How Chris Perkins works through anxiety when he runs games

May 27, 2022Zoltar Leave a comment

I had the pleasure of getting to talk with @ChrisPerkinsDnD about social anxiety while at Gamehole con. Check our talk over at https://t.co/jdqCzru4Us #DnD #Anxiety

— Dr. Megan Connell (@MeganPsyD) November 15, 2018

Your First Dungeons & Dragons Session | Matt Colville

February 14, 2022Zoltar Leave a comment

So you've got an adventure and you're ready to play. Let's get the team together! You’ve tracked the Goblin raiders to their hideout, a tomb that sits atop a hill. Within lies a host of monsters and the girl they kidnapped to use in their fell ritual. If you hurry, she may still be alive. That is a great way to start your first adventure just pow! Drop the players off in front of the dungeon describe the entrance and tell them the stakes goblins and treasure inside just find the girl. Just find the girl. Clear motivation, maybe the simplest most straightforward way to get started certainly the most old-school way to get started But is it the best way to get started well? That’s up to you, but it’s certainly not the only way to get started this episode We’re going to talk about maybe the hardest thing to do in dungeons & Dragons and that is Getting started going from having everybody sitting at the table And you have an adventure ready to actually playing. That transition is always a huge pain in the butt for me I get nervous I get anxiety Once we’re playing no problem I can run for hours But getting over that first hump going from just a bunch of people sitting around a table to playing D&D is for me the hardest thing to do. Back in the day the DM often began an adventure by dropping the players in front of the dungeon and describing the Entrance that’s because a lot of adventures began as modules used at conventions in tournament play That’s right competitive D&D which I have done and which is a lot of fun. Also in the 1970s people wanted to play D&D Specifically they want to explore the dungeon. They want to kill monsters and get loot and level up They weren’t really worried about narrative a question like what’s my motivation would have seemed strange to Gary Gygax in 1974. He would have said “To get treasure!” That’s also a result of the fantasy literature that influenced dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax wasn’t a huge fan of Lord of the rings He didn’t assume that you began the adventure with the talisman that you needed to destroy To save the world because it was the right thing to do He assumed you were more like Conan and would happily scale the tower of the elephant because there was treasure inside also because no one Had ever done it before. Nowadays We sort of assume that the players have a clearer motivation for why they’re going on an adventure Sometimes even a personal stake in what’s happening. I say all this to you to give you a historical context a lot of D&D is Tradition passed on from one group of players to the next also Because there isn’t one right way to do it the way They did it back in 1974 still works And is still a lot of fun is arguably the simplest most straightforward way to start But there are other ways to do it. Dusk falls and five travelers come to the Green Dragon Inn for food Warmth and a place to rest Several Villagers are here eating drinking talking about their day. One day is much the same as another in the hamlet of Villane But looking at you something tells these villagers today will be different. Start in a tavern, great beginning I often see players online disparaging well every cliche, including that one, but if you’re new to this game There are no cliches. Plus maybe your players saw the Fellowship of the Ring and remember Aragorn meeting the hobbits at the Inn of the Prancing Pony. That fellow has done nothing but stare at us since we arrived. Excuse me. That man in the corner, who is he? His one of them rangers. Dangerous folk they are, wandering the wilds. What his right name is I’ve never heard but round hear he’s known as Strider. Strider. Great scene. Players, especially new players, enjoy recognizing scenarios from books or comics or movies that they’ve seen they’ve seen the movie, but they haven’t played it This is their opportunity to do the kinds of things they saw in the movies meet the mysterious stranger in the inn Be the mysterious stranger in the inn. Always feel free to rip stuff off This is your campaign put the stuff you like in it Starting in a tavern does two useful things one it gives the players the opportunity to roleplay Their characters meeting each other for the first time players like establishing the relationships in the group I’m not gonna lie to you though this can also be awkward uh Hello. I mean, my I say, my character sa- Gork, Gork says Hello That’s gonna happen. New playersa aren’t used to role-playing and haven’t used those muscles yet So it can be goofy, it can also be frustrating. The mysterious stranger in the corner ignores you Okay, well fine one of the reasons. We do this is because it’s fun to do dramatic stuff like that But if Gork’s player sticks to his guns then he’s not going to go on the adventure One of the things I like to do is go around the table and ask each player to describe their character I mean, we maybe already know that you’re playing Gork the barbarian But what does gork look like? How does he act? How does he seem? If you ask your players, “Okay everybody we’re gonna go around the table and everybody introduce your character tell us what you’re playing and what your character looks like and how he Behaves.” That might be the first time the player has ever really thought about that. Plus we always form impressions about people before they even open their mouths just by looking at them. It also acts as a safe halfway point between their character being a bunch of stats on a page and actually role-playing them. So while it can be goofy and awkward starting in a tavern is also fun plus It gives the players the opportunity to roleplay their characters and answer the question, “Wait, how do we know each other?” Also number two, they want to know why are we on this adventure? You can just tell them goblins kidnapped a girl and you’ve tracked them to their hideout. That’s fine but some players want to experience that they don’t just want to be told it, Which do you think would be more fun? In the tavern we have some NPCs to talk to, the innkeep and her husband, their daughter the serving girl, a merchant carter from another town. Some may be friendly some may challenge the players but the goal here is to break the ice. Get your players into character by giving them NPCs to talk to and interact with since they may feel awkward talking to each other. Classically the easy way to start is to have the serving girl, and it could be a serving boy, we’ll talk about stereotypes in another episode yes we will, come up and just ask the character what they want to drink, if they’re hungry. Depending on what’s happened before this may be the first time the player has ever been asked a direct question by another character and they’re going to have to come up with an answer. Maybe a stupid answer it may be silly it may be dramatic, but in that moment they are role-playing and now you’re all playing D&D. But what is there to order? we’re in a tavern so we need a menu. Wow! we need people to talk to, and a menu to order from, and all of a sudden you’re starting to understand why back in the day people said “Screw it, let’s just start in front of the tomb.” You can make all that stuff up or I can do it for you Which I just did. There are tools online for all this stuff including random NPCs, random Taverns, random menus, you are not the first person to need solutions to these problems. People