Top 10 Reasons Your D&D Game Sucks (and how to fix it)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- Let's face it, not every Dungeons & Dragons game is amazing and awesome and the stuff of legends. Most are average. Some downright suck. So why do so many D&D games suck? Are the dungeon masters doing something wrong? Are the players? And more importantly, how can we FIX these things so that our games are better? In this video, I discuss the top ten reasons D&D games often fall flat and are just plain NOT FUN, and how dungeon masters and their players can fix them.
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#dnd #dungeonsanddragons - เกม
My one defense of NPC rescuing the party:
It can be a consequence of their actions rather than a spotlight for a DMPC.
Suppose the party defends a street urchin from some corrupt city watchmen. Behind the scenes, they've unlocked a get out of tpk card.
Next time they are heading for a TPK while in that city, a mob of street urchins crawl out of the woodwork and save them.
It can be a reward for good roleplaying.
I think he's talking about the games where this happens all the time. Once or twice is fine as long as it isn't the one NPC the DM created because they want to be a player, too (which a DM should never do, btw).
I quite like playing well-done "wait for the reinforcements" cenarios, although they need a lot of preparation and can take very long.
1. It shouldn't be a scenario where they can run, for example, attack their hometown.
2. It should come with interesting decicions, for example "do I shoot the enemy who is lighting the building full of npcs on fire or do I save the NPC our party already has a strong connection with"
3. It is always better when the players called the reinforcements themselves, even if that needs to include a time skip, for example the "light the beacon" scene from lord of the Rings
This is a cool idea! It's like another form of inspiration in the background
Is this Yu-Gi-Oh?
I agree. When you have an NPC that they helped out of the kindness of their heart come through when they're about to TPK out of bad luck it's awesome and makes me as a player feel like there was a reward for being good and respecting NPCs
The "no it is closed" isn't necessarily bad dm-ing, as long as it is a shop being closed because it is like 10pm.
True...but in the context here it's the DM shutting down player agency.
@@theDMLair 1 situation isn't defining for a good/bad player (although with great/awful it may be), but it can really be as an example of a (possible) flaw.
As far as I am aware, besides entertaining, learning about the game appears to be it's primary purpose. For that reason, an asterisk *this 'flaw' can also be used when it's additive to the story (as long as it fits the 'lore and functioning' of the game)
If you agree that that asterisk would (bene)fit to that secundary task, see it as a constructive additional comment, nothing against the contends itself.
Exactly, a player once asked a peasant about political structures in my campaign and was really disappointed about him knowing no small details
GM SECRET: I never make storylines. I create villains with motivations and goals. I create the setting. I never know what's going to happen until my players act. Their actions have consequences and that creates the story.
This is the approuch iam trying formy new campian with my group and see what happens.
yeah man
I use that same concept of story building. I find an encounter I like that matches the groups level and then I ask myself "why" they fought said monster
I had to convince my players that this is how the game should be ran. When we first started They were under the assumption that its like a video game with one straight plot line. One player even said they couldn't get into the story and i was like, "well youre supposed to help me write it" and had to explain that player character choices are what shape the game." If they decide to investigate a town being attacked by a bandit warlord once a month then thats what I'll start writing. if they decide to investigate criminals within their hometown then that's what ill start writing.
exactly how i do it !
When he said “no one cares about your story” I felt that...
The one good npc rescue ive seen:
In Cautious hero an old king "killed" an entire army of demons but its revealed that they were only pretending to be defeated because they knew they would die from the main character
The one situation in which NPCs can save the day is when they're hinted on, for example "The messenger we sent to the king when we saw the enemy army returned. The kings Army is on the move, but you have to survive and save as many people as possible until they arrive", so in no-win scenarios.
I think the old man commoner is actually the big bad. He seems to be immortal.
Shhhhhh.... Don't tell anyone!
More lives than Kenny.
That point about "a level 5 party against 5 vampire spawns" reminded me of my last session in CoS [potential spoilers]
I had a 4-player 6th-level party raid the house with 6 vampire spawns. I honestly expected some of them to die and was preparing some dark plot or some twist to be able to deal with that in a way that didn't seem unfair. But lo and behold, through really good strategy (and a Shadow Monk's Silence spell plus a really conveniently placed Magic Circle) they managed to take them on with barely a scratch (well, and setting the house temporarily on fire...)
It was then that I started to realise how true "Knowledge is power" rings.
*gives a bunch of really stupid encounters* "And I could keep giving examples from official Wizards modules all day long."
XD
I've found that there is one fun way to Deus Ex Machina a way to save players from a fight they're losing. Instead of going for an overpowered NPC, go for something so bizarre that it draws the player's attention to investigate it.
It really depends on the group, but one example where this worked for me was, when the players were massively losing a fight, a scroll of meteor swarm inexplicably appears with a loud crack right in front of the wizard; there is no immediate attempt to explain "why it makes sense" or to rationalize it within the world, it is intentionally bizarre and outlandish, keep it that way, later the players should find out what happened, and the explanation should be strange. In the case of the scroll, the players found out that the object itself was sapient, and bored, and had been messing with the group they were fighting for years because their wizard accidentally created it with wild magic. A new player joined and began playing the scroll later as a sorcerer, it was interesting.
I feel like being a lazy dungeon master is the most common and most potent. Like the video btw!
Yep, me too. 😁
The party spent almost the entire session planning. Our young druid was getting antsy so I rushed them along a little bit so we could get 1 random encounter in.
I quickly threw an encounter of 2 smilodons against them. They're a party of 2 uber tanks and a wizard level 7 who punch well above their CR.
If the druid hadn't been able to charm 1 it would have been a TPK, my bad. Read the stat blocks when making the encounter people.
I had a party where they were sick of the DM and we had a blowout, due to his npcs, and The game stopped
The players we’re all some degrees of miffed (that feeling when you don’t have character story resolution I think more than anything) so I helped them finishing off what they were doing and basically rounding it up in a set of short games
during this I had the Damned Npc show up to save them like the old DM did and they all rolled their eyes. But they Soon started laughing when the Npc suddenly had to actually use action economy and couldn’t just blow away everything because DM said so , and very comically got absolutely murdered giving the party a chance to get out of the TPK that last DM left them in, I told them that’s how you use a DM’pc and they enjoyed that. (they just wanted to see him die, because he was a proper arsehole)
Later they went to the wizard tower and this was the last dungeon of the game where they raided it got through all his traps and monsters and looted everything before leaving the country letting the BBEG kill that horrible country where everyone was a mind reading sarcastic self importance, un-empathetic, backstabbing, prick and they left rich, on and the fighter kidnapped the hot noble girl on our way out of town, I do not know or care what he had planned for her but she deserved it.
(honestly I did all this to give them a little catharsis)
I would approve of my DM focusing fire on the paladin/sorcerer from #2. They're probably built to be a tank to take pressure off of their party.
True very true. 😂
Wait. What do you mean my AC 23 Paladin with shield is meant to take pressure off my AC12 squishies??
The difficulty with power gamers is they tend to hog the spotlight in combat, and it becomes difficult to provide them a real challenge without overwhelming the rest of the party.
This often requires you to get creative with encouters. Using abilities that work around the the power gamers defences.
