It sucks that the live games didn’t work out, but I’m glad crispy stopped them if it was harming his mental health. Glad you’re feeling better! Thanks for the content.
If your plan relies on the players surrendering, it's automatically a bad plan because if you have even one stubborn player or character at the table, your plan will fail.
I've been both a player for a drunk DM and a DM for a drunk player. Neither were fun even without the newbie factor. Expecting players to just surrender is asking for trouble. They'll either assume that there's another way out or try to make one.
"D&D isn't something you can pick up and play randomly" Back in my 2nd edition DMing days, when I was about 14 or so, I was at a family friend's Christmas dinner. My younger sister and several other kids around our age (13-15) were bored, and so I asked if people wanted to play D&D. My younger sister and 1 of the guys played in my regular game, and the other 2 kids had never played, but we gave them a quick rundown of how the game worked ("roll this d20 whenever you want to try something and Merc asks you to roll") and rolled up some very basic characters (no character sheets, just pencils in a notebook), and played basic D&D for 2 hours and had a fun time. I remember parents getting worried when my sister was screaming "Up! Up! Up! Get out or we're dead" at a Christmas party, or my friend yelling "Help! I'm drowning!" until they realised we were just playing a game. 5e character creation is SOOO much longer and more involved now, sometimes I miss the simplicity of the older editions.
Here in Italy, we have SO MANY games where you can pick up a character in a maximum of 10 minutes, from Broken Compass to Not The End passing through L'Ultima Torcia (The Last Torch in the english relase); this last one can take a few minutes longer, but only to do the maths for the starting gear: for the race, class and starting talents it take just 1 minute at the second pc 😂 And I have used all this game at school in the breaks whit the students (i'm an educator). D&D is the most popular game of course, I play it with pleasure, but there's a world full of games out there, some very crunchy and some less.
I've heard Broken Compass is good; I don't have the full game but I have the quickstart. I do have the full game of Household on PDF though! (Same creators right? I don't know if there's a different Broken Compass besides the one by Two Little Mice). I actually mostly play non-D&D games. My current groups' games are Root, Tales of Xadia (Cortex Prime), a custom-setting Cypher System, and Pathfinder 2e. After the Root game finishes up, we're doing Forbidden Lands, and when the Cypher System game finishes up we're doing When the Wolf Comes (powered by Shadow of the Demon Lord's engine). I actually started GMing at age 12 with Advanced Fighting Fantasy, so I've never really been "stuck in" on D&D.
My intro to D&D was Strahd. Party of 5 counting the DM. Took us 3 years to complete. It was challenging and confusing for me as an absolute beginner but also very fun and I got some great stories out of it!
As far as a casual dnd setting to play dnd with a fully rolled character, abilities, that is a lot. 10 people is a terrifying number of people to run for, I can barely comprehend that.... and that being experience number 1... But for a casual TTRPG experience using dnd5e as a framework, I have a one shot that doesn't require much for people other than telling them they are themselves in 1999 and it's midnight and their gas tank is critically low. The closest gas station is in the absolute middle of nowhere. Everyone has commoner stats but for abilities that the real human is pretty good at they get bonuses and you explain rules on the fly tutorial style. It's been super fun to run for people who've never played any TTRPGs and easy to pull experienced players into as well, that's how my group got started and we switched to full DnD 5e fantasy and it's been awesome : )
i did go into a paid game once. The GM was good but didn't think to tell us how many sessions the game would run. So the sticker shock was a bit much. I did talk with the GM off line and tell them I was not going to be able to work out expense-wise. We worked out an arrangement and I was able to stay in the game and participate with the other players (who were great and very welcoming and supportive.)
