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Silverwing and Sheepstealer are to young to die of old age during Aegon's reigned and the masters did not have a way to kill them, my theory is that the Cannibal ate them and that we will learned about silverwing's fate in F&B vol 2 and about sheepsrealer in a song of ice and fire, the cannibal did not fight any important dragon this theory wluld make it happen, then if it gets injured he could die or go somewhere to sleep for 150 years

The Oakes Bucket of Muldaina: other artifacts pail in comparison!

Your Videos are hidden gems!

That's pretty cool advice on how to combine two things I love. Thank you, sir - you just earned a sub.

We are all George R.R. Martin! I have a metric ton of lofty unfinished work all around me!

good video, great advice and guidance, I am a big fan of sandbox as DM or player, I think it makes a very different and better game, players feel the thrill of exploration

Great video! Overly Sarcastic Productions, www.youtube.com/@OverlySarcasticProductions, is one of my favorite channels that details weird historical and mythical hijinks I can add to D&D games!

Great content, and great approach. But I find this to be the least helpful video, because you missed the first step in this process - finding a historical event to convert. How the heck do you even stumble across something like the War of the Bucket to begin with? This assumes a lot of knowledge of history, which is great for people with a historian background, but for average people, I think a process for locating these gems in history would have been very valuable. That said, I do love the Fall of Civilizations podcast and have drawn events from there for my campaign, but I think this particular advice on hooks is missing that first step of locating a historical event to adapt.

I love using real world in D&D; the religious lore in D&D is convoluted and lame - so I threw Christianity in and suddenly, all religious lore can be tied together. Astral plane with "dead gods?" Thats because they arent the alpha and omega, duh! EZ Lore

At my table, the PCs greatest call to action centers around the local brothel: the Shivering Monk Inn.

thank you

Thanks for posting, this is inspiring content!

This video spurred my imagination like few ever do. Kepp it up!

I had to Google this one: just discussing it at all is entertaining. Lol Re the Great Molasses Caper (LOL) maybe it really was a "mundane" event, as in, it was really molasses and there wasn't really anything else magical to it, BUT the characters are part of the team that must investigate and bring "the culprit" to justice. What happens when the pc investigators tell the mayor that all that really happened was the tank was poorly designed/not properly maintained. A more "Prof DM" approach: the PCs were dealing with something completely unrelated to molasses (perhaps a Veiled Society style investigation, end this is a show down with bad guys. Whatever). A big fight breaks out between the PCs and the Bad Guys. The combat just happens to be in the immediate vicinity of this giant tank. The people involved might not even be aware of it. One thing leads to the next, fire breaks out, an explosion happens, and whoosh! Maybe the PCs were merely watching from the next building, but they were there: "35 people died, sire. Here are your molasses killers". This could be usedvin so many creative ways.

Billiards is competitive though, and rpgs are not. If the players all want the same goal then there's no meaningful impact they can make. At best they'll taunt each other for missed shots and proceed to complete the game with no fanfare. At worst they'll die of boredom.

I too use notion to run my campaigns, and would love to hear more about how you implement it

I've liberally stolen from historical events (weird history in particular) to frame my adventure plots. Two of my favorites by far were the dancing plague of Strasbourg in the 1500s where hundreds of people mysteriously danced for weeks, and the sleeping epidemic that took place in the 1920s which caused victims to fall comatose, sometimes for years. By the way, Bologna is pronounced "bo-lo-nya."

Thanks for this video. Always a pleasure to watch them!

Maybe it's not that the WotC writers don't know how to structure a story, but maybe it's that they don't know how to structure an RPG?

I love this channel. Such good guidance with specific examples of how to prime your imagination and games.

Excellent topic! I had a world I worked on and my friend remarked the political backstory between the nations felt very realistic. I had been watching a lot of European medieval history videos and Baron de Ropp videos, so it came together that way 😂 my struggle has always been retaining a fantastical feel to inspire-by-real-life aspects… too much IRL and my game is negatively impacted, too grounded and “gritty”. Love the advice presented here

The molasses reminds me of Todd Kendrick's gelatinous cube with 60 move and can dash.

I love this channel. I can’t wait for you to have a giant backlog of videos so I can binge them over and over.

You've been bringing a smile to this grognard for the last couple of days. Well done. Have you ever used the factions rules from the Games Without Number systems? I need to finish the video before commenting...

Clans using structured wars to settle disputes? BattleTech? BattleDwarf?

Players excel at finding conflict.

I'm loving your game collection as it's very similar to my D&D-esque games.

Good topic. My players would mostly hoard gold if I didnt come up with unexpected expenses.

W content

Is there a chance of you doing a notion video? I'm getting started working with it using the lazy dm template but I'm finding it difficult and I don't think that template is working for my style. I would greatly appreciate seeing how you do it as your content seems to stick better in my head.

Unconfirmed Contact Reports can be very useful as a guideline how to *steal* horrors from other sources. Several of the presented monsters and threats are directly riffing on Alien, Predator, the Thing, Sand Worm, SCPs, etc, etc. If running monsters directly from the reports you also get a lot of flavor to effortlessly throw at your players as handouts.

Of all the video games I've played, I keep coming back to Phantasy Star Online for my prep and worldbuilding

Thanks for the great video! The video game that inspires me most is Skyrim. Not necessarily because it's amazing at everything (it's pretty good) but because it actually makes me *want* to play the game! It doesn't bog me down in stats and class abilities and stuff, it just asks me my name then lets me loose to go chasing map markers for the next 1000 hours! Obviously, there is a certain minimum amount of mechanical complexity to a compelling fantasy tabletop game (you can't always just Press A To Interact) but I do try to bring that freewheeling, Skyrim kind of Start New Game vibe to the table!

