This actually did a good job of convincing me not to buy the book. I look to these sorts of books more for inspiration than I do for stats and abilities. I dont mean that in a nasty or negative way, you didnt do anything wrong. I am actually appreciative of the opinion you provided. INow I dont have to buy the book just to be disappointed with it just being monster re-writes. If I ever find it for sale somewhere it would be worth grabbing, it isnt worthless by any means, just not worth the heavy price books come in at nowadays.

🥳❤️👍🏿

Subscribed ty

Can’t believe I listened to the point where i’m up to date on your whole campaign diary. It’s been an entertaining ride full of behind-the-screen insights that are highly educational for a wanna-be DM. Thanks for doing this and I look forward to more!

I really like this. It will come in very handy in the campaign I`m working on. My players wanted a war themed campaign, but I still needed to figure out how to make encounters more interesting than just throwing lots of enemies at them... This will help tremendously.

Because my players wanted something different. They voted on a world with a planetary ring, Roman like cultures, WW2, No guns or gunpowder(Ruins the immersion they said), Airships, Mushroom Forests, etc... Now I gotta figure all this out. I mean how do you have WW2 without guns? For example, they wanted a Planetary Ring. How would this effect the world? Well, long hot summers with nights that are almost as bright as day, because the ring would act similar to a full moon that fills half the sky. Long cold winters that are very dark, because the ring would block most of the sunlight like a giant pair of sunglasses on the world. The rings would also occasionally rain down meteor storms, so no large cities exposed on the surface. Cities would be more like Petra, Derinkuyu, Pueblos, or carved out of mountains. If I add bright glowy magic rocks to light up a city, then I can make it work. On the plus side, any old ruin is now automatically an old school dungeon crawl... Something none of these guys have ever experienced. I decided to make lots of canyons where the bottoms are fertile rainforests, with the cities carved into the walls, and up top is mostly inhospitable waste land inhabited by nomads. WW2 can be accomplished by using the Artificers Repeating Shot Infusion as an enchantment on all military crossbows, basically turning the light crossbow into the M1 Garand and the hand crossbow into the 1911 pistol. If I take the Bust Fire mechanic from the automatic rifle in the DMG and slap it on the heavy crossbow I can basically make a machine gun. Reflavor Grenades as "Alchemical" and now we can have WW2 without breaking the Immersion of it being a fantasy world. I can throw large numbers of enemies at them by using swarm mechanics on the enemy units. 10 enemies per unit, one initiative roll, one hit point pool, multi attack, one special attack, the enemies space is difficult terrain, etc... Officers would be a separate initiative, and be much harder. My real problem isn't the world building so much, as it`s coming up with enough WW2 or at least War themed encounters. So far what I have is to rip off the Dirty Dozen/Suicide Squad Movies for the first "Mission" by having my players recruited out of the prison, go to boot camp to be trained (gets them proficiency with the weapons and gear, plus the Sharpshooter feat and the Archery fighting style to make the whole thing work), then they get to jump out of an Airship using Rings of Feather Falling(Parachutes) D-Day style to raid the enemies main research base, steal the prototypes, blow up the base and escape. Think Clint Eastwood`s Fire Fox movie and the Wolfenstien video games. Okay, that's one. I can rip off Bruce Willis`s Tears of the Sun by having them rescue a prince from one of the nations that were being invaded. That`s two. But for the life of me I can`t think of any more... Right now I kinda feel like I`m beating my head against a wall.

Now, the first 3 floors of Scarlet Citadel are EXCELLENT. I cut them apart and treat them as 4 different lairs (Crypt, Cerial KIller Lair, Mad Scientist Ooze Lair, Mad Scientist Time Lair and a Raid on a Dwarven Horde that is trapped and inhabited by Half Trolls- but if you go too far in you get swarmed by insects). LOL, Scarlet Citadel has a 3rd level bypass as well. Why? Because the Story of the Scarlet Citadel isn't part of the surface levels. It REALLY starts at the 4th level where you encounter the factions and the main people that are causing the problems you are there to fix. Looking forward to your 5e Abomination Vault series!

i’m only an aspiring DM, but I would have preferred a ruling in which the Metal “construct“ would have been somehow affected by the heat metal spell. Perhaps it would work as a kind of analgesic, enabling the automaton to move more fluidly. Or it would’ve just made the creature sweat. Something more creative and less legalistic. Just my inexperienced two cents. by the way, I’ve listened all of this way through this formidable campaign diary, and this is as good a place as any for me to tell you I really like your retelling of the gameplay and the peeks behind the screen you provide, which offer quite a few insights. I admire your vast erudition and your commitment to your personal dark fantasy vision.

Thanks again for another informative video! Lots of good ideas

Very interesting ideas! Nothing is as exciting as a ticking clock, and players love it even if they find it stressful. Just need to be strong and enforce a time limit IRL as well, or my players will sit and discuss the next 6 seconds round for 60 minutes x)

Great take! One of my most common frustrations in an ongoing game is losing the thread and realizing nobody remembers what the motivations or goal was for getting into a dungeon.

