Running The Game: Lessons From Dusk

Every time I run D&D, I learn something. This is a couple of things I learned running DUSK.
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[@mcolville]

I don't think the first episode of Dusk is very engaging. Watching everyone learn both an entirely new RPG, AND a whole new VTT platform is A Lot. Episode 3 is a better place to start: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZywcqSEpbKcbqs Episode 5 might be even better. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKKqgnqYlrJ1rcU

[@DefHalan]

Any plans to release it as a Podcast?

[@Campfire_Bandit]

+

[@ganome4995]

I remember some people complaining about how the players were being murder hobos. I was curious but never ended up watching more than a couple minutes.

[@crimsonhawk52]

maybe as a watcher, ep 3 or 5 are better, but as a DM I've rewatched ep 1 like 3 times now just because I love the intro. I've used the goblin jack in the box and the cranky dwarf twice now to start campaigns

[@efg-smca]

@@ganome4995 That's so funny to me. To see how definitions have changed so much since I got into the hobby in the 80s. Definitely not murder hobos.

[@LGreenGriffin]

New RTGs are never late. They arrive precisely when they mean to.

[@theyonlycomeoutwhenitsquiet]

Nor are they early…

[@braddalrymple8615]

My God feel this, just ran my session 0 and this is totally what I needed

[@superjoeyman1]

For some reason i interpreted that as Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators

[@jonothanthrace1530]

Some might say they arrive when they are most needed and least wanted, though few who say that live very long afterwards.

[@arguserhardt8244]

Well.... They are most assuredly never early

[@rivercox8172]

I know that you just get busier and busier as mcdm grows but I REALLY appreciate that you continue to make running the game videos. I love your stuff Matt. Keep up the amazing work, I'll always be excited to see what you come up with next

[@thomasrhoads4316]

I second this!

[@mcolville]

"Leave some stuff behind." I love designing encounters where the NPCs behave in a deeply human and relatable way, but also in a way that has nothing to do with the Heroes' goals, so they have to deal with these folks on their own terms. In this case, I wanted to make a point about sentimentality, but also tradition and culture. Yes, of course we're taking all our belongings with us! What is the POINT of leaving our homes and trying to find a better place for our children, if we have to give up everything that makes us who we are? But then someone else points out; you left out of fear for your lives. Are these material goods worth everything? Worth your lives, your children's lives? And then someone says "Yes! These heirlooms are all we have of our ancestors, these are the things that persist. People worked for generations to earn or make these things, you want to give it all up? If there's an obvious, easy answer, if there's a good guy and a bad guy, then I did a bad job. Because then it's not realistic, but it's also not a CHALLENGE. How are the heroes going to unravel this?? There's no correct answer. It's not a puzzle. It's a test of character.

[@johnnybigbones4955]

I also think that when you or your ancestors have crafted a lot of the stuff you own by hand, you'd be a lot more attached to it. Modern arguments about materialism don't really work so well when you've gotta carve your furniture yourself, and getting a new set might be a real ordeal. I really enjoyed that session, and the bit with the Count of Rend you referenced. That's classic D&D social scenario to me, makes the world feel like a real place and the npcs feel like real people.

[@Campfire_Bandit]

+

[@Lurklen]

@@johnnybigbones4955 Really good point. When you live in a world where life and stability are in many ways fleeting, having something that represents legacy, permanency, and your roots becomes all the more valuable. In our world where *things* come easy, and so does (relative) safety, those things can hold less symbolic meaning in the face of existential threats.

[@just_gut]

This is very real to life. There are some people that will leave everything behind, but most people will at least take *something* with them, even when in mortal peril from a fire or whatever. Even people fleeing their country travel with something that matters. Kids take a stuffed animal, teens and adults take a few keepsakes; maybe it's a family bible or maybe it's some pictures they can keep in a wallet or bag, but it is always something.

[@LokRevenant]

The bit about the Castle Rend part reminded me of the part of Lawrence of Arabia where he has to kill the kid he trekked through the impassable desert to save.

[@seanminer8183]

"...but as a DM, I get these grandiose ideas and think I can do anything." ::catches self slowly nodding::

[@josephrainer]

Yuuuuuuuuup.

[@josephrainer]

Yuuuuuuuuup.

[@therobfather3]

Yuuuuuuuuup.

