Running The Game: Lessons From Dusk 

I don't think the first episode of Dusk is very engaging. Watching everyone learn both an entirely new RPG, AND a whole new VTT platform is A Lot. Episode 3 is a better place to start: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-okMAqNpMi8I.html Episode 5 might be even better. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6qGQGbaMBwc.html

New RTGs are never late. They arrive precisely when they mean to.

I know that you just get busier and busier as mcdm grows but I REALLY appreciate that you continue to make running the game videos. I love your stuff Matt. Keep up the amazing work, I'll always be excited to see what you come up with next

"Leave some stuff behind." I love designing encounters where the NPCs behave in a deeply human and relatable way, but also in a way that has nothing to do with the Heroes' goals, so they have to deal with these folks on their own terms. In this case, I wanted to make a point about sentimentality, but also tradition and culture. Yes, of course we're taking all our belongings with us! What is the POINT of leaving our homes and trying to find a better place for our children, if we have to give up everything that makes us who we are? But then someone else points out; you left out of fear for your lives. Are these material goods worth everything? Worth your lives, your children's lives? And then someone says "Yes! These heirlooms are all we have of our ancestors, these are the things that persist. People worked for generations to earn or make these things, you want to give it all up? If there's an obvious, easy answer, if there's a good guy and a bad guy, then I did a bad job. Because then it's not realistic, but it's also not a CHALLENGE. How are the heroes going to unravel this?? There's no correct answer. It's not a puzzle. It's a test of character.

"...but as a DM, I get these grandiose ideas and think I can do anything." ::catches self slowly nodding::

Matt Colville "D&D is just a game about fighting monsters". Also Matt Colville: "Fighting monsters ceases to be this novel experience, and the players start discovering all this nuance and drama and potential in the game". The joy of course is that both statements are true. Great video, thank you.

Always great when Papa Colville makes an appearance.

This to me is the REAL dnd advice without Matt even saying it: the real lessons you learn on how to be a good DM come from what happens at the table, YOUR table. you learn a lot of about what you feel, like, can and can’t do by doing it. Before that it’ll all just hypothesis, which remain untested in the only experiment that matters: your table and your group.

Using villagers like "hit points" for an adventure is a brilliant idea and that you don't need your heroes to like all of them helps too. Come up with situations that threatens the villagers so that the heroes actually have a chance to be brave by putting themselves in that harms way. The freeform nature of Dusk really makes me want to run my own "escort the villagers through this elf haunted forest" adventure. I'm rewatching The Chain now to have something one while I session prep, but definitely going to rewatch Dusk when I'm finished.

With five NPCs representing the others, you can also have them being at odds because they are representing other npcs. Those five stay the focus, but they implicitly represent others and are the folks who have to deal with the conflicts, the actual people in conflict can become as detailed as is warranted, but when the heroes see Bart and Bort arguing they can engage with those guys, and then if they want to learn more about the situation they are addressing, or just solve the immediate conflict to move things along they can. The fact that they care about Bart and Bort does the heavy lifting of making the conflict between the others matter. I did the same thing with an adventure where the PC's started at level 0, just kids really, and over an in game season, became heroes (they became level 3 at the very end of the adventure, over the course of the following winter). They had a whole village full of people they grew up with, but I kept it to about 7 or so main NPC's that each person was more or less tied to. The others were very simple, but became memorable due to each having their thing (one guy named Finn had a big hat, and the largest farm, and he told long boring stories, another old lady named Old Nenn was the oldest in the village and made really great pies, two brothers who looked like Mario and Luigi were always arguing in the background) they were set dressing, but they each had a couple notes and I remembered to mention it when they were around in the back of this or that more important scene where the PC's were talking to the people they cared about. The Pc's didn't care about these guys, not really, they never even spoke to a bunch of them. But in the final attack when the goblins and orcs came in force, and they couldn't get to Finn's farm in time, and it burned down and he died saving his wife, or when they could save Old Nenn's granddaughter, but the wolves caught her instead, or when one of the bother's lost his hand, and the other lost his wife, and they stopped fighting each other and leaned on one another, the players felt something. They felt bad the pie lady died, she was nice. They felt bad for Finn's wife, who was left with no house and no husband, and they made sure to help her rebuild her farm. The brothers who they'd always kind of rolled their eyes at, now were only reconciled by grief and the PC's wondered if he blamed them for not getting there quick enough. It didn't take much, they were pretty thinly sketched people, but it was enough for them to each have a thing, and to just be existing in the background--I actually think the fact that they were just going about their own lives made them more real, and it required minimal effort from me.

