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They're in daaaaanger with that logo on the book cover.

I remember how appreciative I was of this pantheon when I revisited D&D after taking a break from TTRPGs for nearly two decades. The list was short enough and straightforward enough that I could easily memorize them. Their domains also encouraged action from the PCs. I often come back to this pantheon when running a game in a setting where there isn't a defined pantheon.

Working out what one really needs to run a game is useful thing to do. I don't use electronic devices or miniatures to run games. I could ditch a couple of books, though. DM screens are there to hide notes - I rarely refer to them. But since we're playing online with interstate players, I can fill up the study with lots of crap and it's not a bother. AUD$342 (not including shipping) makes the Chest a case of "well, that was nice". I've seen other versions of this and they all look great, particularly Mr Mercer's. But the cost seems to far exceed utility.

Okay, I really dig the rolling on the domain table idea. I might just have to yoink it for myself.

Thanks! The whole crew is coming to Florida Supercon 2024, so I wanted to get caught up on what the heck Critical Role actually is.

So I scanned comments and nobody is talking about such epic Dad moves like Mike’s showing clearly his experience as he cradles his new 🐶 bf. Fun show!

I'm definitely going to use this system for a more dark souls inspired world. I have one that's super in depth and closer to dragon age or elder scrolls, 3 major religions (polytheism, monotheism, and philosophical) as well has powerful alien demon princes and in depth nations. But I also wanted to make something closer to a classic dark fantasy world with one detailed kingdom in a mysterious world.

Recently, I have stopped using a DM screen, and it has really helped me play the game straight and let the dice tell a story. I've often felt the desire to fudge dice rolls or alter the HP of monsters to better control the flow of a combat, but with no screen, the temptation is completely removed. I highly recommend removing your DM screen. Try it out and see how it changes your game!

It’s a little obnoxious that dungeon coach literally hired every single dnd CZcams to sponsor his new rpg. I understand a few… but EVERYONE?!

*This will be the first RPG book I've ever bought.*

Sarenrae is just a genderbend reskinning of Pelor.

Could you not bring a pencil sharpener to solve the pencil problem?

Wow.. This looks cool, but man. That would be too much stuff for me. I don't have minis and will never buy them again (I gift all the ones that come with kickstarter to my brother), so it would be more stuff for me. My setup is a small bag, with dice, some sheet of paper, my prep notes and a very low gm screen.

Telescope pointer? Retractable Pointer? I would prefer oversized conductor stick ;)

Another video??? Mike you’re far too kind to us lowly viewers

This is a really neat idea, I'm gonna try it out for the homebrew world I'm working on! I think it'll be interesting to try pulling from the whole deck, not just the major arcana. I've used tarot cards as writing prompts before, as inspiration for characters. The idea is you draw a card using the entire deck which then is a jumping-off point for the character. It can inform their personality, a backstory event, philosophy, whatever you want! I find it to be a really fun starting point, especially since there's so many variations of tarot decks out there (I've got a a "corrupted/fallen" one, for instance) (I didn't come up with this idea myself, I got it from a forum thread on a petsim)

Smh... Another Millennial trying to sound educated? 😂 The rule was never forgotten, it was disregarded.. BY MILLENNIALS.

My biggest concern with the case would be the straps being annoying by blocking my DM sheets. If they are removable thats great.

My one group tends to swing between wanting a crunchy game, and then a rules light game. So we often switch it up from time to time and something like this may just hit the spot. This game sounds really interesting and honestly anything that uses an 'action point' system already has me interesting. One of my biggest annoyances with 5e is how bonus actions are handled (or not even bothered with most of the time). Action point systems just inherently suit my brain better when it comes to planning a turn. I'll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.

Love that the mechanical pencil you pulled out was a Paper-Mate Sharpwriter, my favorite mechanical pencil, and Adam Savage's too!

