I still see a lot of random encounter table just chock full of combat encounters instead of being used to flesh out the setting, fill in some lore, inspire awe or dread, etc I'm trying to be more aware of these things and foreshadow campaign events to get (& hopefully keep) my players engaged.
I totally agree, just because you rolled a dragon encounter doesn’t mean they fight. It could be as simple as “a shadow of a massive dragon passes over you.” I know if I was a player that would inspire pure dread thinking about how one day we might not be so lucky to go unnoticed and but also curious as to where it was headed!
A buddy of mine came up with a great idea. We both build a random encounter table and a random event table, so we can pick and choose what is needed to keep the story engaging. It's still a random table, just with the option to either have a combat encounter or a world building event.
The meandering middle. I hate this in published adventures (especially certain WotC adventures). This is where the players are just supposed to wander around a city or whatever until the DM finally decides to spring the trigger encounter on them (looking at you fireball in Dragon Heist). The new Planescape adventure is also quite guilty of this where there is just this meandering middle of random quests and encounters almost none of which have to do with the main plot while the players wait for the main quest to start happening (whether they want to or not).
In Conan the Barbarian, Valeria asks Conan and Subotai if they want to live forever before sneaking into the snake cult tower. She doesn’t carry on a conversation with them about motives, politics, or morality. A story connection is great but it’s ok to do something simply because it’s fun or part of the trope of activities that are associated with the type of game you’re playing.
I agree that the notion of treasure being the reason for delving into the dungeon is a bit of an old-school vibe, but man I really wish it wasn't. I am probably in a minority here, but as a player, my PCs always became adventurers because of this very motivation. Being a farmer or a merchant is not going to cut it. I will save the princess, slay the dragon, and oust the corrupt prince BECAUSE I am an adventurer/hero, and I know there's a bag of gold waiting for me when the job is done. Nobody needs to motivate me with personalized hooks from my PCs backstory.
Adventuring is extremely dangerous. Having a monetary motivation is far more believable than "I am a misfit" or "my parents died" for becoming an adventurer. A world where everyone is looking for their long lost brother, or an item of great significance, or adventuring to find themselves is less believable than a class of people who see adventuring as their best job prospect. Other than that, old-school does not mean bad. Frankly, I think modern TTRPGs have lost what made them special. They began as emergent story makers that added narrative to war games. They have become a worse way to tell a linear story and many of the trends, including a narrative focus (often at the cost of mechanics), create a less cooperative table. Too many folks come to the hobby to tell their story when we should be coming to the hobby to make a story with friends. I think this is the result of a lot of well-meaning advice and experience, but I have found that the promise of TTRPGs as games that create stories has been eroded in favor of telling stories while occasionally playing a game.
I feel like one of the reasons my last campaign fell flat was because I told the players it would be "deadly," like Shadowdark (which didn't exist at the time), but then didn't stick to my guns. So, the players weren't invested in their characters (because I told them not to get too attached to them), but I also didn't throw challenging enough stuff at them to keep them interested. So, I guess, not sticking to your guns as a Gm might be a pitfall
I played the first bit of Out of the Abyss once and the GM started it with a generic dungeon crawl that ended with us getting captured in a drow raid - and honestly I loved it! I really enjoyed the challenge of getting out of the cell with limited gear/powers. Also one of my lasting favourite memories of a game was being mind controlled. I was made to believe that the other PCs were out to get me - but I had agency over how to respond to that. So I think some of this stuff *can* be fine - if it's implemented in the right way. The examples you use in the video do sound much more frustrating!
I feel like the majority of these comes down to respecting the players as co-authors of the story. When players have a cool idea, as a GM I like to run with it when it's possible to do so. It's tricky as the GM to run a game like that bc you need to be really agile and above to think relatively fast. But I feel it's worth it.
The pitfall that I've been struggled with is making my keystone NPCs with way too much going on. Which is to say I create too much for said NPCs (backstory, stat block, Hero Forge portrait, etc.). The problem ends up being that I really want to showcase my creations, even when my players are ready to move on, and kinda jam them further into the session. Recently, I've been trying to scale back the prep time sink that this can be (using the Way of the Lazy DM), and not surprisingly nobody at the table has noticed that my keystone NPCs are less thought out on my end. So far so good I guess? Anyway, thanks for this!
On my random encounters I was inspired by the old 1d6 method of 1 being something awful, 6 something great, 2 and 5 being bad and good, 3 or 4 neutral, so the downbeats on 1 or 2, a boon or help on 5 or 6, things narrative or ambigously adding to the setting, etc on 3 or 4, so never just a list of all combat or traps or tricks, only really 1/3 or 1/2 being a negative.
"I would like for you to use whatever your most powerful attack is on one of your fellows. Please roll a D(however many players there are, I assign number ) to pick a target. It's always tense and fun.
The Fun Vacuums/Vampires! Something that has significantly improved the flow of my games is ensuring they feel smoother and more natural. It's not about speed or constant excitement, as you do need those ups and downs, but here's the deal: I make sure that, first and foremost, each scene serves a purpose in the story. This purpose translates into an objective that the party must achieve. I convey this objective to them, sometimes directly as the GM to the players, but mostly through the game itself. I dont need to focus as much on it these days, since now we've reached a point where they know that in every scene, there's an objective. This encourages player interaction within the scene, but it's still up to the GM to convey the specific objective to the players. These objectives can vary from something as seemingly inconsequential as "getting a feel for the town/area, etc." to critical challenges like "In this battle, you need to stop the Big Bad from completing their ritual. Edit: It's a sort of addendumI do for one of the 8 Steps. When planning out the scene, I write the objective.
The Cypher System adventures are THE best for clues and mcguffins. They have symbols to show all the possible places you can get these. They are never limited to one room/encounter/place/NPC.
Unclear motivation seems like a slippery sloap of reasoning. I've seen (played with) a not insignificant number of players who refuse to accept "The Hook". A farmer comes running into the tavern and says, "Help! Goblins stole my baby. You there adventurers, will you help me?" ... Adventurers: "So, what's in it for us?", "Wellll, how many goblins were there?", "Maybe, but we need to smoke and joke in this tavern first." ... etc, etc, Point being there's a responsibility of the players to engage with the story/world. I feel like a GM could spen a lot of time pondering/creating motivations for the PCs, but ultimately, it's up to the player to engage with the world. Is a fast start a railroad or is it ensuring the game and players get moving? Just my 2 cents and food for thought.
I'm currently getting my kids involved in DND and it's really making me think about this topic. I don't want to make it a total cakewalk because I think they'll get bored, but I want it to be fun so they keep coming back. I've bent a few rules here and there when it comes to skill checks, but only if it's because they've come up with a really good idea that I can help build on and it offers more unpredictable roleplaying opportunities.
Pacing is the absolute biggest one, you can make a lot of mistakes if you move on to fun stuff afterwards. The bad NPC scenario is quickly forgotten if it's 15 mins and then you have fun for four hours! Even a fight with three bears that has no meaning is no big deal if it only takes you 10 minutes.
