Here's a gem: 18:10 On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology, meaning: before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole.
@@Brisarious He's quoting "an old professor of his", I assume from his philosophy program - might be their own statement, or it could be paraphrased from any scholar/philosopher from the last few centuries.
That is a pretty right wing idea... It is almost a quotation of Margaret Thatcher: "They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." Whatever the relation between individuality and culture is, I wouldn't be so adamant about one predating the other.
I did that Me and my brother and some friends had a campaign where they were street urchin children and it started with them warming themselves around a trashcan fire (I dm’d)
On the kid question - we play every three weeks and all our kids (6 of them ranging from almost 2 to 8) just play around the house whilst we play. I think it has really boosted their imaginative play too as they see their parents talking shit about kobolds etc and so they feel they have got total permission to let their imagination go crazy. I also run a Kids DnD for three of them - which is wild!
If you DM for kids, at least from my experience, you find one of two ways things go. Either you get a wacky wild awesome idea that you're not sure how to roll for, or you get the most blunt super simple, super straightforward solution. It is awesome
My wife currently running a DND game and she doesn't want to watch fantasy high until she's finished. When it's done though we're going to be getting drop out for fantasy high. You've guys have done a really amazing job and if theres one thing I've learnt is menu's are for cowards and simpletons!
I havent looked at a menu in the 2 years it took between me watching that video and me posting this comment right now, juuust now, period, how do you end a comment if it isnt a question or quote? "so my friend put her baby down" amy vorpal, this video, 21:30.
I've seen so many players in my earlier days of DMing who make characters who actively do not want to join a party or do not want to adventure, and I get stuck in this corner of "how do I keep the adventurer here", and eventually I realized the answer what Brennan said, that they made the wrong character for the game.
Or you toss something in their way that makes them want or need to adventure. Talk to those players - ask them if they want to do a story-experience where they're driven to adventure. Ask them how they'd like their character to be driven - is there something they'd be so driven to get that they'd adventure for it, do they like one or more of the party members, can you make them need something like a cure or lose something precious? Or you communicate and find that you need or prefer a different character - that's cool too.
My dnd group has been playing together for four years. When I got pregnant I was worried about losing it to care for my baby but nah I took a couple weeks off to recover then jumped back into running my game. I’m lucky my husband understands how important it is to me to keep the group together and he’s super supportive. Babies don’t have to ruin games as long as you have a support system in place ❤️
It's fucking insane how much this is true. Listening to all of Brennan's insane stories about like, winning enough money on a gameshow to move to LA and start his career, or him talking about how he went viral on twitter because the Milano cookies people heard about how he, after a truly terrifying car wreck, crawled back inside of the now upside-down totaled car to grab a half-eaten bag of mint Milano cookies and thought that was cool? It all makes sense now.
@@four1629 The crazy thing is that Milano publicly talked about how they were gonna send Brennan like, a crate of free mint cookies because of him going viral, and then they never did! Brennan says that he considers it a personal slight and still demands he get them one day.
I actually created a character in a long-running campaign that was supposed to be a one-off 2D character that I would never play again cuz I moved away to college. But then I continued to be able to play, and they were the orphan (tho they had a father figure) and they were very apathetic/stoic type. And my DM being the amazing guy that he was and talking to me about stuff out of the game helped me guide my character to become 3D, and the character never became like this joyous, super happy guy or anything. But he went from a 2D "I have trained my whole life to be the strongest warrior for the sake of strength" guy, to a 3D "I've found a family I never knew was possible, and I wanna become stronger to protect them". And I'm glad I was able to do that
Brennan getting that morality is a construct created ad hoc to justify feeling ok about one's already executed actions gives me heart flutter. I would love a chance to play at one of his tables.
I. Loved. This. Episode. There has to exist, in some reality, a podcast where Amy and Brennan discuss the hobby and field questions full time. Genuine DMs with Genuine answers and valid discussions.
The Goblins falling into the traps during every day life makes me think about how many keys crests and medals you need to go to the bathroom in an Umbrella facility in a resident evil game
Brennan's "making something up on the spot" voice is 100% the same as his baseline voice and it's impossible to tell when he's not saying something real unless it just doesn't sound like it would be a real thing.
26.00: imagine being a character that is a normal villager/NPC, who starts their adventure on a quest to hunt down the murderhobos that destroyed the character's town when they passed through.
I've always wanted to play a oath of vengeance paladin who's secretly a dragon. Their backstory is that they had spent thousands of years playing Farmville in overseeing a local village that it considers part of it's 'horde'. All until one day a stranger came and killed the villagers favourite chicken... Now they are on a mission to hunt down and kill the criminal who did it.
I realise this comment is years old. However, there is a novel series that kinda starts like this. It's called NPC's by Drew Hayes, the murder hobos in this case die in the tavern and the npcs have to take their quest up to not get the king's wrath on their town and families.
The point about traps in a dungeon inspired me. The adventurers find that every trap has been disabled by the kobolds, but they can re-arm them for their own gain.
i ran a goblins campaign where they were doing the chore list for their parents of cleaning out the traps, and resetting them, and making sure the gelatinous cubes were fed and the acid trap wasn't too basic. it was literally a 10 thing chore list with a hidden chore ont he back. so much fun.
Lots of interesting ideas, this series came at a right time for me! I started a campaign last week and we did the character creation as a group with everybody picking two best stats and one worst describing them as a character. Only after that we started thinking about the classes of the characters, so everyone would get a character that relies on their best abilities. Basically I made them start at "lvl 0,5" and they're still in the process of discovering their background and skills, as no one really had a clear idea or strong story behind their characters. So we will play the game and create those stories together as we go. I actually studied philosophy of religion in the university and ethics is something I've read a lot about, but despite that we didn't even go into thinking about alignment in our game. I really like the D&D alignment system for the "all-explaining" simplicity, but I feel it's mainly a tool for the DM more than for the players. For example if the DM needs to quickly come up with a NPC, the alignment will pretty much reveal the NPC's general attitude towards the players' actions. The players really don't need to confuse themselves with alignment, but it gives the DM a good base to act on. We had a lot of fun and I'm already waiting for the next session as we will be playing regularly! :)
Be patient on the children front. I started gaming in college. Got older. Had kids. Had chaos. Kept playing, less DMing. Now we play WITH our grown and even younger kids. They can still be annoying but can also be fun. Watching what kind of gamers they become is a special gift to a gaming parent. Rollon.
