The DM Mistakes No One Talks About

[@theDMLair]

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[@amtep]

Hot tip: At the start of the big encounter, have the BBEG yell out "I don’t have time for this!". Then after enough PCs have been downed, she rushes away. Avoids a TPK and has a foreshadowed reason.

[@Mr.CheesePoof-t3i]

Beautiful

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

Very nice

[@Winterclaw42]

If he's a wizard/sorceror then it's more likely it's "I don't have time for this, FIREBALL!" Just as the PCs find him.

[@rainingtacos7529]

I don't know, I feel like if I was a player I would see right through that.

[@yellingintothewind]

@@rainingtacos7529 If you want it to work, you have them make a fighting retreat from the start. It's clear to the players they can stop at any time, as the enemy just wants to escape, but pursuit comes with real danger.

[@georgeb8976]

About players - i always keep in mind that they might be drained from a weeks work, and just want to sit down, relax and have a good time. So that’s what we do - take it easy, start playing and see where this leads us. Sometimes very serious and dramatic sessions, sometimes just slapstick and fun - read the table and act accordingly for every session, important to understand what the players are craving that evening and maybe change plans to give them at least a little of that if possible.

[@MJ-jd7rs]

seconded. There's no issue reminding a player information their pc would know. After all, for the PC it's been a day or so, for the player months irl might have passed. I just had an incident occur where a pc said something they shouldn't have said, they were warned not to say, so I reminded the player about the warning the pc got 2 days ago (Game time) 3 months ago (player time) and asked if that's what he wants to say. He revised his words hehe.

[@dane3038]

I like to run dark and gritty games so that's what I do. But how the players react is their choice 100%. I play my dark and gritty game and they play their silly game. It works because sometimes people cope with the struggles of life by making a joke out of everything.

[@jphendo]

Sitting back as GM to listen to the players talk, speculate, and strategize... I have lost count of how many times I sat quietly and was able to assess things like what clues they caught, what evil plots were working, and what they liked or disliked as a table. Equally, their chats have inspired ideas I could note down and weave into future worldbuilding and adventure ideas. Quietly listing to some player chat is super valuable! Let the moments of silence lead to that. (tl;dr, I agree with that part of the video especially)

[@thisstatementisfalsenothin5312]

@@jphendo I’m working with new players. So it’s really hard to get them to really engage in the game beyond combat. I wish I had players that sat around and actually discussed the game

[@YawdroGaming]

Quiet DMs can hear players speaking, and players enjoy speaking about (and in) their character.

[@Citizen_J]

I committed the worst DM sin ever: I prepped the wrong session! Showed up pumped to play, only to re-read my notes and realize I had prepped the wrong session. We powered through. Turbo embarrassing

[@dashua1735]

How do you prep the wrong session?

[@grismatics]

@@dashua1735 they probably play with more than one group of people... that would at least be my assumption

[@OdinAUT]

I was sure he was going to do an Obi Wan at the end. "How do I know Darren? Well, he's me of course" Still great tips, thanks as always. And you don't completely suck 😊

[@couchpotato8729]

On game stakes (e.g. PC death), I think the most important thing is communication. I've talked to my group, and they've told me they like a certain amount of tension, but don't want character death on the table because they invest a lot in their characters. Early on I pulled surprise DMPCs out of a hat to stop TPKs if necessary, but I've since found that it can be a fun challenge when designing encounters to think of what a failure mode might look like. As an example, a juiced up doppelganger picked off the PCs one by one after they were separated by a series of traps, but instead of killing the PCs, it knocked them unconscious and took them to its lair to eat later, giving them an opportunity to work together, escape, and curb stomp the monster in a really fun and cathartic rematch.

[@mwhearn1]

I have run several "DM Monologues", but I explain what is happening beforehand. They have always been one player getting visitation from the gods in a dream. I'll usually do this when have some law, plot hook and reward I want to give the players. Rather than just dump it, I'll use a dream from the gods to relate it to the story and make the player work it out. Everyone is warned beforehand that this is what is happening, and the player in particular is told that even though it may seem at first if it is a monologue, their character can interact and interrupt at any time. Usually, they don't say anything until the scene is set. Once I had to stop and ask the player how their character felt about the dream so far to get interaction going. Some of the dialogue of the gods will be scripted, and I'll try and cram in as many bad jokes as possible. I want to make sure there is something to entertain the players not involved. The last one I did was a dream from 3 different gods. A dreams meeting (as opposed to teams meeting. I did say bad jokes, right?} Usually the end of the dream (depending on how the player interacts), will be a boon to the player or all the players. There has to be some reward, or it will seem a waste of time to the players not involved.

[@alanthomasgramont]

I had a machina for a while, but we broke up because they just sat in the basement and gamed all day. However, after we broke up, my ex machina suddenly jumped in all the time to help me.

