Hey the old discord link was messed up so check this one out instead if you wanna jump in: discord.gg/Sp2efEK

@chewee517

5 жыл бұрын

2 Things: 1: Holy crap I liked your previous artstyle of your wizard dude way more; but that doesn't mean this one is horrible, it just isn't amazing and fun. 2: How would you best recommend a guy who has no friends with any available time to even hang out in person would go about doing D&D with anyone successfully?

@ApprenticeNick

5 жыл бұрын

@@chewee517 Hey, I'm just some guy, but my recommendation (as somebody who also struggles with this) is to either give up on playing IRL and start using services like roll20 or Fantasy Realms or to search Reddit to see if there are any nearby groups.

@wobblysauce

5 жыл бұрын

Or stop with 5e and use fate :P

@adamwitt7788

5 жыл бұрын

I have an idea for a playable character build pixie wizard riding a tiny servant would that be feasible?

@ApprenticeNick

5 жыл бұрын

@@adamwitt7788 As somebody who frequently DMs, I think it'd be tricky. 5e especially has almost no rules for playing as non-medium races. Obviously anything is possible with enough homebrew, but you would need the right DM and the right group.

Good to know that John Wick took to DMing after exacting revenge for his dog.

@tristandreemurr8755

4 жыл бұрын

Lol. I bet everyone who kills a dog in his champain gets the "rocks fall, you die."

@wolfjack5802

3 жыл бұрын

Went off to run a Cyberpunk Pugmire game

@fenixmeaney6170

3 жыл бұрын

woah

@silentrobot7014

2 жыл бұрын

@@tristandreemurr8755 I use mold earth to shatter the rocks

@jeroen1989

Жыл бұрын

There's nothing like TPK'ing the entire party using only a pencil...

In between shooting guns and stabbing people, John Wick uses his spare time to make DnD videos.

@ChewieLuke

5 жыл бұрын

I once saw him kill a tarrasque with a #$%&ing pencil!

I feel like this is a method best used with Veteran players who might get bored of a traditional campaign format. Otherwise it might be too immersion breaking for players who are newer and require a bit more to get drawn in to story and captivated in the mindset of the world.

@DTDdeathmas

5 жыл бұрын

Erin Tuncan what do you mean?

@VashdaCrash

5 жыл бұрын

I think he's refering to the part where you need to ask for feedback from the players.

@IguitarVreakI

5 жыл бұрын

@@DTDdeathmas if the Players decide to walk down a Road and you(the DM) tell them that they find X (classical style) then they have just acted as their characters, which makes it easier to stay immersed. If the Players give suggestions like "we find Y", " we get attacked by bandits" or " we see a rare animal" Then they have acted as Players, Not as characters. And are co-writing the story as Players. If you are used to tabletop rpgs it might be easy to swap back and forth between the roles of Player and character, but newer Players can have a hard time to immerse themselves in the world and pulling them put for five minutes can make it hard to go back in.

@DTDdeathmas

5 жыл бұрын

IguitarVreakI ok I can see where your coming from, I don’t 100% agree but you raise a valid concern.

"Players tend to forget loose ends and remember closed circles." Probably the best advice for new DMs, period.

Here's how I DM: "Ay girl, you like dungeons?"

@mehmettas2624

5 жыл бұрын

I somehow read that with an italian accent XD

@azoth2335

3 жыл бұрын

Sorry, I only date tavern basement cultists

@canphan1375

3 жыл бұрын

Im trying to get my female friend to play dnd. Imma go say this to her

15 minute time-out is such a well-kept secret. New DMs always have their mind blown when someone explains to them that it's socially acceptable to ask for some time to re-plan mid-game. Great advice.

@Jonny_R

5 жыл бұрын

Oh yeah, I've done that many times when my players go 90 degrees in another direction. It's 80% awesome, and the other 20% is still awesome, but sometimes weird. =)

"People tend to forget loose ends but remember closed circles" fucking massive brain philosophical moment

I wish I saw this before I wrote a 4-page spread on the general diets and exports of a small mining village before my PCs spent 20 minutes of that session trying to kill themselves and everyone around them

@kaboomluong9373

3 жыл бұрын

RIP

Ah yes, i too learned to GM from retired hitmen played by Keanu Reeves.

this explains why my grand plans turn out terribly, but my on the fly changes to the story turn out to be the best adventures

The threats and boons idea is GOLD! I had been running a version of this for wilderness travel where the players roll a d12 each traveling day (1 is a hard encounter, 2-3 normal, 4-11 no encounter, and 12 was a beneficial encounter). But letting the players partake in the creativity is such a great idea.

I've always liked the idea that the players can always go do their own thing, and I'll happily accommodate them. But in the background, the main plot is still going and their decision to turn away from it may have consequences on the world. I can use those consequences to make the world more alive and interesting. I *love* this idea for campaigns in already established settings

The tip about adding seeding random mysterious elements is so immensely useful. It gives the players the impression everything is connected in some cool grand plot while giving the freedom to adapt to their actions and choices

One thing I have done in the past that is a blast is what I call 'Improved inspiration' A player typically gets one per session, and it has a few mundane uses. You can burn it to automatically succeed on any roll which your character has proficiency. More interestingly, it can be used to alter the world and steer the plot. The players arrive in a small town after a long journey and are short on supplies. Unfortunately there is no alchemist here to supply potions and important reagents. One member of the party however is 'inspired' and mentions that she has heard word of a witch in the nearby wood that could get them what they need. The use case of these have varied greatly. One time the players felt the reward for a certain task was lackluster so they used it to find some extra loot. Another time the rogue remembered that he just so happened to have a silver dagger on hand when stumbling upon a trio of were rats in some sewers. And yet another time the party couldn't decide whether to break for camp of push through the night so the bard pointed out a hamlet in the distance that 'wasn't on the map.' Giving the players a little bit of power in shaping the game is a great way of keeping them involved in the process of storytelling and world building. When I started doing it I kind of expected many of my players to just try to us it to get stuff or make things easier for themselves. Surprisingly enough that has not been the case.