I currently DM a group where the players almost unanimously hate one of the player's characters. (Playing with this particular player also stresses me out, but he and I rotate out as DMs for our respective campaigns every other week, and I don't want to cause drama by kicking him or leaving, when everyone else is still having fun apart from dealing with his character). It would be totally different if he was just this OP character as a result of his prowess in adventuring and he had earned his power, but this player is the kind that is constantly pushing for "free" features, based on his character backstory or similar justification. Basically, he's playing as Harry Dresden, but forcing the character into a pure Warlock build (refuses to multiclass), and he gets upset when I tell him that if he wants to do X thing with his character that doesn't fall anywhere in the class, it has to come at a cost of some kind.
I always feel bad when I introduce something that counters the character too, because I still want him to have fun as a player, but I also have that responsibility to everyone else at the table to keep everything fair.
Ok time to sit at my computer for 4 days without moving
You can move now :)
I had a box show up to save the party but he rolled terrible and ended up only creating a diversion which let the party actually save him. That was a great surprise.
Doesn't that just mean they didn't need help after all?
I been in a campaign like this before. That's what drove me to become a DM.
Me too!!!!
Me too hahahahah
I once ran a game where I had made it clear the party would be facing near death in every encounter. Had a bunch of monsters in massive battles with the party, things went pretty well. No players died let alone went down much to my surprise, though not displeasure, until the goblin rogue fell out of a paddle boat and drowned - because the rogue had used dexterity as a dump stat and failed multiple times with advantage to climb a rope. Despite my mercy in giving them advantage and knowledge that their character could die that player was furious. Not that their character died in such a pitiful way or that they rolled poorly.. no, just that they had died in general.
My point here is that sometimes despite your best efforts as a DM to warn players of the type of game you're running, prepare tough but fair encounters and even give a merciful boon, sometimes your player will still want to play in a game not geared to their interests. In this case the player was aware of the risks and ignored them until they were forced to accept them, much to my surprise. As a player you have to communicate with your DM and make sure you're really sure a game is for you, especially when you have doubts about something like the kind of game they'll be running, the types of creatures that may show up in the world, etc. If you're not having fun at a game and you've known all along that certain themes of the game were against your taste from the beginning, especially the challenge, whether it's RP heavy, combat heavy or balanced, don't immediately just think it's the DM. Make sure to take note of the things you didn't like and, if you choose to join more games especially under that DM, ask about those things in particular and be sure the game is right for you. If you still want to be in the game but have concerns, bring them up at the table or with your DM in private to see what could be done to adjust things. Your DM does their best to make the game fun for everyone but they can't read minds.
In the case of this player it was ignorance of what I had told them, something they admitted after the fact themselves. We played in some other games DMed by mutual friends and no ill feelings were shared in the end but the five minutes taken to really consider what they'd been told and inquired a bit more with me the entire issue could have been avoided. Communication is key.
Rogue with dump Dex? He had it coming
@@peleg6748 right? Who does that?
That last one about letting the story be about the PCs:
Being trying to run a player-driven game for 8 months, allowing the players to do whatever they want and going with the plots they create.
And...
I got the most imagination-deprived players ever, mygod...
I find that sometimes I have to dangle three non-collocated juicy quests at the party, and whichever one they choose will lead to more of the story I have prepared. Or if they dawdle too long (something I have not had to deal with in a long time) have the problems they could have dealt with attack the place they are idling. And have that attack leave clues for one of the three quests.
This is why "never railroad" and "never say no" advice is so bad. If you give players complete freedom, they won't know what to do with it, and you'll have hour after hour, session after session of boring non-adventure.
Let the players _add_ to the story as much as they want, but you have to start from the default assumption that the players aren't going to contribute anything (because that could and does happen).
Have a story that gets told as written if PCs don't do anything to change it. Encourage the players to participate in the game world and make their own stories. If they never do, at least have something to entertain yourself with.
I've had a couple boring groups full of players who would probably sit around and watch if their house was on fire. If you just wait for them to go play in the sandbox, nothing will happen.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself I think of it as "guided sandbox" or railroading with lots of player-operated switches. A decent model to think of is those pick-your-path-to-adventure books, where the reader chooses from a few options at choice points, then turns to that page to see what their choice led to. They are building their story from pieces that are already written. Unlike the books, the DM has more flexibility, and can tailor the story tot he players at the table better than an author can tailor to all possible readers.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself that is what I do, there are "main quests" to be followed, but it always baffles me how nothing they come up with on their own
Players don’t create plots, but nor does the DM tell a story in a player driven game (collaborative or otherwise). A story is something that emerges after the fact through play in this type of game. When it comes to designing your session and adventures etc. think situations, not stories.
It sounds like there is a disconnect between expectations; the party is waiting for a situation to get involved in, while you’re expecting them to create one on their own.
Not sure what system you play, but if you want a player driven style look away from official 5e adventures, though that’s frankly just one reason among many to do so.
I highly suggest looking to OSR and related content. Situations not stories concept, is a common design approach through a lot of this content, and I’m sure there’s stuff that communicates this and more much bettering then me. A great deal is system neutral and/or easy to adapt, though many may have some different expectations than say much of 5e content (but that is largely the point, one being they are a more player driven game).
This is also from someone whose experience applying this content has NOT been for an actual OSR system. In my case it’s PF2e, though I am keen to try more OSR and related systems too.
FYI: At 7:55 I flubbed my line and said "prevent" when I actually meant "permit." To be clear, I do NOT allow themes like rape in my games.
What makes D&D games suck for you? What would make them better?
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Had a newby DM that has been a long time player in my games put 3 assassins (yes, the cr 8 ones) against our party of 4 level 7 characters.
We didn't have proper frontline... everyone had d8 hit dice and the assassins hid without any kind of cover. He one shot two of us, and I lasted some rounds thanks to shadow of moil, but thanks to terrible rolls I got hit through disadvantage and lost concentration.
I then declared I would give my life if they spared the others (reward was on my head from a crime boss, was the 3rd group after my head in a single day) and the DM was like "She looks at you and says all she wanted was to see you on your knees..." and I was like "I don't buy it. This person almost killed two of our members beforehand to find out where I was, and I ruined her life in the past. She has been using purple worm poison every attack, and she wanted to talk or something? You better kill me right now dude."
So I bullied the DM into killing my character. Had he bailed us out like that, not only would it make all this stalking pointless, his game would feel non threatning to everyone, since he would just bail us out whenever he felt like it. I later talked to him, and I think he has a better view on how to balance stuff.
Those are two beginners mistakes combined. Usually gets better with experience.
@@PizzaMineKing Yeah, I think it won't happen again. We'll see in two days!
Fat Cat is obviously a Dmcpc (dm cat pc.) Look at him steal old man commoner's spotlight like that! I bet Fat Cat is really Orenge or Squeaky's self insert. That aside I don't know if it counts but I had an npc bring the keys to some jailed players but he got killed with an arrow and the keys landed just bearly in reach of the players.
Loved this video; we've actually had some trouble in our group not between the DM and players, but between players - in regards to affecting story, atonomy; etc. As DM I just want everyone to have fun and not worry about if someone else is 'ruining my story'; it's our story and you put that part well.
I'm watching this the morning after I ran the most derailed session ever. One of my players characters killed a general and took over the army and the city they were in and now I have to figure out how to run him being king of a city
Paperwork. A lot of paperwork. Taxes need to be allocated, diplomatic missions need to be assigned, information from the general populace needs to be gathered. Do it all in real time for one session and they'll never usurp another government. Actions have consequences
The actual king may want his city back, it isn't the only city in the kingdom, is it? Send in the kings invasion army. Alternatively, start a resistance.
