you probably dont give a damn but does anyone know of a way to log back into an instagram account..? I stupidly forgot my account password. I appreciate any assistance you can offer me!
"So, what did everyone do on their own adventures?" "I became a duke and got a cool new shield!" "I started a new elf civilization in the forest!" ... "I accidentally released an ancient evil when trying to release a different ancient evil."
“Wait! Did you mean to release my husband!?! Looks around at ritual circle...”no my unholy Queen, er... yup. It was totally you I was looking to free...” “Totally you my queen...”
Lot's of people say Death Frost Doom most likely will destroy the campaign setting. I think it's actually a great setup to create great big campaigns that follow it.
Now I want to watch a group intentionally release an ancient evil just so they can properly kill it. "Planar Binding, check. Walls of Force, check. Anti-teleportation, check. Dozens of counterspell casters as backup, check. Emergency wishes, check. Slim ready to go supernova chainsaw, check."
When's the last time you saw a proper arcade, instead of something like Dave & Busters where the games are just part of the draw? Been well over two decades for me. When I was a kid the local malls all had one, and the top mall had three at one point. Entire generation of kids out there that never even thought of shoveling their quarters into a coin slot - instead of paying for online microtransactions. :)
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 I don't understand why you would have to explain arcades. They're all over the place. They're just not usually stand-alone. Main Event. Dave and Busters. Blazer Tag... And hell, sometimes they ARE stand-alone. www.yelp.com/biz/pinballz-arcade-austin
It was my first question as a DM when one of my player toss a magic item into a big magical bomb "mythallar " (it's not technically a bomb but a magic device made with raw magic.... players don't want to inspect it but only to destroy this thing. I was a little bit sad but I know that this thing should be fairly unstable) And then only made a nice description how they melt into a stream of magic. It was a nice end of campaing tho :D
I know it's random, but I genuinely love watching your videos purely because of the constant smiling. You genuinely make everything feel like childlike wonder, and I can't tell you how much that is appreciated.
@@smokinyou4312 As a player...hmm. I'd say ask a lot of questions (unless it pisses your DM off, don't ruin the game for them!). SKT has a lot of details that are not immediately obvious. So you want to squeeze out as much info as you can get. Another approach is to just engage with the world as a clueless observer and just marvel at the wild stuff that's going on. If you're cool with that approach, that might be better. But in my experience, players are usually pretty frustrated when they lack info.
It's important to me, Matt. Downtime I find is very underappreciated. Recently, in a one-on-one game my little brother DMs for me, one of my characters developed over a period of downtime. He's a Goliath ranger with a very sheltered upbringing and the civilised world was new to him, it's complexity and politics agitated and stressed him out. He became overbeared with the crulity of the world, and was close to hanging up his bow and going home to his clan. That was until we came upon a floating city. I don't know where it came from, but in character I realised that the Goliath wanted to learn how to woodwork. Using the books, we found out it would take roughly 250 days to gain proficiency. Throughout the downtime he really mellowed out, learning how to deal with the intensity of the world. Now on a new quest whenever he's stressed, he sits down and begins crafting a small wooden objects. Makes it less taxing on me playing the character. Tldr: Stressed Goliath mellows out after downtime.
i love the mental image of this huge goliath carving a tiny wooden beholder and putting it in their backpack with 20+ more random wooden monsters in the middle of a multi-day dungeoncrawl lol
Yeah, I heard "Dominator" and immediately thought "great cats, the player hasn't read Black Company, has he?" Well, maybe he can join the Ten Who Were Taken, they have periodic openings for new members. :)
michael hall my friends an I did it in a semester, and honestly we could play it again and have an entirely different game. We rolled really luckily and happened into a lot of the key items
It's so bizarre to me that modern D&D has focused around these with no single adventures that can easily be used in any campaign or mixed in. They're simultaneously too long for adventures but also too short and overly focused on a singular narrative for a traditional years-long, open-ended campaign. I want to partly blame Paizo for the success of their adventure paths and the recent fixation on making everything published an expensive, lavish, full color hardcover. There's no longer a space for the classic black and white booklet modules or inexpensive softcover sourcebooks.
The “Waterdeep heist “ adventure is not really a heist at all! If anything, it’s a downtime adventure that gives the players a project (their own tavern) and encourages them to align themselves with different city faction, each and every one of which present different ambitions and avenues to grow
Definitely a valid point. I think the difference between the "Tavern management minigame" and tables of sidequests in that adventure and the definition of downtime Matt used in this video is basically the personal touch, something that a published product just can't account for. But it's important to note that different adventures follow different narrative structures as well as different gameplay stuctures. It's not as homogeneous as Matt makes it out to be in the beginning.
@@jimmyhill5079 I've not played or run Dragon Heist myself, but I've heard good things about the Alexandrian's remix, which makes it into an actual heist: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/41217/
@@Torvik40 That remix is super famous and looks pretty good. I for instance couldn't implement it because it's super complex and I wouldn't have time. Now, about to finish the adventure with my own twists, I regret this decision. There's a point in the book that everything is just empty. Like they didn't bother to finish properly or whatever, it's really disapointing.
My D&D campaign is heavily inspired by these videos, and it makes me happy to find I’m starting to get ahead of the curve. One player missed the last session when all the players got captured and jailed in a mine. Due to the plan they enacted to escape, they had to leave that player behind in the torture masters cell. The players kept apologising to me and wondering how to explain it it the player. I immediately told them to stop, and not even think about telling the player. The story isn’t over, it’s a story that happens without you, and if he lives or dies will depend on him, not you. You’ll also only know when we get to the next group session. He’ll either turn up with a new character or not. The tension and excitement for that game went from regret to super excitement.
Sevish I got him in a solo session in which he escaped through his own methods in the madness running down a random corridor with 2 other prisoners. Then did a second session with 2 other friends joining for a one shot with them playing the other fleeing prisoners with their own desire to live/alignments. He did manage to get away in the end and was found through magics several months later. His original character concept was a bard who had lost his muse. Now he was trying to recall his escape through the delirium of pain, malnourishment and panic as a new play, staging his two escapies as 2 sides of his psyche rather than actual people. He’s now been asked to perform his smash hit in front of the king.
Matt is so right, as a DM side quests are so fun. My favorite was after a lost battle with a necromancer, the one dead party member was brought back to life managed to escape using dimension door, stole a horse, then failed a bunch of stealth does an other dimension jumping off the horse to avoid the enemies into a barn then in a last stand burns the barn with a whole bunch of enemies still inside killing them all. This was an afternoon on facebook chat that won't forget, it was so cool
"We started playing D&D right then and there, in chat. We got *no* work done that day." Employees of the year, right here ;) That's such a great story, and this video is really getting me thinking about my own game - especially as my group has to contend with time zones, schedules, and other commitments.
As much as I've enjoyed learning about how to DM through this series, maybe the best gift this channel has given me was learning about the Black Company novels.
You can certainly do worse than read Cook's work. Don't skip Dread Empire either. In fact, don't skip anything. The man's never written a bad book, although some of the later BC books are a tad off on the pacing.
Every single time Matt talks about his DM Brad, it makes me so happy. I want to thank that guy for contributing to Matt, and therefore all of us. Thank you Brad!
Wow returning to this video after the "How long should an Adventure be?" video helped me get even more out of this video than I did when I first saw it. The point that we should run modules instead of big adventures is a good idea, and this video helps illustrate the cool things you can do with that style!
"It shouldn't be about the DM's approval. It should be about the player's commitment.... Make the decision. We'll figure it out as we go." (My best takeaway from this. That statement announces a great DM. I believe that statement is the heart and soul of DND.)
I have to say ive ingested over 57 videos of yours in 15 days, and damn sir, well done. Your presentation, commentary, insight, attitude, mannerisms, all top notch. Well done and as a DM, thank you.
It couldn't be Matt Colville's most important video without him saying "the video is almost done" when there's still 50% remaining. By the way, I love this. When I DM I vastly prefer running the game for characters with their own goals than creating my own adventure from scratch. Yeah, there are villains and dangers in the world, but you will get so much more out of the game if you *want* something.
