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How to Bring Hope to Your Dark Fantasy D&D Campaign | DM Advice | TTRPG | DnD 5e | Ben Byrne
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- Опубликовано: 12 авг 2024
- Hope is as important to dark fantasy D&D campaigns as moral complexity and horrifying monsters! This video is all about ensuring you and your players never lose hope while exploring your grim and dark campaign worlds.
Topics:
00:00 - Bring hope to dark fantasy
03:40 - Allow for the players to succeed!
06:50 - Castlevania season 1 & 2 spoilers
08:09 - Comedy & fun is important
12:36 - Circuit breaker sessions
16:19 - Themes of hope in dark fantasy
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Edited by @ZsDante
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Discover a world of dark fantasy in the Grim Hollow supplements for 5e: ghostfiregaming.com/GGYT_ALL1...
Hope is as essential for a grimdark story as despair is to it. Without the contrast of hope, there is no pain in despair. Without hope to push the players forward and see their progress crumble to dust.
If your setting's too bleak, you won't cause despair, you will only cause apathy. And apathy is the last thing any DM wants their players to feel.
I’m running a dark fantasy campaign right now, bordering on grim-dark.
I shared during our session zero that, the reason I like dark fantasy sometimes, is that when something noble or virtuous shows up, it’s incredibly bright.
Like a candle in an otherwise buffering dark.
I make sure to include the hopeful bits in the aftermath of a battle or when they return to a village they saved or at least helped out by showing things like children playing outside again, pictures of the group drawn by children posted around the town entrance proclaiming their hero's and such, always puts a smile on their faces even if some of them didn't make it
My own rule when running a dark fantasy is: change always requires some kind of sacrifice, and things don't always go the players' way BUT! I don't go out of my way to screw my players either. For example, if I know that my players are very invested in an innocent maiden NPC. They might have already gave up on a lot of stuff to save her, I won't just kill said NPC because "uh, iT'S DaRK fAnTAsY!", it has to 1.make sense as a plot hook and 2.the event has to be intervenable by the players. Or else it's just being an asshole. Sometimes I might even just give said NPC a (relatively) perfect happy ending because it my opinion and experience, these little happy episodes are crucial in keeping your players motivated.
I remember I had a DND campagin where the DM never gave us Downtime, and it was supposed to be a fun campaign. But because he never gave us downtime, and only really gave things to one or two of the PCs, it meant that It felt actively draining to being that campaign.
Especially as I was not one of those players, the combats were unbalanced and unfair, we were never given a chance to do things, unless you were the party rogue, and the rest of us had to often babysit, or beg the rogue for money. Not to also mention that because most of the PCs were broke, constantly, there wasn't really anything to do during the maybe five minutes of Downtime our PCs got.
More importantly, it was hard to do things, because you would have no idea if the DM we had would randomly decide that the NPC you tried to pickpocket had a Luckblade (and actual example) or if he would include a monster that did instahit 10d10 damage to your PC (another example)
Basically, thought process is that even in a not dark fantasy campaign, you need to include hope, to let your players do things and generally give the players time to do things and not be railroaded into the next area.
Not me getting emotional the first few seconds of this video 😢
From personal experience in running Call of Cthulhu campaigns, I recommend allowing the players to bring the comedy mostly, it becomes beautifully realistic and excellent character building as characters are alieving their stress by trying to laugh it off, also downtime sessions are important in any game I think.
In any dark tabletop campaign setting, be it horror or dark fantasy hope is a key part of making it enjoyable and it is really great seeing someone delve into why it is important and how to apply it. I think it's why I can't really enjoy Grimdark settings cause it causes players to go "why bother?" when adventure hooks are put in front of them.
One thing I wanna do with the campaign I plan to run is make sure that each town you visit is being plagued by some sort of menace, and there's a arc (usually tied into the main story somehow) where you must deal with that menace. You get XP, money, and loot, and life improves.
Also, in towns, you get to have downtime, to rest and replenish, and there are ways to get money that don't involve treacherous dungeons. One location is a village inhabited by genasi, each living in their own district, each district having its own minigame. The water district has a swim race that tests your ability to make Athletics checks, the earth district has a flail snail ranch where you get paid for successful Animal Handling checks, the fire district has a endurance contest where you must combat the heat of hot coals with Constitution saving throws, and the air district has a quiz where you can earn money from successful (chosen by a d4 roll) Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion checks, or with your knowledge of the game.
This video was great! It served as a great mission statement for the dark fantasy genre. I tend toward leaning on hope as a driver for most of my campaigns. The idea that things can be made better by the actions of a small group of people is the part of fantasy that I find bleeding into reality and giving me things to strive for in everyday life. It's a pleasure to watch these videos evolve, and I hope (is this a pun? or just wordplay?) that this series will only get better from here!
You're great over there at Ghostfite. Yesterday we did our first session in the Grim Hollow setting. It went great.
That’s so great to hear! 😄
Yeah tell that to my old dm that kept taking everything good we had
We saved a village? The mayor is killed by a werewolf and the whole village is infected so we have to kill them all
We reach a major city and finally can relax from the constant danger of the rural? The party rogue is accused of murder and as soon as we reach his cell to free him the character is instantly executed by a guard
One of the characters gets to visit their childhood home? His parents call him a monster and kick him out because "you are an adventurer so you are a murderer"
Dude ended a 4 month long campaign with a whole monologue about how we are nothig in the grand scheme of things, not special, never been in history and forgotten after a couple days by everyone we know after we beat an arcane desiease spreading to control the population, no morals bad guy successfully mind you
The spiteful answer is to do the same to them as player
Sounds like the kind of DM who'll have a real hard time getting players for a second campaign. I'm honestly surprised you folks were committed enough to stick out the firs.
@@dezopenguin9649 we were seeing if anything good would happen. I think all of us were in denial
@@dezopenguin9649 Sounds like the kind of DM who has a hard time keeping a hold of players.
Nice work on the video!
This was a fun video
Super helpful!!
Interesting video
How to create your morals in D&D campaigns?
Hey Hamza khan, you might enjoy this earlier video about morality in dark fantasy D&D!
ruclips.net/video/PcQxQMLXIlc/видео.html
I also like to give the players an easy win to break things up. Remind them they are powerful and there is hope. Save a child from an ooze while they are level 5+
Have you played Mork Borg yet? There's nothing darker.
Nobody tell this guy about Shadow of the Demon Lord