Re: 5 key villagers. It’s Scooby Doo, or even Stranger Things. The brave one The smart one The funny one The scared one, and The true believer. Edit. “People aren’t just one thing.” This is something Ten Candles does beautifully. Character creation in Ten Candles is fantastic. A trait and a flaw. ________ but ________ Smart but selfish, for example.

Man, I gotta watch Dusk. As soon as my partner catches up on the Chain, we’re watching Dusk together. (Side note, it was around episode 4 of the Chain when my partner went from “It might be fun to play DnD sometime” to “You have GOT to run a game for me!” So thanks for that!)

Holy fuck running the game it is a good day

Clicked as soon as I got the notice!

I think the comments on PC bravery are *chef's kiss*. I always struggled with that, where if the game is played just straight it never feels like characters are powerful. I was going to experiment with 'player controlled narration', where it's a natural conclusion of 'Okay, how do you do it?'. But this adds something I didn't consider. The world must be FULL of 'easy' level encounters, players just never running into them when they're level 10 makes little sense.

If you have Ghosts, you have everything! Great shirt, Matt!

I'm sad to hear these videos aren't well received; they're some of my favorites. I will say; your videos are a huge part of what keeps my DM batteries recharged and my enthusiasm for the game high.

I'm going to be running a game for my wife soon and these are always brilliantly helpful. Thanks!

Designing encounters where each player gets a chance to shine is something that I'm working on. I have a group of 6 with one player roleplaying a 7 cha firbolg druid, and I'm struggling to get the character his share of the spotlight

From my memory, there were about 3 to 5 different families found inside the elven tree temple. Multiplied by 3 generations, that's at least 9 to 15 or even 18 to 30 (!) individuals to track. Choosing 5 - 7 individuals, 1 from each generation of 1 family and a couple from the others to act as "representatives", both in social scenes literally and in a narrative, game design sense would probably be the smart thing to do to simplify DM prep as Matt pointed out

Great job on the lighting for this, the video looks incredible

Yoo sick ghost shirt man, excellent video thanks!

Interesting to me that Matt said new DnD players generally just want to fight monsters and only start to care about RP stuff as they continue playing and get bored of fighting, since that's the exact opposite of my experience. Usually new players I meet care a LOT about NPCs, asking a bunch of questions and getting either tunnel vision-y about how to proceed or choice paralysis because there's so many different ways they can interact with characters and they aren't used to it. Usually new players I meet only start to care about the combat and numbers side of things after they've had a few levels and some opportunities to see what higher-level play can look like.

Just restarted my fifteenth Running the Game binge watch and I am blessed with a new episode? 🙏🏻

The lighting is so crisp!

YES NEW VIDEOOOOOOOO

It sounds like you're trying to develop what are friendly/dependent NPC "cattle" [just a "hit point pool"] in a cattle drive scenario into ... "meaningful minions"? There's got to be a better term for that. Ambitious. Great lessons to be learned from this video, expertly delivered, as always.

Very very good points in this video. Thanks again Matt. The one that felt like a revelation to me: "players start investing in the other parts of the story like lore or npcs when they had enough monster hunting done in their lives"

It sounded like a passing thought, but the idea of just giving NPCs a few keywords to represent their personalities is something I've never thought of or heard anywhere! I am going to put this to use tonight!!

Whoa. The new lighting and color correction is awesome. Great job for the team producing these videos.

