Catastrophic Failure | Running the Game

I know how it seems running D DS is crazy juggling act keeping all these balls in the air you feel like you're riding a catastrophy weight that could collapse at any minute well the good news is when you fail it's question a win not if your friends will remember they'll be impressed you could do it at all Kent at the end of the day the price of failure is no big deal Oh shucks I would've brought him out if I didn't know how to use them shucks I wouldn't put it on less I'm good at it on today's episode we're gonna talk about failure Cass trophic failure like happened to me a couple of weeks ago in my D&D game so those of you who have been following my videos and who remember the episode about the black pudding you may remember me talking about how that one encounter with this news changed my campaign in fact it did a lot more than that it resulted in me killing my boss and I phrased it that way because that's the most dramatic way I can think of doing it but that's not how I felt I felt like I had killed my friends character and that was awful I hated it I hated everything that happened that night it was a terrible evening but we survived it and we're gonna talk about how in order to really understand what happened there's gonna be a lot of stuff in the doobly-doo for you to download and read at your leisure it's all optional you should be able to understand the story without it for the second Turtle Rock Studios D&D group I sent an email out to the players and the title of the email was the baron of beta guard is dead his family murdered now the political situation in the barony in which the game started I considered somewhat optional if the players were interested in engaging with it that's cool if they weren't that's cool too I had an adventure ready that would have hooks into that politics but didn't require the players being interested in it they could just be interested in dungeon delving and they still have a lot of fun I thought now that email is in the doobly-doo there's also a description of my campaign setting which is a one-page description because I think that way people are more likely to read it and there's a map and all the stuff you would expect and in this description it talks about how humans don't trust elves and dwarves for various reasons there is the bad guy who's like 17th level so it's not something you worry about at low levels the invincible overlord and he has taken over the entire area and in order for the dwarves to continue to govern themselves how they want they have to give the invincible overlords slaves so now the dwarves are famous as slow now how do you as a door feel about that that's up to you one of the players as a dwarf player and he read that stuff and he was aware of it but I think he thought of it as kind of not applying to him that's Matt's weird campaign stuff what do I care I'm a cool dwarf war cleric again that didn't bother me I didn't think the players had any obligation to engage with this stuff I think a lot of players like playing non-human characters because they play a human in real life but I like running games that have a political element to them and so I tend to run a humano centric campaign one of the players in fact said I'm gonna play a human druid because everyone you're setting is a xenophobe that's not literally true there's nothing racial about the wait humans treat dwarves it's purely because the dwarves made this bargain this Faustian deal with the invincible overlord I thought that'd be a cool hook for a dwarf player to be disgusted with that and be here with the humans because he's trying to do something about it this is all important to the story stay tuned so there's the original email I sent out describing the central tension of the campaign and we'll do a video on central tensions later I think they're critically important to a good campaign and then I sent out the campaign one-page summary which talked about how many of these species don't trust each other because of the pressure of the invincible overlord and then the players found this super important artifact called the shield of and rim the shield of and room is one of a set there's a shield as a sword as a crown and they confer nobility and room is the name of the entire map that I present the players and there hasn't been a king of and room for a long time somebody with the shield of Andrea could declare themselves the king of and Rim and especially if they were a hero who would save the town or maybe even the entire barony people would follow them and when our players took the shield to their friendly neighborhood high level wizard NPC he expressly told them whatever you do with that do not take it to the city of Boettiger keep because stuff that's happening there is bad news I don't trust the regent it's best that you guys keep it you're going to go into the swamp anyway and go fight some goblins so armed with this information the players made a decision they needed new armor they needed better weapons and the only place they could get heavy armor and heavy weapons was Boettiger key so they strode into Boettiger keep all unawares up until this point there was no need for them to pay attention to the politics of the city but from one point of view that ignorance cost them in fact it cost one player his character when the players entered Boettiger cape i showed them the map which you can see here and i described place is the word to visit they go to the blacksmith they go to the tavern there's a church in town and that's unusual because up until now I described every town in the area as having a ruined church in fact the players had visited a ruin to church and I described that the invincible overlord does not like organized religion in fact it isn't like much organization that isn't his own and in each instance I thought there was a reason the players would visit each of these one of the players needed new arms and armor so he'd go to the blacksmith I expected the thief to want to go to the in the tavern and do some investigation and find out hey what's going on in this town I expected maybe one of the players to go to the church and check it out