Our party acquired a ship and when we decided to hire a crew, the dm got us each to make a crewmate who we would be responsible for roleplaying. Last game, the dm surprised us by making our crew members little character sheets with a special ability or bonus based on how we'd created them, and got us to play as our crewmates for a session. Our characters had gone off adventuring and had left the crew to man the ship, but it had come under attack by pirates! Here's hoping that none of our npcs die before the party can get back to help them.
In my home game we've kind of naturally filled some of those roles based on our characters' personalities. My character (ranger-rogue) would definitely keep a journal so I'm kind of the official note taker. Our rogue is the treasurer/map keeper and our cleric is very knowledgeable on the rules. (Our druid causes trouble and comes up with ideas for us to debate and our barbarian keeps track of our NPCs)
Love that!! Likewise, a few of these roles are naturally filled by some of our players in games that I'm in - it's awesome when stuff like this happens organically and helps everything flow.
It's the same at out table. All of this roles and many more are filled without the DM asking us for them. We have some players even fill and populate towns or villages for him when they have been there before in their backstories.
In one of my groups, we have a designated note-taker. He asked for the job and we happily encouraged it. Moreover, between sessions, he converts the notes into a full narrative of the session. When the campaign ends, we will have a full accounting of the story to read.
this is awesome! my character, a warlock with an 18 intelligence, is our designated note taker, and our monk is our artist both in game and out. our rogue keeps maps and other paper props, and our cleric-fighter is just the resident crackhead with actually pretty good ideas.
I once played with a DM who started every session by asking us players for the recaps. Over time, I naturally filled in the role of group historian (not because I was taking amazing notes but because I love reading and have always been pretty good at remembering story details).
One of my two games is like that! But in the other one, sometimes the DM will go "I'm sorry, I just threw this together ten minutes ago" and I can tell he feels like he should have a better-prepared recap. But he already does so much!!
Both my games (one as GM, one as player) do player-led recaps! It's helpful as a GM for me to gage whether or not my players are picking up the story that I'm trying to tell and if there's anything I need to clarify in that next session etc!
I usually ask that of my players. It does two things at once: 1) I don't trust myself to remember everything that happened in any given session, or what happened last in the previous session, and hearing this recap helps me remember and "get in the zone". 2) Different people often have very different recollections of what was important in a session, and hearing the players tell their version of the story helps me focus on the things they felt were the most important and expand the story along those lines.
In my own game, I keep track of the party's calendar. My DM has a timeline that he doesn't share with the party since it includes things that have started and we just haven't learned about yet, but I keep track of what the party knows for dates including ages and birthdays for the party and important NPCs. Everyone mocked my birthday tracking until I reminded them our elf paladin friend was 754...when elves normally only live to be 750.
My character writes home to her father about her adventures so I compile my notes after every session into a very detailed letter to send (sometimes complete, sometimes not). At the beginning of every session, I read out the latest letter. We’ve also done this with diary entries in other campaigns
That sounds like brilliant characterisation - and brilliant conflict bait! Love it, so much that this is wonderful for in game and out of game, what a great idea!
I would love a video where you give a sort of pros and cons for homebrew games vs. a campaign previously written by wizards of the coasts. It sounds like such an interesting difference and I was wondering which one you play/ have more experience with.
A friend I was in a game with brought their character’s child along on our party’s adventure and the DM let her roleplay both her character and the character’s child. We all had a blast interacting with the both of them and the moments between the character and the kid were so wholesome and sweet. It definitely made both characters more immersed into the world and more believable since our friend had created both the characters. Their bond was much stronger than if it was the DM and the player roleplaying.
I’m the detailed note taker for my party, for all my campaigns. The rest of the party teases me for my mechanical keyboard constantly going off in the background
In most of my games, I usually take on the role of "master NPC list keeper." So that whenever we encounter an NPC (either in-person or through lore or knowledge checks or whatever), I make a note of the name and a few details about who they are and where we met them. It comes in *super handy* when you want to remember, "Who was that goblin we met back in the caves six months ago who said he'd take us to the hidden waterfall?"
The Acquisitions Incorporated book does a great job of linking many of these jobs to the characters in game and even giving small mechanical benefits for doing do.
In one of my groups, everyone takes notes in turns and upload to our google drive his notes. In the next session, he is the one who does the recap. We also make dinner/breakfeast in turns, depends on the time of the session. I really like uploading notes from my character's prespective and also doing recaps in-character.
The shopkeeper/npc idea is fantastic! I like that it adds a sort of local culture/accent to an area if the player ends up talking different than your usual npc voices (we aren't all voice actors after all). And it really feeds your own creativity when they say something crazy and you have to find a way to fit it into your world building. That's why I always describe dnd as GROUP story telling. The best games are ones where the players are helping craft the world.
I actually played in a campaign where the DM didn't give us any maps of the world and one of our players was a dedicated cartographer who was mapping the world along our travels and it was a great experience and I can recommend this to anyone who would enjoy taking on such a role in your party because it's a really cool way to spice up the travels and exploration.
I have been blessed with a group of awesome players. They take notes, monitor the damage the enemy has taken, keep track of what numbers hit and what numbers don't, keep track of shared inventory for division back at their home base (mostly they shove everything into a bag of holding and sort it later). And they've made an GoogleDoc with every NPC I've come up with including their thoughts on them. With this it's very hard to sneak a plot point up to them unnoticed (but I have done it).
This is literally the only UA-cam channel where I don't skip the ads (the rest of the content is great, obviously, but I never see so much commitment in producing an ad).
I’ve been thinking about players playing NPCs for so long and it’s so nice to hear someone else vocalize it! I think it’s a great way for players to incorporate more of their backstory into play while giving them agency over it. That way it’s not all on the dm to remember each player’s full 7 page back story and all their family connections u feel me!
I have a different way of rolling initiative. Instead of doing it at the beginning of combat, everyone rolls at the beginning of each session. That way, when you ask a player to act, their mind doesn't necessarily immediately jump to combat the way it might when you tell everyone to roll initiative right before a combat encounter - you're asking the party to react to an incident, not specifically battle. It opens up the game to a much less combat-focused approach.
I've done this. It's great for downtown because instead of broadly asking "who's gonna do what?" you can cycle through the initiative order and roleplay the mini scenes that happen during downtime. It does have the downside of removing the dramatic "roll initiative" right before combat.
@@stevegruber4724 I don't really have an issue with removing that dramatic line, if it's in service of giving the players a subconscious wider range of options for various situations.
I like these ideas, but I have one more: why not have multiple DMs? With 2 DMs sharing the work you open up a lot of opportunities for collaborative storytelling, NPC interaction and dividing tasks without worry about metagaming. :)
The notetaking thing is so helpful. One of my fellow players kept a wiki for the campaign and she'd drop her notes there every session. We could all access and edit them if we remembered things differently or we could add more details. It was massively helpful.
I love these ideas! As a player I used to host/schedule. As DM I have asked players to manage music, takes notes, or roll for NPCs when there's a complicated battle. I really appreciate how inclusive your thought process was and the language in this video - as a disabled gamer there are things I can't do and I've played with others who had various limitations - being frank but not judgmental about it and framing it as everyone has different needs/abilities is just wonderful. It makes me feel seen and included, even if that wasn't deliberate.
I saw this advice floating around too and immediately adopted it. It's such a relief just to know that someone else at the table is assigned to these things for the DM or even the party. I have a party member who I straight up ask to roll for the enemies (I can trust my players very well or the rolls are done in a server channel) and collect the initiative for the group. Then it's one person reading me off a bunch of numbers they probably already have in numerical order for me by the time I'm done.
One of my players plays an Echo Knight in our Curse of Strahd game and plays his characters brother both in and out of combat, it works so well and really helps me out as DM.
I was once in a campaign doing a module. In one set fight there's a set of NPCs that comes in after x# of rounds to help the party win the fight. The DM gave us little cards about each of the NPCs and let us play them in combat based on stats and general notes about the characters. That's still one of my favorite campaigns because the DM gave us as players more work which got me even more invested in the world!
Thank you for mentioning people who can't listen and take notes at the same time. I've felt guilty about not contributing, but this video has pointed out that managing party loot and other similar smaller tasks is still helping out. 🖤
I love these, my group has been doing this to some degree naturally, anything to do with the characters or party they do, inventory, conditions, concentration, notes, they look after ..I have a vague idea but I can trust them to not cheat ... I always get the players to do session recaps as a group, it means I know what they think happened (with the odd gentle reminder), rather than what I know happened.. it sometimes gives me devious ideas when they do mis-remember (without high INT), or mis-interpret (without high WIS) ...
Great vid Ginny. There's honestly nothing like hearing good fresh D&D ideas! Personally, I use/encourage some of these already for my games (ie: Party Loot system, Rules, Notes & Party Cartographer). The Conditions/Concentration I struggle with that myself on Roll20, I think that's a fantastic idea for a person to take that, or even initiative. NPC's too would be sorta cool, definitely experimental. It's even cooler when the job is justified in character. Right now, we have an Investigator Rogue who is the primary "Notetaker" and recalls lore, clues, and story elements during the session (He's basically Sherlock). In another campaign, the Ranger was the party cartographer that drew maps and tracked exploration progress. Thank you again!