[@SlinkyTWF]

Hey! I got more than 10! I left this online game in September after dealing with it for several years because friends. -- No session zero. We got pushed into Rappan Athuk when literally no one in the group wanted to do an old-school mega-dungeon crawl. -- The DM was often completely silent. We would often go 5-10 minutes waiting for the DM to say something, only to have to prompt him to see if he was still alive. -- DM didn't pay attention when we told him something. He'd go for one his silent spells and then ask, "What was that again?" -- The DM rarely described anything, including things like the rooms we'd enter. When he did, it was usually insufficient, slowing the game down as we had to constantly ask obvious questions, usually to be ignored (see above). -- DM kept changing the rules halfway through the game on a whim, often to nerf specific characters. For example, the druid used thorn whip on a target and the DM ruled that he was forced to pull the target toward him, despite clear rule language to the contrary. On another occasion, he refused to allow a misty step to a higher location because we couldn't see the floor. And there were tons of times he did things like that. -- DM kept introducing house rules in the middle of the game that made the game slower and less fun without asking us whether we wanted it first. Like flanking. And massive damage. And applying a -1 debuff to every time a character dropped to 0 hp (real fun when you're 1st level, right?). -- Most of the DM's NPCs were named Bob and had no personalities. -- DM often fell back on the, "Rules are guidelines," as an excuse for bad rule interpretation (most often anti-player rulings, regardless of the RAW). -- There were 6 PCs in the game, which slowed it down proportionally. Slogging through a mega dungeon IN INITIATIVE ORDER was tedious, especially when players would randomly go AFK because they got bored or take a minute to move 30 feet because a couple couldn't remember how to move after four years of playing 5E. -- The DM forced unnecessary skill checks when the rules didn't require them. This included gating critical info behind high DCs, forcing characters to repeat the same check in the same scene often, having the rogue roll all the time to look for traps and doors instead of using their passive skills. -- Unending random encounters that only served to drag out the story. A single session's worth of content was often stretched into three boring sessions by constant fights with the same monsters. -- Almost every encounter was Deadly, forcing the players to rest frequently, and they often got no benefit from it because of some capricious and invisible condition. We'd often have to leave the area, and return, slogging through even more random encounters on the way back. In several instances, we just gave up and did something else. -- Instead of communicating with us, the DM liked to type NPC dialogue into the VTT game log, slowing the game down to a crawl while we waited for him to finish typing, and there was a 50-50 chance it was some asinine, snide comment. -- The DM capriciously overcharged PCs for everything, from 5000 gp for a 1000 gp spell component, to charging 5000 times the average worker salary per person (or a magic item) to use a teleportation circle as a terminus, to telling us that the annual upkeep on an 8000 gp house is 1800 gp (good thing his house didn't cost 1/4th of its selling price per year) and then adding an extra 600 gp per person in maintenance. The list is too long to enumerate. -- The 60+ y/o DM often degenerated into puerile, sexist OOC jokes. His wife played, and she did not appreciate it, nor did a religious player. They were either too polite or two intimidated to seriously challenge him. I eventually told him to STFU a few weeks before I left the game, and he did, but he kept coming back with "I've been cancelled" BS. -- The DM used a lot of deus ex machinae when he threw OPd or literally impossible encounters at us. He cheated for the players to allow them to win, and it was painfully obvious. -- The DM repeatedly used teleportation traps and creature effects to split up the party. The last time he did that was right after we had just reunited the party after three sessions of searching for the lost party members. That's when I quit the game.

[@SamuelDancingGallew]

For my preparation, I tend to come up with the vague ideas on what may happen, and one or two encounters, depending on what I expect. Otherwise, I like knowing what monsters are around the area so that when I do need to improvise a combat, I can scribble a kindergarten map, and just jump into combat. As for bad rulings, or improper enforcement of rules, I do try to apologize, recognize my mistake, and move on. Of course sometimes there's a hitch in there, but hey. I'm not perfect.

[@chaddemink7731]

You don't suck, Luke. I think games should be on the gritty side. What's the point of adventuring if there is no risk?

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

As a player and narrator I prefer grit and crunch but I can provide cozy fluff if I see it needed or hear a call for it.

[@williamknudson8414]

At the same time, what's the point of investing the time in making characters if there's a revolving door of new characters? It's my experience that the more characters die, the less the PCs invest in them, so the next PC death stings less, and I've found DMs hate it when the PCs fail to invest in caring about their characters. So, you know, maybe there should be some temperature-taking of the table to see where people think they are, and then adjust after play begins based on how the PCs are in practice, too. To use an analogy, some people think tobasco sauce is spicy, and other people think authentic Indian curry is the only way to spice things properly. Similarly, people have a broad range of preferences for danger. Some people want "you will die" certain doom danger, some people enjoy the illusion of danger, and some people prefer pulp or action heroes they know aren't going to *die* but may fail and certainly be put into dire peril. And other people are elsewhere on this spectrum.