Most of the time, I've seen two methods used in that situation. One is that the PC retires from the game and becomes a NPC, perhaps allied with the remaning PCs but not directly involved in their activities (eg. he may send soldiers to help them but he's unlikely to send his entire army since he needs that to protect his own lands, unless the two motives align for some reason). The player rolls up a new PC and continues the game.
The second method of dealing with it is that the PC hires NPCs to run the "whatever" (business, city, guild) under his general direction with only occasional messages required between the PC and the NPCs to keep them on track.
Thanks for the great video, Luke!
I've realized that a lot of us have avoided being a poor DM because of bad experiences with other people. Watching your videos also reminds us to stay aware of the details
Can I say that i adore your videos because you dont sugar coat things that are terrible. You tell it like it is and often tell what happens if you dont fix it. Thanks Luke. Youre one of the reasons i became a DM and feel comfortable doing so.
I have had an NPC pre-emptively save the party. They had found their way to this powerful sorcerer's tower, and were talking with him when they mentioned a location that I had pre-planned for a higher level challenge. The sorcerer told them that he had a fairly good idea of their skill and ability (level and spells) and under no circumstances were they ready to go to this place.
-
About half a game year and six levels later, they revisited the same sorcerer, helped him with some task he had for them, and when they succeeded, he told them they were NOW sufficiently skilled that they had a chance to survive the dangers of the "Mountain of Waters" - the place they were warned away from previously.
-
They went there, having taken as part of their payment for the sorcerer's task a teleport to the base of this mountain, and they very nearly did not succeed, but limped out with no spells left, only a couple of scavenged orcish arrows, no potions, no scrolls, and one dead dwarf from the party. And a pile of phat loot and a story they still talk about almost three real-world years later.
Just feels like Luke here has a good time making these videos.
Which I appreciate,
Because I have a good time watching them!👍
I had a player who fit all of the types of players you listed at the beginning of #6. It was terrible. He also was really weird out of game in bad ways.
Hey Luke, been a fan of your channel for a while now. Just wanted to say great work as always, and thank you for the awesome tips! That old guy in your skit had me dying man.
You are very welcome. Glad you like them. The old guy had YOU dying? 😂
I can vouch for splitting a group in 2 once there are too many players. Was going to introduce a group of friends to the game through LMoP and 8 people wanted to join. Split them in 2 and now i got 2 completely different takes on the adventure that are both really fun! First group turned into a sort of comedy, the players bumbling around and reacting to what's happening around them as best they can. So far to surprising success. The other turned into a more serious game where the players led a carefully planned peasant uprising against an occupying gang of bandits and helped one of the bandits find his place in the world. It's a really cool experience as a DM, highly recommend it as long as you have the time to prep 2 different adventures using the same base material. It's also really fun hearing the players talk about their experiences with each other. The reformed bandit has become a pretty beloved NPC for one of the groups and they're playfully mad at the other one because they killed their boy Frank.
One thought on having the Big Bad escape...if they are smart enough to run from a bad situation, to live to fight another day, that's a pretty good reason for them to run away and come back later.
And yes, I know it's situational, but having them escape can just lead to more story fun and can give the PCs more options.
I think this in reference more to when the BBEG pulls off a miraculous escape even though the party has cut off all their routes. “You counterspell his teleport, but he’s so powerful that he ignores your spell” Kind of stuff.
If you have to foreshadow a BBEG, I wouldn't have him show up directly. (It's an unnecessary risk.)
Foreshadowing can totally be done using henchmen, random towns folk, or perhaps a divination wizard.
FINALLY the stream is gonna start at a reasonable time! I might watch it since it’s not at 0:00. (I meant for me)
I feel that one,
A lot of streams start at 22:00 or later for me,
The chances of me watching then are so slim.
I’ve fallen into the pitfall of rescuing my Players with an NPC twice. Once was for a Story element. The other time was I made a very bad decision as a DM and wanted them out of a situation I “forced” them into. Yes I regret it. Going to remedy these issues going forward.
I did an unwarranted NPC save in my Rolemaster game not too long ago.
I had written up a huge encounter in a field of ancient burial mounds, and on top of one was a tear (rift/gate, etc.) to the Plane of Void, the home of the campaign's BBEG and swarms of minions. - The party had been on a kingdoms-wide hunt to find and force closed all of these tears they could.
So guarding this tear, I have a single demon of the lowest power. But the whole area is a 60' radius magical darkness, powered by a ring of ritually enhanced stone columns.
The party sends the rogue in, and the real guardian of the tear erupts from the ground - an undead called a wrath, which is essentially a blend of lich and demon. The wrath calls forth minions from the burial mounds and the two trees near the tear awakened and hammered the rogue almost to death in one round.
-
So when I designed this encounter, I had kept in mind one of Luke's other videos about having a boss with waves of weak minions to buff the encounter. But between plan and table, the details of the video got lost, and I spawned ALL of the undead minions at once. (A LOT of them!) The party was facing an inevitable TPK because I screwed up.
-
So I used an NPC druid/werewolf and her pack of dire wolves (That were supposed to show up about two sessions later, but in the same general region) to pull a train of about half of the undead long enough for the party to get the rogue healed and take down the wrath, the lone demon, and the sorcerer started destroying the magical standing stones. - Which I decided, due to my screw-up, un-animated a portion of the undead with each stone destroyed.
-
Once the party was off the back foot, the wolves dumped the train of undead on the party and skedaddled.
@@MonkeyJedi99 that sounds epic actually! Here's my screw up:
My players chose to go to the Feydark, our campaign is set in a blend of the Feywild and Material plane. Anyways, then wanted to speak with one of the head Mistresses of a Drow house in Erehli-Cinlu. In order to gain an audience they were given a quest to Capture...not kill...but CAPTURE a Purple Dragon (a Psychic damage based dragon).
The Dragon hides in an icy based/themed dungeon within the Feydark little did they know it was also connected with the Plane of Elemental Chaos. A bridge between planes but they still haven't figured that out. The dungeon was comprised of ice elementals, white Dragonborn fighters, beholder and the leader was a Githzerai. They decided to try to RP their way out of the 2nd encounter. In the room was a cauldron of bubbling blood. The Dragonborn told them to earn their trust they must drink from the cauldron.
I was like there's no way they're going to do that. And of course in typical fashion, they did. The blood contained a parasite to control their minds that only obeyed the Githzerai and the Purple Dragon. Originally I thought this was clever, turns out I now believe this was the dumbest thing I had ever done! So instead of making them suffer these consequences , I had a Archfey that they met way earlier in the campaign magically remove the parasite and kill the Githzerai!
NEVER MIND CONTROL YOUR PLAYERS LIKE THIS! IT IS SUPER STUPID!
The second mistake, same dungeon. I had a "evil link" fight, but this fight went on for over 3 hours and neither side was making any headway. So I put it down to a roll off. Just the rolls for this fight were bad the whole time, so I ended it with them winning but only having 1 HP each. When no one can roll above a 10 except maybe a handful of times...it's a long combat! The mistake was calling the roll off cuz everyone was super excited for this fight! And I let them down...
I feel really bad cuz this is what happened in our last two sessions...I regret both decisions very very much! I definitely plan on correcting these mistakes By never making them again!