As a point of proof for the last suggestion, in regards to player controlled NPCs, that's been a huge benefit for me and the Pokemon D&D game I've been streaming on Saturdays! Especially during Trainer Battles. Instead of it being a one on one combat between me and another player, with the rest of the party just waiting. Another player takes control of that NPC, and now there's two players actively involved in the combat instead of just one. That then frees me up to moderate the fight, and involve the rest of the party in something else so they aren't just twiddling their thumbs for a while. (Plus, I'm not great at running combat anyway) Some NPCs I'm even marking as returning characters, and the player who represented them will get to reprise that role when they return in the future. On top of that, I allow viewers (and my players) to redeem channel points that allow them to make NPC trainers the party will come across. So any trainers the players create, they get to control when they happen to show up. So player controlled NPCs, especially for NPCs that might not hold large import over the plot or narrative, is extremely useful. I fully recommend doing it for anyone on the fence.
Ginny Di...That goblin cosplay is top-notch. Hard to recognize you, and the commitment to the voice/acting coupled with the outfit/makeup/prosthetics really take it to the next level. Just wanted to share my appreciation for what you share.
Hey :) In my group we choose to play as 2 DMS ! In the beginning I should have joined as a player but living with the "main" DM was making it hard not to speak about the adventure, so I just began to help with the preps instead. Now we have a pretty good organisation where I help create the story (being two permits to give a lot more life and backstory to the world : yes almost every bâtiment in this abandoned town has it's own story). In game the main DM take most of the roleplay, and guide the adventure, making the player take action (like "Roll for climbing this") while I take care of the map, effects and conditions, make sure he has the ennemies/pnj stats and backstories accessible at the right moment. I also take care of taking the initiative and rolling the npc's one. It also allow us a little bit more strength to our improvisation because I can rapidly take care of the unknown NPC the player have said they wanted to meet while the other DM describe the place and ask what they want to do for interaction... Meanwhile the players still have to take care of their own conditions, concentration, the music and notes, and making a recap at each beginning (as a group, even if some use to take more the job than other) Being two DM is a very rich experience, with a lot a advantage and a very strong bond. But it also demand being able to keep it low and not ressent the other when thing don't go your way, and being effective at communicating. I love the experience and would definitely recommend ! (That's my third time, with two different DM)
My first PC in our Campaign was an information broker, so I naturally started taking down interesting tidbits. We soon realized how huge and complex of a mystery our DM had woven into the story. (We all love mystery and I'm beyond impressed with it!) My 2nd lvl PC died session two due to a slightly OP homebrew statue mimic and a fully maxed out nat 20 damage roll. My next PC (who fits soooo much better and is much more fun to play) is an Artificer, who also took extensive notes. Due to Covid we couldn't play for over 6 months and our DM's file with his session notes got corrupted. My notes were all We had aside from vague 6 month old memories. Taking notes has helped our sessions, role-playing, detective skills, and saved my DM's sanity. Having at least one note taker, in my opinion, is extremely important! And can help spark memories months old that you hadn't even written down in those notes
I've been running initiative for our group for the last couple of months and it makes a surprising difference. Not just in removing the burden from our DM, but in giving him about a minute of almost uninterrupted time to re-familiarise himself with the enemies we're facing. Before we always used to get a tiny disconnect, now we usually get straight into combat.
in all my campaigns I ask 1 of the players (rotating, and sometimes its going to be me) to write a short summary into our discord, and then at the beginning of the next session 1 of the players does a normal recap too (and usually they get a minor reward for that, like inspiration) the summary helps me to look up stuff that was important in the players mind even months or years later :) and the recap just helps get everybody into the session and if a player does it I feel like other players are more likely to also chip in with details they think are important, which in turn might help shape the session :)
Great video as usual! My older sister has been helping me a lot recently with drawing maps on the fly and keeping track of initiatives and conditions. Also, if my players ever end up adopting an npc, I plan on giving them the option of handling them in combat.
I love the idea of this! I sort of inadvertently did some of this when I started DMing, because I still struggled with rules, numbers etc (and sometimes do to this day tbh) whereas my partner’s special interest has been DnD rules and lore for years. So I’ve always turned to him during sessions if I wasn’t sure of a rule, because it’s so much easier than shuffling around my books to figure it out.
Some notes on the suggestions! 1. Chris Trott runs the music for Mark Hulmes in High Rollers. He's an audio engineer, so his timing is always impeccable. I really recommend this one, especially if you have a really musically-minded player. Make sure they're on the same page as you music-wise, though (i.e. not playing Megalovania for enemy battles if you'd rather use the Witcher 3 or Divinity: Original Sin 2's more mellow scores). 2. I really just use third-party digital initiative trackers, and I'd rather I as a DM control it in case there are any hidden monsters the player characters aren't aware of. 3. I think physical markers for minis/tokens for conditions and concentration/bardic inspiration/etc tokens are much better tools for keeping track of these two. 4. Enemy HP loss is something that I reaaaaally want to keep in my hands for stuff like Theros' mythic actions, which I add to a lot of my homebrewed monsters. Having it be more nebulous makes it more immersive for my players, I feel. 5. OH GOD, YES, PLEASE HAVE PLAYERS TAKE NOTES. If people take anything away from this video, it's this. I have two players that take that responsibility away from me, and honestly they take better notes than I ever did. 6. D&DBeyond's new containers make it easier to figure out what's in shared storage, but they should be on one character's sheet since there's no shared storage yet. 7. No opinion on this one, since I use VTTs even for in-person play. 8. I personally have a lot of the rules and spells memorized myself, so I usually find myself in charge of this. Then again, I also do it in the game I play in. 9. Oh goodness, I would love it if my players took the job of scheduling off my hands for the game I DM. Thankfully, we're on a weekly Wednesday basis most of the time, but rescheduling a day where multiple players have to miss is always a headache. To make it even worse, I'm *also* in charge of scheduling the game that I play in. 10. I make the maps myself, but one of the note-takers is in charge of the map! 11. I've had players play roles in a pre-recorded message of an apocalypse, but other than that I feel better running all of the NPCs-if they're a part of a PC's backstory, I usually defer to things that the player imagined (vocal pattern, personality, sexuality, etc). I do let players roll for certain NPCs in combat if they have a lot of NPCs traveling with them, though! Overall, really good suggestions! I hope people take at least one thing away from this video (ESPECIALLY NOTE-TAKING AND SCHEDULING!)
An old gaming group that was running Earthdawn for a while had a GM that allowed players to earn a little extra xp by keeping an in-character log of what happened during the game session. He'd offer it around, and if a player hadn't done it recently, they'd get priority on handling it, but if a player wasn't interested, they didn't have to, and the xp wasn't enough to do more than just be a token. It was a lot of fun to read through how the other players used their character's voices to handle the journaling. My current gaming crew is a bunch of writers, so in one of our games, there are a lot of NPCs that are actually creations of various players where if it's a game-heavy scene, then the GM plays the NPC, but when it's a roleplaying scene, then the NPCs are controlled by the player who created them. As an example, one of my characters is in a relationship with an 'uncle' of another character who has been involved in some of our adventures. :D
My group uses Foundry, which makes Battle Map, Initiative, and rolls more simple. We each take our own notes for session recaps. I've been our item hoarder, so I keep the party gold and have started some music. I have GM'd before, so I've fallen in to the assistant role. It definitely makes more the games run smooth(er) when the GM can focus on story.
I have an amazing lore keeper who writes up a recap after every session. This is very helpful since we don't play weekly and occasionally we might go a month between games. I love the idea of handing off NPCs during combat, we do that PCs so that if we're only short one person I don't have to adjust combat I've prepped on the fly.
Something similar to battle maps happened a few months ago in my current campaign. We were at our first dungeon in the campaign (not to say it was early, we just hadn't been to a proper dungeon yet), and we walked in to see that the DM had placed a bunch of papers on the table in a specific layout. This would be our map of the dungeon, drawn on as we go amd discover more of it. The DM assigned one of the players to be in charge of drawing it as we go. I always bring my character mini, even though we never use it (we just don't have the money for elaborate stuff like that, and I only have a mini as a birthday present), so my mini was used to keep track of our position in the dungeon. It was great because the DM didn't have to move every time we left a room to draw, and my mini finally got some actual use, and I felt like I was useful/important for bringing it.
Our cleric player is our "white hat rules lawyer"! The rogue likes to draw digital art of the environment I describe, and the bard helps all the inexperienced players remember their abilites, sort of like a deputee DM, as well as taking in-depth notes. I love my players
I've taken notes in previous games, mainly to write down NPC names like you mentioned. But we're streaming our current game now and I found a better way to format my notes to line up with each session. My DM is very appreciative for the detail so he doesn't have to keep track of so much stuff. Players, if you can, take notes.
I have a few to add! I love doing these in my games. I like adding the titles I think it makes players excited to take on some of these responsibilities. Mathematician: Someone to help do quick maths (either a player whos just good at mental math or who has a calculator) Battle Master: Someone who runs groups of monsters in combat(this is GREAT for budding DMs) I only do this for low level minions, preferably something the group has fought plenty of times/don't have a lot of abilities. It just gives me a break in combat ya know, I can focus on running Vecna, one of the players can run this group of zombies. (I love your idea about doing this with roleplaying NPCs as well I never thought of that!) Navigator/Leader: I obviously don't want to give one player control of the group, so make sure to carefully choose this one. But sometimes players argue for hours over stupid stuff like "left tunnel or right tunnel". Having a leader the DM can call upon to simply make a decision can really help move the game along.