[@calvinskye]

@@williamknudson8414 This is true! Death is TTRPGs is waaaay more complex than many youtubers, DMs and players want to talk about. Some want the high risk, some will loose all connection with a game when a character dies. But for some reason, it's often one that's not brought up or discussed enough.

[@archersfriend5900]

​@calvinskye I completely agree. I think there are tons of layers. Some players are very low frustration, some players like tons of risk. Also characters take a long time to build. As a player I love risk and am only interested in playing if there are risks and consequences. I cover my dming style in session 0. I do not alter it for players, I find players that like the style that I enjoy running.

[@TheSwamper]

I like to use the 90 second rule. No one, not even the DM, should ever speak for longer than 90 seconds without giving someone else a chance to do or say something.

[@Mr.CheesePoof-t3i]

K.i.s.s. acronym is most useful ever. Keep it simple silly. My DM in ancient times of old told me this. Absolutely invaluable. The more parts the more likely to fail. Beyond two to three players in single group things get very complex and more likely to fail an break. It's definitely possible but usually a lot more complex or group works extremely well with DM and each other.

[@ZorValachan]

Not D&D, but Sunday one PC died because exploding dice EXPLODED. Healing in that game isn't impossible, but not easy or cheap. The party had 3 potions that had potential to resurrect the character. They applied the first and the character rolled abysmally, still far from the needed total. The rest of the group discussed using another or not. They used and again, a bad roll didn't get his damage low enough. They again discussed using their last potion, deciding to try everything they had. That worked, but the character was still unconscious. They made a carrying harness and carried him to safety. As a GM, I sat back and let them lead the show. Was a great night and the player was grateful.

[@ivimarty]

as a DM i never want my PCs to die but if they do something dumb or if they aren’t able to win then i will let their characters die. my players know that and are okay with it because they also enjoy hard combat. This DM had a nightmare campaign his first mistake was having 9 players and his second mistake was not being more prepared and also not being a firm DM

[@mwhearn1]

If you have 9 players, you have to over prep. I had 8 players for a few sessions, and it was nightmare to prep for, to make sure I had something to involve everyone. Group is now 4 players, much easier.

[@ivimarty]

@ to be honest i under prepare because my players never do exactly what i have planned , which is the essence of dnd haha. i’m good at improvising though and that is my strength as a DM because any campaign i run is a home brew that i have heavily familiarized myself with so i know exactly the lay of the land in each part of the world they are in.

[@mwhearn1]

@@ivimarty I run home brew too. I only prepare bare bones because you never know what the players will do. I have worked as a radio announcer, so improv is not a problem. If I don't have the bones there, the games slows right down as I'm trying to think what to do keeping in mind what happened in the past and any future implications. Not that easy, unless I have already put some thought into it. Once I have some bones, I can wing the rest.

[@ZorValachan]

8+ players isn't a problem at face value. I'm much worse GMing with less than 6 people.

[@VictorStave]

I’m currently in a Spelljammer campaign which is thankfully nearing its end. We began with the world being consumed in massive, crystalline vines, a tiny group of survives to escape, literally the fate of the entire planet on our shoulders! It felt utterly heroic, and obviously highly important! Until, late in the campaign, a group of powerful DMPCs approach us and are instantly attacked; The DM wants us to defend this group, but they easily handled the combat themselves making me feel pointless. Afterward, this group (who are literally described as being “a hero family, basically The Incredibles) inform us they were sent along behind us to handle matter should we fail. And then they left…that was their entire function; To drop by and say “Hey, if you die, we came to do your job for you”. Nothing has ever been so emotionally devastating as having the DM find a way to inform our party “Your actions don’t matter in any way. Everything would be just fine without you”

[@williamanderson3185]

I just had a session where a character dies. But one of the other PC's had a divine trait Breath of Life, boom he revives the 'almost, sort of, kinda dead' player. It was great, I thought old Trev was road kill, it was better because the player using this waited to build tension on the heal. After, Trev's NPC girlfriend gave him a sloppy kiss.

[@michaelthomas1916]

I recently did a wrap up session for a year+ campaign arc. I took the opportunity to forshadow the next arc, and one of the key npcs they will likely deal with early on. The PCs have already met this person briefly, and one encountered her as part of his back story. I could tell that no one recognized the name so i let them all know why their PCs would remember this person, and recognize her.

[@singe_malt9609]

You don’t suck. No tension or death in the game definitely takes away some of the fun. No risk no reward… Keep up the great content! Oh, and totally love the whole “squirrel“ moment at time 9:44. You totally went all “UP” on us…

[@theDMLair]

Yeah, good games require some tension. No fun in a guaranteed win!

