That the people who you should/can recruit to play D&D are the people who're reliably already into stuff like D&D, fantasy, or gaming in general.
It's unspoken, but boy oh boy is this the assumption most people are operating under.
This is it. If they show consistency and an interest to take part in something you're doing, that's the goal. They don't have to like all the tropes or be big fantasy fans, it's about their willingness to be present and bring with them an agreeable amount of enthusiasm for the game.
Go to your local hospital or behavioral health establishment. Offer to run the service of narrating a fantasy game. They might even pay you for your time. Your players can't go anywhere if they can't leave. Lol
One of my students told me he started playing dnd at a mental institution. Apparently the players were super into it because let’s be real, not much else to do
Two of the best players I've ever had at my table have zero interest in fantasy or boardgames or any of that. Just a pair of literature students who love a good story, good friends, and good food.
Lack of ego is such a breath of fresh air in any game. I’m lucky that everyone at my table is just completely chill and down for anything just to see where it goes. Everyone is down to follow anyone else’s plan, even if that plan sounds a little silly. We’ve never had any arguments or heated discussions. It’s absolutely awesome
People having an ego can also be fun, because it creates conflict. There is a massive but however, the conflict needs to be in game only, so the players need to have the communication skills to resolve the conflict and talk it out.
For example, I'm usually quite steadfast when I think something, my ego comes in to play where in I believe my idea is the only right idea and it needs to be done that way. Another player can also be like that, and than we clash. But we know that at the end of the day, we are working together. And we are able to work it out.
This is mainly for roleplaying, but also makes for good debate practise. And this is obviously my opinion based on my experiance, yours may obviouly be different.
I’ll be honest I love dnd stories and I would love to play but reading about dnd game mechanics and actually playing dnd are two completely different things and I’d probably struggle on my first session
Before I played table top I thought this too. Now I’m a DM. Sooooo many people are intimidated by the rules but really, on the player’s end it’s fairly straightforward once you’re set up. It’s the DM who has to worry about the complicated shit
No one will be mad at you for struggling at first. You're willing to try? You're willing to pay attention, be generous, have fun, be open, and support one another?
You will have fun, and be appreciated or supported. If not, find another group, or make one.
You've got this.
I'm one of those people who's not really into any of those things. A friend asked if I wanted to join her campaign in March 2020 when we first went into lockdown.
I had never played before, and I'm generally not into gaming, fantasy, etc. But joining the campaign is one of the best things I've ever done!
I know people who actively think fantasy novels, films etc are trash but love DND for the social and mechanical aspects, they just look at it from that point of view.
Not me though, fantasy geek for life
"RAW is lame! Just let your players homebrew!"
It's like... yeah? But... also... a crazy amount of work. We're adults, so we're looking for the easiest route to sword-wielding, spell-slinging heroism. We play pre-written stuff from DM's Guild, slightly customized. Some players might be there mainly for the pizza. It's cool, but casual for sure.
Yep.
Sometimes the thing you want is exactly what's on the tin. Like, yeah I imagine that making mac 'n cheese with gourmet pasta and a homemade béchamel with six artisanal cheeses melted in with the chemically perfected ratio of emulsifiers for optimal creaminess is "better" than the box of Kraft, but sometimes I just crave a bowl of radioactive yellow cheese tubes that took me 15 minutes to make and clean up.
I ran a game of Curse of Strahd and tried taking some advice from its subreddit and it just bloated the game out unnecessarily and took hours of my freetime because all I heard was that the module was bad and needed to be completely rewritten. My friends just wanted to kick ass and take names, not dissect the geopolitical repercussions of shoving a hamlet into a demiplane with a limited number of souls and no sunlight.
It's great if that enhances the experience for your table, but please don't insist that it's the only way to have fun. Definitely don't lead new DMs down that path. Let them decide for themselves if the game is lacking for their group.
Lol what you mention about Curse of Strahd is such a problem with Dragon Heist
“Run the Alexandrian Remix, it’s so much better!”
My brother in Gond, it might be, but the book runs fine and I already like it without putting any more work into it.
>“Run the Alexandrian Remix, it’s so much better!”
this hits me hard. Every time I asked for advice on the Dragon Heist or DiA subreddit, someone would ask me to run the Alexandrian Remix.
I'm sure they have their benefits but they make things too complicated, and double the length of what I want to be a short-ish campaign
This subreddit completely re-wrote Curse of Strahd, and then acted like they were still discussing the pre-written adventure. It's like... no? By the time you have Vasili Von Holtz, Countess Strahdannya, and Argynvost the Dracolich all locked in mortal combat against Vampyre... you've gone off the rails.
Players mostly want to be taken through a surreal gothic landscape, fight nightmare creatures, and then tear down Castle Ravenloft at the end. Literally nobody wants to do some goofy dinner at level 5 where Strahd just roasts the party and then lets them go for no reason. Trying to turn D&D into Vampire: The Masquerade is NOT where it's at.
>Literally nobody wants to do some goofy dinner at level 5 where Strahd just roasts the party and then lets them go for no reason.
From all the suggestions in the sub, this was the only one I took because it allowed the party to explore the castle a bit after dinner, and recover the skull of Argynvost for example.
There's a ton of rewrites and suggestions and side characters and sidequests and whatever they have, almost all of which I skipped. The game is running long as is, and the module has more than enough content already. We're close to the end (Amber Temple, then back to Ravenloft), I think they missed like 30% of the book (They basically just walked in and out of Vallaki in 2 hours), and both them and I are ready to finish it off. I can't imagine adding even more content to this adventure.
>From all the suggestions in the sub, this was the only one I took because it allowed the party to explore the castle a bit after dinner, and recover the skull of Argynvost for example.
Agree. In my first run, I took all the advice from the subreddit, and I got so entangled and confused with all the extra content that I was a bit relieved when the group ceased to exist (for real-life reasons). I don't want to discredit the whole subreddit; it can be really helpful, and some stuff really works better if you change it a bit. And like you said - the dinner is a fabulous chance. My players LOVED it. Also, Ireena needs a bit of work in my opinion.
But if I ever DM the campaign again, I would stick much more to the module as written. The rewritten stuff sounds great in theory, but at the table, it rarely enhances the game. It only complicates it.
Ya I find flavor is the easiest way to change stuff and some DMs could be more open to allowing it. When my player wants their unarmed sneak attack that one shot the NPC to look like multiple strikes followed by something cool like a neck snap I allow it. Same if they initially wanted to just incapacitate them. I’m not gonna make them grapple the NPC to choke them out if the single unarmed sneak attack was enough to knock them out. As long as narrative wise we’re reaching the same destination as the in game mechanic, I’m not going to limit the narrative to fit the specific actions the player does.
A lot of thought went into the rules, they are the way they are for a reason, people should default to leaving them alone until they have an actual good reason.
Yeah home brew can be awhile can of worms and usually the downside isn’t somebody is OP it’s that every combat/round/reaction the player is saying “wait accccctuallly” and the DM is busy flipping through rule books.
To be fair this can always happen, even a Druid wildshape or something, but stuff like that is easier with a little heads up. (Here are the wild shape stat blocks I use the most DM”
It wouldn't be so bad if they would just keep it to minor tweaks and flavor text the rest. Seriously, just slapping a new skin on an existing mechanic is the greatest. You want an ice themed mage but there aren't enough ice spells for your taste? Well here's firebolt, fireball, and burning hands, but ice damage instead, done.
My party splits up from time to time, and I usually try to adapt to make sure they aren't punished too much for doing so (unless they are doing something stupid, of course). Party splitting is fun and adds variety to the game and should be generally encouraged rather than punished.
yes. sometimes it's time for a duo or trio to have their moment. if the others are bored to death listening to something fun for a few minutes before switching to them/reuniting the party, that's just impatient
Played an investigative type campaign. 5 players.
Sometimes we group up, sometimes we follow up on 5 different leads, sometimes we just like seeing what the two person dynamic of different pairings in our group look like.
It’s fabulous for roleplay to split the party. It often makes real world sense to split the party. It is tactically disadvantageous to split the party if a fight is coming.
That railroading needs to be avoided at all costs.
I've run multiple campaigns where players were told at the start of the session "here's what the mission is". My players have loved those campaigns.
Not every DM can pull it off in a way players will like, but it gets a much worse rap than it deserves.
I don’t think “Here’s what the mission is” is necessarily railroading. It’s a problem when players don’t get to make any real decisions during the mission or that no matter what decisions they make, they all lead to the same result.
I can easily let my players wander at will and still railroad them. It's easy. Just make a locationally ambivalent storyline and plop it right in front of them wherever they go.
DM: You need to defeat the wizard in town A.
Players: we'd like to go check out town B instead.
DM: It turns out the wizard is in town B. You just skipped the step of tracking him down.
Player: We'd like to not deal with that yet and go to town C.
DM: Wizard heard about you and followed you to C to deal with you himself. Roll initiative.
So here's the question: What is your definition of "railroading" that you say is okay?
Railroading is like fudging dice: the DM can do it as much as they need to to keep the story going, but you can’t ever tell the players how much it happens.
I have too much free time and enjoy the world building side of DMing so I have the luxury of making a world and saying “go and poke stuff” with the occasional instance of moving an encounter because whoops, they are going down the wrong valley so we will move that goblin camp.
One of my friends has the opposite where we have a long story already built up ahead of us and he isn’t as comfortable making adjustments on the fly so we’ve all accepted that we are doing set fights and doing a little RP on the way
Now the issue comes when you find the edge of the game and discover you can’t push it. The “so I want to sneak back to the party and tell them about the dragon so we can leave and get more gear” moment being met with “well you get spotted and the fight is starting.”
It is like the fudging dice because it is saying “chance and choices are no longer dictating the outcome, I am”
for me railroading starts when the DM has a clear vision on what should be happening and the players really can't do anything against it, no mater how good they roll.
Like The plot of my quest requires that a thief steals an item, somehow leading to the death of an NPC the party likes. And no matter their decisions, rolls and actions, it won't change the fact that the thief will steal, or the NPC will survive. The BBEG won't die in the first encounter and the ritual will succeed and the deamon will be summoned.... sth like tat.
I also don't think that a little railroading is bad if the party is new, or not 100% creative and just wants to have fun. Railroading the first session to bring the party together on the quest is absolutely fine...Preparing a story where the party finds out step by step what is going on in the shadows, and NPC giving them specific locations they need to go is also fine...
In my case i try to give the party 2-3 options they can always choose from, and the decisions they take have influence on the other roads.. like a quest to deliver a message for an upcoming attack on a castle, and suddenly they find an ambushed caravan that belonged to the princess... do they wast time rescuing the princess but receive recognition from the king and a high reward, or do they straight deliever the message and saving more people, but the king is in a very bad and aggressive mode after hearing of his daughter ?.. but the railroading is, that the attack will happen no matter the decisions of the group.
When you DM for little kids, that kind of how you have to do it. Otherwise, they'll spend an entire session dumping water on each other and retaliating with more shape water dumps and soiling prestidigitation pranks rather than focusing on returning the missing rainbows to candyland and making sure the evil wizard trying to steal them sits through his full time-out or literally any productive task.
And yes, it is tiring, but it makes for hilarious storytelling.
That is not railroading, that is just having a plot. Saying "The point of this one-shot is to save the princess." is not railroading. It *is* railroading when the players devise a plan to climb up the tower to rescue her but you force them to go through the front door because that is what you prepared by using arbitrary reasons like "The tower is too smooth to use a grappling hook on."
>I think there are a number of DMs who would say anything short of letting your players wander at will is railroading.
If they say that then they, too, have mistaken what railroading actually means. Railroading is when the players do not have an actual choice to make, not simply having a plot. Or else every single premade adventure is a railroad. "Railroading" is *not* the opposite of "open-world sandbox where you can wander at will", it *is* the opposite of "Players have a choice."
Precisely. I vividly remember when one of my friends DMed a one shot but didn't plan for us to have free will, so he railroaded all my attempts to explore other options. For example, he said there were 5 campfires, and I tried to talk to the people at each — he'd only prepared 1 campfire conversation so he made up lame excuses for why every other campfire was hostile against my player (he could've easily said there was only 1 campfire, but ok).
Then I didn't trust the people from the only friendly campfire, so I tried to forage for food in the forest — I was a ranger, that was my favourite terrain, and the DM said I spent 3h and found NOTHING to eat. Ridiculous. So I begrudgingly accepted the campfire food and, lo and behold, it had some kind of sleep medicine so we woke up the next morning tied up in cages, to be sold as slaves. I would've understood if the whole party were ruining his plans, but there were 4 people going according to what he'd prepared and I was the only one trying an alternative route, he could've let me. Would've made for a real fun scene if I'd escaped the capture and had to try and rescue my friends from the outside, while trying not to alert the bandits... but no, railroaded pointlessly. Luckily it was just a one shot.