I just dealt with a horror story of my own. I feel so stressed out and need to just let it out. I apologize for it's length. It just left me a shook because the table i was in was so much fun for like 6 or so sessions straight. For context, we were playing "Dragon of Icepeak" so everyone was either a beginner player, or an experienced one trying out a class they havent played before (I always played Fighter, so this time i was a High-elf Cleric). No spoilers! Our group cleared a few quests before 2 players dropped from re-scheduling issues. We went through 1 more quest, which only helped strengthen the bond of the now 4 player party (A Dwarf Fighter, A wood Elf Ranger, A Halfling Rouge and me, High-elf Cleric). We got a new player in the middle of said quest, who sadly didn't clique with the rest and was a little rough around the edges. 30 mins before actually playing was dedicated to a mini session 0, so that we would all be on the same page. This player was very apologetic, but said they were "Learning how to be less abrassive". We joked how our characters have grown close enough where they are abrassive with each other like siblings and told them that so long as there were no insults, it would be fine. The game started and we dealt with some exploring and combat. GM was explaining some rules, when this player interrupted because our DM was "repeating himself too much". What actually changed the entire vibe of the session was this new player doubling down with something like "Usually, when someone says they understand a rule.. when they say they get it...? they get it". This was a little offputting mostly because everyone had different reasons as to why even "repeating" was useful (I often forgot my "Warding flare" and took unnecessary damage. remembering such a resource moments after rolls beat my AC. Our DM wouldn't let me retroactively use it so that "i would Learn to be less forgetful". A rough lesson, but i understood why. I ended up making a cheat sheet of sorts to never forget again) Anyways, The player didn't return after that session, which was a little surprising but our GM said he "Handled it" in private messages and that was that. We just took his word and finished the quest for the day. Next session we got 2 new players (Dragonborn Sorcerer and Half-Elf Warlock). We were all excited and welcoming, as surely there was no way such odd behaviors would repeat, right?. Right??? I was a little bit late to our scheduled time, so i _believed_ i missed the same "mini session 0". The one our GM did last time to get the new players up to speed? I thought he already did that, but Apparently he didn't use it this time because it would take too long for 2 players or something. He just had us meet them on the way coming back from our previous quest and then fill them in through Roleplay. It was unorthodox, but we all agreed we could practice exposition that way and take some work off of our GM's back. First, the new players would meet each other on the road. The first thing this Half-elf said to the dragonborn was "Hey Snake, do you have a name?". It visibly shook the other new player and a few of us didn't understand why at the time. Apparently it was considered a slur towards Dragonborns or something. It became really offputting, but they played it off as just "Strangers being awkward". Then the group found them on the road and invited them. Strength in numbers and all. The Half-elf looked at the dwarf and made a comment about how Dwarves "smell". Our little Fighter heard this, punched the dude in the stomach and moved on. Naturally, My cleric checked up on him to make sure he was ok, but once he noticed she was a High-elf... he immediately began a very weird conversation in elvish that a few of us at the table were absolutely not ready for. He asked why she would "Lower herself to the company of all these Lesser beings". Now, in our Session 0 we all agreed that we wouldn't play on "fantasy racism" tropes. The Halfling rouge wanted to play a tiefling. I wanted a high elf for the stats. There were worries of a cliche stuck up elf and an easy to bully tiefling. He changed to halfling, while i instead made my character an acolyte from a young age, so that she never had contact with "High elf society". We decided on "no racism at all" after those adjustments. I was also playing a very low intelligence Cleric. Since the group was missing on Wisdom/Charisma, i picked up on a sheltered character whose "wisdom" came from phrases priests would repeat religiously to visitors in need of guidance. This way i could play this bomb of a conversation as a "dummy" who didn't know this guy was just "Kissing her butt" because of race. "Lower myself? Well, I am quite tall. So sometimes i need to look down to meet face to face!" she said in an oblivious tone. The dude continued "I suppose... though it's also reasonable someone of such high birthright would venture with a bunch of meat-shields." "Meat shields? I don't think those would be particularly sturdy.... i was only ever taught to carry my steel shield here" Then he dropped the bomb that almost made another player leave. "That makes sense. Can't trust _slaves_ to be proper meat shields either, huh?" At this point i felt my pressure drop. The GM asked us if that was it for the conversation. Half-elf said he said all that in elvish, while i instead spoke in Common. With half the conversation, the others were not able to understand what was going on. All but the Wood elf ranger who also started feeling uncomfortable and told the rest of the adventurers of what this dude was saying. At this point 3 of the 4 original players are wondering what the heck is going on. We agreed to no racism of any sort. We had "skipped" the mini-session 0 that would have helped us understand what the gameplan here was. Apparently the dude was just playing an a-hole that "would get better through companionship"... but outside of my clueless Cleric, who was kindly giving him the benefit of the doubt? the rest of the group