Befriend dragons rather than slay them with Draconis, a peaceful new way to play 5e. Coming to Kickstarter www.kickstarter.com/projects/1176616619/draconis-feel-good-ttrpg-5e/
Draconis seems like a challenge. 5E is a combat-based game. To focus on non-combat resolutions seems pretty niche. Best of luck to all involved, though. I hope it pleasantly suirprises us all.
@@ScottishstormYeah. It does seem like a really nice game, and echoing you good luck to them… But whenever I see something like this I wonder why they don’t just play a non-D&D game that already exists. This sounds very similar to Ryutama, and there’s plenty of non-combat games already out there, from a multitude of PtbA ones to Storybrewer’s ‘Good Society’ and ‘Castles in the Air’ which are almost 100% roleplaying.
Just wanted to say, I've enjoyed the ads you yourself have been incorporating into the vids. I know there's an art to it some RUclipsrs adapt to with varying degrees of success. I've to date liked yours but really thought this one was particularly well done.
My experience has been less character death but more introducing a new player into a campaign. Most suggestions still apply. The line I like to use is "Well you seem like an oddly trustworthy fellow and I will now implicitly and completely believe whatever you say and trust you with my life."
The original "The Gamers" short fan film hits this point *perfectly*. GM: "Now remember, this person is a complete and total stranger, you're in the middle of an evil haunted castle, and the last people you met tried to kill you. What do you do?" PCs: "You seem trustworthy. Will you join us?" New PC: "Yes, yes I will."
@@notentirelyanon6902 God, those movies were master pieces. I love the second one, "Dorkness Rising." My friends and I still quote "as if killing the bard impresses us" whenever a DM kills off an NPC to hype up a bad guy.
In a dungeon, we were on a spiral staircase, and encountered another party. My lead character and theirs recognized each other. "What are you doing here?" "Breaking in. What are you doing here?" "Breaking out." Then it was followed by an exchange of information, some maneuvers to get around each other without falling off. Later, the two groups got together and exchanged members. Fun.😜
For space settings, you can give your players a colony ship with a bunch of people in stasis, but the ship can only support (player count) number of awake crew members at a time. So if a PC dies, you can wake up another colony member. This builds in back story, motivation, and inter party connections.
This is great. Also, what if the PCs are not part of the original crew, but rather have taken on its ancient mission. Between main adventures on passing planets, they could have smaller adventures in which they explore odd pockets of the ship, and discover random cultures of accidentally revived colonists (I'm heavily influenced here by an old TV show called The Starlost).
Im starting to think that Seth, Dweebles, and the rest of the gang are all the same person. Sure, we see them talking some times, but never in the same frame. Very much a Clark Kent situation.
Back on Star Wars Day (May 4th), I threw my Pathfinder group against some yetis in an ice cave (an obvious nod to Empire Strikes Back). Well, my wife's character sadly met their end to some brutal dice rolls! The yeti double-crit & rended her poor archer, and she was down for the count. So, naturally, at the start of the next session, the party found her new character hanging upside down in the ice at the back of the cave!
I've mentioned this in prior videos, but my main character in Traveller always referred to his invisible friend who was a Droyne no one else heard or saw. Who lived in the vents of the ship. If my character would die, she would be available almost immediately for the group to join. I also referenced her all the time when I wanted to talk about things he heard her talk about. Or would mention he heard from 'Xim's experience. So all characters knew their name and with she was good at. Even the game Master has basically made her into an actual NPC kind of like a living aspect of the ship.
In our current Traveller campaign (stringing a bunch of Reach adventures together as a build-up to taking on Pirates of Drinax) we had a second collective character generation session, in which a new player rolled her first character and everyone else joined in and helped her along by rolling up backups. Fun was had, and ice was broken in a most satisfactory manner.
It’s funny you mention Horror on the Orient Express. When I ran it, I had everyone make 4 characters and we did a little prediction on how many characters each player would have left at the end. One of my players started as a professor from Arkham who was in the UK with some students on an extended study trip. His backups were the students who came along with the professor after they accepted the quest to go to Istanbul. Every one of his characters died and he made 2 more past the initial 4 that also died. Conversely I had one players first character survive till the finale after taking photographs of their journey, only to die right at the very end,. HIs photo album became a legendary source of mythos evidence and some leaked and out of context pictures became very popular album covers with alternative musicians 😂.
@@ultralight9625 Everyone’s favorite picture was actually of two PCs punching a third (brand new) PC as they had a nervous breakdown in the car after losing an eye on their first day in the group.
The surfer dude is Todd and the guy with the southern (Texas?) accent is Mike. Dweebles is actually a nickname. His true name is unknown, even to himself. See Seth's NPC vids for when this was revealed.
It was a while before Seth named them on screen, and some commenter offered suggestions. Among them, Dweebles for Player 3. Seth liked it better than the name he had in mind.
“Player charactor life insurance isnt a thing” Me to the bank of neverwinter: right so in the event of my death i want all my funds to go to my daughter.
Don't forget the massive Inheritance Tax! Was even a mention of it way back in the old Isle Of Dread module in the section on how to get the players into the campaign. 😄 Make 'em pay!!
One of the adventuring parties we hired had this in their contract. They all died... along with the other 3 parties we hired... Don't try to ambush vampire knights at night without magical light sources. (in our defense we didn't know we were up against vampires)
Me: The demon has you in its jaws. Player: I attack it. Me: You can attempt to escape, the demon automatically hits you next turn if you stay there. Player: I hit the demon. Me: Okay, damage? Alright, demon's turn, and... you die. Player: I can't believe you killed me.
As mostly a GM, whenever I do play I often have a backup character ready to go. I think I've gotten jaded about characters I control dying; I once had to console another player who started sobbing after MY character died.
It's a pretty epic compliment though, if your character meant so much to them that they were devastated to lose them (unless they cried every time a character died, which is a bit different). I'd feel incredibly vindicated as a roleplayer if that happened to me.
@@BlueTressym I guess I took it as a compliment, but in the moment I just felt strange. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the reason it hit them harder was because I had used the last charge of an ability I had to save their character earlier in the session, so I didn't have it later to save mine, and they blamed themselves for that (Which was obviously not their fault).
Same, I used to feel strongly about my characters until I moved to being mainly a GM. Nowadays when I happen to be a player I ride them like a stolen car 😂
One of my favorite methods to introduce a new PC works only in Paranoia: The PC is strapped to a rocket sled that careens into the party, taking out at least 2 other people.
Ive got a group of 5 for an OSE campaign and had them all make 2 PCs to start. Then if only 2-3 can make a session, they use both of their characters. If everyone can make it, then they each use their primary character. Really works well instead of only having an emergency backup.
I find that in most systems that use levels, as opposed to skill ranks and what else have you. Bringing in a character with a lower level than the rest of the party, even if thematically appropriate, tends to begin a spiral. Especially if health is in any way tied to level. Note that I don't have anything against anyone doing it, but it's just something I have observed.
Yeah you do end up with player whose characters tend to die over and over again, though usually I find the new character hides a lot for quite a while, which isn't fun ether.
