I'm currently one of three druids in my party. Yup, THREE druids. Each of us plays *completely* different than the others, and we're all having a Wild time.
I want my next character in a long term campaign to be a druid and I would honestly love that scenario. I've played Fighter and Warlock in long campaigns and Bard, ranger and paladin for one shots. I did play a druid in a one shot and had a blast can't wait to truly develop a druid character through a campaign
I could see three of my players using wild magic druids and having the random wild chart just sitting on the table cause someone is gonna roll every turn add a wild magic sorcerer lol that would get crazy
A friend of mine lost a player in their DND campaign (going on a year) they were at 10th level, and asked if I wanted to join. The DM (not my friend) was very helpful- and we both found it was very important that my character fit into the setting. We had a "session zero" where we as a group discussed how things work, house rules and stuff. When the first session started it took no more than the "recap" (maybe 3 minutes) before my character was introduced- now I've been playing with the same group for over a year, and I'm loving it- have a great time with them :D
@@gorgit Haha, there is no but- I am absolutely consumed by the fever, and currently I'm working on getting more of my friends involved in D&D- in whatever way I can. I've played a few sessions with one of my oldest friends, and my wife now- and I think it's honestly (as long as you are in a healthy group with people you can trust ofc) an extremely healthy passtime mentally.
Your last point in particular is spot on. I've had gaming groups like that, where I've felt attacked, uncomfortable or bullied at the table, but have sucked it up because I wanted to play and didn't have anyone else to play with. In hindsight, the emotional harm it caused me was absolutely not worth it, and I wish I'd left that table long before I did. I've since left that group and found a group that I feel much more comfortable with. I trust them and since joining them I've had some of the best times I've ever had at a table. The advice in this video is hugely important. Thanks guys.
The "no information about the setting" thing really came up for me in my first campaign. I'm like Kelly in that I like to have a history to my character that meshes with the world of the setting. I drove my GM nuts asking semi-detailed questions about various parts of the map that had little to nothing to do with where the party was currently (on the side, NOT during a session). I figured out later on, he wasn't avoiding answering to be obtuse rather he was a very improvisational GM and literally hadn't decided on those areas beyond the broad strokes of "X" race is the dominant species in that area.
As the DM, I think at that point, I'd say "You know what, your character is from that place. That's your city now. Do what you want with it, and I'll make it work with the rest of the world. And if it doesn't fit perfectly, then that's fine, because that's what different cultures are."
Man, I love my group but I wish they gave a crap about my setting. It's not even like they're mean about it. They always say, "your worlds are always so cool." but they don't participate at all when I ask them if they have any input, lol.
As a DM if I haven't flushed something out and a player is interested about that part of the world for their character creation I just tell them I haven't decided on that, pitch your ideas and we'll collaborate on it. Makes them more invested being able to create part of the world.
your PC may be fully new to the setting i once introduced an non native PC through a magical gate into the stat adventure, for logistical and practical(convention) reasons he did new nothing about the setting Was a fun game The same may go if the PCs really change the world, knowing nothing of the other world
@lyntonfleming I do the same thing. I usually like to base like 3-4 cultures on actual cultures from human history and let players make the rest up or I improvise cultures that are encountered later.
My golden rule for tabletop RPGs: Everyone at the table should strive to make the game as fun as possible for everyone, including the dm. Also communication is key, talking about issues as they come up and having the other people listen and discuss it in a constructive manner can overcome a lot of problems. I played for years in a group where everyone had a diagnosis of some kind, and had different problems that might have put others off, but since we all worked together to accommodate each other, it made it even better. One player got tired very early, so we had to game mid day. I'm terrible with keeping times, especially early, so one of the other players picked me up before the game. Another player was very picky about food, so we ate the same food every Saturday for over a year before we could branch out to three acceptable meals, and so on. These could have been red flags, but because everyone was working together to help each other, it strengthened our bond as a group and as friends.
That is such a beautiful Story. Im about to try dnd for the first time soon, and if been Healing so many Horror stories on the Internet. But good stuff line this makes me want to try regardless.
Our group has a built in method to accommodate this because of life. It's a good way to remove a PC or add one when players show up late or can't make it. We have a creature of some kind that acts like an extradimentional space. It eats and spits out characters as needed and it adds trauma to our PCs the first time it happens and sometimes the lore behind what's happening is so disturbing PC's flat out refuse to talk about it or block it from their minds. This none gets interesting when someone new or and NPC witnesses it and tries to talk about it. - Doc
For the deal with using Entangle to stop something from falling through a grate, I find the best way to do it is say "It actually works, but you get the sense that it was a stroke of luck and shouldn't rely on it happening again."
Sometimes I'll make a spell like this enable the caster to make an arcana check to actually see if it succeeds. The DC will vary with the difficulty of the task.
Was playing a rune knight fighter gem dragonborn and we were being chased by a pirate ship. Flew into the air, grew to large then got enlarge reduced by our parties sorcerer. Next turn I let myself fall directly through the ship, took some damage, and sank it. DM basically said the same thing. It was so epic for him to let it happen once though 😁
"Re-zero" is a fun phrase. In marksmanship it sometimes refers to making adjustments to your rifle's sights to account for any changes to the way you hold and fire it. A good analogy for the purpose of a "re-zero" session.
The main important reason for a Session Zero: YOU ALL AGREED TO MEET UP AT THIS TIME, LET'S SEE IF YOU'RE ACTUALLY CAPABLE OF DOING SO. Sometimes, you might need to pull back the start time by 15 or 30 minutes if it's a little hard for one or two players to make it on time. Having a "will this start time work" game-day is good to have before the game fully starts.
Or, you keep the start time but just know the first 15 minutes will be filler (chatting, reviewing the previous sessions, etc.) while you wait for that one guy to show up and "find his character sheet."
@@Vuntermonkey Sometimes if people can't make it early, having 10 minutes to say Hi & decompress is nice. One time I was a player in a game where I *barely* was able to make it in time after work. not having that brief period of time to decompress made the first 30 minutes in-game a bit hard to get in the groove with and focus. So if people are constantly 15 minutes late, keep the original start time, but just know that you as a DM have those 15 minutes for player catchup/review.
Peoples can miscalculate their needed time to arrive properly - if your train late or your car get in a traffic jam are things,m what you cannot control. Or you just cannot wake up in time... The best way to avoid that, is to try arrive before the scheduled time - about a half an hour can be enough. The "empty" time you can fill with remembering, what happened during the previous session (as the Dungeon Dudes called it: session re-zero), set up your character sheet, create the place, where you are gonna play - make it faster to jump into the game, when the time of beginning arrives. Or, if you get into an accident, you still should be around in time, when YOU arrives. (Also, it's proper mannerism, if you can give a call to your group, if you notice, that you will be late!)
Ugh this is a massive problem with my friends. Two never schedule time ahead for us or will cancel for other plans. And it’s like ffs just say you’re not interested in reserving the time to play online. It’d be a whole other thing if we were playing irl (sadly one, and one of the two bad schedulers at that has moved away) but online it’s super embarrassing. Like it’s fine to not want to play but leaving us in the lurch until like the day before absolutely sucks, especially for the poor DM.
My wife and I played Khenra twins that were both Totem Barbarians. She went wolf for offense, I went bear for defense, and it was one of the overall best campaign experiences I've ever had
I love this idea! sounds like a lot of fun, great use of 2 players working together to make fun characters that complement each other. You can do this with friends too, it is just a fantasy game so go wild. I have one of my best friend playing as my brother in a noble family. I still don;t know how his story is going to affect mine and I am very interested in what is going to happen. As the (imaginary) older brother I am to inhered my fathers rule of Leilon but what will his story tell? I love the idea of people having a common story together in game.
@@EEEGotomtom what's really cool about the Khenra is that as long as your twin is alive you reroll 1s, so it is unbelievably helpful for attacks and saves. Having another player be your character's sibling can definitely be tricky, but as long as the two of you work well together and are close outside the game it should work out well in game ☺️
My daughter wanted to DM a short game (3sessions). All the players made characters up separately and did Barbarians. It was a blast. 4 barbarians can really make a chaotic group.
i currently run one shots at my local youth group for 10-15 year olds, many who have never played before so i usually bring pre generated simplified character sheets of varying classes and let the players pick and name their characters from the options for them, this is great for getting them into the game and i find that running games this way allows me to teach them more about the game by letting me choose when to add more complex aspects, one group i have been running for are now starting a call of cthulu campaign and are even starting to DM for each other.
I think the best way to resolve spell disputes is to read out the spell description out loud. I've had players who thought they could use a spell in a way they couldn't, instead of engaging in their argument I just ask them "please read out what the spell does from the description". If they ask "can I use it differently" then I might say no, or ask for an arcana check, or ask them to spend more resources. I'm perfectly fine with letting players bend the rules, but we need to first be clear on what the rules are so we can proceed on how they can be bent and what the _cost_ of that bending is.
Using more resources. Hmmm.... That's interesting. Now I want to make a table of material components that alter spells and how. Dude, I'm getting a floodgate of inspiration! Thanks for sharing!
My fav moment so far in our campaign? Our DM let us, for the cool moment, use poison spray to coat my fighter's sword for a one use strike after being teleported to the enemy. The whole party loved the fight. (I'm the only fighter as I am the most experienced player and thus play the tank to help the new players. I take most of the attacks so they can explore the mechanics etcs and yes. I said straight up I will be the damage sponge.)
@@luketfer My Magic group has transitioned to 5e as well so there's definitely an expectation of "read the spell out loud" before/when casting it that's already baked in for us. Super helpful!
I think finding a group is similar to dating. Sometimes you know right away it won't work. Sometimes it takes a few sessions. And sometimes it lasts a lifetime.
What is this "dating" you speak of? We're D&D players; we don't know what that word means. I'm kidding! I'm kidding! You can put away those torches and pitchforks.
That makes perfect sense; you're interacting with people when playing D&D, so many things that apply to any activity involving interpersonal interactions are going to apply to D&D as well.
I've been on the receiving end of some pretty terrible DMs and groups. I've seen everything you guys talked about... and I'm actually thankful for it. Allow me to explain. There was no internet available to me when I started. TH-cam didn't exist. I had only the people around me and I suffered under their ugly, nasty playstyle and personalities until I said I'd had enough. All those bad habits, all that nasty behavior, all those red flags, they taught me how to NOT be like that. I was forged better in their crucible of "ick". I love to let characters be heroic because I wasn't allowed to be. I love to work with players on story and, really, anything because nobody did for me. I love to let things slide on a spell or power now and then because "that's so cool!" (with the caviat that it's a one time thing). I want my players to have fun, because I did not. So, thank you, all you awful, terrible DMs and groups. You made me the better, proud Forever DM that I am today.
1st and 2nd edition just had a different feel than modern DnD. From the way rules worked, to the fairly common save or die abilities of monsters, even to the design of the adventures, many of even very beloved and classic adventures like Tomb of Horrors, Temple of Elemental Evil, Rod of Seven Parts... they all had systems designed to be horrible to the players. The game felt more adversarial between GMs and players back then.
Glad to know I'm not alone on that! We had a lot of toxic behavior when I first played D&D, but the best of us have a lot more fun having learned what NOT to do first hand.
I was gonna say something similar, I'm a forever DM and have none of the "red flags" but they have a few of mine sprung. People don't realize the incredible amount of pressure we have as DMs, and the amount of work some of us put into our campaigns, or world even. Like the fact that you have that many red flags for a DM, I'm surprised you get to play at all. I've seen both bad DMs, and bad players. DMs can usually be reasoned with, bad players are harder. I do appreciate that they've outlined some key things of NOT to do as a DM. That would've been a better title.
Ahhhh, nothing make a better Forever DM than dissatisfaction. Same here, I was in 3 different groups and left all of them dissatisfied before I started running my own games. One was too chaotic and "beer and pretzels," one was too strict on rules, and the last one was a step in the right direction, but still lacked depth in story and the DM lacked experience
I remember a story where I felt isolated as a DM since I felt that no one in the table wanted to thang out with me and only do when it's related to the campaign. I just soldier through because it was my responsibility as a DM to run the game for them. But man, I felt really bummed out when I see them having conversations and suddenly stopped when I join in. It took me a while but I left the group. Moral of the story, never play, less run for a table that only wants to use you for there own satisfaction at the game.
oh man, that sucks. Once I had a DM that gave me similar vibes. I get it that we don't have to be best friends with other players or the DM, but I felt like they didn't see their players as people but rather tools they used to have fun.
As GM you do All the work (ok, 99% of the work), you very often invite these people into your home and treat them as guests. If you don't like the players, just cut them loose. Their loss.
That happened to me, too. I was invited to DM for a established group that ended up being married couple at their house … and no one else. I felt like I was their entertainment for the evening. Took a few sessions before I just said “no” and left.
I heard a guy talking about the group he's with the other day and there were MASSIVE red flags. The DM secretly had different players use different methods for setting ability scores (they figured it out later). That right there would have gotten me to walk, but the DM also awarded experience purely on the amount of damage the characters did. That's even worse.
That's why I use point buy, or the 27 point premade array. Rolled scores are for one-shots where you don't expect all the characters to live, let alone continue on to a campaign. Back in 2004, I played with a DM who said we'd roll stats under supervision, but when two friends came back in they claimed to have supervised each other when they rolled their demigod stats, and the DM accepred it. I've hated the rolling method ever since.
@@Keovar Agreed. I've only ever used Point Buy or Standard Array, and I feel like they are far superior to rolling. I have considered a method where the group as a whole rolls for stats (take turns rolling), and use this to make your own array, and then have everyone use the same array, placing each number on the ability score you want, and combining it with your ASIs to get the character you want. I might try that some day, but I don't think I'll ever do a regular Rolling method.
One of the red flags I've experienced is excessive drinking at the table. My players used to drink a little bit during the session, but nothing too bad. Then, one time, a players downed over half a bottle of wine in under an hour. She was disruptive, loud and made decisions that affected the whole party. Example, they were in a mine with zombies and she had her character walk right up to the zombie and try to say hi.
Alcohol at the table is one of my red flags. I get that it's fun for you, but if it's not fun for the table, I don't need it. Either I can leave or they can, and since my group often saddles me with GM responsibility, I'll take the game with me and y'all can start over. That individual needs to decide if gaming or drinking is more important, because it's never not been a problem or disruptive. If that makes me not fun, so be it. I don't ask for much, but maybe that the work I put into running sessions on my little bit of free time be respected. Run your own game, or have your binge after, but I don't have to be okay with your idea of fun if it spoils mine and everyone else's at the table.
You're helping me realize the specifics of what has gone wrong in the past. Hopefully this can help me to avoid or improve those situations in the future. 🤞
I find so many videos on youtube that make me realize where I've gone wrong with various aspects of my life. I wish I'd had a session zero around the age of 8. 😄
Thank you! I joined a well established table a few years ago with no re-zero. First session I felt attacked by the other players interrogating me and my character choices, belittling my attempts to RP, and telling me I was playing my character wrong. I always felt it was my fault but you've made me think differently
I have many times told people to play a certain type of character. If the scenario is a story about some knights escorting a bishop to the Pope, then if the bishop has already been cast, then the character has to be a knight, Within the category 'knight' there is so much room for variation that this should never be a problem.
@@Joker-yw9hl Me and two friends had several sessions where we played 3 Gestalt Rogues. (One was a Gestalt Wizard, another was a Fighter, and the last, I think was a Cleric.) We actually raided a group of slavers, and took all the children to train as our future guild.
Try making stories that don’t have such rigid party comps. Remember it’s the players story not just yours. I can think of plot devices to have a non knight end up in their party. Imagination
Specific scenarios for one-shots or short campaigns have a lot more leeway for constraints (as oxymoronic as that sounds) than long campaigns that last for months or years. The longer you play, the more important it is that you're playing exactly what you want. One reason to play one-shots is to try out character types you might not have chosen otherwise. (Of course it can also be the opposite, to try something you really want but don't think will suit a long campaign.)
Being told what class to play is the MOST frustrating thing ever. I was DMing a game where one player was trying to make a "balanced party" and I had to really advocate for the other players to play what they want. As a DM I can work with any party, and all I want is for everyone to have a good time and not play something they don't want
Everyone wants to play fighters and barbarians I feel obliged to play a caster of some kind, mostly a healer type to keep people alive. Let people play what they want but their choice restricts mine.
Yes! I'm currently running a game with all martials and it's a blast. Sure I have to do some tweaking to balance things, but at the same time it's such fun to have things like a tower wall actually be a challenge the party has to overcome.
Many of these red flags happened on accident in our group of brand new players for the first year or so. If you are anxious, ignorant and without guidance, things can tense up really quickly. I think the reason we still play together is that we had already been close friends before we started playing and agreed to be super transparent and patient with each other. We definitely stumbled along the way and had to have some frank discussions, but we all trust each other to try to learn, be kind and listen. It strengthened our friendship to work through those issues and I am super happy with our group today. 💚
I think with a lot of these the reason why they are red flags and not deal breakers is because they can speak to some underlying issues. Being open, honest, and communicating early and often eliminates the root of the concern. If the DM is trying to host a game players have fun in and the players want to have fun along with the rest of the table, most things can work themselves out.
That's fantastic! So long as you focus on the people you're playing with and not just the game itself, you can overcome just about any problem at the table! You just can't take any mistake too seriously, especially when everyone's new to the game.
Exactly. It's a red flag (warning) not a stop or evacuation sign. A red flag is a sign that might point to something more troubling or a one off instance of bad. You don't know. That's why you observe.
On surprise house rules, many years ago my wife and I joined a game some of her co-workers were in. This was back in D&D 3.0/3.5 days, and the DM was deeply enamored with third-party content that exploded with the original OGL. First session, joining a few sessions after the campaign start, we were all around level 3-4. The DM had us encounter a group of third-party-content goblins that were naturally invisible except under moonlight! (Naturally, the encounter happened at mid-day in game.) I was playing a fighter so I stated I would make a perception check to try and determine where one of the goblins was so I could attack with the major disadvantages that come from fighting against an invisible opponent. The DM said a perception check couldn't be used that way, and when presented with the RAW on perception checks he claimed it was a house rule. So I stated I would blindly attack into one of the spaces around me in an attempt to get lucky and hit one. Denied, because I didn't have the blind fighting feat which, according to him, made it impossible to fight an invisible foe. Again, when presented with the RAW about fighting invisible opponents and how the blind fighting feat just reduced the penalties for doing so, he declared it a house rule. The party ended up barricading themselves in a room and waiting for nightfall, dragging the adventure to a complete halt because we felt we had no options to move forward. We didn't return for a second session.
I don't personally as a DM have any issue with two or more players playing the same class. But it is important that each of the involved players are ok with it. I don't want a player to feel diminished by another player potentially overshadowing them in there class. I'm not going to assume this means s the case. But there will be a conversation to make sure it's cool across the board.
That's a good way to approach things. No classes are necessary but too much overlap can make you feel redundant. I think it's best if you have potential overlap to have those players discuss with each other how they're going with their character. Sometimes they can link their backstories or come up with interesting tactics not commonly used otherwise.
