with the comments track record, apparently these are exactly the dnd games some of you want to play in lol. NoNat1s actually DID write a book(s): www.kickstarter.com/projects/... Merch, Discord, and everything else: linktr.ee/XPtoLevel3
I was reading the comments and got concerned when none were taking about the NFT joke. I fucking loved this joke and am so glad it was never pointed out as an NFT joke.
Lore dumps ENHANCE a game, they don't make the game. If your campaign has cool and unique lore, please find fun ways to reveal it in-game. Making NPCs that talk like tourist guides isn't fun
Also exposition is required for most conventional stories. The tricky part is making the exposition not obviously exposition. My advice would be to play Skyrim, and do the opposite of everything it does.
Personally I think instead of the guard expositing he should have asked the player most likely to know if they wanted to roll a history check, and if they succeed, then regale them with the lore. Make the player feel like their character lives in this world and is a part of it rather than an outsider looking in.
I just played a session where my shove was "blocked" by some lizardfolk guards so I couldn't even try against the chief, just so an NPC could instantly cut the chief in half a second later and end the encounter before I could even start it. The railroad is strong for sure!
Big brain move: You've got writers block in your story so you make a D&D campaign and railroad the players until the place you're stuck, and then get them to write the story for you 😎
Honestly am literally doing that now!. Ever since I started this lil Campaign to figure out the lore of One town in particular during wartime.. I now have dozens of pages of lore that I can Skim through to enhance the overarching story.
@@ItzZeph Hey, what works works. It gets your brain moving trying to come up with ideas quickly. I struggle a lot with getting my ideas perfect before I ever write them down, but for my nanowrimo novel, I've been just writing down anything that comes to mind. It'll be nowhere close to a final draft, but it's fleshed out this story way faster than I would've otherwise.
Weekly sessions, and at times... reminders every twenty minutes because some of my players don't write things down or pay attention 😶 (Keep in mind THEY asked me questions and then proceeded to not listen)
The issue isn't the world building, that's fantastic, the problem is the DM removing player agency and making them 2-dimensional drawings in his DMPC's story.
This is why you create the world, write up all that amazing lore, but then just drop your players in it like a sandbox. Let them choose what to do. You can maybe write a small mini-campaign to get them started off, but don't write a full campaign. Let your players decide what they want to do next that way you don't find yourself just "telling them what happens".
Yeah, the problem with the world that he built is that not only it doesn’t need the players to resolve the plot it actively gets in the way of player interference, such as unburnable rope
@@ChiefLibrarianAhriman An approach I do is having a set string of events layed out, but let the players decide how to handle it. That way, the story is heading out on a clear path, but the players still have agency.
I absolutely love the subtle hint that the illusions the merchants are selling are basically NFTs and the one player just copied their valuable design with Minor Illusion. Jacob you truly are a mad genius Now I know why you play The Wizard so well
Add to the fact that it's a representation of a place in line, not the actual art. No one's selling you the art, they're selling you a place in line symbolized by that piece of art.
@@screamingopossum7809 Also by selling you that place in line they also get you to etch all of your information into your new place in line. Information they can do what they want with.
Yeah, this is why - the moment your players decide to do something in the heat of the moment - everyone involved rolls initiative. Don't make it an arbitrary "who talks first" for anyone - neither player nor DM.
Haha I once ran a scene that had the exact opposite problem - there was a big scene happening where I was hoping the players would intervene, but instead they just kinda stood and watched. A couple times I had the NPCs even reach out and ask the players for help and they were just like, "Nah I'm good."
