Let me know what YOU think the top DM mistake is! 🔴Don't forget to enter my Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes GIVEAWAY if you haven't already: gleam.io/g42XL/mordenkainens-tome-of-foes
I'm great at improve a little too good I improvise side quest in a sandbox and it works out, I can be in combat with players do simple math roll dice give in depth description of how each attack lands and missed with description of blood and environment change with enough time to plan the reward next NPCs and a whole side quest, I improve better active cause I inspire my other ideas.
Oh yeah, I think of this as "rolling back the screen." Letting players in on the "secret stuff" that only the DM knows can often spoil the game experience. Question for you: Do you mind it that the DM might fudge dice rolls from time to time? Or is it the telling you about it part that you don't like?
LOL - Cool. I almost always roll in the open, but every so often there is a fudge here and there. It's always to the player's benefit, too. Either to make the story more interesting, or to make a combat more engaging and dramatic. Never to screw them over. I'm my players' biggest fans.
To me, a D.M. that is proud of killing his player characters is worse than the Murder Hobo's that D.M.s always complain about. It's like that one kid that goes around smashing the other kid's toys simply because their the oldest.
Every time my party steps foot in a tavern for the sole purpose of eating and resting , the npc barkeep will give us a whole menu of meals we can order, a listing of room prices, how many beds to a room, then we’ve gotta sit and wait for our food which prompts roleplay that goes on way too long, so we end up spending 4 hours not progressing the story at all. Then at the end he’ll tell us “lol I didn’t expect you guys to take so long.” Gee I wonder who’s fault that is
Lol - Totally. There's nothing wrong with moving through the mundane stuff so players can experience the exciting parts of D&D. What that is will vary from group to group, but 4 hours roleplaying being at an inn probably appeals to very few players, I feel.
Every once in a while a detailed Inn can be fun. Hopefully the Menu is a handout that takes about 3 seconds to interact with or ignore if you're the type of player that just doesn't care. Personally, I like knowing that the special of the day is Mindflayer Filet on Toast and moving on quickly from there, who else is in the tavern and what I can learn from them?
I once had a DM that took half of our play time because he was unprepared and the other half because he socialised so much... Besides, as a player, in call of cthulhu, he arrived at our first game and didn't have a character and chatted so much that it took THREE HOURS to start the game!!! And the worst part of it is that for a while he was the only DM in our school group, until I had anough and started being a DM based on everything I didn't like in his games
Yeah, that crap sucks. I mean, at that point, you're barely even playing the game, so what's the point? You know, it's funny, I wonder how many DMs were created because disgruntled players were like, "I can run a better game than this!" And then they head off to run their own game. I wonder, too, how much his excessive socialization was to blow time because he wasn't prepared to run the game? You know, a stall tactic.
Not a sin but beware lifting the veil. If your players get wise that you are just super awesome ar winging it, they may actually start to lose some their enchantment with your game.
Agreed! Lifting the veil or "rolling back the screen" as I call it should only be done tactfully. For instance, to resolve a conflict or misunderstanding.
Yep, a DM I had, started the very first session sitting across from us crosslegged with no books, no notes, no maps, no screen. NOTHING as he went through the adventure and "dungeon". The dungeon rooms spaced very far apart and travelling down many stairs so that offten each floor had a single room, obviously so that if we mapped it, there could not be any overlapping since he didn't have a map in his head even. It was obvious he was making it up as he went, so we had no investment in the game. Any "clues" we knew were made up on the spot and he'd just try to tie them into something later, so we couldn't care about trying to figure out what they meant, as we knew he hadn't decided what they meant either. Ie they meant nothing. A good DM can wing an entire adventure/session. But they should never let it show that they are doing so. I've used a random generator to create an inn with a name and menu, personality for the barkeep and several adventure hooks and did it in such a way that it looked like I had all that in my notes.
Years ago i actually planned for 30 minutes of social time pregame, and we would hang out and socialize (BS) after as well. The game time was pretty focused.
I was just about to suggest this one as "the Downright Creepy DM." This idiot plays out all his pre-pubescent rage/sex fantasies on the party. The funny thing here is that the DM in question is rarely pre-pubescent. Not only are female characters likely to be sexually assaulted, but even males. (Females highly more likely.) When my character needs to have a secret list (pre-written and folded on top of the table) of her precautions in the case of sexual assault, things have gone WAY too far. And how sad when the player takes these expectations into the NEXT group they come across, once again expecting their character to be molested. A creepy idiot like this lost me one of my favorite players. I was barely 20 and very shy. Robbie was a sweet and surprisingly innocent 14 yr old, son of friends. Creepy DM decided it was his turn to DM and then led us through a scenario that included whips and chains and other creepiness. My fault was being young, inexperienced and struck like a deer in the headlights. I should have stood up at the table and yelled, "Enough! You're fired as a DM" Instead I was speechless. Result: Robbie, one of our most involved, creative and intelligent players was no longer allowed to play with us. Creepy DM got kicked right away, once the bunch of us managed to get over our stun, but it was too late for Robbie. And yes, at least in the "bad old days" female PC/player sexual assault happened in huge numbers. I got away easy. I have spoken with numerous other girl gamers who got it way worse than I ever did, including being physically assaulted IRL, not just their characters..
I HATE adversarial DMs. (Or killoffs, as I like to call them.) Often times, there is no flavor to the story, the game is boring, and the character I spent TWO TO FOUR HOURS MAKING dies in the first thirty minutes. It sucks. Especially in this encounter: The party was in an elven village. The leader of which, accused us of working with an evil cult. To which, the elves attacked us. I was a druid. I turned into an earth elemental and started to try to defend myself. And what happened? THE DM MADE MY ALLIGNMENT CHANGE AND STRIPPED ME OF MY DRUID'S POWERS! Needless to say, I don't play with that DM anymore.
@@charlottewalnut3118 either homebrewed or an earlier version of DnD... early versions had a significant number of rules based on alignment, though I can't remember losing powers in an alignment shift unless it was something like a Paladin.
Character creation should never take more than ten minutes: pick a name, age, race, and gender, roll some stats, pick a class and go! Heck, for my games, players aren't even allowed to roll stats or choose a class until _after_ we have started roleplaying.
@@detta5497 Which card was that? That sounds really interesting! I absolutely want to run the Deck of Many Things, but I'm worried about it going wrong.
My group has about 5-6 active players (that includes me), but 8 in total. Me and another guy, let’s call him Bob, are usually DM’s, because everyone else is either lazy or bad at improvising and just railroads the hell out of our games. Now I, as a DM, I’m not sure if this is a flex, or if I’m bad at DMing, but what I do is I just kind of keep players engaged with constant quests. It goes something like this: 1. Explore a new area 2. Find out something about the main, main lore. 3. Get Escort missions, chests, and more. 4. Have encounters when the players start getting comfortable enough with loot and gear. 5. Fight the enemies. 6. Get to the main part of the main area. 7. Roleplay, and boss. I find myself being a very, VERY kind DM. I will get to why I am like that, but pretty much whenever I impose any extreme form of challenge, the most I will let them do first and foremost is a short rest, but before that I will say something like “You sense immense danger behind this door. Guys, I am not holding back as a DM. Are you absolutely sure you’re ready?” It is only then I begin to kind of up the difficulty. Back to Bob. He is number 1 on this video’s list. He showed us weapons in a shop? They’re cursed, and we unleash an Arch Lich. We took a long rest? Ancient Black Dragon. We went to visit a druid for the tiniest bit about a character’s backstory? A massive eldritch being that knows Meteor Swarm. We have Action Surge and Extra Attack? “Suddenly, you feel like you Action Surge, neither your extra attack works.” Every. Single. Time. We. Do. Anything. We. Die. The ONE TIME we had a relaxing session was when I SPECIFICALLY begged to in Bob’s DM’s, which we did, and right after that session, he said it will be real bad now. Keep in mind, we are all level 6-7 characters, and this happens every session. Nobody cares much except our rules lawyer who hates every funny thing that happens and everything that isn’t serious, and everything that *is* serious but bends the rules immediately results in him shouting and being angry, then complaining at 1 am about the fact that he has a whole worksheet to do on math in 2 days about trigonometry. Needless to say, we exclude the rules lawyer from my campaign. So I just kind of wanna know: is it bad that I inform my players of challenge, even tho they have more fun knowing when the challenge approaches and when it’s just good fun, or is it better what Bob does where he just has this stupidly difficult and, at times, seemingly unfair campaign, and we all just say “Well first of all, it’s Bob so we will all f*cking die, second off do we even need it?” We have one chaotic evil rogue, and they are usually the only person to ever do anything even remotely dangerous, if it ends poorly, our rules lawyer just starts yapping away (he a lawful good paladin, he cares only about having the strongest possible character at every point of the game) about how I TOLD U IT’S DANGEROUS AAAAA If it’s fine he just angrily grunts and when we ask why he’s angry he’s like I’M NOT ANGRY AAAAAAA So yeah… if you’re still here, I thank you very, very much for reading through my rant.
About being prepared: I currently play in a small group (3 PC + DM) and 2 of us - me included - managed to get captured by slavers in the last session... and im just suuuper exited about the next session :D
They're ok types of favoritism, Like, the DM just liking a player character without giving them special perks. Also, how do I get player to certain places without giving them quests or something like that?
To get a player somewhere... So giving them quests would work, but you could also place something enticing there. Maybe something to do with their backstory. They could hear about it in the tavern. Also think of what motivates your players. Some of mine are motivated by loot, so if I want them to go to a specific place, I could play to their motivation.
FourElemental one thing I’ve seen done was a festival that gave/sold items of varying usefulness that was only available for a certain time @ that place
The biggest one that happened to me is when a DM doesn't let you play the character the way you want to because reasons. For example, I was playing a Monk who scouts, I was a Shadow Monk, and i had the Alert feat. All i wanted to do, all i was built to do, was scout and report back. My DM didn't like this, didn't like that i was scouting ambushes and traps, and didn't like that i wanted to play ahead. What did he do about this? He said, "As you round the corner, there are hundreds of guards that stop to turn and stare at you." I was like, oh okay, I don't get to rolls stealth or anything? I guess I should go back and tell the party. A Shadow Monk with +5 on stealth doesn't get to roll. He then says, "The nearest guards grab you and attack you." and rolls 4 grapple attacks. I'm a monk with 18 AC (standard stuff). I'm still alive, but i'm like, "okay, i take the dodge action, and sprint away. He says, "As you turn around you realize you're surrounded by hundreds of guards," and rolls every die he owns. Out of character i ask, "hey man wtf..." He says, "I'm tired of you going off on your own, there are consequences for doing that." I said, "you mean scouting? you don't know how to DM a character scouting ahead?" Needless to say, I don't want to play with him anymore. He's my best friends husband, and He's difficult to be around.
Allowing someone to be an adversarial player is probably the worst mistake possible . Giving one player a license to be a jerk to the rest of the players will never end well.
Have to admit I have a favorite players but only because they roleplay their characters well and even to the death. I normally award them with extra roleplay xp (50 xp per rp tally) but never by giving them op magic items or fudging rolls for them.
My favorite large group solution was the DM who had two groups-- one running as an evil party, the other as a good party. He essentially did one set of prep, with one campaign-- and the npc's in each game being the pc's of the other. Eventually they found out and just combined it into one big game.
@Stygian Eons At first he wasn't saying anything to the other party, they thought they were in their own group and all their npc's (aka other party) was just the DM. Afterwards, they were all at the same table playing against each other.
Once again, solid list! In particular, I like that you actually say there is a time to kick a person out. I have seen a lot of videos suggesting that whatever is going on is somehow actually on the DM, basically, no matter what. There are players who are looking to create needless problems, alphagame everyone (including the DM), and intentionally do really dumb things (which isn't role playing). I think there is an attitude that the DM (or GM) should always be expected to make some accommodation for that individual, I really don't agree. I think you are bang on correct on that; there is a time to just say, "this isn't working out, let's go our separate ways." Hopefully, it can be done in an amicable manner, but... you know...
Yes, totally. Some players are just...bad. If a player is ruining everyone else's fun, why should everyone be expected to sacrifice their Saturday to put up with that? If things can't be resolved, then the player needs to go. (Otherwise the GOOD players start leaving. Lol)
@@theDMLair Agreed, there has to be a limit, basically. But, where people do or do not draw the line has been odd in my experience. You can only really manage yourself is important to learn.
