Bad Guys! | Running the Game 

silly Mathew. everyone knows that when you can't decide between goblins or undead, just make them undead goblins

"For instance, I often have bad guys resurrect dead good guys. They HATE that!" *menacingly-self-satisfied DM stare* hilarious

"steal from stuff no one has ever heard of, and you are a genius" SO TRUE

"As DMs we're only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from" HAHA! Brilliant. Couldn't agree more ;)

"Floating across the floor towards the inkeep as though the act of walking itself was beneath him" That is one of the best description of a characters gate I've read in a long time. You get a clear picture not only how he moves but his personality within his movement.

"Well that's the end of the video." *Video carries on for another 10 minutes* Fucking hell Matt haha

Hi Matthew, At the age of 30, I just got home from playing my first ever D&D session this evening. I never would have sought out a place to play without these videos.

"I've made this channel because I want more people to run D&D" Well you certainly succeeded among my small group of friends.

I still come back to watch this intro when I want inspiration for DMing. There's so much great stuff to unpack there!

"steal from stuff no one has ever heard of, and you are a genius" I'm stealing that idea about stealing wizards. It's genius.

Man that introduction to that villain had me hooked. I've just found your channel but that opening alone shows your skill as a storyteller you have earned a subscriber.

While I'm commenting on your videos, I should say here that your introduction of Caloril in this video is a paragon of narration, applicable well outside the RPG context. I played the first 5 minutes of this to my s/o, who doesn't game at all, but who is a performer... she was absolutely hooked.

I dont even play D&D, I just love listening to this man.

"The betrayed and the betrayer chasing each other across universes." Is that a Dark Tower reference by any chance?

"I didn't want the video to get too long." at 22 minutes, with 8 minutes left in the video. Classic Colville! :D I, for one, love the long videos. Wouldn't mind an hour a day! \o/

had my players have to leave a falling base in a grand war in the region. they had to escort a couple of capsules to a hidden location behind the enemy lines. the had to sneak through front lines and through some enemy controlled terrain. when they arrived at the hidden base, they found out they brought will destroy everything in the area. everything allies, enemy, innocents, everything. " wait, we're the bad guys?" was the greatest thing ive heard on my table. the party have foiled the plans, and are now fleeing through enemy controlled territory, seeking out allies, but can trust anyone.. Super fun!! Great videos!. only find them recently, ergo commenting on a 7 year old video.

I propose for next topic: How to improvise without players noticing

If Phil feels his warlock is underpowered, you may wish to tell him, if he is unaware, that warlocks get all their spell slots back on a _short_ rest, unlike the other classes. One of my players didn't realize this until recently. Other than that, I don't really know much about warlocks. I do know that my warlock player usually deals lots of damage with AoE spells, and he also has an invocation that lets him add his charisma modifier to his eldritch blast damage. He seems pretty effective.

Also having the heros meet the big-bad early on sets it up so later the big-bad can deliver classic dialogue. " I knew I should have killed you " ; or after fighting after an all out battle that the heros could not have actually won against the higher level big-bad, he or she might be impressed with them and try and recruit them ( or one of them ) " You fought well , join me ... "

My art professors championed a quote: "Good art is made, great art is stolen" And here I am, a massive fan of vaporwave

When my friends and I started playing in high school, we totally didn't know the rules. We were using the 2nd edition books one of us found in his attic with a 3rd edition module someone picked up, and it was an absolute blast.

As me being a non native, self taught, not perfect at all English speaker I have you say that, even talking as fast as a gatling gun, Matthew has one of the most perfectly comprehensible English I've ever heard. Thanks for the content in general and for this video in particular, this has helped me SO much to develop my first big campaign as a DM.

Man, been 25 years since I read the Belgariad! Forgot about the cursed Murgo gold! Thank you for making me feel old. LOL

"steal from stuff that no one knows about, and your a genius." is totally my ethos.

I use the Cheshire Cat as my go-to example for True Neutral.

