Top 15 Worst Dungeon Master Advice Ever
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
- Now, why in the world would you care what the WORST dungeon master advice ever is? Are you trying to be a bad DM? Run a horrible Dungeons & Dragons game? Of course not. However, if we know what the bad DM advice is, what pieces of "wisdom" we should NOT follow, it stands to reason that as dungeon masters we'll have a better understanding of how we SHOULD run our D&D games. In this video, I go over the top 15 pieces of worst dungeon master advice ever, explain why it's bad and what I suggest DMs do instead.
My upcoming Kickstarter, Into the Fey ▶▶ www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Never Upset a Dragon Turtle ▶▶ • D&D Story: Never Upset...
8 Ways to Adjust the Difficulty of a D&D Encounter on the Fly During Combat ▶▶ • 8 Ways to Adjust the D...
How to Deal with a Cheater in D&D ▶▶ • How to Deal with a Che...
-----------------------------SOCIAL----------------------------------------------
Discord ▶▶ / discord
Twitch ▶▶ / thedmlair
Watch my D&D games here ▶▶ / thedmlairstreams
Twitter ▶▶ / thedmlair
Instagram ▶▶ / thedmlair
-----------------------------D&D RESOURCES-------------------------------------
Join my newsletter for free D&D adventures and DM resources every week ▶▶ thedmlair.getresponsepages.com/
More free D&D adventures and DM resources ▶▶ www.thedmlair.com/
My published D&D 5e stuff on DriveThruRPG ▶▶ www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pu...
-----------------------------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL-------------------------------------
PATREON ▶▶ / thedmlair
CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP ▶▶ th-cam.com/users/thedmlairjoin
DM LAIR MERCH ▶▶ teespring.com/stores/the-dm-lair
-----------------------------AFFILIATE LINKS-----------------------------
D&D PRODUCTS I USE ▶▶ www.amazon.com/shop/thedmlair
VIDEO GEAR I USE ▶▶ www.amazon.com/shop/thedmlair...
DUNGEONFOG ▶▶ www.dungeonfog.com/thedmlair
use code THEDMLAIR to get 10% off this online RPG map-making tool
-----------------------------CREDITS/DISCLAIMERS---------------------------------------------
Editing ▶▶ Zack Newman
Art ▶▶ Adobe Stock & Wizards of the Coast
Music and Sound Effects ▶▶ Epidemic Sound
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Some videos on this channel are unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons - เกม
What’s the worst DM advice you’ve ever heard?
Into the Fey Kickstarter ▶▶ www.kickstarter.com/projects/thedmlair/into-the-fey
The DM Lair on Twitch ▶▶ www.twitch.tv/thedmlair
Free D&D Adventures and DM Resources ▶▶ www.thedmlair.com/
Join my Newsletter for free D&D adventures and resources ▶▶ thedmlair.getresponsepages.com/
Become a Patron ▶▶ www.patreon.com/thedmlair
“Write a book instead.” Given to anyone that plays a less than 100 % sandbox game.
4:50 That cat... his eyes see into souls.
All the worst advice I've received has been in the form of people telling me not to add, remove, or change a rule: people who would never play in my games anyway are saying my homebrews or house rules are "unfun" or "unfair."
Nils Jonsson I actually had a bad situation where we got to speak for our characters, but the DM (we tracked stats) made just as many decisions for our characters as we did, directly took control of our characters to force them to go to certain places or talk to certain people... if the DM had told us ahead of time that their adventure was more structured, I would have chosen not to play.
I have video games if I want a linear story or even a branching story. I could go read a book if I wanted to experience a linear, handcrafted story. The whole reason why I enjoy D&D is because it is freeform. *That’s just my preference, but I do believe it is up to players and the DM to set clear expectations before the game starts*. Some players like structured stories, some players like sandbox games and some players like something in between. It is a problem with not setting expectations before the game starts not with players or the DM being unreasonable. It’s why session 0 is really important :)
The worst advice I've heard (besides all the ones you just made a video about) is the idea that DMs should strive to (for lack of better term) Phantom Railroad their players. That is to say, give the players every confidence and sense that their choices matter and that they have true agency, all while making sure they actually stay confined to a preset path.
Basically, the advice ends up being that we should lie to our players to placate their desire for agency, and then completely undermine it at every opportunity without letting the cat out of the bag about it. Some DMs think the best game you can run is this weird, manipulative mind game where the DM tries to see just how far they can get away with railroading without getting caught.
And after getting caught, cue the gaslighting.
DM's SHOULD play to win
...and to win is to have fun with everyone around the table
Absolutely
Exactly, not TPK them
A DM should play the characters to beat their players. The baddie wants to win.
However, they should only do so after making characters the PCs can actually beat, first.
4 goblins will do their best to beat the players. They will kill or flee. But they want to win and survive.
40 goblins is unfair on the players, and shouldn't be there in the first place.
@@nicholasharris4306 40 goblin _minions_ with 1hp each... that's just good fun.
I have a standard disclaimer for my players: "I am not trying to kill you. The NPCs and monsters might be."
@@TheodoreMinick I throw challenges at them. If I think a fight will be too hard, I run a test encounter or two using their characters. (We play over FantasyGrounds so it is easy.) They never know and if it is too easy, I double enemy HP or add enemies, too hard and I cut HP or make some of the adds into minions. Sometimes I add a little HP as they go on a boss fight when it feels intense to draw it out and make them sweat. (That way they win with minimal resources and feel like it was by the skin of their teeth. They seem to love those wins.)
