Keep in mind, a lot of the things he says are homebrew (he does mention this from time to time) Nothing wrong with homebrew though. As long as it makes sense and isn't stupid OP or just unfair/unfun
You should also expect your players to do something goofy that throws that narrative thread out the window and forces you to make something up on the spot. In one of my games, the running joke is that potatoes are the solution to everything. Because they often are. Want to grab the attention of a sleeping owlbear? Chuck potatoes at it. A puzzle involving a dragon fountain statue? Shove a potato into its mouth. A swarm of spiders are attacking through that hole you just made in a wall? Plug the hole with potatoes.
I'm spending most of today prepping a "monstrous adventurers party" one shot for a convention I'm leaving for tomorrow. This video came at exactly the right time, and it's given me some amazing ideas for how to reveal some of the plot elements to the players! You've reminded me that "show, don't tell" is important when writing these narratives, so I think I'll do some tweaking and restructuring to get this one shot to fit the theme even better. Thanks a ton for making these videos! They're a big help, and I appreciate them every time! (Also, this is the first time in ages that I've wanted to throw money at a kickstarter because it advertised on a RU-vid video. That setting looks like a ton of fun, so I'll go look it up later today!)
Really like your animations and i also like your term of "rolling a ball of yarn." As primarily a world build i have the better part of a planet done however i can't seem to bring it to "life." Looking forward to any other tips and epic animations you make. Keep up the good work. :)
This sounds a lot like the way I build backstories for my characters. I set up family and a reason for leaving. Then I delve into how they learned all they know.
This was truly very helpful. I'm at a point where I am struggling to bridge the gap between major plot beats and this helped immensly. Thanks you so much!
The idea of putting the adventure into a flow diagram-type is absolutely genius. I think I’ll try something like this and see how it goes in my next session.
This Video is the single reason I know how to brain storm, every other explanation and Definition never worked for me but the yarn metaphor just made it click just like that, Thank you for that! Also I've always loved your content, Hope your doin' well even if your not makin' videos anymore!
I'm working on the start of my new campaign but I didn't really know how to solve it in the end. This really saved my bacon in that respect, thank you.
Solid video, everything was communicated effectively and concisely. You didn't even try to inflate the video length with rambling. Also narrating as a bird man just makes it more fun in general. Looking forward to new uploads✌️
I've been world building a campaign for the past three months, and I want to say my process is kinda similar to this though I never tried to contextualize my process. This visual definitely helps me understand my own process a lot more. Thank you so much for this video!
I think this also shows how to structure stories in D&D; don't rely on your players to progress the thing. It can continue and develop without their influence. Then you don't have side stories just being awkwardly static and stilted, your world feels more alive
This video is amazing! I don’t know why, but it just answers all the questions I had perfectly, the yarn analogy fit really well. This could even be applied to writing!
I world builded via a character side quest, basically getting to know the "Gandalf the grey"/guide character without having the character really explain ANYTHING like a part of his side quest was getting a prosthetic arm because he was missing his! Along the way they learn of the history, religion, and other stuff about the world.
Your DM advice is pretty good, I'll try to use it within how I run my Games, I pretty much make stuff on the spot, but with this, I'll be able to better organize it more than I already did on the spot.
The one thing I think this method is missing is a link to the player characters. To continue with your yarn analogy, I prefer to have the yarn be tied to the PCs so that they can easily reach it. You could see this as a piece of yarn entangling them and forcing them to deal with it, this discovering how far it really goes.
This is so freaking cool! The story is intriguing and dynamic but the methodical way you describe writing it makes me feel like I could do the same, thanks!
I love this method of quest-building, so organised! Unfortunately, I can't do anything but improv' my ideas to my players at the table before spending hours between sessions tying up the impromptu ideas.