have been doing this for 40 years and they put all their answers up online to save you a lot of work. At some point, after the innkeep has served food and drinks and the players have gotten to know each other and the NPCs, something has to happen. A large man wearing a black leather apron over linen shirt and woolen pants bursts in the door He smells of sulfur and carries a heavy hammer “The got Bes,” He says, “they got my girl.” Goblins have kidnapped the blacksmith’s daughter Well now we’ve got an adventure your players aren’t dumb they sat down at the table wanting an adventure And you just put one in front of them if it occurs to them the players may just ask the blacksmith What happened give them the opportunity to do that literally ask them okay? What do you do? I think about 50% of the DM’s job is just describing what happens and then asking the players of what they do the other 50% is, it’s complex but there’s pizza in there somewhere. Now not all players are motivated by a sense of justice and duty in fact I think you’re just starting out most players are motivated by Let’s call it a enlightened self-interest which is to say greed. In our lives we’re expected to do the right thing there are tons of social pressures on us every day. We have show up on time We have to be polite We have to be respectful One of the reasons people enjoy playing D&D is it gives them an opportunity to throw all that out and say “Hey? Why should I help that guy? What’s in it for me?” And there are lots of examples of classic cool characters saying exactly that. “When they come to get me Rick, I hope you’ll be more of a help.” “I stick my neck out for nobody” “I’m not going anywhere.” “They’re gonna execute her. Look a few minutes ago you said you didn’t want to just wait here to be captured now All you want to do is stay?” “Marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.” “But they’re gonna kill her!” “Better her than me.” Look your players aren’t dumb They know when the blacksmith walked in the door and saying Goblins kidnapped my daughter that that was the adventure showing up, and they might go whoohoo Let’s go or they might want a little more motivation, a little bit more convincing. Okay so here you go. Yeah! A wanted poster. The Invincible Overlord, really it’s the local Baron the Invincible Overlord doesn’t care about a bunch of goblins, is trying to clean up the area you can literally print this out and put it in front of your players to read. A prop like this does a great job of motivating the players one silver piece per Goblin and giving them some sense of the politics of the wider world who is the Baron who is the Invincible Overlord and making the world Beyond the tavern seem exotic and dangerous Ogres, Giants, snake men! If all else fails you can always just have the blacksmith ask the players directly Will you help find my daughter or another trick I’ve used is to have somebody who is obviously Unqualified like an old man or a young girl volunteer this often helps motivate the players. So we met in a tavern, we talked to each other, we talked to the locals, we looked at the wanted poster, and then a Blacksmith’s showed up and gave us our motivation. Time to head to the tomb. So where is this place and how do you get there? players like maps. Fact of life, and a lot of DMs like making maps it’s part of the fun of the game and There are lots of tools for making all sorts of different maps, and we’re going to talk about all of them in upcoming episodes but for now I’m gonna quote Alfred Korzybski the guy who invented Semantics and say “The map is not the territory.” I use maps all the time, but not only do you not need a map I’m gonna argue that there are good reasons not to use a map We live in a time where it’s trivially easy for people to whip their phone out and get directions from anywhere to anywhere You have a basic understanding of the shape of the earth and the country that you live in and the local area But that was not true for most of human history if you were a medieval peasant it was very easy to live your entire life Without ever going more than a few miles outside of town. Maybe you’d visited one or two towns nearby, maybe you’d seen a map of the world in church, or in one of the few books you had ever seen, but that was unusual. It can therefore be more immersive for you to say 2 miles to the North lies the Boar forest and beyond that the tomb on the hill. That is how people thought in the middle ages and not only does it save you work It makes the world feel more dangerous and more mysterious. Show the players a map and they feel like they understand something. Describe it using language and landmarks, and it feels like the world is a large mysterious place which it should. So without a map showing us how to get there, How do we find the tomb? Easy the goblins left tracks. It may occur to the players to go to the Smith’s house and look for tracks if they do that they get to feel like detectives and that’s part of the fun. If they never think of that have an NPC suggest it. That’s what NPCs are for. The goblins left tracks that are easy to follow they go north to the boar wood. It may occur to the players to ask the locals, “Hey, what’s in the forest?” The locals will say “Nothing, boars. It’s in the name of the forest we hunt there all the time There’s no goblins.” So the goblins must be somewhere beyond the forest however big the forest is it’s not something the players can get through in one day They’re gonna have to spend the night there we put the forest between the tomb and the tavern because we want the players to have To spend the night we want the players to have to take watch in the middle of the forest and be wary Wondering if something’s going to attack them in the middle of the night why because it makes the world feel more mysterious And it makes the players feel like they’re on an adventure like anything might happen any Time the players stop and rest outside of town. I have them roll for a random encounter. We’ll do a whole episode later maybe more than one on random encounters, but the goal here is to make the world feel dangerous. If the players feel like they can stop and rest any time they’re wounded or low on spells then they will do so and that will grind everything to a halt. Players naturally want to avoid risk your job is to make everything outside of town seem Risky the world is a dangerous place But for this episode. I’m gonna roll some dice behind the screen and tell the players the evening passes uneventful. I mean you can do what you want. You can throw an ogre at them or maybe a pack of dire boars It is after all in the name of the forest but our goal here is for the players to finish something tonight. And that means we want to get him to the tomb as quickly as possible. Once outside the forest after an hour two of travel the players will see the tomb on top of a hill I like to use old roman ruins for things like this because it communicates to the players this belongs to an ancient civilization. At this point the players may want to hang back and watch the tomb for a while, See if there’s any Goblin activity, that’s a good idea let them do that. Remember we put a goblin patrol around the tomb on purpose in case they did that so the players started in a tavern, they met each other, they met the local NPCs, they met the Blacksmith, they found out his daughter had been kidnapped by Goblins, they followed the Goblin tracks through the forest, they spent the night and the next morning they showed up at the tomb. Now they’re sitting and watching waiting to see what happens. We’ll talk about running the tomb about how many goblins to use and about what kinds of things are going to happen inside the dungeon Next week. Peace out. https://t.co/YC5lPVRWke

— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) February 22, 2016

Chris Perkins: Live Shows and Challenging Yourself

February 11, 2022Zoltar Leave a comment

Running Your First Dungeon | Matt Colville

January 29, 2022Zoltar Leave a comment

all right so we spent some time getting the players to the tomb either you drop the players off right in front of the tomb or they started in town and they met each other and they saw the blacksmith come in his daughter kidnapped and they track the goblins either way now they’re standing outside the tomb hiding in the trees watching to see what’s going on this episode we’re going to talk about how to actually run the dungeon that is the tomb this is going to include stuff like your first combat it’s going to include stuff like figuring out how does combat start exactly I were to talk about the motivation of the goblins and how they react to various things that might happen the DM has a lot of important jobs but certainly near the top is the creation of verisimilitude that means basically tricking the players into thinking that everything that’s happening the game is real now it’s not really a trick in the sense that they are unwilling because it counts on them having something called willing suspension of disbelief when the players show up at your game they want to believe in the secondary world the trick wouldn’t work if they didn’t but if you present things to the player and describe the world that they see in a straightforward manner and the bad guys and all the NPC’s act plausibly and realistically then your players will feel like this is really happening I’m not just playing a video game where the different bad guys are on different scripts and paths that they’ll follow we’re fighting goblins and the goblins have their own goals so let’s talk for a second about what are these goblins want I think that’s one of the most important tools in your toolbox as far as presenting the world as a plausible place knowing what the bad guys want in this case the goblins want to consecrate this tomb and turn it into a temple to their God and the way they’re going to do that is by sacrificing a human that’s why the kidnap the blacksmith’s daughter it’s worth it to spend some time thinking about what kind of victim will most effectively motivate your players I picked a young girl because that’s the traditional sacrifice to a dragon victim but think about the kind of people in real life that your players care about maybe they care about their parents maybe they care about their grandparents maybe they have a special connection to a brother or sister in that case use a character like that the goblins don’t care they just want blood so the goblins aren’t just going to sit there and let the players steamroll over them in every instance when the players encounter the goblins there’s an opportunity for one or more goblins to retreat and go alert the rest of the tomb and the first time that happens that will freak the players out now it may occur to the players that if they’re not stealthy that if they don’t do a good job sneaking into the final battle that the goblins may just sacrifice their victim preemptively but I wouldn’t do that I wouldn’t punish the players for failing to be stealthy I would just say look the ritual is going to take as long as it takes at the end of that period this victim is going to die and the worst case scenario is just the goblins become aware of the heroes they go get more allies they’re hard to surprise and the players end up fighting more goblins in one battle than they would like so that is our tool to present the tomb as a real living thing every encounter there’s the opportunity for the goblins to retreat and go get more allies reinforcements the first time that happens the players will be surprised so the first potential encounter is the Goblin Patrol we put a goblin patrol around the tomb because we wanted the tomb to seem dynamic everyone inside the tomb is basically sitting around waiting for the ritual to be finished or really waiting for the players to show up although they don’t know it but the Goblin Patrol is the dynamic element either the players notice the Patrol or they don’t and each outcome is interesting so how do we find out if the players notice the Patrol well first of all they have to decide to wait and watch if the players decide we’re going to try and move forward and attack the goblins that are on guard in front of the door then the Goblin Patrol won’t notice them but if the players decide no we want to stay here and watch the tomb for a little while that’s when the Patrol has a chance to come by and see them I think when you’re running a scenario like this one of the most difficult things to do or to learn how to do is to figure out how does combat start how do we go from two different groups of people the goblins and the heroes neither aware of the other two both of them fighting especially when they’re outside out in the open it can be a little confusing like oh the players will ask how far away are the goblins and you might not know immediately there’s actually a really interesting chart on the inside of the DMS screen and if you don’t have the DM screen I recommend you go get one we’ll talk about the uses of the DM screen in another episode I think it’s very interesting those lot of psychology bound up in the DM screen but on that screen on the right panel there’s a little chart for starting encounter distance and it gives you a list of terrain where is the encounter happening and a random number you can generate to say how many feet away from the heroes are the bad guys in a dungeon this isn’t that big a deal because the encounters are a lot more self-contained there are rooms and hallways of corridors out in the open there is no easy answer to this so the first thing we need to know this is one of the most complex parts of D&E combat is who notices who first this is called determining surprise or is either side surprise by the other now if both sides know that there are bad guys around then there’s no opportunity for surprise but in this case the players don’t know there’s a goblin Patrol and the Goblin patrol is not really aware that these heroes are here feel free to ask your players a leading question like are you guys trying to hide or are you trying to avoid being seen that’s a better way of putting they will almost certainly say oh yeah even if they hadn’t thought of that before you asked you could just say well you didn’t tell me you were trying to stay hidden so the Goblin Patrol finds you but remember you’re the DM you have near infinite power on your side of the screen it’s always a good idea to give the players of benefit of the doubt it is I think a poor DM who says well you didn’t say you were hiding so the Goblin Patrol ambushes you you don’t need to do stuff like that to challenge the players and they will resent you for that kind of attitude one thing we didn’t talk about when we were designing this adventure was how many goblins are in each encounter and there really isn’t a wrong answer if you buy an adventure module or you download one from the internet you may see oh it says here there are three orcs it’s ok if there are only two or if there are four you should think instead about what is the purpose of this encounter not every encounter needs to be a life-or-death situation you should pepper every adventure with some easy encounters and some medium encounters and some difficult encounters even an easy encounter the players will lose a couple of hit points and have to spend some resources healing and they may cast some spells that they’ll have to rest to get back and over the course of the adventure these things all add up so our Goblin Patrol doesn’t need to challenge the players let’s use two goblins two goblins presents the opportunity for one goblin to get damaged and the other goblin to run off and alert his buddies and when that happens your players are going to freak out because they may never have played a game in which the bad guys act that intelligently and if their first level a single goblin arrow can actually do a lot of damage so let’s find out who notices who have every player make a stealth check and have the goblins make a stealth check this may be the first time they’ve made a stealth check and they will discover that some of them are better at stealth than others typically it’s the thief and the Ranger who do well at stealth and the fighter and the Paladin who do poorly at it so some of your players may have very highest health checks and it’s gonna be hard for the Goblin trol to notice them and some of them gonna have very low stealth checks and those are the ones the goblins will notice the flip side of that is do the players notice the goblins so have the goblins make stealth checks I think one check for both goblins is fine but if you want to you can make a check for each individual goblin every character’s stealth check all the players all the goblins acts as the DC for every characters perception check so now it’s time for everyone to make perception checks perception is based on wisdom which is to say how good are you at noticing things and again some players are gonna have a high perception some players are gonna have a low perception when the goblins make their perception check compared against the heroes dealth checks probably some of those heroes are gonna be noticed by the goblins likewise every player compares their characters perception check against the goblins stealth check every character whose perception check beats the goblins tells check gets to act in the first round of combat it’s possible I suppose there’s a degenerate case where no one on either side notices the other in which case they just pass each other like two ships in the night I don’t know why that’s a metaphor witness ships in the night notice each other don’t they have lights on whatever but that’s not likely probably somebody on one side is gonna notice somebody on the other side and once you’ve figured that out once you know who has noticed who it’s time for initiative literally say okay everybody roll initiative that phrase is the universal symbol for combat is beginning if a character either hero or a goblin did not notice the enemy then on the first round of combat they are surprised a character either good guy or a bad guy who is surprised does not get to act in the first round of combat they don’t get to move they don’t get to attack they don’t get to take any reactions they just basically sit there literally surprised so I have each player roll initiative which means roll a 20-sided die and add their dexterity modifier and do the same thing for the goblins then make a list of the order everybody acts in from highest to lowest this is going to take a second or two but you only have to do it once for the entire combat typically I do this behind the screen so the players don’t know when did the goblins go that’s a useful bit of tactical information and there’s no way they would know that until the goblins act once the goblins have acted though there’s no reason to try to hide their initiative everybody knows what it is and it’s super useful for everybody to be able to see the initiative order so I’ll often write it down on the battle matter I’ll write