Our group was notorious for spending the first session of a new game with the players just interacting in character, as everyone got to know each other (new players got to know the group and vice versa, but mostly the new characters got to know each other). It was pretty rare for us to make any progress whatsoever on the adventure the GM had planned for us.
I'm not sure I have any tips, other than to focus on the characters and not on their stats, advantages, disadvantages, etc. What do they look like? How do they behave? How do they talk (word choice, voice, accent, etc.)?
If that's a regular thing and everyone is happy with it, you just described a "Session Zero". The DM would be better off saying "We're going to begin with a session zero, and you can all yammer on about your personality traits and 'issues', and why your father entrusted you with his sword "Death Fury Hellblade" before he died and |I'll drink coffee and plan out next session's monster stats..." If people get a bit frustrated that nothing is going on beyond a bunch of complete strangers droning on about their life stories, then that's when the DM has to start planning accordingly. I've got to admit that it gets on my nerves. I much prefer friendships and relationships to evolve rather than be forged in a crucible of "Who had the saddest childhood" the first time they all meet, so I tend to throw them into something that makes them act. If they do feel a need to let everyone know that they are a deeply troubled orphan with a vengeance mission to kill the Bandit/Dragon/Sibling/Sorceror/etc who killed their parents/village/sibling/lover/mentor/etc, and why they have trouble trusting strangers (yet felt easy enough to share their life history with the other PCs at the drop of a hat...) they can do that when they get to the next tavern... assuming anyone still wants to listen. As a DM if I were forced to listen to this, it would be around the end of the second story that I would throw an attack at them... a fight breaks out in the tavern and one of them gets wounded, or the chimney explodes without warning... or ANYTHING to get them playing in the here and now rather than just exposing their entire back story before the game even gets going. I stopped asking players for back stories years ago. If they want one... great. "Where do you come from? A bit of basic background... if you can be bothered..." that's as much as I want. As long as they know who the character IS, and they're not just playing a bunch of Min-Maxed stats, I'm fine. BUT... if you feel that you MUST have a long and detailed back story for your character... do everyone at your table a favour and keep it to yourself. Let it out in drips over the course of the relationships you build with the other characters. Don't pour it all over them the first time you meet. Save it... and use it wisely. In my current campaign, only one player came to me with a "back story" of any sort, and it was something basic, simple and since he joined the group about 3 months ago, it hasn't been mentioned within the character interactions at all. But I know that when it does become known, the fact he has held it back for so long will change the way at least two of the other characters think about him. And the other players will remember it because of that!
I seem to have given you the impression that our group was taking turns giving each other infodumps about our character backstories. That wasn't the case at all. But neither did half a dozen strangers enter a tavern/coffeeshop/cantina/whatever and instantly trust each other. We didn't always use the first session as a "session zero". Some games started with a bang. (For example, "You glance awkwardly at the strangers in the elevator, and then suddenly the elevator starts falling.") But once we dealt with the bang, we would definitely spend time in character, with the characters getting to know each other. Think of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. You certainly don't get to know everything about any of the characters in the first act, and few of them trust each other, but you do spend time getting to know something about them, and they start developing relationships. That's closer to what we did than Inigo Montoya's monologue about how he has been pursuing the six-fingered man his entire life.
My longest campaigh started out as a 3 session short adventure. 3 4ish hour sessions turned into 5 years of weekly sessions that were anywhere between 6 and 12 hours long. Never underestimate your ability to get hooked lol
When the five points came up, I restarted the video and took notes. Had me remember a 6ish session I played in and diagram all the points and the setting shifts and the encounter dynamics. Excited to create a series of burst campaigns. The end credits scene deserves a shoutout!
I do not believe me and mine have ever planned a long overarching campaign, we have always done our game sessions more like comic story lines or episodic tv. Where we have our plots, sub plots, goals and villains, after dealing with whatever that plot entailed we then move to other plots with same characters, after a while your recurring villains can turn in to epic villains or epic histories or epic plots. Think Kahn . We did have one game where everyone was responsible for a part of the world and would judge games that took place in that part of the world. And would play in other parts that they was not judging . Worked well for world building ideas and interest in said game and plots taking place.
