Everybody Loves Zombies | Running The Game
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- čas přidán 28. 09. 2021
- A quick dive into why we need monsters in our games.
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#RunningTheGame #MattColville #MCDM - Hry
Matt, I started watching this series when I was in middle school. This week I began college as a creative writing major. Without this series I would never have discovered Dungeons and Dragons, DM’d for my friends (with varying degrees of success), or ever developed the courage to put my content out there for others to see and judge. This series inspired me to peruse my love of storytelling , and changed the trajectory of my life. Thank you.
That's awesome!
This is dope as hell.
Old feelings intensify
@@MCXL1140 my goodness, this was like a punch in the stomach. ;)
This is amazing. I started watching this in high school, and now I'm almost done with my masters, not in something that's super related but I don't care because I'm going to try to make game design, and maybe some writing, a career. No amount of schoolwork keeps me up until 2am because I simply must get my ideas out on paper. Inspiration for aspiration is a wonderful thing.
Spell list for the Dungeon Master class just expanded
- Orcs Attack
- Everybody Loves Zombies
Don't forget
-The clock is always ticking
Rocks fall
You hear (See... Feel...) an explosion
- Chase Them Up a Tree
- Light the Tree on Fire
"The Earth Elemental Steps On Your Head (to make sure you're dead)."
-Patented Colville Screw- Colville's Patented Screw
(Should have put this in D&D format originally, d'oh!)
“If you’re thinking about correcting me on that last sentence… i very strongly urge you not to.” Man i could feel the pure DM menace rolling off this sentence
"It is okay to kill a monster. In fact, it is a good thing to kill a monster"
Monsters Inc. just got real intense.
Imma roll up on the blue guy and the eyeball guy.
They opened the wrong door!
So do they count as like aberrations or...?
@@elijahdavila3684 They're from another plane of existence so there's at least some evidence for the position, yes
The Unicorn _is_ a Monster, just not for the side we typically align with.
I had kickass "evil" campaing with goblin PCs. "Evil" because it wasn' goblins' fault that Unicorn was tasty and had legendary actions on CR5, making him perfect boss for bunch of 3rd lvl characters
Also a good way of forcing a moral quandary for players (if your party likes that sort of thing; not all of them do)... a plague/poison is affecting a whole town, and the local Priest tells the PCs that they can cure the ailment, but they need the horn of a Unicorn. So do the PCs hunt down this creature of absolute good? Do they let the town die rather than risk the vengeance of the fey/a local Druid? Do they seek some other alternative means of getting the horn?
@@daveschrumpf8261 Or do they just find the unicorn and ask *it* to help :D
Ever wtched Super Natural :D That Unicorn was a dick :'D:'D:'D:'D
nah, evil Unicorns can and should exist in more settings
Can the MCDM “monster” book be called Colville’s Creature Compendium?
Ooh, Compendium rhymes with MCDM. That's satisfying.
Mattholomews monsters
Matt Colville's Monster Compendium.
MCMC
@@Yora21 MMMMMM SATISFYING
This whole thread is delicious!
11:38 "I could easily run a campaign where the world is overrun by demons, and devils, and undead... I do not think that game would ever get boring."
This is just Diablo, but in D&D.
I'm with it; a gritty dungeoncrawling campaign with a ton of magic items in the style of Diablo.
Grimhollow calls to you
I ALMOST SAID "Diablo, basically" but I couldn't remember if you ever fought "Evil Humans."
@@mcolville Oh my goodness, the man himself replied to my comment! I'm honoured.
Thanks for getting me into D&D, by the way. I would never have picked up this hobby (or had a place to put all of my weird monsters and locales) without these videos showing up in my recommendations a few years back.
Heck, back in 2nd or 3rd edition (both, I think), there were Diablo D&D supplements. Guides for adventuring through their areas, monster stat blocks, rules for generating random magic items according to the game's style, and even a secret ultra-hard cow level.
@@mcolville I’m pretty sure there were at least some evil humans, but they were cultists and you were pretty sure they were just as evil as the demons.
I seem to remember fighting an angel in Diablo 3, but I think they were somehow supporting the demons and/or actively trying to stop you from saving the world.
"No such thing as a Mind Flayer that is your friend" .. oh why, Clarota... Clarence! :'(
@@Dave-xe3yi Sign me up.
@@Dave-xe3yi There is also Fred from D&D: Online, he's one of the more interesting NPCs in Stormreach
You beat me to it 😅
@@Dave-xe3yi Does he literally suck the bad thoughts out of their head?
@@Dave-xe3yi [Ah, I see you have developed a severe trauma from this memory. Let me help you with that.]
*OM NOM NOM NOM* [There, your trauma has been cured. Please try not to think about it, as your brain will try to look for a part that literally isn't there, and it will cause you pain.]
I simply HEARD about the face hugger and chest-bursting scene when I was a kid (from my uncle) and I didn't sleep for, like, 11 years.
Yeah, now you just need to worry about the real stuff, like 3 foot long worms in your water supply and flys that lay eggs in your skin.
I never have seen Alien but I did have nightmares for most my childhood by seeing this scenes parody in Spaceballs. Spaceballs gave a nightmares.
Matt “Don’t @ Me” Colville
"Don't M@ Me" Colville.
@@carlfishy fuck… you’re way cleverer than I. I hang my head in shame. 👑
@@DMDMStudios No, do not hang your head. Look upon it. Gaze into it. And learn from it that you might do it better next time. :)
Matt: *Talks about how to use factions over species in TTRPGs*
CZcams: Ah yes, you're playing World of Warcraft
Back up a few years to everquest.
@@SAC2116 People old enough to want to back it up to EQ are usually old enough to understand that factions over species isn't a uniquely video gamey situation lol
This fills a huge hole that I’ve felt for a long time in how I consider my games, especially the part about creating a balance between unambiguous and ambiguous encounters. Thanks.
I did this to my players a bit back. I kept giving them moral choices and missed how few and far between the clear "this thing is bad and should be killed" moments were. We had the paladin rolling initiative while the party was shouting "wait! She can be rehabilitated!". Good times...
