Look folks, I started my ttrpg hobby at age 8, with the first ever D&D box set. I’m 51 now, and have played many systems across uncounted settings. There has never been, nor is there likely to ever be, a system or setting that works perfectly. When I run a campaign, I choose a core system that best fits what my players want to invest time in. Then, I throw out the rules from that system that I feel will hinder the story. I replace them with rules from other systems that function more smoothly. The point of playing is to let everyone at the table HAVE FUN, within the structure of agreed upon rules. In session those rules should be established. After that, the only 2 rules that matter are these... 1) What other groups, people, etc. say has NO BEARING on how THIS group will move forward. 2) If a dispute does arise, the GM has the final say. It’s that simple, and always will be. If every group took time to decide this at the start of each campaign, we’d all be able to play more and enjoy it. Instead, we’ve got idiots on multiple sides of EVERY QUESTION arguing that everyone else should be doing everything their way. We’re not robots, programmed to do the same tasks in the same way ad nauseum. We’re hobbyists looking to have a fun time with others who share our joy in these games. So, suck it up, Buttercups. Stop trying to impose your personal preferences on everyone else, find others whose play style matches yours, and PLAY THE GAME. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
My favorite is when DM's combine both the old school and the new school, as in expecting you to write your elaborate backstory but still allowing your character to get shanked by a goblin and die in the very first combat, thus wasting everybody's time and making the players resentful. This used to be me, I've learned better over the years.
I like blending the styles, but not in the way you're describing (although I've experienced what you're talking about) I dislike save or die. Prodding at every corner with ten foot poles, players mapping or getting lost over their inaccurate mapping, or 3d6 down the line But I also dislike feats, a cosmopolitan light hearted critical role world where tielflings and dragon born are hanging out with humans in bars. I dislike magic being so commonplace it basically acts as a stand in for technology. I like resource management, random encounters, and a risk of death always being present. I like caution from the players, but not paranoia where exploration can become a grind. Boldness is rewarded but stupidity is punished. Its very possible to make it work fine. I dont think it has to be a binary choice between two extremes.
Have you ever combined old school, new school, & video game ideas into the campaign? In video games, you go from point A to point B. At point B you can "save" your character before going on to point C. Also, each point is a "safe" zone where characters can regenerate from all damage and level up if they are ready to level up. Once each point (B, C, D, ...) is cleared, there is no chance of random encounters, etc. that would threaten the characters. Maybe the cleric can have the ability to turn the area into a temporal "sanctuary".
@@kevinerose No but the first scenario i ran many many years ago right after we purchased the books I had allowed a few do-overs because what I came up with was too hard. Didn't realize 3 ghouls could cause a party wipe, I didn't understand the rules well enough. I'd like to say we all did stupid and bizarre things with our rpgs when we were kids though.
Some of the best characters I ever played. I didn't so much as create at character creation but discovered as I played them in actual games, and on more than one occasion, I have had characters that has surprised me in regards to who they really were.
The most intense role playing game moment I had was in the Pendragon System My knight holding the line against the advancing saxons. As a player I was well past the point of "we need to fall back" but trait and passion rolls prevented such and each battle round as the injuries added up it was a question of will he die here now today or by luck survive. He ended up being unhorsed and survived only due to a critical squire roll . I had already grabbed the back up character ready.
I belive it was in The Blue Flame of Vengeance by RE Howard, some Solomon Kane story anyways, where the African juju-man raised a guy from the dead (i think really he just animated the corpse) and his broken and mutilated body shambled around, was insane and attacked people, I did that once to the players, after all magic is magic and sometimes it doesn't work properly. They never tried raise dead again. They barely wanted to be near somebody that might have that spell ever again.
Back when we were playing D&D regularly (back in the '80s mostly) our DM let us use Raise Dead all the time BUT he made us work to do it. We couldn't just find, or have, a Cleric and have them do it. We had to go on a quest, have most of the body present, donate to their church, and a bunch of other stuff, and then it might not even work. It basically got to where it was such a pain in the butt that we rarely bothered.
@@erikmartin4996 I remember a whole adventure was one of my characters trying to get another of my character's body to a cleric THEN I had to do a bunch of other stuff for them to earn the favor. :)
Best campaign I every played was a DH2 game, everyone else went through 2 or 3 other characters at least, while my character survived from start to finish. He had so much experience, and was so connected to the world it was palpable this guy was a vet compared to everyone else, despite what anyone's backstory said. A big reason why he survived so much compared to the others was because he was a sniper and stayed near the rear of combat, and his pretty high charisma helped him get out of a few sticky situations. He was pretty reckless to begin with, but after a few close shaves with death he put away the bundles of explosives and took a more measured approach. He didn't survive by chance nor by lack of difficulty he faced, which was made clear by how many of his comrades died, but by a careful approach and a penchant for self preservation.
One of your most useful vids. I shall make this a required viewing for any game I referee from here on out! Where there is no risk, there can be no gain. 😁
I always recommend L&D as a tabletop based on the heraldic tales from the actual era, which I think is a major selling point. Dark Albion and Cults of Chaos are also fantastic. I need to pick up the Old School companion, but money is tight as hell right now because of the holidays.
RPGPwndit DM screen for Lion & Dragon needed with the center panel as seen by the players reading "Improper planning or actions by the players does _not_ constitute an emergency for the DM upon character death"
This was a very good video. It got to it's point, it make a case for it's point and it was not a rant about something that had nothing to do with it's point. And yes, cheap healing and recovery from death or totally being broken cheapens the whole "hero journey" thing that most rpgs pretend to be about. Good advice!
Spot on! These are things I already reinforce in my games, especially 5e games - no written background beyond the bare bone basics, and gritty realism rests!
@DUCATISLO I prefer to let my players take their time with their characters and let their backgrounds develop organically, rather than instituting pressure on them to get it done before play starts, that leaves them room to make up details on the fly when they're warranted and doesn't pigeon-hole their characters into a corner that becomes unproductive for the whole group when they aren't willing to budge because of the corner they've written themselves into. As for gritty realism healing, as an Old Head DM & Player, I see healing in 5e as too easy, and invites the DM to "up the ante" by introducing tougher encounters to challenge the players (and sometimes their characters) before they gain comparable levels. I for one, do not try for TPKs, and I do work closely with my players because I want them to have a great time, but far too often, I see players act carelessly and rely on easy healing like a video-game respawn to keep their lightly invested characters alive. Also, not having a detailed background for characters that die because players are careless and take unmitigated risks relieves them of the heart-break of losing a fully fleshed out character at level 1 because of Gritty Realism. B)
I did a compromise: I have the _Raise Dead_ spell involve a special ritual taken--yes, yes, I know, but he got this part right--from Matthew Mercer, which makes the spell more of a challenge to bring them back. I then included a _Resurrection DC_ that starts at 12 and goes up with each successful Raise Dead. Eventually, the spell fails and the person's dead for good. I also include the Chunky Salsa rule when massive damage is dealt, which requires at least _Resurrection_ to bring them back. But that's just me, I'm sure your mileage will vary.
I had an Elf that had the misfortune of rolling minimum hit points, he survived till 3rd level (still with min hp). It's one of my more memorable characters, and I had others that were much higher levels, but they could take the occasional hit and survive. With 5e, characters are nearly invulnerable with how many hp they have, how easy it is to heal, and how hard it is to die (that and the characters level-up every gaming session). My experience with 5e is that players get bored after 3-5 sessions and want to play a different character or a different game.
About Raise dead, IMO instead of "i will bring him back" should be "i will TRY bring him back" and should have checks and permanent consequences of Resurrection, like losing CON.
Kasmir, We always seem to have the same take on how to play an RPG. All we can do is convince the new crowd to play in one of our games. Then it's up to them. If they want the padded cell can't hurt yourself NERF world, then they can do that, but not in my game, or yours. We should game sometime. - Griff
Hello RPG pundit, on the topic of resting, what would you suggest to make it more...well not feel like to plug your phone every time you run out of hp, spells, etchy. What did you advocate when you were consulting Wotc? Thank you in advance, keep giving us advice and ideas.
Well, I originally advocated for something like healing your level+CON mod in hp, which could be bolstered with herbal medicine and medical lore. When they came up with all the stuff of the "short/long rests" I strongly advocated that they reduce considerably how much rests heal and how often it can be done.
I've been trying to play an Old School style game with New School players. Unfortunately some players just never learn anything. So I'm not as optimistic about turning them into better tactical players.
This is part of the reason I left advemtures league. My tiefling ranger died and I was ok with it and started rolling up a new character and I was told not to bother because they were just going to revive him for free. I told them I'd rather just make a new xharacter but they argued that he was great for the party balance and dynamic so instead of doing what I'd enjoy i just said fuck it and played mr dead tiefling and finished the adventure with no sense of victory at the end. The character also ended up being a bit bitter after he was revived because he was finally at peace and then snatched from it. When I run games, if someone gets raised I have them occasionally see grom reapers and have some clerics (mostly of the god of life and death) treat them with hostility
Volound made a video talking about total war games and their modern hero problem, and it has eerie parallels to your own talking points. In his video, "Total War's "Single Entity Problem"", he mentions a unit from shogun total war that is a master swordsman in a unit of his own. His blade is an extension of himself and he is capable of felling a hundred men, but he is still flesh and bone. An arrow will kill him just as it would a peasant farmer with a spear. He can only fight as long as his body holds up. In the 'hero' role playing games, it becomes an issue of being able to do all that by level 5 and not break a sweat.
