I try to use “your character realizes…” rather than “your character feels…”. This allows the player agency to decide how their character feels about the revelation of whatever they are reacting to…
I try to link it to a piece of the character's backstory or culture. "Where you're from, this is usually considered as ... ". But might feel different.
If the GM is there to describe the world and how the characters perceive it, then after divulging the info, the GM can ask the player how their character feels, or what the character wants to do. The player roleplays their character based upon the world-information provided, which maximizes their agency. The only possible exception, is when a GM calls out a PC for not playing in-character - based upon something established in the backstory or previously in play. Though, perhaps the PC is having a change of heart and trying a new direction. In that case, they need to talk about making changes to the backstory/canon so there isn't any future confusion.
I will tell the players what they feel when it comes to Spells. Your character feels fear, and wants to flee. Your character feels very friendly when Charmed. I try not to take away player agency, but I will ask, "What is your character thinking? What is their motivation?" I won't stop them from doing something stupid if they justify their actions unless it derails the game.
I like to ask my players how their characters feel about things. After describing a monster I've even asked after a fear spell, What about this monster scares your character the most?
The red herring brings to mind Matt Mercer and The Chair. (The players for some reason fixated on this chair in the center of a room, and he kept telling them "It's... a _chair_ " And they kept digging for clues. It was like 15 minutes of non stop hilarity.)
Friend of mine had a similar situation in a game he DMed. Players got stuck on a saloon door because it "had no handle". They got stuck at the door for about half an hour even after my friend had a bunch of npcs just go through it to show how it works.
Real talk, I just had this conversation with one of my players last night. I'm a forever DM. Do you know how much I'd enjoy sitting down, tossing back some doritos, and just... *playing a game?* But no. Instead I'm spending countless hours organizing a session, reworking stat blocks to actually balance a game, coordinating my players so that we all show up at the same time and place (which is like herding squirrels), and then putting down interpersonal conflicts while the PC's wipe the floor with my monsters in two rounds of combat.
I'm always happy to take constructive feedback. But increasingly, if something is just a matter of taste, and a player doesn't like how my taste runs, thus how I am doing things, I will happily say, "You can GM if you want." This almost always halts the whining.
That’s true that is so true 😂 in the group I play with everyone has DMed And personally I think this is the best practice for everyone everyone should eventually try it
I disagree HARD with the boxed text one. It is really annoying to me as a DM when players decide to go charging into a room before I've finished describing it, and they inevitably get upset when they experience consequences that would have been obvious if they had just let me finish my description. DM: "You enter a large circular chamber. On the far end of the chamber is a large pedestal, but in the center of the room-" Player: "I approach the pedestal" DM: "Can I please finish my description of the room?" Player: "I don't care about the rest of the room, I want to inspect the pedestal" DM: "Fine, you run straight toward the pedestal and plunge straight into the 10 foot wide chasm that divides the room in half" Obviously this is an exaggerated example, and I personally wouldn't actually make the player forcibly jump into the chasm, but my point stands. As the player, you should have the courtesy to let your DM give a full description before making any in character decisions, otherwise it will likely backfire.
1000% correct. She read a complaint earlier about not enough foreshadowing, and if that player has also ever complained about long descriptions they need to calm down. Perfect example of something the players want to have both ways
As a DM, you should avoid read-along text so your game more closely resembles a role playing game than a cut scene from a video game or story time in the children's reading room. I'm not saying you shouldn't fully describe the scene, I'm saying you shouldn't break sequence so you can suddenly change voices from your natural voice to the voice that a professional author wrote a little blurb in, asking your players to take a little time out so you can indulge some completely unnecessary prose that you've already admitted your players aren't interested in.
Over all it is co-op game. So if over all everyone is having fun, i dont feel obligsted to change what i am do, i can but I dont have to. But if something just isn't working or ruining the fun then I should adjust. In any given group doing anything together there will be disgreements and even arguments, they just souldnt dominate or overshadow thing. Even on Critical roll you get glimps of it but they are doing a show, so that stuff it worked out off air and for the betterment of the show and maybe not player enjoyment.
It's fine to totally describe a room, I'm referring to box text though which tend to be big paragraphs of exposition that are narrated at the players, instead of engaging them.
If they don't let you describe, then let them describe how their character deals with the consequence of blindly charging in. DC should go up because they missed a lot of (or all of) the clues, perhaps even skip the DC if you can and just go full narrative. Lethal consequences for characters may be a good learning experience for the players, if they don't misconstrue the lesson. The ones with 20 page backstories would flip their lid, while the ones with a 3 syllable backstory weren't likely as invested into the game to begin with. So YMMV. It makes me think of landing on boardwalk and then skipping the payment to the owner. Games have rules, games have flows in how to play them. Anyone can play a RPG, but not everyone is gonna be good at them. The specific purpose of those text boxes is that a professional writer made a blurb of descriptive text that can help the GM say a lot in a little amount of time. Of course they can be paraphrased and otherwise modified to suit the table, to the GM's best ability. There is demand for the descriptive text, at least by GMs, and there are places where it can be generated.
I learned not to describe things using an assumption of imposed feelings while playing MUDs. I was playing a MUD that allowed limited player building and found out how much other players hated room or item descriptions that include describing the reaction of their character. ("The velociraptor notices you as you look at him from across the room, and the cruel & voracious look in his eye fills you with dread.") ^-- things like that seemed innocuous when I wrote them, but after it was pointed out to me as objectionable (and why it was objectionable) I tried to ensure that descriptions were objective and didn't assume any effect or state internal to the character that encountered the thing.
My players secretly hate it when i press the button that electrifies their seat wherever they take damage in game but they've learned to stop complaining (complaining also results in a shock)
Yeah but if you boost the damage they take by enough, they won’t ever be able to complain again. Unfortunately, they also can’t play again, so there is that.😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Probably the best session of Shadowrun I ever played in involved us tracking someone down in the Himalayas. My hacker almost died parachuting in, then failed almost all of their survival rolls. I don't know if it was as fun for the troll who ended up LITERALLY carrying my frostbitten cityboy ass the last few miles to safety, but I found it exciting as fuck. The GM STILL apologizes to me about that 7 years later, even though I constantly talk about how much fun I had, lol.
Had a fighter and cleric team fight a giant spider, kicked its butt, cleric had to keep the creepy NPC guide alive. DM thought we were not happy. Next, later mountain path got our butts handed to us fighting a dozen large hairy jump style spiders. Fighter downed from poison, cleric cured poison. DM, thought we weren't happy because we yelled during the encounter. Post game conversation the DM apologizes because we were unhappy with the game. Smiling. "No. We're having fun. We're yelling in game to try and keep the team motivated and breathing." Your DM may misinterpret interaction. Sometimes need two-way communication.
I think this entire thing is a big lesson in Not every table will be fun for every player, and not every player will be suitable for every table. Find the table that suits you best and you’ll have a long fun campaign. Try to shoehorn yourself into a table and you’ll just become resentful when you’re not having fun and blame everyone else.
@@orokusaki1243 with millions of people in the hobby you will have differences, or inconsistencies, between tables. It's a fools notion to think every table needs to be a carbon copy of each other. What we all need to do and learn, is to find people who want the same kind of game as us and enjoy playing with them. Not trying to force everyone to conform to our ideal of what we think is right and belittling everyone else for what we perceive as wrong. That's what will be the death of our hobby.
@@norcalbowhunter3264 Hes not wrong though. Remember that whole Matt Mercer meme was a real thing. The strongest hobby/game communities tend to be the smaller ones; because they all share some kind of common through-line, even if differences are exaggerated (I'm looking directly at the 40k fans). A modern gamer is often too self centered, or too hyper optimized to easily accommodate a differing play style; and THAT is by far the biggest issue when games/hobbies get more mainstream attention. And with how most video games adapt toward the player, the culture of multiplayer games (both video games and board games) have suffered in ways that aren't obvious until you encounter that one player who thinks they are above the game rules. After that, you start to recognize the gradients of this phenomena else where. If you're lucky, or a have a good friend group, these problems are easily manageable with some experimentation with house rules. Finding people who the same game as you is often has hard as finding a regular raid group. And even knowing those dynamics, at least half the team ends up having to conform to the other half, just to keep the group routinely functional. And like any other similar social dynamic, eventually a whole group can collapse if those subservient players leave due to being ignored or mistreated. The far better way to resolve this is to foster a culture of a flexibility and system literacy. Being able to debate the value of a rule or a system, or even a setting, and negotiate the highest number of overall requirements to fit the group's needs/wants. Having a deal breaker or two is normal for most people, and not a problem. Having too many deal breakers makes it difficult to be flexible, and will inevitably kill someone's interest in a hobby. My friend group's specific interests are pretty polarizing when you look at them. One is into hardcore strategy and reenactment accuracy, one is big power fantasy with a minor messiah complex, one is into low fantasy and hard scifi, one is anime meme machine, and I'm more focused on game mechanics. 4 of us know how to rules lawyer, 1 of us does not. Despite how that sounds, we usually get along great. Because the through line here that if we find a problem or disagreement, we just rapidly prototype a solution and see if its better then the default rule. On a well made game, the logic of the default rules become obvious pretty quickly as we break them. If the game has a serious design flaw, we can maybe work around it. But we're willing to try. Same goes with lore settings, as we'll all respect the goal/mood of the setting, and make that our common goal. Except for that 1 guy in our group. Because he doesn't understand most of the rules, hes prone to making things up as we go along to make what he wants to happen, happen. IF we can keep him on the rails, its not too much of a disruption. But its when he starts to INSIST for an outcome, and doesn't bother to explain why it should work in the context of the game (settings or rules), that the big arguments that grind the game to a halt start to happen. Hes socially oriented, while the rest of us are more technical. We also know he has this same problem in other circles, because when he gets tired or bored, he'll start to ignore frame work to keep himself in the active spot of the game. So for him, we need games with shorter turns, so he feels like hes doing something. And this lends to a small conundrum. Can a player like him be put in a group with like minded players, and it goes smoothly? I kind of doubt it would, due to how the motivations are. While communities and hobbies are usually interchangeable as terminology, this is still distinct from "groups" of players that may exist within and across multiple hobbies. At bare minimum any given group should have a common appreciation of some core aspect of that section of a hobby. So within that idea, Warhammer is not a single hobby. Its at least 4 different hobbies that coalesce under a single IP. And as far as I can tell, the only group that has any kind of real contention with itself and other parts of the IP umbrella are the Lore fans. Apply that idea to DnD and you can start to break down what he is talking about. Ask a bunch of players "what is DnD?" and getting highly varied answers points to a serious identity crisis for the IP. With an inability to agree on what the core of a hobby is, or the inability recognize an IP may have multiple elements to it, means theres no common ground for the community as a whole to agree on. Battletech doesn't have this problem, because "big stompy robots" is something everyone agrees is a major through-line for the whole IP, tying together 3 radically different genres of games (strategy, action and even RPGs) . For 40k its the insanity that is its lore, working equally well in action video game as much as its roots as a war game. How many of us are fully cognizant of the fact that MTG is a DnD spin off? Like acutely aware of the ramifications this has had between the two product lines? I'm seeing this exact problem happening with Diablo 4 right now, with its Seasons. I'm old enough to remember when this used to be called Ladder seasons, and was essentially a competitive leader-board. This is "mostly" the model Path of Exiles uses, and is other biggest, most well known ARPG besides Diablo. So color me surprised when people started comparing what it "should be" as the kind of progression system WoW uses. As much as I get that ended up being the expectation, its the odd insistence that ladder seasons and hardcore death mode never existed in Diablo 2 and 3, when they very clearly did. Or am I totally misunderstanding the thing people are being hyper focused about?
For the balancing every combat to be "hard", I would say it's more about not making every encounter feel super hard (or easy) but have a variety of them. It lets the players try out new abilities/items/tactics without having to worry that much. Also makes world feel more real as the boss lackeys are actually weaker than the bosses and the bosses feel actually hard. etc...
Yeah, I've always felt that you want a range of encounters - sometimes, you want the encounters to be really tough when it matters that they're tough, and sometimes you want the encounters to be easy so that the players can feel powerful.
@@dungeonsanddiscourse As a story-focused player I also like it if the world isn't just a difficulty curve. Although more dangerous area are certainly less likely to have a lot of peasants just living everywhere. If they do have a presence, they might group up more, live in fewer, fortified areas, train as amateur militia and perhaps hire some mercenaries... er.. getting off topic. What I meant to say was: I like for a world to feel more.. 'real' (whatever that means in this context). Although that may just be my very subjective perspective.
Yes variety is great. Hard fights are fun but so is getting mugged by someone who clearly has WIS as a dump stat and should have picked a different target.
@@dungeonsanddiscourse It's not only about variety but also about being able to go back to give those goblin bandits that gave you a hard time at level 1 a good hiding.
My biggest peeve as a new player was how my first session went. Part of the issue was how I handled the situation, but it was out of frustration with how the DM didnt explain I had options. I found a vile filled with a liquid. I opted to drink it, didnt know I could do a check to see if I knew the contents or ask the others to identify it. My PC drank it and died because it was a vile of poison. DM didn't even say role another character. So I sat there watching them finish the session while I did nothing and we only had 1 encounter while I had a PC on the board. Me from that experience now give guidance to new PC on new found items in an attempt to explain their options to prevent a 1st character death out of player ignorance of game mechanics. I started on 1st edition so it was brutal.😂
Having introverted players ask to be spotlighted is a tricky thing ro get right. I had one player whos characters missing family was a huge part of the backstory. He eventually found an uncle who was taken prisoner by the drow. The player jsut looked at me. I asked if his character would do anything and he said "probably not", other players were super excited for him. The uncle gave some family history facts to verify that he was really the uncle, still no response. Another player took this ine aside and chatted for a few minutes about what was going on. Turns put the player just didn't want to talk at the moment, so he decided to kill the uncle. At that point i decided he would get a letter from the rest of the family saying they are safe and sound on a distance island
Thank you for the entertaining information. Unskilled players exist on both sides of the screen. I wonder how many people who submitted opinions have actually ran an RPG as a DM?
I recall watching a Matt Colville video a few months back where he was basically like "the only way to make the players care about the lore is to make it important to what they're actually doing", and I agree wholeheartedly. The players are concentrating on their current goals and objectives, so unless your lore is actually relevant to what they're doing, they have no reason to care. The best way to make the PCs care about the details of some lich that was permanently killed off a few thousand years back is to tie those details into the solutions to the problems they face when, for example, they are exploring said lich's ancient crumbling keep in search of a magical tome they wrote in order to learn how to stop some necromantic ritual.
Especially if your players like mystery adventures, this is a great way to get players asking lore questions. You can get players digging into all sorts of historical topics in pursuit of figuring out some overarching mystery goal.
Connect them to the setting around them. A shopkeeper they like, a house they own, a kid who runs errands for them in town, a historical connection to their family or clan...
But you shouldn't know that 'lore' means 'direct impact'. Because then it's not really lore, it's just the next clue. A nice little Pavlov's Bell to signal. I hit the snare drum, you laugh. That's just conditioning. The joke wasn't funny, but I did the thing, so you do the thing. And some Characters are all about Lore, like studious Wizards and certainly Bards. Bards don't care if the Lore relates to THIS MISSION RIGHT NOW IN THE NEXT 5 SECONDS OMG! They care that it's Lore, that it's Interesting. If there are Dragons in the world, and I don't know about a Dragon until 5 minutes before I meet one... wait, these awesome things exist, no one painted a picture, sang a song? Am I the first ever to run into this thing, or am I running into one and NOW you tell me this huge history I never knew... and why do I know it NOW? Lore is LITERALLY just History. Why would you NOT know a bit of Lore? I mean in my daily life I don't need to know anything about WWII, doesn't affect me in any way. And yet I know, and it interests me.
@@taragnor You really can't though... in the way described. Because if it's not relevant... it shouldn't be there, that's the statement. So I can't have you digging into all sorts of historical topics... because they won't all be relevant. I can only give you very specific topics that directly relate, and then you KNOW they directly relate. You never have to decide "Is THIS the info that is important, or just a cool fact?". There may be a 'Tale of Three Towers', but only ONE Tower is the mission you are on. So you only need the one book, about that Tower. And now you miss the opportunity to decide if those other Towers might be something you wish to pursue. Because the only Lore I give you is for the Missions I'm ASSIGNING you. You never really choose anything. It's just an endless loop of "Here is your next mission, because here is the Lore I'm giving you... because you only want Lore that pertains to what you are doing." A whole World out there, you COULD go in any direction... but you don't know there is anything to go to, because it doesn't link to your current objective?
@@theclimbto1 That's why I said a mystery adventure, because you don't immediately know what's relevant if the quest is "who killed the king?" You have to look at all the suspects. Maybe it was the duke, lets research his backstory... well his family was once part of a group of dark necromancers, but redeemed themselves when they agreed to serve the king. How about the bishop? He was given to the church as an infant when a special holy mark of the gods was found on him. etc. You can get the PCs actively investigating various interesting NPCs that you now get to give a bunch of lore drops to, where they may find a clue in the lore that implicates his reasons for killing the king, or maybe just alleviates him of suspicion. But the PCs will care about your important lore NPCs now because they're relevant to the mystery. One of them is a murderer.
On the "not describing the character's actions" thing, that (like most of these) depends on the table. At my table, some PCs describe their own actions. Others never, ever do. My rule is if a PC described it, that's what happened (within reason) but if they don't want to describe it, that's where I come in
I agree. Mostly because an introverted, shy, or brand new player might _want_ to see their hero doing heroic things, but either fears overstepping their bounds, or is just too embarrassed. When the gm steps in and describes for them, it accomplishes several things- first, the shy guy gets to shine a little more. Second, it sets the example, and lets them know that description is possible beyind "I roll a twelve. Next!" And lastly, those little details can set the stage for other impromptu actions. Like, *You conjure up a firebolt but the arrow the goblin fired at you diverts your attention for a moment and you miss the ogre as the bolt impacts on the tree catching it on fire!* And in a following round, someone makes use of that conveniently placed burning tree.
