Great video. On a similar note, if my players are "overthinking" sometimes it pays to go along with what they're thinking. I may have nothing much in the cave, but if they're guessing it's something super creepy and dangerous, why not give them what they think once in a while? Sometimes players' theorizing is much cooler than whatever I had planned.
This is so damn true, I caught on to this style quick to help me sort out some plot hooks I had gotten writers block on. In the end worked out great to use their theories as inspiration for creating bigger things ahead. Use this method🖒💗
And that's important to clarify. It's not like if players find it a hassle to orchestrate watch duty hat you can't say "Don't worry about it. This is a safe area and nothing will jump you this time". You just need to know when you're relieving the players of something they mistakenly think they have to do and when you're taking away something they want to do even if you know it's not necessary.
If you want to push the game along, there are definitely better ways to go about it. The best I know is CHARACTER MOTI VA TION. ruclips.net/video/PFg2d7tmfvY/видео.html
On the other side of things. I have had a DM let us spend an actual hour making a plan to cross a tree. The tree looked a bit odd and our perception rolls were only okay so when we were told it looks safe we all got scared.
@@Baeur But then that's metagaming. You were told it looks safe, your characters believe it's safe, so why not cross? If you have a character who is paranoid, it would make sense, but otherwise you're removing all meaning from the perception rolls in the first place.
Our DM called our party the conspiracy theorist party. Our warlock was convinced the town master was in league with the bad guys and everyone we met was a part of a massive cover-up.Only the paladin knew the truth because our party had split up to do some shopping and he was the only one to go and tell the town master that the bad guys were dead. He revealed to the paladin that the reason he had ignored them was for fear of his life. Unfortunately this secret died with the paladin in the next session. It was a long time before the misunderstanding was cleared up.
Why clear it up at all? Sounds like a perfectly good hook to me, though the fun would be to have him connected to a completely different and ultimately harmless cult. That way the party could have fun digging into his past, following him to meetings and making one of those walls covered with notes and string things. Ultimately they would infiltrate the cult or raid the masters home, only to find out the Town Master was just a kinky fellow. XP and 'hush money' all-round!
Yep, the look on their faces when I tell them that nothing of interest happens after they just spent so long preparing is priceless. It's also nice because it shows that they actually care about their characters and the world, enough to actually take the time to plan for something that might happen.
Does it make me a truly rotten bastard when I'm "the seasoned veteran Player" and I encourage everyone to overthink the hell out of it??? I rather enjoy out-doing myself... and the GM usually finds it entertaining, too. ;o)
OOOOh, I have a perfect overthinking it: You approach a large bolder in front of the tomb, a solid chunk of mundane stone easily the size of a man. It looks as if it was rolled into place a very long time ago, as grass and mold have grown all around it. It wasn't a very long description but the party seemed to miss a key word: MUNDANE. Even after they looked over this door with magical sight - smart but showing nothing - and combed it several times for more information -it is large and stony - they convinced themselves they had to be missing something. One character even started yelling words at it, begining with 'mellon' and then a whole bunch of other ones like 'sesame.' As this amused me, and I wasn't going to suddenly make it magical after all those tests, I let it continue with no result... It was so hilarious when one of them clicked they had spent an easy 10 minutes yelling at a rock. It was even more beautiful that the player whom started it all was a 'wizard old character type...' likely why the party thought he was senile from that point forward.
"Let the players overthink" I have a friend who really likes to use this strategy against us, and by us I mean the players nothing makes a better horror story than the ones you run yourself through in your head
I happen to have to overthink things, since my PC happens to have a god of Faith against him. Or at least the amount of coincidence happening that screw him over only leave that conclusion. Makes a campfire and almost burns the forest and nearby town to the ground, trips over a corpse and gets knocked prone right in front of a really strong Enemy and managing to get poisened by a healing potion... While not being undead.
My group have a running joke that whenever someone does something really stupid, a man in a robe with a paper bag over his head appears, freezes time, and they discuss the mistake. We even have a model.
A friend of mine who filled in as a DM for me since I usually DM had this running gag that when someone did something stupid, a wooden board would appear SOMEHOW and hit them on the head. We called it the "Board of Education"
My DM once put a trapped riddle thing in the middle of the road. My character ended up solving it in like 30 seconds, but the problem was that once my character said the answer (Your Head) nothing happened. So antics ensued, including lots of prayers to gods and being trolled by my character's god, and my character (a gnome) had the dragonborn paladin shove her slowly into the venus fly-trap looking thing and grabbed like 20 platnum. It was one of my favorite moments because we literally spent 30 minutes in real time trying to figure out wtf to do as the DM just sat there trying not to laugh and not saying anything.
I was once Dming a group of 6 players and had this elaborate dungeon planned out. We were excessively lucky and for our first session of the campaign we had 8 whole hours. The campaign starts with them in a bar, and their interactions in the bar and making sure everyone understood how to play took around 30 minutes. (Almost all new players) So we're 30 min. In and a man runs into the bar yelling about the mayor being kidnapped and anyone who rescues him will be rewarded. The group volunteers. The mayor has been brought to a nearby kobold den in some woods to the southeast. The group decides that to get their faster they want some horses, and I tell them flat out, "you don't have enough money to buy horses for all of you." They decide to steal the horses from the town stables. So they spend four hours devising and carrying out a plan to steal horses without getting caught, something which I had zero prep for. After that they still had 6 and half hours worth of stuff prepared, and only 3 and half hours to do it. Needless to say, we had to finish the adventure in later sessions.
Okay, let the caveat be "as long as the Players are having fun"... Look, I get that AL would prefer a GM sacrifice some of the "fun" of overthink' to keep pacing up and get through a module in a single evening... It's a business model, economics involved, logistics, etc... all that. In a casual game, time really isn't much of a factor, even if you only have so much time to get through a game session... SO it's going to spread one "little adventure" or a single campaign over more sessions... That still MAKES THE GM'S JOB EASIER... SO go with it as long as it's still a fun game for the Players. The hardest part of a GM's work (by far, actually) is the same as the hardest part of being a Coach or Teacher... "Learning when to shut up, sit down, and let THEM make their mistakes." Of course, with that caveat, keeping an eye to "read the Table" so you're confident everyone stays invested and is having fun, has it's own judgment area... so to say. Personally, as long as the Players are laughing and enjoying all the hypotheses, theories, and what-if'ing everything to death, I let them... It's a great resource for notes and later "situationals" I might not have thought of... I'm damned if I'll tell the Table that, but that's how I roll... role... whatever. ;o)
gnarth d'arkanen I have much the same mentality. I did absolutely plan to get done with that dungeon, but the plans they made for stealing the horses were actually really fun. I remember getting questions like, "can I use this illusion spell to make myself look like an eldritch abomination?" "If I try to burn the town as a distraction, how quickly will it spread?" If my bard performs in the town square naked, will the guards be called to bring him to jail?" Etc. It was great because we had a range of players trying to compromise on how to get these horses, murder hobos negotiating with actors negotiating with pacifist characters. And they used the horses and mules they stole in really fun ways when getting to and when in the dungeons. I don't regret letting the players do that.
The only time I get frustrated with overthinking players is when the players stop to overthink dangerous or time-sensitive situations. A few times in Curse of Strahd I’ve just let the events play out without the players’ interactions, and once I even cut short an overthinking session in Castle Ravenloft just by adding a little plastic hourglass (like is found in toy sets, like four for $5 online). Seeing the time ticking down or realizing that the world keeps going without the characters helps keep them on task.
We do not really like to admit it, but... Storytellers do steal ideas from players. I have always liked when my players over-think and actually prepare for the encounters that might be ahead. If a player takes a whole bunch of equipment to deal with traps, I am going to include a few more traps into the campaign. Should the party make an elaborate plan to break in with stealth, I might move around some of the guards just to give it a higher chance of success or add more suspense. If the party hires a whole bunch of mercenaries, that will turn out to be just the right decision to distract the big-bads own minion army long enough to pull off the raid into his compound. So, please bring your ideas to me... it makes my job easier! *MAHAHAHEHEHEHEKeeekeeekeeekeeee*
Jinx Dragon my DM stole a character motivation idea from me. I loved it. It made the game more interesting for the party because we had something big to lose if we failed.
I've been in this situation. I one time gave my players this scroll that told them about a sword within a cellar. It should have been as easy as talking to the owner of the vellar who would say "yeah sure take it, i cant get it open anyway" and then have them make an athletics check to try to open it and then grab the sword if they succed. It was just a little side thing to give them a sword but they thought it had to do with the main story so they were debating as to what to do, searching around town for information and overall just wasting time on this simple task. It took everything i had to not just say "guys it's just a sword, it's not part of the main story" i mean i tried telling them that through the characters by having a quzard that they had cast identify on it give then it's effects and say "it's a normal magic weapon, not cursed at all or anything" and they weren't having it, they were still sure that this was the main quest
My party and I overthink because our DM, who is awesome, ALWAYS puts us against super hard and unforgiving combats and puzzles. We are currently in a a home-brew campaign that the DM made (spent like 2 years making scenarios and maps and dungeons) where we started as level 20 and constantly go up against messed up hard things. We overthink...because we die...a lot.
