That was fast. Congratulations man. Funny how that didn't take long. I think you might need to make that video about your persona/vampire/guy/narrator sooner than later.
He railroaded them by being like "You can go everywhere, but the game will only continue when you go to that one spot marked with an X. Familiar? Yes - that's how many videogames are doing sandbox, too.
One time I told the DM to go crazy with my characters backstory as long as it made sense, and to his credit it was pretty fun as my character slowly found out who the heck he was before he lost his memories leading to some very good role playing. Only do this sort of thing with a good DM you trust because it could turn out terrible for you otherwise.
I'm starting a new game soon with a group of my best friends. Our DM was asking us about backstory and I looked her straight in the eyes and went "My character has amnesia. So long as he was part of a nomad tribe and some kind of warrior/guardian thing, have fun." Her response was only a smirk. My barbarian is in for one hell of an adventure xD
One of my players is at her first experience with d&d. So when she said she had no idea on what to do with the background I asked her if she trusted me to do some additions. 8 months in the campaign and that dragonborn kid is slowly discovering why he's a wild magic Sorcerer (magical experiments on kids, because why not) and why her mother hid him from their kingdom and she told me after every session how she's loving all of this. Just waiting to reunite the character with the mother and I am probably more anxious than my player about it.
@@alaric375 This is exactly what happened with me, but I had gamed with the DM before and we were good friends out of the game as well so I knew he would handle it responsibly.
100%! 10/10 would recommend… *ONLY* if you trust your DM and they are a good/creative one…. But a creative DM coming up with/surprising a clever and improv inclined PC can be a B-E-A-U-tiful thing! I love doing this with my table’s “regular” DM
And if it was the first long campaign then it's to be expected that things won't go as you might prefer. You're still building up a mental idea of what kind of options you actually have when running it.
You know, it worked. There is a saying that goes like "doesn't matter if it is on rails, as long as it is a fun ride", it has been used to describe paizo's adventure paths. Although it was railroaded, your players DID have fun, and the campaign had, based on how you described, it had consistency, and, since the players hadn't come up with bgs... Idk, I just found it neat.
Nah, my reaction: Are you *trying* to steal my title? I, the GM who once *literally* railroaded his party. (As in they were riding a train across the continent, with plot happening at each stop)
@@barryallen2240 Long story short, they knew when a meeting of the Illuminati was happening, but the most direction they had was "Hop on this train, take it to the eastern terminus, and keep going". So of course they hop on as far west as possible, so they can spy on all the passengers and try to identify the Illuminati early EDIT: Oh, and not actually in Eberron, but picture that sort of technology. As I describe it, picture a world on the cusp of the industrial revolution that must have predated Eberron
To be fair that kinda happened with a brazilian RPG system called Tormenta. This one dude had been playing on and off as a cleric of the god of war in a campaign for almost 20 years, with the campaign ending after the announcement of Tormenta20(basically Tormenta 2E), with his by then lvl 80ish character 1v1ing Tormenta's god of war and absolutely destroying him. The creators of the setting made that canon and as of right now it's been 3 years since Weapons Master Arsenal(yes the character's name was Arsenal) became one of, if not straight up THE strongest god in the pantheon, with him being the new god of war.
Thank you for getting me fully into D&D, your first video on The Hallow is what made me more interested to play and I'm in my first campaign and it's actually going well! You're videos are great and keep up the good work!!
I feel like at the end of the day, it's all about the players. And whether or not they enjoy linear railroad stories, or Fallout New Vegas levels of freedom.
Huge disagree. Its about everyone at the table. The DM is also part of the group, and he spends most of the time for the campaign. If the DM has a bad time at the table but the players have a blast, this is not good.
unpopular opinion: railroading isn't always bad. if it works for your players and it's something they are onboard with there is nothing wrong with it. the problem comes when the players try to play a super open sandbox and the GM decides otherwise. but the other way around is just as bad, if the players want to walk through a narrative handed to them and the GM just dumps them in the world and expects them to get on with it, the game will get boring really quick. because in the end the problem is not what style of game you play but the disconnect between the players and GM. and it's not just railroading that this comes up, it's the same with roleplay, challenge, rule interpretation, and probably a load more things that i'm not thinking of right now. the most important this isn't that the players come first (if the GM is having no fun that campaign isn't going to work) but that the players and GM are on the same page
Funniest thing is that the video puts railroading as a bad thing but the video itself correct itself by saying 'As long as everyone is having fun'. Railroad, not railroad, doesn't matter really. The object will always be to make everyone have fun '-'
Thats why a proper session zero is so important Talk to your players what they expect, and what you want from them, pitching them 2-3 Campaign Ideas for them to play is also a good idea
My first (and so far only) time DMing was a homebrewed one shot. The party started at level three and each player was allowed to start off with one uncommon item reviewed by me. The campaign begun with me describing how the party had been searching for a curse removing orb for over a month as a quest for the King, King Lahtav Mohni. The campaign began at the entrance to the temple that the artifact was stored in. The party entered the temple and had to brave a hallway rigged with traps. At the end of the hallway was the Orb of purity that they had spent so long looking for. However, as the players approached the orb, a giant frog came out of nowhere, ate the orb, and then ran off. The party chased the frog into a nearby village where they were attacked by an ogre skeleton and 4 homebrewed archery focused skeletons. This fight wasn't meant to be that difficult but the rogue almost died and the party didn't have a cleric, further complicating the battle. The party learned that a wizard had read out a spell scroll and summoned the skeletons from a local villager. The rogue wanted to rob the houses and so I told them that the only thing that they found was bread. Thinking for whatever reason that the bread would heal them, they decided to eat the bread so I described as they ate an entire loaf of bread and I had them make a constitution save. I can't quite remember if they passed the DC or not but I think that they failed and had them take like 1 damage or something? Anyways the party rested in the town(which I wasn't planning on being possible but I was maybe a bit to lenient with what the players could and couldn't do whoops) and then headed out on the direction of the orb thanks to the Druid's locate object. They confronted the wizard, Frank the outsmartable, and he read off a spell scroll and animated a nearby bucket to attack them(He had a special staff known as the wand of perfection which allows him to succeed instantly on his saves for using the spell scrolls; he's actually a level 1 wizard) Anyways the Party fought the Bucket Golem which was SUPPOSED to be a miniboss buy they killed it with ease because I underestimated the party's strength. Finally, the party entered the woods and noticed that a lot of giant frogs were crowding in the forest. The Druid talked to one of the frogs so I improvised something about how the frogs were about to crown their new frog king. The PCs finally reached Frank, and he talked to them through a tree using minor illusion because he's too much of a coward to talk to them in person. He explained to them his "tragic" backstory about how his colleagues in wizard school always made fun of him for being a terrible wizard and described his plan to kill all of them as petty revenge. The giant frog who ate the orb then appeared and Frank read off two scrolls of enlarge/reduce and the Giant Frog became the homebrewed boss creature known as the huge giant frog. The PCs fought the frog and ended up killing Frank within the first round of combat (again, he was a level 1 wizard) the fighter almost got eaten by the frog and the rogue actually DID get swallowed by the frog and almost died once again. Actually, if I remembered to factor in the resistance to nonmagical piercing/slashing/bludgeoning damage, the moon druid and fighter would've been half as effective and I might have unintentionally killed off the rogue. Anyways the party defeated the huge giant frog who then shrunk down to normal size and then regurgitated the orb and ran off. The party returned to the kingdom and the wizard almost ran off with the orb. I asked if the party wanted to stop them and the druid managed to convince the wizard to hand the orb in for the reward before running off with it to study it. The party gave the king the orb, he kicked the rogue out of the kingdom because part of their backstory was that they tried to rob the king, and then rewarded the rest of the party with 200gp. He removed the curse on his daughter, Nahtrdmeche Mohni, and the wizard took the orb to study it and the one off ended. TL;DR PCs got the relic they were searching for stolen by a giant frog, butted heads with a level 1 wizard, fought a very large frog with legendary actions, and almost lost the rogue twice.