I love the "ok, so here's the video." *starts talking, no cut, no nothing, just straight into it like a stone cold badass* It really tickled my fancy :D
There were also distinct notes of Skyrim, Pirates of the Caribbean, and even Harry Potter in there! Entering a new town to immediately see someone about to be executed? Skyrim, the guy freeing himself through shenanigans and then charismatically swashing some buckles? Pirates. The lady at the end tapping her umbrella on some bricks to open a secret passage? PEAK Harry Potter (Hagrid opening Diagon Alley for the first time)
@@deleteman900 Came here to see/say this. I wouldn't have caught any Skyrim though, nice. Also, an ancient artifact belonging in a museum; that's so Indiana Jones a person doesn't even need to know Indiana Jones to recognize it.
as a DM who's been writing fiction for like 20 years, dnd is absolutely a testing ground where I sneakily get feedback on all my dumb shit that may or may not end up in a story
If only Disney Star Wars people were as smart as you! "Wait you guys don't like my longwinded description of the blue milk entity?" "Wait you guys want villains that are frightening and competent?"...
@@christophersanders3252 Bumbling idiot villains _can_ be done well. Disney Star Wars didn't do that, but it's possible. It just has to be the right kind of story.
@@JesterC88 not all players like the same things some are there to make a story some are the to experience one and some just wanna hangout with their pals
I really like how Jacob talks about these topics in dnd, it starts off ok but gets worse. The greatest example of this is the one about the player who knows all the monster lore and how in the beginning it made a cool encounter but at the end it became worse.
funnily enough a lot of people thought that player was great and would love to have them in there games. Issue being he hijacks the game and makes unrealistic expectations for the DM and if they don’t hold up to lore, they’re going to point it out. I’m glad more people got my point with this one though lol.
@@XPtoLevel3 I always felt the folks saying that were likely *only* looking at the bit where that player provides material by simply offering up information, and not realizing that it feels like someone is setting up a buncha spinning plates then leaving you to keep them from crashing into the ground. I tend to invite my players into worldbuilding and asking for details to help shape the world as we play, but I am expecting to improvise based on those details. Collaborating instead of conforming. Having played with folks like that, they are very much not worth the negatives as laid out in that video.
the DM constantly commenting "it was in the primer. . " and then the sound of near panic in his voice when the players tried to do something that would affect his narrative. . and the look on the third player's face when he realized exactly what was happening with the Mary Sue scene. . . . . i also caught the NFT joke
I had a railroading dm like this once, me and the party tried to rebel against their rule but then they used their dm powers to knock us all back down before ending the session and stealing my characters build for their dmpc, we kept with it for 2 more sessions before us all quiting when they used a creepy pasta as a boss
@@ArmoredChocoboLPs it was Ben drowned, the campaign had a modern zombie apocalypse setting and we were stuck in a haunted town against our will (we all saw how obviously haunted the place was and wanted out) the dm obviously wanted us to go to the arcade so all but one player refused, the one player throwing them a bone went in an was immediately attacked by the Ben drowned boss while the rest of us sat outside. Eventually the dm had enough so they teleported my pc right into the middle of the fight, I then proceeded to nuke it across two rounds. The boss wasn't anything special just some Ben drowned art, no interesting descriptions or mechanics
I had a railroading dm once too that was pretty bad. He started the campaign really beautifully with us all being on a jail boat for unknown reasons. Then he ruined it by having this boat take us to a tavern to meet the king who… just… wanted a favor from us. We all said no, tried to sabotage and kill the king. Of course, none of this worked regardless of our rolls and had no effect on the king physically or emotionally and he pretty well forced us to agree to help. Eventually we all ran out of the tavern because “he can’t stop us all”. He kept trying to force us back into the tavern so in response my character peed in a river with people in the water downstream, punted a child (which the dm didn’t allow me to do unfortunately), and peed on a guard who was forcefully carrying me back to the tavern (with no roll or any way to resist). After that, he kinda teleported everyone back into the tavern except like one person for some reason. In the end, I think we kinda pushed him to give up on the railroading as he finally allowed us to set fire to the tavern and run off, with one pc being too dumb to leave the tavern and burning to death. Needless to say, a second session was never even considered by the dm or by the players. Ironically, I had a lot of fun with that monstrosity, though I can’t say the fun was good-natured as a vast majority of it stemmed from the players collectively trying to break the dm’s railroading. The kicker of it all was that this guy told us he was an experienced dm and that he was really great at it too, so unfortunately not even a “new dm doesn’t know better” scenario. I definitely learned from it though; I learned that being railroaded kinda sucks and that as a dm I wanted my players to have free choice. TLDR: Broke a railroading dm, burned a tavern down, killed a pc, and had fun
The hardest part about being a DM is knowing that everything you've prepped, written or created can at best be repurposed and at worst goes in the proverbial trash. If you make a super cool character who has an awesome backstory and design and know that there's a chance the PCs will talk to them only once to get the minimum info they need for their quest before ignoring them and forgetting they even exist, you have to be okay with that character and all the cool stuff you planned never getting shown off.