I think this misstep is some muted idea virus. D&D and kinda has it's roots in someone taught someone who taught someone who taught someone... and insert a few oddities and you get the different house rules and variation rules and other minute differences, from intent or accident. But somewhere along the lines we got several bad assumptions/corruptions which got carried and turned into what many assume to be a concrete part of the gaming genome. The hard to kill characters is one aspect, and there is the certain question that I think comes up fairly often which is, how smart are smart enemies supposed to be in a combat situation. A lot of encounters could be more interesting if the supposedly intelligent monsters actually were run as being cunning or combat smart to some degree, forcing the players to adapt around what it is those enemies do. Enemies that seek to kill PCs also is a line most DMs just don't ever cross. I think Critical Role is one of the major causes of this viral problem, but the internet in general may have something to do with it, and other shows that started around the same time or around then. Stories, unexplained contrivances for shows, intentional modifications, etc developed into a major misunderstanding for newbies who weren't aware that death and failure were everyday parts of OSR games. Long lived characters were clever, careful, and lucky, not granted divine favor--eg, the DM decided to move the laser pointer to another character that wasn't the cleric until the downed individual stood back up or everything hostile was dead.
IMO people try to make Raise Dead more difficult the wrong way. Instead of making the living players pay some sort of price to raise the dead, the real challenge should be travelling to Heaven or Valhalla and trying to convince the soul of the dead character that he should leave such a place to return back to Earth to suffer and struggle in his frail body only to inevitably die once again. And if the dead character is of the Evil persuasion, now the living PCs need to mount an assault on Hell to rescue the soul of their companion.
@Sir Percival the Gallant At the end of the d20 era, WotC released a book called Ghostwalk that did some of what you are talking about. WotC, however, hedged their bets and limited the effects only to one special, magical town which robbed the idea of most of it's usefulness. Dead characters can add levels in a Ghost class that let them affect the physical world more and more. Not a bad supplement overall but didn't really reach the full potential of the ideas it presented.
Mary Sue backgrounds can and should be avoided at Session 0. The DM should do some expectation management and set the tone of his campaign without giving too much away - "My world is less WoW and LoTR, and more ASOIAF and Conan-like. Write your characters accordingly." Character background is no longer than 1 page, if you're generous. As for game breaking spells - As suggested, they might exact a horrible toll on the caster or the target, or can just be removed from the game entirely. 2e Ressurection had the character make a system shock to survive, and even if he did he'd lose 1 Con point permenantly. As sacrfice goes, it's a good start.
I was wondering about the influence of LotFP on L&D - with the hit points going up one at a time after the first few levels. I ordered L & D today. Looking forward to receiving it.
There is certainly an influence. Lion & Dragon is the eventual ruleset that emerged from my original Dark Albion campaign. When we started that campaign, we were using LotFP rules. As I found it not entirely to my satisfaction for the setting, I started changing all the rules, until the result was the rules that became Lion & Dragon. So L&D is a kind of evolution of LotFP.
I once sketched out a variant rest system for 5E but I never got a chance to playtest it. In short, you divide resting into three categories: *A Breather is a hour rest where abilities like the Wizard's Arcane Recovery can be used but no healing occurs (beyond spells or potions, of course). *A Night's Rest is basically 5E's 8 hour Long Rest but with only 1/2 Hit Dice + CON Bonus healing. *A Long Break is a week+ recovery time where the character regains all HP. Obviously it's not perfect and I've never tested it, but I still think it's a good place to start. EDIT:Oh, and for the love of God ban the Fighter's Second Wind nonsense.
You could add a saving throw against death every time the caster casts raise dead and a saving throw against death by the target for success of the spell. If the caster succeeds the spell might still fail but if the caster fails they are both permanently dead.
This video was top notch! I’ve been looking at ways to make my 5e game more compelling so I can justify DMing it. I know it’s a good game. The culture is just bad. I am having a lot of fun in the OSR, though, and the community is amazing.
the remove of raise dead is not a big thing my players rarely use it and usually it is tied to a draw pack it is a reincarnate spell change there race or a packet with a demon or they return mad since the afterlife is not save to return form or so
I can't speak for the new school vs old school since, while I technically learned about TTRPGs in the 3e era(trying one-shots of Palladium and CoC as well), I haven't gotten to have many conversations with the old guard. My FLGS owner and one of his friends have told me stories, but most of them from the Tournament/History perspective. "It's different" is about all I got from it(and some nice shit talk). I also didn't actually get involved with TTRPGs until the NEXT playtests. Frankly, I was gung ho about a streamlined, modular ruleset, rulings vs rules, bounded accuracy, et al. 6+ years in, however, and my own desire for creative freedom is coming into conflict with the system. I'm no designer, nor a very good worldbuilder really, but I have a baseline I'd like to emulate that requires magic to be low to mid-level (because I want magic to feel magical again) while also returning a bit of grit. I'm in the weird position of trying to run a 1-17/20, epic game(per player request) while also building the world as I go, amongst other issues. I'm a pretty merciless GM, even by 5e standards, as I won't hesitate to run someone through that's making death saves. I also set the expectation through NPC conversations(a well-read acolyte) that there have only been 5 resurrections in known history, but the world itself allows for other methods (Fae pacts, Vampire pacts, "divine intervention"). Despite the issues, the game has gone pretty well thus far. There are still conflicts of expectation across the board, from languages to available healing(A "high magic" race has a monopoly on potions), but my players are cautious and take people's warnings at face value. For example, they've recently entered a desert with deadly humanoid insects, a creature completely new to them. The locals say "Just fucking run" and the group doesn't hesitate to avoid conflict. They're Lv7 and could take on the groups they've spotted, but they don't know it yet. Which leads to: tldr; Dear diary, cause and effect, don't baby your players PS: While I agree with the backstory stuff in general (room for growth is important), I don't mind my players breaking the mold. Part of the advantage of building as we go is that everyone has a home they can invest in developing. I've got a Black Dog who passes as Human through Fae magic, a fortune telling gypsy who glimpses/experiences horrific futures and whose people are burned if they travel too far west, an orphan blacksmith(no longer playing due to work), a hawk warrior that fled from his home on an orbiting citadel, and a tribal barbarian who used to live in a Hedge before it shattered.
Man, two things: first, i really looove your content. I bought your old school companion vol 1 and i love it so far. I'm playing with AD&D 2 rules in FR and Ravenloft setting. Which other book of yours should i buy to improve my AD&D2 games? Now, about raising the deads, i would not go that far. It's actually a great "quest spell"! I would still use it but only for very high level clerics and after having accomplished a special quest. Plus, certain casualties should not admit raising the deads. For instance if my character is purely smashed by a giant and my corpse is nothing more than trash bones and a pool of smashed flesh, i can't be raised. But if i die from drowning or if some vital organs are not that damaged, i think it would be an amazing spell quest! After all: cheating death is the end goal of a lot of magic users. Plus, since you seem kind of fond of western esotericism, you should read Eliphas Levi's book: he talks about raising the deads as a magus. Ps: sorry for my broken English!
That's not coffee. Or at least, what's the point of having fresh ground? If you're going to get high end fresh ground coffee, then you should drink it without a ton of milk and flavoring. If what you want is a coffee-flavored desert don't bother; and I say this without suggesting the latter is bad! Vietnamese Iced Coffee is essentially a coffee-flavored dessert, so it doesn't need high-end coffee to make.
@@RPGPundit well I like the flavors but I'm also trying to cut back on sugar. Even had to pour out an iced coffee from Sonic because it was about ten times too sweet. Anyway I've just noticed that grinding beans myself just makes fresher and better tasting coffee, and the beans are just a bag from Walmart so it's not expensive.
Not everyone has a clear idea what they want their character to be, so even a lot of 5e players welcome the chance to not flesh out their background before play, other than the character creation box checking (used to be a pirate, for example). I always say to players, “show, don’t tell”, and that feeds into not predetermining everything because no one is asking the players to tell everyone their life story on day one.
When i run 5e , i make characters gain permanent death save fail every time raised so max three raises, also haunt them with nightmares and visions of other side, also lingering injuries ( something must have killed them)
I suggested making my 5E campaign harder by capping HP and one player piped saying: "You're just making this difficult for the sake of being difficult." I had to explain why I wanted it to be difficult... As to resurrection, I do intend on it being tied to character religion, so a follower of Thyr won't be able to resurrect a Christian and vice versa... expecting some turned heads at that one, though...
@@RPGPundit I'd wager saying "God doesn't resurrect pagans" might be a bit harsh - albeit fair if that is how the setting presents its gods - but perhaps something like a percentage chance that improves as the dead person is more in line with that god. Something like a base 5% chance of resurrection, another 10% if the character worshipped the same deity, another 10% for having done good deeds and so on, up to a maximum of 90% or something. It certainly could promote the party leaning to the same religion or even see the cleric converting some characters, be it pragmatic yea or nae, but it would make religion a bit more impactful.
I get different opinions on that from my palyers and death still happens I often think that the cr system if far far of you have to throw super hard challenge at them at higher levels but death can happen often you have to add osem environmental or other side effect
I rarely end up with the same pc at the end of a campaign. This is why I want to run a more sandbox-style game and use the slow natural healing rule Slow Natural Healing (DMG) Characters don’t regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest. This optional rule prolongs the amount of time that characters need to recover from their wounds without magical healing benefits and works well for grittier, more realistic campaigns.
"Lamentations of the Flame Princess is the first OSR game to remove Raise Dead" Sometimes, Pundit says things that makes me think he only started playing RPGs two years ago.