why is there a church here but the players didn't do at almost any of that they wanted to go visit the wizard and get their stuff identified they had magic items I want to get identified and there were friends with this wizard but they also had a note which you can see here which you can download describing the bad guys plan to kidnap this wizard so they arrived in town and they all decide to go see the wizard with one exception the dwarf says I don't care about visiting the wizard I want to go to the blacksmith and get a new suit of armor and a new weapon because the black pudding corroded his so the dwarf war priest goes to the blacksmith everyone else goes to visit the wizard they knock on the door and a knight opens the door now the last time the players had visited this wizard it was in his mobile tower his Darrin's instant fortress which was something they found in the road while they were trying to track him down and just like then when they arrived at his mobile tower there was a knight there and when they knocked on the door this Knight opened the door but that night was an ally of the wizard and the players got to know her lady Avelina these Knights were unknown to the players now there were two knights in the tower at this point Knights of the Black Rose and unbeknownst to the players these are high-level bad guy Knights most of them are fighters a couple of them are evil paladin's specifically I think of them as ill riggers from this great issue of Dragon Magazine stay with me this story has an ending the two Knights look at each other and say who are you guys and the hero say we are friends of the wizard taste and they say really will the wizard is missing and the players say well we just saw him not even a week ago and the two Knights look at each other and they whisper they talk to each other and they say you may be the last people to see the wizard alive would you be willing to come talk to the regent and tell him what happened now this is a critical moment because from this point forward the players options begin to narrow and they sense this but didn't know what they could do about it one of the players said wait are these Knights the same Knights that we met last time and I said no these Knights have black roses on their Harold so that was an ill omen now these Knights had a plan let's get these rat catchers these mercenaries into the keep away from prying eyes where we can accuse them of whatever we want and then hang them and in the morning the townspeople will wake up and see these dead adventurers and we'll tell them these are the people that kidnapped and killed our wizard thereby relieving themselves of any guilt so these Knights are acting suspiciously but I didn't want them to act too suspiciously because then it would be obvious and they are trying to trick the players the players agreed their leader is the wizard skoros their pc wizard who is a very lawful good character and basically goes along with whatever the law says and whatever the right thing to do is so when these Knights say will you come with us and talk to the region he's like sure and everyone goes with him so as they go from the Wizards tower to the keep they pick up another Knight now there are three Knights guarding them as you can see their window has narrowed now they can take on two knights probably three Knights that's still doable but then they enter the keep without any objection and they end up outside the region's receiving room in this a little for yay and now there are four knights and the players are now very suspicious one of them says can I make a roll to see if I suspect anything and that kind of baffled me because I felt like you suspect them you obviously have a suspicion otherwise you wouldn't be asking me that act on that suspicion but I realized that what the player really wanted was some kind of objective omniscient narrator confirmation of that suspicion so I said yeah go right ahead and roll make an intuition check he rolled really high and so I texted the player you are being set up now at that point I really think the only thing the players could do would be attack these four Knights because from this point forward things are only going to get worse their options are only going to narrow but the player tried to go to the bathroom do you mind if I excused myself go to the Privy and the four Knights of course don't want these people going anywhere they're trying to trap them and say no no one visits the Privy while you're waiting to talk to the Regent and at that point the players were ushered in to see the region too now there are six nights there is the evil priest and the Regent the regent of Boettiger Lord sexton I tried to pick a name that was ominous the players are now in this long hallway with big stained-glass windows this is where the Baron of betta gar used to receive people and his throne remains empty nearby is a much smaller throne that the Regent uses and he asked the players to describe what happened when they saw taste and they start telling him but he is not really interested this was all a ruse the players away from the public getting them away from the townspeople into this yo room where it's just him and his knights and they can do whatever they want so he starts saying some ominous things to the players the PC Wizards Kouros says hang on the minute wait a minute we didn't have anything to do with the disappearance of taste we have this note from the bad guys saying how they're gonna kidnap the wizard the region says may I see that note and the wizard Skaro says absolutely here you go the region takes it looks at it and rips a tie he says arrest those men because I want to remove any ambiguity at this point and the players were wondering why they're being arrested I had the Regent turned to his priest and say we can pin the disappearance on the wizard on these rat catchers no one will guess that we had anything to do with it now that was the end of that session I said we'll pick it up next week and it'll be initiative the players spent the next week talking about what they could do the thief's player asked me is it reasonable for me to have my thieves tools like hidden about my person