I'm constantly amazed by your players' ability to not pay attention whatsoever to plot, to the point where the really big significant reveals go completely over their heads.
What struck me as strange is why the players didn't try and ask that Copper Dragon for help. He lives in the harbour and would have seen that thing shoot off, maybe even helped them in the caves. He seems very friendly and it's good to have a dragon as a friend.
Good idea, but I do want to point out dragons are not very inconspicuous even under water. So following the submarine with the help of the dragon might not have worked out nearly as well as most of us might hope.
@@necrosylum.l3013 Dragons can also shapechange, either via the polymorph spell with inherent magic or inherently as a spell like ability when they get to the Ancient stage. Metallics especially (Of which this dragon is one) are know to do this to help the shorter-lived races. If the players had asked, the dragon probably would have helped them tail the sub in a far less conspicuous and (far less draconic) form.
Though, mulling it over, Ben might not've known that, considering he had a _Copper_ dragon living in the bay. When, y'know, _Bronze_ Dragons are the aquatic ones, Copper Dragons live in dry upland caves.
"Did Peleios want his character back?" "No. He said he wanted his character dead." Okay, but, why did you tell them that? The whole meta-gaming situation could've easily been avoided by simply not revealing that info. You could've said something along the lines of "Peleios and I talked about the fate of his character. You can ask him specifics when you see him later, but right now, I'm in control of it."
Peleios's fate is horrifyingly riveting. I usually listen to these with one ear and doing something else, but you had my whole attention there. SPOOKY!
Thumbs up to Zumbo for trying to avoid meta-gaming. Yeah he eventually caved but also as a DM i would have allowed it anyways if it looked like the players were going to be at a standstill. Sometimes gotta let things slide to let the game proceed. Also thumbs up for Peleios for being cool with character death. Sounds like your friends (and brother) are really awesome to DM for.
25:47 I love bens creativity, why cause instead of doing one villain he does them all, it's funny how he allows dragons because If you don't know, no dragons are allowed in water deep for like 100 miles or something crazy because of a staff in the vault of dragons
a few episodes ago when you introduced the carnival owner I was like "I know of another WoTC character that has one of those chocobos, what a coincidence." then last episode you reveal Jarlaxl is in town "Wow thats cool they added him to the story" then this episode "wow I'm as blind and naive as your players"
Jarlaxle is actually in this module as written. In fact, as written, the module has you choose one of four main antagonists: the Casselanters, Manshoon, the Xanathar Guild, or Jarlaxle. Ben, however, is running this module with all four in play.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 that’s a very ambitious for sure, I can understand how the players have a hard time keeping track what’s going on with that being the case😅
That answer might change after having played several sessions. Some people can get attached or wish for an especially meaningful death or end for a character. As a DM you have options. New hag mom patron or at least forced to make a deal for their life comes to mind.
@@lordzycarr yeah i think your right about that. it's always best to ask before the game starts but it's fair to ask later on as well even if you have the initial one. It is a thing that depends quite a lot on the players and dm though.
Nah its fine. Kind of keeps the tension up because no one is going to assume they will live, but when you ask the question you are offering them the chance to luck into not being eaten by a coven of sea hags.
You know, I thought Jarlaxle was going to keep stringing the players along in disguise (Bastard had my party unwittingly reporting to him right up until the final confrontation), but casually dropping it to flex is also completely in character.
It’s funny, in my campaign, when we were asked to come with his men to talk to him when he wanted to reveal himself and strike a deal, two of us just disappeared through invisibility and sneaking because we thought it was really bad news, but our third party member got face-to-face with him and was given a piece of Golorr while we riled up an angry mob and destroyed the thing that revealed his men’s identities as drow, accidentally starting a war while our friend got out of that chat completely unscathed. Jarlaxle, along with the Xanathar, ended up being our final bosses.
I like the way you handled the Cassallanters. I'm not sure I handled it well. I probably could have pointed the party more directly towards the problems.
