Better Dungeon Master Tactics!

now let me just Google this term action economy everyone keeps yammering about oh oh no welcome to math Pro the RPG art show my name is Kyle and today we're talking about tactical combats and ttrpgs I recently finished my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3. and I really enjoyed that game I never really thought of 5th edition as a tactical Style game and because I don't really think that it is especially when contrasted to fourth edition which was actually the first edition that I was a dungeon master for but after playing Baldur's Gate 3 I can see that there is potential there and it really has me thinking about running a tactical game so I decided to collect my thoughts and write some notes and figure out what lessons there are to learn from Baldur's Gate 3 and apply them to how a GM might approach a tactical game using a 2d battle mat this video is the longest video I have ever made and if you find this kind of approach to gaming interesting and useful finding your key terms and figuring out what the repeatable patterns are you might also enjoy monstrous which is a book about working monsters into the narrative and World building of your campaign this book goes to Kickstarter on September 5th and we are hoping to get those pre-launch numbers as high as they can be for launch day when they really help boost the visibility of this project so click the link in the description below to swing by the pre-launch page and click that button to get notified when the campaign goes live on September 5th we need to establish the parameters of this discussion first before we even establish our terms let's begin by enumerating some key differences between ttrpgs and video games a lot of these are going to seem fairly obvious but I think it's important to say them anyway conventionally in tabletop RPGs there are no retries there is permadeath there are no quick saves there are no multiple attempts to overcome the big boss video games have the Liberty to experiment with the Aesthetics of difficulty because you can make as many attempts as you have the determination for but imagine how weird it would be if your GM insisted that you keep retrying the same boss battle over and over again until you defeat it before you get to move on with your quest that would be weird secondly in tabletop RPGs there's a real taboo around meta gaming however you Define meta gaming whatever you think about it it is considered deeply uncool to read the adventure module ahead of time and make your plans accordingly versus say using a strategy guide nobody's really going to bother you about that that's totally normal for video games the next thing I want to talk about is the frequency at which there are misunderstandings and uh misapprehensions about tabletop RPGs not getting a rule right not explaining your actions well enough perhaps the the GM doesn't explain the scene well enough even though they're imagining it perfectly in their head they're not conveying it very well all of these things are problems of conversation which is what ttrpgs are primarily mediated by and the challenges of UI and tutorializing a video game aside um they are not mediated by conversation and therefore not subject to the same weaknesses the next thing is I think play testing and play testing data is a lot more difficult to parse and there are fewer metrics to measure when you are dealing with tabletop RPGs versus a video game for instance Baldur's Gate 3 had years of Early Access play testing data and they had heat maps of all the different places that everyone was dying thousands and thousands of players running through the Act 1 one of their game that is information that I don't think any tabletop game has ever had not to mention if this is a Homebrew campaign every time you run something it is probably the first time you've ever run it like you're gonna do your best you're going to draw upon your years of wisdom and the collective information that the community at large has to offer on your particular situation but still like it's it's the first time you've ever done it like you really don't know how it's going to turn out until you run it and finally the biggest difference and I think the reason why many people enjoy playing ttrpgs over video games is because players and GMS get to try anything and keep this in mind when we're going through the Baldur's Gate encounters that there is no accounting for all of the different things that players could attempt to do in the same situation at the tabletop many of our favorite video video games would not stand up to a single evening subjected to a tabletop party of players it would fall apart immediately now let's look at seven different types of enemy units that you could use as a GM on the battlefield these of course are not the only seven kinds of units that a GM could come up with the first unit type we're going to talk about is our infantry this is your bug standard guy with a pointy stick that rushes out to meet the oncoming Heroes an infantry unit is almost never going to be by their Lonesome there's always almost going to be like three or four of them in a group or it could be a whole gaggle of little weird guys that could be all wiped out in a single area of effect attack like a fireball they are not really a serious threat or a big obstacle they are designed to get the hair Heroes to use resources or waste time getting to their actual high priority targets at the rear of the combat they can't really do that much damage on their own but you kind of need to take care of them otherwise they'll gang up on you lock you in position Whittle down your hit points while the rest of the enemies get into their most advantageous positions and we will talk about enemy unit positioning after we get through the unit types so let's move on to our next unit type our ranged unit this is another little speed bump enemy that will use things like bows and arrows or javelins or slingshots to Pelt the heroes with damage from a distance or high places on the battlefield again they should be fairly susceptible to area of effect attacks from the heroes or if a particularly