For fallen heroes like Domnall and Lady Sariel, have you considered having them be aware of what's going on but powerless to stop it while the evil version of them is in control? For example, Lady Sariel's soul could still be in her body despite being undead, and Caloril the Vile just made an evil copy of it and forced it into her body. It would be an "And I Must Scream" scenario of sorts, although it might not be readily apparent to the players until Graves tries to read her mind.

Ugh dude! I can't wait to see a full session of D&D where you DM! You're such a good story tell I wish I was there watching or playing your campaign!

As soon as I heard "red gold" I immediately thought of the Belgariad! This is wonderful. I'm enjoying your videos so much, and as a noob player and even more noob DM I'm finding them so incredibly insightful and helpful. Thank you so much for making them :)

HE DID THE EPISODE ON KEEPING TIME! IT TOOK A YEAR, BUT HE DID IT. I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M YELLING!

If you put this on 0.5 speed he sounds drunk xD

Phil (?) will likely have received Warlock advice by this point, but if I may, I suggest the following: My Warlock builds are almost exclusively Blade Pact builds. A Blade Pact Warlock is never disarmed, and with the right Invocations, always ready. All that's required is taking the right Patron and spell choice to maximize your ability to get in and out of combat. Pact Weapon, Thirsting Blade, Armor of Shadows, and Agonizing Blast would be my 5th level choice. Add the Tough feat, and you have essentially a Fighter, but with built in magical armor, a magical melee weapon they cannot lose, and a ranged weapon in the form of Eldritch Blast+Hex. Since Phil has an...owl...? ...He has Find Familiar and is obviously a Chain Pact (unless he has the Magic Initiate, or Ritual Caster feats, or learned the spell as part of being a Tome Pact Warlock with the right Invocation...yeah...this can be confusing). If he is a Chain Pact, he deserves a better familiar, as they are allowed an Imp, Quasit, Psuedodragon, or Sprite. In any regard, it's important to pick the right Invocations to match spell choice or play style. Devil's Sight (invocation) partnered with the Darkness spell works well. Hold Person to a Bladelock is basically pre-arranged murder. Blindness/Deafness matched with Hex (Wisdom) could render a foe in a bad way, as one sense is gone and the other is at Disadvantage to detect your presence. B/D is not a concentration spell, allowing Hex to work. Any Pact Warlock can take advantage of this. Phil could really maximize his Familiar by using it to deliver touch-based spells like Vampiric Touch. Eldritch Blast as a cantrip cannot be overstated, especially when paired with the Hex Spell. Agonizing Blast as an Invocation turns this combo into great damage generation, because each beam of the Blast will do 1d10+1d6+Charisma Mod. At 5th level, that means twice that potential. It gets even moreso from there. There are other Invocations for this Cantrip that extend range or create knockback - which can be brutal when knocking guard off high castle walls. Dropping Hunger of Hadar over an area that has a simple Grease spell can be brutal. Really, it comes down to how Phil looks at his playstyle and how he wants to engage his foes. Everyone has a preference. Since he's a Great Old One pact, using more of the bonus Pact spells might be useful, as they create fear, confusion and madness. Using his Patron as an inspiration, generating this kind of chaos among his foes might be not only thematic, but effective.

Your storytelling is just .... Enthralling ! Playing D & D with you as the DM must be the most amazing thing ever

OMG I love the idea of someone else running a bad guy off-screen in your campaign. That's something I'm definitely going to employ.

Along with Tolkien, it was the Belgariad that got me into fantasy fiction!

I wonder if Bogan Redcap ever takes a lesson from the Dread Pirate Robert's, and passes on the hat so they can retire from villainy.

"It's the promise of a Reward that motivates the evil character." I get something new everytime I watch this video!

As someone who likes the long videos, I'm super happy to see you haven't reduced the length yet.

Advice for Phil: eldritch blaaäst!

I just ran this inn scenario for my players for a one-off since a few of the group couldn’t make it. One of the best scenarios I’ve ever ran, can’t that you enough for the idea!

