the callout at 5:52 made me think “i dont like this guy, he thinks like me” the mountain goats reference at 6:37 made me think “this guy thinks like me i gotta subscribe NOW”
I appreciate it! I got to see TMG live the day Jenny From Thebes came out so naturally that album has taken over my brain but I'm still really in to Bleed Out
I am an artist, so your idea of using a storyboard for scenes makes so much sense to me more than writing, because I can look at a picture and know what my intent was for that scene where it takes 1 million words to write my ideas down. Thank you once again! I really appreciate your videos🙏
Awesome!! Thank you for watching, this is exactly what I'm hoping this will do for people. I'd love to see any game prep storyboards you end up doing if you want to share them in the discord!
This video is beautiful! I usually word-vomit my ideas onto a page, and then sort them out during prep time, but storyboarding could give future me more of a visual. 😅
I love how you ground this whole cinematic explanation with your personal experience with cool-guy Drew. It must be difficult to balance this whole "may your axes chip and shatter" language with TTRPG books' tendency to... well... spreadsheets. The spreasheets intimidate me. They make me think of taxes instead of axes. Great vid!
Well may your taxes chip and shatter too! (in a helpful way) There are TTRPGs that depend on more natural or dramatic language, most of the Powered by the Apocalypse games spring to mind, but yeah, it can be tough to reconcile cool narrative moment with all the math you then have to do
there was a scene i ran in my campaign that was exhausting to do right but once the idea was in my head it had to be done, where in i put on a specific song, savant melody circus, and then described the dramatic entrance and display of abilities from a group of magic circus preformers and their leader, who the party already knew was a badguy theyve been waiting to encounter, in time with the beats of the music and its tone. getting it exactly right was so stressful but my players actually clapped when the music stopped and i had to go take a break to cry, it was so gratifying to nail that.
• BAM! Nostalgia Juice! • BAM! Nice and to the point! • BAM! Aye, nice, Matt Colville 😄 Love the vid man ❤ Honestly, I only *very briefly* from last year learned a similar thing with the storyboard design - From preparing scenes with the Mythic GM Emulator way of Characters, Scenes, and Events. A scene has a question/obstacle and the players have a solution and you paint the picture around em (The Intentional part!) Even made my hacked version of D&D where Traits are "descriptive flavors" you invoke rather than systematic stuff with points. Even magic worked similar. Like the Fog that Merlin makes from Excalibur!
alright, this is my new favourite video. Storyboarding as prep absolutely blew my mind. I tend to think in scenes as well, I don't know how the hell I never thought to storyboard all that. this is WONDERFUL.
Wow this video style is really amazing! I felt back in the 90s and very nostalgic and OLD, thank you very much -.- But yes, I use intentional designs and strong pictures to amplify the engagement in the story and it really works wonders!
The idea of storyboarding as prep and having those specific moments in the hopper is cool and is good to toy with, but I find that doing it too much causes the DM to put their hand on the wheel a little more than perhaps they should, sometimes unintentionally. Additionally, the extra evocative naming schemes you mentioned towards the end of the video can be really cool but they also reduce flexibility in a system and in character options and can even box in player thinking (PBtA games and especially Blades in the Dark have a problem with this) whereas slightly more ambiguous or yes even generic names allow the mechanics to be easily adapted to different worlds. This not only helps the GM, it helps the player tailor those ideas and mechanics to whatever story they are telling. While I am excited for the MCDMRPG, I am a little unsure when I would get to play it, for this exact reason. But yeah, thinking like a novelist has a lot of pitfalls as a GM, because a game is not a novel. Nor is it a movie, though. I think emphasis on taking what players do and helping it feel like the best moments in cinema in the improv, rather than having a lot of planned moments with cinematic weight, is perhaps better DM advice.
I had a cut segment where I talked about that; I tend to think of these prepped storyboards as synonymous with encounters; if something is depicted this way as a scene? it's an encounter. If I run a session and don't get to any of the encounters I prepped, that was poorly run and prepped. Granted some prep is always going to be wasted, and knowing when to pivot into something else is an important skill. That about sums up that segment lol
More bangers from you! Continuing to knock out my watch later list. Storyboarding will work great for me as I work to adapt a campaign to fit the needs of my group members.
