Will this group be the same every week or will you have different parties and players running about around the world? This is so exciting! I am fully caught up on OPDND and marines (twice), pokemon, and now started rewatching isekai! Very excited Briggs! Rock on man
Who knows maiby if Belle is osme kind of eldlich entity you can multiclass into warlock. Ranger/Worlock is not that great and it only would be posible if Rustage let you change your Int with your Chr but Eldlich blast at higher level is better then those 2 attacks of Rangers, there are some eldlich invocations that are realy fun combos like Repelling Blast & Lance of lethargy and the spells are realy good at higher level and a lot of them can be comboed with your eldlich invocation (Darkness,devil sight is a good combo) . You would probably chose pact of the blade becouse you already have the majority of pact of the chain benefits from Beast Master. Belle can be anything but I would suspect is something water based like The Great Old One or THE Fathomless but there are few water fiends if you would like to go that route. But if you would chose fiend I would change your spell list with water based/cold based spells instead of fire based
Just for the record, inflict wounds doesn’t require a weapon, the only spells that require weapons will specify that they do such as "Steel Wind Stike" or "Booming Blade". Of course, you can flavor spells however you like, so maybe you reach out with necrotic energy or maybe you caot your weapon with it but you don't get to add any weapon damage like you do with booming blade. Sorry for the long explanation, love seeing you play more D&D.
This is great. I love it so far I’m only 10 minutes in and I’m so excited to see this camping play out. Great personalities from everyone and tekking is amazing at everything he does. Good job, everyone and good luck in the campaign.
Hell yeah I love this new D&D series. Now I basically got d&d every week. I got Marines, isekai, Pokémon, and now Rant Cafe. This is awesome, keep it up Briggs!
Well time to dust off the old tracking skills for a new Performance Scoreboard: The party: Axerock (Tekking101): 3 kills , 0 KO's, hit 6/9 attacks (1 crit) and dealt 55+? damage; evaded/blocked 1/3 attacks and took 13 damage; 2 crits and 0 crit fails Edrian Ironstone (Truck-chan): 0 kills, 0 KO's, hit 4/5 attacks and dealt 22+? damage; healed 12HP; evaded/blocked 3/10 attacks and took 26 damage, got KO'd once; 0 crits and 0 crit fails Tomato slime: hit 2/2 attacks and dealt 22 damage Zoran (AniMak): 3 kills, 0 KO's, hit 5/6 attacks (1 crit) and dealt 68 damage; healed 7HP; evaded/blocked 1/4 attacks and took 14 damage; 1 crit and 0 crit fails Notable enemies: Vesvach - killed by Axerock: 0 kills, 0 KO's, hit 7/7 attacks and dealt 21 damage; evaded/blocked 2/7 attacks and took 60 damage; 0 crits and 0 crit fails
Gill, Sill, Bill, and the witch were totally killing adventurers and laundering the stolen gold through the guild. Bill just pretended to fail the save against the suggestion.
Briggs, you did really well my man and everyone was great, plus Mak definitely got into character, and tomatoes with slimes haven't left my mind yet lul
Is it just me or is Tekking's audio a bit low? This is good practice for Briggs' One Piece D&D Marines standalone movie. He's the only one who didn't get to have his own movie from the previous OP DnD.
This was amazing, great job everyone! As an avid viewer of various DND campaigns and an eternal DM I can say with the upmost certainty you did an excellent job DMing Briggs end it helps that you had such great players. If there is more on the way I’ll definitely be keeping an ear out for it!
This is great and I love the setup! You make a great host. I will say my only gripe is I think it might be a good idea to lean away from ai art in thumbnails. DnD official art is always fine to use for thumbnails and all. Keep it up though! V cool to see you gming after watching you play for so long!
Have been listening to Rant Cafe on Spotify every week since the Death Note One Shot episode in 2020. This episode was so fun. Such a great idea. Kinda gives me the same vibes as when you used to read the Truck Isekai light novel. And that's A HUGE COMPLIMENT! Love you guys!
It will be interesting to see this campaign since it's starting from level 3 and features 3 characters. I wonder what the general tone will settle as. One thing I will say is that Tekking and Animak's characters seem like murderhobos
Great first DM session. Wish you luck for all future DM sessions. I loved it how Tekking’s character was so far away in the big battle that nobody could hear anything he was saying.