One-Man-Band Bard. Accordion between the knees, big drum backpack, armpit trumpet/cymbals combo, harmonica mouth harness, banjo in the hands, honk devices in each shoe. Cock your head left or right to activate/deactivate the bubble machine. Pelvic thrusts to activate the slide whistle. Your special power is being absolutely unfathomably loud at inappropriate moments. Bring him on your next stealth mission
The whole plan of sending the warlock down there was... really dumb lol. Like polymorphing any of your people and sending them alone into the ocean is a horrible idea. The fact that the party did not even make sure they had a way to contact them in the intern before sending them just shows the lack of preparedness.. they basically had to make their cleric retcon his preps lol. Yeah, a really.. really bad idea. Better to just cast water breathing, or buy a bunch of water breathing potions and just swim down there as a group or something from the start.. thats still not a good idea... but its way better than polymorphing someone and taking away all of their abilities and just hoping they don't die in a stupid way lol.
Yeah, exactly lol. If they absolutely wanted to go through with the plan, I wonder if they even considered sending the druid instead...You know...because the druid can turn into an aquatic animal free of concentration, and at this level can stay in wildshape for multiple hours, AND can do that TWICE per short rest...Poor Peleios, smh.
people love using polymorph for spying until you have to explain you also get the animals intelligence, and sure a octopus is smarter than most animals but in dnd its int 3.
this is the thing, giving the estate away, doesn't mean the wealth or items of wealth are not bound to the contract... it just means that each and every party who gets some of it "may" fall prey to it.. so in a way the debt may have been paid with the 99 souls. do you know of the series "friday the 13th"? its about a guy who made a deal with the devil to sell cursed items for power... after he disappeared / died or "something else" ((i musn't ruin the series for ya)) a relative took over the shop and discovered the curses... which they then chose to collect all the items back from those who were given or bought them. i can't remember if it was a moral thing or if they were going to fall prey to the curses themselves if they didn't. old series but i remember some of it. this storyling just reminded me of it. peace.
Wait, you ask a player how he feels about character death? I don't understand? How can D&D be fun without you risking anything? Without no risk, there is no real achievement either. Yeah, it is a comedy game but even comedies must have some stakes. I am not saying you have to go Gygax on your players and actively try to kill them at any chance you have but if they put themselves in dangerous situations and screw up, they really only have themselves to blame. If you let them get away with that they will just act worse and worse, trying to push you. No one likes when their character dies but almost all players want to beat the odds and thread the needle. Without any risk though, there is no odds to beat and threading a needle the size of a Jumbo jet isn't very exciting either.
Depends on how you want to play it. Some games feature a character-driven plot, so they don’t kill off player characters because they don’t want to throw a wrench into that plot. Some games prefer to just brutally torture living PCs, and killing them would end things too quickly. There can still be plenty of non-lethal risks to keep the game fun.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 Yes, you want to avoid killing characters in games with character driven plots but there is a limit to that unless there is a reason why the PCs can't die. If for instance you have something a bit like Ready player one where the PCs are avatars in a VR game you can just have them respawn and that is fine but even then there must be some way for the players to fail. But in any scenario where you have combat, traps or environmental dangers, there must be some chance that a character could die or there isn't really a point of having those things. Otherwise combat have zero stakes, you could just say that the players automatically wins or maybe could be forced to retreat but actually spending the time it takes to handle combat in D&D is a huge waste that could be used for something else. And yes, you can run something like a detective story without any actual danger to the PCs and still have it fun, with the focus on solving clues but that is not what is going on here. The players are in combat pretty often and as soon as they realize they can't die, all the tension just disappears. I have actually ran an Infinity's edge campaign when they players respawned if they died (although with some death penalties) and that worked fine but it did mean I had to streamline combat to get it as fast as possible even if they did loose things if they died, because the stakes were lower in that part of the game while the plot had other stakes. Basically some evil Elon Musk clone realized that a meteor were going to hit earth so his solution was to transfer anyone important to a digital life but he needed test subjects for that. He also added some cheats so he and his cronies could control the world but one of his employees tipped off one of the PCs and so on. In short, they realized that their physical bodies had been murdered and that they were stuck in a game and now they were trying to stop the guys in charge plans for controlling the world. So they couldn't die (partly because I killed them all in the second session even if they didn't figure that out until like 15 sessions later when they had leveled up and taken control of a thieves guild. So initially the stakes seemed pretty low but once they figured out the plot it suddenly got rather high and the tension went up a lot.
@@loke6664 I am not reading all that, but there are ways to make stakes without it being life or death. Capture, curses, loss of items, even lose of levels hurt but do not end the story. It allows for comebacks which is a popular trope for a reason.
