Reminds of an anecdote I heard way back when I was a kid. A sculptor created a superb statue of a horse and someone asked him how he did such a great job. The sculptor replied: "It was simple. I just removed everything from the block of marble that did NOT resemble a horse."
@KimKhan3 жыл бұрын
Not a single word spoken in this video was wrong. It really falls well with something another youtube repeats: "Bring back the Master into Dungeon Master." It is YOUR game, and when the final decision needs to be made, the GM is the one that has the final say on all issues. And the general advice on world building is too true, like generalizations, which has become a bad word almost these days, but this video makes one of the best points I have seen in it's favour. Instantly subscribed after seeing that.
@idontno6d1052 жыл бұрын
one time I made a setting where I blocked off all races in the book except humans because they did not fit with the idea I wanted to make my setting, and also so I could balance all the races against themselves instead of something I didn't make myself. That setting is what I've stuck to building the most, while my 'kitchen sink' approaches fell apart.
@cjsutherland24483 жыл бұрын
Well stated. Mystara is all about building something new by rearranging and re-combining the past in interesting ways to create something new.
@Zeithri3 жыл бұрын
I laughed at " _Pretend you're English_ ". Great video. I love it.
@derekburge52943 жыл бұрын
Ah, the tiefling problem... You hit the nail on the head: don't overrepresent things that are supposed to be super rare. Subscribed as hell now.
@LoudApeNation3 жыл бұрын
“Ignore the people who tell you your fun is wrong!” Why is this channel so criminally undersubscribed too?!?!
@springheeledjackofthegurdi21173 жыл бұрын
That gnome statement feels like it has a story behind it
@NotoriusBEN13 жыл бұрын
on point and based info for new players. gj, Mr Welch
@jeffweskamp36853 жыл бұрын
The problem of placing Ravenloft in the High Fantasy rules system of Dungeons & Dragons has been there from the start, way back when the original Black Box set was released. Bruce Nesmith, one of the co-creators of the campaign setting (based on the two Ravenloft adventure modules, I6 and I10), once said that he practically had to re-design the game system to accommodate a Gothic Horror setting. Which is why Ravenloft stands out from all the other D&D settings.
@patrickbuckley72593 жыл бұрын
Yeah the Ravenloft book had a lot of heavy listing to do, introducing rules to make the game more grim gritty, and low magic. The people who wrote the book refused to do any of that and instead spent all of their time and resources infusing the setting with all the tropes and cliché's of terrible modern reboots that completely fail to capture the spirit of the original.
@innocentsmith60913 жыл бұрын
@@patrickbuckley7259 You don't have to be gritty to have horror. Like maybe it won't really be a good representation of gothic horror, but I think a better compromise would be to let D&D characters do all their D&D stuff to beat the adventure, just make it challenging enough that there's an illusion of an existential threat. It's more about giving players the proper queues about the mood of the setting and enough reason to believe it. And if they're newer players, which are really who should be the main targets of published adventures anyway, they probably don't have the system mastery to know otherwise. What WOTC did instead was just completely give up on even the illusion that it's a horror setting and turn it into a farce. But that's also probably because they don't have enough respect for D&D to let their settings take themselves seriously.
@ronniejdio94113 жыл бұрын
Horror doesn't work when characters are avenger level powered heros with 0 chance of suffering or death
@dane30383 жыл бұрын
Way to talk about it without talking about it. The Queen of the Demon Web Pit approves.
@Mr_Welch3 жыл бұрын
Control the language you control the argument. -Nathaniel Webster. Scholar, patriot, all time Scrabble champion.
@pendantblade63613 жыл бұрын
I'd love to see more short videos on writing other than just RPG discussion. Great stuff.
@docnecrotic3 жыл бұрын
Thank you. I'll always stand by these points.
@MsGorteck3 жыл бұрын
With the exception of your Mystria posts, the more I watch your channel the more I like it. This was really, really, enjoyable AND informative, thank you.