Keep it at 'Yes and...' Players should describe what their character wants to do. So you say 'Yes and while you try to convince the king of giving the hand of his daughter to you, you realize that only nobility is able to marry nobility.' If the player rolled good enough, he gets away with complementing the king with the beauty of his daughter. When he fails miserably, he gets thrown in jail for suggesting that the princess is not worthy of a proper husband and should marry below her status.
Would love to see MCDM release modules with all those writers you're working with. Loved old modules way more than WotC's current releases (which are good).
I wholeheartedly agree! It was so nice back in the days of AD&D to have modules that you could link together and create your own style and pace of game play.
I completely agree. Sometimes you want a meal, not a full meal plan. And that is what the (wonderful and high quality) published hardcover adventures represent - a full meal plan.
@@jkhart It's like subscribing to get three meals a day for a month instead of being able to just buy a sandwich or a slice of pizza. There was a lot more flexibility in the past. It's a very negative development. Published adventures are great to incorporate into what you're doing on your own, but these utterly replace it.
This is easily one of my favorite aspects of running D&D just on play by post in Discord. Splitting the party, solo adventures, personal goals, all so much easier to do than at a table. Great video.
When I played as a teenager all our missions were player motivated. Someone wanted to build a coluseum but needed gold so we killed a dragon and sold it's skin. Someone wanted to be the advisor to a king so we planed to insert that character into the royal court and then killed the sitting advisor. Our DM never had to plan anything in advance.
Having watched pretty much all 86 of your running the game videos, this probably *is* the most important one I've seen so far. I love the idea of downtime, but have often been frustrated with how to integrate it properly into my game sessions, under the mistaken assumption that basically everything significant in the campaign should happen during said sessions. From the bottom of my nerdy heart, thank you for making this video, because I think this has the potential to revolutionize my games.
This is so useful. I find myself naturally running more modular adventures. Now I know there's a great benefit to them, and it works perfectly with how I would like my games to be. Thank you very much!
This really help me recontextualize what I've been missing since AD&D, a personal player-GM relationship that has eroded slowly over time. I miss running that stuff and have consistantly "failed" to bring it back except for the occasional really invested player.
@@FridgeEating - "As you begin tending to your party members' wounds, honing your weapons and recovering your spells, you can see through the invisible walls as the orc war party catches up to your position. They don't seem aware of your encampment's presence... *dice rolls* ...until one of them literally faceplants into the side. They begin scratching their heads and marking out the outlines of this strange phenomenon. What do you do?" I think I'm remembering this spell correctly, though a detail or two might be off.
@@bordenfleetwood5773 The druid morphs into a burrowing animal and starts to dig an escape tunnel, while I cast fly on the rogue so they can fly away and cause a diversion. That's a great piece of narrative! I think the spell makes an opaque hemisphere, not invisible (although I think it's see-through from the inside). This sounds way cooler though!
@@FridgeEating - I like it! That's how D&D is done. Honestly, I've never really played, outside of a couple 1-hr quickies. I've always been the DM, so I love hearing players have a "whew! We can rest!" moment, because that's when drama happens! And player plans borne of desperation are the most exciting.
For the longest time I was trying to figure out how to get my old group together to play D&D. We have all moved all around the country and some even out of the country so getting together in one place is next to impossible. But with this it may actually be possible to get together for one weekend every couple of months to run a proper adventure and then spend all the time in between on individual "sidequests". Thank you! I will give this a shot!
Wow, this video is so well polished. I live the increased level of production that you have acquired due to the Kickstarters and patreon. I also enjoyed your failing forward analogy with the rescue mission, which I think would be aided if you had narrative dice in your new sci-fi RPG. Tldr: nice video. Narrative dice are good.
Nullrage I think that everybody knows what an arcade is. If anyone has seen any piece of media in the last 100 years they know. Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, any ‘90/‘00 movie, most Cartoons, or you know and at least one arcade is still open in most of the cities I ever went.
Ever heard of a joke? Everyone, even 7 year olds, knows what arcades are. Places like Dave & Buster's are still popular. It's just Matt making an age joke.
I love this. Back when I ran my Westmarches campaign, there were a couple players who were constantly going off on their own. We just did it all on one one one chats, because I had a rule at the time that actual adventures required 3 to 6 players. But doing it over chat worked great! I was able to go about my life and just text through the app whenever I had time to further the adventure. It did get a little too time consuming at some points with the constant texting so I recommend turning off notifications for that so that you can choose when you get to it rather that feeling obligated to check your phone whenever there is a text.
I needed this topic! It's indubitably important! As always thank you so much for your content. I am a prolific game master due to your advice and encouragement!
I don't know if it's the most important video he's done, but it's a favorite for me. It's a little validating to want that kind of pacing back. Makes me nostalgic.
Lord of the Rings Online is my beyond-the-table itch scratcher. - - I have not used a pre-written module or setting since before Drizzt got his first book. - - I ran a downtime session for a friend's paladin as he was visiting me in the hospital. We had no books, no character sheets, and no dice, but it was fun, and has influenced the game at the table. - - Great video, and thank you. And yes, I learned something, and we all know that this... this is all we have. Peace to you.
Thanks for the video! I too think it is super important to switch the driver of the campaign between World driven or player driven (what you seem to indicate as Modules vs West marches games). Its very true that you need both. Playing only Campaign driven can be very high stakes and leave players always running and not having the time to flesh out their character. Playing only Player driven are not as epic and require the character to want something (that reason alone can cause the end of a campaign). Campaign driven is when the story happens to the player.in the sense that the person "who wants something badly but has difficulty getting it" is the big evil villain of the story. The player organize, react and choose how they want to stop it and suffer the consequences of failure often indirectly (think Frodo being compelled by the story to act or John in Die Hard). Inactivity has a cost. These are very well suited for group play as they can easily motivate multiple people at the time. Player driven is when the character are the one who "want something badly and have difficulty getting it". Their choices ARE the driver. They deal with obstacles and setback and the end goal is more about getting a reward than not suffering a consequence (think bilbo in the hobbit or Indiana jones). Inactivity has little cost, but activity has possibility of great rewards! These are well suited for one on one or small group as they need a good synchronicity of ambition (gold, power, love etc...). Sometimes that is when you go from on player goal to another with the other ones tagging along to help. Because of the differences with my way of doing it, I find your way of organizing your thoughts about the same roleplaying game concepts very interesting. For me downtime is, by definition, the events between major milestone that you don't want (or maybe shouldn't) play through. For that reason, this video felt like it was only about one on one, which is fine. I often play one on one, and they are a powerful tool in our game master tool box. I had a discussion with my Matt about it and it is a fun subject ! Whoever read this far I salute you and wish you the best! Yes, yes you! -Chris -Chris
I want to give Matt a million thanks. This is the spark of life both I and my table needed. I run a group of about 10 who have all started characters working on their own ambitions, independent of one another. The players have shown interest in teaming up, and doing more of a traditional campaign for this setting, so I have been able to take these side quests they have asked for and seed them with hooks and links to the larger narratives I have building in the back. This video, dare I say, is must see for all new players and DMs.
For anyone stoked about these concepts (open-ended downtime, character ambition, complex and variable failure states) I gotta HIGHLY recommend reading and playing Blades in the Dark
Matt, I cannot thank you enough for this series! I'm still in the early part of them but between this and Critical Roll you all have helped me get off to a great start with a game I am designing for my kids and their friend. I have used the basics of the D&D system and written the rest and created a new game world that is what I am hoping to be rich and intricate that encourages their imaginations. It's an environment/world that I have been thinking about for a long time but was really nervous about running it. Now, with all of this study, I feel like I am equipped to design the system, the play order and the wild, unique world and I can introduce them to the world of table top gaming. Its thrilling to be able to create this and bring my children into it with their imaginations to play, thank you for helping me with this! (they are 10 and 14 and their friend is 11 and her dad plays in my game too!)
