I am a college professor in game design and I’ve found a lot of cross over between teaching and GMing! I think that “magician mode” is something I’ve got to read more about too!! Wonderful video!! Cheers!!
Great video! I once did the reverse trick, using TTRPG in my education setting. I'm in university, and we wanted to make a reading club for our classmates to go over things that are not in our classes. I suggested we host a Session Zero to set norms, expectations, and boundaries. Very helpful tools!
I've heard said that the Venn diagram of teachers and tabletop gamers in nearly an eclipse 😌 Also THAT NOTE ON "THEY PULL YOUR NOSE BECAUSE THEY'RE BORED" IS TIMELESS.
This is such a fantastic video - great points approached in a new way, paired with really clean production and fantastic storytelling! I can't wait to see where your channel goes, if this is what you're accomplishing within your first ten uploads 🙌
I am also a teacher and a GM. During the pandemic, I convinced a group of teachers to try D&D. They became instantly obsessed and we have been playing every week for 4 years now :) I used to be the "forever DM" - but no longer :D
Are you KIDDING ME? I JUST came across your video and I have been a teacher for 18 years and one of the few things I have been going for longer than the classroom is Dungeons and Dragons. And I love both. And I have ALWAYS thought there's a huge connection between doing one well and that improving the other! Masterful approach!
I will be using the "what are you thinking as you wake up?" open with my session tonight! I have done in the past a "what are you doing to prepare for the day?" open, but I really love the thoughts/feelings angle...better to get them into RP mode. Thank you!
happy you like it! I feel it also helps for the player, they get more used little by little to really consider the impact that a game event may have on their character
"...people are always going to remember something they experienced or achieved better than something they witnessed" this is phenomenal advice. The challenge of conveying lore and plot effectively is a big one. Putting your players at the center of that experience is such great way to build momentum.
I'm not a GM, but the "kids pulling on your nose because they're bored" concept really resonated with me. It feels analogous to focusing on tasks when you have an attention disorder. So, thank you!
a warmup i use at my table is asking everyone who was the most badass and the bigger loser npc/pc moment from the last session. they always start describing every single detail about hilarious stuff and how cool it was. i also prepare a top 3 "things" and reveal them one by one letting the players guess what's in the first position
I'm a High School teacher in the USA and I run the Tabletop Gaming Club, with a focus on DnD. As far as warm-ups go, having players introduce their characters/what they did last session, take notes about their party mates/their actions, and share out a connection or feeling the characters have about at least 2 of their party mates is a good way to get them into the roleplaying mindset while having them focus on the table in the middle of a loud room. It also leads people to "defending" their character or explaining their actions better, which leads to better characterization.
We found that a chronicle or log helps to maintain continuum. The current team looks up what happened last time and decide what they want to work on from there. The players write what they think was important.
High School Game Development Teacher chiming in, 10 years in (7 as a DM). A lot of this is good advice, but in both mentoring new teachers and new GMs. I find the focus on "engagement" to be a bit unhealthy at times. Young teachers really put a lot of pressure on themselves to be the driving force of energy and engagement in a classroom and unfortunately this can lead to a lot of burn out, as you point out, DMs (especially new DMs) feel similar pressure. The hard fought wisdom that is learned over time is that yes, you have an important role to play in engagement, but over the long haul, the teachers/DMs that make it over the long haul are the ones that understand that they cannot be a constant font of learning. As one of my mentors put it "There are classrooms where the math teacher does a lot of math and there are classrooms where the students do a lot of math. Guess which teacher makes it to year 5."
Oh, this is a very good point, and quite reassuring to hear tbh? I do tend to feel that exhaustion, especially since I'm just starting out, and when you're starting out, you can't help but be so aware of all the skills you have yet to build! I think perhaps what also drives me (and likely others, recently I was talking about it with a friend of mine who is a young teacher too) to this kind of pressure is the image of the teacher in media, in movies.. This idea that in every movie the teacher is a life changing figure for their students. People talking of teaching not as a job, but as a vocation, because for a "good teacher, there is no real work/life balance". That's a lot of pressure to put on a person! I know that realistically, this is not the expectation, only the mythology built around teaching, which makes a lot of teachers feel like they are not doing enough, like they could give even more. So these days I'm trying to loosen up. Hearing this from an experienced teacher helps a bunch!
THIS! IS! EPIC! I used to teach. When I got into DMing, it quickly dawned on me how running a table wasn’t much different from teaching! You are absolutely spot on in every aspect of this video. I’ve been out of the classroom for a couple years now, and I would miss it if it weren’t for DMing. This time, there isn’t the pressure of managing a classroom and I get to work and teach (because D&D has many educational benefits, especially social skills) to children and adults alike!
aaah this is so lovely to hear, especially from a teacher! YES! there's so much that feels so similar to running a game, and tbh, I feel like even as a beginner teacher, being a GM gave me a lil bit of a head start on a few things.
@@corkboardsandcuriosities absolutely! And being a teacher taught me skills for running a table. They overlap in group management, communication, planning, multitasking and other skills.
As another novice teacher, I wholeheartedly identify with this. I have thought about a lot of how teaching helps running games and how much being a GM helps me in the classroom!
If you master your subject (or your gameworld!), improvisation is key, too. It is vital for a GM, but it also serves me well as a teacher! Makes lessons more lively and students more involved (you're adapting to them). Cheers!
From a didactical standpoint, I think we need more inventive Teachers just as yourself, integrating more luddism into teaching.Your students are just in the right hands.
The greatest boon to me as GM, was when I became a flight instructor. Those fundamentals of instruction and how people learn and engage made everything fall into place so I know exactly what you mean and you are exactly correct (in my experience at least)! Literally every beat you touched on here I learned as an instructor and applied in my games to great effect. I also have "the class" open up with a player-led session recap and it sucks us all in every time. I'm loving your videos after just discovering your channel and can't wait to see what you've got coming up. Keep up the great work! P.S. If you ever figure out how to make lesson plans that aren't absolute chaos or absolute inane bullet points please share with the class. Send help.
When you are a beginner at anything the secret ingredient isn't skill or expertise... It is enthusiasm and energy. If you bring a good teacher, energy and enthusiasm, they will guide you to the promised land.
At the start of a campaign, I'll not only ask for their first thoughts in the morning but also ask a description of where they slept. It helps them understand their own character by giving them basic character interactions with their world. They're often more creative that they'ld think and it sometimes leads to recurrent characters or things that they will now do before going to bed. In a session, I had characters waking up at home with their spouse, beaten up in a dumpster, on a friends couch and in a hotel after leaving home. Each of them with a unique NPC that, by interacting with them, will highlight the character's current situation before the story begins.
I'm also a teacher and a GM! One of my first thoughts when I was being introduced into teaching theory and general lesson structure was "Wait... this is just D&D with less dragons". I love this video - thank you!
I'm a senior IT professional, and I find *loads* of skills which cross the gap between Game Mastery and professional communications. Time management, focusing the spotlight on individuals in measured ways, researching topics, managing expectations, and much more. Practicing GMing in a methodical way makes me a better professional, and vise versa.
feel like I've stumbled upon most of these things you talk about through happenstance. When I GM, I'm constantly throwing mysteries and whatnot at the party- usually because they see something weird, or something weird happens to the players they can't quite understand yet. Dangle a question in front of your players and watch them tear your world apart trying to find the answer. Very satisfying!