Chain of acheron after the heist? I figured both of those things were dead. Restarting a game that hasnt been played for months or years is its own challenge in my experiance.

Just finished Princes of the Apocalypse for my players in 5e, it took us 4 years playing most weeks and it was awesome. I cannot stress enough how much of a positive influence these videos have been in establishing a DM style unique to me that actually creates a great game for my friends. Thanks Matt! I hope I use your running the game video to understand 7th edition when it comes out decades from now!

Nice T-Shirt. Saw them in february, seeing them again in September. Can't wait.

Next video is about Lore? Sweet. He was one of my favorite recurring plot characters in Star Trek TNG!

It's always worth remembering that most people can only hold 5-7 things in their head at one time - it helps both for designing mysteries so the players have a realistic chance of solving them and for making sure you don't lose track of your own stuff.

Thats the reason I've been excited about VTTs. I struggle to find maps and tables big enoigh to let a ranger use his longbow at maximum range.

Happy for another video! Thanks for what you do Matt!

A Campaign Diary wrapped in a Running the Game. Appeasing the masses and giving us the juice. I dig it.

Two days after publication, I've watched this five times. This is the good stuff.

It's always lovely to see thematics branch from DM to DM. When you spoke of themes of generations and parents and the future it reminded me of my own game; The Gauntlet. A game where I am running module to module and each new module is a new character for the players, all tied to their family lines. I sincerely hope I do it justice and you've been a great inspiration to my DMing style with your Running the Game episodes. Thank you for the work you do and the knowledge you provide to DMs; both of the present and the future :)

"Villagers as hit points" reminds me of the Superman Returns video game, where Superman doesn't have a life bar, but the city does. If Metropolis takes too much damage, you lose. I thought it was really clever.

I love the idea of 5 key NPC's and can say it is working really well in one of my games. I have 4-5 key NPC's that the players interact with as part of their airship crew. We are even about to run a one shot where the players take control of the NPC's going on a sidequest while their characters were off somewhere else

My group had a similar issue except their villages had been running from an army of these sort of ice Zombies for weeks. The PCs meet them at the end of their rope, last bits of food, fringes of death and the ice Zombies would be there in a few days. So they had a tower defense encounter. Each PC had those days to prep traps, magical traps, teach the more energetic villagers to fight or shoot, they could hide in trees, etc. It was super fun and the PCs definitely felt big heroic just cleaving through hordes of Zombies where they didn't need to roll to hit. They just rolled to see how many they killed. Bonus: no villagers died! It was a little unrealistic but I rolled for the villagers in front of them and rolled super well.

Bbsproductions is SUPER proud to be on this list of fantastic map makers and even prouder to have been used in Dusk! From a DM perspective, I created a village years ago for a campaign and made exactly the same misstep by creation so fewer than 48 different character backgrounds. Waaaaay to many. Completely agree with Matt on the whole 5 thing.

Love this, some great lessons and takeaways! I'm re-listening to/rewatching Dusk and I'm finding so many cool techniques and moments I can use to challenge my players and to help them engage more deeply with their characters, the other PCs, and the NPCs. I run two games for my students and use all MCDM products from Arcadia and a couple re-skinned early level adventures. I will totally be pitching a Dusk campaign as one of the options for the kiddos this next school year. The episodic nature will be perfect to let the kids learn how to DM and take turns running sessions for each other, while also providing a general trajectory and some cool encounters that I can throw at the players to challenge them during the half of the sessions I'll run. As always, thanks you!

Last week I started DMing and I can't thank you enough for the wealth of ideas, problems solving and inspiration this series has provided. Thank you

You are as always inciteful. Sometimes I do some of the things you are talking about, sometimes I do things differently, but always I get a new inside into running games.

Seeing Czepeku on top, no surprise. Their maps are always so amazing and inspiring!

