Well I never thought my story would actually make it to a video, I cannot wait to read the comments sections. It feels so weird having someone narrate my nightmare campaign from the outside.
I just wonder. This friend of yours does he gets his way often in real life?? Or is he guy is playing a lot of solo computer games where his hero is the ultimate being there? He never understood the role the DM has in a campaign. To tell a story that interacts with the characters/ heroes and entertain the players. He is not very imaginative that is for sure! If he let's you travel a ridiculous long trip with every day at least one encounter where is the storyline then? But you have done the best thing and quit...well rage quit;D
3 minutes in and I could not Listen, flashbacks where to real. Everything you said I have experienced including fighting monsters that where immune to our spells and attacks. Only when we felt an Unresistible urge to dig in the mud mid-fight did we find a magical dagger that could hurt them, at that point we were level three and none of us had more than eight health. It was at that point I withdrew from the campaign and became a full-time DM for two groups of strangers.👍🏻
Sounds like he just copied and pasted other people's ideas into his own story. Which is kinda fine, we draw inspiration from already existing people and mythos all the time to tell new stories. But at least do something to make it your own, man. Copy the dimensions of a room, sure, but instead of that orc stronghold when there's braziers and a couple roasting pits and pelts everywhere, maybe it's the audience hall for some grand noble. Reusing templates is great for saving time on set up.
There was a video a while ago about that. Even though my friends and I started playing around two years ago, we've never had something like those happen. DMs "winning" is essentially PVP against a level 100.
DUDE for real!!! I'm not trying to get "ALL RELIGIOUS" or anything but basically that DM was acting like a dick of God who hated his own creations... I mean go cheat on a video game by unlocking the supreme character code.... Every well almost every game has one. But you're EXACTLY 💯 correct. It just sucks that sometimes people are 🖕🤬.. sorry I couldn't think of words to describe the twinkage. But hells yeah, some of the best sessions had like maybe two hours, usually less, of actual role playing. But we NEVER EVER had a "gaming" night that was less than 6. Don't get me wrong we gamed the whole time. It's just we had to take breaks because we were laughing so hard or just plain laughing so hard... Ok so maybe I might've exaggerated a smidge, but the game to laughing ratio was like 60 gaming and 40 laughing. Either way I totes agree with you.
Nah, Old Man Henderson was completely legal by the _Trail of Cthulhu_ rules. Their DM ragequit after Old Man Henderson killed Hastur. Then another player took over and gave Old Man Henderson another story, courtesy of Nyarlathotep. At the end of which, Old Man Henderson and the pretty young thing that used to be Hastur journeyed off into the multiverse, never to darken the _Trail of Cthulhu_ again. The _character_ ragequit.
Old man Henderson was the DM rage quit . That guy destroys psionics the play derailed the campaign so many times the DM threw him out to salvage the campaign.
I’m already pissed that the two level 8 elf wizards had shite books when the party was almost tpk right off the bat and they were just casting fire wall and stuff.
Yea, that definately pissed me off. But what pissed me more was the 40+ guards that arrived 10 seconds after the fight, surrounded us and arrested us. Like, fucking help in the fight.
you think that's bad, I'm a rogue that isn't allow to rogue in one campaign I'm in. Oh I'm allowed to sneak if it's to scout ahead for the party but when I roll to sneak in order to steal something then nothing I roll is high enough. Imagine rolling a natural 20 which brings my sneak roll to 27 and yet being told that they notice me because their passive perception is higher than 27.....we're level 5
@@Badartist888 DM: "Where are you going? Adventure is THAT way." Player: "They had badass spells. I'm going to stay in town until I find a spellbook that has at least ONE of those spells."
"It was the DM's second campaign. Several weeks earlier, they had rushed a dissatisfying ending of their previous campaign in order to begin working on their next big idea." Big mood... My longest-running campaign (over a year, played every week) died out in part because the DM got this great idea for an entirely new world and started working on that more than he was working on his current campaign. He eventually cancelled the campaign so he could run his new world with a different group. (One of the players in the new group is a girl he has the hots for who quit his previous campaign because of me. I called her out for being a manipulative bitch who was stringing this guy along like he ever had a chance with her... keep in mind this is all online, me and the DM live in Texas and this chick lives in Ohio and has had a bf for over a year. But he literally revolves his entire life around this chick and she has absolutely zero intent of getting together with him.) Oh, and he hasn't talked to any of us from the old group since. That was almost two months ago now. Except that he's in another campaign with me, where he plays his character (who is literally a min-maxxed version of my character) and tries to outdo everything I attempt. And outside of session, he refuses to speak to me, or anyone else from that group, except for the DM. What a dingus.
Probably the girl rejected him and then He don't want to admit his mistake by just trying to make your character look bad. The thing about min-Max is that they are retarded in everyother area that your characters isnt, unless they are bard.
He also needed to tell the players in advance about his friend being immortal. It was a good concept but the manner in which it was revealed not so much. It should have been told from the get go or they pull a KOTOR and the party encounters someone who knows that character is immortal and drops the bombshell on the party.
Originality is hard, balancing can be difficult, occasionally fudging dice rolls, for the players sake is fine too, this said, showing favoritism towards a single player is bad, using the ideas of others (without giving them credit or asking for their permission) is not ok and shoehorning something in your game whether it fits your narrative or not is outright stupid
Still being level 3 after going through the forest of Hell would have been the tipping point for me. If the players' accomplishments don't amount to anything, then what's the point.
My group of friends and I sometimes borrow each other's NPCs if they were particularly popular, but only as Easter eggs rather than key story beats. Usually we'll even have the NPC's original creator play them briefly if they aren't an enemy.
Coming back and watching this video a year late is a blast, but it also made me realise I missed one of the best parts. The Wizard/Warlock/Fighter multiclass monstrocity was also on cordial terms with a handful of gods, one of which he ran into on the road and had a chat with in session 3 or 4. Like, we just ran into a god.... on the road.... in the forest from hell. And he was like oh I recognise you, your Fharlanghn, been a while how are you going.
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As a DM as well, i HAVE taken ideas & concepts from others But WITH THEIR BLESSINGS! I, unlike the DThief in this story, take what has willingly given to me and "adjust the parameter's" enough to make the borrowed idea/concept different. As an example, let's take that Lich Ambassador story. Instead of it being the Ambassador that was the Lich, what if it was say their Significant Other and they themselves were just a Love-struck Necromancer helping the Lich out? That story just went from a rehashed plot to a VERY uncomfortable Soap Opera Piece in the span of one sentence. ....And yes, you other DM's out there may use my idea/concept however you wish(just be honest where you got the material from). :D
I'm new to DND but I started playing a year ago or so..... But my DM would make his idea on his own me and the other players enjoy our DM and the story he would come up with.. 😁
Yes my friend loves making his own campaign that he writes down in this note book. Well the DM founded the notebook and steeled a campaign about a hell gate opening up in a church. My friend was super mad about that an a argument broke out but this story have a good ending the DM apologize to everyone and convince my friend to DM the campaign to keep it going, It was one the best holy only campaign I ever play. (mostly because I was allowed to be a paladin tank)
hey i have a question... i don't understand why taking something from someone else's campain is so horrible, isn't it similar to taking something from the books? like how is taking some mayor-y lich from someone else's campain different from taking strahd von zarovich? (i mean besides taking it without asking, the not asking is bad, but is there anything else that's bad?)
Before the video: What's this supposed to mean? Creative thievery can be helpful for GMs. Afterwards: What the hell? He just straight ripped other people off changing no details? Creative thievery implies making it your own, not copy/paste.
3:08 I am already baffled and we haven't even got the promised plagiarism yet I thought MY first stint GMing was bad. (TBF, It was; I one-shot the healer in the first turn of the first round of the first combat) And this guy doesn't even have the excuse of it being the first time.
Don't beat yourself up. Balancing encounters is hard, especially when hit points start low. The first encounter I put my party through they took maybe 2 hits. The second encounter had everyone down at one time or another. Somehow nobody died. There were 6 of them against goblins both times. Also, I don't fudge dice rolls.
I am a fan of the idea "take the things you like and stick it into your campaign" meaning from other media like games, shows, etc. A direct unedited copy of your player's campaign idea seems kinda dumb. Making tough encounters is great so long as you can get the message across that it's going to be tough so the players have the choice of fighting or fleeing. That being said I'm still relatively new to DMing so I'm not the best at describing.
I copy so many ideas from all media I consume is ridiculous, but I always give credit and never copy another players/DM stuff unless asked first. Hard fights are fun, but you have to always give chances to win. Hard fight is not unwinnable fight. I play Pathfinder, but as a rule of thumb, I consider a hard fight is when the fighters have only a 50% chance of hitting the hardest enemy (no temporal buffs included), have HP and/or minions to last roughly three/four rounds, and some power or damage that makes them scary. I could give examples, if you like.
Chrysanthus A few examples would be nice, I only know 5e and I'm still trying to figure out a balance where an encounter is challenging but doesn't end up a slog which has been difficult. I'm definitely improving but could use a few fine tuning from outside sources.
@@Pharland Well, last session my 3 players of 2nd level, a barbarian, fighter and witch (think wizard but no blasting), after a series of fights where they got their resources and HP diminished by undead body parts (Crawling Hands, flying acid spitting heads and a weird floating eye that stuns one round by spitting its tears), finally got approached by a weird cloaked stranger. Turns out, that was a low level demon who was the master of the undead creatures, and started the fight by panicking with magic fear the barbarian, which made him flee 2 rounds. At the beginning of the first round, he magically destroyed the preferred weapon of choice of the fighter, forcing him to use a slightly inferior weapon. Good thing the fighter start with a charging critical hit with his axe the fight, since he then got a full round of attacks that downed him. The ranger NPC they convinced to help them got a nasty critical bite the next turn while trying to defend the witch, leaving her almost dead, while doing only half-decent damage each turn. Finally the barbarian showed up, without magic fear but with very much rage, and finished off the demon with the last round of rage he had that day. Conclusion: a boss fight that took critical hits to be killed without downing more than one player, put out of the fight the barbarian for three turns, nerfed the fighter and downed him first turn, and almost killed the helper NPC (the witch would have been next). And how I knew this was a challenging but winnable fight? The fear was only once per day, so only one player would be affected. His Damage Reduction meant that only good hits counted. His HP meant than even then he could not go down until three rounds (barring criticals). Its AC meant that players only could hit around 50% of their attacks (until the witch very wisely nerfed its AC with a hex). And his full attack was scary damaging. And that was only the second boss in this campaign, and it fought solo. The previous one was a cleric with skeleton minions that left the party with less than 4 HP each before dying.