I think that any description or flavor that a DM wants to add to narrate a PC's action should be confined to what the NPC does or effects in the environment. (e.g. player rolls a weapon attack by his character Bobulus Maximus on a goblin and hits, so the DM could narrate "Bobulus swings his sword at the goblin, who raises his shield to block but overcompensates. Bobulus deftly slips his sword past the shield and pierces the goblin's gut.... Ok, roll for damage, Bob.") [Conversely, if the player narrates then it should rely on their character actions or established bits of the encounter environment. "Bobulus runs up to the goblin, circling until he sees his shadow cross the goblin. He leaps into the air, and while the goblin's vision is momentarily dazzled by the afternoon sun, Bobulus slashes down past the goblin's shield and wounds them... *clatter*... and I rolled a 1 for damage. Crap!"]
I was fortunate enough to have the same gaming group from the time I was 16to about 35.... As the permanent GM, one of our long standing group memes was "The creature dies of Sadness." This came up from when I would build an encounter in any game, and the PC's would clearly dominate with the opponents having no ability to win... I would cut the combat short by saying, "The rest of your opponents, die of sadness." It was just better than fudging dice rolls or trying to artificially raise the difficulty... to the point over the years my friends/group would ask sometimes, "Do they die of Sadness?" and we'd move on. We're all in our 40s now and life has us not meet up as much anymore, but I love those guys and all our gaming memes.
Spotlighting players is insanely easy for me and I do it out of habit by now. Half of my group are wall flowers so if I don't stop and try to pull them into the game I feel I failed as a GM. I also noticed that this triggers the wall flowers to invest and speak up more because they get used to getting involved in the game. One player went from only speaking up only when asked being asked what they wanted to do to leading conversions now. It's amazing. A second went from being too shy to speak up to doing the session recaps for the group.
The group I played with longest were mostly there for the social event, I think, with the actual setting and story second, and decent roleplay a distant third (they attempted it now and then, but mostly they just reverted to playing themselves). One of the best 4-hour sessions we ever had all that got done in the game world was: get drunk, have a bar fight (very restrained: nobody got killed, and for once they didn't start it), pay for damages, and get thown in the tank to sleep it off.
I tend to describe the action in a short 2 second blurb mostly because I really don't like this: "Ok, I attack, crap rolled a 1, ok next!" "Ok, I'm gonna cast a spell. 12? No? Ok, I miss." "Fireball! Dex save! Umm...that's a lot of 1s, crappy fireball for 19 damage" I prefer this kind of action: "Ok, I attack, crap rolled a 1, ok next!" **You swing your sword at the ogre but slightly lose your footing. The ogre easily deflects your sword and mocks you with a bellowing laugh** "Ok, I'm gonna cast a spell. 12? No? Ok, I miss." **You conjure up a firebolt but the arrow the goblin fired at you diverts your attention for a moment and you miss the ogre as the bolt impacts on the tree catching it on fire!** "Fireball! Dex save! Umm...that's a lot of 1s, crappy fireball for 19 damage" **Your summoned ball of flame explodes but the area around is damp and lessens the effect of the spell. It still damages, but not as much as you had hoped.** You don't need to go greatly in depth, but a little bit after each action can add a bit of flavor to the game.
@@fredbloggs7131 Me too, and I especially like it when the players roll nat 1s or 20s- I have them roll again after nat 1s to see HOW it went wrong, pick a suitable course, and narrate it. In one case a character rolled a nat 1 followed by a nat 20, so I ruled that they lost their grip on their sword and accidentally FLUNG it away- straight into the chest of another enemy. They still missed their attack and lost their sword for a bit, but it was was way more entertaining than just "oops, big miss." One time a player rolled nat 20 on a seduction check and the dragon rolled a nat 1 to oppose, so the character gained a dragon fiance who even changed his alignment to stay with her.
Box text is definitely there for two reasons: as an aid for dungeon masters who might be uncomfortable with dramatically extemporizing but still want to convey the required information about the scene (more important in older editions that did not have perception checks or investigation checks), and as an example for extempor-comfortable DMs to memorize or use as the basis for their own improvisation. Generally, the only the DMs who I hear complaining about box text (players are diff) are those who do not need it in the first place.
I prefer milestone leveling when I run, mainly because I'm lazy and dislike maths... it also avoid the Kill everything solo player that some way wants to out level the group. Plus main thing about milestone leveling, it great to do it on a major event or closing a chapter in part of a long campaign.
I agree with the complaint about every encounter being super challenging. You’re not wrong to say fighting 7 goblins as an L20 party, but the problem I see is when every encounter is an 11 out of 10. That’s the complaint I heard. You need easy encounters and hard encounters to build a manageable stress level. If every interaction is a life or death extreme, it gets tedious. Throw in some fun moments to lessen the pressure. You need valleys to appreciate the peaks.
The way I tend to handle it is that MOST of the time, combat is high danger. However, avoiding said combat/being creative may trivialize the fight/encounter and make it easy. EX: luring the monsters into a trap, sneak by a sleeping dragon etc. But I go for a more OSR style game, so I don’t want combat to be the end all be all.
Yes! In real life (whatever the heck that is...), 100% effort is not continuously sustainable (and "giving 110%" is BS and mathematically ignorant). I think I've heard that 80% of max is more typical for sustained efforts (and would still be a challenge). Example: bodybuilders or powerlifters have a max that they want to improve, but their path to improvement doesn't involve only trying to lift their max weight... that's a path to a hernia.
The first thing about being the protagonist I get. I personally really hate it when the world revolves around me. Even in video games I hate when it feels like places I've moved on from could cease to exist and I would never know because they aren't important anymore. I think it has more to do with the role you play in the collaboration. I've always been for the idea that the PCs and the GM have explicit parts of the world that are "theirs". As a player I want to interact with and be surprised by your world, not determine it. And as a GM I want to make a world to my specification so I can watch you knock that world around into a form I hadn't expected. But in both directions we have a part of the collaboration that is strictly ours. The GM sets the stage and PCs are the force of change. Some of the more narrative games feel like I'm trying to paint a picture while someone else keeps adding their own paint to it and even if the end result is good, it can feel sort of hollow. The other thing is not interacting with rules. I really dislike that as well. I feel like rules are our ability to interact with the game world in a tactile way. Without a certain amount of rules involved it can feel like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. People keep saying things are happening, but you don't *experience* it happening. Like the game is a dream instead of a world. It's part of why I tend to prefer LARPing over a fully narrative game. Because if I'm LARPing I'm physically interacting with the world in real life. In a TTRPG the rules take place of that. But then narrative type games don't do either.
👍👍 this was really nice to hear! Obviously I don't 100% agree with everyone about everything but hearing folks' perspectives makes me feel like part of the community 😊
Hot take about red herrings - what if they're planted by a specific npc who is, or is covering for the culprit. As long as the plants are clear and investigable, they become another clue in the chain.
As a GM I fully agree with the final one. Who the hell am I to tell you what your character's emotions are? I have seen a few streams where the GM tells the players how their characters feel and I'm always thinking "what the f*** are you doing?!"
Sometimes I think it's important to put things into context. Like when you smell raw sewage you'd be disgusted. Obviously the player can't smell it, so it wouldn't affect them, but the character would. In some settings, what might be a grave insult in the fiction may not be feel like a big deal in a modern context, so it's important to tell them that this is considered a big deal. A cleric who has spent their whole life worshipping a single god would be infuriated to see some blasphemy committed to one of his god's sacred sites for instance. Yeah, the player himself just won't be affected that way, but the character would be. Similarly if you've got some seductress trying to do her thing to one of the PCs, it's better for the DM to say how the character is falling for her allure as opposed to having the DM try to seduce the player out of character.
@@taragnor I agree with this, since it's trying to remind and convey to the players that something is horrific or would elicit some response like disgust, revulsion, fear, or even convey some initial sense of danger. Otherwise, the characters are just passively, sorta listening to what you say and just carrying on as if everything is just a numbers game. Wouldn't the cleric or druid be suddenly sickened stumbling upon the mass grave of dozens of goblins? The smell and gore and unnaturalness of that scene would make me take a step back and rethink things if I was there witnessing this. But no, I'll describe what they see and the player goes, do I see any weapons or armor to loot. Great, I'm glad I spent some time setting the tone and mood of this scene for you all to not even acknowledge it.
4:20 regarding the potion thing - you probably know this, but tasting a potion is a way to find out what it does rules as written. that's probably what ur players are doing
As an adherent of John Wick and his Play Dirty books--I'm all about letting the combat monsters be _awesome._ They spent their points to be better at combat, so, when combat comes out, I want the gunslinger, jumping from car to car, doing backflips, shooting enemies in the eyes. Let the Hacker and the cop huddle behind cover and shoot center-of-body mass. Show everyone _why_ you are a _two-fisted God of Guns!_ Everyone gets their time to shine (Statements from the hacker: "Really? They put me in a cell with computer access? Do they _know_ what I can do?" "How do the robots get their orders? Please say Bluetooth.") When it is their time to shine, let them make their rolls and encourage them _to be awesome._
If I screw up when designing a key encounter or boss fight, and give the NPC too many (or too few) hit points, I *sometimes* fudge their health during the combat. I don't want to make a climatic fight boring or a TPK because of my poor planning. However, if the players short-circuit the encounter by being clever, I let them do it. For example, a major combat while climbing a 200 foot tall vertical cliff, and the bard casts a spell that makes the boss fall to the ground laughing uncontrollably - he didn't survive the falling damage, and the fight ended in the second round.
Sometimes my players destroy my best plans, things I'm setting up to make the game more interesting later. Like killing a BG before he could escape and return later as the BBG. In my style what happens is what happens. No BBG escape via GM fiat. Sometimes less interesting but sometimes more interesting. But my players KNOW that their actions matter.
I once put a hydra encounter in front of my players and they were probably a little underclasses for…it was looking rough with the hydra heads doing what they do…i even said “guys I might have messed up on this one, I’m sorry for putting this monster up in front of you” they looked at me and all said genuinely “dude this puzzle of a monster is awesome! Etc etc.” They we’re having a blast even though the battle was going south. After foregoing several retreat options, They ended up defeating it through amazing creativity ... that wouldn’t have happened if I had fudged dice, tried to balance it, or have this bloodthirsty hydra just “retreat just cuz”. That being said: if you play a brutal style game, you better darn sure have a really cool plan for if there is a TPK. A deal with a devil for their soul, an adventure in purgatory or the hells, they speak with a god who tells them “your time is not over” etc. Something where the TPK makes the party say “wow, that was a wild TPK” and not “darn, we TPK’d and now I’m bummed.”
I think their comment could also reasonably be understood that, even in a campaign where everything skews deadly, it's good to periodically toss an easy encounter the party's way. It reminds them where they've been, humble beginnings, but also drives home that this world is not balanced, and sometimes, you'll just be outclassed.
Agreed on the milestone leveling. In a game I'm playing in, the DM gave us a milestone level in the middle of a siege. It was so very weird to suddenly have access to new spells magically, but have even gone through a long rest. Dear DMs, it's okay to space out the milestones.
Well, that's not a problem of milestone system. The same thing would happen if you reached the required XP amount just before/during the siege. And here's the kicker, both end up in you, magically, knowing new spells and abilities. There are ways around this, like having party look for mentors who will (upon looking at plot coupons/XP amount) train them. I personally would love this, especially as DM (it reinforces OSR kind of vibe, town vs wilderness) and it doesn't break immersion. The trick is : NO ONE WANTS THIS. And for good reason. It's not practical. Suddenly, you can ONLY level up that way. TLDR :No matter what, they will magically get their upgrade, because it's way easier then coming up with in game reasons for power boosts.
@@Mirekluk Oh, I know it's not an issue with the Milestone system specifically. This was a DM problem, not a leveling issue. I love the milestone leveling because of it's narrative focus. Apologies if I was unclear.
@@Jhaiisiin I mean, not really. Your characters don't just get better at what they knew before (like raising proficiency bonus) but they LEARN new things. Worst offenders are spells. No matter the narrative (unless done the mentor to lvl up path) you are destined to look into your spellbook one day and find more spells then last time you opened it. Same can be told about martial abilities too though. Not every ability has direct link to previous practice, therefore doesn't make sense that just by honing current skills you acquire new ones.
@@Mirekluk Really, only the spellbook bound casters have that weirdness. I have met some DMs who won't even let spellbook casters add new spells unless they've specifically taken time to acquire them at some point during the game sessions. Not something I necessarily agree with, but it's a thing that some do. At least when I'm DMing, I always provide downtime when the milestone happens, and try to provide it periodically between milestones as well so that it helps the feeling of acquiring things through learning rather than spontaneous poof new skill or whatever.
Yeah, and that is great that you do. I personally in play found out that even if I care about progression being tied to narrative (aka how the hell did you learn it), my players don't. The reason is simple : Too much work for something we can handwave. And no, that weirdness can be brought to anything class gives you. Martials abilities for example. You can play it like it's an Aha! moment when you level up, but I still find it somehow... off. Makes more sense to me that xp/milestone is requirement to learn those abilities, rather then opening the gate. And I just personally am biased toward mentor npcs.
"Don't tell me how my character feels" is part of why I hate bards. "I play my lute a bit, and you are inspired by that." Uh, no I'm not? "I do a special dance, which makes you want to fight harder." I can tell you for a fact that it does not.
In 5e, bard abilities are explicitly magical. You feel inspired in the same way as a fear spell makes you feel afraid; you're literally being forced to by magic.
4:50MY personal anecdote on this subject is asking a rogue like player if they really want to put an immoveable rod in the path of the charging horse. The other players didn't think this was a good idea but this player thought it would be a good plan to stop to horse. The out come was the player didn't get out of the way in time and was crushed under the dead horse and was left by his party like that until the incident that this action precipitated was resolved. This player is still in the group and sometimes listens to what the other players suggest as a bad idea.
I had a session where one of the party was enveloped by a cloaker. The dwarven artificer _REALLLLLLLLY_ wanted to shoot it. Since this involved the _head_ (and possibly life,) of another player's character, I nudged him toward reconsidering. He was so attached to the idea, that he actively fought me at the table over the subject. His position was that he assumed we were not playing with friendly-fire rules in play. I pointed out that I'd never said as much, and also, that even if generally, friendly-fire wasn't a consideration, I didn't feel it was appropriate to just meta that fact by blasting away at his fellow adventurer's skull. Eventually, he backed down, and accepted that if he did so, there would be consequences. Even more eventually, he left my table. I was sad to see him go, as generally, he was a fun player to have around, but... I don't know. Was I wrong? I still don't feel I was.
As a GM who's running PF2e custom world game, I'm not a dungeon delving type that wants encounter after encounter of pointless fighting...it's fine for those who do, just not my kind of games is all. I like the set up of the system though so I use it. If you don't want a collaborative story game don't sit at my table. This is where the touching of tips between player and GM's comes in. Setting expectations is both needed and important to the players and the GM. My pet peeve is GMs who are dishonest about what they're running just get butts into their seats at their table. Everyone ends up miserable in the end due to this. Also, anyone who runs games but is now playing a game...if they're not running it how you do that's their business and if you don't like it don't play at that table. Not sure why this is so difficult to do. Like when you're buying a car be ready to get up and walk away from the table.
I have told players how their characters feel before and most of the time I hit it spot on but when I haven't they tell me so and I say okay then you don't feel that way and move forward. I basically use it as a suggestion and let them override because it's their character.
I avoid this at all costs- even when I know both the player and their character like the back of my hand. Not because I might get it wrong, but because it doesn't matter if I get it right- I'm taking away their opportunity to consider how their character feels, and to portray that feeling.
@@Kaotiqua I would agree with you if you're playing with experienced players but I've got some much less experienced players that kind of needed a nudge from time to time.
I roll everything - attack rolls, saving throws, even hit points - infront of the players, the only time I do hidden rolls are for stealth and death saves if they come up. they know how many hit points an enemy has from the moment they hit that enemy, and we find out together. I don't create balanced encounters, I create interesting scenarios for my players to deal with. I can't fudge dice and I won't fudge dice, not even I can save them from the will of the dice all that can is their ideas and plans. survival mechanics... I have my own mechanics that I designed to be circumvented with rations and water but not easily with magic its means to reward planning and forethought and make them weigh the options "is this day of rations worth its weight in gold? I mean we're only 3 days away from town..."
