My favorite GM "clue": In a modern era game, the PCs are driving to Chicago to follow up on a lead that exists only in their heads. The GM said, "As you drive the new hit song comes on the radio 'There is Nothing for You in Chicago'"
That is beautiful. Although to be fair to myself, re-reading this comment after a few minutes, I *REALLY* want an excuse to use "This NPC has no quests for you at this time" in my game at some point...
I was mostly joking around, there is stuff to do in Chicago. I do need to get them out at some point though. The plot is based on a book, I don't want to stray too far. (Worm, found online on parahumans.wordpress.com )
You can also follow the advice of the DM Handbook: “...When all else fails, roll a bunch of dice behind your screen, study them for a moment with a look of deep concern mixed with regret, let loose a heavy sigh, and announce that Tiamat swoops from the sky and attacks.”
was playing on roll20 once and I had enemies lying in ambush. only problem was that I forgot to put them on the hidden GM layer so the PCs spotted them right away. we laughed at my mistake and turned the enemies into a comedic sort of bumbling attackers "YOU FOOLS! I TOLD YOU WE WEREN'T HIDDEN ENOUGH" good fun
Yeah tried basically the same exept this was more the dices fault really. I was litterally not able to get more than 4 on every single hide check I did and believe I got 3 1's in a row..for the same fucking guy...so I kinda had to change the "dangerous highly skilled assasins here to kill you!" to a bunch of badly trained newbees send out to scare and or distract the heroes..they did distract them for like..3 minutes and then just went on to catch the real villians about to kidnap the person they were supposted to protect..so they got one hell of an advantage..stupid dices..
I'm a pen and person type of guy and write all my missions out, I also keep my PC's character sheets while were're not playing, putting two and two together... I handed one of my players the master plot.
One of the best DM moments I've ever had was a total mess up on my part. It's long but it's worth the story. The ranger was looking for herbs in the downtime between quests and rolled a natural 20. I describe him coming across a single rose with gray petals and an ivory, skull-looking center. It was surrounded by vines that it was centered on. No other plant life was visible with its reach. "Haha," I thought to myself, "Sounds cool, now he will bring it with him and I can figure out what its alchemical properties are before next session." "I cast speak with plants." He told me with a determined gaze. I looked back at him with a now stupid self satisfied grin that was quickly fading, "You cast what now....?" ""Yeah since last level up I took this as one of my new spells." ....... "it slowly begins to move and as the grass tickles your legs beneath you, the rose fixes its hollow gaze on you." Nailed it. Shit what does it do? Just wing it. As you all can probably guess I ended up having to make it up as I go and the story quickly spiralled into a quest to find a plains God who could identify this weird rose that I just thought sounded cool looking.
If you plan well enough and know your players, you can usually avoid an adventure going off the rails. Most of my plans survive party contact, with the rare exception, but you can never plan for everything. I enjoy it when the players challenge me and go off script.
When i GM i never use rails [well a steam train system is under construction in one part of the world but that's not the point] Instead they have an enemy, a world map, and the resources within that world. Also in-game time :) They had to attend a coronation to stop an assassin, they were other side of the continent. The result was like around the world in 80 days :) They travelled first by summon-drawn cart [damaged scroll of permanency so the summon lasted a day] then by stolen ship around the coastline, for a little while on the back of a giraffe-centaur and finally over a mountain. The Ranger used the Clerics spare shield as a sleigh to get their ahead of the others and stall :)
yeah, who knows? For all you know you might be playing a pre-made adventure and then your party just so happens to quell the flames of an orc rebellion and helps establish a new orcish hierarchy. all hypothetical....totally...
Awesome rule of thumb. I'm dming for my kids and wife. I've contrived an amazing story and npc's. Both have been mostly neglected cuz they just want to kill shit and all of them feel embarrassed to rp much. So I just have a loose narrative with cautionary lessons (ie greed can come back to haunt you, once you say/do something you can never take it back.) So far it's been working.
I had a subtler version of that. My NPCs were accompanied by a dragon disguised as a half-elf, and climbing a tall mountain. Partway up they put on their winter clothes. They asked me if the woman they were escorting also put some on. I said yes. And then I said "Oh, wait, no, she stays in her robes". I'd been dropping clues about her all along, riding a knife-edge of will-they-won't-they, and I was terrified that me suddenly changing my answer instead of casually dropping my subtle hint would give the game away. Thankfully they're kind of slow on the uptake. They almost figured it out literally thirty seconds before the big reveal I had planned, and even then they were wrong about the many twists I had waiting for them. That was *haaaard* to pull off.
DummyUrD my worst mistake was giving the players an axe I had them intended to fight the big enemy with it was a reward for a very dangerous giant so I couldn't take it away so the dwarf turned into a one man army I fixed it by having the players follow a caravan of shapeshifters gifting the rest of the group equally op weapons then turning on them with an epic battle the qroup balance was perfect ounce more
DummyUrD "So you attack the werewolf?"; "So you follow the dragon and..."; "The druid runs away" (wild shaped). All of these plus revealing NPC classes. I had players think they were facing rangers when they were barbarians, mages that were actually clerics and fighters that were actually rogues. Not much of the surprise falls off, but when you accidentally tell the class, they can be sure what it is and avoiding metagame thinking becomes really hard for everyone.
My worst one was: The players had just entered a gloomy village they knew nothing about. And just when an old house stood out from the other houses in the village, a player starts to develop interest for that house. My response? "Oh, so you enter the Death House?" I just wanted to punch myself in the face after that one xD
In a very recent game of Titansgrave I DM'd, I passed a note to a very perceptive PC saying "That fuel tank will explode after two more rounds." I meant rounds = turns, she heard rounds = bullets. So when the fuel tank exploded two combat rounds later and took her Saurian sniper below 0HP, she complained that no-one had shot it yet. Moral of the story: Synonyms matter.
Yup. I had a group who just casually picked up a gas spore because, instead of hearing "floating sphere", they heard "floating spear" and thought it was a magic item.
in the first tip you mentioned bad luck and saving the party as the gm. i'd like to put forth a terrifying experience with a banshee, in which all of our party members go unconsious 3 from her scream and 1 from combat. it was looking bleak, our dm was debating on starting over, or re-running the encounter. However, fate had words to say that day and I, Raaktir the silver dragonborn bard, clutched my muscles and rose from 0 hp with a critical success. i healed our cleric who in turn healed the fighter who used his second wind to survive another attack as me and the cleric raise our monk and heal ourselves and the fighter delivers a heroic blow severing the banshee in two. it was glorious and i saved our dm from pain
0:02:32 fixing tough encounters, dropping hints, kinda like how Matt kept dropping clues to Sam to use his Mythcarver... Until the point that the entire party was telling him outright to just use it xD lmao!
Or, like he mentions at 6.05, Grogg's sword being more and more taxing / controlling of him as time went on. Not sure if that was intended from the start, but it sure forced them to "cleanse" it as Matt puts it in this video.
The part about removing bad items had "Magic carpet" was written all over it. IT was getting in the way of your story, so remove it and give them a more clunky and situational broom instead! No more, "We all get on the carpet and fly over the ingenious traps so carefully laid out for us to fall into." scenarios.
Yeah..... My DM gave a +10 hammer to us.... yeah +10.... And we've JUST hit level 4... Trying to talk to our DM (a new guy) about how imbalanced it is, might send him this video. :P
Yeah........ When we discovered it's actual stats I was really lost. :P I'm not super knowledgeable about 5E, but I think in 3.5 the highest enchantment was +9. lol
I think you've made up a narrative that doesn't follow anything that's happened in-game. Matt has said on a couple of occasions that the carpet incident was not intentional, as he always assumed that Grog had it because of the Bag of Holding. Plus, if the traps were as ingenious as you say, they'd have never lose the carpet in the first place. GO ANTI-MAGIC FIELDS! Also, the broom was an item belonging to Chris Hardwick's character Gern when he guested on the show and Vex STOLE said broom. I believe I've heard Matt say that he gives the guest players a gold amount and they can buy 1 or 2 magic items to use in-game. So I don't think they were ever meant to have the broom.
Well, you have to be careful to not make it look like the GM is going after the item. Your example feels like a GM flexing muscles, which never feels good to the party.
Another option is to have the item charm the user and revealing that the item belongs to the BBEG. What was percieved to be a sacred bow actually belongs to a goddess of calamity. Everytime it is used the player must make a saving throw or be charmed for a day and doing the goddess's bidding. Also dispelling the affect is near impossible. Only a certain god can dispel the affect and requires the party to gather his sacred weapons in order to rescue the charmed victim for the victim will be addicted to the power rush.
So, I DMed for a year before I knew about the XP budget. I know. I did read the DMG but evidently not very well. So I built this encounter at a slavers hub at the end of an underground river beneath Waterdeep. The group is way too heavy handed and blew their chance to bluff through it (which was really my original intention). So they are floating in on a canoe, facing down two drow mages, a bunch of guards, barbarian pimps, and six archers while being level 6. The encounter split over two weeks. Things were looking pretty grim. The next week, I dropped hints that continuing a full frontal attack on the beach stronghold was suicide, and they would have to use some cunning to look for an out (retreat wasn't an option due to the design of the waterway). Because I didn't want them to die, but I also wanted there to be a cost to their dumb decisions, I had put two ale barrels behind the wall near the most powerful enemies. So they blew them up. Except they weren't ale. The Zhentarim slavers were also running weapons and it was two barrels of alchemist fire. Thankfully it was a very large cavern and the mage was a good distance when magic missiled it. Still, it destroyed the stronghold, killed almost everybody, and nearly killed a few in the group. I guess my advice is: if you make a mistake, blow your group up.
Players: *get knocked unconscious* Me (the dm) : you wake up in a wagon and a man in shackles also in the wagon tells you "hey you, you're finnally awake".
I’ve started an entire campaign this way (it was my first full homebrew campaign and ended up basically being Skyrim but with an undead army instead of dragons)
I've been learning the "don't admit the mistake, own it" a LOT in my campaign. The story flows much better if you just pretend everything was part of your plan all along.
Hi, just a note to say I've been GMing for about 30 yrs and really enjoy these tips and always find something nice to take away and use myself. Thanks!
Back in my Storyteller days, I actually had players legitimately figure out a sub-plot that stopped, in its tracks, a lead up to a latter significant plot. Maybe it was the couple of beers in me (and/or a Mountain Dew or two, I'm hazy on intoxication level) but it made me realize, in an instant, the moment you feel completely in control, you've lost half the fun of a rollicking good RPG. Why invite players when one could just write a novel, after all? I revised the nature of the significant plot, let them "win" the subplot, and it ended up creating a different sub-plot that made them feel more confident they were affecting the storyline, increasing attendance (not attendance rate, actual attendance) for several sessions. As it was the Storyteller System, I just started sketching out ideas, and NPCs, leaving the heavy lifting to the player characters and their motivations, to drive the story. When their stories are just as good, if not better, than the ones you came up with, better to react than to herd unnecessarily.
