3 Ways Brennan Lee Mulligan EXPERTLY Drives a Narrative Forward (Exandria Unlimited: Calamity)
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2022
- Brennan Lee Mulligan is AMAZING at pushing a narrative forward... But he never makes the players feel pressured!
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I think one of my favourite "BLM driving the plot without losing momentum" was how he handled that Travis messed up the codenames at the end, when CLEAR EYE (who is cerrit's wife) contacts him, and travis forgets that's his wife and thought it was his daughter (egghead) and instead of correcting him, he made like a fast switcheroo of TALON taking the stone, and then CLEAR EYE getting in the phone like it was the first time but can be read both ways. correcting him in that moment by saying "no, this was your wife" would've killed the momentum and diminished the emotional impact of the scene. and I think that was brilliant.
YES! I'm so glad someone else noticed this
omg i didnt even notice! i thought something was weird about it when it happened but i just brushed it off, thanks for sharing!
Omg I didn't even notice, I just thought that was his daughter making her own codename because she didn't like egghead! Expert save by brennan
yoo i just explained it in my head like “he said the codenames change often, maya probably just took cleareye in that moment” prime example of if you play it smoothly nobody will notice the momentary mistake
what does black lives matter have to do with anything
I think an important detail about Brennan's style is his EXTENSIVE background in comedy, improv, and storytelling. Especially his work with youth, since kids can come up with the wildest shenanigans that you need to then adapt to in order to keep things on track. It really lends itself to a DM style based around that mix of preparation and flexibility!
Honestly, his life skills up until this point have been PEAK for preparing him for the future
I've noticed that often when he gets particularly scary/serious with the narration, it feels like he's got a lot of practice in telling horror stories around a campfire.
and, Somehow, Emily Axeford can manage to stump him
@@elbruces as he has said before: “what good is a camp counsellor if [they] don’t know how to tell scary stories”. Brennan works at a summer camp for financially needy kids during his holidays and I think you can really tell!
@@nootdraws the camp itself isn’t for financially needy kids, but he has donated portions of his paychecks from CollegeHumor toward the scholarship fund for financially needy campers
To be perfectly honest, Critical Role is fully established and pretty thoroughly analyzed by lots of other dungeon-tubers. A series analyzing Dimension20 or other live play series would be really nifty.
Oh, fear not: it is ABSOLUTELY in my list of things to get done this summer!
@@PlayYourRole Foaming at the mouth ready for a deep dive int House of Candy
@@megadude967 Do you mean A Crown of Candy?
It's be pretty remarkable if there isn't already. BLM and Dim20 are OUTSTANDING. I was a critter before a Dim20 fan, but BLMs energy of entertainment and engagement is infinitely rewatchable.
Mat is what makes CR. Brennan is DMing in the same world setting, but EXU has a drastically different feel because of the difference in Mat and Brennan’s DM styles.
Dimension 20 is way more consumable as a DND podcast then Critical Role. I always thought that CR had a fun looking game but I wasn't crazy drawn to it as a story. D20 is amazingly paced and consistently hilarious. Lou is the best roleplayer
The way I look at it is that CR has a much more 'grounded' feeling (you can watch them make mistakes, make their roles, goof off, ect.) while Dimension 20 cuts it down to what it needs. They still do all of the goofing off and mistakes of course, but it's cut down to remove alllll the fat
@@PlayYourRole I do think CR is way more accurate to what playing with your friends is like just a bit sharper, and more professional. It's a great "hey this is what DND is". Though most of my friends who were big DND heads before finding CR like it less, since we like watching a game that we can't play at our table lol.
@@yourstruly5738 my beef is kind of that it has cultivated that air, the "this is a regular dnd game," thing, and it's not? It's a multimillion dollar media company, first off, and the show hasn't been just a home game for a few years now. Matt's approach, and while I love the show, is to kind of try to hide the contrivances, file off the serial numbers, so to speak, so it feels more genuine. That's some of what, in my opinion, motivates the pointless Endless Speculation of Scripting.
Somehow, despite being leaner and more specific, d20 feels *less* like it's trying to *seem* authentic, which makes it sorta feel more like raw, uncut dnd shoved into your face hole instead of the simmering pot of dnd tincture that is critical role.
@@SeanBoyce-gp wdym hiding hiding the numbers, they litterally do nothing to say, nooo there is totally not 200 ep per season and 4-5 hours long each
D20 is much more bite sized... I mean, their "long stories" are 8 or 10 episodes? Where CR is telling a story across 130ish?
For me, the allure of the long campaign is watching the actors really inhabit their characters across a massive personal arc. Laura Motherfucking Bailey is a legend, with her work as Jester in campaign 2. Liam's character work is also a huge high point.
D20, their stories excel when the characters start out entertaining. Misfits and Magic, there was minimal shift, as we were following just a single chapter.
I had no idea of what DnD was until I watched fantasy high. It was amazing from the start and a big part of that was Brennan's ability
Fantasy high is such an incredible story!!! I'm going to make a video on it someday!
Fantasy high made me cry more than once, all the characters are so relatable in a cartoony way only Brennan can pull off
@@nightangelx1513 "Why would you bring such a cursed being into this world?"
"[Gilear]'s JUST A GUY"
If you liked Fantasy High check out The Legend of Vox Machina and if you like that, and have the crazy amount of time it would require, I highly recommend checking out Critical Role Campaign #1 as it is absolutely hilarious.
I'm really glad you included the caveat at the end that Brennan's DMing style, while absolutely incredible, puts an extraordinary amount of strain on the DM themselves.
Brennan can handle that kind of breakneck pacing, encloypedic worldbuilding, and non-stop improv, but that's because...
1) He's been playing D&D for 23 years.
2) His mother is a professional genre fiction writer, so he grew up around this kind of worldbuilding and character work.
3) He separately has been an improv comedy performer and teacher for years.
