Matt Mercer's Amazing DM Advice!
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- Critical Role's Matt Mercer has soem fanastic advice for both newer DM's and established Game Masters as he sits down to talk shop with fellow Critical Role DM's Liam O'Brien, Aabria Iyengar and Spenser Starke!
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Do you mean like a chair? In the Middle of the Room? With nothing else around it?
What does the chair mean, Mercer?!
it means some times you have to fuck with your players, especially when they are a group of maniacs who love chaos
@@michaelhuerta7469my DM in a campaign gave my group a box with a button it. My character had been drilling into the other characters’ heads not to touch random shit (cause 3 of them nearly died before the end of session 5 from touching random shit) and so we were so fucking scared to hit this button we went a good 10 sessions without touching it and ended up forgetting about it until our pet pushed it for us… the box made birds. When you pushed the button, it summoned a bird. That’s it. That’s all. We freaked out for WEEKS over a literal BIRD CUBE!!!
I will never live this dowb
I fuckin choked on my saliva on this one 😭
@@hyperlink6547bird box written in an alternate universe
@@hyperlink6547Don’t you mean the Bird Box?
If i need my players to touch something i put a sign on it that says "do not touch." 100% success rate.
10/10 fabulous advice! 🤭💕
Much touch all the no touchys. My Gnome probably, at somepoint.
My players heed the advice of ancients who tell them this is not a place of glory, there are no honored dead entomb here.
my players planned a 1 month trip in the jungle to avoid dealing with an angry mob of paesants
I love how happy Matt gets when he's talking about DMing
Yeah, it's so refreshing to see someone this passionnate about the hobby I love
Party: ...Gem's cursed, let's get the fuck out of here.
DM: Damn you Matthew Mercer!
Eh, in that situation you'd be cursing your players for somehow getting it in their heads that glowing somehow signifies cursed. Also why are these adventurers walking away from a bunch of gems
His method only works for players who aren't cynical or jaded.
"The gem glows a little brighter" "huh, ok, anyway, about that roll for the mustiness of the room?"
“Yeah! Then we can go back to the bar at the inn and get back to that crazy amazing NPC Bob the human!”
Matt and brennan have to be possibly the best dungeon masters I have ever seen.
They probably are currently the best living 2
Then you haven’t seen many dms. They’re both pretty basic. Talented, but not exceptionally so.
Im into this hobby for over 24 years now and they are good but nothing extraordinary.
Having played with dozens of different tables I can assure you that they are definitely not the norm. It's not unachievable for others to do, but it's silly to pretend that most tables have DMs that carry the magic with them. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many DM advice sections and DM horror stories, either. @@bogiberson2558
If you're into Vampire the Masquerade, you should check out some of Jason Carl's chronicles. He's elite
CR did a whole series of helper videos. So much good advice in there. Matt has that natural ease about him when he does what he does.
Ah so players are moths. Make things glow and they will follow xD
Feels pretty accurate from my perspective
Essentially, yes. Video games does the same thing (if designed well), where the path to progress the story stands out, often times with the lighting.
Yep. Is it shiny? Yoink. Is it glowy? Yoink. Does it belong to someone else? Uh..... Yoink.
I call them "quest marker hints"
Sometimes you want them to touch the thing and other times "it's just a FUCKEN CHAIR!"
Videogame brain rot
I dm’d for the first time a few days ago(first dnd session ever), and yeah it took a little bit to get in the flow but once your going it’s awesome seeing how people interact with the story. Gotta be on your toes for improv to semi steer them with out them noticing and losing that immersion. I loved being the dm
It makes sense mechanically too, strange magic items be having strange magical effects!
I think the best example of this is the "hint" Matt dropped to the party that helped them find their flying carpet. We're talking pre-streaming Vox Machina, but there's a video on youtube.
His gentle nudge sounded like a fucking neon sign to me. My group fucks with everything
At our table we’d be immediately suspicious and assume it’s a trap of some kind.
Other option:
Roll me a [type] check.
If they roll low, narrate them completely missing something the other players notice. If they roll high, they get insight to what you want them to do.
Players: how will we ever get through this door?
DM: Rogue, please make an Investigation check.
Rogue: 7?
DM: You trip over a loose piece of rubble, and your thieves tools fall out of your pocket.
I think I slightly prefer that to Matt's method. My DM will have us do similar things from time to time - just asking for a role without explaining why, and it always does a good job at ramping up tension and investment, as well as leading to something cool we would've otherwise missed.