This is one of my favorite Colville videos ever. I do so much with my players in downtime and it really is true you get the most personal moments and developments in the 'side' stories.
I have watched this video multiple times and it has changed the way my table runs in the best ways. My players request one on one play constantly now due to the implementation of Downtime both a mechanic I added and in the actual slow moments in our games. Thank you for the videos you've made and please keep making them. Your goal of making new GMs is working, from a DM who would have never tried D&D in a million years until watching your videos.
This video changed the course of my first full D&D game I dungeon mastered completely. I watched this, and when my players finished the first arc of my game, slaying goblins in the Scarlet forests of bekmear, saving the town from the hobgoblin cheiftan empowered by the higher level threat necroest, after they finished partying and drinking snd being given titles and gold, I let the heroes disperse. They all took their horses, and went off to do different things in my world. The wood elven ranger wanted to rebuild wood elven society, as his tribe had been burned down in his backstory, so he went to search for more wood elves, and the bard tagged along. The dragonborn barbarian had amassed a small unit of kobolds while fighting the goblins, who worshipped him like a God, and they believed that more of their kind were being held captive by a group of underdark dwarves, so he went to free them and add to his forces. The fighter had attained a fancy magic sword, the sword of blackened steel, during their adventures, and wanted to have it identified by a wizard. Since mages were hunted in my world, this would require a long hunt. The high elven wizard of the party tagged along with him, since he also wanted to find a high level wizard, as he had yet to meet another magic user outside of his elven home, and wanted to see what he could be taught. When the fighter and wizard searched for this high level wizard, they found him, were trained by him, the fighter even found a high level warrior he was with, so each PC had a high level mentor. Then, the kingdom of illustria found them too. The high level wizard escaped through a dimension door, the PC wizard pretended to betray the fighter, joining illustria temporarily, and the fighter was put in jail, along with his mentor. This led to a year long game, with the party reuniting, killing the king of illustria as he was about to execute the fighter, being chased down by the blood guard, narrowly escaping through the cities sewer system, with both mentors dying to the blood guard, and the players vowing revenge. Over the course of a year, characters achieved their goals, went across the seas to the continent of Obias, leveled up, some died, and new characters joined in their place. All slowly gaining the skills, the armies, the magic weapons, to seige illustria, slay the blood knights, and kill the queen, the last royalty of illustria. The players ended the game as kings and lords, Drajyre the ranger the chief of the wood elves of Autumnhold, Ajax the invincible, wielder of the sword of blackened steel, new king of illustria, to reforge the kingdom to ideals of good and justice, Huktuks the barbarian becoming war leader of Suminstrial, capital of Obias. All because of downtime, where the players decided what they wanted to do, instead of me deciding for them. I have you to thank for a fantastic game, for good stories, and for 5 friends I have grown much closer to, I have went through high school with, and who I now run new d&d games for, all of them brilliant players now, in their own ways. Thank you, for giving me the confidence to dungeon master, and evolve my participation in the hobby, discover my love of storytelling, and begin my own writing endeavors. You are a river to your people.
When I'm DMing, I try to build the entire capaign around my character's motivations, so that every session, every story arc is as personal as Matt describes here. It isn't necessary for the group to separate for the characters to have interesting character arcs. Just let them all quest for whatever that one character wants! That's how I like to run d&d. (P.S: sorry about my english)
Absolutely, this is how I think everyone should DM. Oh, a vampire murdered your family and you now want revenge? Well guess what, now the campaign's big baddy is a vampire.
Running the game made me want to become a DM and taught me how to do it but, and more importantly, these videos accompanied me for 2 months while I was commuting to work, cleaning the house, even shopping, and they never disappointed me. A friend of mine let me borrow Strongholds & Followers and that was also a great read, filled with inspiration and wondrous content. I had my first session (a mild success) and I want to have more, being right in the middle of the process of creating my entire homebrew world and having a blast while at it. So I just wanted to leave my thanks here too - after having clicked all the 85 videos before this to officially Like them, since I had forgotten to do so :) Thank you for sharing this!
A somewhat related complaint I’ve had for a long time about D&D and the mega-adventure style of play is that the level progression happens really quickly in world. That is to say, I’ve seen campaigns go from level one to ten in just a few months of in-game time. Meaning that the PCs go from struggling with kobolds and goblins to fighting beholders and dragons in about the time it takes to do a semester of school. I feel like incorporating downtime and having a series of shorter adventures may help preserve credulity and prevent that super rapid rise in power. It would also give the PCs a chance to have a life of their own outside side of adventuring.
Paul Lyons completely agree!! I’ve noodled over this a lot. How would the status quo powers react? These new guys could easily be a threat, not because of alignment but because they are babes in the wood and naive about existing power dynamics among the major forces and factions. Exceptional Origin or Destiny? Not many others ever advance at this rate. So something is different, remarkable about the PCs, relative to other level NPCs. What is it? Other NPCs might think there is something to ‘get’ . But it all comes back to this exceptionally fast rise in power (and how the characters even know how to handle their new powers).
This is my favourite video of this series so far. Also, the 1on1 with Gertz was probably the only P&P Stream I completely watched. The promise of chain solo-stories fills me with warm, toe-wiggly anticipation.
He's really discussing how the game gets better as the DM and players collaborate creatively and make bold choices. Not everyone is going to want to play a sandbox style game, or do Westmarches style side quests, but the whole group benefits when players work with the DM to make their character stories distinct parts of the action. It's more memorable and satisfying.
I remember when this video came out and I thought “this sounds so cool, I wish I could do something like that” and four years later, I have my own game going at work and I can actually apply the the lessons I learned from this video. Matt is right, this is very much a better way to play than the non-stop adventuring career that many published modules put characters through. I have never had so much fun playing D&D!
The more you preview and tease that One on One D&D video, the more I am convinced I need it in my life. Also, thank you for this video, because it's absolutely golden, and has given me a clear forward path for how to proceed in my own campaign!
I love downtime adventures (henceforth called side quests ;) ) and I'm so glad to see you talking about them. I've been DMing for a long time and I find this series every bit as useful, entertaining, and just plain wholesome as a new DM would. Even when you're covering things I already know, you often give me new angles to think about them from - or sometimes (like the politics series) it's something I've grasped intuitively but never put into words, and your doing so allows me to more rigorously explore and tinker with ideas once they move from intuition to knowledge. You are a gift to this hobby, and if there is a Hall of fame for it then you shouldn't just be in it, they should put your smiling face on the door.
What a great video and the editing/effects are amazing! I love that "The Dominator" story worked out so well for your DM, I can only imagine the glee Brad felt, when Dave had to tell the group what he did xD Also, to be honest, I've actually never considered doing downtime stuff away from the table (which might stem from the fact that my groups tend to play long epics and downtime happens at the table) but I'll definitely have to keep it in mind for my next game!
I really love hearing your perspective on this. I've been DMing a campaign in Ravnica, where all the players are Dimir spies, but they're each infiltrating another guild. Between group adventures, they do "solo missions" where they interact with their cover guild or do side quests. Then at the next group session we start with a "debriefing" where they share what happened, and things they learned. It's awesome to drop little hints that tie together into a bigger picture.
That is something I really liked about the older editions of AD&D where characters could attract followers and establish strongholds and the like. It was a mechanic already in the game, which naturally led to incorporating such ideas into the games. A whole lot of my early games were with just two or three people including the DM. A whole lot of fun to be had.
4:00 That’s Twice now that Matt has literally made me fall on the floor laughing 🤣 This instance has to do with the Campaign Diary Ballisantrax Dreams, which I recently listened to, & the way some members of the community were critiquing the episode of the Chain for “advertising Kingdoms & Warfare” (as if people who create a product wouldn’t want to make use of it 😏
I've been running a campaign for the last 3 years with friends. For the first 2 years we played short self contained quests that I'd occasionally pepper with details of my overarching plot. About a year ago I threw the culmination of these details at my party in a final session and then took a 3 month break from DMing. I've picked up again and we're back to playing regularly, only now they have one set goal, to correct the fallout from the big session before the break. In the 3 month break I found it hard to get players to participate in downtime. I had certain players try to learn new languages and one took the time to multiclass from fighter into paladin, but everyone else seemed happy to just pass a year in game keeping the status quo. I'll admit I was kind of disappointed, I thoughy they would be more invested. I'm planning on doing something similar soon, but with a new perspective from this video
It prolly wasnt the fact that they weren't invested, they just werent interested in downtime because it didnt feel like it was part of the "grand adventure". Half of my group enjoys the downtime, others find it monotonous.
