“If your players have made characters that are a little bit more passive and don’t have a motivation to act, there’s only one thing you can do, and that’s DESTROY THE THINGS THEY LOVE...”
Two of my players thought it would be fun to make sibling PCs with a relatively happy home life. They are currently adventurers to bring in income They also just pissed off an ancient vampire who threatened them if they got in his way. Well.... he’s gonna find their home town and turn a parent into a vampire spawn
I’m running a Star Wars campaign (on hiatus), and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do for my friend’s Jawa character. Have the Empire kill his mentor, sell his parents into slavery, blow up his ship. The possibilities are endless
For real though, we don't play these games to be characters who never encountered pain and adversity, we play to roleplay characters who face tremendous amounts of challenge and tragedy, and who can overcome it either by preventing it or learning to live with it. D&D is about stories, and one of the most basic stories is enduring hardship and growning for it. The difference is that instead of idntifying with a scripted character, we identify with a character we controll, and the "creator" that is, the DM, only creates the hardship and accomedates the enduring, you as a different kind of creator have to create the means of enduring or overcoming the hardship, and when your character grows a ton, some of that sometimes affects everyone at the table too. In my (limited) experience, it's actually rarely the player who's character is growing who grows irl, because they already had the tools their characters gain, but the other players and dm who get to see the story of that peraon unfold, and in a way D&D (and other ttrpg's) lets us share our wisdom through stories, and I love that. A good DM can learn from their players while still preserving the overal story, which requires a very open mind, and relaxed attitude. I'm too nervous to pull it of gracefully, but I have learned things from behind the screen during games, and it's one of the best things.
Oooor they don't see a way to change it, don't feel they are able to, don't think they are good enough to try, don't have any idea what to change towards.
@@ThomasUfnalCrowlake In that case, they have a motivation but have to work through their flaws of apathy or self-deprecation and that can be an interesting journey.
@@ThomasUfnalCrowlake In those cases, the solution seems to be the same in order to make compelling characters out of them. More motivation to change. More motivation to really search for a way to change it, or to force themselves to try even if they don't think they are able.
@@aspyse Or give the character small things to accomplish that get bigger over time to build their confidence up, if that doesn't happen organically already as you play. Or if they come from a down-trodden society, show them places that made it work that used to be like their home town. Or introduce NPCs to them who rose above their own oppression to show them it's possible.
@@ThomasUfnalCrowlake That probably resonates more with players, given fiction as a form of escapism. My suggestion is give them supports that make change more feasible. Maybe that's having the other PCs join them, maybe a figure that's been enforcing the status quo dies, and there's an opening to change direction. The enforcement is in disarray, and you might be able to change things enough to affect what kind of person or people end up with that authority and responsibility next (if anyone)
brennan is like that one feral english teacher that reignites the passion for reading and writing you had as a kid but was squashed in middle school and early high school
Weirdly (or maybe not) mine was a newly qualified teacher - it was her first year teaching and she set homework of answering an essay question with four options in a practice exam . I was a swotty twit and joked that I couldn't pick, they were all great prompts (really unusual in itself, they were all just solid though). She said 'you write them, I'll mark them' and triggered my challenge mode so I spent a weekend writing all of them. She spent four times the effort marking that shit just because I was a swot and she had so many excellent notes - it's over twenty years later and her enthusiasm and genuine interest still inspire me in my work. I try to write as if I want to impress that teacher and I will always remember her fondly :)
The english teacher that ignites your passion but is so passionate that they end up beating the shit out of a student and getting fired. Ah.. I loved that guy.
I dealt with one player who is frequently absent by giving his character narcolepsy, so his character falls asleep when he leaves the game at an unfortunate time. It's hilarious in-game, and now I make him roll narcolepsy saving throws to stay awake in-game sometimes.
Ha, my DM did the same thing with me! There was one rather amusing if unfortunate time where I'd just had shocking grasp cast on myself, so no-one could touch my unconscious body to move me to a safer place. So they just kicked some leaves over me and crossed their fingers. 😄
The party I DM for has such a rotating roster of characters that at this point I have asked the players what their PC is doing when they can’t attend a session. Notable mentions include: The warlock going into a catatonic state due to visions from their patron The wizard souring through his book and failing to realize there’s an adventure going on and The Druid just going to chase butterflies.
For the circumstances when a player is permanently gone from a campaign (i.e. one of your players moves away or no longer wants to participate or something) you can always deify their character. Meaning turn their character into a God. This is what my friends and I did when one of our friends who was doing a campaign with us suddenly passed away in the middle of our campaign. We decided to turn his character into a God in the world in order to honor him and allow him to continue to participate in our game we'd developed with him.
I imagine a giant ninja edgelord to just be standing there, unimpressed, as a horde of teddy bears tries to shove past him, feeling the fabric squishing against his calves and shins.
Cheat. Use your characters backgrounds as the plot points. I mean, seriously, the missing girls in Fantasy High, and all the attached points, were basically a jump off from Riz's character being a budding detective.
all the major plot points/recurring themes were based off the character backgrounds tbh: Riz' background was obviously the main motivator for the mystery of the story, but the recurring themes for all the characters' backgrounds build up the story. Both Fig and Gorgug wanted to find their true parents, Kristen from the beginning had dissonance with how her parents and neighbors practiced their faith and her own worldview, and Adaine had panic attacks which affected her identity and her relation to her own family.
The first story line in my campaign is one of my players is a rlly old elf and she just found out she had grandkids she never met. Another one is related to the main villain of the whole campaign and doesn’t know it and the other one has an old key that is actually a mist talisman that will eventually help them escape the shadowfell
Brennan talks about this approach in the Exandria Unlimited Calamity GM Roundtable and it was really inspiring to me (a potential future DM). Great vid in general, super recommend it.
When you were talking about mercenaries who want gold, and why they want it so much I was thinking “ my wizard needs to pay off that student loan from wizard school.
"The old king was trying to forgive all the wizards loans, but an evil orange necromancer overthrew the king, and squashed that idea." -- rumor in a tavern.
"Start at your point of inspiration." Honestly that's the best piece of advice you could give anyone who wants to start creating anything. You'll never be more productive than when you actually feel inspired so find the thing that makes you feel that spark and build everything on that!
Responding a year late, but this point alone explains so well why I lack motivation to do certain things. For example, I'm learning how to draw and I want to draw but there is nothing in particular that I am inspired to draw, so I just end up doing nothing.
@sethgleason7611 Responding 2 years late. 😅 As an artist who has gone to art school, let me give you some valuable advice for when you don't know what to be inspired by: draw anything. This is the time to say fuck it, nothing is sacred enough for consideration. Look around your room, or wherever you are, draw the first thing you set your eyes on. Don't like it? Keep looking till your mind goes, eh, okay, fine, this'll do. Keep doing this long enough and you'll eventually realize what makes you *want* to draw - and that'll become your new inspiration. Learning to draw is about learning what's cool about what you're drawing - which you can only find out after you've drawn it or interacted with it at least once or in the middle of the drawing process. It's great to have inspiration to start the process, but many artists find that inspiration in the middle of their process instead and that's great too. Nothing is special, because everything has something to teach you. Don't discriminate, just draw the first thing your eyes land on.
Brennan has so much big brain college graduate energy that it feels like he should have an honorary creative writing doctorate and these should be actual office hours for a class he teaches
1:14 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points to start a campaign? 2:21 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points specifically to start a campaign? 9:44 How do you reward creative play without just giving advantage? 12:48 How do you disguise your improv so well? 15:40 Do you have a set plan for creating a storyline that includes al of your characters? 16:09 How do you explain PC absence? 18:25 Do I start at the world or the plot? 20:01 Are you scared of burn out?
It can be a fair amount of work, but it usually doesn't have to be, depending on your dming style and what's important to you. And for me the prep is actually really fun. I love coming up with challenges for my pcs and trying to imagine how they'll react to them, and so prep doesn't feel like a drag. So while you should definitely appreciate your dm for the work they do, dming really isn't a monumental task that only a special few can do. Anyone can dm! And it's really fun actually :)
For me personally, prep can be super fun because it's my own setting that I know very well, so seeing the players engaging with it and making their own decisions is really interesting for me, even though I know they don't care about the world or lore even half as much as me
I have a god made as a joke, and he legit just pulls people in for side adventures and pets with him because he’s a good and happy puppy who takes the characters of absent players to come play with him. I have the player start their next session with (# of missed sessions+1)d100 and tell them what they did, pop something nice, random, possibly cute, but ultimately useless. It’s neat!
