*Thanks for watching!* Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on setting goals when creating the world space for your RPG. Check out these see through ledges for a more organised GM space from Ultimate Game Makers. Find them here: www.ultimategamemakers.com/ Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.
Constraints turn what would otherwise be an impossible and worrisome task into something that is manageable and fun. Writing down and regularly reviewing your constraints and goal is key.
Gummi Bears would make a good setting, I want to play now. LOL! But yes, setting constraints on a campaign helps it to have a shape. Once you have that shape, you can color it in with details like theme and...gummiberry juice. Look, they've got magic, a high fantasy setting, villains, talking animals; what more could you want?! The Crimson Avenger?! It's all right there!! Ahem. Great video. *starts scribbling notes about gummiberry properties*
This series is quite timely for me; I am running a campaign and designing future adventures based on my players' actions, and your breakdowns are very helpful. Keep up the great work!
Thank you Guy! You giving tiny prompts and examples of how goals create adventures really sparked my own creative juices. I fleshed out the most relevant part of my world (with an offshoot into the bigger world) and how I want to DM for my group in only about 15 minutes when before I had no idea have to start!
I really appreciate the breakdown utilizing goals and constraints, it's so helpful! Wish I had this advice when I started putting together my current campaign, but the great thing is I am applying this as I go now and having great chats with the players as we focus on our goals together. Looking forward to the next video! -Dan
@@oz_jones It was actually my favorite campaign I ever ran. One that I would like to actually do again some day. The setting was long post apocalyptic. Done fully with by the book 3rd edition D&D. So thing recovered in starting area, old city, tech regression, but pretty stable. Locked their continent by a stormy and impossible to cross sea. Nobody knew what caused it because so many generations had passed. The players start as new members of ruins explorers. Straight forward. Go out, find relics and history. Party find one artifact that is first piece on the path of what caused the apocalypse, venturing into lawless areas. Uncovering conspiracies and truth, exploring beyond the veil. Within this is a personal theme I made for the fantasy tech. Where magic is able to be mechanised by crystals which are rifts to the various planes and a core primal magic source. The means to create them lost. Nobody knows this at start and think all the crystal cities, etc is for ornamental because apocalypse caused existing ones to be non functional... ...til the players do some things on their journey. My favorite part of it was this was originally written many years ago, and I wanted to change and contextualize good and evil, chaos and law. The seed the campaign grew from was based on all things containing both energies within. Like a cup filled with oil and water. This brought into the campaign with a major act break where party actually had to face a dilemma of who is actually evil. How it isnt a hard fact, but instead on their own perception. Two sides, both good, both evil as well. It was a shocking moral dilemma for the players when they discovered the truth of the apocalypse.
I've been preparing a fantasy western for a while. I'm currently in a game that will end soon and I'm set to DM next and I've just so excited and terrified.
@@hiigguys7395 Well, just remember the tips given. Do not over plan. Just know your world, and let the players immerse themselves. My two tips: NPC think of as your DM PCs. Dont be afraid to come out of character if players go off and do something you are unprepared for or not ready. There is nothing wrong with letting your players know that you werent expecting them to just up and do something outside of the plot hooks.
@@russelljacob7955 I'm trying very hard not to prepare more XD I have the first session, general world politics, some notable NPCs they might run into one day and the BBEG's end goal. I've already been thrown for a loop when half the party declared they are planning on playing bandits. I guess that first bandit encounter I have planned could go a very different way.
I completely agree with this set of questions, but I would put the game system at the end. What everybody wants gives you constraints for the game system, the other way round you risk ending up with a system that's not very suitable for everyone's goals. For example, if your goal is epic fantasy, the constraints that gives you for the RPG system might be long-term character advancement, high power curve, low permanent mortality. You might choose D&D here, but probably not CoC or Paranoia. I do think you can adapt games out of their core setting. If I wanted to run Gothic horror with ghosts, demons and horrified low power PCs I would consider CoC because the rules give me exactly what I need, I'd just replace the mythos with judeo-christian mythology.
Were you high when you made this comment? What moron would ever choose Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia for epic fantasy? As for the "adapting games out of their core setting" thing, have you ever actually seen a group of players who wanted to do that for anything more than a one-shot? I haven't. I actually tried that once, and it was a total mess.
