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I never saw artificers them as particularly steampunk--although you can flavor them that way if you want. I do agree that it's all a matter of how you perceive the class and how you imaging the powers working. Like, if I were to make a character like the Joker, I'd use a wizard. I'd give him a entertainer background--or I guess criminal might work--and then I'd flavor all his spells to just be items that he has. Shocking Grasp would be his joy buzzer. Acid Splash would be the acid-spewing flower on his lapel. Tasha's Hideous Laughter would be joker gas. He could almost work as a sorcerer too or maybe artificer. You could give him a gun as an artificer, but with sorcerer, you'd have the most cantrips to reflavor--just a limited spell list. The classes are just sets of game mechanics to me, and I try to think more as to what set of mechanics fits my character concept. At least, I have more fun with the character when I think of it like that.

The one thing that I would add as a GM, is please make your backstory only contain things your character is aware of. Things like "I'm secretly the child of the BBEG but I don't know it yet" drive me crazy, and I absolutely don't allow that kind of thing. If your character was raised with that knowledge, I can absolutely work with that, and throw in some great twists. But if you're trying to give me a bunch of things you want your character to not know, but shoehorn your arc into a certain things, I'm not gonna approve it.

Wow, Aisling was super edgy.

I've had the reverse of this, where I showed up to a table with a really compelling character ripe for politics and roleplay, And then the entire game was just one long dungeon crawl. All anybody else including the DM wanted to do was clear every room of monsters, collect experience points and gold, and then move on to the next room. Anytime I would make a character choice, or try to engage on a deeper level with the world, They would shoot it down or ignore it.

I think my biggest issue is creating a backstory in the first place and finding one that can really be woven into the game. Everyone I play with always has super indepth and thought out characters and I'm like "here's bob he sits in mud". For me my focus has always been around building a personality profile so they're easy to improv off the bat, but I can never come up with backstories or stuff that happens and end up feeling like I give the dm nothing to work with :/

Hey one thing I’d love to see you do a video on is how to run a smart villain who is one step ahead of the PCs. I suck at improving this or planning it 😅🙃 please help?

I keep considering rebuilding one of my first 3.5 characters, who was completely awesome, for 5e. I have the same weird feeling about playing her under a different DM though, it feels a bit wrong, and i keep worrying I'd try to rebuild her exactly, and be disappointed. But she wouldn't be exactly the same, the classes have evolved over the years, and prestige classes are no longer a thing, so she might be different enough for it not to be weird. I might do it.... 🤔

I almost choked on a skittle at "so bite me." 😂

There's even a way to make warforged fit high fantasy! Warforged already are made of wood and metal, so just use some high fantasy ancient magic to bring them to life, rather than meticulous robotic innards. I've heard people say that warforged have real organs inside, so you could go with that too!

It's not every day that a twenty-something-minute D&D advice video on CZcams makes me feel so seen, or makes me feel so validated, or helps me understand myself better to such a (high) degree, OR gives me even one, let alone four, practical and immediately-usable pieces of game-running advice... but this video does all that and more. Thank you, Ginny, from the bottom of my heart to the top of my messy ADHD brain - thank you so much!

_"what the fuck is a nilbog"_

But does Bless increase his Armour Class? 🤣

When people are presented with new opportunities (such as playing their first D&D game) they often try to push the boundaries. I remember a video about a player who told his DM his first level character fell from the sky as some dethroned son of a deity in a fireball. The DM simply said he took something like 26d6 of damage and died in a pile of ashes and body parts. Most anyone who has gone through their teens can recognize this push to experience something new but find out it wasn't what they really wanted or enjoyed. It seems you wanted to push the boundaries with your first character to see where it would go and your DM (bless his heart) let you. You ended up playing a character with a lot of your own personality traits. Many parallels to growing up and becoming a mature person.

I was watching this for Gits And Shiggles but Two Minutes In and I’ve already figured out my D&D’s Character’s Goals and Catalyst event

It isn't that you can't build a functional warlock without taking Eldritch Blast. It's more, why would you really want to? It's basically like choosing to be a Paladin, and insisting that you only use a dagger, because you like the aesthetic of using a dagger over that of using a sword. Or refusing to wear heavy armor, because you don't like being over-encumbered. Neither choice would cripple the character, but they are clearly suboptimal. Put yourself into the position of your character: why would she not choose the most effective spell for the purpose? Wizards, sorcerers, druids and clerics would absolutely choose Eldritch Blast if it were available to them, because it is just the best damage cantrip in the game, and having a reliable damage cantrip means you have stuff to do even when you're out of spells (and you aren't forced to ineffectually plink at people with a ranged weapon you aren't great at using).

