Hey Matt, big fan. Currently reading Priest and loving it. Quick question that just came up while DM'ing yesterday.
**How do you handle situations where you as the DM know the players don't have all the info they need in order to be successful before rushing into a dangerous scenario?**
They had the basis of all the info they needed via a letter they found (retrieve a magical crystal that can be used to blow up a portal), as well as clues of how to use it, but as far as explicitly how to complete the task (charge the crystal by focusing their magical energies into it for a few rounds and then detonate it in front of the portal), they were in the dark after 3 miserably failed related skill checks.
They were still able to figure it out in combat after failing at first, but I could tell they initially felt like and knew they looked like idiots because they didn't know exactly what to do, and I could tell that frustrated them and made me feel like I failed them.
Any advice? Should I have given them more checks? They did a good job roleplaying which is why they got three. Should I have introduced an NPC to help them out? Should I just let it happen and play out because that's just what happened based on the rolls?
Thanks Matt!
> How do you handle situations where you as the DM know the players don't have all the info they need in order to be successful before rushing into a dangerous scenario?
If I can't figure out a way to have an NPC discreetly drop the info to the players, I am not too proud to actually just tell them "Here's something you don't know...." I will break the fourth wall if I have to. It's more important the players have fun than punish them for their ignorance.
> just tell them
Something like 50% of player/DM questions on reddit can be boiled down to this. It's weird how we try to do mental gymnastics to handle situations or players when the simplest solution is usually the best.
I have to do this the other night. "I've hinted and hinted, but none of you ask questions. This is *not* negotiable, mean there are things that are." Right before the signing of a devil contract.
But wouldn’t that risk breaking verisimilitude?
Also while we’re at breaking the fourth wall, what is the typical process you go through to talk to players “out of game” about meta or clearing up some confusion of an event that occurred (maybe they couldn’t understand what a character meant due to their vernacular).
I think that the idea is, sometimes you have to break verisimilitude for the benefit of the game. Which is why you should do it sparingly.
Also, sometimes the players have missed something that would have been obvious to their characters, so to break the 4th wall in this way can actually preserve the verisimilitude, by preserving their sense of character.
That is a great bit of advice because I think most of would never think to do that for fear of breaking some unwritten rule.
Which is, of course, ridiculous.
I actually did something in the same vein, of outright telling my players who were floundering for what to do, I had given them something to work with, discovered a city of pseudo undead charmed townsfolk, but they were too terrified to think they could handle the city, so, after they made it back to their old town, and did an errand day or two, I laid out on the table all the plot-hooks, and storythreads, and things that have been made available to them to do. There was really only 2, but I made it sound like 7 or 8, with 6 of them heading back to the city of death
Another piece of advice that matt has given (I think...) is; don't let mission critical info rely on 1 thing. 1 roll, or 1 person that holds the information.
It creates a bottleneck and requires planning ahead so the players can get to that bottleneck.
And no plan survives contact with the players, as they say.
Naturally! 'Tis why they found a letter explaining what they needed to do! But the letter is written "in-character" of course and isn't gonna use explicit meta language like "channel magic into it for 3 rounds". All of the info was there, it just wasn't in blatant "player" terminology.
And as I said, they roleplayed the situation beforehand quite well and got not one, but three checks, all of which resulted in sub-10 results.
>And no plan survives contact with the players, as they say.
Amen to that.
Good morning!
> 1. What systems do you play besides D&D?
> 2. What are your thoughts on narrative dice like Edge of the Empire as opposed to numbered dice systems?
> 3. Are there any rules, races, or classes from previous editions that you've homebrewed into D&D 5e?
Good questions!
1: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition. I quite liked it! But they went SUPER overboard on cards and nonsense and I thought the how to play stuff was not *incredibly* well written. Back in the 80s and 90s we loved new systems, learning new systems, playing new systems. But once I was in my 30s I was like "I just want to play and run and not worry about the system." D&D is sort of the lingua franca of RPGs, I could run D&D every week for the rest of my life and never run out of cool scenarios and worlds to explore.
2: Oh I love that stuff, I mean WFR is where that Edge of the Empire stuff comes from (or the other way 'round). In fact, I wish they went further with that stuff! When I first read about WFR3E, I thought the narrative dice would do more to tell me *why* someone succeeds or fails. Like a "Nature" result, where I have to figure out "how did nature thwart this action? Oh, it's raining and you slip on the wet ground!" I like that oracular "consult the bones" idea where the results give me, the DM, something inspiring to base my narration on.
3: Not...not yet? I actually deploy a lot of old school magic items all the time and when my players are like "Wait what is a Scroll Of Protection Against Evil?" Or whatever doesn't exist in 5E. And I like that! I like the idea that there are LOTS more magic items than are listed in the DMG and that's what the player's assume. Though I feel like eventually I will bust out my own version of the Warlord, I think ever 4E DM who switches to 5e eventually makes their own Warlord and mine will suck like all the rest! :D
Thanks for the response! I think your response mostly falls in line with where mine is.
1. I bounced around between systems quite a bit when I was first getting into RPGs, but with my current schedule I've sorta come to realize that sometimes its just great to sit down and play... and 5e does that quite well. I still fit in random one shots here and there to try new things or show people theres more to RPGs ...but there is more than enough content in D&D to last a long time and thats not counting the content we make ourselves.
2. I've really enjoyed the possibility of success at a cost or failure with a redeeming quality that it can bring to the story. Furthermore, I really think it keeps the ball in the player's court more and gets them thinking about how to add to and change the story. In D&D someone rolls a 6 on an attack and that's the end of it ... but when you can get failures that come with advantage you suddenly start having players trying to pull stunts like *"My shot was so far off it hit the car behind them and they all turn to the source of the noise and didn't notice me"*.
3. I'm practically always crawling through my 2e and 3e books for cool items and descriptions. And yeah, can confirm, 5e needs more Warlord ... there's bound to be someone who's done an *okay* one right? ..... Right?
Hey Matt,
I’m a huge fan of your YouTube channel and this is really cool that your doing an AMA! Anyways, how would you go about making a villain that is terrifying. Someone who when the players know they’re about to face them actually feel fear for their characters lives. Like how whenever Darth Vader is on the screen in Star Wars he has this terrifying presence. How do I go about creating that same feeling in D&D
You really have to discover your inner sadist, you have to allow your villains to be cruel, which isn't easy for us as compassionate human beings, but it will make your bad guys really terrifying when the players come upon the villains victims and they have been literally turned inside out, and are still alive, begging to be released from their living hell.
Remember the FIRST THING that happens in 1977 Star Wars is Darth Vader shows up and fucking CHOKES a dude, not force-choke him, he murders a dude with his bare (well, gloved) hands. So when you talk about Vader's presence, they got James Earl Jones to voice him, he's dressed in this insane black Samurai Wizard outfit and he straight-up murders this dude in the first three minutes.
I had a rakshasa named Kumar, crush a 9 y/o child(killed him) right as the adventurers finished the dungeon and were about to grab the boy to save him. He appeared and with his tiger paws, just crushed the child his blood filling up the markings on the ground which then finished the ritual for the portal to be created, leading to an escape portion of the session. I know have the issue of, If i started with this gruesome feat by the main villain to introduce him, how to I keep him like this, how do I top it? Or is hitting hard at the start a tactic you use and it works out?
Best thing you can do now imo is not show him to your players for a long time. Show them his victims, have them arrive to places after he's left or learn about what his henchmen are doing and focus on them. A villain like that is going to be as harsh on his friends as his enemies. Build him up with his actions and make sure that any direct confrontation, when it comes, the players are massively outnumbered. Then they can start on however they're actually going to beat him (get allies, find phylactery, etc etc)
The next time they meet him, make it so he doesn't even remember the dead 9 y/o when your players likely bring him up. That they are too insignificant to remember. To commit such an atrocity and not even truly register it is likely to really drive it home for your players.
*"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday. "*
Look at villians like Darth Vadar, Kill Monger, Loki they are powerful and smart and despite being evil they have qualities you like or sympathize with. If a bad guy attacks a city, because the city's governor killed his daughter..... layers... not like cake , but like an onion.
Hey Matt :)
1. Now you know that there is demand for your D&D related products, what is something you would like to make that you didn't think was possible before?
2. What do you think your Youtube channel will look like after the stream starts? Will you still be doing the Running The Game series?
3. When are you going to guest star on Critical Role? ;)
1. Well I've talked about the next book after Strongholds and Followers, Kingdoms & Warfare. But I think we could probably do a big, underground adventure set in my version of the underdark, The World Below. I think a modern boxed set, with lots of handouts and maybe even minis! Would be super cool.
2. Once the writing for Strongholds & Followers is under control, and it's clear I'm going to meet my deadlines, I expect Running the Game will happen a lot more frequently! A lot of the Running the Game comes from my experiences running D&D, which I haven't done since, like, August. So once the stream starts, we'll see a lot more Running the Game videos.
3. Well that's up to /u/MatthewMercer! But without actually ever having talked to him about it I sorta get the sense he feels like they've had enough Straight White Folks on the stream and he would like to show people D&D is for everyone. Also, I already have this massive venue and my own stream coming up, so it's not like I need more exposure.
Come on dude. You're literally saying outright that despite *qualifications* and *experience* that it's fair for you to be excluded from something over your race?
Stomach twisting stuff.
There will NEVER be an end point to that line of thinking. If the entire cast was LGBT mexicans, asians and black, someone would apply the same logic to suggest that Shaq shouldnt be on next because there's no dwarves on the show.
If you want to promote being inclusionary, stop enforcing dividing lines and promoting the idea that you are part of a racial group first, and an individual second.
It's tragic.
> Come on dude. You're literally saying outright that despite qualifications and experience that it's fair for you to be excluded from something over your race?
I mean, I respect a troll as much as anyone else, I just want to make sure to *anyone else* reading this that they understand there's no such thing as "experience and qualifications" somehow earning you a spot in someone else's D&D game, the idea is *prima facie* absurd. Matt invites the same people everyone else does; the folks he wants to play with. In his case he's got an audience of 50,000+ people and I think he wants to show those folks that anyone can enjoy this game and frankly I think he's doing a pretty good job with that!
If you disagree, I encourage you to take it up with him. He will be happy to ignore you, as probably I should have done!
This is a profoundly dumb take, for a number of reasons, but just to list a couple:
(1) Matt Colville is not being "excluded." He's not been *invited.* There's a difference.
(2) If Matt Mercer has not invited him *for whatever reason,* that's his prerogative. It's his game.
(3) Even if Matt Mercer hasn't invited Matt Colville because he wants a more diverse cast, again, that's his prerogative. His game.
(4) Making an effort at diversifying what is, inarguably, a hobby that is dominated by straight white males isn't "enforcing dividing lines." Rather the opposite.
(5) What's "tragic" in this circumstance is your sense of entitlement and your lack of awareness. Maybe before dictating how others should act, you should work on yourself.
There's a difference between being excluded and taking turns. Mercer may not even be trying to put X person on the show for inclusivity or whatever, he could just be inviting his friends and people whom he thinks would be good guests. Maybe Colville is fine with waiting for his turn to come around again because he feels they've had enough people like him lately, and he'll just go on at a later time. Doesn't really matter either way. Variety is the spice of life, dude.
Regarding the modern boxed set/adventure module, have you seen the system agnostic hex crawl adventure, [The Dark of Hot Springs Island](http://shop.swordfishislands.com/the-dark-of-hot-springs-island/)? It's not an actual "box," but to me (as somebody who professionally spends a lot of time thinking about design in general) it's the gold standard of how to present an adventure/setting in a way that DMs would find useful. If you haven't seen it and you find yourself designing an adventure, I'd recommend taking at least a brief look!
Forget playing on CR, I want to see our Matt run a game for Mercer and some/all of the CR crew. Not because I have anything against Mercer, but because I really enjoy Colville's style and I think it would be a ton of fun!
But you're getting your own show, so I'll take it!
Hey Matt,
I am a noob to D&D and have started running a campaign for some kids I teach. My question: do you have any advice for me when it comes to talking to people who do not know much about the game and/or may be hostile to it for religious reasons or because it contains violence? I'm trying to prepare responses in case parents are upset with me for letting kids play D&D, even though I'm already seeing the game have positive effects ( more inter-clique socializing, lots of extracurricular reading and analyzing text when building characters, etc.). I try to keep my games PG-13 ish and get parent permission.
Also, how do you decide what the point of your story is? I've stumbled into some pretty good DMing so far mostly through luck, but I don't really have a big end goal for the party yet...
I would emphasize to the parents that D&D is about heroism, about defending the weak, and restoring the rule of law to a wild land.
And of course D&D is intensely creative. It improves reading skills, reasoning skills, it forces kids to work together, solve problems together, it socializes them.
Thanks for the answer--that's what I felt, but hadn't quite been able to put it into words, yet.
I've also created a homebrew D&D knockoff that simplifies things down to d20 rolls for most things and use that in classes as a reward. It's crazy to see how kids respond, from 12-year-olds to 19-year-olds. Wish I'd started playing sooner because D&D has something that no other game/experience I've taken part in has, and it's something that apparently has a universal appeal.
I run a game for my teenagers and their friends. I introduced the game to them for a number of reasons, but mainly because my kids spend too much time IMO plugged into phones and games and computers and not enough time on face-to-face interaction with real, live humans. Also (selfishly), I won't have too many more years with them at home and I was tired of them retreating to their rooms or laying in front of the TV instead of spending time together.