4) DMing D&D campaigns is his full-time, 40-hours-a-week job. He's not trying to throw together a session in a couple of hours after work, he has weeks-to-months to prepare every part of his campaigns.
5) He and his players know exactly how many episodes his campaigns for D20 or CR are going to last, and they know that they have to tell a full and satisfying story within that episode limit, so he has a good sense of how much scale he has to build out for his world.
There's so much to learn from Brennan's storytelling chops, but it's also important not to hold yourself to his, or Matt's, or Aabria's, or any pro's standards. Brennan repeats this constantly on his "Adventuring Academy" vodcast, that wherever or however you're playing a tabletop game, your goal is always and only to have fun at *your table* and do what's going to be fun for *you* and *your players.*
I agree, it's what gets touted as the "Mercer Effect" (a term I dislike), but players shouldn't always expect this amount of detail, planning and skill from their DM, who may be skilled and talented, but maybe gets to play once every two or three weeks, has a full time job, family or both and plays at their kitchen table. It's very unlikely they'll have the time or resources to make a game like this, with this amount of stakes and detail. But, as long as everyone at the tabale understands that then you'll still have plenty of fun.
I'm still going to hold myself to their standards in some ways, because they're the first people I ever considered a role model and I honestly believe that with practice I'll be able to pull off something on that level.
@@neerGdyahS Role models are bad for you.
@@pleasegoawaydude Whatever dude. Trying to be exactly like your role models is bad for you. Having people who make you feel a little less lost for what kind of person you want to be and the kinds of things you could do is just fine.
I certainly wouldn't say that NOT having role models ever helped me any.
It's not entirely about a DM style here. Brennan gave them so much information and resources because they're starting as high level players who are major figures in their city, and the whole story is going to be completed in only 4 sessions.
He doesn't always do that though. I'm reminded of Zac Oyama as "Skip" from D20's Starstruck hilariously spending multiple sessions learning how to do things like walk and sleep and understand language.
I would say that the Skip character is ALSO not about DM style. That character's core concept is a pilot that is leaning to pilot a body instead of a ship.
@@MagnusCthulhu right on
Calamity was the best thing i saw DND wise this far. That last episode hat me so in shambles i just sat on my sofa drinking and thinking about stuff that unfolded until i passed out. That last role of Cerrit will tear me up for likely the next months. This was simply a masterful performance from the cast and Brennan just hit this one out of the stadium.
Giving a lot of information works to hide mysteries better than red herrings: no matter how obvious you think something is players will rarely discern it exactly (or agree on interpretation), and it's a lot more satisfying to have them realize they had the information all along.
I had never had the pleasure to watch Brennan DM before, but I did watch him play the CR Elden Ring One-Shot, and he was fantastic in that. I have been enjoying his DMing style. I love watching various DMs as each of them will give me new tolls for my DMing toolbox.
For real, the more diverse DM's I watch, the more I feel prepared for my own games!
Watch dimension 20 now!!! 😁
When I first watched Brennan DM, it was a revelation! I had tried DMing for myself with Mercer and Colville as my previous models, but Mercer's planned plots and long detours into character-driven scenes were too much for my players, and while Colville was a big push into improvisational and simplified DMing by contrast, his style focused on political and military machinations that weren't my players interest either. Mercer's world shines where the players touch it, Colville's world shines on its own and the players find their place in it.
For me, seeing Brennan combine the two with a world that the players already fit into and needed to give their path to shine sparked my inspiration and I knew I'd find what I'd wanted to do. Giving the players more, telling them what their characters would know to help inform their decisions opened up the world and made it feel real apart from the players, but also invited them to make their own path rather than having to find a path that would accept them. Now I had more tools and examples for having the more fleshed out world that satisfied me, but didn't require encyclopedic knowledge of my players and still let me adapt to what they wanted their characters to do.
Awesome both Matt and Brennan collab regularly. Great way for both communities to see another legendary dm with a different style
True! I love them both and have so much respect for them
Agreed! It's great for us as audience to see the different styles (and get introduced to new things we'll probably like!) and it's great for them because every DM just want to get to play sometimes, and when DM's befriend each other, it means they can!
Would love Matt to do a dimension 20 version of this.
@@justinadams7824 then ive got good news for you
6:35 “Making up a character out of nowhere.”
That happened last session.
DM: Make a perception check.
Me: Natural 20 for a total of 22!
DM: You see somebody up on a rooftop, but as soon as you glance up they disappear.
Me: I point discretely to the roof back to my party.
Bard: I rush after them.
DM: this one story building is 70’ away.
Bard: I Dash over and cast Misty Step.
DM: Um… You see a part-Orc child.
Bard: I crack my whip over his head, since the serial killer might be able to use Disguise Self.
DM: It passes over his head harmlessly, and he starts stammering an apology.
A few minutes of interrogation later:
Bard: Wait. You mean to tell me he’s just a regular kid?
DM: He’s just a regular kid.
What DM didn’t say was that he made up the kid on the fly, since he didn’t want to give me nothing on a Nat20. He was trying to set up a tense atmosphere, get the party to ask for rolls as they go along. Instead, he got a part-Orc boy who thought a 2’8” girl in shiny clothing was pretty.
GOD I relate with this story haha
@@PlayYourRole This is the same Bard who waterboarded a cultist under a Zone of Truth whenever he succeeded on the individual Wisdom save. When the DM gave him an alchemy jug for a joke item.
Please tell me that isn’t also relatable.
@@LocalMaple not relatable in game but man it really brought back some repressed memories from high school.
@@foxtoxic9722 Please tell me it’s the original comment that was irl relatable.
@@LocalMaple nah the second one. But we didn’t call it waterboarding back then just swirlies. lol
Brennan and Matt are both amazing DMs with incredibly different styles and flows. I prefer to watch Brennan, but I’d never say one is intrinsically better than the other.
