I've been in a session that had 5 hour combat with bandits.. because the dm of 16 years still stopped everything to check the rule book to make sure that's how a spell or feature worked..
My party just fought a group of 51 soldigers inside of an old giant's meadhall. It took them 4 minutes in game time (40 total combat rounds) to pull this off. It took us 3 8 hour sessions to get through this since the PCs were at such a huge disadvantage and spent a TON of time strategizing each move.
i think my longest fight was against a special rock golem i made called a "goldstar" in the contrary the shortest fight was a giant dragon of multiple elements... nobody won that one
I am always surprised, when people make these, "how to make travel interesting" videos, nobody ever suggests, "player interaction." It does not have to be an "every day" kind of thing, but as the GM, just let the Players know, that just like sitting around the Tavern, the Players can use this opportunity to converse with their fellow Adventurers. So, if a couple of Players want to take advantage of that, for some light role playing, you can quickly set it up as, "night has fallen, you are sitting around the campfire, who is doing what", or, "you are setting up Camp, who is doing what?" It is simple, organic, and it gives the Players an opportunity to form bonds with each other. It adds a little extra bit of depth, so that these numbers, on a piece of paper, seem more real, and fleshed out. And again, it gives those who are not to keen on the combat aspect of the Game, an avenue in which they feel they have done something meaningful, and enjoyable.
I do this quite often, actually that's where about half the session takes place with my most recent group. Hoping we can eventually get back together and start gaming again.
I've been pondering on the idea of "forcing" my players to interact with each others characters. Since we are friends, we talk alot about the stuff OOC, but the characters ain't got a clue who the cleric or the fighter really is.
That is what I loved about Vampire: The Masquerade. It was nearly entirely roleplaying with other players and some NPCs. Depending on the GM and players, there was very little dice rolling. Dice rolls were usually saved for when a player was not role playing their character correctly, or not respecting other characters. For example, if I was playing a character with maximum charisma and leadership, and also prestige, and I was trying to convince a player with low willpower and intelligence to do something for me, he may resist because he thinks it will put his character in danger. So then I'm forced to go to the GM and have him roll my Charisma + Leadership vs his willpower to see if I convince him or not. I always tried to bring this aspect when I would DM D&D, trying to give the players an opportunity to to use their full range of abilities, and offering experience points for non combat encounters, basically treating important and tense social encounters almost exactly like combat encounters, only with more role playing.
I agree! On my journeys with friends, I'll remember the conversations we had or the general feeling of being in a group all experiencing the same thing. In five sessions, my pc might not remember the name of that gorgeous mountain the party traveled over, but she WILL remember something like sitting around the campfire on said mountain when one of the other pcs told a joke and accidentally gave away the punchline halfway through, ruining the joke and making it twice as funny. Character interactions add context to what would otherwise be just a postcard.
Had a game where goblins infested a forest that the PC's had to cross several times. Every time they did the goblins would jump them, steal from them, and chase them. At low levels the forest was very dangerous, goblins like traps. As they leveled up the goblins became more of a nuisance, but still too dangerous to chase into the forest as traps will kill you quick. Around lv 5-6 the players got so mad at the goblins that they hunted them (without compensation) killing every goblin in and around the forest. Killed over 200 of them over the next 2 games. The local traders were so happy with this event that they built a magnificent marble statue to the Goblin Slayers! Placed at the entrance to the forest near the Kingdom border. Then the Goblin Master knew who he needed to kill. ;-)
@@starcycle4308 Yep. We have also played goblin games. Where the nasty adventurers invade our forest... when the players play goblins, the goblins win.... mostly. We do end up losing a few characters along the way but we build backups. Adventurers are dangerous. :)
Remember; QUEST: Trip to accomplish a task. ADVENTURE: Trip without a destination. JOURNEY: When the trip Is more important than the task. If your characters are on a journey, the meat and potatoes of the campaign Is the actual *journey,* It's the way to get there, in which case yes, a majority of your campaign can easily take place, not at the Palace of Elashima where the Crown Prince Is about to be married off to an evil shapeshifter, but on the journey there, where you find out that there's an entire tribe of shapeshifters slowly inserting themselves into positions of power, or something else entirely! Edit: A good example of a Journey Is Lord of the Rings - Getting to Mount Doom and destroying the one ring was basically no time at all.
On the "spiraling out of control": My first GMing experience was a few years back in a Superhero game (Hero system, if anyone cares). The previous session my party had absolutely slaughtered a villain I had hoped to be a recurring mid-level mastermind, so this session began with the players doing final safety wrap-ups at the high-end political party they had been body-guarding people at when the attack occurred. I had planned for a quick conclusion to that and had a few hooks in mind for their teams next moves. What I did not plan for was for 2/3rds of the table to begin channeling their inner Columbos, Fletchers, and Poirots digging into aspects of the baddy's attack I had never even considered. [Looking back on it, my spur-of-the-moment deus ex machina of "highjacked redundant safety systems" to ensure the villain's arrival/ introduction when a PC critted on the elevator he was riding _does_ suggest a more well thought out plan than I envisioned.] Being newer and understanding how much I dislike when my characters get railroaded, I avoided actually telling my players that I had nothing in this line prepared and absolutely no idea of how to improvise something in these lines. Instead, I kept dropping what I thought were obvious hints that this investigation was well in hand by NPCs with nothing better to do; but every one of my move-along,-nothing-to-see-here nudges were interpreted as yet one more clue that this relative nobody was the big clue to hunt down the till-now-only-mentioned Big Bad. We spent two hours IRL and three days in game of me describing dead-ends, them hearing my dead-ends as "The plot thickens; The path lies nearby", me describing the new dead end, repeat. Finally we ended up with a PC trying to pump information out of a heavily drunken former co-owner of a bought-out refrigeration company at his winter home in the Cayman Islands who was under the impression that they were offering to bankroll his lawsuit against his former partners. That glorious train-wreck is how my table coined the term "ending up in the Cayman Islands" as a description for a completely out of control non-storyline that people only enjoy in retrospect.
I just wanted to share a moment I created for my players in my current game. They were traveling by ship to an unexplored wild island (basically chult) and on the way a pod of whales breached the water and the players watched as they blew their breaths and jumped out of the water. Then what was thought to be an eagle in the sky quickly grew to the size of a dragon as a, Roc plunged its talons into the water and lifted a whale out like an eagle fishing salmon. The players realized that this island was way more wild than they could have imagined.
Your mountain thunderstorm story reminded me of a similar experience climbing a mountain in Hawaii. My buddies forgot about me and I slipped and fell down the nearly vertical cliff. I thought I was going to be flung off into open space and die from the drop, but I landed on a root or something and stopped. I yelled out for help for what seemed like a while, but no one came to help. I pulled myself up the mountain by the thorny plants by the side of the path, until my hands were raw but didn't bleed much because the red mud caked into the wounds and stopped the bleeding. At long last I made it to the top, and everyone was like "I woz wundrin whur you went, hurr hurr". What made it worth it, though, was that we were so high up we camped in a cloud, an actual cloud, so thick that you can only see a foot in front of you and you could swish your arm around and it would be soaked. That, and the view going down again was stellar. I've had numerous near-death experiences, but given what came out of it I'd say this one was the closest thing I've ever come to actual adventuring.
My ex-DM did the same thing to our group. We were pretty certain he didn't actually know how to advance his story, so he made a two-week road trip into an 8 session slog-fest. Fight after fight after fight after fight...
Didn't the Pokeman cartoon do that all the time? Cerulean to Vermilion was about thirty minutes' gameplay in the game but felt like it took months in the show.
Adventures in Middle Earth is by far the best travel system. Each character has a role in the journey, such as scout, hunter, and plotter. The characters each make a DC for their role based on the difficulty of the terrain they plotted. This gives the exhausted or well rested bonuses and determines random encounters. Ultimately at the end, their condition determines modifiers at their destination.
Sometimes you can tie the end goal to the journey in interesting ways. My players were hunting a cannibal cult that set up shop in the jungle. They could have skipped straight to it but instead they spent time learning how these cultists had affected the lives of the indigenous peoples of the jungle. When they finally got to kill off the cultists it was personal to them rather than just a job.
One thing about obelisks. In my map, I used obelisks as a marker for the map so I can ensure scale. Then I thought about having the same purpose in world. The obelisk is simply a marker for where they are in the world. Also, the obelisk itself may have nothing special about it. However, it is a reference point to go find something that is important to a campaign.
Some fantastic tips in here, I love the idea of pushing the story forward by showing that they can't further investigate the obelisk, or whatever it may be. And as an aside, though I'm sure you hear it a lot on here, your diction is absolutely marvelous!
Unbelievably useful, as so often with this channel. Just starting DMing with my 10 year olds in ESL class; not much you can do, but you can go on a trip to Shanghai and get your shoes wet in the mud when it rains and you are stuck in the People's park, hiding under a tree. Ok, at their level, that's about four or five simple sentences, but this is the general way to do it. Thankyou.
With regards to the use of random encounter tables, a "middle-ground" method between using them and ignoring them that i have had good results with is to just skim over them and pick one to use as a sort of springboard for an encounter idea, taking the elements listed and modifying them and building a context around them until a more interesting, fleshed-out encounter is born from it. A recent example was during a game in which the party was travelling through a little stretch of unclaimed coastline, sandwiched between mountains and sea, that lay between two countries. Picking out a large group of bandits from a random encounter table, i re-contextualized them as a beached pirate crew that had run aground during a storm (the party had had to take shelter for the night the previous session due to this same storm). It was just something the players could have ignored, but as soon as they saw these guys scurrying around the beach from the road and figuring out they were pirates, they decided to pick a fight with them, and it turned into a damn good fight that actually saw them using good party tactics for the first time in the campaign so far.
In upstate NY e used to have a ritual space as good hour hike from our parking spot. We'd backpack up with all our ritual needs as well as an entire picinic feast. The woods smelled rich with loam and as the chipmunks nattered at us from their perches on fallen birch logs it felt as though the entire forest was alive and intelligent. As if just beyond the rustle of leaves we could hear singing. Thanks for your gorgeous and evocative post, and for bringing that memory back. I'll definitely use it when next my party needs to cross a magic forest. Great video -- I especially appreciate the points on getting the party over a long journey while still making it feel like it happened.
As a travel agent, I would say you could add in some beautiful scenery. Checks of potential bonuses to add. I play Pathfinder. I would say if there's any Shelyn or Desna worshippers in the party, they could feel the urge to draw scenery. Maybe grant them a bonus in the next town from an NPC who always wanted to stop an appreciate a sight at that time that they saw so often, but never drew or recorded themselves. Or maybe Shelyn or Desna is impressed with how good the art is, and they get a +1 sacred bonus on checks for the rest of that day? Or team bonding.
Once I planned basically an entire area around our sorcerer's backstory and they had to suddenly miss several sessions in a row just as we were going there, I wound up improvising several sessions of swamp shenanigans
you are such a good storyteller, each time you started talking about your own real life adventures i got sucked in to your view. i hope i can be half as good someday.
