On Being A Good Player | Running the Game

we really thought this was gonna be the first video in the new space it is not hey everybody Matt Koval here I cleared out the old idea Informer there's a link to it somewhere down in the doobly-doo it's a place where you can go and submit ideas for new videos and vote on the existing ideas and make a point to go look because it sorts them based on how many votes so of course that means the ones at the top tend to get more votes and the ones way down to bottom people don't tend to see but I posted that on Twitter and that caused a whole bunch of people on Twitter to start talking about other things they would like to see and that's how this video happens so if you want to be a participant in the process of which video and that makes next either go to the idea Informer it's pretty cool or you can just follow me on Twitter and suggest things and that tends to be where I get my new ideas from like this video which is all about how to be a good player we've done over 60 videos on how to be a good dungeon master or how to just get started or how to just do it period and I figured it was time based on some conversations I was hearing to talk about what are the things that make a really good player some of these things we've talked about before like the idea of just respecting the other players by bringing dice a pencil and your players Handbook which if this is the first time you've ever played the game no one really expects you to show up with these things they know we're gonna have to loan our friend the use of these books and that's fine but if it's week 4 and week 5 and week 6 and you still haven't bought anything you haven't brought anything to the table even the smallest thing like a pencil then you're transmitting a message and that message is I'm not actually very serious about this I don't I don't take it very seriously it doesn't mean that much to me and when the other people at the table are like listen this is a hobby for us we're gonna spend three to four hours a week doing this so it means something to us and when you show up unprepared and just to mooch off the other players it is a sign of disrespect and in fact I have had players first time players never played the game before so enthusiastic they go and they buy The Player's Handbook and their own dice and I show up with a pencil and that also transmits messaged message at transmit says I'm very serious about this and I want it to work and that makes me really happy so don't feel like you have to have these things if you've never played before but if it's been a few weeks maybe it's time to make an investment something else we've talked about before is taking notes I think the best thing a player can do to show the dungeon master that they are serious about the game they're playing in is to take notes what do we take notes about well here's my answer which is all of the proper nouns that you hear with the exception of I would say big or faraway places so all the people the dungeon master talks about all the named people the dungeon master talks about all the people you meet right down especially if they have some speciality or some unique field of interest or some unique abilities right the names of these people down write the names of the organizations down that Dungeon Master talks about everybody you'll meet write their name down why because it may not be immediately useful but in the days and weeks and sessions to come when you're stuck on something or you're trying to figure out what do we do next you start wondering what resources do we have and that list of notes becomes very valuable and when the first time somebody goes we should go talk to this person because they might know something the dungeon master is gonna be incredibly happy because it means you're taking their game seriously and I am happiest when my players view my setting as a bunch of resources to be exploited I was incredibly happy one time playing game with my friend mark when they were stuck said we should go talk to that Lich that lives in the White Castle in the middle of the forest and the players then spent about 20 minutes trying to talk him out of it oh it's a little just destroy us he'll annihilate us blah blah blah and they'd already encountered this Lich and he'd made short work of them and so they had that fresh in their memory but I could I felt like I couldn't say anything I didn't want to poison the well I didn't want to violate that kind of like DM neutrality principle which maybe we should do a whole video on and now I think I know enough that I probably would be able to let them know that I thought it was a good idea without saying I think this is a good idea but I really wanted them to do it I was really frustrated with the other players that they were trying to talk mark out of it because even though they perceive this Lynch as an enemy that perception is not oh it's no it's not a physical law it is just a perception it's just a collection of traditions and assumptions and they could challenge those and they did and it proved incredibly dramatic and made me give me an opportunity to look cleverer than I am because I quoted a lot of like Hannibal Lecter dialogue to them and they loved it they loved that interaction with the licha was a lot of fun because my friend Mark took something from the world they had encountered before and used it as a resource that is resource that is one of the best things I think a player can do another thing and this gets back to respect is to listen to the other players listen to the dungeon master pay attention don't don't use the fact that another player is talking or the DM is talking as an excuse to think about what you're going to say next because one of your most powerful tools as a player is the way you react to things the way you react to the things these people are saying is as important maybe more important than the actions you take if we take the things the other players including the DM say seriously then that is not only a sign of respect it's gonna make us better players it's gonna make our character is more interesting it's gonna make the story more interesting the flip side of that is a conversation is not a competition it's not a contest to see which of us can get the best zinger in at the end if another player or if the dungeon master is having a dramatic moment and trying to make a point and speaking in character and they end it with you know an underline or an exclamation that is not necessarily an opportunity for you to try to pull