A first-time DM providing tips for other first time DMs and players of the world most popular tabletop roleplaying game. Also discuss all things D&D related!
Thanks! D&D is great for use in therapy! One of the people I used to play with did her thesis for just that! There are so many ways to use it - to help bring quiet people out of their shell, to encourage collaboration, to just help “outcasts” find a social group and at least for my table everyone is welcome no matter differences in race, neurodiversity status, sexual orientation, gender etc. hopefully your wife succeeds! Would love to hear more!
Re: 1st vs. 3rd person. It helps to go back and forth. When your character is doing heroic things, I prefer 1st person. (“I slay the dragon and save the princess!”) But when my character does less-than-heroic things, it can feel better to speak in 3rd person. (“Gil the Rogue sneaks in to the kings chambers and poisons his water before stealing the ring of orc command.”)
If a player has been consistently not paying attention and asks for another recap, my answer is, "No, if you're not paying attention, neither is your character. You spend this round looking around confused. Who's next for initiative?"
That is definitely one way to handle it. I would make exceptions for players that have special needs though but I do like this approach especially of it has been over and over.
If you're disrupting the game and your go-to response is "I'm just role-playing my character" then you need to rethink the character and-or the way you role-play them.
Absolutely! Great comment! That’s what my character would do is nor acceptable if it disrupts the game. One reason I have two house rules - no pvp and all loot is group loot.
For Wild Shape, if we take the wording from the playtest, you should be able to max out your Temp HP every round. When you are in Wild Shape you maintain all of your class features which includes Wild Shape so at the beginning of your turn you use your bonus action to Wild Shape into a different animal (or a different version of that same animal) and that will trigger the granting of temp hp (3 x Druid level). If you are out of uses of Wild Shape you can burn a spell slot to grant you an additional use, no action required, so you still have your bonus action to trigger the Wild Shape and your action to attack. Now enemies will have to burn through your temp HP before they get to your HP pool.
We will have to see how the actual wording is in the new PHB - may have to drop the shape first and I can’t remember off top of my head how that works but you may be 100% right about maxing out temp HP
Rich, a question / suggestion - have you tried other game systems except 5e? I'm curious about your opinion on Daggerheart and DC20 in particular. The latter is generally praised among other TTRPG bloggers and few mechanics from it seems quite curious (and possibly usable in 5e :) )
I have watched daggerheart but not played it but do love some of the things they do. Have not tried DC20 but if it matches the hype it may be as close to a perfect system there is
overall, i think that how ppl met the changes was how computer game's players think about mods in games - you either expect the game itself to be 100% ready and fresh and new and stuff (and do not want to use any mods to better your experience) or you use the game as a source for your own inspiration and "mod" it to better suit your preferences. For me it seems that wotc were on a crunch deadline (10y anniversary) and also decided to play it safe. They market the 2024 version as compatible with 2014 version. Basically it's 5.5e, Tascha v2. Because why would they do it otherwise - OneDnd is coming (maybe, someday). I think that ppl will play with 2024v for few months, tweak this and that and the game will be played for most ppl with like at least 50% of its mechanics homebrewed. Honestly, i'm ok with that.
This is one dnd. I think going forward we won’t see versions anymore (wotc has said as much) so we can see new rules with the year as the divider. I don’t think they rushed it and they did take the playtest feedback seriously, just think some things like the Ranger fell through the cracks due to layoff and then it got rushed due to deadlines. By keeping pretty much everything as it was and improving the glaring things this “version” will be better with homebrew to fix the issues (ranger etc) along with fixes in the books to come as they always do. Thanks as always for the comment! Hope all is well!
That is how most people play 5e now. Just look at the number and success of 5e 3rd party content creators. One DnD was the name they gave the playtest for 2024v/ 5.5. Sure, they backed off on some major changes after the OGL scandal but who's to say that was because of that or from the survey results they received.
How did your one shot go? As for VTTs I have only played online a few times and I wasn’t a fan. My dice rolls were bad and RP was tough because we were only doing voice chat not video. We did those games over fantasy grounds. I did like how the DM was able to run the game and how everything was added automatically to dice rolls. Best of luck with the next one shot!
Hi, Rich! Thank you for the video, especially for the book recommendations. Will checkout some of them in future. Do you ever play DnD via VTT? Can you give similar list of useful platforms for online games? I completed the first ever game few months ago and now preeparing for a one-shot with randoms online (as it is the only way i can play, unfortunately). Found an amazing one-shot on arcane library and am going to use roll20 as a platform. But ultimately want to move my games to Talespire (check them out, they are amazing) Seems alright at the moment.
it's a crying shame that the simplest, most basic blunders can just completely turn people off of running games altogether, seen a couple instances of that happening. good job on the breakdowns. also, ive just noticed that peanut doll. love me some dunham.