beefy one just rushes up there and knocks their heads together they should go down pretty quickly they can't do a lot of damage but they can do that damage consistently at range at will for the entire battle if they aren't dealt with our next enemy unit we're going to talk about is the brute kind of yeah the big scary guy in the room that could absolutely be a problem if they ever lay hands on the heroes this is the first enemy unit type that is worth spending some special abilities and resources to destroy or even better using your resources to stay out of their reach oftentimes they're going to be too big to fit through narrow passageways or have the speed to keep up with Heroes that are running Full Tilt but their bark is as bad as their bite so if they do catch a hero that hero is going to remember it but don't forget that many ttrpgs have an action economy and therefore these brutes can't really do it all on their own they need infantry units and ranged units to be effective but almost more than any other enemy unit type brutes can go almost anywhere on the battlefield as long as they have that backup and speaking of backup here comes the Cavalry the next unit type we're going to talk about the way I'm using the term Cavalry refers to any kind of high Mobility unit that is going to directly engage with the heroes their purpose is very similar to the Infantry except because they control more of the battlefield with their increased speed and Mobility they can better respond to whatever Direction the heroes decide to take in the battle you might need only one or two of these units in a group and again the more of them that there are the less damage and easier to hit and less HP they should have speaking of less HP these Segways I don't know about these Segways speaking of less HP there is the artillery these units are oftentimes going to be some kind of magic user or magical creature with a ranged area of effect attack and at higher levels they're probably going to have some kind of Battlefield control as well that being abilities that would create like a cloud of Darkness that would block line of sight for the heroes they might be using tangling vines or grease spells to affect the mobility of the hero or some kind of pulse or shock wave or earthquake to knock the heroes prone and eat up the movement options for the hero so they can't Advance as quickly as they otherwise would but listen if you punch one of these units in the face it'll fold like a pair of pleated khakis artillery units are the highest priority Target that we talked about so far which is why you need to put your infantry in front of them the next unit type we're talking about shows up in one of the Baldur's Gate examples that I want to talk about but it's not really considered a major unit in most games and this enemy unit type is the spawner and it is going to summon in more minions and infantry units oftentimes to help keep the mid to late game of the battle interesting to make sure that the action economy hasn't been totally toppled and it's like four Heroes against just the boss and because of their ability to directly impact the action economy they are very high priority targets and oftentimes go down in a couple hits from the heroes I did notice that in Baldur's Gate 3 Whenever there was a spawner type enemy on the field and it wasn't a boss oftentimes there was some kind of countdown that you could stop in some way to keep new enemies from being fielded it was a wonderful bit of game balance that I noticed that kept some really difficult fights from being impossible in the final unit type we're talking about today is our Elite oftentimes it is going to be a boss or a mini boss or just some kind of unit type that has multiple unit type abilities wrapped into it in ttrpgs Heroes oftentimes have a wide range of spells and abilities that they can use to make all kinds of different effects during battle and the elite enemy unit is the closest equivalent it's going to have a high AC it's going to have lots of hit points and it's going to have lots of different abilities that are going to allow it to respond how however the heroes choose to launch their assault against it they are oftentimes going to combine the strengths of brutes and artillery units with none of their drawbacks their main disadvantage is they attract a lot of attention and their lifespan is going to be one or two turns tops if the heroes ever get to focus fire on them if the heroes don't think that there's another Combat coming after their encounter with the elite they are going to wail on it with all of their spell slots and all of their abilities and that will be a season wrap for that NPC basically all other enemy unit types exist to protect the elite and waylay the heroes from just running up and killing it immediately now let's talk about the basics of Battlefield positioning and movement for the enemies think of this section of the video as a handy starting point but is by no means the only decision that there is to make with where you put these units and why and I feel it's very important to remember that even though we are using terminologies and Concepts from actual historical military tactics we are not actually trying to defeat our players we are trying to make a really interesting thing to defeat All Enemies on the battlefield of a ttrpg exist to offer a sincere challenge and then die in glorious combat there's lots of different schools of thought on this I tend to think of the purpose of the GM is to add friction and challenge an obstacle but not really to aim for fatality because if that's the point it's trivially easy I have infinite dragons so we're going to start our enemy positions with this Central column of units and we're going to split the central column into three pieces at the front we're going to have the Vanguard in the middle we're going to have yeah the middle guard and all the way at the back of the column will have our rear guard and if you're doing a big old attack with lots of waves everything behind that is going to be reserves but we're not really going to talk about that in this video those boxes off to either