@@madhippy3 And yeah, I mentioned that. But even with all that, unless you have an explanation why the PCs can't die you will still loose a lot of tension, and the players victories will feel less earned for them. I am not saying that you constantly needs to kill them, just that there should be the chance if they screw up.
@@loke6664 I continue to disagree. I would rather lose a character than a level or critical piece of gear. A player with a dead character often comes back with a new PC which can fit into the challenge rating of the encounters. Imagine being made inpetent by being less about to confront challenges. There is a reason later editions removed level drain as an official thing you can do. Its horrible.
I'm constantly amazed by your players' ability to not pay attention whatsoever to plot, to the point where the really big significant reveals go completely over their heads.
I agree.
I have to wonder if you've played d&d lol. Sadly as a DM this is normal...
Yah that's a normal thing for players to do unfortunately
Very on point for many dnd player I've met.
@rene280195 There is typical oblivious, and there is not engaged oblivious. This feels more like the later.
Finally. Pelelos is relevant. He both tricked the investigatior and fell unconscious. Nice.
What struck me as strange is why the players didn't try and ask that Copper Dragon for help. He lives in the harbour and would have seen that thing shoot off, maybe even helped them in the caves. He seems very friendly and it's good to have a dragon as a friend.
"He seems very friendly and it's good to have a dragon as a friend."
So true! :)
Good idea, but I do want to point out dragons are not very inconspicuous even under water. So following the submarine with the help of the dragon might not have worked out nearly as well as most of us might hope.
@@necrosylum.l3013 Dragons can also shapechange, either via the polymorph spell with inherent magic or inherently as a spell like ability when they get to the Ancient stage. Metallics especially (Of which this dragon is one) are know to do this to help the shorter-lived races. If the players had asked, the dragon probably would have helped them tail the sub in a far less conspicuous and (far less draconic) form.
Though, mulling it over, Ben might not've known that, considering he had a _Copper_ dragon living in the bay. When, y'know, _Bronze_ Dragons are the aquatic ones, Copper Dragons live in dry upland caves.
Tuff has the kind of face that expresses both powerful innocence. And terrible violence.
That sums up the entire family legacy. =)
"Did Peleios want his character back?"
"No. He said he wanted his character dead."
Okay, but, why did you tell them that? The whole meta-gaming situation could've easily been avoided by simply not revealing that info. You could've said something along the lines of "Peleios and I talked about the fate of his character. You can ask him specifics when you see him later, but right now, I'm in control of it."
Peleios's fate is horrifyingly riveting. I usually listen to these with one ear and doing something else, but you had my whole attention there. SPOOKY!
I feel like this party really doesnt know why they stay together as a group but they've come too far to question it now
This is a format I really like listening to from you. Thanks Puffin!
Tuff turning into a little badass.
And that bronce dragon has tto be the cutest dragon ever :D .
So Cuuuuuuuuuute!
Thumbs up to Zumbo for trying to avoid meta-gaming. Yeah he eventually caved but also as a DM i would have allowed it anyways if it looked like the players were going to be at a standstill. Sometimes gotta let things slide to let the game proceed.
Also thumbs up for Peleios for being cool with character death.
Sounds like your friends (and brother) are really awesome to DM for.
From what i understand, Puffins brother took to dnd like a fish to water
It feels like a friend is recaping his DnD campain for me. but he is an exceptionally good storyteller :)
I could listen to these stories the whole day. You really are a great storyteller, Puffin.
Just wanted to say I am really enjoying these minimal animation campaign narrations Puffin. Would love to see them continue.
Yes! The Saga continues.
Perfect timing! I just got caught up on the last part.
Monday morning greatness! Thank you.
25:47 I love bens creativity, why cause instead of doing one villain he does them all, it's funny how he allows dragons because If you don't know, no dragons are allowed in water deep for like 100 miles or something crazy because of a staff in the vault of dragons
WOOo!
New Puffin Content!
I'm sure peleos is having some fun time with those three lovely water ladies, he'll be fine.
Pure Gouda Energy
These stories never fail to amaze. ;)
If you believe in yourself and with a tiny pinch of magic, all your dreams can come true
You are a great storyteller!