Saying a DM who kills off his party has won is like saying an author who gets you to stop reading his book on chapter 3 has won. The DM wins when everyone is having a great time and especially when the stories he or she weaves get told and retold within the group for years to come.
Yeah, but occasionally TPKs happen and the DM shouldn't just snap his fingers and undo what is done, that cheapens the event for all. Especially if the group had followers who could pick up where their heroes left off, or the group was smart enough to have a contingency or two arranged for just such a situation.
@@KageRyuu6 Agreed. It's just that the DM shouldn't go looking for that result.
NEVER. Tpk. Always leave at least a third of the party.
@@AN-ou6qu No if a TPK happens it happens purposefully leaving only a few behind after things go bad is the equivalent of purposefully killing them at that point as well as taking away their choices.
"an author who gets you to stop reading his book on chapter 3 has won" Those authors won't even get published if no agent or publisher wants to read past chapter 3.
Winning is having the players win a fight and having uncontrollable excitement.
I'd contend the fight part is optional. Not bad if it happens, but we've all had some very good and memorable sessions where there was no fight in sight.
Or have them biting their nails in fear while walking through a deserted town; or cry their eyes out at a character's death (player or non-player). Or having them be literally unable to speak because they can't stop laughing their butt off.
Causing strong emotions (in a good way) is one of the most rewarding things as a DM.
FUN? IN MY GAME? NO NO NO NO
And sometimes that means making winning as hard as possible
Oh, I thought it was bringing some pizzas every week
I hear the “you should make different voices” all the time. Glad you’ve got that one on here cause that just made me feel better lol.
Voices make immersion better for players, but a crap DM with amazing voices is still a crap DM. I'll take a DM that sucks with voices but tells a good story and makes the game enjoyable over a DM that does voices well, and that's it, any day of the week. I've been playing for 20 years and DMing for 15, and I've run across far far far more DMs that are good that focus on making the NPC enjoyable than the NPC speak in a weird way. =P eventually you'll run out of voices anyway since you only have your voice to work with. Unless you are actually a voice actor/trained for voices....don't worry too much about it.
Until CR, I never even thought of making voices or realized it was a thing.
@@Ambers128 to be fair, how long have you played and how many different groups have you played with? Most people tend to only run with a few groups, so they never see it if their group doesn't do it.
Yeah, no DM should feel bad if they don't do voices. It's certainly an optional thing (though it is a good tool at the DM's disposal that can improve the game).
@@theDMLair good voices are like dessert with a meal. Good dessert after a good meal makes the meal better...but a meal can be amazing without desserts, and if someone just slaps canned cool whip on the table after throwing beans on people and waits for praise....no one is gonna be happy.
7:50 Why bother rolling? Because shiny dice go click-click-click-clack.
Ahh. The sounds of clickity clack math rocks pleases the soul... and my dice goblin gods
I mean, I guess that's fair... Lol
Gygax himself said that the DM rolls dice mostly for the sound. IMO, if there's a result that you need/want to occur for your story, you don't need to roll or ask the player to. Just tell them what happens.
@@TheodoreMinick doesn't that start to touch on railroad-esque activity? I do my best to honor the dice mind you.
@@nomadrl91x it can. But I'm speaking more to the horrible habit of putting important plot points behind a skill check, or the arguably worse habit of letting the players attempt to do the impossible.
There's no need to roll when success is automatic, or impossible, or when you want them to succeed and there's no interesting consequence of failure.
That said, I will often ask for a perception check where there's no chance of failure, just levels of success. That's usually in response to the players asking what they see in a room. A low roll gets very little details, a high roll gets the most detailed description I can come up with. But if there's a clue that I want them to get from that room, I just give it to the player who rolled highest, even if it was a 12.
"Your encounters are too hard, you shouldn't have the enemies hide where, we the players, can't see them"
As a note of reference this was, 5 level 3 characters,vs 2 bug bear rangers(cr 1's) in a tree, none of the players rolled perception(even when suggested/asked)
As someone who has played with a DM that scales your FoW vision range with a perception roll, even in a cave when people have darkvision
The argument being made still has many cases where its valid
these players would hate it at my table where we actually use tactics. enemies vanish regularly, or hide and go for guerilla ambush tactics etc
@@yourface2464 Darkvision only lets you treat darkness as dim light. Creatures in it are still lightly obscured and you have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks.
Hey Luke! I got a few choice ones for your next top bad DM advice video: "your world must be fully built in order to play your first game." "Don't prepare at all. Just let the characters interact with the setting and wing it." "Never customize monsters at all." "Always let your players play whatever characters they want regardless of the setting or the table's moral compass." "Not letting your players split the party is railroading." "Expecting players to take notes is wrong." And by far the worst one... "Act out torture scenes."
I received all of "sage wisdom" and more from ONE player who had been playing and DMing for "over 20 years." This person also had some horrible player habits as you might imagine. These included murderhoboisms, disregard of other characters, competition with other players, spot light hogging, over aggression, and general rudeness. Out of game he was a heavy gatekeeper and very creepy. I won't go into the creepy part, but for those who don't think about it a lot, I'll say this: Bad DM advice can be a red flag sometimes. Most times its just people having a different play style, but rarely it might be because someone is twisted and it'll be obvious, like that torture bit. If someone isn't being constructive and is trying to change you, get them out of your game quick. It gets worse the longer it goes on and no DND is better than bad DND. However, Alot times the bad advice giver just heard it on the internet and bad advice is usually just innocent bad advice. Bad people exist, but most are decent. Happy gaming lol
DM Lair had better make a part two and include some of these since most of these bits of "advice" are common and annoying. I have heard all of those more times than I can count. I think it's mainly because I look like a DM and have been seen with the DMG, even though I don't really play the game very much because of my complete disinterest in running combat.