I had a dungeon master give a guy he liked over 45min of time to play while the rest of us plsyed for 15 min out of an hour... Sitting through 5h of that... Also the guy had to always be the leader although he is incompetent af... The thing that made me leave were super hard empty dungeons. I didn't explore a dungeon for 5h just to find 3 copper (i rolled a nat 20 on searching the treasure room). And now i still have a dm who again plays favorites but at least the dungeons r full
I often joke about relishing the in game death of characters in 5ed dnd but I'm not totally serious about it. Most times I'm just as invested in the characters created by players as they are. I've felt heartache due to a player death in game many times. The only reason I joke about the fact that I cherish PC deaths is because the occasion is very rare! There are so many available opportunities for pcs to return from death in 5ed dnd that dying only happens when huge mistakes are made or when the stakes climb so high the result becomes meaningful
I had a mixture of the favoritism and adversarial DM happen to a group I ironically enough made. Swapped the role of DM unto a friend who I though could handle it fair enough, and I was proven very much wrong as soon as the favorite showed up, and even a bit beforehand. He made his big bad too immortal to kill and tried to make the morals of his bad guy super complex that can't be put into the alignment chart....except his plan was to kill everyone to piss off his divine mother for the fact his mate died. Said villain was also one of the first dragons to boot so really strong and couldn't even take damage dude to the fact he was immortal and almost nothing could get rid of it. And his minions were also slightly weaker and (complex) despite siding with dragon hitler and not knowing his motivation. but our group didn't get that far enough. He used one of our character's backstory and decided to burn the home village and murder her entire family before we visited it once beforehand, only with a weird vision to serve as a warning that got sidelined due to plot until we went on this random "divine? trial to give us shit weapons and armor which turned out to not nearly be as useful by adding random chance.. Anyway after that we got to the main city to visits and it continued on the problem of the village where he treated Slaughter as if it was slightly normalized. With the city state being heavily anti mage and just slaughtering them and burning them with a almighty inquisition that he wanted us to side with despite making the city smell of rotting flesh. Things only got worst with his favorite who came in later and took over a npc he made. It became worst then the DM gave him a lot more to do and made him super important to this mission despite originally being a thief who was forced to join us with everyone hating the rest of the party for being loyal to the empire that everyone there was cool with, it really bothered me. I thought I was going to have a good time when we were trying to investigate and find the 'Mage Rebellion' I as a eldritch fighter and despite there being several types of true magic casters they were all thrown under the same boat. Despite wanting us to side with the Inquisition, he did little to show how bad the mage rebellion was considering how they didn't want to be burnt at the state and inquisition were Deus Vult inquisitors in what was orginally a Japanese area with the Deus Vult knights being in another land in the campaign I was DM of(The whole world was made by me and I gave him a idea of the land and it's history). The Rebellion threw Quick into the dungeon when we got into their base because he shot one of their members(the woman I was trying to interact to learn stuff. about the rebellion, maybe taking them over....when one of them(The love interest) turned into a Xenomorpth and began killing all the mages, They ended up slaughtering every mage with their spells doing nothing to save any of them. It was horrific for my character since I couldn't do much to them either even when we outnumbered them. Meanwhile Quick managed to break out and get away from the Xenomorpths, even finding the exit and getting the important thing he wanted to give to the totally not evil inquisition leader who enslaves mages who turn themselves in willingly.(they wonder why I don't like aligning with him when I'm Chaotic). In the end the whole Mage Rebellion got wiped out by Xenomorpths...all because Quick during a three hour personal seasion he was having IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE WHERE WE BOTH WERE THERE AND I WAS WAITING....he got some sort of poison arrow and a mission to shoot one of the mage rebellion people from shady underground people, and Quick was aware my character fancied the lady who he shot. This was all in one of those fun seassion that basically cut the conflict in half with half the human party with one person making the important choice. Quick, the thief's name, ended up making friends with all of our npc party m single sessions he would do with the DM, and the DM never bought it as a idea as he just assume we would ask for these sessions. I ended up joining and the different was telling. Similar to how my friend getting her home destroyed by a demon force we wouldn't be able to deal with even if we arrived on time and getting nothing from it, I tried helping out a random lady, since my character despite being a eldritch fighter was also bard in that sense, managed to somehow get a satanic cult which was mainly used for comedy purposes than anything and after this one dungeon they ended up killing themselves with me being unable to take actual advantage of them. The dungeon was my breaking point for a few reasons, mainly because Quick had no problems, he was with the important people and was given important information(we were split to be with groups of npcs.) and I was encouraged to hand over information due to how his suit was made. We were going through hell and it was halloween so he threw in a NPC based off of Jason and proceeded to chase me around as if I was one of those campers and not a fighter, all while making that annoying sound while in this stupid maze. I ended up trying to fight Jason and being knocked down even with help, as Quick with two of the npcs managed to take him down with no problem, with a stupid npc archer getting the killing blow while I was stabbed by this overparanoid guy. They ended up taking a actual demon of hell fighting seriously with just Quick and the NPCs while me and a friend were unable to join and another member was abandoned without actually telling us that was gonna happen(He enjoyed torturing her WAY too much. She was also my girlfriend so I was even more annoyed) My Girlfriend and I left the group but was guilt tripped into coming back by Quick but we made it clear we needed something to calm down from all the slaughter....only to bring back my girlfriend's character family just to be sold off/killed for some reason and when we tried to save themwith just the two out us we were outmatched since there were too many tough guys and it was just us with no npcs, and were we led to believe we were just going to go to a nearby village and help it's problems....needless to say we left and won't be turning back. TL:DR Friend was a dick as a DM and Favorited the guy who took over a npc he made while making the rest of us suffer hell and back as he wins with the other npcs he made who instantly loved the thief.
I have a DM who often givens out arbitrary disadvantages for ability checks, attacks and saving throws outside the stated rules, often simply because of the *way* the player worded their actions. Which I wouldn't find a problem if he also gave out advantages in the same way. I've actually logged, over the past 5 sessions the advantages and disadvantages outside of rule and mechanic related reasons. It's total is 17 disadvantages and 3 advantages. Suggestion on how to confront this?
I mean, the disadvantages are reasonable. That's less the of the problem. Here some of the examples: * Gave a player disadvantage on throwing an apple because they aren't "proficient in apple." * Gave a player disadvantage on a deception check because they just casted a spell. * Gave a player disadvantage on a dex save because they were carrying a dead body. * Gave a player disadvantage on an animal handling check because they recently stuck the animal. I'm fine with pretty much all the calls for disadvantage. But they almost never give advantage for anything.
Maybe I should clear up what I mean a bit better: In the example with the dead body. We had just killed the big baddy of a fort. We knew other enemies remained cause we came in via a less direct means. After we killed the big baddy and leader, we took the dead body and were planning on using it to intimidate his underlings in order to get out without a fight. So we grab the body and start walking out, nobody checked for traps, then boom. He gives the person carrying the body a disadvantage on the dexterity save, ok fine, makes sense, body is heavy and would make it harder to move out of the way. Ok, so we take the damage, move onto the underling. Barbarian carries the body into the next room, holds it up, and screams "Who's next!?!" or something (I forgot). We are sure we would get advantage, we ask for advantage on intimidation check. DM says no. It feels like whenever we try to something cool or think out of the box, we are punished more then rewarded.
Charles Miller I got a couple thoughts about this, and then I'll get into my advice for how to handle this. First, I agree that the calls for disadvantage you mentioned seem reasonable. Regarding the specific situation you mentioned -- bypassing much of a dungeon, taking out the big baddie, and then trying to get out without a fight -- my guess is that the DM simply didn't want to let you all out without a fight. Although he allowed you to bypass much of the dungeon, he probably decided that you should still have to fight it. There are reasons a DM might do this, and while none of them are really good reasons, they are the thoughts that can go through a DM's mind: I spent time designing this adventure and now they might skip most of it so I gotta make sure that doesn't happen. Or, these fights are really cool because I get to use X monster or this spellcaster has X spells that are awesome, so I want them to do these fights. Again, not saying those are good reasons; just saying those are possible thoughts your DM was having. A better solution would have been to give the advantage on the Intimidation check -- I certainly would have -- and then perhaps let you all leave. You see, the dungeon wasn't REALLY defeated. Most of the monsters were still alive. So, one of them could have taken over control, and they would have all kept on doing whatever horrible things they were doing to begin with until the PCs actually ended the threat. I think of it this way. If assassins come and kill the general of an army, does the army just disband and give up? No,. the second in command takes over. So, there were other things your DM could have done to play things out realistically instead of just denying you advantage from your good idea. ADVICE HERE: Okay, now that I've analyzed this to crap, let's answer your question, eh? 😃 The best thing to do is to have an open but respectful conversation with your DM -- in fact, this is usually the best way to resolve most issues in D&D, either as a player or a DM. I would explain to him what you have to me: "Hey, we've been noticing that you give disadvantage for things, and that seems perfectly reasonable, but we've also noticed that when we have cool ideas and really good plans and ask for advantage, you almost never give it to us. And that really kills our excitement and fun over coming up with those ideas." Simply explain to him how it makes you feel. A reasonable DM will take that feedback and do something with it. Because here's the thing: SOMETIMES DMS DO THINGS THEIR PLAYERS DON'T LIKE, AND DON'T REALIZE IT. He could be doing this unintentionally, not wanting at all to crap on your good ideas, and he just doesn't know it. If you mention it to him, there's a chance he'll be like "Oh, crap, I'm sorry guys. I didn't realize I was doing that." And honestly, that's your best bet on resolving the situation, IMO. But if you talk to him and he's like "Whatever, I don't care." well, then, at least you know the type of DM you're playing with, and you can make decisions based on that information. I hope this helps, man! 😃👊
The 3rd - Disruptive players - Is a problem yes, but some DMs might see overly enthuastic players and active players as Problematic / Disruptive ones. I've had many games where me and my friend were silently told in game that "maybe other players should act more than you" etc. similar sentences. Well, the problem here was that those other people usually didn't want to lead the party or wanted to act on side by enjoying the company of other people. I understand that some might be shy or want to be rather 'spoken' to. One game this went so out of hand that people had legit 1 - 3 minute awkward silent moments because I personally wanted them to do something. The DM didn't encourage us to do anything and when I took the leader role I got so difficult checks during the game that I just lost motivation half-way of the game. The DM refused to small talk with me and kept the whole game on rails. Ofcourse in the opposite spectrum there are griefers, but you can easily just talk with them rather than boot them out, unless you just don't like them. To me all the roleplaying games are 99% improv and social situations and if you see that there are people actually causing trouble. Talk with them first and then decide how do you deal with them.
The players I currently GM for had a jerk GM. He would bully their characters in game. And took all the gear by getting a random dragon to mug them. He would also often not turn up on game night because he was suddenly tired. I have players who are only just now after over 10 games just starting understand the GM is not their enemy but is there to help them have fun. They have GM PTSD.
I have a problem, I'm DMing a campaign, but it seems I'm giving unintentionally some players too much spotlight, I want everyone to give everyone their moment. The 3 players who get more spotlight are an Archfey Warlock (who crossdresses because he hated pants), a bard (who flirted with the warlock because he looked like a she), and an Artificer (who wishes to end slavery). My guess is it's because the others don't feel as memorable, so probably I don't give them that much attention because of that, but I want them to have fun too.
Omg : The excessive bullcrapping. THANK YOU. I hate that so much. I don't expect my players to be in character for 3 hours like CR, but we don't need to be quoting random movie facts or other stuff in a tense moment. Btw- Loved the wangrod term from Matt Colville 🤣
A recent game I was in the DM had zero fucking prep done. It took him 5 min to find a suitable map for a market. Was there combat? No. We had to visit a single merchant. It was my first and only session with that group.
Timecodes: #8 0:26 - having a favorite #7 0:56 - running a group that's too large #6 2:09 - no choices / railroading #5 3:18 - no consequences for actions #4 4:02 - excessive socializing #3 4:48 - not taking care of disruptive players #2 5:43 - not preparing enough #1 6:47 - being an adversarial dungeon master
Oh boy...do I have a story for you all... So this one person in an RP group I knew from an MMO I play decides to start a D&D game. Of course having not been able to get a game together as a DM and especially not having been able to be a player, I decide to join as the latter. About a month before we are due to start, I plot out my character and get them approved by the DM, and I think all is fine. Oh how I was wrong. To be honest, a red flag should have been their defensiveness, as they specifically stated before the game (and I quote), "No bitching in my kitchen." But, again since I thought that everything was cool, I didn't think much of it. As soon as the session begins, I start to actually use my character and the DM starts bitching about how my abilities are too OP and shit like that. Furthermore, while they did have a rudimentary plan for the session on the surface, they obviously lacked the degree of prep work as well as any contingencies in case things didn't go all according to plan. And of course when something does, he acts like a deer caught in headlights. To top it all off, he assured everyone that he was experienced with D&D, and since things were already tenuous in the RP group (later I left that group due to creative differences and betrayal), I was at least trying to resolve shit. That said, I later talked to a good friend of mine, who also plays D&D, and he agreed that what happened was complete BS given the circumstances. All in all, I am glad I learned from that situation even if it is what *not* to do as a DM. : P
I think the worst thing you can do as a DM is to cheaply kill a player as a way of getting him back for being a jerk. It's not fun if you get put in a situation with C3P0 odds or need to get a natural 20 on your spell save to avoid being raped. You need to play it fair, not design an encounter to knock back a player!
I remember one of my first times DMing, one of my players had an NPC assassinated. The NPC was a total jerk, and impleading everything everyone was trying to do, and he was the boss of the NPC that was helping the players. He figured, ok, get him out of the way, and the one that wants to help us will get a promotion, win-win... I had no problem with this solution and even had the ranger player go through a skill challenge for getting around an accomplishing it. The next day however, the NPC that was helping them was distraught, not that his boss was gone, but the widow was a good woman. They didn't have a concept of a pension and the guy wasn't a noble or anything so she was basically going to get kicked out onto the street. The player who's plan it was looks at me and says "I can't believe you just did that." to which I replied, "Actions have consequences, these weren't my choices."
My very first TTRPG I DM’d was a Pathfinder game back in college. One of my players was an optimizer (though he didn’t go full on cheesy powergamer/munchkin), so it was difficult for me to create meaningfully challenging encounters for quite some time. I admit I may have gotten frustrated and started dipping towards somewhat adversarial thinking - I didn’t want to beat the PCs, but I wanted them to be challenged, to actually have to struggle through some of the fights. Mainly the boss fights. As a result, there were a few really rocky encounters I made that ended up heavily marginalizing one or two of the other PCs. Fortunately for me, rather than give up and leave the game, the affected players talked to me outside of the game and helped me take a step back and see where I was heading with my thinking. I was able to dial back that way of thought, but I don’t think I ever actually succeeded at making a legit challenging encounter before the game petered out due to conflicting schedules and people moving away after we got out of school. I think the biggest hurdle for me was figuring out that the Pathfinder CR system was utterly broken and totally useless. Likewise, I didn’t understand the importance of action economy and that a lone monster just isn’t gonna cut it against the party (at least, not one with an optimizer in it) unless I really beefed it up beyond what’s presented in the MM/Bestiary. I think towards the end of the campaign I’d been thinking of stealing 4E’s ‘bosses get multiple turns’ mechanic, but I can’t remember if I ever got to try it. I’m glad 5E iterated on that - although I never DM’d 4E and largely didn’t like it, there were some good things to be stolen and implemented in other games that I saw reading through the DMG and MM for it.
On railroading - One thing that happened with a friend's group - the DM had gotten a module which they really wanted to try running, but the players had been chasing other things for the past 4-5 session. He had a talk with the players, and basically said "I've recently got a new module which I'm really keen to give a try - if I throw you a plot hook in the next session or two, could you take it, please?" To which all the players agreed. While you could argue that is railroading in a sense, it probably felt a lot better for the players then if the DM had tried to force the players into the plot.
