I LOVE how this video was called "Ctrl + Z", but Matt retconned it to the new title. God I love this channel!

@galvaton10000

2 жыл бұрын

I THOUGHT I WAS GOING CRAZY 🤣

@lynx655

2 жыл бұрын

Came here to say this.

@ouroboros_1355

2 жыл бұрын

THAT explains why I hadn't watched it, I thought it was a commentary on the Ctrl Z series which I didn't watch so I ignored it... 😆

@AnathemaMysticalcel

2 жыл бұрын

Great piece of META.

@kingcrow15

2 жыл бұрын

M E T A

The metagame would be to delete this video, claiming you all made a huge mistake, and then load a new, only slightly different one a few days later.

@TheKazragore

2 жыл бұрын

I can't remember which one it was, but he's actually already done this! One of his videos he legit brought out a didgeridoo and played it. I think he was referencing Dael Kingsmill and one of her D&D videos. He later deleted the video and reuploaded a new version. I loved the first version but he wasn't happy with it.

"Encounter design doesn't stop because you rolled initiative." Just casually throwing out that kind of amazing advice is why I love this channel.

One time our dm had this big encounter planned with some neat new mechanics, we were atop a friendly dragon trying to escape a not-friendly much bigger dragon, and we had to fight off the dragon’s minions that were trying to slow down our friendly dragon so the enemy would catch us. She had events and special rules prepared, and a whole dramatic scene at the end that involved some character drama that we were looking forward to. But by the time the encounter rolled around we were all very tired, she had a long day, and kept forgetting bits she had prepared and the result was a rushed, messy, not super satisfying encounter. Even the scene at the end ended up feeling stunted and half complete. She felt super bad about it cause this big thing she had been planning for a while got ruined because of external reasons that left her too drained to run properly. Us players convinced her that since that encounter was only the last 30 minutes of the session, none of us would have a problem with retconning back to the start of the encounter at the start of next session. Next time through was a blast and went off flawlessly

@naryneitred

Жыл бұрын

The first dnd campaign I played had something similar happen. The encounter was well thought out but we were all tired and just wanted it to be over. Well our barbarian went first and bull rushed the boss creature over a cliff. The key to get out was on its body. Magical key. We spent the next 30 min rolling dice trying to climb down the cliff, 2 members fell to their death. The elf made it down got the key and crit failed 2 times in a row, rolled

I love the Lars addition, really helps explain things fast. Playing out the problem is a creative way to get the message across and its fun. thanks Matt!

@batterylevellow5473

2 жыл бұрын

Fuck yes

@BigBadBanana89

2 жыл бұрын

Felt a bit like a Seth Skorkowsky video :D

@Cbutlerification

2 жыл бұрын

Shouldn't you be thanking Lars.. not Matt?

Im always impressed by the absolute certainty a player has saying "yes" to the "are you sure thats how that works?" question.

For those interested, Pathfinder 1st edition has an adventure "The Dead Roads", in which 1st-level PCs have incorrectly ended up in the afterlife and need to get out. I think it could be adapted pretty easily to get a TPK'd group back to life, even for 5e or another edition.

The largest retcon my group ever performed was due to out of game circumstances. One of our players hadn't shown up, so we went ahead and played him. We happened upon a particularly dangerous magical artifact, and as we were inspecting it a surge of magic erupted, prompting all of us to make a save. He critically failed his. As the group was discussing the fairest action to take, given that he wasn't here and didn't get to roll his save himself, an email came through. It was from the player in question, and it was a Dear John letter to the group. It was....particularly insulting, and left no illusion of a continued friendship. I presented this to the group, and we collectively ruled that this magical surge had simply erased his character from reality. Occasionally we would muse in character that it felt like we were missing someone, but that was more or less the end of it.

“Running with all hamsters full tilt” is one of the best ways I’ve ever heard running a big moment in game described 😂🐹

"I would've prepared this spell if I knew this is the thing we agreed to do last night." - any new player playing druid or cleric "Sure, switch it out." - any decent dm

@donnellobrien4123

Жыл бұрын

I have been thinking of having a rule about allowing classes that can pick out spells every long rest, to willingly leave a 1 spell unprepared and can choose to prepare 1 spell per 10 minutes spent preparing one spell per day to give them some flexibility. So many utility spells never seen because they never had it prepared in the niche situation it is good.

Here’s an idea you can only get away with once: party got TPK’ed infiltrating a wicked mages tower. One of the PCs was a divination Wizard conveniently just exposed to some crazy time magic. Next session started by describing the other players waking up to see the Wizard shaking and frothing at the mouth, eyes rolled back in his head. They manage to shake him out of the trance and his eyes snap open: “If we assault that tower tomorrow we’re all going to die!” He’d had a vision... and now they can choose to avoid that potential future, or go in armed with the knowledge of what happened and a better plan!

@SethWistful

2 жыл бұрын

I'm such an idiot! I tpk'd my party after each of them got their fortunes told by a divination wizard. This would have been a sick way to save the day. But now they're playing in the same world 300 years later and have to deal with the consequences of their previous heroes failing, and they're having a blast with the change in setting/pacing and characters

@jeremiahalonzo

2 жыл бұрын

@@SethWistful You know, the fact that you folks can continue to have fun, in the same setting, and after a TPK!, is very rare. I say this as an ST that's tried to run a span-of-centuries VtM game many times. But yeah, retrospect...

