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I have used a cut-scene myself, though it was not to tell the players what they did. They were escaping a witch's tower after learning that the person they were sent to save had been killed. When they turned back it was more an NPC that they had encountered that was giving up her life to cover the party's escape. PS - I have added a few NPC Mist Walkers and my group's reaction to them have been very good. Their mechanics make them fit really well into my (exploration + intrigue + fey + weird portals) campaign. I am hoping to play one at the end of the year when i am finished moving.
There is a rather simple way of working your way around fudging rolls. As a GM, I personally roll with two d20 dice simultaneously and I give myself advantage / disadvantage at will, so I can sway the story the way it fits me.
having a dm that can't keep continuity of his game in order. (or one who doesn't know how to write a story in the first place. such as having a player, and group of people fallow the raven queen, then have a city that you are railroaded into going to where every thing is a "Good undead" even though they are litches and vampires, and such. a city of undead on the material plane.
I know favoritism is a taboo but GM's favorite for each session goes to whoever buys pizza. They get a single reroll. Is it corrupt? Yes. Is it showing favoritism? Yes. Do I or the other players care? Can't talk, currently eating pizza.
There's an 8 year old in my game, and I told his parents (also players) that he would've been dead/incapicitated if I hadn't prevented it. They pretty much already knew that happened. I did take both of the parents along with two other players down to 0 HP. (There were 8 PCs).
I would never fudge a roll, now hav i rerolled because i mixed the d20 with a shit ton of d20 yes... but i do let them get knocked out and something happens to their body so they dont die within the first session
My group's DM has a way of both doing yet not doing #5. He'll have enemies and big bads START to monologue and do the "haha I have you where I want you!" shtick, but will allow us to interrupt it if we want to. And then has them react to being interrupted, usually in a way that's both comedic yet still in-character. For example: Strahd. We'd gotten to Strahd after fighting through all his castle's traps, guards, magic, and whatnot. Finally come face to face with him. He STARTS to give a speech about his nature, ideals, opinions, and motives. Gets about four sentences in before the wizard just "I cast Fireball". DM allowed it, and after the smoke settled, had Strahd just go "Alright, just interrupt me. I didn't interrupt you when you gave those hero goody-goody speeches in town before coming here. But no, sure, it's fine." And then we started combat proper.
The only cutscene I have ever made has been when killing off a PC. It sounds cruel and awful but hear me out. One of my players wanted to change their character so I offered him a solo game. Just him and me to build this characters story through gameplay. After 3 hours of playing what is now the characters backstory, I sneakily lead him down a path that eventually came with two options. Have a high possibility of dying from an evil overlord (their main villain) or fighting his old character and potentially keeping his new one. He shoots an arrow from stealth and gets a natural fucking 20, instantly killing his old character. (Who was chilling with the party at the time). He succeeds a stealth check and manages to get away without them seeing him. The next game, the party are all drinking and partying in their keep and without warning, or any rolls, an arrow flies through his head. Everyone is like “WHAT THE FUCK”. They meet his new character later in that game. Months later, they still don’t know he killed their old friend.
Worst DM experience: The group had just finished for the night and as we were about to leave I get a call. My grandmother has just passed recently and my family was letting me know that the funeral had been planned for the next Wednesday. Well that just so happened to be our next meeting. I went up to my DM and told her about the news and that I wouldn't be able to make it. We could work things out to make my character leave suddenly and reappear latter on. She, no joke, looked me in the eyes and told me to stop being a wuss and that if I didn't make the next meeting she would murder my character and not let me back into a campaign of hers ever again. I was alarmed at this and, being very shy and not being able to confront her anymore, told the rest of the group what she had told me and they were shocked and angry. We then made a plan. Of course me not being there because of a funeral I didnt show up. They planed to not show up entirely because they didn't find that fair. I never went back but the rest of them said she was being an a-hole and treating them like crap. Lesson learned: If your DM has no sympathy just leave. They don't deserve to be a DM ever.
I once had a DM that had the whole group arrested by gaurds, we got thrown in jail and the hidden dagger I had in my boot that the DM and said that the guards found it and I couldn't roll for stealth or slight of hand it was just "no you can't do that", still sounds pretty normal... Untill I realised the female in our group who had been flirting with the DM managed to "hide" her bow , her 4 foot bow that was slung around her shoulders and 58 arrows to boot, while my sneak orientated rogue who had a 6 inch dagger inside my boot hidden, was found while the bow wasn't. I literally just gave up and walked away.
Sounds like you did the right thing. It's supposed to be a fun for all fantasy RPG game. Not some unbelievable B-S favoritism. If the group dynamic/ vibe sucks, why stay over long ?
I'll add what I consider the worst DM taboo: DM VS PLAYER MENTALITY. Specifically, the DM being a complete and utter jerk to the players. Looking for every opportunity to pull the good old "DM screw job." Treating them like crap. It's like their "power" has gone to their head or something. Hate that crap.
That's how you end up with murder hobos. You gotta let some events be friendly and/or have a happy ending or your players will get PTSD. "Everyone is trying to get me and all helpless innocent things die anyway. I may as well lob explosives at all the things".
Maria Proctor Totally agree. Some encounters need to be positive. And the same for NPCs. Fortunately I don't have murder hobo players -- well, I have ONE player that has murder hobo tendencies, but the other players keep him in check. (And when they don't, I do.) 😀
OMG I hate the "Power Trip DM". I've had that happen plus the bias thing with the same DM. I hated that campaign and never played more than that single session because of it. I have 2 rules that kinda go with the video.... 1)MFW- My Fucking World.....which cuts out the "rule nazi" player, and should the players not want to do the "main quest line" that I have planned for them, that's fine but the world keeps spinning. Ignore it if you want to. The moment I drop the quest, it's time sensitive...not meaning they have to rush, but if they ignore it then the bad guy will win without them opposing it. 2) Daddy's got you- I won't kill the player/party on purpose..... Which still allows freedom for the players to decide their path, and again, if they ignore the quest to stop the evil wizard from raising an undead army or something, then they will miss the opportunity to stop it from happening and get swarmed by hordes of undead..lol
A DM sin I've definitely been guilty of is telling your player: "Your character wouldn't do that because of their alignment." I agree that alignments are important when establishing character personalities but instead I now say: "Tell me why your character would do this." Instead of "Your character wouldn't do this." I've had a lot players actually come up with decent reasons for breaking their characters' alignments and it has added a lot more character-building to my campaigns.
I've had that problem with my brother DMing. It is the most frustrating thing in a game centered around freedom of choice. Props to you for figuring it out and improving your GMing! Alignment should definitely be a loose guideline because irl people never ALWAYS stick to any one personality/morality in EVERY situation.
I like this. I actually really like the alignment system, and think most of the "problems" with it are actually caused by people that do not understand the point of the system. Like people here already said, alignment represents how the character has acted during his life, and as such it sets up expectations on how that character is supposed to act. But it doesn't lock the character's free will, and they can act differently from said expectations. Players should still keep in mind that actions have consequences, tho. Even the rules state that characters' alignment can change during the campaign, based on their actions. And this can be specially important for characters like clerics, paladins and walocks, who draw power from other greater beings that have their own alignments and expect their worshippers to uphold these values. Oathbreaking is a thing in D&D. The DM should definitely talk to the players and try to come to an agreement before introducing alignment changes and oath breaks to their PCs, tho.
To me, as a DM, alignments are a loose base to build your personality on. Especially with new players who aren't as familiar with the alignment system. In my current campaign, 3 out of 4 of the players are completely new to tabletop rpg. This story is about the paladin, who is new. In session 0, the party needed money to silver their weapons to go fight vampires. The paladin, who is lawful good, comes up with a brilliant solution: rob the bank. Ok, fine, you're level one and desperate, so it makes sense as an alignment break. The night heist goes swimmingly well, the money is stolen. Then the paladin asks what the bank is made out of. I tell them it's wood. Paladin proceeds to get their tinderbox and set the bank alight, just because it's made of wood... Yeah, at the end of that session, the paladin was moved to chaotic evil. That first session did help with the backstory, as the paladin set out to be lawful good, answered a powerful archdemon's call, and became the chaotic evil mess we all know and love
@@bharl7226 That's a big assumption. Some people DO stick to their guns no matter what. It tends to make everyone else hate them for it, but it happens.
What?! People fudge dice?! How unthinkably shocking! Shocking I say! What kind of degenerate monster would ever do such a thing?! But, no, seriously. I agree. It's better to use blatant, in character, "an avatar of the Cleric's god appears out of nowhere and Stone Cold Stunner's the Dragon right before it can kill the Fighter" style divine intervention than it is to admit to fudging a roll.
My poker face 😇,my,my poker face.👿 the playas never want to feel like they've been cheated..or, the duex au machina effect.. like a rat being run thru a maze, your own actions being totally irrelevant to the outcome.. disappointing at best- so, how did I die, again ?! Boring..
I DM'd my very first game on Sunday with a one shot that I wrote. It was alright, but during the final boss, their rolls got really good and almost killed it too quickly, so I added 20 more hp to it. During that time, the players rolls began to suck and it killed 2/3 of them. All they know is that they barely managed to survive. I feel like a jerk though.
@@armageddonbound I actually dont use a dm screen and I have giant DM dice that are about the size of goofballs. All my game notes are in notebooks which I keep in my lap to keep my secrets. In a way i am as much a PC in the game with the rules constraints on me as they have.
One of my GMs was guilty of our two most hated sins. Overpowered GMPC who solves everything himself, and trying to defeat the players instead of having fun with us (and sucking at it). In one game, he brought two - yes, TWO - of his favorite characters in the team as GMPCs, a cleric and a wizard, solving riddles in our place or using spells to get us to where he wanted us to go rather than let the team shine. We eventually decided our characters hated them 'just because', and attacked them, forcing them to kill us, and thus end the game. In another, he was getting annoyed that my rogue was picking every lock instead of finding the hidden keys in the dungeon for them. So eventually, to thwart my efforts, he said 'there's no key on that one'. And when my barbarian buddy said he wanted to knock the door down, the GM said it was 'a solid adamantium door' (in a simple orc cave, no less). So I asked "Okay, so what do the hinges look like?" He asked "What?" I repeated. He said "Normal, I guess." I smiled. "Okay, so I do can see them. Fine. I use my tools to unscrew them. We'll carry the door to town and sell the metal." Never again did he pull an adamantium door trick on us.
That's is absolutely insufferable. If you can't take pleasure in being LITERALLY EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE GAME, the you have no business being a DM or GM. You just want to be a player who gets to bend the rules and tell everyone else what to do, and I bet no one wanted to play with you at recess when you were a kid.
@Jessue Hogue: Hats off to you, well played. I actually ran a campaign where the treasure reward for completing a dungeon was an adamantine door... the hardest encounter that session being the logistics of getting it back to town. It was also quite enjoyable to see the PCs spending money in hiring a cart and acquiring enough manpower to get it back. The corrupt weaponsmith / illegal arms dealer underpaid the party ofc, though the townspeople had nothing but praise for the extra work and money
My first game I ever played was with a bunch of newbies and an amazing, well-seasoned, experienced DM. Within the first 5 sessions, we very nearly had a TPK vs a werewolf we weren't meant to aggro. After a grueling fight with only one character left standing at barely any hit points, an attack landed against the high AC enemy. The DM smiled, asked for the damage roll, and then said something along the lines of "I don't need to know the result, because he's only on 1HP right now. The werewolf falls to the floor, dead. Congratulations." The table cheered, the party was revived with no casualties (save our dignity), and it was an amazing moment of tension and relief for a bunch of new players to have. A while later, when I was starting to DM myself, and reading through the MM, I realised something very important: the DM absolutely, completely, 100% fudged the werewolf's HP in order to avoid an early TPK, and to deliver an amazing, memorable moment to a group of new players. I remember at some point after this revelation, I asked him up-front if he'd fudged the HP for that encounter when it was clear to him that we couldn't pull through. He denied it, saying that we'd just hit a lucky streak of rolls at just the right time to succeed. I knew he fudged the HP, and he knew that I knew he fudged the HP, but he still stuck to the narrative of never fudging anything behind the screen. And that's when I learned possibly my most important lesson as a DM; no matter what, no matter how much time has passed since a fudge, no matter how major or minor a fudge was, your players ALWAYS need to know that you'd never, ever fudge anything. So, as a DM, I can say with absolute confidence - I've never, ever fudged anything! 😉
Why not just roll in front of people? There are other ways to change the outcome other than dice. In HeroQuest I roll in front of players, but you can always give the monster a potion, let them have more hp, let them block on white shields and black shields etc.
I would expand on that first taboo. Don't let the players know you pulled your punches in general. There are more ways than just a fudged roll that you can use to save the PCs.
I'll add to this: PCs die. It happens, it's part of D&D. If it's not a cheap shot, and they go out in a blaze of glory, *let them have that!* Even if it IS kind of a cheap shot, I had one just the other week where a player made a mistake and got a face full of wraith resulting in instant death (not unconsciousness, straight up dead), I felt awful, but his character failed the save twice (he used an inspiration), and at the end of the day, I had told them straight up that combat in my games leans towards more lethal than normal. And what happened afterward was the wraith raising the dead PC as a specter, which I had the PC pilot during the combat. He got a chance to struggle to wrest control of his spectral self each turn, and in the end, was able to break the control long enough to let the party finish him. Once they did, his freed spirit lingered for a moment to have a tearful goodbye with the party, and it was a sad sad moment, and one that I could tell was burned into the motivations for the characters. By the time we called the session, the player was already excited for his next character, and while I still felt bad about the cheap shot, sometimes that's just how the dice fall. So in summary, sometimes PCs die. Sometimes it's fair, sometimes it's not, but it should always be memorable, and it's your job as DM to try to make it memorable.
I guess it also depends on what you've agreed with the group in session 0 - if you've said you'll take it easy (because they're new players, you want them to be Big Damn Heroes, etc), then you can always do stuff like roll damage, ask them how many Hp they have left, then say they've now got 1hp (preferably feigning a grimace before telling them). My personal "favourite" is letting the players roll a skill check, then deciding if it passes (ie, assign a DC after the roll). Most of the time my group rolls really well or really bad, so not too hard to fudge.
The only time I show favoritism, is when I feel like one player has a weaker build and is starting to get bored. That's when I might fugde an enemy hit point or two, and then give that person a kill that they might not have earned otherwise
I actually mostly disagree with the favoritism bit; I think that it's totally acceptable to reward players who are putting in more effort by singling out their character so they have something to do. That doesn't mean it's cool to neglect the others, though, because that'll just widen the gap between them.
I completely disagree with you both in a way. Every session let 1 person shine. Switch it up every session if you can. If you have a Bard who is only good at talking then do a large chunk of one session where the group needs that Bard to do his people skills to get the info so that next week the Barbarian in the group can shine by splitting skulls open. You want each player to know that they in the right situation are the star of the show. And you want them to feel amazing when they do something that is what their character is designed to do.
I think retaining engagement is one of the things you would do that for anyway, so it's not wrong by it's self. unless it's like, a constant thing where only that player gets a boost.
i just recently played a session with my regular group, the game turned into a 1 on 1 interaction between the DM and one of the players. Everyone else at the table sat there for over 3 hours listening to what was basically a 1 on 1 session between the two. Worst about this was that said player had split from the group temporarily and non of the characters knew about any of the interaction. And to top it off, when any of the players tried to interact with the DM he'd just respond with something to the equivalent of "nothing is happening right now" and return to the 1 on 1 interaction. personally the worst session i've ever played in. that being said i strongly dislike favoritism.
What do you mean 'weaker build?" Not every build is going to be combat based. If you allow a bard to 'kill steal' from a barbarian because the bard is not built for combat, that is kind of screwed up.
A version of roll-fudging is that one time we suffered a TPK against Vordachai in Kingmaker. It was an extremely close call (bad boss had like 3hp when he downed the last PC) and the GM said "I'm really invested in this campaign and love to GM you guys, so I will give you one more chance for that last roll. I will remind you that you died like punks if you ever get cocky, so it's a win-win. Do you accept?" We accepted and won the encounter. I can't think of a better way to handle it.
@Manuel Sacha you dont really know if it was left with 3 hp after a missed attack or a huge hitting attack that wouldnt hsve killed. All depends tbh on how it had that 3 hp left.
@Manuel Sacha But it depends here. Maybe the last attack to hit the boss brought it to 3 hp. Then everyone missed, then one player drops, then the players all miss again and the boss makes a save on the spells, and all the sudden it could be a couple rounds of shit luck from the players end and you can't just kill the boss randomly. Sure you could choose to have the boss starting missing as well (probably what I would do), but there are situations where they could reach 3 hp and you not want to push it that extra 3
I think the better way of handling it would be having the Players take up new characters a couple of days before the fight, who then sneak in just as their previous characters all get taken down and the new characters are able to take their turns to defeat the boss just as the last old character is taken out.
I DM for two characters with 3 page backstorys and one where the backstory is "came out of a hole, now I want to adventure". I like both, so much potential
I feel like showing a little bit of favoritism to a shy new player is a great way to make them feel welcome amongst players who have been playing together for months, or even years.
Hank Hill Good idea, but it’s probably best to talk to the other players about this before the game. If they’re vets they’ll pick up on the favouritism and possibly call the DM out (which may make it worse for the shy player as the favouritism was aimed at them.)
I think that, as long as it's subtle, AND that the DM talks with the other players, it's a good idea. I actually had a DM like this- I was super shy my sophomore year, and I joined a D&D club, only because my friend forced me into it. I had NO idea what I was doing, and our DM was actually super great, and made me feel really comfortable around all the other people (many of which who had been playing together for years. After the campaign was over, I had become much closer with the club, and our DM bashfully admitted that he had played a bit of favoritism towards me, since I was new. Instead of feeling embarrassed about it, I was actually quite touched at the fact that he put forth an effort to make me feel more comfortable in the group. So... Good on you, man!
Not sure favoritism is the way to go. More attention and coaxing, sure. It can help pull an introvert into the game. Just don't push a shy player too hard.
The worst DM mistake I've ever encountered as a player was about 8 years ago. The DM bcame annoyed that his ex girlfriend's character was flirting with my character (she and I were close friends of a few years). So whenever combat hit my turn, he'd rush me and complain vocally when I asked rules questions (this was my first or second time playing). He'd also whine that I was using my most solidly damaging cantrip too much but would glare at me when I took any time trying to skim the players' manual for my other spells. Eventually, he ended the campaign by taking control of my character by way of cutscene, telling me 'oh well I've already written this plot' when I told him she wouldn't act like that, and then in the same sweep killing her off. And destorying her soul. And that we'd be starting a new game next week, everyone could continue with their characters. Except me because mine was dead. Other players asked if they could go on a quest to ressurect my character or such. DM says no, her soul has been destroyed. It's literally impossible. I refused to go back where I was clearly not wanted and the group fell apart by the time the next session came around.
DM Tip! When the PC's are in strsssful situations, roll random dice just to make them panic. That way, they never know when you are actually rolling for things like an unknown enemy's perception/sneak/etc
As I rule, I always roll dice at random times. Every few minutes a die or 2 are rolled behind the screen. That keeps them from guessing and preparing for an encounter or situation they would not be aware of was taking place. If I want them to know that something is about to happen I ask them to arrange their mini figs to show their current marching order.
I literally have a DM who does all of these things while also giving himself a character in our party that pulls us in all directions, talks over/for us, and is basically immune to death. He literally dominates the game world as the DM and dominates the party with his character. I can't tell you how many times we show up for a game and he hasn't made anything for a session and we end up doing mundane tasks for 4-6 hours or until he gets bored of playing. Not to mention this means we always start late because nothing is prepared and he just needs to "Roll a few enemies for us to fight". Not to mention he talks about how we would have died to his encounters but he let us live. Because of all this most of us have decided to take the story wayyyyy off track anytime we play now and make our own fun in a town. But usually whenever that happens we get forced back to whatever task he has for us within 5 minutes. It got so bad some of the players just showed up at whatever time they felt like because it didn't matter anymore. Not to mention that most games tend to be about three sessions until the DM gets bored, says he doesn't have time to make encounters because work or something (he only works 25 hours a week), and then like a month or two later he talks about setting up a new game. Honestly I didn't even realize how bad this had gotten until I just recently started playing with another group. In comparison my new DM always has stuff planned out but gives us all the freedom to figure things out on our own, has letters actually printed out for us to read rather than telling us what the letter said, and any Npc accompanying us feels like a person we're helping and doesn't take away from our actions. Not to mention we're well past 3 sessions and I'm having more fun with dnd than I've ever had. As much as I love saying that it really sucks because as bad of a DM the first guy is he still showed our whole group dnd. The first few sessions he ever created were fun and well thought out and really showed his drive to make a good experience. I guess he just got lazy. So after all this writing (sorry for whoever read it all) just about a week ago my first DM asked if I'd be up for a new campaign after about a 3 month hiatus since the last one. I had to tell him I was already in a campaign (since they both would be on the same day) and it hurt to see him kinda sad but he admitted he wasn't surprised and he kinda just left it there. So I guess to anyone out there DMing, treat your players with respect and really try to make it a fun experience whether its serious or funny. If you don't try the players will pick up on it and eventually you won't have anyone to play with.
This is exactly why I won't play when I DM. I don't even like playing NPCs. I feel like I have to much meta knowledge and it leaks over into the character.
Anyone saying they just don't have time to make content for a game but they're still holding sessions is just being an asshole in my opinion. Like, just tell people you're not interested enough to make content, take a break, and restart the game when you give a shit again. I work a full time job and run 3 parties that all play ~once a week. If you're interested in doing it, the content gets made. There's no excuse for not just telling people well in advance what the situation is. :/
Nochtic early in the campaign i introduced way to many npc allies, and i regret it cuz fights take longer and its harder to manage when i have to control like 6 guys at once, I would kill them off but the players have become super attached to all of them and it would feel wrong to do so at this point unless it was super dramatic and heroic of a death
1. DM killing off the party without giving them a chance to survive. DM wanted to start a new campaign with the characters' descendants, and sprung this on us in the middle of a session with no warning. Your characters are dead in an unskippable cutscene, roll up their descendants. 2. Reverse favortism: DM targeting one player and trying to make that player's experiences unpleasant. Giving cool loot to everyone except that player, repeatedly killing their characters off outside of combat, etc. 3. Railroading without enough force to reach the destination: we spent five sessions running from the guards, outnumbered massively, no place to hide, constantly being found. DM secretly wanted to have a big street battle, but never made that clear, so we thought he was trying to railroad us into a TPK. 4. DM Puzzles that stop the campaign: DM trapped party in a timewarp: no clues on how to escape, three sessions of repeating the same thing over and over again. Party nearly quit before DM gave us enough info to solve the "puzzle". If a puzzle has ground the campaign to a halt, the DM needs to bypass that puzzle. 5. DM PvPing: DM whose goal is to kill off every character, and who takes pleasure in each character who dies. Basically a griefer who DMs in order to kill other characters rather than to tell a story. 6. Breaking a character, without allowing them a path for redemption or restoration. Your paladin has fallen. His god refuses to take him back. The priests refuse to cast atonement. No new gods will take him. DM won't let you create a new character. Your character is broken, and cannot be fixed because the DM doesn't want them to be fixed. All of these are bad because they set the DM and players against each other on the level of story creation, rather than playing the roles of individuals whose goals might oppose each others'.
We had a DM that constantly does number five. It got so bad to the point that in one session, I rolled a PC at the start, and buried the same one at the end. My friends and I were getting burnt out because every few sessions our characters die, and the DM treats our PC deaths like mini achievements.
One of the best DMs I personally know has already committed almost all of these mistakes with my group in a single campaign. The dude recognized the mistakes by himself and improved guys style a lot! He is truly kind of a teacher to me as a DM too.
Briansgate personally if I wanted to have the big bad show up and taunt the players early, I'd maybe have him be so overleveled that any attacks by the players would be useless. I think Matt Mercer did the same with Critical Role. When the Chroma Conclave first showed up, they were way too powerful for the heroes. The important thing there was that the villiains didn't try too hard to kill them. They had other things to do, so they really only fought just long enough to scare the party. Masterfully done, in my opinion.
I had that once. Now don't get me wrong this wasn't a cutscene but rather a slight joke/character development. My villian at the time were VERY confident to the point he was even smug. He had slightly spied on the PC's so he knew about some of their abilities (Not all just knew what they would often start with) Anyway he walked up to them all overly evil and shit starting his monolog only for one of my PC's to do exactly as I expected. "Well well well if it isn't the tiny thorns that have been in my side for a long w.." "I cast hold person!" and expecting this he uses counterspell and goes "Wow..rude..I am trying to tell you something here..Come on at least let me have my fun before having to leave!" I found it fun and so did my PCs. Gave a good hint as to what kind of character he was as well as telling them that he had clearly seen them
Well I do kill. I mean in this case no I guess it was pretty obvious that he was just there to tease and taunt the players a bit at least I made that pretty obvious after his little speech
personally, if an enemy has motives or something and the party just sneak attacks them or attacks without any monologue, i just have the bad guy let out his motives while hes attacking. like last week, we had a half-ogre who was born underground and never saw sunlight and lived in the sewers. stuff lead up to the bad guy where the party didnt feel like talking to this half-ogre, when in my head it was very possible to use diplomacy with him. either way the party attacked, and while he was attacking, i just said things while he was swinging like "You surfacers took everything from me! You leave us to die down here and you come down here to take this from us!" stuff like that. Just an example, and not as fun as a evil monologue, but at least it can let out motivations if ur party cares about RP
Mistakes are how we learn. 20000 years ago 3 guys were sitting by a campfire and heard a rustle in the bushes. 1 guy went to the bushes to check without a weapon and got eaten. Those other 2 guys saw this and next time they heard a rustle in the bushes they took a weapon to go look.
Yeah, I think just because what you're describing is epic and massive and cinematic doesn't necessarily mean it's a cutscene. As long as the characters still get to act/react to what's going on, that's just engaging storytelling.
We used it after beating a big bad, we had essentially killed it though it had to be completely atomized to die, luckily our wizard had been summoning a meteor for a few turns and once we had it trapped we all warped away and played Country Roads as the BBEG was obliterated by the meteor in a cutscene.
My worst D&D experience involved what is my #1 D&D taboo: A DM having NPCs rape a player's captured character (and expecting me to RP my character's responses) while he described the character's rape in graphic detail. And all of this was without a session zero meeting about what kind of content will be allowed or can be expected in the game. I almost quit TTRPGs for good after that experience. It took me over a year to come back to the game, and only because a close friend wanted to play it, and he repeatedly asked me to DM for him. TL;DR: Don't rape the PCs. And if you think it's okay to do so, make sure everyone at the table knows what kind of content your game can or will include.
Okay, admittedly, I've played around some freaks of nature. I happily admit to "coming from a facetious bunch" and I've taken my share of even RP'ed lumps and knocks... Even had this... er... sordid kind of content involved in a game or two. Only once was it ever "sprung" on the Table with me around, and the GM ended up running for his life out of the room... It's not that I have a big problem with "salacious content" or "morbidity" in RP. Frankly, I don't. When I play at a Table full of Adults, in general Adult content kind of comes with the territory... BUT this sort of graphic horror stuff is the kind of thing YOU WARN PEOPLE ABOUT!!! There's a reason they put the "audience discretionary" warnings all over TV and Cinema features... They have rating systems... Even on the web, places fundamentally designed for ANIMATION have a rating system... (just check out Newgrounds)... People don't appreciate getting dragged into a sexual-psycho-pathological horror show without some rudimentary warning... AND I"m just going out on a limb, to suggest, most of us in the TTRPG factions would probably wish to avoid the kind of game where a PC might get graphically horrifically abused with any expectation of a Role Play scenario... SO no, this kind of thing IS NOT representative of the hobby. While we do have graphic story tellers, we even have horror types, and occasionally conversations can edge toward uncomfortable subjects... we do NOT just blatantly spring the worst kind of terror on a Player's Character and expect it to be "just another part of the fun"... It's not. It's abuse, plain and simple... At my Table, that particular GM would've risked life-threatening injury... not cool. AND I'm sorry you were subject to this kind of crap, Lillith2014. :o(
A note on cutscenes; you can use them so long as your players can act freely within and around them (and they know that explicitly), they're fantastic opportunities for 'rule-of-cool' moments.
A way to use them how you want to I feel is magical barrier or party is in shackles. I hope this encounter I have goes planned. The party is fighting a Mountain Dwarf that betrayed them near a cliff outside of the Mountain Dwarf capital. Once the fight starts to go bad for her, she looks at the cliff, drops a journal, and falls. If a player tries to save her and rolls good then she will hit them with her hammer. They find out she was under a domination spell which is why she betrayed them in her journal.
I only ever used cutscenes to *set* the scene. They'd be my method of introducing the players to a new location or individual. I made sure never to take away agency from the players with them.
I tried to show a five second cutscene to my players and they would constantly interrupt me with "I shoot it!" and never let me show them anything. Something moved? I can't actually describe what they see, they wanna shoot it immediately. There was a giant rat scuttling around and I wanted to show that the bridges were faulty and broken by having the rat fall in and get eaten by a sewer alligator. Instead the PCs decided to maimkillburn and proceeded to walk right across the broken bridge. They asked me 'what the fuck, why didn't you allow us a roll to see it was broken?!" "I tried to show you, you shot the rat that was going to run over the bridge"
So, even if they decide to save her AND roll well, you will still have her do what you wanted in the first place? There's a name for that, you know. It relates to trains.
Johnwestens Norris The effects explained in the charm/dominate spells are pretty clear; you can't give fatal commands. You can tell a character to walk through a room that they don't know is full of traps, but you can't command a character to stab themselves or jump off a cliff. Sorry dude, you're a shitty DM. Edit: Why would she HAVE to jump off the cliff? The PC's could still read her journal if they save her and tie her up.......
One thing. Telling a character how they feel, or how they react? Ok yeah that's bad (unless you have them under a spell or a fear effect, or something like that where its appropriate) But sometimes, namely, when establishing an arch villain, a "cutscene" Where he escapes, or flies away, or whatever, is completely necessary. I'm not saying to ignore them if they try to attack, or speak to them, but I'm saying, sometimes, no, you can't stop the high level wizard from teleporting out. Sometimes, no, you can't keep the assasin guildmaster from escaping imprisonment. Sometimes, story elements (that the DM works really hard on) just happen, because they're meant to happen. I hear alot, people kind of belittling the DM's desire to "Tell their story" instead of allowing the PC's to influence ~everything~. But, why is that a problem? People have to remember, DM's deserve to enjoy their game too, and making compelling story moments is one of the most fun things we can do. So, players, once in a while, how about letting the story hook happen, and not just focusing all your energy into forcing things to happen the way you think they should? I once had a player character die because the Arch Vampire Lord (who had tricked them into letting him into his old castle in order to regain his power) was walking inside, after blasting them all out and laughing maniacally. He was determined to jam an axe up his ass (literally), and I couldn't just tell him no, so he threw himself at the ~Arch Vampire Lord~, in a reckless attack. And obviously, when the Lord attacked back, with advantage, after an already taxing fight with his thralls, he blasted him apart, and when he failed his death saves, he died. And, that wouldn't have been a problem, but he started whining and complaining about it, accusing me of railroading him, and being unfair. No. What I did was not unfair, what YOU did was a bad idea, and the consequences of said bad idea got you killed. I think its important that a DM explains to their players that contrary to popular belief, D&D is not a game where you can "Do anything you want". It's a game where you become a character, and act as THEY would act. Sometimes, the DM isn't the problem.
I think you can do anything you want, as long as you're willing to accept the consequences. Intimidate the king - get arrested, attack the dragon - get roasted, steal from the merchant, get barred.
I let my players have free reign over what they do. If they make a foolish decision, it's on them. But, I try to make it fun, too. An epic death is sometimes better than a sedate victory.
I've been in one situation where the DM telling you how you act was appropriate. A player at my table took some form of PTSD as a flaw. He probably consented far beforehand about these rolls, but he rolled very badly during a situation and basically broke down in the middle of the town. Describing stuff to him like how he felt so helplessly alone. Thankfully it was only a social situation and not combat, and he played it well.
There's a name generator site I found for just about any type of NPC you'll need (Including Heroic Horses, yes you read that). I just have the site ready and if the player's want some random NPC's name I just hit the button and take it.
This happened to me last night. So, the party killed a guy and I took his clothes and assumed his identity, which was... looks up in book for suitably generic Drow name... I became Captain Generic of the Queen's guard. We all got a chuckle out of that.
Addendum: If you DON'T have a suitable name for an NPC at hand, *never ever admit that!* Tell them you have it somewhere and you'll give it to them once you find it. Then come up with something fast. If the players think the NPC should have a name, it has a name, even if you don't know what it is yet. But never *ever* respond, when asked "what's their name?" with "I don't know."
I've been playing D&D for over 20 years. Here are some rules for DM/GMs: 1) Do not use 'save or die' effects on a player's first session. 2) Do not focus on the outcome of the session or adventure- instead focus on the situation the players are currently in. 3) Do not forget why each character is adventuring.
1. Don't tell your players you fudged rolls 2. Do NOT favor players - it's the worst thing you can do 3. Be prepared - showing up without preparing anything for your players is disrespectful and insulting to your players 4. Not setting expectations for your group - not telling your players what you are planning, then you forfeit all rights to be upset when the game they want to play doesn't align with your plans 5. Avoid cutscenes and excessive narrations
@@jacobitewiseman3696 When a DM rolls, and acts as if he/she rolled something different. Fudged rolls are often used to help the players, but are sometimes used against them
I did a cinematic cutscene 2 sessions ago as a kind of experiment. I warned my players that it was going to be a different kind of session and to trust me, and if they ultimately didn't like it to let me know. Granted, it was at the end of a major story arc a year into the campaign, so it was sort of a "TV season finale" kind of event. They ended up loving it, so I think it's less a matter of "don't do this" but rather "tread carefully when doing this." It's definitely not something I plan on doing often, but it may happen again if the story calls for it.
