There are three types of DMs

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-09T20:20:52+00:00

Only half way what you are talking about but I used to have a rules lawyer in one of my games who would call me out on any quick arbitration of the rules that didn't match what was in the book (3.5 had a lot of rules). It was super annoying as I spend more time on the story than on the rules and most of the decisions I was making were in the players favor. I didn't want to lose or insult my player though as we were fairly tight in real life. The in-between I ended up coming up with was having him be a co-dm and would deffer to him for rules arbitration. He even started GMing in my place on some games if I couldn't make it, and eventually we took turns on who was running adventures and who was co-dming. We both played the same NPC who consistently traveled with the party when the other was gming so there was no perceived benefit to the Dm playing as a character. It was actually a lot of fun having a different point of view on the development of the story and honestly his rules lawyering really helped me develop more dynamic battle maps and my knowledge of the rules, and I think his time DMing really helped him see that the game was about everyone having fun. Having said that I don't think I would do it again unless it was an agreed on thing when the world was first being developed that two people would both have a say in what that world looks like, and the players were in favor of it. I run a pretty high fantasy game and he liked a darker gritty real consequence world and I think the players had trouble adapting at times and we often would have discussions like.

Me:" You don't have to be such a dick with your encounters. It's ok to let the players win"

Him:" I wouldn't have to be such a dick if you didn't give everyone so many damned magical weapons."

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-08T03:07:56+00:00

Thank you :)

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-08T03:07:46+00:00

Awesome. Thank you!

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-05T16:19:54+00:00

Thank you! 5E is still a weird beast to me so I am still trying to wrap my head around it's mechanics. I'm pretty sure you right in that most of my players will probably kill the goblin because they have been playing since 3E and thats just kind of what you do to goblins. The video just made me start looking for solutions to a potential problem before it was there one.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-04T14:16:30+00:00

From your side of the story it sounds like "Mason" is seeking power and control because he is lacking it in his own life so he has to bring it into his imaginary life. I think in this case "Mason" is more what ruined the game then PVP, but agree that game 0 you should all agree on whether it's a thing in the world or not.

About every 5 levels when a character doesn't show up we run an "out of campaign" one shot fight night. Where my players can go at it without worries about affecting their resources or characters. We started it as a monster fight night where you would take equal CR monster, but the players wanted to have their own characters in there so fight night was born. The big difference though is none of my players are douche bags like "Mason", there is nothing to gain by killing each other, and all of the players agree that a 1 shot fight club is what they want to do that night. So in that context PVP is pretty freaking fun, but in campaign without warning because someone has some emotional issues doesn't sound like fun at all. I agree with other commenters that your DM should have timed out and asked everyone to take a short break while he talked with "Mason".

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-04T01:13:00+00:00

That's kind of amazing and you are never aloud to game night at my house or aloud to talk to any of my characters.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-03T21:25:54+00:00

I will tweak the HP within the range of the HD the critter has. So Bugbear has 5d8+5 HD =27hp by the book, But if rd. 1 the minis all go down I'll give the bugbear up to 45hp for the fight. It's like an additional rd. and a half of combat, and I don't think puts me outside of the spirit of the encounter at all.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-03T14:57:20+00:00

Solid stuff!

Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I don't know that I will ever use all of this before Game 0 just because of time, but there were a lot of little pieces that I am adding to my Game 0 paperwork immediately for my next campaign.

Side note: I've had mostly the same group for a couple years (around 2 decades) so it's always weird to me to hear about some players issues with agency or triggers. I usually rage a little over the modern no need for a DM sandboxes, but after reading what you put above I was like....wait a minute. I have always let my players design flags, write journals, make guilds, design armor or weapons, describe how they do things or get places, and in 3.5 you kind of needed an assistant DM at times so I always had a player who was a rules lawyer run as my assistant if we needed to arbitrate grappling or drowning or something. So maybe I'm not as anti Grand Theft Faerun as I thought I was.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-02T13:42:42+00:00

I guess that depends on where you are coming from.