Sorry if tldr, but I promise it's worth it. My mother was an elementary school teacher, and she taught me a lot: to be a good student, to love to read, and to love to learn. And she taught me a great deal about children, teaching, and behavioral psychology (tho not in that specific sense). I even got my degree in Music Education, tho I knew by the end I did not have the gift for being a proper teacher. You have an excellent understanding of the basics, and I'm sure you'll be a very good teacher too. I would love to spend hours with you talking about teaching and its relationship to gaming. Or to be a member of your gaming group. But I will tell you this little thing about my dear Mom. She was very religious, and when I discovered D&D in high school, she was unconcerned about it at first. But unfortunately, her religiosity made her gullible, and vulnerable to the slander and lies of the "Satanic Panic." So I did not get to play until college, and even then she worried for my soul. She never understood the positivity or the potential developmental benefits of rpg's, and I was never able to talk with her meaningfully about it. One last thing. I was in her class in 3rd grade, and I kept trying to address her like the other kids, "Mrs. H~" but always caught myself, and ending up frequently calling her "Mrs.... Mother." Bless you, dear Val. Good luck in the classroom and at the table. ❤
Im currently writing a paper on how being a gamemaster can make people better teachers through the abilities they learn dm-ing so seeing this video is super funny
@@corkboardsandcuriosities I would have to translate it and its more than 25 pages so I'm sorry I won't be able to do that probably 😅 If you know german I can provide it to you after grading if I'm happy with it :D
Hi! I find that people who are professional teachers, have advantage since they know how to prep, and discuss the subject to a classroom of students. You also learned to communicate and explain things better. I find the RUclips people, that are teachers, are the ones I listen and learn from. Some RUclipsrs are selling, and entertaining, but I don't need that. Would you be open to have people, like me, to watch one of your game sections? I would pay for it. I learn from watching and taking notes. I don't need to be a player character. I think you are in France, I would watch it on your schedule. No pressure. Thank you for doing this episode. 😀
haaaa you flatter me so much! I will soon be playing online with a few really cool people to test out a new game called Archeterica, i'll make sure to send you the link! Thank you for all the encouragement!
@@corkboardsandcuriosities I'd also be super interested to watch if that's okay! Your persona here is very fun to just listen to, so I wonder how you are when GM'ing (assuming you are).
me too, if that’s alright! i love playing ttrpgs, but also…i’m a magician myself! i’ve found that there’s lots to learn from any source of drama, be it a performance or a game!
Table culture is very DM dependent and it's almost like a dance - keeping people engaged. For a popular example there was a thread with people complaining that the CR players are getting more and more rowdy during the game - and it's true due to not having their attention kept.
I've also used my teaching experience to reel my players back in when they get distracted. No one likes the teacher who snaps their fingers and shouts, especially when all you have to do is lower your voice to a whisper and say something intriguing. It sparks that curiosity again, and boom, they're back.
That was very helpfull and delightfull, thank you very much! I was blessed by the algorythm with another rpg channel I can bingewatch insted of preparing my campain, yes...
Awesome video. I'm a teacher too and I started applying techniques to my players without noticing it. It was until one of them said "He's using his teacher powers against us" when I was like "uh, he is right, it is similar"
Great video, excellent channel! (here, have a sub!) I love your passionate and clear delivery, and that you're delivering really interesting insights. Your students are fortunate to have you in their lives, and we are too. Thank you. I'm a huge fan of cross-disciplinary pollenation - unique wisdom and viewpoints are really super-charged by transferring the lessons and approaches from one discipline to another. Long live the polymath and the generalist!
As a GM one thing I really like to do and received good feedbacks from my players is having a small music like the opening credit of a show. It's a small time during which everyone turn off their mics and at the end of it we directly engage on the game. It gives them a bit of time to put their feet in their character and being a recurring thing help it a lot.
I am a public high school teacher/coach with twenty eight years in the books. You did a very good job with your video. I am just getting into TTRG/D&D and, I appreciate you "activating my prior learning"!
i've taught high school for 10 years and i'm now a first time DM and there's definitely a bunch of things i'm *not* nervous about because of my experience! i've definitely thought about this exact thing a lot - there's absolutely tons of crossover between the two and this video was a delight to watch to hear some of it put into words for the first time.
Useful habits from my school teacher experience: -Let the players summarize what happened during last session before getting into the game. -Take the attention back when I feel like the players are shifting focus. -Notice any player who's getting bored/who doesn't participate a lot and find a solution to get them involved. -Notice a player not confident with his playing skills/roleplaying skills and find a solution to make him shine. -Rephrase a description when I notice a player imagines a scene wrong (just like a teacher rephrases instructions). -Make sure players are in the action as much as possible. -Surprise element. -With the players, summerize what happened during the session and describe what the setting looks like when the session ends. -Try to make every player character feel special, make players feel like "every character has his own story" on top of the story of the group. -Have plan B,C.... In case things go a very different direction from what was planned.
From a writer's perspective, you get the Narrator premise: "Show, don't tell...". If you actually show it properly, you don't need to spoil anything in anticipatìon (unless you want to purposely build anticipation, most commonly to avoid the expected effect in the end... The former is surprise, the later builds suspense...). So, skip the "telling" part right into the "show" one, and your formula simplifies to "Show (don't tell) - Do - Apply". I like your video. Pretty cool content. Keep going!
As both a GM and beginning university professor myself, I appreciated your thoughts. I certainly know the importance of maintaining engagement in both realms, and am far from mastering it in either, but I happened to be working on implementing a lot of these same strategies in the classroom just prior to watching this video. Good luck with your teaching efforts; my command of my students' (or players') attention is tentative at best, but based on how this video held mine, you're already likely to do well in both arenas.
I really like the idea of the video and the execution of it! I agree the most with the magician. Be it as a student, player or GM, this is how you can get my attention. Though as a GM I really like to start my campaigns or one-shots seemingly simple, so the group can assemble and get comfortable with each other enabling also usually some roleplay. Then as soon as they are on their mission, they find more and more hints leading to different background knowledge growing their curiosity into what has been and how this correlates to what or who is still around here awaiting them. With the "Tell, Show, Do, Apply"-method I'd personally narrow it down to things have consequences, be it the things players did or the ones your world does. Also as a student, I had problems with this method, since I didn't learn much of it. Yes, I used it myself a couple of times, but basically I just copied a template and if it didn't work, I still didn't understand how it should work. Finding your own way to the solution is always how I learned the things that works best, especially (returning to GM view) since every single table plays different and has different interests and develop individual dynamics with the flow of the adventure. Thus it's nothing unusual for me to adapt mid-campaign new systems into our rulesets and it be it just for a single character, who wanted to dig in a specialty of theirs more. The warm ups/cold opens are a nice idea to which I can't say not too much, as I'm (no matter the group) always the main notetaker and thus always run around thinking about our campaigns and give most of the time the recap of last session xD And with the warm ups: The first thoughts after a rest is a nice little thing, which again has the potential to create chaos discussions among the players (speaking from experience), but it's still a nice thing to activate the players, if they are fine with revealing their characters true thougths and don't want to keep them a mystery for a later reveal. With the level up at the beginning of a session, I'd actually advice against. This breaks immersion, since everyone speaks out of character and there could be a lot of rule questions coming up and especially spellcasters can potentially need quite a while to do a full level up. Also the mechanical process takes time away from the actual game time, which is a reason, why players could be torn between making it quick and giving things an actual thought, they'll be satisfied with. But what you could do, after you ended last session with a level up, is to give each character a chance to tell how things felt different now with more power or how they reflect things or gained their level up in the first place. For a warlock player of mine always talked with his patron, when leveling up, which we actually played out. These are my personal experiences and thoughts about this. I can't really say in what regard my points are an individual or actually general thing. Either way I thank you for your video and that you decided to share your findings and thoughts. It was especially interesting for me to see, what theory is lying behind the education I went through and what similarities the two POVs actually have!
doing a level up at the start of a session is genius. They're going to be excited to use new abilities and whatnot, immediately pulling them into the game.