You just made me feel better about my contributions as a player! I do like 4/11 of those things when I play (though that's not really happening rn). Where I live we also have the added job of the person who serves and passes the drinks (mate or tereré). It's a cultural thing. Someone, maybe the rules-checker/lawyer, could also be in charge of keeping track of house rules. Wow, I loved the idea of players roleplaying different shopkeepers. It sounds like it could make really interesting and varied npcs. Also, it's nice to see how many of these jobs has Travis taken up. Also thinking of CR, I also prefer that there be more than one note-taker just in case.
I loved this video! I would love for there for be a part two or for this to be a series. I'm a new player and so grateful for what our amazing DM does for us, I'd love to know how we can make his job easier. I've been taking notes for the last two sessions, I'll start sharing them publicly with my party!
Some great ideas here. We use some of them at my table -- mostly developed organically. We find that using condition markers and initiative markers next to minis really helps everyone keep track of things, and at my table it is mostly the players who manage that. On having players run NPCs (perhaps someone has mentioned this elsewhere in the comments), that is a feature of one of the chapters of Storm King's Thunder. I really like your idea of having a player run something like a shopkeeper -- that would be a great way to give a player who is interested in learning to be a DM a taste of what it is like.
Thank you for this video! I really like how the suggestions reinforce the sense of community in the game and encourage people to work better as a team!
As someone who really struggles with paying attention while taking notes, I would definitely appreciate if other players took/shared notes with everyone. Sometimes I’m able to write bullet points in session and immediately type out everything I remember as soon as the session ends, but I know I still miss some important details. If I can read stuff, I can usually remember it, but if I hear it, it goes in one ear and out the other for the most part. And honestly, as someone who struggles to pay attention in general, having other tasks for me to do would help me stay engaged. I’d love to both lighten the load on someone’s shoulders, and give myself a task to keep myself responsible and present even when it’s not my turn in combat, or my character isn’t in a scene, or something.
Rule checker : Present ! / Also, the best job to hand to anyone else : the schedule ! When the players handle the schedule, 1) DM's job is way lighter, and 2) it shows how much they want to play ! I like that so much
Fabulous. My DM has is keep track of the inventory. And if we can't remember the name of a random NPC because we took bad notes, we won't run into them again. A friend loved a game she was playing where the DM had them playing NPC's especially when they got into a huge battle sequence. And having someone who keeps an eye out for concentration spells is always a good idea.
Something that I like doing as a player and like encouraging my players to do as a DM is asking the player to get the honor of drawing a map of their hometown (if it's a possible location we can go to). I do this for three reasons: 1.) It gets the player much more invested in the story than if the DM just does it for them. It's much more personal, so it hurts the player if a BBEG wrecks part of or all of their hometown. That's not a random house that got burned down. That was Old Man Jenkins' house. I used to go over there every day after chores to hear his stories about the great war. 2.) The player designing it gets them very familiar with the town as a setting. This is important, since the player character *grew up in the town.* It helps with RP more if the PC actually knows what their town is like instead of asking the DM if there's a local tavern. 3.) I'm totally not lazy, I swear.
I played in an Iron Kingdoms game several years ago now, and every now and then players would interract with their families, mentors, or other inportant figures in their lives through flashback, or in the now. Pur GM would assign important roles to the players whose character was not in focus at that moment to keep everyone involved. Some of our most emotional stuff came from those sessions. Highly recommend.
Oh heck yeah! As many jobs as I can pawn off on my players is excellent! If I'm NOT the DM I'm usually the note-taker. When I am DM I really wish someone else was ALSO taking notes. I love the idea of having players take on the roles of shopkeep NPCs, but I'm not sure how to work that if they have rumors to offer.
11:12 Since we have played multiple campaigns in our homebrew world Kal’Jaru (@Adventures in Kal’Jaru is our channel btw) we have certain now-NPC characters who are old retired PC’s- when they get used, the old player is invited to play that NPC.
I'd like to add a 12th idea: The Lore Master. At a couple of my table, the dm doesn't have a full grasp on how some monsters, class specific stuff, or lore specific stuff "works" for things specific to the Forgotten Realms. being the lore buff of the table & as someone who's RP'ed all the classes except Blood Hunter, Artificer, Druid, and Sorcerer, I will either point out neat little things about a monster, god/goddess/deity, PC race mechanic &/or lore (I play alot of elves, specificaly drow), or something about a town/city/place I've read about in lore dives or from reading The Legend of Drizzt books. There are a to of great youtubers out there who do lore dives & PC relelvnt content. The ones I've been going to a lot for lore & something to character creation are Ginny Di (RP tips, music, PC ideas, & more), Nerd Immertion (D&D New, Top 10's, new book breakdowns, & more), Jorphdan (sorter, but awesome D&D history, monster, & famous D&D NPC's), Mr. Rhexx (in-depth monsters, deities, NPC's, & LORE), Esper the Bard (informational D&D class & monster teir & etc.), and Bard College of Citris (funny & informational D&D songs).
I quite like how Earthdawn got the players to keep an actual journal - by offering ingame rewards for it. If the group kept a journal they could gain Legend Points from it (basically a mix of XP and how famous you've become) and once per year could sell a copy to the Great Library in Throal (a great dwarven kingdom) for some money. In one of my regular groups we usually start with a recap of the last session to which all of us (but one, more of that later) contribute, we have someone who keeps a journal including pics of the maps our GM draws and our group possessions (which includes a trading caravan) are managed by the player who can't remember the last session for the life of her (she has a rather mercantile outlook out of game as well, so I guess it comes naturally). We keep track of our allies and animals as well, both in and out of combat. Since almost everyone in the group is involved in at least one larger organization and/or cult in addition to our main employer/ally, we definitely do not fall into the lone wolf stereotypes, although we can do murder hobos pretty well at times. 😏
In the before times, when we played at tables, we had a person who ran the white board which we used to track initiative and conditions. I also have a chronicler whose job it is to put together summaries, and a treasurer. I like most of these suggestions. Some are taken care of by using a VTT (initiative is a big one), as well as tracking enemy HP, and the like. There are also some limitations VTT's though (at least with mine), like a player can't be given permissions to do certain things (placing icons on players, managing music, etc.)
If you think about it, while they do share a lot of the roles, you do see some parts of this with CR: for example in C3 you have Ashley on inventory, Marisha on notes, Travis on maps, etc.
we actually already do the NPC in combat in our latest curse of stradh campaign the dm gave one player control over Sorvia (a vistany we convinced to come with us ) and gave me control over Vanrichtin the dm plays them all the time but when they became a part of the party he handed their sheet to two players to control in combat Of course choosing the players is important as both players that got control of the NPCs know their ways around the respective class mechanics and it won't burden them (for example I know most spells in the game so it wasn't hard for me to run a wizard alongside my own cleric character) and honestly, it made the came faster as the dm didn't need to think a lot about these NPCs
I just had a fight break out at a ball where the players had been accompanied by multiple NPC's (friends/occasional antagonists/acquaintances). I had character sheets for them all so I just popped them in the group chat and players picked them up and ran with them while I focused on descriptions and the multiple antagonist combatants. It made managing the fight (especially over zoom, due to a sudden lockdown in my city) much easier. 🤣👍
My old group used to have 11 players in it. However, most of the time there was usually 4 people missing due to jobs, traveling and health issues. The in game explanation we had for random absences was that we were all part of a knighthood. We were essentially a supernatural bullsh!t response team, and there was always varying assignments. Our bard was killed a wheel of evil cheese from the dark realm though.
I've been giving out player jobs since about 2001. The primary ones are initiative (taken care of now by roll 20), lootmaster, and a temp effects tracker. I've also co-opted for people to play NPCs in the World of Darkness to reasonable success. These are great ideas, and are great ways of reducing the cognitive load on already taxed DMs.
As a player, I am always the music person. Choosing the right soundtrack for the right situation is something I feel is important, and love doing. My DM is always thankful when I make sure the ambience is appropriate, and that he doesn't have to worry about it, cuz he puts hella work into our campaign.
My character's backstory is 2 pages on him, and 2 more of me answering the 50 Questions from your 50Q video, and I linked that google doc and allowed commenting by our DM. Also my job is REAAAALLLY boring so I'm often thinking up random things and giving her extra ideas I have. Not all of them will benefit us, such as Zombie Phoenix Dragons! I don't know why I told her that idea. My backstory also leaves open who is the antagonist of my backstory, so she can make it work with her plans more easily. Our party is 8 players, so we do often have to just summarize a session for someone who couldn't come, but we have a range of a couple days it can be, Friday thru Sunday. Our DM makes all Maps and most NPCs, and is amazing at it. All NPCs we make are just from our backstory, only a couple have been RPed by the party. I love the idea for enemy HP though, we've always had one person list Initiative order and the DM puts colored circles on the enemies to help with that(we use the site Roll20), I'll tell him he should add damage taken, or I could take over that job!
Always love these videos, in my games at the start of a session my players do a “previously on...” and at the end Of the session they do a “summary”. Writing long detailed re-caps always made me really tired I found that it’s fun and works well enough.
