Answering frequently asked DM questions (again)

hey before the video starts the kickstarter for aurora just launched this week which is the new project by my buddies over at ghostfire gaming it's a new setting with dragons and survival mechanics and they've got card decks and dice and minis and cool versions of the book with over 80 unique trays to craft create your characters with of course the most beautiful gosh dang art i've ever seen in my entire life look at all that seriously go check it out sponsored this video there's a link down below back it while you can today we're answering a bunch of questions that you guys asked over on the youtube community post that i made a few days ago where uh i asked for you guys to ask me some questions about dming i have a bit of experience myself i dabble in damning i do it every week for like the past two years sometimes twice sometimes three times a week i would hope that with some of this experience that i have i could possibly provide you with some advice on how to run your dnd games and you know sometimes my advice isn't always the greatest thing it's just what worked for me i'm gonna have some examples here and there to try to show you what i've done in the past but in case you want some more clarification or anything i'd love for all the other dm's who are possibly watching this video to add even your own experiences or examples throw them down into the comments and we can just share sort of our experiences and help others in running their games i hope that that's what some of you can get out of this video if you're a experienced dm or if you're a player who's aspiring to be a dm or you just started dming you don't know what you're doing and you're panicking don't worry we've all been there you're not alone and i'm sure your game is really fun and those ideas you wrote down are really cool don't worry it'll be great here's all the questions you can skip ahead if you want to go through some of the time stamps and some of the answers that i go through anything that i referenced today i'll try to throw it down in the description as a link in case there's any tools and whatnot that i use to dm but without further ado let's get started i'd love to know how to incorporate character backstories into the plot more especially pre-writtens how do i do more than surprise the bbg is the cause of all your life's problems this is a good question mostly because it's not a simple answer jacob a few years ago would have said have the bbg do something to upset all of your players maybe steal something or kill something that they love or do something to harm them in some way and then uh then they'll all be properly motivated to deal with that villain the issue is that that is only like one kind of villain not every villain needs to be personally connected to every player unless that's the type of villain that you want to go for then by all means have that villain be worked into each of your players backstories from my perspective it's actually a bit more realistic and natural to have the villain be dropped into the hero's lap instead of being a nemesis to all of them from the very beginning when we started running rhyme in the frostman and none of my players characters were connected to oral one of my players had a slight history with her but overall nothing too major and just for context oral is a demi-god of winter who is causing the sun to not rise over the entirety of the isowindale causing life to be pretty terrible she didn't need to be personally connected to each player even the book goes in to describe how she's a distant mystical being her actions are what caused the party to hate her she's making life terrible for all the people living in the ten towns that being the party's motivator aligned them even closer because they all hated her for the same reason they all had the same experience with her so they all knew what they were getting themselves into however i did change a bit of the story in order to fit some of the characters like spencer's character kazira who's a dampier blood hunter i changed a bit of the story so that spoilers in case anybody's playing this game tekkalili the null vampire was connected to kazira in sort of a way spencer had intended for kazira's family to be missing and that he was going to rescue them i filled in those blanks by bending a bit of the story that was presented in the book so if you're wanting to involve your players more into the backstory of a pre-written take a look at their backstory and what they want and take a look at the pre-written and see if anything matches up see if there's anything that you could put together and then of course communicate with your players and find out what they want to do and what they want to accomplish during the game and then throw that into the game somewhere fill in the blanks that they provide you and if they don't give you any blanks then let them know that there should be a little bit more room for you to add in things so that it can be a little malleable and fit into the rest of the game one thing that may be good to touch upon is the concept of player agency making sure your players feel like their actions affect the world and that they have at least some control over what happens and how things play out for better or worse that things don't just happen to them out of the blue just ways that you like to go about that or encourage proactive players over passiveness and things to avoid yeah i don't have a whole lot to say about this other than make sure you give your players choices and that there are consequences to those choices i recently did a skit about a dm who should have just wrote a book and that dm in that video is sort of the perfect example of a dm who doesn't give their players any choices and just sort of lets things happen to them or their choices are often overruled by their own decisions you also want to make sure that your players understand what their choices will do and how