Another way to deal with absent players: Just don’t justify it, have characters pop in and out of existence. It became canon in my last campaign that the PCs of absent players turned into marbles. DnD is a game and, while immersion is a big part of it, sacrificing some immersion to accommodate a game mechanic is totally fine!
I was waiting for him to say this. Yes, you do lose a little bit of that immersive factor, but at the end of the day, everyone at the table understands that this is a game and a fake world and sometimes real life will interfere with that.
HAH that’s awesome! It’s become cannon in the MotW game that I run that PCs will randomly start T-posing (when the player has to leave early or is interrupted from the game- or even when they have technical difficulties since our game is over Discord) and it is just, a fun way to excuse real life when playing and trying to get immersed. The players even in-character have commented on the T-posing phenomenon which just makes it better XD. For our more spotty players, I do often make up in-game excuses but I try to make them fun or strange in some way. One of our players can only play every once in a blue moon, his character has been basically adopted by a Fae race and will randomly pop in using portals which defy every rule of magic that I’ve set up in the game. I have NPCs comment on the weirdness, both of portals and T-poses, and it somehow makes the world feel more real to have these instances of randomness or rule-breaking, idk.
I'm fond of establishing other obligations the characters might have that result in them pulled away from some questing. Alternatively if you have a setting where any kind of planar travel or similar exists they could temporarily be transported elsewhere. Especially easy if you do an Isekai type of setting where the heroes travel to the campaign world from a "normal" world ala the lion, witch, wardrobe books
I used to run a game at my local game store so the party composition would change each session. We decided that the party that was present for each session was the party that had always been there. It allowed the game to progress but each session became its own dimension or reality. It wasn't a big deal at all.
I know this video is old, but that passive characters describe my players so well. I've always been frustrated by it, but honestly to have it put in a way I can understand makes me feel much better about how they play. Thank you so much!
Holy shit, Brennan should give guest lectures in universities. I don't think there's any better way an up-and-coming writer could spend 20 minutes than by watching this video.
Hi Brennan! I know this video is about a year old, but I just wanted to say that a friend introduced me to you and your content. I've seen Bloodkeep and some of Fantasy High and I absolutely love your style. As a fellow DM you inspire me to make better stories and come up with more ideas for my players to enjoy. Thank you for being you and please don't stop making this wonderful content.
14:25 I think the cannon of what is made up in the session matters more than what you wrote previously. The notes are like the original edit while the session played is the printed book. You can always refer back to your notes if they don't force you to retrospectively change the story your players already read. But if it doesn't fit in anymore, you have to drop it. You can reuse it anywhere else, but if you have non-jokingly canonised something in a session, then it is cannon. Unless you specifically ask your players if they'd prefer your original idea and they mutually agree.
I completely agree with character and campaign being tailored to each other. I met with each of my players individually and we worked together to make their character sheet and I was there to brainstorm backstory and motivation with them. Then I started loosely integrating those character motivations into the story and it has led to an experience where everyone at the table has been having a ton of fun!
5:00 I think this can work, if you're willing to work with your player in tailoring their premade character for the setting. For example, I have this character that is depressed psychic girl, who usually has a preppy ghost friend. I joined a Sci-Fi campaign setting where psychics didn't really exist in the same capacity, so instead I turned her into an inventor/technomancer with an automaton friend instead. The character at their core stays the same, but meshes into the setting.
The Arthur Augefort thing in episode 2 was improv! I could have sworn that was planned. That encounter was way too hard for the players and he didn't tune it down really.
I love that it was improv, but I also feel that the PCs got unlucky with rolls which made it hard, if they hadn't been trying to jump tables, and the corn cuties getting good rolls they would have been fine
@@Tyrantlizardking105 It was only one round of combat spent jumping on tables, right? They were a bit unorthodox by jumping inside the monster and trying to end the encounter without killing everything, but idk if that's necessarily a bad thing. If they had just rolled to hit and rolled damage over and over *maybe* it would have gone better, but it's hard to say. That definitely would have been less entertaining and fun.
I love what Brennan says on people who just show up with a character. I've definitely seen it before, and sometimes it's worked, most of the time nah. Playing a game divorced of its characters is as asinine as a book where the characters stumble through the plot, detached from who they are or what they want to do
This can work if the character has a really memorable or loveable personality. Think the Paddington movies: the titular bear doesn't go through any charavter development because he was always right all along, and the supporting cast are the ones that need to develop instead. It's not boring, because interesting stuff still happens and the world is evolving. But yeah, you can't just have a boring character with no motivations, they'll just become a blank set piece that deals damage. One or the other, if not both are needed to make a compelling story.
Totally agree with Brennan about mantaining lose plots. On my actual campaign, I've created a bunch of middle conservative antagonists and a main revolutionary villain, but the players fell in love and sided with the main villain, so I had to change the full point of view of the settings.
a while back in our (fairly slapstick) campaign, when we had a number of players who would miss now and then, the party happened upon an amulet lying on the ground -- the Amulet of Plot Device (also known as the Amulet of Lazy Storytelling) -- which would promptly suck up one or more characters and spit them out again when the player returned. everyone found it hilarious, including when they tried to get rid of it, only to find it mysteriously returned into their packs.
Such good advice, particularly the bit about working with the players to create their characters with them, make them feel like a part of the world. I feel like that's a game-changer. If your characters have a desire already that's easy, if your characters are passive you have to make their world uncomfortable and force them into disruption. Also good.
Something they won’t tell you professionally is that almost all the source books for dnd are easy to pirate online. Like just google name of book pdf and you will get multiple usable results
5:30 is the reason why Brennan's campaigns have such amazing character development 🥰 the way that his worlds are intertwined with the fates and back stories of the PCs really makes a huge difference! The Unsleeping City (s1) is a really great example of this: (SPOILERS BELOW) you simply couldn't have such a cohesive magic system without cooperative character creation. A drug dealer / wild magic sorcerer? Yes, AND he's now a critical part of the lore as the only character directly connected to dream magic, a lynchpin to several plot points and gets to go through a huge character development by learning to take on responsibilities. A drunk woman going through a messy divorce? yes, AND the ex-husband is actually dead, was actually "the chosen one", was actually a part of a secret society the wife joins, and actually through some shenanigans manages to meet up with her so she can overcome her grief and grow to become the actual Chosen One! Etc etc etc. Literally every single character in that season had a ton of character development (ok, maybe Zac's character didn't change that much, but he was still a part of the world building and was connected to the other character's bakstories through NPC interactions.. As well, Zac likes role playing loveable himbos, so they don't really need to overcome large personal hurdles to be good characters, they're just there, along for the ride and to have a good time, while making huge personal sacrifices for the good of the team etc 🥰)
One hilarious moment for my group was when the DM for one of our campaigns just told us to make characters and bring them in on the day. We ended up with 5 warlocks and a paladin who's story was about getting vengeance on fiends.
As someone playing a bard , the idea that the dm will bend parts of crazy lore that my character spews out( which my character believes but I the player don’t) and the fit it in is awesome
If a player wants to be just a generic passive knight, I'm gonna make you part of a standing army for a nation that's been at war for a while You know you're probably going to get deployed EVENTUALLY, and that's your hook
Start with the world, then the characters, then the plot. The world produces the characters who live in that world, and from the characters arises the plot. Guess who I learned this from? That's right! it was Brennan, as our group wrote what we later referred to as "The Best Game Ever."
18:25 Start at your point of inspiration is good. What made you want to DM a game? If you have an idea in your head, start there and develop from there. If you just want to be a DM, you can run any published adventure, whether professional or 3rd party.
For the question about 17 minutes in about player absences, in a campaign I was Dm'ing years ago we were using a very High magic setting so this way really easy to handle. One player had to leave for three months (three sessions) to go and help their single mother sister through her maternity leave. We got no warning for reasons that are a very long story so I had to think fast. I went with the opportunity presented by the party coming into a decent fortune of treasure from their last dungeon run in the story. So after clearing how to handle this with the player I quietly gave the missing PC their share at the beginning of their first missing session. From there I spent each session playing the PC, but intentionally not really putting a lot of effect into mimicking the missing player, in fact I purposefully got worse and worse at it as time went on. This was really wonderful due to the inbetween mission time this took place in. Lots of good resupplying and leveling character interactions for my not quite right PC to fail at. It took them about a session to figure out that something wasn't right and spent the second and third session discovering that their friend had picked up a cursed item that was basically eating their soul to 'refuel' the dying lich inside of it. The remaining players got a fun side quest out of it and the player who was absence didn't miss any of the over arching story. They also returned to a table mid-saving their life and extremely happy to see them again completely negating any negative feelings amongst the players about the absence disturbing the campaign.