I'm a new teacher and DM, so this was super helpful on both fronts. I'd like to know more about Bucheton's work as well. I teach writing, and one of the articles we start off with focuses on the importance of wonder/curiosity.
I've been GMing since 1977. And I freakin' LOVE: "What is the first thought upon waking" as a question for the players/pc. I am swiping that. Also, not a teacher... (I've dabbled in teaching illustration classes... but that is so much about demonstration and almost going directly to the "Apply stage")... so I had not heard these techniques in these terms. Very cool. I AM going to share this with 2 of my players, one of which, IS a teacher in NYC. I subscribed after this one video and I look forward to sifting through your back catalog and any new videos you end up doing.
Interesting! Funny how the opposite happened to me: being a DM as a kiddo and teenager helped me later on when I had to grab the attention of a class and to feel the mood and the wants of them kids. I just had to turn on my DM mode and do things as if I was running a giant RPG session with 30 players in it. It seems simple, but I get astronomically better results than my fellow colleagues that are always complaining about their classes.
@@corkboardsandcuriosities Good luck on your classes! Also, happy to know that you're doing your research on teaching, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Theory + experience does the thing, don't worry!
If only we were taught pedagogy like that!!! I learnt more useful things in 20 minutes than in a semester at Uni! I am one of those crazy ones who dared to combine DnD and teaching (English), so it was crazy helpful, thank you, will follow you
I became a DM last year, and am a teacher and I have said for the past year that teaching SO set me up for success as a DM. I also play in a game where the DM was a professor, and he's far and away the best DM I've played under. They're directly correlated.
@QuestingBeast is also a teacher, and has mentioned that there are a lot of people running games who teach. Your video makes it clear why that would be such an asset. Love your videos!
A warm up technique I recently used that yielded good results was getting the player's to share a fun fact about their characters. This video had a ton of good information, surprised i have just happened upon this channel.
I'm a teacher & aspiring DM. This is a really interesting crossover & perspective. Most RUclipsrs (or people in general) struggle to create something new, say something worth saying, or make an impression. In my opinion, you've done all of that in this video. I don't think I've ever considered tapping into me teacher-self to keep my players' attention, but the realization hit me so hard, I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee it! Thank you for the insight.
This is so cool! I was a TA in college for 2 years before I was a GM. Used to have a brainstorm session with them to give them ideas of what they'd like to go on & major in. Honestly, my students were as chaotic as my table. Their research ideas were nuts!
I'm yet another teacher and long time DM. Honestly, I'm probably better as a DM, but it is good to see that crossover highlighted so clearly. Time for me to bring more DMing magic into the classroom.
I instinctively used this in my session playing 'dragons of stormwreck Island'. The rogue player went to the temple (they were invited by the cloister) at night and stole a gemstone from the statue in the center of the temple. We stopped the session when all player did a long rest at the camp. The rogue player hid the diamond under his bed before going to sleep (he was worried the cloister would find out about it). The next session started and I asked if he wanted to take the gemstone with him before leaving the room. After which he looked under the bed, and the stone was gone. It was a great way to pull all players back into the game
I semi-recently became a Pre-school teacher. It is amazing how much crossover there is in teaching smol kinders and running a table are. Even in how you narrate a story, increasing pace, changing voices, the volume of your voice can all work wonders for building excitement, or undercut it terribly if you don't do it or do it badly. So I really appreciated this video from the parallels of my own experience, as well as the additional ideas you've given me. Thanks!
AAAAAAAAAAA, this actually helps me so much. I feel like this is info that more DMs should know, cause I wish I knew about this when I started. This channel really is helpful, thank youuuuuu.
I'm an amateur rules writer for tabletop wargames and finding ways to increase player engagement is something I'm always looking to keep at the top of my list. You've got a load of great stuff in here that I think will be super applicable outside teaching and TTRPGs alone. Thanks!
I agree with everything after the two minute mark. All the tips were great, and many of them are part of my game already. One of my favorite embodiment techniques is to talk about food routines: whether your character is a "same thing every morning" type, or whether they enjoy variety. With all that said, please please please stop overpreparing. Overpreparing is a guaranteed way you burn yourself out. It becomes a matter of when, not if. Unlike teaching, a game master can not move or reuse unused lesson plans. Some plots are mutually exclusive, and the more you throw out half of that mutually exclusive plot, the more it sucks. As a concrete example of this: one of my tables famously burned an Apparatus of Kwalish. I had fully expected them to steal it. They had three characters with strong motivations for sea travel, including a druid, an aquaric elf, and a wizard who sought out a necklace of adaptation previously. They were primed for it. But the circumstances of the adventure made is so that they needed to burn everything to cover their tracks, when the stealth team messed up. When that happened, I threw away one island. If I had prepared a whole archipelago, I would have been really sad. But I was not overprepared. That meant I was able to quickly pivot and instead we did some swampwalking.
Having players recap the session is a trick I've used to great success! I set it up as a challenge to the players- if they can accurately recap the previous session, the group gets an extra Hero Point or whatever reroll mechanic your game has. I saw a rapid uptake in my players taking notes after that
My mom is a teacher and we have conversations about teaching/DnD all the time. It was so cool when we discovered we could relate to each other over our passions!
That was the singular most helpful video for me as a dm out of every video I have ever watched, thank you. I have dmed for about 3 months now and something was missing the whole time, I see my sessions looking up now.
I love how in depth this is! As a former teacher, theater director, and occasional LARP GM I've been using some of this overlap without looking too much into it.
i’m an autistic TTRPG player, and the way you color coded and swapped perspectives made it incredibly easy to understand and follow. thank you for helping connect some dots i never knew were there, in an easily digestible way no less!
gosh, you kept me engaged for the whole video, now I even want more! at least for me, you're doing a terrific job at being a teacher/GM :) your voice is soo pleasant, and the light tricks and editing are just chef's kiss, definitely subscribed
It is so easy to gloss over those obvious patterns you mentioned, the way teachers try to get the students engagements. Thank you for the reminder. While I'm quite seldom in experiencing Tell Show Do Apply in class, it is a basic in video games. Thus, that is also one more thing to be aware of. Though I find the magician part is quite overlapping with this one. Time to apply these. Thanks, teach!
