46 years ago, Tracy and Laura Hickman wrote an adventure that would change the hobby forever: I6: Ravenloft. A module that tells the tragic story of a memorable antagonist for role-playing games. A character so memorable that to this day, it still sustains a company ungrateful to its origins. Strahd von Zarovich was created out of a young man’s frustration at finding a vampire as a random encounter behind a random wall in a random dungeon... Today, as part of their 50th-aniversary celebration, WotC couldn't think of anything better than to turn Strahd von Zarovich, the dark lord and master of Ravenloft, into a random encounter behind a random wall in a random dungeon.
unfortunately, the admittedly well executed knockoff of bog standard vampire legend was not the hicksman's main impact on role playing. the sludge tsunami that was dragonlance was a devastation that can only be compared to what rob liefield did "for" comic books
I'm waiting for when I can work a wizard into the game that's just a floating all powerful being in the sky. It was such a an epic apocalyptic scenario where he destroyed everything that ever mattered to anyone in his pursuit of power, so that he was the ruler of a dead world.
@@theupson is dragonlance like...bad or problematic? can you elaborate? im not super familiar w/ the setting, it seems generic but neat enough. kind of a more gimmicky Greyhawk from what ive experienced
Mechanically, balance goes out the window around level 15. In the two campaigns I've run that got to level 20, combat became less about survival and more about managing outcomes. Can a ritual be stopped in time? How many innocents can be saved? One campaign was more narrative-focused, and so that's where I focused the challenge, with multiversal conspiracies being unravelled and warlock patrons being confronted. You don't need to go that extreme to have an epic or dramatic campaign, but it absolutely can work if you allow the high-level insanity to flow wherever it leads. Trying to maintain tight control of things is where it goes wrong.
i think it is supposed to be that way, with your players going from low level pcs barely able to survive to the people making the decisions and having the power. as a dm you are supposed to switch it to questions of morality and questions of what the players will do with their power etc etc.
The LoTR video game Shadow of Mordor includes giving names and titles to the random low level orcs who are able to kill your character. This allows direct enmity to be generated and sometimes leads to more epic stories of surprise and betrayal than the main storyline.
@@andrewdiaz3529 Which sucks, cause they technically can't even do that, or at least not in the way people think. The copywrite is so specific that it would actually be very easy to recreate the mechanic with no legal repercussions. Just change a few small details, and suddenly the copywrites don't hold weight anymore. But it's not about legal repercussions, it's about the THREAT of legal repercussions. It allows the company to threaten a lawsuit, which would cost money to be resolved even if everyone knows that the company wouldn't win. Money that no one wants to pay, or money that indie devs CAN'T pay without going bankrupt trying to fight a legal team that knows to just stall and bleed you out.
That story about your youth group is 100% the heart and soul of D&D. It immediately shot me back to my hay day skulking through the stygian shadows that haunt the space between the lines on graph paper. The most our group ever hated a villain was some rando pirate we lost a fight to who just threw all of our treasure over-board into the sea just to spite us for daring to resist him. We burned his hide-out to the ground. Those were the days of high adventure and like you observed they never seemed to exceed 7th level.
I absolutely love the idea of the two stat blocks. The big ones for the crunchy fans, and the streamlined ones for those who want to keep the action going.
Big stat block in the back with all the other monsters, condensed and glance-able stats on the page of the dungeon where they show up so you don't need to flip away from the action. Brilliant!
i dont mind the crunchy stat blocks, since it just for my reference and i use it as options to remove or make bettter a stats or skilsl for the monsteer of NPC, but if its not your style then sttreamline is the way to go.
I used to do this myself with big statblocks -- make a bulleted list of what they could actually do that was, you know, readable. I do this with adventures too -- take page-long blocks of text and turn them into a few quick bullets.
The backstory and detailed stat blocks are so a DM can run the Monster as a character and not just a sack of hit points and some attacks There is nothing stopping them summarizing for ease of reference in play, but the full details give flavour, and allow them to adjust it for their game, and their players
Funny title, and excellent discussion of what really makes a game epic and memorable! (But don't tell deathbringer my D&D group had a veggie platter last week)
To be fair, I really hate the - Well what if your players don't want to go on the quest presented - line you give sometimes, cause I feel like that should be established with the players before hand. Like hey guys, here's the module we're playing, you're expected to go on the adventure
I agree. With any TTRPG a player needs to understand they are complicit in creating the story. They need to do more than just "act in character" then need to create a character that is going to work in a party and work with the campaign.
I really hate WotC's read-aloud text. There's so many better ways to guide DMs, but instead they want us to essentially act out their novel scene-for-scene
I appreciate that the stat blocks aren’t efficient when it comes to running the game but equally I wouldn’t want them to go away I find them really useful for modifying monsters and generating my own.
Yeah, me too. I kinda like the expanded statblocks. I would shuffle some things around at most if it were up to me, like Prof. DM said with just using the modifier instead of the fully expanded ability scores, and maybe reorganize the attacks/actions section into a new layout where all the math is at the top and all the flavor/descriptions of the action is at the bottom, so you don't have to scan a text to find what die to roll.
I knew a player who was in such a game back in the 3.0 days, and was the sole survivor... because he ran when the players started fighting each other over the "artifact". I suspect it's been done a few times by smart(-arsed) GMs.
@@jeremyarcus-goldberg9543 That is the funny thing. Of course if you replace your head it will be Vecna's brain running your character. Made no sense for people to want to cut their own head off to attach Head of Vecna.
Well that’s stupid lol… what’s the point, you wouldn’t be yourself anymore. Vecna would take control. At least with hands or eyes, your still retaining your brain and head and as such your still yourself
@@enriquepizarro2099This. You learn to care about the characters. About the villagers. You discover Kikuchiyo's past, you understand what the "ronins" feel, even the " class struggle" between peasants, ronins, bandits and samurai. A perfect little adventure.
@@enriquepizarro2099 "But, my kool powerz!i!" I joke. Seriously though, Professor reminds me why I used to start games at level 3 and be stingy with levels.
Vecna is/was a Greyhawk entity and was believed to have been destroyed by Kas (this is why there is little to no mention of him until late 2ed. In the 1st ed AD&D DMG only his name is mentioned when referencing the Hand and Eye artifacts. Not sure what is mentioned about him in 2ed books. Stradh is mentioned in the module because Vecna was imprisoned in Ravenloft. When Vecna escaped Ravenloft, he emerged as a Greater God after absorbing the power from Iuz and entered the city of Sigil. After being ejected from Sigil, Iuz was freed and Vecna returned to Oerth as a Lesser God. This whole Sigil mess was the explanation behind the transition from 2ed to 3ed.
Now hold on! I love lore and find it serves three major purposes, the last of which is the utilitarian part. The first and greatest for me is ENTERTAINMENT. I love lore. I know a huge number of people also love lore. A big complaint that I know a lot of people have about recent D&D books is that there haven't been any lore books. (I know they probably don't sell as much as adventures, but people want them anyway.) History, culture, NPCs, politics...all of this for different parts of the Realms or wherever. Great, great stuff. Number two is that all that lore--history, culture, etc.--make it easier to homebrew adventures in established worlds. Sometimes you just want to use the Forgotten Realms as your backdrop and plug your own stories in there. Then develop the future as you see fit. The third major purpose is that, when you're running those published adventures, it helps you handle what happens when the PCs don't follow the script. You bring up a few railroad-y points where the party can say "no." Well, now you have some inkling of what's happening in the background and make assumptions about how that affects the world and the characters as a result. In the published adventures I've run in 5e, I've found lore to be helpful whenever it was available. It's been part of my prep for a reason.
Yeah am big on Lore and this book was full of Lore ,but even the Lore had huge gaps in expalining anything with any real significant detals, but hey i willtake it I guess, better than nothing.
I agree a bit of lore helps me to understand what's going on and saves me trouble if players don't do what I expected to do, but honestly it could be more objective summered up a bit
"If I want to be entertained I'll read a story" has to be one of the most bizarre takes I've ever seen anyone make in this context. If not for fun and entertainment, why on earth would you play RPGs for then?
Vecna is an anagram of "Vance" as in Jack, the inspiration for D&Ds magic system. Vance's character Cugel is also, with Bilbo the inspiration for the Thief class. the Ioun Stones are taken directly and unchanged from Vance's works, with Vance's blessings.
This kinda sounds like the writers were told "we want you to include as many D&D characters and worlds as possible." The biggest surprise is that is doesn't sound like Minsc and Drizzy show up.
Like Disney cartoons I saw in the early 2000s: trotting out each character in turn, as if their appearance made up for the lack of substance. Not a good sign when "products" feel like they show off the intellectual property solely for the sake of showing off the IP...
7:20 regarding Afterthought, note that the necrotic damage repeats on the target’s turn after it’s been stabbed by the dagger so it makes sense that it’s not combined with the slashing damage IN THIS ONE INSTANCE
Or in any other instance. Resistances to damage types matter especially on a more granular level. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had characters - players and monsters alike - survive blows with 1-3 HP remaining. Miscalculating resistances can be the difference between an enemy dying right as everyone is on their last breaths and a full TPK one round later.
@@morganbush7775 Exactly this - I made the same comment. I use average damage and make my players do their own math and manage their own resistances and the difference in time between saying "16 points of damage" and "7 piercing and 9 necrotic" is negligible. Lumping all the damage together completely eliminates many spells, magic items, feats, and racial traits.
@@fenix6297even if you roll the damage it really doesn't slow the game down much if you have the dice on you (which you should). I agree, it isn't the DMs job to tell people how much damage they have if they resist it. Let them do that
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 You make an excellent point on those small moments that make dnd vs the mega high level bbeg. We are at level 9 (Mad mage) and my character was killed by an invisible stalker, right after we have defeated countless strong groups of enemies. Almost goofing around the dungeon the party underestimated the stalker. It created a sense of mortality and was a humbling experience, now the party is more focused than ever to the main task at hand, almost fueling revenge not on just the stalker but every single creature that we find will now find in undermountain
I’ve successfully migrated both my groups to a mash up of Shadowdark and Icrpg and everyone is here for it. Suddenly any module can just be drag and dropped into the system with minimal effort and my games are running smooth as butter. I can’t imagine going back to anything resembling “raw” dnd mechanics.
Great topic. My groups worst TPK was in the Hall of the Fire Giant King. We had a massive 10 Person group with 6 characters and 4 bad ass NPC's. We had Killed Snurre and found the Red Dragon and chopped it's head off and then we ran into like 100 Trolls, all regenerating 3HP a round, and we got stuck in a long tedious combat in a tunnel where occasionally a fire giant showed up to help them out. We used every spell we had, all the javelins of lightning , the healing staff, everything we had, as this long slogging combat went on for 4-5 hours of real world dice rolling hack and slash. We finished up at 1 am mercifully dying, I'm going to say from boredom. After that TPK we came back next week, happily rolled up new characters and were busy running away from grannies in Horror on the Hill. High Level becomes tough to manage.
I ran against the giants and yep, there were looong battles in this modue. Specially since giants are hp tanks that take quite a while to kill. The red dragon was killed by the Titan they freed on an upper level but the titan was also sent to his plane. One pc had Black Razor with him from White plume mountain, so when he killed a giant, he became very hard to kill as he aboserbed the soul gaining the max hp of it He almost did all the killing while the cleric with Wave, the trident, casted wall of force protecting them. It was long and tedious and finally they did manage to fight against Eclavdra and make her escape. By the way Eclavdra stats were ridicoulous and that time there were no more stats for drow high priestesses so i had to improvise, otherwise she would have been killed in 2 rounds.
Hrmm, fire is one of the most common elements that you can get in D&D in general, no one had a reliable source of it? Not even someone attacking with a torch? All it takes is 1 point of fire damage to stop that regen.
@@rustybrooks8916 Not In Original DnD. In old school you had to burn the troll down to zero and then spend a round burning up the extra bits so there was nothing left to regenerate. In the end we killed maybe ten or twenty of the trolls. as they just kept rotating out. The ones that went down we could never finish off as new ones stepped over top of them. The ones that were down quietly regenerated.
I aggressively disagree with your assertion that lore is not needed. I LIVE to read the lore of these games! Give me their backstory! WOTC gets a little in the weeds sometimes and fForgets that the players don't care. I hear that. But *I* want to read it!!! I wanna know who the bad guys are and why they're doing this stuff.
Great points about some random monster suddenly becoming the main villian because of how a scenario plays out... so true! These things just evolve as the game goes on... a good reminder for me not to pour so much backstory into a character that might not even be needed in the end!
i would argue that DnD's most horrifying villain is Greed. I love it actually when adventures derail with unesxpected deaths or mishaps. Those are always the moments I remember most and those are the moments when my brain clicks on into overdrive to try to pull out of the nose-dive.
Thanks for the great overview PDM. Mr Welch and some of the specialist D&D setting RUclipsrs fixed it brilliantly. It's well worth a watch - properly deadly and includes Dark Sun!
Good stuff! I'm not 100% opposed to backstory, since it can contextualize action, help the DM decide what NPCs do, and adjudicate how they respond to negotiation or other gambits by the players. But it needs to be clear and succinctly presented.
well, you cant' just lump 9 damage and 7 necrotic for 16, because sometimes players get resistances or immunities over time. the 9 and the 7 need to be kept seperate because of that.
I'm using a "fetch quest" type thing in my current campaign. The players don't have to get all of the pieces of the Dark Mirror. The more they get, the more advantage they get towards the bad guy. The villain is after them too. Seems like they could have just added a single chart for each part of the Rod collected adding a bonus to fighting Vecna. I'm pretty sure that is how Ravenloft did it. You didn't need the holy symbol or sun sword, but they sure made it easier.
