Basically every campaign I've played has started like that. Getting sick of DnD because I feel my character never fits in when campaigns start like that...
Yeah, I try my best to get an idea of who my players are gonna be before I run my first session. If possible, I stay involved in the character creation process. Knowing everyone's prologue before the story starts makes tying them in and keeping things interesting that much easier.
You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that imperial ambush, and that thief over there. Lokir: Damn you Stormcloaks... Skyrim was fine until you came along! Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn’t been looking for you I’d have stolen that horse and been halfway to Hammerfell. You there, you and me, we shouldn’t be here. It’s these Stormcloaks the Empire wants. Ralof: We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now. Driver: Shut up back there. Lokir: looks at Ulfric What’s wrong with him, huh? Ralof: Watch your tongue! You’re speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King. Lokir: Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm? You’re the leader of the rebellion... if they’ve captured you... oh gods, where are they taking us? Ralof: I don’t know where we’re going, but Sovngarde awaits. Lokir: No, This can’t be happening! This isn’t happening! Ralof: Hey, what village are you from horse-thief? Lokir: Why do you care? Ralof: A Nord’s last thoughts should be of home. Lokir: Rorikstead. I’m from Rorikstead. Hadvar: General Tullius sir! The headsman is waiting. Tullius: Good, let's get this over with. Lokir: Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh! Divines, please help me! Ralof: Look at him! General Tullius, the Military. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves, I bet they had something to do with this. This is Helgen... I used to be sweet on a girl from here. I wonder if Velod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in... Funny, when I was a boy Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe. Child: Who are they, daddy? Where are they going? Father: You need to go inside, little cub. Child: Why? I want to watch the soldiers! Father: Inside the house, now. Child: Yes papa... heads inside Driver: Woah... Female Captain: Get these prisoners out of the cart! Lokir: Why are we stopping? Ralof: Why do you think? End of the line...
@@MrIzzy5466 this CAN be a problem, but your character should come with a built-in reason to start adventuring, and your DM should have talked to you about roughly HOW the game is going to start. For example, during my Session 0s where we make characters, I usually tell the players the intro story BEFORE we start making anything. "You're all part of a grand caravan of knights, footmen, and camp followers, returning from a vicious crusade against the Orcs and savage human tribes who live in the mountain ranges along Avalon's northern coast. Tell me, who are you? What was your role in the crusade?" If you come back at me saying that your character is a Half-Drow, Half-Tiefling loner who hates everyone, named Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way - I'm gonna shut you down right there. That doesn't fit with the campaign, that's not the story we all came together and agreed to tell. Come at me with a new character idea. You can still be a powergaming Chaotic Evil Rogue, but you'd better have a good reason to be working with this party.
The first time I GM'ed I was probably around 10-12. We didn't have dice so we randomly started and stopped a stop watch and used the milliseconds as our role. I don't remember much of the first campaign, but I remember they had to gather 3 artifacts in order to create a legendary weapon to defeat someone.
The whole confidence thing is super true! One time i accidentally said 40 instead of 4 for the amount of orcs in a patrol and it turned into a great stroy line about a wandering orc tribe.
I actually DON’T think you need tragedy to make a hero. Bilbo Baggins in the hobbit leaves the shire because he realizes he has nothing better to to. He never suffered in his life and was perfectly content before Gandalf visited him. Granted he was uncomfortable at first, but the adventuring lifestyle grew on him. Boredom with regular life is just one way of becoming an adventurer without tragedy. You could be trained from a young age to be an adventurer such as a fighter, monk, or wizard and have always had a dream of exploring the world. Maybe you look to adventuring as a way of leaving a legacy. Tragedy is definitely a strong way of spurring and adventurer into the world, but I feel like that only really works for races that are often described as homebodies that would rather remain where they are (like halflings and firbolgs).
also not the greatest example EVER but if you watched pokemon back in the day, ash didn't have a tragic back story. granted pokemon wasn't _that_ kind of show, but the call to adventure doesn't always have to be a doomed hometown or sick fiance. after all, there's plenty of time for tragedy at the table itself, no?
Another great example of being roped into adventure without a tragic backstory is Johnny Schnarr, a rumrunner from the early 20th century. He was living a fairly satisfying life as a lumberjack, and was roped into a smuggling scheme for essentially being "The guy who was good with boats". After a (semi) successful run, he realized "hey, I could make a lot of money doing this" and went on to become one of the most famous rumrunners of the Pacific, delivering over 60,000 cases of rum without ever being caught.
