@@darrenberquist1000 "Wells Fargo" is all you really need to hear. If you've done business with them, you'd already know the story from first-hand experience.
I saw the title of this video and I couldn't relate more. My players FINALLY got into a fight (with undead skeletons) and then started with "I've forgotten how to do this, we haven't fought in a year!". I checked - it was 9 months...
Personally, I'm partial to the "Orc Diplomat" method, described by Tumblr user floofshy: "We, orcs, love war so much that as Orc diplomat it is my job is to make you humans feel that your war against the orcs is morally justified so that you don't try to do that 'peace-making' again. Please accept this pamphlet explaining how orcs do NOT have an internal experience, and if we did, we would use it only to think evil thoughts. Sincerely and evilly yours, *Iguk the Irredeemable*"
@@dkamouflage Immediately after reading out the letter in a calm, refined voice, Iguk The Irredeemable pulls out his axe and screams his battlecry at the top of his lungs
@@GinnyDi Nah, I had a campaign where we didn't fight for over a year because the DM simply didn't put any combat in, then when people complained, he put us in a fighting pit with enemies that were massively over leveled (we were level 7 and the enemies were appropriate for roughly level 12-14)
As an old-timer, I gotta say that I genuinely love the fact that D&D has expanded, evolved, and diversified so much that "players who don't want to fight" is an actual problem you can now have.
As an old-timer as well, I wholeheartedly agree - although the situation she's describing is still the rare exception rather than the rule. Roleplay/Rollplay balance is absolutely getting better as the TTRPG crowd continues to evolve into more sophisticated and mature players - but "murder-hoboing through the campaign with a ridiculously over-optimized party" is still the prevalent style for most gaming groups. For the most part, I equivalate those people to the wraparound shade bubbas with hysterically-oversized pickup trucks rolling coal with fully-packed gun racks and a whole lotta overcompensation.
@@toddjordan2198 players respond to incentives and if the game rewards kills for XP, expect more kills. This is why I only reward the completion of quests with XP.
right, back in 2e you were basically murderhobos. who occassionally solved a rat trap maze. it might be an age thing too, im older too, teenaged me wanted to have the cool brawls and big battles, but thats pulp novel stuff, i want encounters to expand the story, so im going to try and find out motivations and get favors that open doors. most of the groups i ran with averaged 30, and the older players were definitely the more "lets talk it out" in fact we may have been annoying the teens. now my spell list will tell you, i am loaded for owlbear, but like i said, mindless zero context violence is not exactly where a game with no graphics beyond your imagination shines, its the story(pending dm)
I was very proud of my players when I gave them an evil-but-chatty monster. It wasn't the foe they were after, and it wasn't loyal to anything... it just hadn't decided whether it would be more fun to have a good fight, or start some chaos that could lead to either group being quite weakened and easy prey. The party was terribly unsuccessful and instead got directions to a trap instead, having unwittingly insulted the creature during negotiations. The creature was very willing to be extremely petty in keeping the players from getting what they wanted. The creature also did not survive even 2 rounds of combat with an angry party that pulled no punches and spent some lovely damaging consumables... a grenade, by any other name. Not much I could do against 3 solid crits. And when the baddie they were after said "Hey, if we work together to crack this ancient vault, I'll pay you. I just need the scroll." They were... less interested. The party having discovered the corpse of his last co-conspirator the previous session may have contributed. On reflection, that was actually a very *very* good module... ^_^
Yeah, the Bad Guys segment is super important. After all, a Dragon is not a person. If you ask the average Dragon, they're BETTER than a person. A Dragon is "What if a hurricane was a narcissist obsessed with gold?" You might be able to trick it, to get out from under it, but it's not going to talk to your party like, "Hey guy, let's just sit down and hash it out, man to man." Because it thinks about mortal people of the realm the same way I think about the ants that keep somehow getting into my house to eat on my food: It's not even going to kill you because it hates you. It's going to kill you because you are so very insignificant in comparison to it and your party is especially annoying. And they'd stamp out a small town to get the gold they've stored up while muttering to itself, "Ew, gross...where do all these humans keep coming from, anyway?"