[@MrValquereon]

Yuuuuuuuuuup.

[@DanJMW]

Matt Colville "D&D is just a game about fighting monsters". Also Matt Colville: "Fighting monsters ceases to be this novel experience, and the players start discovering all this nuance and drama and potential in the game". The joy of course is that both statements are true. Great video, thank you.

[@allenyates3469]

I've been slowly moving in the an interesting direction with my games. I basically just move the characters from one battle to another with little narration in between. This sounds a little wacky but I also build my encounters to be really explosive and interactive. I encourage role playing as a problem solving mechanic in combat rather than just talking with a British accent been battles lol

[@jacobs483]

This to me is the REAL dnd advice without Matt even saying it: the real lessons you learn on how to be a good DM come from what happens at the table, YOUR table. you learn a lot of about what you feel, like, can and can’t do by doing it. Before that it’ll all just hypothesis, which remain untested in the only experiment that matters: your table and your group.

[@chrism6315]

Always great when Papa Colville makes an appearance.

[@sthiel126]

You know I've been wondering how to express my long fondness for this guy. I would like to share the use of that title if you dont mind.

[@jeffhall2411]

ahh the Ghost reference lol

[@treymclemore3418]

Using villagers like "hit points" for an adventure is a brilliant idea and that you don't need your heroes to like all of them helps too. Come up with situations that threatens the villagers so that the heroes actually have a chance to be brave by putting themselves in that harms way. The freeform nature of Dusk really makes me want to run my own "escort the villagers through this elf haunted forest" adventure. I'm rewatching The Chain now to have something one while I session prep, but definitely going to rewatch Dusk when I'm finished.

[@FestorFreak]

Similar to villagers as hit points- I’ve had a campaign in the works for a while wherein the players are leading a caravan of refugees across a continent to the safety of the capital city, with an invading army on their trail. (Island continent with the massive capital city on one side, but only small scattered towns and work camps across the rest of it) The invading force sweeps across the continent, putting the party of a timer. Travel requires time, maintenance of wagons, food for everyone in the caravan, and keeping people alive, motivated, and happy. All of these things are effected by semi-randomized events, how the players manage the group, and the route the party takes. The goal is to make it to the capital as efficiently as possible, but stopping at towns to gather resources, and potentially gather more people is encouraged. Sending forward scouts to find locations of interest as well as scouting behind to track the invader’s progress. Travel time is influenced by the terrain traveled on, as well as the size of the caravan, supplies, and morale, each terrain having a flat time requirement while the other factors have thresholds at which speed is further increased or decreased. Upon reaching the capital, the distance between the caravan and the invaders determines how much time the city has to either evacuate or prepare for a siege, while the number of people in the caravan and their morale factors into either choice. More people means a bigger army to defend with, while less people means an easier evacuation. The arrival of the invaders at the capital serves as the finale, with a massive battle ensuing no matter whether they fight or flee. The fate of themselves and everyone around them throughout the entire campaign largely determined by their own decisions. Something i’m very excited to run, and it will likely be a fairly long campaign with all the time, resource, and decision management involved. Lots of opportunity for players to interact with the world and many many characters.

[@treymclemore3418]

@@FestorFreak Wow! That sounds like a ton of fun! Almost reminds me of FTL in how you are always running from the rebel fleet. But I really like the climax for that campaign: defending a city from an army and how many people survived in the caravan determines morale. Part of one campaign I ran dealt a little bit with overland travel and resource management but the ranger basically negated any downsides of travel. I kept reminding them “you guys would have been lost without your ranger!” But it doesn’t feel like you’re an awesome ranger when your features basically turn off exploration.

[@DimaJeydar]

You might enjoy The Banner Saga trilogy. I failed in it so badly it still hurts and is the reason why I now do anything I can to save some random npcs I just met. I feel like my Baldur’s Gate III run only now allowed me to redeem myself by saving as much people as possible.