side of that main column are our flanks all the way back in our rear guard that is where we're going to put our high priority Target the elite the elite isn't going to do very very much until the end of the battle or until the heroes come within range the elite is also going to be great for punishing the heroes for over extending overextending is when a hero or two go beyond the reach of their fellow Heroes ability to support them with healing spells Buffs or Aid in combat and the whole party can overextend Itself by wading into the middle of the column without eliminating enough of the enemy units and then they're going to be surrounded and yeah they're going to get their keisters handed to him in a paper bag now that we know where the heroes are starting and the elite is going to be we can form our columns starting at the front in the Vanguard we're going to place all of our infantry units they are pretty easy pickings for just about any character class but they're sort of designed to invite the martial classes to rush forward and smash into that line leaving the magic users and the range Heroes to deal with whatever is coming out of the flanks or try to start attacking the middle guard next we're going to place one of our ranged units into a flanking position in historical battles and medieval times you would have your archers behind the Infantry and they would fire arrows over the tops of their infantry but in ttrpgs that's not really how it's done and oftentimes there's some kind of rules that penalize or prohibit firing into melee these units firing at range are going to pull the heroes off of the main column and get them to commit to a direction either fleeing the range of enemy fire or confronting the ranged units by rushing their martial classes or expending spell slots on extinguishing this threat from the enemies I'm also going to be placing my Cavalry into the other flanking position introducing asymmetry into unit placement and Battlefield layout is a really easy way to invest the battle with Choice depending on the tactics that the heroes deploy or however the first couple of turns of that combat go might suggest that One Direction is more advantageous than the other can the hero's magic user waylay these Cavalry units with some kind of Battlefield control spell did the Barbarian already bound into the front line of the Infantry off to the left did the Rogue already execute on some plan to start a big fire causing smoke to block line of sight from the ranged units whatever the heroes decide to do it's almost certain that the worst decision is just to rush straight down the middle of the enemy column Cavalry units are really brainless to use you just use all of their movement until they reach the heroes ranged units are a bit trickier because you have to decide how to position them if their line of sight is blocked they're probably going to move to where they have a good shot they might also continue to retreat and stay out of range if the heroes aren't using their full movement to reach them or just don't seem to be bothered enough to use a fireball spell and knock them all out at once the middle guard is basically where we want to put everything else the Vanguard would of course be a more effective place to put our brutes but again we don't actually want to crush our players under our iron heel by putting them in the middle guard or the rear guard they still do a good job defending the elite but we have the suspense of them lurching forward to attack our advancing Heroes the middle guard is also where we are going to place the artillery units they should definitely be protected by the Infantry in the Vanguard and probably at least one of the flanks they are a high priority Target and you want them to be able to fire off at least one spell before they meet the players the artillery does not advance it only Retreats closer back to the elite to support them firing off spells and Battlefield control abilities along the way just make sure that your artillery has one big area of effect damaging spell or ability and a couple of different Battlefield effect spells or abilities and you're good to go that will more than serve its purpose finally for our mid-ground deployment we will have our spawner which will spit out a troop or two and then Retreat to support the elite the spawner can be protected on the Flank In a bigger battle but it's not really important because it can actually create its own blockers just have it start working on its portal spell or you know pulling up skeletons from the ground or whatever on turn one so they know how to prioritize that Target at lower levels artillery units and spawner units work perfectly well as their own bosses in fact you really shouldn't fill out every single battle with every different unit type there's almost no way that it's going to be a balanced encounter especially at the beginning of a campaign and to take it a step further if every single one of your battles looks exactly like this diagram that's going to get boring for you and your players this is just a helpful way to remember what all the units and for and where generally they can be placed and remember the battlefield that's on this diagram is completely blank there's no terrain there's no elevation there's nothing blocking line of sight so um yeah this is just a learning tool so next we're going to take a look at three different battles from act 1 2 and 3 of Baldur's Gate 3 and diagram them out and talk about how they are interacting with these positions and unit types full disclosure I did a little bit of storyboarding work for act one of Baldur's Gate 3 in the early pandemic and I do know some people who worked on the project I have a lot of positive vibes wrapped up into this game so I'm not really intending to be overly critical and this isn't really a review of the game anyway slight spoilers ahead and if you don't want to see any spoilers at all go to the time you see on the screen right now so the first combat encounter we're going to look at today is the blighted village which is from act one and has been in the game for the entirety of Early Access I feel like