September 2023 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A
Welcome to the Sly Flourish Patreon Questions and Answers thread for September 2023!
Ask your monthly RPG-related question in the comments below!
Every Friday morning I answer every question on this post. Some questions make it to the Lazy RPG Talk Show, an RPG Tip video, or Sly Flourish article. Don't be upset if your question doesn't make it to the show – only a few do.
As you consider your question for the month, please
search the Lazy RPG Talk Show Topic Database using keywords from your question to see if I've answered your question previously. You can also search Sly Flourish and the Sly Flourish YouTube Channel to see if I've done an article or video on the topic.
focus your question on tabletop RPGs.
ask only one question each month.
keep your question brief. I love your stories but I get overwhelmed.
Thank you so much for helping me do what I do.
Now bring on the questions!!
Comments (125)
Hey Mike you've been talking a lot about the next iteration of DnD coming in 2024. Given this last playtest packet, do you find yourself disinterested in WotC's direction? I want to see the next evolution and the game and for them to provide guidance for roleplaying and theatre of the mind combat. If they take the great parts of 5e and build upon it I feel it would be much better. Great it for new players, fix the broken pieces, and tailor a DMG that all DMs can learn from.
Hey, Mike, thanks so much for all the fantastic resources you’re putting out there for lazy/anxiety-prone DMs like me! My question: how would you adjust the Deadly Encounter Benchmark to account for the enemies coming in waves, instead of all being present from the beginning? I feel like there should be some sort of upward adjustment to account for the enemy’s reduced damage output, and the ability to focus fire. Obviously doing too much math is antithetical to the Lazy DM approach, but if you/anyone has found a quick rule of thumb like “the deadly benchmark for each wave is 1/2 the normal deadly benchmark” that would be great! (I’m confident my hypothetical example would not work, just using it as an illustration)
Its probably best not managed in math. I was just writing about this in a freelance assignment I've been working on. The difficulty of waves changes depending on how fast those waves come in. If there's room between waves and they're not overlapping heavily, it'll be easier. The more the waves overlap, the harder it goes. So there's no clean way to adjust the encounter benchmark to account for waves. You're best off keeping it in mind for each wave and then deciding how much overlap there is between waves. Those overlaps are also a dial you can turn. If things look too hard, stretch out the waves or have the next wave include fewer creatures. If they're having an easier time, add more monsters coming sooner. Hope that helps!
Hey Mike and Friends of the internet. I’ve been running my first full sized adventure for a year and a half. I've done some shorter adventures but now I’m going through Tomb of Annihilation and the end is approaching. I was reading the end of the adventure and it occurred to me that the last session will be really disappointing if I don’t do something special to conclude it. After defeating Acererak, the story has no denouement. What I’m looking for is guidance on what to do to wrap up the campaign with more ceremony for both the characters and the players beyond reading the two or three “this may happen” paragraphs at the end of the book. What do DMs do to end their long-term campaigns? I’m open to any ideas.
this might be helpful: https://alphastream.org/index.php/2021/02/24/for-a-great-campaign-ask-the-pcs-what-happens-10-to-100-years-after-it-ends/
For 5e sessions played via online video, do you think 5 is the magic number of player characters, to get energy high but also enough spotlight time for each?
I still like four players for just about any number of play. Shadowdark runs well with as few as three. Five is fine. Six is on the edge of too many.
Hi Mike! My question is about overloading a party with too many moral tradeoffs. My group is motivated more by heroism and do-gooder aspects. I've been trying to do something similar to the "give 3 options" approach that you've talked about recently in the Shadowdark prep. My issue is that choosing between the three options frequently involves some kind of moral opportunity cost. For instance, if they choose to help the guy find his missing wife it means they're not going to be able to save the naive explorers from the obviously crooked and murderous trail guides; and if they leave town for either of the first 2 options, it's likely that tensions between a couple of resident factions is going to boil over into a dangerous street war. What should I do, if anything, to lessen the amount of emotional toll on the players when they have to make these kinds of decisions?
Yeah, sometimes you need to pull back on the urgency of different options so that players don't feel like they're always choosing the least worst option. Dialing back the moral dilemmas of each of the options can help. Instead of it being an urgent "save the wife" quest, it's more of a "people have gone missing and we don't know why" quest. If you move the quests to be more exploratory and less urgent, that might help remove the moral quandary of choosing one quest over another.
You can share only some parts of a PDF, using the Google Drive method, if you separate the pages and save a separate stripped-down version with a site like PDF24 Tools. Of course, make backups. Afterward, the stripped-down version may be just as big as the original, but there's also a tool on the site for streamlining it.
I just did a readings and reflections podcast on the article about sharing google drive PDFs. Yes, you can also create a separate PDF with only the pages particular players need which can work well. Preview on a Mac and Adobe Reader make it pretty easy to pull out only the pages you want. I'd still use the limited sharing option of Google Drive, though. Make sure you give it only to certain accounts (not an open URL) and set the settings to remove their ability to download or print it.
Recently I read through Bigby's and noticed that most, if not all, of the Legendary Monsters have no Legendary Actions. Why do you think WotC is moving away from Legendary Actions and is it a good thing? As a DM I am not a fan of the change.
I'm actually ok with it. I tended to forget legendary actions and the idea that there is already a thing that works – reactions – that can serve double-duty for boss monsters is an interesting idea. I have no idea how it works out in actual play but I'm not throwing away the idea yet. I think there's a lot of ways to handle this. Since writing Forge of Foes, I care even less how well designed a monster is. I can always modify it and after 10 years and a bunch of professional monster design work, I trust that I can make a monster fun at the table all on my own. So we'll see how it plays out in the end. I think they're still testing the idea.
How do you handle really important character arcs (that you have already planned and put work into) if they have not concluded before the main story arc wraps up? My group just finished Waterdeep:Dragonheist, However there is currently an undead Owlbear in the basement that a player had been attempting to tame. I had crafted a really cool story arc for her, incorporating some of her major 'Wishes', and it was about to get going, but then the party did something very unexpected and sold the Macguffin to a rival. That campaign is wrapped and a "2 months into the future" narration would be great here -- except I have the dead owlbear with its very very very cool story arc just left there.
You can always add it to your own "two months later" narrative or ask the players if they want to work it into their own "two months later" narrative. Sometimes when an arc breaks, it makes the whole game more interesting. Did the owlbear become some sort of powerful boss monster? Is it now the sidekick of a powerful lich? There was an expectation that it went one way but it could be very interesting if it went another. What could have happened and which path is the coolest? If there's a character (and a player) particularly interested in it, ask them offline what might be cool.
Hi Mike, thank you for another month of great content. Since I was recently comparing the writing in the Crown of the Oathbreaker book with that of the official WotC adventures, I am wondering which writing style you have found to be the easiest to digest/prepare with out of all the published adventures you have read. I know that the content/themes/actually running the adventure of course weights very heavily when evaluating a good adventure to play, but looking purely at the reading/preparation perspective which book has impressed you the most so far?