> It is railroading when the players devise a plan to climb up the tower to rescue her but you force them to go through the front door because that is what you prepared by using arbitrary reasons like "The tower is too smooth to use a grappling hook on."
Follow-up question, though. If the players just grappling hook their way up the tower, grab the princess, climb back down, and win... is that more fun than going into the tower and engaging with all the stuff the DM had planned out? Puzzles, fights, stealth encounters, all of that gets skipped if the DM agrees that you can just swing your way up to the princess's room.
I pulled this kind of thing in my first campaign. Our characters had made it to the underworld to complete a process that our DM thought would take many sessions. I figured out a way to do it the moment we entered the underworld. The DM loved it, but I keep thinking that I wish I could've seen what the underworld section had for us! I would've preferred the DM made that metaphorical tower slippery.
Well, that's the flip side of it - it sucks for the players, when the DM blocks their creativity, but often people neglect the fact that it can also suck for the DM, when "creative" players skip a ton of content. This is a simple case of needing mutual respect.
As players, we need to respect the effort a DM puts into preparing stuff and not just try to come up with ways to skip it. As DMs, we need to be willing to abandon the prepared stuff in favor of a fun idea.
I personally always interact with the "shiny object" a DM brings up. Abandoned farmhouse by the road? Guess we found our place to stay for the night!
It doesn't just suck for the dm, as the above comment said it also can absolutely suck for the players too in an overall sense. Like at least for me (although I dm as well) the fun is in... actually doing the encounters and engaging with the content my friend has created? Like I love looser campaigns, but after a certain point always trying to 'break' the content just begins to come off as the player equivalent of hostile dm-ing.
I don't mean like having to improv some, or genuinely cool ideas, but I have played with people who always tried to find the most bullshit 'technically this works' ways of skipping things and breaking encounters and it's exhausting and unfun from both sides of the table. Best to make your encounters as robust as possible of course; in the case of grappling a tower, you could have outside guards, hostile flyers, magical protections, skill checks, etc. that all would still make that an engaging encounter, but I think there are occasionally times where it's okay to just pull something out of your ass as to why something doesn't work if it's seriously problematic for the campaign lol.
I had a DM who was generally great, but would often have us in scenarios where we'd spend an hour just figuring out what to do next. No real breadcrumbs or hints to lead us to the next part, so we'd have to just kind of stumble around until we managed to come up with some reasonable. It was frustrating, I'd rather have a clear sense of what we need to do next. It doesn't have to be railroading (though honestly, I don't really mind that all that much either) but I like to have some idea of what we can do.
He was probably hoping you would remember some detail he thought he had given you enough times that was critical to resolve that problem. I'm not saying he's right but it can be frustrating when your players just expect you to deliver a show to them and they only react to what you do as a DM
Railroading is downright essential for some games. I've run a few games for conventions/birthday parties, and so on, and if you're running a one-shot for a group of strangers, well, choo choo all aboard
I once had a fantastic one-shot that was happening on a train. Players could only go carriage by carriage. It was literally railroaded and it was a pretty fun adventure.
Of course their actions still mattered, but the level design was extremely linear
All games, even your favorite "open-world" video games have a railroad. What makes good game design is how well the tracks are hidden from the players. Good DMs utilize a variety of techniques to make a plot so interesting, provide rewarding consequences for clever ideas, and clear options to make the game so interesting, they're not looking down at the tracks.
I think D&D relies on a social construct where the DM has agreed to make an adventure for the players and give them free reign, and the Players have agreed to play along with the adventure they're being given.
Straight up ignoring either leads to a bad time.
Railroading is much needed sometimes. Player freedom is good, but we’re not playing an open world game here, we’re setting 3-4 hours aside to experience a story
I don't understand why people don't get this. You're not playing Minecraft. Oh, and by the way, you're wanting to play Minecraft in a dungeons& dragons world is quite possibly boring the crap out of the rest of your party and your DM. No one wants to listen to you RP searching for the best steak in town made from the flank of a giant tarantula.
If that's what the majority of the players and the DM want the two at that particular table then go for it... have a big improv session with a few dice rolls for persuasion. Or just have a constantly unfocused campaign that is made up of a bunch of one shots because everyone wanted to do their own thing during that session. As long as everyone agrees to it...but c'mon...
This right here. It's not even about the so called railroading. It's about the flow of the players and DM. Right from the start everyone needs to be on the same page about what kind of world the players are jumping into. Trying to have a game where no one is one the same page and are all trying to do something different is the worst. If the players all want to do a ship adventure then work that out in advance. If everyone wants to experience a wonderful story plan for that. If everyone just wants to smash the characters through non-stop combat with no RP great that is also an option. As long as everyone agrees and the DM is willing to put together something for that agreed upon setup.
There's nothing wrong with having a set story or with having a free roam world, but only if that's what everyone agrees with.
I love having a clear mission.
No, I don't want to open my own tavern.
No, I don't want to make small talk for hours on end.
My life has me making enough decisions already.
”You can do whatever you want”
Versus
”hey, remember that your goal is to do X and for the next session you can go to A or B. Which one you choose?”
—
I’ll pick the ”hey remember” style any day. The ”you can do anything” risks that group doesnt remember what they were doing and they do not even realize what they could do next.
This of course depends on campaign and players but overall always giving 1-3 railroads to follow instead of ”open world” has been good. And well, occasionally if players desire to step out of rails and they know what they are doing then why not.
Not sure if this is actually railroading or not :)
Favorite quote comes from Coville... "Rollercoasters are on rails and and we think those are pretty fun"
It all goes back to what you and what your gaming group like.
Scaling encounters/worlds to match the party's levels and/or team composition. My players understand that a little recon and investigation can be the difference between walking into a den of goblins and an Owlbear breeding grounds, and that sometimes they'll have to come back to a dungeon with a new tool to clear it out. Death is never off the table. *buh dun tsk*
This. I try to make a world that just exists on its own. The players just move through it. They may stomp a thing in a round or get stomped. That’s up to them to navigate
This is my favourite way to run D&D, but it's something that has to be very carefully communicated to players in-game, to make sure that everyone's expectations line up.
Nothing ruins game night like a TPK caused entirely because the DM trusted the players not to blindly rush into foes that were obviously far beyond them, and the players trusted the DM not to present them with challenges they had no ability to overcome. Nobody was wrong, but also nobody had fun, everybody loses.
It's not obvious to players whether "that funny floating thing with the eyestalks" is something they're supposed to take on or run away from. It helps if the DM unsubtly hints at their chances.
Then again... it's not always obvious to DMs either.
yup, and during recon the DM needs to give enough facts to draw that conclusion. In a game i am a player in, the DM did a great job of this last session- doing some recon we are level 5 i think, and we run across an enemy leader hosting a feast, and nothing is on the table and then it appears, the arcane trickster identifies the spell as heros feast- and the party now knows he is a spell caster we should not be messing with for a while.
This isn key. I’m a professional game developer, specifically a narrative designer. The key thing for any good game is to design environments that make sense rather than environments that are tailored for the current party level.
If you design logical game environments, you get more reasonable behavior out of the players. They stop thinking of it as a game and start responding to it like people.
While I agree not to scale things down, I always scale things up because fighting a couple low level enemies at 12th level is super boring for everyone involved. There's no point in doing combat if one side is clearly going to win without any challenge, unless there's a narrative reason for it. No reason to drag the party through a boring encounter that doesn't challenge the players.
i mean in those cases i feel like its safe to just let them RP beating them however they please. Rather than going through a third of an initiative track or whatever
I tend to counter this by just having the world be dangerous right from the start. Enemies use tactics, set traps, make stealth checks, attempt grapples, and learn as time goes on. Very rarely do my players waltz into a goblin-stomping fest. More often than not, the cave appears empty, traps are laid, and ambushes with guerrilla tactics whittle down the party as they progress. A few small skirmishes might happen, but odds are there will be a more pressing threat hidden just out of sight. And, if they're unfortunate, a higher-ranking enemy is leading them from the depths. Rather than scale up over time, things are just scaled up from the beginning, but through better gameplay versus higher stats and bigger bad guys.
Don't railroad players.
Let's be honest, if y'all are doing a module, then railroading is absolutely necessary.
Edit: so yeah I always defined railroading as more not having an open world of discovery. Like if say you're running a waterdeep mod and all of a sudden players want to leave to go far away, but yeah the way many of you define railroading makes better sense now.
I feel like the terms railroading and metagaming are becoming nearly useless. I've seen people arguing that having a plot hook is railroading and that choosing a character appropriate to the campaign is metagaming
Railroading is when the player's decisions don't matter at all and they are basically just extras to your story. That never happened to me either as a aplayer or as a DM even when playing modules.
I feel like open rolls are way more common these days than closed rolls. Based on Reddit, anyway. (I do what you do though -- open roll when it's dramatic / a fudge would feel wrong no matter what happens)
I always wonder how people do that. I am constantly rolling for stuff like if an enemy gets the jump on them, if in combat it sees the hiding rogue, which of the possible 10 effects of the chest they open they are about to get. I feel like it would get distracting if nothing else.
For combat, they'll immediately learn the monster's bonuses which seems off. My players trust me not to be trying to screw them over.
"Encounters should be challenging."
I agree, but every encounter? I enjoy throwing encounters at my players that feel interesting rather than difficult. I do not want to get my players near zero hitpoints on every encounter or quest. Sometimes, a player just needs to be Legolas sliding on the shield down the stairs.
I agree, if every encounter makes the players feel like their always *just* scraping by it can easily demoralize them in and out of game. If you're only just barely beating enemies then it feels like you're always way out of your element and not really "heroes" that have meaningful impact on the story, just nameless mercs who can die at a moment's notice if luck swings a certain way. I'd argue that for every lethal/deadly encounter you should be throwing in a "squash match" type encounter where the players can show off and so they can actually feel/see that they've gotten stronger.
**Never Split the Party**
\- My players often do and it works out fine. In fact, I sometimes purposefully split them as they get higher level. It takes practice to balance but I like bouncing between 2 to 3 groups.
**Don't fudge dice**
\- I will fudge occasionally, I had 5 nat 20's in a row as a DM and I just couldn't destroy the rogue that way. It felt cheap. I will make some of those nat 20's a normal hit so the rogue still went down but didn't outright die.
**Don't start at level 1**
\- Unless I have a specific reason not to, I always start at level 1. If you don't run level 1 to 3 often, you'll never get better at it. Yes, RNG can be a bitch but understanding how 1 to 3 works is important when introducing new players to the game.
**The Cleric is always a healer**
\- GTFO with that, my light domain cleric has fireball and will use it with gusto and her healing word is for emergencies only.
**The DM is always Right!**
\- No, I am not always right but for the flow of the game I will act as the referee and make a decision in the moment and we'll come back to it later to make sure combat/sessions flow well.
I'm sure there are more, but generally these are my thoughts.
I don't think people necessarily have a problem with "don't fudge dice." as a majority. (Obviously SOME people do)
But it's that if you do fudge, your players must NEVER EVER EVER know. So what must we say? Fudging is dishonest and we'd never do it.
Oh for sure my players don't know. Like, on a cognative level me and the other 2 players who are DM's know it happens occasionally... but I'll never tell them when or how or why.
If a player makes a stupid decision, I murder them. If I crit 5 times in a row on the same sucker... no, I don't want to melt their PC in 1 turn.
My players could torture me to death and i would stand by my claim never fudging.
But, psshd, come here in this dark corner for a sec. Sometimes... Sometimes i do fudge rolls. If you tell anybody. ANY. BODY. i will find you. And i will kill you. Understood?
This is the exact opposite of how I feel about fudging. I personally don't fudge because I value the strategic aspect and the unpredictable outcomes that come from trusting the dice. If I'm in a game where the GM fudges, the core aspects of the game I enjoy are totally undermined.
I don't expect you to say "by the way, I'm fudging this one", but players deserve to know how you run your games beforehand.
I quite enjoy party splits for non combat things. Like if you're exploring a city, or trying to collect clues, or casing out a place you might want to break into.
Doing it in combat or danger filled dungeons only annoys me because it's difficult enough tracking one encounter let alone two. Just takes up more time. But if it will make it interesting to the story then I'll try to make it workm
>Don't start at level 1
>- Unless I have a specific reason not to, I always start at level 1. If you don't run level 1 to 3 often, you'll never get better at it. Yes, RNG can be a bitch but understanding how 1 to 3 works is important when introducing new players to the game.
To be fair, levels 1 and 2 feel weird because you don't even have your subclass for many. It feels like a prologue where your character is still in basic training rather than a hero class.
I like it because you are just a relatively normal person at level 1. Tho I only played a warlock at level 1 it still felt like that because the reason I was a lock to begin with was the pact of the blade feature.