The one issue with overthinking is when it interrupts the flow for everyone else. Out of combat, it might be everyone wants to move on, but one player to continue interacting with something, but that's easier for other players to deal with. In combat it might come from one player deliberating way too much on their turn and being indecisive or not knowing what they can or can't do. I've noticed it with newer players namely--they flounder over how to spend their turn, especially with martial classes. They wanna try doing a huge number of actions or something complicated and unique just so they're not "I attack" constantly, and get stumped when they can't think of anything other than attack or maybe something like a grapple. In a case like this instead it's good to just encourage them to describe how they attack and instead look at being active on their turn instead can come out from flavoring your core actions instead of trying to come up with something improvised and new. Otherwise if they spend too long deliberating a turn that should take 30 to 60 seconds winds up taking 2 minutes and it slows everyone else down.
Back when my players were all around level three (they are now level 8), I had them do the Frog God Games dungeon "Child's Play" where you're shunted to a pocket dimension in a dollhouse to rescue a little girl. The girl was sent there as part of a revenge plot against her parents by the nanny. First of all, my players are 100% convinced that -- because the house was initially created by a djinn -- that the nanny WAS a djinn. They refer to her as such. Secondly, whenever a female NPC shows up, they are completely convinced this is said Not-Djinn lady. When I brought in a totally random necromancer to cause strife in a player's hometown, totally the djinn chick. THE VERY NEXT DAY when the mayor's wife was said to have disappeared, not only was the necromancer the djinn, but somehow she was ALSO the mayor's wife, and they were adamant about trying to convince the mayor of that fact. Yes, I plan on bringing the Not-Djinn-Former-Nanny back as a BBEG, but they are seeing her like Red Herring on A Pup Named Scooby Doo.......and I'm loving it.
One thing that always helps creating that tension and atmosphere is (as a DM) using "seems to" and "appears to" instead of "is" or "isn't" when describing stuff. Like, if they check for a magic trap when inspecting a item, using the short option would assure them of what they want to know, while the long one would result in something like "you are almost sure that you don't sense any magical force coming from the item", which still leaves to your players an open possibility that maybe they unknowingly failed the test, and they are just not feeling that feint, dangerous magic on the item in question. What comes of it is a much deeper scale of role-playing, where character and player alike share their doubts and fear for their lives, and i don't know about you people, but managing to impact PCs AND Players together, for me, is pure gold.
I often play one-shots and I LOVE letting my players overthink things. It gets them to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do and some of them get legit paranoid because of some of the descriptions I throw out there. Sometimes it's warranted, and the players are far better off for doing their prepwork. Sometimes they're afraid for nothing, and we get to laugh about it later after the fact. Besides, it is SO much fun making a 5th lvl party run for their life from a single little CR1 monster.
Yes like once when I was playing my first ever dnd campaign: 5e (actually) very short just to introduce us how it works, Me and my 6 people squad was trying to cure a village from a strange magic disease and we were searching for something to grow a magic tree's seed which fruits will cure the village (thing I discovered with a nat20 medicine as a barbarian ). At the end we were trying to take informations from a fisher or something like that because this guy was very suspect We force ourselves in his house because he won't let us come in(thing we did like three times at this point) I Intimidated the crap out of him and take a key from his pocket then taking him to the right place to use it. When we find out that lead to a time traveling magic chamber or some sh*t that we could use to grow the seed and cure the town we asked him "why did you not tell us before?" HE FUKIN ANSWERED "well why did you not asked me kindly and said that was for the town sake?" Everyone looks at me and I said "I have 8 intelligence!! How am I supposed to think of it?!" Ps:I'm Italian so if there was some ugly grammar I'm verrro sooryo
1000% agree. One of the best parts as a GM is watching the players come up with things you didn't and playing off of that. If they are having fun creating this way over thought approach to a cave, let them. And then (if I had nothing planned) I'm going to award them for it by ensuring thier over prep came in handy during a random improv encounter. Let your players think out loud and steal thier ideas
That last comment on Holy water killing a lich... Reminded me of a game I DMed once. The player were in a monastery and demons were closing all around... And I asked “hey maybe look for some Holy water since it’s a monastery” And they looked, but their perception wasn’t high enough to find it. Then I made the priest who worked at the monastery call out “Hey you looking for something? Just ask and stop wasting our time left!” And they were like “no I’m good” and I just died then.
I just Dmed my first campaign a few days ago and these tip videos as well as watching Matt Mercer have really helped me get an idea of what to do and what not to do.
@carlos Salazar, I always have to remind myself that my players move through content slower than I expect, especially with larger groups. You'll likely only get a single encounter in a session and a bit of roleplay in 4 hours. If people need to leave early, don't be afraid to end a session midway through battle (though still on somewhat of a cliff-hanger). Give your players a reason to be working together in your first session, which'll help the team dynamic & roleplay of the group. I had all my players apply for an Adventuring guild with interviews to boot. With a new group, set out your expectation of the genre of your campaign: horror, adventure, travelling, single town-based; as well as maturity: is it PG-13 or R (18), are torture and sexual scenes off the table unless needed narratively in a mature manner? Regardless, the most important thing is to have fun!
Good points. Carefully setting up camp, and laying plans for something that might not be there, is all a part of the game. Whenever the players go off on a planing spree, I just sit back.
The best thing to do as a DM is to just sit back and take notes. They are revealing how they will tackle situations, what they fear, and how best to kill their characters. I have written the basics of campaigns this way. It is a treasure trove of ideas they give you.
Guilty - definitely guilty. I will stop stopping these brilliant players and their incredibly involved, resource-wasting plans when I've already scratched a big red X onto the random encounter table
I literally had a one-note, throw-away NPC (from session 1) running a carnival-style game booth at an arena tournament become one of the main villains of my campaign. The players were randomly, and extremely, suspicious of him. Ended up giving him an interesting background, and having him pop up from time to time. If I'd just told them "Guys, relax...it's just a dwarf running a weird carnival game," it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.
Yeah I know hat you mean with the rouge and the rat situation my Druid once put two torches into a coffin with a skeleton in its coffin in hopes to kill it but it then burned the entire place down and it collapsed before we could get treasure and my party hates me for it
I LOVE when my players become quiet and start exploring the area. That's when I KNOW they are super focused on what's going in in game. When I have a player say "OMG that was so SCARY" I know I've done my job as a DM right.
Your tips are very usefull! My dungeon master once fucked up and told us a big group of undead that we spent half an hour figuring out how to kill, only had 1hp in the first place. It took away all the sense on accomplishment.
I built a gate house for the party to travel through that was weirdly empty, covered in dust but neatly packed away. They spent 10 minutes searching the empty room with only two doors. It was tempting to tell them they were overthinking but they were having so much fun, it was just really hard to keep a straight face XD
When your players come up with an AWESOME plan that adds an option three to the harrowing choice they WOULD HAVE had to make at the end of the dungeon you've just been planning... brilliant.
Last session we had my three players had to investigate a murder. They got to the crime scene and spent 40 minutes talking amongst themselves and asking me about things in the room. Theorising and conspiring what to do next. And the whole time I had a giant grin on my face. They came up with ideas that I hadn't even brought into account. So many different theories on why the person was murdered. Who would be a suspect and such. It was brilliant!
Last night my party fought and Ochre jelly they thought was black pudding. They kept thinking my smiles behind the screen was because they were right, but they ended up hiding on the other side of the cave sniping it from a distance.
I'm DMing my first sessionn after a few years next week. My players will be new to the game, so they might overthink, this tip was more than welcome. Thanks for it! Keep up the awesome work!
My favorite dnd moment is specifically when one of my players massively overthought my plot. I was running a false hydra. In the other player's house, he found his family portrait, and 2 people he didn't recall, a old fire genasi, Dante, and a young fire/earth genasi hybrid, Gaia, his grandfather and younger sister respectively. After establishing that hybrids are rare and highly sought after in this world, the other player decides that the genasi's father created the story of Dante and Gaia and placed them in the picture to make genasi believe that he had forgotten his grandfather and sister. To clarify: we have completely skipped over "I have forgotten" and went straight to "I believe he wants me to believe I have forgotten." One of my favorite moments, and after failing to find any evidence that this is the case, and record upon record of Gaia and Dante's existence (nat 20 investigation roll), they found a book on aberrations and research the false hydra, use a mirror to fight it, at least until they used hold monster on it.
In situations where the players overthink things, I will sometimes just invent something to be there, just to make their overthinking seem justified. For example, if they keep being cautious for traps, there just _happens_ to be a trap in one of the rooms, which they then avoid. If they are low on health and are sneaking out, maybe a monster from another room (down a path they didn't take) wanders to the entrance of the dungeon.
Man, this reminds me of a campaign where the BBEG was described so dangerous that our party literally avoided the final fight to get more allies/equipment/power for so long the DM got had to restructure the power-balance and history of the setting to get us to continue.
AWESOME tip! I've noticed in Comment Section after Comment Section, there's a fair proclivity for questions like "How do I cost Player Resources without making it an Adventuring Tax?"... I'd like to point out that Players "overthinking" in that planning and plotting stage of Gaming is exactly how they cost themselves... You don't even have to try, most times. Just letting the Players run through all the troublesome "what if" scenarios in their minds will not only create their shopping lists AND extend them miles past "reasonably sensible" but ALSO creates a fair resource for a good GM to TAKE NOTES... No, I'm not endorsing wholesale bad-guy squads exactly as the Paladin and Rogue "suspect" would be involved in this particular mission. For one thing, they've already thought of it... BUT one or two so a Player can say "See I friggin' KNEW it was coming!" ain't always a terrible idea... Still... not exactly... Wait a few missions and then set up the particular "dastardly scheme" the Paladin and Rogue were so sure about prepping for when you took the notes... Without necessarily lending Players the license to determine a game or Campaign's pacing and strength, it's entertaining to see their faces light up when "they think they've figured out this GM just a bit"... OR for lack of better terms, to boost a bit of confidence in their precognition or tactical senses... even if it's not exactly true... The game's not exactly real in so many syllables either... Besides, all the more equipment, weapons, gear, and ammunition ALSO leads to all the more encumbrance, book keeping, and eventually even wondering why their dragging all this crap around... fun. ;o)
I love when players overthink. So much so that I allow them to pursue any lead they deem fit. Problem is, my group got upset that things were taking too long to do, hahaha! I still have to find the right balance, but not helping your players out at all can end up with an unwanted stop the players get frustrated by.
