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Anna/Judge illrigger - Lars/The Commander battlemaster - Matt/DM Töm/Nails sorcerer - Tom/Copper&Bigcat ranger - Phil/Leiutenant pugilist

The Blade Runner sequel didn't "flop". Huh?

One thing I love to do and still challenges is allow players to use their class features and even cast spells to either reduce the difficulty or allow them to use a skill that might not otherwise be applicable. Like maybe intimidate won't work in a chase scene where they're trying to escape a horde of undead, but if the cleric uses turn on dead and expends a use of channel Divinity, then I would let them make an intimidate check as they try and use their force of will to push back the horde to allow the party to make some progress

❤️🥳👍🏿

I appreciate the mental connections between concepts. Thanks for the video

I've moved away from using any prewritten anything. I always feel so restricted by the written stuff, that i enjoy my homebrew. It also feels like most pre-written nowadays give lots of useless random information and not enough important plot information. May just be me.

Really good, loved it!

I could very easily see how a DM who wants to do a West Marches style campaign in Exandria could adapt The Slayer's Take in Vasselheim to be the driving force for all of the adventures. Issylra is a vast, untamed wilderness with Vasselheim being a point of light settlement. Initially, the DM can act as the Guildmaster and post contracts for different monsters to get the campaign moving in the right direction, and then, in the process of exploration, hunt parties can come across the ruins of temples, towers, dungeons, what have you, that, due to the time constraints of the contracts, they cannot explore fully, or maybe at all... These can then become player rumors that get circulated and can be new adventures that other groups of players go on. I think it would also provide different styles of play to satisfy the different player styles. For the players that are combat focused, they can keep taking contracts and hunting and killing ever more challenging monsters. For players who like dungeon delving and exploration, they can chase after the player rumors and explore the ruins of Issylra. Then for the players who want more of a role playing experience, they could maybe have sessions where they explore Vasselheim, or even journey to other cities in Exandria and engage with the factions there.

God, I love this shit

Matt. Where is the 4e video? 4e is so far in the past that most new players don't know anything about it.

Fate points put the fudging power in the hands of the players. So much better.

You absolutely nailed it sir. Great film. Can never be replicated. That’s not going to stop them from trying though… 😒

Found this 8 yrs after you posted it the first time. Thx for not taking it off. Need to start a campaign with my teenagers. Wife is still a no go but we’ll see. Thx for the tips and yes, you should Narrate a book…

I fucking hate Matt Mercer

I'm trying to be a DM and I got sent this for tips and tricks

Anyone who recommends anything from 4e is just simply wrong.

Mmh huh.

I started with 1st ed AD&D. I was great. But I could start off at level one with 4 hit points and get to 50+ at super high level. I always wanted it to be something like, heath + strength. I wanted skills and if I had a 73% chance to succeed, I wanted to have to role under 73 not look thac0 up on a table. I wanted sensible yet slightly heroic, where a gun shot to the head could get you killed. I started playing Call of Cthulhu. The mechanic was exactly what I was looking for. I had also read and loved Lovecraft's writing. Still, I was looking for myth rather than family D&D fantasy for my other game. Enter king Arthur Pendragon, Runequest ect. All BRP. I also wanted easy light rule set and spend experience points to advance skills and no levels for characters. Enter D00lite, Frontierspace, Art of Wushu etc. I still love OSR, moving over to Castles and Crusades after 3.5. I have never liked feats because they make things super hero-esque for me. I didn't like 4th and have never played 5th. 30 years later, I still play twice a week. May I give a shout out to Chill 1st edition/ Cryptword as an excellent variant of D00lite.

What if you’re players are using pre-made characters? Is there any difference between playing pre-made vs player-made characters??

Does anyone know where the tear down the wall animation at 2:31 is from?