This was honestly a great start to the adventure! Simple beginnings before things get heavier. Really inspires me to DM my own campaign with friends. Keep it up
1:14:03 Combat spoiler - I'm sorry, did you give a legendary action to the first boss!? F@#king hell, and I was worried on Rustage beating you guys down😦😱
i see chat is already full of baseless appraisal so i think soft language is covered already and i will provide productive criticism instead hoping you take it with a grain of salt and use it to improve your DM skills instead of stroking your ego. First i want to get the basics out of the way. For the first time its needed to be said you did ok job and its expected to have some oversights regarding how the site works especially regarding functions you dont normally or never use as player (for example autosorting the initiative order. autosorting is missleading name and it does not automatically sort the initiative, you still need to do it, the autosorting name comes from fact you have function that once activated does it for you but you still have to use the said function yourself). That is ofc only lack of experience so its understandable as long you are working on improving and learning these mechanics. If you want to be pro GM you need to get these functions to be your second nature or every time you need to do behind the scenes DM stuff you will be ruining the flow of the session and roleplay will suffer. Story is generic which is good and i approve of this decision as it is your first game you DM and this is not premade game with manual (i believe you came up with this story yourself. if you took this from someone else then that is entirely different story but what i am alluding to is that this does not seem to be out of any official book). The feedback i can give regarding story is that it is kind of railroady regardless of its generic nature. Let me explain how you could get your desired effect and keep the story going the way you wanted without simply forcing player to make choices you planned for them. Your plan was to make them take easy quest such as fighting slimes or maybe goblins if they feel confident and use "law" of the guild to stop them taking quests you dont want them to take. On the way to quest of YOUR choosing (slimes) you ambush them with higher ranking adventurers (you stated that finishing one mission such as killing slimes is enough for first promotion and these brothers already finished slime quest many times so they are rank above). although they have experience they lacked skills to back it up so balancing issue there first of all, but secondly and here is what i mean by you dont need to railroad your party so much, you already have combat prepared to happen on the way to quest you could have let them choose the higher ranking quest after protesting it. so you establish it as ill adviced but you cant stop the party from doing so as it make no sense for guild to say "hey you cant do that" because that defeats the purpose of DND. remember, DND is about roleplay and roleplay is improve and first rule of improv is always say yes if possible. In terms of DM advice, dont say "you cant do that" say "you can certainly try". As a DM your job is to disuade and advice against bad decisions or better yet ensure party knows their decision is risky and potential TPK rather than simply say "no i wont let you do that". DM job is to guide players through adventure, not to tell them how to have fun. So to use your adventure as example, if Zoran was so hasty and reckless and Axel was willing to follow then you could let them go and try high ranking quest and have brothers be more challenging and have them knock down the party to submission and take the quest from them thus making party realize they are not ready for said quest and they would normally decide to go back and take easier quest on their accord and feel like they are making decisions even though you technically did what you originally wanted and made them pick a slime quest. In reality they still get ambushed the way they did and they still ended up doing quest you wanted but they feel like their choices matter and create the story and they came to your desired destination in their own way thinking they have the control of what they are doing. Keep the clipnotes of story you make on the go, that way you wont make inconsistencies in your story. Even if it is just a slight detail that is irellevant and players wont hold it against you, you can only benefit from consistent storytelling in more way than one. Through time it will boost your confidence to improvise and you'll have to depend on clipnotes less and less and that will make your DMing feel more natural and less forced. Next, understand rules of the combat and if you think encounter is not worthy of rolling for initiative then roleplay it out rather than doing weird mix of initiative but no combat. Yes slimes are mundane creatures and pulling proper initiative and having basic one sided combat will take long time especially if there is lot of slimes, but it is important to set the presedence. Surprise attack is only one round aka 1st round of initiative and its important to explain whats happening (if thats the case) is surprise attack. "you ambush the slimes while they were still eating so you managed to catch them off guard and in doing so you managed to kill this one withouth it noticing" is better than saying "oh they are still eating so they are not in combat" Reason why i am saying this is because there is no "not in combat" during initiative (with some exceptions of new combatants joining in long battles in later rounds). SO to explain, slimes are either in combat but surprised or you should try to fully roleplay the fight without initiative. In that case you can make few rolls to see how well party use their best features or strengths to eliminate the slimes without combat. For example Zoran rolls dexterity to see how precise his shooting is if he wants to shoot them or how quickly he dispose them without damaging tomatoes. if he tries to run through the tomato field and slay them you can punish the low roll by saying he damaged lot of tomatoes while doing so. Since even low roll will mean successful killing of slimes give them different kind of punishment for low rolls. Otherwise if you insist that slimes could potentially get aggresive and start fighting them then you must treat that as proper combat, not the awkward combinatio of both where neither parts work well. Another thing about combat. Surprise round is not a round of attacks before combat. Surprise round is round 1 of the actual combat meaning you must roll for all the slimes that are in combat and then you determine which slimes are surprised and they skip their first round. Rolling for initiative for slimes that survive in round 2 is incorrect way of doing things but dont feel bad a lot of skilled DMs also misunderstand the rules of how surprise attack work. Although its almost never used in DND there actually are rules for CHASE in DND rulebook which is something you could have used instead of creating another weird situation where party is hostile and enemies not in combat. as explains previously that is really not a good approach. Overall your story was good, your approach as DM acceptable for first time and your knowledge of DMing comes as that of a player rather than DM in making. That is not an insult. what i am trying to say is that most if not all your DM experience you shown is something you picked up from rustage rather than sitting down and trying to learn how to DM. reason i say this is because almost all the stuff you showed lack of experience is stuff that rustage does behind the scenes without saying anything. For example rustage does not say "ok let me autosort initiative and we can start", he simply does it without a word and player without knowing can assume roll20 does it automatically and it would not be their fault at all to think so. Rustage does all the macros for you guys and i noticed lack of said macros in this session which made things more awkward, some flow and transitions are lacking etc... For first time this is a solid 8/10. For average session this is 6.5/10 and i want to point out that is high score. Any game that is more than 5 out of 10 means its a game worth playing. In DND community we have a saying "no game is better than bad game" so for game to be worth playing it has to be above 5 and this was definitely it.
