Confessions of a Dungeon Master | Part 2

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[@misfitadventurers]

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[@euanthompson]

I set out a sort of "10 rules" for my player that include things like "You are mortal", "Running away is a viable options" and "any thing you say will be considered a valid thing in the world but not necessarily a true thing". I started playing Pathfinder and I now need to add "I will lie to you".

[@cadenceclearwater4340]

I, too, love the counterspell 😅

[@MikChaos]

No 1 - Pets, familiars, favourite npcs, family members. All fair game as targets to pull the heroes heartstrings.

[@bradleyhurley6755]

Familiars just come back so it isn't that big of a deal when you kill them.

[@apjapki]

​@@bradleyhurley6755Well "Find Familar" familiars do. You can still get living familiars like Pseudodragons. If I had one I wouldn't even take in on adventures even - too precious.

[@bradleyhurley6755]

@apjapki those are more like pets at that point, and you should never put those in combat cause they are going to die in like a round.

[@apjapki]

Making a bad guy sound reasonable and say valid things without even lying and all the while dropping hints as to their true values is honestly one of the most satisfying things for the DM. I just had players say "I still think [x] committed [crime] but he did sound really reasonable and honest."

[@kquixotic]

Counterspelling healing is so evil but so great; do it the first time they try to heal so they likely have another couple spell slots and it doesn't feel too bad to the players. It's great motive for the characters to focus fire the one that countered the healing too!

[@MikChaos]

no 4 - I've counterspelled a revivify. Also used one of the Aeorian Reverser monsters from the WIldemount book that turned a healing spell into damage and therefore killed the character.

[@FrostSpike]

Do you have your NPCs execute coup de grace on downed PCs? This could be an animal just biting a character in order to drag their body off to their lair, a ghoul or zombie just chowing down on the body as they are driven by a ravenous hunger, or it could be an intelligent adversary, knowing that the party has access to healing (and death saves), who want to make sure that a downed character is going to stay down rather than yoyo-ing.

[@misfitadventurers]

I've done it a couple times. I normally save that for my especially calculating enemies or monsters that are eager for a meal

[@TheK5K]

Some villains just want to take someone down with them! Sure, they could keep fighting the active characters… or they could plunge their blade through the heart of a downed beloved henchmen and revel in the howls of their enemies as they lick the blood from the blade. Yes, I’ve done this, yes - everyone remembers it and doesn’t take anything for granted.

[@michaelcrumlett187]

Fun! I’d love to see a Confessions video done in the style of the Wild Magic video. My confession combines a few factors you discussed: I made Morgantha in CoS appear to be a kindly old lady, had her travel with the party for a while, and gave the Dream Pastries a mechanical advantage (+1 to saves) for the first day. Wonderful dreams during your rest, followed by a day with a bonus. This goes on for as long as they consume the pastries. As soon as they stop, they have horrible dreams that prevent any kind of benefit from resting, and a level of exhaustion is applied for each day in which they have consumed the pastries. The effect can be countered by eating another pastry, or by a Remove Curse or Greater Restoration. It’s just a shame that 1) They have no idea of the secret of the pastries, and 2) They ran across Morgantha for the first time at level 3. Now she has disappeared with the party at level 4. Their cleric’s not gonna be able to help them yet, even if Strahd hadn’t charmed him in the last session. Evil laugh, end scene.

[@dantherpghero2885]

My players got the wrong idea about an NPC based entirely upon their name: Rollins Goodfellow. They were convinced he was a member of the Thieves Guild, the Mafia, or something shady. They spent hours of game time investigating. Wasting spells and charges from magic items. They broke into the General Store to see what he was hiding. I took absolute delight in indulging them. I arrange my lists of random NPC names in columns of 10. And I roll 2d10. He got 2 kinda last names that sorta seemed to work together.

[@40yearoldninja61]

I've never countered a healing spell, but the BBEG battle is coming up..... One confession is I've gone into a gaming session with 0 prep done. Improved the whole thing.

[@apjapki]

That's only bad if you don't pull it off.

[@davidjennings2179]

For no.3 I only do this if I'm also going to foreshadow it subtly. Like that the party can look back in a different light and see the clues. I had a shop keeper, a very scattered halfling alchemist who always had funny stories about where he'd got his ingredients. I told loads of these throughout the campaign but in there were stories about locations the party knew the BBEG had been. I'll never forget one of my players madly flipping through their notes to make this link. Unfortunately they only made the connection when they went to the alchemist shop to question him and found it booby trapped.

[@apjapki]

Hard agree!

[@bradleyhurley6755]

I have not played in a 5e game where a PC didn't die. Oddly the DM who doesn't like character death has killed the most PCs. I think it is easy to kill PCs if you try.

[@Gaming4ever-pd7jv]

I don't do unwinnable fights; I think that's railroading. The DM should write the situation, not the solution. 11:25

[@misfitadventurers]

Understandable. I think I just view unwinnable fights as the situation and leave it to the players to figure out how they're gonna deal with it

[@apjapki]

​​​@@misfitadventurers But if they set to fight to their own deaths in session 3 are you happy to play that one through to the end? If so, fine.

[@misfitadventurers]

I would never through an "unwinnable" fight at my party in session 3. I normally save those till the party is at least level 5

[@longlostlizard2072]

I never even considered counterspelling healing spells. So dirty, and I will be reserving it for my worst villains. Also, I love the content and bought cool shirts. Thank you!

[@alecbetz1611]

I enjoy unwinnable fights. I do it easly on in the campaign when they meet the big bad or someone who works for the big bad. It shows how strong they need to get and that they arent the strongest in the world

[@boxxie]

Great video. We all have our GM secrets. I never fudge dice and always lie about it when I do. My current campaign has a mini max type and RP bard. Based on that my monsters treat them very different. I have never counter-spelled a healing or finished a downed character, yet.