I agree. You character could just have a wonderlust, or maybe they are trying to find somthing or somone. Perhaps to protect, destroy, rescue or claim posession of it for themselves or the quest-giver.
Use social media and say you want to run a game. Put up fliers in places people your age go or comic/game shops. On line the options are unlimited. If you want to DM players will come to you. (More so if you are willing to do it on an website)
I mean his family has had sad stuff happen and he originally lives alone in a hole by himself:( plus he takes in frodo so clearly not everything is good in his life.
@@robertprouse6814 no ones life is totally perfect. Bilbos life wasnt ideal but it wasnt tragic. Living alone only counts as sad if he was lonely, which he didnt seem to be imo
@@dylanevartt3219 I think it just depends on everyone's perspective of it, I'd certainly say it ends up a bit tragic though due to loads of his dwarf friends dying and him becoming addicted to the ring.
@@dylanevartt3219 He was conflicted about being desperate enough for change to actually go on a quest or staying home bored. Tragic, no, but conflict is at the heart of any choice, and then something about how a 1000 mile journey starts...
He has the tragedy of satisfaction. Where his life is perfect, his town is normal and his needs are met. He has everything a person would need for life. A perfect life, but no reason to live it. It's stagnate, unchanging and entirely expected. A single taste of adventure, of something outside the norm shows up with a story that would tug the heart strings of any hobbit, and he was hooked. His tragedy was not of loss or suffering, but of banality.
Yo I'm currently using the grandma's locket in a campaign, players haven't used it too much but they enjoyed the first interaction with a loving elderly woman
That's totally a "hags" brooch, better mention some subtle hints about it needing to be uncursed or something and slowly make your player's character holding it slowly go insane or perceive horrible goings on around them if they forget, tie it in storywise if you're good Maybe they begin to think like a Granny 😂 and go about trying to bake pies at inopportune times or enter dungeons thinking they're bingo halls
Fucking true. First time DMing, plotted out the gist of the adventure to avoid flying into a random direction. Story starts with party on a train and I have train attendant come by and ask for tickets to give the players a chance to intro their characters looks, voices, and maybe a splash of personality. Then have a train robbery go off with the Attendant getting held hostage. This would be a way of having them bond over a common goal. I hadn't even finished do the dialog for Robber #1(who has the train attendant hostage) when one player whips out a throwing javelin and hucks at the robber. It misses of course, but it kicked off the battle...while the lady was still being held a gun point. Oh, did I mention the robbers had GUNS! 'Cause I did then! BEFORE he HUCKED A FACKING SPEAR! ...Long story short, they murdered all the robbers(all 6 of them) but one, horribly disfigured the train attendant due to a botched Med. check to CAUTERIZE her chest wound...with a burning sword, and brutalized the robber gangs leader's face so bad that they couldn't claim the reward that I had planned for them. From there they proceeded to kill the sister to a reoccurring character in the campaign, turning what was suppose to be a terse-relationship-into-a-friendship to a cold relationship with her trying to murder them. Her sister was a bar maid, by the by. I got back at them, but hot damn.
@@lovebirddraws8475 Nope, I adapted a quote from general Moltke of Prussia I'd seen a while before, but I believe many people had the same idea as I've seen the phrase elsewhere afterwards
As a DM i really made that true when I gave my players a giant rat that "had all the stats of an elephant and a rat that can burrow combined". That was hard to plan around but really fun
Or for a comedic campaign, have the party have pretty much no connection to the plot and be incredibly powerful compared to the monsters. Then the fun of the game comes from them trying to force their help on people who didn’t ask :D
”Help them make their character.” First member doesn’t even show up for two days, second member doesn’t write anything, third isn’t even online half the time
Sky Rim so it’s been 5 months and there isn’t one word on the session one paper. I haven’t even thought of D&D in a long time. Our squad went from 4 to just 2.
@@i_dontexist4951 One on one dnd is pretty amazing. Was kinda uncomfortable with it for about 15 minutes but then my player and I never looked back. Already played about a third of Tomb of Annihilation as a duet. Give it a try, it's a lot less hassle to schedule and allows for plenty of attention and development for the one PC
This is something I know I've had issues with when trying to make a campaign work. It actually made me feel really bad because one player gave me so much to work with it was really easy to incorporate elements into the game but no one else did so it felt like favoritism especially since the player was my girlfriend at the time.