Dm:here's High level spell casters that can kill all of you with a single spell Also Dm:well he only did 6 dmg with a 8d6 dmg spell Me, beginning to think that he just wants these characters to look like bad asses using DMaster Ex Machinas: Ah so you're completely trash at making actual encounters
I mean, I’ve had a DM that used ideas from other campaigns if we needed a filler session but he openly admits to doing that and we couldn’t be mad because we had fun. Even so, it wouldn’t have hurt for this DM to give credit where it’s due, especially if he is taking ideas from his friends.
Tbh, I think that if you like an idea from some form of fiction (i.e. a book with a cool trap or a movie with an interesting plot point) then you should put it in your game. Of course taking ideas from your players campaigns is not ok, unless you get their permission. All in all, it’s not illegal or bad by any means to take ideas from fiction and put it into your campaign, but you shouldn’t base your whole campaign around one stolen plot point. Just put it into your campaign as a potential story option.
I figured this might be a good time to share a story., since as of late, more of the stories featured here have been relatively negative ones. Not bad in the slightest mind you! Just cautionary tales and horror stories. And with that I give you: [The Birth of a New Campaign Type: The Revolver Campaign] I have loved DnD for years but only played it every so often, yet one day I was inspired to take a seat in the DM chair for the first time when I was playing a game called VRChat and found worlds in which people could play DnD on. When I found out a bunch of my friends on there loved DnD, I suggested to DM for them and got to work on making a One Shot. The One Shot was supposed to happen under the following. My players were to start at level 5 and be already established in an Adventurers Guild with the city. The party were as follows: a proportionally correct little person Tiefling bard, a Tiefling Monk, a Dragonborn ranger with fae hawk companion, a WarForged Bard, and a Drow warlock, who for backstory purposes thought he was a sorcerer. They were tasked by the guild master to find a highly praised member of the guild named Paladin Lance, who has been missing for close to two months when he went on a mission to find out why people where disappearing in a forest north of the city, as well as two other members called The Axem Twins, who went missing while going to go look for Lance. Now here's where the fun began. As part of this "One Shot" and as my first time DM'ing I wanted to make sure that everyone was enjoying themselves and really got into the roles they made, so once the mission was given I gave them control of what they wanted to do next. They wanted to get information from around the town about where these three disappeared to. To make a long story short, for the rest of the session they didn't even leave the city as all kinds of events took place within the city that I had to improvise on the spot. After starting a drinking party in a tavern, while picking everyone's pocket they could, a rousing time of "questioning" the associates at a brothel, as well as figuring out the logistics of their previous 3 day stay with the many associates at said brothel to find out how much they owed, which lead to them subsequently having to stop by a magic shop for a potion of lesser restoration to fight off the "poisons" that afflicted them, to attempting to get in to the higher end, Celestial District, to stay the night before heading off on the quest tomorrow, the session was already taken care of. Was I upset by all the side tracking? Not at all. Could I have been a little more forceful to edge to the party to get to the task at hand? Maybe. But that was the beauty of the situation I was in. I had players who thought of what they wanted to do and just went with it. I was glad to have these players so involved. It was at the end of the session that I reminded everyone that we could try to get it done next session as this WAS supposed to be a one shot. And thats when I heard the best thing from one of my players. "Hey I mean, we can just do as many shots as it takes to get it done? OH I KNOW! WE CAN CALL IT A REVOLVER CAMPAIGN. You know since you got a bunch of shots in a revolver but still a low countof them you know?" I was so excited to hear this and so were the others as they wanted more! During these short stints here are the highlights. The party discovered a seemingly abandoned house deep in the woods, to find a little modified version of a blink dog protecting the body of its long dead elven master, who with fantastic rolls by the Tiefling Monk managed to convince the creature that, not only did they mean no harm but they wanted to help take care of its former master. With a proper burial and a proper nights rest in the house the blink dog joined the team with the monk as its new master. They then the next day fought a swarm of dire rats in a marsh-like area of the forest, with a surprising twist. Had any of them been a certain spot, on a random chance or the use of a spell that could be seen as a source of ignition, a pillar of fire would erupt from the ground. That's right, I made a Princess Bride reference. The funniest moment was when the edgelord Drow warlock who thought the party as nothing more than meat shields, gets attacked by the rats with two of them attacking at his legs and sticking there, Ace Ventura style with the third rat scoring a critical and with that, attacked...well um..."down there." He was still standing surprisingly and called out for help after he managed to kill the two rats on his legs, leaving the other one still um, "hanging around". The Dragonborn Ranger heeded the call for help and rushed over to attempt to kill the rat with a blow to the head. After a great damage roll, but a poor dexterity check to aim the blow as it was a called shot, the excess in damage transferred into the Drow's, ahem, Underdark, proceeding to knock the Drow into unconsciousness. They did really well on survival and investigation checks and after a long while of treading through they thickest parts of the forest, they found what appeared to be a mausoleum with skeletal guards posted. Unfortunately that's as far as we got as complications from the real world affected peoples attendance but nonetheless, I was happy to have such a fun time with my party. I was glad to have my first time as DM go so well and I'm looking forward to shooting more shots in the future.
To argue to the contrary, some of the best games I've played have come from my DM seeing something and saying "I'm using that". The obvious difference being that he was open about it and altered things to fit his game.
I only ever rage quit one campaign. We were members of a resistance group. Two new players joined. After a few sessions, they decided they didn't like the resistance and the way it operated and were going to leave. The GM called me and told me their plan and asked if I was going to kill them. WTF. I didn't like they way the resistance operated either, but had failed repeatedly to get them to change. I was considering leaving with them. GM said I shouldn't let them take the resistances weapons. They were MY weapons. I'd been sharing them freely because I had way more than I needed. If I decided to stay I didn't care about the weapons. Next session the two players are grinning like fools at me and the other player and won't say a word to us. Then suddenly, they whip out 2 brand new characters twice our level, with all sorts of overamped abilities our GM had expressly forbidden at the start of the campaign. They attacked us without warning or provocation. GM did nothing during this encounter. Didn't even speak. The two players ran the combat themselves. They fudged dice rolls, they backtracked actions. I killed both of them twice. Their response, didn't happen. The other player cried because she didn't know what the hell was going on. I finally just tossed my character in the trash and walked out. Their parting words. "That's what you get for planning on killing us". TLDR: GM doesn't want new players to derail his campaign, so he sows interparty hostility and let's his campaign go down in flames instead.
In my experience, it's easy to copy an idea, without even noticing. (that was probably not the case here though.) Once my DM ran a campaign, with the same plot as Wing Commander 4. He did not notice himself until we told him. Once I made, what I thought was a very good design for a Robot Character, and later found out it was similar to Zeke from CtrAltDel, but the character had not shown up in the comic for years at that point, so I had forgotten about him.
This sounds like my DM before we had a nice long chat with him (apart from the stealing ideas). Every battle we've fought has been a deadly one, even the random encounters. We fought an Archduke of hell (homebrewed CR 24-ish) when we were 4 level 14s. We only won because he gave us some op magic items and my fighter/rogue multiclass and the hexblade warlock got a surprise round on him and 3 crits between us in the first round. We are nearly level 19 now and going into Epic levels because the BBEG of this campaign is an evil god that we need to kill.
This happened to our play group. The DM said she was recording the sessions in order to better remember what happened in sessions but they were infact trying to turn our campaign and characters into a a creative writing collage course and claiming it was her own work and ideas for each characters motivation and backstories.
I have a Player/DM (we Alternate) Who Regularly Takes NPC and Character Ideas from me to use in his Games, Often in games where I'm not Present. When it Happened the first time I was a Bit annoyed that he was Taking my Ideas, but Since then I've come to see it as a compliment, That I'D Create Character Concepts good enough that they'd Deserve to be "Uploaded" to other Games even when I'm not even there. Plus he Always Gives the characters a New Twist on their theme, so they End up almost Feeling like different Characters. His Style of DMing is far Very Different From mine, I'd Be Tempted to say our styles are Polar Opposites. I'm Essentially a Rules Lawer behind the DM Screen and I try to Map out a World in my Head to Let My players Roam as I adapt to their Actions and Fill in the Blanks as Logically as I can as we go along, ending up with a Story that Evolved from the player's Actions and the world I set up as a Backdrop, What most would Call a Sandbox Game. He on the other Hand Tends to see the Rulebook as a List of Strongly implied Suggestions, and he puts his Focus on trying to Create a Story for the players to Follow through, he usually tries to map out every possible Outcome of every encounter, Social Combat or otherwise, and if Player Actions Don't QUITE Match one of the outcomes he'd Prepared, he Picks one that's closest and Keeps running it as though they'd Done that, Leading to a Kind of Logic Gate Style of gameplay Kinda Like a Videogame With Player Choices(kinda Like "Detroit: Become Human"), or a "Choose your own Adventure" Book. I Like to describe his style as Being on a Railway Network, Where Sure you're on a rail, but you can Still Drive into Different Track, and the Tracks are Set up to take through the most Scenic Locations. There are Benefits to each style, Neither is Really Better than the other outright, it's mostly a matter of Preference. Where Mine offers a More Personalized Adventure/Story, his Gives more Consistent Epic Storytelling Making the Game Feel more Grand. And Seeing the same Characters Show up in both styles is Actually pretty Fun to See play out how they Tend to give off Different levels of Impacts on Players and for Different Reasons. I've even Sat Down With him just to think up New Characters for BOTH of us to use every Now and then, the Shit we Come up with when we TRY to Share Ideas gets Weird and So Awesome, to me at least.
"Fog cloud is a light mist" So there's no reason to ever cast it? I'm pretty sure it's meant to obscure vision and if it doesn't do that it's even more worthless then true strike.
I do love the wholesome stories. These stories about jerks are helpful. I treat these stories as examples on what not to do during my sessions. First DM here.