they'll impact the future of the game your players will be upset if they make a decision that they think is good but surprise it's bad and they're bad now because you decided it's bad at least that'll be their perspective you would have known it was bad from the beginning but because you didn't communicate that they just think that you made them villains at the end of that decision once again referring to the dm who should have just wrote a book video in waterdeep dragon heist if you run the castle anters as your villain the party is presented with a trolley scenario which if you don't know is an ethical dilemma of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger group the party has the stone of galore which is a key into a vault which has over half a million gold pieces but the villains the castle enters need it in order to perform a ritual to save their children however they also need the souls of 99 people if the party gives them the stone the villains are able to save their children but those 99 people die and if the players keep this stone then those children are damned but those 99 people live and also maybe the party gets half a million gold pieces when i ran this part of the game i wanted to make sure that my players knew exactly what their decision would mean i gave them time to think and i even gave them possible options and outcomes in case they were unsatisfied or pretty unhappy with how their decision would lead and how the game would end i didn't want to make anybody uncomfortable but my players had insured me they were willing to make a choice and at that point it's pretty much out of my hands the players are going to make the decision that's going to impact the rest of the story and that's entirely up to them now i'm not saying you need to explain what happens out of game that's a good way to do it but an even better way is to have it explained within the game have npcs explain what their decision will mean show with action what their decision will mean and make sure that your players really really know what they're about to do if i had not explained anything and they had made a choice and then found out the consequences later it would have made for a pretty crappy ending not to say that you can't have consequences the players don't know about but the major consequences of what will happen if they don't make another choice is really important in the idea of a game so once again make sure to communicate with your players i know surprises in d d games are really fun and everybody always wants to do them but it is not worth your players fun just for you to get a little gotcha so keep that in mind one of the glaring issues i had with d d starting out was how to break up the mold of combat a lot of times it could be broken down to roll the die count damage they aren't dead next person i think because of this it could be good to talk about what you can do as a dm to spice up combat i'd like to hear anyone's suggestions on this my best way of doing it is to give enemies and npcs lifelike actions for example the bandits aren't going to get into melee combat with the hulking raging barbarian they're going to pepper him with arrows get the height advantage or even do dirty tactics like throw dirt in his eyes to blind him that's some fun advice there's a lot of ways to spice up combat if it's starting to drag having more monsters on the field even different types of monsters or a dramatic event that's going to change the combat dynamically the terrain could even become a part of the challenge even letting players make choices during combat that aren't who am i gonna hit next for example i've got an encounter with five goblins my players who are fifth level are gonna destroy these goblins at best we're gonna roll initiative and they're just gonna destroy them and at worst it's gonna be a 30 minute slog of nobody being able to beat any armor classes and the goblins getting crits everybody's mostly gonna resort to what can i do to do damage so let's go through that list again what if we change five goblins to ten goblins that immediately makes this a completely different combat maybe half those goblins are ranged and half those goblins are melee what if we did 12 goblins four melee four ranged and four spell casters who said goblins can't cast spells give them a few spells you could do whatever you want what if these goblins are undergoing a ritual in order to transform one of their fellow melee goblins into a giant hulking goblin now the spell casters can spend their bonus action to continue the ritual and after three rounds of them doing this that goblin will turn into a giant beefed up goblin that deals more damage and has more hit points and what if this combat takes place at a makeshift goblin outpost with wooden bridges connecting between gigantic trees and the goblins can either hide behind the cover or maybe they have climbing gear so they can scale the trees maybe they can be up the trees roll stealth to get a surprise round on the party maybe they can cut the ropes on the bridges when players are running across them and now the players have choices it's no longer a battle of what can i do to do the most damage now players are going to be thinking about how they can scale those bridges how they can get up the trees how they can stop the ritual how maybe they can help the party get there quicker is it going to be effective to deal with the ranged goblins in the trees the melee ones coming straight at them or the spell casters what are they doing is this giant goblin going to be a big problem suddenly the help action now looks like a viable option there are so many spells in the wizards arsenal that they could cast to aid the party in this scenario the barbarian can do more than just dash or just hit the combat becomes way more dynamic when there are moving pieces and factors that allow your players to make choices be creative with your combats and remember if you're struggling with balancing your