I think when it comes to starting to create a world there are a few steps that I like to follow: 1. Come up with a loose concept of what's unique about your world and what makes it interesting 2. Start coming up with loose story beats that match the themes of your world 3. Start designing a location for the beginning of the campaign with areas that your PCs can choose to wander toward (i.e a hamlet with surrounding forests with enemies in them) Once you've started Step 3 you'll find that you know where you want to go with the story since you completed the first two steps beforehand.
For starting new campaigns, as a new dungeon master, I would recommend a few things: 1: steal a map somewhere. 2: Pick a village to start in. 3: Flesh out this village, with a few NPCs and problems for the players to engage with. 4: Start playing. 5: You can probably get a couple of sessions out of this village. Meanwhile, you can look at the map, and just in broad strokes define what is going on in the country, and the nearby towns. Things like a rebellion here, an ork problem there etc. Maybe give each nearby city a defining trait (eg. this city is super religious, this other city is in constant darkness). Why are these things happening? doesn't matter yet. 6: As players head towards a location, you flesh it out. So the idea is basically you build the world ahead of the players. Is there a dessert on the map? who rules it, what is their culture like? doesn't matter until the players are headed that way. A very good piece of advice is, "The most important session to prep for, is the next one". And another hint, it is okay to drop clues to things, you don't know where leads, as long as the players don't have time to explore those clues until next session. Why did the bandit leader have glowing rune in his forhead? You have all the way until next session to find out. Admitedly a world built like this can turn out a little 'generic' fantasy, but it's your first campaign, just get something going and tell some cool stories.
Brennan, you are so my kind of DM. I'm really happy to find someone else who feels these ways about improv and the "authority" of a DM choice, about the priority ranks of PC narrative desire and DM world building. Finally, I am maybe the only DM I know right now who says, "I will only run the game if we make your characters as a team" and I loved the way you answered the question about that.
One of my campaigns I’m in is very roleplaying heavy. My character is one of the few who took the longest to remain passive in motivation until recently. For context, the Wizard, and my character, the ranger (, and also the cleric who’s player left the game for schedule reasons) all started sorta passive. We were escaping the demonic invasion of our home town and all had a connection to each other as either long time friends or mentor/student. So at first, survival was our only motivation. But here is the thing, that was about it. The Wizard quickly switched to being active when they realized they now had access to the knowledge they had been trying to research for so long, so he kept with the adventure to continue his research. My character remained passive with his main motivation being to simply protect the group. He is still largely reactive. Then we meet two more of our party. These two are each, for their own reasons, looking for a family member. This makes them quite active and so they join us on our journey. We also later meet yet another member who is also trying to get home, still rather proactive. So why is my character still reactive? Well, his main motivation was to protect what he cares about and what he cares about is the party. But it isn’t the only thing he cared for. See, that home town I started with? My character had spent the last 50 years of his life being it’s guardian, driving off bandits, leading lost people to civilization, search and rescue missions, and bringing back hard to reach medicine from the wilderness. For 50 years he did this and he watched the citizens of that town be born, grow up, and for some, even pass away, in that time frame. He was a known figure of his community and a treasured guardian of it. He enjoyed that role and felt at peace with it. But then he was suddenly on his own and unmoored with only his best friend and student and he has nearly lost them both several times. He has started caring for the newer members of the party too but that really hasn’t stopped my character from worrying about if any of the citizens of his hometown managed to escape too. Recently, my character got information that at least one refugee of his hometown has managed to find sanctuary by following rumors of his name. This has now sparked my character to continue to get his name out there. Why? Because he has no idea where all the refugees scattered to but if they can follow the rumors of his name, he thinks, perhaps he can check them over and make sure they are ok and help them get back on their feet again. His whole motivation is to protect but he has moved from being reactive in it to being proactive in it. I had him show a lot of this during the latest session with him taking a strong lead in using his experience and expertise beyond his combat skills (he is a skilled survival medic with a lot of experience in crafting medicines actually). This came in handy during the latest adventure and he took the lead in key areas. We actually ended up managing to end this section of the adventure in a relatively peaceful way but the hilarious part is that one of the reasons for that is that my character forcibly (not too much so though, it’s been agreed on later but heat of the moment was there) adopted the mini antagonist as their newest student, taking responsibility for her, and interceding before the more corrupt elements of the people in power made the girl a scapegoat. So he switched his tactic. Honestly? A lot of fun. The mix of motivations has been so much fun to roleplay with and bounce off each other in banter and dialogue. And my character having a new student? Well that’s a strong motivation for him. With the added need to advertise his name to act as a beacon, well it’s continued to and fuel to his motivations staying proactive. Honestly? One of my most fun characters to play and definitely the one I think about most between sessions.
I had a player that made a character that was very insistent that he did not want to go adventuring and that he would never work with a group. He was homeless and liked it, his parents had died of natural causes, he had no friends, no family, and no ambitions. I put hook after hook out, hit the usual motivators (gold, god, glory) but nothing, everyone else was on board and he would actively resist every contrived situation I used to try to get his character in the story, so I ignored him and focused on running the story for the other players. If a character (and by extension a player) are not wanting to adventure then they can make a new character that does have motivation to adventure while the old character gets a day job. One character's frequent absence due to player absence was explained by crippling alcoholism due to PTSD. This also involved the introduction of reoccurring characters that he encountered in his binges (I would have a few minutes of 'what did you get up to' at the start of the sessions he returned) and ultimately it led to him multiclassing and getting them hooked in side quests. With others, a player was getting married and wanted to take a break from the game so, via a time traveling wizard that I often used to break the game for theme one-shots (costume party on Halloween that turned into exploring the character's nightmares and dropping some foreshadowing before ghosts started killing everybody and they needed to go on a haunted hay ride to escape, a wedding on Valentines day that turned into battling werewolves and a ritual to save a young couple that eventually had a second part that was their wedding which turned into flying to the moon and battling a ship of lycanthropic pirates in space, or on leap day they went back in time to save the life of one of the party members in a quantum leap reference, stuff like that) and he took them to the alternate world where many of his adventures occur (where his wife was from) and he met a druid woman there while they were solving a murder and he stayed there in that time to be with her. When the player returned, since he was playing a long lived race and it was a time traveling god of magic that sent him there, he had stayed on that world until he had raised his grandchildren and his wife had died and he knew it was time to return to his friends. He played a few more months before he had to quit for good, along with another player. The other player's character had always been a bit intense so I had the other player's character betray and murder this character. It gave some in story resolutions and also gave some motive to the remaining characters.
5:49 - that's such good advice. The idea of investing a little time in laying out the world that they live in and why they are content is great. If so your player knows is that their character, Bob, is content then you can't do sheeyt to them, but if they role play a little and find that they are content because they have a lovely home and their community respects them, then you have them by the balls. You introduce a friendly stranger, who they naturally chat to. The next day that stranger leads a bunch of goblins into the village, who steal all the goods and burn what's left. Now all of Bob's comfort is gone and the whole village think that he gave away the secret of the warding magic that had kept them safe before now.
Aw this makes me feel so grateful, because eventhough I'm not into DMing (yet), I can use this in my writing, fiction and non-fiction too. Rocking an awesome beard!
I'm an author (who once DMed a ton) and I wanted to say this is better writing advice than I've gotten from the last several years' worth of videos specifically about writing. My story is pretty intense and my own standards are ridiculous so I get stuck a lot. Thanks so much, Brennan. ❤
The game Beyond the Wall creates character relationships, a home base, NPCs and their relationships to the PCs and each other, as well as a raft of McGuffins that can tie into later adventures, all in Char Gen. It's pretty remarkable. Through Sunken Lands is thier sword and sorcery game that does the same thing. Really great stuff.
I am just about to start a campaign for some friends, most of whom are brand new to D&D. These episodes are so helpful as great reminders, advice, and tips and tricks. Thanks!
Feeling it SO MUCH about the 'got my character, I'll see you there' thing. I'm a pretty new player so I wasn't sure if it was just me being unreasonable to want a bit more prior information on sessions Example... My first ever game, all the info I got was "There's a space available on this date, come along." The organiser knew it would be my first game and I let them know I might need a little guidance to make sure I'm doing stuff right. So I did some reading and made a character that I thought would be fun. Turn up to the session and it turns out to be an in-progress campaign, but I'm here now so let's go I guess! So I sit down at the table (again, for the first time) where everybody there already knows each other because it's an ongoing thing, and the first thing the DM says, "So this is a homebrew campaign, hope that's okay. It's set in an alternate-reality modern-day city where the players are investigating a cultist plot. One of the characters is a paranormal investigator, one is literally a giant pigeon who doesn't speak. How does your character arrive?" All nice people, but the experience very much put me off trying to get involved in public games.