In my first campaign as a DM I made quite a few mistakes, the biggest one being what this video tells you *not* to do. My players where battling the final boss. The bad guy who was behind it all. The book had three outcomes, you kill the monster, you flee or you convince it that it was all a big misunderstanding (which it was). The party where smart enough to realize that they had no chance to defeat the monster that killed everyone in that town and the forest surruonding it, so they tried to talk to her. There where 2 problems: 1: everyone, except one player, believed every word the monster said. They hadn't figured out that it was a misunderstanding and they had either forgotten what the few survivors had told them or trusted the bad guy more than them. The only player who had put the pieces together was the stubborn, irritating dwarf that always wnted to pick a fight. I had to step the player from doing some things that would have *completely* destroyed the story! He was also the youngest of the players irl so nobody listened to him. He tried t speak up and talk to the monster, but the rest of the party didn't trust that he wouldn't say something stupid that got him killed. He also had really low charisma. Here comes problem 2: everyone had low charisma, or atleast everyone rolled horribly. (maybe I should have let them get killed) They tried to convince the monster, not that it was a misunderstanding, but that the party had nothing to do with it and that she should let them leave. I had no idea what to do. The book gave me nothing for this scenario and I didn't feel confident enough in my improv skills to make up a new ending. Also, they would leave the survivors to die. Not that there where many of them: a baker and the inn keepers two little kids, 8 and 5, who were now orphans. So I hinted and pushed the party in the direction the book told me to go until I could end it and what the book said at least made *some* kind of sense. It would have been more fun for everyone if I had just improvised instead, but I'm 14 and everyone except the dwarf was older than me, so they didn't blame me.
My players recently had to solve a temple puzzle. Bunch of pillars had some clues on them. One pillar was destroyed and the message on it incomplete. The players spent so long looking for that last clue. Here's the thing though: There was no final clue. The message on the last pillar was meant as a little easter egg. An inside joke to amuse myself. Post-session, after they solved the puzzle and had reaped the temple's rewards, one of the players begged me to tell her what the text was supposed to say. In a fit of schadenfreude I told her "well, you didn't find the last clue, so you will never know". Players overthinking things can lead to them feeling a great sense of unease. And that is good. They were about to do something dangerous (and perhaps deadly) so they should be cautious.
Literally the same thing happened to me... my players ran away from a group of 6 zombies because our fighter couldn't fall even one... he freaked out and on character shouted "I cant kill them... run!" Luckily it's a group of new players and none have looked through the MM ;)
See the bad version of overthinking is when you tell them that they can hear something very close to them, and they can't figure out to walk behind the archway they're standing next to. Instead they thought it's somehow underground, or in the nearby town. It took them nearly an hour to think to just walk around to the other side to inspect the archway and find a portal.
I was the DM for session with 3 players (Sorcerer, Cleric & Barbarian). It's a serial murder mystery with vampires pulling the strings. I basically gave the players a whole section of a city to investigate and occasionally gave help through NPCs to aid them when asked. HOO BOY did I enjoy looking at the players overthink plans and eventually get so paranoid they attacked random suspicious. (They got prosecuted ,of course) all in all it was a wild session
My very existence is overthinking (it gets me in trouble from time to time irl), so I’ll think of dozens of ways to do something, with something as well. I mean, my party and I spent probably 20 minutes just trying to figure out if we should toss a rock or a coconut to attract some giant crabs. Well we did; our rogue tossed it beautifully. Then I, the bard, go “hey, I want to try and move them further away” *rock flies only 30 feet in front of us* DM- “The rock lands behind the crabs-“ The entire party including me- “Awww fuck man”. Long story short: We charmed one crab, crush another one, and I (a turtle) Wolverine style slashed through the crab’s face.
The darkness trails thick with the rolling smog. As you walk closer to the enterence walls of the cave to humluath dred woahs. You feel a sudden chill down your very core, that every bone ache as each step you took seems like a unhill battle to lurch further. "Hey can a make a perception check" "sure" (its a 10.) You think its a little to creepy but your sure nothong will grab you or dine on you soul. Maybe you had to much to drink. "Umm.. ok.." "you want to keep going" "yeah" You keep walking as you still feel your bones weighted as you enter the cave. WILL OUR HERO MAKE IT, whats lurking around in these creep cave or its nothing but pure imagition from this fellow player drinking to much before after winning a bet of arm wrestling.
Planning and forethought when going into the unknown is good ... but as a DM, I would suggest putting that effort mostly into collaborative teamwork strategies. Talk to your fellow party members, let them know what kind of powers your characters can use ... focus on any buffing abilities, movement techniques, and out of turn triggers. PS, don't underestimate goblins ... they can be sneaky. Swarmfighting, traps, cramped tunnels with murderholes ... they'll use common simple tactics to great effect.
My group of friends can barely ever meet up for sessions, so those few hours a month we have is precious. Blowing half of it on dicking around can be pretty annoying when there's a grand quest to be had. But there's room for balance.
Sometimes the overthinking of the players, can give teh DM neat ideas for the futur. I'm DMing Curse of Strahd for my friends, and boy do i love to see them rake their brains and overthink, and when the tension is at its peak, i'll ask one of them to make a roll, when they ask why i'll respond with "nothing much, don't worry about it", those words instigate terror and panic in their minds because if it really was nothing important why even ask to roll for it?, whats happening behind the scenes that requires an active roll and that they don't know off?... And when they rolled, or i rolled behind the screen (even if the roll doesn't do anything or doesn't mean anything) i'll just do a "Mmh" with a lifted eyebrow and then say nothing, its a tthis moment that i can see the gears turning in their minds... And man is it wonderfull...
I'm running curse of strahd, and absolutely love when my players in the middle of combat go from confident adventurers to "oh fuck, maybe we can't do this, new plan.."
Reminds me of the time where I suggested we light a fire in a cave to smoke out a group of goblins which unfortunately ended with the death of several of their captives
Good tip, but there's still a limit to this. I once DM'd a game where the players spent close to twenty minutes trying to go up a ladder (no threats whatsoever, they were aware of that) it ground the session to a halt. At some point, intervention is required.
As someone who started by GMing Call of Cthulhu, this is something that has helped me out in GMing since then. Your players must always be on their toes, no matter the treath. For you, outside of the game, it´s just a low level encounter. For the players, for all they know, it could be even a trap set by the BBEG, so let them have their fun, and use it to your advantage.
I remember having my players planning over one hour and a half about how to defeat and hydra. They figured it out in like the first two minutes but they overthink till I lost my sanity. But my policy was to let them be and let the players resolve their own problems. Thanks to God (Selune precisely) the cleric, being the character and the player people to get bored very easily, take a pirate cannon and shot the hydra. I was so thankful
I had a session where all the party had to do was open a door that had a form of infernal magic around it. They instead of opening the door normally they decided to knock on the door (they did this quite Abit from previous experiences) I had them roll to knock cause y not and I came up with some stuff the door would do based on roll one of their hands evaporated from existence cause of a natural 1. So they ended up blowing up a door to get into a large chamber filled with imps and legion devils.
room was pure dark and had several images on the walls. you can't see color with dark vision so you need light to solve the puzzle. players mistook it for an empty room. another room had an auto reset trapped number lock made by dwarves in the center. so if your a dwarf you know the depth of the room in feet and that was the code. players were dwarves and thought it was on a note some were and looked for the nonexistent note. another party elven cleric tried to bash a door down with spells afterwards they hear a voice, "hello who is it? who's knocking on my door" opens door. cleric forgot he could knock on the door.
I've only just started playing, and have only been the DM for about 6 months now, but in my short experience I've found that the best and the worst moments in my game have been directly related to how much involvement I have. If I, as DM, have either unlimited control or zero control over what happens, the story is boring. The best times are when the players have like 80% control over what happens, and I just serve to mediate with 20% of the power.
I'm playing through CoS right now and let me tell you: it's so much fun. They are hella afraid of Strahd, i picked one player (the druid) to be the target of his scrying and whenever he does, creepy whispers sound in her head and she has bad dreams about a dark figure attacking her at night while she is alone. The player is seriously freaked out by this and now they avoid every single confrontation with anything. This module really tought me a lot about tension and suspense. I don't even have to do much anymore, just play a creepy whisper soundeffect and they are on the edge (i recommend tabletopaudio.com/ i love those sounds). But sometimes i have to strain myself not to handwave things because i wanna continue with the plot and they spend half a session making sure their horses are save. Oh boy, wait till they find the beholder under Amber Temple >:D
Indeed, i loved customizing it. It's just one plot in my campaign, Strahd being a servant of a greater power trying to rule again, he lured the party into his realm by setting off an infectious ghoul-disease in another town outside Barovia. Knowing they can't escape, he tried to imprison them there so they can't meddle with his masters plans.