The cutscene is ALWAYS a tread carefully situation. I try very hard to keep player agency, trusting in their roleplaying skills, allowing them to try (no matter how hard the DC is vs the fascinate power of the god they're looking at) to interfere if they so desire.
I did a cutscene at the beginning of my first adventure. It was a scene where only one PC saw a dragon attacking and ran to save the princess (another PC) who was in one room with the last two PCs. I just wanted them all to start the fun together.
I second this, I don't think putting it as a TABOO is really fair since this is less about cutscenes and more about railroading, if a gm wants to give a cutscene description of a scene or something minor like that or even if the group is fine with more than that then it can be a memorable thing. I've been a player in a game where the gm liked concluding battles with a cinematic cutscene and "cut to black" a lot and it really made things more intense and memorable. As always too much of a good thing is bad but comparing all sorts of cutscenes to something like not preparing at all or telling the players you cheated them is not appropriate in my opinion.
I find "cutscenes" perfectly appropriate at the end of campaigns, or when transitioning from one major setting to another. No one wants to RP 6 weeks of wilderness travel, so a minor cutscene detailing the highlights makes sense. As for cutscenes at the end of campaigns, the players I've had have tended to really enjoy the sense of "here's what happened after you saved the world/village/princess/whatever". I've definitely had GMs go overboard on that kind of thing (one DM gave us a cutscene instead of a final battle), but in moderation, I too think they have their place
Ian Sharp That's awesome! Glad that worked well for you. I think getting the players' buy-in on things like that is clutch.I usually do so when I try something new out in the game and then gather feedback from my players afterwards. Sometimes they like it and we keep it. Other times they don't and we throw it out. 😁
Favoritism... made me quit a game. The DM's wife was playing and decided she didn't like my character, so I had to ditch him and roll up a new one. I ditched the game instead.
Mario - Yeah, that's messed up. The DM's wife gets to make the calls? Nope. See ya! I had a DM once that favored one of the players, even giving him the Hand of Vecna (powerful artifact) at level 5. And I'm not sure my character had even one magical item. 🤨
In my very first campaign ever, along with a few of my friends, we had a DM who seemed like an awfully nice guy and seemed quite experienced. It was our first time playing, all of us, so we weren't quite sure what to expect. Everything went along smoothly at first as we went with the story, trying not to get off-track too much, and there wasn't really any intense railroading at first-- it was a nice experience, and we were all having a bunch of fun, even if our characters didn't have very interesting or compelling backstories since we were all fresh off the boat players. However, the more we played along, the more situations we found ourselves in where we were being cutscened into unfavorable positions; the first time, we got captured and imprisoned by an enemy faction. The next, a band of town guards tried to arrest us, despite our collective innocence, forcing us to run under the city into some catacombs to duck them (with the help of another NPC). Immediately after coming out of the catacombs, we tried to rest for 8 hours, only to be told we rested 'a full 24 hours for story purposes'... Then, we find out the NPC who guided us through the catacombs betrayed us and called a pack of slavers to come capture us. Of course, we weren't going to go down without a fight, so we tried to fend them off, only to be assaulted by invisible sleep dart-shooting assassins who couldn't even be perceived through a nat 20 roll for perception. Our entire party felt pricks in their necks, failed our saves, fell unconscious, and woke up in the slaver camp. We'd put up with it to this point-- even though it put a bad taste in our mouths, we were willing to go forward despite that. But then, our DM had the slaver leader come over as our PCs were tied up with magical shackles that prevented the use of magic and basically cutscene-PK one of us right in front of the rest of the party with a warhammer. We tried to talk it out with the DM, telling him that we really, really didn't like the situation he'd put us in and that we were fine with moving forward as long as it never happened again, but he refuted our claims and chalked it up to 'that's just how D&D is, get used to it'. When we tried to respond and convince him that we were truthfully upset as players about this, he blocked us all through Discord and removed us from his server. We haven't heard from him since. Good riddance.
Had a furry dm once, he offered me some bonuses to make my pc a catguy which I didn't mind, but then the longer we played the more obvious it became that our adventure was just the b-plot to the epic tale of his super team of ridiculously op gay dragons that used us like errand boys. And then he raped my pc 5 different times. And claimed my pc liked that.
I'm assuming you mean just outright without rolls or anything? Like I told my rogue he nearly vommited and was disgested by the mutilated body before them, but that was becuase he got a 5 on his Con check after unknowingly walking in on this scene.
Even after a roll, like my character could be on a killing spree of thieves and bandits, but faints when he sees a dead body, nat 1 or not it makes no sense. Stuff like that ruins immersion for me.
StopMoss b if I were to dm a table and make my players roll for something, I'd just give the broad strokes of what hapened. and then let the players fill in the details and reason on how they succeed or fail. It gives players agency while still allowing the dm to have control over the game.
I'm 43 years old. I've played since I was 14 years old, and DMed (badly at first) since I was 18 years old. I've made almost every mistake and seen almost every kind of player you can imagine in almost every type of RPG you can dream up. So I can say that these are solid rules to follow. Especially if you're green. I, personally, can fudge the preparation portion on a regular basis. I set up adventures and let the characters follow their own course to accomplish them. We started a 5E game 2 years ago and play almost every weekend. They started at 4th level with full backgrounds written up. I required a full backstory that suited their race, class and chosen background before play would start. It also included their levels. They had to explain how they arrived at 4th level. I structured the game around one friend who first came up with playing a half-elf warlock of the Raven Queen with the Haunted background. All of this was still UA at the time. But I was allowing a lot of things. His back story was dark and tragic, but well written. So when I pitched it to the other players, they were all required to come up with heroic characters with a sort of dark and tragic history with the concept of Dark Heroes (any Good, Neutral and Lawful Neutral only) in mind. Long story short, it's been two years and they are at 17th level and gradually approaching the end of my campaign. I intertwined their stories into the background of the first character and they are all very excited to play every week. We did have our issues, though. One player was just stubborn beyond belief in wanting to be disruptive to game play and always behaving very anti-heroic. And it wasn't easy, but in time, he simply left the game. We played on with renewed vigor. Now, I know that guy in real life, and he's a great guy to hang with. I still do from time to time. But he's perhaps one of the worst players and self described DMs I've ever dealt with. Some people just have bad game manners. He broke literally ALL of these rules except preparation. He always made his games about himself or NPCs, especially at the expense of the players. It was untenable. I simply stopped playing any of his games, and bluntly explained why. I can be tactful, but I chose not to. All that said, my ground rules were laid for creation, and the backstories provided the fuel. They've had a plethora of adventures they brought on themselves as well as those I manufactured to further the story line. Some were completely off the cuff, others planned right down to every corner in a dungeon. I don't ever play favorites. Even if someone thinks I am singling them out, I always move from player to player. Everyone gets their day, and everyone gets their hard times. I play with the joy of seeing the characters develop into what I've dreamed they could become, and those dreams match the player's dreams for their characters because I asked them to write out what they would one day hope their characters could accomplish. I also know how to read what a player really wants, and regularly surprise them with a story that deepens their character's story in ways they didn't expect, but enjoy more than whatever they would have thought they would like themselves. That takes experience, by the way. You can't shortcut that. Read lots of fantasy novels and daydream about your own characters most of your life and you can lay a groundwork for this style of game play. These are the keys to getting a game running that your players are talking about all week long in anticipation of the upcoming weekend. Plenty of humor, epic battles, fantastic rewards following maximum effort to succeed in grueling circumstances. Loving your player's characters more than they do, and keeping the story intact at any cost. I never fudge rolls. If I need something to work out, I don't roll it. That's what the DM screen is for. But I'm uncharacteristically fair. I usually roll for everything, and automatically have an opponent's weaknesses and strengths in mind before the party arrives. But you HAVE to be able to adapt. Sometimes the players shortcut the fight with an ingenious plan or a heroic act backed by a critically successful roll. Not only do you let them have those wins, but THAT is when you do a cut scene describing how awesome their actions were. That pays in dividends you can't measure. I own my rolls no matter what. I rarely, but on occasion, just don't roll to further the story. My honor and trustworthiness is paramount to the trust of the players and their sense of fair play. I once read a cool article that basically stated that players want to be Bruce Willis in Die Hard. They want to be the heroes. They want to win the day. But they also want to crawl across broken glass, jump out of 40 story windows, get shot to pieces and beaten within an inch of their lives, before they cross that finish line. They need to feel like they earned it. Earning it costs something. Bring that to your game and you'll change the look in their eyes when they come to your table next week...
You didn't really offer advice. You just said "I don't fudge rolls" or "I'm uncharacteristically nice". Next time include some actual tips. And get off your High horse.
@@Romino98 Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Start with Wizard's First Rule. There's well over 10 books in the series. You'll get addicted like a junkie, and it'll radically change your expectations of fantasy novels. Pay attention to his character building, and how he gets you deeply invested in them. The characters are both epic and real, even gritty in how real they are. Then he subjects them to awful circumstances and forces you to feel the gravity of how much you care about them. Many sacrifices are made. It's fantastic storytelling. What's more, the parallels to real life and politics and religion that are told are profound. It gives the story a validity many other authors never achieve. Let me know how it works out...
@@Vamoss39 There's always a cynic, lol! If you want advice, ask a question, I'll be glad to give it. Be specific, and I can offer a wealth of knowledge. But let's be clear, I am not a narcissist. While I'm proud of my accomplishments and confident in my abilities, I'm well aware of my mistakes. I'm also willing to learn from others, even hungry for it. But I'm not a fool. So many people out there have weak views and unsupported garbage opinions they couch as self-proclaimed facts. If you have a differing opinion, fantastic! But you better bring your A game, because I'm not just an accomplished debater, I thoroughly enjoy a vigorous intellectual exchange. It's built into my personality. All that said, your quote was incorrect, I said that I was "uncharacteristically FAIR", not "nice". Just ask my players, they take a beating every session. My games can get very dark. Sometimes even Cthulian or Dark Souls type dark. The kind of dark not meant for children's ears or polite conversation on TH-cam. So, since you're fond of advice, I'll offer you a small sample. Lighten up.
@@dustinwilson4815 I'm not big on commenting on TH-cam, but I thoroughly enjoyed the small overview of your decades of experience DMing. Then I read the comment challenging you - though calling that a challenge might be an overstatement. And I immedialety "knew" you'd respond in a calm, intelligent yet firm way. I'm sure your players are very lucky and happy D&D gamers. I'm close to DMing my first session ever. I daydream about made up characters a lot and I read a lot. Hope it helps. I'm a bit nervous, but I'm playing with good, long time friends. At least two of them are both fair and very direct. We're all relatively experienced players, just not DMs. I have two questions for you, maybe you can give me some advice: My first session coming up soon, do you think it would be best to start with level 1 characters, me being an inexperienced DM? I don't mind the first few levels, quite enjoy them actually, but my players love the amount of options and agency your fledgling level 3s offer or even when characters really begin to grow reaching level 5. Second question: Are there any beginner friendly house rules (again- me being the beginner at DMing, the players do have a decent amount of experience) you have become comfortable with over the years? Rules that just shake up the well treaded D&D path a little? Or do you think I should stick to what works as intended for starters? Thank you for sharing your experience. And sorry for any typos or weird and out of place capitalizations (really fighting my German auto-correction here 😅 Edited to minimize the Kraut in my comment) Cheers! Vic
Not letting the players out-think their situation. Imagine the scene: Your Big Boss is perched on a ledge, ready to flee the scene with the (fill in the blank) as hostage. He spreads his wings annnnnnnndddddd...one of the players does something incredibly clever you never saw coming. Boom...either the bad guy is caught, the hostage released or whatever. Sorry, but your players out-thought you. Let them have it, call it a learning experience and move on. Trying to force the issue after that looks like sour grapes on your part.
Comicsluvr the session was going to revolve around a stealth mission and clever infiltration of a base. They realize that the NPC ally, based on my old character, knew invisibility and hold Person. Proceed to send in their monk and the warlock invisibly to sneak in, then paralyze the general while the monk used flurry of blows with advantage and auto crit on a paralyzed general. I was both proud and dissapointed
HA! I loved it, when I played totem warrior barbarian! Basically, we had an infiltration mission. We needed to go in, snatch a document and move out. So naturally, DM has setup an NPC for us and a stealth mission castle like thing. So, being a barbarian - I go for natural senses to see, if there are any animals nearby. "Why?" - "I want to use them for spying" - "errr... yeah, no animals around, just fucking moles" - "great, direct me to it". Then I managed to talk a mole into helping us investigating the area, though DM was still persistant on us doing it ourselves by saying that the mole is scared and don't want to go deeper. Felt kinda cheated at that point :(
My biggest issue with this when it happens is that most of my players don't have a high enough intelligence score to even comprehend such a plan. Thankfully, most of my players realize that they have to rp their stats, but when you have someone with an 8 intelligence coming up with the entire plan and your wizard with a 19 intelligence can't come up with anything, it is really frustrating. In the case where it doesn't make sense with their stats, I will remind my players that they have to play their stats. That being said, if they want to roll something like investigation and do really well, they essentially just came to an AHA! moment.
Personally as a female player, dm favoritism has been a problem a few times and each time its happened it was just annoying and embaressing. I want to kill a monster and find a cool sword because i rolled well and was clever and did a good play with my team, not because the dm likes me. :/
That sucks, also want to say thank you for having an awesome attitude and being true to the game. I here lots and lots of stories about girls that play and are either openly manipulating the game shamelessly or somehow have ~no idea~ that they seem to get a lot more rewards and cool stuff than everyone else at the table because they have this big smile and cute giggle whenever something good happens. We need more players like you that want a fair and fun experience for everyone and aren't out to be the one and only star of the show. Hopefully you've spoken up and let that DM know at some point that you'd kinda like him to cut the crap, quit staring, and just run the game (politely, of course).
You are playing with the wrong DMs if they only favor you. When I DM i favor 1 person each session and rotate it each session if I can. Let that Bard who is only good at talking have a large chunk of a session finding the information for your character to go kill that monster and find a cool sword because you rolled well and were cleaver. And let that caster who helped you kill them find a scroll only he can read that will lead him to a great library where he can hopefully find that one spell he has been dying for.
My ex-wife would looooooove to talk to you lass. Especially since she hade to work twice as hard to get things. I guess that, in my urge to do not show any favoritism, I made things more difficult to her characters. Of course, she overcome all scenarios and most of situations, but now, years later, I admits that I could have made things just as difficult as anyone else on the game, and not level-hard difficult just because she was my wife.
"As a girl/woman, I really don't want to get this special treatment and unearned favouritism just because of who I am." ----> "Wow, so great to hear a girl say this, we need more like you, thank you, you are the best, marry me!" Calm your tits everybody, if voicing your frustration like an ordinary person and bringing up one's gender earns her paragraphs of admiration because a girl said something you like, you are part of the problem. She said she's frustrated with it herself, I can complain, too. It's fine that you agree with that complaint, but come on.
"there is only one right answer" in the group i was part of in uni, there was one guy, one Story Teller, who was notorious for his inflexibility and inability to deviate from the plan. what made it worse was after sessions he'd often be confronted about it by unhappy players demanding the solution to whatever problem we'd failed to solve, proudly rattle off his answer like he's just smarter than the rest of us, and instantly get shouted down by the whole group because we HAD said that, but worded slightly differently, and been told it was wrong. same guy loved his homebrew, built a couple games from scratch, pretty well done too, but once again could not adapt and actually run it. one in particular, supernatural theme, my powers ran on blood... 2 5ths of the game all the enemies had the train "bloodless", meaning i was starved of resources and may as well not shown up. he wrote this himself, from scratch, and handed us our power sets. it wasn't like i'd built the powers isolated from the plot, he did it.
I'm not sure if it is on the level of "dm-taboo never do this", but my current DM refers to the monsters as "I" and the monsters' turn as "My turn" and laughs when something bad happens to us players, sometimes narrating it as something that makes him laugh even harder. He also is very strict with rules, and as a rogue I've rarely been able to stealth without a complication like "the enemy is just standing there stairing in your direction, so no amount of stealth would have prevented them from seeing you"
I had a DM who immediately after TPK'ing us exclaimed "I win!" Needless to say the group decided he was best fit to be a Player for the rest of eternity.
The worst GM I had could have an entire video dedicated to them. Misleading setting made the party pick very slice of life style characters with minimal combat abilities. We are then put into an incredibly over leveled dungeon where every single basic enemy of trap is nearly a full party wipe. But we always survived thanks to the GM PC who was immortal (I tested). Using a simplified version of the rules, but not explaining them to us, to the point that I was 5 sessions in before I even knew I was a rogue. It got so bad several of us wanted to change characters to fit the now pure dungeon crawling slogfest with zero allowance for RP. Since some of us were playing as children or musicians and artists, you know. GM refused to let us die or leave, until finally tehy relented. How? Not nicely. The other player's character was given to a dark knight that did grimdark things to them. And my character? Fed to spiders but not allowed to just die. We were both given fates of suffering, instead of going home or just dying in battle. The edginess was thick enough in the air to choke you. Utterly disgusting game. Where we were told off for RPing too much, outright being told that what we had said and done was now retconned because she had to approve every single thing, we couldn't just "say things" without her approval and supervision. Finally, it ended with us finally getting a full party wipe. The GM expected us to continue, but none of us were having fun. Worse than that, one of the players later told me that the entire campiagn was plagiaresd from a video game. I've never seen so many many many taboos done all together at once. We were also threatened with character death if we tried to fight the dark knight from earlier who enslaved one of our party members. Not because "he's too storng for you" but because "I have plans for him dont ruin them!". Even though we had a paladin who, mechanically speaking, needed to act. We were forced to act out of character over and over to fit teh GM's narrative. Our skills were made useless due to disabling magic water. And she thought she was balancign things because she kept giving overpowered loot to us. But it's obvious, she eitehr couldnt balance, or forgot to level us up from the start. We felt so useless, and that was by her design. Her GM PC solved everything for us and defeated enemies. Revived us from the dead. And even used magic to change a character's personality. Yeah you read that right. We played this online with text only, but I know we were all giving that same reaction of "wtf". I've spoken about this awful time a few times before. It really really does need, to be it's own video. I will never see a GM worse than this one.
Had a similar story a while ago, was co-hosting a series of chatroom campaigns (set in the same universe, sorta building on one another, a handful of admins taking turns hosting one each) with plotlines loosely connected by design, so at first everyone would wander around on their own with small groups forming on their own. Worked great the first two times, third time ended with the fourth admin bs-ing the apocalypse by the hands of a character who had just been killed minutes before that (sonething he was later removed from our group for, but that's another story). So when the fourth one came around, set a few centuries later, me and two other people had been spending weeks on creating the entire map and political landscape from scratch. It started out pretty great, but due to the concept of having five worlds with a total of some nine kingdoms made the whole thing quite slow paced, as basically all of us were still attending some sort of school at the time and there was rarely a time were all of us were online. So all of this eventually started really getting on the nerves of the guy this is all about, who decided that the only reasonable punishment for two people who, in his eyes, were derailing a plot that noone but him knew about was to face one with the decision to either succumb to him and be his loyal servant or to die, while directly killing the other. Needless to say, this didn't exactly sit well with the other players and after two days of drama, the entirety of that encounter was declared to have never happened. Meanwhile, the guy who brought the third one to a grinding halt was in the progress of not only ressurrecting his literal god that killed everyone at the end of that, but to _also_ bring back his first divine entity that had previously been unanimously outlawed by both the regular players and the rest of the admins, which essentially had me rewriting three of my secondary characters (everyone was allowed to have as many characters in their lore as they could handle, and was allowed to play them as partymembers to compensatd gor an alleged flaw in our combat system) solely for being able to shut down whatever bs he might come up with. Anyway, back on topic. Other guy gets super pissed because people were interfering with his plotline again, despite him never telling anyone where he wants to actually go with it, and he somehow played his personal plotline into being the "main storyline" that everyone is required to follow (literally noone had any connection to any of that, as just about all of it was taking place in the underworld, where for one not even half of the players were even able to go, and for other noone but him ever actually went. So, for the audacity of not shivering in fear before a character noone had ever seen (or sonething like that, don't remember what the exact cause was), he decided that this time, they had gone too far and needed to be banned. Which, truth be told, didn't really do a lot, because their entire story essentially consisted of filler in a place where noone but them ever went, but it pissed off the rest of the players who then became pretty inactive, which pissed him off even more. So when our meant-to-be-epic adventure eventually died on the road, he recruited a whole new bunch of people and created a spinoff where literally every player was handed a fixed character sheet and backstory and when the campaign started, recieved a literal script listing every single action he was to take. Needless to say, I bailed out of it on day one.
One time I was running a game and my friends were fighting a beholder. They had been fighting it for like an hour and one of my friends finished it off with ice hail, in fact most of the damage done to the beholder was magic based damage, and it was awesome! Everyone was jumping up and down and celebrating! But then... I realized... beholders can disable magic in there gaze.... I kept quiet....
A way to fix this problem would be to say that while they investigated his body, they found a large cut on the beholder's central eye, rendering it blind from that eye and disabling its antimagic cone. Maybe it was keeping it hidden with an illusion because beholders are extremely paranoid and it wouldn't want its weakness to be seen? Maybe it had a nemesis that caused the scar? A forgotten detail becomes a new plot hook.
As a DM, I make available the item they want, but I typically make the creatures around it twice as hard and I make that clear to him. So he is a level 3 rogue and wants the assassin's bracers and drones on and on about it, so I lead him to a guy that knows a guy that knows a person that has it. So he tracked him down, nearly got the whole party killed just to interrogate a guy that might know where these bracers are. That NPC was a little taken aback... Like... That's it? You fucking came into my keep, killed half my guards just to ask something frivolous like that? So he gets all that info, heads to the assassin's guild, finds out that the guy that has that is on a mission doing recon. Then has to go to the underdark where that assassin has been captured, and the creatures guarding him can one shot him and his party in an instant. He needs to be at least level 12. He was mad, and has since calmed down and improved his play, I'll probably let him have it at level 6 or 7.
@@Abou47Pandas That seems like super bad advice tbh. First, you're doing the age old "dm vs player" thing which sucks, secondly, he wouldn't know he "needs lvl 12 for those creatures", he'd just die, unless you told him flat out "you need level 12 for these creatures" which makes you a bad dm!
@@Galf506 I summarized. I did not tell him he *needs* to be level 12, it was something like "They look deadly". He was controlling of the party, complained at every step, I put the item he wants in the game and where he could find it. He pushed the party and pushed the party. He is a min max player. He knew where the item was he wanted. He ended up getting the item. No need to be an ass "which makes you a bad dm!" But thanks for your two cents. highly sought after magic items should be hard to get... to earn them... this isn't Christmas, its D&D. Do tell us about your perfect DM skills.
@@Abou47Pandas I'm not a perfect DM, far from it, I'm just starting out actually! What I'm saying is that you went out of your way to make everyone's life gravitate around a particularly irritating player, which you could have shut off with a "no" and worked the item out in some way without ever telling him anything, or just didn't allow it without even replying to his droning. I have a particularly irritating player in my current game too, but the day I cave in to his requests is the day the entire party gets off track just because I got so fed up with this guy I decided to work with him instead of around him, or worse like you did, I just created an elaborate scheme that led the entire party to an over leveled encounter they couldn't take. When one guy gets so irritating that it doesn't allow for the flow of the game, you stop the game, have a little direct chat, and that's it. Common sense. If the other guy isn't being logical, the group will fall apart and that's all there is to it, sadly. DnD is a social game and some people just don't work with it, everyone else would have had more fun embarking on a real quest instead of a turkey chase to an impossible encounter with no results, no?
@@Galf506 I didnt go out of my way, He did. He sat and spoke with the players and pressured them to follow him on his quest to get some bracers. ----- But telling a player "No" *is* bad DMing. Its an open world, sandbox game. If a PC wants to sit in a city and just look for people to ask about some bracers, who am I to say no? I made it a 1 percent chance that he would talk to someone that had ANY sort of information about it. I rolled a 1 on a percent die after dozens of rolls over the course of weeks in a city. Then he proceeded to convince his party to follow up with it, the pleading, the droning etc etc. They caved, not me. I present the world to them, I give their game conflict, I dont tell them no, I speak from their perspective *most* of the time. If the party gets off track, that is on them. I give them the necessary information on multiple conflicts and *they* choose what they do, not me. He was annoying. He did irritate me and the players. We talked to him, he was just...*that guy*. So when they set out for these bracers, I wrote out the steps in the quest... and he lead the party to the end of that quest. They looked deadly. What I EXPECTED him to do, was stealth and try and retrieve the assassin and get the bracers, I gave him the necessary information. He didnt use it. Almost like a class quest, a personal quest. --- bad DM... dont. even.
Big Taboo: NPC who dominates the party. If you want play, become a player. NPCs should be background, support and not there to take the limelight off the players. I've heard of so many horrible experiences of players who have hated their DM for doing this.
"NPC, who dominates the party" - depends. Did the party attack him? This one guy, that is known across the lands to be the fiersest barbarian in the world? Or did they try to sneak into personal chambers of paladin commander, who single-handedly defended a whole avanposte from ghost invasion 3 years ago? IF players HAD warnings AND they chose to FUCK THEMSELVES UP by trying to fuck with this well-known OP dude - yes, yes they should be devostated, if they are like a level 5 APL fuckers.
Evil toaster of pure EVIL I think you're confusing what I mean by "dominating". I don't mean an NPC who is more powerful than the party, I mean one that adventures with the party and dominates the combat and/or their interactions with other encounters.
Ohhh, I see. I sometimes throw one of those to the party, but usually - it's for a specific story element (basically, one-session comrad, that dies / leaves at the end of it to fit for a specific role during an adventure; usually those are either mercs or guides, whom party hires in the first place for guidance or manpower for a quest: found it also to be quite fun to name mercs after vegetables, right now my party for instance is travelling to an epic dungeon with Pickle and Cabbage). Apart from that - why would you? You have millions of NPC's, you are playing, NATIONS worth of power, you are the overseer of the world you are presenting and you can do anything by snapping your fingers in the world. WHY would you even want to play with the party? o_O
I'm running a game for just two people with an NPC along to help. I let the players control her in combat and make sure she takes a back seat in the negotiations with other NPCs.
Dont limit a players RP ability. We once had a paladin in our party who stepped between a fellow party member and the breath of a black dragon to save the other party member. He barely survived, and was left with hideous scars over most of his body. The player saw this as a turning point in the paladin's alignment, maybe shifting him from lawful good to neutral evil, becoming jaded after recovering from his terrible wounds. I personally thought it was a great RP idea, and would have brought up many excellent points of conflict in the future. Our DM, uncomfortable with the idea of an evil aligned character, basically told him the incident left him with voices in his head that convinced him not to be evil any time he was tempted.... LAME
I would have allowed that to happen, but given the paladin a lingering injury from the DMG for story reasons. Specifically the disfiguring scars one, where you gain advantage on all intimidation checks but disadvantage on persuasion
That's a big jump in alignment from one event but it's not too far of a stretch. Alignment isn't really that important and is mostly a guide rather than a hard rule anyways.
My current campaign has a PC that's chaotic evil (or neutral evil; I'm not sure which). So far he's just been a selfish dick more than truly evil... so far... But yeah, actions guide alignment, not the other way around. Him becoming jaded after facing the terrible consequences of trying to be good is an *amazing* idea. If I were the player, I would have been like, "I hear the voice... but I'm telling it to shut up now while I do this". A DM should never take away player agency.
Tip #1 is absolutely true. A good DM will always know when to fudge a roll, whether in the favor of the players or not, but telling them that you did so just shatters the illusion. The BEST CASE scenario is that it has no effect. Nothing good comes of it, but you risk spoiling the entire game.
Matt Kuhn This happened to me in an Adventurers League game. We had barely managed to survive a big fight and were riding the high of having won by the skin of our teeth. Then the DM chimed in with talk about how much he had to bend over backward and fudge things to keep us from being killed. He stole the joy of our victory and made us feel stupid for our decisions.
Exactly! The problem wasn't that the DM did those things - you guys felt great after the fight, and the DM had done a great job keeping the tension up. What was problematic was when he told you.
On the contrary I, as a player, feel far more comfortable knowing the DM will fudge one way or the other if its in service to the story being told, *unless* the game is set up as a brutal expect-merciless-death scenario. Judging by the comment section this may very well make me a minority, but I still disagree that *nothing* good will come out of it.
Nemeke I don’t disagree with you! I think there may be a miscommunication. I absolutely think it’s a good thing for the DM to fudge dice where appropriate! And I don’t think it’s awful for the players to know that the DM might fudge rolls in general. What I don’t think is a good idea is to tell the players that a specific roll was fudged. The purpose of fudging dice is to keep the game fun, usually by maintaining or decreasing tension, whether by ensuring the players don’t get butchered because your dice are rolling hot, or to make sure your big bad doesn’t flub his one important roll making the climactic final encounter a joke. But if they tell the players that a specific roll was fudged, it defeats that purpose. I hope that makes it more clear!
Well, I sometimes fudge DC's. When my player comes up with something fun, exciting and fucking clever - sure, roll the skill. If it's bad - I fudge the DC by "he got distracted" for a re-roll for instance or for an easy win. YES, that's a sin, though I have to admit - I'm a sucker for clever and interesting ideas from my players :'D
Stage fright acting, I can't get over that sometimes. When I'm playing a PC, I do fine, but when I try to DM, everyone stares and I just fudge up my words :(
I was part of a friend of mine's first go at GMing. After every session expressed his fear that he wasn't doing very good. I told him the only mistakes I saw were the kind to be expected of a beginner. My other friend is GMing now, with previous friend in the party. Second friend is much more intelligent and has a bit of experience, and even he expressed fears that he's not doing very well. It's just the nature of performing, I assume. Like giving a public speech, if you aren't nervous AT ALL, you are probably overconfident and going to screw things up.
It's all good dude, I have the opposite problem. I can never get in character when I play as a PC, but if I'm doing a bunch of NPC's, I have absolutely no problem.
I know it's a pretty lae comment and i hope you already are having succes with DM'ing but if not, maybe practise, not only as a DM but just talking to people in general. There's a lot confidence can do. Also: look no further than youtube for it has some amazing tips too
The worst DM taboo is having a female PC getting captured and raped, for "drama". It's extremely depressing how common you hear this horror story, even today, and back in the 90's and 2000's it was even worse.
Just as bad is having the NPCs talk down to a female pc. I had rolled a character to jump into a friends campaign while I was visiting for a few days and basically had her back story be "A veteran warrior of the local lord who was tasked with the protection of the area outside the town." and the DM had guards talk down to my PC because she was a woman, never mind the fact that she was armed with a shield and trident and wearing half-plate with the crest of the lord. Nope, she's a woman and women get no respect in that DM's world.
@@modernalchemist2690 How so? For a bit more context my character was neutral good and witnessed another player in our party break the law, so she sought out the guards to report the crime. The DM originally had them paying attention until another player mentioned her sex. Then the guards did a complete 180 and stopped paying attention to her and shrugged it off as a woman looking for attention. He then had me thrown in jail because she got frustrated and called them incompetent children and walked away. So I didn't even get to take part in the rest of the campaign.
@@immortalharp At least in your first comment, being talked down to by NPC's is a common element in alot of campaigns. Whether its because of sex, race, etc its usually just a simple way of creating drama between characters. Just seems a bit petty to complain that not everyone automatically respects you. (Even with your background) That doesn't happen in real life and I wouldn't expect it in a fantasy world either.
When putting puzzles and mysteries into your campaign... NEVER assume the players think like you do. No matter how obvious it may seem to you, your players are quite often completely clueless about how you want them to solve a puzzle. I had a DM who, if you examined an object that had a clue on or in it somewhere, would tell you nothing unless you did it in exactly the way he imagined you should. The clue was there, but you'd never find it unless you said " I take the figurine, rotate its arm counterclockwise, and look under his left foot.". Always assume your players will miss multiple clues, and have redundancies, extra places they can get the same information from in a different way. Basically, I know you love an intricately crafted puzzle, but if you expect players to figure it out, you're going to need to give them some leeway, because they don't think like you do. Hope this helps.
So much yes. The first time I DM-ed live, I wanted to have a puzzle in the game, and I even made a prop for it - a map, with a transparent sheet with markings that aligned onto it. It was really, really simple, and I almost scrapped it, because I thought it was insultingly dumb. But it took some time for my players to figure out what goes where, and (they said) it felt really nice when they solved it, and it took just the right amount of time out of the session. I think I dodged a bullet there, and it would have been really bad if I had concocted smth super complex and "clever", only for it to stall the game and make my players feel dumb. I suppose one can start with simple things and then gradually build up on them.
I had something like this happen. Long story short, after opening a secret tunnel in a tomb we get shut in and the walls were closing in on us. Apparently, we were suppose to draw a chalice on the wall in blood. How were we suppose to know that? Well, there was a statue in the room before with a scroll in its hand with a chalice on it. We already knew about the blood tendencies of these tombs. Well, my friend and I had both examined the statue (a 14 and 18 on perception, respectively) and didn't notice the chalice symbol because "you examined the statue, not the scroll". The whole campaign was about that level of bull shit so I gave up after that.
This is something I worry a whole lot about and I'm not entirely sure how to resolve it. On the one hand, a puzzle can be interesting and fun if done right. But what do I do if the solution just eludes them? On the one hand, making the puzzle unnecessary takes away a lot of the enjoyment of solving it. But making it necessary can create a roadblock. I can think of some solutions that work in specific cases. For instance, perhaps letting players find a magical artifact, but letting them figure out how it works for themselves... If they can, they've got a fancy artifact to have some fun with and make some encounters easier / manage some task with, but if they can't, they are still free to come up with their own ways around whatever obstacle is presenting itself, be they easier or harder. Or perhaps having failing the puzzle have consequences that shape the story but don't act as a roadblock - failing to save an NPC, perhaps, and then dealing with the aftermath of their death? I don't know. Maybe the trick is that there isn't some catch-all trick around this and it always needs to be a case-by-case basis for what happens with failure. Though, to be fair, I don't think I'd do anything as silly as having them manipulate a figurine in some specific way.