My only problem early on when I started as a DM (and I still consider myself a bit green) is one of my players rolled a strength based monk and all he'd do would be attempt to break the enemies limbs or rip them off entirely. Back then, we weren't playing in 5e, but I still didn't have a good enough understanding of the rules or the confidence in myself to nip that behavior in the butt.
Eventually, the only way I thought I could stop it were if I played fire with fire, so I have a knight of the BBEG cut his arm off (he got it back later). When we started our next campaign, I spoke to him and explained why I wanted him to stop with the limb breaking and dismemberment (since if he can break limbs, I should and the human body can't generate the force needed to tear the limbs off a wyvern). This dude, a student of game design, understood the balance mechanic of it and agreed no fuss.
DMs, sometimes it's just that easy when dealing with problem players. I was a new time DM and they had never played D&D before. He didn't understand his actions were disruptive and game breaking. After that, we moved over to 5e, which is easier in terms of rules. I still allow the limb ripping for when the enemy is defeated (within reason) as a way of working with the player to let him have his fun while also maintaining the precious balance I've finally achieved.
As a new DM I find I spend a lot if time prepping for my games (normally 6-10 hours) over my evenings between our weekly game. I love this time. My imagination gets to flow. And id my players don't follow i can normally adapt something to suit what there wanting to do.
Great vid as always. Iv followed since I started 6 months ago and definitely think my players are having more fun because of the knowledge you have shared.
That's awesome you enjoy the prep process! 😁 Happy to hear the videos have been helpful!
My defense of NPCs saving the party! If it is an already established NPC and if they don't solve the problem but give the PCs an out for the situation, probably at great cost to themselves.
I think it is better if the NPC is announced beforehand, like waiting for the reinforcements you called a few days earlier.
@@PizzaMineKing Like Gandalf
@@Gevaudan1471 I thought more along the lines of "light the beacon" and definitely called reinforcements, but if you called gandalf with a sending, why not?
I once had an rescue mission for an lv.3 party who tried to rescue a lv.6 paladin.
I planed that when they reached him that he can support them with healing spells on the way out of the dungeon, because no one rolled up a healer. I made them find him with only half of his health.
Because the party found him right after a battle I made him heal them instead of himself after they showed him that his wife was sending them.
After that they had to hide because the cult who was trying to sacrifice him started to search for them.
Paladin can actually have quite a heavy punch but I nerved the npc and made him more of a support role.
We weren't able to finish that mission yet and they finally managed to get a long rest.
Because of what the paladin experience he will continue to mainly support the group and because they had more encounters than I planed I already made them level up, even so this was suppose to be an reward after the dungeon.
Do you guys think I can improve on the npc?
It is a rescue mission. I can't make him cannon fire, except when I come up with a plan how they still get rewards in case he dies. I just hope they don't ask why he isn't smashing enemies after he rested.
In terms of prep, I feel that it's a good idea to create content in modular form, so that you can slot it in when what you've planned (based on your knowledge of player intent) runs short in a session.
Great video, and the tip that got me was number 9 the most. I always had the thought in my mind that story was king and that I would adjust to the preferences of the characters. Only issue was that I set events that were gonna happen, the characters should be here by this session and etc. Events will happen find a way to happen despite their action so the overall plot comes. It was a pitfall I fell into and I hated it. I hated it because I prepped too much and felt tired by the end. The image in my mind will never match was is on the table which was a good thing. That's when I found out when all I do is set the stage and let the players be the actors, all I had to do was watch and see the image I never thought of. Basically I learned how to relinquish control and it's amazing. Story is king if only you and the players write it.
I still think you should have some default story running with scheduled events in the PCs don't contribute anything meaningful. If they do engage and start making their own stories, then your predetermined plot can change accordingly.
Don't have 1 story so precious it can't change, but do have a story (or 2 or 3 alternates) that, at the very least, runs in the background. This actually makes it easier to improv and adapt to PC choices than having nothing.
Noooo I missed the Premiere! Time to watch it like a normal peasant now... side note: Love that old guy lol “Baroooooviaaaaa”
#1 - Okay, I don't prep *nothing.* But what DM hasn't failed to prep enough once in a while? Players are unpredictable - what the DM thinks they would/wouldn't want to do isn't always accurate. I remember planning three different side-quests this one time: a murder mystery, a bounty on a monster, and a scavenger hunt for a magic item. My players like to kill things, so I prepped the bounty first, and was working on the scavenger hunt when I got the call that one of the players had to work on our scheduled day, could we please play tonight? And which quest do you suppose they wanted to go on? *THE GODDAMN MURDER MYSTERY.*
#2 - Yeah, this one's hard for me. My wife is also one of my players, so while I think I do a good job of not favoring her I find myself always asking her or somebody else in the party if I actually am being fair or not. And likewise, when I was still figuring out what I was doing one of the other players thought I was targeting her for some reason. Honestly? She was just putting her PC in a lot of situations that I didn't know the rules for yet. And thankfully, we got through it and she's still with us.
#3 - AAAAAAAAAY, there's me from a year ago! Not sure I know enough now to say I'm cured, but I'm definitely better than I was.
#4 - Thankfully hasn't been an issue for me - I've only run as many as 5 players at once, and I felt I handled them well.
#5 - I'd like to think that I'm usually good about this. I have had some things happen here and there where I didn't let players do something, or a fudged a roll, because I needed it for part of a bigger-picture event later and I couldn't think of another way for it to trigger otherwise. But it's not a habit by any stretch.
#6 - Thankfully, he was none of the things you described - but, I did have a problem player that I had to deal with for a little while, and even though it sucked because he was a close friend OOG I did take care of it.
#7 - I'm actually pretty good about this one - but then, it's relatively easy to not overwhelm the party when they're Level 10 now.
#8 - Haven't done this before, although I admit I have an encounter planned where this could have been part of it. Maybe not now.
#9 - This was a hard one to learn, but my game definitely got way better after I did a soft reboot and relegated my original vision to a sub-plot. The players enjoyed it more, and I managed to develop a new main plot that they liked way, way more.
#10 - On one hand, yes, obviously you should listen to the players. But what Luke hinted at without outright saying it is also something to consider: players who don't give feedback. I've had people quit my game because it wasn't the kind of adventure they wanted to do. Fair enough, that happens. But they never said a word to me about it - I found out after they'd already made up their minds to bail, from a different player who's closer to them than I am. And once the players who were still there started actually telling me that they wanted to go in a different direction with the game, I listened and did my soft reboot from the last point. I'm not saying that a DM who doesn't listen isn't a problem. But if there's nobody to listen to, then whose fault is it really?
#2 I am currently running a game for my brothers. I told them they each get 1 "oh I said it out of character" per encounter. One of them kept saying stupid things to the NPC I even allowed him to roll charisma for it which he rolled low. The NPCs gang on him and nearly killed him before the Cleric stepped in to protect him. (He thought I was targeting him but after the game we talked about him not saying stupid stuff and it's fine now)
Tbf I think the first point was more aimed at DMs who wilfully decide to not prep for a game, the kind who goes "Eh I'll come up with something on the fly" so I wouldn't say that's a mistake you do (based on your comment)
@@MultiSuperMarion and that's true enough. Good for those people who can wing it, but a lot of people who think they can really can't.
I had 5-6 players in my game, and we all generally agreed that while it was fun enough, it was hard for everyone to have a chance to shine in any given session, just based on how many people were there. So we did the ultimate sin and split the party. Now we've got two groups of 3 playing their own little arcs on separate continents in the same world, and everyone has a chance to shine.
