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D&D Story: How My Players Broke My Adventure Before it Started
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2020
- How my players broke my adventure before it started.. oh dear.... here's my D&D story, of what they did to break the carefully planned adventure I put together and how I ended up using some techniques I showed you in the last few videos to make it come right!
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*D&D Story: How My Players Broke My Adventure Before it Started*
I'm going to listen to it, and correct this comment if necessary, but the fact you call it *your* adventure before it begins doesn't mesh well with being a great GM.
Why would you GM blindly for a random number of players, making random characters? Who play 2 hours long campaigns? How is this anywhere near a tip to become a great GM? I'll give you a pass tho, this is a great reason for it to be *your* adventure.
My DM: "I've planned this session based on the two most likely options you guys will choose for the next step of this adventure."
Me: "We'll choose the third option."
Classic PC fuckery lol
DM: "You squeeze through your tunnel under the fence. There is a narrow stretch of land between the fence and the moat which you can follow north or south."
PC 1: "Or east"
DM: "There's a moat--"
PC 1: "Can I make a swim check?"
PC 2: "West! Can my barbarian break the fence?"
DM: "No."
PC 2: "I'll go upwards. I've got +12 to climb checks."
DM: "Why would you--"
PC 1: "Or we could go down the tunnel again."
DM: "You can hear guards drawing nearer. You only have time to go north or south!"
PC 3: "I use my Scroll of Teleport."
DM: "Oh FFS..."
Don't plan the PCs options. That is not your job. Plan the options of the enemies instead. What and they want and why? How do they try to get it? What tools do they have? What would happen if no one interferes? Never ever EVER plan what the PCs should do! That's a common fault of beginner GMs. You don't want to write a story here. The story is, what happened in the session. Not what you planned. Again: Never expect the PCs to do anything.
My DM made the mistake of using a plot twist, the original, initial quest giver is secretly the actual, real BBEG. A couple decent rolls, sense motive and the likes, and the adventure was finished in 10 minutes.
At the end of my session today, one of my new players found a bag of holding and then put it in his bag of holding. It's gonna be great.
Doesn't that destroy the bags of holding and rip a portal to the Astral Plane.
TheOtakuKat damn right. Not only that any items in both bags get scattered across the astral plane.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@blackreign92. Along with anyone in a 10 feet radius
Planar campaign it is!!!.... Or you explain the situation, the player makes a new PC that is a family member, now trying to get to the Astral plane to find their lost sibling.
I remember one years ago. One PC got kidnapped, the GM wanted a mass combat to rescue him. Instead another player just shrugged & said "Ah well, I never liked him anyway" and a whole subplot went in the bin.
Sigh, “No plot survives first contact with the players.” There’s a reason DMs are called Cat Herders. All you can do is Plan, Prepare, and Pray. And when that inevitably fails, make it up as you go.
The irony is that the better you prepare the game, the better you can improvise when your game goes awry.
William Sullivan “Have you ever heard the tale of DM Plaguis? No, I wouldn’t think so. It isn’t the sort of story PCs would tell. He was a master of elaborate dungeons and campaigns, such was his skills in the arts, of which most might view as... unnatural. Ironic, even for his abilities to plan and prepare... his players managed to break the game.”
I couldn’t resist😁
I'm currently running a game(close to 2 years mark) and my players haven't derailed the plot. I planned out 2 continents 4 islands 2 BBEGs and pirate ship battles (just in case). Everything else has grown and been shaped by the players.
there are actually better techniques to prepare a game than planning its developments. most start with preparing the game AFTER seeing the character and tailor-make on them a series of interesting conflicts without expecting those to go one way or another.
I thoroughly disagree. So far my current campaing has passed a run time of 18 months. And not once, have my players derailed my plot, not once have I not been able to anticipate their next move. It is a matter of knowing your players, and then you can "lead them" the way you want them to go, without them feeling railroaded.
"*X* breaks the game."
"Only if you're an idiot."
This guy understands the core spirit of D&D. This isn't a competative video game.
Absolutely!
It is not specific to D&D only, but all role-playing games out there.
But yeah, the ability to improvise and change the game on the fly in reaction to creative player actions is something no algorithm can emulate, at least in the forseeable future.
That is so true. I am game master for Dark Heresy 2nd Edition (Highly modded since the second edition was diteched and I love it too much) and GM on the game's creator forum were always complaining about some classes being too broken and I was like...well, my players are now something like ten times that powerful and I never was faced with any problem of that type...
You are right, it is the players against the DM; he is the enemy...
@don't matter because this was a one shot game and they had a strict time table, they couldn't just play on and on. this wasn't a home game.
I would have simply swapped out the snakes on the fly with an entirely different monster type, such as apes or tigers or carnivorous plants. Then alter the stick pygmies to be something along the lines of Earth Genasi or Firenewts.
one of the players was a Fire Genasi. That could get interesting.
So, quantum ogres on steroids?
@don't matter the point is to be flexible, so I don't have to throw out the entire adventure just because the players had created characters with abilities that broke the original plan.