08:00 "This is Anne Orc"
shit, now I can't let my players kill Orcs anymore, thanks...
"Anne Of Orc Gables"
Go get your crossbow, Annie Orcley!
@@perryholley6005 See Dermeister, now it's ok to kill them all again. Thanks Perry! :D
Annie, are you orc-kay?
@@a.morphous66 Are you... *checks clip-board* Orc K. Annie?
I slaughtered them like animals, even the womgoblins and the chilblins.
I seem to remember one of our players using a catapult to splatter Orc babies against a wall. I suspect that is a war crime by today's standards.
@@manfredconnor3194 I suspect that's just a war crime for any civilized world, homie.
@@RashidMBey Oink!
Great advice. I think the a world where there are no unambiguously evil "zombie" factions could be compelling for many TTRPG systems, but a monster-fighting focused game like D&D does kind of need a guilt-free "dart board" for the players to target. It can be surprisingly easy to leave a zombie faction out of world design too, especially if the overarching campaign conflict is more of a grim situation or natural disaster than a conquering BBEG w/ minions, but for a D&D style system, indulging in periodic sessions of guilt-free monster-slaying is kind of necessary to prevent ethical fatigue creeping into the main gameplay loop and diluting the fun.
Yeah, for sure. Although in many of those games that don't need pure evil are games in which the players are in some form evil themselves. Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, the World of Darkness (either one) all have that, but even they still have SOMETHING usually....
Factions are great because you can diversify the members of that faction a lot. A faction can have any combo of animals, humanoids, equipment, and tactics
Yay more Matt - we love you man - would it be possible to do a running the game on how to end a long running campaign ???
someone asked him that in a twitch stream and his answer was basically “no idea, i’ve never done that before”
“Rocks fall, everybody dies.”
If you don't care about spoilers, you can check out the endings (by which I mean the epilogues) of campaign 1 & 2 of Critical Role. They have a different feel but wrap up characters in specific ways.
Yes Matt has said in streams that he's only ever "ended" 1 or 2 campaigns himself so he lacks the advice for a video.
The key is build up. The players should know a good few weeks/months in advance that the BBEG or battle that they're leading up to is the big finale. Go out with all the bells and whistles and close off all the major story threads. Its so dependant on campaign to campaign, but its like a novel in this regard (where DnD usually isn't), it should stay true to the theme of the campaign. If your campaign is super dark and has a lot of PC death then everyone dying in the end is a completely acceptable outcome. If you're running a high epic fantasy power trip campaign then it would definitely go down like a sack of shit.
In the campaign setting I designed roughly 4 years ago, (a friend at work asked me to run a d&d campaign for her and some others) that I still run now, my original voracious monster species were Orcs. They are, in my setting naturally aggressive and violent; only respect strength and revel in bloodshed and torture. I took my inspiration from Tolkien for them and it wasn't difficult to extrapolate this out. The reasoning behind their unrelenting wickedness was an ancient curse they were under. Since my players 3 years later have done the job of lifting that curse, they haven't yet had to adjust to the world where orcs could be reasoned with. Now they are split into factions, just as you described here and I'm looking forward to the players adjusting to it. A big thanks to you Matt for providing excellent DM support for my game and many others who you've helped all these years. It wouldn't have been nearly as easy or fun without your input.
I run games with just Monsters. My players aren't keen on moral quandaries, they like to just smash things and Im fine running that game because its fun letting the players kill things and telling them 'goodjob' then giving them tons of gold that they inevitably never use but it doesnt matter they just like having it. It's a simple game i know but they have fun, i have fun and that's all that matters.
Speaking of tons of gold that never gets used, consider the possible complications that might arise from having a massive hoard of gold if you were in Tolkien's universe.
*whispers*: dragons
Too much gold? Make the group in charge of a small keep. They must pay for hirling's and use their wealth to prop up a local community. There will be at least one or two players that will love being nobles :O
@@mjnior thanks but I don't really need advice, my players just like having gold, they for the most part don't care about any sort of verisimilitude, they just like hunting monsters and getting cool magic items like 90% of the time, every once in a while they check out something and that's when I open up the world for them.
@@aaron2187 and that is totally cool 👍
@@aaron2187 A regular party of dragons
Unambiguous bad guys. This is the lesson that took me the longest to learn, and I still struggle with. Gotta step back and not try to create some humane spark in a battered enemy every battle. It becomes such baggage for the players.
That and they don't want a 10 minute history on a river.
Great video.
Can I play in your game? *I* want a 10 minute history of a river....
Someone is channeling Tolkien every time they sit down.
Villians can have nuances because you get a lot of time to know and struggle against them, or try to convince them, even redeem them, before they stop being villians and either become heroes, history, or a corpse.
But good unambiguous monsters are essential to even a game full of nuances because if I am being forced to smash something to death with a hammer I want to know I'm not a violent thug for doing it. In the classic "Wargames" sense, if the D&D campaign is too fraught with moral landmines then the only correct move is not to play--and not in the snotty sense, but if everything I do makes things worse then the most heroic thing I can do is admit I'm not helping and hang up my smiting hammer.
I have a friend who was a DM and did the classic "You come across the goblin nursery deep in the caves" situation and I spitefully just torched the whole place because I wanted to push back on it. If the book says "always chaotic evil" and my character has grown up knowing goblins only as peasent-murdering sadistic wildlife then I'm not being evil if I torch them. I'm providing pest control. I as a player do not know if goblins can grow up to be good--I hadn't met any goblin NPCs that did anything other than kidnap people, work for evil wizards, and try to kill me. Maybe they cannot. Does my character know differently? I asked what my holy character would think before I did it too. I just think my refusal to engage in post-hoc nuance shocked him.
Goblins and Orcs really shouldn't be listed as "always evil" in setting documents if they're humanlike enough that you start asking if they're innately evil or just raised that way. As soon as something is 'evil' because it was taught to be you've already plunged too deep into moral complexity for it to be a monster.