What do you mean, the character becomes a deus ex machina that will save then in the first sign of a fight going bad. Sometimes us dm chicken from players action consequences yeah haha
I've always looked to create more flexible prep material, like a structure for a plot, but missing details. Then once the player characters are made, take bits of each character's fears, pasts, and interests, and fill in some of the blanks with it. I keep plenty of generic portraits, maps and tables for unforeseen sidetracking. Like if the game was food: I know upfront I'm making a sandwich of some kind. I've got a few bread types around, but I don't know the toppings. The players each provide a few toppings. I select a few, let's say some cheddar cheese, a slice of onion, and this burger meat will round things out. Obviously a bun would go best, so I set everything up and begin making up the mustard and ketchup to make it complete. The bun is the portraits and maps, the sauces are the flavor of the DM's contribution, and the burger would be dry and lame without it. But the meat and veggies... They're all the player's ideas. So in the end, it'll be something they already expressed an interest in, and will dig in.
The amount of great shopkeeper NPCs I’ve made only for the players to never enter that shop pains me But that said, the NPCs I’ve made that ended up doing well have so far been the ones that hit REALLY hard. For example, I’m doing a 1 on 1 with one of my best friends (amazing player, an absolute blast to dm for) so there has to be a LOT of NPC work, and one of the NPCs I didn’t expect him to like is a 15 year old overly-excited annoying-little-brother type. And my god my player loves that kid. I do NPC tier lists with him (both because in incredibly self-indulgent when it comes to hearing about things I do well and because it helps me see what kind of NPCs I can reasonably make that he’ll enjoy) where he puts my NPCs in somewhere from S-F tier and this dumb kid got S tier
What seems to happen with me more often is that they cling to a random character from some one-off side quest and that character ends up a major part of the story or you implement them into a later campaign.
In-Game Lore Dumps? Rookie move man, you've gotta lock your players in a basement with all 700 pages of lore you've written and only let them out when they're finished. How do you think Critical Role got started?
My DM unironically did this to me, but it was because I insisted on joining the anti-heroes with the real risk of becoming an enemy to the other PCs down the line. Took a good 2 months to read all the lore + the 3 years worth of campaign archives.
When I first started designing my first campaign, I quickly realized I was writing enough to fill up a book. It was then I realized I wasn't looking to be a DM. I was looking to build a world for characters to exist in, and since I can't write that without my Adderall prescription..
@@GlutenFreeStudios That's something I'm considering, too. The main problem is, my party is more on the goofy side, and they did some crazy stuff, which was extremely fun while playing, but writing it into a story, that is the real challenge and I'm still trying to find the right balance between the funny parts and a "story that makes sense"
So painful to watch. I briefly had a DM like this. His character, Thok (yes, the DM had his own PC that he said he had added to the party to protect us), was capable of doing things that none of us, as low level characters could do. After one of his mastrubatory story bits, he unapologetically declared, "Thok's so great! He's the character I would play if I wasn't the DM". The group quickly fell apart.
Just started playing. Our DM used his favorite PC-who’s an idiot. I figured she was a hazard after she shot a crossbow at the city guard, so I successfully kicked her off the carriage. Apparently, the horse was a pseudo-unicorn who teleported her back 😒. Unicorn also teleported us to the center of a bandit camp that they could have cleaned up by themselves. They also completed the mission while we were shopping for supplies. I am now conspiring to GM a different TTRPG at our table because he obviously wants to be a player and I would prefer that, too.