I suppose that depends on player attitude and overall challenge level of the game. In highly dangerous campaigns where the GM is running encounters that are a level or two above the average of the party, yes, more frequent PC death is going to quickly take the party level down, and more consistently. That is a GM problem, I think. In parties where one of the players is more, let's say, rowdy than the rest, he is going to experience more frequent death on the individual level, which can be disruptive, and is a player issue. However, each time his character dies, the new character comes in consistently at the prescribed lower level (usually one level lower), compared with the party level, not with his newly dead character's level. Aside from the player likely being disruptive, I don't see that as an issue, really. He can always be evened-up with the rest of the party through use of a one-on-one side game. I speak entirely from experience here, by the way. This was typical of our 3.5 campaigns.
Definitely agree, we used to bring them in a level lower in 3.5 dnd (the idea was they'd be in the same position as if we'd used Raise Dead on the old character), the xp mechanics meant they'd catch up after a while, but if you ran into a hard fight before then, it could be trouble, and the more it happened the further you eneded up behind the other characters. We just let people come in at full level regardless of system these days, more fun and it makes balancing combat easier if there's not one lower level PC who can't keep up.
I Will sometimes say “hey, we have a player or two out this week so let’s run a b-squad mission” and we can run our backup characters through a short mission for that night which can tie in to the main campaign or simply be an unconnected line
That is the current plan. Right now, we just finished Chapter 6 of 10, so hopefully not too much longer before I start a Review/Campaign Diary series on it
My favorite backup character was in starfinder. My backup was... the character. Character was very devoted to cybernetics. So my backup was an AI construct based off the character I was playing. Character was killed, which then triggered this DROS construct to activate. Yeah, was a copout, but I was also burned out on that campaign. Was having long grind of combat in the module being ran. We were right at end then suddenly a save or die spell. So was effectively Thanos snapped out of the game literally at the end of the campaign with a boss before a boss.
No, I’m not Landfill, I’m his twin brother Gil. I taught Landfill everything he knew about drinking beer, I wanna fulfill his legacy by taking his place on your drinking team. You must be Fink, Landfill told me everything about you. I feel like I know you guys, so we won’t have that awkward get to know you stage. And,if I could just ask one favor, if it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable I was hoping maybe you guys could call me Landfill, in honor of him.
Dead Gentlemen Productions / Zombie Orpheus Entertainment included humorous examples of bringing in replacement characters in their movies "The Gamers" and "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising." (The last person they met tried to kill them. Now they meet the replacement character for the one who died earlier.) "You seem trustworthy. Would you care to join our noble quest?" And who could forget "There's 37 more of me a**hole!!"
Funny little detail about PCs' life insurance. According to some sources, piratesband sailors used to wear golden earrings to pay for their own funerals. One of my D&D party had a similar idea: each character had a diamond jewel worth enough to get them resurrected once.
Best backup I ever had was never used. It was a shape changing druid who followed the party unnoticed. The plan was to jump it in when the main went down almost immediately. It became a major NPC in my own campaign in the end and saw a whole lot of game time.
One other resource that's a bit tricky but rewarding to tap is the enemy forces. A member of the gang, cult, city guard, etc may have strong misgivings and be looking for a way out, and here walk up the player characters. It's a good option to offer your player for how to introduce their character to the team: "Don't shoot, I wanna join yous guys! I can help guide you around and get past some of the guards too." Followed quickly by: "Uhhh... hey do you have food? They don't feed us nothing good here, it's been awful!". Establish motive to join and stick with the team in whatever way the player likes, or doesn't like if they're not offering anything. Maybe the mind control wore off, or they've been thinking about getting out for a while, or they're just opportunistic.
We did that in a soft reboot of our d&d campaign (half the old players were gone, replaced by new ones.) By fiat the old characters got captured by the slavers we'd been tangling with, and we talked two guards into helping us escape, who were the new PCs.
"In Case of Stupid Decision Brake Glass". I wish my players would embrace backup characters. The problem is we've all had our brains rotted by 5e policy of, "always let the players win." It's really screwed up perspective.
@user-cx7kg6ok9b Over the course of the past few years my group has ground through three "modules" and we're on our fourth. They are all garbage and we haven't had a single PC death the whole time. The way 5e works is you face "challenges" that are designed to drain x amount of resources. You then get to the big bad for the big resource drain. If you have more resources you win. The dice play only a minor part. It's like a belt sander fight. The two parties grind away to see which belt sander brakes first. Then you start over again.
Ah yes, the time honored tradition of looting your dead friend's corpes and splitting up his belongings. "No way, we can bury him with that +4 chainmail. Hed want us to avenge his death with it." DM"But he fell off a cliff" Players "Mmmaaa....its finelifegoesonletsgoguys"
I think it would funnier if you just drag the corpse to your new friend pc and just be like "He said you should get his belt, real good for what we do" And you got to take it off the dead body. 😂
I mainly play 5e and hasnt really lost a character to character death but I prefer making back ups regardless and that is because it works as a anti anxiety tool for me. I can get very antsy in very intense combats due to having a very hardcore borderline unfair dm in the past and having back ups so i know what i can do next if something bad happens makes me calmer and prevents the anxiety from flaring up to highly and ruining the game for me and everybody. Very helpful.
TL/DR: "who would notice if you went missing?" is a crucial question in a PC's backstory. We run mostly modern horror (location-based campaigns in the vein of Silent Hill, the Phantasm movies, etc.), so what I am about to describe here might work best in atmospheric, investigatory games, but... I typically have a couple of rando NPCs, on friendly terms with the party, running around in the background of the campaign, occasionally showing up for an assist, or needing an assist, but otherwise with their own goals that are aligned with the party's goals. These NPCs are experiencing more or less the same events when they are "offscreen," so they are also good for providing clues, info, etc., in cases where that info is crucial but has been missed by the party. Since the party is used to these NPCs occasionally showing up, they don't question it when one of them appears at the scene of a PC death. The player whose character just died has the option to take that NPC until we can work up a replacement PC. Usually, my NPCs are well-liked by the players, which eases the transition. I do this because my players tend to want to concentrate on one PC at a time, and typically shy away from backup characters, per se. Running an NPC keeps them involved until they get the downtime to create a new character. In terms of creating the new character, I give each player a background survey prior to the campaign which includes questions like, "who would notice if you went missing?" They usually can name a couple of family members or friends who would come looking for the original PC. Pretty handy for helping create the replacement character.
Whit the power level thing, id depends on system. Some have a massice diferencce un power by level. One that i played was skill bases an recomends givin a bit lex exp to the backup because expendin all in once whit planing time can make a huge diference in power.
If the system has level adjusted xp like 3.5 d&d or quadratic xp scaling where lower level pcs catch up faster, I don't have an issue bringing in a new pc 1 level lower. For games like pathfinder 2 with linear leveling, the game expects you to bring in fallen PCs at the exact same level.
I truly miss those 8 to 10 hour game weekend game days, where you'd start around noon and play until dinner, take a break for dinner than resume and play until midnight often. Good times.
I first "learned" about back-up characters when Dark Sun was introduced. I loved that setting and the idea of the back-up character because of how brutal the setting was.
It's kind of surprising Seth how some fake facial hair or a wig can really change your appearance. Truly you are a man of a thousand faces, or at least four.