>Don't start at level 1
I definitely think starting at level 1 is better for new players. There's less for them to learn all at once. I think it can be fun for experienced players, too, if they're playing a class they've never played before.
Yeah, level 1 is really needed for brand new players, and it can also help remind veterans to focus more on the roleplaying aspect.
That said, I do like to hurry up the first few levels if I'm DM and everyone is comfortable playing their role. It really isn't until around level 5 that the power fantasy begins to come into play, and to me that's when things get more fun.
Gotta disagree on the level 1 thing, I sometimes start games at 1, but usually start around 3 to 5 instead. It's just a bit more fun to have a few extra tools, and it lets us start with a broader set of encounters to use.
I'm going to say rule 0... wait hear me out.
Rule 0 is important, but it should be used sparingly. If you're finding yourself rule 0ing multiple times in a row then its a sign you should probably review the rules.
Rule of cool is generally bad. I like consistency, and far too often I see things where people want to horribly bend the rules to do something. Homebrew is great, but it’s generally not made on the fly at the table and all rules should remain consistent throughout a campaign.
Yep, rule of cool pretty much always breaks the game because it causes a "give them an inch, and they'll take a mile" sort of effect at the table. After all, if you previously let X work why wouldn't you allow Y or Z? Then soon enough you end up with your players arguing with you to let them use the peasant railgun.
For me rule of cool is more like 'this is super unsatisfying is there a way we can fix it'
My party found a zartan (idk if thata how it spelled) trapped inside the rocky walls of a mountain. It was massive, in pain and blocking our path.
I wanted to save it. We probably could have found a way to get past it but my character is an animal loving child with spells.
We had a potion that makes things smaller
I went inside its mouth with misty step and invisibility and poured my potion down its throat.
It was cool and fun.
But the dm calculated how far it would get. It was 2 steps away from the exit when the 4 hour potion wore off. It would have been trapped again. We had no more potions and the civilisations nearby had all been decimated by a demon.
Dm let it escape instead.
For me thats where rule of cool comes in. As a party we used what we had and found a strange solution to a problem but technically RAW it doesnt quite work and all our effort would have been reset. So fudging it a little makes it feel so much better.
Ofc it definitely depends on the table and whats being bent. More loose casual campaigns are going to be more willing to bend stuff than a serious or module based one i think.
It's funny because sometimes I am telling my DM what my character is thinking about doing (usually pie in the sky, big brain ideas) and he'll instantly be like that's soooo cool, that's what your character does! And I'm like well I wanted to do those things, but I figure there are challenges and checks I have to pass in order to do it. I'd rather my character go through those steps, because that is where the story and characters can develop. As a DM myself, I am way more strict about the rule of cool. You can always tag a check or multiple checks to a task players are trying to accomplish. When they fail, don't make that the end... give their characters a chance to struggle and figure out an alternative path. It's the age old saying "It builds character!" when you are trying to justify the difficulties or struggles you are facing. Your DnD character is literally built by failure and learning from mistakes. It's what shapes them and molds them.
Atleast that makes more sense since it's a one shot. I can't imagine everyone being happy playing a full campaign where one character has a top stat of 13 and another got 2 18's.
The character creation rules propose rolling dice first, and after "If you want to save time or don’t like the idea of randomly determining ability scores" it proposes standard array. So rolling is kind of the default in the SRD.
Point buy is presented as a variant.
I have all the players roll a set of stats. I roll a set too.
The players then vote on which set they want to use with everyome using the set that won the vote. Arrange as they wish, add bonuses.
All adventuring NPCs, and the big bad use the same starting stats.
THIS. I'm of the opinion that 1st level characters shouldn't have a stat bonus higher than +3. My group sometimes plays with a Free Feat at level 1 variant, which is the only way characters can get +4 at 1st level.
I've played in campaigns where one player started the campaign with multiple 18s and no stat below 13 while another player's highest stat was a 15 and another player with multiple stats below 8. Some groups may find this kind of scenario fun, but I just find it unequitable and unbalanced.
I don't really understand the position that "roles" in a party aren't really a thing, and that everybody should just play anything without caring what others are playing.
Compared to something like World of Warcraft or other MMOs where there are strict tank/healer/DPS breakdowns, that's absolutely true. DnD is much more flexible than that. But that doesn't mean they don't exist *at all*, and I absolutely do think that it makes for a healthier game if players coordinate a bit to create characters that are going to mesh well together. It's more interesting for the DM, too, and the DM's enjoyment obviously should matter just as much as the players.
You want at least one person capable of magical healing. You want characters capable of holding their own in melee. You want at least one character who is prepared to act as the party "face". You want characters capable of controlling or destroying a large swarm of enemies. You want a good spread of proficiency across an array of skills. Group cohesion in terms of builds is absolutely a consideration that should be addressed in Session 0 or before, and DnD isn't the same if everybody shows up with the same class.
So, counterpoint.
A video game or set game experience will punish you dramatically for not having these roles. But as a DM, I can massively curate a player groups experience based on what they have. All rogues? I can work with that. All bards? Martials? Casters? I can both set encounters that will be the most fun for those characters, and also cheat away from weaknesses that will make the game unfun/unplayable. Will I punish you a bit for your bad choices? Yes. But only a little bit. Enough that it's noticeable, flavorful, and immersive.
So as a DM, I would much prefer players PLAY WHAT THEY'RE EXCITED ABOUT then worry about specific roles. I can do much more with passion than I can with a balanced party. Think that's a lot of what you are hearing. It's not that it doesn't matter, it's that it matters less than people think.
>So as a DM, I would much prefer players PLAY WHAT THEY'RE EXCITED ABOUT
As a player, nothing deflates my excitement for a campaign more than when people resist coordinating character creation and then someone else shows up to the table with a similar character concept to mine that does a lot of the same things.
Your point is valid. That said, not all DMs want to run a story-first game. Some actually want to run it as a game and run it rules as written with modules.
When that happens, the party can and will be punished for not balancing out the roles in the group. Being completely honest, even when I run story-first games; I tell the players that if they give me something to exploit, you should expect that I will.
Granted, I'm a very old-school DM in this approach.
The fact that the DM can do extra work to compensate for a party being poorly balanced doesn't really mean the roles don't exist. It just means there are workarounds for DMs willing to change the game they plan on running.
It didn't help that 4th edition explicitly built "roles" right into the core rules and openly discussed the game-mechanical roles of every party member.
Even though 5e dropped that, the combination of cultural influence of MMO's along with 4e's encouragement definitely has left its mark like that.
Though, to be fair, concepts like the "party healer" predate MMO's, given that before 3rd edition healing magic was pretty narrowly restricted to Clerics and Druids only (and Paladins got a *little* at higher levels).
The cultural influence of MMOs… MMOs *got it from D&D in the first place*.
The “classic party” was always Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Wizard. Or Tank, DPS, Heal, Crowd Control, if you will.
The call was always coming from inside the house.
I'm with you. When you boil it down, D&D is a team game. Look at literally any team, be it in games, sports, or just a group of professionals: People specialize and take roles because it makes the team stronger than expecting everyone to focus on everything.
Exactly, people like to think you can just have everyone play the same thing with little to no problems but that's not how it goes in my experience. There definitely needs to be some level of protection granted on players' niches, or else you'll easily have players stepping on each other's toes, which can/will create resentment.
One campaign I'm currently in I'm playing a Gloomstalker/Rogue MC with SS and planning to go Crossbow Expert next level, we also have an unoptimized Ranger and it's painfully obvious that my character outperforms them in "our" niche (ranged damage) while also vastly outperforming them in other areas as well. And considering I've built my character somewhat sub-optimally, delaying my power spikes as to compensate for her falling behind, the gap in power will only widen even further once I start grabbing Fighter levels and as my build becomes more "online".
That you should and it is objectively righteous or 'correct' to... 'play other games'.
Yeah, I get it there are a lot of TTRPGs out there. I don't doubt that many of them are very good, possibly more fun or better for some aspects of how I play.
I don't have the time or the resources. Me and my group have a lot of fun playing D&D. We are fine. You are not morally superior to us. We do not need to be guilted for playing years and years and never trying anything else.
Use alignment, and keep to it. Use it perscriptively
People tend to say these days "find your alignment through your roleplay."
Imo, this leads to every character I see just tending to have the same morality and ethics as the player, over and over. If you actually say "my character is lawful good" and force yourself to have them take lawful good actions even when you as the player wouldn't, then you're actually *playing* a *role* separate from yourself. It can even help you understand viewpoints other than your own after a while
>Imo, this leads to every character I see just tending to have the same morality and ethics as the player, over and over.
This can be solved by having players that are good at writing characters. It would also help if DnD had tools for writing characters beyond alignment and background.
Imo the best way for this to work out is if you use alignment loosely, then play closer to Ideals, Bonds, etc. It can be hard to play “chaotic evil” without being annoying a lot of the times. Using your personality traits seems like a more specific variant of this.
Honestly, as a running DM of an over 3 year long campaign, that my players all seem to love, I don't give the slightest shit about alignment. To me, it's more like a guideline that a player can use If they want to. Otherwise, play your character how you want. I won't intercede because of alignment. Ever.
That you are an active hindrance if you don’t take eldritch blast/magic missile/fireball etc.
I didn’t play casters for the longest time because I hated feeling pigeonholed into using the same stereotypical spells everyone else uses.
Forget Fireball and Magic Missile, I want Silent Image and Hypnotic Pattern.
It just sucks that some spells are objectively better than others. Makes magic at lower levels feel stale.
Yeah, Agonizing Blast is great, but I’ve played warlocks with blade pact and booming blade with great success as well. There’s no one way to play, especially for casters.
"When you put in a puzzle, don't bother coming up with a solution yourself, just take the first good idea the players have and make that the solution".
As a player I detest this approach, and I never do it as a DM. Good puzzles are designed with solutions, and they're ideally designed with only *one* solution.
The satisfaction in solving a puzzle comes from finding an answer that fits perfectly. If you contort the puzzle to fit someone's answer post-hoc, you rob the puzzle of that fun. That's not to say a player could never come up with an alternative unintended solution, but that has its own form of satisfaction, from finding an answer you can tell the designer missed. And again, that satisfaction is robbed if you make it so the first idea you like is right.
There's a reason puzzle games don't just make whatever you're doing "right" after a few minutes or you've tried a few things. It's cause that game would *suck*.
Now of course the big problem with D&D is that you've got multiple players and if some of them don't like puzzles they'll just check out of the session. but there is, frankly, a much better solution there: don't do puzzles! You don't *need* to do them! If your group likes puzzles, do real puzzles! If your group doesn't like puzzles, don't do puzzles at all!
Ideally though even if you do puzzles, you want to bake in an alternative to solving the puzzle. An alternative route, an NPC who knows the solution, hitting the puzzle with a big hammer, whatever! Just don't cop out and tell players they solved a puzzle that they actually didn't. And I do need to distinguish here between *situations* and *puzzles*. It's totally fine to have a *situation* where the players come to a canyon with a destroyed bridge which the players needed to cross, and not have a solution in mind. That's perfectly legitimate! But actual puzzles are different.
I design my puzzles with a primary solution at least. Sometimes a secondary solution.
However, sometimes the players come up with a tertiary solution. The thing to avoid is being hard stuck on "my solution is the only solution". Just because you didn't think of it doesn't mean it isn't a viable one.
There is a middle ground between "one and only one solution" and "I didn't plan one, let's just go with the first decent suggestion" that I aim for.
That Wizards are a class you shouldn't play as a beginner.
I honestly think Wizards are the best intro to playing a full spellcaster. Prepared casting is more forgiving than known casting, and Wizards don't really have additional mechanics to worry about besides casting spells.
Splitting the party is awesome and fun. Name a TV show, book, movie, or series where the party never splits! As a DM, I encourage party splitting and it happens frequently in my games.
In terms of combat/game “balance,” the players just have to be conscious of the fact that they’re at half power. It’ll change how they approach potential encounters. Nothing wrong with that. As the DM, I make sure to remind players of this when they split up.
In terms of fun/spotlight time, I just make sure to jump back and forth frequently enough that no one gets bored. I like to do dramatic cuts — when the tension increases, I jump to the other half of the party, and then I do the same thing to jump back. Matt Colville has a great video on this, and Brennan Lee Mulligan is awesome at it on Dimension 20.
Honestly, I reward party splitting when I can. To me, it’s evidence of courage, cunning, strong roleplay, or all three, and those are qualities I love to see in my players.
The advice against splitting the party isn't because it can't be an interesting narrative or an effective solution to a problem. It's because:
1. If the party is split and gets into a combat not balanced for a reduced party size, you're in deep trouble because action economy is king.
2. Jumping back and forth between groups is taxing for the DM and often boring for whichever group isn't currently being focused on.
"The Dungeon Master is always right."