@Maehedrose3 жыл бұрын
It's about time someone openly defended stereotypes. I've been a storyteller for 30 years and it gets so frustrating when people don't understand the value of basic storytelling tools (and therefore try to make them taboo). The biggest complaint I have about the 'TV Tropes' site is that it tricked some people into thinking tropes were a bad thing - tropes are a storytelling tool, just like hammers and nails are carpentry tools.
@WDFrost-ns4gp3 жыл бұрын
Thank you kindly Mr. Welch, any chance we might get Mr. Welch world building tips and suggestions?
@SkullCowboy3333 жыл бұрын
Thank you for stating this so clearly.
@EvilDoresh3 жыл бұрын
I feel it is too tempting for many GMs to make use of _all_ the various player and monster options available to them. This is _especially_ true for what the books consider the "core" options. It doesn't have to be a "core" option in _your_ campaign, and you certainly don't need to radically revamp a setting to make room for whatever new "core" choices the new edition offers. That way madness lies, aka 4e Forgotten Realms.
@tactiti0n3 жыл бұрын
Can't remember whose words they are, but they go a little something like this "A good writer steals ideas from ten places. Great writers steal from a thousand" Hit the stolen ideas with a hammer until you've shaped them into place and they tend to fit a lot better. Either suspension of disbelief is going strong or you're doing something damned wrong.
@dirus31423 жыл бұрын
This video gives both advice about gaming, writing, and social commentary. Such a breath of fresh air, to hear strait forward thoughtful advice. The corollary to this videos message is players who insist on playing a rare exotic race must accept the consequences of that choice when playing in their DM's setting. I know Mr. Welch understands the small exceptions to the general rules of life. For example when my friend and I were doing research about Detroit in 1907-1910 for GURPS game we wanted to play. We looked at the cultural demographic figures. Every culture listed had a %, the Chinese had 4. Not 4%, just a 4. We found it perplexing. So we ran with it. Teh game had the players in law enforcement, so we had the Detroit PD officers use a Chinese dry cleaner for their uniforms. Because he was the best in the city. Sure it's cliche, But it started to make us piece together how this Chinese family got to Detroit for our Supernatural cop show in Detroit RPG. It was never a plot point. Part of how we played our RPGs was talking about the little details that grew our world, not just the adventure at hand. It gave that context our characters would know. As for my character, he was the first Polish American to be a DPD detective.
@MrNetWraith3 жыл бұрын
In fairness, tieflings actually should be pretty common in the Forgotten Realms because the Realms have seen a LOT of fiendish influence over the centuries. There have been multiple demonic and diabolic invasions, there are active portals to the netherrealms and cults to archfiends all over the place, there are literally regions where there are small pockets of fiends camped out in the material plane as basically guerilla warriors, evil wizards using summoning magic are all over, and there's been at least one fiend-back magocracy that I know of in the Demonbinders of Nar. Logically, tieflings *should* be pretty common as a result of all this! The problem is that tieflings were introduced after the Forgotten Realms and then backported inwards, and frankly TSR always had a hard time stepping out of their Low Fantasy comfort zone. Crappy 5e writing doesn't help, of course. But, all of that said, Mr. Welch also has a perfectly valid point that just because tieflings may proliferate in some settings, doesn't mean they have to be included in others. Mystara, Dragonlance and Birthright are the absolute last settings I would let tieflings feature in, simply because these settings are all so closed off from the fiendish planes. Even Dark Sun makes more sense than Dragonlance, because Dark Sun is such a hellhole that people turning to fiend worship makes sense.
@robertbemis98003 жыл бұрын
I’m thinking of making a Conan world No wizards no paladins The opposite of dark sun it’s a beginning world No written language I’m thinking no scrolls and magical items Group think what else should I eliminate?
@ChibiKami3 жыл бұрын
no wizards, you got that, only sorcerers clerics and ritual magic magical items are fine but they have to be made by shamans--special charms for the PC, not ancient treasures in a lich's tomb speaking of lich's, who are your antagonists? Lizardman faction? Goblinoids trying to evolve at the same time? Undead remnants formed of the lost potential of what will never be?