There are very good reasons for why vecna's stat block is so long. First of all: do NOT average out his saving throws. Between his +14 to intelligence and +2 to Str is a massive difference, a specific weakness that can be utilised by the players. Second: the fact that he deals necrotic and piercing damage is relevant, since players might be resistant to those. What if you play a fallen Aasimar Barbarian? Third: this is not how counterspell works. The only good tip here is to average out the damage instead of rolling dice. That one makes sense. Please ignore everything else. If you want to run big scary monsters, you'll have to do some reading. That's just how it is.
Fair points. 1) Vecna is only going to attack with INT, so STR is inconsequential. 2) Necrotic vs piercing damage would be a big deal if a character had 20hp. For a character that has 175hp and access to unlimited healing, it does not make an appreciable difference.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 first of all, thank you for replying. 1) I was talking about saving throws. The fact that Vecna is very resistant to spells like feeblemind, while being weak to simply getting grappeled is important. It massively changes the pace of the fight and gives your martials a moment to shine at high levels 2) Resistances will always be relevant, since they double the effective HP of the character (against that type of damage). Healing is very much a limited resource. There will always be a finite number of spell-slots, healing potions etc. available. Not to mention the action-cost required to use these resources. Your changes basically invalidate any reason to play the barbarian class, which already suffers at higher levels due to a lack of spell-casting.
To have a compelling high level game, you need the characters to run the show . They're powerful enough to be running kingdoms, teaching apprentices, maybe even retiring. The module can't force a plan onto them, it has to disrupt the plans they have. Kidnap their apprentices as a precursor ritual so they hate vecna personally and want revenge after they save them Send an army to their gates to retrieve the bone of an old lich they had as trophy Have a powerful corruption bathe their entire country in an Unhallowed ground that makes it impossible for their retirement farm to feed their village Make it personal. Make them angry. Give them a reason to use their powers FOR THEMSELVES rather than merely AGAINST VECNA
The first high level campaign i participated in revolved around us being shipwrecked on a spooky demon isle. My first thought was to teleport, plane shift, etc off the island and we basically got super railroaded into having nothing work. We had all the power to leave, but we had to be railroaded to be told why our super capable team couldn't just leave
@SlukkeWhile thats true,maybe the DM should just ban planar travel for the campaign or making difficult or costly to teleport,maybe a difference in time passage while teleporting.I once ran a 5e game in a peninsula that had one ship convoy come once a month to deliver passengers and supplies.The players consisted of one runaway criminal barbarian,one orc druid survivor of an evil chieftain that killed her master and the wizard friend of the barbarian who just lost his wife and kid to a accident.They all had reasons to be there,but after 6 levels(they started at 3) they were struggling to find reasons to stay,after all a demonic cult was present in most of the place.The orc chieftain was dead,the wizard’s wife and kid where ghosts that accompanied him and the barbarian had communed with a primal beast and no longer felt the need to run.I didn’t stop them from leaving or forced them to stay and face the cult leader, I simply planned for both outcomes,whitout their help the city would fall,with them fighting there was a good chance some of the inhabitants would survive.They ended up staying even with me saying that I planned for both situations. They went there for their reasons but stayed to save the city,DMs should also provide a reason for players to keep playing even after their problem is solved.
@Slukke don't blame the players, blame the DM for wanting an impossible situation Having something as mundane as "trapped on a spooky island" just doesn't work with high level characters, exactly because of those teleportation and planar travel spells
@@xolotltolox7626 Except, you know, teleportation-blocking magic is not exactly rare in 5e, so the DM saying your teleportation spells fail is just a convenient plot requirement (that should absolutely be explained in lore in some way) that is absolutely fair and logical for them to use to force a high level party to stay
Not all of your complaints are valid. Saying they should not split damage up into individual damage types ("just say it deals 16 damage") misses the point that this is so that resistance/vulnerability can apply. It is ultimately the same as saying they should get rid of those features and damage types entirely. Damage types are not combined in 5e, so if an attack deals 1d8 bludgeoning and 1d6 necrotic, necrotic resistance will only apply to the necrotic damage. You may think the game would be better without damage types, resistance, etc., but that's extremely subjective.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Yeah it's definitely way too fiddly. I do often feel like 5e monsters have just way too many tiny little extra bits that didn't really need to be there. But then again, sometimes I also find myself complaining that not enough monsters have Athletics proficiency or whatever-so maybe I just don't know what I want.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1but his Rotten Fate attack does an average of 96 Necrotic damage. That’s significant, plus he can make two of those attacks per turn. I’m currently playing an Aasimar Paladin who could very well be planning on tanking those attacks, that resistance matters. 9 damage getting halved to 4 means that if I take both of those attacks, it effectively removed the necrotic aspect from one of them entirely.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 i cannot imagine a DM ever saying that small amounts of damage/HP have never made an appreciable difference in combat. have you never had an enemy or player survive a potentially deadly attack by only a few hit points because of a low roll? rolling for damage is one of the key ways in which enemies become memorable in combat. if every single attack made by every single bugbear dealt the average damage, that would be unfathomably boring for the players and DM to run
Ditching 5E really opened my eyes. I’m an educator and I run Shadowdark after school for a large group of high schoolers. They have gone balls to the walls crazy with excitement nearly every session because their characters are in actual danger. Unlike “The worlds most popular game”. Really the only reason I still have any wotc 5e content is just to convert it to other systems.
That hobgoblin story sums up why the Nemesis System worked in the Shadow of Mordor games. You came to hate and despise that one enemy that kept killing you. And sometimes an enemy you killed would keep coming back, hating you just as much.
No joke, this one orc kept coming back and I was livid screaming at the screen 'WHY ARE YOU ALIVE??? WHYYYYYY" causing much concern for the family hearing me so angry by myself
I had a similar thing happen to me where I was talking to a guy who has only ever played 5th edition and I was telling him I liked the older versions that were more simulationist and characters could die. He said something like: "Yeah, but then you can't really tell epic stories if the characters can die." I just kind of shrugged and said, "I've been doing this for like 30 years." In all that time, no one has ever said: "Remember that time we saved the world from ?" It's always, "Remember when I fumbled and killed the guy we were escorting?" Or "Remember when the mage I was playing picked up a weapon in each hand, that I wasn't proficient in and attacked the wyverns and rolled two 20s?" I've run campaigns with multiverse spanning epic arcs (in high fantasy games) and others based around a single town. Almost always the preference is for the lower power, smaller geographical region with lower stakes.
Character death happens in 5e rules. I mean, your dice have to be pretty snakebit most of the time, but there are plenty of ways to die and nothing that directly forbids it. As a counterpoint to "what everyone remembers", I've run massive campaigns with epic save-the-world plots, and my players remember both their own personal moments AND "the times we saved the world from Blargle Blargle." And yes, death was optional...because there are fates far, far worse than death, which they knew I wasn't afraid to impose. They keep coming back, so I guess they're having fun--which is the main goal here, right? I'm not asking you to disregard your own experience, of course, but just be aware that there are different experiences. You get mostly low-stakes players who want to play small adventures, and I get Epic Heroic types who want to partake in saving the world (who actually get disappointed if the story is small and stays small). Room for us all, which necessitates different approaches.
This comment summarizes the biggest problem with Modules and GM who love to railroad. I'm assuming that a lot of GMs use Modules to save some prep time but I think that it is in detriment on a good game. I prefer to get fun instead of a fully detailed story with a single outcome. A railroaded campaign is SIMPLY BORING.
It's not the DMs job to convince adventurers to go into adventures If I feel like I have to justify to players the need to engage with the game, that's a group of players I'm not DMing for
@@feferson492 I mean, at some point, there ought to be some player agreement in advance that they're going to do it. In a sandbox campaign, players can pick and choose from whatever hooks are to be found that seem interesting to them, but there should never be a question of the players refusing to play the campaign at all. "Hey, Doug, if you're going to spend all night trying your darnedest to refuse to go anywhere near Barovia, why the heck didn't you speak up last Tuesday when we decided we'd do Curse of Strahd?" should not be a question.
Enthusiasm. Players need to be enthusiastic about playing a game about magical murder wizards fighting giant fire breathing dinosaurs, but it's like a relationship, everyone needs to be on the same page in what they're supposed to be enthusiastic about...
Generally, villain backstories are supposed to serve the roleplaying side of the game. But this assumes that the PCs have chances to encounter the villains in question at any time before they roll initiative. Many people don't care to know why the villain is villaining, but some do (I often do, if the villain seems more grey than moustache-twilingly evil). But while it can be useful to have a paragraph or two, several pages of text and dedicated art pieces of events that the players will never see is definitely taking things to new levels of redundant. I've also had some incredibly fun games at higher levels, campaigns such as Curse of the Crimson Throne, and entirely homebrew endeavors. Using D&D 3.5 rules. Where two-weapon fighting meant that some characters had between 6-8 attacks a round, more if hasted, and fully buffed we only missed on a 1. And save or die spells were a thing. The mechanics were not what made the game feel epic, it was the GM's exceptional efforts in tying the story in with the PCs and making us all feel invested in the outcome. I believe high level games should not be just more dungeons with straight-up boss fights against a villain in a room. That's missing the point! One of my favorite high-level combats was when we had to split the party to deal with the final boss: one team jumped off an airship to land on the flying kaiju construct's back and targeted its weak points, while the other team infiltrated its mindscape to directly attack the quori spirits possessing it from within. Was it gonzo? Absolutely. Gloriously bonkers. Were we still just making attacks and dealing hit point damage in the end? Yeah. But the framework mattered. The execution mattered.
You bring up good points, as usual. I always have an answer for a "No" it's called consequences. I do not force players to go on quests but there are always consequences to the campaign world from not going on one. In fact, there are so many events that the players cannot do all of them any case. I leave it to the players to decide what is more important to them. Example: Save a village girl from a goblin band, capture a Crime lord for a local lord or Find the Rod of Ruin before a Necromancer gets his hands on it. I use a calendar to mark progress or failure for each of the bad NPC's. Whichever get completed, happens, and that leads to more quests [options], for the players to decide apon. I cap all my campaigns to 10th or 12th level. I always allow players to use their spells and abilities. If they can out think me, then so much the better. It makes me a better DM in the long run.
Fuck this was hard to watch. Some of the hottest takes I've ever heard and I cannot agree on any of them. The most upsetting was probably the "why not just say 16 damage". That almost sounds like someone who's played one session of DnD, fought one bandit and complained that the piercing damage he dealt had no impact on anything.
I ran a home brew hex crawl where the PCs happened upon a local lord during their travels. He was meant to be a very minor NPC that used his status to force the players to complete a quest for him. I played him as smug, arrogant and rude. The players ended up having such a visceral reaction to him, throughout the quest they discussed all the ways in which they’d like to kill him. In that moment I decided he’d be a recurring NPC and eventually he blossomed into the campaign’s main antagonist. We’ve played together for 10 years, he ended up being my group’s most memorable villain, and he started out as a jerk sending them on a fetch quest against their will.
Awesome video as always. I agree on all points save for the backstories. I do like the back story part of it, but typically, it can be summed up a lot quicker than when you have word or page quotas to check off. I want the Gandalf Video!!!
I mean,yeah the players can always say, nah, I don't want to do that, to any written adventure. I don't see how that's supposed to be avoidable. Even with dm planned adventure, they can say "no". And then, most likely, they can find another DM, as the one they have will be rightfully pissed off at having his time wasted.
The reason for seperating the damage is because resistances are a thing. i would have assumed you'd know that. There are creatures and subclasses with resistance to necrotic damage such as Aasimar and necromancers. You need to seperate damage for this reason.
I know that. So your character is resistant to the 7hp of necrotic damage. If he has 175hp, it doesn't. Make. A. Difference. It just makes the game slooooooooooooow.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 that's a fair criticism. It does slow down the game but I guess it's just something that they do because the damage is split. Not a great answer I know but there are quite a few monsters who have high secondary non physical damage that being resistant to makes a lot of difference. Maybe they should have made it all the same damage type for low damage attacks. I don't know
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Again. It. Does. Make. A. Difference. As. That. Damage. Adds. Up. I've. Already. Given. You. A. Reasonable. Scenario. Where. It. Adds. Up. To. Significant. Damage. Of. More. Than. 250. Points. Over. The. Course. Of. The. Battle. How much time do you really save saying "16 damage" over "7 pierce, 9 necrotic" ???? How does that make the game sloooooooooooow?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 It's simple. Make your players do the math and manage their own resistances. In my game, it's simple - "7 pierce/9 necrotic" - the PLAYER knows if they have resistance and can do the basic math to calculate how much damage they take. I don't see how saying "16 points damage" or even just "16" saves any reasonable amount of time over "7 pierce/9 necro"
if PC will say "No" to Lord Neverember's quest - he'll reply: "oh, i see. you must be pretty busy with more important stuff. then i'll ask someone else". and those heroes will complete this quest instead. simple as that. (as a players you have no reason to refuse if you decided to gather together and play this adventure. so why bother wrighting cosequences of their decline?)
About a year ago I watched your video about leveling up being a curse and that set me down a path to start running an EZD6 game for my group. I never plan more than a session ahead, everyone has a great time at the table, and I've never had more fun in my 35-ish years of role playing. Thank you!
Professor DM: "Don't roll damage dice; just use the average." My dice-goblin brain: "But...but shiny math rocks make click-clack sound!" Seriously though, you have some great insights here (as always) and have given me a bunch to think on (as usual), especially as my group is getting perilously close to those high levels.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 What is this new math you are teaching ;) they don't have the same mean, or variance, or even kind of distribution ;) I get the speed argument but this is in no way the "Same result"
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Yeah...wow Scenario 1 - Vecna does 6-20 points of damage with an average damage of 12 Scenario 2 - Vecna does 11-20 points of damage with an average damage of 15 That's not the same result. They are hardly similar results. The second scenario does roughly double the minimum damage if you opt for the "math rocks"
Some great points here, professor GM! Years ago I took a writing class where my teacher said something that resonated with me, and is similar to what you said here: "The bigger the stakes, the less they matter." What he meant is that readers (or in this case players) often care more about stakes such as rescuing a kidnapped child from an evil witch than they do about stopping a giant demon from ransacking a planet. I have seen this too in the campaigns I've run. My players seemed much more excited by the epic arrival of a PC just in time to save a friend from some Yuan-Ti (she had to roll a 1 on a d100....I told her that outright...and she did it!) than they did fighting a literal deity that was the culmination of years of the campaign.
