More and more, I feel like the randomness of the old tables was key to the fun. Decide on the treasure type (heck, make your own treasure table) but don't roll until the players open the chests. Let them roll, even. Roll for random encounters so the players KNOW they're random and probably not very meaningful. You didn't GIVE them a vorpal blade; they FOUND it, fair and square. You didn't SEND a bulette their way; it just HAPPENED.
I saw a rap battle video awhile back between one person representing D&D and the other representing the indie scene. One of the indie person’s lines was “You’ve got three pillars, but two of them are toothpicks.”
A long gone friend of mine was very good at both of these. He's how I grew up playing. Every campaign he ran was in the same world and so in addition to things we did affecting the present, things changed by the time or latest party and characters were rolling around. Still miss having him around.
But Eisenhour said it first. He said, Plans are useless but planning is essential. This has been adapted into the statement No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Very well chosen clips. I am especially fond of the knighting of Arthur. "In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I give you the right to bear arms and the power to mete justice."
It's good to see you up and running. I heard of your car crash from Tex. I hope you recover fully and make sure you say any pain, oddity, or possible injury to insurance. It helps down the line where you might end up with a life long ouchee. I know it can be depressing but you have loved ones all around you.
Statues in a square as a reward is also a reference for BG2: they're given after a mission in Trademeet. I won't tell more, go play the game and find it out yourselves.
Excellent video which more people should see. Love that you mention quests to find magic items rather than using the short dopamine hits of random tables luckily getting you something.
Thank you for the visual of Disney princesses gathered around the table, in the middle of this. It's a good prompt for trying to figure what each player wants and how it fits into these three pillars.
Bohemian Earspoon is basically a human-sized boar spear. That name is a direct translation of the German one, so ya know, German humor. As for the Macuahuitl, it's basically an oar with razor blades embedded on the edges, except the razors are volcanic glass. Basically it's how you make a sword when you don't have access to iron because you live on a volcano. The Maori and Hawaiians did similar things with shark teeth handaxes for exactly the same reason.
What you say about world building reminds me of Knights of the Dinner Table. B.A. is actually great about incorporating his players' actions into his world building. An ill advised decision to send an npc henchman to retrieve what turned out to be an artifact led to the rise of King Gilead, the aforementioned henchman. The decision to store a bunch of men along with a hefty list of supplies in a bag of holding resulted in the Barringer Rebellion. There was also the PC who became the minor God Knu Kyle Ra, the Doomsday Pack, a long legacy of adventurers referring to themselves as the Untouchable Trio. BA made it all part of his world's history.
The problem with giving the party with strategic weapons is that they generally have a very narrow use case. Sure you could nuke the army besieging the city, but chances are you are gonna destroy the city too. Your enemies learn this and won't present you with any free chances to wipe them out in one blow because they arnt stupid. Chances are the party will use them when they shouldn't and do far more damage than the threat they were hoping to stop.
Was that iranicus feom balders gate 2? Coles notes: listen to your players and be flexible. You know the best gm I know gave this advice: Let the players be the biggest obstacle they face. A d let me tell you after running one puzzle, I totally got it.
i wanted to leave my mark on the tavern in the middle of nothing by planting magic beans on its roof and suggesting the owner a new name for it. though the dm did not pick up on that.
Tinker Gnomes and a nuke, this sounds like the best solution for many of the plots now cannon around the realm of the lance. If there is anything you need hit me up.
For making characters invested in the world and the campaign, nothing solves that problem quite like using the Riddle of Steel family's method of character advancement. Games like Sword and Scoundrel, Song of Swords, or Blade of the Iron Throne all tie character progression to the goals of said characters. If slaying the dragon or rescuing the King's idiot son doesn't feed into something the PCs want, it doesn't give them XP. This creates a wonderful situation where players begin asking not only "What does my character believe or want?" but also "Why are we risking our lives for this? What's in it for us?". They stop treating the world like a sushi conveyor belt of monsters and loot to pick and choose from, but instead like a place that their PCs inhabit and have desires within. I highly recommend this method of XP, as it shifts the entire campaign more towards something like is being talked about here.
@@texteel I strongly disagree, milestone XP is a bad solution. It creates a feeling of DM fiat and aimlessness because you're going to be getting levels no matter what direction you go. Even if you go with "story based" milestones, that's such an arbitrary metric that both the DM and the players have no real direction for the session or campaign. Players need goals to work towards, or else the game has no focus. It also divorces the player incentive of higher levels and the character incentive of pursuing their goals, which the aforementioned solution harmonizes. When I've seen milestone XP used, the alteration in mechanical incentivization makes the game feel less player driven and more like a session of improv. Maybe your group likes that, but for my money, I prefer games where characters have definite goals and work towards them.