I know this message will probably never get seen but this is probably the most impactful video from Matt. These ideas have promoted me to being a much better dm and I've shared this with so many new dms that wanted to start playing. The tools this gives you not only to helps develop individual stories for characters but it allows you to create/introduce new plots that players feel personally attached to or introduce lore that players will care about and use. In the years since I started doing downtime my games have been much more enjoyable for both my players and I. Thank you Matt.
Over the past few months I have watched every single Running the Game video and I've gotta' say, this stuff has helped my campaign and my first time DMing immensely. There are even some great nuggets of info in here regarding making video games which I do as well :) thanks for all your work Matt!
There's a major factor you missed here: It's important for the players to INFORM the other players about their offtime adventures. Imagine if that Ghoul came back and told no one he saved her, she was just given to a temple to be healed and she had no idea how she got there. That's whats going on in my own campaign. A character goes off on their own adventures and refuses to tell anyone what they do. And it's really annoying.
I mean, if you're the DM, can't you punish that activity or notify the other players regardless of her actions? If you're a fellow player, talk to the player and the DM about informing your party.
@@danielfloresdevalgaz4576 no this is a problem some dms think is ok. 'if this player doesn't want to share what they're doing that's their choice' but some players abuse this and never share anything and dms miss this.
You're right Matt, this has been the most influential and important of your videos for me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This helped kindle my love for dm-ing as it gave me the missing link of my puzzle. The info you gave me in this video made it all come together. Thank you once more, for shining the light on the game i love so much.
Matt, your self reflection is an inspiration and a reminder to us all that DMing is an art form that must be practiced. We are always evolving in what we do and we can't reach the next height of expression without first experiencing the thing we want to improve in our game. This comes up for me a lot -- I find myself wishing I had done this new thing sooner, or I see in hindsight that I was neglecting an important principle. In light of a long history of campaigns that fizzled out, it's a relief to see one of my role models revise his method. Thanks.
Fantastic video Matt! I've always run side-quests with my players, and they have been some of the most memorable moments for my players. Letting the assassin off the leash, letting the ranger go scouting into the harsh snowy mountains, so many possibilities. And players really appreciate the extra undivided attention, especially if you run with a group on the larger side.
I genuinely did not realize running a game for a single player was possible. This video completely blew my mind and incorporating this as a possibility in the campaign I'm planning will not only fit perfectly with what I already have planned but will help solve a problem I've been trying to work out for ages. (Also this just sounds insanely fun.) This is my favorite video yet!
I love this video. I decided to use extended downtime between the last adventure and the current one and I enjoyed it immensely. It was a lot of work on my side, but totally worth it. My players loved it. We spent half a session having everyone tell the rest of the party what they were up to and it helped reveal so much more about each character and each player's ambitions.
You truly have a great insight in what makes our adventures work and exciting. From a player perspective: We need ambition and commitment in our characters and claim the world as ours too! Very well done sir! My mind is expanded, many thanks.
This came at just the right time for our group. And it'll give me the opportunity to explore this little backwater duchy with my players collaboratively! One of my player's characters recently died (death spiral with stirges...), so I think I'll use this as a way to get the new one into the town. Thank you, Matt.
I've never played, but I am super interested in being a GM. I remember first time I EVER seen dnd; I was deployed over seas and my corpsman and a few of our com Marines were playing. As an infantry Marine I didn't get much downtime on deployment, but I was half sleeping half listening, and before long I started actually getting it. Crazy fucks playing DND on deployment, but I got it as their way of coping with everything. I never played then (no chance I would have the time). But, now that I am home I think I could use some DND...
hey, i hope u got into it~ cool story. ttrpgs are a respite from my own pain, being able to put myself into the foundations of a world is better than therapy
the best is when your players say they want to do something that you planned to happen anyway
This youtube world is so small. I watch you for your political insight, and here you are commenting about dnd :D
It is the best
@Mario Vicente Shut up, I've seen you here before.
Ayyy t1j! Happy to see you here too ☺️
you probably dont give a damn but does anyone know of a way to log back into an instagram account..?
I stupidly forgot my account password. I appreciate any assistance you can offer me!
"So, what did everyone do on their own adventures?"
"I became a duke and got a cool new shield!"
"I started a new elf civilization in the forest!"
...
"I accidentally released an ancient evil when trying to release a different ancient evil."
If I had a copper piece every time that happened...
You release an ancient evil to make sure an ancient evil is released
“Wait! Did you mean to release my husband!?!
Looks around at ritual circle...”no my unholy Queen, er... yup. It was totally you I was looking to free...” “Totally you my queen...”
Lot's of people say Death Frost Doom most likely will destroy the campaign setting. I think it's actually a great setup to create great big campaigns that follow it.
Now I want to watch a group intentionally release an ancient evil just so they can properly kill it.
"Planar Binding, check. Walls of Force, check. Anti-teleportation, check. Dozens of counterspell casters as backup, check. Emergency wishes, check. Slim ready to go supernova chainsaw, check."
When Matt mentioned arcades:
“Don’t cite the deep magic to me, witch! I was there when it was written!”
Man, I really hate that he probably needed to explain what an arcade was in this age.
When's the last time you saw a proper arcade, instead of something like Dave & Busters where the games are just part of the draw? Been well over two decades for me. When I was a kid the local malls all had one, and the top mall had three at one point. Entire generation of kids out there that never even thought of shoveling their quarters into a coin slot - instead of paying for online microtransactions. :)
I see arcades all the time buuut I’m currently in Japan and their everywhere it’s pretty awesome.
Still got one at the mall where I live
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 I don't understand why you would have to explain arcades. They're all over the place. They're just not usually stand-alone. Main Event. Dave and Busters. Blazer Tag... And hell, sometimes they ARE stand-alone.
www.yelp.com/biz/pinballz-arcade-austin
"You did what?"
Oh man, those are the best D&D moments. I love this game.
It was my first question as a DM when one of my player toss a magic item into a big magical bomb "mythallar " (it's not technically a bomb but a magic device made with raw magic.... players don't want to inspect it but only to destroy this thing. I was a little bit sad but I know that this thing should be fairly unstable) And then only made a nice description how they melt into a stream of magic. It was a nice end of campaing tho :D
"I teleported 600 miles away to a dragon covered snowy peak and met a dwarf tree centaur mage who's gonna help me raise an army."
That “You what.” was really relatable. I feel that way a lot when my players decide to do things.
My players have heard this from NPC's quite a bit.
Sure is. *tired but a tiny bit amused sigh*
Wizard: Did you steal the book from The Xanathar?
Rogue: No, I stole the goldfish.
Wizard: You WHAT?!
Thomas Eddy That’s a big yikes right there.
@@GuardianTactician someone is begging for death!
12:48 "We may be almost done with this video!"
*12 more minutes left*
I was looking or this comment :D
Almost made it myself lol
+
*writes script for video*
*at 12 minute mark say "we may almost be done with the video"*
So was the rest a side quest?! 😎
I know it's random, but I genuinely love watching your videos purely because of the constant smiling. You genuinely make everything feel like childlike wonder, and I can't tell you how much that is appreciated.
ObliviousMuse YESSS he is a magic man and I am going to become wealthy solely to pay Matt to DM for me ❤️
I completely agree. He has very magnetic charisma
agreed!
DUUUDE YES you finally put into words what makes me enjoy every single one of his videos!