A skill Brennan has that should be talked about is his ability to take a deeply emotional moment and use it to directly drive narrative. It’s naturally for a DM, myself included, to sit back when my players have emotional scenes, and let it be something beautiful, but ultimately removed from the actually story. Compare that to how Brennan handled Xerxus. Every moment with Xerxus was beautifully gut wrenching (credit to Luis for being a FANTASTIC actor). Brennan used nearly every scene to directly push the game forward. It made those scenes feel much more important to the game and the world, as opposed to being merely character growth.
Also, Brennan’s narration skills are so entrancing. Anyone who can quietly say the word “Fire” and have the entire table immediately snap to attention like they did…damn.
The detail about the invisibility spell: perfection! It made me feel even more grounded within the world of D&D. Is it something that other sources have noted, or is it a detail that Brennan has specifically thought about? Either way, I'm so thankful for his ability to "yes and" his players.
That idea is pretty old, that 100 percent invisibility would leave you blind since vision is based on light being reflected inside your eye, which is often presumed to not work if there's no surface of the eye for light to hit.
Like I learned this from IIRC a Cracked article on which superpowers would actually suck xD
Honestly, I was less struck by the details about how high Perception clocks invisibility... and how ball shrivelingly _creepy_ he made the description like the players were about to dearly regret rolling those Perception checks.
@@Vaati1992 It's not only old, it's a detail mentioned in HG Wells' "Invisible Man" - where his body and insides gain the same refractive index of air, except his pupils, which remain just slightly visible.
0:50
"[...] this is the first time that this has happened outside of when Aabria took over for Exandria Unlimited."
That's called *the second time* Jay.
Brennan Lee Mulligan is my favorite DM!!!! I was so excited to see him DM on critical role.
He's done so well in every campaign I've seen him in!
@@PlayYourRole
My favorite campaign he did was Mice and Murders. Especially towards the end when he started announcing the clues you'd get on DC checks.
I think Brennan's DMing from Matt's source material is the intersection point of perfect D&D for my tastes.
I also think Brennan can give away more information and push that kind of pace is because his campaigns are much shorter than what someone like Matt or myself would run.
Brennan is one of my biggest DM inspiration, he's super cool. He focuses so much on player enjoyment and having fun as a group.
I've been watching unsleeping city and it's super interesting bc Brennan's worlds are so engaging
I’m honestly curious to see how Brennan runs his long campaigns, since the only ones we’ve seen on the internet are ones meant to last a certain amount of time.
Fantasy high is their longest and it has two seasons. I think they purposely play shorter campaigns
@@learningtoadult3450 They for sure do, since that way they can have the impressive set design for encounters and the editing. They lean into what their format of prerecorded, paywalled content gives
I'm also curious about how he does longer campaigns, since he has mentioned in interviews that he has a home game with friends that he's been running for something like 13 years, iirc. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that.
@@tstymctst Its a long running game but if memory serves he said in those same interviews that they play once a year now. So something to keep in mind. One session a year will really extend a campaign.
Great analysis. I'm so glad critters get to see brennan's style.
Same here! Thank you for the encouragement!
Brennan gives them answers in the form of small stories. So it's never JUST an answer, but it's a short story that builds the moment and gives their rolls a weight of importance.
As someone for whom this is my first encounter with Brennan Lee Mulligan, what I was really impressed by and what I want to take away is how he used questions to the players throughout the minicampaign--pushing to know where his characters were looking, what they were thinking about, what they were giving up or regretting in a given moment. It felt good to get those glimpses behind the actions of the PCs.
Great points! Mice & Murder is a real showcase for how Brennan delivers information to players. He just blew me away with Calamity, too! Brennan and Matt and Aabria, and all the other great DMs out there are all treasures.
Currently on a binge of his dropout campaigns, he ALWAYS lets common sense rule if its plain sight/doable/ or makes sense for a character it normally flies. He even lets it fuck him in certain cases just because it's either a cool moment or makes to much sense. (I.e swirlwarden incident in Crown of candy)
One thing I have noticed from watching Brennan is that he always seems to have an NPC interaction no matter where the players go which helps move them on or always draws them in to a location which just cuts through the ‘I look for someone to talk to’. It draws players in guides them:
Players go to the market: a merchant starts talking to them and calls out
They leave or go across town: someone they know or familiar crosses their path
His pacing comes from the fact that his dimension 20 seasons are a set number of episodes so he knows what he needs to do to get through the narrative. He has an extensive background in improv as well, and that helps. He also knows his table. He's talked before about his pacing is different with produced shows than it is in home games.
I swear I love the explanation on how the invisibility spell is not 100% invisible. So much opportunity for roleplay too. Like what if the caster is blind etc.
Brennan was made for the "more is more" style from the beginning. I forget where I saw it, but once he was recounting how he and his partner Izzy are cut from the same cloth in this way. He recounted they have a running joke/idea for a comedy show thats just dubbed "BIGGER" where they come in with characters and take the biggest wildest leaps and character decisions and let the chaos of their innate style take over.
(Sorry Brennan and Izzy i probably didn't pitch the show as well as you could have 😅)
I believe that brennan mentioned it during adventure party ep for the seven
The thing I have learned most from watching Brennan DM and the thing that has changed my DMing completely is "Focus on the players". Yeah, yeah, he's a master improver with an encyclopedic memory. But that's what allows him to host a show - not what makes him a good DM. He WANTS the players to do well. Yes, he wants to challenge them (see A Crown of Candy), but he makes the game about the players, not about his world or even about "the rules" sometimes. What's incredible to me is that he manages to do this even when his games are more "on rails" than a lot of actual plays.
The important thing to remember when looking at Dms and players is that they come as a team, Brennan lee Mulligan wouldn't be as good without fantastic players like Lou Wilson and the other dimension20 cast. I love my players to bits but if I threw what brennan throws at his players ,they would be overwhelmed. it's about finding what both Dm and player want out of the game. He explains it in the DM four sided dive that he was so thankfull that he had players like Abria, that understood the assignment . It's about lifting each other up
Re: giving the players information and telling them WHY they know it. This seems like a great technique for a historically-based game. The 1920's (or even the 1980's) can seem as alien as any fantasy setting, and lots of exposition directed into the air can be boring for players, but telling ONE player in front of the others why they know about a basalt statue or how to start a plane engine can embed them into the world as well as explaining how they know to look for floating pixl pupil pairs.