The exploration "pillar" is broken without the dungeon/exploration turn tracking system. Without procedures for keeping track of time, it tends to get handwaved. Which makes exploration feel hollow and meaningless.
Hello Mr. Welch, great video and topic. I'm glad you brought up the Maca from 2e. Been on my own crusade to bring those weapons back to life. It's taken me about a year (off and on) to be able to convert those numbers into 5e weapons. Maca. 15 gp, 4 lb, 1d4 bludgeoning + 1d4 slashing. Shaped like elongated paddles of hard wood, wide and flat blades with razor sharp shards of obsidian lodged into their edges. They functioned as both: bludgeoning and slashing weapons. That has been my thinking all along just introduced something a little different once in awhile. I got the joke about the +5 verses puppies, Mystara translation +5 verses Kobolds. Funny you showed a nuke going off at the end, I am going to use Blackmoor as my campaign setting. I knew Gnomes were Evil all along 😉. Thanks Mr. Welch you have a wonderful day!
@@francisdoherty5580 This is very true and fortunately I incorporate all of what was said and have done so for years. Course it's easier because I refuse to play wotc games.
Mr.goat is really good at what you just described I recommend his shadow run campaign,s on mikes channel there very good I like to pimp stuff I like that why I typed this .I very much enjoyed watching you on DM wally stream I hope you feel better soon and thank you for all the entertainment you have given me over the last two years
Perhaps all the more reason to encourage people away from Nu D&D. The designers will never get these ignored parts of the five pillars. Fortunately, there are plenty of choices out there.
Perhaps one day, I will absorb enough to become at least a decent gm. Sadly, I don't think that will happen as I don't get to play as much with few friends. Life is life, though. Videos games are now my go-to. One day, I hope to say I'm a grognard.
I know this is a month old video, but could you speak on the difference between a campaign and an adventure? I get the sense that my group DMs like to create campaigns, deep world building and story but often get too lost in the "sandbox". I'd welcome some kind of railroading if it meant we knew where to go. The last few years has felt empty, wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle. There's been a ton of player agency, it feels like we're driving the campaign and there's plenty to interact with, but the DM is really just reacting and the game eventually ends before any sort of adventure has been completed, or even found out what that adventure is. They're not inexperienced, they also really like Critical Role and other D&d UA-cam media. All I can really do is chuckle a little bit when they do the things their favorite D&d big name UA-camrs say you shouldn't. It is very much like you mentioned that Twilight Zone episode, I feel trapped in can't fail or can't do anything because there's only shallow choices.
Combat allows for mechanical role playing the other two does not. Too many does not to do book keeping so exploration is out. I have not found a system to make social interaction more that roll play game play. As for the story telling pillars that I do not have much to say.
99% of players today do not actually roleplay at all... Most players attend as human die-roller and do the "I follow the party" responses and do the Mother-may-I Q&A. If people learn how to actually roleplay they will find a more fulfilling game.
Mr. Welch has it right(ish). "Tuhl" is the popularized pronunciation by English speakers who only ever see Nahuatl words written. The Nahuatl language pronounces TL at the ends of words like macuahuitl, axolotl, or Quetzalcoatl as sort of a hard T "tuh" sound. There are a number of videos about this on UA-cam from native speakers and linguistics professors if you want to hear it and/or know more.
Dnd is a wargame with roleplaying tacked on,and now 5th ed is a video wargame on a tabletop, lol Thankfully, I found otger system early that had other ways of seeing things Great video
@@gendor5199 in short world building is planning your world to be shaped by the characters actions. You do this in advance and you give them opportunities created for them. Then you showcase these changes later in the campaign Character development is finding out what the players want their characters to aspire to be and set it up so that they can achieve their goals. Even creating specific adventures centered around fulfilling these plans
@@Mr_Welch Great summarization! Thank you very much for replying! It is definitely a tightrope to work out just enough without doing toomuch work and not quite getting started.
Gotta make one little disagreement right quick. Deliberately making a character bad at combat is objectively bad. Deliberately making a character bad at a thing you intend for them to be doing is bad character creation. There's not a single reason on earth to ever make your character complete and total dead weight in combat. Even if you're playing a roleplay focused non-caster, like a charisma rogue or something, there's no reason to completely dump every single combat stat and just deliberately be dead weight.