it on a whiteboard we’re not going to get to noodley into how to run combat that’s not exactly the point of this tutorial we’ll talk about stuff like that in other episodes this is just an overview to get you feeling comfortable with the ideas so you figured out who noticed who first which means you know who’s surprised at who it’s to act in the first round of combat you’ve called for initiative you’ve rolled initiative for the goblins and you’ve written everything down in initiative order now it’s time to fight goblins are smart enough to do stuff like shoot at the lightly armored characters first for instance the wizard is usually lightly armored go ahead and have the goblins attack him goblins are smart enough to avoid shooting the guys in heavy armor because they know they’re gonna miss goblins know how Armour works and they know how weapons work so go ahead and use the goblins short bows and have them try to pick off the wizard the wizard has low head points he has a low armor class and a single hit from a goblin can do a lot of damage to a wizard and that’s another little trick it’s not that big a deal but it makes the players feel like wow the goblins are smart they’re thinking tactically they’re not just blindly attacking the giant meat shield and heavy armor that we put in the front of the party on purpose no of course not the goblins want to win the bad guys don’t know that their job is to create a drama for the players they think their job is to win and if the players feel that way not only would they feel challenged they will believe in the world you’re creating so the goblins attacked the players the players attacked the goblins what happens well the most likely outcome unless you have very few players is that the heroes are gonna kill the goblins they’re just goblins it’s very unlikely that the goblins will just wipe out the party that would be a very interesting beginning to your first D&D campaign two goblins murdered the entire party so after the first round every time the goblins go until they’re both dead I would make a check and see how they taken any damage once they’ve taken damage I would have them retreat now they know the players are a threat we need to go alert our buddies and I would have the goblins spend one round moving and then attacking that lets the players know hey these guys are trying to retreat they’re trying to alert their friends and it’s likely that the goblins will die in that next round of combat but if they live at that point I would have the goblins shout to their buddies and say in goblin that there were intruders coming at which point the Goblin Patrol will have done its job and successfully alerted the goblins in the tomb and that will radically change the behavior of the goblins so most likely scenario is the players wipe out the goblins next most likely scenario is when the goblins act on the second turn some of them are damaged and they begin to retreat in which case it’s still likely that the players will shoot them before they get too far away but there is the chance that if the goblins survive let’s say two rounds of combat and they’ve begun retreating they alert the tomb and now all the goblins in the tomb are aware the players are coming the two guards outside the door retreat inside the players will notice that they’ll go oh great and at that point the players will realize that there are secuence as to our actions and that is one of the most important lessons in Dungeons and Dragons so the players take care of the Goblin Patrol and now it’s time for them to go to the tune proper there are two goblins on guard standing on either side of the door in if they’ve been alerted they’re already inside and they join the next encounter making the next encounter more difficult but the players get close enough make sure you describe the two goblins on patrol on either side of the doors and the doors has having been broken down because that’s how the goblins got into the tomb the stone door was sealed and had been for hundreds of years and it was too strong for any normal human to open the players may wonder how did goblins get this open well they’re gonna find out but if they’re still on guard standing on either side of the door then the players have a couple of options they can either use their bows and their spell attacks to try to kill the goblins at range which could have catastrophic consequences because if they don’t succeed on that first round of combat of killing the goblins then when the goblins get to go they’re gonna retreat inside there is no way these two goblins try to stand and destroy the players it’s up to the players to try to stop them probably the best scenario for the players is one where they use the geometry of the tomb to come up and surprise the goblins from the side goblins are clever but they’re not that smart they’re certainly not as smart as humans and elves and dwarves so these goblins will be shifty and lazy and they’ll be leaning on their weapons and they will assume that the Goblin Patrol is doing its job and they don’t have a care in the world and if the players use the tomb as cover and come up around the side then they’ll get the drop on these goblins and in a situation like that neither side has to make perception checks the heroes are going to surprise the goblins so that means the players are probably going to get a full round of combat where the goblins are like oh my god what is going on and then any players who got a higher initiative than the goblins will get another chance to act on the second round of combat before the goblins go that’s the power of surprise players with surprise and high initiative we’ll get to act twice before the bad guys go notice that every encounter provides the opportunity for these goblins to go alert all the rest of the goblins that kind of guerilla commando action where the players have to be quiet they have to be stealthy they have to stop the goblins from escaping it’s going to make them feel like badass Special Forces guys which is a compelling fantasy so either the players kill the Goblin guards or the Goblin guards managed to escape and get into the tomb and join their buddies inside either way that’s the first encounter down now the players have to descend into the tomb remember to describe the tomb using as many senses as seemed reasonable to what to the players see it’s very in the tomb the goblins have dark vision they don’t need light what do they hear if they listen they probably hear the goblins chanting deep in the tomb the ritual is underway how does it smell it may smell dry and musty because it’s an old tomb or it might smell like goblin poop so what do they see what do they hear what do they smell these are useful tools that help the players feel immersed in the situation again it’s that process of tricking them into suspending their disbelief which they want to do anyway so they descend down the stairs and enter the offering room this is the room with a brazier in the middle and carvings along the walls of the Knights and what they did in life and there’s a bunch of goblins here now one of the important rules of fifth edition D&D and that’s the default Edition for these videos is that any time your players are outnumbered they are in danger because the toughness of bad guys is often measured not in hit points or armor class but in the number of attacks they get I mean hit points an armor class factored into that but if the goblins are getting more attacks per round than the heroes then the heroes are going to find themselves in a bad situation especially at first level even goblin weapons do a lot of damage to first level heroes one more goblin than the number of players is probably not that big a deal so go ahead and try that notice that I didn’t start with a fixed number and then add two if the goblins on guard come inside because that could create a situation where let’s say I said there were four inside and then there were two outside now there are six goblins and if you only have four players they could be in trouble I just decided that there are a certain number of goblins in here and that if the players alerted the guards outside then they are included in that number we’re going for the illusion that this encounter has been strengthened by the goblins outside not the reality now if they decide to go down into the offering room and fight the goblins remember during that fight if they didn’t encounter the patrol around the tomb this is where the patrol comes and ambushes them from behind and now you have an interesting dynamic combat which there are goblins in front of the players and goblins behind the players and the players who thought they were safe in the back of the party discover the opposite they are now the front of the party for these goblins either way this is one of the largest battles the players will have had if they fought the Goblin Patrol that was only two goblins that they fought the goblins on guard that was only two goblins now we’re talking about four or five goblins and things are gonna get interesting if the players have successfully dealt with the Patrol and the guards then they have the chance to get surprised on these goblins because they’re down there just relaxing and have no idea that the players are coming otherwise the players may have an interesting situation because if these goblins are aware the players are coming and the players are where the goblins are coming each side is waiting for the other to do something at which point the players may start thinking outside the box they may decide wait a minute wait a minute do they know we’re coming then let’s not go down there you know what let’s uh let’s take some oil and pour it down there and light it on fire and flush the goblins out fire is a great way to flush guys in a dungeon out of the dungeon I tend to run every game like the Kobayashi Maru I don’t believe this was a fair test of my Command abilities and why not because there was no way to win a no-win scenario or a better way of putting it is a scenario in which the bad guys want to win it’s there for your players job to change the conditions of the test lieutenant you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat to know when scenario how I reprogram the simulation so it was possible to rescue the ship what he cheated I changed the conditions of the test cut a commendation for original thinking I don’t like to lose then you never faced that situation faced death I don’t believe in the no-win scenario you have presented them with a scenario there is a host of goblins in the next room at the bottom of the stairs they can just go downstairs and start fighting the goblins in a scenario where the goblins outnumber them and are ready for them and in fact if this is the first time you’ve played it is likely that they will do that I’ve introduced probably I don’t know close to 100 people to D&D over the last 30 years and first time players in a situation like this they are not used to changing the conditions of the test they will often end up in a situation where they are overwhelmed or they’re outnumbered or the dice achill against them and the goblins get the better of them and after that battle may be a player died maybe there was a total party kill that’s possible I’ve played in games with