Cheers Guy. Also for your Practical Guide hardcover. It’s proved to be one of the few RPG books I’ve bought over the decades that I continue to refer to when planning adventures (along with the Tome of Adventure Design, DMG, and Raging Swan’s Miscellanies). Yours has a unique emphasis and an approach that adds real value and applicable tools. That’s a tricky thing to do in such a saturated market, so congrats and thanks are due. 😊
This video has given me great tips, and ideas for a short story my players are gonna be playing through. We are playing a Star Wars campaign, and we thought it would be fun to do a short *flashback session* to the time before the campaign takes place so they can connect with their characters more, tell a more detailed back story through their past experiences and so on. This video will definitely be of help since I’ve never done a short campaign before, and given what we want to do this is perfect. Thank you for the great videos, great ideas etc and welcome back to the table Guy. And I do think the editor did a really good job on the show lately
I think a short campaign is also a good opportunity to run a focused theme with a goal that the characters are all on board with. For example, they could all be working to take over the underworld of the city they live in; they could all be barbarians that need to sort out an issue with a rival clan or perhaps their goal might be to reclaim their homeland that has been invaded etc... The point is that they have a very specific objective and a more or less fixed amount of time to complete it- you guys have 12 sessions to take over the underworld of Baldur's Gate.
Ive gone from running long prewritten adventures (mostly WotC) and they’ve always fallen over at about the 25% mark. One of the main reasons is DM burnout, i just lose interest after a while and the campaign just seems like a monumental slog to push uphill. I’ve recently run 3 short adventures and finished them all. I feel like i have far more energy to run them because the end is only a few sessions away and we get a change of scene again. We can also jump into higher level PC’s and npc’s as we want. Short adventures is where it’s at and this vid is great timing. Thanks Guy.
sorry to hear that you had to experience the accident, it is good to see that you are still alive and willing to continue making your content. I have learned a lot from you and have been able to take your advice and utilize it in my DMing style and games as a whole. Thank you Guy.
So sorry to hear about your accident. Get well soon. Regarding your videos, I love your stuff (long-time fan). Some of the new edits are fun. To be completely honest with you, you are one of the few people that I see online that are skilled enough to talk for 40 minutes straight without needing to cut anything. You always turned your few flubs into hilarious comments. It's very endearing. Please don't start cutting 300 times in each 10-minute video like so many others (holy crap is that annoying). You are amazingly talented and interesting, my friend. No gimmicks necessary. Keep up the great work! Thanks for all that you do.
That was interesting and just the right length! Our club runs games in "seasons" of about 3 months (10-12 sessions). I'm trying to puzzle out how best to use that intermediate level of time.
Always a pleasure, Guy. Wishing you a speedy recovery. A lot of this advice is very similar to advice my Short Story writing Professor gave us in college. Good to see I can put it to good use in GM'ing as well.
Be careful... don't let too many people on the internet know that you intend to employ narrative structure in your games. According to "feedback" I have received online, that's just the fancy name for "Railroading" and that's BAD!
I'm a bit confused as to the distinction. I'm very much an "older" DM, and my normal Campaigns run for at least a couple of years. They are also very episodic in nature, with each campaign broken into "Adventures" that can each take anything from 2-3 sessions, through to several months". All of which link up to form a complete 5 act overall story-line. Even the shortest adventure is built on a fairly simple "Beginning/Middle/End" format with some of the longer ones having a full 3 or 5 act structure. Most of the DMs I've known for decades run a similar, if not identical, model when creating longer campaigns. I find its often the newer DMs who feel a need to conform to some of the modern ideas about "Sandbox" campaigns who just try to keep a game running by letting the players do what they want without the structure of any sort of narrative line, who end up running games that don't last very long, simply because they aren't very episodic in nature and players are too often left to their own devices.
Well, I think the editing style definitely has some dramatic zoom angles and good transitions for the visual representations, as well as smooth audio between the edits. I'd say, the only thing I would complain about, if I HAD to nitpick, is how there is perhaps a tad too many cuts of the camera being zoomed at various degrees. Just slightly disorienting is all. Other than that it's really clean and pleasant. Good work.
Glad to see you are doing better, Guy! Hope you’ll find yourself back up to full soon enough without any major setbacks or lingering issues. &, as always, an excellent video-greetings to the new editor! Excellent work all around
Video feels a bit "jumpy". I like a more static one with less zoom in - zoom out. Other then that I think your new editor is doing a great job. Thanks for the video though. It's exactly what I need for my next campaign.
i love to tell my group im not writing this story as a whole. I writing the story as it happens IF the players do not intervene. The players are writing the story of what happens when they DO intervene
I really like the background, is that your game room? Not sure about the camera jumps in and out; I think the method where you turned for short asides to a second camera felt more natural.