I'm pretty new to your channel, but I need to say.. I freakin' love your videos! A kindred ADHD spirit making DnD content. And it's funny. And it's relatable. And and and lol. You're amazing man. Keep up the great work. When I have enough money I'm joining your patreon.
@@TheADHDMI can't imagine why I wouldn't take the time. Watching your videos over the last week has been really helpful for me. I am a stay at home homeschooling mum and I'm dming a couple homebrew campaigns for my kiddos so there were a lot of helpful tips I gleaned. But actually more than that, my ADHD has been really crippling lately and watching your DnD as therapy video and specifically the "Only Lazy Person" video firstly, made me cry, and then gave me some courage to just take the time to do something i love to do even if the ever- compiling list of "things that need to get done" doesn't ever empty. I took a leap and joined discord and my anxious nervous self is going to be playing my first ever voice chat session tomorrow! 😉 So really, thanks man. I actually owe you one lol.
Wow! The cinematography for this episode is on point right from the off! Which may or may not be ironic! (I haven't actually watched the episode yet.) EDIT: Oh, OK. So making a game "Cinematic" is mostly about using really evocative language then. Gotcha!
I had not stopped to consider that cinematic has almost lost all it's meaning, but it really is an all over the place kind of word these days. Great video that's given me a lot to think about for encounter design in the planning stages.
Especially in the filmmaker youtube space, every tutorial, no matter what it's teaching, is called "how to make your videos cinematic" lmao Thank you for watching!
I thought the mystery word might be "Evocative." Me personally, I'm very excited for the MCDM rgp, not just since I've been taking the opportunity lately to explore non-DnD games. I do think the example of storyboards is super helpful, since I've been wanting my DnD sessions to feel more impactful and dramatic. I think it's a balancing act for me to create the drama I want, vs. the drama I'm trying to set up for the characters.
I'm so excited for the MCDM RPG too, and I'm excited to STOP CALLING IT THAT when we learn the name lmao Thanks for watching! I hope storyboards serve you well
@@TheADHDM SAME, lol. Have you explored many non-dnd games? I really like 5e, it was my first ttrpg, but I’ve been enjoying learning Mothership and SWRPG
Gonna show this to my DM real quick, not that they are doing anything wrong by any means but hoo boy would it be cool for them to do something like this!
Inspiration used to come to when I was listening to music, or hear lyrics, or imagine a scene in a book, or see something cool in a movie or in a show. I would then turn those into a goal, or at least a "direction", I would use to plot my PCs journeys. Where I would get tripped up, though, was getting lost in the details. I would write long descriptions of events and plan out every contingency, so I could make that scene a reality. This led to severe burnout because I was trying to frame up that storyboard perfectly in my mind, and I would get pissed when the PCs wouldn't go the way I wanted them to. Nowadays, I focus more on feelings and I let the storyboards put themselves together. I'm a big fan of the "prep less" and the "Yes, and... instead of no" options.I create the world and then I populate them with NPCs with their own agendas. I never direct the story anymore. I give the PCs a situation, and I let them figure it out. They make their own storyboards, and I feel like that's way more memorable to them in the end.