I've had to use an emergency backup character in Call of Cthulhu when my character ran screaming into the night after a really bad Sanity failure. He may look familiar. He was a private investigator named Jack. He started off as an NPC who hired us to look into a house his client had bought in Boston. Turned out, there was some weird cult activity and the place was haunted by the former owner. Jack showed up just as my Investigator was running into the night after seeing his dead friend rise up out of the upstairs bath.
I have actually had players act surprised when I tell them that if their PC dies they can create a new one will the same accumulated XP as their dead PC. Because starting a new PC at 1st level while everyone else is 3rd plus sucks for everyone.
Many years ago, I had a new player join a group. The party happened to be in a catacomb at the time. I planned out the perfect moment to introduce the new character... and then watched as the party meandered through the catacomb, never reaching that point. And my inexperienced ass didn't do anything about it - just let the poor guy sit there waiting for his chance to play. Yeah, he didn't come back. Remains one of my biggest regrets as a DM...
When I graduated high school in the early 80’s and I told people I was going to Buffalo to go to college the most memorable response was “I hope you like crime”. So…yeah.
Buffalo smells like Captain Crunch Cereal. Gospel truth. I am not disparaging Austin but I can ask people I know who have moved to Round Rock and Cedar Park. I hope to visit them someday.
Personally, I'm more experienced with the problem of players making 5+ back-up characters and either being very conflicted about which to play or eventually getting too attached and bringing in a back-up as a second character during the game (I had this with a Call of Cthulhu game where everyone ended up with two characters.) Great advice though. My group uses emergency back-up characters often, didn't know anyone else really did that.
Hmm, RUclips just stopped showing me your videos on my front page for about two months. I just realized when I saw this video on my front page and checked to see if I missed any others. I watch plenty of other D&D channels like DUngeonCraft. They keep showing my videos of Joe the Rat Rogan and the like even though I never click on them.
I recently experienced a character death, one that was with the party from the very beginning for over two years of gameplay, from level 3 all the way to level 13 (D&D 5e). He died heroically during a brutal fight against a powerful cult, yet I have a bit of a problem. My new character was introduced to the party soon after by a friendly dragon who the party has been working with, yet its hard to "fit in" with them since they are already so established with years of memories and experienced shared between them and I'm the new guy, trying to fit it. Its been 3 sessions since he was introduced and I've barely had an hour of meaningful RP between the other party members. Any advice?
Verisimilitude isn't necessary in a campaign that's only going to last 4 or 8 weeks. But if we're talking about campaigns that stretch into years, I disagree that an immediate introduction is the "most important thing." Having a player miss out on one session (or just part of one) out of 150 or 200 sessions that will occur across the campaign is far less important. Players understanding that character death will impact the game and real world in a notable way -- the party will have increased challenges and might even need to turn back from their current plunge into a darkened dungeon to find help AND that the player with the new character gets to work with me on integrating and developing a much more meaningful character and introduction -- has resulted in a better play experience at my tables.
I have a million backup characters for each system I play. I usually keep their backstories clear and the rest are malleable so I can fit them into most campaigns at any point. I really don't mind when my character dies, compared to the rest of my group who are usually devastated when theirs go. In fact I'm usually disappointed when my DM retcons TPKs lol. My friends disagree with me on that usually. I really feel that if you have a TPK and you want to continue the campaign, you should drum up another party with the goal of stopping whatever killed the first party, or at the very least puts them on that path. IMO It makes you feel like the world is vast and alive and that your first set of characters aren't the only ones that were out there who were trying to make a difference.
I have many back up characters.. I just make characters in the background of a setting for fun in my free time, and many end up being able to tap in, though I've never needed to do so before. It's kind of a perk of my sub-hobby of character creating I guess.
Please be aware that PC life insurance is void if the player has split the party, ignored the DM saying "are you sure" or has told the DM "that's not how Matt Mercer does it" Cool video. I think I'm going to have to try running a game where folks have a few characters ready that grow at the same rate, but death is a much bigger risk.
I am writing an atomic age Call of Cthulhu game and Im toying with the idea of what Im calling the "Kenny Clause" where a dead player character wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how they got there. I have an explaination for how and why but the players need to figure it out. Im excited about it but Im not sure if its a good idea or not 😅
My favorite implementation of a new player character was a Sentient Deathclaw whom, in the previous session their player failed the AGI+Athletics test and fell to their death. I was able to set it up so the sentient deathclaw was able to be reasoned with through roleplaying and bribing it with the food and supplies their dead character was carrying and they’ve been having fun as Clever the Cleverclaw ever since.
Hey seth, big fan, big fan, lvoe ur videos I have a question and maybe u have nothing to say about but maybe u do Have u ever had to deal with a quiet player? Someone that barely talks at the table i dont think its a problem per say, i think they probably having fun but as a DM it makes me worry so much. Idk if i should ask them more stuff, maybe they dont like being put on the spot but it jsut makes me feel they hate the game also idk it feels like it end up putting more pressure on the other players? when im not a fan of playing in small groups cause i feel like the pressure is on me way more often
Your player may be what someone (I think it was Matthew Colville but don't quote me) called an 'audience member'. By that, he means someone who GENUINELY enjoys just chilling and not participating that much, happy to just be there at the table and vibe with their friends.
Ah yes, I remember my first character death, it was my second time playing D&D second edition and our DM (one of my coworker's friends, Brice) was excited to run us through Planescape. A few sessions in he had the Lady of Pain pass by, I rolled a one on my stealth check followed by a one for acrobatics since I was on a roof at the time as we were trying to get away as fast and quietly as possible, and promptly fell off the roof directly in front of her.Then there was a roll to see what the Lady of Pain would do, a public roll for everyone at the table to see... it was also a one. Brice reached into his binder, took out a really nice black envelope, and then proceeded to pull a piece of actual parchment out of it to read the messy and incredibly graphic and demise of our entire party for the next five to ten minutes. Fun times, after we all made new characters, it remains the best and longest campaign I've ever been in.
I've gotten into games where the DM required certain roles in the party. I tried it a few times, but I learned to just say "No thanks" if it ended up being a character I really didn't want to play...
I've encouraged it. "The party sure could use a " But forcing them into a role they don't want rarely ends well for anyone. Basically, if everyone gets to choose what roles they want, then the last person to choose gets as much freedom as the first person did. If they decide they need one of them to switch to a different role because no one took it, then they all can decide that amongst themselves who is going to bite that bullet.
The whole you are all part of the same organisation is something I've done since my first RPGs, when all the players wandered off on their own because "My character doesn't know these people. Why should I stick around with them?".
As someone who lived to Buffalo over 30 years ago all I’ll say is that Buffalo’s crime rate is 30/1k while Austin is 31.29/1k. That is incidents of crime per 1,000 residents.
Buffalo smells like Captain Crunch Cereal. Gospel truth. I am not disparaging Austin but I can ask people I know who have moved to Round Rock and Cedar Park. I hope to visit them someday.
I was introduced at the tail end of a Curse of Strahd campaign as a Reborn Fighter-- I was kept in a crypt and awoke when the party was searching. Luckily they didn't kill me when I proved to be an intelligent Undead with memories of my former home.