Pretty late to the comment-game, but one thing I like to do is rotate certain jobs. For example the recap: We keep track of all Nat 20s and Nat 1s rolled in a session. Every person (players and DM) start with the counter 0, a 20 means +1 and a 1 means -1. Whoever has the lowest total at the end does the recap in the next session (because this could work like a punishment I as the DM take part - since I roll much more often, especially in combat heavy episodes, I end up doing around half of the recaps). Also, I barely take notes as the DM. Partly because I can remember a lot and write the session report in the following days anyways, and partly because my players send me their notes after every session (this is also great for learning what they liked/remembered the most - if they think it's important for the story and/or character development, they'll write it down. That way I know what interests them most - and what they might have missed, so that I can either also ignore that plot thread, or have it come back later for some dramatic plot twist). Whoops, sorry for the long comment xD
While I personally tend to inform the players of vulnerabilities/resistances/immunities for my monsters (as in, "they appear to take less damage than expected (damage was halved)", usually not "they are resistant to fire damage"), one way to let the players track enemy HP without doing so is by having the DM track only the "unknown damage": Whenever a monster takes additional damage (vulnerability), the DM reduces its HP by the amount of additional damage (same as the announced amount in the case of vulnerability); whenever some damage is negated (resistance/immunity), the DM increases its HP by the amount of damage negated (same as the announced amount in case of immunity, half that for resistance). Whatever number the DM is left with is the total amount of "flat" damage the players need to do to kill the monster. I imagine it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to get used to at first, but I think it could be pretty smooth once you get used to it. I think Matt Colville described this or something like it in one of his videos.
When my in person campaign got moved to roll20 after our favorite store got shut down, I was faced with the prospect of getting everything set up on an unfamiliar platform. I no longer had a white board I could quickly draw a room on. I ended up dividing the task with my players. Using dungeon scrawl, everyone build their character relevant locations that we frequently visited anyways. Our Ranger owns a shop, sorcerer is a librarian, bard works for a news station, etc. Let them have some fun customizing their spaces
I was listening to the video and writing down something on a different tab. Then I heard the ad music and then that voice caught me so off guard I jumped a little bit. Bravo
I've been a GM for nearly 30 years lol and these are all great ideas. I've never had help really myself, but the last few gaming sessions my other friends were GMing and I would get to play as a player, but still co-gm to help them out with some of these things but it's cool. We use tools like roll20 and hero labs and others for conditions/initiative tracking even in in-person gameplay. Sadly I'm typically the one to fill all these roles if I'm playing and not GMing lol but I will share this with my group to maybe get some to "step up" :D
In one of our sessions, there was a beauty pageant going on and our dm had each of us come up with and play a pageant contestant while our party watched the show. It was hilariously amazing
Scheduling tip for everyone: Decide on a schedule first (IE: every monday night, every other tuesday, whatever works for you) and then build a group around this schedule. When you invite a player, tell them when the group plays and then they'll join or not depending on whether or not they can make this work for them. It doesn't work if you already have a group of friends in mind, but it's been very successful for me. Setting the expectation about schedules from the get go has kept my games from turning into situations where we're always scheduling and never playing.
I really enjoy listening to how you explain things. Hearing this makes me want to see a D&D game with 0 DMs involved. also, I enjoyed the goblin store quest lady.
My druid looooooves the Conjure Animals spell - the first time I busted it out in combat my DM said "you want 8 hyenas? fine, you can have 8 hyenas but you're in charge of them." So I not only roll the attacks for anything I conjure, I also track their HP, their special abilities (pack tactics ftw), and their movement on the board. Truly shoving 8 additional creatures at the DM mid-combat is torture, and the fact that the spell itself says "the DM will keep track of the stats" is ABSURD!
In my current campaign world, there are a lot of player characters from one-shots previously played in the same world. Whenever one of them shows up, the player has full control of the character and his main PC at the same time.
We did a few of these, and it can indeed be very helpful. For initiative and conditions, we had tags hanging from the dm-screen (numbered tags for enemies). Maintained by the player next to the dm. By the time the dm was done rolling initiatives for the enemies, the players were already hanging there in-order. For 'player-controlled NPC's', we were going to do that, every character got an intelligent magic item, controlled by the player to their left. Unfortunately that campaign died, I'm curious how well this would have worked. For scheduling, I'm actually a bit surprised it's even on here. I wasn't aware this was even considered a dm-task. Yes this should be elsewhere.
My group used a Discord server, so we made a chat tab to fill with world-building ideas. A magical fantasy world will turn out quite different from the one we live in normally, so when anyone gets an idea of how things would just be different than expected, they post, we discuss, and we develop an immersive world that holds ideas that we collectively made-up. For examples: We just wanted one plane of existence. Any extradimensional space, such as from a bag of holding, is really just a permanent teleportation link to a fixed place that can be reached in the real world, but is often remote or secure enough to function regularly, most the time -- such as a bank vault or a mountain top. Inheritance laws are a total social construct that won't necessarily reach every society. Particularly on the road of adventure, there's no way to make a legal account for one's possessions or get them to an heir or next-of-kin. For a world with a lot of "Kill it and take its stuff" going on, it was ruled that looting the body of a fallen party member was just acceptable. You've probably done it in your campaigns, too, but without considering legal or social implications. Similarly, we've decided that the law of the kingdom (in which the main story took place) allowed for resurrections, but that one's property was forfeit. For the commoner, this didn't mean much, but without such a law, what happens to a lord's lands when he's resurrected five months after his appointed heir is ruling upon his death? Does she just cede it back to him or does he have no rightful claim? It does keep assassinations a real threat, even in a world where death isn't necessarily permanent. Someone made up a fantasy calendar. There's all sorts of strange customs, usually very localized. Some with amazingly detailed explanations, others that are observed through tradition, though no-one really knows why they were started. In short, all players should have some say in the world-building, if'n they are going to be expected to spend a significant length of time playing in it. The DM doesn't need to do all the work and cannot possibly guess at everything the players want.
I've definitely done a few of thses, less officially. We've almost always had a record-keeper, I gave them their own channel in Discord to manage, and they recap every session. The party inevtory also has a channel. And if the party wants NPCs to aid them in combat, that is 100% their responsibility to manage them. I could certainly incorporate a few others.
I don't play DnD, but I play Ars Magica every week and the player playing NPCs is sort of built in and it works well. Each player already gets 2 PCs for themselves and then there's a handful of extra people like guards that anyone can play. I am the notetaker of the group and my DM loves when I can pull up the name of something from forever ago (we've been playing for 4 years now). He also seems to really appreciate when we come with names of things ourselves, like one time we asked if there was a bar nearby and a player stepped up and named it before it was even a problem.
I'm really lucky. The game I'm currently DMing (the second one I've ever DM'd, but the first was in Call of Cthulu, so it's not fully relevant here) is a one-on-one with another DM that's got a decent amount of campaigns under his belt. Given that he *loves* to play DnD and seems to be enjoying the game greatly, he's more than willing to help me with setting things up and, due to the fact that he's able to completely (or, nearly so) separate OOC from in-character knowledge, I've not yet had any issues with him helping me with things like NPC character sheets, maps, and general setup before the actual game. He also runs a campaign for me one-on-one and I'm somewhat ashamed to say I didn't help him set it up yet, but that's mostly because he always seems to have everything ready by the time we speak about it (unlike me >.> ) and, possibly, because I'm quite new to DMing, so I'm still very slow at such things. That said, I have started to come up with my own feats and some of the house rules I've invented for the campaign I'm running have made their way into the one he's running for me (such as Intimidation being governed either by CHA or STR, depending on how it's done, to name a simple one). Many a time we also agree on what calls to make rules-wise and simply use those for both games, should they come up. It's pretty great. ^_^
One thing players could do to help the DM is to talk to him before or after the game about stuff like rules they aren't sure of or concerns they have about the game. It is much easier to resolve that kind of stuff ahead of time, than while the game is running.
Ooo!! I used to be the NPC manager of my table. We would use it strictly in combat, and I would just choose what move to do for the npc I was role playing.
Our party acquired a ship and when we decided to hire a crew, the dm got us each to make a crewmate who we would be responsible for roleplaying. Last game, the dm surprised us by making our crew members little character sheets with a special ability or bonus based on how we'd created them, and got us to play as our crewmates for a session. Our characters had gone off adventuring and had left the crew to man the ship, but it had come under attack by pirates! Here's hoping that none of our npcs die before the party can get back to help them.
This is kind of awesome. I might have to use this at some point....
My Players recently acquired a ship, if they decide to hire people I might steal that idea :D
That is legitimately delightful, love that!
*scribbling DM noises intensify*
Well, that is just a swell idea. I'm sure it will hold water. I hope the tide turns in your favor.
In my home game we've kind of naturally filled some of those roles based on our characters' personalities. My character (ranger-rogue) would definitely keep a journal so I'm kind of the official note taker. Our rogue is the treasurer/map keeper and our cleric is very knowledgeable on the rules. (Our druid causes trouble and comes up with ideas for us to debate and our barbarian keeps track of our NPCs)
Love that!! Likewise, a few of these roles are naturally filled by some of our players in games that I'm in - it's awesome when stuff like this happens organically and helps everything flow.
