did you voice Henry from KOD?

I joined a game where the DM has been overtuning encounters a lot. I got kinda upset the DM didn't kill my character because he didn't want a SECOND character death from the same combat in a session where a new player joined. By all accounts my character should have died, as I think he was at zero hp when the bridge he was on broke. The bridge was connecting islands in the sky. Now the DM is wondering why we try to do whatever we can to avoid fights.

GM of 45+ years (wow, I feel old)... I've never felt a need to "balance" an encounter. the players need to make decisions. to stay and fight or run away, are two of the most important decisions they can make!

I definitely agree with your mentality of the encounters not being balanced( against or for the players) . It either encourages the players to run or think of other things they can do than just kill their enemies!

3:23 "if a player fails a roll, they're out of the chase." I don't like this rule. This rule says to me that if you fail a die roll, you stop playing. That's not fun. It discourages players from doing something they're less good at, and so it discourages people from being creative or thinking outside of their character sheet.

I don't like fantasy races.

Really useful book, definitely gonna use it sometimes... but hoooly shiet the non-classed attribute generation is insanely misogynistic.

I use a very similar sort of method. It almost seems natural. For example, when my players were going through kingmake I rolled for encounters as part of my prep, but then would design the encounter AROUND that roll. If I rolled Bandits on a road encounter, then rolled 3 bandits, I would roll stealth checks for two of them and place them hiding in the foilage off the road, then place the third bandit on the road ready to hail the party. That way it feels a little organic.

Balance is a lie. All balanced encounters do is Encourage players to solve them by fighting. Encounters need to be fair, not balanced. If they encounter 100 orks, they need to have Alternative solutions available, and if they choose to fight, they are most likely to get their chins kicked in. Run, Talk, Hide, Fight, what's your poison?

This reminds me of older D&D versions. 1st and 2nd edition. They had unbalanced wandering monsters, reaction rolls and morale checks. This is how I run encounters. The expectation is that the PCs do not blindly attack anything they meet. If players don't like this "strategic" element I remind them that (1) many video game rpgs don't just have combat encounters, (2) some character classes are designed to be more useful in encounters other than combat, and (3) the players don't raid every settlement or building they encounter, they choose based on their ability or need - so why wouldn't they do the same for random encounters.

There's two tools sets I use for making faction play feel more like rival forces in a dynamic living world. 1. Dice oracles and clocks. 2. The 5e D&D Magic the Gathering setting books. I don't use dice to determine progress on any faction goals. The goals of each faction progress at the rate the players allow them to progress at. Any important goal a faction is working on has a clock attached. Segments on the clock get filled in or emptied when the PCs do something to affect that goal, or they fill in slowly if the players repeatedly decide not to interfere with whatever that faction is doing. Stomp on a faction leader during a quest or dungeon crawl, and that faction may lose a segment of progress on their clock. Take a quest to retrieve a mcguffin and whichever faction you hand the mcguffin over to gets their clock advanced one tick. Where dice come in is in planning for the quest arc and coming up with curve balls to throw at the players at different points. The dice oracle is a tool mentioned on the channel Web DM in a couple of their later videos on factions. Take each faction in your setting and assign them one dice. Vary the dice for each faction by color, and the size of each dice by how powerful that faction is or how much the faction is focused on the PCs. The local Baron's faction may be a d6 if they don't have the resources to enforce law in the region on their own, or it may be a d12 if the Baron's military is the main oppressive force in the region. The local rebels or thieves guild could be anything from d4 to d10 depending on how widespread they are. The minions of a warlock patron or minor enemy like a hag may be a d4 if that group is small and a minor distraction for the party, or they may be the biggest die in the pool if the PCs have drawn the full attention of that enemy leader and they just keep sending forces after the party regardless of what seems reasonable. Take all the dice for each faction in your hands and roll them together. Then, look for key things in the dice pool. 1. Natural ones. 2. Doubles. 3. Dice that are touching. If two or more factions roll the same number, then their goals will be affected by whatever quest the PCs are on. If two or more factions roll ones, then there is an active conflict between the factions involved, and the PCs will be dragged into the issue no matter how hard they fight it. If an odd placement occurs, then something minor might be happening. A minor gang might be snooping around the outpost of a much larger faction they have no real hope of challenging. Both the thieves guild and the assassins guild might have been hired to do jobs that target the same influential NPC, and now there's either a turf war, a shell game, or some elaborate costume farce involving the target NPC being run by a third faction. The point of using dice oracles/pools in this way is to generate prompts for situations the DM may never even consider. The factions are moving against each other, and they are not bothering to check with the DM's script beforehand. The other tools I use are the 5e MtG books. Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica is the best faction politics rpg book ever written. Mythic Odysseys of Theros is the best version of Dieties and Demigods ever written. The Strixhaven book spends too much page space on a dating Sim and a social encounter focused on rails campaign, but the setting fluff and monster sections detail five thematically and visually different versions of the wizard college trope, and there is a bonus rebel faction of disgraced and dropout wizards ready to pick fights with anyone. The ten guilds of Ravnica, fifteen gods of Theros, and the five and a half colleges of Strixhaven can be renamed and dropped into any other setting. Need a barbarian/greenskin trouble maker faction? Gruul clans. The local lord and his small army of order keepers? Azorius Senate. Magic researchers, academics, and inventors? The Izzet, Simic, and all five Strixhaven colleges cover just about anything. Need a circus? Rakdos and Prismari both fit different needs. The 30 factions that make up the guilds, churches, and colleges of the MtG multiverse are incredibly useful stand ins for classic faction tropes, and both the Ravnica and Theros books are full of tables detailing how to use each faction as enemies, PCs supports, quest givers, and more.