I like what you are saying, but its like spaghetti. Put your words up for reading, or give us some animated view of what you are saying to reinforce. Its like a shotgun of words but it does not hit anything downrange.
5e is dead WoTC killed it, in an effort to please everyone, to be all inclusive...the game now feels bland and stale. WoTC repeatedly rolls out more and more silly overpowered player options. DMing this system feels like babysitting a bunch of children on a power trip, the power creep is real. Ive been DMing 5e for almost 10 years ..and yeah its just gotten bad....solution try new systems. Dont get stuck in the tabletop version of world of warcraft....theres lots of other games out there. Inact the third pillar of ttrpg's by "exploring" new games.
More and more, I feel like the randomness of the old tables was key to the fun. Decide on the treasure type (heck, make your own treasure table) but don't roll until the players open the chests. Let them roll, even. Roll for random encounters so the players KNOW they're random and probably not very meaningful. You didn't GIVE them a vorpal blade; they FOUND it, fair and square. You didn't SEND a bulette their way; it just HAPPENED.
I saw a rap battle video awhile back between one person representing D&D and the other representing the indie scene. One of the indie person’s lines was “You’ve got three pillars, but two of them are toothpicks.”
You can't tease me like that without a link
@@Mr_Welch I wish I had it to offer; it doesn’t seem to be on UA-cam, and I don’t remember where I saw it.
A long gone friend of mine was very good at both of these. He's how I grew up playing. Every campaign he ran was in the same world and so in addition to things we did affecting the present, things changed by the time or latest party and characters were rolling around. Still miss having him around.
Nice quote of Baldurs Gate 2 Irenicus's speech right from the open.
"No adventure survives contact with Player Characters."
Murphy would approve of this rule.
But Eisenhour said it first. He said, Plans are useless but planning is essential. This has been adapted into the statement No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Damn you Mr. Welch! Now I have to go watch Excalibur. . . again.
The Gnomish Immortal of Artillery disagrees with the ending song, but agrees with everything else. Also, we may want an alignment check on that guy...
Very well chosen clips. I am especially fond of the knighting of Arthur. "In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I give you the right to bear arms and the power to mete justice."
As a quote from one of our Cyberpunk games:
"'No! Why would we ever need a T-sat?'"
If you need anything, reach out.
Spatula City! Buy 9 spatulas and get the tenth for one penny.
It's good to see you up and running. I heard of your car crash from Tex. I hope you recover fully and make sure you say any pain, oddity, or possible injury to insurance. It helps down the line where you might end up with a life long ouchee. I know it can be depressing but you have loved ones all around you.
Statues in a square as a reward is also a reference for BG2: they're given after a mission in Trademeet. I won't tell more, go play the game and find it out yourselves.
Excellent video which more people should see. Love that you mention quests to find magic items rather than using the short dopamine hits of random tables luckily getting you something.
Thank you for the visual of Disney princesses gathered around the table, in the middle of this. It's a good prompt for trying to figure what each player wants and how it fits into these three pillars.
The advice about gnomes at the end is very important.
Thank you for your time man, hope you are doing well.
lol. We were just talking about this and have been discussing it almost everytime we have meetings. Great topic and video.
Well THAT was a catchy jingle, damn it. Now I'm going to be hiking it the rest of the day
Bohemian Earspoon is basically a human-sized boar spear. That name is a direct translation of the German one, so ya know, German humor.
As for the Macuahuitl, it's basically an oar with razor blades embedded on the edges, except the razors are volcanic glass. Basically it's how you make a sword when you don't have access to iron because you live on a volcano. The Maori and Hawaiians did similar things with shark teeth handaxes for exactly the same reason.
What you say about world building reminds me of Knights of the Dinner Table. B.A. is actually great about incorporating his players' actions into his world building. An ill advised decision to send an npc henchman to retrieve what turned out to be an artifact led to the rise of King Gilead, the aforementioned henchman. The decision to store a bunch of men along with a hefty list of supplies in a bag of holding resulted in the Barringer Rebellion. There was also the PC who became the minor God Knu Kyle Ra, the Doomsday Pack, a long legacy of adventurers referring to themselves as the Untouchable Trio. BA made it all part of his world's history.
The problem with giving the party with strategic weapons is that they generally have a very narrow use case. Sure you could nuke the army besieging the city, but chances are you are gonna destroy the city too. Your enemies learn this and won't present you with any free chances to wipe them out in one blow because they arnt stupid. Chances are the party will use them when they shouldn't and do far more damage than the threat they were hoping to stop.