@@neilwickman Honestly I've never really seen the point of including nurseries and so on within adventures. I guess it's realistic if you invade a lair that the warriors will have kids and mates there, but from a gaming perspective you're just asking for trouble if you place that encounter. At best, everyone is on the same page (whether it's "they're innocents, we'll just ignore them and tell them to get out" or "they're irredeemably evil, let's butcher them all" comes to the same thing) and it wastes time on a "NOP" encounter; at worst you have the players get into a shouting match for the next 30 minutes. I won't say it's never appropriate - I can see a use for it in something like Vampire where you want a moral dilemma (after all, if you play Vampire 'as intended' instead of 'superheroes with fangs' the way that my group and I do, moral dilemmas are to Vampire what killing orcs is to D&D). But throwing it in just to fill up an otherwise empty room is short sighted, IMO.
@@neilwickman Depends on the race.
Gnolls are evil because Yeeohngu has influence over every one of them. They are hard-wired to be destructive and gluttonous. Some may be strong enough of will to resist, but few of those would probably make it out of the pack alive to begin with.
There are also varying degrees of evil. A mob boss who deals in illegal imports and drugs could also be the only person keeping the streets of the city devolving into rampant chaos. He might see himself as a lesser of two evils.
A goblin might be "Chaotic Evil" simply because they do not think about (or care about) the consequences of their actions. They don't seek the death of others, but if they end up killing someone, they might have an "oh well" mindset.
Alignment is objective in the world of D&D. There are cosmic planes of existence based upon alignment. To put real world ambiguity and nuance into that system is not using it as intended.
Your advice to make a setting filled with several conflicting factions, but one "Always Hostile" faction reminds me of Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.
Funny, because Matt was a writer on it
I wonder why...
Ahahaggagaga
When he read this script on stream the other day he actually used Mercenaries in his example; but it looks like for the final he replaced them with orcs and humans etc.
I loved that game so much! Makes me happy to know that Matt was part of making it happen
I have been running a game with my best friends for about 3 years. The heroes navigate factions with conflicting goals, straddle the middle ground between law and chaos, protecting their loved ones from their dangerous occupations -
But the setting has a central conflict of demonic invasion, through portal networks gone awry. No matter how heavy or morally grey things get, I can always deploy a mission to clear out some demons, and it is always a good thing to kill them. I got this advice from Matt's livestreams a few years ago, and it's great to see it again canonized in RTG!
Sounds like the plot of The Plutonia Experiment.
First game with a new group 3 months ago, remembered you bringing this up before and so the first encounter was two ogre zombies and the players agreed that the person controlling them was not a good person (correct) and they needed to set free the zombies.
It became a whole thing, Matt. Undead, definitive abominations of the world, were basically wild creatures devoid of morals and thus, shouldn't be held to our descriptions of evil. EVEN WHEN THEY FOUND A WRATH they tried talking it out of combat.
🤦♂️🤷♂️
You just gotta tell them straight up why there is no good in letting zombies and the like live. Sometimes there is no better way than just spelling it all out.
Make it so when you kill the zombies, their spirit comes out of the zombie and says "Thank youuuu" before floating away. Now if they don't kill the zombie, they are also being mean to the zombie.
I gotta say, those players are absolutely playing on the 'Good' end of their alignment spectrum and it's okay to let them repeatedly try to talk it out with an undead murdering abomination! Not everything needs to be their friend once they liberate it, but I don't see a reason to punish players for being overly optimistic. Players aren't the characters in a narrative that we see played out, they're interacting so unless you're trying to "teach" them not to act a certain way for some certain reason, there's no reason to punish that.
I often find worlds that want to make me feel bad for 'noble' choices to be exceedingly frustrating to engage with. Like, if I free a monster and it's just a monster and it tries to eat me, okay, that's inconvenient for me, but I don't feel bad. I hate when I do something and later a town is murdered and they say I'm a bad person because I didn't know (as a player) what they think I should have known. That's just annoying and unfun.
So yeah, look, if your players are trying to be the noble light of the world, please let them. Make it so the bad shit happens TO THEM when they do that, not to like... innocents, because unless you want the players and characters to become grim, there's no way to steer them into grimness. If you do want that though then you should have explained it upfront, in which case yeah, a grim world of grim grimness can be fun IF you know that GRIMMITUDE is the aesthetic.
@@nonuvurbeeznus795 This is a brilliant approach. In your pitch, killing zombies is good for everyone - including the innocent people whose souls were chained to unholy, lifeless husks against their will.
You can also encourage players to kill the zombies by making it so zombies automatically corrupt the area around them. That way, it's dangerous to allow any zombie to exist for any amount of time.
When I was 6, I was taken to see the Great Santini. My grandmother thought it was going to be about a magician, not an emotionally and physically abusive fighter pilot. Good time.
When I was 6, my mother took my sister and I to see Sharkey's Machine. I mean it had that nice Burt Renoylds in it and we all love Cannonball Run, right?
@@tombolger9373 Best movie stunt of all time.
funny but this is exactly why it was later released in the US as "The Ace" - your Grandmother wasn't the only one who thought it was about a magician.
I saw Aliens at age 8. My grandpa had recorded Aliens and Flight of the Navigator on the same tape. So when I asked to watch Flight of the Navigator, he looked through his card catalog, found which tape had it, and popped it in. Then went off to do something else.
"Humans are a xenophobic, hegemonizing swarm"
"I'm perfectly okay with making super-alien creatures unambiguously evil"
I mean, I AGREE, but now I'm looking at my latest Stellaris game and doing a double-take.
Just look what the Beta Aliens did to the UNE colony Europa VII! Those Xenos only deserve the apocalypse!
Stellaris is to space opera what Dwarf Fortress is to fantasy.
@@Vaasref Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy torture simulator... it gives the bestest of kinks.