I like getting my players talking in-game amongst themselves about what they are planning or what they think is going on. It gives me tons of ideas - where if they're starting to guess a major plot point too soon I can back off of it, or if what they _think_ is happening is better than what I had planned, I incorporate elements from that. It's also good to know where the players want the game to go, and what they have in mind for their characters' futures. Hopefully, it'll be possible to blend your GM-intended story with their ideas and the kind of story they want to play, and create something none of you could have created alone.
I once gave my players a weapon based off an anima cartoon I was watching at the time. I realized my mistake when they took out an adult dragon (I forget the color) in one shot. I tried to get rid of the weapon but my group threatened to quit the campaign if I did. So, we quite. I couldn't figure a way around such a devastating weapon that would make the game challenging to the players. I would have had to use an enemy that was so ridiculously powerful that the party wouldn't survive or just have every encounter be a one hit encounter.
I read the description. That shouldn't have worked. Turning the bag into a butterfly net weapon might have worked but I don't see how putting it on a shield would kill anyone.
My GM let me get a random item from a roll. It ended up being a Luck Blade which he managed poorly. I could basically cast wish multiple times a day, so I was OP.
I really like these GM tips, not that I am a GM myself, but for understanding how a campaign should work. This is very useful to players as well to be aware of how a game should be played (but not as a mandatory rule). By the way, I don't know why, but these videos are always with the audio so low to me. Maybe tunning up the mic a little would help ((:
More tips on how to fix a miscalculated encounter? Nerf the HP of some monster mid fight. Make amount of hits instead of HP for some minions. Fake fail saving throws for unimportant foes.
You could temporarily buff the buff the players dmg rolls (change dice from d6 to d8, adding bonus dmg modifier etc.) while emphasizing, storywise how the players powers suddenly seem to spark beyond what they should capable of. This means that the players have unknowingly tapped into some ancient or unnatural reservoir of power, that will have consequences in the long run (you note down each time you have to resort to this extremity and escalate the long term consequences accordingly). This method works best in situations where no other "rescue method" will work (IE in situations where no friendlies can launch rescue missions because they don't know where the players are). A friend of mine used this as he had us in a scenario where we were lvl 2 and slowly TPKing to a gelatinous cube, thanks to ridiculously good dice rolls from the GM (18/18 on its first attack on us) and bad descisions from the party (3/5 members not familiar with the foe decided to engage in Melee with it and subsequently being 1shot and consumed by the cube).
Frederik sh That sounds like an unbelievable Deus ex Machina. Any discerning player character will question this and immersion will be broken. Not only that, but it will add another tedious mechanic you have to keep track of. Secretly nerfing the enemies is easier and cleaner.
Also don't forget the amazing power of talking to your players and working together for a solution. Also also, on the note of plot mistakes, I tend to run by the "draw maps, leave spaces" motto from dungeon world. If you let something slip you shouldn't have and the players pick up on it awesome. See what they do with that information. It may wind up being more amazing than any "big reveal" you had planned. And don't forget to listen to the pcs. I've had some of my best stories come from my players misinterpreting clues and coming to a completely wrong conclusion that was far far more clever than what I had originally planned. Needless to say those pcs became correct very quickly and I never let on that they had it wrong.
The "Accidentally gave your party an over powered item" has a much simpler solution that Matt provided I think. Don't be afraid to talk to your players. Let a player know "hey I fucked up that item is way too strong, going to make it a bit weaker sorry". I think some DMs, and this doesn't apply to Matt since he's actually making a show that thousands of people follow for the storyline, get too caught up in preserving a sense of cannon/continuity at the expense of fun. I think a player would rather have a dm frankly tell them they messed up and have some power adjustment on the item than have some weird bs happen that ruins the cool new toy they were enjoying.
While this is true, remember that improvisation and the unknown is one of the things that make some things exeptionally fun! Once they complete the quest of "The mysterious glowing sword that seems to have cursed someone" you could then say "I actually did that because the weapon was too strong" and if you did that right the players will be surprised and impressed that you pulled that mistake off and didn't interrupt the game, but instead enhanced it. Just my 20c
True, but I think he talked about communication and understanding between the players a lot in other videos and this was more of a lore friendly way to fix mistakes rather than just talk it out. This is always an option of course, but RPGs are the lands of unending possibilities and instead of "fixing" a mistake you can make it part of an interesting story rather than "listen I screwed up". The whole point of this video after all I think is "There are no mistakes really. Only opportunities."
I'm pretty sure he's done this with Talesin's guns, he just does it off screen between sessions, as it should always be done so as not to bore the other players.
I think he was going for more of an improv bent on the situation. Rather than just 'nerf' the item, incorporate it into the story arc. Make the nerfing part of the fun rather than just "Sorry, I'm castrating you now." Because, even with adults, there's a possibility that they'll act like a spoiled five-year-old being denied candy if you even hint that you're going to take that cool item away from them. By incorporating it into the story, the pill isn't quite as bitter to swallow.
I found this to be EXTREMELY helpful, I'm about to start my first real campaign and my favorite way to reward players is through magical items. I feel it makes the game more immersive and interactive rather than just generic XP and gold. I'm just extremely worried I'm gonna break the game with stupid bullshit that I thought was balanced but wasn't at all tho.
I appreciate that you've given ways to change an OP item to something more tame instead of simply taking it back from the player because the DM made a mistake. That's really well thought out and I like it!!!
James Brooks I know - that's the joke ! It's not funny, imho, if it isn't *actually* related to the topic at hand, or at least that makes it more funny in my mind. xD
Been watching a lot of content regarding the fine tuning of my own GM skills, and it has given me a lot of confidence that I've been doing a lot right. Many areas I can improve upon of course, but it makes it easier to believe my players when they compliment my sessions.
In my experience it takes some good players to die also. I've been in and hosted some sessions where a character died and the player just flipped out. Insted of lots of little fights that widdle the players down I like large scary fights that keep players involved and going through ideas and plans, but this is often times bad unless you've assembled a group that you know well enough to handle the thought that "everyone dies eventually."
I've only had one PC die in my short career, but I've had close calls. My experience is that the best time for PCs to die is during plot-critical moments. Like, for example, we were once making a great final stand against invading orcs, and it was impressive. I almost died that night, but it was a good night to die. By contrast, in a later session in the same campaign, the players ran into a Jin trapped in a wizard's tower that seemed really pissed off. The cleric "wisely" decided the best option was to free it to not piss it off. So they sent me to go grab a book downstairs. What my character didn't know is that the same exact Cleric had intimidated a Fire Elemental before it emerged from a fireplace. Thus, I was in a one-on-one fight with a fire elemental at level 6. I almost died that time, and it felt really frustrating, because it was due to another player's poorly calculated decision that was ignoring all the DM's hints.
Very important episode, thank you Matt! Had a bit of a mishap where a supposed trusted NPC (a friend of a PC) had said one thing, but the party's boss said the opposite. They caught the paradox, and I was able to twist it to throw suspicion on both characters, creating dramatic tension.
Could we improve the volume on these GM tips videos? I always have to turn it up so much higher than anything else I watch, then I forget next time and get assaulted with almost max volume videos that are appropriately volumed.
something i am doing for my game that can help out a lot in fixing mistakes is a special NPC that i call Mr.E. very much a mr mxyzptlk type of character. he has many amazing powers and knows all but wont tell because there is no fun in that. as well may help the player in certain encounters if i feel like it is getting way to rough. i have a party of 2 right now so that can happen. One example, they had to face a Drider Queen, (custom enemy) 4 Driders, and 8 Giant Spiders. while they had 2 npc allies with them they had more close by. so i decided to chance to see if Mr.E will help. i make a d20 roll and if i roll a 15 or higher he will aid in some way. so each new round i rolled and got higher than a 16 so there allies appeared out of nowhere. then towards the end of the fight due to it still be difficult and the match going quite long i had him help a again by removing 3 of the 4 driders. (one was already dead) but for him to do so i had to roll a nat 20 which i did. he has been quite usefull as well the Players are the only one that can see or talk to him. which can make for some interesting situations.
being a DM is hard work. don't let anyone fool you, its HARD and sometimes quite annoying. if yo do start a game, I recommend starting with brand new players. write a good story and go with it. good luck to you and your new world. :)
A thought does occurs to me... In the event of a TPK it could be possible to make note of where the players died, how they died and then when they roll new characters you could perhaps have the deaths of the previous party play a role in the new(or perhaps original plot, maybe the quest giver hired new adventurers after the old ones did not come back from their quest... assigning them the task of discovering the fate of their previous characters and the goal of finishing what they started.)
Sometimes when I mess up I just tell the party; "Hey I accidentally messed up, we're going to have to retcon it with x." Usually if you explain your mistakes your players are willing to go along with your nonsense.
Thanks, Matt, for your suggestions about correcting GM mistakes. Thus far, this has been the most helpful of your most interesting series. I'm a GM of 30 years, on and off, and I've discovered we GM our games in a very similar fashion. I was especially impressed with your suggestions for balancing out power from a magic item acquired by a character. Very creative and helpful ideas! Thank you for your devotion to your craft.
Once had nice hair like this, but my job forces me to keep my hair short. I won't be able to have long hair again until I retire or get a new job. Sucks because females are aloud to have long hair at work, but we can't call gender discrimination due to the nature of the job.
We once had a minor encounter with some bandits, which led to a small bandit camp. was meant to be a fun diversion on the road to a bigger adventure. Luck RUINED the party. Managed to whittle down their forces to the leader and one lackey before TPKing. I had them wake up in an infirmary at a nearby Temple, where the Clerics told them they were rescued, but the leader got away. when the players continued to talk about wanting revenge, I decided to have the leader become a proper NPC. A half orc, gave him a name, and he became a recurring side antagonist. had some bandits or lackeys working in other locations. Eventually they came to find that the leader and the party shared an equal interest in taking out the Big Bad, and, when they finally got to the point of taking him down, the Paladin of the group, instead, offered him a chance at redemption. a persuasion roll later, and he agreed to join the party to fight the Big Bad, on the condition that he gain pardon, and given a chance to start again, not just left to restart on his own. (I believe a Cleric at a temple to the God of the Forge offered to take him in as an acolyte for his skills in fighting and smithing.) was honestly a really memorable experience for the group. and I even occasionally make reference to the former bandit in other campaigns, just for fun.