@carbonmonteroy

2 жыл бұрын

I actually experimented with something like this on a couple of groups, where in certain situations (say you completed the requirements of an gem enchanted to eventually become a Crystal Truth, it was just laying around as loot, it's being given as a quest reward) one could obtain a Crystal Truth that gave them the power to alter themselves, the world, whatever. One of my players used their crystal truth to say that in a fight between them and , they would always win. It was a little climax-breaking but that's fine, I was running "haha that guy was a puppet here's the real big bad" anyway. One of them generated a whole ass desert culture with one. There's a group I'm experimenting with it on now that hasn't yet had the opportunity to use one but knows they exist. Crystal Truth puts a hard limit on how much they can pull off without being a meta-limit like one per session, is basically a free plot device AND a free quest reward when you want to give them something special but don't know what, and lets you go more lax on worldbuilding because your players have a mechanism to add their ideas to the game anyway. That said, I like your improvised inspiration idea. Can I use it in a future campaign?

@lonodel

2 жыл бұрын

@@carbonmonteroy Yeah man, knock yourself out. I recommend giving it a trial run in a one shot or other short campaign before giving your players free reign of it in a long standing game.

@jonathancummins6234

2 жыл бұрын

This is basically the "create a plot point" feature in FATE TRPG. Good stuff and really relieves the work load on the DM

Personally Im not a fan of trying this technique, but asking the players what they want you the dm to know is genius, im gonna do that from now on.

Yep! The DM I grew up playing with and who taught me how to DM had this exact style. He was my bestfriend's dad, Jon. He has played just about any tabletop game you can think of over his RPG carreer (Gamma World, Vampire Masquerade, Scion, DnD, A D&D, and a litany of others including many homebrew systems he created for Elderscrolls, Fallout, and other fantasy worlds he wanted to have a tabletop system to play with friends). He'd have maybe ever have one or two solid points planned out but the entire campaign would be driven by the players' desires and what they CHOSE to do- basically it was the DM's job to be the cosmic force of Karma in the dnd world they made together. The players have so much more fun feeling like the world is reacting to them and their choices rather than feeling like they are being prodded with a stick over and over again being forced into whatever was carefully planned out.

"Don't be afraid of big expanded settings" -Laughs in WH40K

@gaoth88

4 жыл бұрын

Or World of darkness :'(

@Chaosdaniel

4 жыл бұрын

WH40K: Save the world... so you can Exterminatus anyway.

@oz_jones

3 жыл бұрын

@@Chaosdaniel save the world from Xenos filth

i know this is an old video but the fact that players forget loose ends and remember closed ones is so true and it makes it really easy to add fun random elements into the game

At the NPC generator: *A 70 years old tall and muscular man with purple hair and green eyes who worships god of fire burns down his house*

@MrSteveK1138

5 жыл бұрын

"I'm an ordinary guy. Burning down the house!"

@superquantumunitintelproce5222

5 жыл бұрын

@@MrSteveK1138 "hail fire god"

I really like the player generated content regarding boons and banes. Thanks for the idea!

I never understood the sentiment of it's the players fault for derailing my campaign. Maybe because I always wing my campaigns, but it never made sense to me when consistent dm's would be upset because they didn't plan on a character's decision. As a dm, you are supposed to build your world and story with your players. Then again, I can understand how having to throw out months of work can be frustrating.

@StarboyXL9

5 жыл бұрын

It's because they over-prepped. People like that should stick to writing novels (like me). DMing requires a much more flexible view on narratives.

@zeebashew

5 жыл бұрын

@ Joel Gawne Yes! this is precisely it. If you overprep and the group goes where you hope they will go it is magical but 9 times out of 10 they will sense the cage.

@LaoshRa

5 жыл бұрын

ideally you can repurpose most of your smaller ideas/concepts and bring them up regardless of how the main story is developing. you sometimes need to be a bit patient and flexible, waiting for suitable situations to bring them in.

@oOPPHOo

5 жыл бұрын

Especially new DMs like to have some training wheels which is entirely fair. I do actually believe the players have some responsibility to at least not ignore 3 hooks thrown at them in a row. The problem is when players feel like "but why should we do what _you_ want us to do? Your hooks are boring anyway". The solution is to have an open conversation before the campaign and between sessions about goals the party have so that you can better anticipate what hooks they want. The parts you are then expected to improvise are how the world reacts to how the party approaches your hooks, but at least you don't have to improvise the hooks themselves or the context around them. I also think it's fair for new DMs to go. "Alright, this first NPC you meet is going to be your prime contact throughout the start of the campaign. Please don't murder hobo him. Talk to me between sessions if you don't like working for him and I'll see what I can do".

@jamu8060

5 жыл бұрын

It's a newbie mistake that I did. I had this grand campaign idea on my first time as DM. I did fairly well I was told but I always went way over the top about things. Which led to me playing like 10 different enemies and the fights getting overly long. Or conversations getting too long and etc.

What I love to do is after everyone creates their characters, I have everyone roll for a random trinket. Trinkets are EXTREMELY underutilized. It's a great tool to give characters a sort of mini-purpose. Why does my character have a wood carving of a disfigured man? Why would a fighter have a glass orb filled with water, in which swims a clockwork goldfish? It also give the DM something to work worth in terms of story. In the campaign I played in, the disfigured man was the leader of the group who killed my friends wife! Another person has a dead scarab beetle whose essence carried the cure for almost any ailment (but she didn't know that until later). Trinkets are wonderful.

@Starfloofle

5 жыл бұрын

This is such a clever little idea, I love it

@cadunkus

5 жыл бұрын

I rolled a silver-tipped cane as a trinket in the Curse of Strahd. It didn't have any story relevance, but the DM allowed for it to hide a rapier and be used as a spell focus for my warlock so that was cool and added a bit of flair to my PC.

@Starfloofle

5 жыл бұрын

The sneaky ol' sword-in-a-cane trick. I dig it.