Honestly I respect the idea of death being a penalty rather then the end, at least when it comes to long-running campaigns because for the longest time I didn't bother putting to much into my characters backstories as i had a bit of bad luck when it can to being in games that lasted more then two sessions or games where the DM didn't run it like DARKSOULS but without bonfires (seriously outside of oneshots i hate when that happens) but when I finally got a game that lasted longer (said game is nearing its second year of ongoing play which is the longest I'VE been in) I started to love a character I had initially thrown together but had now developed into much more to the point I even threw out my backup sheet as I was determined to see Anchor: the Warforged storm-Barbarian make it to the end, and so far I think its working out as despite being the teams designated 'run in and take all the aggro from enemies because you're the only one with higher then 10 AC' he's never dropped below half HP somehow; but trust me that isn't the DM going easy on us: every other player has nearly died several time (often because of situations they put themselves in) so Anchor has just been stupid lucky thus far.
DM: You know, you can do this thing. Akita: Oh yeah. Okay, I do that thing. DM: Are you sure? Akita: Yup. DM: Got it. Now how are you going to prevent your inevitable doom? Akita: Wait, what? I laughed so hard at this.
Omg that story about the Lost Mine of Phandelver was the EXACT SAME THING I DID!!! 😂 I got my family (Only one person played before) and I was like “I’ll be the DM!” Cut to disaster and me stopping DMing since 😅
I almost ran a railroaded campaign when I first attempted being a DM. It took me a while before I tried again, with a new campaign. A *homebrew* one. I was told my recent attempt was very good, *by a veteran player and DM.*
I don't think railroading is inherently bad, I think it can make games better, so long as the players are okay with it, some players want to experience a storyline that the DM has written, and don't feel the need to run around in a more open world, and would rather just get to the story quickly
You are refreshing man! There's so many d&d videos about all these people who have been playing for years and give all of these tips and stuff and I enjoy their videos. But you have this kind of friendly, laid back innocence that's like 'yeah, what I did may have been a bit crappy compared to 'the professionals' but we all had fun and that's what's important.' I never feel bad about my own games with you because you're so open about the way you do things. Ignore all the haters man, keep making these videos 😁
i was in a game that tpk'd from the goblin fight straight off the bat because having advantage cause they were stealthed and then them rolling higher on initiative led to us dying before we even had a turn to react
In school right now, but I’ll watch it as soon as possible! Edit: finally had time to watch it, EEEEE! Your OC has a backstory?!?!!?!? I can’t wait to hear it!!!!!!!!
This video is such an important video for new dms to watch. Literally doesn't matter how you play, all that matters is that it was enjoyed. Thanks Blaine, twas a good video
I think of all the video game mechanics that can really work well in a DnD campaign is the Rez fountain idea. Death is such an easy thing in DnD, one failed roll or one bad encounter and your dead. Which leads to either a lot of short adventures in where people are constantly making new characters or people play super cautious and nothing epic ever really happens. Or the DM fudges rolls and makes things easy enough no one ever dies... The rez mechanic works really well because you won't stay dead, can take risk etc but you lose time and possibly equipment if you can't recover your bodies. Just like a in a video game.
Okay, but you inadvertently touched on *my* stance on railroading. As long as the players are interested in seeing how the plot unfolds, and as long as they have agency in *how* it unfolds, it isn't railroading. It's the difference between "You have to get into this castle to advance the plot" and "You must fight your way in, and if you try using magic to avoid the front door, it fails" (There's an old Puffin Forest video with a comedic level of contrived reasons he *had* to go in the front, but I think he removed it)
I was legitimately surprised to find you're at 100k, I assumed you were already creeping toward that big M... Congrats, keep up the good work and you'll be at that next order of magnitude in no time!
2:00 This part alone reminds me of how when I started DMing, I'm cringing at myself just thinking about it. Since my failure at running a campaign book, I have run nothing but homebrew since (which had it's own set of problems, primarily me having a hard time telling my players no, way back when).
I’m running a MotW campaign and it’s my first time properly running a game... since my first two attempts with DnD and a homebrew ttrpg failed. I love storytelling, and that definitely comes to play when I’m leading a ttrpg- my first two attempts (DnD and that homebrew) had a crazy complex story centred around my world’s history and even the creation of magic, and even though I’ve dialled back on my lore a bit (I limited myself to only 200 years of history this time instead of three eras that were literally thousands of years long, and one city instead of an entire world TwT) I still like to tell my players a story about where they are, what the people around them are like, and how certain powerful forces come into play. Needless to say, I probably railroad a lot! I have a lot of NPC encounters that have to happen at certain times once the players have certain information, I have dues ex machinas that keep my players from knowing certain info (or from getting to certain people and missing out on very important info that will be needed later in the campaign) and I’m actually keeping very careful track of in-game time as there are certain things that have to happen regardless of wether the party is ready for it or not. Not many of my players have in-depth backstories, so I did feel a little lost when I first started out as I had nothing really to motivate the players with... except for throwing monsters at them XD With the right players, I think it’s perfectly ok to play a more “railroad-y” campaign. I was super nervous at first because there hasn’t been really any combat, aaand it’s a super different game experience from what our earlier Keeper was giving. However, all my players are enjoying themselves, and seem to be genuinely looking foreword to uncovering the mysteries that I’ve shoved in their faces. Even though they may not be in control of the overarching narrative, their choices still hold weight in the short narratives and to certain NPCs, not to mention the relationships between the player characters themselves. And isn’t that what it really is like at times? Your scrappy group of friends doing good and making mistakes, looking on as overwhelming powers they cannot possibly hope to compete against rage out their own stories, stories that seem so big and out of your control until you look around and see that, even though the world is ending, you have made a small safe haven for those around you. Even though you cannot hope to change what is about to happen, you have changed so many lives, people, places, just by doing the little, good things and making little, good choices. And that is... good. Maybe you didn’t save the world, but you saved what you could.
