Guiding The Players (Players stay out!) | Running The Game

hey everybody matt colville here making new dungeon masters one video at a time this is a particularly radioactive video for dms only seriously i mean it do not watch this video if you are a player it will ruin everything we just released an entire custom class for you to play around with go do that just click away and pretend like this video doesn't exist especially do not watch this video if you were one of my players or i will be actually upset and discouraged for you dms who are the only people left watching right this trick may not work but it works pretty routinely for me largely because my players do not suspect a thing okay here's the scenario you've watched some youtube videos by this bugbear looking dude and you realize you can just throw some insane challenge at your players without any idea how to solve it solving problems is the player's job the youtube wanker said not the dm's job okay cool that's very freeing it's very exciting it makes prep easier it makes prep more fun it makes running the game more fun and players can usually be counted on to come up with solutions players are good at that they routinely come up with lots of solutions good solutions bad solutions but this whole structure we've built falls apart if the players fall in love with a really stupid idea i say really stupid because it's funny but no player intentionally comes up with a dumb idea just to come up with a dumb idea they might come up with something foolish or absurd because that's their character but that's different from a player just deciding i would like to fail what's the dumbest thing we can do now an idea only seems dumb to the dm because the dm has all the cards and knows things the players don't so often my players will plot and scheme based on some critical piece of information they have misunderstood or misremembered or some unexamined assumption that is super common when this happens i sometimes point out something they've missed if i think well their character actually experienced this stuff and so they would have a clearer more immediate memory of it than the player but often i feel like people forget things they misinterpret things that's part of the game the players should be allowed to get in over their heads so i sometimes find myself in a situation where the players are debating what they should do and one idea is really good very dramatic likely to be successful will move the plot forward in an interesting way and usually there is some other competing idea that is insane often more than one and i think if they try that they are all gonna die so without railroading the players how do we gently herd them toward the good idea and away from the bad idea well there is no one right answer to this but here's a trick i have used many times to great success when the players are talking about the bad idea i say nothing when they start talking about the good idea i challenge them on it i remind them of all the ways it could go wrong of the possible side effects basically are you sure this is a good idea but i never say that won't work i never say anything bad about this good idea i just ask have you really thought about this for instance at d d lunch right before the battle with the black iron pact in the chain of akron lars said remember if things go south we can petition our gods and patrons i thought yeah that is a good idea but i didn't say that i said remember there is a potential downside a petitioning can piss your god off and you could get cursed that's all i said what that does is it gets the player's wheels spinning hey that crazy idea might fail gets the players to start thinking about ways to stop it from failing and at that point they're hooked now that idea becomes their plan and at that point you can relax like lars wrote a very eloquent and effective speech for his character when the time came to petition his god and some folks watching on twitch thought oh matt told lars to do this to create this moment nope i literally just said remember petitioning your god can backfire you could get cursed and lars reasoned well i've never petitioned before and i haven't done anything my god would disapprove of i think it'll work but you know what i better write down what i'm gonna say if anything this would be a kind of meta gaming the good kind i think because lars knows what works in my campaign you don't just need to roll well you also need to do the song and dance don't just say that you're going to try and convince this city guard tell me how you're going to convince them doesn't have to be in character but i want to know what argument you're going to make before you roll if it's a good speech or a good argument it's more likely your plan will work lars knew that so he wrote a speech all because i said hey that could backfire that was it sixty percent of the time it works every time i usually use this when i have no idea how my players are going to solve a problem to guide them toward the cool idea they just came up with but sometimes i do have something planned and i want to corral them towards it like lars at another point suggested using resurrection on an npc and my entire plot required him to do this literally i had pinned the entire session on it so when he brought it up i pointed at him and challenged him do you have resurrection memorized he did i knew he did because i had covertly looked at his character sheet earlier so i knew my plan was safe he had resurrection but would he use it when i challenged him i did it like i was trying to catch him out like it was a gotcha question yeah sure good idea but you didn't think of it this morning when you prepared your spells so bad luck challenging him when it was what i wanted to do in the first place caused him to just feel like the smartest dude at the table yes i do have resurrection memorized in your face thank god because i don't know what i was gonna do if he didn't resurrect that changeling obviously if your players watch this video then it won't work and we're all doomed for a long time i thought i shouldn't make a video like this but looking at the results of our patreon poll it certainly seems like almost everybody who supports us is a dm so i figured let's go for it that's it folks if you want to guide your players toward one idea and away from another don't say anything about the bad idea but challenge them on the good idea don't say it won't work just ask if they've considered everything that could go wrong then they'll start thinking about what could go wrong and now this good plan has a lot more planning behind it and it becomes the plan they're going to try if you try this let me know if it works does this idea sound crazy to you let me know in the comments below i mean that i read all the comments though not always immediately if this all sounds very familiar to you that is because this is something i talked about in a campaign diary but those videos don't get a ton of views so in the future what i plan on doing is taking what i learn at the table and make a running the game video out of it i learned so much running the chain of akron but those lessons were only seen by a fraction of the audience so better make sure those lessons end up here this video only about six minutes i think i make each video as long as i think it needs to be i have no target length in mind next video i got a few ideas but you probably won't get it until may because i am taking a much needed vacation starting now so please behave yourselves in my absence we got lots of plans for more videos and some surprises i think you'll really like stay tuned this episode is brought to you by the illriger our first custom class a knight of hell i think you'll get a big kick out of patrons can get it for five bucks or you can pick it up in our store for six dollars and 66 cents until next time raise hell out one take in your face tom scott