Worth noting, you can absolutely do that DnD thing of brainstorming an obscene number of characters while disconnected from the adventure. My strategy has been to come up with a character concept, flesh it out and brainstorm it until basically it's just what's on the sheet, and *then* when a campaign is being set up, you talk with the DM about this cool character idea you've had and join them into the story. Basically, you'll want a strong enough character concept, but with a series of "loose ends" which you can tie into the narrative, i.e "I am a loyal cleric of ____", "____ murdered my family", etc.
14:22 From the writing perspective, what was created during session prep is an earlier draft. What comes out in the session itself is a revision, which is an essential part of writing. Under-revision is far more prevalent and more of an issue than over-revision, as folks get attached to what they create. Being ruthless in editing & revising produces stronger works. Unless you're L. Ron Hubbard, in which case, just remember: you can still write, and there are no snakes at the foot of your bed.
I think when you're designing a game to run, world inspires plot and plot inspires world. You might know you want a game about pirates and you want to set it in a high magic world but as you build the plot you're going to need to build locations or factions and as you further define your world you're going to find cool locations or people you want to make part of the story.
Time stamps: 1:01 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points to start a campaign? 9:39 How do you encourage creative play, besides just giving advantage? 12:25 How do you make improv moments feel planned?/How do you hide moments of improv? 15:14 Do you have a set plan for a story line that includes all of your characters? 16:04 How do you explain a player absence or if a player drops out? 18:16 I am a new DM, where do I start? The world, the plot, or both at the same time? 19:55 Are you ever afraid of burn out from running so many elaborate campaigns?
Based on your Authorial Purpose point, I completely agree. Even more so, I say often what is improvised is BETTER than what was already written, because through the creative process of sitting around a table with a bunch of friends, in that excitement and mental flow, and due to the character’s own actions or comments that narrative becomes more immersive. It goes along the same lines of “if there is a rule working against the players fun, and there is no real reason to use it, ignore the rule”. Ignore whatever material you have already written if forcing that narrative will not produce the same or greater enjoyment at the table.
When coming up with plot and worlds for RP without the player characters, I think the best advice is: just start. Don't think about what is good or bad too much, but just use a jumping off point and develop from there. It'll be alright. (-: An easy way to create a jumping off point is taking 2 things you think are cool, maybe drawn from different movies you saw recently. For instance Steampunk and Pirates, or Extreme cold and Ponies. Mash the 2 ideas up and bit by bit imagine what a world where those 2 are important would look like. Okay, we have extreme cold and ponies, so maybe the ponies have woolly fur. They're boring just being beasts of burden, so maybe they're intelligent. Once you made a few steps in the base of the setting, you can think of what a typical day looks like for its inhabitants, encountering these aspects in their daily lives. Just take it one idea at a time and don't weigh the idea in your mind. It's a puzzle piece: you don't need to see the whole picture yet, you just need to know if it connects to what you already know.
4:51 one of the current campaigns im running (the second one ive ever done) has this issue. its a group which introduced me to dnd, and so they are all verterans who have wanted to play certain classes/character archetypes. its been a pain but they are amazing players so it is well worth it
Adventuring Academy is a great resource. I use it both as a player and a fledgling dm to guide myself and expand on opportunities. Over the course of my current campaign my rogue barbarian has incidentally become the strong silent moral compass of the party.
Regarding the "authority of prep," I think something to consider is the satisfaction of discovery and puzzle-solving. To demonstrate more specifically, consider a mystery. The promise of a mystery (usually) is that there's a solution out there, and, if you're up to the challenge, you can discover the solution; you can figure it out. If instead, there was no fixed solution, and, after sufficient clue-finding, you proposed an answer and the GM rolled with it, you would feel less satisfied. You'd feel like you hadn't earned the victory. I think that applies to a lot of discovery and exploration in games for a lot of people. The more collaborative, creative approaches are fun; I enjoy them a lot, but there is some value to feeling like you've figured it out.
With the high angle and Brennan’s full beard this is really giving off the vibe that they’ve locked him in a room and forced him to answer questions for months
As a DM, I feel it’s more on the DM to adjust the stories towards player characters. That’s the only thing they have control over, I don’t want to dictate that.
11:51 i forget where I read it, but best advice I read as someone who overthinks everything, is it doesn't matter how good your world and your lore and your plan is if your players never SEE THEM!!! Only write what the players will see, and write reasons for the players to see the best parts of your story!
I definitely had a sort of strike gold moment in my first campaign. I ran two of them at the same time for different groups that happened to go through my world in the opposite order, so the second half of the campaign for both of them was way better as I had active feedback from both sides to improve it for the other group when they got there. Definitely have struggled to live up to the bar I set for myself with subsequent campaigns, though. Hoping this next one I'm starting in a couple weeks can do so!
Call to adventure - Luke Skywalker Desire to change the world - Jack Skellington Destroy what they love - "When people are passive it means that the status quo fundamentally props them up and makes their life okay." No character motivations? Use the group's proactive meaning for staying together. also why did they choose dangerous adventuring? why is this the only viable method? DO NOT make your story something they're obliged to do.
When players are absent I normally say they are looking after the camp, horses, resting or shopping etc. There was on campaign I ran where the party had an item that if the player wasn't there then their pc had been sucked into this item to help another world fight against a growing threat. When the player came back they could them tell the story of what their pc did. They got a reward for a good tale. It also explained why they lvled up with the party and maybe got other things.
“If your players have made characters that are a little bit more passive and don’t have a motivation to act, there’s only one thing you can do, and that’s DESTROY THE THINGS THEY LOVE...”
Two of my players thought it would be fun to make sibling PCs with a relatively happy home life. They are currently adventurers to bring in income
They also just pissed off an ancient vampire who threatened them if they got in his way. Well.... he’s gonna find their home town and turn a parent into a vampire spawn
Also, the intense vaguely I had to go to to ask them their boundaries without making it obvious I was kidnapping their dad...
Literally been giving my players things to love just so I can take them away later lmao
I’m running a Star Wars campaign (on hiatus), and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do for my friend’s Jawa character. Have the Empire kill his mentor, sell his parents into slavery, blow up his ship. The possibilities are endless
For real though, we don't play these games to be characters who never encountered pain and adversity, we play to roleplay characters who face tremendous amounts of challenge and tragedy, and who can overcome it either by preventing it or learning to live with it.
D&D is about stories, and one of the most basic stories is enduring hardship and growning for it. The difference is that instead of idntifying with a scripted character, we identify with a character we controll, and the "creator" that is, the DM, only creates the hardship and accomedates the enduring, you as a different kind of creator have to create the means of enduring or overcoming the hardship, and when your character grows a ton, some of that sometimes affects everyone at the table too. In my (limited) experience, it's actually rarely the player who's character is growing who grows irl, because they already had the tools their characters gain, but the other players and dm who get to see the story of that peraon unfold, and in a way D&D (and other ttrpg's) lets us share our wisdom through stories, and I love that. A good DM can learn from their players while still preserving the overal story, which requires a very open mind, and relaxed attitude. I'm too nervous to pull it of gracefully, but I have learned things from behind the screen during games, and it's one of the best things.
"When people are passive it means that the status quo fundamentally props them up and makes their life okay." Deeeeeeeep
Oooor they don't see a way to change it, don't feel they are able to, don't think they are good enough to try, don't have any idea what to change towards.
@@ThomasUfnalCrowlake In that case, they have a motivation but have to work through their flaws of apathy or self-deprecation and that can be an interesting journey.
@@ThomasUfnalCrowlake In those cases, the solution seems to be the same in order to make compelling characters out of them. More motivation to change. More motivation to really search for a way to change it, or to force themselves to try even if they don't think they are able.
@@aspyse Or give the character small things to accomplish that get bigger over time to build their confidence up, if that doesn't happen organically already as you play. Or if they come from a down-trodden society, show them places that made it work that used to be like their home town. Or introduce NPCs to them who rose above their own oppression to show them it's possible.
@@ThomasUfnalCrowlake That probably resonates more with players, given fiction as a form of escapism. My suggestion is give them supports that make change more feasible. Maybe that's having the other PCs join them, maybe a figure that's been enforcing the status quo dies, and there's an opening to change direction. The enforcement is in disarray, and you might be able to change things enough to affect what kind of person or people end up with that authority and responsibility next (if anyone)
brennan is like that one feral english teacher that reignites the passion for reading and writing you had as a kid but was squashed in middle school and early high school
Actually true
There’s always one. And they’re the best
Like?