combats and your players are always just slam dunking them all the time i will give you the best advice i ever received for combat balance from my good friend craig who said anything the players can do you can do anything in their arsenal is also in your arsenal i struggle with describing things in my game even if i pre-write the description it always seems to come out wrong do you have any advice on writing improving descriptions i can't give an improv or master's english class in a youtube video but i can help with a few hacks that i use also believe in yourself a little more who's telling you that your descriptions are bad i think they're fine i think your descriptions are great if the characters have the senses sight sound smell and feeling you don't have to be fancy but an easy way to describe anything from a city to a room to a dungeon to a person is those things what do they see upon first glance don't be exorbitant unless that's the point if you want something to look cluttered you can describe how many things there are there what do they hear is it a lot is it nothing is it something specific is it ambient noise what do they smell is it gross is it pleasant is it a mixture of things and last and in my opinion the most important how do they feel i think a lot of dms are apprehensive on telling their players what they feel because they don't want to tell them how to role play their characters but oftentimes players need a jumping off point to decide how their character feels or reacts to a situation scenario event person anything so going with some pretty basic terms as well you can get a pretty good description of something by saying things like the city is bustling crowded with people milling about their normal days you make out a cacophony of voices along with the squeaking of wheels on a cart the scent of dirt muck and wet feet fill the air but what can really set the scene is you saying you feel a sense of wonder in this place it's a melting pot of emotion it's all so over stimulating and you feel like there's endless corners to this place then your players can react to that and maybe they even amend some of those statements like my player probably wouldn't be so overstimulated they're used to this kind of thing because they grew up in a city or a player can be like yeah if i feel that way i'm definitely like in the back with my hood up nobody sees me like i just don't like this at all my players do that all the time it really sets them in the scenario in the scene that they're feeling so yeah tell them how they feel i have a few questions but the main things are how do you pick up a campaign someone else has left off and still create a decent story how do make a villain both threatening and emotionally investing for a high level group honestly i've never dmd a game that a previous dm had dm'd my knee-jerk response to that is communicate with your players on what they would want from the game take their responses and try to do your best with what you know and can keep up the true intention of the game that was left off secondly high level d d saw just kidding i've had my issues with it in the past but really i'm just not a great dm for games above 12th level the sheer amount of rules and things that the players can do can get really overwhelming and it all just falls apart so fast however in a lot of recent books that watsia has released they've done a really good job at balancing higher level games fisman's treasury of dragons alone has some of the best stat blocks for high level games mythic creatures are so good for example in my iceman dale where i'm in the frostman game my eighth level players were crushing it and when they got to the caves of hunger to deal with tekka lily um they would have reasonably killed him in like around the first time he shows up and in case you weren't familiar teca lily the null vampire is supposed to be a reoccurring villain through the caves of hunger who periodically attacks the players and then runs away and uh they would have killed him in a round so i needed to beef him up a little bit and the best way that i did it was with mythic actions basically the way mythic works is that when an enemy is brought to zero hit points they go into a mythic state where all of their health is regenerated and they gain new legendary actions and maybe even special mythic actions that go under their regular actions it's like having two health bars but there's no limit to this and i made tekkalili have three health bars and he has some abilities that i gave him that made the game way more fun him way more dangerous and overall my players have generally been having a good time with him and like i said before from my friend craig anything that the players can do you can do anything in their arsenal is also in your arsenal what you're annoyed by that cleric who can do like 40 healing in a turn you can make the bad guy do 40 healing on themselves nobody will question that they'll be like oh that's the thing i can do i should have known oh what you got counterspell i've also got counterspell in fact in the new monsters of the multiverse they've changed counterspell to be really really good where some monsters in fact have it as a reaction that recharges and that is so fun oh the barbarian has resistance to all damage and can do 30 damage in a hit well guess what bucko my beholder has resistance to all that kind of damage and has a ray that has a dc25 save that can do 25 damage in a hit who's who's gonna question that you can do that don't forget you can do that as for emotionally invest i don't know how being a higher level character removes any sort of emotional investment from the game unless your players are just going full dr manhattan on you i think you're wondering more on how to challenge them and i answered that here so uh go go watch that right there coming off oh my god this one's long coming off of a dm high from an amazing combat encounter here's my tiny rant about the system i