Two that leap out to mind are Dragon of Icespire Peak and Light of Xaryxis both by WOTC. Arcane Library's various adventures are also very easy to parse but maybe a *little* light on the details I'd want to fill in secrets and clues, old history, and the like.
Hi Mike, I'm planning on going on a camping trip at the beginning of next month and it has been requested that I run a one shot one of the evening we are there. What pre-made adventures do you suggest for a 1-shot for 1st level characters and what preparations might you make for running D&D in the great outdoors.
I don't know that you need any special preparations for playing outdoors. Make sure players have something smooth to roll on like a dice tray. You can get them for pretty cheap. For first level adventures I like: - Lost Mine of Phandelver - Dragons of Stormwreck Isle - Dragon of Icespire Peak - Call of Starsong Tower (https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/ruins_of_the_grendleroot_preview.pdf) - The Night Blade (http://s3.amazonaws.com/slyflourish_content/fantastic_adventures_sample.pdf) You can also use my player packets for pregens that include spell descriptions: https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/fantastic_adventures_pregen_characters.pdf
Hey Mike, in one of their newest videos the Dungeon Duds proposed a new Boss mechanic (https://youtu.be/i8bx7crRiqA?feature=shared TLDR: Boss has no standart action turn in the round, but always an action after a players turn, makes the Boss more dynamic to react to players) I like the idea of the Boss continually reacting to the actions of the characters. The Duds mention the problem that this might make damage output hard to calculate, but I thing this idea could be great to combine with your generic monster stats table, especially the damage per round column, as a inverted-damage-pool that the Boss can use each round. Would love to hear your thoughts on the DDs Boss mechanic and how to make it LazeGM material 😄
Some versions of the D&D miniatures wargame had something like this – bosses got to act in between turns of players. Games like Dungeon World do this too – the characters take damage when *they* fail in their attacks. You can certainly increase the number of legendary actions a monster gets by the number of extra players. 5e expects four characters and legendary monsters have three legendary actions to give them these in-between moves. Instead, you could treat it as N - 1 legendary actions where N is the number of characters. This increases the threat of a legendary monster proportionally to the number of players which is pretty good. The Forge of Foes total monster damage table can help you balance it out too but if you're increasing a legendary monster's attacks by the number of players, that should work out too.
Hi Mike! I run a high-level 5e campaign. To help contend with my players’ high-level abilities in our session zero I gave them a guiding principle to interpret into their character’s aspects, like PFIBs. To help prevent their high-level powers from working against them. Like situations where the party splits far apart by their myriad of abilities. The principle is they are boon companions that fight against the forces of darkness, they care deeply about each other. They know they need each other to fight the high-level threats and mysteries they face. I have one player who continually disregards this much to the chagrin of the other players. He’s the fastest PC in the game by far. He’s almost died twice. In our last encounter, he moved so fast that he met the encounter 4 rounds ahead of everyone else. This resulted in him chasing off the bad guys before anyone else could get there. Even if his PC died, I think this would continue with the next. I don’t like fudging rolls so it’s hard to hide things from him. I’ve tried talking to him about these issues, as have some of the players. All trying to insist he aligns with this principle. At this point, I’m kind of at a loss. Am I wrong to put the limitations of the above principle upon my players?
I don't know that there's a great way to handle this beyond what you've already tried. Some players just fixate on their mechanics and simply aren't into any of the actual roleplay aspects of their roleplaying game. Some players just aren't a fantastic fit for the group. If you've already talked to them, and so have other players, and the behavior isn't changing, your only options appear to be either to live with it or ask them to find another game. The latter is certainly hard so maybe just living with it is ok. Otherwise, you might have to force the issue in game by making it simply impossible for him to use his super-speed to break the flow of the game. Explaining to him that these abilities are making the game less fun for you and for the other group can at least explain why you're nerfing these abilities. I wish I had a better answer.
Hey Mike. This is a strictly “in my head” issue, but as a gm, do you ever worry about too many coincidences in an adventure? Like, this rando npc you meet on the road is actual a village elder you haven’t seen in a decade, and he has important news! Or this painting has key info you’ll need in the next location! Now, my players have never commented on this, but sometimes I just worry about it.
I don't worry about it. First, the world is full of coincidences and it also makes our games more fun when the characters run into the familiar. Maybe don't do it all the time but I wouldn't worry about doing it sometimes.
Hail Caeser Mike! The Romans had no concept of the number zero and I am worried that your encounter benchmark doesn't as well. I just had an interesting encounter with my group. I wanted them to meet a small nest of Giant Fire beetles and then realized that the creatures were CR 0. so while trying desperately to determine how many would be deadly (my party is 5×level 5), I gave up and used 4 / person and used horde tactics (grouping them together and having damage spread out amongst them). It didn't last more than 1.5 rounds, but it was fun for the party (what always counts). Honestly, it worked well. I just still would like to know if there is a specific "special case" to CR 0 monsters or does one just throw enough at the party so that it feels good?
Infinite fire giant beetles! It's right there in the math!! I'd probably treat them as 1/8th or maybe, if you want, 1/16th. There aren't a lot of fights with CR 0 monsters so I typically don't worry about it. Treating them as 1/8 is probably safe or 1/16 if you want to throw a lot of them out there.
Hey Mike! I want to run a Halloween 1-shot for my players on Halloween. I know you've talked about you like to run Curse of Strahd for your players for a Halloween game, but what's the format of that? How do you make it into a 1-shot? Any other suggestions for spooky 1-shots?
I have just the article for you! https://slyflourish.com/running_ravenloft.html I also wrote Tomb of the Red Headsman as a Halloween adventure: https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/ff98052f30d610b78a3b_patreon_files/tomb_of_the_red_headsman.zip
Hey Mike! New to ttrpg's and decided to dive in headfirst. I built my own homebrew region for 6 players. After a few weeks of creative overload ending in complete brain lock I found notion, which led me to you. Something I haven't been able to read much about or find is the concept of skipping levels. Is that a thing? Say the characters are rewarded by a deity and are divinely blessed and jump 5 levels. Am I way out of my mind for considering something like this?
It's rare but it does happen. Apparently there are level jumps in the upcoming Planescape adventure published by Wizards of the Coast. I probably wouldn't do it, though. Each level offers interesting new features to explore. Getting a whole pile at once loses the fun of that exploration and can confuse players who have to suddenly learn a whole new pile of mechanics.
Do you have any advice for overcoming the need to cater to what I am calling "prescription D&D"? I'm not one of those people who thinks emulating Matt Mercer is the secret to success, but I still feel pressured to put on vast production value for a game or "I'm doing it wrong." Irrational, yes, but there is no changing that the current era of TTRPGs is one steeped deep in the frills of fancy battle maps, lighting, special effects, ambient audio, and so-forth. I would love to provide those extra layers for my players, but as another visually impaired DM (I know this came up to you recently), those steps just aren't feasible and I struggle to get past that. The reception of Baldur's Gate 3 has only increased my insecurities— watching people who "never got it" or didn't care suddenly latch on to D&D just because the experience was finally presented to them in a fully visual package. I was first recommended Return of the Lazy DM when asking r/DMAcademy how people with easy-to-overwhelm medical conditions handle DMing insecurity. While the answers from both Reddit and your book were insightful; as time has gone on, the feeling that I am providing a lesser service than people want is currently the biggest detriment to my DM enjoyment and confidence. Feedback from my players on the matter always feels neutral or polite. I just found your article on getting useful feedback and yet need to employ the tips there, but do you have any additional context for breaking the mold of D&D's table dressing expectations and/or tips for making theater-of-the-mind play more attention-grabbing in a time where the intricacy of VTT props feels more celebrated than the adventure content itself?