@@vancomycinb1193 Plus, if the whole world is threatened, the author (or DM) isn't likely to actually let it die. But if one person is threatened, there's a genuine risk that they're a corpse by the end of the game session.
I guess I'm weird, I've never understood how people can feel this way. I'm far less bothered by a single death than the deaths of thousands. Living in this world is insanely difficult for me due to the overwhelming about of suffering that humanity faces every day, every moment! Some things are more personal to me, but I take on pain from every terrible thing I hear about.
@@rustybrooks8916 It's not that those things don't matter. It's that for the stakes of a story (and note I'm clearly saying a story here) that it's easier for individual players to connect with a smaller struggle than a universe-spanning epic. Think about, as an example, the most memorable/popular fantasy and sci-fi stories. With Star Wars we're more drawn to the one-on-one duel between Luke and Vader in Empire, rather than the massive battle that happens in Attack of the Clones. In LotR, most folks tend to connect most with Fellowship of the Ring, which had smaller stakes and more human-focused conflicts than Return of the King. For superheroes, we recall the moments when Batman fought alone against a key villain such as The Joker in Killing Joke, rather than the times Batman alongside the Justice League struggled against an alien armada. The human moments are what endear us to stories and characters, and can make for resonant conflict.
@@dezopenguin9649 Excellent point! If the world is destroyed, the campaign ends. But if a single person the PCs care about, like the example Professor DM gave with the bard skewered by the hobgoblin, is in peril the stakes are immediately raised. The consequences can be felt all the way through the campaign and may affect their future interactions, strategy, etc.
Us old school gamers (when that word meant table top role playing gamers), who grew up playing d&d in the early 80s, or even earlier, cut our teeth on Dungeon Crawls and complex “Evil Lairs”. Each Dm tried to outdo each other with the complexity of the dungeon, traps, puzzles ect. When we evolved into more role playing rather than purely combat type games, more often than not it was “off the cuff”, ie, improvised, and made up by the Dm as we went along. This type of play was way more flexible than playing modules, and led to the most fun. The villains and adversaries emerged organically, usually from a random NPC called “Bob” later fleshed out by the DM when he/she became relevant. The players choices decided what would happen next, not the module, usually going completely off script and NOT doing what the Dm had planned. It was a thing, we would deliberately say NO, and do our own thing. Also, player bases such as keeps, castles, towers etc were a common occurrence, and often gameplay centered on that, building our base. Players also had followers, up to and including small armies, so as the level of play became higher, the politics and economics of empire building and armies, navies and wizard academies, became the next level of gameplay, and this was before we finished high school. Modern D&D has become dumbed down, and the stakes have been removed, and people have become too attached to their characters. In most long lasting campaigns that went for years, it was rare to have more than one original character in the current party, most having been killed off along the way. Low level gaming in the old days was brutal, you would always have back up characters, because characters died, a lot. Make a silly choice, you died. Annoy the wrong Ruler, you died. Became too much of a murder hobo, you where tracked down by the authorities and you died. The stakes were always there, you could be killed, permanently, and you did, all the time. It added to the satisfaction when you completed something important, and you survived. Long old man rambling over. Parting thought, play other games besides d&d, it will make you a better gamer, and I promise you, you will enjoy it!
Your words are my thoughts. All of a sudden I just had some low level characters come to mind that died by the hands of the authorities because I became a murder hobo. First and last time I ever played that way.
It is always fascinating getting the perspective from the DnD side of roleplaying games. Runequest and its d100 children are more-or-less contemporary with DnD and have always been around but I guess less popular. In those systems (Runequest, Mythras, BRP, Call of Cthulhu, etc) combat is usually something to be avoided if you can and worked around whenever possible, because a major wound that kills you is just around the corner. I can also never wrap my head around armor that reduces your chances of getting hit instead of absorbing damage. ;)
I ran the Northlands Saga for Pathfinder 1st Edition by Frog God Games a couple of years ago. By the end (about 14th or 15th level), the Ranger and Fighter had so many extra attacks it was ridiculous. The players were throwing handfuls of dice, sorting them out by color, and calculating. Player turns seemed to last forever. It was rough. The campaign was awesome, but I'd do it in OSR to level 9 or 10 if I ran it again.
So many D&D modules reserve the BBEG to the end because were he to encounter the party too early, it'd simply result in a TPK. The reason is because combat is the main way to resolve conflict and every fight is a fight to the death. Non-lethal means of resolving conflict in a way that sustains suspense is actively discouraged by the rules.
If the villain is so overwhelming, there is the simple solution of having him go "I don't have time for this" and talk away from the party because the number of turns it would take to kill them are turns he could be watching Days of Our Lives and he's already a week behind because his schemes have forced him to TiVo it. Most adventures have the BBEG show up to the end because most adventures are structured as dungeon crawl or a series of dungeon crawls and that is how dungeon crawls work, traditionally. Final boss is on the final floor.
My only disagreement with you is when you mention "why is it 7 piercing and 9 necrotic damage? just make it 16 damage!". Damage types are a big deal in dnd. Its so boring if you take it all way. I understand that having such a large statblock can be a headache, but reducing his stats to two post-it notes of info is not inspiring. Hes not a BBEG at that point, hes hit points who takes away hit points, and thats it.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1hate to say it but I agree with them. Damage types also add flavour. With those damage types you can describe how it effects the characters bodies etc. and the players in turn can decide how they would react. Plus you say it doesn't matter but even in level 18 one shots tiny amounts of damage all add up. I have been saved by a resistance to radiant before when they actually did very little.
@@kitnal4143 It's why swarms of small enemies can wipe out high hitpoint pools. Death by a Thousand Cuts is incredibly effective after all. The main strength of many melee martials is their tankiness, and they'll often work on trying to gain resistances and immunities (barbarians have the easiest time, with them resisting the 3 main damage types when raging from level 1)
@sev1120 I see building tank as a three choice option: crank the AC, crank the HP, or crank resistances (often a mix of the three). It really comes down to taste/class but people sadly underestimate the importance of recording all damage types /rolls.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 question. What about characters that have resistance or immunity to necrotic? Like a topaz Dragonborn or Aasimar. you can’t just lump together damage types into one and have to be just 16 damage, cause then your denying one of the player’s necrotic resistance
I think this was less about Vecna, and more about how to write a good villain in general. Or, better yet, how to engage your players in a campaign. I've been a GM for 30+ years, and I can honestly say it's an extremely difficult thing but very rewarding when it works out. I really love the thoughts in this video and found it difficult to find anything to disagree on. (I've also found those extended D&D stats to be simply a way to fill pages.)
Firstly, I LOVE ALL Dungeon Craft videos! Secondly, while I agree with the latter half of the video on RPG philosophy, I personally disagree with your points on "overwritten" stat blocks and on adventures including lots of lore. Why do the stat blocks include the ability scores and not just the ability bonuses? They include them because that is how 5e stat blocks are written, it would be annoyingly inconsistent and feel incomplete to me if the ability scores were not included. It's useful that it lists both the average damage (which I normally use) and the dice used to calculate that damage, because that way if the monster scores a critical hit, I can double the damage dice without doubling the static damage bonus. These are how crits work for the players so for fairness I want to follow the same rule as a DM. I'm glad it breaks the damage down by type because my players have ways of reducing necrotic damage specifically. I really like having it all spelled out for me in the stat blocks. Including a super shortened version in the adventure in addition to the complete one would be good, but otherwise I can just make a short version myself as you showed. Regarding the lore, I agree that when making a homebrew adventure, strict utilitarianism is great for ensuring you make efficient use of prep time. However, for a prewritten adventure, I expect the writers will have fleshed out the villain's character, history and motivations. Even if it's lore that happens "off screen" it can help me to roleplay the villain and understand how they fit into the world. I've read and ran Curse of Strahd and I wish it provided more lore surrounding Strahd's homeland and the history of Barovia. I'd rather the book provides lore that I don't need, than find myself needing lore the adventure doesn't provide.
I already agree with tis title of the vid, I have read the frist 4 chapters and there is so much rework and add work to do, this book seemed to have been rushed out without even understanding that the trash books they have been putting out over bthe last 10 years should have ended before they put this book out, WTH were they thinking??? Chris Perkins should be ashamed of this dribble. I mean the story idea is great but the execution is a trash fire in every chapter. It just looks like they made a premise and a prompt for each chapter, did a little bit of writing and moved on to the next chapter. As usual they expect the DM to do all the heavy lifting ( which normally i wouldnt mind but come on the book is over 55 dollar with tax). I mean take for instance theres a chapter in the book where you have to find a piece of tthe Rod thats being held by some obscure Cult of a diety NO ONE HAAS EVER HEARD about. Theres an NPC that helps you, dont why she would and she doesnt care about this MAJOR ARTTIFACT. She just wants to kill the cultists, for reasons. The party then proceeds but some how the cultists keep getting taken out, why ? how?...who knows. You find the NPC draped over the bodies of some cultists. You never heard the fight or tthe spellcasting or evening the screams of cultist dying, why?...Who knows. And dont even let me tell about how Strahd knows about he Rod but doesnt have it in his possestion ( I dont tthink I spelled that right), seriously dont asked, literally no one knows, not even Strahd. Overall, this book was lazily written and rushed out, simply another cash grab so unless you are use to doing rework on adventure books or modules ( which unfortunately I have been doing a lot in the last 10 years for this ediiton.) i wouldnt waste my money on this book, you will have more fun and way less rework converting any Pathfinder Adventure Path. 3 out of 10 and a sad sad ending for this edition.
I had a similar experience with out of the abyss. That is a skeleton of a campaign that really needed fleshing out by the DM. I think they were going to make it a two parter but just rushed it out as a single campaign. I was happy to put in the work, but like you said if you are paying that much for a module it should be able to practically run itself.
Rushing out trash modules is a D&D tradition that started with AD&D. Most of the modules that are applauded by influencers prove to be trash when you actually try to run them. Some good ideas, but they seem like 2nd drafts when a 3rd was planned and edited by a twelve-year-old.
"We are looking for a piece of a rod" "I haven't heard of something like that... but can you guys help me stoping this cult?" "No, we are looking for a rod" Credits roll
Your "bard's head on a pike" was excellent! It is creative GM's that make these games memorable. Regardless of the campaign being homebrew or from a WotC book.
"Does high level D&D work at all?" Good question sir, and while I don't have quite your credentials, I have also been running TTRPGs since the 1983 Red Box that I got in 85. So, that's some 38/39 years. B/X was my go to for a solid 8 to 10 years, and level 10 was about where things would start falling apart back then even, and this is pre-OGL, Feats, Class Features Being More Defined, etc. Really, it seems like no edition of D&D has worked much past level 10. Because it was my high school years, we made a game last level 1 to 36 (for those not playing Demi-Humans) and, well, a lot of the post Level 12 stuff just kinda had to be houseruled or handwaved to work. Honestly, it really started teaching me Narrative Based Games before they were popular.
Frankly, any narrative dealing with characters of too high a power level becomes difficult to manage. Even in novels, stories tend to become much faster paced and abridged when the protagonists obtain massive power, because there is little justification for them not to be able to solve most everything except whatever they need to face to resolve the story. Its why Superman stories almost always have to include some reason he can't use all of his powers. Kryptonite, collateral damage, magic macguffins, amnesia, or something else. Because otherwise there is no feasible reason he can't just instantly resolve a problem. Reminds me of that sketch where Superman is asking Batman for his help on something, and Batman just pauses and asks, "Why?"
Letting the gameplay and the player rolls decide the villain really creates a dynamic and memorable game. I highly recommend this. In my wife’s Ironsworn game she was taken prisoner by an elf warlord. A roll indicated that he was kind, and a further roll showed that there was conflict in the village because she was an outsider. She ended up having to fight the village mystic and defeated him, thereby earning his enmity as he became an outcast and had to wander the outer world. Thus the BBEG of the world was spawned.
Remember the movie Be kind rewind, we need the sweeded versions of these modules. Dnd is like ,hey we made a great adventure then the power's that be that make all the decisions, we need to dumb it down,add some filler to thicken it up to justify the book to be 49.95 Prof. Dungeon Master you are awesome I love how you trim the fat inspires me to do as well !
I'm sorry, but "what if the players say "no"?" is a really odd criticism. One would assume that if the campaign is described as "Hey, I got the new DnD adventure Vecna Eye of Ruin, want to play?" And all the players say "yeah, that sounds awesome! We're in!" they are not going to say "no" once the adventure has started. Any and every adventures completely falls apart if the players don't buy into it. But it's like starting a BG3 campaign, spending hours on the character creation and then going "You know what, I'm just going to hang out on the Nautiloid and won't visit the bridge."
The more RPGs I play, the more I'm convinced the whole concept of character level is a detriment to the game. This is one reason why I like Forbidden Lands (thought it has its problems). Characters have more gradual, even-spaced out improvements in abilities and skills, and special gear is truly special. It's perfectly reasonable for a brand new character to attempt to adventure with a hero that's survived a dozen sessions, because even that experienced hero isn't going to tempt fate by trying anything too dangerous.