Speaking of characters that are not fun, I once DM'ed a game for (mostly) newbies, and the only player with some prior D&D experience decided to play a character that was basically racist, and believed all the other races were scum. So while the rest of the characters were interested in following the plot hooks and figuring things out, the more experienced player's character would stomp around after them complaining (in his character's native tongue) about how demeaning it was to have to associate with these worthless other races. I eventually had to take them aside for a chat about the example they were showing to the new players, but the game pretty much fell apart after that. :(
@@Defiring dude that’s TERRIBLE advice. If you create in-game consequences for out-of-game problems that ruins the experience for everyone. I think they handled the situation very well
It's a shamee because I feel like that could work a tiny bit, just not with racism. That player was absolutely the problem and sticking the fun out of it for others. Maybe if it was a more general biteless sarcasm and snobbishness for everything/ dramaticness hiding a warm hearted interior due to the characters backstory (ie, raised by nobility perhaps?) could be done right and made into a flaw that allows a character arc to happen while not being too overbearing, but the person playing would have to really know what they were doing to pull that off. Then again, that is more like a completely separate character to that one guy but I sort of see how someone might be misguided enough to go for racism when they actually meant something like this. Actual fullblown racism (against multiple fantasy races, no less) just should not and will not fly like 90% of the time, and its too similar to real life issues to not chord with someone else on that table. I don't understand why they would decide to go for that - especially on a table full of completely new players - when one wrong move could permanently ruin someone else's experience with the game
Amy might've interrupted every one of Brennen's thoughts, it was a little difficult to get through. Awesome episode nonetheless, thank you both for the tips!
11:33 The rant about 3.5. I completely agree. I started on 3e right before the 3.5 revision came out and I fucking love it. Yeah, it might be a gigantic and convoluted system, but there are so many more options than in any of the other editions.
Possibly the best D&D campaign was a 3.5 megadungeon crawl my dad ran (actually, about the time this came out), for an example of a good dungeon-crawl game. Basically, it was set in this faux-Indian empire where the party all set off for some border town where the local river was drying up to see if they could figure out what was going on. After some scrapes with kobald bandits, the party found their way into the kobald caves and started hunting around, eventually finding cracks, tunnels and holes leading into abandoned crypts. After some time, we discovered that in fact the entire mountain was riddled with the ruins of an abandoned Dwarven city, and the campaign involved us repeatedly venturing into this dungeon filled with monsters, undead, and those damn kobalds (who very clearly had a society, and came up with all sorts of irritating counters to us), looking for loot and answers. The dungeon was designed in such a way that it was nearly impossible for us to access certain areas of the dungeon (with more treasure, plot significance, and harder enemies) until we reached a certain level with high-DC locks, physical obstacles, or tough monsters. We eventually found and made friends with a tribe of lizardmen living on top of the mountain, got involved in a civic dispute between the more liberal lizardmen led by their druid-priest and the xenophobic elder warlord, and finally rooted out the kobald menace in a dramatic, fucking awesome assault on their main base. We had raided and scouted it before, and the kobalds had innovated and fortified-their hideout had trenches dug into the stone, and kobalds with improvised rocket launchers or grenadiers with alchemist's fires running through and sniping at us; my druid finally cleared the trenches with a flaming sphere. Then, kobald reserves brought up Hwachas (arrow-based rocket artillery invaded in medieval Korea) to barrage us with, and one of our party members successfully overran one of them and turned it on the others, and there were dragon hatchlings and a bunch of kobalds with class levels at the back and it was kick-ass-the satisfaction of finally being able to move through the dungeon without being constantly harassed by kobald grenadiers with feathered hats was supreme. We had feuds with demons, we rescued ancient heroes trapped and tortured for centuries, and, at last restored the river's flow by repairing an old dwarven plumbing system. When the water turned out to be impure, my druid and our cleric worked overtime healing the sick and casting divinations to find out the problem. At long last, we traced the water's source to a deep corner of the mountain where a black dragon had been polluting it, and in a dramatic final battle slayed a dragon in a dungeon. We ended at, like, 16th level, and it was fucking awesome.
Quick update: still not out. I've gifted Name of the Wind to everyone I care about, and now they're coming to kill me. I should have waited until the series was done!
I take some of this advice to an extreme- my little moth warlock is bringing her father and 8-year-old brother along on her adventure with her! there's a lot of keeping the small child out of trouble, and it's fun to roll babysitting checks
After TEN (10) years of trying, I finally have a regular game which has met a whopping 16 times (17 if you count session 0). the most games i have ever made it in. we occasionally are sans one player but never more than one and we have KEPT PLAYING after having to cancel a session, more than once... i never thought it would happen to me! it's just about continuing to try, eventually the stars align and it starts working
I love traps. They do need to be appropriate, but I think they are a great element of a lair-entity/group that feels vulnerable or has valuables to guard. Also, I think you can take a borderline somewhat bland or out of place character who might get boring and ask interesting exact questions about them until the player gets inspired by ideas and creates that depth via just thinking about things a bit more. It's like adding additional details until the creation glows.
I feel the same way about 3.5 that Brennan does. Trying to eke out every little +1 bonus available to you, Prestige Classes > Subclasses, SO many feats! Still my favorite edition.
"Mostly, people are not motivated by idealogical codes, people are motivated by impulse and construct idealogical codes to justify and rationalize what they were already going to do."
I have a player who wanted to play a paladin and then proceeded to put a 11 into charisma and a 16 into wisdom as they wanted to be bad socially, I let them know they won't be able to cast many spells at all and would be very limited, they continued anyway, I said ok I'll allow you to use wisdom as your spellcasting mod and they went nope I'll stick with charisma, finally after thinking more about their character decided they were charismatic just shy but there was nothing I could do to stop them doing something that they would regret
My group had a similar problem with the plot point that this happened so now you guys have none of what you earned. We were only able to keep 3 magic items and the gear we carried. It was a big piss off because we had made an hq temple that we had built with the insane amounts of gold we earned through adventuring. It really took a lot of the fun and enjoyment because we'd worked so hard and then through downtime we lost it all to a war.
I am sort of torn on multiclassing. I have a bard with two levels in warrior (I wanted to be a "skald", so it was mostly an RP decision though action surge is nice), but were it not for my DM house ruling a few things for me (allowing me to have the heavy armor proficiency in particular), it would feel like I wasted the two levels. Without house rules and tweaks, multiclassing feels like a punishment for doing something out of the box. On the other hand, as Brennan says, it shouldn't be the correct "power gamer" choice either, and I think that might be a worse state.