What specifically OSR RPG predating LotFP did not have Raise Dead? Note: clones that count a limited level-range below what would include Raise Dead on spell lists does not count.
I'm still with the some what lengthy backstory and a personality. Letting them change though the course of the game. The professional soldier driven to horrific acts for revenge. The mother hen witch who gives up everything for her homeland. Or the harden assassin who learns the joy of caring for others.
I don't think there is a such thing as a hardened assassin that's only level 1, or 0 or whatever. Backstory like that really only works if you're starting at a higher level than you typically do.
In my opinion, DMs are not storytellers (and a roleplaying game is not best played as a storytelling game. If you want to play a storytelling game, there are games designed as storytelling games that do that much better). A GM places challenges in front of the players, the players try to solve the challenges, and after you are done playing, then you can tell the story (or stories) about what happened at the table. As a byproduct of play, a story may emerge. It occurred to me recently that, at some time in the past (maybe around 3rd edition of D&D?), professional writers took over the design and adventure making of D&D; as opposed to the original D&D material which was written by a shoe repairman and a security guard, and other wargaming hobbyists. Sometime around then the game became about telling stories (which is just what you would expect a writer to be interested in) rather than the exploration of maps by PCs and combat with fierce creatures to obtain treasure [in a hexcrawl or a dungeon delve]. Video game influences (which are much more linier or like chose your own adventures) also began to influence TTRPG design [for the worse in my opinion]. Modules began to be written as movement from plot point to plot point, rather than allowing characters to roam around in the sandbox pursuing their own ideas and motivations. It seems like this was around the time that the term "railroading" arose and was used as a derogatory term by those of us who had grown up playing the open world/sandbox type of campaign to describe these ‘plot driven’ 'straightjackets' type of adventures. The linked videos are a great example of this point of view (which I agree with): ua-cam.com/video/4c9BoqE-jeY/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/PIQpVNbLwuE/v-deo.html The story is what happens at [or away from] the table AFTER they game is finished for the evening, when tales are told of what happened during the game. When I hear GMs, game designers and others talking about the three-act structure, overlaid by the Shakespearian five act structure, and then talking about the realization moment in screenplays [coming at approximately page 80], and the climax of the story, and [heaven help us] the denouement, etc., etc., I know that I am listening to someone who likely learned to play after the rise of the 'storytelling/video game' type of adventure. Back in 1974, when age 10 to 25 year old 'kids' were putting together their D&D worlds and building sandboxes for others to play in, we/they had little formal education about story structure and the like [and wouldn't have thought about using it in the design of a 'dungeon' or wilderness adventure anyway], but we/they knew enough to create challenges for players to overcome, which creates the environment for conflict (which is critical to drama), and with players having created motivated characters who were seeking fame and fortune, and were placed in such a sandbox environment, they organically created story through play. Look at things like the Judges Guild materials from the late 70s. They are filled with locations, creatures, NPCs, random tables and such and not plot points, a main narrative, etc. A DM is not a storyteller and RPGs are best used as role playing games, and not storytelling games.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. Assuming we are in a Weak Man phase, and this has created soft games with narcissistic concern about character and back-story, what are the fixes you propose in playing 5E which would fix the system? Rests that are not so complete, maybe?
That is just a load of hogwash. I suggest reading a series of blog articles entitled The Fremen Mirage as to why that claim in unsupported by actual historical events.
5e isn't a "soft game" anyone that's played curse of Strad can tell you that. As a DM you have total control over how lethal or non lethal something is. If you don't like them taking long rests throw in ambushes don't try to fix a system that isn't broken. Just you know don't start complaining when you're pc's start having +15 to 20 in stealth and run from every fight because high lethality dosen't actually promot courage in play styles
@Agent Milos it's the same system the only thing different about Strad is that it's written to be difficult in COS you can't go to Strad"s castle at lvl 8 and win. My group did that in expedition to castle ravenloft and it pissed the DM off so much he hasn't run 3.5 since that is ridiculous power creep im sure 1e and 2e might have it better but there's definitely a forum out there about optimization for them too. 5e isn't perfect but it's not so broken as to be discarded as trash because you dislike the style of fantasy it prefers
@14:20~~you know, I think I've mentioned this before, Bill Allen of D&D with highschool students, is currently hosting Lamentations? oh crap, just spent 10 minutes trying to think of "Arduin" and now, I forgot why. OH! Raise Dead/Resurrect was such a big deal in our game in uni that it affected the entire party. Individually and collectively. Each one of us had to sacrifice something (my halfling had to stop having a 25 charisma, it went to 18, but he could no longer just charm the trunks off trees. and each member had to change, not relinquish, something. plus the group had to pledge, under geas, to end wars, not battles, but wars. to get one character back. radical difference than D&D which we all also played, which was pretty much just a pay for such) we were young
I will probably do a livestream. But no guests, because I have no idea how to do a multiperson livestream on youtube. UA-cam doesn't make that easy, unfortunately.
Who are you? You say you helped create 5thed. Is your name in the credits somewhere? Just found this channel today. Also took a look at Inappropriate Characters. Great stuff. Completely agree with what I've seen so far. Do not like modern DnD. 'Mary Sue character knows anything, des anything at any time because I made a simple skill roll that's almost impossible to fail on. Mary isn't afraid of any combat because she knows her special super powers and advantages at applying them will win the day one handed while nibbling on her special snowflake cookies with the other won't allow her to fail. Besides healings ready and death is a joke so Kowabunga baby! Look at me I'm the greatest hero ever! Blah.. not fun.
@@RPGPundit okay I don't know if you read your old comments and videos or not but putting this here. So 9 months ago when I asked this question I first come across your channel. I asked that question because of an extremely interested in your point of view. Now I spent nine months watching your content and trying to figure out whether or not I agree with this guy. I conclusion in short is I almost 100% agree with you on everything you say about tension in the games and what an RPG should be versus the modern storytelling method of playing dungeon dragons. At the time I thought I'd want to get back into the game and I was willing to play fifth edition but I didn't have quite the understanding of it that I do now. Most of that or one of that, is thanks to you. So I do appreciate your work. I'd still probably like to get back into the game spin a very long time and you know I'm kind of getting old now but that doesn't matter. Haven't been a player character since the '80s. First edition. After that I was dungeon master up until the early 2000s. Second edition. If I do end up getting back into the game I wouldn't mind the fifth edition framework. I mean the backbone the d20 type system but I would definitely want the tension of the danger that we had in Old School d&d. Either I'll just find some way to play Old School DND. Anyway I just came back to revisit this to say I've been listening making up my mind and thank you. I'm just one of probably many people that really appreciate your view on things.
@6:40~~So you are from Rotterdam, which you are approaching. _ayyy, I know all the back alleys._ You get to the gates of Rotterdam, and you don't remember gates. There was talks of gates when you left, and some even had put up fences and gates around their homes, but they all bought dogs. Now there is an earthen mound around the whole town, a ditch filled with waste outside the mound, and a pair of gates. _So, I'm to expect changes? and so I do._ The gate guards, guards, you've never know so many guards, and they have different accents. They are telling you, brokenly, in a high handed manner, like they don't have accents, you do! "You must present papers of recent residency, if they are more than 8 days old, you must go to the other side to the camp of Corps N'teen. There you will have daily check ins for the next TenDay, to ensure you are not suspect of being a coercive." (You need to be in town tomorrow afternoon!) *FAST FORWARD* if you comply. You are cleared to enter, you must wear a compliance mask. You must wear clothing that identifies your occupation: tourist, home leaser, migrant worker, & you cannot call anyone by personal name, only their affiliation. The previous mayor, who you recognize, is now the hostess. He greets you as you enter: "Velcommin baker, tourist, migrant, & another tourist!" He offers to clean your gear, a good job for a fee, just sprinkling it with political waters is free, sprinkling your gear, as he speaks with you, suddenly turns to stains of orange or purple. Splotches. If your answers are becoming contradictory, then they turn to brown. You are then invited to use the town's troughs for personal cleansing. Which bleaches any natural item. But you sure do smell clean! _No, I'm Free_ and all people shun you in public. (but MANY, too many, approach you privately)
once inside, mostly those that had gates are the same...otherwise, the place has been bulldozed and rebuilt...there are no alleys anymore. *Thanks for your backstory here* yes the infrastructure is MOSTLY the same, but where there were homes and businesses, is now apartments, compounds, and rental centers. The Grave Reset has not made the town refreshed, it has made the town serously depressed.
I'm attempting to keep a cohesive comment section between the 8 or so D&D people I follow, Like WallyDM, Bill Allen, You, and you, if you find them, will find others, giving depth to the game I'm proposing, and playing, with or without you. The hard part is...finding bored people who like D&D and are willing to follow the clues. As in, what I wrote today in response, actually goes along with comments I made On Other Channels. Those comments being a campaign which I keep straight in my head. Many of them originate on AJ Pickett monster lores. There should be a way, of keeping them cohesed. Without providing links, but under the comment it should read...for similar comments by Axblade, here's the list. c'mon yt AI make it sew!
The OSR discord was blowing up yesterday. People posting every few seconds. The issue? LGBT stuff in Japan. This is the same server that basically suggested I go elsewhere if I'm looking to play any of RPGPundit's games... What a weird world.
My player group had a DM that removed resurrection from the Clerics spell casting, because no Deity would grant that type of power to a mere mortal. They only way to get resurrection was to find it on an extremely rare scroll or artifact. Well one time one of our players lost his character and he really wanted to get him back. Our DM dropped a rumor that a resurrection scroll existed in the treasure trove of an ancient Wizard. So off we went, our first venture into Tomb of Horrors. We lost five characters, total group wipe, the first time in. 3 of 5 the second time, before we gave up. Never again did any of us ask to have access to resurrection.