Honestly if I were dming I would reward the players for their overthinking once in a while, throw in an encounter with a higher loot drop or something. Let their actions have an effect on the world. Setting out traps and wards makes battles easier, forgetting to put them out might lead to nothing but it also might make encounters harder, like if a lower level group of enemies gets the drop on them they have extra initiative. Just stuff like that
This reminds me of the time I was dming Dragon heist and when they got to the first dungeon the wild magic Sorcerer had wild magic prompting everyone became Invisible except the barbarian Which turns what was supposed to be a two or three turn in counter into a 12 turn behemoth of goblins shooting from random directions and players frantically running about
So... *Sigh* I was running a game and I had them do a basic dungeon crawl threw a cave. The first obstacle they had was a door... Yes just a door, and that's what I was trying my hardest to sell it as. But! One of the players for whatever reason thought otherwise. Now I can understand this so I thought nothing of it; at first. He did an arcana check and nothing, he casts sense magic and nothing, he scans the door for markings or writing of which I told him it was a very dirty and dust covered door. He casts gust which sends said dust into another players eyes temporarily blinding him, he then makes a bottle of acid throws it at the door and melts it just enough to create a small whole to the other side. He then casts thunder clap causing the door to crumble open as much as he needed to actually go threw, but he also sends the rest of the players on there butt... All he had to do was push it open.
One issue I think you're brushing over is that the DM is still a player. And just like any player it's frustrating and boring when there's nothing for you to do. As a DM make that planning active, do flashbacks with each player to figure out why their character is so paranoid in this situation. Use that as fuel for the scene. "Buying rope because we might have to climb something" is way less interesting than "I'm buying rope because where I grew up my community had a coming of age trial where we would try climb a cliff face and I fell as a child." Over planning is a behaviour dnd incentivises in its most negative form. DnD structurally encourages players to try and get "the win scenario" instead of "the interesting scenario". This means minimising failure is in players best interest, and thus over-planning happens. A game I would reccomend checking out for solutions to this problem is Blades In The Dark. It's got some super interesting planning mechanics that streamline the experience and is generally a great game. The setting, artwork, and layout are all incredible definitely worth checking out on their own merit.
I'm running Curse of Strahd right now (they're going to Ravenloft so some prayers for them please) but I've always let them overthink and freak out about literal nothing. So then when they find out its nothing, they're like "Oh...OK". Then the next time something happens and they go "Last time = waste of time therefore: no need to freak" and then they get totally screwed over almost dying. So know they are ALWAYS ON EDGE NO MATTER WHAT! And it's great. We've been playing for ages and although this is our first Official Campaign we've played, it's their favourite thus far.
Ordinarily, I'd agree with you, but in a session I ran, I encountered a time I had to tell him outright, OOC. The party had seen a figure (or rather, this player, whom I shall refer to as Rogue A) who had seemed to be invisible, become visible, and phase out from sight. Rogue A was transfixed on this, understandably so. However, as this figure was in the company of other powerful beings, relative to their location this was something to be expected. Later on that session, the party triggered a magical trap, causing four horrors to appear. I described the effects of the appearance, and Rogue A was convinced it was linked to the figure from before. It was not. I told him before it was like the figure disappeared from sight. This was something being conjured that was not there before. He would not listen, and was convinced they were linked. I told him in no uncertain terms they were not, as his character would be able to see the difference, but he was convinced I was keeping something from him, and chose to pursue this, taking more time for his obsession, pursuing a link he had dreamed up, rather than investigating what either actually was.
And to any saying I could have played along and made it a part of the story, I may have, except this part was a plot point that couldn't really be adjusted. It would be like if you were running a Tolkein-esque fantasy, and someone starts insisting something happens because of the Force. Not Force-like magic, but the actual Star Wars Force.
My players underthink. Don't ask enough questions so it kinda becomes cumbersome to constantly try to prod what my players really want to do (they kinda expect me to offer options on a silver platter). *slight spoilers below on Curse of Sthrad* So... Today I ran CoS first time and planned to teach them things the hard way. I started with my players in different parts of a village (they never met each other in my "prologue") and designed encounters for each of them individually. Long story short, first player managed to get out of the mist (in the wrong side of course), Second lost consciousness in the mist (saved by vistani), and third got ripped badly by werewolves and buried in a mass grave (dug up and saved by the first player). It was a small thing but rather effective. Now they no longer trust me completely and joke that I almost did TPK in my first session.
One of my characters I have yet to play is Jobin Rochester. I got his last name on a name generator...anyway I am going to try and have him convince the party to establish a mercenary company, with a Fort for home and a travel carriage. The travel carriage seems like a really good idea to me, it would have goblet holders, velvet seats, some chests, and beds. As for the fort, eh, I just want a big fort with enough space for at least 30 people for guards or other mercenaries. It could be called anything that's not stupid, the best I came up with so far (just now) is Fort McKraken.
One of the reasons I like random encounter charts is that there is ALWAYS a chance of something really threatening showing up. So if the players are out on an adventure I never tell them that they are totally safe. Why would I tell them that? There are wide ranging monsters that can show up practically anywhere in this world! Now if they prepare a campsite properly and make some good rolls to find a place then I can describe to the player on watch that a giant monsters wandered nearby but left. Or they can find some tracks or something. It all depends on the situation. As long as you allow the players to use their abilities to protect themselves and they don't feel completely powerless then you can keep the balance between game and story.
Time to whip out a story: The Mound of Dirt So I ran a CoC one shot and the players had all arrived in a town where the cult lived and coming to the end of the investigation the party realizes that cult is based in the towns church so they make there way there and find a mound of dirt outside it. They proceed to do a large verity of tests to the mound of dirt to figure out what it was. As you may have guessed it was a mound of dirt. The cult were doing excavations under the church and that is why it was there. I considered this a massive win
I hate whenever i have some sort of “behind the screen” knowledge and cant really act on it without compromising the role play. Or the classic “Yes i want to go into every single cave or explore every room in this house despite the fact that my character has already gotten what they were looking for”
Lmao I was setting up a short Christmas adventure so I had my players in the tavern they'd stayed at last night and I was like "You're not sure why but nobody at all is in the tavern (there was a street festival) and someone immediately came to teh conclusion "We're gonna get ambushed as soon as we leave" and I just sat there like 🤣
When you're doing a one-off that needs to conclude in three hours, I appreciate when the DM let's us know when there are certain game aspects that won't be as rewarding/necessary as they would be in a long-term campaign. For this reason, I'm ok with being told I'm overthinking if it means we will save time and we won't have to turn the one-off into a multiple-off (I have played in sooo many one-offs that never reached a conclusion).
The only time the DM should intervein is when it is not all the players around the table having fun fooling around. IF every body is on it, let them go, if only 1 or 2 are fooling and the other wish forward, you can recommand them to go forth a bit !
@@catguymcyarnson9772 Yeah it went pretty good 😂 my players helped me out tremendously and also knowing how to go with the flow and make up stuff on the spot helps lol
newton marques goblins can be scary man. Imagine walking through a forest road and then being lifted into the air by a net in the ground then getting riddled with poison arrows!
I agree, main reason I give nothing away. Takes away the surprise, if the players are role-playing, let them role play, they are becoming the character. That you don't want to disrupt.
Great video. On a similar note, if my players are "overthinking" sometimes it pays to go along with what they're thinking. I may have nothing much in the cave, but if they're guessing it's something super creepy and dangerous, why not give them what they think once in a while? Sometimes players' theorizing is much cooler than whatever I had planned.
Totally!
WASD20 Nothing bad in stealing good ideas for a game ... especially when they were uttered by some players a few minutes ago
This is so damn true, I caught on to this style quick to help me sort out some plot hooks I had gotten writers block on. In the end worked out great to use their theories as inspiration for creating bigger things ahead. Use this method🖒💗
True. Like, someone says there lives an ancient balor in these mines, you can be like "nnnnooooooo... it was empty... but NOW there is!" XD
Yeah, I figure if they make backup plans or contingencies, try to make them relevant...
I think the real lesson we're talking about is "don't force progression when the players are having fun doing something else"
And that's important to clarify. It's not like if players find it a hassle to orchestrate watch duty hat you can't say "Don't worry about it. This is a safe area and nothing will jump you this time". You just need to know when you're relieving the players of something they mistakenly think they have to do and when you're taking away something they want to do even if you know it's not necessary.
If you want to push the game along, there are definitely better ways to go about it. The best I know is CHARACTER MOTI VA TION. ruclips.net/video/PFg2d7tmfvY/видео.html
On the other side of things. I have had a DM let us spend an actual hour making a plan to cross a tree. The tree looked a bit odd and our perception rolls were only okay so when we were told it looks safe we all got scared.
@@Baeur But then that's metagaming. You were told it looks safe, your characters believe it's safe, so why not cross? If you have a character who is paranoid, it would make sense, but otherwise you're removing all meaning from the perception rolls in the first place.
@@UltimatTacoman it was the way he said looks safe.
Our DM called our party the conspiracy theorist party. Our warlock was convinced the town master was in league with the bad guys and everyone we met was a part of a massive cover-up.Only the paladin knew the truth because our party had split up to do some shopping and he was the only one to go and tell the town master that the bad guys were dead. He revealed to the paladin that the reason he had ignored them was for fear of his life. Unfortunately this secret died with the paladin in the next session. It was a long time before the misunderstanding was cleared up.
Why clear it up at all?