I'm not an expert in dealing with anxiety in general which is its own whole subject and likely best approached by reaching out to a professional. I think its important to remember what really matters to players – getting around a table, sharing some laughs, and sharing in a story focused around their characters. The geegaws and doodads like tabletop terrain, fancy miniatures, lighting effects, music, and all of that might be nice window dressing but it's not what's really important. I don't think its the graphics alone that makes Baldur's Gate 3 a good game. It looks great, sure, but the gameplay and story matter. The richness of the characters. The fun and impact of the dialog trees we have. The ability to change the world in big ways – that's what people remember. I don't think the current era of TTRPGs is steeped in high production value. I've seen three old-school RPGs just break 10k backers and more than a million dollars on Kickstarter. The production value isn't important. Us facilitating a fun story at the table, that's what matters. When talking to your players, ask them what they're enjoying and what they want more of. I bet high production value stuff isn't the answer.
Hey Mike, thanks for all you do for us patrons and I appreciate the practical approach you take to things. I am running Rise of the Drow and have gotten to a very 'sandbox-y' section where the party needs to free dozens of captives from a heavily guarded location - there are many ways they might go about it, but no way to predict. How do you adopt the Eight Steps in situations like this - things like fantastic locations, scenes and NPC's can be a bit all over.
This is a perfect situation and the eight steps are designed to help you prepare for that situation without necessarily knowing what the characters are going to do. When you're developing a situation like this here are some steps: - What is the goal of the situation? Make sure it's clear to the characters and the players. - What is the location like? Get a map and write out what the rooms are. It doesn't have to be much. A word or two will do it. - Who are the inhabitants including adversaries but also just normal civilians going about their day. - What complications might occur? More here: https://slyflourish.com/anatomy_of_a_situation_castle_orzelbirg.html
Howdy Mike! I've been riding the Shadowdark bandwagon hard, and its gotten me thinking: "if I could get a table together of anyone, living or dead, to play a game with, who would it be?" I want to ask you the very same question! If you could put together your Dream Team for a game of Shadowdark, D&D, or another RPG, who would you pick and why? Here's the short video I made with my answers! https://youtu.be/uDdUB9TU82g Thanks for everything! 🤙
Hi Michael! I'm going to give you an answer you might not like. For me, my ideal table are the friends who already come to that table. We've been playing together for years, maybe decades. I love them. I'm comfortable with them. I don't need to play with anyone else. But if I were to put together an ideal table outside of that answer maybe: - Stephen King - Neil Gaiman - Taika Waititi - Quinten Tarrantino - Brian Vaughan
Hi Mike! With the release of the Alpha of D&D Beyond's Maps, what do you think is the safest bet for a new DM to spend money on when they want to play online? What is most important to yourself when choosing a VTT? Personally, I have already spend hundreds of euros on the digital books in Roll20, and it is a hard decision to make the switch ever. Maybe I'll never? I can't get some of the books on DnDBeyond anymore.
The safest bet is to stick with the tools your using. D&D Beyond is probably the most "secure" of the platforms for D&D 5e since WOTC owns it. WOTC could pull support for every other platform if they wanted to. I think its always important to remember that we're just leasing content when we buy it on a platform like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Foundry (I think), and Shard. Those sites and their material could go down for many reasons and since they hold the real license to the content, we could lose it too. Books, PDFs, and ebooks are our own. Most everything else is just borrowed as long as the owner deems it worthy to continue. But overall I'd stick to what you already have.
Hi Mike! I’m on the Hero tier, and I enjoy the opportunity to listen to you read and further discuss your articles on a podcast during my commute. 👍🏻 Am I correct in my impression that you publish more articles than you will read out loud to us? If so, can you somehow make it easy to see at a glance (e.g., in my RSS reader, Feedly) which articles you will read on the podcast, so I know which ones I still need to save into Instapaper to read later? Thanks!
Hi Joe! Right now the plan is to do one of these recordings for every current article. So a new article comes out on the website (and over RSS) on Monday. Tuesday it's sent out as a newsletter. Thursday it's recorded and posted as a Readings and Reflections podcast for hero-tier subscribers. Right now expect that every new article gets a reading.
Hello Mike, you mentioned on a recent show that you wish Owlbear Rodeo had automated fog of war like some other VTTs. Well, I was just noodling around on there (version 2) and I did find a dynamic fog of war extension. I haven't had the chance to play with it yet but it looks promising. Here's the install link ( https://owlbear-rodeo-dynamic-fog-of-war.onrender.com/manifest.json ). Now get out there and play an Owlbear Rodeo-assisted TTRPG!
Thanks! We actually found a great way to create a circular fog-revealing polygon and then attach that to a token. It works really well. I plan on showing it on the show on Sunday.
Hi Mike. I want to run a "protect the village" adventure like you describe in the lazy dm companion. Most of those kind of stories involve training (or at least rallying) the villagers to assist in defeating the much more powerful horde of bandits or whatever's threatening them. Do you have advice for running such a big conflict without tracking what every villager is doing, but still making their contribution mean something?
Hi Topher! Your instincts to stay away from turn-by-turn tracking of every villager is right on. That's too much. Instead, have the characters make ability checks using relevant proficiencies in various skills as they describe how they're preparing the villagers for an attack and then use the results of that to determine and describe how the villagers are holding off larger forces of enemies while the characters focus on the big bad or other elite groups of forces. Take a look at the war-themed campaigns section of the Companion on page 41 for more details. Keep the lens on the characters and what they're doing and describe the larger battle of trained (or untrained) villagers in the backdrop.
You've mentioned how we shouldn't prep as if it's going to be published, but atm I'm writing a convention scenario that other GMs might use. How would you go about it? (I'm currently talking about it in the Discord, but I think it's an interesting topic so I'll ask here too. 😃)
Writing an adventure for someone else, particularly for publication, is a whole other big topic. I don't think there's a perfect style either. It's been 50 years and we still argue about whether an adventure should have flavor text or not. I would recommend finding published adventures you found worked really well for you and study their style – not just the outline but how they write and how much they write. Some good models of varying designs might include: - Dragons of Stormwreck Isle - Dragons of Icespire Peak - Light of Xaryxis - The adventure of Arcane Library - My own adventures in Ruins of the Grendleroot. But there are literally thousands of others. I would try to keep the words as few as possible with lots of lists to keep things easy to parse at the table for a convention. Good luck!
