Advanced Gamemastery in general has improved my GMing exponentially! My dungeons have gone from basic, linear, and using the 5 room structure to a real place of exploration with meaningful choices.
Excellent opening and closing by reading from the book! I recently started a campaign with a nearby portal to the Feywild as the premise. Instead of starting the adventure in front of the portal, the PCs are following a trail of goblin attacks which will eventually lead them to the portal. As always, I try to use the 3ClueRule and a well-Jaquayed dungeon map to turn a boring railroad into a beautifully organic scenario with multiple paths of interest. Thank you Justin! Please keep making these!
Just found this video. As a sand box runner, I would add: how about smells of fir trees in the room, or snow /dirt in front of the wardrobe, or a breeze / air moving around the seam of the door. Anything to draw attention to the wardrobe. Don't forget to involve all the senses rather than just rely on narrative. If all else fails, have one of the children sent to hang up a coat in the wardrobe. Start with subtle hooks, shine a light to attract the moths, finally lead them by the nose if all else fails. Sometimes you may even need to meta game and say "guys - this is it"
I have to wonder if these 'fantasy classic reframed for Gaming advice' videos are the most successful or memorable of your series. I know out of Colvilles videos, his similar advice video incorporating Tolkien's works is the only one I remember years afterwards. If it's not clear, this is a request for similarly structured videos in the future! Great work!
About the narrative control advice, I was thinking that in that situation I would have just directly teleported them to Narnia and then said "You have gone through a portal that took you here. Before you go off exploring, tell me how it happened"
Very cool advice! I can't wait for your "Don't prep plots, prep situatiosn" video, that was the one thing that made game-mastering so much fun for me and I'd love to get better at it.
Something to point out is that they way you set up the hook is in some way going to affect the tone of the game. For example, let's say you give the players a map of the mansion and a simple task "The Professor tells the kids to clean up the place on the following week", then it might create the expectation than other places in the house might hold similar interesting things. Or for example, you can create a mistery around why the Professor keeps dissapearing and why there are snowing footprints and strange objects on the study. The first scenario reminds me to the Spiderwick Chronicles, the second could be the begining of a horror story.
That's a great point! I think the fact that so many published adventures make scenario hooks bland out of the mistaken belief that it's the only way to make them generic makes us overlook how much power there can be in a scenario hook.
Cool breakdown and yeah, knowing how to get the best from your players is just as important as it is to craft the world that you want them to play in. Gaming is about fun and people enjoy it when they are made to feel part of the narrative and not just following it. Thanks for sharing.
This was another great video (and fantastic interview on The Smart Party, which clued me into this youtube channel). Something I've been thinking about a lot, mentioned in this video, is how "clues" and "hooks" can be treated in similar fashion. I would be interesting to see a compare/contrast of their use, how the principles of advanced gamemastery used for one do (or perhaps do not) translate well to the other.
I wish I could pay you to read me to sleep every night. I hope you have children (or that you do someday or you have nieces/nephews) and they grow up with the joy of hearing you read them fairytales and fantasy novels. You sir, have an incredible reading voice.
I would like to Thank you for creating and making avaliable all of this Great content on your Chanel. I learn something new every time i watch (and rewatch) your videos. If you find time and motivation, i personally would like to hear more about your ODD 1974 campain.
I think the proactive players are specifically the reason podcasts like Critical Role and Dimension 20 are so successful. People focus on the GM so much, they forget that the players are incredible. It's honestly such a drain for me to play with only reactive players that at this point, I straight up won't GM unless at least half my party is somewhat proactive. It just doesn't feel organic and it's exhausting constantly leading them by a rope. Do you have any tips for incentivizing players to take the reins of their own fun? To create active premises and/or to find hooks I've buried?
The most effective tip I've found for this is to get in front of it: During character creation help the players to create characters who already have big, compelling goals. Figure out how to translate the encrypted chapters of the Necronomicon; find the Ruby of Alsarrat in the Dungeon of Doom; kill Count Roogna; etc. The other thing that can be very useful is clearly communicating a default action: If you don't have anything else you'd like to be doing in this campaign, you can always do X. In a megadungeon, it's "pick an exit and go through it." In a hexcrawl it's "pick a direction and start walking." In Rime of the Frostmaiden it's "go to a new town and see if the chwingas/caravan you're looking for is there." In Technoir it's "ask one of your contacts for a lead." The default action isn't necessarily compelling by itself (although it should be designed so that taking it leads them reliably to interesting content), but it conditions them to make decisions for themselves.
@@TheAlexandrian This is great advice. Thanks! I'll be sure to work on making sure my players know that there are default actions they can always take, like how they're always allowed to literally explore the city and see what's around or just ask nearby NPC's what's going on in town.
I've never heard about this distinction between reactive and proactive players that's pitentially very usefull for dealing with player. Super interesting.