Idea: prep a lot about the setting, but next to nothing for the plot. This will give you much more room to improv without leaving you unprepared.

@Xsomono

10 ай бұрын

I think the very improve heavy style can work well but it depends on the GM. Personally I'm somewhat bad at coming up with good ideas on the fly (or any ideas). Every GM has to discover whether they're better of doing more planning or more improvising and find a balance between the two. In my experience mostly preping a setting and little plot can backfire. I ran a campaign like that and it ended up being a very disoriented game where nobody really knew where they wanted the story to go. For me it works better to make some sort of semi detailed timeline for a main plot, it also generally makes the payoff that much sweeter. I just wrote this in case newish DMs look here for advice. My suggestion to new DMs is finding out how much improve you can get away with. Some people are just the type that have to prep a lot.

@Darasilverdragon

9 ай бұрын

This is basically what I do I go over my setting with a fine toothed comb, setting up every last little tavern and temple along with all the people that inhabit them, their relationships with each other, the state of the world, and so on Then I just loosely decide what the rough future plot points will be and where they take place, make a much more detailed initial hook to get things started, and it's off to the races

My advice, after launching a sandbox is this: 1) Ask more. Players can come up with interesting ideas. 2) Use online tools to build encounters. It won't take more than 5 minutes. 3) There are no bad random encounter, only unexplained ones: Roll a random encounter and pulled the adult balck dragon in the middle of a small town of fishermen... What's a black dragon doing in the middle of a portown? . It's an illusion, a transmuter pulled off a wrong spell, it's a black lizard with wings and commoners confuse them with dragons, it's a black dragon for real and you better run for your life. Ask the players what they think could've happened (advice 1).

@Cheforeno

3 жыл бұрын

Werry helpful, Thank you.

@Vinemaple

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah. This. You spend a moment thinking up how your freaky random result COULD make sense, without turning into a headache for you, and often that ends up being more interesting, anyway. Bend, add, or subtract until you have something your heroes have a chance at or a handle into, something that has story potential.

I like to build something akin to a mindmap with everything being more or less connected back to the main plot. That means the players can venture freely through the setting and follow different story strands that still may give some clue about the overarching story.

"Players tend to forget loose ends and remember closed circles" I think it was the Pretending to be People podcast which did a review of their story after like 2yr (at a season break, I think). Zach pretty much admitted he tossed out tons of hooks, and it was only by listening to the recap episode that the players realized that they had forgotten half of them.

This is basically how I run a Dnd campaigns. It is way more interesting for everybody involved. I like the idea of getting the players involved with the story and developing connections with each other. I've never thought about doing that, so I've never used that idea, and since I typically play at the local game shop, or did until Covid-19, this is a great way to get everyone involved quickly.

Then there's my players who sometimes act like sims just waiting around for something to happen even though they have many plot hooks to go onto.

@CorboWill

4 жыл бұрын

If they are waiting for something to happen then your plot hooks need to give them something to react to. The hook has to directly affect the player for them to want to get involved.

@VirtualMarmalade

3 жыл бұрын

Some of my friends try this sometimes too. I think the secret is to just let the world move on without them - if bandits are raiding supply lines and the pcs don't care, follow that to it's natural conclusion without them. Either someone else takes care of them or there's a food shortage in town. Maybe all the prices of goods goes up, maybe the town starts paying the bandits "protection money." Your choices in this situation are basically 1) escalate the problem until it directly affects them, 2) let some npc resolve it and move on to something else, or 3) escalate the problem and make that part of the status quo, then move on to something else. The pcs choice to act or not should have consequences, otherwise they won't have a stake in doing much of anything y'know? At the same time, you can't force them to care about something that doesn't interest them. Talk to them about what kinds of adventures they want to have. They might surprise you.

@blucky7798

3 жыл бұрын

I've run into this before, in all likelihood your plot hooks are simply going over the heads of your players. This isn't your fault or theirs, sometimes it just happens and some players are just not great at noticing what is and isn't a plot hook (and as much as I want this to be constructive, some GMs have a habit of making very difficult to detect plot hooks that aren't intuitive for any player to notice). I would recommend simply making your plot hooks slightly more noticeable, an easy way to do this is to play out a scene in front of your players where some NPCs do or say something that outlines the plot hook in question. This can even integrate a PC if you wish by having an NPC say start arguing with them about something plot related or start gossiping about the plot hook or if your players are still not picking it up have an NPC literally run straight into them asking for help with a seemingly unrelated problem that you can retroactively tangentially relate to your desired plot hook (eg. "Help me find my lost son, he went missing in this area of town please/I'll pay you/whatever you think will motivate your players" and what do you know the area the son is lost in just so happens to be where the plot is happening too). The last one is slightly contrived so save it for a last resort as the others are still easily noticeable enough for most players since if you're actively playing out this scene in front of them detailing events that are NOT directly related to them it should be obvious that it is a plot hook to anyone paying attention. If you see players not really picking up on this fact just give them a hint in a short break in your game by saying in a supportive and friendly tone (no playful sarcasm or condescension allowed) "Just a hint everyone but if I'm talking about something in detail, it's probably important or plot related" (because let's face it, that's just a fact about any GM, if they've taken the time to explain an event in detail it should be important or relevant).

It's cool how much of this I did naturally because it feels right, but also how to improve on what I do to better make it work.

Ah, yes, my favorite search engine, Gondor.

@N7Toman

4 жыл бұрын

Where where the Rohan search engine when Gondor was overwhelmed with search queries?!

I come back to this video every couple of months or so because this all sounds so cool and useful, but my small brain cannot wrap my head around it. Still cannot and I as I am working on an Eberron campaign I really wish it did!!!

@madhippy3

2 жыл бұрын

@@chrisstoltz3648 You may, but I don't understand it on the practical level. It isn't about misunderstanding the intent, I could us a longer video with some examples.