Exactly! This is how I run CoC - my players love the notion of cosmic horror, they're just not specifically into Lovecraft, so I don't use those trappings, just the mood and tone. I invent the horrors myself, just using CoC as a structure to hang it on cuz I love the system. As a result, my modern-day adventures are focussed on slowly revealing a buried 1930's conspiracy that existed within the Civilian Conservation Corps, involving projects in Oregon. It seems they were being used as cover for installing a series of occult items at selected locations intended for a veil-rending ritual that was never completed. It seems someone today has new ambitions. My group stumbled on the conspiracy by accident and got a few clues and some bruises; as time passes and more has been revealed, they are still not sure just who all is involved or how deep it all goes yet...
I get my players to collaborate with me when making a setting, with a major session zero that uses a 'Players palette' that lists 'wants and don't wants' - discussion continues until agreement is reached. You should discuss the 'Player's palette', Guy, it's a super-powerful tool...
My problem is that whenever i ask these questions it looks like this: Would you like combat? answer: yes Would you like investigation? answer: yes Would you like intrique? answer: yes Would you like dragons? answer: yes Would you like magic? answer: yes Would you like pets? answer: yes Would you like simple gameplay? answer: yes Would you like fully coustomisable character? answer: yes Would you like deep tactical combat? answer: yes Reading this you might think, you are lucky... your players like anything... but in reality they dont.
"We want combat, we want a political campaign that's focused around the PCs, kinda sandboxy. And let's explore relationships. This is what we like!" You just described the perfect Shadowrun group. I WANT THIS GROUP OF PLAYERS!! 🤪 Thx for another helpful video. Have a nice one!
I don't know, that doesn't sound quite right for Shadowrun. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of games that would be great for that, but Shadowrun isn't really designed for it.
@@mattpace1026 Uhm... combat is self-explanatory. Politics = corporations and stuff. PC-focused and sandboxy = one run after the other without metaplot. Relationships = PCs among themselves and with their connections. Perfect grey-suit Shadowrun IMO! 🤪
@@frigginsepone446 And just how do you expect to focus on relationships between the PCs and their connections with no time in-between runs? I mean no malice, but it sounds like you haven't thought this through.
@@mattpace1026 Listen, Matt, no malice as well, BUT I master Shadowrun this way for decades now. Relationship is build during Runs, and of course there is time-in-between. "One run after the other" related to the kind of story telling: most of the time I do just singular Runs without a combining metaplot (sandboxy). That doesn't mean the Runs have to happen back to back. And it doesn't mean there is no player-to-GM or player-to-player communication between sessions.
Great video! Fantastic tips! I am building my own world too. A sandbox with 3 different start points/journey/and ways to discover the secrets of my World. Thx you!
I would 110% Dm or play a gummy bears game, anyone else with me on that? That show was my first intro into medieval fantasy and gave me so many ideas as a dm watching it years later on disney+
Dashing and daring, Courageous and caring, Faithful and friendly, With stories to share. All through the forest, They sing out in chorus, Marching along, As their song fills the air. Gummi Bears!! Bouncing here and there and everywhere. High adventure that's beyond compare. They are the Gummi Bears. Magic and mystery, Are part of their history, Along with the secret, Of gummiberry juice. Their legend is growing, They take pride in knowing, They'll fight for what's right, In whatever they do. Gummi Bears!! Bouncing here and there and everywhere. High adventure that's beyond compare. They are the Gummi Bears. They are the Gummi Bears!! Thanks for kick starting that one in my head. LOL
On the segment of Choosing your TTRPG, and this leads into one of my core problems with Pathfinder 2e. Mechanically the game is pretty awesome! The action economy, character creation, and leveling are all amazing, and I love running/playing with them. Unfortunately the mechanics are just a little too tightly tied to Galerion, I've been trying to build a world there, and I'm constantly running into issues. Bards are hard coded as occult spellcasting, where my own worldbuilding tends to run them as more divine in nature. Good, Evil, Chaos, and Law are also hard-coded into the system as damage types, which I don't really want to include. That and there are way more races than I'm able to build up at once, and people are constantly bugging me to play the ones that are either not ready yet, or I'm holding off for story reasons.