[@Lurklen]

With five NPCs representing the others, you can also have them being at odds because they are representing other npcs. Those five stay the focus, but they implicitly represent others and are the folks who have to deal with the conflicts, the actual people in conflict can become as detailed as is warranted, but when the heroes see Bart and Bort arguing they can engage with those guys, and then if they want to learn more about the situation they are addressing, or just solve the immediate conflict to move things along they can. The fact that they care about Bart and Bort does the heavy lifting of making the conflict between the others matter. I did the same thing with an adventure where the PC's started at level 0, just kids really, and over an in game season, became heroes (they became level 3 at the very end of the adventure, over the course of the following winter). They had a whole village full of people they grew up with, but I kept it to about 7 or so main NPC's that each person was more or less tied to. The others were very simple, but became memorable due to each having their thing (one guy named Finn had a big hat, and the largest farm, and he told long boring stories, another old lady named Old Nenn was the oldest in the village and made really great pies, two brothers who looked like Mario and Luigi were always arguing in the background) they were set dressing, but they each had a couple notes and I remembered to mention it when they were around in the back of this or that more important scene where the PC's were talking to the people they cared about. The Pc's didn't care about these guys, not really, they never even spoke to a bunch of them. But in the final attack when the goblins and orcs came in force, and they couldn't get to Finn's farm in time, and it burned down and he died saving his wife, or when they could save Old Nenn's granddaughter, but the wolves caught her instead, or when one of the bother's lost his hand, and the other lost his wife, and they stopped fighting each other and leaned on one another, the players felt something. They felt bad the pie lady died, she was nice. They felt bad for Finn's wife, who was left with no house and no husband, and they made sure to help her rebuild her farm. The brothers who they'd always kind of rolled their eyes at, now were only reconciled by grief and the PC's wondered if he blamed them for not getting there quick enough. It didn't take much, they were pretty thinly sketched people, but it was enough for them to each have a thing, and to just be existing in the background--I actually think the fact that they were just going about their own lives made them more real, and it required minimal effort from me.

[@BillNyeTheBountyGuy]

I think the comments on PC bravery are *chef's kiss*. I always struggled with that, where if the game is played just straight it never feels like characters are powerful. I was going to experiment with 'player controlled narration', where it's a natural conclusion of 'Okay, how do you do it?'. But this adds something I didn't consider. The world must be FULL of 'easy' level encounters, players just never running into them when they're level 10 makes little sense.

[@solidcumbyhaha702]

Holy fuck running the game it is a good day

[@100nodog]

Indubitably!

[@LokRevenant]

Re: 5 key villagers. It’s Scooby Doo, or even Stranger Things. The brave one The smart one The funny one The scared one, and The true believer. Edit. “People aren’t just one thing.” This is something Ten Candles does beautifully. Character creation in Ten Candles is fantastic. A trait and a flaw. ________ but ________ Smart but selfish, for example.

[@beeplk7290]

I'm sad to hear these videos aren't well received; they're some of my favorites. I will say; your videos are a huge part of what keeps my DM batteries recharged and my enthusiasm for the game high.

[@Alice-not-Alice]

Man, I gotta watch Dusk. As soon as my partner catches up on the Chain, we’re watching Dusk together. (Side note, it was around episode 4 of the Chain when my partner went from “It might be fun to play DnD sometime” to “You have GOT to run a game for me!” So thanks for that!)

[@johnnybigbones4955]

Dusk is really cool. They did a great job with the editing and so on.

[@voland6846]

There's one particular episode of Dusk that I genuinely think might stick me _for life._ You're in for a great ride :)

[@100nodog]

Clicked as soon as I got the notice!

[@tylerdavid6569]

If you have Ghosts, you have everything! Great shirt, Matt!

[@RyanZibell]

Designing encounters where each player gets a chance to shine is something that I'm working on. I have a group of 6 with one player roleplaying a 7 cha firbolg druid, and I'm struggling to get the character his share of the spotlight

[@rashadfoux6927]

I'm going to be running a game for my wife soon and these are always brilliantly helpful. Thanks!

[@cantoraman]

Very very good points in this video. Thanks again Matt. The one that felt like a revelation to me: "players start investing in the other parts of the story like lore or npcs when they had enough monster hunting done in their lives"

[@ApprenticeNick]

Interesting to me that Matt said new DnD players generally just want to fight monsters and only start to care about RP stuff as they continue playing and get bored of fighting, since that's the exact opposite of my experience. Usually new players I meet care a LOT about NPCs, asking a bunch of questions and getting either tunnel vision-y about how to proceed or choice paralysis because there's so many different ways they can interact with characters and they aren't used to it. Usually new players I meet only start to care about the combat and numbers side of things after they've had a few levels and some opportunities to see what higher-level play can look like.