Thankfully I actually enjoy setting up basically one campaign a week, and have the time to, or this'd be a nightmare too.
As a DM I sometimes dislike when my players have a cloak of displacement.
But then I remember there's AoE spells and it doesn't matter if they have it or not :D
I feel like number 9 is hard to get because on the one hand, the DM is basically the story teller that the players are coming to the game for, but on the other hand is expected to abandon the story at a moments notice. That's something that can be hard to reconcile if you've never taken a creative writing class or something to actually train for it. I don't hear many people bring it up when they give advise. It's usually "Don't railroad" but no word on how to avoid doing it. My solution is to have a handful of events going on in the background that the players sand characters are aware of, but don't really pertain to them. The northern kingdom is at war with the southern kingdom, Orc and humanoid monster tribes have been conducting organized raids a lot lately as opposed to their normal chaotic behaviors, an ancient bit of technology that has always just kind of stood there suddenly turned on and no one knows what it does or why. These can all lead to separate story lines, or they could all be branches of one big story. The trick isn't to have a story prepared that you as the DM want to see play out. The trick is to build the story out of what your players do with it, create both positive and negative consequences for their decisions and use those consequences to make up the story together. TL:;DR- Players are the actors, DM is the director but there is no set script. The actors should be surprised by the turn of events caused by their decisions, the DM should be surprised by how the over all story plays out.
Exactly. I am running a system of my own creation which allows for excellent games with almost no preparation for things like monsters, encounters, and such. This allows me to only work on the story aspects. How I structure my games is that there are some fixed events that will absolutely happen, but the players don't necessarily have to interact with them. So, for example, at a certain time, the army of the (probably) big bad guy will storm down the High Road from Icewind Dale. That is fixed.
However, my players could fight him, join him, raid his base while he's gone, ignore him and go on a quest to find the kingdom of the faeries in the Underdark (A personal goal of one of my characters, who is a faerie.), or let him destroy their lord's castle and their friend with it, and fall back to Neverwinter to raise a bigger army, despite the fact that I gave them a dragon. (Which they did.) So, they ultimately have a great deal of choice in what they do. I run most of my games like this, with fixed events, and scattered quest hooks. At any given time I have about five or so possible activities for them. Unfortunately, they are sometimes inclined to spend the entire game session shopping, which bores me terribly.
Ive DMed a games where one player constantly insists on going solo separately from the party...usually that character dies in my games but I still feel that I don't know how to deal with that since it doesn't pop up much.
Even with that wide ass net you casted, my players are a very different kind of disruptive.
Otherwise, thanks a lot for the help. My games are usually pretty terrible (which makes me being the forever DM that much more mystifying) and it’s nice to get some advice.
I'm a pretty new DM and I am trying to improve player agency. How can I introduce activities other than the main story arc properly. I want to give the party options without forcing them into anything.
Hmmm can you tell us more about this cloak of displacement? Haven't heard your thoughts on it before.
I don't have any encounter prepared but i do have a custom bestiary that has monsters/animals/enemy NPCs classified by ecosystems forest/deep forest, mountain, ocean, city, etc. So what they found varies according to where they are and their luck. Besides the stuff i did plan for them to find.
As for DNPC i have only one wich has the same lvl as them and is just a cleric (since none of them has any healing abilities)
Normally I watch the intro table moments, but this time I needed to skip through, so I was skipping forward 10 second intervals and I've gotta say seeing snippets of the skit out of context was HILARIOUS lol. 🤣
Had a session where us players were fighting undead in the streets of a halfling city. Their gallant champion was riding in on a mastiff to save us, but we killed the last undead just in time for him to arrive, shocked and dejected. This is the best use of a DM's hero NPC.
I was under prepared for my game last night. I had anticipated two different directions the PCs might go. Of course, they picked a third direction, and then a fourth. It seemed like the night dragged out, and we ended earlier then normal. I felt bad.
I think there should be another rule added if a player doesn't show up for a game one time don't tell them they can't play anymore.
4:00 it's important to prep so stuff isn't arbitrary in a game about decisions: I gotta be able to make decisions and know just about how the fantastic world will react to those decisions.
As someone who is preparing a homebrew campaign, this was helpful. Thanks!
Except for a short few months of Greyhawk, I have always run homebrew settings. Sometimes I fit published adventures in, and I even radically changed how I used Greyhawk for the couple of years I did (because it had a cool color map).
Hi am a new DM and I think your ac inc video helped me a lot so thanks
Ps love your chanel and what you are doing for the cominutie
Awesome, thank you. Happy to help! 😁
DMPCs are like sex: Get explicit consent from the players and if they're not feeling it's then it's time to stop.
I know you mention how you don’t like foreshadowing the bbeg, but I wonder if there is a way to do it without being a negative experience. For instance, I was planning on using the way Colville talks about introducing Kalarel the Vile into his games as inspiration for my upcoming games...having the bbeg conducting his plan in the background and not pay mind to the PCs befause of how low level and insignificant they are at this point. He has no reason to be threatened and would remind the players that they are not superhumans. If they attack him out of the blue then he will use like a force cage and leave or use his generals to do the bidding
On #8, I once had a similar situation. It wasn't as dire, but I did have a wizard appear out of another dimension and aid them. He later joined the party. However, at the beginning of the session, he had inexplicably appeared in their room while they were sleeping, along with PCs from a different game we had played, then vanished. So, I had set it up that something was going to happen. Also, despite the fact that the wizard could world-jump and time-travel, and was relatively powerful with magic, he had severe weaknesses, and a personality. This balanced it out so that it worked.
The current homebrew campaign I'm running has several high level NPC's with the party from level one as they explore some pretty crazy stuff. When the combat starts, the NPC's look powerful and they take on the big problems, but this usually leaves the NPC's open to attacks or engaged and they are trusting the party to deal with the chaff, which is usually level appropriate. The NPC's are a metric by which the party measures themselves and they can see themselves catching up, despite NPC's levelling too. They love the characters I've created and I play them in a way that makes the players feel valuable and trusted.
Soon, there's going to be a big battle where the NPC's are going to have their hands full protecting the camp and the party will have to take on a big threat alone. After this, I intend to get them involved in rebuilding the camp into a more permanent village, procuring supplies, gathering research materials and leading expeditions into the island continent to explore more, giving them total freedom in the campaign after a railroad start to establish both context and clear goals... The NPC's may be powerful, but they will be assets that can be employed by an equally or more powerful party at that point... The quest givers, protectors and leaders will be peers capable of helping, and then will give way to the players agency as the player characters mature in the world and take up the mantle and the cause.
Hopefully, it goes well and I don't accidentally kill them with the homebrew monster I cooked up for their big battle xD wish me luck...
Also, for algorithm sakes I’ll make a seperate comment, but how would you suggest adding other adventuring parties into the world to make it more realistic and not be just this group of 4 players acting as the only powerful players able to take on tasks without stealing a player group’s thunder? Great video yet again!
I had an NPC sort of rescue a party....that being said the party was given more than one escape route and this plot was something I had in mind...not to help save them...but to allow them a choice time.
Short version, to many enemies that they already knew were there. They rushed in anyways and one of them had a gift of a summon demon. The demon was summoned and told them to run. They chose to fight...and dang nab it somehow won haha. What a great time though.
5am probably going to miss this one lol.