the rug out from under them just to say something clever and score points I don't think it's about scoring points it's about letting other players letting other people have those dramatic moments let them do those things conversations are not competitions these are all relatively straightforward so far a somewhat more abstract lesson that it took me a while to learn as a player because I have been a player at least as much as I have been a dungeon master is to find your fun within the game that the dungeon master is running and the game the group is playing in a campaign is like a ship you and the other players and the DM are all on it together and it is going to leave port with a destination prescribed by the dungeon master but it may not get there it may not get anywhere near the place there are all sorts of factors that are blowing on the sails of the ship that could cause it to go off course and that can be a very pleasant experience even for the DM to be surprised and even a very tiny change early on can produce huge results in where the ship lands when I show up at the table with a new character in a new campaign I try to keep the characters goals and motivations open-ended I've had to leave space there in the characters background to fill it in once I know more about the adventure and the campaign but I try to know the character very well leaving that space leaving some things like my character's motivation undefined let's meet right them in later when I discover the direction the campaign is going if you show up with a character that has an agenda now you are automatically instantly in conflict with the dungeon master because if they don't know about it then they may never work that into their game they may not be prepared to work it into their game the dungeon master does a ton of work in order to try to present a dramatic framework for you and the other players and that's called an adventure and if you take the time to go all right I'm not gonna figure out what mimal only thing what my character is I'm not gonna figure what they want yet I'm gonna wait so that my character can want the things that advance the story then I think you'll have a much better time one of my favorite characters of all time is in my friend Jim's Albion a game which is fantasy prehistoric fantasy England and because it was set in a fantasy version of the real world I was playing saket who was an Egyptian from fantasy Egypt and I knew who saket was he was a paladin and I knew what was important to saket but I had no idea what his goals were he washes up on the shores of Albion and he discovers that the human beings there are living incredibly primitive lives right there they're just now dealing with like domestication and stuff like that and building farms and they are at the whim of these much more powerful forces the the the for mauryans and the elves and the wars between them and I decided after several weeks of play that'sa ket's job was going to be to bring the knowledge of this much more advanced civilization to these primitive people and tried to better them and try to give them the wherewithal to survive in this world against these more powerful forces and things like agriculture and astronomy and Sciences and stuff like that we're super important to this case and that's something that I made up that was not something I had thought about when I was making the character I knew who SiC hat was I didn't know what he wanted and left that blank so that I could want the things that were relevant to the campaign Jim was running so the shorthand for that is learn to find your fun in the game the DM is running because I guarantee you unless there's a huge misalignment between the players in the DM and you're like this is not the right group for me that whatever the DM is trying to do there are lots of different characters you would enjoy playing with in that perhaps narrow boundary also remember that the DM does just a ton of work outside the game give them some help when the Dungeon Master is wondering how a rule works you can look it up for them and really you're not even just looking it up for the DM you're looking it up for the entire table you don't just have to be focused on your character of course the flip side of that is know how your stuff works we've talked about this before and that definitely seen people online who feel like it is the dungeon masters responsibility to know how literally all the rules in the game working on I don't think it's possible for one person to hold all those rules in their head at one time I think the game is just too complex so when it is your turn it is best if you not only want to say no how your stuff works I guess what I'm really saying is have it ready because you may be pretty familiar with how this spell works or how this class ability works but if you don't have it your fingertips when the dungeon master asks a question because the dungeon master needs to know how is this spell or special ability going to interact interface with the scenario that I'm dealing with right now you need to have the answer and the answer is written down so this is a tricky thing because there's often no way for you to do this because of the way initiative in D&D 5 works you have a plan what you want to do at the beginning of your turn but by the time your turn comes around or the begin around I should say by the time your turn comes around the scenario has changed that thing you wanted to do is no longer relevant and so now you have to make up a new plan on the spot when that happens we get it we don't expect you to have all of your stuff ready in that moment but spend your time after your last turn thinking about what you're going to do on your next turn and have the things you're going to use at your fingertips this is another sign of a respect for the rest of the table if you say I'm going to catch the spell and the Dungeon Master says okay what does that do what you say I don't know then you just let everybody down and it's not I don't think it's that hard to do this all sorts of tools online and stuff you can use to make it a little bit easier to find the stuff you're looking for relatively quickly last piece of advice and this was another thing that it took me a long time to learn it was so important in fact that it ended up being written into the employee handbook at one of the video game companies I work for and that is be prepared to lose gracefully these games are very complex and they're trying to model the most complex thing there is which is a reality