Well, i said bunch of cons because i wanted to give my criticisms hoping you will use them to reflect and improve. i hope you (or anyone reading this) dont take it as simple attack cause that is not the case. Now i want to say some positive things i saw. First of all i want to point out that having a first time player makes experience in general harder but to have someone playing for first time in your first DM session makes even more presure on you so i want to say i am aware of extra burder you had as DM in this so that is a big plus considering how well you did overall. I already mentioned that its good thing you decided to make the story generic and not try to write something very linear or narratively rich because you can never predict what parts of story you come up with will be entertaining to players. So until you are comfortable enough to simply make a world and let party choose what to do in your world and you are prepared enough to improvise on the go, having less established and simple plotlines is better. Simple does not mean worse as long you let party focus on what they want. To explain what i mean, a party having fun among themselves and enjoying the simple one straight line journey from A to B is better experience than party being forced through hoops of ideas you came up with while not being interested in half of it. Narratively you may think they would enjoy the game more if they keep getting twists and turns but if that kills the joy and fun out of it then its not a good thing its negative. to summarize it, sometimes less is more and you used that well. Your story itself is good. I think you came up with tomato on the go which was good, party questioned why would someone constantly choose basic started quest and fight slime so much that they are willing to fight adventurers for it and personal reward of good quality tomatoes was a good imrpov, if that was not improv then ill take an L on my guess :D the plot twist of making party believe the C rank quest is probably made by noble only for it to be a trap by evil necromancer trying to lure weak adventurers is good one and maybe a favorite part of the story for me. Most importantly i think you hit a nice balance of allowing players to do what they want in terms of combat (the tomato slime spiritual weapon, Tekkings retreating while shooting etc.) while respecting the rules of the game (as much as you can with your knowledge of said rules). Rules of combat and spells/features/actions should be followed but as long the changes to the rule is pure flavour there is no reason not to allow them as long they dont break the mechanic. I hope you do more of these and no matter what people say (and no matter what i said here) only person who can judge you is your players. If they had lot of fun that is all that matters, even if i would argue you had flaws and bits you could and SHOULD improve on if you really want to be DM and do this more often, as long party had fun then this is 10/10 experience for them. and if there is anyone who's criticism you REALLY need to take, it is not me, it is not other DMs, it is the party members you want to DM for. As weird as it sounds and lot of DMs dont want to hear this but DM is meant to serve players not control them. Dungeon master creates the world for player to experience, they are not supposed to take players and force them to do what they want. that is main reason why railroading is so much frowned upon. So what i am saying is only feedback you REALLY need is that of your players, if you are doing something wrong but your party really enjoyed it then there is no reason for you to change it no matter how it might annoy the viewers, your duty is to your party first and foremost, so if your party say to ignore everything i just said you should do exactly that :D thats my 5 cent to this and i hope you do more of this videos :)
Oh for f@#k's sake, I'm just starting to reach the finish line of One Piece DnD, and you add more to the must-watch list just now!? Haaaaaah. Well make sure to form a playlist
Loved this you did wonderful Briggs might I suggest being more active with the background music I’ve been doing that for my first campaign it’s honestly a game changer immediate approvement otherwise you did wonderful for your first time ❤️
I mean in one of the OPDND episodes he said that's how he feels watching any Tekking video, so I would assume the same for this. He can experience all of his players (now we just need Daniel Greene) being a DM.
Hey briggs loved this first session but if you ever have trouble with tekking 320 range you can always have some better defenses like maybe the necromancer could summoner the skeletons to protect herself and giver her cover
Might want to reconsider using AI art brother. I get it’s likely easier for a show just starting out but using DM guide images or public domain ones would likely the better move for the long haul. Already saw folks on the Reddit avoid them show for that reason. I can’t do more than reconfirm tho, still a great watch
Zoran being from a country called Rodina (family in most slavic languages) is absolutely hilarious. Most underrated joke of this session Also Zoran is a common balkan name, any chance Animak named his character after himself or some of his relatives?