@@cvwx7485 Historically, holy people never raised the dead. God raised the dead, the holy people just asked him to do it. This is true of all miracles. That's why I don't how Clerics work in D&D.
And if you insist on having the short rest and raise dead faceroll rules then extend them to your enemies. Have them rushing in and blowing all their abilities then dying (after multiple saves) only for you to meet them again further into the same dungeon an hour later with them all rezzed up at full strength and ready to blow their cooldowns/spells again. And another hour later *again* etc, etc. It then stops being the special heroes with their own unique rulebook they beat everyone else in the world over the head with, it's now an annoying but fundamental part of life that you accept or work around. Also for the comment (around 11;30) abut the veteran "greatest swordsman in the land" vs a level 0 peasant - it gives me flashbacks to Wheel of Time where they repeatedly talked about the Captain of the Palace Guard (or something like that) losing to a peasant with a stick/quarterstaff.
I feel there is a middle ground were characters do have some accomplishments to their name, but are still not anything special. Playing games outside of the d20sphere, like GURPS or Call of Cthulhu or Vampire the Masquerade can bring that out a lot more.
5 ads on this video. Fuck UA-cam. This is the last video I'll ever watch here. I hope you're uploading these videos to Bitchute Pundit, I'd hate to miss your content.
I prefer bringing back the dead being simply very expensive in term of gold costs. This is the reason most of my characters have stayed dead in 3.75; the party would rather keep the money and use it to buy new gear (in a system where literally half your progression is gear based). Granted, part of the reason they abandoned my characters like that, is that the GMs typically allow you to make a new character at the same level... Which honestly seems wrong in this context. So a better idea might be that if they chose not to raise dead, they'll have to train up a level 1 character again.
Give the players each a terrifying secret 1. Your family line suffers from Lycanthropy. You may change one full moon. 2. You accidentally married into a family of Thieves and Assassins. 3.The City Mayor lost the signet ring in a tavern / brothel you found it. You pocketed it. 4. You left a party last night and accidentally took a cloak that did not belong to you home. 5. You lost a lot of money gambling and some stranger fronted you for a favor at a later time. 6. One or both of your parents are wanted for a long list of crimes. 7. You secretly adopted or have been feeding a baby monster in the woods. 8. You are a disease spreader / Typhoid Mary type. You know it. Possibly infected the whole party.
@@Charlotte_WilliamsFYTG well yes and no what I'm pointing out is that some times gms try to force things on players even when its clear they don't want a example would be when i played a wizard in pathfinder and picked a archetype specifically so I could have create water from the cleric spell list then the party gets into a desert and my decides i have to roll to see if my spell succeeds no idea why specially since its a cantrip that i can just spam infinitely, i ahve seem multiple instances where a play picks a option to negate a specific kind of challenge such as feather fall and the gm ignores it or tries to twart it
@@fakebunny1272 Sounds like a communication breakdown. Did you guys have a session 0? If so your GM should've been clear about that. Adding some difficulty can help but it's best not to surprise the players with it. I wasn't there but if I had to guess I'd say your gm wanted supplies to be more of an issue in his game and didn't express that well enough. But remember there are other groups out there and you don't have to put up with it. Try telling your gm how you feel about it and ask if you can re-roll your character or make a new one. It sounds to me like maybe you wouldn't have chosen that character if you knew ahead of time.
The thing I dont like about new school is the flavour is gone..Half orc paladin?? No problem..Halfing Monk?? Sure Dwarf Wizard?? Yup..With no cultural significance..Also there is too many powers and every class has a way to do spells that magic becomes not special at all
I'll admit I could only watch the first 5 minutes but my question is: why on earth would I want to play a game where I'm playing a character that's the same boring ass loser that I am in real life?
@@RPGPundit no. no it's not. many people play games to escape their mundane lives so it's entirely appropriate as a question to ask. but, rest assured I've been made to feel a ton of shame during my life.
@@danacoleman4007 Well that's the thing, it isn't about making someone boring or a loser, it is about making someone purposefully mortal. XP to Lvl 3 talked about in one of his videos about when you make characters, you should purposefully design them with their ending in mind. The point is not to live forever, the point is to inspire others and leave something behind for the world before you get to the end.
Ok, i do not mean to be rude here, but i am going to have to be. If "You cannot die" makes your games not fun, you are really, really bad at designing games. I am not taking away from your point, 5th edition, and 4 edition before it was HORRIBLY designed. But creating an interesting and compelling story is not contingent upon the characters dying. I can easily imagine a plethora of scenarios, particularity at high level, were the failure of the players in no way results in there deaths but has region wide consequences they are certain to not like.
In my opinion, DMs are not storytellers (and a roleplaying game is not best played as a storytelling game. If you want to play a storytelling game, there are games designed as storytelling games that do that much better). A GM places challenges in front of the players, the players try to solve the challenges, and after you are done playing, then you can tell the story (or stories) about what happened at the table. As a byproduct of play, a story may emerge. It occurred to me recently that, at some time in the past (maybe around 3rd edition of D&D?), professional writers took over the design and adventure making of D&D; as opposed to the original D&D material which was written by a shoe repairman and a security guard, and other wargaming hobbyists. Sometime around then the game became about telling stories (which is just what you would expect a writer to be interested in) rather than the exploration of maps by PCs and combat with fierce creatures to obtain treasure [in a hexcrawl or a dungeon delve]. Video game influences (which are much linier or like chose your own adventures) also began to influence TTRPG design [for the worse in my opinion]. Modules began to be written as movement from plot point to plot point, rather than allowing characters to roam around in the sandbox pursuing their own ideas and motivations. It seems like this was around the time that the term "railroading" arose and was used as a derogatory term by those of us who had grown up playing the open world/sandbox type of campaign to describe these ‘plot driven’ 'straightjackets' type of adventures. The linked videos are a great example of this point of view (which I agree with): ua-cam.com/video/4c9BoqE-jeY/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/PIQpVNbLwuE/v-deo.html The story is what happens at [or away from] the table AFTER they game is finished for the evening, when tales are told of what happened during the game. When I hear GMs, game designers and others talking about the three-act structure, overlaid by the Shakespearian five act structure, and then talking about the realization moment in screenplays [coming at approximately page 80], and the climax of the story, and [heaven help us] the denouement, etc., etc., I know that I am listening to someone who likely learned to play after the rise of the 'storytelling/video game' type of adventure. Back in 1974, when age 10 to 25 year old 'kids' were putting together their D&D worlds and building sandboxes for others to play in, we/they had little formal education about story structure and the like [and wouldn't have thought about using it in the design of a 'dungeon' or wilderness adventure anyway], but we/they knew enough to create challenges for players to overcome, which creates the environment for conflict (which is critical to drama), and with players having created motivated characters who were seeking fame and fortune, and were placed in such a sandbox environment, they organically created story through play. Look at things like the Judges Guild materials from the late 70s. They are filled with locations, creatures, NPCs, random tables and such and not plot points, a main narrative, etc. A DM is not a storyteller and RPGs are best used as role playing games, and not storytelling games.
Look folks, I started my ttrpg hobby at age 8, with the first ever D&D box set. I’m 51 now, and have played many systems across uncounted settings. There has never been, nor is there likely to ever be, a system or setting that works perfectly. When I run a campaign, I choose a core system that best fits what my players want to invest time in. Then, I throw out the rules from that system that I feel will hinder the story. I replace them with rules from other systems that function more smoothly. The point of playing is to let everyone at the table HAVE FUN, within the structure of agreed upon rules. In session those rules should be established. After that, the only 2 rules that matter are these...
1) What other groups, people, etc. say has NO BEARING on how THIS group will move forward.
2) If a dispute does arise, the GM has the final say.
It’s that simple, and always will be. If every group took time to decide this at the start of each campaign, we’d all be able to play more and enjoy it. Instead, we’ve got idiots on multiple sides of EVERY QUESTION arguing that everyone else should be doing everything their way. We’re not robots, programmed to do the same tasks in the same way ad nauseum. We’re hobbyists looking to have a fun time with others who share our joy in these games. So, suck it up, Buttercups. Stop trying to impose your personal preferences on everyone else, find others whose play style matches yours, and PLAY THE GAME.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
My favorite is when DM's combine both the old school and the new school, as in expecting you to write your elaborate backstory but still allowing your character to get shanked by a goblin and die in the very first combat, thus wasting everybody's time and making the players resentful.
This used to be me, I've learned better over the years.
I like blending the styles, but not in the way you're describing (although I've experienced what you're talking about)
I dislike save or die. Prodding at every corner with ten foot poles, players mapping or getting lost over their inaccurate mapping, or 3d6 down the line
But I also dislike feats, a cosmopolitan light hearted critical role world where tielflings and dragon born are hanging out with humans in bars. I dislike magic being so commonplace it basically acts as a stand in for technology. I like resource management, random encounters, and a risk of death always being present. I like caution from the players, but not paranoia where exploration can become a grind. Boldness is rewarded but stupidity is punished.
Its very possible to make it work fine. I dont think it has to be a binary choice between two extremes.
Have you ever combined old school, new school, & video game ideas into the campaign? In video games, you go from point A to point B. At point B you can "save" your character before going on to point C. Also, each point is a "safe" zone where characters can regenerate from all damage and level up if they are ready to level up. Once each point (B, C, D, ...) is cleared, there is no chance of random encounters, etc. that would threaten the characters. Maybe the cleric can have the ability to turn the area into a temporal "sanctuary".