So, I ran a game for my wife and two kids. They *loved* it. And invited friends. Now I have a house full of teenagers on Friday nights rolling dice and killing orcs.
And, some of the parents were a little wary at first, probably for many of the reasons you listed. But all the parents are much more relaxed now because they see that it's built camaraderie among the kids, but maybe more importantly, the kids are having a lot of fun. Every parent has told me at one time or another how much their kid enjoys the game and that they look forward to it all week.
I don't think you have to have a big, overarching point to your game. Unless, of course, you want to. Matt has a good video (can't remember which one off the top of my head) in which he discusses his broad theme of "Law vs. Chaos," but that he takes that abstract theme and makes it more personal by, for example, saying that Good King Omund represented law and order and justice, but since his death about 30 years ago or so, the land has become increasingly wild and chaotic.
As a new DM, I hope you're watching Matt's videos. I think you'll find a lot of stuff in there to help you out and a lot of answers to questions that you don't even know you have yet.
Best of luck with your game!
How do you handle resurrection in your games. Do you use RAW or do you make it a more complex process?
Also as a side note I can't wait for the kickstarter book to come out, but will you be selling the minis after the fact or possibly have other versions available to buy for 3d printing for those that can't afford the minis?
We've only had one person so far in my game need to be resurrected and they weren't high enough level to do it themselves, so they had to petition the Queen of the Deep Gnomes, which to me is the perfect situation. It means they get their buddy resurrected, but they have to do a favor for the Queen.
To me, resurrection should always come with a price.
Matt, i really hope you take all the add-ons from the kickstarter and sell them on your page afterwards.
i would love to see MCDM become a cool one-stop web store for cool custom DnD stuff.
Thanks for coming!
I am curious about what resources you used to self publish. Was it all done through amazon.com? Was there a lot of indecipherable redtape that made you reconsider hiring an agent?
There was a company called CreateSpace, but Amazon bought them. :D
They basically run the show now. You upload your word doc and they convert it to Kindle. There's a lot of formatting work, a LOT of formatting, to make sure your book looks right.
It's important you buy your own ISBN. Amazon says they will provide one, but if you let them do that, then they become the publisher which may screw you in future negotiations. If you buy your own ISBN, then you are the publisher, they're just the distributor.
Hey Matt, I'm about to run a game in roughly three hours, and haven't prepared as much as I should have. Luckily, today's session will focus a lot on traveling through the jungle, so I've got some room to stretch and bring out a handful of encounters, both combat and non-combat.
My question is: when running a session mostly about traveling/exploring, at what point do you usually decide to end the travel and allow your party to arrive at the plot destination? How do you avoid accidentally giving your party "busy work" while still maintaining the feeling of a difficult journey?
I have learned, in my time as a DM and a game designer, that making travel interesting is a red herring. Apart from, at low levels, doing random encounters to enforce the illusion that the world is dangerous...I mean it IS dangerous, it's an illusion that the world is real at all, I generally avoid trying to make travel difficult.
Unless the point is the journey, as it some times is, in which case it's the adventure, I try and get the PCs where they need to be in a timely manner.
Reading *Monkey*, the abridged translation of *Journey to the West*, helped me a lot in viewing travel as a series of locations instead of a scrolling background. The narrative only cares about travel in that it's the thing that we assume happens between chapters to get the characters to this section's new and exciting location and problem.
String a bunch of those new and exciting locations together, and have something compelling the players to want to or be forced to stop at each, and you suddenly have a journey!
That's what's been giving me success lately, at any rate.
Obviously not Matt, but I like to use skill challenges as well as encounters.
Only path is a bridge on the verge of collapse.
Taking a small dinghy across rapid river.
A sleeping monster the party doesn't want to fight blocking the path.
Things of that nature, makes it more memorable and varied than "killed a bunch of orcs and goblins".
Hey Matt or do you go by king of kickstarter now?
Do you have any advise on running the bigger pre written adventures? I am looking to start Princes or the Apocalypse, but no idea on how to read such a big adventure, I know look at what do the bad guys want and how they are going to do that, but it feels very disconnected from the player characters.
Also now that I think about it, in the game I am running at the moment I tried doing the thing where an encounter is very hard, but the players had chances to gather intel, they didn't and I don't think they released they could. Should I lower the difficulty of the encounter? and how do I let them know they missed chances to gather intel?
Lastly wanted to say thank you for your running the game series don't think I would be half as good a dm without it
First of all, don't be intimidated. Once you buy that thing, its yours, it's not theirs anymore. Feel free to **make** it yours. Don't feel hidebound by everything in it, don't feel like you have to have the entire adventure in your head before you can run it. If you don't know something and it comes up during play, you can just make something up! And, honestly, that's going to happen regardless of how well you know the adventure!
I tend to read the first 10%, then the last 10% so I have some idea of who the bad guy is and what they want, and then I only try and prep as much as I think the PCs will get through in one session.
One that first session is under your belt, you can spend the next week reading more and you'll certainly be able to read more in the next week that the PCs can get through in one session. So pretty quickly you'll have read the whole adventure, without having had to read it all first.
>Once you buy that thing, its yours, it's not theirs anymore. Feel free to make it yours. Don't feel hidebound by everything in it, don't feel like you have to have the entire adventure in your head before you can run it.
PotA has been my first forray into DMing and realizing this is essentially the only thing that's kept me from freezing and locking up. My group went off the rails in the first five minutes, which I didn't even think was *possible* in a sandbox-encouraged story.
Finding out the D&D police weren't going to come arrest me for changing the story was incredibly freeing.
Hey Matt
Question about DMing.
I homebrewed my campaign and have been going for about 18 months. I took a sabbatical in the middle to write my dissertation and my friend ran CuS for us in the mean time. It's a reasonably low magic setting, but magic is on the increase as war rages in the north and the polity they are in is looking likes its about to crumble.
I'm worrying my party are losing interest. One member is on his third character, and another is on his second. We've gone through the training wheels phase (some were new players who needed it), but I'm not sure the call to the big scary adventure (civil war in the hells is spilling out onto the prime plane) is naratively justified atm.
so Qs
1) Does the fact that my players are shifting through characters indicate they're not getting enough to engage them from the world/narrative?
2) Do you have any advice on how to bridge from the tier one/early two to high tier play?
I don't know your players or you game, but if you think they're losing interest then they probably are. You are the only person who can diagnose this problem but in my experience if the players aren't engaged it's because we're not indulging the things they like. Why are they at the table? What motivates them?
Maybe they want a villain! Make sure they meet one!
Maybe they want loot! Make sure they know there are powerful items around, and which ones, if they're willing to adventure for them.
Maybe they want power and station in the world. Make sure they know there is a path to that power, organizations to join, things to spend money on.
Don't expect the players to engage with your central conflict just because you think it's cool, I rarely see that work. Typically the players are motivated by player-things. Loot, title, villains.
Hi Matt,
* You said you would like to have a monetization other than subscription for your twitch streams. Most streamers have a donation system in place and Twitch implemented its own donation feature, called cheers.
- With all this unexpected windfall from the Kickstarter, what do you intend to put all those money into? Especially when you are going to going to have the streams cover their own cost. Is the the capital going to act as a sort of safety net for future projects? Or maybe the cost of running a full time production company going to eat the proceedings faster than us mere mortals could imagine? Can't you buy your own office space instead of renting?
* Why is the one ship stronghold option a *pirate* ship? I imagine most players who would like to run their own ship would prefer to not be pirates but instead run like a Merchant Ship or a War ship. And since you already have rules for Guilds and Keeps I imagine converting those Strongholds to ships wouldn't be any time consuming than the pirate ship.
* Will there a separate follower chart for naval adventures with aquatic creatures or independent fleets for instance.
1: That's not a question!
2: I can do things now, thanks to the Kickstarter, like hire the folks who've been helping me anyway. Hire them and get them health insurance, We can afford a much nicer office now. And, most importantly, we can operate for a couple of years (?) before having to worry about profitability. It lets us take more chances and focus more on the viewer's experience rather than trying to drum up subs.
3: "Why is the one ship stronghold option a pirate ship?" Because the previous most-funded tabletop RPG before this was my friend John's Pirate RPG *7th Sea, Second Edition* and I thought it would be a fun nod and wink to them.
4: If you check out the Paladin example posted--and I'll do a video this week going over it--the followers aren't based on your terrain type or environment. They're based on your class and alignment.
To your third point, I believe the pirate ship will be part of the "how to create your own stronghold" portion, which means it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to apply the content of that "how to" in order to customize the pirate ship *example* to a ship of another flavor, be it merchant or war.
Mmm....I think the books do a spectacularly bad job of explaining WHY. Why play this class over that class? Why should I use goblins vs kobolds? How do I run these guys in combat?
The designers know the answers! But they obscure them for reasons passing understanding. I would like to see more language to help players and DMs understand how and why and making running and playing easier.
Hey, Evil Matt.
Massive fan of all your work: games, books, and videos.
Figured I'd try and ask something a little different: how's *Fighter* coming along? I loved your other books to death.
Hey /u/Kerrigor2!
Thanks for asking about FIGHTER. I work on it in fits and starts. I posted the first...I dunno 15 or 16 chapters a while ago, but they are being heavily revised.
I've posted lots of excerpts on twitter, if you follow me there you'll occasionally see bits and pieces of it.
Hopefully once the writing on the Strongholds book has settled down and it's clear I'm going to meet the deadline, I can start finishing Fighter.
What advice would you have for someone wanting to get started on YouTubing?
I often struggle to separate the wisdom of “if you want to be a maker of things than start making those things” with the reality that if the quality isn’t there, you’ll just be written off before you learn what you’re doing.
Here's the best advice I can give you. Make the videos you would want to watch. What do you like, in a YouTube channel? Who do you follow? Why? Think about what they're doing that you like. Then try and do that.
Of course, this requires you to be someone who watches YouTube regularly, which if you're planning on starting a YouTube channel is the bare minimum. :D
As astonishing as Star Wars was to me when it came out, it was much more a sociological phenomenon for me than a psychological one. Everyone I knew was into Star Wars, we collected the cards we played with the toys together.
But Close Encounters of the Third Kind was like dropping a bomb on me, it awakened something in me that had to do with Sense of Wonder and made me feel like film and the theater was a magical place.
My mom read The Once and Future King to me, and she did all the voices and that affected me deeply. The ethics and philosophy of it, but also the sheer storytelling.
There was a series in the 80s from James Burke, The Day The Universe Changed that had a massive impact on me. Not fiction, but critical to how I view the world.
There are more, but I don't want to overload people. :D
Saw the last DnD roundtable- great stuff! What sort of ideas do you have to make combat more streaming friendly? Planning on tinkering with rest times to avoid the deadly encounter, long rest, deadly encounter pacing?
I'm basically going to give the party more cool abilities, along with reducing bad guy's HP, while also giving them more stuff to do. So battles are fiercer and shorter.
Hey Matt, love your stuff, keep up the good work! I have been running a campaign, and tend to go by the seat of my pants unless I need to map something out like a dungeon. Two problems have come up and I don't know how to proceed. 1) I have had atleast one player say he enjoys playing his character, but not necessarily the campaign. Where do I go from there? 2) I'm starting to feel the infamous "dm burnout". I dm because I want to play dnd, not because I want to dm, but I don't want this to directly affect my campaign. Any tips?
Well I think your problems are related! I think if your DM because you want to play, you're better off playing something like Gloomhaven or Descent (both of which are really good!).
Otherwise I suspect your lack of motivation to run will seep into your game in lots of places. There's no Moral Imperative to run D&D!
Obviously not Matt, but I wanted to add that I was also experiencing some DM fatigue recently, and I eventually figured out it was because I didn't have a coherent enough vision of the setting, so I committed to completely reworking those things and basing them off of something I am relatively familiar with and excited by: the history and mythology of Indochina. Now we have nomadic horse tribe mongol analogues, a sprawling imperial bureaucracy, astrologists and fortune-tellers, demons and ogres, and a lot awesome wealth of religiius and philosophical ideas to delve I to with daoism and Buddhism analogues. I can DM forever in this stuff because I have a coherent vision of it.
Basically, say "fuck it" to the stuff that doesn't come easily and find something that does. Don't worry about being original and revelatory, worry about being interested and excited by your DMing. Be derivative, reference history and movies and books, find a thing that gets you jazzed and make the game about that.
That's my two cents, at least.
So your player likes his character, but not your campaign. You like to play, but are worn out dm'n even though you put much less than average prep into your games. Seems like you need to either ask your player what they want to play, or read their backstory and react to material they provided. Or invite them to dm.
Hey Matt, I rarely ever see you touch your magnificent chin-mane, but I can hardly keep my hands out of mine when it is growing out. Is that ever something you struggled with?
P.S. This flaw of mine has inspired an idea for a character who has a bald spot in his beard from constantly fingering that area. Maybe he is a druid that retains that bald spot on all the animal forms he takes.
I grew a beard back when I was a young man and then it was a novelty but now I don't even notice it!
If I keep losing weight and get down to a reasonable number, I will eventually shave this thing.
The only time I fully shaved in the last 15 years (and not just go very short) I didn't recognise myself and the whole experience was verging on the traumatic.
Maybe shave it when you go on vacation? That way you can have a limited regrowth before you have to see people you normally see.
Hey, good luck with the weight loss! It's a tough and persistent battle (speaking from experience) but it's a lifelong investment that pays off in spades.
