What No One Tells You About DMing D&D

after countless hours World building coming up with a plot vetting your players characters Gathering battle maps making minis checking stat blocks and like 5,000 other tasks you are finally playing your DND D campaign and then it dies drama happens people don't show up to the game you start taking longer and longer breaks and before you know it that campaign is dead in the water what do well I'm Antonio Deo this is pointy hat and we're about to make sure this never happens on this episode of tip of the hat there's approximately 700,000 videos that go seven tips your mom didn't tell you about when playing D and D so why make another one well I think that the advice here is not to toe my own toe kind of rare in these D and D streets I'm not going to focus on stuff like I don't know the best level to play campaigns at or if potions should or shouldn't be a bonus action I'll leave those questions to the philosophers I want to concentrate on stuff that is seldom given shine to so that people get some actual value out of this video I think many people are not aware of what an insane social tight RPP a D and D campaign truly is and I think a lot of D and advice out there doesn't focus on this which is wild to me because in my experience these are the reasons why campaigns fail yes it's hard to get it all together at the same time at the same place consistently but it's also a deeply personal activity that requires a lot of emotional maturity and the bane of all nerd spaces social skills it's five people sometimes more all needing to Jael and work together while they perform as sometimes downright emotionally taxing extended improv exercise where people tend to put a lot of their personal hangups into it's it's basically the social equivalent of a mindfield wait this reads like I'm discouraging you from playing a campaign and that's not my goal my point is is that it can be done very much so I've DMD and played in multiple year-long campaigns that were happening every single week and that ended but I think you're setting yourself up for failure if you don't do the ground workor so put on your hard hat don't look too hard at all the OSHA violations and come with me as we make sure your D and campaign doesn't combust into flames before any DM tries to run anything though they're going to need one thing and that is monsters conjurers the world over have tried to summon monsters from every plane of existence and although any second raid megas can send for a quasit it takes a true Arch conjurer to call forth the good stuff or at least the arch conjurer's writings a summoning grimoire that can invite any Beast fiend or Beyond from the finds of the Multiverse but where would one acquire such an artifact well there's a Kickstarter for it about to go live the monsters of drenim from their dungeon dudes and ghostfire yes those guys they were my buddies we hang out at Denon Monsters of drenim is a 300 plus page massive Tob filled to the brim with Incredible creatures 150 plus of them in fact but not only that it also comes with ready to run lir encounters and completely brand new mechanics like the new deadly condition to bring a new level of strategy to the game and extremely excited about this crafting and harvesting mechanics Minecraft hours Monster Hunter hours well let's talk about the stars of this the monsters they go from cr1 to cr30 for those of you that are into putting your players through it and look at these guys look at this one look at this cool bloodbending witch look at this fun guy look at this oh maybe don't look at that one too much I'm scared and there are many many more the kickstarter is about to launch which means you can join the VIP Discord right now and get a completely free set of resin moner dies when you pledge and a bunch of exclusive behind the scenes content right before the campaign and you know this campaign is going to go off because the dudes have had like two widely successful kickstarters before so if all of this sounds well and good go ahead and check all this out in the very first link in the description and now that we got ourselves some monsters let's get back into actually running this thing yes this is kind of meant for DMS but also for players I resent this implication that DM has to come up to the table with basically everything figured out if you're a player you can very much point to your DM in the direction of tools like this to help them out so this is very much useful to you because you're the one playing in this you want it to go well so listen up because this will all be on the test too little boy also this guide is not going to touch on stuff like the World building or narrative side of things I've made a whole video on that before this video is going to touch on the social aspect of campaign the things that nerds tend to completely forgo when they're planning to start a campaign and you don't often see these tips and videos I mean I have not so listen up in my experience people will come up with like 70 kinds of magic radishes and the economics of demon Valley until the cows come home but will neglect to ensure that the most indispensable aspect of playing a campaign the people that play it are set up for Success so we're going to do that today and we're going to do it through a numbered list because y all love them for some reason who am I kidding I love them too let's go number one setting expectations this step is the first step because it's crucial in setting everyone up for Success literally all other steps rely on this one happening first and happening well I think there are many DMS out there that never sit down to actually think of this at all and then there are other DMS that have an idea of their expectations