Thanks for the video! You make some excellent points on the difficulty of writing a high level adventure and it is as true today as it has been since 1974. I have found that high-level adventures for any particular group are best created by that group's DM. It is possible for that DM to take a prewritten adventure and tailor it for them but that can even be true with low-level prewritten adventures. The truth is that the importance of the relationship between a DM and that DM's group is baked into D&D since the very beginning. This is why face-to-face gaming in a DM's homebrew setting played a a sandbox will always be the the ideal way to play while removing any of those factors will diminish RPGing in some ways. It's the way the game was originally written to work and they've spent 50 years writing ways to patch up a game when some portion of that ideal is missing. David Wesely brought some folks together for his game of Braunstein and tailored it to them, Arneson had his group and developed RPGing with them in mind, and even Gygax created Greyhawk for, and in response to, those he gathered to play. The original rules explained how a DM should be ready to do a lot of work to put a setting together because it is what they had all done.
Mr. Dr. Dungeon Professor, I just have one problem with your critique and its the part where you mention that the players can say "no". Instead of bringing up that scenario I think it would be more useful to tell prospective DMs that they need to inform their players to make characters that actually want to go on this adventure. Clearly this is a big book and the DM should have already made it clear they were running a long adventure, so why even pretend like the players are going to say no? Unless they're just trying to troll of course.
Man, I love this channel but, again, there's some low perspective here. "Why post the stat values? Why not just the bonuses?" Well, just in case the character (Vecta in this case) stats get changed due to some effect. It seems like he's just trying to find things to critique. Not saying I don't agree at some points, but people should not be using just their perspective (or their way of playing) to judge someone else's work.
I agree. On an official book, the stat blocks should be as detailed as possible. Imagine if it had those post-its as the stat block. People would have 100s of questions.
Other games do better stat blocks. See Pirate Borg or Index Card RPG. WoTC is so behind in terms of design and presentation. My perspective is I see hundreds of other games doing it better.
PDM you give the best advice! Always come back to re-watch the old videos. After 30 years away, I returned to DM 5e in 2020 with the support of watching your videos. Still play every Sunday at the local game shop: Hard Knox Games! Love this crazy hobby!
The overwhelming majority of your videos have useful or insightful content and are worth watching, but sometimes, you just whine. Why not lump an attack's piercing damage in with its necrotic bonus damage? Someone might have resistance or immunity to it, that's why.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1I actually thought this same thing the other day. I was using a CR 23 Arch Duke from the Chains of Asmodeus module and one of the attacks had a 7 average damage Necrotic added to the piercing damage. At that level it's just annoying and I hate saying to my level 20 player who is Necrotic resistance, "And you take.....3 Necrotic Damage." It's just dumb .
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I don’t think that’s the entire story not only does the type of damage inform the players on the enemy. But it also allows the barbarian who took totem to be like, “hey, my subclass matters here”. Cutting that out for bog standard 9 piercing would eliminate that choice that the player made when choosing their subclass.
The last part of this video hit home for me. I remember almost 35 years ago, my players where around 15th level (different d20 system) and I was running an open ended campaign. My Big Bad was Lord Vansil, an undead/vampirish type that led the Black Sun Empire. But it wasn't Vansil the group was after...it was his Generals. Early on in the campaign, they came across the 7 generals of the BSE and bad things happened. Over time, these generals made it personal for my players and they became invested. They managed to take down one of them and this inspired them to hunt down the other 6. We had so much fun and I knew that eventually Lord Vansil would make an appearance and I didn't have to force him on my players.
I think it is hilarious that you and I posted videos on the exact same day that both reference that article, "Gandalf Was Only a 5th Level Magic User" from Dragon #5. Great minds think alike, Professor!!!! Great video as always! I really enjoyed your story at the end of your youth group in the Caves of Chaos. I've had so many similar experiences with my daughter's group in terms of the NPC adversaries they respond to. Not sure if you knew this, but Brian Blume named the character "Vecna" as an anagram of the author "Jack Vance" who inspired the mechanics of the D&D magic system. Cheers!
I always find it a little troubling when nothing is said about what to do if the players fail at doing or getting something. That should always be a real possibility. I always try to have a Plan B for the BBEG or the Bad Guys. And try to have something in mind for if the players succeed or fail at any one of the major points along the way. After all the BBEG and Bad Guys are not going to keep assaulting the city if the Party has defeated their army. But they will still want the McGuffin they were after, so how would they go about getting it now? Or can they use something else? These are questions you need an answer to.
I like the concept of the 2 stat blocks. The simplified should be on the page the creature appears and the detailed should be in the back. As a DM of decades even I make mistakes, misread things, forget about an ability, and so on. That is part of the reason why I create my own module.
Yet another well-written and well-executed video. Thank you. Your story about the Caves of Chaos highlights how true engagement comes from making things personal. Vecna wants to reshape reality? *shrugs*. He stole your carriage and killed your dog? Grab some pencils 'cause the party is about to get John Wick on him. In seriousness, I'm actually pretty sad that they took what _could_ have been a mind-blowing and epic plot and turned it into a pretty average set of adventures which may (or, probably, may not) be linked together.
For me, I think developing the lore and backstory for the villains is really for the DM themselves. If it comes up great, if not, the villains actions upon the PCs and the world will usually suffice enough as a reason for the PCs to consider them a bad guy.
I HATE adventures that rail road players. I remember a Pathfinder module that did that. Go get the BIG Magic Artifact, Travel the dimensions, fight big bad guys, and possibly die. OH and the artifact? It is worth 750,000,000 Gold and there is a group willing to buy it off you for half the value and they will do the travel. NOPE, Players have to do it. We all said Screw it, We are selling it and moving on.
For a big pre-planned adventure path, it's kind of inevitable. If a Dm were writing their own adventures session by session there's a lot more room to adapt to players doing the unexpected. But if everything is preplotted, an unexpected action early on could invalidate large portions of the book (unless the DM can coax players back onto the tracks, which is still railroading but less obvious)
Regarding high level adventures, I will say the following: (1) I hate how many adventures will say "all your cool abilities don't work". I understand why this happens but I still hate it. I think it comes from "lazy adventure writer" territory. When someone wants to write a railroad adventure, they can do so for low level characters. The problem comes when they maintain that same mentality for higher level adventures. Instead, they should explore avenues where the characters have more options to do things in their own way. I come from the background of "superhero fan" since the 1970s. And while some superhero stories do keep the heroes from using their powers too (Superman vs kryptonite (or red sun rays or whatever), Green Lantern vs yellow, etc), mostly the heroes get to use their amazing fantastic powers all the time. Heroes with the ability to teleport don't usually have that power turned off in the comics, but it happens almost all the time in D&D adventures. Comic book writers somehow don't have their adventures ruined by allowing a hero to use their powers. Why is it so different in D&D adventures? Obviously, there's a difference between writing a story and writing an adventure. PCs may do unexpected things but characters in a story never will. But ignoring that, there's also the fact that stories are written FOR these characters, while a generic store-bought D&D adventure is not. So, my second point about high level adventures is: (2) You have to know who you're writing the adventure for. If you've written a story for Batman (a high-level low-tier character), it will be totally demolished if we use Superman as a PC. Yes, even the detective parts. That's why I have had no problem making high-powered adventures for high-powered PCs in any campaign I might run, without having to turn off the PCs' powers. (Only one time did I make it so that burrowing through the ground would be a risky and dangerous thing to do, which is the closest I've ever come.) It's because in a campaign, I know what the PCs are capable of. (I mean, with spellcasters who change their spells all the time, it's a bit harder to know exactly, but more or less, I still know.) And admittedly, this is easier in a superhero game because superhero PCs are far more predictable than D&D PCs because superheroes always (more or less) have the same powers. For high level play, I have the superhero mentality and I wish more people did. Let the PCs use their powers. If they make the adventure easier, good, that's what the powers are for. And I wish we could banish all the DMs/GMs who have the rigid mentality of "But if they don't fight the orc guarding a chest in a 10'x10' room, my adventure is ruined!" Give the PCs some freedom but also realize that that same freedom applies to the villains, who should be just as capable of using the "scry and teleport" strategy.
Hi. I thought I'd respond because you put in so much effort, and I appreciate that. I agree with you. It takes an above average GM (IMO) to handle those powers. Kids can't do it. A GM needs experience. I watch kids running high level games and it's just...yeah....
Spot on advice about epic nature of the game and how epic doesn't need to mean world-ending.... even in movies like MCU movies face this - they run out of ideas it seems and make the movies world-ending plots instead of making them more personal and closer to the chest like Civil War or Winter Soldier. The MAIN reason that Infinity War worked is because we cared about the characters themselves... when we saw heroes die, it really meant something to us and had better impact. Infinity War and Endgame was one of those rare occasions where the plot centered around stoppign the world ending, but we still gave a damn to the end because all the beloved characters were there and we saw them kick ass! So Eve of Ruin might work better if the PCs have personal stakes and personal ties to the plot, like their NPC Mom is captured and tortured by Vecna or something.... make sure the PCs have personal stakes there or it doesn't mean much.
What CoS got right that EoR didn’t was having the villain interact with the party. There were times where Strahd just showed up out of blue either to taunt or terrify the players. Not only does Vecna never show up before the end (not even a simple dream spell), but when the players do reach the end, the book literally states to the dungeon master to not have vecna speak to the players or be interested in them because “he’s too focused on his ritual”, meaning he can’t even have a classic villain monologue, or even just taunt the players.
For the “2 stat blocks” argument I would suggest the quick annotated version in the location where the monster shows up, and the fleshed out full version at the end to maybe make any alterations you wanted
46 years ago, Tracy and Laura Hickman wrote an adventure that would change the hobby forever: I6: Ravenloft. A module that tells the tragic story of a memorable antagonist for role-playing games.
A character so memorable that to this day, it still sustains a company ungrateful to its origins.
Strahd von Zarovich was created out of a young man’s frustration at finding a vampire as a random encounter behind a random wall in a random dungeon...
Today, as part of their 50th-aniversary celebration, WotC couldn't think of anything better than to turn Strahd von Zarovich, the dark lord and master of Ravenloft, into a random encounter behind a random wall in a random dungeon.
unfortunately, the admittedly well executed knockoff of bog standard vampire legend was not the hicksman's main impact on role playing. the sludge tsunami that was dragonlance was a devastation that can only be compared to what rob liefield did "for" comic books
@@theupson Yet, Dragonlance was my and many others introduction to RPG Fantasy and it also gave us memorable characters and world building.
I'm waiting for when I can work a wizard into the game that's just a floating all powerful being in the sky. It was such a an epic apocalyptic scenario where he destroyed everything that ever mattered to anyone in his pursuit of power, so that he was the ruler of a dead world.
is it actually TODAY? Wow! I'll have to let my group know, we're playing it now.
@@theupson is dragonlance like...bad or problematic? can you elaborate? im not super familiar w/ the setting, it seems generic but neat enough. kind of a more gimmicky Greyhawk from what ive experienced
Mechanically, balance goes out the window around level 15. In the two campaigns I've run that got to level 20, combat became less about survival and more about managing outcomes. Can a ritual be stopped in time? How many innocents can be saved? One campaign was more narrative-focused, and so that's where I focused the challenge, with multiversal conspiracies being unravelled and warlock patrons being confronted. You don't need to go that extreme to have an epic or dramatic campaign, but it absolutely can work if you allow the high-level insanity to flow wherever it leads. Trying to maintain tight control of things is where it goes wrong.
Wasn’t this the original intent of the old versions (pre 3.x), where at higher levels, you built a stronghold and became a lord?
i think it is supposed to be that way, with your players going from low level pcs barely able to survive to the people making the decisions and having the power. as a dm you are supposed to switch it to questions of morality and questions of what the players will do with their power etc etc.
Didn't WoW Shadowlands already do this remake the universe plot?😊
It's the Superman problem and that's a great way to handle it
I find 5e falls apart after about level 9.
The LoTR video game Shadow of Mordor includes giving names and titles to the random low level orcs who are able to kill your character. This allows direct enmity to be generated and sometimes leads to more epic stories of surprise and betrayal than the main storyline.
It's a shame that that system is copyrighted and can't be used by any other developer because that would be amazing for a crpg game.
Man, that game and the sequel were SO GOOD.
Sucks the copywrote that feature so no one else could ever use it, then never used it again
@@andrewdiaz3529 Which sucks, cause they technically can't even do that, or at least not in the way people think. The copywrite is so specific that it would actually be very easy to recreate the mechanic with no legal repercussions. Just change a few small details, and suddenly the copywrites don't hold weight anymore.
But it's not about legal repercussions, it's about the THREAT of legal repercussions. It allows the company to threaten a lawsuit, which would cost money to be resolved even if everyone knows that the company wouldn't win. Money that no one wants to pay, or money that indie devs CAN'T pay without going bankrupt trying to fight a legal team that knows to just stall and bleed you out.
SHADOW OF MORDOR MENTIONED
That story about your youth group is 100% the heart and soul of D&D. It immediately shot me back to my hay day skulking through the stygian shadows that haunt the space between the lines on graph paper. The most our group ever hated a villain was some rando pirate we lost a fight to who just threw all of our treasure over-board into the sea just to spite us for daring to resist him. We burned his hide-out to the ground.
Those were the days of high adventure and like you observed they never seemed to exceed 7th level.
I absolutely love the idea of the two stat blocks. The big ones for the crunchy fans, and the streamlined ones for those who want to keep the action going.
Thanks for sharing!
Big stat block in the back with all the other monsters, condensed and glance-able stats on the page of the dungeon where they show up so you don't need to flip away from the action. Brilliant!
i dont mind the crunchy stat blocks, since it just for my reference and i use it as options to remove or make bettter a stats or skilsl for the monsteer of NPC, but if its not your style then sttreamline is the way to go.
Asking WotC to do 30 seconds of extra work for the convenience of their entire player base? LMFAO. yea, they’ll get right on that xD
I used to do this myself with big statblocks -- make a bulleted list of what they could actually do that was, you know, readable. I do this with adventures too -- take page-long blocks of text and turn them into a few quick bullets.