@@kevinerose No but the first scenario i ran many many years ago right after we purchased the books I had allowed a few do-overs because what I came up with was too hard.
Didn't realize 3 ghouls could cause a party wipe, I didn't understand the rules well enough. I'd like to say we all did stupid and bizarre things with our rpgs when we were kids though.
At least the other players had a prewritten eulogy for the funeral
Some of the best characters I ever played. I didn't so much as create at character creation but discovered as I played them in actual games, and on more than one occasion, I have had characters that has surprised me in regards to who they really were.
The most intense role playing game moment I had was in the Pendragon System
My knight holding the line against the advancing saxons.
As a player I was well past the point of "we need to fall back" but trait and passion rolls prevented such and each battle round as the injuries added up it was a question of will he die here now today or by luck survive.
He ended up being unhorsed and survived only due to a critical squire roll .
I had already grabbed the back up character ready.
I belive it was in The Blue Flame of Vengeance by RE Howard, some Solomon Kane story anyways, where the African juju-man raised a guy from the dead (i think really he just animated the corpse) and his broken and mutilated body shambled around, was insane and attacked people, I did that once to the players, after all magic is magic and sometimes it doesn't work properly. They never tried raise dead again. They barely wanted to be near somebody that might have that spell ever again.
Back when we were playing D&D regularly (back in the '80s mostly) our DM let us use Raise Dead all the time BUT he made us work to do it. We couldn't just find, or have, a Cleric and have them do it. We had to go on a quest, have most of the body present, donate to their church, and a bunch of other stuff, and then it might not even work.
It basically got to where it was such a pain in the butt that we rarely bothered.
Exactly to both of you! Great job to your DMs
@@erikmartin4996 I remember a whole adventure was one of my characters trying to get another of my character's body to a cleric THEN I had to do a bunch of other stuff for them to earn the favor. :)
That's so wrong, but it made me laugh. I'm still laughing from it.
The Epic of Gilgamesh was an Epic about attempting to overcome death, not a run to the mini-mart
Well put.
Best campaign I every played was a DH2 game, everyone else went through 2 or 3 other characters at least, while my character survived from start to finish. He had so much experience, and was so connected to the world it was palpable this guy was a vet compared to everyone else, despite what anyone's backstory said. A big reason why he survived so much compared to the others was because he was a sniper and stayed near the rear of combat, and his pretty high charisma helped him get out of a few sticky situations. He was pretty reckless to begin with, but after a few close shaves with death he put away the bundles of explosives and took a more measured approach. He didn't survive by chance nor by lack of difficulty he faced, which was made clear by how many of his comrades died, but by a careful approach and a penchant for self preservation.
Luck undoubtedly played a role, but preparedness is key.
At 14, I wanted to play something 5E because I was young and inexperienced. Now at 34, 1E/osr, Warhammer, CoC are hella fun!
One of your most useful vids. I shall make this a required viewing for any game I referee from here on out! Where there is no risk, there can be no gain. 😁
Thanks! Please share it!
I always recommend L&D as a tabletop based on the heraldic tales from the actual era, which I think is a major selling point. Dark Albion and Cults of Chaos are also fantastic. I need to pick up the Old School companion, but money is tight as hell right now because of the holidays.
Well, hope you get your chance soon!
RPGPwndit DM screen for Lion & Dragon needed with the center panel as seen by the players reading
"Improper planning or actions by the players does _not_ constitute an emergency for the DM upon character death"
This was a very good video. It got to it's point, it make a case for it's point and it was not a rant about something that had nothing to do with it's point. And yes, cheap healing and recovery from death or totally being broken cheapens the whole "hero journey" thing that most rpgs pretend to be about. Good advice!
Spot on! These are things I already reinforce in my games, especially 5e games - no written background beyond the bare bone basics, and gritty realism rests!
@DUCATISLO I prefer to let my players take their time with their characters and let their backgrounds develop organically, rather than instituting pressure on them to get it done before play starts, that leaves them room to make up details on the fly when they're warranted and doesn't pigeon-hole their characters into a corner that becomes unproductive for the whole group when they aren't willing to budge because of the corner they've written themselves into.
As for gritty realism healing, as an Old Head DM & Player, I see healing in 5e as too easy, and invites the DM to "up the ante" by introducing tougher encounters to challenge the players (and sometimes their characters) before they gain comparable levels. I for one, do not try for TPKs, and I do work closely with my players because I want them to have a great time, but far too often, I see players act carelessly and rely on easy healing like a video-game respawn to keep their lightly invested characters alive.
Also, not having a detailed background for characters that die because players are careless and take unmitigated risks relieves them of the heart-break of losing a fully fleshed out character at level 1 because of Gritty Realism. B)
Fantastic advice that I'll be using in my next game.
* Character dies in 14th century Europe *
* "I've No More F***s To Give" starts playing in the background *
I did a compromise: I have the _Raise Dead_ spell involve a special ritual taken--yes, yes, I know, but he got this part right--from Matthew Mercer, which makes the spell more of a challenge to bring them back. I then included a _Resurrection DC_ that starts at 12 and goes up with each successful Raise Dead. Eventually, the spell fails and the person's dead for good. I also include the Chunky Salsa rule when massive damage is dealt, which requires at least _Resurrection_ to bring them back. But that's just me, I'm sure your mileage will vary.
Sounds like what I've dealt with.
Well, in the old AD&D rules you had "resurrection survival" rolls. This at least made there be some risk of final death.
We also lost a Con. point each time permanently
I had an Elf that had the misfortune of rolling minimum hit points, he survived till 3rd level (still with min hp). It's one of my more memorable characters, and I had others that were much higher levels, but they could take the occasional hit and survive. With 5e, characters are nearly invulnerable with how many hp they have, how easy it is to heal, and how hard it is to die (that and the characters level-up every gaming session). My experience with 5e is that players get bored after 3-5 sessions and want to play a different character or a different game.
About Raise dead, IMO instead of "i will bring him back" should be "i will TRY bring him back" and should have checks and permanent consequences of Resurrection, like losing CON.
Kasmir, We always seem to have the same take on how to play an RPG. All we can do is convince the new crowd to play in one of our games. Then it's up to them. If they want the padded cell can't hurt yourself NERF world, then they can do that, but not in my game, or yours. We should game sometime. - Griff
Hello RPG pundit, on the topic of resting, what would you suggest to make it more...well not feel like to plug your phone every time you run out of hp, spells, etchy. What did you advocate when you were consulting Wotc? Thank you in advance, keep giving us advice and ideas.
Well, I originally advocated for something like healing your level+CON mod in hp, which could be bolstered with herbal medicine and medical lore.
When they came up with all the stuff of the "short/long rests" I strongly advocated that they reduce considerably how much rests heal and how often it can be done.
Excellent point. No Raise Dead in my campaign for now on.😁
Glad I've converted you! Now spread the word: share the video!
@@RPGPundit, Grim Jim’s Grimdark 5e supplement has some solid ideas on short and long rests as well.
I've been trying to play an Old School style game with New School players. Unfortunately some players just never learn anything. So I'm not as optimistic about turning them into better tactical players.
Give them time and maybe some examples from helpful NPCs at first.
@@RPGPundit One player left after 2 years, the others are still there. I haven't giving up on them completely, but it's a slow climb.
This is part of the reason I left advemtures league. My tiefling ranger died and I was ok with it and started rolling up a new character and I was told not to bother because they were just going to revive him for free. I told them I'd rather just make a new xharacter but they argued that he was great for the party balance and dynamic so instead of doing what I'd enjoy i just said fuck it and played mr dead tiefling and finished the adventure with no sense of victory at the end. The character also ended up being a bit bitter after he was revived because he was finally at peace and then snatched from it.
When I run games, if someone gets raised I have them occasionally see grom reapers and have some clerics (mostly of the god of life and death) treat them with hostility
Just Say No to Adventurer's League!
Playing knowing that you could die in any combat is much more fun because fights are so much more intense.
The secret to end all of these "how to run a dnd campaign better" videos is to just play a better game.
Volound made a video talking about total war games and their modern hero problem, and it has eerie parallels to your own talking points. In his video, "Total War's "Single Entity Problem"", he mentions a unit from shogun total war that is a master swordsman in a unit of his own. His blade is an extension of himself and he is capable of felling a hundred men, but he is still flesh and bone. An arrow will kill him just as it would a peasant farmer with a spear. He can only fight as long as his body holds up. In the 'hero' role playing games, it becomes an issue of being able to do all that by level 5 and not break a sweat.
I think this misstep is some muted idea virus. D&D and kinda has it's roots in someone taught someone who taught someone who taught someone... and insert a few oddities and you get the different house rules and variation rules and other minute differences, from intent or accident. But somewhere along the lines we got several bad assumptions/corruptions which got carried and turned into what many assume to be a concrete part of the gaming genome. The hard to kill characters is one aspect, and there is the certain question that I think comes up fairly often which is, how smart are smart enemies supposed to be in a combat situation. A lot of encounters could be more interesting if the supposedly intelligent monsters actually were run as being cunning or combat smart to some degree, forcing the players to adapt around what it is those enemies do. Enemies that seek to kill PCs also is a line most DMs just don't ever cross.
I think Critical Role is one of the major causes of this viral problem, but the internet in general may have something to do with it, and other shows that started around the same time or around then. Stories, unexplained contrivances for shows, intentional modifications, etc developed into a major misunderstanding for newbies who weren't aware that death and failure were everyday parts of OSR games. Long lived characters were clever, careful, and lucky, not granted divine favor--eg, the DM decided to move the laser pointer to another character that wasn't the cleric until the downed individual stood back up or everything hostile was dead.
