"...blot out the collective memory of all the other leads they had before the wild goose chase. Completely derailing the scenario." I'm in this video and I don't like it.
Your videos are always so clear and concise. The useful-advice-to-noise ratio is insanely high. This channel needs to blow up because these are core, practical GM skills that are immediately applicable and super useful for new GMs.
Thank you! That's very kind. I'm very committed to keeping the fluff out (because that's what I want in the videos I watch), so it's nice to hear we're getting that right.
When I ask for an Investigation/ Interrogation type check: If they roll high I tell them "You're certain of the info", if they roll low I tell them "You're certain of the info but it took you 5 hours (some long time) to be certain". This way the check is about how much time and effort it took rather than the quality. I've seen players think that because they rolled a 5 that it means they were lied to.
Oh thanks, that's good advice !! On a 5e table I GM, some players are always suspecting there is more to be learned or gained, and they would always indirectly ask for an insight check ("Is he telling the truth ?"), which leads to further (meta) doubts if the insight check is botched. This would resolves that in a lot of situations !!!
This is also commonly referred to as the Yes, but-rule. You succeed, but to a higher cost. You managed to pick the lock, BUT your lockpicks are now broken. You haggled the price down, BUT you and your group have squandered the merchants good will. It is great tool to forward the story and i like to encourage everyone to utilize it freely. Just get a feeling for the exception of the rule, when you need to say no. And then say No, BUT ...!
Yeah. The danger with asking for skill rolls when the PCs are on the wrong track is that if they fail, the fact that the GM even asked for a roll becomes confirmation that there's really something there. (A bit like that twisted conspiracy-theory logic.) This solution neatly sidesteps that: they still find out there is definitely nothing there, but their skills have made a difference.
When you mention how players will take he lack of evidence to be evidence of something, reminded me immediately of the Silver Blaze story of Sherlock Holmes. Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” The story is of a horse being stolen and the watchdog did not bark when it happened. The dog didn't bark because the dog knew the person who was taking the thief. A lawyer's blog talks about that bit in an article about how that lack of evidence can be evidence of something in itself. As they worded it: "It is not that difficult in many legal circumstances to recognize that you expect certain facts will be demonstrated - like the barking of a watchdog during the commission of a crime - and thus the absence of those expected facts can have meaning."
It's crazy that you only have 8.9k subscribers with such a high sub rate. This channel deserves to be way bigger. We'll have to start laying out 3 clues each to lead people here.
I still think about on session I ran many years ago. It was the free Star Wars Revised Module "Masquerade" about going to a party thrown by the Bothan Spynet to find a Cerean criminal who had information about a kidnaped girl. The players spent 2 hours of a 4 hour session talking to the person who was giving them the job in the hopes of finding out every last detail they could. Whatever I tried I just could not get them to go to the party which is the interesting part of the game. When they finally got there I had to rush the rest of it and one of the players had just checked out. I wish I had had some of those tools then. Asking "what do you hope to achieve here?" has been just so helpful as sometimes the players themselves do not all know the answer to that and are just going with the rest of the group. If no one has a clear objective it can be very easy for players to spin their wheels.
8:30 I do think as a GM you need to be certain before asking for a roll on anything that you've got meaningful options to provide the player for either outcome. - If the players roll poorly, they'll still assume there was something but the dice are screwing them over. - If the players roll maximum, they'll feel cheated if its still a failure with no useful leads or developments. Even more of a kill joy if your table is the type to cheer such dice rolls and celebrate them as the whole table waits in anticipating of... You better have something, you asked for a roll. Having experienced both of the above situations as a player and a GM over the years, I personally think only asking for rolls when there is something interesting from both success or failure is important.
Two ideas. 1. With a little improv, you can put the thing you wanted them to find right in their way. Turns out, someone at the docks did see the suspect or the library did have the book. If you and your scenario are flexible enough, you can just adjust. 2. It's handy to have a few simple generic encounters sitting in your notes. On the way to the docks they run into a purse snatching and if they follow that into a gang of thieves and you've got a fun donnybrook. Or they come upon an accident that looks like it might not have been so accidental after all and they've got a (quickly resolved) murder mystery on their hands. In a D&D setting, you can just roll for wandering monsters on the appropriate table. It won't move the plot forward, but it can be fun on the way.
Fantastic advice! I especially appreciate the idea of using dead ends as something like a signpost towards the actual mystery. Having the suspect suggest the actual perp lets players feel like they're always on track. I like that every scene can feel important.