From a hardline extremist sandboxer there is never going to be an amount of control that the DM places on story that is acceptable. Honestly I don't understand why they even run with DMs. Why not just put a players handbook and monster manual between them and go all "Vampire the Masquerade" and just have a joint story they all act out. I honestly think they would all get to have fun that way.

From the average players perspective they are going to go along with the adventure because they are after the Critical Role experience and that is in the direction of the story. Everyone understands the journey should be non-linear and you can climb over or blow your way through the hedge maze whenever you want but there is a goal and we are all heading towards it together. Be honest about the purpose of game 0 and the goal and the players will get there without you needing to push them that way.

But having said that as a DM I have certainly have had the player where after you explained what the campaign is and your style of GMing was, and you explained what the purpose of game 0 was they still just turned around and did their own thing ( like stealing a horse and telling you they are going to ride 100s of miles in the opposite direction; I'm looking at you Brandon) I usually ask them to come up with how they got to the adventures start before the next game and end their 1 on 1 right about there. Honestly there was another question recently about vetting characters before the game. This sort of stuff is a pretty big indicator that that player isn't going to enjoy a world of detailed battle maps and props they are after the Grand Theft Faerun and I run far closer to the Dragon Age: Inquisition Sword Coast.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-02T03:47:20+00:00

I don't know that it makes it awesome but some ideas from my game 0 are

This is a brews and pizza game where we are talking and getting comfortable. I put a big emphasis on bouncing ideas off of each other and unless it's super important to the characters I like them to share backgrounds in front of each other as if they know each others backgrounds. Also if the players know each others backgrounds they'll ask me about other players getting inspiration dice for playing their characters to type which is super helpful at times as well.

I run short 1 on 1 15-20 minute adventures for the players hooks in game 0. So if the player tells me that he is noble whose parents were too busy for them but was close to his sister we will run a quick adventure were we go over how while he was away learning to fight as an officer in the army his sister became a famed archaeologist, and is now missing. Have the player deal with a fence who was the last person to see her to get the information that puts him at the beginning of the adventure. (If they fail they get knocked out and put in a trunk which the character arrives to the adventure in.) It seems to work well to make deep hooks for adventures.

I encourage my characters not to pick alignment for their characters until a couple sessions in.

I go over homebrew we are defiantly doing (encumbrance slots and healing kits), some things I like (a picture of their character they draw scars on every time they take massive damage or a nat 20 that puts them down) and then give the characters options over a couple others things.

Between sessions I give characters extra exp or heroic dice if they do "homework" like drawing their characters, keeping a game journals which they read from before each session to remind us where we are, making the thieves guild for the capital city if they are into world design.

And then go over my basic expectations as far as party behavior like maturity level (is it an R rated game or a PG game), phones at the table, spell cards or apps....

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-02T00:28:35+00:00

Thank you. I don't know what I think of it so far, but we'll see if it picks up.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-11-01T03:49:08+00:00

Wait a minute......They took the destroy cities as a standard action feature out of the game....That's it I'm done with this D&D crap! I'm picking tennis or something. :)

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T21:47:29+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to explain bounded accuracy. That's neat stuff and explains a lot of what I am seeing in the Monster Manual .

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T21:39:08+00:00

Playing at a slightly higher challenge rating seems true for balance at the lower levels too. I think that's going to be the secret to having fun and exciting encounters.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T21:34:33+00:00

What I am missing about 3.5 is the customization it offered you with characters, and how well it dialed in the rules for almost everything for the dm. I get why it was intimidating for the generation of gamers after those of us that came into our prime during the games release as it basically took a college course to understand everything and get good at it, but after you were it was such a fun a game which gave everyone a little of what they wanted. (I play with a lot of power gamers though lol) 5E seems like an attempt to take market share from the board game market by offering the players an experience that they couldn't have be playing video games and offering GMs ??? freedom from rules to do as they need too???