When there is something I *want* the players to notice, I ask them all to roll a [whatever] check. Then, i just take the top 1-2 results and they succeeded
That's hilarious
@@MorbidGuardian I don't like just having somebody roll something to see if they notice a thing. Then it's game over fiction. If you tell them about something and they go to investigate, then it's fiction first. Don't forget, this is from a panel about Candela Obscura, but still, fiction first works really well with D&D too. You WANT them to find the thing, so tell them about the thing and how it seems different or how it might catch their eye. Then the roll comes later when they're actually trying to learn about why it caught their eye.
Tried the tugging sensation thing and players were like “Nope we aren’t going in that direction.”
I mean, it's obviously bad news and obviously a plot point. They don't wanna mess with it because they think it's gonna unleash some unspeakable horror, so they wanna skip it.
That's how you advance the story, so apparently they don't want to actually play the game, they just want to live in it... or do what they want to do instead of following story. I'd talk to them if that kind of thing comes up. Let them know that these things that are highlighted are because they keep the story and interest going. Also, make sure there's actually something interesting there.
You can also use their passive perception as a way to drop something right in front of them. And you can even play it off like you almost didn’t want them to find it, just to entice them further.
Or you just describe it there. If is important and cool, why hide it behind a roll or check? 😊
@@toribiogubert7729 I'm pretty sure this person isn't doing that. If you've described a room or event and you're players aren't taking interest in something you don't wanna spell out you need to find creative solutions to avoid forcing them into doing something. This comment suggested using passive perception to explain why their character noticed something even if the player didn't. By pretending you didn't want them to find it, you're making it a bigger mystery and now the players want to engage with it.
@@imwolfpup1421 Matt's constant "damn your high passive perception orym!"
I imagine half the time is "dammit, I can't hide anything" and the other half is "ha ha you can't even miss the thing I want you to see if you tried!"
It's important to note that this was for Candela Obscura, which is fiction first, so you talk and rolls are the least important things until you have something you're wanting to do that requires them.
@@andrewl9191 Isn't it all fiction first? We're playing make believe in our hears with TTRPGs out there. Some might like number crunching more than others, but ultimately we're making up stories collaboratively, no?
Fucking love all these folks they're so great at everything they work on, their effort will NEVER go unnoticed! ❤❤❤
One of the best there is...OK. the best there is
I can't wait to meet this man next month.
Where is he going to be?
@@seanmiller2644 Anime NYC.
Matthew Mercer is a BRILLIANT Dungeon Master, and player, and voice actor, and actor. He's also a great human being. Thank you, Matthew for the joy and thrills that you have brought so many of us with your storytelling. Your audience appreciates it more than you know.
Yes.
Excellent.
Thank you.
I tried to do this with a wall that had information on it, but it was LIGHTLY covered in grime. I described this wall half a dozen times when they asked “is there anything in this room” before someone finally decided to check it out as they were all about to leave.
I love how invested everyone gets when the other is speaking ❤ it is the most beautiful example of active listening ❤
THANK YOUUU!!! I was just building on a story and I needed my players to interact with an object, just in case 👍🏻
There's definitely a lot of different ideas around this problem, and my favorite is two methods that work separately, but are meant to work together.
One is the gumshoe method, which is effectively saying "if it's in the room, and they need it, just fucking tell them it's there," and any roll on the player side is to give them more information on the clue/item, i.e. if the roll is successful the player learns it's infused with magic or whatever.
This method is to eliminate as many failure points as possible, we've all fallen into the mystery snag where we have a clue but the player never finds it because they made a bad roll; it's a dead end narratively, and it fucking sucks.
The other method is the Three Clue Rule, in effect it's a way of design that gives multiple solutions to a choke point problem, The Alexandrian has a wonder blog post about it, with different ideas of how one should convey and use information to continue a story.
So this crystal we have is fun, but we need three ways for the players to either learn that it'll give you important information, or three other ways to gain the information the crystal would have given; hell, having all of those options would be the best idea.
Matt's method is a very quick and dirty method, which works perfectly well for improvisational scenes.
I trully belive my first biggest mistake as a DM was giving my players a puzzle and not directing them towards the solution more directly.
