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What are you using as vtt

Pay the 50 bucks and play on Foundry VTT, you will have a way better gaming experience...

Coming back this video 2 years later. About to run my first mass battle for my viking campaign!

Another banger video bud. Myself I love! exploring! be it into hexes and finding things out about areas to dungeons or the underdark... I honestly AD&D has the best rules for this stuff and no I am not a 60 year old playing since day one I am 33. Its one reason I also like Shadowdark it took on parts of the old AD&D feel to exploing and some of the hex stuff and dungeon was almsot ripped directly from it with some changes to make it lighter and faster to use.

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Ranger concept is good. Implementation is terrible. Same is true for Bards & Druids. None of them should be stand alone Classes. They are all sub classes at best. This is True in Every Edition of D&D.

Amazing video

the removing con/combat takes too long is a 5E thing. if your playing something like OSE combat is quick.

Are you wearing a Louis XIV.-style ermine coat? 🙂

I had a longsword that did 1d8 necrotic damage and was intelligent. Certainly on the evil side. But it made my game. I was not too involved in role playing until I got the sword, but as I started interacting with it, I got better and it presented rp opportunities for other players

Great video! I'll use these tips on my next one shot.

the social contract of the game is that players and DM each come prepared to play nice with the other. DM prepares a game consistent with what the party expressed interest in, and the players interact with what the DM presents, trusting in a future pay off. if either side inflexibly wants to be catered to, it doesn't work.

Well tbf on identify not doing that stuff RAW, it's because Legend Lore is a spell that already exists and does precisely that.

I generate a calendar with pregenerated Weather. Also the random encounters are recorded on the same list. There is interpretation involved considering where they are when encounters occur of course.

There is a place for either option, you are not factoring in every aspect. I run a combined Open World and a little bit of linear adventure when the situation arrives: Some players and groups thrive in structured environments where a clear narrative arc is defined, providing a sense of purpose and reducing decision fatigue. Linear campaigns can allow DMs to craft deeply rich and detailed stories that might be diluted by excessive improvisation. The improvisational style can overwhelm less experienced DMs or players, leading to chaotic or unsatisfying game sessions.

Man, that art took me back to the late 1980s.

The setting determines the available tracks, the players choose which way to go and the GM keeps all the trains running including the ones the players didnt choose to get on. The one major thing i do with my world is have all NPCs act even when the players arent there. The world is dynamic, the choices are varied, but limited, and the stakes are high!

I always suggest to new GMs: run a simulationist game once. Don't write a story, linear or otherwise, but create a world that has tension, but is otherwise stable, and then add an antagonist force that upsets the balance. Then just add the players in... Make your antagonist move their plot forward, them react to the players' actions. Let it play out from there, adding random tables as needed. Let your players write the story with their actions. Yes, you'll have to improvise. Yes, you'll need to take notes... But it is a damn sight easier than trying to keep players on the line and they will be WAY more invested, because it's *their story.*

7:31 I actually did something like this based mainly on the Ravnica book's plot hook crafter. They have stuff like a problem, a general idea of how the players need to go about solving it for the quest (siege, protect the fortress, perform a heist, etc.), who the villain is, and a complication. I basically just took all of the parts I wanted, made them vague (like replacing faction names with numbers), and added some additional options to fit the campaign I was planning it for.

tbh the most fun I had with a "stronghold" was the only one the DM didn't bog down with rules. It was the classic abandoned property from a monster living in it that the party gets for completing the quest to slay it. We did so and got to renovating. I was playing a "mutant blood hunter" so the wizard was trying to clean up the place with prestidigitation but I'd rush in to collect things like cob webs, fur from the monster we killed, etc. to use in my research. Cleric and druid committed themselves to moving out the broken wood, patching up problem areas, and painting. The monk of all people took on cooking duty. Once we were done RPing the clean-up, we just hand-waved how we kept money going here and there between quests with the locals, particularly in the main part of a town that wasn't *too* far away. Stuff like brewing simple potions of a potency your average person could use. All the DM did for their part was use it as a place for NPCs to find us when certain plot threads needed a tugging. We didn't need a map or anything, we just kept it all in the theater of the mind

I can see the merit of the first version if you want 1 player to stand out as the one who saved the day but I prefer the team effort that these scenes usually have so some variant of the 2nd version wherein the party shares a score would be more my speed. Something specific you mentioned, how spells lower the DC, is certainly a fair way to do it, but if we're doing that example of mold earth to circumvent the whole obstacle I think it makes more sense narratively for it to help everyone if everyone is making the same roll (athletics, acrobatics, etc.) Heck, maybe it could even change the obstacle TO athletics because the characters are still running over the ramp.