ObliviousMuse what a nice comment! :D
Listening to that "The Dominator" story just has me gobsmacked. No wonder everyone hates wizards lmao
Go read The Black Company by Glen Cook!
and because they're huge nerds
Wizards are the moral philosophers of D&D. Everybody hates them
@@WhatsUpGazpacho Is that a The Good Place reference?
i've been running storm king's thunder for a few months, and it's been like 75% downtime lol
Storm King's Under a Lot of Pressure Right Now and is Taking Some Time for Himself
About to start that soon as a player, any tips?
@@smokinyou4312 As a player...hmm. I'd say ask a lot of questions (unless it pisses your DM off, don't ruin the game for them!). SKT has a lot of details that are not immediately obvious. So you want to squeeze out as much info as you can get. Another approach is to just engage with the world as a clueless observer and just marvel at the wild stuff that's going on. If you're cool with that approach, that might be better. But in my experience, players are usually pretty frustrated when they lack info.
Yoo it's T1J! Was not expecting to see you here of all places.
Insane crossover
It's important to me, Matt.
Downtime I find is very underappreciated. Recently, in a one-on-one game my little brother DMs for me, one of my characters developed over a period of downtime.
He's a Goliath ranger with a very sheltered upbringing and the civilised world was new to him, it's complexity and politics agitated and stressed him out. He became overbeared with the crulity of the world, and was close to hanging up his bow and going home to his clan. That was until we came upon a floating city.
I don't know where it came from, but in character I realised that the Goliath wanted to learn how to woodwork. Using the books, we found out it would take roughly 250 days to gain proficiency. Throughout the downtime he really mellowed out, learning how to deal with the intensity of the world.
Now on a new quest whenever he's stressed, he sits down and begins crafting a small wooden objects.
Makes it less taxing on me playing the character.
Tldr: Stressed Goliath mellows out after downtime.
i love the mental image of this huge goliath carving a tiny wooden beholder and putting it in their backpack with 20+ more random wooden monsters in the middle of a multi-day dungeoncrawl lol
Hawkeye Gough from Dark Souls
I see your old DM's Black Company reference.
Edit: my suspicions are confirmed literally a minute later.
Yeah, I heard "Dominator" and immediately thought "great cats, the player hasn't read Black Company, has he?" Well, maybe he can join the Ten Who Were Taken, they have periodic openings for new members. :)
@@richmcgee434 It's really like the 37 Who Were Taken by this point. Doesn't have the same "snap" to it though.
First thing I thought of. It's been years since I read The Black Company so I'm glad I remembered the reference.
Matt Colville and Crew constantly talk about the Black Company
20:10 Holy moly, is that an Adventure Lookup plug in 2019? I'm flashing back to the early days of Running the Game
Hello, nice name
Still one of the channel's great contributions
@@jay_browncomedy Insert Spiderman pointing at himself meme here
My group speed ran Curse of Strahd and it took us a year.
michael hall my friends an I did it in a semester, and honestly we could play it again and have an entirely different game. We rolled really luckily and happened into a lot of the key items
It's so bizarre to me that modern D&D has focused around these with no single adventures that can easily be used in any campaign or mixed in. They're simultaneously too long for adventures but also too short and overly focused on a singular narrative for a traditional years-long, open-ended campaign.
I want to partly blame Paizo for the success of their adventure paths and the recent fixation on making everything published an expensive, lavish, full color hardcover. There's no longer a space for the classic black and white booklet modules or inexpensive softcover sourcebooks.
@@Belgand "The DMs guild disliked that"
The “Waterdeep heist “ adventure is not really a heist at all! If anything, it’s a downtime adventure that gives the players a project (their own tavern) and encourages them to align themselves with different city faction, each and every one of which present different ambitions and avenues to grow
That was a bummer. I had to build my own heist into it.
And it has Jarlaxle, who is my fovourite published villain
Definitely a valid point. I think the difference between the "Tavern management minigame" and tables of sidequests in that adventure and the definition of downtime Matt used in this video is basically the personal touch, something that a published product just can't account for. But it's important to note that different adventures follow different narrative structures as well as different gameplay stuctures. It's not as homogeneous as Matt makes it out to be in the beginning.
@@jimmyhill5079 I've not played or run Dragon Heist myself, but I've heard good things about the Alexandrian's remix, which makes it into an actual heist: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/41217/
@@Torvik40 That remix is super famous and looks pretty good. I for instance couldn't implement it because it's super complex and I wouldn't have time. Now, about to finish the adventure with my own twists, I regret this decision. There's a point in the book that everything is just empty. Like they didn't bother to finish properly or whatever, it's really disapointing.
"... melted my friend, Dave's, war elephant." :D :D :D
That was another great video. Thank you.
"... I realize, many of you hate twitch."
It's nice to be recognized.
I perfected your comment. Preserve the 69
Grant Dixson startrekathon on justintv was amazing.
Wait why do people hate Twitch?
@@midknight1339 Because I like watching videos, but don't like watching streams
@@N00bvlog Didn't he say he was going to stream on UA-cam instead of Twitch? It's still a stream...
My D&D campaign is heavily inspired by these videos, and it makes me happy to find I’m starting to get ahead of the curve.
One player missed the last session when all the players got captured and jailed in a mine. Due to the plan they enacted to escape, they had to leave that player behind in the torture masters cell.
The players kept apologising to me and wondering how to explain it it the player. I immediately told them to stop, and not even think about telling the player.
The story isn’t over, it’s a story that happens without you, and if he lives or dies will depend on him, not you. You’ll also only know when we get to the next group session. He’ll either turn up with a new character or not.
The tension and excitement for that game went from regret to super excitement.
Did he come back with a new character or not? :)
Sevish I got him in a solo session in which he escaped through his own methods in the madness running down a random corridor with 2 other prisoners. Then did a second session with 2 other friends joining for a one shot with them playing the other fleeing prisoners with their own desire to live/alignments. He did manage to get away in the end and was found through magics several months later. His original character concept was a bard who had lost his muse. Now he was trying to recall his escape through the delirium of pain, malnourishment and panic as a new play, staging his two escapies as 2 sides of his psyche rather than actual people. He’s now been asked to perform his smash hit in front of the king.
@@goodsprotyousif6010 that's amazing, thanks for sharing that
When Matt says "We may be almost done with this video" at 12:50 and there's still 11min to go
Next book: "Downtime & B plots"
I would totally buy that book!
King of Kickstarter get it done!
Yes, take my money
I would totally get this!
Matt is so right, as a DM side quests are so fun. My favorite was after a lost battle with a necromancer, the one dead party member was brought back to life managed to escape using dimension door, stole a horse, then failed a bunch of stealth does an other dimension jumping off the horse to avoid the enemies into a barn then in a last stand burns the barn with a whole bunch of enemies still inside killing them all. This was an afternoon on facebook chat that won't forget, it was so cool
Yea, sometimes I don't think players realize how much of dming is plucking different ideas from the void until you get some that go well together.
"We started playing D&D right then and there, in chat. We got *no* work done that day." Employees of the year, right here ;) That's such a great story, and this video is really getting me thinking about my own game - especially as my group has to contend with time zones, schedules, and other commitments.
Matt, the quality is through the roof. The little effects and cuts really add a load of flavour.
As much as I've enjoyed learning about how to DM through this series, maybe the best gift this channel has given me was learning about the Black Company novels.
You can certainly do worse than read Cook's work. Don't skip Dread Empire either. In fact, don't skip anything. The man's never written a bad book, although some of the later BC books are a tad off on the pacing.
Every single time Matt talks about his DM Brad, it makes me so happy. I want to thank that guy for contributing to Matt, and therefore all of us. Thank you Brad!
Wow returning to this video after the "How long should an Adventure be?" video helped me get even more out of this video than I did when I first saw it. The point that we should run modules instead of big adventures is a good idea, and this video helps illustrate the cool things you can do with that style!
"It shouldn't be about the DM's approval. It should be about the player's commitment.... Make the decision. We'll figure it out as we go." (My best takeaway from this. That statement announces a great DM. I believe that statement is the heart and soul of DND.)