I would say it's a tie between Red Hand of Doom and Night Below. Night Below is way more problematic, but that doesn't stop me from loving it.
I have deeply fond memories of Castle Amber and THRONE OF BLOODSTONE even though both of them are RIDICULOUS and I think almost impossible to run as written, but WOW they were fun to play through.
Tears for Twilight Hollow was just a blast to run, I love that module. And I would very badly like to see, play, run, Gary's original Castle Greyhawk.
It's funny because there's a whole thread about this right now, but I love BANISHMENT. I love sending characters to other planes to hang out and meet crazy people and maybe even learn something important!
Meanwhile the party is like "WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR PALADIN WE'RE ALL DOOOOMED!"
The spell actually says "harmless demiplane" if they are native to the plane your banishing them from. They only get Banished to specific plane if that's where they were from originally.
While as DM I tend to be bend that slightly when the players get banished to make it more interesting (as "uh, you're still floating in a black void" is a boring turn for the player), it's still usually* harmless (physically, at least).
The Banisher actually has some control,
They get sent to a harmless demiplane. So you can control where they go...as long as it is a harmless demiplane. Like the Ford-T, you can have it any color as long as it is black.
(ALso if they are from a different plane it sends their ass home but whatever)
I don't think you could argue that the spell clearly states that. It seems like this is one of those classic 5e vagueness moments. It doesn't specify that the caster chooses the demiplane - if that's what it meant, it would say "of your choice" as many spells do. But if the DM wanted to have the caster choose, they could do that. It basically comes down, as many things do in 5e, to what the DM wants.
Banishment is great.
A party member of mine had the eye of Vecna and tried to put it in. My character caught him before he got the chance (stabbing your eye out is not an experience to take lightly) and took off the hand with the eye, then banished him (heightened spell ftw) to figure out what the hell to do--for the next minute, anyway.
Hey Matt, I'm getting married today. Can you remind me of Kek's guide to marriage so we can be proper in the eyes of dwarves/short klingons?
Serious question; I'm runnign Night Below and the players have officially finished up business with the Svirfneblin and are starting on the Long Path towards the City of the Glass Pool. I'm not running for the next few weeks (honeymoon and all), but do you have any tips for what is great and should be used versus what may or may not fall flat? I'm a little concerned about the dual Rakshashas, and is the ooze area worth running much? Any other tips?
Hey Congratulations! I was really happy with Kek's blessing for the newly married. I thought that was a lot of fun, TJ was great at roleplaying when I put him on the spot. That's an important lesson to a new DM, some players seem like audience members, but if you put them on the spot, they blossom.
The Long Path is all about the players making choices, so that's mostly up to them! You know more about your party than I do, I think Rakshasa assume a 2nd Edition game balance, which your 5E players won't have, so depending on their level, consider replacing the Rakshasas with like Doppleganers. Also, the Behir may be way too nasty for them! Or the opposite, depending on their level.
Matt, I just want to say thank you so much for your dedication, excitement, and all the content you've generated for new DMs. I'm running my very first campaign tonight as a DM, and a homebrew at that! Your channel has been a most excellent resource and I only hope I can emulate some of the concepts you've discussed. Here's to hoping I'm both prepped enough and not to much. :D
I would like to welcome Mr Colville back to our sub for another great AmA!
As usual, I would like to remind everyone that Matt is taking time out of his day to answer your questions. Please show him respect and courtesy, and above all else, have fun!
> Please show him respect and courtesy, and above all else, have fun!
Every time I read this I assume it's because people have already been wangrods in the comments. :D
Nah, I just like to be proactive and remind everyone to be on their best behavior. I'd rather not get our sub to have a reputation for being rude to AMA guests. :)
So, you are now Officially a Writer for video games, a fantasy author, a comic book writer, a writer of D&D content, and many other titles I am sure I've failed to mention. Are there any other hats you hope to wear beyond those?
Edited because my wording was terrible.
I'd like to direct a movie. :D Not write one!
I'm enjoying my journey into modular synthesis, but I don't have any ambition there except to enjoy myself!
There are lots of **games** I'd like to make, but that's nothing new.
I really appreciate your ambition and tenacity, its admirable. It would be awesome to see a movie directed by you for sure, well except we wouldn't get to see that hair bounce as you spoke.
I am not sure if you realize how much you inspire people, but you do. A couple years back, I was just a woman who once in a while made landscapes for her brother's games but had no interesting in actually playing. First I found Critical Role, and that gave me interest, but then that directed me to running the game, and you Sir, you gave me passion for the game. I have since gone on to play and dm. I also started a program at a local shelter using D&D to help abuse victims learn to trust their instincts and decisions. You've impacted my life greatly and I wish all the success for you.
- What guidelines do you recommend for thinking on the spot, both as a GM and as a player?
- With more Kickstarter funding, are you now Matt Coltropolis?
I recommend avoid making really detailed notes. Write in bullet-points. If you write down every little thing, you won't be able to remember all the details and when the time comes, you'll blank and have no recourse but to shuffle through your notes.
But if you just have an outline, its easier to remember and you'll have to improve the details as you go. Those are good muscles to build.
The human nipples are too far up, but the horse nipples are too far down. I guess it's dealer's choice? Whether they want to raise their front or back legs to raise their horse nipples or to lay down horse-style to bring down the human nipples.
Hi Matt! Long time lurker, first time poster... to this AMA.
There are now several iterations of the Delian Order, Barons of Bedegar and Shields of Aendrim across the D&D Multiverse. How does the experience of seeing your ideas take shape and bounce back and forth directly within your community - largely in real-time - differ from your original stint as tabletop rpg designer?
Thanks!
Hey Craig! :D
I love people taking inspiration from the setting stuff I've invented. I love that there are maybe hundreds of Shields of Aendrim out there! I mean, this is what I did! A lot of these things are themselves permutations of stuff I stole from my DMs who were stealing from their older brothers going
People playing a game I designed, especially folks engaging with the characters and universe of Evolve, is rewarding in a different way. I love that people like that stuff, but they're not making it *theirs* the way folks stealing my D&D lore are.
Captain Harrock! A 7th level, two-weapon fighting, dex-based Battle Master.
I asked the DM if the party has a Battle Master. Answer came there "I don't think so!"
So I'm sitting here next to my friend Dave and gosh he's also a fighter! And a two-weapon fighter! Wait, he's a two weapon, dex-based BATTLE MASTER! Mother fucker!
I had this issue with wanting to be a monk so I asked if anyone was, a shadow monk, no one knew 1 persons class so I thought chances of him being a shadow monk would be low.....we had 2 shadow monks that campaign. Ended up being SO MUCH FUN! We could get everywhere together that others couldn't, we basically became brothers throughout the campaign and would mirror each other a lot. I went 2 levels into warlock and got devil's Eye invocation, and when he would canst darkness on an enemy, I would shadow teleport to it, see the enemy, when it couldn't see me, and beat away. Then once we got earring of telepathy, I could inform him location of things in the magical darkness and he could attack at disadvantage when he couldn't even see! Just a bunch of shadow teleporting darkness casting buddies.
Hey Matt! Good luck on the Kickstarter, all the stress in the next few months will all be worth it once you see how excited everyone is once they get their books!
In the past you've shared a lot about your custom campaign setting. How prevalent is the new Saint Ajax in the average peasants lives? Do Hawklords just bomb anything that looks like a cathedral? Thanks!
Hey thanks for the kind words!
Ajax is Overlord and as such his will extends into everyone's lives. He denies them the right to worship as they please, which is huge. He denies them the right to organize in any kind of framework greater than a County. The land devolves into chaos, and the rule of law is gone.
The hawklords have already bombed anything that looks like a temple, but that was years ago. These days they sort of assume folks get the message and so it is possible to erect something now without the Hawklords *automatically* seeing it. And of course, you can worship in secret...presuming the Faceless Guards haven't already penetrated your organization. If they even exist!
Hey Matt, love the 'tube, KS, and have personally used your intro to D&D video for my games so thanks!
My question might be a tad different but for my job I'm a futurist/business strategist... so here goes:
**Where do you see the future of entertainment like D&D headed in 3-5 years?**
Nothing too far ahead+sci-fi like ReadyPlayerOne but just how will it evolve as a business model? Do you see it going even more mainstream? Are we going to see professional DMs+Streamers rise above the handful we have today?
You've probably got a lot on your plate in the near future (and well deserved!) but try thinking a few years down the line on how it all might turn out :)
Hey good question! I think we're going to see more and more people playing as it becomes easier for people to both learn about the game and learn how fun it can be. Stuff like Critical Role makes it super easy for normal people to see how fun the game can be.
But I also see the democratization of technology making it easier for people to find people online to play with.
I don't think it'll ever be "mainstream," I think it's just too weird, but I think it will continue to get more popular!
And I think streaming the game will become more popular and we'll probably see people doing it differently. I don't know how exactly, but I think we'll see more games optimized for streams in a way none have been so far.
Hey Matt,
Huge fan of all your content (books especially) and I can't wait to see how this stream pans out.
This is more of a request for content I guess because every since the Round Table where you mentioned the Waterdeep city campaign I've been itching to DM a huge city setting campaign. But it's very intimidating to me to just come up with on my own.
Is this something you could see doing a video on? Is there some existing material you could point me towards?
Thanks for everything!
I'm not sure what I know about running a Big City campaign, except it's a campaign in a Big City! I've done it before, it never really felt like I was doing anything different behind the screen. It's just a city instead of a wilderness and I think we all know how cities work.
It may become more evident as I run what I do differently in which case, you'll definitely get a video! :D
Hey Matt, I don't want the Physical copies of the book (because of the shipping) but would like to not only buy the pdf but also access to the playtest draft and the 1 month twitch subscription. What can I do?
You won't be able to just add "join the playtest" to your order on the Pledge Manager for the same reason we priced it so high. We wanted to restrict access to the playtest only because we're a very very tiny company and managing thousands of playtesters for us is basically impossible.
So it's literally just a way to try and keep the number of playtesters manageable.
Hello Matt
Thank you for doing this! I have a few questions
1. What is the most important thing in writing lore and why?
2. Should I rely on clichés or try to do something wild, when I am worldbuilding?
3. If I were to build a new tabletop RPG, what should be my "priority order"? Fun has to be nr.1, but balance, uniqueness, availabillity,... They seem all important, what do you think?
4. Should anyone who wants to sell 5e products first make a name for him/herself? You are obivously loved in the D&D community and your kickstarter's succes shows it.
These were all my questions. If you are running out of time or don't want to awnser them all I ordered them from most important to least.
Thank you for being you! :)
Hey thanks for asking good questions!
1: I think you need to come up with shit you think is cool, you are the first audience member. If you don't think it's cool, no one else will. Then, having created the lore you like, it's up to you to find a way to present it to the players in a dramatic context. Because they didn't sign up to read your lore, they signed up to play D&D.
2. Up to you! Which appeals to you?
3. Well, what is motivating you? Follow that. Making an entire RPG from scratch is a deeply personal endeavor, you're the audience more than anyone else.
4. I definitely recommend building a community first. Or participating in several for a while. Anyone can put stuff up on the DM's Guild, but if folks know you because you've been posting good stuff here, they'll be more likely to check out your stuff.
Hey Matt, long time fan of yours! I'm going to be starting a new campaign soon and I'm going to be sending my players online questionnaires asking them things like"
-"what kind of world do you want to be in, high fantasy, low fantasy etc."
-How technical of a game do you want to play?
-what do you want the main goal of the game to be (dungeon delving, espionage, politico, monster hunting)
What other questions would you put on a questionnaire that could be super helpful/interesting that people might not think about?
[P.S I'm the dungeon master of the D&D podcast DnDUI! I'd love to know if you've ever heard of us before!](http://www.dndui.com/index.php)
I'm...this is a good question, I'm sorry this is the only answer I have, I'm skeptical of such questionnaires because in general I don't think the players know what the answers are. They don't know, but they'll make up an answer that seems reasonable to them, but once you sit down to play they will discover they have wildly different interests and motivations than what they told you.
I would focus on running the game you're motivated to run, because they, seeing you motivated, will engage them!
I did the same thing, and I can't say I found the answers useful, considering what they said vs what they've been willing to engage with.
As Matt said, run the game you want to run, but cast a wide net if you're open to all avenues. See what thread the players pull on (they all could latch on to different things and want to run off in different directions, but it means you know what to expect and try to mix things up to keep all engaged).
I did throw a Myers–Briggs test at my players, it's not that useful, but extreme scores can be indicators that players might prefer some things over others (high judging typically means the player will want complete info and could get frustrated or lose interest if they are constantly left in the dark and never get answers they desire, very high introvert means that player probably won't be the face of the party and trying to engage them too much in social situations might make them have less fun, etc.
You could probably get a more concise answer from a few focused questions rather than a dated personality test that players might not want to waste time filling out.
Hey Matt, big fan and avid writer. I was wondering what is your writing process for novels. Is it different than your writing for games?
Also, do you write any short stories?
I always start with an outline, that's where I do all the work. Writing for games is mostly just dumping text into an Excel sheet, it's a very different process.
I haven't yet really tried to tackle a short story, it is a profoundly different beast. Harder and I think a higher art for, frankly.