I love GalCiv's take on humans. We're the galaxy's best diplomats, but most of the galaxy doesn't realize that that's because we had to _become_ that to make peace among humans. After that, diplomacy with other species was easy by comparison.
czcams.com/video/O1CQ7Vwz8Eo/video.html it's really the only way to play
Love the advice here, feels like a spiritual successor to the "Orcs Attack" video. Good work as always
I think Matt’s strong points is he is a story teller above all, and I think his best running the game videos use stories to get his point across, I feel like that was something we were missing over Covid. But now that Matt is running dnd again he’s more able to use stories and ideas from his game. For me personally i really like that and I’m glad to see it happening more and more
New Dael and new Colville in the same afternoon? Excellent!
Factions. Absolutely the perfect way to set up quests,alliances and foes for a party of Adventures. Right now in my Homebrew, there are 8 different Factions pulling on the Players even though they don't realize a few of them as such.
I love the dungeon dudes' approach to making factions feel real. Basically you have 2 NPCs: the leader that expresses the most extreme beliefs and pitfalls of the faction, and the 2nd in command who's a lot more "normal" but still has a reason to be there.
As I have moved to less prep I have moved from nations and factions to NPCs. Rather than spend hours creating a country I just creat me the king, rather than spend hours fleshing out a thieves guild I just flesh out the guild boss. NPCs are representative and relationships between factions are the relationships between the boss npcs
Ok so petetion to rename the "Monster Manual" to "Creature Catalogue."
Nah Compendium doesn't roll off as easy. Too many syllables.
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 honestly i’d rather a departure from alliteration. maybe something like “Monsters (and other things)”
maybe not serious enough
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 But “catalogue” sounds like they’re for sale
Beings Book
As a Person (not just player) who loves Non-human/Monster characters I super appreciate this video. It also offers some advice about factions I never considered before.
One of my focus points, "Context matters." The players should be given context to a situation and not shoved on stage without anything to work with.
If you have an encounter in the woods, have a reason that encounter is there other than to run into the players.
Love the Alien bit at the beginning. Ever since I saw it in college, it's been my favorite movie of all time. Like Matt said, the Xenomorph is the perfect monster, and Alien is the perfect horror movie.
"A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility
I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."
I'd expected Colville to discuss the Nazis from Indiana Jones in the section of the video that was about factions. They're a "faction", a group of people, that you can kill and absolutely not feel sorry for them at all. D&D needs a faction like Nazis to make the players feel good about killing them.
B&D had them for years. But then they become "cool" and get adopted into the PC class system. Orcs, kobolds, goblins, dark elves, kenku...all of them migrated from Monster Manual to Players Handbook. They are the fashion, and just as likely as an elf or dwarf in the party. "Normalization" of "monster races" is a really interesting part of the hobby to me, though it does force us to constantly re-invent the new "zombie" faction, I find. That said: your world/setting/table. Any group can be the zombies if you and your table agree they are.
You mean like Greyhawk's Scarlet Brotherhood? I mean, even their heraldry implies the connection (a four-armed, wavy-pointed black star on a red background).
Or like the classic version of Thay from the Forgotten Realms?
@@glennb9129 Meh. Like I pointed out to Levi, define your "monsters" by their behavior, not by their species.
Red wizards of thay?
@@glennb9129 Did you watch the video? Species shouldn't determine alignment amongst humanoids; faction should.
"Might makes right... another way of saying they are of the evil alignment" 🤙🏼 that's deep for a throw away quote. 👏🏽
For real he was throwing some shade
Perfect timing! I was just looking for something to watch over lunch. Thanks for continuing to put out great content Matt!
Mosquitoes are the Monsters of the real world.
Mosquitoes, wasps, parasites that blind you, and, arguably, wild boars. The world *does* have *some* monstrous species.
From their perspective they just borrow a tiny drop of our blood to feed their babies. It’s not their fault we get malaria and Zika
@@VeganStories they don't have a perspective, they don't even really have brains. The ecosystem would not suffer in their absence.
They are the enemy of man.
@@bradweigand5794 roaches.
In that case you probably want to drop some Stirges into your game.
That monster's frightful presence has been deconstructed so much through parodies and other media, especially through memes the last decade. A different world. Good content mr Matt.
I love this video! It’s always cool finding out more and more about Matt and his experiences in the past, and seeing how they subtlety shape him today. I definitely see the inspiration behind Matt’s signature, “Orcs attack!”, coming from seeing “Everybody loves zombies” on a business card. Great work Matt, once again I love your content
Forget Zombies; everybody loves Matthew Colville! Your videos are an ongoing inspiration and always delightfully entertaining. Thank you for all your hard (even if you make it look easy) work ☺️
LOVED this nuanced take on "monsters" and factions. Placing at the forefront of our game worlds that one example of a creature or species is not the same as others seems like it can really help add depth and realism in addition helping us all remember that generalizations are failures to understand and think deeply about something.
Unless it's zombies.
I'm so glad to be having regular RtG uploads. Truly pleased that you have taken your time to do it safely as well. I've missed the sagely advice and your unmistakable cadence. Thanks Matt and team. Good to see you again.
Shane Lacey Hensley was one of my first inspirations as a writer. Hearing his name again threw me back to my youth and reading about the world of Bloodshadows.
You're one of my favorite game designers and DMs. I don't always agree with your stances on things but this video is tight... excellent. One thing I think people leave out of the argument for malevolent species such as orcs or goblins is the possibility of divine corruption. I always assumed that whatever Evil deity created goblins, for example, did so in a way that made them enjoy cruelty and be void of empathy. In the old lore Lolth took elves and actively altered their nature, made them more like the illithids you mentioned.
My dad took 12 year old me and 10 year old brother to see 1982's Conan the Barbarian. Yeah. He was shocked. I was pleased.
"What is best in life?"
"Take your progeny to an R-rated film, feel the utter shock and horror, and hear the gleeful laughter of your children."
That was great advice, and thanks for the kind words, Matt. I enjoy your show immensely. :) The other part of "Everyone loves zombies!" means that "if there are zombies, there is magic," and I believe some element of magic or the supernatural is crucial to the kinds of games we make. Part of that is the simple commercial appeal that magic allows--different kinds of characters, loot, fantastic beasts and monsters, etc. The other part is a bit deeper. Without writing an essay here on a CZcams Comment line, I mostly make pseudo historical games, and feel like an element of the fantastic grants us an "escape hatch" from the immersive, sometimes heavy, realities we otherwise attempt to explore. Happy trails, friends!
