What led you to start running paid games? I'd love to see a post more about you. Your history with gaming, what you did before you were a paid game master, etc.
Hey man, it's a long story and probably a good video idea haha! You can also just jump in my discord if you want to chat in a place that's not youtube!
A little counterpoint to "make your combats hard". Doing so *all the time* and making it feel like your players are surviving by you arbitrarily letting them live when they should have lost or just scraping by, by the luck of the dice, feels exhausting. Players also need some easy wins to feel like their characters are awesome and have a nice, relaxed evening. If they come pre-stressed into your game, because they know this evening will be another meat grinder, it will stop being fun after a while. Mixing it up so that they have some hard fights and some easy fights has turned out better results for me. Preferably during the same session as well. *edit* Whoops, should have let the video play another minute. Yep, you made the same points. :)
You're right of course, hard and easy should be mixed so that it doesn't wear out your players. I should have emphasized a bit more on the easy fights as well in the video, so thank you for your comment!
My answers i s - make battles hard and have consequences other than characters dying. Nobody at the table wants a game over, packing and going home. So have players enter fights they actually may lose and suffer consequences they and their characters will feel if they do (they fail to rescue a loved one, for example, they would have saved if they won). TPK is as anticlimactic consequence of losing a fight as it gets. My advice is - stop having inconsequential battles for battles sake.
I have a random question: Music.. what genre? I like rock/metal. I've been creating custom AI songs specific to our campaign and characters. They're too polite to say so, but I think that's not the preference backing music for most players. Immersion breaking. I *think* they want stuff more like movie soundtracks. What do you use? Foundry modules? Like Michael Gelfi?
Well im struggling with combat difficulty :D Free Archetype Rule, Shield Loving Fullplate Paladin , +1 from Bard, and the party is beating all encounters very easily And I dont want to add "powercreep" Enemies which only results in the party trying to play more optimize and its spiraling out of control I dont like the Owlcat Games type of Optimizing :/
I recommend you change any "Moderate" encounters to "Severe" and go from there. There's no harm in making encounters slightly difficult if your players are overcoming battles. You should also be playing the enemies optimally as well! And if it's an issue at the table, then tip number 0 (which I should have put in the video) is communication is key!
What led you to start running paid games? I'd love to see a post more about you. Your history with gaming, what you did before you were a paid game master, etc.
Hey man, it's a long story and probably a good video idea haha! You can also just jump in my discord if you want to chat in a place that's not youtube!
@@CrusherEAGLE I just joined yesterday!
Heavily vouch for this guy! Loved his games!
Miss you joy!
Last tip, absolutely. If you have that mindset then everything else will click into place.
Yeah, seriously, just come out of the video with that last tip and you should be good!
What a great video! Countless Hours of gameplay with this great GM, These tips were given from hard earned experience. Great tips!
You were an amazing player and I hope life is treating you well!!
Great advice. Love your channel
Thank you so much! I hope it was useful!
Tip 5 is still the hardest for me and after 8 years of being on and off DM it's always a struggle once my group exceeds 3 players
A little counterpoint to "make your combats hard". Doing so *all the time* and making it feel like your players are surviving by you arbitrarily letting them live when they should have lost or just scraping by, by the luck of the dice, feels exhausting. Players also need some easy wins to feel like their characters are awesome and have a nice, relaxed evening. If they come pre-stressed into your game, because they know this evening will be another meat grinder, it will stop being fun after a while. Mixing it up so that they have some hard fights and some easy fights has turned out better results for me. Preferably during the same session as well.
*edit* Whoops, should have let the video play another minute. Yep, you made the same points. :)
You're right of course, hard and easy should be mixed so that it doesn't wear out your players. I should have emphasized a bit more on the easy fights as well in the video, so thank you for your comment!
My answers i s - make battles hard and have consequences other than characters dying. Nobody at the table wants a game over, packing and going home. So have players enter fights they actually may lose and suffer consequences they and their characters will feel if they do (they fail to rescue a loved one, for example, they would have saved if they won). TPK is as anticlimactic consequence of losing a fight as it gets.
My advice is - stop having inconsequential battles for battles sake.
How do you dare to suggest that I let my players have fun?!?!? =(
=Þ
Excellent video.
Shhhh don't tell them our secret ;)
I have a random question: Music.. what genre? I like rock/metal. I've been creating custom AI songs specific to our campaign and characters. They're too polite to say so, but I think that's not the preference backing music for most players. Immersion breaking. I *think* they want stuff more like movie soundtracks. What do you use? Foundry modules? Like Michael Gelfi?
Michael Ghelfi is a good one and also videogame soundtracks are their absolute jam, for both ambiance and battles
Well im struggling with combat difficulty :D
Free Archetype Rule, Shield Loving Fullplate Paladin , +1 from Bard, and the party is beating all encounters very easily
And I dont want to add "powercreep" Enemies which only results in the party trying to play more optimize and its spiraling out of control
I dont like the Owlcat Games type of Optimizing :/
I recommend you change any "Moderate" encounters to "Severe" and go from there.
There's no harm in making encounters slightly difficult if your players are overcoming battles. You should also be playing the enemies optimally as well!
And if it's an issue at the table, then tip number 0 (which I should have put in the video) is communication is key!