My favorite advice-giving GM has a RU-vid Channel with incredibly good content distilled in a short and easy to grasp video? Yes please and some more Took me way too long to find out
Other than you, Dave Thaumavore, William SRD, Roll4Initiative and LegalKimchi, I haven't found anyone who regularly do non-AP RPG content that's not exclusively about sword & sorcery games with d20s. That's just 5 channels. Y'all are pioneers. Thank you for the great stuff.
Definitely helpful. Just for the simple reminder that it's okay to stop, re-contextualize and move things forward. The examples were *particularly* useful to help show it in practice. For that alone, subbed. I've got a game tomorrow, and hope to keep this fresh in mind.
One method I favor to deal with wild goose chases is to insert a "gosling" if it can at all make sense. The party's searching a library, or the apartment of someone they suspect is involved? Nothing direct, *but* by random fluke, they find an odd bookmark in a library book, a courier pigeon-type message to a Person of Interest, with some sort of coded instructions. Using such a message as a bookmark was a poor choice, but a sufficiently plausible slip-up that it can lure the party back on track. Or, you know, any one of a number of anti-red herrings that can qualify as subtle accidents, discovered by sheer luck.
With regard to your point about the difference between "There is nothing to find there, this is the wrong path", and "You tried that and it didn't pan out, now what?", I think another thing to be considered is that knowing "this guy doesn't know anything" or "there is nothing here" can itself be a revelation. As you point out elsewhere, using the null result to rule out options is an important step in mystery-solving. So "You asked around and nobody at the docks has heard anything" is still the players accomplishing something, because they now have a data point that rules out smuggling through the docks (or whatever).
I don't play DnD, just not many of my friends who are into it/have the time to play. But I still enjoy your videos, it just feels like hanging out with a good friend.
One of the top DM advice channels! I especially like the fact that you speak to the audience as if they have a basic level of understanding. Far too many channels speak in high pitched (high energy) voices and waste time explaining the obvious.
I've done precisely this many, many times! Reading your blog and watching your videos has been a great boon to my game mastery these last few years. Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Justin!
I like that in your games a failure often leads to an alternate step. The player can’t find the next step on this path, it is unavailable; but there are more options down this path over here. Its either because the player is on the wrong path, or they failed the check. Either way they have a new direction.
This is like the Cop shows where the Cop takes them into the Interrogation room and find that so and so is innocent, it cuts from them bringing the suspect into the room to the next scene being the suspect leaving and the detectives saying "Well, we got nothing from them," and then their partner follows up with either a) "So we should go check out or b) "Yeah, their alibi checks out, but they did mention , we should check that out." and both will then get them back on the path of the actual crime. Skip all the dead space and lead us to the important pieces that loop back to the fun parts, while still appreciating the player's contribution to the story and giving it merit.
Truly great stuff. You don't just talk about each point, you offer a concrete example so that viewers can place themselves in the position and in their minds they roleplay the situation coming up and their handling of it. That roleplay really helps people to recognize the situation in the future when it happens, and to more naturally just fall into the desired response.
Great advice! During my last game I didn't know what to do when the players kept pressing a dead lead. Next time I'll be able to do a better job at letting them feel like the game is truly open, vs just telling them they found all they could and reminding them about their other leads.
Something that my DM has successfully done is introduce imminent threats and time constraints where it’s not a legitimate option to stray completely off the path.
Two examples: We’re off in the caverns, but we know an Orc army is planning on sieging the Keep any day now. Or a Suicide Squad-type mission. But after we get there, there are multiple quests going on in the one location, in addition to our actual assigned job.
I always love your content! I'm prepping for a new homebrew heavily-modified 5e campaign at the moment, and your videos and articles are veritable treasure troves of knowledge.
The best advice I got is "if the players are looking for a hidden door. Put one there." Because they insist something has to be there, you may as well spare yourself the headache of ushering them away.
Amazingly well constructed advice. I have to recommend Sly Flourish's "Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master" and it's abstracted "Secrets and Clues" approach when it comes to this topic. Preparing to improvise, and having your "plot progressing" info ready to drop in where it fits best has completely changed the game for me. That way, your plot points serve the pacing of the game, and the explorative freedom of the characters, rather than the other way around.
I always have an NPC the players want to kill, show up to distract them to chasing the npc. Which leads to a random encounter that leads to the right path.
My campaigns have often been developed from this very thing! I have emphasized that I feed off their thinking out loud. Great insights and suggestions. I can definitely see how your advice can improve my development process
Great video! (Like all of your other ones, and your website). Short, sweet, to the point, and with clear examples that help showcase the ideas in action. You brought up pacing in this video, and might I suggest that as a video topic in and of itself? Pacing is one of those things I think most GMs struggle with, myself included. You have to know when it's time to just cut to the chase, get them to the dungeon, end the combat, etc.