Hello mat colville I am looking for an Isekai D&D campaign where only humans are allowed as playable races. I am very interested in finding a DM who is keen on hosting such a unique setting. Have you perhaps run such a campaign, or do you know someone who would be interested in doing so? Any suggestions are welcome! Thank you for your time and help! Best regards, Stanley Schlosser

I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying how are you gonna jump straight to western and not pirates of the Caribbean

I mean, the old modules took months for weekly games to get through. They might only be 34 pages, but that might take you 3 months to get through. D&D is inherently a long form game, and always has been. This just seems like rosey colored glasses on how it used to be. Heck, with ad&d you were always talking about how many rooms you got through to make a good session. Lost Mines is 65 pages, but that is a regional map, 3 adventures, a dungeon, a lot more art than a 1980's module could aford, and a detailed explanation of mechanics since it is meant to play the game with no supporting matterials. You get enough to do a mini campaign with lost mines, which a lot of people completed. I would say, cut the art and change the formating of phadelver and you could make a 30 page module. Castle Amberville, which he waved around as an example, took my play group 6 months to finish with BECMI rules. Yes, it is only 36 pages or so, but you cannot complete anything in it in a few sessions; the writing was just more compact because of the procedural nature of BECMI/AD&D and it refered to other books more often. There is a sharp drop off for players, in general, and always has been. More people try it and drop out than finish a campaign or adventure; that is just how any activitiy works. I think less people are ignorate to what toilets are than episodic content; they probably just did not know episodic content had a $5 name instead of, "like a marvel movie." This is more of an issue of using designer techno-babble than the general populous being unaware.

I know I'm super late to comment, but oh well. A few months ago, my players were faced by a big undead giant who had a bunch of undead viking soldiers. He was essentially a big ol' healthpool with a big claw attack. I did use this advice to spice up the fight though. Each round, he would roar as a bonus action and give the minions another multiattack. Really put the pressure on the players and they were super engaged. Thank you for the advice! Always a great listen between sessions.

PS: love the Eddie Izzard edit. 🤣🤣

I always have random encounters, but i have a list of them. A d4 determines how many occur that day during travel (if it's a multiple day long trip) and a d10 decides which random encounter they experience. If they roll a 10, that's the "nat 20" result and "spawns" a wandering Trader with a cloak of many pockets, where each pocket contains different rarity items. Each rarity up costs more money/a quest or other items. The kicker is: the loot is randomized. Choose a rarity and type. I look at that rarity tier's item list, and you roll for it.

idk, I read a lot of chinese webnovels, and I feel like "use a sword like a hoverboard" and "get mad shredded via navel gazing exercises" are definitely generally appealing fantasies (as is the evil version -- gain strength by sapping others' vitality).

Honestly, given my party and their priorities I'm going to have the goblins sacrificing the town cats and dogs hahaha

My group is coming up on the 7-yr anniversary of our game, all homebrew, lots and lots of adventures, lots of exploration of the setting. Can't imagine a game missing that (actually i can but i don't want to 😂).

Ballgag and riding crop storage. Oh, and leather chap storage. That's what dungeons are for.

I wish the two idiots, calling themselves "experienced role players" nearly ruining our RPG-group had at least seen one of Mat´s videos. One of them came up with the "Curse of Strahd" which he would love to run as a DM while I got time to prepare the second part of my D&D homebrew campaign. I first was please, because I thought we could take turns in runing the game. But he got frustrated in the midle of the first adventure of "Curse of Strahd", we only played it on two evenings. Without telling anyone that we wants to stop, he just said he wants to play Cyberpunk Red and his best buddy instantly shoots out which of the prepepared characters he want´s to pick. Funny, because the other players did not even knew from which they could choose. At this point a dispute started why we change the system in the middle of the adventure. All players put a lot of efford in their characters. One word lead to another, as the "Strahd"-DM said he felt denunciated for his decissions and left the group. His buddy kept silenced, did not even answered an offer for the next D&D-campaign and was therefore later official removed from the group. Nothing against long campaigns, but: Only start them if you got the balls to go through. I lead my homebrew campaign for 19 adventures and we are still in the game. I splited it into parts which end with something important, rememberable. Then I do a break an we go on later from there. During the brakes we play something else, mostly not fantasy. So we go with fresh hunger for fantasy in the next part. One advice: Never play with people who call themself experienced and show signs of not even basics. The "experienced" player looking at his smartphone, forgetting his dice and doesn´t care about a session zero for an example I experienced. Big red flag from the beginning.