@digitaljanus

2 жыл бұрын

I did this a couple times when I DMed in high school. I'd call those "bad dream" sessions "the 9th season of Dallas", if you want a clue as to how old I am.

@BrackishBrit

2 жыл бұрын

@@digitaljanus Guess we'd call it "8th season of Game of Thrones" nowadays.

@psychee1

2 жыл бұрын

I think that's a cool and narrative way to do it. Granted I'm a big softie but I've used the Vision of their demise-card twice and it can add tension to the story.

Regarding TPKs, in the first adventure of Acquisitions Incorporated, the entire party was wiped. The DM thought on the fly, and had the party essentially benefit from a short rest and had them wake up in the middle of a ritual to sacrifice them to summon a great evil. The fight continued to go badly, so the DM had a goblin NPC the party had spared earlier come in to rescue them. The goblin died, but it pulled aggro long enough for the party to eke out a victory. It was a great session, and a great illustration of what you're describibg.

17:15 "Shouldn't be too hard; I believe in you" almost made me tear up, I don't know why, but thank you.

@DudeWheresMyApple

2 жыл бұрын

Same, it's so genuinely sweet! 😭

The third type of retcon, not mentioned in this video: the story has gone someplace that the people around the table don't like. It's tonally all wrong, or it touches on topics people don't want to discuss, or there's no way to justify the characters still wanting to work together, or for any reason it's not the story you wanted to tell. In this case, don't fudge, don't change things surreptitiously: talk to the players. Call a time out, and together find the version of events everyone is good with. There's no point continuing to play a game that is making people unhappy or uncomfortable.

@jefflavenau6805

2 жыл бұрын

I agree with your conclusion, but offer an alternative solution because of the vast scope you described of nobody liking ANYTHING: Start a new campaign from scratch. Maybe the BBEG is the same, further down the timeline, but maybe not. Should never be afraid to say "Let's just start again."

@bananajoe113

2 жыл бұрын

I wouldn't change the previous events. If you run into this issue it sounds more like you don't understand what content they like and retconning won't fix future content. If anything stop and talk about what they do like to play and start doing events in game around that. Also have events in game to reconcile feelings about past events. Its the same thing as someone making a character with a tragic backstory and later on in the campaign after level one someone shows up or an event is brought up and resolved.

@Washeek

2 жыл бұрын

I don't know. The level of issues you talk about here sound like a bit too much to salvage. At least I haven't had a single success with trying to talk things like these out. Either you have an established group and things don't tend to spiral like this unless someone introduces a huge change - new member, old member leaving, GM rotation, New system and then yeah re-evaluate the change. Or this is a new group and hitting a spiral like this in the beginning means it will require an exorbitant investment from everyone to fix. In that case, break up and find different people, life is too short to try and break down walls with your head.

@doomedwit1010

2 жыл бұрын

Of it's a long running campaign this could make sense. I had a long running campaign we all liked and then the GM went all X-Files and players weren't liking it. A simple conversation and retconning one or two scenes could have easily fixed that. So it happens. Especially in longer games where a particular story arc or villain just isn't working out but you're not starting over from scratch. I have certainly had characters I really liked and wanted to reuse.

@cryofpaine

2 жыл бұрын

Ideally this would be solved in Session 0. Boundaries should be set before you start. And make sure the safety tools are in place so that if you're starting down that path, someone can nip it in the bud before you go too far down that path.

A game called Houses of the Blooded blew my young mind back in 2010 because it was my first foray into gaming outside of the traditional fantasy milieu. There's a section of advice about fostering the right kind of culture for your friends and it mentions that a game of backstabbing nobles doesn't have to be miserable so long as you keep the drama in-game. The designer John Wick (not the movie assassin) named this concept after one of his gaming friends and actively encouraged players of HotB to use a particular phrase when things get heavy: "friendly game?" When reading it a decade ago, the "Colville Rule" was sound advice and Matt was just someone who my favorite game designer mentioned once. Today, I'm watching the man himself reiterate that same eye-opening advice. It's kind of surreal.

@Poodlestroop

2 жыл бұрын

My main takeaway from this is that Matt Colville was friends with John Wick.

Once, during a playthrough of Lost Mines, our party was fully wiped out: the dreaded TPK. We had decided to explore one more room before resting, even though we were at our limits. It turned out the next room was the final boss chamber. Our DM was very smart about this and had our party leader meet a strange old man in a void-like space. He offered a card (from the Deck of Many Things) which wound up being the one which allows the drawer to change one event of their choice. They chose to alter things so we rested instead of moving forward. We all returned to the mine, all remembering what had happened, but alive. Later on, the old man in the void turned out to be our campaign's BBEG and piecing all the clues about him together was a lot of fun! In the end, our GM had a genius idea to roll our mistake back without technically erasing it: it was actually a plot point!

Thank you so much Matthew! I just had a tpk because my party didn't believe Delayed Fireball is a substantial deterrent. I've been so stressed on hiw I could "unfuck" this situation and you've helped me, as a new DM, to overcome what I thought was a campaign ending mistake.