this is the combat encounter where people playing Baldur's Gate 3 go oh you can get Advantage by shooting from a high place in this game and it totally changes the way they play the game and possibly D and D from then on we have this busted up Village that has been taken over by some goblins who have set up on the roofs of these buildings in Ambush and while it's not super obvious there is a delightful little flavor of that asymmetry that I've been talking about on one building we have two archers and on the other building we have an Archer and a mage so The Archers are going to be our ranged units and the Mage is going to be the artillery or really almost even more of an elite unit in this case because it is such an early low level encounter now the streets and Courtyards are also being patrolled by a couple of goblins as well and those are going to be our infantry units so you may have noticed that already in this first example from Baldur's Gate 3 this looks nothing like the diagram I just showed you unless of course the player enters through the main gate of the village in which case looky there we have all of our range units off to the flanks and we have our main column of infantry units ready to rush in to the center and tie up our heroes as they get pelted from the sides by spells and arrows if the players approach The Village Square from the side having already dispatched a couple of goblins isolated in a small courtyard then the heroes will find themselves in a similar situation being rushed by infantry as they are pelted from the flank by ranged units and once they punch their way through the Infantry they will find themselves within range of the artillery and another ranged unit I strongly suspect that the designer of this particular encounter expected you to keep reloading until you found what I think is the optimal solution which is to sneak up onto the buildings with either the ranged units or the artillery so while I was won over by the fiendishness of this encounter design in the game if this came up in play I would be I think really upset with my GM because it is designed to defeat the player I think if you reduce the amount of ranged units that are up on top of buildings and maybe even reposition the artillery unit so it's behind the Infantry you still have a pretty crafty and difficult combat this next one is a bit more spoilery it's from act two towards the end as you are assaulting the base of moonrise Tower again this encounter is sort of on the mean-spirited side of things though at this point in the game you should really be thinking through this stuff ahead of time and not getting bushwhacked every single encounter you walk into this was the first battle in my playthrough where it really struck me what the level design was doing with asymmetry in the battlefield and with the unit deployment now it's assumed that the heroes are going to start at the end of this long staircase Corridor into the foyer area waiting at the bottom of the foyer is a big old ogre and this big boss wizard person our brute and our Elite off to one side is a line of ranged units with this sort of task master acting as infantry off to the other side we have a brute and an artillery unit Waiting by some pillars the staircase on the opposite end of the room where you need to head is guarded by another couple of artillery units the rafters on both sides of the battlefield have some crossbow archers as ranged units and for me they were the most tilting aspect of this fight now if you're anything like me you will be tempted to go after the elite Target in the center they are set there as bait they are there to get you to run down this staircase and get destroyed in the crossfire you're going to get hit with area of effect spells because you're in a contained area you're going to get hit with Darkness spells you won't be able to see out of it it is a nightmare again what the game expects you to do is sneak around and attack one of their flanks so you are not within firing range of 100 of their ranged units and artillery units from the second turn and again this encounter completely deviates from the diagram that I showed you earlier it puts the elite front and center but that is designed to pull you in to all of these ranged units on the flanks and the artillery units in the rear and those are where they're supposed to be on the diagram this formation is really easy to adapt to the tabletop if you just cut out those dangled archers on the Rafters and get rid of one or two of those artillery units this is a great battle to borrow the formation from as long long as your Elite unit has the AC and HP to stand up to a couple of rounds also the context of this fight is that this is sort of the fight before the big fight so if your Heroes do Rush In And Wipe Out the elite on the first turn they still have to finish the rest of the fight because everybody there is not guarding the elite they are guarding the guy upstairs oh and the bottleneck is also mean spirited for a tabletop game so I would probably have it so that players could jump off either side of the staircase into the arena and kind of adjust their approach to either of the flanks if they so choose next let's look at some elements of asymmetry that has been worked into this encounter off to the left we have a bunch of ranged units and you are closer to the brute and off to the right side you have just one brute and an artillery unit and you are closer to the elite Target my party was fairly melee heavy and I didn't really have a lot of area of effect tax at this point in the game so it made the most sense for my party to attack the right flank of this formation the biggest element of asymmetry on this battlefield is really just this Fallen pillar off to the right flank Fallen pillars and piles of Rebel are the easiest things you can do to introduce asymmetry onto the battlefield and offer different tactical opportunities if I would have had better answers for crowd control with some area of effect attacks taking the Left Flank would probably be the way to go to reduce the number of enemy combatants on the field quickly at the beginning of the fight