I created a theme. I really wanted a 1930s archeology style rush for artifacts and treasures in an arid landscape but set in an Eberron style technology world. From there I asked for backstory bulletpoints and a reason they'd want to go to this land of artifacts and treasures. Things they wanted and I'd craft them into the world and build it around them. Example: New player just sent me a dwarf character today to join in on the next session. He wanted: to be the son of a renowned blacksmith, mother died in attack, joined an order of paladins out of grief, decided he could best serve his revenge on evil in this new land, and he wanted a thunder theme (tried to convince him on Tempest Cleric, lol). Now the players are all aware I'll work with it the best I can but changes will happen if things get really shoehorned. So I came up with: His mother and father were in an order that defended a secret smithing technique that used lightning instead of standard forges. The females of the order are the smiths and the males are guardians of the techniques. The mother is tasked to create something (he doesn't know what) using an object found from this new land. An attack is made attempting to steal it and she dies trying to defend it. In his grief he joins the order with his father and ends up having a vision of his mother beckoning him to travel to the new land. Eventually the idea is that he'll learn during adventures in this land that during the attack his mother's soul was drawn into the object that she was creating and the attackers fled to the new lands thus cueing his path onto Oath of Vengeance and I'll describe all of his spells and actions with thunder/lightning themes. :D
The first game I made, I accidentally forgot to add a plot. The party just went around the world, doing small quests. I mean, one character had an capsule where he had to take blood of different boss monsters and bathe the capsule in it to open it, each time a gem on the side would change color, but the item inside just transformed his mount into something different because he kept complaining about his mount
@@Adam-cq2yo I mean, kinda. At the beginning I introduced a life mechanic where their character would respawn, but once they ran out of "ankhs" they would die and have to make a new character. I forgot what level they ended up at, but the campaign went on for a couple months, with a session every week. Only one character actually survived beginning to end though (the one with the capsule blood thing)
Panda fact #5: The giant panda's scientific name in english is 'Ailuropoda melanoleuca' which means 'black and white cat-foot'. In Chinese, the literal translation (dà xióng māo) is 'large bear cat'. The word 'panda' however, is said to come from the Nepalese word 'ponya' which comes from the phrase 'nigalya ponya', meaning 'eater of bamboo'
Fake panda facts #1 Pandas are actually not bears, but rather raccoons which have undergone megafaunic gigantism due to lengthy genetic isolation. The nickname "trash panda" commonly used for raccoons is a reference to this.
You seem to be very unenthused about magic items and loot. In spite of how big a motivator they can be, especially with how limited 5e is in customization.
One of the big reasons I play 3.5. 5e is kind balls like they hired Bethesda to dumb it down so everyone could play it. Accessibility leads to money and that's all a corporation cares about at the end of the day.
A way to pull off being unsure is to tell it from a first person perspective, "you enter the room and see what you estimate to be twenty orcs." Is better than "you enter the room and there are about twenty orcs" Gives you more time to think and do all that good stuff. Remember a pretty good answer right now tends to be better than a perfect answer in five minutes. Edit have been corrected in my replies that this is second person not first
I don't remember who said this (might have been Spoony) but he said don't say "there's nothing there" instead say "you don't see anything" which can freak players out if they rolled high but not ridiculously high.
@@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527 Thanks for correcting me, looked it up you got it right. and so I'm currently debating myself on whether I should edit my comment or leave it be.
"No heroes come from a happy family." I'll have you know that my character only just found out that her parents are evil. They were actually really nice to her, she ran away because a mad god talks to her through telepathy and told her to. Rather than being a hero through misfortune, she's a hero through pure happenstance. The fact that she once dated a succubus and left the relationship heartbroken doesn't drive her at all.
Runesmith: All heroes are born from tragedy Me: or a psychological problem or a love of adventure or boredom or embarassment or a million other non-tragic reasons my characters became heroes (though, to be fair, a lot of them are actually evil)
My character I am playing currently is an adventurer because she doesn't like confrontation and doesn't want to deal with the aftermath of her divorce, and needed and excuse to track down an item that was stolen from her over a decade ago
When he said tragedy I think he meant generally any bad thing happening; like having psychological problems. This may not be a bad that happening in your opinion but boredom of life would be a pretty bad tragedy in my opinion, and major embarrassment/shame could also be considered a tragedy. And if someone love adventure then you have to answer why or what made it start. Someone doesn’t just wake up one day and decide to kill a dragon. Maybe that were bored with their life so a “tragedy” was still there. Now se backstories may not have a tragedy but almost all will.