If you play an edgy loner it's best to let them evolve past that. That way you have character growth. Even if they only open up to one other character it's progress.

Don't be embarrassed by your character. My first character was a 2nd edition 1/2 elf Ranger with Falconer kit. Background: 1 - Who are his parents? One is an elf, the other a human. Which one was which? Don't know. He's a Ranger. 2 - Where is he from? Don't know; he's a Ranger. 3 - What's his job? Don't know; he's a Ranger. 4 - Who's his best friend? This falco because he's a Ranger with the Falconer kit. 5 - What's his motivation? Don't know; he's a Ranger.

The only thing that matters is if you can work with the party, and you're not too irritating to the other players. Otherwise, edge it up as much as you like, there's nothing inherently wrong with edge.

Are you sure it's not just you that is obsessed with that type of "special" backstory? As someone who has a real life tragic backstory, it kinda seems like "tragic porn" to me, my backstory is N. O. Body from random unimportant farm village, where most lived and died farming for the local lord and haven't even left the village all their life or he is the ten son of the local minor lord , if he needs some nobel backstory. I never want to be special when playing an avatar and it actually annoys me that every idiot want to be the chosen one, that is not how the world work, your one among many and if you work together with others you can create a better future, but if you solo you end up like the awful people that becomes kings and rich, with no humanity left in them.

My bladesinger signed up for the adventurer's guild in her hometown. She likes to save up and spend her money on new spells, and dresses (both to use during her dance performances). Signing up with the vanguard was simply a way for her to make some extra money quickly, hoping to team up with some others who were maybe more well-versed in the art of adventuring. She didn't have a real "catalyst" moment, and after two quests, her monetary needs were more or less satisfied. Though by this point, she's made good friends in the other party members and they are slowly uncovering a large threat to the city. For me, the absence of this catalyst greatly enhanced my roleplay by imposing difficult choices on her path; when to keep adventuring, or when to quit? When is involvement in a case - where you're never supposed to be involved - enough, and when are you in too deep? It allows for a very human character, one that is scared, fun, and sometimes uncertain about things. That's just my input! Maybe it will inspire someone else :]

What are the dimensions??

Grieving and death of loved ones is painful for me. 'Its part of dnd, its not real!' Does not mean it wont hurt. If I do not plan to nreak my oath, I believe I am playing well enough. Don't tell me I failed because I did not understand or get that the dm thinks differently. It is a class change I did not choose and tells I am a 'failure'. Also triggering. So... Yeah. I am nearly 30 and would appreciate such tools.

Honestly I thought part of old Aisling's charm was that she had seemingly no self awareness of how friendly she actually was 😂

I love the way you dress! And the future Ginny adding something was very nice

I was never in the “artificers bad” camp, but that MAY have something to do with a certain Just Dani from Rolling With Difficulty

Our DND plays the missing character…. Makes a point of using features that the player rarely uses. Once turned the players character into a dragon… the DM has played for decades and you can see the experience in how he plays…

I think mean/standoffish can work but you definitely have to have some kind of aligned goals that would encourage the party to put up with you. I played a temporary character for part of a campaign during the Curse of Strahd section, and he was fully neutral evil (ruthless and amoral, rather than cackling maniac), a bit condescending and critical, and very much not willing to risk himself to save others, but he wanted to lift Strahd's curse (to study it, because reasons) and knew things that could help. It was a lot of fun to play a less talkative, more calculating character after playing the party's face for a while.

Where can I buy that talking cat?

I have a former adventurer NPC who started taking warlock levels as, oddly enough, his retirement plan. He took a deal for magic powers to make running his business a little easier. Unseen Servant, Mage Hand, that sort of thing.

Lol. Safety tools. Damn genz snowflakes.

Listening to this, I think it'd be a fun little exercise to take this type of character from the DM's perspective and try to make it work. Like, trying to stick as much to the original concept, but also making it work for other things. Like, "the rot is impossible to stop", the first thing that comes to my mind isn't to make it a "some people think it's impossible, other's don't", but to play onto the "no, it's impossible", having aisiling constantly be told that while OOC the player and DM know that's not the case, so they can feel OK with Aisling staying stubborn, and that, in the end, getting rewarded, when they e.g. find out of a hidden thing in history where the rot occured but was stopped. Heck, that could even be tied into a) why aisling's fam is being so shunned (maybe their ancestors stopped it at great price) or b) the soil lady, who maybe thinks that the way it was ended wasn't the best way.