Definitely feel you on the campaign vs video game thing, honestly a factor that makes me hesitant to DM myself. I’m confident in my writing skills and know I could right a great adventure…a great linear adventure with premade characters. The improv needed to properly DM is another story: it’s not even that I don’t have it, just that I have no real way of knowing aside from trial by fire, which terrifies me. That said, watching videos like this builds my confidence there somewhat: along with being great stories in their own right, often I see elements like the beholder in your previous Hallow story, and think about how fun it would be to build on stuff like that. I think if I ever got into DMing, especially for longer campaigns or multiple campaigns with the same players, I’d be the Jack of weaving new plot lines out of all the weird crap that happens to the party (gonna hold off on king or master until I have any sort of experience actually doing that), and the more I think about that, the more I want to try it.
alot of new players like this from my experience. they are scared of making their own story and so you kinda gotta "railroad" them until they get comfortable makin their own story
6:28 ok thats calix's (from supernatural origins season 3) origin his father is a angel but was killed by his mother so he could rest in peace oh and calix is a half angel half vampire
Sounds like you and your player knew what kind of game you were playing, that is the basis, as long as your players, AND YOU!, had fun, you won the game
every time I see that snail-promo I spend a second waiting for a seque into mentioning JessJackdaw just because it sounds so much like something from one of her mishmash videos and even looks a lot like her artstyle until you look closer (very simmilar use of color, different linework...sorta looks like the same person using a different toolset to draw really). so glad you guys ended up with something enjoyable, we probably wouldn't be getting the occasional wonderful little totally-not-a-trainwreck of a video from you if it'd gone horribly and these things tend to put me in a good mood for awhile whenever I think of them, it doesn't sound like much but it makes a real positive impact on my life.
Honnestly, I'm higlighting the part about player backstory because I give it a moddicum of importance: As a sorta-perma-DM myself, I always ask for PC's backstories before I writte any hard concrete thing of the world at large. Optionaly, I create a base of what the world looks like and give my players the "briefing" of how and what this world is and let them situate their characters in it (so pretty much their backstories are part of the world). As a Player, I try to give any person that is a DM on the table I play, a decent back story. Theres no single full-proof list, but in essence i try to give the DM, at minimum, some of the following: - 1-2 Familiars (Mom & Dad; Mom & Brother; Dad & Sister; etc...) - 1-4 Friends (Childhood friends, Teenage Friends, etc...) - 1 Love Interrest (You might not even end up chassing for this to its "finish-line", but at least have something in mind...) - 1-2 Rivals (Some competition is always a good thing, and a rival has a personal side to it. Bonus points if they are antagonists or full-blown villains!) - 1 Inspirational Figure (You admired this persons ethos, code of conduct, moral and ethical sense that you remember them as a role-model (they can even be one of the previously mentioned...) - A Place of Origin (Your "home": can be a village, a town, a city, etc...) - A specific goal or aspiration - A flaw/ short-comming (a flawed charecter normaly develops over time, where has my "All Good Paladin" never did anything even remotly fun, because "something, something stoicism and selflesness"). As a final word, it suprises me, the ammount of people who say "Man, a backstorie over one page long!? What are you trying to copy? Critical Role?". Because as a DM, I want your character to have something to care for, to fight for! You dont need backstories ala critical role to be invested, as long as you have at least one or two things to go for (the list above is not a full set of obligations), because as a DM I want to tell "Your Characters Stories", not "My DM/GM Storie". Your characters are the main actors, the ones which the narrative revolves around, not the other way around. Give me something, so that I can give you everything! (In the most effective and character lore accurate as possible).
It's worse when your players obstinately refuse to participate in your game due to character immersion. "Oh, my character wouldn't go with you. She isn't that concerned by the story elements so far and she doesn't like the other PCs, so she just stays in town being a Blacksmith." The player in question then threw a fit when the DM had NPCs her character cared about get effected and ask her to go along with what the party was investigating for their sake, accused the DM of Railroading, begrudgingly went along while as a player constantly commenting about what a pack of insufferable jackasses her character thought ours were, after the party was successful refused to update her character's opinion of the other PCs despite them all selflessly helping NPCs she cared about and the entire town her character was from and refused to associate with them further, and after a heatedly whispered side-bar with the DM wasn't happy until the DM said "Okay, your character is now an NPC who runs a Blacksmith shop in this town. If the players ever go to her shop again you can play her in the interaction. Please go make another character who would go along on adventures with the other PCs." She then smiled as if to say 'That's how correct Roleplaying works,' and happily rolled up a new character. She literally Railroaded her own character out of the game on the first session.
My first homebrewn campaign went the exact opposit way. I started by getting the PCs shipwrecked on an island and made them play Robinson Crusoe for 1 session. They hated it and wanted to go adventuring, so instead going ahead as planned and hve them being attacked by animals and monsters, survive a tropical storm, more battles with a tribe of snakepeople also living on that island and some hunting for food I jumped immediatly forward to hinting them towards a strange cave guarded by a skelleton soldier. Exploring that cave they found an ancient and legendary skyship and one series of skillchecks later flew it out of the top of the volcano it was in while also causing an eruption that sank the island. From that point on the players were running the campaign like this: Players: "We want to visit a desert - where is the next desert, let's fly there" Me: "OK, looking on the map, the next desert is 2 weeks away. You're passing by a city, so maybe you should get provisions there", They: "Ahh, ok, we do that, but can we just skip the shopping? We really want to go to a desert" - Me: Well, OK" - and the rest of the session was me scrambling for finding a good improv for a desert adventure that I usually would then flesh out before the next session where I would then be forced to build up on the nonsensicle improv I made in that first episode. And when that questarc was done, they went ahead being like "I would really like to go to an undermountain dwarf mining city" ... I still liked a lot of the campaign and they were enjoying it, too. But from an objective standpoint the campaign was complete garbage.
... as weird as this may sound, this seems intresting, then again i just enjoy having fun so if a game ended up being railroaded, i wouldn't actually mind, at least if it was a railroad like this, since it seems like your sisters had some leeway on what they could do and were not being forced to go do anything... though i could be wrong XD, but as you said at the end as long as everyone has/had fun.