I think I needed this video. Currently in my campaign they have not fought a single monster, and there is always a question whether they should have killed the enemy. I need to change that, and this video brought it to my attention. Thanks again Matt
Early this week, I was wondering what I was allowed to throw mindlessly at my players, and they be allowed to kill it unquestionably. Basically came up with undead, demons, devils, (great minds think alike) and most constructs. And after a conversation about fallen angels the other day, I'm starting to think it can actually be a little bit morally ambiguous with demons and devils.
Thanks for the perfectly timed video Matt! Great advice, as always. Gonna start cooking up factions to flesh out my world.
Since demons and devils are basically by definition creatures of undiluted evil, there really is no reason to morally object to killing them.
Damn Arcadia 8 and a video today? Life is good ❤️
Matt is a river to his people.
I loved this video. Thank you for taking the time to make it!
Engagement for the youtube god!
Also, you’re the one who first inspired me to make factions important in my games and setting! K&W also gave me a ton of tools to make them even more interactive and cool! Thank you for all the amazing advice and content!
A friend of mine once said "a monster is whatever the dm is running, a npc is a monster, a monster is a npc"
Holy crap, this solves SO many problems I've been having with world building. I've been trying to sus out for a long time how to handle drow in my world in such a way that maintains them as cool spider crazed scheming antagonists without running straight into racism problems. Factions makes SO much sense for handling that cleanly.
One of my favorite books series solves the problem by having all elves simply be the same race. What common folk think of as "elves" are simply one faction. What people think of as "dark elves" look practically identical to "typical" elves, but with different manner of dress and savage hatred in their eyes. The dark elves worship an evil god, and it twists their soul. It's possible for a dark elf to "return," turning away from the evil god and joining the "typical" elves. Once they've returned, they look just like any other elf. There's no such thing as a "good" dark elf, because once they turn good, they're no longer dark.
You could do the same thing. Drow are evil and worship Lolth. An elf that turns away from Lolth is no longer a drow. Take race out of it entirely. It never made sense for the elves that stay away from sunlight to be the ones with the darkest skin anyhow.
With Drow, it can help to really focus on the themes of them being a wealthy, powerful civilization with an unjust hierarchy built on slavery, torture, murder, and decadence. All this even before you get into the corrupt theocracy in thrall to a demon goddess. They are, in many ways, a mirror of Real World feudal and ecclesiastic power structures.
It's less bad because it's not punching down. The drow you're fighting aren't the drow commoners, scarcely higher on the food chain of drow society than the non-drow slaves. Those poor folks mostly never leave the Underdark cities. They're as much prisoners of the system as anyone. No, the drow you fight are those in the comfortable middle or upper tiers of the hierarchy, for whom the system is very rewarding, so long as they do any underhanded or vile act to maintain it.
Which means while there's probably some moral quandary in killing a random drow that's just trying to make ends meet, you're probably okay killing drow of the upper class or their middle bracket enforcers. Their class interests mean they would never be persuaded to NOT be evil or hostile. They will never willingly betray the hierarchy, even if it means killing, torturing, or enslaving people. (Plus, to many drow in positions of power, the ability to kill, torture, and enslave is a perk of having that power). Betraying individual members of that hierarchy, sure, because drow society fosters duplicity and ambition. But never the system as a whole.
@@DrLipkin the original reasoning for Drow being dark was as a boon hunting in the low light/dark caves, they were originally significantly smaller also, making them more agile/sneaky, but that stuff kinda fell away as they became stereotyped as a more civilised/authoritarian evil faction
Also that's just generally what the Drow are, elves that followed Lolth, they're functional a subrace because of the 'ancient past' aspect of how dnd typically handles it's history
@@DrLipkin I've been doing this since 2nd edition. I never liked the drow; they always smacked of a Villain Sue race of adversaries (they have high-level magic items you can't loot!) and the black skin never made sense to me. In Dragonlance, "dark elves" were just elves who turned to evil, and in Raymond Feist's Midkemia novels (based on his friend's D&D game) the dark elves were one of the four main elven factions but they lived in the forest in tribes and sometimes organized orcs and goblins into raiding hordes. I based my dark elves on those two sources.
@@digitaljanus Feist's novels were the books I was talking about.
Getting all of these running the game videos back to back is the highlight of my life rn.
Hi Matt, Stardookie here. I once played a Neutral Good Mindflayer named "Jasmine!" She was disguised as a female high elf, and worked as a flutist in a tavern band similar to the one in the Mos Eisley Cantina! She had taken a vow of denial similar to the oath taken by some of the black-ribboner vampires in the Discworld novels, and refused to eat the brains of sapient creatures! xD
Great video btw!
Although not a term attached to mechanics like "creature" the book does indeed define monster and I'd say this video basically supports the definition. Matt's pretty sharp so I imagine using the unicorn as an example isn't arbitrary.
"A monster is defined as any creature that can be interacted with and potentially fought and killed. Even something as harmless as a frog or as benevolent as a unicorn is a monster by this definition."
My boyfriend runs a campaign where undead are more like property of the rich. Necromancy is a gentleman’s art and so destroying one is destruction of property.
Ooh, interesting idea!
Always a treat to have a new video from you. This one just seemed to hit me in an extra special way, very well written, insightful, and wide spreading. Looking forward to next one.
"They believe 'might makes right' which is another way of saying they're evil." Great stuff!
Great video! I've been heading towards Factions-over-Species in my games already but hearing it articulated so clearly really cements the idea (and reassures me I was on the right track).
Leaving this comment to feed the algorithm, but also to say 'thanks' for Good Advice.