I ran a game with too many players that actually went really well. I turned the campaign I had prepared into a Westmarches style adventurer’s guild and invited everyone to a discord channel with a quest board. Group signs up for a quest, we schedule a session.
We started with 12 players and hemorrhaged to a regular group of 4-6 pretty quickly, but a few new players got to try out the game and that final group played an awesome evil campaign.
I’ve also saved the day with an NPC in a way that the players loved, because the NPC showed up alongside one of the players’ new PCs.
The party were passing through a canyon on the trail of a White Oni who stole an artifact from their village, but their path was blocked by one of his subordinates; a Red Oni girl with the power to draw and summon chalk beasts. Our rogue was killed in the first encounter by a pair of Chalk Dire Wolves and we ended the session after his burial.
The next session, they entered the final confrontation with the Red Oni at the edge of the canyon. The party is exhausted, out of spell slots, a man down… and on the 3rd round of combat, the dead rogue’s new PC shows up with a group of soldiers from the nearby town.
The Red Oni was swiftly beat down and captured by the new, fully loaded sorcerer.
I got a dungeon master who runs great games story wise. He kinda railroads us sometimes, but since he is new and most of our players are, I think it's fine. What bothers me is, that he doesn't really know how basic stuff like saving throws, advantage, spellcasting and some abilty checks work. How do I convince him of learning that stuff? On 2 occasions a pc died because of false ruling already :(
A friend of mine was in a game recently. Because the DM didn't want to players to be able to skip sections with flight/teleportation, all magic or abilities which resemble magic had you roll 1d6. 1 = Misfire; 2-4 = it doesnt work; 5-6 = it works right. He didn't tell anyone beforehand or decide 'hey lets no just ask the players not to skip stuff.'
I once had a game where we were helping the queen general of a city regain control of her golem security forces by finding and returning their control rod. We found the rod thouhh it was damaged, and after deeming her too irresponsible after the way she handled the situation, we refused to help her repair it like she asked and decided to leave town. After we boarded our airship, the DM used mind control on one of our players to steal the control rod and run back to the city because, in his words, he "didn't know what exactly we wanted to do next," even though our characters had a long in game conversation both about refusing to help the queen anymore and what our plans were next. The game didn't co time after that session, as this had happened before to the SAME player (who obviously was pretty pissed) earlier in the campaign. We had a discussion with our DM about how uncool it is to mind control characters in order to railroad you plot, which he seemed understanding about. So when he did it again it was game over.
I feel like for the first one it depends on the DM, personally I don't really prepare specifically, I just know the overarching story and a few big events that will happen, and everything past that is Improv, and usually my games go great
Furthermore I have a question. How do you handle point 8. You say, you never safed a player but how do yoz handle it, if your players do great sacrifices like giving up some magic items to be safed by an NPC. In my situation, they misshandled a fight against a green dragon and some dragon cultists and got almost recked. Then one of my players who made a deal with an ancient black dragon (who has a name and is neutral in my storyline) sacrificed several magic Items to get help from him. I thought this was creative and has some consequences so I granted them the safe. Would you have handled it different and call my way a bad call or do you think it is kinda okay to do so? I am interested in your opinion!
Had a DM who thought the point of the game was to be "vs." the players instead of working with them to create an awesome roleplaying experience. My pacifist gnome illusionist just had to shrug cause every enemy was suddenly a construct (like a nest of snakes in the wild... that were made of metal and clockwork for no reason) or other illusion immune type. When we entered a damp chamber with leaky plumbing, my character (the cook) threw some fresh meat in the middle of the room and we waited 5 minutes. Confident that there were no lurking oozes, we entered the chamber. Surprise, surprise. Roll init as oozes come out and attack the "unsuspecting" party. I stood up, asked the DM "THEN WHY DID I HAVE THE BOWL, BART? WHY DID I HAVE THE BOWL??" He says, the oozes were "asleep". When I asked how are they doing something that isn't physiologically possible, he just shrugged... and that was his answer. Last session I ever played with him.
Sometimes, talking doesn't fix things and you need to part ways. At least you don't need to pay lawyers to leave a D&D group.
"Yes and..." is the most important rule of the game. As a DM the hardest part is trying to get players to "follow" your adventure. I've adopted a "Yes and.../No but..." rule at our table. If someone wants to play a sandbox RPG computer game that took hundreds of writers, programmers, etc. to create then that's their choice.
There is an agreement that DM's and Player's enter when they start playing together. The players pick up, what the DM lays down, and the DM integrates the players choices into the adventure. I try to lay out a goal for my players, and let their choices create the adventure of getting there. Instead of letting the players chose a goal, and have to create everything over and over again, during the campaign.
Keep up the great vids Luke. Stay happy and healthy.
Guilty of #1, not by desire, but being new to GMing, I don't have a wide repertoire of tricks and ideas to fall back on yet. I'm still trying to build that up.
We've all been there. With time and practice it all gets better and easier.
@@theDMLair And watch plenty of videos from creators who talk about games. You will not use all of the ideas, you may not even use most of them, but there will be at least a handful that VASTLY improve your game, and make your life at least a little bit easier.
I had the npcs rescue the characters once. Because they called him. For help. From jail they semi escaped. With sending. That i forgot they could do. And you know what? It was fun and cool because it went from jail break simulator to hold out tensely until reinforcments arrive.
I don't have enough space to tell all the garbage we've had to deal with for over 30 sessions of this campaign I'm in. I did post a novel under the pinned comment of you "railroading and player agency" video though if you want a taste of this particular game.
Good points
But I run 11 players and they all have fun
Good video
I agree with your reasoning on large groups I don’t like them, but I feel like that same reason can be applied to something you said earlier in the video about the Paladin / sorcerer. I don’t think it’s wrong to target the players who are using op builds that they got off of the Internet. Often times those are the people who are trying to “win” DnD, and their characters can have a serious negative impact on the rest of the players at the table. If you don’t focus on them, they destroy your encounters and make combat boring or frustrating for the other players.
We had an encounter with a big homebrew boss creature, the party was already pretty hurt and the DM was on the war path. My character had been holding onto a potion of growth for an IRL year and half so I thought that this would be the best time to use it. Grow large almost eye to eye to this new boss and grapple it so the party could have an easier time dealing with it. The DM then started to make me roll odd saving throws and checks for things that I didn’t have to roll for 3 rounds ago and he didn’t give any reasons why, nothing on the creature changed or anything. For example the boss had a charge attack that required a dex save. I saved before and after growing to large size, then out of the blue he started to make me roll with disadvantage on the same saving throws because, “you’re a bigger target it’s easier to hit you” but when I said, “you didn’t make me roll like this for the last 3 rounds what’s changed” he responded with, “I changed my mind” me and another player just looked at each other rolled our eyes
That sounds like BS. He just forgot you had something which would make the encounter easier and didn't like it. It's my opinion that a DM should reward players for good role-playing by using something in a clever way, not penalise them just because the DM overlooked the fact that a player had something useful which would make the encounter easier.
You can have NPCs that ASSIST the players but your players HAVE to be the main focus.
Have an npc that can help in a dungeon, make them equal or less in level and don't steal the damn spotlight
I had my PC's rescued by a NPC in my campaign once and it worked really well however:
1.) The fight was in their second adventure and to establish the power of their first big vilian for the campaign
2.) The rescue provided some much needed plotpoints for the overarching story (it's a long running campaign and all players knew it)
3.) The bad guy at this point already had the stats, weaknesses and spells he would have when he was supposed to face the party meaning: if by some miracle they managed to defeat him at that point they could, and i would establish throughout their adventures how impressive it was.