I had a group with two frontliners, two mages and one gunslinger. Two sessions later I only had two mages and a gunslinger because one of the players moved to another country (like he didn't know that would happen when he joined...) and another player had some personal issue. So when looking for new players I had to make clear that the party has a big weakness and they should probably fill it. The new player picked fighter, but even so, the other players felt kinda inadequate because they chose their classes when they knew what everyone else was going to play and they expected to have a specific play style in the group. It's also very difficult to balance an encounter when the party itself is not balanced.
Ironically enough I had this exact thing happen to me. I was playing an eldritch knight with a greatsword themed after Zack Fair. I was the only Frontline, and I went a high CHR build, in tandem with the inspiring leader feat. This made me a semi tank, semi melee dps, and a slight support role during downtime. It wasn't perfect but it led to some amazing fights. Then, when we had to replace one of the players due to RL issues, and this player is a minmaxxer.. and there's nothing inherently wrong with that but not only did they have almost 10 AC higher than me on average(and i had 16 AC), they also had many other things that simply made their character statistically *better* than mine in every way. Needless to say, all combat after that went very smoothly. But no longer did we have combat where we might die to some of the stronger encounters because this new guy never got hit, and rarely missed. Turned combat into a bore since we no longer had to worry about anyone dying. And it made my character completely irrelevant in basically all scenarios. What had previously been an intense game, where every decision mattered became a foregone conclusion even against boss enemies. Everyone else found the game had gotten boring even during social encounters since the new guys character seemed to have bonuses to everything by level 3 that only some of the RP was still interesting. Needless to say I retired my character at a sensible point, but not long after, everyone, including the dm decided the game had gotten stale so we all decided to go our separate ways.
The question of whether it's metagaming to know how trolls work for me is resolved by the question "what does my character know about trolls?", which gives the DM scope to allow for their weaknesses to be common knowledge or basically unknown as appropriate.
You literally can’t avoid metagaming because your character by coincidence could use fire against a troll. By avoiding that you are metagaming. Also, Whether you ask your DM or not whether your character knows a monsters trait, your subconscious knowledge of the fact is influencing you whether you know it or not.
@@floofzykitty5072 That's...not the case here? He's circumventing the metagaming by actively asking "what does my character know?" which meta gaming by definition is making a decision as your character using knowledge your character would not reasonably have. As a DM, I'd ask them to either make a history or general intelligence check and let that determine what they know. It's a fun way to incorporate that kind of stuff.
This is the most important question at all the tables i've played at! And the most asked. nothing wrong with doing an insight, history, etc., check to see what they know. and it gives the dm a reason to refresh into their backstory to help decide what they would and wouldn't know.
I mean, if a character has Fireball on their character sheet, it's metagaming anytime they don't take a chance to cast it when trying to do damage to multiple targets. Depending on the level of play, sometimes even single targets. Actually, just always use Fireball. Just use Fireball. Just Fireball. JUST FIREBALL. Now, not learning/preparing Fireball in the first place, that's a totally valid reason not to cast it on the trolls. Another valid reason would be if you're a Light Cleric comboing Spirit Shroud and Scorching Ray, but that's still fire damage so the end result is the same. It's kinda hard not to have a generous use of fire in a 5E D&D party, you've got to go out of your way to avoid it more often than not. Even if you're in a super low magic campaign, that type of party probably always has lit touches on hand.
Well,, it's depending on the PC's core personality as well. I have a fallen Aasimar Undying warlock, who doesn't really use fire based spells (the only exception is the Create Bonefire cantrip, but that's for making camps), so if it would run into a troll, it wouldn't use fireball, even if his patron would be a Fiend. His favorite cantrip is the Chill Touch though, which also stops regenerating abilities, so he would be able to put a considerable contribute to it's death, even if the most likely to kill it would be our Tiefling barbarian.
As a first time DM I am so glad I spent sooooo much time working with my players on their characters, who they are, where they fit into the setting etc. Great video, great relief I didn't end up unintentionally producing these red flags.
Making someone play a class is only ok if they dont know what to play. Friend of mine just got into dnd and has no preference after we went through all classes. I just said "lets just have you play this one to fill a group role, but feel free to change later if you make up your mind". We made his character and backstory yesterday and hes very happy with the result
I agree with this sentiment. However, when people talk about "making" someone play a particular class or fill a particular role, I think they mean force/pressure. In your example you were helping, not only your friend, but everyone else as well (way to kill two birds with one stone there, nice). Not only that, but you gave them a choice to opt out of their class/role if they disliked it. You weren't really "making" them, but rather you were guiding an undecided newcomer. By giving them the opportunity to change, it doesn't feel like they are forced to stick with it for the sake of the squad.
I take a different approach and ask what kind of playstyles they generally prefer and go through options with them that point in that direction. My roommate really wanted to be a Bardbarian and El Kabong the health back into people. Told her there wasn't really a great way for me to help her eith that, but Mercy Monk is literally all about punching hp into friends or poison into enemies, which she liked enough
My group is pretty big, but we've had a few filler games where whoever was GMing laid out class and/or background restrictions for the party. In a V:tM game, we had one game where everyone was playing Clan Gangrel. We had D&D games where everyone was limited to Fighters or Barbarians. I think limiting certain aspects of character creation is fine, so long as it supports the story being told.
I feel like it's important to point out that sometimes restrictions within a group are important and even fun at times, I once had a group I played with in which magic was outlawed but it was still subtly used by many people on the sly which added a bit of tension but also a rush to the game play as well. It made me as a druid player carefully think about my choices of spells in a public setting
That's not a restriction, by game viewpoint. It's an in-game restriction, which by i means, that it will have logical consequences. But your DM didn't say, you CANNOT play any spellcasting class! That's only world building element, which makes those types of characters more targeted, and harder to play - but it also means, that among your enemies might be less people, who are proficient in magic as well, therefor your character essentially would be a stronger opponent, that others would think after notice it.
The important distinction here is that there was no actual restriction against using magic; it's just illegal, and that, at it's root, is just (potentially) great world detail. Much like playing a Jedi during the timeframe of the original Star Wars films. As long as a GM isn't specifically and unfairly punishing YOU, just for playing the character, it's just dramatic tension.
One thing that we always do to address metagaming is by simply asking if our characters would know the information the players know. For instance, when we fought a banshee and everyone but me went down from the wail, once I got everyone back up I asked if my character would know if that danger was no longer present, and by passing a history check, we knew we didn't have to fear that happening again if we went back to fight it right away.
I always felt this sort of thing could be easily addressed with either a knowledge roll, or having a minimum knowledge skill value. One character, a barbarian, once stated at creation that his tribe would often tell stories and draw pictures of monstrous threats that he believes are just stories to scare children into staying close to the tribe, and that during encounters, he would try things from the stories and be willing to spend points when levelling into knowledge as a sign that it is now fact rather than fable.
On the topic of shutting down optimization, I think it's important for dungeon masters to outright define what they consider power gaming or metagaming since different dungeon masters will have their own idea of what metagaming and power gaming is. It's especially the case when you bring optimization into it which some will argue falls under the umbrella of power gaming.
Yeah I think it comes down to internal balance within the group. We've got one player who, without fail, will build the most powerful thing that can possibly be built. The rest of the group aren't that good with breaking the system so we end up with one player who's monstrously more powerful than the rest. That player then shows up all the rest and the DM has a nightmare trying to balance encounters
Part of the issue is that most DMs are often ill-equipped to evaluate the actual strength of builds but quick to decide what they think is strong based largely on their own anecdotes and emotional reactions. I think for most, "power gaming" is more of a bogeyman or a label for "stuff I don't like" rather than a proper concept. The really-optimized stuff can only work if the DM explicitly allows it because 5e is so heavily-bounded. A good example is tech like rest casting or conjure airstrike. The relative power difference between a character built with the slightest effort and a hyper-optimized build if the DM doesn't allow shenanigans is about 40-50% at most, as there are few multiplicative synergies and you're still limited by action economy and concentration. Some of the best-optimized builds at their peak disparity do double the DPR of just a plain old Rogue hidin' and hittin' with no subclass factored in. Most of the real difference comes from playing smart, piloting the character effectively and building for more than just combat numbers. But hey, some people want Clueless Kevin's tavern brawler barbarian monk as a baseline and think Susy Sharparrow is OP because she put her stats in Dex and uses a bow.
@@RaethFennec Yeah, I just think all builds have different strengths in 5e. I've seen some super cool optimized builds surrounding out of combat utility too. It's silly to restrict players on what they can play IMO. I had so many moments in my first campaign where I wanted to take something that would bolster my character within base rules and my DM refused to tolerate that. Ended up having less fun because my DM would ban fun build options for the sake of "balance". Not like conjure woodland animals gamebreaking type stuff, just things they didn't consider "balanced" or stuff like Death Cleric which they considered "evil". Like I'm a game design major and they're telling me what's balanced or not. Plus the lack of nuance to say a class is "meant for a DM because it's evil" is funny considering most builds I'd want to play with a necromancer or death cleric would likely subvert that trope. They even seemed a little offput when I wanted to build partially around action economy. Like I enjoy building around mechanics and RP, so it's frustrating when someone restricts that creativity when most of what I picked was in the base game. I'm not trying to break damage thresholds or some shit, I just know it's way more fun to play a character that's mechanically optimized. Whether it's optimized for the flavor I want, outside of combat, or the actual combat. Like it's so silly to try and micromanage party roles outside of keeping the same Ability Scores/levels and stuff. Just turns into a situation where players are comparing themselves to others when in reality, most good play in DnD surrounds game skill and not builds. And really, it's about having fun at the end of the day. If a player has a problem, communication obviously needs to happen. But like as a DM I will never restrict something WOTC releases for the edition I'm playing in, as that player bought the subclass, wants to use it, and it wouldn't be fair to them to restrict that. Rules as intended is a much better solution than straight up shutting down a combo or creative choice. I'll just adapt my campaign to their needs as a player, or buff other characters to make things more interesting for them and the way they want to play the game. DnD is such an individual experience that it ends up not really mattering anyways because most people are too focused on their own turn/game to care whether timmy in the corner is doing 20 or 25 damage on average. And if they do care, why so? Like what's the point of getting jealous of another player's successes? Hate to say it, but some people need to observe and learn instead of complaining about their DPR being lower. Newer players might have issues like this, but ultimately it can be solved via items or boons given by the DM if it becomes a huge deal.
@@greyscaleadaven Haha, I think we are two of one mind! I wrote a comment earlier that mentioned a few of the exact things you said here and I agree with you wholeheartedly. I even specifically suggested to someone if a player wanted to optimize in a group with players who didn't, that as a DM I'd talk with them privately and say absolutely go for it, but if other players fall too far behind, I might grant them extra boons or magic items while you get normal loot on schedule and will you be okay with that on the understanding that they'll need the help keeping up with you? That way the player has a wink wink nudge nudge nudge with the DM so they don't feel left out when Newbie Ned's melee monk gets Bracers of Defense and an Eldritch Claw tattoo by level 5 with a Staff of Striking on the horizon and Optimizer Oscar's Paladin 4 Warlock 1 PAM who's jumping ship to Sorcerer in a few levels only has a +1 quarterstaff and maybe a thermal cube or something fun for roleplay.
I think it's pretty fair for a GM to set a target power level for a campaign, but that's only tangentially related to optimisation. There's lots of ways you can approach this (whether you want to limit DPR, burst damage, general utility, whatever), but I think it can help focus a campaign and let people get to higher levels before the balance completely breaks. As a GM I can know that in a high-power game, pure martials aren't going to keep up and someone who picks one is going to have a bad time. Similarly, something like a Twilight Cleric (bad with specific 5e examples, I GM PF1e) will completely throw off the the balance of a low-power game. But, if a player approaches me asking to play one of these classes and I get the idea that they know what they're doing and will play up/down to the group then I'd let them. For Pathfinder examples, I'd probably use Swashbuckler and Summoner as the examples. Swashbuckler has very few decision points so they fit well into low-mid power games but don't really have any way to play up to high power levels (pre-rework Rogue and Monk were also bad but in more mundane, less interesting ways). Pre-rework Summoner on the other hand just had a really high power floor, a well-played full-caster would be stronger obviously, but as a Summoner you could randomly pick options and still end up with a pet that was stronger than a moderately optimised martial all while also being able to toss around the best Wizard combat spells (and basically only the best Wizard spells, their list was limited to just the good stuff). Then there were also the issues with their spell list that let an optimiser break apart Wealth By Level and make incredibly cheap wands, but that's more technical. Point is, there are classes/options that don't really fit into certain game power levels, a skilled or cooperative player can work around this to some degree. As a sweaty optimiser, I think it's good manners to pick a low-power character concept and push it to its limits. I know I could break the game with a full caster or any of the established power-gamey builds, I think it's more fun for everyone to play to the party's power level with a sub-optimal type of character. I get to spend hours reading up character options to squeeze every last drop of power from a build; the other players get to see a weird, wacky build they've never seen before and the GM gets to run a normal mid-power game without everything falling apart and fights being anticlimactic.
An important thing that I had to learn the hard way is that there's such a thing as "too many people". I'm not just referring to someone who might be more introverted, or scheduling, though those are problems with larger groups. But, it becomes a lot for the GM to keep track of to the point that balancing kinda goes out the window. Especially with action economy. But, an unfortunate side effect of a large party is that, in an effort to make sure everyone gets a chance in the spotlight, there's large portions of time where no one is in the spotlight. 4-6 people & a GM is a solid amount. If you're comfortable as a GM, you can push it to 8, but don't go over that.
Regarding action economy balancing, it's a particularly tough issue to fix because the only real solution is to even out the actions on each side by adding more monsters or giving them more actions, but that means there's more time between each player's turn (which is already an issue with larger groups). Then the issue compounds upon itself even further, because people zone out when they haven't taken a turn in a while, so you get the "umm, what happened since my last turn?" thing on every players turn which makes all the turns take even longer and makes the problem even worse.
I’ve run games with up to 30 people, which would definitely stress some, but I started playing D&D in a huge group of like 20+ people, so I never found DM’ing for big groups to be an issue. The secret is to make eye contact with each person at the table, make sure each person gets to do the thing they are there to do, and be ready to skip people that aren’t ready when it’s their turn. Those that like what you are doing will return, and those that don’t won’t be missed.
5 is pretty much the limit, unless all the players are fine with not doing anything for the whole session, watching other players do something instead. Thought, if you are doing only combat, then the amount of players doesn't really matter, they just have to think fast.
As someone currently playing a Warlock who very deliberately didn't take Eldritch Blast, I'm glad you said "If you're having fun, you're doing it right" bc I am definitely having fun with my Neutral Evil Warlock who's passing as a regular spellcaster (pact of the Tome) and totally about to betray the party at the last battle (DM: Hey you wanna be an evil cultist in my Zelda Homebrew who befriends the party and then betrays them in the end? Me: uh hell yeah???)
That sounds like an incredibly fun character! Have you made it to the moment of truth yet? Also I’m curious how you managed to hide the lack of spell slots during gameplay
@@Lucas-ns9hd oh yes, this campaign ended fairly soon after. It was a combination of her roleplay heavy, combat light campaign, and a surprising lack of meta gaming on their part, I believe. They all knew I was playing a warlock, of course, but it didn't come up in roleplay so it wasn't addressed. It uh. Didn't end how I wanted it to, but it was that dms first time dm-ing and they did something that was honestly really cool from my character's perspective, but left me as a player unable to do anything, so the end battle was a little anticlimactic. Pro-tip: don't have your warlock's patron take their soul into their own body bc that leaves their body on the ground along with all of their stuff and they can't cast any of the cool spells they just learned.
@@LtSarai Oh no! Well I'm sorry to hear that it wasn't as satisfying as you'd hoped. I hope the rest of the campaign was as fun as it sounded, at least. I've had roleplay-heavy homebrews get soured right at the end as well so I can definitely relate. Thanks for sharing!
Looking back now. One player heavily favoured by DM, was also murder hobo and stole player magic items. Major downer..... especially if someone else had a hot session on the dice...... player sulked like a 2yr old not allowed chocolate........
You nailed it when you mentioned trust. The group I'm in right now has been playing for over a year, and we've developed enough trust that we're comfortable with romances between PCs, with mild PVP (it's still a game for a team, but there are sometimes conflicts) without being upset with anyone out of character, with character's lying and scheming. We do a lot of things together that i would not be comfortable doing with a group I hadn't built this trust with. It's really great. Trust is key.
For my experience in the past, our "session zero"s usually happen naturally, casually over the course of the week/time period leading up to the first scheduled session. So that by the time the first session comes up everything is already laid out in expectations. We're prepared to jump right in right from the get go ish
Same here. I find it pretty hard to get people to do a session zero, but very easy to let the conversations and ideas flow for a couple weeks before hand, then do a quick recap to begin session 1.
Some time ago I tried to enter in an existing online campaign. Prior to join, I listened to an hour or two of a couple of sessions - I didn't have the best feelings but I was starving for D&D so I went along, joining as soon as there was chance to do it. After a couple of sessions I confirmed my fears - the group had a one man show person that was eating hours of sessions just to role everything was happening to him to the point that we were practically being silent just to be able to go ahead in the campaign. Not only that, he was doing metagaming A LOT, showing off how many things he knew on monsters and so on, correcting the master in game when he was saying something not by the rules/monster book. After my second or third session, he requested a "follow up meeting", in which he complained that I was not playing my Dwarven Cleric "right", somehow backed up by the DM and one of the other players. Right after that meeting, we had my final session with that group: he wasted almost 2 hours out of 4 chatting by himself with PNG just to "clarify" to me how it was the correct way of playing in that group, describing himself what he was doing and why and so on. When the session was finished a different player wrote an huge rant in the game chat on avoiding to waste time in the sessions since "we" were going too slow. I kind of gave up, I wrote down my point of view and I told them that I was going to leave the campaign. I must say, it was probably one if not my worst experience in D&D.
Yep, I have a Monk with the healer feat (soldier background, so a combat medic) and we're fine at level 10. Never needed the healing word or cure wounds spells.
I've seen a lot of those flags. I'm in a large group that's been around since the 1980s, and I can promise you every single one of those has appeared at some time or another, though rarely enough to be a major problem. Except that last one. As you stated, that's a major problem in and of itself. I was the victim of it for quite some time. Because I have issues dealing with people socially, and the group was my one reliable social outlet, I shrugged it off for a long time until I finally just hit my wall and left. Years later, after spelling it out to some in individual conversations after I left, and being specifically invited back, I returned. The group has much the same people, but one or two are gone, the negative attitude has disappeared in those who remained, and it's maintained itself that way since before the pandemic so I'm reasonably certain things are positive now. Just the same, I understand fully that last red flag, and the consequences it brings. I also confirmed through this experience how people can change for the better, and their groups with them.
I have encountered more grief from DMs over the 1st level spell Goodberry than I ever expected. Even in a lv17 campaign, being told that casting Goodberry before going to sleep is meta-gaming is like a slap in the face.