Never thought about making a backup character from the start, mostly because it always seemed to me a bit drastic. But I can see the point in using an NPC as an emergency backup character and to integrate such a thing with some brief notes and concepts about the "real" backup character ("My wizard comes from a family with a long tradition of soldiers. He has a bigger brother in the cavalry and a sister in the scouts").
Had a few fun replacements over the years: 🧛♂player whose Vampire: The Masquerade character got killed in a federal raid on their lair took over the leader of the strike force for the final 2 sessions, using his own former PC's phone to lure the others into an ambush. He met a horrible death at their hands, but not before taking one of them with him. 🎅player whose Savage Worlds character would be out of action for months in-game used an antagonist from another PC's backstory as their replacement, showing up begging for that PC's help because the rest of his group had betrayed him. "We can take revenge together!" When their replacement inevitably double-crossed the party, the player's OG returned, now fully healed, to save the day! 😈right before the final showdown of a long-running D&D campaign, all the characters were either killed or captured. Luckily, they were level 20! Our paladin (now an angel) was imbued with the last vestige of his dying god to save the universe; our fighter made a deal with the goddess of death to serve her in exchange for this temporary return to the world of the living; our necrodancer awoke in a fresh clone body he'd cooked up for himself; and our captured transmuter used powers he'd gained in his own personal quest to break free from the Big Bad's palace. Was badass!
I always have a few emergency backup characters ready for my players to use. They’re usually characters with interesting gimmicks and relatively shallow personalities so it’s easy to take over and have fun making the character your own. Emergency backups almost never become full time party members but anything is better than making a player sit out a session because a battle went south.
Before pandemic, i was running Out of the Abyss ...the rogue died in a battle against some monsters, luckily next encounter they found some Drow slavers... after a small easy battle, the rogue player took the same character sheet, just changed the name, and we introduce it the "new Character" as one of the prisoners... "oh well, our old rogue died, wanna get out of the underdark?, maybe you can take and use some of her gear"... after a small funeral ceremony... we moved on and game continued. Great advice and video as usual Seth!!
I don't run level-based games like D&D but if I did, I'd rule that any incoming replacement characters had been just as active (elsewhere, obviously) as the character they're replacing and are just as good in their own right - similar to the back-up characters for _Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades_ going up in levels at the same rate as the PCs. With skill-based games, I'd allow _replacement_ characters to come in with extra skills in keeping with how much the original character had grown/developed throughout the course of the game just to reflect the player's hard work. *_New_* characters for new players would still be fresh out of CharGen, though, since a freshly-minted skill-based character is still a perfectly workable character.
I enjoyed this very much, especially the player skits. Love those. This is some great advice and a lot of good ideas. Thanks for another fun videos. Looking forward to more.
Personally with bringing in a character ( I play DnD 5E, which is level based), I personally like the idea of them being the same level as the rest of the party but having Level 1 tier equipment and gold.
Something I've done if a PC dies in the middle of an ongoing combat is bring them in as a DM/GM assistant. That way they don't have to twiddle their thumbs for 10-30 minutes. I hand them a baddie stat block and let the player take a crack at killing off their friends for the rest of the combat!
For skill based games that still use XP (GURPS, Edge SWRPG, etc), I"m partial to dividing the earned XP into categories. - Group XP and Character XP for completing objectives/goals in the narrative (even failing can give XP if they tried, but not if they didn't). - Player XP for contributing further to raise the fun/enjoyment at the table for everyone (a well timed joke, or helping to steer away from negativity, etc.). - Actual session play time (basically attendance and participation XP (an amount per minutes of active play - typically is the bulk of XP earned). - Replacement Characters get half of the former's Character and Group XP, and all of their Player XP and Play Time XP. Progression systems in games can certainly feel a little, excess at times. I like the more subtle ones. In the above, XP spends are only during downtime, so it "feels" a little more realistic/natural and allows for time gaps (for some breathing room) instead of constant adventure 24/7/365.
Befriend dragons rather than slay them with Draconis, a peaceful new way to play 5e. Coming to Kickstarter
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1176616619/draconis-feel-good-ttrpg-5e/
Draconis seems like a challenge. 5E is a combat-based game. To focus on non-combat resolutions seems pretty niche. Best of luck to all involved, though. I hope it pleasantly suirprises us all.
Pretty sure it is Studio Ghibli. You dropped the L and Studio Ghibli never drops L's.
@@katyushamarikov8819It’s also pronounced like ‘Jibuli’ ジブリ
@@ScottishstormYeah. It does seem like a really nice game, and echoing you good luck to them… But whenever I see something like this I wonder why they don’t just play a non-D&D game that already exists. This sounds very similar to Ryutama, and there’s plenty of non-combat games already out there, from a multitude of PtbA ones to Storybrewer’s ‘Good Society’ and ‘Castles in the Air’ which are almost 100% roleplaying.
Just wanted to say, I've enjoyed the ads you yourself have been incorporating into the vids. I know there's an art to it some RUclipsrs adapt to with varying degrees of success. I've to date liked yours but really thought this one was particularly well done.
"...even Jack Chick knew better than that..."
Thank the gods I wasn't drinking anything 😆
You and me both.
Not so lucky. Damn it Seth.
Wonderful cartoonist, and batshit crazy.
Blackleaf had to appear in this video and I'm glad she did. It's the only way she gets to live on. :)
Such a weird tract
My experience has been less character death but more introducing a new player into a campaign. Most suggestions still apply. The line I like to use is "Well you seem like an oddly trustworthy fellow and I will now implicitly and completely believe whatever you say and trust you with my life."
it's great!
The original "The Gamers" short fan film hits this point *perfectly*.
GM: "Now remember, this person is a complete and total stranger, you're in the middle of an evil haunted castle, and the last people you met tried to kill you. What do you do?"
PCs: "You seem trustworthy. Will you join us?"
New PC: "Yes, yes I will."
@@notentirelyanon6902 God, those movies were master pieces. I love the second one, "Dorkness Rising." My friends and I still quote "as if killing the bard impresses us" whenever a DM kills off an NPC to hype up a bad guy.
Quick! Hide behind the mound of dead bards!
Hey you, yeah I remember you, we were friends, cousins, neighbors or whatever. Yeah come with us, guys they're chill, trust them with your life.
Well, it's not "looting your old buddy" but more like "securing an inheritance" 😇
"It's what Tomas would have wanted..."
Admit it, Seth. You made this video specifically to remind your players to make their backup characters.
In a dungeon, we were on a spiral staircase, and encountered another party. My lead character and theirs recognized each other. "What are you doing here?"
"Breaking in. What are you doing here?"
"Breaking out."
Then it was followed by an exchange of information, some maneuvers to get around each other without falling off.
Later, the two groups got together and exchanged members. Fun.😜
For space settings, you can give your players a colony ship with a bunch of people in stasis, but the ship can only support (player count) number of awake crew members at a time. So if a PC dies, you can wake up another colony member.
This builds in back story, motivation, and inter party connections.
This is great. Also, what if the PCs are not part of the original crew, but rather have taken on its ancient mission. Between main adventures on passing planets, they could have smaller adventures in which they explore odd pockets of the ship, and discover random cultures of accidentally revived colonists (I'm heavily influenced here by an old TV show called The Starlost).