Great Advice! This gets right to the heart of the "moral ambiguity" controversy and provides a great workable solution for GameMasters, Designers, and Players. Thank you for all you do #WellPlayed
7:38 I love how gentle yet firm he is when making moral statements like this. I've noticed it in a couple videos now. I think it's important to correct and rebuke bad behavior without being antagonistic, because doing that tends to make people dig in their heels even if they start to suspect their position is wrong. Unleashing righteous wrath may feel good (kind of the thesis of this video) but it won't convert anyone. In any case, almost all the people you may disagree with aren't monsters no matter how much you dislike their point. Monsters tend not to bother arguing.
Just like to shout out the awesome writing of Matt's videos. Very well put together. Thanks for content!!!
Love the message of the video, but want to take a second to say it looks great! Very clean and Matt really pops out from the background.
This video reminds me of a conversation I had with my players. For the game their one request was morally unambiguous bad guys. But one of them also is playing a drow cleric that would like to redeem, or aid in redeeming, the drow and they wanted to know how I would resolve it. The solution is simple and I told them so. "Drow Society, as directed by their goddess, is topped with all the betrayal and hate you see. Advancement in their society encourages it. But aside from the people playing that monstrous game, most people are just people trying to get by in a society run by those rules."
I find it works well for many of the races D&D says is evil because "their leadership" or "their god" is evil and forces it. Sure, the people at the top, the system might be...but the majority of people? They're just people. Sure they have biases. Sure they were raised a certain way. Sure they've consumed a lot of propaganda. But most folks are just folks.
In my last campaign, I had a player whose character vehemently REFUSED to attack anything I threw at the party. This included non-sentient monsters that have literally only one desire in all of existence and that is to KILL. Scarecrows that kidnap people in the night, gargantuan monstrosities fueled by an endless hunger, even undead hordes. This character never so much as cast an offensive cantrip at any of them. It infuriated the party (and myself), both in character and out, because at the end of the day D&D is a combat-focused game. At some point, you're going to have to fight something for some reason. I wish I had this video back then to throw at them.
That's frustrating. It sounds like they weren't there to play D&D. Were you ever able to resolve that?
If you hate combat, d&d is not the game system for you. I have to constantly suggest to new players that they be very clear what they want out of a game before we settle on a system to play. And if they don't want to fight things then I throw half the systems off the list immediately.
Disruptive character concepts should be thrown out immediately. It's easier to say than do I guess when you're the one that's there with the person.
I would at the very least ask them to play a character that won't KILL but to be some weird conscientious objector pacifist type that won't fight to defend themselves or even their friends doesn't fit the genre of heroic fantasy at all. If he hates killing so much why are all of his friends mercenaries? It doesn't make sense why he would even associate with those people...
@@Julian_The_Apostate Something like this happened to me in a campaign I'm in at the moment. I rolled a Lawful Good cleric because I liked the idea of exploring what Lawful Good Cleric means in a world where you're running around killing monsters. He wasn't a pacifist, but he did have a very strong moral code. Problem was, everyone else had shown up to the game with a murder hobo. After about three hours of play, my character had a crisis of faith that his God had even asked him to travel with these maniacs, and he wandered off into the forest never to be seen again.
Next session I introduced a morally ambiguous halfling (with a large scoop of kender) monk, and we all had much more fun as a result.
Could you throw such a player into a supporter or controller role, like a healer/buffer cleric or a wizard or druid who focuses on defensive and battlefield altering spells? I.e. even if they themselves don't want to attack anything would they be okay with helping the other PCs fight or at least with preventing other PCs from harm like a conscientious objector? Has anyone ever experienced this?
There are actually good Mindflayers in dnd Canon, I'm pretty sure. I know there is one in Baldur's Gate 3. If they manage to break free of the Elder Brain, they are very free to chose a more benevolent life.
Just wanted to say this is great timing, because I almost died in a car accident earlier today and your videos always cheer me up. Thank you, Matt.
Yikes, hope you're Ok!
It's videos like this which remind me what I loved so much about Mercenaries. The North Koreans functioned in the same way as zombies there.
The zero-sum game of competing factions reminds me of a Ken Levine GDC talk. I watched this years ago so take my recollection with a grain of salt. In the talk, Mr. Levine discusses a faction system very similar to yours as a way to provide dynamic and realistic content that is mechanically meaningful and not horrendously taxing on the dev team.
For anyone who wants to look it up, it's called "Ken Levine On 'Narrative Lego'".
"if you're thinking about correcting me in that last sentence, I very strongly urge you not to"
I felt that...
Thank you for the wonderful video! I am on a short DM hiatus to rest myself and these videos help spark creativity.
If you wanted to keep it alliterative without using “Monster” in the title, you could call it the “Creature Compendium”
I love that Pathfinder uses Bestiaries.
Excuse my french.
Holy shit Matt, you took an incredibly complicated topic and succinctly and expertly crafted not only an explaination of the nuanced problems in the area but also some practical advice for avoiding those pitfalls. That's stunning. absolutely fucking outstanding. This is in my eyes an unoffical response to the 'why evil races are bad game design' video from Extra credits that went down so poorly.
I am toying with making a playlist of 'Required reading for Rookie game designers' and almost every single running the game video is definitely going on it. (My memory fails me there might be a few ones which are too specifically about dnd.) You good sir are quite possibly the highest authority on Based game design takes and I respect the hell out of you.
Man, such a good analysis. So well-said. A lot of these ideas have been percolating in my mind for years, some crystallizing pretty well, but others just bubbling on by… Thanks for this: it’s helped the crystallization process immensely and made me really excited to engage all the more at my table.
Happy to see how this resolved! Plus, great video.