Thank god for this episode. I have been running my first extended campaign over the past few weeks, and just gave out a new item to one member that I think is way too powerful. Mercer to save the day
Another possibility is that over time, some downside to magic item appears, e.g., it turns out that ring of invisibility you found is slowly corrupting you, and using it give away your location to a very nasty bad guy.
i think a good way to correct for an overly powerful item in the party is to have it taken away by someone more powerful. if, as an extreme example, you have a level 1 party with a holy avenger, that's not going to stay a secret for long. eventually someone's going to recognise what it is, and that information's going to make it's way back to (in this instance) the Church, who immediately dispatch a unit of 10 lvl 20 Crusader Lords to find the party and retrieve the holy relic, so it can be stored in the Church's reliquary for safekeeping
one of the things our DM did for the fighter in our party who had way too good of gear including a ring of regeneration which made in between combat encounters a bit silly ... even death didn't really effect him unless via some death spell or disintegration. Solution? He found a suit of plate armor that as soon as he touched in the armory of Giants molded to his shape and put itself all around him, destroying everything he wore underneath in the process. It's still very powerful armor, but not near as powerful as he was before... it also is cursed and talks to him in his head to do evil things...which is a fun twist on the beefy fighter in the party.
Wow as I watch this more and more I find me and Matt are on like the same wavelength with our ideas. I know this is older so he had me beat, but holy god we use near the same wording in our videos. The uncanny near word for word part in this video around 3 minutes and in my first video I ever did, (Story Core Emoturnus) when explaining how to give clues and how to adapt is ridiculous. At the very least it is an honor to be so in sync on these issues. Keep up the good work.
I've found that when the PC's seem stuck on the story, they probably actually do have what you want... just pieced out between them. stopping and asking them, "okay, so what do guys think is happening here? what do you know?" and geeeently guide them into putting pieces together. Worked well when I was running Against the Cult of the Reptile God.
I've been given an orb early on by a GM that doubles the power of my fire spells.... I'm a sorcerer with a meta magic to turn any elemental ability into fire when i cast it... :) In his defence i was a much lower level at the time. I hope he's not watching this :P When i was GM'ing once i'd given clues to an assassination plot on a religious leader. meanwhile i'd used an npc to conscripts one of the players to assassinate the same leader (because they said they were corrupt and working for the Empire to the north). A great scene played out where 2/3 of the gang protected the arch-paladin & arch-cleric only for the last member to bow-sniped the soon to be new arch-cleric [current one was v old] & legged it to freedom. We actually had a court-case game a few weeks later when he got caught & they had to fake his execution to keep him alive.
About players misinterpreting clues: when we played Tomb of horror, there is a text somewhere telling a story, we managed to believe that the story was about how to beat the module so we over interpreted it in a way that made us miss traps and led us (almost) straight to the end. The GM was dying of laughter while we were trying to make sens of the text and how it was related to our surrounding. And all along the play session, we were telling ourselves how good we were and how we managed to overthink the module creator... Fun times!
Can you guys PLEASE increase the volume of these videos before uploading? My pc is already on max volume and I can barely hear it! SPECIALLY when Mercer whispers for dramatic effect!
I had to roughly double the volume on my external speakers compared to what I was using to listen to other videos with. And then my PC's occasional alert sounds, balanced for my normal volume level, practically knocked me out of my chair. So, yeah, either everyone else's youtube videos are balanced too loud, or this one's too quiet...
OMG, yes ty ty ty for these tips because as a newer DM I have made many of these mistakes and was at a loss how to fix them. One issue I have run into lately is revealing too much to the party by accident. So, yea, not fun as a DM to make that blunder and ruin the encounter.
Look I know these are all filmed in advance and no one will ever see this anyway, but I'd really appreciate a video on running an NPC as a party member.
My advice is not to. The issue with a NPC as a party member is it can quickly become a dungeon master player character. Overshadowing the party and turning everyone else into the second string. Or a cheap excuse to magically put the party back on track. I could go on and on. But I assume your asking this because you are having these sort's of problems. Npc's need to be quest givers, temp party members or party members in need of protection from the party. They should never be equals if they are going to be staying around for a while. Any who that's my thoughts on it.
If you have to have an NPC as a temp party member (and, as mentioned by others, that should be temporary at best) the best idea is to make them a support role (a healer or bard works well here, or maybe some types of wizard - but avoid damage cantrips!). Never let a temp party member be a major damage dealer in the party unless it's a temporary NPC along for one or two fights and the party has already had a few encounters to feel powerful. If your NPC is a Bless or Bardic Inspiration machine, though, the PCs can appreciate their intervention as they take the primary role of winning the day.
Fixing mistakes is one thing, but if you're too benevolent towards your party they'll start expecting you to always have someone around to save them. It even happened to me when I had a planned encounter with an NPC turn into my players interpreting it as a direct message from the DM, and that's despite the fact that I *_never_* do such things. If you set it up as an expectation, you won't be taken seriously ever again. A TPK was a real possibility in our 4th edition game. My players, fun as they are, aren't really... great at tactical thinking. I kind of have to play blindfolded and concussed for them to stand a chance, and in one fight against duergar they were about to die. So how did I fix it? I could've lied about my rolls, make most of the attacks miss by fiat, introduced an NPC to save them, gone the deus ex machina route. What did I do instead? I told my players which actions would let them get out of the fight alive if all went well. Instead of the fighter going down in a blaze of useless glory, I explained five steps that'd let them survive the encounter. And then I rolled my dice and I didn't lie about the results, not once. Everybody survived, battered to shit but still alive. I personally think this is a better way of intervening than poofing Rescue McSavesyouall into existence in the other room with his Concord-made iWin bow (EVE online joke, kids). It's obviously DM intervention, there's no escaping it, but at least _they_ got themselves out of it with their own rolls. Plus it doesn't create sudden characters who'll be expected to stick around and unbalance the game further or potentially uninteresting diversions like almost dying to one enemy only to almost die to a one-armed wampa. Goddamn I'm old.
one thing i do in my current game is giving them a failsave option upon death. since they are currently (more or less volentarily) working for a lich and bound to him by magic when they die they can choose to deepen the pakt, getting revived with some Hp and the next time they rest they get a random mutation ^^ those can be helpfull (one of my mages got bone plates giving him +1 AC) others are more cosmetical (our elf has unrestricted joints) but some can be pretty changeing for the char (things like permanently loosing mental stats due to a shrinking skull and so on) and of course they can allways choose NOT to take the deal and die ^^ ...or come up with other interessting solutions (one of my players is currently playing a animated skull (... and not even his own skull) and is looking to learn necromancy to build himself a new body) this lessens the impact of charakter death but is still a risk and is still problematic for most of them on a roleplay level. (funnyly enough the one PC that would be fine with getting more evil is the one that never dies...)
EdwardHowton I always build my encounters for the party. And although that means they are rather fit for the job, it also means they have to think before, while and after the encounter. When they don't (and/or they lose confidence, either in me or themselves), they lose (or get very close to). In such situations, I always do as you said. But I have an "achievements" system to reward some actions other than spilling blood. One of the achievements (and the only bad one) is called "miraculous". I give it to players after an encounter in which they needed "DM intervention" and they lose a little XP. Only enough to bother them so they take the lessons and tips more seriously.
***** Well, this is the achievement system I use, in case you're interested. It's all in Portuguese, but it shouldn't be hard to translate. docs.google.com/document/d/1jd_7t9tHRFU3Ahx8jMUN7cb2yOexl5DuonvEV9pz_gM/edit?usp=sharing It's for D&D 3.5, BTW. (Works well for Pathfinder, of course)
Top Gallant sadly no... in my current game i droped some major hints about an upcomming ambush... and jet they still ran right into it. at least both warriors did while the casters were hesitant. aka the party was split and the squishy-ish csters were open to attack while the warris were surrounded. there was NOTHING more i could have done without taking controll away from my players. and they even failed the easy-ish checks to spot the ambush i gave them even though they ran blindely instead of advancing carefully... funnily enough the only char who survived it without needing a demonic pakt reurrection was the DD mage ^^ even the healer died
Wow- we had a stall due to my lack of innovation and our plot turned cause my players weren't picking up my hints in a dungeon (finding the prisoners, etc) and we stalled and stopped for the night (a first in our campaign). I was crushed that I had failed. Thank you Matt, you've helped me brainstorm a way around this. I can't thank you enough.
in our pathfinder game our gm accidentally put us up against a paladin of a slavery god we were supposed to lose to, our druid flattened him, later it turns out he's been "killed" multiple times, now we are all shit scared of him D:>
My biggest mistake my first time DMing was saying straight out what the ultimate villain would be. While the campaign never actually got the point of fighting it, one member of the party used that meta-knowledge to tool their character towards countering the villain's abilities. I hadn't really considered at the time customizing it, but now, I see it was a simple solution. That, and being too quick to say 'No' when a player misinterpreted something I said and asked if it was some other, more interesting idea that worked just as well as what I had in mind. There were other mistakes made along the way, but those were my biggest bugbears, and that campaign was definitely one big learning experience.
Brilliant. Never realized how much a story can change no matter how adaptable I initially think it is. You can't predict 100% what the players want to do. Missed an excellent quest when the main PC who was crucial to the event but the thing was that he drank quite a bid and he... grabbed a bottle of liquor and wandered drunkenly out of the room...
I'm becoming eerily certain that you are watching my games. every video has fixed a mistake I've made in the past, or given hints that I desperately needed because of the game before! thank you Matt!
The nice thing about running low fantasy settings is that balance against the players is never really a challenge, it's trying to keep the monster in the box for as long as possible so that you can generate genuine feelings of creepiness and amazement at supernatural things. I am always happy when I can make a player freaked out by an event that would be excused as a level 0 wizard spell in normal D&D.
One time I was planning to do a big survival session after the PC's ship had wrecked. Miles of treacherous forest and mountains separated the PC from the next safe settlement. A player was searching some crates and barrels that had washed up the shore, and found some dumb stuff (rope, lamp oil, rum...), and he asked "Do I find some food?". Of course, in my mind I was screaming "Hell no, I'm gonna make you BEG for food while in that forest", but my dumb mouth said "yeah, 5 days rations". After a mental facepalm, I persuaded the players to set up camp at the edge of the forest, and luckily for me, they forgot to set up guard duties. Next day, their equipment had been rummaged through and through, and not one gram of food was left. They tracked the beast responsible, and eventually reached a monkey shrine where they found a Monkey's Paw. Mental self high-five.
Love your videos. I think my favorite story about an almost accidental TPK due to crappy dice rolls. I had a small side quest built in as a way to get players thinking of things and do a loot dump for some of them. I had a NPC girl come up to one of them asking for help. This PC was a knight following a god who had "help those in need" as a prime directive and wore the gods symbol emblazoned on his breastplate/cloak. So they follow this girl who's family had been attacked and they find a guy sitting over a couple of empty bottles. the 5 level 5 NPC's attack this guy after he threw a shuriken and crit, one shotting the NPC girl. Come to find out this guy is a lvl 4 monk. The funny part is that every single player rolled a 10 or below on almost every single attack roll vs a monk that had about 10 rounds to drink potions and and prepare for them. They won but by the time they killed the 1 monk 2 of them were knocked out and another was nearly down. The only person who was ok was the rogue and the ranger. The ranger, who immediately after the battle shot an arrow at a giant vulture circling over head, sparking a second battle. There was some dice fudging but man was it fun.