[@FrostSpike]

08:18 You can't do that "good guy is really a bad guy" stunt too often, or the party will stop forming relationships with NPCs. You're either going to kill them off, or they'll end up being evil.

[@apjapki]

I think you can walk a line where someone is a suspect so not completely seen as good or bad but can still cloud the party's judgement with their words or actions.

[@RIVERSRPGChannel]

Yes I’ve used the bad guy to become a friend of the party. Yea unwinable scenarios are a must for me. They need to think and talk or something other than fight for this. Nice counterspell Good video

[@cadenceclearwater4340]

Time to spill the T ☕️

[@apjapki]

Unwinnable confrontations should usually end with the bad guys leaving. It's never reasonable to expect a party to evaluate threat level or run away. They are heroes. They are supposed to be stupidly brave. It always feels to me that the DM designing a scenario where they must flee is the DM taling them completely out of the roleplay and hitting them over the head with "player play the game properly". I had a DM do this to me in a cyberpunk setting and when I stood my ground anyway with the knowledge that my character would very likely die, they quit the whole campaign. So in other words - it was just railroading.

[@misfitadventurers]

I try to not to plan for any one solution. I observe how my players intend to handle the situation and try to react accordingly. Sometimes that might mean the villain makes their point and leaves sometimes it doesn't

[@cadenceclearwater4340]

Amanda, Master of Chaos Muahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!

[@RIVERSRPGChannel]

How long have you been playing and DMing

[@apjapki]

I don't think counterspelling a healing spell is even bad, let alone evil. Who do the players think they are fighting? The Care Bears?

[@amtrak7394]

I was running a Star Wars game once where one of the Force users was getting a little too liberal in using it and thinking he was the baddest S.O.B. since Revan. Well, I threw Vader at them to teach them a lesson. Instead of running away or trying to avoid him, THEY DECIDED TO FIGHT HIM!!! Yeah, a level 4 Force user facing off against Darth Vader! To be fair, I did issue the standard "Are you really sure you want to do this," warning to the players (which they promptly ignored). As I'm sure you can imagine, the Force user lost an arm. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! The Scoundrel decided to go full chaotic dumbass (way beyond chaotic stupid) and threw AN EXPLODINGH CIGAR at Vader to try and cover their escape. It blew up right in Vader's face. Yeah, that didn't go over too well for the group because now they'd not gotten Vader's attention, they'd pissed him off! So in the next gaming session, I had to improvise a prison breakout adventure because these knuckleheads had pissed off the number 2 villain in the galaxy (not to mention me, the game master).

[@apjapki]

Why were you angry with your players taking a possible choice you offered them? If you didn't want them to fight Vader, don't have Vader fight them. I'm glad you didn't railroad them but there's no need to be annoyed at them.

[@amtrak7394]

@@apjapki You need to understand that most of my players, like me, are former military. We therefore, in my opinion, have a slightly different thought process than the average player. They all knew going into the game in general that there was a fine line between hardass and dumbass and that I would warn them if they were about to cross that line. But if they decided to cross it anyway, the "Eff around and find out" clause could very well come into play. I never intentionally punished my players for doing something stupid or irritating me. That's a cardinal no-no for game masters. They knew Vader was after them, they had plenty of chances to escape and / or avoid him, but they chose to face him anyway. That was their choice that was initiated by an unfortunate die roll a session or two earlier when I decided to throw a Dark Jedi at them. I was even going to let the Force user off with a nasty scar as a result of the fight. But then the scoundrel intentionally threw that exploding cigar at Vader's face. As a result, Vader had to make a Constitution check to see if he could keep control of his rage. He failed... and I made that roll in the open so the player's could see the result. After that, the characters were just along for the ride and the Force user got to have the phrase, "I effed around and I found out," stenciled on prosthetic arm he acquired two sessions later. We were all laughing about it at the end of the session and they admitted, "Yeah we kinda did push Vader too far, so we kinda got what we deserved." That prosthetic arm became a badge of comical honor among them. So overall, my players knew they were pushing it, and in they end, they admitted they'd pushed it a little too far.

[@euanthompson]

Here is my confession. I will cheat as the DM. I did it this last week. I have rules. I will only ever cheat if I believe it will be to the players advantage or will allow them to do something cool. For example I allowed my wizard to cast command when they would not normally be able to this week. The plan being it would cause the Fighter to run away and allow the Witch to do something cool and use final sacrifice. Sadly it didn't work, but I tried.

[@andrewlustfield6079]

There is nothing wrong with killing characters. Nothing. Nothing ups the tension when a giant throws a rock and someone's neck gets broken, leaving the other players to think--this could be me next. So I'm with Professor Dungeon Master when he says get rid of death saving throws--it's the worst mechanic of any edition of D&D that I'm aware of.

[@apjapki]

Each playgroup has to agree how lethal they want the game to be. There's room for the three page backstory guy to expect to live most of a campaign just as much as the guys who have five backup characters with rhyming names can expect to lose some in a meat grinder.

[@andrewlustfield6079]

@@apjapki I'm going to respectfully disagree--this is the DMs to decide. Given the time, energy, careful thought and passion that goes into creating a game world and adventure or series of adventures-for a player to tell the game master how to order their world and run their game is just rude. And further there is a lot of space in between running something that is Dark Sun lethal and the player with the three page backstory. It's not an "either--or" in most games I've played in and run. That's pretty much a false choice.

[@cadenceclearwater4340]

1. Remember Steve 🐦

[@misfitadventurers]

Gone but not forgotten!

[@omnidivus83]

😊

[@qwertsgamingchannel7504]

First comment AND like! Heck yeah! ❤