I just acknowledge that in medieval esq fantasy everybody's monsters. The humans are monsters sometimes, the elves, the dwarves, lizard folk, orcs. Pobody's Nerfect, evil is where you stand, morality is based on the perspective of the participant, heroes are GREAT, not necessarily GOOD, from our point of view. I also work from the idea that while you can reason with an orc, they are looking at the world through a lens where you are potentially food, and where killing you being wrong is just not on their moral radar. They just aren't wired for guilt, or pity in the way humans are, they'd find the concept that people might be conflicted killing them very strange. The species and races and whatever in fantasy land are a bunch of aliens as different to us as bears, budgies, and bees. A bear might love you, but the version of that feeling it feels won't necessarily preclude it from eating you if things go south in your relationship. And that's okay, you just have to remember that it's a bear, and not confuse it for a human. (Likewise the bear has to try to remember that to its human friend, love can often mean collars, locks, leashes, and control, and navigate that with wariness and caution. Don't even get me started on dragons. Intelligent apex predators are like cats in a world of mice. Is it evil to eat a mouse if you're a cat? Maybe, but you are a cat, so you will do what you need to do.)
This is the species conflict, peace between them is harder than between different humans, because while humans are functionally all the same deep down, these other guys have different things driving them. Orcs need conflict to thrive, its not just an attitude of might makes right, it's a drive so they can make sense of the world. Dwarves need to be fulfilling a purpose in a very literal and tangible way, or they get weird. Elves are a contradiction of stasis and constant change that is at odds with the drives of everyone else, and they find that endlessly fascinating while also mourning it, as they usually die or fail before changing enough to fully understand it. The point, to me, of having different races is the fact that they are monstrous (or alien) to each other, but that they're explorable. Unlike reality where the differences in humans are very understandable if we get out of our own way, players in a fantasy world can butt heads or immerse themselves in a mindset that is attempting to approximate something else, if only a bit. (Alignment is just a byword for signaling that difference in drive or motivation. If something is evil it tells you how it's hardwired, not necessarily what it's going to do, but what it's main drives are.) I understand this is MY interpretations of these creatures, though I don't think they're far from the central concepts of them.
But aside from that, I also just ask my players to remember that while we are playing, they are existing in a world separate from ours, that has some fundamentally different rules, and where most societies (if not all) accept violence and suffering as acceptable outcomes of some interactions, and that by definition they are playing characters for whom killing people is a legitimate action in their life. It's not a hypothetical, even the least martial of the classes trains itself to kill people. Whatever character concept they have, they need to take that into consideration (unlike in perhaps a skill based game where you could just be like a dancer or something). Is it wrong to kill? Well in a society where most people are armed and a high percentage are trained in violence, it may be wrong to murder, but killing is part of life. That is a pretty huge world view change compared to the lives of the people I know. Even the 'good' guys are pretty fucked up by our standards.
This is one reason I like to use demons and devils. They're not always aggressive or violent towards the PCs, but the PCs always know they're not up to any good.
The only real ambiguity is if killing them is something the demon/devil WANTED the players to do or not.
Amazing video with tremendous advice and CRUNCH!!! THANK YOU!
Great video! not only running the game advice, but also worldbuilding advice, which I always love.
Excellent advice, as expected. I got a bit taken aback by the humans being xenophobes thing, with me planning my first game as a DM in a homebrew world where humans are very much the opposite, but it made me think about how great being a DM is. You get to make your fantasy world with friends and have them play with it!
In my case, Humans are the first/only one of the various mortal races that was not specifically created by one of the gods, and they are absolutely spreading into everything and interbreeding with everyone.
Human takeover is inevitable
The reason why humans are often treated as xenophobic and a spreading plague in fantasy games is partially because we know what people are like in real life and partially because of a very common human desire to make ourselves out to be worse than those around us. It also makes us seem less bad for saying "X race is evil". Because if *we're* the ones saying that it must be bad. Lol
There's an excellent blog post out there called "D&D Doesn't Understand What Monsters Are", which touches on similar themes. The basic idea is: a monster is a creature that has been *made monstrous* by some external force - destruction of its habitat, a physical or mental injury that obstructs its normal self-maintenance, glowing mutagen, gazing into the abyss, whatever. They are a symptom that something in the world is out of order.
My current game is all about the players basically being a problem cleanup crew for a dragon who recently moved in and has caused all sorts of problems.
That's a great idea for story and encounter design, too. I was just thinking about how to fit monsters into a game where you're mostly focused on an abstract threat, like political intrigue or environmental damage. For that, I love the Game of Thrones approach: use monsters that embody forces of nature.
I once heard someone say that they make White Dragons interesting by leaning into their low intelligence and making them feral avatars of frozen devastation. If a White Dragon moves into the cliffs near a village, then all the crops die, temperatures drop by like 30°F, and blizzards that drop golfball-sized hail batter the valley every other day. Now the people are starving, freezing to death, and constantly getting injured by all the blizzards and hail. And that's if you assume the dragon is only bringing *natural* problems. You could toss in some ice elementals, too.
Suddenly, you've got a village full of people to save. So one way or another, that dragon has got to go. The only question is, how will you get rid of him?
Now we have a hook. :)
I genuinely just did this without even thinking about why. My party was just learning that some of the kobolds in this dragon-influenced forest were just regular people, maybe weird people, but not necessarily bad. Some even did a one shot AS some kobolds. But I needed a challenge, danger, and I needed to set the tone that some kobolds are benign. But there’s definitely unambiguous evil in these woods…and sometimes it’s Kobolds-UNDEAD kobolds. This is now a key clue to the problems of the area, all because I needed something I KNEW they could feel great about killing. Thanks for helping clarify why that worked and some of what I can build off of it.
This really just blew my mind wide open. This is seriously the only CZcams channel that can get me to write thousands of words on my setting from one point. I've been thinking way too big with my factions. I gotta go smaller.
This came out when I finished watching adventure time. I've been guilty of a lot of "this npc is helping you only for their own nasty goal and this vilain is absolutely justified". I want my players to have fun and keep the ambiguity occasional from now on.
I'm also about to start a new campaign, do you guys think I can do a campaign mainly about social encounters that wouldn't have to be 50 shades of guilt trip ? if yes how ?
If you want to do a campaign that is mainly about social encounters, you might want to look at a different system.
@@DrLipkin Yeah I'll be using Uknown Armies, but I'd still take any advice !