“As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. The Thinker can think about virtually anything. The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves." - R.A.W.
on the subject of broken rogues in 3.5 I made an assassin for an evil game he was a mountain dwarf rogue 3/ ranger 2/ Dark Hunter 5/ Assassin 10 who used urgrosh and dual hand x-bows and he had like 7 attacks for sneak attack if his DC 30+ death attack fails on top of that his darkvision was like 150 ft. had improved stone cunning and +8 poison resist and one of the other players still couldn't wrap his head around dwarven assassin.
I actually was in a super cool campaighn and my dm stole my memories but in a cool way. I only figured out as a both player and character like the third or fourth last sessions and it made for a awsome character
The thing that has made my game successful in terms of commitment was: regularity Having a regular time window every fortnight (2 weeks) made it a lot easier to keep it running. People can miss a session every now and again, but having that regular time slot made it easier for people to stick with it. A regular appointment gives it a subconscious level of importance that many people with highly variable schedules and depression sorely crave
If anyone wants to see a great take at the dungeon crawling genre, please look at Heart: The City Beaneath RPG. It's a dungeon crawl for rich story telling
9 years is an achievement of commitment. But, the length of the campaign should be set in hours of play. If (as he mentioned) they were playing once every two months, and those session were about 4 to 5 hours...then, a campaign played weekly over a year of 8 hours sessions would be even longer
I'm definitely going to take notes, everyone in my group has a great time playing but we always fall off and stop playing due to jobs, or depression. Tip and tricks are wanted
Brennan. I feel you with the voice auditions. I also suggest pregnancy announcements, soldiers returning home, and cubs fans reacting to their World Series win.
Good philosophy bits and even better warnings against bad or potentially worrisome ideas, so thanks for that :) Also, 9+ years campaign? Damn, I wish...
I am dming for the first time and my group is a couple with 2 kids who have no problem housing the game and are first time players and my partner who loves hanging out with people and has played before. I think 3 people as a starter group is a pretty good number. It helps that the guy is a stay at home dad and makes snacks and alcohol for game night.
I mean it's not the greatest option, i don't advise it when getting into more expensive scapes, terrain minis and whatnot, generally, before these last few months the baby was luckily normally asleep or falling asleep as the games would start. Lately it's been a bit different. I, as the DM, allow the baby to roll my dice so the other players can see. he is generally done after a few times. HOWEVER, when we are out adventuring, and moving the pieces the baby shows back up, the baby is treated as an anomaly in the world, such as a gargantuan size creature and initiates many checks as the baby knows how to move the terrain around. As he helps me set up sometimes. he is 3, and understands fully how to sneak around the table i use to get next to me to point and be told he can do this or that. he enjoys it, it provides comedy to the needed other members sometimes. He is basically godzilla. Yes, he does have a sheet. Yes, it is really a gargantuan sized creature, No, the goal isn't to defeat it. It's to survive. Be able to flee safely and live.
I've played every edition of D&D (blue box owner since 1981), each has had strengths and weaknesses. We've settled into Pathfinder as its 3.5 with improvements. My players are all veterans from at least 2nd ed. and customization is king. 5E while easier to get into just doesn't have the customization, especially in skills we prefer. As to alignment, 'the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules'. My players don't even write down their alignment, I track where they are on that spectrum based on what they do. Creatures like celestials, demons, ect. are the ideas that lead to that alignment taken to an extreme.
The way I think about alignment is that Good and Evil are the *ideals* of Good and Evil (and the same for Law and Chaos); mortal beings that are not intrinsically tied to Good (like a deity of Law and Good might be) still define what it means to be good. Basically, Law and Chaos and Good and Evil are matters of morality, and as mortals, we shape the ideas that funnel into the divine concept of their various forms.
15:20 - Similarly, I had built up a Druid in what turned out to be my penultimate 3.5 game (at least for now, if I can get people to go back) who, during the final battle of that campaign, wildshaped into a triceratops, and used another spell to fly in the middle of a tornado and shoot lightning out of my eyes. I have yet to replicate this in 5e to any significant degree.
The last time I had players lose memory I just had them accumulate negative modifiers or additives to a DC, when they failed in the range of the loss. I would give them the stage to tell us what memory was just lost and how it made them not get the outcome they were hoping for. Real powerful stuff. Try that with disadvantage with a legendary type action... The players got to lore themselves to the max, and a near tpk because if no it was emotional enough to throw waves of feels... good bad and ugly... But I think the key there is I let the players decide what they lost... And the nature of the table is the next memory lost upped the stakes... Was more heart wrenching at times. Except one player. I will reply to this with their brilliant play...
Okay so this guy was the broody orphan family all taking him in and all dying and just there's a trail of bodies behind this guy that makes him not want to work with anybody cuz he's afraid of attachments, blah blah, blah, and being friends with people and all that (in game) just got more people hurt... As he lost his memories he became a better person a happier person and played like a team member for the first time in the whole session and the party didn't TPK because he was willing to sacrifice himself to try and help them by risking themselves so much... And ultimately they didn't want to be the person that they were before so they decided to not get their memories back when it came time to restore... And it's not what I expected, but it's more than I ever hoped for a one off game... And really makes me wish it was a campaign, cause that table good go places. Oh, and recounting all the memories as they were restored to them was our wrap up moment. Kind of cathartic in a way... Another player said they felt like they were a better person (in game) for losing themselves and fighting to get themselves back felt good. Great session. Mechanically we figured out the effects were a lost couple levels for the guy who wanted to stay in blissful ignorance. Later on they thanked me for helping them fix their character... I did nothing but let the dice fall where they may... I think it's a pretty good way to do the loss if you have to have it. I think 🤔 you could do that in reverse too... From near total skill/memory loss... It's on my short list of mechanics to try out. Has anyone done the Freaky Friday "you don't know who you are" and secretly swap out the players actual character with another players else and through trial and error they slowly regain and find themselves... By eventually discovering what they can do... It's interesting, don't drag it out though, once they get the idea then let them take control of their characters again... And not perfect, sometimes it's flopped (a group that is not familiar with each other btw... This was a flop at a convention pick up game... Well duh on me) It turns shared character lore into a puzzle... "Am I the mage trying to use a sword?" If I cast a spell will it actually work if I believe hard enough!?!?... Just remember to lower the car of everything... lol. Everyone comes away not sure if they liked it, but they talk about it a lot like they did... 🤣 Maybe it's a once ever per group gimmick. But memory loss put on characters (losing player agency... Woof... Red flags everywhere with that one...) But I keep trying... 😂
Brennan is by far the best DM I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. Amy too, is fantastic in her insights. I just wish she wouldn't interrupt so much... Every other sentence she just talks right over him.