I do. It scares them.

I am playing DnD and other rpgs for over 40 years. I like sandbox games up to a point, but I rarely ever played one as a player and never DMing one myself for the simple reason that it is incredibly much work and/or you need to be an excellent improviser. Most DMs have little time to prepare and I rarely met any good improvisors (including myself). So, I decided for myself to DM on an existing world (Greyhawk) with modules which I expand and connect with a storyline and I try to get the background of the PCs included when it fits the module or story.

I really hope a lot of people watch this and take it to heart. It is not too hard to adapts your game to the actions of the players.

6:12 Ehhhhh the exact numbers on this don't seem good. It's like most of the time you're going to be either already at that point or just 1-2 points shy from the hireling not doing the thing or worse as your baseline. I would imagine someone selling their services THAT cheap really needs the money and will at least take a few setbacks before they start acting out. Like maybe you roll a d4 and keep that number as the adventuring day goes on to climb up towards their number. Additionally, even if the negatives are consistently reaching the edge without hitting that point, you might carry a point(s) over to the next day to nudge it in that direction because that stuff really does add up irl. Like if a job kept making me consider refusing or leaving each day without making me do it, I'd be more inclined to do so the next day until conditions improved.

Planning to do something with hirelings since the party is going to have a crew on the high seas. I'm currently stuggling with one though becaue the plan was to have them help disable magical traps in an area full of them but being able to cast dispel magic and/or counterspell a lot RAW requires a stupid large amount of high spell slots. Sure I could give them that anti-magic field one but that's even higher level and a bit too powerful. I want more of a back-and-forth between the party and the one renewing the traps on the battlefield.

For real, I've noticed so many DMs such fall into the pitfall of designing fluff combat sessions until everyone loses their momentum to get back to the story and then either players stop showing, while using work or something else as an excuse to postpone, or the DM ends things before a narrative conclusion to start a campaign they're more excited about running with new characters at lower level. I think a lot of them could benefit from keeping a simple list of goals and tying what's going on into 2 or more goals until they hit a satisfying conclusion.

I've actually done the work of trying a few systems by this point but tbh I still play 5e most and pf2e second with nothing else I was exposed to really lining up to how I want to play as easily. Sure, the other two have issues, but there's not just my experience on how to address them but many many many many channels on here (including this one) parroting the same things if I'm unsure or need a refresher.

Concise, targeted advice... and loved the 'old-school' images!

Sir you have killed the sacred calf and I thank you for it

Nice

Here here! Need more of this philosophy out there! Dropping a very similar video soon myself. Less LOTR, more CONAN!!

Open Landscape rules them all! But it is only for pro-active players.

In OSR games especially I prefer to build a sandbox and scatter interesting dungeons and adventures about the setting. If the players don't go there, then the dungeon doesn't get used, but I can always sprinkle it into the next campaign's sandbox.

I completely agree. Railroading is bad. Linear adventures are not great. Truly open-world sandbox is best. Of course, this world has to be ripe for adventure. There is no point in creating Milton Keynes. When you look at classic IP, such as Hyperboria, it's filled to the brim with lost cities, black nagic and violent warlords. There are hundreds of situations that vould gorm the backdrop of a great story. I suspect that a lot of GMs believe railroading is the correct way because they started by running published adventures; which are almost always railroads. For some insane reason, published adventures are thought of as a gold standard.

If I do this, I gonna play solo-like style.

I think the illusion of control is a good foundation. You have to be able to adapt to your players, but also if you’ve made a dungeon outside of town X and your party goes to new town Y, they might just “happen” upon a dungeon. They don’t have to explore it, but there’s a lot of work that goes into some scenarios that you can reuse or relocate

You are conflating a linear adventure with railroading. A linear adventure would be running Hoard of the Dragon Queen for example, a linear story with objectives that players will usually need to complete do to advance to another part of the adventure (they don't have to do them though there may be in game consequences). In a linear adventure the players have choices on what they do, where they go, how to resolve conflicts complete objectives if they choose to do so. A railroad is not allowing player choices without any justification besides the GM doesn't want the PCs to make that choice "nope you can not go right", "nope you can't fight that NPC", "nope you can't travel here or there" "nope you can't approach the bandits this way", "nope you can not ride your horses on the road like all of the NPCs, you have to walk because I have an encounter planned this specific way" etc...