Fellow teacher and GM here! I love this video! Both the warm up and cold open are great for classroom and table engagement, and I often find myself comparing notes between what I see at the table vs the classroom. I’ve found that both players and students will often default to socializing with their friends unless I take the reigns. It’s the same in kids and adults! Of course it’s less stressful at the game table where the stakes are lower lol. I loved what you said about Doing! Giving your players a more unforgettable experience and I feel silly I didn’t make that connection myself sooner haha. I guess sometimes I’m just too much in my own head. Excellent video with excellent info!
this was fascinating, i felt as though I had hit an echo chamber with gming content on yt but this was a way of looking at gming I had not considered, and will now adapt into my way of play
In our games (yes you can watch our recent liveplays) We play a lot differently as our players drive the narrative and the GM/DM is a reaction-narrator. When I GM/DM I only prep what I control (NPC motives/goals and "pushes") The players in our games know the 'premise' of the session but they control where they go and what they do (I'm not allowed to move my players' characters) They even co-create (adding to the setting during gameplay). Players are only allowed to talk in-character (no out-of-character talk or game mechanics) and describe what they do, they talk to each other as characters. They never ask me (the GM/DM) direct questions. "Pushes" are derived before the game or during the game as a cause and effect. If the players do something that inhibits an NPC, there can be repercussions later as a "revenge push". I do very minor prep on locations, a sentence or two suffices. The players will be giving me ideas as they roleplay with each other. So you need to be able to think of things during the game that would be cool. As you don't have an example of gameplay on your channel its hard to guess if you are playing like our group does or not... but you are hitting on topics of akin interest.
Yeah, this is great!! Pedagogy fits perfectly with storytelling. I'm not a dm (I might try some day), but as a player, I will still keep these tips and methods in mind. We are all writing the story, after all!
This is very cool so far! Warm-ups were very much a thing myself and my partner (who GMs his own games) introduced when our group went online. While I don't do full on warmups, I actually have my players do recap in-character! They're allowed to say meta information (kinda like the interview sections of a reality tv show!), but it's a fun way to let each of them voice their thoughts on the previous session's events and practice their character voices. The magician stance is such a cool way to frame building a scene, and I want to try to keep that in mind whenever I build out a scene/encounter for my players by asking "What is the mystery?". Because whenever I think back on when my players are most engaged, it's when they're trying to learn the answers to something. I think while I knew tell, show, do, apply in my heart when it comes to mechanics, I definitely want to keep it in mind for storytelling as well! Like, if an enemy has a dangerous ability or something the players won't expect, I'll usually demonstrate it to them by having the enemy use it on a friendly NPC the first round of combat. All around this was a really lovely video!
Love it. I run a lot of convention games and I’m always terrified of being a “bad teacher” leading to new players having a bad time in my sessions. Thank you for the tips! They inspired a few ideas im going to try out at Adepticon! 😁
I find your channel to be one of the most interesting and captivating I've seen in many years. The way you think outside the box and connect different content in an entirely new perspective is really something unique. And learning you're a teacher makes perfect sense. I may be a little biased, seeing I'm finishing my master's in education, but I see a lot of bell hooks' and Paulo Freire's teaching as a practice of freedom in what you teach. And seeing you want to keep growing... You seriously inspire me. Thank you so much ❤
Well, I didn't want to pull on your nose once during this video, so you must be doing something right. More seriously, as a beginner GM, I really appreciate this perspective. It's helping me crystalize and put focus on some stuff I was already instinctively doing. And your presentation is excellent!
Ah! You were looking for becoming a better teacher and found something to become a better GM and now I'm going to use that to become a better game designer. It will be fun re-adapting all these concepts to videogames :)
I just wanted to chime in and say that you have an amazing channel and a unique perspective to what goes in to being a DM that I have not seen on other channels. I am so excited for where this channel will go in the future and wish you all the best!
No you're actually insane. For years i've listened to people say the same things over and over again about how to be a good DM but all of your talking points are new and innovative ways to approach DMing in a fun and interactive manner! All of this stuff hasn't really been said before, but it all makes so much sense! Thank you for making this, what an oddly great idea you had.
Lovely video. Love the concept of warmup activities, involving players in recap and checking in with PCs what they are doing/thinking as the game starts. And your voice is Devine.
color coding the teacher perspective and the gm perspective with different color lights is mesmerizing
glad to hear it, because attempting to color grade nearly killed me hahahahah
@@corkboardsandcuriositiesI think you did great! But then teachers often are good at grading ;)
@salmontan or at structuring visuals. @corkboardsandcuriosities You did a good job, which program are you using?
I use colors to highlight important things like loot (magic items), traps, or certain actions the pcs are likely to take.
Ah shit, I just learned I’m colorblind
I am a college professor in game design and I’ve found a lot of cross over between teaching and GMing! I think that “magician mode” is something I’ve got to read more about too!! Wonderful video!! Cheers!!
Great video! I once did the reverse trick, using TTRPG in my education setting. I'm in university, and we wanted to make a reading club for our classmates to go over things that are not in our classes. I suggested we host a Session Zero to set norms, expectations, and boundaries. Very helpful tools!
Love your channel
I teach at a college as well, and I agree. There's so much crossover! I'm finding that teaching is helping my DMing and vice versa.
Greeting professor!
Teaching college is performance art.
I've heard said that the Venn diagram of teachers and tabletop gamers in nearly an eclipse 😌 Also THAT NOTE ON "THEY PULL YOUR NOSE BECAUSE THEY'RE BORED" IS TIMELESS.
clowns are vessels for all the wisdom in the world !
This is incredibly helpful! Fascinating to learn more about teaching through GMing as well
This is such a fantastic video - great points approached in a new way, paired with really clean production and fantastic storytelling! I can't wait to see where your channel goes, if this is what you're accomplishing within your first ten uploads 🙌
Seriously. She has fantastic insight, and great presentation
I love when people make crossovers of... anything really, this is a *Hobby × Profession* crossover
hahaha, i think that's just my impulse to relate literally everything in my life to ttrpg
@@corkboardsandcuriosities That's such a relatable impulse.
I am also a teacher and a GM. During the pandemic, I convinced a group of teachers to try D&D. They became instantly obsessed and we have been playing every week for 4 years now :) I used to be the "forever DM" - but no longer :D
Are you KIDDING ME? I JUST came across your video and I have been a teacher for 18 years and one of the few things I have been going for longer than the classroom is Dungeons and Dragons. And I love both.
And I have ALWAYS thought there's a huge connection between doing one well and that improving the other!
Masterful approach!
aaah amazing! I didn't expect to see so many teachers in the comments, and it is absolutely delightful to hear that this resonates!
I will be using the "what are you thinking as you wake up?" open with my session tonight! I have done in the past a "what are you doing to prepare for the day?" open, but I really love the thoughts/feelings angle...better to get them into RP mode. Thank you!
Me too! I'm really curious to see how it goes.
happy you like it! I feel it also helps for the player, they get more used little by little to really consider the impact that a game event may have on their character
Same, I'm yoinking
I might do "What woke you up?"
oooh that's a cool one @@jamesscullion3034
"...people are always going to remember something they experienced or achieved better than something they witnessed" this is phenomenal advice. The challenge of conveying lore and plot effectively is a big one. Putting your players at the center of that experience is such great way to build momentum.