Like for the Krull reference.
Time After Time appreciation.
Was that iranicus feom balders gate 2?
Coles notes: listen to your players and be flexible.
You know the best gm I know gave this advice: Let the players be the biggest obstacle they face. A d let me tell you after running one puzzle, I totally got it.
Yes it was
@@Mr_Welch Lolz. Best video game villain ever.
Really enjoyed this video, amazing writing and insight
Can also attest from my friend's games, don't give gnomes nuclear weapons. Or let them build reality altering magic items.
i wanted to leave my mark on the tavern in the middle of nothing by planting magic beans on its roof and suggesting the owner a new name for it. though the dm did not pick up on that.
Fantastic video, Mr. Welch ❤
Great topic, I would love to hear more!
out of curiosity i measured. Parimaribo, Surinam is about as far away from Houston, Texas as Anchorage, Alaska is.
IDK why, but I now have an intense and immense desire for Mr. Welch to use that voice at the end for his PC in that group BECMI RPG he's doing.
Tinker Gnomes and a nuke, this sounds like the best solution for many of the plots now cannon around the realm of the lance. If there is anything you need hit me up.
spatula city... classic
For making characters invested in the world and the campaign, nothing solves that problem quite like using the Riddle of Steel family's method of character advancement. Games like Sword and Scoundrel, Song of Swords, or Blade of the Iron Throne all tie character progression to the goals of said characters. If slaying the dragon or rescuing the King's idiot son doesn't feed into something the PCs want, it doesn't give them XP. This creates a wonderful situation where players begin asking not only "What does my character believe or want?" but also "Why are we risking our lives for this? What's in it for us?". They stop treating the world like a sushi conveyor belt of monsters and loot to pick and choose from, but instead like a place that their PCs inhabit and have desires within. I highly recommend this method of XP, as it shifts the entire campaign more towards something like is being talked about here.
at that points just use milestone
@@texteel I strongly disagree, milestone XP is a bad solution. It creates a feeling of DM fiat and aimlessness because you're going to be getting levels no matter what direction you go. Even if you go with "story based" milestones, that's such an arbitrary metric that both the DM and the players have no real direction for the session or campaign. Players need goals to work towards, or else the game has no focus. It also divorces the player incentive of higher levels and the character incentive of pursuing their goals, which the aforementioned solution harmonizes. When I've seen milestone XP used, the alteration in mechanical incentivization makes the game feel less player driven and more like a session of improv. Maybe your group likes that, but for my money, I prefer games where characters have definite goals and work towards them.
@@GammaCyber1 but what you are suggesting is already DM fiat. "If you dont do what I think that you should be doing no XP for you"
The exploration "pillar" is broken without the dungeon/exploration turn tracking system.
Without procedures for keeping track of time, it tends to get handwaved. Which makes exploration feel hollow and meaningless.
Great advice. Thank you very much!
Get well
Fair points the question is how to teach the people on both sides of the DM screen?
Hello Mr. Welch, great video and topic. I'm glad you brought up the Maca from 2e. Been on my own crusade to bring those weapons back to life. It's taken me about a year (off and on) to be able to convert those numbers into 5e weapons.
Maca.
15 gp, 4 lb, 1d4 bludgeoning + 1d4 slashing.
Shaped like elongated paddles of hard wood, wide and flat blades with razor sharp shards of obsidian lodged into their edges. They functioned as both: bludgeoning and slashing weapons.
That has been my thinking all along just introduced something a little different once in awhile. I got the joke about the +5 verses puppies, Mystara translation +5 verses Kobolds. Funny you showed a nuke going off at the end, I am going to use Blackmoor as my campaign setting. I knew Gnomes were Evil all along 😉.
Thanks Mr. Welch you have a wonderful day!
Great video. The problem with some of it is if you're playing any of the wotc games those games seldom get past 5th level.
And, if properly used, these pillars will bring the campaign to higher levels. They need to be included from the start.
@@francisdoherty5580 This is very true and fortunately I incorporate all of what was said and have done so for years. Course it's easier because I refuse to play wotc games.
Mr.goat is really good at what you just described I recommend his shadow run campaign,s on mikes channel there very good I like to pimp stuff I like that why I typed this .I very much enjoyed watching you on DM wally stream I hope you feel better soon and thank you for all the entertainment you have given me over the last two years
I’m using the Dagger +1, +5 vs Puppies.
Perhaps all the more reason to encourage people away from Nu D&D. The designers will never get these ignored parts of the five pillars. Fortunately, there are plenty of choices out there.