DM Lair video: Drops at 4am
Me: Ooh, a piece of candy....and insomnia
Happy to help! 😂
Re: "The GM's fun doesn't matter, only the players' fun."
No, I firmly agree that anyone saying this is a moron. More over, I'd say I know the type to think like this, and stop me when you've heard this one before. This is the same person to show up late, not bring anything (pencils, dice, snacks, etc), be on their phone the whole game, complain when they don't get their way, are an incredibly selfish person just as a rule of thumb, and has a hard time sticking to any commitment they make both in character and out of character.
My opinion on it is that its the GM's job is to make sure that ALL the players are having fun, including the GM, because the GM is just as much a player as anyone else at the table.
Those type of players are called " chaotic " stupid.
I was at a game shop in my early 20's back in 2000 when AD&D2e turn into D&D3e.
No one could figure out what type of game they wanted to play. Most of the six other posers were a bunch of whiners. And there was me and some lonely odd guy out that just wanted to play D&D, and he was a newbie.
So I started a game with him and gave him eight characters to play with, and the posers whined to the shop owner saying that I could not run a game where I gave a solo player eight characters to play with. Solo player means solo character.
Shop owner said it was my game so my rules.
Another Long Time Player show up and join my game and I told him what I was doing, so L.T.P. join my game with two PC.
Each character & class represents a myth arch type, and the player has to figure out which voice accent goes to which PC. The eight characters help develop Role playing acting skills. Also which parts of your mind that deals with problem solving .
"This is the same person to show up late" Gonna stop you right there sir!
"I'm hungry. I need food. Help!"
Loved it. I actually watched that a few times and chuckled
I watched it about 5 times after my editor delivered the cut. 😂
The "yes but" advice I feel like was born only as an advice for DMs that were only saying no to everything. There is time for yes, there is time for no but there is also time for yes but. Or no but.
Could be. Saying no all the time certainly makes for a miserable player experience imo.
Is it better to say no, and have the players be disappointed but still be alive and have the ability to find a way, or to just say yes and let the potential tpko roll out?
Specifically for high level invested play
Now you gotta do the reverse. Top 15 Best Dungeon Master Advice.
I'd watch the heck out of that...
I'd just link this channel's complete playlist lol
Absolutely
"I feel like all crap advice deals with the extremes", so basically, don't listen to DM advice from a sith, got it.
That's a bit extreme. Siths may very well have good advice. Listen to the advice, but make a reasonable analysis of it.
@@japphan Yeah that's more accurate
"Only a poor DM deals in absolutes"
@@thunderdrae7749 You are absolutely correct (Yes I am a DM)
Are siths playing DnD?
I imagine Darth Vaders NPCs will all sound the same.
Almost none of my NPC's have prewritten backstories. I just make some general characteristics and then, if the party latches on to them, I know which ones to focus on. It just makes things so much easier because I don't end up wasting energy on one off faces and I can really focus on the ones I know my players want to know more about. I've done this for every NPC at my table for 2 years and while it hasn't been perfect, its made my job as a DM easier and the players don't notice.
D&D doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be fun and engaging for everyone involved. That’s what I’ve found in my short time DMing.
What I do is simply move backstories. You never know which NPC would intrigue your PCs right away. Sometimes my PCs ask nothing about NPCs past while others they ask about great detail. For the first session I prepare the number of NPCs I know I need +1 and every subsequent session I add backstories if the PCs were very intrigued by a certain NPC. I feel like it works about 90% of the time
"The DM should play to win"
Traditionally, the win state for a DM is a stack of dead PC sheets, pizza bought by someone else and your ego vigorously stroked.
I like the pizza part... 😂
Traditionally?!
@@fruit_slash9679 yeah.... but traditionally each placer had 3 characters, having 1 die is little problem then i guess
I'd say a dms win when everyone has fun, same for players
In my eyes, the DM wins when everyone is having a good time and the players followed the campaign through to the end and enjoy having you as their DM... and the DM enjoying it as much as the players do. That is, to me, the DM's win condition, as well as the players'. The DM and players can only win together as they all have the same goal: have a good time with your group.
Edit: "The Pizza" is a legendary item that drastically helps get everyone in good spirits, especially combined with "The Soda", another legendary item with the same effect, but with extra fizz.
I once had a bad campaign and I wasn’t aloud to kick players because I didn’t have the powers to do so. ( high school club)
Sigh....allowed****
That's when you just flip the table and quit playing. Find a group outside the club.
This is when you arrange for the problem PCs to die and just never find a good place to introduce the replacements.
@@fhuber7507 no you just always kill there pc every time you introduce them
ww11gunny "This is an- o shit he died whoops"
I like that Luke compulsively does karate when he gets frustrated 🤣
he talks with his hands. lol I was talking to a friend about a lecturer, and I warned her that one criticism was that she used lots of hand movements, if she found that distracting. That's when she reminded me that her career had been teaching at a school for the deaf.
"You should shower your players with magic items so they can have more fun" I followed that when I first heard it and regretted it.
reminds me of several stories:
-a DM who was SO free with stuff his players sneaked into a giant's lair and sneaked out with 10,000,000,000,000,000 gold coins.
and how did they carry it? in their backpacks, of course!
a classic "Monty Haul" campaign.
