I had a blast with this…

Dungeons & Dragons Tech Support from yours truly & @WIRED

*PS – I don’t allow my characters bonus or off hand attacks in 5e without some sort of proficiency, feat, or fighting style. – It was impossible.

It was like he was going to

have to roll a one in 100.

At disadvantage,

he rolls two 20s, both nat 20s.

He rolled double nat 20s at

disadvantage, throwing a rock

into a hole with magical darkness

against this fleeing black dragon.

I had to give him the hit.

The whole table was screaming.

The place, oh! Oh!

You know, there’s no way he could hit it.

He hit it, and he killed that dragon.

Hi, I’m Joe Manganiello,

and this is “Dungeons and Dragon Support”.

[upbeat music]

Okay, this is from Silk the Crocker,

AKA CrocsFansOnly.

Hey, people who play Dungeons

and Dragons out there,

what’s the best way to

start/learn/get into it?

Well, I think there’s two ways you can go.

One, you can get three books.

You need three books to play DnD.

You need the “Player’s Handbook”,

you need the “Dungeon Masters Guide”,

and you need a “Monster Manual”.

From there, it’s pretty, self-explanatory.

Make a character.

You’re going to get

between 50 and 70% of how

to play DnD,

or at least all the necessary

questions you’re going

to want to ask, from creating a character.

So, crack a “Player’s

Handbook”, pick a race,

pick a class, pick your

background, get your equipment,

set your character up.

Then from there, somebody is

going to need to run the game.

So if you’re ambitious,

you loves storytelling

the way that I do, you’re

going to lean into becoming

the Dungeon Master rather than a player.

Now, Dungeon Masters, you’re going to want

to read the “Dungeon Masters Guide”.

Get acquainted with the “Monster Manual”.

See what monsters in

there you like, you don’t,

you want to throw at your

characters, blah, blah, blah.

Then, you’re going to want it

either homebrew an adventure,

which means you write your

own, or the other option,

I would say, that just

simplifies things is

to get the starter kit,

which is a boxed set.

And everything, once

again is self-explanatory,

but it’s on a smaller scale.

That’s how you get into it, brother.

Oh, the next question is

from my buddy, Sam Witwer.

Dungeons and Dragons question.

What’s a more dangerous

character to have in your party,

Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil?

It’s a great question, Sam,

and one that I feel like I am

uniquely qualified to answer.

I would say the better thing

for the party would be

a Lawful Evil character

because at least there are rules,

there are collective goals

that can be adhered to.

You might have a, you know,

Dragonborn worshiper of Tiamat

in your group who plays

really well with the group.

And there’s a collective

goal, but there’s also,

because of the Lawful Evil, there’s a,

kind of a long-play goal.

There’s a goal outside of the group

that this Dragonborn

Paladin of Tiamat would

be also attempting to achieve.

But, they can play nice within a group.

It’s kind of like when Magneto

came to take over the X-Men

after Charles Xavier died.

And they can see eye to

eye on a common goal,

but you got to watch out once

you start achieving that goal,

because that Awful Evil

character might flip.

Chaotic Evil, on the other hand,

Chaotic just doesn’t play nice.

I’ve been in groups with Chaotic players.

I’ve Dungeon Mastered for

groups with Chaotic players.

It’s like a, having a

gremlin in your group

that’s just going to throw a monkey wrench

everywhere you go.

So, I think that that would

be a lot more frustrating.

You’d want to kill him or throw him out.

Next one is from Star Shinobi.

Good morning, or afternoon, evening,

depending on where you live.

Question for today, what

was your favorite way

a GM has, a Game Master, has

opened a campaign or one shot?

We’ve all woken up in a cell,

or we’re sitting in a tavern,

but have you had anything unique?

I’m interested.

Yes, my friend John Castle

ran us through this adventure

where we were unconscious

and we all woke up,

didn’t know where we were,

had no armor, no weapons.

And we were all realized we were chained

to each other on a slave barge.

So, we all had to kind of wake up

and then decide what to do.

And I was playing a minotaur,

so I started like headbutting

our captors off the barge

into the water,

and now we’re fighting

and kind of chained up.

And he created these cool mechanics

for us being chained

up, and how that worked,

and how we could try to break

the chains or, you know,

work together, or how much

we can move, or not move.

And I just thought it was really ingenious

in a very, very smart

way of, of starting out.

And then we had a, like the

guys we killed or, you know,

subdued we had to, then, then

those became our weapons.

So, we were just trying to piece together

anything we could get to keep fighting,

and get off of this barge,

and fight for freedom.

So that, that was a cool one,

just, you know, off the cuff.

