10 Tips to Grimdark Your D&D Game!

10 steps to make your dnd game more grimdark today on dungeoncraft welcome to dungeon craft i'm professor dungeon master and this channel is about playing the ultimate game of dnd and other tabletop role-playing games and i'm deathbringer level up your game by subscribing and hit the bell icon to be informed when we upload new videos if you're a fan of this channel you know i love grim dark fantasy i like my fantasy with a hard edge where the thought that your character might not make it out of that dungeon is a real possibility and that's what i prefer to run as a game master but it's also what i prefer to play one of my patrons baldrage also loves a grim dark game and he went through the trouble of going through the entire caves of carnage campaign series you can get a link to that below to find out how i did it he went through with a notebook and a pen wrote everything down and wrote the script to this episode and because i'm very lazy i said heck i'll just use it as an episode and he not only refers to the case of carnage but some of my other videos and game of thrones as well so let's check out baldrage's advice 10 steps to make your game more grimdark [Music] one use human opponents whenever possible this may reduce your player's propensity to be murder hobos because it's a lot ickier feeling to kill a human being it also provides more opportunities for role play because these creatures are creatures you can communicate negotiate with and they can beg for their lives human opponents are more plausible and grounded than your typical fantasy monsters in the caves of carnage many of the monsters are just humans who've devolved into a state of cannibalism using humans as adversary provides more opportunity to demonstrate mankind's inherent potential for inhuman behavior people might not feel bad about torturing a lizard man but if it's a human being it's kind of icky and that's what makes it grim dark two never use monsters straight out of the monster manual the unknown is always scarier than the familiar players unfamiliarity will heighten the fear and tension which are important for creating a sense of vulnerability so rename those monsters re-skin them give them different tactics or abilities or make up new monsters altogether also instead of making scenarios which are like a monster zoo you might consider sticking to just one monster type of monster per session if it's a werewolf scenario for example make the scenario entirely about that just have there to be one werewolf that the players are hunting instead of a whole bunch of them that keeps the monster unique three humanize the adversaries even the monsters when creating an adversary always ask yourself what do they do when they're not killing player characters what do they do to pass the time making the player characters realize their adversaries have a life outside of fighting pcs raises the moral stakes and may again contribute to reducing murder hoboism red fergus the bandit chief is a vicious psychopath but he has a pregnant girlfriend and he likes to play chess the goblins in the caves of carnage are mutated halflings who like to spend their free time watching scorpions fight and they pray to their god the great grub to deliver them from their desperate plight four make the npcs morally gray or give them a flaw reduce the number of npcs that are purely good or irredeemably evil the munchberger brothers are prosperous merchants in the party's primary employer but they make their fortunes selling drugs the witch is the character's mentor which is a bully and a drug addict the castellan of the key permits the caves to exist because it forms an important part of the keeps economy and commerce and that same rule applies to adversary npcs bruner the scholar genuinely cares about the goblin's oppression and plight countess claudia van hammerstein is actually a capable ruler who improves the welfare of her peasants except for the ones she murders and bathes in their blood cersei lannister is a cruel and ruthless ruler but she loves her children 5. the pcs themselves have to be vulnerable grimdark doesn't mean the players have to die or be rendered helpless but the players have to believe their characters can die as a result of a poor choice or an unlucky die role in game of thrones ned stark caitlyn stark robb stark all die arya john sansa and bran they're each powerful in different ways but they're all extremely vulnerable they careen from one catastrophe to another barely surviving each encounter if you want to bring this feeling that death is a possibility of any time to your tabletop two suggestions one roll out in public so the players know you are not fudging the die rolls and if you roll a natural 20 they're going to take a critical hit the other option is to eliminate resurrection reincarnation wish anything that could bring a player character back to life once the player character is dead they are dead and it is final six use the character creation process to demonstrate that the world is a brutal unforgiving place where nothing is going to be given everything has to be earned no fudging ability scores started with no armor no equipment no money use a character funnel like in dungeon crawl classics where the characters start as zero level humans with just d6 hit points no re-rolls for hit points there and they have occupations like rat catchers sin eaters or gong farmers one of the ideas i've imported from 5e hardcore mode available on drive through rpg right now is the idea of pure hit points constitution doesn't give you bonus hit points and every level including first you have to roll for hit points and you don't re-roll on a one