That World of Warcraft thing instantly makes me think of a way better way to do it, which I think would work in a TTRPG. Give a lich or whatever some kind of deadly effect that's slowly building up throughout the fight, but let the players know that reinforcements are on the way. When their NPC allies show up, as this ability comes close to killing the PCs, have the NPCs do something that nullifies this effect... and make it clear that they're using all their strength to save the PCs from the instant death effect, and if the PCs don't take out the bad guy soon, their friends die too. Kinda faking them out, making it seem at first like a battle they're supposed to lose, but now that they've survived long enough, it's up to them to finish the fight. The point is, the deus ex machina reveals that you're not actually out to screw them over, you just wanted to scare 'em a little first, and now it's a fair fight. Hard to pull off in some systems, though, where players can unexpectedly annihilate a bad guy in a couple of turns, or where it's hard to put a party under severe pressure for more than a couple of turns without completely shutting them down.
Pacing is a big issue in my games. Probably my worst trait as a DM. The "15 minutes of fun in 4 hours" quote really resonated with me. Does anyone has any recommendation of materials (books, articles, etc.) to improve at this?
Play lightweight game systems. Do less combat. Run shorter sessions and keep them punchy. Where are your games slowing down? Dungeoncraft #99 (3 tips for improving narration: paint the picture, move the camera, lead the players) is good advice if it's the narrative parts of the game that are slow or players are getting lost. It could be summed up as less is more: don't over describe, skip forward to the next interesting decision and make it pretty obvious what the options are. Less combat: not every conflict needs to be a fight to the death. Be open to confrontations where combat is an option neither side wants. Morale/reaction rolls for npcs can help give more nuance. I think 5e combat can be particularly bad as the heroic style of play carries the assumption the heroes will prevail but the fights get bogged down with minutia as the stakes get higher. If you're running modules, consider pruning meaningless fights (eg the bears Mike mentions) or substituting them with meaningful encounters that drive the adventure forward. Restricting rest, or using slightly grittier resting rules mean players may be more risk averse as health becomes a precious resource. Bob World Builder had a recent video about this; Drunkens and Dragons/Runehammer had a good video ages ago about resting, and how rest can be used as a reward when given just before a big showdown because it lets the PCs go full badass mode
On shorter sessions, recently my group has been doing 3 hour sessions on weeknights and the tighter timeslot means less messing around, more gaming. Oh, and smaller groups. 3 players is a lot less communication overhead than 5 or 6. We did a Shadowdark game a few weeks ago in a 3 hour session and even including character creation I think we got through more game than most longer 5e sessions
There was a video stream by Knights of Last Call recently that spoke to the topic of death and dying and how many modern games still hold on to a paradigm of death and dying that is counterproductive to the type of gameplay it promotes through its mechanics. D&D and Pathfinder are the most popular examples in this regard, in so far that there is a lot of time and effort devoted to creating characters, learning the rules, and mastering the system, only for character death to either be meaningless (due to the relative ease of resurrecting that character) or punishing to the player by removing their agency for a certain amount of time or disincentivizing them to continue playing because they can no longer play as that character. Some solutions that have been presented for the type of play involving narrative arcs (as opposed to playing out a "world-playing game") is to take non-consensual PC death off the table. The TTJRPG, Fabula Ultima, does this by presenting two choices when a PC reaches zero HP: they either concede to some sort of defeat that doesn't remove player agency (but still suffer consequences) or, if certain conditions are met, they can heroically sacrifice themselves in order to achieve a narratively-meaningful victory (effectively retiring them from play). The caveat here is that the players have to care about something other than their character's survival for this to have a meaningful impact, otherwise they may as well play the old-school style of a band of treasure-seeking knaves exploring a dangerous and unforgiving world (where it makes sense for there to exist a player agency-removing mechanic, since character creation and play is a lot simpler than WotC-era D&D).
I think getting stunned or paralyzed or something is frustrating, but not a “fun killer” . It is a loss of agency within the confines of the system, which it is ok to me. Like the mechanics of falling jn love in Monster Hearts. So, frustrating things don’t necessarily mean “bad things that should avoid at all costs”. As adults, we’re ok with a bit of frustration to spice our adventures and take it away from a boring and bland endeavor. I’m more into the OSR these days, and part of what drove me and my friends to it was this idea that 5e trying to keep all frustration away from us was a bit condescending and not fun to us. In short, those points you mentioned are very subjective, as is a lot of things in these art-form we enjoy
It's less about frustration and more about having to wait 45min for your turn and then... you don't get to have a turn so you gotta wait another 45min. That is bad game design. If combat wasn't so slow in D&D it probably wouldn't be a problem.
@@danrimo826 to me, bad game design is a combat with rounds of 45 minutes (I know it is an hyperbole, we know combats in 5e tend to be a slog). Also, in campaigns where you have hirelings and retainers, that player can command some of those NPCs while they are paralyzed/stunned. Even if that's not the case, it is ok. I've been there, being a player that made a bad choice, ending up paralyzed by some monster, being frustrated, but also having fun helping the other players to deal with that encounter by giving advice (the GM back then wasn't crazy about "metagaming" in those kinds of situation). So again, calling it "bad design" when there is a lot of people who enjoy that kind of playstyle doesn't seem right to me. Those are different approaches to the game, and some people enjoy it, some people don't-
@@lucasmarquesdecamargos4298 Sure, pretty much all of the so-called "Fun Killers" are situational. There's one group I've played with that only cares about combat and loot, so "player agency" and "meaningful choices" are not that important to them. But most players aren't like that, so DMs should watch out for that kind of thing. Likewise, the existence of some minority that thinks being paralyzed is awesome doesn't mean that DMs shouldn't be cautious about over-using such attacks.
Some of the agency-stealing powers, like stun or charm, can be angled into more fun with combat RP. Instead of a simple "you skip your turn" or "your charmed and attack your friends"... Describe why, how it feels, and put drama into the effect. Let the party hear the struggle and act accordingly. I wouldn't give up these effects which so many opponents use just because it takes agency away. I would use them as critical points of a more interesting combat than simply roll to attack.
I run games with other dms in this sort of open table one shot/episodical format, and I've seen people who come in with very skewed perceptions of the game. Adversarial with the DM and other players, main character syndrome, etc etc. But on the DM side of things I've seen people fall for using monsters that can be inherently unfun, I remember someone commenting on how they were excited to try and play a sorcerer and a Beholder just double rayed them and they died before taking a turn. Those kind of statblocks I tend to move away from since I don't like the idea of having to monitor and fudge die so people don't insta die or get perma paralyzed for something that they had no options for. Also anti magic zones feel weird in combat as they just nullify entire classes.
@@KazisCollection The main problem we've had when having multiple dms is coordination and need for a "lore master" aka someone who just makes sure that it all (even if loosely) fits and feels cohesive to the players. And monitoring the group, making sure every dm is comfortable enough with players (personalities will always clash but so long as it doesn't ruin it for anyone it's fine) and all players with each other and the dms. Lastly my group has been blessed with very few "controversies" but the format lends itself to them so beware.
