Brennan's point about the rails highlights what makes Lou such a good player, because he separates his character's mindset and his own will. He takes decisions that don't make sense in the "game" frame of reference, but in the character's mind, they do. Makes it so much more fun and truthful!
As a writer, that's often a weakness I have to deal with. I like my characters and I don't want bad things to happen to them, I want things to go well. I sometimes have to consciously remind myself that it's my job to fuck with them.
@@killerlette22I more so love everyone thinking it was a bit and him, mid laugh attack, being like “as dumb as all this sounds, this is absolutely in character”.
See I'd argue Aabriya has max charisma and Matt has max intelligence (I've always seen Matt as a very methodical story builder while Aabriya LOVES to focus on relationships and what exactly makes people tick), but either way they all have high stats when it comes to creating their stories
Brennan's use of the connection between Daedalus' two inventions, the Labyrinth and the wax wings, to dramatically explain the situation he figured out that he was in... that was beyond compare. As a Classics student, I aspire to remain at least 3/4 as passionate about storytelling as Brennan is. Because I could _never_ match that.
I can tell you with confidence that all it takes is a commitment to madness and grandiosity. It takes practice to get a hold of that and use it as a tool at your command rather than a yoke around your neck, but if you do it enough you *will* get the hang of it. As someone with my own ongoing mental illness struggles I think in my case I need to have therapy (which I do!) In order to balance things and keep them from getting away from me. But if you're of relatively sound mind and not going through much, maybe you've got some downtime at home from work, get yourself a thesaurus and a dictionary of your choosing and just intentionally talk like a wizard for an hour or so. You will absolutely find that you had this skill within you already and all you needed was the will and and focus to sharpen it into something truly special.
@@0The_Farlander0 You're absolutely right! I tend to speak in winding metaphors and extravagant turns of phrase anyway, interspersed with modern slang for extra silliness, while (usually) still being able to rein myself in for more serious/formal matters. It's 110% a neurodivergent thing, and I do struggle with being concise sometimes, but it fills my life with whimsy and wonder. It reminds me that *everything* can be interesting and alive if you shift your mindset just a little bit. There's a good kind of madness - think Dionysian, moderation is key - in radically accepting contradiction and weaving beautiful, wild stories from everyone's experiences. _Man, I really should get back into DnD, shouldn't I?_
Especially doing it on the fly. He's coming up with the rant and acting the hell out of it all at once. Also, as a fellow ranter, I say live your dreams @shatteredreality_513. The real hard part is figuring out how not to repeat yourself so that the people listening don't get fed up, but if you can do that people will usually remain interested.
I love the "Brennan Cannot Win" monologue because he reveals that he's fully aware of the story of Daedalus and how he crafted the Labyrinth for Minos to contain the half-man, half-bull beast that was born after he (Daedalus) had crafted the wooden cow disguise for Pasiphae in the first place...
Whenever someone mentions new ideas for Dimension 20 Brennan does this polite nervous chuckle. It’s the chuckle of a man who knows he will never finish all the ideas he already has.
6:00 Brennans metaphor about water had a whole layer not expressed; water will also take the shape of whatever volume contains it, so the meandering of the straight path comes from opening up narrative spaces for your players to fill with their agency. Be like water, my friends. -B. Lee
Well now I want to play an innately paradoxical character who initially seems like they have no goals or motivations and is just completely devoid of earthly attachments but actually did ascend to Nirvana and spends the campaign trying to figure out why they got kicked out.
The first bit about having a character with no desires hit home for me. My friends and I played a lot of dnd when we were younger and didn't understand the importance of backstory, and as a result the two people who got it were having way more fun until it clicked for the rest of us, all at once. That campaign where it first clicked will probably be my favorite campaign I have ever played for the rest of my life.
Even then I don't think it works. A character with amnesia still has backstory and history, somewhere they came from, people who know them, things they have done that have affected the world, etc. They just don't remember it. I've been in campaigns where a player gave their character amnesia and had the DM come up with their backstory so that it could come up in-game. Personally, I wouldn't agree to do that as a DM, but even then that's not a clean slate.