experienced DMS or the first session everybody died that’s not necessarily a bad thing it’s okay if everyone dies as long as all the players feel like yeah that’s what would have happened it’s not ok if they think that was what should we have done new players often feel that way they often feel like they have no options they feel like they have to accept what you tell them as the only truth and getting them over that hump from just accepting everything you put in front of them to starting to use the environment and invent new options can be tough if a combat like that goes badly the players have to retreat or they lose a member or they lose all their members in a total party kill I try to avoid telling the players okay well here’s what I think you should have done because the goal of D&D is not to make me look smart and all-knowing it’s for everybody to have a good time instead I’ll tell the players well here’s what other groups have done in that same situation now that’s something I can get away with because I’ve been running the game for thirty years you may not have that option you may have to say this in your own way instead I’ll say well one group of players came down here and when they saw this situation they didn’t go down those stairs and walk into an ambush instead they made camp outside the tomb they lit a fire and they used their bed rolls and their packs to make it look like they were sleeping around the fire but in fact they were waiting outside the circle of fire light for the goblins to come out now that may seem like an obvious trap that the players were laying but goblins are dumb let the goblins fall for something like that but this is all worst case scenario stuff it’s entirely plausible that your players are going to go down those stairs and wipe the goblins out in a later episode we’ll talk about how to run combat such that if things start going badly you can kind of behind the scenes try to avoid a situation where there’s a total party kill so either the players just go down there and fight the goblins or they try to lure the goblins out or they try to smoke the goblins out but one way or the other they need to deal with those goblins in the offering room once the goblins are dead the players should notice the room describe the room to them there’s carvings of knights on one wall and they’re fighting bad guys maybe they’re fighting goblins on the other side of the offering room is carved into the stone the oath of the Delian order I swear to fight chaos in all its forms etc etc and you can feel free to change that to whatever you think sounds good remember the point of the oath on the wall is to give the players later on in the dungeon the opportunity to swear fealty to the delian Order and that will allow them to enter the secret room where all the treasure is so the players have dealt with the goblins in the offering room they’ve had an opportunity to notice what’s in the offering room it may occur to them to search the offering room I don’t think there’s really anything in the offering room for the heroes to find other than whatever small change the goblins might have had on them but that’s up to you maybe there is some treasure in here maybe there is a potion or two or a scroll if there’s some consumable magic items in here like a healing potion or a magic scroll it would have to be hidden somewhere that the goblins didn’t notice it otherwise why didn’t goblins use it so they fought the goblins in the offering room maybe they’ve searched the offering room you’ve described the offering room to them so they see the Knights fighting and they see the oath now it’s time to deal with the trap it may not even occur to the players to look for traps this will fix that after this encounter the players are going to be super paranoid about traps which is part of the fun back in the 70s when you made a character you noticed on the list of equipment that one of the things you could buy was a ten-foot pole and you wonder to yourself what is the purpose of a ten-foot pole exactly am I supposed to evolve over things well the way they played back then one player would be in front with the ten-foot pole tapping the floor or maybe even the ceiling of the dungeon in front of them to listen for hollow noises and to see if they could trigger any traps in front of them well this trap is a pressure plate trap it only goes off if someone steps on it and it has to be someone that weighs more than let’s say a goblin or halfling so if for some reason you have a halfling in the front of the party he can easily walk over this trap without triggering it but if he’s a thief and he’s searching as he goes he will notice the trap otherwise as the players walk down the corridor they might just set the trap off if you are a particularly benevolent GM you might ask them to make perception checks now that’s a tricky situation asking the players to make a perception check tells them there’s something to find at which point if they all fail their perception checks they start to get paranoid and that tends to slow everything down but a benevolent DM might set a reasonable DC say 11 or 12 for seeing the trap before you spring it in which case players will roll I might notice there’s a trap there otherwise the players step on the trap and a giant scythe comes out of the ceiling and attacks one of the players make an attack role for the scythe give it an attack bonus roughly equivalent to the goblins maybe you think the trap is nastier than a goblin or maybe it’s not as nasty as a goblin that’s up to you and in that adjudication you are doing some next-level DM work now you can decide to go to the DMS guy to look up traps and find out how they work and find out what their bonus to hit is and find out how much damage they do based on what level they are or you could just decide they’re about as tough as a goblin they don’t have hit points they go off they do their damage and that’s it there are lots of goblins but there’s only one trap so making the trap lethal making the trap nastier than a goblin is perfectly legitimate or you might decide wow my players have really taken a beating from these goblins so I’m going to make it so the trap doesn’t do that much damage if it is so the players have maybe fought a patrol of goblins they probably fought the goblins on guard outside the door they dealt with the goblins in the offer room either by going down there and fighting luring them out somehow and maybe they stepped on a trap and took some damage at this point the players may think about resting there are two kinds of rests in D&D you can either take a short rest which I believe is for about an hour or you take a long rest which is basically spending the night with a short rest you get to spend your hit die and get a little bit of healing and some abilities reset and a long rest you get all your hit points back and all your abilities reset and all your spells refresh a long rest would require leaving the dungeon and going and camping in the forest or something in which case there would be a chance that the goblins are something else in the forest might come by and attack the players but I think that even a short rest outside of town means there’s going to be a random encounter so if the players want to say let’s get out of here let’s go rest outside just for an hour and get some healing I would say that’s fine and then I would roll for a random encounter I would let the players know resting does not come without consequences because if they feel like resting is a given if they feel like it’s safe then they’re gonna do it all the time they’ll do it after every battle just like the goblins want to win the players want to win and they will behave in a way that may be unrealistic for their characters but maximizes their chances of victory now in general in my game I make sure that if the players get a random encounter it is nasty it might be a creature like an owl bear or something comes by something not directly related to the dungeon if they try to rest inside the dungeon which will be very foolish I would have goblins come attack them in fact I would invent new goblins that weren’t part of any encounter just to come attack these zeros the players of course will think that they were the goblins in the next room and that’s fine let them think that when the players decide to take a short rest I often have them roll for the random encounter just because I think it’s more fun for them to be in charge of their fate in this scenario I would just say okay if you guys want to take a rest that’s fine and I would roll for random encounter behind the screen and I probably would not even if I rolled a six I would probably say nothing happens the hour passes uneventful me because after all we want the players to have fun and we know the secret of the players having fun yet that will keep wingmen the Wookiee is in this case a metaphor the players have dealt with lots of goblins they dealt with a trap and now it’s time for them to go on to what they think will probably be the final battle the goblin boss the bug bear so this is the encounter in the room with a statue of the leader of the order and the bugbear chieftain that’s running these goblins bug bears are like big super goblins goblins hobgoblins and bug bears are all kind of related I like bug bears because they’re big and they’re tough and I sort of look like a bug bear remember to describe the room again describe what the players see describe what they hear describe how it smells there’s a goblin Chaman in here and he’s burning incense there is also the person they’ve come to save I think there’s a classic image that people might have of what it looks like to have a young girl being ready for sacrifice and you can use that kind of imagery if you want it is your game but I think of that stuff as being incredibly sexist and I think it affects the players a lot more if especially if they’re expecting something like that if they walk into the room and they discover that the human they’ve come to save is locked in a tiny cage and is terrified and cold and is maybe filthy and their clothes have been torn and they’re crying that’s probably what the goblins would do they would keep me in a cage where the human can’t get away they don’t care for humans provocatively posed that’s ridiculous and that kind of situation the human afraid cold shivering crying covered in filth that will make the players feel more empathy toward this person and make them want to rescue the moor it’s funny interesting things happen in D&D Player’s who didn’t know they had empathy suddenly discover it so the bug bears their the Goblin shaman is there I mean what is a goblin shaman that’s up to you I would just take a normal goblin and like give him one cleric spell but in all other ways he would be a normal goblin because the bug bear is very tough I would try to avoid a situation where goblins from other rooms in the tomb have come here to wait for the humans because that could really turn this into a nasty battle you know this ritual takes hours to complete so the Goblin shaman has been down here chanting the entire time and has put up the Do Not Disturb sign so that other goblins haven’t come in here that gives you the opportunity to tailor this bugbear encounter so that the players