I still haven't figured out how to put puzzles in the game. I really like puzzles as a player but I'm not very good at figuring them out. I have a friend who is very good at them though so he usually does all the hard work and we all help figure the rest of it out. Which is a lot of fun for all of us. The group where I'm DMing though, I'm still figuring out how to create puzzles and how many clues I should give. It's very tricky.
The first puzzle I had put in my campaign, I just had needed the party to touch a strange rune engraved into the wall. It was my first campaign and I believe the second session. I tried to make it clear, with the party having seen the symbol several times and several notes referring to its power. It was emanating a strange power, and if the party didn’t touch it the campaign wouldn’t really start (the rune was cursed and would attach to the player who activated it). They ended up leaving, and to cut a lengthy back and forth short, they summoned a demon who solved the puzzle for them, and was forced to inhabit the body of a wolf pup. He became a regular NPC of Puppy Bob and way their Deus Ex Machina
You should never just say "No" and leave it at that, true, but sometimes players cant' do ANYTHING. New players especially need to learn this. What a good DM SHOULD do is, when a player asks if they can or says they are going to do something, tell them what they need to do or what needs to happen for them to be able to do that. "I want to blah blah blah" "Okay, that would take more action than you can this turn but you can certainly reach *whatever* on this turn and do the rest of it with your next turn" kind of thing. Or at the very least explain WHY they can't (currently) do that thing. When in doubt, have them roll. Even high rolls can fail, hell even natural 20's can fail if the DM so chooses.
I had a player once who tried to take the two handed ax of a Minotaur skeleton. He got mad at me because after picking it up he rolled a con save and failed causing his knee to break under the weight of the 6 foot+ ax. Now normally I wouldn't even allow a player to attempt that but he was the kind of person who wouldn't learn if there were no repercussions.
I left a game because of this. My dm would not let me do anything that wasn't in his idea of the story and he constantly tryed to get me killed because i would not stop challenging him.
An example of this was i simply wanted to walk with my party past a cave but noooo we need to go in the cave. The dm told us no you dont you walk into the cave. The cave also had no importance there were 4 goblins in it thats it and a few gold
One of my pet peeves with DMs is (and I’ve found this happens with a lot of DMs) when they consistently/always punish a nat 1 roll but don’t always look for ways to reward the rare nat 20s that aren’t in combat. For example if you roll a nat one on a perception check for standing watch at night, the DM will say you fell asleep and a raccoon comes into camp and steals some of your party’s stuff, but if you nat 20 on a perception check for standing watch, they say you go through the night and nothing happens but you can really hear the individual crickets chirping well…that’s nonsense and you will lose players trust when you do that. Even if you didn’t have anything planned, maybe make something up like throw in an unplanned small encounter that the nat 20 just saved the party from a surprise attack or even that you saw it coming early enough that your party now has an opportunity for a surprise round on the bandits, or maybe say that the player notices a little bit of glittering in the nearby stream and find a little bit of gold or even that a player notices that a deer has unwittingly bedded down right next to the party and they can shoot it with their bow so the party has some fresh meat and a hide to sell in the next town….something…anything…the player feels like they got a win and you get a win by looking like you had something prepared and it encourages your players to be more engaged even in the mundane stuff
All great tips. My DM loves to make story arcs around one player at a time. It can get really hard to make everyone at the table fell important (we have a party of six) but he seems to manage okay.
when i was a kid i managed to run a roleplaying gme for my group, notihng fancu snce i didn't have books, and didn't know any dice different than a d6 so it was a really simple system, and i made this story arc where all of them would go through some dungeons to find legendary elemental weapons per person and i would always get on-stop whining of "what about mine" or "why his first" types of whining for those, those dungeons basically ended the campaign for the players...
1: My Precious Setting/No Immersion World: Two sides of the same coin. One is where the DM values their world over the Players' fun; they usually do everything in their power to prevent PC impact from "staining" their universe. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a world where the DM gives up on immersion entirely and the game world becomes a joke. Both are guaranteed to end with the PCs not bothering to interact with the world at all. 2: Vengeful DM: The opposite of favorites. Yes, that Player has been Chaotic Stupid for their last three characters, but that doesn't mean you should be chomping at the bit to preemptively destroy their new character based on past games alone. If a Player becomes convinced they are the permanent punching bag of the group, they won't bother trying to improve. 3: Pushover DM: The opposite of the "NO!" DM. Easily pressured and way too catering to the PCs. It could also be a DM who knows the rules less than their Players. A DM who doesn't stick to their vision or can be talked into giving the PCs 5 Levels for free is bound to give up or end up with a No Immersion World.
Id argue that, especially in a long term campaign, a person actually interest to be a DM who has a "my precious setting" should know that it will be changed, thus should go along with all the logical impacts of the players actions (especially if in the end it is revealed that some of the gods are hiding that the main planes or even the whole universe resets every few million years or something like that giving players the option to look for ways to PERMANENTLY keep characters dead).
ToddTheTolerable your number three happened in a Kingmaker game I played once, we were given so much free stuff due to a couple of players constantly whining (especially one who was a Skald in a party full of casters) that we ended up stupidly overpowered at level 6 blasting through everything like nobody’s business.
ToddTheTolerable As a DM I love building a setting but a lot of the fun for me is that the PCs are history in action. I build a country and then the PCs decide its fate. I think this standpoint is probably the best way, as a DM, to both love your setting and let the PCs have fun in it.
ANDELE3025 I should probably clarify that the DM *should* take their game world seriously; the “precious setting” is just that taken way too far-valuing world lore and events far more than PC impact
Everything my players want to do, I respond with, "You can certainly try." Then I set the appropriate DC and/or add advantage or disadvantage, based on what they are trying to do. It's always possible, even when it's not likely.
Letting players take forever to figure out what their action is going to be, especially when it's the same player over and over. Allowing players to be on their phones the whole game, no the phone is not on silent either. Holding a player's hand and spoon feeding them how to play their character. What really should be done in this case is to sit down with that player individually out of the game and help them so next game they will be more prepared and actually know what they're doing.
Establishing cutscenes: good Powerplaying cutscenes that show your character potentially being out of character by a DM: bad Matt Mercer cutscenes: A++++
Scripted events are also kind of annoying. What I mean by that is having the DM turn the situation to combat even though your party has been getting by perfectly by utilizing stealth or speech instead of direct combat.
yeah but the DM has things planned out as well. I get that players want to do things, but so does the DM be it a quest or certain events. You play dnd for the freedom and role-playing opportunity as a player it gives you and that's fine but the DM is there for something as well they've put time and effort into the story they've crafted for you. I get what you are saying but let the DM have their fun as well
The one thing I would add here: GMs should never use first person pronouns during combat. Nothing sets the tone of Player Vs DM than the DM declaring that, "ah, I missed you" or "I'll power attack for 5." Never fails to to make things adversarial.
This is good advice, I have a personal rule that I use: Only use first person pronouns when speaking in character and even then not 100% (nobles / royalty often speak in third person anyway).
100% agree there. For fun, try it some time though... and be sure to watch your players' stances and eyes. I've never seen a group that doesn't almost immediately begin to get defensive.
I (as the dm) are not attacking the party. the monsters are. and yes, they have abilities that, if utilized in a proper chain, could end the party pretty easily; but they are also, often times, stupid monsters that don't really work together so much as all attack the same group of people. but I always said "the attack misses" or "the lizard thrusts his spear into you. you take 4 damage." etc.
During combat, I do this in situations where either: 1. 2 or less casters, so I can have some fun with spells, that require verbal component. It's a lot more fun to say "I command you to yield, good sir!" instead of "he casts command on you". 2. It's a talkative enemy. Bard, Bondian spy, maybe a fun pirate or a jester, suave vampire or wtf ever - yes, if it fits 100,000,000% with the enemy and it's one enemy of this type - yes, I can have fun with "haha, I attack you with my stabby stick of death" or whatever Otherwise, no. No point. Maybe some fun stuff like REEEEEE as kobolds make their move, but that's kinda it
I try to do this too. I always make sure to refer to the character rather then the player, i try to avoid "You," "Me," and whatnot in favor of the character's name and/or preferred pronoun.
Not sure anyone will see this, but I'll throw my biggest taboo I've ever been a victim of out there. Taking back an item or ability from a player that you gave. I understand that quest items are eventually going to go bye bye, and thats not what i mean,the best way is for me to give an example. In my case, I had a character that because of a curse could become a human/spider hybrid like a drider, but human instead of drow (kinda like a werewolf, where he was a lot stronger, but had no control ). Anyhow, he had this curse for years, had an item that let him control it, and it became part of him, then my DM threw us against a big bad, and I went to change into that form since that form was stronger (and could probably one shot the Big Bad), and he just told me I couldn't cause the bad guy "Removed the curse" (Btw no explanation on how he knew about it, let alone when he removed it. and this was a strong curse, I took it to every temple to get it removed when I first got it, with no luck, even having a god manifest on the martial plain and look at it, and say they couldn't remove it.) so my character lost all his abilities he had for years with nothing but a sentience, and i lost a huge part of my character because my DM forgot my character could do that and didn't want his Big bad to go down easy. TLDR: Taboo#6 taking away from the players to make an encounter tougher rather then changing the encounter to be more challenging for the players as is
Fully agree! The DM needs to have awareness of what the players have up their sleeve and adjust scenarios to fit them. I even sometimes suggest my players use an item because they REALLY needed to and forgot they had it haha.
Had to do that, when we switched to PathFinder. I misread the rules about starting stats, so I gave my players 4d6+3 stats instead of either 3d6+3 / 4d6. Worst feeling ever, taking 18 stats away back from the players later down the line.
God yes I hate this. One example of it happening wasn't even directed at me but a fellow player. We were somewhere around level 6, and at the end of one session the sorcerer found a Robe of the Archmagi. Everyone at the table was so in awe at the find, but by the next time we got together to play the DM had decided that it was a robe with the potential to be an Robe of the Archmagi, and currently only gave a fraction of the benefits, with more of its powers being unlockable with 2 upgrades down the line. I felt so crushed for them, just imagining finding an awesome magic item for my character only to be told that it's functionally a +1 weapon instead until later.
been there back when me and my friends just started our dm just decided out of the blue that we had to many magic items (I guess) so in a cutscene we had no control over or input on he let us keep one magic item each and took all the rest
@@WolforNuva Oh man. The giving of magic items was a big factor in the game I ran. I quickly realised I'd over-supplied and over-indulged the items I was giving, but instead of trying to do a backflip and somehow remove them, I just adjusted the difficulties of what the players had to do to account for it. It's harder, but more rewarding, especially for the players when they manage to beat the challenges you're putting against them. And I got a real sense of satisfaction seeing that feeling of accomplishment that it created amongst them. The only time I took an item back from them was their Apparatus of Kwalish, and that was only because they'd parked in it a location that got inundated by an entire lake of lava summoned by a series of Gate spells close to where they'd left it :P
Rule #1 No drugs or alcohol, if you want to get past the first scene/encounter of the game. Rule #2 RAW works well on many aspects unless you want to climb a rope or cross a stream. In those cases expect someone to die if you are to literal to the rules. lol
My Nr.1 DM taboo would be "force a PC to kill another PC" Here is the story: The night already started out pretty intense. We where inside the enemy-base, pretending to be their allies, when they came armed and agressivly marching to our room. The party wasnt rested and one of our players was absent that night, so the DM didnt include him in that scene at all. It was pretty clear that we couldnt fight this. I, as the groups frontline and with the most HP left, tried to buy my friends some time while they let their PCs escape through the small window one by one. The last of them escaped in the same moment that my PC goes down. When she wakes up again, my PC finds herself in a dungeon, stripped of everything but her underwear. She manages to get rid of her handcuffs and tries to escape, but the dungeon turns out to be a maze and she gets captured again. The next time she opens her eyes she is chained up again and infront of her stands the one, we assumed to be the leader of the enemy faction. With no other option left I tried to talk myself out of this, pretending to be on their side and insisting that this was a missunderstanding. Somehow this seemed to work and by the end of the conversation the man infront of my girl was nearly convinced, that I was loyal to them, even if my friends decided to betray them by escaping shamelessly. I just had to pass one more test and I would be free again. Thats when the guards brought the PC of the absent player in. He looked really beaten up and it was my job to finish him, with the knife the leader gave me. Since the other player wasnt there I could not even talk with him about the situation, and hesitating would surely kill my PC, which I loved dearly. So I did it, but I felt more than horrible while the DM discribed the Tabaxi dying in my PCs arms and I feel horrible about it until today, even if I tell myself that it was totaly in character to do it and loosing my character would be even worse. (Fun fact: about 3 sessions later the DM killed our whole party anyway and I left his table after that.)
That is just an awesome story mechanic. As i DM i force players to make horrible choices all the time. Sure, they will be miserable, but damn are they into the story and they are sure more interested in beating the bad guys.
That situation doesn't look confortable, but I think I'd allow it _after there was enough development_ and like it if it was for the sake of a really good story, even if it's so tragic and I couldn't play anymore, but maybe that's just me. hm, the dm should have warned people or asked them to let him do unexpected things before all that though, and it should only be for the sake of a good story. Not like those tv series that kill everyone just for a pinch of drama, it's subtle sometimes where you draw the line
I'd have handled that kind of situation a bit differently, as I think it was a great chance for some growth. For example, I'd still have the player choose whether or not to kill, but the weapon that was given to the player would have an engraving in a language only them and their best friend knew. Suddenly, that guy would turn out to be their long lost friend who once saved their lives, and was disguised as an evil leader for some greater good, explaining his absence. You know, something like that.
That to me sounds like your dm was a dick, but that situation could have been an epic moment, first off the other character would have had to be there, and there would have had to be a chance of you both getting out of it alive, I also this before it got to that point that there should have been a pause to the game, if it was my game I would have had to pause it and remind my party that I am playing the villain based on what they would do, I would not be happy to do that because I want my players to succeed but the villain does not, I already told my players before we started that I would do the best I could to play the enemy as they would act, that could mean them running away from a lost fight or going to get help or yielding, or if it comes to it, finishing off a downed pc just to take someone with them
I've never GM'd a game, but I would like to point out that you don't want to over-prepare either. My group meets once a week and about a month ago, our GM spent most of that week working on a side quest for us. It was supposed to take up the entire 4 hour session. We got through it in just one. We were told by an NPC that we needed to stay on the forest path no matter what and that we should run if we heard rattling chains. That "night," our campsite was surrounded by creatures with glowing eyes. Our Dwarf Fighter scared them off with a single Intimidate roll. Wasn't even a Nat 20. Then after we had gotten the MacGuffin quickly thanks to some lucky rolls, said Dwarf decided that the path home was too long and winding for him, so he pushed through the undergrowth. No one wanted to split the party and leave him to fend for himself so everyone followed. That's when we heard the chains. All but one character turned and ran, guess who it was? By the time we the characters realized that he wasn't following behind us and ran back to save him, the monster was half dead already. The Dwarf was the party tank and the creature had been trying to grapple him in its chains to drain his life force, but couldn't get past his high AC and was taking damage each turn from the Dwarf's sword. The poor GM was so sad and had to default the rest of the session to dragon hunting.
As a novice (3 yrs) GM, I second the overprepping tip. I had a dreaded "cutscene," where the story's Big Bad would make his escape while leaving the party to deal with his invisible henchbeing, and I had thought I had considered every contingency in advance, except... for a Tanglefoot Bag. (this was Pathfinder, not 5e.) They critted with it, and my villain rolled a 1 on his Reflex save, which despite a super-high Dex, was not enough. And once he was trapped in place, the group proceeded to just pummel the crap out of him until he was unconscious. They tied him up, interrogated him, and then murdered him when he wasn't more forthcoming. This sent the campaign heading off in a totally different direction, though it was probably for the better, in hindsight.
That is sad. I think his failure though, was actually underestimating the party's strength. Also, I'm quite surprised, as I'm sure he was, that you guys finished what was meant for 4 hours in 1. Very unusual.
My absolute least favourite is when the DM allows for 0 discussion. I know sometimes you setup an encounter where you defeat a bunch of enemies and the party finds a note or whatever, but if someone wants to capture an enemy instead, allow them to, or if they want to avoid the fight all together and just talk to the enemies, try to allow that too. I dislike when a band of goblins goes from a group of individuals to a band of low level monsters Also DON'T YOU TELL ME HOW MY CHARACTER REACTS, IF MY ARM GETS CUT OFF AND I LAUGH AT THE ENEMY THEN I'M LAUGHING AT THE ENEMY, NOT REELING IN SHOCK
I think I'd make you roll some sort of Constitution save if you wanted to do that. But if someone cut off your brother's arm in front of you, I'd say react away.
Dungeon masters giving oil to the squeaky wheel. Special treament, items or super long turns to players that whine/complain the most or are the loudest. While those that try to play the game like it's supposed to be played get ignored and pushed to the side. Also DM not cracking down on players interrupting others. If a player goes to talk and another player starts over talking them, as a DM they will be set straight by me right away. But Unfourtionatly most will not do so.
By that same token, STs or DMs who refuse to listen to players who have legitimate issues. "I feel like I made a social character and I don't get to social" receiving the response of getting ignored is grounds for immediate boot to the head. Players interrupting others is the worst. I played a social character prior, never got to do anything, combat was a pain because everything was stupidly OP compared to us, and anytime I tried to social, the least social character who constantly got to shine in combat would speak up and interrupt me because I actually thought about what I would say whereas he would just start barging into the conversation and usually get our party in more trouble than we started in.
Conner Wolf I watched a TED talk once about how introverts can actually be the best extroverts because they carefully plan what they say. What you commented reminded me of that. Sorry about your frustrations.
this is a pretty obnoxious one : one of the guys characters was core to the plot of the game, so when he died, some time hyjinx or other method of preservation revived him and/or bailed him out. on the other hand, when i got forcibly put into a no-win situation (i got teleported by a beyond-deity enemy into a pocket dimension, along with one of the guys. his girlfriend was forced to choose one of us to die : guess who got shafted there), i had to roll up a new character after one death, as opposed to the 4 different deaths this other character went through.
I think a cut scene can be a great tool if used properly. It sould be an interactive cut scene, like a travel montage, or training montage, an escape, or wrapping up a story narrative after a boss battle.
I have only done one of those and that was litterally because they were all knocked out and litterally couldn't do shit or see anything so I just explained to them how they could feel themself get dragged away untill they suddenly fell for a few seconds before it seemingly slowed down. They woke up hours later on the beach with one NPC that they had saved earlier dead in the same boat as them with a TON of questions that couldn't be answered..Pretty fun but I guess it was more a detailed description than a cutscene since they litterally couldn't interact even if they wanted to
It can also be used t introduce World Lore stuff into the game. Something that happens in the background where the characters can't actually interfer with and start to forget up until the point a certain character from that scene comes in... but they "saw" him die. Curiosity killed the cat is all I say. :D
I feel like I'm becoming a really bad Dm, lately I've been annoyed at my players for "breaking the world". I don't know if this is a struggle with me or if that op edgelord has just finally deteriorated me
Try changing your game around. If they just want to murder hobo, make an evil campaign. If they just want to go off and explore the land, they can.. And you can have escelating dc encounters for them as long as they arent following the story line. Eventually theyll realize that they cant keep going on like this and will turn back. If death dkesnt bother them. Take some time with each player individually to come up with an awesome background they can fall in love with, they wont want to die if they like their character.
It's hard to say what the problem might be without any details, but if you and your players have different ideas about how the game should go, you should all set some time aside and discuss what you want to do. Aside from that, you should keep in mind that all actions have consequences and there's always a bigger fish. If your PCs try to break the world, the world should try to break them.
Breaking the world... i know this all too well. My bbeg got polymorphed, stuck into a bag of holding, then transformed back, breaking the bag of holding and killing him... the players still enjoyed it tho
Update, I guess: I no longer play with these people as I realized they didn't actually care for me. Instead I've found an amazing group who will no longer take advantage of me.
@@haichie1341 That makes me happy happy to hear. I hope it's still going well for you. I feel like having all around good people at your table might be the most important corner stone of any campaign. Cheers! 🙂
Advice for DMs that play over Discord. A few things helped me when I DMed for good friends that don't live nearby. 1. Try not using Camera. I found this more helpful halfway through a campaign. Noone could use camera due to a problem with discord one day. I have a few friends that will not roleplay. This happened and they all came out of their shell. It also added to their imagination not having any faces to focus on. 2. If you don't trust their rolls, reverse the roll a few times. Break it to your PCs that a curse is in effect due to a location after they have used knowledge Arcana. You feel as if your luck is reversed or something along the lines. I had a PC who constantly rolled well. 15s and above almost every encounter at all times. He was having good luck with his rolls in this instance and bad things would happen to him. After this happened he didn't fudge his rolls again. It was a cool way of showing him what I could do without doubting him outloud. Later he actually admitted he was fudging and apologized. I only did this because I knew him well enough. So use this with caution..
For playing on Discord you really need a Dicebot. There’s some good ones online and they work great. Players just go to a channel and type !d20 and it will randomly generate a number like dice would
I see a lot of folks saying cutscenes are ok. and I cannot agree. Cody here is not the first to give this piece of advice but I think his example of a bad guy's monologue doesn't quite capture why it's bad. so; I'll quote ProJared and his example of a bad cutscene: DM: "you approach the village square, there an executioner stands above (important NPC your players need alive) he readies his axe and swings..." *The party wizard, interuppts* "I CAST HOLD PERSON ON THE EXECUTIONER" DM: "I wasn't finished"
i suspect a good way to implement some kind of cut scene is solely to have a different npc retell a situation he viewed. therefore its not a situation the players can react to, but they might be inclined to hear the story out
That is brillan BigCharlie. The only other way I could see having a cut scene at all would be IF all the characters have been captured. Then the big bad can tell the heroes his evil plan. Very much like a James Bond villain. "Do you expect me to talk?" "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
I do cutscenes sometimes, but they never take place around the party. It's more to show the players something offscreen. Something like "as you settle down to rest, the camera pans upwards for a second, then pans back down to show the evil archmage talking to someone out of sight". That way I can let the players, but not their characters, know something about his plans or weaknesses. Because, really, what BBEG worth his salt would actually TELL the only people in the world who can stop him exactly how to? I guess they're more like cutaways than cutscenes, but it accomplishes the same goal with no possible hit to immersion. It also adds a more "cinematic" feel to the game, which I reinforce by opening each session with "as the title screen fades, the camera focuses on the party as they are doing whatever they left last session doing" and by having credits roll at the end of the session. Sometimes I even do post-credit Marvel style scenes.
The most I really get into "cut scenes" is when I have to be reactionary to my players being stupid. Example: My players approached a tower in the middle of the night, in which they heard chanting from inside. I told them the door was locked, but there were several windows they could see through. I try to get the group to at least walk around the tower first to see if there was anything else. Nope. Barbarian rolls a strength check to charge through the door and rolls a 20 (also the only double digit the poor guy rolled that night), barges through the door. Que "cutscene": you break the door off its hinges with a loud crash, gaining the immediate attention of everyone in the room. But congrats, the chanting has stopped. The room is full of people dressed in dark robes, but it seems as though you've barged into a wedding ceremony. (A cult captured the person they were looking for and were going to force her to marry one of the cultists.) The ringleader springs into action and fires off a bolt of fire in your direction..... yadda yadda. If they had literally walked around the damn building they would have found the room attached to the tower where she was being held and could have snuck her out quietly but no. One bad idea, a good roll, and 20 cultists later they nearly got their whole party killed.
Worst taboos? 1. Monty Haul. 2. Magic item shops in every town fully stocked, has an online catalog with next day delivery, and it can be made. 3. A week's amount of food that lasts months. 4. A torch/lamp that lasts for months. 5. The light source is never hand held. It's attached to my helm, his shield, her shoes, her sword, etc. and despite moving all over the place has no affect on vision, esp.when it goes alone into a room, goes around a corner, falls in a pit, etc. 6. The monsters want to die. They never retreat, never lose morale, and lack any survival skills. 7. As the BBEG loses his army piecemeal, they don't notice it and his leaders and minions don't either. 8. The monsters have magic items and don't use any of them. 9. The monsters seem to lack any familiarity of their lair. 10. The fame and notoriety of the heroes goes noticed only a few, esp. when gold starts to flow...
Something I do all the time and I wish I didn't is pulling back the curtain and showing the players the secrets of the adventure. I only do this after the fact, but it ruins the mystery. Keep the players guessing, keep the mystery going ad don't give away those secrets!
I don't think that's bad per sé, if you do it after the fact. The aim is to have fun.. Together. And if you cannot share that experience, then where's the fun for you, the GM? I say: Don't become an isolated island. Don't be the one looking in from outside. It's okay to do a big reveal after the game, show them the workings (since they solved most of it anyway), and share in the banter. At the end of the day, you, too, are a player of a game.
Ed Stevens Yeah, pulling back the curtain ruins the game for the players, IMO. Even if the players say they want to know, they really don't. It's so much more fun for them not knowing.
That's not a bad thing after the fact. I always tell my players when something went WAY different than I expected, and even tell them what I had planned instead. It shows that you are giving them the freedom to alter the world.
I have had to pull back the curtain a little once. It was the first session of a new campaign and the party had no tanks and no healers. Pretty much everyone in the town told the party they should pay their respects at the local temple, but they decided not to. Had to have the healer NPC who was waiting to join them at the temple bail save them from a fight they were losing very badly. I ended up telling them after the fact that the NPC had been at the temple. They all just laughed and said, "But thou must."
CastleBroknhed No frontliners is a recipe for disaster... They gotta have something to keep the baddiea off the archers and casters. Otherwise every encounter will be rough....
*an aged and wizened DM sits at the bedside of an ill an dying party member, and plagued with guilt he feels compelled to unburden himself. "I'm so sorry, i have something to confess... remember that campaign 27 years ago with that beholder "The Resplendent Eye-Tyrant"... you rolled a natural 1 on your dex-" "FUQ YOU, MAN!. my life is a lie..." *BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
My two are very simple: railroading and anti-favortism. If your players want to do things other than directly follow your storyline, adapt. It's not that hard to change an encounter location to fit where they went if you want them to meet an enemy or give them loot with a letter stating something happened. Don't force players to go exactly where you want, when you want, how you want. At that point, why are they even there? As for anti-favortism, it's the reason I absolutely refuse to play with a certain DM. For whatever reason, he hated my characters (or me, unknown which). I've had characters 1 hit killed, trapped by a dragon after getting a Nat 20, had xp purchased things done at character creation taken away multiple times, characters killed off screen or solo away from anyone else in the party with no knowledge of what happened to them, set equipment "broken" from crits or botches when that never happened to anyone else, constant focus from enemies no matter what class I'm playing ect, ect. Literally anything you can do to target a player, he did to me. He was my first DM, so it took until we played our third different TTRPG that I figured out "oh, this isn't how DnD or Exalted works, this is just him being a d-bag". The killer for me was his extremely graphic and detailed rape of my character after she was charmed by an enemy despite being immune to charm effects by a character creation, xp purchased permanent feature, which he explained away by claiming he meant it was done by a god and thus not affected by your specifically stated feature. I got up and walked out, told him he was disgusting and vile, on top of being a terrible DM.
Jeffrey Fulstone I don’t blame you for ditching that DM, ignoring Something the player has because the Core rulebook (AKA the bible of D&D) says they do without checking if it’s cool with said player way before (as in, during character creation) is an easy way to lose players.
@@alexhackett1312 Thanks for your kind words! Yea, there's a reason the majority of my original gaming group refused to play any games DM'd by that person, or have him involved at all. By the way, if he had done something "by the book" I probably would have been more forgiving, it was more like he had specific rules for me and another set of rules for everyone else.
My wife is a rogue and steals everything from npcs that is nailed down or not. One time she left her supplies behind without thinking so I kept looting her stuff. Only got like 25 silver, but it felt good to steal from the rogue ajd it didn't really inconvenience her. Also the dm kinda favors her anyway so I knew she would make even more back. It's my response to dm favoritism.
I had a mercenary character who was stolen from by a rogue in the party. I observed him doing this and pretended to be asleep. A couple sessions later we had to split up and I went with the rogue and when he wasn't expecting it (caught him flat footed) clubbed him to death with my maul and took his gold. I went back to the party and bluffed them into believing he fell in battle. Benefits of a high perception and bluff.
Back in the old days, at the end of the adventure we'd grab the halfling thief by his ankles and shake him until the loot he'd stolen fell out. We just took it for granted that he'd stolen from us; after all, he was a thief. No animosity was involved, just playing the characters as they were.
Animosity only exists within the character created. We had just met, no time to build any rapport. Should become likeable before you start trying to steal from the party.
A DM taboo I recently had to experience was one I like to call. "Your sheet means nothing." My dm ran a reality jumping game and got everybody to roll up stats make characters I made a great backstoryfor my tortle Druid hermit. And I brought it to the table...and my dm said. "Everyone is human and all your stats are at 10." This gut punch pretty much made my whole time playing a absolute bore and a slog because all the work I put into my character meant nothing. Sure my DM said we would gwt our stats back as we played, but he never told us that before the game started. So the whole game pretty much gave me a bad taste in my mouth the whole time because it pretty much was a waste of time since session zero until we FINALLY (ten sessions later) got our stats back
My friend DM'd once, he was a "do whatever you want I can't stop you sort of DM". A goblin failed an intelligence check and got a Nat 1, instead of the check just not working, the DM decided since it was such a bad roll that a Giant 'Eater of Worlds' Snake God erupts from the ground and starts killing everyone. Then our cleric trys to summon their god to do battle with the snake and also rolled a 1 summoning cuthulu, the world became so unblanced that there were so many gods in one place that the universe exploded the end. Needless to say, we never let him DM again.
Worst DM sin is the opposite of #3. Super linear narrative which eliminates any freedom from players. One direction scenarios/quests which they feel like players are the actors in a DM's predetermined story.
My dm does this and it feels like I'm playing a co-op rpg game instead of an open world massive adventure where we can do whatever we want, seems like we just have to do whatever the dm says. Complete destruction of freedom.
yeah I feel you! last time I played with such a type of DM, a player decided to spill a undefined magic potion we found and the story ended there because that potion was a key point for the final battle of the adventure....!!!! that was really hilarious but sad in the same way. I never played with that group again for obvious reasons!
This one I'm on the ledge about this one , if my GM had made it clear the story was about us doing XYZ and it was somewhat critical to lore (such as in a warcraft based RPG I did where we witnessed and was involved with very core lore story already presented from its past) I can forgive this a little. As long as I'm clear on the boundrys of what we're doing, and we are aloud freedom to play our characters I'm happy to avoid complicating the gms story telling in regards to that, but it has to be established what were doing first, not braking lore in a past based game and being part of the story is fine, just stopping me being immersed in my character out side of this is not cool.
Ah, the plot railroad. Guilty of this myself from time to time, but getting far better about it. Once you realize it's not a story *you* are telling the players, but a story the players are experiencing *with* you, and allow things to develop organically, everyone will have a better time, and trust me, as a DM you'll enjoy yourself even more than you thought. Be prepared for the players to royally fuck up something that should have been simple, or for them to cakewalk through something you planned to be insanely hard. Don't be vindictive about it, player actions are the best tool to advance a narrative, and the stories will be way better, and the players will love feeling their effects on the world they're in.
Huh? If a DM told me that they had to fudge the rolls behind the scenes I wouldn't think "Damn he took away my choices" I think, "Damn that's a good DM who put our enjoyment and the story above complete random chance". I have zero interest in a DM that's fine with killing off PCs, who through no fault of their own, die because of the pure random luck of the dice.
There are players who believe something like, "the dice are god." And there are players like you who just want to have fun, and meaningless death of a PC does not make for fun.
@Leisure that's a perfectly reasonable way to play, but it's not the only way to do it. I actually have multiple regular games, some I DM and some I play. Different games are set up differently. I find each style differently enjoyable, but the entire table knows which type we are playing. The short of it is: play the game that's fun for you. Just make sure all those at the table are playing the same game.
Have you ever listened to the adventure zone? It is a great real play podcast and I think it is a example of cutscenes being a great adition to the story and adding atmosphere.
Ethan Barter I freaking love The Adventure Zone! It’s some fantastic storytelling! However, while lots of the cut scenes are really well done, I actually wouldn’t tell dms to look to it for advice. There are multiple instances where the pcs become bystanders & the npcs determine major event at the end of a story arc (e.g., Petals To the Metal.) I think it works for their table & they love creating a story first & foremost, but I as a player feel extremely frustrated if it seems like my choices don’t matter & the dm is just going to do what s/he wants. But yeah I love Taz so much it makes me emotional!
Teabooksgirl I’ll second this, but I will say that if you’re playing with players who got into D&D via TAZ, a little more cutscene might be appropriate. However, I would stick to cutscenes controlling only NPCs, and if your players are present for the scene let them decide how they feel or act in the moment by taking a break from the cutscene - you won’t be able to do it as scripted after your players respond, but it will cut them off from the action less. TAZ is definitely geared towards producing a satisfying story rather than gameplay experience, although they obviously all had a great time with balance.