[@David_Blake91]

It really depends on said new players' previous experiences: If they come to the game from watching Critical Role, or other actual plays, then yes, they will be more RP oriented. But if they are coming from a boardgame-background, then combat (and maybe exploration) will be more interesting for them & they will mostly start to care about RP later on, just like Matt said. Or at least that was my own experience.

[@Parker8752]

It's always worth remembering that most people can only hold 5-7 things in their head at one time - it helps both for designing mysteries so the players have a realistic chance of solving them and for making sure you don't lose track of your own stuff.

[@TheDelver]

Just restarted my fifteenth Running the Game binge watch and I am blessed with a new episode? 🙏🏻

[@skyemclarenwalton]

From my memory, there were about 3 to 5 different families found inside the elven tree temple. Multiplied by 3 generations, that's at least 9 to 15 or even 18 to 30 (!) individuals to track. Choosing 5 - 7 individuals, 1 from each generation of 1 family and a couple from the others to act as "representatives", both in social scenes literally and in a narrative, game design sense would probably be the smart thing to do to simplify DM prep as Matt pointed out

[@josiahbanks6534]

Yoo sick ghost shirt man, excellent video thanks!

[@TheRealMang0Man0fMystery]

Great job on the lighting for this, the video looks incredible

[@jblackburn]

Bbsproductions is SUPER proud to be on this list of fantastic map makers and even prouder to have been used in Dusk! From a DM perspective, I created a village years ago for a campaign and made exactly the same misstep by creation so fewer than 48 different character backgrounds. Waaaaay to many. Completely agree with Matt on the whole 5 thing.

[@laddg85]

It sounded like a passing thought, but the idea of just giving NPCs a few keywords to represent their personalities is something I've never thought of or heard anywhere! I am going to put this to use tonight!!

[@voland6846]

There's quite a few modern RPGs that have something like that built explicitly into the system, and I really like using it!

[@lordnickipoo]

The lighting is so crisp!

[@fatcandyking1913]

I love the idea of 5 key NPC's and can say it is working really well in one of my games. I have 4-5 key NPC's that the players interact with as part of their airship crew. We are even about to run a one shot where the players take control of the NPC's going on a sidequest while their characters were off somewhere else

[@Campfire_Bandit]

Just finished Princes of the Apocalypse for my players in 5e, it took us 4 years playing most weeks and it was awesome. I cannot stress enough how much of a positive influence these videos have been in establishing a DM style unique to me that actually creates a great game for my friends. Thanks Matt! I hope I use your running the game video to understand 7th edition when it comes out decades from now!

[@valkyriebait136]

Next video is about Lore? Sweet. He was one of my favorite recurring plot characters in Star Trek TNG!

[@NoahKunin]

Whoa. The new lighting and color correction is awesome. Great job for the team producing these videos.

[@OverpaidSlacker]

It sounds like you're trying to develop what are friendly/dependent NPC "cattle" [just a "hit point pool"] in a cattle drive scenario into ... "meaningful minions"? There's got to be a better term for that. Ambitious. Great lessons to be learned from this video, expertly delivered, as always.

[@babonilla]

In software development we use the concept of pets vs cattle (used to refer to server infrastructure) but the same term can be used here. You name pets, tend to their needs, take care of them and are indispensable.

[@OverpaidSlacker]

@@babonilla Cool analogy. Were I the contrary sort I'd say it's imperfect, but it's definitely illustrative of an important and interesting distinction. If Matt had gone with a "you get 100 gp for each settler/refugee you get over the finish line" then maybe the NPC "hit point pool" becomes more livestock/commodity to the PCs. Once the PCs are emotionally invested (which attitude may have been hindered if the PC were introduced to the NPCs as though they were revenue generating livestock) then the players' behavior probably changes, subtly and profoundly. The PCs' motives are similar in either case, and generally "aligned" but certainly not identical. And in those small differences you'll probably find a whole lot of interesting RP opportunities ... and resulting outcomes. Thx for the comment; more to think about!

[@ganome4995]

Chain of acheron after the heist? I figured both of those things were dead. Restarting a game that hasnt been played for months or years is its own challenge in my experiance.

[@alarin612]

"Villagers as hit points" reminds me of the Superman Returns video game, where Superman doesn't have a life bar, but the city does. If Metropolis takes too much damage, you lose. I thought it was really clever.