Great stuff, although I prefer the term 'Misunderstood Guy' to 'Bad Guy'. Just to share, in one of my games I made the recurring villain the identical twin brother of the wizard PC. This inevitably created a lot of headaches for the party because whenever they came across surviving victims of the evil wizard's nefarious handiwork they would frequently mistake the wizard PC for his evil sibling and be blamed for his deeds as his accomplices. To make matters worse, because of a somewhat convoluted backstory involving a magical experiment conducted by the twins' somewhat deranged father (also a powerful wizard), their life essences became tethered to each other but also created an arcane polarity between them, causing magic to work unpredictably or fizzle entirely whenever one brother cast spells directly on or in close proximity of the other. Even worse, if one of them died it was theorized (as laid out in their father's notes) that his twin would also die and the resulting resonance would cause a tear in reality. While the theoretical death effect was never put to the test (it was a 1% chance that would still test positive with Legend Lore), it created an unusual dynamic between the PCs and the evil wizard whereby they could only ever foil his plans and slay his minions but never take him out personally for fear of the repercussions. In turn, the evil wizard would sometimes assist his brother in the form of warnings, useful information, or 'care packages' of scrolls and potions. The evil wizard did this when the mood suited him in order to flaunt his superiority and in the process annoy the PC wizard (because brothers sometimes suck, Neutral Evil ones even more so) and because despite everything, at the end of the day he and the wizard PC were still family. I found this whole situation really interesting because under normal circumstances these two sides would simply annihilate each other on sight. But here, because of what was essentially the threat of mutually assured destruction, good and evil needed to coexist to a certain degree and that, in turn, fostered dialogue (a fair amount of which was trash talking, but still). Also, because the evil wizard was occasionally helping them deal with other powerful villains (really just the evil wizard's rivals, but they were unaware of this), it created a blurring of ethical lines and every so often the PCs would find themselves letting the evil wizard get away with certain with things, never enough to change anyone's alignment, but, you know...baby steps. Needless to say, one of the main goals of the wizard PC was to find a means of undoing the effect that magically bound him to his brother, but sadly I never got to bring this particular campaign to any satisfying conclusion.

Little did he know a bit less than 2 years later he raised 2 million bucks to publish a book about a somewhat smallish part of the game overall. Good job Matt C. you really are a wellspring of good for the game.

Totally agree about the rule ignorance, and not just regarding D&D. When I first started playing a board game called Splendor, we played using the rules as understood by the game's owner. Turns out there were several rules he'd got wrong, but the game was still plenty of fun with the wrong rules. Now we know how they actually work, we play properly, but it does show that no matter what the official rules may be, it's okay to tinker with them.

Omg! I just realized my strahd gave my players a single good coin with his effigy on it. That means they possess something he can use to scry on them! Thanks Matt!!

I doubt you still read comments 4 years later which is absolutely fine. I just wanted to share that I recently played my first round of D&D as a player after 3 previous sessions of character creation and combat trials to get a feel for the game before we started our campaign. That sparked my interest in DMing. Then I stumbled across your videos. Now I've spent 30 minutes to even hours a day watching you, reading and researching. I've already asked a couple close friends if they would like to start a campaign and we're all waiting to see what our schedules look like but I'm so excited at even the possibility to try and DM. Thank you so much for all this wonderful content and the passion you pour into your videos.

+1 for THE BLACK COMPANY - Glenn Cook is criminally underappreciated . . .

Matt, I'm a new DM 5 sessions in, and your videos are really saving me. My party is up to 8 people now. Everyone loves the game and I have a hard time turning people away. In any case, I find that after a session I'm pretty drained. I can't eat really while it's going because I'm thinking too much and talking there is a lot to organize and remember. I game on Thursday nights, and though I love doing it, I'm finding that on the weekend, when I should really be planning out the next session, my mind wanders and I put it off. I usually spend the night before the session scrambling to come up with something interesting and memorable. I'm running the starter set right now (Lmop) and embellishing heavily. I'm really looking forward to your "finding the content" video you mentioned that is coming up. I love this episode!