Also great that you can look through the colonist roster and pick the kind of character the party needs.
Im starting to think that Seth, Dweebles, and the rest of the gang are all the same person. Sure, we see them talking some times, but never in the same frame. Very much a Clark Kent situation.
No, no they're clearly different people. Seth wears glasses for starters.
And Dweebles has that sweet facial hair. Seth couldn't possibly grow something that lush that quickly. 😊
Hide behind the mount of dead bards!
😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Classic
Ha! I get that reference.
those aren't backups, those are clones, don't do that
The Gamers 4 Kickstarter just launched! Let's make it happen!
Including Buffalo NY in the list of remote locations killed me 😂
And I know nothing of Buffalo.
Don't forget "hostile".
Like, mate, you didn't have to call my hometown out like that 😂
Back on Star Wars Day (May 4th), I threw my Pathfinder group against some yetis in an ice cave (an obvious nod to Empire Strikes Back).
Well, my wife's character sadly met their end to some brutal dice rolls! The yeti double-crit & rended her poor archer, and she was down for the count.
So, naturally, at the start of the next session, the party found her new character hanging upside down in the ice at the back of the cave!
Nice
Did she get the tube? Boy, I hope she got the tube.
GM: Make a backup character? PC: Umm... GM: THE FORMS OF KANLY HAVE BEEN OBEYED.
Haha... Dune refrences...
It is by will alone I set the dice in motion
I've mentioned this in prior videos, but my main character in Traveller always referred to his invisible friend who was a Droyne no one else heard or saw. Who lived in the vents of the ship. If my character would die, she would be available almost immediately for the group to join. I also referenced her all the time when I wanted to talk about things he heard her talk about. Or would mention he heard from 'Xim's experience. So all characters knew their name and with she was good at. Even the game Master has basically made her into an actual NPC kind of like a living aspect of the ship.
In our current Traveller campaign (stringing a bunch of Reach adventures together as a build-up to taking on Pirates of Drinax) we had a second collective character generation session, in which a new player rolled her first character and everyone else joined in and helped her along by rolling up backups. Fun was had, and ice was broken in a most satisfactory manner.
That's a good idea.
It’s funny you mention Horror on the Orient Express. When I ran it, I had everyone make 4 characters and we did a little prediction on how many characters each player would have left at the end. One of my players started as a professor from Arkham who was in the UK with some students on an extended study trip. His backups were the students who came along with the professor after they accepted the quest to go to Istanbul. Every one of his characters died and he made 2 more past the initial 4 that also died. Conversely I had one players first character survive till the finale after taking photographs of their journey, only to die right at the very end,. HIs photo album became a legendary source of mythos evidence and some leaked and out of context pictures became very popular album covers with alternative musicians 😂.
Ah yes the 'Eldritch photos and other oddities album', guaranteed to make everyone looking through the books snapshots of memories certifiably insane.
@@ultralight9625 Everyone’s favorite picture was actually of two PCs punching a third (brand new) PC as they had a nervous breakdown in the car after losing an eye on their first day in the group.
You do such a good job with "The Gang" that I actually see them as different people. Well done.
I sadly only know Dweebles and Jack The NPC's names.
The surfer dude is Todd and the guy with the southern (Texas?) accent is Mike. Dweebles is actually a nickname. His true name is unknown, even to himself. See Seth's NPC vids for when this was revealed.
It was a while before Seth named them on screen, and some commenter offered suggestions. Among them, Dweebles for Player 3. Seth liked it better than the name he had in mind.
@@edwardbarach2263 That's right, Mustache Mike!
I was just thinking the same 😄
“Player charactor life insurance isnt a thing”
Me to the bank of neverwinter: right so in the event of my death i want all my funds to go to my daughter.
Did something similar in Star Wars Edge of the Empire. All mercs must sign the life insurance and final will before the suicide mission.
It wasn't before Seth gave the insurance companies the idea, now we'll be bombarded with ads about it in a week or two.
Don't forget the massive Inheritance Tax!
Was even a mention of it way back in the old Isle Of Dread module in the section on how to get the players into the campaign. 😄
Make 'em pay!!
I'm almost certain this is actually a product the Traveller's Aid Society sells to Travellers.
One of the adventuring parties we hired had this in their contract.
They all died... along with the other 3 parties we hired...
Don't try to ambush vampire knights at night without magical light sources. (in our defense we didn't know we were up against vampires)
Me: The demon has you in its jaws.
Player: I attack it.
Me: You can attempt to escape, the demon automatically hits you next turn if you stay there.
Player: I hit the demon.
Me: Okay, damage? Alright, demon's turn, and... you die.
Player: I can't believe you killed me.
As mostly a GM, whenever I do play I often have a backup character ready to go.
I think I've gotten jaded about characters I control dying; I once had to console another player who started sobbing after MY character died.
Women ☕
It's a pretty epic compliment though, if your character meant so much to them that they were devastated to lose them (unless they cried every time a character died, which is a bit different). I'd feel incredibly vindicated as a roleplayer if that happened to me.
@@BlueTressym I guess I took it as a compliment, but in the moment I just felt strange. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the reason it hit them harder was because I had used the last charge of an ability I had to save their character earlier in the session, so I didn't have it later to save mine, and they blamed themselves for that (Which was obviously not their fault).
@@CaptainBG01 that's beautiful.
Same, I used to feel strongly about my characters until I moved to being mainly a GM. Nowadays when I happen to be a player I ride them like a stolen car 😂
One of my favorite methods to introduce a new PC works only in Paranoia: The PC is strapped to a rocket sled that careens into the party, taking out at least 2 other people.
At home sick today. Seth's videos make my day better.
Had a stressful day in general. Seth’s video made my evening better.
hope you feel better soon.
Hope you get feeling better
Stay hydrated!
Don’t die, rerolling a new character in the game of life is an absolute pain in the ass.
Ive got a group of 5 for an OSE campaign and had them all make 2 PCs to start. Then if only 2-3 can make a session, they use both of their characters. If everyone can make it, then they each use their primary character. Really works well instead of only having an emergency backup.
oh hey another OSE player out in the wild, a rare sight
I love that idea! Better than having to find backup players last minute too, or postponing sessions.
I find that in most systems that use levels, as opposed to skill ranks and what else have you. Bringing in a character with a lower level than the rest of the party, even if thematically appropriate, tends to begin a spiral. Especially if health is in any way tied to level. Note that I don't have anything against anyone doing it, but it's just something I have observed.
Yeah you do end up with player whose characters tend to die over and over again, though usually I find the new character hides a lot for quite a while, which isn't fun ether.
I suppose that depends on player attitude and overall challenge level of the game. In highly dangerous campaigns where the GM is running encounters that are a level or two above the average of the party, yes, more frequent PC death is going to quickly take the party level down, and more consistently. That is a GM problem, I think. In parties where one of the players is more, let's say, rowdy than the rest, he is going to experience more frequent death on the individual level, which can be disruptive, and is a player issue. However, each time his character dies, the new character comes in consistently at the prescribed lower level (usually one level lower), compared with the party level, not with his newly dead character's level. Aside from the player likely being disruptive, I don't see that as an issue, really. He can always be evened-up with the rest of the party through use of a one-on-one side game. I speak entirely from experience here, by the way. This was typical of our 3.5 campaigns.