[@jierdareisa4313]

I do really love ALL the DM Lair videos!!!! ❤

[@GabeTetrault]

I left a group because of the DM doing a lot of these things. We were always poor, there were overpowered PCs that would show up and steal the show/kill the boss, he'd change how something worked (making someone roll for something a prior player didn't have to roll for multiple times before), allowed one player to PVP/Steal from other players despite all of the other players not wanting to play that type of game, DEDUCT experience from the group if someone didn't do something he had planned (like calling out them out), and when approached/confronted by someone about any of it he would just double-down and say the DM has the right to handle things as he wished. When he told us, "You're just over half way through the main story" and we'd been at it for over 10 months as it is - and every prior campaign had been 6-8 months long for this group - I about lost my mind. There was no way that I'd go through all of this for that much more time. He never got any buy-in from the group before essentially taking control of the table. What really bummed me out was that I was also the primary host. It was almost always at my house, as I had the space (and no kids at home). I put up with it for longer than I would have because I felt that it would inconvenience the rest of the group.

[@biffstrong1079]

Ellendor the Ranger? Again? I hate that guy. Oh yeah that rogue should have been able to climb the tower.

[@MichaelFischer-pf7ft]

I'd love to see more videos like this, about real-life "how-to" and "how-not-to" stories. Best of all would be real-life tales of how a DM messed up and then recovered.

[@RobKinneySouthpaw]

13:00 improvisation is important and great. But if you pull *everything* out of your butt, Don't be surprised when all you come up with is sometimes just crap.

[@sorcdk2880]

I am a bit tired of how much bashing there is against low prep GMing. The main reason that things turn to crap is when what you improvise is not supported by anything at all and you are forced to base things on the first random idea you have. All you really need in practice is just to think through some general ideas beforehand, and then in game you can improvise all you want by taking those decent ideas and building up top of them and putting things in as might seem relevant. The change from just adding a bit with improvisation and have that work securely is a lot easier than building something whole cloth in an instant and not having some part be janky. For instance if you have thought up that in a city there is going to be a gang that might lean toward some focus, then it is a lot easier to spawn in encounters with criminals that effectively have reasonable objectives and actions because you know the background, which compared with just randomly spawning in an encounter can work well and be easy to make a larger story out of that does not feel like just random encounter nr. 235. And the only preperation that took was to have the thought that you might want to add in a gang with possibly that focus at some point in maybe this story or some other one. No need for detailed description of all the NPCs related to it, a deep dive in just what beside that focus they have and so on, as that is all something you can silently work on when adding new components with improvisation.

[@IsaacBenevides]

10:12 No! Let's talk more about how terrifying birds are! People don't realize this enough

[@mwhearn1]

I live in Australia with the Emu, Cassowary and Magpie. We how terrifying birds can be.

[@sitnamkrad]

8:40 Here I am! Just kidding, kinda. The thing that always bothers me about this topic is that there seems to be a false dichotomy most of the time. Either kill all the characters whenever the dice say so. Or bail them out completely. This idea that without character death, the game has no stakes, is completely false. Not only does it completely ignore every other possible penalty for failure. It ignores on of the only tangible penalties there is, a loss of player time. Think about it, it's a game. None of it is actually real. The characters aren't. The story isn't. Once you put away the dice, your life continues as it always has. Except that every hour you spent in the game is an hour you don't get back. You only need to look at video games like Elden Ring to see how frustrated players can get when they spend hours trying to accomplish something, and failing. Even without losing their characters. In a TTRPG, your players spend literally hours on their character. That is a very big investment, and I think this is often not taken into consideration when talking about character death. Players hate losing time this way, and it's no wonder that video games and D&D have moved towards a more forgiving experience over time. Though some mistakenly think that not wanting to deal with harsh penalties also means not wanting to deal with difficult objectives, but these are 2 different things. In the end, I think if you are more conscious and respectful of the player's time investment into their character, and incorporate other forms of penalties for failure, you can give players more difficult encounters, you have more room to fix your inevitable mistakes, and decrease the urge to deus-ex machina your way out of undesirable outcomes.

[@robinmohamedally7587]

big time clown energy. Nobody take this loser seriously.

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

TLDR it’s really a case by case basis. Can the player handle their character dying right now? Ask if you need to. If not, don’t kill them. Failure means passing but at a big price.

[@JohnKay79]

I LOVE birds. But yeah, they're just flying reptiles. You can see the dinosaur heritage in Roadrunners.

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

Lizards aren’t scary unless they’re dangerous. Same thing with cats and canines

[@SuperMattMart]

I've been guilty of every one of these individually at one time or another. Though definitely not all at once. Being a GM is hard.