Sounds like a perfectly good hook to me, though the fun would be to have him connected to a completely different and ultimately harmless cult. That way the party could have fun digging into his past, following him to meetings and making one of those walls covered with notes and string things. Ultimately they would infiltrate the cult or raid the masters home, only to find out the Town Master was just a kinky fellow.
XP and 'hush money' all-round!
He said it was a long time before it was cleared up, so maybe it was cleared up naturally by the players, who knows
That's pretty awesome.
As a DM, I absolutely love when my players overthink things.
Me too, it feels so evil... but it's so much fun.
Yep, the look on their faces when I tell them that nothing of interest happens after they just spent so long preparing is priceless. It's also nice because it shows that they actually care about their characters and the world, enough to actually take the time to plan for something that might happen.
Does it make me a truly rotten bastard when I'm "the seasoned veteran Player" and I encourage everyone to overthink the hell out of it???
I rather enjoy out-doing myself... and the GM usually finds it entertaining, too. ;o)
OOOOh, I have a perfect overthinking it:
You approach a large bolder in front of the tomb, a solid chunk of mundane stone easily the size of a man. It looks as if it was rolled into place a very long time ago, as grass and mold have grown all around it.
It wasn't a very long description but the party seemed to miss a key word: MUNDANE. Even after they looked over this door with magical sight - smart but showing nothing - and combed it several times for more information -it is large and stony - they convinced themselves they had to be missing something. One character even started yelling words at it, begining with 'mellon' and then a whole bunch of other ones like 'sesame.' As this amused me, and I wasn't going to suddenly make it magical after all those tests, I let it continue with no result...
It was so hilarious when one of them clicked they had spent an easy 10 minutes yelling at a rock.
It was even more beautiful that the player whom started it all was a 'wizard old character type...' likely why the party thought he was senile from that point forward.
The player who started*
"Let the players overthink"
I have a friend who really likes to use this strategy against us, and by us I mean the players
nothing makes a better horror story than the ones you run yourself through in your head
Exactly!
Itai Sprachman Well that's also one key element in horror media, don't show the monster, the fear of the unknown is the strongest one.
Wolf with Laces true
I happen to have to overthink things, since my PC happens to have a god of Faith against him. Or at least the amount of coincidence happening that screw him over only leave that conclusion. Makes a campfire and almost burns the forest and nearby town to the ground, trips over a corpse and gets knocked prone right in front of a really strong Enemy and managing to get poisened by a healing potion... While not being undead.
My group have a running joke that whenever someone does something really stupid, a man in a robe with a paper bag over his head appears, freezes time, and they discuss the mistake. We even have a model.
Does the model include the paper bag?
A friend of mine who filled in as a DM for me since I usually DM had this running gag that when someone did something stupid, a wooden board would appear SOMEHOW and hit them on the head. We called it the "Board of Education"
My DM once put a trapped riddle thing in the middle of the road. My character ended up solving it in like 30 seconds, but the problem was that once my character said the answer (Your Head) nothing happened. So antics ensued, including lots of prayers to gods and being trolled by my character's god, and my character (a gnome) had the dragonborn paladin shove her slowly into the venus fly-trap looking thing and grabbed like 20 platnum. It was one of my favorite moments because we literally spent 30 minutes in real time trying to figure out wtf to do as the DM just sat there trying not to laugh and not saying anything.
I was once Dming a group of 6 players and had this elaborate dungeon planned out. We were excessively lucky and for our first session of the campaign we had 8 whole hours. The campaign starts with them in a bar, and their interactions in the bar and making sure everyone understood how to play took around 30 minutes. (Almost all new players) So we're 30 min. In and a man runs into the bar yelling about the mayor being kidnapped and anyone who rescues him will be rewarded. The group volunteers. The mayor has been brought to a nearby kobold den in some woods to the southeast. The group decides that to get their faster they want some horses, and I tell them flat out, "you don't have enough money to buy horses for all of you." They decide to steal the horses from the town stables. So they spend four hours devising and carrying out a plan to steal horses without getting caught, something which I had zero prep for. After that they still had 6 and half hours worth of stuff prepared, and only 3 and half hours to do it. Needless to say, we had to finish the adventure in later sessions.
Okay, let the caveat be "as long as the Players are having fun"...
Look, I get that AL would prefer a GM sacrifice some of the "fun" of overthink' to keep pacing up and get through a module in a single evening... It's a business model, economics involved, logistics, etc... all that.
In a casual game, time really isn't much of a factor, even if you only have so much time to get through a game session... SO it's going to spread one "little adventure" or a single campaign over more sessions... That still MAKES THE GM'S JOB EASIER... SO go with it as long as it's still a fun game for the Players.
The hardest part of a GM's work (by far, actually) is the same as the hardest part of being a Coach or Teacher... "Learning when to shut up, sit down, and let THEM make their mistakes."
Of course, with that caveat, keeping an eye to "read the Table" so you're confident everyone stays invested and is having fun, has it's own judgment area... so to say. Personally, as long as the Players are laughing and enjoying all the hypotheses, theories, and what-if'ing everything to death, I let them... It's a great resource for notes and later "situationals" I might not have thought of... I'm damned if I'll tell the Table that, but that's how I roll... role... whatever. ;o)
gnarth d'arkanen
I have much the same mentality. I did absolutely plan to get done with that dungeon, but the plans they made for stealing the horses were actually really fun. I remember getting questions like, "can I use this illusion spell to make myself look like an eldritch abomination?" "If I try to burn the town as a distraction, how quickly will it spread?" If my bard performs in the town square naked, will the guards be called to bring him to jail?" Etc. It was great because we had a range of players trying to compromise on how to get these horses, murder hobos negotiating with actors negotiating with pacifist characters. And they used the horses and mules they stole in really fun ways when getting to and when in the dungeons. I don't regret letting the players do that.
Well, noah younger, that's prob'ly why I stuck a "like" on your comment then. Glad it wasn't pure confusion... [tongue firmly in cheek] ;o)
The only time I get frustrated with overthinking players is when the players stop to overthink dangerous or time-sensitive situations. A few times in Curse of Strahd I’ve just let the events play out without the players’ interactions, and once I even cut short an overthinking session in Castle Ravenloft just by adding a little plastic hourglass (like is found in toy sets, like four for $5 online). Seeing the time ticking down or realizing that the world keeps going without the characters helps keep them on task.
We do not really like to admit it, but... Storytellers do steal ideas from players.
I have always liked when my players over-think and actually prepare for the encounters that might be ahead. If a player takes a whole bunch of equipment to deal with traps, I am going to include a few more traps into the campaign. Should the party make an elaborate plan to break in with stealth, I might move around some of the guards just to give it a higher chance of success or add more suspense. If the party hires a whole bunch of mercenaries, that will turn out to be just the right decision to distract the big-bads own minion army long enough to pull off the raid into his compound.
So, please bring your ideas to me... it makes my job easier!
*MAHAHAHEHEHEHEKeeekeeekeeekeeee*
Jinx Dragon my DM stole a character motivation idea from me. I loved it. It made the game more interesting for the party because we had something big to lose if we failed.
I've been in this situation. I one time gave my players this scroll that told them about a sword within a cellar. It should have been as easy as talking to the owner of the vellar who would say "yeah sure take it, i cant get it open anyway" and then have them make an athletics check to try to open it and then grab the sword if they succed. It was just a little side thing to give them a sword but they thought it had to do with the main story so they were debating as to what to do, searching around town for information and overall just wasting time on this simple task. It took everything i had to not just say "guys it's just a sword, it's not part of the main story" i mean i tried telling them that through the characters by having a quzard that they had cast identify on it give then it's effects and say "it's a normal magic weapon, not cursed at all or anything" and they weren't having it, they were still sure that this was the main quest
My party and I overthink because our DM, who is awesome, ALWAYS puts us against super hard and unforgiving combats and puzzles. We are currently in a a home-brew campaign that the DM made (spent like 2 years making scenarios and maps and dungeons) where we started as level 20 and constantly go up against messed up hard things. We overthink...because we die...a lot.
The one issue with overthinking is when it interrupts the flow for everyone else. Out of combat, it might be everyone wants to move on, but one player to continue interacting with something, but that's easier for other players to deal with. In combat it might come from one player deliberating way too much on their turn and being indecisive or not knowing what they can or can't do.
I've noticed it with newer players namely--they flounder over how to spend their turn, especially with martial classes. They wanna try doing a huge number of actions or something complicated and unique just so they're not "I attack" constantly, and get stumped when they can't think of anything other than attack or maybe something like a grapple.
In a case like this instead it's good to just encourage them to describe how they attack and instead look at being active on their turn instead can come out from flavoring your core actions instead of trying to come up with something improvised and new.
Otherwise if they spend too long deliberating a turn that should take 30 to 60 seconds winds up taking 2 minutes and it slows everyone else down.
Back when my players were all around level three (they are now level 8), I had them do the Frog God Games dungeon "Child's Play" where you're shunted to a pocket dimension in a dollhouse to rescue a little girl. The girl was sent there as part of a revenge plot against her parents by the nanny.
First of all, my players are 100% convinced that -- because the house was initially created by a djinn -- that the nanny WAS a djinn. They refer to her as such. Secondly, whenever a female NPC shows up, they are completely convinced this is said Not-Djinn lady.
When I brought in a totally random necromancer to cause strife in a player's hometown, totally the djinn chick. THE VERY NEXT DAY when the mayor's wife was said to have disappeared, not only was the necromancer the djinn, but somehow she was ALSO the mayor's wife, and they were adamant about trying to convince the mayor of that fact.