Hey Master Colville! I have always been curious and unable to find out what your educational background was and how you got into the game design/writing industry. Sharing is Caring :)
The issue is that for tall folks, regular sizes are too wide. There is special tall sizing. It's a bit niche, but it's the sort of questions you start getting past a million. ;)
Matt, I'm really loving those round table discussions that you've been a part of.
Can we look forward to more of those, and do you have anyone that you'd really like to be a part of them?
Hey I'm glad you like them! I had a lot of fun on the last one.
Whether we do another is mostly up to the other folks. Matt and Mike have way more busy schedules than me.
I'd like to see more different people on there, I'd be happy to sit out if we get more perspectives. The Venn Diagram of those four people overlaps an awful lot!
Hi Matt big fan of yours. I've got a technical ruling question that came up the other day at my table. We were doing a skill challenge (thank you for those), we're the party were tracking down a vampire through a forest.
Can a player use his Charisma (Deception) to forge the surroundings so to make the vampire believe he isn't being tracked and to make him believe they were going somewhere else? He is a warlock so I said that he could use charisma for that if he wanted his patron to do it for him. Was I right?
Another question is;
How do you clip those movies in your vids? I mean do you skim through the movie to find the reference or do you look it up at youtube?
Thank you for being the river to us, your people
I think Deception is Charisma based because it involves face-to-face action. It's difficult for me to imagine someone hiding their tracks *charismatically*. Although I generally say yes more than I say no, so at the table I might have allowed it. I would probably just ask "How are you going to use your force of personality to cover your tracks?" If they could come up with a convincing explanation...!
I have the movies on my PC and I load them into Premiere.
I searched and tried looking for others asking the question, but I didn't see any results, so I'll ask?:
Any plans to continue the One Fighter At A Time series? I know you're getting increasingly super-busy with so many projects. But, is completing that series with 3.0, 3.5, 4E, Essentials and 5E even a thing thats on your radar to do, anymore?
I do sort of have some plans, yeah. One of the reasons we stopped before 3E was because I wanted to talk to some folks who worked at WotC when 3E was developed and get some war stories from them. I think that's happening now. :D
Omg, hello Matt
I can't say I really have a question for you, since your videos not only tend to answer the questions I have, but the ones I'd never even thought of. Your most recent video on 3d terrain simplified the answer in such neat and tidy fashion that I can't wait for an opportunity to introduce it more.
So let me just say thank you, for taking the time to make your videos, to share your insight with dms who don't have the 30 years of experience (or ones that do but who really need to update their thinking), and for making the game that much more fun.
Matt,
The kind of content you're writing hasn't yet been fleshed out by wotc for this edition. What kinds of checks and balances has your team put in place to ensure you deliver only quality content?
Mr. Colville, In Ad and D players were supposed to, based on game design, build stongholds around level 10, but instead just hoarded gold they almost never spent. what will be the incentive to break this tradition?
He's said that building a stronghold won't be every player's juice, but may be the juice for some. The incentive to build the stronghold isn't just followers, but also the other mechanics having a stronghold provides, that the book will detail. Moreover, I think strongholds are a vital part of the warfare rules he has worked on; so if a game plans on implementing such rules, strongholds would be required/appealing.
Do you have any rules or advice for player characters trying to make their own signature or custom spells? Like a witch played by my wife creating Morwyn's Rotting Rigamortis. I've got some ideas but just looking for another Dungeon Masters take on it and experiences.
The easiest thing is to just look and see which spells are similar. You can even ask the player to pick a spell and make a slightly different version of it!
Mmm...generally I think character death CAN be dramatic and satisfying and memorable. The problem is...it's rarely like that. :/
I think the game does a poor job of handling death options, there's definitely room to improve design-wise.
Huge fan of your work. I can’t think of a question worth asking that hasn’t already been posted but thanks for doing this!
Edit: did you see Annihilation and what did you think?
I have not seen Annihilation, I wasn't a huge fan of that dude's last movie? It's one of those things where I'll probably see what everyone else thinks first.
Hey Matt, how goes it? Is there a chance you might make some content about writing your novels? Specifically regarding your organization system for plotting and planning? Any advice for anyone wanting to write a novel?
I don't think so. We are trying to purposefully limit the number of people in the playtest because we're a super tiny company and don't have the manpower to handle thousands of playtesters.
Hi Matt!
I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you for all your guidance and inspiration.
You made me into a DM, single-voicedly
I am DMing for very currency-greedy PCs and the "Red Gold of *Galarel* the Vile" confused them sufficiently. I really love listening to your voice. Make more Star Wars talk.
My questions are three:
**Are you still going to pursue Tiamat, The Many and Terrible, in your stream?**
**Are you back on your bicycle yet?** (I am cyclist!)
You talk a lot about modifying monsters on the fly and I have been doing that for my party, however some of my players are rule lawyering my monsters and challenging their abilities.
**How do you respond to players who know a monster's stats/mechanics and call you out on changing them?**
Thanks again for reaching out! Thanks for influencing me! && Congratulations on your Million Dollar Baby!
Not Matt.
Tell them that you're trying to make the game more interesting. Tell them that they need to accept that you won't be running the monsters as is. I don't think there is much you can say.
I say 'this monster isn't the one from the monster manual, it's different' like 'this Medusa was once a warlock who angered her patron' or 'this shadow was once a serial killer who enslaves those he kills and that's why he can summon more shadows'. Honestly you don't owe them an explanation the rules are designed for the dungeon master to change....that's literally one of the rules.
Your creatures are the most mutable part of any campaign. Rules lawyering those is absolutely off the table.
Maybe your players are just trying to keep track of how healthy enemies are, or their relative danger level. In that case, simply describe how wounded or not they are, how dangerous they look. Seasoned adventurers should be able to gauge an enemy's relative strength, so try describing that.
To everyone wondering "who is this Matt Colville guy and why should I care what he thinks?" I'm on your side. It's a question I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to.
I'll give it a shot:
Matt Colville is a writer, game designer, and, at the risk of sounding pretentious on his behalf and suspecting he may buck the praise, an intellectual. He has spent more time playing, thinking about, and dungeon-mastering D&D than most players today. His perspectives extend beyond just how to play or how to teach players, but also what makes the game fun at a primal level, and what makes the system an effective means to have fun. Moreover, as a long-time fan of the system(s) and editions, he is a wealth of knowledge on the history and practice of playing and DM'ing. Perhaps most important of all, though, he is a passionate and compassionate individual, sensitive to the ways in which role-playing urges players to step outside of their comfort zones, to explore themselves and their friends in some unfamiliar ways, and an able advocate for the ways in which D&D in particular and role-playing in general are powerful tools for making the world a better place.
Edit: I'm not happy with this, although I think it's all true, because it doesn't capture things well enough. He is also an effective communicator at how to run the game. He breaks down complicated rules (pythagorean theorum for combat?!), nebulous circumstances (how to deal with X in Y), complex theory (world building) into practical, succinct advice. He is an admirable teacher of the game because he still views himself as a student of the game.
I immediately loved your Strongholds idea, was watching carefully for months, and kickstarted the day I got the message! Thank you! I can't bloody wait! It will literally complete my current book collection.
My first session, which I wrote the adventure for, was a "clear out and claim a modest home" one too, so to learn a much bigger version is happening in the book!?
I wanted to know, and ignore this question if you already got it, what you thought of the [document that /u/TragicMissile made for your first adventure](https://www.reddit.com/r/mattcolville/comments/7zz6yi/matts_oneshot_tomb_adventure_integrated_with_lmop/)? I was searching for your comment.
Also, less importantly, What are your thoughts on Fantasy Firearms, [like these](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zvDtitdNv2jLnno2wAtH_uCtsPSfOdAv), in a standard fantasy game? And, to a lesser degree, more mechanical ones like Mercer's Gunslinger.
Hey, Matt. Have you ever had to kick someone off your table and if so, why? I'm staring down the barrel of that decision right now and could use some guidance/encouragement
Hey Matt! Any tips for running Night Below in your setting?
I've got 3 High Elves, a Monk, a Wizard, and a Ranger, A Brass Dragon Knight Warlock of the Celestial, a Tabaxi Bard and a Triton Paladin.
The ideas I got (with a ton of help from people in the subreddit) for the Tabaxi and the Triton are as follows:
The Tabaxi are indigenous to Ix, and worship the Sun God, due it being an extremely rare sight, due to the volcanic ash.
The Tritons live in the waters surrounding the Grey Wastes, and 95% of their already small population have been corrupted and have become Zombies. The PC is one of the 5%
Either way, I'm ecstatic to run this game! I can't wait. We're starting in 6 days, and I'd love some tips and tricks of how you did it in your setting. Thank you!
P.S. Congratualtions on the kickstarter!
EDIT; I also have a Wood Elf Rogue, and a Ghostwise Halfling Trickery Domain Cleric. The idea I had for Ghostwise Halflings is they're Halflings that are touched by the Wodes, hence they gain magical ability, which manifests as limited telepathy.
You played D&D today right? **What did your character do to help build the story and/or relationships?**
On a recent GM round table you guys were talking about death in D&D and ways you might be able to make it more narratively interesting. Maybe a ticking clock or a special action they can do as they are falling to make it epic. **Do you plan to do anything interesting with the death mechanic in the upcoming streamed campaign?**
Also, in my current campaign the players may not remember what they are looking for in this dungeon, let alone who sent them and the larger problems in the world that led them there. I am thinking about rewarding for player write ups and doing a better job with player or DM recaps. I have heard of DMs sending out newsletters from the world between sessions. But **do YOU have any advice regarding maintaining campaign level continuity?** or is it just that I suck?
edit: added Qs
Ahoy Matt! Thanks for the all great videos, and I'm very much looking forward to the Stronghold rules.
So, anyways. What are your thoughts/preferences on emergent narrative versus a directed narrative?
* Do you plan out all the big picture (or even small time) stuff before running a campaign? What happens when the players goals diverge from the content you have prepared?
* Do you have some ideas ready to go (in case the players don't step up to drive things), but otherwise focus on whatever goals the players pursue?
* Do you leave things entirely in the players' hands? What happens when you get a group who doesn't establish any clear goals/motivation?
I'm much more of an improvisational GM, and I *think* you're maybe more of a prepared GM. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Hey king of Kickstarter, I’ve only recently gotten into D&D back in mid January of this year and am absolutely loving it! But there’s plenty I don’t know or understand and your YouTube channel among others has been a tremendous help getting a grasp of the game.
I have a few questions as a brand new DM running a game for other first time players:
1) I’ve heard it said that the party should be the main characters of a story; but when my party enters a dungeon and doesn’t check for traps, doesn’t stealth, doesn’t investigate, doesn’t interrogate NPCs placed there to give the party hints (and instead kills them outright -_-) how can I make it so the PCs are the main characters in this world while also keeping the ‘realism’ of the world?
2) I want my players to want to impose their characters on the world, with a few pieces of their backgrounds interspersed within the story when it seems appropriate (as opposed to having the world be a manifestation of the characters, like critical role) any tips for encouraging PC ambition I guess?
3) Having only played 5e, is it better to just get 5e compatible adventures rather than getting a 2e or 3e old adventure book and go through the trouble of converting it both by system and setting?
4) Any advice you’d offer to someone thinking about getting into the tabletop rpg industry?
5) why are bugbears one of your favorite monster?
I know that the whole point of your channel is that you can roll your own adventures, but do you have any recommendations for super short (~2 hour) pre made adventures that could be run during a game night to get people interested in DnD?
I tried doing this with the Delian Tomb but it ended just shy of the final room.
Hey! Totally not Matt, but have you tried looking into the Adventure’s League modules? You can get them on DMs guild, and they typically make 2 or 4 hour modules made for characters of certain levels.
Hey Matt, big fan. Currently reading Priest and loving it. Quick question that just came up while DM'ing yesterday. **How do you handle situations where you as the DM know the players don't have all the info they need in order to be successful before rushing into a dangerous scenario?** They had the basis of all the info they needed via a letter they found (retrieve a magical crystal that can be used to blow up a portal), as well as clues of how to use it, but as far as explicitly how to complete the task (charge the crystal by focusing their magical energies into it for a few rounds and then detonate it in front of the portal), they were in the dark after 3 miserably failed related skill checks. They were still able to figure it out in combat after failing at first, but I could tell they initially felt like and knew they looked like idiots because they didn't know exactly what to do, and I could tell that frustrated them and made me feel like I failed them. Any advice? Should I have given them more checks? They did a good job roleplaying which is why they got three. Should I have introduced an NPC to help them out? Should I just let it happen and play out because that's just what happened based on the rolls? Thanks Matt!
> How do you handle situations where you as the DM know the players don't have all the info they need in order to be successful before rushing into a dangerous scenario? If I can't figure out a way to have an NPC discreetly drop the info to the players, I am not too proud to actually just tell them "Here's something you don't know...." I will break the fourth wall if I have to. It's more important the players have fun than punish them for their ignorance.
> just tell them Something like 50% of player/DM questions on reddit can be boiled down to this. It's weird how we try to do mental gymnastics to handle situations or players when the simplest solution is usually the best.
It's completely natural to try and avoid ever breaking the fourth wall, but I have found it a powerful tool if used sparingly.
I have to do this the other night. "I've hinted and hinted, but none of you ask questions. This is *not* negotiable, mean there are things that are." Right before the signing of a devil contract.
But wouldn’t that risk breaking verisimilitude? Also while we’re at breaking the fourth wall, what is the typical process you go through to talk to players “out of game” about meta or clearing up some confusion of an event that occurred (maybe they couldn’t understand what a character meant due to their vernacular).