Weirdly (or maybe not) mine was a newly qualified teacher - it was her first year teaching and she set homework of answering an essay question with four options in a practice exam . I was a swotty twit and joked that I couldn't pick, they were all great prompts (really unusual in itself, they were all just solid though). She said 'you write them, I'll mark them' and triggered my challenge mode so I spent a weekend writing all of them. She spent four times the effort marking that shit just because I was a swot and she had so many excellent notes - it's over twenty years later and her enthusiasm and genuine interest still inspire me in my work. I try to write as if I want to impress that teacher and I will always remember her fondly :)
The english teacher that ignites your passion but is so passionate that they end up beating the shit out of a student and getting fired. Ah.. I loved that guy.
"Making up worlds slaps, and I love it."
I felt that, bud.
Hell yeah!🤘😁
"Don't demand you be good at something you're new at" what sage advice
I dealt with one player who is frequently absent by giving his character narcolepsy, so his character falls asleep when he leaves the game at an unfortunate time. It's hilarious in-game, and now I make him roll narcolepsy saving throws to stay awake in-game sometimes.
That's honestly a great idea, and fun too!
😂😂
Ha, my DM did the same thing with me! There was one rather amusing if unfortunate time where I'd just had shocking grasp cast on myself, so no-one could touch my unconscious body to move me to a safer place. So they just kicked some leaves over me and crossed their fingers. 😄
That’s hilarious!
The party I DM for has such a rotating roster of characters that at this point I have asked the players what their PC is doing when they can’t attend a session.
Notable mentions include:
The warlock going into a catatonic state due to visions from their patron
The wizard souring through his book and failing to realize there’s an adventure going on
and
The Druid just going to chase butterflies.
He gives off such a step dad energy.
Well, considering his life long dream is to be a father, no surprise really.
EnderMcCloud he is a father now
@@emilyjfreer2895 He is?!
@@emilyjfreer2895 since when
Brendad Lee Momigan
*whispers* guys i think brennan's gonna freak out if we don't go in this dungeon.
Brennan: *overhears* WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT!?
i read this as it happened
bruh
I also read this as it happened wtf
For the circumstances when a player is permanently gone from a campaign (i.e. one of your players moves away or no longer wants to participate or something) you can always deify their character. Meaning turn their character into a God. This is what my friends and I did when one of our friends who was doing a campaign with us suddenly passed away in the middle of our campaign. We decided to turn his character into a God in the world in order to honor him and allow him to continue to participate in our game we'd developed with him.
That’s so pretty 🥲
❤️🩹
Kinda hard to deify bob, the level 3 fighter
@@andoujurai4295bob the level 3 fighter gets run over by a wagon, the end.
@@andoujurai4295 A party starting a cult of Bob a lvl 3 fighter who they've just seen ascend in the middle of the village is in the rulebook
Honestly, edgelord duel wielding ranger showing up to a carebear-themed game sounds like a great time.
ikr?!? Brennan could totally make that work somehow!
I imagine a giant ninja edgelord to just be standing there, unimpressed, as a horde of teddy bears tries to shove past him, feeling the fabric squishing against his calves and shins.
That’s Cody I’m unsleeping city S2
I think that was Crown of Candy.
doomguy and animal crossing
"Obligation is the death of fun"
its really too bad this guy isnt running blizzard
Goddamn Brennan making me get a minor in philosophy just because of how great he talks and I wanna be like that.
he did improv for a long time so i think that's where he got his oratory skills as well
I was literally just wondering what he studied then I see this comment lol werid.
Cheat. Use your characters backgrounds as the plot points. I mean, seriously, the missing girls in Fantasy High, and all the attached points, were basically a jump off from Riz's character being a budding detective.
all the major plot points/recurring themes were based off the character backgrounds tbh: Riz' background was obviously the main motivator for the mystery of the story, but the recurring themes for all the characters' backgrounds build up the story. Both Fig and Gorgug wanted to find their true parents, Kristen from the beginning had dissonance with how her parents and neighbors practiced their faith and her own worldview, and Adaine had panic attacks which affected her identity and her relation to her own family.
The first story line in my campaign is one of my players is a rlly old elf and she just found out she had grandkids she never met. Another one is related to the main villain of the whole campaign and doesn’t know it and the other one has an old key that is actually a mist talisman that will eventually help them escape the shadowfell
Brennan talks about this approach in the Exandria Unlimited Calamity GM Roundtable and it was really inspiring to me (a potential future DM). Great vid in general, super recommend it.
And if they don't make backgrounds?
@@elgatochurro Work up a background with them. I don't take no background characters.
When you were talking about mercenaries who want gold, and why they want it so much I was thinking “ my wizard needs to pay off that student loan from wizard school.
In a D&D show I watched how a character was killed by debt collectors from wizard school. It was very dramatic
@@huxleyleigh4856 what’s the name of the show?
Sounds like The Magicians?
"The old king was trying to forgive all the wizards loans, but an evil orange necromancer overthrew the king, and squashed that idea." -- rumor in a tavern.
"Start at your point of inspiration."
Honestly that's the best piece of advice you could give anyone who wants to start creating anything. You'll never be more productive than when you actually feel inspired so find the thing that makes you feel that spark and build everything on that!
Responding a year late, but this point alone explains so well why I lack motivation to do certain things. For example, I'm learning how to draw and I want to draw but there is nothing in particular that I am inspired to draw, so I just end up doing nothing.
@sethgleason7611 Responding 2 years late. 😅
As an artist who has gone to art school, let me give you some valuable advice for when you don't know what to be inspired by: draw anything. This is the time to say fuck it, nothing is sacred enough for consideration. Look around your room, or wherever you are, draw the first thing you set your eyes on. Don't like it? Keep looking till your mind goes, eh, okay, fine, this'll do. Keep doing this long enough and you'll eventually realize what makes you *want* to draw - and that'll become your new inspiration.
Learning to draw is about learning what's cool about what you're drawing - which you can only find out after you've drawn it or interacted with it at least once or in the middle of the drawing process. It's great to have inspiration to start the process, but many artists find that inspiration in the middle of their process instead and that's great too. Nothing is special, because everything has something to teach you. Don't discriminate, just draw the first thing your eyes land on.
Brennan has so much big brain college graduate energy that it feels like he should have an honorary creative writing doctorate and these should be actual office hours for a class he teaches
1:14 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points to start a campaign?
2:21 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points specifically to start a campaign?
9:44 How do you reward creative play without just giving advantage?
12:48 How do you disguise your improv so well?
15:40 Do you have a set plan for creating a storyline that includes al of your characters?
16:09 How do you explain PC absence?
18:25 Do I start at the world or the plot?
20:01 Are you scared of burn out?
This comrade out here farming honest likes, doing the lords work.
Greatly appreciated friend 🙏
This man is Not the hero we wanted, He’s the hero we needed
bump
Underrated comment
I love how he talks about this. I could listen to him give a masterclass on niche subjects like this for hours
Is it just me, or does anyone else now really want to see the Edgelord Ranger learn how to love with the carebears?
Honestly Brennan could run a campaign about linguists arguing about the Oxford comma and I'd watch an entire season
This man is diabolically wholesome. He must be protected.
props to anyone who DMs. it seems like a horrendous amount of work + the pressure of taking up hours of someone's time.
agreed. odd to find someone else watching this so recently!
@@aarontheperson6867 yeah! the algorithm strikes again. plus I've been on a CH kick recently
@@wahlawigi9572 haha hell yeah
It can be a fair amount of work, but it usually doesn't have to be, depending on your dming style and what's important to you. And for me the prep is actually really fun. I love coming up with challenges for my pcs and trying to imagine how they'll react to them, and so prep doesn't feel like a drag. So while you should definitely appreciate your dm for the work they do, dming really isn't a monumental task that only a special few can do. Anyone can dm! And it's really fun actually :)
For me personally, prep can be super fun because it's my own setting that I know very well, so seeing the players engaging with it and making their own decisions is really interesting for me, even though I know they don't care about the world or lore even half as much as me
Brennan Lee Mulligan: Dungeon Dad
More like dungeon daddy. .
@@derblobinmeister3006 *not a bdsm podcast
I have a god made as a joke, and he legit just pulls people in for side adventures and pets with him because he’s a good and happy puppy who takes the characters of absent players to come play with him. I have the player start their next session with (# of missed sessions+1)d100 and tell them what they did, pop something nice, random, possibly cute, but ultimately useless. It’s neat!