Okay, Mariah Sanchez, AKA MariahInReality.

Tips for a first time Dungeon Master?

Well, a Dungeon Master is a storyteller.

You’re a show-runner of

a long-form narrative

that’s going to take place

over months and maybe years.

So, you always want to be,

you know, all the, you know,

few steps down the road,

understanding how to set

up these character arcs,

these story arcs that have

payoffs down the line.

So with that said, you

know, what are your arcs?

What’s going to be

satisfying to your players?

And that’s going to

differ for every group.

So, a Dungeon Master also has

to have the type of chess-like

approach to storytelling

where you’re building

these tracks out ahead.

You know, you’re three, ten

moves, chess moves ahead

on the board from your players.

But, you’re also going

to have to be empathetic

to the point where you can understand,

you can look into the

heart of your players

and understand what each one

of them wants from the game.

Some want to hunt for treasure.

Some want to cause chaos, mythology,

and deities, and, and kind of religion,

and magic, and deep-dive storytelling.

So, you kind of want to

gauge how your players are

or what they like.

Then, you’re going to mold that story

and be able to use those

archetypical qualities

in order to build, you know, stories

and to throw things at them.

You know, as a Dungeon Master, have fun,

understand your players and prep.

Because inevitably, your

players are never going

to go where you think they’re going to go.

They’re going to choose

their own, crazy narrative.

They’re going to kill the shopkeeper

that you wanted to have

become part of their group

in this great storyline.

They’re just going to murder

him and steal all of his stuff.

So, you need to be ready for

all of that in the moment.

And along with prep, I would

say keep lists, post-it notes,

on the inside of your

Dungeon Master shield

with names on them.

Just tons of names, male

names, female names,

human names, dwarven

names, elvin names, just,

because you’re going to

have to be pulling those

out of your ass way more

than you could ever possibly imagine.

So that’s another,

probably the fourth big key

to being a Dungeon Master is just be,

be ready to pull it out of your ass.

That gets into like listening

to your own inspiration.

Wherever you want the story to go

or you get an inspiration to take it,

just take it there, just go there.

All right, this is from Turq Owl.

Dungeons and Dragons question,

do Rogues get to attack twice per action

if they have daggers in both hands?

Kind of lost on this logistic.

All right, that’s an interesting question.

Yeah, I can see how

that would be confusing.

There’s a fighting style where you can,

you can have a second attack.

And there is a feat in which you get

to add your damage bonus

to attacks or offhand attacks.

So, you know, you either

need the fighting ability

or you need a feat that allows

you to strike with two hands.

You were talking daggers here,

so we’re talking about a small weapon

rather than a large weapon,

which gets into a whole other thing

because there are feats for fighters

in which they can carry, you know,

heavy weapons in both hands.

This is from @OptionalRule.

“I break his knees”.

Many a DnD or tabletop role-playing game

Game Master looks on in horror

as the players torture someone

who doesn’t do what they want.

How do you handle this in your games?

Do you overlook it, penalize

them, encourage them?

Hey, I’m just the referee.

I just set up the world.

I’m just the, the voyeur.

I mean, don’t get me wrong,

I’m also the architect

of the long-form story.

So, I’m the one who’s

setting the, the tracks down.

You can gently nudge people

in the storylines that you think are going

to be really interesting,

but inevitably it’s up to

them because they may decide

to go the other way.

So, you need to be ready for that.

And with that said, the

beauty of role-playing is that

you can do whatever you want.

If they want to kill and

torture the shopkeeper,

they can do that.

They can do whatever they want.

So they’re going to start

with the shopkeeper,

but then they’re going

to take out the sheriff

and his deputy when they get there,

and then they’re going

to take over this town

and hold them hostage.

I always get excited,

whatever the players do,

because I’m just going to go with it.

You know, my players sometimes

come across Hill Giants

in the wild, and a fight breaks out,

and they kill all the Hill Giants.

And then when they go and

they search the bodies

of the Hill Giants, I’ll

say, yes, it’s interesting,

you hear something making a noise

in the pocket of the Hill Giant’s vest.

You look inside of the, you

know, the, the vest pouch,

and it’s like a little, bone rattle

that looks like it would

fit into the hand of a,

of a baby Hill Giant.

Oh, and what’s this, it’s

a, it’s a taxidermied fox

that’s been stuffed like

a, like a child’s toy

Somewhere off in the distance,

you swear, you hear the

faint sound of a baby crying,

you know?

So it’s like, you just

wiped out a whole village

of Hill Giants, and you

think, yeah, we did it.

And now I’m going to make you feel bad

because you left all

these, like, orphaned,

Hill Giant babies out there,

screaming in the night.