One bad DMing trait that doesn't get much recognition (Maybe because it doesn't happen much) is the DM that makes things too easy on players or lets anything go. I had a DM (good guy, good friend, bad DM) who let everything go and made things too easy on us. I went in thinking it's a standard game so created a pretty standard, but interesting character. Everything within the rules. It was second edition, so I asked beforehand if that included what some call 2.5 edtiion. All the players option suff, kits, and skills and all. It did so I stuck to that by the rules. Another character had a cleric, who ALSO had some skeleton minions and the ability to make more from any bones. This was just in addition to all the powers granted for being a cleric. No get rid of this ability to get another ability instead (which I'm fond of). Just powers they gave themselves. Note here that this DM said that 3rd edition was too unbalanced. DM created a homebrew class for a new player. She was basically a goddess. She had a bunch of area affect spells that also could NOT harm allies. Basically a whole arsenal of fireball spells (though they included water, air etc) that would not hurt any allies in the area of effect. He even admitted that he made the class to be able to solo adventures. Okay, that would be cool if you were running a solo adventure but not to put someone who can solo an adventure in a group. Why are the rest of us here then. My fault for NOT making an overpowered character. I could have just said my character could do all these powerful things and I would have gotten those powers. My only redemption was that I played a thief, so I had needed skills the others didn't. Then another player joins the group playing a halfling thief........... Oh and he can breath fire. Another player wanted to play a monk. The DM didn't have any reference for a monk for 2nd edition, so he just let him play a 3rd editon monk in a second edition game. Anyone not familiar with 1st and second editions, there were very few special ability gains. Throughout 20 levels, you pretty much had the same abilities, only gaining a couple at various levels other than just getting better at hitting things and more spells. No feats or equivalent. Or if you want to consider some of the specail abilities as feats then you got a couple over 20 levels. 3rd edition monk got new abilities every level. The DM who thought 3rd edition was too unbalanced did this. And things were too easy on us constantly. There was never the threat of death. We fought a beholder and defeated it in 1 round of combat and 2 attacks into the second round, with only one character (mine) suffering any damage, and not enough to even worry the slightest. And evey combat was like that. Never a danger or worry that our characters could die. Never ANY of our characters suffering enough damage to even take us to half our HP. At one point after numerous complaints about it being too easy, he said it was time to take off the gloves. I left not long after and I heard that it never did get challenging. One character played an Illusionist (subclass of wizard) and he never had her actually cast spells or use spell slots. Rather than cast a spell from the Illusionist spell lists, she would just say what kind of illusion she wanted to cast. Like "A volley of 1,000 arrows" and he'd have the enemy roll a save to disbelieve otherwise they took the damage from what the illusion looked like. At one point there were 2 magial statues protecting the treasure we were after. One of the characters just persuaded them by talking to them to be our allies and travel with us and fight for us. Magically created statues set to guard a place (or any command) should not be able to be persuaded or charmed AT ALL. I'm against the whole "A natural 20 can achieve the impossible" anyway, but it wasn't even a nat 20. It was a 16. A roll of 16 allowed something to happen that shouldn't be able to happen at all.
Welp. I'm doing pretty good! I see one, maybe two of these applying to me and not very much. ( The prep work. I'm working on that. My first encounter went bad and I had to sort of improvise a reason not to TPK. But it ended up turning into a dramatic character moment, so even though I wouldn't recommend, I fumbled my way to victory. )
I too have left two games. One was supposed to start at 7:00pm, but usually didn't start until 11:00pm because some players were always late. The other was a game in which the character I was playing and my buddies were killed off in the first 30 minutes (saving the other player characters). The DM then tortured the rest of the party for four hours trying to get out of a hole. Everything they attempted required 3-4 ability checks which pretty much guaranteed it would fail.
Wow, I'd leave those games, too. I can't stand games that don't start on time. My games are at 4 pm, and I beat myself up if I start around 4:05 instead of 4 like I said. It's like a pet peeve of mine to have things start on time.
3:21 My dm took this quite seriously and had two armies and a civilian rebellion attack us, it didn't end up well for the party... (9/12 players were murder hobos, so the various cities where they made a mess were quite upset)
Favoritism can also piss off the person being favored. I was in an online D&D game where the enemies would inexplicably always miss when they tried to attack my sorceress. I always succeeded rolls for skill check and combat even when they were HORRIBLE. I confronted the DM and told him I didn't like it at all so next session... he made my character get sucked into a whirlpool and nearly die twice while the other players tried to get me out, it took about an hour just to get through that, and my character was critical after all that...then he brought in an enemy from my backstory that summoned magical vines around me that were impossible to do anything to except break through with a strength check of ridiculous DC my -1 noodle armed ass would never make. So I just watched the rest of the party play through the encounter from my own backstory while I made countless strength checks on my turn until I just started passing... yea I quit after that.
I had a DM who had us encounter dozens of harpies. We didn't want to sit through and deal with the long combat that would ensue because just...dozens of enemies rolling dice would take HOURS and we had already told him we didn't want to have as much combat in our game. We tried to talk our way out of it, but the DM seemed so dead set on us NEEDING to have a combat. In order to get out of the encounter, the harpies demanded some sort of payment, so we gave up some of our lesser used magical items. Our paladin did not have anything to give and the DM would only accept us going on a mission for the harpies as a payment. So then, as punishment for avoiding the harpy fight, we had to fight some huge, much more difficult boss for literally no reason. It derailed our campaign for like 3 sessions and was such a waste of time when literally no one wanted to do it. No bearing on the story whatsoever. Just because we NEEDED a combat apparently. This is a regular problem where we tell him we want to get on with the story or we try to RP out of a combat and he just refuses.
My addvice is to think about it like your a story teller. Who is sharing a tale of true adventures. So as you tell how it's going The players are the people who make this story go. So it can't go on without the pc's. And your just telling them what is unfolding around them. Now new DMs don't understand that players tend to not listen, and go in the direction off to the side. And that upsets them because they spent all that 3 hours thinking of a big thing for them to do. And they just wander off. Like a turd, in the wind. But if your running a good and at least somewhat straight forward group. You shouldn't have that problem that much
Here's one I just experienced. No session 0. DM completely unprepared and had just the basic outlines of a story. Literally said "you're in a Dwarven kingdom and it's going to be attacked by Orcs in two days. Ok go." Two hours and literally nothing happened because the DM kept going off on real life tangents.
I am thinking of DMing at some point in the future, do you think 5 players is too much for a first time DM? Also while they're all good friends of mine, not all of them know each other, will this be a problem?
5 is not a crazy number. I wouldn't have any more though. Them not knowing each other shouldn't be a concern. Most of my players started as complete strangers.
I write my own stories already I am ironically wanting to DM because I want the chaos of other ideas that aren't mine because that's what interests me in a game And you NEVER go out of your way to tpk If they are unprepared, oh well If they brought it on their own selves, serves them right If they roll a nat 1 death save, suggest an interesting Bard they could try out If they escape all conceivable consequences for their murder hobo actions, they deserve to play that character and I would let them keep that magical sword they took from the king's scabbard but let them know that they should probably keep it hidden in that town just to be safe The DM is there to give the players the tools to be legends It is up to the players what they do with them
@@theDMLair that's my plan I have the 5e handbook and starter set so far I need to work on making encounters and finding time for all the players to meet at the same time and I want to keep it simple to start off I don't take notes Any advice?
In my defence the DM role is new to me and the majority of the party is new to the game. Spells have been cast free of charge, strong weapons against weak-ish monsters. I have eased them in to mechanics and how they are used. Coming to a halfway point. I am introducing mobs and bosses that can't be solved with magic and melee alone but cleaver thinking, enviomental usage and speechcraft!
Excessive Socializing: What is considered excessive can vary between groups. You mentioned leaving a group because the game started 1 hour later than the appointed start time. This is normal for us - everyone shows up, we either order food or cook on the grill, then we BS while we eat, and 60-90 minutes after appointment time we get to the game. We are all friends, and we like to socialize a little before getting down to business. Now online...yeah, it is much easier to get to the came quicker, no question. With the virus sending us online, games begin within 15 minutes of start time, cause we have all already eaten, etc. and are ready to go!
My first 5e DM wouldn't stop talking and describing things that didn't matter. He also wouldn't give us any choices, and he put us in Inverness when we were lvl 1.... And he wanted to make our characters for us and only sat down with 1 or 2 other players to help them. Then I made the mistake of opening my living room to the game.... There was a child with M&M hands touching my entire house while I tried to pay attention. The DM and his girlfriend tried to compromise by tying him up in a high chair instead of being normal parents that try and teach their child. Also the DM would treat his girlfriend like shit the entire game, and made us all feel awkward as hell. She was my friend at the time, but sadly this campaign was the first step to losing her as a friend. Her boyfriend was the worst DM.. even after my boyfriend, his friend, my sister, and I had left their group they still had problems. But I was the only one who had the balls to say anything, so I got blamed for just hating on him for no reason. I don't think I'm missing much lol. I'm the DM with the people who left the group, plus another one of my sisters now, and I have been watching everything I can about DMing. My group loves me, but I still don't ever want to be THAT DM.
I have a DM who hates me, we startet a campaign like 6 months ago and we play like every second weekend and always when we encounter a monster that is strong enough to kill one of us, it always will chaise me. Because of that its like my 3rd character in this story. (I always play ranged classes)
I have a player who interrupts and countermands the other players at the table during social situations. He charges forward to keep the game moving when things slow down, which is sometimes a pro and sometimes a con. In addition, if something is shown to have negative consequences (like separating from the rest of the party) he will continue to do that thing and then complain that I'm being unfair when the negative consequences keep happening. I don't hate him, but I usually have short patience for his nonsense. This might be an issue you want to talk to your DM about and see if you can resolve it.
Thomas Eddy thats sad, but im a very calm person, i love social interactions an like to hear how others do this too. But as I said, i always in backline, becaus of my ranged attacks
heres a few reasons im considering quitting my current playgroup... 1. the DM dosent come prepared for much 2. the DM dosent look up what enemies we are going to face untill we are at the table 3. the DM dosent know how the enemies he actually puts us up against live/act (for example he made a encounter in a dungeon where we came up against 12 dwarvs a gold dragon and a blue dragon) 4. when we had a TPK becous we kept pushing into a orc camp when we should have gotten away... we woke up on a field next to the camp with all our gear and gold... no penelty or reason for surviving... 5. the DM dont give us eny loot just gold and then lets us buy whatever we want from whatever merchent we meet... 6. the DM fudges the rolls... well actually he just says "i rolled a 7 but im calling it a 18 becous im the DM" (we dont have a DM screen) 7. the DM dont plan farther then the next encounter and the quests we get are 2-3 encounters and then a reward... and i must admit even tho im pretty new at dnd this DM really sucks the joy out of it...
I have only quit a few games in my life, but they were all largely due to number 6, railroading. You take away my agency as a player, then yea...you need to go write a book and stop DMing. Present the players a problem, and let them surprise you with how they solve it. This isn't just a piece of advice for games, its a piece of advice for life. As a leader, or as a manager, give your employees the problem, delegate responsibility for the task, and let them come up with a solution.....you may just be pleasantly surprised with their ingenuity.
the dm I have is guilty of 8,6 and 1 his favorites are the two girls at the table. Who's backstory is the most explored? the girls. who gets all the magical items? the girls. Who had a four hour long session 0 while the DM ignored the other players? Yup one of the girls. He hated my campaign because "your railroading us" yeah well everything right down to my backstory has been the DM's choice. I couldn't write a backstory for my second character because "he is just a temp character and its faster this way" well my temp character seems pretty permanent because its been five 8 hour long sessions. And the last game we had he change the mechanics of the game so his character could win fist fights. Literately his was stressed out because the rogue was so luck that she almost won in a game of chance where the odds of her wining were less than 10%
#1 was this brand new dm that tpkd us on the first encounter in LMoP and he was so happy about it too, cool thanks for the 10 minute game, are you proud of yourself?
One of the worst DM Moments for me was when my DM punished me for trying to get some characterdevelopment going... doesn`t feel good when you try to bring depth into your Char and get punished for it
Had a DM who introduced a new PC with a note stating his character was now betrothed to my character. I was not happy. Had it been an NPC, maybe, but throwing that at me at the table with no warning? oh hell no. My solution though was finding a prestige class that required my character to remain pure (and got a unicorn mount) Had another DM that I admit I made stupid decisions that resulted in the death of my character. But every time I died, I made a new character, at the original level we started. So I'm this lone level 10 running around with level 16s going up against EL15+ that my character just couldn't do anything against (and could die again in 2 hits). So the DM gives me a melee paladin cohort! that's a level 9 *facepalm* I nicknamed the paladin "kamikaze".
Im preparing my own campaign and set a time and date for the first meet up. My group is mostly new. (5 people, 1 is a veteran.) Two of them told me that they mostly want to be in the background and just go with the flow. But I want them to engage with everyone rather than just the three doing everything. My fear is that if I try to include them or even make them participate they might feel offence to it or think they're being pushed when they originally didn't want to be. Is there a way where I can push them to participate without them becoming discouraged or just flat out not participating?
A dm who dosen't accept the "rule of cool." I dont know how many times I would have an idea of how to attack (example: I was once playing a halfling rouge and was 10 feet from a monster and asked if I could move the 10 feet, slide under the monster while attacking, and continue moving my last 15 feet.) Most of the time dms would allow this even though it's not how a typical turn would be taken but the "rule of cool" would allow it. But dms who wouldn't allow it drive me crazy because it completely makes sense for the character
I'll be honest... I suffer from #2 a lot - like not 0% preparation, but sometimes I forget something, or haven't developed something in parts of the world yet (it's still a WIP) and end up having the players decisions/developments and integrate that as part of the world's lore/canon
I think the most common mistake I make is pacing the game too slow because I want to describe everything. I also want to roleplay every tavern visit and merchant interaction. I have to remember to up the pace if the players are too polite to say anything.
My DM designed a perfect boss fight to ruin D&D for me. Not only had he been showing favoritism, had a giant group, but he made a boss fight where my character could not damage the boss or even heal the damage it dealt. We were 6 hours into this boss fight, and all of us wanted to get home. He said we were about halfway done. Most of us were dead or unconscious because his boss had more actions per turn than there were players and the first 6 attacks that hit his 28 AC were negated by one of his 6 arms. He just wanted to kill all of us and play with his friends who were all discording into our live session. We never finished the boss fight.
I disagree with background sonal distraction. It adds nothing but distraction. Also here's a free advice on using sound effects in your game: Don't use them as a distraction. If sound effect have to be played during anyone speaking to have an effect then the most effect it can have is distraction. Good sound effects don't have to be played for more than few seconds and never over someone's speach. Examples: squeaky door is a good sound effect, stormy rain is a bad sound effect, bardic concert in a tavern is the worst you can do unless players came in there just to attend to a concert and there's nothing to discuss or to narrate.