@bumblebot2458

2 жыл бұрын

@@madhippy3 okay so to add after what Chris Stoltz says, this works really well with a homebrew setting that you're making or one you're winging in general, as you're not the only person in charge of bookwork. It really helps with skimming your player's brains and picking out things that they prefer during play (like with the encounter stuff, if one player keeps putting weapon/combat based encounters, they probably like combat, but another may put RP and political intrigue encounters, showing their inquisitive nature). It's been a fun way to gauge my player's interests, and reward them for creative thinking. Although to summarize (and provide my own personal changes), try this. - Planning is important, but keep it loose. Get important details out, like bosses and whatnot, and keep them handy. You may even after a while just do all of this mentally, but try and get used to the book keeping side of it or it'll bite you in the ass later. - Make or find RNG tables. More specifically, for NPCs. Keep races and expected traits handy, and roll/test whatever you want to. With practice you can come up with this stuff on the fly, but tables help. - Back on planning, plan vaguely ahead but focused forward. What I mean is have a vague cookie-cutter idea of the future, *but* make sure there's options for paths later. If you have an idea, know it's okay to remold incase players go off the beaten path. - Finally, the encounters. I would actually recommend *not* starting with any encounters. Instead have your players generate all of them. Offer them the ability to make one of three encounter types: good, bad, and neutral. For every good, they must make one bad, but they can make as many neutral as they like. The encounters should be vague enough for you to flesh out, but still make sense in the area (a triton *probably* shouldn't be roaming the desert). I hope that helps! Sorry if it's rambly.

The second you said John Wick I knew this person was going to be hard to find. Lol

For getting players to know each other's characters in the beginning, giving players that question for each other is a really genius way of getting people to roleplay with each other much faster! The way I've been doing it is, in general, starting people off in the same location (thus, ask people to write into their backstories why they might be there) and then start everyone off with what I call the goblin sequence - have an encounter with minimal repercussions should they fail, but shows their character traits well. My first one was a short hooded figure stealing a purse from a richer elven lady, a crowd forming to see the commotion. Players can gain an understanding of each other through how they react to this; when the goblin takes off down a back alley, what do they do? A noble warrior might try to chase him down to return the purse, a rogue might follow at a distance to pick up what's left, a neutral wizard may follow at a distance and observe, while the bard could stay behind and play to the crowd that's formed. That's what happened with mine, and people picked up on each other's quirks, strengths and weaknesses through an encounter, had a lot of fun adding twists and turns to the chase 🤗

Oh, that Boons & Threats is something I've never thought of before. And it sounds like it could be REALLY fun if you have people playing "Not-so-moral" characters or people who have only their best interests in mind.

I first watched this video when I was still living in Belgium. I was very excited to see the town of Wetter Dorp as that is Flemish for "the fatter village".

I was a dm for a one shot and went completely for the improvise everything method. Not for a full campaign, but worked amazing for a one shot

My general style for DMing is I build a World Map with a huge variety of Towns and other locations, then write a quick blurb for what generally goes on in that place, the general inhabitants and one potential event in that area. When the party arrive, I know what I should be at least prepared for and what could potentially happen there. For example, the next town over from where my party are is a Town where Wizards are king and worship of any Deity is frowned upon. There is potential for a Paladin uprising in the town. If and when the party get to that Town, I will know roughly, based on the Party, how things will play out, as my party are mostly melee characters, with a single caster. As for random encounters, I know what kind of areas I've layed out on the map, so if I need a quick random encounter, I can pull out one of the Monster Books and select something that fits. They stumble into a deep cave and decide to look for some buried Treasure? Maybe they'll run into a small clan of Mycanids or a Troll.

The tips in this video are immensely helpful. I come back every so often to re-watch and figure out new ways to use these ideas.

so one of the best things my favorite DM did was to not have a central quest with good/bad guys planned. anywhere we went, he had set up a minimum of 3 factions with conflicting interests, none of which had the clear moral high ground. This let us interact with the environment in a very open-ended way, deciding who we would support and who oppose, or even try to seek to mediate between them. he usually had one "shit hits the fan" moment planned that would push everything into heightened conflict, and some combat encounters with twists set up so they could be flexibly reskinned for either setting. i found this style really rewarding, as it felt more lake collaborative storytelling than questing-on-rails, but still allowed for a ton of detail and rich backstory for each of the groups involved. it's a formula that could be repeated endlessly with different flavors and never really got old.

This is really good advice, I wouldn't have thought of the boon/danger bowl. ... Knowing my players, they'll probably make a habit of singing "Danger zone" but... "Danger Bowl". Maybe I'll have them draw it out of something with more syllables in it.

@Nyaaani

5 жыл бұрын

you could get a plastic box or something and call it the danger container

@zeebashew

5 жыл бұрын

Step in too my DANGER BOWL

Oooh that, submitted threat/gain mechanic is SO good, I'm stealing that for my survival campaign.

Wow, a lot of really amazing tips in there. My favorite though... Far too often I've seen campaigns either start with the PCs all meeting by happenstance, and becoming united by circumstances/a common goal, or the DM basically just goes "So, you've been adventuring together for a while now..." and that's it. Coming up with those questions, prompting players to create that little bit of backstory, and giving them a chance to really think about how they want to relate to the other PCs, would definitely make for a richer roleplaying experience! 👍👍👍👍

I REALLY like the threats and boons system

The way I took to DMing my new campaign is basically setting the players on a railroad, but in-between missions they can leave the railroad and do whatever they want. Basically a videogame where they can just dip and do side quests forever.

@marcmagliari1688

2 жыл бұрын

Did that end up working? Normally rail roading is a big nono in terms of player agency

My favorite thing is all players writes 5 rumours about their charchter and passes them out to the other players only one of the five rumors are true.

Having players come up with ideas of what they'll find along the path WHILE you set up said location is such a genius way to keep the players engaged while you figure things out on the DM side!