the final encounter we're going to look at is probably the most spoilery it takes place at the end of act three the big assault towards the end of the game the high Hall Courtyard this is a very large Battlefield and there's all kinds of ways that you can approach it but we're just going to look at how it begins there's really only one entrance that I saw to this battlefield there may be other ways to get it in but this is not really sneaking around finding the optimal entrance this is about what you do once you pass the gate there's a lot of asymmetry in the battlefield as a whole but in this opening sequence there really isn't that much there's a big statue in the middle and a couple of bridges off to the side and a gate house directly above you your exit from this battlefield is on the other side of the Arena up a set of stairs and it is further away than you would think if you try to smash your way through the main column of the enemies you're gonna get your butt kicked there's not much happening in the courtyard in front of you just a Vanguard of a couple of infantry units to the Left Flank is a row of goblin Archer ranged units that are there to ruin your day if you try to punch your way through the middle of the enemy column guarding the right flank in the Gatehouse is an artillery unit and a ranged unit oh that's right there's a big old ogre at the rear on the Left Flank ready to hurl exploding barrels into the courtyard and there to support those goblins and off deep into the right flank there is a spawner this demon that calls other demons into the battle and guarding the top of the stairs in the middle of the column is our Elite in this case a mind flare we have waves of reserves waiting in every direction on your way to the exit so sneaking your way through this is going to be pretty tricky that spawner off on the right flank in this asymmetrical deployment is probably the highest priority for the opening moves of this battle if you let that thing alone it is going to take this action economy and throw it out the window you will be completely overwhelmed the best play that I could figure out was to sneak into The High Ground on the right flank and attack that spawner and then Seize The High Ground on the Gatehouse from which I could launch all of my area of effect attacks against the ranged units that had to reposition to find a bed better line of sight on me I think the big takeaway for tabletop here again is the asymmetry of the enemy unit deployment each flank is designed to encourage a different approach for parties of different strengths and this avoids a situation in which your players feel like they just need to flip a coin whether they Juke right or left in this case with the spawner off on the right flank I strongly feel that that is the direction that every party should take but you know I I actually haven't played that many campaigns with that many 12 level characters so you know there might be something very obvious to long time players that I'm missing and this is where I better have remembered to put in the time signature for where you were supposed to skip those spoilers so using this dry erase marker mat let's see if we can't come up with an interesting Boss Arena that uses the asymmetry that we've seen in the Baldur's Gate 3 encounters and also properly deploy our unit types so that the battle never gets stale I start by marking out these big columns all around the perimeter and interior of the room and then Mark in where the stairs are going to go for these levels of risers leading up to this Throne this is a really standard Throne Room Arena there's really no surprises quite yet and we're starting with a symmetrical design that we're then going to ruin in a bit I like to hatch or fill in the areas where there's going to be an elevation change they might read as walls at first but you know I just have to explain that to the players we'll get a better look at this in a bit but I am drawing these toppled statues over on the far side of the room the Left Flank and this is where I'm going to place my ranged units you can climb up the incline plane of one Statue where the beheaded statue across from it is this handy little sniper's Roost this first element of asymmetry on the battlefield will also support the asymmetry of our troop deployment for our next bit of Battlefield asymmetry we are going to have this toppled pillar smash into the staircase on the side of the throne platform when I drew this it was mostly for visual variety but we are actually going to activate this element of asymmetry in a bit a couple more statues and details to the room and it's it's looking pretty good we know where the players start we know where the boss is so let's start with our Vanguard of infantry I'm gonna have a couple little goblins at the bottom of the stairs to rush in to claim First Blood just a heads up I'm doing some very simple challenge rating math on this if my players were running low on health and resources I would probably go ahead and swap out minions for this forward Vanguard and maybe even the ranged units up on the Statue I place my Cavalry units off to the right flank and my range units off to the Left Flank up on that perch that I made for them I decide to remove one of my Cavalry units and kind of make this Wolf the pet of the ogre that I'm using as my brute over on the right flank next I place my magic user artillery unit in the middle guard up on that first Riser so this is what we end up with we have a slight shift in the Paradigm because our brute is over in the flank kind of where he's most useless and our Cavalry unit is also set a little bit farther back so depending on the direction our players take he may not be able to engage on the first turn but I think this is going to add some interesting options for maneuvering for the players and then also not just like punish them with a horribly unbalanced action economy on turn one so let's try out a couple of different scenarios depending on which direction the players decide to move in on turn one what we're trying to look for is if every direction offers an interest alternative outcome also we're