Ok i want opinion here just to see if im in the wrong. My players were doing an eberron mission, defend some cargo on a train. Bandits attacked part way through and tried rigging a bomb to the cargo. Now, the players specifically left some bandits alive. They knocked out 2, killed the rest. They disarmed the bombs. Heres the issue, i specifcally made it very clear the bombs could be rearmed. They did not take the bombs with them, they did not tie up the knocked out bandits. They did not removed the knocked out bandits. They left them exactly where they were. So in the middle of the night, 2 woke up, rearmed the bombs, and exploded the cargo. Am i the bad guy here? They think i should retcon but it seems like this should be the consequences of leaving them alive and not securing them Edit: they were also the only ones with acsess bar the head car, who would not have left their car on order, so no staff wouldve entered
I need help with a dm that always let a favorite player go first and pick the best loot and let's him use his slight of hand modifier to avoid crappy rolls
As a dm I think one of the worse things a dm can do is letting a player take full control of the game as well as limiting by race when it's just because the dm doesn't want to deal with the races strength but also not being preped as a dm is bad
Just wanna get anyone's opinion, I did a sorta railroad on my recent campaign and I wanna know if the way or reason is good or not Basically, I wanted to make it so they'd be locked up and thrown into a dungeon after an invasion of the town they started out in, and I gave them multiple options to try dealing with the invasion, whether it's fleeing or defending, either way I planned to eventually have them knocked out and thrown in the dungeon, but this was only to start setting up the story and I no longer plan on doing this, it was just to set up the story, and that's something I don't plan on using much in the future, if at all, I'm relatively knew and still figuring out good ways to start an adventure, but would you consider that a sin? Also this has nothing to do with #1 in the video, I'm always rooting for my players
Table talk/socialization is relative to the group. A group of good friends who use D&D as an excuse to hang out every now and then is different than a group of enthusiast who really want to play the game. There is always a line where it becomes a bit too much, but where that is depends almost entirely on the group.
Should a DND group wait 2 hours for one stray PC who is running late, or should they just continue on; and have them jump in during a fight as reinforcements?
Continue on! Shoot, I start my games at the designated time. I don't even wait 15 minutes if someone is running behind. It's not fair nor respectful to the other 4 players who are on time.
The DM of the campaign I quit did all but the last two. He's younger than me, so I was patient but letting a level 4 one-shot a mind flayer that just happened to be asleep was ludicrous.
@@theDMLair Here's the whole story. After the Rouge assassin was GIVEN an amulet that can teleport anywhere, a failed role randomly teleported us in front of a castle. A mind flayer telepathically spoke to us, acknowledging our presence. We talked about whether we wanted to go in or not. Before we even finished talking, the DM said, "There's a portal next to you that goes inside." The rouge went in and found the mind flayer, who had just spoken to us, sleeping. The assassin skill made it an auto-crit, and the game breaking homebrew let the rouge attack with both short swords, modifiers on both, use both of the swords' elemental magic, which were also given to him at no expense, and then double the total damage, because of the crit, not just dice. He did well over 100 damage, to a mind flayer that went to sleep 30 seconds after threatening a group of adventurers.
I think a big one is never letting others GM. The next one is never playing anything but D&D, sometimes you need to play Gamma World or something else to change it from time to time.
I know this is a late comment but I saw this video and I had to say just one thing my dm did that made really mad, it was a no-choice thing and I hated it. So he had this tournament among us and for the most part, it was okay. We rolled with dice and stayed within the rules until it went up to my character and the one who was playing my brother (he homebrewed some character sheets for us, just character backstories mind you, anything else was from the rulebook and such) we were against each other and I was winning cuz I was rolling better than he was. However, it didn't matter because he had us do something completely different that was all in favor of the one going against me for "cinematic purposes" he does this again with someone else too. It just made me not want to play anymore. My other dm, I'm in another game, is so much better because he's the exact opposite, explicitly saying if a dm is forcing people to fit a desired narrative then just write a book, don't waste player's time. Not to mention the previous guy had like 9 people in it, half of which don't show 90% of the time. He's better at dming when we're using already made stories like Waterdeep dragonheist but his other stuff was just asinine.
Yeah, I get that. Ignoring rolls just for "cinematic effect" can certainly make a player feel like their actions don't matter. Makes me wonder why half the group never bothered to show...
I DMd my first game tonight. I can tell you that railroading was definitely something wrong that I did. I felt bad because most of the party were brand new players. They were asking for help and what they should do? I feel like I made a mistake there in presenting things in a way that made them aware of options. So I over-corrected. I had a players offer them a job or make suggestions and I gave them the stupid choice, of 'Do you want to do what NPC X has just offered you?' That really isn't a good choice and is totally railroading. I want to be careful next session and not do it, but I'm also afraid that because they are new, they won't be 100% sure that they can do whatever they want.
Dude you know what I think is completely awesome about what you just said. Well first of all your first time dungeon mastering but you immediately had some introspection and we're thinking about the things that you did and how you could do them better. That is to be commended dude like hardcore. You keep doing that thinking about what you did and things you can improve on and you're going to get better and better as a dungeon master. That's really cool. Regarding the railroading I wouldn't sweat it. Will you might consider doing for new players is simply reviewing their options. Well you know you guys could do X or you could do why or you could do Z. I think it's perfectly fine to remind them what their choices are. Yes you and I both know that they could literally do anything but for new players who maybe aren't accustomed to how RPGs work at the table giving them options is okay. I would give them several options so that they don't feel railroaded or let in a certain direction but giving them several options is perfectly fine. In fact I do this regularly with my players. They have lots of things going on and sometimes they have trouble making decisions. So I'll just remind them of the different things they have on the plate I'm the table and that they might do. I see no problem with this whatsoever in fact I see it as good dungeon mastering in a way.
@@theDMLair Thanks so much for the help, the video, and your advice. This week's game went way better. It was far from perfect. I need to work on controlling the pace for next week, but I felt like I did better with the types of choices I gave players so that was an improvement. It's cool that these videos cut right to the chase and provide me exactly what I'm looking for.
Top mistake I've seen a GM pull would be committing adultery with the wife of the one of the players, then inviting her to play with what was left of the group while the divorce proceedings were ongoing. Admittedly an unlikely scenario, but if you get see the signs in your own group, just walk away. Maybe run.
The excessive socializing is the most annoying thing I'm dealing with my group right now. The place we gather is a shared place with like 4 others that don't play in our game. They constantly interrupt and butt in with off topic distractions.
4:02 I, as the DM, have the problem, that my players always start conversations during the game. Mostly they are about D&D, so they are not off topic, but it still ruins the flow of the game and makes it hard for me to stay focused on what's going on in the game. I have told them to limit those conversations, but they are still doing it excessivly. I don't know what consequences to bring. Does someone have advise for me?
Hey, I and 4 other players (one was joining the group) waited for 1 and a half HOURS for our DM to show up before giving up. They canceled last week's session due to something big, what should I do? Edit: we use discord, and the dm hasn't said anything yet
I'm running a game through skype during this quarantine and none of my players have dnd dice. I'm fudging a dice roll here and there if I think it makes the story more compelling, most of the time in my players favour with few exceptions.
The DM shouldn't ensure the players die for the sick satisfaction, but the DM also shouldn't just let the players get off scot-free all the time otherwise there is no sense of a challenge.
#4 was in my first game. I am an autistic introvert, and was a child at this time. While I mostly could fake being extroverted (which I'm great at now) I had no endurance for social exhaustion. It drove me crazy when the game would derail and turn into an irl discussion. With the not being prepared, how do you make sure you're adiquitly prepared?
Making sure that you're adequately prepared is a matter of personal taste and experience. You need to know yourself. Know the things that you are comfortable improvising and know the things that if you don't prepare them in advance will fall flat at the game table. For instance I know that I'm pretty good at creating descriptions of rooms and things that are in them on the Fly. However I really don't want to have to improvise opponents in a combat or even terrain perhaps. Those are the things that I want to have thought about and planned in advance. So the real trick is just to figure out what you can improvise and when you can improvise and then plan and prepare the things that you don't want to have to improvise at your game
@@theDMLair thanks. My plan with encounters is to use enemy generators, dungeon generators, and make some calculators for loot; will be improved with what I'm learning from your videos. I plan on it being an open world with quest hooks in almost every town. I'm starting with world building and right now I'm working on the pantheon. I've been in a railroad game once and will never forget how my gm almost killed my familiar as a warning for role-playing my character's (and familliar's) emotions. I was upset, but got the hint to cut the fluff out. I never want my players to feel that, and want their actions to be monumental in the world of my creation.
My dm has the problem of a way to large group. Is there any advice on how to change this AFTER the start of the campaign? Seriously were sometimes up to 12 players and some are lvl 4, some lvl 13 (btw problem is quite serious, pls help)
So, I'm actually a player, and my DM only ever wings it and the quality of the game has gone downhill. What is the best way to mention that he should prepare better without demanding he be different?
I would just have an honest conversation with him if you have a good relationship with the guy. I would tell him that you feel like the quality of the games going down and it's in part due to his winging it and not preparing enough. At the end of the day I don't know that you can have it both ways. If he doesn't change the way that he does it he's going to keep on waiting it and the quality of the game is going to stay the way it is now. If the cause of the quality not being so good is that he doesn't prepare enough then he kind of needs to change how he does things if the quality is to improve at all. So I don't think you can have your cake and also eat it in this situation.
The Critical Zone Yeah, I've been thinking about this. Here's the thing, the DMG has rules for running chases, but I find them unsatisfying. They are too complex and boggy for something that should be fast-paced and exciting. I would run a chase scene as a SKILL CHALLENGE which I believe was introduced in 4e and then discarded (like much that was introduced there). Here's how I'd do it, and we'll assume that the PCs are chasing an NPC trying to escape for the purposes of this example. 1) Determine a DC for the chase. Maybe 10 or 15 for an easy/medium one. 20+ for a challenging one. You decide based on the circumstances. If it's an elite assassin trying to escape, that DC might be 25. If it's a common thug, maybe only 10. 2) Determine how many successes result in capturing the villain fleeing and how many failures result in him getting away. (AND TELL YOU PLAYERS THESE NUMBERS. It makes it more interesting, IMO, if they know they are in a skill challenge and what the parameters for success are.) The successes/failures should probably be the same number, and I think 3 to 5 is probably good. You might decide to make it be 1 or 2 per player involved in the chase, depending on how many players you have. 3) Have a player tell you how he is trying to catch the villain. "I'm running as fast as I can through the alley to catch him." Athletics check. "I'm chasing after him, yelling at the crowd, trying to get someone in front of the assassin to slow him up." Persuasion check. "As I chase him, I'm climbing up on the rooftops where there are fewer people so I can run faster, and I leap from rooftop to rooftop." Acrobatics or Athletics check. "As I chase, I'm checking all the alleys and hideaway spots to make sure we don't lose him." Perception check. 4) Go around the table, having each player do this, comparing their results with the DC you set, and tallying up the successes and failures until you either get enough to succeed or enough to fail. And here's the thing: NO ONE CAN REPEAT THE SAME ACTION THAT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE. Encourage them to be creative. Once you've done skill challenges once or twice, you'll find them very fast to play out, and this will result in a chase scene that is not only fast-paced and exciting, but also encourages your players to be creative. Hope this helps! 😃👊
I could use advice, our game is suppose to start around 8 and often doesnt until around 11pm. I am the DM but two of the players like to cook dinner and the rest of us watch a show or play ps4 while food is being made. It seems like a bad time to ask to start while the others are cooking but this also usually means we eat at 9pm and start the game at 10. Whats your advice. I still have fun, but we often only play for about an hour since there is a lot of cross talk and interruptions (another problem i am working on). Advice?
Honestly, that's less playing DnD and mostly just hanging out and eating together. It sounds like the others in you group may not be super interested in playing DnD? I would see if they can do the whole cooking and dinner thing before the game and then have at least 3 hours to play the game together.
Say no. I would. 5 is plenty. If you want run a separate game for the other 3, but a group of 8 is too many for any but an exceptional DM or a DM willing to risk a rocky game for everyone.
“You should be writing a book!” Are you kidding? Characters are just as bad as players in not doing what I want for the plot. I feel like I’m playing singleplayer D&D when I write.
When I was writing I could always control what the characters did. And if I decided to allow them to take the plot elsewhere, if was because I decided to allow it. My hands were always the ones doing the typing.
I'd make a terrible DM. I wouldn't go out of my way to kill the players, but if they were about to do something lethal I wouldn't ask "are you sure?", I'd just kill them. Then laugh.
Now that's something I've never tried before... I've eaten cameras but I've never eaten microphones. Will have to try that. Thanks for the suggestion! 😂
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Let me know what YOU think the top DM mistake is!
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I'm great at improve a little too good I improvise side quest in a sandbox and it works out, I can be in combat with players do simple math roll dice give in depth description of how each attack lands and missed with description of blood and environment change with enough time to plan the reward next NPCs and a whole side quest, I improve better active cause I inspire my other ideas.
Oh thank god I don't do any of these
Speaking of DM prep do you have a checklist before a session? Not a campaign but a session.
The DM who tells you later they fudged a crucial role taking away the magic of the moment.
Oh yeah, I think of this as "rolling back the screen." Letting players in on the "secret stuff" that only the DM knows can often spoil the game experience.
Question for you: Do you mind it that the DM might fudge dice rolls from time to time? Or is it the telling you about it part that you don't like?
Ignorance is bliss :D I don't mind a fudge here and there when its good for story :D
LOL - Cool. I almost always roll in the open, but every so often there is a fudge here and there. It's always to the player's benefit, too. Either to make the story more interesting, or to make a combat more engaging and dramatic. Never to screw them over. I'm my players' biggest fans.
All combat dice in the open, all the time. #NoFudging
My dm rolls all combat related rolls in front of the screen
To me, a D.M. that is proud of killing his player characters is worse than the Murder Hobo's that D.M.s always complain about. It's like that one kid that goes around smashing the other kid's toys simply because their the oldest.
Every time my party steps foot in a tavern for the sole purpose of eating and resting , the npc barkeep will give us a whole menu of meals we can order, a listing of room prices, how many beds to a room, then we’ve gotta sit and wait for our food which prompts roleplay that goes on way too long, so we end up spending 4 hours not progressing the story at all. Then at the end he’ll tell us “lol I didn’t expect you guys to take so long.” Gee I wonder who’s fault that is
Lol - Totally. There's nothing wrong with moving through the mundane stuff so players can experience the exciting parts of D&D. What that is will vary from group to group, but 4 hours roleplaying being at an inn probably appeals to very few players, I feel.
the DM Lair Lol I think one of my teammates once referred to our campaign as a Tavern Simulator
Wow. I'd be the player in that game ALWAYS picking a fight with someone at the tavern...just to make things more exciting. 😂
Is it bad that tavern simulator actually sounds great if you were told about it beforehand
Every once in a while a detailed Inn can be fun. Hopefully the Menu is a handout that takes about 3 seconds to interact with or ignore if you're the type of player that just doesn't care.
Personally, I like knowing that the special of the day is Mindflayer Filet on Toast and moving on quickly from there, who else is in the tavern and what I can learn from them?