Rich, thank you for the video. Just exactly what I was looking for :) Will have the very first game today and spent good 10h+ already prepping. Its more of a general idea on what to do than a real scenario, but will work all the same (I hope). Hope in time it will take me less hours to do such a task. My ADHD mind requires to create something HUGE with every big project I'm working on so spending a lot of time on details even though that may not be even be seen or used ^.^ Anyway, thank you for the video and your tips. Helpful as always. Wrote down some of your advices to use in the future. (and thanks for the Dungeon Alchemist!)
Good luck! Let me know how it goes! And hopefully in time prep takes you less and less time. With something like ADHD it can make it difficult at times but you will figure out what works for you!
Hi, Rich! Thank you for great advices as always! Im so thankful that you made a video out of my suggestion and even shout out me <3 I actually found the action counter method very helpful. Will be using it with the XP book method as well to calculate the best version of the encounter. Basically double down it. It kind of not clear on which parts of abilities to focus (like when u spoke about troll) when scaling - what is too much or too little to give to a monster but i guess it will come with experience :) I bought the starter edition with premade chars and adventure. Will give my two players a choice to pick their character and will scale down the amount of enemies. For instance make it not 4 goblins but maybe 3 or even 2. Honeslty speaking, I so much enjoy your videos. Will surely write you after will complete the first game and let you know about my experience 😅
Few suggestions for future videos: 1. Maps. How to create them or what is a nice place to get them and how often should i be using them 2. Music and other immersive experience - what are you using and if using at all 3. Something else - honeslty forgot 😂 Please keep making this content! Ps It would be great if you ll do something about your microphone - it was too quiet this time :(
Thanks for watching. Glad it was helpful! Yeah deciding what to scale up or down is dependent on what you want the players to experience so it is case by case. The starter edition is great and going from 4 goblins to 2 is perfect!
I will be coming out with a video about the houserules I have in my game - they are some of the usual stuff, potions as a bonus etc. as for guidelines i will definitely cover that in the house rules video! Thanks for the comment and the ideas!
Rich, thank you for honestly great advices! I'm loving your content. My wife suggested to play the very first game with her and our relative, so i'm super pumped and excited and nervous too of how this is going to work out. As a suggestion - can you maybe do a video about how to scale the game down or up depending on the number of players / their classes / their experience ? For instance, i want to start with a premade one-shot with premade characters although im not quite sure which to pick. And probably will have only two players for the very first game. Any advice on how to scale the experience for them? Im talking about how many monsters there should be, what items they should be having, should my npc give them free potions of healing at the start etc Both never played dnd and i'm kinda afraid to tpk the very first game 😂 P.s. I'm the guy who's reading the DM guidebook from the comment under previous video :)
Thanks for the great comment and suggestion about scaling (i will do a video on that in the future). As for your first session and scaling what is key to look at is action economy. If your players can make 3 attacks total the closer to three attacks from the enemies the more balanced it may be (depending on magic items etc). Damage output and hp is also something to look at - too high damage output can end in a tpk quickly and too high Hp can result in the encounter lasting too long. With only two players if one drops to 0 it will be too tough for the other (the death spiral). So for your first one try to balance the action economy and remove any extra enemies that could make it tough. Good luck and let me know how it goes!
@@RichtheFirst-TimeDM right after i posted this, read in the dm book that they suggest to use monsters xp as a guide on the difficulty. Sound like a good system (on paper). Basically, you need to add total party xp points based on their level and preferred difficulty (threshold), then add total monster xp that party can gain and add multiplier to that. Comparing both numbers will give you an understanding of difficulty of the encounter for members
That is a good place to start however it does not take into account magic items, feats, special abilities of the party (this is why CR - challenge rating - is broken in D&D). So once you do what the book suggests you should still look at action economy/damage output etc to further fine tune the encounter otherwise your party may curbstomp the enemies (which can be fun for the party) or worse the enemies curbstomp the party.
good video. another recommendation if i may: modules for first time dms. i noticed your bookshelf, you could review Lost Mine of Phandelver or Waterdeep Dragon Heist. maybe even some older stuff like Murder in Baldur's Gate, i cant praise that one enough.
Thanks again for another great comment and recommendation! As for the books i have never run a module (only done homebrew) but i have played in a few. But i could read the adventures and review them based on how they are for a first time dm compared to a veteran dm!
That's actually a great advice, thank you. I'm prepping for the first rime ever DMing and currently reading the official DM guide. And what ive gathered ist that it will take me half a year to prep the game at least 😂 My friend though pointed that i should just run a one shot and see how it goes. Anyway, subbed to your channel
Running a one-shot first is a great way to get your feet wet! And I know you were joking but prep time will be different for everyone. Thanks for the sub and let me know how your first game goes! Good luck!