so that if I'm captured and searched they won't find them I said do it as far as I'm concerned you always have your thieves tools hidden about your person you're a thief I mean unless you're in the dungeon in which case it makes sense to have them handy otherwise when you're in town why would you have them anywhere else I wanted that player to understand that if he got captured he would probably be able to get out of a jail cell using as these tools meanwhile the wizard player said guys I don't know about you but I'll be able to get out of here I have invisibility memorized also the druid player said I don't about you guys but I can turn into a spider and I can get out of here if we end up in jail I can just slip through the bars so I felt as though we had a pretty good session lined up for the next week the players were gonna get arrested they were going to end up in jail and they were gonna try to find a way out and they would discover what had happened to the dwarf player who wasn't with them remember the dwarf war priest was talking to the blacksmith and something extraordinary happened I would switch between the players in the kief and the dwarf at the blacksmith and go back and forth to try to keep everybody engaged and so the dwarf Wahoos that the blacksmith walks up to this huge cumin so very large blacksmith there are lots of people in here doing work and lots of customers the dwarf says excuse me master Smith I need some new armor and a new weapon and the Smith spits on the ground and says I do not deal with slavers now this was the first time the dwarf player ever had to deal with that prejudice and I was sort of curious as to what he would do because this was a player who hadn't done a lot of role-playing up until now I was kind of amazed the dwarf player went for it he role played he spoke in character he was a dwarf he wasn't gonna let this guy talk to like this and he wasn't a slaver and he told the Smith I'm not flavor in fact I saved the people of gravis further nearby town near to betta gar keep there was being attacked by Undead and my friends and I saved that whole place he gave an impassioned in character speech I was impressed but I thought it would probably take a little bit more than you know one mouthy dwarf to change this blacksmith's mind so I said alright I'll give you a 20% chance that someone from the nearby town of gravis bur that you had saved is here in betta gar keep I mean this is the local big city so of course there's people moving back and forth all the time so the dwarf player rolled percentile dice enrolled a 19 so I had a customer in the Smith who say he's right he's telling the truth I was there I remember him they're heroes they saved us the blacksmith was like wow I I guess I was wrong at this point the dwarf pushed his luck I think because he was trying to get better prices for his gear and he said you're right I'm a hero in fact I'm a friend of taste the Beres wizard tastes yours towns wizard you should be nice to me at that point he feels fingers pinching his elbow and a figure a small figure at a siding he turns and he looks and there's a halfling there and the halfling says uh excuse me friend your voice carries shouldn't we be talking about this outside and the dwarf player realizes that something strange is going on he goes on uh yeah let's talk outside he asks the Smith to hang on a minute and he and the halfling go outside so this point I take of the dwarf player outside and we roleplay his conversation with a halfling out of your shot of the rest of the group so they and for the next week have no idea what happened between the door for the halfling the halfling says what's wrong with you don't you know what's going on don't you know that taste is missing because he was loyal to the Baron the Baron and his family were murdered and everyone thinks the regent did it and the dwarf says whoa no I had no idea the halfling says where are your friends where's the rest of the party that saved the people of greatest verse and the dwarf says well they're all talking to the wizard and a thing says oh my god the Black Rose are going to arrest them take them to the region and they're going to be accused of the Wizards murder the halfling says what would you be willing to do to save your friends and the dwarf said I would be willing to do anything I would risk my life to save my friends of course he would he's a dwarf the halfling says yeah okay having you guys owe us a favor isn't bad and if you guys can find taste and save him then taste would owe us a favor and that's not bad either all right I'll help you out the halfling says and reaches behind his neck and pulls out like a leather thong this key he snaps the key off and he says this is a skeleton key to the Barons prisons now the Regent may have changed the locks but if he hasn't this will get you in or out of any door in the jail he says how can we hide this about your person so that they won't find you if you happen to get arrested they'll search you I know come here he says now the player who plays this dwarf has this great beard so I walk up and make like I'm trying to fiddle with his beard and I say the halfling starts braiding the key into your beard he says they'll never look forward here the dwarf player thinks this is awesome he's like oh this is going to be amazing yeah my beard smart then the halfling draws a picture of the keep in the sand and says this is the keep and this is the Wizards tower nearby and this is the secret corridor that connects the two underground in the same level as the jails so if you can get your friends out you don't have to try to escape through the keep you can escape through the secret corridor and up and out through the Wizards tower the dwarf is now incredibly stoked because he is certain he knows what's gonna happen they're gonna get arrested they're gonna be in jail and he's gonna help bust him out and that's kind of what I thought was gonna happen but that's not what happened so here is this week's lesson never take away your players agency I mean I'm sure there can be people in the comments that say oh I've done it before and it worked great well fine I'm sure there are exceptions