and there's no way for the rules to cover every little edge case and so you're often gonna end up at loggerheads with other players or other DMS because you want something to work with certain way and it's not clear if it does and you make an assumption the DM challenges or another player challenges that assumption and now you're gonna have a little bit of an argument about what did this thing mean and can I do this and that is not a problem that's normal it happens in every game there is no way to avoid it the Prato becomes a problem when you decide to re-litigate that argument with every subsequent argument I've seen this a million times at the table I've seen it at work where something's really really important to you and you get an argument with everybody and the discussion doesn't go your way and you lose and instead of going okay that's fair if that's how it is that's how it is and moving on you keep a little list you keep a score and you bring that resentment to the next fight and when it comes up you try to go back in time and refight that old battle all you're doing is making yourself and everyone else at the table miserable it can't be about scoring points it can't be about winning arguments it can't be about well I'm the smart one and it's my plan you folks should listen to me that's probably not why we get together to play with you it's just because we like you and we think you're a fun person to hang out with so if the if the battle doesn't go your way if the argument doesn't go your way it's not the end of the world just move on it's perfectly natural to get wrapped up in an argument and invest some of your identity in the outcome but you will discover that the first time you let it go and say okay but if that's how it is no problem it's a very freeing liberating experience and it frees you up to enjoy hanging out with the other players at the table and not worried about that stuff because overwhelmingly they're not worried about it that that fight you just lost they're not stewing over it they've moved on and they still like you and they still want to have fun and play games and if you can do the same thing then you're gonna have a great time a lot of this advice boils down to just respect the other players listen to them take the things they say seriously don't always try to get the last word in don't try to re-litigate two old battles and if if you know people who hear that advice and their reaction is what does that mean I can't have any fun you got just let them know it's not all about you we are this is our time that we are all spending together and people whose reaction is oh to seven I don't get to have any fun they I think are are trying to get something different they're trying to get a different kind of validation out of the game when everyone else is just trying to have fun and I'm not sure there may be a video in the future we did a video called the sociology of D&D there may be a video coming called the psychology of D&D where we talk about people's expectations at the table and what what kinds of problems can and can't be solved at the table and what it's reasonable to expect from a group of D&D players that's it folks that's the what makes a good player episode this is the kind of video where I look forward to the comments because people will watch the video and they'll go oh and it'll make them think of stuff and they will post it in the comments and then I will read the comments and I'll go that is a good point it don't make me want to make another video so there may be a part two coming in the future I was looking forward to this being the first video in the new space at the at the official MC DM office but there was a glitch and so this might be the last video in the old space I'm super looking forward super excited to start shooting videos in the new space and speaking of things I am super excited by there is a Kickstarter it's about to close I think there's only like 36 hours left by the time I upload this video it's a monte cook Kickstarter money cook my cook gains that guy is an inspiration to me and has been for years since all the way back to third edition and maybe before the stuff that his company puts out really inspires me to be a better developer and a better designer and they are doing a book that I am contributing to called your best game ever and it's a general-purpose guide to playing RPGs that is not system specific it's about stuff like getting started and finding a group and being a good game master and being a good player and a lot of the stuff we've talked about in these videos a lot of stuff we haven't talked about it's got a killer list of people contributed to it with incredibly smart people and me it's got Eric Campbell and Luke Crane and Matt Mercer and those people are all very smart scott chanel chuck hey contributed to it which i am incredibly excited to be in the same book as genell JK because she is one of the old-school oh gee D&D designers she worked for the judges guild and did some of the classic dungeon specifically dungeon design in fact her design became so iconic that 20 years later people were looking at new dungeons and be like why are these new dungeons like these awesome old dungeons what what was the difference and they noticed that a lot of these old dungeons were designed by Janel Jacquet and somebody actually wrote an article called Jacques hating the dungeon which is all about giving players choice and making a dungeon that you could play through several times and it's not just linear and boring and all sorts of different branches and they actually start graphing out different dungeons and showing you how this dungeon seems like it has a lot of choice but in fact it is literally linear and this one's linear except this got one branch and it doesn't matter which way you go you end up at the same place and her dungeons were dynamic and had all sorts of different entrances and they encouraged you to explore and so I'm just crazy excited to be in the same book as she is but that Kickstarter end soon so Heidi hence there is a link in the doobly-doo that's it folks next video I don't know what it's gonna be about I'm gonna go check out the idea informer there'll be a link to that too just to see what people are talking about until next time peace out

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 409,528

Keywords: matt colville, dungeons & dragons, D&D, Running D&D, Playing D&D, matthew colville, Strongholds & Followers

Id: 0MhjHHrfreo

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018