Perhaps one day, I will absorb enough to become at least a decent gm. Sadly, I don't think that will happen as I don't get to play as much with few friends. Life is life, though. Videos games are now my go-to. One day, I hope to say I'm a grognard.
Life also finds a way...
Guns are not out of the scope for DND games. The origin of THE WAND OF MAGIC MISSLES was a six shooter for the earliest version of DND.
I know this is a month old video, but could you speak on the difference between a campaign and an adventure? I get the sense that my group DMs like to create campaigns, deep world building and story but often get too lost in the "sandbox". I'd welcome some kind of railroading if it meant we knew where to go. The last few years has felt empty, wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle. There's been a ton of player agency, it feels like we're driving the campaign and there's plenty to interact with, but the DM is really just reacting and the game eventually ends before any sort of adventure has been completed, or even found out what that adventure is. They're not inexperienced, they also really like Critical Role and other D&d UA-cam media. All I can really do is chuckle a little bit when they do the things their favorite D&d big name UA-camrs say you shouldn't. It is very much like you mentioned that Twilight Zone episode, I feel trapped in can't fail or can't do anything because there's only shallow choices.
I can certainly try
I thought one of the two pillars would have been mystara
Great advice
For a game so obsessed with combat, d&ds combat sure isn't very interesting or balanced.
Combat allows for mechanical role playing the other two does not. Too many does not to do book keeping so exploration is out. I have not found a system to make social interaction more that roll play game play.
As for the story telling pillars that I do not have much to say.
Mr. Welch! Love your stuff... Just one thing, it's pronounced m-ah k-ah wee till
99% of players today do not actually roleplay at all... Most players attend as human die-roller and do the "I follow the party" responses and do the Mother-may-I Q&A. If people learn how to actually roleplay they will find a more fulfilling game.
Cheers
The obsidian weapon would be phonetically Ma-ka-wheat-le if my memory is correct
Had to look it up. If it's wrong, blame Google.
Mr. Welch has it right(ish). "Tuhl" is the popularized pronunciation by English speakers who only ever see Nahuatl words written. The Nahuatl language pronounces TL at the ends of words like macuahuitl, axolotl, or Quetzalcoatl as sort of a hard T "tuh" sound. There are a number of videos about this on UA-cam from native speakers and linguistics professors if you want to hear it and/or know more.
Mah-kwa-hweeT
"Mac-aw-teel"
I have a quick tip for those that think the travel pillar doesn't exist - read the rules in the Adventuring cbapter, and implement them. Just read
Dnd is a wargame with roleplaying tacked on,and now 5th ed is a video wargame on a tabletop, lol
Thankfully, I found otger system early that had other ways of seeing things
Great video
It's Skyrim on paper, much like WoW on paper before it lol
@@docnecrotic lol, I started moving to BRP/RQ a long time ago,
@@stefanjakubowski8222 Nice
I am overwhelmed, didn't catch the lesson, and comments were only slightly helpful
@@gendor5199 in short world building is planning your world to be shaped by the characters actions. You do this in advance and you give them opportunities created for them. Then you showcase these changes later in the campaign
Character development is finding out what the players want their characters to aspire to be and set it up so that they can achieve their goals. Even creating specific adventures centered around fulfilling these plans
@@Mr_Welch Great summarization! Thank you very much for replying!
It is definitely a tightrope to work out just enough without doing toomuch work and not quite getting started.
Gotta make one little disagreement right quick. Deliberately making a character bad at combat is objectively bad. Deliberately making a character bad at a thing you intend for them to be doing is bad character creation. There's not a single reason on earth to ever make your character complete and total dead weight in combat. Even if you're playing a roleplay focused non-caster, like a charisma rogue or something, there's no reason to completely dump every single combat stat and just deliberately be dead weight.
I like what you are saying, but its like spaghetti. Put your words up for reading, or give us some animated view of what you are saying to reinforce. Its like a shotgun of words but it does not hit anything downrange.
Yeah... this applies to the Dungeon Master, not the system.
5e is dead WoTC killed it, in an effort to please everyone, to be all inclusive...the game now feels bland and stale. WoTC repeatedly rolls out more and more silly overpowered player options. DMing this system feels like babysitting a bunch of children on a power trip, the power creep is real. Ive been DMing 5e for almost 10 years
..and yeah its just gotten bad....solution try new systems. Dont get stuck in the tabletop version of world of warcraft....theres lots of other games out there. Inact the third pillar of ttrpg's by "exploring" new games.