Oh, video about lore! I'm super excited. It's always has been an important theme to me. Me and my best buddy are both DMs and we have so different approach. How much lore is needed to believable world? What kind of lore? Strange myths or grounded scenarious, details or vague ideas? How much you need to feel prepared? How to fight the feeling of emptiness of your own world? What are purposes of the lore for worldbuilding? That's a lot to discuss, I wonder what Matt has to say! I'm here for 40 mins video, let's go! :D

Valuable lessons. Its so easy to get caught up in planning epic, world-spanning campaigns. Or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the game..

Upon listening to Matt in this video, I just got an idea for a variation of Dusk set in a more arctic environment. And have the party have to get them to safety after encountering ... Red Slaad (Alien xenomorphs). Kind of Aliens meets The Thing. Thanks Matt! I'm off to start writing this stuff down!

This is great! My party is currently sailing to a new city and the crew has become the people they are escorting. The crew are in danger as they encounter threats etc. and the party need the crew to stay alive because they can’t sail the ship themselves. Seems like a very similar situation, just on water.

Thanks Matt, this running the game video is really eye-opening and the dusk-style campaign sounds fantastic, already coming up with ideas. It's always great to watch these videos, they really helped me a lot in becoming a DM. Thanks Matt!

Great video, don't discredit it. I loved hearing even you, a seasoned and excellent DM, overplan and bite off more than you can swallow sometimes.

1. You successfully sold me on watching some Dusk. That sounds cool. 2. I actually ran something very similar to this scenario way back in like 2009 during the height of 4e. I blew up Fallcrest (the default town in the DMG, which I'm sure Matt knows) and the party had to escort the entire population of the town over to Hammerfast all while being harried by orcs and various monsters in the woods. I think I ran an encounter extremely similar to Matt's griffin encounter but it was with displacer beasts. The difference was that I had something like 10,000 people, so I started each session with a Battlestar Galactica-esque tally of the remaining population, but the players already had existing relationships with a lot of these people since they had interacted with them like normal villagers before I blew the town up. The players really cared when the mayor was killed in an orcish raid because that dude had been giving them quests for like 6 months.

I‘m enjoying Dusk with my girlfriend, it’s a wonderful adventure ☺️ thanks for the great work

Our group winds up stumbling into the NPCs-as-hitpoints situations a lot. To the point where we've nicknamed the scenario the "orphan wagon". Sometimes as complex as trying to support an entire civilization of imperiled goblins, sometimes as simple as literally winding up in the middle of the desert with a wagon full of orphans. Our DM's solution to making them all unique was to delegate the tasks of naming, statting, and finding pictures for all of them on the players. Which takes a load of the work off his back, and also gets the players *very* emotionally invested in those NPCs.

2:15 I have the same thing with minis. If I find a new, cool mini I can imagine a whole stat block and backstory in seconds. I'll have it's dialogue, hopes, dreams, arch-enemies, and favorite minions in my head.

WOOT!

Surprisingly, this was a super helpful video! The advice fits super well with my current campaign I’m running, where I have a large cast of NPCs and I’m trying to make every single one have depth to them. So, I will be focusing on the handful that my party have already latched on to. Thanks a ton Matt, I sincerely love your videos and your running the campaign series has made me a much better GM

I think I watched this video 3-4 times for the lessons before I even tried to watch Dusk. Then I watched Dusk and got hooked, so now I'm watching this again. Dusk is kinda the ideal way I want my campaigns to feel, warts and all.

It took me a few days to carve out the time, but I am happy to watch longer videos. Love your content and thank you for working on it!

Our DM ran a city encounter about the city being attacked by vampires and cultists. We had so many choices and so many paths we could have chosen. I had chosen to fight till I was bloodied, no spell slots, and had my total HP drained to a 1/4 of what it normally was. Another player chose to hid in a inn and not help anyone. It changed the perspective of the towns people towards us. I got renown and recognition while the other player got nothing (one npc even labeled him as a coward since he saw him hiding). It was all a choice. A choice to be heroic and help people who had nothing to do with our quest or stay safe and sound. I will always remember that game session. Our actions meant something in that game even though it had nothing to do with the primary plot. Those are the kind of encounters I love.