It's the same at out table. All of this roles and many more are filled without the DM asking us for them. We have some players even fill and populate towns or villages for him when they have been there before in their backstories.
In one of my groups, we have a designated note-taker. He asked for the job and we happily encouraged it. Moreover, between sessions, he converts the notes into a full narrative of the session. When the campaign ends, we will have a full accounting of the story to read.
@@JedisTrek oh, man, amazing
this is awesome! my character, a warlock with an 18 intelligence, is our designated note taker, and our monk is our artist both in game and out. our rogue keeps maps and other paper props, and our cleric-fighter is just the resident crackhead with actually pretty good ideas.
I once played with a DM who started every session by asking us players for the recaps. Over time, I naturally filled in the role of group historian (not because I was taking amazing notes but because I love reading and have always been pretty good at remembering story details).
One of my two games is like that! But in the other one, sometimes the DM will go "I'm sorry, I just threw this together ten minutes ago" and I can tell he feels like he should have a better-prepared recap. But he already does so much!!
Recapper gets inspiration for us!
In my old group we recorded an audio in which we did the recap and told about each personal ideas or goals for the next session. That was also cool.
Both my games (one as GM, one as player) do player-led recaps! It's helpful as a GM for me to gage whether or not my players are picking up the story that I'm trying to tell and if there's anything I need to clarify in that next session etc!
I usually ask that of my players. It does two things at once:
1) I don't trust myself to remember everything that happened in any given session, or what happened last in the previous session, and hearing this recap helps me remember and "get in the zone".
2) Different people often have very different recollections of what was important in a session, and hearing the players tell their version of the story helps me focus on the things they felt were the most important and expand the story along those lines.
In my own game, I keep track of the party's calendar. My DM has a timeline that he doesn't share with the party since it includes things that have started and we just haven't learned about yet, but I keep track of what the party knows for dates including ages and birthdays for the party and important NPCs.
Everyone mocked my birthday tracking until I reminded them our elf paladin friend was 754...when elves normally only live to be 750.
My character writes home to her father about her adventures so I compile my notes after every session into a very detailed letter to send (sometimes complete, sometimes not). At the beginning of every session, I read out the latest letter. We’ve also done this with diary entries in other campaigns
That is a really neat idea. Do you mind if I steal it 🤫
That's a super cute idea!
@@joze838 go for it - good ideas are meant to be shared
That sounds like brilliant characterisation - and brilliant conflict bait! Love it, so much that this is wonderful for in game and out of game, what a great idea!
If I had a player do this I would find some justification to give them gold for it - this is awesome from both a tracking and flavor perspective.
I would love a video where you give a sort of pros and cons for homebrew games vs. a campaign previously written by wizards of the coasts. It sounds like such an interesting difference and I was wondering which one you play/ have more experience with.
A friend I was in a game with brought their character’s child along on our party’s adventure and the DM let her roleplay both her character and the character’s child. We all had a blast interacting with the both of them and the moments between the character and the kid were so wholesome and sweet. It definitely made both characters more immersed into the world and more believable since our friend had created both the characters. Their bond was much stronger than if it was the DM and the player roleplaying.
I’m the detailed note taker for my party, for all my campaigns. The rest of the party teases me for my mechanical keyboard constantly going off in the background
In most of my games, I usually take on the role of "master NPC list keeper." So that whenever we encounter an NPC (either in-person or through lore or knowledge checks or whatever), I make a note of the name and a few details about who they are and where we met them. It comes in *super handy* when you want to remember, "Who was that goblin we met back in the caves six months ago who said he'd take us to the hidden waterfall?"
That's a really good job. When I take my notes I make the names really bold and easy to find.
I totally love your sponsored bits, the characters and dynamics are amazing
I get the impression she was a theater geek in middle and/or high school. That level of acting talent just suggests lots of experience.
The Acquisitions Incorporated book does a great job of linking many of these jobs to the characters in game and even giving small mechanical benefits for doing do.
In one of my groups, everyone takes notes in turns and upload to our google drive his notes. In the next session, he is the one who does the recap. We also make dinner/breakfeast in turns, depends on the time of the session. I really like uploading notes from my character's prespective and also doing recaps in-character.
The shopkeeper/npc idea is fantastic!
I like that it adds a sort of local culture/accent to an area if the player ends up talking different than your usual npc voices (we aren't all voice actors after all). And it really feeds your own creativity when they say something crazy and you have to find a way to fit it into your world building. That's why I always describe dnd as GROUP story telling. The best games are ones where the players are helping craft the world.
I actually played in a campaign where the DM didn't give us any maps of the world and one of our players was a dedicated cartographer who was mapping the world along our travels and it was a great experience and I can recommend this to anyone who would enjoy taking on such a role in your party because it's a really cool way to spice up the travels and exploration.
I have been blessed with a group of awesome players. They take notes, monitor the damage the enemy has taken, keep track of what numbers hit and what numbers don't, keep track of shared inventory for division back at their home base (mostly they shove everything into a bag of holding and sort it later). And they've made an GoogleDoc with every NPC I've come up with including their thoughts on them. With this it's very hard to sneak a plot point up to them unnoticed (but I have done it).
This sounds like a great solution for my table full of short-attention-span adult players. Thanks for a video full of excellent ideas to try!
This is literally the only UA-cam channel where I don't skip the ads (the rest of the content is great, obviously, but I never see so much commitment in producing an ad).
I’ve been thinking about players playing NPCs for so long and it’s so nice to hear someone else vocalize it! I think it’s a great way for players to incorporate more of their backstory into play while giving them agency over it. That way it’s not all on the dm to remember each player’s full 7 page back story and all their family connections u feel me!
I have a different way of rolling initiative. Instead of doing it at the beginning of combat, everyone rolls at the beginning of each session. That way, when you ask a player to act, their mind doesn't necessarily immediately jump to combat the way it might when you tell everyone to roll initiative right before a combat encounter - you're asking the party to react to an incident, not specifically battle. It opens up the game to a much less combat-focused approach.
I've done this. It's great for downtown because instead of broadly asking "who's gonna do what?" you can cycle through the initiative order and roleplay the mini scenes that happen during downtime. It does have the downside of removing the dramatic "roll initiative" right before combat.
@@stevegruber4724 I don't really have an issue with removing that dramatic line, if it's in service of giving the players a subconscious wider range of options for various situations.
I like these ideas, but I have one more: why not have multiple DMs? With 2 DMs sharing the work you open up a lot of opportunities for collaborative storytelling, NPC interaction and dividing tasks without worry about metagaming. :)
The little flourish and voice during "I think its MORE than fair" cracked me up hard. I always watch your "commercials" lol.
The notetaking thing is so helpful. One of my fellow players kept a wiki for the campaign and she'd drop her notes there every session. We could all access and edit them if we remembered things differently or we could add more details. It was massively helpful.
I love these ideas! As a player I used to host/schedule. As DM I have asked players to manage music, takes notes, or roll for NPCs when there's a complicated battle. I really appreciate how inclusive your thought process was and the language in this video - as a disabled gamer there are things I can't do and I've played with others who had various limitations - being frank but not judgmental about it and framing it as everyone has different needs/abilities is just wonderful. It makes me feel seen and included, even if that wasn't deliberate.
I saw this advice floating around too and immediately adopted it. It's such a relief just to know that someone else at the table is assigned to these things for the DM or even the party. I have a party member who I straight up ask to roll for the enemies (I can trust my players very well or the rolls are done in a server channel) and collect the initiative for the group. Then it's one person reading me off a bunch of numbers they probably already have in numerical order for me by the time I'm done.
One of my players plays an Echo Knight in our Curse of Strahd game and plays his characters brother both in and out of combat, it works so well and really helps me out as DM.
I was once in a campaign doing a module. In one set fight there's a set of NPCs that comes in after x# of rounds to help the party win the fight. The DM gave us little cards about each of the NPCs and let us play them in combat based on stats and general notes about the characters. That's still one of my favorite campaigns because the DM gave us as players more work which got me even more invested in the world!
Thank you for mentioning people who can't listen and take notes at the same time. I've felt guilty about not contributing, but this video has pointed out that managing party loot and other similar smaller tasks is still helping out. 🖤
I love these, my group has been doing this to some degree naturally, anything to do with the characters or party they do, inventory, conditions, concentration, notes, they look after ..I have a vague idea but I can trust them to not cheat ...
I always get the players to do session recaps as a group, it means I know what they think happened (with the odd gentle reminder), rather than what I know happened.. it sometimes gives me devious ideas when they do mis-remember (without high INT), or mis-interpret (without high WIS) ...
Great vid Ginny. There's honestly nothing like hearing good fresh D&D ideas!
Personally, I use/encourage some of these already for my games (ie: Party Loot system, Rules, Notes & Party Cartographer). The Conditions/Concentration I struggle with that myself on Roll20, I think that's a fantastic idea for a person to take that, or even initiative. NPC's too would be sorta cool, definitely experimental.
It's even cooler when the job is justified in character. Right now, we have an Investigator Rogue who is the primary "Notetaker" and recalls lore, clues, and story elements during the session (He's basically Sherlock). In another campaign, the Ranger was the party cartographer that drew maps and tracked exploration progress.
Thank you again!