I’m cringing for Briggs because I know I was nervous running my first campaign and I’m just so nervous for him Edit: I stopped cringing near the 20 minute mark. I really think he hit his stride once the first combat happened
Kek, Tekking doing background voices complaining about the prices of food. Briggs handling the nervous wreck guild clerk role way too well- No clue what these characters look like other than Tekking's red and chill Damn, first step outta guild doors and the party is receiving a London greeting. One problem Briggs the first time DM mans is doing is narrating what the NPC's are doing in first person Teach a man to stab, and so on. Hopefully Ax got enough of those Eldritch whatevers to keep blasting from that far away. Thought Zoran mans was a warrior of sorts with how he was talking and behaving in combat. The High Ground is even more effective it it's like over 100ft away from the damn battle field. Wait, cleric, warlock, rogue, this party is completely lacking in front row battlers- This ain't balanced at all! Or are Warlocks like more tankier wizards? What he doing way back not tanking for the other two- So, what happened to that dragged woman?- Oof, poor woman. First rescue attempt failed. Ayyy, free loot in the Witch's castle? Hope they remember to check it out in the next EP Inflation's wild in that world. *Claps for the first time DM* (How precious)
Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed the first episode of Rant Café D&D!! Looks like we are aiming to do this bi-weekly so stay tuned!
Let's go
Let's fucking go
God answered our prayers.
Great job, Briggo-sama!!
Will this group be the same every week or will you have different parties and players running about around the world? This is so exciting! I am fully caught up on OPDND and marines (twice), pokemon, and now started rewatching isekai! Very excited Briggs! Rock on man
Thanks for inviting me to play this Briggs. It was a lot of fun to play a Warlock for the first time.
lol the beginning with you ordering food
Who knows maiby if Belle is osme kind of eldlich entity you can multiclass into warlock. Ranger/Worlock is not that great and it only would be posible if Rustage let you change your Int with your Chr but Eldlich blast at higher level is better then those 2 attacks of Rangers, there are some eldlich invocations that are realy fun combos like Repelling Blast & Lance of lethargy and the spells are realy good at higher level and a lot of them can be comboed with your eldlich invocation (Darkness,devil sight is a good combo) . You would probably chose pact of the blade becouse you already have the majority of pact of the chain benefits from Beast Master. Belle can be anything but I would suspect is something water based like The Great Old One or THE Fathomless but there are few water fiends if you would like to go that route. But if you would chose fiend I would change your spell list with water based/cold based spells instead of fire based
Just for the record, inflict wounds doesn’t require a weapon, the only spells that require weapons will specify that they do such as "Steel Wind Stike" or "Booming Blade".
Of course, you can flavor spells however you like, so maybe you reach out with necrotic energy or maybe you caot your weapon with it but you don't get to add any weapon damage like you do with booming blade.
Sorry for the long explanation, love seeing you play more D&D.
This is great. I love it so far I’m only 10 minutes in and I’m so excited to see this camping play out. Great personalities from everyone and tekking is amazing at everything he does. Good job, everyone and good luck in the campaign.
Ready for you to Gatling Eldridge blast onto everyone 😭
Briggs and Tekking on their way to have a dnd podcast for every day of the week
I'd watch them all
The dream!
I’m all for that!
I want that, desperately
I’m down
THIS WAS HYPE!! Can't wait for more. Zoran don't play.
Animak, were you possessed by Christopher Walken when killing Gill?
Is that supposed to be a cosplay of Peter the great?
Your character was entertaining and you have a knack for role playing already! Hope to see more!
"I get that a lot from women" made me laugh so hard 😂 I hope you enjoy playing DnD it's an experience that's for sure 😂
The D&D bug really got to Briggs over these years.
It’s funny cause I remember when OPDND first started and he said he didn’t know if he was gonna like it or not. He loves this shit 😂
As a veteran viewer of OPDND and Isekai, you had me at "beautiful woman"
Hell yeah I love this new D&D series. Now I basically got d&d every week. I got Marines, isekai, Pokémon, and now Rant Cafe. This is awesome, keep it up Briggs!
Wednesday has skill check if you want to check that out aswell! Doesn’t have anyone of this community but it’s by moist critical and it’s really fun
shameless self plug, but im getting ready to start one too lol!