"Don't comment me, I'm a beginner teacher. Just... pray for my students." That was fantastic!
And thanks for the excellent video!
I'm not a GM, but the "kids pulling on your nose because they're bored" concept really resonated with me. It feels analogous to focusing on tasks when you have an attention disorder. So, thank you!
a warmup i use at my table is asking everyone who was the most badass and the bigger loser npc/pc moment from the last session. they always start describing every single detail about hilarious stuff and how cool it was.
i also prepare a top 3 "things" and reveal them one by one letting the players guess what's in the first position
I'm a High School teacher in the USA and I run the Tabletop Gaming Club, with a focus on DnD. As far as warm-ups go, having players introduce their characters/what they did last session, take notes about their party mates/their actions, and share out a connection or feeling the characters have about at least 2 of their party mates is a good way to get them into the roleplaying mindset while having them focus on the table in the middle of a loud room. It also leads people to "defending" their character or explaining their actions better, which leads to better characterization.
We found that a chronicle or log helps to maintain continuum. The current team looks up what happened last time and decide what they want to work on from there. The players write what they think was important.
High School Game Development Teacher chiming in, 10 years in (7 as a DM). A lot of this is good advice, but in both mentoring new teachers and new GMs. I find the focus on "engagement" to be a bit unhealthy at times. Young teachers really put a lot of pressure on themselves to be the driving force of energy and engagement in a classroom and unfortunately this can lead to a lot of burn out, as you point out, DMs (especially new DMs) feel similar pressure. The hard fought wisdom that is learned over time is that yes, you have an important role to play in engagement, but over the long haul, the teachers/DMs that make it over the long haul are the ones that understand that they cannot be a constant font of learning. As one of my mentors put it "There are classrooms where the math teacher does a lot of math and there are classrooms where the students do a lot of math. Guess which teacher makes it to year 5."
Oh, this is a very good point, and quite reassuring to hear tbh? I do tend to feel that exhaustion, especially since I'm just starting out, and when you're starting out, you can't help but be so aware of all the skills you have yet to build! I think perhaps what also drives me (and likely others, recently I was talking about it with a friend of mine who is a young teacher too) to this kind of pressure is the image of the teacher in media, in movies.. This idea that in every movie the teacher is a life changing figure for their students. People talking of teaching not as a job, but as a vocation, because for a "good teacher, there is no real work/life balance". That's a lot of pressure to put on a person! I know that realistically, this is not the expectation, only the mythology built around teaching, which makes a lot of teachers feel like they are not doing enough, like they could give even more. So these days I'm trying to loosen up. Hearing this from an experienced teacher helps a bunch!
I'm a teacher myself and have been playing dnd for 30 years and I love your point of view! It's so easy to join the to concepts! Bravo!
THIS!
IS!
EPIC!
I used to teach. When I got into DMing, it quickly dawned on me how running a table wasn’t much different from teaching! You are absolutely spot on in every aspect of this video.
I’ve been out of the classroom for a couple years now, and I would miss it if it weren’t for DMing. This time, there isn’t the pressure of managing a classroom and I get to work and teach (because D&D has many educational benefits, especially social skills) to children and adults alike!
aaah this is so lovely to hear, especially from a teacher!
YES! there's so much that feels so similar to running a game, and tbh, I feel like even as a beginner teacher, being a GM gave me a lil bit of a head start on a few things.
@@corkboardsandcuriosities absolutely! And being a teacher taught me skills for running a table. They overlap in group management, communication, planning, multitasking and other skills.
As another novice teacher, I wholeheartedly identify with this. I have thought about a lot of how teaching helps running games and how much being a GM helps me in the classroom!
If you master your subject (or your gameworld!), improvisation is key, too. It is vital for a GM, but it also serves me well as a teacher! Makes lessons more lively and students more involved (you're adapting to them). Cheers!
From a didactical standpoint, I think we need more inventive Teachers just as yourself, integrating more luddism into teaching.Your students are just in the right hands.
So many youtubers seem to be teachers. Must be a natural connection 😊
the real challenge is making sure my high schoolers don't find my youtube channel hahaha
@@corkboardsandcuriosities I'd be psyqued if I knew my teacher plays D&D!
@@danielzarkos I've not yet had a student who was into TTRPG... but it's only a matter of time until they join our ranks!
lmao :D@@corkboardsandcuriosities
I was gonna ask where you're from, but the way you pronounced Dominique's (?) names gave it away!
The greatest boon to me as GM, was when I became a flight instructor. Those fundamentals of instruction and how people learn and engage made everything fall into place so I know exactly what you mean and you are exactly correct (in my experience at least)! Literally every beat you touched on here I learned as an instructor and applied in my games to great effect. I also have "the class" open up with a player-led session recap and it sucks us all in every time. I'm loving your videos after just discovering your channel and can't wait to see what you've got coming up. Keep up the great work!
P.S. If you ever figure out how to make lesson plans that aren't absolute chaos or absolute inane bullet points please share with the class. Send help.
My players have never heard about the concept of: deescalating heated interactions
Everything always ends in a fight
As a fellow teacher (teaching assistant, to be exact) and D&D noob, this video couldn't be more perfect
When you are a beginner at anything the secret ingredient isn't skill or expertise...
It is enthusiasm and energy.
If you bring a good teacher, energy and enthusiasm, they will guide you to the promised land.
At the start of a campaign, I'll not only ask for their first thoughts in the morning but also ask a description of where they slept. It helps them understand their own character by giving them basic character interactions with their world. They're often more creative that they'ld think and it sometimes leads to recurrent characters or things that they will now do before going to bed.
In a session, I had characters waking up at home with their spouse, beaten up in a dumpster, on a friends couch and in a hotel after leaving home. Each of them with a unique NPC that, by interacting with them, will highlight the character's current situation before the story begins.
I'm also a teacher and a GM! One of my first thoughts when I was being introduced into teaching theory and general lesson structure was "Wait... this is just D&D with less dragons". I love this video - thank you!
I'm a senior IT professional, and I find *loads* of skills which cross the gap between Game Mastery and professional communications. Time management, focusing the spotlight on individuals in measured ways, researching topics, managing expectations, and much more. Practicing GMing in a methodical way makes me a better professional, and vise versa.
This is also how RPG Elite has framed his "RPG Elite philosophies for your life" series of videos, which are pretty great too.
feel like I've stumbled upon most of these things you talk about through happenstance. When I GM, I'm constantly throwing mysteries and whatnot at the party- usually because they see something weird, or something weird happens to the players they can't quite understand yet. Dangle a question in front of your players and watch them tear your world apart trying to find the answer. Very satisfying!
As a fellow teacher and GM; this was helpful on both sides of the coin! Thank you for this! 😄👍💯
This video is underrated. Amazing new perspective about GMing I've never heard in all my years of enjoying the hobby! Thank you!