caros amigos sejam bem vindos a mais um video de hoje no mundo militar

It's so nice to hear that people out there feel the exact same way I do. Great video!

How would you handle xp for fleeing monsters? My instinct is to give full xp so players aren’t incentivized towards war crimes but I’d be worried about monsters fleeing in dungeons and then coming back to fight again giving double xp.

That's the spirit! love all your videos and hope you prosper to and beyond your goals!

In the 37 years I am playing and developping my own TTRPG I never got the idea about levels and hence about Encounter Levels and Challenge Ratings. Well I did balancing throw overboard completely so not even the PCs are balanced among themselves. Why I don't use them or don't get my head around them you ask? Well most likely this is that I want to create with my players a damn good story. THIS is the main goal and also the main reward. Hence not game mechanic is for our way to play useful when using level and ratings. But this is our way to play. To each group his own way. Most important is, that you have FUN and get EXCITED! Cheers 🍻

How to make rules of engagement, code of conduct for warfare, chivalry on the battlefield, war crime tribunals... a thing again? How to do that in a culture that sees only battle maps?

Currently playing Pathfinder 2e which has highly consistent and tight encounters - however less flexibility because of prep.

i fully agree with you on the morale thing, but an issue i run into with enemies retreating is that when you game it out using the rules, it tends to be that the enemies just cant escape because they have equal or less move speed than the PCs. (exception being in dungeons since typically my players wont want to run off into the dark to chase down retreating enemies). but any fight outside they will just be run down

ay you hit 5k! Congrats!

Very cool vid. I started on 2e and it took a while for me to learn balance is can be achieved many ways. The example I use is Willow and the battle of Tir Asleen. A fighter & mage (and goat) can prep for a battle against a numerous amount of soldiers but will eventually be over run. However, throw a hungry & neutral 2 headed dragon in the mix and things change REAL quick.

Sometimes the XP system can influence this need for "balanced" encounters. If the PCs can only level up by beating the baddies, then making those encounters beatable is crucial to the game design. In old-school games where most or all of the XP is gained by acquiring treasure, balancing an encounter isn't as necessary.

Hey Loki, congrats on 5k and hello from California! I’ve been playing old school since I was a boy and my dad introduced me to his old AD&D materials, that DM screen art will always inspire adventure and mystery. Been watching your stuff for awhile now and I always find it to be good advice

Nice vt ... Randomness is nice but it can cause problems that you don't see. Creating really underpowered or over powered fights , which were only meant to be incidental fights. However the GM is a player too so surprises can be fun too. After all the dice gods run the game too

Great video! I think being upfront about what kind of game it is you’re running is good. Maybe it’s deadly and the players need to think about how they approach an encounter, or maybe it’s a casual and sweet game more puzzle oriented. Whatever it is, make sure your players know.