@@virgilelegros2816 Maybe try having an unambiguously good faction or person in it that has some reason to be interested in the players so they will be popping in every now and then? They would probably get the feeling of, “there’s practically nothing I can say or do to ruin our relationship with this person”. Although, perhaps in such an example, that is an extremely neutral individual instead of good? A robotic assistant would probably be a poor choice for it, but it would probably fit depending on how advanced the robot is.
I’m not familiar with the system or what the central goal of the game is, but Golden Sky Stories is a cute and fluffy game about social encounters too.
So we finished our short (about 5-6 months) campaign about kids trying to become wizards in a modern world where spell are only for rich people. It went super well!
There were factions and conflicts but usually no "good guys" wanted to pull their heads off, sometimes characters wanted to fight them because they were angry but one side would stop once they had beaten the other one up.
For zombies I had weird, super violent people that had an a very destructive and complexe idea in their head. Towards the end of the campaign a PC got infected by the idea and slowly developped the same obssession while also learning to understand the cultutist. It was wild, the player were really happy, I liked it, thank you Colville.
I love Piers Anthony's zombies. They are not evil.
The ending of Castle Roogna, where Millie and Jonathan reunite after centuries of unlife apart, is still one of my favorites.
@@aqacefan Mine too!
Hi Matt!
On the "not all of these creatures are evil" front...
Early on in my West Marches game, some of my squishier level 1 PCs were killed by a group of kenku bandits who had set a trap for them - the players got really unlucky with dice and I was new to 5e at the time as a DM.
A rescue party came looking for the "missing" PCs and found the kenku and killed them - but then discovered that the same kenku who killed their missing friends had also taken them to the top of a hill and given them a sky burial, treating the slain party members with respect in death, and also revealing that these kenku had a culture and weren't just bloodthirsty monsters. The players got real conflicted about that, which I liked.
Later on they met another kenku who is a cleric of the Raven Queen, who actually saved their lives. So they've definitely learnt not to judge all "monsters" the same. I'm very much of the opinion that any truly sentient race shouldn't be tied to a particular alignment without a good reason - it feels more realistic and keeps things interesting!
I had a similar experience when my aunt bought four year old me Jurassic Park thinking it was The Land Before Time. For years I had T-Rex shadows haunt me when I would try to sleep.
This is a better worded version of Extra Credits "Orcs are Evil" video. It feels like Matt is giving us the benefit of the doubt because we play games and we want to run good games. It is awesome to have a content creator give us advice and thoughts to get the creative juices flowing. Thank you Matt!
Shane Hensley is legit. He's the real deal.
I once saw a paladin steal a cloak of resistance from a couple of Orc babies that were lost in the wilderness, leaving them to freeze to death in the snow. Half the party, including the rogue, was upset with it. The Paladin’s justification was simple, _they’re orcs! Therefore they’re evil_ But we were like _but they’re babies_ This was back in 3.5 days when paladins got a bonus to their saving throws equal to their charisma bonus, meaning that our paladin didn’t even need the cloak of resistance, he just wanted it.
Goes to show you that even the player characters can be monsters.
Yup, monstrous is as monstrous does!
You bring up such a great point here. I just had my first session as a DM and I couldn't believe how many times some of the newer players tried to reason with murderous Orcs, or save the Kenku who tried to rob them. If you really want a group to hack n slash through an encounter you sometimes have to make it black and white.
Back in my day we were SCARED of zombies! Back in my day we ran away from them and if they touched us our friends shot us in the face!
The part in your video where you said “don’t at me” got me thinking about how some people and factions in the real world do believe there are some other people or factions who are unambiguously evil. For me this means that it makes sense that some factions in my fictional world would also believe that about their enemies. How would you incorporate such a cruel, deluded, and in-empathetic faction into your world WITHOUT making that viewpoint seem too credible?
Just don’t introduce them first.
Prove them wrong before they have a chance to indoctrinate the players.
Alternatively, if the players drift to such a faction, have them suffer the consequences of treating everyone else as an enemy. Unless this faction is self-sustaining and incredibly powerful, at some point, the isolationist faction will be ill-equipped for an enemy or a goal they wish to pursue.
You are also the DM and you can simply talk to your players before or after a game. It’s perfectly fine to tell them things about the world that would be obvious to their characters.
Finally, do you have any players at the table that believe this in real life? If not, then this is probably not a concern for you. That framework is a mythology that can only be perpetuated by limiting contact with “the enemies” or selfish desires that requires manipulating and controlling people to achieve.
I introduce the victims first. In Kobold Press's Ghoul Imperium, show human slaves and refugees. In Chult, have some survivors talking about how awful the YuanTi attack was. That way, when they meet the bad guy and they give their "we have a reason" speech, your PCs instantly know it's BS if it means hurting innocent people.
Wow! It is amazing to know that you worked at the company that made the Aria RPG. I finally catched up with you having seen all of the Running the Game series. Thanks for all the amazing content!
Cheers!
Glad to see new videos Matt, you have inspired me greatly with being a DM, me and my son just watched alien and aliens the other day he's 9 and he loved it.
And then you have 40k, where EVERY faction is evil (some factions would count as unaligned, and some SUBfactions make it up to Neutral with great effort, but NOBODY is good) and you can feel good killing everybody who isn’t on your side because they’re probably evil, and if not, you are so you don’t care.
_Suffer Not the Alien to Live._
"Monster Manual" - basic, small pp energy, derogatory to unicorns
"Creature Catalogue" - sophisticated, big pp energy, neutral to all forms of life
My world view has changed and there's no going back.
I really wanted to like this video twice.
Philosophical nuance is always something I am down for, and I have a great love of how you say things. You have been able to articulate difficult concepts in a clear fashion, and I appreciate it greatly.
In watching this, I remember the former high priest of Bahamat who had turned to necromancy (party felt good about killing him and minions), the blood thirst crazed Sphinx scion (party urgently needed to kill it or get their blood drunk), the quori looking to possess people and break the borders of planet dimensions (party felt good about killing it), and I think I’ve set up combat half decently. Now I know they also fulfilled this kind of philosophy.
As ever, just the right piece of advice I hadn’t realised I needed until I heard it. Thanks