I don't need it, but it looks SO PRETTY AND USEFUL! Love seeing this combo of TTRPG and organizing content, never imagined it would happen

0:38 Gonna cut you off right here... Dragonlance: The Gods are real, they just abandoned the world... Eberron: All the "Common" gods (The Sovereign Host & The Dark Six) are entirely conceptual, they dont actually exist as beings (The Progenitor Dragons do, but...) So, saying "D&D", you're really meaning Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, and any BS WotC pushes in their current design of the game... But, lets go back to Eberron for a quick pick... Yes, all the gods are Conceptual...they always have been, residual energy from when the Progenitor Dragons made the Crystal Sphere... but Clerics and Paladins and Druids existed the whole time...either via Dragons, Giants, Orcs and Goblins, or the current races of Eberron... so, how? Because "*Faith*" in that concept is what grants power. Im playing an Artificer in a 3.5 game, who came from Eberron, but is in a different world now; The Character frequently shows the ability to enchant with Divine Magic, but has a dismissive (or atleast, irrelevent) attitude towards Gods in general. He see's the value of the Cleric and Healer in the group, but doesn't believe in their gods. In fact, he generally states that his belief is in what is *real* ; basically that his Artisen smithing and enchanting as an Artificer is more substantial then the Gods. ...even in the face of one of the other players character having become a Demi-God. He's like "No, you studied scrolls of power that openned you up to the cosmic energies of creation, and now you can tap a power you never knew about"... My character is basically a Quantum Engineer, who has explained gods and cosmic forces away as simply as science explained weather and nature and fauna and flora. ...Its Biology, its Ecology, its Physics, its Astrophysics...

Orion/ Tiberius was the best part of CR. Makes the experience more realistic to have a toxic af person being gross at the table.

What?!? Why did they unlist it? It was one of my absolute favorite episodes.

I would have no use for the chest but the moment you opened it, my eyes lit up and a massive grin crept across my face. What a gorgeous work of organization

700th like ^^ Also Hmm interesting might check this out

Im gonna tell ya something, as a dad of 4 years, with 2 kids... "After Midnight"...get use to it! Its 5am as I write this, and Im up because of 2 factors...but the main one being, that I was pushed out of bed by my 4yo...and 3yo... we have a Queen-size bed, but those tiny Younglings take up SOOO much space! So, yeah... also, at this point, the best sleep period they have is between 10pm and 2am when they wont wake up for anything... so... Dad advice. As the Nazi Lion King song goes... "Be Prepared!" ...this isn't ending anytime soon, mate!

Been (very) slowly putting together a world/campaign setting for the last 2yrs. Started writing and rewriting the pantheon a few days ago. Was using a mishmash of D&D gods as a base but then realized I don’t want to flesh out NPCs and plot hooks and then have to go back and retcon things to match the custom pantheon I wanted to create. So now I’m just here fervorously rewriting every god I took from D&D 😅 got my work cut out for me but I’m actually enjoying it as it’s naturally helping me flesh out more of the world’s lord and pre-history

...i just noticed DMG has more characters than just a lich

Follow the making of this kickstarter pretty close. In my opinion, the game is so into working like a video game it forgot it has to tell a story. There are no narrative-focused mechanics, just hyper granular mechanics that would work well if we were machines. There's a lot of heart in the making of the game and Alan seems like a great guy who deserves all his success. I will still see where this goes, but at this juncture it seems to me this game is not for folk who play to tell a collective story.

I also really like Pathfinder 2e's Iconics. It's a cool way to show off the classes and it allows them to demonstrate other things using these characters. It kind of creates a "canon" party that they can use in fiction and art and whatnot.

Another banger of a video! It's wild that the videos are so fantastic even with mini Mike! Hope the little one is doing good! Make sure you get some sleep because you definitely deserve it! This video comes at a perfect time of me. I literally thought to myself it would be cool to have a video showing what other dms keep behind the screen so thanks! Also question for you? I bought a 6 feet long chalk broad to use as the battle map and to keep the dice from flying off the table. I love using it but all my players don't like it. They listed of various concerns about the biggest one is they didn't 't like how I asked them not to eat on it and to use a small baking sheet to keep your drink, character sheet and dice on it. I would like to continue to use the chalk broad for dnd since I bought it just for running table top games with. Any advice from people would be appreciated. Hope everyone has a great day.

This is a good channel. I like Mike.

I keep candies behind my DM screen. AND MY NOTES. Yes, notes...

Online play, I still use a DM screen for the same reason why I would for in-person play. My desk space is divided between computer, a spot for dice and dice tray (I mainly use physical dice during games, but sometimes I'll switch to digital [it's the clacking sound that I enjoy]), campaign notebook with pencils (quicker and easier to keep notes than to switch windows to a Google doc and type), and drink. I keep books down to the side where they are within reach as I know them a lot better and it's faster for me to flip through pages than type something on DnD Beyond or Google search.