I love DMing like I'm directing a movie. I like to describe most things with camera shots e.g. "We come in high over the tree tops, arcing down to the roadside tavern. Evening rain hammers against the wood shake roof. Zooming in through the window we see 4 round tables with chairs set apart from a bar on the wall opposite the entry door. The barkeep looks out across the room and eyes the four.. 'adventurers' by the fire. The storm outside and crackle of wood are all you hear as you warm yourselves. Would you please describe your characters?" (Yup, nothing wrong starting in a tavern lol) I suppose it's easier to DM in "third person" if that makes sense? Since I'm not really a character I enjoy the "scope" to see everything. Subbed and commented for engagement, enjoy the content. Also is the cat ok? They have a cone and you never addressed it. 🙃
Dale (the big floofy cat) is alright. He had a little surgery and had to wear the cone while it healed. Thanks for being concerned about him 🙏 I love thinking of game scenes like they're filmed too, I think I picked it up when Griffin McElroy said "The camera pans over" etc. a lot in The Adventure Zone's early days
TLDR I have aphantasia and I use what you said in the video to run games and I assume (They've said it once before maybe I hope) that my players find that my games are cinematic and visual. Which makes me a happy GM ^-^ To say I struggle to picture things in and out of games would mean I have any ability to do so whatsoever. I have Aphantasia. Aphantasia is an impairment or even lack of an ability to picture things mentally, and I happen to lack the ability entirely (I can conceptualize, like I know what an apple looks like, I can describe it, but I am confounded as to how someone can actually just see it in their mind.). Didn't even know one could literally picture something till just a year or two ago. And I find that even without being able to picture what I'm saying or the scene I'm saying, Intentionally describing something or borrowing (...or stealing I guess. Not giving it back.) from books and movies really helps me conceptualize the story, and helps my players visualize. I recently told my players I have this and they were like astonished by it (Humble brag I guess.). I've always seen TTRPGs as not a way to tell a story necessarily, but a play, one the director sets a scene and lets the actors run amok, but I personally always plan out certain interactions, set up drama, not set in any specific point, but moments that are almost certain to play out. You can do extra prep on just those scenes, describing senses and feelings, change your tone for it, if you have background music get a track specifically for the moments, your players will feel the tonal change and start leaning in, phones will be forgotten and they'll be standing in that clearing while cloaked figures surrounding them on all sides approach shouting "NI" Also, love all of your videos. As a DM with ADHD myself they've helped me step up my game and ease the burden of DMing a lot! Also also, Wizard of Barge Tarot FTW!!
Yes! 100 points for the Wizard of Barge recognition I am not full on aphantasiac but my mental imagery is very fuzzy and low res, so externalizing the visualization process is really helpful to me. Even visualizing things like "What am I going to wear today", if I've already made some outfits and taken pictures, I can think of those Thanks for watching! ADHDMs solidarity
This is not at all what i thought this video was talking about by the title. You can absolutely DM from director stance, hell you can play as a player from director stance
Cinematic for RPGs means scene based rather than map and grid based. Forget about measuring time and space - just move from critical moment to critical moment. It helps to still have Maps but use them to orient the players rather than to define the limits of their play.
![โอ้เธอช่าง... - บี้เดอะสกา ft. ต๋อง เทวัญ (Prod. by ป๋าเพชร) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zbWhiLFmVL0/mqdefault.jpg)
Your editing slaps & your film making is an inspiration. Keep the faith. The views you deserve will come!
🙏 thank you for the kind words
@@TheADHDM here to say the same thing. this is the first video of yours I've seen, can't wait to dive in to the others
the callout at 5:52 made me think “i dont like this guy, he thinks like me”
the mountain goats reference at 6:37 made me think “this guy thinks like me i gotta subscribe NOW”
I appreciate it!
I got to see TMG live the day Jenny From Thebes came out so naturally that album has taken over my brain but I'm still really in to Bleed Out
I am an artist, so your idea of using a storyboard for scenes makes so much sense to me more than writing, because I can look at a picture and know what my intent was for that scene where it takes 1 million words to write my ideas down. Thank you once again! I really appreciate your videos🙏
Awesome!! Thank you for watching, this is exactly what I'm hoping this will do for people.
I'd love to see any game prep storyboards you end up doing if you want to share them in the discord!
This video is beautiful! I usually word-vomit my ideas onto a page, and then sort them out during prep time, but storyboarding could give future me more of a visual. 😅
I appreciate you watching! I hope storyboards are a good tool for you
Another banger!
I appreciate you watching it!
I love how you ground this whole cinematic explanation with your personal experience with cool-guy Drew.
It must be difficult to balance this whole "may your axes chip and shatter" language with TTRPG books' tendency to... well... spreadsheets. The spreasheets intimidate me. They make me think of taxes instead of axes.
Great vid!