Going into this adventure, the players have no idea they would otherwise have been dealing with Stick Pygmies. So from their perspective nothing is lost by changing that encounter to Fire Newts prior to the encounter. If you're worried about incompatibility, you could even give the Fire Newts the exact same stat block as the Stick Pygmies, except change all their "stick-based" special abilities to fire-based ones. It's just a simple behind the scenes swap-a-rooni to salvage all my hard work.
If you've ever sat behind the screen you'd realize that DMs do those kinds of swaps all the time.
@@johnalbert2102 Nothing behind the DM screen is real until it is said or placed in front of the players
@@azuraben5128 Shhhhh! Don't let them hear our secret!
I love this story, partly because it's a DM 's worst nightmare and best outcome all in one. They broke it, but you rallied so effectively they have no idea they broke it...and still want to keep playing! That's the best!
You exaggerate. This isn't the worst nightmare, it's how sessions typically go if you have some experienced players in your group who are capable of creative problem solving. Or simply players who are not content being led by the hand along the prepared track.
The great appeal of role-playing is the illusion of a real, living world and the freedom and agency you as a player have within it. If you just want to lean back and enjoy the ride, you might as well play a video game.
@@olafmeiner4496 as a new and inexperienced DM this is my worst nightmare, as I currently don't feel I have the skills to rally the way Guy did. Not everyone feels so confident.
@@eclectic_nerd yes, it is intimidating in the beginning. I get that. I've been there. And I still have a lot to learn as a GM. But here are some tips that might help:
1. If you notice you are starting to panic, ask for a break. If your players accidently unmask the villain in the first act, don't deny them. Don't ask for a ret-con either. Call for a break, take a deep breath, take stock and rewrite your plan. Even consider ending the session early to give you the needed time. Your players will understand.
2. Be aware of the moving parts of your adventure, the various NPCs and their motivation. What are events that should trigger? Can you trigger one early? In a different order? Can you modify a triggered event slightly to adjust for the new circumstances? If the PCs decide against raiding the goblins' den, have the goblins raid the village the following night.
3. Imagine the roles of players and GM were reversed. Think of the NPCs as your PCs and react to the situation your players create as if they were the GMs. If the villain from the previous example was your PC, will she fight, flee or allow herself to be arrested in the hopes to escape later. Or maybe her lieutenant immediately takes over her job, so the story can go on?
4. Be confident. Say yes to unconventional or creative ideas from time to time. That's scary, I know. But very rewarding.
5. If you want to train your improvisation skills specifically, play a wonky dream episode one-shot that you haven't prepared for in the least. Communicate to your players that htis is an experiment and that they shouldn't have high expectations. Then make everything up as you go. Because it is a dream, there are no consequences and you can simply ret-con as much as you like. If you have written yourself into a corner, well, the players wake up, just to find themselves inside the next dream within a dream within a dream,.... The result and the feedback of your players might surprise you. To go one step further your group could even switch GMs in between scenes and the next person must continue where the last one left of.
Yep, it reminds me of the biggest complement a player didn't realize he was giving a GM. At a tournament my university's SF/gaming club put on each term, one of the GM evaluation forms came back with the answer to the question "how well did your GM ad-lib?" being "not applicable, no ad-libbing occurred."
What we knew, is that the guy who wrote the tournament had come into GM central during the session shaking his head saying: "I don't know what happened with Paul's group, they aren't even in the right city."
I had a similar experience, though it may have come from my complete inexperience in DMing at the time. In my first campaign, I made a setting that used to be completely free of magic, but due to a breach in the Contracts written by ancient gods, magic slowly began to seep in. Since no one knew what magic was before then, almost every civilized societies would not understand magic, and therefore fear and hate it. The campaign was going to be centered around the exploration of "Does the end justify the means", as the players get to see the extent in which societies attempt to push out the encroaching influences of the supernatural.
However, every single PC was either a non-human or an explicitly magical individual, meaning there was not a single person that would be a gateway between the humans and their fear of magic and creatures that were born of magic. Additionally, being people who were magically inclined or not human themselves, they would not know about the effort that human societies go to hide their dastardly deeds in their fight against magic, since they were almost all on the receiving end of it. So, what was supposed to be a campaign focused on a small group of people unearthing the dark deeds that their country must go through to protect its citizen from the earthshattering effects of magic, it became a story of a group of displaced, persecuted group of adventurers who were banished from the civilized world planning to gain enough power to kill the king of the humans, the one who caused the most amount of pain and suffering to them as a whole.
Sounds like a great story even if it wasn't what you had planned at all.
It was great that you were able to adapt to fit your player's characters into the setting. You can never plan for everything and leaving some things vague can be a great help when you need to improvise. Sometimes your players might do something that might seem to 'break' an adventure or they figure something out that you had planned as a big reveal, and dealing with those things in a fun and interesting way will come with time and experience. And it's never a bad thing to just tell your players that you might be stuck or need time to rearrange part of the adventure, as long as you embrace that chaos, don't railroad your players, and as long as everyone is having fun then it will work out.
