DM Prep: Call of the Netherdeep - Chapter 3 and Motivations

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In this video I continue discussing my thought process on how I am going to run the Call of the Netherdeep module, D&D's first official adventure set in the world of Exandria. In part 3 here, I discuss Chapter 3: Bazzoxan as well as motivating players to advance the story into the Betrayer's Rise
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Index:
00:00 Intro
00:54 Ch 3: No Time for Pleasantries
03:01 Bazzoxan Overview
03:18 Rollable Scenes Table
04:49 Motivations
06:21 Levity in the Barracks
07:40 Dilapidated Temple
07:59 Betrayer's Rise Start
09:30 R2
09:55 R8: Secret Book
10:14 R10
11:04 R14
13:41 R16
15:45 Tier 2 Rival Fight Video

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Опубликовано:

14 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 34

@Samarium62Sm Год назад

Thanks for creating this series. It's been helpful to watch through. Just a note, Gibbering in Gibbering Mouthers is the adjective of the verb gibber, like gibberish. It's pronounced like it starts with the letter J.

@TheEssentialGameMaster Год назад

Glad the series has been helpful to you. Thanks for the note.

@CoffeebreakX2 2 года назад

I got thrown this campaign as an very novice DM from my friend group a week before our campaign, this is going to help sooo much thank you!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

Wonderful to hear that you're finding it helpful! DMing can feel really overwhelming as a novice, or at least it did for me. I think the first several times especially can be anxiety-inducing but it's always been a lot of fun no matter what and it gets much easier the more you do it. If you have any specific areas of the module that seem more daunting or you have questions about I'm definitely interested to hear what parts!

@hinodejisa 2 года назад

Nice. Another perspective on running the campaign has been useful as I prep. Your thoughts on upping the stakes in the blood room were interesting.

@montylane2488 2 года назад

These videos are coming in clutch, my friend. Really nice to hear another DMs thoughts actively as I read through the module. Real pumped to run it!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

Glad to hear it. When do you start running it?

@montylane2488 2 года назад

Well we are running “unwelcomed spirits” first (I truncated the hex crawl to 2-3 key encounters. Running as written sounds like a real snore like you mentioned). So, I predict 3 weeks until we kick off in Jigow! I didn’t catch it in the videos if you did say. Have you started running it yet? Wish you the best!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

I haven't started yet. We're currently doing a few sessions of a Mothership RPG scenario. I think the title is "The Haunting of Epsilon 14" or something like that, where someone else is taking a turn at being the GM (My first time I've been a player since 2010). And we also need to put some closure on our Edge of the Empire (Star Wars/FFG) Campaign, so I need at least 3 more sessions of that probably. Our group has a lot of momentum and excitement to get back to D&D 5E right now though so I can't wait.

@montylane2488 2 года назад

@@TheEssentialGameMaster And I bet that time as a player probably got you juiced to DM this one!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

@@montylane2488 Absolutely!

@kappascrolls6495 2 года назад

I'm really loving the content, I never found a youtube channel this early in its journey so I feel very happy honestly. And super excited for the things to come. The quality is amazing and the audio is super crisp too. I love the way you explain things and go over stuff so freely, you know exactly what you are talking about and it shows. Personally I wouldn't have minded 5 more minutes just to chew the encounters through a little more. maybe give a quick "if you level your players up before the dungeon and feel the need to give them more of a challenge, add monster x" That could be very helpful but of course I also understand that it's hard to make an umbrella statement like that and a DM that already thinks that deeply, might probably already find the solution for that himself, just personally I feel like nudging us into that direction could help some people :D Anyway, really wishing you all the best with this series, can't wait for the next episode! Quick question: What's your favourite class to play and any classes you never got to play as/would love to play if u got to be a player again?

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

Thanks for the kind words and great suggestion. I'm practically a forever DM at this point. I got to play a sorcerer and a cleric in 3.5E for a few campaigns 12+ years ago. If I was going to be a player again it would be hard to decide what class, but at the moment, I might go for a rogue or a druid.

@mabepedu 2 года назад

Yo this is awesome!!! haven't played chapter 2 yet, but your video are very useful and I made a lot of notes and marks, I feel like I'm more ready for whenever we play chapter 2, so thanks for making this series, I think it's really useful for starter DMs like me lol, also I really aprecciate that you put stuff that could be useful like maps or stuff that people upload to the cotn reddit, it's really awesome, consider myself suscribed!!!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

Glad I could help! I'm also going back and adding more resources in some of the descriptions as I see more come out. Especially since now I'm recording these for later chapters which are ahead of a lot of the resources that have been made so far.

@dmeep 2 года назад

yes... more.... excellent...

@Meelord95 2 года назад

Great help as usual! As a newer DM these help a lot, thanks!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

You're welcome!