Honestly I agree on the lack of creating everything. Running a game in a homebrew world and at least one kingdom exists solely because a player asked about it
Fit the world pretty perfectly, but I've been focusing mostly on what's relevant to the players with everything outside of that bubble being a few major lynchpins and concepts surrounding them.
Good information, but I would suggest organizing it differently. You already established the the DM must run a game they will enjoy, so the first element should be to lay down the constraints of what you are willing to do. That will narrow RPG systems and form the basis of the GM/ player contract. It you don’t have players you now have a frame work to advertise with. If you have a group you can establish what you are willing to do and then the group can decide if you running the next campaign will be a good fit for everyone.
I agree. For me the order would be to think about what I personally want or don't want, then ask the people I might play with if they like any of that and what their preferences are. Unless one of those preferences is explicitly for a specific ruleset I would leave the system choice for last, informed by what I and everybody else want to do in the game.
constraits really are usefull in campaing designin. makes it so much better when you multiple things to emphasise and dont just repeat button when designin next adventure.
Guy kind of gets at this in his video, but one of the ideas I subscribe to is: pick the system that encourages the behaviour you want. If you want swashbuckling action, a system that mechanically rewards ridiculous stunts like swinging from chandeliers will help more than one that applies penalties for the extra difficulty. If you want grim and gritty, a system that gives wound penalties can help tension more than one where you're fine until you fall over.
In a way DnD is a post-apocalyptic game. After all, you are delwing into ruins of much older civilizations that have been destroyed by whatever force and these newer civilizations have been built on top of their ruins.
the "i said fantasy or scifi" example didn't make sense -- whether a campaign is apocalyptic is unrelated to whether it is scifi, fantasy, or neither. A fantasy game in an apocalyptic setting is completely compatible with the constraints the DM layed out.
Question: i like epick, but if you start epick, i allways failt to move forawrd. My games tend to very quickly get to the point where the players are fighting with dragons, and saveing the world etc... but the problem with this is that then I dont now how to contiune.... so... what comes after you have slayn the monster, got ritch, saved the world, got famous...?
I'll be honest with you, i prefer to run episodic games. Every session is it's own self contained quest, with it's own self contained theme, and that means that the campaign can live on indefinitely. Which is normally what i shoot for. I kind of prefer that as a player too, because that basically means there's no pressure. When the world is ending and you've got a deadline to meet but the rest of party wants to spend a entire 4 hour session on a shopping spree that just irritates the shit out of me. Priorities people! Episodic campaign you can have them do all their shopping between sessions and then just do the story. There's also no need to talk to everybody because the goal is pretty clear, and you don't need to worry about unsolvable puzzles or not finding key pieces of lore. I've seen an entire campaign completely derailed because nobody in the party could meet a dc 15 investigation check. Then the dm had the nerve to complain about it afterwards. Well, if you want us to find something we need to progress in the story don't leave it up to rng.
Yup, episodic games in a persistent world is what I'm running now. No more worrying about "but Mike can't make it this week", now you just go through the Adventure without Michaelas the Bard present. Not being available 1 week doesn't mean the campaign is on hold, it means you miss out on that adventure. Then the table develops a group of people who show up because they want to play, and anyone lukewarm on your game can just not show. Plus, it let's the party dynamic change over time, people can try different characters if they want, it's more fun overall. Most of my campaign failures have been from trying to force it to be a LotR style intensive campaign, and moving towards episodic games in a campaign world in the style of the Grand Marches has been a big improvement.
haha that would be absolutely not my thing^^ and unsolvable puzzles have something to do with beeing a bad DM and not with the stile of adventure. If they need to find that clue to make progress don't let them roll.
@@heikesiegl2640 Different strokes for different folks. there is nothing wrong with having a goal in the campaign. However, i am a very goal oriented person. So when i have a task that needs to be performed i put finishing that task ahead of everything else. In the case of a game that includes roleplay and other niceties, which is why i hate the shopping sessions and the talking to everybody who isn't relevant to the plot...unless they're gag characters and those are just fun to be around. btw, i don't have a problem with shopping in game, but i think when you go shopping you should have a list of everything you want to buy and everything you want to sell and get it over with as quickly as possible.
You talked a lot about how a goal relates to adventures, but the world building aspect felt really thin.. I still don't know how to apply most of this to actual worldbuilding.. Or does setting not equal worldbuilding.....?