Seven years late to the show, but I thought I smelled some Black Company references with that opening! I love that series, you sir are a man of taste and I applaud

My main problem with your videos is that they inspire me so much that I start dreaming up a campaign after watching for a few minutes and end up completely zoning out for the rest of the video

I’ve watch this video six times in three years. It’s great every time.

"We're only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from" My new favorite quote. Also, hey! I've used the Belgariad too! I love that series!

You and Mercer have gave me hope in running DnD again after my 3 major fails at trying. Will do it better hopefully

Warlocks are super powerful because of their spell slots that recharge on the short rest. This allows them to keep up with fighters in a long adventuring day. Their spells are also cast as the highest level option they have. So a 5th level Warlock casts every spell as if it were 3rd level, this allows them to keep up with the Wizards and Sorcerers. Lastly the Invocations they get fill in the gaps left by a short spell list by giving them lots of utility. So overall they are just different, and take some getting used to. You cant expect to go nova like a wizard could, and you can't expect to go toe to toe with a martial character, but your dps and utility over the long haul are second to none. Hopefully that helps Phil :)

"Don't get in a fight." ... Sounds like something said at best a minute before a fight.

I just wanted to point out: I've listened to this entire series, five times now. And I keep getting something new out of it each time. Thank you for putting so much of your time and life energy into this Matt. You're the best.

4 years late but as soon as the guy came to collect the bodies it reminded me of the Black Company!! So glad those books are getting some love!

I go to these videos over and over for reference. So useful. Thank you so much Matt Coleville “D&D is not the things written between the covers of the books (sic) D&D is what happens at the table among the people playing the game.”

Probably won’t see this as I’m posting so late, but I thoroughly enjoy your content and I’m looking to buy your books. Thank you!

I'm DMing a game for the first time in a week, we are all complete novices at this and I ended up DMing but the more I think about it the more I get excited about the prospect. Anyway, for our first two sessions we have a player attending- Sam - who will not be able to attend other sessions (He's in the Royal Air Force so doesn't have the time), I want the first couple of sessions to be geared towards giving his character a decent arc. So we're playing the Lost MIne of Phandelver from the starter set - seeing as we're all starters it seemed a good place to... start. And I've decided that Sam's character will be an apprentice to the wizard Iarno Albrek - the missing wizard who the party can look for in the Redbrand manor. Anyway, spoilers for LMP - but in the quest Iarno is the bad guy and is in charge of the Redbrand bandits. I have made some adjustments such that when the party reaches the wizard's chamber they find Iarno in the middle of some great and terrible magical experiment - he is drawing magical power from a soul trapped in a giant glass flask - the figure in the flask being Sam's character. Shock, horror! Turns out that Sam has been playing a construct which has inhabited his body and Iarno is using him to draw more poo souls for his experiments. Then I say "Sam (he's not chosen a name yet) attacks Flynn" and then Sam fights alongside Iarno and some bandits against the party. If the party smashes the flask then Sam regains control and switches sides etc. Eventually Iarno flees or is captured or killed, and Sam's character thanks the party - he can then drop in and out of the story as and when Sam is able to play him (I'm going to give him some dodgy ethereal travel abilities as a result of being separated from his essence for so long). I did steal it somewhat from your vignette you mentioned a few videos back, hope you don't mind.

this put me immediately in mind of Austin Kleon's inspirational little book, "Steal Like An Artist." great reinforcement here. love it. and i've totally stolen from The Black Company myself. what a brilliant series.

I love that your early adventures talk about you only having a few thousand subscribers and look now. It is great when deserving people get popular.