@stinky1895

2 жыл бұрын

If Dark Souls has taught me anything, it's that delayed fireball is a perfectly adequate deterrent

@CaptainOrlax

2 жыл бұрын

@@stinky1895 “I’m sorry!” “Very good!”

@kaemonbonet4931

2 жыл бұрын

What are you thinking you're gonna do?

@robertcrane561

2 жыл бұрын

Well, first I'm going to talk to my players and see what solutions they are most comfortable with. I had a comment that a player didnt understand the gravity of the situation, and I agree that it is extremely unsporting to kill a new player's character because they didnt comprehend the situation. So I will give them a choice. A single one time coupon to redo the last 10 minutes of the last session (a character has a premonition of a fate that may come if she fails to calm her ally.) Or live with the mistake and hit the *CONTINUE?* button. (The party will have a verrrrry tiny interlude in the spirit realm and then brought to life months later by a Kraul Death Priest. A secret friend of a player. And must help the bug with a kinda, ity bity, small Demon problem before they are allowed to continue their mission.) I'm looking forward to what they will decide

@NeverUseAnApostrophe

2 жыл бұрын

As a younger DM, I killed a first-time player; the party underestimated a room full of wights. What served me was having him as an undead PC that drastically changed his life. You can make the "punishment" of dying mechanical in nature to invest your player while it serves your DM plans for the character and campaign in the long term. Hope things go well!

WHY AREN'T PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THE TITLE CHANGE

I love how this video was initially titled something like "Control+Z" and now its called "Retconning." Love the meta humor.

@FF3LockeZ

2 жыл бұрын

I don't think that's meta humor, I think too many viewers just didn't understand what Ctrl+Z means because they're either not super computer-savvy, or only use phones and not Windows computers, so the title was changed to something more obvious.

I think you can also just listen to what your players ideas if a TPK occurs. I'm running a heavily modified version of The Red Hand of Doom, and when the characters were facing a large detachment of the Hobgoblin Army, the players seriously considered if a TPK was going to happen. The PCs had just evacuated the town's children using a Swan Token, and the players decided on their own that if TPK happened, they wanted to time skip 10 or so years into the future, and play some of the older children who escaped. And were now back for BLOOD. I could not have thought of a better solution myself. Players are good, y'all.

Has a trap go off one time. Described what happened and how the character was set back. Player asks, "Wait, don't I get a save?" Oh, yes you do. They roll and succeed. "You get a vivid vision of what would have happened if you tried to do that again."

That line for when to retcon and when to let things play out is pretty blurry. Case in point: a buddy of mine went celestial warlock. Chose a djinn patron. He's a details guy so I figured he picked a chaotic evil patron on purpose. When his "master" appeared in the first session the look in his eyes when his patron appeared and started going on about slaves, torment, and typical evil NPC demands was priceless. He immediately wanted to change patrons and it would have been super easy to retcon it. ...but we both wanted to make it into a story arc where he breaks free of his current patron and finds a new one (it fit perfectly into stuff going on in the world and the campaign premise, although he doesn't know that yet). His mistake has become a major part of the players story and a large amount of amusement for us all. Plus I got a new BBEG for down the road. I can't wait, and he's gonna love it seeing his decisions come full circle.

Matt Retconned the title of this video. Incredible. It was originally "Ctrl-Z", now it's "Retconning".

@highlandcan

2 жыл бұрын

I was coming here to say exactly that as well. Thought I was going nuts

"Jax was always a Monk" is my game's version of "Boots was always a Bard." I had this super-specific vision for my character (Jax) as a Pugilist Street-fighter (Battlemaster) that came into contact with a bit of Evocation Magic (Magic Initiate). But as the story and character developed (Monks got involved), it just wasn't working for what I wanted. Then I worked with the DM to redesign Jax as a Monk from the beginning: 4-Elements with the Martial Adept Feat. I keep thinking to myself "This is way better. Why didn't I do this from the start?" Also, Yay! Lars is in a Video!

@RavarSeer

2 жыл бұрын

Jax is a bard in my campaign

@Dunkster91

2 жыл бұрын

@@RavarSeer always has been

@TheAntranig123

2 жыл бұрын

I've had this happen too. Nerro was always a waterbender (was a ranger first).

Ah, fresh river water. Thank you sir.

"We'll pick this up in three weeks, with you all in the after life and trying to get out." Thank you Matt! Now I have an awesome way to fix a tpk that shouldn't have happened.

16:57 A fun way of bringing a character back to death is after the battle, when the other players are done with their RP over the death, before time advances too much, and before they move the body... the DM interrupts and says the scene fades to black, and the dead player character suddenly opens their eyes and sits up with a gasp, still reeling from their final moments of pain and disorientation as they slipped into death. As they come to their senses, they look around. They're in the same place they died, but it's empty. No one is there. Not the party, not the enemies, not even signs of the battle. And there's some sort of environmental change... deep, writhing shadows or flames licking up the walls, or bathed in shining light... whatever is appropriate thematically and aesthetically to... a figure they suddenly notice who wasn't there before. A powerful being has taken notice of your death and sees an opportunity. After a little RP exchange, the figure offers the character a choice. The figure can bring the character back to life... if they'll swear their service. If they agree, cut back to the real scene with everyone else, and the dead character suddenly sits up gasping, exactly how they did in their vision encounter. And then you tell the player their character gains a level in warlock. Bonus points if the figure offering the deal is somewhat antithetical to the character's original values or goals so it's a hard choice. They could choose to die and roll a new character. Or they could level up ahead of every one else and be forced to contend with their new patron's demands going forward. This also works as a visitation from a god and the character becomes a paladin after swearing an Oath instead of a Pact, if their original character class doesn't fit with a caster.