I have to say ive ingested over 57 videos of yours in 15 days, and damn sir, well done. Your presentation, commentary, insight, attitude, mannerisms, all top notch. Well done and as a DM, thank you.
It couldn't be Matt Colville's most important video without him saying "the video is almost done" when there's still 50% remaining.
By the way, I love this. When I DM I vastly prefer running the game for characters with their own goals than creating my own adventure from scratch. Yeah, there are villains and dangers in the world, but you will get so much more out of the game if you *want* something.
Improv: Yes, and
DMing: Yes, but
Keep it at 'Yes and...'
Players should describe what their character wants to do.
So you say 'Yes and while you try to convince the king of giving the hand of his daughter to you, you realize that only nobility is able to marry nobility.' If the player rolled good enough, he gets away with complementing the king with the beauty of his daughter.
When he fails miserably, he gets thrown in jail for suggesting that the princess is not worthy of a proper husband and should marry below her status.
Joris Vander Cammen
Yes, but you have to roll a check to get away with that
@@eamartig you have to roll a check to not get your head removed from your shoulders
Would love to see MCDM release modules with all those writers you're working with. Loved old modules way more than WotC's current releases (which are good).
I wholeheartedly agree! It was so nice back in the days of AD&D to have modules that you could link together and create your own style and pace of game play.
I completely agree. Sometimes you want a meal, not a full meal plan. And that is what the (wonderful and high quality) published hardcover adventures represent - a full meal plan.
@@jkhart It's like subscribing to get three meals a day for a month instead of being able to just buy a sandwich or a slice of pizza. There was a lot more flexibility in the past. It's a very negative development. Published adventures are great to incorporate into what you're doing on your own, but these utterly replace it.
This is easily one of my favorite aspects of running D&D just on play by post in Discord. Splitting the party, solo adventures, personal goals, all so much easier to do than at a table. Great video.
Not playing in person is like drinking La Croix instead of a soda; you understand everything it's supposed to be, but you notice everything it isn't.
it's funny and impressive how easy it is to rewatch your videos every once in a while and find new things to be inspired by
When I played as a teenager all our missions were player motivated. Someone wanted to build a coluseum but needed gold so we killed a dragon and sold it's skin. Someone wanted to be the advisor to a king so we planed to insert that character into the royal court and then killed the sitting advisor.
Our DM never had to plan anything in advance.
Damn, this video is insanely good. I find myself returning to it without fail from time to time to keep it fresh in my memory. Good job, Matt.
Having watched pretty much all 86 of your running the game videos, this probably *is* the most important one I've seen so far.
I love the idea of downtime, but have often been frustrated with how to integrate it properly into my game sessions, under the mistaken assumption that basically everything significant in the campaign should happen during said sessions.
From the bottom of my nerdy heart, thank you for making this video, because I think this has the potential to revolutionize my games.
This is so useful. I find myself naturally running more modular adventures. Now I know there's a great benefit to them, and it works perfectly with how I would like my games to be. Thank you very much!
This really help me recontextualize what I've been missing since AD&D, a personal player-GM relationship that has eroded slowly over time. I miss running that stuff and have consistantly "failed" to bring it back except for the occasional really invested player.
the game isn't what it used to be, that's for sure.
"Well,... I completed the ritual, and..."
Nothing good EVER follows that statement. EVER. But it's probably awesome more than 80% of the time anyways.
Well, ... I completed the ritual, and now we can rest safely in this tiny hut I summoned.
@@FridgeEating - "As you begin tending to your party members' wounds, honing your weapons and recovering your spells, you can see through the invisible walls as the orc war party catches up to your position. They don't seem aware of your encampment's presence... *dice rolls* ...until one of them literally faceplants into the side. They begin scratching their heads and marking out the outlines of this strange phenomenon. What do you do?"
I think I'm remembering this spell correctly, though a detail or two might be off.
@@bordenfleetwood5773 The druid morphs into a burrowing animal and starts to dig an escape tunnel, while I cast fly on the rogue so they can fly away and cause a diversion.
That's a great piece of narrative! I think the spell makes an opaque hemisphere, not invisible (although I think it's see-through from the inside). This sounds way cooler though!
@@FridgeEating - I like it! That's how D&D is done. Honestly, I've never really played, outside of a couple 1-hr quickies. I've always been the DM, so I love hearing players have a "whew! We can rest!" moment, because that's when drama happens!
And player plans borne of desperation are the most exciting.
For the longest time I was trying to figure out how to get my old group together to play D&D. We have all moved all around the country and some even out of the country so getting together in one place is next to impossible. But with this it may actually be possible to get together for one weekend every couple of months to run a proper adventure and then spend all the time in between on individual "sidequests". Thank you! I will give this a shot!
Making stealth rolls while playing D&D at work - it's always tough to tell if your stealth is in game or IRL
Wow, this video is so well polished. I live the increased level of production that you have acquired due to the Kickstarters and patreon. I also enjoyed your failing forward analogy with the rescue mission, which I think would be aided if you had narrative dice in your new sci-fi RPG.
Tldr: nice video. Narrative dice are good.
This was and is important to me. It absolutely changed the way my friends and I play D&D.
I felt my back pop when you had to define "Arcade" for the kids.
I don't know if that's actually necessary now, thanks to Wreck-It Ralph.
Nullrage I think that everybody knows what an arcade is. If anyone has seen any piece of media in the last 100 years they know.
Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, any ‘90/‘00 movie, most Cartoons, or you know and at least one arcade is still open in most of the cities I ever went.
Ever heard of a joke? Everyone, even 7 year olds, knows what arcades are. Places like Dave & Buster's are still popular. It's just Matt making an age joke.
I love this. Back when I ran my Westmarches campaign, there were a couple players who were constantly going off on their own. We just did it all on one one one chats, because I had a rule at the time that actual adventures required 3 to 6 players. But doing it over chat worked great! I was able to go about my life and just text through the app whenever I had time to further the adventure. It did get a little too time consuming at some points with the constant texting so I recommend turning off notifications for that so that you can choose when you get to it rather that feeling obligated to check your phone whenever there is a text.
I needed this topic! It's indubitably important!
As always thank you so much for your content. I am a prolific game master due to your advice and encouragement!
15:20 might be the best piece of d&d advice I've ever heard.
“Dominator”
Yep...
“Taken”
YEP
*Black Company intensifies*
I love that you explained "arcade."
I don't know if it's the most important video he's done, but it's a favorite for me. It's a little validating to want that kind of pacing back. Makes me nostalgic.
Lord of the Rings Online is my beyond-the-table itch scratcher. - - I have not used a pre-written module or setting since before Drizzt got his first book. - - I ran a downtime session for a friend's paladin as he was visiting me in the hospital. We had no books, no character sheets, and no dice, but it was fun, and has influenced the game at the table. - - Great video, and thank you. And yes, I learned something, and we all know that this... this is all we have. Peace to you.
Yay, I just caught myself wishing Matt would post.
Thanks for the video! I too think it is super important to switch the driver of the campaign between World driven or player driven (what you seem to indicate as Modules vs West marches games). Its very true that you need both. Playing only Campaign driven can be very high stakes and leave players always running and not having the time to flesh out their character. Playing only Player driven are not as epic and require the character to want something (that reason alone can cause the end of a campaign).
Campaign driven is when the story happens to the player.in the sense that the person "who wants something badly but has difficulty getting it" is the big evil villain of the story. The player organize, react and choose how they want to stop it and suffer the consequences of failure often indirectly (think Frodo being compelled by the story to act or John in Die Hard). Inactivity has a cost. These are very well suited for group play as they can easily motivate multiple people at the time.
Player driven is when the character are the one who "want something badly and have difficulty getting it". Their choices ARE the driver. They deal with obstacles and setback and the end goal is more about getting a reward than not suffering a consequence (think bilbo in the hobbit or Indiana jones). Inactivity has little cost, but activity has possibility of great rewards! These are well suited for one on one or small group as they need a good synchronicity of ambition (gold, power, love etc...). Sometimes that is when you go from on player goal to another with the other ones tagging along to help.