or a two you keep whatever you roll some people are gonna say what fun is it to play a character with just one hit point in my opinion it's tons of fun if you gave me a choice between a barbarian with an 18 strength and some guy with just one hit point i would definitely play the one hit point guy every time and this is how i do it first off i name him lucky then i give him a family you know like seven kids and his wife is pregnant with the eighth and is due to give birth any day now and the reason he became an adventurer is because the locust swarm came and ate all his crops and a fever killed all his pigs so now he has no choice but to dig desperately in holes in the ground and fight monsters before his landlord forecloses on his land and i'd say to the other players i wrote these letters from my wife and children please promise me that if i don't make it out you'll give it to them and if we do manage to get any treasure please bring my share back home i still owe my lord one thousand gold pieces and my youngest son little pubert born prematurely poor thing can't breathe without the drugs from the apothecary they're so expensive and he needs them every week now that provides the game master and my fellow players with great role playing opportunities because if this guy dies they're going to inherit his entire family so it probably would result in the players just forming a protective circle around lucky so he doesn't bite the dust and that's kind of the point of the grim dark game the characters are less superheroes and more like everyday people trying to survive and i personally i think if you've got a player who could complain that their stats are too low you've got a player who is a unimaginative and b they stink seven make magic rare and dangerous i like magic users to be mysterious in my world they're hunted and killed on sight mostly by clerics spells have to be found or taught by a mentor they just don't pop into the wizard's head when they gain a level and magic items are super rare and mostly cursed in my long-running campaign we've been going since the 90s absolutely no one has any kind of magic weapon or armor at all potions are a thing but that's about it if my players found a magic sword they'd probably fling it in the nearest lake and be afraid to use it in combat eight travel is dangerous and should never be taken for granted don't gloss over travel it's an opportunity to foreshadow and illustrate the grim nature of your world in my episode the bone road the player characters can meet flatulence plague stricken peasants come across a hanged witch or a cruel and capricious noble or they could just be ambushed when my players have to travel they know i have the bone road encounters in my game master's notebook so they're careful they will travel in caravans if they can or get a coach and they'll pay money so that they can arrive at their destination sooner and safely and that is what the middle ages was like it was perilous nine no fairy tale endings one of the themes of grim dark literature is the protagonists have to make a decision between a set of really bad choices so even if they win they still kind of lose in my banded adventure the player characters have to rescue rowena the daughter of a wealthy and powerful merchant and she's fallen in love with black angus the leader of the bandit gang so when they rescue her she will stab them in the back and if they bring her back home she's only going to escape again to seek black angus out again in the caves of carnage if the players defeat the big baddie the vermin lord the munchburger brothers swoop in and start mining moonstone and soon the entire empire is ravaged by drug addiction in game of thrones the night king is defeated and cersei is overthrown but daenerys goes mad and destroys king's landing that kind of decision we have to choose between the wrong option and the even worse option that's one of the essential qualities to a grim dark game 10. don't overdo it leave the truly horrible stuff to the player's imaginations always apply common sense and good taste then i realize that differs widely from group to group but you know what i mean there is a line that your group just shouldn't cross or you don't feel comfortable crossing for me that's any kind of violence against children graphic torture or non-consensual sexual situations this is just a place i just don't go in episode 2 of the bone road the characters are captured by goblins and i simply said they torture you you wake up chains in a cell what do you do there's no reason to graphically describe what happened to them leave that to the player's imaginations whatever they can imagine is probably more horrible than anything you can describe so thanks baldrage for this great episode and all the patrons for making dungeoncraft possible if you're interested in supporting the channel and you want to check out the extended version of this video you can check out our patreon link below also below you'll find links to the dungeoncraft facebook group of course if you enjoy this content give it a thumbs up like it share it drop a comment we always appreciate that thanks so much for watching i'm professor dungeonmaster i'll see you next time and until then may all your roles be twenties deathbringer again grimdark this guy's game is practically candyland but if you want more dungeon craft click on these videos

Channel: Dungeon Craft

Views: 107,574

Keywords: grimdark your D&D, grimdark D&D, dark D&D, D&D hardcore mode, OSR D&D, top 10 tips to grimdark your D&D game, grimdark your D&D game, grimdark dungeons and dragons, dark dungeons and dragons

Id: 1S8k5R5hdao

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021