@@Amaranthyne We tried that with our guy. He did everything he could to tear down other DMs. He was toxic. I sent a message to the group saying it was clear we were breaking up, and wished everyone well. I then messaged the others, letting them know I had another DM lined up for starting a new group, and invited them to join, making it clear Mr. Toxic wasn't going to be invited.
@@Enn- Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to suggest that as a solution-I was just stating what I am currently doing. Thankfully, my DM isn’t toxic and I think he is getting better. My brother (who I’m playing with) decided to switch characters and those NPCs were tied to his druid character so we handily divested ourselves of the characters I was getting ready to throttle to death. He keeps giving us NPCs so we can have more interesting battles from his perspective and he leveled us at break neck speed. I’m not sure how to break it to him that I don’t mind fighting goblins and would be interested in playing with encumbrance rules. However, I’ve succeeded in getting past a session 0 for a _Blades in the Dark_ campaign and I’m psyched because I love the system. He also gets to play his harebrained PC which will be much less frustrating when I can start hitting him with consequences instead of suffering them. The system also rewards well for roleplaying so it will probably work out well for everyone.
Finished GMing our first and second session of _Blades in the dark_ 🥳! My brother told me I did a better job-and I was never to repeat that info to our DM (his best friend). My brother treats praises like pulled teeth so I’m over the moon and had a great time! Here’s hoping it continues to go well 🤞
I have a paladin NPC that the party rescued while searching for missing children, and they *gave him* a set of plate armor they found when he was without armor (none of the group could efficiently use heavy armor). After the adventure was over he tried to go his own way, but the players insisted her stay with them. He's more or less a part of the party now, but I do my best to put spotlight on the players and ensure they don't feel useless or ignored.
Once had a DM that also literally did void my Pass without Trace (as in, people were somehow still tracking us without problems) and had some unburnable rope to prevent us from getting a creative advantage in combat. And this was not even for the sake of storytelling, but in a public module...
I feel sorry for these dms. They just wanna tell a story :( Edit: I feel like I should clarify that a dm who does this should absolutely be confronted and asked to stop. I never said otherwise. I just feel sorry that in their effort to tell a story, they end up annoying their friends.
Tbh, i think some parts of it are important and should be focused on things like world building creating an overarching plot, secrets, cool locations etc, but none of that should be plunt force upon the players and you should leave the players their agency at all cost. a game without player agency and weight to actions is meaningless.
This campaign is legit a metaphor for the dangers of copy and pasting an NFT. Player 1: "But it's just an illusion, not like a painting or like a physical thing?" GM: "Yeah, It doesn't even exist" Player 2: "Yeah I saw one, cast Minor Illusion to copy it, and now they're trying to kill me..."
This was so real, my first dm was like this, and a lot of the sessions played out very similarly to what happened in the video. I don't play with him anymore, but I hear he's writing a book.
I think a major part of this, isn't the insane level of worldbuilding or lore, but the dm trying to guide the story to much, at the cost of role playing and player freedom. A good dnd world can have lore the size of a book and still provide all the freedom and supplements for them to explore their characters. For instance a world built in a night won't be tailored to allow the freedom of every playstyle and whim of the characters, not many worlds can prepare for such. The goal with worldbuilding is to provide just enough interactions within the world for them to play with, so that they don't get bored with their questing or you don't run out of material. Players very much like when you put stuff in the world, they just want to be able to shake it like a christmas present, and feel safe doing it.
Don’t mean to be THAT guy, but Matthew Mercer does a great job of this on critical role, you can tell the entire world exists, but 90% of it could never be discovered because he doesn’t force it on the players
True. I know many people loathe the "Mercer effect" but just thinking how that man went about planning whole cities and several possible battlemaps, depending on what house his party eventually ended up in is just incredible... Nothing you would ever expect from a "normal" DM but that is just beyond dedication
The best thing for this kinda person to do is DM a mystery campaign. Then you can hide clues and needed information in the lore dumps to keep players interested, and it serves a gameplay purpose.