The downward beats thing is so important - a lot of GMs lean into "Well, you made bad decisions, therefore, you need to face consequences" and then having to pull a deus ex machina out of their back packet because, well, now that they players have been beaten into the ground, you have no way of them becoming able to continue the story without you granting them a few 'free' wins. It's always good to let people fail forwards sometimes.
Not adventure mistakes, but pitfalls of my own GMing style: 1. Improv shock - when the improv sends the game careening around a mountain pass, theme, realism, and immersion flying out of the carriage at every hairpin turn 2. Dubbing - everyone's fooling around and we don't get to the big fight, or the cliffhanger of the big fight, or the prelude to the cliffhanger of the big fight... 3. Tolkienizing - when I just take too fucking long to get to the damn mountain 4. Fishing with the wrong bait - dropping all the rp hooks into the water, expecting pickerel, only to have players great white shark their way through it 5. Fantasy fuschia - when I absolutely, positively need everyone to imagine the same thing as me, even though I could have said "it's a 30x90 room with pillars here, here, and here."
Hey Mike, I don't comment often on your stuff (or in general :P) but this was a realy useful video that made me thinking about mistakes I already made and improved on. Thanks! By the way: It took me half the video to realize that the thumbnail never was about adventures where you hunt a serial killer or something. ^^
Low agency is indeed a fun killer in RPGs. People give advice on how to skip travel, but the real problem is “travel” is picking the highest Wisdom character and rolling over and over to view the next inconvenience or non sequitur. Imagine if someone said dungeons were boring! Dungeons have telegraphed choices; the wilderness has vantage points, constellations, and landmarks! Dungeons have secret rooms and connected encounters; the wilds have caves, grottos, sheltered ruins, and encounters can connect as well! Dungeons have traps, hazards, and obstacles; the wilds have quicksand, flash floods, rifts, and mountains! Approach the wilds as a dungeon, and you’ll see the informed, critical decisions and agency one should put into it.
IMO, player agency is a 2-edged sword. They have the ability to do what they want to do. But the also have the responsibility to do that. When players are placed in some situations where they're captured, scrounging for clues, feeling bored, etc... they're the adventurers. Their job is to drive the action. As players, their job is to embody their characters, and know what their characters should want to do. They need to supply their characters with motivations and attitudes. A bit of hyperbole of here, but as a GM if I'm lampshading the solutions to problems, then it feels like I'm playing the game on behalf of the PCs. I feel like my job as GM is to provide dilemmas and conflict. Players bring solutions and respond to conflict. Some players I've found play far too passively.
Forcing direction under the "guise" of choice. "Where do you go?" "We go left." "That hall collapsed." "We go right." "That is a lake of boiling acid." "Up?" "Wind Sheers" "Down?" "Arcane locked door... that is barred." "I guess we head back..." "what you guys are quitting already? You haven't tried forward!" "You told us we could smell a dragon arse ahead." "Yeah?" "WE ARE FIRST LEVEL!" The appearance of choice without actual choices ... is the worst IMO. I actually yelled at a DM to stop wasting our time and just tell us where to go when that happened once. And it happened all because he wanted a specific encounter to occur in a specific location ... although we find out later there was nothing special about the location!
Here's a few I can think of: 1. Not giving your players the opportunity to use their cool powers/abilities. The classic is the Monk with Deflect Missiles, and suddenly nobody ever shoots them anymore. Or the Barbarian who can't be surprised, but the DM never uses ambushes. I was just in a game where one of the players was a Triton, and we happened to go into an underwater area where she could use all of her cool racial powers and she was so excited about it. There's lots of niche abilities that can make your players feel so badass when they realize they have *exactly the right tool for the job*. It also rewards players who know their characters and abilities really well. 2. Pointless exploration areas. I find the official WotC modules are really bad for this. They have a dungeon with 30 or 40 rooms in it, but the majority of them have nothing of interest in them. No loot, no secrets, no traps, no lore, nothing to interact with at all. But the room still has enough of a description that the party feels like they need to look around, do all of their Perception checks, etc. You end up spending an hour or two of a four hour session just looking at empty rooms. Exploration done well is awesome and one of my favourite parts of the game, but done poorly it is really a fun-killer. 3. Puzzles. I'm just going to say it: Most puzzles in D&D suck. They rely mostly on out-of-character knowledge and are more of a separate minigame/timewaster than actually part of the world. Many of them *really* don't make a lot of sense in-universe.
aHA! Found it. It's because this video is a snippet from an old talkshow episode. The video with the Product Highlight is "Bigby's Glory of the Giants Spotlight - The Lazy RPG Talk Show".
I had a DM that straight up said magic didn't work right in this campaign they were running and each time we tried to use the DM rolled a D100 to see if our spell actually worked or if there was a surge of wildmagic... I started out stuck in a cell and tried to wildshape into a mouse to get out and basically was told "no" and instead I turned blue or something. Made me never want to play at that table again. I also hate petrification and feel WotC uses it way too much. I'm playing in RotFM (Slight spoiler ahead) and one player got petrified because they followed the clues to the magical McGuffin we were looking for and just went slightly further into the next room and failed an impossible saving throw (I think the DM said it was like 25 or something... we're level 8) and they had to sit out for the rest of the 3 hour session until the rest of us could fight our way out and get back to a town.
My over 5 year game has been in jeopardy for months and its given me much time to reflect. Ive committed so many of these "sins" in some way shape or form. Ive been granted more perspective since, Its something I just need to be better about.
The one point of this video I strongly disagree with is your broad definition of what is "taking away player agency". To be clear, I only disagree with the breadth of the definition. I agree that meaningless choices such as "you can go left or right but both paths lead to the same door" or "no matter what you do you will always have to work with/for a certain NPC" are bad. (See the quantum ogre and the beginning of Descent into Avernus). This is the situation where the players are acting out the DM's novel, and that is rarely desirable. It is undesirable because it conflicts with the primary distinguishing characteristic and strength of TTRPGs, which is the ability to create emergent gameplay and stories through the choices made by everyone at the table. Invalidating or ignoring choices made at the table directly contradicts this goal and turns TTRPGs into worse versions of video games and novels. What are not removers of agency are combat mechanics. Being stunned in combat or restrained or charmed does not remove agency. It limits your combat effectiveness, sometimes reducing it to 0 or even a negative. It does not invalidate decisions you made and in many cases stems from tactical decisions made by the player. No prior player choice has been invalidated. For example, becoming petrified is a foreseeable outcome of fighting a basilisk. This is good design. It varies enemies and encounters. If DMs are discouraged from using control effects then the game becomes rocket tag as the NPCs can only rush to do more damage than the PCs, but also they cannot do too much damage because that would knock a PC unconscious and remove their agency. And so we arrive at a style of play where the PCs are never in real danger. They have fully working plot armor. Sure friends or family might get hurt but the PCs themselves will never have to deal with real adversity and the extent the PC has to deal with trauma is completely up to the player. Players will often forget inconvenient traits when necessary. And so instead of playing in a DM's novel we are playing in a player's OC fan fiction. This is just as undesirable for the same reasons. To make things harder on myself, I will address the 50 drow with sleep darts situation. The worst version of this situation is "suddenly Drow!" They pop up you get hit and boom you are captured. The issue with this is not that they have a combat mechanic that knocks you unconscious, the issue is that the Drow appeared suddenly in a narrative beat without providing the players a chance to react. The way to fix the "suddenly Drow!" scenario is to remove the suddenly part, not to remove the mechanics that make Drow unique and thematic. So the DM provides the players with an opportunity to react. The players do what they will do, and the DM adjudicates. The Drow may still capture the PCs or maybe they wont. Maybe the PCs hide, or talk their way out of it, or join the drow, or maybe the drow are running from a beholder, or any other number of possibilities. But that is why we are playing TTRPGs to make emergent stories with our friends! I think the definition of removing agency needs to be significantly narrowed from "something that limits choice" to "a narrative choice that invalidates prior choice." Your definition is too prospective. An analysis of agency revolves around consequences and must look backward not forwards.