Definitely agree, we used to bring them in a level lower in 3.5 dnd (the idea was they'd be in the same position as if we'd used Raise Dead on the old character), the xp mechanics meant they'd catch up after a while, but if you ran into a hard fight before then, it could be trouble, and the more it happened the further you eneded up behind the other characters.
We just let people come in at full level regardless of system these days, more fun and it makes balancing combat easier if there's not one lower level PC who can't keep up.
I Will sometimes say “hey, we have a player or two out this week so let’s run a b-squad mission” and we can run our backup characters through a short mission for that night which can tie in to the main campaign or simply be an unconnected line
I would love to see a recap of the traveler camping when its done similar to what you did with 2 headed serpent
That is the current plan. Right now, we just finished Chapter 6 of 10, so hopefully not too much longer before I start a Review/Campaign Diary series on it
Been looking forward to a campaign recap myself.
Good news!
My favorite backup character was in starfinder. My backup was... the character.
Character was very devoted to cybernetics. So my backup was an AI construct based off the character I was playing. Character was killed, which then triggered this DROS construct to activate.
Yeah, was a copout, but I was also burned out on that campaign. Was having long grind of combat in the module being ran. We were right at end then suddenly a save or die spell. So was effectively Thanos snapped out of the game literally at the end of the campaign with a boss before a boss.
No, I’m not Landfill, I’m his twin brother Gil. I taught Landfill everything he knew about drinking beer, I wanna fulfill his legacy by taking his place on your drinking team. You must be Fink, Landfill told me everything about you. I feel like I know you guys, so we won’t have that awkward get to know you stage. And,if I could just ask one favor, if it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable I was hoping maybe you guys could call me Landfill, in honor of him.
Dead Gentlemen Productions / Zombie Orpheus Entertainment included humorous examples of bringing in replacement characters in their movies "The Gamers" and "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising."
(The last person they met tried to kill them. Now they meet the replacement character for the one who died earlier.) "You seem trustworthy. Would you care to join our noble quest?"
And who could forget "There's 37 more of me a**hole!!"
The Gamers 4 Kickstarter just launched!!
Funny little detail about PCs' life insurance. According to some sources, piratesband sailors used to wear golden earrings to pay for their own funerals. One of my D&D party had a similar idea: each character had a diamond jewel worth enough to get them resurrected once.
Best backup I ever had was never used. It was a shape changing druid who followed the party unnoticed. The plan was to jump it in when the main went down almost immediately. It became a major NPC in my own campaign in the end and saw a whole lot of game time.
One other resource that's a bit tricky but rewarding to tap is the enemy forces. A member of the gang, cult, city guard, etc may have strong misgivings and be looking for a way out, and here walk up the player characters. It's a good option to offer your player for how to introduce their character to the team: "Don't shoot, I wanna join yous guys! I can help guide you around and get past some of the guards too." Followed quickly by: "Uhhh... hey do you have food? They don't feed us nothing good here, it's been awful!". Establish motive to join and stick with the team in whatever way the player likes, or doesn't like if they're not offering anything. Maybe the mind control wore off, or they've been thinking about getting out for a while, or they're just opportunistic.
We did that in a soft reboot of our d&d campaign (half the old players were gone, replaced by new ones.) By fiat the old characters got captured by the slavers we'd been tangling with, and we talked two guards into helping us escape, who were the new PCs.
Oh, **insert fantasy hero character name**, we hardly knew ye!
"i still miss Bob the fighter, after he got eaten by kobolds. But at least we have his brother, Bob the 2nd, who looks remarkably similar"
"In Case of Stupid Decision Brake Glass".
I wish my players would embrace backup characters. The problem is we've all had our brains rotted by 5e policy of, "always let the players win." It's really screwed up perspective.
@user-cx7kg6ok9b Over the course of the past few years my group has ground through three "modules" and we're on our fourth. They are all garbage and we haven't had a single PC death the whole time. The way 5e works is you face "challenges" that are designed to drain x amount of resources. You then get to the big bad for the big resource drain. If you have more resources you win. The dice play only a minor part.
It's like a belt sander fight. The two parties grind away to see which belt sander brakes first. Then you start over again.
Ah yes, the time honored tradition of looting your dead friend's corpes and splitting up his belongings. "No way, we can bury him with that +4 chainmail. Hed want us to avenge his death with it." DM"But he fell off a cliff" Players "Mmmaaa....its finelifegoesonletsgoguys"
I think it would funnier if you just drag the corpse to your new friend pc and just be like "He said you should get his belt, real good for what we do"
And you got to take it off the dead body. 😂
I mainly play 5e and hasnt really lost a character to character death but I prefer making back ups regardless and that is because it works as a anti anxiety tool for me. I can get very antsy in very intense combats due to having a very hardcore borderline unfair dm in the past and having back ups so i know what i can do next if something bad happens makes me calmer and prevents the anxiety from flaring up to highly and ruining the game for me and everybody. Very helpful.
TL/DR: "who would notice if you went missing?" is a crucial question in a PC's backstory.
We run mostly modern horror (location-based campaigns in the vein of Silent Hill, the Phantasm movies, etc.), so what I am about to describe here might work best in atmospheric, investigatory games, but... I typically have a couple of rando NPCs, on friendly terms with the party, running around in the background of the campaign, occasionally showing up for an assist, or needing an assist, but otherwise with their own goals that are aligned with the party's goals. These NPCs are experiencing more or less the same events when they are "offscreen," so they are also good for providing clues, info, etc., in cases where that info is crucial but has been missed by the party. Since the party is used to these NPCs occasionally showing up, they don't question it when one of them appears at the scene of a PC death. The player whose character just died has the option to take that NPC until we can work up a replacement PC. Usually, my NPCs are well-liked by the players, which eases the transition.
I do this because my players tend to want to concentrate on one PC at a time, and typically shy away from backup characters, per se. Running an NPC keeps them involved until they get the downtime to create a new character. In terms of creating the new character, I give each player a background survey prior to the campaign which includes questions like, "who would notice if you went missing?" They usually can name a couple of family members or friends who would come looking for the original PC. Pretty handy for helping create the replacement character.
As someone living in Buffalo, you speak the truth.
Whit the power level thing, id depends on system.
Some have a massice diferencce un power by level.
One that i played was skill bases an recomends givin a bit lex exp to the backup because expendin all in once whit planing time can make a huge diference in power.
Idk what it is, but seeing the gang in videos always cheers me up.
If the system has level adjusted xp like 3.5 d&d or quadratic xp scaling where lower level pcs catch up faster, I don't have an issue bringing in a new pc 1 level lower.
For games like pathfinder 2 with linear leveling, the game expects you to bring in fallen PCs at the exact same level.
It can manage to cause problems even in 3.5, particularly if you manage to kill them before the new character catches up.
@@Electric999999 the differemce of a single level of strength in 3.5 isn't that big of a deal.
I truly miss those 8 to 10 hour game weekend game days, where you'd start around noon and play until dinner, take a break for dinner than resume and play until midnight often. Good times.