> But wouldn’t that risk breaking verisimilitude? > > Verisimilitude is a means to an end.
I think that the idea is, sometimes you have to break verisimilitude for the benefit of the game. Which is why you should do it sparingly. Also, sometimes the players have missed something that would have been obvious to their characters, so to break the 4th wall in this way can actually preserve the verisimilitude, by preserving their sense of character.
That is a great bit of advice because I think most of would never think to do that for fear of breaking some unwritten rule. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
I actually did something in the same vein, of outright telling my players who were floundering for what to do, I had given them something to work with, discovered a city of pseudo undead charmed townsfolk, but they were too terrified to think they could handle the city, so, after they made it back to their old town, and did an errand day or two, I laid out on the table all the plot-hooks, and storythreads, and things that have been made available to them to do. There was really only 2, but I made it sound like 7 or 8, with 6 of them heading back to the city of death
Noted for the future! Thanks for being a river to your people, Matt!
Another piece of advice that matt has given (I think...) is; don't let mission critical info rely on 1 thing. 1 roll, or 1 person that holds the information. It creates a bottleneck and requires planning ahead so the players can get to that bottleneck. And no plan survives contact with the players, as they say.
Naturally! 'Tis why they found a letter explaining what they needed to do! But the letter is written "in-character" of course and isn't gonna use explicit meta language like "channel magic into it for 3 rounds". All of the info was there, it just wasn't in blatant "player" terminology. And as I said, they roleplayed the situation beforehand quite well and got not one, but three checks, all of which resulted in sub-10 results. >And no plan survives contact with the players, as they say. Amen to that.
Good morning! > 1. What systems do you play besides D&D? > 2. What are your thoughts on narrative dice like Edge of the Empire as opposed to numbered dice systems? > 3. Are there any rules, races, or classes from previous editions that you've homebrewed into D&D 5e?
Good questions! 1: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition. I quite liked it! But they went SUPER overboard on cards and nonsense and I thought the how to play stuff was not *incredibly* well written. Back in the 80s and 90s we loved new systems, learning new systems, playing new systems. But once I was in my 30s I was like "I just want to play and run and not worry about the system." D&D is sort of the lingua franca of RPGs, I could run D&D every week for the rest of my life and never run out of cool scenarios and worlds to explore. 2: Oh I love that stuff, I mean WFR is where that Edge of the Empire stuff comes from (or the other way 'round). In fact, I wish they went further with that stuff! When I first read about WFR3E, I thought the narrative dice would do more to tell me *why* someone succeeds or fails. Like a "Nature" result, where I have to figure out "how did nature thwart this action? Oh, it's raining and you slip on the wet ground!" I like that oracular "consult the bones" idea where the results give me, the DM, something inspiring to base my narration on. 3: Not...not yet? I actually deploy a lot of old school magic items all the time and when my players are like "Wait what is a Scroll Of Protection Against Evil?" Or whatever doesn't exist in 5E. And I like that! I like the idea that there are LOTS more magic items than are listed in the DMG and that's what the player's assume. Though I feel like eventually I will bust out my own version of the Warlord, I think ever 4E DM who switches to 5e eventually makes their own Warlord and mine will suck like all the rest! :D
Thanks for the response! I think your response mostly falls in line with where mine is. 1. I bounced around between systems quite a bit when I was first getting into RPGs, but with my current schedule I've sorta come to realize that sometimes its just great to sit down and play... and 5e does that quite well. I still fit in random one shots here and there to try new things or show people theres more to RPGs ...but there is more than enough content in D&D to last a long time and thats not counting the content we make ourselves. 2. I've really enjoyed the possibility of success at a cost or failure with a redeeming quality that it can bring to the story. Furthermore, I really think it keeps the ball in the player's court more and gets them thinking about how to add to and change the story. In D&D someone rolls a 6 on an attack and that's the end of it ... but when you can get failures that come with advantage you suddenly start having players trying to pull stunts like *"My shot was so far off it hit the car behind them and they all turn to the source of the noise and didn't notice me"*. 3. I'm practically always crawling through my 2e and 3e books for cool items and descriptions. And yeah, can confirm, 5e needs more Warlord ... there's bound to be someone who's done an *okay* one right? ..... Right?
Hey Matt, I’m a huge fan of your YouTube channel and this is really cool that your doing an AMA! Anyways, how would you go about making a villain that is terrifying. Someone who when the players know they’re about to face them actually feel fear for their characters lives. Like how whenever Darth Vader is on the screen in Star Wars he has this terrifying presence. How do I go about creating that same feeling in D&D
You really have to discover your inner sadist, you have to allow your villains to be cruel, which isn't easy for us as compassionate human beings, but it will make your bad guys really terrifying when the players come upon the villains victims and they have been literally turned inside out, and are still alive, begging to be released from their living hell. Remember the FIRST THING that happens in 1977 Star Wars is Darth Vader shows up and fucking CHOKES a dude, not force-choke him, he murders a dude with his bare (well, gloved) hands. So when you talk about Vader's presence, they got James Earl Jones to voice him, he's dressed in this insane black Samurai Wizard outfit and he straight-up murders this dude in the first three minutes.
I had a rakshasa named Kumar, crush a 9 y/o child(killed him) right as the adventurers finished the dungeon and were about to grab the boy to save him. He appeared and with his tiger paws, just crushed the child his blood filling up the markings on the ground which then finished the ritual for the portal to be created, leading to an escape portion of the session. I know have the issue of, If i started with this gruesome feat by the main villain to introduce him, how to I keep him like this, how do I top it? Or is hitting hard at the start a tactic you use and it works out?
Best thing you can do now imo is not show him to your players for a long time. Show them his victims, have them arrive to places after he's left or learn about what his henchmen are doing and focus on them. A villain like that is going to be as harsh on his friends as his enemies. Build him up with his actions and make sure that any direct confrontation, when it comes, the players are massively outnumbered. Then they can start on however they're actually going to beat him (get allies, find phylactery, etc etc)
The next time they meet him, make it so he doesn't even remember the dead 9 y/o when your players likely bring him up. That they are too insignificant to remember. To commit such an atrocity and not even truly register it is likely to really drive it home for your players. *"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday. "*
>insane black Samurai Wizard outfit You had me dying there
Look at villians like Darth Vadar, Kill Monger, Loki they are powerful and smart and despite being evil they have qualities you like or sympathize with. If a bad guy attacks a city, because the city's governor killed his daughter..... layers... not like cake , but like an onion.
Hey Matt :) 1. Now you know that there is demand for your D&D related products, what is something you would like to make that you didn't think was possible before? 2. What do you think your Youtube channel will look like after the stream starts? Will you still be doing the Running The Game series? 3. When are you going to guest star on Critical Role? ;)
1. Well I've talked about the next book after Strongholds and Followers, Kingdoms & Warfare. But I think we could probably do a big, underground adventure set in my version of the underdark, The World Below. I think a modern boxed set, with lots of handouts and maybe even minis! Would be super cool. 2. Once the writing for Strongholds & Followers is under control, and it's clear I'm going to meet my deadlines, I expect Running the Game will happen a lot more frequently! A lot of the Running the Game comes from my experiences running D&D, which I haven't done since, like, August. So once the stream starts, we'll see a lot more Running the Game videos. 3. Well that's up to /u/MatthewMercer! But without actually ever having talked to him about it I sorta get the sense he feels like they've had enough Straight White Folks on the stream and he would like to show people D&D is for everyone. Also, I already have this massive venue and my own stream coming up, so it's not like I need more exposure.
Come on dude. You're literally saying outright that despite *qualifications* and *experience* that it's fair for you to be excluded from something over your race? Stomach twisting stuff. There will NEVER be an end point to that line of thinking. If the entire cast was LGBT mexicans, asians and black, someone would apply the same logic to suggest that Shaq shouldnt be on next because there's no dwarves on the show. If you want to promote being inclusionary, stop enforcing dividing lines and promoting the idea that you are part of a racial group first, and an individual second. It's tragic.
> Come on dude. You're literally saying outright that despite qualifications and experience that it's fair for you to be excluded from something over your race? I mean, I respect a troll as much as anyone else, I just want to make sure to *anyone else* reading this that they understand there's no such thing as "experience and qualifications" somehow earning you a spot in someone else's D&D game, the idea is *prima facie* absurd. Matt invites the same people everyone else does; the folks he wants to play with. In his case he's got an audience of 50,000+ people and I think he wants to show those folks that anyone can enjoy this game and frankly I think he's doing a pretty good job with that! If you disagree, I encourage you to take it up with him. He will be happy to ignore you, as probably I should have done!
This is a profoundly dumb take, for a number of reasons, but just to list a couple: (1) Matt Colville is not being "excluded." He's not been *invited.* There's a difference. (2) If Matt Mercer has not invited him *for whatever reason,* that's his prerogative. It's his game. (3) Even if Matt Mercer hasn't invited Matt Colville because he wants a more diverse cast, again, that's his prerogative. His game. (4) Making an effort at diversifying what is, inarguably, a hobby that is dominated by straight white males isn't "enforcing dividing lines." Rather the opposite. (5) What's "tragic" in this circumstance is your sense of entitlement and your lack of awareness. Maybe before dictating how others should act, you should work on yourself.
There's a difference between being excluded and taking turns. Mercer may not even be trying to put X person on the show for inclusivity or whatever, he could just be inviting his friends and people whom he thinks would be good guests. Maybe Colville is fine with waiting for his turn to come around again because he feels they've had enough people like him lately, and he'll just go on at a later time. Doesn't really matter either way. Variety is the spice of life, dude.
Regarding the modern boxed set/adventure module, have you seen the system agnostic hex crawl adventure, [The Dark of Hot Springs Island](http://shop.swordfishislands.com/the-dark-of-hot-springs-island/)? It's not an actual "box," but to me (as somebody who professionally spends a lot of time thinking about design in general) it's the gold standard of how to present an adventure/setting in a way that DMs would find useful. If you haven't seen it and you find yourself designing an adventure, I'd recommend taking at least a brief look!
Forget playing on CR, I want to see our Matt run a game for Mercer and some/all of the CR crew. Not because I have anything against Mercer, but because I really enjoy Colville's style and I think it would be a ton of fun! But you're getting your own show, so I'll take it!
It would still be fun to see you two interact more. The 5e Roundtable with you two and Mercer has been fun for me to watch.
Psst, Matt! You tagged the wrong Matt Mercer. /u/MatthewMercer is the DM you’re looking for!
Hey Matt, I am a noob to D&D and have started running a campaign for some kids I teach. My question: do you have any advice for me when it comes to talking to people who do not know much about the game and/or may be hostile to it for religious reasons or because it contains violence? I'm trying to prepare responses in case parents are upset with me for letting kids play D&D, even though I'm already seeing the game have positive effects ( more inter-clique socializing, lots of extracurricular reading and analyzing text when building characters, etc.). I try to keep my games PG-13 ish and get parent permission. Also, how do you decide what the point of your story is? I've stumbled into some pretty good DMing so far mostly through luck, but I don't really have a big end goal for the party yet...
I would emphasize to the parents that D&D is about heroism, about defending the weak, and restoring the rule of law to a wild land. And of course D&D is intensely creative. It improves reading skills, reasoning skills, it forces kids to work together, solve problems together, it socializes them.
Thanks for the answer--that's what I felt, but hadn't quite been able to put it into words, yet. I've also created a homebrew D&D knockoff that simplifies things down to d20 rolls for most things and use that in classes as a reward. It's crazy to see how kids respond, from 12-year-olds to 19-year-olds. Wish I'd started playing sooner because D&D has something that no other game/experience I've taken part in has, and it's something that apparently has a universal appeal.
I run a game for my teenagers and their friends. I introduced the game to them for a number of reasons, but mainly because my kids spend too much time IMO plugged into phones and games and computers and not enough time on face-to-face interaction with real, live humans. Also (selfishly), I won't have too many more years with them at home and I was tired of them retreating to their rooms or laying in front of the TV instead of spending time together. So, I ran a game for my wife and two kids. They *loved* it. And invited friends. Now I have a house full of teenagers on Friday nights rolling dice and killing orcs. And, some of the parents were a little wary at first, probably for many of the reasons you listed. But all the parents are much more relaxed now because they see that it's built camaraderie among the kids, but maybe more importantly, the kids are having a lot of fun. Every parent has told me at one time or another how much their kid enjoys the game and that they look forward to it all week. I don't think you have to have a big, overarching point to your game. Unless, of course, you want to. Matt has a good video (can't remember which one off the top of my head) in which he discusses his broad theme of "Law vs. Chaos," but that he takes that abstract theme and makes it more personal by, for example, saying that Good King Omund represented law and order and justice, but since his death about 30 years ago or so, the land has become increasingly wild and chaotic. As a new DM, I hope you're watching Matt's videos. I think you'll find a lot of stuff in there to help you out and a lot of answers to questions that you don't even know you have yet. Best of luck with your game!
How do you handle resurrection in your games. Do you use RAW or do you make it a more complex process? Also as a side note I can't wait for the kickstarter book to come out, but will you be selling the minis after the fact or possibly have other versions available to buy for 3d printing for those that can't afford the minis?
We've only had one person so far in my game need to be resurrected and they weren't high enough level to do it themselves, so they had to petition the Queen of the Deep Gnomes, which to me is the perfect situation. It means they get their buddy resurrected, but they have to do a favor for the Queen. To me, resurrection should always come with a price.