As a point of proof for the last suggestion, in regards to player controlled NPCs, that's been a huge benefit for me and the Pokemon D&D game I've been streaming on Saturdays! Especially during Trainer Battles. Instead of it being a one on one combat between me and another player, with the rest of the party just waiting. Another player takes control of that NPC, and now there's two players actively involved in the combat instead of just one. That then frees me up to moderate the fight, and involve the rest of the party in something else so they aren't just twiddling their thumbs for a while. (Plus, I'm not great at running combat anyway)
Some NPCs I'm even marking as returning characters, and the player who represented them will get to reprise that role when they return in the future. On top of that, I allow viewers (and my players) to redeem channel points that allow them to make NPC trainers the party will come across. So any trainers the players create, they get to control when they happen to show up.
So player controlled NPCs, especially for NPCs that might not hold large import over the plot or narrative, is extremely useful. I fully recommend doing it for anyone on the fence.
Ginny Di...That goblin cosplay is top-notch. Hard to recognize you, and the commitment to the voice/acting coupled with the outfit/makeup/prosthetics really take it to the next level. Just wanted to share my appreciation for what you share.
Hey :)
In my group we choose to play as 2 DMS !
In the beginning I should have joined as a player but living with the "main" DM was making it hard not to speak about the adventure, so I just began to help with the preps instead. Now we have a pretty good organisation where I help create the story (being two permits to give a lot more life and backstory to the world : yes almost every bâtiment in this abandoned town has it's own story). In game the main DM take most of the roleplay, and guide the adventure, making the player take action (like "Roll for climbing this") while I take care of the map, effects and conditions, make sure he has the ennemies/pnj stats and backstories accessible at the right moment. I also take care of taking the initiative and rolling the npc's one. It also allow us a little bit more strength to our improvisation because I can rapidly take care of the unknown NPC the player have said they wanted to meet while the other DM describe the place and ask what they want to do for interaction...
Meanwhile the players still have to take care of their own conditions, concentration, the music and notes, and making a recap at each beginning (as a group, even if some use to take more the job than other)
Being two DM is a very rich experience, with a lot a advantage and a very strong bond. But it also demand being able to keep it low and not ressent the other when thing don't go your way, and being effective at communicating. I love the experience and would definitely recommend ! (That's my third time, with two different DM)
My first PC in our Campaign was an information broker, so I naturally started taking down interesting tidbits.
We soon realized how huge and complex of a mystery our DM had woven into the story. (We all love mystery and I'm beyond impressed with it!)
My 2nd lvl PC died session two due to a slightly OP homebrew statue mimic and a fully maxed out nat 20 damage roll. My next PC (who fits soooo much better and is much more fun to play) is an Artificer, who also took extensive notes.
Due to Covid we couldn't play for over 6 months and our DM's file with his session notes got corrupted. My notes were all We had aside from vague 6 month old memories. Taking notes has helped our sessions, role-playing, detective skills, and saved my DM's sanity. Having at least one note taker, in my opinion, is extremely important! And can help spark memories months old that you hadn't even written down in those notes
I've been running initiative for our group for the last couple of months and it makes a surprising difference. Not just in removing the burden from our DM, but in giving him about a minute of almost uninterrupted time to re-familiarise himself with the enemies we're facing. Before we always used to get a tiny disconnect, now we usually get straight into combat.
My players handle their own timeline entries too! Fantastic video, GDee!
in all my campaigns I ask 1 of the players (rotating, and sometimes its going to be me) to write a short summary into our discord, and then at the beginning of the next session 1 of the players does a normal recap too (and usually they get a minor reward for that, like inspiration)
the summary helps me to look up stuff that was important in the players mind even months or years later :) and the recap just helps get everybody into the session and if a player does it I feel like other players are more likely to also chip in with details they think are important, which in turn might help shape the session :)
Great video as usual! My older sister has been helping me a lot recently with drawing maps on the fly and keeping track of initiatives and conditions. Also, if my players ever end up adopting an npc, I plan on giving them the option of handling them in combat.
I love the idea of this! I sort of inadvertently did some of this when I started DMing, because I still struggled with rules, numbers etc (and sometimes do to this day tbh) whereas my partner’s special interest has been DnD rules and lore for years. So I’ve always turned to him during sessions if I wasn’t sure of a rule, because it’s so much easier than shuffling around my books to figure it out.
Some notes on the suggestions!
1. Chris Trott runs the music for Mark Hulmes in High Rollers. He's an audio engineer, so his timing is always impeccable. I really recommend this one, especially if you have a really musically-minded player. Make sure they're on the same page as you music-wise, though (i.e. not playing Megalovania for enemy battles if you'd rather use the Witcher 3 or Divinity: Original Sin 2's more mellow scores).
2. I really just use third-party digital initiative trackers, and I'd rather I as a DM control it in case there are any hidden monsters the player characters aren't aware of.
3. I think physical markers for minis/tokens for conditions and concentration/bardic inspiration/etc tokens are much better tools for keeping track of these two.
4. Enemy HP loss is something that I reaaaaally want to keep in my hands for stuff like Theros' mythic actions, which I add to a lot of my homebrewed monsters. Having it be more nebulous makes it more immersive for my players, I feel.
5. OH GOD, YES, PLEASE HAVE PLAYERS TAKE NOTES. If people take anything away from this video, it's this. I have two players that take that responsibility away from me, and honestly they take better notes than I ever did.
6. D&DBeyond's new containers make it easier to figure out what's in shared storage, but they should be on one character's sheet since there's no shared storage yet.
7. No opinion on this one, since I use VTTs even for in-person play.
8. I personally have a lot of the rules and spells memorized myself, so I usually find myself in charge of this. Then again, I also do it in the game I play in.
9. Oh goodness, I would love it if my players took the job of scheduling off my hands for the game I DM. Thankfully, we're on a weekly Wednesday basis most of the time, but rescheduling a day where multiple players have to miss is always a headache. To make it even worse, I'm *also* in charge of scheduling the game that I play in.
10. I make the maps myself, but one of the note-takers is in charge of the map!
11. I've had players play roles in a pre-recorded message of an apocalypse, but other than that I feel better running all of the NPCs-if they're a part of a PC's backstory, I usually defer to things that the player imagined (vocal pattern, personality, sexuality, etc). I do let players roll for certain NPCs in combat if they have a lot of NPCs traveling with them, though!
Overall, really good suggestions! I hope people take at least one thing away from this video (ESPECIALLY NOTE-TAKING AND SCHEDULING!)
An old gaming group that was running Earthdawn for a while had a GM that allowed players to earn a little extra xp by keeping an in-character log of what happened during the game session. He'd offer it around, and if a player hadn't done it recently, they'd get priority on handling it, but if a player wasn't interested, they didn't have to, and the xp wasn't enough to do more than just be a token. It was a lot of fun to read through how the other players used their character's voices to handle the journaling.
My current gaming crew is a bunch of writers, so in one of our games, there are a lot of NPCs that are actually creations of various players where if it's a game-heavy scene, then the GM plays the NPC, but when it's a roleplaying scene, then the NPCs are controlled by the player who created them. As an example, one of my characters is in a relationship with an 'uncle' of another character who has been involved in some of our adventures. :D
My group uses Foundry, which makes Battle Map, Initiative, and rolls more simple. We each take our own notes for session recaps. I've been our item hoarder, so I keep the party gold and have started some music. I have GM'd before, so I've fallen in to the assistant role. It definitely makes more the games run smooth(er) when the GM can focus on story.
When talking about NPCs, you're basically describing most of the King Arthur Pendragon games I've run over the last few years. :D
I have an amazing lore keeper who writes up a recap after every session. This is very helpful since we don't play weekly and occasionally we might go a month between games. I love the idea of handing off NPCs during combat, we do that PCs so that if we're only short one person I don't have to adjust combat I've prepped on the fly.
Something similar to battle maps happened a few months ago in my current campaign. We were at our first dungeon in the campaign (not to say it was early, we just hadn't been to a proper dungeon yet), and we walked in to see that the DM had placed a bunch of papers on the table in a specific layout. This would be our map of the dungeon, drawn on as we go amd discover more of it. The DM assigned one of the players to be in charge of drawing it as we go. I always bring my character mini, even though we never use it (we just don't have the money for elaborate stuff like that, and I only have a mini as a birthday present), so my mini was used to keep track of our position in the dungeon. It was great because the DM didn't have to move every time we left a room to draw, and my mini finally got some actual use, and I felt like I was useful/important for bringing it.
Our cleric player is our "white hat rules lawyer"! The rogue likes to draw digital art of the environment I describe, and the bard helps all the inexperienced players remember their abilites, sort of like a deputee DM, as well as taking in-depth notes.
I love my players
I've taken notes in previous games, mainly to write down NPC names like you mentioned. But we're streaming our current game now and I found a better way to format my notes to line up with each session. My DM is very appreciative for the detail so he doesn't have to keep track of so much stuff. Players, if you can, take notes.
I have a few to add! I love doing these in my games. I like adding the titles I think it makes players excited to take on some of these responsibilities.
Mathematician: Someone to help do quick maths (either a player whos just good at mental math or who has a calculator)
Battle Master: Someone who runs groups of monsters in combat(this is GREAT for budding DMs) I only do this for low level minions, preferably something the group has fought plenty of times/don't have a lot of abilities. It just gives me a break in combat ya know, I can focus on running Vecna, one of the players can run this group of zombies. (I love your idea about doing this with roleplaying NPCs as well I never thought of that!)