-a DM in a comic strip who had a funny house-rule he called "DGR": "the Darn Good Reason rule, as in, no one would become an adventurer unless he has a darn good reason to believe he would SURVIVE."
this meant better than normal starting equipment that the PCs "inherited", at least in one PC backstory.
the DM did that because he got tired of one clumsy player "having to make new characters three times in every session"
A new DM Monty Hauled my 3rd level Fighter/Thief with a sword that did beyond ridiculous damage to evil enemies along with automatically resurrecting me. I sang "Hastur" over and over until he appeared, then killed him in a few rounds. Got the XP to make 20th level. Can it get worse than that?
Worst of all "DM is God, don't argue with them", seriously I can't tell how many times I've heard this tossed around. No, the DM is not infallible, and unless the entire setting and rules are home brew they are not the game's sole creator, they are a Referee to the rules which the group has agreed to follow and a Story Teller the group wants to listen to. Now if a DM is wrong about a rule and they haven't explicitly stated they are home-brewing that rule, then discuss it with them after the session, and if you can't remember to do so, then write your DM a note so they can read it after. And if the story takes a turn you aren't comfortable with, then inform them politely, they can't read your mind.
Thank you. I hate it to be tossed around by the DM because "he is god".
I also don't enjoy it when i have no own will anymore.
*my character, who is pretty much afraid of deep water thanks to tragic backstory, and his adventure group standing at the side of a river*
Me: "Well i would like to search for a bridge or a boat to cross it!"
The rogue: "i try to convince him to swim through it! I rolled a 14!"
Dm: "yeah you are convinced to swim"
What? No!
A DM with a God complex is a scary thing. I've had my old DM say to me "So......do you want your character to die, cause i just flipped a coin to see if I'd even give you a chance to turn around" but all my I did was try for 5 minutes to explore the city they had put hours into. I wasn't going anywhere dangerous, they just were gonna kill me. I'm the group DM now
argue and discuss are two different words.
wizard is back yay
"I feel like all crap advice deals with extremes" is my favorite line 🤣
Meat grinders are not too bad, if making a character is easy and fast. I remember playing The Witcher TRPG and the fact that making a character took so long did not fit too well with the fact that it was a very deadly game.
clearly - these gamers have never played the classic game of "PARANOIA". each player begins with 5 clones - because they will die!
tomb of horrors? the reputation makes players think they want to play it , until they find out half the rooms send you back to room one , sometimes naked... ;)
My group is planning on doing a ToH night after we finish our current module. I've told them to each bring 10 characters, and not to be too invested in them since they're going to all die. I'll probably prep a different one shot in case I kill them all within the first hour.
I’d love to run Tomb of Horrors, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to play it...
The WORST advice I ever heard was: It's the DM's job to work around the players.
This was in a situation where a player was being problematic, so I asked them if we could work TOGETHER to figure something out that works for us both. (They were playing a Monk who wanted to burn down a building filled with orphans forced to be thieves, AND tried to ditch the party at every turn) I tried to work with them and figure out a way that I didn't have to spend at least a third of the game making up reasons for the character to stay (since they obviously didn't WANT their character to be shelved) but their response was, "It's the DM's job to work around the players, you're supposed to make this fun for US." yeah that game fell apart REALLY quick.
"We have a fundamental disagreement about your responsibilities as a player. Now I'm not going to tell you to change your views, but I am telling you that I'm no longer willing to let your behavior effect the enjoyment of myself or the other players. We can talk about this again when you have some ideas for how to align your character's goals and the party's goals."
At which point you redesign next week's encounters so they have a version that can be used if the party is down a player. Him sitting on his hands throughout multiple combats because he ditched the party would at least put a stop to his ditching. As for him being evil, hopefully the party can handle that.
"Alright, Ill so something tailored around the players. Don't come back next week."
I dont like kicking players, but if theyre problematic and actively refusing to better themselves? Then its a tumor that needs to be severed.
"Don't split the party."
God yes. The worst session I ever had was when the DM split the party in two and had us take turns sitting in a seperate room alone so we wouldn't know what was happening with the other players.
It was miserable. We were there for 3 hours and spent at least half of it just waiting for it to be 'our turn.'
In the end, he ended up killing both halves of the party with overpowered bosses meaning it was essentially a waste of time.
We never invited that guy to play again.
That sounds like you just had a very bad DM. I've dealt with split parties on multiple occasions, and a skilled DM can rather easily handle such a situation while still making it fun. Also, asking your players to leave the table for something as trivial as "the other half of the party is in another room" is just shitty. Leaving the room should be for a major scene, perhaps a vision or a very important dream sequence or something involving deep backstory exploration. Not half the party talking with an NPC while the other half is in combat.
Also, he was clearly just tryna TPK the group by dividing y'all and killing you guys separately, meaning he was a member of the Church of DM Wins.
I've been in that situation, and I know how terribly boring and unfun it is.
Splitting the party and still making it work is the sign of a great DM. I have one DM that has split the party multiple times and even if our characters aren't present for the action, we (as players) get to still witness it and enjoy what's going on. That DM also makes it a point to regularly swap back and forth between the groups, as though we were in initiative, giving each of us turns to play and watch.
The “don’t DM unless you’ve played” is total BS. I was a long time watcher of multiple streamed games and wanted to play but had no friends who were interested.
My FLGS has “Learn to Play D&D” classes so I went to one. I spent 4 weeks doing a super basic adventure with strangers and by the end we all wanted to keep playing together. As I had the most knowledge of the game rules from watching streams I was elected to be the DM. We started playing with the understanding that we are all learning so criticism has been fairly kind.