'Avoid chaining combat' Oh man! I spent two years part of a Starfinder campaign from lvl 1 through lvl 20. Last few sessions were just combat combat combat grind. Come end of those last few sessions, I just toned out and was dice tossing.
Hello! Loved you channel! Got a 2-shots called "Curse of Selune". Used lots lores and also let the players to visit the Moon after traveling a damaged portal (which let characters to jump from level 3 to level 6)! In general it was good but didn't love it enough because I lack of time. Now, I want to develop a 3-5 sessions campaign named "Chicken Hunt and Man-eaten Jungle". It is about the party to be hired to obtain Baba Yaga's gold eggs or chickens, but she and her daughters are clever enough to set enough obstacles for the players to hunt her gold eggs or chickens... It gets more complicated because it is in the heart of Chult, which the players have to be smart enough to not die in this suicide mission. There should be puzzles, roleplays to obtain information, intense and long chase, high level magic and combats, high risks to die, etc... So, what are your recommendations besides the ones you mentioned in the video?
OMG I hope you have a very quick recovery, and that you are feeling back to your usual self as soon as possible! Love your content! You're the best! This is my obligatory content to improve your results in the TH-cam algorithm. :)
Hi. your new edit is fast. has more cuts and it doesn't have stops. I am attuned to the old kind of edit. I loved your pauses for thinking. It was a more chill kind of video. I could think along you talking. I think your old chill editing was way way better.
This is literally perfect timing, I have just started planing a short campaign. Quick question: If the characters start at lvl. 1, what level should they generally have advanced to by the end of the short adventure?
It depends greatly on the flavor you want to give the adventure, and the style of TTRPG you’re running. For example, for Call of Cthulhu I’d say it’s rare to see level-ups in short adventures, while a game like D&D accounts for them more readily. Also, if you aim to have a fast-paced adventure where the characters go from zero-to-hero and FEEL that advancement, you might give them one level per session, or even make them skip levels. On the opposite side you have a more “humble beginnings” adventure, where the party stays at level 1 the whole time and has to resort to creative and mundane solutions to face their challenges. As a rule of thumb, I’d say the safe way to go (especially for new GMs) would be to keep the whole adventure 1 level (if under 10 sessions), or maybe 75% with the same level and have a level up right before the last part (maybe before going into the necromancer’s lair, or even right before the final fight, if convenient). It can add dramatic effect, if played out correctly
Hey Guy, hope feeling better! 'Keep it contained' Made me think of an issue have seen in a campaign I am in and could make a good video. How do you deal with players who dont want to embrace what the GM is presenting. Seems every player wants to run off and do their own thing. 'Oh, I am not interested in this mysterious underground base. So I am going to go find something that fits my character'. Seriously, feels like I am only one who is wanting to embrace what we have. Feel bad for the GM because is a fascinating turn of events. But isnt what the player specifically wants so they refuse to go along with it and all want their own personal agenda be the focus of gameplay.
Easiest way would be to make some links to their personal agendas apparent in your content ahead of time by writing hooks that give their characters (or them as people) a reason to be interested. If you just present them a quest to clear out your cool dungeon then yeah it's a cool dungeon, but if you present them with an instance where they overhear a rumour of a dragon cult doing stuff in your cool dungeon, then the Fighter, whose brother was sacrificed by a dragon cult, is gonna be way more invested in checking that out When you're the GM you have the wonderful gift of the players not knowing what you're thinking or what you've planned, which means it's not true until you say it out loud. You are absolutely free to chop and change the things you've written/planned on the fly if you haven't already written content with their characters in mind. YMMV with your ability to manage improvising that sort of stuff on the fly of course!