Hey Mike, Quick Q: I'm wondering - have you heard of/used Aurora 5e Character Builder? It's not backed by WoTC, which I know is something you've said you would like to see more of. It's also only compatible with 5e, so not very versatile. That being said, it's definitely my favorite character builder I've used. It does a great job of walking the user through building a character, and it even allows you to choose which sources it pulls content from (e.g. if you only allowed your characters to use content from the 2014 PHB and Tasha's, you could just turn only those two sources on). There's a repository of additional sources you can add on the website, including 3rd party content like some stuff from Kobold press and the critical role campaign setting. have a good one :)
I haven't heard of Aurora and doing some searching shows me that the project is no longer supported. Can you point me to more about it? Another note, I don't support any builder that violates copyrights. As much as I think WOTC should support a wide range of tools, I don't support people pirating their material. Some tools, like Lion's Den for example, is popular because it can intake XML files of copyrighted material from users which is really just bootlegged material. I'm not pushing for that sort of use.
Do you know of any resources which have detailed and a variety of examples of how to include rival adventurers in a campaign in situations which would not combat with each other? Thanks!
I wrote up an article for an issue of Arcadia with a group known as the Grim Accord that offered a lot of advice for how to incorporate them into your campaign which can give you ideas how to incorporate your own groups with some reskinning. I'd tend to think of a rival group as one "villian" or "front". Pick the leader of the group and let that one be the main villain or NPC you consider as you see how they act in the world depending on the actions of the characters. It doesn't need to be too complicated. Stat-block wise, use some general NPC stat blocks or reskin some monsters to fit the power and style of the combatants. Keep that simple too. Just one unique ability per NPC is enough to make them feel unique and a lot of time you can do it just with flavor.
Since the Passive Scores are defined as 10 + Skill Bonus, what are your thoughts on characters potentially having more than three passive scores? As in, the standard character sheet only has Perception, Instight and Investigation passive scores listed. My point is that if they have +5 in Arcana, they should have a Passive Arcana score of 15, and considering the recommendation to use Passive Scores as floor for checks, how would you react to they rolling a Nat 1 on a DC 15 check? Would you have them fail it? Having them rolling is fine as a way to see if they can get a higher check and get more information, but I want to get your opinion on "Does it make sense for them to fail a check they are clearly proficient at?"
I like to spend more time offering up particular views of the world based on whether a character has proficiency or training in a particular skill. So someone trained in Arcana automatically knows things about strange magical stuff going on. This sort of acts as a floor but I don't worry about the numbers too much. Training alone lets characters know stuff. A lot of time we're passing information that they'd certainly get some level of knowledge from but they might get even more if they roll high. That's where using a floor can help. You can certainly tell there's a magical aura coming off of the chest but that 18 tells you it has something to do with evocation and that 23 tells you it's trapped with a glyph of warding of fire.
Hey Mike! I'm just coming off running the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur for Shadowdark and it was really good fun! My group will be going back to our high power 5e game soon, and I find myself thinking about how much extra prep I need and how much information I need to keep in my head. I'd very much like to use my experience with the succinct design of Shadowdark to simplify running 5e for myself. I recently had a look at your one-page 5e in uncovered secrets 2 and really enjoyed the trimmed design - much like Shadowdark! You might not have an easy answer for how I would go about achieving this, but given your experience trimming 5e, how would you go about thinking about this sort of game design, and do you have any good resources? Thanks for everything you do, I'm a pretty recent enjoyer of your content and I get a whole lot from it.
I think there's a lot we can learn from how to prep Shadowdark and I don't think prepping 5e has to be that much different or harder or take longer. We can run dungeons much the same way. We can keep to very simple plots. We can build structures for dungeon crawling and overland travel and downtime activities. We can even switch to a treasure-as-XP system (although I still prefer goal-based leveling). I think the difference in Shadowdark is the difference between a grim dark fantasy RPG and a high fantasy RPG. 5e has a greater deal of character agency that Shadowdark doesn't have. In 5e you don't worry about running out of light, food, or space. Characters are more robust. And so on. But I think we don't have to change much to make it as easy to prep for 5e as we do for Shadowdark.
First of all, thank you so much for helping DMs like me. My anxiety for planning and running sessions has gone way down since following your content. I'm having trouble running games for my 5e group that is level 11. We play every 3-6 weeks, and have had an ongoing homebrew game for almost 4 years. In that time, my players have had kids and our play time is short, sporadic, sometimes only 2 hours at a time. The issue I'm having is making that actual game time feel meaningful without taking too much time recapping all of the lore and background for the session. I’ve attempted to give texts out a day in advance to recap what we did the last session and to get everyone on the same page prior to game time, but inevitably I spend a lot of time answering questions about what happened the sessions before during the actual gameplay time. We tend to go 1-2 sessions sometimes without combat due to timing and the pacing can feel slow because of that. In addition, I've had one player approach me and say he can't remember much and the games "stopped feeling like D&D" and feels too epic for our very casual players and thinks our group would be better with one shot adventures at this point. I’ve polled the group and they seem to want to continue but I can’t help but feel at least one of my players isn’t having a good time. How can I improve these games without the players feeling the burden of having to remember everything and spending more game time just playing?
Hi Christpher! Yeah, this is hard in a few ways. First, you don't get to play often enough that your players can remember what's going on from week to week. Second, the games are short. Third, it's 11th level which means a lot of time in combat making choices – and players who may not remember all the choices they have. You can take a more episodic approach to the campaign. Think of each session as an episode of a short 30 minute action show like the latest Star Wars shows on Disney+ or something like Walker Texas Ranger. Get to the meat of the situation fast. Keep the story simple. Try to hit on all three pillars but know you'll probably only get one big battle in. You can work with your players to try to speed things up a bit but it's hard if they've built out their characters over the past 11 levels. I really feel like getting down to the pure meat of what a D&D game is like can help. Set up a single situation and let the players navigate it, take the resolution and move it to the next situation. Cut the boring middle. Cut travel time and exposition and the rest. Maybe every so often have a session of downtime that's *just* tying the story together. You might take a look at the D&D Encounters program from back in the 4e days that built episodic adventures like that for in-store play. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/123366/War-of-Everlasting-Darkness-4e https://www.dmsguild.com/product/121468/Keep-on-the-Borderlands-A-Season-of-Serpents-Chapters-15-4e https://www.dmsguild.com/product/121732/Dark-Legacy-of-Evard-4e There are more if you can dig them up. Hope that helps!
After watching the latest talk show, I noticed you were talking up Demiplane. While it's good that D&D Beyond will have a competitor, it has always seemed that your biggest issue with DDB was that WoTC was heading to being digital only and you've "ranted" time and again that if you buy digital on a platform, you don't own the content and it can be taken away at any time. Now that Demiplane appears to be selling digital content on behalf of third party publishers, how are they any different to D&D Beyond? You are still buying digital content on their platform and you still don't "own" it any more than you do on DDB. One might even suggest that on this particular point Demiplane might be worse because at least DDB is backed by the massive corporate money machine that is WoTC/Hasbro. Not throwing shade at Demiplane but if the ownership of digital content is the problem, it doesn't appear that Demiplane is any different. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this aspect of it.