The ultimate campaign would be (in my opinion) a DM collaboration between you and Rob from VLDL. Rod’s experience + voices and you’re anime prowess would be absolutely amazing.
coming back here after watching a while ago ngl, if I ever had the time to play dnd, I'd absolutely love a campaign styled like this actually it's literally highly customisable multiplayer rpg mega video game now that's optimal
Railroading isn’t always the worst, sometimes in my group if we are stumped on what to do we will ask one of our favorite npc’s (an old king who is important to plot) so our dm can push us in a direction that’ll keep things moving
I recently ran my first ever game (went in dry without even running a 1-shot first) in the Star Wars: Clone Wars era with a completely homebrewed story. It lasted about a year and despite being pretty railroady in my opinion everyone enjoyed it. Out of the 4 players 2 of them basically had never played D&D before so I didn't want to overload them completely with something completely open-ended. In the end, the party generally *wanted* to focus on the main story as it were so that's what they did. I let them pursue it in whatever manner they wanted though, like I would tell them where they should go but not how to get there. They said they never felt railroaded when I asked them awhile after the game was over though I'm still not sure if that's because I didn't actually railroad them or my tricks were subtle enough to not be noticed. Basically, I don't think railroading is inherently bad. Some groups want to go experience a storyline and others want to explore. The trick is to know what your group is like and to accommodate them appropriately.
Gonna be honest, when I play what matters to me ultimately is I'm having fun, I often don't mind if my characters don't get a lot of spot light as long as I'm getting to laugh and play with friends and everyone is having a good time that's what I enjoy most.
5:06 Timeout, let's be clear about one thing regarding creative writing: Characters don't need backstories to determine what their goals are. In fact, characters don't need backstories at all to be well characterised. Now please don't misunderstand this "don't need" for "should not have/do not profit from having". Backstory alone doesn't inform how a character was affected by their past and how they will react in the future. In regards to this I urge you to watch the opening of Mulan 1998 (the animated one). The film quickly establishes who Mulan is and how she thinks and behaves. And that's her for the rest of the film. She doesn't get "backstory" in the traditional sense, no flashback scenes, no young to adult time skip (like in the live action) we are introduced to her in the present and follow her actions right after
I’m actually only now playing phandelver lol. I started, get this, the Icewind Dale Frostmaiden module. Talk about hard mode. It did settle my love for rangers though. I recommend that campaign for those who want to play rangers in particular, especially if you actually want to give favored terrain a shot. Pick undead if you want to play with favored enemies though. It will serve you best for some of those encounters. Anyway, yeah I got into Phandelver only recently, almost just past 6 months after I started playing. I’ve joined quite a few campaigns since then and have a good number under my belt before I started but this one was advertised as being new player friendly. I mentioned my experience to the dm though and they said I could still join as I was knew enough and the group had lost their ranger last session and didn’t have a good charisma character. So I went with fey wanderer (which is amazing because you add your wis mod to some of your charisma skills). It worked out and the other players find my red riding hood inspired ranger very cool. She has a good sled dog who they adore, has tamed their obstinate donkey, and plays them music on her flute for long journeys and extra group coin….also keeps them from being surprise rounded lol because I favor perception as my main skill to dump stats and expertise like stuff into (variant ranger calls it some thing else but basically same thing). I plan to add scout rogue to this character later, after getting level 4 (for a feat I want as flavor from her backstory but also helps her out as a human). That will boost her survival and nature checks even more. I already bought her thieves tools to flavor her teaching herself how to use them before I take rogue levels.
4:56. That isn't railroading, that you dealing with the fact that your players have no back story. You have to take more charge when that's the case, otherwise nothing happens.
Honestly, this campaign kind of sounds fun. Just a touch of extra flexibility would make this a very enjoyable experience. I want to give a campaign with respawn mechanics a try someday.
In the end everyone had a good time playing DnD, which no matter what technical flaws the campaign may have had is still a successful campaign, well done.
In my 40 years of playing & DMing, I've found that some groups actually *like* being railroaded to some extent... otherwise they suffer stress from the Tyranny of Choice in a truly open sandboxed world. Whatever works for the group to let them have fun.
Akita reminds me that the tiefling rogue of my own that I’m so fond of spawned from a random Tiefling name generator (except it’s just Akta but close enough)
Eyy we hit 100k subs. Thanks everyone
Suck it nerd, you can't stop us from hearing the story now
Ayyyyy! Congrats!
That was fast. Congratulations man. Funny how that didn't take long.
I think you might need to make that video about your persona/vampire/guy/narrator sooner than later.
I’m not subscribed but congrats
Congrats
"the hallow was an open world sandbox"
That you still managed to railroad the players through?
I'm almost impressed
I mean, he eventually railroads, when he inserted plot
Remember Fallout 3?
He railroaded them by being like "You can go everywhere, but the game will only continue when you go to that one spot marked with an X. Familiar? Yes - that's how many videogames are doing sandbox, too.
You forgot about Adam adim????
When you let players pick between 15 towns to go to, but they are all secretly the same town.
Video title: I railroaded my party
What blaine actually talking about: making the hollows into a video game*
You ever play a video game? Most of em likes this are railroaded
One time I told the DM to go crazy with my characters backstory as long as it made sense, and to his credit it was pretty fun as my character slowly found out who the heck he was before he lost his memories leading to some very good role playing. Only do this sort of thing with a good DM you trust because it could turn out terrible for you otherwise.
I'm starting a new game soon with a group of my best friends. Our DM was asking us about backstory and I looked her straight in the eyes and went "My character has amnesia. So long as he was part of a nomad tribe and some kind of warrior/guardian thing, have fun."
Her response was only a smirk. My barbarian is in for one hell of an adventure xD
One of my players is at her first experience with d&d. So when she said she had no idea on what to do with the background I asked her if she trusted me to do some additions.
8 months in the campaign and that dragonborn kid is slowly discovering why he's a wild magic Sorcerer (magical experiments on kids, because why not) and why her mother hid him from their kingdom and she told me after every session how she's loving all of this. Just waiting to reunite the character with the mother and I am probably more anxious than my player about it.
@@xandercretuitus9704 Ride on man ride on
@@alaric375 This is exactly what happened with me, but I had gamed with the DM before and we were good friends out of the game as well so I knew he would handle it responsibly.
100%! 10/10 would recommend… *ONLY* if you trust your DM and they are a good/creative one…. But a creative DM coming up with/surprising a clever and improv inclined PC can be a B-E-A-U-tiful thing! I love doing this with my table’s “regular” DM
if they had fun who cares
Pretty much that yes: fun first & good/ok everything else second
People should learn this more.
And if it was the first long campaign then it's to be expected that things won't go as you might prefer. You're still building up a mental idea of what kind of options you actually have when running it.