One thing I tend to do when making a quest or something is to just make a skeleton. I just fill in the details that are absolutely needed, such as the map of a dungeon, the loot in it and enemies. Then just fill in the details as i go along
I actually played my first campaign with a DM who had his own pc in the party. While a lot of plot points involved this pc, the game was pretty well built around each pc and their own backstory and interconnection with eachother. So the narrative ended up working quite well, even with a DM pc. But that's mainly the case of a good DM working with the players throughout
Of course, there are a few things he did do wrong, being his first time DMing a campaign, but overall the narrative played out well and left a good impression for me
You're not kidding taking control of a character away from a player is a cardinal sin. one that can end the whole game. the last time I played D&D(3.5E) this happened to my character and ended the game permanently. all because of a 5 foot step that was made by the DM controlling my character. putting him in range of the monster just so the DM could show off how strong his monster was by killing my nearly epic level character in one hit. He made my almost epic level fighter / Scout to take a 5-foot step forward. putting him just in range to get whacked, and preventing me from taking a five foot step backwards. which would have dropped me an additional 10 feet away from the monster and out of range of his attacks on the set of giant stairs (10'×10')we were climbing. this character was based around Mobility in combat and it might seem silly to get bent out of shape about a five foot step, but when it makes the difference between your character surviving and dying it becomes an issue. Nobody likes for their character to die but when the DM takes control of your character and puts it in a situation where it can be killed because of it it's a serious issue
I had a similar experience once- At the time, I was doing the potentially-dumb thing of playing two characters. The second, a bard, was meant to be only a temporary member meant to fill the magic-user slot in the party. I'd used her in a previous adventure before in the same campaign, so I thought it'd be nice to bring her back briefly. We were all at a festival in the city, but plot shenanigans began to happen, including one of our player's characters getting captured and our party now had to enter a secret underground section of the city to rescue them. I had my bard stay behind to get some guards in hopes that they'd assist, and the rest of us went down to the dungeon to investigate. Upon reaching them, one of the BBEG's henchmen came along and cornered us, and that's when it happened: the DM told us "One of the others throw down [Bard], beaten, bruised, and tied up. What had happened was that my character had gotten beaten to near-death and captured off-screen--no rolls or any mention of what was happening whatsoever. Things are fine now, we're long past that point in the campaign, but I still find it to be a serious problem when a DM starts messing with the control of player characters.
TriBlade Aura oh that's just wrong I've played two characters before as a matter of fact it was in the longest running game I had ever played in thing lasted for five years in times where one of my characters was separated from the main group he would either have me stay after the main game or set aside some other time for me to come and play through whatever shenanigans that character was going through but he would have never dreamed of pulling some crap like you just described
As a DM, when it's finally time to face off with the BBEG it can honestly feel a little exciting on both sides. The party has been trying to reach this point and have heard tell of this big baddy, and know to be careful, while on the other hand there is this crazy challenge for the players with maybe one or two really powerful spells or actions, and it's kind of cathartic to finally be able to use a character that has been hyped for so long. THAT BEING SAID, I would NEVER showcase that power on a party character unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then it would be a random decision to keep it fair. I tend to showcase the power on an NPC, maybe one that the PCs grew fond of to add a gravity to their situation and motivate their characters.
Darth Vaultboy oh no man this wasn't some built-up big bad boss monster kind of thing. this was a random encounter on a flight of Giant 60 ft tall ascending tunnel with 10 ft(H) x 10 ft (L)× 30 ft(W) stairs with 30ft by 30ft Square platforms every 300 ft inside a mountain that we had transverseed lots of times to get in and out of this Hidden City it took 3 days to climb the stairs in or out and the city was warded from teleportation. so after a dozen or so times of going in and out of this city we were accustomed to it. my character was the only one in the group that passed his spot and listen checks so he was the only one able to Act during the surprise round. I was the Scout anyway so I was always in front. I was on the edge of the step when this Giant thing popped out of nowhere he had a 10-foot reach I moved 5 foot forward made a single attack then stated I take a five foot step backwards (yes I had spring attack) & end my turn. the DM frustrated that his monster didn't surprise the whole party because of me took control of my character forcing him to take a five foot step into the monsters threatened area instead of backwards which would have caused me to fall off the edge of the stair & down 10 feet so Out Of Reach of the monster . sure I would have taken 1 D6 fall damage (the reason he stated my character wouldn't do that) but that was way better than getting bitch slapped by this thing which ended up being a critical hit killing my ecl 18th character in one hit 2 days away from town with no method to resurrect him they ran from the battle ( can't really blame them it did just drop one of their strongest Fighters in one hit) without recovering his body And while all of that sucked and was very inappropriate for a DM to do. None of that was the reason the game ended. the reason the game ended was because he took control of my character did an action resulting in his death while he was under the DM's control. then proceeded to argue with me why that was okay. getting physically angry and screaming at me. While the only question I asked was who's supposed to control my character me or you? And if the answer is you why the hell am I here?
Dude, if you were possessed, charmed, drawn via monster ability or said that you were going down the said set of stairs with too low passive perception, thats on you.
As a DM for Christmas I got a spell book from Elderwood Academy from a player. It was done in my favorite color and it says "Beware of smiling DM" on the side. Kicks butt. Best gift last Christmas
My mentality lately has been, I create an encounter ahead of time (try to just barely hit that line of deadly), after that I am on the players side. Occasionally I have to fudge a really unlucky (critical roll) attack, or forfeit using the optimal spell or strategy to give the players a chance. But at the end of the night when they ask "I did my best to kill you, I'll get you next time". Outside of the game I'm on the monsters side, building lairs and plans for them to succeed. At the table I want my friends to feel like heroes, and sometimes they are strong and smart, other times they're lucky. I've skipped monologues or "cool" entrances completely. I use NPC and letters/journals to tell the villain story. It's that trope in movies "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, SHOOT HIM! HE'S NOT DEAD, HIT HIM AGAIN!" and D&D is the place where you get to live out that fantasy. I don't want to take that away from my players.
Chris Krukowski I sometimes have some npcs start monologues but I absolutely let my players interrupt them/attack them. I think it's led to some pretty funny moments
My one DM would have a spy network so complex they would know our every move, bordering on meta gaming. We put traps and sigils to protect our town, they would disarm them and walk right past. We set watches they would know weak points etc It got extra annoying. Oh, and we couldn’t spy on them since the spies were all owned by the “big bad”.
ValasaFantastic you're right but even more so spies are rarely loyal to anything but the highest bidder many have no issue providing info to both sides so it should just be a question of how much gold is needed
This actually can work, if it's explained later in the story. Like, the spies - being ghosts, spectres or spirits for instance. Though, you do have to postpone that priorly, that there is a sensation of magic, that can be felt where players are looking. However, it's a lot more fun to just give them random item, make sure they didn't give a shit about it may be cursed / magically imbued with tracking / eavesedropping spells and then fucking them up for that. THAT is fun and awesome, although makes your players paranoid a bit later on.
The only time I have used a "cutscene" is when my party was being hunted down by some slave traders and was hiding in the woods. They had one pc stand guard while the others slept and I would ask the guard to make a skill check to see if they would stay awake, taking into account how long they had been awake/how much fighting they had been doing. I also rolled to see if the slave traders would find them in the woods and if the guard was awake when the slave traders found them they would fight. If they fell asleep and they didnt get found nothing would happen, if they fell asleep and got found I did a stealth check to see if the party would wake up and fight or, what ended up happening, the slave traders were able to drug the party members and they all woke up on a ship in the brig and sold into slavery. They planned a riot and got all their stuff back and freed most of the slaves and sailed off leaving the slavers with basically nothing and then when hey got back mainland they decided to dedicate their time to hunting down slavers on a slave ship. I was expecting them to go back to their original quest. (They had to free a kings daughter from the slavers in order to end a war) they returned the girl and then I had to write a whole new story about slave traders!
I don't know, it was pretty hilarious when I failed every combat roll during the dungeon, only to pick up a cursed sword at the end and instantly roll an 18 on the first attack, almost killing one of the other players.
A thousand times yes. Random weapon drop turning into murder your friends sucks. I made a cleric for a group 5 person group and picked up an evil sentient mace, the mace dominates person on one of the party then has them start walking to their death. Turned into a shit show real quick.
I'd stipulate that any item that turns your PC into an NPC- not under your control- is essentially an evil item . And a potential campaign breaker , unless used careful and sparingly.
Something I learned the hard way is basing a whole section of game play on one skill (Stealth) because your players will fail the check at the worst moment, ruining the whole section. I advise that any part of a mission or campaign as a whole should be achievable any of three different ways. Like a castle invasion to steal an artifact being completed by stealth, strait forward attack, or charm your way in. Give a variety of way to get to the goal.
It's hard to do though. Not every situation will fairly favor both a barbian AND a rogue, sometimes its just 1 characters time to shine and the others need to let them have that moment.
+Andreas Michael Design Problem with that is that the rogue/barabarian/(other class) may fail rolls multiple times and can ruin the entire section because of that. I've experienced this multiple times with my characters and my GM safely assumes I will fail/critically fail on any major story important strengths I have. Always be prepared for the section of a game to change, ALWAYS!
I had a DM who was just 17 and was DMing his first game. He primarily knows Pathfinder and was making the transition to 5e with difficulty. He knew the basic rules but never read the DMG or the Player's Handbook, even after close to a dozen sessions with him. And his big taboo was inexplicably complex skill checks. Like, I'm surprised he didn't have us rolling dex and con saves whenever we breathed or ate anything to avoid choking on our own tongues. A rogue wanted to climb onto a rooftop and the DM told him to roll athletics, then roll dexterity. When questioned why, his reasoning was that athletics was to grab the roof, and dexterity was to pull yourself up without banging your head or hurting yourself. We argued this until he dropped it, but you could see he was dead set in keeping his mindset. He had us roll sleight of hand checks to dig holes, acrobatics to throw dead animals, perception checks to see the freaking sky, and so on. It became a joke after a while. And, worse, he was determined to have us take damage any time we failed any check and wouldn't describe anything to us without us making some kind of check first. For example, my ranger, whose favored enemy is a goblin, was not allowed to recognize goblins as anything other than "tiny green humanoids" until I'd made a successful perception check. One player couldn't make it one day so his character spent the entire session unconscious, and at one point the DM randomly had this character fall off the wagon we were transporting, hit his head, and land face-down in the mud. When the players asked about him, they were informed he wasn't breathing. Cue the players asking if the character was dead, to which they got, "[shrugs] He isn't breathing." They eventually turned him over and he was breathing just fine. The very fact that the character was simply unconscious because his player wasn't there and could've died via suffocation as if this were a variant of the Avatar film was just insane. One of the most baffling things for me was the fact that my player was 14, which the DM took to mean I was completely incompetent. I had a strength score of 14 and he insisted I couldn't lift a 40lb barrel by myself. I was 5'1" and he had NPCs referring to my character as a halfling. Anytime I was keeping watch or scouting or, at one point, using a ballista (had a +7 to my ranged attack rolls, the best in the party), he would look at the rest of the party, confused, and say, "Are you sure you want the 14-year-old to do this?" My husband, also in the party, at one point snapped and said, "YES. We want the player with the best score doing this." I think that's the moment the DM had the epiphany of, oh, age doesn't matter, does it? Yeah haha, her dex is 18 and her str is 14 and her con is 16 and she probably wouldn't get drunk off one mug of ale, huh? (He insisted I'd drop dead after one sip of alcohol due to my age. Logical, right?) Up until now he'd even had all the NPCs simply scoff at my character and write her off, and I'm thinking, this is medieval times. 14 is practically adulthood. She could walk through town and oneshot every NPC. Anywhere else, she'd be a prodigy; in this game, with this DM, she's a walking joke. Wow, dude. It was a very frustrating campaign with him and I'm infinitely glad we never finished it.
I had a railroad DM tell me that my PC went up to a quest board, read a particular one, and decided to do it without my say so. The whole time I was just thinking, "My character is a Barbarian; he can't even read..."
With one exception: If the PC decides his character suddenly knows some metagame knowledge his backstory and skills can't possibly account for I will veto it.
I don't agree with you for that one because it's their characters so of course most of the time they will ignore feeling that are bad for them. For example how many players dare to admit that their character is afraid of something to the point they can't almost do anything? Like you play in a real world setting and suddently in the dark night and see a man walking toward you, you can see he has a hole in his chest of the size of a head, and no skin, the meat is in putrification and the smell of death and shit is all around him. A lot of players would be like: I'm a cop I'm not afraid, but you're a cop how many time you deal with undead before? let me check. none!! you deal with reality not undead thing. For you (even if you believe in surnatural force) it's the first encounter ever and an horrible one, you can't even understand what you are seeing. How many players would admit that their characters is "stun" by the horror or just want to run away and don't face it? Another example I experienced: In a realistic pirate game the three aventurers where walking for hours in the jungle, with only 1 liter of water and their last meal was 6-7 hours ago. And I describe something like that "So you're still walking, the heat is getting harder with the hours, the walk start to be difficult due to the dense vegetation that slow you and make each step exhausting. You start to be exhausted. And one player said: What I'm exhausted after few hours of walk? Talk about an aventurer! And I said: Yeah because you can walk more than 6 hours straight in a jungle, so not a road, with 30° (celcius) and just one liter of water for 4 people (they had one npc with them)? The two others players were like: how shit! we can't do that it's a miracle we can still work. And the other player where like: hum okay... (but clearly not convince and by the way it was the very first experience of this kind for his character and in the game he has like 8 in constitution in D&D so not a tough guy... Players will tend to refuse any feeling that can weak their character even for a moment. Even (and most often) in a realistic setting. Because they are on a chair not in the situation for them the danger is not real. Even if you describe clearly the situation has dangerous, exhausting, hard... Of course you can explain them and lot of them will understand that running away and screaming will be the only thing that they can do against such situation; wanted to do a break to rest their feet or thing like that. But some player will never think of that and some even refuse to admit that their character will act like that just because it's not go for them. So you say it one time and the next time you don't have to tell them that after hours of walking in the jungle they are exhausted and will not expect to be able to fight correctly if they attack someone. I don't think the DM should control the character, telling what they think all the time but some time it could help not to control but saying what they think or feel in such situation because players will not realize the situation or accept that the situation is way over their control and they can't handle it (like being tired, afraid). It's for my "alarm signal" you can give to the players about a situation instead of: ok you keep walking? and when the start a fight: Due to being tired you take X malus to all your rolls. It make sense but first give them an ingame signal of the situation and how their character can handle by a description of the situation and the feeling before giving the meta-game signal like malus in roll. But it needs to be done wisely: A character that is known for being very brave and already encounter undead will not being suddenly afraid of a zombie, a man that is very in love with his wife and never cheat on her will not think of "damn this woman is hot I don't mind to bang her!" it's the player's choose. So you need to know the background of the heros and not doing it often but in situation that are obviously the one feeling possible or when the players don't realize the situation. but everyone is way to do DM and for some players it's okay and for others not so the important thing in all game is after if the players (included the DM) like a thing or don't like something in the game to tell it like: "guys I want you to realize that you are some fucking teenagers! you can't be brave to don't give a fuck about your dead family that was just murdered in the last session". Or: "dude stop saying that my character cared about that little bear! my character doesn't give a fuck it's a paladin he protect human being not animals!"
I used telling the players their feelings once as an indication that the characters were under a form of subtle mind control, since they knew that I never normally do that and I had been doing it for about a session before they figured it out. The players figured it out JUST before they were about to slaughter another group of like minded adventurers under the delusion that it was a group of demons. It was probably the most meta I've ever gotten in a game. Although there were other hints as well (the flying demon wasn't flying, the demons were using unusual weapons and armor etc...)
Great video! As a DM, my most recent misstep that pretty much soured the entire campaign was to shift plot direction on the party. They had been scrambling through an old warlock's tower, going through traps, puzzles and a few encounters trying to get to the top to stop what they thought was the sacrifice of an NPC they had become attached to. Anyhow, when it came down to it, the sacrifice turned out to be a summoning and they followed the half-formed demon through a portal. This was meant to be an introduction to a big multi session campaign arc where they uncovered one of the big secrets of the campaign world that actually tied into the background of one of the characters who's player had been struggling to find a connection between his character and the rest of he party. Anyhow, things didn't go as planned and the players felt like I had run a bait and switch on them, story-wise. I tried to back pedal the story but that left them with a bunch of magic items that would have served them well in the story that was to be but made them pretty overpowered and wealthy going back to where they had come from. From there, the energy seemed to disappear from the group and that campaign ended.
Here is where I might suggest what I often (dubiously?) call "Tween-sessions"... In some cases they become even more important along the way than the "Session 0" was to start off the game. For one, in Session 0, you can remember to remark about and explain most of your intentions, the debatable rules, home-brews included, and general expectations at the Table... BUT there's practically always something that gets forgotten... SO... A "Tween-Session" discussion, to remind Players of a somewhat obscure tid-bit, or to let them know about something you're thinking of putting in the game, or whatever can serve as really helpful... For another, Plot-Twists can be tricky. We (GM's) often employ some form of Foreshadowing, Foreboding, and advanced glimmers of insight, ranging from Dream-sequences to full-on Prophecy... BUT sometimes the whole effort to produce a "clever" plot twist just comes across the Table as a "bait and switch" tactical call... Like you can't come up with a remarkable way to keep the Players guessing and since they guessed your strategy, you just cheaply "changed it"... "Tween-session discussions" can get across to the Players that (in point of fact) you've been working on this particular twist for weeks in advance, and they might as well understand, twists are part of the fanciful fun of D&D and story telling in general... Just in case you ran short of ideas for a proper foreshadowing, it can help that once in a while. Some consider it a "meta-plague", so I'd recommend keeping these to a kind of periodic minimal, but not to be afraid to employ it at least occasionally through especially the longer campaigns and arcs. I learned (or invented?... might be too strong a word. I'm not that bright) the hard way too. ;o)
I kinda have a problem when it comes to talking with my players. See all of them are fairly new (And some of my best friends but that is mostly irrelevant) and to quote one of them "Don't tell us what you are planning or how you will do things! We want to be suprised!" Now I have given them a bit of background information about the country they are in, how things more or less work (In the area they actually know about) and I like that they can't plan ahead too much with their characters since in this case having specific magic could make this VERY easy. I at least want them to earn the knowledge in the game before they can get to use it rather than just meta game. Sorry I am digressing the thing is they dont want to know what is ahead of them. We have played a few sections before so I more or less know what they like but telling them about the story ahead could ruin the fun but at the same time telling them would ruin a big part of what they find fun so..should I just go with my guts?
bibbobella, My suggestions, including the "tween session discussion", are just that... suggestions. I found it useful when I was concerned that my "narrative skills" as a GM were lacking for introducing a good plot twist. Some plot twists are easy to do, and the "damage control" issues are almost non-existent, so it's no big deal. It becomes something like a big joke, and everyone can laugh. Example... The PC's are trudging through a treacherous sort of terrain with obvious sinister tropes in mind, like up to their wastes in a swampy bog... dark... stinks... (you get the idea)... AND they happen on a particularly brightly colored toad of unusual (large) size... {Normally, in the wild (IRL) a brightly colored creature lacks camouflage BECAUSE it's inherently dangerous, usually poisonous... so the PC's are rightly confused and timid} The "twist" happens when a child approaches from some nearby shadows and alarms everyone while she collects her "pet" (the toad) and the gag is that it's a completely harmless species of exotic origins... somewhere else, it might've actually BEEN camouflaged... Other plot twists, aren't so simple... (say) a "beloved" NPC who's regularly been helpful and congenial, is about to betray the party horribly to the Evilest nefarious son of a bitch in the game... It's GOING to create a surprise attack, putting the party at a disadvantage, and while the dramatic points are to create a visceral emotional response in the Players (and of course, bring the group close to death without an actual TPK, while taxing resources) it's easy for this one to be perceived as a rotten thing for any GM to pull... It's really easy when PC's are injured and even put face-down on the ground, for Players to call "Cheat"... SO... I invented the "tween session discussion" where I can recap some "foreboding" or "foreshadowing" event from earlier in the session or the game, and kind of elude to a twist approaching... THAT does NOT mean, that you should stop the session and say "Okay guys and dolls, here comes time for the lovely granny lady to F*** you all over!" in just so many words... even if you have a scheduled "tween session discussion" it's probably a good idea to drop less than subtle hints instead of flat out telling them the story... Some fans of the RPG world would accuse me of meta-gaming, even possibly doing so a bit too much. There's nothing inherently wrong with meta-gaming... Just everything wrong with doing TOO much of it willy-nilly. Most of the time, my most regular of Players never had issue with plot twists, betrayals, and a variety of conflicting contents that most people would even find uncomfortable in not-so-polite conversation... BUT for those few who might feel "cheated", especially when you're unsure of your narrative hints being taken seriously or skilled enough to get the message across... maybe there's room to consider. At the end of the day, YOU know your Players in far greater detail than I do... than any of us, really. You can probably read their reactions and gauge how far you should push something like a twist or pun or even word play... before dropping the idea and letting the story move on... OR even just calling a time-out to address whatever concerns might need raised. On that kind of choice, you kind of HAVE to trust your gut. ;o)
Corollary for Sin 2: when it's one player's time to shine, let them. Let everyone have their big dramatic moments. If the players can help, good, but if someone wants to drag the spotlight over to them when it isn't their turn to have it, politely shut them down. Or not politely, if necessary.
Don’t be frustrated if/when your players outsmart you. Reward that behavior and use it to fuel you making more difficult challenges in the future. I had a sunken tower with a large creature at the bottom floor. Druid used whirlpool or some other spell to basically churn the creature with no effort. It was fantastic but in the moment my players for sure felt my frustration and they shouldn’t
PaganUniform This happened with me as a Player, the DM decided to put a Beholder in an enclosed space I was a warlock with Hunger of Hadar, reppelling blast and devils sight. I sat there smacking the Beholder while everyone bombed it with aoe spells. We beat it without taking any damage at all. And the DM got really pissed and confrontational.
I absolutely LOVE IT, when my players find cheap tacticts for doing something. That's so fucking rewarding, than "we just go and kinda fight, hoping for something good" - why? :D The more you endorse that behaviour - the more clever your players will act and come out of their shells, thinking creativily! And this is fantastic! You can also do cheap tacticts, if you really wanted to, like "there was actually a powerful sorcerer who had been sitting there with scrying on him and he was the one behind the beholder, HUZZA! >:D", but in the end of it all - they found something, that you didn't think of and they used it. Cherish it, it's fucking great. In the end, you then get a lot of great laughs, since your players start paying attention to things that you might not. Like, the last session I've been running - party stumbled upon a dying peasant. Basically, a small quest giver, who then died afterwards. Naturally, was looted and party found an amulet on him. So, after thinking for a bit - I though it would be nice to give the tank ability of resentless endurance, which would make me be able to experiment a bit more freely with monsters, so naturally I told them about the enchantment. The enchantment, naturally, was a once per day - if dead, go to 1 HP and be alive again. And the wizard of the group started laughing, saying after a bit "soo, you are saying that we KILLED the peasant by looting this amulet from him?". I almost died there, facepalming myself xD.
I say that I do fudge rolls at times. I don't say that I did when I do. One statement is for disclosure and open honesty the other ruins the current experience.
It also sounds like bragging when DM's do... or at least thats my opinion. I DM for a few of my friends and we are all pretty new so I have fudged a roll or two but I feel like if I said "Well I could have killed you but I choose not to" not only ruins the experience but also makes me look like a sore loser or cocky dick
@@VioletRoseLilly I admitted to fudging die rolls once and it was when the player I fudged for left and I admitted that I did it to keep him from raging. He was a nice guy, but had a bit of a temper, and had been handed a really shit hand that entire session, the past few sessions honestly. I fudged some rolls so he didn't instant die when I fucked up. I also admitted to fudging rolls early on DMing because I didn't know how to balance encounters yet, and was upfront and told the players "Ok so that combat went poorly, I'm still learning this, I'm sorry guys"
@Leisure Every story is fake. Writers aren't just rolling random dice to determine how their story goes and the MCs die halfway through. Do you really wanna die from falling down some stairs?
@Leisure Strawman. That is literally not what I meant. If you nat 1 on an acrobatics and then fall down some stairs, just normal stairs, is that a good story for you to die right there? Of course not. That'd be a terrible ending for a character you put your heart and soul into. Nobody is suggesting the entire story is fixed, but there are times when you have an ST who can make a human judgement for a reason. Because sometimes the dice are wrong. Rolling determining the narrative is how you die from 1d6 falling damage at level 1.
@Leisure It's an old joke that pokes fun at the D&D health and rolling system, particularly the cruelty of falling damage. And generally speaking, you might require more than that, but even in your scenario, to me, that's anticlimactic. What kind of movie would Lord of the Rings be if Frodo had just slipped and fallen off a high cliff at some random moment and died? The risk of death isn't what makes you enjoy something, the memories you make along the way are. Yeah D&D should still have a risk for death, but random dark mook #5 shouldn't _usually_ be that life-threatening situation. Goblins shouldn't be a life-or-death encounter (Unless you're in the goblin slayer universe). It's all about storytelling and the best stories require moments of high tension for a character to die. Say a more 'plausible' scenario happens, you happen to be climbing a mountain, you roll a nat 1, you fall and die. No climactic finale, no resolved conflicted for your character, you just fucking die. That is not fun. That is anticlimactic.
I am guilty of this and it did bite me. The indestructible enemy. The point of the encounter was to force the party to lose so the enemy they fought simply didn't take damage, not that it couldn't, I didn't keep track because it wasn't meant to die in this encounter. Never build an encounter where you aren't prepared for either the party or what they are fighting to die. Because they will find a way to kill it and if you stop them from that goal by exhibiting your DM god powers they will be unhappy with you
From experience: it's not because you did it, it can be done well. Like every tool in your kit, each has a place and a right way to use it. If your players kill Cthulhu, you're running Cthulhu wrong.
This is true. Intentionally put a monster somewhere once that was too strong for them to try and scare them away, so they would understand that if they're not careful they might die. To make it short: at first they put up a better fight than expected, thought they could win, and then I had to intervene to not kill them after the first rounds. Not going to happen again.
Excellent list for new DMs looking to improve. I would add to this forcing or allowing any sort of sexual assault to a player character. I have never seen it at my table, but I hear this time and time again when people are sharing D&D horror stories. You never know if someone at your table may have been personally affected by sexual assault. Players come to the table to escape from the struggles of reality, not to be forced to live them again. It’s your job as the DM to cut that type of behavior out before it happens. If you are the one causing it, that my friend is a heinous abuse of your power as a DM and is in my opinion the ultimate taboo.
If players choose to act like that in character then you should not prevent it, punish it in world as appropriate, but punishing them out of game for actions which might be appropriate for their character would be over stepping the bounds. Characters regularly commit murder, should you stop that to? Now if a player regularly has characters that do this, or torture etc then you might need to have a word with them.
killcat1971 I respectfully disagree. I am all for maintaining as aspect of verisimilitude in my game, but there is a point where a line must be drawn between player agency and what will simply not be tolerated at the table. For me, that latter includes pointless murder, excessive torture, and any kind of sexual assault or rape. I clarified with my players early on that if one of them creates a PC that just has to do those sorts of actions to be “in character”, well then they can see themselves out and find a new group to play with. Allowing a player to act this way in character is not worth jeopardizing the experience of one or more other players or having them feel uncomfortable to the point of never wanting to play a tabletop game again. If you do have a gritty dark setting and you have set expectations with your players then it could in exceptionally rare circumstances be okay to allow something like abuse or rape to have occurred, but if that is ever the case it better damned well happen off screen and with all of the players’ consent.
If your running the game then you can set any rules you like, and if players can't play within that then they should not play, I agree entirely, but I personally would handle it in game unless it's repeated. Now I as a character would terminate any character that I found had done that, and as a DM I would have one of the female centric churches send a Vengence Paladin after their asses, can you imagine the church of Hera or Diana putting up with that shit?
Holy fuck dude. What kind of games are you running? More importantly, who the fuck are your players? I mean sure, if you're DMing for a bunch of hardened felons in a supermax, we might need to go there. But given normal parameters, this can be settled with three words: "Fuck. Off. Now."
I think that falls under "Set Expectations". Some campaigns are dark and brutal; advising the players that there maybe over the top torture, violence, and rape from the setting is acceptable as long as the players are fine with it. If you're doing a normal hack and slash adventure game and you suddenly introduce something like this... Yeah that could cause problems.
Cutscene - IS okay if you allow your players to INTERFIERE with your cutscene. Basically, if you start telling your players, that "as you walk into a dark room, you can see glowing green light in the end. A lich, they've been hunting for so long is standing there, near reanimated corpses of missing villagers. He waves his..." - "I take out my bow and shoot him in the back, while he is distracted" - CUTSCENE OVER, INITIATE COMBAT. THIS allows for a cutscene. If they CHOOSE to watch, what this same lich does and not interfiere - sure, great, you get a cutscene. The moment you say NO during it - this is where the sinbound cutscene comes.
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Cut-scenes DO have a place, but think more Skyrim instead of Halo. The cut-scene can not be the thing that robs the players of action.
I have used a cut-scene myself, though it was not to tell the players what they did.
They were escaping a witch's tower after learning that the person they were sent to save had been killed.
When they turned back it was more an NPC that they had encountered that was giving up her life to cover the party's escape.
PS - I have added a few NPC Mist Walkers and my group's reaction to them have been very good.
Their mechanics make them fit really well into my (exploration + intrigue + fey + weird portals) campaign.
I am hoping to play one at the end of the year when i am finished moving.
There is a rather simple way of working your way around fudging rolls. As a GM, I personally roll with two d20 dice simultaneously and I give myself advantage / disadvantage at will, so I can sway the story the way it fits me.
What about players who come to the table not prepared?
having a dm that can't keep continuity of his game in order. (or one who doesn't know how to write a story in the first place. such as having a player, and group of people fallow the raven queen, then have a city that you are railroaded into going to where every thing is a "Good undead" even though they are litches and vampires, and such. a city of undead on the material plane.
I know favoritism is a taboo but GM's favorite for each session goes to whoever buys pizza. They get a single reroll.
Is it corrupt? Yes. Is it showing favoritism? Yes. Do I or the other players care? Can't talk, currently eating pizza.
Sounds fair honestly
This is exactly how our table works, whoever brings the snacks, gets the stacks (reroll a roll that is
I give inspiration for bringing snacks
Bahaha
Love your work
Telling your party you fudged a roll is the same as a disney mascot taking his mask off for fans
Wow... that's perfect!
GOOD analogy. Metaphor? ... Fudge it. Both.
There's an 8 year old in my game, and I told his parents (also players) that he would've been dead/incapicitated if I hadn't prevented it. They pretty much already knew that happened. I did take both of the parents along with two other players down to 0 HP. (There were 8 PCs).
I would never fudge a roll, now hav i rerolled because i mixed the d20 with a shit ton of d20 yes...
but i do let them get knocked out and something happens to their body so they dont die within the first session
As soon as you admit it once, every other roll or epic moment loses its value
My group's DM has a way of both doing yet not doing #5. He'll have enemies and big bads START to monologue and do the "haha I have you where I want you!" shtick, but will allow us to interrupt it if we want to. And then has them react to being interrupted, usually in a way that's both comedic yet still in-character.
For example: Strahd. We'd gotten to Strahd after fighting through all his castle's traps, guards, magic, and whatnot. Finally come face to face with him. He STARTS to give a speech about his nature, ideals, opinions, and motives. Gets about four sentences in before the wizard just "I cast Fireball". DM allowed it, and after the smoke settled, had Strahd just go "Alright, just interrupt me. I didn't interrupt you when you gave those hero goody-goody speeches in town before coming here. But no, sure, it's fine." And then we started combat proper.
That sounds fun.
That's some great DMing there. I'll have to make note. ^_^ I am running Strahd right now!
I personally don't see that as a cut scene. That reads more exemplary role-playing.
MrTheStevey dr. Doofenschmirts, is that you?
Dude that's the perfect way to go about it. Your DM rocks
The only cutscene I have ever made has been when killing off a PC. It sounds cruel and awful but hear me out.
One of my players wanted to change their character so I offered him a solo game. Just him and me to build this characters story through gameplay. After 3 hours of playing what is now the characters backstory, I sneakily lead him down a path that eventually came with two options. Have a high possibility of dying from an evil overlord (their main villain) or fighting his old character and potentially keeping his new one.
He shoots an arrow from stealth and gets a natural fucking 20, instantly killing his old character. (Who was chilling with the party at the time).
He succeeds a stealth check and manages to get away without them seeing him.
The next game, the party are all drinking and partying in their keep and without warning, or any rolls, an arrow flies through his head. Everyone is like “WHAT THE FUCK”.
They meet his new character later in that game. Months later, they still don’t know he killed their old friend.
That's probably the only exception to the rule. Interesting story.
Genius
Kill the player as an NPC, assume their identity and become a PC.
That is absolutely the most brilliant scheme i've ever heard. Well played to you and your player.
This is fantastic!
Worst DM experience:
The group had just finished for the night and as we were about to leave I get a call. My grandmother has just passed recently and my family was letting me know that the funeral had been planned for the next Wednesday. Well that just so happened to be our next meeting. I went up to my DM and told her about the news and that I wouldn't be able to make it. We could work things out to make my character leave suddenly and reappear latter on. She, no joke, looked me in the eyes and told me to stop being a wuss and that if I didn't make the next meeting she would murder my character and not let me back into a campaign of hers ever again. I was alarmed at this and, being very shy and not being able to confront her anymore, told the rest of the group what she had told me and they were shocked and angry. We then made a plan. Of course me not being there because of a funeral I didnt show up. They planed to not show up entirely because they didn't find that fair. I never went back but the rest of them said she was being an a-hole and treating them like crap.
Lesson learned: If your DM has no sympathy just leave. They don't deserve to be a DM ever.
What a horrible human being. I'm sorry about your grandmother, and sorry that your DM was a monstrosity of a person.
Holy shit, that's ridiculous.
Holy shit
What a bitch! How old was this woman?
That's a shit DM and a shit person.
I once had a DM that had the whole group arrested by gaurds, we got thrown in jail and the hidden dagger I had in my boot that the DM and said that the guards found it and I couldn't roll for stealth or slight of hand it was just "no you can't do that", still sounds pretty normal...
Untill I realised the female in our group who had been flirting with the DM managed to "hide" her bow , her 4 foot bow that was slung around her shoulders and 58 arrows to boot, while my sneak orientated rogue who had a 6 inch dagger inside my boot hidden, was found while the bow wasn't.
I literally just gave up and walked away.
Golden Knife that’s pretty bad, yeah. Worth walking away from that kind of favoritism.
Sounds like you did the right thing. It's supposed to be a fun for all fantasy RPG game. Not some unbelievable B-S favoritism. If the group dynamic/ vibe sucks, why stay over long ?