Adorable, I love it ❤️
@@XandraMirum Rexxy is best boi
Another way to deal with absent players: Just don’t justify it, have characters pop in and out of existence. It became canon in my last campaign that the PCs of absent players turned into marbles. DnD is a game and, while immersion is a big part of it, sacrificing some immersion to accommodate a game mechanic is totally fine!
I was waiting for him to say this. Yes, you do lose a little bit of that immersive factor, but at the end of the day, everyone at the table understands that this is a game and a fake world and sometimes real life will interfere with that.
HAH that’s awesome! It’s become cannon in the MotW game that I run that PCs will randomly start T-posing (when the player has to leave early or is interrupted from the game- or even when they have technical difficulties since our game is over Discord) and it is just, a fun way to excuse real life when playing and trying to get immersed. The players even in-character have commented on the T-posing phenomenon which just makes it better XD.
For our more spotty players, I do often make up in-game excuses but I try to make them fun or strange in some way. One of our players can only play every once in a blue moon, his character has been basically adopted by a Fae race and will randomly pop in using portals which defy every rule of magic that I’ve set up in the game. I have NPCs comment on the weirdness, both of portals and T-poses, and it somehow makes the world feel more real to have these instances of randomness or rule-breaking, idk.
I'm fond of establishing other obligations the characters might have that result in them pulled away from some questing. Alternatively if you have a setting where any kind of planar travel or similar exists they could temporarily be transported elsewhere. Especially easy if you do an Isekai type of setting where the heroes travel to the campaign world from a "normal" world ala the lion, witch, wardrobe books
THAT. Is a freaking great idea!
I used to run a game at my local game store so the party composition would change each session. We decided that the party that was present for each session was the party that had always been there. It allowed the game to progress but each session became its own dimension or reality. It wasn't a big deal at all.
I need to get a tattoo that says "making worlds slaps and I love it"
I know this video is old, but that passive characters describe my players so well. I've always been frustrated by it, but honestly to have it put in a way I can understand makes me feel much better about how they play. Thank you so much!
Holy shit, Brennan should give guest lectures in universities. I don't think there's any better way an up-and-coming writer could spend 20 minutes than by watching this video.
Jeezus those 20 minutes just disappeared.
I absolutely adore these
Hi Brennan! I know this video is about a year old, but I just wanted to say that a friend introduced me to you and your content. I've seen Bloodkeep and some of Fantasy High and I absolutely love your style. As a fellow DM you inspire me to make better stories and come up with more ideas for my players to enjoy. Thank you for being you and please don't stop making this wonderful content.
"When people are passive it means the status quo is working for them" love it
Tell that to North Koreans.
@@alexandertiberius1098 it's a game dude, calm down
No, It's a really, unbelievably naive sentence.
@@alexandertiberius1098 it's a game, it was never intended to be an absolute rule about all of reality, it's intended to be about a game
@@ben9689 where it also isn't at all applicable.
14:25 I think the cannon of what is made up in the session matters more than what you wrote previously. The notes are like the original edit while the session played is the printed book. You can always refer back to your notes if they don't force you to retrospectively change the story your players already read. But if it doesn't fit in anymore, you have to drop it. You can reuse it anywhere else, but if you have non-jokingly canonised something in a session, then it is cannon. Unless you specifically ask your players if they'd prefer your original idea and they mutually agree.
I completely agree with character and campaign being tailored to each other. I met with each of my players individually and we worked together to make their character sheet and I was there to brainstorm backstory and motivation with them. Then I started loosely integrating those character motivations into the story and it has led to an experience where everyone at the table has been having a ton of fun!
I love that all the examples he’s using for getting adventures started are things we have seen in D20 nearly 2 years later
5:00 I think this can work, if you're willing to work with your player in tailoring their premade character for the setting. For example, I have this character that is depressed psychic girl, who usually has a preppy ghost friend. I joined a Sci-Fi campaign setting where psychics didn't really exist in the same capacity, so instead I turned her into an inventor/technomancer with an automaton friend instead. The character at their core stays the same, but meshes into the setting.
The Arthur Augefort thing in episode 2 was improv! I could have sworn that was planned. That encounter was way too hard for the players and he didn't tune it down really.
I love that it was improv, but I also feel that the PCs got unlucky with rolls which made it hard, if they hadn't been trying to jump tables, and the corn cuties getting good rolls they would have been fine
Was it really hard? Or did they just try to jump on tables too many times? Lmao
Who would win? Fabian Arameus Seacaster, son of renowned pirate William Seacaster? Or one high school lunch table.
@@Tyrantlizardking105
It was only one round of combat spent jumping on tables, right? They were a bit unorthodox by jumping inside the monster and trying to end the encounter without killing everything, but idk if that's necessarily a bad thing. If they had just rolled to hit and rolled damage over and over *maybe* it would have gone better, but it's hard to say. That definitely would have been less entertaining and fun.
@@auradmg The lunch table
I love what Brennan says on people who just show up with a character. I've definitely seen it before, and sometimes it's worked, most of the time nah. Playing a game divorced of its characters is as asinine as a book where the characters stumble through the plot, detached from who they are or what they want to do
This can work if the character has a really memorable or loveable personality. Think the Paddington movies: the titular bear doesn't go through any charavter development because he was always right all along, and the supporting cast are the ones that need to develop instead. It's not boring, because interesting stuff still happens and the world is evolving.
But yeah, you can't just have a boring character with no motivations, they'll just become a blank set piece that deals damage. One or the other, if not both are needed to make a compelling story.
I really love the energy and welcoming vibe Brennan gives off.
Best quote : "Obligation is the Death of Fun" - Yes! I've been at so many tables like this......and it isn't fun! Thanks for the backup Brennan!!
Totally agree with Brennan about mantaining lose plots. On my actual campaign, I've created a bunch of middle conservative antagonists and a main revolutionary villain, but the players fell in love and sided with the main villain, so I had to change the full point of view of the settings.
a while back in our (fairly slapstick) campaign, when we had a number of players who would miss now and then, the party happened upon an amulet lying on the ground -- the Amulet of Plot Device (also known as the Amulet of Lazy Storytelling) -- which would promptly suck up one or more characters and spit them out again when the player returned. everyone found it hilarious, including when they tried to get rid of it, only to find it mysteriously returned into their packs.
Such good advice, particularly the bit about working with the players to create their characters with them, make them feel like a part of the world. I feel like that's a game-changer. If your characters have a desire already that's easy, if your characters are passive you have to make their world uncomfortable and force them into disruption. Also good.
AA said "isn't that right Mr. Gibbons?"
"Wait what?"
boom.
This is really helpful as someone who wants to get into D&D and someone wants to write a fantasy novel!
Something they won’t tell you professionally is that almost all the source books for dnd are easy to pirate online. Like just google name of book pdf and you will get multiple usable results
5:30 is the reason why Brennan's campaigns have such amazing character development 🥰 the way that his worlds are intertwined with the fates and back stories of the PCs really makes a huge difference! The Unsleeping City (s1) is a really great example of this: (SPOILERS BELOW)
you simply couldn't have such a cohesive magic system without cooperative character creation. A drug dealer / wild magic sorcerer? Yes, AND he's now a critical part of the lore as the only character directly connected to dream magic, a lynchpin to several plot points and gets to go through a huge character development by learning to take on responsibilities. A drunk woman going through a messy divorce? yes, AND the ex-husband is actually dead, was actually "the chosen one", was actually a part of a secret society the wife joins, and actually through some shenanigans manages to meet up with her so she can overcome her grief and grow to become the actual Chosen One! Etc etc etc. Literally every single character in that season had a ton of character development (ok, maybe Zac's character didn't change that much, but he was still a part of the world building and was connected to the other character's bakstories through NPC interactions.. As well, Zac likes role playing loveable himbos, so they don't really need to overcome large personal hurdles to be good characters, they're just there, along for the ride and to have a good time, while making huge personal sacrifices for the good of the team etc 🥰)
I am so happy they are doing these.
One hilarious moment for my group was when the DM for one of our campaigns just told us to make characters and bring them in on the day. We ended up with 5 warlocks and a paladin who's story was about getting vengeance on fiends.
Favorite improv book: Process! Such a great resource for every kind of creator.
As someone playing a bard , the idea that the dm will bend parts of crazy lore that my character spews out( which my character believes but I the player don’t) and the fit it in is awesome
If a player wants to be just a generic passive knight, I'm gonna make you part of a standing army for a nation that's been at war for a while
You know you're probably going to get deployed EVENTUALLY, and that's your hook
Start with the world, then the characters, then the plot. The world produces the characters who live in that world, and from the characters arises the plot. Guess who I learned this from? That's right! it was Brennan, as our group wrote what we later referred to as "The Best Game Ever."