I think my favorite example of a mistake turned into a great plot point was a Dungeon World game I ran where the character who was merely supposed to be the cocky rival turned into the new arc villain. I was having them all meet in the guild, where he taunted my PCs' party as a crowd of screaming fans cheered him on, but I took the roleplaying too far and had him viciously insult the team's favorite PC, a dopey but purehearted cyclops-human. They proceeded to spend half a session pranking and basically tormenting the rival character until he became so irritated by them he tried to overtake the hub town and destroy them. It was a train wreck, I loved it.
how does a GM accidentally give away something like this? did he roll randomly or something? I just refuse to give things like that at lower levels. I think he did it on purpose. im sure he was amused.
This was very inspiring. Matt is clearly a very good, and very dedicated GM, and I feel that I have a lot to learn, but that I can learn a lot from him. Keep up the good work, Matt (assuming you happen to see this, which I doubt)
Try an online game maybe Torgo? Or, start your friends on a' gateway' homebrew campaign, and do a d&d one after. Don't give up on your D&D dreams! :) (d&dreams ;) )
I wasn't sure how powerful my encounter was going to be for a new party so I had the enemies set to arrive in waves, if the first wave was more powerful than I expected then that'd be it, if the party wrecked that wave in no time at all then I had more powerful foes ready to step in. (As it happens, the former was the case).
The objectively best course of action if you give someone an item that is too powerful is to kill the entire party and make them play as the people who has to clean up the corpses.
or you could kill the party and then have them loot the bodies however the item is missing and then you can later have a lead onto what happened to it and make it into a quest.
Apples Malus In the scenario those looting the bodies would have some link to the party. For instance their old bartender friend or someone who was supposed to meet with them sends a group to look for them and that group finds and loots the bodies and return to the bartender who comments on how this extra-ordinary item was missing but nothing else. That is just one way to handle it at least. Also this way the new party need only have a way of becoming employed or whatever by the bartender and don't necessarily need to have any link whatsoever to the now dead party.
My very first game of DnD, our DM had a bunch of homebrew magic items they came up with, and really thought were cool. Their mistake, was then giving enough of them to the party within the first session, that every member had 3 magic items in the first session. My Rogue had 2 daggers, and another passive item, all with made it so my character would, at minimum, deal 18 damage in worst case scenarios
I sometimes just have NPCs just break the fourth wall. Or sometimes I trust the players with information their characters don't know. Whatever. Semi-satirical games, woo.
What you said that sticks out to me is "Obvious clues to you may not be obvious to the player because you already have all of the information." My DM was trying to point us in the direction of a spy against their country, but the only clue he gave us until he had to throw in a different clue was in the spy's name. But we had no reason to suspect or distrust the NPC because she wasn't really doing much to the party. She was pretty much "out of sight, out of mind" but he later mentioned to me that he thought the spy reveal was obvious because her name was Lyra. "Lyra" because she "lies". I didn't think to tell him it was obvious to him because the story is in his head already, because all I could think of was that I had met a very kind Lyra in a game before that and that was part of why this Lyra didn't seem out of sorts.
I'm currently DMing my first story and during our second session, the party was able to chose a weapon from the local armory. I messed up and did not realize that ANY weapon that is +1 is magical and supposed to be rare. So, I set it up that this town receives their arms from the capital city in the kingdom, where an amazing blacksmith makes quality weapons and armor for most of the kingdom. Then I reduced their item attainment. I did get creative with this NPC skills. One of my PC's is rolling a Paladin and asked for a custom piece of armor with his deity's symbol engraves across the whole chest. Making him pay out of the nose, the plate armor moved seamlessly(no disadvantage on stealth, Only with heavy armor proficiency) and had "the symbol feel warm around his body. After attunement, he learned that his deity was able to be channeled slightly through the crest of the armor allowing for a more focused connection. (+1 to spells dealing radiant damage, only with HIS deity) Item creation IS SO FUN.
A good way to make sure items are balanced is if you’re worried about if it’s going to be under or overpowered add a little carving into it. If the power is too much, make it a curse. Too little, a blessing, just right, a plot clue.
Once my players in an encounter faced a guy with a really powerful flaming magical sword, and at the end of the fight, after teaming up against the ennemy, one player went and picked up the sword. The whole party was level 3. I quickly realized that the sword would be too powerful for the balance of the party and when the player grabbed the sword, the flames disappeared. The player who picked up was a sorcerer, so he knew a bit about magic, so it made sense that he understood what was happenning to the sword; I explained that the sword was almost sentient and that it was to grow stronger the more the player used it, as the sword was getting used to the player himself and his fightning style. So every time they level up, the sword becomes a bit stronger, I think it's a good way to balance a magic item, and it was my first time DM'ing D&D, and all of the player's first time playing D&D, and I think it gave them better expectation for loot than juste a few copper coins and an unknown potion.
One thing you mentioned that I particularly like is to convert any TPKs into the party being captured and thrown into a dungeon (or something.) Escaping from that situation can provide another totally different adventure. I haven't been a GM all that much but one thing I did is to essentially never permanently kill a PC except in the case of extreme stupidity. If they are fighting at the top of a cliff, and the dice conspire to make them fall off through no fault of their own, I will generally find a way to save them (perhaps with bad consequences.) If they are on the top of the same cliff, and jump off of their own free will, they're going to die.
for the magic item thing, an interesting way to improve it (depending on the exact situation) is say something like "as you leave the tower, the [magic item name] appears to glow slightly less" and on a successful check, you say "it appears the tower (or dungeon, or cave, or wherever they found it) was connected to the item to boost its power while it was within its walls"
If the players start chasing the 'wrong' plot, and have ideas that are leading them away from your planned plot, resist the urge to just nudge them harder in the 'right' direction. Consider altering your plot first, or creating a new smaller plot to reward their inventiveness. Especially if this is a problem you are trying to address between sessions, you can usually find a way to both have your story and also let the dog have its bone, so to speak. Even if for the players it turns out to just be an interesting side quest that leads to more questions than answers, they will appreciate the openness of the world, and it will feel bigger and more responsive as a result.
It's rather amusing that the HCoC which tends to be a thorn in Matt's side ended up in the hands of Sam's character when it's Sam who is also a bit of a thorn in his side. Partially due to said cone, but also from things like the amazing Matt print shirt from episode seventy-seven.
I may or may not have had an auction in my campaign where I was auctioning off magic items and that included an instant fortress. I thought I had made sure my party couldn't afford it so the BBEG's second in command could buy it in front of them and it would be a fun little reveal... instead, I had completely forgotten that the rogue had stolen tons of money the week prior and now my party has an instant castle that is also essentially a grenade. My fix is going to be that all the items sold by the auctioneer were faulty and he was a scam artist that the party will have to track down if they want to get their money back, but hoo boy I am not looking forward to watching enemies get one shot by having a castle dropped on them.
My favorite GM "clue": In a modern era game, the PCs are driving to Chicago to follow up on a lead that exists only in their heads. The GM said, "As you drive the new hit song comes on the radio 'There is Nothing for You in Chicago'"
BAM this has now been stolen. :P
That is beautiful. Although to be fair to myself, re-reading this comment after a few minutes, I *REALLY* want an excuse to use "This NPC has no quests for you at this time" in my game at some point...
That's actually useful, I do need to get my players out of Chicago.
Why don't you take a plot point that you have elsewhere and put it in Chicago?
I was mostly joking around, there is stuff to do in Chicago. I do need to get them out at some point though.
The plot is based on a book, I don't want to stray too far.
(Worm, found online on parahumans.wordpress.com )
You can also follow the advice of the DM Handbook:
“...When all else fails, roll a bunch of dice behind your screen, study them for a moment with a look of deep concern mixed with regret, let loose a heavy sigh, and announce that Tiamat swoops from the sky and attacks.”
Flying tarrasques are best tarrasques
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I just read that for the first time like 30 minutes ago! LOL
or a 30 ft Giant meteor made of flaming hands giving the finger hits the party for 20d20 damage lol
Is it really in the book? AHAHAHAH
was playing on roll20 once and I had enemies lying in ambush.
only problem was that I forgot to put them on the hidden GM layer so the PCs spotted them right away. we laughed at my mistake and turned the enemies into a comedic sort of bumbling attackers "YOU FOOLS! I TOLD YOU WE WEREN'T HIDDEN ENOUGH"
good fun
That's awesome :D
DA FING IZ YA GOTTA PAINT YER SKIN PERRPUL. AINT NO UMIE EVA SEEN A PURPEL ORKBOY!!!
Yeah tried basically the same exept this was more the dices fault really. I was litterally not able to get more than 4 on every single hide check I did and believe I got 3 1's in a row..for the same fucking guy...so I kinda had to change the "dangerous highly skilled assasins here to kill you!" to a bunch of badly trained newbees send out to scare and or distract the heroes..they did distract them for like..3 minutes and then just went on to catch the real villians about to kidnap the person they were supposted to protect..so they got one hell of an advantage..stupid dices..
I'm a pen and person type of guy and write all my missions out, I also keep my PC's character sheets while were're not playing, putting two and two together... I handed one of my players the master plot.
Eion Grady lol
This lesson seems to come down to a quote by Bob Ross:
"We don't make mistakes, only happy accidents."
happy trees, happy trees
Vidya Gaymes I actually have that as my wallpaper, lol
This is actually a fantastic mantra for a perfectionist like me that's breaking into DMing. I'm glad you posted it!
You've inspired me to attach this quote to my DM screen. I'm always beating myself up over mistakes I make while DMing for my group.
Vidya Gaymes yes. just yes
'Then they're fucked. In which case, heh.' Made me chuckle, well played Mr Mercer.
*they're We're not savages here. :D
Made me literally laugh out loud. I actually paused the video to laugh for a few seconds. :D
Thank you for noticing! I have corrected it now :) lol
One of the best DM moments I've ever had was a total mess up on my part. It's long but it's worth the story. The ranger was looking for herbs in the downtime between quests and rolled a natural 20. I describe him coming across a single rose with gray petals and an ivory, skull-looking center. It was surrounded by vines that it was centered on. No other plant life was visible with its reach. "Haha," I thought to myself, "Sounds cool, now he will bring it with him and I can figure out what its alchemical properties are before next session."
"I cast speak with plants." He told me with a determined gaze.
I looked back at him with a now stupid self satisfied grin that was quickly fading, "You cast what now....?"
""Yeah since last level up I took this as one of my new spells."
....... "it slowly begins to move and as the grass tickles your legs beneath you, the rose fixes its hollow gaze on you." Nailed it. Shit what does it do? Just wing it.
As you all can probably guess I ended up having to make it up as I go and the story quickly spiralled into a quest to find a plains God who could identify this weird rose that I just thought sounded cool looking.
just because the ranger could speak with plants, doesn't mean the plant has to tell the truth. ;)
Whoa, what happened next!? Lol
"There is nothing to see here, move along!"
