
I’m running my first ever session in four days and have nothing planned out, just the idea floating in the space between my ears. Ah well, it’ll be fiiine, four days is more than 30 minutes, which is all the time I’ll need I’m sure
Mine is "Have a vague plan for what's going to happen, hash out the details at the last minute, then find out again that your party never speedruns through content so half of it is left over for next session. (But they COULD so you overprepare again next session)
Also, I am extremely lucky I have a party who actually enjoys following the rails. And that most of them are engineers who understand the importance of irl logistics and keeping commitments.
Back in the 90s the only prep I ever did was having a few ideas and making sure I had my books and dice. I could just flip to pages of the monster manual and have a notebook handy to track initiative and HP and such. These days playing online on a VTT it takes a lot more time and work to setup maps with proper lighting, build encounters with all the enemy stat blocks prepared in the system for rolling and such. So a lot of prep work needs done, specially to have things ready to deal with whatever crazy unpredictable things the party decides to do.
As a DM....yes. all of these are how you DM. All of them at the same time, sometimes all at once.
Ok that last one was just a personal attack 😭 great video 😂
I lean towards a mix of normal and unprepared, because I've learned that the party has a habit of derailing your plans anyway. Take some notes, scribble down a general outline, prepare some combat encounters and improvise the rest. Last time, the party spent an entire session 'sightseeing' after I described a crumbling wall that is supposed to protect the village but is slowly crumbling apart because they villagers can't/won't repair it. It was only meant to describe the poor defenses of the village, but my players took it upon themselves to thoroughly inspect the wall from all sides, did a full perimeter sweep, made several notes about weak points of entry (which I had to make up on the spot, just to keep it interesting) and then went about scouting the surrounding landscape to determine which side was the most advantageous for an invading force to arrive from.
It was just a ramshackle wall. It meant nothing. But in that particular session, it meant everything to them, so I rolled with it. They're probably planning to rebuild and fortify it next session, but I'm actually fine with that, because it gives me more time to create the invading force that wouldn't have existed if they had left the wall alone and tended to their business as usual.
Gotta go where the flow takes you.
Yes! Simply yes!
Those "Late night thoughts" are exactly the reason I sleep with a notepad and pen next to my bed.
Omg XD the "Late NIght Thought, "The Inspired". and "The Aesthetics" happens to me all the time! Especially all at once! XD
Can definitely relate to the last one, we always sat around and chatted for an hour before playing lol
Dude! I did the series one from your 2nd one shot series!!
The Mercer dig....had me rolling a DEATH SAVE!!
"The prepared but nothing goes the way he planned" Rob from VLDL D&D
Love your videos!
I nearly choked on my food with the Matt Mercer one
“The unprepared” literally me every time
I go with a combo of prepared and unprepared. I always have at least 3 options for combat and one good encounter that I roll possibility for in travel sessions, have them role play out what they do with their downtime; such as train, teach, or study, and I typically have 1 mini boss encounter for every main story beat. The rest is improv, adlib, and we'll timed music changes (if I remember to change the song.)
They usually follow the story beats, my dice rolls usually give them easy encounters or peaceful travel, and my mini bosses usually get their teeth kicked in by good strategy and teamwork.
The Brennan one was awesome
How I imagine DMs preparing: "Well, my PLAYERS don't do anything, so WHY SHOULD I??
I run D&D at my job (I'm a therapist, and I construct a campaign that's cathartic/skill-building/self-esteem building for clients to run PCs in that they've created however they want but with a handful of therapeutic questions guiding them) and I'm naturally the unprepared, but I'm getting more comfortable in prepping and one day hope to multiclass in The Aesthetic.
I feel called out!
Yeah, the last session I DMed started as;
1> hey, wanna come over and play DnD?
me> Uhhh... sure...?
1> awesome. Then I'll see you in a bit.
half an hour later
me> Hey guys, thanks for inviting me
2> Yeah, no problem. I really hope we'll be able to get through everything you have planned
me> what do you mean?
2> Aren't you the DM?
me> whelp.... I guess we're doing improve tonight!
The trick to DMing is keeping notes, having some worldbuilding, three or four plot hooks, and a name generator ready to generate. Just have the plot running in the background, the party will collide with it soon enough as things go absolutely out of control into madness-inducing chaos.
I started my campaign fully prepared, I had bullet points with general storyline, I had character notes, I created interactive events with homebrew rules I tested out, and I had prepared encounters (even if I hadn't got to grips with challenge difficulty) ...yeah that didn't last 2 sessions when I came to realise the party wouldn't do it and I instead reverted to making up stuff on the fly and making maps last minute based on the players plans
the Matt and Brenan ones are dope
I DMed for the first time recently (I was running a pre-written one) and I was running around my house gathering everything together
I have only had a session go according to plan twice; the first was simple luck.