I have a PC in a game coming up being played by my HS best friend. They wanted to play a satyr druid that has a background of being in a Feywild cult (I detect a lil bit of Kristen Applebees inspo but not to the point of ripoff lol). They were having a lot of trouble deciding what his motivation for adventuring would be, and I realized that if the character was either still a cult member or very very stationary and passive that it would quickly become very unfun for her. Fortunately she realized this as well and told me she was a bit stuck with things. I gave her a suggestion of him actually having left the cult recently and being on the Material Plane to get some answers about religious stuff, giving him a reason to be on the move. It also dovetails really nicely with the other PC’s motivations/backstories and the first major settlement they’ll encounter. They liked my idea and took it! So I guess my thoughts on helping PCs with unfun characters is like, gentle guidance and suggestions especially with new ones. But this will depend a lot on how well you know the player beforehand, them as a person, and the nature of the game you’re running. If I were in a situation where I don’t know the player too well and they didn’t really take my suggestions I would probably just let them figure things out for themselves, but not be vindictive or anything.
50:00 the key point here is that out of character problems can't be solved in character. If the DM broke the social contract of the group's expectations for the game, that needs to be discussed among the players and the DM outside of it. You can't roleplay your way out of a situation like that.
The way iv always though of game design, is Complexity vs depth. Ideally, you want as much Depth as you can get for as little complexity as possible. And by that metric, 5e overall just has a vastly superior ratio of one to the other. Where the last few 3.5 hold-outs still have some ground is, 3.5 does have more depth overall, its just the amount of complexity it takes to get their really isnt as worth it if you haven't already put in that effort. That said, im super glad the community as a whole has spent these last few years sort of slowing broadening out, People are gradually realizing D&D isn't the only game in town and things like Cyberpunk, WoD, Call of Cthullu, L5R, Shadowrun, all the Fantasy flight games, they're out there, and they can fill in a niche so much better than what just homebrewing D&D could have done.
"maybe consider warlock" I have a great solution for the plucky paladin that's actually a warlock and doesn't know it. That's it. They're patron deity is someone most people consider a pretty normal clericy god or paladinny god but they made a pact with it thinking that's how they become a paladin and are actually a pact of the blade warlock with that patron running around smiting things and also being purely charisma based
On a couple of occasions I've built characters that have me sitting with difficult energy. I think I've managed to figure out how not to do that, though the circumstances of my current campaign have that coming out a bit unfortunately. Definitely understand the recommendation of not building characters that aren't fun to play. Like, I still had fun playing them because figuring out a character and building their story is excellent in the end, but in the meantime playing an anxious, PTSD ridden character is exhausting.
I shall DM for this man one day! Let it be known as my wizardly powers grow I will somehow ensnare this human known as Brennan. It shall be such an honor to DM the DM.
"the main antagonist to organizing D&D is babies"
*Looks up in shift worker*
Here's a gem:
18:10 On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology, meaning: before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole.
Hells yeah
I know I heard that line somewhere before. do you know if Brendan is quoting someone?
@@Brisarious He's quoting "an old professor of his", I assume from his philosophy program - might be their own statement, or it could be paraphrased from any scholar/philosopher from the last few centuries.
This CAN be true. However it doesn't address the tendency some folks have to be possessed by ideology.
That is a pretty right wing idea... It is almost a quotation of Margaret Thatcher: "They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."
Whatever the relation between individuality and culture is, I wouldn't be so adamant about one predating the other.
If all the PCs are orphans, just start the game in the orphanage
Boom
Found family
"...and then the orphanage burned down..."
It was built on an Indian burial ground.
Then have all the PC's asking every npc they interact with if they're their dad/mum
I did that Me and my brother and some friends had a campaign where they were street urchin children and it started with them warming themselves around a trashcan fire (I dm’d)
@@jeffgil4669 This is a certified Gorgug Thistlespring Moment
Final Fantasy 8?
On the kid question - we play every three weeks and all our kids (6 of them ranging from almost 2 to 8) just play around the house whilst we play. I think it has really boosted their imaginative play too as they see their parents talking shit about kobolds etc and so they feel they have got total permission to let their imagination go crazy. I also run a Kids DnD for three of them - which is wild!
Ooo kids’ dnd! That sounds wonderful ^_^
kids dnd sounds like it could range from good to evil, but is always chaotic.
If you DM for kids, at least from my experience, you find one of two ways things go. Either you get a wacky wild awesome idea that you're not sure how to roll for, or you get the most blunt super simple, super straightforward solution.
It is awesome
“The DM is playing a different game than the PCs. The DM is playing a game of imagination. The PCs are immersing.” LOVE THIS DESCRIPTION!
My wife currently running a DND game and she doesn't want to watch fantasy high until she's finished.
When it's done though we're going to be getting drop out for fantasy high.
You've guys have done a really amazing job and if theres one thing I've learnt is menu's are for cowards and simpletons!
Has your wife finished her game? What did you think of fantasy high?
I havent looked at a menu in the 2 years it took between me watching that video and me posting this comment right now,
juuust now,
period,
how do you end a comment if it isnt a question or quote?
"so my friend put her baby down"
amy vorpal, this video, 21:30.
I've seen so many players in my earlier days of DMing who make characters who actively do not want to join a party or do not want to adventure, and I get stuck in this corner of "how do I keep the adventurer here", and eventually I realized the answer what Brennan said, that they made the wrong character for the game.
Or you toss something in their way that makes them want or need to adventure. Talk to those players - ask them if they want to do a story-experience where they're driven to adventure. Ask them how they'd like their character to be driven - is there something they'd be so driven to get that they'd adventure for it, do they like one or more of the party members, can you make them need something like a cure or lose something precious? Or you communicate and find that you need or prefer a different character - that's cool too.