My game last night was Hilarious Half Orc Monk (-1 Int); needs to attune to his Wizards Chessboard by beating someone. I figured I'd just give it to him...but as soon as the game started he said he wanted to play chess with the kids (who will obviously have disadvantage). For 2 hours in-game, neither proceeded to roll above 3, until the kid rolls a nat 1. "My King is stronger than your Priest, because he's riding the PONY!" The monk says, and the kid facepalms as-if he should've seen that coming. The 20 Int Artificer walks away before her brain melts out her ears. Gnome Barbarian (-1 Int); goes up to Smithy and asks for a Horshoe. "2 silver." Watches Gnome look through a bag half his size. "I said 5 Silver..." Gnome looks at him a sec, "...OK!" Gives it to him. "Can I make something?" Smith, "Scrap's over there." Gnome proceedes to roll NAT 20 on whatever he wants to make. The Smith watching his skill intently noticing he's creating Steel out of Iron scrap, "You're quite skilled. What are you making?" Gnome, "Something..." When he finishes, it gleams in the light. A Masterwork, Steel Spike! "Is that to defeat the demons in the mine!?" The smith asks impressed. Gnome looks at him plainly walks out into the street and plants it in the ground. Walks back seriously turns around...and throws the horseshoe. After a moment the Smith looks down at the smiling Gnome, "What a Waste..." and walks away.
from the famous words of Matthew Coville "steal from something everyone knows and you are derivative, Steal from something nobody knows and your a Genius". this guy failed as a DM hard and if he felt so desperate to take something at all he should have found something so obscure and old and ran with it.....But that requires work.
First! Hail Astoshan and self like mode on... 3.5 edition: Good ol' DMs doing anything in their power to take the party down, while making their brains work as lil as possible . *Perfectly balanced, as all things should be*
That's not how I remember 3.5. The few DMs who were like that were 1and 2 veterans. As a 3.5 DM my biggest problem is people who play other edditions either 2 E or 5E trying to interject those rules into my game. Oddly enough it's the veteran 2E players that are worse.
That person was a horrible DM no doubt BUT here's the apparently hot take: "stealing" ideas is perfectly fine as long as things make sense inside your campaign. The problem was stealing them from sources that are so easily recognizable by players, tearing down all sense of originality or uncertainty. Like, at least give it a fun twist or something, my dude
To clarify it IS ok to make an encounter that cannot be won by the party the way they currently are. However that should be made clear. Also read stat blocks thoroughly. I have had to make so many last minuet revisions because I miss understood the abilities of a combatant. And if you need a combat that is simply to deplete your party of supplies sheathed that be healing potions. Spells slots, hp, or even material things the random encounters of and suddenly bears, and the wolf pack attacks work great and can do as much or as little damage as you see fit.
>Constantly making a sub-level-5 party face multiple 7th-8th level spellcasters >Fudges dice rolls when things go south Bruh ... It took you _two months_ of play sessions to travel one road? Holy fuck your DM is a mess, and I haven't even gotten to the bad part yet
Impossible encounters for low level PCs reminds me of playing in game where almost every npc my dm created had some level in a class: that guard who just arrested you is actually a level 15 fighter, oh that little girl who just pick pocketed the barbarian is a level 5 rogue. It was just stupid
I had a DM who did this in my earlier experiences of D&D a few times whenever they tried to put in their own OC Edgelord Paladin and the group wasn't feeling the campaign stories he tried to run by us. It eventually got to the point where I and a couple others deliberately created characters that were absolutely silly, or would mean he'd have to put actual thought into how events went if he wanted to continue DM'ing. We also would take care not to mention our own ideas for campaign stories prior to sessions, because he would find things to "incorporate" without permission or any tie-ins to previous sessions. Over time he got better after a lot of people declared they would not play with him any further if he didn't change his methods, and it seems my former DM has learned to keep his own main characters largely out of the main party if he's running it, but a lot of longtime friends in the same circle still dodge his campaigns these days because of just how bad the stories had been if it didn't center on his character, even though he's an otherwise generally likable guy.
This reminds me eerily so of a DM who I played with formerly, still am friends with, but for various reasons beyond just plagiarism my friends and I will not partake in any of his campaigns again. The DM was a person who could not for the life of him create dm PCS, or even plot points, without having them revolve around games or anime that he's watched in the past and are using as 'inspiration'. His rendition of familiar characters were horribly butchered in their personalities or identities from the original IP they came from. Because he believed that 'I'm doing them better than their original source material!'. That, combined with the DM more or less using his army of stolen characters, our "Allies", to keep any of us from being able to have meaningful rp without him finding a way to butt a character into the conversation, left a very bitter taste in everybodies mouths. In due time, the DM would 'lose inspiration' for his game, and conclude it to absolutely nobodies surprise. He was discouraged because of the fact that nobody actively wanted to take his chimera [N]PC's seriously, let alone build meaningful relationships or bonds with characters that couldn't die, and were a fraction of the identities we fell in love with in their original works in the first place.
I have had a player steal the start of one of my campaigns before, but her players were having so much fun with my campaign opener that I didn’t feel too bad about it. So I don’t know how to feel about this topic because I have seen the fun people can have directly stealing plots and campaigns. The player in question is a good friend on mine and she even told me later on that she had done it because the opener is very fun, throws players into the action, and has multiple creative ways to progress through it. So don’t always get mad at a gm who steals your campaigns, just let them know to give you some credit or something.
My playgroup has been together for years. We’ve gone through numerous campaigns DMed by various people. Occasionally, we throw in references or homages to our past games. But we don’t claim that these are our ideas
Impossible encounters are one thing, my campaigns always have a healthy sprinkling of them but they are NEVER as easy as "oh you 'happen' to spot something out of the ordinary in a ships' hold, when you check it out it starts ganking you!" it's more "as you sneak past the final guards, ignoring their clearly magical and high grade equipment, you find yourself face to face with a figure, (please roll Religion checks please) who bears a frightening resemblance to a normally peaceful and kindly mortal turned deity, they turn and greet you warmly, despite what you assumed was a flawless effort to remain hidden." i drop MASSIVE hints that you should probably NOT smack The Thing(trademark) or you're in for a very bad time, typically works, and gets my point across that "not everything is a fight, and not everywhere is somewhere you should be, no matter how good your stealth."
Hey last game I played kinda de-evolved into a home brew session that later prematurely ended. So since this video is about the EMS that steal stuff I give y’all full permission to steal this story ) We had a Rogue (me), a fighter, a bard, and a healer. Anyways we took a break from the main quest to get some gear. DM asked for filler while he worked on setting up the main quest for everyone. My idea was the only one I remember and we had to railroad it a bit .... ) Here is the Dungeon as well as the loot that I remember. The whole group went on the quest ( for experience). * Rogue- got a lockpick called the skeleton key (oblivion reference ) that gave a 100% success to picking locks but using it cost 4 health points. (Quest was a poker game) * Fighter - Flaming Sword but flame only lasted for 30 minutes ( in real time) before it ran out and had to be refilled via buying fuel (Quest was a dungeon ) that was set at gas station prices minus the decimal point. ( IE if gas was $1.96 the price was $196 or gold pieces whatever) * Bard ( played guitar IRL and in game) - magic guitar pic - guaranteed success / max damage( no way for enemy to save themselves) but after each use bard had to roll a D6 if it was a even number a guitar string broke and he could not use the guitar till he replaced the string. (Quest was a battle of the musicians) ( sadly the group disbanded due to real life issues.... and the healer did not get to get his gear. However he was set up for this) * Healer - Rod of Asclepius, - heals target to full health but whatever spell used costs double the magic. ( Quest was a old teacher was dying ( age) at the other end of world. We were supposed to be working our way to the teacher completing the other quests enroute) . Anyways if y’all want y’all can use the storyline I’d like to think somewhere this storyline got completed. Or that I at least helped someone
If you hear a good DnD story and use it as inspiration for your homebrew that's perfectly fine if you don't profit off it. Stealing a friends idea is obviously a bad idea especially if they're a PC in your campaign.
I steal ideas all the time as a DM. But unlike the OP's DM, I always put my own twist on it so it's not a straight rip off. I only use the stuff from online stories for inspiration, never something my players would know. And this is how Astoshan is going to be a major npc in my campaign.
DUDE, DUDE wTF!! Talk about a TWINK!!!! I applaud you for being the grown up and remaining friends... I wouldn't normally suggest beating the $h1T out of someone.. Help me understand how you didn't. That person has a real friend in YOU. OMG 😍 you're amazing, I seriously wish I had a friend like you. Just one more question, (probably alot more) did they ever DM again and if so did you participate? Also if so how'd it go? Told you prolly allot more questions... You were right, it pissed me off to.
If I could change one thing, it would the immortal character. Maybe change it to a character that can’t go to the afterlife. Possibly add something like after his death, a few days later they find a goblin walking towards the party saying their names.
This is sad. My DM is one of the most kind and forgiving people I could ever wish to play a game under. We are running a module right now but has taken the time to look at everyone’s backstory and incorporate it into the already pre-written world In a fun and engaging way. His first priority is the make sure his players have fun which in turn makes it so he has fun too. Once you lose sight of that and start stealing original ideas from your players without talking to them first it becomes insulting and aggravating for everyone. Just so sad.
I don’t understand as a Dm, why a Dm, The Story Writer and Teller, would have purposefully Steal others campaign content, and put 3rd level players against Super overpowered, deadly monsters. Some people. ( I do get using others ideas in your campaign but not full out Plagiarizing them)
While this DM sounds like he just got way to high on his own power trip, I got to give em credit for the immortal PC idea that actually sounds like something that would be really fun to RP. Kinda like a guy who has seen way to much and just wants it all to end so he can finally rest and is just plain sick and tried of watching friends and loved ones die around him, while he goes on and on getting pulled back each and every time from that sweet embrace of death. Honestly I would love to RP that but I highly doubt any DM I know would even allow it.
I was a bit shocked to hear during that encounter on the boat that the party was still LEVEL 3! They’ve had multiple sessions fighting people and creatures well above their own level, hell above their COMBINED LEVELS, multiple sessions of that and haven’t gained a SINGLE LEVEL!?