[@dragonstryk7280]

I ran the Kingmaker AP, and I actually had to warn off the group through the party Bard (King in the AP). They went ABSOLUTELY rabid building up their kingdom, and it was some *broken* stuff. Ironically, it was the party druid that kicked off the insanity, by *actually reading her spells*. Yeah, it got batcrap crazy fast from there. Two spells in particular became the issue: Goodberry (small), and Plant Growth (son of a bitch!). It at all hit the fan at 7th level, when the druid was considering feats, and the Ranger asked out taking Leadership to make a troop of Rangers that would move about the wild areas of the kingdom and handle business. The druid got quiet for a minute, and I should have realized it was gonna be bad from there. I was fielding questions from the rest of the party. Yeah, so Druid realized she could actually take Leadership to have a druid corps, and things get nuts from here. At the low level, Goodberries were being cast on the daily, parsing out the berries to anyone who couldn't afford a meal. This would've been less of an issue, except she stated that she would be training her cohort IN the leadership feat whenever the cohort was able to take it. Because of the various bonuses they had, the leadership score meant her cohort would only be two levels behind her. So as the party levels, the Druid Corps ALSO levels and expands. The Goodberry thing gave some small bonuses, nothing crazy, until the Plant Growth enters the chat. The second use of Plant Growth (Which no one ever uses, cause why would you?), increases crop yield by 33%. In an adventuer's life, it's not really something you'd do outside of incredibly niche circumstances. As Rulers of a Kingdom, however, the story changes considerably. She looked up the rules for magical item creation, and set up a simple bracelet that did only the second effect of Plant Growth, and began purchasing them up through the Cathedral of Erastil they built. So, the kingdom got nuts, cause everyone else started piling on. They were super-excited, but it had to get reined in. I could've just said to stop, sure, but decided to handle the issue in-world. The King starts to realize that their position is becoming a possible issue for Brevoy, and while they might be powerful for the area, the might of a fully established nation coming down on them is far past what they can just tank.

[@InvictusIIKhan]

You are an exceptionally helpful teacher.

[@willbrashear]

30 years of GM experience. It doesn't tell you that it took 30 years to develop all the voices for the skit, either!

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

Ha!

[@artistpoet5253]

So much good advice... ...and you don't suck!

[@theDMLair]

Thank you!

[@Doodle1776]

I run Castles and Crusaudes game and that leans more towards light so bigger groups are easier. All of my groups have six players. The game seems to recommend between 3-7 players.

[@TheSwamper]

I confess that in my early days, I would punish players I caught cheating. Not harshly, but it'd be a few points of damage type Wandering to let them know I was onto them.

[@shrooms33]

This example sounded like a DM had a lot of hostile players.

[@TalonSilvercloud]

I have NPC's who are romantically involved banter and sometimes bicker. I usually try to have most of it off screen, and let the players either stumble across it, or they poke the NPC's into talking about something and away it goes. But I always build in an interruption so it doesn't go overly long. If I have a character who is going to lore dump, I usually try to have some kind of gimmick to make it memorable. One such lore dump (it was more of a report on the enemy patrols someone was encountering), they used their ability to manipulate fire to make illusions out of fire. She made a small raiding party and acted out her encounter, all out of fire. I spent more time describing the fire than on the lore dump. Another time the party ran across a dragon who did tarot readings. I owned a dragon themed tarot deck, so I pulled out a few cards. Rather than a big lore dump, I gave each player a tidbit that was more relevant to them, and warning of things to come. Kept it personal and relevant, did it one at a time, and let them go discuss it afterwards while I started on the next person. But 10 minute lore dumps? Unless you're pausing every paragraph or two and letting players ask questions, I can't think of how someone would take 10 minutes to deliver any kind of important lore.

[@rcschmidt668]

Nice to see the characters at the table again. Great reminders, especially when I as DM might wax verbose. And you don’t completely suck. 😂

[@MJ-jd7rs]

I love how the only two options are to either callously slaughter your PCs while making them irrelevant to the plot or to give them plot armor and cuddle them throughout the campaign. 'Cause, you know, there's nothing in between. PCs are hard to kill already, and even if you do manage to get one, unless you homebrew resurrection rules, they're easy to get back up (300/500 gp diamond and a 3/5th level spell slot). If you ACTUALLY manage to Perma kill one, that's an achievement (unless you homebrewed something to make it harder). There's no issue of making the campaign about the characters, of establishing personal quests/backstories, of making the adventure revolve around the group, because pcs perma dying IS hard.

[@archersfriend5900]

I completely agree. In 5e it is really hard to perma kill a pc. In 3 years I have ony killed 3 running two weekly campaigns.

[@RentonBrax]

All this gives the impression that the DM wasn't talking to the party about the adventure out of the game. DM's, you gotta talk to your friends, its not a movie, its collaborative story telling. Find out where they want to go, if they want their character to survive, if they want OP loot and have a power fantasy, its all in the game. Play your table, not the book.