I didn't know you had an accident. Glad you're okay. I haven't noticed any presentation changes in your vids either. I guess I'm not good at paying attention? 😅 I listen to your vids rather than watch. The substance of your vids is more important than what they look like, imo.
re: editing… the constant cuts and fake camera movements are really distracting… to the point I lose track of what you’re saying… and I don’t really want to rewind, because it means sitting through the cuts and movements again. Hopefully you’ll find a happy medium
Guy, why does your AI generated talking wizard thing look kinda like me?.. hahaha I liked this video, the time stats were more fun math to consider in these math & story games… learning PF2e I’d say even if we/ our group gets over the learning curve of figuring out all we can do, I’d still say once we do it, will be over 2mins per turn… we each get like 2d20 rolls that aren’t attacks, and then get more than 1 attack per turn usually. But yeah, that 2 mins per turn is a nice standard for most games/groups… the table I play at might just be outside the bell curve hahaha Oh.. love this as a video, weird echoey quality that’s unexplained to the listener as a podcast, also if you’re going to use for podcast, best to edit all the “comment below’s” or add “if you want to comment below, go to TH-cam” and hope this is a temp solution while Guy is on the mend … he hoped hopefully.
Our group was notorious for spending the first session of a new game with the players just interacting in character, as everyone got to know each other (new players got to know the group and vice versa, but mostly the new characters got to know each other). It was pretty rare for us to make any progress whatsoever on the adventure the GM had planned for us.
I personally like that. Shows your players' heads are in the game and are immersing themselves.
I wish my players would interact like that. I’ve never managed to do so with any of my tables. Any tips?
I'm not sure I have any tips, other than to focus on the characters and not on their stats, advantages, disadvantages, etc. What do they look like? How do they behave? How do they talk (word choice, voice, accent, etc.)?
If that's a regular thing and everyone is happy with it, you just described a "Session Zero". The DM would be better off saying "We're going to begin with a session zero, and you can all yammer on about your personality traits and 'issues', and why your father entrusted you with his sword "Death Fury Hellblade" before he died and |I'll drink coffee and plan out next session's monster stats..."
If people get a bit frustrated that nothing is going on beyond a bunch of complete strangers droning on about their life stories, then that's when the DM has to start planning accordingly.
I've got to admit that it gets on my nerves.
I much prefer friendships and relationships to evolve rather than be forged in a crucible of "Who had the saddest childhood" the first time they all meet, so I tend to throw them into something that makes them act.
If they do feel a need to let everyone know that they are a deeply troubled orphan with a vengeance mission to kill the Bandit/Dragon/Sibling/Sorceror/etc who killed their parents/village/sibling/lover/mentor/etc, and why they have trouble trusting strangers (yet felt easy enough to share their life history with the other PCs at the drop of a hat...) they can do that when they get to the next tavern... assuming anyone still wants to listen.
As a DM if I were forced to listen to this, it would be around the end of the second story that I would throw an attack at them... a fight breaks out in the tavern and one of them gets wounded, or the chimney explodes without warning... or ANYTHING to get them playing in the here and now rather than just exposing their entire back story before the game even gets going.
I stopped asking players for back stories years ago. If they want one... great. "Where do you come from? A bit of basic background... if you can be bothered..." that's as much as I want.
As long as they know who the character IS, and they're not just playing a bunch of Min-Maxed stats, I'm fine.
BUT... if you feel that you MUST have a long and detailed back story for your character... do everyone at your table a favour and keep it to yourself.
Let it out in drips over the course of the relationships you build with the other characters.
Don't pour it all over them the first time you meet. Save it... and use it wisely.
In my current campaign, only one player came to me with a "back story" of any sort, and it was something basic, simple and since he joined the group about 3 months ago, it hasn't been mentioned within the character interactions at all. But I know that when it does become known, the fact he has held it back for so long will change the way at least two of the other characters think about him.
And the other players will remember it because of that!
I seem to have given you the impression that our group was taking turns giving each other infodumps about our character backstories. That wasn't the case at all. But neither did half a dozen strangers enter a tavern/coffeeshop/cantina/whatever and instantly trust each other.
We didn't always use the first session as a "session zero". Some games started with a bang. (For example, "You glance awkwardly at the strangers in the elevator, and then suddenly the elevator starts falling.") But once we dealt with the bang, we would definitely spend time in character, with the characters getting to know each other.
Think of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. You certainly don't get to know everything about any of the characters in the first act, and few of them trust each other, but you do spend time getting to know something about them, and they start developing relationships. That's closer to what we did than Inigo Montoya's monologue about how he has been pursuing the six-fingered man his entire life.