Also not sure what game you were playing if it was D&D or something else or if your players made their characters randomly, but having a session 0 to talk to your players about the setting you've planned and the tone or genre that you are going for could go a long way to avoiding that kind of conflict. If you want most of them to be human then tell them, if magic is perceived as a mysterious and dangerous thing by most of the inhabitants of your world then they need to know that, especially if they want to make a character with magical abilities. But you seem to have done really well in creating a fun story, that fit around what your players brought to the table.
Isn't this a prime example how sessions go in general?
The power to talk your way out of a combat encounter or to turn the narrative on its head by siding with the villain,.. isn't that creative freedom one of the main reasons why we play role-playing games?
My approach: Create encounters as problems for the players to solve, but don't fixate on only one possible solution. It might even be okay to have no solution prepared at all. Because the players most certainly will come up with ideas you didn't anticipate and this should be rewarded by having things go their way.
I onced played with some experienced players a cuthulu oneshot where i, the gm, had no idea how they could win. I told them upfront: "I have this idea for a CoC adventure but I haven't figured out a way for you to win." And they wanted to try anyway. And they actually made it. So yeah, players may find solutions you never thought possible.
My players avoided an entire cobmat with a disguised adult green dragon through some MAJORLY stupid luck (Kept rolling 1-2 on insight checks, players kept rolling 18-20...) and a reenactment of "A Christmas Carol"...
When playing a final fantasy tribute campaign, i based by character on Gilgamesh. Loud, hammy, brightly coloured and all.
It wasn't until the first encounter that the gm remembered he'd rolled a random fault for our quest guide. Colorophobia. He came up to pur party, saw me and fled screaming.
I ran my first session as a GM recently. Your videos helped me a lot, so thanks for that.
This is why I don't plan encounters until i know what characters the PCs have made... and even if a player does manage to find a way to "break the game", I see it as a fair cop. If you planned an encounter with snakes and somebody could communicate with snakes, I see this as a unique way to solve a problem.
Gotta admit that I love it when my players throw a curve ball and think of something I don't. In my last session they put up a magic barrier that blocked off an entire encounter and still managed to complete the dungeon and beat the end boss. Now they are discussing whether or not they should open the barrier. Little do they know that reading a pair of scrolls will (a) close the barrier and (b) awaken a Zombie T-rex. Even if they leave it I'm still giving them full XP because it was an inventive way of dealing with a problem.
You made a mistake there, Guy. NEVER try to predict the actions of your players, if you've got the idea that they will go from A to B to C, the pcs will go from A to D, F, E, back to F and then to C.
I don't plan beyond "here's a situation, here's a trigger, here's your characters, off they go!"
Predictions can still be correct most of the time and it can save you a lot of stress to at least think about all the most likely outcomes.
DnD is great at showing how clever you aren't. Like as a GM I can think I've planned for almost every possible scenario only to have then do something completely different and lay waste to all my plans so I'm adapting on the fly.
This is how role-playing works. Period. No plan survives the first contact with the players. And that is what makes role-playing so special. You can play the same module / adventure / campaign several times even with the same people and it will always be different, because you will always write your own story.
Your problem is trying to plan for every possible choice the players can make.
Think like the NPC's who built the fort. Not like a GM with game mechanics. Same goes for the environment. If the PCs are using a spell or what ever to bypass some thing, think how that would work logically. Then give a consequence. Like we all get on our flying carpet to fly over the thing. Well, now they are a bunch of people on a colorful carpet up in the air for every one to see. How strong is the wind? Might some one fall off half way cross the thing? Bad guys have bows.
"X Breaks the Game"
There is a HUGE list of things that players can get their hands on that can supposedly break the game. Teleportation, summoning shenanigans, and so much more.
I would love to see a video that talked about this, but not in a broad or general way. Specific tools, tackled.
I've had the same problem you discussed in this video, and it was indeed ultimately solved with the same toolset. Change the triggers, reframe the problem or options, the players will usually course correct for you, often without knowledge that anything had gone wrong at all.
I started an SWN adventure without reading too much into psionics once. The psychic players (I had 2 of them) broke everything so hard immediately. Should have paid attention to how powerful psychics are in SWN... At least they still had fun, breaking things isn't really bad.
To me Divination spells are the most game-breaking ones as they risk to spoil so much of the fun. I know I can make up reason for why it wouldn't give them the information they want but then the spell itself is useless and they wasted one of their slots for nothing.
Complete Arcane for 3.5e actually has a section discussing this one.
@@junieb9446 before I go digging for it, what's the gist of that section?
The answer is simple: Change the way you prepare your game. When I started out as a GM I prepared stories. That was a huge mistake. Nowadays I prepare maps and NPCs with their own agendas, I prepare encounters as nodes, but the PCs decide which nodes they visit, in which order they visit them and how the encounters play out. Often how a encounter plays out influences the other nodes to some degree. And if the PCs find a way to skip the traps and teleport right to the finale, or if they poison the villain's dinner without a climactic battle, let them have their victory! They will feel clever and love your game for it.