Nothing you said couldn't also apply to a human who could have that attitude. Plenty of people on power have, these villagers are just peasants, poor, some "interior" race, religious group etc. Unless the creature is completely alien it has to basically be a human in terms of personality and motivation because we are humans playing the game. It's like aliens in Star Trek something actually alien is often not interesting except as the occasional mystery.
They may not be human, but they are people. A promise of greater wealth later could make even a red back down. If they believe you. You just better be able to back that up and have another promise of greater wealth later on everytime you see them or things could go poorly.
Just have your big bad cast Silence on that party. Pretty sure most people will get the hint that the time for talking is over when they are forced to be unable to.
This is also one hell of a statement if the party consists of primarily spellcasters. "Don't even *try* your godsdamned enchantment magic, I'm not even humoring the idea."
"A 20 isn't mind control" absolutely nails it. If a person isn't going to be convinced then even if the roll is amazing it's just not going to happen. Just like rolling a 20 for investigation when there really is nothing there to find. I also use what I call "the jam jar rule" which is if players are trying to do something like a strength check then they can all have a go, but a persuasion check for a person is only really going to be possible once. The party can't all have a go at persuading a guard to let them through a gate, for example. The more party members try, the more the guard will be annoyed and the less it will work. But the more members of a party try to open a jam jar lid then the more likely they'll get it open. Jelly, for my USA friends. ☺️
The earnings, the slick suit, plus musical Talent (note the capital T) suggest Ginny studied under the College of Swords. "Great advice, great presentation, greatsword" is such a Bard vibe. The actual fucking sword clinches it. I fear and respect her damaging flourishes. Mainly fear.
I have the otherway problem. How to stop my players being murderhobos and actually talk to NPS with lengthy backstories and who actually knew the PC's lost father.
Related: how do I get players to attempt other methods of gaining information from NPCs and not immediately resort to threats and torture at the slightest resistance?
What they find fun should not really be considered a problem. If you want them not to kill an NPC, meet them in public. Or hint about the knowledge the NPC has. If they are killing innocent people, they just became the bad guys.
Here's something to swipe as a house rule: In Savage Worlds, NPC Reaction comes in 5 levels, not 3. And it's flat out impossible to improve the reaction by more than one level oer encounter. So, if an NPC starts out Hostile, no amount of sweet talking will make him any better than Unfriendly. And against an Unfriendly opponent, a "diplomatic solution" means that he's willing to accept your surrender.
@@hawklegs6940 The levels are: Helpful - might volunteer to give aid for free Friendly - will probably agree to help if the task is not too dangerous or costly Neutral - mostly wants to be left alone. Can be persuaded and/of bribed to assist if the task carries no risk to themselves Unfriendly - wants nothing to do with the characters. Might attack if further provoked or annoyed. Hostile - will attack at the slightest provocation
"Make your bad guys actually bad". Indeed, Ginny! I used this constantly and can recommend it. I've found that I didn't even have to go into morbid or grisly detail either, and could just let the players piece together what was going on. A Search check reveals "child-sized bones" in a goblin communal stew pot, for example. That's enough for most players to realize that they're dealing with dangerous, predatory forces which care nothing for anything beyond their own desires. Cheers!
Statements like "sometimes there will be no way to successfully talk certain enemies out of violence to get what they want" reinforces the idea that crits don't apply to non-combat rolls - which is rules as written (and intended).
Just because it's not possible to talk them out of it, doesn't mean you can't give them something else instead. A villain that's going to attack no matter what might still hesitate (or stop to monologue about how pathetic you are to even try talking them out of it), or you can grant other benefits for a good roll like fewer minions in the fight (maybe the argument worked on them instead), or having a recharge ability start out drained because you caught them off guard etc.
@@GinnyDi It can be really fun to play with the alignment in reverse as well - e.g- instead of chaotic evil being the one you can't talk down, have them be easy because they crave a challenge or want to screw over someone more powerful, while a lawful good planetar is forced to fight the party for something they did that was an affront to its deity, even though they did with good reason (because lawful can mean super-inflexible if you want it to).
@@haravikk Yeah if anything a lawful creature is less likely to change its mind, because it usually has some stronger reasoning than "I feel like it." The knight swore an oath and will see that oath fulfilled by whatever means he has to for instance. Chaotics are probably easier to talk into and out of things, since they tend to live by their current whim.