I know it's just an example, but it needs to be said: If you think that you may as well be playing d20 modern if you're playing call of Cthulhu without Cthulhu, then you have no idea how mechanics shape story and play. D20 modern was always a heroic game with levels and hit points and characters who rapidly become larger than life. CoC is about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. Even without any horror or supernatural elements the mechanics themselves reinforce a dark and bleak world. Characters in call of Cthulhu are fragile, only learn through failure, and are prone to loss. Every encounter is potentially deadly, and requires a great deal of consideration before you even make the choice to engage. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with d20 modern, but it is not Call of cthulhu. I had a lot of fun with that system playing the kind of games that it was designed to play back in its day, but I would never use it for the same kind of game that I would use COC for. There's a reason that line lasted for 4 years, and call of Cthulhu has been going strong for more than 40.
I completely agree. Guy is a D&D guy who is slowly starting to see the wider world, I think he's still in the process of seeing how the choice of game system impacts so much more than just the setting.
@@thrar Yeah, he does really good work, but I don't want to give all the new GMs out there looking for advice the wrong impression because of an implication that I don't believe he actually intended to make.
@@JeramyWare Right. I do like how he's generally acknowledging that people might play something that's not D&D. Much better than the sort of people who go "Oh, you want horror? D&D is great for that, let's play Curse of Strahd!".
If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Different game systems have very different strengths. A setting can be one of those but there are many other distinctions. For example, visceral horror, epic fantasy, or galactic exploration all have different requirements for what sort of focus you'd want from your game system.
@@thrar I wasn't expecting my attempt at a humorous shout out to GURPS to get a rebuttal. I agree, there's no reason that an RPG system other than the greatest one ever devised couldn't be adequate. Seriously though, I think you are right about the flavor that the game mechanics can encourage and also agree with your other comment that you can adapt systems to different settings if you and your players find certain mechanics inspirational to the experience you're looking for.
Either I am the perfect Gm or you just waffle on too much without saying much. Most of the time I get to the end of your videos and you've said nothing I don't already do. I keep waiting for this golden tidbit of wisdom you may have, but it's always flat. You take 15mins and more to say so little.
"If you choose D&D..." then you might as well stab your eye out with a rusty melon scoop. D&D has become boring and near painful and too expensive to play.
*Thanks for watching!* Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on setting goals when creating the world space for your RPG.
Check out these see through ledges for a more organised GM space from Ultimate Game Makers. Find them here: www.ultimategamemakers.com/
Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.
Constraints turn what would otherwise be an impossible and worrisome task into something that is manageable and fun. Writing down and regularly reviewing your constraints and goal is key.
I'm listening to this while procrastinating actually prepping my session. Love the content Guy, I hope you're doing well.
We all do :)
Yes
Forreal though...it's a problem lol
Gummi Bears would make a good setting, I want to play now. LOL! But yes, setting constraints on a campaign helps it to have a shape. Once you have that shape, you can color it in with details like theme and...gummiberry juice. Look, they've got magic, a high fantasy setting, villains, talking animals; what more could you want?! The Crimson Avenger?! It's all right there!! Ahem. Great video. *starts scribbling notes about gummiberry properties*
All right, NOW I get your point about constraints. Lol. I needed the fleshing out. Well done, chap.
This series is quite timely for me; I am running a campaign and designing future adventures based on my players' actions, and your breakdowns are very helpful. Keep up the great work!
Always watch your videos when I'm working on my stuff. Really helps with idea building.
I only found this channel two days ago and im already in love i cannot WAIT to use these tips in my current game
Thank you Guy! You giving tiny prompts and examples of how goals create adventures really sparked my own creative juices. I fleshed out the most relevant part of my world (with an offshoot into the bigger world) and how I want to DM for my group in only about 15 minutes when before I had no idea have to start!
I really appreciate the breakdown utilizing goals and constraints, it's so helpful! Wish I had this advice when I started putting together my current campaign, but the great thing is I am applying this as I go now and having great chats with the players as we focus on our goals together. Looking forward to the next video!
-Dan
Loving your content my man, and bonus points for the unironic use of “booyakasha” in the sponsored segment lol
...You also can see if you can combine genres.
"I want to play apocalyptic"
I had a campaign that was fantasy apocalyptic...
Yeah, you can totally do apocalytic fantasy.