Navigator/Leader: I obviously don't want to give one player control of the group, so make sure to carefully choose this one. But sometimes players argue for hours over stupid stuff like "left tunnel or right tunnel". Having a leader the DM can call upon to simply make a decision can really help move the game along.
You just made me feel better about my contributions as a player! I do like 4/11 of those things when I play (though that's not really happening rn).
Where I live we also have the added job of the person who serves and passes the drinks (mate or tereré). It's a cultural thing.
Someone, maybe the rules-checker/lawyer, could also be in charge of keeping track of house rules.
Wow, I loved the idea of players roleplaying different shopkeepers. It sounds like it could make really interesting and varied npcs.
Also, it's nice to see how many of these jobs has Travis taken up. Also thinking of CR, I also prefer that there be more than one note-taker just in case.
I loved this video! I would love for there for be a part two or for this to be a series. I'm a new player and so grateful for what our amazing DM does for us, I'd love to know how we can make his job easier. I've been taking notes for the last two sessions, I'll start sharing them publicly with my party!
Some great ideas here. We use some of them at my table -- mostly developed organically. We find that using condition markers and initiative markers next to minis really helps everyone keep track of things, and at my table it is mostly the players who manage that. On having players run NPCs (perhaps someone has mentioned this elsewhere in the comments), that is a feature of one of the chapters of Storm King's Thunder. I really like your idea of having a player run something like a shopkeeper -- that would be a great way to give a player who is interested in learning to be a DM a taste of what it is like.
Thank you for this video! I really like how the suggestions reinforce the sense of community in the game and encourage people to work better as a team!
As someone who really struggles with paying attention while taking notes, I would definitely appreciate if other players took/shared notes with everyone. Sometimes I’m able to write bullet points in session and immediately type out everything I remember as soon as the session ends, but I know I still miss some important details. If I can read stuff, I can usually remember it, but if I hear it, it goes in one ear and out the other for the most part.
And honestly, as someone who struggles to pay attention in general, having other tasks for me to do would help me stay engaged. I’d love to both lighten the load on someone’s shoulders, and give myself a task to keep myself responsible and present even when it’s not my turn in combat, or my character isn’t in a scene, or something.
Best work around to the good morning or whatever thing I've ever heard!
I really appreciate the work you put into your sponsorship ads. Nice job Ginny Di.
Rule checker : Present ! / Also, the best job to hand to anyone else : the schedule ! When the players handle the schedule, 1) DM's job is way lighter, and 2) it shows how much they want to play ! I like that so much
Fabulous. My DM has is keep track of the inventory. And if we can't remember the name of a random NPC because we took bad notes, we won't run into them again. A friend loved a game she was playing where the DM had them playing NPC's especially when they got into a huge battle sequence. And having someone who keeps an eye out for concentration spells is always a good idea.
I swear your sponsor commercials are one of the few I don’t skip!
"Good time zone to you." lol that joke already gets you a thumbs up.
Something that I like doing as a player and like encouraging my players to do as a DM is asking the player to get the honor of drawing a map of their hometown (if it's a possible location we can go to).
I do this for three reasons:
1.) It gets the player much more invested in the story than if the DM just does it for them. It's much more personal, so it hurts the player if a BBEG wrecks part of or all of their hometown. That's not a random house that got burned down. That was Old Man Jenkins' house. I used to go over there every day after chores to hear his stories about the great war.
2.) The player designing it gets them very familiar with the town as a setting. This is important, since the player character *grew up in the town.* It helps with RP more if the PC actually knows what their town is like instead of asking the DM if there's a local tavern.
3.) I'm totally not lazy, I swear.
I played in an Iron Kingdoms game several years ago now, and every now and then players would interract with their families, mentors, or other inportant figures in their lives through flashback, or in the now. Pur GM would assign important roles to the players whose character was not in focus at that moment to keep everyone involved. Some of our most emotional stuff came from those sessions. Highly recommend.
Oh heck yeah! As many jobs as I can pawn off on my players is excellent! If I'm NOT the DM I'm usually the note-taker. When I am DM I really wish someone else was ALSO taking notes. I love the idea of having players take on the roles of shopkeep NPCs, but I'm not sure how to work that if they have rumors to offer.
11:12 Since we have played multiple campaigns in our homebrew world Kal’Jaru (@Adventures in Kal’Jaru is our channel btw) we have certain now-NPC characters who are old retired PC’s- when they get used, the old player is invited to play that NPC.
I'd like to add a 12th idea: The Lore Master.
At a couple of my table, the dm doesn't have a full grasp on how some monsters, class specific stuff, or lore specific stuff "works" for things specific to the Forgotten Realms. being the lore buff of the table & as someone who's RP'ed all the classes except Blood Hunter, Artificer, Druid, and Sorcerer, I will either point out neat little things about a monster, god/goddess/deity, PC race mechanic &/or lore (I play alot of elves, specificaly drow), or something about a town/city/place I've read about in lore dives or from reading The Legend of Drizzt books.
There are a to of great youtubers out there who do lore dives & PC relelvnt content. The ones I've been going to a lot for lore & something to character creation are Ginny Di (RP tips, music, PC ideas, & more), Nerd Immertion (D&D New, Top 10's, new book breakdowns, & more), Jorphdan (sorter, but awesome D&D history, monster, & famous D&D NPC's), Mr. Rhexx (in-depth monsters, deities, NPC's, & LORE), Esper the Bard (informational D&D class & monster teir & etc.), and Bard College of Citris (funny & informational D&D songs).
I quite like how Earthdawn got the players to keep an actual journal - by offering ingame rewards for it. If the group kept a journal they could gain Legend Points from it (basically a mix of XP and how famous you've become) and once per year could sell a copy to the Great Library in Throal (a great dwarven kingdom) for some money.
In one of my regular groups we usually start with a recap of the last session to which all of us (but one, more of that later) contribute, we have someone who keeps a journal including pics of the maps our GM draws and our group possessions (which includes a trading caravan) are managed by the player who can't remember the last session for the life of her (she has a rather mercantile outlook out of game as well, so I guess it comes naturally). We keep track of our allies and animals as well, both in and out of combat.
Since almost everyone in the group is involved in at least one larger organization and/or cult in addition to our main employer/ally, we definitely do not fall into the lone wolf stereotypes, although we can do murder hobos pretty well at times. 😏
I haven't even finished this video yet but have to comment because your commercials/ads are the best! haha love it
In the before times, when we played at tables, we had a person who ran the white board which we used to track initiative and conditions. I also have a chronicler whose job it is to put together summaries, and a treasurer. I like most of these suggestions. Some are taken care of by using a VTT (initiative is a big one), as well as tracking enemy HP, and the like. There are also some limitations VTT's though (at least with mine), like a player can't be given permissions to do certain things (placing icons on players, managing music, etc.)
If you think about it, while they do share a lot of the roles, you do see some parts of this with CR: for example in C3 you have Ashley on inventory, Marisha on notes, Travis on maps, etc.
we actually already do the NPC in combat in our latest curse of stradh campaign the dm gave one player control over Sorvia (a vistany we convinced to come with us ) and gave me control over Vanrichtin
the dm plays them all the time but when they became a part of the party he handed their sheet to two players to control in combat
Of course choosing the players is important as both players that got control of the NPCs know their ways around the respective class mechanics and it won't burden them (for example I know most spells in the game so it wasn't hard for me to run a wizard alongside my own cleric character)
and honestly, it made the came faster as the dm didn't need to think a lot about these NPCs
I just had a fight break out at a ball where the players had been accompanied by multiple NPC's (friends/occasional antagonists/acquaintances). I had character sheets for them all so I just popped them in the group chat and players picked them up and ran with them while I focused on descriptions and the multiple antagonist combatants. It made managing the fight (especially over zoom, due to a sudden lockdown in my city) much easier. 🤣👍
My old group used to have 11 players in it. However, most of the time there was usually 4 people missing due to jobs, traveling and health issues. The in game explanation we had for random absences was that we were all part of a knighthood. We were essentially a supernatural bullsh!t response team, and there was always varying assignments. Our bard was killed a wheel of evil cheese from the dark realm though.
I've been giving out player jobs since about 2001. The primary ones are initiative (taken care of now by roll 20), lootmaster, and a temp effects tracker. I've also co-opted for people to play NPCs in the World of Darkness to reasonable success. These are great ideas, and are great ways of reducing the cognitive load on already taxed DMs.
Great Tips that not only help the GM but increase player buy in!
As a player, I am always the music person. Choosing the right soundtrack for the right situation is something I feel is important, and love doing. My DM is always thankful when I make sure the ambience is appropriate, and that he doesn't have to worry about it, cuz he puts hella work into our campaign.
I appreciate the effort Ginny puts into her ads.
My character's backstory is 2 pages on him, and 2 more of me answering the 50 Questions from your 50Q video, and I linked that google doc and allowed commenting by our DM. Also my job is REAAAALLLY boring so I'm often thinking up random things and giving her extra ideas I have. Not all of them will benefit us, such as Zombie Phoenix Dragons! I don't know why I told her that idea. My backstory also leaves open who is the antagonist of my backstory, so she can make it work with her plans more easily.