"And Akita was... well Akita"
That one just made me explode with laugh
I do so enjoy exploding with laugh
I so do exploding enjoy with laugh.
I do so enjoy exploding with laugh
You know, it worked. There is a saying that goes like "doesn't matter if it is on rails, as long as it is a fun ride", it has been used to describe paizo's adventure paths. Although it was railroaded, your players DID have fun, and the campaign had, based on how you described, it had consistency, and, since the players hadn't come up with bgs... Idk, I just found it neat.
Everyone: *sees the title*
Everyone: YOU WHAT
Nah, my reaction: Are you *trying* to steal my title? I, the GM who once *literally* railroaded his party. (As in they were riding a train across the continent, with plot happening at each stop)
Me: groan
@@justineberlein5916 that sounds.... awesome
@@barryallen2240 Long story short, they knew when a meeting of the Illuminati was happening, but the most direction they had was "Hop on this train, take it to the eastern terminus, and keep going". So of course they hop on as far west as possible, so they can spy on all the passengers and try to identify the Illuminati early
EDIT: Oh, and not actually in Eberron, but picture that sort of technology. As I describe it, picture a world on the cusp of the industrial revolution that must have predated Eberron
At first I read "I railroaded my party for 20 years" and was shocked to hear about a dude who ran a 20 year campaign
To be fair that kinda happened with a brazilian RPG system called Tormenta. This one dude had been playing on and off as a cleric of the god of war in a campaign for almost 20 years, with the campaign ending after the announcement of Tormenta20(basically Tormenta 2E), with his by then lvl 80ish character 1v1ing Tormenta's god of war and absolutely destroying him. The creators of the setting made that canon and as of right now it's been 3 years since Weapons Master Arsenal(yes the character's name was Arsenal) became one of, if not straight up THE strongest god in the pantheon, with him being the new god of war.
Videos title"I railroad my players"
Me:I'm going to love this video
2 years later, i find this and it actually just helped me fix a campaign. THANK. YOU.
"1 step to getting your viewers into a series: Cliffhangers."
Blane: *We dont do that here.*
Wait. Your avatar in these videos is a vampire? I never knew that.
Huh, me neither
Same
He should be dead because... he is the captain
he only said it in passing before
Yeah didn’t know until now
1:22 WHERE WAS THAT THING WHEN I WAS 8?!!!!!!!!!!!
No idea either, my country got the built-in version and it isn't THIS complex
Thank you for getting me fully into D&D, your first video on The Hallow is what made me more interested to play and I'm in my first campaign and it's actually going well! You're videos are great and keep up the good work!!
So is it just a thing now that dnd animators are interested in game design
Well i guess I’m not the weirdo now when i rant about it
That boy seems like it has an interesting lore. I'm keen to hear about it.
I feel like at the end of the day, it's all about the players. And whether or not they enjoy linear railroad stories, or Fallout New Vegas levels of freedom.
Huge disagree. Its about everyone at the table. The DM is also part of the group, and he spends most of the time for the campaign. If the DM has a bad time at the table but the players have a blast, this is not good.
unpopular opinion: railroading isn't always bad.
if it works for your players and it's something they are onboard with there is nothing wrong with it. the problem comes when the players try to play a super open sandbox and the GM decides otherwise. but the other way around is just as bad, if the players want to walk through a narrative handed to them and the GM just dumps them in the world and expects them to get on with it, the game will get boring really quick.
because in the end the problem is not what style of game you play but the disconnect between the players and GM. and it's not just railroading that this comes up, it's the same with roleplay, challenge, rule interpretation, and probably a load more things that i'm not thinking of right now. the most important this isn't that the players come first (if the GM is having no fun that campaign isn't going to work) but that the players and GM are on the same page
True
I plan on doing a campaign so thanks for te help blain
Funniest thing is that the video puts railroading as a bad thing but the video itself correct itself by saying 'As long as everyone is having fun'.
Railroad, not railroad, doesn't matter really. The object will always be to make everyone have fun '-'
Thats why a proper session zero is so important
Talk to your players what they expect, and what you want from them, pitching them 2-3 Campaign Ideas for them to play is also a good idea
My first (and so far only) time DMing was a homebrewed one shot. The party started at level three and each player was allowed to start off with one uncommon item reviewed by me. The campaign begun with me describing how the party had been searching for a curse removing orb for over a month as a quest for the King, King Lahtav Mohni. The campaign began at the entrance to the temple that the artifact was stored in. The party entered the temple and had to brave a hallway rigged with traps. At the end of the hallway was the Orb of purity that they had spent so long looking for. However, as the players approached the orb, a giant frog came out of nowhere, ate the orb, and then ran off. The party chased the frog into a nearby village where they were attacked by an ogre skeleton and 4 homebrewed archery focused skeletons. This fight wasn't meant to be that difficult but the rogue almost died and the party didn't have a cleric, further complicating the battle. The party learned that a wizard had read out a spell scroll and summoned the skeletons from a local villager. The rogue wanted to rob the houses and so I told them that the only thing that they found was bread. Thinking for whatever reason that the bread would heal them, they decided to eat the bread so I described as they ate an entire loaf of bread and I had them make a constitution save. I can't quite remember if they passed the DC or not but I think that they failed and had them take like 1 damage or something? Anyways the party rested in the town(which I wasn't planning on being possible but I was maybe a bit to lenient with what the players could and couldn't do whoops) and then headed out on the direction of the orb thanks to the Druid's locate object. They confronted the wizard, Frank the outsmartable, and he read off a spell scroll and animated a nearby bucket to attack them(He had a special staff known as the wand of perfection which allows him to succeed instantly on his saves for using the spell scrolls; he's actually a level 1 wizard) Anyways the Party fought the Bucket Golem which was SUPPOSED to be a miniboss buy they killed it with ease because I underestimated the party's strength. Finally, the party entered the woods and noticed that a lot of giant frogs were crowding in the forest. The Druid talked to one of the frogs so I improvised something about how the frogs were about to crown their new frog king. The PCs finally reached Frank, and he talked to them through a tree using minor illusion because he's too much of a coward to talk to them in person. He explained to them his "tragic" backstory about how his colleagues in wizard school always made fun of him for being a terrible wizard and described his plan to kill all of them as petty revenge. The giant frog who ate the orb then appeared and Frank read off two scrolls of enlarge/reduce and the Giant Frog became the homebrewed boss creature known as the huge giant frog. The PCs fought the frog and ended up killing Frank within the first round of combat (again, he was a level 1 wizard) the fighter almost got eaten by the frog and the rogue actually DID get swallowed by the frog and almost died once again. Actually, if I remembered to factor in the resistance to nonmagical piercing/slashing/bludgeoning damage, the moon druid and fighter would've been half as effective and I might have unintentionally killed off the rogue. Anyways the party defeated the huge giant frog who then shrunk down to normal size and then regurgitated the orb and ran off. The party returned to the kingdom and the wizard almost ran off with the orb. I asked if the party wanted to stop them and the druid managed to convince the wizard to hand the orb in for the reward before running off with it to study it. The party gave the king the orb, he kicked the rogue out of the kingdom because part of their backstory was that they tried to rob the king, and then rewarded the rest of the party with 200gp. He removed the curse on his daughter, Nahtrdmeche Mohni, and the wizard took the orb to study it and the one off ended.