If you have to fudge rolls every encounter, you need to reexamine your priorities as a DM. Now, as a DM, there are two kinds of roll fudging 1. Use a reroll, as if you were giving advantage or disadvantage 2. Selecting the numbers you want I almost never use option 2, because while it's the most effective, overuse eventually kills the whole point of using dice in the first place. Instead, using a reroll increases your chances, but still leaves in a chance for failure. Even then I keep my rerolling to under 3 a session, because overusing that has the same result of sucking the element of risk out of the game.
lol before even getting 5 mins in. I have a bone to pick with the wizard spell-book thing. The spell books are encrypted and it costs 50 gp per spell in materials to learn a new spell via a scroll or deciphered spell in a spell book. You can’t just pick up a wizard spell-book and read it. Unless you also find a cipher on the wizard along with the spellbook and you’d still have to spend the 50 gp to learn it and only wizards can learn spells this way.
If you don't want your wizard gaining new spells, just don't leave the spellbooks in, lol. Or do something interesting like when he touches the book, it bursts into flame, destroying itself. The player won't be happy, but at least it makes more sense than a powerful spellcaster having no worthwhile spells in their spellbook.
Yeah, wow, that's a bad DM right there. NPC encounters have a Challenge Rating FOR A REASON! Third level PCs shouldn't face off against enemies with a 5-level difference, that's just not fair.
What made me rage quit my first DM and the group entirely was because the DM kept changing and hopping between campaigns, normally that wouldn't bother me as long as we went back to them. The problem came around when he had us play this serious by the book campaign role play and everything only to scrap it and replace it with another. He made us make characters that we got into and played well, then decided to force us to fight a couple of anti-christ like child gods with no warning or way to survive. The first one was benevolent and gave us necklaces to not be corrupted, not 30 minutes later and we encounter the other outright evil child god doing creepy things in a elven mansion. The necklaces began to glow as we where running away and we got a bad feeling and ditched them. Seconds later they exploded and I accidentally killed this supposedly op NPC. Then the demon monster child god (Im not sure what it was exactly) started picking off the party one by one, I was the last one left and the child just outright said that it corrupted the benevolent one and the world is about to end. No opportunity to fight back, no indication of a way to survive, and no democracy or negotiations was viable. If the story ended there I wouldn't be as mad because it was a fairly creepy moment that was decent. But no he said that our spirits went on to possess these conveniently pre planned characters for an entirely different game, because he wanted to play it. That's where I got pissed off and outright left the group. If you wanted to play a different campaign all he could have done is asked and we would have gone with it for the fun of trying something new like we always have. But knowing him, he would have gotten bored of it after showing off one or two of his OP final fantasy like characters and then put us into a TPK. I stopped playing DND for a couple of years and started again lately
A lot of DM’s make the mistake of constantly throwing a single OP boss at a party, thinking it will be a good fight. It’s not- the one hit kill possibilities are too great. I made that same mistake on one or two occasions myself. Cloudkill is really puts a nasty damper on things when you’re low level... But honestly there’s two solutions. The more labor intensive solution is to make bigger encounters- have more enemies show up at an average CR. I don’t cringe from having 8 Merrow climb on the boat and tracking their stats separately. That was a fun encounter as my party are glass cannons and do massive damage in the first round- then have to try and mop up whatever remains, if they can. The other solution for a boss fight, one of the players pointed out- “Simply max out the monster’s hit points to give it more staying power.” Yeah, if it’s 10d6 + 20, give it 80 hp instead of the 55 hp listed as the average. Helps extend the encounter and makes even just three CR 2 creatures a bit more exciting for a level 5 party.
the only time I made an encounter "unbeatable" is whenfighting would be usless and have to find a different way around it. and there was a good story reason why something like that was there in the first place.
If you're a wizare and you kill another, loot their spell book. Those are hard to replace, and even if you don't need it now you can sell it or.... save it juuuuuust in case. They are not easy to replace.
I mean, there is definitely some issue behavioral issues that are either due to inexperience or bad decision making, but none of these videos ever talk about discussing these issues with their DM. I think we provide to much gratification to people bitching about their friends. The first time they said anything was when they was demanded to stop stealing ideas from their campaigns. Which I personally don't have an issue with. Maybe this is a hot take, but I am inspired and often "steal" concepts from pop culture, fantasy novels, and the like that I find interesting. I typically change it to my desires. I twisted the cultusit town from Castlevania season 3 into my current campaign and my players are having a blast. If I use music from game of thrones, baldurs gate, and the like then why should I have to draw the line because my buddy came up with something cool? I see it as homaging good work. For fuck sake, my player made a character based around the power puff girls. Should she have to contact the show creator for intellectual permission? Now, the least he could have done was twist it a bit (like most DMs do) and claiming it was original was uncool for sure, but this idea that other fantasy content is off limits is stupid imo. In the original scenario, a player sat in on a group and was unhappy he stole from him, but this pretends that this stuff has any bearing on anything other than a Friday night game . However, putting borrowed content in front of it's creator is...weird and I see why that would be an issue.
Thank you! I've been scrolling down the comments wondering at how people can't see that the players are just as much at fault for having a bad time - a GM/DM (especially a beginner) still needs feedback from their players, and it sounds like these people ragequit over something fairly minor. Yes the DMPC is annoying, but the backstory provided could be interesting, just handled poorly. The dice fudging in favour of the players would be perfectly fine in a lot of groups who don't want PCs dying. The endless battle encounters should be reduced and toned down, but some players enjoy just rolling dice and wading through enemies, so without feedback the DM could be thinking you're enjoying yourselves. The plagiarism thing without asking or thanking the original creator isn't cool or ok, and continuing to do so when asked not to isn't either, but reusing someone's ideas in a different context with different players is perfectly fine, "highest form of flattery" and all that. Just ask the original creator if it's ok with them first ^^'
Not actually true. I voiced my concerns and qualms with the campaign far earlier than it seems to appear in this story. I was genuinely trying to steer the DM onto the right track from early on. But there is not much you can do with someone who refuses to accept any form of constructive criticism. If I were to put every time someone complained or tried to help the DM into the story it would be 4x the length
I have actually planned an impossible encounter, but the party won't die. To clarify, a cult is using an adult black dragon to be their muscle, and the level 5 party have been a thorn in the side of the cult. So, they are gonna send Argrinara (the dragon) to send a message. Stop messing with them. And she'll down the party, or they can succeed. She will down the party but not kill them, carrying them back to the gates of the main city. Leaving each of them with a scar some place on their body as a reminder. I'm still not sure about it, but I've had some good feedback when I've talked to others about it.
I’m a first time dm atm who is doing a completely homebrewd campaign that’s set in the world of warhammer I’m not very good but I could even see that this was a bit ridiculous.
Well plagiarizing another system or setting is not the same as plagiarizing another player's campaigns. I am not against stealing ideas or concept from another setting.
You are right, this made me really angry, but I have also realized that I need to fix something in my own DMing. I do admit to throwing random encounters at my players constantly, I gotta fix that
Id say please do make encounters that are impossible... but hear me out if you do make it very likely that the party can get away when things get out of hands and also add a little subquest to it soo they can later find a weakness to exploit through investigations and such..
I mean, I'm not gonna lie, if a game has a good idea for a story I'll probably use it for my game if I get inspired to. Shit, my ravenloft game is almost certain to use the ideas from the False Hydra story at some point. I get that he wasn't a good DM and all, but I see no problem with borrowing ideas from other campaigns if they think they will work in your own game.
Lol, I love stealing ideas, and making impossible encounters. It's a part of why I am forever voted the eternal DM =P. I guess it's all in how you pitch it.
Well I never thought my story would actually make it to a video, I cannot wait to read the comments sections. It feels so weird having someone narrate my nightmare campaign from the outside.
I just wonder. This friend of yours does he gets his way often in real life?? Or is he guy is playing a lot of solo computer games where his hero is the ultimate being there? He never understood the role the DM has in a campaign. To tell a story that interacts with the characters/ heroes and entertain the players. He is not very imaginative that is for sure! If he let's you travel a ridiculous long trip with every day at least one encounter where is the storyline then? But you have done the best thing and quit...well rage quit;D
@Phoenix he sounds like a reluctant DM who didn’t really want to do the things DMs would enjoy doing.
I've seen more original people at a HALLOWEEN PARTY (there're a LOT of people wearing the EXACT SAME costume at Halloween parties).
3 minutes in and I could not Listen, flashbacks where to real. Everything you said I have experienced including fighting monsters that where immune to our spells and attacks. Only when we felt an Unresistible urge to dig in the mud mid-fight did we find a magical dagger that could hurt them, at that point we were level three and none of us had more than eight health. It was at that point I withdrew from the campaign and became a full-time DM for two groups of strangers.👍🏻
Sounds like he just copied and pasted other people's ideas into his own story. Which is kinda fine, we draw inspiration from already existing people and mythos all the time to tell new stories. But at least do something to make it your own, man. Copy the dimensions of a room, sure, but instead of that orc stronghold when there's braziers and a couple roasting pits and pelts everywhere, maybe it's the audience hall for some grand noble. Reusing templates is great for saving time on set up.
Listening to this story, I don't think I could have lasted a single session with a DM like this. OP must have the patience of a Saint!
It was probably one of those “Maybe it’ll get better” situations.
It was 100% one of those "Maybe it'll get better" situations. We had been debating it for weeks but kept giving benefit of the doubt
The best DM is one who cares about the players having fun. The worst is the one who tries to win. My DM only wants us to have fun.
There was a video a while ago about that. Even though my friends and I started playing around two years ago, we've never had something like those happen. DMs "winning" is essentially PVP against a level 100.
DUDE for real!!! I'm not trying to get "ALL RELIGIOUS" or anything but basically that DM was acting like a dick of God who hated his own creations... I mean go cheat on a video game by unlocking the supreme character code.... Every well almost every game has one.
But you're EXACTLY 💯 correct. It just sucks that sometimes people are 🖕🤬.. sorry I couldn't think of words to describe the twinkage.
But hells yeah, some of the best sessions had like maybe two hours, usually less, of actual role playing. But we NEVER EVER had a "gaming" night that was less than 6. Don't get me wrong we gamed the whole time. It's just we had to take breaks because we were laughing so hard or just plain laughing so hard... Ok so maybe I might've exaggerated a smidge, but the game to laughing ratio was like 60 gaming and 40 laughing. Either way I totes agree with you.
my dm is trying to make us have fun fighting giant scrotum demons while eating now im buying 20 dancing swords to not deal with those demons again
And the best player is one who cares about the DM having fun. The worst is the one who does no prep and only wants to win.