My dnd group has been playing together for four years. When I got pregnant I was worried about losing it to care for my baby but nah I took a couple weeks off to recover then jumped back into running my game. I’m lucky my husband understands how important it is to me to keep the group together and he’s super supportive. Babies don’t have to ruin games as long as you have a support system in place ❤️
That support system is everything
Social capital is best capital
Brennan is IRL Jawbone!
It's fucking insane how much this is true. Listening to all of Brennan's insane stories about like, winning enough money on a gameshow to move to LA and start his career, or him talking about how he went viral on twitter because the Milano cookies people heard about how he, after a truly terrifying car wreck, crawled back inside of the now upside-down totaled car to grab a half-eaten bag of mint Milano cookies and thought that was cool? It all makes sense now.
@@johnthomason9980 both of these anecdotes just make me love the man even more.
@@johnthomason9980 okay but.... i would do the same. milano mint cookies are my salvation
@@four1629 The crazy thing is that Milano publicly talked about how they were gonna send Brennan like, a crate of free mint cookies because of him going viral, and then they never did! Brennan says that he considers it a personal slight and still demands he get them one day.
Can confirm my last campaign fell apart due to babies... it was my baby but still...
I love that they mentioned being the DM and saying: "You guys organize yourselves. I'll let you know when I am done. But you herd the cats."
Brennan is such a step dad like he has stepdad and substitute teacher vibe
In a good way?
I get more of an extremely cool uncle vibe but that also works.
@@rain6957 100 percent in the best way
Camp counselor for life!
Why the heck would you say that about him, i say with no biases whatsoever?!
I actually created a character in a long-running campaign that was supposed to be a one-off 2D character that I would never play again cuz I moved away to college. But then I continued to be able to play, and they were the orphan (tho they had a father figure) and they were very apathetic/stoic type. And my DM being the amazing guy that he was and talking to me about stuff out of the game helped me guide my character to become 3D, and the character never became like this joyous, super happy guy or anything. But he went from a 2D "I have trained my whole life to be the strongest warrior for the sake of strength" guy, to a 3D "I've found a family I never knew was possible, and I wanna become stronger to protect them". And I'm glad I was able to do that
Brennan getting that morality is a construct created ad hoc to justify feeling ok about one's already executed actions gives me heart flutter. I would love a chance to play at one of his tables.
I. Loved. This. Episode. There has to exist, in some reality, a podcast where Amy and Brennan discuss the hobby and field questions full time.
Genuine DMs with Genuine answers and valid discussions.
The Goblins falling into the traps during every day life makes me think about how many keys crests and medals you need to go to the bathroom in an Umbrella facility in a resident evil game
I would think that even a Goblin would learn where to not step, after being darted in the ass more than twice.
Lmao "I am an orphan, and my parents were killed by wolves, who killed themselves and then i killed them in the afterlife" 😂
And my name is Damien silverblade, and I am also an orphan
Brennan's "making something up on the spot" voice is 100% the same as his baseline voice and it's impossible to tell when he's not saying something real unless it just doesn't sound like it would be a real thing.
"Personality predates ideology", that's excellent stuff
26.00: imagine being a character that is a normal villager/NPC, who starts their adventure on a quest to hunt down the murderhobos that destroyed the character's town when they passed through.
Another interesting idea would be being a fisherman or dock worker who lost friends to crabs
I've always wanted to play a oath of vengeance paladin who's secretly a dragon. Their backstory is that they had spent thousands of years playing Farmville in overseeing a local village that it considers part of it's 'horde'. All until one day a stranger came and killed the villagers favourite chicken... Now they are on a mission to hunt down and kill the criminal who did it.
I realise this comment is years old. However, there is a novel series that kinda starts like this. It's called NPC's by Drew Hayes, the murder hobos in this case die in the tavern and the npcs have to take their quest up to not get the king's wrath on their town and families.
The point about traps in a dungeon inspired me. The adventurers find that every trap has been disabled by the kobolds, but they can re-arm them for their own gain.
i ran a goblins campaign where they were doing the chore list for their parents of cleaning out the traps, and resetting them, and making sure the gelatinous cubes were fed and the acid trap wasn't too basic. it was literally a 10 thing chore list with a hidden chore ont he back. so much fun.
I love watching Amy in ‘Breaking News’. Now I need more Amy and Brennan giving me GM tips.
That is where I became aware of her. Was jarring seeing her form complete sentences without breaking down physically and mentally
My favorite video. Go Brennan. It is your birthday.
I would love to see Amy’s list of 15 (20?) questions for new characters...!
Agreed!
Lots of interesting ideas, this series came at a right time for me! I started a campaign last week and we did the character creation as a group with everybody picking two best stats and one worst describing them as a character. Only after that we started thinking about the classes of the characters, so everyone would get a character that relies on their best abilities. Basically I made them start at "lvl 0,5" and they're still in the process of discovering their background and skills, as no one really had a clear idea or strong story behind their characters. So we will play the game and create those stories together as we go.
I actually studied philosophy of religion in the university and ethics is something I've read a lot about, but despite that we didn't even go into thinking about alignment in our game. I really like the D&D alignment system for the "all-explaining" simplicity, but I feel it's mainly a tool for the DM more than for the players. For example if the DM needs to quickly come up with a NPC, the alignment will pretty much reveal the NPC's general attitude towards the players' actions. The players really don't need to confuse themselves with alignment, but it gives the DM a good base to act on.
We had a lot of fun and I'm already waiting for the next session as we will be playing regularly! :)
Be patient on the children front. I started gaming in college. Got older. Had kids. Had chaos. Kept playing, less DMing. Now we play WITH our grown and even younger kids. They can still be annoying but can also be fun. Watching what kind of gamers they become is a special gift to a gaming parent. Rollon.
Speaking of characters that are not fun, I once DM'ed a game for (mostly) newbies, and the only player with some prior D&D experience decided to play a character that was basically racist, and believed all the other races were scum. So while the rest of the characters were interested in following the plot hooks and figuring things out, the more experienced player's character would stomp around after them complaining (in his character's native tongue) about how demeaning it was to have to associate with these worthless other races. I eventually had to take them aside for a chat about the example they were showing to the new players, but the game pretty much fell apart after that. :(
That's kinda on you. Don't take the player appart from the others, the simply can't come back from that. Create consequences.
@@Defiring dude that’s TERRIBLE advice. If you create in-game consequences for out-of-game problems that ruins the experience for everyone. I think they handled the situation very well
@@TylerBevanOfficial well, if the character has flaws, make those flaws have consequences. That's the point.
