My TTRPG Hierarchy of Needs - Finding Flow In Your Games
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- Опубликовано: 22 сен 2024
- Sometimes, games of DnD or any other TTRPGs can be so much fun that you can forget the world around you for hours at a time! I've had this happen a few times, but I wanted to figure out if there was a way to have more reliably awesome experiences at the table.
I borrowed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - it provided a way to frame my thinking to avoid focussing on the wrong things, instead making sure the fundamentals at my table were covered, before worrying about Transcendence or Flow.
🔎 The Alexandrian - Three Clue Rule... this genuinely revolutionised my campaigns:
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📖 Journal article on Transcendence used in the description at the end. This isn't exactly easy reading - full of technical language:
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🌐 Wikipedia article on Flow. Used for the description at the end.
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Your videos and channel are criminally undersubscribed. Keep doing what you're doing!
Thank you so much! I’m super happy with how many subscribers I’ve got so far, as I’ve only been doing this for a few months. It’s the mysteries of the RUclips algorithm that have been puzzling me, and the wild range of views my videos get - but the plan is to keep on learning and getting better, while still having a lovely time in the process!
I play in quite a few games and the one that absolutely gets the best flow and the sense of "where th eheck did the time go" is our arena dnd game. Its at the table so that helps a bit but the combats are very quick and explosive and since we are a team rather than a group of randos on a mission we get something in common to roleplay about. We have quite a lot of timeskips between matches so they have spent years in game together at this point and its fun to reflect that closeness.
This is also a very attentive group of players that pay attention outside of their turn, i had our fighter rush in to take damage for my squishy ranger or our surgeon rogue noticing im low on health and making her way over or our barbarian coming to carry me a distancee bcause my character got afflicted with 3 exhaustion levels. It helps that safety feeling you mentioned thats not just out of game but in game, having players that care that we all make it out of there and help eachother.
Oh wow if you can keep 10 players engaged and focussed throughout a session you have truly reached GM Guru status!!! 🙏 In order to remain connected to my players and keep everyone immersed (involved) I have found my limit is 4 players as a GM. As a player, I will also try avoid any game with more than this because I’ve felt I don’t get enough of a ‘go’ in the those games (too many players especially in combat just naturally slows any game and I’m too impatient waiting for your turn). Perhaps I’m just on the low need of the transcendence pyramid and/or more GMs could benefit from watching this video 😂
Haha thank you! This was an intro session with 7/10 of them being brand new to DnD/TTRPGs, so I think they were on their best behaviour! For ongoing campaigns, I’ve found that it’s the scheduling that is the limiting factor on group sizes for me.
Combat was definitely the slow part at the table of 10. I wanted to make sure everyone had their time in the spotlight, but it meant people had nothing to do for 10 minutes at a time as we went round in initiative. I’m liking Daggerheart for this as players turns are MUCH faster, especially at high levels, I’ve found combat flows super fast and cinematically 😊
In our hobby people mostly call that immersion, but quite often people talk past each other using that term. Since for some it is only about abnegation and becoming lost in their character, while for others it is more about that transcendence of experiencing not just the character but the flow of the game as a whole. I personally prefer the second, and that is why I avoid second person as GM, and ask the players to portray their characters mostly in third person. I do this so that players think beyond the confines of their character, and express them for everyone else to experience in a holistic manner and not just everybody trying to get into the head of their character, but make the whole world come alive.
Oh man I love a ceilidh - and they put me in a flow state too! There's something very special about connecting with people during a dance - I often lose my sense of time while DMing a game, but I've never reached that sense of profound connection I have during a ceilidh.
There's definitely something about ceilidhs which messes with my sense of time. I think it's the need to be constantly watching and paying attention to where you need to go next, while not crashing into anyone else... especially little old ladies, who when you dance with them always seem to have arms like tree trunks! Not to be messed with!
In my TED Talk on a comparative study of the similarities between ceilidh dancing and running TTRPGs I will... 😊
@@RenegadeRolls yeah, one of the best things for me is being able to connect with people of all ages through a shared activity. I guess it's possible to do the same with TTRPGs - maybe that's the definition of a great pastime!
Your thumbnail rocks, and great video!
I'm usually in a state of flow during the games I run, but I'm not sure about my players. It's hard enough paying attention on 5 players, I can't imagine doing so with 10!
Keep up the great work!
TBH I'm still amazed that none of us noticed. At the point in the session when Curry-a-geddon(TM) happened, the players were in exploration / investigation mode, trying to figure out how to un-pertrify an NPC. I wonder if players focus better at different points, and when different types of play are happening. This calls for a repeat experiment... with more curry!
Something I didn't mention in the video is that it's MUCH easier for me to focus and find that flow state in person than it is playing online... though weirdly I can totally lose track of time when playing games (looking at you, Rimworld!)