@tomvg87 Год назад

Thanks so much for these videos, they’ve been a huge help so far. My PCs are currently doing the road to Bazzoxan along with the rivals and they’re becoming pretty good friends. So I’m not sure yet on how I will play out Bazzoxan and Betrayer’s Rise where there is supposed to be a stand off at some point

@TheEssentialGameMaster Год назад

You're welcome! As far as the betrayal, just keep in mind how you think each rival would really feel based on their interactions, but particular Ayo. It's possible they wouldn't betray, but Ayo is very driven to succeed and if she justified it as 'just business' maybe she would..and it would truly surprise the players. If you don't want them to fight, maybe find another hired crew to fight the party in the dungeon.

@markschreuder3498 2 года назад

Another excellent video - keep up the good work! I know I'm biting off a lot for my first DM gig, but I'm really getting hooked by this whole story - and for better or worse you are acting as enabler for my decision :) Luckily my party will be all family and close friends, so we will all be learning this together. One question I have - I know this is very subjective, but what is your gut feeling on how many sessions you expect to go through the content of the CoTN book itself?

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

That is a pretty tough question as there's a lot of factors. How many party members, how much do they roleplay and add character moments that stretch out scenes, how long do you let them do that versus keeping it moving, how long does it take them to figure out puzzles, what content do you add that's outside of the module if any, how do the rolls go, how long of sessions do you do? I think it's very possible for a group to easily take twice as long as another group depending on playstyles with a module like this. I wish I could give you a better answer. Current gut feeling is this is a minimum of 60 hours but probably over 100.

@rossarnold4094 2 года назад

Great video. I am a little concerned that your prioritising the possibility for a memorable battle when you plan to circumnavigate the party's actions in R14. If they do kill the orcs or do think to knock spell the door (something most characters don't take) then I'd let them have it.

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

I think that's a fair playstyle too. And everyone should really feel it out with their players and if you continue to play together evolve. Usually once we're a bit past stuff, when we do debriefs, I do talk to my players about what shenanigans I ran and things they missed/could have turned out differently.

@rossarnold4094 2 года назад

@@TheEssentialGameMaster That's fair enough. Everyone has their own GMing style but I'm just wary of overriding my players actions because of something I want to get done. It's a trap I've fallen into before.

@Flappieeeee 2 года назад

Hey love these videos! Really helps a lot for preparing the chapters for my own future games. Question, how long do you spend per session on preparation and recapping afterwards?

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

Hi, thank you so much! Glad to hear this is helpful! So, like a lot of things with tabletop RPGs, there's not always a concrete answer for how long things take. Recapping might be 20 minutes. For session prep, if I'm running an adventure module, I spend a lot of time up front on it so that session-to-session I just need to re-read a couple of pages, so that time might be 20 or so minutes re-reading a few pages and getting any minor tweaks. If I'm doing content that is either homebrew or expect a large divergence outside what's written in the module, I spend more time per session than that.

@Flappieeeee 2 года назад

@@TheEssentialGameMaster thanks for the response. I always find myself spending hours on finding good maps and preparing tokens etc. Seems like buying the module on Roll20 could save a lot of time. I will also check out the subreddits you recommended!

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

It's very nice to have maps/tokens/stats already prepped in Roll20 with the modules. But I often end up buying the module twice because it's not always convenient to read from Roll20, especially if you're not at a computer. I've bought a few modules from R20, and this one seems to have some extra bells and whistles that others have not, like macro bars for combatants. But I wish I didn't have to buy it twice to get all that.

@onat7697 Год назад

Another great guide. I've always find it weird that if the rivals are friendly, they will not obey Aloysia. But in the later chapters, they end up working for the Consortium later on. Now this may make sense depending on what happened during sessions but I can see a lot of other scenarios where the rivals may not want to work with them. What do you think they would end up doing in that case?

@TheEssentialGameMaster Год назад

The book has limited space and can't outline every possibility. If it feels like something doesn't make sense, you can audible. The consortium is the 'opposite' side as the other two factions. But those other two factions, while allied, are different entities, and I think the rivals could end up working for the other one with a more amicable rivalry (we want to be first, best, etc. but we recognize we're still on the same side). You know the conclusion and where you're aiming to end up, so just try to take a path that feels logical with your table's story so far.

@boogie61798 2 года назад

I love the content! Have you considered playing or covering any Pathfinder 2e?

@TheEssentialGameMaster 2 года назад

Thank you! No Pathfinder so far, but I'm 100% all for other systems besides D&D. I've spent the past two years doing a Star Wars (Fantasy Flight Games) Edge of the Empire campaign. My group just finished up a Mothership one-shot and I've purchased Blades in the Dark with the intent to play that (probably after we finish CotN). From everything I've heard Pathfinder is very similar to D&D 3.5.

@boogie61798 2 года назад

That’s awesome, I definitely think Pathfinder’s Adventure Paths would work extremely well with the format you’ve got going on your channel so far. Can’t wait to see more, keep it up EGM!