Preparing just enough for the next adventure and improvising the rest on the fly is how I've been DMing homebrew Pen and Paper games for the past year and let me tell you: it's absolutely amazing. It all does hinge on the players trusting the DM to be able to improvise complex ideas on the spot, but I've never had any problems with it and got into some amazing situations within the game this way that could have never even been possible if I tried to write down something ahead of time. For example, a story that I told on my channel, was about how basically my characters once almost got accidentally disintegrated by a past version of themselves during a timeloop. How it happened was so unlikely and ridiculous, that it required an improvisation style of DMing to even get there, and I will never DM any other way.

Dude! The boon/bane thing will even be great for my West Marches(ish) campaign. Good way to help inexperienced players figure out what makes their dude click.

I start with a map, i throw beans on paper and trace the shapes, then add water, terraforming, nature, then settlememts based on adjacent resources. Then i determine how a settlement survives, income, primary resource, and start designing characters to act as representatives of those trades to the players. After that i begin connecting them with bonds to each other and letthe stories between them unfold while the players do what they do. It gives the players the feeling that the world is more alive since it sometimes changes without them seeing how but they know if they pay attention theyll pick up on certain situations unfolding. After i design all that then i add a villian, someone who really wants something that other people wouldnt want them to have. A way of getting that thing, and a final conclusion act. I sync it up with the written quests that the players choose to either do or not do and they effect the end result. For example. Theres a side quest with a bearded devil. If they players choose not to do the quest or choose to not get rid of the devil the main enemy will make a pact with the devil and gain demons in his undead army.

Be really careful when listening to John Wick, he's an Adversarial GM. For example, he recommends that GMs find ways to turn a character's skills or abilities into drawbacks. Can a PC run really fast? Make them roll nigh-impossible skill checks every time they use it or run into brick walls and take loads of damage. Can your PC find an enemy's weak point? Every time they use it, it always kills their target, even if they wanted to take them in alive. Does your super Lucky PC use it to avoid an explosion? Make them fly far away into an even worse location, now alone and surrounded by enemies. At one point he boasts that he almost never 'kills' a PC, he forces them to retire their character or quit the game instead. One time a character got framed and locked in jail, and for six weeks, six four-hour sessions, Wick would turn to him and say "What do you do this turn?", taunting him, knowing that there was nothing he could do. I know this because he wrote a book about it, as if being a huge jerk was an accomplishment that should be mimicked.

@princessepingouin

5 жыл бұрын

Fuck this guy then...

@apathypower9559

5 жыл бұрын

DM's that let you get away with murder are just as bad, imo.

@ObsidianKnight90

5 жыл бұрын

Other nuggets of 'wisdom' from John Wick include: - If a player makes a character you don't like, send NPCs to beat him up and throw him in jail, and don't let that player make a new character unless he begs you for the privilege. - If a player disrupts the game by not paying enough attention, or reading at the table, or speaking too loudly, put a black token in the middle of the table. Then, later in the game, when somebody ELSE makes a crucial die roll, take the token away and shout "YOU FAIL!" at them. - If a player makes a character that's too strong, set up dice in advance that would represent a 'critical hit' or the like. Then, have an overpowered enemy attack that character and instead of rolling, reveal your pre-prepared dice. Tell that player they are dead and must make a new character. - If somebody corrects you about how a rule works, take their book and character sheet away. If they forget what their bonus is or how many dice to roll, they automatically fail. If that doesn't work, give him 4-sided dice instead of 10-sided dice (or whatever your game rolls for task resolution), or blindfold him so he doesn't know what he rolled and thus automatically fails. I swear I'm not making any of this up.

@andrewvanhorne4359

5 жыл бұрын

Weird - that's exactly the opposite impression I took away from reading his Tomb of Horrors article. Do you remember the title of the book?

@WeWillAlwaysHaveVALIS

5 жыл бұрын

Wow so they're like a power gamer except they're the DM... Sounds a bit of a nightmare to be honest with you.

I feel that this may be the most helpful 3 minutes of DM information period. Full stop, no take backs. This could be its own class and it would be worth its weight in dragon babies. I would pay double for this to be included in every campaign book. Imagine how much more you could get out of a session if this was implemented. Zee, I once more sing your praise. Thank you

I really like the bowl of boom & doom. I'm absolutely doing that next time

I love it when both players and DMs give up a little bit of their control over the characters and world to tell a collaborative story. Make a PC's background on the vague side so the DM can drop hooks consistent with a character's history that's a surprise even for the player. Inversely, let characters go off on their insane thing and use the ripple effects from that to change the world in small or large ways.

I like the threats and boons system

You can say they'll forget loose ends all they want, my players are constantly berating me about the fact that they never got to talk more with the pirates they met session 2

@RaggedLands

5 жыл бұрын

Put the pirates in another campaign or adventure.

@cerickNY

5 жыл бұрын

Tell them that they're playing Dungeons & Dragons and if they want to go find the pirates, that's on them.

@SirusShea

5 жыл бұрын

Have them find a sunk ship with the same name on it, but no bodies. Then never talk about it and be super cagey for the rest of the campaign, until they fight the big bad in the finale and realize that they had been kidnapped and enslaved, and the PCs are the big heeeerrrrroooooss.

@jeremydaly8293

5 жыл бұрын

@@SirusShea Nah, they find they ship drifting empty, no one aboard. Way creepier

I think starting a campaign off with small problems and building it from there is much better. Starting the players off in a little skirmish in a town seems a lot more fun and free than starting them off with the idea that they are the hero’s of the land and it all relies on them. That idea can be established later when the group grows closer and has had the freedom to just explore and have some fun getting to know the setting

I didn't know John Wick DM'd. I guess he had to do something between all the gunfights.