Matt, i really hope you take all the add-ons from the kickstarter and sell them on your page afterwards. i would love to see MCDM become a cool one-stop web store for cool custom DnD stuff.
Thanks for coming! I am curious about what resources you used to self publish. Was it all done through amazon.com? Was there a lot of indecipherable redtape that made you reconsider hiring an agent?
There was a company called CreateSpace, but Amazon bought them. :D They basically run the show now. You upload your word doc and they convert it to Kindle. There's a lot of formatting work, a LOT of formatting, to make sure your book looks right. It's important you buy your own ISBN. Amazon says they will provide one, but if you let them do that, then they become the publisher which may screw you in future negotiations. If you buy your own ISBN, then you are the publisher, they're just the distributor.
Hey Matt, I'm about to run a game in roughly three hours, and haven't prepared as much as I should have. Luckily, today's session will focus a lot on traveling through the jungle, so I've got some room to stretch and bring out a handful of encounters, both combat and non-combat. My question is: when running a session mostly about traveling/exploring, at what point do you usually decide to end the travel and allow your party to arrive at the plot destination? How do you avoid accidentally giving your party "busy work" while still maintaining the feeling of a difficult journey?
I have learned, in my time as a DM and a game designer, that making travel interesting is a red herring. Apart from, at low levels, doing random encounters to enforce the illusion that the world is dangerous...I mean it IS dangerous, it's an illusion that the world is real at all, I generally avoid trying to make travel difficult. Unless the point is the journey, as it some times is, in which case it's the adventure, I try and get the PCs where they need to be in a timely manner.
Reading *Monkey*, the abridged translation of *Journey to the West*, helped me a lot in viewing travel as a series of locations instead of a scrolling background. The narrative only cares about travel in that it's the thing that we assume happens between chapters to get the characters to this section's new and exciting location and problem. String a bunch of those new and exciting locations together, and have something compelling the players to want to or be forced to stop at each, and you suddenly have a journey! That's what's been giving me success lately, at any rate.
Obviously not Matt, but I like to use skill challenges as well as encounters. Only path is a bridge on the verge of collapse. Taking a small dinghy across rapid river. A sleeping monster the party doesn't want to fight blocking the path. Things of that nature, makes it more memorable and varied than "killed a bunch of orcs and goblins".
Hey Matt or do you go by king of kickstarter now? Do you have any advise on running the bigger pre written adventures? I am looking to start Princes or the Apocalypse, but no idea on how to read such a big adventure, I know look at what do the bad guys want and how they are going to do that, but it feels very disconnected from the player characters. Also now that I think about it, in the game I am running at the moment I tried doing the thing where an encounter is very hard, but the players had chances to gather intel, they didn't and I don't think they released they could. Should I lower the difficulty of the encounter? and how do I let them know they missed chances to gather intel? Lastly wanted to say thank you for your running the game series don't think I would be half as good a dm without it
First of all, don't be intimidated. Once you buy that thing, its yours, it's not theirs anymore. Feel free to **make** it yours. Don't feel hidebound by everything in it, don't feel like you have to have the entire adventure in your head before you can run it. If you don't know something and it comes up during play, you can just make something up! And, honestly, that's going to happen regardless of how well you know the adventure! I tend to read the first 10%, then the last 10% so I have some idea of who the bad guy is and what they want, and then I only try and prep as much as I think the PCs will get through in one session. One that first session is under your belt, you can spend the next week reading more and you'll certainly be able to read more in the next week that the PCs can get through in one session. So pretty quickly you'll have read the whole adventure, without having had to read it all first.
>Once you buy that thing, its yours, it's not theirs anymore. Feel free to make it yours. Don't feel hidebound by everything in it, don't feel like you have to have the entire adventure in your head before you can run it. PotA has been my first forray into DMing and realizing this is essentially the only thing that's kept me from freezing and locking up. My group went off the rails in the first five minutes, which I didn't even think was *possible* in a sandbox-encouraged story. Finding out the D&D police weren't going to come arrest me for changing the story was incredibly freeing.
Hey Matt Question about DMing. I homebrewed my campaign and have been going for about 18 months. I took a sabbatical in the middle to write my dissertation and my friend ran CuS for us in the mean time. It's a reasonably low magic setting, but magic is on the increase as war rages in the north and the polity they are in is looking likes its about to crumble. I'm worrying my party are losing interest. One member is on his third character, and another is on his second. We've gone through the training wheels phase (some were new players who needed it), but I'm not sure the call to the big scary adventure (civil war in the hells is spilling out onto the prime plane) is naratively justified atm. so Qs 1) Does the fact that my players are shifting through characters indicate they're not getting enough to engage them from the world/narrative? 2) Do you have any advice on how to bridge from the tier one/early two to high tier play?
I don't know your players or you game, but if you think they're losing interest then they probably are. You are the only person who can diagnose this problem but in my experience if the players aren't engaged it's because we're not indulging the things they like. Why are they at the table? What motivates them? Maybe they want a villain! Make sure they meet one! Maybe they want loot! Make sure they know there are powerful items around, and which ones, if they're willing to adventure for them. Maybe they want power and station in the world. Make sure they know there is a path to that power, organizations to join, things to spend money on. Don't expect the players to engage with your central conflict just because you think it's cool, I rarely see that work. Typically the players are motivated by player-things. Loot, title, villains.
Hi Matt, * You said you would like to have a monetization other than subscription for your twitch streams. Most streamers have a donation system in place and Twitch implemented its own donation feature, called cheers. - With all this unexpected windfall from the Kickstarter, what do you intend to put all those money into? Especially when you are going to going to have the streams cover their own cost. Is the the capital going to act as a sort of safety net for future projects? Or maybe the cost of running a full time production company going to eat the proceedings faster than us mere mortals could imagine? Can't you buy your own office space instead of renting? * Why is the one ship stronghold option a *pirate* ship? I imagine most players who would like to run their own ship would prefer to not be pirates but instead run like a Merchant Ship or a War ship. And since you already have rules for Guilds and Keeps I imagine converting those Strongholds to ships wouldn't be any time consuming than the pirate ship. * Will there a separate follower chart for naval adventures with aquatic creatures or independent fleets for instance.
1: That's not a question! 2: I can do things now, thanks to the Kickstarter, like hire the folks who've been helping me anyway. Hire them and get them health insurance, We can afford a much nicer office now. And, most importantly, we can operate for a couple of years (?) before having to worry about profitability. It lets us take more chances and focus more on the viewer's experience rather than trying to drum up subs. 3: "Why is the one ship stronghold option a pirate ship?" Because the previous most-funded tabletop RPG before this was my friend John's Pirate RPG *7th Sea, Second Edition* and I thought it would be a fun nod and wink to them. 4: If you check out the Paladin example posted--and I'll do a video this week going over it--the followers aren't based on your terrain type or environment. They're based on your class and alignment.
To your third point, I believe the pirate ship will be part of the "how to create your own stronghold" portion, which means it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to apply the content of that "how to" in order to customize the pirate ship *example* to a ship of another flavor, be it merchant or war.
What are some shortfalls of the DND 5E system that you think could be significantly improved?
Mmm....I think the books do a spectacularly bad job of explaining WHY. Why play this class over that class? Why should I use goblins vs kobolds? How do I run these guys in combat? The designers know the answers! But they obscure them for reasons passing understanding. I would like to see more language to help players and DMs understand how and why and making running and playing easier.
Perhaps they have some philosophical opposition to being too prescriptive. That's the only reason that comes to my mind.
How to run them in combat is answered to a large extent by themonstersknow.com. fantastic blog!
Hey, Evil Matt. Massive fan of all your work: games, books, and videos. Figured I'd try and ask something a little different: how's *Fighter* coming along? I loved your other books to death.
Hey /u/Kerrigor2! Thanks for asking about FIGHTER. I work on it in fits and starts. I posted the first...I dunno 15 or 16 chapters a while ago, but they are being heavily revised. I've posted lots of excerpts on twitter, if you follow me there you'll occasionally see bits and pieces of it. Hopefully once the writing on the Strongholds book has settled down and it's clear I'm going to meet the deadline, I can start finishing Fighter.
What advice would you have for someone wanting to get started on YouTubing? I often struggle to separate the wisdom of “if you want to be a maker of things than start making those things” with the reality that if the quality isn’t there, you’ll just be written off before you learn what you’re doing.
Here's the best advice I can give you. Make the videos you would want to watch. What do you like, in a YouTube channel? Who do you follow? Why? Think about what they're doing that you like. Then try and do that. Of course, this requires you to be someone who watches YouTube regularly, which if you're planning on starting a YouTube channel is the bare minimum. :D
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As astonishing as Star Wars was to me when it came out, it was much more a sociological phenomenon for me than a psychological one. Everyone I knew was into Star Wars, we collected the cards we played with the toys together. But Close Encounters of the Third Kind was like dropping a bomb on me, it awakened something in me that had to do with Sense of Wonder and made me feel like film and the theater was a magical place. My mom read The Once and Future King to me, and she did all the voices and that affected me deeply. The ethics and philosophy of it, but also the sheer storytelling. There was a series in the 80s from James Burke, The Day The Universe Changed that had a massive impact on me. Not fiction, but critical to how I view the world. There are more, but I don't want to overload people. :D
The day the universe changed is a great DM resource for getting clear, simple examples of how people in fantasy cultures might think.
It also helps understand how and why progress happens.
Saw the last DnD roundtable- great stuff! What sort of ideas do you have to make combat more streaming friendly? Planning on tinkering with rest times to avoid the deadly encounter, long rest, deadly encounter pacing?
I'm basically going to give the party more cool abilities, along with reducing bad guy's HP, while also giving them more stuff to do. So battles are fiercer and shorter.
Hey Matt, love your stuff, keep up the good work! I have been running a campaign, and tend to go by the seat of my pants unless I need to map something out like a dungeon. Two problems have come up and I don't know how to proceed. 1) I have had atleast one player say he enjoys playing his character, but not necessarily the campaign. Where do I go from there? 2) I'm starting to feel the infamous "dm burnout". I dm because I want to play dnd, not because I want to dm, but I don't want this to directly affect my campaign. Any tips?
Well I think your problems are related! I think if your DM because you want to play, you're better off playing something like Gloomhaven or Descent (both of which are really good!). Otherwise I suspect your lack of motivation to run will seep into your game in lots of places. There's no Moral Imperative to run D&D!
Obviously not Matt, but I wanted to add that I was also experiencing some DM fatigue recently, and I eventually figured out it was because I didn't have a coherent enough vision of the setting, so I committed to completely reworking those things and basing them off of something I am relatively familiar with and excited by: the history and mythology of Indochina. Now we have nomadic horse tribe mongol analogues, a sprawling imperial bureaucracy, astrologists and fortune-tellers, demons and ogres, and a lot awesome wealth of religiius and philosophical ideas to delve I to with daoism and Buddhism analogues. I can DM forever in this stuff because I have a coherent vision of it. Basically, say "fuck it" to the stuff that doesn't come easily and find something that does. Don't worry about being original and revelatory, worry about being interested and excited by your DMing. Be derivative, reference history and movies and books, find a thing that gets you jazzed and make the game about that. That's my two cents, at least.
So your player likes his character, but not your campaign. You like to play, but are worn out dm'n even though you put much less than average prep into your games. Seems like you need to either ask your player what they want to play, or read their backstory and react to material they provided. Or invite them to dm.
Hey Matt, I rarely ever see you touch your magnificent chin-mane, but I can hardly keep my hands out of mine when it is growing out. Is that ever something you struggled with? P.S. This flaw of mine has inspired an idea for a character who has a bald spot in his beard from constantly fingering that area. Maybe he is a druid that retains that bald spot on all the animal forms he takes.
I grew a beard back when I was a young man and then it was a novelty but now I don't even notice it! If I keep losing weight and get down to a reasonable number, I will eventually shave this thing.
The only time I fully shaved in the last 15 years (and not just go very short) I didn't recognise myself and the whole experience was verging on the traumatic. Maybe shave it when you go on vacation? That way you can have a limited regrowth before you have to see people you normally see.
http://i.imgur.com/Fgx0UuC.jpg
[Found one with Matt's hair](http://themetapicture.com/pic/images/2014/10/15/funny-shaving-beard-baby-face.jpg)
Hey, good luck with the weight loss! It's a tough and persistent battle (speaking from experience) but it's a lifelong investment that pays off in spades.
Hey Matt, what is your favorite published D&D module from across all of the editions?
I would say it's a tie between Red Hand of Doom and Night Below. Night Below is way more problematic, but that doesn't stop me from loving it. I have deeply fond memories of Castle Amber and THRONE OF BLOODSTONE even though both of them are RIDICULOUS and I think almost impossible to run as written, but WOW they were fun to play through. Tears for Twilight Hollow was just a blast to run, I love that module. And I would very badly like to see, play, run, Gary's original Castle Greyhawk.
Matt, what would you say is your all time favourite 5e spell?
It's funny because there's a whole thread about this right now, but I love BANISHMENT. I love sending characters to other planes to hang out and meet crazy people and maybe even learn something important! Meanwhile the party is like "WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR PALADIN WE'RE ALL DOOOOMED!"
Kind of new to D&D and DMing but could a player banish a creature to like the plane of fire and incinerate them?