@@oz_jones It was actually my favorite campaign I ever ran. One that I would like to actually do again some day.
The setting was long post apocalyptic. Done fully with by the book 3rd edition D&D. So thing recovered in starting area, old city, tech regression, but pretty stable. Locked their continent by a stormy and impossible to cross sea.
Nobody knew what caused it because so many generations had passed. The players start as new members of ruins explorers. Straight forward. Go out, find relics and history. Party find one artifact that is first piece on the path of what caused the apocalypse, venturing into lawless areas. Uncovering conspiracies and truth, exploring beyond the veil.
Within this is a personal theme I made for the fantasy tech. Where magic is able to be mechanised by crystals which are rifts to the various planes and a core primal magic source. The means to create them lost. Nobody knows this at start and think all the crystal cities, etc is for ornamental because apocalypse caused existing ones to be non functional...
...til the players do some things on their journey.
My favorite part of it was this was originally written many years ago, and I wanted to change and contextualize good and evil, chaos and law. The seed the campaign grew from was based on all things containing both energies within. Like a cup filled with oil and water. This brought into the campaign with a major act break where party actually had to face a dilemma of who is actually evil. How it isnt a hard fact, but instead on their own perception. Two sides, both good, both evil as well. It was a shocking moral dilemma for the players when they discovered the truth of the apocalypse.
I've been preparing a fantasy western for a while. I'm currently in a game that will end soon and I'm set to DM next and I've just so excited and terrified.
@@hiigguys7395 Well, just remember the tips given. Do not over plan. Just know your world, and let the players immerse themselves. My two tips:
NPC think of as your DM PCs.
Dont be afraid to come out of character if players go off and do something you are unprepared for or not ready. There is nothing wrong with letting your players know that you werent expecting them to just up and do something outside of the plot hooks.
@@russelljacob7955 I'm trying very hard not to prepare more XD I have the first session, general world politics, some notable NPCs they might run into one day and the BBEG's end goal. I've already been thrown for a loop when half the party declared they are planning on playing bandits. I guess that first bandit encounter I have planned could go a very different way.
That gamemaker stuff is amazing! Stuff I want that I didnt know I needed, but I need! ... Now if only I had in person game again.
I completely agree with this set of questions, but I would put the game system at the end.
What everybody wants gives you constraints for the game system, the other way round you risk ending up with a system that's not very suitable for everyone's goals.
For example, if your goal is epic fantasy, the constraints that gives you for the RPG system might be long-term character advancement, high power curve, low permanent mortality. You might choose D&D here, but probably not CoC or Paranoia.
I do think you can adapt games out of their core setting. If I wanted to run Gothic horror with ghosts, demons and horrified low power PCs I would consider CoC because the rules give me exactly what I need, I'd just replace the mythos with judeo-christian mythology.
Were you high when you made this comment? What moron would ever choose Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia for epic fantasy?
As for the "adapting games out of their core setting" thing, have you ever actually seen a group of players who wanted to do that for anything more than a one-shot? I haven't.
I actually tried that once, and it was a total mess.
Exactly! This is how I run CoC - my players love the notion of cosmic horror, they're just not specifically into Lovecraft, so I don't use those trappings, just the mood and tone. I invent the horrors myself, just using CoC as a structure to hang it on cuz I love the system.
As a result, my modern-day adventures are focussed on slowly revealing a buried 1930's conspiracy that existed within the Civilian Conservation Corps, involving projects in Oregon. It seems they were being used as cover for installing a series of occult items at selected locations intended for a veil-rending ritual that was never completed. It seems someone today has new ambitions.
My group stumbled on the conspiracy by accident and got a few clues and some bruises; as time passes and more has been revealed, they are still not sure just who all is involved or how deep it all goes yet...
Great video! I‘m currently developing my own setting for a campaign I want to run in the future and your videos help me a lot.
This was really helpful. It made me think a lot about the goals and constraints i am setting in my games
I get my players to collaborate with me when making a setting, with a major session zero that uses a 'Players palette' that lists 'wants and don't wants' - discussion continues until agreement is reached. You should discuss the 'Player's palette', Guy, it's a super-powerful tool...
I've just figured out that versions of Mutant Year Zero's system works for seemingly everything unless you want complicated magic.