[@GnarledStaff]

Thats the reason I've been excited about VTTs. I struggle to find maps and tables big enoigh to let a ranger use his longbow at maximum range.

[@O4C209]

Two days after publication, I've watched this five times. This is the good stuff.

[@AnarchyintheUK1]

My group had a similar issue except their villages had been running from an army of these sort of ice Zombies for weeks. The PCs meet them at the end of their rope, last bits of food, fringes of death and the ice Zombies would be there in a few days. So they had a tower defense encounter. Each PC had those days to prep traps, magical traps, teach the more energetic villagers to fight or shoot, they could hide in trees, etc. It was super fun and the PCs definitely felt big heroic just cleaving through hordes of Zombies where they didn't need to roll to hit. They just rolled to see how many they killed. Bonus: no villagers died! It was a little unrealistic but I rolled for the villagers in front of them and rolled super well.

[@alexhobbs1208]

Last week I started DMing and I can't thank you enough for the wealth of ideas, problems solving and inspiration this series has provided. Thank you

[@aronglasser]

It's always lovely to see thematics branch from DM to DM. When you spoke of themes of generations and parents and the future it reminded me of my own game; The Gauntlet. A game where I am running module to module and each new module is a new character for the players, all tied to their family lines. I sincerely hope I do it justice and you've been a great inspiration to my DMing style with your Running the Game episodes. Thank you for the work you do and the knowledge you provide to DMs; both of the present and the future :)

[@braulioservodedeus]

This is an awesome idea!

[@DMingThoughts]

Oh, video about lore! I'm super excited. It's always has been an important theme to me. Me and my best buddy are both DMs and we have so different approach. How much lore is needed to believable world? What kind of lore? Strange myths or grounded scenarious, details or vague ideas? How much you need to feel prepared? How to fight the feeling of emptiness of your own world? What are purposes of the lore for worldbuilding? That's a lot to discuss, I wonder what Matt has to say! I'm here for 40 mins video, let's go! :D

[@sluggardly]

Our group winds up stumbling into the NPCs-as-hitpoints situations a lot. To the point where we've nicknamed the scenario the "orphan wagon". Sometimes as complex as trying to support an entire civilization of imperiled goblins, sometimes as simple as literally winding up in the middle of the desert with a wagon full of orphans. Our DM's solution to making them all unique was to delegate the tasks of naming, statting, and finding pictures for all of them on the players. Which takes a load of the work off his back, and also gets the players *very* emotionally invested in those NPCs.

[@Meowmeow0506]

Nice T-Shirt. Saw them in february, seeing them again in September. Can't wait.

[@eleintblood]

I've already rewatched the whole thing and it just gets better. Great chemistry, amazing writing and DMing. Specially loved the existential crisis Zoga had. I was crying laughing the whole time

[@jackdubois1512]

Valuable lessons. Its so easy to get caught up in planning epic, world-spanning campaigns. Or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the game..

[@johncross5339]

YES NEW VIDEOOOOOOOO

[@jimmyhill5079]

A Campaign Diary wrapped in a Running the Game. Appeasing the masses and giving us the juice. I dig it.

[@zombiepete]

1. You successfully sold me on watching some Dusk. That sounds cool. 2. I actually ran something very similar to this scenario way back in like 2009 during the height of 4e. I blew up Fallcrest (the default town in the DMG, which I'm sure Matt knows) and the party had to escort the entire population of the town over to Hammerfast all while being harried by orcs and various monsters in the woods. I think I ran an encounter extremely similar to Matt's griffin encounter but it was with displacer beasts. The difference was that I had something like 10,000 people, so I started each session with a Battlestar Galactica-esque tally of the remaining population, but the players already had existing relationships with a lot of these people since they had interacted with them like normal villagers before I blew the town up. The players really cared when the mayor was killed in an orcish raid because that dude had been giving them quests for like 6 months.

[@paulcoy9060]

2:15 I have the same thing with minis. If I find a new, cool mini I can imagine a whole stat block and backstory in seconds. I'll have it's dialogue, hopes, dreams, arch-enemies, and favorite minions in my head.

[@melaneykk5986]

You are as always inciteful. Sometimes I do some of the things you are talking about, sometimes I do things differently, but always I get a new inside into running games.