Plenty of villains are happy to let you talk yourself out of fighting them, then go right on ahead and do their terrible stuff after you've wandered away. It is very rare to find situations where your chances of changing someone's whole worldview in a single conversation is measurably above zero. Maybe you can convince them to try to accomplish their goals in a different way, but it is typically nigh impossible to change those goals.
I mean, considering there's a nearly zero chance of changing a family member's mind about politics or the economy over dinner... The idea of convincing a villain to drop their evil plans is WILD
@@GinnyDi Yeah, especially while they point the tip of a magical sword or a magic staff at you - basically the fantasy equivalent of a loaded shotgun. AND have a horde of minions at their side... There is something called 'leverage', so why would the villain drop their evil master plan just because some small group of goody-two-shoes want to sweet talk them ? Living in a safe and civilized environment is great and all, but how can any reasonable person believe that applies to a situation where cold-blooded criminal murderers assault you with a small army ? XD No one could keep them from attacking, that´s just illogical. I don´t care about your 20 charisma and high roll. Impossible, roll initiative ! Or just get gutted, I guess Oo I like to always ask "Would a police officer shoot now ?" Even the most peaceful people have to admit - when the crazy person tries to gut you with a kitchen knife, the velvet gloves come off. Self-preservation is top priority to anyone that is not completely mental, after all.
Agree with the initial assessment- if the party constantly wants to "talk it out" every time a conflict arises, then they may all be happier playing a different game like, say, Wanderhome vs. a game that is built with combat as its core mechanic and raison d'etre.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight is an official D&D campaign where all combat is optional. Are you suggesting that you should use another system for that campaign?
@@avengingblowfish9653 what? What gave you that idea? p sure op meant dnd the system is not going to give the players the same amount of satisfaction. You can fit any piece in the square hole, but at that point your hardly playing the same game anymore. Why fight the game when you can play one that does what you want better? Doesn't mean it's impossible to keep putting the triangle in the square hole
@@avengingblowfish9653D&D is very obviously designed around combat. Fighting is made very safe without long term injuries, has resurrection and characters rarely die and can come back, the DM isn't supposed to give them challenges they can't beat. You don't get to loot enemies you persuade either. Abilities are overwhelming about combat, there aren't many different ways to handle social situations or much nuance to it. The whole game pushes you towards combat. If you want a game where it's rare a different system with higher risk and consequences for righting and a better ratio of combat to non combat options and abilities is going to work better. You can hammer a nail with a screwdriver but it's not the best tool for the job.
One tactic that I have used to get players to fight some bad guys was to have the bad guys seriously hurt an NPC that the party cared about. The NPC (a street urchin) had been gathering information on a cult that the players were investigating in a large city. The players were trying to talk their way through encounters with this cult, with most of the cult being fanatics, and talked themselves out of combat on more than one occasion, which ended up with many of the cult members escaping encounter after encounter. And I got the feeling that they were not taking the cult seriously. So I had one of the cult members summon an imp (low level demon) and set it on the street urchin who was spying on them when the party was not around. I let the street urchin survive, just, and sent a city guard to tell the characters. They went ballistic, and over the next month literally took the city part looking for the cult, offering no quarter to any cult members that they found, all thought of diplomacy with the cult being thrown out the window. I must admit that their reaction made me thing that I might have gone too far. The street urchin had been a contact for one of the roguish characters since the start of the campaign, and had regularly given them information (for a fee), and the imp attack happened about 12 months into the campaign, so the characters had got to be very close and protective of the urchin. This probably would not have worked if the urchin was an NPC that the party had just met.
Depends on whether the attachment was emotional investment or raw practicality; removing an informant, even temporarily, deprives the player characters of a resource that makes the game run more smoothly for the players. Should they return to their 'live and let live' tactics with another group of ill-intentioned miscreants, have the PC's gear, money, and clothes stolen by the ne'er-do-wells. Their response should answer the question.