Well time to dust off the old tracking skills for a new Performance Scoreboard:
The party:
Axerock (Tekking101): 3 kills , 0 KO's, hit 6/9 attacks (1 crit) and dealt 55+? damage; evaded/blocked 1/3 attacks and took 13 damage; 2 crits and 0 crit fails
Edrian Ironstone (Truck-chan): 0 kills, 0 KO's, hit 4/5 attacks and dealt 22+? damage; healed 12HP; evaded/blocked 3/10 attacks and took 26 damage, got KO'd once; 0 crits and 0 crit fails
Tomato slime: hit 2/2 attacks and dealt 22 damage
Zoran (AniMak): 3 kills, 0 KO's, hit 5/6 attacks (1 crit) and dealt 68 damage; healed 7HP; evaded/blocked 1/4 attacks and took 14 damage; 1 crit and 0 crit fails
Notable enemies:
Vesvach - killed by Axerock: 0 kills, 0 KO's, hit 7/7 attacks and dealt 21 damage; evaded/blocked 2/7 attacks and took 60 damage; 0 crits and 0 crit fails
I just found this and I'm so glad that the Anime youtuber cinematic universe is expanding
Gill, Sill, Bill, and the witch were totally killing adventurers and laundering the stolen gold through the guild. Bill just pretended to fail the save against the suggestion.
Briggs, you did really well my man and everyone was great, plus Mak definitely got into character, and tomatoes with slimes haven't left my mind yet lul
Letsgoo, I've been waiting for the RUclips version!
Hope this will become a popular & long lasting show
For a first attempt this was pretty good all around.
I was afraid Axross was gonna get posssessed by the spirit of Will and kill Bill
@@AnyMEmdqthe Will of Will, if you will
Is it just me or is Tekking's audio a bit low?
This is good practice for Briggs' One Piece D&D Marines standalone movie. He's the only one who didn't get to have his own movie from the previous OP DnD.
I increased it like halfway through the session when I noticed
@@BriggsADA I'm only at the first 10 minute mark but I hope you get to 200k subs!
This was amazing, great job everyone! As an avid viewer of various DND campaigns and an eternal DM I can say with the upmost certainty you did an excellent job DMing Briggs end it helps that you had such great players. If there is more on the way I’ll definitely be keeping an ear out for it!
This is great and I love the setup! You make a great host. I will say my only gripe is I think it might be a good idea to lean away from ai art in thumbnails. DnD official art is always fine to use for thumbnails and all. Keep it up though! V cool to see you gming after watching you play for so long!
I knew animak would be an incredible role player straight out the gates 😂 great job y’all keep doing them!
58:36 briggs bullying the stutter made me spit my food out laughing
Have been listening to Rant Cafe on Spotify every week since the Death Note One Shot episode in 2020. This episode was so fun. Such a great idea. Kinda gives me the same vibes as when you used to read the Truck Isekai light novel. And that's A HUGE COMPLIMENT! Love you guys!
I didn't hear anthing bout this. Lets f'ing goooooooo. Briggo dming and some f'ing amazing players
Briggs and tekking have been in all of the DND campaigns I watch and I love it
im so glad there's another DND podcast with tekking and briggs
I am looking forward to this good luck DMing Briggs.
This is awesome. I've watched you play Dnd for the first time years ago and now youre DMing for rhe 1st time.
Id be down for more , this is sick.
Tomato/Slime hybrid as a Spiritual Weapon was definitely not on my radar, but quite fun 😁
Not bad at all for a first time DM.
~_~
It will be interesting to see this campaign since it's starting from level 3 and features 3 characters. I wonder what the general tone will settle as. One thing I will say is that Tekking and Animak's characters seem like murderhobos
Tekking has to be checked constantly or he just murderhobos 😂 Rustage is the only one that’s really roped him in
Not even 20 minutes in, and it seems briggo has been holding out on us for voices in rustage dnds
Had laughing in the library 😂😂😂, great stuff
Tekking said this was fun, and I wanted to try and catch this campaign from the beginning. I’m excited
love this episode. pls continue with this series. dont worry even if ur dming is not perfect its still enjoyable and u ll get better eventually
How many likes do we need to get you to do a whole campaign with this group
I think we are doing it. The boiz liked it
I'm super hyped for more, and you killed it as a DM, more proof that all it takes to be a good DM is to just do it
Absolutely amazing to see you grow into the hobby. Super glad you're enjoying it.
What a great time, listened while I was at work. The atmosphere and vivid story telling made for a hilarious time
This is so exciting holy crap. Honestly, I keep up with all of the D&D content if it has you and tekking in it has to be gold
This is going to be fun briggo training for the next one piece DnD movie
Great first DM session. Wish you luck for all future DM sessions. I loved it how Tekking’s character was so far away in the big battle that nobody could hear anything he was saying.
This was honestly a great start to the adventure! Simple beginnings before things get heavier. Really inspires me to DM my own campaign with friends. Keep it up
I’m hyped for even more dnd! 🎉 let’s go baby
Briggs and Tekking are fated to do dnd campaigns together whenever dnd is mixed with anitubers
Combined a series of side quests into one adventure, and it works so well
1:14:03 Combat spoiler -
I'm sorry, did you give a legendary action to the first boss!?