I'm looking to adapt both the Art of Pacing and the Art of Rulings series into videos. Big project, though! Hoping we can get some momentum with regular releases built up and then launch into something like that!
I am still firmly against rolling for anything that cannot succeed. Any check should risk ressources being spend (tangible time is a ressource) as well. So the only way that I think makes sense for you to call for a roll in the scenario of the players trying to find the occult book is that they succeed in the definite information that it isn't there BEFORE they waste their day. An example of a successful roll compared to your example. "You call ahead before your visit to the library. The librarian seemed a bit confused but is willing to cooperate none the less. As you arrive at the library an hour later two small shelfs at the entrance are filled with mystery books and fairy tales or biographies of completely unrelated people. You quickly skim through the books to realize this wasn't worth your time. It's 2 pm, you're getting hungry. What do you do?"
Hey! I discovered your channel and your site not long ago and I am completely in love! Thank you for all this amazing content! One thing that I never know how to do is to determine the results checks to determine if a person is telling the truth. Let's say the NPC is telling the truth. If the failure is big enough would the player think the NPC is lying? Extreme example: if the player gets natural 1, would he be sure that the NPC is lying? Also should I do private rolls in this case? Otherwise I think there could be metagaming.
One thing you have to be careful of is the sort of player who's suffering from Abused Gamer Syndrome, and whose preferred way of lashing out is to figure out what the GM wants him to do next and then do anything and everything but that. With that sort of player, making it clear that this is a dead end will only encourage them: Once they figure out that they've driven into a dead end they will double down and pursue that path come hell or high water, because by dicking around and wasting time doing something they know can't work they are successfully defying the "railroad" and asserting their free will.
I don't think that having a dead end is actually a problem. Constant dead ends are. If you have the party involved in the mystery, then I feel it is legitimate and grounded that they find some dead ends. It shows there was effort made by the bad guy during this conspiracy to hide their tracks, or purposefully setting the players on the wrong path. Now, during a one shot, this is a really bad approach. During an adventure, it feels more natural. Not everything is a clue. If they keep coming up on dead ends, the NPC is always the best call. Reveal some details, but nothing actually too crazy. This is just a steer back onto a location they may need to go, or a bridge which can help them connect two pieces of evidence. Now, that being said, my pacing is a bit more unique than other DMs I play with. So, it might not work for everyone because a lot of it involves storytelling muscles, and knowing how many are too many (generally, if you have two in a row, it's too much). Obviously, for one shots, this approach is pretty poisonous to the flow (go figure, I'm not great at running them), so, removing any potential chances at dead ends is the best idea, including practices like the one I said. But, if you are in an adventure, it is okay for players to spin their wheels for a bit, if they spin them for too long, introduce an NPC or, as the Alexandrian said, make it not a dead end (this may involve some finessing, but I think The Note is probably a good way, such as a book falls from the desk and a small paper comes out, number is written on the bottom of a cup, ect...). Don't give away everything, but it will steer your PCs back, or forward, onto the track they need.
I agree with you that occasional dead ends are fine, or even good. But sometimes you have a player that really sinks their teeth into some particular idea, that happens to be a dead end, and they just won't let it go. Even if a scene ends, they will circle back in the future to the same dead end and try again. And again. You either make something up that lets the dead end lead them in a useful direction, or you tell them fairly clearly that there is no there there. A little table time in dead ends is fine, but lots of table time in dead ends is frustrating for the aggregate group of players at the table who are there to play.
I agree with a caveat; a dead end which is a complete waste of time is rare in my game. If the PCs choose to spend time on something I will always make it worthwhile, even if what they get out of it has nothing to do with their current investigation; or it might give them a new approach. An example; the PCs go to a library but you know as DM that the cultists removed all the books in that place over 30 years ago, as a precaution against discovery. So instead of the PCs wasting their time completely they see one of the NPCs they need to question, talking to one of the librarians furtively. It has nothing to do with the adventure per se but the fact the NPC is having an affair with that young lady whilst married, means there is a chance for the PCs to gain leverage over the NPC and that gets them back on track, as they now have some possible blackmail. Or you could throw in something completely unrelated and the PCs get a chance for some fun RP or get some foreshadowing for a future event, or this is a perfect time for a PC with a detailed backstory to discover a titbit of information that relates to their personal goals rather than the mission.