We’ve played together every Monday night since last September and we’ve had an amazing time. Is everything perfectly by the book? No. Have mistakes been made? Of course. But we are all having fun and isn’t that the whole point??? Plus I now have 4 more friends!
You win :)
Handlebar Fox I’m well aware that I hit the proverbial lottery with this group. Actually able to play every week (granted it’s on roll20 now instead of in person but still), everyone gets along and has the same level of chaotic ridiculousness, and no one is overly critical of each other. And one of my players runs another campaign for us when I need a break, so I get to play occasionally too. I’m incredibly spoiled. 🤣
Yeah, I'm DMing a game, we're all 1st timers. And we are having a blast
"Could that have been over the top?"; have you watched your videos?
Um, no? 😂
Checking TH-cam one last time before I finally sleep was a bad idea. Welp.
Ohhh 😮
Yo Danni can you unban me?
@@doodledicemonsters nah I'm good
Wanna check the rest of my videos, too, while you're at it? 😂
@@theDMLair I'll think about it
The "Win" state for a DM is easy. A completed campaign that the players enjoyed doing.
Cannot agree more, as a DM most of the time and a player some of the time, I’ve seen so many campaigns die due to DM or player disinterest, problematic players, questionable rulings and more. Actually being able to finish a decently sized campaign and having your players enjoy it overall is a damn medal of honour.
I have spent 6 months designing an adventure called “Into the Feywild” so I could release it on DM’s guild..... guess I got to change the name now.....
Number 13 specially applied to me. I started really dwelling into D&D territory over quarantine and started reading and learning how it works. As soon as I did lots of my friends told me they wanted to play for ages but didn't know how to, and without anyone in the GM seat I stepped up and I like to think my players are having fun at the table!
"...or how amazing you think you are -- or you watch D&D shows with famous voice actors and you think that's the way the game must be played..." So glad this was added! I believe this is the single most detrimental thing to the game. It's the root of if your not in costume and doing voices your not roleplaying.
Worst DMing advice I've heard us from this dude on TH-cam, something Lair. 😂 Just kidding, LOVE your content, thanks for all you do!
Thankd dude! 😀
Your videos are proving to be invaluable as I am trying to learn how to DM for my sister and some friends. It will take me a while but I'm looking forward to it, and catching up on your videos.
Oh hey, both of my suggestions made it in here. Thanks, Luke!
I guess while I'm here, I'll throw another in the mix: "If you're doing homebrew, you should have the entire world built before you start a game."
LMAO I've been running a build-as-you-go/soft lore world for months now and it's been a blast. I think you just have to know *enough* to get the game going; everything can develop as you proceed, especially since player interaction is a good way to get ideas for new lore and the like. Seriously, I cannot tell you how much I have changed from my original "plans" because it fit the players and the direction they were taking and I think it turned out for the better by leaps and bounds.
And honestly, a game where your world is *absolutely complete* isn't going to happen. Hell, even our lord and savior of worldbuilding, J.R.R. Tolkien, didn't think his work was complete when he finished writing The Lord of the Rings.
I’m on Session 10 of my first ever campaign.
Never been a PC, just did it.
I will say, I was lucky and 3 of my players are Forever DM’s who are just glad to have a game. They helped a LOT when starting out.
Also, I’ve found my limit is 5 as well.
Started with 4, lost one (3), gained two (5), gained another (6), had to kick one (5).
With 3 the party was nearly TPK’d by an as-written encounter- they would have been wiped- or at least 2 of them and the 3rd running for help- without the town guards noticing the sounds of combat coming from the abandoned Inn.
With 6 the combats took forever and I was overwhelmed by keeping track of everything and what everyone was doing.
5 takes a reasonable amount of time, I can keep track of everything, and even if someone has to miss a session it doesn’t ruin combat balance.
Thanks very much for the laughs. While I have heard some of these, some I hadn't. Guess I need to start looking for more info online and not in person... Good job!
A win for me is everyone having fun then that’s a win.
Fudging dice rolls, I have a couple videos on that.
Good list
I have a DM who likes to casually rewrite the rules mid-session to prevent you from going off-track from his linear story.
My bard temporarily couldn't inspire anyone, because it was making the other players a little too good at beating our foes.
Fan-tas-tic.
Some of the worst advice I’ve seen is still “No plan survives first contact with the players, so never plan anything.”
Improvisation is one of the cores of D&D, and it’s a great skill to have to help make the game fun and memorable. However, very few people can manage to pull an entire adventure or campaign out of thin air, especially one that’s coherent and satisfying to play. Besides, if DMs should never plan anything, why do we have published modules that are hundreds of pages long and present self-contained adventures with definite beginnings, middles and ends?
Instead of “Don’t plan anything,” my advice would simply be “You can’t plan for everything.” Plan as much as you need to have a solid foundation to build on from the emergent gameplay in the session, and leave yourself enough wiggle room to improvise. Then, when the players inevitably go a direction you didn’t expect, you can easily alter the sequence of events, or insert a new scenario that helps them get back on track. It’s worked for me, a fledgling DM who has had to put up with my players farting about in the starting town for 90 minutes when we were supposed to be doing a one-shot.
Agreed, the twist on this that I try to adhere to is "plan what you don't want to improvise". And if the players ended up bypassing what you planned, use it later. I made a map of an underground smuggler's hideout underneath a warehouse with a cave that led to a hidden cove. My players failed to find the key to the entrance and therefore didn't know what was there. A few sessions later...what did they find in a completely different city? A smuggler's hideout underneath a warehouse with a cave that led to a hidden cove. They started figuring out that they might have found this where they failed previously, and now have started trying to uncover smuggler's hideouts everywhere. By simply using a map I'd already made the players have found their own adventure.