TL;DR PCs got the relic they were searching for stolen by a giant frog, butted heads with a level 1 wizard, fought a very large frog with legendary actions, and almost lost the rogue twice.
Honestly I respect the idea of death being a penalty rather then the end, at least when it comes to long-running campaigns because for the longest time I didn't bother putting to much into my characters backstories as i had a bit of bad luck when it can to being in games that lasted more then two sessions or games where the DM didn't run it like DARKSOULS but without bonfires (seriously outside of oneshots i hate when that happens) but when I finally got a game that lasted longer (said game is nearing its second year of ongoing play which is the longest I'VE been in) I started to love a character I had initially thrown together but had now developed into much more to the point I even threw out my backup sheet as I was determined to see Anchor: the Warforged storm-Barbarian make it to the end, and so far I think its working out as despite being the teams designated 'run in and take all the aggro from enemies because you're the only one with higher then 10 AC' he's never dropped below half HP somehow; but trust me that isn't the DM going easy on us: every other player has nearly died several time (often because of situations they put themselves in) so Anchor has just been stupid lucky thus far.
"Better buckle up and wait til 100k subs"
*instantly subscribes*
DM: You know, you can do this thing.
Akita: Oh yeah. Okay, I do that thing.
DM: Are you sure?
Akita: Yup.
DM: Got it. Now how are you going to prevent your inevitable doom?
Akita: Wait, what?
I laughed so hard at this.
Omg that story about the Lost Mine of Phandelver was the EXACT SAME THING I DID!!! 😂 I got my family (Only one person played before) and I was like “I’ll be the DM!” Cut to disaster and me stopping DMing since 😅
I almost ran a railroaded campaign when I first attempted being a DM. It took me a while before I tried again, with a new campaign. A *homebrew* one. I was told my recent attempt was very good, *by a veteran player and DM.*
I don't think railroading is inherently bad, I think it can make games better, so long as the players are okay with it, some players want to experience a storyline that the DM has written, and don't feel the need to run around in a more open world, and would rather just get to the story quickly
You are refreshing man! There's so many d&d videos about all these people who have been playing for years and give all of these tips and stuff and I enjoy their videos. But you have this kind of friendly, laid back innocence that's like 'yeah, what I did may have been a bit crappy compared to 'the professionals' but we all had fun and that's what's important.'
I never feel bad about my own games with you because you're so open about the way you do things.
Ignore all the haters man, keep making these videos 😁
Akita: Die to cancer
Me: Hey, that's pretty good!
I kinda wanna try a family DND game some day, the minis shall be our monopoly bits
i was in a game that tpk'd from the goblin fight straight off the bat because having advantage cause they were stealthed and then them rolling higher on initiative led to us dying before we even had a turn to react
In school right now, but I’ll watch it as soon as possible!
Edit: finally had time to watch it, EEEEE! Your OC has a backstory?!?!!?!? I can’t wait to hear it!!!!!!!!
Good luck in school then!
This video is such an important video for new dms to watch. Literally doesn't matter how you play, all that matters is that it was enjoyed.
Thanks Blaine, twas a good video
Thanks for sharing that with us man. Some of my early games had similar themes and whatnot. I love hearing people's early game stories.
“So, Akita, how will you break your fall”
“Wait, wha-“
*CONVENIENTLY PLACED AD*
10:01
You call it a persona, I call it a placeholder
I love your content and the work/comitment that goes into it!
The bit where he’s fumbling over the book around the 2 minutes mark, the music played is the Andrius battle theme
YOOO you can't just leave on a low key cliffhanger like that
OMG so close to 100k. I remember when you had 7k. Well done for all your hard work creating these awesome videos!
Thank You!!
Congratulations on 100,000 subs!
Happy 100k you deserved it
Congrats on reaching 100k. Even though i dont play dnd your content never fails to entertain me. Keep up the good work.
EVERYBODY HOP ONTO THE RAILROAD TRAIN
I think of all the video game mechanics that can really work well in a DnD campaign is the Rez fountain idea. Death is such an easy thing in DnD, one failed roll or one bad encounter and your dead. Which leads to either a lot of short adventures in where people are constantly making new characters or people play super cautious and nothing epic ever really happens.
Or the DM fudges rolls and makes things easy enough no one ever dies... The rez mechanic works really well because you won't stay dead, can take risk etc but you lose time and possibly equipment if you can't recover your bodies. Just like a in a video game.
The fact critcrab in 6:51 with hollow eyes meas he KNOWS he's witnessing an horror story.
You might not have the subscribers of the bigger DnD RUclipsrs, but you have the spirit and put in the work. I always enjoy these videos, well done!
Okay, but you inadvertently touched on *my* stance on railroading. As long as the players are interested in seeing how the plot unfolds, and as long as they have agency in *how* it unfolds, it isn't railroading. It's the difference between "You have to get into this castle to advance the plot" and "You must fight your way in, and if you try using magic to avoid the front door, it fails" (There's an old Puffin Forest video with a comedic level of contrived reasons he *had* to go in the front, but I think he removed it)
Your so close to 100k subs. Thanks for all of the great videos.
I thought he had 500k but no he just hit 100k (congrats btw) high quality content for a small channel keep up the good work
I was legitimately surprised to find you're at 100k, I assumed you were already creeping toward that big M... Congrats, keep up the good work and you'll be at that next order of magnitude in no time!
Your voice sounds nice and cheerful...i really enjoyed your stories
2:00 This part alone reminds me of how when I started DMing, I'm cringing at myself just thinking about it. Since my failure at running a campaign book, I have run nothing but homebrew since (which had it's own set of problems, primarily me having a hard time telling my players no, way back when).