Sorry if tldr, but I promise it's worth it. My mother was an elementary school teacher, and she taught me a lot: to be a good student, to love to read, and to love to learn. And she taught me a great deal about children, teaching, and behavioral psychology (tho not in that specific sense). I even got my degree in Music Education, tho I knew by the end I did not have the gift for being a proper teacher. You have an excellent understanding of the basics, and I'm sure you'll be a very good teacher too. I would love to spend hours with you talking about teaching and its relationship to gaming. Or to be a member of your gaming group. But I will tell you this little thing about my dear Mom. She was very religious, and when I discovered D&D in high school, she was unconcerned about it at first. But unfortunately, her religiosity made her gullible, and vulnerable to the slander and lies of the "Satanic Panic." So I did not get to play until college, and even then she worried for my soul. She never understood the positivity or the potential developmental benefits of rpg's, and I was never able to talk with her meaningfully about it. One last thing. I was in her class in 3rd grade, and I kept trying to address her like the other kids, "Mrs. H~" but always caught myself, and ending up frequently calling her "Mrs.... Mother." Bless you, dear Val. Good luck in the classroom and at the table. ❤
Im currently writing a paper on how being a gamemaster can make people better teachers through the abilities they learn dm-ing so seeing this video is super funny
omg I would be so interested to read that paper
@@corkboardsandcuriosities I would have to translate it and its more than 25 pages so I'm sorry I won't be able to do that probably 😅 If you know german I can provide it to you after grading if I'm happy with it :D
Hi! I find that people who are professional teachers, have advantage since they know how to prep, and discuss the subject to a classroom of students. You also learned to communicate and explain things better. I find the RUclips people, that are teachers, are the ones I listen and learn from. Some RUclipsrs are selling, and entertaining, but I don't need that. Would you be open to have people, like me, to watch one of your game sections? I would pay for it. I learn from watching and taking notes. I don't need to be a player character. I think you are in France, I would watch it on your schedule. No pressure. Thank you for doing this episode. 😀
haaaa you flatter me so much! I will soon be playing online with a few really cool people to test out a new game called Archeterica, i'll make sure to send you the link! Thank you for all the encouragement!
@@corkboardsandcuriosities I'd also be super interested to watch if that's okay! Your persona here is very fun to just listen to, so I wonder how you are when GM'ing (assuming you are).
me too, if that’s alright! i love playing ttrpgs, but also…i’m a magician myself! i’ve found that there’s lots to learn from any source of drama, be it a performance or a game!
Table culture is very DM dependent and it's almost like a dance - keeping people engaged.
For a popular example there was a thread with people complaining that the CR players are getting more and more rowdy during the game - and it's true due to not having their attention kept.
I've also used my teaching experience to reel my players back in when they get distracted. No one likes the teacher who snaps their fingers and shouts, especially when all you have to do is lower your voice to a whisper and say something intriguing. It sparks that curiosity again, and boom, they're back.
That was very helpfull and delightfull, thank you very much!
I was blessed by the algorythm with another rpg channel I can bingewatch insted of preparing my campain, yes...
Awesome video.
I'm a teacher too and I started applying techniques to my players without noticing it. It was until one of them said "He's using his teacher powers against us" when I was like "uh, he is right, it is similar"
Great video, excellent channel! (here, have a sub!)
I love your passionate and clear delivery, and that you're delivering really interesting insights. Your students are fortunate to have you in their lives, and we are too. Thank you.
I'm a huge fan of cross-disciplinary pollenation - unique wisdom and viewpoints are really super-charged by transferring the lessons and approaches from one discipline to another.
Long live the polymath and the generalist!
As a GM one thing I really like to do and received good feedbacks from my players is having a small music like the opening credit of a show. It's a small time during which everyone turn off their mics and at the end of it we directly engage on the game. It gives them a bit of time to put their feet in their character and being a recurring thing help it a lot.
I am a public high school teacher/coach with twenty eight years in the books. You did a very good job with your video. I am just getting into TTRG/D&D and, I appreciate you "activating my prior learning"!
As an experienced GM, I use everything I know to enhance my classroom.
English Lit teacherling of 1 month and GM of 18 months. There’s a good bit of crossover for sure. I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while!!
i've taught high school for 10 years and i'm now a first time DM and there's definitely a bunch of things i'm *not* nervous about because of my experience! i've definitely thought about this exact thing a lot - there's absolutely tons of crossover between the two and this video was a delight to watch to hear some of it put into words for the first time.
Useful habits from my school teacher experience:
-Let the players summarize what happened during last session before getting into the game.
-Take the attention back when I feel like the players are shifting focus.
-Notice any player who's getting bored/who doesn't participate a lot and find a solution to get them involved.
-Notice a player not confident with his playing skills/roleplaying skills and find a solution to make him shine.
-Rephrase a description when I notice a player imagines a scene wrong (just like a teacher rephrases instructions).
-Make sure players are in the action as much as possible.
-Surprise element.
-With the players, summerize what happened during the session and describe what the setting looks like when the session ends.
-Try to make every player character feel special, make players feel like "every character has his own story" on top of the story of the group.
-Have plan B,C.... In case things go a very different direction from what was planned.
This is awesome! You gave a lot of great advice that I can start using in my games. Thank you😃
Teacher/GM here, and this is a brilliant video. I learned a little about teaching AND running games! Great video
From a writer's perspective, you get the Narrator premise: "Show, don't tell...". If you actually show it properly, you don't need to spoil anything in anticipatìon (unless you want to purposely build anticipation, most commonly to avoid the expected effect in the end... The former is surprise, the later builds suspense...). So, skip the "telling" part right into the "show" one, and your formula simplifies to "Show (don't tell) - Do - Apply".
I like your video. Pretty cool content. Keep going!
There's a time for all strategies. You're not writing a novel.
As both a GM and beginning university professor myself, I appreciated your thoughts. I certainly know the importance of maintaining engagement in both realms, and am far from mastering it in either, but I happened to be working on implementing a lot of these same strategies in the classroom just prior to watching this video.
Good luck with your teaching efforts; my command of my students' (or players') attention is tentative at best, but based on how this video held mine, you're already likely to do well in both arenas.
As a new DM and new teacher myself, I found this video very intriguing on both fronts!
I really like the idea of the video and the execution of it! I agree the most with the magician. Be it as a student, player or GM, this is how you can get my attention. Though as a GM I really like to start my campaigns or one-shots seemingly simple, so the group can assemble and get comfortable with each other enabling also usually some roleplay. Then as soon as they are on their mission, they find more and more hints leading to different background knowledge growing their curiosity into what has been and how this correlates to what or who is still around here awaiting them.
With the "Tell, Show, Do, Apply"-method I'd personally narrow it down to things have consequences, be it the things players did or the ones your world does. Also as a student, I had problems with this method, since I didn't learn much of it. Yes, I used it myself a couple of times, but basically I just copied a template and if it didn't work, I still didn't understand how it should work. Finding your own way to the solution is always how I learned the things that works best, especially (returning to GM view) since every single table plays different and has different interests and develop individual dynamics with the flow of the adventure. Thus it's nothing unusual for me to adapt mid-campaign new systems into our rulesets and it be it just for a single character, who wanted to dig in a specialty of theirs more.