You're level 17 with 20 Intelligence/Wisdom but your character could not POSSIBLY have figured out that sleeping causes all their spell slots to regenerate and that Goodberries last 24 hours. :P No feasible way a person could solve such a challenge. It is beyond even immortal minds.
@@RaethFennec Exactly. It's just the fantasy equivalent to a life hack. Not much different than setting a timer on a slow cooker. There are obviously limits to how far one can reasonably push magic, but this is not that.
I'll out myself here but I hate that spell by default in it's 5e form and revert it in a heartbeat to it's earlier (needs fresh berries to be cast on) form. So I would definitely have a gut reaction to shut that down because of my hate for that spell, but upon giving it a moment (like I had while typing my original reply) I realize it's not that big a deal.
@@OnlineSarcasmFails I do like the berry requirement for flavor. On my caster I used a branch of mistletoe as my spell focus, so I RPed that the berries enlarged and fell into my hand or whatever. However with a spell focus, that removes the non-gold material component. That makes it simpler for the players, but does remove some of the flavor. (Edit) lol at the idea of "Bland"berries
our game had two arcane tricksters, until the one multiclassed into paladin. they even had the same spells. it was a hoot. they play off each other really well. i will never force a player to be anything they do not. we all have our own power fantasies.
Similar situation as a game I'm in now we have an arcane trickster who is more range focus and there spells are trixy and theivey and like to be unseen , where as mine is more upfront, spells built for identifying and finding out magical knowledge but one great thing is I'm helping him study arcana and how his magic works and he's helping me communicate better as my one is very bad at socialising and often leads to people being creeped out by him or laughing lol
My favorite line of the whole video " It doesn't suck if you have fun playing it". I play an inquisitive rogue with 17 wisdom and 12 dex, that is a police inspector for Baldur's gate watch. And the party barbarian goes on stealth missions and scouting, with his 16 dex and stealth proficiency, We have a really awesome time playing our characters. The whole resume of the game is to have fun. It is really unfortunate that not everyone gets that.
One that sticks out to me is the new guy to our table with a character named "Simon the Pie Man" and his motivation to adventure was to find the best pie ingredients throughout the land. The GM immediately responded "Are you serious?! That is a stupid name, fix it or I'll kill your character." We thought he was joking at first... he was not. I was genuinely invested in the 30 seconds I knew of Simon... but it didn't matter because we had a series of unfortunate combat rolls which resulted in a party wipe and total reroll. Disclaimer: the rolls werent stacked against us, a party of 7 rolled at least 20 sub 5s which caused the TPK.
As the only experienced player in a large group, I played a human fighter doing market research to open a shop someday. Really fun to let new players figure out the game and only step in when (or just after)it’s going horribly wrong.
@@kylesimone6140 I hear ya, but it was with workmates and a beer and pretzels level of game. Also, it was my first game, so I just chalked it up to not knowing better.
one major red flag I have found is when a DM never plays. I can understand when a good DM is too busy running games that they have no time to actually play in one, but no someone who only DMs and never plays, that indicates someone who can't play yet wants to run. not usually a good DM.
As a dm I would never punish a player for picking the optimal option as long as it fits within their character. But seeing people who exclusively play stuff like kalashtar totem barbarians or half elf sorcerers make my eyes glaze over
I feel like ppl optimising by doing stuff like making half-elf sorcerers is more an issue with the game than players. I don't think theres any blameworthiness in players making their main stat their best stat etc., I think the issue is more with tying things with significant roleplay significance, like race, to mechanics in a fairly inflexible way makes ppl have to balance being mechanically helpful to the party and being more inventive with more fluffy roleplay
Yeah some dms absolutely go over the line with that stuff but like. Especially when you’re the only one doing it in a party that isn’t even about that, I just wonder why that’s ‘all’ you want to play
@@Odoclick you can be both mechanically useful and a character, it’s called ‘making a character’. That’s literally what you described with the half elf sorcerer; as long as you actually care enough to give them character traits, you’ve done it. But if all you care about is being the absolute most powerful (not just making a half elf sorcerer, although you know stats aren’t tied to race anymore right?), and that is all you do with every character…I mean, fine but join a game where that’s the point then? Because it really makes it hard for the rest of the party to keep up.
The way to approach "telling players what class to play" is to directly inform them of the already existing characters. It happened to me twice in one year where a character came to the table with the same race, class, and subclass as another one of my players. And there was some disappointment that came out of it because it's fun as a player to feel like you have a niche and are needed. If both players playing the same subclass are fine with it, great! But make sure they're both aware before you have a spiderman meme at your table. Plus if they know, they might even come up with joint backstory!
This. I think that solidly banning duplication among classes or subclasses is rarely the best option, but not everyone wants to double up in that way because it can take away from their own character fulfillment or fun of the gameplay. As long as all parties- not just the joining party- are okay with it, almost anything can work, but often time those kinds of discussions about what players feel okay with will fall to the wayside and the decision will fall completely on DM preference. I know for myself, I want to have utility in the group and feel special and useful, so I'd never willingly choose to play the same subclass or maybe even class of someone else at the table, even if it meant I needed to go back to the drawing board with my character.
I use the "jam band analogy"-- a party is like a jam band, everyone should get time to step up and solo to show their chops, and everyone is going to have times they need to sit back and play rhythm for a while. If you're duplicating someone to the extent I can't put them in the spotlight on their own, that's a problem. If you're building your character so I can give you both your fair shot in the limelight then it doesn't matter mechanically how you're built.
Thats what two of my players are doing now. One is elf ranger other is half elf ranger. So one decided they were the mentor to the other and thats how they know each other in their backstory.
I will say that when I started playing DnD, I was really glad that my DM (also my boyfriend) helped me pick something that I find fun but not too hard to learn, and it's a build that's gotten more complicated as I learn (Paladin, Grave Cleric, Fighter)
In my 20+ years of playing, the DM always had characters in the party. The players would determine what the DM's characters did and it worked out really well. It was nice for the DM too because it allowed him to develop characters and feel like they were also playing the game. But, I can see how that could be abused.
That sounds more like a party PC, rather than a DMPC. And with the rest of the players being in on it, it removes most of the railroading aspect that's usually the worst part of DMPCs.
I did the same for my first campaign as the DM because there was only 3 players. When the players were stuck on what to do, I would use the DMPC for tips
@@LinkinVoider I understand that. Just asking why normal npcs that were placed in towns and such couldn’t act as guides or give tips. From experience it feels bad to have someone follow the party around as a hint box.
I held a Session 0 with the group I’ve been playing with for several years for a campaign I started running, even though everybody (myself included) was unsure if we really needed one - and I’m SO GLAD we did; we’ve had some of the most fun RP and the most fantastic and cohesive party dynamic out of any campaign we’ve done thus far, and it’s made for tremendously easier and more directed session planning between meetups. Session Zero is always the way to go!
I love this video, and all the videos you guys put out about social dynamics outside of actual gameplay. I was the dungeon master of a group for two years; we had agreed to meet once a month, but (through no fault of their own, we were all in highschool) most of them did not make it for most sessions. We ended up playing only twice a year, if we were lucky. Then, when the players did show up, they were inattentive and generally not engaged. I think this group was looking for something different with their campaign, which I don't hold against, them, but I became very frustrated that my work in this homebrew campaign was essentially being wasted. I also played as a player in another group with a hardcore murder hobo. It's an extremely difficult thing to stand up to someone who is so belligerent and disrespectful, but finally I had to say that he wasn't welcome in my house if he continued to act like this (I was hosting). He tried very hard to make himself the victim, but no one in our group fell for it. Finally he said, "I'm not going to join your next campaign, since you say I'll ruin it." Later he asked if he could join, and it was my delight and pleasure to tell him no. The moral is: do not put up with this. Make clear in your session zero that you have a zero tolerance policy for murder hoboism. If someone acts this way, give them one warning and then kick them out. Do not wait and put up with this any longer than you have to.
I spent a long time in a semi-toxic dnd group with an egomaniacal DM. He would literally quit whole modules if it wasn't going to his plan, and he would punish players for doing things that interfered with the approved storyline. Unfortunately, he was also my boyfriend, and would be verbally abusive in game to me in front of others. Both to me as a person, and as a character. I stayed for ten years because I'm an idiot, but I also loved dnd, and those other players. They were my closest friends. Now, years later, I feel like I can't trust any of them. Because not a one of them ever spoke up for me. A part of me still has great memories, but the rest is disappointed in them as human beings. I'm currently studying 5e and after a ten year break from dnd, am ready to try again. That's how I found your video. Thank you for helping players find healthy environments! 😊
the lousy thing is that the worse the group is, the more they burn through players and therefore the more people get subjected to bad behavior. Kinda like dating in a way.
95% of the game is are you having fun and get along with everyone. Like any other hobby it's the people you are with. My group had a 4 session quest to retrieve baked goods. They loved it. Just have fun.
@Nickachuuuuu in order to recreat the bag of colding it had to be recreated at the same stellar location to connect with the same Astral dimension. Some research and a well done role the goodies were retrieved.
My stance on "banned options" is that as a DM becomes more experienced this list should get shorter and not longer. The whole reason I had a list like this when i started DMing was that I found DMing intimidating and a little overwhelming. Saying "I'm only working from these books" or "please, please don't hit me with a [insert complicated class build or uncommon race here]" helped me keep my footing and not get thrown for too many loops when a character threw out a spell I didn't understand or created a build that broke an encounter or session. When that happens as a new DM, it's just so much harder to deal with. But as I've gained experience, gained knowledge, gotten more comfortable, etc. I've started introducing some of those "banned" (I don't like calling it that) items to my table, because I feel ready for the challenge DMing them presents. In the same way player characters options and abilities expand as they level up, so does the table and the DM haha. Obviously I'm describing a more collaborative scenario than the one you are describing, but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.
Agreed. When I started DMing 2 years ago I made a hard ban on all UA and Homebrew because I didn't feel confident in anything not playtested. Since I have gained more experience I allow a lot of those things after reviewing it. It is now pretty much anything official and you are golden, anything unofficial consult me, if it's not broken it's most likely okay and if it is let's work together to bring it to scale
@glarak9819 "pretty much anything official and you are golden, anything unofficial consult me, if it's not broken it's most likely okay and if it is let's work together to bring it to scale" Sir, with this alone, you are peak DM in my opinion. I also began DMing 2 or so years ago, and I have always said ALMOST THE EXACT SAME WORDS to everyone I have ever DM'd for, and never have I had a bad game or arguments at the table (to be fair, I have played for 13 years before striking out as a DM). I believe that this flexibility in DMing is what makes makes players comfortable discussing rules or even builds with you. I do believe the DM should keep the balance in a game and ensure that everyone has a good time, but I also believe your DM should be your friend, working with you to make sure that you are playing the PC that YOU want to play, but that EVERYONE has a good time. I think the best part though about being flexible, is that the players learn to think outside the box, they are encouraged to work together, and as the DM, you are always learning something new about the group and how to make things run more smoothly in the future. TL;DR: I agree and you are a peak DM
A few red flags for me is side talking by the other players when the DM is talking about the setting, as well as blocking view of dice rolls. Same goes for interrupting the players when it isn't their turn. This is happened as a DM and as a player. Thankfully the player blocking dice rolls and interrupted left the group before I brought it up. I am on the verge on leaving the group with the sidetalking. I plan on mentioning it to our DM about this and will leave if it continues.
This is something that I now mention in session zero. If someone else is having their turn, in or out of combat, it's their turn in the spotlight. If you have something to say in character, that's part of the game. Have a reaction to declare, part of the game, go ahead. The one liner that's too good to pass up, once in a while, OK. If I'm making a riles mistake and it's important to address now and not after the encounter, if the toaster oven's on fire, speak up or course, but if your thought can wait a moment, then please hold wait until your own turn.
I never tell another player what they can or can't play, but I'll often shift what *I'm* playing so that I don't end up potentially stealing their spotlight. That's my main thing when it comes to multiple people playing the same class/subclass: it can be hard to allow *both* of these characters their "time to shine" if they're both good at the same things.
So my story, was actually in highschool, close to 20 years ago. I'd wanted to play DnD, I found a group that played during lunch, and interestingly, it was a group of people I knew and at the time thought I was friends with. When I asked if I could join, I was told I could, though they effectively said "Yeah you play this goat, and it's now a dead goat." That extended out to when I went to various game and hobby shops as well; I could never find a group that was willing to let me join, even ones just starting. Only now that I decided that I might as well just be a Dungeon Master that I've been able to play a bit more often.
Honestly ive never had any issues joining a game without session 0 , aslong as dm gives info on the world and helps making a character fit in when joining, its also pretty fun introducing myself to the players that know little about me
@@certanmike I've never had a session 0 in like 15+ years of playing D&D. Or what could be considered a session 0. There have been some pregame character building, but even that didn't reach the level of what I would consider a session 0 to be.
I once DM'ed a one-shot adventure in which the players agreed to all play clerics from different domains. The team was called "The A-men". Next up is a traveling troupe consisting only of different subclasses of Bards. The "figher" will be the Valor bard, the "rogue" will be the Whispers bard, the "wizard" will be the Lore bard, and so on.
Re: "no setting information", I once had a prospective GM tell me that he wasn't giving setting information because "if you can't come up with something in the framework of generic fantasy you're creatively bankrupt and aren't worth having at the table".
Yeah, a DM should introduce a new character pretty quickly. Group I’m with now lost a member so it was easy for my character to “meet” the remaining characters as they were hiding the bodies of a bad guy and opted to join in, so it all worked. Dropped in the first ten minutes of the game, everyone at the same level, etc. So far, so good!
So, I joined a campaign that was almost a year in. To be fair, it was all people I've known for years. I sat in on 2 sessions (this is a discord game) and did a separate one shot before we introduced my character. It worked out really well as I knew the group dynamics well enough to squeeze in comfortably.
I actually joined a home brew session that has been going on for 3 years as a level 11 twilight cleric… they made me feel super welcomed, integrated my character seamlessly and have really helped me grow and obsession for dnd
I'm a DM and I personally recommend my brand new players to not play some of the more complex spell casters because of how hard they are. But I don't ban it out right to them because if they really want to play said class, they can. I offer some of the easier full casters and some of the half casters. Sometimes they are like, "yeah cool I'll do that class you suggested" or they are "na, I want to try this class that is harder to learn" and I am cool with it. If they later on want to change their character or class, I'm willing to work with them on it.
I'm some what similar when I get new players I split classes up into lvl of complexity, usually from simplest to most martial to half caster to caster. I do this not to convince them not to play a class but so they know what they're getting into or so that they can go to the type of play they know they enjoy with less trouble.
I feel like in D&D every class is a medium difficulty, with the subclass options making the class really hard or easy. Like a fighter and/or rogue should be among the easiest choice, but man my fighter has like 200 options for reactions.
I'm really glad that my first and only DM is a badass. He loves the creativity we come up with as a group. We finished up our last story battling through the nine circles of hell and about to start a new adventure in the 40K universe as Orks. Yes, the entire playgroup. I'm so excited.
I've got to ask. Your game in 40k. Is it some D&D sorta thing using that environment, the models game or going old school for Rogue Trader? Or is there another defined RPG based in the grimdark future? Because THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! My gaming group has done a few sessions of Rogue Trader, but we're looking for more ways to use that system for role playing.
If you have a DM who loves creativity, you have at the worst the basis for a good DM. That can end up as a questionable DM, but you probably have a straight up great DM you shouldn't let go.
This is one of the most "this speaks to me" videos I've ever watched on the subject of table gaming. And I'll admit that I've been frustrated by many of these items, but also BEEN many of these red flags, both while learning the game and while I felt I had a fair grasp of it. That fumble chart dismemberment example, man....I totally did that, and got called out on it right away. I wanted a game where botched rolls would come with drastic consequences, and the players were quick to remind me that we as a group never agreed on that notion. And the rezero session would likely have saved me introducing a new character mid-campaign. He was probably one of my proudest character creations, and he just wasn't a fit, and got alienated easily by the party. And at the time, I took it personally and now realize I could have saved myself by having a quick table discussion. Just wow.
As a result of a lot of these experiences, I ultimately left the table around five years ago. I felt I just wasn't able to enjoy the time, and it took some time to realize that was AT LEAST half my fault. And for the other five or six players, at least I had the clarity to see that removing myself was the best course of action. I miss it, desperately at times. But in my time away, I did better for my physical and mental health, have had more quality time with my family, and even wrote and published a novel. I'm hoping to return this year wiser, and throw out an epic one shot to celebrate D&D's 50th year, and find myself table savvy again with a lean toward a better experience for everyone.
In my current campaign, not only am I one of two draconic sorcerers, but we both picked blue dragons. The other character is a blue dragonborn, while I just wanted to play with lightning more than I've ever been able to before. It worked out pretty well, especially when we were able to position ourselves to fire Lightning Bolt down the same line. He wound up multiclassing into tempest cleric, and we still make a good team.
In my Tuesday game, I'm one of two Rogues with Elven blood (I'm a full-blooded Eladrin, he's a High half-elf). We've been bouncing off eachother since session one with him being a motor mouth who doesn't think things through and be being the more serious one who tries to keep him out of trouble. Come level 3 I subclassed as assassin while he took swashbuckler, and we just got past the "will they won't they?" phase of our romance subplot. Which may have involved both of us making deals with our Warlock's demon patron behind the other's back to protect each other. 😅
I have been caught in some atrocious games that would hit the highlight reel of D&D horror stories sadly, sadly in some instances it took me way to long to realise.... Which is why I strive not to stay in awful games anymore. As always, great video, and loved that plug for your Patreon there at the end, very sneaky.... :)
The things I experienced among these points: Session Zero - Nobody want to do it let's just play. It is hard to have a session zero when the players (if you are the DM) do not want to have one. Joining an Established Group - I never really felt difficulty joining a group so far. They always found a way to get you in there. The Railroad DM / My game if you defeat my monsters I get upset, if you try to go outside my story I will make magical things happen to force you back DM: Oh boy, let's not talk about this one. Last Minute Drop Out: It is always unfortunate. I have unfortunately been part of this once. I was playing in a group where I just did not enjoy the DMs style of play. So I ended up booking up the day / forgetting the games and after about 3-4 of such sessions I decided to tell them I was just not having fun and left.
Personally, I think a good session zero is even MORE important for long-time groups. It's an opportunity to check-in and discuss potentially trying something new -- or even just brainstorm together about how to make your games more rewarding and fun rather than settling into a "routine".