was struggling to find an in-character reason as to why they would accept to travel together. There was no discussion of lines and veils with this guy. No safety tools to decompress after the session either. Everyone just kind of left as quickly as possible. There was definitively tension and everyone was feeling it to a varying degree. Now, the next part is totally my screw up. If we had communicated better, things wouldnt have derailed as terribly as they did. Dwarf added me on Discord to discuss the red flags of this possible problem player. I told him that we should talk with the GM about it, but he said he was just about ready to leave the campaign altogether and that made me panic a bit. To avoid losing him or anyone, we organized a group chat with everyone (GM included) to voice our worries. At this time our GM was in holiday so he didnt check in or respond for a couple days. The first to speak was Dragonborn sorcerer, who just outright decided he wasnt playing with us and left. He didn't say why, he just left. It was obvious to everyone why he left though. He was very uncomfortable from interacting with the half-elf player. So i started saying how it was a shame he probably didn't clique with our table. That's when our "problem player" interjected, hoping he was not the cause of that. Taking a deep breath, i mentioned how i wasn't sure if we discussed session 0 topics with him, so his character starting his adventuring trip with fantasy racism was... a lot. He agreed and promised to drop that aspect of the character, which made me feel muuuuch better about continuing the campaign with him. The damage was already done though. The Dwarf mentioned he explicitly didn't want any racism, that he didn't sign up for that and that he felt his trust was betrayed. From there, me and ranger tried to descalate saying how it caught us "Offguard". That we simply didn't expect that sort of angle from a new player joining us, and that maybe we should have those session 0 expectations written down somewhere so that no one could forget (Or new players could read them during character creation) For levity, i tried to joke about how it's "really funny that your character met us, said we sucked.... and yet still asked to join our group" This didn't go as planned and he was the next to leave. At this point our GM interjected to inform us of still being on his holiday trip and to stop talking about all this. That he would read the situation asap. I apologized to him cause it felt we only made things worse by not waiting for him. The day before our next session the GM contacted me to inform me that if there was a problem with another player, that we should have come to him. He said we ganged up on half-elf and got them to leave, which was an offense he took 0 tolerance with.... And just like that, Dwarf and me were kicked off the table. Did i deserve it? Yes. Mediating these kind of issues is something i do a lot with friends and family... but in this case i should have gone to our GM and let _him_ handle it in private like he did with the first "problem player". The stress i am feeling right now from possibly alienating a new player from D&D? If its not entirely my fault, i did definitively took a part on it. I believe i offered the suggestion to write down the session 0 expectations, Then GM blocked me as i was trying to acknowledge my mistake. The message didn't go through. Dwarf felt absolutely terrible too. Not just from having a part on this nightmare, but also for having his trust betrayed by being told by the GM that "Fantasy Racism between elves and dwarves is just that... a fantasy. If you can't separate your character being the target of it from yourself. You are the one with the problem". Hopefully we all can move on from this horror story with some sort of lesson from it.
Woah! While you are correct that having the DM there while the problem was discussed is the way things should have gone, the DM is also at fault here for not enforcing the session zero boundaries that you discussed. If they forgot to bring the new players up to the speed that's one thing but as soon as lines were crossed they ought to have paused the session and explained the mistake and communicated the lines and veils as discussed at session zero.
I think you’re in the right. Players are adults and should be able to discuss issues with each other without needing a mediator. Secondly, the DM shouldn’t approve a boundary then get mad when people are asked to respect it.
Cannot overstate being straightforward with players. Ran a game about nobility and somehow, saying “just going about nobleman business when odd things start happening”, that led to 2/5 players being actual businessmen who were also technically nobles and they did NOT fit with the setting
The idea that you shouldn't have the player proceed by only doing a very specific thing is something module writers could do as well. Puffin Forrest had a hilarious video about when he accidentally skipped over part of a module where the players were supposed infiltrate a Yuan-Ti temple posing as slaves (i.e. surrendering same issue Matt had) and meet an NPC ally. The result was that the players went in guns blazing as it were, killed said NPC, and the campaign went of the rails. He managed to luck out as players were smart enough to divide and conquer the army of enemies inside the temple so no player ended up dying.
The greatest advice I could give to any DM is to create problems for your players to solve, not solutions. You can offer one or two possible solutions for your players to find, but don’t make those the only solutions to the problems. And if you create, or run an adventure that has only one or two solutions (like finding the identity of who did the thing) then don’t lock finding critical clues and information behind rolls if you want the players to find it, and complete the adventure. D&D is a collaborative game and everyone playing may have different ideas about how to approach any particular situation.