@@aaronhumphrey2009 yea I know right, i was thinking of starting to dm myself so i could do better
"female" lmao
You’re dm is a certified turbo-virgin for that one.
I, as a french guy myself, master the skill of the french accent. Contact me for your french accent needs.
is it true that all french characters get advantage with persuasion rolls involving women?
@@christophercrafte involving men too, I assure you 😉
French laugh and say baguette
hahahahha username checks out
It is so hard to type anything French white English autocorrect.
I'll add what I consider the worst DM taboo: DM VS PLAYER MENTALITY. Specifically, the DM being a complete and utter jerk to the players. Looking for every opportunity to pull the good old "DM screw job." Treating them like crap. It's like their "power" has gone to their head or something. Hate that crap.
Agreed, that sucks greatly!
LJ Yeah, I've been in one game like that. But it was enough to make me NEVER want my players to feel that way.
That's how you end up with murder hobos. You gotta let some events be friendly and/or have a happy ending or your players will get PTSD. "Everyone is trying to get me and all helpless innocent things die anyway. I may as well lob explosives at all the things".
Maria Proctor Totally agree. Some encounters need to be positive. And the same for NPCs. Fortunately I don't have murder hobo players -- well, I have ONE player that has murder hobo tendencies, but the other players keep him in check. (And when they don't, I do.) 😀
OMG I hate the "Power Trip DM". I've had that happen plus the bias thing with the same DM. I hated that campaign and never played more than that single session because of it.
I have 2 rules that kinda go with the video....
1)MFW- My Fucking World.....which cuts out the "rule nazi" player, and should the players not want to do the "main quest line" that I have planned for them, that's fine but the world keeps spinning. Ignore it if you want to. The moment I drop the quest, it's time sensitive...not meaning they have to rush, but if they ignore it then the bad guy will win without them opposing it.
2) Daddy's got you- I won't kill the player/party on purpose..... Which still allows freedom for the players to decide their path, and again, if they ignore the quest to stop the evil wizard from raising an undead army or something, then they will miss the opportunity to stop it from happening and get swarmed by hordes of undead..lol
A DM sin I've definitely been guilty of is telling your player:
"Your character wouldn't do that because of their alignment."
I agree that alignments are important when establishing character personalities but instead I now say:
"Tell me why your character would do this." Instead of "Your character wouldn't do this."
I've had a lot players actually come up with decent reasons for breaking their characters' alignments and it has added a lot more character-building to my campaigns.
Thanks
I've had that problem with my brother DMing. It is the most frustrating thing in a game centered around freedom of choice. Props to you for figuring it out and improving your GMing!
Alignment should definitely be a loose guideline because irl people never ALWAYS stick to any one personality/morality in EVERY situation.
I like this. I actually really like the alignment system, and think most of the "problems" with it are actually caused by people that do not understand the point of the system.
Like people here already said, alignment represents how the character has acted during his life, and as such it sets up expectations on how that character is supposed to act. But it doesn't lock the character's free will, and they can act differently from said expectations.
Players should still keep in mind that actions have consequences, tho. Even the rules state that characters' alignment can change during the campaign, based on their actions. And this can be specially important for characters like clerics, paladins and walocks, who draw power from other greater beings that have their own alignments and expect their worshippers to uphold these values. Oathbreaking is a thing in D&D.
The DM should definitely talk to the players and try to come to an agreement before introducing alignment changes and oath breaks to their PCs, tho.
To me, as a DM, alignments are a loose base to build your personality on. Especially with new players who aren't as familiar with the alignment system. In my current campaign, 3 out of 4 of the players are completely new to tabletop rpg. This story is about the paladin, who is new. In session 0, the party needed money to silver their weapons to go fight vampires. The paladin, who is lawful good, comes up with a brilliant solution: rob the bank. Ok, fine, you're level one and desperate, so it makes sense as an alignment break. The night heist goes swimmingly well, the money is stolen. Then the paladin asks what the bank is made out of. I tell them it's wood. Paladin proceeds to get their tinderbox and set the bank alight, just because it's made of wood... Yeah, at the end of that session, the paladin was moved to chaotic evil. That first session did help with the backstory, as the paladin set out to be lawful good, answered a powerful archdemon's call, and became the chaotic evil mess we all know and love
@@bharl7226 That's a big assumption. Some people DO stick to their guns no matter what. It tends to make everyone else hate them for it, but it happens.
Very experienced DM here, 100% agree, NEVER say a word about it. Don't hint about it, don't let your face show anything. Do NOT.
What?! People fudge dice?! How unthinkably shocking! Shocking I say! What kind of degenerate monster would ever do such a thing?!
But, no, seriously. I agree. It's better to use blatant, in character, "an avatar of the Cleric's god appears out of nowhere and Stone Cold Stunner's the Dragon right before it can kill the Fighter" style divine intervention than it is to admit to fudging a roll.
My poker face 😇,my,my poker face.👿 the playas never want to feel like they've been cheated..or, the duex au machina effect.. like a rat being run thru a maze, your own actions being totally irrelevant to the outcome.. disappointing at best- so, how did I die, again ?! Boring..
I DM'd my very first game on Sunday with a one shot that I wrote. It was alright, but during the final boss, their rolls got really good and almost killed it too quickly, so I added 20 more hp to it. During that time, the players rolls began to suck and it killed 2/3 of them. All they know is that they barely managed to survive. I feel like a jerk though.
Am I the only GM who rolls 95% my rolls in front of the players?
@@armageddonbound I actually dont use a dm screen and I have giant DM dice that are about the size of goofballs. All my game notes are in notebooks which I keep in my lap to keep my secrets. In a way i am as much a PC in the game with the rules constraints on me as they have.
One of my GMs was guilty of our two most hated sins. Overpowered GMPC who solves everything himself, and trying to defeat the players instead of having fun with us (and sucking at it).
In one game, he brought two - yes, TWO - of his favorite characters in the team as GMPCs, a cleric and a wizard, solving riddles in our place or using spells to get us to where he wanted us to go rather than let the team shine. We eventually decided our characters hated them 'just because', and attacked them, forcing them to kill us, and thus end the game.
In another, he was getting annoyed that my rogue was picking every lock instead of finding the hidden keys in the dungeon for them. So eventually, to thwart my efforts, he said 'there's no key on that one'. And when my barbarian buddy said he wanted to knock the door down, the GM said it was 'a solid adamantium door' (in a simple orc cave, no less). So I asked "Okay, so what do the hinges look like?" He asked "What?" I repeated. He said "Normal, I guess." I smiled. "Okay, so I do can see them. Fine. I use my tools to unscrew them. We'll carry the door to town and sell the metal."
Never again did he pull an adamantium door trick on us.
this is what my DM does and it sucks, all our campains have this super OP person who does everything and cant die
@@theboogermcnuggets867 Have you guys tried talking to him about this?
We did this same thing regarding an adamantium door! Except we had to abandon the door in a river at one point and never got back to it to sell. =T
That's is absolutely insufferable. If you can't take pleasure in being LITERALLY EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE GAME, the you have no business being a DM or GM. You just want to be a player who gets to bend the rules and tell everyone else what to do, and I bet no one wanted to play with you at recess when you were a kid.
@Jessue Hogue: Hats off to you, well played. I actually ran a campaign where the treasure reward for completing a dungeon was an adamantine door... the hardest encounter that session being the logistics of getting it back to town. It was also quite enjoyable to see the PCs spending money in hiring a cart and acquiring enough manpower to get it back. The corrupt weaponsmith / illegal arms dealer underpaid the party ofc, though the townspeople had nothing but praise for the extra work and money
My first game I ever played was with a bunch of newbies and an amazing, well-seasoned, experienced DM. Within the first 5 sessions, we very nearly had a TPK vs a werewolf we weren't meant to aggro. After a grueling fight with only one character left standing at barely any hit points, an attack landed against the high AC enemy. The DM smiled, asked for the damage roll, and then said something along the lines of "I don't need to know the result, because he's only on 1HP right now. The werewolf falls to the floor, dead. Congratulations." The table cheered, the party was revived with no casualties (save our dignity), and it was an amazing moment of tension and relief for a bunch of new players to have.
A while later, when I was starting to DM myself, and reading through the MM, I realised something very important: the DM absolutely, completely, 100% fudged the werewolf's HP in order to avoid an early TPK, and to deliver an amazing, memorable moment to a group of new players.
I remember at some point after this revelation, I asked him up-front if he'd fudged the HP for that encounter when it was clear to him that we couldn't pull through. He denied it, saying that we'd just hit a lucky streak of rolls at just the right time to succeed. I knew he fudged the HP, and he knew that I knew he fudged the HP, but he still stuck to the narrative of never fudging anything behind the screen.
And that's when I learned possibly my most important lesson as a DM; no matter what, no matter how much time has passed since a fudge, no matter how major or minor a fudge was, your players ALWAYS need to know that you'd never, ever fudge anything.
So, as a DM, I can say with absolute confidence - I've never, ever fudged anything!
😉
Rule number 1 of the club of fudging?
Never talk about the club of fudging.
Wink wink😉
100 percent not fudged, you are wrong! HP are meant to be decided by the DM, that's why the Hit Dice are shown in the stat block.
Like witches , i don't believe them , but they are out there somewhere for real .
Why not just roll in front of people? There are other ways to change the outcome other than dice. In HeroQuest I roll in front of players, but you can always give the monster a potion, let them have more hp, let them block on white shields and black shields etc.
I would expand on that first taboo. Don't let the players know you pulled your punches in general. There are more ways than just a fudged roll that you can use to save the PCs.
I'll add to this: PCs die. It happens, it's part of D&D. If it's not a cheap shot, and they go out in a blaze of glory, *let them have that!*
Even if it IS kind of a cheap shot, I had one just the other week where a player made a mistake and got a face full of wraith resulting in instant death (not unconsciousness, straight up dead), I felt awful, but his character failed the save twice (he used an inspiration), and at the end of the day, I had told them straight up that combat in my games leans towards more lethal than normal. And what happened afterward was the wraith raising the dead PC as a specter, which I had the PC pilot during the combat. He got a chance to struggle to wrest control of his spectral self each turn, and in the end, was able to break the control long enough to let the party finish him.
Once they did, his freed spirit lingered for a moment to have a tearful goodbye with the party, and it was a sad sad moment, and one that I could tell was burned into the motivations for the characters. By the time we called the session, the player was already excited for his next character, and while I still felt bad about the cheap shot, sometimes that's just how the dice fall.
So in summary, sometimes PCs die. Sometimes it's fair, sometimes it's not, but it should always be memorable, and it's your job as DM to try to make it memorable.
I let my PCs die. I used to make that a goal, but now I just let it happen
There are times when that is fine, like telling them you leveled them up before a fight since they didn't take a long rest, DnD 5e of course
I guess it also depends on what you've agreed with the group in session 0 - if you've said you'll take it easy (because they're new players, you want them to be Big Damn Heroes, etc), then you can always do stuff like roll damage, ask them how many Hp they have left, then say they've now got 1hp (preferably feigning a grimace before telling them).
My personal "favourite" is letting the players roll a skill check, then deciding if it passes (ie, assign a DC after the roll). Most of the time my group rolls really well or really bad, so not too hard to fudge.
@@Morow991 this is exactly how dnd should be played. the "people die" realization needs to be accepted by the dm and players alike.
The only time I show favoritism, is when I feel like one player has a weaker build and is starting to get bored. That's when I might fugde an enemy hit point or two, and then give that person a kill that they might not have earned otherwise
I actually mostly disagree with the favoritism bit; I think that it's totally acceptable to reward players who are putting in more effort by singling out their character so they have something to do. That doesn't mean it's cool to neglect the others, though, because that'll just widen the gap between them.
I completely disagree with you both in a way. Every session let 1 person shine. Switch it up every session if you can. If you have a Bard who is only good at talking then do a large chunk of one session where the group needs that Bard to do his people skills to get the info so that next week the Barbarian in the group can shine by splitting skulls open. You want each player to know that they in the right situation are the star of the show. And you want them to feel amazing when they do something that is what their character is designed to do.
I think retaining engagement is one of the things you would do that for anyway, so it's not wrong by it's self. unless it's like, a constant thing where only that player gets a boost.
i just recently played a session with my regular group, the game turned into a 1 on 1 interaction between the DM and one of the players. Everyone else at the table sat there for over 3 hours listening to what was basically a 1 on 1 session between the two. Worst about this was that said player had split from the group temporarily and non of the characters knew about any of the interaction. And to top it off, when any of the players tried to interact with the DM he'd just respond with something to the equivalent of "nothing is happening right now" and return to the 1 on 1 interaction. personally the worst session i've ever played in. that being said i strongly dislike favoritism.
What do you mean 'weaker build?" Not every build is going to be combat based. If you allow a bard to 'kill steal' from a barbarian because the bard is not built for combat, that is kind of screwed up.
A version of roll-fudging is that one time we suffered a TPK against Vordachai in Kingmaker. It was an extremely close call (bad boss had like 3hp when he downed the last PC) and the GM said "I'm really invested in this campaign and love to GM you guys, so I will give you one more chance for that last roll. I will remind you that you died like punks if you ever get cocky, so it's a win-win. Do you accept?"
We accepted and won the encounter. I can't think of a better way to handle it.
@Manuel Sacha you dont really know if it was left with 3 hp after a missed attack or a huge hitting attack that wouldnt hsve killed. All depends tbh on how it had that 3 hp left.
@Manuel Sacha But it depends here. Maybe the last attack to hit the boss brought it to 3 hp. Then everyone missed, then one player drops, then the players all miss again and the boss makes a save on the spells, and all the sudden it could be a couple rounds of shit luck from the players end and you can't just kill the boss randomly.
Sure you could choose to have the boss starting missing as well (probably what I would do), but there are situations where they could reach 3 hp and you not want to push it that extra 3
I think the better way of handling it would be having the Players take up new characters a couple of days before the fight, who then sneak in just as their previous characters all get taken down and the new characters are able to take their turns to defeat the boss just as the last old character is taken out.
Nobody likes to hear, "I let you win."
Yeah omg
however. Hear me out. It's said from one npc to pc they just had a one on one duel with. Maybe?
@@grahamcusick429
If that’s for the character developing a relationship with the NPC, then it works. A DM telling that to a player is just shitty.
I DM for two characters with 3 page backstorys and one where the backstory is "came out of a hole, now I want to adventure". I like both, so much potential
Are you my DM? lol
@@PalPlays yes
Both are like me lol
The magic of D&D, I saw a barbarian killing a beholder with a flower...
You can't drop a story like that and then not tell us about the encounter!
I agree with our friend ron here. We need the complete-story
Please, don't let us wondering what happened there. We need the good details.
GIVE US THE GOODS!
Ken B wha- how
I feel like showing a little bit of favoritism to a shy new player is a great way to make them feel welcome amongst players who have been playing together for months, or even years.
Hank Hill
Good idea, but it’s probably best to talk to the other players about this before the game. If they’re vets they’ll pick up on the favouritism and possibly call the DM out (which may make it worse for the shy player as the favouritism was aimed at them.)
I think that, as long as it's subtle, AND that the DM talks with the other players, it's a good idea. I actually had a DM like this- I was super shy my sophomore year, and I joined a D&D club, only because my friend forced me into it. I had NO idea what I was doing, and our DM was actually super great, and made me feel really comfortable around all the other people (many of which who had been playing together for years. After the campaign was over, I had become much closer with the club, and our DM bashfully admitted that he had played a bit of favoritism towards me, since I was new. Instead of feeling embarrassed about it, I was actually quite touched at the fact that he put forth an effort to make me feel more comfortable in the group. So... Good on you, man!
I actually did that recently with a friend because he would have tpked the whole table if I didn't fudge some numbers... don't judge
Not sure favoritism is the way to go. More attention and coaxing, sure. It can help pull an introvert into the game. Just don't push a shy player too hard.
The dm made one of our bards the party leader to try to integrate him into the game
The worst DM mistake I've ever encountered as a player was about 8 years ago. The DM bcame annoyed that his ex girlfriend's character was flirting with my character (she and I were close friends of a few years). So whenever combat hit my turn, he'd rush me and complain vocally when I asked rules questions (this was my first or second time playing). He'd also whine that I was using my most solidly damaging cantrip too much but would glare at me when I took any time trying to skim the players' manual for my other spells.
Eventually, he ended the campaign by taking control of my character by way of cutscene, telling me 'oh well I've already written this plot' when I told him she wouldn't act like that, and then in the same sweep killing her off. And destorying her soul. And that we'd be starting a new game next week, everyone could continue with their characters. Except me because mine was dead.
Other players asked if they could go on a quest to ressurect my character or such. DM says no, her soul has been destroyed. It's literally impossible.
I refused to go back where I was clearly not wanted and the group fell apart by the time the next session came around.
Nona did she leave his dumbass for that or was she already his ex at the time?
What a dick!
Acting out personal issue within game. He should have been called out on that.
I cant believe your other party members didn't call the (shitty) dm about that
DM Tip! When the PC's are in strsssful situations, roll random dice just to make them panic. That way, they never know when you are actually rolling for things like an unknown enemy's perception/sneak/etc
As I rule, I always roll dice at random times. Every few minutes a die or 2 are rolled behind the screen. That keeps them from guessing and preparing for an encounter or situation they would not be aware of was taking place. If I want them to know that something is about to happen I ask them to arrange their mini figs to show their current marching order.
I like opening a book, smiling or sighing, and rolling a dice
I'm convinced our DM does this but he has an incredible poker face and I just live in fear.
I literally have a DM who does all of these things while also giving himself a character in our party that pulls us in all directions, talks over/for us, and is basically immune to death. He literally dominates the game world as the DM and dominates the party with his character.
I can't tell you how many times we show up for a game and he hasn't made anything for a session and we end up doing mundane tasks for 4-6 hours or until he gets bored of playing. Not to mention this means we always start late because nothing is prepared and he just needs to "Roll a few enemies for us to fight". Not to mention he talks about how we would have died to his encounters but he let us live.
Because of all this most of us have decided to take the story wayyyyy off track anytime we play now and make our own fun in a town. But usually whenever that happens we get forced back to whatever task he has for us within 5 minutes.
It got so bad some of the players just showed up at whatever time they felt like because it didn't matter anymore. Not to mention that most games tend to be about three sessions until the DM gets bored, says he doesn't have time to make encounters because work or something (he only works 25 hours a week), and then like a month or two later he talks about setting up a new game.
Honestly I didn't even realize how bad this had gotten until I just recently started playing with another group. In comparison my new DM always has stuff planned out but gives us all the freedom to figure things out on our own, has letters actually printed out for us to read rather than telling us what the letter said, and any Npc accompanying us feels like a person we're helping and doesn't take away from our actions. Not to mention we're well past 3 sessions and I'm having more fun with dnd than I've ever had. As much as I love saying that it really sucks because as bad of a DM the first guy is he still showed our whole group dnd. The first few sessions he ever created were fun and well thought out and really showed his drive to make a good experience. I guess he just got lazy.
So after all this writing (sorry for whoever read it all) just about a week ago my first DM asked if I'd be up for a new campaign after about a 3 month hiatus since the last one. I had to tell him I was already in a campaign (since they both would be on the same day) and it hurt to see him kinda sad but he admitted he wasn't surprised and he kinda just left it there.
So I guess to anyone out there DMing, treat your players with respect and really try to make it a fun experience whether its serious or funny. If you don't try the players will pick up on it and eventually you won't have anyone to play with.
This is exactly why I won't play when I DM. I don't even like playing NPCs. I feel like I have to much meta knowledge and it leaks over into the character.
Anyone saying they just don't have time to make content for a game but they're still holding sessions is just being an asshole in my opinion. Like, just tell people you're not interested enough to make content, take a break, and restart the game when you give a shit again. I work a full time job and run 3 parties that all play ~once a week. If you're interested in doing it, the content gets made. There's no excuse for not just telling people well in advance what the situation is. :/
How come no one else in the group is being a GM?
Nochtic early in the campaign i introduced way to many npc allies, and i regret it cuz fights take longer and its harder to manage when i have to control like 6 guys at once, I would kill them off but the players have become super attached to all of them and it would feel wrong to do so at this point unless it was super dramatic and heroic of a death
Zero Charisma
1. DM killing off the party without giving them a chance to survive. DM wanted to start a new campaign with the characters' descendants, and sprung this on us in the middle of a session with no warning. Your characters are dead in an unskippable cutscene, roll up their descendants.
2. Reverse favortism: DM targeting one player and trying to make that player's experiences unpleasant. Giving cool loot to everyone except that player, repeatedly killing their characters off outside of combat, etc.
3. Railroading without enough force to reach the destination: we spent five sessions running from the guards, outnumbered massively, no place to hide, constantly being found. DM secretly wanted to have a big street battle, but never made that clear, so we thought he was trying to railroad us into a TPK.
4. DM Puzzles that stop the campaign: DM trapped party in a timewarp: no clues on how to escape, three sessions of repeating the same thing over and over again. Party nearly quit before DM gave us enough info to solve the "puzzle". If a puzzle has ground the campaign to a halt, the DM needs to bypass that puzzle.
5. DM PvPing: DM whose goal is to kill off every character, and who takes pleasure in each character who dies. Basically a griefer who DMs in order to kill other characters rather than to tell a story.
6. Breaking a character, without allowing them a path for redemption or restoration. Your paladin has fallen. His god refuses to take him back. The priests refuse to cast atonement. No new gods will take him. DM won't let you create a new character. Your character is broken, and cannot be fixed because the DM doesn't want them to be fixed.
All of these are bad because they set the DM and players against each other on the level of story creation, rather than playing the roles of individuals whose goals might oppose each others'.
Ed Hrafnskald Conway wow your number 1 sounds familiar
Yeah, those are signs of REALLY bad DM's lol
Have we gamed together? Or did you run into this with another DM/group/game?
Ed Hrafnskald Conway I encountered this with another dungeon master coincidentally.
We had a DM that constantly does number five. It got so bad to the point that in one session, I rolled a PC at the start, and buried the same one at the end.
My friends and I were getting burnt out because every few sessions our characters die, and the DM treats our PC deaths like mini achievements.
One of the best DMs I personally know has already committed almost all of these mistakes with my group in a single campaign. The dude recognized the mistakes by himself and improved guys style a lot! He is truly kind of a teacher to me as a DM too.
Good on you for sticking with a new DM while he improves.
#5 is brutal. the big bad evil guy wants to monologue, but, the heroes say nope, we attack.
sigh.
Briansgate personally if I wanted to have the big bad show up and taunt the players early, I'd maybe have him be so overleveled that any attacks by the players would be useless. I think Matt Mercer did the same with Critical Role. When the Chroma Conclave first showed up, they were way too powerful for the heroes. The important thing there was that the villiains didn't try too hard to kill them. They had other things to do, so they really only fought just long enough to scare the party. Masterfully done, in my opinion.
I had that once. Now don't get me wrong this wasn't a cutscene but rather a slight joke/character development. My villian at the time were VERY confident to the point he was even smug. He had slightly spied on the PC's so he knew about some of their abilities (Not all just knew what they would often start with)
Anyway he walked up to them all overly evil and shit starting his monolog only for one of my PC's to do exactly as I expected.
"Well well well if it isn't the tiny thorns that have been in my side for a long w.." "I cast hold person!" and expecting this he uses counterspell and goes "Wow..rude..I am trying to tell you something here..Come on at least let me have my fun before having to leave!"
I found it fun and so did my PCs. Gave a good hint as to what kind of character he was as well as telling them that he had clearly seen them
I think that has a lot to do with your DM style. Your players are confident that you won't kill them so they have no fear.
Well I do kill. I mean in this case no I guess it was pretty obvious that he was just there to tease and taunt the players a bit at least I made that pretty obvious after his little speech
personally, if an enemy has motives or something and the party just sneak attacks them or attacks without any monologue, i just have the bad guy let out his motives while hes attacking. like last week, we had a half-ogre who was born underground and never saw sunlight and lived in the sewers. stuff lead up to the bad guy where the party didnt feel like talking to this half-ogre, when in my head it was very possible to use diplomacy with him. either way the party attacked, and while he was attacking, i just said things while he was swinging like "You surfacers took everything from me! You leave us to die down here and you come down here to take this from us!" stuff like that. Just an example, and not as fun as a evil monologue, but at least it can let out motivations if ur party cares about RP
You are not bad for making a mistake, only for not recognizing it is one. So never feel insulted when someone calls out a mistake you made.
Mistakes are one of the best things in life, as long as you can learn from them. Pobody's Nerfect.
Mistakes are how we learn. 20000 years ago 3 guys were sitting by a campfire and heard a rustle in the bushes. 1 guy went to the bushes to check without a weapon and got eaten. Those other 2 guys saw this and next time they heard a rustle in the bushes they took a weapon to go look.
I always use a cutscene to introduce a campaign, and my players love it. However, I believe that's the only spot you should cutscene on imo.
That’s just setting the scene not cutscening
@@thesepretzelssuckass247 There are many players (and DMs) that do not understand that difference.
Yeah, I think just because what you're describing is epic and massive and cinematic doesn't necessarily mean it's a cutscene. As long as the characters still get to act/react to what's going on, that's just engaging storytelling.
We used it after beating a big bad, we had essentially killed it though it had to be completely atomized to die, luckily our wizard had been summoning a meteor for a few turns and once we had it trapped we all warped away and played Country Roads as the BBEG was obliterated by the meteor in a cutscene.
What about dreams that the character has I would say it's acceptable there as well
My worst D&D experience involved what is my #1 D&D taboo: A DM having NPCs rape a player's captured character (and expecting me to RP my character's responses) while he described the character's rape in graphic detail. And all of this was without a session zero meeting about what kind of content will be allowed or can be expected in the game. I almost quit TTRPGs for good after that experience. It took me over a year to come back to the game, and only because a close friend wanted to play it, and he repeatedly asked me to DM for him.
TL;DR: Don't rape the PCs. And if you think it's okay to do so, make sure everyone at the table knows what kind of content your game can or will include.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. That is not representative of the hobby I assure you.
Yeah that's not cool. Not cool at all. Talk about a real creep.
Okay, admittedly, I've played around some freaks of nature. I happily admit to "coming from a facetious bunch" and I've taken my share of even RP'ed lumps and knocks...
Even had this... er... sordid kind of content involved in a game or two. Only once was it ever "sprung" on the Table with me around, and the GM ended up running for his life out of the room... It's not that I have a big problem with "salacious content" or "morbidity" in RP. Frankly, I don't. When I play at a Table full of Adults, in general Adult content kind of comes with the territory... BUT this sort of graphic horror stuff is the kind of thing YOU WARN PEOPLE ABOUT!!!
There's a reason they put the "audience discretionary" warnings all over TV and Cinema features... They have rating systems... Even on the web, places fundamentally designed for ANIMATION have a rating system... (just check out Newgrounds)... People don't appreciate getting dragged into a sexual-psycho-pathological horror show without some rudimentary warning... AND I"m just going out on a limb, to suggest, most of us in the TTRPG factions would probably wish to avoid the kind of game where a PC might get graphically horrifically abused with any expectation of a Role Play scenario...
SO no, this kind of thing IS NOT representative of the hobby. While we do have graphic story tellers, we even have horror types, and occasionally conversations can edge toward uncomfortable subjects... we do NOT just blatantly spring the worst kind of terror on a Player's Character and expect it to be "just another part of the fun"... It's not. It's abuse, plain and simple...
At my Table, that particular GM would've risked life-threatening injury... not cool. AND I'm sorry you were subject to this kind of crap, Lillith2014. :o(
Ok, that's some next level bullshit right there.
Oh my god, I'm so sorry to hear that happened to you. The word "rape" is banned at my table because that's just how strongly I feel about it.
A note on cutscenes; you can use them so long as your players can act freely within and around them (and they know that explicitly), they're fantastic opportunities for 'rule-of-cool' moments.
A way to use them how you want to I feel is magical barrier or party is in shackles. I hope this encounter I have goes planned. The party is fighting a Mountain Dwarf that betrayed them near a cliff outside of the Mountain Dwarf capital. Once the fight starts to go bad for her, she looks at the cliff, drops a journal, and falls. If a player tries to save her and rolls good then she will hit them with her hammer. They find out she was under a domination spell which is why she betrayed them in her journal.
I only ever used cutscenes to *set* the scene. They'd be my method of introducing the players to a new location or individual. I made sure never to take away agency from the players with them.
I tried to show a five second cutscene to my players and they would constantly interrupt me with "I shoot it!" and never let me show them anything. Something moved? I can't actually describe what they see, they wanna shoot it immediately. There was a giant rat scuttling around and I wanted to show that the bridges were faulty and broken by having the rat fall in and get eaten by a sewer alligator. Instead the PCs decided to maimkillburn and proceeded to walk right across the broken bridge.
They asked me 'what the fuck, why didn't you allow us a roll to see it was broken?!"
"I tried to show you, you shot the rat that was going to run over the bridge"
So, even if they decide to save her AND roll well, you will still have her do what you wanted in the first place? There's a name for that, you know. It relates to trains.
Johnwestens Norris The effects explained in the charm/dominate spells are pretty clear; you can't give fatal commands. You can tell a character to walk through a room that they don't know is full of traps, but you can't command a character to stab themselves or jump off a cliff.
Sorry dude, you're a shitty DM.
Edit: Why would she HAVE to jump off the cliff? The PC's could still read her journal if they save her and tie her up.......
One thing.
Telling a character how they feel, or how they react? Ok yeah that's bad (unless you have them under a spell or a fear effect, or something like that where its appropriate)
But sometimes, namely, when establishing an arch villain, a "cutscene" Where he escapes, or flies away, or whatever, is completely necessary. I'm not saying to ignore them if they try to attack, or speak to them, but I'm saying, sometimes, no, you can't stop the high level wizard from teleporting out. Sometimes, no, you can't keep the assasin guildmaster from escaping imprisonment. Sometimes, story elements (that the DM works really hard on) just happen, because they're meant to happen.
I hear alot, people kind of belittling the DM's desire to "Tell their story" instead of allowing the PC's to influence ~everything~.
But, why is that a problem? People have to remember, DM's deserve to enjoy their game too, and making compelling story moments is one of the most fun things we can do. So, players, once in a while, how about letting the story hook happen, and not just focusing all your energy into forcing things to happen the way you think they should?
I once had a player character die because the Arch Vampire Lord (who had tricked them into letting him into his old castle in order to regain his power) was walking inside, after blasting them all out and laughing maniacally. He was determined to jam an axe up his ass (literally), and I couldn't just tell him no, so he threw himself at the ~Arch Vampire Lord~, in a reckless attack.
And obviously, when the Lord attacked back, with advantage, after an already taxing fight with his thralls, he blasted him apart, and when he failed his death saves, he died. And, that wouldn't have been a problem, but he started whining and complaining about it, accusing me of railroading him, and being unfair.
No. What I did was not unfair, what YOU did was a bad idea, and the consequences of said bad idea got you killed. I think its important that a DM explains to their players that contrary to popular belief, D&D is not a game where you can "Do anything you want". It's a game where you become a character, and act as THEY would act.
Sometimes, the DM isn't the problem.
I think you can do anything you want, as long as you're willing to accept the consequences. Intimidate the king - get arrested, attack the dragon - get roasted, steal from the merchant, get barred.
I let my players have free reign over what they do. If they make a foolish decision, it's on them. But, I try to make it fun, too. An epic death is sometimes better than a sedate victory.
I've been in one situation where the DM telling you how you act was appropriate. A player at my table took some form of PTSD as a flaw. He probably consented far beforehand about these rolls, but he rolled very badly during a situation and basically broke down in the middle of the town. Describing stuff to him like how he felt so helplessly alone. Thankfully it was only a social situation and not combat, and he played it well.
@@PrinceSilvermane
That's actually a really good idea.
Crochet Daikon wow amazing points
Dungeon Master Rule No 1: Always have a list of potential NPC names at hand. ALWAYS!
There's a name generator site I found for just about any type of NPC you'll need (Including Heroic Horses, yes you read that). I just have the site ready and if the player's want some random NPC's name I just hit the button and take it.
Smartboy123 And then take note of the NPC and their name in case the players want to see them again!
This happened to me last night. So, the party killed a guy and I took his clothes and assumed his identity, which was... looks up in book for suitably generic Drow name...
I became Captain Generic of the Queen's guard. We all got a chuckle out of that.
Addendum: If you DON'T have a suitable name for an NPC at hand, *never ever admit that!* Tell them you have it somewhere and you'll give it to them once you find it. Then come up with something fast. If the players think the NPC should have a name, it has a name, even if you don't know what it is yet. But never *ever* respond, when asked "what's their name?" with "I don't know."
I need to work on this honestly.
I've been playing D&D for over 20 years. Here are some rules for DM/GMs:
1) Do not use 'save or die' effects on a player's first session.
2) Do not focus on the outcome of the session or adventure- instead focus on the situation the players are currently in.
3) Do not forget why each character is adventuring.
1. Don't tell your players you fudged rolls
2. Do NOT favor players - it's the worst thing you can do
3. Be prepared - showing up without preparing anything for your players is disrespectful and insulting to your players
4. Not setting expectations for your group - not telling your players what you are planning, then you forfeit all rights to be upset when the game they want to play doesn't align with your plans
5. Avoid cutscenes and excessive narrations
Thank you!
What's a fudge roll
@@jacobitewiseman3696 Common Finnish dessert, delicious AF.
@@jacobitewiseman3696 When a DM rolls, and acts as if he/she rolled something different. Fudged rolls are often used to help the players, but are sometimes used against them
@@nobody8612 definetely not
I did a cinematic cutscene 2 sessions ago as a kind of experiment. I warned my players that it was going to be a different kind of session and to trust me, and if they ultimately didn't like it to let me know. Granted, it was at the end of a major story arc a year into the campaign, so it was sort of a "TV season finale" kind of event. They ended up loving it, so I think it's less a matter of "don't do this" but rather "tread carefully when doing this." It's definitely not something I plan on doing often, but it may happen again if the story calls for it.