If things go completely off track and I have no idea how to continue, I ask myself: Who are the relevant NPCs and what is their answer to the players' unconventional actions?
Under no circumstances try to force the players back on the track you laid out before them! Rail-roading is one of the greatest sins a GM can commit.
I makes me nostalgic for the red box THAC0 days where your choices for race were basically human, elf, dwarf, or halfling. Oh, the elegant simplicity of that time!
Man, you really know how to use Dungeon Fog. I got in there and had no idea where to begin. Now that I have turned the learning curve on Roll 20, I'll go back and give it another go.
It's funny. I'm playing a Yuan-Ti Pureblood Temptress right now in a game, so when I saw this video and saw a player playing a Yuan-Ti, I immediately said "Snakes. The problem is going to be snakes." It's a fun power.
This is why having a laid out plan is both a blessing and a curse. It can be fun setting up little adventure where the players go down these three rooms and this will happen in each room, but the wrench gets thrown if you forget that your characters have survival skills outside of combat or traps. Now, the way to fix this is a good one. As he said in the video, change when your triggers happen. If the events you had planed were tenable at all, then you should be able to tweak the plan on the fly. If your triggers aren't satisfying in room 3 instead of room 2, then why was room 2 so special and why can't it be changed in a GM View way? More than likely, it has less to do with the importance of Room 2 and more to do with you being inflexible.
We are human. That makes us primates. Monkeys are primates. We as more intelligent primates do not have mystic power over monkeys. Same goes for your Yuan Ti. Unless you have an ability that lets you do direct mind control you are dealing with an animal that runs on the survival fight or flight response.
Or fuck your snek person, they are now water monitor lizards. Giant ones, with big teeth and claws. That hunt in packs. because water monitor lizards do hunt in packs from time to time.
Awesome! I really need to rewatch the trigger video. But I’d still love a tutorial on the way you make your rivers look so GOOD! Thanks for all your hard work!
I'm preparing for my first time DMing, and I've got five main routes for my players to find and possibly take. They can do multiple, but since each route is for a different alignment, they would be unlikely to take both the Lawful route and the Chaotic route. Each route has a different length, difficulty, and difficulty to find it, with the easiest to find and lowest challenge rating route being the longest in duration, and the most difficult being one of the easiest to find as well as the shortest. Right away, I realized that the Lawful route, which I had wanted to be the hardest to find, would be particularly easy for the Rogue player to find, which caught me off guard as when I gave a quiz about different things the player wanted to do, they indicated that this Lawful route was the only one they weren't all that interested in. Learning this, of course, has given me all sorts of ideas on how to get my players into routes they aren't interested in, without them realizing that they don't have as much choice as they think. Obviously, at any point, they could decide to help the slavers, or the demon cult, or kill the friendly NPCs I've made. I'm prepared, however, to see wherever it is they take this story.
You overdoing it. Man, like, totally. They would take a sixth route they will somehow create in their minds because they will operate with insufficient data. Do not make routes; make encounters and use them while appropriate.
If you think you are prepared, you're not.
Players always break the adventure you have planned
Lol
Not always...
No plan survives contact with the PCs.
you don't prepare for what's going to happen, you prepare to improvise.
last week i had a session that began with downtime that was pretty prepared. the second half was the player find out that a wizard they commisioned to look for information got turned into a nothic and they wanted to bring them to safety. this lead to absolute hijinks with the party splitting up 3 ways, people getting to show of some stuff, using connections they made in their downtime, trying to evade guards that were just objectively no match for them, and ended with a jetpacking gnome. all i had was a nothic and the map of neverwinter. every step they or the guards took was pure improv. it was one of the best sessions i think i've ran.
I had a major campaign with a ongoing main villain. So to build his evilness I had his men basically destroy and wipe out most of a village. Our team turn up as the siege has happened. Hence the start of the adventure.
My evil main villain decides to gloat and set up that he's the guy they need to hate. He is standing on an upper ledge and is basically waffling telling them he is dangerous.
Our ranger asks to take a shot at him. I think it's a bad idea but let him do so. Natural 20 knocks our main villain off his perch.
So now I have to amend the main villain has a limp due to being knocked off. Which was not in the original plan but became a plot point that he wanted to kill the party even more
Reminds me of that time in adventures of the Windswift where they used a spell to pull Guys BBEG off a ledge into a 300ft ravine.
Guy said from now on his BBEGs will get OHSA approved handrails.
I have recently consumed your channel. Would just like to say thank you for your hard work and I find your insight to be excellent.
I can definitely relate to this story. One of my campaigns involved a test game during session zero which would have the group start in a normal looking town and prepare to reach a capital city only to reveal a grim, post apocalyptic scene everywhere else they went. I forgot about the players' need for a safe location, so they spent the entire test game in that town learning about and destroying the False Hydra beneath the town AT LV 1. I was lucky to keep a level head and got through it with only the simple "new mechanics" hiccups.