The backstory and detailed stat blocks are so a DM can run the Monster as a character and not just a sack of hit points and some attacks
There is nothing stopping them summarizing for ease of reference in play, but the full details give flavour, and allow them to adjust it for their game, and their players
This right here.
Yes exactly.
Also, he said ignore damage types entirely by just doing totals and Not rolling damage to save time is just.. certainly a take of all time
This guy has some garbo ass takes, saw a few vids a while ago about how to run a table for newbies, safe to say i completely ignored them
Funny title, and excellent discussion of what really makes a game epic and memorable! (But don't tell deathbringer my D&D group had a veggie platter last week)
A veggie platter?! Oh, Bob...no...
😂
I like veggies... what's wrong with that? LOL
@BobWorldBuilder Everyone knows if your trapped in the Andes after plane crash, you eat the vegetarian first.
@@EpicEmpires-pb7zv Soda? Where is the beer? 🍻
To be fair, I really hate the - Well what if your players don't want to go on the quest presented - line you give sometimes, cause I feel like that should be established with the players before hand. Like hey guys, here's the module we're playing, you're expected to go on the adventure
YES. Absolutely. I said that but cut it for time.
I agree. With any TTRPG a player needs to understand they are complicit in creating the story. They need to do more than just "act in character" then need to create a character that is going to work in a party and work with the campaign.
Yes, the point would have been better if it was "what if the players think of a better solution ?"
I really hate WotC's read-aloud text. There's so many better ways to guide DMs, but instead they want us to essentially act out their novel scene-for-scene
I appreciate that the stat blocks aren’t efficient when it comes to running the game but equally I wouldn’t want them to go away I find them really useful for modifying monsters and generating my own.
Good point.
Yeah, me too. I kinda like the expanded statblocks. I would shuffle some things around at most if it were up to me, like Prof. DM said with just using the modifier instead of the fully expanded ability scores, and maybe reorganize the attacks/actions section into a new layout where all the math is at the top and all the flavor/descriptions of the action is at the bottom, so you don't have to scan a text to find what die to roll.
Best DM I have seen was using the Head of Vecna. Players were cutting their own heads off to try to attach the Head of Vecna.
Lol. Classic!
I knew a player who was in such a game back in the 3.0 days, and was the sole survivor... because he ran when the players started fighting each other over the "artifact". I suspect it's been done a few times by smart(-arsed) GMs.
An impossible philosophical question. Would you then be the original person with a new head or would you be Vecna with a new body?
@@jeremyarcus-goldberg9543 That is the funny thing. Of course if you replace your head it will be Vecna's brain running your character. Made no sense for people to want to cut their own head off to attach Head of Vecna.
Well that’s stupid lol… what’s the point, you wouldn’t be yourself anymore. Vecna would take control. At least with hands or eyes, your still retaining your brain and head and as such your still yourself
Nailed it! Your Caves of Chaos anecdote perfectly sums up how "Epic" does not mean "High-level". Could not agree more!!
The Seven Samurai is pure epic and the mission is to save a small village from bandits.
@@enriquepizarro2099This. You learn to care about the characters. About the villagers. You discover Kikuchiyo's past, you understand what the "ronins" feel, even the " class struggle" between peasants, ronins, bandits and samurai. A perfect little adventure.
More on that to come.
@@enriquepizarro2099 "But, my kool powerz!i!"
I joke. Seriously though, Professor reminds me why I used to start games at level 3 and be stingy with levels.
Vecna is/was a Greyhawk entity and was believed to have been destroyed by Kas (this is why there is little to no mention of him until late 2ed. In the 1st ed AD&D DMG only his name is mentioned when referencing the Hand and Eye artifacts. Not sure what is mentioned about him in 2ed books. Stradh is mentioned in the module because Vecna was imprisoned in Ravenloft. When Vecna escaped Ravenloft, he emerged as a Greater God after absorbing the power from Iuz and entered the city of Sigil. After being ejected from Sigil, Iuz was freed and Vecna returned to Oerth as a Lesser God. This whole Sigil mess was the explanation behind the transition from 2ed to 3ed.
Thank you for sharing!
I totally forgot about that, thanks.
Now hold on!
I love lore and find it serves three major purposes, the last of which is the utilitarian part.
The first and greatest for me is ENTERTAINMENT. I love lore. I know a huge number of people also love lore. A big complaint that I know a lot of people have about recent D&D books is that there haven't been any lore books. (I know they probably don't sell as much as adventures, but people want them anyway.) History, culture, NPCs, politics...all of this for different parts of the Realms or wherever. Great, great stuff.
Number two is that all that lore--history, culture, etc.--make it easier to homebrew adventures in established worlds. Sometimes you just want to use the Forgotten Realms as your backdrop and plug your own stories in there. Then develop the future as you see fit.
The third major purpose is that, when you're running those published adventures, it helps you handle what happens when the PCs don't follow the script. You bring up a few railroad-y points where the party can say "no." Well, now you have some inkling of what's happening in the background and make assumptions about how that affects the world and the characters as a result. In the published adventures I've run in 5e, I've found lore to be helpful whenever it was available. It's been part of my prep for a reason.
Totally cool. We things differently. If I want to be entertained I'll read a story. But no shade! Thanks for engaging!
Yeah am big on Lore and this book was full of Lore ,but even the Lore had huge gaps in expalining anything with any real significant detals, but hey i willtake it I guess, better than nothing.
I agree a bit of lore helps me to understand what's going on and saves me trouble if players don't do what I expected to do, but honestly it could be more objective summered up a bit
"If I want to be entertained I'll read a story" has to be one of the most bizarre takes I've ever seen anyone make in this context. If not for fun and entertainment, why on earth would you play RPGs for then?
@@mrcvtz yeah, this baffles me. is DMing not enjoyable for him..? why does he even play if it's not entertaining?
Vecna is an anagram of "Vance" as in Jack, the inspiration for D&Ds magic system. Vance's character Cugel is also, with Bilbo the inspiration for the Thief class. the Ioun Stones are taken directly and unchanged from Vance's works, with Vance's blessings.
This kinda sounds like the writers were told "we want you to include as many D&D characters and worlds as possible."
The biggest surprise is that is doesn't sound like Minsc and Drizzy show up.
I'm sure there's a reference to a miniature giant space hamster somewhere.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was some Hasbro mandate.
Drizzy was busy getting a bbl
Like Disney cartoons I saw in the early 2000s: trotting out each character in turn, as if their appearance made up for the lack of substance. Not a good sign when "products" feel like they show off the intellectual property solely for the sake of showing off the IP...
Almost sounds like the DND version of Ready Player One
I know some groups DO want the maximum math version of a stat block, but an accompany little summary stat block is a great idea
7:20 regarding Afterthought, note that the necrotic damage repeats on the target’s turn after it’s been stabbed by the dagger so it makes sense that it’s not combined with the slashing damage IN THIS ONE INSTANCE
Or in any other instance. Resistances to damage types matter especially on a more granular level. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had characters - players and monsters alike - survive blows with 1-3 HP remaining. Miscalculating resistances can be the difference between an enemy dying right as everyone is on their last breaths and a full TPK one round later.
@@morganbush7775 Exactly this - I made the same comment.
I use average damage and make my players do their own math and manage their own resistances and the difference in time between saying "16 points of damage" and "7 piercing and 9 necrotic" is negligible.
Lumping all the damage together completely eliminates many spells, magic items, feats, and racial traits.
@@fenix6297even if you roll the damage it really doesn't slow the game down much if you have the dice on you (which you should). I agree, it isn't the DMs job to tell people how much damage they have if they resist it. Let them do that
I laughed out loud at the kids hunting down the hobgoblin who killed their friend room by room. Glad they got him!
Cool. I'll tell them when I game with them tomorrow.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 You make an excellent point on those small moments that make dnd vs the mega high level bbeg. We are at level 9 (Mad mage) and my character was killed by an invisible stalker, right after we have defeated countless strong groups of enemies. Almost goofing around the dungeon the party underestimated the stalker. It created a sense of mortality and was a humbling experience, now the party is more focused than ever to the main task at hand, almost fueling revenge not on just the stalker but every single creature that we find will now find in undermountain
I’ve successfully migrated both my groups to a mash up of Shadowdark and Icrpg and everyone is here for it. Suddenly any module can just be drag and dropped into the system with minimal effort and my games are running smooth as butter. I can’t imagine going back to anything resembling “raw” dnd mechanics.
Shadowdark is way easier to run, for sure.
5:57 i mean, you could technically say that for any module and story. "Here's the story. No. What, why? Because we don't wanna."
Great topic. My groups worst TPK was in the Hall of the Fire Giant King. We had a massive 10 Person group with 6 characters and 4 bad ass NPC's. We had Killed Snurre and found the Red Dragon and chopped it's head off and then we ran into like 100 Trolls, all regenerating 3HP a round, and we got stuck in a long tedious combat in a tunnel where occasionally a fire giant showed up to help them out. We used every spell we had, all the javelins of lightning , the healing staff, everything we had, as this long slogging combat went on for 4-5 hours of real world dice rolling hack and slash. We finished up at 1 am mercifully dying, I'm going to say from boredom.
After that TPK we came back next week, happily rolled up new characters and were busy running away from grannies in Horror on the Hill.
High Level becomes tough to manage.
Horror on the Hill!
I ran against the giants and yep, there were looong battles in this modue. Specially since giants are hp tanks that take quite a while to kill. The red dragon was killed by the Titan they freed on an upper level but the titan was also sent to his plane. One pc had Black Razor with him from White plume mountain, so when he killed a giant, he became very hard to kill as he aboserbed the soul gaining the max hp of it He almost did all the killing while the cleric with Wave, the trident, casted wall of force protecting them. It was long and tedious and finally they did manage to fight against Eclavdra and make her escape. By the way Eclavdra stats were ridicoulous and that time there were no more stats for drow high priestesses so i had to improvise, otherwise she would have been killed in 2 rounds.
Hrmm, fire is one of the most common elements that you can get in D&D in general, no one had a reliable source of it? Not even someone attacking with a torch? All it takes is 1 point of fire damage to stop that regen.
@@rustybrooks8916 Not In Original DnD. In old school you had to burn the troll down to zero and then spend a round burning up the extra bits so there was nothing left to regenerate. In the end we killed maybe ten or twenty of the trolls. as they just kept rotating out. The ones that went down we could never finish off as new ones stepped over top of them. The ones that were down quietly regenerated.
@@renzopinasco2206 Yes we had the Titan with us and he wasn't enough. And just went on forever.
I aggressively disagree with your assertion that lore is not needed. I LIVE to read the lore of these games! Give me their backstory! WOTC gets a little in the weeds sometimes and fForgets that the players don't care. I hear that. But *I* want to read it!!! I wanna know who the bad guys are and why they're doing this stuff.
That's cool. I respect that.
Great points about some random monster suddenly becoming the main villian because of how a scenario plays out... so true! These things just evolve as the game goes on... a good reminder for me not to pour so much backstory into a character that might not even be needed in the end!
Thanks for sharing!
i would argue that DnD's most horrifying villain is Greed. I love it actually when adventures derail with unesxpected deaths or mishaps. Those are always the moments I remember most and those are the moments when my brain clicks on into overdrive to try to pull out of the nose-dive.
Thanks for the great overview PDM.
Mr Welch and some of the specialist D&D setting RUclipsrs fixed it brilliantly. It's well worth a watch - properly deadly and includes Dark Sun!
I saw it. As soon as I read it it I thought: "people are going to end up giving this the "Alexandrian Dragonheist makeover."
Awesome!
It was well worthy of notes and doing the extra work for those needing that high level stuff.
What is the name of thier YT channel?
@@tazmokhan7614 ruclips.net/video/nT7VDUoF2KM/видео.html
@@tazmokhan7614Mr. Welch
Content is called:
'Welcome to Mystara: Making Vecna Eve of Ruin Epic with Awesomeness Editors'
Good stuff!
I'm not 100% opposed to backstory, since it can contextualize action, help the DM decide what NPCs do, and adjudicate how they respond to negotiation or other gambits by the players. But it needs to be clear and succinctly presented.
Thanks for sharing!
well, you cant' just lump 9 damage and 7 necrotic for 16, because sometimes players get resistances or immunities over time. the 9 and the 7 need to be kept seperate because of that.
A character who is 19th level has 155 and access to healing as a bonus action. 7hp does not make a difference. It's bean-counting.
I'm using a "fetch quest" type thing in my current campaign. The players don't have to get all of the pieces of the Dark Mirror. The more they get, the more advantage they get towards the bad guy. The villain is after them too. Seems like they could have just added a single chart for each part of the Rod collected adding a bonus to fighting Vecna. I'm pretty sure that is how Ravenloft did it. You didn't need the holy symbol or sun sword, but they sure made it easier.
Thanks for sharing!
There are very good reasons for why vecna's stat block is so long. First of all: do NOT average out his saving throws. Between his +14 to intelligence and +2 to Str is a massive difference, a specific weakness that can be utilised by the players. Second: the fact that he deals necrotic and piercing damage is relevant, since players might be resistant to those. What if you play a fallen Aasimar Barbarian? Third: this is not how counterspell works.
The only good tip here is to average out the damage instead of rolling dice. That one makes sense. Please ignore everything else. If you want to run big scary monsters, you'll have to do some reading. That's just how it is.
Fair points. 1) Vecna is only going to attack with INT, so STR is inconsequential. 2) Necrotic vs piercing damage would be a big deal if a character had 20hp. For a character that has 175hp and access to unlimited healing, it does not make an appreciable difference.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 first of all, thank you for replying. 1) I was talking about saving throws. The fact that Vecna is very resistant to spells like feeblemind, while being weak to simply getting grappeled is important. It massively changes the pace of the fight and gives your martials a moment to shine at high levels 2) Resistances will always be relevant, since they double the effective HP of the character (against that type of damage). Healing is very much a limited resource. There will always be a finite number of spell-slots, healing potions etc. available. Not to mention the action-cost required to use these resources.