My longest campaigh started out as a 3 session short adventure. 3 4ish hour sessions turned into 5 years of weekly sessions that were anywhere between 6 and 12 hours long.
Never underestimate your ability to get hooked lol
Welcome back
Great to see that you are nearly back to Full Hitpoints Guy.
New format is Fun also 😂
When the five points came up, I restarted the video and took notes. Had me remember a 6ish session I played in and diagram all the points and the setting shifts and the encounter dynamics. Excited to create a series of burst campaigns.
The end credits scene deserves a shoutout!
Welcome back Guy! Love the shelf in the back! Can’t wait for a walk through for our own inspirations at home. 😂 1:24 “how long is a piece of string?”
Yes, I noticed the new editing. I enjoy it 😁 Also, I hope you get to feel better soon!
I do not believe me and mine have ever planned a long overarching campaign, we have always done our game sessions more like comic story lines or episodic tv. Where we have our plots, sub plots, goals and villains, after dealing with whatever that plot entailed we then move to other plots with same characters, after a while your recurring villains can turn in to epic villains or epic histories or epic plots. Think Kahn .
We did have one game where everyone was responsible for a part of the world and would judge games that took place in that part of the world. And would play in other parts that they was not judging . Worked well for world building ideas and interest in said game and plots taking place.
Step 1: Announce a OneShot to your group
Step 2: Profit
15 years later...
Cheers Guy. Also for your Practical Guide hardcover. It’s proved to be one of the few RPG books I’ve bought over the decades that I continue to refer to when planning adventures (along with the Tome of Adventure Design, DMG, and Raging Swan’s Miscellanies). Yours has a unique emphasis and an approach that adds real value and applicable tools. That’s a tricky thing to do in such a saturated market, so congrats and thanks are due. 😊
This video has given me great tips, and ideas for a short story my players are gonna be playing through. We are playing a Star Wars campaign, and we thought it would be fun to do a short *flashback session* to the time before the campaign takes place so they can connect with their characters more, tell a more detailed back story through their past experiences and so on.
This video will definitely be of help since I’ve never done a short campaign before, and given what we want to do this is perfect.
Thank you for the great videos, great ideas etc and welcome back to the table Guy. And I do think the editor did a really good job on the show lately
Welcome back! Also, the new editor seems to be doing a great job. Everything just looks a tad bit cleaner now, cuts seem more professional.
I think a short campaign is also a good opportunity to run a focused theme with a goal that the characters are all on board with. For example, they could all be working to take over the underworld of the city they live in; they could all be barbarians that need to sort out an issue with a rival clan or perhaps their goal might be to reclaim their homeland that has been invaded etc... The point is that they have a very specific objective and a more or less fixed amount of time to complete it- you guys have 12 sessions to take over the underworld of Baldur's Gate.
Ive gone from running long prewritten adventures (mostly WotC) and they’ve always fallen over at about the 25% mark. One of the main reasons is DM burnout, i just lose interest after a while and the campaign just seems like a monumental slog to push uphill.
I’ve recently run 3 short adventures and finished them all. I feel like i have far more energy to run them because the end is only a few sessions away and we get a change of scene again. We can also jump into higher level PC’s and npc’s as we want.
Short adventures is where it’s at and this vid is great timing. Thanks Guy.
sorry to hear that you had to experience the accident, it is good to see that you are still alive and willing to continue making your content. I have learned a lot from you and have been able to take your advice and utilize it in my DMing style and games as a whole. Thank you Guy.
So sorry to hear about your accident. Get well soon. Regarding your videos, I love your stuff (long-time fan). Some of the new edits are fun. To be completely honest with you, you are one of the few people that I see online that are skilled enough to talk for 40 minutes straight without needing to cut anything. You always turned your few flubs into hilarious comments. It's very endearing. Please don't start cutting 300 times in each 10-minute video like so many others (holy crap is that annoying). You are amazingly talented and interesting, my friend. No gimmicks necessary. Keep up the great work! Thanks for all that you do.
I love both the new editor and the more muted, less shouty talking style ;)
Thank you for posting this. Definitely something that has been on my mind, since I want to try different settings and systems.
Oh, I forgot. Love the new production, too.
That was interesting and just the right length! Our club runs games in "seasons" of about 3 months (10-12 sessions). I'm trying to puzzle out how best to use that intermediate level of time.