So it’s like, I always try

to make my players feel bad

about wiping things out

because there’s so much

just head-chopping-off

and lighting people on fire in DnD

that a lot of times,

the humanitarian angle never gets covered.

You know, but that’s kind of

this sense of humor that I have

with my players.

You know, like I said, man,

it’s just have fun with it.

Let it go.

It’s, it’s not up to you, it’s up to them.

And then you just start guiding

it where you want it to go,

because yeah, ultimately, as the referee,

you can be as hard on them as you want

or not depending on how you

feel or, you know, whatever.

Parabasis, next Dungeons

and Dragons question.

What was your favorite

character, class, and race?

Growing up, I was big into elves

because elves had a little bit of magic

and a little bit of fighting,

and I really liked that.

2E Dragonlance, I was a minotaur the,

the second you could be a minotaur,

I was a minotaur, of course.

And now when I say elf,

I’m not trying to get out of answering

what’s my favorite class.

Back in the day, elf was race and class.

And you were an elf, which

means you had, you had both,

which was kind of interesting.

I love playing a warlock.

I’m playing a warlock

right now in a Mad Mage,

Dungeon in the Mad Mage campaign.

And man, there’s just so

many tricks up their sleeve.

So for me,

I love playing characters

that have tons of options.

Like, I have a high-level

sorcerer that I love playing

because along with the metamagic,

and then you really have

tons of options, you know,

and ways to get out of situations,

or ways to be creative,

or ways to participate

in the storytelling.

You know, if you twin polymorph

T-Rexes inside of a tavern,

doesn’t matter what the

Dungeon Master had planned,

you’re in charge now

of the story, you know.

You just caused this to happen.

So, I really like being able

to really affect the story.

And I find that those spell casters,

there’s a lot of wow factor.

Okay, this is from

J.L.J-F.Leger, AKA geekbot.

Question is is it weird that

I practice character voices

in front of the bathroom mirror?

No, I don’t think that’s weird.

I don’t do a character voice

too much when I’m a player,

unless I’m like delivering some

opus or some charisma check.

But when I Dungeon Master, I, I,

it’s just voices all over the place.

All my NPCs have voices,

whether they’re, you know,

the lady, sweet, little,

lady works down at the,

at the apothecary.

Her name’s Tony.

You know, what do yins what?

What can I get yins?

That’s basically the Pittsburgh

dialect where I grew up.

So, you know, and then my

brother will start laughing.

People who’ve been to

Pittsburgh will start laughing,

people even who haven’t been

to Pittsburgh start laughing

cause it’s such a rich character.

And it’s based on somebody who works

at a sandwich shop back

home, you know, that I know.

And then they become

a character, and then,

yins should go over

and see my nephew Donny

and that he’s a blacksmith, you know?

And then they go and visit

Donny and he talks the same way.

You know, or like, you know

all of the animal familiars or, you know,

the druids speaking to

animals, then there’s,

there’s all of those voices,

you know, of all of the,

like the Christmas, the Christmas

animals in “South Park”.

You know, if they talk to a squirrel,

the squirrel talks like that, of course.

And then they want to talk to the horse,

the horse says oh, they went that way.

Or they talk to a seagull,

but seagull wasn’t impressed at all

with what they were doing.

He was, in fact, he was,

he was amazed any of them wound up alive,

how sloppy they were.

And they asked the seagull,

you know, what’s your name?

You can call me Christopher Squalken.

I think you should take it a step further

and film yourself doing

the character voices,

that way you could

critique your performance.

I don’t know,

maybe there’s some sort

of career for you here.

You’re going to become

an actor or something.

But no, man, I totally do all of that.

I always develop voices or,

or to figure a voice out

and then make a note to myself,

somewhere down the line,

I need a character that’s going

to talk like Ted Knight in

“Caddy Shack”, you know?

And then when they get

to the council’s it,

oh, ho, hello, yes.

That’s usually how my

DMing goes, as well, so.

I identify.

I just pivot from voice to voice,

like, you can see that

it’s just, it’s endless,

and I’m always making notes

of this voice or that voice.

And you know, I’m popping those

characters up along the way.

Saeragushi_arts, what would be a fearsome

and evil name for a black dragon?

And what kind of a gem would you give him?

Oh, good question.

So, I actually just

answered this question.

So, I designed a quest book

for the relaunch of hero quest.

I named the black dragon Venim, V-E-N-I-M.

Which I like, so you should take that.

And I would think, I don’t know for a gem,

I would give the black

dragon a giant amethyst,

some gigantic, huge, massive amethyst

that had some sort of

like, even in darkness,

had some sort of like

magical ability to, to,

to create light from the

inside, almost like a pulsing,

but it’s just the way that

the light shifts and hits it.