Well put, and it was lovely to hear about your tent experience, and the thistles. One thing I plan to do for my campaign, where my players are about to cross a continent in 10 ingame days (about 2 weeks of Earth days), is give them the opportunity to tell stories with each other, with inspiration as a reward. This lets them contribute to the world (where the GM can select set how fictional/impactful the story actually is!) and helps the party bond more. All while the GM gets to take a break. I even plan to add story-enhancement items to grant greater inspirations (stepping up from 1d4) - so now there's another entire discipline of tool use on top of combat and utility.
random encounter tables can be wierd, the first time I used one my players encountered a drunk hill giant, the encounter was supposed to be them talking to the giant, finding out he was missing his ring, and then find it for him. if they did he gave them some item or whatever. well, my players just attacked him at first sight, the giant being drunk and all basically couldn't resist any of the bard's "hideous laughter" spells and was slain in a very long laughing fit. my players were level 2 I think, the giant had a CR of 7. they just gained half a level from a random encounter. so yeah, the point is - know your players, if a random encounter is supposed to be played peacefully and your group is a bunch of murderhobos you might wanna consider not picking that one. or do, and perhaps you gain a fun little story (or a dead group that got smashed by an angry drunk giant).
You could have informed your players that the rules for for awarding XP say that XP are awarded for SUCCESSFULLY dealing with an encounter, and as they killed this giant before it could ask them for their help, and they never got the reward it was going to give them as gratitude for their kindness in helping. So all in all: They FAILED this encounter, thus: Sorry, no XP for this one! And if the players couriously then try to get to know what it wanted help for, and what it wanted to reward them with, you just answer: Sorry, you killed it, and thus you will never know! At least I think that is what I would have done in your situation.
the exp they got was the monster manual exp for slaying giants, the encounter itself gave like 600 if they dealt with it according to the table, killing the giant gave more around 3000+ lol. I know now in retrospect that I could've dealt with this better but I was younger and had no clue how to handle that situation so I just played the mechanics, which I was more confident in applying correctly.
I think that random tables are an excellent way to foreshadow encounters. For example, you can say, "The players find an abandoned wagon in the middle of the road, with great kegs of mead. What is odd, though, is that the wagon couldn't have been pulled by horses; it has a rope as thick as your arm coiled at the front of it. It looks as if the kegs are still full, but that the wagon has been abandoned for several days already. Gnolls burst out the forest, crossbows at the ready. "Bonehed's mead's ours! Attack!" And each time they roll that same range of numbers, you reveal one more bit of information of how this giant affects the ecosystem of enounters around him. It's a neat way to build up an arc of tension that's not dependent on finishing an encounter, but rather on answering the questions of the players. And even if the players kill the giant, you can have the aftermath of that ripple out through the next encounters. Maybe they come upon the brewery that supplied the giant or some village that paid the giant to obstruct some cave with a giant boulder.
Great video! I have recently started running a campaign for my group of friends, first time doing any dnd at all. On our first session right at the beginning,, myplayers were in the town hall and they mayor was telling them about missing people. One of my players jokingly claims "Its werewolves Mr mayor.", to which I respond.."haha no no, there haven't been werewolves here for 30 years!". ... Whelp...for the next hour all 5 of them were walking around town, trying to find any information or clues on werewolves and why they were kidnapping people based on that one thing the mayor said. And every time they asked an NPC about werewolves I'd say the same thing...THERE ARE NO WEREWOLVES HERE. This just caused them to think the town was hiding something from them. We all had a good laugh after the session once they figured out the campaign had literally zero to do with werewolves.
Is there a reason why do you neglect logistics? From my experience, there are players who don't like travel because it doesn't give them agency. You just move from point A to point B, there are no choices to make. Asking players for making ten dice rolls instead of one does not create agency. That's why you want logistics. Let's say four men travel for a week - they need to eat, sleep and drink. That requires preparation and careful resource management (that includes spell slots, yet I am aware there are "Goodberry" and "Create Food And Water" spells in D&D/PF). Travel itself turns into a mini-game (just ensure it stays "mini" and does not consume too much game time).
totally agree with your point. Resource management makes journeying interesting: after the second goblin night attack when players don't get back at full capacity, or after some goblins steal their food and water, then they'll start getting tense!
I wanna add that I think the investigation frustration you described: "You try a, you check b, you look at c; you find nothing nothing nothing". Can be a very nice tool to throw off your players once in a while. I only use this very seldomly, but in those moments, with the players being at unease not knowing what to do, you really feel a tension growing in your group. This has created some very amazing moments in the campaign I DM, but it is very easy to overdo
Good luck putting creatures in front of players, like "unicorn in a glade". Your PCs are going to try and either tame it as a mount, or kill it for the EXP and crafting resources. How many Wizards would want a Unicorn horn wand? How many Warrior-classes would want a Unicorn horn spear? P.S. Music at the end?
Now they have a huge bounty on their head by the elf lord of the forest and perhaps a couple of high leven elven assassins on their assets. Make every deed have a price and soon they'll stop murder hobboing rare species.
For Ian Fleming, part of the James Bond books was the travel. The books partially function as travelogues and that makes the reader feel like Bond travels to exotic and thrilling locations. And if you look at the locations, NPC's, and encounters they all advance the travelogue. That is, the encounters, NPC's, and locations either tell you something useful or interesting about the country you have come in, or they plant a Checkov's gun. So encounters and locations should tell the players about potential allies, obstacles, or how they do things in this part of the world that they will need to know.
I know this is an older video, but I really appreciate your channel as a whole - specifically, this is great advice! I've struggled with travel in the past, swinging wildly between the grid by grid method (which is universally hated) or else skipping too much and going "eh yay you made it". And my players have DEFINITELY been distracted by random things they found on the side of the road that have derailed the whole thing, so finding that balance is so hard. Thanks again for the advice!
South African DM here! Your tale about the misadventures braving the thunderstorm on the mountaintop really resonated strongly with some of my own memories I have of time spent in the Drakensberg. My own campaign is only two episodes in and I have really enjoyed your tips on creating better adventures. I was especially dreading the trek from base to a quest location,but these tips should make it better for all. Keep up the good work!
If they're hyped to do it, then do it. That's how I handle this. I don't view anything as being "bogged down" unless its clear that the people playing are not into what is happening. If they think there is something there, then there WILL be. That doesn't mean it will be positive, but something WILL be wherever they decide to scratch. If it derails everything, that's fine. If I describe say, a piece of art that they find that is *supposed* to just be a random treasure; and then they, for some reason, become interested in it and start asking questions, well then maybe it's actually a mimicy-thing, maybe it's actually a cleverly hidden dimension door that takes you into a pocket dimension vault for some mad wizard, maybe it's a scrying device for said mad wizard and that will be revealed later. I don't care if they don't "move forward". I will make that goal harder/darker/let the bad guy win and make everything worse, or even just forget about it and gloss over it entirely. All depends on how important I feel that detail is. That isn't to say that I don't have a master plot- but that plot is going to continue if the PCs care or not. They will see the results of their care... or their lack of it.
Everyone wins! The players get to adventure on their own terms, and the villains get to move onwards towards their endgame. Which is honestly more exciting anyways.
I do travel as a hex crawl. I have a map out, depending on terrain and how you're going you go X many hexes in a day, and I either have something planned or make a few quick rolls on a chart. NOT a monster chart, though monsters are there. it's things like an interesting merchant with special loot, a tempest, the notice of an evil being, something from one of my collection of small adventures. For starters it makes this a living breathing world where things are dangerous and people don't travel much because monsters don't oblige by staying in thier designated areas. Player might just wander to see what they can find. because yeah it might be a mini-dungeon or army, but it might be a guy with a custom magic item to sell or an overturned cart some insanely buff goblins turned into a gym, challenging all who pass to a push-up contest. they plan ahead for the trail, or suddenly have to think on thier feet when they run out of stuff. one of my players' favorite stories is still when they ran out of food in the wastes. the party on edge, fighting each other and the land trying to find something. debating on whether to go cannibal on the next person they encountered, or just kill the mule and ditch the treasure to try to make it out. it pitted them against an enemy they couldn't just blast, their own body. Now of course if they took a safe road or just wanted to narrate this particular campaign, I'd oblige and just ask what they did on the road in that campaign. but generally I fine people enjoy travel if you make it a JOURNEY with things to engage in. I wholehearted disagree on doing just an encounter or two though. Either skip the journey entirely and warp them there in a narration, or make it an undertaking. between is a waste of time. everyone will start that encounter with everything in thier arsenal and know there won't be another that day, so basically any fight will be a wash. it's a worst of both worlds sort of compromise that leads to people feeling like the time was wasted. Both travel and skip can work, or maybe just make non-combats only, but commit to one.
I might have to steal some of those ideas. Particularly that Goblin gym. One that I made that I thought was interesting was that the party was travelling along a road near a forest. There was a strange black object floating in the sky about 30 feet in the air (party was level 4). A rumbling could be heard from the forest, like the footsteps of a large creature, and it was getting closer. I gave the party effectively 1 round to prepare (they did almost nothing) before the 2 Ogres and their 2 pet Tigers burst out of the forest, one of the Ogres in front. The Ogre in front jumps into the air, as high as it can at the object, before coming up short and crashing down onto the ground, causing the party to make a Dex saving throw or take damage from being landed on by an Ogre. After a difficult battle, the party was (barely) victorious. It was then that they realised that the object was an immovable rod, that was somehow 30 feet in the air. The Ogres hadn't even known that the party was there: they were just trying to get the immovable rod, and had got a running start. After a lot of rope throwing, the party eventually figured out how to get the immovable rod down. That was the reward for that encounter.
That is brilliant. I may have to steal some of your ideas in turn. which is one of the best parts about the online TTRPG community, being exposed to all sorts of new things to adapt XD seriously though, nothing will make a goliath or even dwarf fume like losing to a goblin in a contest of strength. I mean, goblins can be PCs meaning they can have just as high a strength and even the bigest rules lawyer can't say anything XD
What a great video. for some reason this one helped the most with how i think about balancing descriptions, rolls, combat, and dialogue. i guess a good travel segment is possible to have all of those. very well done! Thanks for your work.
Always great to be reminded to be more descriptive of the different senses as the adventures move throughout the world. Thank for another inspiring video.
Great video my man! I'm about to di a big travel sequence for my group tomorrow and found this helpful. One thing I will say is that I feel sometimes the random encounters can be fun to use because they are a nice surprise for both the players AND the DM
Oh I love this. First time DM so I'm watching a lots of videos, but I'm also a writer and I love adding what types of trees and flowers and fruits and smells and noises the players experience. Of course one of the players asked what kind of noises can we hear it. I was proud of myself because I was ready with a real youtube video creepy sounds a hunter recorded when he was trying to watch for deer. I haven't really experimented with voices. Of course traveling through the Dark Forest was part of my adventure I wrote and the trees move making it difficult to navigate or even escape but once is fun once. Then I used evil vines and screaming mushrooms. The goblins would appear when they heard the mushrooms. Then the party encounted a battle between goblins and a ettin which they smartly avoided. I feel I'll have to make it quicker when they go back through. Thanks
I know this is an old video to comment on, but I am so glad I watched it. I have suspected for a long time that you are South African, but was never sure. Your accent is is such that I thought you may be British. Very very happy to see a fellow South African do well on RUclips and be an amazing voice for us nerds everywhere. You sir, have a new subscriber !
I've been stuck with prepping for my players for my game on Saturday. I just feel like the adventure was missing something, most noticeably in travel. Then this video popped up on my channel. Thank you so much for the tips!! this will be so super helpful.