Always a pleasure, Guy. Wishing you a speedy recovery. A lot of this advice is very similar to advice my Short Story writing Professor gave us in college. Good to see I can put it to good use in GM'ing as well.
Be careful... don't let too many people on the internet know that you intend to employ narrative structure in your games.
According to "feedback" I have received online, that's just the fancy name for "Railroading" and that's BAD!
I'm literally doing this right now! perfect timing! thank you!
Love the outro!
Glad you are on the mend.
This is very good advice.
Especially useful for "older" GMs who have a tendency towards episodic games and less long campaigns.
I'm a bit confused as to the distinction.
I'm very much an "older" DM, and my normal Campaigns run for at least a couple of years.
They are also very episodic in nature, with each campaign broken into "Adventures" that can each take anything from 2-3 sessions, through to several months". All of which link up to form a complete 5 act overall story-line.
Even the shortest adventure is built on a fairly simple "Beginning/Middle/End" format with some of the longer ones having a full 3 or 5 act structure.
Most of the DMs I've known for decades run a similar, if not identical, model when creating longer campaigns.
I find its often the newer DMs who feel a need to conform to some of the modern ideas about "Sandbox" campaigns who just try to keep a game running by letting the players do what they want without the structure of any sort of narrative line, who end up running games that don't last very long, simply because they aren't very episodic in nature and players are too often left to their own devices.
Happy to see you again! Hope you recover well. You and Nonats both got hurt 😞
Guy, this was the first video I've watched of yours that I needed to rewatch, while furiously taking notes. Wonderful! Thank you.
i do notice, and i like the new videos ;)
Get well soon!
You read my thoughts, Guy. I was looking for this. Thank you so much!
Well, I think the editing style definitely has some dramatic zoom angles and good transitions for the visual representations, as well as smooth audio between the edits.
I'd say, the only thing I would complain about, if I HAD to nitpick, is how there is perhaps a tad too many cuts of the camera being zoomed at various degrees. Just slightly disorienting is all.
Other than that it's really clean and pleasant. Good work.
Glad to see you are doing better, Guy! Hope you’ll find yourself back up to full soon enough without any major setbacks or lingering issues. &, as always, an excellent video-greetings to the new editor! Excellent work all around
Welcome back. Hope you recover quickly.
Missed you. Missed the announcement. Very sorry hope all is gravy baby!
Video feels a bit "jumpy". I like a more static one with less zoom in - zoom out. Other then that I think your new editor is doing a great job.
Thanks for the video though. It's exactly what I need for my next campaign.
Well said! Guy!
Just the video I needed. Thank you!
All I can do is dream big and planning for long campaigns.
i love to tell my group im not writing this story as a whole. I writing the story as it happens IF the players do not intervene. The players are writing the story of what happens when they DO intervene
Great video, has always.
Hope you're doing well.
I've broken my ribs twice before, that sh!t hurts dude, get well soon!
I really like the background, is that your game room? Not sure about the camera jumps in and out; I think the method where you turned for short asides to a second camera felt more natural.
'Avoid chaining combat'
Oh man! I spent two years part of a Starfinder campaign from lvl 1 through lvl 20. Last few sessions were just combat combat combat grind.
Come end of those last few sessions, I just toned out and was dice tossing.
Holy smokes, well done with the sanctum ❤
Hello! Loved you channel!
Got a 2-shots called "Curse of Selune". Used lots lores and also let the players to visit the Moon after traveling a damaged portal (which let characters to jump from level 3 to level 6)! In general it was good but didn't love it enough because I lack of time.
Now, I want to develop a 3-5 sessions campaign named "Chicken Hunt and Man-eaten Jungle". It is about the party to be hired to obtain Baba Yaga's gold eggs or chickens, but she and her daughters are clever enough to set enough obstacles for the players to hunt her gold eggs or chickens... It gets more complicated because it is in the heart of Chult, which the players have to be smart enough to not die in this suicide mission.
There should be puzzles, roleplays to obtain information, intense and long chase, high level magic and combats, high risks to die, etc...
So, what are your recommendations besides the ones you mentioned in the video?
OMG I hope you have a very quick recovery, and that you are feeling back to your usual self as soon as possible! Love your content! You're the best! This is my obligatory content to improve your results in the TH-cam algorithm. :)
All adventurers must attain some form of the only purely thorough mistake you can make is complacency.