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 95,654

Rating: 4.9855285 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: uKkDXsCxk0I

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/KahnGage]

DM: I should try this technique Matt recommended.

Matt: But what if it backfires?

Hook, line and sinker

[u/Tohlemite]

Great video. Now to figure out how to trick my player who also watches these.

[u/MisterB78]

I think knowing your players is the best foundation though - poking at potential flaws could definitely scare some players away from an idea instead of getting them to think about it more deeply.

The second trick - sneakily challenging your player about something you know they'll be right about - will probably work on pretty much everyone!

[u/MCXL]

This is advice he has given on stream many times, and I think he always says, "my players need to turn off the stream now" or something similar.

This is, by the way, baby's first way to manipulate people.

[u/imperturbableDreamer]

This is pretty good advice and the psychology outlined is worth keeping in mind.

I don't see why players shouldn't know this, however. I remind my players of rules and consequences constantly for pretty much all plans. Applying it a bit more selectively at times should not be noticeable or more "metagamable" than anything else a GM says.

[u/Sathothery]

I realize I’ve been kind of doing some of this unconsciously. Two of my players have some bizarre cosmic-scale plans that I am all for supporting... so I remind them that they are looking for edge cases and don’t currently have any idea what the potential complications could even be. Encouraging research and planning.

[u/MagnificentLefty]

One of the best Running The Game videos in a while! And they've been really insightful recently, so that's saying something.

After watching this, I thought about the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I wrapped up last year. To my memory, every time I asked someone about an idea I thought was a good one, they doubled down. This also happened when I asked about bad ideas.

I didn't even realize this happened until now.

I think the best piece of advice here was not saying anything if they propose an idea you don't like or is suicidally dumb. Good players are hoping to engage with the DM and the game. Reward good ideas by engaging.

Most excellent.

[u/BarnyTrubble]

Pseudo-reverse psychology, one of the classic blunders, you know that I know that you know that I think this was a bad idea, but what you haven't considered is that I know that you know that I know that you know that I might be thinking that, so really what I'm doing is making you think that I know that you know that I--

[u/Erlind42]

I worry that with how straightforward I can be that my players will more respond to my feedback as a sign that they shouldn't do it. I have a habit, maybe a bad one, of letting the players if something they're planning is an out and out bad idea.

Like, if they decide to have the rogue infiltrate the orc fortress by themselves and try to complete the quest by themselves. I'll allow it of course, but I'll remind them that if they fail, that rogue is by themselves in the middle of a fortress, without any backup.

If something isn't what I expected or I just think it's not a great plan, I tend to interfere less and just let them talk among themselves. But I also don't want them going down a bad path without any warning. So I just worry that by challenging their ideas they might take that as signaling that they shouldn't do the thing instead of thinking of ways to make it work.