No this would be horrible, what made the DM bad wasnt the lore dumps it was that every time his players tried to do something he said no. player says his background lets him move secretly through the city "no, the city has eyes", player tries to cast locate object "no, the spell doesnt work", player tries to burn the ropes to free the prisoner "no, the prisoner frees himself". If they ran a mystery the dm would start by introducing Herlock Sholmes who will just solve it all while they continue to accomplish nothing
I've had a DM like this, pretty much just railroaded everything and rarely acknowledged player input. Ultimately I got kicked out offscreen during a campaign where the DM was trying to force the party to team up with some demons and my character refused to work with them, I was apparently trying to sabotage the game.
Gotta hand it to you, I have been in this EXACT scenario as a player, and this was literally our reaction. Too polite and/or confused to actually stop our dm until it was too late.
I have a rule: you don't look for lore, you don't get lore that isn't immediately relevant. I give lore when it's important to move the story, anything is just meant to enhance the story, foreshadow, or give a better understanding, but my players have to look for it.
@@xselinisx Asking the right people (nobles, scribes/scholars, archeologists, crime bosses, etc.), libraries, museums/monuments with guides, spells, history/religion/medicine checks, and the like. Things like that. It all depends on what they're looking for and what resources they have at their disposal to get it.
I've had my players ask random peasants and other low class people questions about the lore of their towns or of the kingdom and I usually just respond with crappy answers like rambling about how this guy owns a farm or how there's a feud between 2 random peasants for generations. If they ask scholars or find written history somewhere I give them a much more detailed explanation of what they want
Our first dungeon master was like this, except all of “his lore” was ripped from an existing property and he never told us this until after the campaign ended
So many stories have been written that even if you sit in your own head and write what you think a dungeons and dragons campaign should be like you’ll still end up with a lot of similarities to other stories that have been written. I think taking ideas from EVERYTHING to make a better dnd story is the way to go.
That is the absolute secret to making a campaign successful when writing it. Build some McGuffin or major story beat totally ripped from another franchise (Infinity stone theme is great and has been used for 2 campaigns ive played in and 1 I wrote to great narative success, as they can be anything from litteral gems to weapons to items or spells/parts of a spell), write your world, then figure out a good way to fit your McGuffin in and make sense, tweaking both the world and McGuffin as needed. Then flesh out a few major NPCs or enemies and sprinkle them around and scale them as needed and let the players do it their own way. If you want to impose a time limit or rule set to keep them on your beats that works okay too, maybe they only have a limited time and have to take the more optimal route, maybe they have to get them in a certain order or they'll scatter or hurt the party. Then drop the players in, give them a shove in the right direction to a plot hook and let the story roll from there. Build in extra things if you need to and it makes sense
@@Caragoner I suspect there wasn't this much thought put in, nor were there many adjustments made to give this campaign setting its own identity. What we ended up playing was little more than a watered down version of a digital card game in which the player/party were never the main characters to begin with
This one hits too close to home. I knew I had a problem when I made two NPCs talk to each other for ten minutes, but knowing I have a problem is only the first step.
@@brookejon3695 I felt this pain a few times when running one on one sessions for when a player was away from the party due to some stuff that happened.
My advice is to, at the start of the game, not to worry about the story so much. Hell, the last game I played properly the dm didn’t know who the bbeg would be until we were like level 12.
Sometimes it's necessary to have a bit of dialogue between NPCs. You want to talk about a problem? My DM once had half of an entire session (or roughly 2h45m total) of JUST 7 different NPCs talking to each other... And the DM could only do 3 distinct voices, all of which were very annoying to listen to for extended periods of time. There were numerous times where we tried to interject, but he almost ignored us. He acknowledged that our character spoke, but just continued on with his script, and even occasionally said "can't you see that I'm talking to [other NPC name]?”
I prefer to just have a few flow charts pre-printed with little sticky notes covering the spoilers for my players. Saves time and hand cramps, and headaches for me when they try to go off the rails.
This was my biggest fear as a started my first campagn as DM. However my Players are great storytellers, so don't feel like trying to tell my story, instead trying to be a vehicle for theirs.