This is a fun idea, but personally most of the fun of being the DM(for me anyway) comes from creating a really elaborate world all on my own and creating a deep, intriguing plotline, and then setting my players loose and watching them set everything on fire and unravel all my hard work. I know it sounds weird, but seeing crazy, out-of-the-box solutions I never considered to things I planned out so far in advance and seeing my big epic plotline get shredded is really part of the fun for me! I mean it's not to say I don't care about what my players feel they want to see/do/avoid or whatever, in fact I encourage them to explore to their hearts' content, but I've always felt that a big part of the enjoyment of DMing for me comes from crafting the worlds and encounters myself, and I've gotten really good at freestyling them when things go way off the rails. If they're really hellbent on helping I'll usually let them, but honestly I feel like this is the best part of DMing and it's something that I selfishly guard all for myself most of the time :P

I have never played DnD. I have always wanted to and thankfully with my brother moving to live with me I have found a group. I mentioned my want to play to my brother, he got character sheets and we built our characters. Then he contacted a DM who ran the very first campaign he was ever a part of 5 years ago. Basically a hail marry, saying "Hey, remember me? You were an awesome DM and my brother and I would like to play, its his first time, help?" and sure enough they responded with "Hell Yes". Turns out, this DM has been building and adding onto a world for the past 5 years of his own making. The area is massive, everything entirely unique, its his baby. And this is the world we are playing in, im 2 5 hour sessions in at this point and am absolutely loving it. I cannot believe I did not try and get into this sooner.

The idea of having a bunch of plot hooks works well for me, I have a whole barrel of them scattered throughout the set, most of them generic enough that I can throw them in now and again. I have a few of them linked together, though most of the time, I angle to make them seem linked so that the players start making connections that were never there. It lets me offload some of the burden of creating story. An example is, A landlord is asking if someone's seen his bar. It's weird, and I can even have a few other NPCs mention that it's odd to hear an entire bar go missing. (NPC missing something improbable) Meanwhile, the town guard has wanted posters up for a rogue wizard seen around the place. (Generic 'Wanted criminal' posters) Meanwhile, a local shop owner is needing the party's help finding a few arcane items for a client who's looking to buy them. (Mysterious patron is asking for mysterious things) Meanwhile... So, they pick one, find the location of the missing bar, and a few of the local NPCs mention they saw a wizard walk into the bar the night before it vanished. 'huh, he looks a bit like the wanted posters' 'Hold on, isn't that shopkeep looking for arcane and magical things for a client? Balthazar or something?' And thus, they began hunting the rogue wizard Balthazar, by gathering those items and setting a trap. At that point, I roll a D6, odds, and this becomes a plot twist. They catch the wizard, who quickly pleads that they hand over the items. He's been trying to gather the ingredients to bring the Bar back, having wild-magic'd the building away by accident.

I DM using the Semi-Sandbox style. Create a world with rich lore, or find one Create an over-arcing plot of apocalyptic proportions And let your players try to prevent the end of the world, or city They usually start out small, dealing with the side-effects of whatever scenario, before getting tipped off on the larger plot. My style is to not notify them of impending doom early on unless their party has problems with infighting or staying on task. At first, it just seems like business as usual. But the longer you wait, the more prevalent the threat becomes. Otherwise, it's all improvised, and since nothing is really written in stone, the players will run into the plot eventually, even if they try to avoid it, I won't let them avoid it. I'll stick the plot in front of them with a sword drawn if I have to.

I am about to DM a campaign in a self build world and was really unsure about some things... This actually helped me a lot right now, cause i never thought off that "Threats and Boons" thingy and it is actually pretty amazing! Thanks a lot!

@Targe0

5 жыл бұрын

good thing also to remember is your job is to give the players a goal and to step in when the story they are telling needs a little help such as places to go, people to talk to and stuff to deal with. DMs real job is to if it where a book write the core plot and let the players full the gaps in the rest of the chapters.

@celesdiamon8421

5 жыл бұрын

i am really glad i have the campaign area pat down, i was just unsure on how to... make travel more interesting and this video just gave me the Epiphany i needed for that :D And yeah, Dming is basically writing a book and thanks to an old habit of writing stories, i am already proficient with that! *rolls D20 and gets a nat. 1* well, not even the Proficiency mod can help me now :(

the best session I've run to date was literally a road, an npc, and a mansion with monsters already placed. I had almost nothing to go on story wise, but the group actually started trying to piece things together, and when they said something that more or less fit, I would just agree or embellish what they came up with. I didn't even think about the captured astral diva being the NPC from the beginning, but they thought he had created a materialized person to bring adventurers to his rescue, so that's what happened lol

Zee got this idea from watching Whose Line is it Anyway! "Campaigns from a Hat"

The Threats and Boons bowl is surely gonna make an appearance in my next session. Fantastic concept having the players submit to the pool.

@ThetrueRiokan

5 жыл бұрын

mind telling us how it went afterwards?

@RainenAvernathy

5 жыл бұрын

@@ThetrueRiokan Sure will. We meet this Sunday for some 3.5e.

"Tend to forget loose ends and remember full circles." This is excellent advice regardless. An easy way to make your game seem more plotted out is to just go back to your earlier adventure, look at something that was left hanging, and start having it show up again. I recommend giving the bad guys an easy symbol to wear, be it a Celtic cross, spiral, or just the image of a fire breathing chicken on their shields (the Flaming Game Cocks are going to be a thing in my campaign coming up). Don't over explain what the symbol is during the first adventure and then just throw it in at a later date. I also take elements from my players and extrapolate. Our Orc Bard-Barian was known from bragging of all his great accomplishments and dressing garishly... So I decided to extrapolate that into his home Orc culture... Which I based off of professional wrestlers and had them all dressed in garish clothing and yelling boasts at each other trying to win various championships. Let me tell you, roll playing a bunch of professional wrestlers for two weeks while the party adventured in their homeland was a lot of fun for me as the DM.

@zeebashew

5 жыл бұрын

Yes! That sounds like a fun game!

sadly I doubt I'll be getting a response considering how old this video is, but I'll put this down just in case; I had a simple idea to add atop of your lotto drawing thing. Simply put, allow the players a way to notice that there are several "interesting locations" in their vicinity, and represent it by tokens. Tokens each marked to be specifically linked to a consequence card. So the players can actually continue along the road, or investigate if they wish to risk hardship for reward. And then have a few of the hardships in line that the players *will* run into, just so that things aren't entirely smooth sailing for them. What do you guys think?