I see a lot of random encounters and meaningless fights when I play as a player, and I really don't like them, especially if that is going to be the session. Just a random encounter, omg, no! As GM, I once had this very cool dungeon in mind, but the way I hocked the players was so forced on them that it dragged the pace for many sessions until the campain felt a part. The problems there were 1) too much planning ahead and 2) stopping the natural flow of the campaign. Another thing that happened at that time was that the players were expecting different game styles. No fault of anyone, but trying to have a group of players that is on the same page on the type of game they want to play is huge, and this usually works with a smaller party; for this, at the moment, I try to stick to the 3 players' party as much as I can. In any case, I would love to read a short book on this argument!!
I'm facing Unclear Goals/Motivation and Too Many Choices in my current Curse of Strahd campaign. However, in a sandbox style campaign, is it really on the DM to come up with motivations or is it on the players?
You gotta meet each other half way. The players need to make characters with a reason to engage with the setting/story, but the DM has to give them enough information to do so. The DM needs to make sure the players have leads to follow and ways to pursue their goals, but then the players need to take initiative in actually chasing them down rather than waiting for the plot to come drag them along.
There is a belief that failure is a fun ender and that (particularly in 5e) that players need to succeed all the time. This isn't the case. Failure and lack of progress is only a fun killer if it serves no purpose. If the characters can't find a clue and the story is waiting for them to find it, that's a fun killer. If the characters can't find a vital clue, use that failure to drive the game forward. Maybe the characters have to abandon the search because of a time limit. Maybe they think there is nothing more to find and move on. If you REALLY need them to find that clue and they keep failing, have a hostile NPC try to get the info or even secures the info. This creates instant tension and conflict that has a extra hazard to not make the PCs succeeding be pointless. PCs fail some important rolls? Have an extra encounter to burn extra resources and get the game moving again. If a scene just involves some NPCs talking to each other, have that encounter reveal information about the NPCs or plot. Add in a call to action from a NPC to inform the players and the characters that shit is about to go down and that shit is going to land on the PCs one way or another. These clues will then prompt a decision from the characters on what to do next. Like in good writing, every scene in an RPG severs a purpose. Sometimes that purpose can be to cause frustration or even to teach humility. It important to then use those emotions to drive the characters and story along.
I do not think this something to take heart and it was mostly because my players trust me. I did a capture scene were npc arrived with a squad of guards to arrest the characters. They were told that they were part of an robbery and mugging. Tho they weren’t even in town at the point. They got questioned individually and they got to roll persuasion or deception depending what they said. The guard also knew that they weren’t in town because they made a ruckus the first time they were in the city and the guard captain had told all guards to inform immediately when they are in town. So he wanted to basically get them alone so he could subtly tell that someone is framing them. So they can clear their own name.
Here’s another one - too much focus on realism to the point where you no longer want to interact with the world because the dm keeps telling you that you got it wrong. Actions without consequences (good or bad) Not having moments to enjoy your special abilities
I agree about having the PCs captured removes agency. How many published adventures start that way? How about Balder's Gate 3? Why don't you rail against them?
As a GM, i really want out of combat mind control to not feel utterly abysmal. It's a neat ability, narratively, for some enemies to have. But every time I try to use it, it's like "Hey you failed a save. Sit there and say 'Okay' for a few scenese while I tell you what you do." Awful. I regret it every time i try.
On of the killers I think is the most fun is the gelatinous cube. Basically just think of it as a lethal cream pie. Sling it down ramps, hallways, drop them from the ceiling, at the bottom of pits.... oh. That's not what the thumbnail meant? Damn.
I like to put it a G Cube on the opposite side of a pitfall. If the players try to jump over the pit (or better yet, if the barbarian decides to throw the halfling across the gap) and don't notice the cube first, hilarity ensures. I also like to put them in rooms with mimics. Nothing brings more joy than watching players panic when they start getting grappled by mimics as a cube slorbs its way towards them.
Had this recently, gm got pissed because i did something rash that screwed up his plans. So they forced the pc to make a b line and go into the monster factory, without any clear motivation as to why. They just wanted to have a hallowen session.
I don't think too many choices belongs on the list. It's the whole basis for a sandbox style campaign. I may be an issue if there's a mismatch between the players and the setting so it should have been dealt with in session zero. Good players should be able to deal with any number of choices just by setting goals and prioritizing.
That depends. In my experience, too many choices has often led to the players arguing for too long or getting overwhelmed, often withering the pacing of the session and making it difficult for the GM to prepare. I think a good GM should give the players enough options to give them agency, and be open to the suggestions they provide.
Maybe our Game Masters shouldn't be the ones who control the "fun" of the game. Maybe that's too much responsibility for one person. Maybe the players should be the ones who create the fun? My group has been playing Root the RPG, and in that system, the GM creates an area (clearing) that has a situation. That's all. It's up to the players to affect that situation. They control the pacing and advocate for their own fun. Example, you say? Last session, the players wanted to use a decoy to scare off some local hoodlums. They decided a big taxidermy bear would work best. Then one player said, "Let's go on a bear hunt!" And they did just that. The take away: my players set the pacing, and express their agency fully. No work required on my end.
I still see a lot of random encounter table just chock full of combat encounters instead of being used to flesh out the setting, fill in some lore, inspire awe or dread, etc I'm trying to be more aware of these things and foreshadow campaign events to get (& hopefully keep) my players engaged.
I totally agree, just because you rolled a dragon encounter doesn’t mean they fight. It could be as simple as “a shadow of a massive dragon passes over you.” I know if I was a player that would inspire pure dread thinking about how one day we might not be so lucky to go unnoticed and but also curious as to where it was headed!
A buddy of mine came up with a great idea. We both build a random encounter table and a random event table, so we can pick and choose what is needed to keep the story engaging. It's still a random table, just with the option to either have a combat encounter or a world building event.
The meandering middle. I hate this in published adventures (especially certain WotC adventures). This is where the players are just supposed to wander around a city or whatever until the DM finally decides to spring the trigger encounter on them (looking at you fireball in Dragon Heist). The new Planescape adventure is also quite guilty of this where there is just this meandering middle of random quests and encounters almost none of which have to do with the main plot while the players wait for the main quest to start happening (whether they want to or not).