The cutscene is ALWAYS a tread carefully situation. I try very hard to keep player agency, trusting in their roleplaying skills, allowing them to try (no matter how hard the DC is vs the fascinate power of the god they're looking at) to interfere if they so desire.
I did a cutscene at the beginning of my first adventure. It was a scene where only one PC saw a dragon attacking and ran to save the princess (another PC) who was in one room with the last two PCs. I just wanted them all to start the fun together.
I second this, I don't think putting it as a TABOO is really fair since this is less about cutscenes and more about railroading, if a gm wants to give a cutscene description of a scene or something minor like that or even if the group is fine with more than that then it can be a memorable thing.
I've been a player in a game where the gm liked concluding battles with a cinematic cutscene and "cut to black" a lot and it really made things more intense and memorable. As always too much of a good thing is bad but comparing all sorts of cutscenes to something like not preparing at all or telling the players you cheated them is not appropriate in my opinion.
I find "cutscenes" perfectly appropriate at the end of campaigns, or when transitioning from one major setting to another. No one wants to RP 6 weeks of wilderness travel, so a minor cutscene detailing the highlights makes sense. As for cutscenes at the end of campaigns, the players I've had have tended to really enjoy the sense of "here's what happened after you saved the world/village/princess/whatever". I've definitely had GMs go overboard on that kind of thing (one DM gave us a cutscene instead of a final battle), but in moderation, I too think they have their place
Ian Sharp That's awesome! Glad that worked well for you. I think getting the players' buy-in on things like that is clutch.I usually do so when I try something new out in the game and then gather feedback from my players afterwards. Sometimes they like it and we keep it. Other times they don't and we throw it out. 😁
Favoritism... made me quit a game. The DM's wife was playing and decided she didn't like my character, so I had to ditch him and roll up a new one. I ditched the game instead.
Mario - Yeah, that's messed up. The DM's wife gets to make the calls? Nope. See ya! I had a DM once that favored one of the players, even giving him the Hand of Vecna (powerful artifact) at level 5. And I'm not sure my character had even one magical item. 🤨
the DM Lair
Hand of Vecna at level 5 lol
I assume they didn’t nerf it at all either
That’s rough
HoodedxFreak Nope, the DM didn't nerf it. Unfortunately, the game didnt make it any further so I never got to see how THAT played out. 😂
the DM Lair
That’s a shame would have at least been funny in retrospect
HoodedxFreak Yes, I'm sure it would have been one of those messed up stories I'd recount to my D&D buddies for years. 😀
In my very first campaign ever, along with a few of my friends, we had a DM who seemed like an awfully nice guy and seemed quite experienced. It was our first time playing, all of us, so we weren't quite sure what to expect.
Everything went along smoothly at first as we went with the story, trying not to get off-track too much, and there wasn't really any intense railroading at first-- it was a nice experience, and we were all having a bunch of fun, even if our characters didn't have very interesting or compelling backstories since we were all fresh off the boat players.
However, the more we played along, the more situations we found ourselves in where we were being cutscened into unfavorable positions; the first time, we got captured and imprisoned by an enemy faction. The next, a band of town guards tried to arrest us, despite our collective innocence, forcing us to run under the city into some catacombs to duck them (with the help of another NPC). Immediately after coming out of the catacombs, we tried to rest for 8 hours, only to be told we rested 'a full 24 hours for story purposes'...
Then, we find out the NPC who guided us through the catacombs betrayed us and called a pack of slavers to come capture us. Of course, we weren't going to go down without a fight, so we tried to fend them off, only to be assaulted by invisible sleep dart-shooting assassins who couldn't even be perceived through a nat 20 roll for perception. Our entire party felt pricks in their necks, failed our saves, fell unconscious, and woke up in the slaver camp.
We'd put up with it to this point-- even though it put a bad taste in our mouths, we were willing to go forward despite that. But then, our DM had the slaver leader come over as our PCs were tied up with magical shackles that prevented the use of magic and basically cutscene-PK one of us right in front of the rest of the party with a warhammer.
We tried to talk it out with the DM, telling him that we really, really didn't like the situation he'd put us in and that we were fine with moving forward as long as it never happened again, but he refuted our claims and chalked it up to 'that's just how D&D is, get used to it'. When we tried to respond and convince him that we were truthfully upset as players about this, he blocked us all through Discord and removed us from his server. We haven't heard from him since. Good riddance.
Well at least you got rid of him, that's something.
Seems like dnd was more like more like sadistic s&m to this dm
Ruckus The Mad seems like someone wanted to show off their Negan
Sounds like your DM wanted to be like Neagan in the Walking dead. Too bad because those seasons with him are among the worst ones.
Had a furry dm once, he offered me some bonuses to make my pc a catguy which I didn't mind, but then the longer we played the more obvious it became that our adventure was just the b-plot to the epic tale of his super team of ridiculously op gay dragons that used us like errand boys.
And then he raped my pc 5 different times.
And claimed my pc liked that.
The dm telling me how my character reacts to something.
I'm assuming you mean just outright without rolls or anything? Like I told my rogue he nearly vommited and was disgested by the mutilated body before them, but that was becuase he got a 5 on his Con check after unknowingly walking in on this scene.
Even after a roll, like my character could be on a killing spree of thieves and bandits, but faints when he sees a dead body, nat 1 or not it makes no sense. Stuff like that ruins immersion for me.
StopMoss b Why would they make you roll a con save on seeing a body? Seems silly to me
Moi, controlling "Jack", chaotic neutral Rogue: "Jack does (x)"
DM: "No, Jack wouldn't do that"
Moi: *flips table*
StopMoss b if I were to dm a table and make my players roll for something, I'd just give the broad strokes of what hapened. and then let the players fill in the details and reason on how they succeed or fail. It gives players agency while still allowing the dm to have control over the game.
I'm 43 years old. I've played since I was 14 years old, and DMed (badly at first) since I was 18 years old. I've made almost every mistake and seen almost every kind of player you can imagine in almost every type of RPG you can dream up. So I can say that these are solid rules to follow. Especially if you're green.
I, personally, can fudge the preparation portion on a regular basis. I set up adventures and let the characters follow their own course to accomplish them. We started a 5E game 2 years ago and play almost every weekend. They started at 4th level with full backgrounds written up. I required a full backstory that suited their race, class and chosen background before play would start. It also included their levels. They had to explain how they arrived at 4th level. I structured the game around one friend who first came up with playing a half-elf warlock of the Raven Queen with the Haunted background. All of this was still UA at the time. But I was allowing a lot of things. His back story was dark and tragic, but well written. So when I pitched it to the other players, they were all required to come up with heroic characters with a sort of dark and tragic history with the concept of Dark Heroes (any Good, Neutral and Lawful Neutral only) in mind. Long story short, it's been two years and they are at 17th level and gradually approaching the end of my campaign. I intertwined their stories into the background of the first character and they are all very excited to play every week.
We did have our issues, though. One player was just stubborn beyond belief in wanting to be disruptive to game play and always behaving very anti-heroic. And it wasn't easy, but in time, he simply left the game. We played on with renewed vigor. Now, I know that guy in real life, and he's a great guy to hang with. I still do from time to time. But he's perhaps one of the worst players and self described DMs I've ever dealt with. Some people just have bad game manners. He broke literally ALL of these rules except preparation. He always made his games about himself or NPCs, especially at the expense of the players. It was untenable. I simply stopped playing any of his games, and bluntly explained why. I can be tactful, but I chose not to.
All that said, my ground rules were laid for creation, and the backstories provided the fuel. They've had a plethora of adventures they brought on themselves as well as those I manufactured to further the story line. Some were completely off the cuff, others planned right down to every corner in a dungeon.
I don't ever play favorites. Even if someone thinks I am singling them out, I always move from player to player. Everyone gets their day, and everyone gets their hard times. I play with the joy of seeing the characters develop into what I've dreamed they could become, and those dreams match the player's dreams for their characters because I asked them to write out what they would one day hope their characters could accomplish. I also know how to read what a player really wants, and regularly surprise them with a story that deepens their character's story in ways they didn't expect, but enjoy more than whatever they would have thought they would like themselves. That takes experience, by the way. You can't shortcut that. Read lots of fantasy novels and daydream about your own characters most of your life and you can lay a groundwork for this style of game play. These are the keys to getting a game running that your players are talking about all week long in anticipation of the upcoming weekend. Plenty of humor, epic battles, fantastic rewards following maximum effort to succeed in grueling circumstances. Loving your player's characters more than they do, and keeping the story intact at any cost.
I never fudge rolls. If I need something to work out, I don't roll it. That's what the DM screen is for. But I'm uncharacteristically fair. I usually roll for everything, and automatically have an opponent's weaknesses and strengths in mind before the party arrives. But you HAVE to be able to adapt. Sometimes the players shortcut the fight with an ingenious plan or a heroic act backed by a critically successful roll. Not only do you let them have those wins, but THAT is when you do a cut scene describing how awesome their actions were. That pays in dividends you can't measure.
I own my rolls no matter what. I rarely, but on occasion, just don't roll to further the story. My honor and trustworthiness is paramount to the trust of the players and their sense of fair play.
I once read a cool article that basically stated that players want to be Bruce Willis in Die Hard. They want to be the heroes. They want to win the day. But they also want to crawl across broken glass, jump out of 40 story windows, get shot to pieces and beaten within an inch of their lives, before they cross that finish line. They need to feel like they earned it. Earning it costs something. Bring that to your game and you'll change the look in their eyes when they come to your table next week...
You didn't really offer advice. You just said "I don't fudge rolls" or "I'm uncharacteristically nice". Next time include some actual tips. And get off your High horse.
Hi! Do you have any good fantasy book recommendations to read that would help my DMing skills/ imagination?
@@Romino98 Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Start with Wizard's First Rule. There's well over 10 books in the series. You'll get addicted like a junkie, and it'll radically change your expectations of fantasy novels. Pay attention to his character building, and how he gets you deeply invested in them. The characters are both epic and real, even gritty in how real they are. Then he subjects them to awful circumstances and forces you to feel the gravity of how much you care about them. Many sacrifices are made. It's fantastic storytelling.
What's more, the parallels to real life and politics and religion that are told are profound. It gives the story a validity many other authors never achieve.
Let me know how it works out...
@@Vamoss39 There's always a cynic, lol!
If you want advice, ask a question, I'll be glad to give it. Be specific, and I can offer a wealth of knowledge.
But let's be clear, I am not a narcissist. While I'm proud of my accomplishments and confident in my abilities, I'm well aware of my mistakes. I'm also willing to learn from others, even hungry for it. But I'm not a fool. So many people out there have weak views and unsupported garbage opinions they couch as self-proclaimed facts.
If you have a differing opinion, fantastic! But you better bring your A game, because I'm not just an accomplished debater, I thoroughly enjoy a vigorous intellectual exchange. It's built into my personality.
All that said, your quote was incorrect, I said that I was "uncharacteristically FAIR", not "nice". Just ask my players, they take a beating every session. My games can get very dark. Sometimes even Cthulian or Dark Souls type dark. The kind of dark not meant for children's ears or polite conversation on TH-cam.
So, since you're fond of advice, I'll offer you a small sample.
Lighten up.
@@dustinwilson4815 I'm not big on commenting on TH-cam, but I thoroughly enjoyed the small overview of your decades of experience DMing. Then I read the comment challenging you - though calling that a challenge might be an overstatement. And I immedialety "knew" you'd respond in a calm, intelligent yet firm way. I'm sure your players are very lucky and happy D&D gamers. I'm close to DMing my first session ever. I daydream about made up characters a lot and I read a lot. Hope it helps. I'm a bit nervous, but I'm playing with good, long time friends. At least two of them are both fair and very direct. We're all relatively experienced players, just not DMs.
I have two questions for you, maybe you can give me some advice: My first session coming up soon, do you think it would be best to start with level 1 characters, me being an inexperienced DM? I don't mind the first few levels, quite enjoy them actually, but my players love the amount of options and agency your fledgling level 3s offer or even when characters really begin to grow reaching level 5.
Second question: Are there any beginner friendly house rules (again- me being the beginner at DMing, the players do have a decent amount of experience) you have become comfortable with over the years? Rules that just shake up the well treaded D&D path a little? Or do you think I should stick to what works as intended for starters?
Thank you for sharing your experience. And sorry for any typos or weird and out of place capitalizations (really fighting my German auto-correction here 😅 Edited to minimize the Kraut in my comment)
Cheers!
Vic
Not letting the players out-think their situation. Imagine the scene: Your Big Boss is perched on a ledge, ready to flee the scene with the (fill in the blank) as hostage. He spreads his wings annnnnnnndddddd...one of the players does something incredibly clever you never saw coming. Boom...either the bad guy is caught, the hostage released or whatever. Sorry, but your players out-thought you. Let them have it, call it a learning experience and move on. Trying to force the issue after that looks like sour grapes on your part.
Comicsluvr the session was going to revolve around a stealth mission and clever infiltration of a base. They realize that the NPC ally, based on my old character, knew invisibility and hold Person. Proceed to send in their monk and the warlock invisibly to sneak in, then paralyze the general while the monk used flurry of blows with advantage and auto crit on a paralyzed general. I was both proud and dissapointed
Proud AND disappointed. Yeah...I can totally see that.
HA! I loved it, when I played totem warrior barbarian!
Basically, we had an infiltration mission. We needed to go in, snatch a document and move out. So naturally, DM has setup an NPC for us and a stealth mission castle like thing. So, being a barbarian - I go for natural senses to see, if there are any animals nearby. "Why?" - "I want to use them for spying" - "errr... yeah, no animals around, just fucking moles" - "great, direct me to it". Then I managed to talk a mole into helping us investigating the area, though DM was still persistant on us doing it ourselves by saying that the mole is scared and don't want to go deeper. Felt kinda cheated at that point :(
My biggest issue with this when it happens is that most of my players don't have a high enough intelligence score to even comprehend such a plan. Thankfully, most of my players realize that they have to rp their stats, but when you have someone with an 8 intelligence coming up with the entire plan and your wizard with a 19 intelligence can't come up with anything, it is really frustrating. In the case where it doesn't make sense with their stats, I will remind my players that they have to play their stats. That being said, if they want to roll something like investigation and do really well, they essentially just came to an AHA! moment.
Intelligence - knowing stuff, coming up with stuff - wisdom
Personally as a female player, dm favoritism has been a problem a few times and each time its happened it was just annoying and embaressing. I want to kill a monster and find a cool sword because i rolled well and was clever and did a good play with my team, not because the dm likes me. :/
That sucks, also want to say thank you for having an awesome attitude and being true to the game. I here lots and lots of stories about girls that play and are either openly manipulating the game shamelessly or somehow have ~no idea~ that they seem to get a lot more rewards and cool stuff than everyone else at the table because they have this big smile and cute giggle whenever something good happens. We need more players like you that want a fair and fun experience for everyone and aren't out to be the one and only star of the show. Hopefully you've spoken up and let that DM know at some point that you'd kinda like him to cut the crap, quit staring, and just run the game (politely, of course).
You are playing with the wrong DMs if they only favor you. When I DM i favor 1 person each session and rotate it each session if I can. Let that Bard who is only good at talking have a large chunk of a session finding the information for your character to go kill that monster and find a cool sword because you rolled well and were cleaver. And let that caster who helped you kill them find a scroll only he can read that will lead him to a great library where he can hopefully find that one spell he has been dying for.
My ex-wife would looooooove to talk to you lass. Especially since she hade to work twice as hard to get things. I guess that, in my urge to do not show any favoritism, I made things more difficult to her characters.
Of course, she overcome all scenarios and most of situations, but now, years later, I admits that I could have made things just as difficult as anyone else on the game, and not level-hard difficult just because she was my wife.
"As a girl/woman, I really don't want to get this special treatment and unearned favouritism just because of who I am."
---->
"Wow, so great to hear a girl say this, we need more like you, thank you, you are the best, marry me!"
Calm your tits everybody, if voicing your frustration like an ordinary person and bringing up one's gender earns her paragraphs of admiration because a girl said something you like, you are part of the problem. She said she's frustrated with it herself, I can complain, too. It's fine that you agree with that complaint, but come on.
That’s mega fuckin’ rip
"there is only one right answer"
in the group i was part of in uni, there was one guy, one Story Teller, who was notorious for his inflexibility and inability to deviate from the plan. what made it worse was after sessions he'd often be confronted about it by unhappy players demanding the solution to whatever problem we'd failed to solve, proudly rattle off his answer like he's just smarter than the rest of us, and instantly get shouted down by the whole group because we HAD said that, but worded slightly differently, and been told it was wrong.
same guy loved his homebrew, built a couple games from scratch, pretty well done too, but once again could not adapt and actually run it. one in particular, supernatural theme, my powers ran on blood... 2 5ths of the game all the enemies had the train "bloodless", meaning i was starved of resources and may as well not shown up. he wrote this himself, from scratch, and handed us our power sets. it wasn't like i'd built the powers isolated from the plot, he did it.
I'm not sure if it is on the level of "dm-taboo never do this", but my current DM refers to the monsters as "I" and the monsters' turn as "My turn" and laughs when something bad happens to us players, sometimes narrating it as something that makes him laugh even harder. He also is very strict with rules, and as a rogue I've rarely been able to stealth without a complication like "the enemy is just standing there stairing in your direction, so no amount of stealth would have prevented them from seeing you"
This is definitely something I would consider a big no-no
I would say that they are not a good dm
I had a DM who immediately after TPK'ing us exclaimed "I win!"
Needless to say the group decided he was best fit to be a Player for the rest of eternity.
I would probably give disadvantage to stealth if it’s like a hallway that a guard is stationed to look down tbh
You know what they call a bad GM???
A terrible novelist. ;o)
The worst GM I had could have an entire video dedicated to them. Misleading setting made the party pick very slice of life style characters with minimal combat abilities. We are then put into an incredibly over leveled dungeon where every single basic enemy of trap is nearly a full party wipe. But we always survived thanks to the GM PC who was immortal (I tested). Using a simplified version of the rules, but not explaining them to us, to the point that I was 5 sessions in before I even knew I was a rogue.
It got so bad several of us wanted to change characters to fit the now pure dungeon crawling slogfest with zero allowance for RP. Since some of us were playing as children or musicians and artists, you know. GM refused to let us die or leave, until finally tehy relented. How? Not nicely. The other player's character was given to a dark knight that did grimdark things to them. And my character? Fed to spiders but not allowed to just die. We were both given fates of suffering, instead of going home or just dying in battle. The edginess was thick enough in the air to choke you. Utterly disgusting game. Where we were told off for RPing too much, outright being told that what we had said and done was now retconned because she had to approve every single thing, we couldn't just "say things" without her approval and supervision.
Finally, it ended with us finally getting a full party wipe. The GM expected us to continue, but none of us were having fun. Worse than that, one of the players later told me that the entire campiagn was plagiaresd from a video game. I've never seen so many many many taboos done all together at once. We were also threatened with character death if we tried to fight the dark knight from earlier who enslaved one of our party members. Not because "he's too storng for you" but because "I have plans for him dont ruin them!". Even though we had a paladin who, mechanically speaking, needed to act. We were forced to act out of character over and over to fit teh GM's narrative. Our skills were made useless due to disabling magic water.
And she thought she was balancign things because she kept giving overpowered loot to us. But it's obvious, she eitehr couldnt balance, or forgot to level us up from the start. We felt so useless, and that was by her design. Her GM PC solved everything for us and defeated enemies. Revived us from the dead. And even used magic to change a character's personality. Yeah you read that right. We played this online with text only, but I know we were all giving that same reaction of "wtf".
I've spoken about this awful time a few times before. It really really does need, to be it's own video. I will never see a GM worse than this one.
Did you ever tell them how shitty they were? And take your friends and find a new dm?
Had a similar story a while ago, was co-hosting a series of chatroom campaigns (set in the same universe, sorta building on one another, a handful of admins taking turns hosting one each) with plotlines loosely connected by design, so at first everyone would wander around on their own with small groups forming on their own. Worked great the first two times, third time ended with the fourth admin bs-ing the apocalypse by the hands of a character who had just been killed minutes before that (sonething he was later removed from our group for, but that's another story). So when the fourth one came around, set a few centuries later, me and two other people had been spending weeks on creating the entire map and political landscape from scratch. It started out pretty great, but due to the concept of having five worlds with a total of some nine kingdoms made the whole thing quite slow paced, as basically all of us were still attending some sort of school at the time and there was rarely a time were all of us were online.
So all of this eventually started really getting on the nerves of the guy this is all about, who decided that the only reasonable punishment for two people who, in his eyes, were derailing a plot that noone but him knew about was to face one with the decision to either succumb to him and be his loyal servant or to die, while directly killing the other. Needless to say, this didn't exactly sit well with the other players and after two days of drama, the entirety of that encounter was declared to have never happened. Meanwhile, the guy who brought the third one to a grinding halt was in the progress of not only ressurrecting his literal god that killed everyone at the end of that, but to _also_ bring back his first divine entity that had previously been unanimously outlawed by both the regular players and the rest of the admins, which essentially had me rewriting three of my secondary characters (everyone was allowed to have as many characters in their lore as they could handle, and was allowed to play them as partymembers to compensatd gor an alleged flaw in our combat system) solely for being able to shut down whatever bs he might come up with.
Anyway, back on topic. Other guy gets super pissed because people were interfering with his plotline again, despite him never telling anyone where he wants to actually go with it, and he somehow played his personal plotline into being the "main storyline" that everyone is required to follow (literally noone had any connection to any of that, as just about all of it was taking place in the underworld, where for one not even half of the players were even able to go, and for other noone but him ever actually went. So, for the audacity of not shivering in fear before a character noone had ever seen (or sonething like that, don't remember what the exact cause was), he decided that this time, they had gone too far and needed to be banned. Which, truth be told, didn't really do a lot, because their entire story essentially consisted of filler in a place where noone but them ever went, but it pissed off the rest of the players who then became pretty inactive, which pissed him off even more. So when our meant-to-be-epic adventure eventually died on the road, he recruited a whole new bunch of people and created a spinoff where literally every player was handed a fixed character sheet and backstory and when the campaign started, recieved a literal script listing every single action he was to take. Needless to say, I bailed out of it on day one.
What was the game being plagiarized? I'd love to see what she was drawing from, sounds terrible
Bigby B I don't know why, but I immediately thought of the dungeon at the end of Tales of Symphonia. Who knows though
One time I was running a game and my friends were fighting a beholder. They had been fighting it for like an hour and one of my friends finished it off with ice hail, in fact most of the damage done to the beholder was magic based damage, and it was awesome! Everyone was jumping up and down and celebrating! But then... I realized... beholders can disable magic in there gaze.... I kept quiet....
Name checks out
A way to fix this problem would be to say that while they investigated his body, they found a large cut on the beholder's central eye, rendering it blind from that eye and disabling its antimagic cone. Maybe it was keeping it hidden with an illusion because beholders are extremely paranoid and it wouldn't want its weakness to be seen? Maybe it had a nemesis that caused the scar? A forgotten detail becomes a new plot hook.
@@outbreakperfected9374 I will definitely take that into consideration. That’s pretty smart!
Never cave to a whining and complaining player.
As a DM, I make available the item they want, but I typically make the creatures around it twice as hard and I make that clear to him. So he is a level 3 rogue and wants the assassin's bracers and drones on and on about it, so I lead him to a guy that knows a guy that knows a person that has it. So he tracked him down, nearly got the whole party killed just to interrogate a guy that might know where these bracers are. That NPC was a little taken aback... Like... That's it? You fucking came into my keep, killed half my guards just to ask something frivolous like that? So he gets all that info, heads to the assassin's guild, finds out that the guy that has that is on a mission doing recon. Then has to go to the underdark where that assassin has been captured, and the creatures guarding him can one shot him and his party in an instant. He needs to be at least level 12. He was mad, and has since calmed down and improved his play, I'll probably let him have it at level 6 or 7.
@@Abou47Pandas That seems like super bad advice tbh. First, you're doing the age old "dm vs player" thing which sucks, secondly, he wouldn't know he "needs lvl 12 for those creatures", he'd just die, unless you told him flat out "you need level 12 for these creatures" which makes you a bad dm!
@@Galf506 I summarized. I did not tell him he *needs* to be level 12, it was something like "They look deadly". He was controlling of the party, complained at every step, I put the item he wants in the game and where he could find it. He pushed the party and pushed the party. He is a min max player. He knew where the item was he wanted. He ended up getting the item. No need to be an ass "which makes you a bad dm!"
But thanks for your two cents. highly sought after magic items should be hard to get... to earn them... this isn't Christmas, its D&D. Do tell us about your perfect DM skills.
@@Abou47Pandas I'm not a perfect DM, far from it, I'm just starting out actually! What I'm saying is that you went out of your way to make everyone's life gravitate around a particularly irritating player, which you could have shut off with a "no" and worked the item out in some way without ever telling him anything, or just didn't allow it without even replying to his droning. I have a particularly irritating player in my current game too, but the day I cave in to his requests is the day the entire party gets off track just because I got so fed up with this guy I decided to work with him instead of around him, or worse like you did, I just created an elaborate scheme that led the entire party to an over leveled encounter they couldn't take.
When one guy gets so irritating that it doesn't allow for the flow of the game, you stop the game, have a little direct chat, and that's it. Common sense. If the other guy isn't being logical, the group will fall apart and that's all there is to it, sadly. DnD is a social game and some people just don't work with it, everyone else would have had more fun embarking on a real quest instead of a turkey chase to an impossible encounter with no results, no?
@@Galf506 I didnt go out of my way, He did. He sat and spoke with the players and pressured them to follow him on his quest to get some bracers. ----- But telling a player "No" *is* bad DMing. Its an open world, sandbox game. If a PC wants to sit in a city and just look for people to ask about some bracers, who am I to say no? I made it a 1 percent chance that he would talk to someone that had ANY sort of information about it. I rolled a 1 on a percent die after dozens of rolls over the course of weeks in a city. Then he proceeded to convince his party to follow up with it, the pleading, the droning etc etc. They caved, not me. I present the world to them, I give their game conflict, I dont tell them no, I speak from their perspective *most* of the time. If the party gets off track, that is on them. I give them the necessary information on multiple conflicts and *they* choose what they do, not me. He was annoying. He did irritate me and the players. We talked to him, he was just...*that guy*. So when they set out for these bracers, I wrote out the steps in the quest... and he lead the party to the end of that quest.
They looked deadly. What I EXPECTED him to do, was stealth and try and retrieve the assassin and get the bracers, I gave him the necessary information. He didnt use it. Almost like a class quest, a personal quest. --- bad DM... dont. even.
Big Taboo: NPC who dominates the party. If you want play, become a player. NPCs should be background, support and not there to take the limelight off the players. I've heard of so many horrible experiences of players who have hated their DM for doing this.
"NPC, who dominates the party" - depends. Did the party attack him? This one guy, that is known across the lands to be the fiersest barbarian in the world? Or did they try to sneak into personal chambers of paladin commander, who single-handedly defended a whole avanposte from ghost invasion 3 years ago?
IF players HAD warnings AND they chose to FUCK THEMSELVES UP by trying to fuck with this well-known OP dude - yes, yes they should be devostated, if they are like a level 5 APL fuckers.
Evil toaster of pure EVIL I think he means where the dm throws their on character into the party so they can be a player and the dm
Evil toaster of pure EVIL I think you're confusing what I mean by "dominating". I don't mean an NPC who is more powerful than the party, I mean one that adventures with the party and dominates the combat and/or their interactions with other encounters.
Ohhh, I see. I sometimes throw one of those to the party, but usually - it's for a specific story element (basically, one-session comrad, that dies / leaves at the end of it to fit for a specific role during an adventure; usually those are either mercs or guides, whom party hires in the first place for guidance or manpower for a quest: found it also to be quite fun to name mercs after vegetables, right now my party for instance is travelling to an epic dungeon with Pickle and Cabbage). Apart from that - why would you? You have millions of NPC's, you are playing, NATIONS worth of power, you are the overseer of the world you are presenting and you can do anything by snapping your fingers in the world. WHY would you even want to play with the party? o_O
I'm running a game for just two people with an NPC along to help. I let the players control her in combat and make sure she takes a back seat in the negotiations with other NPCs.
Dont limit a players RP ability. We once had a paladin in our party who stepped between a fellow party member and the breath of a black dragon to save the other party member. He barely survived, and was left with hideous scars over most of his body. The player saw this as a turning point in the paladin's alignment, maybe shifting him from lawful good to neutral evil, becoming jaded after recovering from his terrible wounds. I personally thought it was a great RP idea, and would have brought up many excellent points of conflict in the future.
Our DM, uncomfortable with the idea of an evil aligned character, basically told him the incident left him with voices in his head that convinced him not to be evil any time he was tempted.... LAME
What kind of DM can't handle alignment ?
I would have allowed that to happen, but given the paladin a lingering injury from the DMG for story reasons. Specifically the disfiguring scars one, where you gain advantage on all intimidation checks but disadvantage on persuasion
That's a big jump in alignment from one event but it's not too far of a stretch. Alignment isn't really that important and is mostly a guide rather than a hard rule anyways.
My current campaign has a PC that's chaotic evil (or neutral evil; I'm not sure which). So far he's just been a selfish dick more than truly evil... so far... But yeah, actions guide alignment, not the other way around. Him becoming jaded after facing the terrible consequences of trying to be good is an *amazing* idea. If I were the player, I would have been like, "I hear the voice... but I'm telling it to shut up now while I do this". A DM should never take away player agency.
He tried to save a party member and became evil?
Tip #1 is absolutely true. A good DM will always know when to fudge a roll, whether in the favor of the players or not, but telling them that you did so just shatters the illusion. The BEST CASE scenario is that it has no effect. Nothing good comes of it, but you risk spoiling the entire game.
Matt Kuhn This happened to me in an Adventurers League game. We had barely managed to survive a big fight and were riding the high of having won by the skin of our teeth. Then the DM chimed in with talk about how much he had to bend over backward and fudge things to keep us from being killed. He stole the joy of our victory and made us feel stupid for our decisions.
Exactly! The problem wasn't that the DM did those things - you guys felt great after the fight, and the DM had done a great job keeping the tension up. What was problematic was when he told you.
On the contrary I, as a player, feel far more comfortable knowing the DM will fudge one way or the other if its in service to the story being told, *unless* the game is set up as a brutal expect-merciless-death scenario.
Judging by the comment section this may very well make me a minority, but I still disagree that *nothing* good will come out of it.
Nemeke I don’t disagree with you! I think there may be a miscommunication. I absolutely think it’s a good thing for the DM to fudge dice where appropriate! And I don’t think it’s awful for the players to know that the DM might fudge rolls in general. What I don’t think is a good idea is to tell the players that a specific roll was fudged. The purpose of fudging dice is to keep the game fun, usually by maintaining or decreasing tension, whether by ensuring the players don’t get butchered because your dice are rolling hot, or to make sure your big bad doesn’t flub his one important roll making the climactic final encounter a joke. But if they tell the players that a specific roll was fudged, it defeats that purpose. I hope that makes it more clear!
Well, I sometimes fudge DC's. When my player comes up with something fun, exciting and fucking clever - sure, roll the skill. If it's bad - I fudge the DC by "he got distracted" for a re-roll for instance or for an easy win. YES, that's a sin, though I have to admit - I'm a sucker for clever and interesting ideas from my players :'D
Stage fright acting, I can't get over that sometimes. When I'm playing a PC, I do fine, but when I try to DM, everyone stares and I just fudge up my words :(
I was part of a friend of mine's first go at GMing. After every session expressed his fear that he wasn't doing very good. I told him the only mistakes I saw were the kind to be expected of a beginner.
My other friend is GMing now, with previous friend in the party. Second friend is much more intelligent and has a bit of experience, and even he expressed fears that he's not doing very well.
It's just the nature of performing, I assume. Like giving a public speech, if you aren't nervous AT ALL, you are probably overconfident and going to screw things up.
It's all good dude, I have the opposite problem. I can never get in character when I play as a PC, but if I'm doing a bunch of NPC's, I have absolutely no problem.
That's a good reason to have a screen between you and the players.
try to do online sessions on a website like roll20 first
I know it's a pretty lae comment and i hope you already are having succes with DM'ing but if not, maybe practise, not only as a DM but just talking to people in general. There's a lot confidence can do. Also: look no further than youtube for it has some amazing tips too
The worst DM taboo is having a female PC getting captured and raped, for "drama". It's extremely depressing how common you hear this horror story, even today, and back in the 90's and 2000's it was even worse.
what the ✨✨fuck✨✨
that just sounds awful and unenjoyable for literally everyone
Just as bad is having the NPCs talk down to a female pc. I had rolled a character to jump into a friends campaign while I was visiting for a few days and basically had her back story be "A veteran warrior of the local lord who was tasked with the protection of the area outside the town." and the DM had guards talk down to my PC because she was a woman, never mind the fact that she was armed with a shield and trident and wearing half-plate with the crest of the lord. Nope, she's a woman and women get no respect in that DM's world.
@@immortalharp That sounds like you're being a bit too sensitive in that instance.
@@modernalchemist2690 How so? For a bit more context my character was neutral good and witnessed another player in our party break the law, so she sought out the guards to report the crime. The DM originally had them paying attention until another player mentioned her sex. Then the guards did a complete 180 and stopped paying attention to her and shrugged it off as a woman looking for attention. He then had me thrown in jail because she got frustrated and called them incompetent children and walked away. So I didn't even get to take part in the rest of the campaign.
@@immortalharp At least in your first comment, being talked down to by NPC's is a common element in alot of campaigns. Whether its because of sex, race, etc its usually just a simple way of creating drama between characters. Just seems a bit petty to complain that not everyone automatically respects you. (Even with your background) That doesn't happen in real life and I wouldn't expect it in a fantasy world either.
When putting puzzles and mysteries into your campaign... NEVER assume the players think like you do. No matter how obvious it may seem to you, your players are quite often completely clueless about how you want them to solve a puzzle.