My main reasoning is The Forgotten Realms is by far the most commonly known. This comes with so many expectations. After decades in the hobby, I am just so burnt on FR.

Ive actually been homebrewing a prison escape for a session 0 with a bunch of brand new 5e players. This is a fantastic way for me to up the tension! Thanks!!

I have a artificer who's planning on crafting a delerium powered rifle during the course of the campaign. I think having new delerium powered technology emerge is really interesting and cool!

good stuff, as always, thanks!

You know who should use FR? Ed Greenwood. It would feel weird showing up at his house to play, and he's running an Eberron campaign. Actually, the fact of FR is great. It's been around forever and it's fully detailed. But imo it shouldn't serve as more than an example of what's possible. I don't think most gamers should even aspire to its scale. It's too big, too much, for most. You'll never need all that. Create or steal or adapt what you need and let that be your world. Anything else is basically just dead weight slowing you down. I'm not saying don't think or plan or prep. I'm saying less is more. Unless you're Ed.

My answer is usually a combination of both proposed with the addendum of if I want to run generic fantasy, I’ve digested enough fantasy media that I don’t really need to do any conscious worldbuilding at all, and I certainly don’t need to learn the history of a setting that’s as uniquely boring to me as FR (YMMV; obviously it hasn’t become the “default” D&D setting because it doesn’t resonate for people). FR’s problem for me is that it’s a remarkably deeply developed world that didn’t need to be anywhere near this deep.

I like some the aditions in demons and devils in the book i love the actuakl in lore catagorization of the demons evolving aspect and standadising demons and devils to have actual racial traits and abilities that all of their rave have its inspired me give those traits to others of their kind or prefer use those demons and devils over tha actual ones in official matedial

I'm not sure I see the point of that question. The obvious answer is "because I don't want to...which is why I'm creating my own world." You can't build a world - for stories, for games or whatever, based on just one question. That is the snake-oil salesman's pitch. That is the grail of the terminally lazy and it never amounts to a memorable world or good gaming. That said, the only ONE acceptable question is "What do the players want?" Base your world on what your players want and it will be, at the very least, an enjoyable game.

I also prefer to run more thematic games, but for me that is more than just creating a mood board. And as an aside, witch hunts are not a middle ages thing, those happened after medieval times, mostly after modern book printing and translations of the bible into other languages than Latin happened, and thus a fracturing in belief threatened the orthodoxy.

Solid video, and I feel like it also alludes to a question I often find myself asking, which is: why am I running this game in D&D? At least for me, system can't really be separated from setting, especially with something like D&D, whose rules and mechanics are VERY MUCH tied into it's default settings, and demands either removing/ignoring a lot of things from play or doing some heavy reflavoring if you want to get away from the feel of those default settings. Even if I have solid reasons for not using the Forgotten Realms as a setting, D&D's mechanics demand that my homebrew world have some very Forgotten Realms, generic high fantasy flavor, so if I want to stray away from that, it's always worth asking if there's any point in trying to wrangle D&D to fit when there are tons of other wonderful TTRPGs that might fit what I want to do better. Could I homebrew D&D into a steampunk setting full of high fantasy races? Sure, and maybe Eberron skews close enough to what I want for me to work within it's framework, but if I'm deadset on things like firearms and machinery, maybe it's better to just run Tephra, which is a system all about steampunk with high fantasy races, and will have more fleshed out, playtested rules for those things. I think a lot of people get this idea that new TTRPGs are hard to learn because D&D is hard to learn, but there are TONS of rules-light options you can pick up in an evening, and even a lot of crunchier systems are still much easier to learn than D&D thanks to a more cohesive vision and less of a weird mix of new mechanics and legacy mechanics from older editions.

Good video, and good question.

respect for the tick figure!

Why not use the forgotten realms? They are too colorful, everything is in there and so everything loses meaning. Nothing is special. You want to play as a walking pile of manure? Well, in modern Forgotten Realm you might actually be a favorite with the people in the village because - hey, everything is okay. You are into emo drow? We got you covered. Orcs and bugbears are cuddly little or big besties, magic everywhere. Every frickin farmer has a magical sickle +2000 of total and utter destruction. Just no.

id rather make my own world and remember that than have to remember/look up a whole bunch of stuff about a world i dont know at all

It always helps me to create the map first and then create a story that fits it using the surroundings. Maybe I'm doing it backwards 🤣

What a lovely question !

Seems kinda wierd that it's either Freedom so go play story games or Specific Feels. FR is still vague enough I can easily make a Specific Feels campaign. For me that has been the problem with D&D setting, so generic. Drasgonlance started off great but after D&D D&Ded it, it became bleh. Birthright was almost something. 1. Map. Without a map both DM and Players will lose interest quickly. 2. Gods. Make them unique 3. Classes and Races. Limit them. Just because there is some book with <insert race/class> doesn't mean you have to allow them. 4. Talk big, play small. Explan vaguely about whats out there, detail the small area around the players. That way you can freely change something according to whats happening with the players. 5. Time. Have time have actual meaning. Does it not break fun when the weather/season is always the same. Or doing something has no time limit. 0. World in Motion. Do not have Plots. Allow the world to move without the players. It sucks as a player when some DM gives you '3 plot hooks' to chase around. And nothing happens with these "plot hooks" until the players act upon them. I'm sorry I can go play any number of video games and do that.