[@brewski4758]

Came close to a TPK, which was 100% the players fault. Wandering into an encounter halfway through a long rest (oh look there;s a glowing orb, lets follow it 🤦) 2 players went down. So what i did was had the lone player basically have an adrenaline burst after seeing his comrades go down. So he did his remaining attacks at advantage. Player got to have an epic moment of there character saving the day whilst still having the real stakes of a TPK

[@DrewMolina]

Awkward silence: I find asking probing questions to help move the game along without forcing the group to move forward right that moment. Sometimes it gets one player to think out loud which causes others to do the same. Combat knowledge: I use a combination of character's class, back story, background, and skills and drop hints when I feel it's necessary. Large groups: This is 100% dependent on your gaming space, split the group in two groups if you've got two DMs. They work together to build one giant story where each parties are doing different things to reach a common goal, one or both could be aware of each other from session one, have a couple sessions where the they run into each other. During the time the two parties run into each other players could trade players.

[@angelawesneski5029]

On the topic of letting characters die, I think discussing tone and the possibility of character death in session 0 is really important. I think you can still have a lot of fun if you try not to kill characters, and some players will feel they need to be cautious/self protective if they are constantly afraid they'll die. I think figuring out how character death should be handled should be a collaboration between DMs and players.

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

Definitely

[@liamcage7208]

My bad habit. I have a very good friend that I have been playing TTRPG's with for 40 years. He Gms also and knows the rules well. I like to homebrew a lot with minor stuff to fit the setting where as my friend is a Rules Lawyer (from Harvard Law - lol). Anyway, my friend argues with me a lot and when an encounter doesn't go they way he thinks it should he tries to seize the narrative. Needless to say this causes friction. So much friction that sometimes when my friend simply speaks I'm ready to argue. My bad. My friend and I have been playing TTRPGs since AD&D in the early 1980's. I'm not giving him the boot from the table. We have to figure it out. (edited for spelling).

[@shellnet411]

Have a lot of loot, but only allow them to take a certain amount

[@antenor790]

8 players level 3 vs giant ape cr 7. I think 1 player fall and i was unlucky with the rolls in like 3 rounds they manage to kill that in a easy fight. Everyone was disappointed, thankfully it's hard to have 8 players regularly so they split the party. The only time everyone got together again in against a treant what was nearly a tpk (no one die but almost everyone fall) i loved that boss fight, it's in my top 3 dnd fights i dmed. Economy action i would say.

[@mikko272]

like a balloon method adjust when necessary.

[@Mr_GoR_]

I become hyper self-aware when I'm doing multiple NPCs in a single "scene." It's really awkward. Breaking character/immersion and just summarizing a conversation feels awkward sometimes too, but it's less awkward than having a conversation with yourself as 2 separate characters in front of your table for like 5 minutes.🤣 Also I try not to give NPCs full backstories, sometimes it happens, but if they're story relevant, they will have a motivation and a personality, maybe.

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

I don’t do the talking to myself thing. That part I tell them about what they said as if I were retelling a conversation I witnessed. He said, she said and a gist to be gotten.

[@twilightgardenspresentatio6384]

Gotta know if the players are ok with character death. If not, I give them that plot armor but success comes at a cost. Even in the moment, asking “are you ok with your character being slain in this story” can help them prepare or say no- not now. Just listen to them. It’s even better when they say yeah and then survive anyway.

[@robinmohamedally7587]

Unless they're my close friends, i'm not interested in mollycoddling them in a safe space. And not even then. It's a game that needs to have risk and a chance of losing. That's the best part of all of this, we can just find other groups, if people want to play it in Candyass mode.

[@Khaoscntrl]

10:07 as someone who owns a bird....this is accurate

[@SalihFCanpolat]

Not for me, I don't do any D&D... I haven't been doing it for around 27 years.

[@nequies]

Great content 10/10

[@theDMLair]

Thank you!

[@SkorjOlafsen]

Don't avoid TPKs; instead don't let them end the story. I've used two methods for this. First, have the players know there's some character or creature in the area capable of raising them, but not someone they'd want to be in debt to (or, at high level, some old enemy scrying them from time to time), without going into details - just atmosphere for the area. A TPK can then be followed by the party being raised, and some horrible burden imposed on them that they have to break free from. That way, a TPK has consequences the players feel, and the adventure continues. Best not used more than once, though. Second, as the players adventure through lower levels, have them do some quest for some powerful entity who could in theory raise the party after a TPK (or, better, resurrect them), and leave the story with the party being owed a favor. If many levels later there's a TPK you have a foreshadowed reason for an NPC to bring them back, and it feels like something the party _earned_ not an asspull by the DM. The key in general is to pre-plan for a TPK and give some story reason, no matter how thin, ahead of time for continuing the story. And to do so without making it seem like it's going to happen again. It's easy to come up with something if you have all the time you need to brainstorm ideas long before the TPK.

[@theDMLair]

That's a great approach. I like how you give it a sense of dread and a sense of earned reward for the players.