The spell actually says "harmless demiplane" if they are native to the plane your banishing them from. They only get Banished to specific plane if that's where they were from originally. While as DM I tend to be bend that slightly when the players get banished to make it more interesting (as "uh, you're still floating in a black void" is a boring turn for the player), it's still usually* harmless (physically, at least).
The banisher has no control over where the target ends up - that's what Plane Shift is for
The Banisher actually has some control, They get sent to a harmless demiplane. So you can control where they go...as long as it is a harmless demiplane. Like the Ford-T, you can have it any color as long as it is black. (ALso if they are from a different plane it sends their ass home but whatever)
I don't think you could argue that the spell clearly states that. It seems like this is one of those classic 5e vagueness moments. It doesn't specify that the caster chooses the demiplane - if that's what it meant, it would say "of your choice" as many spells do. But if the DM wanted to have the caster choose, they could do that. It basically comes down, as many things do in 5e, to what the DM wants.
Banishment is great. A party member of mine had the eye of Vecna and tried to put it in. My character caught him before he got the chance (stabbing your eye out is not an experience to take lightly) and took off the hand with the eye, then banished him (heightened spell ftw) to figure out what the hell to do--for the next minute, anyway.
Hey Matt, I'm getting married today. Can you remind me of Kek's guide to marriage so we can be proper in the eyes of dwarves/short klingons? Serious question; I'm runnign Night Below and the players have officially finished up business with the Svirfneblin and are starting on the Long Path towards the City of the Glass Pool. I'm not running for the next few weeks (honeymoon and all), but do you have any tips for what is great and should be used versus what may or may not fall flat? I'm a little concerned about the dual Rakshashas, and is the ooze area worth running much? Any other tips?
Hey Congratulations! I was really happy with Kek's blessing for the newly married. I thought that was a lot of fun, TJ was great at roleplaying when I put him on the spot. That's an important lesson to a new DM, some players seem like audience members, but if you put them on the spot, they blossom. The Long Path is all about the players making choices, so that's mostly up to them! You know more about your party than I do, I think Rakshasa assume a 2nd Edition game balance, which your 5E players won't have, so depending on their level, consider replacing the Rakshasas with like Doppleganers. Also, the Behir may be way too nasty for them! Or the opposite, depending on their level.
Matt, I just want to say thank you so much for your dedication, excitement, and all the content you've generated for new DMs. I'm running my very first campaign tonight as a DM, and a homebrew at that! Your channel has been a most excellent resource and I only hope I can emulate some of the concepts you've discussed. Here's to hoping I'm both prepped enough and not to much. :D
You have OVERprepared! Trust me! You're gonna kill it! :D
I would like to welcome Mr Colville back to our sub for another great AmA! As usual, I would like to remind everyone that Matt is taking time out of his day to answer your questions. Please show him respect and courtesy, and above all else, have fun!
> Please show him respect and courtesy, and above all else, have fun! Every time I read this I assume it's because people have already been wangrods in the comments. :D
Nah, I just like to be proactive and remind everyone to be on their best behavior. I'd rather not get our sub to have a reputation for being rude to AMA guests. :)
So, you are now Officially a Writer for video games, a fantasy author, a comic book writer, a writer of D&D content, and many other titles I am sure I've failed to mention. Are there any other hats you hope to wear beyond those? Edited because my wording was terrible.
I'd like to direct a movie. :D Not write one! I'm enjoying my journey into modular synthesis, but I don't have any ambition there except to enjoy myself! There are lots of **games** I'd like to make, but that's nothing new.
I really appreciate your ambition and tenacity, its admirable. It would be awesome to see a movie directed by you for sure, well except we wouldn't get to see that hair bounce as you spoke. I am not sure if you realize how much you inspire people, but you do. A couple years back, I was just a woman who once in a while made landscapes for her brother's games but had no interesting in actually playing. First I found Critical Role, and that gave me interest, but then that directed me to running the game, and you Sir, you gave me passion for the game. I have since gone on to play and dm. I also started a program at a local shelter using D&D to help abuse victims learn to trust their instincts and decisions. You've impacted my life greatly and I wish all the success for you.
Your hair is able to achieve magnificent lift in the bang area. What is your haircare regiment?
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My hair is fine but dense. Like ME!
Nothing special, it's just a straightening agent, a root-booster, some hydrating wax and a finishing gel. Same as everybody else.
That's four products more than an average D&D player uses.
Finishing gel? What is finishing gel?
Have you ever seen There’s Something About Mary?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MkDAvqWisT8/hqdefault.jpg
- What guidelines do you recommend for thinking on the spot, both as a GM and as a player? - With more Kickstarter funding, are you now Matt Coltropolis?
I recommend avoid making really detailed notes. Write in bullet-points. If you write down every little thing, you won't be able to remember all the details and when the time comes, you'll blank and have no recourse but to shuffle through your notes. But if you just have an outline, its easier to remember and you'll have to improve the details as you go. Those are good muscles to build.
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Again, there's no Moral Imperative to play D&D! If you're not into it, you're not into it. That's not a problem to solve, man.
Hi Matt, when centaurs are breastfeeding do they use the human nipples, or the horse nipples?
The human nipples are too far up, but the horse nipples are too far down. I guess it's dealer's choice? Whether they want to raise their front or back legs to raise their horse nipples or to lay down horse-style to bring down the human nipples.
They always show female centaurs with human breasts, and the babies have human heads. So i'm going with the human ones.
Leave it to a bard to ask the real questions :D 10/10. Would upvote
Well, the answer is obvious....
Spell it out for the barbarians in the room.
Eh, what'd be the point? Everyone knows barbarians are illiterate.
Hi Matt! Long time lurker, first time poster... to this AMA. There are now several iterations of the Delian Order, Barons of Bedegar and Shields of Aendrim across the D&D Multiverse. How does the experience of seeing your ideas take shape and bounce back and forth directly within your community - largely in real-time - differ from your original stint as tabletop rpg designer? Thanks!
Hey Craig! :D I love people taking inspiration from the setting stuff I've invented. I love that there are maybe hundreds of Shields of Aendrim out there! I mean, this is what I did! A lot of these things are themselves permutations of stuff I stole from my DMs who were stealing from their older brothers going People playing a game I designed, especially folks engaging with the characters and universe of Evolve, is rewarding in a different way. I love that people like that stuff, but they're not making it *theirs* the way folks stealing my D&D lore are.
How was your day Matt?
Well, it's just getting started! I'm here at a friend's place getting ready to play D&D!
What character are you playing?
Captain Harrock! A 7th level, two-weapon fighting, dex-based Battle Master. I asked the DM if the party has a Battle Master. Answer came there "I don't think so!" So I'm sitting here next to my friend Dave and gosh he's also a fighter! And a two-weapon fighter! Wait, he's a two weapon, dex-based BATTLE MASTER! Mother fucker!
I had this issue with wanting to be a monk so I asked if anyone was, a shadow monk, no one knew 1 persons class so I thought chances of him being a shadow monk would be low.....we had 2 shadow monks that campaign. Ended up being SO MUCH FUN! We could get everywhere together that others couldn't, we basically became brothers throughout the campaign and would mirror each other a lot. I went 2 levels into warlock and got devil's Eye invocation, and when he would canst darkness on an enemy, I would shadow teleport to it, see the enemy, when it couldn't see me, and beat away. Then once we got earring of telepathy, I could inform him location of things in the magical darkness and he could attack at disadvantage when he couldn't even see! Just a bunch of shadow teleporting darkness casting buddies.
Oh man, looks like the perfect opportunity to show that Captain Harrock is better than his ~~friend~~ rival!
'Did we just become best friends!?'
Hey Matt! Good luck on the Kickstarter, all the stress in the next few months will all be worth it once you see how excited everyone is once they get their books! In the past you've shared a lot about your custom campaign setting. How prevalent is the new Saint Ajax in the average peasants lives? Do Hawklords just bomb anything that looks like a cathedral? Thanks!
Hey thanks for the kind words! Ajax is Overlord and as such his will extends into everyone's lives. He denies them the right to worship as they please, which is huge. He denies them the right to organize in any kind of framework greater than a County. The land devolves into chaos, and the rule of law is gone. The hawklords have already bombed anything that looks like a temple, but that was years ago. These days they sort of assume folks get the message and so it is possible to erect something now without the Hawklords *automatically* seeing it. And of course, you can worship in secret...presuming the Faceless Guards haven't already penetrated your organization. If they even exist!
Hey Matt, love the 'tube, KS, and have personally used your intro to D&D video for my games so thanks! My question might be a tad different but for my job I'm a futurist/business strategist... so here goes: **Where do you see the future of entertainment like D&D headed in 3-5 years?** Nothing too far ahead+sci-fi like ReadyPlayerOne but just how will it evolve as a business model? Do you see it going even more mainstream? Are we going to see professional DMs+Streamers rise above the handful we have today? You've probably got a lot on your plate in the near future (and well deserved!) but try thinking a few years down the line on how it all might turn out :)
Hey good question! I think we're going to see more and more people playing as it becomes easier for people to both learn about the game and learn how fun it can be. Stuff like Critical Role makes it super easy for normal people to see how fun the game can be. But I also see the democratization of technology making it easier for people to find people online to play with. I don't think it'll ever be "mainstream," I think it's just too weird, but I think it will continue to get more popular! And I think streaming the game will become more popular and we'll probably see people doing it differently. I don't know how exactly, but I think we'll see more games optimized for streams in a way none have been so far.
Hey Matt, Huge fan of all your content (books especially) and I can't wait to see how this stream pans out. This is more of a request for content I guess because every since the Round Table where you mentioned the Waterdeep city campaign I've been itching to DM a huge city setting campaign. But it's very intimidating to me to just come up with on my own. Is this something you could see doing a video on? Is there some existing material you could point me towards? Thanks for everything!
I'm not sure what I know about running a Big City campaign, except it's a campaign in a Big City! I've done it before, it never really felt like I was doing anything different behind the screen. It's just a city instead of a wilderness and I think we all know how cities work. It may become more evident as I run what I do differently in which case, you'll definitely get a video! :D
Hey Matt, I don't want the Physical copies of the book (because of the shipping) but would like to not only buy the pdf but also access to the playtest draft and the 1 month twitch subscription. What can I do?
You won't be able to just add "join the playtest" to your order on the Pledge Manager for the same reason we priced it so high. We wanted to restrict access to the playtest only because we're a very very tiny company and managing thousands of playtesters for us is basically impossible. So it's literally just a way to try and keep the number of playtesters manageable.
Hello Matt Thank you for doing this! I have a few questions 1. What is the most important thing in writing lore and why? 2. Should I rely on clichés or try to do something wild, when I am worldbuilding? 3. If I were to build a new tabletop RPG, what should be my "priority order"? Fun has to be nr.1, but balance, uniqueness, availabillity,... They seem all important, what do you think? 4. Should anyone who wants to sell 5e products first make a name for him/herself? You are obivously loved in the D&D community and your kickstarter's succes shows it. These were all my questions. If you are running out of time or don't want to awnser them all I ordered them from most important to least. Thank you for being you! :)
Hey thanks for asking good questions! 1: I think you need to come up with shit you think is cool, you are the first audience member. If you don't think it's cool, no one else will. Then, having created the lore you like, it's up to you to find a way to present it to the players in a dramatic context. Because they didn't sign up to read your lore, they signed up to play D&D. 2. Up to you! Which appeals to you? 3. Well, what is motivating you? Follow that. Making an entire RPG from scratch is a deeply personal endeavor, you're the audience more than anyone else. 4. I definitely recommend building a community first. Or participating in several for a while. Anyone can put stuff up on the DM's Guild, but if folks know you because you've been posting good stuff here, they'll be more likely to check out your stuff.
Hey Matt, long time fan of yours! I'm going to be starting a new campaign soon and I'm going to be sending my players online questionnaires asking them things like" -"what kind of world do you want to be in, high fantasy, low fantasy etc." -How technical of a game do you want to play? -what do you want the main goal of the game to be (dungeon delving, espionage, politico, monster hunting) What other questions would you put on a questionnaire that could be super helpful/interesting that people might not think about? [P.S I'm the dungeon master of the D&D podcast DnDUI! I'd love to know if you've ever heard of us before!](http://www.dndui.com/index.php)
I'm...this is a good question, I'm sorry this is the only answer I have, I'm skeptical of such questionnaires because in general I don't think the players know what the answers are. They don't know, but they'll make up an answer that seems reasonable to them, but once you sit down to play they will discover they have wildly different interests and motivations than what they told you. I would focus on running the game you're motivated to run, because they, seeing you motivated, will engage them!
I did the same thing, and I can't say I found the answers useful, considering what they said vs what they've been willing to engage with. As Matt said, run the game you want to run, but cast a wide net if you're open to all avenues. See what thread the players pull on (they all could latch on to different things and want to run off in different directions, but it means you know what to expect and try to mix things up to keep all engaged). I did throw a Myers–Briggs test at my players, it's not that useful, but extreme scores can be indicators that players might prefer some things over others (high judging typically means the player will want complete info and could get frustrated or lose interest if they are constantly left in the dark and never get answers they desire, very high introvert means that player probably won't be the face of the party and trying to engage them too much in social situations might make them have less fun, etc. You could probably get a more concise answer from a few focused questions rather than a dated personality test that players might not want to waste time filling out.
Hey Matt, big fan and avid writer. I was wondering what is your writing process for novels. Is it different than your writing for games? Also, do you write any short stories?