I've been waiting all week to answer this question! There are a couple of different things at play here. First, yes, if you buy a license for content on any digital platform, you're renting. You don't own the material unless you can download it to a USB stick and put it in your safe deposit box. It doesn't matter if its DDB or Demiplane or Shard or Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds or Foundry. That's true regardless. Demiplane doesn't solve that problem. The *other* issue is one of fair competition, potential enshittification, and building a good product for customers who have choices about where they go. Lock-in is bad. All of these platforms have a degree of lock-in. You can't move easily from Roll20 to Demiplane if all your stuff is on Roll 20. But at least you have a choice. If one platform just starts to suck, you can go elsewhere. You can decide to invest or reinvest in core books on another platform and pick up where you left off. If there are four or five different digital tools with different features and pricing models, you get to choose the one that fits what you want. If only one platform serves the content you want to play a game, you're stuck with whatever you decide. D&D Beyond is different than Demiplane and the others because they are the 50x dominant producer of material for 5e. They are both the biggest (or maybe second-biggest next to Roll 20) digital platform for 5e *and* the highest seller of 5e material. No other platform in TTRPGs has that same dominance. There's no way I can see where Wizards of the Coast locking their content to one platform is a benefit to users. It's a monopoly plain and simple. A lack of competition almost always lead to a worse product for a higher cost. As an example, name three major improvements D&D Beyond has had since WOTC bought it. We want choices when we choose what we want to play and where we want to play it. I'm excited to see Tales of the Valiant on Shard. I'm excited to see Demiplane pick up steam. I'm hoping D&D Beyond gets better. Above all, I want choices. I don't want any one single company to be the absolute dominant driver of the game I love and the tools I use.
Your changing of gears and bringing in your style of DMing to ShadowDark (and worries about playing ShadowDark "wrong") got me thinking, what "good" advice doesn't work for you or your group? As an example, you seem to tone down a lot of encounters, but for some of my players (if not groups), if there wasn't a distinct possibility of character death, there'd be accusations of me running a theme park rather than an adventure whilst ruining any sense of achievement.
I don't think I go easy on players really. I'll throw the kitchen sink at them a lot of times. I've run battles 2x or 3x above the deadly threshold because I know that, somehow, they'll manage to even the odds (kicking dudes into a big pit is one way). The question of what good advice I don't follow is a good one! Probably the biggest is focusing more on actual tactical combat. Worrying about which monster synergies work best. Worrying about positioning and interesting environmental effects. Building really good tactical environments with lots of odds-and-ends to work with – real Baldur's Gate 3 sort of chewy combat encounters. A lot of players love that sort of play but I just switched to be more fast and loose with most battles and that's the style I like to play. I asked our Discord server about it. Some brought up "don't fudge" which, I suppose some think is good advice but I think there are good times to fudge like ending battles early when they've overstayed their welcome. But maybe that. I'll come back and add more as I hear back.
Hey Mike, decided to finally join the Patreon, glad to be here! I have had trouble with combat feeling entirely separate from the rest of the game. Once initiative is rolled, the roleplay part of the game disappears and the players are focused only in making optimal choices. I have tried telling them before a combat that it would not be life-threatening (in order to get them to loosen up) and trying to roleplay enemies during combat but there are no reactions as they seem to be focused on what they are gonna do on their next turn. My question is: What are some ways to encourage more rp during combat instead of wargamey "i do x, end turn"?
Some groups just don't jump into that sort of roleplaying. I'll sometimes have monsters roleplay about their own mechanics or tactics just to break the fourth wall and let people slide in. My old standby questions help players think about the world a bit: What do their attacks look like? What is an interesting physical characteristic of the monster they just hit (so you can use that to reference them later). Describe their killing blow. What does their spell look like? Try to get them to describe what their action is like in the game before describing the mechanics. I also think running some of the battles in the theater of the mind helps players break away from the board-game style a lot of players are used to. Hope that helps!
Hey Mike, i'd love to hear your thoughts on the free player's guide for Crown and Skull, Runehammer games' new system. A lot of the system is focused on giving players more responsibility so the gm is freed up to focus on more important stuff. Very lazy dm-esque!
Hi Topher! I've skimmed through it but didn't really grok it when I read it. I'll need to spend more time on it and time, right now, is scarce. Sorry! You get another question if you want one =)
What book, if any, do you find indispensable to physically have at the table for yourself as the GM? I know my PCs like rolling items, so a magic items book being brought out makes them happy. I was curious your thoughts on what is most helpful for you.
Honestly, very few these days. I have a lot of indispensable charts and tables including my new shiny "monster stats by CR" table from Forge of Foes. My 5e quick reference sheet is another: https://slyflourish.com/revised_5e_cheat_sheet.html I use the stress effect table from the Lazy DM's Companion all the time too. https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html#stresseffects Books? Not so much really these days.
Hi Mike, I really enjoyed your recent segment "Adventure Pitfalls". Content like this is super impactful for GMs still learning the craft. I'd like to push back on a sentiment expressed in that segment. And that is, the idea that in-game setbacks create games that are "no fun". Clearly, all games should have some challenges, but I think different types of players (and GMs) prefer different challenge levels. Personally, I love being challenged!!! Being captured in the middle of the game would be great fun to me. In general, the closer the group gets to defeat and death, the more fun I am having because the group is forced to work together and be imaginative. That kind of playing experience is what will be remembered.
Different strokes for different folks. I've seen a *lot* of players pissed off when their stuff gets taken from them in an arbitrary way. If the game takes one there – you have an unexpected TPK for example – and you end up in a cell with no gear *that way*, I think that's clear. It's when the DM puts an impossible battle in place just for the contrivance of putting characters in cells with no gear – that sort of sucks. Loss aversion is real and players can be distinctly aware when there's no actual forward progress and instead they're just catching up to where they already are. There are lots of great scenarios to challenge our players. These "two steps back" scenarios don't have to be part of them
Hi Mike, I've been considering using Point Crawls a bit more as a mechanism for helping my group make choices. I want to give them agency, but they aren't the kind of group that explores or asks for options (despite a lot of hints of where to investigate). As such, it's a bit hard to ride the fine line between railroading and providing them with structure so they don't have too much world to try to navigate. I know I can use Point Crawls for exploration in the wilderness, but have you ever used Point Crawls for plot points in a larger homebrew campaign setting? I can't remember if that's what you did in your Numenera game or not. What would the pros/cons be of doing so? Can you think of any tips that would help me use a Point Crawl for driving plot? Thanks.
I think instead of worrying about the whole thing as point crawls, think of them as sets of decisions the characters (and the players) can make. Three choices is usually good, and give them a good reason to pick one path over another without making one path the clear winner. This way the branches branch out as they pick one path or another instead of you building the whole big pointcrawl ahead of time and only using one branch. I think such things can get overly complicated if we try to map out the whole network instead of just the next hops, if that makes sense. What are the next three big choices the characters might have in front of them?