@pubjubz

Жыл бұрын

that's a cool idea! I'm definitely stealing this!

@itzaleaf405

11 ай бұрын

@@pubjubz I'm with pub on this one, might just steal this away for myself as well...

@Ozarka0

9 ай бұрын

@@itzaleaf405 Hey, you guys goa head and use all you like! If you really like the idea so much, tell me how it went! I just started up my own campaign finally, and have been considering ideas to make things more exciting during long travel times.

I like the sowing of history between the pcs. No more awkward first meeting where you want the pcs to just get together already but their characters just don't like or trust each other.

Ah yes step one: don't invent an entire world I have failed

@323starlight

Жыл бұрын

I failed too

Absolutely LOVED the segment about "The Path." The boons and threats concept is one I'll definitely be stealing for my own game. Thanks Zee!

This sounds like the best concise piece of advice about GMing that I ever had! Can't wait to try it!

I'm running a campaign very close to this, thanks to this video, for 1 year now and it is working wonders :D Thank you so much for all of your great tips and keep up the great work you doing out there!

My players decided in session one to go on a random tangent of crime and murdering a local governor. They thought they got a way with it until three session later the equivalent of an FBI agent showed up to talk to them. Hes now the main villain of the campaign and i've married him into my original plans. Players are under the illusion their reactivity from the first session spiraled us into a whole different campaign

@TheGregamonster

3 жыл бұрын

This is another good thing to remember. You're making the world, and you can make anything you want to be related related. Players decide to leave the crime ridden town you planned on basing the campaign in? Well the crime organization's reach reaches further than you expected. Players decide they like a certain reoccurring villain and don't want to kill him? He has a tragic backstory and is actually working for a bigger bad against his will. There's plenty of ways you can keep the story in the direction you planned for without restricting the player's freedoms.

@TheGregamonster

3 жыл бұрын

It's especially good to remember that anything you haven't already revealed is subject to change. Have a cool tavern bard character prepared to help the investigation along, but your players are violently avoiding the tavern? Well now he's a street busker, bucking on the street corner near where your players are investigating.

I like the boons and threats in a hat idea.

Fuckin' nailed it Zee. Animation is on point, this is outstanding advice, and the collaborative random encounters is GENIUS. Extremely good shit.

Your comment about players remembering closed circles and forgetting loose ends is pretty on point. Even now, 6 months after the "conclusion", my players still reference my passing comment (through the medium of an NPC "seer") to "look for smoke", which only one player wrote down. Basically, "look for smoke" was a non-combat way into the main adventuring area of their next quest, which at the time they hadn't even set out on. When they went down that way, none of them even remembered it; it was only the following evening when one player was organising his notes that he saw what he'd written down weeks before. Now my players hang onto every odd utterance that any NPC that might have foreknowledge comes out with. Which is nice.

I'm a big fan of your stuff Zee, but this was definitely a next-level commentary. I appreciate how you incorporate the players' desires, I also try to do so and I think that there's no better way to get them to buy in. The questions/setup bit, love it, never thought of that! But overall this video's a great exemplifier of your clear intuitive understanding of the game, and how it really comes down to the people involved, whether the story stays on the table or moves to their heads. Very well done.

Totally going to give the boons & threats hat/bowl a shot in the future. That sounds brilliant!

My preference is creating a custom world of my own and getting a really good feels for it's tone and history, then figure out a few potential plot threads: a political struggle between factions of barons, a brewing war with a neighboring kingdom, more effective than usual bandit raids to the south, a mysterious cult in the forest, etc. Once I have that I can toss out hints and references to those potential threads at my leisure while my players do whatever they want. If they choose to ignore them, in later sessions they'll still get to see the impacts of things they heard about prior, making it feel like a more alive world. If they show interest in one of the threads, I can improvise more about it and spend more time between sessions fleshing it out. Since it's a custom world, I'm free to continue building it as the players explore it and shape it to suit whichever plot thread they seem to be most interested in.

I do something similar to this, I refer to it as "Laying the Tracks" which is basically to say I railroad my party, but I don't set down the railroad tracks too far ahead of the current session. I create towns, NPCs, storylines AS the party is playing. I usually only plan 1 - 2 sessions ahead, my notes are often just general ideas such as Names, personality traits and motives. A lot of my notes are things like "This should happen between point A and point B" and I let events play out naturally and what feels more thematically fitting at the time. This gives me the direction I need to let the players feel like all of this is planned, while giving me the freedom to invent parts of the world on the spot and not be attached to any ideas to begin with. Then if the players change course, I've only plotted the next session or two anyways. I can ditch that course, salvage whatever material isn't bound to a particular lore/story bit that only makes sense in that direction, and then just reconstruction a new series of notes. Most of my prep material is a page long, my in session notes are always longer to keep track of what actually happened to build new ideas from.

Huh so you too use the fast and loose method of adventure and world building. I have only dm'ed 2 times so far, but we have a barely literate bard, a changeling with a mental defect that makes him stand in front of mirrors for extended amounts of time, a mage that has a baking fetish and keeps animated combat muffins with him and a cleric that has severe dyslexia and is at odds with his god (loki) all the time(because loki is loki). However the player that is playing the warforged is my favorite. He got incredibly low rolls on his stats(3.5 ed) and opted IN to taking as many defect rolls as possible. He is a warforged that can barely speak, but mostly beeps and boops. Randomly makes modem connection sounds during rest at night, has exactly 4 dex to work with, is a kleptomaniac, rust bucket that can't remember what he is doing when or where most of the time and is quickly distracted by shiny objects. He is the most defective robot I have ever seen, yet he is endearing as he completely fumbled through everything so far. Also, all the other player lost a bet that he was going to be the first to die.