Regarding character death, I've employed "character death turns into an adventure." When a character has died in the campaign, I've made it clear that there will be an opportunity to bring them back, whether it be journeying into the feywild to restore their life from an enchanted pool or something like that. Somebody's character dying is probably the greatest pull to adventure you can get in this game. I also employed the alternative - "you can get your friend back quickly, but at a cost." In this instance, my warlock's patron (the two have a shaky relationship) offered to resurrect his artificer friend for him, at the cost of his undying loyalty and service. Because the warlock was trying to get away from this patron, it ended up being a very interesting character sacrifice that didn't require any mechanical change. Setbacks happen - but like Matt said, just give them the small bit of optimism that they can fix the situation while still keeping consequences on the table.

Wauw. I had just begun rewatching your campaign diaries as inspiration for my campaign and here you are with a new video. Coincidence? Yeah, probably..

Some of the best Running the Game is when Matt goes into the sociology. Also, what a treat to have Lars in the video. And great news to finally have Appendix M coming.

I had a TPK when I ran dragon heist, one of those situations where things just happened so fast, Manshoon casts Psychic Scream and suddenly heads are exploding. Next session, they all wake up on the banks of the river Styx in Avernus. After some brief negotiations with the locals, the party were riding in an infernal war machine across the barren land in search of a mysterious merchant with the power to shift between planes. It only lasted a couple sessions but the PC's became extremely invested in stopping Manshoon. It also opened up the campaign to extraplanar elements, expanding the lore of the world and introducing new plot hooks. Definitely not the best way to do it, but it made the best of a bad situation and maintained verisimilitude (as weird as that sounds).

This was the perfect video to watch right now. A player of mine died from a beholder and I have felt bad about it because she really liked the character. But we are going to be doing the curse of strand campaign next and now she has an excuse to become a reborn and have a dark gift that brought her back to life:)

"But what if the players like their new character better?" My solution, write the old characters out if the players request it. Changing the party is salvageable - it's what you'd be doing anyway if there wasn't a second-chance. You don't even have to have that character stay dead. It could happen some other way - maybe the Afterlife has given that character new insight and convinced them to take on an advisory role, rather than an active one. Maybe their injuries are permanent and grievous enough that adventuring in their state wouldn't be feasible, forcing them on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.

@toribiogubert7729

2 жыл бұрын

There is always the classic "now i came back from rhe dead I shure want to enjoy my life! No more dark dungeon for me guys."

Matt, I’ve been playing and DM’ing since the 70’s, and I still learn something (or remember things I’d forgotten) every time I watch one of your videos. You are never too old or experienced to pick up good ideas, especially with this hobby.

Going back and watching this video later, I'm reminded of the premise I had in mind for a Starfinder game I was running. The idea was that the entire universe my players were exploring existed inside an old DOS computer game, a text adventure that was wildly advanced for its time. A little ... *too* advanced. Anyway, the way we did retcons a lot in that game was explaining what the characters knew as a Glitch in the game: "Oh, I forgot to add this feature to my damage last turn, can we add that in?" "Sure, Dave, roll it." "I got a 6." "Okay, you all see the boss raise his axe to execute Wally the Walrus, blood still pouring from his wounds but still standing on his feet. Then, everything *fizzes* like an old TV screen, and the boss is now dead on the floor, his axe fallen to his side. Wally's safe, for the time being." Just thought I'd leave this here in case someone happens across it like a year later. I think this video was what inspired me to do that in the first place lol

I use that "your character would remember stuff you don't because they life this life 24/7 while you don't" all the time, it's good at demonstrating the need to give the players slack

I will add one note on Ret-Coning; it's not just "do-over" or "changed history", it's also ADDING information about past events such that they provide different contexts. The show Red vs Blue is literally just Ret-conning each season.

@ppppppqqqppp

2 жыл бұрын

generally speaking yes, that is a retcon, but the common usage really only applies to retroactively changing things, rather than just adding backstory.

@monkeysk8er33

2 жыл бұрын

Adding context to past events is NOT retconning. Retconning is a negation of past events. Recontextualization is adding information that alters one's perception of past events. Let me help make this easier to comprehend: In real life, when you learn new information that recontextualizes something you previously thought, is some magical omniscient force altering reality, retroactively? No, you're just learning, that's how learning works. Don't worry, this is a common misconception. Most people aren't educated on the difference. You're welcome.

"Encounter Design does not stop, just because you roll initiative". Agreed. 100% Thank you for this!

@kryptonianguest1903

2 жыл бұрын

If you play Pathfinder 2e, then 99.9% of the time it does exactly that. So refreshing to finally GM a game where the encounter design rules actually work.

This is quite possibly one of the best videos you've put together. It's so integral to the experience of D&D and how the game progresses every single session.