The warm ups/cold opens are a nice idea to which I can't say not too much, as I'm (no matter the group) always the main notetaker and thus always run around thinking about our campaigns and give most of the time the recap of last session xD And with the warm ups: The first thoughts after a rest is a nice little thing, which again has the potential to create chaos discussions among the players (speaking from experience), but it's still a nice thing to activate the players, if they are fine with revealing their characters true thougths and don't want to keep them a mystery for a later reveal. With the level up at the beginning of a session, I'd actually advice against. This breaks immersion, since everyone speaks out of character and there could be a lot of rule questions coming up and especially spellcasters can potentially need quite a while to do a full level up. Also the mechanical process takes time away from the actual game time, which is a reason, why players could be torn between making it quick and giving things an actual thought, they'll be satisfied with. But what you could do, after you ended last session with a level up, is to give each character a chance to tell how things felt different now with more power or how they reflect things or gained their level up in the first place. For a warlock player of mine always talked with his patron, when leveling up, which we actually played out.
These are my personal experiences and thoughts about this. I can't really say in what regard my points are an individual or actually general thing. Either way I thank you for your video and that you decided to share your findings and thoughts. It was especially interesting for me to see, what theory is lying behind the education I went through and what similarities the two POVs actually have!
This is some of the most original TTRPG content I have seen in some time. Thank you! I can imagine you are a really good teacher.
Great video as a teacher and also as DM I find combat helps in both the classroom and DnD : )
:o are you suggesting I bring my battleaxe to class?
doing a level up at the start of a session is genius. They're going to be excited to use new abilities and whatnot, immediately pulling them into the game.
I'm a new teacher and DM, so this was super helpful on both fronts. I'd like to know more about Bucheton's work as well. I teach writing, and one of the articles we start off with focuses on the importance of wonder/curiosity.
ooooh may I ask what article?
@@corkboardsandcuriosities It's called "How Wonder Works" by Jesse Prinz. 🙂
I've been GMing since 1977. And I freakin' LOVE: "What is the first thought upon waking" as a question for the players/pc. I am swiping that. Also, not a teacher... (I've dabbled in teaching illustration classes... but that is so much about demonstration and almost going directly to the "Apply stage")... so I had not heard these techniques in these terms. Very cool. I AM going to share this with 2 of my players, one of which, IS a teacher in NYC. I subscribed after this one video and I look forward to sifting through your back catalog and any new videos you end up doing.
Interesting! Funny how the opposite happened to me: being a DM as a kiddo and teenager helped me later on when I had to grab the attention of a class and to feel the mood and the wants of them kids. I just had to turn on my DM mode and do things as if I was running a giant RPG session with 30 players in it. It seems simple, but I get astronomically better results than my fellow colleagues that are always complaining about their classes.
yessss! I for sure feel like it gave me a bit of a head start, i'm still a beginner teacher, but so many of our GM skills are transposable !
@@corkboardsandcuriosities Good luck on your classes! Also, happy to know that you're doing your research on teaching, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Theory + experience does the thing, don't worry!
@@lssn Theory and Experience are really good names for dual wielding weapons
@@corkboardsandcuriosities LOL 😆 "You wanna be put down by Theory or Experience? Your choice"
damn, you made me cackle @@lssn
If only we were taught pedagogy like that!!! I learnt more useful things in 20 minutes than in a semester at Uni! I am one of those crazy ones who dared to combine DnD and teaching (English), so it was crazy helpful, thank you, will follow you
With you as my teacher, I think I would continue to have a love for learning.
As a teacher I always felt like DMing felt very natural but I couldn't tell you why. Now the connections are obvious. 👍
I became a DM last year, and am a teacher and I have said for the past year that teaching SO set me up for success as a DM. I also play in a game where the DM was a professor, and he's far and away the best DM I've played under. They're directly correlated.
@QuestingBeast is also a teacher, and has mentioned that there are a lot of people running games who teach. Your video makes it clear why that would be such an asset. Love your videos!
A warm up technique I recently used that yielded good results was getting the player's to share a fun fact about their characters. This video had a ton of good information, surprised i have just happened upon this channel.
I'm a teacher & aspiring DM. This is a really interesting crossover & perspective.
Most RUclipsrs (or people in general) struggle to create something new, say something worth saying, or make an impression. In my opinion, you've done all of that in this video. I don't think I've ever considered tapping into me teacher-self to keep my players' attention, but the realization hit me so hard, I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee it! Thank you for the insight.
before seeing this video i always thought there had to be a crossover between gming and teaching, its cool to finally hear someone talk about it
This is so cool! I was a TA in college for 2 years before I was a GM. Used to have a brainstorm session with them to give them ideas of what they'd like to go on & major in. Honestly, my students were as chaotic as my table. Their research ideas were nuts!
oooh i love that
you didn't choose the chaotic crowd, the chaotic crowd chose you
I'm yet another teacher and long time DM. Honestly, I'm probably better as a DM, but it is good to see that crossover highlighted so clearly. Time for me to bring more DMing magic into the classroom.
This is so neat and a concept I never would've thought of before!
aaaah i'm happy you liked it! I was really worried that this one would only be interesting to teachers hahaha
Brings me back to the time I was a teacher, Great video as always!!
I found there are strong similarities in prepping.
haha, prepping is not my strong suit as a teacher, I just take too long with it, but I'm getting better, finding a method helps!
@@corkboardsandcuriosities well you can go the other way around, just apply your RPG prepping skills on the classroom.
I instinctively used this in my session playing 'dragons of stormwreck Island'. The rogue player went to the temple (they were invited by the cloister) at night and stole a gemstone from the statue in the center of the temple. We stopped the session when all player did a long rest at the camp. The rogue player hid the diamond under his bed before going to sleep (he was worried the cloister would find out about it). The next session started and I asked if he wanted to take the gemstone with him before leaving the room. After which he looked under the bed, and the stone was gone. It was a great way to pull all players back into the game
I semi-recently became a Pre-school teacher. It is amazing how much crossover there is in teaching smol kinders and running a table are. Even in how you narrate a story, increasing pace, changing voices, the volume of your voice can all work wonders for building excitement, or undercut it terribly if you don't do it or do it badly. So I really appreciated this video from the parallels of my own experience, as well as the additional ideas you've given me. Thanks!
AAAAAAAAAAA, this actually helps me so much. I feel like this is info that more DMs should know, cause I wish I knew about this when I started. This channel really is helpful, thank youuuuuu.
I'm an amateur rules writer for tabletop wargames and finding ways to increase player engagement is something I'm always looking to keep at the top of my list. You've got a load of great stuff in here that I think will be super applicable outside teaching and TTRPGs alone. Thanks!
I agree with everything after the two minute mark. All the tips were great, and many of them are part of my game already. One of my favorite embodiment techniques is to talk about food routines: whether your character is a "same thing every morning" type, or whether they enjoy variety.
With all that said, please please please stop overpreparing. Overpreparing is a guaranteed way you burn yourself out. It becomes a matter of when, not if. Unlike teaching, a game master can not move or reuse unused lesson plans. Some plots are mutually exclusive, and the more you throw out half of that mutually exclusive plot, the more it sucks.