The last sentence of my first reply was meant to say this.” Not all backstories will have tragedy but almost all off them will, and every character I have ever enjoyed playin had some sort of tragedy.
Step one, play. They say it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it. Take notes, GM. Never mind. Step Zero, watch AJ's gaming session. Thank me later.
@@elgatochurro AJ Prickett, he's an awfully good DM. Very expressive and interesting to watch. He has really good tips videos and a painfully underrated campaign he's running.
This is really helpful for me. I was having trouble keeping my party engaged; it was a bad combination of new players and way too many. I found that 12 sessions in, my campaign was only halfway through. How long is your normal session?
I've always liked DMing really long sessions, but it depends on the party I have at the time. The current group plays for anywhere between 8-10 hours, but I've ran games where the players didn't want to have sessions that go beyond four hours, and once I had a session that lasted nearly 13 hours. I would just play it by ear and you'll quickly be able to tell if the players can stay engaged for your session length, whenever I notice a pattern of the game slowing down I'll take the session duration down by an hour until the pattern stops.
This video certainly addresses some beginner problems, but I disagree with a lot of the smaller details. I dont understand what's wrong with the word "about", and backstory doesn't need tragedy. When every backstory is a sob story, it can significantly darken the overall mood of the PC and campaign. Also, it's already very common (not that bad but whatever). I do like your writing style and it caused me to reassess some of my own campaigns, you really simplified a process that many find too stressful.
Does it count if the information was destroyed by an enemy failing? A fireball blew up too close to my villain and destroyed his orders... Then the only member of the party that was there didn't explore
Your players don't know it was the only one. Make another one! Like have a familiar delivering a message to the killed guy and your PCs capture it. Anything of the sort.
Hot damn, that 10-minute rule is an important one. I’ve seen it happen time and time again, particularly these days when virtual campaigns have become the norm over in-person games. It can be easy to get wrapped up in one person finding that clue you needed them to find, and forget that the rest of the party was investigating other things in the room.
I ended up making my own three main antagonists that no one currently knows about. OOOOOOOOH BOY They are going to be so confused and so freaked. Ya got a demon king Cannibalistic monsters And a damn witchcraft cult
Loved this video. When I run a campaign, I choose a vague general direction for it to go into and then prepare a detailed first session. I let the players write the story for me and see what they like and what parts interest them the most so I know what they want. I then prepare session to session depending on what they do. I never write full campaigns because I don't want to railroad or get derailed. Some of my best and longest running campaigns ended drastically different then how I thought they would. I always make sure that the players choices effect the outcomes in the campaign and influence the direction it gets taken in
"No heroes come from happy family" *nervously looks at my druid who comes from a loving family who are all still alive and whose adventuring career fueled by the virtues they taught her and her own desire to make them proud*
So I’m writing a campaign where it is the zombie apocalypse and zombie start running everywhere due to the coronavirus evolving and me and my buddies who all live in the same hometown have to do whatever we can to survive and every time we go somewhere with drawl a blueprint of that place and we loot it, we also drew blueprints of our homes so we can choose which one we want to choose his base and whatever items you have in real life you could use in the game we have a hunger level we have a thirst level we actually looked up how much she average person eats or drinks and that’s how much you consume we have pounds of food and gallons of drink, and since I am the DM I want it to be more interesting to wear eventually we have to migrate to another town we’ve all been to. Does this sound like a cool campaign?
Nothing has clarified exactly what I need to do with my story than the Iceberg analogy. Literally 30 seconds and you made me want to put everything down and write everything out. Thank you so much for the advice!
Great advice. You mentioned to leave the campaign with most or all questions answered though I've found its also good to drip feed info in different ways over multiple sessions. That way, at the end of a story arc you get all the pieces tie up and the reveal of a plot twist... every step towards this result is always open and effected by player actions. I run an open, consistent world rather than modules etc. Just a tip to those watching that its absolutely fine to have an end goal of a story arc that you desire as a DM, but its better to let that happen organically rather than forced. I've stunned players with a scene put before them they never expected but in hindsight their actions with other NPCs clearly pointed to this event and a massacre around them, that spared them as players for helping the antagonist unknowingly before.