My problem is that whenever i ask these questions it looks like this:
Would you like combat? answer: yes
Would you like investigation? answer: yes
Would you like intrique? answer: yes
Would you like dragons? answer: yes
Would you like magic? answer: yes
Would you like pets? answer: yes
Would you like simple gameplay? answer: yes
Would you like fully coustomisable character? answer: yes
Would you like deep tactical combat? answer: yes
Reading this you might think, you are lucky... your players like anything... but in reality they dont.
"We want combat, we want a political campaign that's focused around the PCs, kinda sandboxy. And let's explore relationships. This is what we like!"
You just described the perfect Shadowrun group. I WANT THIS GROUP OF PLAYERS!! 🤪
Thx for another helpful video. Have a nice one!
I don't know, that doesn't sound quite right for Shadowrun.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of games that would be great for that, but Shadowrun isn't really designed for it.
@@mattpace1026 Uhm... combat is self-explanatory.
Politics = corporations and stuff.
PC-focused and sandboxy = one run after the other without metaplot.
Relationships = PCs among themselves and with their connections.
Perfect grey-suit Shadowrun IMO! 🤪
@@frigginsepone446 And just how do you expect to focus on relationships between the PCs and their connections with no time in-between runs? I mean no malice, but it sounds like you haven't thought this through.
@@mattpace1026 Listen, Matt, no malice as well, BUT I master Shadowrun this way for decades now.
Relationship is build during Runs, and of course there is time-in-between. "One run after the other" related to the kind of story telling: most of the time I do just singular Runs without a combining metaplot (sandboxy).
That doesn't mean the Runs have to happen back to back. And it doesn't mean there is no player-to-GM or player-to-player communication between sessions.
@@frigginsepone446 Oh, okay, I get it now, I think. I just misunderstood some things. Not used to hearing about campaigns/adventures like that.
I just love ❤ your systematic engineer approach to RPGs! 😂 In fact I have quite similar approach in my professional life.
Great video! Fantastic tips! I am building my own world too. A sandbox with 3 different start points/journey/and ways to discover the secrets of my World. Thx you!
Your organized approach really speaks to me. Thank you!
Extremely nice video again ! Make us know when the book is released because I really want to buy it.
Thank you! You can pre-order the book here: bit.ly/3EDNbmK
I would 110% Dm or play a gummy bears game, anyone else with me on that? That show was my first intro into medieval fantasy and gave me so many ideas as a dm watching it years later on disney+
That show was so awesome! You can literally pluck entire adventures straight from it. I've done it with great success.
Dashing and daring, Courageous and caring, Faithful and friendly, With stories to share. All through the forest, They sing out in chorus, Marching along, As their song fills the air.
Gummi Bears!! Bouncing here and there and everywhere. High adventure that's beyond compare. They are the Gummi Bears.
Magic and mystery, Are part of their history, Along with the secret, Of gummiberry juice. Their legend is growing, They take pride in knowing, They'll fight for what's right, In whatever they do.
Gummi Bears!! Bouncing here and there and everywhere. High adventure that's beyond compare. They are the Gummi Bears. They are the Gummi Bears!!
Thanks for kick starting that one in my head. LOL
On the segment of Choosing your TTRPG, and this leads into one of my core problems with Pathfinder 2e. Mechanically the game is pretty awesome! The action economy, character creation, and leveling are all amazing, and I love running/playing with them. Unfortunately the mechanics are just a little too tightly tied to Galerion, I've been trying to build a world there, and I'm constantly running into issues.
Bards are hard coded as occult spellcasting, where my own worldbuilding tends to run them as more divine in nature. Good, Evil, Chaos, and Law are also hard-coded into the system as damage types, which I don't really want to include. That and there are way more races than I'm able to build up at once, and people are constantly bugging me to play the ones that are either not ready yet, or I'm holding off for story reasons.
I like the Age system for a de-dnd-ified fantasy system.
I like the Age system for a de-dnd-ified fantasy system.
another great episode! thanks!
Honestly I agree on the lack of creating everything. Running a game in a homebrew world and at least one kingdom exists solely because a player asked about it
Fit the world pretty perfectly, but I've been focusing mostly on what's relevant to the players with everything outside of that bubble being a few major lynchpins and concepts surrounding them.