Seeing how one of the cover arts is a dragon with an orb seeing the party
I like to think the DM is an enemy
If the DM ragequits, it’s _That Guy Destroys Psionics._
If the Rulebook ragequits, it’s _Old Man Henderson._
And then, my friend, there is _this._
Classics. I'm waiting for the day we get a narration for them.
Nah, Old Man Henderson was completely legal by the _Trail of Cthulhu_ rules. Their DM ragequit after Old Man Henderson killed Hastur. Then another player took over and gave Old Man Henderson another story, courtesy of Nyarlathotep. At the end of which, Old Man Henderson and the pretty young thing that used to be Hastur journeyed off into the multiverse, never to darken the _Trail of Cthulhu_ again.
The _character_ ragequit.
@@wandererwerewolf477 Well Hastur ran on a specific house rule that the GM didn't think through.
Old man Henderson was the DM rage quit .
That guy destroys psionics the play derailed the campaign so many times the DM threw him out to salvage the campaign.
The Last Wizard destroying Psionics was one of the best player stories ever written.
It sounds like this DM was playing d&d with his Multi-class friend and everyone else was his luggage, and he was lazy stealing his friends ideas.
I’m already pissed that the two level 8 elf wizards had shite books when the party was almost tpk right off the bat and they were just casting fire wall and stuff.
Yea, that definately pissed me off. But what pissed me more was the 40+ guards that arrived 10 seconds after the fight, surrounded us and arrested us. Like, fucking help in the fight.
@@PhoenixIsTrash To be fair, they would probably have been terrified of the walls of fire.
you think that's bad, I'm a rogue that isn't allow to rogue in one campaign I'm in. Oh I'm allowed to sneak if it's to scout ahead for the party but when I roll to sneak in order to steal something then nothing I roll is high enough. Imagine rolling a natural 20 which brings my sneak roll to 27 and yet being told that they notice me because their passive perception is higher than 27.....we're level 5
@@Badartist888 DM: "Where are you going? Adventure is THAT way."
Player: "They had badass spells. I'm going to stay in town until I find a spellbook that has at least ONE of those spells."
how did they survive?
Player: "How should I make a challenging, yet good campaign?!"
Their crow brain: "Steal campaign from others. Make 'cool' unbeatable DMPC's."
"It was the DM's second campaign. Several weeks earlier, they had rushed a dissatisfying ending of their previous campaign in order to begin working on their next big idea."
Big mood... My longest-running campaign (over a year, played every week) died out in part because the DM got this great idea for an entirely new world and started working on that more than he was working on his current campaign. He eventually cancelled the campaign so he could run his new world with a different group. (One of the players in the new group is a girl he has the hots for who quit his previous campaign because of me. I called her out for being a manipulative bitch who was stringing this guy along like he ever had a chance with her... keep in mind this is all online, me and the DM live in Texas and this chick lives in Ohio and has had a bf for over a year. But he literally revolves his entire life around this chick and she has absolutely zero intent of getting together with him.) Oh, and he hasn't talked to any of us from the old group since. That was almost two months ago now.
Except that he's in another campaign with me, where he plays his character (who is literally a min-maxxed version of my character) and tries to outdo everything I attempt. And outside of session, he refuses to speak to me, or anyone else from that group, except for the DM.
What a dingus.
You should kick him.
I don't like to throw around this word a lot, but he's a literal simp.
He sounds like a total simp
Sometimes people are so stupid, I wish natural selection could be a thing again.
Probably the girl rejected him and then He don't want to admit his mistake by just trying to make your character look bad. The thing about min-Max is that they are retarded in everyother area that your characters isnt, unless they are bard.
I feel like the dm could have easily avoided conflict by just simply asking if he could use some aspects for ya’ll campaigns, smh.
He also needed to tell the players in advance about his friend being immortal. It was a good concept but the manner in which it was revealed not so much. It should have been told from the get go or they pull a KOTOR and the party encounters someone who knows that character is immortal and drops the bombshell on the party.
Originality is hard, balancing can be difficult, occasionally fudging dice rolls, for the players sake is fine too, this said, showing favoritism towards a single player is bad, using the ideas of others (without giving them credit or asking for their permission) is not ok and shoehorning something in your game whether it fits your narrative or not is outright stupid
Still being level 3 after going through the forest of Hell would have been the tipping point for me. If the players' accomplishments don't amount to anything, then what's the point.
I was wondering the same thing and I don't even play lol
I'd have started asking how much xp we're getting and tracking it myself.
My group of friends and I sometimes borrow each other's NPCs if they were particularly popular, but only as Easter eggs rather than key story beats. Usually we'll even have the NPC's original creator play them briefly if they aren't an enemy.
"with a story that made me almost violently angry :D"
Something about this doesn't fit, i can't quite place ^ my finger on it.
It's a slasher smile.
Coming back and watching this video a year late is a blast, but it also made me realise I missed one of the best parts. The Wizard/Warlock/Fighter multiclass monstrocity was also on cordial terms with a handful of gods, one of which he ran into on the road and had a chat with in session 3 or 4. Like, we just ran into a god.... on the road.... in the forest from hell. And he was like oh I recognise you, your Fharlanghn, been a while how are you going.
The beginning of this story has an actually good story hook just poor execution.
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As a DM as well, i HAVE taken ideas & concepts from others But WITH THEIR BLESSINGS! I, unlike the DThief in this story, take what has willingly given to me and "adjust the parameter's" enough to make the borrowed idea/concept different.
As an example, let's take that Lich Ambassador story. Instead of it being the Ambassador that was the Lich, what if it was say their Significant Other and they themselves were just a Love-struck Necromancer helping the Lich out? That story just went from a rehashed plot to a VERY uncomfortable Soap Opera Piece in the span of one sentence.
....And yes, you other DM's out there may use my idea/concept however you wish(just be honest where you got the material from). :D
Homebrew gone bad.
The worst kinda thing I guess.
I'm new to DND but I started playing a year ago or so..... But my DM would make his idea on his own me and the other players enjoy our DM and the story he would come up with.. 😁
Yes my friend loves making his own campaign that he writes down in this note book. Well the DM founded the notebook and steeled a campaign about a hell gate opening up in a church. My friend was super mad about that an a argument broke out but this story have a good ending the DM apologize to everyone and convince my friend to DM the campaign to keep it going, It was one the best holy only campaign I ever play. (mostly because I was allowed to be a paladin tank)
hey i have a question... i don't understand why taking something from someone else's campain is so horrible, isn't it similar to taking something from the books? like how is taking some mayor-y lich from someone else's campain different from taking strahd von zarovich?
(i mean besides taking it without asking, the not asking is bad, but is there anything else that's bad?)
Before the video: What's this supposed to mean? Creative thievery can be helpful for GMs.
Afterwards: What the hell? He just straight ripped other people off changing no details? Creative thievery implies making it your own, not copy/paste.
Exactly, people need to learn the difference between drawing inspiration from other and outright stealing their ideas.
I hope I never get mad enough to rage quit a game. Yikes. I got secondhand big mad.
3:08 I am already baffled and we haven't even got the promised plagiarism yet
I thought MY first stint GMing was bad. (TBF, It was; I one-shot the healer in the first turn of the first round of the first combat)
And this guy doesn't even have the excuse of it being the first time.
Don't beat yourself up. Balancing encounters is hard, especially when hit points start low.
The first encounter I put my party through they took maybe 2 hits.
The second encounter had everyone down at one time or another. Somehow nobody died.
There were 6 of them against goblins both times.
Also, I don't fudge dice rolls.
@@FlyingDominion I gave three goblins fighter class levels because I didn't understand how monsters in D&D worked.
@@HalfTangible That's not an unreasonable assumption to make.
@@FlyingDominion So you DM'd the beginning of Goblin Slayer!
Not entirely too far off. There were fewer goblins and nobody died (somehow. There was a miracle miss against a downed PC).
I am a fan of the idea "take the things you like and stick it into your campaign" meaning from other media like games, shows, etc.
A direct unedited copy of your player's campaign idea seems kinda dumb.
Making tough encounters is great so long as you can get the message across that it's going to be tough so the players have the choice of fighting or fleeing.
That being said I'm still relatively new to DMing so I'm not the best at describing.
You did fine describing this-and I completely agree
I copy so many ideas from all media I consume is ridiculous, but I always give credit and never copy another players/DM stuff unless asked first.
Hard fights are fun, but you have to always give chances to win. Hard fight is not unwinnable fight. I play Pathfinder, but as a rule of thumb, I consider a hard fight is when the fighters have only a 50% chance of hitting the hardest enemy (no temporal buffs included), have HP and/or minions to last roughly three/four rounds, and some power or damage that makes them scary. I could give examples, if you like.
Chrysanthus A few examples would be nice, I only know 5e and I'm still trying to figure out a balance where an encounter is challenging but doesn't end up a slog which has been difficult. I'm definitely improving but could use a few fine tuning from outside sources.
@@Pharland Well, last session my 3 players of 2nd level, a barbarian, fighter and witch (think wizard but no blasting), after a series of fights where they got their resources and HP diminished by undead body parts (Crawling Hands, flying acid spitting heads and a weird floating eye that stuns one round by spitting its tears), finally got approached by a weird cloaked stranger. Turns out, that was a low level demon who was the master of the undead creatures, and started the fight by panicking with magic fear the barbarian, which made him flee 2 rounds. At the beginning of the first round, he magically destroyed the preferred weapon of choice of the fighter, forcing him to use a slightly inferior weapon. Good thing the fighter start with a charging critical hit with his axe the fight, since he then got a full round of attacks that downed him. The ranger NPC they convinced to help them got a nasty critical bite the next turn while trying to defend the witch, leaving her almost dead, while doing only half-decent damage each turn. Finally the barbarian showed up, without magic fear but with very much rage, and finished off the demon with the last round of rage he had that day.
Conclusion: a boss fight that took critical hits to be killed without downing more than one player, put out of the fight the barbarian for three turns, nerfed the fighter and downed him first turn, and almost killed the helper NPC (the witch would have been next).
And how I knew this was a challenging but winnable fight? The fear was only once per day, so only one player would be affected. His Damage Reduction meant that only good hits counted. His HP meant than even then he could not go down until three rounds (barring criticals). Its AC meant that players only could hit around 50% of their attacks (until the witch very wisely nerfed its AC with a hex). And his full attack was scary damaging.