In Conan the Barbarian, Valeria asks Conan and Subotai if they want to live forever before sneaking into the snake cult tower. She doesn’t carry on a conversation with them about motives, politics, or morality. A story connection is great but it’s ok to do something simply because it’s fun or part of the trope of activities that are associated with the type of game you’re playing.
I agree that the notion of treasure being the reason for delving into the dungeon is a bit of an old-school vibe, but man I really wish it wasn't. I am probably in a minority here, but as a player, my PCs always became adventurers because of this very motivation. Being a farmer or a merchant is not going to cut it. I will save the princess, slay the dragon, and oust the corrupt prince BECAUSE I am an adventurer/hero, and I know there's a bag of gold waiting for me when the job is done. Nobody needs to motivate me with personalized hooks from my PCs backstory.
Adventuring is extremely dangerous. Having a monetary motivation is far more believable than "I am a misfit" or "my parents died" for becoming an adventurer. A world where everyone is looking for their long lost brother, or an item of great significance, or adventuring to find themselves is less believable than a class of people who see adventuring as their best job prospect.
Other than that, old-school does not mean bad. Frankly, I think modern TTRPGs have lost what made them special. They began as emergent story makers that added narrative to war games. They have become a worse way to tell a linear story and many of the trends, including a narrative focus (often at the cost of mechanics), create a less cooperative table. Too many folks come to the hobby to tell their story when we should be coming to the hobby to make a story with friends. I think this is the result of a lot of well-meaning advice and experience, but I have found that the promise of TTRPGs as games that create stories has been eroded in favor of telling stories while occasionally playing a game.
I feel like one of the reasons my last campaign fell flat was because I told the players it would be "deadly," like Shadowdark (which didn't exist at the time), but then didn't stick to my guns. So, the players weren't invested in their characters (because I told them not to get too attached to them), but I also didn't throw challenging enough stuff at them to keep them interested. So, I guess, not sticking to your guns as a Gm might be a pitfall
I played the first bit of Out of the Abyss once and the GM started it with a generic dungeon crawl that ended with us getting captured in a drow raid - and honestly I loved it! I really enjoyed the challenge of getting out of the cell with limited gear/powers.
Also one of my lasting favourite memories of a game was being mind controlled. I was made to believe that the other PCs were out to get me - but I had agency over how to respond to that.
So I think some of this stuff *can* be fine - if it's implemented in the right way. The examples you use in the video do sound much more frustrating!
I feel like the majority of these comes down to respecting the players as co-authors of the story. When players have a cool idea, as a GM I like to run with it when it's possible to do so. It's tricky as the GM to run a game like that bc you need to be really agile and above to think relatively fast. But I feel it's worth it.
The pitfall that I've been struggled with is making my keystone NPCs with way too much going on. Which is to say I create too much for said NPCs (backstory, stat block, Hero Forge portrait, etc.). The problem ends up being that I really want to showcase my creations, even when my players are ready to move on, and kinda jam them further into the session. Recently, I've been trying to scale back the prep time sink that this can be (using the Way of the Lazy DM), and not surprisingly nobody at the table has noticed that my keystone NPCs are less thought out on my end. So far so good I guess?
Anyway, thanks for this!
It is the way.
I agree with you. I also used to do that, but not anymore.
I wish you good gaming.
On my random encounters I was inspired by the old 1d6 method of 1 being something awful, 6 something great, 2 and 5 being bad and good, 3 or 4 neutral, so the downbeats on 1 or 2, a boon or help on 5 or 6, things narrative or ambigously adding to the setting, etc on 3 or 4, so never just a list of all combat or traps or tricks, only really 1/3 or 1/2 being a negative.
"I would like for you to use whatever your most powerful attack is on one of your fellows. Please roll a D(however many players there are, I assign number ) to pick a target.
It's always tense and fun.
The Fun Vacuums/Vampires!
Something that has significantly improved the flow of my games is ensuring they feel smoother and more natural. It's not about speed or constant excitement, as you do need those ups and downs, but here's the deal: I make sure that, first and foremost, each scene serves a purpose in the story. This purpose translates into an objective that the party must achieve. I convey this objective to them, sometimes directly as the GM to the players, but mostly through the game itself.
I dont need to focus as much on it these days, since now we've reached a point where they know that in every scene, there's an objective. This encourages player interaction within the scene, but it's still up to the GM to convey the specific objective to the players.
These objectives can vary from something as seemingly inconsequential as "getting a feel for the town/area, etc." to critical challenges like "In this battle, you need to stop the Big Bad from completing their ritual.
Edit: It's a sort of addendumI do for one of the 8 Steps. When planning out the scene, I write the objective.
❤
The Cypher System adventures are THE best for clues and mcguffins. They have symbols to show all the possible places you can get these. They are never limited to one room/encounter/place/NPC.
Unclear motivation seems like a slippery sloap of reasoning. I've seen (played with) a not insignificant number of players who refuse to accept "The Hook". A farmer comes running into the tavern and says, "Help! Goblins stole my baby. You there adventurers, will you help me?" ... Adventurers: "So, what's in it for us?", "Wellll, how many goblins were there?", "Maybe, but we need to smoke and joke in this tavern first." ... etc, etc,
Point being there's a responsibility of the players to engage with the story/world. I feel like a GM could spen a lot of time pondering/creating motivations for the PCs, but ultimately, it's up to the player to engage with the world. Is a fast start a railroad or is it ensuring the game and players get moving? Just my 2 cents and food for thought.
I'm currently getting my kids involved in DND and it's really making me think about this topic. I don't want to make it a total cakewalk because I think they'll get bored, but I want it to be fun so they keep coming back. I've bent a few rules here and there when it comes to skill checks, but only if it's because they've come up with a really good idea that I can help build on and it offers more unpredictable roleplaying opportunities.
Pacing is the absolute biggest one, you can make a lot of mistakes if you move on to fun stuff afterwards. The bad NPC scenario is quickly forgotten if it's 15 mins and then you have fun for four hours! Even a fight with three bears that has no meaning is no big deal if it only takes you 10 minutes.
Great content! Love to hear your thoughts and experience.
That World of Warcraft thing instantly makes me think of a way better way to do it, which I think would work in a TTRPG. Give a lich or whatever some kind of deadly effect that's slowly building up throughout the fight, but let the players know that reinforcements are on the way. When their NPC allies show up, as this ability comes close to killing the PCs, have the NPCs do something that nullifies this effect... and make it clear that they're using all their strength to save the PCs from the instant death effect, and if the PCs don't take out the bad guy soon, their friends die too. Kinda faking them out, making it seem at first like a battle they're supposed to lose, but now that they've survived long enough, it's up to them to finish the fight. The point is, the deus ex machina reveals that you're not actually out to screw them over, you just wanted to scare 'em a little first, and now it's a fair fight.