Hello Mike! I seem to have trouble with when to follow the improv story arcs with a published campaign. Everyone is having fun, but for the module to make sense it wants to follow a certain route. When should I hold on to the prewritten story and when to let the improv at the table guide the story? The issue with following improv is the potential to make the rest of the published campaign’s story arc fall apart. I’m running Rime, and I really enjoy your prep videos. Thank you for those! Your videos have fundamentally changed how I DM and think about the game. Edit: Grammer/clarification
Hello! I think you want to have a good understanding of the main beats of the adventure – the big chapter-break parts and how to get there. You might want to note which parts of the adventure are optional and which are really required. I'd probably lean more towards letting the players go where the story takes them and then work in what you can. But for some big outline-focused campaigns, you still want to make the larger motivations clear and repeat them often.
Hey Mike! In October I will have about three weeks with literally no responsibilities. I have some ideas outside of general relaxation, but if you were presented with the same situation, what activities would you fill your time with to improve as a GM?
Woo. What a dream scenario! I'd read. I'd read a lot. I'd pick up a lot of different setting books and dig in. Here would be my reading list: - Dungeons of Drakkenheim - Ptolus - Tal'dorei Reborn - Planegea - Venture Maidens - Odyssey of the Dragon Lords I'd probably also dig into the Kobold Guides: https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product-category/all-products/guides/ I *wouldn't* spend a lot of time fleshing out my big campaign, I don't think. Maybe a little, but too much prep makes the whole thing too rigid. I might also start writing a general RPG design book but that's just me =)
I'll DM two groups playing the Castle Ravenloft Halloween session with one player joining both session. I've read your and many other ideas on how to make it work but I'm still looking for a nice idea to somehow make it more interesting for that specific player. She already had the idea of using the same character with a "reborn lineage" to explain her meta knowledge but as a DM, I feel that there's lots of potential for narrative as well as making things surprising for her again (on top of all the Fortunes randomness). Curious for your ideas on involving players with "foreknowledge" in general and for Ravenloft!
I think a lot of the fun of Ravenloft is that it can be cyclical. It's happened before and it'll happen again. Some of the fun I've had with Ravenloft is shaking up who the main players are: https://slyflourish.com/running_ravenloft.html You could have a character who somehow kept her memories of having done it before but maybe those memories aren't reliable. Since you're moving the pieces around, it'll still be different. You can move even more pieces around by changing up some of the encounters in various rooms. Even if the players know about it, it can still be a lot of fun.
Hi Mike, I'm doing a bit of research into starting an RPG club at my local library (I'm in the UK). I'd like to run several different RPGs, not just D&D, to allow people to get some exposure to different systems and adventure styles. I'd like it to be primarily paper based with face to face sessions and drawn maps, etc. I'd also like to be able to cater to a range of potential ages. Assuming that the logistics of running the club work out and thinking from the point of view of how to structure the sessions, do you have any tips / links / thoughts about the best way kick it off? For example, I could run a west marches style setting which club members dip into (but this might tie me into a single system too much?) or I could run a fresh one-shot each week (maybe more flexible but probably more work?). I would initially be looking at running maybe one session each week and life / jobs / children mean that my prep time would need to be lean and mean (enter the Lazy DM!!). I'd love to get your sage opinion! Keep up the good work!
The first think you probably want to do is recruit GMs for it. You'll want a bunch of them and you'll want to train them to train other GMs. I think running a bunch of RPGs is a great idea. Depending on their ages, Fate Condensed and Fate Accelerated can work really well. It's fast and easy to learn and expands out to any world. For more advanced players you can try something like Cypher system which is also system agnostic. Of course, they may have heard of D&D so some starter sets are a good idea. WOTC has a special program for schools that might help: https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/educators Hope that helps!
Hi Mike, I am planning on running a Shadowdark campaign. Since there's a high likelihood of PC death, especially for the 1st few levels, I would love to have a "base" for my grim-ish, sword&sorcery Sandbox-y hex crawl, which is a believable PC bank that avoids that feeling of contrivance when introducing new PCs. Any thoughts out of left field (or any direction you like) for such a location?
A lot of it depends on the setting you run it in. An adventurer's guild is a good one. Artifact hunters. An ad-hoc university of relic seekers. Something like that. Bigger groups don't really fit the style of Shadowdark like a special branch of a local kingdom or something like that because the worlds of Shadowdark seem to be more on the fringe of society.
Hi Mike! You're running a 3-hour intro 5E game for new players. What published one-shot do you run?
Here are a few I'd consider: - Starsong Tower from Ruins of the Grendleroot (it's free!) https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/ruins_of_the_grendleroot_preview.pdf - Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. You can get through the maybe the first third of it in 3 hours. - Caves of the Cockatrice from Fantastic Lairs (it's also free!) https://slyflourish_content.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/fantastic_lairs_preview.pdf
Hi Mike. Inspired by playing Baldurs Gate III, my work friends want to play tabletop DnD once per month with me as DM. They are casual DnD players so I think I should just run a basic 5E adventure that can reliably deliver a decent 3-hour game once per month. Would you recommend Phandelver, or Dragon of Ice Spire Peak, or Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands, or something else? Thanks
Of course, I'd recommend Ruins of the Grendleroot and the free 1st level adventure, Call of Starsong Tower. https://shop.slyflourish.com/products/fantastic-adventures-ruins-of-the-grendleroot-pdf-map-pack https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/ruins_of_the_grendleroot_preview.pdf If you want to stick to something from WOTC, either Dragons of Stormwreck Isle or Dragon of Icespire Peak are great. The new Phandelver Shattered Obelisk hardcover also looks cool and I love Lost Mine of Phandelver so that can work well.
Hey Mike, I've been running a couple of campaigns at the same time (4 D&D and 2 Star Wars), one of them was Storm King's Thunder, that campaign ended, and 2 players (due to real life events) dropped back to back after the campaign ended. (both were enjoying themselves, but work/life got in the way, and I believe it's the case). They all wanted to continue playing until Level 20. Now with 2 players leaving the group, I'm loosing interest on building the next stretch of the campaign for the remaining 3 players. Any tips on keeping the motivation for the campaign and keeping the adventure (level 13 at this time) still interesting and fun for everyone at the table?
You might talk to your remaining players about how they feel about it. You could also use it as a reset to the story and move to a whole new phase of it. Start with a new session zero but at 13th level for the remainder of the campaign. You could also put it on hiatus and run something else for a little while if your own drive to run it has waned. Even if you don't want to run another 7 levels of it you can still dramatically slim down the conclusion of the adventure to end it sooner. But I might start by talking to your players and seeing how they feel about it.
Hey Mike, please ignore if you are going to go through the August questions one last time (I posted this there a few days ago). About a year ago or so you started a conversation about how to get campaigns to the finish line and why so many GMs struggle with it, after conducting a survey on YouTube. Back then you said you wanted to explore the topic further as you didn’t have much to say at the time. I was wondering if this could be a topic of the week sometime. Personally, my question is how does one stays committed to a campaign when there are so many good, inspiring games, modules and setting books coming out every other month? I want to explore a lot of games beyond 5E and even within 5E, there are many settings I’d like to GM for my players… how to maintain balance?