And that was only the second boss in this campaign, and it fought solo. The previous one was a cleric with skeleton minions that left the party with less than 4 HP each before dying.
@@Jake007123 That sounds like a fun session, and it sounds like both you and the players are pretty good at the game, lol.
Dm:here's High level spell casters that can kill all of you with a single spell
Also Dm:well he only did 6 dmg with a 8d6 dmg spell
Me, beginning to think that he just wants these characters to look like bad asses using DMaster Ex Machinas: Ah so you're completely trash at making actual encounters
I mean, I’ve had a DM that used ideas from other campaigns if we needed a filler session but he openly admits to doing that and we couldn’t be mad because we had fun. Even so, it wouldn’t have hurt for this DM to give credit where it’s due, especially if he is taking ideas from his friends.
Tbh, I think that if you like an idea from some form of fiction (i.e. a book with a cool trap or a movie with an interesting plot point) then you should put it in your game. Of course taking ideas from your players campaigns is not ok, unless you get their permission. All in all, it’s not illegal or bad by any means to take ideas from fiction and put it into your campaign, but you shouldn’t base your whole campaign around one stolen plot point. Just put it into your campaign as a potential story option.
Quite a lot of these DND stories are plagiarized from fiction. It's all in the execution and not slavishly following the source, but adapting it.
I figured this might be a good time to share a story., since as of late, more of the stories featured here have been relatively negative ones. Not bad in the slightest mind you! Just cautionary tales and horror stories. And with that I give you:
[The Birth of a New Campaign Type: The Revolver Campaign]
I have loved DnD for years but only played it every so often, yet one day I was inspired to take a seat in the DM chair for the first time when I was playing a game called VRChat and found worlds in which people could play DnD on. When I found out a bunch of my friends on there loved DnD, I suggested to DM for them and got to work on making a One Shot.
The One Shot was supposed to happen under the following. My players were to start at level 5 and be already established in an Adventurers Guild with the city. The party were as follows: a proportionally correct little person Tiefling bard, a Tiefling Monk, a Dragonborn ranger with fae hawk companion, a WarForged Bard, and a Drow warlock, who for backstory purposes thought he was a sorcerer. They were tasked by the guild master to find a highly praised member of the guild named Paladin Lance, who has been missing for close to two months when he went on a mission to find out why people where disappearing in a forest north of the city, as well as two other members called The Axem Twins, who went missing while going to go look for Lance.
Now here's where the fun began. As part of this "One Shot" and as my first time DM'ing I wanted to make sure that everyone was enjoying themselves and really got into the roles they made, so once the mission was given I gave them control of what they wanted to do next. They wanted to get information from around the town about where these three disappeared to.
To make a long story short, for the rest of the session they didn't even leave the city as all kinds of events took place within the city that I had to improvise on the spot. After starting a drinking party in a tavern, while picking everyone's pocket they could, a rousing time of "questioning" the associates at a brothel, as well as figuring out the logistics of their previous 3 day stay with the many associates at said brothel to find out how much they owed, which lead to them subsequently having to stop by a magic shop for a potion of lesser restoration to fight off the "poisons" that afflicted them, to attempting to get in to the higher end, Celestial District, to stay the night before heading off on the quest tomorrow, the session was already taken care of.
Was I upset by all the side tracking? Not at all. Could I have been a little more forceful to edge to the party to get to the task at hand? Maybe. But that was the beauty of the situation I was in. I had players who thought of what they wanted to do and just went with it. I was glad to have these players so involved. It was at the end of the session that I reminded everyone that we could try to get it done next session as this WAS supposed to be a one shot. And thats when I heard the best thing from one of my players. "Hey I mean, we can just do as many shots as it takes to get it done? OH I KNOW! WE CAN CALL IT A REVOLVER CAMPAIGN. You know since you got a bunch of shots in a revolver but still a low countof them you know?" I was so excited to hear this and so were the others as they wanted more! During these short stints here are the highlights.
The party discovered a seemingly abandoned house deep in the woods, to find a little modified version of a blink dog protecting the body of its long dead elven master, who with fantastic rolls by the Tiefling Monk managed to convince the creature that, not only did they mean no harm but they wanted to help take care of its former master. With a proper burial and a proper nights rest in the house the blink dog joined the team with the monk as its new master.
They then the next day fought a swarm of dire rats in a marsh-like area of the forest, with a surprising twist. Had any of them been a certain spot, on a random chance or the use of a spell that could be seen as a source of ignition, a pillar of fire would erupt from the ground. That's right, I made a Princess Bride reference. The funniest moment was when the edgelord Drow warlock who thought the party as nothing more than meat shields, gets attacked by the rats with two of them attacking at his legs and sticking there, Ace Ventura style with the third rat scoring a critical and with that, attacked...well um..."down there." He was still standing surprisingly and called out for help after he managed to kill the two rats on his legs, leaving the other one still um, "hanging around". The Dragonborn Ranger heeded the call for help and rushed over to attempt to kill the rat with a blow to the head. After a great damage roll, but a poor dexterity check to aim the blow as it was a called shot, the excess in damage transferred into the Drow's, ahem, Underdark, proceeding to knock the Drow into unconsciousness.
They did really well on survival and investigation checks and after a long while of treading through they thickest parts of the forest, they found what appeared to be a mausoleum with skeletal guards posted.
Unfortunately that's as far as we got as complications from the real world affected peoples attendance but nonetheless, I was happy to have such a fun time with my party. I was glad to have my first time as DM go so well and I'm looking forward to shooting more shots in the future.
Mind sending it to team@allthingsdnd.com?
All Things DnD gladly!
@@allthingsdnd i hope it sent alright ^~^
The lightning bolt example just sounds like he scaled down the spell to match a level 1 party.
To argue to the contrary, some of the best games I've played have come from my DM seeing something and saying "I'm using that". The obvious difference being that he was open about it and altered things to fit his game.
I only ever rage quit one campaign. We were members of a resistance group. Two new players joined. After a few sessions, they decided they didn't like the resistance and the way it operated and were going to leave. The GM called me and told me their plan and asked if I was going to kill them.
WTF. I didn't like they way the resistance operated either, but had failed repeatedly to get them to change. I was considering leaving with them. GM said I shouldn't let them take the resistances weapons. They were MY weapons. I'd been sharing them freely because I had way more than I needed. If I decided to stay I didn't care about the weapons.
Next session the two players are grinning like fools at me and the other player and won't say a word to us. Then suddenly, they whip out 2 brand new characters twice our level, with all sorts of overamped abilities our GM had expressly forbidden at the start of the campaign. They attacked us without warning or provocation.
GM did nothing during this encounter. Didn't even speak. The two players ran the combat themselves. They fudged dice rolls, they backtracked actions. I killed both of them twice. Their response, didn't happen. The other player cried because she didn't know what the hell was going on. I finally just tossed my character in the trash and walked out. Their parting words. "That's what you get for planning on killing us".
TLDR: GM doesn't want new players to derail his campaign, so he sows interparty hostility and let's his campaign go down in flames instead.
Holy crap what the hell was wrong with that DM? I hope the other player who got shafted found a better group as well.
Y'all literally make the best DND story videos. Love them to death!
Yay finally I love your vids honestly these 3 days were bacicley waiting for you to post
In my experience, it's easy to copy an idea, without even noticing. (that was probably not the case here though.)
Once my DM ran a campaign, with the same plot as Wing Commander 4. He did not notice himself until we told him.
Once I made, what I thought was a very good design for a Robot Character, and later found out it was similar to Zeke from CtrAltDel, but the character had not shown up in the comic for years at that point, so I had forgotten about him.
This sounds like my DM before we had a nice long chat with him (apart from the stealing ideas). Every battle we've fought has been a deadly one, even the random encounters. We fought an Archduke of hell (homebrewed CR 24-ish) when we were 4 level 14s. We only won because he gave us some op magic items and my fighter/rogue multiclass and the hexblade warlock got a surprise round on him and 3 crits between us in the first round. We are nearly level 19 now and going into Epic levels because the BBEG of this campaign is an evil god that we need to kill.
This happened to our play group. The DM said she was recording the sessions in order to better remember what happened in sessions but they were infact trying to turn our campaign and characters into a a creative writing collage course and claiming it was her own work and ideas for each characters motivation and backstories.
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery
I have a Player/DM (we Alternate) Who Regularly Takes NPC and Character Ideas from me to use in his Games, Often in games where I'm not Present. When it Happened the first time I was a Bit annoyed that he was Taking my Ideas, but Since then I've come to see it as a compliment, That I'D Create Character Concepts good enough that they'd Deserve to be "Uploaded" to other Games even when I'm not even there. Plus he Always Gives the characters a New Twist on their theme, so they End up almost Feeling like different Characters.
His Style of DMing is far Very Different From mine, I'd Be Tempted to say our styles are Polar Opposites.
I'm Essentially a Rules Lawer behind the DM Screen and I try to Map out a World in my Head to Let My players Roam as I adapt to their Actions and Fill in the Blanks as Logically as I can as we go along, ending up with a Story that Evolved from the player's Actions and the world I set up as a Backdrop, What most would Call a Sandbox Game.
He on the other Hand Tends to see the Rulebook as a List of Strongly implied Suggestions, and he puts his Focus on trying to Create a Story for the players to Follow through, he usually tries to map out every possible Outcome of every encounter, Social Combat or otherwise, and if Player Actions Don't QUITE Match one of the outcomes he'd Prepared, he Picks one that's closest and Keeps running it as though they'd Done that, Leading to a Kind of Logic Gate Style of gameplay Kinda Like a Videogame With Player Choices(kinda Like "Detroit: Become Human"), or a "Choose your own Adventure" Book. I Like to describe his style as Being on a Railway Network, Where Sure you're on a rail, but you can Still Drive into Different Track, and the Tracks are Set up to take through the most Scenic Locations.
There are Benefits to each style, Neither is Really Better than the other outright, it's mostly a matter of Preference. Where Mine offers a More Personalized Adventure/Story, his Gives more Consistent Epic Storytelling Making the Game Feel more Grand. And Seeing the same Characters Show up in both styles is Actually pretty Fun to See play out how they Tend to give off Different levels of Impacts on Players and for Different Reasons. I've even Sat Down With him just to think up New Characters for BOTH of us to use every Now and then, the Shit we Come up with when we TRY to Share Ideas gets Weird and So Awesome, to me at least.