I recently had my players fight a group of cultists that had a cult leader with a unicorn as a sidekick, so the cult leader had darkness, and the unicorn has abilities to heal and transport. The cult leader even dragged one of the players away that had dropped to zero HP and it took two sessions to get him back

Thank you for this video Matt. I don't usually comment but I watch every one of these things, and I appreciate you putting in the time and effort to make and upload them.

I loved Dusk, and I appreciate Matt distilling some lessons learned here. He had a great "table" of players, with engaging characters, and I am happy that I watched each episode from beginning to end. I really like the idea of "5 NPCs" (villagers, here) and I think that is probably very applicable to some games I am running. The insight on heroism is also pretty clutch! Thank you Matt, MCDM, and et al!

the thumbnail is too powerful, I'm compelled to watch the vid every time I see it

I thought it was fun to see that you're wearing a Ghost shirt because I recently saw them in concert and I wore a Matt Colville shirt! It just felt right at the time, now I know why, haha. Sure would love to see more of you on your channel when you're able!

Gotta say, I really enjoyed the session around the fire eating.

It's like a Running the Game and a Campaign Diary wrapped into one!

Thank you for this video! I really enjoyed it!

Solvi knows. Great timing, just finished dusk a week or so ago. I loved the adventure, well done!

Wow, totally needed to hear this!

This was very informative and helpful

I've already rewatched the whole thing and it just gets better. Great chemistry, amazing writing and DMing. Specially loved the existential crisis Zoga had. I was crying laughing the whole time

Thanks for the great map links! I signed up for all of them, some REALLY great stuff in there!

Thank you Matt, this video is has been very helpful for me: I always learn a lot from your campaign diaries (or similar content). They are also some of my favorites so thank you making them even if they are viewed less by the masses

These videos are always so helpful! You guys rock. Keep doing what you are doing

Always something perfect to re energize me to run. Thank you.

Superb insight as always! Thanks for all the great advice!

Excellent video and souper full of really great stories & lessons

These are some of my favorite episodes. The wide range of ideas and challenges give me a lot of material to work with.

oh my i was just rewatching some Running the Game yesterday!

Great to have you back! This was a fantastic and insightful video. I'd love to here more of your reflections on Dusk.

Thank you so much Matt! I learned so much from this video, as usual. (Thank you Commenters, also!) I've been a DM for about 10 months but only found your channel recently. Thank for you all the work you're doing. You've become part of my weekly prep and I sure do appreciate you helping me to improve.

I really appreciate these videos based on what you learned in a campaign/session.

As always, I am blown away by the clarity of your advice. There is so much meat on those bones! Thank you!

i loved dust it was awesome, really love watching you guys play

This is kind of like a campaign diary to my thinking, which is just delightful

Thank you for your insight once again, as well as the very entertaining campaign!

Hey Matt, great video! Lots of good insights here!

I appreciate how Matt presents his experience for others to learn from. ~ Adam

Thank you for this one Matt.

I really enjoyed Dusk and this was a good post-mortem on the sessions.

This video came at a perfect time for me. I've just started writing a campaign focused around defending a village

Came for the Ghost shirt, stayed for the excellent lesson.

A while ago I ran a summit of world leaders the players had gathered in the hopes to form an alliance. I couldn’t keep all of it in my head, so I did exactly what you suggested and boiled them down into one or two keywords a motive. Excellent advice! It works great!

I just started learning to DM and am writing a campaign based on a board game I created with some other people. A lot of the lore is already there and it's just about transposing that lore into DnD rules. This series has been super helpful as I plan the campaign! As a writer, the storytelling aspect is easy for me, but creating the maps and dungeons is quite challenging for my brain.

I wonder if the Dusk players in the Chain will take the descriptive freedom 4e teaches and apply it to 5e when the Chain comes back.

Love your shirt Matt! It's rare to see a fellow Ghost fan. Keep up the great work!