I enjoy the retconning of this video's title, a very nice touch.

The "limbo" idea reminds me of old Planescape stuff, where you first have to sit through the judgment of the actual Chinese bureaucrat of the dead to determine where you go, and then are shuttled off to whatever divine realm within whatever plane you're sentenced to. I feel like if you wanted to go a little longer-form with that, you could have a beautiful "What Dreams May Come"-inspired thing where your party of friends have to go on trial for their lives, are split up, and then have to literally cross multiple afterlives to get to each other, break out of their cosmically-ordained chains with the power of friendship, and return to the land of the living wiser and changed by their time in the Lands Beyond Life.

@colmotten

2 жыл бұрын

You can also the Beetlejuice waiting room and Tim Burton's challenge of getting back the characters back to the real world.

It's fun to see Lars in things again. :D

Perfect. I already told my party I'm reconning the ending to last session. Impeccable timing

Another key use of retcon; when a player pulls an X card (or whatever your equivalent is), but belatedly. We stopped the session, spoke privately and then with the group, and agreed on a modified set of facts that avoided the content in question.

I get excited when I see Matt in a Rush t-shirt. Hold your fire no less!

@joemitchell8739

2 жыл бұрын

I'm trying to think of what song fits for this video's topic...Time Stand Still maybe?

😮 The "Matthew Colville" just said he believes in me... I got chills. Looong time DM here I do enjoy this series as I have lived most of the scenarios. Glad to hear I did it correctly. You take a player out with a disintegration spell and you tell the tale of how the realm mourned their passing after sacrificing his life so that his team could win the day and stop the big bad. It can get real emotional, but owning it can give it more value then red-coning ever could. Thanks Matt, keep on keeping on!!

"I don't know what comics are like, now..." Well, based off the sales, neither does anyone else. So you're not alone.

Love the T-Shirt! In my session zero, we talk about the basic retcon rules. Generally, if a player (or the DM) forgets about an ability and they pass turn, it doesn't get retconed. The only time it does is when the error is egregious enough to have a major impact on what's going on. Sometimes we explain it, "In the confusion of battle, the monster simply didn't see the rogue trying to hide in plain sight."

I forgot/confused my keyboard shortcuts and thought this Running the Game episode was going to be about copy/pasting things from other adventures into your own.

I tend to run 2e games in a very dark and gritty fashion; meaning, I tweak damage in combat to make the combat feel fast and lethal like a real fight. This means that I have to think on my toes a lot to help players not die sometimes because I want them to have fun. This video is super helpful and coincidental because I’ve been thinking about allowing ways of resurrecting their characters; previously I wouldn’t allow it because I didn’t want death to stop being scary. Now I see that I can make things a lot more interesting by allowing them a way back. My views on PC death were pretty carved in “tomb” stone but this video has given me new options. Thank you.

this is officially my favorite MCDM video intro

I think my favorite example of this was in a Warlords of the Accordlands game. It was the first session and two players were playing Deverenians (basically LE Numenorians, for those not familiar with the setting) and one of them accidentally impuned the others honor. A duel broke out which the other character tried to break up. The party ended up killing THEMSELVES in the first 30 minutes of the campaign, lol. It was great, because everyone was in character and LE does what LE does. We ended up just starting over, one of the players made a new character and we now have a house rule of "only one Deverenian per party, unless the players have already determined the hierarchy" lol

3:21 I actually had a really cool moment in combat where one of my players used the spell Jump as a ranger. They were fighting a particular spell-casting bad guy and at one point he cast Wall of Fire and enclosed himself in it with one of the hurt PCs. This ranger cast jump and went over the wall into it to attack him without taking damage from the stepping into it.

I always liked the "you died and wake up in the underworld" but I think I would do a solo adventure for each player, tackling their greatest fear, and having to overcome it to get back to the land of the living.

@All4Tanuki

11 ай бұрын

That would be cool, especially if it were just one or two players. You could pull from the player collaboration video too, and make their return a secret bit of downtime...

I once intentionally started a campaign with the TPK, raised by a wizard to do their bidding set-up. It even started with the "you're in a tavern" trope, followed by cowled assassins swarming the place and killing everyone. The wizard raised the ones who lasted the longest (the PCs). Instant party unity: the very first conversation they had after setting out was "We're gonna kill him, right?" It helped that we were playing a system that was new to many of the players (RuneQuest 3rd ed) - and one that was inherently more lethal than D&D. The set-up helped everyone get used to the new system and see how lethal it could be. This was decades ago, and my friends still bring up that fight and the campaign that followed.

Whenever I start to get DM burnout I just come watch Colville videos to get the ol' noggin spinning about new fun things to do as a DM and new fun ways to solve problems and I'm suddenly excited to DM again. Thanks to Matt and the whole MCDM crew for help to make DMing exciting and fun.

I really like how you ended up bringing Co back with the whole side mission thing that was cool. I would do that

@A._Person

2 жыл бұрын

I believe his name is 'Koh'.