@robertbemis98003 жыл бұрын
Spell tattoos replace scrolls
@dalrostsd3 жыл бұрын
Hamlet is best heard in the original Klingon
@penzotoko66193 жыл бұрын
I actually prefer the Elcor version...
@TylerWx3 жыл бұрын
That's a great video. Well done!
@andrewmichaelschaefferXIV3 жыл бұрын
BRILLIANT WISDOM
@michaellittle2263 жыл бұрын
Thanks for sharing.
@Cubelarooso2 жыл бұрын
The most important part of this video is the invective against the use of "snowflake" without "special." That shit gets me riled up.
@markskarr22573 жыл бұрын
Couldn't agree more.
@markskarr22573 жыл бұрын
It doesn't just apply to Dungeons and Dragons.
@fleetcenturion3 жыл бұрын
3:10 - As I've said before, DragonLance _does_ include Drow. The dark elf Raistlin fought during his Test of High Sorcery is referred to as a Drow, and there's even an adventure that features them (DLS4: Wild Elves). They just shouldn't be player-characters. The Thiewar dwarf clan is virtually identical to the Duergar, minus the mind flayer influence.
@gorillaguerillaDK2 жыл бұрын
If we view how the old Rome was, then they had ethnicities of all kinds, both from within and from outside of the Roman Empire! The only ethnicities we can say for sure wasn’t there were indigenous people of the region where Australia is, and the Americas!
@Dariushellstrome3 жыл бұрын
I missed this one and the tubes of U won't load comments
@RoninCatholic3 жыл бұрын
I'm the kind of player who likes the _challenge of_ being a race seen as an enemy and an outsider. If I want to be a nice version of a usually hostile monster (or a "relatively controllable because I can be aimed at dungeons to fight other monsters" version) I don't _want_ the GM to turn the other monsters into misunderstood and wrongly persecuted social outcasts. I'm not going to pick a monster widely known as a monster for my character's race with the flavor text at character generation saying "These guys are seen as monsters and face persecution or at least innate distrust" and expect to not actually encounter that in gameplay. And while Mystara is my favorite of the established and official D&D settings, my own setting is basically the opposite: Instead of no races naturally being able to interbreed, interbreeding is so common that _by default_ most NPCs and player characters are going to be mixed race. Instead of a wide world with many diverse cultures based on real world cultures, there's a very small inhabited area with a fairly stock high fantasy cultural melting pot surrounded on all sides by monsters of various and dubious levels of sapience; you've got a walled city of under ten thousand souls and nobody is sure if there even are any other cities left standing elsewhere in the world because travel is so dangerous. Rather than the gods of most settings or the Immortals of Mystara, I have a singular monotheistic and verifiably true religion where heretics don't get Clerics/Paladins/Celestial Warlocks/Favored Souls as an easy debunk to their claims of validity; Right Makes Might rather than Might Makes Right. This also necessitates the reintroduction of mechanics to cut off divine spellcasters' powers if they actually do things that flagrantly violate their vows or the modus operandi of their god, which has been sorely missing since 4th Edition launched.
@bigblue3443 жыл бұрын
Thank you, I am so tired of having elves running around everywhere or supposed rare creatures be in almost every town.
@camerongunn79063 жыл бұрын
I don't mind them recycling plots. But I swear to Odin this Movie remake bullshit has to end.
@Barquevious_Jackson3 жыл бұрын
1:09 But don't you like Mystara?
@ryderma13 жыл бұрын
Good Stuff!!
@SimonAshworthWood3 жыл бұрын
Mr. Welch, please re-check the title. After the word "word", did you mean "is" or "in"?
@Mr_Welch3 жыл бұрын
Typo fixed
@freddaniel50993 жыл бұрын
? 5 or 5:30? Is that okay? The boy and I are settling down for a nap. 😴💤
@Shneily-Wheely3 жыл бұрын
Hail!