Our DM realized that as a bunch of scared newbies who are really into chit chatting with NPCs and talked a giant spider out of eating us she would need a proper bad guy for us to fight. So we got a guy who was recruiting children to do his dirty work (and getting them killed). By the time we got to him we had no interest in his back story and were trying to roll for imitative while he monologued at us. Like you said, give the player a proper bad guy and they'll want him dead
Funny, as a DM I actually use this in reverse to sometimes trick my players into attacking an otherwise friendly group. I'll just say "okay you run into a group of lizard men, your two groups just spot each other as you round the corner around some trees, they seem to be armed with wooden shields and crude spears. roll for initiative" And if the lizard men win they're not going to attack bu will just ready actions and warily observe the PCs, or attempt to talk. But if the PCs win, maybe they start attacking right away... who knows. I find it helps some players to get out of the video game mentality of "we're in combat, therefore we must kill everything."
Excellent video. Over the years I've been able to moderate the balance of combat and discourse by defining an "undeniable level of evil" within the mind of the players. You touched on this in your video and it is so true. Examples would be: 1) A group of lizard men attack the village in order to steal children with a certain birth trait. These they leave alive but everyone else they kill and eat. 2) The party encounters the big baddie in his cohorts lair. He is surround by a group of 50 children whose souls he's just absorbed. These undead are forced to attack the party, and the villain laughs as they are force to stop the children while he escapes. These types of repulsively evil acts will make the players want to stop the bad guys. Not talk it out.
Totally thinking about running a game now where the party helps a mother dragon find her eggs, and later in the campaign something along the lines of mother dragon is now wiping out the entire local ecosystem to feed her hungry babies. Or the baby dragons reach an age where they have to leave the nest and live on their own, and now they're wandering terrors. Good job adventurers :D
So, "Terminator Monsters"? ("It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear - and it absolutely will not stop! Ever! Until you are dead!")
It's more a case of what evil haven't Wells Fargo done? Search for "cross-selling scandal". In all fairness, I should withdraw that remark. Wells Fargo probably haven't sacrificed many children to Demogorgon. Yet.
You absolutely nailed it with this one, Ginny; I didn't need the advice since this is far from a problem I have, but your little gags had me absolutely cackling (and your patreon plug was so well fit into the video that I didn't even realize it *was* one until I saw the link in the description.) good show, funny dnd internet lady
I'm so glad you touched on it at the end under bad guys, because as soon as you showed Sven's email (or the excerpt) my brain went "here's the problem." We're playing D&D. A real Villain shouldn't be pursuing *reasonable* self-interests, they should be pursuing *unreasonable* self interests. The dragon isn't just hoarding wealth, it is literally killing the town/region by vacuuming up all the wealth and its attacks are making merchant caravans wary of coming into the area with needed supplies to live. The dragon doesn't care because those people will be dead in a couple years anyhow, while its life spans millennia and its growth is far more important. The goblins shouldn't just be trying to live peacefully, they should be stealing sheep and villagers and sacrificing them to margubliyet in a ritual designed to spare them from an afterlife of eternal servitude to the dark god. My PCs asked me for a game with "moral black and white" so they didn't feel bad punching goblins, and then made a drow redemptionist and a tiefling who thought everyone could be redeemed. The game worked because I didn't rely on race statblocks. I just made my villains clearly evil. They all had jumped the shark on kicking the dog and didn't care. And when it came to "evil races" of sentients - like the drow - I made it clear that the rank and file people didn't necessarily ascribe to the same beliefs as the leadership, but they were raised to not know any other way of life. Evil got punched in the dick. A bunch of people were saved from tyrannical rulers and given a shot at a better life. And a fun time was had by all in a game that went from level 1-20. Thanks in large part to invested players, but also me taking their concerns in mind and giving them villains they never had to question the value of stopping via violence if other means failed.
in my opinion a goblin sacrificing villagers IS a reasonable self-interest, if that goblin learned that it helps them in the afterlife. It is all about perspective and what happened to the characters before you encountered them. I agree with the general points tho
Ginny Di: Imagine if your mom was like "hey we're out of eggs" do you go to the grocery store and get more eggs or do you kill your mom Me: Your tone of voice makes me think I should say the first one.