Hi Thiago! I answered this back on the August thread. Thanks for double-checking!
Hi Mike! For my birthday my siblings and their spouses are going to try DnD and I want to run a one-shot. What is the best level experience for new ttrpg players? Level 1 feels too fragile and your abilities to do cool things is pretty limited. I was thinking maybe level 3 so everyone has a subclass. What are your thoughts?
If you're careful about it, level 1 can be fine. You might have them blessed with the *aid* spell so they have five extra hit points to begin with so a single crit won't kill them. The fragility of 1st level is mostly a problem with adventures and GMs that don't account for how much weaker they are. If you have a handle on that fragility, it should be fine. I'd give them some extra hit points and still run 1st level for brand new players.
Hello Mike, A recent episode of Panda's Talking Games, #325, and reading the Werewolf the Apocalypse 5th ed game had me thinking about scenes. In a game with a dungeon I can intuitively introduce, run, and close a scene. In a game such as Marvel Multiverse RPG and Werewolf, there are no clear scenes to prepare. Would you have any tips on how to prepare, run, and close scenes for these types of games? Thank you for all the work you do in the RPG industry. Keep up the great work!
That's a good question. Different RPGs have different types of scenes and a few of them I'm just not familiar with, such as Werewolf. I think those scenes still have central points of conflict, secrets that might be discovered, choices to be made, and NPCs to interact with. I think, when we look at the game we're running, we have to decide which components we need in order to run it. Most often at least some of the eight steps are there. Sometimes we need to focus on one aspect more than another.
How can game masters bring more energy to their sessions (and therefore, hopefully, to their players)?
Oof! That's a biggie! Hydrate. Eat well. Exercise. Schedule for a time where your energy is high. Build off of the energy of the players around you. Avoid carbs. Find the material in the campaign you really love and shine a light on that. Run what *you're* excited about. Stand. Be a kid again. Focus on the fun parts you loved when you were 13 years old. Put your adult cynicism aside and focus on what you love about the game.
Hey Mike, I wanted to get your opinion on splitting the party. Have you or do you split the party? For me, "I let the party split up" based on their choices in session but, I always try to bring them back together by the end. Contrary to popular belief, I love doing so and had great success thus far.
Yeah, I let them split up when it can work well in the current situation and let them know when it's best to join back up again. Sometimes I have to force the situation, breaking the fourth wall as it were, to get them back together but it's worth it for the smoothness of the game. We don't want to run a battle where two of the players can't participate. Let them magically get back in there again.
I've recently learned about the concept of Four Corner Opposition and how it could be applied to RPGs. What are your thoughts on this technique, both from an RPG perspective and more specifically from the Three Fronts perspective?
I had never heard of it until you mentioned it but it's a fascinating idea!
What are some of your top tips for describing engaging action in a scene? I had players who went through a portal to a renegade space ship, and they were being chased by a huge evil Corp cruiser. On paper it read as exciting, but in play it felt a little flat in my delivery of high action skill checks.
I think listening to audiobooks helps with this. Feeding narrative descriptions into our brains helps wire our brains to come up with interesting descriptions when we need them. During your prep you can also jot down the main points you think are interesting to discuss and build your narrative off of that. Also, don't be hard on yourself. We don't have to espouse perfect prose every moment of our game.
Hi Mike! I'm a huge fan of your work and have all your books, and I've noticed the books have some common themes. For example, all of your Lazy DM books have sections on DM advice, helpful rules shortcuts, generators/random tables, adventure templates, maps, etc. I was wondering if you've considered compiling the related content together? For example, to bring all your "lazy rules" together into a reference guide? Or to have all your generators together for easy access? I've debated doing this myself by extracting pages form the PDF's, but I thought I would ask to see if it was an interesting idea. Regardless, thanks for all the great content!
My next big project after the City of Arches is going to be something like this but that's a couple of years out. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Lazy GMs Reference Document which pulls together material from Return, the Workbook, and the Companion into one big document: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html
Hey Mike, I recently discovered "Me, Myself and Die!" and have been fascinated lately with the tools of solo play. I started thinking about the general prospect of having an Oracle by my side when GMing regular games - ideally to add a tense roll in specific moments. The idea of "Consulting the Oracle" in front of the players to determine whether or not a monster attacks a downed PC or if the BBEG happens to be scrying on the party at some opportune time is intriguing to me. Do you have any thoughts on this sort of approach? And, if so, are there any other tools you know of in the solo-space that could be beneficial to GMing?
I think that could be very cool. When I run my games I typically don't think I need such a thing – I feel like I have a handle on what's going on and don't have a lot of room to change things up based on an oracle roll. I do roll dice a lot to determine things like who gets attacked or how someone reacts but I don't have an oracle tracker right in front of me. It sounds like a cool idea though! Give it a try!
I've heard you mention the Destiny video game several times throughout your videos/pods and it had me thinking about the way Destiny raid bosses work l. They normally have a puzzle like feature that protects them whilst minions attack and the puzzle usually requires solving or some action to progress it before being able to damage the boss. Do you think this is something we could use in D&D or is it a recipe for a disasterously frustrating TPK? I would assume the puzzle would need to be pretty obvious or require a good amount of foreshadowing using secrets and Clues. Thanks in advance
One important difference between video games and D&D games is that video games often let you try again, over and over. Destiny raid bosses and Dark Souls style bosses work the way they do because they expect you to fail a bunch. I think we can definitely take ideas from these sort of multi-variate boss fights where characters and players have to change up what they do to affect the battle but there isn't an expectation that they'll have to try it again and again. I'm not big on puzzles but things like shattering powerful monuments or closing a demonic gate or other such variables I think are great. Hope that helps!
Hey, Mike. Do you have suggestions for using recaps at the start of a session, particularly in combination with strong starts? My gaming group is just my wife and daughter, and we tend to play sporadically; sometimes twice in a weekend and sometimes once every two months. Using some of your advice, I've been tracking our sessions using Obsidian so I have the high points of previous sessions, but I haven't hit on a good way to work those in without it feeling like a bullet list. I've considered doing a cinematic recap, like the "pre-credits" scenes on recent shows like the Mandalorian and similar, but it hasn't come out well in my solo practice.
First, don't sweat it too much. Give yourself a break =) I like to have the whole group recap things before we get started. You can let them start and help them fill in the blanks. During the game you might stress the importance of one of them taking notes to refer to later. Great players take notes. Trying to do a perfect Star Wars story-crawl isn't necessary though. Often a bullet list is fine. It's the strong start that really pulls them in. Hope that helps!
Hey Mike, please ignore this if you plan on returning to the last August questions first. You often stress the importance of moving the dial between positive and negative beats when pacing a session. When running games with procedural exploration and random encounters (e.g. Shadowdark but any OSRish game), do you find you have less room to do that? Does the procedure produce an adequate cycle of tension and release all on its own? Or is it just that everyone has to accept the premise that if this session is all negative beats, the players only have their own decisions (and the dice) to blame?
Hi Omar! I answered this over on the August questions. Thanks for double-checking!