One thing I am going to say that is probably the main reason Brendon became so good at DMing like this is the D20 show are like 20 episodes each so he has to push through a lot of info and plot points fast while letting the characters think its their idea
One of the single most powerful traits of both Brennan and Matt as DMs is the fact that they are rooting for their players.
I just wanted to hop in and say thank you for all of your content!! Your videos and advice have been such a huge help to me as a fledgling DM!!! I’m constantly trying to improve my style so that my players have the most enjoyment out of each session!
The DM for Dungeons of Drakkenheim (Monty) also does this very well; he allows the story to unfold naturally without excessively holding back the story or requiring the players to do too much.
Man I really haven't had the chance to get to Dugeons of Drakkenheim yet. I've heard great stuff about it though!
I know you open the video saying that you're not trying to compare Matt and Brennan, but this is one of the key differences between Matt and Brennan that I noticed since starting with D20 after being a crit role fan. It's also what I think makes BLM's approach actually more grounded and realistic as a form for new DMs to try to emulate to create a fun game for players.
Where Matt is a REactive DM, Brennan is a PROactive DM. Matt sets up his world and waits for his players to pick up and follow up on certain threads and then reacts to his players' actions. Brennan sets up his world and then pushes the narrative forward, forcing his players to be the reactive ones. Matt gives the reigns to his players, where BLM unabashedly grips the reigns in his hands and drags the party behind him. That's because Matt can rely on his players to drive a narrative. Most of us-who aren't DMing for professional actors-can't always do that. BLM has a much more traditional set of players, so he practically vomits information, choices and encounters at their feet to keep things moving.
I think a lot of DMs are hesitant to play like BLM because they've been fed the narrative that railroading is bad. But where BLM shines is that while he's holding the reigns, he gives space to the players to rock the carriage on its wheels back and forth-changing the narrative's heading by a few degrees, maybe even taking a turn at a fork in the road-so they still have a substantial role in the story as it develops. Going too far in EITHER railroading or sandboxing can result in a bad time. Both Matt and Brennan are on that spectrum, just at different ends. And both are just far enough away from the edges to keep their games extremely engaging.
I think that emulating BLM's style over MM's style is a good choice for new DMs because it allows for a much faster and more engaging pace for your players. When you and your players are not as experienced as the crit role crew is, it's hard to keep a narrative moving forward, and the pace can drag to a slog. I've experienced this first-hand, both as a player and as a DM. Once everyone is in a spot where they know how to drive a narrative, once the player characters have their own goals and arcs, you can lay back a bit more and just react to them like Matt does. But till then, be like Brennan. Throw as much information as you can at the party. Secrets are MEANT to be revealed. Grip those reigns tight and take your players along for a wild ride.
I don't know if I completely agree with that. Brennan is known for taking a throw away character or joke and make it important in the narative, it's sometimes just not obvious because he is a master in improv and he has a philosophy degree, (Just really watch game changers for some fucking good improv) So what may seem to be a carefully scripted scene or talk is quite possibly improv. The thing with the calamity campaign is that this was probably more on rails then his usual campaigns since he was working in someones elses world and it was a prequel, so the ending was known but he had to tell the journey.
@@Suztvfan Brennan definitely is big into improv (I mean the whole CollegeHumor crew is born of improv comedy), but for D20/EXU he knows the story beats and encounters he wants to hit prior to any campaign/session. He's talked about it pretty extensively in interviews before; D20 is a production with a lot of moving parts, a defined release schedule, and a lot of people working on it, so he rigorously prepares what he wants to accomplish in a given session, and part of that is anticipating the moves that his players will make. D20 has used elaborate physical/virtual sets since its inception. That means that he is not going to let others' work-hours go to waste. He will absolutely improv things moment to moment, but from the overhead he knows exactly what story elements and encounters he plans to have from the outset. And that's a good thing, and exactly what I'm talking about. He knows the destinations he wants to hit, but he gives the players the space to shift the journey on the way there, and make decisions that shift the overall narrative and shape the encounters. That doesn't mean he's not improvising dialogue, changing the narrative as it progresses, etc. He absolutely is. But he knows before any given session what secrets he plans to reveal, how he plans to reveal them, and what he anticipates will occur. Having that structure prepared then affords him the ability to change on the fly when something unexpected happens.
That's the core of learning how to run a linear game without making it feel like a railroad. Prep what you need to, do so thoroughly, and do it enough that you know when to throw it all in the bin and shift in a new direction and still be able to tell the story effectively.
@@Suztvfan that doesn't necessarily negate the idea. Improv DMing can be easier for new DMs, who don't have the time/energy to pour through every bit of rules and lore.
That's how I started. I would have a loose idea as to what a session looks like. Maybe describe a setting using theater of the mind. And then i let my players take as many branching paths, to get to the same spot. I've had a dungeon encounter (in my notes) pushed back a few sessions, because my players did something different, but they will eventually find there way back into the encounter through a new pathway. Meanwhile, I'm improving almost everything else, to guide them back "on the rails" so to speak.
The main difference I see is the format they usually run. Matt runs full campaigns that can go for over 110 episodes each, and in all of that sprawling story he puts arcs within arcs, and lets the story help build the world, giving it more and more detail. The players can literally do anything they can imagine, and Matt will follow their lead and plan just ahead of them. Brennan runs limited campaigns (I think the most episodes he's done in one is 12?) that aim for a beginning, middle and end - and often certain "checkpoints" along the way. For DM's, I'd recommend starting like Brennan and taking the characters through some more focused arcs, and then gradually taking the rails off to let them take the lead on wherever the story may go.