LMAO I LOVE THAT PUFFIN IS A FLUMPH
THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS PUFFIN
a few episodes ago when you introduced the carnival owner I was like "I know of another WoTC character that has one of those chocobos, what a coincidence." then last episode you reveal Jarlaxl is in town "Wow thats cool they added him to the story" then this episode "wow I'm as blind and naive as your players"
Jarlaxle is actually in this module as written. In fact, as written, the module has you choose one of four main antagonists: the Casselanters, Manshoon, the Xanathar Guild, or Jarlaxle. Ben, however, is running this module with all four in play.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 that’s a very ambitious for sure, I can understand how the players have a hard time keeping track what’s going on with that being the case😅
"How do you feel about character death?" is a question you should've asked your players nine, not eight, nine sessions ago.
I think the answers pretty clear after these nine sessions lmao
I never ask that ;)
That answer might change after having played several sessions. Some people can get attached or wish for an especially meaningful death or end for a character. As a DM you have options. New hag mom patron or at least forced to make a deal for their life comes to mind.
@@lordzycarr yeah i think your right about that. it's always best to ask before the game starts but it's fair to ask later on as well even if you have the initial one. It is a thing that depends quite a lot on the players and dm though.
Nah its fine. Kind of keeps the tension up because no one is going to assume they will live, but when you ask the question you are offering them the chance to luck into not being eaten by a coven of sea hags.
I love the bronze dragon in the harbor. I think it's now one of my favorite NPC's I've heard of
Who else let out a loud "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" scream at the end?
Just me? Okay then.
You know, I thought Jarlaxle was going to keep stringing the players along in disguise (Bastard had my party unwittingly reporting to him right up until the final confrontation), but casually dropping it to flex is also completely in character.
"Manchune"
It’s funny, in my campaign, when we were asked to come with his men to talk to him when he wanted to reveal himself and strike a deal, two of us just disappeared through invisibility and sneaking because we thought it was really bad news, but our third party member got face-to-face with him and was given a piece of Golorr while we riled up an angry mob and destroyed the thing that revealed his men’s identities as drow, accidentally starting a war while our friend got out of that chat completely unscathed.
Jarlaxle, along with the Xanathar, ended up being our final bosses.
Ya know i didnt realize till now
Tuff doesnt know that gouda is lost among the demiplanes of ravenloft. That's pretty sad
Thank you, Father Puffin
Eyy! Part 8!!
Woof. Thats an absolutely brutal way to go eh?
It's me! Manshoon. On the phone.
Pathetic fake! Where is your sense of showmanship? I, the _real_ Manshoon, shall show my greatness!
This is my favorite episode so far. The players are being super competent! Zumbo is a bit...mean
Yeah boi!
I like the way you handled the Cassallanters. I'm not sure I handled it well. I probably could have pointed the party more directly towards the problems.
My favorite D&D 5e character subclass is the eloquence bard. What's yours?
One-Man-Band Bard. Accordion between the knees, big drum backpack, armpit trumpet/cymbals combo, harmonica mouth harness, banjo in the hands, honk devices in each shoe. Cock your head left or right to activate/deactivate the bubble machine. Pelvic thrusts to activate the slide whistle. Your special power is being absolutely unfathomably loud at inappropriate moments. Bring him on your next stealth mission
College of Glamour Bard.
There's nothing more amusing than bonus action Commanding people to *grovel* and kiss your feet every turn.
All at no cost.
Adding a comment for support!
The whole plan of sending the warlock down there was... really dumb lol. Like polymorphing any of your people and sending them alone into the ocean is a horrible idea. The fact that the party did not even make sure they had a way to contact them in the intern before sending them just shows the lack of preparedness.. they basically had to make their cleric retcon his preps lol.
Yeah, a really.. really bad idea. Better to just cast water breathing, or buy a bunch of water breathing potions and just swim down there as a group or something from the start.. thats still not a good idea... but its way better than polymorphing someone and taking away all of their abilities and just hoping they don't die in a stupid way lol.
Yeah, exactly lol. If they absolutely wanted to go through with the plan, I wonder if they even considered sending the druid instead...You know...because the druid can turn into an aquatic animal free of concentration, and at this level can stay in wildshape for multiple hours, AND can do that TWICE per short rest...Poor Peleios, smh.
Jarlaxle's poor ego.
Wait….. wait…… WAIT…. Isn’t Tuff Thyme the cousin of Guada Thyme???
I notice the failing with Ben is he ASSUMES his party will get it. Your party, your friends don't. You should know your party lol
Goodbye NaNa we will miss you
Let's gooooooooooooo
people love using polymorph for spying until you have to explain you also get the animals intelligence, and sure a octopus is smarter than most animals but in dnd its int 3.