F@#king hell, and I was worried on Rustage beating you guys down😦😱
😂😂
Hey thought you all did really well. Loved seeing briggs dm for the first time.
For a new DM You are killing it Briggs, I look forward to seeing more episodes
i see chat is already full of baseless appraisal so i think soft language is covered already and i will provide productive criticism instead hoping you take it with a grain of salt and use it to improve your DM skills instead of stroking your ego. First i want to get the basics out of the way. For the first time its needed to be said you did ok job and its expected to have some oversights regarding how the site works especially regarding functions you dont normally or never use as player (for example autosorting the initiative order. autosorting is missleading name and it does not automatically sort the initiative, you still need to do it, the autosorting name comes from fact you have function that once activated does it for you but you still have to use the said function yourself). That is ofc only lack of experience so its understandable as long you are working on improving and learning these mechanics. If you want to be pro GM you need to get these functions to be your second nature or every time you need to do behind the scenes DM stuff you will be ruining the flow of the session and roleplay will suffer.
Story is generic which is good and i approve of this decision as it is your first game you DM and this is not premade game with manual (i believe you came up with this story yourself. if you took this from someone else then that is entirely different story but what i am alluding to is that this does not seem to be out of any official book). The feedback i can give regarding story is that it is kind of railroady regardless of its generic nature.
Let me explain how you could get your desired effect and keep the story going the way you wanted without simply forcing player to make choices you planned for them.
Your plan was to make them take easy quest such as fighting slimes or maybe goblins if they feel confident and use "law" of the guild to stop them taking quests you dont want them to take. On the way to quest of YOUR choosing (slimes) you ambush them with higher ranking adventurers (you stated that finishing one mission such as killing slimes is enough for first promotion and these brothers already finished slime quest many times so they are rank above). although they have experience they lacked skills to back it up so balancing issue there first of all, but secondly and here is what i mean by you dont need to railroad your party so much, you already have combat prepared to happen on the way to quest you could have let them choose the higher ranking quest after protesting it. so you establish it as ill adviced but you cant stop the party from doing so as it make no sense for guild to say "hey you cant do that" because that defeats the purpose of DND. remember, DND is about roleplay and roleplay is improve and first rule of improv is always say yes if possible. In terms of DM advice, dont say "you cant do that" say "you can certainly try". As a DM your job is to disuade and advice against bad decisions or better yet ensure party knows their decision is risky and potential TPK rather than simply say "no i wont let you do that". DM job is to guide players through adventure, not to tell them how to have fun.
So to use your adventure as example, if Zoran was so hasty and reckless and Axel was willing to follow then you could let them go and try high ranking quest and have brothers be more challenging and have them knock down the party to submission and take the quest from them thus making party realize they are not ready for said quest and they would normally decide to go back and take easier quest on their accord and feel like they are making decisions even though you technically did what you originally wanted and made them pick a slime quest. In reality they still get ambushed the way they did and they still ended up doing quest you wanted but they feel like their choices matter and create the story and they came to your desired destination in their own way thinking they have the control of what they are doing.
Keep the clipnotes of story you make on the go, that way you wont make inconsistencies in your story. Even if it is just a slight detail that is irellevant and players wont hold it against you, you can only benefit from consistent storytelling in more way than one. Through time it will boost your confidence to improvise and you'll have to depend on clipnotes less and less and that will make your DMing feel more natural and less forced.
Next, understand rules of the combat and if you think encounter is not worthy of rolling for initiative then roleplay it out rather than doing weird mix of initiative but no combat. Yes slimes are mundane creatures and pulling proper initiative and having basic one sided combat will take long time especially if there is lot of slimes, but it is important to set the presedence. Surprise attack is only one round aka 1st round of initiative and its important to explain whats happening (if thats the case) is surprise attack. "you ambush the slimes while they were still eating so you managed to catch them off guard and in doing so you managed to kill this one withouth it noticing" is better than saying "oh they are still eating so they are not in combat" Reason why i am saying this is because there is no "not in combat" during initiative (with some exceptions of new combatants joining in long battles in later rounds). SO to explain, slimes are either in combat but surprised or you should try to fully roleplay the fight without initiative. In that case you can make few rolls to see how well party use their best features or strengths to eliminate the slimes without combat. For example Zoran rolls dexterity to see how precise his shooting is if he wants to shoot them or how quickly he dispose them without damaging tomatoes. if he tries to run through the tomato field and slay them you can punish the low roll by saying he damaged lot of tomatoes while doing so. Since even low roll will mean successful killing of slimes give them different kind of punishment for low rolls. Otherwise if you insist that slimes could potentially get aggresive and start fighting them then you must treat that as proper combat, not the awkward combinatio of both where neither parts work well.