Not fudging dice has led to some of the most exciting moments of my DMing life. Fudging dice has also saved myself from having the hottest dice at the table or my own poor planning. It's a tool, like any other, just don't over do it
@@colorpg152 cheating implies the game really has rules. If I'm building bosses from scratch and testing them for the first time at the table with friends I'm not exactly worried about what the book says I should do. The players have a very narrow set of tools, but the DM has a lot of space to make the adventure too easy or too hard. Fudging is how you keep the adventure at the level you intended. it should be used appropriately, like any tool. To much and the players will feel the edge of danger disappear, too little and they die to bad design
@@BouncingTribbles the player are not your toys and nobody said they need to feel danger that is just your assumption, this is a role playing game not a action game
@@colorpg152 who said anything about the players being toys? I said they have tools too. I'm the world though, they just play one person at a time, according to the rules anyways. I'm on the don't do it to much side of things, as I've said, but I've also rolled more crits in one night (while not fudging roles) then any of my players. Having a couple orcs slaughter your whole party because you roll max crit damage 3 times in a row might be some DM's style, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. People do want the encounters to seem dangerous for their characters, but they also don't want to be completely outclassed and slaughtered. As always, balance in all things. And just so you know, Dungeons and Dragons IS an action based TTRPG. Otherwise it would have rules for diplomacy, or having a day to day life. The DND rulebooks are 90% combat. Try Vampire the Masquerade or another intrigue system if you're actually interested in role playing. Every DM and every group will have a different vibe. My last regular group had 5 wargamers in it, you better believe they wanted the encounters to be challenging and feel dangerous. I've also DMd for much less aggressive gamers, and they spent a lot more time talking to the inkeeper's wife. They didn't want every fight to be life or death, instead they liked the threat of danger, suspense, and creepy fae bullshit. Fudging is for when you plan for party A but end up playing with party B
one thing you could do instead of milestone or exp, is basically a mix of both. you could call it exp with less steps or milestone with more steps tbh you set a number of milestones for a level up, and give them lots of tiny milestones they don’t know about yet. if they do anything unexpected that could be a milestone, that’s a milestone too it keeps things from being “that monster was 200 exp, that one was 500 exp” and you don’t have to count the exact exp. but it also still lets you and your players feel a sense of progression to the next level, if they know how many milestones they need, and how many they have if you’re too afraid of them overleveling somehow, first of all, don’t be, second of all, you can always just gate certain levels behind certain milestones. i don’t necessarily think you should, but it’s an option i know people will say it’s just what already exists, but different… but i feel like it’s what already exists, but neater and with clear expectations set for players
For one campaign, I simply awarded everybody ONE point at the end of every session they attended. Each level cost that level's number of session points to reach. Level 2: 2 sessions. Level 5, five sessions. It worked out well, and I gave players opportunities to catch up if they had to miss a session, but it didn't happen often. Two birds: one stone. ;)
Moar great content !! Before I jump let me start by saying as DM for (fcuk, way too long!!) years, in a game with 3 or more players you will have people voicing all of these, creating a wonderful “group contradiction” - this is why it’s so important to session 0, spotlighting and session reviews …. Are we “all” having fun. 1. DMPC - what’s the clear unambiguous role of this plot device (be use that’s what it better be) - set up and get out 2. If there is no tension and no outcome that is risk/reward based, just do it in “free mode” - players succeed at whatever it is they’re trying to. If there are risks in a pillar, set them clearly - this goes for combat (which is relatively easy as hps, consumables (like spells, potions, daily (sorry long rest) abilities that are in play - in exploration this was traditionally burning touches, random encounters, “the doors close behind you”., in Social usually there is simply succeed/fail in the moment, maybe end up in a jail or the gallows, maybe banished from a kingdom or local tavern. Games like BiTD (and you can also use ICRPG) advice have progress clocks, or countdown clocks … in the open for all to see. If you use Doom or Chaos (Dishonored) the DM has a build up pool to make the next “Combat” more deadly. Don’t be afraid to change the scale. Yes, it’s a wilderness journey, describe what happened, even have a top level “combat” or scene resolution, but the rolls describing outcome happen as the heroes’ get into the next danger scene… maybe the outcome was loosing coin, a condition you don’t notice, lost equipment … or literally run the scene as a Flashback bringing this consequences directly into the present scene (BiTD again) 3. Let my PC swing across the room, land feet first on the bannister, peppering the goblins with arrows as I slide down. Absolutely!! In BiTD, id engage with the player to say “ok, that sounds desperate, but you can keep standard effect; or positioning is controlled, but it’s a lesser effect; or you can roll stress and do both.” The trade offs are baked in; in D&D could be, absolutely you can do that, but at the end of your attack you’ll make a check (l think acrobatics and athletics are applicable) or you can use any skill at disadvantage for a Dex check. If you fail, you take double damage from any attacks in the following round. In other game terms you’ve lost “position” 4. I haven’t rolled a d20 as a DM since early 3rd edition. I’ve referred to this as Active Playing forever, but now a days fiction first, player pov seem to be common. Usually I’ll roll the damage or take average, but, I tell the player at the time of the attack - “The hill giant swings his club with ferocious force that will likely leave you prone and broken in half if you fail to defend; the attack will do 32 hp damage). Players roll d20 Ac plus their bonus (which is just AC-10 (players get the extra half point!!). Same for saves … (FYI - players can roll the D20 as advantage on attacks and take disadvantage on their defensive rolls ; great for when the ranger at the back of the party thinks they’re hidden and choose to be “wreckless”, and the goblet assassin sneaks up) No fudging, even with Fudge 5. Plot is not Railroading. Being the “Hero” doesn’t mean “Winning”. If we don’t want an empty box, setting background makes the sandbox interesting. The PCs need an active stage to reflect off, the world around them has their own actions, and the world changing around the players helps them feel part of the world without their own agency. All this crap allows the DM to react naturally to the players, no box reading, no looking up rules, no ending the game because an adventure wasn’t prepped. And finally players, remember you’re not the only one on the other side of the scene. Do what the group wants at all time …
In regards to player chugging unknown potions, isn't it written in one of the core rulebooks that a PC can taste-test a potion to know what it does without suffering consequences for it?
the music in this video gave me feelings... good video subject, and yes, boxed text lore dumps are terrible, also yes, taking away character agency and wasting the players time is Bad.
"Your character feels..." is totally okay. Of course it depends upon the setting but I don't fricken care about player's agency in certain moments. In the present of an Elder Dragon, a Balrog, a god etc. I tell them what they feel. What they make out of that and how they react to that is totally their thing. But those are the exceptions, the moments when reality is all the sudden shattered by their encounter. In "normal" world situations of course it's it's to them to decide how they feel. When they stumble across the dead bodies of little children that starved to death they decide how their characters would feel. Definetely.
Players need to be on-board with the fantasy being told together at the table. They gotta lean into it. Their _agency_ should be in support of the experience and immersion and fun of the whole group at the table.
As for collaborative storytelling: With our DM we regularly do skill challenges in which we roll initiative to then overcome an obstacle like going from A to B in a cave system. We are then encouraged to come up with possible individual obstacles to solve with our skills. And I find this a nice change of pace, giving us more agency in how we want our character to help the group
In regards to the 'extroverts have a leg up' hypothesis, I feel this is something that really only applies at the extremes usually, and is largely dependent on how good of players you have. I think most of the time it's not an issue if you as the DM help your players understand why they should WANT to have their character interact with the other PCs in cool ways and sort of provide a mirror for them to get in character and push the more laid back players contribute to the decision making process, which is where I often see more introverted players struggle to feel comfortable asserting their ideas. That's where the whole group should have the emotional intelligence to support that player subtly when they do contribute, by taking their input seriously even if they don't push it as forcefully as the more outgoing personalities. Over time the less naturally assertive players will learn that their ideas are welcome and they will decide for themselves on how often they want to jump in. It's not really a bad thing IMO if a certain player doesn't want to always be the one making plans and decisions, as long as they feel comfortable and heard when they do provide input. It's only when the other players get used to someone not providing input and start bulldozing over their ideas that it becomes a problem. I've seen both ends of the spectrum. I've had players that I had to ask to take a step back a little and let the other players have more input, and I've had players that have a harder time naturally jumping in with input and tend to observe things from the sidelines unless prompted. At the end of the day we can't do everything as DMs, and creating a sense of comradery and mutual support where no one player hogs the spot light is ultimately on the players. Although the DM has the responsibility of making sure the players understand what constitutes acceptable behavior at their table, it's up to the players to apply these principles in good faith so everyone can have fun.
For the GMPC I was GMing the introlude to a Scion (Children of gods!) game and had the players basically play sidekicks to a badass fucking hero. The focus was still on the players, but they took care of the vermin and the situation around the Hero, and when one of the players tried to join in the main combat he got minched! This really set the game in perspective for when they became heroes themselves!
Controversial Take: I think red herrings can be great, but the key to making them not suck is to make the reveal an interesting twist that provides the party with new options, rather than a dead end. They may have not found what they we're looking for, but it still drives the plot forward and/or provides new options to the players. This is THE key to making this work. For example: Maybe the party has been trying to track down why children keep disappearing in the local village. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that the local medicine woman may in fact, be a witch. Evidence of her sneaking into the cursed magical woods in the middle of the night, rumors about her from the local towns people who already suspect her, the fact that children often go missing near the edge of the woods where she lives, and an amulet belonging to a missing child that she apparently dropped on the way into the woods one night, that was subsequently found by one of the search parties organized by the local church. After some investigating, the PCs find all these clues and determine that the medicine woman is probably a witch, and decide to break into her house in the middle of the night. Upon doing so their fears are confirmed, and they discover the witch inside her hut, brewing an odd concoction over her cauldron. Que epic battle, during the fight the witch starts using mind probing spells to figure why the fuck the party is in her house, and quickly realizes that they believe her to be the reason for the missing children. At this point she goes invisible and starts trying to negotiate with the PCs and explains that no, she is not the reason for the missing children, and in fact she has been trying to figure out where the children are going, as she has encountered several undead children who have been turned into ghouls lurking in the edge of the forest. She tells the party that the undead she encountered were clearly not mindless, but were under control of a necromancer. She presents some evidence, and the party is convinced. The witch offers to help guide the party after convincing them she is a nice witch and means no harm to the village. A tenuous alliance is formed, and the party and witch rest up before venturing together into the woods in search of the source of the ghoulish infestation. After some adventuring, they find the necromancers lair deep within the cursed wood. They clear out the base of minions and capture the necromancer, hoping to interrogate him to find the rest of the children. To their horror, they realize that the necromancer is actually the head priest of the local church, the one who gave them the amulet in the first place, and the one who started the rumors about the medicine woman in the first place. Que oh shit moment for the party. The party finds the remaining children and rescues them, kills the necromancer and his minions, and returns the region to a state of peace. They agree not to tell the witches' secret so long as she makes a blood pact to never harm the village and to always watch over them. I guarantee if you ran that adventure correctly it would slap. Anyways I just spent entirely to much time coming up with that example, hopefully someone enjoyed it haha.
I had an NPC send the party on a quest to a ruin weeks away in the wilderness. Played out the whole journey. Yeah there was nothing there, that dude just got rid of them so he could steal something uninterrupted. If they had asked anyone else, or maybe pushed him a bit more, or visited the library, they could have saved the time. As it stood, they got fooled and *hated* that guy worse than any spooky villain I ever created
Re challenge Some of my best encounters were mixed sets of powerful and weak foes. One where weak technicians were scrambling to turn on powerful golems, and another where cannon fodder infantry were being necromatically raised into powerful Frankensteinesque monsters when they weren't scared away.
I do not play for power fantasies (I feel like an oddity when I say that) but I find that occasionally confronting high level pc's with low level adversaries helps maintaining coherence to the world. That way the characters a) are acutely aware of their progression and b) don't ever had that feeling of "how long has it been since we last saw a kobold? I wonder what happened to them. One day they just decided to stop raiding villages or whatever, I guess"
But to me I can't avoid the why are the kobold attacking the high level party? Kobold aren't stupid, they attack the low level character because they think they can win, I doubt they would feel the same about higher level PCs. Similarly, the higher level PCs now have more important things to deal with than raiding kobolds.
@@n3kkidninj4 I mean, high level is not always noticeable at first sight. Someone without the expertise or the resources might just think those are pretty weapons and armor, not necessarily magical ones. On the other hand, kobolds might not specifically attack the pc's. Maybe some npc from the past comes to the pc's to ask them to make good on their words (ten levels ago: "if you ever need help, don't hesitate to come to us, we'll be glad to lend a hand"). Or maybe the pc's are on their way to some other place in an important mission and they just find themselves in the middle of a low level war between the village they were counting on resting in and some kobold colony. The attacks are every night, the people are scared and desperate and they know no one cares becsuse no one has answered their pleas for help, so they ask the pc's for help, a good aligned party should have a hard time saying no to that people. Maybe that is some of the pc's birthplace, maybe their families live there, will they forsake their families because they "have something more important to do"? Also, maybe those attacks have a reason. Maybe the kobolds were a peaceful tribe minding their own business but someone came and took possession of all their eggs and now they have to be at their new master's bidding or risk their children be murdered. Maybe that new master is nothing more than a pawn of a deeper darkness playing their part in a much more ambitious plan. Maybe this is some side plan by the BBEG meant to help him in their final evil plan and the players have stumbled upon it and have the opportunity to derail or, at least, delay said plans? I don't know, being the GM one has all the answers, you can work out a way to include one of such encounters or side adventures once in a while as a way to keep coherence and signal the party's actual current power and also make it meaningful and maybe actually important in some way for the pc's, the world at large and/or the current quest 🤷♂️
I am getting ready to a session 0 for my next Deadlands campaign, and one of our exercises includes listing your pet peeves. I did the exercise too, so everyone had to answer... Mine was "overpowered GMPCs..." Yup. I agree with that one.
I think weak monsters at higher levels isn't necessarily a bad idea... What I think is that its best to mix them in as minions to really big monsters... And I do think that thier stats should be enough that if you decide to ignore them that might be a mistake as they swamp you... but also that if you focus on them you take them out pretty easy like the whole minion monster idea that they had in 4th edition where a monster was there to take a hit and fall over but could still be a threat if you ignored it.
9:05 Player engagement is up to the group as a whole. As was hinted at multiple times in this video dm/player expectations gotta touch in the middle, and communication is a very important aspect of that. For example; at my table, half the players are the "introverted" (more the go with the flow, chill to just do what the rest of the party wants) type, two are a bit more middle-of-the-road while still leaning more towards chill, and myself, the definitive extrovert of our table. Our Not-Quite-Forever DM is also an extrovert, so when she's not DMing, it can be hard for us to not hog the limelight. After one session, the DM had a chat with one of the introverts because they were having a hard time connecting with and enjoying their character. DM made some story bits and spotlights for that character previously that went ignored, so DM was feeling frustrated as well. DM and I were talking about what she could do to bring that player and the others (back) in to get them more engaged, and I realized what I could do. From that session on, when the DM would present a situation that needed to be solved, or murder suspects to interrogate, etc., etc., I would wait for a bit and if no one stepped forward, I would with a, "I'm going, and [Introvert 1/2/3's Character] is going with me!" by dint of requesting their assistance with whatever task was at hand. I found that bringing their character along and talking about whatever cockamamie scheme I'd cooked up and asking their input both in and out of character gave them a chance to voice their opinions (IC and out) and get their characters involved, even if it was my character starting the interaction. After a few sessions of this the introverts even started initiating plans/ideas/actions on their own! It's actually been a relief for me, since I'm not constantly having to find a reason to insert myself into all these scenes that aren't for me, and it doesn't feel quite so much like it's just me and the DM playing anymore. tl;dr If you're an introvert, talk with your DM about ways to signal that you have something you want to say/do/etc., or talk to one of your more extroverted friends outside of game about helping you be heard (or if your group has such a bad problem talking over each other, maybe talk with the whole group about it). If you're an extrovert, keep an eye out for your introverted friends, and if you notice they haven't said/done much in game lately, find ways to pull them in. We're all here to have a good time, yeah?
I really have only done a single survival type encounter in a TTRPG and I think worked out wonderfully. I recently ran Trail of Tsathogguah from the Call of Cthulhu 40th Anniversary box and the players encountered the Gnoph-Keh (big snow monster) on their way to the objective. I did fudge that the monster was summoned because the players arrived too slowly but that was because the game had been pretty slow and non-lethal up until that point and my group is more action oriented so I wanted to give them something to actually fight or flee from. This turned into a two session encounter of a lot of running away and shooting at the monster. They eventually forced it to flee but one of the PCs was horribly gored but still alive lost in the snow storm the monster created. As a result I had them roll various survival based checks (Navigation, Tracking) to find their way back to the camp through the blizzard while requiring them to make constitution rolls to survive through the frigid temperatures while wounded. Meanwhile another group of PCs that were in poor shape but better off went looking for her and had to make similar checks and ultimately had to turn back as they were going to die of exposure as they kept rolling poorly. It turned into a really dramatic scene even after the monster fled as the wounded PCs made it back to camp with exactly 1 HP having passed the constitution checks 3 rounds in a row just barely. It was quite intense and dramatic because it could go either way based on the result of a single roll. That being said it works in a tense situation where the risk of death is looming, I would be less into it if it was just making people roll various survival skills checks across days of travel to prevent them from dying in the wilderness. Shortcut stuff like that and have the players make a group check or elect a player to make the survival skills check and if they fail it either extend their travel time (the party gets lost or the path disappears for a bit, or there has been unusually heavy rainfall so the river they have to cross is flooded and unsafe to traverse at that point) or force them to stumble into an extra encounter so it eats up some of their resources. Maslow's hierarchy of needs applies to TTRPG PCs as well, if your players can only roll to find food, water, and shelter every day it becomes hard for them to progress through a story as they are struggling to survive.
The boxed text is something I use to keep myself on track and try to remember how the dungeon or scenario connects. If I'm running something which is totally off the cuff, I give a basic decription and embellish as needed. IF I can remember enough without reading text, I'll try to give a condenced version and embellish as needed. I've also used flexi HP for monsters, not to reach a certain round count, but more in place of fudging dice when the players aren't doing well, or when I want to push the tension up a bit. It's also easier for me to track player damage dealt, rather then monster HP remaining, so sometimes I'll look at a total and decide that's enough for a kill. Regarding the first point, I can't count the number of times I didn't read all the text or recall enough details from a published adventure, then realize the encounter played out in a way that foils other encounters or where I missed something crucial in an encounter and now have to figure out how to work it back in. On the other hand, published adventures themselves work somewhat like a single text box; they just provide a starting point to build from.
Because I'm not very good at determining how hard to make an encounter I will frequently make the encounter what I think is doable (which turns out to be easy because I always underestimate with the players can accomplish) and then I will a up the encounter if it's proving to be too easy. A monster screams for help and help arrives, if it's getting too hard The monsters feel they're getting overwhelmed and morale starts to break. I try to get creative about it so it's not predictable and it remains interesting and plausible to the players. I also adjust the rewards based on how well they do. Even if the players realize I am doing this they will also realize that if they kick major butt unexpectedly that I will reward them greatly.
One thing I like to do is to note the medium and maximum hp a monster can have with their hit die, if things are going too easy I just crank up the hp to be the maximum for that monster . Works fine. Tho if thinks are going too hard, I just look at my players with that face that says "I'm sorry little one" as I beat their assess
using goblins with high level party is great. i use that a lot of times. all those little battles waste resources they may need for the BBEG. each night the goblins attack and not giving the party a good night sleep so no spells back, no hp's back. my group plays 3.5
The "are you sure?" does work, but as a DM I try to extrapolate as much as the character could be aware of. I use a combination of the Mental/Social Traits (Int,Wis,Cha) mixed with the background and playstyle of the character in question. Int characters generally get more if/then scenario descriptors for Int ability situations, and the same for the others; Wis for situations that would require gut feelings or Instinctual threats, and Cha for social missteps & dangers.
The only time I 'massage' the hit points of a monster in combat is if I forgot some ability earlier, like regen or advantage and 'made it up' later to extend the combat for dramatic or challenge purposes.