Good takes and good advice. I've been playing for over 30 years and I approve of this video. D&D (and tabletop RPG's in general) are like 80% improv, 15% preparation, and 5% rules keeping. Trying to predict what players are going to do is rarely a good idea, if ever.
by the way the $30 a session is per PERSON. So if its a standard party of 5. Thats 120 x 5...thats 600 dollars a month and if you do 2 or 3 games a week at the same price bruh...
Not my first Campaign as GM, though I my current AWESOME group has started gathering lore relevant 'artifact level' magic items in preparation for delving into the final 'mega dungeon' and to meet the BBEG. It has taken Years to get here, first time for a campaign this big/long. I am so hyped and a bit nervous (TBH I have haven't yet put the final dungeon on paper yet). While, I would certainly enjoy getting to play a One-shot or short (2-5 sessions) adventure with you, Crispy (or any of others' featured here), yet I would avoid any long term expectations without feeling out how our playstyles mesh.
We had a PC bitten by a wererat recently, resulting in us rushing about to find some fresh belladonna before one hour runs out and the "easy" sure no longer works. My druid recognized the wererats and confirmed she was infected as the GM gave me Knowledge: Nature rolls (yes, 3.5). So then my spider-lady druid was flying about as a falcon while two other people went to a black market (with the elven cleric traumatizing two gate guards along the way... nat 20 intimidation) so that we came back with more than enough and the warforged cleric (highest Heal skill) applying it (read force-feeding the child-like warlock).
What a great tip at the end. I've got a game I've been designing for a while that would involve obfuscating the truth as a main story point. I've been worried about how potential players would react to that, but explaining that I wouldn't tell them everything, but what I DO tell them is the truth? That should solve the problem before it's a problem.
I've been running a paid D&D game for almost two years now, with a second running for a few months now. Just saying that it is possible. Having a (randomly chosen) great group of players heps, too.
I can definitely see what you mean. If you’re a paid DM, it’s your job. You can like or even love your job. But you have to be professional. You’re now selling a product, not just having fun with your hobby. It’s much like commissioned art. You have to create what the customer is paying for.
I'm a paid DM on Startplaying. I see lot's of games for 30 bucks and even I question how and why? I have a price range from 7 to 13 bucks. I dont plan to ever charge more than 15. I keep my prices low for reasons like (affordability) (reasonable expectations) (less chance of "pay to win" mentality). If adventures leage at a game store is 5 bucks, and a movie ticket is like 11 to 20 bucks. I feel like 10 bucks to run curse of strahd is reasonable.
10.35 I been high once while Dming with my friends, and that session was probably one of the craziest, in the positive way. But even if the overall experience wasn't that bad, i wouldn't do that again ^^"
"D&D and Super Casual, they don't really mix!" Nonsense, they absolutely do mix. People like you telling folks that it doesn't is what makes people more hesitant to play. The game can be as casual or as serious as you make it, and I have been playing D&D since the early 80's, and have introduced new folks to the game in many situations over the years... including when folks were imbibing. I do appreciate your opinions on this... but your experience is extremely limited. It really is not that hard... if you are a storyteller, you can run a nice casual game with all levels of players... if you are someone stuck on rules and numbers, you probably can't and you likely aren't actually a good DM.
Sure. They can mix. But they usually don't. If you really think most people will pick up on the entire game in the same span as it takes to set up a Mario Kart match, you don't only lack D&D experience. You lack life experience.
it's not ideal to have comentary on videos we haven't actually seen. maybe a more detailed description of the video would have made it better. as it stands it's confusing and not very engaging :(
It sucks that the live games didn’t work out, but I’m glad crispy stopped them if it was harming his mental health.
Glad you’re feeling better! Thanks for the content.
If your plan relies on the players surrendering, it's automatically a bad plan because if you have even one stubborn player or character at the table, your plan will fail.
I've been both a player for a drunk DM and a DM for a drunk player. Neither were fun even without the newbie factor.
Expecting players to just surrender is asking for trouble. They'll either assume that there's another way out or try to make one.