@@elbruces no....some are up to 40 episodes within the same setting (fantasy high and unsleeping city had a second season
*looks left*
*looks right*
Brennan > Matt
I would say equally great in different ways. You may prefer Brennan's style, as do I, but we can't deny Matt's talent. There's another comment that compares them to George R R Martin and JRR Tolkien, which I agree with. GRRM and Brennan focus more on character interaction and world build as needed to enhance the experience where JRRT and Matt world builds to a ridiculous level in order to set the characters loose in whichever way they want.
I’d love to see you do a DM deep dive on griffin McElroy or Anthony Burch at some point on how to play d&d without all the strict rule sets
The offering up information without dice rolls or even players asking is so important. It respects both the role play and passive perception in a way I haven't seen before.
I think this is why I enjoy Brennan as a DM so much. The aspect of giving enough information or more information than expected is probably the reason I always love watching Dim20.
You said it so well!
I actually don't think much of Calamity was "scripted" or "railroaded".
The story was very clear that the betrayer gods were returning from all over, not just Avelir. If somehow the players "changed history" in one flying city - Avelir - it would presumably have no effect on the world-shattering Calamity. I think Brennan had way more freedom than what most people think, and probably more than the players may have realized.
I actually thought the players were doing more to drive the story in a certain direction then Brennan was.
If these 6 players decided to ignore Vespin Chloras and the like the Calamity would have still happened. And if the players stopped Vespin and sailed Avelir to another plane, then the Calamity would have still happened. I think the player's were their own agents at all times.
This helped me a lot with planning my next session, thanks for a solid breakdown
Fantastic video and excellent message. Thanks so much!
Watching Brennan GM is like Bryan Wilson listening to the white album for the first time. It's all at once incredibly beautiful and inspiring to watch and yet cripplingly depressing because you know that no matter how much you practice you will absolutely never reach his level of skill.
Says you! I’m going to be the very best the best there ever was 🤣
At the start of every session, I have the party agree on 4 things they want to accomplish before heading into the action. I roll a d4 and hook into the plot after however many of their tasks I rolled.
There's times where they agree to say "nah too bad we wanna finish our errands" but letting players control pace gives so much enthusiasm when they finally roll into the serious roleplay
The way he discusses such cool and mysterious concepts like the invisibility trick in a way that the player openly takes the knowledge and molds it into their own headcannon
Great video! You should consider covering the light source in your vid with a cloth. It will help with the shine and reflections in your eyes
You are so right -- enabling players to quickly find and understand new information helps them move the story forward, and that lets THEM control the pace of the narrative.
Brennan does it masterfully.
Information encourages interaction, which leads to more player choices and agency.
Always give players information that their characters could perceive.
Bold of you to assume there wasn't already a huge overlap of Critical Role and Dimension 20 fans. (i.e. "I'm so excited that the Critical Role community is getting to see his DMing chops for the first time.")
Watching Brennan DM is like watching an avengers movie where its just pure action and epicness for a shorter amount of time, but watching Matt is like watching 8 seasons of game of thrones. Both are amazing and purely comes down to taste, which is why I watch both.
I watched D20 and was always amazed on his ability to give a lot of detail and doesn’t require too many rolls, if a player’s character knows something they just know it. His ability to really get alot of things done in a small amount of time really stems from how D20 is structured with it having to be shorter for the show format as well as a limited amount of episodes which series has like EXU calamity was set for 4 episodes and in D20 they have several episodes which they try and fit into about an hour long and he does a great job with being able to hit the bulletin points which works I think for a dnd show like D20 but not for every campaign. I like a slower more long paced story but I try to use some of his traits like characters would just know something. I currently have a Bloodhunter who would know certain abilities of monsters and recognizes when certain spirits or monsters by scents others wouldn’t be able to pick up. I have an artificier who went to a large college so he would know alot of lore stuff since he studied. I have a player who lives in a big city and they just reached that city so they will know the ins and outs of the city so it’s easier to navigate and also know about their laws and military since he used to be part of it
He’s an amazing DM and I’m interested to see how he does a longer campaign like Matt’s are with multiple plot hooks more spread out, Fantasy High is the closes I saw this but episode count to that show is only 20 episodes and I would love to see the 100+ episode long campaign Vox Machina and Mighty Nien have had
I love your breakdown here and the addition of why this works for him but maybe not all. I plan to try adding more free information and letting players find answers instead of winning them by chance more often. It feels like it would work for my own streams as it keeps the world flowing.
I think Brennen’s DM style only works because two things: he plans everything to a T, *and* he’s a master level improv artist among masters. And that’s insane because the advice you always hear from CZcamsrs is “don’t plan everything to a T and completely fly by the seat of your pants because players will throw a wrench in your plans.”
He actually is great at improv and coming up with something fast. He once had a player roll a nat 20 and it made something possible in his world that was just not possible in that world, it was one of the rules in that world that this didn't exists. His players even told him that he didn't have to honor that nat 20 since it really shattered the world building he did before it. He did take a minute, came up with an amazing engaging way to weave it in the story and push the narrative forward. And that was something that completely destroyed the rules of how that world worked, and he just had to think a little to come up with something that just seemed to fit (and was even a little bit emotional).
Imaging if he gets a curveball and it just fits in the story, he would roll with it and it's quite possible that you don't know if it was planned or not.
"not planning everything" isn't honestly valid. The true benchmark is know WHAT is important to prepare, and what can take a backseat (in my opinon)
I disagree, I think Brennan builds his campaign like everyone should build there characters. He knows the material so well that he can improvise everything on the spot bc he knows how the setting works just that well. A great example of that is a on the spot pregnancy that one of his characters made up in the heat of the moment. That became a huge plot point in a 6 episode campaign! So yes he knows the points he needs his characters to get but he still opens up his players available to do whatever they want and he has confidence to be able to get them there anyway!