There was a mimic hidden in a mansion and initially my clues were pretty slight. Like the number of objects in a room contradicting what the NPC said. Eventually I tried to make it super obvious, but in hindsight I shouldve just sprung the mimic at them after them not understanding the 3rd clue I gave them (there was someone in a room and when they returned only that persons shoes were infront of a barrel). You kinda forget how caught up players can get in their own theories.
my players are the exact opposite, ill drop those kinds of narrative hints and theyll just go, "...nope, we gotta leave."
And the groups just like "naaa we going to the Inn for drinks and Wenches!" And the DM dies a little inside...
Love the advice😊
Glowing gem? Last time that got me in trouble with a dragon, no thank you.
Clearly, in that case you need to get a party member to check it out first. "Hey, so and so, I think I noticed something over there. You're so good at finding things, you should check it out." lol
I do this and my players go.... Nah fuck it I need a long rest. Let's go
The gamer DnD player, just out here for that levelling and powertripping
I did the glowing stone thing(I was an artifact in a museum). The players thought it was cursed and burned the building down. I 86ed the campaign idea I had to have them hunted down by *not Indidana Jones* and a pack of ghosts that lived there lol
One of my favorite 3e moments was when I dropped SO MANY hints that the party needed to obtain a masterwork weapon to damage the boss at the end of the campaign, even going so far as to have an NPC drop one in the boss room as he was killed, only to have the Bard use their Masterwork lute as an improvised weapon and take him out.
Party ignorance sometimes leads to the wildest shit
It's the difference between asking a child if it wants some candy and forcing M&M's down their throats.
My players avoided the rest of a quest because one of them ad-libbed that there might be wraiths there and the rest went "ooooooh wraiths, lets not go there" and thus, the children of the town were NOT rescued
'Little gentle nudge'
I mean that is up to interpretation.
I put keep out signs for my nightmare of a druid to break into. She literally uses gasious form at the most unconvential times
In my experience, most TTRPG players *want* to find and follow the story, even if they want to do other stuff as well. If you find yourself running for a group that is refusing to take all of your plot hooks and hints, you're probably in a toxic group -- or at least a group that just doesn't want to play a more narrative game but just won't say anything about it.
What I learned in my time as a DM, if you want your players to do something, slap them with it until they notice. :D If you want them to take a quest, don't wait for them to decide to take it, but give it to them through an NPC or a circumstance.
The "little, gentle nudge" is the equivalent of ripping out the emtire fence and pelting the player with it...
And if all else fails, just talk to them above table that this is where the story is heading. Playing with people that you know and trust is the most important part of roleplaying! Don't settle for people who have wildly differing values from each other.
That, and I feel like a lot of players will get into the roleplay of it. "Oh, DM said I feel drawn to this thing? Guess I'm drawn to this thing!"
Like, they know it's an outside influence probably, but don't know if it's good or not, but they for sure know that their character feels this and it's harder for them to resist it.
When I describe a magic item I tend to include a slight oddity in its appearance. Like a magical scalemail might look like copper, but with a purple sheen to it like the light reflects wrong.
You know there is still that one door you havent unlocked...
My favorite thing is to use this in a reverse psychology situation.
My party loves narratives like this, but also tends to overwork in an area that doesn't have anything of particular "importance" to the story, so I occasionally give them something interesting that would otherwise seem mundane if it wasn't brought up, and their suspicion of said situation sometimes leads them to attempt to avoid it by going somewhere else.
It can work as an attractant and a repellent depending on how it's used.
I do this all the time!
I had alooking glass that you could see the past through, and they picked it up and were like, "cool, gold mirror... extra loot" and immediately put it in their bag. So at an opportune time, I had the bag radiate warmth, something was humming in their bag of holding... so they had to go through their equipment list to figure out what it was. It took them FOREVER!! 😅
The GOAT
Mercer is the GOAT...👍😎❤️
And that's where my players shouted, "NOPE! SCREW THAT!" And they leave.
OR when your party wants to go back to the quest giver but the quest was the HOOK for the entire campaign so you just send over a page with their payment so they can move forward XD ( I did this with Strahd) .
Where can I watch this whole thing
Gm roundtable for Candela Obsurca last week. On critical roles channel
I mean... You can also just move the gem to the next room they're about to enter.
A smart DM would learn from Matt, but just like learning writing tricks from people like Tolkien, but they don't try and imitate them but use these lessons to create your own style
As I turn around and see the gem, I turn back and shrug - surely that incredibly important item is not intended for me... surely...