@@DungeonDudes I think it falls to the time everyone have, and if they live nearby. Being a Discord/Roll20 DM for 3 years now, i know it will be hard to everyone make time to just chat and have a Session 0 My group in the moment consists of 5 Players, 4 of them were from the last game and we have someone new to this one. In the Group chat i listed my house rules that i thought would better the experience for everyone, and let the observation that in regards of some doubt or clarification, i would be there to answer whatever question when i have time. Not Session 0, but i use to do a "Introdutory Session", players don't need the sheets if they are incomplete, but to at least have the character ready in mind. Then i explain the history, scenario and some of details, and start to introduce the characters and have them meet without pushing the plot foward. That's the way we do for sometime now and never happened to anyone have a problem with that
But wouldn't a pre-game group chat essentially BE a lite session zero? Edit: Oh wait, in continuing to watch the video Monty seems to think the answer to this would still be a "no." So there you go! Do a session zero even if you don't think you'll need one!
@@DungeonDudes I think there is a balance to be struck. Many don’t have time to dedicate a trip or video chat to just rehash session zero things. If anything needs to be discussed it can be rolled into session one.
I'm a DM for other DMs and when I run a module for them, I customize the monsters and slightly modify the encounters to keep them on their toes, cuz generally they might have already run them for their own groups. There are great 3rd party sources out there for new monsters, etc. to maintain the fun-factor for them.
This reminds me of Gary Gygax saying he liked to play at Dave Arneson's game *because* Dave would change the monsters so he wouldn't know their stats 😂
In my first D&D table and session, more than a decade ago, I got ganged up by two players who would keep calling me a coward chicken because my caster character was acting defensive (staying out of the heat of battle, sneaking, etc). They were laughing and making fun, but it got so constant that it got really uncomfortable and annoying - when I started talking in character, they would start making clucking sounds. They were both childhood friends of the DM, so I was really out of place. Thankfully, one of the other players spoke out and said it was really rude of them to act like that. They gave up on the table, we got two new players, and we played that campaign for 9 years! The player who spoke out is today one of my best friends.
To the banlist flag, my dm goes "you can do that, just know that if you do, the enemies will be able to as well" to summoning a cow as far up as I could to cause damage to enemies... ended up not doing that
I had a player ask if they could use Light on someone's eyes to blind them one time, and i let them. Next session an NPC they were being anoying with used Light to blind them, and they complained that was not how the spell work, gave them a smug "Oh really?" And the other players were like "You messed up this time". Sad to say, it was not the only time something like this happened, but at least i kicked them out
For me powergaming can’t really be seen before you play with the person as it’s a pattern over time kinda thing. But it’s a tough thing to balance: you don’t wanna shut down fun builds, but you can’t sacrifice other players fun just so one of the party can (I generally have noticed if one person min maxes to the extreme, the other players either feel like they can’t compare in fights or they get pressured to min max as well)
You can build encounters around the minmax character that disable some of their OP abilities. Can they fly and snipe at extreme ranges? Go underground. But give them big caverns where they can still do stuff. Just watch out for the Thing In The Ceiling That You Can't See But Has Giant Sticky Tentacles!
@@Daves_Not_Here_Man_76 yes but then do that too often you as the DM get accused of „shutting down their build“. Which they have a point btw, if you allowed their build then actively design multiple encounters that shut down their build you may as well not have authorised their build to begin with.
TLDR--don't assume things will be a problem. Talk to your whole table, discuss concerns, see if players offer their own solutions first before you panic and find a way to make the disparity benefit the experience instead of detract from it. There's a lot of nuance here. It starts with a good session 0 or re-0. Is everyone's build on a similar level for combat? If not, does that matter to those players? Some players are more than happy to let the wargamer of the group handle the heavy lifting in combat. As a DM, don't assume what will bother your players. Communicate with them and plan for solutions. Worried an optimized build will run away and leave other players feeling bad about combat? Ask the player privately if they're okay with you handing out boons and magic items to under-performing players to bring them up a notch and will they be okay understanding that when they only get normal loot on schedule, or purely utility items. Players will always be upset about being nerfed, but rarely will anyone complain about finding a cool magic sword or staff. Create moments in combat where even the weakest player can be the hero or have a badass moment. Ideally, combat is about more than just rolling dice and comparing numbers. Probably no one is going to remember that turn you high-rolled all your damage and got a crit unless it's attached to something else noteworthy like a story moment. But they'll probably never forget the time your gnome artificer grabbed every potion in the evil wizard's lab and jumped off the second floor mezzanine onto them so the fall damage would shatter them all on impact, creating a huge magical explosion, nearly killing both and turning them into fire breathing puddles of water which took a full 5 minutes for everyone to stop laughing about and start making arguments as to whether or not a puddle of water can exhale. ... No one should have to nerf themselves to play, but if you have, say, a group of newbies and a veteran player... work with the player to put that into the story! Maybe the veteran player has been raised from childhood for combat and forced to fight in vicious battles. They might be traumatized and need their allies for support. Maybe in the absence of that support, they fall apart and have to roll occasionally to see if they have an episode or not. Now that player's strength is the party's strength because they'd fall apart otherwise. Alternatively, let the other players know your dilemma and ask them if they'd be comfortable with getting some help to polish up their build a little. Only as a last resort, ask if the vet is okay with toning it down and playing more of a support role for the others, with an understanding that the combat will be balanced down and with a promise that you won't punish them for not being stronger. Ultimately, it's a loss for you as the DM if you have to tell a player you want at your table that they can't play what they have their heart set on.
Min-maxing is an issue mainly because it basically puts extra work on the DM for not that much gain. If I know the player, or expect that kind of thing beforehand I hand out powerful bonuses or abilities to the others who don't min-max and try to even it out which then just allows me to crank up combats for them all. Unless the whole group all tell me "hey make Jimmy the strongest one of us", I won't really allow one person to stand head and shoulders above the rest. There are other DMs and other tables they can play that way at.
I am a total newbie to DnD. I am working so so so hard because so many of the red flags you listed came up in my game.. as a total newbie to the game I joined an ongoing campaign at level 4, confused and lost, experienced the DM as cagey, I for months did not know what setting we play.. One of the more experienced players is also just impossible to read, his characters are so hard to read. Fun and imaginative and creative, but impossible to read... No session zero. Or re-zero.. So I end up working so hard trying to learn on my own.. I have thought many times of leaving. Why am I still playing? Because I know that with the right group I will absolutely love this game. I am pretty tough inside and can weather the trial run of learning the game with this group. I enjoy some of the people at the table and enjoyed a few moments of role play. The campaign will ramp down soon due to life circumstances so hey I will play till the end. And then I hope to find my group, my people, my table.
Hey guys I just want to thank you for the staff of healing suggestion. I'm a rookie DM and the group is made up of all first timers and we ended up with not one healer. So I've been tossing them extra healing potions but having them constantly finding potions just didn't feel natural. We just reach level 2 last session and our wizard was going to take a class in cleric to gain some healing. But now I can offer the staff as an alternative so he can build his character as he wants. On a side note he still ended taking the level in cleric because it tied in really well with his backstory
A wizard with a single level dip in Cleric for armor and shield proficiency and bless/guidance/healing word package is also the best path for optimization! Especially for Peace domain or if they have access to Goodberry, Life. Good on them! But do be mindful if they're optimizing a wizard, you may need some good practices and wisdom about encounter design. Either way, I hope you cheer them on as a player!
The Table vibe point kinda hits home for me. Had a DM who put a lot of work and effort into the campaign, and a decent group of players I mostly enjoyed playing with, but I could never trust the DM to let me use my characters' abilities for whatever reason (I was a way of shadow monk).
My DM decided for whatever reason that my rogue should be "kneecapped" for "story reasons" so for 8 games I had to make wisdom saves after every long rest and on fail I would get an exhaustion level and long rest didn't remove any of them. Ended up fighting a dragon with two exhaustion levels as a rogue. You know, the character that is supposed to be fast and good at skills, having disadvantage on all skills and half the speed taken away. Also, DM wasn't clear about what or why is hoing on, it was just happening without any reason and it was solved because one game DM just said "you have a vision of this random place". Then, a few games later my character lost all subclass abilities (phantom) and again, no reason, no solution, it just happened. Nothing similar has happened to any other character and I've been playing with that group for a year. It's weird because I like all the players and I don't have any other problems with the DM, I like how he does things most of the time, but this is just weird to be a dead weight for the party without any way to solve it.
@@helgenlane This sounds like a great opportunity to communicate with the DM privately, preferably in person or on a video call so there's no misunderstanding on tone. Ask what their reason is and if they don't have a reason, ask if they could stop. If I had to guess, I'd put all my silver pieces on you having the highest DPR and they probably either don't know how to handle that, and/or they have an old school mentality and see rogues as already being "too good" and Phantom being the best subclass to be unfair or unneeded power creep. Phantom Rogue is probably literally (one of?) the best martial in 5e at current, as far as a straight class goes. Either way, I wouldn't make assumptions. Maybe they'll tie it in later to a story beat and they just thought it was cool. Assume no malice and just ask openly for an explanation, but do ask for an explanation because it does seem to bother you a little and it's not good to let stuff like that build up and risk causing resentment.
16:16 this happened to me on the first round of the first combat with my first character in my first campaign. Rolled a 1, then a 20, and the DM said I broke my heirloom dwarven battleaxe while chopping my shield arm off with it. I was planning to take dwarven defender as a prestige class...
My last session zero was a discord call where i helped people build their character. I asked what they wanted, and told them what would work in our campaign. Also asked what they wanted from the game. We also had a first timer who wanted to play wizard, and i normally dont tell people what to play, but i did tell him: hey wizards are very versatile and supportive, and if you are looking to just blast spells with big damage, sorcerer might be better and it is easier to play"
My very first game of D&D, I made this character that fit me so well and felt pumped to play. One of the other players immediately cast a spell to manipulate my character and proceeded to build a situation of sexual assault to my character with almost no disgust from the other players and DM. It was horrifying. I’m frankly surprised that I ever played any campaign after that.
I am blessed with the most wonderful DM and play group we have known each other since high school. Only 1 player was kind of bossy but it was still fun and just how our group dynamic was and she was loved and we lost her a few years ago. RIP hope she started a table in the sky
I think part of the being told what to play bit is where people just default to thinking like old editions where you were kinda ham boned if you didn't have a balanced party. It's definitely not needed in newer editions.
I would like for Dungeon Dudes to do a similar video where they go over the store/convention D&D Adventure's League gaming groups, now that they have gone over the home D&D groups.
@@Hazel-xl8in Oh yeah it's terrible. Did I mention we were outnumbered 3 to 6 and the enemies were ranged and had the high ground and we were ambushed so we started out completely screwed? They ONLY spammed status effects. It was also just a meaningless random encounter.
I don’t use hard control like stunning and incapacitating, but I think using pushes, pulls, grapples, and fear effects can add some excitement to combats. For a first time player, definitely not though.
I've used monsters with status effects in a campaign that was a horror one shot specifically with the forewarning that it was a high hazard game. And the creatures have their time and place but to spam it seems like an abuse of the intent.
@@petermartinez5507 they were a type of monster that spammed status effect attacks that did 1d4 damage. The dm said "they're made to be annoying". And yeah I'm all for status effects. As long as I still get to play the game.
We never had a session zero in our friend group, but we do know each other since high school for most of us, and we talk about games all the time and adjust to what we all think is best for the game. We also have multiple DMs in our group, so sometimes it's one friend DMing for a few games and doing a certain arc that they've been working on, and then another one will take over for certain parts of really big campaigns. Not saying this is for everyone, but it definitely has been working for us for years now. As long as everyone is reasonable and communicate and understand that ultimately, the DM's word is the final one (all our DMs are focused on players fun experience first and for most), then it should be a great group!
Biggest red flag I've dealt with has been players talking over each other. It's tricky sometimes online, but when certain "overzealous" players keep pushing their actions and ideas over other players who are talking, it really hurts the trust between players.
Which brings me to mine: "Oh it's my *character*" It's not that difficult to have your character be a dick without being a dick yourself. But you've got to have a limit on it regardless, because whatever you're writing for your character there's the limit that they're part of a team. Before you play them that character has joined the team knowingly, with the consent of the team, and for some kind of reason. A jerk might get here, but an outright abusive character didn't get to where your character is.
Almost joined a campaign where I wasn't allowed to choose the race, class and subclass of the character. The backstory was also pretty much set. I had to bow out. As a result I did get inspired into making a character which I currently play in a campaign.
In the Surprise House Rules section. This happened on my third session playing with a group where I managed to lock a hostile werewolf guard inside of a cell I escaped. To throw it in his face that I was faster than him, I told him, "I think I'll make a rug out of you, friend. I'll come back when the rot gets you." My character winked at him, chuckled, and went on their merry way. The DM told me my alignment was shifting from Neutral Good to Chaotic Evil because of that action. What? My character's alignment is my decision not yours.
My group is all adults. All but one of us have kids. We've all got our own homes and jobs to deal with. We run a side campaign that we play when people are missing. We just know, that the side campaign doesn't matter and it's agreed upon, the main campaign is played when everybody is there. If you miss, you miss out on the side campaign.
Putting your highest score in your most important ability not only isn't power gaming. It's also realistic. Someone with a naturally high strength score deciding to become a fighter, or with a naturally high intelligence deciding to become a wizard, just makes sense. People often lean into their strengths.
Speaking as a DM who might be accused of having "too many" restrictions on what isn't allowed in his games - I think one thing to bear in mind is that some of us DMed through late 3.5. With players who were engineers. Just... something to think about.
I think the only thing we have house ruled at our table is that creatures don't immediately realize they were charmed when the spell ends. It depends on what you do with it. If you force them to do something they would never do then they would realize it. If you talk to a guard in a pub while drinking and use it to get them to reveal just a little more information than they normally would then they probably won't realize it.
There was one game I was in where another player made a necromancer who jumped in EVERY time there was something that needed to be done. Suspected traps down a hallway? They step infront of the rogue, who already stated what they were doing, saying "don't worry, I got this" while a skeleton walks through triggering everything. Huge boulder blocking a tunnel in a cave? "No fellow troll fighter, my minions will take care of it". Need to know where a group of orcs went an hour earlier? "Rangers belong in the back and the diviner need not waste spells. My minions will scout in all directions". He was dominating all conversations, speaking over half the time (game with 8PCs, a DM, and a DM assistant), and constantly cut off everyone including the DM... We as a group kept telling them that it wasn't ok, they seemed to understand and promised to do better, and it would just start again next session... Went on for 4 sessions before we told them to leave.
WOW. I must say I have noticed couple of those red flags in my DM-ing. I love RPG but I always preferred playing to DM-ing and those few times I did DM a setting, I have noticed it wasn't as fun as I wanted to - neither for me nor for my friends. I see in was my fault actually. It was good to hear your take on this. Thanks!
Whenever I want to introduce a new house rule after session zero, I poll my players either during the next session or over our group chat. Definitely helps if you see or think of something that you still want to include but didn't during that initial session. I also go by the rule of "if you get to do it, so can I." I will do my best to avoid specific interpretations of the rules or applications of spells/abilities until the players do it, at which time I'll make sure they're okay with the notion that I'll use it at a future date.
One of the biggest things about joining an in progress game, ask each remaining person privately why the other person/people left. If they all have the exact same vague answer, don't join. The answers should all be slightly different in wording if nothing else. But at peast one should be able to say "This is what they said." You absolutely want the catchup/intro session.
I'm currently one of three druids in my party. Yup, THREE druids. Each of us plays *completely* different than the others, and we're all having a Wild time.
Please tell me Wild Time is also the party name...
@@kereymckenna4611 Alas, no. Should be though!
I want my next character in a long term campaign to be a druid and I would honestly love that scenario. I've played Fighter and Warlock in long campaigns and Bard, ranger and paladin for one shots. I did play a druid in a one shot and had a blast can't wait to truly develop a druid character through a campaign
I could see three of my players using wild magic druids and having the random wild chart just sitting on the table cause someone is gonna roll every turn add a wild magic sorcerer lol that would get crazy
Goodberries galore!
A friend of mine lost a player in their DND campaign (going on a year) they were at 10th level, and asked if I wanted to join. The DM (not my friend) was very helpful- and we both found it was very important that my character fit into the setting. We had a "session zero" where we as a group discussed how things work, house rules and stuff. When the first session started it took no more than the "recap" (maybe 3 minutes) before my character was introduced- now I've been playing with the same group for over a year, and I'm loving it- have a great time with them :D
The entire thing I was just waiting for the 'But then...' and Im glad there didnt come one ':D Have fun!
@@gorgit is it sad that I was expecting the same thing and am glad I was wrong?
@@Allantitan if it is sad that youre happy a person you dont know of has awesome fun eith friends? No, not to my recollection
@@gorgit Haha, there is no but- I am absolutely consumed by the fever, and currently I'm working on getting more of my friends involved in D&D- in whatever way I can. I've played a few sessions with one of my oldest friends, and my wife now- and I think it's honestly (as long as you are in a healthy group with people you can trust ofc) an extremely healthy passtime mentally.
This is the ideal situation
Your last point in particular is spot on.
I've had gaming groups like that, where I've felt attacked, uncomfortable or bullied at the table, but have sucked it up because I wanted to play and didn't have anyone else to play with. In hindsight, the emotional harm it caused me was absolutely not worth it, and I wish I'd left that table long before I did.
I've since left that group and found a group that I feel much more comfortable with. I trust them and since joining them I've had some of the best times I've ever had at a table.
The advice in this video is hugely important. Thanks guys.
I was in a second edition group (or first?) where we were all multi classed thieves.
The "no information about the setting" thing really came up for me in my first campaign. I'm like Kelly in that I like to have a history to my character that meshes with the world of the setting. I drove my GM nuts asking semi-detailed questions about various parts of the map that had little to nothing to do with where the party was currently (on the side, NOT during a session). I figured out later on, he wasn't avoiding answering to be obtuse rather he was a very improvisational GM and literally hadn't decided on those areas beyond the broad strokes of "X" race is the dominant species in that area.
As the DM, I think at that point, I'd say "You know what, your character is from that place. That's your city now. Do what you want with it, and I'll make it work with the rest of the world. And if it doesn't fit perfectly, then that's fine, because that's what different cultures are."
Man, I love my group but I wish they gave a crap about my setting. It's not even like they're mean about it. They always say, "your worlds are always so cool." but they don't participate at all when I ask them if they have any input, lol.
As a DM if I haven't flushed something out and a player is interested about that part of the world for their character creation I just tell them I haven't decided on that, pitch your ideas and we'll collaborate on it.
Makes them more invested being able to create part of the world.
your PC may be fully new to the setting
i once introduced an non native PC through a magical gate into the stat adventure, for logistical and practical(convention) reasons he did new nothing about the setting
Was a fun game
The same may go if the PCs really change the world, knowing nothing of the other world
@lyntonfleming I do the same thing. I usually like to base like 3-4 cultures on actual cultures from human history and let players make the rest up or I improvise cultures that are encountered later.
"That's not D&D, that's some kind of weird absurdist hell" is definitely one of the more humorously savage Dungeon Dudes quotes
Dungeons and Meetings and Confusing Regulations and Expenses Reporting, by Franz Kafka
I went to like the comment, and you were at 420 likes, so I hesitated but had to like that comment.
My golden rule for tabletop RPGs: Everyone at the table should strive to make the game as fun as possible for everyone, including the dm. Also communication is key, talking about issues as they come up and having the other people listen and discuss it in a constructive manner can overcome a lot of problems.