@@Defiring the problem was the player, their character was just a symptom of that.
It's a shamee because I feel like that could work a tiny bit, just not with racism. That player was absolutely the problem and sticking the fun out of it for others. Maybe if it was a more general biteless sarcasm and snobbishness for everything/ dramaticness hiding a warm hearted interior due to the characters backstory (ie, raised by nobility perhaps?) could be done right and made into a flaw that allows a character arc to happen while not being too overbearing, but the person playing would have to really know what they were doing to pull that off. Then again, that is more like a completely separate character to that one guy but I sort of see how someone might be misguided enough to go for racism when they actually meant something like this. Actual fullblown racism (against multiple fantasy races, no less) just should not and will not fly like 90% of the time, and its too similar to real life issues to not chord with someone else on that table. I don't understand why they would decide to go for that - especially on a table full of completely new players - when one wrong move could permanently ruin someone else's experience with the game
Brennan is my hero, I just, I can't even.
I have never played d and d but i just watched this whole video. Its riveting to watch people explain their passions. Really interesting and thank you
Amy might've interrupted every one of Brennen's thoughts, it was a little difficult to get through.
Awesome episode nonetheless, thank you both for the tips!
11:33 The rant about 3.5. I completely agree. I started on 3e right before the 3.5 revision came out and I fucking love it. Yeah, it might be a gigantic and convoluted system, but there are so many more options than in any of the other editions.
I hope Brennan and his players had a nice 10 year anniversary
Possibly the best D&D campaign was a 3.5 megadungeon crawl my dad ran (actually, about the time this came out), for an example of a good dungeon-crawl game.
Basically, it was set in this faux-Indian empire where the party all set off for some border town where the local river was drying up to see if they could figure out what was going on. After some scrapes with kobald bandits, the party found their way into the kobald caves and started hunting around, eventually finding cracks, tunnels and holes leading into abandoned crypts. After some time, we discovered that in fact the entire mountain was riddled with the ruins of an abandoned Dwarven city, and the campaign involved us repeatedly venturing into this dungeon filled with monsters, undead, and those damn kobalds (who very clearly had a society, and came up with all sorts of irritating counters to us), looking for loot and answers. The dungeon was designed in such a way that it was nearly impossible for us to access certain areas of the dungeon (with more treasure, plot significance, and harder enemies) until we reached a certain level with high-DC locks, physical obstacles, or tough monsters.
We eventually found and made friends with a tribe of lizardmen living on top of the mountain, got involved in a civic dispute between the more liberal lizardmen led by their druid-priest and the xenophobic elder warlord, and finally rooted out the kobald menace in a dramatic, fucking awesome assault on their main base. We had raided and scouted it before, and the kobalds had innovated and fortified-their hideout had trenches dug into the stone, and kobalds with improvised rocket launchers or grenadiers with alchemist's fires running through and sniping at us; my druid finally cleared the trenches with a flaming sphere. Then, kobald reserves brought up Hwachas (arrow-based rocket artillery invaded in medieval Korea) to barrage us with, and one of our party members successfully overran one of them and turned it on the others, and there were dragon hatchlings and a bunch of kobalds with class levels at the back and it was kick-ass-the satisfaction of finally being able to move through the dungeon without being constantly harassed by kobald grenadiers with feathered hats was supreme.
We had feuds with demons, we rescued ancient heroes trapped and tortured for centuries, and, at last restored the river's flow by repairing an old dwarven plumbing system. When the water turned out to be impure, my druid and our cleric worked overtime healing the sick and casting divinations to find out the problem. At long last, we traced the water's source to a deep corner of the mountain where a black dragon had been polluting it, and in a dramatic final battle slayed a dragon in a dungeon.
We ended at, like, 16th level, and it was fucking awesome.
I'm here two years in the future to tell you that Patrick Rothfuss still hasn't released The Doors of Stone and it's still agonizing.
Quick update: still not out. I've gifted Name of the Wind to everyone I care about, and now they're coming to kill me. I should have waited until the series was done!
@@Tybuscus Oh jeez
@@Tybuscus Don't be ridiculous, we're all going to be dead by the time the series is done.
It could be worse: he could have crowd-sourced the ending like Game of Thrones and given us finale-by-committee...
@@devinmann3034 Or even worse, Pat will be dead before the series is done.
30:00 My group has an inside joke of ‘arrow guy’ who spent 12 years making 420,000,000 arrows to fill every arrow dispenser
48:14 this exact example of character assassination is what was on my mind throughout the entirety of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
I take some of this advice to an extreme- my little moth warlock is bringing her father and 8-year-old brother along on her adventure with her! there's a lot of keeping the small child out of trouble, and it's fun to roll babysitting checks
After TEN (10) years of trying, I finally have a regular game which has met a whopping 16 times (17 if you count session 0). the most games i have ever made it in. we occasionally are sans one player but never more than one and we have KEPT PLAYING after having to cancel a session, more than once... i never thought it would happen to me! it's just about continuing to try, eventually the stars align and it starts working
I love traps. They do need to be appropriate, but I think they are a great element of a lair-entity/group that feels vulnerable or has valuables to guard.
Also, I think you can take a borderline somewhat bland or out of place character who might get boring and ask interesting exact questions about them until the player gets inspired by ideas and creates that depth via just thinking about things a bit more. It's like adding additional details until the creation glows.
I am heavily crushing on Amy now ❤️ Loved this conversation so so much!
"Mine is to cry" like its nothing.
I feel the same way about 3.5 that Brennan does. Trying to eke out every little +1 bonus available to you, Prestige Classes > Subclasses, SO many feats! Still my favorite edition.
"Mostly, people are not motivated by idealogical codes, people are motivated by impulse and construct idealogical codes to justify and rationalize what they were already going to do."
I have a player who wanted to play a paladin and then proceeded to put a 11 into charisma and a 16 into wisdom as they wanted to be bad socially, I let them know they won't be able to cast many spells at all and would be very limited, they continued anyway, I said ok I'll allow you to use wisdom as your spellcasting mod and they went nope I'll stick with charisma, finally after thinking more about their character decided they were charismatic just shy but there was nothing I could do to stop them doing something that they would regret
At that point, you need to just ask them if they want to play D&D or another TTRPG.