"I been a dungeon master since high school and..." It's like "in the oldest Minecraft anarchy server"
Another fit fan. Nice!
I once had a DM that took half of our play time because he was unprepared and the other half because he socialised so much... Besides, as a player, in call of cthulhu, he arrived at our first game and didn't have a character and chatted so much that it took THREE HOURS to start the game!!! And the worst part of it is that for a while he was the only DM in our school group, until I had anough and started being a DM based on everything I didn't like in his games
Yeah, that crap sucks. I mean, at that point, you're barely even playing the game, so what's the point? You know, it's funny, I wonder how many DMs were created because disgruntled players were like, "I can run a better game than this!" And then they head off to run their own game.
I wonder, too, how much his excessive socialization was to blow time because he wasn't prepared to run the game? You know, a stall tactic.
Having a crap GM is one way to learn how to be a good one.
Just had this exact thing happen to me with a regular DnD game.
Not a sin but beware lifting the veil. If your players get wise that you are just super awesome ar winging it, they may actually start to lose some their enchantment with your game.
Agreed! Lifting the veil or "rolling back the screen" as I call it should only be done tactfully. For instance, to resolve a conflict or misunderstanding.
Yep, a DM I had, started the very first session sitting across from us crosslegged with no books, no notes, no maps, no screen. NOTHING as he went through the adventure and "dungeon". The dungeon rooms spaced very far apart and travelling down many stairs so that offten each floor had a single room, obviously so that if we mapped it, there could not be any overlapping since he didn't have a map in his head even. It was obvious he was making it up as he went, so we had no investment in the game. Any "clues" we knew were made up on the spot and he'd just try to tie them into something later, so we couldn't care about trying to figure out what they meant, as we knew he hadn't decided what they meant either. Ie they meant nothing.
A good DM can wing an entire adventure/session. But they should never let it show that they are doing so. I've used a random generator to create an inn with a name and menu, personality for the barkeep and several adventure hooks and did it in such a way that it looked like I had all that in my notes.
Years ago i actually planned for 30 minutes of social time pregame, and we would hang out and socialize (BS) after as well. The game time was pretty focused.
Yeah, that's a good way to do it to give the players time to get the socializing out of their system before the game starts up. :D
#1 should be "Subjecting female PCs to sexual assault". Depressingly more common than you think.
I've read some posts about that happening. That stuff is messed up...
im usually running Dark fantasy and i never had anyone complain (i do ask if its okay beforehand though)
How your surrounded by uber strong wierdoes you'd think that would be difficult.
Yeah that’s why in my group it’s male PC only due to some incidents in some campaigns
I was just about to suggest this one as "the Downright Creepy DM." This idiot plays out all his pre-pubescent rage/sex fantasies on the party. The funny thing here is that the DM in question is rarely pre-pubescent. Not only are female characters likely to be sexually assaulted, but even males. (Females highly more likely.) When my character needs to have a secret list (pre-written and folded on top of the table) of her precautions in the case of sexual assault, things have gone WAY too far. And how sad when the player takes these expectations into the NEXT group they come across, once again expecting their character to be molested.
A creepy idiot like this lost me one of my favorite players. I was barely 20 and very shy. Robbie was a sweet and surprisingly innocent 14 yr old, son of friends. Creepy DM decided it was his turn to DM and then led us through a scenario that included whips and chains and other creepiness. My fault was being young, inexperienced and struck like a deer in the headlights. I should have stood up at the table and yelled, "Enough! You're fired as a DM" Instead I was speechless. Result: Robbie, one of our most involved, creative and intelligent players was no longer allowed to play with us. Creepy DM got kicked right away, once the bunch of us managed to get over our stun, but it was too late for Robbie.
And yes, at least in the "bad old days" female PC/player sexual assault happened in huge numbers. I got away easy. I have spoken with numerous other girl gamers who got it way worse than I ever did, including being physically assaulted IRL, not just their characters..
I HATE adversarial DMs. (Or killoffs, as I like to call them.) Often times, there is no flavor to the story, the game is boring, and the character I spent TWO TO FOUR HOURS MAKING dies in the first thirty minutes. It sucks. Especially in this encounter:
The party was in an elven village. The leader of which, accused us of working with an evil cult. To which, the elves attacked us. I was a druid. I turned into an earth elemental and started to try to defend myself. And what happened?
THE DM MADE MY ALLIGNMENT CHANGE AND STRIPPED ME OF MY DRUID'S POWERS!
Needless to say, I don't play with that DM anymore.
Wait how does that work.
Oberstruhmfuhrer Schrodinger that’s a good question
I wouldn’t call myself adversarial but I get a but carried away with my encounters
@@charlottewalnut3118 either homebrewed or an earlier version of DnD... early versions had a significant number of rules based on alignment, though I can't remember losing powers in an alignment shift unless it was something like a Paladin.
Character creation should never take more than ten minutes: pick a name, age, race, and gender, roll some stats, pick a class and go!
Heck, for my games, players aren't even allowed to roll stats or choose a class until _after_ we have started roleplaying.
How to kill a party without using monsters.
1) Give them the deck of many things
2) Watch as their world is destroyed.
I did give them a deck of many things and it turnd out that it improft the story by turning one of the players in to a Robot.
@@detta5497 Which card was that? That sounds really interesting! I absolutely want to run the Deck of Many Things, but I'm worried about it going wrong.
@@Soitisisit Maybe you can make your own version of the deck of many things, but don't include any cards that could potentially ruin your game?
Cause and wffect is one my highest laws, im not out to get people but the natural effect of an event will come
My group has about 5-6 active players (that includes me), but 8 in total.
Me and another guy, let’s call him Bob, are usually DM’s, because everyone else is either lazy or bad at improvising and just railroads the hell out of our games.
Now I, as a DM, I’m not sure if this is a flex, or if I’m bad at DMing, but what I do is I just kind of keep players engaged with constant quests.
It goes something like this:
1. Explore a new area
2. Find out something about the main, main lore.
3. Get Escort missions, chests, and more.
4. Have encounters when the players start getting comfortable enough with loot and gear.
5. Fight the enemies.
6. Get to the main part of the main area.
7. Roleplay, and boss.
I find myself being a very, VERY kind DM. I will get to why I am like that, but pretty much whenever I impose any extreme form of challenge, the most I will let them do first and foremost is a short rest, but before that I will say something like “You sense immense danger behind this door. Guys, I am not holding back as a DM. Are you absolutely sure you’re ready?” It is only then I begin to kind of up the difficulty.
Back to Bob. He is number 1 on this video’s list. He showed us weapons in a shop? They’re cursed, and we unleash an Arch Lich. We took a long rest? Ancient Black Dragon. We went to visit a druid for the tiniest bit about a character’s backstory? A massive eldritch being that knows Meteor Swarm. We have Action Surge and Extra Attack? “Suddenly, you feel like you Action Surge, neither your extra attack works.” Every. Single. Time. We. Do. Anything. We. Die.
The ONE TIME we had a relaxing session was when I SPECIFICALLY begged to in Bob’s DM’s, which we did, and right after that session, he said it will be real bad now. Keep in mind, we are all level 6-7 characters, and this happens every session. Nobody cares much except our rules lawyer who hates every funny thing that happens and everything that isn’t serious, and everything that *is* serious but bends the rules immediately results in him shouting and being angry, then complaining at 1 am about the fact that he has a whole worksheet to do on math in 2 days about trigonometry.
Needless to say, we exclude the rules lawyer from my campaign.
So I just kind of wanna know: is it bad that I inform my players of challenge, even tho they have more fun knowing when the challenge approaches and when it’s just good fun, or is it better what Bob does where he just has this stupidly difficult and, at times, seemingly unfair campaign, and we all just say “Well first of all, it’s Bob so we will all f*cking die, second off do we even need it?” We have one chaotic evil rogue, and they are usually the only person to ever do anything even remotely dangerous, if it ends poorly, our rules lawyer just starts yapping away (he a lawful good paladin, he cares only about having the strongest possible character at every point of the game) about how I TOLD U IT’S DANGEROUS AAAAA
If it’s fine he just angrily grunts and when we ask why he’s angry he’s like I’M NOT ANGRY AAAAAAA
So yeah… if you’re still here, I thank you very, very much for reading through my rant.
This is a good video. I do enjoy PCs failing in a comical sense, I enjoy them overcoming the struggles and challenges I send their way a lot more
Agreed. Both failure and success can be fun at the table. As a player I usually push my luck, so I'm not surprised when I die. 😂
About being prepared:
I currently play in a small group (3 PC + DM) and 2 of us - me included - managed to get captured by slavers in the last session... and im just suuuper exited about the next session :D
So how'd the session go?
They're ok types of favoritism,
Like, the DM just liking a player character without giving them special perks.
Also, how do I get player to certain places without giving them quests or something like that?
To get a player somewhere... So giving them quests would work, but you could also place something enticing there. Maybe something to do with their backstory. They could hear about it in the tavern. Also think of what motivates your players. Some of mine are motivated by loot, so if I want them to go to a specific place, I could play to their motivation.
the DM Lair thanks alot
FourElemental one thing I’ve seen done was a festival that gave/sold items of varying usefulness that was only available for a certain time @ that place
The biggest one that happened to me is when a DM doesn't let you play the character the way you want to because reasons. For example, I was playing a Monk who scouts, I was a Shadow Monk, and i had the Alert feat. All i wanted to do, all i was built to do, was scout and report back. My DM didn't like this, didn't like that i was scouting ambushes and traps, and didn't like that i wanted to play ahead. What did he do about this? He said, "As you round the corner, there are hundreds of guards that stop to turn and stare at you." I was like, oh okay, I don't get to rolls stealth or anything? I guess I should go back and tell the party. A Shadow Monk with +5 on stealth doesn't get to roll. He then says, "The nearest guards grab you and attack you." and rolls 4 grapple attacks. I'm a monk with 18 AC (standard stuff). I'm still alive, but i'm like, "okay, i take the dodge action, and sprint away. He says, "As you turn around you realize you're surrounded by hundreds of guards," and rolls every die he owns. Out of character i ask, "hey man wtf..." He says, "I'm tired of you going off on your own, there are consequences for doing that." I said, "you mean scouting? you don't know how to DM a character scouting ahead?"
Needless to say, I don't want to play with him anymore. He's my best friends husband, and He's difficult to be around.
Allowing someone to be an adversarial player is probably the worst mistake possible . Giving one player a license to be a jerk to the rest of the players will never end well.
oh god, my very first time DMing....I actually had a group of 8....was awful....had I known >.
Everyone starts somewhere.
"I got better." - former newt
@@theDMLair A+ for the Monty Python reference :)
Have to admit I have a favorite players but only because they roleplay their characters well and even to the death. I normally award them with extra roleplay xp (50 xp per rp tally) but never by giving them op magic items or fudging rolls for them.
My favorite large group solution was the DM who had two groups-- one running as an evil party, the other as a good party. He essentially did one set of prep, with one campaign-- and the npc's in each game being the pc's of the other. Eventually they found out and just combined it into one big game.
@Stygian Eons At first he wasn't saying anything to the other party, they thought they were in their own group and all their npc's (aka other party) was just the DM. Afterwards, they were all at the same table playing against each other.
Once again, solid list! In particular, I like that you actually say there is a time to kick a person out. I have seen a lot of videos suggesting that whatever is going on is somehow actually on the DM, basically, no matter what. There are players who are looking to create needless problems, alphagame everyone (including the DM), and intentionally do really dumb things (which isn't role playing). I think there is an attitude that the DM (or GM) should always be expected to make some accommodation for that individual, I really don't agree. I think you are bang on correct on that; there is a time to just say, "this isn't working out, let's go our separate ways." Hopefully, it can be done in an amicable manner, but... you know...
Yes, totally. Some players are just...bad. If a player is ruining everyone else's fun, why should everyone be expected to sacrifice their Saturday to put up with that? If things can't be resolved, then the player needs to go. (Otherwise the GOOD players start leaving. Lol)
@@theDMLair Agreed, there has to be a limit, basically. But, where people do or do not draw the line has been odd in my experience. You can only really manage yourself is important to learn.
I had a dungeon master give a guy he liked over 45min of time to play while the rest of us plsyed for 15 min out of an hour... Sitting through 5h of that... Also the guy had to always be the leader although he is incompetent af... The thing that made me leave were super hard empty dungeons. I didn't explore a dungeon for 5h just to find 3 copper (i rolled a nat 20 on searching the treasure room). And now i still have a dm who again plays favorites but at least the dungeons r full
Yeah that sucks. Not giving equal table time is horrible. I've been the bored player... No fun.
buddy, if my dm handed out a hand of vecna, we would all look at the gm like "so vecna is around? Welp, this world is fucked"
I used to think it was me vs the players. Once I realized it's a mutual storytelling game we started having a lot more fun and I enjoyed gming
I often joke about relishing the in game death of characters in 5ed dnd but I'm not totally serious about it. Most times I'm just as invested in the characters created by players as they are. I've felt heartache due to a player death in game many times.
The only reason I joke about the fact that I cherish PC deaths is because the occasion is very rare! There are so many available opportunities for pcs to return from death in 5ed dnd that dying only happens when huge mistakes are made or when the stakes climb so high the result becomes meaningful
I had a mixture of the favoritism and adversarial DM happen to a group I ironically enough made. Swapped the role of DM unto a friend who I though could handle it fair enough, and I was proven very much wrong as soon as the favorite showed up, and even a bit beforehand. He made his big bad too immortal to kill and tried to make the morals of his bad guy super complex that can't be put into the alignment chart....except his plan was to kill everyone to piss off his divine mother for the fact his mate died. Said villain was also one of the first dragons to boot so really strong and couldn't even take damage dude to the fact he was immortal and almost nothing could get rid of it. And his minions were also slightly weaker and (complex) despite siding with dragon hitler and not knowing his motivation.
but our group didn't get that far enough. He used one of our character's backstory and decided to burn the home village and murder her entire family before we visited it once beforehand, only with a weird vision to serve as a warning that got sidelined due to plot until we went on this random "divine? trial to give us shit weapons and armor which turned out to not nearly be as useful by adding random chance.. Anyway after that we got to the main city to visits and it continued on the problem of the village where he treated Slaughter as if it was slightly normalized. With the city state being heavily anti mage and just slaughtering them and burning them with a almighty inquisition that he wanted us to side with despite making the city smell of rotting flesh. Things only got worst with his favorite who came in later and took over a npc he made. It became worst then the DM gave him a lot more to do and made him super important to this mission despite originally being a thief who was forced to join us with everyone hating the rest of the party for being loyal to the empire that everyone there was cool with, it really bothered me.