I played for years in a group where everyone had a diagnosis of some kind, and had different problems that might have put others off, but since we all worked together to accommodate each other, it made it even better.
One player got tired very early, so we had to game mid day. I'm terrible with keeping times, especially early, so one of the other players picked me up before the game. Another player was very picky about food, so we ate the same food every Saturday for over a year before we could branch out to three acceptable meals, and so on.
These could have been red flags, but because everyone was working together to help each other, it strengthened our bond as a group and as friends.
That is such a beautiful Story. Im about to try dnd for the first time soon, and if been Healing so many Horror stories on the Internet. But good stuff line this makes me want to try regardless.
@@azncisg Hope you had a good time!
One of my house rules is around how long we wait for a no-show, no-call before just starting without them
Makes perfect sense. Been doing that for decades and it's just common courtesy to everyone in the group. Well done.
Our group has a built in method to accommodate this because of life. It's a good way to remove a PC or add one when players show up late or can't make it. We have a creature of some kind that acts like an extradimentional space. It eats and spits out characters as needed and it adds trauma to our PCs the first time it happens and sometimes the lore behind what's happening is so disturbing PC's flat out refuse to talk about it or block it from their minds. This none gets interesting when someone new or and NPC witnesses it and tries to talk about it. - Doc
For the deal with using Entangle to stop something from falling through a grate, I find the best way to do it is say "It actually works, but you get the sense that it was a stroke of luck and shouldn't rely on it happening again."
Great way of handling that.
A lot of things can get solved with this great compromise
Sometimes I'll make a spell like this enable the caster to make an arcana check to actually see if it succeeds. The DC will vary with the difficulty of the task.
Love this!
Was playing a rune knight fighter gem dragonborn and we were being chased by a pirate ship. Flew into the air, grew to large then got enlarge reduced by our parties sorcerer. Next turn I let myself fall directly through the ship, took some damage, and sank it. DM basically said the same thing. It was so epic for him to let it happen once though 😁
"Re-zero" is a fun phrase. In marksmanship it sometimes refers to making adjustments to your rifle's sights to account for any changes to the way you hold and fire it. A good analogy for the purpose of a "re-zero" session.
Also works if the same player keeps dying and coming back as a clone of his previous character
The main important reason for a Session Zero: YOU ALL AGREED TO MEET UP AT THIS TIME, LET'S SEE IF YOU'RE ACTUALLY CAPABLE OF DOING SO.
Sometimes, you might need to pull back the start time by 15 or 30 minutes if it's a little hard for one or two players to make it on time. Having a "will this start time work" game-day is good to have before the game fully starts.
Or, you keep the start time but just know the first 15 minutes will be filler (chatting, reviewing the previous sessions, etc.) while you wait for that one guy to show up and "find his character sheet."
@@Vuntermonkey Sometimes if people can't make it early, having 10 minutes to say Hi & decompress is nice. One time I was a player in a game where I *barely* was able to make it in time after work. not having that brief period of time to decompress made the first 30 minutes in-game a bit hard to get in the groove with and focus.
So if people are constantly 15 minutes late, keep the original start time, but just know that you as a DM have those 15 minutes for player catchup/review.
@@MindOfGenius That is legitimate. My comment is more reflective of someone like my brother. I swear he does it on purpose >.
Peoples can miscalculate their needed time to arrive properly - if your train late or your car get in a traffic jam are things,m what you cannot control. Or you just cannot wake up in time... The best way to avoid that, is to try arrive before the scheduled time - about a half an hour can be enough. The "empty" time you can fill with remembering, what happened during the previous session (as the Dungeon Dudes called it: session re-zero), set up your character sheet, create the place, where you are gonna play - make it faster to jump into the game, when the time of beginning arrives. Or, if you get into an accident, you still should be around in time, when YOU arrives. (Also, it's proper mannerism, if you can give a call to your group, if you notice, that you will be late!)
Ugh this is a massive problem with my friends. Two never schedule time ahead for us or will cancel for other plans. And it’s like ffs just say you’re not interested in reserving the time to play online. It’d be a whole other thing if we were playing irl (sadly one, and one of the two bad schedulers at that has moved away) but online it’s super embarrassing. Like it’s fine to not want to play but leaving us in the lurch until like the day before absolutely sucks, especially for the poor DM.
My wife and I played Khenra twins that were both Totem Barbarians. She went wolf for offense, I went bear for defense, and it was one of the overall best campaign experiences I've ever had
I love this idea! sounds like a lot of fun, great use of 2 players working together to make fun characters that complement each other. You can do this with friends too, it is just a fantasy game so go wild. I have one of my best friend playing as my brother in a noble family. I still don;t know how his story is going to affect mine and I am very interested in what is going to happen. As the (imaginary) older brother I am to inhered my fathers rule of Leilon but what will his story tell? I love the idea of people having a common story together in game.
@@EEEGotomtom what's really cool about the Khenra is that as long as your twin is alive you reroll 1s, so it is unbelievably helpful for attacks and saves. Having another player be your character's sibling can definitely be tricky, but as long as the two of you work well together and are close outside the game it should work out well in game ☺️
That’s awesome
@@tylerrees85 Such a great idea. I am totally doing something like this if I ever die along side someone else in my ongoing campaign.
My daughter wanted to DM a short game (3sessions). All the players made characters up separately and did Barbarians. It was a blast. 4 barbarians can really make a chaotic group.
i currently run one shots at my local youth group for 10-15 year olds, many who have never played before so i usually bring pre generated simplified character sheets of varying classes and let the players pick and name their characters from the options for them, this is great for getting them into the game and i find that running games this way allows me to teach them more about the game by letting me choose when to add more complex aspects, one group i have been running for are now starting a call of cthulu campaign and are even starting to DM for each other.
I think the best way to resolve spell disputes is to read out the spell description out loud. I've had players who thought they could use a spell in a way they couldn't, instead of engaging in their argument I just ask them "please read out what the spell does from the description".
If they ask "can I use it differently" then I might say no, or ask for an arcana check, or ask them to spend more resources. I'm perfectly fine with letting players bend the rules, but we need to first be clear on what the rules are so we can proceed on how they can be bent and what the _cost_ of that bending is.
Using more resources. Hmmm.... That's interesting. Now I want to make a table of material components that alter spells and how. Dude, I'm getting a floodgate of inspiration! Thanks for sharing!
usiing a arcana check is BRILLIANT i love that
Ah the old Magic: The Gathering approach, "Reading the card, explains the card".
My fav moment so far in our campaign? Our DM let us, for the cool moment, use poison spray to coat my fighter's sword for a one use strike after being teleported to the enemy.
The whole party loved the fight.
(I'm the only fighter as I am the most experienced player and thus play the tank to help the new players. I take most of the attacks so they can explore the mechanics etcs and yes. I said straight up I will be the damage sponge.)
@@luketfer My Magic group has transitioned to 5e as well so there's definitely an expectation of "read the spell out loud" before/when casting it that's already baked in for us. Super helpful!
I think finding a group is similar to dating. Sometimes you know right away it won't work. Sometimes it takes a few sessions. And sometimes it lasts a lifetime.
What is this "dating" you speak of? We're D&D players; we don't know what that word means.
I'm kidding! I'm kidding! You can put away those torches and pitchforks.
I completely agree, t
TH-cam can make all kinds of videos but if the pieces don't fit, there is not much you can do.
@@toddhadley9002 Do you also tell little jokes?
That makes perfect sense; you're interacting with people when playing D&D, so many things that apply to any activity involving interpersonal interactions are going to apply to D&D as well.
This is so right and also totally Zen ❤
I've been on the receiving end of some pretty terrible DMs and groups. I've seen everything you guys talked about... and I'm actually thankful for it. Allow me to explain.
There was no internet available to me when I started. TH-cam didn't exist. I had only the people around me and I suffered under their ugly, nasty playstyle and personalities until I said I'd had enough.
All those bad habits, all that nasty behavior, all those red flags, they taught me how to NOT be like that. I was forged better in their crucible of "ick".
I love to let characters be heroic because I wasn't allowed to be. I love to work with players on story and, really, anything because nobody did for me. I love to let things slide on a spell or power now and then because "that's so cool!" (with the caviat that it's a one time thing). I want my players to have fun, because I did not.
So, thank you, all you awful, terrible DMs and groups. You made me the better, proud Forever DM that I am today.
1st and 2nd edition just had a different feel than modern DnD. From the way rules worked, to the fairly common save or die abilities of monsters, even to the design of the adventures, many of even very beloved and classic adventures like Tomb of Horrors, Temple of Elemental Evil, Rod of Seven Parts... they all had systems designed to be horrible to the players. The game felt more adversarial between GMs and players back then.
@@briane75 Absolutely. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was just as big as an offender.
Glad to know I'm not alone on that! We had a lot of toxic behavior when I first played D&D, but the best of us have a lot more fun having learned what NOT to do first hand.
I was gonna say something similar, I'm a forever DM and have none of the "red flags" but they have a few of mine sprung. People don't realize the incredible amount of pressure we have as DMs, and the amount of work some of us put into our campaigns, or world even. Like the fact that you have that many red flags for a DM, I'm surprised you get to play at all. I've seen both bad DMs, and bad players. DMs can usually be reasoned with, bad players are harder. I do appreciate that they've outlined some key things of NOT to do as a DM. That would've been a better title.
Ahhhh, nothing make a better Forever DM than dissatisfaction. Same here, I was in 3 different groups and left all of them dissatisfied before I started running my own games.
One was too chaotic and "beer and pretzels," one was too strict on rules, and the last one was a step in the right direction, but still lacked depth in story and the DM lacked experience
I remember a story where I felt isolated as a DM since I felt that no one in the table wanted to thang out with me and only do when it's related to the campaign. I just soldier through because it was my responsibility as a DM to run the game for them. But man, I felt really bummed out when I see them having conversations and suddenly stopped when I join in. It took me a while but I left the group.
Moral of the story, never play, less run for a table that only wants to use you for there own satisfaction at the game.
Yup
oh man, that sucks. Once I had a DM that gave me similar vibes. I get it that we don't have to be best friends with other players or the DM, but I felt like they didn't see their players as people but rather tools they used to have fun.
As GM you do All the work (ok, 99% of the work), you very often invite these people into your home and treat them as guests. If you don't like the players, just cut them loose. Their loss.
If you are being treated as no more than an entertainment provider, charge for your services.
That happened to me, too. I was invited to DM for a established group that ended up being married couple at their house … and no one else. I felt like I was their entertainment for the evening. Took a few sessions before I just said “no” and left.
I heard a guy talking about the group he's with the other day and there were MASSIVE red flags. The DM secretly had different players use different methods for setting ability scores (they figured it out later). That right there would have gotten me to walk, but the DM also awarded experience purely on the amount of damage the characters did. That's even worse.
Those are actual red flags, as opposed to merely not adopting the relative recent practice of holding a session zero.
Does that mean healers levelled down if they healed more damage than they caused?
@@Halinspark Probably not, but that’s hilarious
That's why I use point buy, or the 27 point premade array. Rolled scores are for one-shots where you don't expect all the characters to live, let alone continue on to a campaign.
Back in 2004, I played with a DM who said we'd roll stats under supervision, but when two friends came back in they claimed to have supervised each other when they rolled their demigod stats, and the DM accepred it. I've hated the rolling method ever since.
@@Keovar Agreed. I've only ever used Point Buy or Standard Array, and I feel like they are far superior to rolling.
I have considered a method where the group as a whole rolls for stats (take turns rolling), and use this to make your own array, and then have everyone use the same array, placing each number on the ability score you want, and combining it with your ASIs to get the character you want. I might try that some day, but I don't think I'll ever do a regular Rolling method.
One of the red flags I've experienced is excessive drinking at the table. My players used to drink a little bit during the session, but nothing too bad. Then, one time, a players downed over half a bottle of wine in under an hour. She was disruptive, loud and made decisions that affected the whole party. Example, they were in a mine with zombies and she had her character walk right up to the zombie and try to say hi.
Oh wow… that sucks.. Put a cap on it
@@igayparisjr nah fuck that, it adds flavour. Stop being so serious.
@@dww34 it’s serious enough for him to post here so I offered him a suggestion. I personally don’t have a cap lol so yeah..
Sounds like fun, don't be so elitist.
Alcohol at the table is one of my red flags. I get that it's fun for you, but if it's not fun for the table, I don't need it. Either I can leave or they can, and since my group often saddles me with GM responsibility, I'll take the game with me and y'all can start over. That individual needs to decide if gaming or drinking is more important, because it's never not been a problem or disruptive.
If that makes me not fun, so be it. I don't ask for much, but maybe that the work I put into running sessions on my little bit of free time be respected. Run your own game, or have your binge after, but I don't have to be okay with your idea of fun if it spoils mine and everyone else's at the table.
You're helping me realize the specifics of what has gone wrong in the past. Hopefully this can help me to avoid or improve those situations in the future. 🤞
I find so many videos on youtube that make me realize where I've gone wrong with various aspects of my life. I wish I'd had a session zero around the age of 8. 😄
Thank you! I joined a well established table a few years ago with no re-zero. First session I felt attacked by the other players interrogating me and my character choices, belittling my attempts to RP, and telling me I was playing my character wrong. I always felt it was my fault but you've made me think differently
Lack of "re-zero" and players being dicks are completely unrelated. The red flag dor players being dicks is that you feel like they are being dicks.
i hope you left that sucks
@@helgenlane moral of the story: DON'T BE A DICK
It definitely wasn't your fault
I have many times told people to play a certain type of character. If the scenario is a story about some knights escorting a bishop to the Pope, then if the bishop has already been cast, then the character has to be a knight, Within the category 'knight' there is so much room for variation that this should never be a problem.
I still romanticise the idea of an all-bard party travelling as a troupe
@@Joker-yw9hl Me and two friends had several sessions where we played 3 Gestalt Rogues. (One was a Gestalt Wizard, another was a Fighter, and the last, I think was a Cleric.) We actually raided a group of slavers, and took all the children to train as our future guild.
Try making stories that don’t have such rigid party comps. Remember it’s the players story not just yours. I can think of plot devices to have a non knight end up in their party. Imagination
There's the old joke of an all-Cleric team called the A-Men.
Specific scenarios for one-shots or short campaigns have a lot more leeway for constraints (as oxymoronic as that sounds) than long campaigns that last for months or years. The longer you play, the more important it is that you're playing exactly what you want. One reason to play one-shots is to try out character types you might not have chosen otherwise. (Of course it can also be the opposite, to try something you really want but don't think will suit a long campaign.)
Being told what class to play is the MOST frustrating thing ever. I was DMing a game where one player was trying to make a "balanced party" and I had to really advocate for the other players to play what they want. As a DM I can work with any party, and all I want is for everyone to have a good time and not play something they don't want
Being forced into a role in a role-playing game is a str8 up no for me. I 100% agree
Everyone wants to play fighters and barbarians I feel obliged to play a caster of some kind, mostly a healer type to keep people alive. Let people play what they want but their choice restricts mine.
@Gordan Moran While I understand that feeling, but the pressure to play a caster/healer is internal. You are making the choice.
Yes! I'm currently running a game with all martials and it's a blast. Sure I have to do some tweaking to balance things, but at the same time it's such fun to have things like a tower wall actually be a challenge the party has to overcome.
@@gordanmoran4549 as someone who also usually plays support, it's a luxury not a necessity, you can get along just fine with no support.
Many of these red flags happened on accident in our group of brand new players for the first year or so. If you are anxious, ignorant and without guidance, things can tense up really quickly. I think the reason we still play together is that we had already been close friends before we started playing and agreed to be super transparent and patient with each other. We definitely stumbled along the way and had to have some frank discussions, but we all trust each other to try to learn, be kind and listen. It strengthened our friendship to work through those issues and I am super happy with our group today. 💚
I need to find a group like that xd
I think with a lot of these the reason why they are red flags and not deal breakers is because they can speak to some underlying issues. Being open, honest, and communicating early and often eliminates the root of the concern.
If the DM is trying to host a game players have fun in and the players want to have fun along with the rest of the table, most things can work themselves out.
That's fantastic! So long as you focus on the people you're playing with and not just the game itself, you can overcome just about any problem at the table!
You just can't take any mistake too seriously, especially when everyone's new to the game.
Exactly. It's a red flag (warning) not a stop or evacuation sign.
A red flag is a sign that might point to something more troubling or a one off instance of bad. You don't know. That's why you observe.
the situation triggers some vague memories
On surprise house rules, many years ago my wife and I joined a game some of her co-workers were in. This was back in D&D 3.0/3.5 days, and the DM was deeply enamored with third-party content that exploded with the original OGL. First session, joining a few sessions after the campaign start, we were all around level 3-4. The DM had us encounter a group of third-party-content goblins that were naturally invisible except under moonlight! (Naturally, the encounter happened at mid-day in game.) I was playing a fighter so I stated I would make a perception check to try and determine where one of the goblins was so I could attack with the major disadvantages that come from fighting against an invisible opponent. The DM said a perception check couldn't be used that way, and when presented with the RAW on perception checks he claimed it was a house rule. So I stated I would blindly attack into one of the spaces around me in an attempt to get lucky and hit one. Denied, because I didn't have the blind fighting feat which, according to him, made it impossible to fight an invisible foe. Again, when presented with the RAW about fighting invisible opponents and how the blind fighting feat just reduced the penalties for doing so, he declared it a house rule. The party ended up barricading themselves in a room and waiting for nightfall, dragging the adventure to a complete halt because we felt we had no options to move forward.
We didn't return for a second session.
I don't personally as a DM have any issue with two or more players playing the same class. But it is important that each of the involved players are ok with it. I don't want a player to feel diminished by another player potentially overshadowing them in there class. I'm not going to assume this means s the case. But there will be a conversation to make sure it's cool across the board.
I ran a game where they all had to be artificers, lol.
@@paximilian4037 cool, again no problem with running it myself. Just need to ensure my players are down when there is overlap
That's a good way to approach things. No classes are necessary but too much overlap can make you feel redundant. I think it's best if you have potential overlap to have those players discuss with each other how they're going with their character. Sometimes they can link their backstories or come up with interesting tactics not commonly used otherwise.
I had a group with two frontliners, two mages and one gunslinger. Two sessions later I only had two mages and a gunslinger because one of the players moved to another country (like he didn't know that would happen when he joined...) and another player had some personal issue. So when looking for new players I had to make clear that the party has a big weakness and they should probably fill it. The new player picked fighter, but even so, the other players felt kinda inadequate because they chose their classes when they knew what everyone else was going to play and they expected to have a specific play style in the group.
It's also very difficult to balance an encounter when the party itself is not balanced.
Ironically enough I had this exact thing happen to me.
I was playing an eldritch knight with a greatsword themed after Zack Fair.
I was the only Frontline, and I went a high CHR build, in tandem with the inspiring leader feat.
This made me a semi tank, semi melee dps, and a slight support role during downtime.