Well may your taxes chip and shatter too! (in a helpful way)
There are TTRPGs that depend on more natural or dramatic language, most of the Powered by the Apocalypse games spring to mind, but yeah, it can be tough to reconcile cool narrative moment with all the math you then have to do
there was a scene i ran in my campaign that was exhausting to do right but once the idea was in my head it had to be done, where in i put on a specific song, savant melody circus, and then described the dramatic entrance and display of abilities from a group of magic circus preformers and their leader, who the party already knew was a badguy theyve been waiting to encounter, in time with the beats of the music and its tone. getting it exactly right was so stressful but my players actually clapped when the music stopped and i had to go take a break to cry, it was so gratifying to nail that.
When "how hard I tried" lines up with "how much it was appreciated" that's an unmatched high lmao
REALLY digging your Cinematography and Editing for your videos... especially this one. Keep up the great work!
• BAM! Nostalgia Juice!
• BAM! Nice and to the point!
• BAM! Aye, nice, Matt Colville 😄
Love the vid man ❤
Honestly, I only *very briefly* from last year learned a similar thing with the storyboard design -
From preparing scenes with the Mythic GM Emulator way of Characters, Scenes, and Events. A scene has a question/obstacle and the players have a solution and you paint the picture around em (The Intentional part!)
Even made my hacked version of D&D where Traits are "descriptive flavors" you invoke rather than systematic stuff with points.
Even magic worked similar. Like the Fog that Merlin makes from Excalibur!
Thank you so much!!
And oh man Excalibur is one of my favs, got me into romantic composers like Wagner!
alright, this is my new favourite video.
Storyboarding as prep absolutely blew my mind. I tend to think in scenes as well, I don't know how the hell I never thought to storyboard all that. this is WONDERFUL.
Thank you so much! Now the storyboards must go on the corkboard!!!
It is so cool to see your editing/filmmaking style evolve! Your storyboards are amazing.
Thank you so much!!!
Presentation is paramount~
Love your videos
Thank you so much! If you know anyone who would like this stuff, recite it from memory outside their window
Or send them a link, whichever is easier
Wow this video style is really amazing! I felt back in the 90s and very nostalgic and OLD, thank you very much -.-
But yes, I use intentional designs and strong pictures to amplify the engagement in the story and it really works wonders!
I'm glad you enjoyed the style! Thank you for watching!
Your style of video is the same way my brain visualizes information. Great advice, love it
Glad to hear it! Thank you for watching
The idea of storyboarding as prep and having those specific moments in the hopper is cool and is good to toy with, but I find that doing it too much causes the DM to put their hand on the wheel a little more than perhaps they should, sometimes unintentionally. Additionally, the extra evocative naming schemes you mentioned towards the end of the video can be really cool but they also reduce flexibility in a system and in character options and can even box in player thinking (PBtA games and especially Blades in the Dark have a problem with this) whereas slightly more ambiguous or yes even generic names allow the mechanics to be easily adapted to different worlds. This not only helps the GM, it helps the player tailor those ideas and mechanics to whatever story they are telling. While I am excited for the MCDMRPG, I am a little unsure when I would get to play it, for this exact reason.
But yeah, thinking like a novelist has a lot of pitfalls as a GM, because a game is not a novel. Nor is it a movie, though. I think emphasis on taking what players do and helping it feel like the best moments in cinema in the improv, rather than having a lot of planned moments with cinematic weight, is perhaps better DM advice.
I had a cut segment where I talked about that;
I tend to think of these prepped storyboards as synonymous with encounters; if something is depicted this way as a scene? it's an encounter. If I run a session and don't get to any of the encounters I prepped, that was poorly run and prepped.
Granted some prep is always going to be wasted, and knowing when to pivot into something else is an important skill.
That about sums up that segment lol
More bangers from you! Continuing to knock out my watch later list. Storyboarding will work great for me as I work to adapt a campaign to fit the needs of my group members.
🙏 Appreciate you watching
Good luck prepping the game for your coworkers
I'm pretty new to your channel, but I need to say.. I freakin' love your videos! A kindred ADHD spirit making DnD content. And it's funny. And it's relatable. And and and lol. You're amazing man. Keep up the great work. When I have enough money I'm joining your patreon.
Thank you for watching! These kinds of comments get me so fired up!