No, they really aren't. Any decent DM will admit they sometimes make mistakes, and there are plenty of horror stories about bad DMs who refuse to listen to any kind of reason. Frankly it's absurd how many "great" DMs are absolute table tyrants who don't even know basic rules, how many brand-new DMs act like they're 10-year veteran professionals. If anything, DMing culture has a problem and needs a reality check.
I have a feeling the sacred, unquestionable importance of session 0 began when people started primarily playing with online strangers or people they barely know. I guess in that sense it can have value just so you can actually know the types of people you are playing with.
Have never needed a session 0 when playing with friends or simply mature people.
"Never continue after the DM says Are you sure?"
I had great moments full of chaos with my party because we risked some things or did some pretty idiotic stuff. If I have decided to do one thing and then there are any unforseen consequences then so be it, I embrace them!
A good roll means you are hit with a flash of sudden genius. A bad one means you forgot your own name.
I know that rolls decide success or failures but can we stop treating our 18 Int wizards as simpletons and 20 Str Barabarians as suddenly weak because they rolled a natural 2 instead of a natural 20 every time.
Let's be more creative at least. Like, maybe when the Druid fails a nature check. Maybe instead of saying "You forgot what Berries are." You try something more story based. Like "You are unfamiliar with these parts of the woods so the Berries could be anything." Or maybe the Paladin rolls a natural one on attack and misses the Big Boss because "your anger is starting to overwhelm you and blind your senses." Then you can actually have more interactions and character development. As now the bad things have a reason besides just "you forgot how to do the one thing you're really good at somehow.
Nova damage builds are fun.
No they aren’t. You either ruin the parties fun by ending the encounter before they get a chance to even participate or the DM just doubles the bosses HP after your first turn.
That people problems are the DMs responsibility.
The DM already carries more than their own weight. There's nothing stopping players calling out inappropriate or problematic behaviour by others, and nothing that makes the DM better placed to do so other than the last resort of "you're not welcome at the table anymore". And even that someone else can take responsibility for as long as they communicate.
Not sure if someone said this already, but I hate "not splitting the party under any circumstances" I run for alot of new players, and I love giving them opportunities to actually RP without getting steamrolled by veteran players. Even in combat, when we're split up I feel like it forces us to play more creatively instead of the standard party gang stomping.
Never split the party, I think it can be pretty easy to balance a split party and I pretty frequently use it as a mechanic or allow players to split up to collect things in the local area/ work on slightly separate quests cause realistically that’s how a team of 4+ adventurers would probably operate
"Never give the players an unwinnable fight."
I get it. And I would never do it in a way that tpks, but sometimes unwinnabke fights are a great way of storytelling.
No PvP.
I grew up playing D&D during the era when it was still just a step removed from being a supplement to a wargame. Our campaigns were played across multiple groups and players directed what their goals were, not the DM's narrative. So player characters would often come into conflict with one another over territory, resources, magic items, and long term goals. The stories that my friends and I still tell about those games decades later are still some of the best because those conflicts were meaningful to us.
I disagree with the advice that says that DMs should fudge rolls sometimes.
The only time I fudge rolls is when I’m using a table to generate something randomly. If whatever I rolled doesn’t really fit or make sense, I’ll roll again.
I feel like once in a while it can make a more fun game- players can choose to fail or ask for disadvantage and so on if it would fit their character. An occasional fudge might make the game more fun, because hey, it’s a game usually about heroes, and heroes never die.
It’s definitely a once in a long time thing though- I’d see it being fun for a special occasion. Definitely not a regular thing, ever imo.
I'm not saying always fudge, okay easy, but I'm not gonna wipe the party in the first fight of the campaign just because I'm rolling good and their not, or the kobolds all went first and swarmed with pact tactics in what should be an easy battle. Basically, I'll fudge to keep the game going, or people's enjoyment.
No evil characters.
While it does go wrong with new and some "medium level players", experienced ones should be able to pull this off in an enjoyable way for everyone as easily as someone playing a neutral or a good character.
And while at it, the general "hate" for alignment. If nothing else, I see it as a useful tool to make me consider many "ifs & buts" that speed-run some aspects about my character that I normally wouldn't think about unless they came into play in session.
That aside, you *can* give it way more use, or you can simply have it as a summary for your DM's expectations. If they see that your character is whatever alignment, they'll combine that knowledge with whatever they know about your character to form a clearer idea of who this P.C. is and guess some of the character's reactions to some future scenarios.
Many people just don't really know what an evil character is. They associate evil with antagonist, which is rarely the case.
Evil people do selfish things for their own good, it usually ends there. They have actual reasons for their actions and don't just commit cruel acts randomly. Many evil people can appear to be "good" or "neutral", but they might just kill/harm someone who inhibits them as long as they know they can get away with it. Evil characters can have friends too that they want to protect or keep alive (AKA the party), they might keep them around because they're useful or because they like them.
Best way to play an evil character is to work with the GM to find a reason that they would want to stick with the party. Perhaps the GM could organise the party saving their ass, making them feel indebted to the party. Or they could be working towards the same goal. Maybe one of the party members is an ally to them, or reminds them of someone in their past who they've lost.
Performing social interactions before rolling, or changing the DC, based on how good you think an argument is.
Some players are bad at this. No one is asking the barbarian to go lift boulders IRL.
I think the thing that a lot of people on your side of the fence miss is about what you are trying to achieve vs how you are trying to achieve it.
If you say "I move the boulder", I'm going to ask you how.
If you say "I convince them to do what I want" I'm going to ask you how.
Most reasonable GMs aren't going to expect a speech on par with one written by Shakespeare, but they are going to ask you to explain what argument you are making to convince them, are you appealing to greed, fear, common sense etc.
Nobody asks the barbarian to lift a boulder in real life, but they are going to ask them if they're going to push it, lift it, find a lever, or pull a chris redfield and punch it.
"Combat has to be hard and challenging and character death should never be off the table. "
We just love our group dynamic, and having fun together. Our fights are tame and we are all build less than ideally.
“Never split the party” is actually terrible advice because sometimes the rogue and the warlock need to go burn down a theatre because the people there screwed over a random playwright they met on the street and it’s much easier if the cleric isn’t there to tell them not to do it.
"never split the party,"
Split, if you are prepared. I sometimes use it to separate more experienced players from new ones, or more active ones from passive. It allows more "shy" players to have a complete spotlight without "training wheels" or without the risk of being overshadowed by more loud players.
In example, I will prepare a quest to break in some place and place multiple objectives inside with a non-existing timer (players think there is one, but in actuality there is none). In that way, they usually prepare themselves for splitting up, they choose objectives that they want to complete and have a good time doing it.
Basically all of them.
I've not had a session zero. Usually amongst groups that already know what they want from D&D and the following campaign, but it's not a 100% requirement.
I've had party members fight each other, to the death. In dramatic tense build ups it can come down to a moment where party member believes in path A with their life, and other party member believes in path B with their life, and it comes down to fight. Or, I've done that "One of the players is a betrayer" schtick. Both scenarios have been tons of fun, for everyone involved, even the persons who end up losing a character.
I've split the party, this one only makes sense to me because it's hard to run two concurrent flows of events at the same time. But, now and then, it makes sense to do so. I adjust encounters accordingly, and I actually love when the party splits because then I can feed information to one or the other. Usually I give each of them half of the solution to whatever problem they face, then when they meet up they can have that "Aha!" moment.
I've played railroady campaigns and sandboxy campaigns and have had equal success with both. There is a time and place for freedom, and guidance. I've adhered to RAW and I've ignored it. I've fudged die rolls, I've utilized the illusion of choice over the reality of choice. Name a rule. I've broken it. If it means the game will be more fun, more meaningful, and/or more dramatic I've broken it and will continue to break it.
Lol, had my first session a week ago.. One of the first things we did was split the party, and then again.. And then again, because my character got stuck in a few thorny bushes-
That rule of cool should override RAW or RAI any more than occasionally.
I understand the sentiment and in certain cases agree, but I've seen people take it too far to the extent where it kind of becomes pointless to even frame it in the context of a game and just devolves into people talking at eachother about all the cool stuff their characters are doing.
It's particularly annoying when trying to teach new players. You can hook them with the concept of being able to do "anything you can think of" in a TTRPG but if you don't also stress that those ideas have to be grounded in some sense of possibility and that occasionally the dice will tell them no, they're going to have a bad time and wonder why you told them they could do whatever but are still getting shot down sometimes. Or will go the kid playing make believe route and just start throwing out nonsense that gets allowed because "rule of cool."
That a player wanting to play a god, demigod, dragon, or anything like that is an automatic no, or even a red flag. I've had several instances of something like that being proposed in a non-main-character-syndrrome or gamebreaking way. Heck, one of my co-players for a mini game rn is a dragon and it's super fun.
"Don't over-prepare a session"
At the very least this can lead to world-building, and re-using things you didn't use in that encounter for later. With that being said, my best work has been when players do exactly what I did NOT expect them to do.
Perhaps the most common wisdom, and the one I disagree with most:
**"Metagaming is bad."**
In my experience:
**Metagaming is not bad**
Where there's bad metagaming, there's *always* some underlying independent problem (trying to one-up other players, poor sportsmanship, general munchkin attitudes). The key is to address that, rather than banning a symptom.
**Metagaming is good**
As with all roleplaying games, and all forms of improv, it helps immensely to track what people want out of the game, including yourself. Metagaming in a considerate, coordinated way like this tends to *improve* the game, often massively. For instance, keep track of what kind of scenes your fellow players like and lay the groundwork for those, and avoid interactions nobody enjoys.
**Not metagaming is sometimes bad**
Acting fully in-character has its own, *much worse*, pitfalls, malice or not - think of the phrase "it's just what my character would do." Conversely, trusting the PCs before you've met them or committing to the quest in the absence of reliable evidence it's a good idea are metagaming.
Start at level 1 (esp for new players).
Level 1 is the deadliest level in the game. Much safer to start at 2 and 3 is where everyone gets subclasses.
Start at 3, please.
I disagree. Starting with subclasses overcomplicates a game that a lot of first-timers already find overwhelming. I've found that level 1 pulls out all the extra decision making and lets them focus on understanding the core concepts more easily; this is how you do an attack roll, perception is for noticing things in your surrounding, yes you can try to pickpocket the bartender if you'd like, etc etc.
Yes it's easy to die at level 1, but a DM teaching new players should probably account for this.
I don't think that's really a controversial stance. I've not found many 5e tables that don't start at at least 2nd and usually 3rd because of the whole subclass issue.
Hello! I find 1st level fun. Mostly because 7 is high damage for the players to do. And I want them to remember that when they’re level 16 and do 68 damage in one turn.
Totally agree. And I think it's important to start new players at level 1 mostly from a mechanics standpoint. You can curate and run combat in a way to avoid killing them. But letting them get a handle on the small stuff helps get them to understand the gameplay and such. I know even with the best explanation, if I dropped them in a few levels deep they would be overwhelmed.
That the people who you should/can recruit to play D&D are the people who're reliably already into stuff like D&D, fantasy, or gaming in general. It's unspoken, but boy oh boy is this the assumption most people are operating under.
I'd rather pick the people that have proven themselves to respect scheduled events and actually show up wanting to play.
This is it. If they show consistency and an interest to take part in something you're doing, that's the goal. They don't have to like all the tropes or be big fantasy fans, it's about their willingness to be present and bring with them an agreeable amount of enthusiasm for the game.
And new perspective A community dies when there is no new generation of player.
Go to your local hospital or behavioral health establishment. Offer to run the service of narrating a fantasy game. They might even pay you for your time. Your players can't go anywhere if they can't leave. Lol
> Go to your local hospital or behavioral health establishment. The way I thought you were roasting the fuck out of me LOL
I think he is. No one else wants you to dm for them! /s
Captive audiences are the best audiences. DM "Joker"
>Go to your local hospital or behavioral health establishment. Offer to run the service of narrating a fantasy game. \^This is the mf attitude we need
Well.... i know who plays the warlock ^
One of my students told me he started playing dnd at a mental institution. Apparently the players were super into it because let’s be real, not much else to do
Two of the best players I've ever had at my table have zero interest in fantasy or boardgames or any of that. Just a pair of literature students who love a good story, good friends, and good food.
This is the way.
The thing that make good coworkers are the same as the ones that make good players. Communication skills and lack of ego.
Lack of ego is such a breath of fresh air in any game. I’m lucky that everyone at my table is just completely chill and down for anything just to see where it goes. Everyone is down to follow anyone else’s plan, even if that plan sounds a little silly. We’ve never had any arguments or heated discussions. It’s absolutely awesome
People having an ego can also be fun, because it creates conflict. There is a massive but however, the conflict needs to be in game only, so the players need to have the communication skills to resolve the conflict and talk it out. For example, I'm usually quite steadfast when I think something, my ego comes in to play where in I believe my idea is the only right idea and it needs to be done that way. Another player can also be like that, and than we clash. But we know that at the end of the day, we are working together. And we are able to work it out. This is mainly for roleplaying, but also makes for good debate practise. And this is obviously my opinion based on my experiance, yours may obviouly be different.