Hard to pull off in some systems, though, where players can unexpectedly annihilate a bad guy in a couple of turns, or where it's hard to put a party under severe pressure for more than a couple of turns without completely shutting them down.
Pacing is a big issue in my games. Probably my worst trait as a DM. The "15 minutes of fun in 4 hours" quote really resonated with me. Does anyone has any recommendation of materials (books, articles, etc.) to improve at this?
Google "The Alexandrian pacing" great info there
Stop referencing the rules in game. Just make a ruling, and make a note.
@@groovegnome Its a good advice, but i dont think it really solves the problem, pal.
Play lightweight game systems. Do less combat. Run shorter sessions and keep them punchy.
Where are your games slowing down?
Dungeoncraft #99 (3 tips for improving narration: paint the picture, move the camera, lead the players) is good advice if it's the narrative parts of the game that are slow or players are getting lost. It could be summed up as less is more: don't over describe, skip forward to the next interesting decision and make it pretty obvious what the options are.
Less combat: not every conflict needs to be a fight to the death. Be open to confrontations where combat is an option neither side wants. Morale/reaction rolls for npcs can help give more nuance. I think 5e combat can be particularly bad as the heroic style of play carries the assumption the heroes will prevail but the fights get bogged down with minutia as the stakes get higher.
If you're running modules, consider pruning meaningless fights (eg the bears Mike mentions) or substituting them with meaningful encounters that drive the adventure forward.
Restricting rest, or using slightly grittier resting rules mean players may be more risk averse as health becomes a precious resource. Bob World Builder had a recent video about this; Drunkens and Dragons/Runehammer had a good video ages ago about resting, and how rest can be used as a reward when given just before a big showdown because it lets the PCs go full badass mode
On shorter sessions, recently my group has been doing 3 hour sessions on weeknights and the tighter timeslot means less messing around, more gaming.
Oh, and smaller groups. 3 players is a lot less communication overhead than 5 or 6.
We did a Shadowdark game a few weeks ago in a 3 hour session and even including character creation I think we got through more game than most longer 5e sessions
There was a video stream by Knights of Last Call recently that spoke to the topic of death and dying and how many modern games still hold on to a paradigm of death and dying that is counterproductive to the type of gameplay it promotes through its mechanics.
D&D and Pathfinder are the most popular examples in this regard, in so far that there is a lot of time and effort devoted to creating characters, learning the rules, and mastering the system, only for character death to either be meaningless (due to the relative ease of resurrecting that character) or punishing to the player by removing their agency for a certain amount of time or disincentivizing them to continue playing because they can no longer play as that character.
Some solutions that have been presented for the type of play involving narrative arcs (as opposed to playing out a "world-playing game") is to take non-consensual PC death off the table. The TTJRPG, Fabula Ultima, does this by presenting two choices when a PC reaches zero HP: they either concede to some sort of defeat that doesn't remove player agency (but still suffer consequences) or, if certain conditions are met, they can heroically sacrifice themselves in order to achieve a narratively-meaningful victory (effectively retiring them from play). The caveat here is that the players have to care about something other than their character's survival for this to have a meaningful impact, otherwise they may as well play the old-school style of a band of treasure-seeking knaves exploring a dangerous and unforgiving world (where it makes sense for there to exist a player agency-removing mechanic, since character creation and play is a lot simpler than WotC-era D&D).
I think getting stunned or paralyzed or something is frustrating, but not a “fun killer” . It is a loss of agency within the confines of the system, which it is ok to me. Like the mechanics of falling jn love in Monster Hearts. So, frustrating things don’t necessarily mean “bad things that should avoid at all costs”. As adults, we’re ok with a bit of frustration to spice our adventures and take it away from a boring and bland endeavor. I’m more into the OSR these days, and part of what drove me and my friends to it was this idea that 5e trying to keep all frustration away from us was a bit condescending and not fun to us.
In short, those points you mentioned are very subjective, as is a lot of things in these art-form we enjoy
It's less about frustration and more about having to wait 45min for your turn and then... you don't get to have a turn so you gotta wait another 45min. That is bad game design. If combat wasn't so slow in D&D it probably wouldn't be a problem.
@@danrimo826 to me, bad game design is a combat with rounds of 45 minutes (I know it is an hyperbole, we know combats in 5e tend to be a slog). Also, in campaigns where you have hirelings and retainers, that player can command some of those NPCs while they are paralyzed/stunned. Even if that's not the case, it is ok. I've been there, being a player that made a bad choice, ending up paralyzed by some monster, being frustrated, but also having fun helping the other players to deal with that encounter by giving advice (the GM back then wasn't crazy about "metagaming" in those kinds of situation).
So again, calling it "bad design" when there is a lot of people who enjoy that kind of playstyle doesn't seem right to me. Those are different approaches to the game, and some people enjoy it, some people don't-
@@lucasmarquesdecamargos4298 Sure, pretty much all of the so-called "Fun Killers" are situational. There's one group I've played with that only cares about combat and loot, so "player agency" and "meaningful choices" are not that important to them. But most players aren't like that, so DMs should watch out for that kind of thing. Likewise, the existence of some minority that thinks being paralyzed is awesome doesn't mean that DMs shouldn't be cautious about over-using such attacks.
Some of the agency-stealing powers, like stun or charm, can be angled into more fun with combat RP. Instead of a simple "you skip your turn" or "your charmed and attack your friends"... Describe why, how it feels, and put drama into the effect. Let the party hear the struggle and act accordingly.
I wouldn't give up these effects which so many opponents use just because it takes agency away. I would use them as critical points of a more interesting combat than simply roll to attack.
I run games with other dms in this sort of open table one shot/episodical format, and I've seen people who come in with very skewed perceptions of the game. Adversarial with the DM and other players, main character syndrome, etc etc.
But on the DM side of things I've seen people fall for using monsters that can be inherently unfun, I remember someone commenting on how they were excited to try and play a sorcerer and a Beholder just double rayed them and they died before taking a turn. Those kind of statblocks I tend to move away from since I don't like the idea of having to monitor and fudge die so people don't insta die or get perma paralyzed for something that they had no options for.
Also anti magic zones feel weird in combat as they just nullify entire classes.
Thinking of starting a new open table game. Can you mention any other pitfalls for adventure design?
@@KazisCollection The main problem we've had when having multiple dms is coordination and need for a "lore master" aka someone who just makes sure that it all (even if loosely) fits and feels cohesive to the players.
And monitoring the group, making sure every dm is comfortable enough with players (personalities will always clash but so long as it doesn't ruin it for anyone it's fine) and all players with each other and the dms.
Lastly my group has been blessed with very few "controversies" but the format lends itself to them so beware.
The downward beats thing is so important - a lot of GMs lean into "Well, you made bad decisions, therefore, you need to face consequences" and then having to pull a deus ex machina out of their back packet because, well, now that they players have been beaten into the ground, you have no way of them becoming able to continue the story without you granting them a few 'free' wins. It's always good to let people fail forwards sometimes.