I'm not ashamed of pulling the "This is your nemesis, but you can't face him yet" card and my players love meeting him again and hating him more and more each encounter
I once had a DM get way too stoned before his session.
He was an improv Dm, which is fine with me, but this time his brain just shut down and forgot any sort of direction or encounters.
We were in a dungeon, and it was pretty linear, but he liked to throw in puzzles. It was pretty repetitive, combat encounter then puzzle , combat encounter then puzzle. Well, we just finished a puzzle, and sat down ready for our combat encounter. Just prior to this the DM went and got waay too stoned. Normally he smokes before a session, but this time was different. He sat there and couldnt describe the lead up to the encounter.
"And....um...." *Stares blankly* He stumbled through a very rough and simple encounter. Half way through he fell asleep at the table.
I didnt stay long after that. shamefully I just left and didnt say why, but I felt he knew.
I mean, sometimes limiting player choice is okay.
Say you're running a linear adventure, and someone wants to steer wildly off course. You may mention that you would prefer them to stay on the adventure as, that is what you have content for.
A kind DM may allow it but mention, they will have to pause the game there and spend a few weeks preparing other stuff to use for this new adventure path.
I'm getting this from Matt Covil BTW, he did a video on player Choice vs player Agency :P
Well, not going to lie, I've definitely had some of these happen to me; and sadly, from the same DM...
So where to begin. The DM in question grew up on 2e and heavily homebrewed it (ignored THAC0 and several rules). I should have realized way sooner when he started railroading us in his first campaign. We found a crystal in our first session that held a soul and because we didn't follow a cursed dark paladin after said character said to not follow him (we were level 1 at this point, so...). We went in the complete opposite direction as we were intermingled with the antagonist of the campaign (showed up as of the 2nd session and flip-flopped being on our side and against us) are branded as criminals because one of our players helped this soul get a body. Doesn't give us an option to convince us to join this NPC or to let him go on his way, we are branded as criminals over the action of one player because he wanted the party to go to a certain kingdom. Get to said kingdom and 3 sessions later the kingdom is destroyed due to forces we can't have an influence on, etc., etc, blah, blah, blah. That's not to mention our characters were ripped from our own worlds (mine twice as a way to explain how she can perform magic and still be from Modern Day Earth). So many times it was follow my story or your character is on death's door or worse.
It wasn't just railroading as there were several times where he changed the mechanics of the game, like rolling to see if Magic Missiles worked, then it's to summon them and another roll to see if they find their target to returning it back to the first way he ruled the spell. He even went so far to take away a character's control of their own magic because the character was experiencing great emotion (having his daughter stolen from him and was being mocked by his step-daughter who was against us at the time; druids were absolutely broken in 2e). Then having many instances where he would smile sadistically if we rolled a nat 1 as he got the chance to roll if our characters would outright die to his misadventures tables (which failed him and gave our druid two miracles in the form of auto-healing if you stayed near him, and allowed me to One-Hit KO one of his world bosses and gain a second character/my wizard found the girl of her dreams).
And many times he had many OP NPCs, which luckily many were on our side as he adds broken weapons like Armor Piercing Arrows, a modern-day rifle and pistols, etc. Luckily it wasn't as bad in his first campaign as we were only a 4 Player party. But it's his second campaign where he showed heavily of being one of those DMs (and in another campaign he was a disruptive player).
I had a feeling something wasn't right when I had to fight him for my character to keep the one magic item he allowed all players to keep from their backstory (which was a modified Clock of Protection which allowed a magic-user to spend an action to regain a spell slot before having to wait a long rest to regain this ability). Second, was that when we started the second campaign we had 9 Players and were in talks to have 3 more before an incident happened (may get into it later) that I made the call to leave the group when I didn't want to after my character died.
So now the bigger problems and what eventually lead to me leaving the group and no longer being friends with this DM...
It started when he allowed his players to throw each other under the bus or outright mock other players, giving half-truths about my character because a friendly NPC was stealing from my character when she was drinking the night before. Another player in that moment became confrontational with mine (the player being a Mormon) saying my character was being out of line while my character had someone stealing from her just moments before. That same player then talking to every other character as to whether my character should be kicked from the group because she openly drank when she's not in combat and was pissed off because DM stole our agency and decided all the humans in the town we were in needed to die because of the sins of the goddess we were employed to.
We are also sent on a quest to kill what we were told at the time, a big orc (which was 80 feet tall in which the goddess knew already for our level 5 party at the time). We didn't even get the fight it as when our party finally saw it a 50 ft. mech (a MtG creature) teleports a few miles away and One-Hit KOs it and tells our characters to lie and say we killed it. We arrive back into town just for an NPC to One-Shot our Goliath Blood Hunter when it was stealing from us but had limited understanding even though it was from a futuristic society and were expected that everything was ok (even though our Goliath got a critical when trying to hit it, but did nothing because it had carbon fiber armor built onto it).
In another occasion, the entire party is poisoned (and we weren't given a saving throw), and only one of our party was able to stop being poisoned because he realized the source came from another Dark Paladin. Again, no saving throw. He stopped being sick because he shared the same class.
The DM didn't follow the poisoning rules as he allowed another player to poison my character because of the incident of being upset and defending herself when someone was trying to steal from her. I roll a nat 20 for the poison save, but the DM is like, "I'm trying to save your character! All your saving throw is doing is keeping the poison in and killing them!" which only did 4 or so damage.
Is it ok for an NPC to use one spell (Ie. one 8th lvl magic missle) then yawn and say "Ya'll got this", then walk away?
NPC's have "saved" my players party , once it was planned after a few hard encounters, they fought 3 back to back encounters and if they surrendered or were defeated, but not killed, an NPC rescued them before their execution, the other time an NPC that was a temporary companion (their damage dealer wasn't there), who expedited some (3) grinding encounters, and my players loved both times
I would think that the "temporary companion to replace a missing player" wouldn't be too hard to role-play. Just invent some kind of grudge between the temp NPC and the enemy. If it turns out that the temp NPC is needed for a bit longer, maybe have the temp NPC decide that the PCs are "worthy" of some more help.
@@melkiorwiseman5234 THe NPC was a one of the PC's adoptive(she was the adopted one) brother seeking vengence against a mad scientist wich at the moment was belived one of his failures was responsible for her other brother's death
I see myself in car too many of those categories.
The funny thing is, in your example at the start, "railroading" the characters was perfectly fine. There are times to exercise player free will and times to engage with the content the DM has prepared, and "ignore obvious plot hook and go to the tavern" is bad player behavior.
Can confirm #2, I have a DM who hasnt given me Inspiration in months, whereas everyone else at the table gets it once or more per session.
Are you doing anything to earn it, or is it expected regardless of how you play?
I fully agree, the NPC rescuing the party is rarely ever done in a good way and quite frankly shouldn't really be done often if at all. However there are a lot of DMs who I know have taken this advice as the NPCs not mattering at all, which is not true. Quite frankly the opposite is, the story behind every NPC is part of the story behind the world, and an NPC who is the party's long term ally could definitely have a deep backstory that members of the party could find themselves curious about and involve themselves in, maybe even find that the player character and the NPC are actually connected through backstory. What I'm trying to say here is that a PC knowing an NPC's backstory, struggles and dreams could be comparable to a friend who knows another friend's story, the good and bad, and just like there's a bond between those two friends a bond could be formed between the PC and NPC that could make for some incredible roleplay and depending on the specific NPC.