Hi Mike, How does your game prep vary when preparing to run a published adventure. Specifically with room or encounter descriptions - do you just have the adventure open in front of you? I was thinking about this when you were criticizing The Scarlett Citadel for its verbose room descriptions. Do you add some notes to your 8 steps document, perhaps under potential scenes? I am visually impaired, so basically always have to make abbreviated notes for myself, and am always looking for better ways of doing things! Thanks, Graham Dyer
I do like to have the book in front of me. Sometimes I need it, sometimes not. I think having abbreviated notes is a fine way to go. The 8 steps has room for noting notable locations but if I have the book or an easy way to summarize whats in it, I don't always need it. This article may help: https://slyflourish.com/choosing_the_right_steps.html Regarding being a visually impaired GM, I recently had a blind GM email me asking for help and resources. Here are some that may help: There’s a Discord server for blind or visually impaired GMs called Knights of the Braille. You can join it here: https://discord.gg/dapD8upQGr Dungeons And Dragons: a How-To For Blind And Low Vision Tabletop Enthusiasts https://coolblindtech.com/dungeons-dragons-blind-low-vision-tabletop-enthusiasts/ Accessible Gaming Quarterly magazine https://www.accessiblegamingzine.com/ That All May Read apparently has services for the D&D 5e core books in braille and audio: https://www.loc.gov/nls/thatallmayread/
Less of a question and more of a Topic request: I’d love to see a spiritual sequel to your “Ranking WotC’s Published Adventures” video that’s the equivalent for sourcebooks. You said some things in your Bigby’s assessment comparing it to other sourcebooks like Eberron RftLW, and it got me thinking that it would be very valuable to have your condensed thoughts on the official sourcebooks that you’ve had a chance to use. In particular, what value they have to us as DMs in providing useful tools, prompts, ideas, systems, maps etc etc. Ignoring the player options of course, and maybe even the monsters.
Good idea! First, some caveats. All of these are good. I won't put any on here I *don't* like. The rankings are also really close in some circumstances. I'm also likely missing some. But here they are! Eberron Rising from the Last War Tal'dorei Reborn Midgard Ravnica Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft Ptolus Venture Maidens Zobeck Clockwork City Southlands Planegea Fizban's Treasury of Dragons Bigby's Glory of the Giants Path of the Planebreaker Iskandar Wastes of Chaos
Hey Mike, here's my question (somewhat similar to high-level starting equipment question, but purposefully redirecting from that). Have you every started a campaign at a higher level and do you incorporate some kind of perk, boon, etc... related the the PCs background to reflect the higher level? Any recommendations? Eg: Starting a campaign with players at Level 5 and perhaps the PC with the Noble background can choose to be relatively rich vs the other PCs. Perhaps the Gladiator background PC can choose an extra fighting feat. Perhaps the Far Wanderer PC can choose a rare magic item instead of an uncommon magic item. Merchant Guild PC can choose to own an operational shop in the starting town.
Hi Ean! I typically don't start at a higher level. Instead, I'd run shorter sessions to level them up. I really love early levels in 5e – things just run so smoothly – so I don't want to miss that chance. As far as starting out characters at higher levels, I usually give them their choice of an uncommon magic item if they're between 3rd and 7th level, and a rare item from 8th to 12th or something like that. I haven't really given other boons beyond what they already get as higher level characters. Hope that helps!
I have good ideas and use your preparation technique, however during the "heat of the battle" during a session, I tend to remember to incorporate about half of my ideas as I am trying to keep the game moving and listen to my players. Any advice on this one? Thank you, Sir!
Is the game going well? Are people having fun? Then it's all working out! Half is absolutely fine. It often gives you more material for the next time you prep, which is great. Over years of looking at my own prep and own games, I typically give out about half the secrets and clues I prep but it's always better to have more than I need. Being in the heat of the game is the important part. Seeing what the characters do and having the world react – that's the way it works! You're doing great!
Hi Mike! Since you've been running Shadowdark, what tips do you have for those coming from 5e to OSR for handling the "Rulings, not rules" aspect of the game?
That's a great question but I'm too new to Shadowdark to really give a good answer right now. Try me again on this question in a few months =)
Hey Mike! I recently started a combat where the players were against 2 creatures and on the first turn of combat the more powerful of the two creatures was banished(through banishment) to their home plane. In response I buffed the other creature mainly turning up the damage dial, but it kinda felt like I was invalidating what the characters did. In situations where a save or suck spell completely takes a creature out of a fight how do you deal with it? Looking back I kinda wish I had just had the other creature retreat instead.
This is a common problem. The best solution I have for something like this is the idea of "lightning rods" where you lean in to things like banish by putting in specific creatures that are best to be banished. https://slyflourish.com/lightning_rods.html But when it catches you by surprise, I think your best bet is to let it ride. If the players didn't notice the other monster got beefed up and still enjoyed the battle, that's fine. That's what the dials are for. If you think they saw you turning the dials and felt like the world just became arbitrary, that can be a problem. But now you know for the next battle!
Hi Mike! Here's my question right away, more context below. And feel free to save this until you've played, I know you were waiting for the PS5 version: How far off is Baldur's Gate in terms of how D&D actually works in real life? Long story short, I understand a lot of what is discussed in your show and in your books, but it's hard for me to visualize in play sometimes. This is because, while I'm a DM, I have rarely gotten the chance to sink my teeth into it. I'm a children's librarian so I usually run a game at the library for tweens, but it's often just Icespire Peak over and over for different players every time, and I've done a biweekly campaign for friends that was way too casual and way too many people and more of a hangout. Which is fine, but it wasn't much of a game. I've tried watching Critical Role, but I just can't watch people play; I just wanna play myself! BG3 is really helping me get my TTRPG fix, but I'm not sure if it's an accurate realization of a true and blue TTRPG experience. Maybes it's moreso a railroad type situation that happens to take place in the Forgotten Realms and includes a lot of PHB elements. There are a couple cool articles that are somewhat relevant to this question, if you're interested, but I'm curious to hear your perspective: https://www.denofgeek.com/games/how-baldurs-gate-3-changes-dungeons-and-dragons/ https://kotaku.com/baldurs-gate-3-larian-rpg-pc-steam-dice-rolls-d20-1850729004 https://kotaku.com/baldurs-gate-3-bg3-dungeons-dragons-dnd-ttrpg-1850753337
Hi Alex! I just started Baldur's Gate 3 this week on the PS5 and, so far, I love it. It's a video game, to be sure, but CRPGs are awesome. The original SSI gold box games are what got me to start loving D&D in the first place. I think there are some things that fit well with what D&D is like – character choices, rolling skill checks, tactical combat, and that sort of thing. It's super polished in BG3 which is great. The story is already set, though, and you can only take it in so many new and strange directions. My friends and I share stories about how far off our various BG3 games have gone, which is a testament to how far the game goes to give each of us a unique experience. But it's still not a tabletop RPG. I think playing multiplayer can scratch the social connection itch but it's really a different game with a bunch of friends around a table. So I think there's room for both. BG3 can definitely scratch the itch of playing D&D but it's not the same social experience playing around a table (even virtually) gives us.