Honestly, a warlock is essentially an archer with a bit of magical options. He should be focusing on things boosting eldritch blast in his invocations. Think things like agonizing blast and the range increase one. The spells are limited but come back in a short rest. Tell him to USE THEM during combat. They are literally a combat blaster wizard who sends out a bunch of eldritch blasts. They have decent damage if you treat them like an archer with some magical options for flavor. He will feel really bad outside of combat if he plays as an archer, he has poor skills and skill selection, so you need to use your magic but then you literally only have eldritch blast left in combat. Eldritch blast is essentailly 'shoot an arrow' that's better damage than an arrow. Warlocks scale well and get the same 6+ level spells as bards essentailly in uses per day. Warlocks are pretty much just blasters though, think old school evocation wizards. His utility spells that he has should generally be the ones granted by his patron status. Those are the flavor spells, he needs to focus on damage because that's what warlocks do, they're an archer with some extra magical oomph but less survival. Warlock is SUPER overpowered btw if you let your players short rest too often since they get their spells back on short rest, be careful on that. But the non damage spells are usually dictated by the patron and their 'domain' style spells. The warlock doesn't chose his own powers though(for crunch we let the player chose on level up, but... you don't have to), they're granted by the patron, have some fun with him. It's also the EASIEST way btw to help a warlock player out. The patron is usually extremely knowledgable as a great old one. If you know your warlock is about to be poop cause he has very little to do with undead other than 'I cast eldritch blast' maybe his patron will impose a minor penalty and CHANGE his spells(you get to do this as the DM running his patron). Honestly, if your warlock is struggling to feel good, change his spell loadout as his patron, you can influence him that way and give him a little more fun suddenly having a different spell set. Just make sure he doesn't get to abuse or chose the spells, and if negotiating(yes you can talk to your patron) you can take something FROM the player to change spells.

You say “we” a lot, I like that. Thank you Colville

I had two primary antagonists once, an evil prince and his wife an equally evil priestess, they had been caught in dueling over maintaining their power base. However due to their already incredible power and organization, attacking one greatly benefited the other... it was obvious neither one would be allowed to continue, but they couldn't split their focus between the two, not really anyways. So they had to choose who to focus on first, which they agonized over... they finally decided because of her nature as a spellcaster, the evil priestess should be fought first... oh boy did I enjoy proving them wrong. Anyways this is my favorite video you've done to date!

Having someone else control the villians sounds AMAZING and really inspiring. It sounds like a great way to keep me creative as a gm

It's funny, when I see you in motion you always seem so positive, fun and excited, but whenever I pause the video you look angry and scary lol!

My dad made me read the Belgariad when I was 12 and i loved him for it! Love that you referenced it!

Ok, that idea of letting friends who are not currently in the campaign play the bad guys is amazing. It is something I absolutely HAVE to try...although I very, very rarely have one and the same bad guy for longer parts of the campaign.

Man, the body collecting is such a brilliant intro. If there is one thing that PCs produce with great regularity, it is corpses, and since it's a messy byproduct of their adventuring, the bad guy scooping them up isn't a mechanical loss or threat to the players immediately, like it would be if he were to steal a magical artifact from the end of a dungeon. The party can go about their business, being D&D PCs, and will, just by doing what the game encourages them to do (kill and loot) encounter the big bad. I'm having a hell of a time thinking of a better way to tie in your hook mechanically to the gameplay.

You know, I just started watching your videos because your explanations were useful (and you are a great orator) for my personal writing hobby, but now I really wanna get into D&D :0

WOO HOO!!! Someone else has read the Belgariad!!!! I literally cheered when you said that, and told my family that you are officially the coolest person on youtube. (No one else I've ever talked to has read it.)

I ran this opening months ago introducing a new party to D&D. It was a huge hit. I heard and audible "oh s###" at the "floating across the ground, as though the act of walking itself is beneath him".

You, sir, have given me some great insight on how to run an upcoming situation my party will be encountering. I've currently got a player who consistently churns out evil aligned characters through his choices; so I'm going to have him and the party inadvertently CREATE their BBEG by helping an Archmage become a Lich (without their knowing it). Then? Well. I don't know. We'll see how things pan out. But you've definitely given me some great tips on how to develop the BBEG and present him to the party in a fun way.

First time viewer. (Literally... this is my first video of yours.) Love this video. You sir, have gained yet another subscriber :) Def gonna listen to this while working on my upcoming campaign in 3.5

I love this channel. I'd like a video on random encounters, and how to run encounters who are not for the players, I realized my friends realized everything is balanced around their characters, but since they aren't familiar with the monster manual that much, its hard for them to gauge the difficulty of an encounter, so I'd really like some tips of not killing people with over powered encounters, but also give them a feeling that the world is alive.