Your changes basically invalidate any reason to play the barbarian class, which already suffers at higher levels due to a lack of spell-casting.
To have a compelling high level game, you need the characters to run the show .
They're powerful enough to be running kingdoms, teaching apprentices, maybe even retiring. The module can't force a plan onto them, it has to disrupt the plans they have.
Kidnap their apprentices as a precursor ritual so they hate vecna personally and want revenge after they save them
Send an army to their gates to retrieve the bone of an old lich they had as trophy
Have a powerful corruption bathe their entire country in an Unhallowed ground that makes it impossible for their retirement farm to feed their village
Make it personal. Make them angry. Give them a reason to use their powers FOR THEMSELVES rather than merely AGAINST VECNA
Good point.
The first high level campaign i participated in revolved around us being shipwrecked on a spooky demon isle. My first thought was to teleport, plane shift, etc off the island and we basically got super railroaded into having nothing work.
We had all the power to leave, but we had to be railroaded to be told why our super capable team couldn't just leave
@SlukkeWhile thats true,maybe the DM should just ban planar travel for the campaign or making difficult or costly to teleport,maybe a difference in time passage while teleporting.I once ran a 5e game in a peninsula that had one ship convoy come once a month to deliver passengers and supplies.The players consisted of one runaway criminal barbarian,one orc druid survivor of an evil chieftain that killed her master and the wizard friend of the barbarian who just lost his wife and kid to a accident.They all had reasons to be there,but after 6 levels(they started at 3) they were struggling to find reasons to stay,after all a demonic cult was present in most of the place.The orc chieftain was dead,the wizard’s wife and kid where ghosts that accompanied him and the barbarian had communed with a primal beast and no longer felt the need to run.I didn’t stop them from leaving or forced them to stay and face the cult leader, I simply planned for both outcomes,whitout their help the city would fall,with them fighting there was a good chance some of the inhabitants would survive.They ended up staying even with me saying that I planned for both situations. They went there for their reasons but stayed to save the city,DMs should also provide a reason for players to keep playing even after their problem is solved.
@Slukke don't blame the players, blame the DM for wanting an impossible situation
Having something as mundane as "trapped on a spooky island" just doesn't work with high level characters, exactly because of those teleportation and planar travel spells
@@xolotltolox7626 Except, you know, teleportation-blocking magic is not exactly rare in 5e, so the DM saying your teleportation spells fail is just a convenient plot requirement (that should absolutely be explained in lore in some way) that is absolutely fair and logical for them to use to force a high level party to stay
Not all of your complaints are valid. Saying they should not split damage up into individual damage types ("just say it deals 16 damage") misses the point that this is so that resistance/vulnerability can apply. It is ultimately the same as saying they should get rid of those features and damage types entirely. Damage types are not combined in 5e, so if an attack deals 1d8 bludgeoning and 1d6 necrotic, necrotic resistance will only apply to the necrotic damage. You may think the game would be better without damage types, resistance, etc., but that's extremely subjective.
Even if a character is resistant to necrotic damage, it's only 7hp for a character that has 150hp. It does not make an appreciable difference.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Yeah it's definitely way too fiddly. I do often feel like 5e monsters have just way too many tiny little extra bits that didn't really need to be there. But then again, sometimes I also find myself complaining that not enough monsters have Athletics proficiency or whatever-so maybe I just don't know what I want.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1but his Rotten Fate attack does an average of 96 Necrotic damage. That’s significant, plus he can make two of those attacks per turn. I’m currently playing an Aasimar Paladin who could very well be planning on tanking those attacks, that resistance matters. 9 damage getting halved to 4 means that if I take both of those attacks, it effectively removed the necrotic aspect from one of them entirely.
Considering what Vecna is, he can probably change the damage type he is doing on the fly if he wants to anyway.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 i cannot imagine a DM ever saying that small amounts of damage/HP have never made an appreciable difference in combat. have you never had an enemy or player survive a potentially deadly attack by only a few hit points because of a low roll? rolling for damage is one of the key ways in which enemies become memorable in combat. if every single attack made by every single bugbear dealt the average damage, that would be unfathomably boring for the players and DM to run
Kudos for not giving away the biggest spoiler in the adventure! I watched several videos that did it. Great vid, as always
Thanks!
I mean people deserve to know Mordenkainen was Kas all along so that they could steer clear away from this drivel.
Ditching 5E really opened my eyes. I’m an educator and I run Shadowdark after school for a large group of high schoolers. They have gone balls to the walls crazy with excitement nearly every session because their characters are in actual danger. Unlike “The worlds most popular game”. Really the only reason I still have any wotc 5e content is just to convert it to other systems.
THIS! Kids LOVE danger!
Shadowdark IS DND. Its just licensed 5E DND with some rules twists.
That hobgoblin story sums up why the Nemesis System worked in the Shadow of Mordor games. You came to hate and despise that one enemy that kept killing you. And sometimes an enemy you killed would keep coming back, hating you just as much.
No joke, this one orc kept coming back and I was livid screaming at the screen 'WHY ARE YOU ALIVE??? WHYYYYYY" causing much concern for the family hearing me so angry by myself
@@russell6clacks Oh I know exactly what you mean.
I had a similar thing happen to me where I was talking to a guy who has only ever played 5th edition and I was telling him I liked the older versions that were more simulationist and characters could die. He said something like: "Yeah, but then you can't really tell epic stories if the characters can die."
I just kind of shrugged and said, "I've been doing this for like 30 years."
In all that time, no one has ever said: "Remember that time we saved the world from ?"
It's always, "Remember when I fumbled and killed the guy we were escorting?" Or "Remember when the mage I was playing picked up a weapon in each hand, that I wasn't proficient in and attacked the wyverns and rolled two 20s?"
I've run campaigns with multiverse spanning epic arcs (in high fantasy games) and others based around a single town. Almost always the preference is for the lower power, smaller geographical region with lower stakes.
Great post.
The stories are NOT epic, if you know ahead of time that your character will never be in danger of dying.
@@robinmohamedally7587 Good point.
Goblin slayer is all about the low level adventures. Someone will slay the daemon lord, but the goblins are still here.
Character death happens in 5e rules. I mean, your dice have to be pretty snakebit most of the time, but there are plenty of ways to die and nothing that directly forbids it.
As a counterpoint to "what everyone remembers", I've run massive campaigns with epic save-the-world plots, and my players remember both their own personal moments AND "the times we saved the world from Blargle Blargle." And yes, death was optional...because there are fates far, far worse than death, which they knew I wasn't afraid to impose. They keep coming back, so I guess they're having fun--which is the main goal here, right?
I'm not asking you to disregard your own experience, of course, but just be aware that there are different experiences. You get mostly low-stakes players who want to play small adventures, and I get Epic Heroic types who want to partake in saving the world (who actually get disappointed if the story is small and stays small). Room for us all, which necessitates different approaches.
IF the PCs say no the GM takes their character and says, "Play a character who would play the adventure."
Good answer.
This comment summarizes the biggest problem with Modules and GM who love to railroad.
I'm assuming that a lot of GMs use Modules to save some prep time but I think that it is in detriment on a good game. I prefer to get fun instead of a fully detailed story with a single outcome. A railroaded campaign is SIMPLY BORING.
It's not the DMs job to convince adventurers to go into adventures
If I feel like I have to justify to players the need to engage with the game, that's a group of players I'm not DMing for
@@feferson492 I mean, at some point, there ought to be some player agreement in advance that they're going to do it. In a sandbox campaign, players can pick and choose from whatever hooks are to be found that seem interesting to them, but there should never be a question of the players refusing to play the campaign at all. "Hey, Doug, if you're going to spend all night trying your darnedest to refuse to go anywhere near Barovia, why the heck didn't you speak up last Tuesday when we decided we'd do Curse of Strahd?" should not be a question.
Enthusiasm. Players need to be enthusiastic about playing a game about magical murder wizards fighting giant fire breathing dinosaurs, but it's like a relationship, everyone needs to be on the same page in what they're supposed to be enthusiastic about...
Generally, villain backstories are supposed to serve the roleplaying side of the game. But this assumes that the PCs have chances to encounter the villains in question at any time before they roll initiative. Many people don't care to know why the villain is villaining, but some do (I often do, if the villain seems more grey than moustache-twilingly evil). But while it can be useful to have a paragraph or two, several pages of text and dedicated art pieces of events that the players will never see is definitely taking things to new levels of redundant.
I've also had some incredibly fun games at higher levels, campaigns such as Curse of the Crimson Throne, and entirely homebrew endeavors. Using D&D 3.5 rules. Where two-weapon fighting meant that some characters had between 6-8 attacks a round, more if hasted, and fully buffed we only missed on a 1. And save or die spells were a thing. The mechanics were not what made the game feel epic, it was the GM's exceptional efforts in tying the story in with the PCs and making us all feel invested in the outcome.
I believe high level games should not be just more dungeons with straight-up boss fights against a villain in a room. That's missing the point! One of my favorite high-level combats was when we had to split the party to deal with the final boss: one team jumped off an airship to land on the flying kaiju construct's back and targeted its weak points, while the other team infiltrated its mindscape to directly attack the quori spirits possessing it from within. Was it gonzo? Absolutely. Gloriously bonkers. Were we still just making attacks and dealing hit point damage in the end? Yeah. But the framework mattered. The execution mattered.
You bring up good points, as usual. I always have an answer for a "No" it's called consequences. I do not force players to go on quests but there are always consequences to the campaign world from not going on one. In fact, there are so many events that the players cannot do all of them any case. I leave it to the players to decide what is more important to them. Example: Save a village girl from a goblin band, capture a Crime lord for a local lord or Find the Rod of Ruin before a Necromancer gets his hands on it. I use a calendar to mark progress or failure for each of the bad NPC's. Whichever get completed, happens, and that leads to more quests [options], for the players to decide apon. I cap all my campaigns to 10th or 12th level. I always allow players to use their spells and abilities. If they can out think me, then so much the better. It makes me a better DM in the long run.
Fuck this was hard to watch. Some of the hottest takes I've ever heard and I cannot agree on any of them.
The most upsetting was probably the "why not just say 16 damage". That almost sounds like someone who's played one session of DnD, fought one bandit and complained that the piercing damage he dealt had no impact on anything.
I've read the first chapter and, like you, I'm making notes. Thanks for the insights.
Thanks for watching!
I ran a home brew hex crawl where the PCs happened upon a local lord during their travels. He was meant to be a very minor NPC that used his status to force the players to complete a quest for him. I played him as smug, arrogant and rude. The players ended up having such a visceral reaction to him, throughout the quest they discussed all the ways in which they’d like to kill him. In that moment I decided he’d be a recurring NPC and eventually he blossomed into the campaign’s main antagonist. We’ve played together for 10 years, he ended up being my group’s most memorable villain, and he started out as a jerk sending them on a fetch quest against their will.
Awesome video as always. I agree on all points save for the backstories. I do like the back story part of it, but typically, it can be summed up a lot quicker than when you have word or page quotas to check off. I want the Gandalf Video!!!
It's coming!
I mean,yeah the players can always say, nah, I don't want to do that, to any written adventure. I don't see how that's supposed to be avoidable. Even with dm planned adventure, they can say "no".
And then, most likely, they can find another DM, as the one they have will be rightfully pissed off at having his time wasted.
"Let's get all our trendy IPs and put them in one story". Multiverse. So creative.
I concur. Multiverses are over.
The reason for seperating the damage is because resistances are a thing. i would have assumed you'd know that. There are creatures and subclasses with resistance to necrotic damage such as Aasimar and necromancers. You need to seperate damage for this reason.
I know that. So your character is resistant to the 7hp of necrotic damage. If he has 175hp, it doesn't. Make. A. Difference. It just makes the game slooooooooooooow.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 that's a fair criticism. It does slow down the game but I guess it's just something that they do because the damage is split. Not a great answer I know but there are quite a few monsters who have high secondary non physical damage that being resistant to makes a lot of difference. Maybe they should have made it all the same damage type for low damage attacks. I don't know
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Again.
It. Does. Make. A. Difference. As. That. Damage. Adds. Up.
I've. Already. Given. You. A. Reasonable. Scenario. Where. It. Adds. Up. To. Significant. Damage. Of. More. Than. 250. Points. Over. The. Course. Of. The. Battle.
How much time do you really save saying "16 damage" over "7 pierce, 9 necrotic" ????
How does that make the game sloooooooooooow?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 It's simple. Make your players do the math and manage their own resistances.
In my game, it's simple - "7 pierce/9 necrotic" - the PLAYER knows if they have resistance and can do the basic math to calculate how much damage they take.
I don't see how saying "16 points damage" or even just "16" saves any reasonable amount of time over "7 pierce/9 necro"
if PC will say "No" to Lord Neverember's quest - he'll reply: "oh, i see. you must be pretty busy with more important stuff. then i'll ask someone else". and those heroes will complete this quest instead.
simple as that. (as a players you have no reason to refuse if you decided to gather together and play this adventure. so why bother wrighting cosequences of their decline?)
I love ALL Deathbringer riffs!
Thanks!
About a year ago I watched your video about leveling up being a curse and that set me down a path to start running an EZD6 game for my group. I never plan more than a session ahead, everyone has a great time at the table, and I've never had more fun in my 35-ish years of role playing. Thank you!
Professor DM: "Don't roll damage dice; just use the average."
My dice-goblin brain: "But...but shiny math rocks make click-clack sound!"
Seriously though, you have some great insights here (as always) and have given me a bunch to think on (as usual), especially as my group is getting perilously close to those high levels.