I had a DM who, if you examined an object that had a clue on or in it somewhere, would tell you nothing unless you did it in exactly the way he imagined you should. The clue was there, but you'd never find it unless you said " I take the figurine, rotate its arm counterclockwise, and look under his left foot.". Always assume your players will miss multiple clues, and have redundancies, extra places they can get the same information from in a different way.
Basically, I know you love an intricately crafted puzzle, but if you expect players to figure it out, you're going to need to give them some leeway, because they don't think like you do.
Hope this helps.
So much yes.
The first time I DM-ed live, I wanted to have a puzzle in the game, and I even made a prop for it - a map, with a transparent sheet with markings that aligned onto it. It was really, really simple, and I almost scrapped it, because I thought it was insultingly dumb. But it took some time for my players to figure out what goes where, and (they said) it felt really nice when they solved it, and it took just the right amount of time out of the session. I think I dodged a bullet there, and it would have been really bad if I had concocted smth super complex and "clever", only for it to stall the game and make my players feel dumb.
I suppose one can start with simple things and then gradually build up on them.
I had something like this happen.
Long story short, after opening a secret tunnel in a tomb we get shut in and the walls were closing in on us. Apparently, we were suppose to draw a chalice on the wall in blood. How were we suppose to know that?
Well, there was a statue in the room before with a scroll in its hand with a chalice on it. We already knew about the blood tendencies of these tombs. Well, my friend and I had both examined the statue (a 14 and 18 on perception, respectively) and didn't notice the chalice symbol because "you examined the statue, not the scroll".
The whole campaign was about that level of bull shit so I gave up after that.
This is something I worry a whole lot about and I'm not entirely sure how to resolve it.
On the one hand, a puzzle can be interesting and fun if done right. But what do I do if the solution just eludes them? On the one hand, making the puzzle unnecessary takes away a lot of the enjoyment of solving it. But making it necessary can create a roadblock.
I can think of some solutions that work in specific cases. For instance, perhaps letting players find a magical artifact, but letting them figure out how it works for themselves... If they can, they've got a fancy artifact to have some fun with and make some encounters easier / manage some task with, but if they can't, they are still free to come up with their own ways around whatever obstacle is presenting itself, be they easier or harder. Or perhaps having failing the puzzle have consequences that shape the story but don't act as a roadblock - failing to save an NPC, perhaps, and then dealing with the aftermath of their death?
I don't know. Maybe the trick is that there isn't some catch-all trick around this and it always needs to be a case-by-case basis for what happens with failure.
Though, to be fair, I don't think I'd do anything as silly as having them manipulate a figurine in some specific way.
I still haven't figured out how to put puzzles in the game. I really like puzzles as a player but I'm not very good at figuring them out. I have a friend who is very good at them though so he usually does all the hard work and we all help figure the rest of it out. Which is a lot of fun for all of us.
The group where I'm DMing though, I'm still figuring out how to create puzzles and how many clues I should give. It's very tricky.
The first puzzle I had put in my campaign, I just had needed the party to touch a strange rune engraved into the wall. It was my first campaign and I believe the second session. I tried to make it clear, with the party having seen the symbol several times and several notes referring to its power. It was emanating a strange power, and if the party didn’t touch it the campaign wouldn’t really start (the rune was cursed and would attach to the player who activated it). They ended up leaving, and to cut a lengthy back and forth short, they summoned a demon who solved the puzzle for them, and was forced to inhabit the body of a wolf pup. He became a regular NPC of Puppy Bob and way their Deus Ex Machina
Saying no to someone’s idea. Here’s an example
Player: I cast hold on the executioner’s axe
DM: No you dont
(Dont ever do this)
@EarthDragons BroSkemp then put rules before that, and/or ask people if they're ok with canceling some actions that severely disrupt the story
You should never just say "No" and leave it at that, true, but sometimes players cant' do ANYTHING. New players especially need to learn this. What a good DM SHOULD do is, when a player asks if they can or says they are going to do something, tell them what they need to do or what needs to happen for them to be able to do that. "I want to blah blah blah" "Okay, that would take more action than you can this turn but you can certainly reach *whatever* on this turn and do the rest of it with your next turn" kind of thing. Or at the very least explain WHY they can't (currently) do that thing. When in doubt, have them roll. Even high rolls can fail, hell even natural 20's can fail if the DM so chooses.
I had a player once who tried to take the two handed ax of a Minotaur skeleton. He got mad at me because after picking it up he rolled a con save and failed causing his knee to break under the weight of the 6 foot+ ax. Now normally I wouldn't even allow a player to attempt that but he was the kind of person who wouldn't learn if there were no repercussions.
I left a game because of this. My dm would not let me do anything that wasn't in his idea of the story and he constantly tryed to get me killed because i would not stop challenging him.
An example of this was i simply wanted to walk with my party past a cave but noooo we need to go in the cave. The dm told us no you dont you walk into the cave. The cave also had no importance there were 4 goblins in it thats it and a few gold
One of my pet peeves with DMs is (and I’ve found this happens with a lot of DMs) when they consistently/always punish a nat 1 roll but don’t always look for ways to reward the rare nat 20s that aren’t in combat. For example if you roll a nat one on a perception check for standing watch at night, the DM will say you fell asleep and a raccoon comes into camp and steals some of your party’s stuff, but if you nat 20 on a perception check for standing watch, they say you go through the night and nothing happens but you can really hear the individual crickets chirping well…that’s nonsense and you will lose players trust when you do that. Even if you didn’t have anything planned, maybe make something up like throw in an unplanned small encounter that the nat 20 just saved the party from a surprise attack or even that you saw it coming early enough that your party now has an opportunity for a surprise round on the bandits, or maybe say that the player notices a little bit of glittering in the nearby stream and find a little bit of gold or even that a player notices that a deer has unwittingly bedded down right next to the party and they can shoot it with their bow so the party has some fresh meat and a hide to sell in the next town….something…anything…the player feels like they got a win and you get a win by looking like you had something prepared and it encourages your players to be more engaged even in the mundane stuff
All great tips. My DM loves to make story arcs around one player at a time. It can get really hard to make everyone at the table fell important (we have a party of six) but he seems to manage okay.
when i was a kid i managed to run a roleplaying gme for my group, notihng fancu snce i didn't have books, and didn't know any dice different than a d6 so it was a really simple system, and i made this story arc where all of them would go through some dungeons to find legendary elemental weapons per person and i would always get on-stop whining of "what about mine" or "why his first" types of whining for those, those dungeons basically ended the campaign for the players...
1: My Precious Setting/No Immersion World: Two sides of the same coin. One is where the DM values their world over the Players' fun; they usually do everything in their power to prevent PC impact from "staining" their universe. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a world where the DM gives up on immersion entirely and the game world becomes a joke. Both are guaranteed to end with the PCs not bothering to interact with the world at all.
2: Vengeful DM: The opposite of favorites. Yes, that Player has been Chaotic Stupid for their last three characters, but that doesn't mean you should be chomping at the bit to preemptively destroy their new character based on past games alone. If a Player becomes convinced they are the permanent punching bag of the group, they won't bother trying to improve.
3: Pushover DM: The opposite of the "NO!" DM. Easily pressured and way too catering to the PCs. It could also be a DM who knows the rules less than their Players. A DM who doesn't stick to their vision or can be talked into giving the PCs 5 Levels for free is bound to give up or end up with a No Immersion World.
Id argue that, especially in a long term campaign, a person actually interest to be a DM who has a "my precious setting" should know that it will be changed, thus should go along with all the logical impacts of the players actions (especially if in the end it is revealed that some of the gods are hiding that the main planes or even the whole universe resets every few million years or something like that giving players the option to look for ways to PERMANENTLY keep characters dead).
ToddTheTolerable your number three happened in a Kingmaker game I played once, we were given so much free stuff due to a couple of players constantly whining (especially one who was a Skald in a party full of casters) that we ended up stupidly overpowered at level 6 blasting through everything like nobody’s business.
ToddTheTolerable As a DM I love building a setting but a lot of the fun for me is that the PCs are history in action. I build a country and then the PCs decide its fate. I think this standpoint is probably the best way, as a DM, to both love your setting and let the PCs have fun in it.
ANDELE3025 I should probably clarify that the DM *should* take their game world seriously; the “precious setting” is just that taken way too far-valuing world lore and events far more than PC impact
Everything my players want to do, I respond with, "You can certainly try." Then I set the appropriate DC and/or add advantage or disadvantage, based on what they are trying to do. It's always possible, even when it's not likely.
Letting players take forever to figure out what their action is going to be, especially when it's the same player over and over. Allowing players to be on their phones the whole game, no the phone is not on silent either. Holding a player's hand and spoon feeding them how to play their character. What really should be done in this case is to sit down with that player individually out of the game and help them so next game they will be more prepared and actually know what they're doing.
Establishing cutscenes: good
Powerplaying cutscenes that show your character potentially being out of character by a DM: bad
Matt Mercer cutscenes: A++++
Griffin McElroy is great to
Matt Colville cutscenes were pretty great too
Scripted events are also kind of annoying. What I mean by that is having the DM turn the situation to combat even though your party has been getting by perfectly by utilizing stealth or speech instead of direct combat.
My DM has been doing things like this, and it's been pretty awesome. Fights have been challenging, and we've almost wiped on multiple occasions.
Vice versa too.
yeah but the DM has things planned out as well. I get that players want to do things, but so does the DM be it a quest or certain events. You play dnd for the freedom and role-playing opportunity as a player it gives you and that's fine but the DM is there for something as well they've put time and effort into the story they've crafted for you. I get what you are saying but let the DM have their fun as well
As a GM master with little experience this helped
The one thing I would add here: GMs should never use first person pronouns during combat. Nothing sets the tone of Player Vs DM than the DM declaring that, "ah, I missed you" or "I'll power attack for 5." Never fails to to make things adversarial.
This is good advice, I have a personal rule that I use: Only use first person pronouns when speaking in character and even then not 100% (nobles / royalty often speak in third person anyway).
100% agree there. For fun, try it some time though... and be sure to watch your players' stances and eyes. I've never seen a group that doesn't almost immediately begin to get defensive.
I (as the dm) are not attacking the party. the monsters are. and yes, they have abilities that, if utilized in a proper chain, could end the party pretty easily; but they are also, often times, stupid monsters that don't really work together so much as all attack the same group of people. but I always said "the attack misses" or "the lizard thrusts his spear into you. you take 4 damage." etc.
During combat, I do this in situations where either:
1. 2 or less casters, so I can have some fun with spells, that require verbal component. It's a lot more fun to say "I command you to yield, good sir!" instead of "he casts command on you".
2. It's a talkative enemy. Bard, Bondian spy, maybe a fun pirate or a jester, suave vampire or wtf ever - yes, if it fits 100,000,000% with the enemy and it's one enemy of this type - yes, I can have fun with "haha, I attack you with my stabby stick of death" or whatever
Otherwise, no. No point. Maybe some fun stuff like REEEEEE as kobolds make their move, but that's kinda it
I try to do this too. I always make sure to refer to the character rather then the player, i try to avoid "You," "Me," and whatnot in favor of the character's name and/or preferred pronoun.
Not sure anyone will see this, but I'll throw my biggest taboo I've ever been a victim of out there.
Taking back an item or ability from a player that you gave. I understand that quest items are eventually going to go bye bye, and thats not what i mean,the best way is for me to give an example. In my case, I had a character that because of a curse could become a human/spider hybrid like a drider, but human instead of drow (kinda like a werewolf, where he was a lot stronger, but had no control ). Anyhow, he had this curse for years, had an item that let him control it, and it became part of him, then my DM threw us against a big bad, and I went to change into that form since that form was stronger (and could probably one shot the Big Bad), and he just told me I couldn't cause the bad guy "Removed the curse" (Btw no explanation on how he knew about it, let alone when he removed it. and this was a strong curse, I took it to every temple to get it removed when I first got it, with no luck, even having a god manifest on the martial plain and look at it, and say they couldn't remove it.) so my character lost all his abilities he had for years with nothing but a sentience, and i lost a huge part of my character because my DM forgot my character could do that and didn't want his Big bad to go down easy.
TLDR: Taboo#6 taking away from the players to make an encounter tougher rather then changing the encounter to be more challenging for the players as is
Fully agree! The DM needs to have awareness of what the players have up their sleeve and adjust scenarios to fit them. I even sometimes suggest my players use an item because they REALLY needed to and forgot they had it haha.
Had to do that, when we switched to PathFinder. I misread the rules about starting stats, so I gave my players 4d6+3 stats instead of either 3d6+3 / 4d6. Worst feeling ever, taking 18 stats away back from the players later down the line.
God yes I hate this. One example of it happening wasn't even directed at me but a fellow player. We were somewhere around level 6, and at the end of one session the sorcerer found a Robe of the Archmagi. Everyone at the table was so in awe at the find, but by the next time we got together to play the DM had decided that it was a robe with the potential to be an Robe of the Archmagi, and currently only gave a fraction of the benefits, with more of its powers being unlockable with 2 upgrades down the line. I felt so crushed for them, just imagining finding an awesome magic item for my character only to be told that it's functionally a +1 weapon instead until later.
been there
back when me and my friends just started our dm just decided out of the blue that we had to many magic items (I guess) so in a cutscene we had no control over or input on he let us keep one magic item each and took all the rest
@@WolforNuva Oh man. The giving of magic items was a big factor in the game I ran. I quickly realised I'd over-supplied and over-indulged the items I was giving, but instead of trying to do a backflip and somehow remove them, I just adjusted the difficulties of what the players had to do to account for it. It's harder, but more rewarding, especially for the players when they manage to beat the challenges you're putting against them. And I got a real sense of satisfaction seeing that feeling of accomplishment that it created amongst them. The only time I took an item back from them was their Apparatus of Kwalish, and that was only because they'd parked in it a location that got inundated by an entire lake of lava summoned by a series of Gate spells close to where they'd left it :P
Rule #1 No drugs or alcohol, if you want to get past the first scene/encounter of the game. Rule #2 RAW works well on many aspects unless you want to climb a rope or cross a stream. In those cases expect someone to die if you are to literal to the rules. lol
My Nr.1 DM taboo would be "force a PC to kill another PC"
Here is the story:
The night already started out pretty intense. We where inside the enemy-base, pretending to be their allies, when they came armed and agressivly marching to our room. The party wasnt rested and one of our players was absent that night, so the DM didnt include him in that scene at all. It was pretty clear that we couldnt fight this.
I, as the groups frontline and with the most HP left, tried to buy my friends some time while they let their PCs escape through the small window one by one. The last of them escaped in the same moment that my PC goes down.
When she wakes up again, my PC finds herself in a dungeon, stripped of everything but her underwear. She manages to get rid of her handcuffs and tries to escape, but the dungeon turns out to be a maze and she gets captured again.
The next time she opens her eyes she is chained up again and infront of her stands the one, we assumed to be the leader of the enemy faction.
With no other option left I tried to talk myself out of this, pretending to be on their side and insisting that this was a missunderstanding. Somehow this seemed to work and by the end of the conversation the man infront of my girl was nearly convinced, that I was loyal to them, even if my friends decided to betray them by escaping shamelessly. I just had to pass one more test and I would be free again.
Thats when the guards brought the PC of the absent player in. He looked really beaten up and it was my job to finish him, with the knife the leader gave me.
Since the other player wasnt there I could not even talk with him about the situation, and hesitating would surely kill my PC, which I loved dearly.
So I did it, but I felt more than horrible while the DM discribed the Tabaxi dying in my PCs arms and I feel horrible about it until today, even if I tell myself that it was totaly in character to do it and loosing my character would be even worse.
(Fun fact: about 3 sessions later the DM killed our whole party anyway and I left his table after that.)
I'm glad to hear you left.
That is just an awesome story mechanic. As i DM i force players to make horrible choices all the time. Sure, they will be miserable, but damn are they into the story and they are sure more interested in beating the bad guys.
That situation doesn't look confortable, but I think I'd allow it _after there was enough development_ and like it if it was for the sake of a really good story, even if it's so tragic and I couldn't play anymore, but maybe that's just me. hm, the dm should have warned people or asked them to let him do unexpected things before all that though, and it should only be for the sake of a good story. Not like those tv series that kill everyone just for a pinch of drama, it's subtle sometimes where you draw the line
I'd have handled that kind of situation a bit differently, as I think it was a great chance for some growth. For example, I'd still have the player choose whether or not to kill, but the weapon that was given to the player would have an engraving in a language only them and their best friend knew.
Suddenly, that guy would turn out to be their long lost friend who once saved their lives, and was disguised as an evil leader for some greater good, explaining his absence.
You know, something like that.
That to me sounds like your dm was a dick, but that situation could have been an epic moment, first off the other character would have had to be there, and there would have had to be a chance of you both getting out of it alive, I also this before it got to that point that there should have been a pause to the game, if it was my game I would have had to pause it and remind my party that I am playing the villain based on what they would do, I would not be happy to do that because I want my players to succeed but the villain does not, I already told my players before we started that I would do the best I could to play the enemy as they would act, that could mean them running away from a lost fight or going to get help or yielding, or if it comes to it, finishing off a downed pc just to take someone with them
I've never GM'd a game, but I would like to point out that you don't want to over-prepare either. My group meets once a week and about a month ago, our GM spent most of that week working on a side quest for us. It was supposed to take up the entire 4 hour session. We got through it in just one. We were told by an NPC that we needed to stay on the forest path no matter what and that we should run if we heard rattling chains. That "night," our campsite was surrounded by creatures with glowing eyes. Our Dwarf Fighter scared them off with a single Intimidate roll. Wasn't even a Nat 20. Then after we had gotten the MacGuffin quickly thanks to some lucky rolls, said Dwarf decided that the path home was too long and winding for him, so he pushed through the undergrowth. No one wanted to split the party and leave him to fend for himself so everyone followed. That's when we heard the chains. All but one character turned and ran, guess who it was? By the time we the characters realized that he wasn't following behind us and ran back to save him, the monster was half dead already. The Dwarf was the party tank and the creature had been trying to grapple him in its chains to drain his life force, but couldn't get past his high AC and was taking damage each turn from the Dwarf's sword. The poor GM was so sad and had to default the rest of the session to dragon hunting.
As a novice (3 yrs) GM, I second the overprepping tip. I had a dreaded "cutscene," where the story's Big Bad would make his escape while leaving the party to deal with his invisible henchbeing, and I had thought I had considered every contingency in advance, except... for a Tanglefoot Bag. (this was Pathfinder, not 5e.) They critted with it, and my villain rolled a 1 on his Reflex save, which despite a super-high Dex, was not enough. And once he was trapped in place, the group proceeded to just pummel the crap out of him until he was unconscious. They tied him up, interrogated him, and then murdered him when he wasn't more forthcoming. This sent the campaign heading off in a totally different direction, though it was probably for the better, in hindsight.
That sounds like underpreparing. You should always prepare with stock NPC names, quests etc.
That is sad. I think his failure though, was actually underestimating the party's strength. Also, I'm quite surprised, as I'm sure he was, that you guys finished what was meant for 4 hours in 1. Very unusual.
What a chad dwarf
My absolute least favourite is when the DM allows for 0 discussion. I know sometimes you setup an encounter where you defeat a bunch of enemies and the party finds a note or whatever, but if someone wants to capture an enemy instead, allow them to, or if they want to avoid the fight all together and just talk to the enemies, try to allow that too. I dislike when a band of goblins goes from a group of individuals to a band of low level monsters
Also DON'T YOU TELL ME HOW MY CHARACTER REACTS, IF MY ARM GETS CUT OFF AND I LAUGH AT THE ENEMY THEN I'M LAUGHING AT THE ENEMY, NOT REELING IN SHOCK
Why is your character laughing about his/her arm getting cut off?
"Your arm gets cut off. How do you react?"
I think I'd make you roll some sort of Constitution save if you wanted to do that. But if someone cut off your brother's arm in front of you, I'd say react away.
Dungeon masters giving oil to the squeaky wheel. Special treament, items or super long turns to players that whine/complain the most or are the loudest.
While those that try to play the game like it's supposed to be played get ignored and pushed to the side.
Also DM not cracking down on players interrupting others. If a player goes to talk and another player starts over talking them, as a DM they will be set straight by me right away. But Unfourtionatly most will not do so.
By that same token, STs or DMs who refuse to listen to players who have legitimate issues. "I feel like I made a social character and I don't get to social" receiving the response of getting ignored is grounds for immediate boot to the head.
Players interrupting others is the worst. I played a social character prior, never got to do anything, combat was a pain because everything was stupidly OP compared to us, and anytime I tried to social, the least social character who constantly got to shine in combat would speak up and interrupt me because I actually thought about what I would say whereas he would just start barging into the conversation and usually get our party in more trouble than we started in.
^^^This.
Had a friend like that. He ended up not being able to come on fridays anymore, we were all so happy. (It is a school club so we cant kick him out btw)
Conner Wolf I watched a TED talk once about how introverts can actually be the best extroverts because they carefully plan what they say.
What you commented reminded me of that. Sorry about your frustrations.
this is a pretty obnoxious one : one of the guys characters was core to the plot of the game, so when he died, some time hyjinx or other method of preservation revived him and/or bailed him out. on the other hand, when i got forcibly put into a no-win situation (i got teleported by a beyond-deity enemy into a pocket dimension, along with one of the guys. his girlfriend was forced to choose one of us to die : guess who got shafted there), i had to roll up a new character after one death, as opposed to the 4 different deaths this other character went through.
I think a cut scene can be a great tool if used properly. It sould be an interactive cut scene, like a travel montage, or training montage, an escape, or wrapping up a story narrative after a boss battle.
I have only done one of those and that was litterally because they were all knocked out and litterally couldn't do shit or see anything so I just explained to them how they could feel themself get dragged away untill they suddenly fell for a few seconds before it seemingly slowed down.
They woke up hours later on the beach with one NPC that they had saved earlier dead in the same boat as them with a TON of questions that couldn't be answered..Pretty fun but I guess it was more a detailed description than a cutscene since they litterally couldn't interact even if they wanted to
It can also be used t introduce World Lore stuff into the game. Something that happens in the background where the characters can't actually interfer with and start to forget up until the point a certain character from that scene comes in... but they "saw" him die. Curiosity killed the cat is all I say. :D
ryan rhino I use then occasionally but you have to be very careful and have players that enjoy them.
I feel like I'm becoming a really bad Dm, lately I've been annoyed at my players for "breaking the world". I don't know if this is a struggle with me or if that op edgelord has just finally deteriorated me
Try changing your game around. If they just want to murder hobo, make an evil campaign. If they just want to go off and explore the land, they can.. And you can have escelating dc encounters for them as long as they arent following the story line. Eventually theyll realize that they cant keep going on like this and will turn back. If death dkesnt bother them. Take some time with each player individually to come up with an awesome background they can fall in love with, they wont want to die if they like their character.
It's hard to say what the problem might be without any details, but if you and your players have different ideas about how the game should go, you should all set some time aside and discuss what you want to do. Aside from that, you should keep in mind that all actions have consequences and there's always a bigger fish. If your PCs try to break the world, the world should try to break them.
Breaking the world... i know this all too well. My bbeg got polymorphed, stuck into a bag of holding, then transformed back, breaking the bag of holding and killing him... the players still enjoyed it tho
Update, I guess: I no longer play with these people as I realized they didn't actually care for me. Instead I've found an amazing group who will no longer take advantage of me.
@@haichie1341 That makes me happy happy to hear. I hope it's still going well for you. I feel like having all around good people at your table might be the most important corner stone of any campaign.
Cheers! 🙂
Advice for DMs that play over Discord. A few things helped me when I DMed for good friends that don't live nearby.
1. Try not using Camera. I found this more helpful halfway through a campaign. Noone could use camera due to a problem with discord one day. I have a few friends that will not roleplay. This happened and they all came out of their shell. It also added to their imagination not having any faces to focus on.
2. If you don't trust their rolls, reverse the roll a few times. Break it to your PCs that a curse is in effect due to a location after they have used knowledge Arcana. You feel as if your luck is reversed or something along the lines. I had a PC who constantly rolled well. 15s and above almost every encounter at all times. He was having good luck with his rolls in this instance and bad things would happen to him. After this happened he didn't fudge his rolls again. It was a cool way of showing him what I could do without doubting him outloud. Later he actually admitted he was fudging and apologized. I only did this because I knew him well enough. So use this with caution..
number 1 rule for dnd on the internet. If the dm cannot see your dice roll, it did not happen. get a dice bot, or use a virtual tabletop.
Easiest Solution To 1: Just Play With People Who Don't Have Cameras!
For playing on Discord you really need a Dicebot. There’s some good ones online and they work great. Players just go to a channel and type !d20 and it will randomly generate a number like dice would
I see a lot of folks saying cutscenes are ok. and I cannot agree. Cody here is not the first to give this piece of advice but I think his example of a bad guy's monologue doesn't quite capture why it's bad.
so; I'll quote ProJared and his example of a bad cutscene:
DM: "you approach the village square, there an executioner stands above (important NPC your players need alive) he readies his axe and swings..."
*The party wizard, interuppts* "I CAST HOLD PERSON ON THE EXECUTIONER"
DM: "I wasn't finished"
i suspect a good way to implement some kind of cut scene is solely to have a different npc retell a situation he viewed. therefore its not a situation the players can react to, but they might be inclined to hear the story out
your vision is obscured due to his
bodygaurds, you'll have to get closer for that to work
That is brillan BigCharlie. The only other way I could see having a cut scene at all would be IF all the characters have been captured. Then the big bad can tell the heroes his evil plan. Very much like a James Bond villain. "Do you expect me to talk?" "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
I do cutscenes sometimes, but they never take place around the party. It's more to show the players something offscreen. Something like "as you settle down to rest, the camera pans upwards for a second, then pans back down to show the evil archmage talking to someone out of sight". That way I can let the players, but not their characters, know something about his plans or weaknesses. Because, really, what BBEG worth his salt would actually TELL the only people in the world who can stop him exactly how to? I guess they're more like cutaways than cutscenes, but it accomplishes the same goal with no possible hit to immersion. It also adds a more "cinematic" feel to the game, which I reinforce by opening each session with "as the title screen fades, the camera focuses on the party as they are doing whatever they left last session doing" and by having credits roll at the end of the session. Sometimes I even do post-credit Marvel style scenes.
The most I really get into "cut scenes" is when I have to be reactionary to my players being stupid.
Example: My players approached a tower in the middle of the night, in which they heard chanting from inside. I told them the door was locked, but there were several windows they could see through. I try to get the group to at least walk around the tower first to see if there was anything else. Nope. Barbarian rolls a strength check to charge through the door and rolls a 20 (also the only double digit the poor guy rolled that night), barges through the door. Que "cutscene": you break the door off its hinges with a loud crash, gaining the immediate attention of everyone in the room. But congrats, the chanting has stopped. The room is full of people dressed in dark robes, but it seems as though you've barged into a wedding ceremony. (A cult captured the person they were looking for and were going to force her to marry one of the cultists.) The ringleader springs into action and fires off a bolt of fire in your direction..... yadda yadda.
If they had literally walked around the damn building they would have found the room attached to the tower where she was being held and could have snuck her out quietly but no. One bad idea, a good roll, and 20 cultists later they nearly got their whole party killed.
Worst taboos?
1. Monty Haul.
2. Magic item shops in every town fully stocked, has an online catalog with next day delivery, and it can be made.
3. A week's amount of food that lasts months.
4. A torch/lamp that lasts for months.
5. The light source is never hand held. It's attached to my helm, his shield, her shoes, her sword, etc. and despite moving all over the place has no affect on vision, esp.when it goes alone into a room, goes around a corner, falls in a pit, etc.
6. The monsters want to die. They never retreat, never lose morale, and lack any survival skills.
7. As the BBEG loses his army piecemeal, they don't notice it and his leaders and minions don't either.
8. The monsters have magic items and don't use any of them.
9. The monsters seem to lack any familiarity of their lair.
10. The fame and notoriety of the heroes goes noticed only a few, esp. when gold starts to flow...
Something I do all the time and I wish I didn't is pulling back the curtain and showing the players the secrets of the adventure. I only do this after the fact, but it ruins the mystery. Keep the players guessing, keep the mystery going ad don't give away those secrets!
I don't think that's bad per sé, if you do it after the fact. The aim is to have fun.. Together. And if you cannot share that experience, then where's the fun for you, the GM?
I say: Don't become an isolated island. Don't be the one looking in from outside. It's okay to do a big reveal after the game, show them the workings (since they solved most of it anyway), and share in the banter. At the end of the day, you, too, are a player of a game.
Ed Stevens Yeah, pulling back the curtain ruins the game for the players, IMO. Even if the players say they want to know, they really don't. It's so much more fun for them not knowing.
That's not a bad thing after the fact.
I always tell my players when something went WAY different than I expected, and even tell them what I had planned instead. It shows that you are giving them the freedom to alter the world.
I have had to pull back the curtain a little once. It was the first session of a new campaign and the party had no tanks and no healers. Pretty much everyone in the town told the party they should pay their respects at the local temple, but they decided not to. Had to have the healer NPC who was waiting to join them at the temple bail save them from a fight they were losing very badly. I ended up telling them after the fact that the NPC had been at the temple. They all just laughed and said, "But thou must."
CastleBroknhed No frontliners is a recipe for disaster... They gotta have something to keep the baddiea off the archers and casters. Otherwise every encounter will be rough....
Never tell em you fudged a roll because then it makes the players feel like they don't have a impact on the narrative
*an aged and wizened DM sits at the bedside of an ill an dying party member, and plagued with guilt he feels compelled to unburden himself. "I'm so sorry, i have something to confess... remember that campaign 27 years ago with that beholder "The Resplendent Eye-Tyrant"... you rolled a natural 1 on your dex-"
"FUQ YOU, MAN!. my life is a lie..." *BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
"In hindsight it's kind of my fault for letting you roll my saving throws."
My two are very simple: railroading and anti-favortism. If your players want to do things other than directly follow your storyline, adapt. It's not that hard to change an encounter location to fit where they went if you want them to meet an enemy or give them loot with a letter stating something happened. Don't force players to go exactly where you want, when you want, how you want. At that point, why are they even there?
As for anti-favortism, it's the reason I absolutely refuse to play with a certain DM. For whatever reason, he hated my characters (or me, unknown which). I've had characters 1 hit killed, trapped by a dragon after getting a Nat 20, had xp purchased things done at character creation taken away multiple times, characters killed off screen or solo away from anyone else in the party with no knowledge of what happened to them, set equipment "broken" from crits or botches when that never happened to anyone else, constant focus from enemies no matter what class I'm playing ect, ect. Literally anything you can do to target a player, he did to me. He was my first DM, so it took until we played our third different TTRPG that I figured out "oh, this isn't how DnD or Exalted works, this is just him being a d-bag". The killer for me was his extremely graphic and detailed rape of my character after she was charmed by an enemy despite being immune to charm effects by a character creation, xp purchased permanent feature, which he explained away by claiming he meant it was done by a god and thus not affected by your specifically stated feature. I got up and walked out, told him he was disgusting and vile, on top of being a terrible DM.
Jeffrey Fulstone
I don’t blame you for ditching that DM, ignoring Something the player has because the Core rulebook (AKA the bible of D&D) says they do without checking if it’s cool with said player way before (as in, during character creation) is an easy way to lose players.
@@alexhackett1312 Thanks for your kind words! Yea, there's a reason the majority of my original gaming group refused to play any games DM'd by that person, or have him involved at all. By the way, if he had done something "by the book" I probably would have been more forgiving, it was more like he had specific rules for me and another set of rules for everyone else.
My god I got actually sick at that last part. Like there's a difference between hating characters and being a disgusting person.
Never, EVER, let players steal from each other, its the seed of chaos that will eventualy ruin your game
I stole from my friends but behaved as their bank. With high interest. They got all the shiny swords I just wanted to have the highest GP count.
My wife is a rogue and steals everything from npcs that is nailed down or not. One time she left her supplies behind without thinking so I kept looting her stuff. Only got like 25 silver, but it felt good to steal from the rogue ajd it didn't really inconvenience her. Also the dm kinda favors her anyway so I knew she would make even more back. It's my response to dm favoritism.
I had a mercenary character who was stolen from by a rogue in the party. I observed him doing this and pretended to be asleep. A couple sessions later we had to split up and I went with the rogue and when he wasn't expecting it (caught him flat footed) clubbed him to death with my maul and took his gold. I went back to the party and bluffed them into believing he fell in battle. Benefits of a high perception and bluff.
Back in the old days, at the end of the adventure we'd grab the halfling thief by his ankles and shake him until the loot he'd stolen fell out. We just took it for granted that he'd stolen from us; after all, he was a thief. No animosity was involved, just playing the characters as they were.
Animosity only exists within the character created. We had just met, no time to build any rapport. Should become likeable before you start trying to steal from the party.
A DM taboo I recently had to experience was one I like to call. "Your sheet means nothing."
My dm ran a reality jumping game and got everybody to roll up stats make characters I made a great backstoryfor my tortle Druid hermit. And I brought it to the table...and my dm said. "Everyone is human and all your stats are at 10."
This gut punch pretty much made my whole time playing a absolute bore and a slog because all the work I put into my character meant nothing. Sure my DM said we would gwt our stats back as we played, but he never told us that before the game started. So the whole game pretty much gave me a bad taste in my mouth the whole time because it pretty much was a waste of time since session zero until we FINALLY (ten sessions later) got our stats back
That could be a fun game, but something like that absolutely needs to be communicated before hand.
@@xthebumpx yes, that and also not telling your players. "Oh yeah your also bottem of the rank nobodies."
I'll never understand folks like you that sit through ten sessions of utter crap. If the game sucks, walk away.
@@aaronharkness7487 uhhh the game never lasted 10 sessions...the party quit at 3 because we hoped it would get better...it didnt
My friend DM'd once, he was a "do whatever you want I can't stop you sort of DM". A goblin failed an intelligence check and got a Nat 1, instead of the check just not working, the DM decided since it was such a bad roll that a Giant 'Eater of Worlds' Snake God erupts from the ground and starts killing everyone. Then our cleric trys to summon their god to do battle with the snake and also rolled a 1 summoning cuthulu, the world became so unblanced that there were so many gods in one place that the universe exploded the end. Needless to say, we never let him DM again.
see that kind of insane bullshit can work, and be super fun even, if everyone goes into something, knowing that "this is about to be stupid"
Worst DM sin is the opposite of #3. Super linear narrative which eliminates any freedom from players. One direction scenarios/quests which they feel like players are the actors in a DM's predetermined story.