What a coincidence! Just this morning I read Ginny Di's email newsletter where she answered the question of what she keeps behind her screen. It's amusing when there's synchronicity in the world.

You genuinely seem like a DM that would be awesome to play with… I don’t know, we share very similar views on rulings, the importance of role-play and everything, but you just overall seem like a very genuine, kind and understanding game master

I think there's a base misassumption that many GMs (including me xD) work under. That there's only one type of material; the shit you physically use at the table. Only recently (15 years of practicing the craft and a master's degree in game design later xD I'm very much feeling dumb for realising something this simple this late) I've come to the conclusion that there's at least 2 types of material. The material you study and prepare your sessions on (i.e. for example, the big Binder of Strahdness that you made), that will never see the light of the table. The material you actually use at your table (i.e. Anto's or Professor Dungeon Master's notebooks, for example), that you fill with the specifics you need and the condensed/digested/munched on stuff from the studying material. Note: none of the ttrpg books I've ever seen so far has been a working book. They've all been studying books and that bothers me autistic brain so much. Also: thank the bloody gods for cards! I have made MtG sized cards for all the stuff I most commonly use.

My DM screen is basically my laptop so I guess it doesn't count? Otherwise I have a tab for the character sheets so I can double check spells/abilities in moments where vagueness wants to be clarified, a list of my homebrew items so I can recall how they work, a one note of the quest list/NPC motivations and characteristics as I struggle with RP improv, and an encounter page with monster notes. Otherwise, I've got 2 dice trays, and a number of spare sets of dice just incase anyone forgets theirs.

@17:20 THANK YOU! I've had this argument so many times! The fact that there are clerics who don't pray to gods and can do everything a cleric that does pray to a god can do eliminates essentially all "proof" of the gods. And even if godless clerics are rare, paladins canonically get their power from their oath, not to mention the other divine casters you mentioned, and even some *arcane casters* can do what clerics do (celestial warlocks, bards, etc). This really isn't any different than a religious person and atheist disagreeing on something in real life being a miracle.

Mike... I do not mean this as a criticism, but... How the hell has your video production rate gone up now that you've got a tiny human to take care of? (at least this one is one of those shorter videos you mentioned trying to do more of in your last ~30 minute video, I guess)

I've never been a GM but that looks EPIC!!!!!

The thing about the red box warrior drama is that it's annoying they insist that's it's a woman and decided they must make it a woman and call everyone sexist when corrected, as well as that's there's plenty of iconic DnD women they could've highlighted. If they just did that, or said "we're doing this for fun as a reinterpretation" then I know at least folks like me women and people who believe representation is important, would be much more on their side. But instead they went the buzzfeed route of intentional instigation to try and drum up money. Also damn that loot box thing I didn't even know about! That's a great shout, probably intentional. 🤔 Anywho to the more interesting parts: I find it SO weird how much malding has been going on over the book covers and how everyone wants to insist they're bad. Like not just "oh i personally wish they did something different" no, it's just insistence that these covers are terrible. It's WILD to me, like yeah art is is subjective but we can all agree at least that these covers are conventionally pretty right?? The trend of the cover trap is quite a funny thing to point out lol. Never really noticed how they nearly never have a full party. Neat. Fun video 👍 Also yes please do another for the other covers!! I love the Lolth cover so mcuh! It's great. :D

I've found children's washable markers make far easier wiping wet-erase markers than actual wet-erase markers.

maybe I'm the only one who does this but even when I run in person I'm running from roll20 so I use a laptop instead of a screen. I have the roll20 game open and then 5etools in another tab for rules.

two things behind my screen. A table of target numbers with percentage chance to succeed. And a sticky note to remind me that one of my players has blindsight 60ft and can't see past that distance.

I want to play an "atheist" character who believes that divine magic is kinda like arcane magics. Swap out studies for prayers and stories, and now you have a miracle. Instead of gods, they would think that there are really old and powerful forces of energy out there, and sometimes we see what we wanna see when we encounter something like that.

Only sad it doesn't look like a treasure chest... Is that the deluxe edition? 🤔

You're spoiling us Mike. Also I find funny to see you as a teacher with the pointer and at the same time use it as a weapon to punish unruly behaviour.