Assuming the PC is a lone wolf in this example, maybe then that NPC that was so closely connected with a PC dies at the hands of the BBEG, then that PC truly has a reason to find and stop the BBEG whilst simultaneously getting a reason to have massive character development, such as the realization that they need to maintain ties with those they care about, resulting in a closer bond with the party and therefore better teamwork and the possible removal of a lone-wolf kind of character.
I know this isn't the best example but I'm just basically trying to say that the NPCs, their stories and their connections with the party are important without stealing spotlight.
I am also playing curse of Strahd. Last session i made a mistake. I had miscalculeted the time and alowed to cast revivify on a PC dead for 5 minutes. That spend a scroll to cast it. I just noticed my mistake days after. What would you do to fix this mistake without killing the character again?
Don't fix it, but keep it in mind for next time
Just ignore. I had a rule 0: No do overs. At my second session I f*** up all the spellcasting, cause I did not know how to properly use spells (basically every spell that was not a DC something automatically hit). We realized stuff was wrong, cause it was way to strong. We looked it up and next session used the rules as we should have been. But the story did not change, we moved on as if session 2 was fine.
Explain to players out of game you made a mistake about it and there won't be a negative consequence for it but also take a hard look at the mistake itself and the intention of the rule. Revivify is mostly a low level resurrection with resurrection having more requirements and expensive components because it should cost something for it's power and the amount of time after death. Dead for a week or so, yeah you'd need something harder because a significant amount of time has passed. 5 minutes? Well, do you really care about spare change?
@@eddieramirez8292 Me for example as a DM always 100% ignore the material components for a spell. I only care about spell slot used and Verbal, Somatic etc (Meaning if the spell is verbal and you are magically muted, you can not cast). I do not take into account gold cost, vials, virgin blood :P etc.
@@nagyzoli that can backfire for spells that consume expensive materials or require specific rare items. For example, at higher levels, once a spellcaster has the plane shift spell, he can go anywhere if you forego the requirement for a tuning fork attuned to the specific target plane.
a horrible game I was in ehhhh....
well after a really good adventure, I decided to run storm kings thunder. after a couple sessions, one player just killed everything they saw. another was on his phone and didn't pay attention, and the other one constantly killed off their characters to make new ones. I thought it was because i wasn't running the adventure well enough to grasp their attention so I addressed the problems in the group and asked what i could do to improve. they didn't say anything for my improvement so I decided to stop STK and run a one-shot. it was the same thing but worse. then I said to the group that I was going to run descent into Avernus to finally see how that went (btw they voted for that one). within 45 minutes of the first session, they used all the money they won from Baldurs bones went to felogyrs fireworks bought tons of black powder and fireworks (i can't remember but it was about 1000 gold ish of stuff. went into the elfsong tavern and lit the place to kingdom come, and even in the exploding burning building, they just did random things not running away to survive, killing everyone in the tavern. I gave them an opportunity to escape and they could have jumped out of the window but they still stayed and died.
needless to say at that point I had enough.
I completely agree with an NPC saving the party being a lame solution to a dire situation, so I present a better alternative to a TPK: the enemies are suddenly ordered to stop fighting and instead take the party prisoner. This brings up some interesting questions about the enemies’ motivations, and I feel it’s a better solution than a TPK. Of course, feel free to disagree with me ;)
Its funny that you bring up the 5 vampire spawn in CoS. That totally tpked my players and I've felt bad about it ever since.
I skimmed the first encounter in that adventure and determined to never subject my players to it. And I have not had enough give-a-bleep to re-scale it more reasonably. The setting just doesn't call to me.
this might not be in a DnD game but it so fits here. So we are tasked to save an npc from an insane asylum. Game first start off with drawing a piss poor map. Where I ask. "Am I hidden here." Gm is like. "Yes you are." Only for me to be hacking the security system in the front door. So we have a gun fight to get down to the lower floors. We win and get to the lower floors. Suddenly swat is out the building and we have to fight them before we can go deeper inside the building. 2 turns later a super swat team comes in with all matter of good gear. We fight them only for a villain boss comes to kill the few we had not kill. Then starts to fight us. We defeat this boss. Save the npc. Escaping we have to fight more swat. Then a mega boss villain comes into play. Which super npc comes to save the day.... or tries. Seems this boss is to bad ass for even the super npc. So now Co GM has to bring in there npc character to help out. After a long battle. The boss drops a tactical nuke on us. With deus machina plot armor saves us with 1 hp. This was the second mission for our group. With the first mission had stealth ninja with one hit kill sneak attacks and robot with railguns.
Question. So I had this DM once who kept switching the rules a lot! Long Rests that don't heal you AT ALL if you do it in the wild, monsters that used their Recharge ability alongside their normal one, attacks that hit allies if they miss enemies due to cover, ignoring Paladins' immunity to disease, disengage reducing your movement by half... honestly I could go on! That's just off the top of my head! And sure, that's on him! But I also had a tendency to correct him whenever he tried to pull that off (which, again, was often), and I wonder: is that problematic on my part? In video above, it is mentioned that antagonizing the DM is also problematic and it's the job of the DM to make that kind of stuff not happen.
I guess my question is: if you play with a problematic DM, how do you point it out without being problematic yourself?
My 5 level 4 players with cool weapons erased 1 full fledged CR13 vampire, 1 intellect devourer, 3 ghouls and lvl 6 necromancer wizzard. They have GIGANTIC AC, one of them has 20 AC and is able to sacrifice spell slot to increase AC by 5 as reaction (so 3 times fail). And has the ability of luck, to force reroll a nat 20
Great video today my friend
I have one thing planned out where an NPC saves the players and claims that "they are too valuable" to die there and thus the group, at least it's intended, runs leaving the NPC behind to hold off the enemy alone.
It shall be the first time I do this and I hope it will work out the way I intend to play it off..
Ah. Dumbledore at the blood gate stuff. (That part where blood has to be used to open the way to reach one of the horcruxes). It might work, if you handle it right. But I'd suggest foreshadowing it somehow and the NPC would probably need to either die or at least be weakened for an extended period of time so he won't be rescuing the PCs again if they're stupid enough to try the exact same thing again without being substantially better prepared first.
@@melkiorwiseman5234 my plan is either the NPC dies or, due to the nature of the BBEG, gets converted to an enemy of the PCs.
I'm guilty of number 8 solely because one player screwed over the party and left them to die and i wasn't about to have 2 of my 3 players roll up new characters because one player decided to leave them to their deaths.
For a new campaign that I'm working on I have one "set" story but the rest of it is open for the players to run around in.
Set as in there's conflicts that need to be solved but how they go about it is up to them.
So my players are Part of an adventurers guild and I've introduced a rival party (Friendly Rivalry), now I have no current plan for this group but honestly I think it would work out rather well if my players where saved by this group of adventurers, who'll jokingly lord this over the players. until this party begs for their help or is themselves saved by my players time and time again. It would be an interesting dynamic to say the least.
But, I'll first see how the players deal with small provocations by this rival party before I decide to do anything with them. FYI they hold the same Guild rank as the party however they are one character level higher then my players.