The second one was a 3-day long campaign that I planned from beginning to end with EVERY action the players could take. When I say Every, I mean Every. It took 3 whole weeks to prepare a campaign that happened in a *single* city. A city filled with barely any NPCs. On the bright side, they appreciated me playing 4d chess with me because I made the villain a cosmic horror.
The late night thought hits too close to home
I felt so many of those in my DMing experience
Definitely like the sponsorships happening at the beginning vs the end of the sketch.
Always gotta throw that "let me make a quick cup of coffee" when you wake up at session start and need a quick bit of time to take a piss and also make coffee.
The group I DM for all live in the same area, most of them in one house, and another next door, so they only time D&D is missed each week is usually if they're actually sick, or because of me who lives in a different area not being able to make it
I love how my DM is like, make a new character that's your homework, then I'm ready for the next session, and he cancels because he didn't do his homework. Making the fricing session!!!
I am both "the Inspired" and "the prepared but deep down knows the party won't follow anything he has prepared"
Okay, that Matt Mercer one hit home. XD I need to watch EXU Calamity to see his DM style as I've yet to see any with him as one.
"The Late Night Thought" is why there are potato people, flesh tanks, and rampant magic tomfoolery in my current dnd game
I always procrastinate and then stress plan in the last day before the session 😂
1:44 ouch you got me
I fit mostly into the “unprepared”, because I find I just go into world building instead of campaign building. I have only DMed one session though and have had a few late night thoughts.
I felt that 'why do I even bother' so... so very hard.
I'm the unprepared, or the I've walked my party into something that wasn't suppose to be a quest line, and now it is.
The Aesthetics one hurt so bad lol
I flew home for the holidays a few years ago and ran a session for my friends where I had a full game map printed and laminated and got a whole mess of minis to be used during a home brewed war game I created, but one of them rolled a nat20 during the first perception check, and by the time they finished a completely improvised encounter that I had to make up because of that roll, we were out of time and the war game never happened 😩
When running a once-in-a-decade in-person game, never give your players a way to take the route you hadn't planned for, because it'll be a lot of wasted effort for nothing lol
Nice 👌
Brennan: "My plans never get ruined"
**enter Lou Wilson and Ally Beardsley's Nat 20s**
SO. MUCH. TRUTH.
Just forgot one thing on Matt Mercet bit. That ice cube rolling sound while drinking.
'Do-go-lo-lu'.
I'm a combination of the Inspired and the Late Night Thought.
I ran a campaign set in an alternate version of Kamen Rider Zi-o and one campaign day, while I was doing my day job, I got hit with this thought:
"What if the War that happened in this timeline was monetized, directly preventing the events of this other timeline when the story broke, which also led into the hero of the third timeline having to not have to fight his greatest foe, and instead he lost faith in humanity and retired from being both a hero and doctor?"
0:53. This happens to me more times than I'd like to admit
Thx for mentioning my boy Brennan Lee Mulligan. And yeah I'm eternally winging it DM with a half page filled with chicken scratch
I just make up a story as we go, and make up random encounters, such as a fish mafia inside of a casino, with a Megala-Don (get it) who has a fire bolt shotgun and Eldritch Blast Tommy-Gun
you forgot the Chris Perkins "How shall we slaughter the party this session?"
This feels like a personal attack xD
I relate to a few because I shift regularly depending on the situation my groups are currently in :D I prepare for around 1 to 2 hours and get 2 sessions almost every time (sometimes more) and the in-between those scenarios, I can just madly wing it with ✨ Improv ✨
You just need the right group to make your DM-life easier ~
The Prepared should have been "Alright, I have everything laid out on the table... and everyone cancelled."
My Journey through the years DMing my friends:
"The Prepared" ----> "The Prepared But Knows Deep Down The Party Won't Follow Anything He Prepared" --------> "The Unprepared"
Looks about right.
How I personnaly prepare my sessions :
- I make WAY too much content for a single session. Of course the first fight is going to take two thirds of it, and my players will want to know everything about every place, NPC, object, etc...
- I plan to slack off for the next three sessions. After all, I have made more than four times what was necessary last time.
- Being a perfectionnist, I go back to my prep and flesh it out "a little". I get a lot of ideas everytime that I want to include. I try to build a more open narrative, to allow my players to have more inputs into what's happening. I make 3D battlemaps on a VTT because I'm not satisfied with those I made previously and was planning to re-use. I end up putting almost as much time into each session as I did with the first one.
- What was supposed to be a two sessions scenario end up becoming a twelve sessions story arc. Way more stuff happened than what was originaly planned, it was fun as hell.
- I'm completely exhausted, and ask one of my players to take the DM mantel back (we switch regularly).
- After a month or two, rince and repeat.