I don’t know if this would work for a whole _party_ that doesn’t want to kill the monster, but here’s a strategy that has worked well for my group. My current character is Delilah: a warforged redemption paladin with a very personal desire not to kill people (see: warforged). She will always begin an encounter with a sentient enemy by trying to talk them down. But, so as to allow my other players freedom, my DM will always begin initiative and _then_ have me talk to them on my turns. That way, we are still compelled to be in the cool combat encounter, but I don’t have to swing my axe if I don’t want to. And there’s the added bonus that “the sorcerer just hit you for 70 damage, you are going to die” is a pretty good way to get people to surrender lol
3 seconds in and I already have to pause to say that Ginny, you look amazing in this video!! The hair, the makeup, those sword earrings?!! That look SLAYS!
Matt Colville has a good video on this, it's called "everyone loves zombies." Its basically talking about how you should always try to have a force or group everyone is on board for taking down, both in and out of game. Cuz its a useful tool as a dm.
I recently started a new campaign with my long-time players. One of whom always seems to sympathize with the villians even when we show just how evil they are. Myself and my friend Dylan (Both DMs) had to slap her in the face (metaphorically) a couple of times with acts we know she doesn't tolerate, like harming children, to make her finally want to fight them. Recently, however, I pulled off a villian that my party wanted to fight the moment they heard about him. And the funny part is it wasn't even my first idea for the character XD He's a Circus Ringleader named Oskar Bang whom I originally planned to just be a self-serving, greedy little jerk. But then Dee, my player who was a literal WEREWOLF started roleplaying like she was scared of Oskar. She described that he'd tortured her in the past for being "disobedient" by cutting her open and shoving silver into her wounds. And I was just like: " 0.0 , A'ight. Guess we ballin." and proceeded to make even circus strongmen scared of him. Why? Because he was a dealmaker. A devil at a crossroads sort of figure whom gambled with souls to serve his overlord. And said overlord gave him horrifying powers like telepathy and illusion magics, as well as the ability to fall under the effects of Greater Invisibility at will by stepping into a dark enough shadow. It was great! They're going to try and end him this week. But man oh man are they in for a hard encounter now >:)
I'm reminded of that trope in action movies, where the hero gives the villain one last chance to repent, then the villain pulls his side piece, and the hero shoots them dead. In this way, the audience sees the hero both as merciful good-guy, and merciless badass. If your players are hesitant to fight the scary monster, one easy solution is to have the scary monster initiate the hostilities.
Ginni, this look is living rent free in my head. You continue to serve both face and content on a level that few can compete with. Thanks for the rec of the Proactive Roleplaying book, It's fantastic and I ended up getting the three DM books for my husband's birthday. You are killing it out here. Be proud of yourself.
Since you mention it, this whole dilemma is why I'm using undead, dem0nic, etc. enemys with such frequency in my own game - as something thats supernaturally evil and (usually) can't be reasoned with, they are giving the players some breathing room regarding their conscience a much needed break. Animals are also great in this regard, depending on your party (which both refers to the players and the classes they picked) or any humanoid adversaries that attack, crucially, first (like certain types of raiders or bandits). While, yes, you *can* take them out non-lethally, players tend to feel less troubled about it if its clearly in selfdefense. Also, making humanoids *really* evil can sometimes be helpful with certain parties, and be a great opportunity for roleplay decions - what crimes does your player/character consider truly unforgiveable? I have a monk player of mine who serves the g0d of farming of my homebrew pantheon - a g0d who has himself and his followers devoted for helpfullness, humbleness, and simple, values like community and family. The player is also a dad, and when a friendly goblin tribe asked them to find and bring back one of their own, he was shocked to discover that the missing goblin had been kidnapped, and that she was merely a teenager. Yeah, the negotiation amounted to "Free her *now* or face the consequences". The bandits dared to object, so they faced the consequences, which may or may not have involved a quarterstuff being shoved through some skulls. (Little Disclaimer: I made sure the player was ok with content like this beforehand). (Edit: Adding that you mentioned this approach as well! :) )
great ideas and sounds like a fun session. also finally a typing quirk my screen reader can follow. I have the same approach, most of the time I'm playing some sort of hero which means i believe in good and helping people so to earn my wrath is to be a slaver, child abuser etc. or your first example things that aren't sentient or sapient but just forces of evil/objects.