I always found the first time my pc died was tougher, but after that, it’s grand. As a gm, helping players through their first or second time a character death helps. (I find it’s tougher if they’ve forked out a lot for a custom mini!) If the entire party dies we’ve done things like another adventuring group following up from their patrons on what happened their earlier charges and catch them up with their last known location…patrons use scrying abilities …equivalent of - time to turn on “where’s my party” ! Scrolls of speak with dead to possibly converse with former pc’s to find special items they may have died with, if they badly wanted something special back , heirlooms, additional information etc. For resurrected characters I reduce their lowest stat by 2 to simulate stress from being brought back ( doesn’t impact much on what their good at, but it shows there’s a finite amount of times they can be brought back…. like Bilbo’s quote along the lines of “butter that’s been spread too thin” . That also helps players decide if they want to continue with a pc or retiring them or letting them pass on.

I love how every playgroup has a phrase for this. My table says "cheat step?" The very important part of the turn where you cheat.

18:12 I did something like this when I made the mistake of pitting a 5th level party against a beholder zombie. Instead of the paladin getting disintegrated while at full HP, I said that an npc jumped in front of him and the npc, the paladin's shiny new +1 shield and the arm behind the shield all got disintegrated. This kept the consequence of that event all the way to when that character eventually made it to level 20, and he picked up a gimmick of having a bunch of utility prosthetic arms that he would use, essentially other magic items like a ring of spell storing flavored to be built in to a prosthetic arm.

@wickedly1

2 жыл бұрын

That's awesome!

He is a river to his people

This is great, I was wondering how Matt would view retcons and this is excellent advice

I love how you even retconned the title of the video, nice touch!

“All hamsters at full tilt” LOL!!! Matt, I love this channel. I also did not know retcon stood for retroactive continuity - thanks for that. Keep it up! 👍

I recently retconned events in a game of Heart I've been running lately. Following a tough fight, the pcs were harvesting the spoils of their victory and tending to their wounds when a bit of tension between one of my NPCs and a player hit a breaking point. Abilities were hit and the ultimate result dealt a stampede of damage to the entire table and led to me wrongly chastising the player for their actions. I was out of line and reeling from the tailspin, not to mention the several misinterpretations of the rules which compounded to make a situation that would otherwise have been a tense standoff into complete chaos. We put the game on pause for nearly a month and I talked to the players individually and as a group about how to proceed. Ultimately, a little divine intervention from a malevolent deity meant that the events happened but we washed the consequences of them away as reality bent and burned from magical mayhem. From both the rules mix-up and the fact that I'd lost my temper with a player, it was the solution that fit best and made sense. I think situations like that, where the wellbeing of the players is at stake from a wild series of mistakes, is exactly the use case for a retconn and I wish that sort of issue had been more discussed in the video. Lovely work as always MC.

The Theros book (heavily inspired by Greek mythology) also mentions this 'escaping the underworld' idea, so the 5e designers have thought about it.

@joemitchell8739

2 жыл бұрын

Me and my group have all been escaping the Theros underworld for 3 months or so, and that's definitely what I thought of when Matt talked about how you can cheat death. We finally made it to Agonas last time, so we're almost out!

Great advice as usual. I had a player's character die early in the campaign. I allow everyone one free chance to roll to avoid death, something he did succeed on behind the scenes. However, he choose to play a new character from his backstory he had given me, allowing that character to become an NPC doing his own thing. Later on, when he decided to sacrifice his new character in a deal with Asmodeus to save his friends, we decided he would bring his old character back. He asked about potentially switching classes, but he felt it would be weird/wouldn't make sense. I told him, his character had been away from the party for months, leveling up on his own, not to mention had been brought back to life at the behest of some powerful being as he knew, so I told him it was perfectly acceptable that he may have been brought back differently than he was previously, and has learned new techniques. As such, I allowed him to switch classes as well as his ability scores around to fit better with his new class. He's been having a blast, and no one else at the table was bothered by it. To them, he was brought back to life by some powerful being, the idea he might not be the exact same as when they last saw him at level 3 never crossed their minds.

Listening to archive video of MCDM Plays Paranoia. Mat asking “Friendly Game?” rang clear as a BELL after this video. 🙂. Thank you Matt for a solid message that we all make mistakes and can work together.

Ive got covid 19, sad but matt covile uploads, yay!

@rokkkrinn2793

2 жыл бұрын

Get well soon.

@seraaron

2 жыл бұрын

get well soon!

NOTIFICATIONS SQUAD LETS GO I NEEDED THIS MATT I HAVE DMS BLOCK

@Essayeem

2 жыл бұрын

Beat me by 7 minutes

@vincentnicosia2315

2 жыл бұрын

@@Essayeem i’m obviously the bigger matt colville fan in this relationship

All the Princess Bride references. Love it. Also, this is just like running a course as a teacher. Syllabus says we have an exam this week, but we're not there yet, so I'll delay or cancel it.

Due to some circumstances, I am about to take one of my games on hiatus. In the interim, I plan to do a few major retcons to my homebrew setting to bring things much more in line with where it has been developing and away from some of the placeholder names and less baked ideas I put in place when we began years ago. While I know academically that I could have always done this, I kinda feel as though this video was my sign that I was doing the right thing, and I appreciate it.

Colville, the mentor we all need.

Jerry killed it with the edits and effects!