Not adventure mistakes, but pitfalls of my own GMing style:
1. Improv shock - when the improv sends the game careening around a mountain pass, theme, realism, and immersion flying out of the carriage at every hairpin turn
2. Dubbing - everyone's fooling around and we don't get to the big fight, or the cliffhanger of the big fight, or the prelude to the cliffhanger of the big fight...
3. Tolkienizing - when I just take too fucking long to get to the damn mountain
4. Fishing with the wrong bait - dropping all the rp hooks into the water, expecting pickerel, only to have players great white shark their way through it
5. Fantasy fuschia - when I absolutely, positively need everyone to imagine the same thing as me, even though I could have said "it's a 30x90 room with pillars here, here, and here."
Hey Mike,
I don't comment often on your stuff (or in general :P) but this was a realy useful video that made me thinking about mistakes I already made and improved on. Thanks!
By the way: It took me half the video to realize that the thumbnail never was about adventures where you hunt a serial killer or something. ^^
This is a really helpful way to look at my DMing, thanks Mike
Low agency is indeed a fun killer in RPGs. People give advice on how to skip travel, but the real problem is “travel” is picking the highest Wisdom character and rolling over and over to view the next inconvenience or non sequitur.
Imagine if someone said dungeons were boring! Dungeons have telegraphed choices; the wilderness has vantage points, constellations, and landmarks! Dungeons have secret rooms and connected encounters; the wilds have caves, grottos, sheltered ruins, and encounters can connect as well! Dungeons have traps, hazards, and obstacles; the wilds have quicksand, flash floods, rifts, and mountains! Approach the wilds as a dungeon, and you’ll see the informed, critical decisions and agency one should put into it.
IMO, player agency is a 2-edged sword. They have the ability to do what they want to do. But the also have the responsibility to do that.
When players are placed in some situations where they're captured, scrounging for clues, feeling bored, etc... they're the adventurers. Their job is to drive the action. As players, their job is to embody their characters, and know what their characters should want to do. They need to supply their characters with motivations and attitudes. A bit of hyperbole of here, but as a GM if I'm lampshading the solutions to problems, then it feels like I'm playing the game on behalf of the PCs. I feel like my job as GM is to provide dilemmas and conflict. Players bring solutions and respond to conflict. Some players I've found play far too passively.
Forcing direction under the "guise" of choice. "Where do you go?" "We go left." "That hall collapsed." "We go right." "That is a lake of boiling acid." "Up?" "Wind Sheers" "Down?" "Arcane locked door... that is barred." "I guess we head back..." "what you guys are quitting already? You haven't tried forward!" "You told us we could smell a dragon arse ahead." "Yeah?" "WE ARE FIRST LEVEL!"
The appearance of choice without actual choices ... is the worst IMO. I actually yelled at a DM to stop wasting our time and just tell us where to go when that happened once. And it happened all because he wanted a specific encounter to occur in a specific location ... although we find out later there was nothing special about the location!
Good video
Getting railroaded into a fight with an assassin guild
Here's a few I can think of:
1. Not giving your players the opportunity to use their cool powers/abilities. The classic is the Monk with Deflect Missiles, and suddenly nobody ever shoots them anymore. Or the Barbarian who can't be surprised, but the DM never uses ambushes. I was just in a game where one of the players was a Triton, and we happened to go into an underwater area where she could use all of her cool racial powers and she was so excited about it. There's lots of niche abilities that can make your players feel so badass when they realize they have *exactly the right tool for the job*. It also rewards players who know their characters and abilities really well.
2. Pointless exploration areas. I find the official WotC modules are really bad for this. They have a dungeon with 30 or 40 rooms in it, but the majority of them have nothing of interest in them. No loot, no secrets, no traps, no lore, nothing to interact with at all. But the room still has enough of a description that the party feels like they need to look around, do all of their Perception checks, etc. You end up spending an hour or two of a four hour session just looking at empty rooms. Exploration done well is awesome and one of my favourite parts of the game, but done poorly it is really a fun-killer.
3. Puzzles. I'm just going to say it: Most puzzles in D&D suck. They rely mostly on out-of-character knowledge and are more of a separate minigame/timewaster than actually part of the world. Many of them *really* don't make a lot of sense in-universe.
I would appreciate that if a link to the original video was in the description. Please and thank you
Me too - I scrolled through a bunch of old videos but I couldn't find it :-(
aHA! Found it. It's because this video is a snippet from an old talkshow episode.
The video with the Product Highlight is "Bigby's Glory of the Giants Spotlight - The Lazy RPG Talk Show".
I had a DM that straight up said magic didn't work right in this campaign they were running and each time we tried to use the DM rolled a D100 to see if our spell actually worked or if there was a surge of wildmagic... I started out stuck in a cell and tried to wildshape into a mouse to get out and basically was told "no" and instead I turned blue or something. Made me never want to play at that table again.
I also hate petrification and feel WotC uses it way too much. I'm playing in RotFM (Slight spoiler ahead) and one player got petrified because they followed the clues to the magical McGuffin we were looking for and just went slightly further into the next room and failed an impossible saving throw (I think the DM said it was like 25 or something... we're level 8) and they had to sit out for the rest of the 3 hour session until the rest of us could fight our way out and get back to a town.
My over 5 year game has been in jeopardy for months and its given me much time to reflect. Ive committed so many of these "sins" in some way shape or form. Ive been granted more perspective since, Its something I just need to be better about.
The one point of this video I strongly disagree with is your broad definition of what is "taking away player agency". To be clear, I only disagree with the breadth of the definition.
I agree that meaningless choices such as "you can go left or right but both paths lead to the same door" or "no matter what you do you will always have to work with/for a certain NPC" are bad. (See the quantum ogre and the beginning of Descent into Avernus). This is the situation where the players are acting out the DM's novel, and that is rarely desirable. It is undesirable because it conflicts with the primary distinguishing characteristic and strength of TTRPGs, which is the ability to create emergent gameplay and stories through the choices made by everyone at the table. Invalidating or ignoring choices made at the table directly contradicts this goal and turns TTRPGs into worse versions of video games and novels.
What are not removers of agency are combat mechanics. Being stunned in combat or restrained or charmed does not remove agency. It limits your combat effectiveness, sometimes reducing it to 0 or even a negative. It does not invalidate decisions you made and in many cases stems from tactical decisions made by the player. No prior player choice has been invalidated.
For example, becoming petrified is a foreseeable outcome of fighting a basilisk. This is good design. It varies enemies and encounters. If DMs are discouraged from using control effects then the game becomes rocket tag as the NPCs can only rush to do more damage than the PCs, but also they cannot do too much damage because that would knock a PC unconscious and remove their agency. And so we arrive at a style of play where the PCs are never in real danger. They have fully working plot armor. Sure friends or family might get hurt but the PCs themselves will never have to deal with real adversity and the extent the PC has to deal with trauma is completely up to the player. Players will often forget inconvenient traits when necessary. And so instead of playing in a DM's novel we are playing in a player's OC fan fiction. This is just as undesirable for the same reasons.