The banking metaphor works well for this. I worked as a phone teller for Bank of America for a while and I refunded ever overdraft fee I could on principle but the computer itself would not allow me to on some accounts. There wasn't an option to. So yeah it makes sense there's just not an option to not be combative sometimes. Structural to the story. I think this touches on something I've been thinking about lately which is that D&D is ultimately a fantasy to escape into and for a lot of players they just don't find anything escapist about killing. It's stressful to them even if it's fake. Which is part of why I've been swapping "died" for "passed out cold and can be captured" for some villains and some tables. It's not a perfect solution but it did get them to fight more knowing they wouldn't kill the person.
Love the earrings. I don't even run D&D as much anymore because I've written so many of my own ttrpg systems for fun that my group will often just play one of those, and advice like this still comes in handy or at the very least is always good to remember. (Not that I'm an expert). I'll often run things that are horror/comedy--so explicitly evil that it becomes comical, (the tale of Gormaal the Skin Slurper comes to mind) so I appreciate the Feral Merfolk statblock being something players just have to buckle down on and fight... sink or swim :) You have insightful thoughts, thanks for the content.
Fascinating subject, never encountered it at my tables personally. Minus the time Anna-Belle wanted to talk down the faen spirit of the moon, long story. The punchy edits, the flow, spectacular! Also, the drip? Immaculate.
While it kind of touches on parts of your three picks, I would like to give a shoutout to 4) simply don't give them the choice! I know it goes against most DM's instincts to deny freedom, but my two favourites for this are a) ambush and b) time sensitivity (e.g- people in danger, need to stop a device activating and they're trying to stop you etc.). In both cases you can still allow the players to *try* to talk down the enemy, but I'm a big fan of making that into a really tough choice (do you risk wasting a turn while you're actively in danger?) Not that I usually have trouble with the group I currently DM wanting to fight things - I tend to have the opposite problem, though I think we're finding a balance. 😂
In one of my current campaigns (at high level), we recently finished a tournament. The finals, rather than being our group versus one other group, had a 3 way battle of us, a trio of demons (including a Balor), and a massive dinosaur. I (Paladin) got a really high diplomacy roll against the Balor. This did not make the Balor my friend. It appealed to his sense of warrior's honor, and convinced him to, after the dinosaur was killed, duel my character. The point of this story is that, like, you can do both. You can absolutely still do all your cool social finesse stuff, while also actually engaging in combat. There have been fights that we talked our way out of. There have been others that we knew that was impossible. I just really loved this one because even though I rolled astronomically high on Diplomacy, IT DID NOT GET ME OUT OF THE FIGHT. It just changed the conditions of the fight in an interesting way.
I don't usually mind my players talking their way out of things, so this isn't a problem for me. I even award full xp if they avoid or talk their way out of a fight. The one thing, though, is that if they don't eliminate that baddie, it still exists in the world and will still be doing what it does. If what it does is eat people, then people in the area will be a) terrified b) complaining about it and c) occasionally disappearing. Actions, and the lack of them, bear consequences. In the D&D multiverse, some of those consequences can be really bad
Players go looking for lost children and find a troll encampment with a pile of childlike bones picked clean of meat and cracked open with their marrow sucked out. There is but one traumatized child in a makeshift cage. The Players, "Yeah but I bet if we just talk to them they could be a really good friend. They probably just a bad childhood."
Right? I keep getting distracted thinking about how I should try for that look someday. And I'm a dude! (Well. sometimes. More like a mostly closeted bigender gal.)
You can flip it around and have your players chose to stop fighting to talk, with a little homebrew rule of course since DND doesn't consider this aspect until the fight that started is over: Combat will have dialogue interludes randomly or after a round or two, where the players can attempt dialogue possibly convince the enemy that it doesn't want to fight to the death anymore. This way the players will always feel comfortable engaging in combat if they know they can stop it without killing. Now you do have fights and they can stop fighting to talk.
I wish my old group had this problem... my old table was a bunch of murderhobos who didn't want to role play and just min/max all their combat-oriented builds, so my role play builds didn't get much opportunity to do... anything. The combat problem we had at that point was everybody was talking too much on their turns. I'd finish my turn in the round in about two, three minutes, and then everybody else could take as much as fifteen minutes to half an hour for just one turn. We had a session where it took almost a full hour for one player to make one turn, because everybody was debating semantics about rules.