3:30 one or two Encounters (Adversaries, NPCs, Locations) 10:30 Discriptions (take some journeys, engage the senses) 15:24 Checks/Challenges (simulate the enviroment) 16:33 Surprise Discoverys (combinated moments to punctuate)
I'm fairly new to D&D and stumbled over your channel recently while doing some long-term research so that my campaigns are good when I eventually sit down in the GM chair. I've been devouring everything you've posted since. I'm a fellow South African now living in Texas, and I have to say I'm exceptionally proud of the success of your channel, given you're a countryman. I also suspect you were describing the sunset in the Drakensberg this episode...? I don't know. But you made me miss South Africa. The prettiest beaches I've ever seen. I remember distinctively coming through the pass on my way to Cape Town and seeing all of the city laid out before me. It was incredible. Anyway, I'm going to put it on my bucket list, come hell or high water, to play D&D in a campaign GMed by you just once in my life. Pipe dream, I know, but I'd love to see all of what you teach in action first hand. Take care, friend.
I have an obelisk civilization! The oldest known civilization, though most don’t know what they are. They move about as quick as a snail so most won’t notice movement and just be like why is there a random obelisk in this field? But it’s actually been traveling for a hundred years which is a day’s work for them. If you tip them over you’ve effectively killed them. They can’t die but that is death for them because they’re usually stuck there forever till they erode. If you tip them there’s a sealed hole into their bottom where their may be some loot or some rocks
Reminds me of one time my old GM had a campaign that was straight up JUST the journey, on which we ofc had quite a lot of obstacles and basically mini-adventures at every stop. We spent few sessions in an abandoned castle and met a necromancer, we we attacked by an evil fairy when we visited a city. I don't know if it's a good session model to go off of. Later on he came up with better structure, where journeys lasted quite a bit, but way back to our cult was nearly instant (skip or teleport). Don't worry though, he always made sure journeys were amazingly packed with action and side stories, to the point where the target was just like another thing to tackle.
> quick tips > 20 minutes > ok Great vid though! I've subscribed and started bingeing your videos, you're amazing and your advice has helped me with my first campaign as DM, my friends have loved it and it's been a massive success and I feel like I'm connecting with my friends properly for the first time in years. Thank you so much for your help.
I remember studying Naturalism in literature during highschool. It's always great to describe nature, when it integrates them and the plot with a bigger more indiferent universe.
I have an idea I found on the internet: A plague of Shadows A single Shadow can make a whole horde in mere hours, they fit through 1 inch holes, and are sneaky boys, worthy of divine intervention (or a random group of adventurers).
Horses and carts make it more interesting in that they invite vehicle combat, rest, carrying more supplies, a coach driver/ferriman npc (that might not always agree, could give information, and could get killed off while you're away), and faster travel.
Have your encounters along the way add intrigue to the destination. The bandit leader somehow has an amulet that looks like a carving from one of the books or pictures a character has seen. A troll has a piece of gem that only comes from the region they are headed towards. Etcetera.
I live in Iowa, we can't have IRL adventures. All land is owned. I've never seen a mountain or desert in my whole life. I've barely travelled, we can't afford it. But we play D&D for the raw sake of adventure. We tend to do what we never can.
Another thing to those ideas is to make the thing you are travelling on more interesting. Give your players strange mounts or an airship or the gift of a travelling spell or 1 use magic item from an npc they have helped. One of my current groups have helped an elf commune and so have a choice of using pegasuseses or giant eagles to get to their next destination.These are trained to fly back by themselves. It's a bit different from just walking or using their mounts with the extra legs or a cart etc.
Knowing my players they'd want to catch that fish, deconstruct the obelisk, tame/kill the unicorn, as it gives them bragging rights, trophies, gold and/or xp. It's gonna be a hard retrofit of our game style but I find almost all of your advices... utilisable to a certain extent.
I don't know why, but when I clicked on the vid I was convinced it said "how to make TIME TRAVEL interesting". My disappointment is immeasurable. Good vid tho :)
He's already done a time travel episode that's fairly in depth IIRC. Well, he's already done it from my perspective. Maybe it hasn't happened for you yet.
Something I think goes overlooked is weather. Weather can effect how a party travels, what kind of encounters they can run into, and what their resource management can become by the time they reach their destination.
im making a campaign at the moment set in ancient japan and im using japanese legends and folk lore quite heavily and this really helped.your the best😁
This is your first video that I disagree with. Having emergent adventure opportunities delaying your main adventure is not a bad thing. It builds the flavor of your world and builds heavy immersion. Your players now know that they have options and that their decisions can drive the narrative. It also gives you more material to work with that your characters can embrace as their own choice. While it may delay your main adventure, that isn't a bad thing unless you make it a bad thing.
On the contrary, these things that add flavor to your world don't need to take 4 hours to become significant. For example, my players ran into sentient elk-wolve-things that usually live in the mountain. They were driven to hunt in the lower forest because of food shortages, and since the party didn't attack them when the wolves were eating they will now have aid when they go into the harsh mountains. Side quests are not the same as getting side tracked during travel, and should be used to give flavor to the world.
@@DM-Raven That is the point of this video, he is saying it shouldn't take that long. It shouldn't spiral to the point that the time to get there takes a better part of the session and disrupts the reason for them being there. It is just a respect to the flow of the campaign. You don't want players to lose sight of the main goal.
@@TheDukersrules I think we're arguing semantics at this point. In the video, he says the adventure should start "when you arrive at the destination." I'd argue that getting to the destination can be a fun part of the adventure if you do it correctly. Just saying "you arrive" is a lot of wasted chance at fun problem solving. D&D is about overcoming challenges using the tools you have at your disposal. And trying to avoid danger while getting to a destination can be a huge challenge depending on the situation. I would agree that if you're just sitting there rolling a million dice rolls to simulate every mile that you walk, that's no fun. But if the group knows it's going through dangerous terrain, they can use their skills to either avoid encounters, or even provoke them if they're trying to accomplish the goal of ridding the road of dangers. I honestly leave that up to my players, my job is to make sure I support their action and make the outcome of their decisions "not boring."
@@DM-Raven Then you don't completely disagree with his video :) That is all I was saying. Obviously you don't take main attractions out of certain places, such as dangerous poisonous swamps etc. If it is meany to be a challenge, then it isn't just mundane travel. Also, was not trying to argue, was just discussing. Wanted to see how you backed up your point as I am considering every aspect as a returning GM.
That story about setting up the tent in the storm reminded me of a trip up a mountain when I was a teen in the Boy Scouts. My patrol and I decided to set up camp outside the tree line on a rocky flat. We couldnt stake the tent in to the rocks of course, and we woke up with us and the tent having been blown way to close to the edge of the rocks!
Excellent video!!! Thank you! I am trying to avoid the use of portals after portals so I can make my players explore roads and different ways to get to villages etc. This video really helped!!!
That's brilliant! I haved some great advice to new dms, everything you do on game, npcs, encounters, gossips, fights, itens, quests, everything I do is focused on moving foward the story. For good or bad ways, just keep the story going and the game on. I always present a npc or item on the way, thinking "this is gonna make the game go foward or go back?" Every npc or location is a oportunity to discover a secret or something else about the quest, vilans, etc. 🖖 Guy been amazing as always!
I've constantly had issues involving my Rangers and their talents when I DM, an issue I sought to rectify and strived tirelessly to correct, because as a Ranger player myself I've often felt my DM never allowed my character's talents to shine. All tutorials and guides I've seen online that orient themselves on involving Rangers say that I must never skip the journey and travelling, as this is where a Ranger truly shines. The only problem with this instruction is that it never indicates HOW I'm supposed to narrate that journey without just throwing encounters willy-nilly; the concept of doing this does not sit well with me. This video has proven very helpful in the elaboration of journey narrative and has helped me better myself as a GM. Thank you.
Got a buddy who uses a travel time/speed system. The keep an on going clock eg. The bbeg is planning something on the next full moon. The variables are mounted vs. walking and travel distance. Say your going to a neighboring kingdom and it takes 10 days/encounters by walking and speed changes on how many days it takes the party. And if you hit an encounter you can change the speed. Example: */m = mounted */w =walking "hell bent" 10/m 5/w but kills the mounts and exhausts the party with no resting or beneficial events. "hard riding"- 5/m 3/w distance,sleep only counts as a short rest with no beneficial encounters beacuse they are to busy riding "Easy ride"- 2/m 1/w distance and they party can meet beneficial events and avoids some negative ones. eg. Locals with monster sighting to avoid, merchants with trade caravan, guards with news/rumors of the kingdom and maps. She give priority to plot events like evil minons attacking the party. But one good of the travel system is the control and freedom of the party state. If the PC want to move faster they can but it might harm them. Or if they go slow and investigate they can find helpful benefits.
Thank you for creating the tabletop finder, I found a singular player for my table so far but we've been able to create a useable single player campaign, so thank you
Oh it has turned into two, so thank you again, but I need some input on how you want to be portrayed because I am including a reference to your materials, and such in my game book since I do believe that you produce high quality advice for aspiring GM's that instead of including 200+ pages of sage advice I am just wanting to reference your catalogue, contact me by DM if you want to let me do that
I'm about to have my players embark on a 10-ish day journey across the plains, skirting around a forest, to get to a citadel of Pelor. I've been thinking about how to get them excited for it and this is going to help!
I tend to make 0-1 encounters during a travel. Usually the travels in my campaign take about 2-3 days in game time. Sometimes the encounters are just a small thing happening in the forest. Sometimes it's a random hunter they chat with for a while and gain insight and lore of the world. Sometimes it's a medium difficulty combat encounter. Traveling is just such a big part of the game and it easily takes 25-30% of session time if I really start to put encounters and stuff into it. And usually the players have some time dependent stuff that doesn't necessarily have to be done. But if they postpone it, it will turn to shit usually and a quest fails in a way. This makes it so that the players don't just keep traveling from town to town like fast travel.
@@williamjones7718 tbh, i never liked them too,... they dont convey the hardship or length of the journey. they only look nice, but thats it... but i acknoledge i am biased in that regard. as much as i love the books i just cant stand the movies... and how they tell the story...
@@Brainreaver79 but the travel stuff is still there, pretty much ever other chapter with Frodo was just a description of scenery and them wandering, you could skip it and not miss much other than what the land looked like and how they felt.
This video was super helpful. I'm DMing my first session ever next week and the stenario is extremly simmilar to the exempel you use in the video so it helped me a whole bunch.
One thing I thought about fear of while the party is on the journey. How about making it so the is actually a facet of the actual primary one they are heading for.
My players were very suprised at how challenging and fun travel was. They underestimated the weather and often got lost due to vague directions. They had rests along the journey and the descriptions I gave during them (along with some background music) really emerged them in the roleplay aspect of the game. And when an encounter did pop up, they were genuinely nervous.
one caveat: sometimes the journey IS the adventure. E.g. I'm GM-ing a space opera game where the pc's went through a time portal, for a mission. They've completed their tasks and think going back through the portal they'll meet up with the rest of the team, and decide whether or not they go deliver what they found, or keep it for themselves. In reality time on either side of the portal runs differently, so while they spend a week or so on their side several years have passed in their own time. An enemy faction has showed up, the rest of the team has gone in hiding in a cave system a few weeks travel away, which blocks all signals so they can't be found, and set up a mini civilisation to survive. The pc's are going to have to travel to that location, living of the land, dodging the enemies, dealing with local wildlife and terrain, then finally escape the planet. The whole point is to make "let's wrap it up" into a few sessions of survival.
i am actually a big fan of video game RPG, and learning about TTRPG from your channels have been a blast! i am a murder hobo lol and if i were to run a session i would be trying to level my players up and having a grand adventure … VGRPG roots i guess haha
"The Hidden Fortress" has some nice journey ideas: encounter with patrols, two interactions with checkpoints and a memorable moment of the fire festival. Also the Zatoichi movies usually have a journey with a moment in the blazing Japanese summer, or the scent of plum blossoms in the spring etc.
