There is not really any background to Lief, and I love how you added to it. My background for him was he was running a successful tavern, raising a young daughter as a single father. Then some old women came along (2 hags) locked Lief in the cellar with poisoned wine, and kidnapped his daughter, Lily. This connects to the background of the tavern's previous owners... one was a hag that ran an orphanage who ate children... I added to it saying it was a coven, 1 hag was killed, the other 2 escaped. Several years later, upon nearing her 13 birthday, the hags sought to do a dark ritual to turn Lily into another hag! The party successfully saved Lily, and several other children! Skip ahead several months later, the party found a note on the chalkboard they installed to communicate with Lief, as a poltergeist he can't speak. It was a goodbye message, saying that they found and rescued his daughter, and renovated and reopened his tavern, and he could move on happy! Lily now 13, lives with the local stable master and his family, a family friend of Lief and Lily. Really love your hag story built up from the side quest!
Great work! Adding to an NPCs story is one of the great luxuries of being the DM. I absolutely love what you did for your Lief! Hags are great creatures! I really enjoy putting them in games because they can be great low level issues on their own or make a coven and they can then be used in higher levels. Good stuff keep it up!
I’m about to start dming water deep and I couldn’t find any break down videos that I could relate with so your videos are super convenient. I’m happy i found it
Im really glad they could help! I do enjoy the sit down, break down videos but I also thought just a first hand week to week experience would be valuable to some.
@@blackjackcorp it went very well. We finished up Waterdeep Dragonheist and now Ive take a seat as a player while someone else is running Frost Maiden which is going well. I have just started running Dragon of Icespire Peak and the first video went out a couple days ago. After that Ill be doing another campaign so there will be more videos to come!
The Rule of Fun and the Rule of Cool supersede all other rues in the book. I love the spam mail cats. I'm sure you got a lot of mileage out of that as a running gag.
I am about to run my first D&D campaign. I've run other games before, first time running D&D. I chose this campaign and I found your channel looking for a good resource. I like your work, it helped a lot with me getting ready. I for one appreciate longer videos.
I'm loving your series. Started running this a few days ago over Roll20 with my friends. I've only ever run Call of Cthulhu and Star Wars so this is my first time doing DnD as a DM. I have this awful habit where when the players start proposing theories of what is going on I kind of want to work it into the story to make the players think they're smart and so they have more fun lol so in the span of 1 session Xanathar is suddenly kidnapping teenagers from The Blackstaff Academy (One of the PCs is a student there) and controlling them with mind flayers which is what the Apprentice in the sewers was all because I tried to do a voice and it sounded like I was a 12 year old boy so I was like "You know what? He is now a 12 year old boy who Nihiloor is mind controlling, why not!" and I have no idea how if that is going to fuck me up down the line. Faction missions on Sunday, the players are already acquainted with Force Grey and the Zhentarim. They're all pretty Neutral with Evil leanings but I am going to try and push them towards the Harpers a liiiiittle bit just because I have some fun ideas for them.
haha omg I'm already so invest in YOUR STORY you'll need to make videos for me to keep up with this amazing campaign! Im glad you are enjoying the series and I hope it helps you along your journey. Honestly if your players put great ideas out into the and their is no reason why it cant happen then I say go for it! Throw in a twist where what they thought was a little off and they will go nuts for being so close. Sounds like you are doing a fantastic job so keep it up!
I'm about to start the factions missions in my game. I only saw a gold reward for the Zhentarim. Am I missing something in the book? I'm going to have to add gold rewards to the other missions if they are ever going to afford the tavern remodel and taxes.
No you arent missing anything. Most of the early missions are a standard “50g reward” and/or “faction points” They go up later on in the harder missions for some but only to “100g” which is kinda rubbish! To make up for lack of money I had Renaer Neverember hire my group as personal body guards for a party he was hosting on one of the holidays in the calandar (I went with the High Harvestide festival - I think its a video or 2 after this one) and he offered them 500g for a successful night. Anyway basically Xanathars thugs and a mage spiked the drinks with a sudo sleep spell type potion and knocked everyone out. Players didnt drink or made saves and then battled to protect him. Then yay yay half way to the tavern.