I wish Bethesda would have learned this shit before they made Elder Scrolls 4 and 5

Day 35653 of asking for a video on inspiration/luck systems

Another great video ❤ congrats for 5k!!

First comment 🎉

Had a major, planetwide war almost 1,000 years ago. On the continent (the main area of the campaign), a huge section of the Eastern seaboard subsided, with some of it going under the ocean, and the rest dropping several hundred feet, creating The Escarpment, a barrier that makes passage difficult from the coastal regions to the interior. Several polities from the interior of Keralia have recently expanded into the coastal lowlands, coming into contact with analogs of the Egyptians and the Sumerians, as well as an empire from across the sea which practices slavery and large-scale human sacrifice (think Aztecs crossed with Mongols). As the tides of war shift back and forth, the players have to deal with new areas being opened up for them, and other areas destroyed, or now behind enemy lines. Lots of roleplaying opportunities and throw in some large scale battles and campaigns. Fun stuff. 🙂

The spears too video gamey for me.

100th comment woo! Thanks so much for the deep dive. Ive read it and want to run, not sure its right for my table. Love this content, very relaxing voice, and I like that you consider other old school systems and adjecent. Ive a lot of love for OSE and DCC! I also love the classic fantasy vibes of this module. Can you do Dark Tower next please?

I am currently running a campaign set in one city, its floating and massive, but a lot of the themes are the same and it's made up of floors, with lots of slums and rich people in a like castle in the sky style of city. the entire campaign is set within the floors of the city with lots of opportunity to explore slums and dim alleyways. And talk to npcs and local warlords in a very lawless place, atleast until they get to the richer parts of the metropolis.

I've had a fantasy world bubbling away in my head for a while. My instinct has been to do a fairly typical "heroes journey" type campaign in a small area that's largely a farming community that the PCs protect from rising threats that I can use to introduce the wider world to them without throwing them into it and overwhelming them. Glad I stumbled on to a good idea!

Hexcrawl video!!

My campaign "world" so far exists in a region surrounding an inland sea, comparable to perhaps the Caspian. At this point, they have identified a network of points of interest along one shore, and interacted with coastal regional cities controlled by two duchy factions. Plenty of room to push outward or across the water to access other points of interest or resources.

This is great advice. I created a world with three major realms (inspired by Britain, France, & Italy). Players can choose which they’d like to adventure in. They might never visit the others, so i don’t need more than the basic info about them. Then i focused on creating points of interest i could scatter around the chosen realm & rumors of specific treasure to entice them to visit them. Plenty of small treasures nearby, but big treasures require some travel.

It's also easier to keep my interest as a DM for a short campaign.

I have been running games in the Mystara world for almost 40 years. The old TSR guard designed and built them. I just use them. I doubt I’ll ever need a different world for my games. Between the 15 gazetteers, all the modules, Threshold magazine, and the Vaults of Pandius there is enough there to keep me going for multiple lifetimes of play. I honestly don’t see how this is a bad thing. I don’t think that DM burnout comes from the campaign world. I believe it is far more likely that those folks are struggling with the mechanics of running a game for the modern walking magic card deck that characters are today. This is why the players from my generation all laughed when Magic the Gathering bought D&D. When you get frustrated and tired of what Dungeons and Dragons has become just remember you can always just play the game how it was originally intended. Thank you Dave and Gary. BECMI Forever! Long Live King Elmore!!

Hello! I'm currently struggling a bit with this, essentially i want to create a campaign that is roughly happening during the sengoku jidai in our world, speaking a big civil war on a island nation with outside forces meddling in the affairs. I envisioned my differen playergroups being able to take up a piece of land after they did x things towards that and eventually can unify the island. While creating a hexmap i'm stuggling in How big or detailed i want it :D

World building is a side game for the fun of GMs and has little to do with running the game at the table.