I’m running a MotW campaign and it’s my first time properly running a game... since my first two attempts with DnD and a homebrew ttrpg failed. I love storytelling, and that definitely comes to play when I’m leading a ttrpg- my first two attempts (DnD and that homebrew) had a crazy complex story centred around my world’s history and even the creation of magic, and even though I’ve dialled back on my lore a bit (I limited myself to only 200 years of history this time instead of three eras that were literally thousands of years long, and one city instead of an entire world TwT) I still like to tell my players a story about where they are, what the people around them are like, and how certain powerful forces come into play. Needless to say, I probably railroad a lot! I have a lot of NPC encounters that have to happen at certain times once the players have certain information, I have dues ex machinas that keep my players from knowing certain info (or from getting to certain people and missing out on very important info that will be needed later in the campaign) and I’m actually keeping very careful track of in-game time as there are certain things that have to happen regardless of wether the party is ready for it or not. Not many of my players have in-depth backstories, so I did feel a little lost when I first started out as I had nothing really to motivate the players with... except for throwing monsters at them XD
With the right players, I think it’s perfectly ok to play a more “railroad-y” campaign. I was super nervous at first because there hasn’t been really any combat, aaand it’s a super different game experience from what our earlier Keeper was giving. However, all my players are enjoying themselves, and seem to be genuinely looking foreword to uncovering the mysteries that I’ve shoved in their faces. Even though they may not be in control of the overarching narrative, their choices still hold weight in the short narratives and to certain NPCs, not to mention the relationships between the player characters themselves.
And isn’t that what it really is like at times? Your scrappy group of friends doing good and making mistakes, looking on as overwhelming powers they cannot possibly hope to compete against rage out their own stories, stories that seem so big and out of your control until you look around and see that, even though the world is ending, you have made a small safe haven for those around you. Even though you cannot hope to change what is about to happen, you have changed so many lives, people, places, just by doing the little, good things and making little, good choices. And that is... good. Maybe you didn’t save the world, but you saved what you could.
Thanks for makeing this video now I have to entirely scrap my campaign
Preliminary congratulations on 100k subs!
Definitely feel you on the campaign vs video game thing, honestly a factor that makes me hesitant to DM myself. I’m confident in my writing skills and know I could right a great adventure…a great linear adventure with premade characters.
The improv needed to properly DM is another story: it’s not even that I don’t have it, just that I have no real way of knowing aside from trial by fire, which terrifies me. That said, watching videos like this builds my confidence there somewhat: along with being great stories in their own right, often I see elements like the beholder in your previous Hallow story, and think about how fun it would be to build on stuff like that. I think if I ever got into DMing, especially for longer campaigns or multiple campaigns with the same players, I’d be the Jack of weaving new plot lines out of all the weird crap that happens to the party (gonna hold off on king or master until I have any sort of experience actually doing that), and the more I think about that, the more I want to try it.
alot of new players like this from my experience. they are scared of making their own story and so you kinda gotta "railroad" them until they get comfortable makin their own story
6:28 ok thats calix's (from supernatural origins season 3) origin his father is a angel but was killed by his mother so he could rest in peace oh and calix is a half angel half vampire
Sounds like you and your player knew what kind of game you were playing, that is the basis, as long as your players, AND YOU!, had fun, you won the game
every time I see that snail-promo I spend a second waiting for a seque into mentioning JessJackdaw just because it sounds so much like something from one of her mishmash videos and even looks a lot like her artstyle until you look closer (very simmilar use of color, different linework...sorta looks like the same person using a different toolset to draw really).
so glad you guys ended up with something enjoyable, we probably wouldn't be getting the occasional wonderful little totally-not-a-trainwreck of a video from you if it'd gone horribly and these things tend to put me in a good mood for awhile whenever I think of them, it doesn't sound like much but it makes a real positive impact on my life.
6:55 That bookshelf.... xD
Honnestly, I'm higlighting the part about player backstory because I give it a moddicum of importance:
As a sorta-perma-DM myself, I always ask for PC's backstories before I writte any hard concrete thing of the world at large. Optionaly, I create a base of what the world looks like and give my players the "briefing" of how and what this world is and let them situate their characters in it (so pretty much their backstories are part of the world).
As a Player, I try to give any person that is a DM on the table I play, a decent back story. Theres no single full-proof list, but in essence i try to give the DM, at minimum, some of the following:
- 1-2 Familiars (Mom & Dad; Mom & Brother; Dad & Sister; etc...)
- 1-4 Friends (Childhood friends, Teenage Friends, etc...)
- 1 Love Interrest (You might not even end up chassing for this to its "finish-line", but at least have something in mind...)
- 1-2 Rivals (Some competition is always a good thing, and a rival has a personal side to it. Bonus points if they are antagonists or full-blown villains!)
- 1 Inspirational Figure (You admired this persons ethos, code of conduct, moral and ethical sense that you remember them as a role-model (they can even be one of the previously mentioned...)
- A Place of Origin (Your "home": can be a village, a town, a city, etc...)
- A specific goal or aspiration
- A flaw/ short-comming (a flawed charecter normaly develops over time, where has my "All Good Paladin" never did anything even remotly fun, because "something, something stoicism and selflesness").
As a final word, it suprises me, the ammount of people who say "Man, a backstorie over one page long!? What are you trying to copy? Critical Role?". Because as a DM, I want your character to have something to care for, to fight for! You dont need backstories ala critical role to be invested, as long as you have at least one or two things to go for (the list above is not a full set of obligations), because as a DM I want to tell "Your Characters Stories", not "My DM/GM Storie". Your characters are the main actors, the ones which the narrative revolves around, not the other way around. Give me something, so that I can give you everything! (In the most effective and character lore accurate as possible).
6:56 The critcrab in the background lol
I could see having fun with that story.
Congrats on 100k subs!
I'm currently running Lost Mines of Phandelver as a 1st time DM, and this is super relatable!
It's worse when your players obstinately refuse to participate in your game due to character immersion. "Oh, my character wouldn't go with you. She isn't that concerned by the story elements so far and she doesn't like the other PCs, so she just stays in town being a Blacksmith."
The player in question then threw a fit when the DM had NPCs her character cared about get effected and ask her to go along with what the party was investigating for their sake, accused the DM of Railroading, begrudgingly went along while as a player constantly commenting about what a pack of insufferable jackasses her character thought ours were, after the party was successful refused to update her character's opinion of the other PCs despite them all selflessly helping NPCs she cared about and the entire town her character was from and refused to associate with them further, and after a heatedly whispered side-bar with the DM wasn't happy until the DM said "Okay, your character is now an NPC who runs a Blacksmith shop in this town. If the players ever go to her shop again you can play her in the interaction. Please go make another character who would go along on adventures with the other PCs." She then smiled as if to say 'That's how correct Roleplaying works,' and happily rolled up a new character. She literally Railroaded her own character out of the game on the first session.
My first homebrewn campaign went the exact opposit way. I started by getting the PCs shipwrecked on an island and made them play Robinson Crusoe for 1 session. They hated it and wanted to go adventuring, so instead going ahead as planned and hve them being attacked by animals and monsters, survive a tropical storm, more battles with a tribe of snakepeople also living on that island and some hunting for food I jumped immediatly forward to hinting them towards a strange cave guarded by a skelleton soldier. Exploring that cave they found an ancient and legendary skyship and one series of skillchecks later flew it out of the top of the volcano it was in while also causing an eruption that sank the island.