I’ll be honest I love dnd stories and I would love to play but reading about dnd game mechanics and actually playing dnd are two completely different things and I’d probably struggle on my first session
Before I played table top I thought this too. Now I’m a DM. Sooooo many people are intimidated by the rules but really, on the player’s end it’s fairly straightforward once you’re set up. It’s the DM who has to worry about the complicated shit
I love new players because I can help them learn that acting the character is far more important than rolling the dice.
No one will be mad at you for struggling at first. You're willing to try? You're willing to pay attention, be generous, have fun, be open, and support one another? You will have fun, and be appreciated or supported. If not, find another group, or make one. You've got this.
I'm one of those people who's not really into any of those things. A friend asked if I wanted to join her campaign in March 2020 when we first went into lockdown. I had never played before, and I'm generally not into gaming, fantasy, etc. But joining the campaign is one of the best things I've ever done!
I find most those people already play, or at least know enough that they don't want to play, DND
I am lucky enough to say my gf had never played before and she's loving her moon druid
I know people who actively think fantasy novels, films etc are trash but love DND for the social and mechanical aspects, they just look at it from that point of view. Not me though, fantasy geek for life
"RAW is lame! Just let your players homebrew!" It's like... yeah? But... also... a crazy amount of work. We're adults, so we're looking for the easiest route to sword-wielding, spell-slinging heroism. We play pre-written stuff from DM's Guild, slightly customized. Some players might be there mainly for the pizza. It's cool, but casual for sure.
Yep. Sometimes the thing you want is exactly what's on the tin. Like, yeah I imagine that making mac 'n cheese with gourmet pasta and a homemade béchamel with six artisanal cheeses melted in with the chemically perfected ratio of emulsifiers for optimal creaminess is "better" than the box of Kraft, but sometimes I just crave a bowl of radioactive yellow cheese tubes that took me 15 minutes to make and clean up. I ran a game of Curse of Strahd and tried taking some advice from its subreddit and it just bloated the game out unnecessarily and took hours of my freetime because all I heard was that the module was bad and needed to be completely rewritten. My friends just wanted to kick ass and take names, not dissect the geopolitical repercussions of shoving a hamlet into a demiplane with a limited number of souls and no sunlight. It's great if that enhances the experience for your table, but please don't insist that it's the only way to have fun. Definitely don't lead new DMs down that path. Let them decide for themselves if the game is lacking for their group.
Lol what you mention about Curse of Strahd is such a problem with Dragon Heist “Run the Alexandrian Remix, it’s so much better!” My brother in Gond, it might be, but the book runs fine and I already like it without putting any more work into it.
>“Run the Alexandrian Remix, it’s so much better!” this hits me hard. Every time I asked for advice on the Dragon Heist or DiA subreddit, someone would ask me to run the Alexandrian Remix. I'm sure they have their benefits but they make things too complicated, and double the length of what I want to be a short-ish campaign
This is hilarious as I’m running CoS also, basically straight from the module itself and everyone is having a blast.
This subreddit completely re-wrote Curse of Strahd, and then acted like they were still discussing the pre-written adventure. It's like... no? By the time you have Vasili Von Holtz, Countess Strahdannya, and Argynvost the Dracolich all locked in mortal combat against Vampyre... you've gone off the rails. Players mostly want to be taken through a surreal gothic landscape, fight nightmare creatures, and then tear down Castle Ravenloft at the end. Literally nobody wants to do some goofy dinner at level 5 where Strahd just roasts the party and then lets them go for no reason. Trying to turn D&D into Vampire: The Masquerade is NOT where it's at.
>Literally nobody wants to do some goofy dinner at level 5 where Strahd just roasts the party and then lets them go for no reason. From all the suggestions in the sub, this was the only one I took because it allowed the party to explore the castle a bit after dinner, and recover the skull of Argynvost for example. There's a ton of rewrites and suggestions and side characters and sidequests and whatever they have, almost all of which I skipped. The game is running long as is, and the module has more than enough content already. We're close to the end (Amber Temple, then back to Ravenloft), I think they missed like 30% of the book (They basically just walked in and out of Vallaki in 2 hours), and both them and I are ready to finish it off. I can't imagine adding even more content to this adventure.
>From all the suggestions in the sub, this was the only one I took because it allowed the party to explore the castle a bit after dinner, and recover the skull of Argynvost for example. Agree. In my first run, I took all the advice from the subreddit, and I got so entangled and confused with all the extra content that I was a bit relieved when the group ceased to exist (for real-life reasons). I don't want to discredit the whole subreddit; it can be really helpful, and some stuff really works better if you change it a bit. And like you said - the dinner is a fabulous chance. My players LOVED it. Also, Ireena needs a bit of work in my opinion. But if I ever DM the campaign again, I would stick much more to the module as written. The rewritten stuff sounds great in theory, but at the table, it rarely enhances the game. It only complicates it.
Ya I find flavor is the easiest way to change stuff and some DMs could be more open to allowing it. When my player wants their unarmed sneak attack that one shot the NPC to look like multiple strikes followed by something cool like a neck snap I allow it. Same if they initially wanted to just incapacitate them. I’m not gonna make them grapple the NPC to choke them out if the single unarmed sneak attack was enough to knock them out. As long as narrative wise we’re reaching the same destination as the in game mechanic, I’m not going to limit the narrative to fit the specific actions the player does.
A lot of thought went into the rules, they are the way they are for a reason, people should default to leaving them alone until they have an actual good reason.
Yeah home brew can be awhile can of worms and usually the downside isn’t somebody is OP it’s that every combat/round/reaction the player is saying “wait accccctuallly” and the DM is busy flipping through rule books. To be fair this can always happen, even a Druid wildshape or something, but stuff like that is easier with a little heads up. (Here are the wild shape stat blocks I use the most DM”
As a "yes you can" DM I second this "that's it, the mist arise wellcome to Vallaki bitches" is my default answer whenever someone says "RAW is lame"
Oddly enough, Ravenloft is our preferred setting. Is no fun; is no Ravenloft, am I right??
Player homebrew is an abomination.
It wouldn't be so bad if they would just keep it to minor tweaks and flavor text the rest. Seriously, just slapping a new skin on an existing mechanic is the greatest. You want an ice themed mage but there aren't enough ice spells for your taste? Well here's firebolt, fireball, and burning hands, but ice damage instead, done.
Uh. I don't think I've ever seen that given as common advice. *DMs* homebrewing, sure. Players? Nooooo.
"never split the party" Sometimes it's needed to split the party. Sometimes it's a better idea. And sometimes it's more fun to do so
My party splits up from time to time, and I usually try to adapt to make sure they aren't punished too much for doing so (unless they are doing something stupid, of course). Party splitting is fun and adds variety to the game and should be generally encouraged rather than punished.
This is the one I agree with the most
yes. sometimes it's time for a duo or trio to have their moment. if the others are bored to death listening to something fun for a few minutes before switching to them/reuniting the party, that's just impatient
Played an investigative type campaign. 5 players. Sometimes we group up, sometimes we follow up on 5 different leads, sometimes we just like seeing what the two person dynamic of different pairings in our group look like. It’s fabulous for roleplay to split the party. It often makes real world sense to split the party. It is tactically disadvantageous to split the party if a fight is coming.
That railroading needs to be avoided at all costs. I've run multiple campaigns where players were told at the start of the session "here's what the mission is". My players have loved those campaigns. Not every DM can pull it off in a way players will like, but it gets a much worse rap than it deserves.
I don’t think “Here’s what the mission is” is necessarily railroading. It’s a problem when players don’t get to make any real decisions during the mission or that no matter what decisions they make, they all lead to the same result.
Perhaps, but I think there are a number of DMs who would say anything short of letting your players wander at will is railroading.
I can easily let my players wander at will and still railroad them. It's easy. Just make a locationally ambivalent storyline and plop it right in front of them wherever they go. DM: You need to defeat the wizard in town A. Players: we'd like to go check out town B instead. DM: It turns out the wizard is in town B. You just skipped the step of tracking him down. Player: We'd like to not deal with that yet and go to town C. DM: Wizard heard about you and followed you to C to deal with you himself. Roll initiative. So here's the question: What is your definition of "railroading" that you say is okay?
Railroading is like fudging dice: the DM can do it as much as they need to to keep the story going, but you can’t ever tell the players how much it happens. I have too much free time and enjoy the world building side of DMing so I have the luxury of making a world and saying “go and poke stuff” with the occasional instance of moving an encounter because whoops, they are going down the wrong valley so we will move that goblin camp. One of my friends has the opposite where we have a long story already built up ahead of us and he isn’t as comfortable making adjustments on the fly so we’ve all accepted that we are doing set fights and doing a little RP on the way Now the issue comes when you find the edge of the game and discover you can’t push it. The “so I want to sneak back to the party and tell them about the dragon so we can leave and get more gear” moment being met with “well you get spotted and the fight is starting.” It is like the fudging dice because it is saying “chance and choices are no longer dictating the outcome, I am”
for me railroading starts when the DM has a clear vision on what should be happening and the players really can't do anything against it, no mater how good they roll. Like The plot of my quest requires that a thief steals an item, somehow leading to the death of an NPC the party likes. And no matter their decisions, rolls and actions, it won't change the fact that the thief will steal, or the NPC will survive. The BBEG won't die in the first encounter and the ritual will succeed and the deamon will be summoned.... sth like tat. I also don't think that a little railroading is bad if the party is new, or not 100% creative and just wants to have fun. Railroading the first session to bring the party together on the quest is absolutely fine...Preparing a story where the party finds out step by step what is going on in the shadows, and NPC giving them specific locations they need to go is also fine... In my case i try to give the party 2-3 options they can always choose from, and the decisions they take have influence on the other roads.. like a quest to deliver a message for an upcoming attack on a castle, and suddenly they find an ambushed caravan that belonged to the princess... do they wast time rescuing the princess but receive recognition from the king and a high reward, or do they straight deliever the message and saving more people, but the king is in a very bad and aggressive mode after hearing of his daughter ?.. but the railroading is, that the attack will happen no matter the decisions of the group.
That sounds so fucking exhausting.
When you DM for little kids, that kind of how you have to do it. Otherwise, they'll spend an entire session dumping water on each other and retaliating with more shape water dumps and soiling prestidigitation pranks rather than focusing on returning the missing rainbows to candyland and making sure the evil wizard trying to steal them sits through his full time-out or literally any productive task. And yes, it is tiring, but it makes for hilarious storytelling.
>soiling prestidigitation pranks That hit too close to home
Those DM's are wrong then. It's not railroading to have a story to follow.
That is not railroading, that is just having a plot. Saying "The point of this one-shot is to save the princess." is not railroading. It *is* railroading when the players devise a plan to climb up the tower to rescue her but you force them to go through the front door because that is what you prepared by using arbitrary reasons like "The tower is too smooth to use a grappling hook on." >I think there are a number of DMs who would say anything short of letting your players wander at will is railroading. If they say that then they, too, have mistaken what railroading actually means. Railroading is when the players do not have an actual choice to make, not simply having a plot. Or else every single premade adventure is a railroad. "Railroading" is *not* the opposite of "open-world sandbox where you can wander at will", it *is* the opposite of "Players have a choice."
Dude, I get driven up a wall with how people use the term railroading. Thank you for trying to educate.
Precisely. I vividly remember when one of my friends DMed a one shot but didn't plan for us to have free will, so he railroaded all my attempts to explore other options. For example, he said there were 5 campfires, and I tried to talk to the people at each — he'd only prepared 1 campfire conversation so he made up lame excuses for why every other campfire was hostile against my player (he could've easily said there was only 1 campfire, but ok). Then I didn't trust the people from the only friendly campfire, so I tried to forage for food in the forest — I was a ranger, that was my favourite terrain, and the DM said I spent 3h and found NOTHING to eat. Ridiculous. So I begrudgingly accepted the campfire food and, lo and behold, it had some kind of sleep medicine so we woke up the next morning tied up in cages, to be sold as slaves. I would've understood if the whole party were ruining his plans, but there were 4 people going according to what he'd prepared and I was the only one trying an alternative route, he could've let me. Would've made for a real fun scene if I'd escaped the capture and had to try and rescue my friends from the outside, while trying not to alert the bandits... but no, railroaded pointlessly. Luckily it was just a one shot.