My DM had us set in the world of a novel she wrote, but did pretty good about letting us interact with that world as we pleased. She said we were also helping her come up with more backstory lore.
Ever since i started dm'ing i dreamed about a "open world" campaign, the scope was too big but recently i found a loop hole, a campaign that strictly takes place in one city, i have everything ready maps and such, and they can always revisit places they have already been to explore some more, I've specifically made places were they could only progress through at certain levels, and so far is being awesome both to DM and for the players, as they discover the lore of the city by themselves
@@Nitrogen-Oxide seems like a terrible approach, i have the events and story happening independently of what they do, and their backgrounds is tied to this city, so they go after their story by themselves
If you want NPCs to have their own stories, you should try to make it a story separate from the party's that they can choose to interact with and influence at their leisure as it progresses. You should not make your party feel like they're side characters
this. im in this campaign where i have said this exact words, that it feels like we’re side characters here for some reason. like, why are we here? everyone’s more powerful than us, every npc we interacted with feels like a lvl 10 warlock waiting to take offense at the slightest hit of negative reaction, and the dmnpcs are genuinely so unlikeable but they sure can do everything and are powerful. let me tell you it’s becomes boring real quick. hell, i barely have any player agency.
@@restingsleep that really sucks. I was fortune that my DM noticed how our characters did not have much attachment to the world. He made an entire side quest for my character which helped to give my character an attachment to the world. I know this does not change your experience, but hopefully it demonstrates that great DMs will find a way to draw your group into the world - even if that means writing a new side quest.
The key is to give a morsel of background and hope it makes your players want to seek out more info. If it doesn’t then the world building was really more for you to be comfortable as a GM while running the game 🎲
One of my current DMs is like this… so I feel this in an INTENSE level. We HAVE at least told him he’s railroading us and he is trying to get better about it. But it’s been rough going
This is why you make a setting, the npc characters with their own independant motivations and lives. Then you let loose the PCs onto the world. Make lots of trouble for them to find, stick their nose in, and get caught up in a plot pushed by their actions. Make shit. Let them fuck around and find out. They need to carve out their own story. Make a mess. It's collaborative storytelling.
That's the best way of DMing! The group I am in was given free reign in an amazing world. And so fat we have destroyed a militaristic village, allied with dubious beings. Pissed off MANY nobles, and stolen back an ancient relic from the empire itself. We also are the ones that saved the Isle from nobles trying to summon demons! Which we did by intercepting them at the tallest peak in the island and engaged in an absolutely chaotic team battle. The stuff we get up to is honestly such an amazing mess that I'm loving every second of.
As a new DM I use a DMPC but not to try to write my own story (Only have 3 players and the campaign is made to 4), its a young bard that wants to live an adventure, he just helps and heals during combat just as a good boy he is. The players always take decisions. This video is very accurate and really teaches a lesson.
Oh, I feel that! In my early DMing days I would get *all* carried away on my descriptions, basically putting the actual game on hold while I just floated down the stream of consciousness. I'd be in my own little world, just adding layer upon layer of irrelevant - often improvised - details until someone would manage to shut me down. Usually by jumping in when I paused for breath. Though I have since reined in the worst of those tendencies I'm kinda self-conscious about it. And still sometimes I'll find myself yammering about rare dyes harvested from venomous caterpillars and elusive swamp moss when the original question was something like "What color is the tapestry?" My face is hot from blushing right now! 🤭
Felt this. I've had plenty of talks with my DM about refraining from showing off NPCs and environments. The game is supposed to be about the players. If you really want them to be invested, find a natural way to hook them. It's so tempting as a DM because you put all this work into situations and characters that you want the players to witness, but players -NEVER- don't always follow the script, and will often bypass a lot of cool moments. But, sadly, tis the cost of being a DM. You're there to make sure everyone, not just yourself, is having fun and that sometimes means your players never seeing that one scene you rehearsed for 8 hours, or that NPC you spent 2 days creating.
Big fan of using modules to enhance a campaign. I think of myself as a DM as the game. A video game made by one person is daunting. Especially a game with over 200 hours of playtime such as a multi year campaign.