and just never communicate them I guess those are relying on the players's mystical magical power of telepathy to do the work for them stop relying on that body I'm just curious how did that work out last time badly oh wow who would have thought setting expectations involves two steps on its own coming up with the expectations for your campaign and successfully communicating these expectations to your players so what do I mean by expectations well I'm glad you ask disembodied voice that sets up my scripts for me is this campaign roleplay heavy combat heavy you were going to say a mix of both right I knew it this is a very bad way to come up with expectations for you and your players be specific because roleplay heavy or combat heavy mean completely different things to completely different people dungeon delvers might think a campaign is roleplay heavy if it evolves B basically any role playing at all whereas theater kits might consider a campaign combat heavy if it has like a dungeon every 10 sessions to break up the angsty crying please I'm a St when I DM I tell my players there will be plenty of time for role play but I also aim to have at least one combat encounter per session not always but I never go two sessions without combat and combat will happen way more often when they enter a dungeon there see I set specific expectations not just for my players but also for myself people now know exactly how often combat will happen and in what circumstances so is that it are we done setting expectations no how deadly is your campaign is death possible at all if it is how possible is death will players have to bring up a backup character with them at all times is resurrection a thing how much of a thing is it is it easy to do or is it hard dealing with death is a whole thing in and of itself we'll do a video on it at one point this game seems like it never runs out of topics to make videos about but it's important to set this expectation because death can make or break a game and it can make or break a campaign setting expectations early is basically obligatory to have your campaign actually survive survive death I guess weird phrasing moving on is your campaign a linear narrative a nonlinear narrative a Sandbox game this one will be more or less important to your players for me this will literally decide if I want to play in your game at all I made an entire video on what these three styles of narratives are and why I like linear the most I'll link it at the end of this video but the short answer here is linear does not mean railroading a linear Adventure is an adventure where there is causality between the order of events X happens then y happens because X happened and after y happens Z happens balers Gate 3 is a linear Adventure all linear Adventures have nonlinear bits to them the main plot of bers Gate 3 is very linear don't recite the old magic at me I was there when it was written nonlinear Adventure is an adventure where X Y and Z can happen in any order breath of the wild is a nonlinear Adventure as sandbox Adventure is one where there no predetermined events there's no X or Y or Z the story basically happens whenever the players make a choice to go to a place there's no overarching plot people are extremely particular about stuff like this even if they don't know they are and they don't know these terms if you ever take a trip to DND Reddit or I don't know the turbo hell that is D and D Twitter you'll find plenty of people saying we played for 10 sessions and never found the plot or it felt like we were just going through the plot the DM had laid out for us instead of Our Own Adventure this is the result of people coming into a campaign with their own expectations but if players have their own preferences how are you going to make it so that everyone likes it well disembodied boys again I'm so glad you asked let's talk about that two choose your players so I'm going to go ahead and say something controversial yet Brave and something that people don't want to hear but here it goes not all your friends are D and D friends have you heard that old wisdom of not every friend can be a roommate I believe the exact same thing happens in D and D you you can appeal to your players all you want at the end of the day there are things that you are either not interested in running and they want to play or things you very much want to run but they don't want to play one of my best friends hates linear and nonlinear Adventures preferring sandbox above all I am literally the exact opposite we don't play together we can't because what we are looking for in this game are wildly different experiences another one of my friends is a dungeon delving Maniac that loves a dungeon with a number of floors in the trip full digits and another one will start to lose interest if a dungeon is longer than two sessions those two will just not be happy playing in the same game and forcing them to will make it so at least one of them is unhappy you as a DM bending over backwards to accommodate both will result in a campaign that appeals to them some of the time and a campaign that they can't stand to play in for the remainder of the time as harsh as that is that campaign is either doomed to fail or doomed to have a player that resiliently endures a game they don't like to hang out with friends either way not great what is the solution to this choose your players yes I know D andd is already hard to play because of how many people you need in order to play but I assure you having a game that ends when it's supposed to end where people are happy to play in is just better than having a game that Peters out because half the people there are miserable during it but there are very much ways to mitigate this let me list them oh I'm