"D&D isn't something you can pick up and play randomly" Back in my 2nd edition DMing days, when I was about 14 or so, I was at a family friend's Christmas dinner. My younger sister and several other kids around our age (13-15) were bored, and so I asked if people wanted to play D&D. My younger sister and 1 of the guys played in my regular game, and the other 2 kids had never played, but we gave them a quick rundown of how the game worked ("roll this d20 whenever you want to try something and Merc asks you to roll") and rolled up some very basic characters (no character sheets, just pencils in a notebook), and played basic D&D for 2 hours and had a fun time.
I remember parents getting worried when my sister was screaming "Up! Up! Up! Get out or we're dead" at a Christmas party, or my friend yelling "Help! I'm drowning!" until they realised we were just playing a game.
5e character creation is SOOO much longer and more involved now, sometimes I miss the simplicity of the older editions.
Here in Italy, we have SO MANY games where you can pick up a character in a maximum of 10 minutes, from Broken Compass to Not The End passing through L'Ultima Torcia (The Last Torch in the english relase); this last one can take a few minutes longer, but only to do the maths for the starting gear: for the race, class and starting talents it take just 1 minute at the second pc 😂
And I have used all this game at school in the breaks whit the students (i'm an educator).
D&D is the most popular game of course, I play it with pleasure, but there's a world full of games out there, some very crunchy and some less.
I've heard Broken Compass is good; I don't have the full game but I have the quickstart. I do have the full game of Household on PDF though! (Same creators right? I don't know if there's a different Broken Compass besides the one by Two Little Mice). I actually mostly play non-D&D games. My current groups' games are Root, Tales of Xadia (Cortex Prime), a custom-setting Cypher System, and Pathfinder 2e.
After the Root game finishes up, we're doing Forbidden Lands, and when the Cypher System game finishes up we're doing When the Wolf Comes (powered by Shadow of the Demon Lord's engine). I actually started GMing at age 12 with Advanced Fighting Fantasy, so I've never really been "stuck in" on D&D.
My intro to D&D was Strahd. Party of 5 counting the DM. Took us 3 years to complete. It was challenging and confusing for me as an absolute beginner but also very fun and I got some great stories out of it!
10:08 : "Oil and water, Cupcake. Oil and Water ..."
As far as a casual dnd setting to play dnd with a fully rolled character, abilities, that is a lot. 10 people is a terrifying number of people to run for, I can barely comprehend that.... and that being experience number 1...
But for a casual TTRPG experience using dnd5e as a framework, I have a one shot that doesn't require much for people other than telling them they are themselves in 1999 and it's midnight and their gas tank is critically low. The closest gas station is in the absolute middle of nowhere. Everyone has commoner stats but for abilities that the real human is pretty good at they get bonuses and you explain rules on the fly tutorial style. It's been super fun to run for people who've never played any TTRPGs and easy to pull experienced players into as well, that's how my group got started and we switched to full DnD 5e fantasy and it's been awesome : )
i did go into a paid game once. The GM was good but didn't think to tell us how many sessions the game would run. So the sticker shock was a bit much. I did talk with the GM off line and tell them I was not going to be able to work out expense-wise. We worked out an arrangement and I was able to stay in the game and participate with the other players (who were great and very welcoming and supportive.)
I just dealt with a horror story of my own. I feel so stressed out and need to just let it out. I apologize for it's length.
It just left me a shook because the table i was in was so much fun for like 6 or so sessions straight. For context, we were playing "Dragon of Icepeak" so everyone was either a beginner player, or an experienced one trying out a class they havent played before (I always played Fighter, so this time i was a High-elf Cleric).
No spoilers! Our group cleared a few quests before 2 players dropped from re-scheduling issues. We went through 1 more quest, which only helped strengthen the bond of the now 4 player party (A Dwarf Fighter, A wood Elf Ranger, A Halfling Rouge and me, High-elf Cleric).
We got a new player in the middle of said quest, who sadly didn't clique with the rest and was a little rough around the edges. 30 mins before actually playing was dedicated to a mini session 0, so that we would all be on the same page. This player was very apologetic, but said they were "Learning how to be less abrassive". We joked how our characters have grown close enough where they are abrassive with each other like siblings and told them that so long as there were no insults, it would be fine.
The game started and we dealt with some exploring and combat. GM was explaining some rules, when this player interrupted because our DM was "repeating himself too much". What actually changed the entire vibe of the session was this new player doubling down with something like "Usually, when someone says they understand a rule.. when they say they get it...? they get it".