[@sqoody7invegas625]

I recently had my players fight a group of cultists that had a cult leader with a unicorn as a sidekick, so the cult leader had darkness, and the unicorn has abilities to heal and transport. The cult leader even dragged one of the players away that had dropped to zero HP and it took two sessions to get him back

[@escosenator]

This is great! My party is currently sailing to a new city and the crew has become the people they are escorting. The crew are in danger as they encounter threats etc. and the party need the crew to stay alive because they can’t sail the ship themselves. Seems like a very similar situation, just on water.

[@mikeyHustle]

I think I watched this video 3-4 times for the lessons before I even tried to watch Dusk. Then I watched Dusk and got hooked, so now I'm watching this again. Dusk is kinda the ideal way I want my campaigns to feel, warts and all.

[@evangiesel8703]

the thumbnail is too powerful, I'm compelled to watch the vid every time I see it

[@BeastmasterRanger]

Our DM ran a city encounter about the city being attacked by vampires and cultists. We had so many choices and so many paths we could have chosen. I had chosen to fight till I was bloodied, no spell slots, and had my total HP drained to a 1/4 of what it normally was. Another player chose to hid in a inn and not help anyone. It changed the perspective of the towns people towards us. I got renown and recognition while the other player got nothing (one npc even labeled him as a coward since he saw him hiding). It was all a choice. A choice to be heroic and help people who had nothing to do with our quest or stay safe and sound. I will always remember that game session. Our actions meant something in that game even though it had nothing to do with the primary plot. Those are the kind of encounters I love.

[@cdfreester]

Upon listening to Matt in this video, I just got an idea for a variation of Dusk set in a more arctic environment. And have the party have to get them to safety after encountering ... Red Slaad (Alien xenomorphs). Kind of Aliens meets The Thing. Thanks Matt! I'm off to start writing this stuff down!

[@Koahmar91]

It's like a Running the Game and a Campaign Diary wrapped into one!

[@suddenlybardolater9069]

That's what I remember the campaign diaries to be

[@samsampier7147]

It is really sad that the average MCDM viewer does not understand Campaign Diaries. It’s Running the Game in practice. I find learning what didn’t work and why so valuable so I can troubleshoot and fine tune my own games.

[@efranke20001]

I loved Dusk, and I appreciate Matt distilling some lessons learned here. He had a great "table" of players, with engaging characters, and I am happy that I watched each episode from beginning to end. I really like the idea of "5 NPCs" (villagers, here) and I think that is probably very applicable to some games I am running. The insight on heroism is also pretty clutch! Thank you Matt, MCDM, and et al!

[@Schlaym]

Seeing Czepeku on top, no surprise. Their maps are always so amazing and inspiring!

[@escondidoguitar]

Came for the Ghost shirt, stayed for the excellent lesson.

[@emanuelebonini3362]

Thanks Matt, this running the game video is really eye-opening and the dusk-style campaign sounds fantastic, already coming up with ideas. It's always great to watch these videos, they really helped me a lot in becoming a DM. Thanks Matt!

[@jeffcallahan5467]

A while ago I ran a summit of world leaders the players had gathered in the hopes to form an alliance. I couldn’t keep all of it in my head, so I did exactly what you suggested and boiled them down into one or two keywords a motive. Excellent advice! It works great!

[@Calebgoblin]

This is kind of like a campaign diary to my thinking, which is just delightful

[@kenanbrown3147]

Love this, some great lessons and takeaways! I'm re-listening to/rewatching Dusk and I'm finding so many cool techniques and moments I can use to challenge my players and to help them engage more deeply with their characters, the other PCs, and the NPCs. I run two games for my students and use all MCDM products from Arcadia and a couple re-skinned early level adventures. I will totally be pitching a Dusk campaign as one of the options for the kiddos this next school year. The episodic nature will be perfect to let the kids learn how to DM and take turns running sessions for each other, while also providing a general trajectory and some cool encounters that I can throw at the players to challenge them during the half of the sessions I'll run. As always, thanks you!