It wasn't perfect but it led to some amazing fights.
Then, when we had to replace one of the players due to RL issues, and this player is a minmaxxer.. and there's nothing inherently wrong with that but not only did they have almost 10 AC higher than me on average(and i had 16 AC), they also had many other things that simply made their character statistically *better* than mine in every way.
Needless to say, all combat after that went very smoothly. But no longer did we have combat where we might die to some of the stronger encounters because this new guy never got hit, and rarely missed.
Turned combat into a bore since we no longer had to worry about anyone dying.
And it made my character completely irrelevant in basically all scenarios.
What had previously been an intense game, where every decision mattered became a foregone conclusion even against boss enemies.
Everyone else found the game had gotten boring even during social encounters since the new guys character seemed to have bonuses to everything by level 3 that only some of the RP was still interesting.
Needless to say I retired my character at a sensible point, but not long after, everyone, including the dm decided the game had gotten stale so we all decided to go our separate ways.
The question of whether it's metagaming to know how trolls work for me is resolved by the question "what does my character know about trolls?", which gives the DM scope to allow for their weaknesses to be common knowledge or basically unknown as appropriate.
You literally can’t avoid metagaming because your character by coincidence could use fire against a troll. By avoiding that you are metagaming. Also, Whether you ask your DM or not whether your character knows a monsters trait, your subconscious knowledge of the fact is influencing you whether you know it or not.
@@floofzykitty5072 That's...not the case here? He's circumventing the metagaming by actively asking "what does my character know?" which meta gaming by definition is making a decision as your character using knowledge your character would not reasonably have. As a DM, I'd ask them to either make a history or general intelligence check and let that determine what they know. It's a fun way to incorporate that kind of stuff.
This is the most important question at all the tables i've played at! And the most asked. nothing wrong with doing an insight, history, etc., check to see what they know. and it gives the dm a reason to refresh into their backstory to help decide what they would and wouldn't know.
I mean, if a character has Fireball on their character sheet, it's metagaming anytime they don't take a chance to cast it when trying to do damage to multiple targets. Depending on the level of play, sometimes even single targets. Actually, just always use Fireball. Just use Fireball. Just Fireball. JUST FIREBALL.
Now, not learning/preparing Fireball in the first place, that's a totally valid reason not to cast it on the trolls. Another valid reason would be if you're a Light Cleric comboing Spirit Shroud and Scorching Ray, but that's still fire damage so the end result is the same. It's kinda hard not to have a generous use of fire in a 5E D&D party, you've got to go out of your way to avoid it more often than not. Even if you're in a super low magic campaign, that type of party probably always has lit touches on hand.
Well,, it's depending on the PC's core personality as well.
I have a fallen Aasimar Undying warlock, who doesn't really use fire based spells (the only exception is the Create Bonefire cantrip, but that's for making camps), so if it would run into a troll, it wouldn't use fireball, even if his patron would be a Fiend. His favorite cantrip is the Chill Touch though, which also stops regenerating abilities, so he would be able to put a considerable contribute to it's death, even if the most likely to kill it would be our Tiefling barbarian.
As a first time DM I am so glad I spent sooooo much time working with my players on their characters, who they are, where they fit into the setting etc. Great video, great relief I didn't end up unintentionally producing these red flags.
Making someone play a class is only ok if they dont know what to play. Friend of mine just got into dnd and has no preference after we went through all classes. I just said "lets just have you play this one to fill a group role, but feel free to change later if you make up your mind". We made his character and backstory yesterday and hes very happy with the result
I agree with this sentiment. However, when people talk about "making" someone play a particular class or fill a particular role, I think they mean force/pressure.
In your example you were helping, not only your friend, but everyone else as well (way to kill two birds with one stone there, nice). Not only that, but you gave them a choice to opt out of their class/role if they disliked it. You weren't really "making" them, but rather you were guiding an undecided newcomer. By giving them the opportunity to change, it doesn't feel like they are forced to stick with it for the sake of the squad.
I take a different approach and ask what kind of playstyles they generally prefer and go through options with them that point in that direction. My roommate really wanted to be a Bardbarian and El Kabong the health back into people. Told her there wasn't really a great way for me to help her eith that, but Mercy Monk is literally all about punching hp into friends or poison into enemies, which she liked enough
My group is pretty big, but we've had a few filler games where whoever was GMing laid out class and/or background restrictions for the party.
In a V:tM game, we had one game where everyone was playing Clan Gangrel. We had D&D games where everyone was limited to Fighters or Barbarians.
I think limiting certain aspects of character creation is fine, so long as it supports the story being told.
I feel like it's important to point out that sometimes restrictions within a group are important and even fun at times, I once had a group I played with in which magic was outlawed but it was still subtly used by many people on the sly which added a bit of tension but also a rush to the game play as well. It made me as a druid player carefully think about my choices of spells in a public setting
That's not a restriction, by game viewpoint. It's an in-game restriction, which by i means, that it will have logical consequences. But your DM didn't say, you CANNOT play any spellcasting class! That's only world building element, which makes those types of characters more targeted, and harder to play - but it also means, that among your enemies might be less people, who are proficient in magic as well, therefor your character essentially would be a stronger opponent, that others would think after notice it.
The important distinction here is that there was no actual restriction against using magic; it's just illegal, and that, at it's root, is just (potentially) great world detail. Much like playing a Jedi during the timeframe of the original Star Wars films. As long as a GM isn't specifically and unfairly punishing YOU, just for playing the character, it's just dramatic tension.
Like things a GM can or does not want to handle like time powers
yup. my DM thinks the underdark is stupid so we don't have drow or gnomes. lol
@@lulzywizard7576
gnomes?
One thing that we always do to address metagaming is by simply asking if our characters would know the information the players know. For instance, when we fought a banshee and everyone but me went down from the wail, once I got everyone back up I asked if my character would know if that danger was no longer present, and by passing a history check, we knew we didn't have to fear that happening again if we went back to fight it right away.
I always felt this sort of thing could be easily addressed with either a knowledge roll, or having a minimum knowledge skill value. One character, a barbarian, once stated at creation that his tribe would often tell stories and draw pictures of monstrous threats that he believes are just stories to scare children into staying close to the tribe, and that during encounters, he would try things from the stories and be willing to spend points when levelling into knowledge as a sign that it is now fact rather than fable.
On the topic of shutting down optimization, I think it's important for dungeon masters to outright define what they consider power gaming or metagaming since different dungeon masters will have their own idea of what metagaming and power gaming is. It's especially the case when you bring optimization into it which some will argue falls under the umbrella of power gaming.
Yeah I think it comes down to internal balance within the group. We've got one player who, without fail, will build the most powerful thing that can possibly be built. The rest of the group aren't that good with breaking the system so we end up with one player who's monstrously more powerful than the rest. That player then shows up all the rest and the DM has a nightmare trying to balance encounters
Part of the issue is that most DMs are often ill-equipped to evaluate the actual strength of builds but quick to decide what they think is strong based largely on their own anecdotes and emotional reactions. I think for most, "power gaming" is more of a bogeyman or a label for "stuff I don't like" rather than a proper concept. The really-optimized stuff can only work if the DM explicitly allows it because 5e is so heavily-bounded. A good example is tech like rest casting or conjure airstrike. The relative power difference between a character built with the slightest effort and a hyper-optimized build if the DM doesn't allow shenanigans is about 40-50% at most, as there are few multiplicative synergies and you're still limited by action economy and concentration. Some of the best-optimized builds at their peak disparity do double the DPR of just a plain old Rogue hidin' and hittin' with no subclass factored in. Most of the real difference comes from playing smart, piloting the character effectively and building for more than just combat numbers. But hey, some people want Clueless Kevin's tavern brawler barbarian monk as a baseline and think Susy Sharparrow is OP because she put her stats in Dex and uses a bow.
@@RaethFennec Yeah, I just think all builds have different strengths in 5e. I've seen some super cool optimized builds surrounding out of combat utility too. It's silly to restrict players on what they can play IMO. I had so many moments in my first campaign where I wanted to take something that would bolster my character within base rules and my DM refused to tolerate that. Ended up having less fun because my DM would ban fun build options for the sake of "balance". Not like conjure woodland animals gamebreaking type stuff, just things they didn't consider "balanced" or stuff like Death Cleric which they considered "evil". Like I'm a game design major and they're telling me what's balanced or not. Plus the lack of nuance to say a class is "meant for a DM because it's evil" is funny considering most builds I'd want to play with a necromancer or death cleric would likely subvert that trope. They even seemed a little offput when I wanted to build partially around action economy. Like I enjoy building around mechanics and RP, so it's frustrating when someone restricts that creativity when most of what I picked was in the base game. I'm not trying to break damage thresholds or some shit, I just know it's way more fun to play a character that's mechanically optimized. Whether it's optimized for the flavor I want, outside of combat, or the actual combat. Like it's so silly to try and micromanage party roles outside of keeping the same Ability Scores/levels and stuff. Just turns into a situation where players are comparing themselves to others when in reality, most good play in DnD surrounds game skill and not builds. And really, it's about having fun at the end of the day. If a player has a problem, communication obviously needs to happen. But like as a DM I will never restrict something WOTC releases for the edition I'm playing in, as that player bought the subclass, wants to use it, and it wouldn't be fair to them to restrict that. Rules as intended is a much better solution than straight up shutting down a combo or creative choice. I'll just adapt my campaign to their needs as a player, or buff other characters to make things more interesting for them and the way they want to play the game. DnD is such an individual experience that it ends up not really mattering anyways because most people are too focused on their own turn/game to care whether timmy in the corner is doing 20 or 25 damage on average. And if they do care, why so? Like what's the point of getting jealous of another player's successes? Hate to say it, but some people need to observe and learn instead of complaining about their DPR being lower. Newer players might have issues like this, but ultimately it can be solved via items or boons given by the DM if it becomes a huge deal.
@@greyscaleadaven Haha, I think we are two of one mind! I wrote a comment earlier that mentioned a few of the exact things you said here and I agree with you wholeheartedly. I even specifically suggested to someone if a player wanted to optimize in a group with players who didn't, that as a DM I'd talk with them privately and say absolutely go for it, but if other players fall too far behind, I might grant them extra boons or magic items while you get normal loot on schedule and will you be okay with that on the understanding that they'll need the help keeping up with you? That way the player has a wink wink nudge nudge nudge with the DM so they don't feel left out when Newbie Ned's melee monk gets Bracers of Defense and an Eldritch Claw tattoo by level 5 with a Staff of Striking on the horizon and Optimizer Oscar's Paladin 4 Warlock 1 PAM who's jumping ship to Sorcerer in a few levels only has a +1 quarterstaff and maybe a thermal cube or something fun for roleplay.
I think it's pretty fair for a GM to set a target power level for a campaign, but that's only tangentially related to optimisation. There's lots of ways you can approach this (whether you want to limit DPR, burst damage, general utility, whatever), but I think it can help focus a campaign and let people get to higher levels before the balance completely breaks.
As a GM I can know that in a high-power game, pure martials aren't going to keep up and someone who picks one is going to have a bad time. Similarly, something like a Twilight Cleric (bad with specific 5e examples, I GM PF1e) will completely throw off the the balance of a low-power game. But, if a player approaches me asking to play one of these classes and I get the idea that they know what they're doing and will play up/down to the group then I'd let them.
For Pathfinder examples, I'd probably use Swashbuckler and Summoner as the examples. Swashbuckler has very few decision points so they fit well into low-mid power games but don't really have any way to play up to high power levels (pre-rework Rogue and Monk were also bad but in more mundane, less interesting ways). Pre-rework Summoner on the other hand just had a really high power floor, a well-played full-caster would be stronger obviously, but as a Summoner you could randomly pick options and still end up with a pet that was stronger than a moderately optimised martial all while also being able to toss around the best Wizard combat spells (and basically only the best Wizard spells, their list was limited to just the good stuff). Then there were also the issues with their spell list that let an optimiser break apart Wealth By Level and make incredibly cheap wands, but that's more technical. Point is, there are classes/options that don't really fit into certain game power levels, a skilled or cooperative player can work around this to some degree.
As a sweaty optimiser, I think it's good manners to pick a low-power character concept and push it to its limits. I know I could break the game with a full caster or any of the established power-gamey builds, I think it's more fun for everyone to play to the party's power level with a sub-optimal type of character. I get to spend hours reading up character options to squeeze every last drop of power from a build; the other players get to see a weird, wacky build they've never seen before and the GM gets to run a normal mid-power game without everything falling apart and fights being anticlimactic.
An important thing that I had to learn the hard way is that there's such a thing as "too many people".
I'm not just referring to someone who might be more introverted, or scheduling, though those are problems with larger groups. But, it becomes a lot for the GM to keep track of to the point that balancing kinda goes out the window. Especially with action economy.
But, an unfortunate side effect of a large party is that, in an effort to make sure everyone gets a chance in the spotlight, there's large portions of time where no one is in the spotlight.
4-6 people & a GM is a solid amount. If you're comfortable as a GM, you can push it to 8, but don't go over that.
Regarding action economy balancing, it's a particularly tough issue to fix because the only real solution is to even out the actions on each side by adding more monsters or giving them more actions, but that means there's more time between each player's turn (which is already an issue with larger groups). Then the issue compounds upon itself even further, because people zone out when they haven't taken a turn in a while, so you get the "umm, what happened since my last turn?" thing on every players turn which makes all the turns take even longer and makes the problem even worse.
I’ve run games with up to 30 people, which would definitely stress some, but I started playing D&D in a huge group of like 20+ people, so I never found DM’ing for big groups to be an issue. The secret is to make eye contact with each person at the table, make sure each person gets to do the thing they are there to do, and be ready to skip people that aren’t ready when it’s their turn. Those that like what you are doing will return, and those that don’t won’t be missed.
5 is pretty much the limit, unless all the players are fine with not doing anything for the whole session, watching other players do something instead. Thought, if you are doing only combat, then the amount of players doesn't really matter, they just have to think fast.
3 to 4 is the sweet spot IMHO.
As someone currently playing a Warlock who very deliberately didn't take Eldritch Blast, I'm glad you said "If you're having fun, you're doing it right" bc I am definitely having fun with my Neutral Evil Warlock who's passing as a regular spellcaster (pact of the Tome) and totally about to betray the party at the last battle (DM: Hey you wanna be an evil cultist in my Zelda Homebrew who befriends the party and then betrays them in the end? Me: uh hell yeah???)
That sounds like an incredibly fun character! Have you made it to the moment of truth yet? Also I’m curious how you managed to hide the lack of spell slots during gameplay
@@Lucas-ns9hd oh yes, this campaign ended fairly soon after. It was a combination of her roleplay heavy, combat light campaign, and a surprising lack of meta gaming on their part, I believe. They all knew I was playing a warlock, of course, but it didn't come up in roleplay so it wasn't addressed.
It uh. Didn't end how I wanted it to, but it was that dms first time dm-ing and they did something that was honestly really cool from my character's perspective, but left me as a player unable to do anything, so the end battle was a little anticlimactic.
Pro-tip: don't have your warlock's patron take their soul into their own body bc that leaves their body on the ground along with all of their stuff and they can't cast any of the cool spells they just learned.
@@LtSarai Oh no! Well I'm sorry to hear that it wasn't as satisfying as you'd hoped. I hope the rest of the campaign was as fun as it sounded, at least. I've had roleplay-heavy homebrews get soured right at the end as well so I can definitely relate. Thanks for sharing!
Looking back now. One player heavily favoured by DM, was also murder hobo and stole player magic items. Major downer..... especially if someone else had a hot session on the dice...... player sulked like a 2yr old not allowed chocolate........
You nailed it when you mentioned trust. The group I'm in right now has been playing for over a year, and we've developed enough trust that we're comfortable with romances between PCs, with mild PVP (it's still a game for a team, but there are sometimes conflicts) without being upset with anyone out of character, with character's lying and scheming. We do a lot of things together that i would not be comfortable doing with a group I hadn't built this trust with. It's really great. Trust is key.
For my experience in the past, our "session zero"s usually happen naturally, casually over the course of the week/time period leading up to the first scheduled session. So that by the time the first session comes up everything is already laid out in expectations. We're prepared to jump right in right from the get go ish
Same here. I find it pretty hard to get people to do a session zero, but very easy to let the conversations and ideas flow for a couple weeks before hand, then do a quick recap to begin session 1.
Yes my experience, a conversation on Whatapp that discusses the setting, any restrictions, what people are thinking of playing. .etc ...
As long as you do the session zero tasks, which is preparing everyone for session one and forward, you fulfill the same function.
@@slavesforging5361 Just have them show up for Session 1 and say "before we begin......"
Being a DM isn't a licence to be obnoxious.
Some time ago I tried to enter in an existing online campaign. Prior to join, I listened to an hour or two of a couple of sessions - I didn't have the best feelings but I was starving for D&D so I went along, joining as soon as there was chance to do it. After a couple of sessions I confirmed my fears - the group had a one man show person that was eating hours of sessions just to role everything was happening to him to the point that we were practically being silent just to be able to go ahead in the campaign. Not only that, he was doing metagaming A LOT, showing off how many things he knew on monsters and so on, correcting the master in game when he was saying something not by the rules/monster book.
After my second or third session, he requested a "follow up meeting", in which he complained that I was not playing my Dwarven Cleric "right", somehow backed up by the DM and one of the other players. Right after that meeting, we had my final session with that group: he wasted almost 2 hours out of 4 chatting by himself with PNG just to "clarify" to me how it was the correct way of playing in that group, describing himself what he was doing and why and so on.
When the session was finished a different player wrote an huge rant in the game chat on avoiding to waste time in the sessions since "we" were going too slow. I kind of gave up, I wrote down my point of view and I told them that I was going to leave the campaign. I must say, it was probably one if not my worst experience in D&D.
The party Ranger was the healer for the first 6 levels of the campaign I'm running. Not with spells, just a healer's kit and the healing feat!
Truly a medic.
Yep, I have a Monk with the healer feat (soldier background, so a combat medic) and we're fine at level 10. Never needed the healing word or cure wounds spells.
@@jbirkins Fully down to how the DM balances really.
Highly underrated feat. Makes potions irrelevant because it's so efficient.
I've seen a lot of those flags. I'm in a large group that's been around since the 1980s, and I can promise you every single one of those has appeared at some time or another, though rarely enough to be a major problem. Except that last one. As you stated, that's a major problem in and of itself. I was the victim of it for quite some time. Because I have issues dealing with people socially, and the group was my one reliable social outlet, I shrugged it off for a long time until I finally just hit my wall and left. Years later, after spelling it out to some in individual conversations after I left, and being specifically invited back, I returned. The group has much the same people, but one or two are gone, the negative attitude has disappeared in those who remained, and it's maintained itself that way since before the pandemic so I'm reasonably certain things are positive now. Just the same, I understand fully that last red flag, and the consequences it brings. I also confirmed through this experience how people can change for the better, and their groups with them.