More GMs need to be ok with rolling on a chart to give them a quick and easy way to answer things that they were not prepared for. There is nothing wrong with have elements of RNG in the game, that includes having to roll up a new dungeon, town or just a NPC. There are charts for everthing.

We used to call it "playing through the novel" a railroad campaign just like a sword and sorcery book. My dungeons are set and have multiple ways in and through. The party went in the back door one time and went from the BBEG of the lair to the easy front guards before they realized they had managed to go through backwards. I didn't stop them and when it was done we all had a great laugh. The players write the story, I just provide the setting, props, and narrative.

Being flexible I. My game is the hardest part of running, but is also most rewarding.

I often vacillate somewhere between the two extremes and have recently settled somewhere in the middle when it comes to narrative agency for my table. I'm a 20-something and so are all of my players. I like the freedom oriented ideal of a sandbox, OSR, type game but it is just that: an ideal. I've been working at achieving a sandbox style game for almost two years now and have kind of given up. Not because I dislike sandboxes but because I find that it isn't fun for my table. My players come from the exact background you are probably imagining right now, video games and 5e DnD, and so they have certain expectations for how the game is going to run and what is required of them. I've made enormous strides in broadening their horizons and showing them alternative ways to play TTRPGs (we got a 16 month, once a week, Knave 1st edition campaign completed just last January). It was a great time but the pendulum is swinging the other way. We've recently gotten back into more structured styles of game with stuff like Mothership and CAIN, which by design have a lot more 'railroad' elements (loose narrative structures, lack of sandboxing, etc.) than our previous game. I'm personally having way more fun since I think I operate best as GM when I can sit somewhere between structure and pure improv. The table is generally having more fun too as I think what they were craving is more direction from me. They have a hard time avoiding the pitfalls of callous greed and murderhobo-ism when presented with the kind of freedom a traditional hex-crawl can provide. I've come to terms with the fact that we (myself absolutely included) are a more story driven group than perhaps my OSR idols are (meaning: you, Bandit's Keep, and that crowd). So I think your closing point about having an array of options works best. Its easy as a GM, especially when youre excited for a new campaign or adventure, to write yourself into a corner with one or two elaborate quests. My approach going forward is definitely going to err on the side of structure (less 'dead air' where the players are deliberating on what they should buy in the next town, which dungeon they want to pursue, etc.) I also absolutely am not going to write an epic. A dozen or so quest hooks with a small bulleted list for each one that all tie into a more central narrative is probably how I'm going to go. If the players are super intrigued by the central narrative, great. I'll expand on it. If they aren't all that interested but enjoy pursuing the smaller goals, also great, pivot back towards a sandbox. Being flexible is the real key to a fun game, in my opinion. I think that's where player agency, the kind that you can't get from video games, books, or film, truly lies in TTRPGs.

Engagement!!! Enchantment...EnCHANTment!!!

Agrees great video, i think its better to invest in creating a setting with no exact plot and fully open too the players

Glad to see you back. Sounds like a busy time you had.

In my wife's current campaign, I have a rather standard Dwarf Rune Knight Fighter, of the warrior scholar artisan style - a student of Giant runic magic and craftsmanship, with "some beating skulls on the side". This is what I would love as my endgame weapon - all for the flavor with a bonus of it being a damn effective weapon as well.

Or you can have players that, when presented with the option to choose where they go next, freeze up not knowing what to do or hyper fixates on what they deem is the main quest.. They skipped 3 character arcs because they didnt ever want to follow up on rumours.

Are Defend Checks possible when using THAC0?

I would argue that Railroading is not the same as linear storytelling but it kinda feels like you are using them synonymously. I definitely agree with the idea of giving your players the agency to make real choices though, a game without meaningful choices quickly stagnates.

Lots of food for thought, thanks loki! Good to see you back 🎉