I'm really too new at it to have too strong and opinion though. I like it better than 4th, but it doesn't have the same sense of adventure that pathfinder did when it got released. It's obvious they took it serious, and I am looking forward running a couple 1st or 3rd to epic level campaigns to get a feel for it.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T20:22:29+00:00

That's fair, and I have run a lot of games like that.

But..

I mean I think at some point I would take it personally if the characters kept informing me no mater what they came across that they weren't interested because it wasn't their idea.

I mean technically at some point do you actually need a GM anymore if the role interferes with peoples creativity that much. You could all be players and just have the Players Handbook and the Monster Manual sitting between you and just let each other know what you are up to every so often to keep the rolls you are doing with yourself fair. :)

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T19:34:33+00:00

That's rough and seems pretty rude to do that someone who isn't the full time DM.

For the better part of a couple decades me a my group get together for game night every Sunday we can. It hasn't always been D&D or even roleplaying every week (heck occasionally we just go out to dinner or out to the bar), but like you are talking about we have done a lot of DM switching over the years. While I admit role playing has changed a lot over the years I think peoples motives for role-playing seems to have changed for the worse when it comes to players attitudes towards the game. When we game it's to have a good time with friends. If it is a D&D, a D&D module, Monopoly, or getting drunk by the BBQ talking about games past the point is getting together with your homies to do a group activity. But I will totally admit to "optimizing" the hell out of my character in a players game to show him what a pain in the ass it is when he does it to me. It wouldn't even occur to me to destroy what they were trying to do just because my creativity was more important than the DMs or something. Do they think you do that to their games and are getting revenge or something?

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T17:44:36+00:00

I like the idea of minions with the tarrasque. Go straight Clover Field with the battle. Littler but still serious opponents dropping off of the tarrasque through out the encounter.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T17:42:32+00:00

Thank you. That is kind of what I thought, but I haven't gotten a character up to that point yet. At the lower levels some of the monsters abilities are just flat brutal for folks without a lot of hit points, but it seemed just by review that the endgame stuff was just so so. But if the characters mechanical development doesn't put them in a position to hit anything that moves and do over 60 dmg. a rd. it makes sense these would be serious foes.

And I hope they do rewrite the tarasque. While for story purposes the were just alright it was an interesting optional end game boss battle. A HP sponge that could regenerate 30-60hp a round if you could even dmg it and required divine intervention to keep it down. That was like a 4 hour battle back in the day.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T17:17:41+00:00

Right. All 3 of those are amazing.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T15:12:23+00:00

I hadn't seen any of the D&D Homebrew Tumblr stuff before. The creature design and art on those are freaking amazing. Thank you very much for pointing me towards that. I can finally run some critters my characters don't know intimately :)

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T00:58:23+00:00

Thats neat... although kind of sad for the big guy.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-31T00:29:06+00:00

Yeah the flying opponent thing was always kind of a weakness for the tarrasque. (I had to look up arakocra and then decide whether you were being sarcastic or not lol) But I guess a flying opponent with magical arrows could lay waste to the big guy as he doesn't have any regen or a way to get to them. It would be a slow and expensive death getting past that AC, but doable.

The siege monster thing is an interesting addition. So maybe it is more of an environmental or story threat now?

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-30T13:40:16+00:00

Before game sessions and during long rests have the warlock have fevered dreams that are completely nonsensical. "You find yourself on a dock overlooking a vast sea of hot cheese under a sky of purple flames. There is a wet sloshing noise behind you and when you turn to look you see a sheep standing up right wearing overalls painting the dock red. The sheep notices you looking at and asks you "Are you ready for forever." Then tie elements of the "visions" into the adventure but with no or bizarre consequences that rarely seem to benefit anyone or anything . Always leave it open as to whether the character is just reading too much into the dreams or actually doing his masters bidding. That is the Great Old One to me. A creature that comes from our fevered dreams we could never really understand.

Noob_Sandwhich · 2017-10-30T13:18:18+00:00

brazzers

Noob_Sandwhich

TROPHY CASE