He's a math rock trick. Vecna does 2d8+4 damage. Switch it to 10+d10. Same result and you get to roll your math rocks. Rock on!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 What is this new math you are teaching ;) they don't have the same mean, or variance, or even kind of distribution ;) I get the speed argument but this is in no way the "Same result"
@@ggellnerThis response has me borderline hyperventilating. WHAT DOES THIS MAN THINK HE KNOWS
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Yeah...wow
Scenario 1 - Vecna does 6-20 points of damage with an average damage of 12
Scenario 2 - Vecna does 11-20 points of damage with an average damage of 15
That's not the same result. They are hardly similar results.
The second scenario does roughly double the minimum damage if you opt for the "math rocks"
I’m currently running Eve of Ruin right now and sir your insight on this campaign’s written pitfalls were so helpful for me. Thank you so much.
Some great points here, professor GM!
Years ago I took a writing class where my teacher said something that resonated with me, and is similar to what you said here: "The bigger the stakes, the less they matter." What he meant is that readers (or in this case players) often care more about stakes such as rescuing a kidnapped child from an evil witch than they do about stopping a giant demon from ransacking a planet.
I have seen this too in the campaigns I've run. My players seemed much more excited by the epic arrival of a PC just in time to save a friend from some Yuan-Ti (she had to roll a 1 on a d100....I told her that outright...and she did it!) than they did fighting a literal deity that was the culmination of years of the campaign.
"If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics"
@@vancomycinb1193 Plus, if the whole world is threatened, the author (or DM) isn't likely to actually let it die. But if one person is threatened, there's a genuine risk that they're a corpse by the end of the game session.
I guess I'm weird, I've never understood how people can feel this way. I'm far less bothered by a single death than the deaths of thousands. Living in this world is insanely difficult for me due to the overwhelming about of suffering that humanity faces every day, every moment! Some things are more personal to me, but I take on pain from every terrible thing I hear about.
@@rustybrooks8916 It's not that those things don't matter. It's that for the stakes of a story (and note I'm clearly saying a story here) that it's easier for individual players to connect with a smaller struggle than a universe-spanning epic.
Think about, as an example, the most memorable/popular fantasy and sci-fi stories. With Star Wars we're more drawn to the one-on-one duel between Luke and Vader in Empire, rather than the massive battle that happens in Attack of the Clones. In LotR, most folks tend to connect most with Fellowship of the Ring, which had smaller stakes and more human-focused conflicts than Return of the King. For superheroes, we recall the moments when Batman fought alone against a key villain such as The Joker in Killing Joke, rather than the times Batman alongside the Justice League struggled against an alien armada. The human moments are what endear us to stories and characters, and can make for resonant conflict.
@@dezopenguin9649 Excellent point! If the world is destroyed, the campaign ends. But if a single person the PCs care about, like the example Professor DM gave with the bard skewered by the hobgoblin, is in peril the stakes are immediately raised. The consequences can be felt all the way through the campaign and may affect their future interactions, strategy, etc.
This makes we wanna go play the old BG games again…
Wotc is like hollywood, in that they seem to just regurgitate old content in endless remakes and reboots.
So you kind of hate the math and hate the lore too. I guess that’s why you love the art so much. It’s all that’s left in a book.
Love your Borderlands story in this vid!!
Thanks!
Us old school gamers (when that word meant table top role playing gamers), who grew up playing d&d in the early 80s, or even earlier, cut our teeth on Dungeon Crawls and complex “Evil Lairs”. Each Dm tried to outdo each other with the complexity of the dungeon, traps, puzzles ect. When we evolved into more role playing rather than purely combat type games, more often than not it was “off the cuff”, ie, improvised, and made up by the Dm as we went along. This type of play was way more flexible than playing modules, and led to the most fun. The villains and adversaries emerged organically, usually from a random NPC called “Bob” later fleshed out by the DM when he/she became relevant. The players choices decided what would happen next, not the module, usually going completely off script and NOT doing what the Dm had planned. It was a thing, we would deliberately say NO, and do our own thing. Also, player bases such as keeps, castles, towers etc were a common occurrence, and often gameplay centered on that, building our base. Players also had followers, up to and including small armies, so as the level of play became higher, the politics and economics of empire building and armies, navies and wizard academies, became the next level of gameplay, and this was before we finished high school. Modern D&D has become dumbed down, and the stakes have been removed, and people have become too attached to their characters. In most long lasting campaigns that went for years, it was rare to have more than one original character in the current party, most having been killed off along the way. Low level gaming in the old days was brutal, you would always have back up characters, because characters died, a lot. Make a silly choice, you died. Annoy the wrong Ruler, you died. Became too much of a murder hobo, you where tracked down by the authorities and you died. The stakes were always there, you could be killed, permanently, and you did, all the time. It added to the satisfaction when you completed something important, and you survived. Long old man rambling over. Parting thought, play other games besides d&d, it will make you a better gamer, and I promise you, you will enjoy it!
Agree with all of this
Your words are my thoughts. All of a sudden I just had some low level characters come to mind that died by the hands of the authorities because I became a murder hobo. First and last time I ever played that way.
@@yellowmartian that’s the way we used to play!
It is always fascinating getting the perspective from the DnD side of roleplaying games. Runequest and its d100 children are more-or-less contemporary with DnD and have always been around but I guess less popular. In those systems (Runequest, Mythras, BRP, Call of Cthulhu, etc) combat is usually something to be avoided if you can and worked around whenever possible, because a major wound that kills you is just around the corner.
I can also never wrap my head around armor that reduces your chances of getting hit instead of absorbing damage. ;)
More Prof DM revamped campaigns. I want to see a Professor DM remake of Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
Possible.
Hey Professor! This episode was gold. Thoughful, usable advice and anecdotes end to end. Thanks!
Thanks!
Hey, the veggie platter is there to help you recover in between servings of the good stuff! (like my 10-cheese, bacon & mushroom mac & cheese)
Love it!
I ran the Northlands Saga for Pathfinder 1st Edition by Frog God Games a couple of years ago. By the end (about 14th or 15th level), the Ranger and Fighter had so many extra attacks it was ridiculous. The players were throwing handfuls of dice, sorting them out by color, and calculating. Player turns seemed to last forever. It was rough. The campaign was awesome, but I'd do it in OSR to level 9 or 10 if I ran it again.
I love seeing a comment on the Northlands Saga out in the wild! I worked on part of that book.
@@kevinwright7515 Well done! It was great and we had a ton of fun!
@@jimhavoc Thank you!
Dungeon Craft is the reason i have a RUclips account.
Thank you.
So many D&D modules reserve the BBEG to the end because were he to encounter the party too early, it'd simply result in a TPK. The reason is because combat is the main way to resolve conflict and every fight is a fight to the death. Non-lethal means of resolving conflict in a way that sustains suspense is actively discouraged by the rules.
If the villain is so overwhelming, there is the simple solution of having him go "I don't have time for this" and talk away from the party because the number of turns it would take to kill them are turns he could be watching Days of Our Lives and he's already a week behind because his schemes have forced him to TiVo it. Most adventures have the BBEG show up to the end because most adventures are structured as dungeon crawl or a series of dungeon crawls and that is how dungeon crawls work, traditionally. Final boss is on the final floor.
My only disagreement with you is when you mention "why is it 7 piercing and 9 necrotic damage? just make it 16 damage!". Damage types are a big deal in dnd. Its so boring if you take it all way. I understand that having such a large statblock can be a headache, but reducing his stats to two post-it notes of info is not inspiring. Hes not a BBEG at that point, hes hit points who takes away hit points, and thats it.
Thank you for responding. 5-10hp to a character that has 175 and has virtually unlimited healing resources does not make a difference.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1hate to say it but I agree with them. Damage types also add flavour. With those damage types you can describe how it effects the characters bodies etc. and the players in turn can decide how they would react. Plus you say it doesn't matter but even in level 18 one shots tiny amounts of damage all add up. I have been saved by a resistance to radiant before when they actually did very little.
@@kitnal4143 It's why swarms of small enemies can wipe out high hitpoint pools. Death by a Thousand Cuts is incredibly effective after all.
The main strength of many melee martials is their tankiness, and they'll often work on trying to gain resistances and immunities (barbarians have the easiest time, with them resisting the 3 main damage types when raging from level 1)
@sev1120 I see building tank as a three choice option: crank the AC, crank the HP, or crank resistances (often a mix of the three). It really comes down to taste/class but people sadly underestimate the importance of recording all damage types /rolls.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 question. What about characters that have resistance or immunity to necrotic? Like a topaz Dragonborn or Aasimar. you can’t just lump together damage types into one and have to be just 16 damage, cause then your denying one of the player’s necrotic resistance
I think this was less about Vecna, and more about how to write a good villain in general. Or, better yet, how to engage your players in a campaign.
I've been a GM for 30+ years, and I can honestly say it's an extremely difficult thing but very rewarding when it works out. I really love the thoughts in this video and found it difficult to find anything to disagree on. (I've also found those extended D&D stats to be simply a way to fill pages.)
Excellent Plan 9 From Outer Space reference. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Great movie.
Firstly, I LOVE ALL Dungeon Craft videos! Secondly, while I agree with the latter half of the video on RPG philosophy, I personally disagree with your points on "overwritten" stat blocks and on adventures including lots of lore.
Why do the stat blocks include the ability scores and not just the ability bonuses? They include them because that is how 5e stat blocks are written, it would be annoyingly inconsistent and feel incomplete to me if the ability scores were not included.
It's useful that it lists both the average damage (which I normally use) and the dice used to calculate that damage, because that way if the monster scores a critical hit, I can double the damage dice without doubling the static damage bonus. These are how crits work for the players so for fairness I want to follow the same rule as a DM. I'm glad it breaks the damage down by type because my players have ways of reducing necrotic damage specifically.
I really like having it all spelled out for me in the stat blocks. Including a super shortened version in the adventure in addition to the complete one would be good, but otherwise I can just make a short version myself as you showed.
Regarding the lore, I agree that when making a homebrew adventure, strict utilitarianism is great for ensuring you make efficient use of prep time. However, for a prewritten adventure, I expect the writers will have fleshed out the villain's character, history and motivations. Even if it's lore that happens "off screen" it can help me to roleplay the villain and understand how they fit into the world. I've read and ran Curse of Strahd and I wish it provided more lore surrounding Strahd's homeland and the history of Barovia.
I'd rather the book provides lore that I don't need, than find myself needing lore the adventure doesn't provide.
Rando hobgoblin story was instructive!
Thanks!
That was great motivation and role-play by the party. It's wonderful as a DM when those moments come up.
The post-it note stat block is brilliant. I will be using that and making my life so much easier. Thank you professor for making me a better DM.
I already agree with tis title of the vid, I have read the frist 4 chapters and there is so much rework and add work to do, this book seemed to have been rushed out without even understanding that the trash books they have been putting out over bthe last 10 years should have ended before they put this book out, WTH were they thinking??? Chris Perkins should be ashamed of this dribble. I mean the story idea is great but the execution is a trash fire in every chapter. It just looks like they made a premise and a prompt for each chapter, did a little bit of writing and moved on to the next chapter. As usual they expect the DM to do all the heavy lifting ( which normally i wouldnt mind but come on the book is over 55 dollar with tax). I mean take for instance theres a chapter in the book where you have to find a piece of tthe Rod thats being held by some obscure Cult of a diety NO ONE HAAS EVER HEARD about. Theres an NPC that helps you, dont why she would and she doesnt care about this MAJOR ARTTIFACT. She just wants to kill the cultists, for reasons. The party then proceeds but some how the cultists keep getting taken out, why ? how?...who knows. You find the NPC draped over the bodies of some cultists. You never heard the fight or tthe spellcasting or evening the screams of cultist dying, why?...Who knows. And dont even let me tell about how Strahd knows about he Rod but doesnt have it in his possestion ( I dont tthink I spelled that right), seriously dont asked, literally no one knows, not even Strahd. Overall, this book was lazily written and rushed out, simply another cash grab so unless you are use to doing rework on adventure books or modules ( which unfortunately I have been doing a lot in the last 10 years for this ediiton.) i wouldnt waste my money on this book, you will have more fun and way less rework converting any Pathfinder Adventure Path. 3 out of 10 and a sad sad ending for this edition.
I had a similar experience with out of the abyss. That is a skeleton of a campaign that really needed fleshing out by the DM. I think they were going to make it a two parter but just rushed it out as a single campaign.
I was happy to put in the work, but like you said if you are paying that much for a module it should be able to practically run itself.
They definitely rushed this out.
Rushing out trash modules is a D&D tradition that started with AD&D. Most of the modules that are applauded by influencers prove to be trash when you actually try to run them. Some good ideas, but they seem like 2nd drafts when a 3rd was planned and edited by a twelve-year-old.
"We are looking for a piece of a rod"
"I haven't heard of something like that... but can you guys help me stoping this cult?"
"No, we are looking for a rod"
Credits roll
Geeze guy.. What exactly do you want? Even bitd modules weren't totally spelled out. I know, I wrote a lot in the 80s & 90s. 😃
Your "bard's head on a pike" was excellent! It is creative GM's that make these games memorable. Regardless of the campaign being homebrew or from a WotC book.
"Does high level D&D work at all?"
Good question sir, and while I don't have quite your credentials, I have also been running TTRPGs since the 1983 Red Box that I got in 85. So, that's some 38/39 years.
B/X was my go to for a solid 8 to 10 years, and level 10 was about where things would start falling apart back then even, and this is pre-OGL, Feats, Class Features Being More Defined, etc. Really, it seems like no edition of D&D has worked much past level 10.
Because it was my high school years, we made a game last level 1 to 36 (for those not playing Demi-Humans) and, well, a lot of the post Level 12 stuff just kinda had to be houseruled or handwaved to work. Honestly, it really started teaching me Narrative Based Games before they were popular.
Thanks for sharing!