This was a little offputting mostly because everyone had different reasons as to why even "repeating" was useful (I often forgot my "Warding flare" and took unnecessary damage. remembering such a resource moments after rolls beat my AC. Our DM wouldn't let me retroactively use it so that "i would Learn to be less forgetful". A rough lesson, but i understood why. I ended up making a cheat sheet of sorts to never forget again)
Anyways, The player didn't return after that session, which was a little surprising but our GM said he "Handled it" in private messages and that was that. We just took his word and finished the quest for the day.
Next session we got 2 new players (Dragonborn Sorcerer and Half-Elf Warlock). We were all excited and welcoming, as surely there was no way such odd behaviors would repeat, right?. Right???
I was a little bit late to our scheduled time, so i _believed_ i missed the same "mini session 0". The one our GM did last time to get the new players up to speed? I thought he already did that, but Apparently he didn't use it this time because it would take too long for 2 players or something. He just had us meet them on the way coming back from our previous quest and then fill them in through Roleplay. It was unorthodox, but we all agreed we could practice exposition that way and take some work off of our GM's back.
First, the new players would meet each other on the road. The first thing this Half-elf said to the dragonborn was "Hey Snake, do you have a name?". It visibly shook the other new player and a few of us didn't understand why at the time. Apparently it was considered a slur towards Dragonborns or something. It became really offputting, but they played it off as just "Strangers being awkward".
Then the group found them on the road and invited them. Strength in numbers and all. The Half-elf looked at the dwarf and made a comment about how Dwarves "smell". Our little Fighter heard this, punched the dude in the stomach and moved on.
Naturally, My cleric checked up on him to make sure he was ok, but once he noticed she was a High-elf... he immediately began a very weird conversation in elvish that a few of us at the table were absolutely not ready for. He asked why she would "Lower herself to the company of all these Lesser beings".
Now, in our Session 0 we all agreed that we wouldn't play on "fantasy racism" tropes. The Halfling rouge wanted to play a tiefling. I wanted a high elf for the stats. There were worries of a cliche stuck up elf and an easy to bully tiefling. He changed to halfling, while i instead made my character an acolyte from a young age, so that she never had contact with "High elf society". We decided on "no racism at all" after those adjustments.
I was also playing a very low intelligence Cleric.
Since the group was missing on Wisdom/Charisma, i picked up on a sheltered character whose "wisdom" came from phrases priests would repeat religiously to visitors in need of guidance. This way i could play this bomb of a conversation as a "dummy" who didn't know this guy was just "Kissing her butt" because of race.
"Lower myself? Well, I am quite tall. So sometimes i need to look down to meet face to face!" she said in an oblivious tone.
The dude continued "I suppose... though it's also reasonable someone of such high birthright would venture with a bunch of meat-shields."
"Meat shields? I don't think those would be particularly sturdy.... i was only ever taught to carry my steel shield here"
Then he dropped the bomb that almost made another player leave. "That makes sense. Can't trust _slaves_ to be proper meat shields either, huh?"
At this point i felt my pressure drop. The GM asked us if that was it for the conversation. Half-elf said he said all that in elvish, while i instead spoke in Common. With half the conversation, the others were not able to understand what was going on. All but the Wood elf ranger who also started feeling uncomfortable and told the rest of the adventurers of what this dude was saying.
At this point 3 of the 4 original players are wondering what the heck is going on. We agreed to no racism of any sort.
We had "skipped" the mini-session 0 that would have helped us understand what the gameplan here was. Apparently the dude was just playing an a-hole that "would get better through companionship"... but outside of my clueless Cleric, who was kindly giving him the benefit of the doubt? the rest of the group was struggling to find an in-character reason as to why they would accept to travel together.
There was no discussion of lines and veils with this guy. No safety tools to decompress after the session either. Everyone just kind of left as quickly as possible. There was definitively tension and everyone was feeling it to a varying degree.
Now, the next part is totally my screw up. If we had communicated better, things wouldnt have derailed as terribly as they did. Dwarf added me on Discord to discuss the red flags of this possible problem player. I told him that we should talk with the GM about it, but he said he was just about ready to leave the campaign altogether and that made me panic a bit.
To avoid losing him or anyone, we organized a group chat with everyone (GM included) to voice our worries. At this time our GM was in holiday so he didnt check in or respond for a couple days.
The first to speak was Dragonborn sorcerer, who just outright decided he wasnt playing with us and left. He didn't say why, he just left. It was obvious to everyone why he left though. He was very uncomfortable from interacting with the half-elf player.