"Fog cloud is a light mist" So there's no reason to ever cast it? I'm pretty sure it's meant to obscure vision and if it doesn't do that it's even more worthless then true strike.
I cast a light mist! Good luck reading the fine print now, sucker!
I do love the wholesome stories. These stories about jerks are helpful. I treat these stories as examples on what not to do during my sessions. First DM here.
DM: rolled badly
OP: .... what drugs were you on when designing this encounter?
My game last night was Hilarious
Half Orc Monk (-1 Int); needs to attune to his Wizards Chessboard by beating someone. I figured I'd just give it to him...but as soon as the game started he said he wanted to play chess with the kids (who will obviously have disadvantage).
For 2 hours in-game, neither proceeded to roll above 3, until the kid rolls a nat 1.
"My King is stronger than your Priest, because he's riding the PONY!" The monk says, and the kid facepalms as-if he should've seen that coming. The 20 Int Artificer walks away before her brain melts out her ears.
Gnome Barbarian (-1 Int); goes up to Smithy and asks for a Horshoe. "2 silver." Watches Gnome look through a bag half his size. "I said 5 Silver..."
Gnome looks at him a sec, "...OK!" Gives it to him. "Can I make something?"
Smith, "Scrap's over there."
Gnome proceedes to roll NAT 20 on whatever he wants to make. The Smith watching his skill intently noticing he's creating Steel out of Iron scrap, "You're quite skilled. What are you making?"
Gnome, "Something..."
When he finishes, it gleams in the light. A Masterwork, Steel Spike!
"Is that to defeat the demons in the mine!?" The smith asks impressed.
Gnome looks at him plainly walks out into the street and plants it in the ground. Walks back seriously turns around...and throws the horseshoe.
After a moment the Smith looks down at the smiling Gnome, "What a Waste..." and walks away.
from the famous words of Matthew Coville "steal from something everyone knows and you are derivative, Steal from something nobody knows and your a Genius". this guy failed as a DM hard and if he felt so desperate to take something at all he should have found something so obscure and old and ran with it.....But that requires work.
First! Hail Astoshan and self like mode on...
3.5 edition: Good ol' DMs doing anything in their power to take the party down, while making their brains work as lil as possible . *Perfectly balanced, as all things should be*
That's not how I remember 3.5. The few DMs who were like that were 1and 2 veterans. As a 3.5 DM my biggest problem is people who play other edditions either 2 E or 5E trying to interject those rules into my game. Oddly enough it's the veteran 2E players that are worse.
That person was a horrible DM no doubt
BUT
here's the apparently hot take: "stealing" ideas is perfectly fine as long as things make sense inside your campaign. The problem was stealing them from sources that are so easily recognizable by players, tearing down all sense of originality or uncertainty. Like, at least give it a fun twist or something, my dude
To clarify it IS ok to make an encounter that cannot be won by the party the way they currently are. However that should be made clear. Also read stat blocks thoroughly. I have had to make so many last minuet revisions because I miss understood the abilities of a combatant. And if you need a combat that is simply to deplete your party of supplies sheathed that be healing potions. Spells slots, hp, or even material things the random encounters of and suddenly bears, and the wolf pack attacks work great and can do as much or as little damage as you see fit.
How on earth were you still lvl 3 by the time you got to the ship if you were fighting stuff that far out leveled you
>Constantly making a sub-level-5 party face multiple 7th-8th level spellcasters
>Fudges dice rolls when things go south
Bruh
... It took you _two months_ of play sessions to travel one road? Holy fuck your DM is a mess, and I haven't even gotten to the bad part yet
I lobe that the first special thanks every time is "giggle fart" XDXD
way to hear that the last 3 seconds or so of the audio is recycled from an older video as I could hear the quality difference.
Impossible encounters for low level PCs reminds me of playing in game where almost every npc my dm created had some level in a class: that guard who just arrested you is actually a level 15 fighter, oh that little girl who just pick pocketed the barbarian is a level 5 rogue. It was just stupid
I had a DM who did this in my earlier experiences of D&D a few times whenever they tried to put in their own OC Edgelord Paladin and the group wasn't feeling the campaign stories he tried to run by us. It eventually got to the point where I and a couple others deliberately created characters that were absolutely silly, or would mean he'd have to put actual thought into how events went if he wanted to continue DM'ing. We also would take care not to mention our own ideas for campaign stories prior to sessions, because he would find things to "incorporate" without permission or any tie-ins to previous sessions. Over time he got better after a lot of people declared they would not play with him any further if he didn't change his methods, and it seems my former DM has learned to keep his own main characters largely out of the main party if he's running it, but a lot of longtime friends in the same circle still dodge his campaigns these days because of just how bad the stories had been if it didn't center on his character, even though he's an otherwise generally likable guy.
This reminds me eerily so of a DM who I played with formerly, still am friends with, but for various reasons beyond just plagiarism my friends and I will not partake in any of his campaigns again. The DM was a person who could not for the life of him create dm PCS, or even plot points, without having them revolve around games or anime that he's watched in the past and are using as 'inspiration'. His rendition of familiar characters were horribly butchered in their personalities or identities from the original IP they came from. Because he believed that 'I'm doing them better than their original source material!'. That, combined with the DM more or less using his army of stolen characters, our "Allies", to keep any of us from being able to have meaningful rp without him finding a way to butt a character into the conversation, left a very bitter taste in everybodies mouths. In due time, the DM would 'lose inspiration' for his game, and conclude it to absolutely nobodies surprise. He was discouraged because of the fact that nobody actively wanted to take his chimera [N]PC's seriously, let alone build meaningful relationships or bonds with characters that couldn't die, and were a fraction of the identities we fell in love with in their original works in the first place.
DM: You rolled a 19 Mark! I fudged it. That giant would have killed you man!
Someone should tell the DM that Immortal in DnD only means you doesn't age or dies to disease, however a Spear through the head would kill him.
I have had a player steal the start of one of my campaigns before, but her players were having so much fun with my campaign opener that I didn’t feel too bad about it. So I don’t know how to feel about this topic because I have seen the fun people can have directly stealing plots and campaigns. The player in question is a good friend on mine and she even told me later on that she had done it because the opener is very fun, throws players into the action, and has multiple creative ways to progress through it. So don’t always get mad at a gm who steals your campaigns, just let them know to give you some credit or something.
My playgroup has been together for years. We’ve gone through numerous campaigns DMed by various people. Occasionally, we throw in references or homages to our past games. But we don’t claim that these are our ideas
Impossible encounters are one thing, my campaigns always have a healthy sprinkling of them but they are NEVER as easy as "oh you 'happen' to spot something out of the ordinary in a ships' hold, when you check it out it starts ganking you!" it's more "as you sneak past the final guards, ignoring their clearly magical and high grade equipment, you find yourself face to face with a figure, (please roll Religion checks please) who bears a frightening resemblance to a normally peaceful and kindly mortal turned deity, they turn and greet you warmly, despite what you assumed was a flawless effort to remain hidden." i drop MASSIVE hints that you should probably NOT smack The Thing(trademark) or you're in for a very bad time, typically works, and gets my point across that "not everything is a fight, and not everywhere is somewhere you should be, no matter how good your stealth."
Hey last game I played kinda de-evolved into a home brew session that later prematurely ended. So since this video is about the EMS that steal stuff I give y’all full permission to steal this story )
We had a Rogue (me), a fighter, a bard, and a healer.
Anyways we took a break from the main quest to get some gear. DM asked for filler while he worked on setting up the main quest for everyone. My idea was the only one I remember and we had to railroad it a bit .... ) Here is the Dungeon as well as the loot that I remember. The whole group went on the quest ( for experience).
* Rogue- got a lockpick called the skeleton key (oblivion reference ) that gave a 100% success to picking locks but using it cost 4 health points. (Quest was a poker game)
* Fighter - Flaming Sword but flame only lasted for 30 minutes ( in real time) before it ran out and had to be refilled via buying fuel (Quest was a dungeon ) that was set at gas station prices minus the decimal point. ( IE if gas was $1.96 the price was $196 or gold pieces whatever)
* Bard ( played guitar IRL and in game) - magic guitar pic - guaranteed success / max damage( no way for enemy to save themselves) but after each use bard had to roll a D6 if it was a even number a guitar string broke and he could not use the guitar till he replaced the string. (Quest was a battle of the musicians)
( sadly the group disbanded due to real life issues.... and the healer did not get to get his gear. However he was set up for this)
* Healer - Rod of Asclepius, - heals target to full health but whatever spell used costs double the magic. ( Quest was a old teacher was dying ( age) at the other end of world. We were supposed to be working our way to the teacher completing the other quests enroute) .
Anyways if y’all want y’all can use the storyline I’d like to think somewhere this storyline got completed. Or that I at least helped someone
If you hear a good DnD story and use it as inspiration for your homebrew that's perfectly fine if you don't profit off it. Stealing a friends idea is obviously a bad idea especially if they're a PC in your campaign.
I steal ideas all the time as a DM. But unlike the OP's DM, I always put my own twist on it so it's not a straight rip off. I only use the stuff from online stories for inspiration, never something my players would know.
And this is how Astoshan is going to be a major npc in my campaign.
DUDE, DUDE wTF!! Talk about a TWINK!!!! I applaud you for being the grown up and remaining friends... I wouldn't normally suggest beating the $h1T out of someone.. Help me understand how you didn't. That person has a real friend in YOU. OMG 😍 you're amazing, I seriously wish I had a friend like you.
Just one more question, (probably alot more) did they ever DM again and if so did you participate? Also if so how'd it go? Told you prolly allot more questions... You were right, it pissed me off to.
There is a huge difference between taking inspiration and outright stealing ideas
This legitimately sounds like a story I’ve had recently about my new dnd campaign I’m in. my dm is exactly like this holy shit.
If I could change one thing, it would the immortal character. Maybe change it to a character that can’t go to the afterlife. Possibly add something like after his death, a few days later they find a goblin walking towards the party saying their names.