To properly quote the saying used "No plan survives contact with the enemy".
To quote George Patton "I have found plans useless but planning indispensable".
Always plan, regardless of what your players tend to do.
Number 16 out of 15: So true... Was running for 6, was difficult enough. Then out of enthousiasm we've invited a 7th friend to join, and It's made my life so much harder... Rest of the group then wanted to invite her BF as number 8, but I refused... The amount of time it takes to move the story along due to everyone running around made it so difficult. Fun is still had a plenty, but I sometimes just dream of the days when they were still with just 6
Gotta agree about having challenges that players simply can't fight their way through.
My best game session so far is when our DM was running a game for me and another player who were both playing Druids. We had to rescue some tortured animals from a zoo run by a corrupt zoo keeper. The quest giver was a Dryad in disguise which we found out later.
We couldn't simply fight our way through a dozen or so town guards that were around the zoo as we were both 2nd level, so we made a plan. Using a Scroll of Jump, I turned into an Axebeak and pretended to attack the other Druid before bolting out the front gate (60 feet of movement, they fast). Using the power of Jump I leapt onto a small building and made a lot of noise, before hopping into a back alley out of sight. When the guards came to look, I used Druidcraft to make the sound of an Axebeak down the alley and said 'it went that way'.
That's one way to get rid of a load of guards.
I am pretty excited about that kickstarter!
I'm a simple man. I see cat, I click like.
One of my favorite jokes as a DM is “DM is trying to kill the players” I do love putting players in challenging situations. Knowing that they can fail makes it interesting, but they also have to be able to succeed.
Honestly, that skit made me feel bad. I'd be really angry and sad if all of my friends just roasted me when all I wanted to do was tell a collaborative story.
As nearly-perpetual DM of my long running group, I can confirm it's incessant roasting! It's done out of love, though--even when I was a player and another one was DMing, I was the roasted one. Hell, even when we played video games, I was the roasted one.
it's always nice to watch your videos, Luke. I'm starting to get the impression that you don't take yourself very seriously. It's only been, what, 50 videos or so of yours that I've watched... Keep it up. I need my Tuesday morning chuckle. Every once in a while there's some useful advice too ;)
I can see your passion and fire behind these lol! I’m with ya bro!
So close to 60k!!
Honestly, I really appreciate #13, my first experience with D&D was as a DM. And it's turned out to be really valuable, because I'm currently running a campaign that asks a lot of me in general, and without a lot of experience with it this would probably be too much for me
Most blatant time I've fudged the dice was when one of my players got crit by a lion demonspawn at 2nd level. We were playing with maximized criticals. Before I even rolled any dice, he had like 8 health, and there was a nonzero chance that his character would just die outright, it was a strong enemy. So I kept the crit but said he rolled minimum on his own damage, because crits are actually really dangerous at early levels and while I could have rolled the damage pretty safely, I didn't want to feel like "you should be dead" so this avoids that.
I appreciate your take on rule 13. I took the dive into DMing since no one else was able to, even though my experience woth DnD had been exclusively through watching Oxventure and Dungeon Breaker.
Editing flavor was really different in this one. I think I like this
"Make NPCs interesting" yep. My DM is my best friend and more than 75% of them are references that are so on the nose I think he just likes to see me cringe at Uncle Iroh and Ajay Che
I'm a relatively new DM, and my group has been very kind to me. I always put the entire group's fun (myself included) as the keystone in designing my games, and after every session I ask what they think. I try to pay attention to the small details they might make in-character. Maybe an off-handed joke about "being afraid of bees" comes back in a few sessions when the group needs to collect honey for an elixir, or maybe somebody mentions their sister by name, how they used to wrestle, and I'm able to reference back to that when that character barely succeeds on a grapple check.
Videos like this help me set the goal posts realistically. It helps to illustrate where the extremes are, and how to set realistic and reasonable expectations for myself, given my skillset. Most importantly, it helps enable me to do this without sacrificing my cornerstone ideal of the entire table having a great experience.
New dm here. Gotta say I love your videos. Your content is awesome!
Ooh! Have you done a video on alignment? I'd love to see one discussing whether or not we actually need it!
I appreciate that you have edited your subtitles. Thanks.
You are very welcome. Wrote them myself. 😀
the DM Lair I can tell you put some time into it. I watch a lot of TH-cam videos with subtitles and I can tell most of them are auto generated. I especially appreciate the punctuation! Having helped others add/edit the automatic subtitles, I know it can be time consuming. Thanks for the consideration. 😁
I'm so happy #12 was on your list. I ran a short module in which I tried to use voices and the energy I put in just wasn't worth it for me. I'd recently started running a long-term campaign and I largely only use tone, general mannerism, and maybe some verbal tics, but not voices. I want to think that my players aren't engaging with my NPCs any less for the lack of different voices, and it's good to get affirmation about that.
Glad you did this one today my friend.
I've only ever been a DM, never a player. I would like to be a player one day, but that might have to wait for a one-shot at Montreal Comicon. I'm glad I didn't wait for actual DnD experience before getting behind a DM screen.
One of my favourite TH-camrs, making an adventure about my favourite plane/ fey creatures? I cannot throw gold pieces fast enough.
0:46 and so, the DM went through the 5 stages of grief:
Denial - He refused to admit his mistakes to the party.
Anger - Their constant nods toward his minor flaws irritated him.
Bargaining - The DM tried desperately to sway the conversation.
Depression - The DM lost hope.