I first "learned" about back-up characters when Dark Sun was introduced. I loved that setting and the idea of the back-up character because of how brutal the setting was.
It's kind of surprising Seth how some fake facial hair or a wig can really change your appearance. Truly you are a man of a thousand faces, or at least four.
I've had to use an emergency backup character in Call of Cthulhu when my character ran screaming into the night after a really bad Sanity failure. He may look familiar. He was a private investigator named Jack. He started off as an NPC who hired us to look into a house his client had bought in Boston. Turned out, there was some weird cult activity and the place was haunted by the former owner. Jack showed up just as my Investigator was running into the night after seeing his dead friend rise up out of the upstairs bath.
I have actually had players act surprised when I tell them that if their PC dies they can create a new one will the same accumulated XP as their dead PC. Because starting a new PC at 1st level while everyone else is 3rd plus sucks for everyone.
Many years ago, I had a new player join a group. The party happened to be in a catacomb at the time. I planned out the perfect moment to introduce the new character... and then watched as the party meandered through the catacomb, never reaching that point. And my inexperienced ass didn't do anything about it - just let the poor guy sit there waiting for his chance to play. Yeah, he didn't come back. Remains one of my biggest regrets as a DM...
take that, buffalo
I had to pause the video to finish laughing so I could see again.
When I graduated high school in the early 80’s and I told people I was going to Buffalo to go to college the most memorable response was “I hope you like crime”. So…yeah.
Buffalo a hostile place? All of upstate New York just got hilariously upset...
I can honestly say noT ALL of upstate New York. LOL
Rochester and Syracuse are taking a breath of relief.
Definitely the most creative use of a Jack Chick track ever!
Sooooooooooooooo... we ARE getting a complete series dedicated to this Traveler campaing, as with The Two Headed Serpent, right?
That's the plan. I might begin in July. If not, then August.
DM “ suddenly the smoke clears..and the new character is here! It’s called Magic Cartman.”
Buffalo smells like Captain Crunch Cereal. Gospel truth.
I am not disparaging Austin but I can ask people I know who have moved to Round Rock and Cedar Park. I hope to visit them someday.
Personally, I'm more experienced with the problem of players making 5+ back-up characters and either being very conflicted about which to play or eventually getting too attached and bringing in a back-up as a second character during the game (I had this with a Call of Cthulhu game where everyone ended up with two characters.)
Great advice though. My group uses emergency back-up characters often, didn't know anyone else really did that.
Can't wait for that clout chaser who refuses to even consider another perspective on this topic to make another video on this that I won't watch. lol
Oh, I'm sure I'll be notified if/when that happens
@@SSkorkowsky No doubt! Can't escape.
Hmm, RUclips just stopped showing me your videos on my front page for about two months. I just realized when I saw this video on my front page and checked to see if I missed any others. I watch plenty of other D&D channels like DUngeonCraft. They keep showing my videos of Joe the Rat Rogan and the like even though I never click on them.
I recently experienced a character death, one that was with the party from the very beginning for over two years of gameplay, from level 3 all the way to level 13 (D&D 5e). He died heroically during a brutal fight against a powerful cult, yet I have a bit of a problem. My new character was introduced to the party soon after by a friendly dragon who the party has been working with, yet its hard to "fit in" with them since they are already so established with years of memories and experienced shared between them and I'm the new guy, trying to fit it. Its been 3 sessions since he was introduced and I've barely had an hour of meaningful RP between the other party members. Any advice?
Verisimilitude isn't necessary in a campaign that's only going to last 4 or 8 weeks. But if we're talking about campaigns that stretch into years, I disagree that an immediate introduction is the "most important thing." Having a player miss out on one session (or just part of one) out of 150 or 200 sessions that will occur across the campaign is far less important.
Players understanding that character death will impact the game and real world in a notable way -- the party will have increased challenges and might even need to turn back from their current plunge into a darkened dungeon to find help AND that the player with the new character gets to work with me on integrating and developing a much more meaningful character and introduction -- has resulted in a better play experience at my tables.
Here come 40 Scott Garibay videos.
Back-up characters are great. There is nothing worse than missing out on the majority of a session while you roll up a new one.
I have
a million backup characters for each system I play. I usually keep their backstories clear and the rest are malleable so I can fit them into most campaigns at any point.
I really don't mind when my character dies, compared to the rest of my group who are usually devastated when theirs go.
In fact I'm usually disappointed when my DM retcons TPKs lol. My friends disagree with me on that usually. I really feel that if you have a TPK and you want to continue the campaign, you should drum up another party with the goal of stopping whatever killed the first party, or at the very least puts them on that path. IMO It makes you feel like the world is vast and alive and that your first set of characters aren't the only ones that were out there who were trying to make a difference.
I have many back up characters.. I just make characters in the background of a setting for fun in my free time, and many end up being able to tap in, though I've never needed to do so before. It's kind of a perk of my sub-hobby of character creating I guess.
"Poor Tomas. I mean it - his credit cards are all maxed out and there's only $1.52 in his checking account!"
Please be aware that PC life insurance is void if the player has split the party, ignored the DM saying "are you sure" or has told the DM "that's not how Matt Mercer does it"
Cool video. I think I'm going to have to try running a game where folks have a few characters ready that grow at the same rate, but death is a much bigger risk.
Finally Seth is back on my feed! Thanks RUclips, and your algorithm. ;/
I am writing an atomic age Call of Cthulhu game and Im toying with the idea of what Im calling the "Kenny Clause" where a dead player character wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how they got there. I have an explaination for how and why but the players need to figure it out. Im excited about it but Im not sure if its a good idea or not 😅
Who are you?
I'm You.
No I'm asking YOU.
That's what I said my name is Yu.
Dweebles is the only one that my brain can’t remember is a disguise. It’s like I’m convinced he’s another person.
Thanks for the really solid advice Seth. You're awesome :D
My favorite implementation of a new player character was a Sentient Deathclaw whom, in the previous session their player failed the AGI+Athletics test and fell to their death. I was able to set it up so the sentient deathclaw was able to be reasoned with through roleplaying and bribing it with the food and supplies their dead character was carrying and they’ve been having fun as Clever the Cleverclaw ever since.
Picking the bones for every bit of value! Love it.
nice to see the gang and thx for the advice
I enjoy all of Seth Skorkowsky videos
Ah, the old Satanic Panic cartoon. The 80's were a riot, I tell you!
There are few things more enjoyable than a Seth Skorkowsky video.
Perfect video to match the Kickstarter of The Gamers 4! Just launched!
Not advertising, just passionate for the project!
Your imaginary players shouldn't feel a sigh of relief. You are roleplaying them, which makes them player characters. They should be very afraid
Hey seth, big fan, big fan, lvoe ur videos
I have a question and maybe u have nothing to say about but maybe u do
Have u ever had to deal with a quiet player? Someone that barely talks at the table
i dont think its a problem per say, i think they probably having fun but as a DM it makes me worry so much. Idk if i should ask them more stuff, maybe they dont like being put on the spot
but it jsut makes me feel they hate the game
also idk it feels like it end up putting more pressure on the other players? when im not a fan of playing in small groups cause i feel like the pressure is on me way more often
Your player may be what someone (I think it was Matthew Colville but don't quote me) called an 'audience member'. By that, he means someone who GENUINELY enjoys just chilling and not participating that much, happy to just be there at the table and vibe with their friends.