Burgeoning DM here. Many many thanks for your work. Your expertise is palpable and much appreciated

Big fan of the hologram'd bad guy use. It also works well to establish the great scope of an enemies power, as there's nothing more terrifying to players than seeing an enemy they couldn't defeat easily defeated by another.

Now this was interesting... And it showed me that I'm still not reading enough.

10 000 subscribers? How about 300k+ :D Go Matt!

I played a warlock in a long term campaign and we also used the telepathy as two-way communication my character had to initiate. I often used it to allow the party to consult and plan in front of NPCs without them knowing. The DM added another effect that the telepathy ability interfered with doppelgangers' memory stealing powers. When doppelgangers were around my character would hear a terrible buzzing noise in her head. The doppelgangers we encountered hated my warlock. As for Phil's trouble playing a warlock I've heard the "too weak" complaint before. What makes a warlock so useful is all the "at will" powers they can get. Being able to read every language is amazing. Being able to detect magic anytime speeds up the game and makes it easy to detect illusions and magical traps. The best power, by far, is summoning elementals. I'll never forget the look of horror on the other players' faces when I ordered my earth elemental to grapple the bad guy, pull him into the mountainside and leave him there to suffocate. There are choices that make the cantrips (like Eldritch Blast) far more effective as well, such as increasing range and adding the charisma modifier to damage. Warlocks are awesome because they always cast all their spells at the highest slot available and they can recover them all after a mere short rest.The trick is to use those two or three spells at the right time. The hardest thing about playing a warlock is convincing the party to do a short rest so you can recover your spells.

Hi Mathew, rewatching your videos as a refresher because everyone needs to hear this stuff again every now and then; but when it comes to who knows the rules best, my players do. As the DM I learned enough to run my monsters, create monsters and ask for ability checks. They need to help eachother and know everything when it comes too their characters. When my friend and I switch roles I'm asking for help with my character because I have so much in my head, it's hard to remember characters on top of it all. Anything else I've learned about the rules accept what I need to know to baseline DM, my players have looked up as we play and we talk about it at the table.

"Domnall?" "Who the hell is Domnall?"

Whenever I watch this, I’m always in the dilemma of wanting to show these to my players but at the same time to shamelessly steal all your ideas.

Fun hearing Matt talk about 10000 subs here in 2121 with 30 times that! MCDM for life

Stealing... I mean, borrowing, and borrowing and borrowing. This is one of the reasons I watch your channel. You feed my imagination and get my DM juices going. Thanks, Matt, really enjoy your channel.

my DM made our bad guy a NPC on our team

Wow, someone drank a "potion of haste" as it seems 😄...

I think my favorite technique ties into your written communications idea for a D&D session. I would make each of the letters passed between evil 'Leaders' a mundane monster with a special feature- multiple eyed crow, carrion vulture with glowing eyes, etc. Every time the player characters killed a lieutenant and stole the letter from the big bad the messenger 'familiar' got more and more furious! By the time they got to the end, they'd enter this massive cathedral, and the familiar would shapeshift into the end boss's right hand man. It was a beautiful result hah!

Sometimes, you have reccurent bad guys popping out organically. A couple of years ago, my friend ran the Tomb of Abysthor, and there was this disciple of Orcus, a low level named cleric of the name of Marzabul. Due to the nature of the module, fights often ended up with both side withdrawing licking their wounds, but that cleric, who was nothing special and shouldn't have lived past the first encounter, kept surviving all the bouts between our groups and the Temple of Orcus. It came so organically and since his survival was never a cheap plot trick, the hatred towards that guy was real, it was really intense in-game and out of character. All of that for a low level leader. But hey, still remember him 10 years after the game

I came by to listen again. This is my second or third pass through Running the game. I always hear something cool.