[@TheIoPC]

I appreciate how Matt presents his experience for others to learn from. ~ Adam

[@voltdragon]

Surprisingly, this was a super helpful video! The advice fits super well with my current campaign I’m running, where I have a large cast of NPCs and I’m trying to make every single one have depth to them. So, I will be focusing on the handful that my party have already latched on to. Thanks a ton Matt, I sincerely love your videos and your running the campaign series has made me a much better GM

[@o_double_t_o]

INTRO: I appreciate your Running the Game videos so much! SUBJECT: I agree with running an adventure multiple times. I might be DMing again for a table of brand new players. I’m pretty sure I’ll run LMoP (or an ARCAIDA adventure) for a second time because I know it and I want to change up who my villagers are: Daren the Skyrim guard becomes reclusive, the town Mayer no longer a combo of the steward of Gondor and Duke Harken, but instead a delightful bachelor!

[@sir_quoth]

Gotta say, I really enjoyed the session around the fire eating.

[@demonicdonut22]

Great video, don't discredit it. I loved hearing even you, a seasoned and excellent DM, overplan and bite off more than you can swallow sometimes.

[@rjlayton7826]

Thank you for this video Matt. I don't usually comment but I watch every one of these things, and I appreciate you putting in the time and effort to make and upload them.

[@snakeyesx21]

The "villagers as hit points" is something that I was spellbound by in the early episodes of the Battlestar Galactica remake. The population total was the main tension of the show, but they abandoned it in the second season.

[@nolanbenson3113]

I just started learning to DM and am writing a campaign based on a board game I created with some other people. A lot of the lore is already there and it's just about transposing that lore into DnD rules. This series has been super helpful as I plan the campaign! As a writer, the storytelling aspect is easy for me, but creating the maps and dungeons is quite challenging for my brain.

[@brockreedy9393]

I thought it was fun to see that you're wearing a Ghost shirt because I recently saw them in concert and I wore a Matt Colville shirt! It just felt right at the time, now I know why, haha. Sure would love to see more of you on your channel when you're able!

[@Wagamos]

Solvi knows. Great timing, just finished dusk a week or so ago. I loved the adventure, well done!

[@thomasrhoads4316]

It took me a few days to carve out the time, but I am happy to watch longer videos. Love your content and thank you for working on it!

[@johnpritchett7079]

I'm going to steal this. In my campaign I was planning for one of my pcs to get a letter saying their home village was in danger and it is located right next to a big dark forest

[@zwolga]

Love this idea. I’ve incorporated a mini version of this into my session zeros. Not by design, but because session zero was quick and we had more time. As always amazing content Matt!

[@TheRockinDonkey]

That heroic moment sounded really awesome.

[@Micsma]

This is always the best thing for me. I like to listen to it 3 or 4 or 5 times and again and then I write stuff on it.

[@menotu7997]

Your VTT map idea is actually something I did for my players recently. They are escorting an old fragile wizard to an old dungeon he wants an item from with promise they can have anything else in the dungeon. A large cave complex was something they had to travel through. I was worried it'd be too much work for just 1 session or so. Instead it turned into 3 of careful exploring and tense areas of rest. Part of this was the dynamic lighting. I had forgotten all but 1 of the party members didn't have dark vision. It was nice to see dancing lights, torches, and lanterns be used so extensively for once.

[@liondovegm]

What solidified STK as the most memorable campaign I've played in was how hard everyone fought not to survive, we could have run away, but to save as many people in Brynnshander as possible. We fucked up earlier in the campaign and alongside the frost giant was a bunch of enraged yeti and a demon from Sunless Citadel that we betrayed. Everyone was going to die in ten towns and it was our fault. Scenes like the bard keeping up tiny hut over children while my wizard flew on a broomstick to lure the giant away and the rogue actually dying to protect some pickpockets they were taking under their wing, the paladin taking charge of, inspiring, and leading the shellshocked guard, and the warlock using the opportunity to backstab the party and steal (I think the mayor was Danessa or something, the rogue hit on her) the ten town's Ioun Stone of Lordly Might (Plot ticket that i later learned wasn't in the module but was important for the homebrew)

[@tonysladky8925]

I think I've heard you talk about the Castle Rend campaign a million times, and this is the first time I've ever recognized Nicodemus' name. I guess during past mentions, I hadn't recently re-read the Dresden Files book that introduced the character of Nicodemus. I wouldn't presume the player was a Dresden Files fan, so I finally looked up where the name actually came from. Neat stuff.