Our party is 8 players, so we do often have to just summarize a session for someone who couldn't come, but we have a range of a couple days it can be, Friday thru Sunday. Our DM makes all Maps and most NPCs, and is amazing at it. All NPCs we make are just from our backstory, only a couple have been RPed by the party. I love the idea for enemy HP though, we've always had one person list Initiative order and the DM puts colored circles on the enemies to help with that(we use the site Roll20), I'll tell him he should add damage taken, or I could take over that job!
Always love these videos, in my games at the start of a session my players do a “previously on...” and at the end Of the session they do a “summary”. Writing long detailed re-caps always made me really tired I found that it’s fun and works well enough.
Pretty late to the comment-game, but one thing I like to do is rotate certain jobs. For example the recap: We keep track of all Nat 20s and Nat 1s rolled in a session. Every person (players and DM) start with the counter 0, a 20 means +1 and a 1 means -1. Whoever has the lowest total at the end does the recap in the next session (because this could work like a punishment I as the DM take part - since I roll much more often, especially in combat heavy episodes, I end up doing around half of the recaps).
Also, I barely take notes as the DM. Partly because I can remember a lot and write the session report in the following days anyways, and partly because my players send me their notes after every session (this is also great for learning what they liked/remembered the most - if they think it's important for the story and/or character development, they'll write it down. That way I know what interests them most - and what they might have missed, so that I can either also ignore that plot thread, or have it come back later for some dramatic plot twist).
Whoops, sorry for the long comment xD
While I personally tend to inform the players of vulnerabilities/resistances/immunities for my monsters (as in, "they appear to take less damage than expected (damage was halved)", usually not "they are resistant to fire damage"), one way to let the players track enemy HP without doing so is by having the DM track only the "unknown damage":
Whenever a monster takes additional damage (vulnerability), the DM reduces its HP by the amount of additional damage (same as the announced amount in the case of vulnerability); whenever some damage is negated (resistance/immunity), the DM increases its HP by the amount of damage negated (same as the announced amount in case of immunity, half that for resistance). Whatever number the DM is left with is the total amount of "flat" damage the players need to do to kill the monster.
I imagine it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to get used to at first, but I think it could be pretty smooth once you get used to it. I think Matt Colville described this or something like it in one of his videos.
When my in person campaign got moved to roll20 after our favorite store got shut down, I was faced with the prospect of getting everything set up on an unfamiliar platform. I no longer had a white board I could quickly draw a room on.
I ended up dividing the task with my players. Using dungeon scrawl, everyone build their character relevant locations that we frequently visited anyways. Our Ranger owns a shop, sorcerer is a librarian, bard works for a news station, etc. Let them have some fun customizing their spaces
I was listening to the video and writing down something on a different tab. Then I heard the ad music and then that voice caught me so off guard I jumped a little bit. Bravo
I've been a GM for nearly 30 years lol and these are all great ideas. I've never had help really myself, but the last few gaming sessions my other friends were GMing and I would get to play as a player, but still co-gm to help them out with some of these things but it's cool. We use tools like roll20 and hero labs and others for conditions/initiative tracking even in in-person gameplay. Sadly I'm typically the one to fill all these roles if I'm playing and not GMing lol but I will share this with my group to maybe get some to "step up" :D
Oh my goodness, this ad is amazing
In one of our sessions, there was a beauty pageant going on and our dm had each of us come up with and play a pageant contestant while our party watched the show. It was hilariously amazing
Scheduling tip for everyone: Decide on a schedule first (IE: every monday night, every other tuesday, whatever works for you) and then build a group around this schedule. When you invite a player, tell them when the group plays and then they'll join or not depending on whether or not they can make this work for them. It doesn't work if you already have a group of friends in mind, but it's been very successful for me. Setting the expectation about schedules from the get go has kept my games from turning into situations where we're always scheduling and never playing.
I really enjoy listening to how you explain things. Hearing this makes me want to see a D&D game with 0 DMs involved.
also, I enjoyed the goblin store quest lady.
My druid looooooves the Conjure Animals spell - the first time I busted it out in combat my DM said "you want 8 hyenas? fine, you can have 8 hyenas but you're in charge of them." So I not only roll the attacks for anything I conjure, I also track their HP, their special abilities (pack tactics ftw), and their movement on the board. Truly shoving 8 additional creatures at the DM mid-combat is torture, and the fact that the spell itself says "the DM will keep track of the stats" is ABSURD!
In my current campaign world, there are a lot of player characters from one-shots previously played in the same world. Whenever one of them shows up, the player has full control of the character and his main PC at the same time.
We did a few of these, and it can indeed be very helpful.
For initiative and conditions, we had tags hanging from the dm-screen (numbered tags for enemies).
Maintained by the player next to the dm. By the time the dm was done rolling initiatives for the enemies, the players were already hanging there in-order.
For 'player-controlled NPC's', we were going to do that, every character got an intelligent magic item, controlled by the player to their left.
Unfortunately that campaign died, I'm curious how well this would have worked.
For scheduling, I'm actually a bit surprised it's even on here. I wasn't aware this was even considered a dm-task. Yes this should be elsewhere.
13:25 YOU GOT THE TOUCH, YOU GOT THE POWEEEEEEEER!
YEAH! *instrumental*
My group used a Discord server, so we made a chat tab to fill with world-building ideas. A magical fantasy world will turn out quite different from the one we live in normally, so when anyone gets an idea of how things would just be different than expected, they post, we discuss, and we develop an immersive world that holds ideas that we collectively made-up.
For examples: We just wanted one plane of existence. Any extradimensional space, such as from a bag of holding, is really just a permanent teleportation link to a fixed place that can be reached in the real world, but is often remote or secure enough to function regularly, most the time -- such as a bank vault or a mountain top.
Inheritance laws are a total social construct that won't necessarily reach every society. Particularly on the road of adventure, there's no way to make a legal account for one's possessions or get them to an heir or next-of-kin. For a world with a lot of "Kill it and take its stuff" going on, it was ruled that looting the body of a fallen party member was just acceptable. You've probably done it in your campaigns, too, but without considering legal or social implications.
Similarly, we've decided that the law of the kingdom (in which the main story took place) allowed for resurrections, but that one's property was forfeit. For the commoner, this didn't mean much, but without such a law, what happens to a lord's lands when he's resurrected five months after his appointed heir is ruling upon his death? Does she just cede it back to him or does he have no rightful claim? It does keep assassinations a real threat, even in a world where death isn't necessarily permanent.
Someone made up a fantasy calendar.
There's all sorts of strange customs, usually very localized. Some with amazingly detailed explanations, others that are observed through tradition, though no-one really knows why they were started.
In short, all players should have some say in the world-building, if'n they are going to be expected to spend a significant length of time playing in it. The DM doesn't need to do all the work and cannot possibly guess at everything the players want.
I love the end. Your D&D is yours! Own it!
I've definitely done a few of thses, less officially. We've almost always had a record-keeper, I gave them their own channel in Discord to manage, and they recap every session. The party inevtory also has a channel.
And if the party wants NPCs to aid them in combat, that is 100% their responsibility to manage them.
I could certainly incorporate a few others.
"Good timezone to you all"
I'm dying 🤣😭😂💀
I don't play DnD, but I play Ars Magica every week and the player playing NPCs is sort of built in and it works well. Each player already gets 2 PCs for themselves and then there's a handful of extra people like guards that anyone can play. I am the notetaker of the group and my DM loves when I can pull up the name of something from forever ago (we've been playing for 4 years now). He also seems to really appreciate when we come with names of things ourselves, like one time we asked if there was a bar nearby and a player stepped up and named it before it was even a problem.
I'm really lucky. The game I'm currently DMing (the second one I've ever DM'd, but the first was in Call of Cthulu, so it's not fully relevant here) is a one-on-one with another DM that's got a decent amount of campaigns under his belt.
Given that he *loves* to play DnD and seems to be enjoying the game greatly, he's more than willing to help me with setting things up and, due to the fact that he's able to completely (or, nearly so) separate OOC from in-character knowledge, I've not yet had any issues with him helping me with things like NPC character sheets, maps, and general setup before the actual game.
He also runs a campaign for me one-on-one and I'm somewhat ashamed to say I didn't help him set it up yet, but that's mostly because he always seems to have everything ready by the time we speak about it (unlike me >.> ) and, possibly, because I'm quite new to DMing, so I'm still very slow at such things.
That said, I have started to come up with my own feats and some of the house rules I've invented for the campaign I'm running have made their way into the one he's running for me (such as Intimidation being governed either by CHA or STR, depending on how it's done, to name a simple one). Many a time we also agree on what calls to make rules-wise and simply use those for both games, should they come up.
It's pretty great. ^_^
I think I will watch this with my players at the end of our next session and ask if anyone is interested in volunteering. Thanks for the inspiration.
One thing players could do to help the DM is to talk to him before or after the game about stuff like rules they aren't sure of or concerns they have about the game. It is much easier to resolve that kind of stuff ahead of time, than while the game is running.
A few years ago I was in a group that had a player track initiative and HP on a large white board that everyone could see it was super helpful
Ooo!! I used to be the NPC manager of my table. We would use it strictly in combat, and I would just choose what move to do for the npc I was role playing.
Love the ads thanks for all you do Ginni Di