There's always great advice in these sorts of videos and breakdowns, but I've learned it's extremely situational to the sort of group you have to work with, and it can be easy to let general complaints get to you. For instance, telling players how their character feels - my group doesn't tend to roleplay as much. It's just how we function, they tend to like having a clear direction and they don't go out of their way to be 'in character', so for certain moments that relate to backstory or big character driven reveals, giving them an emotional frame of reference can help them make more character-driven choices. This is a rare thing, and I don't outright say 'this is how you feel' unless asked, but for my group in particular, it can be a helpful element to the game. Similarly the 'box text' aspect - the players are mostly respectful of longer descriptions and will wait to ask questions, but previously I had tried to avoid long-winded 'cutscenes' or narrative descriptions, feeling like it was a little too close to railroading or sapping player agency. For a more roleplay-oriented group, it might well have been the right instinct, but not at my table. Returning to longer descriptions and, more importantly, narrating certain key moments rather than just opening it up to the table, has helped to improve the energy and focus of the entire group and has made a definite positive impact all around. I think it's important to recognise that there are a lot of groups out there that just do not embrace the 'roleplay' aspect of the game to the extent that people generally expect - and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. My group are just a bunch of people who want to get together once a week and catch up and engage in a dynamic interactive story where they can get space-sharks high and explode things - and that's okay. They aren't going to hold conversations in character, they're not terribly interested in the social or political aspects of the game world and they don't tend to care too much about saving the day - though they will if that's the story we're telling. And to tell the truth, most of the groups I have been in have been the same way. So if anyone else is watching this and second-guessing themselves, remember that not all advice applies to all groups, you're not failing as a GM if your group doesn't RP and when in doubt, ask your players. They'll probably surprise you.
Pre-Made characters is tempting because you can guarantee you will not end up with sir dick diggler gnome devil Paladin. Players cast lots of stones at GMs, but they are far more guilty of ruining games by sheer number.
I found this better with inexperienced players or a very specific type of campaign, like something based on an existing franchise that the PCs just can't be anything outside the lore or else it breaks the basics of having a game set in that specific universe
Not every encounter has to be a challenge itself so much as it should act to challenge your player's threat assessment and resource management. "Easy" encounters can also be a great way to introduce something the players will encounter moving forward, giving them an opportunity to recognize the clues you've given and prepare accordingly.
I'm reminded of Shadowrun's "Common Sense" merit. I always used it as a GM cause then only the people who devoted resources to it got the full "are you sure you want to do that?"
There is a time and a place, albeit rarely, for virtually everything everybody is complaining about. The hallmark of a good DM is to utilize them only when needed and only when value is added. In other words, it would likely be a worse experience for the majority of players at the table to NOT do the thing. The end-all be-all to all of this is a DM it's crucial to develop the tools to think on your feet, not be beholden to planning, and to KNOW your players and what they want. Frequent communication and solicitation of HONEST feedback is crucial for you to learn what the players at your table really like and dislike. Then, serve up only what the majority like. It's deceptively simple. DMs need to get over the "I'm telling a story" or even "We're telling a story." The good DM prepares. The bad DM plans. Your #1 job as DM is, quite simply, to ensure the maximum amount of people are having the maximum amount of fun, and want to return to the next session. Period. It's that simple. It's not about ensuring the simulation is accurate. It's not about ensuring the rules are followed. It's not about ensuring that the story is enthralling. It's not making sure encounters are balanced just right. Those things MAY be important...or they may not. One group of players may love lengthy detailed boxed text, or burdensome investigation with multiple leads that turn out to be red herrings. Or the majority of your players may hate them. Every table is different. The key to being a great DM is finding this out, and then sticking to it. Furthermore, it also means accepting if you've put together a table of players who are just looking for something very different, In that case, majority wins, and the minority should probably go find another table that suits their playstyle. Some DM's are far too congenial and try to mix things up to keep everybody happy. That can work when the disparities aren't that great, but when they are, you need to let people go.
The survival game idea did seem like an interesting setup. It would probably be more rule and settings with some random events and weather systems. Trying to design it a bit like a D&D version of "The forest" and you find things you need to get your players to gradually improve their situation. You'd really need players that would be able to enjoy that sort of scenario just.
9:45 I often only describe big things that happen and I USUALLY only start doing it giving a brief example of how the monster/subject/etc is reacting to the action and then letting the player decide from there. I give a diving board but I have too cause of who are in my games... they're not super instigating roleplayers but when I give them a jumping point they take it away.
This is a fun one - I've played "D&D" since 1978 and many other systems besides. Here are some of my thoughts on a few points: @2:40 - I never do this, and no one in our group does this. If we're running pre-generated characters, the mechanics of the characters are generated but the personalities are left to the players. None of us are professional (or even amateur) actors and we're not going to spend any significant time "getting into character" for a role we aren't invested in, or at least interested in. YMMV, naturally. I think this would be an amazing exercise for actual acting groups, amateur or professional, since it's exactly the sort of thing that they can apply to their acting. @5:49 - Totally get this. When running pre-packaged scenarios I tend to skim and summarize these "boxed text" passages and then ask the players if they need clarification. I try to give salient "environmental" details in the summary ("The room is very damp and the walls and floor are rather mossy", etc) without getting too crazy. My goal is to shorten it by at least half, if not more, since we can roleplay the exploration and detail-gathering from there. Basically, try to give the players an "at-a-glance" version of the giant, encyclopedic blurb. @6:49 - I'm on the fence here, myself. My group generally plays games with some sort of "social skills" attached to characters, like D&D's Diplomacy skill, and when a roleplaying session is in progress we still almost always have situations where a PC is trying to convince a NPC to do or accept something. This is naturally a great opportunity for "mechanical interaction with the game", since though the GM might know logically that the NPC should accept or refuse, making a social skill check to accomplish this is a better way of determining the NPC's knowledge and attitude toward the proposal and the proposing PC. @7:50 - In this case it's difficult. The GM can't be the only person responsible for a player's enjoyment. Maybe the player would benefit from examining their character and adjusting their character's behavior to be more assertive, then trying to "get into character" for the session. I'm no psychologist, but this helped me be more proactive in gaming sessions when I was young. "Don't split the party" is a common mantra, but occasionally splitting off players, in town during downtime, for example, is a good way to ensure each player gets some of that "spotlighting" as you point out. @9:15 - Repeating the actions back is something that I do when I'm not sure I completely understand what the player wants. I don't "repeat", I "summarize". This lets the player stop me before I take any action that might be dependent upon my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the player's intent. @14:26 - Tuning every single encounter into a life-or-death situation is a little much in my opinion. A warehouse is going to be guarded based on the average threat in the area, not on "that group of adventurers that the GM is sending this way" unless the NPC "leader" was somehow tipped off (which is valid, but not EVERY DANGED TIME). As the comment notes, the character capabilities are automatically adjusted for in every aspect of the world and this is one way to break immersion that is a little insidious. "I'm more powerful, so general things should be easier" is a natural way to think. Key encounters should be balanced, since we can assume the villain has some reason to expect stiff opposition, but the bartender shouldn't be armed with a 30 Diplomacy skill just to oppose the players while they're gathering information. Naturally, sometimes the difficulty is just a reflection of the actual adventuring environment - see S1: Tomb of Horrors as an example. @17:28 - This ties right back to 2:40. The GM hands me a pre-written character, then when I don't interpret the GM's precious NPC for whom I'm rolling dice the GM will attempt to tell me that their pre-written character wouldn't behave this way. This is why it's a bad idea for GMs to hand out pre-written characters (as opposed to pre-generated character stats). The GM becomes both the director and actor in their own play and the players become random number generators with no actual volition. My reactions to these are based on things I've seen over the years in various groups using various rule systems, both as a GM and as a player. The best way to address literally all of these issues is to sit down as a group and pick any bones you have with the GM's style, the other players, and even some of the rules/house rules. This helps to get that "GM expectations vs player expectations" friction out of the way.
Me as DM: "Ok, so do we want to play D&D or maybe Warhammer Fantasy this weekend?" Pla yers" "Er, yeah D&D would be great!" Me as DM: "Wrong, it's Call of C'Thulhu."
Something I think would be fun when it comes to premade characters, is to let the players make characters for each other. If it's a group of friends that have played already, I foresee a lot of fun when they get each other to play out of their usual style. Getting the brooding rogue to be a sweet cleric granny. Getting the orderly paladin player to be a crazy wild magic sorceror. etc.
I'M not a great gm, but I've had players do things in such a way that there were times that rolling wasn't necessary because what they did was out of the scope of the character of the potentially hostile npcs. They had more fun thinking things through rather than rolling sometimes because it allowed them to roleplay better. I think this is both something that a player has to understand, as well as the GM understanding their PCs. Doing it right makes it more entertaining, especially when they are doing it as a group.
I had a great session where a low INT dwarf barbarian got bored in a hags hut, and as the other PCs had a conversation, he went off to find 'a drink'. The character unwittingly found an alchemist lab table, and went 'looking for the bottle that smells of alcohol the most'. He found it, and the player announced, without my "Are you sure?", he'd down it in one gulp. I didn't even allow him a save at this point. Character died instantly, player was speechless, then laughed his head off. It was memorable and incredibly funny and sad at the same time. Kids gloves = not always necessary.
Spotlighting can be crazy hard sometimes. I've ran a table for years that had 3 really out going people, that where all involved in some form of stage performance for their hobby and 2 guys that where really introverted. It could be a job to prevent the game from turning into a huge trio stage show. Don't get me wrong, they where great, you'd only have to give them a few words and they'd turn it into a stage play through improvisation, but it would also turn the other two players into their audience. Which isn't what's supposed to happen. I mostly managed to solve it by enforcing mechanics. Calling for dice rolls and prompting often stopped the trio in their tracks and allowed the more subdued duo to get their foot in the door through the skills their characters had. We played a system that wasn't as combat focused as D&D is and there where a lot of different skills. So, having the duo know stuff, or pass a social skill where the trio did not forced them to take their place within the game and have mechanical backing to do so. It was something I had to learn to be mindful off however and be disciplined in. Especially when you're still trying to learn to find a good balance, which is surely different for every group. You don't want to annoy the more exuberant players by constantly interrupting their fun with "could you roll X for me." We're all different types of players with different types of interests, and it can be hard to get everyone to go along sometimes.
Can certainly be tough. The more out going ones can end up running the whole show with the quieter ones in tow. Ideally they're all passing the ball around and meaningfully including each other in the game. One option to keep track of who's gotten a chance, is as simple as tokens or chits. For each "scene" draw a chit and spotlight that PC first, then draw another chit and spotlight that PC next. Keep going until all have been spotlighted in that scene. Do the same for each "scene" thereafter. While "spotlighted" the others can surely help, but they aren't the one who is being focused on. All characters will have _something_ to do in a scene.
I think when things really start happening in a scene, having a quick check in with each player to make sure they're not getting bowled over by the enthusiasm of other players can be very helpful to introverted a newer players who aren't sure of their footing yet. I have been in situations where I've been trying to get a word in edgewise to address a quick character need but the scene gets swept away by others and it can be pretty frustrating, especially when the scene is escalating into a clusterfuck because of a minority of exuberant actors dragging others along. Edit:Props for Ace Rimmer. But of course, there's always a next Ace Rimmer! The Healthbar thing is a bit gamey. But one of the problems with video games and DnD (pretty often in my experience) is that they don't do a good job conveying the mount of fight left in an enemy. DMs tend to be pretty cagey about accurately describing how actually hurt an enemy is in an easy to understand way. What I've tended to see is that they'll describe a state change at 50 and 25% and maybe death's door. A healthbar would add transparency and a way for players to assess on their own how well they're actually doing.
I understand the Milestone issue. I've had DMs give 2-3 levels at certain points because our characters skipped a segment of the story and they need to be higher levels to match the part we're entering. However, I've also had sessions in which my party kills a dragon/demon after clearing a dungeon and we don't get a level because there's other stuff to do at our current level.
Recently, my players almost red-herringed themselves when solving a mystery. It was a murder/sabotage mystery in Legend of the Five ring, and the head investigator of the group, a Kitsuki samurai, went down the logical path of working out who has both the motive and the necessary knowledge to commit the crime, which did lead to quite a few suspects (the victim, the Champion of the Mantis Clan, had put quite a few noses out of joint, both in and out of clan, recently). Luckily, it didn't take the Kitsuki too long to realise that one important step in the plan could only have been done by someone with the ability to essentially travel between spirit realms at will, something they only knew a couple of people could do (one they'd recently killed), and who they also knew would have motive to want to kill said Champion, so a lot of potential time wasting was soon averted.
7:00 ME! I am a player that loves the GAME part of D&D, with a bit of Role Play for my spice at times of drama and tension. But mundane interactions, simple encounters with basic NPC's who are intended as info-dumps or quest givers without a huge link to the grand scope of the world, I am 100% going to check out of RP with them, and just sit back and let the RP-focused people at the table have a grand time. I am not an actor, I am a tactician and strategist, and those roles come out in D&D mechanically, MOST of the time, combat. Not always, true, and I love those RP sessions that actually play to my gaming strengths, but they are usually not very frequent.
When it’s coming to those kind of interactions, what I do is this I like to have a lot of RP so when it’s coming to persuasion, deception, and intimidation a lot of the time I have them at the highest DC they can be but depending on how the player role-plays it with their character I lower the DC. This is how you award good RPing and you still allow them to use their dice and their skills and basically how this makes sense is that the person has to make a good argument, and then the dice integrated that luck so perhaps say if you’re saying the right things but you catch them on the wrong day and they’re just being argumentative then it may still not work or you roll good but you made such a weak argument that it didn’t work anyway. But with this combination it encourages the good RP and still make sure players pray for those good rolls and to me personally it feels the most realistic and it puts the situation more into the players hand especially😁
I understand why people wouldn’t like DMs feeling them what their character would do. I am the exception I guess. I actually ask my DM and other players how they think my character would act in certain situations. I may have created my character but it has been shaped and evolved by the campaign and the other players/characters. I find it fun to get input and inspiration from the table. I often have to ask my DM about how they think my character would respond since we collaborated on my character’s backstory, and world lore, to make the campaign more interesting, dynamic, and fun.
I couldn't disagree more about fudging dice rolls. Not saving a character when they die because of incredibly bad luck is damaging to the whole campaign. I had one character that died like that and I let the dice rule. Because he died, and was level 1 and everyone else was level 8, he got bored and stopped showing up. Then his best friend stopped showing up and the other players did not want to go on without them. The whole long running campaign disappeared in a puff of smoke.
For the players asking for easy fight so they can "feel their power growing up", what I do as a DM that leans towards mostly deadly encounters (my players love the tactical combats, even too much for my taste), is that in those encounters sometimes there are minions that the PC now dispatch with ease, but remember how hard it was to deal with them not so long ago.
I had a gm once that used one of his pc power characters as an npc in a game of Rifts. My juicer went to a bar (for some reason) and ended up getting in a fight with a guy who looked like a nobody because that guy was being a dick to my juicer for no reason (which is something one does not do to a juicer unless that somebody wants an ass-whooping with extreme haste). My character got hit on the first swing (which is hard to do with a juicer), and got punched hard enough to destroy his armour (equal to protection like a battle tank) from a bare fist, which sent him flying across the bar. So, my character got up, dusted himself off, picked up his weapons from the locker the bar demanded he put them in upon entrance, and left. He then scaled the building across from the front entrance, then set up to snipe the bastard when he left. I told the gm my character would wait until the guy came out (which he did) and would snipe him in the noodle. I rolled a nat 20 to hit (crit), and the gm said my blaster rifle goes *click*, but nothing happens; all my ammo was gone, and my character sitting there for hours did not notice. A professional chem-enhanced super soldier merc didn't notice all his ammo was gone. He gave me a bunch of other bullshit for the rest of the game while his gf (my friend) got to do nothing but wait while her character was on a flight from Japan to NYC (anyone who plays Rifts will wonder how that is a thing that would happen). I beat his ass at Starfox 64 afterwards.
@youtubeuniversity3638 Nope. Just that it was gone. My character went and "convinced" the bouncer to tell, but all he got was a vague description of a guy who "went west".
I will describe what a character does because I want to encourage the player to interact more. Like I will start the description and ask them how it ends. This is a great way of getting players engaged, especially the players who tend to be wallflowers otherwise.
One thing about good game design, and I think this applies both to computer games and tabletops, is a good difficulty curve. Not, every encounter is hard or every encounter is easy. More like.. overall there's a steady escalation of challenge, but when you zoom in, you get peaks and valleys. The peaks raise tension, and the valleys release tension.
I try to use “your character realizes…” rather than “your character feels…”. This allows the player agency to decide how their character feels about the revelation of whatever they are reacting to…
I try to link it to a piece of the character's backstory or culture. "Where you're from, this is usually considered as ... ". But might feel different.
Oh, I like that and what @crowhaveninc said. I will try to incorporate some variation of those, because I am totally bad for this, lol
If the GM is there to describe the world and how the characters perceive it, then after divulging the info, the GM can ask the player how their character feels, or what the character wants to do.
The player roleplays their character based upon the world-information provided, which maximizes their agency.
The only possible exception, is when a GM calls out a PC for not playing in-character - based upon something established in the backstory or previously in play. Though, perhaps the PC is having a change of heart and trying a new direction. In that case, they need to talk about making changes to the backstory/canon so there isn't any future confusion.
I will tell the players what they feel when it comes to Spells. Your character feels fear, and wants to flee. Your character feels very friendly when Charmed.
I try not to take away player agency, but I will ask, "What is your character thinking? What is their motivation?" I won't stop them from doing something stupid if they justify their actions unless it derails the game.
I like to ask my players how their characters feel about things. After describing a monster I've even asked after a fear spell, What about this monster scares your character the most?
The red herring brings to mind Matt Mercer and The Chair. (The players for some reason fixated on this chair in the center of a room, and he kept telling them "It's... a _chair_ " And they kept digging for clues. It was like 15 minutes of non stop hilarity.)
Players create their own red herrings... no need for the GM to intentionally insert them.
Friend of mine had a similar situation in a game he DMed. Players got stuck on a saloon door because it "had no handle". They got stuck at the door for about half an hour even after my friend had a bunch of npcs just go through it to show how it works.
@@Xaxares WTF... it's in the name... it's a saloon door... have they never seen a movie?
What really bugs me is players that complain about your GM style but refuse to GM themselves because it’s too hard! 😡
Preach!
Real talk, I just had this conversation with one of my players last night. I'm a forever DM. Do you know how much I'd enjoy sitting down, tossing back some doritos, and just... *playing a game?*
But no. Instead I'm spending countless hours organizing a session, reworking stat blocks to actually balance a game, coordinating my players so that we all show up at the same time and place (which is like herding squirrels), and then putting down interpersonal conflicts while the PC's wipe the floor with my monsters in two rounds of combat.