You say that you don't want to give the players a reason to derail and investigate things that will take them away from the main quest. I would have to say that allowing the group to derail is perfectly fine, as the 'side quest' begins and ends quickly. To use your example, telling the players there is a moving village somewhere will definitely cause the group to look for it. Instead, tell the group about the walking huts, BUT that no one has seen them in a very long time. Then have the group cross one of these huts on it's side, crashed to the ground and with long slender wooden legs slumped on some rocks. They can investigate the ruins, but the side quest begins and ends in those ruins. Side adventures are fine, just keep them short and sweet.
I think a good event to use is a simple mystery. I once had my players needing to go to one country to another by crossing a great sea. But when they were crossing a member of the ships crew walked in on NPC and saw something they shouldn't have. The witness was then killed. Now the players have a murder mystery on their hands.
Indeed. I also agree with Guy in that I really can't stand random encounters. (And I'm obviously talking about random encounters in tabletop, not the channel. The channel is awesome) I will always, always use scripted encounters.
The job of the GM is to figure out the Economy and Ecology of the game, the only other job is to explain what the characters see, hear, and know. Random encounters ignore ecology. I refuse to use them.
I tend to use a form of random scripted encounters. I make a bunch of encounters for an area, ones which aren't just monsters being at a place, and choose from them somewhat randomly (mostly based on which ones I like most). If an encounter doesn't get used, then I can just adapt it a bit to work in a different environment.
9:36 my first gm did this when we were looking at mysterious door after I rolled a nat 20. "It's a door." Was all he would say. It was a lever system door and he didn't want to "give it away" Really hurt my overall D&D experience
Remember, Natural 20 Is not an automatic success on skill checks - If he had a -4 or -10 in perception, maybe It makes sense, but If he had a +5 or more, yeah, I'd call bullshit.
A 20 dosnt grant omnipotence. If your character has no way of knowing what it is then it dosnt matter what you roll. A skill check should only happen if they are called for not when the pcs want to too
We were on a journey through the jungles of chult and met some giants. We hid inside of a rope trick spell when we were over run and someone brought a bag of holding into the rope trick. We spent 6 months irl time stuck in the astral plane. Was actually pretty fun but definitely one of those spiraling out of control random encounters
In my current Elven/fey/Nature Campaign the players have a safehouse in a place of intrest. And THEN when they want to go somewhere, they have to plan, take their stuff, have a traveling means, and we have a session of a journey. like a filler episode.
I break my adventures into chucks. To get to the next chunk, I have all the players roll whatever skill they want as long as it makes sense in the situation. Going through a jungle? Survival, perception, athletics all work great. I need three success of dc14 or a nat20 and one success before three fails. Then I have two encounters prepared, one positive and one negative, for each degree of success or failure they get as a group. If I get more than three fails before one success, then they get a boss monster and they just walked into it's lair lol
encounter i make op the spot: -you come across a stream, make a perseption check =succes -you notice there's something off about this water +i use detect magic -you notice that the water has a very slight enchantment effect on it. +i want to try to jump over it =succes -not wanting to test the waters you gracefully leap over the stream +i too would like to try to jump over it =succes after a crit fail as a halfling -after thinking you wouldn't make it you trow your entire body forward. you catch a mouth full of grass, but you have avoided the water. +then i too shall try to jump over the water =fail -while making a briliant head start you just way to early and land in the middel of the stream +i shout "guys, help me" -while that is what you try to say what instead comes out of your mouth is "guys, help me"(with a pitched up voice) i call it, the squeaky river (:
The only time I ever had player investigate a lair after a random encounter was when they were in a desert, it wasn't windy so the tracks were obvious, and also because it was a desert, it was not going to be very far because the attackers weren't carrying much in terms of food/water. In other words, they only ever investigated when I opened the door for them to do so.
Edit: I normally would NEVER write a comment this long, but I know I have some really good info to share after DMing for over 25 years. And I also figured if anyone will read all this,it would definitely be other DMs and role players lol. I think it's a good rule of thumb to be more descriptive about what happens when players make a roll. And the higher they roll,the more useful information you give them, while low rolls could result in incorrect or misleading information. Of course,you should make this clear from the get go. As far as random encounters, I typically only used those whenever the players would travel randomly. As for having a main quest, I typically tried to use my players background stories in order to make a main quest with multiple branching paths, and different ways to achieve the same goal. Therefore, when traveling, I would still use the players survival skill to determine if they had encounter or not, but typically they wouldn't be random. They would be crafted in a way that would encourage the players to continue on in their quest, to their destination. And when players would roll high on their survival skill, I would give them unique encounters. Some would still be combat, but winning would give them rare items, or useful information such as a map to a dungeon which contains an extremely rare or unique item. Or they could run into a merchant who was being harassed and likely robbed until you show up. The players could intimidate them into leaving, which would result in the merchant either selling you normal wares at 50% off, or selling you expensive rare items. But by leaving them alive, you've now earned an enemy, and the bandits will make an effort at some point to attack or rob the group. This could be during this session, or Ina future session, for example after the group has gone to the dungeon they were going to and completed their quest, on their way back to town, the bandits coul ambush them while they are weakened, or steal from the if the group decides to rest in the same area where the bandits were first encountered. Of course, they woul still get their appropriate rolls to spot the bandits ahead of time, or wake up while they were being robbed. There would also be encounters with no combat, but where the players find something interesting to examine. There may be nothing seemingly useful there, but it could foreshadow something that was going to happen later, or could provide information the players could use to gain an advantage in later quests. And of course there's always room for fun or humorous encounters to break the monotony. Obviously, how appropriate humor is will be different for every game, but I always loved the random encounters in Fallout and Fallout 2 that really served no purpose other than to be cool and funny, often referencing movies or other games. I think when done right, they can add a lot of flavor to your game and serve to make it memorable. It's definitely one of the ways to make a game that people remember and talk about forever, the kind o story you can tell to a stranger and they will enjoy it. As DM, I think it's important not to leave the humor and creativity up to the players, not entirely anyway. The look on the player's face who is playing a wacky bard who sings songs of his accomplishments which are obviously embellished or outright lies when you have a random encounter that make one of his stories true is priceless. For example, running into a group of tribals who have all kinds of tools and talismans and things mad out of a dragons bones. As you investigate how they got them, the village elder sees the bars and starts bowing and praying in a language you don't understand. He then guides you all to a shrine with a giant statue of the bars with the inscription, "Dragon Slayer". As night falls, you are invited to rest in the safety o the village, and around the campfire, they elders tell tales of how the low level bard single handedly slayed the dragon and set the land free from the bondage of slavery their families had been in for generations. As they turn to the bard and ask him to play them an epic song of how he slayed the dragon, it will be hilarious to see how the player handles it. Will he just make something up in hopes of appeasing them? Did he pay enough attention to their stories to get away with lying? Will they realize he's a fraud? So much cool stuff like that can be done while traveling. That's why I embrace it. The most important thing isn't the main quest, it's to have fun.
The travel and camping scenes from the hobbit and LOTR movies were by far my favorite scenes in the movies. There should have been even more to emphasize just how arduous the journey was supposed to be. If you don't like that sort of narrative and description then you definitely want to avoid the books. Tolkien spends chapter upon chapter describing the journey and the environments.
Simplest way to prevent player sidetrack on a journey is to have time pressure. They are disinclined to chase non existent hooks when they're on a mission and have to be there or back by a certain time. Usually. Some of the funniest journeys (indeed all scenes) evolve from critical failures and their consequences. One journey into badlands derailed into nightmare when a pc crit failed a veterinary roll on a traders sick camel. The trader failed to become the intended ally/contact/info source after they killed his camel, the animal loving vet then spiraled into 3 days of morose depression and self doubt while the remaining party had to traverse the badlands without his survival skills and/or the traders help - meaning an inept character had to take charge ensuing a double critical failure on his survival roll for the party (This wadi looks like a good place to ride out the squall...) Extremely funny in the end after they straggled into the dissident camp they were sent to infiltrate with tarnished reputations and no equipment. Seems harsh, but they were truly disastrous rolls and no one actually died in the wild when they should have.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
D&D! Where a 3 day journey takes 10 minutes and a 3 minute fight takes 3 hours!
jajajajajaja yeah i been there jejejjee
I've been in a session that had 5 hour combat with bandits.. because the dm of 16 years still stopped everything to check the rule book to make sure that's how a spell or feature worked..
My party just fought a group of 51 soldigers inside of an old giant's meadhall. It took them 4 minutes in game time (40 total combat rounds) to pull this off. It took us 3 8 hour sessions to get through this since the PCs were at such a huge disadvantage and spent a TON of time strategizing each move.
I was once in a huge, intricate, and epic battle with a Kraken that lasted 10 hours IRL... The fight was about 2 minutes in-game XD
i think my longest fight was against a special rock golem i made called a "goldstar"
in the contrary the shortest fight was a giant dragon of multiple elements... nobody won that one
I am always surprised, when people make these, "how to make travel interesting" videos, nobody ever suggests, "player interaction." It does not have to be an "every day" kind of thing, but as the GM, just let the Players know, that just like sitting around the Tavern, the Players can use this opportunity to converse with their fellow Adventurers. So, if a couple of Players want to take advantage of that, for some light role playing, you can quickly set it up as, "night has fallen, you are sitting around the campfire, who is doing what", or, "you are setting up Camp, who is doing what?" It is simple, organic, and it gives the Players an opportunity to form bonds with each other. It adds a little extra bit of depth, so that these numbers, on a piece of paper, seem more real, and fleshed out. And again, it gives those who are not to keen on the combat aspect of the Game, an avenue in which they feel they have done something meaningful, and enjoyable.
I do this quite often, actually that's where about half the session takes place with my most recent group. Hoping we can eventually get back together and start gaming again.
I've been pondering on the idea of "forcing" my players to interact with each others characters. Since we are friends, we talk alot about the stuff OOC, but the characters ain't got a clue who the cleric or the fighter really is.
@@thevebis6392 The Fighter is the one who causes the bleeding, and the Cleric is the one who stops the bleeding. :p
That is what I loved about Vampire: The Masquerade. It was nearly entirely roleplaying with other players and some NPCs. Depending on the GM and players, there was very little dice rolling. Dice rolls were usually saved for when a player was not role playing their character correctly, or not respecting other characters.
For example, if I was playing a character with maximum charisma and leadership, and also prestige, and I was trying to convince a player with low willpower and intelligence to do something for me, he may resist because he thinks it will put his character in danger. So then I'm forced to go to the GM and have him roll my Charisma + Leadership vs his willpower to see if I convince him or not.