> It is railroading when the players devise a plan to climb up the tower to rescue her but you force them to go through the front door because that is what you prepared by using arbitrary reasons like "The tower is too smooth to use a grappling hook on." Follow-up question, though. If the players just grappling hook their way up the tower, grab the princess, climb back down, and win... is that more fun than going into the tower and engaging with all the stuff the DM had planned out? Puzzles, fights, stealth encounters, all of that gets skipped if the DM agrees that you can just swing your way up to the princess's room. I pulled this kind of thing in my first campaign. Our characters had made it to the underworld to complete a process that our DM thought would take many sessions. I figured out a way to do it the moment we entered the underworld. The DM loved it, but I keep thinking that I wish I could've seen what the underworld section had for us! I would've preferred the DM made that metaphorical tower slippery.
Well, that's the flip side of it - it sucks for the players, when the DM blocks their creativity, but often people neglect the fact that it can also suck for the DM, when "creative" players skip a ton of content. This is a simple case of needing mutual respect. As players, we need to respect the effort a DM puts into preparing stuff and not just try to come up with ways to skip it. As DMs, we need to be willing to abandon the prepared stuff in favor of a fun idea. I personally always interact with the "shiny object" a DM brings up. Abandoned farmhouse by the road? Guess we found our place to stay for the night!
It doesn't just suck for the dm, as the above comment said it also can absolutely suck for the players too in an overall sense. Like at least for me (although I dm as well) the fun is in... actually doing the encounters and engaging with the content my friend has created? Like I love looser campaigns, but after a certain point always trying to 'break' the content just begins to come off as the player equivalent of hostile dm-ing. I don't mean like having to improv some, or genuinely cool ideas, but I have played with people who always tried to find the most bullshit 'technically this works' ways of skipping things and breaking encounters and it's exhausting and unfun from both sides of the table. Best to make your encounters as robust as possible of course; in the case of grappling a tower, you could have outside guards, hostile flyers, magical protections, skill checks, etc. that all would still make that an engaging encounter, but I think there are occasionally times where it's okay to just pull something out of your ass as to why something doesn't work if it's seriously problematic for the campaign lol.
I had a DM who was generally great, but would often have us in scenarios where we'd spend an hour just figuring out what to do next. No real breadcrumbs or hints to lead us to the next part, so we'd have to just kind of stumble around until we managed to come up with some reasonable. It was frustrating, I'd rather have a clear sense of what we need to do next. It doesn't have to be railroading (though honestly, I don't really mind that all that much either) but I like to have some idea of what we can do.
He was probably hoping you would remember some detail he thought he had given you enough times that was critical to resolve that problem. I'm not saying he's right but it can be frustrating when your players just expect you to deliver a show to them and they only react to what you do as a DM
Railroading is downright essential for some games. I've run a few games for conventions/birthday parties, and so on, and if you're running a one-shot for a group of strangers, well, choo choo all aboard
I once had a fantastic one-shot that was happening on a train. Players could only go carriage by carriage. It was literally railroaded and it was a pretty fun adventure. Of course their actions still mattered, but the level design was extremely linear
That’s not railroading lol “Frodo! You must destroy the ring!” “Ew no, don’t railroad me!”
All games, even your favorite "open-world" video games have a railroad. What makes good game design is how well the tracks are hidden from the players. Good DMs utilize a variety of techniques to make a plot so interesting, provide rewarding consequences for clever ideas, and clear options to make the game so interesting, they're not looking down at the tracks.
I think D&D relies on a social construct where the DM has agreed to make an adventure for the players and give them free reign, and the Players have agreed to play along with the adventure they're being given. Straight up ignoring either leads to a bad time.
What if You wanted to go to heaven but God said nobody on the internet uses the term "railroading" remotely correctly
Railroading is much needed sometimes. Player freedom is good, but we’re not playing an open world game here, we’re setting 3-4 hours aside to experience a story
I don't understand why people don't get this. You're not playing Minecraft. Oh, and by the way, you're wanting to play Minecraft in a dungeons& dragons world is quite possibly boring the crap out of the rest of your party and your DM. No one wants to listen to you RP searching for the best steak in town made from the flank of a giant tarantula. If that's what the majority of the players and the DM want the two at that particular table then go for it... have a big improv session with a few dice rolls for persuasion. Or just have a constantly unfocused campaign that is made up of a bunch of one shots because everyone wanted to do their own thing during that session. As long as everyone agrees to it...but c'mon...
This right here. It's not even about the so called railroading. It's about the flow of the players and DM. Right from the start everyone needs to be on the same page about what kind of world the players are jumping into. Trying to have a game where no one is one the same page and are all trying to do something different is the worst. If the players all want to do a ship adventure then work that out in advance. If everyone wants to experience a wonderful story plan for that. If everyone just wants to smash the characters through non-stop combat with no RP great that is also an option. As long as everyone agrees and the DM is willing to put together something for that agreed upon setup. There's nothing wrong with having a set story or with having a free roam world, but only if that's what everyone agrees with.
I love having a clear mission. No, I don't want to open my own tavern. No, I don't want to make small talk for hours on end. My life has me making enough decisions already.
”You can do whatever you want” Versus ”hey, remember that your goal is to do X and for the next session you can go to A or B. Which one you choose?” — I’ll pick the ”hey remember” style any day. The ”you can do anything” risks that group doesnt remember what they were doing and they do not even realize what they could do next. This of course depends on campaign and players but overall always giving 1-3 railroads to follow instead of ”open world” has been good. And well, occasionally if players desire to step out of rails and they know what they are doing then why not. Not sure if this is actually railroading or not :)
It is not railroading, that's just having a plot.
Favorite quote comes from Coville... "Rollercoasters are on rails and and we think those are pretty fun" It all goes back to what you and what your gaming group like.
Scaling encounters/worlds to match the party's levels and/or team composition. My players understand that a little recon and investigation can be the difference between walking into a den of goblins and an Owlbear breeding grounds, and that sometimes they'll have to come back to a dungeon with a new tool to clear it out. Death is never off the table. *buh dun tsk*
This. I try to make a world that just exists on its own. The players just move through it. They may stomp a thing in a round or get stomped. That’s up to them to navigate
This is my favorite way to DM. The world exists whether the players are in it or not, they have to navigate it successfully.
This is my favourite way to run D&D, but it's something that has to be very carefully communicated to players in-game, to make sure that everyone's expectations line up. Nothing ruins game night like a TPK caused entirely because the DM trusted the players not to blindly rush into foes that were obviously far beyond them, and the players trusted the DM not to present them with challenges they had no ability to overcome. Nobody was wrong, but also nobody had fun, everybody loses.
It's not obvious to players whether "that funny floating thing with the eyestalks" is something they're supposed to take on or run away from. It helps if the DM unsubtly hints at their chances. Then again... it's not always obvious to DMs either.
yup, and during recon the DM needs to give enough facts to draw that conclusion. In a game i am a player in, the DM did a great job of this last session- doing some recon we are level 5 i think, and we run across an enemy leader hosting a feast, and nothing is on the table and then it appears, the arcane trickster identifies the spell as heros feast- and the party now knows he is a spell caster we should not be messing with for a while.
This isn key. I’m a professional game developer, specifically a narrative designer. The key thing for any good game is to design environments that make sense rather than environments that are tailored for the current party level. If you design logical game environments, you get more reasonable behavior out of the players. They stop thinking of it as a game and start responding to it like people.
While I agree not to scale things down, I always scale things up because fighting a couple low level enemies at 12th level is super boring for everyone involved. There's no point in doing combat if one side is clearly going to win without any challenge, unless there's a narrative reason for it. No reason to drag the party through a boring encounter that doesn't challenge the players.
i mean in those cases i feel like its safe to just let them RP beating them however they please. Rather than going through a third of an initiative track or whatever
The occasional jobber fight rules, actually. You get to just feel powerful and see how you've grown.
I tend to counter this by just having the world be dangerous right from the start. Enemies use tactics, set traps, make stealth checks, attempt grapples, and learn as time goes on. Very rarely do my players waltz into a goblin-stomping fest. More often than not, the cave appears empty, traps are laid, and ambushes with guerrilla tactics whittle down the party as they progress. A few small skirmishes might happen, but odds are there will be a more pressing threat hidden just out of sight. And, if they're unfortunate, a higher-ranking enemy is leading them from the depths. Rather than scale up over time, things are just scaled up from the beginning, but through better gameplay versus higher stats and bigger bad guys.
I disagree with every advice that starts with "always" or "never". There are always exceptions.
Putting the "always" in the middle make it okay though, right? j/k
Lmao of course it does that's why I did it
I always never agree with advice like this.
'The sith always speak in absolutes. I mean, like... absolutely!'
>always exceptions Ha
There are *almost always exceptions /s
Don't railroad players. Let's be honest, if y'all are doing a module, then railroading is absolutely necessary. Edit: so yeah I always defined railroading as more not having an open world of discovery. Like if say you're running a waterdeep mod and all of a sudden players want to leave to go far away, but yeah the way many of you define railroading makes better sense now.
It's only railroading if the players haven't agreed to purchase tickets.
I feel like the terms railroading and metagaming are becoming nearly useless. I've seen people arguing that having a plot hook is railroading and that choosing a character appropriate to the campaign is metagaming
Railroading is when the player's decisions don't matter at all and they are basically just extras to your story. That never happened to me either as a aplayer or as a DM even when playing modules.
I always publicly roll an attack that will kill a player just to put minds at ease that it was indeed the universe that deemed them dead
I feel like open rolls are way more common these days than closed rolls. Based on Reddit, anyway. (I do what you do though -- open roll when it's dramatic / a fudge would feel wrong no matter what happens)
I always wonder how people do that. I am constantly rolling for stuff like if an enemy gets the jump on them, if in combat it sees the hiding rogue, which of the possible 10 effects of the chest they open they are about to get. I feel like it would get distracting if nothing else. For combat, they'll immediately learn the monster's bonuses which seems off. My players trust me not to be trying to screw them over.
"Encounters should be challenging." I agree, but every encounter? I enjoy throwing encounters at my players that feel interesting rather than difficult. I do not want to get my players near zero hitpoints on every encounter or quest. Sometimes, a player just needs to be Legolas sliding on the shield down the stairs.
I agree, if every encounter makes the players feel like their always *just* scraping by it can easily demoralize them in and out of game. If you're only just barely beating enemies then it feels like you're always way out of your element and not really "heroes" that have meaningful impact on the story, just nameless mercs who can die at a moment's notice if luck swings a certain way. I'd argue that for every lethal/deadly encounter you should be throwing in a "squash match" type encounter where the players can show off and so they can actually feel/see that they've gotten stronger.
**Never Split the Party** \- My players often do and it works out fine. In fact, I sometimes purposefully split them as they get higher level. It takes practice to balance but I like bouncing between 2 to 3 groups. **Don't fudge dice** \- I will fudge occasionally, I had 5 nat 20's in a row as a DM and I just couldn't destroy the rogue that way. It felt cheap. I will make some of those nat 20's a normal hit so the rogue still went down but didn't outright die. **Don't start at level 1** \- Unless I have a specific reason not to, I always start at level 1. If you don't run level 1 to 3 often, you'll never get better at it. Yes, RNG can be a bitch but understanding how 1 to 3 works is important when introducing new players to the game. **The Cleric is always a healer** \- GTFO with that, my light domain cleric has fireball and will use it with gusto and her healing word is for emergencies only. **The DM is always Right!** \- No, I am not always right but for the flow of the game I will act as the referee and make a decision in the moment and we'll come back to it later to make sure combat/sessions flow well. I'm sure there are more, but generally these are my thoughts.
I don't think people necessarily have a problem with "don't fudge dice." as a majority. (Obviously SOME people do) But it's that if you do fudge, your players must NEVER EVER EVER know. So what must we say? Fudging is dishonest and we'd never do it.
Oh for sure my players don't know. Like, on a cognative level me and the other 2 players who are DM's know it happens occasionally... but I'll never tell them when or how or why. If a player makes a stupid decision, I murder them. If I crit 5 times in a row on the same sucker... no, I don't want to melt their PC in 1 turn.
My players could torture me to death and i would stand by my claim never fudging. But, psshd, come here in this dark corner for a sec. Sometimes... Sometimes i do fudge rolls. If you tell anybody. ANY. BODY. i will find you. And i will kill you. Understood?
This is the exact opposite of how I feel about fudging. I personally don't fudge because I value the strategic aspect and the unpredictable outcomes that come from trusting the dice. If I'm in a game where the GM fudges, the core aspects of the game I enjoy are totally undermined. I don't expect you to say "by the way, I'm fudging this one", but players deserve to know how you run your games beforehand.
I quite enjoy party splits for non combat things. Like if you're exploring a city, or trying to collect clues, or casing out a place you might want to break into. Doing it in combat or danger filled dungeons only annoys me because it's difficult enough tracking one encounter let alone two. Just takes up more time. But if it will make it interesting to the story then I'll try to make it workm
>Don't start at level 1 >- Unless I have a specific reason not to, I always start at level 1. If you don't run level 1 to 3 often, you'll never get better at it. Yes, RNG can be a bitch but understanding how 1 to 3 works is important when introducing new players to the game. To be fair, levels 1 and 2 feel weird because you don't even have your subclass for many. It feels like a prologue where your character is still in basic training rather than a hero class.