I'm always happy to take constructive feedback. But increasingly, if something is just a matter of taste, and a player doesn't like how my taste runs, thus how I am doing things, I will happily say, "You can GM if you want." This almost always halts the whining.
That’s true that is so true 😂 in the group I play with everyone has DMed And personally I think this is the best practice for everyone everyone should eventually try it
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144 I couldn’t agree more. In my experience the best players are ones who also DM. Sounds like you have a great group.
I disagree HARD with the boxed text one. It is really annoying to me as a DM when players decide to go charging into a room before I've finished describing it, and they inevitably get upset when they experience consequences that would have been obvious if they had just let me finish my description.
DM: "You enter a large circular chamber. On the far end of the chamber is a large pedestal, but in the center of the room-"
Player: "I approach the pedestal"
DM: "Can I please finish my description of the room?"
Player: "I don't care about the rest of the room, I want to inspect the pedestal"
DM: "Fine, you run straight toward the pedestal and plunge straight into the 10 foot wide chasm that divides the room in half"
Obviously this is an exaggerated example, and I personally wouldn't actually make the player forcibly jump into the chasm, but my point stands. As the player, you should have the courtesy to let your DM give a full description before making any in character decisions, otherwise it will likely backfire.
1000% correct. She read a complaint earlier about not enough foreshadowing, and if that player has also ever complained about long descriptions they need to calm down. Perfect example of something the players want to have both ways
As a DM, you should avoid read-along text so your game more closely resembles a role playing game than a cut scene from a video game or story time in the children's reading room.
I'm not saying you shouldn't fully describe the scene, I'm saying you shouldn't break sequence so you can suddenly change voices from your natural voice to the voice that a professional author wrote a little blurb in, asking your players to take a little time out so you can indulge some completely unnecessary prose that you've already admitted your players aren't interested in.
Over all it is co-op game. So if over all everyone is having fun, i dont feel obligsted to change what i am do, i can but I dont have to. But if something just isn't working or ruining the fun then I should adjust. In any given group doing anything together there will be disgreements and even arguments, they just souldnt dominate or overshadow thing. Even on Critical roll you get glimps of it but they are doing a show, so that stuff it worked out off air and for the betterment of the show and maybe not player enjoyment.
It's fine to totally describe a room, I'm referring to box text though which tend to be big paragraphs of exposition that are narrated at the players, instead of engaging them.
If they don't let you describe, then let them describe how their character deals with the consequence of blindly charging in. DC should go up because they missed a lot of (or all of) the clues, perhaps even skip the DC if you can and just go full narrative.
Lethal consequences for characters may be a good learning experience for the players, if they don't misconstrue the lesson. The ones with 20 page backstories would flip their lid, while the ones with a 3 syllable backstory weren't likely as invested into the game to begin with. So YMMV.
It makes me think of landing on boardwalk and then skipping the payment to the owner. Games have rules, games have flows in how to play them. Anyone can play a RPG, but not everyone is gonna be good at them.
The specific purpose of those text boxes is that a professional writer made a blurb of descriptive text that can help the GM say a lot in a little amount of time. Of course they can be paraphrased and otherwise modified to suit the table, to the GM's best ability. There is demand for the descriptive text, at least by GMs, and there are places where it can be generated.
That last one about the DM dictating how my character feels really burns my biscuits. I hate it when DMs do that.
I learned not to describe things using an assumption of imposed feelings while playing MUDs. I was playing a MUD that allowed limited player building and found out how much other players hated room or item descriptions that include describing the reaction of their character. ("The velociraptor notices you as you look at him from across the room, and the cruel & voracious look in his eye fills you with dread.")
^-- things like that seemed innocuous when I wrote them, but after it was pointed out to me as objectionable (and why it was objectionable) I tried to ensure that descriptions were objective and didn't assume any effect or state internal to the character that encountered the thing.
My players secretly hate it when i press the button that electrifies their seat wherever they take damage in game but they've learned to stop complaining (complaining also results in a shock)
Yeah... I have one player that might actually encourage, lol. Let's not. Lol
Just send them to the shadow realm that should fix things.
Mmph. That’s a paddlin’
@twilightgardenspresentatio6384 and if they heal themselves after that's a paladin
Yeah but if you boost the damage they take by enough, they won’t ever be able to complain again. Unfortunately, they also can’t play again, so there is that.😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Probably the best session of Shadowrun I ever played in involved us tracking someone down in the Himalayas. My hacker almost died parachuting in, then failed almost all of their survival rolls. I don't know if it was as fun for the troll who ended up LITERALLY carrying my frostbitten cityboy ass the last few miles to safety, but I found it exciting as fuck. The GM STILL apologizes to me about that 7 years later, even though I constantly talk about how much fun I had, lol.
hey, it creates awesome RP sessions :D
@@dungeonsanddiscourse it definitely did, lol.
Had a fighter and cleric team fight a giant spider, kicked its butt, cleric had to keep the creepy NPC guide alive. DM thought we were not happy.
Next, later mountain path got our butts handed to us fighting a dozen large hairy jump style spiders. Fighter downed from poison, cleric cured poison. DM, thought we weren't happy because we yelled during the encounter.
Post game conversation the DM apologizes because we were unhappy with the game.
Smiling. "No. We're having fun. We're yelling in game to try and keep the team motivated and breathing." Your DM may misinterpret interaction. Sometimes need two-way communication.
I think this entire thing is a big lesson in
Not every table will be fun for every player, and not every player will be suitable for every table. Find the table that suits you best and you’ll have a long fun campaign. Try to shoehorn yourself into a table and you’ll just become resentful when you’re not having fun and blame everyone else.
The inconsistency of the hobby's participants will ultimately play a big role in the ruin of the hobby.
@@orokusaki1243 with millions of people in the hobby you will have differences, or inconsistencies, between tables. It's a fools notion to think every table needs to be a carbon copy of each other.
What we all need to do and learn, is to find people who want the same kind of game as us and enjoy playing with them. Not trying to force everyone to conform to our ideal of what we think is right and belittling everyone else for what we perceive as wrong.
That's what will be the death of our hobby.
@@norcalbowhunter3264 Hes not wrong though. Remember that whole Matt Mercer meme was a real thing.
The strongest hobby/game communities tend to be the smaller ones; because they all share some kind of common through-line, even if differences are exaggerated (I'm looking directly at the 40k fans). A modern gamer is often too self centered, or too hyper optimized to easily accommodate a differing play style; and THAT is by far the biggest issue when games/hobbies get more mainstream attention. And with how most video games adapt toward the player, the culture of multiplayer games (both video games and board games) have suffered in ways that aren't obvious until you encounter that one player who thinks they are above the game rules. After that, you start to recognize the gradients of this phenomena else where. If you're lucky, or a have a good friend group, these problems are easily manageable with some experimentation with house rules.
Finding people who the same game as you is often has hard as finding a regular raid group. And even knowing those dynamics, at least half the team ends up having to conform to the other half, just to keep the group routinely functional. And like any other similar social dynamic, eventually a whole group can collapse if those subservient players leave due to being ignored or mistreated.
The far better way to resolve this is to foster a culture of a flexibility and system literacy. Being able to debate the value of a rule or a system, or even a setting, and negotiate the highest number of overall requirements to fit the group's needs/wants. Having a deal breaker or two is normal for most people, and not a problem. Having too many deal breakers makes it difficult to be flexible, and will inevitably kill someone's interest in a hobby.
My friend group's specific interests are pretty polarizing when you look at them. One is into hardcore strategy and reenactment accuracy, one is big power fantasy with a minor messiah complex, one is into low fantasy and hard scifi, one is anime meme machine, and I'm more focused on game mechanics. 4 of us know how to rules lawyer, 1 of us does not. Despite how that sounds, we usually get along great. Because the through line here that if we find a problem or disagreement, we just rapidly prototype a solution and see if its better then the default rule. On a well made game, the logic of the default rules become obvious pretty quickly as we break them. If the game has a serious design flaw, we can maybe work around it. But we're willing to try. Same goes with lore settings, as we'll all respect the goal/mood of the setting, and make that our common goal.
Except for that 1 guy in our group. Because he doesn't understand most of the rules, hes prone to making things up as we go along to make what he wants to happen, happen. IF we can keep him on the rails, its not too much of a disruption. But its when he starts to INSIST for an outcome, and doesn't bother to explain why it should work in the context of the game (settings or rules), that the big arguments that grind the game to a halt start to happen. Hes socially oriented, while the rest of us are more technical. We also know he has this same problem in other circles, because when he gets tired or bored, he'll start to ignore frame work to keep himself in the active spot of the game. So for him, we need games with shorter turns, so he feels like hes doing something.
And this lends to a small conundrum. Can a player like him be put in a group with like minded players, and it goes smoothly? I kind of doubt it would, due to how the motivations are.
While communities and hobbies are usually interchangeable as terminology, this is still distinct from "groups" of players that may exist within and across multiple hobbies. At bare minimum any given group should have a common appreciation of some core aspect of that section of a hobby. So within that idea, Warhammer is not a single hobby. Its at least 4 different hobbies that coalesce under a single IP. And as far as I can tell, the only group that has any kind of real contention with itself and other parts of the IP umbrella are the Lore fans.
Apply that idea to DnD and you can start to break down what he is talking about. Ask a bunch of players "what is DnD?" and getting highly varied answers points to a serious identity crisis for the IP. With an inability to agree on what the core of a hobby is, or the inability recognize an IP may have multiple elements to it, means theres no common ground for the community as a whole to agree on. Battletech doesn't have this problem, because "big stompy robots" is something everyone agrees is a major through-line for the whole IP, tying together 3 radically different genres of games (strategy, action and even RPGs) . For 40k its the insanity that is its lore, working equally well in action video game as much as its roots as a war game. How many of us are fully cognizant of the fact that MTG is a DnD spin off? Like acutely aware of the ramifications this has had between the two product lines?
I'm seeing this exact problem happening with Diablo 4 right now, with its Seasons. I'm old enough to remember when this used to be called Ladder seasons, and was essentially a competitive leader-board. This is "mostly" the model Path of Exiles uses, and is other biggest, most well known ARPG besides Diablo. So color me surprised when people started comparing what it "should be" as the kind of progression system WoW uses. As much as I get that ended up being the expectation, its the odd insistence that ladder seasons and hardcore death mode never existed in Diablo 2 and 3, when they very clearly did. Or am I totally misunderstanding the thing people are being hyper focused about?
@@freelancerthe2561Mucho texto
Didnt read but the guy you responded to is 100 percent correct
For the balancing every combat to be "hard", I would say it's more about not making every encounter feel super hard (or easy) but have a variety of them. It lets the players try out new abilities/items/tactics without having to worry that much. Also makes world feel more real as the boss lackeys are actually weaker than the bosses and the bosses feel actually hard. etc...
Totally agree, variety is the spice of life
Yeah, I've always felt that you want a range of encounters - sometimes, you want the encounters to be really tough when it matters that they're tough, and sometimes you want the encounters to be easy so that the players can feel powerful.
@@dungeonsanddiscourse As a story-focused player I also like it if the world isn't just a difficulty curve. Although more dangerous area are certainly less likely to have a lot of peasants just living everywhere. If they do have a presence, they might group up more, live in fewer, fortified areas, train as amateur militia and perhaps hire some mercenaries... er.. getting off topic.
What I meant to say was: I like for a world to feel more.. 'real' (whatever that means in this context). Although that may just be my very subjective perspective.
Yes variety is great. Hard fights are fun but so is getting mugged by someone who clearly has WIS as a dump stat and should have picked a different target.
@@dungeonsanddiscourse It's not only about variety but also about being able to go back to give those goblin bandits that gave you a hard time at level 1 a good hiding.
My biggest peeve as a new player was how my first session went. Part of the issue was how I handled the situation, but it was out of frustration with how the DM didnt explain I had options. I found a vile filled with a liquid. I opted to drink it, didnt know I could do a check to see if I knew the contents or ask the others to identify it. My PC drank it and died because it was a vile of poison. DM didn't even say role another character. So I sat there watching them finish the session while I did nothing and we only had 1 encounter while I had a PC on the board.
Me from that experience now give guidance to new PC on new found items in an attempt to explain their options to prevent a 1st character death out of player ignorance of game mechanics. I started on 1st edition so it was brutal.😂
Having introverted players ask to be spotlighted is a tricky thing ro get right. I had one player whos characters missing family was a huge part of the backstory. He eventually found an uncle who was taken prisoner by the drow. The player jsut looked at me. I asked if his character would do anything and he said "probably not", other players were super excited for him. The uncle gave some family history facts to verify that he was really the uncle, still no response. Another player took this ine aside and chatted for a few minutes about what was going on. Turns put the player just didn't want to talk at the moment, so he decided to kill the uncle. At that point i decided he would get a letter from the rest of the family saying they are safe and sound on a distance island
What the actual fuck....?!?😮
Thank you for the entertaining information. Unskilled players exist on both sides of the screen. I wonder how many people who submitted opinions have actually ran an RPG as a DM?
Probably very few! lol
Here herer!
I recall watching a Matt Colville video a few months back where he was basically like "the only way to make the players care about the lore is to make it important to what they're actually doing", and I agree wholeheartedly. The players are concentrating on their current goals and objectives, so unless your lore is actually relevant to what they're doing, they have no reason to care. The best way to make the PCs care about the details of some lich that was permanently killed off a few thousand years back is to tie those details into the solutions to the problems they face when, for example, they are exploring said lich's ancient crumbling keep in search of a magical tome they wrote in order to learn how to stop some necromantic ritual.
Especially if your players like mystery adventures, this is a great way to get players asking lore questions. You can get players digging into all sorts of historical topics in pursuit of figuring out some overarching mystery goal.
Connect them to the setting around them. A shopkeeper they like, a house they own, a kid who runs errands for them in town, a historical connection to their family or clan...
But you shouldn't know that 'lore' means 'direct impact'. Because then it's not really lore, it's just the next clue. A nice little Pavlov's Bell to signal.
I hit the snare drum, you laugh. That's just conditioning. The joke wasn't funny, but I did the thing, so you do the thing.
And some Characters are all about Lore, like studious Wizards and certainly Bards. Bards don't care if the Lore relates to THIS MISSION RIGHT NOW IN THE NEXT 5 SECONDS OMG! They care that it's Lore, that it's Interesting.
If there are Dragons in the world, and I don't know about a Dragon until 5 minutes before I meet one... wait, these awesome things exist, no one painted a picture, sang a song? Am I the first ever to run into this thing, or am I running into one and NOW you tell me this huge history I never knew... and why do I know it NOW?
Lore is LITERALLY just History. Why would you NOT know a bit of Lore? I mean in my daily life I don't need to know anything about WWII, doesn't affect me in any way. And yet I know, and it interests me.
@@taragnor You really can't though... in the way described. Because if it's not relevant... it shouldn't be there, that's the statement. So I can't have you digging into all sorts of historical topics... because they won't all be relevant. I can only give you very specific topics that directly relate, and then you KNOW they directly relate. You never have to decide "Is THIS the info that is important, or just a cool fact?".
There may be a 'Tale of Three Towers', but only ONE Tower is the mission you are on. So you only need the one book, about that Tower. And now you miss the opportunity to decide if those other Towers might be something you wish to pursue. Because the only Lore I give you is for the Missions I'm ASSIGNING you. You never really choose anything.
It's just an endless loop of "Here is your next mission, because here is the Lore I'm giving you... because you only want Lore that pertains to what you are doing." A whole World out there, you COULD go in any direction... but you don't know there is anything to go to, because it doesn't link to your current objective?
@@theclimbto1 That's why I said a mystery adventure, because you don't immediately know what's relevant if the quest is "who killed the king?"
You have to look at all the suspects. Maybe it was the duke, lets research his backstory... well his family was once part of a group of dark necromancers, but redeemed themselves when they agreed to serve the king. How about the bishop? He was given to the church as an infant when a special holy mark of the gods was found on him. etc.
You can get the PCs actively investigating various interesting NPCs that you now get to give a bunch of lore drops to, where they may find a clue in the lore that implicates his reasons for killing the king, or maybe just alleviates him of suspicion. But the PCs will care about your important lore NPCs now because they're relevant to the mystery. One of them is a murderer.
On the "not describing the character's actions" thing, that (like most of these) depends on the table. At my table, some PCs describe their own actions. Others never, ever do. My rule is if a PC described it, that's what happened (within reason) but if they don't want to describe it, that's where I come in
I agree. Mostly because an introverted, shy, or brand new player might _want_ to see their hero doing heroic things, but either fears overstepping their bounds, or is just too embarrassed. When the gm steps in and describes for them, it accomplishes several things- first, the shy guy gets to shine a little more. Second, it sets the example, and lets them know that description is possible beyind "I roll a twelve. Next!" And lastly, those little details can set the stage for other impromptu actions. Like, *You conjure up a firebolt but the arrow the goblin fired at you diverts your attention for a moment and you miss the ogre as the bolt impacts on the tree catching it on fire!*
And in a following round, someone makes use of that conveniently placed burning tree.
I think that any description or flavor that a DM wants to add to narrate a PC's action should be confined to what the NPC does or effects in the environment. (e.g. player rolls a weapon attack by his character Bobulus Maximus on a goblin and hits, so the DM could narrate "Bobulus swings his sword at the goblin, who raises his shield to block but overcompensates. Bobulus deftly slips his sword past the shield and pierces the goblin's gut.... Ok, roll for damage, Bob.")
[Conversely, if the player narrates then it should rely on their character actions or established bits of the encounter environment. "Bobulus runs up to the goblin, circling until he sees his shadow cross the goblin. He leaps into the air, and while the goblin's vision is momentarily dazzled by the afternoon sun, Bobulus slashes down past the goblin's shield and wounds them... *clatter*... and I rolled a 1 for damage. Crap!"]
I was fortunate enough to have the same gaming group from the time I was 16to about 35.... As the permanent GM, one of our long standing group memes was "The creature dies of Sadness." This came up from when I would build an encounter in any game, and the PC's would clearly dominate with the opponents having no ability to win... I would cut the combat short by saying, "The rest of your opponents, die of sadness." It was just better than fudging dice rolls or trying to artificially raise the difficulty... to the point over the years my friends/group would ask sometimes, "Do they die of Sadness?" and we'd move on.