already the number list uh number a make smaller groups did you know that the D andd council is not allowed to send assassins snipers to your house if you play a game with less than five people it's true since 1952 they changed it I have played a campaign where it was just the DM and two players and I was one of them so if I didn't manage to sink it to the ground you can too plenty of fantastic games can be run with less than the suggested number of players just like a game can run with more than the suggested number of players I don't know I can think of a few number B make smaller campaigns this is something that I'm working on for myself I don't have tips for this yet I'm trying my best if you want to play with your friends but your friends wanton different games and you want to run both of the types of games your friends like important point there you the DM also need to have fun you can accomplish this much easier by running shorter campaigns yes campaigns that last 4 years are impressive but I happen to think it's also much easier to run them running a campaign that is short I'm talking four sessions six sessions I find that really really hard to do and still give the same emotional significance than a longer campaign has this is my personal D and D goal for 2024 to run a d andd campaign that caps out at 6 to8 sessions at most Dimension 20 style my favorite example of this and the thing I sent to people that are D andd curious is critical roles exandria unlimited Calamity Chronicles of the revelations memories and Knuckles I think that's Testament to how impactful and emotionally fulfilling as short campaign can be which also frees you up to play more campaigns with different combinations of players I've run year plus campaigns for well years and towards the end I get massive burnout I am tired [Music] I suspect this wouldn't be much of an issue if this campaigns took me 2 to 4 months to run instead of you know 17 and finally number c I got to say the obvious because sometimes it's not that obvious be honest with your players saying I really want to run a dungeon Delvin game and I know you won't enjoy that so instead of forcing yourself to join something you won't like I think it's better if we wait for the next campaign for you to play and in the meantime let's make sure we run some one shot so we get to play together that will go a long way here contrary to popular belief I do not believe that bad D and D is better than no DND D we're all very busy adults with very busy lives stop mom I told you to not being honest and open with the reasons why you think a player won't be a good fit is important okay enough of this emotional maturity stuff back to tips for play pretend we've set expectations we've chosen our players now it's time to three make it easy on yourself it's important to know that a lot of times Cains and because of d m's it's kind of the elephant in the room here for the entirety of this video we've been addressing how to manage players so it's now time for the control freaks at the table the end burnout is very real believe me I know and while I've personally never ended a campaign because of burnout I've definitely seen some end because of just that real talk for a second in my last year plus campaign I spent the last five or so sessions actively fighting against myself because I just didn't want to run it at all I was very much burnt out the prep I used to love doing now felt like this massive chore onire with a full-time job the 4 to 5 hours of play that used to fly by were now just a reminder of just how much time this was taking away from my already limited free time see I stopped seeing it as free time running the game was a job and not a job I enjoyed actually I pushed through because I knew we were so close to the end but it was rough and now I'm still recovering from it I'm about to play in a campaign but I don't know when I'll be back to running not long know what I mean whenever an idea pops out from The Tall Grass it be a matter of minutes before I start prepping again and yes a Sher campaign would have definitely helped but you know what else would have helped not doing the literal most every single time for every single session everyone does the most differently but if you're a prepper like me this can be very much an issue once again I actively enjoy prepping but a campaign is a marathon and once you've run a marathon for more than a year you might get just like a tsy bit tired in this last campaign I decided that every important NPC was going to have a fully drawn fully colored illustration for absolutely no reason I also made every single Monster they fought custom like nothing from a book I added like five different unique rule sets from potion creation to a companion system all combat had its own unique battle map and these were all battle maps done by me now you might look at that and say well of course you burn out that's crazy but here's the thing in my many many talks with many DMs I found out that spefic specifically DMS that enjoy prep like I do all have versions of these tasks that yes can be very cool and add a lot to your campaign but can also be extremely tiring maybe not all boss monsters need custom art maybe you can take some existing monsters from the books you buy instead of constantly making your own maybe it's a good idea to just look for maps online or Draw them on grid paper maybe not every MPC needs a specific song to play when they arrive maybe not every enemy needs a mini maybe you don't need terrain pieces for every combat yes all of these might seem doable now but will they still be doable 5 months in 8 months in 12 months in it's time to take a step back especially if your instinct is I want to blow my players away with spectacle and