More questions! What kind of incentives are you giving to these players to join the various factions? Im trying to figure out how id actually SELL it. Is this info in the book? Trying to track a copy down
Luckily my players weren’t BRAND NEW so we all had player knowledge on the factions. Honestly if they were brand new I wouldnt offer them any kind of membership straight out the gate. I would just give them the quests as options to do and if they engaged with certain ones more around the 3rd faction mission Id then start feeding in the idea of joining and see who is interested. Its not crucial to join so dont worry if they dont.
I've dm'd for a long time, but I'm new to modules. I don't have the time for the world crafting anymore. any tips for module running? I find I miss things alot and it doesn't feel organic when I backtrack
Time is just such a huge factor and it really makes things hard when you dont have a lot of it. I would suggest in terms of module running that where you do have time that you watch module break downs online and take maybe 30 minutes out of your day to read a new part of the module you are running (maybe before bed). In terms of lore same thing. Just 10-30mins of your day for a new lore video or a quick lore read up and the knowledge will slowly build. Overall if your life is very busy right now there is no shame in talking to your players and asking someone to run a short campaign or a handful of one shots for 4 weeks to allow you to relax and enjoy being a player while you spend some time preparing for future games. Good luck! I know its tough finding a balance.
Some edits I made to make the players more invested was made a gold dragon worth 5 gp. Also since I only have 3 players I started them at level 2 and since the campaign ends at level 5, now level 6 with my edits. I plan on doing decent right after this with the same characters
I’m running through decent as a player right now, it’s super fun as a warlock but with the connections to the events of decent I plan on having General Zodge reach out to the party who found the gold dragons, to investigate the disappearance of the city
Dude I'm stealing that hag story line, I just painted some hags. That's brilliant! Thanks brother, take care and God bless 😎🤘🍻
Please do!!! It was so much fun and one our most memorable moments of the entire run.
I really love the series, its helping a lot. Thx for the hard work and keep going on!
Thanks so much for the kind words! I will keep trying, I really am happy that the Waterdeep Vlog series has helped so many people.
This series is a gem!!! Thank you!
Im so glad to see it is still helping people out! Good luck with your adventure!
There is not really any background to Lief, and I love how you added to it. My background for him was he was running a successful tavern, raising a young daughter as a single father. Then some old women came along (2 hags) locked Lief in the cellar with poisoned wine, and kidnapped his daughter, Lily. This connects to the background of the tavern's previous owners... one was a hag that ran an orphanage who ate children... I added to it saying it was a coven, 1 hag was killed, the other 2 escaped.
Several years later, upon nearing her 13 birthday, the hags sought to do a dark ritual to turn Lily into another hag! The party successfully saved Lily, and several other children!
Skip ahead several months later, the party found a note on the chalkboard they installed to communicate with Lief, as a poltergeist he can't speak. It was a goodbye message, saying that they found and rescued his daughter, and renovated and reopened his tavern, and he could move on happy! Lily now 13, lives with the local stable master and his family, a family friend of Lief and Lily.
Really love your hag story built up from the side quest!
Great work! Adding to an NPCs story is one of the great luxuries of being the DM. I absolutely love what you did for your Lief!
Hags are great creatures! I really enjoy putting them in games because they can be great low level issues on their own or make a coven and they can then be used in higher levels.
Good stuff keep it up!
I’m about to start dming water deep and I couldn’t find any break down videos that I could relate with so your videos are super convenient. I’m happy i found it
Im really glad they could help! I do enjoy the sit down, break down videos but I also thought just a first hand week to week experience would be valuable to some.
How's that going, 2 months in? (Bout to run it myself)
same here! it doesn't really seem to be a thing anyone else does, so it would be cool if this also expanded into other adventure modules ^^
@@blackjackcorp it went very well. We finished up Waterdeep Dragonheist and now Ive take a seat as a player while someone else is running Frost Maiden which is going well.
I have just started running Dragon of Icespire Peak and the first video went out a couple days ago.
After that Ill be doing another campaign so there will be more videos to come!
The Rule of Fun and the Rule of Cool supersede all other rues in the book.
I love the spam mail cats. I'm sure you got a lot of mileage out of that as a running gag.
Haha we still bring it up occasionally. Literally so random but so much fun.
I am about to run my first D&D campaign. I've run other games before, first time running D&D. I chose this campaign and I found your channel looking for a good resource.