I appreciate you taking the time to do that
@@TheADHDMI can't imagine why I wouldn't take the time. Watching your videos over the last week has been really helpful for me. I am a stay at home homeschooling mum and I'm dming a couple homebrew campaigns for my kiddos so there were a lot of helpful tips I gleaned. But actually more than that, my ADHD has been really crippling lately and watching your DnD as therapy video and specifically the "Only Lazy Person" video firstly, made me cry, and then gave me some courage to just take the time to do something i love to do even if the ever- compiling list of "things that need to get done" doesn't ever empty. I took a leap and joined discord and my anxious nervous self is going to be playing my first ever voice chat session tomorrow! 😉 So really, thanks man. I actually owe you one lol.
Wow! The cinematography for this episode is on point right from the off!
Which may or may not be ironic! (I haven't actually watched the episode yet.)
EDIT: Oh, OK. So making a game "Cinematic" is mostly about using really evocative language then. Gotcha!
I appreciate you saying so! I have a lot of fun with more "cinematic" sequences like that so when people like them it's a relief
I had not stopped to consider that cinematic has almost lost all it's meaning, but it really is an all over the place kind of word these days.
Great video that's given me a lot to think about for encounter design in the planning stages.
Especially in the filmmaker youtube space, every tutorial, no matter what it's teaching, is called "how to make your videos cinematic" lmao
Thank you for watching!
@@TheADHDM
"Hey! Make your movies, like movies!"
"Okay... Thanks..."
That's perfect.
🤣up next how to make your fiction more fictional and your music more musical, stay tuned
@@TheADHDM lol 😆
This video is beautifully shot, very well done!
I really appreciate that! Still learning a lot about how to shoot this kind of stuff, more to come. Thank you for watching
One might say it's........cinematic! Wait no I mean intentional
you know, i think this a weirdly good description of how i think and run my game already.
Nice! Sounds like a cool game
I thought the mystery word might be "Evocative." Me personally, I'm very excited for the MCDM rgp, not just since I've been taking the opportunity lately to explore non-DnD games. I do think the example of storyboards is super helpful, since I've been wanting my DnD sessions to feel more impactful and dramatic. I think it's a balancing act for me to create the drama I want, vs. the drama I'm trying to set up for the characters.
I'm so excited for the MCDM RPG too, and I'm excited to STOP CALLING IT THAT when we learn the name lmao
Thanks for watching! I hope storyboards serve you well
@@TheADHDM SAME, lol. Have you explored many non-dnd games? I really like 5e, it was my first ttrpg, but I’ve been enjoying learning Mothership and SWRPG
@@empatheticrambo4890 I'm loving Shadowdark RPG, Lancer, and Blades in the Dark right now, and prepping something for Kids on Bikes
@@TheADHDM I’ve heard great things about those! My big focus (aside from MCDM and SWRPG) I’m planning to explore Quest, Cairn, and Mausritter
Another great video! 💙
Thank you very much!
Awesome video! Also seeing those Andy J. Pizza prints on the wall made me smile, I love the feel of your videos too!🤘
+10000 points for recognizing Mr. Pizza's work
as you can imagine, he's a huge influence
Haha thank you! He’s been a huge Influence and inspiration for me too!🤘🍕
Gonna show this to my DM real quick, not that they are doing anything wrong by any means but hoo boy would it be cool for them to do something like this!
Thanks for boosting the signal!
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS REFERENCE??? WAGE WARS GET RICH DIE HANDSOME????
Stay undefeated
I feel so attacked, games I'm running, novel I'm working on, ttrpg game I'm cooking up
sometimes I am not unique, and that's always extremely funny
Yeah sometimes it's nice to feel seen
other times it's like "am I being personally targeted by a stranger" lmao
Thanks for watching
Inspiration used to come to when I was listening to music, or hear lyrics, or imagine a scene in a book, or see something cool in a movie or in a show. I would then turn those into a goal, or at least a "direction", I would use to plot my PCs journeys.