@@Suztvfan Which campaign/moment was this?
@@dancool708 Mice and Murder, magic and supernatural did not exist in this world but when in an occult/medium shop one character tries to see if they can commune with the victim, so it was pretty wild when his ghost appeared.
This wave of brennan love is the dopamine hit I've been craving
Thinking back on the games I've run, I think I do tend to freely give what information the players would know, but I will definitely be more intentional about doing that from now on.
"Give your players the ability to get the information they need." Yes. It's a philosophy I try to practice at my table. Obviously, you want to try and avoid straight up lore dumps, but when there's information the players need, there has to be a way for them to discover it otherwise the game goes stale. Maybe an NPC divulges the info, maybe the warlock's patron or the cleric's deity sends them a vision when they long rest, maybe the town drunk is raving about something bizarre that everyone else dismisses as the rantings of a fool... or tie it in with the character's background or backstory. And remember, the characters would recall things that the players have probably forgotten.
Also, I don't think it's fair to call it railroading, but it is laying down the rails. It does provide direction, but the players still get to choose to follow or take a detour, and they decide the manner which they do either. Most players want to play the game, so they will follow the trail, lol.
I agree with you, people should not copy others but find their own style. My own style running games however is also very transparent and improvisation is easy for me, thus I do such things already and enjoy the players driving the game quite fast. However I can say there is another drawback to that style which was not mentioned, if players are passive or outright or overly cautious then it might still not end up to be a fast paced experience, since allowing the players to put the pedal to the metal doesn't necessarily means the players will take advantage of such liberty.
Ahh passivity and over caution can be a real game killer if one is not careful. Although, I think this style can help with that in some cases! A lot of the times, players are passive because of lack of confidence. The more information the DM can freely give telling them they're on the right track, the better they can do!
I think one of Brennan's tactics that I admire most is that instead of restricting outflow of information, he encourages it. Not to the point of inundation, necessarily, but that the players are provided with all the information they need, but he forces them to utilize their own specialties to figure out what it all means. He will broadside you with intelligence and basicallly just be like "well there, I gave you literally everything you need to solve this problem. I'd recommend hopping to getting that shit solved, yeah?".
One of the things that chaps my hide in D&D games is when all the NPC's are either hostile or begruding with help or information
To be fair, when quite some stuff are improvised, I often find myself needing to give information in bite size as I often need to think of something on the spot
Great video. Excellent advice about learning without trying to copy. As an aside, is the invisibility description really about more is more or about gatekeeping less? That seemed less about giving lore/info and more about adding colorful descriptions to a feature the character doesn’t have to roll for. It is a great skill and adds to immersion and the internal logic to the world but seemed not quite an example of your main point regarding gatekeeping.
I've been examining the GMing of the GMs in Dimension 20 and Critical Role tables, as well as other GM advice around on books and posts and even studying Game Design books trying to find tips, tricks and extra talents out there to help my playstyle as a GM. You see it with even talented GMs like Brennan as at least twice he's had moments where something just shatters his mind as 'that is such a neat trick', first with Misfits and Magic episode 1 where Aabria does a 'This is what you don't see' moment after Evan Klemp's bird flies away into the distance, and the second was recently with the Adventuring Academy discussion on Death Saves. I could write a huge post here about different talents that can help improve games, but as you stated at the end... find talents that work with your playstyle so that you feel comfortable.
The big thing about the 'breakneck speed' with Brennan is that he runs shorter series of games. Even the D20 games max out around 20 episodes on the high end, and I would figure he has the beat maps written out ahead of time. He knows what the story needs, maybe not 'where' the events will happen as he cannot tell the players will be but he knows what the story needs and can shift the event to a location. That is something I heard in my studies as 'Schrodinger's Universe', where anything the PCs are not directly observing is in a state of flux where it is anything. So, if the GM needs the BBEG to suddenly be next door, they're next door. The how, why, all that stuff is not important UNTIL the players go looking at it (and then you can usually make stuff up and add some player theories to it as well to make a narrative, if you need it). The important fact is an event happened off-stage as you, the GM, needed it. So, if Brennan knows what he needs to make a great story, he can have the events shift to make it work for him and get the players to follow at the breakneck pace because, much like a TV season arc... the events had to occur. Its 'controlled improv', like watching an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway, the framework is maintained by the pre-set prompts by the Gamemaster, the rest is improv by the players.. Except in this version, we let the players be Dramatic if they wish.
Please analyze Johnny Chiodini from Oxventure next. If you want a good example of one of their sessions, watch Mind Your Manors, either on Outside Xbox or Outside Xtra (I don't remember which).
Huh, I actually haven't ever heard of that one! I'll need to go give it a look!
i find it interesting that it's very similar to how brennan does tangents in animated clips i've seen of him. He will just spout out novels of words to prove a point and very easily slips into monologues.
I only recently got into watching Critical Role, as in a year and a half ago when I was stuck at home with an injury. In fact it was the infamous "Blueberry Cupcake" that got it on my radar. Ever since I have binged their content and even moved to Dimension 20. Seeing the differences in the way Matt, Brennan, and Aabria tell a story is wild. Especially when one of them sits at a table for the other. That moment in Calamity when Brennan just went with what Sam said and did not ask him to roll for it shows his style quite clearly.
You know, as you describe DMs keeping information from players I can't help but think of two different Godbound games I was apart of (playing as godlings).
In one game the domain of knowledge was banned from all future games because I had a character who wanted to know where God disappeared to and used the power, which is basically to ask the.GM about almost anything, and discovered his location.
The second game we got to a point we could finally travel the astral sea and we joked about one of the players abilities to know how to travel to anywhere and eventually got him to use it to find heaven (It wasn't known if it actually existed). We got the coordinates and headed to heaven. The complete derailment of the campaign and hearing the GM say, "We are ending the session so I can prepare for the next session." was priceless.