In my home brew game (the shadows that fall) there is this ancient tablet where if you fail to read it you have to find an old elf that is inside the woods but if you can read it it says “I am watching you -rose”
Twist ending, the whole village was ALSO werewolves, and the sister's the only human (adopted) Good ending, she's offered lycanthropy as a way of saying "welcome to the family" quite literally Bad ending is much messier and will likely lead to TPK
Fun detail I've recently discovered: in older editions of D&D, they used to specify how frequently any given monster would be encountered: common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or unique. Werewolves? They're COMMON. Right along with Humans, Dwarves, Orcs and Ogres. Lycanthropy is an ISSUE.
Worldbuilding and yarn are a good metaphor, and to add: Players are like cats with yarn. No matter how carefully you weave, even the most cooperative player might just get tangled in it, unintentionally ignore it all, or bat it around and pull it apart. I am..... overwhelmingly guilty of 2/3 of those. Not even on purpose. Sometimes the players woven into the stray start changing the direction you would have taken it, i think. [pls note i can't DM to save my or a party's lives, haven't even learned how to do it properly]
holy fuck,im so proud of ya for the sponsor,man! and such a great one too! also, I think I'm probably gonna use that structure of worldbuilding haha (starter dm here,lol,if aynone would have any tips,id be thankful)
I already started building the prologue of my current campaign in a different, less effective way, but I’ll likely use this method for the larger, main plot, so thanks for the advice! :)
I was expecting a more broad form of worldbuilding, but this is helpful too - more actually, since the wide-scale worldbuilding videos are a lot more common I'm brainstorming some ideas for a Slavic-inspired homebrew campaign, and I can think of a couple of 'balls of yarn' I can work with. Maybe the players find themselves in a tavern where a fight breaks out between a dwarf paladin of Perun and an elf cleric of Veles, who are both after the same goal that their gods requested of them. Or, how about a village on the outskirts of a forest that's home to Baba Yaga herself? Or maybe a group of rusalki come to a local town asking for aid fighting off a group of vodyanoi. Or what if the rusalki are attacking people instead, because their river has been polluted or dammed by the humans?
This is good shit. More please! Maybe fleshing things out more/more detail in general in the form of a free-talk/podcast/drawing stream sort of style if that strikes your fancy.
I've considered doing a podcast, for sure, as it would give me more time to talk about things like this without burning my fingers down to stumps from drawing an hour's worth of content or taking months to make one video. A podcast may happen down the line, it's a very attractive idea.
One of my friends failed at that.. He was DMing for me and other 2 friends, the scenario was a rebellion on the capital, the militia asked our help but later we were approached by the king's assassin to backstab them for riches, we were suppose to give our answer to him the next day, we were all neutral so, at first, we though of going with the assassin for the money but, in the end, since we were Lv3, we decided to just flee the capital, let them kill themselves and come back to scavenge since it would be chaos after the fight, my DM did NOT saw that coming, he was pretty damn sure we would aid one of the factions instead and he had to call out the session short to create the scenario for the next weekend.. He didn't liked to hinder player's choices so he didn't went with "Oh, you have to side with one or the other or [halfassedexcuse] will happen!" in order to force us to choose a side so, next week, we fought other scavengers, people from the remaining militia that were angered at us bailing on them and the king's guards because the king was upset because we not only denied his request, we also didn't even bother to show up and give an answer to his royal assassin, it was epic tho'..
This would work great in my campaign except for the fact that lycanthropes in our world pulled the old City Goblin and have a wealthy and massive monarchy. Technically they're all royal family.
Most werewolves wouldn't care about civilians so my character would give him a free pass tho that likely wouldn't save him from the mob. Also, one dead werewolf can sometimes end up with 3-4 new werewolves with zero control.
You can definitely have both! Trust me, you can never have enough plot hooks, players tend to miss even the most obvious ones. As far as deciding between a few or many, I'd say it depends on how strong your broad ones are and how prevalent the few are. If you have a few dozen reveal conditions, but they're strictly related to one area/object/person, the players may be more likely to miss them if they're not drawn to them. If you have a few broad ones, but you don't have them actively changing or being talked about in the game world, then your players may also miss those if they're not used to the hints. Ultimately, it's up to trial and error to see what version works for you and your players!