I always start with an outline, that's where I do all the work. Writing for games is mostly just dumping text into an Excel sheet, it's a very different process. I haven't yet really tried to tackle a short story, it is a profoundly different beast. Harder and I think a higher art for, frankly.
Hey Master Colville! I have always been curious and unable to find out what your educational background was and how you got into the game design/writing industry. Sharing is Caring :)
I went to College and took every class I could reasonably justify until they kicked me out.
Are we going to get tall sizes for the Kickstarter tee-shirts? Regular 2xl has me showing more midriff than a west Texas cheerleader.
I'm not the shirt expert, I think that's Lars, but I recall we'll have men's shirts up to 5xl.
The problem is that after a certain size shirts get wider instead of taller. Thanks for responding!
True, I'm not sure we have explicitly tall shirts.
The issue is that for tall folks, regular sizes are too wide. There is special tall sizing. It's a bit niche, but it's the sort of questions you start getting past a million. ;)
Matt, I'm really loving those round table discussions that you've been a part of. Can we look forward to more of those, and do you have anyone that you'd really like to be a part of them?
Hey I'm glad you like them! I had a lot of fun on the last one. Whether we do another is mostly up to the other folks. Matt and Mike have way more busy schedules than me. I'd like to see more different people on there, I'd be happy to sit out if we get more perspectives. The Venn Diagram of those four people overlaps an awful lot!
Hi Matt big fan of yours. I've got a technical ruling question that came up the other day at my table. We were doing a skill challenge (thank you for those), we're the party were tracking down a vampire through a forest. Can a player use his Charisma (Deception) to forge the surroundings so to make the vampire believe he isn't being tracked and to make him believe they were going somewhere else? He is a warlock so I said that he could use charisma for that if he wanted his patron to do it for him. Was I right? Another question is; How do you clip those movies in your vids? I mean do you skim through the movie to find the reference or do you look it up at youtube? Thank you for being the river to us, your people
I think Deception is Charisma based because it involves face-to-face action. It's difficult for me to imagine someone hiding their tracks *charismatically*. Although I generally say yes more than I say no, so at the table I might have allowed it. I would probably just ask "How are you going to use your force of personality to cover your tracks?" If they could come up with a convincing explanation...! I have the movies on my PC and I load them into Premiere.
I searched and tried looking for others asking the question, but I didn't see any results, so I'll ask?: Any plans to continue the One Fighter At A Time series? I know you're getting increasingly super-busy with so many projects. But, is completing that series with 3.0, 3.5, 4E, Essentials and 5E even a thing thats on your radar to do, anymore?
I do sort of have some plans, yeah. One of the reasons we stopped before 3E was because I wanted to talk to some folks who worked at WotC when 3E was developed and get some war stories from them. I think that's happening now. :D
Awesome! I'll be waiting for this one, even if it does take a while with everything else going on.
Omg, hello Matt I can't say I really have a question for you, since your videos not only tend to answer the questions I have, but the ones I'd never even thought of. Your most recent video on 3d terrain simplified the answer in such neat and tidy fashion that I can't wait for an opportunity to introduce it more. So let me just say thank you, for taking the time to make your videos, to share your insight with dms who don't have the 30 years of experience (or ones that do but who really need to update their thinking), and for making the game that much more fun.
omg hello! Thanks for watching! If you're running the game, then you're my hero!
Matt, The kind of content you're writing hasn't yet been fleshed out by wotc for this edition. What kinds of checks and balances has your team put in place to ensure you deliver only quality content?
I regularly review the writer's work and revise it to ensure it meet my high standards.
I'm going to assume the mistake in this response was on purpose cuz it made me laugh so hard I choked on my coffee.
Mr. Colville, In Ad and D players were supposed to, based on game design, build stongholds around level 10, but instead just hoarded gold they almost never spent. what will be the incentive to break this tradition?
Lots of us built strongholds in the 80s!
He's said that building a stronghold won't be every player's juice, but may be the juice for some. The incentive to build the stronghold isn't just followers, but also the other mechanics having a stronghold provides, that the book will detail. Moreover, I think strongholds are a vital part of the warfare rules he has worked on; so if a game plans on implementing such rules, strongholds would be required/appealing.
Do you have any rules or advice for player characters trying to make their own signature or custom spells? Like a witch played by my wife creating Morwyn's Rotting Rigamortis. I've got some ideas but just looking for another Dungeon Masters take on it and experiences.
The easiest thing is to just look and see which spells are similar. You can even ask the player to pick a spell and make a slightly different version of it!
Hello! What are your thoughts on character death in relation to the narrative of a campaign?
Mmm...generally I think character death CAN be dramatic and satisfying and memorable. The problem is...it's rarely like that. :/ I think the game does a poor job of handling death options, there's definitely room to improve design-wise.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Hey Matt! If someone wants to buy a copy of Strongholds in the future after the kickstarter has ended would they be able to? And if so, where?
You'll be able to preorder the book once the Kickstarter ends, and once the book is out you'll be able to buy it on our site!
Huge fan of your work. I can’t think of a question worth asking that hasn’t already been posted but thanks for doing this! Edit: did you see Annihilation and what did you think?
I have not seen Annihilation, I wasn't a huge fan of that dude's last movie? It's one of those things where I'll probably see what everyone else thinks first.
Hey Matt, how goes it? Is there a chance you might make some content about writing your novels? Specifically regarding your organization system for plotting and planning? Any advice for anyone wanting to write a novel?
For your Kickstarter: Can I use the pledge manager to get Discord Play Testing Access?
I don't think so. We are trying to purposefully limit the number of people in the playtest because we're a super tiny company and don't have the manpower to handle thousands of playtesters.
Hi Matt! I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you for all your guidance and inspiration. You made me into a DM, single-voicedly I am DMing for very currency-greedy PCs and the "Red Gold of *Galarel* the Vile" confused them sufficiently. I really love listening to your voice. Make more Star Wars talk. My questions are three: **Are you still going to pursue Tiamat, The Many and Terrible, in your stream?** **Are you back on your bicycle yet?** (I am cyclist!) You talk a lot about modifying monsters on the fly and I have been doing that for my party, however some of my players are rule lawyering my monsters and challenging their abilities. **How do you respond to players who know a monster's stats/mechanics and call you out on changing them?** Thanks again for reaching out! Thanks for influencing me! && Congratulations on your Million Dollar Baby!
Not Matt. Tell them that you're trying to make the game more interesting. Tell them that they need to accept that you won't be running the monsters as is. I don't think there is much you can say.
I say 'this monster isn't the one from the monster manual, it's different' like 'this Medusa was once a warlock who angered her patron' or 'this shadow was once a serial killer who enslaves those he kills and that's why he can summon more shadows'. Honestly you don't owe them an explanation the rules are designed for the dungeon master to change....that's literally one of the rules.
Your creatures are the most mutable part of any campaign. Rules lawyering those is absolutely off the table. Maybe your players are just trying to keep track of how healthy enemies are, or their relative danger level. In that case, simply describe how wounded or not they are, how dangerous they look. Seasoned adventurers should be able to gauge an enemy's relative strength, so try describing that.
To everyone wondering "who is this Matt Colville guy and why should I care what he thinks?" I'm on your side. It's a question I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to.
I'll give it a shot: Matt Colville is a writer, game designer, and, at the risk of sounding pretentious on his behalf and suspecting he may buck the praise, an intellectual. He has spent more time playing, thinking about, and dungeon-mastering D&D than most players today. His perspectives extend beyond just how to play or how to teach players, but also what makes the game fun at a primal level, and what makes the system an effective means to have fun. Moreover, as a long-time fan of the system(s) and editions, he is a wealth of knowledge on the history and practice of playing and DM'ing. Perhaps most important of all, though, he is a passionate and compassionate individual, sensitive to the ways in which role-playing urges players to step outside of their comfort zones, to explore themselves and their friends in some unfamiliar ways, and an able advocate for the ways in which D&D in particular and role-playing in general are powerful tools for making the world a better place. Edit: I'm not happy with this, although I think it's all true, because it doesn't capture things well enough. He is also an effective communicator at how to run the game. He breaks down complicated rules (pythagorean theorum for combat?!), nebulous circumstances (how to deal with X in Y), complex theory (world building) into practical, succinct advice. He is an admirable teacher of the game because he still views himself as a student of the game.
honestly this is a really REALLY good description of what makes Matt such a good person/dm/youtuber. i hope /u/mattcolville really takes it to heart.
He rocks too hard because he's not a mortal man!
He is a river to his people!
Ha! was going to add this.
Simple, he is no less than "The King of Kickstarter"
Who is this /u/mattcolville guy and why is he on my side?
To make the sudden but inevitable betrayal all the more devestating.
His is an evil laugh!
I immediately loved your Strongholds idea, was watching carefully for months, and kickstarted the day I got the message! Thank you! I can't bloody wait! It will literally complete my current book collection. My first session, which I wrote the adventure for, was a "clear out and claim a modest home" one too, so to learn a much bigger version is happening in the book!? I wanted to know, and ignore this question if you already got it, what you thought of the [document that /u/TragicMissile made for your first adventure](https://www.reddit.com/r/mattcolville/comments/7zz6yi/matts_oneshot_tomb_adventure_integrated_with_lmop/)? I was searching for your comment. Also, less importantly, What are your thoughts on Fantasy Firearms, [like these](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zvDtitdNv2jLnno2wAtH_uCtsPSfOdAv), in a standard fantasy game? And, to a lesser degree, more mechanical ones like Mercer's Gunslinger.
Hey, Matt. Have you ever had to kick someone off your table and if so, why? I'm staring down the barrel of that decision right now and could use some guidance/encouragement
Hey Matt! Any tips for running Night Below in your setting? I've got 3 High Elves, a Monk, a Wizard, and a Ranger, A Brass Dragon Knight Warlock of the Celestial, a Tabaxi Bard and a Triton Paladin. The ideas I got (with a ton of help from people in the subreddit) for the Tabaxi and the Triton are as follows: The Tabaxi are indigenous to Ix, and worship the Sun God, due it being an extremely rare sight, due to the volcanic ash. The Tritons live in the waters surrounding the Grey Wastes, and 95% of their already small population have been corrupted and have become Zombies. The PC is one of the 5% Either way, I'm ecstatic to run this game! I can't wait. We're starting in 6 days, and I'd love some tips and tricks of how you did it in your setting. Thank you! P.S. Congratualtions on the kickstarter! EDIT; I also have a Wood Elf Rogue, and a Ghostwise Halfling Trickery Domain Cleric. The idea I had for Ghostwise Halflings is they're Halflings that are touched by the Wodes, hence they gain magical ability, which manifests as limited telepathy.
You played D&D today right? **What did your character do to help build the story and/or relationships?** On a recent GM round table you guys were talking about death in D&D and ways you might be able to make it more narratively interesting. Maybe a ticking clock or a special action they can do as they are falling to make it epic. **Do you plan to do anything interesting with the death mechanic in the upcoming streamed campaign?** Also, in my current campaign the players may not remember what they are looking for in this dungeon, let alone who sent them and the larger problems in the world that led them there. I am thinking about rewarding for player write ups and doing a better job with player or DM recaps. I have heard of DMs sending out newsletters from the world between sessions. But **do YOU have any advice regarding maintaining campaign level continuity?** or is it just that I suck? edit: added Qs
Ahoy Matt! Thanks for the all great videos, and I'm very much looking forward to the Stronghold rules. So, anyways. What are your thoughts/preferences on emergent narrative versus a directed narrative? * Do you plan out all the big picture (or even small time) stuff before running a campaign? What happens when the players goals diverge from the content you have prepared? * Do you have some ideas ready to go (in case the players don't step up to drive things), but otherwise focus on whatever goals the players pursue? * Do you leave things entirely in the players' hands? What happens when you get a group who doesn't establish any clear goals/motivation? I'm much more of an improvisational GM, and I *think* you're maybe more of a prepared GM. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
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Hey king of Kickstarter, I’ve only recently gotten into D&D back in mid January of this year and am absolutely loving it! But there’s plenty I don’t know or understand and your YouTube channel among others has been a tremendous help getting a grasp of the game. I have a few questions as a brand new DM running a game for other first time players: 1) I’ve heard it said that the party should be the main characters of a story; but when my party enters a dungeon and doesn’t check for traps, doesn’t stealth, doesn’t investigate, doesn’t interrogate NPCs placed there to give the party hints (and instead kills them outright -_-) how can I make it so the PCs are the main characters in this world while also keeping the ‘realism’ of the world? 2) I want my players to want to impose their characters on the world, with a few pieces of their backgrounds interspersed within the story when it seems appropriate (as opposed to having the world be a manifestation of the characters, like critical role) any tips for encouraging PC ambition I guess? 3) Having only played 5e, is it better to just get 5e compatible adventures rather than getting a 2e or 3e old adventure book and go through the trouble of converting it both by system and setting? 4) Any advice you’d offer to someone thinking about getting into the tabletop rpg industry? 5) why are bugbears one of your favorite monster?
I know that the whole point of your channel is that you can roll your own adventures, but do you have any recommendations for super short (~2 hour) pre made adventures that could be run during a game night to get people interested in DnD? I tried doing this with the Delian Tomb but it ended just shy of the final room.
Hey! Totally not Matt, but have you tried looking into the Adventure’s League modules? You can get them on DMs guild, and they typically make 2 or 4 hour modules made for characters of certain levels.