I got very lucky with finding a game, I didn't even know dnd existed until like 6 months ago, I got introduced to dnd through school and luckily someone organised a dnd group at my school, the person who organised the dnd group at my school also organised an out of school dnd place with multiple groups, proper gear, pre organised game times on sunday for 2 hours every week and even snacks. And now play at my new school and even am a gm there, so even if the internet makes it seem almost impossible to find a group and times to play, you can get lucky and find a place like I did

I thought I was burnt out, but it turned out I just hated my players😂

I sent my players on a quest in a dream city place to gain cool powers, (still haven't decided what to give them yet) the first thing they did was try to buy donuts, I saw the opportunity to send them on a side quest, the donut shop was sold out, so they went to the edge of the city to another donut shop, now 1 session later they are kidnapping the prime minister of the city

Working hard at world building is not the same as working hard to make a fun game. It's like any kind of story, or media, you can have a movie that's brilliantly shot and well written but poorly paced and is super boring to watch. If you want engagement, you have to engage their emotions.

This song calms my anxiety down thank god for this song.

I have a few ideas for Artificers I'd like to try, one being a potionmaker from a family of more traditional Wizards, and one being an apothecary trying to cure magical diseases (specifically the one she's been afflicted with- vampirism, which multiclasses her into Berserker Barbarian- but that's just the one at the top of the list). Both Alchemist subclass, but I've seen some really fun Battle Smith builds from one of my tablemates.

2018 ? My goodness I thought you had played for more than 1 edition . Oh well , you still make valid points in your videos . Having started when it was called ' Chain Mail ' the basics are still the basics of Role Play . And since you favor Role Play over Roll Play I will continue to watch .

Don't worry, my first longform dnd character was also an edgy wood elf who multiclassed Druid with another class (both picked for the aesthetic), had issues with cannibalism in his backstory, and was written to be inherently opposed to the rest of the party but had to drop or hide a lot of it along the way. And also got some serious reworking for future campaigns. Still love ya, Dageru...

I think you would love Franny's feet, it was a kids show from the 2000's about a girl who lived with her grand dad who was a cobbler. She'd try on the customers shoes and go on an adventure related to the profession of the shoes

I like that your cat is Italo-Hispano-American.

1 year later, and I've just finding your video. Thank you, now I have some tools to fix my DnD urge alone. 🙏🏻

Usually my characters have a background. They are someone, come from a good family, etc. My current character. Has the Ruined background, a simic hybrid and is a refugee, per the DM. So we decided he was probably a noblemen, was taken prisoner by the evil forces, experimented on and tortured to the point he wants to forget his past life and now goes by the name Monty, short for monster. But dang, I will have some fun playing him.

I see a lot of parallels here to what I did with my first character. Most traits, items, and abilities were chosen purely for taste rather than because they were useful in the specific setting or campaign. I didn't go back on my decisions, but I felt the need to find explanations for why my character has this thing or can do this, etc., which eventually led to a more detailed backstory and the addition of more NPC relationships for the GM to work with.

This video inspires me to rebuild old characters for new campaigns. Too bad Dusk Blade as a class is effectively dead. I’d love to play as one again in 5E.

The rarity of elves reminds me of a home brew system I played where humans dominated. In character creation, we rolled a d4 to determine if you were non-human. If you rolled a one, you could choose non-human. After that, you kept rolling. The number of ones of ones you rolled in a row, determined what tables you could choose from. Magic users were also rare and required one on a d4, but there was no additional rolls.

i like your shirts pattern

You should reward the players for creating relationships, yes - but you also have to be careful because some players will try to use this to give themselves big perks... Like, when you said one has been hired to bodyguard another and gets a paycheck. That player now has a steady supply of gold coming in that the other player characters don't have - so, you have to either give all of them equal opportunities or risk other players feeling like you're favouring one. Some game systems actually have mechanics built into them to reward creating backstory relationships. These are worth borrowing into any system that doesn't.

This is interesting. I want to say, hopefully without being rude, that I kind of did have a "who's Aisling and why she special" kind of attitude for those videos (part might have been jealousy because my characters are all my favorites and deserve videos that I'm not willing or able to make) So here we have, character progression? for Aisling or Ginny? Where are the lines!!?

Randomly generated fan fiction?