This is amazing, thank you so much! We just had this conversation with our group yesterday. I noticed a bit of tension between players, spoke with them and it was because I had put too much morally gray enemies against them. This put the more moral pc's and more morally gray pc's against each other (often enemies who did awful stuff, but had good reason to). We had a good talk and I now know I need to think more LOTR and less the Witcher. But, I was struggling how to shape this encounters apart from throwing just endless zombies against them. This helps me on my way as DM. Thank you for this Heroes Feast!
Fun fact about gelaticube - I ran demo sessions on the public event a few weeks ago (I prepared a few settings but players always had chosen D&D). And, one of the scenes was "the party meets a cube". They didn't fight it. They breadcrumbed it to the place where some dvergr had their pantry with a lot of salted meat, and they bolted the door. In other demo, another group of players breadcrumbed the cube to the burnt-out library and dropped a few bookcases on it... No combat each time, the second case used a few "feat of strength" rolls.
We are going to need a term for these "ANTI-murder hobos"! (Seriously, I think this might be a generational thing. Since I NEVER encountered this problem back with my older players.)
Yes, persuasion skill shouldn't be treated as a magic wand. Unless you give a villain a very good reason why he should abandon his evil plan, he's unlikely to do it. And even if he's friendly to you, it's going to equate to "If you turn around and let me do my evil ritual, I'll let you live" and not the guy abandoning his plans for world domination because you asked him nicely.
Sven's writing sounds more of the issue. "Why aren't you killing the dragon?" "It wants to find its babies." "But it's a dragon!" Forget "reasonable" self interests, razing the countryside to increase its hoard is a reasonable self interest for a dragon, don't give them SYMPATHETIC self interests. As Ginny put, at the end of the day they have to be the bad guy if there aren't any murder hobos in the party.
My party (I’m a player too) usually fights first, asks questions later. We recently orphaned a Kobold because we didn’t hesitate to attack the parents when we trespassed on THEIR home and they attacked first. We managed to persuade the kid to stand down and kinda left him there 😂 oops
As a DM, I could see that being a pretty good plot hook… if I were you, I’d watch out for signs of that kid growing up and coming to take revenge on you in a few years.
Who knew such good info was in the DM guide!? haha nice. Having bad guys that are purposely harming innocents for their own gains, is another good inspiration. Having "out of character" discussions drag on, standing in front of the bad guy? I eventually just start counting backwards. 5,4,3,2,1 bad guy gets surprise attack.
This is why I play in the home-brews that I do. Decades ago my DM was playing DND and went "I don't like that the point of the game is to kill people and take their stuff and it's hard to function if you don't." So he decided to take what he liked from DND (the role play, the fantasy elements, etc.) and then built his own world and system and we've been playing in it for 30 years... I say we. He's had rotating casts all those years. I’ve been here 2 and a bit and I love it :) joining this game is what caused me to find this channel because RP was super new to me and a lot of your advice is not only DND applicable, which I love.
Now to note, doesn't mean we don't have combat. We do, frequently (though maybe 1/3 games, I think) but we always FEEL IT because our opponents are villains. They attack first, they're hurting innocents, or other story-driven reasons. It makes the combat (pardon the pun) really hit.
brennan lee mulligan is the king of making unsympathetic villain encounters. i hate biz so much and was SO excited when riz shot his freaking fingers off.
Players: You are an wise dragon, I'm sure if we take some time to discuss we can come to an amicable solution right? Dragon: I understand where you are coming from, but it's still my JOB to test anyone who wants to meet the princess at the top of this tower.
i ended up using this advice in my most recent session! half of my party is reluctant to fight, while i could see it was frustrating other players. i ended up giving them a bunch of boar-sloth monsters that ambushed and ate passing travelers to fight --they still tried to cast Speak with Animals and Animal Friendship on them, but since the intelligence scores didn't line up (and they were monstrosities, not beasts) it didn't work and they had to fight, but didn't feel bad about it. they even rescued a trapped traveler and his buddy. win-win!
Great video! I would also add sometimes it's ok to have the bad guy end the talking and start to fight. They might be interested in talking if you're going to surrender, but if you don't surrender then they'll start combat. It doesn't have to be players triggering the start of initiative.