love d d combat is about as easy to balance as a bunch of drunken monkeys on a rigged scale fights are often either way too hard or too easy it takes a lot of effort planned and external resources like kobold fight club the monsters know what they are doing or amazing videos by creators like the runesmith i used his highway bandit advice 30 minutes ago and it was one of the best encounters i ever made so thank you logan to make a combat encounter that is actually fun and fair so please i would love any and all advice on balancing combat also i hate that i struggle with giving my players cool items and awesome magic because that will always make my job a lot harder and a lot more time sensitive i also hate how static d combat can be jumps rolls high grounded obstacles are usually kind of meaningless which is far from the epic swatch buckling that seems to be going on in most minds mine included at my table how best to give out cool stuff without tripling your prep time or ruining your plot yeah my immediate response to that is if you think d is supposed to be balanced in any sort of way by using challenge rating then uh you are playing the wrong game the game will never be properly balanced and that is because your players minds supersede the rules so if your players come up with something real cool you're going to let them do it because rule of cool so yeah the game's going to be a little unbalanced i'm not saying you shouldn't use rule of cool rule of cool is the best it's fun it's a good time sometimes you're gonna pop off sometimes the players are gonna pop up that's just how it goes and i don't necessarily like the argument that a lot of people make that in order to make challenging combat you need to have all these resources in order to do it properly bro that's just called strategy you're allowed to use other resources in order to make you a little better at strategy if you think five regular goblins on a flat mat with nothing change to them is gonna be fun 30 times in a row i i shouldn't have to tell you that that's a bad idea yes use resources use things that people write uh to make your games more fun that's why they exist this should not be a complaint all right the dm's guide does not need to tell you how to do everything in the game it's a bit of a freeform game anyways i will stop ranting now and answer the question how best to give out cool stuff without tripling your prep time or ruining the plot thinking ahead every time i've given out an item that i didn't think twice about before giving out to the party has become problematic when i spend the day before thinking about the ramifications of the item what the item will allow the player to do and how it will affect the games going forward i tend to have a lot easier of a time whenever the player uses that item in order to gain an advantage into combat or kill a bunch of things or anything like that when you homebrew a magic item and give it to a player you will just feel like a proud parent every time that they use it in comparison to oops i rolled on the dm on the on the dmg table and now my player has the the pigments that create literally create anything they want and it's a problem oh no i tend to feel a lot better about magic items that i give out when i either consider them a little beforehand or if i just write up the item myself if you want a mixture of story and magic items i've made a couple of magic items in the past that i call either level uppable magic items or scaling magic items or achievement magic items whatever you want to call them basically you get a bunch of little achievements that you have to complete in order to unlock the abilities of the magic item you can also theme them around each character so every character gets something a little different for example in our even fall game i based all of their achievement magic items off of the tarot cards that they had chosen for their character and themed it around that and then sort of gave them like a big epic ult ability that would sort of happen near the end of the game so little ways like that can keep magic items from derailing your entire plot i'm struggling with managing combat he doesn't have a lot of combat issues what's going on i think players are getting too good i think i think over the years of fifth edition i think a lot of dd players have just learned how the system works and they are just dogging on these dms who are like oh no my beholder stunning strike no i'm struggling with managing combat i'm trying to get better at it overall because it's not my strong suit generally but i'm finding that the hardest thing is actually keeping up with everything that's happening conditions on players monsters combat tactics of monsters etc etc do you have any tips you yourself use yeah i i definitely feel the same way i try my best to keep combat fast and going because when it slows down it starts to drag especially when everybody's sitting around waiting for their turn and i have heard some bad takes online for making games faster and making combat let me just run through some of those do not force your players to be quiet on their turns unless they're like under the age of 15. do not force your players to say their turn and actions within six real life seconds otherwise their turn gets skipped do not skip your players turns for any reason that would come from outside of game do not make a rule where everybody comes to the session with a coin and they put the coin in a bowl and each of those coins is a token that redeems you a bathroom break and if you run out nobody can use the bathroom anymore i ca there are people who are limiting people going to the bathroom in their dnd games that is insane just don't make the game any harder for your players outside of the game just it's it's a game it's a game what are we why are we limiting the bathroom why are we forcing players to come up with their turns in six seconds that is you ridiculous all of you are ridiculous okay for real though