A good rule of thumb for GMs: No plan survives contact with the party. It's a good idea to be flexible.
our gm has learnt to plan only the most basic points, cause our bumbling arsonists ALWAYS go off the rails to get there :D
If you plan well enough and know your players, you can usually avoid an adventure going off the rails. Most of my plans survive party contact, with the rare exception, but you can never plan for everything. I enjoy it when the players challenge me and go off script.
When i GM i never use rails [well a steam train system is under construction in one part of the world but that's not the point] Instead they have an enemy, a world map, and the resources within that world.
Also in-game time :)
They had to attend a coronation to stop an assassin, they were other side of the continent.
The result was like around the world in 80 days :) They travelled first by summon-drawn cart [damaged scroll of permanency so the summon lasted a day] then by stolen ship around the coastline, for a little while on the back of a giraffe-centaur and finally over a mountain. The Ranger used the Clerics spare shield as a sleigh to get their ahead of the others and stall :)
yeah, who knows? For all you know you might be playing a pre-made adventure and then your party just so happens to quell the flames of an orc rebellion and helps establish a new orcish hierarchy.
all hypothetical....totally...
Awesome rule of thumb. I'm dming for my kids and wife.
I've contrived an amazing story and npc's. Both have been mostly neglected cuz they just want to kill shit and all of them feel embarrassed to rp much.
So I just have a loose narrative with cautionary lessons (ie greed can come back to haunt you, once you say/do something you can never take it back.) So far it's been working.
My worst one yet was, "so you follow the shapeshifter?" whoops :D
I had a subtler version of that. My NPCs were accompanied by a dragon disguised as a half-elf, and climbing a tall mountain. Partway up they put on their winter clothes. They asked me if the woman they were escorting also put some on. I said yes. And then I said "Oh, wait, no, she stays in her robes". I'd been dropping clues about her all along, riding a knife-edge of will-they-won't-they, and I was terrified that me suddenly changing my answer instead of casually dropping my subtle hint would give the game away.
Thankfully they're kind of slow on the uptake. They almost figured it out literally thirty seconds before the big reveal I had planned, and even then they were wrong about the many twists I had waiting for them. That was *haaaard* to pull off.
DummyUrD my worst mistake was giving the players an axe I had them intended to fight the big enemy with it was a reward for a very dangerous giant so I couldn't take it away so the dwarf turned into a one man army I fixed it by having the players follow a caravan of shapeshifters gifting the rest of the group equally op weapons then turning on them with an epic battle the qroup balance was perfect ounce more
DummyUrD "So you attack the werewolf?"; "So you follow the dragon and..."; "The druid runs away" (wild shaped). All of these plus revealing NPC classes. I had players think they were facing rangers when they were barbarians, mages that were actually clerics and fighters that were actually rogues. Not much of the surprise falls off, but when you accidentally tell the class, they can be sure what it is and avoiding metagame thinking becomes really hard for everyone.
Drakonyan Azkar, exactly and in my case they had no ideas and I was trying to set up a mystery, oh well
My worst one was: The players had just entered a gloomy village they knew nothing about. And just when an old house stood out from the other houses in the village, a player starts to develop interest for that house.
My response? "Oh, so you enter the Death House?" I just wanted to punch myself in the face after that one xD
"You see a room with furniture, there is a note hidden behind a chair in the cor-...
There's a chair."
"Is there a note behind the chair?"
"MAYBE"
Lmao i just rolled a 1 on this and died
Is it weird that I hear Bob saying Maybeeeeee....
In a very recent game of Titansgrave I DM'd, I passed a note to a very perceptive PC saying "That fuel tank will explode after two more rounds."
I meant rounds = turns, she heard rounds = bullets. So when the fuel tank exploded two combat rounds later and took her Saurian sniper below 0HP, she complained that no-one had shot it yet.
Moral of the story: Synonyms matter.
lol yeah I've been there. Key is to write long notes and use way more words then seems necessary. though it still happens, but it's always funny. :P
TBakerXD Homonyms*
Guess she just failed the other perception check
Yup. I had a group who just casually picked up a gas spore because, instead of hearing "floating sphere", they heard "floating spear" and thought it was a magic item.
in the first tip you mentioned bad luck and saving the party as the gm. i'd like to put forth a terrifying experience with a banshee, in which all of our party members go unconsious 3 from her scream and 1 from combat. it was looking bleak, our dm was debating on starting over, or re-running the encounter. However, fate had words to say that day
and I, Raaktir the silver dragonborn bard, clutched my muscles and rose from 0 hp with a critical success. i healed our cleric who in turn healed the fighter who used his second wind to survive another attack as me and the cleric raise our monk and heal ourselves and the fighter delivers a heroic blow severing the banshee in two. it was glorious and i saved our dm from pain
PIKATHUNDER7 those are the fights you never forget
"Don't admit the mistake. OWN IT!!"
I love you Matt
U should add critical role clips that demonstrate some of these situations
Season one vectna fight. The fight wasnt going in the path needed. Arkon came in and went 50 shades of fubar on him
When Grog pulled the "Sword" from the deck of many things?
@@travismcallister3688 could someone find a timestamped link?
@@NN-mh4bj sure you could. I'd do it and send it you you. But not gonna lie. I know how to search TH-cam. That's ... That's about it.
Toothy maw
0:02:32 fixing tough encounters, dropping hints, kinda like how Matt kept dropping clues to Sam to use his Mythcarver... Until the point that the entire party was telling him outright to just use it xD lmao!
Or, like he mentions at 6.05, Grogg's sword being more and more taxing / controlling of him as time went on. Not sure if that was intended from the start, but it sure forced them to "cleanse" it as Matt puts it in this video.
The part about removing bad items had "Magic carpet" was written all over it. IT was getting in the way of your story, so remove it and give them a more clunky and situational broom instead! No more, "We all get on the carpet and fly over the ingenious traps so carefully laid out for us to fall into." scenarios.
Yeah..... My DM gave a +10 hammer to us.... yeah +10.... And we've JUST hit level 4... Trying to talk to our DM (a new guy) about how imbalanced it is, might send him this video. :P
a +10, at level 4? Wat?
TheMan83554 remember the broom wasn't meant to be around the way it has been.
Yeah........ When we discovered it's actual stats I was really lost. :P I'm not super knowledgeable about 5E, but I think in 3.5 the highest enchantment was +9. lol
I think you've made up a narrative that doesn't follow anything that's happened in-game. Matt has said on a couple of occasions that the carpet incident was not intentional, as he always assumed that Grog had it because of the Bag of Holding. Plus, if the traps were as ingenious as you say, they'd have never lose the carpet in the first place. GO ANTI-MAGIC FIELDS!
Also, the broom was an item belonging to Chris Hardwick's character Gern when he guested on the show and Vex STOLE said broom. I believe I've heard Matt say that he gives the guest players a gold amount and they can buy 1 or 2 magic items to use in-game. So I don't think they were ever meant to have the broom.
Another good way to prevent the party from abusing a powerful magical item is to introduce an anti-magic glyph that drops it into a pit of acid
Poor magic carpet...
Well, you have to be careful to not make it look like the GM is going after the item. Your example feels like a GM flexing muscles, which never feels good to the party.
Another option is to have the item charm the user and revealing that the item belongs to the BBEG. What was percieved to be a sacred bow actually belongs to a goddess of calamity. Everytime it is used the player must make a saving throw or be charmed for a day and doing the goddess's bidding. Also dispelling the affect is near impossible. Only a certain god can dispel the affect and requires the party to gather his sacred weapons in order to rescue the charmed victim for the victim will be addicted to the power rush.
@@roguishpaladin no no. that was quite justified. actual event from the critical role series.
@@iamvigant can someone give a timestamped link?
So, I DMed for a year before I knew about the XP budget. I know. I did read the DMG but evidently not very well. So I built this encounter at a slavers hub at the end of an underground river beneath Waterdeep. The group is way too heavy handed and blew their chance to bluff through it (which was really my original intention). So they are floating in on a canoe, facing down two drow mages, a bunch of guards, barbarian pimps, and six archers while being level 6. The encounter split over two weeks. Things were looking pretty grim.
The next week, I dropped hints that continuing a full frontal attack on the beach stronghold was suicide, and they would have to use some cunning to look for an out (retreat wasn't an option due to the design of the waterway). Because I didn't want them to die, but I also wanted there to be a cost to their dumb decisions, I had put two ale barrels behind the wall near the most powerful enemies. So they blew them up.
Except they weren't ale. The Zhentarim slavers were also running weapons and it was two barrels of alchemist fire. Thankfully it was a very large cavern and the mage was a good distance when magic missiled it. Still, it destroyed the stronghold, killed almost everybody, and nearly killed a few in the group.
I guess my advice is: if you make a mistake, blow your group up.
Players: *get knocked unconscious*
Me (the dm) : you wake up in a wagon and a man in shackles also in the wagon tells you "hey you, you're finnally awake".
I’ve started an entire campaign this way (it was my first full homebrew campaign and ended up basically being Skyrim but with an undead army instead of dragons)
This has actually been prevalent in a lot of sessions I run, so thank you!
HighTechWizard I GM for newer players in multiple games, so I end up using these tip more often than not.
I've been learning the "don't admit the mistake, own it" a LOT in my campaign. The story flows much better if you just pretend everything was part of your plan all along.
Hi, just a note to say I've been GMing for about 30 yrs and really enjoy these tips and always find something nice to take away and use myself. Thanks!
Back in my Storyteller days, I actually had players legitimately figure out a sub-plot that stopped, in its tracks, a lead up to a latter significant plot. Maybe it was the couple of beers in me (and/or a Mountain Dew or two, I'm hazy on intoxication level) but it made me realize, in an instant, the moment you feel completely in control, you've lost half the fun of a rollicking good RPG. Why invite players when one could just write a novel, after all? I revised the nature of the significant plot, let them "win" the subplot, and it ended up creating a different sub-plot that made them feel more confident they were affecting the storyline, increasing attendance (not attendance rate, actual attendance) for several sessions. As it was the Storyteller System, I just started sketching out ideas, and NPCs, leaving the heavy lifting to the player characters and their motivations, to drive the story. When their stories are just as good, if not better, than the ones you came up with, better to react than to herd unnecessarily.
I like getting my players talking in-game amongst themselves about what they are planning or what they think is going on. It gives me tons of ideas - where if they're starting to guess a major plot point too soon I can back off of it, or if what they _think_ is happening is better than what I had planned, I incorporate elements from that.
It's also good to know where the players want the game to go, and what they have in mind for their characters' futures. Hopefully, it'll be possible to blend your GM-intended story with their ideas and the kind of story they want to play, and create something none of you could have created alone.
Raise your virtual hand if you've committed all of these GM Sins! *Raises hand*
i gave them a bag of devouring later did they come up with the plan to attach it to a shield and thus having a 1 on 2 chance to kill any enemy.
I have and know I will in the future as well.