I've found that, if someone has amnesia, it kind of becomes the center of the story, and the resolution is rarely interesting. From a storytelling standpoint, a climax occurs when someone's internal realization expands and becomes an external action, but we're not sure if that internal realization or that external action may succeed, which is where the internal and external drama comes from. But with amnesia, the central internal question is "who am I?" - but if you RP (or read about) a character with amnesia, you already KNOW who they are: what their interests are, what they want, what they need, etc - that's the whole "getting to know the character" part of roleplaying and/or storytelling, and should be occurring throughout the story. So when the climax comes, and the individual realizes "I am really X" - well, we already know the character, from going along with the journey this entire time. It's really just filling in the final few words of their backstory, and that's....really not all that emotionally satisfying. consider movies that have had Amnesia as a central premise; AngelHeart and Memento - while they (arguably) succeed, they require MASSIVE external plot twists to get them to work. And consider the first Captian Marvel movie - I would argue that one didn't succeed particularly well from a storytelling perspective (ignoring anyting else: personally, I thought the supporting cast was excellent, and Brie Larson did OK with what she was given) because a character learning their own backstory is kinda boring.
As DM of several decades, even then I don't allow it, I still put it right back to the player telling them to at least provide an outline of their character's circumstance so it's not entirely in a vacuum. Because here's the thing, when a player does that it's essentially them telling me to write their character's backstory for them when I'm already crafting the backstories of numerous NPCs not to mention that of the setting (ie the world) itself for why the PCs are there and involved in the first place, and so if I start coming up with a story for their character that they don't care for--well, then chances are I lose that player and it's gonna be put on me why they're not enjoying the character; thus as a rule of thumb I always reject the whole amnesia angles with no backstory from the player and put it back onto them to craft at least some sort of outline so their character's origins and where that will take them in the world, so it is still squarely on the shoulders of that player, ie their character, their responsibility. The only time I've allowed the "no backstory" or rather the closest thing to it, was for a warforged character within a setting where they were being massed produced as non-sentient automatons, and one fresh off of the assembly line gained sentience like Jonny 5 for mysterious reasons--but even then there's a tale there crafted by the player, so even with such a short backstory it's still a solid backstory of a truly fresh beginning--there is no past to speak of, so the journey becomes a tale of the how and the why and finding meaning in it for their continued existence.
disco elysium, planescape: torment and torment: tides of numenera are examples of role playing videogames that implement that trope right; the pc may not know their backstory, but they sure as hell have one, and it sure as hell matters.
I love brennan’s explanation here, but when i describe a similar philosophy, I use a penn juliette analogy for magic with crowd work. As a magician your goal is for your mark to make a decision 100% of their own free will, and it be the exact decision you needed them to make. As the ‘rails’ of a story, as a dm, your goal is to let the players make decisions about what to do, and have those decisions be the decisions you can handle/lead to prepared material.
i also think this is why pretty much every actual play DM gets accused of railroading to some degree; for most good stories, by the end it will feel like the way things played out is the only way they could have happened (regardless of reality). people will see that and be like “they always knew how it would end! they railroaded them!” completely ignoring a) character agency b) player satisfaction and c) do we or do we not. want a good story
I feel this way about characterisation when I play FFXII, when a side character has more stake in the plot than your main guy, you know you took a wrong turn in the creative process.
I had an experienced player and DM be one of my players for the first time I was a DM. he made me make his backstory for him and suffice it to say he’s no longer one of my PCs. I would ask him for advice to make the story better and truly he was not helpful the one piece of advice he gave me was don’t railroad. How am I supposed to not railroad when you give me the job of making up half of your character I’m gonna do it accidentally, I have a new round of players and it’s going much better now. I’m still learning, but I got my players to argue with each other so I take that as a win.😂
1:30 To this whole argument I've actually seen a very interesting way to do this kind of character no backstory just a class, a name and such. One. my players is playing a warforged who just gained sentience and that's it that's the entire back story they were used in war now they are aware. His lack of motivation gave him motivation because now he has the question of "Who am i, why am i here, what is my purpse" He took a bland character with no character and made him something fascinating
I was confused about the fonts bc i never ventured into the double us, i always went for elephant (or joker). Just looked it up, and the basic comparison table that i randomly just found had webdings, wingdings, wingdings 2 and wingdings 3, which basically says that both of the aforementioned fonts are fonts and that they are different fonts, as sam had said at the end of the clip
That's some serious copium you got there buddy. Nothing that was in Brennan's first point applies to C3. The fact that you burned out on watching it, is a completly separate thing
I said nothing about being burnt out, google some statistics of campaign 3 viewership, and after that google what copium means, and after that google what projection means@@nightingale8178