IMO people try to make Raise Dead more difficult the wrong way. Instead of making the living players pay some sort of price to raise the dead, the real challenge should be travelling to Heaven or Valhalla and trying to convince the soul of the dead character that he should leave such a place to return back to Earth to suffer and struggle in his frail body only to inevitably die once again.
And if the dead character is of the Evil persuasion, now the living PCs need to mount an assault on Hell to rescue the soul of their companion.
@Sir Percival the Gallant At the end of the d20 era, WotC released a book called Ghostwalk that did some of what you are talking about. WotC, however, hedged their bets and limited the effects only to one special, magical town which robbed the idea of most of it's usefulness. Dead characters can add levels in a Ghost class that let them affect the physical world more and more. Not a bad supplement overall but didn't really reach the full potential of the ideas it presented.
Yes, stuff like that would be fine.
Young Adult TV series on the CW- LOL. Nailed it.
One of the things that made darksun so compelling for me was, how deadly the world was. Perhaps in another 10 years all this woke crap will be done.
From your lips to Cthulhu's tentacles!
@Ja Pandason if you like Dark Sun, you'll love Cha'alt!
Mary Sue backgrounds can and should be avoided at Session 0.
The DM should do some expectation management and set the tone of his campaign without giving too much away - "My world is less WoW and LoTR, and more ASOIAF and Conan-like. Write your characters accordingly."
Character background is no longer than 1 page, if you're generous.
As for game breaking spells - As suggested, they might exact a horrible toll on the caster or the target, or can just be removed from the game entirely.
2e Ressurection had the character make a system shock to survive, and even if he did he'd lose 1 Con point permenantly. As sacrfice goes, it's a good start.
I was wondering about the influence of LotFP on L&D - with the hit points going up one at a time after the first few levels. I ordered L & D today. Looking forward to receiving it.
There is certainly an influence. Lion & Dragon is the eventual ruleset that emerged from my original Dark Albion campaign. When we started that campaign, we were using LotFP rules. As I found it not entirely to my satisfaction for the setting, I started changing all the rules, until the result was the rules that became Lion & Dragon. So L&D is a kind of evolution of LotFP.
@@RPGPundit That seems to be what inevitably happens to rules sets.
I once sketched out a variant rest system for 5E but I never got a chance to playtest it. In short, you divide resting into three categories:
*A Breather is a hour rest where abilities like the Wizard's Arcane Recovery can be used but no healing occurs (beyond spells or potions, of course).
*A Night's Rest is basically 5E's 8 hour Long Rest but with only 1/2 Hit Dice + CON Bonus healing.
*A Long Break is a week+ recovery time where the character regains all HP.
Obviously it's not perfect and I've never tested it, but I still think it's a good place to start.
EDIT:Oh, and for the love of God ban the Fighter's Second Wind nonsense.
Death comes quick, and often, in HârnMaster. Surviving over time is what builds the story, and memories.
You could add a saving throw against death every time the caster casts raise dead and a saving throw against death by the target for success of the spell. If the caster succeeds the spell might still fail but if the caster fails they are both permanently dead.
Yes, that sort of thing is possible. It just depends on how much level of lethality you want.
This video was top notch! I’ve been looking at ways to make my 5e game more compelling so I can justify DMing it. I know it’s a good game. The culture is just bad. I am having a lot of fun in the OSR, though, and the community is amazing.
Thanks. Please share it!
the remove of raise dead is not a big thing my players rarely use it and usually it is tied to a draw pack it is a reincarnate spell change there race or a packet with a demon or they return mad since the afterlife is not save to return form or so
I can't speak for the new school vs old school since, while I technically learned about TTRPGs in the 3e era(trying one-shots of Palladium and CoC as well), I haven't gotten to have many conversations with the old guard. My FLGS owner and one of his friends have told me stories, but most of them from the Tournament/History perspective. "It's different" is about all I got from it(and some nice shit talk). I also didn't actually get involved with TTRPGs until the NEXT playtests. Frankly, I was gung ho about a streamlined, modular ruleset, rulings vs rules, bounded accuracy, et al. 6+ years in, however, and my own desire for creative freedom is coming into conflict with the system.
I'm no designer, nor a very good worldbuilder really, but I have a baseline I'd like to emulate that requires magic to be low to mid-level (because I want magic to feel magical again) while also returning a bit of grit. I'm in the weird position of trying to run a 1-17/20, epic game(per player request) while also building the world as I go, amongst other issues. I'm a pretty merciless GM, even by 5e standards, as I won't hesitate to run someone through that's making death saves. I also set the expectation through NPC conversations(a well-read acolyte) that there have only been 5 resurrections in known history, but the world itself allows for other methods (Fae pacts, Vampire pacts, "divine intervention").
Despite the issues, the game has gone pretty well thus far. There are still conflicts of expectation across the board, from languages to available healing(A "high magic" race has a monopoly on potions), but my players are cautious and take people's warnings at face value. For example, they've recently entered a desert with deadly humanoid insects, a creature completely new to them. The locals say "Just fucking run" and the group doesn't hesitate to avoid conflict. They're Lv7 and could take on the groups they've spotted, but they don't know it yet. Which leads to:
tldr; Dear diary, cause and effect, don't baby your players
PS: While I agree with the backstory stuff in general (room for growth is important), I don't mind my players breaking the mold. Part of the advantage of building as we go is that everyone has a home they can invest in developing. I've got a Black Dog who passes as Human through Fae magic, a fortune telling gypsy who glimpses/experiences horrific futures and whose people are burned if they travel too far west, an orphan blacksmith(no longer playing due to work), a hawk warrior that fled from his home on an orbiting citadel, and a tribal barbarian who used to live in a Hedge before it shattered.
I couldn’t agree anymore than I do! 👍
Man, two things: first, i really looove your content. I bought your old school companion vol 1 and i love it so far. I'm playing with AD&D 2 rules in FR and Ravenloft setting. Which other book of yours should i buy to improve my AD&D2 games?
Now, about raising the deads, i would not go that far. It's actually a great "quest spell"! I would still use it but only for very high level clerics and after having accomplished a special quest. Plus, certain casualties should not admit raising the deads. For instance if my character is purely smashed by a giant and my corpse is nothing more than trash bones and a pool of smashed flesh, i can't be raised. But if i die from drowning or if some vital organs are not that damaged, i think it would be an amazing spell quest! After all: cheating death is the end goal of a lot of magic users. Plus, since you seem kind of fond of western esotericism, you should read Eliphas Levi's book: he talks about raising the deads as a magus.
Ps: sorry for my broken English!
I'm enjoying fresh ground coffee with almond milk, vanilla flavor syrup, and caramel flavor powder.
That's not coffee. Or at least, what's the point of having fresh ground? If you're going to get high end fresh ground coffee, then you should drink it without a ton of milk and flavoring. If what you want is a coffee-flavored desert don't bother; and I say this without suggesting the latter is bad! Vietnamese Iced Coffee is essentially a coffee-flavored dessert, so it doesn't need high-end coffee to make.
@@RPGPundit well I like the flavors but I'm also trying to cut back on sugar. Even had to pour out an iced coffee from Sonic because it was about ten times too sweet. Anyway I've just noticed that grinding beans myself just makes fresher and better tasting coffee, and the beans are just a bag from Walmart so it's not expensive.
Not everyone has a clear idea what they want their character to be, so even a lot of 5e players welcome the chance to not flesh out their background before play, other than the character creation box checking (used to be a pirate, for example). I always say to players, “show, don’t tell”, and that feeds into not predetermining everything because no one is asking the players to tell everyone their life story on day one.
I play barbarians...human barbarians.....Celtic, Germanic, norse historically accurate versions or close to it anyways. I'm very simple
When i run 5e , i make characters gain permanent death save fail every time raised so max three raises, also haunt them with nightmares and visions of other side, also lingering injuries ( something must have killed them)
I like maiming PCs instead of killing them, as long as it makes sense.
Uncle Pundit...LOL!
I suggested making my 5E campaign harder by capping HP and one player piped saying: "You're just making this difficult for the sake of being difficult." I had to explain why I wanted it to be difficult... As to resurrection, I do intend on it being tied to character religion, so a follower of Thyr won't be able to resurrect a Christian and vice versa... expecting some turned heads at that one, though...
That's a very good point you make, regarding how resurrection should be handled by religious affiliation.
@@RPGPundit I'd wager saying "God doesn't resurrect pagans" might be a bit harsh - albeit fair if that is how the setting presents its gods - but perhaps something like a percentage chance that improves as the dead person is more in line with that god. Something like a base 5% chance of resurrection, another 10% if the character worshipped the same deity, another 10% for having done good deeds and so on, up to a maximum of 90% or something.
It certainly could promote the party leaning to the same religion or even see the cleric converting some characters, be it pragmatic yea or nae, but it would make religion a bit more impactful.
I get different opinions on that from my palyers and death still happens I often think that the cr system if far far of you have to throw super hard challenge at them at higher levels but death can happen often you have to add osem environmental or other side effect
I rarely end up with the same pc at the end of a campaign. This is why I want to run a more sandbox-style game and use the slow natural healing rule
Slow Natural Healing (DMG)
Characters don’t regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest.
This optional rule prolongs the amount of time that characters need to recover from their wounds without magical healing benefits and works well for grittier, more realistic campaigns.