Yes, I plan on bringing the Not-Djinn-Former-Nanny back as a BBEG, but they are seeing her like Red Herring on A Pup Named Scooby Doo.......and I'm loving it.
I am going to need updates on this.
One thing that always helps creating that tension and atmosphere is (as a DM) using "seems to" and "appears to" instead of "is" or "isn't" when describing stuff. Like, if they check for a magic trap when inspecting a item, using the short option would assure them of what they want to know, while the long one would result in something like "you are almost sure that you don't sense any magical force coming from the item", which still leaves to your players an open possibility that maybe they unknowingly failed the test, and they are just not feeling that feint, dangerous magic on the item in question. What comes of it is a much deeper scale of role-playing, where character and player alike share their doubts and fear for their lives, and i don't know about you people, but managing to impact PCs AND Players together, for me, is pure gold.
I often play one-shots and I LOVE letting my players overthink things. It gets them to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do and some of them get legit paranoid because of some of the descriptions I throw out there. Sometimes it's warranted, and the players are far better off for doing their prepwork. Sometimes they're afraid for nothing, and we get to laugh about it later after the fact.
Besides, it is SO much fun making a 5th lvl party run for their life from a single little CR1 monster.
Yes like once when I was playing my first ever dnd campaign:
5e (actually) very short just to introduce us how it works,
Me and my 6 people squad was trying to cure a village from a strange magic disease and we were searching for something to grow a magic tree's seed which fruits will cure the village (thing I discovered with a nat20 medicine as a barbarian ).
At the end we were trying to take informations from a fisher or something like that because this guy was very suspect
We force ourselves in his house because he won't let us come in(thing we did like three times at this point)
I Intimidated the crap out of him and take a key from his pocket then taking him to the right place to use it.
When we find out that lead to a time traveling magic chamber or some sh*t that we could use to grow the seed and cure the town we asked him "why did you not tell us before?"
HE FUKIN ANSWERED "well why did you not asked me kindly and said that was for the town sake?"
Everyone looks at me and I said
"I have 8 intelligence!! How am I supposed to think of it?!"
Ps:I'm Italian so if there was some ugly grammar I'm verrro sooryo
Valerio Milanesi now im just imagining a barbarian with an Italian accent intimadating a farmer after reading this
zac garcia the mafia's gone ghetto
Well, 8 int means only slightly more stupid than average, so it makes sense.
That's great, haha!
Honestly as a dm
I looooooove when my players over think. It shows that they are invested in not only my game, but there characters as well.
1000% agree. One of the best parts as a GM is watching the players come up with things you didn't and playing off of that. If they are having fun creating this way over thought approach to a cave, let them. And then (if I had nothing planned) I'm going to award them for it by ensuring thier over prep came in handy during a random improv encounter. Let your players think out loud and steal thier ideas
That last comment on Holy water killing a lich...
Reminded me of a game I DMed once. The player were in a monastery and demons were closing all around...
And I asked “hey maybe look for some Holy water since it’s a monastery”
And they looked, but their perception wasn’t high enough to find it. Then I made the priest who worked at the monastery call out “Hey you looking for something? Just ask and stop wasting our time left!” And they were like “no I’m good” and I just died then.
Thank you I need that tip. Just about to start my first campaign and I'm taking to heart every tip you guys provide
I just Dmed my first campaign a few days ago and these tip videos as well as watching Matt Mercer have really helped me get an idea of what to do and what not to do.
@carlos Salazar, I always have to remind myself that my players move through content slower than I expect, especially with larger groups. You'll likely only get a single encounter in a session and a bit of roleplay in 4 hours. If people need to leave early, don't be afraid to end a session midway through battle (though still on somewhat of a cliff-hanger).
Give your players a reason to be working together in your first session, which'll help the team dynamic & roleplay of the group. I had all my players apply for an Adventuring guild with interviews to boot.
With a new group, set out your expectation of the genre of your campaign: horror, adventure, travelling, single town-based; as well as maturity: is it PG-13 or R (18), are torture and sexual scenes off the table unless needed narratively in a mature manner?
Regardless, the most important thing is to have fun!
I couldn’t agree more. I hate it when everyone’s prepping and getting ready for a fight and the DM just goes “oh yeah sorry, there ain’t shit here”
"WELL THEN PUT SOMETHING IN HERE! I WANNA FIGHT" - me when this happens
Good points. Carefully setting up camp, and laying plans for something that might not be there, is all a part of the game. Whenever the players go off on a planing spree, I just sit back.
The best thing to do as a DM is to just sit back and take notes. They are revealing how they will tackle situations, what they fear, and how best to kill their characters. I have written the basics of campaigns this way. It is a treasure trove of ideas they give you.
Guilty - definitely guilty. I will stop stopping these brilliant players and their incredibly involved, resource-wasting plans when I've already scratched a big red X onto the random encounter table
True that - I mean, if my GM stopped me from overthinking things, he wouldn't have let me try to cast vicious mockery on a floating orb.
Please tell me how this panned out after words
My character yelled about how the floating orb was much more oval, and nothing happened. Cue that being the in-joke for the week.
As is tradition
I literally had a one-note, throw-away NPC (from session 1) running a carnival-style game booth at an arena tournament become one of the main villains of my campaign.
The players were randomly, and extremely, suspicious of him. Ended up giving him an interesting background, and having him pop up from time to time.
If I'd just told them "Guys, relax...it's just a dwarf running a weird carnival game," it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.
"You've convinced people sitting in your apartment around a table with Doritos and Mountain Dew that they may DIE TONIGHT TO VAMPIRE SPAWN!" XD
Agreed! So fun when they reach conclusions I never thought of. "Why, yes...of course, that was the BB's motivation..."
My dm for most of the adventures I go on likes to improvise a lot. Its honestly how we get the best content for our adventures.
DMs need to remember that some of the best stories are the random ones that unravel before you without any plan whatsoever
Yeah I know hat you mean with the rouge and the rat situation my Druid once put two torches into a coffin with a skeleton in its coffin in hopes to kill it but it then burned the entire place down and it collapsed before we could get treasure and my party hates me for it
I LOVE when my players become quiet and start exploring the area. That's when I KNOW they are super focused on what's going in in game. When I have a player say "OMG that was so SCARY" I know I've done my job as a DM right.
Your tips are very usefull! My dungeon master once fucked up and told us a big group of undead that we spent half an hour figuring out how to kill, only had 1hp in the first place. It took away all the sense on accomplishment.
I built a gate house for the party to travel through that was weirdly empty, covered in dust but neatly packed away. They spent 10 minutes searching the empty room with only two doors. It was tempting to tell them they were overthinking but they were having so much fun, it was just really hard to keep a straight face XD
I love when the party spends half an hour panicking about their game plan when there's an empty room ahead of them
When your players come up with an AWESOME plan that adds an option three to the harrowing choice they WOULD HAVE had to make at the end of the dungeon you've just been planning... brilliant.
That painted scene with the larty fighting the big green dragon @03:19 ... that's Vox Machina fighting Raishon, The Diseased Dragon.
Last session we had my three players had to investigate a murder. They got to the crime scene and spent 40 minutes talking amongst themselves and asking me about things in the room. Theorising and conspiring what to do next. And the whole time I had a giant grin on my face. They came up with ideas that I hadn't even brought into account. So many different theories on why the person was murdered. Who would be a suspect and such. It was brilliant!
Last night my party fought and Ochre jelly they thought was black pudding. They kept thinking my smiles behind the screen was because they were right, but they ended up hiding on the other side of the cave sniping it from a distance.
I'm DMing my first sessionn after a few years next week. My players will be new to the game, so they might overthink, this tip was more than welcome. Thanks for it! Keep up the awesome work!
My favorite dnd moment is specifically when one of my players massively overthought my plot. I was running a false hydra. In the other player's house, he found his family portrait, and 2 people he didn't recall, a old fire genasi, Dante, and a young fire/earth genasi hybrid, Gaia, his grandfather and younger sister respectively. After establishing that hybrids are rare and highly sought after in this world, the other player decides that the genasi's father created the story of Dante and Gaia and placed them in the picture to make genasi believe that he had forgotten his grandfather and sister. To clarify: we have completely skipped over "I have forgotten" and went straight to "I believe he wants me to believe I have forgotten." One of my favorite moments, and after failing to find any evidence that this is the case, and record upon record of Gaia and Dante's existence (nat 20 investigation roll), they found a book on aberrations and research the false hydra, use a mirror to fight it, at least until they used hold monster on it.
oh I love it when my players over thing, gives me ideas >:) some of my best adventures actually came from my players
In situations where the players overthink things, I will sometimes just invent something to be there, just to make their overthinking seem justified. For example, if they keep being cautious for traps, there just _happens_ to be a trap in one of the rooms, which they then avoid. If they are low on health and are sneaking out, maybe a monster from another room (down a path they didn't take) wanders to the entrance of the dungeon.
I loved that critical role art you included at around 3:25
Man, this reminds me of a campaign where the BBEG was described so dangerous that our party literally avoided the final fight to get more allies/equipment/power for so long the DM got had to restructure the power-balance and history of the setting to get us to continue.
AWESOME tip!
I've noticed in Comment Section after Comment Section, there's a fair proclivity for questions like "How do I cost Player Resources without making it an Adventuring Tax?"...
I'd like to point out that Players "overthinking" in that planning and plotting stage of Gaming is exactly how they cost themselves... You don't even have to try, most times. Just letting the Players run through all the troublesome "what if" scenarios in their minds will not only create their shopping lists AND extend them miles past "reasonably sensible" but ALSO creates a fair resource for a good GM to TAKE NOTES...