I have been playing and DMing since 1979 and as many have responded players do things you never could imagine no matter how well you plan and prepare. But that's what makes it fun.
Before the official "Descent Into Avernus", came out, I was running my fishing buddies through "Fires of Hell" which was based on "Fires of Dis" from Planescape. The WHOLE module is based on the fact of long, arduous land travel through the first layer of Hell.
Magical flight is banned in Avernus by decree of archduke Zariel and what do my buddies all roll? Tieflings with wings. So many of the encounters were built around having to figure out an obstacle -- trenches, view distance, etc. -- without being able to get "a birds eye" or being able to fly.
Happens a lot in my games, but I always just try to roll with it. Keeps my improv skills sharp and some of the best adventures and encounters have happened from my players doing something completely unexpected.
We did this to our DMs 3.5 campaign by getting an innocuous item called the travel cloak. They assumed it was a mundane item, but it actually basically removes the threat of most weather with permenant endure elements, provides shelter and all the food and water you need. Our DM overlooked it because it wasn't called the "incredible travel cloak of game breaking convenience" or something. Item's only 1200 too, and if you know you're going to do a campaign with survival elements, it really is OP.
The snakes could have been a Yuan-Ti liberation army. Fighting against the limbed-supressers. Making combat more imminent and give it a funny twist.
While the warforged could be trialed by combat to see if he is a worthy tribute to the dungeons curse
...I might have accidentally mucked up a pretty neat story element that my DM had planned.
We were mostly new players, and after being nearly mauled by snowmen and "Paindeers", it's safe to say that we were fairly paranoid. So much that once we reached the village we had set out for, none of us dared to go inside. We were pretty tapped, so instead, I set up Leomund's Tiny Hut at the entrance and we took a long rest. ...turns out that had we ventured just a liiiittle bit further in, we would have found tents that would have magically put us to sleep and given us all intricate nightmares about our backstories, which our DM had planned out *beautifully* with recorded soundtracks, creepy voice effects and everything.
We still got the nightmares though (our DM decided that this effect wasn't dependent on the tents after all, but more of the area in general and that the hut did not protect us from that). However, it was a wee bit awkward when we woke up and found the tents, but couldn't figure out their purpose or why they were magically putting us to sleep for seemingly no reason... ^-^;
COOL Love the fact you share your dilemmas as a GM - very inspiring
I had a friend who always found a way to bypass my boss fights. Hed eather befriend them or find some way to bluff or slight of hand his way to a free sneak attack that would crit for max damage or somthing
That's great. Sounds like your friend figured out what kind of game he wanted to play. As long as not too many other players were looking forward to said boss fight.
This really brings up a massively important point to running Convention games: Provide Pre-Gen characters so you know exactly what each PC is capable of and is appropriate to the game.
...or just improvise like here, because running your own character is like half of D&D. Pre-gens should be saved for quick tutorials for new players or quick drop in PCs.
Best video yet! You have given great advice for planning, but the best plan does not survive contact with the Players. Most of my games do not go according to plan. These are not "broken" but often much better than I could have imagined.
This I’m interested in even the amazing guy has these stories
You really make DMing sound fun and easy, time to check out your other stuff!
@11:32 - "Only if you're an idiot." I absolutely love that. My friends and I played Torg eternity last night, a continuing effort within the Cyberpapacy, and everything they came up with was utterly brilliant -I have some highly intelligent friends- but I was able to take a few seconds to think something up each time... I have planned almost nothing for this adventure, in fact, so I'm not disappointed as badly when something gets broken, hehe.
As a 1st time GM playing with much more advanced Players who are literally constantly trying to break the game, I really appreciate this video!.. thanks Guy, with the tools you’ve provided I’ve been able to keep up and keep them on their toes... just finished our 4th (5th counting prologue) session and got my 1st text from a player that read “dude that story was dope, thank you!” .. so thanks for that ;~)
Your adventure as designed sounds awesome!
I had a shadowrun game where my players just decided to risk blowing open the wall of the building to escape another way, mapping on the fly! Of course in that game, one of the major enemies got befriended, gotta reward good roleplay, and they earned it.
I really enjoyed your story. When I do one shots, I assign pregens to the pcs, that allows me to at least control that aspect of my game. I especially do this for con games.
I think it was either you or Matt Coleville or Cody who said: I have this planned, PC's are off to one direction, leave the destination of quest areas obscure so they don't know what they'll find.
What I've learned from Matt Mercer is to get the players invested in one direction so you know what to bring next, but end the session just as they start on the path or are a bit on the path to the next quest that you can design for next session.
Also, it's hard to always be the GM. I mean I like dragging the players asses along but I'd really like to play for a year after DMing for 20.
Cool. My PCs have a habit of subverting my expectations, so I usually set up my dungeons in a mirrored format. If they cotton on to 1 trap on 1 side , I can swap around what is where in the mirror and give them what they need so they dont get stuck.