So i started saying how it was a shame he probably didn't clique with our table. That's when our "problem player" interjected, hoping he was not the cause of that.
Taking a deep breath, i mentioned how i wasn't sure if we discussed session 0 topics with him, so his character starting his adventuring trip with fantasy racism was... a lot.
He agreed and promised to drop that aspect of the character, which made me feel muuuuch better about continuing the campaign with him. The damage was already done though. The Dwarf mentioned he explicitly didn't want any racism, that he didn't sign up for that and that he felt his trust was betrayed.
From there, me and ranger tried to descalate saying how it caught us "Offguard". That we simply didn't expect that sort of angle from a new player joining us, and that maybe we should have those session 0 expectations written down somewhere so that no one could forget (Or new players could read them during character creation)
For levity, i tried to joke about how it's "really funny that your character met us, said we sucked.... and yet still asked to join our group"
This didn't go as planned and he was the next to leave. At this point our GM interjected to inform us of still being on his holiday trip and to stop talking about all this. That he would read the situation asap. I apologized to him cause it felt we only made things worse by not waiting for him.
The day before our next session the GM contacted me to inform me that if there was a problem with another player, that we should have come to him.
He said we ganged up on half-elf and got them to leave, which was an offense he took 0 tolerance with.... And just like that, Dwarf and me were kicked off the table.
Did i deserve it? Yes. Mediating these kind of issues is something i do a lot with friends and family... but in this case i should have gone to our GM and let _him_ handle it in private like he did with the first "problem player". The stress i am feeling right now from possibly alienating a new player from D&D? If its not entirely my fault, i did definitively took a part on it.
I believe i offered the suggestion to write down the session 0 expectations, Then GM blocked me as i was trying to acknowledge my mistake. The message didn't go through.
Dwarf felt absolutely terrible too. Not just from having a part on this nightmare, but also for having his trust betrayed by being told by the GM that "Fantasy Racism between elves and dwarves is just that... a fantasy. If you can't separate your character being the target of it from yourself. You are the one with the problem".
Hopefully we all can move on from this horror story with some sort of lesson from it.
jesus, that's bad
Woah! While you are correct that having the DM there while the problem was discussed is the way things should have gone, the DM is also at fault here for not enforcing the session zero boundaries that you discussed. If they forgot to bring the new players up to the speed that's one thing but as soon as lines were crossed they ought to have paused the session and explained the mistake and communicated the lines and veils as discussed at session zero.
I think you’re in the right. Players are adults and should be able to discuss issues with each other without needing a mediator.
Secondly, the DM shouldn’t approve a boundary then get mad when people are asked to respect it.
Cannot overstate being straightforward with players. Ran a game about nobility and somehow, saying “just going about nobleman business when odd things start happening”, that led to 2/5 players being actual businessmen who were also technically nobles and they did NOT fit with the setting
15:40... I swear to god I thought he said lesbianos like that was one of the players or their character
Lesbi-honest is one of crispys speech quirks. Just wait until you hear how he pronounces “wheird”
The idea that you shouldn't have the player proceed by only doing a very specific thing is something module writers could do as well. Puffin Forrest had a hilarious video about when he accidentally skipped over part of a module where the players were supposed infiltrate a Yuan-Ti temple posing as slaves (i.e. surrendering same issue Matt had) and meet an NPC ally. The result was that the players went in guns blazing as it were, killed said NPC, and the campaign went of the rails. He managed to luck out as players were smart enough to divide and conquer the army of enemies inside the temple so no player ended up dying.
The greatest advice I could give to any DM is to create problems for your players to solve, not solutions. You can offer one or two possible solutions for your players to find, but don’t make those the only solutions to the problems. And if you create, or run an adventure that has only one or two solutions (like finding the identity of who did the thing) then don’t lock finding critical clues and information behind rolls if you want the players to find it, and complete the adventure.
D&D is a collaborative game and everyone playing may have different ideas about how to approach any particular situation.
Good takes and good advice. I've been playing for over 30 years and I approve of this video.
D&D (and tabletop RPG's in general) are like 80% improv, 15% preparation, and 5% rules keeping. Trying to predict what players are going to do is rarely a good idea, if ever.
by the way the $30 a session is per PERSON. So if its a standard party of 5. Thats 120 x 5...thats 600 dollars a month
and if you do 2 or 3 games a week at the same price bruh...