[@nathanmichael167]

I never really like the GM advice of "Kill characters to make tension". Players spend a lot of time crafting and honing and falling in love with a character. As GM, I feel it's my part to provide other stakes to enhance tension and drama, and not risk their lives on mundane chance or me rolling crappy on a random monster table. I find if you get players engrossed in plots, stories, npcs and the world around them, they will care as much about those things dying than their character, and they don't have to force building and liking a new character. It's a lot more believable that the party rescues a party member at the brink of death than the party finds a random NPC who happens to be on the same quest as them and they instantly trust this person . That's not to say player's don't die in my games. I have plenty of "high stakes" or "boss" fights where i inform players that the encounter is dangerous and characters will die. In a recent , what the party thought was mundane encounter, they fought a group of lizard people from another dimension who were "radioactive". With the players in a fantasy world not understanding what that means, one of the players risked their life, failed badly and died. But, instead of just making it a mundane "oh your character is dead , roll up another one". The players revered that death, because death isn't common in my campaign. The party even tried two side quests to attempt to reverse it. In the end, they commented, as they have before, that they were happy the death had meaning. After the character died , the player and i talked about their new character, how they felt about their character dying and we roadmapped out a proper introduction for her. (The two sidequests were designed to build into this). In the mean time Every risk the player's take has a failure condition. I find these to be more interesting and move plots in new and unexpected directions. IF players start dropping in combat , the enemy wins and that win condition takes place. I've had several campaigns even end with the BBEG winning, forcing me as a gm to create scenerios of, what happens when evil wins. I like to think of it like a Novel. When i'm reading a good book, rarely is "death" the big 2nd act negative that forces the protaganists to dig deep and overcome insurmountable odds. It's usually something more intricate.

[@MJ-jd7rs]

i think some of it comes from 'professional dms' who run mulitple games and likely have 10+ pcs in total they're designing adventures around. Most games see 1 dm having to care about 3-6 pcs max. In the former, the dm doesn't have the time/energy to invest in the pcs. In the latter, the situation MOST dms will be in, you do and should. After all, why should the players invest in your world if you don't invest in them?

[@nathanmichael167]

@MJ-jd7rs This is so valid. This is why i never went the professional route. I've won 2 National GM awards and could easily bank it (i have 2 friends who do corporate GMing). But i know I'd hate it. Meeting celebs is cool, but spending time with friends is better.

[@sbncaptain8209]

Birds aren't real. They're CIA spying devices. Also, good advice as usual. Thank you sir.

[@TheSwamper]

There are two types of information: Need to know, and Would be nice to know. When creating TTRPG content, try to put as much information/lore as possible into the second category. For all info in the first category, just tell them, or have an NPC tell them flat out.

[@Marcus-ki1en]

Hmmm, could "Darin" be an early you, before you became learned and wise? Some pretty basic, early career GM mistakes. All of us have been guilty of one or more of these at one time or another.

[@GeraldKatz]

I remember your pet squirrel.

[@Dysfunctional_Reprint]

Birds are dinosaurs after all

[@aliceroorback3717]

Nobody tell Luke about cassowaries.

[@theDMLair]

What.... what are those?

[@RIVERSRPGChannel]

Yes I do someone good things and at least one of the bad things. I used to do more bad things years ago.

[@viktorberecz27]

Birds are the dinosaurs that survived the impact. Of course they're vicious. (Pigeons and chickens excluded. They're just dumb af. 😅) P.s.: you don't completely suck, Luke. I'm soon starting a campaign with 6 players in my dark and unforgiving homebrew world (after like 15 years of not being a DM - I used to run smaller adventures in high school, but that was half an eternity ago) and I found a lot of your videos pretty helpful.

[@israelmorales4249]

Great video, i' guilty of al the chargues here presented in a lot f ssions. jeje thx for the advices! Luke, did you know abut the "Terrorbird" they are native of the Isle of Dread....they ar like Chokobos

[@KaineVillante]

Honestly I also am guilty of Deus ex Machina. My main reason is usually it's because of a random encounter that got too out of hand. But also I don't want my player going through all the trouble of making a backstory me prepping material for it then having to throw all that away and start over. 7:23

[@TheDougliestDoug]

@KaineVillante I have issues with it too, so I found a middle ground and present dead characters with a choice instead. Do you want your character to be dead and rerolled, or do you wanna RP this out with life but consequences? That could be a permanent crippling injury, or could be a third party help for a price, and those consequences should be talked about above the table with the group as well. If it threatens to bog down the action or take away from the gravity of the moment as they take their time tk decide, you can also say "You're down, we'll figure out if that's for good once this is done."