Great new series, guy
I am a teacher at a high school. I am creating a table top role playing class. I am mining these videos for lessons
Thanks, Guy! Now I want to create an apocalyptic game in the Gummie Bear universe.
Great as always Guy, inspired me to get going on my next adventure
Call of Brian is just Monty Python’s Life of Brian with more cultists, tentacles, and madness.
Player 1: I like combat!
Player 2: I like politics!
Player 3: I like interpersonal roleplay!
GM: Political morally grey violence!
So your settings is Earth?
Good information, but I would suggest organizing it differently. You already established the the DM must run a game they will enjoy, so the first element should be to lay down the constraints of what you are willing to do. That will narrow RPG systems and form the basis of the GM/ player contract. It you don’t have players you now have a frame work to advertise with. If you have a group you can establish what you are willing to do and then the group can decide if you running the next campaign will be a good fit for everyone.
I agree. For me the order would be to think about what I personally want or don't want, then ask the people I might play with if they like any of that and what their preferences are.
Unless one of those preferences is explicitly for a specific ruleset I would leave the system choice for last, informed by what I and everybody else want to do in the game.
You're the best, man!
My goal was to have characters/ players that had goals in a sandbox type setting. Almost complete and utter failure.
Exploring an exotic or fascinating world is a possible goal - I’d be interested in your approach to world building
constraits really are usefull in campaing designin. makes it so much better when you multiple things to emphasise and dont just repeat button when designin next adventure.
Guy kind of gets at this in his video, but one of the ideas I subscribe to is: pick the system that encourages the behaviour you want. If you want swashbuckling action, a system that mechanically rewards ridiculous stunts like swinging from chandeliers will help more than one that applies penalties for the extra difficulty. If you want grim and gritty, a system that gives wound penalties can help tension more than one where you're fine until you fall over.
looking slim, how did you do with covid. I stacked on. Keep up whatever you are doing. Oh and great video. :)
In a way DnD is a post-apocalyptic game. After all, you are delwing into ruins of much older civilizations that have been destroyed by whatever force and these newer civilizations have been built on top of their ruins.
You have to be "setting" yourself up for success
the "i said fantasy or scifi" example didn't make sense -- whether a campaign is apocalyptic is unrelated to whether it is scifi, fantasy, or neither. A fantasy game in an apocalyptic setting is completely compatible with the constraints the DM layed out.
Question: i like epick, but if you start epick, i allways failt to move forawrd. My games tend to very quickly get to the point where the players are fighting with dragons, and saveing the world etc... but the problem with this is that then I dont now how to contiune.... so... what comes after you have slayn the monster, got ritch, saved the world, got famous...?
The cosmic horror, Brian.
"In his scummy apartment near the docks, Stoned Brian lies dreaming,"
Why does Guy's mustache appear to be asymmetrical?! I can't stop staring at it while watching and It's bugging the heck out of me! lol
Made me remember Gummi Bears. I've completely forgot about them.
Okay but apocalyptic fantasy sounds awesome
I'll be honest with you, i prefer to run episodic games. Every session is it's own self contained quest, with it's own self contained theme, and that means that the campaign can live on indefinitely. Which is normally what i shoot for. I kind of prefer that as a player too, because that basically means there's no pressure. When the world is ending and you've got a deadline to meet but the rest of party wants to spend a entire 4 hour session on a shopping spree that just irritates the shit out of me. Priorities people! Episodic campaign you can have them do all their shopping between sessions and then just do the story. There's also no need to talk to everybody because the goal is pretty clear, and you don't need to worry about unsolvable puzzles or not finding key pieces of lore. I've seen an entire campaign completely derailed because nobody in the party could meet a dc 15 investigation check. Then the dm had the nerve to complain about it afterwards. Well, if you want us to find something we need to progress in the story don't leave it up to rng.
Yup, episodic games in a persistent world is what I'm running now. No more worrying about "but Mike can't make it this week", now you just go through the Adventure without Michaelas the Bard present. Not being available 1 week doesn't mean the campaign is on hold, it means you miss out on that adventure. Then the table develops a group of people who show up because they want to play, and anyone lukewarm on your game can just not show. Plus, it let's the party dynamic change over time, people can try different characters if they want, it's more fun overall.