But even in the dark,

you can see the light,

sparkling inside,

somehow it’s got its own

kind of thing going on.

Anyway, there you go.

This is from OneCritWonder.

What is your favorite DnD

campaign setting and why?

I love Dragon Lands. I just do.

I like Krynn.

I liked that there are

books that are companions,

that give you a fully-fleshed-out

view of the world.

Because I find that with

some of the other worlds,

it’s very hard to get the canon straight.

And it’s very hard to

understand, you know,

pantheons and gods, and I mean,

it just seems like there’s

so much catch-up work,

and there are all answers

to these questions,

but it’s like so hard to find them.

And there’s different answers

to different questions.

Anyway, with Krynn,

if you don’t include the

fifth age stuff that was done

without Margaret and Tracy,

if you only look at the

Margaret and Tracy canon

or at least, you know,

the books that they,

you know, okayed, you get

this like really beautiful,

amazing, deep world that

involves all the things

about fantasy that I like.

Which is, you know, fighting,

and friendship, and family,

and romance, and love.

My gosh, it just seems like they’re trying

to eradicate romance from,

from DnD and tabletop.

And so I really love Dragon

Lands for that reason.

It’s, it’s very human and

you understand the gods,

you understand what’s at stake.

And there are great NPCs,

and villains, and things.

And you know, my favorite,

you know, characters

in all of DnD canon.

So, I like Dragons Lands. I like Krynn.

Recently, I’ve gotten into collecting

all the old Dark Sun

modules and, and box sets.

So, those are starting to pile up,

so maybe around the holidays I’ll be able

to dive into those.

Okay, this is from Matt

Holmes, AKA tabletoppaintin.

If your PC’s philosophy differs

from the rest of the group,

do you roll up a new one,

conform to the group,

or see how much you can get

away with behind their backs?

You’re trying to make me an accomplice

or somehow justify you

destroying your party.

Play nice, young man.

Don’t be a menace to

your own group, you know,

or something where like

somebody is going to want

to punch you on the way up the stairs.

Cause I’ve had players

that try to split the party

and that becomes their thing,

I’m going to go explore,

and some character dies.

And people get pissed, and they have words

with each other about it.

So, you know, it’s a team game.

Play nice with other kids in the sandbox.

But with that said, like,

don’t let it that get in the

way of, of a great character.

All right, this is from Edward R. Curtis

AKA Dimly_Lit.

That’s very gothic.

Odd Dungeons and Dragons question.

Typically when making

your player character,

do you come up with the character first,

then the race, class stuff,

or the other way around,

choosing the race, class stuff,

then making a character around that?

Interesting question.

I think it differs.

I think it just differs

from character to character.

When I was a kid, we

didn’t have Dragonborns.

Those came around in Fourth Edition.

And I wasn’t playing,

I was on a DnD hiatus during

like Third and Fourth Edition.

So, when I met back up with Fifth Edition

and I saw that you could

play as the Dragonborn,

and then I saw that they were chromatic.

I thought, oh man, that’s

like playing a low level,

you know, or aspiring dragon high Lord,

or someone in the dragon

army in Dragon Lands.

It’s in the Dragon Lands books.

And I just thought, man,

that is like super cool.

We didn’t have, like I said,

we didn’t have that when I was a kid.

So, I naturally gravitated

towards picking a red Dragonborn first.

I liked Paladins.

I thought Paladin was a, you know,

really cool class growing up

and a little bit of

magic, lots of fighting.

Then, I saw that there was

a possibility of playing

an Oathbreaker if your

Dungeon Master allowed it,

so that’s how I built

back character Arkhan.

Yeah, and then other times it’s like,

I already know what the character is.

You know, he’s going

to be a little Halfling

who has all black leather and a gimp mask.

And he walks around and

talks like, and he, you know.

And he’s a wild sourcerer because

every time he shoots magic

he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

And you know, and he, you know

so all of a sudden now I have this little,

like German S&M, Halfling, wild sourcerer

that I just cooked up in my brain,

and all right, I’ll make

that character and play him.

Okay, the next one is

from the danward_spiral.

I, if that’s a Nine Inch Nails reference,

then that’s awesome.

Currently making some homebrew races

from my own DnD setting.

Any abstract ideas? Weird is good.

I don’t know, man.

I always thought about like, you know,

a civilization of dark gnomes.

I have all kinds of other

ideas that I use, you know,

in my game and float around.

I mean, I’ll, I’ll give you one.

I wanted something between

dragon and draconian

because I, you know,

I have the Fifth Edition draconian stats.