I made a dmpc, made my players fall in love with him, make him seem important to the destruction of the big bad, and he was the villain. So funny to see the look on their faces 😂
does the chef class have a path of the butcher option if not... what the FUCK ARE YE DOING!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! *Cough* *Cough* ow my throat...……......……...……….....mate
I tried out something different for my current campaign. I gave my players a choice of six origin story scenarios, all of which connect to the main story in different ways. Within those starting scenarios, they could craft their character and backstory as they wanted. Before the party got together, I played solo origin story sessions with each one individually to really help them get to know their characters. When the party did meet up at last, everyone knew their character really well and had a personal goal to fulfil in the grand scheme of things.
The DM for the group I'm playing with seems to only know rails. The party didn't want to join his guild and he really said, "Alright, the world ends, campaigns over!" It was kind of really sad.
I have always disagreed with all heroes are born from tragedy schtick. So much so in fact that I rarely ever make characters with tragic backstory. Faheen? Carrying out the word of Pelor Militys? An archaeologist that just wants more money Carnitza? A prince, tired of his home, who decided to go on an adventure
Weirdly I've made a similar item, except it's an earring and it's impossible to take off, but it gives no beneficial powers, just criticisms and racist comments about dwarves. It's fantastic also it ties into their backstories because it plays as a maternal figure like that from their past. It's called the earring of the mother, feel free to use it just tell me you have in responses
being a dm: seeing someone pull out their phone means youre the bad guy being a school teacher: student pulls out phone and theyre the bad guy maybe teachers can learn from this too and decide to be more engaging instead of bore you to death with their words and punish you for it because they can't entertain, even in the slightest. if you cant tell I hate school
I'm starting a new campaign in two weeks, and I just found your channel. I can't stop watching these. It's inspiring, to say the least. :) So thanks for making them.
I really enjoyed this video. The information was clear and concise with narration that felt welcoming, as if speaking to an equal. Excellent job! Cheers.
Great Video! One more thing to add, although backstories can really help at the beginning. I've noticed brand new players might not have an idea of what a good back story is. So sometimes creating it with them as the first few sessions launch is the best tactic. This goes for tragedy as well. Their tragedy can occur within the first couple sessions as a PC dies. *Not for all groups. Speak with your friends about player death beforehand*
Sometimes subverting the tragedy trope is worth considering. It’s particularly played out in the age of memes. My character is regarded as the more traditional “heroic” character of my party, but is also the lone character without a tragic backstory. Both his parents are still alive and well, his love of exploration is in fact a transmitted value from his parents. Don’t be afraid to subvert a trope in a surface mundane way.
When I make a campaign (thanks to this vid) I try to get info on their characters and try to make the campaign around their interests. It gives my players interest and helps me out with writing block. I can be really creative but often idk where to start so I use backstories.
I have definitely done a railroad story for my current party. However they lay the tracks however they want as fast as they want. All I do is provide a hook and end game in mind, the dice and the players are the masters of what happen in between the needed encounters. And thankfully I have a respectful party that has actually murdered murderhobos (oh thank the lord)
@@VoidplayLP dunno, could argue that any story reservation is bad. (context: an ancient rivalry between gods has reignited and the continent the party is on will erupt into death and madness whenever the fighting gets started proper. the moon goddess plays off of mortal sentiniments of freedom and hope, while the sun god only asks that the order is maintained... and that this rivalry be ceased permanently. so far the sun is winning in this feud)
Thank you for the bit about writing the story after you know the players. This is something I decided to do in my current game that will be having it's first session soon. I gave my players the setting and let them all know what quest they were given, then let them make characters. I soon realised that my original story was not focused enough on the first quest and now my players had made their characters like the first quest was the main thing. So, I had to throw my story out and start over. I've been told a couple times this was the right thing to do, but never from someone talking about it as actual DnD advice like here. So thank you, I feel more confident about that choice. This is honestly the best advice there is for both keeping player attention, and for avoiding railroading too, I'd say. Nothing worse then having a game about taking out a necromancer, only to find out 3/6 players are necromancers themselves. No matter how well written it is, that sounds like a doomed game. A GM's greatest skill really is being able to adapt.
Good video, great advice. My one issue is that this advice really only works for story driven campaigns. Story campaigns are my favorite and I love creating them, but not all groups are like this (*cough* *cough* my players). You should do other videos with advice for different campaign styles!
