the best encounter I ever DMd in 10 years was a party of lvl 1 PCs versus three times the recommended number of gnolls and an EFFING TROLL, but then also telling them "anything goes, I'll rule everything in your favor within reason" and they proceded to spend everything they had on the gnolls, dig a pit for the troll (they knew it was coming), luring it into it, since it's stupid, and dropping a crapton of alchemist fires on it. It was glorious.
Ngl I like my screen. I like to build suspense and I think a fun aspect to the game is trying to keep a straight face when I roll and know the outcome to something everyone's waiting for. Then I can describe it in story. If a roll is crazy I move my hands away from my screen, tell what happens and as I get to the pinnacle of the description, move the screen to reveal the roll. Idk I think it adds something but to each their own :)
Quartershots is more my speed. I'm afraid to try and run one of those huge book premade adventures because no amount of text is going to cover the creativity of the players - and I can make things up just fine. What I actually need is less, not more. Outline only.
My DM screen is to hide the fact that I'm not taking notes about the 40 minute planning discussion about how to fight the one goblin in the room and I'm actually just doodling a little goblin getting hit by an axe. They must never know.
I am DMing some Pathfinder 2 adventures and they are pretty good and streamlined. I can easy find whatever information I need, there is no overbloated text sections and ideas and description is overall pretty good
The main reason I clicked on this is because I saw legos in the thumbnail. This didn't turn out to be what I expected (a gripe that 5E's options aren't good choices). I think it's an interesting idea not allowing players to see most mechanics/numbers when they create characters, or even after. HOWEVER. Even though you change the way players approach the game, it doesn't eliminate the fact that the DM has to manage characters, too. The DM probably shouldn't be min-maxing the hardest possible opponents, but the game would run smoother if the DM had the ability to fall back on a character build when a NPC unexpectedly becomes more important.
10:05 Me, answering the player that wanted to buy potions at the shop before being caught: "Yes, and you did it. Tell me how much money you've spent and what potions you've bought." Also me, after he described that to me: "Back to present time, you feel like it might not have been a good ideia, as you watch the enemies now have all your potions. And spare money." As the Joker once said, very poor choice of words, my good player.
Amazing!! That go exacly how I see exploration: point and click adventure games! The way you explained makes it so easy to visualize now. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I just keep a smart list of rules in my note taking app. I don't recall what that spell does or how much damage or what the area of effect is? I just look it up. It took forever for me to do it. But I have all of that stuff directly in the notes app I use to keep track of the game as a whole. All my pictures, maps, sounds, music, character notes, encounter notes and everything exist in a single file and all of it is searchable.
You made a really good recommendation in another video that I wanted to come back to but I couldn't remember your username. I did, however, remember your attitude so I just searched for "I fixed D&D". Found you straight away.
I love your 'crossbow' analogy. for me this hits the right spot. But my conclusion about why most character builds in D&D suck is a slightly different. Dungeons and Dragons is mainly a tactical dungeon crawler where they slap a little bit of character play on to it, for just a tiny bit of flavor. Its focus as a dungeon crawler ist on combat-solution (kill any tthing), trap-solution (find, disarm or place dangers) and seduction-solution (persuade to win, baby!!!). This gets more dire when you look at the options the playerhandbook hands to you, because its main focus is combat-solution: - classes = 80% combat-solution - feats = 80% combat-solution - spells = 80% combat-solution Its maybe say's that you can do creative things like combine the leg of a chair with a curtain and try to scare the wild animal with your improvised torch... but some chapter in to the book you will see that you dont have as much creative options to begin with, because rules say other wise! And this is a problem with all D&D editions i know. Sure you can trow out all rules and say "I play like i wish to play!!!" but the common player readys the book and decide 'crossbow' is its default action, because combat-solution feels like the only valid and intendet option. The game frames its self as such... at least... in its heart it is still a dungeon crawler with a little bit charakter play sprincelt on to, it for some flavor... ;P P.S.: And bigger more complex systems with restrictions per skills are not the problem of this. in shadowrun 4A you can not do alot without the right skills, but the skills show you more solutions then only combat to a problem and frames its self so the player can feel like they have moer valid options beside picking up the crossbow.... in that game i saw more player creativity then i ever did with D&D. :( [edit] The framing is the importent part, because it can softlock your minde in to a specific path of thinking...
I tried to run a duo session with my gf from one of these. I was so confused. I was like ... Why do i need to prep to make these make any fucking sense and have any kind of flow? They describe a room for an entire page but a characters personality is like "He likes snakes, he dsn't like taxes". LIKE WTF!? So i'm just going full original story, cuz i ain't taking my time doing this if i can just make it from my own head which i remember easier as well.
I started my first dnd campaign less than a week ago. It's a pmd homebrew campaign and I chose to be a fathomless warlock butterfree that does nothing but *W A T E R*. The dm apparently liked it so much that he created water-based puzzles for me and I'm pretty sure the plot is based on warlock patrons not responding to their warlocks anymore. My build is barely optimized and I love it.