look at what's feasible in the long run for your own sanity okay so you've set expectations with you and your players you've chosen those players and you have made sure to make things doable for yourself in the long run it's now time to tackle one of the two Final Bosses of D and D four avoid drama avoid it easy okay we're done with that please like comment and subscribe leave at least a 45% tip or whatever Americans have decided is the acceptable amount instead of paying their waiters and okay fine I'll do the thing drama is as many wise philosophers have pointed out he's a killer in this industry drama ends campaigns I have been in one that ended like that it was not fun and while the reasons why drama happens or doesn't are as varied as the drama itself and I hardly encourage you to share them in the comments because I'm messy and nosy and and I want people to learn of course but also I want to know the one through line that connects all possible drama sources at the table is that the reasons behind it are always social in nature drama is a social conflict now it's important to say that stuff like setting expectations for your campaign and ensuring that the players that will enjoy this game are the ones playing it will actually do a lot to avoid drama in general but it's also important to say that you can do all of this and still have drama happen what we can do to minimize the chance of drama arising in a d andd group is to put social safeguards up since as we have established drama is just a catchy messy word for a social problem that's right people in my comments that get mad at pronouns or whatever yall get mad at these days I'm going to talk about safety tools safety tools are good to avoid drama if everyone in the group shares things that they are not cool with at all and things that they are okay with them being referred to but not described at length this automatically eliminates a ton of sources of drama this is commonly referred to as liines and veils lines being things that you're not cool with them happening and veils being things that you're cool with them being referenced but not described at length or otherwise giving the spotlight as an example I always put oh God you know I'm not doing good with YouTube right now let's call it unclothe wrestling competitions as a veil for me I'm very much cool with the DM going and then you do that and that's it I would rather eat a bowl of thumbtacks that have my friends I can't even say it the image of it is so cringey to me I would rather die than have my friends sit there describing it to me describe it no I guess I shouldn't yuck someone's yum but God would I not be okay with that no thank you if there was no space to clearly stay that anywhere a player could very much innocently cross that and they wouldn't be in the wrong for doing so per se because I never said I wasn't cool with that but it would for sure make me like uncomfortable can you see how stuff like this leads to drama honestly having people ride down their lines and veils takes too minutes tops and is a net positive all around the only people that get mad at this are the ones that still think attack helicopter is like remotely funny 2024 current year but if taking this step that takes no time and saves you a headache and the potential death of your campaign is to soyed or whatever for you go off King stay triggered or whatever okay now that we've tackled the drama thing let's move on to the real final boss of D and D campaigns five the scheduling monster I'm not sure you've noticed by The Impossible number of unfunny scheduling memes floating around but scheduling seems to be a problem for D andd players hard to believe that angling together a group of five people with jobs and or school to play at once sometimes in the same space for something along the lines of 5 hours is hard who would have th not me now there's surprisingly little advice on how to schedule and what I'm about to suggest is apparently not common advice but here's what has worked for me my credentials are I've dm'd many very very long campaigns with all players that were all working adults with busy lives and fdm them to completion but no no no no not like that stop stop it my veil okay here's a piece of advice be a hard ass I know right off the wheels of kindness and understanding and communication this seems like a weird piece of advice to give I straight up don't think that week to week scheduling as in scheduling the next session at a different time each week depending on the availability of people works straight up I don't think that's conducive to actually playing regularly what I do when I start a campaign is during session zero we all fill out a sheet with our available times we look at where it does intersect and that will be D and D time for every single week no changes then I tell my players I take this pretend dragon game very seriously and I put a lot of work in it so if they're not ready to schedule around this game they're not welcome to play yes it sounds harsh but I don't know man my campaigns have never had scheduling issues like ever I ask my players to make D and D a priority in the week just like I make going to the gym a priority and many people make things like walking their dog or their War coffee run at priority in my last Campaign which we played weekly in we took two breaks one two week break for Christmas and one week break for convention stuff none of the players were absent for more than two sessions in total outside of those breaks we played for close to 18 months weekly out of five people we played across five different time zones we had people waking up at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday to play D and D that's what making a commitment is of course if a