Frankly, any narrative dealing with characters of too high a power level becomes difficult to manage. Even in novels, stories tend to become much faster paced and abridged when the protagonists obtain massive power, because there is little justification for them not to be able to solve most everything except whatever they need to face to resolve the story.
Its why Superman stories almost always have to include some reason he can't use all of his powers. Kryptonite, collateral damage, magic macguffins, amnesia, or something else. Because otherwise there is no feasible reason he can't just instantly resolve a problem. Reminds me of that sketch where Superman is asking Batman for his help on something, and Batman just pauses and asks, "Why?"
Letting the gameplay and the player rolls decide the villain really creates a dynamic and memorable game. I highly recommend this. In my wife’s Ironsworn game she was taken prisoner by an elf warlord. A roll indicated that he was kind, and a further roll showed that there was conflict in the village because she was an outsider. She ended up having to fight the village mystic and defeated him, thereby earning his enmity as he became an outcast and had to wander the outer world. Thus the BBEG of the world was spawned.
I loved the post-it notes at 8:00, super useful way to shorthand stats for any creature.
You're welcome!
I've been writing monster stats in a similar way when DMing 5e, and it saves me so much brainpower during encounters.
Remember the movie Be kind rewind, we need the sweeded versions of these modules. Dnd is like ,hey we made a great adventure then the power's that be that make all the decisions, we need to dumb it down,add some filler to thicken it up to justify the book to be 49.95 Prof. Dungeon Master you are awesome I love how you trim the fat inspires me to do as well !
I'm sorry, but "what if the players say "no"?" is a really odd criticism. One would assume that if the campaign is described as "Hey, I got the new DnD adventure Vecna Eye of Ruin, want to play?" And all the players say "yeah, that sounds awesome! We're in!" they are not going to say "no" once the adventure has started.
Any and every adventures completely falls apart if the players don't buy into it. But it's like starting a BG3 campaign, spending hours on the character creation and then going "You know what, I'm just going to hang out on the Nautiloid and won't visit the bridge."
Why ask a question you don't want answered? It like asking my children, "Wouldn't you like to clean your room?"
Oh man! I have an original physical copy of Dungeon #54 and I LOVE the 'Unhallowed Ground' adventure. I've run it several times!
The more RPGs I play, the more I'm convinced the whole concept of character level is a detriment to the game.
This is one reason why I like Forbidden Lands (thought it has its problems). Characters have more gradual, even-spaced out improvements in abilities and skills, and special gear is truly special. It's perfectly reasonable for a brand new character to attempt to adventure with a hero that's survived a dozen sessions, because even that experienced hero isn't going to tempt fate by trying anything too dangerous.
Thanks for the video! You make some excellent points on the difficulty of writing a high level adventure and it is as true today as it has been since 1974. I have found that high-level adventures for any particular group are best created by that group's DM. It is possible for that DM to take a prewritten adventure and tailor it for them but that can even be true with low-level prewritten adventures. The truth is that the importance of the relationship between a DM and that DM's group is baked into D&D since the very beginning. This is why face-to-face gaming in a DM's homebrew setting played a a sandbox will always be the the ideal way to play while removing any of those factors will diminish RPGing in some ways. It's the way the game was originally written to work and they've spent 50 years writing ways to patch up a game when some portion of that ideal is missing. David Wesely brought some folks together for his game of Braunstein and tailored it to them, Arneson had his group and developed RPGing with them in mind, and even Gygax created Greyhawk for, and in response to, those he gathered to play. The original rules explained how a DM should be ready to do a lot of work to put a setting together because it is what they had all done.
Thanks for commenting!
Mr. Dr. Dungeon Professor, I just have one problem with your critique and its the part where you mention that the players can say "no". Instead of bringing up that scenario I think it would be more useful to tell prospective DMs that they need to inform their players to make characters that actually want to go on this adventure. Clearly this is a big book and the DM should have already made it clear they were running a long adventure, so why even pretend like the players are going to say no? Unless they're just trying to troll of course.
Good point. I had a whole sidebar on this topic but it was cut for time. In a future video. Probably "Tomb of Horrors." Stay tuned.
“It would be nice to have the stat blocks in the text.” 5 minutes later. “Why are there even stat blocks in this text?”
Man, I love this channel but, again, there's some low perspective here. "Why post the stat values? Why not just the bonuses?" Well, just in case the character (Vecta in this case) stats get changed due to some effect. It seems like he's just trying to find things to critique. Not saying I don't agree at some points, but people should not be using just their perspective (or their way of playing) to judge someone else's work.
I agree. On an official book, the stat blocks should be as detailed as possible. Imagine if it had those post-its as the stat block. People would have 100s of questions.
Other games do better stat blocks. See Pirate Borg or Index Card RPG. WoTC is so behind in terms of design and presentation. My perspective is I see hundreds of other games doing it better.
But that's not what you said @@DUNGEONCRAFT1
PDM you give the best advice! Always come back to re-watch the old videos. After 30 years away, I returned to DM 5e in 2020 with the support of watching your videos. Still play every Sunday at the local game shop: Hard Knox Games! Love this crazy hobby!
Have fun!
The overwhelming majority of your videos have useful or insightful content and are worth watching, but sometimes, you just whine. Why not lump an attack's piercing damage in with its necrotic bonus damage? Someone might have resistance or immunity to it, that's why.
So they save 7hp? 9hp? If they ahem 175hp and access to unlimited healing, IT. JUST. DOESN'T. MATTER.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1I actually thought this same thing the other day. I was using a CR 23 Arch Duke from the Chains of Asmodeus module and one of the attacks had a 7 average damage Necrotic added to the piercing damage. At that level it's just annoying and I hate saying to my level 20 player who is Necrotic resistance, "And you take.....3 Necrotic Damage." It's just dumb .
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I don’t think that’s the entire story not only does the type of damage inform the players on the enemy. But it also allows the barbarian who took totem to be like, “hey, my subclass matters here”. Cutting that out for bog standard 9 piercing would eliminate that choice that the player made when choosing their subclass.
The last part of this video hit home for me. I remember almost 35 years ago, my players where around 15th level (different d20 system) and I was running an open ended campaign. My Big Bad was Lord Vansil, an undead/vampirish type that led the Black Sun Empire. But it wasn't Vansil the group was after...it was his Generals. Early on in the campaign, they came across the 7 generals of the BSE and bad things happened. Over time, these generals made it personal for my players and they became invested. They managed to take down one of them and this inspired them to hunt down the other 6. We had so much fun and I knew that eventually Lord Vansil would make an appearance and I didn't have to force him on my players.
Thanks for sharing! Great story!
I think it is hilarious that you and I posted videos on the exact same day that both reference that article, "Gandalf Was Only a 5th Level Magic User" from Dragon #5. Great minds think alike, Professor!!!!
Great video as always! I really enjoyed your story at the end of your youth group in the Caves of Chaos. I've had so many similar experiences with my daughter's group in terms of the NPC adversaries they respond to.
Not sure if you knew this, but Brian Blume named the character "Vecna" as an anagram of the author "Jack Vance" who inspired the mechanics of the D&D magic system.
Cheers!
Vecna. Bad memories from a long time ago... I think he is popculturally hyped. I prefer Kyuss.
You have to ride the Stranger Things train before the wheels fall off.
@@ChrisJ2001 right. But it will come to an end. TTRPGS will never stop...
@@n.ludemann9199correct. That’s why I said “before they fall off.”
I always find it a little troubling when nothing is said about what to do if the players fail at doing or getting something. That should always be a real possibility.
I always try to have a Plan B for the BBEG or the Bad Guys. And try to have something in mind for if the players succeed or fail at any one of the major points along the way. After all the BBEG and Bad Guys are not going to keep assaulting the city if the Party has defeated their army. But they will still want the McGuffin they were after, so how would they go about getting it now? Or can they use something else? These are questions you need an answer to.
11:20 The most memorable (and hated) villain in D&D is Bargle. He killed Aleena the cleric.
That's how you make it personal. ;-)
Exactly!
I like the concept of the 2 stat blocks. The simplified should be on the page the creature appears and the detailed should be in the back.
As a DM of decades even I make mistakes, misread things, forget about an ability, and so on.
That is part of the reason why I create my own module.
I wonder if, perhaps, WotC is playing around with AI writing now?
AI would have probably done better, to be fair.
@@johncharlesceccherelli2876 I don't know about that.
No. It was written by humans.
I wish … AI would have been better…
Yet another well-written and well-executed video. Thank you. Your story about the Caves of Chaos highlights how true engagement comes from making things personal. Vecna wants to reshape reality? *shrugs*. He stole your carriage and killed your dog? Grab some pencils 'cause the party is about to get John Wick on him.
In seriousness, I'm actually pretty sad that they took what _could_ have been a mind-blowing and epic plot and turned it into a pretty average set of adventures which may (or, probably, may not) be linked together.
They revisit Death House? :| That's weird.
And it's not bad.
Its not a 5e book if a large part of it is not just reprinted stuff to pad it
@@bp6942 True even the vecna statblock is a reprint
For me, I think developing the lore and backstory for the villains is really for the DM themselves. If it comes up great, if not, the villains actions upon the PCs and the world will usually suffice enough as a reason for the PCs to consider them a bad guy.
I HATE adventures that rail road players. I remember a Pathfinder module that did that. Go get the BIG Magic Artifact, Travel the dimensions, fight big bad guys, and possibly die. OH and the artifact? It is worth 750,000,000 Gold and there is a group willing to buy it off you for half the value and they will do the travel. NOPE, Players have to do it. We all said Screw it, We are selling it and moving on.
Thanks for sharing!
For a big pre-planned adventure path, it's kind of inevitable. If a Dm were writing their own adventures session by session there's a lot more room to adapt to players doing the unexpected. But if everything is preplotted, an unexpected action early on could invalidate large portions of the book (unless the DM can coax players back onto the tracks, which is still railroading but less obvious)
If you hate railroading, this guy is not the one you should be listening to.
Brilliant your best video to date you really knocked it out of the park with your Philosophy finale !
Regarding high level adventures, I will say the following:
(1) I hate how many adventures will say "all your cool abilities don't work". I understand why this happens but I still hate it. I think it comes from "lazy adventure writer" territory. When someone wants to write a railroad adventure, they can do so for low level characters. The problem comes when they maintain that same mentality for higher level adventures. Instead, they should explore avenues where the characters have more options to do things in their own way.
I come from the background of "superhero fan" since the 1970s. And while some superhero stories do keep the heroes from using their powers too (Superman vs kryptonite (or red sun rays or whatever), Green Lantern vs yellow, etc), mostly the heroes get to use their amazing fantastic powers all the time. Heroes with the ability to teleport don't usually have that power turned off in the comics, but it happens almost all the time in D&D adventures. Comic book writers somehow don't have their adventures ruined by allowing a hero to use their powers. Why is it so different in D&D adventures?
Obviously, there's a difference between writing a story and writing an adventure. PCs may do unexpected things but characters in a story never will. But ignoring that, there's also the fact that stories are written FOR these characters, while a generic store-bought D&D adventure is not. So, my second point about high level adventures is:
(2) You have to know who you're writing the adventure for. If you've written a story for Batman (a high-level low-tier character), it will be totally demolished if we use Superman as a PC. Yes, even the detective parts. That's why I have had no problem making high-powered adventures for high-powered PCs in any campaign I might run, without having to turn off the PCs' powers. (Only one time did I make it so that burrowing through the ground would be a risky and dangerous thing to do, which is the closest I've ever come.) It's because in a campaign, I know what the PCs are capable of. (I mean, with spellcasters who change their spells all the time, it's a bit harder to know exactly, but more or less, I still know.) And admittedly, this is easier in a superhero game because superhero PCs are far more predictable than D&D PCs because superheroes always (more or less) have the same powers.
For high level play, I have the superhero mentality and I wish more people did. Let the PCs use their powers. If they make the adventure easier, good, that's what the powers are for. And I wish we could banish all the DMs/GMs who have the rigid mentality of "But if they don't fight the orc guarding a chest in a 10'x10' room, my adventure is ruined!" Give the PCs some freedom but also realize that that same freedom applies to the villains, who should be just as capable of using the "scry and teleport" strategy.
Hi. I thought I'd respond because you put in so much effort, and I appreciate that. I agree with you. It takes an above average GM (IMO) to handle those powers. Kids can't do it. A GM needs experience. I watch kids running high level games and it's just...yeah....
Spot on advice about epic nature of the game and how epic doesn't need to mean world-ending.... even in movies like MCU movies face this - they run out of ideas it seems and make the movies world-ending plots instead of making them more personal and closer to the chest like Civil War or Winter Soldier. The MAIN reason that Infinity War worked is because we cared about the characters themselves... when we saw heroes die, it really meant something to us and had better impact.
Infinity War and Endgame was one of those rare occasions where the plot centered around stoppign the world ending, but we still gave a damn to the end because all the beloved characters were there and we saw them kick ass!
So Eve of Ruin might work better if the PCs have personal stakes and personal ties to the plot, like their NPC Mom is captured and tortured by Vecna or something.... make sure the PCs have personal stakes there or it doesn't mean much.
Thanks for sharing!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 No problem .... love your videos :)
Great review. You've highlighted the issues I've had to WoTC's published 5E adventures. I look forward to each Dungeon Craft video!
Thank you.
What CoS got right that EoR didn’t was having the villain interact with the party. There were times where Strahd just showed up out of blue either to taunt or terrify the players. Not only does Vecna never show up before the end (not even a simple dream spell), but when the players do reach the end, the book literally states to the dungeon master to not have vecna speak to the players or be interested in them because “he’s too focused on his ritual”, meaning he can’t even have a classic villain monologue, or even just taunt the players.
Yup.
For the “2 stat blocks” argument I would suggest the quick annotated version in the location where the monster shows up, and the fleshed out full version at the end to maybe make any alterations you wanted