Brennan is so fucking baller it’s unreal
Something I think a lot of people miss out when watching Dimension20 or Brennan's games is that he really, really does overprepare for everything in order to riff off of both the settings and the players. Dimension20 worldbuilding often last months with back and forth between the set builders, loremakers and Brennan and oftentimes even with people who understand the setting more than Brennan himself (like the creator of Starstruck who was his mom).
For a show with about 60~80 hours of actual, uncut playtime, there has got to be at least thousands of hours of work put into it by a whole team of people over the course of months. Most DMs will not have this kind of resource, but most dm might not even know what to do with the resources available. And I think Brennan did an excellent job in converting that into entertaining, fun, and most of all, engaging campaigns.
Brennen Lee Mulligan is such a great example of how some of the best dramatic writers come from a comedy background. Comedians tend to see a lot of the world. Their job is to observe reality and dissect what makes it funny, to experience as much as possible and retell those experiences, or shadows of those experiences, which may not have been funny in the moment, into a story audiences can laugh at. All that real world experience and mastery of storytelling tends to translate very well into dramatic roles.
Bad drama is grimdark new age DC movie style. All “oooh it’s so dramatic and heavy and daaaark” with no balance. It feels disingenuous. Anyone who’s lived in the world thoroughly enough understands that the comedy in tragedy is what makes these stories real and human, the importance of levity even when the world is crashing down around you, the heartbreak when that ounce of levity is taken away and the meaningfulness of when the universe allows you to keep it.
“Tragedy itself isn’t funny, but tragedy has a tendency to render everything around it absurd.”
I have that same froghemoth mini. Such a great looking figure :D
As a DM, I can always improve and I constantly think I'm not that great. So it's funny when I watch these videos and go "Cool! I already do that!". Definitely reassuring
Have to admit I've been hesitant following CR following the conclusion of S2. I did watch EXU but I struggled to get into S3 and now Brennan has taken over as DM I admit that drove another wedge for me, as I didn't know him as a DM; however watching this video has rekindled interest for me and I think I'll go back and re-start S3 and see where it leads me.
I hope you give Calamity and Brennan a chance! The Dimension 20 seasons are much shorter too (both in time and in episode count), so if you are also short on time you can start by those. Brennan is an incredible DM and seems like an amazing person. :)
@@giualonso just watching S3 now, watching the last epp of 2011 so I have a bit of catching up to do ;)
Brennan is very compelling for me, him and Anthony Bursch from Dungeon and Daddies
I found your first tip about giving a lot of information to be very valuable, but I worry that describing the alternative as gatekeeping obscures your actual point. Because I think this happens not because DM's want to hide the information, but because they want to have gameplay. It's just instinctual for me to ask my players to roll investigation or perception before I tell them stuff... And the adjustment that I'm planning to try is to just give them the information and say that it was a passive perception or investigation check. Gatekeeping implies that the motivation is that the DM doesn't want the players to have the information but the truth is that we often desperately want the players to have the information but we're just conditioned to hide it behind a skill check because that's how DND is structured. I think the heart of the advice is that narrative is more important than gameplay and that it's okay to prioritize driving the narrative forward over rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice especially if someone rolling a natural one would bring the narrative to a halt.
Thanks for this vid. It turns out I'm already doing some of these things myself. And the only reason I am is cause I have already seen what happens when we aren't given enough info as a player. It is absolutely frustrating.
If itnis done that way you have to understand how the dm thinks to eat have hope of finding the other pieces
I wound up finding myself tuning out eventually because of it.
The EXU was so much better than I ever expected, both the first and Calamity. I did get a bit tired of Zexrus, as redemption paladins are a bit Eh to me, but still I was on the edge of my seat even to the end. If you haven't seen Brennan Lee Mulligan's Escape from bloodkeep with Matthew Mercer playing in it. Check it out asap i've seen it like 3 times all the way through and still itching for a 4th time.
With regards to Brennan just handing out important information, I think it's also worthy of note how his style of DMing also directs and controls the flow of that information. There were situations where he did give knowledge freely (ETA: in congruency with the dice rolls), but technically only one or two PCs knew it, and then he crafted the path to the next scene or battle in a way where that information never gets shared with the other PCs at the table. So we as an audience and them as players know it, but (and this is a testament to their incredible role-play skills) the other PCs have no clue.
Spoiler example:
When Nydas and Zerxus go the Hall of Prophecy and Zerxus has his whole thing with Asmodeus... Brennan crafts the whole encounter and what follows (the immediate death of the helmswoman/Battle with Lycretia) in a way where even though the whole table and the audience knows what happened, none of the other PCs do. And Brennan remarks on it in their Wrap up that they did that it was a conscious choice because he knew that Luis would share that with Lou's character Nydas and Brennan didn't want that. So he gave all that information, for a high dice roll, freely... yet he didn't really give much at all since it goes to a lone PC with no time/ability to share it.
Brennans style is perfect for these short adventures he runs on Dimension20 and now on Critical Role. Like you said, it´s hard to do this and probably next to impossible to do for a long running campaign.
Agreed! The way he punches emotion into such a small amount of time is truly incredible
I don't think it's impossible... it just involves a bit of Xanatos speed chess and a bit of algorithmic content generation. The trick is not trying to plan to your endgame at all, but always being two or three moves ahead and having a means to buy yourself time.
A standard combat encounter 2-3 CR above the party's level will make them feel threatened while you're running it on _autopilot,_ thinking about the plot instead of fighting smart.
@@dammitvictor798 that's... pretty smart actually. Thankfully my DM days are almost over for the time being, but I'll keep this in mind for whenever I DM for a long term canpaing again
"Patia.. is your arm weakest at the elbow or shoulder?"