I always tried to bring this aspect when I would DM D&D, trying to give the players an opportunity to to use their full range of abilities, and offering experience points for non combat encounters, basically treating important and tense social encounters almost exactly like combat encounters, only with more role playing.
I agree! On my journeys with friends, I'll remember the conversations we had or the general feeling of being in a group all experiencing the same thing. In five sessions, my pc might not remember the name of that gorgeous mountain the party traveled over, but she WILL remember something like sitting around the campfire on said mountain when one of the other pcs told a joke and accidentally gave away the punchline halfway through, ruining the joke and making it twice as funny. Character interactions add context to what would otherwise be just a postcard.
Had a game where goblins infested a forest that the PC's had to cross several times. Every time they did the goblins would jump them, steal from them, and chase them. At low levels the forest was very dangerous, goblins like traps. As they leveled up the goblins became more of a nuisance, but still too dangerous to chase into the forest as traps will kill you quick. Around lv 5-6 the players got so mad at the goblins that they hunted them (without compensation) killing every goblin in and around the forest. Killed over 200 of them over the next 2 games. The local traders were so happy with this event that they built a magnificent marble statue to the Goblin Slayers! Placed at the entrance to the forest near the Kingdom border. Then the Goblin Master knew who he needed to kill. ;-)
The goblin bard singing the tragidy of the highwayman who brought the evil group that slaughtered over 200 innocent goblin citizens.
"killing every goblin" Goblin Slayer approves
The Goblins just wanted you out of their forest though :(
@@starcycle4308 Yep. We have also played goblin games. Where the nasty adventurers invade our forest... when the players play goblins, the goblins win.... mostly. We do end up losing a few characters along the way but we build backups. Adventurers are dangerous. :)
@@davidbeppler3032 :D
I'm just imaging the players watching as their goblin characters dance on the corpses of their other characters tbh 😂
If a bard is in your party and he does not sing 500 miles they have failed as a bard
I have been band form the bard class :(
(to good at singing)
500 miles! ROFL!
Lance Clemings please tell me it was a male bard that did that, if it wasn’t I’ll be very disappointed.
What about one foot in front of the other
Or "I'm On My Way" or whatever it's called by the same band. It was on the Shrek soundtrack, so it's got that going for it too.
Remember;
QUEST: Trip to accomplish a task.
ADVENTURE: Trip without a destination.
JOURNEY: When the trip Is more important than the task.
If your characters are on a journey, the meat and potatoes of the campaign Is the actual *journey,* It's the way to get there, in which case yes, a majority of your campaign can easily take place, not at the Palace of Elashima where the Crown Prince Is about to be married off to an evil shapeshifter, but on the journey there, where you find out that there's an entire tribe of shapeshifters slowly inserting themselves into positions of power, or something else entirely!
Edit: A good example of a Journey Is Lord of the Rings - Getting to Mount Doom and destroying the one ring was basically no time at all.
This is a great way to break it down!
tomb of annihilation is a great example of this
I still need to play it! I mainly run homebrew stuff!
So do I, but I just felt like it fit within my world and exactly what the group needed at the time.
It's very good. I am now running Acererak as a reoccuring villain after finishing ToA :)
On the "spiraling out of control":
My first GMing experience was a few years back in a Superhero game (Hero system, if anyone cares). The previous session my party had absolutely slaughtered a villain I had hoped to be a recurring mid-level mastermind, so this session began with the players doing final safety wrap-ups at the high-end political party they had been body-guarding people at when the attack occurred. I had planned for a quick conclusion to that and had a few hooks in mind for their teams next moves. What I did not plan for was for 2/3rds of the table to begin channeling their inner Columbos, Fletchers, and Poirots digging into aspects of the baddy's attack I had never even considered. [Looking back on it, my spur-of-the-moment deus ex machina of "highjacked redundant safety systems" to ensure the villain's arrival/ introduction when a PC critted on the elevator he was riding _does_ suggest a more well thought out plan than I envisioned.]
Being newer and understanding how much I dislike when my characters get railroaded, I avoided actually telling my players that I had nothing in this line prepared and absolutely no idea of how to improvise something in these lines. Instead, I kept dropping what I thought were obvious hints that this investigation was well in hand by NPCs with nothing better to do; but every one of my move-along,-nothing-to-see-here nudges were interpreted as yet one more clue that this relative nobody was the big clue to hunt down the till-now-only-mentioned Big Bad. We spent two hours IRL and three days in game of me describing dead-ends, them hearing my dead-ends as "The plot thickens; The path lies nearby", me describing the new dead end, repeat. Finally we ended up with a PC trying to pump information out of a heavily drunken former co-owner of a bought-out refrigeration company at his winter home in the Cayman Islands who was under the impression that they were offering to bankroll his lawsuit against his former partners.
That glorious train-wreck is how my table coined the term "ending up in the Cayman Islands" as a description for a completely out of control non-storyline that people only enjoy in retrospect.
I just wanted to share a moment I created for my players in my current game. They were traveling by ship to an unexplored wild island (basically chult) and on the way a pod of whales breached the water and the players watched as they blew their breaths and jumped out of the water. Then what was thought to be an eagle in the sky quickly grew to the size of a dragon as a, Roc plunged its talons into the water and lifted a whale out like an eagle fishing salmon. The players realized that this island was way more wild than they could have imagined.
Your mountain thunderstorm story reminded me of a similar experience climbing a mountain in Hawaii. My buddies forgot about me and I slipped and fell down the nearly vertical cliff. I thought I was going to be flung off into open space and die from the drop, but I landed on a root or something and stopped. I yelled out for help for what seemed like a while, but no one came to help. I pulled myself up the mountain by the thorny plants by the side of the path, until my hands were raw but didn't bleed much because the red mud caked into the wounds and stopped the bleeding.
At long last I made it to the top, and everyone was like "I woz wundrin whur you went, hurr hurr". What made it worth it, though, was that we were so high up we camped in a cloud, an actual cloud, so thick that you can only see a foot in front of you and you could swish your arm around and it would be soaked. That, and the view going down again was stellar.
I've had numerous near-death experiences, but given what came out of it I'd say this one was the closest thing I've ever come to actual adventuring.
Flibber Nodgets Next time an old white woman asks you for beer and smokes, indulge her. Pele smiled on you my friend.
Write a book. I'll read it.
Wawcke I mean, that was basically the whole story, so...
Congrats, you read the book!
"I've had numerous near-death experiences"
I was talking about that part. But the book was great, thank you.
If you almost die but live to tell an interesting story about it, That IS an adventure.
You can overdo it. One of my GMs has made a travel from one city to another take about 10 sittings.
My ex-DM did the same thing to our group. We were pretty certain he didn't actually know how to advance his story, so he made a two-week road trip into an 8 session slog-fest. Fight after fight after fight after fight...
@@michaeltolsma7717 Ouch, makes me feel better about my two sessions travel times.
Jeez
It's not the destination but the journey lol
Didn't the Pokeman cartoon do that all the time? Cerulean to Vermilion was about thirty minutes' gameplay in the game but felt like it took months in the show.
Adventures in Middle Earth is by far the best travel system. Each character has a role in the journey, such as scout, hunter, and plotter. The characters each make a DC for their role based on the difficulty of the terrain they plotted. This gives the exhausted or well rested bonuses and determines random encounters. Ultimately at the end, their condition determines modifiers at their destination.
Sounds neat! Do you know what AiME sourcebook has that information? Thanks!
@@CalibratedCore pretty sure it's the GM Guide.
Sometimes you can tie the end goal to the journey in interesting ways. My players were hunting a cannibal cult that set up shop in the jungle. They could have skipped straight to it but instead they spent time learning how these cultists had affected the lives of the indigenous peoples of the jungle. When they finally got to kill off the cultists it was personal to them rather than just a job.
Bad idea that obelisk. Ask Ben from Puffin Forest.
LETS PUSH THE OBELISK!
I CAST I D E N T I F Y
XD
K N O C K I T O V E R !
One thing about obelisks. In my map, I used obelisks as a marker for the map so I can ensure scale. Then I thought about having the same purpose in world. The obelisk is simply a marker for where they are in the world. Also, the obelisk itself may have nothing special about it. However, it is a reference point to go find something that is important to a campaign.
Some fantastic tips in here, I love the idea of pushing the story forward by showing that they can't further investigate the obelisk, or whatever it may be.
And as an aside, though I'm sure you hear it a lot on here, your diction is absolutely marvelous!
Thank you :)
Unbelievably useful, as so often with this channel. Just starting DMing with my 10 year olds in ESL class; not much you can do, but you can go on a trip to Shanghai and get your shoes wet in the mud when it rains and you are stuck in the People's park, hiding under a tree. Ok, at their level, that's about four or five simple sentences, but this is the general way to do it. Thankyou.
With regards to the use of random encounter tables, a "middle-ground" method between using them and ignoring them that i have had good results with is to just skim over them and pick one to use as a sort of springboard for an encounter idea, taking the elements listed and modifying them and building a context around them until a more interesting, fleshed-out encounter is born from it. A recent example was during a game in which the party was travelling through a little stretch of unclaimed coastline, sandwiched between mountains and sea, that lay between two countries. Picking out a large group of bandits from a random encounter table, i re-contextualized them as a beached pirate crew that had run aground during a storm (the party had had to take shelter for the night the previous session due to this same storm). It was just something the players could have ignored, but as soon as they saw these guys scurrying around the beach from the road and figuring out they were pirates, they decided to pick a fight with them, and it turned into a damn good fight that actually saw them using good party tactics for the first time in the campaign so far.
In upstate NY e used to have a ritual space as good hour hike from our parking spot. We'd backpack up with all our ritual needs as well as an entire picinic feast.
The woods smelled rich with loam and as the chipmunks nattered at us from their perches on fallen birch logs it felt as though the entire forest was alive and intelligent. As if just beyond the rustle of leaves we could hear singing.
Thanks for your gorgeous and evocative post, and for bringing that memory back. I'll definitely use it when next my party needs to cross a magic forest.
Great video -- I especially appreciate the points on getting the party over a long journey while still making it feel like it happened.
As a travel agent, I would say you could add in some beautiful scenery. Checks of potential bonuses to add.
I play Pathfinder. I would say if there's any Shelyn or Desna worshippers in the party, they could feel the urge to draw scenery. Maybe grant them a bonus in the next town from an NPC who always wanted to stop an appreciate a sight at that time that they saw so often, but never drew or recorded themselves. Or maybe Shelyn or Desna is impressed with how good the art is, and they get a +1 sacred bonus on checks for the rest of that day?
Or team bonding.
Once I planned basically an entire area around our sorcerer's backstory and they had to suddenly miss several sessions in a row just as we were going there, I wound up improvising several sessions of swamp shenanigans
you are such a good storyteller, each time you started talking about your own real life adventures i got sucked in to your view. i hope i can be half as good someday.