18:25 Start at your point of inspiration is good. What made you want to DM a game? If you have an idea in your head, start there and develop from there. If you just want to be a DM, you can run any published adventure, whether professional or 3rd party.
For the question about 17 minutes in about player absences, in a campaign I was Dm'ing years ago we were using a very High magic setting so this way really easy to handle. One player had to leave for three months (three sessions) to go and help their single mother sister through her maternity leave. We got no warning for reasons that are a very long story so I had to think fast. I went with the opportunity presented by the party coming into a decent fortune of treasure from their last dungeon run in the story. So after clearing how to handle this with the player I quietly gave the missing PC their share at the beginning of their first missing session. From there I spent each session playing the PC, but intentionally not really putting a lot of effect into mimicking the missing player, in fact I purposefully got worse and worse at it as time went on. This was really wonderful due to the inbetween mission time this took place in. Lots of good resupplying and leveling character interactions for my not quite right PC to fail at. It took them about a session to figure out that something wasn't right and spent the second and third session discovering that their friend had picked up a cursed item that was basically eating their soul to 'refuel' the dying lich inside of it. The remaining players got a fun side quest out of it and the player who was absence didn't miss any of the over arching story. They also returned to a table mid-saving their life and extremely happy to see them again completely negating any negative feelings amongst the players about the absence disturbing the campaign.
Brennen is the inspiration I needed to become a DM. Love what you do man!
I think when it comes to starting to create a world there are a few steps that I like to follow:
1. Come up with a loose concept of what's unique about your world and what makes it interesting
2. Start coming up with loose story beats that match the themes of your world
3. Start designing a location for the beginning of the campaign with areas that your PCs can choose to wander toward (i.e a hamlet with surrounding forests with enemies in them)
Once you've started Step 3 you'll find that you know where you want to go with the story since you completed the first two steps beforehand.
09:34 that’s like writing advice, and that’s what some of us are here for :)
For starting new campaigns, as a new dungeon master, I would recommend a few things:
1: steal a map somewhere.
2: Pick a village to start in.
3: Flesh out this village, with a few NPCs and problems for the players to engage with.
4: Start playing.
5: You can probably get a couple of sessions out of this village. Meanwhile, you can look at the map, and just in broad strokes define what is going on in the country, and the nearby towns. Things like a rebellion here, an ork problem there etc. Maybe give each nearby city a defining trait (eg. this city is super religious, this other city is in constant darkness). Why are these things happening? doesn't matter yet.
6: As players head towards a location, you flesh it out.
So the idea is basically you build the world ahead of the players. Is there a dessert on the map? who rules it, what is their culture like? doesn't matter until the players are headed that way. A very good piece of advice is, "The most important session to prep for, is the next one". And another hint, it is okay to drop clues to things, you don't know where leads, as long as the players don't have time to explore those clues until next session. Why did the bandit leader have glowing rune in his forhead? You have all the way until next session to find out.
Admitedly a world built like this can turn out a little 'generic' fantasy, but it's your first campaign, just get something going and tell some cool stories.
Brennan, you are so my kind of DM. I'm really happy to find someone else who feels these ways about improv and the "authority" of a DM choice, about the priority ranks of PC narrative desire and DM world building. Finally, I am maybe the only DM I know right now who says, "I will only run the game if we make your characters as a team" and I loved the way you answered the question about that.
One of my campaigns I’m in is very roleplaying heavy. My character is one of the few who took the longest to remain passive in motivation until recently.
For context, the Wizard, and my character, the ranger (, and also the cleric who’s player left the game for schedule reasons) all started sorta passive. We were escaping the demonic invasion of our home town and all had a connection to each other as either long time friends or mentor/student. So at first, survival was our only motivation. But here is the thing, that was about it. The Wizard quickly switched to being active when they realized they now had access to the knowledge they had been trying to research for so long, so he kept with the adventure to continue his research. My character remained passive with his main motivation being to simply protect the group. He is still largely reactive. Then we meet two more of our party. These two are each, for their own reasons, looking for a family member. This makes them quite active and so they join us on our journey. We also later meet yet another member who is also trying to get home, still rather proactive. So why is my character still reactive? Well, his main motivation was to protect what he cares about and what he cares about is the party. But it isn’t the only thing he cared for. See, that home town I started with? My character had spent the last 50 years of his life being it’s guardian, driving off bandits, leading lost people to civilization, search and rescue missions, and bringing back hard to reach medicine from the wilderness. For 50 years he did this and he watched the citizens of that town be born, grow up, and for some, even pass away, in that time frame. He was a known figure of his community and a treasured guardian of it. He enjoyed that role and felt at peace with it. But then he was suddenly on his own and unmoored with only his best friend and student and he has nearly lost them both several times. He has started caring for the newer members of the party too but that really hasn’t stopped my character from worrying about if any of the citizens of his hometown managed to escape too. Recently, my character got information that at least one refugee of his hometown has managed to find sanctuary by following rumors of his name. This has now sparked my character to continue to get his name out there. Why? Because he has no idea where all the refugees scattered to but if they can follow the rumors of his name, he thinks, perhaps he can check them over and make sure they are ok and help them get back on their feet again. His whole motivation is to protect but he has moved from being reactive in it to being proactive in it. I had him show a lot of this during the latest session with him taking a strong lead in using his experience and expertise beyond his combat skills (he is a skilled survival medic with a lot of experience in crafting medicines actually). This came in handy during the latest adventure and he took the lead in key areas. We actually ended up managing to end this section of the adventure in a relatively peaceful way but the hilarious part is that one of the reasons for that is that my character forcibly (not too much so though, it’s been agreed on later but heat of the moment was there) adopted the mini antagonist as their newest student, taking responsibility for her, and interceding before the more corrupt elements of the people in power made the girl a scapegoat. So he switched his tactic. Honestly? A lot of fun. The mix of motivations has been so much fun to roleplay with and bounce off each other in banter and dialogue. And my character having a new student? Well that’s a strong motivation for him. With the added need to advertise his name to act as a beacon, well it’s continued to and fuel to his motivations staying proactive. Honestly? One of my most fun characters to play and definitely the one I think about most between sessions.
Thanks step-dad Brennan. All us newbie dms appreciate you
I had a player that made a character that was very insistent that he did not want to go adventuring and that he would never work with a group. He was homeless and liked it, his parents had died of natural causes, he had no friends, no family, and no ambitions. I put hook after hook out, hit the usual motivators (gold, god, glory) but nothing, everyone else was on board and he would actively resist every contrived situation I used to try to get his character in the story, so I ignored him and focused on running the story for the other players. If a character (and by extension a player) are not wanting to adventure then they can make a new character that does have motivation to adventure while the old character gets a day job.
One character's frequent absence due to player absence was explained by crippling alcoholism due to PTSD. This also involved the introduction of reoccurring characters that he encountered in his binges (I would have a few minutes of 'what did you get up to' at the start of the sessions he returned) and ultimately it led to him multiclassing and getting them hooked in side quests.
With others, a player was getting married and wanted to take a break from the game so, via a time traveling wizard that I often used to break the game for theme one-shots (costume party on Halloween that turned into exploring the character's nightmares and dropping some foreshadowing before ghosts started killing everybody and they needed to go on a haunted hay ride to escape, a wedding on Valentines day that turned into battling werewolves and a ritual to save a young couple that eventually had a second part that was their wedding which turned into flying to the moon and battling a ship of lycanthropic pirates in space, or on leap day they went back in time to save the life of one of the party members in a quantum leap reference, stuff like that) and he took them to the alternate world where many of his adventures occur (where his wife was from) and he met a druid woman there while they were solving a murder and he stayed there in that time to be with her. When the player returned, since he was playing a long lived race and it was a time traveling god of magic that sent him there, he had stayed on that world until he had raised his grandchildren and his wife had died and he knew it was time to return to his friends. He played a few more months before he had to quit for good, along with another player. The other player's character had always been a bit intense so I had the other player's character betray and murder this character. It gave some in story resolutions and also gave some motive to the remaining characters.
I love you SO MUCH BRENDAD
5:49 - that's such good advice.
The idea of investing a little time in laying out the world that they live in and why they are content is great. If so your player knows is that their character, Bob, is content then you can't do sheeyt to them, but if they role play a little and find that they are content because they have a lovely home and their community respects them, then you have them by the balls. You introduce a friendly stranger, who they naturally chat to. The next day that stranger leads a bunch of goblins into the village, who steal all the goods and burn what's left.