We're all in our 40s now and life has us not meet up as much anymore, but I love those guys and all our gaming memes.
Spotlighting players is insanely easy for me and I do it out of habit by now. Half of my group are wall flowers so if I don't stop and try to pull them into the game I feel I failed as a GM. I also noticed that this triggers the wall flowers to invest and speak up more because they get used to getting involved in the game. One player went from only speaking up only when asked being asked what they wanted to do to leading conversions now. It's amazing. A second went from being too shy to speak up to doing the session recaps for the group.
The group I played with longest were mostly there for the social event, I think, with the actual setting and story second, and decent roleplay a distant third (they attempted it now and then, but mostly they just reverted to playing themselves). One of the best 4-hour sessions we ever had all that got done in the game world was: get drunk, have a bar fight (very restrained: nobody got killed, and for once they didn't start it), pay for damages, and get thown in the tank to sleep it off.
I have never been more motivated to go onto reddit, find these comments and grognard-explain why they are wrong.
I wouldn't bother you would just get the unwashed masses on reddit foaming at the mouth telling you how you are wrong.
same lmao
I tend to describe the action in a short 2 second blurb mostly because I really don't like this:
"Ok, I attack, crap rolled a 1, ok next!"
"Ok, I'm gonna cast a spell. 12? No? Ok, I miss."
"Fireball! Dex save! Umm...that's a lot of 1s, crappy fireball for 19 damage"
I prefer this kind of action:
"Ok, I attack, crap rolled a 1, ok next!"
**You swing your sword at the ogre but slightly lose your footing. The ogre easily deflects your sword and mocks you with a bellowing laugh**
"Ok, I'm gonna cast a spell. 12? No? Ok, I miss."
**You conjure up a firebolt but the arrow the goblin fired at you diverts your attention for a moment and you miss the ogre as the bolt impacts on the tree catching it on fire!**
"Fireball! Dex save! Umm...that's a lot of 1s, crappy fireball for 19 damage"
**Your summoned ball of flame explodes but the area around is damp and lessens the effect of the spell. It still damages, but not as much as you had hoped.**
You don't need to go greatly in depth, but a little bit after each action can add a bit of flavor to the game.
As a DM this is something I try and do, I feel it gives a good flavour to the game.
@@fredbloggs7131 Me too, and I especially like it when the players roll nat 1s or 20s- I have them roll again after nat 1s to see HOW it went wrong, pick a suitable course, and narrate it. In one case a character rolled a nat 1 followed by a nat 20, so I ruled that they lost their grip on their sword and accidentally FLUNG it away- straight into the chest of another enemy. They still missed their attack and lost their sword for a bit, but it was was way more entertaining than just "oops, big miss." One time a player rolled nat 20 on a seduction check and the dragon rolled a nat 1 to oppose, so the character gained a dragon fiance who even changed his alignment to stay with her.
Box text is definitely there for two reasons: as an aid for dungeon masters who might be uncomfortable with dramatically extemporizing but still want to convey the required information about the scene (more important in older editions that did not have perception checks or investigation checks), and as an example for extempor-comfortable DMs to memorize or use as the basis for their own improvisation. Generally, the only the DMs who I hear complaining about box text (players are diff) are those who do not need it in the first place.
Gotcha! houserules that do not explained until they come up, especially if they make players waste turns or pick useless build options.
I prefer milestone leveling when I run, mainly because I'm lazy and dislike maths... it also avoid the Kill everything solo player that some way wants to out level the group. Plus main thing about milestone leveling, it great to do it on a major event or closing a chapter in part of a long campaign.
I agree with the complaint about every encounter being super challenging. You’re not wrong to say fighting 7 goblins as an L20 party, but the problem I see is when every encounter is an 11 out of 10. That’s the complaint I heard. You need easy encounters and hard encounters to build a manageable stress level. If every interaction is a life or death extreme, it gets tedious. Throw in some fun moments to lessen the pressure. You need valleys to appreciate the peaks.
Which is hard to accomplish if all you run are combat encounters. Which is why I do not only run combat encounters ;)
@@fuckthisshit541 I think that’s a given, but it’s a good point to make
The way I tend to handle it is that MOST of the time, combat is high danger. However, avoiding said combat/being creative may trivialize the fight/encounter and make it easy. EX: luring the monsters into a trap, sneak by a sleeping dragon etc.
But I go for a more OSR style game, so I don’t want combat to be the end all be all.
Yes! In real life (whatever the heck that is...), 100% effort is not continuously sustainable (and "giving 110%" is BS and mathematically ignorant). I think I've heard that 80% of max is more typical for sustained efforts (and would still be a challenge). Example: bodybuilders or powerlifters have a max that they want to improve, but their path to improvement doesn't involve only trying to lift their max weight... that's a path to a hernia.
The first thing about being the protagonist I get. I personally really hate it when the world revolves around me. Even in video games I hate when it feels like places I've moved on from could cease to exist and I would never know because they aren't important anymore. I think it has more to do with the role you play in the collaboration. I've always been for the idea that the PCs and the GM have explicit parts of the world that are "theirs". As a player I want to interact with and be surprised by your world, not determine it. And as a GM I want to make a world to my specification so I can watch you knock that world around into a form I hadn't expected. But in both directions we have a part of the collaboration that is strictly ours. The GM sets the stage and PCs are the force of change. Some of the more narrative games feel like I'm trying to paint a picture while someone else keeps adding their own paint to it and even if the end result is good, it can feel sort of hollow.
The other thing is not interacting with rules. I really dislike that as well. I feel like rules are our ability to interact with the game world in a tactile way. Without a certain amount of rules involved it can feel like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. People keep saying things are happening, but you don't *experience* it happening. Like the game is a dream instead of a world. It's part of why I tend to prefer LARPing over a fully narrative game. Because if I'm LARPing I'm physically interacting with the world in real life. In a TTRPG the rules take place of that. But then narrative type games don't do either.
👍👍 this was really nice to hear!
Obviously I don't 100% agree with everyone about everything but hearing folks' perspectives makes me feel like part of the community 😊
Hot take about red herrings - what if they're planted by a specific npc who is, or is covering for the culprit. As long as the plants are clear and investigable, they become another clue in the chain.
Oh yeah they CAN be used for sure - just as a general rule I find that they confuse the party a lot
As a GM I fully agree with the final one. Who the hell am I to tell you what your character's emotions are? I have seen a few streams where the GM tells the players how their characters feel and I'm always thinking "what the f*** are you doing?!"
Sometimes I think it's important to put things into context. Like when you smell raw sewage you'd be disgusted. Obviously the player can't smell it, so it wouldn't affect them, but the character would. In some settings, what might be a grave insult in the fiction may not be feel like a big deal in a modern context, so it's important to tell them that this is considered a big deal. A cleric who has spent their whole life worshipping a single god would be infuriated to see some blasphemy committed to one of his god's sacred sites for instance. Yeah, the player himself just won't be affected that way, but the character would be. Similarly if you've got some seductress trying to do her thing to one of the PCs, it's better for the DM to say how the character is falling for her allure as opposed to having the DM try to seduce the player out of character.
@@taragnor I agree with this, since it's trying to remind and convey to the players that something is horrific or would elicit some response like disgust, revulsion, fear, or even convey some initial sense of danger. Otherwise, the characters are just passively, sorta listening to what you say and just carrying on as if everything is just a numbers game. Wouldn't the cleric or druid be suddenly sickened stumbling upon the mass grave of dozens of goblins? The smell and gore and unnaturalness of that scene would make me take a step back and rethink things if I was there witnessing this. But no, I'll describe what they see and the player goes, do I see any weapons or armor to loot. Great, I'm glad I spent some time setting the tone and mood of this scene for you all to not even acknowledge it.
I've had characters make choices that were obviously sub-optimal in terms of potential consequences, because that was the more entertaining choice.
4:20 regarding the potion thing - you probably know this, but tasting a potion is a way to find out what it does rules as written. that's probably what ur players are doing
I say if you find something I'm a Dungeon, it's fair game to consume.
As an adherent of John Wick and his Play Dirty books--I'm all about letting the combat monsters be _awesome._ They spent their points to be better at combat, so, when combat comes out, I want the gunslinger, jumping from car to car, doing backflips, shooting enemies in the eyes. Let the Hacker and the cop huddle behind cover and shoot center-of-body mass. Show everyone _why_ you are a _two-fisted God of Guns!_ Everyone gets their time to shine (Statements from the hacker: "Really? They put me in a cell with computer access? Do they _know_ what I can do?" "How do the robots get their orders? Please say Bluetooth.") When it is their time to shine, let them make their rolls and encourage them _to be awesome._
If I screw up when designing a key encounter or boss fight, and give the NPC too many (or too few) hit points, I *sometimes* fudge their health during the combat. I don't want to make a climatic fight boring or a TPK because of my poor planning.
However, if the players short-circuit the encounter by being clever, I let them do it. For example, a major combat while climbing a 200 foot tall vertical cliff, and the bard casts a spell that makes the boss fall to the ground laughing uncontrollably - he didn't survive the falling damage, and the fight ended in the second round.
Sometimes my players destroy my best plans, things I'm setting up to make the game more interesting later. Like killing a BG before he could escape and return later as the BBG. In my style what happens is what happens. No BBG escape via GM fiat. Sometimes less interesting but sometimes more interesting. But my players KNOW that their actions matter.
Is it okay to re-design an encounter on the fly depending on the capabilities and mood of the party?
@@incognit01233 I'd say absolutely. In fact, failing to do so can be catestrophic.
I once put a hydra encounter in front of my players and they were probably a little underclasses for…it was looking rough with the hydra heads doing what they do…i even said “guys I might have messed up on this one, I’m sorry for putting this monster up in front of you” they looked at me and all said genuinely “dude this puzzle of a monster is awesome! Etc etc.” They we’re having a blast even though the battle was going south. After foregoing several retreat options, They ended up defeating it through amazing creativity ... that wouldn’t have happened if I had fudged dice, tried to balance it, or have this bloodthirsty hydra just “retreat just cuz”.
That being said: if you play a brutal style game, you better darn sure have a really cool plan for if there is a TPK. A deal with a devil for their soul, an adventure in purgatory or the hells, they speak with a god who tells them “your time is not over” etc. Something where the TPK makes the party say “wow, that was a wild TPK” and not “darn, we TPK’d and now I’m bummed.”
I think their comment could also reasonably be understood that, even in a campaign where everything skews deadly, it's good to periodically toss an easy encounter the party's way. It reminds them where they've been, humble beginnings, but also drives home that this world is not balanced, and sometimes, you'll just be outclassed.
Agreed on the milestone leveling. In a game I'm playing in, the DM gave us a milestone level in the middle of a siege. It was so very weird to suddenly have access to new spells magically, but have even gone through a long rest. Dear DMs, it's okay to space out the milestones.
Well, that's not a problem of milestone system. The same thing would happen if you reached the required XP amount just before/during the siege.
And here's the kicker, both end up in you, magically, knowing new spells and abilities.
There are ways around this, like having party look for mentors who will (upon looking at plot coupons/XP amount) train them.
I personally would love this, especially as DM (it reinforces OSR kind of vibe, town vs wilderness) and it doesn't break immersion.
The trick is : NO ONE WANTS THIS. And for good reason. It's not practical. Suddenly, you can ONLY level up that way.
TLDR :No matter what, they will magically get their upgrade, because it's way easier then coming up with in game reasons for power boosts.
@@Mirekluk Oh, I know it's not an issue with the Milestone system specifically. This was a DM problem, not a leveling issue. I love the milestone leveling because of it's narrative focus.
Apologies if I was unclear.
@@Jhaiisiin I mean, not really. Your characters don't just get better at what they knew before (like raising proficiency bonus) but they LEARN new things. Worst offenders are spells. No matter the narrative (unless done the mentor to lvl up path) you are destined to look into your spellbook one day and find more spells then last time you opened it. Same can be told about martial abilities too though. Not every ability has direct link to previous practice, therefore doesn't make sense that just by honing current skills you acquire new ones.
@@Mirekluk Really, only the spellbook bound casters have that weirdness. I have met some DMs who won't even let spellbook casters add new spells unless they've specifically taken time to acquire them at some point during the game sessions. Not something I necessarily agree with, but it's a thing that some do.
At least when I'm DMing, I always provide downtime when the milestone happens, and try to provide it periodically between milestones as well so that it helps the feeling of acquiring things through learning rather than spontaneous poof new skill or whatever.
Yeah, and that is great that you do.
I personally in play found out that even if I care about progression being tied to narrative (aka how the hell did you learn it), my players don't. The reason is simple : Too much work for something we can handwave.
And no, that weirdness can be brought to anything class gives you. Martials abilities for example. You can play it like it's an Aha! moment when you level up, but I still find it somehow... off. Makes more sense to me that xp/milestone is requirement to learn those abilities, rather then opening the gate.
And I just personally am biased toward mentor npcs.
"Don't tell me how my character feels" is part of why I hate bards. "I play my lute a bit, and you are inspired by that." Uh, no I'm not?
"I do a special dance, which makes you want to fight harder." I can tell you for a fact that it does not.
In 5e, bard abilities are explicitly magical. You feel inspired in the same way as a fear spell makes you feel afraid; you're literally being forced to by magic.
4:50MY personal anecdote on this subject is asking a rogue like player if they really want to put an immoveable rod in the path of the charging horse. The other players didn't think this was a good idea but this player thought it would be a good plan to stop to horse. The out come was the player didn't get out of the way in time and was crushed under the dead horse and was left by his party like that until the incident that this action precipitated was resolved. This player is still in the group and sometimes listens to what the other players suggest as a bad idea.
I had a session where one of the party was enveloped by a cloaker. The dwarven artificer _REALLLLLLLLY_ wanted to shoot it. Since this involved the _head_ (and possibly life,) of another player's character, I nudged him toward reconsidering. He was so attached to the idea, that he actively fought me at the table over the subject. His position was that he assumed we were not playing with friendly-fire rules in play. I pointed out that I'd never said as much, and also, that even if generally, friendly-fire wasn't a consideration, I didn't feel it was appropriate to just meta that fact by blasting away at his fellow adventurer's skull. Eventually, he backed down, and accepted that if he did so, there would be consequences. Even more eventually, he left my table. I was sad to see him go, as generally, he was a fun player to have around, but... I don't know. Was I wrong? I still don't feel I was.
@@Kaotiqua I'd say you did well.
As a GM who's running PF2e custom world game, I'm not a dungeon delving type that wants encounter after encounter of pointless fighting...it's fine for those who do, just not my kind of games is all. I like the set up of the system though so I use it. If you don't want a collaborative story game don't sit at my table. This is where the touching of tips between player and GM's comes in. Setting expectations is both needed and important to the players and the GM.
My pet peeve is GMs who are dishonest about what they're running just get butts into their seats at their table. Everyone ends up miserable in the end due to this.
Also, anyone who runs games but is now playing a game...if they're not running it how you do that's their business and if you don't like it don't play at that table. Not sure why this is so difficult to do. Like when you're buying a car be ready to get up and walk away from the table.
I have told players how their characters feel before and most of the time I hit it spot on but when I haven't they tell me so and I say okay then you don't feel that way and move forward. I basically use it as a suggestion and let them override because it's their character.
I avoid this at all costs- even when I know both the player and their character like the back of my hand. Not because I might get it wrong, but because it doesn't matter if I get it right- I'm taking away their opportunity to consider how their character feels, and to portray that feeling.
@@Kaotiqua I would agree with you if you're playing with experienced players but I've got some much less experienced players that kind of needed a nudge from time to time.
The guy who complained about contributing to the world in a collab format doesn't get how awesome that is. Especially in a game like 13th age
Absolutely loved this video. The most amazing thing about being a DM/GM is that the learning to be a better one never ends!
I roll everything - attack rolls, saving throws, even hit points - infront of the players, the only time I do hidden rolls are for stealth and death saves if they come up. they know how many hit points an enemy has from the moment they hit that enemy, and we find out together.
I don't create balanced encounters, I create interesting scenarios for my players to deal with.
I can't fudge dice and I won't fudge dice, not even I can save them from the will of the dice all that can is their ideas and plans.
survival mechanics... I have my own mechanics that I designed to be circumvented with rations and water but not easily with magic its means to reward planning and forethought and make them weigh the options "is this day of rations worth its weight in gold? I mean we're only 3 days away from town..."
Not fudging dice has led to some of the most exciting moments of my DMing life. Fudging dice has also saved myself from having the hottest dice at the table or my own poor planning. It's a tool, like any other, just don't over do it
If I need to fudge, I just decide instead of rolling
its called cheating
@@colorpg152 cheating implies the game really has rules. If I'm building bosses from scratch and testing them for the first time at the table with friends I'm not exactly worried about what the book says I should do. The players have a very narrow set of tools, but the DM has a lot of space to make the adventure too easy or too hard. Fudging is how you keep the adventure at the level you intended. it should be used appropriately, like any tool. To much and the players will feel the edge of danger disappear, too little and they die to bad design
@@BouncingTribbles the player are not your toys and nobody said they need to feel danger that is just your assumption, this is a role playing game not a action game
@@colorpg152 who said anything about the players being toys? I said they have tools too. I'm the world though, they just play one person at a time, according to the rules anyways.
I'm on the don't do it to much side of things, as I've said, but I've also rolled more crits in one night (while not fudging roles) then any of my players. Having a couple orcs slaughter your whole party because you roll max crit damage 3 times in a row might be some DM's style, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. People do want the encounters to seem dangerous for their characters, but they also don't want to be completely outclassed and slaughtered. As always, balance in all things.
And just so you know, Dungeons and Dragons IS an action based TTRPG. Otherwise it would have rules for diplomacy, or having a day to day life. The DND rulebooks are 90% combat. Try Vampire the Masquerade or another intrigue system if you're actually interested in role playing.