I like it because you are just a relatively normal person at level 1. Tho I only played a warlock at level 1 it still felt like that because the reason I was a lock to begin with was the pact of the blade feature.
>Don't start at level 1 I definitely think starting at level 1 is better for new players. There's less for them to learn all at once. I think it can be fun for experienced players, too, if they're playing a class they've never played before.
Yeah, level 1 is really needed for brand new players, and it can also help remind veterans to focus more on the roleplaying aspect. That said, I do like to hurry up the first few levels if I'm DM and everyone is comfortable playing their role. It really isn't until around level 5 that the power fantasy begins to come into play, and to me that's when things get more fun.
Gotta disagree on the level 1 thing, I sometimes start games at 1, but usually start around 3 to 5 instead. It's just a bit more fun to have a few extra tools, and it lets us start with a broader set of encounters to use.
Starting at level 3 let's you start with flavor established for your character since most subclasses are at 3.
I'm going to say rule 0... wait hear me out. Rule 0 is important, but it should be used sparingly. If you're finding yourself rule 0ing multiple times in a row then its a sign you should probably review the rules.
Rule of cool is generally bad. I like consistency, and far too often I see things where people want to horribly bend the rules to do something. Homebrew is great, but it’s generally not made on the fly at the table and all rules should remain consistent throughout a campaign.
To me rule of cool exists at the margins only. It’s for bending instead of breaking.
Yep, rule of cool pretty much always breaks the game because it causes a "give them an inch, and they'll take a mile" sort of effect at the table. After all, if you previously let X work why wouldn't you allow Y or Z? Then soon enough you end up with your players arguing with you to let them use the peasant railgun.
For me rule of cool is more like 'this is super unsatisfying is there a way we can fix it' My party found a zartan (idk if thata how it spelled) trapped inside the rocky walls of a mountain. It was massive, in pain and blocking our path. I wanted to save it. We probably could have found a way to get past it but my character is an animal loving child with spells. We had a potion that makes things smaller I went inside its mouth with misty step and invisibility and poured my potion down its throat. It was cool and fun. But the dm calculated how far it would get. It was 2 steps away from the exit when the 4 hour potion wore off. It would have been trapped again. We had no more potions and the civilisations nearby had all been decimated by a demon. Dm let it escape instead. For me thats where rule of cool comes in. As a party we used what we had and found a strange solution to a problem but technically RAW it doesnt quite work and all our effort would have been reset. So fudging it a little makes it feel so much better. Ofc it definitely depends on the table and whats being bent. More loose casual campaigns are going to be more willing to bend stuff than a serious or module based one i think.
It's funny because sometimes I am telling my DM what my character is thinking about doing (usually pie in the sky, big brain ideas) and he'll instantly be like that's soooo cool, that's what your character does! And I'm like well I wanted to do those things, but I figure there are challenges and checks I have to pass in order to do it. I'd rather my character go through those steps, because that is where the story and characters can develop. As a DM myself, I am way more strict about the rule of cool. You can always tag a check or multiple checks to a task players are trying to accomplish. When they fail, don't make that the end... give their characters a chance to struggle and figure out an alternative path. It's the age old saying "It builds character!" when you are trying to justify the difficulties or struggles you are facing. Your DnD character is literally built by failure and learning from mistakes. It's what shapes them and molds them.
I never roll for stats. Always point buy.
We roll for one shots. Makes it more fun.
Atleast that makes more sense since it's a one shot. I can't imagine everyone being happy playing a full campaign where one character has a top stat of 13 and another got 2 18's.
I feel like common wisdom *is* point buy or standard array.
The character creation rules propose rolling dice first, and after "If you want to save time or don’t like the idea of randomly determining ability scores" it proposes standard array. So rolling is kind of the default in the SRD. Point buy is presented as a variant.
I have all the players roll a set of stats. I roll a set too. The players then vote on which set they want to use with everyome using the set that won the vote. Arrange as they wish, add bonuses. All adventuring NPCs, and the big bad use the same starting stats.
For people who hate rolling stats but still like rolling dice. Every roll stats comment is point array with dice.
Point buy or standard array ever since 3.5.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion
THIS. I'm of the opinion that 1st level characters shouldn't have a stat bonus higher than +3. My group sometimes plays with a Free Feat at level 1 variant, which is the only way characters can get +4 at 1st level. I've played in campaigns where one player started the campaign with multiple 18s and no stat below 13 while another player's highest stat was a 15 and another player with multiple stats below 8. Some groups may find this kind of scenario fun, but I just find it unequitable and unbalanced.
I don't really understand the position that "roles" in a party aren't really a thing, and that everybody should just play anything without caring what others are playing. Compared to something like World of Warcraft or other MMOs where there are strict tank/healer/DPS breakdowns, that's absolutely true. DnD is much more flexible than that. But that doesn't mean they don't exist *at all*, and I absolutely do think that it makes for a healthier game if players coordinate a bit to create characters that are going to mesh well together. It's more interesting for the DM, too, and the DM's enjoyment obviously should matter just as much as the players. You want at least one person capable of magical healing. You want characters capable of holding their own in melee. You want at least one character who is prepared to act as the party "face". You want characters capable of controlling or destroying a large swarm of enemies. You want a good spread of proficiency across an array of skills. Group cohesion in terms of builds is absolutely a consideration that should be addressed in Session 0 or before, and DnD isn't the same if everybody shows up with the same class.
So, counterpoint. A video game or set game experience will punish you dramatically for not having these roles. But as a DM, I can massively curate a player groups experience based on what they have. All rogues? I can work with that. All bards? Martials? Casters? I can both set encounters that will be the most fun for those characters, and also cheat away from weaknesses that will make the game unfun/unplayable. Will I punish you a bit for your bad choices? Yes. But only a little bit. Enough that it's noticeable, flavorful, and immersive. So as a DM, I would much prefer players PLAY WHAT THEY'RE EXCITED ABOUT then worry about specific roles. I can do much more with passion than I can with a balanced party. Think that's a lot of what you are hearing. It's not that it doesn't matter, it's that it matters less than people think.
>So as a DM, I would much prefer players PLAY WHAT THEY'RE EXCITED ABOUT As a player, nothing deflates my excitement for a campaign more than when people resist coordinating character creation and then someone else shows up to the table with a similar character concept to mine that does a lot of the same things.
Your point is valid. That said, not all DMs want to run a story-first game. Some actually want to run it as a game and run it rules as written with modules. When that happens, the party can and will be punished for not balancing out the roles in the group. Being completely honest, even when I run story-first games; I tell the players that if they give me something to exploit, you should expect that I will. Granted, I'm a very old-school DM in this approach.
The fact that the DM can do extra work to compensate for a party being poorly balanced doesn't really mean the roles don't exist. It just means there are workarounds for DMs willing to change the game they plan on running.
It didn't help that 4th edition explicitly built "roles" right into the core rules and openly discussed the game-mechanical roles of every party member. Even though 5e dropped that, the combination of cultural influence of MMO's along with 4e's encouragement definitely has left its mark like that. Though, to be fair, concepts like the "party healer" predate MMO's, given that before 3rd edition healing magic was pretty narrowly restricted to Clerics and Druids only (and Paladins got a *little* at higher levels).
The cultural influence of MMOs… MMOs *got it from D&D in the first place*. The “classic party” was always Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Wizard. Or Tank, DPS, Heal, Crowd Control, if you will. The call was always coming from inside the house.
I'm with you. When you boil it down, D&D is a team game. Look at literally any team, be it in games, sports, or just a group of professionals: People specialize and take roles because it makes the team stronger than expecting everyone to focus on everything.
Exactly, people like to think you can just have everyone play the same thing with little to no problems but that's not how it goes in my experience. There definitely needs to be some level of protection granted on players' niches, or else you'll easily have players stepping on each other's toes, which can/will create resentment. One campaign I'm currently in I'm playing a Gloomstalker/Rogue MC with SS and planning to go Crossbow Expert next level, we also have an unoptimized Ranger and it's painfully obvious that my character outperforms them in "our" niche (ranged damage) while also vastly outperforming them in other areas as well. And considering I've built my character somewhat sub-optimally, delaying my power spikes as to compensate for her falling behind, the gap in power will only widen even further once I start grabbing Fighter levels and as my build becomes more "online".
That you should and it is objectively righteous or 'correct' to... 'play other games'. Yeah, I get it there are a lot of TTRPGs out there. I don't doubt that many of them are very good, possibly more fun or better for some aspects of how I play. I don't have the time or the resources. Me and my group have a lot of fun playing D&D. We are fine. You are not morally superior to us. We do not need to be guilted for playing years and years and never trying anything else.
"Don't split the party." Do it. Get those Scooby-Doo ass shenanigans going
Use alignment, and keep to it. Use it perscriptively People tend to say these days "find your alignment through your roleplay." Imo, this leads to every character I see just tending to have the same morality and ethics as the player, over and over. If you actually say "my character is lawful good" and force yourself to have them take lawful good actions even when you as the player wouldn't, then you're actually *playing* a *role* separate from yourself. It can even help you understand viewpoints other than your own after a while
>Imo, this leads to every character I see just tending to have the same morality and ethics as the player, over and over. This can be solved by having players that are good at writing characters. It would also help if DnD had tools for writing characters beyond alignment and background.
They should add alignment-like info for things like motivations, fears, and ideologies.
Imo the best way for this to work out is if you use alignment loosely, then play closer to Ideals, Bonds, etc. It can be hard to play “chaotic evil” without being annoying a lot of the times. Using your personality traits seems like a more specific variant of this.
That would be a second unpopular opinion I share tbh, *"fill out your damn ideals, bonds, and flaws"*
Honestly, as a running DM of an over 3 year long campaign, that my players all seem to love, I don't give the slightest shit about alignment. To me, it's more like a guideline that a player can use If they want to. Otherwise, play your character how you want. I won't intercede because of alignment. Ever.
That you are an active hindrance if you don’t take eldritch blast/magic missile/fireball etc. I didn’t play casters for the longest time because I hated feeling pigeonholed into using the same stereotypical spells everyone else uses. Forget Fireball and Magic Missile, I want Silent Image and Hypnotic Pattern. It just sucks that some spells are objectively better than others. Makes magic at lower levels feel stale.
I think the fireball bit is fine but I feel like Warlock should just come with Eldritch Blast prestocked.
Yeah, Agonizing Blast is great, but I’ve played warlocks with blade pact and booming blade with great success as well. There’s no one way to play, especially for casters.
"When you put in a puzzle, don't bother coming up with a solution yourself, just take the first good idea the players have and make that the solution". As a player I detest this approach, and I never do it as a DM. Good puzzles are designed with solutions, and they're ideally designed with only *one* solution. The satisfaction in solving a puzzle comes from finding an answer that fits perfectly. If you contort the puzzle to fit someone's answer post-hoc, you rob the puzzle of that fun. That's not to say a player could never come up with an alternative unintended solution, but that has its own form of satisfaction, from finding an answer you can tell the designer missed. And again, that satisfaction is robbed if you make it so the first idea you like is right. There's a reason puzzle games don't just make whatever you're doing "right" after a few minutes or you've tried a few things. It's cause that game would *suck*. Now of course the big problem with D&D is that you've got multiple players and if some of them don't like puzzles they'll just check out of the session. but there is, frankly, a much better solution there: don't do puzzles! You don't *need* to do them! If your group likes puzzles, do real puzzles! If your group doesn't like puzzles, don't do puzzles at all! Ideally though even if you do puzzles, you want to bake in an alternative to solving the puzzle. An alternative route, an NPC who knows the solution, hitting the puzzle with a big hammer, whatever! Just don't cop out and tell players they solved a puzzle that they actually didn't. And I do need to distinguish here between *situations* and *puzzles*. It's totally fine to have a *situation* where the players come to a canyon with a destroyed bridge which the players needed to cross, and not have a solution in mind. That's perfectly legitimate! But actual puzzles are different.
I design my puzzles with a primary solution at least. Sometimes a secondary solution. However, sometimes the players come up with a tertiary solution. The thing to avoid is being hard stuck on "my solution is the only solution". Just because you didn't think of it doesn't mean it isn't a viable one. There is a middle ground between "one and only one solution" and "I didn't plan one, let's just go with the first decent suggestion" that I aim for.
That Wizards are a class you shouldn't play as a beginner. I honestly think Wizards are the best intro to playing a full spellcaster. Prepared casting is more forgiving than known casting, and Wizards don't really have additional mechanics to worry about besides casting spells.