Another thing about combat. Surprise round is not a round of attacks before combat. Surprise round is round 1 of the actual combat meaning you must roll for all the slimes that are in combat and then you determine which slimes are surprised and they skip their first round. Rolling for initiative for slimes that survive in round 2 is incorrect way of doing things but dont feel bad a lot of skilled DMs also misunderstand the rules of how surprise attack work.
Although its almost never used in DND there actually are rules for CHASE in DND rulebook which is something you could have used instead of creating another weird situation where party is hostile and enemies not in combat. as explains previously that is really not a good approach.
Overall your story was good, your approach as DM acceptable for first time and your knowledge of DMing comes as that of a player rather than DM in making. That is not an insult. what i am trying to say is that most if not all your DM experience you shown is something you picked up from rustage rather than sitting down and trying to learn how to DM. reason i say this is because almost all the stuff you showed lack of experience is stuff that rustage does behind the scenes without saying anything. For example rustage does not say "ok let me autosort initiative and we can start", he simply does it without a word and player without knowing can assume roll20 does it automatically and it would not be their fault at all to think so. Rustage does all the macros for you guys and i noticed lack of said macros in this session which made things more awkward, some flow and transitions are lacking etc...
For first time this is a solid 8/10. For average session this is 6.5/10 and i want to point out that is high score. Any game that is more than 5 out of 10 means its a game worth playing. In DND community we have a saying "no game is better than bad game" so for game to be worth playing it has to be above 5 and this was definitely it.
Well, i said bunch of cons because i wanted to give my criticisms hoping you will use them to reflect and improve. i hope you (or anyone reading this) dont take it as simple attack cause that is not the case. Now i want to say some positive things i saw.
First of all i want to point out that having a first time player makes experience in general harder but to have someone playing for first time in your first DM session makes even more presure on you so i want to say i am aware of extra burder you had as DM in this so that is a big plus considering how well you did overall.
I already mentioned that its good thing you decided to make the story generic and not try to write something very linear or narratively rich because you can never predict what parts of story you come up with will be entertaining to players. So until you are comfortable enough to simply make a world and let party choose what to do in your world and you are prepared enough to improvise on the go, having less established and simple plotlines is better. Simple does not mean worse as long you let party focus on what they want. To explain what i mean, a party having fun among themselves and enjoying the simple one straight line journey from A to B is better experience than party being forced through hoops of ideas you came up with while not being interested in half of it. Narratively you may think they would enjoy the game more if they keep getting twists and turns but if that kills the joy and fun out of it then its not a good thing its negative. to summarize it, sometimes less is more and you used that well.
Your story itself is good. I think you came up with tomato on the go which was good, party questioned why would someone constantly choose basic started quest and fight slime so much that they are willing to fight adventurers for it and personal reward of good quality tomatoes was a good imrpov, if that was not improv then ill take an L on my guess :D the plot twist of making party believe the C rank quest is probably made by noble only for it to be a trap by evil necromancer trying to lure weak adventurers is good one and maybe a favorite part of the story for me.
Most importantly i think you hit a nice balance of allowing players to do what they want in terms of combat (the tomato slime spiritual weapon, Tekkings retreating while shooting etc.) while respecting the rules of the game (as much as you can with your knowledge of said rules). Rules of combat and spells/features/actions should be followed but as long the changes to the rule is pure flavour there is no reason not to allow them as long they dont break the mechanic.
I hope you do more of these and no matter what people say (and no matter what i said here) only person who can judge you is your players. If they had lot of fun that is all that matters, even if i would argue you had flaws and bits you could and SHOULD improve on if you really want to be DM and do this more often, as long party had fun then this is 10/10 experience for them. and if there is anyone who's criticism you REALLY need to take, it is not me, it is not other DMs, it is the party members you want to DM for. As weird as it sounds and lot of DMs dont want to hear this but DM is meant to serve players not control them. Dungeon master creates the world for player to experience, they are not supposed to take players and force them to do what they want. that is main reason why railroading is so much frowned upon. So what i am saying is only feedback you REALLY need is that of your players, if you are doing something wrong but your party really enjoyed it then there is no reason for you to change it no matter how it might annoy the viewers, your duty is to your party first and foremost, so if your party say to ignore everything i just said you should do exactly that :D
thats my 5 cent to this and i hope you do more of this videos :)
Oh for f@#k's sake, I'm just starting to reach the finish line of One Piece DnD, and you add more to the must-watch list just now!? Haaaaaah. Well make sure to form a playlist
Ok, it's alright, I can vibe with this
Loved this you did wonderful Briggs might I suggest being more active with the background music I’ve been doing that for my first campaign it’s honestly a game changer immediate approvement otherwise you did wonderful for your first time ❤️
Tekking somehow becomes the main character in every dnd campaign
Yea he’s extremely charismatic and him being the only player with a face cam helps him in this campaign
i need this series to continue. edit*(I read the top comment finally, i am very happy.)