As someone who lives in Buffalo that gag had me rolling 😂
Ah yes, I remember my first character death, it was my second time playing D&D second edition and our DM (one of my coworker's friends, Brice) was excited to run us through Planescape.
A few sessions in he had the Lady of Pain pass by, I rolled a one on my stealth check followed by a one for acrobatics since I was on a roof at the time as we were trying to get away as fast and quietly as possible, and promptly fell off the roof directly in front of her.Then there was a roll to see what the Lady of Pain would do, a public roll for everyone at the table to see... it was also a one.
Brice reached into his binder, took out a really nice black envelope, and then proceeded to pull a piece of actual parchment out of it to read the messy and incredibly graphic and demise of our entire party for the next five to ten minutes. Fun times, after we all made new characters, it remains the best and longest campaign I've ever been in.
My next CoC session starts in Buffalo NY, spooky 😅
Good tips, Seth! I always look forward to a new video.
I've gotten into games where the DM required certain roles in the party. I tried it a few times, but I learned to just say "No thanks" if it ended up being a character I really didn't want to play...
I've encouraged it. "The party sure could use a " But forcing them into a role they don't want rarely ends well for anyone. Basically, if everyone gets to choose what roles they want, then the last person to choose gets as much freedom as the first person did. If they decide they need one of them to switch to a different role because no one took it, then they all can decide that amongst themselves who is going to bite that bullet.
The whole you are all part of the same organisation is something I've done since my first RPGs, when all the players wandered off on their own because "My character doesn't know these people. Why should I stick around with them?".
As someone who lived to Buffalo over 30 years ago all I’ll say is that Buffalo’s crime rate is 30/1k while Austin is 31.29/1k. That is incidents of crime per 1,000 residents.
@user-cx7kg6ok9b If you're likely to get robbed and assaulted going to a concert though then that cancels things out a bit.
Buffalo smells like Captain Crunch Cereal. Gospel truth.
I am not disparaging Austin but I can ask people I know who have moved to Round Rock and Cedar Park. I hope to visit them someday.
Buffalo has awesome restaurants and a pretty active music scene, although I have heard Austin’s music scene is tops.
I was introduced at the tail end of a Curse of Strahd campaign as a Reborn Fighter-- I was kept in a crypt and awoke when the party was searching. Luckily they didn't kill me when I proved to be an intelligent Undead with memories of my former home.
Fine, I'll have a backup created before our next game. Sheesh.
What? You got a problem playing Peachy's frail mom, Otter's hillbilly wife, or Lilly's murder-rage robot?
Never thought about making a backup character from the start, mostly because it always seemed to me a bit drastic. But I can see the point in using an NPC as an emergency backup character and to integrate such a thing with some brief notes and concepts about the "real" backup character ("My wizard comes from a family with a long tradition of soldiers. He has a bigger brother in the cavalry and a sister in the scouts").
This will I found in his pocket, which accidentally just burned up mysteriously, says I'm entitled to all his worldly possessions.
Had a few fun replacements over the years:
🧛♂player whose Vampire: The Masquerade character got killed in a federal raid on their lair took over the leader of the strike force for the final 2 sessions, using his own former PC's phone to lure the others into an ambush. He met a horrible death at their hands, but not before taking one of them with him.
🎅player whose Savage Worlds character would be out of action for months in-game used an antagonist from another PC's backstory as their replacement, showing up begging for that PC's help because the rest of his group had betrayed him. "We can take revenge together!" When their replacement inevitably double-crossed the party, the player's OG returned, now fully healed, to save the day!
😈right before the final showdown of a long-running D&D campaign, all the characters were either killed or captured. Luckily, they were level 20! Our paladin (now an angel) was imbued with the last vestige of his dying god to save the universe; our fighter made a deal with the goddess of death to serve her in exchange for this temporary return to the world of the living; our necrodancer awoke in a fresh clone body he'd cooked up for himself; and our captured transmuter used powers he'd gained in his own personal quest to break free from the Big Bad's palace. Was badass!
I always have a few emergency backup characters ready for my players to use. They’re usually characters with interesting gimmicks and relatively shallow personalities so it’s easy to take over and have fun making the character your own. Emergency backups almost never become full time party members but anything is better than making a player sit out a session because a battle went south.
"It's what Tomas would have wanted!" lol, heard things like that many times (and said it a few).
13:17 I lived in Buffalo for ~10 years. Can confirm.
Although I'm not sure it's more hostile than Texas.
Before pandemic, i was running Out of the Abyss ...the rogue died in a battle against some monsters, luckily next encounter they found some Drow slavers... after a small easy battle, the rogue player took the same character sheet, just changed the name, and we introduce it the "new Character" as one of the prisoners... "oh well, our old rogue died, wanna get out of the underdark?, maybe you can take and use some of her gear"... after a small funeral ceremony... we moved on and game continued. Great advice and video as usual Seth!!
Yeah man, ya gotta watch out in Buffalo
5e and no combat?
Sounds really, really, really LAME
Pathfinder may be a better for, with their skill system, but still a level game.
I don't run level-based games like D&D but if I did, I'd rule that any incoming replacement characters had been just as active (elsewhere, obviously) as the character they're replacing and are just as good in their own right - similar to the back-up characters for _Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades_ going up in levels at the same rate as the PCs.
With skill-based games, I'd allow _replacement_ characters to come in with extra skills in keeping with how much the original character had grown/developed throughout the course of the game just to reflect the player's hard work. *_New_* characters for new players would still be fresh out of CharGen, though, since a freshly-minted skill-based character is still a perfectly workable character.
As someone who is going to be running Horrors on the Orient Express soon, I know this will be a handy video to have! Pray for my PCs success!
I enjoyed this very much, especially the player skits. Love those. This is some great advice and a lot of good ideas. Thanks for another fun videos. Looking forward to more.
Personally with bringing in a character ( I play DnD 5E, which is level based), I personally like the idea of them being the same level as the rest of the party but having Level 1 tier equipment and gold.
Something I've done if a PC dies in the middle of an ongoing combat is bring them in as a DM/GM assistant. That way they don't have to twiddle their thumbs for 10-30 minutes. I hand them a baddie stat block and let the player take a crack at killing off their friends for the rest of the combat!
For skill based games that still use XP (GURPS, Edge SWRPG, etc), I"m partial to dividing the earned XP into categories.
- Group XP and Character XP for completing objectives/goals in the narrative (even failing can give XP if they tried, but not if they didn't).
- Player XP for contributing further to raise the fun/enjoyment at the table for everyone (a well timed joke, or helping to steer away from negativity, etc.).
- Actual session play time (basically attendance and participation XP (an amount per minutes of active play - typically is the bulk of XP earned).
- Replacement Characters get half of the former's Character and Group XP, and all of their Player XP and Play Time XP.
Progression systems in games can certainly feel a little, excess at times. I like the more subtle ones. In the above, XP spends are only during downtime, so it "feels" a little more realistic/natural and allows for time gaps (for some breathing room) instead of constant adventure 24/7/365.