I think Slow Ass Game & complicated rules also forces people out and exacerbates the length of the campaigns. Most tables I see most of the players zoning out, thumbing their phones etc while someone looks through his list of spells or feats and tries to calculate exactly the optimal attack or action.

Just too many people out there who haven' t been told they are free to modify their adventures and Wizbros (probably) won't send Pinkertons to threaten them if I do. I view the big books as a collection of modules. If I need a goblin cave, maybe I take the Phandelver cave, rotate it or change a few rooms, switch the entrance and Im ready to play in a few mins.

beginning of the cold war, ussr actually had much more legitimacy in the eyes of the world at large than it did as time went on, although i would say its legitimacy was still greater before nazi invasion. At the time, people believed also that communism was an assault on individual freedom of expression, that it would destroy class-based social hegemony, that the workers would revolt and destroy them, that communists were brainwashed mind-slaves, or simply that russia was opposed to the US and therefore must be fought

I just started this playlist. This is so great thanks!

This video convinced me to stop forcing my long campaign arc to happen and start running Keep on the Borderlands, adjusting it to 5e manually as we go. I love it, it's the most fun I've had in the game for a long time

6:34 my favorite phrase to use when I'm talking to players or potential players is: "This isn't my adventure. It's yours. I'm just the guy that tells it."

I'm running the Kingmaker AP right now, and it's only recently become clear to me that it was originally written as a series of modules. This realization has led to some good results: 1. There is a feeling of accomplishment after each adventure. 2. I can swap in a different module or a homebrew if i feel like it. 3. I can skip a module if i don't find it interesting, or I don't think the players will find it interesting, or if the PCs are just over-leveled for it.

It's funny Matt, you're saying these things in a video now, but I wrote a Wordpress article using your words and things you'd said previously, to say many of the same things. Alas, the power of Six!

I don't care if I'm 7 years late, I have YT premium so I can listen to videos like this in the car.

I started d&d in the 80s stopped in the early 90s thirty ish years went by I started playing with 5e n 2018 been playing since. I’m mostly a DM. Matt does speak truth and I’ve also had some monster hardcover adventures never get finished. It’s not a good feeling as a dm or player to not finish. But I’ve been playing with mostly (besides one or two players) the same group for many years now. I have 60 year olds that n my group and the rest are between late 30s to 50s. We all have years of d&d xp. We like the hard cover adventures. We don’t care how long they take we just like our week game to play. One guys game of dungeon of the mad mage is in year two and still everyone gladly plays each week. I think session ones is where you talk about this - adventure style pace and expected duration. That’s what I do. If you are made aware and you agree to it that’s on you when 7 months later you are like “why are we still playing this?”

I use my own dice as minis

I'm in 100% agreement. I love TTRPGs, but goodness me. I do have a life outside of it. I have other hobbies. I would like to conclude adventures before the end of a tax year 😂

The Silmarillion has some of the greatest drama I've ever read. I reject the notion that it is exclusively lore!

My main problem was the lore changes. Like the planes. I get that it really doesn't matter that they turned Baator into a planet... But I really love the idea of infinite things. Wondering what will happen if you just keep going. Like how do we know the lowest layer of Carceri only has one would? Others could just be insanely far away. Or how can you have an infinite mountain that also has boundaries? That makes no sense and I love it. So yeah. When 4th changed that it was almost heartbreaking. I know I can just declare the planes still work the way they used to, but it just wouldn't feel right. But yeah aside from the whole soul crushing lore changes, 4E was pretty fun mechanically!

"we didnt play minecraft or league of legends or rocket league" brother i play all three and feel attacked. even though i also love worldbuilding, no one ever talks about rocket league and now i'm hurt.

I learned to run a game of dnd using old school essentials rules and solo tables in Osric. 5th edition starter set was too demanding with skills and everything.

As someone who just loves doing accents in improv, i love using my skills when I GM

Meanwhile, the neglected Necromancer who summons zombies to have company: "Why does everyone hate me? 😢"

Meanwhile, the neglected Necromancer who summons zombies to have company: "Why does everyone hate me? 😢"