@manarayofhope23743 жыл бұрын
Oh Boy!
@Ad00m3d3 жыл бұрын
BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
@fairytalejediftj70413 жыл бұрын
Warhol actually said someone gets famous every fifteen minutes. He's probably become the most misquoted person of all time. ☺
@SerpenThrope3 жыл бұрын
You know, the lore is that Tiefling blood overrides everything else. I think there's a lot of drama to milk from the idea that their population is increasing with every generation for that reason. One tiefling parent and you're a tiefling...
@Mr_Welch3 жыл бұрын
It's also a setting where the Immortals aren't having any of the archfiend's crap either.
@SerpenThrope3 жыл бұрын
@@Mr_Welch I didn't say Mystara. I meant as a possible source of drama for a Setting.
@lawfulstupid6433 жыл бұрын
@@Mr_Welch That sounds like an awesome Immortal adventure though. The Devils are trying to creep into The Known World through the introduction of Tieflings, time to rally a warband of Immortals to kick in the gates of Avernus.
@Reverberon3 жыл бұрын
@@lawfulstupid643 Tiefling extermination crew.
@fleetcenturion3 жыл бұрын
Except most still don't get to reproduce, because nobody trusts tieflings, least of all, other tieflings. This is what happens when you start to play every edgelord race as nothing more than funny looking humans.
@burningbronze75553 жыл бұрын
I would suggest the eternal know you audience do include things that make them want to fight you on them either do not include it or play with different people, also all pieces can be put it different place nothing is stopping you from making nothing but good guy orcs and evil dwarves dedicated to grinding up the world.
@GreyTide3 жыл бұрын
Might Wana check your title. I think one of the "Is"s should be "In".
@Mr_Welch3 жыл бұрын
Typo fixed
@Hilti-rb6dp3 жыл бұрын
This is an open letter to woc
@kennieminski70803 жыл бұрын
Was this in response to something (for I am not even aware of the loop then), or just an itch you needed to scratch?
@Mr_Welch3 жыл бұрын
Itch. Get a lot of questions from people. When I get enough to make a coherent video I try and answer them all at once.
@kennieminski70803 жыл бұрын
@@Mr_Welch Cool.
@philips.55633 жыл бұрын
Modern remake movies must make your brain itch.
@Mr_Welch3 жыл бұрын
Depends on the quality. Not all remakes suck; on rare occasions they are better than the original like Frasier's Mummy or Scarface. Even the Wizard of Oz was a remake. Surgeon's law applies, 90% of everything is crap. With all the remakes getting made we are getting a lot of crap at once.
@gorillaguerillaDK2 жыл бұрын
I agree completely that as long as you’re respectful towards the cultures you’re "stealing" from, then steal all you can!
@youknowpomm3 жыл бұрын
8:00 nah. That's a myth.
@fleetcenturion3 жыл бұрын
Good Photoshop though. =P
@gorillaguerillaDK2 жыл бұрын
I have to disagree on the James Bond part! Simply because James Bond isn’t a single person, but the "identity" of a range of agents! This is why it makes no difference who play him, or if he prefer a Vodka Martini over a Martini, (as was suddenly the case when Skyy Vodka did a bit of Product Placement). Heck, it’s also why the insane "bitching" about how it can’t be a black guy or a woman, is rather ridiculous! Or do the Lore-obsessed really think that James Bond is supposed to be the same person today, who was a older guy saving the world back in the 60's and 70's? That’s just crazy! No, James Bond is an identity given to the 007 agent - if it’s a woman, call her Jane or Jamie, (Jane is probably better as Jamie sounds to American)…
@richardstephens33273 жыл бұрын
Thank you! now I can send all the baby DM's I know who want to make everything legal and everyone a special snowflake to this video and tell them I have a flamer.