Well put, and it was lovely to hear about your tent experience, and the thistles. One thing I plan to do for my campaign, where my players are about to cross a continent in 10 ingame days (about 2 weeks of Earth days), is give them the opportunity to tell stories with each other, with inspiration as a reward. This lets them contribute to the world (where the GM can select set how fictional/impactful the story actually is!) and helps the party bond more. All while the GM gets to take a break. I even plan to add story-enhancement items to grant greater inspirations (stepping up from 1d4) - so now there's another entire discipline of tool use on top of combat and utility.
random encounter tables can be wierd, the first time I used one my players encountered a drunk hill giant, the encounter was supposed to be them talking to the giant, finding out he was missing his ring, and then find it for him. if they did he gave them some item or whatever.
well, my players just attacked him at first sight, the giant being drunk and all basically couldn't resist any of the bard's "hideous laughter" spells and was slain in a very long laughing fit.
my players were level 2 I think, the giant had a CR of 7. they just gained half a level from a random encounter.
so yeah, the point is - know your players, if a random encounter is supposed to be played peacefully and your group is a bunch of murderhobos you might wanna consider not picking that one. or do, and perhaps you gain a fun little story (or a dead group that got smashed by an angry drunk giant).
You could have informed your players that the rules for for awarding XP say that XP are awarded for SUCCESSFULLY dealing with an encounter, and as they killed this giant before it could ask them for their help, and they never got the reward it was going to give them as gratitude for their kindness in helping. So all in all: They FAILED this encounter, thus: Sorry, no XP for this one!
And if the players couriously then try to get to know what it wanted help for, and what it wanted to reward them with, you just answer: Sorry, you killed it, and thus you will never know!
At least I think that is what I would have done in your situation.
the exp they got was the monster manual exp for slaying giants, the encounter itself gave like 600 if they dealt with it according to the table, killing the giant gave more around 3000+ lol.
I know now in retrospect that I could've dealt with this better but I was younger and had no clue how to handle that situation so I just played the mechanics, which I was more confident in applying correctly.
Did you lower the CR due to it being drunk?
I think that random tables are an excellent way to foreshadow encounters. For example, you can say,
"The players find an abandoned wagon in the middle of the road, with great kegs of mead. What is odd, though, is that the wagon couldn't have been pulled by horses; it has a rope as thick as your arm coiled at the front of it. It looks as if the kegs are still full, but that the wagon has been abandoned for several days already. Gnolls burst out the forest, crossbows at the ready. "Bonehed's mead's ours! Attack!"
And each time they roll that same range of numbers, you reveal one more bit of information of how this giant affects the ecosystem of enounters around him.
It's a neat way to build up an arc of tension that's not dependent on finishing an encounter, but rather on answering the questions of the players.
And even if the players kill the giant, you can have the aftermath of that ripple out through the next encounters. Maybe they come upon the brewery that supplied the giant or some village that paid the giant to obstruct some cave with a giant boulder.
kinda, I gave him -2 on saving throws. I guess that could be seen as lowering his Cr @AlmightyK
Great video! I have recently started running a campaign for my group of friends, first time doing any dnd at all. On our first session right at the beginning,, myplayers were in the town hall and they mayor was telling them about missing people. One of my players jokingly claims "Its werewolves Mr mayor.", to which I respond.."haha no no, there haven't been werewolves here for 30 years!".
...
Whelp...for the next hour all 5 of them were walking around town, trying to find any information or clues on werewolves and why they were kidnapping people based on that one thing the mayor said.
And every time they asked an NPC about werewolves I'd say the same thing...THERE ARE NO WEREWOLVES HERE. This just caused them to think the town was hiding something from them. We all had a good laugh after the session once they figured out the campaign had literally zero to do with werewolves.
Is there a reason why do you neglect logistics? From my experience, there are players who don't like travel because it doesn't give them agency. You just move from point A to point B, there are no choices to make. Asking players for making ten dice rolls instead of one does not create agency. That's why you want logistics. Let's say four men travel for a week - they need to eat, sleep and drink. That requires preparation and careful resource management (that includes spell slots, yet I am aware there are "Goodberry" and "Create Food And Water" spells in D&D/PF). Travel itself turns into a mini-game (just ensure it stays "mini" and does not consume too much game time).
totally agree with your point. Resource management makes journeying interesting: after the second goblin night attack when players don't get back at full capacity, or after some goblins steal their food and water, then they'll start getting tense!
I wanna add that I think the investigation frustration you described: "You try a, you check b, you look at c; you find nothing nothing nothing". Can be a very nice tool to throw off your players once in a while.
I only use this very seldomly, but in those moments, with the players being at unease not knowing what to do, you really feel a tension growing in your group.
This has created some very amazing moments in the campaign I DM, but it is very easy to overdo
Good luck putting creatures in front of players, like "unicorn in a glade". Your PCs are going to try and either tame it as a mount, or kill it for the EXP and crafting resources. How many Wizards would want a Unicorn horn wand? How many Warrior-classes would want a Unicorn horn spear?
P.S. Music at the end?
The music is Desert Caravan by Aaron Kenny
@Lance Clemings And here I am planning to put a unicorn so if they try to tame it and none of them is a virgin they will all die trying lol
Now they have a huge bounty on their head by the elf lord of the forest and perhaps a couple of high leven elven assassins on their assets. Make every deed have a price and soon they'll stop murder hobboing rare species.
For Ian Fleming, part of the James Bond books was the travel. The books partially function as travelogues and that makes the reader feel like Bond travels to exotic and thrilling locations. And if you look at the locations, NPC's, and encounters they all advance the travelogue. That is, the encounters, NPC's, and locations either tell you something useful or interesting about the country you have come in, or they plant a Checkov's gun. So encounters and locations should tell the players about potential allies, obstacles, or how they do things in this part of the world that they will need to know.
I know this is an older video, but I really appreciate your channel as a whole - specifically, this is great advice! I've struggled with travel in the past, swinging wildly between the grid by grid method (which is universally hated) or else skipping too much and going "eh yay you made it". And my players have DEFINITELY been distracted by random things they found on the side of the road that have derailed the whole thing, so finding that balance is so hard. Thanks again for the advice!
South African DM here! Your tale about the misadventures braving the thunderstorm on the mountaintop really resonated strongly with some of my own memories I have of time spent in the Drakensberg. My own campaign is only two episodes in and I have really enjoyed your tips on creating better adventures. I was especially dreading the trek from base to a quest location,but these tips should make it better for all. Keep up the good work!
I'm a simple preacher: I hear about the Monolith, I click like.
Like him or hate him, he does what he says on the tin
PREACH!
If they're hyped to do it, then do it. That's how I handle this. I don't view anything as being "bogged down" unless its clear that the people playing are not into what is happening. If they think there is something there, then there WILL be. That doesn't mean it will be positive, but something WILL be wherever they decide to scratch. If it derails everything, that's fine. If I describe say, a piece of art that they find that is *supposed* to just be a random treasure; and then they, for some reason, become interested in it and start asking questions, well then maybe it's actually a mimicy-thing, maybe it's actually a cleverly hidden dimension door that takes you into a pocket dimension vault for some mad wizard, maybe it's a scrying device for said mad wizard and that will be revealed later.
I don't care if they don't "move forward". I will make that goal harder/darker/let the bad guy win and make everything worse, or even just forget about it and gloss over it entirely. All depends on how important I feel that detail is.
That isn't to say that I don't have a master plot- but that plot is going to continue if the PCs care or not. They will see the results of their care... or their lack of it.
Everyone wins! The players get to adventure on their own terms, and the villains get to move onwards towards their endgame. Which is honestly more exciting anyways.
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I do travel as a hex crawl. I have a map out, depending on terrain and how you're going you go X many hexes in a day, and I either have something planned or make a few quick rolls on a chart. NOT a monster chart, though monsters are there. it's things like an interesting merchant with special loot, a tempest, the notice of an evil being, something from one of my collection of small adventures.
For starters it makes this a living breathing world where things are dangerous and people don't travel much because monsters don't oblige by staying in thier designated areas. Player might just wander to see what they can find. because yeah it might be a mini-dungeon or army, but it might be a guy with a custom magic item to sell or an overturned cart some insanely buff goblins turned into a gym, challenging all who pass to a push-up contest. they plan ahead for the trail, or suddenly have to think on thier feet when they run out of stuff. one of my players' favorite stories is still when they ran out of food in the wastes. the party on edge, fighting each other and the land trying to find something. debating on whether to go cannibal on the next person they encountered, or just kill the mule and ditch the treasure to try to make it out. it pitted them against an enemy they couldn't just blast, their own body. Now of course if they took a safe road or just wanted to narrate this particular campaign, I'd oblige and just ask what they did on the road in that campaign. but generally I fine people enjoy travel if you make it a JOURNEY with things to engage in.
I wholehearted disagree on doing just an encounter or two though. Either skip the journey entirely and warp them there in a narration, or make it an undertaking. between is a waste of time. everyone will start that encounter with everything in thier arsenal and know there won't be another that day, so basically any fight will be a wash. it's a worst of both worlds sort of compromise that leads to people feeling like the time was wasted. Both travel and skip can work, or maybe just make non-combats only, but commit to one.
I might have to steal some of those ideas. Particularly that Goblin gym.
One that I made that I thought was interesting was that the party was travelling along a road near a forest. There was a strange black object floating in the sky about 30 feet in the air (party was level 4). A rumbling could be heard from the forest, like the footsteps of a large creature, and it was getting closer. I gave the party effectively 1 round to prepare (they did almost nothing) before the 2 Ogres and their 2 pet Tigers burst out of the forest, one of the Ogres in front.
The Ogre in front jumps into the air, as high as it can at the object, before coming up short and crashing down onto the ground, causing the party to make a Dex saving throw or take damage from being landed on by an Ogre.
After a difficult battle, the party was (barely) victorious.
It was then that they realised that the object was an immovable rod, that was somehow 30 feet in the air. The Ogres hadn't even known that the party was there: they were just trying to get the immovable rod, and had got a running start. After a lot of rope throwing, the party eventually figured out how to get the immovable rod down.
That was the reward for that encounter.
That is brilliant. I may have to steal some of your ideas in turn. which is one of the best parts about the online TTRPG community, being exposed to all sorts of new things to adapt XD
seriously though, nothing will make a goliath or even dwarf fume like losing to a goblin in a contest of strength. I mean, goblins can be PCs meaning they can have just as high a strength and even the bigest rules lawyer can't say anything XD
100% on board with this.
What a great video. for some reason this one helped the most with how i think about balancing descriptions, rolls, combat, and dialogue. i guess a good travel segment is possible to have all of those. very well done! Thanks for your work.
Always great to be reminded to be more descriptive of the different senses as the adventures move throughout the world.
Thank for another inspiring video.
Great video my man! I'm about to di a big travel sequence for my group tomorrow and found this helpful. One thing I will say is that I feel sometimes the random encounters can be fun to use because they are a nice surprise for both the players AND the DM
Oh I love this. First time DM so I'm watching a lots of videos, but I'm also a writer and I love adding what types of trees and flowers and fruits and smells and noises the players experience. Of course one of the players asked what kind of noises can we hear it. I was proud of myself because I was ready with a real youtube video creepy sounds a hunter recorded when he was trying to watch for deer. I haven't really experimented with voices. Of course traveling through the Dark Forest was part of my adventure I wrote and the trees move making it difficult to navigate or even escape but once is fun once. Then I used evil vines and screaming mushrooms. The goblins would appear when they heard the mushrooms. Then the party encounted a battle between goblins and a ettin which they smartly avoided. I feel I'll have to make it quicker when they go back through. Thanks
What’s wrong with a road trip session?
“Bogged down” means the players are directing the action, which is a good thing.