Hope the recovery goes well!
Fantastic
The valley is uncanny
Hi. your new edit is fast. has more cuts and it doesn't have stops. I am attuned to the old kind of edit. I loved your pauses for thinking. It was a more chill kind of video. I could think along you talking. I think your old chill editing was way way better.
This is literally perfect timing, I have just started planing a short campaign. Quick question: If the characters start at lvl. 1, what level should they generally have advanced to by the end of the short adventure?
It depends greatly on the flavor you want to give the adventure, and the style of TTRPG you’re running. For example, for Call of Cthulhu I’d say it’s rare to see level-ups in short adventures, while a game like D&D accounts for them more readily. Also, if you aim to have a fast-paced adventure where the characters go from zero-to-hero and FEEL that advancement, you might give them one level per session, or even make them skip levels. On the opposite side you have a more “humble beginnings” adventure, where the party stays at level 1 the whole time and has to resort to creative and mundane solutions to face their challenges.
As a rule of thumb, I’d say the safe way to go (especially for new GMs) would be to keep the whole adventure 1 level (if under 10 sessions), or maybe 75% with the same level and have a level up right before the last part (maybe before going into the necromancer’s lair, or even right before the final fight, if convenient). It can add dramatic effect, if played out correctly
Hey Guy, hope feeling better!
'Keep it contained' Made me think of an issue have seen in a campaign I am in and could make a good video. How do you deal with players who dont want to embrace what the GM is presenting.
Seems every player wants to run off and do their own thing. 'Oh, I am not interested in this mysterious underground base. So I am going to go find something that fits my character'. Seriously, feels like I am only one who is wanting to embrace what we have.
Feel bad for the GM because is a fascinating turn of events. But isnt what the player specifically wants so they refuse to go along with it and all want their own personal agenda be the focus of gameplay.
Easiest way would be to make some links to their personal agendas apparent in your content ahead of time by writing hooks that give their characters (or them as people) a reason to be interested.
If you just present them a quest to clear out your cool dungeon then yeah it's a cool dungeon, but if you present them with an instance where they overhear a rumour of a dragon cult doing stuff in your cool dungeon, then the Fighter, whose brother was sacrificed by a dragon cult, is gonna be way more invested in checking that out
When you're the GM you have the wonderful gift of the players not knowing what you're thinking or what you've planned, which means it's not true until you say it out loud. You are absolutely free to chop and change the things you've written/planned on the fly if you haven't already written content with their characters in mind.
YMMV with your ability to manage improvising that sort of stuff on the fly of course!
I didn't know you had an accident. Glad you're okay.
I haven't noticed any presentation changes in your vids either. I guess I'm not good at paying attention? 😅 I listen to your vids rather than watch. The substance of your vids is more important than what they look like, imo.
Sorry about your ribs breaking. I know how painful of a recovery that can be. Luckily playing D&D isn’t physically strenuous
☮
2 minutes per player actually sounds less than I would expect.
How to plan a short campaign.
Step 1 fail utterly and watch as your short 12 session campaigns spirals out of control into a two year monster.
Is audio and video desync for anybody else?
re: editing… the constant cuts and fake camera movements are really distracting… to the point I lose track of what you’re saying… and I don’t really want to rewind, because it means sitting through the cuts and movements again.
Hopefully you’ll find a happy medium
Video feels very jumpy.
With the sudden zooms.
Wow! What deepfake did you use? Its very cool! :D I wanna know xD
You're losing weight buddy heck yeah!
Audio and video are out of sync for me.
Guy, why does your AI generated talking wizard thing look kinda like me?.. hahaha
I liked this video, the time stats were more fun math to consider in these math & story games… learning PF2e I’d say even if we/ our group gets over the learning curve of figuring out all we can do, I’d still say once we do it, will be over 2mins per turn… we each get like 2d20 rolls that aren’t attacks, and then get more than 1 attack per turn usually.
But yeah, that 2 mins per turn is a nice standard for most games/groups… the table I play at might just be outside the bell curve hahaha
Oh.. love this as a video, weird echoey quality that’s unexplained to the listener as a podcast, also if you’re going to use for podcast, best to edit all the “comment below’s” or add “if you want to comment below, go to TH-cam” and hope this is a temp solution while Guy is on the mend … he hoped hopefully.
Get well soon!