From that point on the players were running the campaign like this: Players: "We want to visit a desert - where is the next desert, let's fly there" Me: "OK, looking on the map, the next desert is 2 weeks away. You're passing by a city, so maybe you should get provisions there", They: "Ahh, ok, we do that, but can we just skip the shopping? We really want to go to a desert" - Me: Well, OK" - and the rest of the session was me scrambling for finding a good improv for a desert adventure that I usually would then flesh out before the next session where I would then be forced to build up on the nonsensicle improv I made in that first episode.
And when that questarc was done, they went ahead being like "I would really like to go to an undermountain dwarf mining city" ... I still liked a lot of the campaign and they were enjoying it, too. But from an objective standpoint the campaign was complete garbage.
... as weird as this may sound, this seems intresting, then again i just enjoy having fun so if a game ended up being railroaded, i wouldn't actually mind, at least if it was a railroad like this, since it seems like your sisters had some leeway on what they could do and were not being forced to go do anything... though i could be wrong XD, but as you said at the end as long as everyone has/had fun.
I love that the group playing video games is just using a gamecube.
The ultimate campaign would be (in my opinion) a DM collaboration between you and Rob from VLDL. Rod’s experience + voices and you’re anime prowess would be absolutely amazing.
3:40. *distant waterfall music*
Welcome to 100k subs. Let's hear the story!
coming back here after watching a while ago
ngl, if I ever had the time to play dnd, I'd absolutely love a campaign styled like this actually
it's literally highly customisable multiplayer rpg mega video game
now that's optimal
Literally less than 100 people need to subscribe for that video to come out. Awesome! ^^
Railroading isn’t always the worst, sometimes in my group if we are stumped on what to do we will ask one of our favorite npc’s (an old king who is important to plot) so our dm can push us in a direction that’ll keep things moving
I recently ran my first ever game (went in dry without even running a 1-shot first) in the Star Wars: Clone Wars era with a completely homebrewed story. It lasted about a year and despite being pretty railroady in my opinion everyone enjoyed it. Out of the 4 players 2 of them basically had never played D&D before so I didn't want to overload them completely with something completely open-ended. In the end, the party generally *wanted* to focus on the main story as it were so that's what they did. I let them pursue it in whatever manner they wanted though, like I would tell them where they should go but not how to get there. They said they never felt railroaded when I asked them awhile after the game was over though I'm still not sure if that's because I didn't actually railroad them or my tricks were subtle enough to not be noticed.
Basically, I don't think railroading is inherently bad. Some groups want to go experience a storyline and others want to explore. The trick is to know what your group is like and to accommodate them appropriately.
"And a week later, they were reseructed." I'm not the only one hearing the u in reserected right?
I mean, the correct spelling, resurrected, has a 'u' in it, so that's not surprising.
I think my sisters would have liked D&D too, if I had the books growing up. They liked playing video games with me, and role playing as kids do.
Gonna be honest, when I play what matters to me ultimately is I'm having fun, I often don't mind if my characters don't get a lot of spot light as long as I'm getting to laugh and play with friends and everyone is having a good time that's what I enjoy most.
"you can make up what you want" nah this was my life
More often than not, the cure for railroading is experience. More importantly, you all enjoyed yourselves.
Blaine - I shall railroad the entire campaign... INTO FUN!!!!
5:06 Timeout, let's be clear about one thing regarding creative writing: Characters don't need backstories to determine what their goals are. In fact, characters don't need backstories at all to be well characterised. Now please don't misunderstand this "don't need" for "should not have/do not profit from having". Backstory alone doesn't inform how a character was affected by their past and how they will react in the future.
In regards to this I urge you to watch the opening of Mulan 1998 (the animated one). The film quickly establishes who Mulan is and how she thinks and behaves. And that's her for the rest of the film. She doesn't get "backstory" in the traditional sense, no flashback scenes, no young to adult time skip (like in the live action) we are introduced to her in the present and follow her actions right after
I’m actually only now playing phandelver lol. I started, get this, the Icewind Dale Frostmaiden module. Talk about hard mode. It did settle my love for rangers though. I recommend that campaign for those who want to play rangers in particular, especially if you actually want to give favored terrain a shot. Pick undead if you want to play with favored enemies though. It will serve you best for some of those encounters. Anyway, yeah I got into Phandelver only recently, almost just past 6 months after I started playing. I’ve joined quite a few campaigns since then and have a good number under my belt before I started but this one was advertised as being new player friendly. I mentioned my experience to the dm though and they said I could still join as I was knew enough and the group had lost their ranger last session and didn’t have a good charisma character. So I went with fey wanderer (which is amazing because you add your wis mod to some of your charisma skills). It worked out and the other players find my red riding hood inspired ranger very cool. She has a good sled dog who they adore, has tamed their obstinate donkey, and plays them music on her flute for long journeys and extra group coin….also keeps them from being surprise rounded lol because I favor perception as my main skill to dump stats and expertise like stuff into (variant ranger calls it some thing else but basically same thing). I plan to add scout rogue to this character later, after getting level 4 (for a feat I want as flavor from her backstory but also helps her out as a human). That will boost her survival and nature checks even more. I already bought her thieves tools to flavor her teaching herself how to use them before I take rogue levels.
4:56. That isn't railroading, that you dealing with the fact that your players have no back story. You have to take more charge when that's the case, otherwise nothing happens.
Honestly, this campaign kind of sounds fun. Just a touch of extra flexibility would make this a very enjoyable experience. I want to give a campaign with respawn mechanics a try someday.
So close to the 100k!
We would love to play a videogame based on it!
actually that sounds like it really was a pretty fun adventure.
Man, this really reminds me of a combo of "Is it wrong to pick up girls on a dungeon" and "re:zero starting life in a new world"
Ngl, it's more tame than my friend's campaigns
That campaign sounds fukin awesome.
In the end everyone had a good time playing DnD, which no matter what technical flaws the campaign may have had is still a successful campaign, well done.
I been waiting for part 2... Now time wait for part 3.
I am extremely new to dnd but I started a homebrew campaign and it seems to going fine everyone is enjoying it
I love the background undertale music, I have a few Spotify playlists dedicated to undertale songs
In my 40 years of playing & DMing, I've found that some groups actually *like* being railroaded to some extent... otherwise they suffer stress from the Tyranny of Choice in a truly open sandboxed world. Whatever works for the group to let them have fun.
Akita reminds me that the tiefling rogue of my own that I’m so fond of spawned from a random Tiefling name generator (except it’s just Akta but close enough)
I love these videos