Every DM and every group will have a different vibe. My last regular group had 5 wargamers in it, you better believe they wanted the encounters to be challenging and feel dangerous. I've also DMd for much less aggressive gamers, and they spent a lot more time talking to the inkeeper's wife. They didn't want every fight to be life or death, instead they liked the threat of danger, suspense, and creepy fae bullshit. Fudging is for when you plan for party A but end up playing with party B
one thing you could do instead of milestone or exp, is basically a mix of both. you could call it exp with less steps or milestone with more steps tbh
you set a number of milestones for a level up, and give them lots of tiny milestones they don’t know about yet. if they do anything unexpected that could be a milestone, that’s a milestone too
it keeps things from being “that monster was 200 exp, that one was 500 exp” and you don’t have to count the exact exp. but it also still lets you and your players feel a sense of progression to the next level, if they know how many milestones they need, and how many they have
if you’re too afraid of them overleveling somehow, first of all, don’t be, second of all, you can always just gate certain levels behind certain milestones. i don’t necessarily think you should, but it’s an option
i know people will say it’s just what already exists, but different… but i feel like it’s what already exists, but neater and with clear expectations set for players
For one campaign, I simply awarded everybody ONE point at the end of every session they attended. Each level cost that level's number of session points to reach. Level 2: 2 sessions. Level 5, five sessions. It worked out well, and I gave players opportunities to catch up if they had to miss a session, but it didn't happen often. Two birds: one stone. ;)
Great video, dude.
Always on initiative is GREAT for shifting the spotlight.
Moar great content !!
Before I jump let me start by saying as DM for (fcuk, way too long!!) years, in a game with 3 or more players you will have people voicing all of these, creating a wonderful “group contradiction” - this is why it’s so important to session 0, spotlighting and session reviews …. Are we “all” having fun.
1. DMPC - what’s the clear unambiguous role of this plot device (be use that’s what it better be) - set up and get out
2. If there is no tension and no outcome that is risk/reward based, just do it in “free mode” - players succeed at whatever it is they’re trying to. If there are risks in a pillar, set them clearly - this goes for combat (which is relatively easy as hps, consumables (like spells, potions, daily (sorry long rest) abilities that are in play - in exploration this was traditionally burning touches, random encounters, “the doors close behind you”., in Social usually there is simply succeed/fail in the moment, maybe end up in a jail or the gallows, maybe banished from a kingdom or local tavern.
Games like BiTD (and you can also use ICRPG) advice have progress clocks, or countdown clocks … in the open for all to see. If you use Doom or Chaos (Dishonored) the DM has a build up pool to make the next “Combat” more deadly.
Don’t be afraid to change the scale. Yes, it’s a wilderness journey, describe what happened, even have a top level “combat” or scene resolution, but the rolls describing outcome happen as the heroes’ get into the next danger scene… maybe the outcome was loosing coin, a condition you don’t notice, lost equipment … or literally run the scene as a Flashback bringing this consequences directly into the present scene (BiTD again)
3. Let my PC swing across the room, land feet first on the bannister, peppering the goblins with arrows as I slide down. Absolutely!! In BiTD, id engage with the player to say “ok, that sounds desperate, but you can keep standard effect; or positioning is controlled, but it’s a lesser effect; or you can roll stress and do both.”
The trade offs are baked in; in D&D could be, absolutely you can do that, but at the end of your attack you’ll make a check (l think acrobatics and athletics are applicable) or you can use any skill at disadvantage for a Dex check. If you fail, you take double damage from any attacks in the following round. In other game terms you’ve lost “position”
4. I haven’t rolled a d20 as a DM since early 3rd edition. I’ve referred to this as Active Playing forever, but now a days fiction first, player pov seem to be common. Usually I’ll roll the damage or take average, but, I tell the player at the time of the attack - “The hill giant swings his club with ferocious force that will likely leave you prone and broken in half if you fail to defend; the attack will do 32 hp damage).
Players roll d20 Ac plus their bonus (which is just AC-10 (players get the extra half point!!). Same for saves …
(FYI - players can roll the D20 as advantage on attacks and take disadvantage on their defensive rolls ; great for when the ranger at the back of the party thinks they’re hidden and choose to be “wreckless”, and the goblet assassin sneaks up)
No fudging, even with Fudge
5. Plot is not Railroading. Being the “Hero” doesn’t mean “Winning”. If we don’t want an empty box, setting background makes the sandbox interesting.
The PCs need an active stage to reflect off, the world around them has their own actions, and the world changing around the players helps them feel part of the world without their own agency.
All this crap allows the DM to react naturally to the players, no box reading, no looking up rules, no ending the game because an adventure wasn’t prepped.
And finally players, remember you’re not the only one on the other side of the scene. Do what the group wants at all time …
In regards to player chugging unknown potions, isn't it written in one of the core rulebooks that a PC can taste-test a potion to know what it does without suffering consequences for it?
Mighta not been a D&D system, and even if maybe they were adamant on downing it all not taste testing.
the music in this video gave me feelings... good video subject, and yes, boxed text lore dumps are terrible, also yes, taking away character agency and wasting the players time is Bad.
"Your character feels..." is totally okay. Of course it depends upon the setting but I don't fricken care about player's agency in certain moments. In the present of an Elder Dragon, a Balrog, a god etc. I tell them what they feel. What they make out of that and how they react to that is totally their thing. But those are the exceptions, the moments when reality is all the sudden shattered by their encounter.
In "normal" world situations of course it's it's to them to decide how they feel. When they stumble across the dead bodies of little children that starved to death they decide how their characters would feel. Definetely.
Players need to be on-board with the fantasy being told together at the table. They gotta lean into it.
Their _agency_ should be in support of the experience and immersion and fun of the whole group at the table.
As for collaborative storytelling: With our DM we regularly do skill challenges in which we roll initiative to then overcome an obstacle like going from A to B in a cave system. We are then encouraged to come up with possible individual obstacles to solve with our skills. And I find this a nice change of pace, giving us more agency in how we want our character to help the group
In regards to the 'extroverts have a leg up' hypothesis, I feel this is something that really only applies at the extremes usually, and is largely dependent on how good of players you have. I think most of the time it's not an issue if you as the DM help your players understand why they should WANT to have their character interact with the other PCs in cool ways and sort of provide a mirror for them to get in character and push the more laid back players contribute to the decision making process, which is where I often see more introverted players struggle to feel comfortable asserting their ideas. That's where the whole group should have the emotional intelligence to support that player subtly when they do contribute, by taking their input seriously even if they don't push it as forcefully as the more outgoing personalities.
Over time the less naturally assertive players will learn that their ideas are welcome and they will decide for themselves on how often they want to jump in. It's not really a bad thing IMO if a certain player doesn't want to always be the one making plans and decisions, as long as they feel comfortable and heard when they do provide input. It's only when the other players get used to someone not providing input and start bulldozing over their ideas that it becomes a problem.
I've seen both ends of the spectrum. I've had players that I had to ask to take a step back a little and let the other players have more input, and I've had players that have a harder time naturally jumping in with input and tend to observe things from the sidelines unless prompted.
At the end of the day we can't do everything as DMs, and creating a sense of comradery and mutual support where no one player hogs the spot light is ultimately on the players. Although the DM has the responsibility of making sure the players understand what constitutes acceptable behavior at their table, it's up to the players to apply these principles in good faith so everyone can have fun.
2:44 This was how we ran tournaments. You were handed a character and backstory and expected to role-play it.
For the GMPC
I was GMing the introlude to a Scion (Children of gods!) game and had the players basically play sidekicks to a badass fucking hero.
The focus was still on the players, but they took care of the vermin and the situation around the Hero, and when one of the players tried to join in the main combat he got minched!
This really set the game in perspective for when they became heroes themselves!
I’m just here for the pronunciation of “however”
Controversial Take: I think red herrings can be great, but the key to making them not suck is to make the reveal an interesting twist that provides the party with new options, rather than a dead end. They may have not found what they we're looking for, but it still drives the plot forward and/or provides new options to the players. This is THE key to making this work.
For example:
Maybe the party has been trying to track down why children keep disappearing in the local village. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that the local medicine woman may in fact, be a witch. Evidence of her sneaking into the cursed magical woods in the middle of the night, rumors about her from the local towns people who already suspect her, the fact that children often go missing near the edge of the woods where she lives, and an amulet belonging to a missing child that she apparently dropped on the way into the woods one night, that was subsequently found by one of the search parties organized by the local church.
After some investigating, the PCs find all these clues and determine that the medicine woman is probably a witch, and decide to break into her house in the middle of the night.
Upon doing so their fears are confirmed, and they discover the witch inside her hut, brewing an odd concoction over her cauldron.
Que epic battle, during the fight the witch starts using mind probing spells to figure why the fuck the party is in her house, and quickly realizes that they believe her to be the reason for the missing children.
At this point she goes invisible and starts trying to negotiate with the PCs and explains that no, she is not the reason for the missing children, and in fact she has been trying to figure out where the children are going, as she has encountered several undead children who have been turned into ghouls lurking in the edge of the forest. She tells the party that the undead she encountered were clearly not mindless, but were under control of a necromancer. She presents some evidence, and the party is convinced.
The witch offers to help guide the party after convincing them she is a nice witch and means no harm to the village. A tenuous alliance is formed, and the party and witch rest up before venturing together into the woods in search of the source of the ghoulish infestation.
After some adventuring, they find the necromancers lair deep within the cursed wood. They clear out the base of minions and capture the necromancer, hoping to interrogate him to find the rest of the children. To their horror, they realize that the necromancer is actually the head priest of the local church, the one who gave them the amulet in the first place, and the one who started the rumors about the medicine woman in the first place.
Que oh shit moment for the party.
The party finds the remaining children and rescues them, kills the necromancer and his minions, and returns the region to a state of peace. They agree not to tell the witches' secret so long as she makes a blood pact to never harm the village and to always watch over them.
I guarantee if you ran that adventure correctly it would slap. Anyways I just spent entirely to much time coming up with that example, hopefully someone enjoyed it haha.
I had an NPC send the party on a quest to a ruin weeks away in the wilderness. Played out the whole journey. Yeah there was nothing there, that dude just got rid of them so he could steal something uninterrupted. If they had asked anyone else, or maybe pushed him a bit more, or visited the library, they could have saved the time. As it stood, they got fooled and *hated* that guy worse than any spooky villain I ever created
Re challenge
Some of my best encounters were mixed sets of powerful and weak foes.
One where weak technicians were scrambling to turn on powerful golems, and another where cannon fodder infantry were being necromatically raised into powerful Frankensteinesque monsters when they weren't scared away.
I do not play for power fantasies (I feel like an oddity when I say that) but I find that occasionally confronting high level pc's with low level adversaries helps maintaining coherence to the world. That way the characters a) are acutely aware of their progression and b) don't ever had that feeling of "how long has it been since we last saw a kobold? I wonder what happened to them. One day they just decided to stop raiding villages or whatever, I guess"
But to me I can't avoid the why are the kobold attacking the high level party? Kobold aren't stupid, they attack the low level character because they think they can win, I doubt they would feel the same about higher level PCs. Similarly, the higher level PCs now have more important things to deal with than raiding kobolds.
@@n3kkidninj4 I mean, high level is not always noticeable at first sight. Someone without the expertise or the resources might just think those are pretty weapons and armor, not necessarily magical ones. On the other hand, kobolds might not specifically attack the pc's. Maybe some npc from the past comes to the pc's to ask them to make good on their words (ten levels ago: "if you ever need help, don't hesitate to come to us, we'll be glad to lend a hand"). Or maybe the pc's are on their way to some other place in an important mission and they just find themselves in the middle of a low level war between the village they were counting on resting in and some kobold colony. The attacks are every night, the people are scared and desperate and they know no one cares becsuse no one has answered their pleas for help, so they ask the pc's for help, a good aligned party should have a hard time saying no to that people. Maybe that is some of the pc's birthplace, maybe their families live there, will they forsake their families because they "have something more important to do"?
Also, maybe those attacks have a reason. Maybe the kobolds were a peaceful tribe minding their own business but someone came and took possession of all their eggs and now they have to be at their new master's bidding or risk their children be murdered. Maybe that new master is nothing more than a pawn of a deeper darkness playing their part in a much more ambitious plan. Maybe this is some side plan by the BBEG meant to help him in their final evil plan and the players have stumbled upon it and have the opportunity to derail or, at least, delay said plans?
I don't know, being the GM one has all the answers, you can work out a way to include one of such encounters or side adventures once in a while as a way to keep coherence and signal the party's actual current power and also make it meaningful and maybe actually important in some way for the pc's, the world at large and/or the current quest 🤷♂️
I am getting ready to a session 0 for my next Deadlands campaign, and one of our exercises includes listing your pet peeves. I did the exercise too, so everyone had to answer... Mine was "overpowered GMPCs..." Yup. I agree with that one.
I think weak monsters at higher levels isn't necessarily a bad idea... What I think is that its best to mix them in as minions to really big monsters... And I do think that thier stats should be enough that if you decide to ignore them that might be a mistake as they swamp you... but also that if you focus on them you take them out pretty easy like the whole minion monster idea that they had in 4th edition where a monster was there to take a hit and fall over but could still be a threat if you ignored it.
9:05 Player engagement is up to the group as a whole. As was hinted at multiple times in this video dm/player expectations gotta touch in the middle, and communication is a very important aspect of that.
For example; at my table, half the players are the "introverted" (more the go with the flow, chill to just do what the rest of the party wants) type, two are a bit more middle-of-the-road while still leaning more towards chill, and myself, the definitive extrovert of our table. Our Not-Quite-Forever DM is also an extrovert, so when she's not DMing, it can be hard for us to not hog the limelight. After one session, the DM had a chat with one of the introverts because they were having a hard time connecting with and enjoying their character. DM made some story bits and spotlights for that character previously that went ignored, so DM was feeling frustrated as well. DM and I were talking about what she could do to bring that player and the others (back) in to get them more engaged, and I realized what I could do.
From that session on, when the DM would present a situation that needed to be solved, or murder suspects to interrogate, etc., etc., I would wait for a bit and if no one stepped forward, I would with a, "I'm going, and [Introvert 1/2/3's Character] is going with me!" by dint of requesting their assistance with whatever task was at hand. I found that bringing their character along and talking about whatever cockamamie scheme I'd cooked up and asking their input both in and out of character gave them a chance to voice their opinions (IC and out) and get their characters involved, even if it was my character starting the interaction. After a few sessions of this the introverts even started initiating plans/ideas/actions on their own! It's actually been a relief for me, since I'm not constantly having to find a reason to insert myself into all these scenes that aren't for me, and it doesn't feel quite so much like it's just me and the DM playing anymore.
tl;dr If you're an introvert, talk with your DM about ways to signal that you have something you want to say/do/etc., or talk to one of your more extroverted friends outside of game about helping you be heard (or if your group has such a bad problem talking over each other, maybe talk with the whole group about it). If you're an extrovert, keep an eye out for your introverted friends, and if you notice they haven't said/done much in game lately, find ways to pull them in. We're all here to have a good time, yeah?
Don't know about players, but as a DM I absolutely cannot stand it when my players choose joke names for their characters.
OMG this. (Unless they're REALLLLLLY subtle and clever.) In general, I'm a "take the game seriously" kind of gm, and that's not for everyone.
I really have only done a single survival type encounter in a TTRPG and I think worked out wonderfully. I recently ran Trail of Tsathogguah from the Call of Cthulhu 40th Anniversary box and the players encountered the Gnoph-Keh (big snow monster) on their way to the objective. I did fudge that the monster was summoned because the players arrived too slowly but that was because the game had been pretty slow and non-lethal up until that point and my group is more action oriented so I wanted to give them something to actually fight or flee from. This turned into a two session encounter of a lot of running away and shooting at the monster. They eventually forced it to flee but one of the PCs was horribly gored but still alive lost in the snow storm the monster created. As a result I had them roll various survival based checks (Navigation, Tracking) to find their way back to the camp through the blizzard while requiring them to make constitution rolls to survive through the frigid temperatures while wounded. Meanwhile another group of PCs that were in poor shape but better off went looking for her and had to make similar checks and ultimately had to turn back as they were going to die of exposure as they kept rolling poorly. It turned into a really dramatic scene even after the monster fled as the wounded PCs made it back to camp with exactly 1 HP having passed the constitution checks 3 rounds in a row just barely. It was quite intense and dramatic because it could go either way based on the result of a single roll.
That being said it works in a tense situation where the risk of death is looming, I would be less into it if it was just making people roll various survival skills checks across days of travel to prevent them from dying in the wilderness. Shortcut stuff like that and have the players make a group check or elect a player to make the survival skills check and if they fail it either extend their travel time (the party gets lost or the path disappears for a bit, or there has been unusually heavy rainfall so the river they have to cross is flooded and unsafe to traverse at that point) or force them to stumble into an extra encounter so it eats up some of their resources. Maslow's hierarchy of needs applies to TTRPG PCs as well, if your players can only roll to find food, water, and shelter every day it becomes hard for them to progress through a story as they are struggling to survive.
The boxed text is something I use to keep myself on track and try to remember how the dungeon or scenario connects. If I'm running something which is totally off the cuff, I give a basic decription and embellish as needed. IF I can remember enough without reading text, I'll try to give a condenced version and embellish as needed. I've also used flexi HP for monsters, not to reach a certain round count, but more in place of fudging dice when the players aren't doing well, or when I want to push the tension up a bit. It's also easier for me to track player damage dealt, rather then monster HP remaining, so sometimes I'll look at a total and decide that's enough for a kill.
Regarding the first point, I can't count the number of times I didn't read all the text or recall enough details from a published adventure, then realize the encounter played out in a way that foils other encounters or where I missed something crucial in an encounter and now have to figure out how to work it back in. On the other hand, published adventures themselves work somewhat like a single text box; they just provide a starting point to build from.
Because I'm not very good at determining how hard to make an encounter I will frequently make the encounter what I think is doable (which turns out to be easy because I always underestimate with the players can accomplish) and then I will a up the encounter if it's proving to be too easy. A monster screams for help and help arrives, if it's getting too hard The monsters feel they're getting overwhelmed and morale starts to break. I try to get creative about it so it's not predictable and it remains interesting and plausible to the players. I also adjust the rewards based on how well they do. Even if the players realize I am doing this they will also realize that if they kick major butt unexpectedly that I will reward them greatly.
