Short Rest: Behind the Screens - DM Advice Part II
The Three M's are still here and we are STILL SQUEAKING! Join us behind the screen as we discuss collaborating with your players to build their characters, our favorite starter sets and how to prevent magic from meddling with your murder mysteries!
Sound Mixing and Editing by Trevor Lyon
Comments (37)
It's shocking how many of these questions can be answered by "play a different game that is designed to be what you want to do".
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did you fall asleep on your phone or something lmao
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I'm running a ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign and loving it. I wonder why nobody ever mentions that one? To Emily's point about "staring at the ceiling" there have been a few recent YouTube videos about how boredom is good for us. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/LKPwKFigF8U
As a person who is about 5 sessions from finishing running Curse of Strahd as his first module as a DM, please pick something different. I cut out basically 70 percent of the lore and just put magic items to defeat Strahd at three of my favorite locations and went from there.
I'm currently running Spelljammer with my party! It's a lot of fun (except for ship to ship combat). We started from Spelljammer Academy then moved on to Spelljammer Adventures in space definitely recommend if you're a big space person!
Dude I was at that donkey Kong mystery live show. Shit was so funny, hopefully the couple that got engaged is doing well
Emily’s laugh is pure joy and sunshine
Waah this inspired me to turn off my phone and stare at the ceiling.....so healing + I'd do anything Emily tells me to
My question got answered and now I’m obligated to buy an orb
Everyone needs two orbs and a pic of Murph and Em on their wedding day behind their screen
You guys. Southeast Virginia. Next round of live shows please.
Murph is bang on when saying that if you want to write you need to read. Creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum, and often to recharge you need to spend time being exposed to stuff that excites you. All the times I've burnt out as a DM are when my schedule has lost the time to enjoy new kinds of art.
In regards to murder mysteries, I think another fun thing to consider is that while players can use spells to solve mysteries, the culprit could have also used magic to commit it. Maybe the murder was done via a dominated proxy, or an assassin who had their memory modified. If a crime is premeditated in a world with magic, the criminal knows that magic is there and can plan around it in the same way someone might plan around security cameras during a heist by hiring a hacker which helps to add more levels.
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The way I jumped when Emily said Stratford upon Avon 🤣 I lived there for ten years as a teenager!
They answered my question and liked my idea about the reality show!! It made my day (: Ps if you guys are still reading I’m utilizing “commercial breaks” (aka down time) to enact gossip and following up on alliance or rivalry building, it includes adv or dis on deception to hide sabotage actions (like doing something that causes disadvantage to the targeted player and deception role to prevent getting caught)
I hope y’ll keep doing these! Love it!
Not gonna lie, hearing Murph go "Siickk" about my campaign idea made my day.
Ah yes, the 3 M's: Murph, M-ily, and Mavrus's friend Hungry Dave
Thanks for the sources and ideas! Really love the faction system, kind of reminds me of old WoW rep in a way
Emily, putting my therapist hat on to say I think it’s brilliant to turn everything off and stare at the ceiling
Little bummed that they seem to have spoiled an unreleased sonic murder mystery live show :(
Guys, if you want to play something like investigation or really anything that isn't larger than life fantasy, DON'T PLAY DND/PATHFINDER! There are hundreds of simpler AND more realistic system for other genres, look them up! Trying to force DnD into a murder mystery is like trying to create a dating sim on the Doom engine. It's possible, but there are way better options.
Not 👏 everyone 👏 learns 👏 new 👏 systems 👏 as 👏 easily 👏 as 👏 you 👏 do. Also sometimes people just wanna throw a little murder mystery into a pre established game already being played in dnd or pathfinder. Don’t tell people how to play games that are supposed to be about creativity and personal choice.
Post-apocalyptic Toronto REPRESENT!
Thanks for answering my question!! I bought the Kobold Press books thanks to Murph’s love for them! I remember him talking about the fey lords and ladies when the boobs went to the feywild and fought that bear king guy. Super cool books!!
The fantasy world/post-apocalyptic earth campaign sounds so fun
I can't believe Caldwell didn't throw out "two orb jorb"
I'm just a humble wife worm, thank you for this bounty
I am part of the pro-squeak initiative, my brethren let us gather meakly and mousely
y’all better squeak every time lmfao