[@Butonz1]

I found that planning and improving NPC actions with the explicit goal of getting my players to "care" about this NPC or that NPC... almost always blew up in my face. It never worked out how imagined. NPCs who I designed to be as freindly/helpful to the party as they possibly could, ended up being the NPC's my players had the worst relationships with. Much like how Matt suggests here, it's the characters driven by their own goals and or idiosyncrasies that my players seem to get really attached to.

[@ScoffMathews]

I've been meaning to watch dusk, I think this finally sold me on sacrificing some reading time in favor of inspiration. I'm going to resume a campaign in a few weeks, where the players will face a K&W goblin coalition. I think I will take something like what I understand dusk to be as my "fail forward" scenario, where the heroes lose and have to find the survivors in the forest. Might even be new heroes. I might even turn the difficulty slider up.

[@awolfofchaos3211]

I might be sacrificed by my girlfriend if I didn't open this comment without mentioning your shirt lol. She is a diehard Ghost fan and the only reason I recognized the shirt is thanks to her 🤣 I think the "being brave because their lives aren't on the line" is an incredibly strong point, I am going to start trying to implement in my games to see how it works! hopefully you get to use it more and talk more about it's results in later videos Keep up the awesome videos and I cannot wait until the next one!!

[@PaulFulbright]

Thanks for the great map links! I signed up for all of them, some REALLY great stuff in there!

[@jblackburn]

Thankyou so much! Beg, Borrow and Steal Productions is super proud to see our patreon in this list. The other patreons on this list are super awesome as well!

[@BlindTitan]

This video came at a perfect time for me. I've just started writing a campaign focused around defending a village

[@Musubi9092]

I‘m enjoying Dusk with my girlfriend, it’s a wonderful adventure ☺️ thanks for the great work

[@anarchclown]

Old thing I noticed from running vampire. Vampire is very full of characters. You can never get a personal relationship with all of them. But a good way to help you do so. Is to give the players about 5 people to keep close track of and interact with the first session. Then adding one new important character each session until all 100+ vampires and mortals are introduced in some way. The same thing applies to most other settings where you remain in one social situation for long enough.

[@micahgreen409]

Great insights! I need to figure out how to bring more personality to my NPCs, and how to build challenges around my players. Running a Dusk style game sounds super fun!

[@thatthinker]

The lesson about a small number of people who matter and are interactable makes so much sense to me now and is why my village game is working now. I could have made 50 villagers (like I did last time) and figure out their daily schedules and all that... but that didn't work, so this time I have 8-9 (the official population count so far). It's so easy to get my players in the dungeon under the town because the dungeon just percolates up monsters that threaten these villagers that everyone knows and keep track of, because there's only a few.

[@demonzabrak]

3:05 so what you do is turn-increment scalar multipliers to the grid. Each square stops being 5 feet and becomes 15 feet, 30 feet, or 60 feet, depending on visibility and pace. Low visibility stealth with a lot of waiting for ambushes, means you’d be moving at 15, or half movement speed one time, no stealth and good visibility and you’d be hustling each round, crossing rolling plains or something. Once you’re close enough to zoom back in, set the combatant groups anywhere within X by X square zones based on their relative positions and resume normal scale battle. Allow players to stick together in an appropriate sized square during this movement style.

[@dagonpoint]

As always, I am blown away by the clarity of your advice. There is so much meat on those bones! Thank you!

[@jacquiblanchard3131]

Thank you so much Matt! I learned so much from this video, as usual. (Thank you Commenters, also!) I've been a DM for about 10 months but only found your channel recently. Thank for you all the work you're doing. You've become part of my weekly prep and I sure do appreciate you helping me to improve.

[@jebgordon6608]

I really enjoyed Dusk and this was a good post-mortem on the sessions.

[@WadeAllen001]

You mentioned in the beginning that this isn't a video that a lot of people will watch, but I think you could've made this video more likely to be watched by people by titling it something like "make your NPCs engaging." That's really what the lessons here are about.

[@markfelps2269]

Mutant: Year Zero uses the inhabitants of your ark as a sort of "hit points" for the campaign. People die every session and you can limit the deaths by building up the food and technology of your ark, but you can never stop it altogether.

[@ardanblade641]

These are some of my favorite episodes. The wide range of ideas and challenges give me a lot of material to work with.

[@MrSilvUr]

I wonder if the Dusk players in the Chain will take the descriptive freedom 4e teaches and apply it to 5e when the Chain comes back.