Because of the differences with my way of doing it, I find your way of organizing your thoughts about the same roleplaying game concepts very interesting. For me downtime is, by definition, the events between major milestone that you don't want (or maybe shouldn't) play through. For that reason, this video felt like it was only about one on one, which is fine. I often play one on one, and they are a powerful tool in our game master tool box. I had a discussion with my Matt about it and it is a fun subject !
Whoever read this far I salute you and wish you the best! Yes, yes you!
-Chris
-Chris
Matt Colville is one of two channels where I actually did "ring the bell" on UA-cam, out of the 100 or so I'm subscribed to!
I want to give Matt a million thanks. This is the spark of life both I and my table needed. I run a group of about 10 who have all started characters working on their own ambitions, independent of one another. The players have shown interest in teaming up, and doing more of a traditional campaign for this setting, so I have been able to take these side quests they have asked for and seed them with hooks and links to the larger narratives I have building in the back. This video, dare I say, is must see for all new players and DMs.
For anyone stoked about these concepts (open-ended downtime, character ambition, complex and variable failure states) I gotta HIGHLY recommend reading and playing Blades in the Dark
Matt, I cannot thank you enough for this series! I'm still in the early part of them but between this and Critical Roll you all have helped me get off to a great start with a game I am designing for my kids and their friend. I have used the basics of the D&D system and written the rest and created a new game world that is what I am hoping to be rich and intricate that encourages their imaginations. It's an environment/world that I have been thinking about for a long time but was really nervous about running it. Now, with all of this study, I feel like I am equipped to design the system, the play order and the wild, unique world and I can introduce them to the world of table top gaming. Its thrilling to be able to create this and bring my children into it with their imaginations to play, thank you for helping me with this! (they are 10 and 14 and their friend is 11 and her dad plays in my game too!)
What a nice birthday present, a Colville video!
This is one of my favorite Colville videos ever. I do so much with my players in downtime and it really is true you get the most personal moments and developments in the 'side' stories.
Happy birthday!
@@MrSilvUr Thank you!
Happy birthday! 💐
@@thomasrhoads4316 :-D
I have watched this video multiple times and it has changed the way my table runs in the best ways. My players request one on one play constantly now due to the implementation of Downtime both a mechanic I added and in the actual slow moments in our games. Thank you for the videos you've made and please keep making them. Your goal of making new GMs is working, from a DM who would have never tried D&D in a million years until watching your videos.
3:10 HE SAID ALIGNMENT, GET HIM
This video changed the course of my first full D&D game I dungeon mastered completely. I watched this, and when my players finished the first arc of my game, slaying goblins in the Scarlet forests of bekmear, saving the town from the hobgoblin cheiftan empowered by the higher level threat necroest, after they finished partying and drinking snd being given titles and gold, I let the heroes disperse. They all took their horses, and went off to do different things in my world. The wood elven ranger wanted to rebuild wood elven society, as his tribe had been burned down in his backstory, so he went to search for more wood elves, and the bard tagged along. The dragonborn barbarian had amassed a small unit of kobolds while fighting the goblins, who worshipped him like a God, and they believed that more of their kind were being held captive by a group of underdark dwarves, so he went to free them and add to his forces. The fighter had attained a fancy magic sword, the sword of blackened steel, during their adventures, and wanted to have it identified by a wizard. Since mages were hunted in my world, this would require a long hunt. The high elven wizard of the party tagged along with him, since he also wanted to find a high level wizard, as he had yet to meet another magic user outside of his elven home, and wanted to see what he could be taught. When the fighter and wizard searched for this high level wizard, they found him, were trained by him, the fighter even found a high level warrior he was with, so each PC had a high level mentor. Then, the kingdom of illustria found them too. The high level wizard escaped through a dimension door, the PC wizard pretended to betray the fighter, joining illustria temporarily, and the fighter was put in jail, along with his mentor. This led to a year long game, with the party reuniting, killing the king of illustria as he was about to execute the fighter, being chased down by the blood guard, narrowly escaping through the cities sewer system, with both mentors dying to the blood guard, and the players vowing revenge. Over the course of a year, characters achieved their goals, went across the seas to the continent of Obias, leveled up, some died, and new characters joined in their place. All slowly gaining the skills, the armies, the magic weapons, to seige illustria, slay the blood knights, and kill the queen, the last royalty of illustria. The players ended the game as kings and lords, Drajyre the ranger the chief of the wood elves of Autumnhold, Ajax the invincible, wielder of the sword of blackened steel, new king of illustria, to reforge the kingdom to ideals of good and justice, Huktuks the barbarian becoming war leader of Suminstrial, capital of Obias. All because of downtime, where the players decided what they wanted to do, instead of me deciding for them. I have you to thank for a fantastic game, for good stories, and for 5 friends I have grown much closer to, I have went through high school with, and who I now run new d&d games for, all of them brilliant players now, in their own ways. Thank you, for giving me the confidence to dungeon master, and evolve my participation in the hobby, discover my love of storytelling, and begin my own writing endeavors. You are a river to your people.
When I'm DMing, I try to build the entire capaign around my character's motivations, so that every session, every story arc is as personal as Matt describes here. It isn't necessary for the group to separate for the characters to have interesting character arcs. Just let them all quest for whatever that one character wants! That's how I like to run d&d.
(P.S: sorry about my english)
Absolutely, this is how I think everyone should DM. Oh, a vampire murdered your family and you now want revenge? Well guess what, now the campaign's big baddy is a vampire.
Too few DMs do this. It's how I roll, too. My world, their story. 100% sandbox.
Your english is good, I would not have known it was not your first language.
@@spacesandshark2418 Mercer are you in there?
Running the game made me want to become a DM and taught me how to do it but, and more importantly, these videos accompanied me for 2 months while I was commuting to work, cleaning the house, even shopping, and they never disappointed me. A friend of mine let me borrow Strongholds & Followers and that was also a great read, filled with inspiration and wondrous content.
I had my first session (a mild success) and I want to have more, being right in the middle of the process of creating my entire homebrew world and having a blast while at it. So I just wanted to leave my thanks here too - after having clicked all the 85 videos before this to officially Like them, since I had forgotten to do so :) Thank you for sharing this!
A somewhat related complaint I’ve had for a long time about D&D and the mega-adventure style of play is that the level progression happens really quickly in world. That is to say, I’ve seen campaigns go from level one to ten in just a few months of in-game time. Meaning that the PCs go from struggling with kobolds and goblins to fighting beholders and dragons in about the time it takes to do a semester of school.
I feel like incorporating downtime and having a series of shorter adventures may help preserve credulity and prevent that super rapid rise in power. It would also give the PCs a chance to have a life of their own outside side of adventuring.
Paul Lyons completely agree!! I’ve noodled over this a lot.
How would the status quo powers react? These new guys could easily be a threat, not because of alignment but because they are babes in the wood and naive about existing power dynamics among the major forces and factions.
Exceptional Origin or Destiny? Not many others ever advance at this rate. So something is different, remarkable about the PCs, relative to other level NPCs. What is it? Other NPCs might think there is something to ‘get’ .
But it all comes back to this exceptionally fast rise in power (and how the characters even know how to handle their new powers).
This is my favourite video of this series so far. Also, the 1on1 with Gertz was probably the only P&P Stream I completely watched. The promise of chain solo-stories fills me with warm, toe-wiggly anticipation.
Matt at 12:47 - "We may be almost done with this video"
The Video: Goes on for another 10 minutes.
Classic Matt!
He's really discussing how the game gets better as the DM and players collaborate creatively and make bold choices. Not everyone is going to want to play a sandbox style game, or do Westmarches style side quests, but the whole group benefits when players work with the DM to make their character stories distinct parts of the action. It's more memorable and satisfying.
Your TIMING IS IMPECCABLE! LIterally my party is doing downtime tomorrow and I was looking for things for them to do!
Nothing encourages me to be a better DM more than Colville's videos. Thanks Matt.
Matt is like the Budha of tabletop rpgs.