Re-Ginny's 1st game:
Supercasualfragballisticexperienceatrocious
Not my first Campaign as GM, though I my current AWESOME group has started gathering lore relevant 'artifact level' magic items in preparation for delving into the final 'mega dungeon' and to meet the BBEG. It has taken Years to get here, first time for a campaign this big/long. I am so hyped and a bit nervous (TBH I have haven't yet put the final dungeon on paper yet).
While, I would certainly enjoy getting to play a One-shot or short (2-5 sessions) adventure with you, Crispy (or any of others' featured here), yet I would avoid any long term expectations without feeling out how our playstyles mesh.
As soon as I saw the Godzilla in the background I got distracted from the video 😂
I thought this was the ginny collab, when's that gonna be?
It’s not in the cards right now. We’re both very busy, but hey! It could happen in the future.
Me too lol
@@CrispysTavernme too lol
We had a PC bitten by a wererat recently, resulting in us rushing about to find some fresh belladonna before one hour runs out and the "easy" sure no longer works. My druid recognized the wererats and confirmed she was infected as the GM gave me Knowledge: Nature rolls (yes, 3.5). So then my spider-lady druid was flying about as a falcon while two other people went to a black market (with the elven cleric traumatizing two gate guards along the way... nat 20 intimidation) so that we came back with more than enough and the warforged cleric (highest Heal skill) applying it (read force-feeding the child-like warlock).
What a great tip at the end. I've got a game I've been designing for a while that would involve obfuscating the truth as a main story point. I've been worried about how potential players would react to that, but explaining that I wouldn't tell them everything, but what I DO tell them is the truth? That should solve the problem before it's a problem.
you're right of course! You may not be a great DM for me, but I'd love to at least try playing in your game.
I tried running a DND game while under the influence of weed just ended up doing a trippy dream sequence
I've been running a paid D&D game for almost two years now, with a second running for a few months now. Just saying that it is possible. Having a (randomly chosen) great group of players heps, too.
I can definitely see what you mean. If you’re a paid DM, it’s your job. You can like or even love your job. But you have to be professional. You’re now selling a product, not just having fun with your hobby. It’s much like commissioned art. You have to create what the customer is paying for.
I'm a paid DM on Startplaying. I see lot's of games for 30 bucks and even I question how and why? I have a price range from 7 to 13 bucks. I dont plan to ever charge more than 15. I keep my prices low for reasons like (affordability) (reasonable expectations) (less chance of "pay to win" mentality). If adventures leage at a game store is 5 bucks, and a movie ticket is like 11 to 20 bucks. I feel like 10 bucks to run curse of strahd is reasonable.
i like your Godzilla figure in the background
Expectations, people! Goes both ways, for players AND for GMs.
10.35 I been high once while Dming with my friends, and that session was probably one of the craziest, in the positive way.
But even if the overall experience wasn't that bad, i wouldn't do that again ^^"
"Even if you give your players advantage they can sill fail" - ah yes. That time I had advantage on a roll and still rolled 2x a nat 1 .... painful 😅
Ouch that sucks. I'm sorry
So many paid D&D roll20 listing are for 7-8 PCs for a module, which is way too many players for those games.
Crispppy !!!
I thought my game of $55 a month was a lot...
HI :)
Anyone can have a horror story.
Anyone can have a horror story
"D&D and Super Casual, they don't really mix!"
Nonsense, they absolutely do mix. People like you telling folks that it doesn't is what makes people more hesitant to play. The game can be as casual or as serious as you make it, and I have been playing D&D since the early 80's, and have introduced new folks to the game in many situations over the years... including when folks were imbibing.
I do appreciate your opinions on this... but your experience is extremely limited.
It really is not that hard... if you are a storyteller, you can run a nice casual game with all levels of players... if you are someone stuck on rules and numbers, you probably can't and you likely aren't actually a good DM.
Sure. They can mix. But they usually don't.
If you really think most people will pick up on the entire game in the same span as it takes to set up a Mario Kart match, you don't only lack D&D experience.
You lack life experience.
early
it's not ideal to have comentary on videos we haven't actually seen. maybe a more detailed description of the video would have made it better. as it stands it's confusing and not very engaging :(
Anyone can have a horror story
Anyone can have a horror story