but I have now done this three or four times since I was 15 and every single time it is failed any time you set your players up in a situation where they have to surrender they will not you can begin an adventure with the players captured in jail in fact that's how out of the abyss begins and I think it's fantastic but you can't put the players in that scenario they will never go for it they will always try to fight their way out in fact they will fight their way out on purpose even if they know they will fail just to be stubborn just to show you how much they hate it and you know what I've done the same thing as a player even as a player this is why I should have known and whatever happens from here on out it is not the players fault it's my fault I set them up for this I should not have I should have known better I've had the same thing happened to me as a player and I hated it and I rebelled at it the same way they did nobody throws me my own guns and says ride nobody nobody throat me my own gun it says run nobody so the next week when it was initiative the dwarf player is sitting there waiting for them to get captured he's super excited to see what's going to happen but the players have concocted their own plan now since the week before they have sort of realized the scenario they're in they realize they have brought the shield of and room to the Regent they have brought him the thing he needs to legitimize his rule the one thing their NPC buddy tasteless who told him not to do so now they're going to do anything to stop him from getting that shield including risk of their own lives including suicide if it comes down to it and you know what that's super dramatic and in a sense it worked there was an epic battle in which the wizard gave his pack to the half-orc fighter the half war fighter has the shield and now the half war fighter has the shield and the Wizards spell book the wizard was very afraid of his spell book getting captured by the bad guys the wizard then casts invisibility on the half work he had originally planned on casting on himself kind of selfishly so that he knew he would escape but now he's doing it selflessly he's saying you go invisible take the shield take all our gear get out of here and this amazing chess game played out where the bad guys attacked the player-character wizard to disrupt his concentration that caused the half-orc to go from being invisible to visible then the bad guy priest casts whole person on the orc and freezes the orc then the good guys attack the evil priest and disrupt his concentration causing the orc to be able to move again back and forth it goes players go down players go back up these Knights turn out to be incredibly tough but so are the players three of them escape two of them are captured the wizard is attacked by one of the paladins and goes down in one shot because I had sort of forgotten or maybe I didn't even really know that the third-level wizard at max hip points has ten hit points so in fact I did enough damage to him to kill him outright and I said no no they're not trying to kill you they're attacking to subdue remember they want you guys to hang in the morning they want to kill you here where no one's watching now from one point of view that was an epic battle but from another point of view it was miserable because the players were constantly describing how they felt like they had no choice they felt like there was nothing they could do they felt like they had been railroaded and that made me feel bad so I wasn't having a good time so even though if this had been any other scenario I think everyone would have thought wow that was an epic battle it didn't feel that way it felt like this intense struggle for or control over player agency the three players escape they steal some horses they ride to the blacksmith they find the door for they say we got to get out of here the dwarf says wait a minute wait a man I need to tell you what happened and the players say no no no time to explain get on the horse the dwarf says ok and gets on the horse and they ride out of town so for the players are out of town two of the players are captured the two captured players wake up in the jail they're not sure how much time has gone by I think that's maybe an important point as far as they knew they could be about to be hung you'll be caught and damn well hung I think he looks pretty well madam please we have no time the guard is one of the Knights it's not a typical man-at-arms this is a powerful night one of the nights that almost killed them a minute ago the two players who were captured the wizard in the druid asked me to describe the jail cell really requests they say can I see the other player are the walls barred or are they stone walls I said well let me draw it out for you that was a mistake me drawing it on the battle map sent the signal that this was a combat encounter and the implication with a combat encounter is that there is a way to win but I didn't mean either of those things I didn't intend this to be a combat encounter at all and I certainly didn't think there was a way for them to get out of this they were both manacled so they couldn't cast spells but I didn't know what kind of signal I was sending so I drew the jail on the mat and I put the Paladin guard where she was and I put the PCs where they were in opposite jail cells and they shared a language they could talk to each other which I didn't know which meant when they were in the for yay and the Druids suspected that these guys were trying to set them up he could have said something in a language that the paladins and the guards couldn't understand and maybe come up with a scenario where they could jump the guards when there were only four of them so these two players captured start talking about how they might be able to get out and the wizard player incredibly bravely said I am going to say the worst most hateful most disgusting things I can to this female guard to get her to come over here and face me now the actual player my friend Phil is not that bad a guy so he doesn't know what to say that would cause her to do that but just telling me my character says those things was enough and