I like your work, it helped a lot with me getting ready.
I for one appreciate longer videos.
Im glad its helping you. Means Ive done something right haha
I'm loving your series. Started running this a few days ago over Roll20 with my friends. I've only ever run Call of Cthulhu and Star Wars so this is my first time doing DnD as a DM. I have this awful habit where when the players start proposing theories of what is going on I kind of want to work it into the story to make the players think they're smart and so they have more fun lol so in the span of 1 session Xanathar is suddenly kidnapping teenagers from The Blackstaff Academy (One of the PCs is a student there) and controlling them with mind flayers which is what the Apprentice in the sewers was all because I tried to do a voice and it sounded like I was a 12 year old boy so I was like "You know what? He is now a 12 year old boy who Nihiloor is mind controlling, why not!" and I have no idea how if that is going to fuck me up down the line.
Faction missions on Sunday, the players are already acquainted with Force Grey and the Zhentarim. They're all pretty Neutral with Evil leanings but I am going to try and push them towards the Harpers a liiiiittle bit just because I have some fun ideas for them.
haha omg I'm already so invest in YOUR STORY you'll need to make videos for me to keep up with this amazing campaign!
Im glad you are enjoying the series and I hope it helps you along your journey. Honestly if your players put great ideas out into the and their is no reason why it cant happen then I say go for it! Throw in a twist where what they thought was a little off and they will go nuts for being so close.
Sounds like you are doing a fantastic job so keep it up!
I'm about to start the factions missions in my game. I only saw a gold reward for the Zhentarim. Am I missing something in the book? I'm going to have to add gold rewards to the other missions if they are ever going to afford the tavern remodel and taxes.
No you arent missing anything. Most of the early missions are a standard “50g reward” and/or “faction points”
They go up later on in the harder missions for some but only to “100g” which is kinda rubbish!
To make up for lack of money I had Renaer Neverember hire my group as personal body guards for a party he was hosting on one of the holidays in the calandar (I went with the High Harvestide festival - I think its a video or 2 after this one) and he offered them 500g for a successful night.
Anyway basically Xanathars thugs and a mage spiked the drinks with a sudo sleep spell type potion and knocked everyone out. Players didnt drink or made saves and then battled to protect him. Then yay yay half way to the tavern.
More questions! What kind of incentives are you giving to these players to join the various factions? Im trying to figure out how id actually SELL it. Is this info in the book? Trying to track a copy down
Luckily my players weren’t BRAND NEW so we all had player knowledge on the factions.
Honestly if they were brand new I wouldnt offer them any kind of membership straight out the gate. I would just give them the quests as options to do and if they engaged with certain ones more around the 3rd faction mission Id then start feeding in the idea of joining and see who is interested.
Its not crucial to join so dont worry if they dont.
I've dm'd for a long time, but I'm new to modules. I don't have the time for the world crafting anymore. any tips for module running? I find I miss things alot and it doesn't feel organic when I backtrack
Time is just such a huge factor and it really makes things hard when you dont have a lot of it.
I would suggest in terms of module running that where you do have time that you watch module break downs online and take maybe 30 minutes out of your day to read a new part of the module you are running (maybe before bed).
In terms of lore same thing. Just 10-30mins of your day for a new lore video or a quick lore read up and the knowledge will slowly build.
Overall if your life is very busy right now there is no shame in talking to your players and asking someone to run a short campaign or a handful of one shots for 4 weeks to allow you to relax and enjoy being a player while you spend some time preparing for future games.
Good luck! I know its tough finding a balance.
Some edits I made to make the players more invested was made a gold dragon worth 5 gp. Also since I only have 3 players I started them at level 2 and since the campaign ends at level 5, now level 6 with my edits. I plan on doing decent right after this with the same characters
I havent run Decent myself but I did get to play through it as a player last year and its so much fun. Good choice in future game.
I’m running through decent as a player right now, it’s super fun as a warlock but with the connections to the events of decent I plan on having General Zodge reach out to the party who found the gold dragons, to investigate the disappearance of the city
#200th sub right here
Legend!
Wow the video got many views in such and short time😂😂
There are a lot in Waterdeep and they could do with a detailed video each haha.
@@TheDMSide Yeah there isn't much on the pre-writtens tbh!