My group had a similar problem with the plot point that this happened so now you guys have none of what you earned. We were only able to keep 3 magic items and the gear we carried. It was a big piss off because we had made an hq temple that we had built with the insane amounts of gold we earned through adventuring. It really took a lot of the fun and enjoyment because we'd worked so hard and then through downtime we lost it all to a war.
Amy should get a sword and name it the Vorpahl blade and maybe have snicker-snack inscribed on it.
I am sort of torn on multiclassing. I have a bard with two levels in warrior (I wanted to be a "skald", so it was mostly an RP decision though action surge is nice), but were it not for my DM house ruling a few things for me (allowing me to have the heavy armor proficiency in particular), it would feel like I wasted the two levels. Without house rules and tweaks, multiclassing feels like a punishment for doing something out of the box. On the other hand, as Brennan says, it shouldn't be the correct "power gamer" choice either, and I think that might be a worse state.
“As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. The Thinker can think about virtually anything. The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves." - R.A.W.
on the subject of broken rogues in 3.5 I made an assassin for an evil game he was a mountain dwarf rogue 3/ ranger 2/ Dark Hunter 5/ Assassin 10 who used urgrosh and dual hand x-bows and he had like 7 attacks for sneak attack if his DC 30+ death attack fails on top of that his darkvision was like 150 ft. had improved stone cunning and +8 poison resist and one of the other players still couldn't wrap his head around dwarven assassin.
I actually was in a super cool campaighn and my dm stole my memories but in a cool way. I only figured out as a both player and character like the third or fourth last sessions and it made for a awsome character
The thing that has made my game successful in terms of commitment was: regularity
Having a regular time window every fortnight (2 weeks) made it a lot easier to keep it running. People can miss a session every now and again, but having that regular time slot made it easier for people to stick with it. A regular appointment gives it a subconscious level of importance that many people with highly variable schedules and depression sorely crave
Omg, I love watching videos of the Voice for the same reason! Also, I love your line about wanting to make your players cry! LOL
nyaaaaaa! it's on youtube now!
finally I can leave the comment, how Amy is wonderful )))) it will be cool to see her in game too
If anyone wants to see a great take at the dungeon crawling genre, please look at Heart: The City Beaneath RPG. It's a dungeon crawl for rich story telling
9 years is an achievement of commitment. But, the length of the campaign should be set in hours of play. If (as he mentioned) they were playing once every two months, and those session were about 4 to 5 hours...then, a campaign played weekly over a year of 8 hours sessions would be even longer
I'm definitely going to take notes, everyone in my group has a great time playing but we always fall off and stop playing due to jobs, or depression. Tip and tricks are wanted
Brennan. I feel you with the voice auditions. I also suggest pregnancy announcements, soldiers returning home, and cubs fans reacting to their World Series win.
Finally! I’ve been going back for that 3.5 multi class bit! Thank you Vorpahl!
The way I tell my players (especially new ones) to ignore alignment entirely 🤣
Good philosophy bits and even better warnings against bad or potentially worrisome ideas, so thanks for that :) Also, 9+ years campaign? Damn, I wish...
I am dming for the first time and my group is a couple with 2 kids who have no problem housing the game and are first time players and my partner who loves hanging out with people and has played before. I think 3 people as a starter group is a pretty good number. It helps that the guy is a stay at home dad and makes snacks and alcohol for game night.
The Amy Vorpahl Sword!
I mean it's not the greatest option, i don't advise it when getting into more expensive scapes, terrain minis and whatnot, generally, before these last few months the baby was luckily normally asleep or falling asleep as the games would start. Lately it's been a bit different. I, as the DM, allow the baby to roll my dice so the other players can see. he is generally done after a few times. HOWEVER, when we are out adventuring, and moving the pieces the baby shows back up, the baby is treated as an anomaly in the world, such as a gargantuan size creature and initiates many checks as the baby knows how to move the terrain around. As he helps me set up sometimes. he is 3, and understands fully how to sneak around the table i use to get next to me to point and be told he can do this or that. he enjoys it, it provides comedy to the needed other members sometimes.
He is basically godzilla. Yes, he does have a sheet. Yes, it is really a gargantuan sized creature, No, the goal isn't to defeat it. It's to survive. Be able to flee safely and live.
6:00 The cut to Brennan was perfection
The order of this playlist is all over the place. It's an outrage.
Came for the nerd talk, left with a very interesting discourse on psychology and ideology.
I've played every edition of D&D (blue box owner since 1981), each has had strengths and weaknesses. We've settled into Pathfinder as its 3.5 with improvements. My players are all veterans from at least 2nd ed. and customization is king. 5E while easier to get into just doesn't have the customization, especially in skills we prefer. As to alignment, 'the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules'. My players don't even write down their alignment, I track where they are on that spectrum based on what they do. Creatures like celestials, demons, ect. are the ideas that lead to that alignment taken to an extreme.
3:58 Brennans goal to make his PCs cry is why I love him lol
I love Amy so much Brennan I'm in the comments put her on everything
"FUCK that guy!", I love you Brennan
The way I think about alignment is that Good and Evil are the *ideals* of Good and Evil (and the same for Law and Chaos); mortal beings that are not intrinsically tied to Good (like a deity of Law and Good might be) still define what it means to be good. Basically, Law and Chaos and Good and Evil are matters of morality, and as mortals, we shape the ideas that funnel into the divine concept of their various forms.
"A ripcord to pull, in case things get TOO silly!"
15:20 - Similarly, I had built up a Druid in what turned out to be my penultimate 3.5 game (at least for now, if I can get people to go back) who, during the final battle of that campaign, wildshaped into a triceratops, and used another spell to fly in the middle of a tornado and shoot lightning out of my eyes.
I have yet to replicate this in 5e to any significant degree.
I came for advice on keeping the game going. I stayed for the stellar advice on Session Zero.
“You can create a first-level character in 20 minutes”
Me, who spends 3 hours making a character: haha, totally dude
It's been 3 days-
Noodle you fool! you've slipped into the temporal stream! its been over 300 years!
5 minutes with backstory, I've made hundreds
@@elisestaudter7508 Wh-what? I swear, it was 2019 just yesterday, when am I?
@@pointynoodle oh, poor thing, it still thinks it’s in the 21st century...