Don’t tell anyone.

So I wanted something in the middle there,

kind of like a tank that could move in.

And so I created these abominations

and created a storyline of

how they’re being created.

And then I just stated

them up and, you know,

throw them at my players.

Okay, the next question is from YUM DM.

When a character dies

and the player makes up a new character,

what level do you start them at?

In old, older versions of DnD,

First Edition, Second Edition, Basic,

you had characters in a party

that were all different levels

because the game was really centered upon

getting your character

to the highest level

that they could possibly go,

getting your character

the best magical items,

the most gold, etc.

You had players in the party,

you could have a ninth-level player,

with a first-level player,

with a second-level player.

Whereas, in Fifth Edition,

it is more centered around

the collective story that you’re telling.

All the characters in

the group go up at once.

You don’t have characters going up

on different levels, generally.

So, you know, when a character dies,

jumps back in, and you

might play it differently,

but all my characters are

all at the same level.

They all move from fourth

to fifth level together,

from fifth level of six level together.

So, it’s easy to just jump

them back in at that level.

But it’s DM’s choice.

The Dungeon Master can do anything.

If you think it’s better storytelling-wise

to start somebody off at level one

while the rest of the group

is advanced, like, go for it.

Like, that’s, that’s totally fine.

Okay, this is from @TrashMobMinis.

Maybe a dumb question,

there’s no dumb questions.

But I’m a dumb DM.

Okay.

How do I get the players to form bonds

between their characters?

Is this a chemistry that

happens at its own pace

or is there something I can

do to catalyze connections?

Good question.

There’s always a narrative story element

that can tie characters together,

whether they came from the same place

or they start having the same dreams

and start relating that to each other,

that somehow are tied.

They might’ve been

somewhere at the same time,

but you can text them both separately

in between sessions

and let them know that there’s

this part of their backstory,

there’s this part of their backstory.

But the other thing is,

is like, yeah, I mean,

I think it’s just going to happen.

You know, I had a character

who was a Bear Barbarian

and it was just used to taking

all the punishing damage

and soaking that up.

But there was a cleric in the group.

And the cleric, this guy was amazing.

He would keep, it’s my friend Jason Liles,

he would keep track of what

everyone’s hit points were,

everyone in the group.

And he was like the greatest

cleric I’ve ever played with.

And he knew how many hit

points I had as the Barbarian.

And his job, he would

keep feeding me healing.

So my character’s job was

to soak up all the damage

and make sure everybody attacked him.

And it was this really

great, symbiotic relationship

that we formed that then

became like the storyline

where, on a role-playing sense,

my Barbarian character

had done a lot of things

that he regretted.

And there, here was this,

like, Holy, pious character

who believed in this god

and believed that the god could save my,

my character’s soul.

There became this storyline

between the, born out of the characters,

out of the both of them,

where they kind of needed each other

and fed off of each other.

You know, it’s really cool

when that stuff happens.

So, you know, but there’s only so much

of it that you can

force upon your players.

@OregonRolledA20, what

is your best DnD memory?

Probably comes from a couple of years ago,

right around the holidays,

close to my birthday.

My wife, there was this big

box next to the front door,

and she told me to go bring

the box into the kitchen.

And I did, and I opened it.

And unbeknownst to me,

Sophia had had someone at,

within DnD connect her to Jeff Easley

who painted all the cover paintings

for the old “Players Handbooks”,

and “Dungeon Masters Guides”

and Adventure Modules.

He’s one of the four

horsemen, just, you know

one of the great, great, great

fantasy painters of all time.

And she got in contact with him

and had him paint my

Arkhan the Cruel, my, my,

my Dragonborn Oathbreaker

Paladin of Tiamat.

She surprised me with this

original Jeff Easley painting

of Arkhan in front of Tiamat

like it was the cover of

one of those old books.

But, you know, to be honest, like there’s,

there’s a great DnD memory

every week in our games.

That’s kind of the beauty of it,

something unexpected happens every week.

All right, so that’s it

for me, Joe Manganiello.

I want to thank the amazing artists,

and storytellers, and writers.

Dungeons and Dragons was really

a fountainhead of creativity

for me as a kid.

It is where I learned

how to build a character,

build a backstory, where I

learned long-form storytelling

as it pertains to writing,

and producing, and directing.

and really just sparked my

lifelong love of telling stories.

So, thank you so much for your questions.

I had a blast answering them

and I hope we get to do it again someday.

Thanks a lot.

[upbeat music]

⚔️💀🩸@Wizards_DnD https://t.co/wVzYPJAwyi

— JOE MANGANIELLO (@JoeManganiello) December 12, 2020