Acceptance - The DM left.
I'd been wanting to play(and DM) for a very long time, had trouble finding a group, talked a couple of friends into giving it a go with me, so I created a Batman themed campaign (only way I'd interest one of my 2 players) with advice I've picked up here and on other channels or watching games. We had our first session on Sunday, and it was a success, my players enjoyed it a lot more than they thought they would and I had a blast too 😊
All that to say you don't have to play first to become a DM, you can still have fun with your players.
Many thanks Luke for your great advice and content, it's helped immensely
Orange needs to be invited to the table more often. Such great cosplay and dedication to the role!
Re 13: My first experience playing D&D was miserable. One player's character (a kobold) would repeatedly harass my character by biting him, another blamed me for everything that went wrong (usually the kobold's doing), and the DM ACTUALLY WENT OUT OF HIS WAY TO CUT OFF ONE OF MY CHARACTER'S WINGS. After which, the DM kicked me out. I had only been there for 3 sessions and the other two members at our table really liked having me there. However, I was apparently such a problem to deal with because of how the other two players treated me that the DM felt it best that I just leave.
3 years later and I'm a (forever) DM with an ever-expanding group of players that jump at the gun to be in one of my sessions. Does playing D&D help you transition into being a DM? Yes, but it's absolutely NOT a requirement. Heck, I barely even learned anything during those sessions and my DM actually taught me a number of rules wrong on purpose without telling me.
It might be hard, but you can definitely start out as a DM. Just try and not become one like I experienced my first time (but I think that's an easy thing to do).
I agree that the DM should play to win.
But my definition of winning is the Players defeating their enemies.
They had us in the first half not gonna lie
That's actually equally(maybe not quite as equal) bad advice. Players always winning with no real risk(which is what happens if the DM plays to make sure the players defeat the enemies) then they will lose a sense of immersion or risk/reward. I'd say the win state should be 'everyone has fun and wants to continue the game'. Even if there's a spot where players aren't happy with what happened(like loss of a beloved character or npc), but the player still loved the game and wants to keep playing...you did your job.
Unshackled Jester I’ll drink to that bro
@@epileum67 I hope your con score is high, cuz we'r breakin out the fine dwarven spirits if we're drinkin.
Unshackled Jester Ah yes, I see you are a man of culture
Ha using the cat cameo to cover up the fact that you just called us all morons. Well played sir, I see what you did there. Lol good stuff.
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
"Encounters should all be super challenging. Without risk of death, there is no fun." This is one I mostly agree with. When players do not face more than one encounter a day and can go nova on the monsters, it makes sense to me to make the creature(s) much more deadly. About 80% of my encounters end with one player or ally going unconscious and they seem to be having a blast. Overall we've had four deaths over nine months, with only two coming explicitly from combat.
I'm on the edge on that one. It's all about resource management in some games. If you're having a one-encounter "work day" before a chance to rest up that encounter better be a mortal threat or you might as well handwave the battle. But having every single fight a brutal near-TPK is maybe a bit much. If nothing else throwing a softball fight in lets the players revel in how powerful they've become, and the contrast between it and a hard encounter makes the dangerous ones feel more threatening.
Dear luke. I wanted to let you know that I love your videos (only been watching for 3 weeks though :(. Anyway, I am just so glad to be able to comment now. ( didn't have an account in the past.) Keep Going!
Awesome, thank you! 😀
I was told that few things are more rewarding then the shock on a players face when they have to choose between losing a prized magic item or losing levels.
Yeah, that sounds like advice from a DM who plays to “win”.
That has got to be the worst advice I've ever heard, and I've heard some seriously dumb advice. That is just asking to have players wall away. Not that you should never include something like that, but you should never 'enjoy' the players being upset. *facepalm*
Yep, that's a dumb piece of advice for sure.
@@theDMLair although, making your players face dilemmas and make real choices is amazing.
But I would say it's much better to make your dilemma be truely in game, whereas this feels like you're giving them a meta dilemma
God I love your characters and openings. I bust out laughing every new video. TY
I’ve never been so clickbaited in my life... you said 15!!
Another great video. Why not surprise us some time and do a horrible one, eh?
Adding the club real at the end... Love it
Like you said, a lot of these bad DM guidelines have everything to do with extremes, and two sides of the same coin I see every now and then is "Never railroad your players" and "Never run an open sandbox campaign". Honestly, it's a balancing act between the two, and it's doable. Players should have the agency to make their choices, or at least have the illusion of choice, and the DM should be able to modulate and improvise with their story beats to stitch together a cohesive adventure even if it's not exactly the tour guide they had in mind: Got a castle ruins in the mountains planned for your players but they decide they want to head to the swamps? Easy, move that castle from the mountains to the swamps, maybe make it a manor instead or let the new context evolve the idea, maybe the reason the castle is in ruins is because of the castle lord's impetus to build a castle on an unstable foundation, so now it's half-sunken.
thank you for speaking up!
Great video, hope your doing well
Thank you for always creating amazing content and not dragging your videos to 25-40 minutes to explain 5 things 🤣. Best channel by far!