it worked they may be in a dire role I don't remember and the guard walks up opens the door to his Jail walks into his cell and says you're to hang in the morning no one said you needed a tongue to do that the implication here was clear she's going to cut out his tongue if he keep talking at this point because of the way the jail cells were situated she has her back to the druid player and unbeknownst to me wild shape is not a spell you don't need your hands-free to be able to do it so the druid player turns into a spider behind the guards back and escapes and now at this point everyone has escaped except the wizard player the Paladin on guard lady Morgan seeing that the druid has escaped behind her back draws her sword and executes skoros the wizard and at that point all hell broke loose the wizard player had no problem with the reality of that it was clear to him that he was at her mercy and she could do this anytime she wanted he was just trying to distract her so the druid could escape but what he didn't know or what he hadn't considered was that this humiliated her and that made her incredibly angry and she is not a regular man-at-arms she is an evil bad guy paladin that we are setting up to be the recurring villains of this adventure first of all she had no idea that either of the PCs could escape and now one of them under her charge is gone and as far as she was concerned the other player character could do the same thing and there was no way she was going to her boss the region is saying I let them both go angry at being humiliated and wanting to make sure that she was at least able to tell her boss one of them didn't get away she executes the wizard now it's reasonable for somebody watching this listen to this to think I did that to teach somebody a lesson but nothing could be further from the truth in fact he was maybe the only player I would have gone that far with because of all the players at the table my friend Phil playing the wizard was the one who was the most skeptical of me letting the players off the hook he's the one who would say Matt's taking it easy on us in fact at one point he said you took it easy on us last night and I'm like what are you talking about and he goes no I know what you did you stopped kind of paying attention to how we were managing light because you knew that otherwise we were gonna get smoked by these goblins in the mine and I was like Phil I don't really know how the rules for light work I didn't do anything to take it easy on you I just forgot but that's how he thinks and I guess maybe I'm projecting too because that's how I think as a player I'm always kind of because I'm a GM I'm always kind of aware of when the dungeon master is making allowances behind the screen to keep the players alive when it otherwise wouldn't be realistic so I thought of all the players there he was the one who wouldn't let me get away with it I felt like I had to do the most realistic plausible thing and in that moment to me there was no way a humiliated evil night was going to let this guy live when lady Morgana realized all the awful things the wizard had said or just a trick and not only had she been tricked but the result of the trick was that the druid player de scaped she was humiliated and in her anger she was capable of anything now when the druid player heard this he said you know what I go back in there and commit suicide against the night I don't want to play anymore this is how unhappy everybody was a large percentage of the players thought this is it we're not playing gened anymore everything has collapsed Phil got up and left now we were playing at work so Phil is now walking around the office at nine o'clock at night and the other people who are there late working or like hey Phil what's going on how's D&D and he is furious my friend Wes said well Matt runs a pretty fair game I guess if you died then there was a good reason and feels like no there was not a good reason part of this is the fact that all through this the players had kind of been bouncing around from one encounter to the next without a whole lot of rhyme or reason and of all the players phil was the most upset by this he was often asking why are we doing this he was the player who was the most upset that they didn't think enough and he's the one that paid the price for everything so it was maximally unjust Phil walked around and talked to some of the other employees blew off some steam and came back sat down and said okay I just need to talk about what happened and that's another lesson when a catastrophe like this occurs it's important that everybody just talk it out describe your perspective to the players why did everything happen you know normally I do not tell the players what their choices are I do not tell the players what they could do in town I do not tell the players what they could do in battle because I sort of feel like that's taking some of the fun away from the players it's disrespectful part of the fun of D&D is you as a player coming up with this stuff but a lot of these players have never played before they literally don't know what the traditions are that I take for granted so we spent the next two hours talking about what it just happened the druid player explained that the reason he committed suicide against the paladin was because he didn't want to play anymore if Phil wasn't gonna play but Phil's reaction was what are you talking about NACA where as far as Phil was concerned we were gonna keep playing he was just really angry now and wanted to talk about what happened I explained the palette of this point of view which I normally don't do but this situation demanded it and Phil thought about it and said okay yeah all right that makes sense I buy it and the party kind of talked the druid player down admittedly he had been complaining about having migraines all night so that's another lesson don't play angry don't play with migraines you know there are a lot of things you know we'd all been at work for eight hours up until then and so there are a lot of things that contribute to players making bad decisions there are a lot of things that contribute to DMS making bad decisions after about half an