“Only if you’re an idiot”... no truer words 😂
A big part of *my* fun as a GM is to roll with what the players say. It's really fun when I can take exactly what the character wants and use it against them.
I was doing a Call of Cthulu game. A player who thought he was clever came up with a Tibetan Ninja Monk. I looked at the sheet and announced that the game started in Arkham. The player gave me his plan. I cheerfully said: "How are you speaking to these people?" He had no ability to speak language other than Tibetan.
Story evolution, in my opinion, is the best part of D&D.
A creative guy like you Guy shouldn't have panics at all. So a PC can talk to snakes, big deal. Make the snake encounter a spider encounter you can even keep the same statblocks and hopla a new but quite the same combat encounter.
Honestly, as an experienced GM of many different non d20 systems, I think the big issue here wasn't the players "breaking" anything, it was your assumption that a low combat adventure can't be a blast.
I've been running the same Fate-based campaign for years now, and while I haven't tracked it specifically, I'd be surprised if AT LEAST half the sessions had no combat whatsoever in them, and the players always have fun and come back for more.
Finally! Someone who understands that combat doesn't define a good session. Or a good game. And that there are systems other than D&D on the market.
No plan, nor devil nor even god, no matter how perfect, survives contact with the player.
Thanks guy for the advice
I love hearing DM's stories about how things go unplanned, my favorite is one where the party was meant to search for and save a princess kidnapped during her wedding but they found out she didn't want to get married and helped her run away before the wedding so they essentially are the kidnappers and now have to be on the run.
I was about to go all out attack before I actually saw the video... until I saw the very end!!! Players can't break a game they can only create the challenge the GM needs to make a great session!
Players can brake a game by being assholes.
I love his methods so much more than fudging rolls. Improve is an understood part of the GM's job
Apply the idea of procedural generation to DM planning. Make only a setting and one or two NPCs prior to the encounter. Have a list of names of places and people. Same with area details and character traits. Read off the lists as you describe what they come across. This way they can do whatever they want, and you can describe the story based on their actions. As long as you have an understanding of each situation, then you can "generate" whatever you need to that would reasonably be in that setting for the session to move forward.
I do this in all my games and I only prep for ten minutes prior to each game. I draw out the maps on colored contact paper that I can use a dry erase maker on. And I use miniatures to stand in for other monsters when I don't have a certain monster figurine. And since players, including mine, will always go "off script" when it comes to the game session, this allows me to never be unprepared for the way a session goes. I hope this helps a few people run more games. Keep up the good work everyone.
DM is setting up a ravenloft campaign, said any offical material is fine - the party so far consists of: fighter/monk multiclass with lots of monster hunter stuff (tulok the barbarians simon belmont build), grave cleric, scooby & shaggy ranger & a sun soul monk thus far - still 3 more characters to confirm
Hosted my first DND session as the DM and i had a Warforged barbarian, a Shifter(?) ranger, A Dragonborn Paladin, and a Tiefling Sorceror. Rowdy bunch right? Well after causing utter mayhem in my town i created the level 1 group make there way to an inn to deal with a rat problem (cliche i know but w/e). I need to mention that our Sorceror was a... wild mage. What i was unaware of was how when he rolls a natural 1 when casting spells to determine a wild magic surge it is the DM's DECISION as to whether it would or wouldn't occur.
So we just went with it.
He pulls out his percentile dice.
He rolls an 8.
Everyone was within 20 feet.
Everyone was level 1.
That is an amazing set of story ideas wrapped in a neat atmosphere! Wish I had that level of creativity. I mostly just steal other’s ideas and repackage them. :)
stealing ideas and reworking them is a great way to make stories. my favourite is to just combine stuff which turns it unique. combine mindflayers with war of the worlds and you got a neat adventure ready to go.
Here's a tip for hiding maps for beginners: take an amazon box big enough on at least one side to fit a sheet of paper. Then cut off everything but the bottom and a finger-length of the sides. Glue the sides and all edges and stuff. Then buy deco sand. Maybe paint the sides if you're artsy, doesn't matter. Put the sheet with the map in your cut off box and pour the sand over it to hide the map. Then just push the sand aside as the PCs explore.
Don't use sand from outside, that's just...ewww.
The right amount of preparation is great! But too much preparation is worse than none!
I was running a Star Wars RPG with custom system. I created open world, bunch of factions, lots of characters with complex interactions. My players were three Jedi Knights, latter to be joined by fourth, sent to planet to locate a missing Padawan with healing talent. We did not last an hour, because apparently "Investigation in open world" means going to nearest casino, annoying the chief of security who just wanted to get on with her day and instead there were Jedi barging into her office on top floor of skyscraper asking if they can play despite having force powers, get on a train and leave the capital city to go to a seaside resort where they enter a bar during the day, start asking for drugs from bartender and when he gets confused and increasingly alarmed they slaughter the whole staff and owner of the bar. And apparently it was all somehow my fault because all I gave them was an open world map, background info on the planet and missing girl and a comlink contact for local planetary security investigator. Why they went to casino first I do not know. Why they decided to get out of the city after security chief kicked them out of the casino I do not know. And why they went to the end of the train line to escape wrath of casino security chief that just wanted them to leave her office and casino so she could get back to her job, I do not know. I would like to point out they did not ask once about the girl in the casino until they were being escorted out and started asking for drugs to first find out if the bar had underground connection.