Rustage must feel like a proud mother right now.
I mean in one of the OPDND episodes he said that's how he feels watching any Tekking video, so I would assume the same for this. He can experience all of his players (now we just need Daniel Greene) being a DM.
Great job on taking the criticisms my guy. Can’t wait to see where this series goes
Congrats on the first game ran!!
Warlock, rogue and cleric feels a bit weak defensively. Hopefully they recruit a barbarian or tank npc.
Clerics can be extremely tanky
Nice oneshot, can't wait to see more of this. is there a playlist for this that i can save and check for updates??
Once episode 2 drops I'll make a Playlist. Stay tuned
Tekking's old man characters are the best 😂
Animac - some of these have eaten dragons before.... How did this rimuru reference go unnoticed..
You got it, so it was worth it.
@@AnimeUproar yay
ANOTHER TEKKING X BRIGGS DND TO WATCH?! Sign me up
Can’t wait to see more! 😃
LETS GO, so hype for this!
Really really funny I hope this becomes a regular series and not just a shot
Actually a really great session!
(btw is the thumbnail image AI generated? It looks like it.)
I think it is because there’s no credited artist in the description too so I’d say it’s probably AI
Rant cafe is back!! And Nux is replaced by the Cringe lord Tekking101🥰🥰🥰
Lets go Briggs! Can’t wait to see you dm and also remember it’s /r not r/ !
this was so fun to watch! can't wait for more!
Blindly supporting Briggsking in all D&Deaveors
Hey briggs loved this first session but if you ever have trouble with tekking 320 range you can always have some better defenses like maybe the necromancer could summoner the skeletons to protect herself and giver her cover
Yeah, I’m locked in. You did great as a DM
Love this guys keep it going love dnd fire episode Briggs
My God, another one of these for me to keep up with 😂
I loved seeing Tekking make full use of the insane range of Eldrich spear lol. Verona would be jealous 😆.
Oh, I thought it was going to be rantcafe themed. But I totally recall you saying you were going to do this as a way to get maK into into dnd
Can this be on Spotify and Apple Podcasts soon
Will be on the rant café spotify today!
MORE DND AND TEKKING COUNT ME IN
Let's gooo. Dungeon master briggs.
What a majestic picture of Animak
Hyper Giga-Chad Briggs as the DM? Let's GOOOOOO
Might want to reconsider using AI art brother. I get it’s likely easier for a show just starting out but using DM guide images or public domain ones would likely the better move for the long haul. Already saw folks on the Reddit avoid them show for that reason. I can’t do more than reconfirm tho, still a great watch
I can't wait for the olive arc
Oh anotha I see. I’m ready to embark on
Zoran being from a country called Rodina (family in most slavic languages) is absolutely hilarious. Most underrated joke of this session
Also Zoran is a common balkan name, any chance Animak named his character after himself or some of his relatives?
I saw this and freaked the fuck out lol
1:20:50 Getting a Benny Hill image
Love slime creatures, W dming
What more tekking and Briggs dnd hell yes
Can’t wait
I’m cringing for Briggs because I know I was nervous running my first campaign and I’m just so nervous for him
Edit: I stopped cringing near the 20 minute mark. I really think he hit his stride once the first combat happened
I want those tomatoes 🍅
Kek, Tekking doing background voices complaining about the prices of food.
Briggs handling the nervous wreck guild clerk role way too well-
No clue what these characters look like other than Tekking's red and chill
Damn, first step outta guild doors and the party is receiving a London greeting.
One problem Briggs the first time DM mans is doing is narrating what the NPC's are doing in first person
Teach a man to stab, and so on.
Hopefully Ax got enough of those Eldritch whatevers to keep blasting from that far away.
Thought Zoran mans was a warrior of sorts with how he was talking and behaving in combat.
The High Ground is even more effective it it's like over 100ft away from the damn battle field.
Wait, cleric, warlock, rogue, this party is completely lacking in front row battlers- This ain't balanced at all! Or are Warlocks like more tankier wizards? What he doing way back not tanking for the other two-
So, what happened to that dragged woman?- Oof, poor woman. First rescue attempt failed.
Ayyy, free loot in the Witch's castle? Hope they remember to check it out in the next EP
Inflation's wild in that world.
*Claps for the first time DM* (How precious)
I haven't watched it yet, but i give it 189/10 already 🎉
Rant cafe
Pokemon
One piece
Isekai
If briggs can run dnd, anyone can
We need more!
I was scared thinking tekking was going to kill the old farmer
He’s not playing Willam so don’t worry😂
Plz do more it was so fun
Ahhhh I love this!!❤
So many glizzies
olive!!!!!
Looks fun
❤❤❤❤❤
Am I the only one who was expecting Truck chan's character to be named Wagon?