Reduce wound healing down 1/2 of what most games do. Then put a limit on how many healings a day can be done.
at the start of me hacking 5e, resurrection magic was the first thing removed
people should stay dead (undead is a different matter...)
Systems like deathsaves and bleeding out only move the tension imo
"Lamentations of the Flame Princess is the first OSR game to remove Raise Dead"
Sometimes, Pundit says things that makes me think he only started playing RPGs two years ago.
Hedgehobbit dropping bantz.
What specifically OSR RPG predating LotFP did not have Raise Dead? Note: clones that count a limited level-range below what would include Raise Dead on spell lists does not count.
Playing that at moment , refreshing change from 5e
I'm still with the some what lengthy backstory and a personality. Letting them change though the course of the game. The professional soldier driven to horrific acts for revenge. The mother hen witch who gives up everything for her homeland. Or the harden assassin who learns the joy of caring for others.
I don't think there is a such thing as a hardened assassin that's only level 1, or 0 or whatever. Backstory like that really only works if you're starting at a higher level than you typically do.
@@Julian_The_Apostate The assassin stared at level six or seven.
In my opinion, DMs are not storytellers (and a roleplaying game is not best played as a storytelling game. If you want to play a storytelling game, there are games designed as storytelling games that do that much better). A GM places challenges in front of the players, the players try to solve the challenges, and after you are done playing, then you can tell the story (or stories) about what happened at the table. As a byproduct of play, a story may emerge.
It occurred to me recently that, at some time in the past (maybe around 3rd edition of D&D?), professional writers took over the design and adventure making of D&D; as opposed to the original D&D material which was written by a shoe repairman and a security guard, and other wargaming hobbyists. Sometime around then the game became about telling stories (which is just what you would expect a writer to be interested in) rather than the exploration of maps by PCs and combat with fierce creatures to obtain treasure [in a hexcrawl or a dungeon delve]. Video game influences (which are much more linier or like chose your own adventures) also began to influence TTRPG design [for the worse in my opinion]. Modules began to be written as movement from plot point to plot point, rather than allowing characters to roam around in the sandbox pursuing their own ideas and motivations. It seems like this was around the time that the term "railroading" arose and was used as a derogatory term by those of us who had grown up playing the open world/sandbox type of campaign to describe these ‘plot driven’ 'straightjackets' type of adventures. The linked videos are a great example of this point of view (which I agree with): ua-cam.com/video/4c9BoqE-jeY/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/PIQpVNbLwuE/v-deo.html
The story is what happens at [or away from] the table AFTER they game is finished for the evening, when tales are told of what happened during the game. When I hear GMs, game designers and others talking about the three-act structure, overlaid by the Shakespearian five act structure, and then talking about the realization moment in screenplays [coming at approximately page 80], and the climax of the story, and [heaven help us] the denouement, etc., etc., I know that I am listening to someone who likely learned to play after the rise of the 'storytelling/video game' type of adventure.
Back in 1974, when age 10 to 25 year old 'kids' were putting together their D&D worlds and building sandboxes for others to play in, we/they had little formal education about story structure and the like [and wouldn't have thought about using it in the design of a 'dungeon' or wilderness adventure anyway], but we/they knew enough to create challenges for players to overcome, which creates the environment for conflict (which is critical to drama), and with players having created motivated characters who were seeking fame and fortune, and were placed in such a sandbox environment, they organically created story through play. Look at things like the Judges Guild materials from the late 70s. They are filled with locations, creatures, NPCs, random tables and such and not plot points, a main narrative, etc. A DM is not a storyteller and RPGs are best used as role playing games, and not storytelling games.
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.
Assuming we are in a Weak Man phase, and this has created soft games with narcissistic concern about character and back-story, what are the fixes you propose in playing 5E which would fix the system? Rests that are not so complete, maybe?
man, you are everywhere!
Well, I argued no short rests, no raise dead, make the death save harder to survive.
That is just a load of hogwash. I suggest reading a series of blog articles entitled The Fremen Mirage as to why that claim in unsupported by actual historical events.
5e isn't a "soft game" anyone that's played curse of Strad can tell you that. As a DM you have total control over how lethal or non lethal something is. If you don't like them taking long rests throw in ambushes don't try to fix a system that isn't broken. Just you know don't start complaining when you're pc's start having +15 to 20 in stealth and run from every fight because high lethality dosen't actually promot courage in play styles
@Agent Milos it's the same system the only thing different about Strad is that it's written to be difficult in COS you can't go to Strad"s castle at lvl 8 and win. My group did that in expedition to castle ravenloft and it pissed the DM off so much he hasn't run 3.5 since that is ridiculous power creep im sure 1e and 2e might have it better but there's definitely a forum out there about optimization for them too. 5e isn't perfect but it's not so broken as to be discarded as trash because you dislike the style of fantasy it prefers
@15:00~~all PC's start with amnesia like a cia operative?
@14:20~~you know, I think I've mentioned this before, Bill Allen of D&D with highschool students, is currently hosting Lamentations?
oh crap, just spent 10 minutes trying to think of "Arduin" and now, I forgot why.
OH! Raise Dead/Resurrect was such a big deal in our game in uni that it affected the entire party. Individually and collectively. Each one of us had to sacrifice something (my halfling had to stop having a 25 charisma, it went to 18, but he could no longer just charm the trunks off trees. and each member had to change, not relinquish, something. plus the group had to pledge, under geas, to end wars, not battles, but wars. to get one character back. radical difference than D&D which we all also played, which was pretty much just a pay for such) we were young
Will there be a 3k subs celebration stream? Maybe with special guests?
I will probably do a livestream. But no guests, because I have no idea how to do a multiperson livestream on youtube. UA-cam doesn't make that easy, unfortunately.
I bet you could get a volunteer fan to host it for you, perhaps from the pool of people who volunteered as guest co-host for IC.
Who are you? You say you helped create 5thed. Is your name in the credits somewhere? Just found this channel today. Also took a look at Inappropriate Characters. Great stuff. Completely agree with what I've seen so far. Do not like modern DnD.
'Mary Sue character knows anything, des anything at any time because I made a simple skill roll that's almost impossible to fail on. Mary isn't afraid of any combat because she knows her special super powers and advantages at applying them will win the day one handed while nibbling on her special snowflake cookies with the other won't allow her to fail. Besides healings ready and death is a joke so Kowabunga baby! Look at me I'm the greatest hero ever! Blah.. not fun.
I was a Consultant. Credited in all the early printings of the PHB.
@@RPGPundit okay I don't know if you read your old comments and videos or not but putting this here. So 9 months ago when I asked this question I first come across your channel. I asked that question because of an extremely interested in your point of view. Now I spent nine months watching your content and trying to figure out whether or not I agree with this guy. I conclusion in short is I almost 100% agree with you on everything you say about tension in the games and what an RPG should be versus the modern storytelling method of playing dungeon dragons. At the time I thought I'd want to get back into the game and I was willing to play fifth edition but I didn't have quite the understanding of it that I do now. Most of that or one of that, is thanks to you. So I do appreciate your work. I'd still probably like to get back into the game spin a very long time and you know I'm kind of getting old now but that doesn't matter. Haven't been a player character since the '80s. First edition. After that I was dungeon master up until the early 2000s. Second edition. If I do end up getting back into the game I wouldn't mind the fifth edition framework. I mean the backbone the d20 type system but I would definitely want the tension of the danger that we had in Old School d&d. Either I'll just find some way to play Old School DND. Anyway I just came back to revisit this to say I've been listening making up my mind and thank you. I'm just one of probably many people that really appreciate your view on things.
@6:40~~So you are from Rotterdam, which you are approaching.
_ayyy, I know all the back alleys._
You get to the gates of Rotterdam, and you don't remember gates. There was talks of gates when you left, and some even had put up fences and gates around their homes, but they all bought dogs. Now there is an earthen mound around the whole town, a ditch filled with waste outside the mound, and a pair of gates.
_So, I'm to expect changes? and so I do._
The gate guards, guards, you've never know so many guards, and they have different accents. They are telling you, brokenly, in a high handed manner, like they don't have accents, you do! "You must present papers of recent residency, if they are more than 8 days old, you must go to the other side to the camp of Corps N'teen. There you will have daily check ins for the next TenDay, to ensure you are not suspect of being a coercive."
(You need to be in town tomorrow afternoon!)
*FAST FORWARD* if you comply.
You are cleared to enter, you must wear a compliance mask. You must wear clothing that identifies your occupation: tourist, home leaser, migrant worker, & you cannot call anyone by personal name, only their affiliation.
The previous mayor, who you recognize, is now the hostess. He greets you as you enter: "Velcommin baker, tourist, migrant, & another tourist!" He offers to clean your gear, a good job for a fee, just sprinkling it with political waters is free, sprinkling your gear, as he speaks with you, suddenly turns to stains of orange or purple. Splotches. If your answers are becoming contradictory, then they turn to brown.
You are then invited to use the town's troughs for personal cleansing. Which bleaches any natural item.
But you sure do smell clean!
_No, I'm Free_ and all people shun you in public.
(but MANY, too many, approach you privately)
once inside, mostly those that had gates are the same...otherwise, the place has been bulldozed and rebuilt...there are no alleys anymore.
*Thanks for your backstory here* yes the infrastructure is MOSTLY the same, but where there were homes and businesses, is now apartments, compounds, and rental centers.
The Grave Reset has not made the town refreshed, it has made the town serously depressed.
I'm attempting to keep a cohesive comment section between the 8 or so D&D people I follow, Like WallyDM, Bill Allen, You, and you, if you find them, will find others, giving depth to the game I'm proposing, and playing, with or without you.