@@dondumitru7093 If it was a custom mystery, I would 100% look for a way to make the dead end the end destination. Obviously, that's case by case, and normally doesn't work. But, I've had it work once or twice in the past. There indeed does hit a point where you know it, the party knows it, everybody knows the area is a dead end. As a DM, it is weird for me to break the Veil of the Chair and just come out and say, "Nah man, there's nothing here.", because it makes me feel video gamey. So, I will normally say, "If there is something here, you guys don't have enough pieces to figure it out right now.". That doesn't completely solve the problem, but it normally pulls the one player off the dead end. This looks like a problem for the future, but it is actually an opportunity to build something into the dead end if you can. Normally I am thinking about places, right? But, for NPCs, I think it'd be cool if they were caught in a different plot tangential to the adventure the party is on. It's a strange, built in, story hook based off the persistence of one player. So, the show goes on, and the PC feels like they were right the whole time. Although, if the player likes to rub stuff in, maybe I'll skip it :-P
I just wanted to say that your reviews of modules and such are on a completely different level than that of others. You actually critique what you are reviewing -- both the good and the bad -- whereas, the other ones that I have read basically are just cheerleaders.
What do you do if they roll low on the check? If you know there's nothing to find, the last thing you want is for them to be convinced the dice screwed them and that they need to keep trying or to get disconsolate because they 'failed'.
At this point you can use a cluster of techniques around how to resolve failure: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46186/roleplaying-games/failure-for-the-beginning-gm
Never devolve an RPG to meaningless dice rolling if possible. In investigations, you want the players engaged as well as their characters. If the PCs search a room and tell me exactly where they look and an item is there, I NEVER ask for a dice roll. They find it automatically. It encourages Players to think and be precise. There are situations where this is not appropriate because there is no certainty of success. In this case I use the following two techniques. In the first, which I use with shy players, I will let them roll and then instead of saying 'you succeed or fail' I pass them a note with info on which they can use to either win the challenge (if they rolled well) false info or a false suggestion (if they failed) or tell them something irrelevant if the roll was so-so. But AFTER I have given them this info, they still have to play talking to the guard, looking around the room etc. But NOW they have either an advantage or a disadvantage based on the info they got from the roll. Another technique is called 'virtual rolling'. The PCs describe what they are doing and then instead of rolling a dice you assign them a roll based on how sound their approach is. I always give a player a 10 minimum when using this method, so the table knows that a virtual roll, which requires roleplaying or description (basically engagement) is ALWAYS better than just rolling dice. It encourages plans, RP and engagement. Then the PCs add their mod and if the virtual roll plus their mods is good enough they succeed. Virtual rolls ensure that players are rewarded for RP. It's always horrible when a player comes up with an amazing plan, or a really solid RP and then you roll the dice and they get a 1. It tells the PCs 'just don't bother engaging, just roll the stupid dice. That's the opposite result from what I want in my games. Just my 2 cents...
You can make them suceede on the skill check but create another kind of set back. For example, maybe the interrogation goes a little out of your hand and the suspect punches you or the PCs spend so much time at the library that they are tired for the rest of the day. If you are playing a game like Chronicles of Darkness, there are many tags that you could give the players and that would be a GREAT solution with the system.
Regarding dead end skill checks, I'm always hesitant to call for them, because they may roll poorly and then they didn't find something because of that. How would you handle those situations where there pursue further?
Question - isn't calling for a check very much a double edged sword? Like, what if PC rolls low? In that case when I tell them "yeah there is nothing to find here" they would likely assume that this is becasue they rolled poorly.
I'm starting a campaign in my own rpg system (currently under development) and it has a more sandbox feel but I don't want it to be a hex crawl. I was thinking of having one overarching plot thread from the start and give the players three different, unrelated scenario hooks for the first session. Each one leading to a different type of adventure so that players could choose the path that suits them. Do you have any advice on how to start a campaign like that?
Check node-based scenario design: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach It'll give you everything you need for that.
@@TheAlexandrian no no no, I DEMAND an entire video! Haha. Thanks for the link I'll give it a read during my lunch break. Also thanks for your videos. It's frustrating to look for ressources online that only benefit the very new or inexperienced GM. Sometimes you want something with a bit more tooth to it and your videos provide just that.
(In regards to expanding the audience for these videos ...) My understanding is that RU-vid pushes new videos first to subscribers and others already identified as cohorts of the channel. Then, if those first viewers watch the video all the way to the end, and/or Like the video, RU-vid will promote the video to the cohorts that those first viewers are members of. So press the Like button! It really does help promote the video and the channel outside of the early audience.