hour Phil start to think about his new character I said you want a role stance and he said yes now if you've watched my videos before you know I have my own system for generating stats a role for d68 is three but you do them in order so your first role is your strength your second role is your decks and that way players don't bring their own baggage to the table and you get this cool or ocular process of discovering your character but the flip side of that rule is if that character doesn't live you get to roll the normal way which is rule 46 take the highest three and place them wherever you want so you can play whatever character you want immediately Phil started to roll up a new warlock and he was really excited by this warlock and I quoted my friend Mark who once said to me you know Matt when you kill one of my characters I am really legitimately angry at you for about half an hour I am furious at you and he said let me be furious do not try to change what happened to bring my character back from the dead just because I'm unhappy because that's also not satisfying that's not what would have happened just let me be angry for about half an hour and then I'll relax and I'll start thinking about my new character and when I told the party this Phil smiled and nodded and said it's literally been half an hour and now I'm back to wanting to play this new character the other players had never really thought about what would happen when someone died for many of them a player dying meant that was it that was the end of D&D and we had to explain especially Phil and I would play D&D a lot before that look no player dying is not the end of the game when the Drude player realized this he said okay well then in that case I would not have gone in the commit suicide and at this point it started to feel like okay we're all gonna get to keep playing together now the door player finally says guys can I tell you what happened with me and the halfling and he describes this whole scenario they had in their pocket the entire time the opportunity for the dwarf to bust them out of jail but the party never really got arrested only two of the players did and then one of them escaped and the other one was killed so the dwarf never got to do his cool stuff now we've played several times since then we're gonna play again Monday and everything seems to be back to normal and the players are a more cohesive group now than they were before in fact I think every time we play the group is a little bit more tight-knit and my friend Phil who lost his wizard is now playing a warlock and he spent more time on that characters backstory then all the other players put together he made it a point to make his character from the bearing of betta gar so he knows all this stuff he knows who all the bad guys are he knows what happened to the Baron he knows what anyone from this area would know all the stuff that the players have up until now kind of been ignoring so even though he lost a character he is super engaged with what's going on also he has a lot more hit points now so it's a lot more likely to live so what are the lessons to be taken away from this one my overwhelming piece of advice to you is never put the players in a situation where you're taking their agency their ability to decide their own fate away from them in other words never put a gun to their head and say surrender because they won't they will come up with a perfectly plausible reasonable way to escape and try to thwart whatever plan you have like I said I'm sure there's someone who's gonna say no no we've done it before it works fine but in my experience that's never happened even as a player whenever I'm a DM anytime the players are in a scenario where the DM thought they should or would surrender they'd never do that when Phil's character scores died Phil was very mature about the whole thing he got incredibly angry right but he got up and he left he walked it off and then he came back and said let's talk about what happened I need to understand and I explained my point of view and now of course thanks to the dwarf the players have made contact with the local Thieves Guild that have some interest in maybe getting some new allies I wrote up a cool little narrative thing you can download the doobly-doo that I then emailed to the players to show them they're not alone I also wrote a long email to the players I basically recapitulated the video the railroad versus a sandbox and I explained to them something I never had I had given them all this setting material but I had never told them what kind of game do I run what am I like as a DM right now if you're just starting out you might not know what you're like as a DM but I do I know exactly what kind of game I run I know what kind of players I value I know what kind of scenarios I concoct and I didn't communicate any of this to the players why not because I'm an idiot you're an imbecile because I am perfectly capable of screwing up just like anybody else so when I finally wrote this email saying look guys I put these things in front of you the politics of the area the various adventures I have ready and you can pick any of them up or ignore them I don't mind but I also run the kind of game where you can get your cells in over your head you can get yourselves in trouble I don't expect that just because I set up a combat encounter that there is a way for you guys to solve it it's entirely possible you guys could get yourself into a situation because of the choices you made that is suicidal in which case I would expect you to retreat or surrender and the players had never thought about that they didn't know that because I had never told them so if you have some idea of what kind of DM you're going to be tell your players ahead of time say this is the kind of game I run don't just say this is the campaign setting don't just say well hear how my elves are different than D&D elves talk about who you are as a Dungeon Master what kind of game you like running what kind of players do you value or maybe a better way of putting it is what kind of behavior do you value in your players right I like players who are motivated who have their own ambition who want