major life event happens like changes in jobs leading to changes of schedule it's time to work out a new schedule for DND once again this is what works for me you can think this is mean or whatever I think it's commitment to a timec consuming hobby we all love and my players agree if being extremely lenient with people being late or not showing up at all didn't work if changing the time you play D and D weekly at the whims of schedules of five people didn't work maybe consider this and please don't go mad with power with this weirdo and speaking of going mad with power number six feedback okay so this one is extra spicy see I went to a little hell space called arts and in this health space I have received a lot of a little type of torture called feedback this actually was really really good for me because feedback means nothing to me anymore if I feel like it's constructive I take it if I feel like it isn't I ignore it if I feel like it can help me make whatever I'm working on better I apply it and if not I don't having your peers and your teachers tell you exactly what they think of artwork you poured Blood Sweat and Tears into receiving that feedback every single day having that work graded having those grades decide if you pass the final year exam where 80% of students fail and are required to take the first year again that will make you not internalize feedback really fast fortunately most people don't go to our school and thank God for that but unfortunately this means most people are not good at all at receiving feedback and I regret to inform you that the only way I know to get better at receiving feedback is receiving feedback but if you're scared of it and let's be honest most people are you're going to try to avoid receiving it at all costs I'm here to tell you this you can watch every single one of my videos you can watch every possible video on D and D on YouTube you can spend hours on Reddit reading horror stories and on funny memes and you will not be better at playing or running this game unless you do it critically you will learn from experience of course but you will learn much faster if you receive feedback while you do this the key to receiving feedback is not to take it personally which is easier said than done a lot of people talk about how they like constructive criticism and in my experience this is not true most people don't like constructive criticism most people don't like criticism period because they see it as a personal attack a value judgment a critique against themselves and not whatever is being critiqued because they feel whatever is being critiqued is personal to them so they take it personally so someone criticizing it feels personal how to get over this exposure therapy baby get that feedback but how well if you're the DM you are in an advantageous position here I have The High Ground you already do a ton more work than your players so it's time to ask them for some work back at the end of a session message your players not during the session I repeat not during the session after you're done message them and ask them for their thoughts and feelings be specific but don't ask too many questions and insist on getting these answers be annoying remind them a day before the next game they hav't been giving you their answers back if you have to spend time picking music making stat blocks choosing Maps painting minis of whichever task of the 1,000 other tasks that can be involved in dming they can do this one thing for you but what if you're a player well you got to ask nicely I would actually not bother your DM maybe just run this by them and if they can fit it in their schedule they'll do it but don't harp on it instead turn to other players they're just not as busy as you are with d and d prep tell them it's important for you that you want to get better and ask them short and few questions now is negative critique going to hurt yeah it will and you need to sit with those feelings let them pass and with time they will hurt a little bit less every day until you just hear them for what they are suggestions and opinions that you should most likely listen to since you are most likely playing with people that love you and want you to be better at what you yourself want to be better all this self-improvement thing is very nice and all but it's easier said than done what questions are you even asking when looking to receive feedback I keep saying you should ask for short questions and you should ask few questions so what are they well guess what I ask them for you in the description of this very video you're watching you will find a set of feedback questions very simple ones that you can send to your friends after a session if you want to improve they are separated in two categories if you're a DM and if you're a player look everyone homework isn't that fun but what if homework is somehow unthinkably not fun for you well what about a silly goofy monster have this video on mimics it has a brand new alternative to mimics and if self-improvement is what you're after here's a whole video on tips for the narrative side of D and D have fun with your homework children it will be graded

Channel: Pointy Hat

Views: 305,823

Keywords: DnD, D&D, DnD with a twist, 5e, TTRPG, How to, Illustration, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D with a twist, d&d battle music, pointy hat, animation, rant, hat, homebrew, trailer, D&D trailer, OneD&D, one d&d, onednd, OGL, SRD, Wizards, wizards of the coast, WotC, WOC, baldurs gate, gith, lore, dnd lore, DMing, DM, Dungeon Master, Advice, Tips, What to know, DMing advice, DM tips, DM advice, How to be a Dungeon Master, How to play DnD, How to play D&D, wrong

Id: yUhWlfH68L4

Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024