Where I would get tripped up, though, was getting lost in the details. I would write long descriptions of events and plan out every contingency, so I could make that scene a reality. This led to severe burnout because I was trying to frame up that storyboard perfectly in my mind, and I would get pissed when the PCs wouldn't go the way I wanted them to.
Nowadays, I focus more on feelings and I let the storyboards put themselves together. I'm a big fan of the "prep less" and the "Yes, and... instead of no" options.I create the world and then I populate them with NPCs with their own agendas. I never direct the story anymore. I give the PCs a situation, and I let them figure it out. They make their own storyboards, and I feel like that's way more memorable to them in the end.
"direction"
I see what you did there 🎬
it sounds like you've got a relaxed, effective prep style! Thank you for watching!
It was a pleasure. Always great to see the intersectionality of neurodivergence and TTRPGs get some attention. It's very validating.
I love DMing like I'm directing a movie. I like to describe most things with camera shots e.g. "We come in high over the tree tops, arcing down to the roadside tavern. Evening rain hammers against the wood shake roof. Zooming in through the window we see 4 round tables with chairs set apart from a bar on the wall opposite the entry door. The barkeep looks out across the room and eyes the four.. 'adventurers' by the fire. The storm outside and crackle of wood are all you hear as you warm yourselves. Would you please describe your characters?" (Yup, nothing wrong starting in a tavern lol) I suppose it's easier to DM in "third person" if that makes sense? Since I'm not really a character I enjoy the "scope" to see everything. Subbed and commented for engagement, enjoy the content.
Also is the cat ok? They have a cone and you never addressed it. 🙃
Dale (the big floofy cat) is alright. He had a little surgery and had to wear the cone while it healed. Thanks for being concerned about him 🙏
I love thinking of game scenes like they're filmed too, I think I picked it up when Griffin McElroy said "The camera pans over" etc. a lot in The Adventure Zone's early days
One could say these games
Drew
you in
this is the first thing I saw on my phone today
that is what you have done
TLDR I have aphantasia and I use what you said in the video to run games and I assume (They've said it once before maybe I hope) that my players find that my games are cinematic and visual. Which makes me a happy GM ^-^
To say I struggle to picture things in and out of games would mean I have any ability to do so whatsoever. I have Aphantasia. Aphantasia is an impairment or even lack of an ability to picture things mentally, and I happen to lack the ability entirely (I can conceptualize, like I know what an apple looks like, I can describe it, but I am confounded as to how someone can actually just see it in their mind.). Didn't even know one could literally picture something till just a year or two ago. And I find that even without being able to picture what I'm saying or the scene I'm saying, Intentionally describing something or borrowing (...or stealing I guess. Not giving it back.) from books and movies really helps me conceptualize the story, and helps my players visualize. I recently told my players I have this and they were like astonished by it (Humble brag I guess.). I've always seen TTRPGs as not a way to tell a story necessarily, but a play, one the director sets a scene and lets the actors run amok, but I personally always plan out certain interactions, set up drama, not set in any specific point, but moments that are almost certain to play out. You can do extra prep on just those scenes, describing senses and feelings, change your tone for it, if you have background music get a track specifically for the moments, your players will feel the tonal change and start leaning in, phones will be forgotten and they'll be standing in that clearing while cloaked figures surrounding them on all sides approach shouting "NI"
Also, love all of your videos. As a DM with ADHD myself they've helped me step up my game and ease the burden of DMing a lot! Also also, Wizard of Barge Tarot FTW!!
Yes! 100 points for the Wizard of Barge recognition
I am not full on aphantasiac but my mental imagery is very fuzzy and low res, so externalizing the visualization process is really helpful to me. Even visualizing things like "What am I going to wear today", if I've already made some outfits and taken pictures, I can think of those
Thanks for watching! ADHDMs solidarity
This is not at all what i thought this video was talking about by the title. You can absolutely DM from director stance, hell you can play as a player from director stance
First
Like LIGHTNING
Cinematic for RPGs means scene based rather than map and grid based. Forget about measuring time and space - just move from critical moment to critical moment. It helps to still have Maps but use them to orient the players rather than to define the limits of their play.
That's a helpful perspective. There are definitely game types that lend themselves better to the concept.
Thanks for watching