I’ve played with tables dense to somehow miss all the blatant clues that “THE WAR IS OVER HERE. THIS WAY TO MAJOR PLOT. OOH BIG EPIC FIGHT IMPORTANT TO ARC” and skip the battle ENTIRELY. They jump started the apocalypse because of that.
When regular DM's do that, players will say it's railroading
The gem is trapped, haunted by evil spirits
The proud and joyful way he says "Hey, I built something cool for you. You might want to check it out." really sums up Great DM'ing.
You're not there to let others play out your story. Your role is to facilitate a made-up setting through words that is fun and rewarding for your friends to engage with.
Matt is such an inspiration.
As another commenter wrote, i put a do not disturb or do not touch sign on it. Someone will do what the sign says not to do. 😂
Then again I've actually said, "ok, i should have dropped that hint harder, you need the McGuffin". 😂. I was years out of practice for that game though. Also my son was a PC in it and he learned a healthy wariness of things in D&D. Perhaps I OVER emphasized caution.
A good DM adapts to what his players to a great DM makes his players think that’s what he’s doing 😂
My players would 100% say "nah, we'll pass" and leave anyway. 😂
Any object that asks to be touched is an object the players will never touch.
...Unless you describe it as sexy. You don't even have to go into what that means, just call the ominous floating orb sexy.
One other thing: if you don’t want your players to do something, tell them that you don’t want them to fight it
Not with my group. They'd immediately attack it with everything they've got.
Well. The last example is anything but a "gentle nudge". It's a huge, glowing neon sign that goes "the railroad goes HERE you idiots".
my players once spent two hours trying to open a door. the key was to knock on it. then when it opened they didnt go through it because they were scared it was a trap.
the neon sign is necessary sometimes.
@@battyrae1398 For sure, hence the "you idiots" at the end of my comment. Still, let's not fool ourselves and call it a "gentle nudge".
@@Giby86considering some people will magically bind an important quest item to a player the moment they look at it or touch it, its pretty gentle because it's still a suggestion. They don't force the item on the person or say how they need to interact with it. They just highlight that it exists. Nothing in the game exists without narration so I don't see how narrating with emphasis is a problem. Without emphasis they might think you're telegraphing that it's not important and thus should be ignored.
@@dm_ex_machina3395 You're actively downplaying the example. Literally saying "you get the sense that you should check out that one specific gem" isn't describing it with emphasis, it's almost exactly railroading. It doesn't matter that the players can still skip it, they would do so knowing that they made the incorrect decision...which is basically passive aggressive railroading.
Which video is this? I would love to watch the whole thing!
It’s on Critical Role’s channel, the DM round table for Candela Obscura last week! Saw someone else post on another comment about it
The central flaw here is that the focus is on the item rather than the vision. It is setting a stop on the railroad and requiring the players to hit that stop before they go to the next and the next and the next, on a railroaded story.
Alternatively, giving the players agency and allowing them to collaborative build the narrative together I have found to be a much more satisfying experience.
But each to their own.
Matt doesn't railroad - heck, he has whole towns that we never hear about because the players never go there. But you need to drop narrative points somewhere.
@@acelibrarian My comment addressed the single example provided, not anything else, which specifically directs the party to pass through a specific story point before continuing. In ludonarrative theory, that's pretty definitional.
But to speak to your point, from an epistemological point of view, you believe there are whole unused towns. But since you've never seen them in the narrative, you don't know they are real. Indeed, they are not real in the narrative. They may exist in a sourcebook or may reportedly exist in notes somewhere or be referenced in an interview, but they are outside of the text, so can't be considered as part of the provided narrative.
Where can I watch the full episode of this talk?
Matt is a very strong DM in his ability to world build and improv, but this here isn't particularly good advice for the average play group. This is just railroading. What you're supposed to do is give a strong emphasis to the area or the gem while describing the scene to make sure it's strong in their mind without pushing them towards it specifically. When they finish picking through the other props in the area and have the "Is that everything" comment you can remind them that there's an element they noticed but didn't interact with, or maybe even ask for a perception check to find other hints that it might be important... But having a random dude run at it, or make them feel a "mystic pull" is just hand holding. It's okay for the players to miss your plot hook, you can make more, or better yet let them create their own. Your job is to make a world for the players to act in, not take them on a guided tour of all of your favourite set pieces. Since they're making a show it's ultimately fine for him to prioritize his set narrative, but it would not be a satisfying play-style for you all at home looking to DM for your friends.