I thought I was going to have a good time when we were trying to investigate and find the 'Mage Rebellion' I as a eldritch fighter and despite there being several types of true magic casters they were all thrown under the same boat. Despite wanting us to side with the Inquisition, he did little to show how bad the mage rebellion was considering how they didn't want to be burnt at the state and inquisition were Deus Vult inquisitors in what was orginally a Japanese area with the Deus Vult knights being in another land in the campaign I was DM of(The whole world was made by me and I gave him a idea of the land and it's history). The Rebellion threw Quick into the dungeon when we got into their base because he shot one of their members(the woman I was trying to interact to learn stuff. about the rebellion, maybe taking them over....when one of them(The love interest) turned into a Xenomorpth and began killing all the mages, They ended up slaughtering every mage with their spells doing nothing to save any of them. It was horrific for my character since I couldn't do much to them either even when we outnumbered them. Meanwhile Quick managed to break out and get away from the Xenomorpths, even finding the exit and getting the important thing he wanted to give to the totally not evil inquisition leader who enslaves mages who turn themselves in willingly.(they wonder why I don't like aligning with him when I'm Chaotic). In the end the whole Mage Rebellion got wiped out by Xenomorpths...all because Quick during a three hour personal seasion he was having IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE WHERE WE BOTH WERE THERE AND I WAS WAITING....he got some sort of poison arrow and a mission to shoot one of the mage rebellion people from shady underground people, and Quick was aware my character fancied the lady who he shot. This was all in one of those fun seassion that basically cut the conflict in half with half the human party with one person making the important choice.
Quick, the thief's name, ended up making friends with all of our npc party m single sessions he would do with the DM, and the DM never bought it as a idea as he just assume we would ask for these sessions. I ended up joining and the different was telling. Similar to how my friend getting her home destroyed by a demon force we wouldn't be able to deal with even if we arrived on time and getting nothing from it, I tried helping out a random lady, since my character despite being a eldritch fighter was also bard in that sense, managed to somehow get a satanic cult which was mainly used for comedy purposes than anything and after this one dungeon they ended up killing themselves with me being unable to take actual advantage of them. The dungeon was my breaking point for a few reasons, mainly because Quick had no problems, he was with the important people and was given important information(we were split to be with groups of npcs.) and I was encouraged to hand over information due to how his suit was made. We were going through hell and it was halloween so he threw in a NPC based off of Jason and proceeded to chase me around as if I was one of those campers and not a fighter, all while making that annoying sound while in this stupid maze. I ended up trying to fight Jason and being knocked down even with help, as Quick with two of the npcs managed to take him down with no problem, with a stupid npc archer getting the killing blow while I was stabbed by this overparanoid guy. They ended up taking a actual demon of hell fighting seriously with just Quick and the NPCs while me and a friend were unable to join and another member was abandoned without actually telling us that was gonna happen(He enjoyed torturing her WAY too much. She was also my girlfriend so I was even more annoyed)
My Girlfriend and I left the group but was guilt tripped into coming back by Quick but we made it clear we needed something to calm down from all the slaughter....only to bring back my girlfriend's character family just to be sold off/killed for some reason and when we tried to save themwith just the two out us we were outmatched since there were too many tough guys and it was just us with no npcs, and were we led to believe we were just going to go to a nearby village and help it's problems....needless to say we left and won't be turning back.
TL:DR
Friend was a dick as a DM and Favorited the guy who took over a npc he made while making the rest of us suffer hell and back as he wins with the other npcs he made who instantly loved the thief.
I have a DM who often givens out arbitrary disadvantages for ability checks, attacks and saving throws outside the stated rules, often simply because of the *way* the player worded their actions. Which I wouldn't find a problem if he also gave out advantages in the same way. I've actually logged, over the past 5 sessions the advantages and disadvantages outside of rule and mechanic related reasons. It's total is 17 disadvantages and 3 advantages.
Suggestion on how to confront this?
Do you happen to have a few examples of when he imposed disadvantage? I'd like to better understand his reasoning, and examples might help.
I mean, the disadvantages are reasonable. That's less the of the problem. Here some of the examples:
* Gave a player disadvantage on throwing an apple because they aren't "proficient in apple."
* Gave a player disadvantage on a deception check because they just casted a spell.
* Gave a player disadvantage on a dex save because they were carrying a dead body.
* Gave a player disadvantage on an animal handling check because they recently stuck the animal.
I'm fine with pretty much all the calls for disadvantage. But they almost never give advantage for anything.
Maybe I should clear up what I mean a bit better:
In the example with the dead body. We had just killed the big baddy of a fort. We knew other enemies remained cause we came in via a less direct means. After we killed the big baddy and leader, we took the dead body and were planning on using it to intimidate his underlings in order to get out without a fight. So we grab the body and start walking out, nobody checked for traps, then boom.
He gives the person carrying the body a disadvantage on the dexterity save, ok fine, makes sense, body is heavy and would make it harder to move out of the way.
Ok, so we take the damage, move onto the underling. Barbarian carries the body into the next room, holds it up, and screams "Who's next!?!" or something (I forgot). We are sure we would get advantage, we ask for advantage on intimidation check. DM says no.
It feels like whenever we try to something cool or think out of the box, we are punished more then rewarded.
Charles Miller I got a couple thoughts about this, and then I'll get into my advice for how to handle this.
First, I agree that the calls for disadvantage you mentioned seem reasonable. Regarding the specific situation you mentioned -- bypassing much of a dungeon, taking out the big baddie, and then trying to get out without a fight -- my guess is that the DM simply didn't want to let you all out without a fight. Although he allowed you to bypass much of the dungeon, he probably decided that you should still have to fight it.
There are reasons a DM might do this, and while none of them are really good reasons, they are the thoughts that can go through a DM's mind: I spent time designing this adventure and now they might skip most of it so I gotta make sure that doesn't happen. Or, these fights are really cool because I get to use X monster or this spellcaster has X spells that are awesome, so I want them to do these fights.
Again, not saying those are good reasons; just saying those are possible thoughts your DM was having. A better solution would have been to give the advantage on the Intimidation check -- I certainly would have -- and then perhaps let you all leave. You see, the dungeon wasn't REALLY defeated. Most of the monsters were still alive. So, one of them could have taken over control, and they would have all kept on doing whatever horrible things they were doing to begin with until the PCs actually ended the threat.
I think of it this way. If assassins come and kill the general of an army, does the army just disband and give up? No,. the second in command takes over. So, there were other things your DM could have done to play things out realistically instead of just denying you advantage from your good idea.
ADVICE HERE: Okay, now that I've analyzed this to crap, let's answer your question, eh? 😃 The best thing to do is to have an open but respectful conversation with your DM -- in fact, this is usually the best way to resolve most issues in D&D, either as a player or a DM. I would explain to him what you have to me: "Hey, we've been noticing that you give disadvantage for things, and that seems perfectly reasonable, but we've also noticed that when we have cool ideas and really good plans and ask for advantage, you almost never give it to us. And that really kills our excitement and fun over coming up with those ideas."
Simply explain to him how it makes you feel. A reasonable DM will take that feedback and do something with it. Because here's the thing: SOMETIMES DMS DO THINGS THEIR PLAYERS DON'T LIKE, AND DON'T REALIZE IT. He could be doing this unintentionally, not wanting at all to crap on your good ideas, and he just doesn't know it. If you mention it to him, there's a chance he'll be like "Oh, crap, I'm sorry guys. I didn't realize I was doing that."
And honestly, that's your best bet on resolving the situation, IMO. But if you talk to him and he's like "Whatever, I don't care." well, then, at least you know the type of DM you're playing with, and you can make decisions based on that information.
I hope this helps, man! 😃👊
Ok, thanks for the reply! We'll talk to him next session.
The 3rd - Disruptive players - Is a problem yes, but some DMs might see overly enthuastic players and active players as Problematic / Disruptive ones. I've had many games where me and my friend were silently told in game that "maybe other players should act more than you" etc. similar sentences. Well, the problem here was that those other people usually didn't want to lead the party or wanted to act on side by enjoying the company of other people. I understand that some might be shy or want to be rather 'spoken' to.
One game this went so out of hand that people had legit 1 - 3 minute awkward silent moments because I personally wanted them to do something. The DM didn't encourage us to do anything and when I took the leader role I got so difficult checks during the game that I just lost motivation half-way of the game. The DM refused to small talk with me and kept the whole game on rails. Ofcourse in the opposite spectrum there are griefers, but you can easily just talk with them rather than boot them out, unless you just don't like them. To me all the roleplaying games are 99% improv and social situations and if you see that there are people actually causing trouble. Talk with them first and then decide how do you deal with them.
The players I currently GM for had a jerk GM. He would bully their characters in game. And took all the gear by getting a random dragon to mug them. He would also often not turn up on game night because he was suddenly tired. I have players who are only just now after over 10 games just starting understand the GM is not their enemy but is there to help them have fun. They have GM PTSD.
I have a problem, I'm DMing a campaign, but it seems I'm giving unintentionally some players too much spotlight, I want everyone to give everyone their moment.
The 3 players who get more spotlight are an Archfey Warlock (who crossdresses because he hated pants), a bard (who flirted with the warlock because he looked like a she), and an Artificer (who wishes to end slavery).
My guess is it's because the others don't feel as memorable, so probably I don't give them that much attention because of that, but I want them to have fun too.
Omg : The excessive bullcrapping. THANK YOU. I hate that so much. I don't expect my players to be in character for 3 hours like CR, but we don't need to be quoting random movie facts or other stuff in a tense moment.
Btw- Loved the wangrod term from Matt Colville 🤣
Yeah like let's play DnD at some point right? 😁
Great video! Interesting topic. Dynamic presentation. And cute to boot! 😍
A recent game I was in the DM had zero fucking prep done. It took him 5 min to find a suitable map for a market. Was there combat? No. We had to visit a single merchant. It was my first and only session with that group.
Wow, that sounds miserable...
Lol "when SHE is getting low on HP"
Timecodes:
#8 0:26 - having a favorite
#7 0:56 - running a group that's too large
#6 2:09 - no choices / railroading
#5 3:18 - no consequences for actions
#4 4:02 - excessive socializing
#3 4:48 - not taking care of disruptive players
#2 5:43 - not preparing enough
#1 6:47 - being an adversarial dungeon master
Oh boy...do I have a story for you all...
So this one person in an RP group I knew from an MMO I play decides to start a D&D game. Of course having not been able to get a game together as a DM and especially not having been able to be a player, I decide to join as the latter. About a month before we are due to start, I plot out my character and get them approved by the DM, and I think all is fine.
Oh how I was wrong. To be honest, a red flag should have been their defensiveness, as they specifically stated before the game (and I quote), "No bitching in my kitchen." But, again since I thought that everything was cool, I didn't think much of it.
As soon as the session begins, I start to actually use my character and the DM starts bitching about how my abilities are too OP and shit like that. Furthermore, while they did have a rudimentary plan for the session on the surface, they obviously lacked the degree of prep work as well as any contingencies in case things didn't go all according to plan. And of course when something does, he acts like a deer caught in headlights.
To top it all off, he assured everyone that he was experienced with D&D, and since things were already tenuous in the RP group (later I left that group due to creative differences and betrayal), I was at least trying to resolve shit. That said, I later talked to a good friend of mine, who also plays D&D, and he agreed that what happened was complete BS given the circumstances. All in all, I am glad I learned from that situation even if it is what *not* to do as a DM. : P
I think the worst thing you can do as a DM is to cheaply kill a player as a way of getting him back for being a jerk. It's not fun if you get put in a situation with C3P0 odds or need to get a natural 20 on your spell save to avoid being raped. You need to play it fair, not design an encounter to knock back a player!
I remember one of my first times DMing, one of my players had an NPC assassinated. The NPC was a total jerk, and impleading everything everyone was trying to do, and he was the boss of the NPC that was helping the players. He figured, ok, get him out of the way, and the one that wants to help us will get a promotion, win-win... I had no problem with this solution and even had the ranger player go through a skill challenge for getting around an accomplishing it. The next day however, the NPC that was helping them was distraught, not that his boss was gone, but the widow was a good woman. They didn't have a concept of a pension and the guy wasn't a noble or anything so she was basically going to get kicked out onto the street. The player who's plan it was looks at me and says "I can't believe you just did that." to which I replied, "Actions have consequences, these weren't my choices."
My very first TTRPG I DM’d was a Pathfinder game back in college. One of my players was an optimizer (though he didn’t go full on cheesy powergamer/munchkin), so it was difficult for me to create meaningfully challenging encounters for quite some time. I admit I may have gotten frustrated and started dipping towards somewhat adversarial thinking - I didn’t want to beat the PCs, but I wanted them to be challenged, to actually have to struggle through some of the fights. Mainly the boss fights. As a result, there were a few really rocky encounters I made that ended up heavily marginalizing one or two of the other PCs. Fortunately for me, rather than give up and leave the game, the affected players talked to me outside of the game and helped me take a step back and see where I was heading with my thinking.
I was able to dial back that way of thought, but I don’t think I ever actually succeeded at making a legit challenging encounter before the game petered out due to conflicting schedules and people moving away after we got out of school.
I think the biggest hurdle for me was figuring out that the Pathfinder CR system was utterly broken and totally useless. Likewise, I didn’t understand the importance of action economy and that a lone monster just isn’t gonna cut it against the party (at least, not one with an optimizer in it) unless I really beefed it up beyond what’s presented in the MM/Bestiary. I think towards the end of the campaign I’d been thinking of stealing 4E’s ‘bosses get multiple turns’ mechanic, but I can’t remember if I ever got to try it. I’m glad 5E iterated on that - although I never DM’d 4E and largely didn’t like it, there were some good things to be stolen and implemented in other games that I saw reading through the DMG and MM for it.
On railroading - One thing that happened with a friend's group - the DM had gotten a module which they really wanted to try running, but the players had been chasing other things for the past 4-5 session. He had a talk with the players, and basically said "I've recently got a new module which I'm really keen to give a try - if I throw you a plot hook in the next session or two, could you take it, please?" To which all the players agreed.
While you could argue that is railroading in a sense, it probably felt a lot better for the players then if the DM had tried to force the players into the plot.