The "kitchen sink" is exactly the reason I never want to use the forgotten realms. I don't want to run my PG-13 desert nomad campaign, and have my player say "My character is a lolth-sworn dominatrix and you have to deal with it because it's cannon" or some other 100 year old crap I've never even heard of, let alone approved

Not the answer being "because I don't have a copy of the Forgotten Realms" 🥲

Honestly after being a DM for almost a decade now, I haven't found such good and straightforward advice on homebrewing worlds. Oftentimes it can be really difficult to know what to actually spend time creating, and advice like "spiral outward" is great for encounter design and general session prep but doesn't really help with the actual *creation* of the world. Having the several step checklist you recommended simplifies the process and makes things much clearer. Thank you!

The question is "why don't you buy this book and use its contents instead of coming up with something on your own?

LMAO! That's was a great and surprising question.

Because one of my players knows the Realms better than I do, and I may give a bad clue or something that leads them astray. There is so much to the Realms that even with all the videos and such, I can't catch up.

Dude... "Bee-stee-air-ee" not "BEST-ee-air-ee." They are BEAsts, not BEsts.

Prepping for a convention right now and this showed up. Excellent advice. Action-able!

I feel like the thing with legendary resistances is that the DM was never supposed to tell players that it used its legendary resistance. At least I never tell my players that that’s what the monster does. That way the monster seems genuinely intimidating rather than the DM is just giving you a swift kick to the nuts.

These videos are definitely helpful, thank you. I'm slowly prepping to run this campaign and seeing how your party handled things has been very useful (and entertaining) so far. Right now I'm debating on using a different system to run this in (Savage Worlds, Shadow of the Demon Lord and Shadowdark are the contenders). From what I've seen, 5e just makes it too easy to bypass certain situations instead of thinking their way through them.

Thanks! This was pretty helpful. My group is still only level 3, but I read over this one a ton trying to figure it out. I did see the solution you mentioned on Reddit where the user displayed the map isometrically, making the (possible) 3d solution more apparent. I’m considering making the L shape be the hall extending vertically, making it obvious something is up there, and they could see the statue if they peek up there. When the light hits the statue and it slides back, I’ll have a staircase form. I play a lot of Doom, so self-building staircases just seem natural.

Page 147 describes the puzzle fairly well IMO. The map doesn't show doors because they're NOT doors. It's a wall with a small glass 'porthole' (like a ship window). My biggest dilemma was that there is NO SUNLIGHT in Drakkenheim. The Haze prevents sunlight...so how do you make the mirrors work?! I fixed a lot of the problems with one change. Let the Daylight spell work. Once that happened my group was off to the races. I placed a staircase in the shaft upwards to the archives to make that area work. Glad your players came up with a clever solution! 👏

I have been waiting for this one... Thanks again for sharing your experience. You know I love your stuff. 1. @3:33 The Door Problem: The jpg maps that are sent with the Kickstarter have the doors properly highlighted in color where the maps in the book/pdf kinda merge with the wall and look just like wall. 2. We need a table of contents that applies to the Drakkenheim KZbin where certain events take place so ambiguous issues are not so difficult to deal with. How did they deal with it in the Series? I'm sure this list or spreadsheet is out there somewhere but I haven't found it. 3. I was hoping in the VTT that there would be some awesome dynamic lighting and reflections solution programmed in, but it doesn't seem to be. Looks like the GM just has to reveal the areas as needed when they reflect the light in certain locations.

Gooey Cube is a company that does exactly what you are describing. Lots of handouts and NPC art right inside the campaign box.

Bro W tips keep it up👌

This is a great tool to help immerse your players in the game world.

Steamforged Games Local Legends did a great job of this with NPC portrait cards and a separate booklet with all of their info in.

This!!!!!! As someone who doesn't take notes in my campaigns, the NPC visuals bring back 99% of the pertinent / relevant information. Also makes it more of an immersive experience...and isn't that one of the main goals of the game?? Kuddos to you for the time and effort you put in to your preparation! I'm sure your players appreciate it!

pp

Knuckleheads🤔 Seems like they had a pretty good plan for a bunch of knuckleheads.

I recall the adventure module saying that during the daytime the Lord of the Feast "rests inside the cathedral to keep the voices in his head quiet" ...and so always imagined when prepping that the party would find a way to confront him on the inside... That is NOT what happened, but that was due to players not wanting to be foolish and confront him 'in his lair'. Because you felt obligated to use the map I think you homebrewed and contrived a great scenario that forced the players onto that map. It sounds like they had an epic battle and will take a great story away from it!

My group is 7 pcs so they should be able to handle the Lord of the Feast when they get to him.