No, I'm not endorsing wholesale bad-guy squads exactly as the Paladin and Rogue "suspect" would be involved in this particular mission. For one thing, they've already thought of it... BUT one or two so a Player can say "See I friggin' KNEW it was coming!" ain't always a terrible idea... Still... not exactly... Wait a few missions and then set up the particular "dastardly scheme" the Paladin and Rogue were so sure about prepping for when you took the notes...
Without necessarily lending Players the license to determine a game or Campaign's pacing and strength, it's entertaining to see their faces light up when "they think they've figured out this GM just a bit"... OR for lack of better terms, to boost a bit of confidence in their precognition or tactical senses... even if it's not exactly true... The game's not exactly real in so many syllables either...
Besides, all the more equipment, weapons, gear, and ammunition ALSO leads to all the more encumbrance, book keeping, and eventually even wondering why their dragging all this crap around... fun. ;o)
I love when players overthink. So much so that I allow them to pursue any lead they deem fit. Problem is, my group got upset that things were taking too long to do, hahaha! I still have to find the right balance, but not helping your players out at all can end up with an unwanted stop the players get frustrated by.
In my first campaign as a DM I made quite a few mistakes, the biggest one being what this video tells you *not* to do.
My players where battling the final boss. The bad guy who was behind it all. The book had three outcomes, you kill the monster, you flee or you convince it that it was all a big misunderstanding (which it was). The party where smart enough to realize that they had no chance to defeat the monster that killed everyone in that town and the forest surruonding it, so they tried to talk to her.
There where 2 problems:
1: everyone, except one player, believed every word the monster said. They hadn't figured out that it was a misunderstanding and they had either forgotten what the few survivors had told them or trusted the bad guy more than them. The only player who had put the pieces together was the stubborn, irritating dwarf that always wnted to pick a fight. I had to step the player from doing some things that would have *completely* destroyed the story! He was also the youngest of the players irl so nobody listened to him. He tried t speak up and talk to the monster, but the rest of the party didn't trust that he wouldn't say something stupid that got him killed. He also had really low charisma.
Here comes problem 2: everyone had low charisma, or atleast everyone rolled horribly. (maybe I should have let them get killed)
They tried to convince the monster, not that it was a misunderstanding, but that the party had nothing to do with it and that she should let them leave.
I had no idea what to do. The book gave me nothing for this scenario and I didn't feel confident enough in my improv skills to make up a new ending. Also, they would leave the survivors to die. Not that there where many of them: a baker and the inn keepers two little kids, 8 and 5, who were now orphans.
So I hinted and pushed the party in the direction the book told me to go until I could end it and what the book said at least made *some* kind of sense.
It would have been more fun for everyone if I had just improvised instead, but I'm 14 and everyone except the dwarf was older than me, so they didn't blame me.
My players recently had to solve a temple puzzle. Bunch of pillars had some clues on them. One pillar was destroyed and the message on it incomplete. The players spent so long looking for that last clue. Here's the thing though: There was no final clue. The message on the last pillar was meant as a little easter egg. An inside joke to amuse myself.
Post-session, after they solved the puzzle and had reaped the temple's rewards, one of the players begged me to tell her what the text was supposed to say. In a fit of schadenfreude I told her "well, you didn't find the last clue, so you will never know".
Players overthinking things can lead to them feeling a great sense of unease. And that is good. They were about to do something dangerous (and perhaps deadly) so they should be cautious.
"Those undead are immortal! We can not defeat them!" -My players yesterday in fight with four silly zombies
Literally the same thing happened to me... my players ran away from a group of 6 zombies because our fighter couldn't fall even one... he freaked out and on character shouted "I cant kill them... run!" Luckily it's a group of new players and none have looked through the MM ;)
See the bad version of overthinking is when you tell them that they can hear something very close to them, and they can't figure out to walk behind the archway they're standing next to.
Instead they thought it's somehow underground, or in the nearby town. It took them nearly an hour to think to just walk around to the other side to inspect the archway and find a portal.
If a dm told ME that it was just a cave, I would be like “suuuuuuure, I don’t believe you”
I was the DM for session with 3 players (Sorcerer, Cleric & Barbarian). It's a serial murder mystery with vampires pulling the strings. I basically gave the players a whole section of a city to investigate and occasionally gave help through NPCs to aid them when asked. HOO BOY did I enjoy looking at the players overthink plans and eventually get so paranoid they attacked random suspicious. (They got prosecuted ,of course) all in all it was a wild session
My very existence is overthinking (it gets me in trouble from time to time irl), so I’ll think of dozens of ways to do something, with something as well. I mean, my party and I spent probably 20 minutes just trying to figure out if we should toss a rock or a coconut to attract some giant crabs.
Well we did; our rogue tossed it beautifully. Then I, the bard, go “hey, I want to try and move them further away” *rock flies only 30 feet in front of us*
DM- “The rock lands behind the crabs-“
The entire party including me- “Awww fuck man”.
Long story short: We charmed one crab, crush another one, and I (a turtle) Wolverine style slashed through the crab’s face.
My DM has a tendency to just sit there as we talk about that sort of thing and bask in our fear LOL
MORE D&D TIPS PLEASE Haha all of these have been the best videos on the internet for D&D
The darkness trails thick with the rolling smog. As you walk closer to the enterence walls of the cave to humluath dred woahs. You feel a sudden chill down your very core, that every bone ache as each step you took seems like a unhill battle to lurch further. "Hey can a make a perception check" "sure" (its a 10.) You think its a little to creepy but your sure nothong will grab you or dine on you soul. Maybe you had to much to drink. "Umm.. ok.." "you want to keep going" "yeah" You keep walking as you still feel your bones weighted as you enter the cave.
WILL OUR HERO MAKE IT, whats lurking around in these creep cave or its nothing but pure imagition from this fellow player drinking to much before after winning a bet of arm wrestling.
Planning and forethought when going into the unknown is good ... but as a DM, I would suggest putting that effort mostly into collaborative teamwork strategies.
Talk to your fellow party members, let them know what kind of powers your characters can use ... focus on any buffing abilities, movement techniques, and out of turn triggers.
PS, don't underestimate goblins ... they can be sneaky. Swarmfighting, traps, cramped tunnels with murderholes ... they'll use common simple tactics to great effect.
I like to call this The Wizard of Oz Rule. Never peek at the person behind the curtain.
My group of friends can barely ever meet up for sessions, so those few hours a month we have is precious. Blowing half of it on dicking around can be pretty annoying when there's a grand quest to be had. But there's room for balance.
Sometimes the overthinking of the players, can give teh DM neat ideas for the futur.
I'm DMing Curse of Strahd for my friends, and boy do i love to see them rake their brains and overthink, and when the tension is at its peak, i'll ask one of them to make a roll, when they ask why i'll respond with "nothing much, don't worry about it", those words instigate terror and panic in their minds because if it really was nothing important why even ask to roll for it?, whats happening behind the scenes that requires an active roll and that they don't know off?...
And when they rolled, or i rolled behind the screen (even if the roll doesn't do anything or doesn't mean anything) i'll just do a "Mmh" with a lifted eyebrow and then say nothing, its a tthis moment that i can see the gears turning in their minds...
And man is it wonderfull...
If I ever say "There's nothing to be worried about, there's no danger," my players are most definitely getting attacked during their rest.
I like your style
I'm running curse of strahd, and absolutely love when my players in the middle of combat go from confident adventurers to "oh fuck, maybe we can't do this, new plan.."
Reminds me of the time where I suggested we light a fire in a cave to smoke out a group of goblins which unfortunately ended with the death of several of their captives
Good tip, but there's still a limit to this. I once DM'd a game where the players spent close to twenty minutes trying to go up a ladder (no threats whatsoever, they were aware of that) it ground the session to a halt. At some point, intervention is required.
As someone who started by GMing Call of Cthulhu, this is something that has helped me out in GMing since then. Your players must always be on their toes, no matter the treath. For you, outside of the game, it´s just a low level encounter. For the players, for all they know, it could be even a trap set by the BBEG, so let them have their fun, and use it to your advantage.
I remember having my players planning over one hour and a half about how to defeat and hydra. They figured it out in like the first two minutes but they overthink till I lost my sanity. But my policy was to let them be and let the players resolve their own problems. Thanks to God (Selune precisely) the cleric, being the character and the player people to get bored very easily, take a pirate cannon and shot the hydra. I was so thankful
I had a session where all the party had to do was open a door that had a form of infernal magic around it. They instead of opening the door normally they decided to knock on the door (they did this quite Abit from previous experiences) I had them roll to knock cause y not and I came up with some stuff the door would do based on roll one of their hands evaporated from existence cause of a natural 1. So they ended up blowing up a door to get into a large chamber filled with imps and legion devils.
room was pure dark and had several images on the walls. you can't see color with dark vision so you need light to solve the puzzle. players mistook it for an empty room.
another room had an auto reset trapped number lock made by dwarves in the center. so if your a dwarf you know the depth of the room in feet and that was the code. players were dwarves and thought it was on a note some were and looked for the nonexistent note.
another party elven cleric tried to bash a door down with spells afterwards they hear a voice, "hello who is it? who's knocking on my door" opens door. cleric forgot he could knock on the door.