don’t get overwhelmed so a bug there one or two goblins in here and that should be enough and again I think unless things have gone catastrophic ly bad up until now and the players have alerted several different groups of goblins the players will actually have the opportunity here to get the drop on these guys because like I said they’re concentrating on the ritual ‘we roll initiative play out the combat so up until now the goblins haven’t done anything particularly clever or smart other than having patrol but here we have a bug baron bug bears are like very smart goblins so if during the course of this combat one of the heroes goes unconscious which is likely to happen i would have the bug bear chieftain on his turn say to the heroes and broke in common leave and your friend lose this may confuse the players because they haven’t encountered something like this before wait a minute if we leave then why would our friend live and then i would just explain that it is a tradition in this culture in this area it doesn’t matter if you’re human or goblin or an orc that if you manage to take out one of your opponents and they’re still alive you ransom them back I mean there is a real world tradition especially during the Middle Ages of one army fighting another capturing some of their guys and ransoming those people back to the army for goal and that’s what this goblin wants to do he knows humans are weak he knows that as one of the heroes goes down that he can capture that hero and sell him back to his buddies we’ll talk about bad guys and their tactics of another episode I just wanted to give you an idea for something the bugbear chief can could do that would surprise the players if that sounds too complex you don’t really understand how that would play out don’t worry about it just have everybody fight to the death that’s typical goblin behavior so you call for initiative you run out the battle as normal and hopefully at the end of it the heroes are still alive and they’ve rescued the human victim from town now it’s time for them to investigate this room and see what’s going on they’ll notice there’s a statue they’ll notice there’s a statue of a knight and they’ll notice there’s something written at the bottom if you are to keep this you must first give it to me it’s a riddle and I want to emphasize it is perfectly alright for the players not to solve the riddle if the players come out of this adventure wondering wow what would happen if we’d gotten that riddle right then they’re hooked right then they believe in the secondary world it’s not a video game where they can load a saved game and try it again and try different options it’s one of the things that makes RPGs like D&D different from every other game and if they don’t get the riddle right after the game they may ask you hey what was the answer to that riddle do not tell them we’re going to talk about this of another episode too but in general avoid showing the players the little man behind the curtain pulling all the levers you’re grateful preachers think yourself lucky that I’m giving you audience tomorrow instead of 20 Oh it ruins the players fun even though they want it do not give it to them okay so they fought the bugbear they fought the goblins they rescued the girl and maybe they figure out the riddle maybe they realize it means keep your word therefore I have to give the statue my word and they swear the oath of the Delian order or they just say I swear to fight evil or I give you my word I think anything like that would be fine then the secret door they didn’t know is their slides open revealing a room beyond at that point the players will be like holy crap what’s in there that might be a good stopping place I cliffhanger this exercise these last four episodes we’ve done in this whole adventure is really just to give you an idea of what starting a game of D&D is like of what running an adventure is like and to make you feel confident that you can do it I have no real expectation that you will literally use this adventure but if you did you may discover that it takes you three or four hours just to get to the first encounter or the second encounter at which point any of these encounters could be a cliffhanger I literally just started a new campaign last week at work I had a lot of content ready for them and they literally got through one combat in four hours but they had a lot of fun they felt like they got a lot done it was mostly role-playing and stuff like that and that might be what your first session is like but if you started the adventure by dropping the players in the woods outside the tomb watching to see what was going on then it’s possible they’ve made it this far in their first night at which point this would be an interesting place to stop what’s behind the secret door or maybe you still have plenty of time in which case to the undead so here’s where the Delian order is buried there are no bad guys in here as far as they can tell there are six small sarcophagi and there’s one big sarcophagi and I would take the time to describe each sarcophagi differently so that the players think oh these are the Knights this is each individual Knight is here and there’s one big one and that’s where the lead Knight is probably the dude whose statue is in the room outside the players are naturally going to want to loot this tomb they’re going to look in the sarcophagi and see what’s in there in which case undead attack how many undead and what type are they well that’s up to you I think zombies and skeletons are mostly interchangeable and I would only have a couple of them attack the players now remember these undead are kind of sitting there on a trigger they’re not going to attack the players unless the players interfere with the sarcophagi so it’s perfectly reasonable for the players to spend the night in the tomb or outside the tomb with the human they’ve rescued before they go into this secret room and now you have a choice if the players go into the room without resting that means they’re going to be beat up they’re going to be low on spells which means they’re going to find a small number of skeletons or zombies but if they rest first then man I think there’s going to be five or six hombres in here now I think it should be possible for the players to recover the treasure without triggering the zombies but for me the only way that would be possible is if a paladin had sworn the oath of the Delian order and made an honorary member of it a paladin or cleric who swears the Delian oath becomes an honorary member of their order blessed by the ghost of the Knights so he can come into this room and he can take the magic items that are in here and nothing bad is going to happen to him but unless that specific situation came up I would say looting the tomb makes the undead attack there’s no surprise it’s just regular everyday initiative it’s a normal combat and at the end of the players get the cool stuff in the sarcophagi remember up until now the players haven’t gotten any treasures so I would put a couple of hundred gold in there it’ll seem like a lot to them until they have to split at four or five or six ways I would also put some consumable magic items in their potions or scrolls that’s an easy way to give the players magic items without completely breaking your game because regardless of how good the potion or scroll is once they’ve used it it’s gone and I would give them a plus-one sword I might even say it’s a plus-one sword plus three vs. goblins that’s a mechanic they used back in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons days the late 70s early 80s the idea that a weapon did one thing against everybody but did a better thing against a specific kind of bad guy remember the carvings in the offering room of the Knights fighting bad guys whatever bad guys you described the Knights fighting I would say this weapon is good against it’s a plus one weapon versus everybody but it’s a plus two or plus three weapon versus those bad guys now technically as far as the DMS guide is concerned that is a lot of magic to give a first-level party but I don’t think it’s that big a deal it just means one person in the party is going to be really good against one type of bad guy it’ll make them feel special without grossly unbalancing the game and players really like getting magic items as a reward it will make them want to play again so that’s it the player has fought a bunch of goblins they either triggered or avoided trap they fought the bugbear boss of the goblins they rescued the girl and maybe they found the secret door in the treasure was hidden beyond that’s a whole adventure my goal with this series is to convince you that being a DM is fun and that you would enjoy doing it I’m not trying to convince you to use this adventure this adventure is just an example of how I think and the stuff I’ve learned running D&D especially for first-time players what kinds of things can you expect to happen you can find a link to the map of the dungeon and some notes in the doobly-doo down below so you can either use this adventure or be inspired by this adventure to come up with your own or go download a first level adventure online it doesn’t matter to me as long as you start playing I was 16 when I ran my first game of D&D back in the 80s and that was considered late most of my friends had started when they were 12 none of them started by reading the books and figuring it out on their own all of them including me started because people they know often their older brothers or people degrade ahead of them Randy Andy for them and they watched that guy running the game and thought I could do that so that’s kind of what I’m trying to do is to be that older brother or the kid one grade ahead of you in class saying hey let’s play D&D it’s fun and you see how I do it you go hey I think I could do that that’s what the rest of this series is going to be about it’s going to be all the lessons I’ve learned from running D&D what would you like to hear about what would you like me to talk about I like doing this stuff I like talking about the game I like talking about what I’ve learned and the good news is if you like listening then there is a near infinite number of topics regarding being a good DM next week we’re going to talk about making characters from the DMS point of view what are all these numbers and what do they mean there’s a lot of really weird stuff built into D&D that’s not perfectly obvious the first time you play and I think it’s a good idea for the DM to understand these things so he can explain them to the players we’ll talk about different methods of stat generation and we’ll talk about the choices that players tend to make when they’re making characters for the first time so when you go through the process of making characters for the first time your players may ask questions like why does this work the way it does next week you’ll have the answers but I want to know what you want to talk about if you have any questions about running D&D feel free to ask I will make it a point to go through all the comments and answer them in following videos so we made an adventure we got the party together we got the party to the dungeon and then we ran the dungeon next week we make characters for the first time peace out