This is sad. My DM is one of the most kind and forgiving people I could ever wish to play a game under. We are running a module right now but has taken the time to look at everyone’s backstory and incorporate it into the already pre-written world In a fun and engaging way. His first priority is the make sure his players have fun which in turn makes it so he has fun too. Once you lose sight of that and start stealing original ideas from your players without talking to them first it becomes insulting and aggravating for everyone. Just so sad.
I don’t understand as a Dm, why a Dm, The Story Writer and Teller, would have purposefully Steal others campaign content, and put 3rd level players against Super overpowered, deadly monsters. Some people. ( I do get using others ideas in your campaign but not full out Plagiarizing them)
While this DM sounds like he just got way to high on his own power trip, I got to give em credit for the immortal PC idea that actually sounds like something that would be really fun to RP. Kinda like a guy who has seen way to much and just wants it all to end so he can finally rest and is just plain sick and tried of watching friends and loved ones die around him, while he goes on and on getting pulled back each and every time from that sweet embrace of death. Honestly I would love to RP that but I highly doubt any DM I know would even allow it.
I was a bit shocked to hear during that encounter on the boat that the party was still LEVEL 3! They’ve had multiple sessions fighting people and creatures well above their own level, hell above their COMBINED LEVELS, multiple sessions of that and haven’t gained a SINGLE LEVEL!?
Did anyone else get supernatural vibes from the colt revolver in a box that can kill gods quest
If you have to fudge rolls every encounter, you need to reexamine your priorities as a DM.
Now, as a DM, there are two kinds of roll fudging
1. Use a reroll, as if you were giving advantage or disadvantage
2. Selecting the numbers you want
I almost never use option 2, because while it's the most effective, overuse eventually kills the whole point of using dice in the first place. Instead, using a reroll increases your chances, but still leaves in a chance for failure.
Even then I keep my rerolling to under 3 a session, because overusing that has the same result of sucking the element of risk out of the game.
There are pills to control your childish rage.
I fell asleep last night listening to another vid and it autoplayed 21 of your videos while I was asleep lol, have fun with my free views hahaha.
I’ve never played dnd and know very little about it, but I love writing and from a story telling viewpoint this is simply painful
This is my first time watching his videos. He has the same vocal cadence as Darkness Prevails and similar vocal sound.
lol before even getting 5 mins in. I have a bone to pick with the wizard spell-book thing. The spell books are encrypted and it costs 50 gp per spell in materials to learn a new spell via a scroll or deciphered spell in a spell book. You can’t just pick up a wizard spell-book and read it. Unless you also find a cipher on the wizard along with the spellbook and you’d still have to spend the 50 gp to learn it and only wizards can learn spells this way.
If you don't want your wizard gaining new spells, just don't leave the spellbooks in, lol. Or do something interesting like when he touches the book, it bursts into flame, destroying itself. The player won't be happy, but at least it makes more sense than a powerful spellcaster having no worthwhile spells in their spellbook.
Yeah, wow, that's a bad DM right there. NPC encounters have a Challenge Rating FOR A REASON! Third level PCs shouldn't face off against enemies with a 5-level difference, that's just not fair.
What made me rage quit my first DM and the group entirely was because the DM kept changing and hopping between campaigns, normally that wouldn't bother me as long as we went back to them.
The problem came around when he had us play this serious by the book campaign role play and everything only to scrap it and replace it with another.
He made us make characters that we got into and played well, then decided to force us to fight a couple of anti-christ like child gods with no warning or way to survive. The first one was benevolent and gave us necklaces to not be corrupted, not 30 minutes later and we encounter the other outright evil child god doing creepy things in a elven mansion. The necklaces began to glow as we where running away and we got a bad feeling and ditched them. Seconds later they exploded and I accidentally killed this supposedly op NPC.
Then the demon monster child god (Im not sure what it was exactly) started picking off the party one by one, I was the last one left and the child just outright said that it corrupted the benevolent one and the world is about to end.
No opportunity to fight back, no indication of a way to survive, and no democracy or negotiations was viable. If the story ended there I wouldn't be as mad because it was a fairly creepy moment that was decent. But no he said that our spirits went on to possess these conveniently pre planned characters for an entirely different game, because he wanted to play it. That's where I got pissed off and outright left the group.
If you wanted to play a different campaign all he could have done is asked and we would have gone with it for the fun of trying something new like we always have. But knowing him, he would have gotten bored of it after showing off one or two of his OP final fantasy like characters and then put us into a TPK.
I stopped playing DND for a couple of years and started again lately
A lot of DM’s make the mistake of constantly throwing a single OP boss at a party, thinking it will be a good fight. It’s not- the one hit kill possibilities are too great. I made that same mistake on one or two occasions myself. Cloudkill is really puts a nasty damper on things when you’re low level... But honestly there’s two solutions. The more labor intensive solution is to make bigger encounters- have more enemies show up at an average CR. I don’t cringe from having 8 Merrow climb on the boat and tracking their stats separately. That was a fun encounter as my party are glass cannons and do massive damage in the first round- then have to try and mop up whatever remains, if they can. The other solution for a boss fight, one of the players pointed out- “Simply max out the monster’s hit points to give it more staying power.” Yeah, if it’s 10d6 + 20, give it 80 hp instead of the 55 hp listed as the average. Helps extend the encounter and makes even just three CR 2 creatures a bit more exciting for a level 5 party.
the only time I made an encounter "unbeatable" is whenfighting would be usless and have to find a different way around it. and there was a good story reason why something like that was there in the first place.
If you're a wizare and you kill another, loot their spell book. Those are hard to replace, and even if you don't need it now you can sell it or.... save it juuuuuust in case. They are not easy to replace.
I mean, there is definitely some issue behavioral issues that are either due to inexperience or bad decision making, but none of these videos ever talk about discussing these issues with their DM. I think we provide to much gratification to people bitching about their friends.
The first time they said anything was when they was demanded to stop stealing ideas from their campaigns. Which I personally don't have an issue with.
Maybe this is a hot take, but I am inspired and often "steal" concepts from pop culture, fantasy novels, and the like that I find interesting. I typically change it to my desires. I twisted the cultusit town from Castlevania season 3 into my current campaign and my players are having a blast. If I use music from game of thrones, baldurs gate, and the like then why should I have to draw the line because my buddy came up with something cool? I see it as homaging good work. For fuck sake, my player made a character based around the power puff girls. Should she have to contact the show creator for intellectual permission?
Now, the least he could have done was twist it a bit (like most DMs do) and claiming it was original was uncool for sure, but this idea that other fantasy content is off limits is stupid imo. In the original scenario, a player sat in on a group and was unhappy he stole from him, but this pretends that this stuff has any bearing on anything other than a Friday night game . However, putting borrowed content in front of it's creator is...weird and I see why that would be an issue.
Thank you! I've been scrolling down the comments wondering at how people can't see that the players are just as much at fault for having a bad time - a GM/DM (especially a beginner) still needs feedback from their players, and it sounds like these people ragequit over something fairly minor. Yes the DMPC is annoying, but the backstory provided could be interesting, just handled poorly. The dice fudging in favour of the players would be perfectly fine in a lot of groups who don't want PCs dying. The endless battle encounters should be reduced and toned down, but some players enjoy just rolling dice and wading through enemies, so without feedback the DM could be thinking you're enjoying yourselves.
The plagiarism thing without asking or thanking the original creator isn't cool or ok, and continuing to do so when asked not to isn't either, but reusing someone's ideas in a different context with different players is perfectly fine, "highest form of flattery" and all that. Just ask the original creator if it's ok with them first ^^'
Not actually true. I voiced my concerns and qualms with the campaign far earlier than it seems to appear in this story. I was genuinely trying to steer the DM onto the right track from early on. But there is not much you can do with someone who refuses to accept any form of constructive criticism. If I were to put every time someone complained or tried to help the DM into the story it would be 4x the length
The best part of this story is the three don'ts at the end.
I have actually planned an impossible encounter, but the party won't die. To clarify, a cult is using an adult black dragon to be their muscle, and the level 5 party have been a thorn in the side of the cult. So, they are gonna send Argrinara (the dragon) to send a message. Stop messing with them. And she'll down the party, or they can succeed. She will down the party but not kill them, carrying them back to the gates of the main city. Leaving each of them with a scar some place on their body as a reminder. I'm still not sure about it, but I've had some good feedback when I've talked to others about it.
"All Things DnD is back, with a story that almost made me violently angry!"
Oh ho ho, this gun' be good.
I'm dull too but this also pissed me off
Did anyone communicate their displeasure over constant boring x combat encounters that lacked any emotional gravity due to lack of rp?
Stealing is illegal! Punish him!
Sounds like the last DM i've been part off.
Yes stealing things from others is wrong, Now excuse me I need to go play Curse of Strahd.
I’m a first time dm atm who is doing a completely homebrewd campaign that’s set in the world of warhammer I’m not very good but I could even see that this was a bit ridiculous.
Well plagiarizing another system or setting is not the same as plagiarizing another player's campaigns. I am not against stealing ideas or concept from another setting.
This one seems less like a story and more like a cautionary "what not to do."
You are right, this made me really angry, but I have also realized that I need to fix something in my own DMing. I do admit to throwing random encounters at my players constantly, I gotta fix that
Id say please do make encounters that are impossible... but hear me out if you do make it very likely that the party can get away when things get out of hands and also add a little subquest to it soo they can later find a weakness to exploit through investigations and such..
You can take ideas from others to build around or at least ask if you can use them and should never pass them of as your own
3:41 I mean technically it's the same probability as any feasible dice roll but yeah, quite convenient and clearly fudging
You guys know our Narrator sounds like a robot but human
Robot But Human
Atleast is gave me an idea for a lovecraftian horror campaign idea
3 minutes in and there’s 150 views, neat
I mean, I'm not gonna lie, if a game has a good idea for a story I'll probably use it for my game if I get inspired to. Shit, my ravenloft game is almost certain to use the ideas from the False Hydra story at some point. I get that he wasn't a good DM and all, but I see no problem with borrowing ideas from other campaigns if they think they will work in your own game.
It's one thing to copy someone else's campaign, it's another thing to do it without permission and when they're in the campaign
If it was the first rage quit, I wonder what is the last.
Lol, I love stealing ideas, and making impossible encounters. It's a part of why I am forever voted the eternal DM =P.
I guess it's all in how you pitch it.
Dang, that's not a way to run a game. Not a D&D player yet, but if you're DMing you're essentially designing a game and story when you homebrew.