I started work on my hexcrawl a couple of years before Elden Ring, but after playing that game it gave me such an energy boost and lots of new inspiration for worldbuilding. One thing Elden RIng gave me is that slight repetition of core themes among the "random locations" scattered in the gameworld. Graveyards always having ghost gloveworts, catacombs always having a puzzle before opening the boss door, evergaol's always guaranteeing an optional boss fight, minor erdtrees always having crystal tears as loot, mines always having smithing stones etc. It gives the player a strong hint about what the location is gonna be about, and they can decide if they want to explore further or go somewhere else. If the player needs more ghost glovewort's they will be excited if they find a graveyard or catacomb, if not they just explore somewhere else. I love that kind of decision making in a hexcrawl. So I made a list of all the types of random "location categories" I want my game to have once I start generating content in my hexes. What I mean by "location categories" is a really zoomed out concept that I will create in further detail once I've generated it. And I also codified what type of general gameplay can be expected in each of these location categories. The gameplay of a five room dungeon is slightly different than a three room dungeon. Or a boss lair versus a faction encampent (one of the categories I stole straight from Elden Ring). It makes for a random generation method that is more consistent with my core themes, rather than having random tables that are too random and ultra specific.

Good video. I've thought that since launch, Elden Ring felt like an Old School DnD game, ESPECIALLY when you get into Caelid. It's almost like it becomes Mork Borg.

I hope more people find this channel, really good stuff here

Noice

Noice

Freaking LOVE Elden Ring. I've used it as the inspiration for the current campaign I am running. Campaign takes place 60 years after the conclusion of The Godwars, which saw 90% of all life completely wiped out. The gods have been sealed in the outer planes and the players are in a city that is something like a shantytown built atop the ruins of a once-great and highly technologically advanced civilization. The players are searching for fragments of gods who were shattered in the Godwars so they can unite them and stop a Blight that is slowly approaching the city. The campaign ends if they don't stop it on time. They have been given this task by the shattered remains of the patriarch of the pantheon. He has marked their souls so that he can bring them back when they die (if one of them dies, they all die within a few minutes). This isn't without cost, though, because it takes him more and more effort to bring them back each time they die, which translates to longer and longer in-game time passing between each death. The whole thing is a mashup of a West Marches-style hexcrawl with an epic Elden Ring story. There is one mega city that is generally safe for the players where they can rest and recover. As far as the characters and the citizens of the city know, they are the last of their kind in the world. There is no hope for outside help. The wilderness hexes get more dangerous the further you get form the city. We are using some homebrew rest and recovery mechanics to really make wilderness survival a challenge. I could go on and on. There is so much more to it. Lots of intrigue in the city with solo missions happening on a discord server. If you're interested in a more thorough breakdown, let me know and I'll try to post a Google drive link to some campaign documents or something.

How would you do this for a nautical pirates game where we would like to really have a sailing ship component heavily featured

I appreciate your videos. You have me aspiring to make a hexcrawl in future. Keep up the great work.

I've really enjoyed watching your videos! They are always very informative and have good ideas to pull from.

I never really understood the hexcrawl thing with just " a few spires and interesting tidbits" coming from a linear story like most D&D modules. But after a few hours of Elden Ring, I caught myself just going to places that looked cool that I could see or something that stands out. It really made sandboxes and hex crawls click to me.

Terrible advice. Video games are too limited in gameplay to ever compare to tabletop rpgs.

This is one of my favourite rpg channels, after seeing the billiards metaphor for RPGs I have been excited to see what comes next and as a die-hard fan of fromsoft I clicked immediately!!!

My advice for those unsure about running a game. 1. Nothing in your world is static. Everything can be moved to where it is needed. 2. Draw out the map as the players progress. This is typically how West March Campaigns are done. 3. Collaborate story telling. Get your players involved. 4. Be clear and communicate with one another. Boundaries should be discussed and if none come up, the game doesn't go forward. This is important so a session doesn't come to an abrupt halt do to some line being crossed that shouldn't have been. The third and fourth ones will be the more daunting because, and I'll catch flak, a lot of players are lazy and don't even bring a bare minimum of anything to the table. This is a game that requires communication, if you barely can have a conversation, how are you going to play?

I use notion for work and writing and D&D. I would love to see how you do your worldbuilding and campaign design in Notion.

Um... 30+ year GM. What is a "plot"? I only do Economy and Ecology. Everything else is the players. Reality happens, they react. Repeat.

I personally think you can easily have it both ways, just don't finish the campaign setting until you know what the player characters will be, so instead of including every fantasy race possible you only include the ones the players picked (and also the ones you personally enjoy). Nobody wants to play a dwarf? Then there's no dwarfs. So now you don't have to limit your players *and* you don't waste time thinking about a race your players don't even show any interest in. It also avoids just forcing your own personal tastes on the players, because for example in campaign prep when left entirely to my own devices I'd never include gnomes because I don't really like them much, but I wouldn't want to tell my players 'No Gnomes allowed' when I know the core reason I don't ever include them in my settings is purely because I just don't really like them.

Same thing for me. I do include halflings. Heavily influenced by the traditional Fantasy authors- Robert E. Howard, Tolkien, Moorcock,Leiber,etc. I run my my versions of Elves, ( including Drow), Dwarves ,Halflings, Half-elves, Humans. No half-orcs. Some of the other races may exist…. just not as PC’s. Mostly human, high fantasy, medieval world dropped into the Forgotten Realms setting.