So I dm'd my first 2 (!) games last night, and they both went fantastic, and ive just been so excited since! I just want to say thanks for making sooo many running the game videos, and dusk, and chains (miss that, was amazing)! And for anyone else scrolling by, just do it.

Ok that's the best changed title I've seen on YT. Well done Matt.

I love this video -- solving these problems have been some of the most challenging things I've encountered in my games. I think one scenario you left out in this video is solving the ret-con within the world/mythology. For example, I was running a 5e ruleset game based in the Star Wars ancient past (pre-Jedi), and the "surprise" in the world was that the characters were each shards of the soul of an aspect of the Force (of Daughter, from the Mortis arc in Clone Wars). The goal of the story was to help the players realize this truth (hopefully, *after* realizing they were playing in Star Wars), and join their souls together to defeat the BBEG. But before that could happen, one of the players died. Brutally. The party went out of their way and encountered an extremely dangerous encounter long before they should have, and one of the characters was one-shot by a spell. They took three times their max HP in damage. It was a brutal roll. It was extremely unsatisfying. The players knew they were in over their heads, so there was an aspect of "well we kind of earned it", but it still felt wrong to me, and it was also that player's first PC that they really loved. Part of the encounter included a large number of NPC allies, that were already part of the lore of the campaign, and I intended to use them to sacrifice themselves to protect the soul shards (the NPCs knew what the PCs were, and knew they had to be preserved). When the character died, I felt like I'd failed anyway. The remainder of the party finished the encounter and prepared to rest. I asked the table for a break. The player went to cry in another room. I went outside and paced for a few minutes while I turned it over in my head. Eventually, I determined that these NPCs would do literally anything to protect the soul shards. Their entire purpose of existence was to protect those shards. So I had the NPCs dramatically sacrifice themselves, inefficiently transferring their life essence to resurrect the character. It was a bloody and tragic scene as these relatively beloved NPCs lemmings'd themselves off a cliff to splatter their essence over the party. But the bard was returned. The party was distraught at the loss of these allies who had been so instrumental in their success and understanding of the story, but that sacrifice gave incredible weight to the bard's death -- the party realized just how important they were to these NPCs -- to the world. And it was actually the first clue to the party that in a way, they were part of something ... immortal. Obviously you can't always solve these problems with an in-story solution. But I would say at the very least, when you're considering ret-conning something, take a 10 minute break. Go outside, take a walk, look at your game maps, peruse the titles of your notes. Think for a minute about how you might tie this into the story, and how it can serve to push the party forward. Because if you can do this, it doesn't look like a retcon anymore -- it looks like an inevitable outcome of the story, and it can draw in a character very deeply to the story, as they now feel irrevocably woven into the fabric of the world.

As far as backup plans for a party wipe, I've had "the party's souls are saved by a Valkyrie and given the chance to fight the bad guy from the other side of the veil of death" burning a hole in my pocket for years, but these bozos keep overcoming all my daunting odds! Honestly, the nerve...

I had 2 players die in a game that I ran, the goblins had an obvious upper hand and their thought process was as follows 1) If we wanted to we could probably mop up the rest of the party 2) But some of us almost certainly would die 3) I dont want to die 4) Offer to let them leave, after all we just want them out of our camp. Then their was a Dryad witch in a forest about 2-3 days walk from the PC's Home village who offered to reincarnate the two dead party members in exchange for a favor.

One of my Invisible Sun players died and became a ghost...and was a ghost for more than a year (of play time) before finding an opportunity to gain a replacement body.

First! Wait. That was stupid. Let’s agree I didn’t do that.

1 minute squad, let's go!

I have thoroughly enjoyed these videos. However, I really like this one. Such good information. I like the fact you explain why some actions of a DM can destroy the feeling of being in another world to we a mere “we are playing a game”. One other thing. Love the line “you gave them a chance to un “f” the situation “. I like giving players a chance to “fix” a bad break, but there is a limit to it. Again, great series and thank you for the work you put in for us!

I love that I was thinking limbo and then he said it. It's reassuring to sometimes have your ideas validated.

What do you think about "the party died here, but in a parallel universe things happened differently..." or "the party died, but their friend traveled to the past to warn them"?

@cobwebb679

2 жыл бұрын

This would be awesome in a superhero game. As a player, I'd almost feel like it was a setup for that intro to the time travel/ parallel universe.

@quartzionic

2 жыл бұрын

I think it really depends on the overall tone/theming of your game. If the scale of your game is very grand and/or there have been other things to set up time travel and parallel universes, then I could see those maybe working. If they come out of nowhere, maybe not. The time travel could feel too much like a deus ex machina, and the parallel universe shift could remove a lot of the fear surrounding death for your players. Out of the two, the time travel solution feels like the better one, since confirming that there are parallel universes has a lot of implications.

First! Woot woot!

@AnathemaMysticalcel

2 жыл бұрын

Congrats!

We had to retcon something at our last session, although it was only the end of a combat. A 2 separate casters attacked Acererak & he used Counterspell on both & teleported away on his turn, we were fairly concerned he couldn't do that but the DM said that his legendary actions said he could cast "any 3rd level or lower spell", but after some discussion we all agreed (DM included) that legendary actions happen at the end of a character's turn & are therefore not "reactions", so only one spell could be Counterspelled, so the fight was reconned that our druid had in fact used Thorn Whip to finish off the Lich, pulling him off the cliff into the lava below.