So many great tips! I'm definitely introducing the "hologram villain" and "really creepy dude who's relatively neutral to my party's adventure but kinda tracking them anyway" to my homebrew pf2e campaign. Also, an evil resurrected PC? *Chefs kiss*

Never DMed before, but here are two villain ideas I came up with: 1. A Mind Flayer, trapped outside his home dimension and cut off from the hivemind, trying to return home, but if he does so, the Illithid legion will storm through and take over the world 2. (Works better as a secondary villain than a BBEG) A leader of a small goblin clan, in posession of some macguffin. The low-level party is welcomed by the clan, but this object is sacred to their culture, and thus the players can't have it. The villain's second-in-command then tells the party that, if they help them kill the leader, they can have the macguffin. After doing so, because of their betrayal, the leader returns as a revenant and continues to dog their steps for the rest of the campaign.

Hi! I'm relatively new to the whole DnD world, only having played half a dozen times, and I'll be hosting my first session next Thursday. I'm so excited! Mostly thanks to you I've now got a little boy to rescue, a dungeon, riddles, fights and a (hopefully epic) Bad Guy lined up for my new players. None of those are exactly like yours, but your tips and tricks are fantastic and a great help - and I probably never would have dared to do this if not for your videos. So thanks!

Referencing that "The Black Company" for the win. I have to go reread that now.

Again, what a different attitude of writing! Growing up in the fanfic/roleplay community, you are working off of something that everyone HAS heard of, and the riddle is making it your own. You can definitely take elements from more obscure media, but usually that's considered an easter egg for a reader who might be familiar with it. But honestly you know how to do this! In your sandbox vs railroad video, what you did was write a crossover between D&D and Tolkien. That didn't make it boring to listen to even for people who recognized it right away. The trick is to use influences ("stealing") in a way that is interesting for people who know what you're doing, which will automatically also make it interesting for people who don't.

About your warlock friend... I have had to do a bunch of work to help a friend of mine make their warlock good. The main trick is making sure they have a good "trick" that is limitless. For example, the Pact of the Tome warlock can have a lot of cantrips from multiple classes. This allows, for example, the warlock to have frostbite, thornwhip and eldritch blast. Depending on the situation they can make people attack with disadvantage or pull them closer or damage them (and push them with the right eldritch invocation). Lastly, in terms of the spells, pick ones that scale well with level. Hex is really good for damaging a single target and making them struggle with one ability.

As a new DM starting with very little D&D experience and never really reading high fantasy outside of Tolkien I'm really liking your videos! my proudest part of my campaign so far is my antagonist and his introduction so I've really been looking forward to this episode. first time he showed up he told the strongest member of the party that if he could best him in single combat then he would release the dwarf he had kidnapped. now the antagonist was really only a couple of levels higher then the players and if they just attacked him together they may even have had a chance but 1 on 1 the pc didn't have a chance. my players were so scared of this man that several sessions later after they had managed to track down the camp and finally find the kidnapped dwarf they decided to take up employment by the antagonist and execute the dwarf they had spent all this time trying to save rather then attack him. really didn't see it going that way when I wrote the encounter and it was a really great moment that we discussed at length after the session. I really wish I had gotten into the hobby at a younger age but it was never really a thing in my school or college. now close to 30 I'm having such a great time sharing the expirience with my friends and creating a story with them.

I watch this video on a regular basis. It's the foundation for the villains in my current campaign, where I finally implemented the red coins thing and even a holo appeareance of a mid game boss has already happened :)

That's one awesome trick. Just a few weeks ago, I introduced some high level villains for my playgroup. They decided to fight the villains through combat and 3 of the PCs were knocked down. The manage to escape in the end but with a price. One of the PC's childhood friend lost his life in order to save them. Oh and also, their Pixie friend was captured. They left the battle scene with grief on their hearts and swore that they will come back one day and finish off those villains.

"As writers, we're only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from" I hope you don't mind, but I will be "honoring" this phrase regularly in the future. Naturally, I will lose track of where I got this phrase, and soon people will think I came up with it. Such is the lot of those who are truly inspired in their creativity. Well done good sir... Well done.

I'm five years late here....but man your videos sure do make a brand new DM a lot less anxious/stressed about running the game. Thanks for what you do, good sir.