As a concrete example of this: one of my tables famously burned an Apparatus of Kwalish. I had fully expected them to steal it. They had three characters with strong motivations for sea travel, including a druid, an aquaric elf, and a wizard who sought out a necklace of adaptation previously. They were primed for it. But the circumstances of the adventure made is so that they needed to burn everything to cover their tracks, when the stealth team messed up.
When that happened, I threw away one island. If I had prepared a whole archipelago, I would have been really sad. But I was not overprepared. That meant I was able to quickly pivot and instead we did some swampwalking.
Having players recap the session is a trick I've used to great success! I set it up as a challenge to the players- if they can accurately recap the previous session, the group gets an extra Hero Point or whatever reroll mechanic your game has. I saw a rapid uptake in my players taking notes after that
What you said in the beginning made me want to give you a hug.
I cannot thank you enough for this addition to my Kit. Incredible!
My mom is a teacher and we have conversations about teaching/DnD all the time. It was so cool when we discovered we could relate to each other over our passions!
That was the singular most helpful video for me as a dm out of every video I have ever watched, thank you.
I have dmed for about 3 months now and something was missing the whole time, I see my sessions looking up now.
As a fellow teacher, you did an awesome job showing how the two practices relate! great video ! :D
DMing is teaching. That's why after a long day of class, I can sometimes resent having to DM that night.
Same here. Also why I dread my friends saying, for the umpteenth time, "Can we play on Sunday night?" I go to sleep teaching and wake up teaching lol
I love how in depth this is! As a former teacher, theater director, and occasional LARP GM I've been using some of this overlap without looking too much into it.
i’m an autistic TTRPG player, and the way you color coded and swapped perspectives made it incredibly easy to understand and follow. thank you for helping connect some dots i never knew were there, in an easily digestible way no less!
Beginner teacher and GM here, thanks for compiling all this insight to a short video! Also love your hair 😊
gosh, you kept me engaged for the whole video, now I even want more! at least for me, you're doing a terrific job at being a teacher/GM :)
your voice is soo pleasant, and the light tricks and editing are just chef's kiss, definitely subscribed
As one who uses games to help kids reach their full potential in a safe space, this advices are gold.
Thank you for the beautiful ideas and input!
Agreed.
Different kinds of teachers with different skills equal different kinds of DMs.
The worst is a lazy teacher that DMs, because it carries over.
:o hopefully my students don't think that of me!
@corkboardsandcuriosities I'm sure they enjoy your lessons if your channel content is any indication!✌️
It is so easy to gloss over those obvious patterns you mentioned, the way teachers try to get the students engagements. Thank you for the reminder.
While I'm quite seldom in experiencing Tell Show Do Apply in class, it is a basic in video games. Thus, that is also one more thing to be aware of. Though I find the magician part is quite overlapping with this one.
Time to apply these. Thanks, teach!
Fellow teacher and GM here! I love this video! Both the warm up and cold open are great for classroom and table engagement, and I often find myself comparing notes between what I see at the table vs the classroom. I’ve found that both players and students will often default to socializing with their friends unless I take the reigns. It’s the same in kids and adults! Of course it’s less stressful at the game table where the stakes are lower lol.
I loved what you said about Doing! Giving your players a more unforgettable experience and I feel silly I didn’t make that connection myself sooner haha. I guess sometimes I’m just too much in my own head. Excellent video with excellent info!
this was fascinating, i felt as though I had hit an echo chamber with gming content on yt but this was a way of looking at gming I had not considered, and will now adapt into my way of play
In our games (yes you can watch our recent liveplays) We play a lot differently as our players drive the narrative and the GM/DM is a reaction-narrator.
When I GM/DM I only prep what I control (NPC motives/goals and "pushes") The players in our games know the 'premise' of the session but they control where they go and what they do (I'm not allowed to move my players' characters) They even co-create (adding to the setting during gameplay).
Players are only allowed to talk in-character (no out-of-character talk or game mechanics) and describe what they do, they talk to each other as characters. They never ask me (the GM/DM) direct questions.
"Pushes" are derived before the game or during the game as a cause and effect. If the players do something that inhibits an NPC, there can be repercussions later as a "revenge push". I do very minor prep on locations, a sentence or two suffices. The players will be giving me ideas as they roleplay with each other. So you need to be able to think of things during the game that would be cool. As you don't have an example of gameplay on your channel its hard to guess if you are playing like our group does or not... but you are hitting on topics of akin interest.
Yeah, this is great!! Pedagogy fits perfectly with storytelling. I'm not a dm (I might try some day), but as a player, I will still keep these tips and methods in mind. We are all writing the story, after all!
This is very cool so far!
Warm-ups were very much a thing myself and my partner (who GMs his own games) introduced when our group went online. While I don't do full on warmups, I actually have my players do recap in-character! They're allowed to say meta information (kinda like the interview sections of a reality tv show!), but it's a fun way to let each of them voice their thoughts on the previous session's events and practice their character voices.
The magician stance is such a cool way to frame building a scene, and I want to try to keep that in mind whenever I build out a scene/encounter for my players by asking "What is the mystery?". Because whenever I think back on when my players are most engaged, it's when they're trying to learn the answers to something.
I think while I knew tell, show, do, apply in my heart when it comes to mechanics, I definitely want to keep it in mind for storytelling as well! Like, if an enemy has a dangerous ability or something the players won't expect, I'll usually demonstrate it to them by having the enemy use it on a friendly NPC the first round of combat.
All around this was a really lovely video!
Love it. I run a lot of convention games and I’m always terrified of being a “bad teacher” leading to new players having a bad time in my sessions. Thank you for the tips! They inspired a few ideas im going to try out at Adepticon! 😁
Succinct, quirky and humorous, and insightful and informative! Thank you. Please continue making more content!
I find your channel to be one of the most interesting and captivating I've seen in many years. The way you think outside the box and connect different content in an entirely new perspective is really something unique. And learning you're a teacher makes perfect sense. I may be a little biased, seeing I'm finishing my master's in education, but I see a lot of bell hooks' and Paulo Freire's teaching as a practice of freedom in what you teach. And seeing you want to keep growing... You seriously inspire me. Thank you so much ❤
qsjdhbiqsdjfbqsiudhc aaaaaaaah you're gonna make me cry this is so good to hear
Well, I didn't want to pull on your nose once during this video, so you must be doing something right. More seriously, as a beginner GM, I really appreciate this perspective. It's helping me crystalize and put focus on some stuff I was already instinctively doing. And your presentation is excellent!
Ah! You were looking for becoming a better teacher and found something to become a better GM and now I'm going to use that to become a better game designer. It will be fun re-adapting all these concepts to videogames :)
I just wanted to chime in and say that you have an amazing channel and a unique perspective to what goes in to being a DM that I have not seen on other channels. I am so excited for where this channel will go in the future and wish you all the best!
No you're actually insane. For years i've listened to people say the same things over and over again about how to be a good DM but all of your talking points are new and innovative ways to approach DMing in a fun and interactive manner! All of this stuff hasn't really been said before, but it all makes so much sense! Thank you for making this, what an oddly great idea you had.
Lovely video. Love the concept of warmup activities, involving players in recap and checking in with PCs what they are doing/thinking as the game starts. And your voice is Devine.
thank you so, so much! happy to hear this resonates!