I know this is an old video to comment on, but I am so glad I watched it. I have suspected for a long time that you are South African, but was never sure. Your accent is is such that I thought you may be British. Very very happy to see a fellow South African do well on RUclips and be an amazing voice for us nerds everywhere. You sir, have a new subscriber
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I've been stuck with prepping for my players for my game on Saturday. I just feel like the adventure was missing something, most noticeably in travel. Then this video popped up on my channel. Thank you so much for the tips!! this will be so super helpful.
3:30 one or two Encounters (Adversaries, NPCs, Locations)
10:30 Discriptions (take some journeys, engage the senses)
15:24 Checks/Challenges (simulate the enviroment)
16:33 Surprise Discoverys (combinated moments to punctuate)
I'm fairly new to D&D and stumbled over your channel recently while doing some long-term research so that my campaigns are good when I eventually sit down in the GM chair. I've been devouring everything you've posted since. I'm a fellow South African now living in Texas, and I have to say I'm exceptionally proud of the success of your channel, given you're a countryman. I also suspect you were describing the sunset in the Drakensberg this episode...? I don't know. But you made me miss South Africa. The prettiest beaches I've ever seen. I remember distinctively coming through the pass on my way to Cape Town and seeing all of the city laid out before me. It was incredible.
Anyway, I'm going to put it on my bucket list, come hell or high water, to play D&D in a campaign GMed by you just once in my life. Pipe dream, I know, but I'd love to see all of what you teach in action first hand. Take care, friend.
I have an obelisk civilization! The oldest known civilization, though most don’t know what they are. They move about as quick as a snail so most won’t notice movement and just be like why is there a random obelisk in this field? But it’s actually been traveling for a hundred years which is a day’s work for them. If you tip them over you’ve effectively killed them. They can’t die but that is death for them because they’re usually stuck there forever till they erode. If you tip them there’s a sealed hole into their bottom where their may be some loot or some rocks
Reminds me of one time my old GM had a campaign that was straight up JUST the journey, on which we ofc had quite a lot of obstacles and basically mini-adventures at every stop. We spent few sessions in an abandoned castle and met a necromancer, we we attacked by an evil fairy when we visited a city. I don't know if it's a good session model to go off of.
Later on he came up with better structure, where journeys lasted quite a bit, but way back to our cult was nearly instant (skip or teleport). Don't worry though, he always made sure journeys were amazingly packed with action and side stories, to the point where the target was just like another thing to tackle.
> quick tips
> 20 minutes
> ok
Great vid though! I've subscribed and started bingeing your videos, you're amazing and your advice has helped me with my first campaign as DM, my friends have loved it and it's been a massive success and I feel like I'm connecting with my friends properly for the first time in years. Thank you so much for your help.
Just found your channel. I'm DMing my first campaign and so far my players seem to be enjoying. These videos are helping a lot. Thank you!
That's why TOR (The One Ring) is so interesting... journeys are part of the adventure.
I remember studying Naturalism in literature during highschool. It's always great to describe nature, when it integrates them and the plot with a bigger more indiferent universe.
I have an idea I found on the internet: A plague of Shadows
A single Shadow can make a whole horde in mere hours, they fit through 1 inch holes, and are sneaky boys, worthy of divine intervention (or a random group of adventurers).
Horses and carts make it more interesting in that they invite vehicle combat, rest, carrying more supplies, a coach driver/ferriman npc (that might not always agree, could give information, and could get killed off while you're away), and faster travel.
Have your encounters along the way add intrigue to the destination. The bandit leader somehow has an amulet that looks like a carving from one of the books or pictures a character has seen. A troll has a piece of gem that only comes from the region they are headed towards. Etcetera.
I live in Iowa, we can't have IRL adventures. All land is owned. I've never seen a mountain or desert in my whole life. I've barely travelled, we can't afford it. But we play D&D for the raw sake of adventure. We tend to do what we never can.
Another thing to those ideas is to make the thing you are travelling on more interesting. Give your players strange mounts or an airship or the gift of a travelling spell or 1 use magic item from an npc they have helped. One of my current groups have helped an elf commune and so have a choice of using pegasuseses or giant eagles to get to their next destination.These are trained to fly back by themselves. It's a bit different from just walking or using their mounts with the extra legs or a cart etc.
Knowing my players they'd want to catch that fish, deconstruct the obelisk, tame/kill the unicorn, as it gives them bragging rights, trophies, gold and/or xp.
It's gonna be a hard retrofit of our game style but I find almost all of your advices... utilisable to a certain extent.
I don't know why, but when I clicked on the vid I was convinced it said "how to make TIME TRAVEL interesting".
My disappointment is immeasurable.
Good vid tho :)
The video about time travel is in another time.
That's what I read too...
Actually id like to see video called "how to make time travel NOT destroy the plot with myriads of plot-holes".
It did... did.
He's already done a time travel episode that's fairly in depth IIRC.
Well, he's already done it from my perspective. Maybe it hasn't happened for you yet.
I really liked hearing about your real life hiking experience. Your descriptions were excellent. You should share your experiences with us more!
Something I think goes overlooked is weather. Weather can effect how a party travels, what kind of encounters they can run into, and what their resource management can become by the time they reach their destination.
Love your content! You're the best! This is my obligatory comment to enhance your RUclips algorithm performance.
When you describe that sunrise... I can see why you’re a GM👌👌👌
im making a campaign at the moment set in ancient japan and im using japanese legends and folk lore quite heavily and this really helped.your the best😁
This is your first video that I disagree with. Having emergent adventure opportunities delaying your main adventure is not a bad thing. It builds the flavor of your world and builds heavy immersion. Your players now know that they have options and that their decisions can drive the narrative. It also gives you more material to work with that your characters can embrace as their own choice. While it may delay your main adventure, that isn't a bad thing unless you make it a bad thing.
On the contrary, these things that add flavor to your world don't need to take 4 hours to become significant. For example, my players ran into sentient elk-wolve-things that usually live in the mountain. They were driven to hunt in the lower forest because of food shortages, and since the party didn't attack them when the wolves were eating they will now have aid when they go into the harsh mountains. Side quests are not the same as getting side tracked during travel, and should be used to give flavor to the world.
I don't know any GM's who's overland travel rules take four hours for small amounts of travel.
@@DM-Raven That is the point of this video, he is saying it shouldn't take that long. It shouldn't spiral to the point that the time to get there takes a better part of the session and disrupts the reason for them being there. It is just a respect to the flow of the campaign. You don't want players to lose sight of the main goal.
@@TheDukersrules I think we're arguing semantics at this point. In the video, he says the adventure should start "when you arrive at the destination." I'd argue that getting to the destination can be a fun part of the adventure if you do it correctly. Just saying "you arrive" is a lot of wasted chance at fun problem solving. D&D is about overcoming challenges using the tools you have at your disposal. And trying to avoid danger while getting to a destination can be a huge challenge depending on the situation. I would agree that if you're just sitting there rolling a million dice rolls to simulate every mile that you walk, that's no fun. But if the group knows it's going through dangerous terrain, they can use their skills to either avoid encounters, or even provoke them if they're trying to accomplish the goal of ridding the road of dangers. I honestly leave that up to my players, my job is to make sure I support their action and make the outcome of their decisions "not boring."
@@DM-Raven Then you don't completely disagree with his video :) That is all I was saying. Obviously you don't take main attractions out of certain places, such as dangerous poisonous swamps etc. If it is meany to be a challenge, then it isn't just mundane travel. Also, was not trying to argue, was just discussing. Wanted to see how you backed up your point as I am considering every aspect as a returning GM.
Another great topic. Can't wait to load this into memory.
That story about setting up the tent in the storm reminded me of a trip up a mountain when I was a teen in the Boy Scouts. My patrol and I decided to set up camp outside the tree line on a rocky flat. We couldnt stake the tent in to the rocks of course, and we woke up with us and the tent having been blown way to close to the edge of the rocks!
Excellent video!!! Thank you! I am trying to avoid the use of portals after portals so I can make my players explore roads and different ways to get to villages etc. This video really helped!!!
That's brilliant! I haved some great advice to new dms, everything you do on game, npcs, encounters, gossips, fights, itens, quests, everything I do is focused on moving foward the story. For good or bad ways, just keep the story going and the game on.
I always present a npc or item on the way, thinking "this is gonna make the game go foward or go back?" Every npc or location is a oportunity to discover a secret or something else about the quest, vilans, etc.
🖖 Guy been amazing as always!
I've constantly had issues involving my Rangers and their talents when I DM, an issue I sought to rectify and strived tirelessly to correct, because as a Ranger player myself I've often felt my DM never allowed my character's talents to shine. All tutorials and guides I've seen online that orient themselves on involving Rangers say that I must never skip the journey and travelling, as this is where a Ranger truly shines. The only problem with this instruction is that it never indicates HOW I'm supposed to narrate that journey without just throwing encounters willy-nilly; the concept of doing this does not sit well with me. This video has proven very helpful in the elaboration of journey narrative and has helped me better myself as a GM. Thank you.
Got a buddy who uses a travel time/speed system. The keep an on going clock eg. The bbeg is planning something on the next full moon. The variables are mounted vs. walking and travel distance. Say your going to a neighboring kingdom and it takes 10 days/encounters by walking and speed changes on how many days it takes the party. And if you hit an encounter you can change the speed. Example: */m = mounted */w =walking
"hell bent" 10/m 5/w but kills the mounts and exhausts the party with no resting or beneficial events.
"hard riding"- 5/m 3/w distance,sleep only counts as a short rest with no beneficial encounters beacuse they are to busy riding
"Easy ride"- 2/m 1/w distance and they party can meet beneficial events and avoids some negative ones. eg. Locals with monster sighting to avoid, merchants with trade caravan, guards with news/rumors of the kingdom and maps.
She give priority to plot events like evil minons attacking the party.
But one good of the travel system is the control and freedom of the party state. If the PC want to move faster they can but it might harm them. Or if they go slow and investigate they can find helpful benefits.
Thank you for creating the tabletop finder, I found a singular player for my table so far but we've been able to create a useable single player campaign, so thank you
Oh it has turned into two, so thank you again, but I need some input on how you want to be portrayed because I am including a reference to your materials, and such in my game book since I do believe that you produce high quality advice for aspiring GM's that instead of including 200+ pages of sage advice I am just wanting to reference your catalogue, contact me by DM if you want to let me do that
Thank you so much for these videos! I’ve watched quite a few and they are always succinct and wonderfully useful.
I'm about to have my players embark on a 10-ish day journey across the plains, skirting around a forest, to get to a citadel of Pelor. I've been thinking about how to get them excited for it and this is going to help!
I tend to make 0-1 encounters during a travel. Usually the travels in my campaign take about 2-3 days in game time. Sometimes the encounters are just a small thing happening in the forest. Sometimes it's a random hunter they chat with for a while and gain insight and lore of the world. Sometimes it's a medium difficulty combat encounter. Traveling is just such a big part of the game and it easily takes 25-30% of session time if I really start to put encounters and stuff into it. And usually the players have some time dependent stuff that doesn't necessarily have to be done. But if they postpone it, it will turn to shit usually and a quest fails in a way. This makes it so that the players don't just keep traveling from town to town like fast travel.
Those travel shots in LotR that you seem to hate are literally 'descriptions' for the audience.
Yes. Conveys the long trek and wild lands. I'll wager our friend does not enjoy fishing.