Just posting this comment to note that the video was originally titled "CTRL-Z", but has since been retconned to "Retconning | Running the Game".

In one of the first games I ran for friends there was a series of incredibly unlucky rolls on my part that ended up wiping the entire party while they were still level 1. Everyone was still super invested in their characters and the setting, so I called the session and for the next week devised a scenario based off of a scene from Terry Pratchett's "Mort" where Mort wakes up in Death's house for the first time. The characters were offered a second chance if they completed a task for Death in his domain, and once they did they woke up in the same places they had died several hours later. The whole thing was a huge success and everyone was engaged with the scenario, but it goes without saying that this kind of thing could only be done once per campaign, possibly even per player.

Great advice! I once ran a game where the party was approaching a castle on a big hill by walking up the path/driveway. The Ranger decided to climb a tall cliff to get a sneaky approach before the party arrived. I thought it was a bad idea, and told him so... But, I let him do it. Near the top he crit failed his climbing roll and he fell to his death. I let this sink in with him and the rest of the party for a minute. They were chattering like school kids and panic seemed to be coming over the table. Fingers were pointed and blame was being laid. I could have had him re-roll a character, but also thought his character would have known better seeing the actual cliff before him... So, I stood up and said, "You (pointing to the Ranger) wake screaming with sweat covering your body. The rest of your companions leap to their feet being awoken by the terrifying screams. Each of them looks around until finally finding you, sweating and panting. Peering at each of the players you say, 'I just had a terrible nightmare and I fell to my death. I highly recommend that we all take the path to the castle instead of climbing that cliff we were talking about.'" I let that sink in for a few seconds before finishing with, "Are you guys ready to start your journey to the castle?" Everyone laughed, we all jumped back into the game, and an important lesson was learned. To this day, we poke fun of the Ranger and talk about that "nightmare." It worked out nicely for us.

Matt retconned the retcon video title. This man lives by example.

I love that Matt retconned his old video title for this video.

10:21 "At the end of the day we are not sitting around the campfire telling a story together. We are playing a game with dice and sometimes things do not play out in a satisfying way and THAT is the story." This was the most important sentence of this whole video for me. So many mistakes made by so many DM's because they start the game with the basis of a "Story" instead of playing the game and letting the story become born out of that process. Also great to point out that death is the weight by which we standardize our game. That is to say, without death on the table; the heroes actions and decisions have no context. Without risk there is no true reward. The players must know failure is possible to feel success.

Thank you. Very well said. I haven’t gamed with actual dice, pencils, and paper in decades. Yet, if I did again I hope my DM/GM would subscribe to your channel.

I already comment this before, but this is the best moment to share this history. i had a adventure where a Medusa (who in my setting is magical before, but pretrify anyone who behold their beauty for too long (about 3 turns)) started a cult, and wanted to conquer the city, my players thought would be a good ideia to infiltrate the mansion where the cult was without a fight, and got surrounded by 20 cultist + medusa. after the TPK i describe how the medusa who like trophys pretrifed each one. and them after asking if they still wanted to play that character. I described the feeling of been unpretifed by one of their NPC allies. Now they got recruted join the resistence to fight the medusa cult who actually CONQUERED the city while they were pretrifed.

Probably my most common retcons have been the "Well that doesn't work like you thought it does". Though I do remember the grumbling I had in one game. Played a diviner. Only to have a DM who said they were philosophically opposed to fate and predetermined outcomes. And as such all divination abilities based on any sort of future telling just... didn't work. And no I wasn't allowed to swap them out, I had to deal with just most of my abilities being dead weight. It was an illuminating moment that made me far, far, faaaar more open to retconning things than I ever saw before that point. And just realizing when you made a character that didn't fit into a game and need to tweak and alter it.

The idea that the character sheet is an imperfect expression of the player's character is so understated, and by proxy that idea extends to the class/subclass systems as well. A player shouldn't have to justify their levels in Druid and Artificer unless they want to. Sometimes they just need something from each of them to properly express the character they created.

One of the best ways I've seen a major retcon be done was in Rollplay Far Verona (which was a science fiction setting), when the party found themselves Roleplayed into a corner where there was going to be some serious player vs player conflict that would make it difficult to continue the game after, the players all agreed that their characters couldn't back down, but they didn't want to continue doing it, so the DM introduced a time traveller, the scene froze and the time traveller being basically a DM self insert said "Damn this situation isn't supposed to be like this" and then went back in time to fix it and the party then went back a day or two into the game and tried it over again but doing things differently. Instead of just undoing the mistake, they made it part of the story and introduced a new element of this Time traveller trying to keep the group going.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading through Valda's Spire of Secrets and noticed the paladin subclass choices. My party's paladin has never been happy with the oath he had chosen at 3rd level - but as a sailor (down to the background) who had recently sailed the party through a dangerous storm... and as a multiclass warlock with a kraken patron... the idea of switching him to Oath of Storms made a TON of sense. I proposed the change and he jumped at it... and I can't wait until the party sees him use some of his new abilities :)

The end of the first battle of Fantasy High S1 has a perfect example of "replace a tragedy with a crisis"