looking for a situation where if the players gain an early advantage and wipe out a bunch of troops early on that we don't end up with a couple of dead turns but the enemy just has to move into position and can't really do anything it seems like if our players charge straight in they are going to slam into the front line and the Cavalry will be able to catch up with them they'll be within range of the ranged attack and the artillery they're in for a bad time let's see what happens if they turn left and go after the archers depending on how they spend their movement they might just avoid slamming into the Vanguard and they almost certainly will avoid running into the Cavalry they might score a couple shots against the range units or more wisely against the artillery and from there they can Seize The High Ground which is actually Beyond line of sight for the artillery unit and then kind of take out the Infantry and the Cavalry at their Leisure assuming they have answers for an area of effect attack from the artillery they kind of have this whole encounter licked already which is a problem there are two easy solutions that I see to this problem first we include a spawner from the beginning of the encounter give him a long warm-up time on bringing in new enemy units so they won't really pop up until the mid game and the the players think that they have everything in hand or we just move our Elite unit forward if our players choose to turn left at the beginning because I can already tell if the players turn right they're going to get cornered and swarmed I decide that I wanted to develop this idea of the secret entrance to the boss room that perhaps our players could have discovered as they were trudging their way through the dungeon this is a trickier position than you might think but if they sneak attack the ogre and wipe him out early they can almost bottleneck half of the enemies and take them on one by one but we'll definitely want to have that spawner next to the elite to make sure that things don't get dry because our ranged units are in no position to help and neither is the artillery piece the other thing that I would add here is to make sure that your Battlefield is actually big enough and some cut footage for this video I found out that by using only half of the battle Mats area to make sure that the map stayed in camera the way that I had it set up it meant that all of my units were basically in range of each other at all times and the differences in Mobility between the Cavalry and the brute really didn't come into play hardly at all everything made a lot more sense in all the ranges and sight lines and details really started to come together so make sure that your Battlefield is large enough and for the folks out there using virtual tabletops I haven't really drawn that many top-down Maps so I thought I would showcase Elven Tower Adventures this isn't a paid ad spot I just wanted to give them a shout out because they were a major inspiration to me when I first started drawing Maps Alvin Tower Adventures creates top-down and isometric maps with one shot or full-length Adventures for each map right now I'm just showing you the big Arena Maps that I think would work really well for the kinds of things that we talked about in today's video but they have maps for all kinds of locations and Dungeons and taverns and basically anything you need to get your fantasy campaign off and running they have close to 700 maps and Adventures which all come with varied versions including support for roll 20 and other vtts they even have a Creative Commons collection of 150 Maps if you're putting together a little Zine so check out the links in the description below to see everything that Elven Tower Adventures has going on doggy I think that will just about do it for for this episode there's of course a lot more to say about enemy encounters and tactics from the GM side but that will have to wait for another video if you enjoy these longer form videos and these deep dives into these bigger topics please swing by the pre-launch page for the Monstrous Kickstarter and sign up for notifications for when the campaign goes live on September 5th my teaching semester is just about to start up again so I don't know when the next video is going to come out so until next time whenever that is farewell and welcome to the aftercrow where I take the time to thank all of my patrons who support this show and its continued success Becker's at the secret Sketchbook level have seen a couple of short videos that I've shot about my process how I'm taking each of these monster ideas for monstrous from ideation to full illustration and they've also seen a sneak peek at a big commercial commission that I landed recently this semester not only am I back to teaching tabletop prototype in play but I really want to make sure that I am prioritizing time to play lots more games not only do I enjoy myself more when I have more things to say about all kinds of different games but I feel like it produces better work for me I don't know how other artists do it but it seems to be vitally important to me to stay curious and continue to shovel in more influences more different voices and more exposure to lots of different design thinking and people to play with and that's the real challenge that's the key I have been something of an anti-social art Goblin for the whole summer at least when I wasn't at shows and spending time with the people that I care about playing new and interesting games sounds like a great way to remedy my habit of cloistering myself up in my art studio for extended periods of time thanks again to all of my patrons and thank you for watching all the way to the end of this enormous video and I will see you next time foreign

Channel: Map Crow

Views: 83,520

Keywords: dungeons & dragons, dnd 5e, dm tips, baldurs gate 3, game master, d&d 5e, dungeon master tips, dm advice, dungeons and dragons, roleplaying game, dnd 5th edition, tactical rpg games, dnd combat, dnd combat guide dm, combat encounter, combat encounters 5e

Id: 9ClB4UewOys

Length: 39min 53sec (2393 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023