I love players overthinking it gives me fuel for future games
This video actually made me realize I've been doing this way too much, really appreciate this video
I've only just started playing, and have only been the DM for about 6 months now, but in my short experience I've found that the best and the worst moments in my game have been directly related to how much involvement I have. If I, as DM, have either unlimited control or zero control over what happens, the story is boring. The best times are when the players have like 80% control over what happens, and I just serve to mediate with 20% of the power.
I'm playing through CoS right now and let me tell you: it's so much fun. They are hella afraid of Strahd, i picked one player (the druid) to be the target of his scrying and whenever he does, creepy whispers sound in her head and she has bad dreams about a dark figure attacking her at night while she is alone. The player is seriously freaked out by this and now they avoid every single confrontation with anything. This module really tought me a lot about tension and suspense. I don't even have to do much anymore, just play a creepy whisper soundeffect and they are on the edge (i recommend tabletopaudio.com/ i love those sounds). But sometimes i have to strain myself not to handwave things because i wanna continue with the plot and they spend half a session making sure their horses are save.
Oh boy, wait till they find the beholder under Amber Temple >:D
That's awesome! Curse of Strahd is a lot of fun.
Indeed, i loved customizing it. It's just one plot in my campaign, Strahd being a servant of a greater power trying to rule again, he lured the party into his realm by setting off an infectious ghoul-disease in another town outside Barovia. Knowing they can't escape, he tried to imprison them there so they can't meddle with his masters plans.
Overthink? You must mean my "new original™️ good idea" i just came up with and they will totally find in that dungeon
Honestly if I were dming I would reward the players for their overthinking once in a while, throw in an encounter with a higher loot drop or something. Let their actions have an effect on the world. Setting out traps and wards makes battles easier, forgetting to put them out might lead to nothing but it also might make encounters harder, like if a lower level group of enemies gets the drop on them they have extra initiative. Just stuff like that
This reminds me of the time I was dming Dragon heist and when they got to the first dungeon the wild magic Sorcerer had wild magic prompting everyone became Invisible except the barbarian Which turns what was supposed to be a two or three turn in counter into a 12 turn behemoth of goblins shooting from random directions and players frantically running about
So... *Sigh* I was running a game and I had them do a basic dungeon crawl threw a cave. The first obstacle they had was a door... Yes just a door, and that's what I was trying my hardest to sell it as. But! One of the players for whatever reason thought otherwise. Now I can understand this so I thought nothing of it; at first. He did an arcana check and nothing, he casts sense magic and nothing, he scans the door for markings or writing of which I told him it was a very dirty and dust covered door. He casts gust which sends said dust into another players eyes temporarily blinding him, he then makes a bottle of acid throws it at the door and melts it just enough to create a small whole to the other side. He then casts thunder clap causing the door to crumble open as much as he needed to actually go threw, but he also sends the rest of the players on there butt... All he had to do was push it open.
One issue I think you're brushing over is that the DM is still a player. And just like any player it's frustrating and boring when there's nothing for you to do. As a DM make that planning active, do flashbacks with each player to figure out why their character is so paranoid in this situation. Use that as fuel for the scene. "Buying rope because we might have to climb something" is way less interesting than "I'm buying rope because where I grew up my community had a coming of age trial where we would try climb a cliff face and I fell as a child."
Over planning is a behaviour dnd incentivises in its most negative form. DnD structurally encourages players to try and get "the win scenario" instead of "the interesting scenario". This means minimising failure is in players best interest, and thus over-planning happens.
A game I would reccomend checking out for solutions to this problem is Blades In The Dark. It's got some super interesting planning mechanics that streamline the experience and is generally a great game. The setting, artwork, and layout are all incredible definitely worth checking out on their own merit.
What I like to do is to sometimes lie about if there's enemies and sometimes don't
I'm running Curse of Strahd right now (they're going to Ravenloft so some prayers for them please) but I've always let them overthink and freak out about literal nothing. So then when they find out its nothing, they're like "Oh...OK". Then the next time something happens and they go "Last time = waste of time therefore: no need to freak" and then they get totally screwed over almost dying. So know they are ALWAYS ON EDGE NO MATTER WHAT! And it's great. We've been playing for ages and although this is our first Official Campaign we've played, it's their favourite thus far.
Ordinarily, I'd agree with you, but in a session I ran, I encountered a time I had to tell him outright, OOC. The party had seen a figure (or rather, this player, whom I shall refer to as Rogue A) who had seemed to be invisible, become visible, and phase out from sight. Rogue A was transfixed on this, understandably so. However, as this figure was in the company of other powerful beings, relative to their location this was something to be expected.
Later on that session, the party triggered a magical trap, causing four horrors to appear. I described the effects of the appearance, and Rogue A was convinced it was linked to the figure from before. It was not. I told him before it was like the figure disappeared from sight. This was something being conjured that was not there before. He would not listen, and was convinced they were linked. I told him in no uncertain terms they were not, as his character would be able to see the difference, but he was convinced I was keeping something from him, and chose to pursue this, taking more time for his obsession, pursuing a link he had dreamed up, rather than investigating what either actually was.
And to any saying I could have played along and made it a part of the story, I may have, except this part was a plot point that couldn't really be adjusted. It would be like if you were running a Tolkein-esque fantasy, and someone starts insisting something happens because of the Force. Not Force-like magic, but the actual Star Wars Force.
My players underthink. Don't ask enough questions so it kinda becomes cumbersome to constantly try to prod what my players really want to do (they kinda expect me to offer options on a silver platter).
*slight spoilers below on Curse of Sthrad*
So... Today I ran CoS first time and planned to teach them things the hard way.
I started with my players in different parts of a village (they never met each other in my "prologue") and designed encounters for each of them individually.
Long story short, first player managed to get out of the mist (in the wrong side of course), Second lost consciousness in the mist (saved by vistani), and third got ripped badly by werewolves and buried in a mass grave (dug up and saved by the first player).
It was a small thing but rather effective. Now they no longer trust me completely and joke that I almost did TPK in my first session.
One of my characters I have yet to play is Jobin Rochester. I got his last name on a name generator...anyway I am going to try and have him convince the party to establish a mercenary company, with a Fort for home and a travel carriage. The travel carriage seems like a really good idea to me, it would have goblet holders, velvet seats, some chests, and beds. As for the fort, eh, I just want a big fort with enough space for at least 30 people for guards or other mercenaries. It could be called anything that's not stupid, the best I came up with so far (just now) is Fort McKraken.
Johnwestens Norris Good luck in filling McKraken.
Last week every door took us an hour of realtime. Most wheren't locked. We spend the entire evening opening doors.
One of the reasons I like random encounter charts is that there is ALWAYS a chance of something really threatening showing up. So if the players are out on an adventure I never tell them that they are totally safe. Why would I tell them that? There are wide ranging monsters that can show up practically anywhere in this world! Now if they prepare a campsite properly and make some good rolls to find a place then I can describe to the player on watch that a giant monsters wandered nearby but left. Or they can find some tracks or something. It all depends on the situation. As long as you allow the players to use their abilities to protect themselves and they don't feel completely powerless then you can keep the balance between game and story.
Time to whip out a story: The Mound of Dirt
So I ran a CoC one shot and the players had all arrived in a town where the cult lived and coming to the end of the investigation the party realizes that cult is based in the towns church so they make there way there and find a mound of dirt outside it. They proceed to do a large verity of tests to the mound of dirt to figure out what it was. As you may have guessed it was a mound of dirt. The cult were doing excavations under the church and that is why it was there. I considered this a massive win
Finely, I've been waiting for someone to say this so I could show my DM that I'm not the only one who feels this way
I hate whenever i have some sort of “behind the screen” knowledge and cant really act on it without compromising the role play. Or the classic “Yes i want to go into every single cave or explore every room in this house despite the fact that my character has already gotten what they were looking for”
Lmao I was setting up a short Christmas adventure so I had my players in the tavern they'd stayed at last night and I was like "You're not sure why but nobody at all is in the tavern (there was a street festival) and someone immediately came to teh conclusion "We're gonna get ambushed as soon as we leave" and I just sat there like 🤣
You should add this to the d&d tips playlist
Jacob, your voice sounds godly to listen to. Please make more D&D Tips (and really looking forward to the next How to Play)!
Please do a video like the Matt/ travis ones on how Sam plays the comedy relief perfectly
When you're doing a one-off that needs to conclude in three hours, I appreciate when the DM let's us know when there are certain game aspects that won't be as rewarding/necessary as they would be in a long-term campaign. For this reason, I'm ok with being told I'm overthinking if it means we will save time and we won't have to turn the one-off into a multiple-off (I have played in sooo many one-offs that never reached a conclusion).
The only time the DM should intervein is when it is not all the players around the table having fun fooling around. IF every body is on it, let them go, if only 1 or 2 are fooling and the other wish forward, you can recommand them to go forth a bit !
Needed this 👍🏻 Doing a one shot and I’ve never dungeon mastered before 😅 wish me luck lol
did it go well?
@@catguymcyarnson9772 Yeah it went pretty good 😂 my players helped me out tremendously and also knowing how to go with the flow and make up stuff on the spot helps lol
Before goblin slayer: you guys are overthinking it its just some goblins
After goblin slayer: dont you want to buy more supplies before you go
newton marques goblins can be scary man. Imagine walking through a forest road and then being lifted into the air by a net in the ground then getting riddled with poison arrows!
I agree, main reason I give nothing away. Takes away the surprise, if the players are role-playing, let them role play, they are becoming the character. That you don't want to disrupt.
My friends and I built a rope bridge once in game, that was fun.