I have tried some pay to play games were DMs devote so much time to expanding the world and working with players to reach the grand level of dnd roleplay. Mostly theatre kids willing to pay some money to get that Dimension20, High rollers, or Critical Role experience. Not sure where else I could find players and a DM that focused on the game for free. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you have 10 pages of information before the game, extensive backstory, and hours of working with the DM behind the scenes. At this point, it is a group jobby for most of us. What is important is remembering every DM and players have their different styles and all that matters is that everyone has fun. Find your own style and group you enjoy playing with and the experiences are just as amazing.
Haven't watched the video yet but as a fan of D20 I can definitely say "More is More?" is an amazing description of BLM
brennan's improv notes? BIGGER!
Despite the disclaimer at the beginning I see the top comments are still to focused on different types of comparisons between DMs.
But in regards to the actual video, I totally agree. Since I started playing Call of Cthulhu (a very investigative focused rpg) I have learned that to create a mistery, a puzzle, or an investigation, not giving information is not exactly the best idea and that actually players (at least mine, of course it depends too much on the players types each table have) enjoy, react, inmerse so much more in the story when you give more information, help them deduce ideas, help them connect points because their characters may know more than the players, etc. And since then, my DnD campaigns are even more enjoyable to my players, or so they think haha.
But yeah I love Brennan style, you can see that when he is running the "game" parts of the session he uses a lot of fillers, but when he is narrating a story he has CERO fillers and that's when you know that he is so inmerse himself in that narrative. And that at the end of the day he loves to basically tell stories.
I found Brennan telling players key info that players didn’t understand the significance.
There we have an exotic hair style, indeed.
To be fair, it also helps because they're level 14 characters with a lot of status.
incredible
I am DMing my first game with 5 people. I have never played D&D before, but I also play with two experienced players in this group. I got into D&D because of Dimension 20 Fantasy High, and I am pretty much completely copying Brennan. He is a huge inspiration to me, and I am really just trying to capture him. I will say to help me not prepare as much, I just really try to go slow and limit my players when I can. I try to limit them as least as possible though. I think it is a nice balance where they can drive the narrative forward themselves. I was told by everyone I did an excellent job which really made me happy !
He has said before, but the main reason he pulls his players at such a speed is because he has a set time that the game has to end by. He said himself his home games are much more paced.
I give info the characters logically know similar to Brennan. I give more for high level characters. Rolls are often for more info; when the roll is high. Sometimes if it’s really rare knowledge the roll can determine if they know it at all but that’s for rare lore only. You need to as GM know the lore and ecosystems well to do this effectively. Study and build worldlore use real world nature, sociology and history really help. This helps for shorter more story focused mini campaigns best. If it’s more ‘railroaded’ it’s easier vs if the players teleport suddenly elsewhere. But as GM ask for a break to prep the new area. Prep the amount you feel. Comfortable GMs prep the amount they need to have fun and do a good job. Seek the right amount overprepping can ‘lock you in’ and make you less adaptable to players going ‘off script’. Keep flexibility in mind. Invest in random encounter charts by area, shops PCs will likely visit interesting NPCs, etc. Also what you learn about your players preferences and behaviour.
"This is the first time that this has happened! *other then that this is the second time?" 😆
Word is hard. Brain is dumb.
My take feom Brennan is that he does give you the information but you have to look for it. Like casting legend lore or seeking a book. Other dms give you the lore dump as an intro and personally Im not invested enough in the storry to care. But the way Brennan does it Im atlest a few episodes in before the info dump happens and Im all in by then.
Thanks.
"This is the first time this has happened, outside the times Aabriya took over..."
So... the second time this has happened, lol.
This is the first time this has happened except for the first time lol i think that means its the second time
For your first point about giving more information to your players, I find that it is simply the better method for mystery/information gathering scenarios; lets face it, our players aren't sherlock holmes, and will more often than not simply not find the information we made to continue the narrative, or misinterpret it. We've all fallen into the mystery snag where we have a clue but the player never finds it because they made a bad roll; it's a dead end narratively, and it fucking sucks, luckily some smart people had ideas on how to fix this, and I'll share two that work in tandem, and are mostly system agnostic!
The gumshoe method, or what I believe is the closest to Brennan's style, effectively says "if it's in the room, and they need it, just fucking tell them it's there," and any roll on the player side is to give them more information on the clue/item, i.e. if the roll is successful the player learns it's infused with magic or whatever.
This method is to eliminate as many failure points as possible, in order to keep the narrative going.
Then you have the Three Clue Rule, in effect it's a way of design that gives multiple solutions to a choke point problem, The Alexandrian has a wonder blog post about it, with different ideas of how one should convey and use information to continue a story.
So the key rule for the Three Clue Rule, is to have three different ways the players can gain information; so instead of just having a magic stone that gives you a vision of the past to gain the code to a locked door, have a library with a dusty unused tome in their archives as well, and an old treasure hunter who has almost cracked the code, the fewer chokepoints in the story, the better.
As for the speed issue of Brennan's style, we should remember that Brennan is working under heavy time restraints that a normal GM doesn't have to deal with at their home game. Brennan absolutely has to hit story beats within the limited time that he has, any normal campaign can easily slow down the pace.
If you liked this video, feel free to come watch my pride month celebration video! (it could use the help, CZcams does NOT like this topic) czcams.com/video/3Nm-V4v5MZI/video.html
He has a very different style when he's not behind the screen at Dimension 20.
It's always horrible when you accidentally lock crucial information behind a dice roll the players keep failing. Which is why sometimes just giving information is the best route.
yeah but not in a way the players feel like the Dice dindt matter in the first place. In my Shadowrungame one player failed horrible at a crucial point of my story. Needed to meet the boss of a Scrap-Gang and the Guard outrolled him... sooo they wouldnt let him walk in and talk to the Masterchief, but they put a gun to his head and threw him in a cell with some Bloodhound to be questioned by the Warchief. My player thought he'd die there - got all information they needed, still ;)
Oh btw he got out on the term being his personal shadowrunner for some runs and had to obey, when called :)
Calamity was the first time in Critical Role history in which Matt had nothing to do with an Exandria story, and Brennan was the best choice.