One bad DMing trait that doesn't get much recognition (Maybe because it doesn't happen much) is the DM that makes things too easy on players or lets anything go. I had a DM (good guy, good friend, bad DM) who let everything go and made things too easy on us. I went in thinking it's a standard game so created a pretty standard, but interesting character. Everything within the rules. It was second edition, so I asked beforehand if that included what some call 2.5 edtiion. All the players option suff, kits, and skills and all. It did so I stuck to that by the rules. Another character had a cleric, who ALSO had some skeleton minions and the ability to make more from any bones. This was just in addition to all the powers granted for being a cleric. No get rid of this ability to get another ability instead (which I'm fond of). Just powers they gave themselves. Note here that this DM said that 3rd edition was too unbalanced. DM created a homebrew class for a new player. She was basically a goddess. She had a bunch of area affect spells that also could NOT harm allies. Basically a whole arsenal of fireball spells (though they included water, air etc) that would not hurt any allies in the area of effect. He even admitted that he made the class to be able to solo adventures. Okay, that would be cool if you were running a solo adventure but not to put someone who can solo an adventure in a group. Why are the rest of us here then.
My fault for NOT making an overpowered character. I could have just said my character could do all these powerful things and I would have gotten those powers. My only redemption was that I played a thief, so I had needed skills the others didn't. Then another player joins the group playing a halfling thief........... Oh and he can breath fire. Another player wanted to play a monk. The DM didn't have any reference for a monk for 2nd edition, so he just let him play a 3rd editon monk in a second edition game. Anyone not familiar with 1st and second editions, there were very few special ability gains. Throughout 20 levels, you pretty much had the same abilities, only gaining a couple at various levels other than just getting better at hitting things and more spells. No feats or equivalent. Or if you want to consider some of the specail abilities as feats then you got a couple over 20 levels. 3rd edition monk got new abilities every level. The DM who thought 3rd edition was too unbalanced did this.
And things were too easy on us constantly. There was never the threat of death. We fought a beholder and defeated it in 1 round of combat and 2 attacks into the second round, with only one character (mine) suffering any damage, and not enough to even worry the slightest. And evey combat was like that. Never a danger or worry that our characters could die. Never ANY of our characters suffering enough damage to even take us to half our HP. At one point after numerous complaints about it being too easy, he said it was time to take off the gloves. I left not long after and I heard that it never did get challenging.
One character played an Illusionist (subclass of wizard) and he never had her actually cast spells or use spell slots. Rather than cast a spell from the Illusionist spell lists, she would just say what kind of illusion she wanted to cast. Like "A volley of 1,000 arrows" and he'd have the enemy roll a save to disbelieve otherwise they took the damage from what the illusion looked like.
At one point there were 2 magial statues protecting the treasure we were after. One of the characters just persuaded them by talking to them to be our allies and travel with us and fight for us. Magically created statues set to guard a place (or any command) should not be able to be persuaded or charmed AT ALL. I'm against the whole "A natural 20 can achieve the impossible" anyway, but it wasn't even a nat 20. It was a 16. A roll of 16 allowed something to happen that shouldn't be able to happen at all.
Welp. I'm doing pretty good! I see one, maybe two of these applying to me and not very much. ( The prep work. I'm working on that. My first encounter went bad and I had to sort of improvise a reason not to TPK. But it ended up turning into a dramatic character moment, so even though I wouldn't recommend, I fumbled my way to victory. )
I too have left two games. One was supposed to start at 7:00pm, but usually didn't start until 11:00pm because some players were always late. The other was a game in which the character I was playing and my buddies were killed off in the first 30 minutes (saving the other player characters). The DM then tortured the rest of the party for four hours trying to get out of a hole. Everything they attempted required 3-4 ability checks which pretty much guaranteed it would fail.
Wow, I'd leave those games, too. I can't stand games that don't start on time. My games are at 4 pm, and I beat myself up if I start around 4:05 instead of 4 like I said. It's like a pet peeve of mine to have things start on time.
3:21
My dm took this quite seriously and had two armies and a civilian rebellion attack us, it didn't end up well for the party...
(9/12 players were murder hobos, so the various cities where they made a mess were quite upset)
Murderhoboing has consequences... 😈
Favoritism can also piss off the person being favored. I was in an online D&D game where the enemies would inexplicably always miss when they tried to attack my sorceress. I always succeeded rolls for skill check and combat even when they were HORRIBLE. I confronted the DM and told him I didn't like it at all so next session... he made my character get sucked into a whirlpool and nearly die twice while the other players tried to get me out, it took about an hour just to get through that, and my character was critical after all that...then he brought in an enemy from my backstory that summoned magical vines around me that were impossible to do anything to except break through with a strength check of ridiculous DC my -1 noodle armed ass would never make. So I just watched the rest of the party play through the encounter from my own backstory while I made countless strength checks on my turn until I just started passing... yea I quit after that.
I had a DM who had us encounter dozens of harpies. We didn't want to sit through and deal with the long combat that would ensue because just...dozens of enemies rolling dice would take HOURS and we had already told him we didn't want to have as much combat in our game. We tried to talk our way out of it, but the DM seemed so dead set on us NEEDING to have a combat. In order to get out of the encounter, the harpies demanded some sort of payment, so we gave up some of our lesser used magical items. Our paladin did not have anything to give and the DM would only accept us going on a mission for the harpies as a payment. So then, as punishment for avoiding the harpy fight, we had to fight some huge, much more difficult boss for literally no reason. It derailed our campaign for like 3 sessions and was such a waste of time when literally no one wanted to do it. No bearing on the story whatsoever. Just because we NEEDED a combat apparently. This is a regular problem where we tell him we want to get on with the story or we try to RP out of a combat and he just refuses.
My addvice is to think about it like your a story teller. Who is sharing a tale of true adventures. So as you tell how it's going
The players are the people who make this story go. So it can't go on without the pc's. And your just telling them what is unfolding around them. Now new DMs don't understand that players tend to not listen, and go in the direction off to the side. And that upsets them because they spent all that 3 hours thinking of a big thing for them to do. And they just wander off. Like a turd, in the wind. But if your running a good and at least somewhat straight forward group. You shouldn't have that problem that much
The worst DM i played with controlled the parties chareters and im still going through the story
Wait, are you saying he actually controls what your character does?
Where I go, but not battles
It sounds like you're still playing with him. Do you know why he does that or have you asked him why he does that?
i think he does it so the story gose on because we have 5 players
Here's one I just experienced.
No session 0.
DM completely unprepared and had just the basic outlines of a story. Literally said "you're in a Dwarven kingdom and it's going to be attacked by Orcs in two days. Ok go."
Two hours and literally nothing happened because the DM kept going off on real life tangents.
I keep pepple from thinking i flub my rolls by rolling in front of them, so they know i'm not trying to kill or miss them.
I am thinking of DMing at some point in the future, do you think 5 players is too much for a first time DM? Also while they're all good friends of mine, not all of them know each other, will this be a problem?
5 is not a crazy number. I wouldn't have any more though. Them not knowing each other shouldn't be a concern. Most of my players started as complete strangers.
I write my own stories already
I am ironically wanting to DM because I want the chaos of other ideas that aren't mine because that's what interests me in a game
And you NEVER go out of your way to tpk
If they are unprepared, oh well
If they brought it on their own selves, serves them right
If they roll a nat 1 death save, suggest an interesting Bard they could try out
If they escape all conceivable consequences for their murder hobo actions, they deserve to play that character and I would let them keep that magical sword they took from the king's scabbard but let them know that they should probably keep it hidden in that town just to be safe
The DM is there to give the players the tools to be legends
It is up to the players what they do with them
Ah man, you should give DMing a try then. You'll probably live it!
@@theDMLair that's my plan
I have the 5e handbook and starter set so far
I need to work on making encounters and finding time for all the players to meet at the same time and I want to keep it simple to start off
I don't take notes
Any advice?
In my defence the DM role is new to me and the majority of the party is new to the game. Spells have been cast free of charge, strong weapons against weak-ish monsters. I have eased them in to mechanics and how they are used. Coming to a halfway point. I am introducing mobs and bosses that can't be solved with magic and melee alone but cleaver thinking, enviomental usage and speechcraft!
Excessive Socializing: What is considered excessive can vary between groups. You mentioned leaving a group because the game started 1 hour later than the appointed start time. This is normal for us - everyone shows up, we either order food or cook on the grill, then we BS while we eat, and 60-90 minutes after appointment time we get to the game. We are all friends, and we like to socialize a little before getting down to business. Now online...yeah, it is much easier to get to the came quicker, no question. With the virus sending us online, games begin within 15 minutes of start time, cause we have all already eaten, etc. and are ready to go!
My first 5e DM wouldn't stop talking and describing things that didn't matter. He also wouldn't give us any choices, and he put us in Inverness when we were lvl 1.... And he wanted to make our characters for us and only sat down with 1 or 2 other players to help them. Then I made the mistake of opening my living room to the game.... There was a child with M&M hands touching my entire house while I tried to pay attention. The DM and his girlfriend tried to compromise by tying him up in a high chair instead of being normal parents that try and teach their child.
Also the DM would treat his girlfriend like shit the entire game, and made us all feel awkward as hell. She was my friend at the time, but sadly this campaign was the first step to losing her as a friend. Her boyfriend was the worst DM.. even after my boyfriend, his friend, my sister, and I had left their group they still had problems. But I was the only one who had the balls to say anything, so I got blamed for just hating on him for no reason. I don't think I'm missing much lol.
I'm the DM with the people who left the group, plus another one of my sisters now, and I have been watching everything I can about DMing. My group loves me, but I still don't ever want to be THAT DM.
I have a DM who hates me, we startet a campaign like 6 months ago and we play like every second weekend and always when we encounter a monster that is strong enough to kill one of us, it always will chaise me.
Because of that its like my 3rd character in this story.
(I always play ranged classes)
I have a player who interrupts and countermands the other players at the table during social situations. He charges forward to keep the game moving when things slow down, which is sometimes a pro and sometimes a con.
In addition, if something is shown to have negative consequences (like separating from the rest of the party) he will continue to do that thing and then complain that I'm being unfair when the negative consequences keep happening.
I don't hate him, but I usually have short patience for his nonsense. This might be an issue you want to talk to your DM about and see if you can resolve it.
Thomas Eddy thats sad, but im a very calm person, i love social interactions an like to hear how others do this too.
But as I said, i always in backline, becaus of my ranged attacks
heres a few reasons im considering quitting my current playgroup...
1. the DM dosent come prepared for much
2. the DM dosent look up what enemies we are going to face untill we are at the table
3. the DM dosent know how the enemies he actually puts us up against live/act (for example he made a encounter in a dungeon where we came up against 12 dwarvs a gold dragon and a blue dragon)
4. when we had a TPK becous we kept pushing into a orc camp when we should have gotten away... we woke up on a field next to the camp with all our gear and gold... no penelty or reason for surviving...
5. the DM dont give us eny loot just gold and then lets us buy whatever we want from whatever merchent we meet...
6. the DM fudges the rolls... well actually he just says "i rolled a 7 but im calling it a 18 becous im the DM" (we dont have a DM screen)
7. the DM dont plan farther then the next encounter and the quests we get are 2-3 encounters and then a reward...
and i must admit even tho im pretty new at dnd this DM really sucks the joy out of it...
I have only quit a few games in my life, but they were all largely due to number 6, railroading. You take away my agency as a player, then yea...you need to go write a book and stop DMing. Present the players a problem, and let them surprise you with how they solve it. This isn't just a piece of advice for games, its a piece of advice for life. As a leader, or as a manager, give your employees the problem, delegate responsibility for the task, and let them come up with a solution.....you may just be pleasantly surprised with their ingenuity.
the dm I have is guilty of 8,6 and 1
his favorites are the two girls at the table. Who's backstory is the most explored? the girls. who gets all the magical items? the girls. Who had a four hour long session 0 while the DM ignored the other players? Yup one of the girls.
He hated my campaign because "your railroading us" yeah well everything right down to my backstory has been the DM's choice. I couldn't write a backstory for my second character because "he is just a temp character and its faster this way" well my temp character seems pretty permanent because its been five 8 hour long sessions.
And the last game we had he change the mechanics of the game so his character could win fist fights. Literately his was stressed out because the rogue was so luck that she almost won in a game of chance where the odds of her wining were less than 10%
#1 was this brand new dm that tpkd us on the first encounter in LMoP and he was so happy about it too, cool thanks for the 10 minute game, are you proud of yourself?
Wow, that's messed up. TPK on first encounter is sketchy, but to be happy/proud of it is insane. Did you guys keep playing with him?
the DM Lair Of course we didn’t
As written you can't tpk on the first encounter. The players are knocked out and robbed
One of the worst DM Moments for me was when my DM punished me for trying to get some characterdevelopment going... doesn`t feel good when you try to bring depth into your Char and get punished for it
Had a DM who introduced a new PC with a note stating his character was now betrothed to my character. I was not happy. Had it been an NPC, maybe, but throwing that at me at the table with no warning? oh hell no. My solution though was finding a prestige class that required my character to remain pure (and got a unicorn mount)
Had another DM that I admit I made stupid decisions that resulted in the death of my character. But every time I died, I made a new character, at the original level we started. So I'm this lone level 10 running around with level 16s going up against EL15+ that my character just couldn't do anything against (and could die again in 2 hits). So the DM gives me a melee paladin cohort! that's a level 9 *facepalm* I nicknamed the paladin "kamikaze".
Im preparing my own campaign and set a time and date for the first meet up. My group is mostly new. (5 people, 1 is a veteran.) Two of them told me that they mostly want to be in the background and just go with the flow. But I want them to engage with everyone rather than just the three doing everything. My fear is that if I try to include them or even make them participate they might feel offence to it or think they're being pushed when they originally didn't want to be. Is there a way where I can push them to participate without them becoming discouraged or just flat out not participating?
A dm who dosen't accept the "rule of cool." I dont know how many times I would have an idea of how to attack (example: I was once playing a halfling rouge and was 10 feet from a monster and asked if I could move the 10 feet, slide under the monster while attacking, and continue moving my last 15 feet.) Most of the time dms would allow this even though it's not how a typical turn would be taken but the "rule of cool" would allow it. But dms who wouldn't allow it drive me crazy because it completely makes sense for the character
I'll be honest... I suffer from #2 a lot - like not 0% preparation, but sometimes I forget something, or haven't developed something in parts of the world yet (it's still a WIP) and end up having the players decisions/developments and integrate that as part of the world's lore/canon
I think the most common mistake I make is pacing the game too slow because I want to describe everything. I also want to roleplay every tavern visit and merchant interaction. I have to remember to up the pace if the players are too polite to say anything.
My DM designed a perfect boss fight to ruin D&D for me. Not only had he been showing favoritism, had a giant group, but he made a boss fight where my character could not damage the boss or even heal the damage it dealt. We were 6 hours into this boss fight, and all of us wanted to get home. He said we were about halfway done. Most of us were dead or unconscious because his boss had more actions per turn than there were players and the first 6 attacks that hit his 28 AC were negated by one of his 6 arms. He just wanted to kill all of us and play with his friends who were all discording into our live session. We never finished the boss fight.