I once gave my players a weapon based off an anima cartoon I was watching at the time. I realized my mistake when they took out an adult dragon (I forget the color) in one shot. I tried to get rid of the weapon but my group threatened to quit the campaign if I did. So, we quite. I couldn't figure a way around such a devastating weapon that would make the game challenging to the players. I would have had to use an enemy that was so ridiculously powerful that the party wouldn't survive or just have every encounter be a one hit encounter.
I read the description. That shouldn't have worked. Turning the bag into a butterfly net weapon might have worked but I don't see how putting it on a shield would kill anyone.
My GM let me get a random item from a roll. It ended up being a Luck Blade which he managed poorly. I could basically cast wish multiple times a day, so I was OP.
I really like these GM tips, not that I am a GM myself, but for understanding how a campaign should work. This is very useful to players as well to be aware of how a game should be played (but not as a mandatory rule).
By the way, I don't know why, but these videos are always with the audio so low to me. Maybe tunning up the mic a little would help ((:
More tips on how to fix a miscalculated encounter? Nerf the HP of some monster mid fight. Make amount of hits instead of HP for some minions. Fake fail saving throws for unimportant foes.
You could temporarily buff the buff the players dmg rolls (change dice from d6 to d8, adding bonus dmg modifier etc.) while emphasizing, storywise how the players powers suddenly seem to spark beyond what they should capable of. This means that the players have unknowingly tapped into some ancient or unnatural reservoir of power, that will have consequences in the long run (you note down each time you have to resort to this extremity and escalate the long term consequences accordingly). This method works best in situations where no other "rescue method" will work (IE in situations where no friendlies can launch rescue missions because they don't know where the players are).
A friend of mine used this as he had us in a scenario where we were lvl 2 and slowly TPKing to a gelatinous cube, thanks to ridiculously good dice rolls from the GM (18/18 on its first attack on us) and bad descisions from the party (3/5 members not familiar with the foe decided to engage in Melee with it and subsequently being 1shot and consumed by the cube).
I have a magic NPC that hangs with the group and I use her to nerf or buff as needed.
Yeah doing that constantly whilst figuring out the balance since I am new.
Frederik sh That sounds like an unbelievable Deus ex Machina. Any discerning player character will question this and immersion will be broken. Not only that, but it will add another tedious mechanic you have to keep track of. Secretly nerfing the enemies is easier and cleaner.
Have one big bad and many minions with only one Hp each. It leads to an epic cinematic fight scene
Also don't forget the amazing power of talking to your players and working together for a solution.
Also also, on the note of plot mistakes, I tend to run by the "draw maps, leave spaces" motto from dungeon world. If you let something slip you shouldn't have and the players pick up on it awesome. See what they do with that information. It may wind up being more amazing than any "big reveal" you had planned. And don't forget to listen to the pcs. I've had some of my best stories come from my players misinterpreting clues and coming to a completely wrong conclusion that was far far more clever than what I had originally planned. Needless to say those pcs became correct very quickly and I never let on that they had it wrong.
The "Accidentally gave your party an over powered item" has a much simpler solution that Matt provided I think. Don't be afraid to talk to your players. Let a player know "hey I fucked up that item is way too strong, going to make it a bit weaker sorry".
I think some DMs, and this doesn't apply to Matt since he's actually making a show that thousands of people follow for the storyline, get too caught up in preserving a sense of cannon/continuity at the expense of fun. I think a player would rather have a dm frankly tell them they messed up and have some power adjustment on the item than have some weird bs happen that ruins the cool new toy they were enjoying.
I'm really sad this wasn't in the video tbh. A GM can always call a timeout and speak to the players like adults.
While this is true, remember that improvisation and the unknown is one of the things that make some things exeptionally fun! Once they complete the quest of "The mysterious glowing sword that seems to have cursed someone" you could then say "I actually did that because the weapon was too strong" and if you did that right the players will be surprised and impressed that you pulled that mistake off and didn't interrupt the game, but instead enhanced it. Just my 20c
True, but I think he talked about communication and understanding between the players a lot in other videos and this was more of a lore friendly way to fix mistakes rather than just talk it out. This is always an option of course, but RPGs are the lands of unending possibilities and instead of "fixing" a mistake you can make it part of an interesting story rather than "listen I screwed up". The whole point of this video after all I think is "There are no mistakes really. Only opportunities."
I'm pretty sure he's done this with Talesin's guns, he just does it off screen between sessions, as it should always be done so as not to bore the other players.
I think he was going for more of an improv bent on the situation. Rather than just 'nerf' the item, incorporate it into the story arc. Make the nerfing part of the fun rather than just "Sorry, I'm castrating you now." Because, even with adults, there's a possibility that they'll act like a spoiled five-year-old being denied candy if you even hint that you're going to take that cool item away from them.
By incorporating it into the story, the pill isn't quite as bitter to swallow.
woah, the way Mathew fixes these GM mistakes feel far cooler than many GM intentional adventures
I found this to be EXTREMELY helpful, I'm about to start my first real campaign and my favorite way to reward players is through magical items. I feel it makes the game more immersive and interactive rather than just generic XP and gold. I'm just extremely worried I'm gonna break the game with stupid bullshit that I thought was balanced but wasn't at all tho.
I appreciate that you've given ways to change an OP item to something more tame instead of simply taking it back from the player because the DM made a mistake. That's really well thought out and I like it!!!
The best fix is usually just "rocks fall, everyone dies".
That would be more ideal to punish murder hobos. If the GM is making the mistakes listed here, why punish the players?
James Brooks
It was meant as a joke. ;-)
Well, to be fair, "rocks fall, everyone dies", is a very real gm/dm thing :P
James Brooks
I know - that's the joke ! It's not funny, imho, if it isn't *actually* related to the topic at hand, or at least that makes it more funny in my mind. xD
Nuke the world.
Been watching a lot of content regarding the fine tuning of my own GM skills, and it has given me a lot of confidence that I've been doing a lot right. Many areas I can improve upon of course, but it makes it easier to believe my players when they compliment my sessions.
Dying in-game is cool if it's not anticlimatic. If done well it's pretty good and moving.
In my experience it takes some good players to die also. I've been in and hosted some sessions where a character died and the player just flipped out.
Insted of lots of little fights that widdle the players down I like large scary fights that keep players involved and going through ideas and plans, but this is often times bad unless you've assembled a group that you know well enough to handle the thought that "everyone dies eventually."
I've only had one PC die in my short career, but I've had close calls. My experience is that the best time for PCs to die is during plot-critical moments. Like, for example, we were once making a great final stand against invading orcs, and it was impressive. I almost died that night, but it was a good night to die.
By contrast, in a later session in the same campaign, the players ran into a Jin trapped in a wizard's tower that seemed really pissed off. The cleric "wisely" decided the best option was to free it to not piss it off. So they sent me to go grab a book downstairs. What my character didn't know is that the same exact Cleric had intimidated a Fire Elemental before it emerged from a fireplace. Thus, I was in a one-on-one fight with a fire elemental at level 6. I almost died that time, and it felt really frustrating, because it was due to another player's poorly calculated decision that was ignoring all the DM's hints.
Very important episode, thank you Matt! Had a bit of a mishap where a supposed trusted NPC (a friend of a PC) had said one thing, but the party's boss said the opposite. They caught the paradox, and I was able to twist it to throw suspicion on both characters, creating dramatic tension.
Could we improve the volume on these GM tips videos? I always have to turn it up so much higher than anything else I watch, then I forget next time and get assaulted with almost max volume videos that are appropriately volumed.
Strange. I don't have that issue.
Amocoru i think its your device mate, i dont have that either
I have that also.
The video seems unusually quiet for me, too.
I have that too!
I always love his super creative solutions that involve real story telling.
something i am doing for my game that can help out a lot in fixing mistakes is a special NPC that i call Mr.E. very much a mr mxyzptlk type of character. he has many amazing powers and knows all but wont tell because there is no fun in that. as well may help the player in certain encounters if i feel like it is getting way to rough. i have a party of 2 right now so that can happen.
One example, they had to face a Drider Queen, (custom enemy) 4 Driders, and 8 Giant Spiders. while they had 2 npc allies with them they had more close by. so i decided to chance to see if Mr.E will help. i make a d20 roll and if i roll a 15 or higher he will aid in some way. so each new round i rolled and got higher than a 16 so there allies appeared out of nowhere. then towards the end of the fight due to it still be difficult and the match going quite long i had him help a again by removing 3 of the 4 driders. (one was already dead) but for him to do so i had to roll a nat 20 which i did. he has been quite usefull as well the Players are the only one that can see or talk to him. which can make for some interesting situations.
This is definitely one of the best tip videos out there. Matt has helped me run my own campaign so much, and I am eternally thankful for him.
these vids have really gotten my interest in DnD back up. It's even got me wondering if maybe I'd have more fun as a DM instead of a player.
being a DM is hard work. don't let anyone fool you, its HARD and sometimes quite annoying. if yo do start a game, I recommend starting with brand new players. write a good story and go with it. good luck to you and your new world. :)
A thought does occurs to me... In the event of a TPK it could be possible to make note of where the players died, how they died and then when they roll new characters you could perhaps have the deaths of the previous party play a role in the new(or perhaps original plot, maybe the quest giver hired new adventurers after the old ones did not come back from their quest... assigning them the task of discovering the fate of their previous characters and the goal of finishing what they started.)
Sometimes when I mess up I just tell the party; "Hey I accidentally messed up, we're going to have to retcon it with x." Usually if you explain your mistakes your players are willing to go along with your nonsense.
Thanks, Matt, for your suggestions about correcting GM mistakes. Thus far, this has been the most helpful of your most interesting series. I'm a GM of 30 years, on and off, and I've discovered we GM our games in a very similar fashion. I was especially impressed with your suggestions for balancing out power from a magic item acquired by a character. Very creative and helpful ideas! Thank you for your devotion to your craft.
I once had hair that almost rivaled Mercer, even had an identical style... couldnt get a job until I cut it...
Roy Next time Ponytail or braid it.
Worked for me
Once had nice hair like this, but my job forces me to keep my hair short. I won't be able to have long hair again until I retire or get a new job. Sucks because females are aloud to have long hair at work, but we can't call gender discrimination due to the nature of the job.
And some people say men don't deal with sexism.
@@Goomba_Smash that's so shitty man hope you get the opportunity to grow it back
Matt’s sides to the camera are so funny! You can see the GM frustration shining through.
so.... fake it till you make it.... :P
We once had a minor encounter with some bandits, which led to a small bandit camp. was meant to be a fun diversion on the road to a bigger adventure. Luck RUINED the party. Managed to whittle down their forces to the leader and one lackey before TPKing. I had them wake up in an infirmary at a nearby Temple, where the Clerics told them they were rescued, but the leader got away. when the players continued to talk about wanting revenge, I decided to have the leader become a proper NPC. A half orc, gave him a name, and he became a recurring side antagonist. had some bandits or lackeys working in other locations. Eventually they came to find that the leader and the party shared an equal interest in taking out the Big Bad, and, when they finally got to the point of taking him down, the Paladin of the group, instead, offered him a chance at redemption. a persuasion roll later, and he agreed to join the party to fight the Big Bad, on the condition that he gain pardon, and given a chance to start again, not just left to restart on his own. (I believe a Cleric at a temple to the God of the Forge offered to take him in as an acolyte for his skills in fighting and smithing.)
was honestly a really memorable experience for the group. and I even occasionally make reference to the former bandit in other campaigns, just for fun.