The idea of players breaking the game has made me want to run a campaign based on a single player SNES rpg.
It's the chaos of it all that makes it enticing
Those maps do look very cool
okay at 7:00 my game masters instinct says double up the crocodiles (if you cant think of another jungle monster, because time) and make it not fight/notfight but fight head on and ambush opportunity and have the snake warn them (to be able to set up an ambush) and maybe even fight alongside them (until the first hit because new friends are find but dying is still dying)
and then the junglers can be a social encounter again. Now you "only" need to improvise some personality and roleplaying stuff for the snake
This problem is the difference between static and dynamic world settings. With a static world setting the Game Master is dependent upon the players following the events and settings planned by the Game Master in advance. In a dynamic world setting, the world unveils based on the player's actions and choices. Needless to say, this second extemporaneous game style is harder for GMs to do because it requires everything to be decided in the moment and on the fly which doesn't leave time for detailed settings and NPCs. Even encounter events have to be produced as loose actions which can be dropped into the game in a sensible fashion where ever the players end up going.
One major technique I learned 34 years ago to overcome this issue is to split the game into two distinct portions/activities. The first activity is the game itself played using the rules and the characters chosen by the players in the world designed by the GM. This should be kept to a time frame of about 2-3 hours so that long playtime fatigue doesn't set in, where the players start loosing focus and becoming bored. A way to end these 2-3 hour session is with the discovery of an encounter, aka with a cliffhanger. Then take another 1-2 hours debriefing the players about what they'd like to see for their characters in the next game, and long term with your campaign. This is best done in a casual environment of food and drinks, and can be done at a restaurant where casual conversation is possible. While the Game Master may take notes, this isn't a continuation of game play, but an idea gathering session so the GM knows what to plan, and the players are less resistant because they know the GM is planning some things they are looking to have for their character stories as long as they don't sabotage and derail the game.
Daaaang, my Guy. Someone done hoodwinked you?
"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
I've found this applies pretty well to DMing as well.
Back in the 80's when i and my friends played D&D, i learned very quickly, that my friends were out to ruin the adventure before it began.
Things like random town encounters, resulted in massacres of the town folk etc.....
If you want something to be a combat encounter and your player has something that would turn it into a social encounter based on race or something, then just change which creatures you're throwing at them. It isn't a good idea to do in a longer campaign but is definitely okay for a one-shot. I think the situation was handled okay overall but could have been easily changed to suit the original vision better
In my last adventure the players were supposed to protect the villagers construction from a goblin scouting party and there was an optional fight at the goblin lair filled with traps and goblins.
One of them "Chad" managed to befriend one of the 3 goblins they captured, fed it, clothed it and I rolled a dice to see how the Goblin reacted to all this rolling a nat 1 and having the goblin be charmed by his care. A new party member spoke goblin and they ended being guided by this goblin to the lair, avoiding the traps and succesfully bluffing there was a fire inside the cave causing panic and having the goblins themselves fall on the traps and wiping 2/3s of then out before the poor goblins had a chance to fight.
My plans were thrown out of the window but it sure made me laugh like a maniac.
They also have an alcoholic goblin pet now wearing one shoe and a large fisherman's hat
change the snakes to flesheating boars on the fly? :D on the other hand, you did really well and it was a fun adventure as it sounds! So noone broke anything!^^
It turned out better than you could have planned I think.
Do you have the session posted somewhere? It would be fun to watch.
Dm rule #1: your story is your responsibility. You handled that very well.
My players avoided my subplot by refusing to listen to my planted NPC guard in Jazzercise Brainwash Prison. Whoo was going to get them out and help expose a cult. Nah, I like it in here, and that sounds weird, I'll wait for my friends. Team shows up, does a relatively discreet rescue, just leaves.
I had a game like that yesterday:P
Last game i DMed, i planned a huge combat with an army of goblins commanded by 2 Hobgoblin Warlords, where 7 players where going to strugle there way up a hill defended by 25 goblin archers, fighters and some shamans. But they suddenly decided to run, because they lost the element of surprise. Back to the town, 1 hour away from the Goblin's lair, they realised they where followed by a small group of goblins with one of the Hobgoblins in front of them. This little squad just standed in the middle of the town, causing fear on the town's people, but not attacking. The players showed up and had social encounter with the Hobgoblin, that offered a deal with them. The adventurer's group could not step next the Goblin's Lair, but in return, the Hobgoblin ( that i made a Lawful Evil character ), promised that her army would not step next the town never again. After that, they made a speech, and with a really high result and good speech coming from the players, they made the entire small farm town become servants of Bahamut and prepare to fight the goblins if they ever broke the deal.