To make things harder on myself, I will address the 50 drow with sleep darts situation. The worst version of this situation is "suddenly Drow!" They pop up you get hit and boom you are captured. The issue with this is not that they have a combat mechanic that knocks you unconscious, the issue is that the Drow appeared suddenly in a narrative beat without providing the players a chance to react. The way to fix the "suddenly Drow!" scenario is to remove the suddenly part, not to remove the mechanics that make Drow unique and thematic. So the DM provides the players with an opportunity to react. The players do what they will do, and the DM adjudicates. The Drow may still capture the PCs or maybe they wont. Maybe the PCs hide, or talk their way out of it, or join the drow, or maybe the drow are running from a beholder, or any other number of possibilities. But that is why we are playing TTRPGs to make emergent stories with our friends!
I think the definition of removing agency needs to be significantly narrowed from "something that limits choice" to "a narrative choice that invalidates prior choice." Your definition is too prospective. An analysis of agency revolves around consequences and must look backward not forwards.
I see a lot of random encounters and meaningless fights when I play as a player, and I really don't like them, especially if that is going to be the session. Just a random encounter, omg, no!
As GM, I once had this very cool dungeon in mind, but the way I hocked the players was so forced on them that it dragged the pace for many sessions until the campain felt a part. The problems there were 1) too much planning ahead and 2) stopping the natural flow of the campaign.
Another thing that happened at that time was that the players were expecting different game styles. No fault of anyone, but trying to have a group of players that is on the same page on the type of game they want to play is huge, and this usually works with a smaller party; for this, at the moment, I try to stick to the 3 players' party as much as I can.
In any case, I would love to read a short book on this argument!!
Any time a GM disregards everything players "try" for over 5 minutes they're probably just a terrible GM. Fun is the idea, not frustration.
I'm facing Unclear Goals/Motivation and Too Many Choices in my current Curse of Strahd campaign. However, in a sandbox style campaign, is it really on the DM to come up with motivations or is it on the players?
You gotta meet each other half way. The players need to make characters with a reason to engage with the setting/story, but the DM has to give them enough information to do so. The DM needs to make sure the players have leads to follow and ways to pursue their goals, but then the players need to take initiative in actually chasing them down rather than waiting for the plot to come drag them along.
There is a belief that failure is a fun ender and that (particularly in 5e) that players need to succeed all the time. This isn't the case. Failure and lack of progress is only a fun killer if it serves no purpose. If the characters can't find a clue and the story is waiting for them to find it, that's a fun killer. If the characters can't find a vital clue, use that failure to drive the game forward. Maybe the characters have to abandon the search because of a time limit. Maybe they think there is nothing more to find and move on. If you REALLY need them to find that clue and they keep failing, have a hostile NPC try to get the info or even secures the info. This creates instant tension and conflict that has a extra hazard to not make the PCs succeeding be pointless. PCs fail some important rolls? Have an extra encounter to burn extra resources and get the game moving again.
If a scene just involves some NPCs talking to each other, have that encounter reveal information about the NPCs or plot. Add in a call to action from a NPC to inform the players and the characters that shit is about to go down and that shit is going to land on the PCs one way or another. These clues will then prompt a decision from the characters on what to do next.
Like in good writing, every scene in an RPG severs a purpose. Sometimes that purpose can be to cause frustration or even to teach humility. It important to then use those emotions to drive the characters and story along.
I do not think this something to take heart and it was mostly because my players trust me.
I did a capture scene were npc arrived with a squad of guards to arrest the characters. They were told that they were part of an robbery and mugging. Tho they weren’t even in town at the point. They got questioned individually and they got to roll persuasion or deception depending what they said. The guard also knew that they weren’t in town because they made a ruckus the first time they were in the city and the guard captain had told all guards to inform immediately when they are in town. So he wanted to basically get them alone so he could subtly tell that someone is framing them. So they can clear their own name.
Here’s another one - too much focus on realism to the point where you no longer want to interact with the world because the dm keeps telling you that you got it wrong.
Actions without consequences (good or bad)
Not having moments to enjoy your special abilities
I agree about having the PCs captured removes agency. How many published adventures start that way? How about Balder's Gate 3? Why don't you rail against them?
Oh man that lich king fight was so bad.
I love the idea that the players summon a powerful NPC to help them. I hate the idea that an NPC would show up and take their victory FROM them
As a GM, i really want out of combat mind control to not feel utterly abysmal.
It's a neat ability, narratively, for some enemies to have. But every time I try to use it, it's like "Hey you failed a save. Sit there and say 'Okay' for a few scenese while I tell you what you do."
Awful. I regret it every time i try.
Travels? Pointcrawls or non-crunchy hexcrawls
Not letting players perma kill bad guys by building the bad guys to always have some escape plan.
Having a plan is fine since it's just an obvious tactic, but there should also be a way for players to learn about it and counter it.
I hate useless ability checks and invisible traps.
Tyranny of Fun.
Getting captured is the only way into the area is a decent narrative. The Player's have to plan getting captured...
Focus on a single player’s character above everyone else’s!
Every single time I play pathfinder it's always been 10 minutes of fun in 4 hours
Not all of these but a good a majority of these are true unless *Playing Curse of Strahd* then its totally expected
So no one can be captured? Because their superheroes?
On of the killers I think is the most fun is the gelatinous cube. Basically just think of it as a lethal cream pie. Sling it down ramps, hallways, drop them from the ceiling, at the bottom of pits.... oh. That's not what the thumbnail meant? Damn.
I like to put it a G Cube on the opposite side of a pitfall. If the players try to jump over the pit (or better yet, if the barbarian decides to throw the halfling across the gap) and don't notice the cube first, hilarity ensures. I also like to put them in rooms with mimics. Nothing brings more joy than watching players panic when they start getting grappled by mimics as a cube slorbs its way towards them.
Had this recently, gm got pissed because i did something rash that screwed up his plans. So they forced the pc to make a b line and go into the monster factory, without any clear motivation as to why. They just wanted to have a hallowen session.
I don't think too many choices belongs on the list. It's the whole basis for a sandbox style campaign. I may be an issue if there's a mismatch between the players and the setting so it should have been dealt with in session zero. Good players should be able to deal with any number of choices just by setting goals and prioritizing.
That depends. In my experience, too many choices has often led to the players arguing for too long or getting overwhelmed, often withering the pacing of the session and making it difficult for the GM to prepare. I think a good GM should give the players enough options to give them agency, and be open to the suggestions they provide.
Maybe our Game Masters shouldn't be the ones who control the "fun" of the game. Maybe that's too much responsibility for one person. Maybe the players should be the ones who create the fun? My group has been playing Root the RPG, and in that system, the GM creates an area (clearing) that has a situation. That's all. It's up to the players to affect that situation. They control the pacing and advocate for their own fun. Example, you say? Last session, the players wanted to use a decoy to scare off some local hoodlums. They decided a big taxidermy bear would work best. Then one player said, "Let's go on a bear hunt!" And they did just that. The take away: my players set the pacing, and express their agency fully. No work required on my end.
I loathe Savior NPCs so much!
I remember this one lesson. One problem...too many downward beats in this video. Real fun killer.