Your First Dungeons & Dragons Session! | Matt Colville

January 22, 2022Zoltar Leave a comment

So you've got an adventure and you're ready to play. Let's get the team together! You’ve tracked the Goblin raiders to their hideout, a tomb that sits atop a hill. Within lies a host of monsters and the girl they kidnapped to use in their fell ritual. If you hurry, she may still be alive. That is a great way to start your first adventure just pow! Drop the players off in front of the dungeon describe the entrance and tell them the stakes goblins and treasure inside just find the girl. Just find the girl. Clear motivation, maybe the simplest most straightforward way to get started certainly the most old-school way to get started But is it the best way to get started well? That’s up to you, but it’s certainly not the only way to get started this episode We’re going to talk about maybe the hardest thing to do in dungeons & Dragons and that is Getting started going from having everybody sitting at the table And you have an adventure ready to actually playing. That transition is always a huge pain in the butt for me I get nervous I get anxiety Once we’re playing no problem I can run for hours But getting over that first hump going from just a bunch of people sitting around a table to playing D&D is for me the hardest thing to do. Back in the day the DM often began an adventure by dropping the players in front of the dungeon and describing the Entrance that’s because a lot of adventures began as modules used at conventions in tournament play That’s right competitive D&D which I have done and which is a lot of fun. Also in the 1970s people wanted to play D&D Specifically they want to explore the dungeon. They want to kill monsters and get loot and level up They weren’t really worried about narrative a question like what’s my motivation would have seemed strange to Gary Gygax in 1974. He would have said “To get treasure!” That’s also a result of the fantasy literature that influenced dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax wasn’t a huge fan of Lord of the rings He didn’t assume that you began the adventure with the talisman that you needed to destroy To save the world because it was the right thing to do He assumed you were more like Conan and would happily scale the tower of the elephant because there was treasure inside also because no one Had ever done it before. Nowadays We sort of assume that the players have a clearer motivation for why they’re going on an adventure Sometimes even a personal stake in what’s happening. I say all this to you to give you a historical context a lot of D&D is Tradition passed on from one group of players to the next also Because there isn’t one right way to do it the way They did it back in 1974 still works And is still a lot of fun is arguably the simplest most straightforward way to start But there are other ways to do it. Dusk falls and five travelers come to the Green Dragon Inn for food Warmth and a place to rest Several Villagers are here eating drinking talking about their day. One day is much the same as another in the hamlet of Villane But looking at you something tells these villagers today will be different. Start in a tavern, great beginning I often see players online disparaging well every cliche, including that one, but if you’re new to this game There are no cliches. Plus maybe your players saw the Fellowship of the Ring and remember Aragorn meeting the hobbits at the Inn of the Prancing Pony. That fellow has done nothing but stare at us since we arrived. Excuse me. That man in the corner, who is he? His one of them rangers. Dangerous folk they are, wandering the wilds. What his right name is I’ve never heard but round hear he’s known as Strider. Strider. Great scene. Players, especially new players, enjoy recognizing scenarios from books or comics or movies that they’ve seen they’ve seen the movie, but they haven’t played it This is their opportunity to do the kinds of things they saw in the movies meet the mysterious stranger in the inn Be the mysterious stranger in the inn. Always feel free to rip stuff off This is your campaign put the stuff you like in it Starting in a tavern does two useful things one it gives the players the opportunity to roleplay Their characters meeting each other for the first time players like establishing the relationships in the group I’m not gonna lie to you though this can also be awkward uh Hello. I mean, my I say, my character sa- Gork, Gork says Hello That’s gonna happen. New playersa aren’t used to role-playing and haven’t used those muscles yet So it can be goofy, it can also be frustrating. The mysterious stranger in the corner ignores you Okay, well fine one of the reasons. We do this is because it’s fun to do dramatic stuff like that But if Gork’s player sticks to his guns then he’s not going to go on the adventure One of the things I like to do is go around the table and ask each player to describe their character I mean, we maybe already know that you’re playing Gork the barbarian But what does gork look like? How does he act? How does he seem? If you ask your players, “Okay everybody we’re gonna go around the table and everybody introduce your character tell us what you’re playing and what your character looks like and how he Behaves.” That might be the first time the player has ever really thought about that. Plus we always form impressions about people before they even open their mouths just by looking at them. It also acts as a safe halfway point between their character being a bunch of stats on a page and actually role-playing them. So while it can be goofy and awkward starting in a tavern is also fun plus It gives the players the opportunity to roleplay their characters and answer the question, “Wait, how do we know each other?” Also number two, they want to know why are we on this adventure? You can just tell them goblins kidnapped a girl and you’ve tracked them to their hideout. That’s fine but some players want to experience that they don’t just want to be told it, Which do you think would be more fun? In the tavern we have some NPCs to talk to, the innkeep and her husband, their daughter the serving girl, a merchant carter from another town. Some may be friendly some may challenge the players but the goal here is to break the ice. Get your players into character by giving them NPCs to talk to and interact with since they may feel awkward talking to each other. Classically the easy way to start is to have the serving girl, and it could be a serving boy, we’ll talk about stereotypes in another episode yes we will, come up and just ask the character what they want to drink, if they’re hungry. Depending on what’s happened before this may be the first time the player has ever been asked a direct question by another character and they’re going to have to come up with an answer. Maybe a stupid answer it may be silly it may be dramatic, but in that moment they are role-playing and now you’re all playing D&D. But what is there to order? we’re in a tavern so we need a menu. Wow! we need people to talk to, and a menu to order from, and all of a sudden you’re starting to understand why back in the day people said “Screw it, let’s just start in front of the tomb.” You can make all that stuff up or I can do it for you Which I just did. There are tools online for all this stuff including random NPCs, random Taverns, random menus, you are not the first person to need solutions to these problems. People have been doing this for 40 years and they put all their answers up online to save you a lot of work. At some point, after the innkeep has served food and drinks and the players have gotten to