@@williamjones7718 tbh, i never liked them too,... they dont convey the hardship or length of the journey. they only look nice, but thats it... but i acknoledge i am biased in that regard. as much as i love the books i just cant stand the movies... and how they tell the story...
@@Brainreaver79 but the travel stuff is still there, pretty much ever other chapter with Frodo was just a description of scenery and them wandering, you could skip it and not miss much other than what the land looked like and how they felt.
Your my favorite dnd youtuber
Very good advice for a common stumbling point in sessions
This video was super helpful. I'm DMing my first session ever next week and the stenario is extremly simmilar to the exempel you use in the video so it helped me a whole bunch.
One thing I thought about fear of while the party is on the journey. How about making it so the is actually a facet of the actual primary one they are heading for.
My players were very suprised at how challenging and fun travel was. They underestimated the weather and often got lost due to vague directions. They had rests along the journey and the descriptions I gave during them (along with some background music) really emerged them in the roleplay aspect of the game. And when an encounter did pop up, they were genuinely nervous.
one caveat: sometimes the journey IS the adventure. E.g. I'm GM-ing a space opera game where the pc's went through a time portal, for a mission. They've completed their tasks and think going back through the portal they'll meet up with the rest of the team, and decide whether or not they go deliver what they found, or keep it for themselves. In reality time on either side of the portal runs differently, so while they spend a week or so on their side several years have passed in their own time. An enemy faction has showed up, the rest of the team has gone in hiding in a cave system a few weeks travel away, which blocks all signals so they can't be found, and set up a mini civilisation to survive. The pc's are going to have to travel to that location, living of the land, dodging the enemies, dealing with local wildlife and terrain, then finally escape the planet. The whole point is to make "let's wrap it up" into a few sessions of survival.
i am actually a big fan of video game RPG, and learning about TTRPG from your channels have been a blast! i am a murder hobo lol and if i were to run a session i would be trying to level my players up and having a grand adventure … VGRPG roots i guess haha
"The Hidden Fortress" has some nice journey ideas: encounter with patrols, two interactions with checkpoints and a memorable moment of the fire festival. Also the Zatoichi movies usually have a journey with a moment in the blazing Japanese summer, or the scent of plum blossoms in the spring etc.
This actually really helped as my campaign is taking place across an entire super continent
Your videos are fantastic and I thoroughly enjoy watching and learning from them. Great work, as always! Love, peace, and chicken grease.
You say that you don't want to give the players a reason to derail and investigate things that will take them away from the main quest. I would have to say that allowing the group to derail is perfectly fine, as the 'side quest' begins and ends quickly.
To use your example, telling the players there is a moving village somewhere will definitely cause the group to look for it.
Instead, tell the group about the walking huts, BUT that no one has seen them in a very long time. Then have the group cross one of these huts on it's side, crashed to the ground and with long slender wooden legs slumped on some rocks. They can investigate the ruins, but the side quest begins and ends in those ruins.
Side adventures are fine, just keep them short and sweet.
I think a good event to use is a simple mystery.
I once had my players needing to go to one country to another by crossing a great sea.
But when they were crossing a member of the ships crew walked in on NPC and saw something they shouldn't have. The witness was then killed.
Now the players have a murder mystery on their hands.
Yes, "keep things simple" is a good advice to remember!
Indeed. I also agree with Guy in that I really can't stand random encounters. (And I'm obviously talking about random encounters in tabletop, not the channel. The channel is awesome)
I will always, always use scripted encounters.
The job of the GM is to figure out the Economy and Ecology of the game, the only other job is to explain what the characters see, hear, and know. Random encounters ignore ecology. I refuse to use them.
I tend to use a form of random scripted encounters. I make a bunch of encounters for an area, ones which aren't just monsters being at a place, and choose from them somewhat randomly (mostly based on which ones I like most). If an encounter doesn't get used, then I can just adapt it a bit to work in a different environment.
FRKNSPACEWIZARD!!! Brett that works!
9:36 my first gm did this when we were looking at mysterious door after I rolled a nat 20. "It's a door." Was all he would say. It was a lever system door and he didn't want to "give it away" Really hurt my overall D&D experience
Such bullshit. Natural 20 should reveal nearly everything, and more when you add your relevant bonuses.
Sounds like your DM thought he was far more clever than any of his players. xD
I'm sorry :(
Remember, Natural 20 Is not an automatic success on skill checks - If he had a -4 or -10 in perception, maybe It makes sense, but If he had a +5 or more, yeah, I'd call bullshit.
A 20 dosnt grant omnipotence. If your character has no way of knowing what it is then it dosnt matter what you roll.
A skill check should only happen if they are called for not when the pcs want to too
very usefull as always. Please inspire me about space travels!
We were on a journey through the jungles of chult and met some giants. We hid inside of a rope trick spell when we were over run and someone brought a bag of holding into the rope trick. We spent 6 months irl time stuck in the astral plane. Was actually pretty fun but definitely one of those spiraling out of control random encounters
In my current Elven/fey/Nature Campaign the players have a safehouse in a place of intrest. And THEN when they want to go somewhere, they have to plan, take their stuff, have a traveling means, and we have a session of a journey. like a filler episode.
Once again, the topic I need when I need it
Well done
Dude, I found this channel today and I am watching all your videos. Really good.
Excellent video!!! I leaned so much, fantastic work Guy
I break my adventures into chucks. To get to the next chunk, I have all the players roll whatever skill they want as long as it makes sense in the situation. Going through a jungle? Survival, perception, athletics all work great. I need three success of dc14 or a nat20 and one success before three fails. Then I have two encounters prepared, one positive and one negative, for each degree of success or failure they get as a group. If I get more than three fails before one success, then they get a boss monster and they just walked into it's lair lol
encounter i make op the spot:
-you come across a stream, make a perseption check
=succes
-you notice there's something off about this water
+i use detect magic
-you notice that the water has a very slight enchantment effect on it.
+i want to try to jump over it
=succes
-not wanting to test the waters you gracefully leap over the stream
+i too would like to try to jump over it
=succes after a crit fail as a halfling
-after thinking you wouldn't make it you trow your entire body forward. you catch a mouth full of grass, but you have avoided the water.
+then i too shall try to jump over the water
=fail
-while making a briliant head start you just way to early and land in the middel of the stream
+i shout "guys, help me"
-while that is what you try to say what instead comes out of your mouth is "guys, help me"(with a pitched up voice)
i call it, the squeaky river (:
Hey Guy. Lourens here. been watching your channel of late, as I have been getting into DnD
THIS is literally a game-changer for me! Thank you!! :-)
The only time I ever had player investigate a lair after a random encounter was when they were in a desert, it wasn't windy so the tracks were obvious, and also because it was a desert, it was not going to be very far because the attackers weren't carrying much in terms of food/water.
In other words, they only ever investigated when I opened the door for them to do so.
"3-Headed-whatever" is totally my favorite monster from now on
Edit: I normally would NEVER write a comment this long, but I know I have some really good info to share after DMing for over 25 years. And I also figured if anyone will read all this,it would definitely be other DMs and role players lol.
I think it's a good rule of thumb to be more descriptive about what happens when players make a roll. And the higher they roll,the more useful information you give them, while low rolls could result in incorrect or misleading information. Of course,you should make this clear from the get go.
As far as random encounters, I typically only used those whenever the players would travel randomly.
As for having a main quest, I typically tried to use my players background stories in order to make a main quest with multiple branching paths, and different ways to achieve the same goal. Therefore, when traveling, I would still use the players survival skill to determine if they had encounter or not, but typically they wouldn't be random. They would be crafted in a way that would encourage the players to continue on in their quest, to their destination.
And when players would roll high on their survival skill, I would give them unique encounters. Some would still be combat, but winning would give them rare items, or useful information such as a map to a dungeon which contains an extremely rare or unique item. Or they could run into a merchant who was being harassed and likely robbed until you show up. The players could intimidate them into leaving, which would result in the merchant either selling you normal wares at 50% off, or selling you expensive rare items. But by leaving them alive, you've now earned an enemy, and the bandits will make an effort at some point to attack or rob the group.
This could be during this session, or Ina future session, for example after the group has gone to the dungeon they were going to and completed their quest, on their way back to town, the bandits coul ambush them while they are weakened, or steal from the if the group decides to rest in the same area where the bandits were first encountered. Of course, they woul still get their appropriate rolls to spot the bandits ahead of time, or wake up while they were being robbed.
There would also be encounters with no combat, but where the players find something interesting to examine. There may be nothing seemingly useful there, but it could foreshadow something that was going to happen later, or could provide information the players could use to gain an advantage in later quests.
And of course there's always room for fun or humorous encounters to break the monotony. Obviously, how appropriate humor is will be different for every game, but I always loved the random encounters in Fallout and Fallout 2 that really served no purpose other than to be cool and funny, often referencing movies or other games. I think when done right, they can add a lot of flavor to your game and serve to make it memorable. It's definitely one of the ways to make a game that people remember and talk about forever, the kind o story you can tell to a stranger and they will enjoy it. As DM, I think it's important not to leave the humor and creativity up to the players, not entirely anyway. The look on the player's face who is playing a wacky bard who sings songs of his accomplishments which are obviously embellished or outright lies when you have a random encounter that make one of his stories true is priceless.
For example, running into a group of tribals who have all kinds of tools and talismans and things mad out of a dragons bones. As you investigate how they got them, the village elder sees the bars and starts bowing and praying in a language you don't understand. He then guides you all to a shrine with a giant statue of the bars with the inscription, "Dragon Slayer".
As night falls, you are invited to rest in the safety o the village, and around the campfire, they elders tell tales of how the low level bard single handedly slayed the dragon and set the land free from the bondage of slavery their families had been in for generations. As they turn to the bard and ask him to play them an epic song of how he slayed the dragon, it will be hilarious to see how the player handles it. Will he just make something up in hopes of appeasing them? Did he pay enough attention to their stories to get away with lying? Will they realize he's a fraud?
So much cool stuff like that can be done while traveling. That's why I embrace it. The most important thing isn't the main quest, it's to have fun.
The travel and camping scenes from the hobbit and LOTR movies were by far my favorite scenes in the movies. There should have been even more to emphasize just how arduous the journey was supposed to be. If you don't like that sort of narrative and description then you definitely want to avoid the books. Tolkien spends chapter upon chapter describing the journey and the environments.
Simplest way to prevent player sidetrack on a journey is to have time pressure. They are disinclined to chase non existent hooks when they're on a mission and have to be there or back by a certain time. Usually.
Some of the funniest journeys (indeed all scenes) evolve from critical failures and their consequences. One journey into badlands derailed into nightmare when a pc crit failed a veterinary roll on a traders sick camel. The trader failed to become the intended ally/contact/info source after they killed his camel, the animal loving vet then spiraled into 3 days of morose depression and self doubt while the remaining party had to traverse the badlands without his survival skills and/or the traders help - meaning an inept character had to take charge ensuing a double critical failure on his survival roll for the party (This wadi looks like a good place to ride out the squall...) Extremely funny in the end after they straggled into the dissident camp they were sent to infiltrate with tarnished reputations and no equipment. Seems harsh, but they were truly disastrous rolls and no one actually died in the wild when they should have.
Indinana Jones has the ABSOLUTE best travel sequences that should be employed by every GM!
Indinana Jones: the adventurer with a sharp set of skills and a bright yellow peel
Thank you so much for doing this! Its amazing advice!