[@theDMLair]

We call that plot armor

[@eliinthewolverinestate6729]

My Irish accent really sucks for my druid/bard. We as players have screwed things up many times. But it's a game. A few auguries and D.m. can steer in direction needed. Our tank player is a less talk more of a murder hobo. We usually travel with a war wagon with fire suppression. We have made it beyond pyros and have fire fighting solutions. Our D.M screws with our wagons. Been stolen twice, smashed by dire bear, boulder, giant, melted by acid, and burnt twice. Most of those have been randoms. A broken wagon wheel puts us on guard. It's just simple randoms that really make things sometimes. With an air elemental, summon creatures, and a boat. I don't own the wagon this campaign. I will say not having wild empathy makes it interesting in eldeen reaches. We choose a place NW of Guardian groove to call home. One map showed stumps at head waters of river from Cree. So we call it Stumpwood because of dire beavers. They have a dam that recharges aquifers of the Towering wood. Players need to help make the world their own too. With all the tree lovers around there needed to be good reason for the stumps. Dire beavers need a place to live too.

[@eldritchmorgasm4018]

Biggest mistake, not enough bacon 😅

[@wapper7777]

Luke! You don’t completely suck! Only mostly

[@theDMLair]

I'll take it!

[@LeeTheDM]

To be perfectly honest, I think that the majority of dnd players don’t want their characters to die permanently. Almost all of my players, which is like 30 of them, would be peeved if their character died with no way to resurrect them available.

[@theDMLair]

Different things appeal to different players. I'd be bored in a game where u can die

[@gregorysheridan2015]

Never ever Never ever never ever save your players.

[@erichanson3369]

Hey, Luke, I just wanted to let you know that you should never kill a character and you should always just give them plot armor and let them live and survive the entire campaign and never have any threat to their life whatsoever. ...obviously

[@backin80s]

"imagine a big bird be vicious horrible monster"..... Have you played elden ring,( or anny other FromSoftware game), those crows in mohgwyn palace are Nightmare fuel.

[@kwith]

I'd love some time stamps lol

[@TheNekofanatic]

Even when you don't have a cat on your shirt, you have cat *hair* on your shirt.

[@theDMLair]

Of course! 😸

[@jonathanschmitt5762]

13:55 Half the players don't show up anyways.

[@waltersobchack8886]

Triple H music hits.

[@GeraldKatz]

No, I don't believe PCs should have plot armor and never die. I only object to DMs wanting it to happen getting their jollies when a PC does die.

[@Deram1Axres]

Man, you can just let your players discuss things for an hour and they will be engaged and give you a bunch of things you can use in future games as they completely miss-guess what is going on, but they don't know that that inn keeper was only fishy because the players took so much interest in him lol. For character deaths, one way I've seen a DM approach it and see it go both ways, is more or less an evil god takes advantage of them and offers them a chance to come back but to serve them instead, seen one character refuse to give up his morals and his character died and his soul was taken to his god's realm and another character felt betrayed because their god didn't save them, so they took the offer and were a lot more vicious and no longer cared about preserving life and pretty much went from a peaceful approach to a "idc if they die, we need to do x". Gives an option for some roleplay, especially when the other players are all of a sudden are dealing with a drastically changed person who moments ago they thought was dead. And ya, I have had to drop so many hooks to try and get my players to catch onto things, I even made the checks needed on some things lower as time went on, I have never seen so many DC10 checks fail on a level 6 party lol.

[@badmojo0777]

Its worth nothing that Sly Flourishs Lazy DM strategy isnt actually lazy, its jsut a name.. it jsut promotes smart prep instead of over prepping.

[@Gramakin]

Heh! Birds are dinosaurs.

[@slagmoth]

I have to disagree, in order for a world to be believable that precludes carefully placed loot custom designed for your PCs. Anytime I found something specifically for my PC in someone else's game it always felt contrived and lazy.

[@theDMLair]

And you feel good when none of the loot is useful?

[@slagmoth]

@@theDMLair I have never found anything that wasn't in some way useful. Even if it was randomly generated I have always found a use for what we found. Maybe I am just more creative than most? Dunno.

[@Mishtimaus]

Dear Dm lair Luke, the story with Darren is nice, but it's easier to listen to your videos if I hear: issue number EIGHT - and capture my attention again while cooking and cleaning or phasing out because issue seven didn't interest me

[@soldierbreed]

Day-us

[@KaineVillante]

Luke you're not a moron 😂 however I get no less amusement seeing you make videos about players causing mischief when you literally showed up to dragonheist with a murder hobo cleric 😂 2:32

[@theDMLair]

I'm a horrible player...you'll see. Lol

[@jriggan]

Not so suck👍

[@ApocRNG]

Did you just talk bad on birds?

[@MegaDratsab]

Birds lack empathy. I still love them.

[@Mr.CheesePoof-t3i]

Look into life of love birds. Might find a little surprise.

[@robinmohamedally7587]

There are a lot of findings, even video evidence, that contradicts that. SOME birds lack empathy. Just like some humans do

[@christopherbronson3275]

30 minutes later, only 400 views. Dude fell off

[@sbncaptain8209]

Nah, the KZbin algorithm is brutal at times. He'll be fine.

[@eldritchmorgasm4018]

More bacon = More success! 😏