managing combat is really overwhelming and you want to make sure that your players are having fun for starters make sure to only focus on whose turn it currently is i know some players are going to want to jump in with abilities and reactions and things that they can do on somebody else's turn but just gently remind them that you'll get back to them after this person finishes their turn i know some players are going to be like well it matters right now and it's like well you can just go back and amend something that happened during the turn it's not a big deal two i use d d beyond's encounter builder which shows me hit points abilities movements etc but if you don't have this you can easily recreate this in a spreadsheet by asking players for their hit point totals and having slots for conditions and even writing down how long they'll last you can just scroll down and go through each round of combat three combat tactics for monsters yeah that is a video on its own if you're at a loss attack whoever attacked last and use special abilities when you can don't feel bad for targeting the person who's either doing the most damage or the squishiest members of the party if you've got four members of your party and all of them are really good at dealing damage don't be disappointed when you throw a pit fiend at them and it ties in one turn a way to alleviate that would be to spread out the amount of damage that can be dealt so instead of having one pid fiend maybe have four things that have the equivalent hp to a pit fiend you're gonna get more damage out on the party while they're gonna be doing the same amount of damage back to that pool of hit points if you've got three party members who are all melee and one guy who's ranged and that ranged guy is just killing everything before the party can get to the enemies create something for that ranged person to fight create another ranged thing that can fight that guy and they can duel on their own really the easiest way i found to challenge my players and strategize against them and make the monsters feel really smart is to sort of just mimic what they can already do and if that's really boring to you then have fun coming up with brand new abilities that you utilize against them you could maybe even run a mock combat like take the players character sheets and like photocopy them or get them on t to beyond which is how i do it and run a mock combat and see what they would do on each turn and think about how that would go down and lastly i myself have a really tough time with managing 15 goblins in an encounter and which is which and which one took damage and which one didn't but i use these little rings that have numbers on them that you can put around the minis in order to denote which is which there's a link down in the description if you want to buy those not sponsored i know i'm also not doing an affiliated link i don't need to make money off of every little thing i do if you don't have access to things like that you could always use the little caps to uh bottles uh like when you open a bottle and it has a little ring you can always use those rings and you can get different colors of them and if you've got a bunch of different things you could say like the green goblin or the blue goblin or the red goblin or you could name all of the goblins and each give them different abilities or different hit points of some kind in order to denote a difference between them i find that that's a little harder to do but it is possible i just did it last week with a bunch of giants i gave them all different minis and gave them all names and different abilities so that i knew which one was which and it went pretty well but that's mostly what i do to keep combat going to keep it easy and flowing and all that kind of stuff i only ever played a single session of dnd sadly that being said a bunch of my friends have recently expressed wanting to get into it and ask me if i teach them and dm for them the closest guideline i have is having watched some dimension 20 and high rollers being absolutely clueless i don't know where to even begin teaching new players considering i'm one myself do you remember the first time you started dming and how did you go about learning any tips or videos you know of would go such a long way thanks for the great content you put out when we first started playing d d we thought a d6 was for initiative and all of your ability scores you rolled with a d20 and you could change them if you rolled a three you your strength's a three now my point is that it doesn't really matter if you get it right or wrong who's who's going to know if you have watched some d d and have a basic idea of how it goes down that's honestly enough do what you think is fun and then slowly learn how to play the game as for videos um there's a lot here on youtube a lot just you just search them up how dm how do i do this where do i go for that how there's there's so many i've made them lots of people have made them i'm sure you can find something there's also lots of resources like on dm's guild or even just for free like on reddit and whatnot where you can find pre-made character sheets or helpful sheets on how to run the game also all of the basic rules are up for free on dnd beyond if you need a quick reference if you want a really easy module to run dragon of ice fire peak with the starter set is really really good however players like you are kind of the entire reason i wrote my book the questanomicon in case you don't know it's a compendium of 13 adventures with varying themes each adventure is about one to three sessions you can choose it can be a one shot a two shot or a three shot they've got villains that you can pick to customize your adventure you can kind of pick any sort of theme you want to do a horror game a fantasy game a western heist a seafaring adventure post-apocalyptic anything that you could think of and we sort of wrote that book to be easy for newer dm's to run we've got a