The hard part is...finding bored people who like D&D and are willing to follow the clues.
As in, what I wrote today in response, actually goes along with comments I made On Other Channels. Those comments being a campaign which I keep straight in my head. Many of them originate on AJ Pickett monster lores.
There should be a way, of keeping them cohesed. Without providing links, but under the comment it should read...for similar comments by Axblade, here's the list.
c'mon yt AI make it sew!
currently see Clickbait on those channels.
The OSR discord was blowing up yesterday. People posting every few seconds. The issue? LGBT stuff in Japan. This is the same server that basically suggested I go elsewhere if I'm looking to play any of RPGPundit's games... What a weird world.
OSR reddit is just as bad.
@@Hedgehobbit I don't think I've ever logged on to reddit and been glad that I did.
Y'all need theRPGsite!
My player group had a DM that removed resurrection from the Clerics spell casting, because no Deity would grant that type of power to a mere mortal. They only way to get resurrection was to find it on an extremely rare scroll or artifact.
Well one time one of our players lost his character and he really wanted to get him back. Our DM dropped a rumor that a resurrection scroll existed in the treasure trove of an ancient Wizard. So off we went, our first venture into Tomb of Horrors. We lost five characters, total group wipe, the first time in. 3 of 5 the second time, before we gave up. Never again did any of us ask to have access to resurrection.
The first few centuries of Christianity says differently. Although, only really holy people could do it :)
Other than Jesus himself, only the most remarkable miracle-workers did resurrections. So it shouldn't be a simple spell
@@cvwx7485 Historically, holy people never raised the dead. God raised the dead, the holy people just asked him to do it. This is true of all miracles. That's why I don't how Clerics work in D&D.
And if you insist on having the short rest and raise dead faceroll rules then extend them to your enemies. Have them rushing in and blowing all their abilities then dying (after multiple saves) only for you to meet them again further into the same dungeon an hour later with them all rezzed up at full strength and ready to blow their cooldowns/spells again. And another hour later *again* etc, etc.
It then stops being the special heroes with their own unique rulebook they beat everyone else in the world over the head with, it's now an annoying but fundamental part of life that you accept or work around.
Also for the comment (around 11;30) abut the veteran "greatest swordsman in the land" vs a level 0 peasant - it gives me flashbacks to Wheel of Time where they repeatedly talked about the Captain of the Palace Guard (or something like that) losing to a peasant with a stick/quarterstaff.
I feel there is a middle ground were characters do have some accomplishments to their name, but are still not anything special. Playing games outside of the d20sphere, like GURPS or Call of Cthulhu or Vampire the Masquerade can bring that out a lot more.
5 ads on this video. Fuck UA-cam.
This is the last video I'll ever watch here. I hope you're uploading these videos to Bitchute Pundit, I'd hate to miss your content.
Our games you can be one fumble or nat 20 crit from death...I fumbled my axe and chopped my PCs hand off...
Lion & Dragon has some gory critical rules. These are expanded (and can be used for any OSR/DnD game) in the Old School Companion.
Brutal, bravo !
@@stevekillgore9272 fumble was always a tense moment.
I prefer bringing back the dead being simply very expensive in term of gold costs. This is the reason most of my characters have stayed dead in 3.75; the party would rather keep the money and use it to buy new gear (in a system where literally half your progression is gear based). Granted, part of the reason they abandoned my characters like that, is that the GMs typically allow you to make a new character at the same level... Which honestly seems wrong in this context. So a better idea might be that if they chose not to raise dead, they'll have to train up a level 1 character again.
Give the players each a terrifying secret
1. Your family line suffers from Lycanthropy. You may change one full moon.
2. You accidentally married into a family of Thieves and Assassins.
3.The City Mayor lost the signet ring in a tavern / brothel you found it. You pocketed it.
4. You left a party last night and accidentally took a cloak that did not belong to you home.
5. You lost a lot of money gambling and some stranger fronted you for a favor at a later time.
6. One or both of your parents are wanted for a long list of crimes.
7. You secretly adopted or have been feeding a baby monster in the woods.
8. You are a disease spreader / Typhoid Mary type. You know it. Possibly infected the whole party.
i don't like this i love being able to raise dead and just hate how people keep trying to shove difficulty down my throat
Well that's an easy fix. Don't have it in your game then.
@@Charlotte_WilliamsFYTG well yes and no what I'm pointing out is that some times gms try to force things on players even when its clear they don't want a example would be when i played a wizard in pathfinder and picked a archetype specifically so I could have create water from the cleric spell list then the party gets into a desert and my decides i have to roll to see if my spell succeeds no idea why specially since its a cantrip that i can just spam infinitely, i ahve seem multiple instances where a play picks a option to negate a specific kind of challenge such as feather fall and the gm ignores it or tries to twart it
@@fakebunny1272 Sounds like a communication breakdown. Did you guys have a session 0? If so your GM should've been clear about that. Adding some difficulty can help but it's best not to surprise the players with it. I wasn't there but if I had to guess I'd say your gm wanted supplies to be more of an issue in his game and didn't express that well enough. But remember there are other groups out there and you don't have to put up with it. Try telling your gm how you feel about it and ask if you can re-roll your character or make a new one. It sounds to me like maybe you wouldn't have chosen that character if you knew ahead of time.
I've always hated backstories.
holy. enough ads on your videos?
How many were there? There's not supposed to be more than three (one before the start, one in the middle, one after the end)?
I only saw 1 or 2 ads... and I sat through the whole damn thing!
@@RPGPundit I promise you: 9 commercials were served to me. Maybe it was because I was in an airport with some sketchy wifi IP address..
The thing I dont like about new school is the flavour is gone..Half orc paladin?? No problem..Halfing Monk?? Sure Dwarf Wizard?? Yup..With no cultural significance..Also there is too many powers and every class has a way to do spells that magic becomes not special at all
I'll admit I could only watch the first 5 minutes but my question is: why on earth would I want to play a game where I'm playing a character that's the same boring ass loser that I am in real life?
Well, that's an absurd question and you should feel ashamed for asking it.
@@RPGPundit no. no it's not. many people play games to escape their mundane lives so it's entirely appropriate as a question to ask. but, rest assured I've been made to feel a ton of shame during my life.
@@danacoleman4007 Well that's the thing, it isn't about making someone boring or a loser, it is about making someone purposefully mortal. XP to Lvl 3 talked about in one of his videos about when you make characters, you should purposefully design them with their ending in mind. The point is not to live forever, the point is to inspire others and leave something behind for the world before you get to the end.
Ok, i do not mean to be rude here, but i am going to have to be. If "You cannot die" makes your games not fun, you are really, really bad at designing games. I am not taking away from your point, 5th edition, and 4 edition before it was HORRIBLY designed. But creating an interesting and compelling story is not contingent upon the characters dying. I can easily imagine a plethora of scenarios, particularity at high level, were the failure of the players in no way results in there deaths but has region wide consequences they are certain to not like.
Maybe so, but the risk of death is always a crucial theme in the human experience.
Dude, please get some elocution lessons.
In my opinion, DMs are not storytellers (and a roleplaying game is not best played as a storytelling game. If you want to play a storytelling game, there are games designed as storytelling games that do that much better). A GM places challenges in front of the players, the players try to solve the challenges, and after you are done playing, then you can tell the story (or stories) about what happened at the table. As a byproduct of play, a story may emerge.
It occurred to me recently that, at some time in the past (maybe around 3rd edition of D&D?), professional writers took over the design and adventure making of D&D; as opposed to the original D&D material which was written by a shoe repairman and a security guard, and other wargaming hobbyists. Sometime around then the game became about telling stories (which is just what you would expect a writer to be interested in) rather than the exploration of maps by PCs and combat with fierce creatures to obtain treasure [in a hexcrawl or a dungeon delve]. Video game influences (which are much linier or like chose your own adventures) also began to influence TTRPG design [for the worse in my opinion]. Modules began to be written as movement from plot point to plot point, rather than allowing characters to roam around in the sandbox pursuing their own ideas and motivations. It seems like this was around the time that the term "railroading" arose and was used as a derogatory term by those of us who had grown up playing the open world/sandbox type of campaign to describe these ‘plot driven’ 'straightjackets' type of adventures. The linked videos are a great example of this point of view (which I agree with): ua-cam.com/video/4c9BoqE-jeY/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/PIQpVNbLwuE/v-deo.html
The story is what happens at [or away from] the table AFTER they game is finished for the evening, when tales are told of what happened during the game. When I hear GMs, game designers and others talking about the three-act structure, overlaid by the Shakespearian five act structure, and then talking about the realization moment in screenplays [coming at approximately page 80], and the climax of the story, and [heaven help us] the denouement, etc., etc., I know that I am listening to someone who likely learned to play after the rise of the 'storytelling/video game' type of adventure.
Back in 1974, when age 10 to 25 year old 'kids' were putting together their D&D worlds and building sandboxes for others to play in, we/they had little formal education about story structure and the like [and wouldn't have thought about using it in the design of a 'dungeon' or wilderness adventure anyway], but we/they knew enough to create challenges for players to overcome, which creates the environment for conflict (which is critical to drama), and with players having created motivated characters who were seeking fame and fortune, and were placed in such a sandbox environment, they organically created story through play. Look at things like the Judges Guild materials from the late 70s. They are filled with locations, creatures, NPCs, random tables and such and not plot points, a main narrative, etc. A DM is not a storyteller and RPGs are best used as role playing games, and not storytelling games.