"Here's something I did, but you can do it whatever way it suits you"
I remember when this video came out and I thought “this sounds so cool, I wish I could do something like that” and four years later, I have my own game going at work and I can actually apply the the lessons I learned from this video. Matt is right, this is very much a better way to play than the non-stop adventuring career that many published modules put characters through. I have never had so much fun playing D&D!
I know it's going to be a good day when Uncle Matt uploads a video.
The more you preview and tease that One on One D&D video, the more I am convinced I need it in my life. Also, thank you for this video, because it's absolutely golden, and has given me a clear forward path for how to proceed in my own campaign!
Another great video Matt. My favorite is always, "You can try, just tell me what you are doing?"
I love downtime adventures (henceforth called side quests ;) ) and I'm so glad to see you talking about them. I've been DMing for a long time and I find this series every bit as useful, entertaining, and just plain wholesome as a new DM would. Even when you're covering things I already know, you often give me new angles to think about them from - or sometimes (like the politics series) it's something I've grasped intuitively but never put into words, and your doing so allows me to more rigorously explore and tinker with ideas once they move from intuition to knowledge. You are a gift to this hobby, and if there is a Hall of fame for it then you shouldn't just be in it, they should put your smiling face on the door.
What a great video and the editing/effects are amazing!
I love that "The Dominator" story worked out so well for your DM, I can only imagine the glee Brad felt, when Dave had to tell the group what he did xD
Also, to be honest, I've actually never considered doing downtime stuff away from the table (which might stem from the fact that my groups tend to play long epics and downtime happens at the table) but I'll definitely have to keep it in mind for my next game!
I really love hearing your perspective on this. I've been DMing a campaign in Ravnica, where all the players are Dimir spies, but they're each infiltrating another guild. Between group adventures, they do "solo missions" where they interact with their cover guild or do side quests. Then at the next group session we start with a "debriefing" where they share what happened, and things they learned. It's awesome to drop little hints that tie together into a bigger picture.
4:03 - A+
That is something I really liked about the older editions of AD&D where characters could attract followers and establish strongholds and the like. It was a mechanic already in the game, which naturally led to incorporating such ideas into the games. A whole lot of my early games were with just two or three people including the DM. A whole lot of fun to be had.
4:00
That’s Twice now that Matt has literally made me fall on the floor laughing 🤣
This instance has to do with the Campaign Diary Ballisantrax Dreams, which I recently listened to, & the way some members of the community were critiquing the episode of the Chain for “advertising Kingdoms & Warfare” (as if people who create a product wouldn’t want to make use of it 😏
You're one of my favorite D&D youtube channels! I love your topics and the passion you have when you talk about D&D ideas!
I've been running a campaign for the last 3 years with friends. For the first 2 years we played short self contained quests that I'd occasionally pepper with details of my overarching plot. About a year ago I threw the culmination of these details at my party in a final session and then took a 3 month break from DMing.
I've picked up again and we're back to playing regularly, only now they have one set goal, to correct the fallout from the big session before the break.
In the 3 month break I found it hard to get players to participate in downtime. I had certain players try to learn new languages and one took the time to multiclass from fighter into paladin, but everyone else seemed happy to just pass a year in game keeping the status quo. I'll admit I was kind of disappointed, I thoughy they would be more invested.
I'm planning on doing something similar soon, but with a new perspective from this video
It prolly wasnt the fact that they weren't invested, they just werent interested in downtime because it didnt feel like it was part of the "grand adventure". Half of my group enjoys the downtime, others find it monotonous.
I know this message will probably never get seen but this is probably the most impactful video from Matt. These ideas have promoted me to being a much better dm and I've shared this with so many new dms that wanted to start playing. The tools this gives you not only to helps develop individual stories for characters but it allows you to create/introduce new plots that players feel personally attached to or introduce lore that players will care about and use. In the years since I started doing downtime my games have been much more enjoyable for both my players and I. Thank you Matt.
"You did what?" 😂😂😂 i laughed out loud
Over the past few months I have watched every single Running the Game video and I've gotta' say, this stuff has helped my campaign and my first time DMing immensely. There are even some great nuggets of info in here regarding making video games which I do as well :) thanks for all your work Matt!
There's a major factor you missed here:
It's important for the players to INFORM the other players about their offtime adventures.
Imagine if that Ghoul came back and told no one he saved her, she was just given to a temple to be healed and she had no idea how she got there.
That's whats going on in my own campaign. A character goes off on their own adventures and refuses to tell anyone what they do. And it's really annoying.
I mean, if you're the DM, can't you punish that activity or notify the other players regardless of her actions? If you're a fellow player, talk to the player and the DM about informing your party.
@@danielfloresdevalgaz4576 no this is a problem some dms think is ok.
'if this player doesn't want to share what they're doing that's their choice' but some players abuse this and never share anything and dms miss this.
@@xBlacksStarx I mean I meant this specifically applying to you
@@danielfloresdevalgaz4576 I'm not the DM. I'm a player who's seeing another player do this and the DM thinks this is fine and it's maddening.
I don’t think that’s a problem, if it’s personal and they have no reason to tell the party they shouldn’t.
You're right Matt, this has been the most influential and important of your videos for me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This helped kindle my love for dm-ing as it gave me the missing link of my puzzle. The info you gave me in this video made it all come together. Thank you once more, for shining the light on the game i love so much.
Matt at 12:47 : We may be almost done with the video
I mean, it is more than 50% of the video.
Matt, your self reflection is an inspiration and a reminder to us all that DMing is an art form that must be practiced. We are always evolving in what we do and we can't reach the next height of expression without first experiencing the thing we want to improve in our game. This comes up for me a lot -- I find myself wishing I had done this new thing sooner, or I see in hindsight that I was neglecting an important principle. In light of a long history of campaigns that fizzled out, it's a relief to see one of my role models revise his method. Thanks.
Colville at 7 in the morning? Sounds great!
Fantastic video Matt! I've always run side-quests with my players, and they have been some of the most memorable moments for my players. Letting the assassin off the leash, letting the ranger go scouting into the harsh snowy mountains, so many possibilities. And players really appreciate the extra undivided attention, especially if you run with a group on the larger side.
I love how much your group(s) borrow from Black Company.
I genuinely did not realize running a game for a single player was possible. This video completely blew my mind and incorporating this as a possibility in the campaign I'm planning will not only fit perfectly with what I already have planned but will help solve a problem I've been trying to work out for ages. (Also this just sounds insanely fun.) This is my favorite video yet!
My internal monologue: "Why does this sound so familiar?" "Oh yeah, Patreon!"
I love this video. I decided to use extended downtime between the last adventure and the current one and I enjoyed it immensely. It was a lot of work on my side, but totally worth it. My players loved it. We spent half a session having everyone tell the rest of the party what they were up to and it helped reveal so much more about each character and each player's ambitions.
First baby! Let’s hear about some downtime!
You truly have a great insight in what makes our adventures work and exciting.
From a player perspective:
We need ambition and commitment in our characters and claim the world as ours too!
Very well done sir!
My mind is expanded, many thanks.
Arekaed... What is this Arekaed you speak off old sage!
;P
Darn kids with their arcades and vinyl records and moon boots.
This came at just the right time for our group. And it'll give me the opportunity to explore this little backwater duchy with my players collaboratively! One of my player's characters recently died (death spiral with stirges...), so I think I'll use this as a way to get the new one into the town. Thank you, Matt.
I've never played, but I am super interested in being a GM. I remember first time I EVER seen dnd; I was deployed over seas and my corpsman and a few of our com Marines were playing. As an infantry Marine I didn't get much downtime on deployment, but I was half sleeping half listening, and before long I started actually getting it. Crazy fucks playing DND on deployment, but I got it as their way of coping with everything. I never played then (no chance I would have the time). But, now that I am home I think I could use some DND...
hey, i hope u got into it~ cool story. ttrpgs are a respite from my own pain, being able to put myself into the foundations of a world is better than therapy
Thanks a million for this Matt! You are truly a river unto your people. Will be watching the shenanigans tonight for sure.