My dm does this and it feels like I'm playing a co-op rpg game instead of an open world massive adventure where we can do whatever we want, seems like we just have to do whatever the dm says. Complete destruction of freedom.
yeah I feel you! last time I played with such a type of DM, a player decided to spill a undefined magic potion we found and the story ended there because that potion was a key point for the final battle of the adventure....!!!! that was really hilarious but sad in the same way.
I never played with that group again for obvious reasons!
This one I'm on the ledge about this one , if my GM had made it clear the story was about us doing XYZ and it was somewhat critical to lore (such as in a warcraft based RPG I did where we witnessed and was involved with very core lore story already presented from its past) I can forgive this a little.
As long as I'm clear on the boundrys of what we're doing, and we are aloud freedom to play our characters I'm happy to avoid complicating the gms story telling in regards to that, but it has to be established what were doing first, not braking lore in a past based game and being part of the story is fine, just stopping me being immersed in my character out side of this is not cool.
Ah, the plot railroad. Guilty of this myself from time to time, but getting far better about it. Once you realize it's not a story *you* are telling the players, but a story the players are experiencing *with* you, and allow things to develop organically, everyone will have a better time, and trust me, as a DM you'll enjoy yourself even more than you thought. Be prepared for the players to royally fuck up something that should have been simple, or for them to cakewalk through something you planned to be insanely hard. Don't be vindictive about it, player actions are the best tool to advance a narrative, and the stories will be way better, and the players will love feeling their effects on the world they're in.
Huh? If a DM told me that they had to fudge the rolls behind the scenes I wouldn't think "Damn he took away my choices" I think, "Damn that's a good DM who put our enjoyment and the story above complete random chance". I have zero interest in a DM that's fine with killing off PCs, who through no fault of their own, die because of the pure random luck of the dice.
There are players who believe something like, "the dice are god." And there are players like you who just want to have fun, and meaningless death of a PC does not make for fun.
@Leisure that's a perfectly reasonable way to play, but it's not the only way to do it. I actually have multiple regular games, some I DM and some I play. Different games are set up differently. I find each style differently enjoyable, but the entire table knows which type we are playing.
The short of it is: play the game that's fun for you. Just make sure all those at the table are playing the same game.
Have you ever listened to the adventure zone? It is a great real play podcast and I think it is a example of cutscenes being a great adition to the story and adding atmosphere.
Ethan Barter I freaking love The Adventure Zone! It’s some fantastic storytelling! However, while lots of the cut scenes are really well done, I actually wouldn’t tell dms to look to it for advice. There are multiple instances where the pcs become bystanders & the npcs determine major event at the end of a story arc (e.g., Petals To the Metal.) I think it works for their table & they love creating a story first & foremost, but I as a player feel extremely frustrated if it seems like my choices don’t matter & the dm is just going to do what s/he wants. But yeah I love Taz so much it makes me emotional!
Teabooksgirl I’ll second this, but I will say that if you’re playing with players who got into D&D via TAZ, a little more cutscene might be appropriate. However, I would stick to cutscenes controlling only NPCs, and if your players are present for the scene let them decide how they feel or act in the moment by taking a break from the cutscene - you won’t be able to do it as scripted after your players respond, but it will cut them off from the action less. TAZ is definitely geared towards producing a satisfying story rather than gameplay experience, although they obviously all had a great time with balance.
One thing I tend to do when making a quest or something is to just make a skeleton. I just fill in the details that are absolutely needed, such as the map of a dungeon, the loot in it and enemies. Then just fill in the details as i go along
The Dm playing his own character as a PC. Tie in with the favoritism since most can’t stop favoring themselves, which sucks!
Don't need a cleric. But it's nice to have one. Gotta get creative, and use different 'better' tactics that apply to you cleric-less group.
I actually played my first campaign with a DM who had his own pc in the party. While a lot of plot points involved this pc, the game was pretty well built around each pc and their own backstory and interconnection with eachother. So the narrative ended up working quite well, even with a DM pc. But that's mainly the case of a good DM working with the players throughout
Of course, there are a few things he did do wrong, being his first time DMing a campaign, but overall the narrative played out well and left a good impression for me
You're not kidding taking control of a character away from a player is a cardinal sin. one that can end the whole game.
the last time I played D&D(3.5E) this happened to my character and ended the game permanently.
all because of a 5 foot step that was made by the DM controlling my character.
putting him in range of the monster just so the DM could show off how strong his monster was by killing my nearly epic level character in one hit.
He made my almost epic level fighter / Scout to take a 5-foot step forward. putting him just in range to get whacked, and preventing me from taking a five foot step backwards. which would have dropped me an additional 10 feet away from the monster and out of range of his attacks on the set of giant stairs (10'×10')we were climbing.
this character was based around Mobility in combat and it might seem silly to get bent out of shape about a five foot step, but when it makes the difference between your character surviving and dying it becomes an issue.
Nobody likes for their character to die but when the DM takes control of your character and puts it in a situation where it can be killed because of it it's a serious issue
I had a similar experience once-
At the time, I was doing the potentially-dumb thing of playing two characters. The second, a bard, was meant to be only a temporary member meant to fill the magic-user slot in the party. I'd used her in a previous adventure before in the same campaign, so I thought it'd be nice to bring her back briefly.
We were all at a festival in the city, but plot shenanigans began to happen, including one of our player's characters getting captured and our party now had to enter a secret underground section of the city to rescue them. I had my bard stay behind to get some guards in hopes that they'd assist, and the rest of us went down to the dungeon to investigate.
Upon reaching them, one of the BBEG's henchmen came along and cornered us, and that's when it happened: the DM told us "One of the others throw down [Bard], beaten, bruised, and tied up.
What had happened was that my character had gotten beaten to near-death and captured off-screen--no rolls or any mention of what was happening whatsoever.
Things are fine now, we're long past that point in the campaign, but I still find it to be a serious problem when a DM starts messing with the control of player characters.
TriBlade Aura oh that's just wrong I've played two characters before as a matter of fact it was in the longest running game I had ever played in thing lasted for five years in times where one of my characters was separated from the main group he would either have me stay after the main game or set aside some other time for me to come and play through whatever shenanigans that character was going through but he would have never dreamed of pulling some crap like you just described
As a DM, when it's finally time to face off with the BBEG it can honestly feel a little exciting on both sides. The party has been trying to reach this point and have heard tell of this big baddy, and know to be careful, while on the other hand there is this crazy challenge for the players with maybe one or two really powerful spells or actions, and it's kind of cathartic to finally be able to use a character that has been hyped for so long. THAT BEING SAID, I would NEVER showcase that power on a party character unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then it would be a random decision to keep it fair. I tend to showcase the power on an NPC, maybe one that the PCs grew fond of to add a gravity to their situation and motivate their characters.
Darth Vaultboy oh no man this wasn't some built-up big bad boss monster kind of thing.
this was a random encounter on a flight of Giant 60 ft tall ascending tunnel with 10 ft(H) x 10 ft (L)× 30 ft(W) stairs with 30ft by 30ft Square platforms every 300 ft inside a mountain that we had transverseed lots of times to get in and out of this Hidden City
it took 3 days to climb the stairs in or out and the city was warded from teleportation. so after a dozen or so times of going in and out of this city we were accustomed to it.
my character was the only one in the group that passed his spot and listen checks so he was the only one able to Act during the surprise round.
I was the Scout anyway so I was always in front. I was on the edge of the step when this Giant thing popped out of nowhere he had a 10-foot reach I moved 5 foot forward made a single attack then stated I take a five foot step backwards (yes I had spring attack) & end my turn. the DM frustrated that his monster didn't surprise the whole party because of me took control of my character forcing him to take a five foot step into the monsters threatened area instead of backwards which would have caused me to fall off the edge of the stair & down 10 feet so Out Of Reach of the monster .
sure I would have taken 1 D6 fall damage (the reason he stated my character wouldn't do that) but that was way better than getting bitch slapped by this thing which ended up being a critical hit killing my ecl 18th character in one hit 2 days away from town with no method to resurrect him they ran from the battle ( can't really blame them it did just drop one of their strongest Fighters in one hit) without recovering his body
And while all of that sucked and was very inappropriate for a DM to do.
None of that was the reason the game ended. the reason the game ended was because he took control of my character did an action resulting in his death while he was under the DM's control. then proceeded to argue with me why that was okay. getting physically angry and screaming at me. While the only question I asked was who's supposed to control my character me or you? And if the answer is you why the hell am I here?
Dude, if you were possessed, charmed, drawn via monster ability or said that you were going down the said set of stairs with too low passive perception, thats on you.
As a DM for Christmas I got a spell book from Elderwood Academy from a player. It was done in my favorite color and it says "Beware of smiling DM" on the side. Kicks butt. Best gift last Christmas
My mentality lately has been, I create an encounter ahead of time (try to just barely hit that line of deadly), after that I am on the players side. Occasionally I have to fudge a really unlucky (critical roll) attack, or forfeit using the optimal spell or strategy to give the players a chance. But at the end of the night when they ask "I did my best to kill you, I'll get you next time".
Outside of the game I'm on the monsters side, building lairs and plans for them to succeed. At the table I want my friends to feel like heroes, and sometimes they are strong and smart, other times they're lucky.
I've skipped monologues or "cool" entrances completely. I use NPC and letters/journals to tell the villain story. It's that trope in movies "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, SHOOT HIM! HE'S NOT DEAD, HIT HIM AGAIN!" and D&D is the place where you get to live out that fantasy. I don't want to take that away from my players.
Chris Krukowski I sometimes have some npcs start monologues but I absolutely let my players interrupt them/attack them. I think it's led to some pretty funny moments
My one DM would have a spy network so complex they would know our every move, bordering on meta gaming. We put traps and sigils to protect our town, they would disarm them and walk right past. We set watches they would know weak points etc It got extra annoying. Oh, and we couldn’t spy on them since the spies were all owned by the “big bad”.
Therealhatepotion that is a sign of a inept GM the kind that takes the analogy of being god of the gaming world you're running a little too literally
Therealhatepotion if they can spy you can too.
ValasaFantastic you're right but even more so spies are rarely loyal to anything but the highest bidder many have no issue providing info to both sides so it should just be a question of how much gold is needed
This actually can work, if it's explained later in the story. Like, the spies - being ghosts, spectres or spirits for instance. Though, you do have to postpone that priorly, that there is a sensation of magic, that can be felt where players are looking.
However, it's a lot more fun to just give them random item, make sure they didn't give a shit about it may be cursed / magically imbued with tracking / eavesedropping spells and then fucking them up for that. THAT is fun and awesome, although makes your players paranoid a bit later on.
Totally inept. It was his way of trying to keep the energy high. It just made us hate the game he ran.
The only time I have used a "cutscene" is when my party was being hunted down by some slave traders and was hiding in the woods. They had one pc stand guard while the others slept and I would ask the guard to make a skill check to see if they would stay awake, taking into account how long they had been awake/how much fighting they had been doing. I also rolled to see if the slave traders would find them in the woods and if the guard was awake when the slave traders found them they would fight. If they fell asleep and they didnt get found nothing would happen, if they fell asleep and got found I did a stealth check to see if the party would wake up and fight or, what ended up happening, the slave traders were able to drug the party members and they all woke up on a ship in the brig and sold into slavery. They planned a riot and got all their stuff back and freed most of the slaves and sailed off leaving the slavers with basically nothing and then when hey got back mainland they decided to dedicate their time to hunting down slavers on a slave ship. I was expecting them to go back to their original quest. (They had to free a kings daughter from the slavers in order to end a war) they returned the girl and then I had to write a whole new story about slave traders!
Caleb Regan this is a good idea for handling a cut scene. Unpredictability and the constant roll of a die can really tense up a situation.
One of the worst thing a DM can do is have a cursed item lead to player PvP.
That happened in a game I was in once. That exact thing. Chaos ensued.
I don't know, it was pretty hilarious when I failed every combat roll during the dungeon, only to pick up a cursed sword at the end and instantly roll an 18 on the first attack, almost killing one of the other players.
A thousand times yes. Random weapon drop turning into murder your friends sucks. I made a cleric for a group 5 person group and picked up an evil sentient mace, the mace dominates person on one of the party then has them start walking to their death. Turned into a shit show real quick.
I'd stipulate that any item that turns your PC into an NPC- not under your control- is essentially an evil item . And a potential campaign breaker , unless used careful and sparingly.
Something I learned the hard way is basing a whole section of game play on one skill (Stealth) because your players will fail the check at the worst moment, ruining the whole section. I advise that any part of a mission or campaign as a whole should be achievable any of three different ways. Like a castle invasion to steal an artifact being completed by stealth, strait forward attack, or charm your way in. Give a variety of way to get to the goal.
It's hard to do though. Not every situation will fairly favor both a barbian AND a rogue, sometimes its just 1 characters time to shine and the others need to let them have that moment.
+Andreas Michael Design
Problem with that is that the rogue/barabarian/(other class) may fail rolls multiple times and can ruin the entire section because of that. I've experienced this multiple times with my characters and my GM safely assumes I will fail/critically fail on any major story important strengths I have. Always be prepared for the section of a game to change, ALWAYS!
I had a DM who was just 17 and was DMing his first game. He primarily knows Pathfinder and was making the transition to 5e with difficulty. He knew the basic rules but never read the DMG or the Player's Handbook, even after close to a dozen sessions with him. And his big taboo was inexplicably complex skill checks. Like, I'm surprised he didn't have us rolling dex and con saves whenever we breathed or ate anything to avoid choking on our own tongues.
A rogue wanted to climb onto a rooftop and the DM told him to roll athletics, then roll dexterity. When questioned why, his reasoning was that athletics was to grab the roof, and dexterity was to pull yourself up without banging your head or hurting yourself. We argued this until he dropped it, but you could see he was dead set in keeping his mindset. He had us roll sleight of hand checks to dig holes, acrobatics to throw dead animals, perception checks to see the freaking sky, and so on. It became a joke after a while. And, worse, he was determined to have us take damage any time we failed any check and wouldn't describe anything to us without us making some kind of check first.
For example, my ranger, whose favored enemy is a goblin, was not allowed to recognize goblins as anything other than "tiny green humanoids" until I'd made a successful perception check. One player couldn't make it one day so his character spent the entire session unconscious, and at one point the DM randomly had this character fall off the wagon we were transporting, hit his head, and land face-down in the mud. When the players asked about him, they were informed he wasn't breathing. Cue the players asking if the character was dead, to which they got, "[shrugs] He isn't breathing." They eventually turned him over and he was breathing just fine.
The very fact that the character was simply unconscious because his player wasn't there and could've died via suffocation as if this were a variant of the Avatar film was just insane.
One of the most baffling things for me was the fact that my player was 14, which the DM took to mean I was completely incompetent. I had a strength score of 14 and he insisted I couldn't lift a 40lb barrel by myself. I was 5'1" and he had NPCs referring to my character as a halfling. Anytime I was keeping watch or scouting or, at one point, using a ballista (had a +7 to my ranged attack rolls, the best in the party), he would look at the rest of the party, confused, and say, "Are you sure you want the 14-year-old to do this?"
My husband, also in the party, at one point snapped and said, "YES. We want the player with the best score doing this."
I think that's the moment the DM had the epiphany of, oh, age doesn't matter, does it? Yeah haha, her dex is 18 and her str is 14 and her con is 16 and she probably wouldn't get drunk off one mug of ale, huh? (He insisted I'd drop dead after one sip of alcohol due to my age. Logical, right?)
Up until now he'd even had all the NPCs simply scoff at my character and write her off, and I'm thinking, this is medieval times. 14 is practically adulthood. She could walk through town and oneshot every NPC. Anywhere else, she'd be a prodigy; in this game, with this DM, she's a walking joke. Wow, dude.
It was a very frustrating campaign with him and I'm infinitely glad we never finished it.
Another big taboo. Unless under the influence of enhancements, never tell a player how they think or feel. It's their character, not yours
I had a railroad DM tell me that my PC went up to a quest board, read a particular one, and decided to do it without my say so. The whole time I was just thinking, "My character is a Barbarian; he can't even read..."
ToddTheTolerable that's epically funny and tragically sad all at once.
With one exception: If the PC decides his character suddenly knows some metagame knowledge his backstory and skills can't possibly account for I will veto it.
I don't agree with you for that one because it's their characters so of course most of the time they will ignore feeling that are bad for them.
For example how many players dare to admit that their character is afraid of something to the point they can't almost do anything? Like you play in a real world setting and suddently in the dark night and see a man walking toward you, you can see he has a hole in his chest of the size of a head, and no skin, the meat is in putrification and the smell of death and shit is all around him. A lot of players would be like: I'm a cop I'm not afraid, but you're a cop how many time you deal with undead before? let me check. none!! you deal with reality not undead thing. For you (even if you believe in surnatural force) it's the first encounter ever and an horrible one, you can't even understand what you are seeing.
How many players would admit that their characters is "stun" by the horror or just want to run away and don't face it?
Another example I experienced: In a realistic pirate game the three aventurers where walking for hours in the jungle, with only 1 liter of water and their last meal was 6-7 hours ago. And I describe something like that "So you're still walking, the heat is getting harder with the hours, the walk start to be difficult due to the dense vegetation that slow you and make each step exhausting. You start to be exhausted.
And one player said: What I'm exhausted after few hours of walk? Talk about an aventurer! And I said: Yeah because you can walk more than 6 hours straight in a jungle, so not a road, with 30° (celcius) and just one liter of water for 4 people (they had one npc with them)? The two others players were like: how shit! we can't do that it's a miracle we can still work. And the other player where like: hum okay... (but clearly not convince and by the way it was the very first experience of this kind for his character and in the game he has like 8 in constitution in D&D so not a tough guy...
Players will tend to refuse any feeling that can weak their character even for a moment. Even (and most often) in a realistic setting. Because they are on a chair not in the situation for them the danger is not real. Even if you describe clearly the situation has dangerous, exhausting, hard...
Of course you can explain them and lot of them will understand that running away and screaming will be the only thing that they can do against such situation; wanted to do a break to rest their feet or thing like that. But some player will never think of that and some even refuse to admit that their character will act like that just because it's not go for them. So you say it one time and the next time you don't have to tell them that after hours of walking in the jungle they are exhausted and will not expect to be able to fight correctly if they attack someone.
I don't think the DM should control the character, telling what they think all the time but some time it could help not to control but saying what they think or feel in such situation because players will not realize the situation or accept that the situation is way over their control and they can't handle it (like being tired, afraid). It's for my "alarm signal" you can give to the players about a situation instead of: ok you keep walking? and when the start a fight: Due to being tired you take X malus to all your rolls. It make sense but first give them an ingame signal of the situation and how their character can handle by a description of the situation and the feeling before giving the meta-game signal like malus in roll.
But it needs to be done wisely: A character that is known for being very brave and already encounter undead will not being suddenly afraid of a zombie, a man that is very in love with his wife and never cheat on her will not think of "damn this woman is hot I don't mind to bang her!" it's the player's choose. So you need to know the background of the heros and not doing it often but in situation that are obviously the one feeling possible or when the players don't realize the situation.
but everyone is way to do DM and for some players it's okay and for others not so the important thing in all game is after if the players (included the DM) like a thing or don't like something in the game to tell it like:
"guys I want you to realize that you are some fucking teenagers! you can't be brave to don't give a fuck about your dead family that was just murdered in the last session". Or: "dude stop saying that my character cared about that little bear! my character doesn't give a fuck it's a paladin he protect human being not animals!"
I used telling the players their feelings once as an indication that the characters were under a form of subtle mind control, since they knew that I never normally do that and I had been doing it for about a session before they figured it out. The players figured it out JUST before they were about to slaughter another group of like minded adventurers under the delusion that it was a group of demons. It was probably the most meta I've ever gotten in a game. Although there were other hints as well (the flying demon wasn't flying, the demons were using unusual weapons and armor etc...)
Great video! As a DM, my most recent misstep that pretty much soured the entire campaign was to shift plot direction on the party. They had been scrambling through an old warlock's tower, going through traps, puzzles and a few encounters trying to get to the top to stop what they thought was the sacrifice of an NPC they had become attached to. Anyhow, when it came down to it, the sacrifice turned out to be a summoning and they followed the half-formed demon through a portal. This was meant to be an introduction to a big multi session campaign arc where they uncovered one of the big secrets of the campaign world that actually tied into the background of one of the characters who's player had been struggling to find a connection between his character and the rest of he party. Anyhow, things didn't go as planned and the players felt like I had run a bait and switch on them, story-wise. I tried to back pedal the story but that left them with a bunch of magic items that would have served them well in the story that was to be but made them pretty overpowered and wealthy going back to where they had come from. From there, the energy seemed to disappear from the group and that campaign ended.
Here is where I might suggest what I often (dubiously?) call "Tween-sessions"... In some cases they become even more important along the way than the "Session 0" was to start off the game.
For one, in Session 0, you can remember to remark about and explain most of your intentions, the debatable rules, home-brews included, and general expectations at the Table... BUT there's practically always something that gets forgotten... SO... A "Tween-Session" discussion, to remind Players of a somewhat obscure tid-bit, or to let them know about something you're thinking of putting in the game, or whatever can serve as really helpful...
For another, Plot-Twists can be tricky. We (GM's) often employ some form of Foreshadowing, Foreboding, and advanced glimmers of insight, ranging from Dream-sequences to full-on Prophecy... BUT sometimes the whole effort to produce a "clever" plot twist just comes across the Table as a "bait and switch" tactical call... Like you can't come up with a remarkable way to keep the Players guessing and since they guessed your strategy, you just cheaply "changed it"...
"Tween-session discussions" can get across to the Players that (in point of fact) you've been working on this particular twist for weeks in advance, and they might as well understand, twists are part of the fanciful fun of D&D and story telling in general... Just in case you ran short of ideas for a proper foreshadowing, it can help that once in a while. Some consider it a "meta-plague", so I'd recommend keeping these to a kind of periodic minimal, but not to be afraid to employ it at least occasionally through especially the longer campaigns and arcs.
I learned (or invented?... might be too strong a word. I'm not that bright) the hard way too. ;o)
I kinda have a problem when it comes to talking with my players. See all of them are fairly new (And some of my best friends but that is mostly irrelevant)
and to quote one of them "Don't tell us what you are planning or how you will do things! We want to be suprised!"
Now I have given them a bit of background information about the country they are in, how things more or less work (In the area they actually know about) and I like that they can't plan ahead too much with their characters since in this case having specific magic could make this VERY easy. I at least want them to earn the knowledge in the game before they can get to use it rather than just meta game.
Sorry I am digressing the thing is they dont want to know what is ahead of them. We have played a few sections before so I more or less know what they like but telling them about the story ahead could ruin the fun but at the same time telling them would ruin a big part of what they find fun so..should I just go with my guts?
In my opinion, realistically, a group of adventurers who refuse to gather information before setting out on a quest won't live very long...
bibbobella,
My suggestions, including the "tween session discussion", are just that... suggestions. I found it useful when I was concerned that my "narrative skills" as a GM were lacking for introducing a good plot twist.
Some plot twists are easy to do, and the "damage control" issues are almost non-existent, so it's no big deal. It becomes something like a big joke, and everyone can laugh.
Example... The PC's are trudging through a treacherous sort of terrain with obvious sinister tropes in mind, like up to their wastes in a swampy bog... dark... stinks... (you get the idea)... AND they happen on a particularly brightly colored toad of unusual (large) size...
{Normally, in the wild (IRL) a brightly colored creature lacks camouflage BECAUSE it's inherently dangerous, usually poisonous... so the PC's are rightly confused and timid}
The "twist" happens when a child approaches from some nearby shadows and alarms everyone while she collects her "pet" (the toad) and the gag is that it's a completely harmless species of exotic origins... somewhere else, it might've actually BEEN camouflaged...
Other plot twists, aren't so simple... (say) a "beloved" NPC who's regularly been helpful and congenial, is about to betray the party horribly to the Evilest nefarious son of a bitch in the game... It's GOING to create a surprise attack, putting the party at a disadvantage, and while the dramatic points are to create a visceral emotional response in the Players (and of course, bring the group close to death without an actual TPK, while taxing resources) it's easy for this one to be perceived as a rotten thing for any GM to pull... It's really easy when PC's are injured and even put face-down on the ground, for Players to call "Cheat"...
SO... I invented the "tween session discussion" where I can recap some "foreboding" or "foreshadowing" event from earlier in the session or the game, and kind of elude to a twist approaching...
THAT does NOT mean, that you should stop the session and say "Okay guys and dolls, here comes time for the lovely granny lady to F*** you all over!" in just so many words... even if you have a scheduled "tween session discussion" it's probably a good idea to drop less than subtle hints instead of flat out telling them the story...
Some fans of the RPG world would accuse me of meta-gaming, even possibly doing so a bit too much. There's nothing inherently wrong with meta-gaming... Just everything wrong with doing TOO much of it willy-nilly.
Most of the time, my most regular of Players never had issue with plot twists, betrayals, and a variety of conflicting contents that most people would even find uncomfortable in not-so-polite conversation... BUT for those few who might feel "cheated", especially when you're unsure of your narrative hints being taken seriously or skilled enough to get the message across... maybe there's room to consider.
At the end of the day, YOU know your Players in far greater detail than I do... than any of us, really. You can probably read their reactions and gauge how far you should push something like a twist or pun or even word play... before dropping the idea and letting the story move on... OR even just calling a time-out to address whatever concerns might need raised. On that kind of choice, you kind of HAVE to trust your gut. ;o)
Corollary for Sin 2: when it's one player's time to shine, let them. Let everyone have their big dramatic moments. If the players can help, good, but if someone wants to drag the spotlight over to them when it isn't their turn to have it, politely shut them down. Or not politely, if necessary.
Don’t be frustrated if/when your players outsmart you. Reward that behavior and use it to fuel you making more difficult challenges in the future. I had a sunken tower with a large creature at the bottom floor. Druid used whirlpool or some other spell to basically churn the creature with no effort. It was fantastic but in the moment my players for sure felt my frustration and they shouldn’t
PaganUniform This happened with me as a Player, the DM decided to put a Beholder in an enclosed space I was a warlock with Hunger of Hadar, reppelling blast and devils sight. I sat there smacking the Beholder while everyone bombed it with aoe spells. We beat it without taking any damage at all. And the DM got really pissed and confrontational.
I absolutely LOVE IT, when my players find cheap tacticts for doing something. That's so fucking rewarding, than "we just go and kinda fight, hoping for something good" - why? :D The more you endorse that behaviour - the more clever your players will act and come out of their shells, thinking creativily! And this is fantastic! You can also do cheap tacticts, if you really wanted to, like "there was actually a powerful sorcerer who had been sitting there with scrying on him and he was the one behind the beholder, HUZZA! >:D", but in the end of it all - they found something, that you didn't think of and they used it. Cherish it, it's fucking great. In the end, you then get a lot of great laughs, since your players start paying attention to things that you might not.
Like, the last session I've been running - party stumbled upon a dying peasant. Basically, a small quest giver, who then died afterwards. Naturally, was looted and party found an amulet on him. So, after thinking for a bit - I though it would be nice to give the tank ability of resentless endurance, which would make me be able to experiment a bit more freely with monsters, so naturally I told them about the enchantment. The enchantment, naturally, was a once per day - if dead, go to 1 HP and be alive again. And the wizard of the group started laughing, saying after a bit "soo, you are saying that we KILLED the peasant by looting this amulet from him?". I almost died there, facepalming myself xD.
I a person that can never be angry when someone outsmarts me. because im too busy being impressed AF.
I say that I do fudge rolls at times. I don't say that I did when I do. One statement is for disclosure and open honesty the other ruins the current experience.
It also sounds like bragging when DM's do... or at least thats my opinion.
I DM for a few of my friends and we are all pretty new so I have fudged a roll or two but I feel like if I said "Well I could have killed you but I choose not to" not only ruins the experience but also makes me look like a sore loser or cocky dick
@@VioletRoseLilly I admitted to fudging die rolls once and it was when the player I fudged for left and I admitted that I did it to keep him from raging. He was a nice guy, but had a bit of a temper, and had been handed a really shit hand that entire session, the past few sessions honestly. I fudged some rolls so he didn't instant die when I fucked up.
I also admitted to fudging rolls early on DMing because I didn't know how to balance encounters yet, and was upfront and told the players "Ok so that combat went poorly, I'm still learning this, I'm sorry guys"
@Leisure Every story is fake. Writers aren't just rolling random dice to determine how their story goes and the MCs die halfway through. Do you really wanna die from falling down some stairs?
@Leisure Strawman. That is literally not what I meant. If you nat 1 on an acrobatics and then fall down some stairs, just normal stairs, is that a good story for you to die right there? Of course not. That'd be a terrible ending for a character you put your heart and soul into. Nobody is suggesting the entire story is fixed, but there are times when you have an ST who can make a human judgement for a reason. Because sometimes the dice are wrong.
Rolling determining the narrative is how you die from 1d6 falling damage at level 1.
@Leisure It's an old joke that pokes fun at the D&D health and rolling system, particularly the cruelty of falling damage.
And generally speaking, you might require more than that, but even in your scenario, to me, that's anticlimactic. What kind of movie would Lord of the Rings be if Frodo had just slipped and fallen off a high cliff at some random moment and died? The risk of death isn't what makes you enjoy something, the memories you make along the way are. Yeah D&D should still have a risk for death, but random dark mook #5 shouldn't _usually_ be that life-threatening situation. Goblins shouldn't be a life-or-death encounter (Unless you're in the goblin slayer universe). It's all about storytelling and the best stories require moments of high tension for a character to die. Say a more 'plausible' scenario happens, you happen to be climbing a mountain, you roll a nat 1, you fall and die. No climactic finale, no resolved conflicted for your character, you just fucking die. That is not fun. That is anticlimactic.
I am guilty of this and it did bite me. The indestructible enemy. The point of the encounter was to force the party to lose so the enemy they fought simply didn't take damage, not that it couldn't, I didn't keep track because it wasn't meant to die in this encounter. Never build an encounter where you aren't prepared for either the party or what they are fighting to die. Because they will find a way to kill it and if you stop them from that goal by exhibiting your DM god powers they will be unhappy with you
From experience: it's not because you did it, it can be done well. Like every tool in your kit, each has a place and a right way to use it. If your players kill Cthulhu, you're running Cthulhu wrong.
This is true. Intentionally put a monster somewhere once that was too strong for them to try and scare them away, so they would understand that if they're not careful they might die. To make it short: at first they put up a better fight than expected, thought they could win, and then I had to intervene to not kill them after the first rounds. Not going to happen again.
just place down a tarrasque. that'll scare them RIGHT off
The way I learned it was, 'Never put anything in front of the party you are not willing to have then kill and loot."
@@MonkeyJedi99 very true
Excellent list for new DMs looking to improve. I would add to this forcing or allowing any sort of sexual assault to a player character. I have never seen it at my table, but I hear this time and time again when people are sharing D&D horror stories. You never know if someone at your table may have been personally affected by sexual assault. Players come to the table to escape from the struggles of reality, not to be forced to live them again. It’s your job as the DM to cut that type of behavior out before it happens. If you are the one causing it, that my friend is a heinous abuse of your power as a DM and is in my opinion the ultimate taboo.
If players choose to act like that in character then you should not prevent it, punish it in world as appropriate, but punishing them out of game for actions which might be appropriate for their character would be over stepping the bounds. Characters regularly commit murder, should you stop that to? Now if a player regularly has characters that do this, or torture etc then you might need to have a word with them.
killcat1971 I respectfully disagree. I am all for maintaining as aspect of verisimilitude in my game, but there is a point where a line must be drawn between player agency and what will simply not be tolerated at the table. For me, that latter includes pointless murder, excessive torture, and any kind of sexual assault or rape. I clarified with my players early on that if one of them creates a PC that just has to do those sorts of actions to be “in character”, well then they can see themselves out and find a new group to play with. Allowing a player to act this way in character is not worth jeopardizing the experience of one or more other players or having them feel uncomfortable to the point of never wanting to play a tabletop game again. If you do have a gritty dark setting and you have set expectations with your players then it could in exceptionally rare circumstances be okay to allow something like abuse or rape to have occurred, but if that is ever the case it better damned well happen off screen and with all of the players’ consent.
If your running the game then you can set any rules you like, and if players can't play within that then they should not play, I agree entirely, but I personally would handle it in game unless it's repeated. Now I as a character would terminate any character that I found had done that, and as a DM I would have one of the female centric churches send a Vengence Paladin after their asses, can you imagine the church of Hera or Diana putting up with that shit?
Holy fuck dude. What kind of games are you running? More importantly, who the fuck are your players?
I mean sure, if you're DMing for a bunch of hardened felons in a supermax, we might need to go there. But given normal parameters, this can be settled with three words:
"Fuck. Off. Now."
I think that falls under "Set Expectations". Some campaigns are dark and brutal; advising the players that there maybe over the top torture, violence, and rape from the setting is acceptable as long as the players are fine with it.
If you're doing a normal hack and slash adventure game and you suddenly introduce something like this... Yeah that could cause problems.
Cutscene - IS okay if you allow your players to INTERFIERE with your cutscene. Basically, if you start telling your players, that "as you walk into a dark room, you can see glowing green light in the end. A lich, they've been hunting for so long is standing there, near reanimated corpses of missing villagers. He waves his..." - "I take out my bow and shoot him in the back, while he is distracted" - CUTSCENE OVER, INITIATE COMBAT. THIS allows for a cutscene. If they CHOOSE to watch, what this same lich does and not interfiere - sure, great, you get a cutscene. The moment you say NO during it - this is where the sinbound cutscene comes.