Decent points. I think it is largely a matter of what you're looking to run. I like to run open world games. Have a world map, with various places having some kind of gimmick to it and the players are free to explore and invest their time in whichever one they don't like. I mean, to some extent, a lot of campaigns boil down to players/characters imposing their morality upon others if they're not facing a world ending threat. Think about it from the perspective of our world, image a group with the power to level cities living in our world. They might act as hitmen for the US government, they might act as diplomats aiming to bring peace to the middle east, or, they might decide that they don't like how China is run and cause a coup. Meanwhile, they are unlikely to actually know the ins and outs of every single place, especially if they haven't been there before. Translate that back to fantasy worlds and games "With a 12 on your history check? You know that this place looks down on people who can't use magic, and they fought some war recently, you're not sure if that's still ongoing", then, you can put in some filler time as they make their trek all the while fleshing things out in the background. Again, this is all just my personal preference. Make a bunch of window dressing and let your players explore, but I just really like open world games, both to play and to run, and I know that that is not everyone's cup of tea.

Almost feels like making a huge setting / world map is one of the mandatory growing pains of new DMs. Wasted a lot of time on it only to have my buddies play in a single region. That effort could've gone into making that region more detailed for the players instead of being absorbed in my own ideas.

No. I will continue building massive worlds for small one-shot campaigns.

I would love a hexcrawl video! Thanks for the content as always.

I feel burnd out as a GM at the moment. I will absolutely will they to start a new campaign this year. I then will do my best to ceep it simple and to follow your advice 🙏 And I am not a hexcrawl GM but I would click on that video.

I think I like creating a vast world only to give the players the sense of scale of the world they live in. However, very little of it is fleshed out to start with. Which I find is actually fine. If something is relevant, it gets more detail. Things around the start of an adventure will slowly come into focus. A sort of wave function collapse. In fact, I started with a mutated version of the Mystara map and just made it different with a vastly different history (to an extent - even history isn't fleshed out). But I generally have an idea of what types of places distant lands are. A sort of one liner about a place in my head. But I leave it open. What the larger scope world does is allow me and my players to collaboratively create things together. "What's this place?", they can ask. I give them the one liner thought and we improve details from there where it is needed. I do not think that there is a need to write up vast swaths ahead of time to make your world make sense. I am currently running a Savage Worlds Game (well, soon), Sci Fi. I did in this case limit the scope of systems humanity has settled to about 18 close stars to earth. This is even a larger scale than a fantasy world. Even with 20 accessable star systems comes the potential for 100 different planets and thousands of moons and other assorted settlement areas (stations, asteroid belts, and so on). I would not dare define even a small fraction of it. I have defined the relevant big players to the story I am going to tell and a few key worlds that may be influenced by them. None of the planets really have histories or maps or anything. They are just names. This gives my players room to define their own origin as well and build themselves into the narrative going on. I wont lie. The Elder Mystara (which then got renamed to Greymist) and the Sixteen Systems campaign worlds took quite a bit of work to define even at the lowest resolution. Mystara taking three months of heads down work and the Sixteen systems has been about a month worth of work that I am still iterating on. But at the end of the day, I have a story I am going to tell that involves the agency of the players. Leaving things quite open to iterpretation helps that.

Its great to have a large map to work with. but adventures should stick to small maps. my best campaign was all set within one single 24 mile hex and I ran that campaign for 4 months. whenever its my turn to run again I might continue the adventure in a part 2.

Less is more in my experience. I always encourage my players to contribute to lore and stuff like that, especially things concerning their PC. What I mean is, you don’t have to fill every corner of your world with details before the game starts. Great video! New Gm’s, at least try to take Loki’s advice before you totally fatigue yourselves!

Consider an Old School 30 mile hex. That is 900 square miles. That is a huge area to adventure in without ever leaving a single hex. Where I live, I have coastal, mountain, valley both wider and narrow, woods, and rolling hills. There is even some sparse wooded areas. Start small and build on as the players progress. This is what I did, and now 45 years later I have 3 small continents, but the players always start in a single hex.