lot of notes and special hints and guides in order to run the game a little bit easier we also brought the balance down a little bit so that first level players can have an easier time learning how to play d d without the game trying to kill them every three seconds we also tried to include a lot of staples of d d adventures things like choices consequences npcs exploration role play all that kind of stuff the introduction as well has a whole section on how you can start dming and what you can do in order to make your game super fun and the tips that i use that i'm sort of explaining in this video that being said the adventures are also for experienced players as well uh we really just made that book so that players are people who don't even really know how to play d d can aspire to try to dm uh with this book it's going to be out pretty soon if you want to check it out i'll put a link in the description this isn't like a sponsored bit or anything i swear i'm just wanting to talk about my book because this is why i wrote it i've been dming for three new players recently as expected they're having some difficulty remembering all the things they need to know like how to figure out attack bonus armor class skill check bonuses etc sometimes i have to remind myself that they've literally never played before now so i need to be patient no real question just a piece of advice for myself and anyone who's in a similar scenario have patience with new players of course they don't know everything you know so obvious as that might sound yeah if your players are nude take it easy on them they they aren't gonna know everything instantly just remind them what they need to know every so often and eventually they're going to remember setting your expectations high for new players is the easiest way to get them to hate playing d i've in the past have had new players join in with games with experienced players and it's always soured that new players experience when all of the experienced players are bogging them down with how cool they can role play and all the things that they can do and all of the rules they need to remember and generally sometimes just feel very intimidated by the game do not overwhelm your new players just ease them in they don't need to know everything just let them have fun let them have an experience where they get to have a good time and provide that for them at the table especially if you're an experienced dm maybe even have some reference cheats if they need to remember stats and abilities in ac and dice and all that kind of stuff that's an easy way for them to manage that on their own also if you are such a master of the rules and you want them to know it then why don't you just do it all right have their character sheets behind the screen and just reference it immediately or just remember it there's no reason to make anything harder for your players just make room for them to have fun as a new dm i have a question how do you keep your players engaged with the story the last few times i've dm'd none of my players seemed really excited to come back and play the next session oh and i want to be able to make the experience exciting and fun for when i dm again any thoughts this is a situational question and i don't know if my answer is going to be perfect for your scenario but i will do my best a rule i try to follow for myself is i try to make something exciting happen every single game not at the players but for the players going back and referencing the video i just made dm's who should have just wrote a book the dm is creating exciting scenarios but the players don't get to engage in it it's just for them that's not exciting you should have wrote a book have some drama happen have them fight a scary monster have an npc go missing and they have to solve it and maybe there's no solution and whatever they decide to do is the way that they solve it that'll make them feel really really smart have them discover a dastardly plot then we'll destroy the city or have them do a swashbuckling battle with goblins on a bridge in a forest with giant trees and the goblins are raining down fire from the top of the trees and the goblins are also doing a ritual to make one of their goblins big and giant so it'll attack the town that they care about because they're from that town and they love all the people there well my players aren't really invested in the backstory so they don't really care fine then the goblin's going to attack the town that has all the magic items that they can buy and all the potions of healing that they've gathered there the humanity i don't have the perfect answer for what will work best for your game but one thing i always try to do is try to make something exciting happen every game because i don't want everybody to show up and sit around do nothing all day then again the go-to fix-all answer for most of these questions is communicate with your players ask them what they want to do what would be fun take that in write something out bam you made a perfect game because it's literally what the players wanted to do don't overthink it don't everything running your games make sure to have fun and communicate with your players and i don't know be creative i guess and care and you know the stuff you're doing in your game is probably really fun so long as your players are having fun so make sure you're having fun too all right these were some long questions and the vod for this is an hour so i'm gonna go edit this and um hope you guys found some of this helpful and um okay that is the end of the video

Channel: XP to Level 3

Views: 390,998

Keywords: dnd, d&d, dungeons and dragons, how to, tutorial, funny, monk, fighter, 5e, player, book, dm, dungeon master, roll, ranger, rogue, paladin, cleric, barbarian, bard, wizard, sorcerer, warlock, artificer, mystic, skits, idea, character, stats, build, new, tips, gm

Id: aUZawMNIstI

Length: 32min 15sec (1935 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022