I have encountered more grief from DMs over the 1st level spell Goodberry than I ever expected. Even in a lv17 campaign, being told that casting Goodberry before going to sleep is meta-gaming is like a slap in the face.
You're level 17 with 20 Intelligence/Wisdom but your character could not POSSIBLY have figured out that sleeping causes all their spell slots to regenerate and that Goodberries last 24 hours. :P No feasible way a person could solve such a challenge. It is beyond even immortal minds.
@@RaethFennec Exactly. It's just the fantasy equivalent to a life hack. Not much different than setting a timer on a slow cooker. There are obviously limits to how far one can reasonably push magic, but this is not that.
I'll out myself here but I hate that spell by default in it's 5e form and revert it in a heartbeat to it's earlier (needs fresh berries to be cast on) form. So I would definitely have a gut reaction to shut that down because of my hate for that spell, but upon giving it a moment (like I had while typing my original reply) I realize it's not that big a deal.
@@OnlineSarcasmFails I do like the berry requirement for flavor. On my caster I used a branch of mistletoe as my spell focus, so I RPed that the berries enlarged and fell into my hand or whatever.
However with a spell focus, that removes the non-gold material component. That makes it simpler for the players, but does remove some of the flavor.
(Edit) lol at the idea of "Bland"berries
Welcome to Goodberry, home of the Goodberry.
Can I take ya ordah?
our game had two arcane tricksters, until the one multiclassed into paladin. they even had the same spells. it was a hoot. they play off each other really well. i will never force a player to be anything they do not. we all have our own power fantasies.
Similar situation as a game I'm in now we have an arcane trickster who is more range focus and there spells are trixy and theivey and like to be unseen , where as mine is more upfront, spells built for identifying and finding out magical knowledge but one great thing is I'm helping him study arcana and how his magic works and he's helping me communicate better as my one is very bad at socialising and often leads to people being creeped out by him or laughing lol
Everybody's gangsta until the orc barbarian yeets the kitsune arcane trickster at the bbeg
@@datbiteygal9789 🤣 darnit! I have to let our barbie know he has an alternate weapon now!
@@baie_nuuskierig yes yes throw the furry
That Dino hoodie is the most aggressively 90's thing I've ever seen and I want one, haha
My favorite line of the whole video " It doesn't suck if you have fun playing it". I play an inquisitive rogue with 17 wisdom and 12 dex, that is a police inspector for Baldur's gate watch. And the party barbarian goes on stealth missions and scouting, with his 16 dex and stealth proficiency, We have a really awesome time playing our characters. The whole resume of the game is to have fun. It is really unfortunate that not everyone gets that.
That sounds like a lot of fun actually
Baldur like you mean the norse god?
@@Acefdiamonds Probably Baldur like Baldur's Gate the city in the Forgotten Realms D&D world. It's been host to several adventures and video games.
@@ParanormalEncyclopedia oh ok I just heard Baldur
@@Acefdiamonds In the forgotten Realms campaign setting, there is a city called Baldur's gate. It is the center of many events in the setting.
One that sticks out to me is the new guy to our table with a character named "Simon the Pie Man" and his motivation to adventure was to find the best pie ingredients throughout the land. The GM immediately responded "Are you serious?! That is a stupid name, fix it or I'll kill your character." We thought he was joking at first... he was not. I was genuinely invested in the 30 seconds I knew of Simon... but it didn't matter because we had a series of unfortunate combat rolls which resulted in a party wipe and total reroll. Disclaimer: the rolls werent stacked against us, a party of 7 rolled at least 20 sub 5s which caused the TPK.
Simon the Pie Man reminds me of the Tale of Slap-Happy Jack, the Firbolg Barbarian raised by clowns (look him up).
This sounds amazing, I wish Simon well in his next campaign XD
As the only experienced player in a large group, I played a human fighter doing market research to open a shop someday. Really fun to let new players figure out the game and only step in when (or just after)it’s going horribly wrong.
thats so horrible poor simon :(
i would've left tbh
@@kylesimone6140 I hear ya, but it was with workmates and a beer and pretzels level of game. Also, it was my first game, so I just chalked it up to not knowing better.
one major red flag I have found is when a DM never plays. I can understand when a good DM is too busy running games that they have no time to actually play in one, but no someone who only DMs and never plays, that indicates someone who can't play yet wants to run. not usually a good DM.
As a dm I would never punish a player for picking the optimal option as long as it fits within their character. But seeing people who exclusively play stuff like kalashtar totem barbarians or half elf sorcerers make my eyes glaze over
I feel like ppl optimising by doing stuff like making half-elf sorcerers is more an issue with the game than players. I don't think theres any blameworthiness in players making their main stat their best stat etc., I think the issue is more with tying things with significant roleplay significance, like race, to mechanics in a fairly inflexible way makes ppl have to balance being mechanically helpful to the party and being more inventive with more fluffy roleplay
Yeah some dms absolutely go over the line with that stuff but like. Especially when you’re the only one doing it in a party that isn’t even about that, I just wonder why that’s ‘all’ you want to play
@@Odoclick you can be both mechanically useful and a character, it’s called ‘making a character’. That’s literally what you described with the half elf sorcerer; as long as you actually care enough to give them character traits, you’ve done it. But if all you care about is being the absolute most powerful (not just making a half elf sorcerer, although you know stats aren’t tied to race anymore right?), and that is all you do with every character…I mean, fine but join a game where that’s the point then? Because it really makes it hard for the rest of the party to keep up.
The way to approach "telling players what class to play" is to directly inform them of the already existing characters. It happened to me twice in one year where a character came to the table with the same race, class, and subclass as another one of my players. And there was some disappointment that came out of it because it's fun as a player to feel like you have a niche and are needed.
If both players playing the same subclass are fine with it, great! But make sure they're both aware before you have a spiderman meme at your table. Plus if they know, they might even come up with joint backstory!
This. I think that solidly banning duplication among classes or subclasses is rarely the best option, but not everyone wants to double up in that way because it can take away from their own character fulfillment or fun of the gameplay. As long as all parties- not just the joining party- are okay with it, almost anything can work, but often time those kinds of discussions about what players feel okay with will fall to the wayside and the decision will fall completely on DM preference. I know for myself, I want to have utility in the group and feel special and useful, so I'd never willingly choose to play the same subclass or maybe even class of someone else at the table, even if it meant I needed to go back to the drawing board with my character.
It may also be the theme or troupe play
every PC is from that class
I use the "jam band analogy"-- a party is like a jam band, everyone should get time to step up and solo to show their chops, and everyone is going to have times they need to sit back and play rhythm for a while. If you're duplicating someone to the extent I can't put them in the spotlight on their own, that's a problem. If you're building your character so I can give you both your fair shot in the limelight then it doesn't matter mechanically how you're built.
Thats what two of my players are doing now. One is elf ranger other is half elf ranger. So one decided they were the mentor to the other and thats how they know each other in their backstory.
I will say that when I started playing DnD, I was really glad that my DM (also my boyfriend) helped me pick something that I find fun but not too hard to learn, and it's a build that's gotten more complicated as I learn (Paladin, Grave Cleric, Fighter)
In my 20+ years of playing, the DM always had characters in the party. The players would determine what the DM's characters did and it worked out really well. It was nice for the DM too because it allowed him to develop characters and feel like they were also playing the game. But, I can see how that could be abused.
That sounds more like a party PC, rather than a DMPC. And with the rest of the players being in on it, it removes most of the railroading aspect that's usually the worst part of DMPCs.
I did the same for my first campaign as the DM because there was only 3 players. When the players were stuck on what to do, I would use the DMPC for tips
@@LinkinVoiderwhy couldn’t you use an NPC for that?
@@joshahyu this was more than an npc because it followed the characters on their entire journey
@@LinkinVoider I understand that. Just asking why normal npcs that were placed in towns and such couldn’t act as guides or give tips. From experience it feels bad to have someone follow the party around as a hint box.
I held a Session 0 with the group I’ve been playing with for several years for a campaign I started running, even though everybody (myself included) was unsure if we really needed one - and I’m SO GLAD we did; we’ve had some of the most fun RP and the most fantastic and cohesive party dynamic out of any campaign we’ve done thus far, and it’s made for tremendously easier and more directed session planning between meetups. Session Zero is always the way to go!
I love this video, and all the videos you guys put out about social dynamics outside of actual gameplay. I was the dungeon master of a group for two years; we had agreed to meet once a month, but (through no fault of their own, we were all in highschool) most of them did not make it for most sessions. We ended up playing only twice a year, if we were lucky.
Then, when the players did show up, they were inattentive and generally not engaged. I think this group was looking for something different with their campaign, which I don't hold against, them, but I became very frustrated that my work in this homebrew campaign was essentially being wasted.
I also played as a player in another group with a hardcore murder hobo. It's an extremely difficult thing to stand up to someone who is so belligerent and disrespectful, but finally I had to say that he wasn't welcome in my house if he continued to act like this (I was hosting). He tried very hard to make himself the victim, but no one in our group fell for it. Finally he said, "I'm not going to join your next campaign, since you say I'll ruin it." Later he asked if he could join, and it was my delight and pleasure to tell him no.
The moral is: do not put up with this. Make clear in your session zero that you have a zero tolerance policy for murder hoboism. If someone acts this way, give them one warning and then kick them out. Do not wait and put up with this any longer than you have to.
I spent a long time in a semi-toxic dnd group with an egomaniacal DM. He would literally quit whole modules if it wasn't going to his plan, and he would punish players for doing things that interfered with the approved storyline. Unfortunately, he was also my boyfriend, and would be verbally abusive in game to me in front of others. Both to me as a person, and as a character. I stayed for ten years because I'm an idiot, but I also loved dnd, and those other players. They were my closest friends. Now, years later, I feel like I can't trust any of them. Because not a one of them ever spoke up for me. A part of me still has great memories, but the rest is disappointed in them as human beings. I'm currently studying 5e and after a ten year break from dnd, am ready to try again. That's how I found your video. Thank you for helping players find healthy environments! 😊
the lousy thing is that the worse the group is, the more they burn through players and therefore the more people get subjected to bad behavior. Kinda like dating in a way.
95% of the game is are you having fun and get along with everyone. Like any other hobby it's the people you are with. My group had a 4 session quest to retrieve baked goods. They loved it. Just have fun.
100% agree. We had a beach episode where we chased crabs and tried different ice cream flavors. With a barbecue at night. We had a blast
we bar hopped and did Karaoke, so much fun
Well? Don't leave us in the dark! Did they bring back the baked goods?
DID THE CHILDREN GET TO ENJOY THEIR PASTRIES!?
ANSWER MEEEEEEE
@Nickachuuuuu in order to recreat the bag of colding it had to be recreated at the same stellar location to connect with the same Astral dimension. Some research and a well done role the goodies were retrieved.
@@PankuHunter \o/
That is quite the galaxy brain solution to bring back some pies xD
My stance on "banned options" is that as a DM becomes more experienced this list should get shorter and not longer.
The whole reason I had a list like this when i started DMing was that I found DMing intimidating and a little overwhelming. Saying "I'm only working from these books" or "please, please don't hit me with a [insert complicated class build or uncommon race here]" helped me keep my footing and not get thrown for too many loops when a character threw out a spell I didn't understand or created a build that broke an encounter or session. When that happens as a new DM, it's just so much harder to deal with.
But as I've gained experience, gained knowledge, gotten more comfortable, etc. I've started introducing some of those "banned" (I don't like calling it that) items to my table, because I feel ready for the challenge DMing them presents.
In the same way player characters options and abilities expand as they level up, so does the table and the DM haha.
Obviously I'm describing a more collaborative scenario than the one you are describing, but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.
Agreed. When I started DMing 2 years ago I made a hard ban on all UA and Homebrew because I didn't feel confident in anything not playtested. Since I have gained more experience I allow a lot of those things after reviewing it. It is now pretty much anything official and you are golden, anything unofficial consult me, if it's not broken it's most likely okay and if it is let's work together to bring it to scale
@glarak9819 "pretty much anything official and you are golden, anything unofficial consult me, if it's not broken it's most likely okay and if it is let's work together to bring it to scale"
Sir, with this alone, you are peak DM in my opinion. I also began DMing 2 or so years ago, and I have always said ALMOST THE EXACT SAME WORDS to everyone I have ever DM'd for, and never have I had a bad game or arguments at the table (to be fair, I have played for 13 years before striking out as a DM). I believe that this flexibility in DMing is what makes makes players comfortable discussing rules or even builds with you. I do believe the DM should keep the balance in a game and ensure that everyone has a good time, but I also believe your DM should be your friend, working with you to make sure that you are playing the PC that YOU want to play, but that EVERYONE has a good time. I think the best part though about being flexible, is that the players learn to think outside the box, they are encouraged to work together, and as the DM, you are always learning something new about the group and how to make things run more smoothly in the future.
TL;DR: I agree and you are a peak DM
A few red flags for me is side talking by the other players when the DM is talking about the setting, as well as blocking view of dice rolls. Same goes for interrupting the players when it isn't their turn. This is happened as a DM and as a player. Thankfully the player blocking dice rolls and interrupted left the group before I brought it up. I am on the verge on leaving the group with the sidetalking. I plan on mentioning it to our DM about this and will leave if it continues.
This is something that I now mention in session zero. If someone else is having their turn, in or out of combat, it's their turn in the spotlight. If you have something to say in character, that's part of the game. Have a reaction to declare, part of the game, go ahead. The one liner that's too good to pass up, once in a while, OK. If I'm making a riles mistake and it's important to address now and not after the encounter, if the toaster oven's on fire, speak up or course, but if your thought can wait a moment, then please hold wait until your own turn.
I never tell another player what they can or can't play, but I'll often shift what *I'm* playing so that I don't end up potentially stealing their spotlight. That's my main thing when it comes to multiple people playing the same class/subclass: it can be hard to allow *both* of these characters their "time to shine" if they're both good at the same things.
So my story, was actually in highschool, close to 20 years ago. I'd wanted to play DnD, I found a group that played during lunch, and interestingly, it was a group of people I knew and at the time thought I was friends with. When I asked if I could join, I was told I could, though they effectively said "Yeah you play this goat, and it's now a dead goat." That extended out to when I went to various game and hobby shops as well; I could never find a group that was willing to let me join, even ones just starting. Only now that I decided that I might as well just be a Dungeon Master that I've been able to play a bit more often.
Honestly ive never had any issues joining a game without session 0 , aslong as dm gives info on the world and helps making a character fit in when joining, its also pretty fun introducing myself to the players that know little about me
TBT I have only had one session 0 in over 20 years of playing in fact only heard of it in the past 3 years or so
@@certanmike I've never had a session 0 in like 15+ years of playing D&D. Or what could be considered a session 0. There have been some pregame character building, but even that didn't reach the level of what I would consider a session 0 to be.
I once DM'ed a one-shot adventure in which the players agreed to all play clerics from different domains. The team was called "The A-men". Next up is a traveling troupe consisting only of different subclasses of Bards. The "figher" will be the Valor bard, the "rogue" will be the Whispers bard, the "wizard" will be the Lore bard, and so on.
Did they happen to get the idea from watching Jocat? If not then great minds think alike, he made that joke in his D&D series
@@JohnHaloWarrior95
ever heard of ars magica
the complete fighter had also a few examples
Re: "no setting information", I once had a prospective GM tell me that he wasn't giving setting information because "if you can't come up with something in the framework of generic fantasy you're creatively bankrupt and aren't worth having at the table".
Yeah, a DM should introduce a new character pretty quickly. Group I’m with now lost a member so it was easy for my character to “meet” the remaining characters as they were hiding the bodies of a bad guy and opted to join in, so it all worked. Dropped in the first ten minutes of the game, everyone at the same level, etc. So far, so good!
absolutly as fast as possible, everything else be damned
But Wellmeaning people may believe it needs to do different
So, I joined a campaign that was almost a year in. To be fair, it was all people I've known for years. I sat in on 2 sessions (this is a discord game) and did a separate one shot before we introduced my character. It worked out really well as I knew the group dynamics well enough to squeeze in comfortably.
I actually joined a home brew session that has been going on for 3 years as a level 11 twilight cleric… they made me feel super welcomed, integrated my character seamlessly and have really helped me grow and obsession for dnd
I'm a DM and I personally recommend my brand new players to not play some of the more complex spell casters because of how hard they are. But I don't ban it out right to them because if they really want to play said class, they can. I offer some of the easier full casters and some of the half casters. Sometimes they are like, "yeah cool I'll do that class you suggested" or they are "na, I want to try this class that is harder to learn" and I am cool with it. If they later on want to change their character or class, I'm willing to work with them on it.
I'm some what similar when I get new players I split classes up into lvl of complexity, usually from simplest to most martial to half caster to caster. I do this not to convince them not to play a class but so they know what they're getting into or so that they can go to the type of play they know they enjoy with less trouble.
I feel like in D&D every class is a medium difficulty, with the subclass options making the class really hard or easy. Like a fighter and/or rogue should be among the easiest choice, but man my fighter has like 200 options for reactions.
@@bradleyhurley6755 I'm still intimidated by Battle Masters and I've been playing for a decade, lol
@@andrewbok204 battle masters are like 90% fluff and like 5% stuff you would ever want to use. A lot depends on your build though.
I'm really glad that my first and only DM is a badass. He loves the creativity we come up with as a group. We finished up our last story battling through the nine circles of hell and about to start a new adventure in the 40K universe as Orks. Yes, the entire playgroup. I'm so excited.
I've got to ask. Your game in 40k. Is it some D&D sorta thing using that environment, the models game or going old school for Rogue Trader? Or is there another defined RPG based in the grimdark future? Because THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!
My gaming group has done a few sessions of Rogue Trader, but we're looking for more ways to use that system for role playing.
If you have a DM who loves creativity, you have at the worst the basis for a good DM. That can end up as a questionable DM, but you probably have a straight up great DM you shouldn't let go.
This is one of the most "this speaks to me" videos I've ever watched on the subject of table gaming.
And I'll admit that I've been frustrated by many of these items, but also BEEN many of these red flags, both while learning the game and while I felt I had a fair grasp of it.
That fumble chart dismemberment example, man....I totally did that, and got called out on it right away. I wanted a game where botched rolls would come with drastic consequences, and the players were quick to remind me that we as a group never agreed on that notion.
And the rezero session would likely have saved me introducing a new character mid-campaign. He was probably one of my proudest character creations, and he just wasn't a fit, and got alienated easily by the party. And at the time, I took it personally and now realize I could have saved myself by having a quick table discussion. Just wow.
As a result of a lot of these experiences, I ultimately left the table around five years ago. I felt I just wasn't able to enjoy the time, and it took some time to realize that was AT LEAST half my fault. And for the other five or six players, at least I had the clarity to see that removing myself was the best course of action.
I miss it, desperately at times. But in my time away, I did better for my physical and mental health, have had more quality time with my family, and even wrote and published a novel.
I'm hoping to return this year wiser, and throw out an epic one shot to celebrate D&D's 50th year, and find myself table savvy again with a lean toward a better experience for everyone.