@patrickbuckley72593 жыл бұрын
I Generally avoid the "all members of a race are evil from birth" angle. I prefer the idea that "Evil Races" are that way because their culture is evil. A matter of pure preference on my part. Still the argument that unless you are playing them in a region far from their own, or they are doing the work necessary to disguise their true nature, people are going to attack them on sight. The issue with running a setting like this (and why I would not suggest it to new GM's) is that this can invite issues where players want to play these races, but don't want to deal with the inherent bigotry & danger of doing so. Not a lot of people are going to want to have to wear chains and pretend to be another PC's slave, just to enter a city. I have had players call entire civilizations evil because they have a KoS policy for a neighboring race. Despite the fact that they knew the one was one of the few Nations that did not participate in Slavery, and the other (The KoS one) constantly attacked them to kidnap people to press gang into slavery, and sacrifice to their Baby Eating Vampire Deity. WTF? However a race with a naturally more feral psyche could still have dangerous children. It might be possible to take a Gnoll cub and "Raise them Right" but what do you do when you have a whole pack of Gnoll Cubs baying for your blood, and they are ARMED... Typically avoid having my players find humanoid children though. I'd rather avoid the ensuing argument.
@Usernamesdontmatter13 жыл бұрын
I mean "All members of a species being evil" kinda makes sense since in dnd they are created by Gods and other interdimensional beings who created them to serve some sort of purpose. If an evil god created a race why wouldn't the race be evil by default? Sure there are always exceptions to rule there could be some good apples in the rotten tree. Dragons work exactly the same way. Tiamat and Bahamut have a stranglehold on their not so free will. Chromatic dragons are by default evil and metallic dragons are good. In 5e they don't have a choice in this. I don't see anyone really defending chromatic dragons from the horrors of it being nearly impossible to break their stereotypes.
@RoninCatholic3 жыл бұрын
I like the added challenge and drama inherent in being seen as a monster. Having actual might to back me up being what makes this fantasy feel different from reality. It's definitely not for everyone, so as long as I know what I'm signing up for...
@patrickbuckley72593 жыл бұрын
@@Usernamesdontmatter1 Yeah in D&D that makes sense, Evil deities in my setting are rarely so powerful though as true divinity is reserved for "Enlightened beings" "Evil Gods" have to cheat. (I have reasons the True Gods aren't completely dominating the playing field though). It Just doesn't pan out with the Metaphysics, people have to choose Good & Evil, though their is a measure of truth in this with certain Path's of Magic where yeah, using this kind of magic places you in the domain of the entity that birthed it. So say you use Fyrrite Blood Magic, you are under the domain of the Demon God Fyrr, so if you use that kind of magic long enough, your evil. (It doesn't help that that is probably the most blatantly evil example... with the anointment rite being to bath in virgin blood, and I don't even want to get into it's rite of "immortality.") But again, that's how my setting works, & I am not saying all setting's should work that way. I am a busy body. I would not suggest most people run settings the way I run mine, as I create a lot of extra work for myself, and have to delve into some really fucked topics to paint a picture of true cosmic evils. Either have blatant Good & Evil, and/or Order & Chaos, or go full Gray Morality.