Most of my campaign failures have been from trying to force it to be a LotR style intensive campaign, and moving towards episodic games in a campaign world in the style of the Grand Marches has been a big improvement.
haha that would be absolutely not my thing^^
and unsolvable puzzles have something to do with beeing a bad DM and not with the stile of adventure. If they need to find that clue to make progress don't let them roll.
@@heikesiegl2640 Different strokes for different folks. there is nothing wrong with having a goal in the campaign. However, i am a very goal oriented person. So when i have a task that needs to be performed i put finishing that task ahead of everything else. In the case of a game that includes roleplay and other niceties, which is why i hate the shopping sessions and the talking to everybody who isn't relevant to the plot...unless they're gag characters and those are just fun to be around. btw, i don't have a problem with shopping in game, but i think when you go shopping you should have a list of everything you want to buy and everything you want to sell and get it over with as quickly as possible.
You talked a lot about how a goal relates to adventures, but the world building aspect felt really thin.. I still don't know how to apply most of this to actual worldbuilding.. Or does setting not equal worldbuilding.....?
I know it's just an example, but it needs to be said: If you think that you may as well be playing d20 modern if you're playing call of Cthulhu without Cthulhu, then you have no idea how mechanics shape story and play. D20 modern was always a heroic game with levels and hit points and characters who rapidly become larger than life.
CoC is about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. Even without any horror or supernatural elements the mechanics themselves reinforce a dark and bleak world. Characters in call of Cthulhu are fragile, only learn through failure, and are prone to loss. Every encounter is potentially deadly, and requires a great deal of consideration before you even make the choice to engage.
Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with d20 modern, but it is not Call of cthulhu. I had a lot of fun with that system playing the kind of games that it was designed to play back in its day, but I would never use it for the same kind of game that I would use COC for. There's a reason that line lasted for 4 years, and call of Cthulhu has been going strong for more than 40.
I completely agree.
Guy is a D&D guy who is slowly starting to see the wider world, I think he's still in the process of seeing how the choice of game system impacts so much more than just the setting.
@@thrar Yeah, he does really good work, but I don't want to give all the new GMs out there looking for advice the wrong impression because of an implication that I don't believe he actually intended to make.
@@JeramyWare Right. I do like how he's generally acknowledging that people might play something that's not D&D.
Much better than the sort of people who go "Oh, you want horror? D&D is great for that, let's play Curse of Strahd!".
It seems like the Ultimate game makers website is down! :(
A y o hopefully gonna be handy for my superhero campaign lol
Shocker: I was already following this to some degree
Oh well then Fantasy........ but can it be apocolyptic fantasy?
Damn, Peter.
Okay, so listen... I understand Brian isn't the greatest name, but comparing me to an elder evil is just going TOO FAR! 😂
18:08 booya ka'sha!
NOT THE DISCOVERY UNIVERSE!!!!
8:40 I'll just leave this here: ruclips.net/video/Oqk_fN0NRgg/видео.html
If only there was a general universal system for role playing you could use no matter the setting. 😜
Fnord. Always fnord.
There's three, actually.
@@PsionNovastar FATE, GURPS and whats the third?
If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Different game systems have very different strengths. A setting can be one of those but there are many other distinctions.
For example, visceral horror, epic fantasy, or galactic exploration all have different requirements for what sort of focus you'd want from your game system.
@@thrar I wasn't expecting my attempt at a humorous shout out to GURPS to get a rebuttal. I agree, there's no reason that an RPG system other than the greatest one ever devised couldn't be adequate.
Seriously though, I think you are right about the flavor that the game mechanics can encourage and also agree with your other comment that you can adapt systems to different settings if you and your players find certain mechanics inspirational to the experience you're looking for.
Notification squad!
Cha'alt!
Gummi Bears you say... 🤔
Tell me more!
Somebody called?
BOOYAKASHA!
No goal?
Booyakasha? OK 👍
I swear he said "ledgers" not "ledges". I still don't know what he was calling them or how it was spelled
Either I am the perfect Gm or you just waffle on too much without saying much.
Most of the time I get to the end of your videos and you've said nothing I don't already do. I keep waiting for this golden tidbit of wisdom you may have, but it's always flat. You take 15mins and more to say so little.
All that means is that you are not the target audience. You need the advanced edition.
"If you choose D&D..." then you might as well stab your eye out with a rusty melon scoop. D&D has become boring and near painful and too expensive to play.