Thank god for this episode. I have been running my first extended campaign over the past few weeks, and just gave out a new item to one member that I think is way too powerful. Mercer to save the day
Another possibility is that over time, some downside to magic item appears, e.g., it turns out that ring of invisibility you found is slowly corrupting you, and using it give away your location to a very nasty bad guy.
i think a good way to correct for an overly powerful item in the party
is to have it taken away by someone more powerful. if, as an extreme
example, you have a level 1 party with a holy avenger, that's not going
to stay a secret for long. eventually someone's going to recognise what
it is, and that information's going to make it's way back to (in this
instance) the Church, who immediately dispatch a unit of 10 lvl 20
Crusader Lords to find the party and retrieve the holy relic, so it can
be stored in the Church's reliquary for safekeeping
How many level 20 NPCs?
you are hands down the best DM i have seen...... your ability to adlib is insane
Man, did this come at a good time for me.
one of the things our DM did for the fighter in our party who had way too good of gear including a ring of regeneration which made in between combat encounters a bit silly ... even death didn't really effect him unless via some death spell or disintegration.
Solution? He found a suit of plate armor that as soon as he touched in the armory of Giants molded to his shape and put itself all around him, destroying everything he wore underneath in the process. It's still very powerful armor, but not near as powerful as he was before... it also is cursed and talks to him in his head to do evil things...which is a fun twist on the beefy fighter in the party.
Wow as I watch this more and more I find me and Matt are on like the same wavelength with our ideas. I know this is older so he had me beat, but holy god we use near the same wording in our videos. The uncanny near word for word part in this video around 3 minutes and in my first video I ever did, (Story Core Emoturnus) when explaining how to give clues and how to adapt is ridiculous. At the very least it is an honor to be so in sync on these issues. Keep up the good work.
I got bored once and gave the party a Deck of many things :(
Yessss
Aaaand, what happened?!
Everything.
TheSiggan
Many things
Jelke Ludolphij more like the deck of 20 things
I've found that when the PC's seem stuck on the story, they probably actually do have what you want... just pieced out between them. stopping and asking them, "okay, so what do guys think is happening here? what do you know?" and geeeently guide them into putting pieces together. Worked well when I was running Against the Cult of the Reptile God.
I've been given an orb early on by a GM that doubles the power of my fire spells.... I'm a sorcerer with a meta magic to turn any elemental ability into fire when i cast it... :) In his defence i was a much lower level at the time. I hope he's not watching this :P
When i was GM'ing once i'd given clues to an assassination plot on a religious leader. meanwhile i'd used an npc to conscripts one of the players to assassinate the same leader (because they said they were corrupt and working for the Empire to the north). A great scene played out where 2/3 of the gang protected the arch-paladin & arch-cleric only for the last member to bow-sniped the soon to be new arch-cleric [current one was v old] & legged it to freedom.
We actually had a court-case game a few weeks later when he got caught & they had to fake his execution to keep him alive.
About players misinterpreting clues: when we played Tomb of horror, there is a text somewhere telling a story, we managed to believe that the story was about how to beat the module so we over interpreted it in a way that made us miss traps and led us (almost) straight to the end. The GM was dying of laughter while we were trying to make sens of the text and how it was related to our surrounding. And all along the play session, we were telling ourselves how good we were and how we managed to overthink the module creator... Fun times!
Looking forward to Cursed Hand Cone of Clarity.
Can you guys PLEASE increase the volume of these videos before uploading? My pc is already on max volume and I can barely hear it! SPECIALLY when Mercer whispers for dramatic effect!
Rodrigo Quaresma Have no problem with them, double check TH-cam's video volume
Same, my volume is fine on this, about 45% (full disclosure I also use headphones)
I had to roughly double the volume on my external speakers compared to what I was using to listen to other videos with. And then my PC's occasional alert sounds, balanced for my normal volume level, practically knocked me out of my chair. So, yeah, either everyone else's youtube videos are balanced too loud, or this one's too quiet...
OMG, yes ty ty ty for these tips because as a newer DM I have made many of these mistakes and was at a loss how to fix them. One issue I have run into lately is revealing too much to the party by accident. So, yea, not fun as a DM to make that blunder and ruin the encounter.
Look I know these are all filmed in advance and no one will ever see this anyway, but I'd really appreciate a video on running an NPC as a party member.
Lego Insomniac You don't. You can thank me later
My advice is not to. The issue with a NPC as a party member is it can quickly become a dungeon master player character. Overshadowing the party and turning everyone else into the second string. Or a cheap excuse to magically put the party back on track. I could go on and on. But I assume your asking this because you are having these sort's of problems. Npc's need to be quest givers, temp party members or party members in need of protection from the party. They should never be equals if they are going to be staying around for a while. Any who that's my thoughts on it.
I'm pretty sure he's done one now. If not, Matthew Colvile has done one
If you have to have an NPC as a temp party member (and, as mentioned by others, that should be temporary at best) the best idea is to make them a support role (a healer or bard works well here, or maybe some types of wizard - but avoid damage cantrips!). Never let a temp party member be a major damage dealer in the party unless it's a temporary NPC along for one or two fights and the party has already had a few encounters to feel powerful. If your NPC is a Bless or Bardic Inspiration machine, though, the PCs can appreciate their intervention as they take the primary role of winning the day.
Years later this is still helpful
Fixing mistakes is one thing, but if you're too benevolent towards your party they'll start expecting you to always have someone around to save them.
It even happened to me when I had a planned encounter with an NPC turn into my players interpreting it as a direct message from the DM, and that's despite the fact that I *_never_* do such things. If you set it up as an expectation, you won't be taken seriously ever again.
A TPK was a real possibility in our 4th edition game. My players, fun as they are, aren't really... great at tactical thinking. I kind of have to play blindfolded and concussed for them to stand a chance, and in one fight against duergar they were about to die. So how did I fix it? I could've lied about my rolls, make most of the attacks miss by fiat, introduced an NPC to save them, gone the deus ex machina route. What did I do instead?
I told my players which actions would let them get out of the fight alive if all went well. Instead of the fighter going down in a blaze of useless glory, I explained five steps that'd let them survive the encounter. And then I rolled my dice and I didn't lie about the results, not once. Everybody survived, battered to shit but still alive.
I personally think this is a better way of intervening than poofing Rescue McSavesyouall into existence in the other room with his Concord-made iWin bow (EVE online joke, kids). It's obviously DM intervention, there's no escaping it, but at least _they_ got themselves out of it with their own rolls. Plus it doesn't create sudden characters who'll be expected to stick around and unbalance the game further or potentially uninteresting diversions like almost dying to one enemy only to almost die to a one-armed wampa. Goddamn I'm old.
one thing i do in my current game is giving them a failsave option upon death.
since they are currently (more or less volentarily) working for a lich and bound to him by magic when they die they can choose to deepen the pakt, getting revived with some Hp and the next time they rest they get a random mutation ^^ those can be helpfull (one of my mages got bone plates giving him +1 AC) others are more cosmetical (our elf has unrestricted joints) but some can be pretty changeing for the char (things like permanently loosing mental stats due to a shrinking skull and so on) and of course they can allways choose NOT to take the deal and die ^^ ...or come up with other interessting solutions (one of my players is currently playing a animated skull (... and not even his own skull) and is looking to learn necromancy to build himself a new body)
this lessens the impact of charakter death but is still a risk and is still problematic for most of them on a roleplay level. (funnyly enough the one PC that would be fine with getting more evil is the one that never dies...)
EdwardHowton I always build my encounters for the party. And although that means they are rather fit for the job, it also means they have to think before, while and after the encounter. When they don't (and/or they lose confidence, either in me or themselves), they lose (or get very close to).
In such situations, I always do as you said. But I have an "achievements" system to reward some actions other than spilling blood. One of the achievements (and the only bad one) is called "miraculous". I give it to players after an encounter in which they needed "DM intervention" and they lose a little XP. Only enough to bother them so they take the lessons and tips more seriously.
Drakonyan Azkar I really like that idea. It's kind of like the 5E inspiration system on overdrive.
***** Well, this is the achievement system I use, in case you're interested. It's all in Portuguese, but it shouldn't be hard to translate.
docs.google.com/document/d/1jd_7t9tHRFU3Ahx8jMUN7cb2yOexl5DuonvEV9pz_gM/edit?usp=sharing
It's for D&D 3.5, BTW. (Works well for Pathfinder, of course)
Top Gallant
sadly no...
in my current game i droped some major hints about an upcomming ambush... and jet they still ran right into it. at least both warriors did while the casters were hesitant. aka the party was split and the squishy-ish csters were open to attack while the warris were surrounded.
there was NOTHING more i could have done without taking controll away from my players.
and they even failed the easy-ish checks to spot the ambush i gave them even though they ran blindely instead of advancing carefully...
funnily enough the only char who survived it without needing a demonic pakt reurrection was the DD mage ^^ even the healer died
Matt you are the literal reason i got more into d and d and dms like you are the reson why amazing rpg games are fun
Wow- we had a stall due to my lack of innovation and our plot turned cause my players weren't picking up my hints in a dungeon (finding the prisoners, etc) and we stalled and stopped for the night (a first in our campaign). I was crushed that I had failed.
Thank you Matt, you've helped me brainstorm a way around this.
I can't thank you enough.
Geek and Sundry is litreally my favourite youtube channel. You deserve the diamond play button more that anyone!!!
in our pathfinder game our gm accidentally put us up against a paladin of a slavery god we were supposed to lose to, our druid flattened him, later it turns out he's been "killed" multiple times, now we are all shit scared of him D:>
My biggest mistake my first time DMing was saying straight out what the ultimate villain would be. While the campaign never actually got the point of fighting it, one member of the party used that meta-knowledge to tool their character towards countering the villain's abilities. I hadn't really considered at the time customizing it, but now, I see it was a simple solution.
That, and being too quick to say 'No' when a player misinterpreted something I said and asked if it was some other, more interesting idea that worked just as well as what I had in mind.
There were other mistakes made along the way, but those were my biggest bugbears, and that campaign was definitely one big learning experience.
Brilliant. Never realized how much a story can change no matter how adaptable I initially think it is. You can't predict 100% what the players want to do. Missed an excellent quest when the main PC who was crucial to the event but the thing was that he drank quite a bid and he... grabbed a bottle of liquor and wandered drunkenly out of the room...