to achieve things in the world so for instance the players have found through their own decision-making I did not put this in front of them they found and took the shield of and room for themselves which means now if they wanted to one of the players could declare himself king of and room and if that player has saved a lot of people people would flock to him but again that's up to the players so I took the time to write an email to explain to them this is the kind of game I run which I should have done months ago we sat down and talked for two hours about what had happened I explained my point of view I explained why the bad guys behave the way they did and the players at the end of the night ultimately thought okay well actually that was pretty epic skoros gave His life so that the druid could escape and as a result everyone had escaped except the wizard if there was any player at the table who was going to sacrifice his character his life so that everyone else could escape it was Phil that's why Phil didn't cast invisibility on himself he cast it on the fighter so the fighter could get out with the shield so they could achieve their new objective of do not let the regen get the shield of and room and he didn't and now they've got some epic bad guys that are on their tail right I mean what a great way to introduce some bad guys maybe there's a way to do it without sacrificing a player though so at the end of the day I don't think the players did anything wrong I don't think they did anything stupid I do feel their choices got more and more narrow as they went and they didn't detect that at first and once they did detect it they weren't sure what they could do and I didn't tell him what they could do because I felt like I don't want to tell you guys what to do then I'm kind of taking some of the fun away from you but since then I have made it a point to remind them of things they know to remind them of their options you know the players interrogate an orc and say is there a secret way into black spire keep in New York says no and I say well he seems to be telling the truth and the players talk about and I have to remind them don't forget you guys know of a secret way in you found out back in the mine from the goblins now normally I wouldn't tell my players that I would expect them to live or die on their own you know on their wit's but again these are new players with one or two exceptions none of them have ever played D&D before so that's the catastrophe episode lesson number one do not take agency away from your players lesson number two communicate to your players and tell them what kind of DM you're going to be what kind of eventually are going to run and don't be afraid to tell them what you think is likely to happen based on this scenario they've concocted don't be afraid of failure because it's going to happen failing doesn't matter what matters is how you respond to that failure be open to your players complaints speak openly about what you thought about your motivation about why things went the way they did my campaign suffered well I thought for a little while might be a fatal catastrophe but my friends and I talked about it and we got over it and we fixed it and we're still playing next time we get the other in play which is tomorrow night the players gonna try and infiltrate broken spire keep which I think is going to be part of the climax of this first book of the campaign they have a lot of ideas about how to lay siege to or infiltrate broken spire keep they thought about sending the druid in disguised as a tiny animal they thought about sending the warlock in using visibility or having the warlock cast invisibility on the Ranger or the thief so they could go in and scout the place and get a map and find out where all the bad guys where are the prisoners but so far they've managed to ambush and kill several different patrols and they've gotten some information about what's going on inside to keep and they've reduced the numbers of the people in the keep a little bit and they even know about a backdoor a secret way in but it's going to require them doubling back and that might take a while and the bad guys might get reinforcements so I'm as excited as anybody if I know what happens next I'm feeling a lot better by the way I'm not iron person I'm like 95% let me know what you guys want to see next as far as episodes go I'm thinking about doing an episode on alignment I'm thinking about doing an episode on setting up cool bad guys I still want to do an episode where we build a campaign together because I think that's the kind of thing that makes running Dungeons & Dragons uniquely fun also of course we're gonna do episodes about prepackaged campaign setting we'll talk about The Forgotten Realms and Grayhawk and about a bunch of other campaign settings that might be a little more obscure but if we do build a campaign together it's probably going to be something where we get together on Twitch and I run hexa prefer and we generate a random map and I look to the chat channel and say okay what are we gonna call this mountain range and who lives here and tell me something interesting about this mountain range that's a secret that the players might not know and after we've done that with all the different regions and features we'll have a campaign map I'm on the Pacific coast so if we get together on Twitch it's probably gonna be on the weekend it's probably gonna be around you know in the afternoon let's say noon ish so far this is like episode 16 or 17 and I've promised to do a lot of stuff in these episodes but I've forgotten most of those promises so if you remember when I said oh we'll talk about this in a future episode let me know in the doobly-doo as always there are no ads in this channel and I have no patreon but if you want to support the channel I encourage you to come by my Amazon page there's a link in the doobly-doo I am an independent author I write fantasy novels if you like D&D if you like fantasy you might like them read the description read the reviews you might like them next week we talk about well what do you want to talk about I'm as eager to find out as you are until next time peace out