I don't have many dungeons in my setting because the civilization, while old, has only been where it is now for 846 years (at time of campaign)
The last time I had players lose memory I just had them accumulate negative modifiers or additives to a DC, when they failed in the range of the loss. I would give them the stage to tell us what memory was just lost and how it made them not get the outcome they were hoping for. Real powerful stuff. Try that with disadvantage with a legendary type action... The players got to lore themselves to the max, and a near tpk because if no it was emotional enough to throw waves of feels... good bad and ugly... But I think the key there is I let the players decide what they lost... And the nature of the table is the next memory lost upped the stakes... Was more heart wrenching at times. Except one player. I will reply to this with their brilliant play...
Okay so this guy was the broody orphan family all taking him in and all dying and just there's a trail of bodies behind this guy that makes him not want to work with anybody cuz he's afraid of attachments, blah blah, blah, and being friends with people and all that (in game) just got more people hurt... As he lost his memories he became a better person a happier person and played like a team member for the first time in the whole session and the party didn't TPK because he was willing to sacrifice himself to try and help them by risking themselves so much... And ultimately they didn't want to be the person that they were before so they decided to not get their memories back when it came time to restore... And it's not what I expected, but it's more than I ever hoped for a one off game... And really makes me wish it was a campaign, cause that table good go places. Oh, and recounting all the memories as they were restored to them was our wrap up moment. Kind of cathartic in a way... Another player said they felt like they were a better person (in game) for losing themselves and fighting to get themselves back felt good. Great session. Mechanically we figured out the effects were a lost couple levels for the guy who wanted to stay in blissful ignorance. Later on they thanked me for helping them fix their character... I did nothing but let the dice fall where they may... I think it's a pretty good way to do the loss if you have to have it. I think 🤔 you could do that in reverse too... From near total skill/memory loss... It's on my short list of mechanics to try out.
Has anyone done the Freaky Friday "you don't know who you are" and secretly swap out the players actual character with another players else and through trial and error they slowly regain and find themselves... By eventually discovering what they can do... It's interesting, don't drag it out though, once they get the idea then let them take control of their characters again... And not perfect, sometimes it's flopped (a group that is not familiar with each other btw... This was a flop at a convention pick up game... Well duh on me) It turns shared character lore into a puzzle... "Am I the mage trying to use a sword?" If I cast a spell will it actually work if I believe hard enough!?!?... Just remember to lower the car of everything... lol. Everyone comes away not sure if they liked it, but they talk about it a lot like they did... 🤣 Maybe it's a once ever per group gimmick. But memory loss put on characters (losing player agency... Woof... Red flags everywhere with that one...) But I keep trying... 😂
Brennan is by far the best DM I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. Amy too, is fantastic in her insights. I just wish she wouldn't interrupt so much... Every other sentence she just talks right over him.
I disagree. Brennan talks a fuck ton and Amy is mostly a really patient listener.
I'll blame babies. I'm happy to.
"how can i hurt you?" I immediately thought of John Wick and the dog. DM's will find something!
No laser wagons
I have a PC in a game coming up being played by my HS best friend. They wanted to play a satyr druid that has a background of being in a Feywild cult (I detect a lil bit of Kristen Applebees inspo but not to the point of ripoff lol). They were having a lot of trouble deciding what his motivation for adventuring would be, and I realized that if the character was either still a cult member or very very stationary and passive that it would quickly become very unfun for her. Fortunately she realized this as well and told me she was a bit stuck with things. I gave her a suggestion of him actually having left the cult recently and being on the Material Plane to get some answers about religious stuff, giving him a reason to be on the move. It also dovetails really nicely with the other PC’s motivations/backstories and the first major settlement they’ll encounter. They liked my idea and took it! So I guess my thoughts on helping PCs with unfun characters is like, gentle guidance and suggestions especially with new ones. But this will depend a lot on how well you know the player beforehand, them as a person, and the nature of the game you’re running. If I were in a situation where I don’t know the player too well and they didn’t really take my suggestions I would probably just let them figure things out for themselves, but not be vindictive or anything.
50:00 the key point here is that out of character problems can't be solved in character. If the DM broke the social contract of the group's expectations for the game, that needs to be discussed among the players and the DM outside of it. You can't roleplay your way out of a situation like that.
"Get rid of the BABIES" xD I love Amy 100x more now
49:19 I relate to Brennan slightly changing colors in these few seconds.
Brennan's homebrew world is actually the Iron Kingdoms >.>
Me? Have kids? Never, I need the time to play DnD
As a person who has had 3 campaigns halted because my party who are all teens (so was I) because we couldn't scuadue
I'm going to use an aging system. So to start off I'm putting the progenitors first obviously but getting down to the progeny/loved one going forward.
50:40 Brennan is based AF
The way iv always though of game design, is Complexity vs depth. Ideally, you want as much Depth as you can get for as little complexity as possible. And by that metric, 5e overall just has a vastly superior ratio of one to the other. Where the last few 3.5 hold-outs still have some ground is, 3.5 does have more depth overall, its just the amount of complexity it takes to get their really isnt as worth it if you haven't already put in that effort.
That said, im super glad the community as a whole has spent these last few years sort of slowing broadening out, People are gradually realizing D&D isn't the only game in town and things like Cyberpunk, WoD, Call of Cthullu, L5R, Shadowrun, all the Fantasy flight games, they're out there, and they can fill in a niche so much better than what just homebrewing D&D could have done.
I’d question the 20 mins but I once made a DnD character during the introduction to a oneshot 😂
Amy Vorpahl is like the crazed sister of Gwendolyn Christie and I love that for her
"maybe consider warlock"
I have a great solution for the plucky paladin that's actually a warlock and doesn't know it.
That's it.
They're patron deity is someone most people consider a pretty normal clericy god or paladinny god but they made a pact with it thinking that's how they become a paladin and are actually a pact of the blade warlock with that patron running around smiting things and also being purely charisma based
Amy is THE reason to watch Breaking News.
On a couple of occasions I've built characters that have me sitting with difficult energy. I think I've managed to figure out how not to do that, though the circumstances of my current campaign have that coming out a bit unfortunately. Definitely understand the recommendation of not building characters that aren't fun to play. Like, I still had fun playing them because figuring out a character and building their story is excellent in the end, but in the meantime playing an anxious, PTSD ridden character is exhausting.
Yeah. I play every 3 2 ti 3 times a week with different groups
I shall DM for this man one day! Let it be known as my wizardly powers grow I will somehow ensnare this human known as Brennan. It shall be such an honor to DM the DM.
Once a parent, always a parent...
Such a great discussion
You guys are my heroes