Also one thing I did was give them all prophetic dreams granted by a magic user.
I'm becoming eerily certain that you are watching my games. every video has fixed a mistake I've made in the past, or given hints that I desperately needed because of the game before! thank you Matt!
The nice thing about running low fantasy settings is that balance against the players is never really a challenge, it's trying to keep the monster in the box for as long as possible so that you can generate genuine feelings of creepiness and amazement at supernatural things. I am always happy when I can make a player freaked out by an event that would be excused as a level 0 wizard spell in normal D&D.
One time I was planning to do a big survival session after the PC's ship had wrecked. Miles of treacherous forest and mountains separated the PC from the next safe settlement. A player was searching some crates and barrels that had washed up the shore, and found some dumb stuff (rope, lamp oil, rum...), and he asked "Do I find some food?". Of course, in my mind I was screaming "Hell no, I'm gonna make you BEG for food while in that forest", but my dumb mouth said "yeah, 5 days rations".
After a mental facepalm, I persuaded the players to set up camp at the edge of the forest, and luckily for me, they forgot to set up guard duties. Next day, their equipment had been rummaged through and through, and not one gram of food was left. They tracked the beast responsible, and eventually reached a monkey shrine where they found a Monkey's Paw.
Mental self high-five.
Love your videos. I think my favorite story about an almost accidental TPK due to crappy dice rolls. I had a small side quest built in as a way to get players thinking of things and do a loot dump for some of them. I had a NPC girl come up to one of them asking for help. This PC was a knight following a god who had "help those in need" as a prime directive and wore the gods symbol emblazoned on his breastplate/cloak.
So they follow this girl who's family had been attacked and they find a guy sitting over a couple of empty bottles. the 5 level 5 NPC's attack this guy after he threw a shuriken and crit, one shotting the NPC girl. Come to find out this guy is a lvl 4 monk. The funny part is that every single player rolled a 10 or below on almost every single attack roll vs a monk that had about 10 rounds to drink potions and and prepare for them. They won but by the time they killed the 1 monk 2 of them were knocked out and another was nearly down. The only person who was ok was the rogue and the ranger. The ranger, who immediately after the battle shot an arrow at a giant vulture circling over head, sparking a second battle.
There was some dice fudging but man was it fun.
I think my favorite example of a mistake turned into a great plot point was a Dungeon World game I ran where the character who was merely supposed to be the cocky rival turned into the new arc villain. I was having them all meet in the guild, where he taunted my PCs' party as a crowd of screaming fans cheered him on, but I took the roleplaying too far and had him viciously insult the team's favorite PC, a dopey but purehearted cyclops-human. They proceeded to spend half a session pranking and basically tormenting the rival character until he became so irritated by them he tried to overtake the hub town and destroy them. It was a train wreck, I loved it.
Example of overpowered item, my GM accidentally gave the warlock the Wand of Orcus. We're 7th level.
Yeah this might be a good time for them to reveal how cursed it really is.
how does a GM accidentally give away something like this? did he roll randomly or something? I just refuse to give things like that at lower levels. I think he did it on purpose. im sure he was amused.
The part with the magical items really helped me as GM - Thank you!
Literally only here to listen and stare at Matt...
This was very inspiring. Matt is clearly a very good, and very dedicated GM, and I feel that I have a lot to learn, but that I can learn a lot from him.
Keep up the good work, Matt (assuming you happen to see this, which I doubt)
Thanks for such a great series, Matt! I'm GM-ing my first campaign soon and having access to advice from my favorite DM is pretty rad!
"In which case, haha!"
Seriously the best advice yet, this is what they mean when they say "roll with it".
Such a cool series. Makes me want to do D&D like I used to. I wish I had nerd friends, everyone I know is too cool for D&D. )-':
Torgo or maybe they are NOT cool enough for dnd
+LukeMaster118: well put!
Try an online game maybe Torgo? Or, start your friends on a' gateway' homebrew campaign, and do a d&d one after.
Don't give up on your D&D dreams! :) (d&dreams ;) )
Hell, if there were enough people and someone willing to DM (I'm just too damn rusty), I'd play in an AD&D game over Skype video.
lots of people do it through webcam nowadays.
I wasn't sure how powerful my encounter was going to be for a new party so I had the enemies set to arrive in waves, if the first wave was more powerful than I expected then that'd be it, if the party wrecked that wave in no time at all then I had more powerful foes ready to step in. (As it happens, the former was the case).
The objectively best course of action if you give someone an item that is too powerful is to kill the entire party and make them play as the people who has to clean up the corpses.
So their new chars can loot the OP item and get massacred too, perpetuating the cycle of blood that feeds the item's ever growing strength and malice!
Poldovico
You get it. Good..
or you could kill the party and then have them loot the bodies however the item is missing and then you can later have a lead onto what happened to it and make it into a quest.
deamongimli
Who is looting the bodies? and how do they even know that there was an item?
Apples Malus In the scenario those looting the bodies would have some link to the party. For instance their old bartender friend or someone who was supposed to meet with them sends a group to look for them and that group finds and loots the bodies and return to the bartender who comments on how this extra-ordinary item was missing but nothing else. That is just one way to handle it at least. Also this way the new party need only have a way of becoming employed or whatever by the bartender and don't necessarily need to have any link whatsoever to the now dead party.
My very first game of DnD, our DM had a bunch of homebrew magic items they came up with, and really thought were cool. Their mistake, was then giving enough of them to the party within the first session, that every member had 3 magic items in the first session. My Rogue had 2 daggers, and another passive item, all with made it so my character would, at minimum, deal 18 damage in worst case scenarios
Thank you so much, I just gave one of my PCS an antimatter rifle and I did not realize just how much damage it did
I sometimes just have NPCs just break the fourth wall. Or sometimes I trust the players with information their characters don't know. Whatever. Semi-satirical games, woo.
What you said that sticks out to me is "Obvious clues to you may not be obvious to the player because you already have all of the information." My DM was trying to point us in the direction of a spy against their country, but the only clue he gave us until he had to throw in a different clue was in the spy's name. But we had no reason to suspect or distrust the NPC because she wasn't really doing much to the party. She was pretty much "out of sight, out of mind" but he later mentioned to me that he thought the spy reveal was obvious because her name was Lyra. "Lyra" because she "lies". I didn't think to tell him it was obvious to him because the story is in his head already, because all I could think of was that I had met a very kind Lyra in a game before that and that was part of why this Lyra didn't seem out of sorts.
Critical Role spoiler warning. Was the flying carpet an example of overpowered item that had to be taken away from the party?
No Matt thought Grog had it in his bag of holding but Tiberius had taken it
Ethan Palmer Not that. A couple of episodes later the carpet *spoiler* falls into a pit of acid and loses the ability to fly.
Giby86 I know
+Ethan Palmer uhm, so why did you reply with that?...
Matt has said in a few Q&As that he liked the party having the carpet, since it generally made transportation so much easier.
I'm currently DMing my first story and during our second session, the party was able to chose a weapon from the local armory. I messed up and did not realize that ANY weapon that is +1 is magical and supposed to be rare. So, I set it up that this town receives their arms from the capital city in the kingdom, where an amazing blacksmith makes quality weapons and armor for most of the kingdom. Then I reduced their item attainment. I did get creative with this NPC skills. One of my PC's is rolling a Paladin and asked for a custom piece of armor with his deity's symbol engraves across the whole chest. Making him pay out of the nose, the plate armor moved seamlessly(no disadvantage on stealth, Only with heavy armor proficiency) and had "the symbol feel warm around his body. After attunement, he learned that his deity was able to be channeled slightly through the crest of the armor allowing for a more focused connection. (+1 to spells dealing radiant damage, only with HIS deity) Item creation IS SO FUN.
One mistake people make all the time, way to many wristbands
colin kuykendall
One mistake people make all the time, "to" instead of "too".
A good way to make sure items are balanced is if you’re worried about if it’s going to be under or overpowered add a little carving into it. If the power is too much, make it a curse. Too little, a blessing, just right, a plot clue.
another Gmmm.. Tips XD
I gave one of my players a mark, which basically gives +5 des and str. I needed an excuse to make a downgrade and your tips was very good. Ty Matt.
Once my players in an encounter faced a guy with a really powerful flaming magical sword, and at the end of the fight, after teaming up against the ennemy, one player went and picked up the sword. The whole party was level 3.
I quickly realized that the sword would be too powerful for the balance of the party and when the player grabbed the sword, the flames disappeared. The player who picked up was a sorcerer, so he knew a bit about magic, so it made sense that he understood what was happenning to the sword; I explained that the sword was almost sentient and that it was to grow stronger the more the player used it, as the sword was getting used to the player himself and his fightning style.
So every time they level up, the sword becomes a bit stronger, I think it's a good way to balance a magic item, and it was my first time DM'ing D&D, and all of the player's first time playing D&D, and I think it gave them better expectation for loot than juste a few copper coins and an unknown potion.
One thing you mentioned that I particularly like is to convert any TPKs into the party being captured and thrown into a dungeon (or something.) Escaping from that situation can provide another totally different adventure.
I haven't been a GM all that much but one thing I did is to essentially never permanently kill a PC except in the case of extreme stupidity. If they are fighting at the top of a cliff, and the dice conspire to make them fall off through no fault of their own, I will generally find a way to save them (perhaps with bad consequences.) If they are on the top of the same cliff, and jump off of their own free will, they're going to die.
for the magic item thing, an interesting way to improve it (depending on the exact situation) is say something like "as you leave the tower, the [magic item name] appears to glow slightly less" and on a successful check, you say "it appears the tower (or dungeon, or cave, or wherever they found it) was connected to the item to boost its power while it was within its walls"
If the players start chasing the 'wrong' plot, and have ideas that are leading them away from your planned plot, resist the urge to just nudge them harder in the 'right' direction. Consider altering your plot first, or creating a new smaller plot to reward their inventiveness. Especially if this is a problem you are trying to address between sessions, you can usually find a way to both have your story and also let the dog have its bone, so to speak. Even if for the players it turns out to just be an interesting side quest that leads to more questions than answers, they will appreciate the openness of the world, and it will feel bigger and more responsive as a result.
It's rather amusing that the HCoC which tends to be a thorn in Matt's side ended up in the hands of Sam's character when it's Sam who is also a bit of a thorn in his side. Partially due to said cone, but also from things like the amazing Matt print shirt from episode seventy-seven.
I may or may not have had an auction in my campaign where I was auctioning off magic items and that included an instant fortress. I thought I had made sure my party couldn't afford it so the BBEG's second in command could buy it in front of them and it would be a fun little reveal... instead, I had completely forgotten that the rogue had stolen tons of money the week prior and now my party has an instant castle that is also essentially a grenade. My fix is going to be that all the items sold by the auctioneer were faulty and he was a scam artist that the party will have to track down if they want to get their money back, but hoo boy I am not looking forward to watching enemies get one shot by having a castle dropped on them.