One thing I like to do is to note the medium and maximum hp a monster can have with their hit die, if things are going too easy I just crank up the hp to be the maximum for that monster . Works fine. Tho if thinks are going too hard, I just look at my players with that face that says "I'm sorry little one" as I beat their assess
using goblins with high level party is great. i use that a lot of times. all those little battles waste resources they may need for the BBEG. each night the goblins attack and not giving the party a good night sleep so no spells back, no hp's back. my group plays 3.5
The "are you sure?" does work, but as a DM I try to extrapolate as much as the character could be aware of. I use a combination of the Mental/Social Traits (Int,Wis,Cha) mixed with the background and playstyle of the character in question. Int characters generally get more if/then scenario descriptors for Int ability situations, and the same for the others; Wis for situations that would require gut feelings or Instinctual threats, and Cha for social missteps & dangers.
Sometimes the "Are you sure?" is because the gm knows that the player isn't paying full attention, or thinking as clearly as their character might.
The only time I 'massage' the hit points of a monster in combat is if I forgot some ability earlier, like regen or advantage and 'made it up' later to extend the combat for dramatic or challenge purposes.
There's always great advice in these sorts of videos and breakdowns, but I've learned it's extremely situational to the sort of group you have to work with, and it can be easy to let general complaints get to you.
For instance, telling players how their character feels - my group doesn't tend to roleplay as much. It's just how we function, they tend to like having a clear direction and they don't go out of their way to be 'in character', so for certain moments that relate to backstory or big character driven reveals, giving them an emotional frame of reference can help them make more character-driven choices. This is a rare thing, and I don't outright say 'this is how you feel' unless asked, but for my group in particular, it can be a helpful element to the game.
Similarly the 'box text' aspect - the players are mostly respectful of longer descriptions and will wait to ask questions, but previously I had tried to avoid long-winded 'cutscenes' or narrative descriptions, feeling like it was a little too close to railroading or sapping player agency. For a more roleplay-oriented group, it might well have been the right instinct, but not at my table. Returning to longer descriptions and, more importantly, narrating certain key moments rather than just opening it up to the table, has helped to improve the energy and focus of the entire group and has made a definite positive impact all around.
I think it's important to recognise that there are a lot of groups out there that just do not embrace the 'roleplay' aspect of the game to the extent that people generally expect - and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. My group are just a bunch of people who want to get together once a week and catch up and engage in a dynamic interactive story where they can get space-sharks high and explode things - and that's okay. They aren't going to hold conversations in character, they're not terribly interested in the social or political aspects of the game world and they don't tend to care too much about saving the day - though they will if that's the story we're telling. And to tell the truth, most of the groups I have been in have been the same way. So if anyone else is watching this and second-guessing themselves, remember that not all advice applies to all groups, you're not failing as a GM if your group doesn't RP and when in doubt, ask your players. They'll probably surprise you.
Pre-Made characters is tempting because you can guarantee you will not end up with sir dick diggler gnome devil Paladin. Players cast lots of stones at GMs, but they are far more guilty of ruining games by sheer number.
I found this better with inexperienced players or a very specific type of campaign, like something based on an existing franchise that the PCs just can't be anything outside the lore or else it breaks the basics of having a game set in that specific universe
Why in the world would someone with a short attention span become a lawyer? Sounds like pure torture.
I know right :D
Not every encounter has to be a challenge itself so much as it should act to challenge your player's threat assessment and resource management. "Easy" encounters can also be a great way to introduce something the players will encounter moving forward, giving them an opportunity to recognize the clues you've given and prepare accordingly.
Really enjoyed this video! I hope this style of content performs well
I'm reminded of Shadowrun's "Common Sense" merit. I always used it as a GM cause then only the people who devoted resources to it got the full "are you sure you want to do that?"
There is a time and a place, albeit rarely, for virtually everything everybody is complaining about. The hallmark of a good DM is to utilize them only when needed and only when value is added. In other words, it would likely be a worse experience for the majority of players at the table to NOT do the thing.
The end-all be-all to all of this is a DM it's crucial to develop the tools to think on your feet, not be beholden to planning, and to KNOW your players and what they want. Frequent communication and solicitation of HONEST feedback is crucial for you to learn what the players at your table really like and dislike. Then, serve up only what the majority like. It's deceptively simple.
DMs need to get over the "I'm telling a story" or even "We're telling a story."
The good DM prepares. The bad DM plans.
Your #1 job as DM is, quite simply, to ensure the maximum amount of people are having the maximum amount of fun, and want to return to the next session.
Period.
It's that simple.
It's not about ensuring the simulation is accurate. It's not about ensuring the rules are followed. It's not about ensuring that the story is enthralling. It's not making sure encounters are balanced just right.
Those things MAY be important...or they may not. One group of players may love lengthy detailed boxed text, or burdensome investigation with multiple leads that turn out to be red herrings.
Or the majority of your players may hate them.
Every table is different.
The key to being a great DM is finding this out, and then sticking to it. Furthermore, it also means accepting if you've put together a table of players who are just looking for something very different, In that case, majority wins, and the minority should probably go find another table that suits their playstyle.
Some DM's are far too congenial and try to mix things up to keep everybody happy. That can work when the disparities aren't that great, but when they are, you need to let people go.
The survival game idea did seem like an interesting setup. It would probably be more rule and settings with some random events and weather systems. Trying to design it a bit like a D&D version of "The forest" and you find things you need to get your players to gradually improve their situation. You'd really need players that would be able to enjoy that sort of scenario just.
A little bit of "dry" humor there in the timestamps. I loved it.
9:45 I often only describe big things that happen and I USUALLY only start doing it giving a brief example of how the monster/subject/etc is reacting to the action and then letting the player decide from there. I give a diving board but I have too cause of who are in my games... they're not super instigating roleplayers but when I give them a jumping point they take it away.
This is a fun one - I've played "D&D" since 1978 and many other systems besides. Here are some of my thoughts on a few points:
@2:40 - I never do this, and no one in our group does this. If we're running pre-generated characters, the mechanics of the characters are generated but the personalities are left to the players. None of us are professional (or even amateur) actors and we're not going to spend any significant time "getting into character" for a role we aren't invested in, or at least interested in. YMMV, naturally. I think this would be an amazing exercise for actual acting groups, amateur or professional, since it's exactly the sort of thing that they can apply to their acting.
@5:49 - Totally get this. When running pre-packaged scenarios I tend to skim and summarize these "boxed text" passages and then ask the players if they need clarification. I try to give salient "environmental" details in the summary ("The room is very damp and the walls and floor are rather mossy", etc) without getting too crazy. My goal is to shorten it by at least half, if not more, since we can roleplay the exploration and detail-gathering from there. Basically, try to give the players an "at-a-glance" version of the giant, encyclopedic blurb.
@6:49 - I'm on the fence here, myself. My group generally plays games with some sort of "social skills" attached to characters, like D&D's Diplomacy skill, and when a roleplaying session is in progress we still almost always have situations where a PC is trying to convince a NPC to do or accept something. This is naturally a great opportunity for "mechanical interaction with the game", since though the GM might know logically that the NPC should accept or refuse, making a social skill check to accomplish this is a better way of determining the NPC's knowledge and attitude toward the proposal and the proposing PC.
@7:50 - In this case it's difficult. The GM can't be the only person responsible for a player's enjoyment. Maybe the player would benefit from examining their character and adjusting their character's behavior to be more assertive, then trying to "get into character" for the session. I'm no psychologist, but this helped me be more proactive in gaming sessions when I was young. "Don't split the party" is a common mantra, but occasionally splitting off players, in town during downtime, for example, is a good way to ensure each player gets some of that "spotlighting" as you point out.
@9:15 - Repeating the actions back is something that I do when I'm not sure I completely understand what the player wants. I don't "repeat", I "summarize". This lets the player stop me before I take any action that might be dependent upon my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the player's intent.
@14:26 - Tuning every single encounter into a life-or-death situation is a little much in my opinion. A warehouse is going to be guarded based on the average threat in the area, not on "that group of adventurers that the GM is sending this way" unless the NPC "leader" was somehow tipped off (which is valid, but not EVERY DANGED TIME). As the comment notes, the character capabilities are automatically adjusted for in every aspect of the world and this is one way to break immersion that is a little insidious. "I'm more powerful, so general things should be easier" is a natural way to think. Key encounters should be balanced, since we can assume the villain has some reason to expect stiff opposition, but the bartender shouldn't be armed with a 30 Diplomacy skill just to oppose the players while they're gathering information. Naturally, sometimes the difficulty is just a reflection of the actual adventuring environment - see S1: Tomb of Horrors as an example.
@17:28 - This ties right back to 2:40. The GM hands me a pre-written character, then when I don't interpret the GM's precious NPC for whom I'm rolling dice the GM will attempt to tell me that their pre-written character wouldn't behave this way. This is why it's a bad idea for GMs to hand out pre-written characters (as opposed to pre-generated character stats). The GM becomes both the director and actor in their own play and the players become random number generators with no actual volition.
My reactions to these are based on things I've seen over the years in various groups using various rule systems, both as a GM and as a player. The best way to address literally all of these issues is to sit down as a group and pick any bones you have with the GM's style, the other players, and even some of the rules/house rules. This helps to get that "GM expectations vs player expectations" friction out of the way.
Me as DM: "Ok, so do we want to play D&D or maybe Warhammer Fantasy this weekend?" Pla
yers" "Er, yeah D&D would be great!" Me as DM: "Wrong, it's Call of C'Thulhu."
#TooAccruate
If one of the lads wants to DM AD&D 2e they just do so.
Something I think would be fun when it comes to premade characters, is to let the players make characters for each other. If it's a group of friends that have played already, I foresee a lot of fun when they get each other to play out of their usual style. Getting the brooding rogue to be a sweet cleric granny. Getting the orderly paladin player to be a crazy wild magic sorceror. etc.
I'M not a great gm, but I've had players do things in such a way that there were times that rolling wasn't necessary because what they did was out of the scope of the character of the potentially hostile npcs. They had more fun thinking things through rather than rolling sometimes because it allowed them to roleplay better. I think this is both something that a player has to understand, as well as the GM understanding their PCs. Doing it right makes it more entertaining, especially when they are doing it as a group.
I had a great session where a low INT dwarf barbarian got bored in a hags hut, and as the other PCs had a conversation, he went off to find 'a drink'. The character unwittingly found an alchemist lab table, and went 'looking for the bottle that smells of alcohol the most'. He found it, and the player announced, without my "Are you sure?", he'd down it in one gulp. I didn't even allow him a save at this point. Character died instantly, player was speechless, then laughed his head off. It was memorable and incredibly funny and sad at the same time. Kids gloves = not always necessary.
I need to get you at my table! having you and a player would freaking rock
Hey Discourse, agree with some of these Reddit comments.
Was awesome meeting you at Q Con 🤓
Spotlighting can be crazy hard sometimes. I've ran a table for years that had 3 really out going people, that where all involved in some form of stage performance for their hobby and 2 guys that where really introverted. It could be a job to prevent the game from turning into a huge trio stage show. Don't get me wrong, they where great, you'd only have to give them a few words and they'd turn it into a stage play through improvisation, but it would also turn the other two players into their audience. Which isn't what's supposed to happen.
I mostly managed to solve it by enforcing mechanics. Calling for dice rolls and prompting often stopped the trio in their tracks and allowed the more subdued duo to get their foot in the door through the skills their characters had. We played a system that wasn't as combat focused as D&D is and there where a lot of different skills. So, having the duo know stuff, or pass a social skill where the trio did not forced them to take their place within the game and have mechanical backing to do so.
It was something I had to learn to be mindful off however and be disciplined in. Especially when you're still trying to learn to find a good balance, which is surely different for every group. You don't want to annoy the more exuberant players by constantly interrupting their fun with "could you roll X for me." We're all different types of players with different types of interests, and it can be hard to get everyone to go along sometimes.
Can certainly be tough. The more out going ones can end up running the whole show with the quieter ones in tow. Ideally they're all passing the ball around and meaningfully including each other in the game.
One option to keep track of who's gotten a chance, is as simple as tokens or chits. For each "scene" draw a chit and spotlight that PC first, then draw another chit and spotlight that PC next. Keep going until all have been spotlighted in that scene. Do the same for each "scene" thereafter. While "spotlighted" the others can surely help, but they aren't the one who is being focused on. All characters will have _something_ to do in a scene.
I think when things really start happening in a scene, having a quick check in with each player to make sure they're not getting bowled over by the enthusiasm of other players can be very helpful to introverted a newer players who aren't sure of their footing yet. I have been in situations where I've been trying to get a word in edgewise to address a quick character need but the scene gets swept away by others and it can be pretty frustrating, especially when the scene is escalating into a clusterfuck because of a minority of exuberant actors dragging others along.
Edit:Props for Ace Rimmer. But of course, there's always a next Ace Rimmer!
The Healthbar thing is a bit gamey. But one of the problems with video games and DnD (pretty often in my experience) is that they don't do a good job conveying the mount of fight left in an enemy. DMs tend to be pretty cagey about accurately describing how actually hurt an enemy is in an easy to understand way. What I've tended to see is that they'll describe a state change at 50 and 25% and maybe death's door. A healthbar would add transparency and a way for players to assess on their own how well they're actually doing.
I understand the Milestone issue. I've had DMs give 2-3 levels at certain points because our characters skipped a segment of the story and they need to be higher levels to match the part we're entering. However, I've also had sessions in which my party kills a dragon/demon after clearing a dungeon and we don't get a level because there's other stuff to do at our current level.
Wow I can't believe this is like my 4th video of yours I've watched without realizing I wasn't subscribed yet, my b
Recently, my players almost red-herringed themselves when solving a mystery. It was a murder/sabotage mystery in Legend of the Five ring, and the head investigator of the group, a Kitsuki samurai, went down the logical path of working out who has both the motive and the necessary knowledge to commit the crime, which did lead to quite a few suspects (the victim, the Champion of the Mantis Clan, had put quite a few noses out of joint, both in and out of clan, recently).
Luckily, it didn't take the Kitsuki too long to realise that one important step in the plan could only have been done by someone with the ability to essentially travel between spirit realms at will, something they only knew a couple of people could do (one they'd recently killed), and who they also knew would have motive to want to kill said Champion, so a lot of potential time wasting was soon averted.
7:00 ME! I am a player that loves the GAME part of D&D, with a bit of Role Play for my spice at times of drama and tension. But mundane interactions, simple encounters with basic NPC's who are intended as info-dumps or quest givers without a huge link to the grand scope of the world, I am 100% going to check out of RP with them, and just sit back and let the RP-focused people at the table have a grand time. I am not an actor, I am a tactician and strategist, and those roles come out in D&D mechanically, MOST of the time, combat. Not always, true, and I love those RP sessions that actually play to my gaming strengths, but they are usually not very frequent.
When it’s coming to those kind of interactions, what I do is this I like to have a lot of RP so when it’s coming to persuasion, deception, and intimidation a lot of the time I have them at the highest DC they can be but depending on how the player role-plays it with their character I lower the DC. This is how you award good RPing and you still allow them to use their dice and their skills and basically how this makes sense is that the person has to make a good argument, and then the dice integrated that luck so perhaps say if you’re saying the right things but you catch them on the wrong day and they’re just being argumentative then it may still not work or you roll good but you made such a weak argument that it didn’t work anyway. But with this combination it encourages the good RP and still make sure players pray for those good rolls and to me personally it feels the most realistic and it puts the situation more into the players hand especially😁
As the first commenter, I have to say that game masters should listen to this. Good Stuff, mate!
4:42 The use of Kayne (or whatever his name is currently) as the poster child for being divorced from reality is *chef's kiss!*
that first point was, you can't say two mutually exclusive things and say this needs to happen
I understand why people wouldn’t like DMs feeling them what their character would do. I am the exception I guess. I actually ask my DM and other players how they think my character would act in certain situations. I may have created my character but it has been shaped and evolved by the campaign and the other players/characters. I find it fun to get input and inspiration from the table. I often have to ask my DM about how they think my character would respond since we collaborated on my character’s backstory, and world lore, to make the campaign more interesting, dynamic, and fun.
I couldn't disagree more about fudging dice rolls. Not saving a character when they die because of incredibly bad luck is damaging to the whole campaign. I had one character that died like that and I let the dice rule. Because he died, and was level 1 and everyone else was level 8, he got bored and stopped showing up. Then his best friend stopped showing up and the other players did not want to go on without them. The whole long running campaign disappeared in a puff of smoke.
For the players asking for easy fight so they can "feel their power growing up", what I do as a DM that leans towards mostly deadly encounters (my players love the tactical combats, even too much for my taste), is that in those encounters sometimes there are minions that the PC now dispatch with ease, but remember how hard it was to deal with them not so long ago.
I had a gm once that used one of his pc power characters as an npc in a game of Rifts. My juicer went to a bar (for some reason) and ended up getting in a fight with a guy who looked like a nobody because that guy was being a dick to my juicer for no reason (which is something one does not do to a juicer unless that somebody wants an ass-whooping with extreme haste).
My character got hit on the first swing (which is hard to do with a juicer), and got punched hard enough to destroy his armour (equal to protection like a battle tank) from a bare fist, which sent him flying across the bar.
So, my character got up, dusted himself off, picked up his weapons from the locker the bar demanded he put them in upon entrance, and left. He then scaled the building across from the front entrance, then set up to snipe the bastard when he left. I told the gm my character would wait until the guy came out (which he did) and would snipe him in the noodle. I rolled a nat 20 to hit (crit), and the gm said my blaster rifle goes *click*, but nothing happens; all my ammo was gone, and my character sitting there for hours did not notice. A professional chem-enhanced super soldier merc didn't notice all his ammo was gone.
He gave me a bunch of other bullshit for the rest of the game while his gf (my friend) got to do nothing but wait while her character was on a flight from Japan to NYC (anyone who plays Rifts will wonder how that is a thing that would happen).
I beat his ass at Starfox 64 afterwards.
...did he even explain where the ammo had went...?
@youtubeuniversity3638 Nope. Just that it was gone. My character went and "convinced" the bouncer to tell, but all he got was a vague description of a guy who "went west".
I had a DM who did the round-by-round encounter balancing thing. I similarly hated it.
I will describe what a character does because I want to encourage the player to interact more. Like I will start the description and ask them how it ends. This is a great way of getting players engaged, especially the players who tend to be wallflowers otherwise.
One thing about good game design, and I think this applies both to computer games and tabletops, is a good difficulty curve. Not, every encounter is hard or every encounter is easy. More like.. overall there's a steady escalation of challenge, but when you zoom in, you get peaks and valleys. The peaks raise tension, and the valleys release tension.