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 1,008,226

Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, D&D

Id: 8Q8bVPpc84A

Length: 33min 43sec (2023 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/mattcolville]

Someone in the comments said my mistake was shifting narrative focus to the captured PCs in jail, instead of focusing on the dwarf and his attempt to get arrested, get thrown in with them, and escape.

That person is entirely correct. With one simple narrative shift, everything would have gone off without a hitch, and the dwarf player would have got to play out his cool secret.

Of course, hindsight is 50/50. I thought we were just going to check in on the jailed Druid and wizard so they would know they weren't dead.

[u/ragingsystem]

Matt this episode resonated with me on a personal level due to how things are going in my game.

The characters (More so one than all of them) were given a quest by the warlocks patron to collect the rod of seven parts.

The quest hasn't really resonated with them and now as their characters have developed I think it is holding them back. So me and the warlock player had a chat, she is likely going to give the rod parts they have already to her patron and then cut off ties with them (Gaining a fun, roleplay curse with some mechanical benefits).

This is going to open the world up more to my players, especially the new ones and hopefully show them that they are the masters of their characters choices and they aren't forced into any plot lines I have been throwing out there.

That said to reinforce things I posted this video to our group and told them that we all myself included could learn things from it about how to better play the game.

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful videos. I am a fairly long time DM of 7-8ish years and thought at first your videos were more newbie oriented but I watched them anyway to see if there were things I could show my less experienced players and I just liked listening to your groups stories and your humor.

This video showed me how wrong I was and helped to remind me that as a DM you are always learning and even the most simple of lessons that you thought you knew can really open your eyes to issues!

Thanks again, your videos are epic!

[u/gameguy360]

This series is quickly becoming my newest unhealthy obsession. Knock it off, I've got work in the morning!! ^{just kidding keep going.}

[u/IceCreamBalloons]

I guess I've always been okay with pc deaths, even if they're done narratively without an opportunity to survive. In my first party we had one player who was very... brash. He didn't want to pay a toll so he tried to run through, the guards had horses, he had his little dwarf legs and it was obvious he wouldn't make it far. He turned and the his spear for a critical hit. The DM assumed he was among for the closest horse, in which case he would be beaten unconscious, dropped at our feet, and told we have to pay the toll and for the horse of we want to pass.

But then the player said he was aiming for the rider, who would be instantly killed from that attack. The DM even gave him an opportunity to say he was aiming for the horse, but he was adamant that he killed the guard. The DM said, "Okay then, the other five guards overpower you, tie you up and slit your throat. You just murdered their friend right in front of them, they're not gonna let you live for that."

It sucks, but we learned to be ready to die if we put ourselves in death's way through our own stupidity and that rolling up a new character isn't what you want to do, but it's not that bad.

In Matt's case it's a bit different, the wizard wasn't being stupid, but he was in an obviously precarious position where he's literally incapable of defending himself. This is what my group uses insight checks for, getting an idea of how npcs will react to our actions since we can't actually be there to pick up on subconscious cues.

[u/dm_kainami]

Youtube Channel

Twitter

In this video, Matt Colville speaks about his own campaign that he's running and some of the catastrophic events that occurred and that may have been badly handled. DMs are human too after all! Also don't be afraid to tweet or comment on the video to say what you might want him to cover next.

tl;dw

Some summarized advice:

• Do not take agency away from your players
• Communicate to your players and tell them what DM you are going to be
• Don't be afraid to tell them what is likely to happen based on the scenario they concocted
• Be open to your player's complaints and speak openly about what you thought about (NPC) motivation and why things went the way they did

[u/ringostar1997]

Favourite DnD YouTube channel by far. This guy has gotten me to be a more confident DM!