Wow what a train wreck. Sorry you had to experience a wangrod DM like that.
My current DM has made the to many players mistake but our DM is pretty good at his job and still makes it fun (at least for me)
I disagree with background sonal distraction.
It adds nothing but distraction.
Also here's a free advice on using sound effects in your game:
Don't use them as a distraction.
If sound effect have to be played during anyone speaking to have an effect then the most effect it can have is distraction.
Good sound effects don't have to be played for more than few seconds and never over someone's speach.
Examples: squeaky door is a good sound effect, stormy rain is a bad sound effect, bardic concert in a tavern is the worst you can do unless players came in there just to attend to a concert and there's nothing to discuss or to narrate.
I've been worried about not preparing enough.
I try to give them as much choice as possible just don't get the feeling they're invested.
Ok i want opinion here just to see if im in the wrong.
My players were doing an eberron mission, defend some cargo on a train. Bandits attacked part way through and tried rigging a bomb to the cargo. Now, the players specifically left some bandits alive. They knocked out 2, killed the rest. They disarmed the bombs.
Heres the issue, i specifcally made it very clear the bombs could be rearmed. They did not take the bombs with them, they did not tie up the knocked out bandits. They did not removed the knocked out bandits. They left them exactly where they were. So in the middle of the night, 2 woke up, rearmed the bombs, and exploded the cargo. Am i the bad guy here? They think i should retcon but it seems like this should be the consequences of leaving them alive and not securing them
Edit: they were also the only ones with acsess bar the head car, who would not have left their car on order, so no staff wouldve entered
I need help with a dm that always let a favorite player go first and pick the best loot and let's him use his slight of hand modifier to avoid crappy rolls
As a dm I think one of the worse things a dm can do is letting a player take full control of the game as well as limiting by race when it's just because the dm doesn't want to deal with the races strength but also not being preped as a dm is bad
Just wanna get anyone's opinion, I did a sorta railroad on my recent campaign and I wanna know if the way or reason is good or not
Basically, I wanted to make it so they'd be locked up and thrown into a dungeon after an invasion of the town they started out in, and I gave them multiple options to try dealing with the invasion, whether it's fleeing or defending, either way I planned to eventually have them knocked out and thrown in the dungeon, but this was only to start setting up the story and I no longer plan on doing this, it was just to set up the story, and that's something I don't plan on using much in the future, if at all, I'm relatively knew and still figuring out good ways to start an adventure, but would you consider that a sin?
Also this has nothing to do with #1 in the video, I'm always rooting for my players
Table talk/socialization is relative to the group. A group of good friends who use D&D as an excuse to hang out every now and then is different than a group of enthusiast who really want to play the game. There is always a line where it becomes a bit too much, but where that is depends almost entirely on the group.
Should a DND group wait 2 hours for one stray PC who is running late, or should they just continue on; and have them jump in during a fight as reinforcements?
Continue on! Shoot, I start my games at the designated time. I don't even wait 15 minutes if someone is running behind. It's not fair nor respectful to the other 4 players who are on time.
The DM of the campaign I quit did all but the last two. He's younger than me, so I was patient but letting a level 4 one-shot a mind flayer that just happened to be asleep was ludicrous.
Did he slit his throat or something? I feel like it would be fairly easy to kill someone sleeping. They are so vulnerable.
@@theDMLair Here's the whole story. After the Rouge assassin was GIVEN an amulet that can teleport anywhere, a failed role randomly teleported us in front of a castle. A mind flayer telepathically spoke to us, acknowledging our presence. We talked about whether we wanted to go in or not. Before we even finished talking, the DM said, "There's a portal next to you that goes inside." The rouge went in and found the mind flayer, who had just spoken to us, sleeping. The assassin skill made it an auto-crit, and the game breaking homebrew let the rouge attack with both short swords, modifiers on both, use both of the swords' elemental magic, which were also given to him at no expense, and then double the total damage, because of the crit, not just dice. He did well over 100 damage, to a mind flayer that went to sleep 30 seconds after threatening a group of adventurers.
I think a big one is never letting others GM. The next one is never playing anything but D&D, sometimes you need to play Gamma World or something else to change it from time to time.
Good points!
Thanks! 😃👊
I know this is a late comment but I saw this video and I had to say just one thing my dm did that made really mad, it was a no-choice thing and I hated it. So he had this tournament among us and for the most part, it was okay. We rolled with dice and stayed within the rules until it went up to my character and the one who was playing my brother (he homebrewed some character sheets for us, just character backstories mind you, anything else was from the rulebook and such) we were against each other and I was winning cuz I was rolling better than he was. However, it didn't matter because he had us do something completely different that was all in favor of the one going against me for "cinematic purposes" he does this again with someone else too. It just made me not want to play anymore. My other dm, I'm in another game, is so much better because he's the exact opposite, explicitly saying if a dm is forcing people to fit a desired narrative then just write a book, don't waste player's time. Not to mention the previous guy had like 9 people in it, half of which don't show 90% of the time. He's better at dming when we're using already made stories like Waterdeep dragonheist but his other stuff was just asinine.
Yeah, I get that. Ignoring rolls just for "cinematic effect" can certainly make a player feel like their actions don't matter. Makes me wonder why half the group never bothered to show...
I DMd my first game tonight. I can tell you that railroading was definitely something wrong that I did. I felt bad because most of the party were brand new players. They were asking for help and what they should do? I feel like I made a mistake there in presenting things in a way that made them aware of options. So I over-corrected. I had a players offer them a job or make suggestions and I gave them the stupid choice, of 'Do you want to do what NPC X has just offered you?' That really isn't a good choice and is totally railroading. I want to be careful next session and not do it, but I'm also afraid that because they are new, they won't be 100% sure that they can do whatever they want.
Dude you know what I think is completely awesome about what you just said. Well first of all your first time dungeon mastering but you immediately had some introspection and we're thinking about the things that you did and how you could do them better. That is to be commended dude like hardcore. You keep doing that thinking about what you did and things you can improve on and you're going to get better and better as a dungeon master. That's really cool.
Regarding the railroading I wouldn't sweat it. Will you might consider doing for new players is simply reviewing their options. Well you know you guys could do X or you could do why or you could do Z. I think it's perfectly fine to remind them what their choices are. Yes you and I both know that they could literally do anything but for new players who maybe aren't accustomed to how RPGs work at the table giving them options is okay. I would give them several options so that they don't feel railroaded or let in a certain direction but giving them several options is perfectly fine. In fact I do this regularly with my players. They have lots of things going on and sometimes they have trouble making decisions. So I'll just remind them of the different things they have on the plate I'm the table and that they might do. I see no problem with this whatsoever in fact I see it as good dungeon mastering in a way.
@@theDMLair Thanks so much for the help, the video, and your advice. This week's game went way better. It was far from perfect. I need to work on controlling the pace for next week, but I felt like I did better with the types of choices I gave players so that was an improvement. It's cool that these videos cut right to the chase and provide me exactly what I'm looking for.
Awesome, Andrew! Glad they're helpful for you. 😀
Top mistake I've seen a GM pull would be committing adultery with the wife of the one of the players, then inviting her to play with what was left of the group while the divorce proceedings were ongoing. Admittedly an unlikely scenario, but if you get see the signs in your own group, just walk away. Maybe run.
The excessive socializing is the most annoying thing I'm dealing with my group right now. The place we gather is a shared place with like 4 others that don't play in our game. They constantly interrupt and butt in with off topic distractions.
Yeah that sucks. I wouldn't be able to take that.
4:02 I, as the DM, have the problem, that my players always start conversations during the game. Mostly they are about D&D, so they are not off topic, but it still ruins the flow of the game and makes it hard for me to stay focused on what's going on in the game.
I have told them to limit those conversations, but they are still doing it excessivly.
I don't know what consequences to bring.
Does someone have advise for me?
Hey, I and 4 other players (one was joining the group) waited for 1 and a half HOURS for our DM to show up before giving up. They canceled last week's session due to something big, what should I do?
Edit: we use discord, and the dm hasn't said anything yet
I'm running a game through skype during this quarantine and none of my players have dnd dice. I'm fudging a dice roll here and there if I think it makes the story more compelling, most of the time in my players favour with few exceptions.
Awesome video!!!😈
The DM shouldn't ensure the players die for the sick satisfaction, but the DM also shouldn't just let the players get off scot-free all the time otherwise there is no sense of a challenge.
#4 was in my first game. I am an autistic introvert, and was a child at this time. While I mostly could fake being extroverted (which I'm great at now) I had no endurance for social exhaustion. It drove me crazy when the game would derail and turn into an irl discussion.
With the not being prepared, how do you make sure you're adiquitly prepared?
Making sure that you're adequately prepared is a matter of personal taste and experience. You need to know yourself. Know the things that you are comfortable improvising and know the things that if you don't prepare them in advance will fall flat at the game table. For instance I know that I'm pretty good at creating descriptions of rooms and things that are in them on the Fly. However I really don't want to have to improvise opponents in a combat or even terrain perhaps. Those are the things that I want to have thought about and planned in advance. So the real trick is just to figure out what you can improvise and when you can improvise and then plan and prepare the things that you don't want to have to improvise at your game
@@theDMLair thanks. My plan with encounters is to use enemy generators, dungeon generators, and make some calculators for loot; will be improved with what I'm learning from your videos. I plan on it being an open world with quest hooks in almost every town. I'm starting with world building and right now I'm working on the pantheon. I've been in a railroad game once and will never forget how my gm almost killed my familiar as a warning for role-playing my character's (and familliar's) emotions. I was upset, but got the hint to cut the fluff out. I never want my players to feel that, and want their actions to be monumental in the world of my creation.
My dm has the problem of a way to large group. Is there any advice on how to change this AFTER the start of the campaign? Seriously were sometimes up to 12 players and some are lvl 4, some lvl 13 (btw problem is quite serious, pls help)
Split the group in two. Maybe even run the same campaign but now for 2 separate groups.
@@theDMLair thx
So, I'm actually a player, and my DM only ever wings it and the quality of the game has gone downhill. What is the best way to mention that he should prepare better without demanding he be different?
I would just have an honest conversation with him if you have a good relationship with the guy. I would tell him that you feel like the quality of the games going down and it's in part due to his winging it and not preparing enough. At the end of the day I don't know that you can have it both ways. If he doesn't change the way that he does it he's going to keep on waiting it and the quality of the game is going to stay the way it is now. If the cause of the quality not being so good is that he doesn't prepare enough then he kind of needs to change how he does things if the quality is to improve at all. So I don't think you can have your cake and also eat it in this situation.
Do you have any tips for running a chase?
The Critical Zone Yeah, I've been thinking about this. Here's the thing, the DMG has rules for running chases, but I find them unsatisfying. They are too complex and boggy for something that should be fast-paced and exciting.
I would run a chase scene as a SKILL CHALLENGE which I believe was introduced in 4e and then discarded (like much that was introduced there). Here's how I'd do it, and we'll assume that the PCs are chasing an NPC trying to escape for the purposes of this example.
1) Determine a DC for the chase. Maybe 10 or 15 for an easy/medium one. 20+ for a challenging one. You decide based on the circumstances. If it's an elite assassin trying to escape, that DC might be 25. If it's a common thug, maybe only 10.
2) Determine how many successes result in capturing the villain fleeing and how many failures result in him getting away. (AND TELL YOU PLAYERS THESE NUMBERS. It makes it more interesting, IMO, if they know they are in a skill challenge and what the parameters for success are.) The successes/failures should probably be the same number, and I think 3 to 5 is probably good. You might decide to make it be 1 or 2 per player involved in the chase, depending on how many players you have.
3) Have a player tell you how he is trying to catch the villain. "I'm running as fast as I can through the alley to catch him." Athletics check. "I'm chasing after him, yelling at the crowd, trying to get someone in front of the assassin to slow him up." Persuasion check. "As I chase him, I'm climbing up on the rooftops where there are fewer people so I can run faster, and I leap from rooftop to rooftop." Acrobatics or Athletics check. "As I chase, I'm checking all the alleys and hideaway spots to make sure we don't lose him." Perception check.
4) Go around the table, having each player do this, comparing their results with the DC you set, and tallying up the successes and failures until you either get enough to succeed or enough to fail. And here's the thing: NO ONE CAN REPEAT THE SAME ACTION THAT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE. Encourage them to be creative.
Once you've done skill challenges once or twice, you'll find them very fast to play out, and this will result in a chase scene that is not only fast-paced and exciting, but also encourages your players to be creative.
Hope this helps! 😃👊
very good information!!
#1 mistake for any dm, new or veteran. Not preparing before a session
I could use advice, our game is suppose to start around 8 and often doesnt until around 11pm. I am the DM but two of the players like to cook dinner and the rest of us watch a show or play ps4 while food is being made. It seems like a bad time to ask to start while the others are cooking but this also usually means we eat at 9pm and start the game at 10. Whats your advice. I still have fun, but we often only play for about an hour since there is a lot of cross talk and interruptions (another problem i am working on). Advice?
We play at two of the players house not my home, so i cant really kick them out
Honestly, that's less playing DnD and mostly just hanging out and eating together. It sounds like the others in you group may not be super interested in playing DnD? I would see if they can do the whole cooking and dinner thing before the game and then have at least 3 hours to play the game together.
@@theDMLair the other problem is my inability to have good pacing, think you could do a video on that
Im running a group of 5 through a campaign right now and they want to bring three more players into the campaign. How would you handle this?
Say no. I would. 5 is plenty.
If you want run a separate game for the other 3, but a group of 8 is too many for any but an exceptional DM or a DM willing to risk a rocky game for everyone.
“You should be writing a book!”
Are you kidding? Characters are just as bad as players in not doing what I want for the plot. I feel like I’m playing singleplayer D&D when I write.
When I was writing I could always control what the characters did. And if I decided to allow them to take the plot elsewhere, if was because I decided to allow it. My hands were always the ones doing the typing.
I'd make a terrible DM. I wouldn't go out of my way to kill the players, but if they were about to do something lethal I wouldn't ask "are you sure?", I'd just kill them. Then laugh.
Please don't eat the camera. It's not healthy.
But it looks so delicious...
It's not the best, I'd recommend eating the mic. It's WAY tastier, trust me.@@theDMLair
Now that's something I've never tried before... I've eaten cameras but I've never eaten microphones. Will have to try that. Thanks for the suggestion! 😂
No problem! Don't forget to season it!@@theDMLair