This advice can do more harm than good if taken to extremes, imo. Of course you want everyone to have fun but does that mean the players will never enjoy exposition? Does that mean you won't enjoy the game if you don't show everything off? And if it is, shouldn't the DM be having fun too? I think stuff like this call for a group talk, and if the ways the DM and the players have fun are in conflict, maybe they don't fit well together.
Everyone has different standards and expectations for the game. If you're telling your DM to never do something, I feel like that's bad. Always cater to the table, but never police other tables. Unless they're doing something actually bad.
@@nickkane8 There's a twist of trying to make that video game appeal to a handful of people instead of millions though. I get your thought process, but I'd like my players to see the world I made. No one else.
I get what you mean, and I dont know how bad it was at your table, but its not just 'about the players'. The DM is there to enjoy themselves too, and theyre the ones putting the most work in for it. Its fun playing off of players for the most part, but the DM is allowed some agency in the world too, so long as they give you the chance to play off of them. I feel like this is why there are so many forever players - in their mind a good DM isnt having fun, theyre just describing rooms and monsters so the players can enjoy themselves.
This video makes me realize that this is a fear that I have with running my own homebrew setting. The first half with the lore dumps is exactly something I would probably do because I'm wont to go on tangents about stuff I love. But also I've seen this happen as a player where I accomplish basically nothing over the course of a session.
A lore dump occasionally is usually okay. Settings have backgrounds and it's often important for the players to know what's going on. I've talked with my players about me going into "cutscene mode" occasionally and they're okay with it as long as I'm not overriding their chances to act. Usually I'll talk for a bit if I'm describing something happening in the distance after my players have dealt with an immediate threat.
I had a DM that was EXACTLY like this... but all of the Lore and details that he kept describing were not interesting like this, it it wasn't even fun to listen to him talk at all. It was like being forced to listen to an Audio book version of a bad story
I kinda fell into it was it was quick in that the thing happened hundreds of years ago where a princess murdered her king and queen parents with an axe in their vacation home.
This shit hit a little too close to home. This was my last DM and oof, it was a rough experience by the end. I love this video because the situation felt more realistic then many others that are brought to a level of absurdity. This is more grounded with great jokes. I hope to see more like this, but your content is fantastic over all. I’m always excited for your uploads.
I love how the players had solutions to problems that the DM didn't let work because he already had planned solutions for them. Like the rope and the secret passages.
Yeah, I feel this. Lore is fun, but when an encounter is solved entirely by an npc, some of the fun is lost. Played a game that didn't last long where every potential boss battle was defeated by an NPC either sacrificing themself or unleashing some secret power. Combat got boring quick. It was basically just hit thing until deus ex machina solved the problem.
For me when I use NPCs in combat I try to do 3 things 1. Give them a cool ability that helps the party but doesn't steal their thunder (my favorite is a modified version of the orc war chiefs battle cry, that lets the party all make an attack as a reaction) 2. Make them strong enough to be helpful 3. Make them weak enough where they would be completely screwed if the party wasn't there That said most NPCs aren't inclined to hunt down monsters and help the party delve into dungeons by default, the players have to make an effort to get them on their side or the NPC has to have a damn good reason to be helping the party in combat.
@@ADT1995 I had one NPC powerful enough to handle himself, but he's too busy to tag along. There are two NPCs I have with the two parties I have currently: One is a paladin who the group INSISTED should stay with them, and I've asked multiple times if they're okay with Rollo staying with them. The other is an undine bard who mostly casts support spells and can create shapes with water by singing. She became the cleric PC's girlfriend and she died once, but was brought back when he cast Raise Dead for the first time.