know each other and the NPCs, something has to happen. A large man wearing a black leather apron over linen shirt and woolen pants bursts in the door He smells of sulfur and carries a heavy hammer “The got Bes,” He says, “they got my girl.” Goblins have kidnapped the blacksmith’s daughter Well now we’ve got an adventure your players aren’t dumb they sat down at the table wanting an adventure And you just put one in front of them if it occurs to them the players may just ask the blacksmith What happened give them the opportunity to do that literally ask them okay? What do you do? I think about 50% of the DM’s job is just describing what happens and then asking the players of what they do the other 50% is, it’s complex but there’s pizza in there somewhere. Now not all players are motivated by a sense of justice and duty in fact I think you’re just starting out most players are motivated by Let’s call it a enlightened self-interest which is to say greed. In our lives we’re expected to do the right thing there are tons of social pressures on us every day. We have show up on time We have to be polite We have to be respectful One of the reasons people enjoy playing D&D is it gives them an opportunity to throw all that out and say “Hey? Why should I help that guy? What’s in it for me?” And there are lots of examples of classic cool characters saying exactly that. “When they come to get me Rick, I hope you’ll be more of a help.” “I stick my neck out for nobody” “I’m not going anywhere.” “They’re gonna execute her. Look a few minutes ago you said you didn’t want to just wait here to be captured now All you want to do is stay?” “Marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.” “But they’re gonna kill her!” “Better her than me.” Look your players aren’t dumb They know when the blacksmith walked in the door and saying Goblins kidnapped my daughter that that was the adventure showing up, and they might go whoohoo Let’s go or they might want a little more motivation, a little bit more convincing. Okay so here you go. Yeah! A wanted poster. The Invincible Overlord, really it’s the local Baron the Invincible Overlord doesn’t care about a bunch of goblins, is trying to clean up the area you can literally print this out and put it in front of your players to read. A prop like this does a great job of motivating the players one silver piece per Goblin and giving them some sense of the politics of the wider world who is the Baron who is the Invincible Overlord and making the world Beyond the tavern seem exotic and dangerous Ogres, Giants, snake men! If all else fails you can always just have the blacksmith ask the players directly Will you help find my daughter or another trick I’ve used is to have somebody who is obviously Unqualified like an old man or a young girl volunteer this often helps motivate the players. So we met in a tavern, we talked to each other, we talked to the locals, we looked at the wanted poster, and then a Blacksmith’s showed up and gave us our motivation. Time to head to the tomb. So where is this place and how do you get there? players like maps. Fact of life, and a lot of DMs like making maps it’s part of the fun of the game and There are lots of tools for making all sorts of different maps, and we’re going to talk about all of them in upcoming episodes but for now I’m gonna quote Alfred Korzybski the guy who invented Semantics and say “The map is not the territory.” I use maps all the time, but not only do you not need a map I’m gonna argue that there are good reasons not to use a map We live in a time where it’s trivially easy for people to whip their phone out and get directions from anywhere to anywhere You have a basic understanding of the shape of the earth and the country that you live in and the local area But that was not true for most of human history if you were a medieval peasant it was very easy to live your entire life Without ever going more than a few miles outside of town. Maybe you’d visited one or two towns nearby, maybe you’d seen a map of the world in church, or in one of the few books you had ever seen, but that was unusual. It can therefore be more immersive for you to say 2 miles to the North lies the Boar forest and beyond that the tomb on the hill. That is how people thought in the middle ages and not only does it save you work It makes the world feel more dangerous and more mysterious. Show the players a map and they feel like they understand something. Describe it using language and landmarks, and it feels like the world is a large mysterious place which it should. So without a map showing us how to get there, How do we find the tomb? Easy the goblins left tracks. It may occur to the players to go to the Smith’s house and look for tracks if they do that they get to feel like detectives and that’s part of the fun. If they never think of that have an NPC suggest it. That’s what NPCs are for. The goblins left tracks that are easy to follow they go north to the boar wood. It may occur to the players to ask the locals, “Hey, what’s in the forest?” The locals will say “Nothing, boars. It’s in the name of the forest we hunt there all the time There’s no goblins.” So the goblins must be somewhere beyond the forest however big the forest is it’s not something the players can get through in one day They’re gonna have to spend the night there we put the forest between the tomb and the tavern because we want the players to have To spend the night we want the players to have to take watch in the middle of the forest and be wary Wondering if something’s going to attack them in the middle of the night why because it makes the world feel more mysterious And it makes the players feel like they’re on an adventure like anything might happen any Time the players stop and rest outside of town. I have them roll for a random encounter. We’ll do a whole episode later maybe more than one on random encounters, but the goal here is to make the world feel dangerous. If the players feel like they can stop and rest any time they’re wounded or low on spells then they will do so and that will grind everything to a halt. Players naturally want to avoid risk your job is to make everything outside of town seem Risky the world is a dangerous place But for this episode. I’m gonna roll some dice behind the screen and tell the players the evening passes uneventful. I mean you can do what you want. You can throw an ogre at them or maybe a pack of dire boars It is after all in the name of the forest but our goal here is for the players to finish something tonight. And that means we want to get him to the tomb as quickly as possible. Once outside the forest after an hour two of travel the players will see the tomb on top of a hill I like to use old roman ruins for things like this because it communicates to the players this belongs to an ancient civilization. At this point the players may want to hang back and watch the tomb for a while, See if there’s any Goblin activity, that’s a good idea let them do that. Remember we put a goblin patrol around the tomb on purpose in case they did that so the players started in a tavern, they met each other, they met the local NPCs, they met the Blacksmith, they found out his daughter had been kidnapped by Goblins, they followed the Goblin tracks through the forest, they spent the night and the next morning they showed up at the tomb. Now they’re sitting and watching waiting to see what happens. We’ll talk about running the tomb about how many goblins to use and about what kinds of things are going to happen inside the dungeon Next week. Peace out. https://t.co/YC5lPVRWke

— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) February 22, 2016