Now all of Bob's comfort is gone and the whole village think that he gave away the secret of the warding magic that had kept them safe before now.
Aw this makes me feel so grateful, because eventhough I'm not into DMing (yet), I can use this in my writing, fiction and non-fiction too.
Rocking an awesome beard!
You are such an amazing person, the world is so much cooler and nicer with you in it. Much love from the future
I'm an author (who once DMed a ton) and I wanted to say this is better writing advice than I've gotten from the last several years' worth of videos specifically about writing. My story is pretty intense and my own standards are ridiculous so I get stuck a lot. Thanks so much, Brennan. ❤
The game Beyond the Wall creates character relationships, a home base, NPCs and their relationships to the PCs and each other, as well as a raft of McGuffins that can tie into later adventures, all in Char Gen. It's pretty remarkable. Through Sunken Lands is thier sword and sorcery game that does the same thing. Really great stuff.
I am just about to start a campaign for some friends, most of whom are brand new to D&D. These episodes are so helpful as great reminders, advice, and tips and tricks. Thanks!
I like the passive character introduction, that is something I can get behind
Feeling it SO MUCH about the 'got my character, I'll see you there' thing. I'm a pretty new player so I wasn't sure if it was just me being unreasonable to want a bit more prior information on sessions
Example... My first ever game, all the info I got was "There's a space available on this date, come along." The organiser knew it would be my first game and I let them know I might need a little guidance to make sure I'm doing stuff right. So I did some reading and made a character that I thought would be fun. Turn up to the session and it turns out to be an in-progress campaign, but I'm here now so let's go I guess! So I sit down at the table (again, for the first time) where everybody there already knows each other because it's an ongoing thing, and the first thing the DM says, "So this is a homebrew campaign, hope that's okay. It's set in an alternate-reality modern-day city where the players are investigating a cultist plot. One of the characters is a paranormal investigator, one is literally a giant pigeon who doesn't speak. How does your character arrive?" All nice people, but the experience very much put me off trying to get involved in public games.
These are always so helpful, interesting and entertaining
This series is amazing and this video in particular really highlights the strengths. Keep coming back to it.
Worth noting, you can absolutely do that DnD thing of brainstorming an obscene number of characters while disconnected from the adventure. My strategy has been to come up with a character concept, flesh it out and brainstorm it until basically it's just what's on the sheet, and *then* when a campaign is being set up, you talk with the DM about this cool character idea you've had and join them into the story. Basically, you'll want a strong enough character concept, but with a series of "loose ends" which you can tie into the narrative, i.e "I am a loyal cleric of ____", "____ murdered my family", etc.
14:22 From the writing perspective, what was created during session prep is an earlier draft. What comes out in the session itself is a revision, which is an essential part of writing. Under-revision is far more prevalent and more of an issue than over-revision, as folks get attached to what they create. Being ruthless in editing & revising produces stronger works.
Unless you're L. Ron Hubbard, in which case, just remember: you can still write, and there are no snakes at the foot of your bed.
Love you, Brennan. Watching you run Dimension20’s Fantasy High inspired me to return to the DM chair.
I think when you're designing a game to run, world inspires plot and plot inspires world. You might know you want a game about pirates and you want to set it in a high magic world but as you build the plot you're going to need to build locations or factions and as you further define your world you're going to find cool locations or people you want to make part of the story.
These are great resources for DMs
An edgelord ranger might be just what a care bear campaign needs…
Time stamps:
1:01 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points to start a campaign?
9:39 How do you encourage creative play, besides just giving advantage?
12:25 How do you make improv moments feel planned?/How do you hide moments of improv?
15:14 Do you have a set plan for a story line that includes all of your characters?
16:04 How do you explain a player absence or if a player drops out?
18:16 I am a new DM, where do I start? The world, the plot, or both at the same time?
19:55 Are you ever afraid of burn out from running so many elaborate campaigns?
My favorite piece of player driven retcon improv is the werehouse
Brennan gives off great professor energy!
Based on your Authorial Purpose point, I completely agree. Even more so, I say often what is improvised is BETTER than what was already written, because through the creative process of sitting around a table with a bunch of friends, in that excitement and mental flow, and due to the character’s own actions or comments that narrative becomes more immersive.
It goes along the same lines of “if there is a rule working against the players fun, and there is no real reason to use it, ignore the rule”. Ignore whatever material you have already written if forcing that narrative will not produce the same or greater enjoyment at the table.
When coming up with plot and worlds for RP without the player characters, I think the best advice is: just start. Don't think about what is good or bad too much, but just use a jumping off point and develop from there. It'll be alright. (-: An easy way to create a jumping off point is taking 2 things you think are cool, maybe drawn from different movies you saw recently. For instance Steampunk and Pirates, or Extreme cold and Ponies. Mash the 2 ideas up and bit by bit imagine what a world where those 2 are important would look like. Okay, we have extreme cold and ponies, so maybe the ponies have woolly fur. They're boring just being beasts of burden, so maybe they're intelligent. Once you made a few steps in the base of the setting, you can think of what a typical day looks like for its inhabitants, encountering these aspects in their daily lives. Just take it one idea at a time and don't weigh the idea in your mind.
It's a puzzle piece: you don't need to see the whole picture yet, you just need to know if it connects to what you already know.
4:51 one of the current campaigns im running (the second one ive ever done) has this issue. its a group which introduced me to dnd, and so they are all verterans who have wanted to play certain classes/character archetypes. its been a pain but they are amazing players so it is well worth it
Adventuring Academy is a great resource. I use it both as a player and a fledgling dm to guide myself and expand on opportunities.
Over the course of my current campaign my rogue barbarian has incidentally become the strong silent moral compass of the party.
Brenan looking like a homeless dad and i love it
Gilear?
Can confirm that it tends to go better when you're not 10, my first campaign was when I was 12 and it went great!
(My next one was shit)
The idea authority thing was incredibly moving, thank you 💜
Ive started my campaign off by destroying their lives but just giving them the sliver to keep going and fight to gain something back
Regarding the "authority of prep," I think something to consider is the satisfaction of discovery and puzzle-solving. To demonstrate more specifically, consider a mystery. The promise of a mystery (usually) is that there's a solution out there, and, if you're up to the challenge, you can discover the solution; you can figure it out. If instead, there was no fixed solution, and, after sufficient clue-finding, you proposed an answer and the GM rolled with it, you would feel less satisfied. You'd feel like you hadn't earned the victory.
I think that applies to a lot of discovery and exploration in games for a lot of people. The more collaborative, creative approaches are fun; I enjoy them a lot, but there is some value to feeling like you've figured it out.
With the high angle and Brennan’s full beard this is really giving off the vibe that they’ve locked him in a room and forced him to answer questions for months
Brennan is honestly going to be the greatest dad of all time. I wish I had more friends like him.
As a DM, I feel it’s more on the DM to adjust the stories towards player characters. That’s the only thing they have control over, I don’t want to dictate that.
11:51 i forget where I read it, but best advice I read as someone who overthinks everything, is it doesn't matter how good your world and your lore and your plan is if your players never SEE THEM!!!
Only write what the players will see, and write reasons for the players to see the best parts of your story!
I definitely had a sort of strike gold moment in my first campaign. I ran two of them at the same time for different groups that happened to go through my world in the opposite order, so the second half of the campaign for both of them was way better as I had active feedback from both sides to improve it for the other group when they got there. Definitely have struggled to live up to the bar I set for myself with subsequent campaigns, though. Hoping this next one I'm starting in a couple weeks can do so!
the bit about the dichotomy between character and plot being illusory 👌
Call to adventure - Luke Skywalker
Desire to change the world - Jack Skellington
Destroy what they love - "When people are passive it means that the status quo fundamentally props them up and makes their life okay."
No character motivations? Use the group's proactive meaning for staying together. also why did they choose dangerous adventuring? why is this the only viable method?
DO NOT make your story something they're obliged to do.
Such a great video! Thanks, Brennan!
When players are absent I normally say they are looking after the camp, horses, resting or shopping etc. There was on campaign I ran where the party had an item that if the player wasn't there then their pc had been sucked into this item to help another world fight against a growing threat. When the player came back they could them tell the story of what their pc did. They got a reward for a good tale. It also explained why they lvled up with the party and maybe got other things.
I can't wait to meet my class next semester. I hope they enjoy their D&D inspired class.
I tried dming when I was 11 and a dude thought I was bullying him even tho he kept rolling super low.