Thank you so much for broaching this subject! I play D&D with a group & one of our members is CONSTANTLY trying to talk the party's way out of fighting, trying to REFORM the villains when several of us have wanted to just wipe the villains out for all the heinous crimes they've done to our PCs. It's been extremely frustrating & I haven't known how to handle this sort of situation.
Really great video Ginny, and really well explained. I had to use those tactics recently in our Wild Beyond The Witchlight campaign [spoilers ahead]. Since this module is widely known for how every encounter could potentially be resolved peacefully and it's always up to the party how they go about resolution, and knowing that my party enjoys combat but aren't murder hobos (and magnified by the fact they had just finished Tyranny of Dragons and we were experimenting with this as a module where I would level up all the NPCs / monsters to be appropriate for them starting so high), I simply leaned into the evil of what these hags were doing. That's not even to say that I made anything up to make it sound worse, I just made sure the slavery and abuse were highly visible.
Great video! If only I had a quarter for every time I had to say "Persuasion is not mind control" ... THere was a great choose your own adventure style play I saw some years ago where an audience member got to be the hero of the play. In the one I saw, the hero kid when asked if she wanted to sneak around the guard or fight them, she choose to talk and ask the goblin if they would join their quest to defeat the BBG. This had apparently never happened in the play before, and because ofa limited cast it made the next puzzle encounter easier to pass as there was one less actor available to play a 'guardian' (one actor quiped about it in the scene and it got discussed in the meet and greet after the play). Lots of ways to solve an encounter, by sword or by word, but sometimes you just gotta get violent.
I definitely can appreciate this. I was the DM usually but just not into killing but realized D&D just wasn't something that lent itself to that; at least not and be fair to the players who were comfortable with that. It's what eventually led me to segway into being a GM in TSr's Marvel and later Mayfair's DC games. In the superhero setting it was easier for them to accept the "superhero code". But it also lent itself to having the occassional Wolverine or Punisher type. Or to WW2 or Wikd West settings where we each could accept drifting a slight big closer to each others style. But as a D&D player who was a non-killer (usually) it defninitely was (for a while) a fun challenge in creativity to still be a useful party member.
Match the players to the game and the game to the players. If the group doesn't want to fight as a primary method to overcome challenges, try a game that fits. I think "The One Ring" is a great example.
Before I hear your answer, going to mention "kicking the dog". It's a term in screenwriting where you have the villain do something especially horrible to someone (or something) innocent -- make it pretty clear they are irredeemable so that when the hero kills them or does other horrible things to them the audience will feel good about it (because it satisfies our sense of justice). This is especially important for revenge stories if we want the avenging protagonist to feel sympathetic.
LMAO! "Sometimes you just wanna stab stuff!" That NEEDS to be a t-shirt & I will buy it! "D&D...because sometimes you just wanna stab stuff." -Ginny Di
I love how you compared minions and call center employees. As one myself; doesn’t matter how much you yell, not going against company policy, as I’ll probably be fired and someone else will just re-do what I un-did lol
I'm running a game where my players are pirates, and since we're in the early game, they're mostly exploring various islands or tracking down bounties. I like to let the reputation of their bounty do all this work for me, as the players come across clues to where their prey is, they also learn about who that person or monster is and what they do. After every big find, the group discusses what they think and it usually gives me all the information i need to decide how they'll find the bounty and what that initial interaction should look like. Whether the target is a new warlord in an area leaving harassed locals to talk to or a raiding party leaving piles of poisoned corpses to follow, there's usually a plan for how the party wants to address it by the time they get there.
Great topic. In my group, I do have 1 player who always tries discussion first (it's kind of core to their character) but they know when to stop talking and start stomping. Unrelated side note: LOVE the execu-goth look 😍
I startled my dog laughing at the Wells Fargo callbacks. Also, the makeup today is an artful balance between bold and sophisticated, kudos! Also, I'm searching sword earrings, which I didn't know I needed before just now. Loved the serious content, too. It has application in writing, not just DM work. It's all storytelling, i guess.
Been a minute since I watched your videos and I'm astounded at how much the editing has improved. I loved the cutaway bits to Wells Fargo and Parlaying with Monsters, they're hilarious
The wit in your most recent videos have been SO GOOD! So many moments have been laugh out loud funny. The Wells Fargo Customer Support example made me laugh so hard I was crying!