@@xFlareLeon the only NPC that is actually with the party is an abjuration wizard (originally an abjurer statblock, now has an actual character sheet) that is the fighters girlfriend... Originally a throwaway NPC, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn't actually speak common (she speaks orc elvish undercommon and giant). But while I'm against using DM PCs I don't consider her a DM PC, she's there because the party wants her to be (especially the fighter) As a 13th level wizard she's more than powerful enough to be helpful, but the party is 16th level and she's the only member of the party without legendary items, so yeah she is easily outmatched against the enemies that they fight against if they weren't there My description of how I like to do NPCs was a general statement, not a strict "thou shalt follow these commandments and an exception thou shalt have not", every group is different.... This party has convinced level 20 NPCs to help them multiple times, the other two parties I run for only do so in desperation (behind the screen they never need it, but I like to reward good roleplaying and if the party desires it and puts in the work for it I make it possible) I run these all in the same world, and there are only a handful of level 20 NPCs, none of them are necessarily inclined to help any given party without a reason. I have one level 20 cleric in the entire world, a couple of level 20 wizards, and two level 20 fighters (one created by a characters backstory), and one level 20 paladin, and if these NPCs are killed by this party or another they don't come back. Your NPCs sound great, and like they actually contribute to the enjoyment at the table.
loved the way you transitioned from the ad into the skit in the same take, made it feel like it wasn't tacked on and also led seamlessly into the video I actually came here for.
I'm a DM and can safely say I've never done that. The first campaign I ran was homebrew and I only had a.. rough draft of the setting not to mention actual campaign plot/story. But, in the end the players and I made a very memorable story that I hope to top one of these days.
Hello xp to level 3 may i please beg you for your oppinion on the dingo doodles trausqque figure, specifically if its safer as a doorstop or a garden gnome
I had a DM who was so wrapped up in his own story and superfluous descriptions of locations. Over the course of a three hour session, not a single player got to roll a die. It was atrocious.
Ok but honestly sessions without dice rolling (or "imposed" dice rolling asked for by the DM) can be just as much fun. If you ever had your players just plot out a plan for something big for hours or discuss options and debate or hell, even just have a big ol roleplay heavy session in which the only rolls made were asked for by the players like history or religion or self imposed deception/insight, then you should know they can be a whole lotta fun too. Dice are good and all, as a goblin I love my clack clacks, but they're not paramount
@@iridium6714 I get what you're saying and I do agree that letting players form their own avenger is rewarding and doesn't require rolling to be fun. But you give this DM too much credit. The reason why this session didn't have any dice rolls was because he picked out a branching dungeon that he found online and scaled it down to level 1, which meant cutting out encounters at the end of those branches. So instead of cutting out the empty branches, he kept them in so he could describe the brickwork or the moss, perhaps a pool of water before telling us it was a dead end. This went on for 2 hours before we finally made it out. The rest of the season was him expositing about the town or handwaving away the need to make checks and him deciding if we auto passed or failed based on our character background.
Happy to see sinclais library sponsoring this video. I would be interested in a video where you put the kickstarters sponsors into a video and do a small review on it. The stuff that runesmith did, grim hollow and soon to be sinclairs library
@@Nonat1s Oh wow! Happy to see another Sinclair's Library fan who certainly isnt the owner! The stream of Nonat to the release was really nice, even if I only cought the first part of it before the designer could come on.
I have a similar DM. He’s doing a campaign in Meiji-era Japan but with magic and his adventures guide us from cutscene to cut scene. It’s cool though, he homebrews the monsters to be lore accurate and combat is super fun and inventive, even if it’s terrifying lol
The best way to know if a dm should have written a book is because they automatically get immersive skyrim background music. It's a dead giveaway, I know from experience.
Incredible video!! Also DMs, it's ok that some things still do happen without your players involvement. Asking "so what are you guys doing" every 5 minutes can get frustrating for you 😂
Even though this is satire, I get what that’s like man. Stories really important to me as a player, love it over any other accept, but when dm’s don’t know how to balance it out can get tiresome.
I recently decided to stop DMing and playing D&D to focus more heavily on my writing, so this came at the perfect time lol. I like storytelling and worldbuilding in general, but by far my favorite way to express it is with writing - players are far too unpredictable for me, a guy who likes to plan every scene out in my novels meticulously, and now I have hours of extra writing time every week! Still won't stop watching amazing D&D content like this though, I couldn't call myself a nerd otherwise.