@telendar2949

4 жыл бұрын

That sounds like the greatest "heroes against everyone's will" group I've ever heard of XD

When my DM pulled out crack peppers I knew he was free-styling more than he told us

My usual style of DM'ing involved building a setting and filling it with potential plothooks, but not forcing the party to settle on just one. Feel like a little dungeon crawling? The ancient ruins of a lost hobgoblin empire are half-sunken in the marshes to the north, just be careful about tipping the balance in the local power struggle between matriarch black dragon and the lichen fighting for control there. Up for a little intrigue? You could look into the nation-spanning criminal syndicate headed by a powerful merchant family, or investigate rumors of vampires infiltrating the noble court. Just want to hunt bounties? That's fine, there's a bounty board in almost every major city. And along the way, maybe you'll discover clues as to the origins of the great Sundering centuries ago, and why pockets of wild magic are suddenly appearing across the land.

Watching this today I feel like this style would work very well in the Genesys system. Given its propensity for having the players work with the DM to build the narrative in their own way outside of just what their character can do. Neat. THanks.

WOAH!! So cool seeing Satines name there!! She used to be my DM in college!

@jsizzlesaurusrex

5 жыл бұрын

I honestly don't really like her. She just fits this nitch of women I find very distasteful, she just wants to much attention. Not trying to call her a slut(love them), but she just wants people to look at her too much.

@imrlyboredful

5 жыл бұрын

jsizzleasaurusrex Are you a real person?

I know this is old, but I just today spotted my favorite piece of advice in the video. At 1:08, we briefly see the list of four things a quest hook needs. Two is the perceived problem. Three is the actual problem. That is such a good piece of advice, put very succinctly.

So this is essentially a metagame around the central storytelling mechanics of D&D. Definitely going to try this next time I DM.

This had some really cool tips. I loved the player questions and random encounter stuff. A+ ideas!

1:44 (Possibly A Fish Person?) *what a random detail that Im sure isn't relating to anything in particular*

I love how concise this is. I often struggle to prepare adventures in reasonable amounts of time and I really think this will help.

The more tricks you have in your bag, the more prepared you’ll be to produce a game everyone at the table enjoys.

This gives me an idea which sounds positively D&d meets mad libs - where when encountering something the party can write adjectives nouns and verbs to alter a standalone encounter - its easy to make silly - but I want to try that out

@geoffreyprecht2410

5 жыл бұрын

Now I want to do an entire one-shot like this.

@mathisunderwater3429

5 жыл бұрын

@@geoffreyprecht2410 like - your underground, there is a beholder (you dont say this) - give the party adjectives/nouns/ and verbs to detail what he does before the party arrives, what makes him look diffrent and whats around

I come up with quests when I'm bored and if my party throws me a curveball I have a small stack of things to throw back. Also if I come up with a plot they don't find I don't force them towards it I save it for a rainy day

would love a full video on closed circles vs loose ends

That's a fun idea, and I may try it next time I'm running the show. When I DM, I make a modular campaign, creating a lot of small scenarios in advance that all contribute to a grander story, I then slot them in to appropriate places and times as my players move about and explore. That way, they have their freedom and I have (most of) my meticulously planned story I want to share. I've also found that creating a list of objectives to work on toward a greater goal, for players to achieve in no particular order, gives them their sense of freedom and allows you better control over events.

Thanks for the idea. It helped me come up with an idea for a homebrew item called the Bloody Fork. The bloody fork tunes to rare ores so my players can find it. I have one player who's interested in building stuff in game so I thought this might be motivating for him to use. But the catch is this: It holds 3 charges, recharges on 4(1d4) every long rest while in hand. Or the player can charge 1 by spending 1 hit die. He worries about lack of HP in the party so it should be interesting to see how he manages risk reward.

I especially like the bit about 'You got in to an argument last week with another PC; what was it about?' and 'You got drunk with PC X and you both told each other a secret. What was yours?' Any other ideas for good questions like this? I was trying to think of more but the best I can think of is "You're looking for something but haven't told anyone else in the party yet; what is it?' or 'You're carrying a secret item; what is it?' but although there's some room for fun there, I think there are probably some better questions to ask? Anyone got some ideas?

@___i3ambi126

4 жыл бұрын

I think the point was to build a history between pcs. So they should all include some other player

@6Grey6malkin6

4 жыл бұрын

*There was a war between Nation/Religion/Organization X and Y: which side were you on?* Maybe two PCs were in the same squad? Maybe they heard of one another? Maybe they're just ideologically aligned? Maybe they were on opposite sides? Maybe they were both just fighting to survive? Maybe PC 1 killed PC 2's wife/husband/dog/etc and is keeping it a secret? Add more sides to the conflict as the plot/setting requires.

I am intimidated by the amount of steps and prep you go through with the players.

@geoffreyprecht2410

5 жыл бұрын

Wikis are easy to read and provide plenty of links to things that could be relevant as characters explore an area or talk to an NPC. Get a few ideas for directions the game could go, and follow your players' lead. If everyone knows the setting well enough, you shouldn't have a problem working together to create interesting stories. That method is much more fun than writing up entire plots and hoping your players stumble across them or follow your plot hooks. With most parties, when it comes to plot hooks, quantity is better than quality. Sure, you can write up an incredibly detailed story that poses some interesting existential questions to keep your players up at night, but what's the point if they'd all prefer to get attached to the nameless NPC barmaid? Come up with something on the fly and fit it into your current situation. Maybe the barmaid has a mysterious tattoo that she keeps covered up. Maybe the tattoo moves constantly. Maybe the party will somehow figure out that the barmaid is part of a secret cult that poses a threat to the town. Boom. Impromptu plot hook. Come up with a funny sounding demon name for her to worship, and you've got yourself an interesting story idea that will keep the players interested because they feel like they found this mysterious secret. Remember, your players are the main characters of the story. Don't make them go looking for the cool stuff. Rather, make the cool stuff happen to them.

This is the most helpful DMing video. Most are vague and the tips can be kinda involved, but these tips are great and practical!! I hope you do a few more in the future :D