In my current campaign, not only am I one of two draconic sorcerers, but we both picked blue dragons. The other character is a blue dragonborn, while I just wanted to play with lightning more than I've ever been able to before. It worked out pretty well, especially when we were able to position ourselves to fire Lightning Bolt down the same line. He wound up multiclassing into tempest cleric, and we still make a good team.
In my Tuesday game, I'm one of two Rogues with Elven blood (I'm a full-blooded Eladrin, he's a High half-elf). We've been bouncing off eachother since session one with him being a motor mouth who doesn't think things through and be being the more serious one who tries to keep him out of trouble. Come level 3 I subclassed as assassin while he took swashbuckler, and we just got past the "will they won't they?" phase of our romance subplot. Which may have involved both of us making deals with our Warlock's demon patron behind the other's back to protect each other. 😅
I have been caught in some atrocious games that would hit the highlight reel of D&D horror stories sadly, sadly in some instances it took me way to long to realise.... Which is why I strive not to stay in awful games anymore.
As always, great video, and loved that plug for your Patreon there at the end, very sneaky.... :)
The things I experienced among these points:
Session Zero - Nobody want to do it let's just play. It is hard to have a session zero when the players (if you are the DM) do not want to have one.
Joining an Established Group - I never really felt difficulty joining a group so far. They always found a way to get you in there.
The Railroad DM / My game if you defeat my monsters I get upset, if you try to go outside my story I will make magical things happen to force you back DM: Oh boy, let's not talk about this one.
Last Minute Drop Out: It is always unfortunate. I have unfortunately been part of this once. I was playing in a group where I just did not enjoy the DMs style of play. So I ended up booking up the day / forgetting the games and after about 3-4 of such sessions I decided to tell them I was just not having fun and left.
I’m gonna have to disagree with the first one. A group chat can absolutely be a replacement for a session zero. Especially with a long time group.
Personally, I think a good session zero is even MORE important for long-time groups. It's an opportunity to check-in and discuss potentially trying something new -- or even just brainstorm together about how to make your games more rewarding and fun rather than settling into a "routine".
@@DungeonDudes I think it falls to the time everyone have, and if they live nearby. Being a Discord/Roll20 DM for 3 years now, i know it will be hard to everyone make time to just chat and have a Session 0
My group in the moment consists of 5 Players, 4 of them were from the last game and we have someone new to this one. In the Group chat i listed my house rules that i thought would better the experience for everyone, and let the observation that in regards of some doubt or clarification, i would be there to answer whatever question when i have time.
Not Session 0, but i use to do a "Introdutory Session", players don't need the sheets if they are incomplete, but to at least have the character ready in mind.
Then i explain the history, scenario and some of details, and start to introduce the characters and have them meet without pushing the plot foward.
That's the way we do for sometime now and never happened to anyone have a problem with that
But wouldn't a pre-game group chat essentially BE a lite session zero?
Edit: Oh wait, in continuing to watch the video Monty seems to think the answer to this would still be a "no." So there you go! Do a session zero even if you don't think you'll need one!
@@DungeonDudes I think there is a balance to be struck. Many don’t have time to dedicate a trip or video chat to just rehash session zero things. If anything needs to be discussed it can be rolled into session one.
“It’s important to know that not one of these by itself is a dealbreaker” - Kelly
I'm a DM for other DMs and when I run a module for them, I customize the monsters and slightly modify the encounters to keep them on their toes, cuz generally they might have already run them for their own groups. There are great 3rd party sources out there for new monsters, etc. to maintain the fun-factor for them.
This reminds me of Gary Gygax saying he liked to play at Dave Arneson's game *because* Dave would change the monsters so he wouldn't know their stats 😂
Same here.
In my first D&D table and session, more than a decade ago, I got ganged up by two players who would keep calling me a coward chicken because my caster character was acting defensive (staying out of the heat of battle, sneaking, etc). They were laughing and making fun, but it got so constant that it got really uncomfortable and annoying - when I started talking in character, they would start making clucking sounds.
They were both childhood friends of the DM, so I was really out of place. Thankfully, one of the other players spoke out and said it was really rude of them to act like that. They gave up on the table, we got two new players, and we played that campaign for 9 years! The player who spoke out is today one of my best friends.
To the banlist flag, my dm goes "you can do that, just know that if you do, the enemies will be able to as well" to summoning a cow as far up as I could to cause damage to enemies... ended up not doing that
I had a player ask if they could use Light on someone's eyes to blind them one time, and i let them.
Next session an NPC they were being anoying with used Light to blind them, and they complained that was not how the spell work, gave them a smug "Oh really?" And the other players were like "You messed up this time".
Sad to say, it was not the only time something like this happened, but at least i kicked them out
I also will tell players: "You're a good druid...are you sure you'd really summon animals just to kill them?"
@@rylprd True Neutral baby xD
This Is generally what I'll do, anything the players can do a canny enough enemy can do as well.
@@Pherim_ the 2e AD&D light spell specifically calls out using light to blind when cast on the eyes as a use of the spell.
For me powergaming can’t really be seen before you play with the person as it’s a pattern over time kinda thing. But it’s a tough thing to balance: you don’t wanna shut down fun builds, but you can’t sacrifice other players fun just so one of the party can (I generally have noticed if one person min maxes to the extreme, the other players either feel like they can’t compare in fights or they get pressured to min max as well)
You can build encounters around the minmax character that disable some of their OP abilities. Can they fly and snipe at extreme ranges? Go underground. But give them big caverns where they can still do stuff. Just watch out for the Thing In The Ceiling That You Can't See But Has Giant Sticky Tentacles!
Some of it too is how well the min/max character is pulling punches or just not going all out every second
@@Daves_Not_Here_Man_76 yes but then do that too often you as the DM get accused of „shutting down their build“. Which they have a point btw, if you allowed their build then actively design multiple encounters that shut down their build you may as well not have authorised their build to begin with.
TLDR--don't assume things will be a problem. Talk to your whole table, discuss concerns, see if players offer their own solutions first before you panic and find a way to make the disparity benefit the experience instead of detract from it.
There's a lot of nuance here. It starts with a good session 0 or re-0. Is everyone's build on a similar level for combat? If not, does that matter to those players? Some players are more than happy to let the wargamer of the group handle the heavy lifting in combat. As a DM, don't assume what will bother your players. Communicate with them and plan for solutions. Worried an optimized build will run away and leave other players feeling bad about combat? Ask the player privately if they're okay with you handing out boons and magic items to under-performing players to bring them up a notch and will they be okay understanding that when they only get normal loot on schedule, or purely utility items. Players will always be upset about being nerfed, but rarely will anyone complain about finding a cool magic sword or staff. Create moments in combat where even the weakest player can be the hero or have a badass moment. Ideally, combat is about more than just rolling dice and comparing numbers. Probably no one is going to remember that turn you high-rolled all your damage and got a crit unless it's attached to something else noteworthy like a story moment. But they'll probably never forget the time your gnome artificer grabbed every potion in the evil wizard's lab and jumped off the second floor mezzanine onto them so the fall damage would shatter them all on impact, creating a huge magical explosion, nearly killing both and turning them into fire breathing puddles of water which took a full 5 minutes for everyone to stop laughing about and start making arguments as to whether or not a puddle of water can exhale. ... No one should have to nerf themselves to play, but if you have, say, a group of newbies and a veteran player... work with the player to put that into the story! Maybe the veteran player has been raised from childhood for combat and forced to fight in vicious battles. They might be traumatized and need their allies for support. Maybe in the absence of that support, they fall apart and have to roll occasionally to see if they have an episode or not. Now that player's strength is the party's strength because they'd fall apart otherwise. Alternatively, let the other players know your dilemma and ask them if they'd be comfortable with getting some help to polish up their build a little. Only as a last resort, ask if the vet is okay with toning it down and playing more of a support role for the others, with an understanding that the combat will be balanced down and with a promise that you won't punish them for not being stronger. Ultimately, it's a loss for you as the DM if you have to tell a player you want at your table that they can't play what they have their heart set on.
Min-maxing is an issue mainly because it basically puts extra work on the DM for not that much gain. If I know the player, or expect that kind of thing beforehand I hand out powerful bonuses or abilities to the others who don't min-max and try to even it out which then just allows me to crank up combats for them all. Unless the whole group all tell me "hey make Jimmy the strongest one of us", I won't really allow one person to stand head and shoulders above the rest. There are other DMs and other tables they can play that way at.
I am a total newbie to DnD. I am working so so so hard because so many of the red flags you listed came up in my game.. as a total newbie to the game I joined an ongoing campaign at level 4, confused and lost, experienced the DM as cagey, I for months did not know what setting we play..
One of the more experienced players is also just impossible to read, his characters are so hard to read. Fun and imaginative and creative, but impossible to read... No session zero. Or re-zero..
So I end up working so hard trying to learn on my own.. I have thought many times of leaving. Why am I still playing? Because I know that with the right group I will absolutely love this game. I am pretty tough inside and can weather the trial run of learning the game with this group. I enjoy some of the people at the table and enjoyed a few moments of role play. The campaign will ramp down soon due to life circumstances so hey I will play till the end. And then I hope to find my group, my people, my table.
Hey guys I just want to thank you for the staff of healing suggestion. I'm a rookie DM and the group is made up of all first timers and we ended up with not one healer. So I've been tossing them extra healing potions but having them constantly finding potions just didn't feel natural. We just reach level 2 last session and our wizard was going to take a class in cleric to gain some healing. But now I can offer the staff as an alternative so he can build his character as he wants. On a side note he still ended taking the level in cleric because it tied in really well with his backstory
A wizard with a single level dip in Cleric for armor and shield proficiency and bless/guidance/healing word package is also the best path for optimization! Especially for Peace domain or if they have access to Goodberry, Life. Good on them! But do be mindful if they're optimizing a wizard, you may need some good practices and wisdom about encounter design. Either way, I hope you cheer them on as a player!
The Table vibe point kinda hits home for me. Had a DM who put a lot of work and effort into the campaign, and a decent group of players I mostly enjoyed playing with, but I could never trust the DM to let me use my characters' abilities for whatever reason (I was a way of shadow monk).
Oof. You know shit's bad when the monk is getting flak.
My DM decided for whatever reason that my rogue should be "kneecapped" for "story reasons" so for 8 games I had to make wisdom saves after every long rest and on fail I would get an exhaustion level and long rest didn't remove any of them. Ended up fighting a dragon with two exhaustion levels as a rogue. You know, the character that is supposed to be fast and good at skills, having disadvantage on all skills and half the speed taken away. Also, DM wasn't clear about what or why is hoing on, it was just happening without any reason and it was solved because one game DM just said "you have a vision of this random place".
Then, a few games later my character lost all subclass abilities (phantom) and again, no reason, no solution, it just happened. Nothing similar has happened to any other character and I've been playing with that group for a year. It's weird because I like all the players and I don't have any other problems with the DM, I like how he does things most of the time, but this is just weird to be a dead weight for the party without any way to solve it.
@@helgenlane This sounds like a great opportunity to communicate with the DM privately, preferably in person or on a video call so there's no misunderstanding on tone. Ask what their reason is and if they don't have a reason, ask if they could stop. If I had to guess, I'd put all my silver pieces on you having the highest DPR and they probably either don't know how to handle that, and/or they have an old school mentality and see rogues as already being "too good" and Phantom being the best subclass to be unfair or unneeded power creep. Phantom Rogue is probably literally (one of?) the best martial in 5e at current, as far as a straight class goes.
Either way, I wouldn't make assumptions. Maybe they'll tie it in later to a story beat and they just thought it was cool. Assume no malice and just ask openly for an explanation, but do ask for an explanation because it does seem to bother you a little and it's not good to let stuff like that build up and risk causing resentment.
16:16 this happened to me on the first round of the first combat with my first character in my first campaign. Rolled a 1, then a 20, and the DM said I broke my heirloom dwarven battleaxe while chopping my shield arm off with it. I was planning to take dwarven defender as a prestige class...
My last session zero was a discord call where i helped people build their character. I asked what they wanted, and told them what would work in our campaign. Also asked what they wanted from the game.
We also had a first timer who wanted to play wizard, and i normally dont tell people what to play, but i did tell him: hey wizards are very versatile and supportive, and if you are looking to just blast spells with big damage, sorcerer might be better and it is easier to play"
My very first game of D&D, I made this character that fit me so well and felt pumped to play. One of the other players immediately cast a spell to manipulate my character and proceeded to build a situation of sexual assault to my character with almost no disgust from the other players and DM. It was horrifying. I’m frankly surprised that I ever played any campaign after that.
If he wasn't a Bard and the other characters didn't react to it I would have walked away. - Doc
I am blessed with the most wonderful DM and play group we have known each other since high school. Only 1 player was kind of bossy but it was still fun and just how our group dynamic was and she was loved and we lost her a few years ago. RIP hope she started a table in the sky
that is such a weird way to talk about a dead friend
Quite the strange response as well
how so? im just pointing something out thats odd. @@scottfitzpatrick1939
not really? just making an observation. nice try though
I think part of the being told what to play bit is where people just default to thinking like old editions where you were kinda ham boned if you didn't have a balanced party. It's definitely not needed in newer editions.
I would like for Dungeon Dudes to do a similar video where they go over the store/convention D&D Adventure's League gaming groups, now that they have gone over the home D&D groups.
Recently played a game where all 4 of us played dwarf barbarian quadruplettes it was a blast
Be a first time player barbarian and the dm spams monsters that stun, snare and other status effects.
honestly spamming any incapacitating effect is bad practice to me. i prefer players and monsters to actually do things in a fight
@@Hazel-xl8in Oh yeah it's terrible. Did I mention we were outnumbered 3 to 6 and the enemies were ranged and had the high ground and we were ambushed so we started out completely screwed? They ONLY spammed status effects. It was also just a meaningless random encounter.
I don’t use hard control like stunning and incapacitating, but I think using pushes, pulls, grapples, and fear effects can add some excitement to combats. For a first time player, definitely not though.
I've used monsters with status effects in a campaign that was a horror one shot specifically with the forewarning that it was a high hazard game. And the creatures have their time and place but to spam it seems like an abuse of the intent.
@@petermartinez5507 they were a type of monster that spammed status effect attacks that did 1d4 damage. The dm said "they're made to be annoying". And yeah I'm all for status effects. As long as I still get to play the game.
Jill sounds like a terrific player; taking notes, paying attention, and organizing campaign reviews.
We Stan (Sten) for Jill
We never had a session zero in our friend group, but we do know each other since high school for most of us, and we talk about games all the time and adjust to what we all think is best for the game. We also have multiple DMs in our group, so sometimes it's one friend DMing for a few games and doing a certain arc that they've been working on, and then another one will take over for certain parts of really big campaigns. Not saying this is for everyone, but it definitely has been working for us for years now. As long as everyone is reasonable and communicate and understand that ultimately, the DM's word is the final one (all our DMs are focused on players fun experience first and for most), then it should be a great group!
Biggest red flag I've dealt with has been players talking over each other. It's tricky sometimes online, but when certain "overzealous" players keep pushing their actions and ideas over other players who are talking, it really hurts the trust between players.
Which brings me to mine: "Oh it's my *character*"
It's not that difficult to have your character be a dick without being a dick yourself. But you've got to have a limit on it regardless, because whatever you're writing for your character there's the limit that they're part of a team. Before you play them that character has joined the team knowingly, with the consent of the team, and for some kind of reason. A jerk might get here, but an outright abusive character didn't get to where your character is.
Almost joined a campaign where I wasn't allowed to choose the race, class and subclass of the character. The backstory was also pretty much set. I had to bow out.
As a result I did get inspired into making a character which I currently play in a campaign.
In the Surprise House Rules section. This happened on my third session playing with a group where I managed to lock a hostile werewolf guard inside of a cell I escaped. To throw it in his face that I was faster than him, I told him, "I think I'll make a rug out of you, friend. I'll come back when the rot gets you." My character winked at him, chuckled, and went on their merry way. The DM told me my alignment was shifting from Neutral Good to Chaotic Evil because of that action. What? My character's alignment is my decision not yours.
My group is all adults. All but one of us have kids. We've all got our own homes and jobs to deal with. We run a side campaign that we play when people are missing. We just know, that the side campaign doesn't matter and it's agreed upon, the main campaign is played when everybody is there. If you miss, you miss out on the side campaign.
Putting your highest score in your most important ability not only isn't power gaming. It's also realistic. Someone with a naturally high strength score deciding to become a fighter, or with a naturally high intelligence deciding to become a wizard, just makes sense. People often lean into their strengths.
So many people seem to just blank on this point.
Speaking as a DM who might be accused of having "too many" restrictions on what isn't allowed in his games - I think one thing to bear in mind is that some of us DMed through late 3.5. With players who were engineers.
Just... something to think about.
I think the only thing we have house ruled at our table is that creatures don't immediately realize they were charmed when the spell ends. It depends on what you do with it. If you force them to do something they would never do then they would realize it. If you talk to a guard in a pub while drinking and use it to get them to reveal just a little more information than they normally would then they probably won't realize it.
My group is so laid back and fun that it's hard for me to imagine the groups you are describing.
When you find Your People, hang on for dear life!!!
There was one game I was in where another player made a necromancer who jumped in EVERY time there was something that needed to be done.
Suspected traps down a hallway? They step infront of the rogue, who already stated what they were doing, saying "don't worry, I got this" while a skeleton walks through triggering everything. Huge boulder blocking a tunnel in a cave? "No fellow troll fighter, my minions will take care of it". Need to know where a group of orcs went an hour earlier? "Rangers belong in the back and the diviner need not waste spells. My minions will scout in all directions".
He was dominating all conversations, speaking over half the time (game with 8PCs, a DM, and a DM assistant), and constantly cut off everyone including the DM... We as a group kept telling them that it wasn't ok, they seemed to understand and promised to do better, and it would just start again next session... Went on for 4 sessions before we told them to leave.
WOW. I must say I have noticed couple of those red flags in my DM-ing. I love RPG but I always preferred playing to DM-ing and those few times I did DM a setting, I have noticed it wasn't as fun as I wanted to - neither for me nor for my friends. I see in was my fault actually.
It was good to hear your take on this. Thanks!
You having the self-awareness to take that lesson with good grace is a huge green flag :)
Whenever I want to introduce a new house rule after session zero, I poll my players either during the next session or over our group chat. Definitely helps if you see or think of something that you still want to include but didn't during that initial session.
I also go by the rule of "if you get to do it, so can I." I will do my best to avoid specific interpretations of the rules or applications of spells/abilities until the players do it, at which time I'll make sure they're okay with the notion that I'll use it at a future date.
One of the biggest things about joining an in progress game, ask each remaining person privately why the other person/people left.
If they all have the exact same vague answer, don't join. The answers should all be slightly different in wording if nothing else. But at peast one should be able to say "This is what they said."
You absolutely want the catchup/intro session.
Every Dungeon Dudes video is an opportunity for me to gawk at Kelly's choice of clothing. That hoodie amazing.