In resume, my plan was a long battle against a horde of goblins, but ended up as a full social encounters session. It was fun, but the leason here is... as DM, you have to be always ready to turn the table around and keep up with the actions of your players.
Being a DM is like turning a roulette wheel and hoping it lands on even.
Could have the snakes be mind-controlled by the magic of the place.
I stunned my GM in our second season by turning my druid into a rat and scouted his dungeon thoroughly. I missed a couple things, but otherwise detected many of the cave's secrets.
Where can I watch the one-shot? Interested to see how the game actually went in real time, thanks!
This was a very fun and insightful vid. But I wonder why you'd stick to your adventure if the PCs break several of your base premisis? I.e. if there is a Yuan-Ti in the party, why not change the snakes description-wise into scorpions (or ants, or reptiloid weregoblins ...) but keep their stats?
My new response whenever somebody complains that such and such a thing "breaks" D&D.
"Only if you're an idiot." -Guy, The Great GM.
I once ran a game where my players literally beat an unbeatable encounter.
Whole encounter was that the players were conscripted to help defend a walled city from another armies attack.
The other army belonged to a nation that was heavily xenophobic and warmongering.
The whole plot was that the players would take part in the battle; then eventually flee as their lines collapsed.
Then the campaign would mostly be them fleeing to the next defensive city. From there it would morph into them doing odd jobs and missions for the citizens and army there. In order to prepare for the enemy and weaken it with raids.
None of that ever happened. The party snuck out the night before the battle. Was able to ambush an enemy patrol. Steal their armor, snuck into the enemy encampment, then poisoned the entire food and water supply of the enemy army.
This was against some really high stealth checks mind you.
Next day comes; word of the enemy army fleeing back to their nation spreads. Group is now considered heroes. I spend the whole next week speed building a new campaign for them.
The GM's job is to hide the railroad tracks, and also to make sure those tracks can be rearranged to fit anywhere.
Nice gamer chair!!!
@Great DM - why you're not doing audio podcast ? I honestly would love to listen to this but don't have enough time to watch.
In spite of all the planning you can do... and all the prep'... complete with the best and most complete of professionally created modules available... As a GM' you WILL be caught with your pants down.
There's probably a couple dozen quippy little principled phrases of wit and wisdom about the matter. Sooner or later, when it comes down to it, you're just going to have to improvise... adapt... and carry on. There are techniques and tricks to keep this to a relative minimum, but the fact remains that you will have everything formulated to make sense with "X" and the Players will choose "Y" or "Z"...
Some of them will go out of their way, through mental gymnastics to find a means of pushing the GM past his or her limits and outside of their plans. Others just stumble upon those decisions without the slightest idea that they're derailing the most carefully covered bases of a Campaign... tossing literal hours of prep' into the trashcan.
That's part of the fun of even Playing, AND Running (GM'ing) a Campaign. It's okay... encouraged even. You should let the adventure get off the rails. That's the space where the weirdest and most wonderful stories come from... pure creativity.
Obviously, in the beginning, it's awkward and uncomfortable as a head-space. It's hard to watch a perfectly good plotline take a wild left turn into abyssal darkness of "I have no f***ing idea"... AND you will make a mess of it from time to time. BUT if you're not willing to dive in and make that mess, you can't risk making something great out of it. You can't get the practice that hones GM'ing into a fine skill of improv' and adaptation.
Don't panic. Take notes as you go... to help keep it all straight... AND above all, have a good time with it. ;o)
I mean, when you saw the Yuan-Ti character get handed in, why not just change the Snakes into another type of lizard to get around the ability? Especially in tight one-shots, I'm totally for DMs having some ability to be flexible and keep combat encounters as combat, etc.
I think the Twig Blights would have been horrified at the sight of the mockery of life and Vice versa with the snakes Just because you can speak to your prey doesn't mean your not going to eat it.
8:45 The spell Suggestion reads the following: "...The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable. Asking the creature to stab itself, throw itself onto a spear, immolate itself, or do some other obviously harmful act ends the spell.".
Telling the snakes to attack the undead crocodile would essentially be the same as "throwing oneself onto a spear" (or fang), wouldn't it? They did evidently have enough wisdom to understand that it meant danger to attack it, right?
No plan survives first contact with the player characters
Hey. Just putting this comment on this video because currently is is the most recent. Me and 2 friends want to play dnd, but everyone wants to be a player instead of a dm. The internet told me that a dm shouldn't also be a player. We have never played before and are only trying to have fun in the game, so what should we do?
Had something similar happen in a starfinder campaign. The PC's were up against a very powerful water elemental. They weren't supposed to be able to beat it. One of them was playing the skill monkey as a bard. Yup, he rolled a nat 20 to seduce it. Though it was funny so now he has five half water elemental kids running around.
In our game group we have a saying "No amount of DM planning can make up for player ingenuity or stupidity."
Does anyone know if this stream can be seen anywhere?
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. Because players will find ways to muck things around.