@fleetcenturion3 жыл бұрын
Yes, yes. Everyone knows that orcs only rob, r*pe, murder, and eat people (not necessarily in that order) because of millennia of systematic oppression, at the hands of human colonialists, xenophobic elves, and the dwarf bankers! =P
@patrickbuckley72593 жыл бұрын
@@fleetcenturion (I know your joking but I like to ramble...) I should think it has more to do with following a authoritarian madman down the path to hell and allowing him to warp their bodies and minds to his twisted whims. Well that's Tolkien. Every setting is different. Though the best examples generally follow the Tolkien model, a race warped by making dark pacts with evil entities. I hate the D&D Orcs because they lack the pathos and tragedy or the poignant message about the corrupting power of evil. I do however prefer whene writing to say that Orcs don't have to continue to follow this path. My take on Orcs are the followers of the aforementioned Blood God, once men twisted by his evil magics to serve his twisted ambition (an obvious rip of of Tolkien, though their are twists and turns). Yet they are not destined to remain as such, though the only group that has managed to splinter off are based on the Mongols, so while an obvious step up from where they where, still not the nicest folks. Orcs are sympathetic in that sense, but they did make their own bed (in most cases) and I think that's their real tragedy. The Orcs in Elder Scrolls (Who I do Like) do kind of fit this model though (the one you are rightfully joking about) but they still managed to make them pretty cool. My point is I prefer to write with the assumption that all intelligent species all have some level of free will, they may have evil influences nagging at the back of their mind do to some dark heritage, but they can still make their own choices. (Everyone has a choice no matter their origins or their circumstances) However this does not mean I think all fantasy should work like this, hell some of my favorite fantasy has a blatantly and inherently evil and irredeemable "race" of monsters. It is cultures that make a species evil in my works, not their biology. Not that I do not have things like baked in temperamental differences, Orcs should be more warlike and prone to aggression, they where literally twisted into weapons of war. When I mentioned bigotry I didn't mean to imply those monstrous races that face it are not by and large monstrous (Though sometimes it's just that two races hate each other and are constantly at war seeing one another as monsters, but the former is as common as the latter). I for instance would let a player play an Orc, but if they did so they would face the persecutions that such a being world inherently face, especially with the outside world seeing them as a race of Blood Thirsty Slaves who's Priesthood Eats Babies. (Which is an accurate assessment of Orc Culture or at least Fyrrite Orc culture.) They are judging the Orc based on the actions of other Orcs, and a reasonable person would realize that, yeah, there might be a rational reason for them to be suspicious of him when this is all they know of Orcs. So the only way he'd be let into the city is pretending to be the slave/prisoner of other players. Yet some of my players would look me in the eye and say this makes this people evil for mistreating this poor Orc. Which is dumb. Sure this Orc is different, hell he can be a kind hearted gentle giant who hugs puppies and heals the sick, but how the F*$( are a bunch of villagers who live in constant fear of Orc raids going to know or even believe that? This is part of why I suggest most GM's do the more simplistic set up of Orcs=Evil, much less of a head ache.
@erikmartin49963 жыл бұрын
WOTC will be knocking down your door to hire you after this one! 🤣 Way to tell the truth without holding back!
@docnecrotic3 жыл бұрын
Nah, they'll be sending assassins lol
@erikmartin49963 жыл бұрын
@@docnecrotic 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@ForestFWhite2 ай бұрын
Hell yes to the hell no!
@GrimGoblinLives3 жыл бұрын
Dude, I counted, it’s like 1 Tiefling per campaign, you’re blowing them out of proportion.
@GrimGoblinLives3 жыл бұрын
Okay so there is no mention of Tieflings in Curse of Strahd, Lost Mines of phandelver, Rime of the Frostmaiden, Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Out of the Abyss. No Tieflings in Tomb of Annihilation, merely mention of them being immune to one specific cursed item. A single Tiefling in Princes of the Apocalypse. Two in Rise of Tiamat. 3 in Descent Into Avernus, which is one Adventure I was expecting more. 3 In Storm King's Thunder, which has you dick around entire Sword Coast Area. The only adventures with many Tieflings are Dragon Heist (6, one of which is in random loyalty quest for Jarlaxe and you are unlikely to meet her and 3 seem to have been hired by a guy who wanted his servants to be Tieflings) and Dungeon of the Mad Mage (5, two of which are sisters, two are hanging out in Skullport and 1 is a prisoner). It feels there's more because former has a doppleganger pretending to be a Tiefling and the latter mentions a lot of dead bodies were of Tieflings. You're getting worked over an average of 1.6 a Tiefling per campaign.
@RoninCatholic3 жыл бұрын
@@GrimGoblinLives That's still two adventures with very high tiefling concentrations.
@GrimGoblinLives3 жыл бұрын
@@RoninCatholic And majority of adventures with no Tieflings at all. It's more Waterdeep books are an outlier and shouldn't be counted. And seeing they're set in Realm's New York and a megadungeon to end all megadungeons, it does make a degree of sense.