Thank you! Really appreciate it. :D
Oh I forgot on my last comment 1 I don't know the books and barely can keep up with exact rules but I wing it with some major improv.. thanks to all of Luke's great videos. A very big thank you Luke for your great tips and guides all very useful. I would join your patrons but money is very tight. As soon as I have extra floating cash I will be joining with some debt to be paid as they say...lol
Ok this advice wasn't give specifically to me but to a player in my group who showed interest in DMing will call hit Rage. Rage wanted to run a one shot for my group and asked me and one of our other players will call him Java for some advice since me and Java have the most DM experience in our group. One day while preparing for the one shot another one of our players who will be referred to as Spotlight was with Rage and asked what Rage was doing. Rage told Spotlight that he was making NPCs for the one shot and Spotlight asked him why which technically isn't advice but he basically told Rage that you don't need to make NPCs. The group all knows this something Spotlight does when he DMs he improves the entire game not caring to make NPCs a world or even an adventure what ever Spotlight thinks is cool just happens but it tends to be pretty boring. Just don't listen to Spotlight have your notes even if it's just something basic like names of people stores and locations and a general idea of the adventure.
Having 6 players in my game is tough, but since we're playing via discord it makes it even harder, then throw on top of that a bad internet connection. I can say it's a struggle. Limit yourself before it gets too far!
Feeling that meat grinder story. I've started at TTRPG in Cyberpunk Red. The issue is our main DM/GM makes sessions which always include some kind of battle encounter. His battles tend to be very rough on the players, and I feel like I'm not enjoying the game sessions as much anymore, because the whole Cyberpunk has been reduced to butchery. A session with a different GM where the plot revolved around a fashion show and some Militech shenanigans felt like such a breather...
Can't wait for the “Don't Split the Party” video. We just ended our campaign early due to everyone being split doing their own quests (among other, IRL reasons).
Wow, I feel that. Really sucks.
Hey Luke,
Could you make a video about how to run an evil oneshot/campaign? Im planning something for Halloween and would love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
Greetings from Germany :)
Number one rule: Establish boundaries and stick to them.
Thank you for pointing out that not everyone has had the opportunity to play dnd and still needs to step up as a dm even if they don't have any experience with the game.
Me and my friends have wanted to play for a few years now but haven't had the opportunity to play with experienced players before. So one of us just had to take up the role of the dm.
I'm doing my best and putting in a lot of work, and since all of my friends are beginners we're learning it all together. So far we're having a lot of fun!
Using your channel for great tips!!
This video is making me experience Mandella effect. I could've sworn you made this seem video before but it doesn't seem to be the case. Also I think the second one is somehow a warped version of the decent advice: "Don't just say 'Yes' or 'No', say, 'Yes but' or 'No and'" Or something like that. Basically it's saying to adding alternate options and consequences rather than just shutting down or allowing an idea and leaving it at that.
Also the DM should totally play to win as long as the win-state is defined as everyone having fun.
I Remember the first time my friends and i wanted to play Roleplay Board Games, we started with Warhammer Quest and i thought, i would take the mantle for this and we played every week and i made up the quest every week, expanded the rules of what was given and it was an amazing run they went through, they ended up starting a Guild, bought a guild hall, got members to help go on quests and get them loot while they faced the forces of chaos... what a great time, i remember they where portalled back in time and were lost forever fighting the BBEG in a endless battle. which i turned into a fairy tale. good times.
16. When DMing for a new group, do a TPK first session to establish your authority.
"If a player is causing a problem, just kill their character"
This come from Gary Gygax himself and is evidence that he was not the one to listen to when it came to how to run the game and be a DM. It is actually stated in the 1st edition AD&D DMG.
I feel I should point out that Gygax had a lot of experience in the local wargaming scene before coming up with the hero unit houserules that he called Dungeons and Dragons.
I played D&D once when I was 13 with my cousin. Then 2 years later, I DMed a game for my friends. I had only played it once and didn’t really know the rules. It was the first time any of my friends played, and the first time I ever DMed. I had one night to read up on the rules so I skipped a ton of stuff. We played the game so wrong, but it was amazing, and will probably live in my heart forever. So no, you don’t really need to know all the rules, or really even play before dming
I can't believe it took me this long to notice the heavy armour helm! Vivat!
I had two problem players (of course it was the two rogues in the party). One was very much the "lone wolf" type, while the other was bordering on murderhobo territory. What did I do to solve this?
The lone wolf I had a brief chat with just to remind him that DnD is a teamwork-based game, so running ahead of the group and looting while informing no one of their goal is almost a guaranteed death sentence (he triggered a rug of smothering that the entire group was supposed to fight, and nearly died because no one knew otherwise). He took the advice to heart and became a team player without sacrificing his character's independence streak. It became more of a personality trait than a "way of life" that he was going with.
The murderhobo type I actually solved pretty easily. They threatened the life of a friendly shopkeep? Merchant Guild is gonna raise prices on them because that's what guilds are for. Solve a problem using diplomacy? Congrats, they gave your party 30 platinum for treating their sick instead of slaughtering them all for stealing medicines.
Being a decent DM can be determined by your own methods of problem solving while preserving your friends' levels of enjoyment
Man... that barbarian character is so... genuine. I'm quite fond of him.
#13 is 10/10 advice. I’ve been wanting to play/try D&D since late 2019 but didn’t know anyone who played, and all my friends who were interested had never played themselves. I’ll admit I wanted to play more than my friends so I took it upon myself to try to run a game and learn the rules. (Since no one knows the rules anyways) it makes creating a session for me less stressful. We ran our first session last Saturday where everyone generally had fun even if I messed up some of the in game mechanics, it was enjoyable enough for them to want me to set up the next session so I say success
I thoroughly enjoyed that intro skit lol
Thanks! 😂
With regards to DM's knowing the rules, I would suggest that the DM know the basic rules at least as well as the PCs.
I haven't been this excited for a D&D Kickstarter since The Legend of Vox Machina and Matt Colville's Kingdoms and Warfare.