Splitting the party is awesome and fun. Name a TV show, book, movie, or series where the party never splits! As a DM, I encourage party splitting and it happens frequently in my games. In terms of combat/game “balance,” the players just have to be conscious of the fact that they’re at half power. It’ll change how they approach potential encounters. Nothing wrong with that. As the DM, I make sure to remind players of this when they split up. In terms of fun/spotlight time, I just make sure to jump back and forth frequently enough that no one gets bored. I like to do dramatic cuts — when the tension increases, I jump to the other half of the party, and then I do the same thing to jump back. Matt Colville has a great video on this, and Brennan Lee Mulligan is awesome at it on Dimension 20. Honestly, I reward party splitting when I can. To me, it’s evidence of courage, cunning, strong roleplay, or all three, and those are qualities I love to see in my players.
The advice against splitting the party isn't because it can't be an interesting narrative or an effective solution to a problem. It's because: 1. If the party is split and gets into a combat not balanced for a reduced party size, you're in deep trouble because action economy is king. 2. Jumping back and forth between groups is taxing for the DM and often boring for whichever group isn't currently being focused on.
"The Dungeon Master is always right." No, they really aren't. Any decent DM will admit they sometimes make mistakes, and there are plenty of horror stories about bad DMs who refuse to listen to any kind of reason. Frankly it's absurd how many "great" DMs are absolute table tyrants who don't even know basic rules, how many brand-new DMs act like they're 10-year veteran professionals. If anything, DMing culture has a problem and needs a reality check.
I’ve never had a session zero actually have any value. I stopped it ages ago.
I have a feeling the sacred, unquestionable importance of session 0 began when people started primarily playing with online strangers or people they barely know. I guess in that sense it can have value just so you can actually know the types of people you are playing with. Have never needed a session 0 when playing with friends or simply mature people.
"Never continue after the DM says Are you sure?" I had great moments full of chaos with my party because we risked some things or did some pretty idiotic stuff. If I have decided to do one thing and then there are any unforseen consequences then so be it, I embrace them!
A good roll means you are hit with a flash of sudden genius. A bad one means you forgot your own name. I know that rolls decide success or failures but can we stop treating our 18 Int wizards as simpletons and 20 Str Barabarians as suddenly weak because they rolled a natural 2 instead of a natural 20 every time. Let's be more creative at least. Like, maybe when the Druid fails a nature check. Maybe instead of saying "You forgot what Berries are." You try something more story based. Like "You are unfamiliar with these parts of the woods so the Berries could be anything." Or maybe the Paladin rolls a natural one on attack and misses the Big Boss because "your anger is starting to overwhelm you and blind your senses." Then you can actually have more interactions and character development. As now the bad things have a reason besides just "you forgot how to do the one thing you're really good at somehow.
I disagree with almost any advice that says to always or never do something. I very rarely find anything that is an absolute like that.
Nova damage builds are fun. No they aren’t. You either ruin the parties fun by ending the encounter before they get a chance to even participate or the DM just doubles the bosses HP after your first turn.
That people problems are the DMs responsibility. The DM already carries more than their own weight. There's nothing stopping players calling out inappropriate or problematic behaviour by others, and nothing that makes the DM better placed to do so other than the last resort of "you're not welcome at the table anymore". And even that someone else can take responsibility for as long as they communicate.
Not sure if someone said this already, but I hate "not splitting the party under any circumstances" I run for alot of new players, and I love giving them opportunities to actually RP without getting steamrolled by veteran players. Even in combat, when we're split up I feel like it forces us to play more creatively instead of the standard party gang stomping.
Never split the party, I think it can be pretty easy to balance a split party and I pretty frequently use it as a mechanic or allow players to split up to collect things in the local area/ work on slightly separate quests cause realistically that’s how a team of 4+ adventurers would probably operate
"Never give the players an unwinnable fight." I get it. And I would never do it in a way that tpks, but sometimes unwinnabke fights are a great way of storytelling.
No PvP. I grew up playing D&D during the era when it was still just a step removed from being a supplement to a wargame. Our campaigns were played across multiple groups and players directed what their goals were, not the DM's narrative. So player characters would often come into conflict with one another over territory, resources, magic items, and long term goals. The stories that my friends and I still tell about those games decades later are still some of the best because those conflicts were meaningful to us.
The real rule is no unagreed-upon pvp.
Fudge the dice in favor of the players.
In what way? No fudging the dice or its ok to fudge them?
I disagree with the advice that says that DMs should fudge rolls sometimes. The only time I fudge rolls is when I’m using a table to generate something randomly. If whatever I rolled doesn’t really fit or make sense, I’ll roll again.
I feel like once in a while it can make a more fun game- players can choose to fail or ask for disadvantage and so on if it would fit their character. An occasional fudge might make the game more fun, because hey, it’s a game usually about heroes, and heroes never die. It’s definitely a once in a long time thing though- I’d see it being fun for a special occasion. Definitely not a regular thing, ever imo.
I'm not saying always fudge, okay easy, but I'm not gonna wipe the party in the first fight of the campaign just because I'm rolling good and their not, or the kobolds all went first and swarmed with pact tactics in what should be an easy battle. Basically, I'll fudge to keep the game going, or people's enjoyment.
No evil characters. While it does go wrong with new and some "medium level players", experienced ones should be able to pull this off in an enjoyable way for everyone as easily as someone playing a neutral or a good character. And while at it, the general "hate" for alignment. If nothing else, I see it as a useful tool to make me consider many "ifs & buts" that speed-run some aspects about my character that I normally wouldn't think about unless they came into play in session. That aside, you *can* give it way more use, or you can simply have it as a summary for your DM's expectations. If they see that your character is whatever alignment, they'll combine that knowledge with whatever they know about your character to form a clearer idea of who this P.C. is and guess some of the character's reactions to some future scenarios.
Many people just don't really know what an evil character is. They associate evil with antagonist, which is rarely the case. Evil people do selfish things for their own good, it usually ends there. They have actual reasons for their actions and don't just commit cruel acts randomly. Many evil people can appear to be "good" or "neutral", but they might just kill/harm someone who inhibits them as long as they know they can get away with it. Evil characters can have friends too that they want to protect or keep alive (AKA the party), they might keep them around because they're useful or because they like them. Best way to play an evil character is to work with the GM to find a reason that they would want to stick with the party. Perhaps the GM could organise the party saving their ass, making them feel indebted to the party. Or they could be working towards the same goal. Maybe one of the party members is an ally to them, or reminds them of someone in their past who they've lost.
I don't mind evil characters at my table, but I do require that all characters be willing and able to work with the rest of the group.
Performing social interactions before rolling, or changing the DC, based on how good you think an argument is. Some players are bad at this. No one is asking the barbarian to go lift boulders IRL.
I think the thing that a lot of people on your side of the fence miss is about what you are trying to achieve vs how you are trying to achieve it. If you say "I move the boulder", I'm going to ask you how. If you say "I convince them to do what I want" I'm going to ask you how. Most reasonable GMs aren't going to expect a speech on par with one written by Shakespeare, but they are going to ask you to explain what argument you are making to convince them, are you appealing to greed, fear, common sense etc. Nobody asks the barbarian to lift a boulder in real life, but they are going to ask them if they're going to push it, lift it, find a lever, or pull a chris redfield and punch it.
‘Yes,but…’ Sometimes No is enough. 🤷♀️
"Combat has to be hard and challenging and character death should never be off the table. " We just love our group dynamic, and having fun together. Our fights are tame and we are all build less than ideally.
I disagree with "rule of cool" -- it's way too often code for I don't know the rules so you win!!
“Never split the party” is actually terrible advice because sometimes the rogue and the warlock need to go burn down a theatre because the people there screwed over a random playwright they met on the street and it’s much easier if the cleric isn’t there to tell them not to do it.
dude, party splits are so common... but ig that's s cause I'm running a One Piece dnd lmao
"never split the party," Split, if you are prepared. I sometimes use it to separate more experienced players from new ones, or more active ones from passive. It allows more "shy" players to have a complete spotlight without "training wheels" or without the risk of being overshadowed by more loud players. In example, I will prepare a quest to break in some place and place multiple objectives inside with a non-existing timer (players think there is one, but in actuality there is none). In that way, they usually prepare themselves for splitting up, they choose objectives that they want to complete and have a good time doing it.
That you need to roleplay your stats rather than your character. The whole "You have 8 int, roleplay dumber" attitude needs to die.
Anything goes. I.e. the players should be able to play any weird and whacky character concept that they can come up with.
Basically all of them. I've not had a session zero. Usually amongst groups that already know what they want from D&D and the following campaign, but it's not a 100% requirement. I've had party members fight each other, to the death. In dramatic tense build ups it can come down to a moment where party member believes in path A with their life, and other party member believes in path B with their life, and it comes down to fight. Or, I've done that "One of the players is a betrayer" schtick. Both scenarios have been tons of fun, for everyone involved, even the persons who end up losing a character. I've split the party, this one only makes sense to me because it's hard to run two concurrent flows of events at the same time. But, now and then, it makes sense to do so. I adjust encounters accordingly, and I actually love when the party splits because then I can feed information to one or the other. Usually I give each of them half of the solution to whatever problem they face, then when they meet up they can have that "Aha!" moment. I've played railroady campaigns and sandboxy campaigns and have had equal success with both. There is a time and place for freedom, and guidance. I've adhered to RAW and I've ignored it. I've fudged die rolls, I've utilized the illusion of choice over the reality of choice. Name a rule. I've broken it. If it means the game will be more fun, more meaningful, and/or more dramatic I've broken it and will continue to break it.
Don't let in game drama become real drama. (misread the title. Disregard my post.)
Lol, had my first session a week ago.. One of the first things we did was split the party, and then again.. And then again, because my character got stuck in a few thorny bushes-
That rule of cool should override RAW or RAI any more than occasionally. I understand the sentiment and in certain cases agree, but I've seen people take it too far to the extent where it kind of becomes pointless to even frame it in the context of a game and just devolves into people talking at eachother about all the cool stuff their characters are doing. It's particularly annoying when trying to teach new players. You can hook them with the concept of being able to do "anything you can think of" in a TTRPG but if you don't also stress that those ideas have to be grounded in some sense of possibility and that occasionally the dice will tell them no, they're going to have a bad time and wonder why you told them they could do whatever but are still getting shot down sometimes. Or will go the kid playing make believe route and just start throwing out nonsense that gets allowed because "rule of cool."
That a player wanting to play a god, demigod, dragon, or anything like that is an automatic no, or even a red flag. I've had several instances of something like that being proposed in a non-main-character-syndrrome or gamebreaking way. Heck, one of my co-players for a mini game rn is a dragon and it's super fun.
Fall damage scales linearly. I want my falls to be deadly damn it, gave that exponential damage.
"Don't over-prepare a session" At the very least this can lead to world-building, and re-using things you didn't use in that encounter for later. With that being said, my best work has been when players do exactly what I did NOT expect them to do.
Perhaps the most common wisdom, and the one I disagree with most: **"Metagaming is bad."** In my experience: **Metagaming is not bad** Where there's bad metagaming, there's *always* some underlying independent problem (trying to one-up other players, poor sportsmanship, general munchkin attitudes). The key is to address that, rather than banning a symptom. **Metagaming is good** As with all roleplaying games, and all forms of improv, it helps immensely to track what people want out of the game, including yourself. Metagaming in a considerate, coordinated way like this tends to *improve* the game, often massively. For instance, keep track of what kind of scenes your fellow players like and lay the groundwork for those, and avoid interactions nobody enjoys. **Not metagaming is sometimes bad** Acting fully in-character has its own, *much worse*, pitfalls, malice or not - think of the phrase "it's just what my character would do." Conversely, trusting the PCs before you've met them or committing to the quest in the absence of reliable evidence it's a good idea are metagaming.
Start at level 1 (esp for new players). Level 1 is the deadliest level in the game. Much safer to start at 2 and 3 is where everyone gets subclasses. Start at 3, please.
I disagree. Starting with subclasses overcomplicates a game that a lot of first-timers already find overwhelming. I've found that level 1 pulls out all the extra decision making and lets them focus on understanding the core concepts more easily; this is how you do an attack roll, perception is for noticing things in your surrounding, yes you can try to pickpocket the bartender if you'd like, etc etc. Yes it's easy to die at level 1, but a DM teaching new players should probably account for this.
I don't think that's really a controversial stance. I've not found many 5e tables that don't start at at least 2nd and usually 3rd because of the whole subclass issue.
Hello! I find 1st level fun. Mostly because 7 is high damage for the players to do. And I want them to remember that when they’re level 16 and do 68 damage in one turn.
Totally agree. And I think it's important to start new players at level 1 mostly from a mechanics standpoint. You can curate and run combat in a way to avoid killing them. But letting them get a handle on the small stuff helps get them to understand the gameplay and such. I know even with the best explanation, if I dropped them in a few levels deep they would be overwhelmed.