I’ve tried the first one before, but the issue is my players just don’t care. Everyone and their mother could be going in one direction and they’ll be like “but what’s in this OTHER direction” 😂
LINK THE ORIGINAL VIDEO IN THE SHORT
Wheres the link to where we can watch the full thing?
Can anyone tell me what vid this is from? I'm trying to learn about his dm'ing style using tons of RP.
In short: Players are basically corvids. Make it shiny and they will poke at it.
Cool
I don't love the "narrative that you built" thing. I don't want to shout railroad without cause but I feel like "if they're about to skip a cool thing that you wrote you can telegraph it more or again" is better advice
what video is this from?
My mates would know exactly what I'm trying to do then intentionally not do whatever it is I'd want them to do for example the whole glowing gem thing they'd just shrug and move on. I mean I'd do the exact same thing but not the point 😂
Yeahno: I know plenty of people who walk straight past that kind of thing because they hate it from prior experience
"Any boy can cycle with his eyes shut down this road: try it today!"
Matt's a scuba just put it on a bookshelf
Players literally have a dusted dagger and a pristine dagger thays the exact smar that need to be sat together to become a magic item. Theyve left one in. The box and the other i. Its scabbard.
Game Design but on an improvised manner. Thinking on the go.
A Gem that "pulls" me? Cursed, dont touch.
My players: So is that my passive perception? Its like 8 my guy...
Me: you have eyes don't you?
My players: Yeah?
Me: Tell me have you ever in your personal life, tried looking for something only to leave have a moment where you feel a sensation turnb around and see something?
My players: Oh yeah...!!
-----
At my table specifially I have be blatant and give therm options b ut also let them know hey if your gonna through me your solution to the problem I am all ears... just that judging by your characters this is how i assume you'd progress... 9/10 fthey agree with me. The 1 percent they solve it their way... it works for me.
Until you put a chair in a room and they spend 3 episodes investigating the chair
What is this from??
Only works if you have good players
DM - “look… a plot hook”
Bad player - “I kill the elf”
Elf - “I’m a player too, you can’t kill me”
Bad player - “I rolled a nat 20 to hit”
Oh ok that makes sense… so railroading
/s
Tell us about the chair....
My DnD experiences? That's a trap and someone is gonna die.
Most players want to do the cool stuff that's been prepped. The thing pro DMs do is how they'll swing their players back into the cool thing.
"That looks trapped. I'm going to wrap it in cloth and then throw it at an enemy to see what it does."
And now the enemy gets the vision of the prophecy, and the players have to extract it from them. 😂
Of course that can lead to a fun scene of a goblin babbling about the end of the world being nigh. And now your players think that it inflicts madness and start chucking it at every enemy at every opportunity until they realize that there are some correlations between their babbling. 🤣
I've also just used video game terms (very sparingly) you know "you notice the quest objective waypoint hasn't changed" you know a there's something more in this area that you haven't given me any way to assist you towards semiorganicly
Although I also have canonically a item in game for 1 gp in mildly limited supply (basically don't abuse it too much) from the in world bakery that makes the consumer see a glowing quest trail pertaining to the current quest on the players mind that will slow walk them to the next objective in case I ever get way too coy or something seems too obvious to me to feel I need to prepare any more clues or hint and across the 2 campaigns I've put that in it's only been consumed 2 or 3 times (1 time for a puzzle in which it make an interactive object glow which instantly got them back to having fun, 1 time where they mistook the crucial hint as just flavor text, and one time when they were just tired from irl stuff and they weren't really stuck just too worn out)
Just break the 4th wall... real immersive roleplay you got there.
@Yekrep yeah but unfortunately it is necessary with some dense players where subtle or nuance clues just don't work
That's called railroading and if anyone other than this dude said this, people would be raging. He's correct and it is a very basic tool that many DMs use, but if this weren't Matt Mercer saying this extremely basic bit of advice instead of over-praising him, there would be riots and deaththreats to whoever the Not Matt Mercer is in that fictional version of this short.
I always love Matt's nail colors
Thats when your wizard says, “Nah, eff that, FIREBALL!”
How to railroad 101.
Y'know how players hyperfocus on little details that you said for flavor without any intention for them to be important? I utilize that. I describe important things like they're anything else, and somehow that gets players to latch on.
Players are weird.
I think role playing games are better when they are not 'run' by a GM in this way and the players are free to do as they please.