Noooo! Not Nana! She was the best character!
Most competent, too,
So did thay get the chocobo for working the fair Or what?
Nana is Sparklegem, I take it?
What in the ever-loving cheese is a "turo" card?
Lol Red October and One Peice references. Isn't the Bada bada the sound that the message snails make in One Peice.
No art?
Why is your channel name puffin forest
this is the thing, giving the estate away, doesn't mean the wealth or items of wealth are not bound to the contract... it just means that each and every party who gets some of it "may" fall prey to it.. so in a way the debt may have been paid with the 99 souls. do you know of the series "friday the 13th"? its about a guy who made a deal with the devil to sell cursed items for power... after he disappeared / died or "something else" ((i musn't ruin the series for ya)) a relative took over the shop and discovered the curses... which they then chose to collect all the items back from those who were given or bought them. i can't remember if it was a moral thing or if they were going to fall prey to the curses themselves if they didn't. old series but i remember some of it. this storyling just reminded me of it. peace.
Christopher MF Perkins!
How long has Ben been a Flumph?
Here's a 1-up to consider in later D&D games:
ua-cam.com/video/n1P3dhsLeZg/v-deo.html
2:00
Who is this Jar Axel Bane Ray that has 2 eye patches ? I bet he knows Driz Dudden. 🤣😂🤣😂😅😂
19:50
in fairness to your party, that is not how I pronounce Baenre.
Aw well that was a bit of an anti-climactic death lol
Wait, you ask a player how he feels about character death?
I don't understand? How can D&D be fun without you risking anything?
Without no risk, there is no real achievement either. Yeah, it is a comedy game but even comedies must have some stakes.
I am not saying you have to go Gygax on your players and actively try to kill them at any chance you have but if they put themselves in dangerous situations and screw up, they really only have themselves to blame. If you let them get away with that they will just act worse and worse, trying to push you.
No one likes when their character dies but almost all players want to beat the odds and thread the needle. Without any risk though, there is no odds to beat and threading a needle the size of a Jumbo jet isn't very exciting either.
Depends on how you want to play it. Some games feature a character-driven plot, so they don’t kill off player characters because they don’t want to throw a wrench into that plot. Some games prefer to just brutally torture living PCs, and killing them would end things too quickly. There can still be plenty of non-lethal risks to keep the game fun.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 Yes, you want to avoid killing characters in games with character driven plots but there is a limit to that unless there is a reason why the PCs can't die.
If for instance you have something a bit like Ready player one where the PCs are avatars in a VR game you can just have them respawn and that is fine but even then there must be some way for the players to fail.
But in any scenario where you have combat, traps or environmental dangers, there must be some chance that a character could die or there isn't really a point of having those things.
Otherwise combat have zero stakes, you could just say that the players automatically wins or maybe could be forced to retreat but actually spending the time it takes to handle combat in D&D is a huge waste that could be used for something else.
And yes, you can run something like a detective story without any actual danger to the PCs and still have it fun, with the focus on solving clues but that is not what is going on here. The players are in combat pretty often and as soon as they realize they can't die, all the tension just disappears.
I have actually ran an Infinity's edge campaign when they players respawned if they died (although with some death penalties) and that worked fine but it did mean I had to streamline combat to get it as fast as possible even if they did loose things if they died, because the stakes were lower in that part of the game while the plot had other stakes.
Basically some evil Elon Musk clone realized that a meteor were going to hit earth so his solution was to transfer anyone important to a digital life but he needed test subjects for that. He also added some cheats so he and his cronies could control the world but one of his employees tipped off one of the PCs and so on.
In short, they realized that their physical bodies had been murdered and that they were stuck in a game and now they were trying to stop the guys in charge plans for controlling the world.
So they couldn't die (partly because I killed them all in the second session even if they didn't figure that out until like 15 sessions later when they had leveled up and taken control of a thieves guild.
So initially the stakes seemed pretty low but once they figured out the plot it suddenly got rather high and the tension went up a lot.
@@loke6664 I am not reading all that, but there are ways to make stakes without it being life or death. Capture, curses, loss of items, even lose of levels hurt but do not end the story. It allows for comebacks which is a popular trope for a reason.
@@madhippy3 And yeah, I mentioned that. But even with all that, unless you have an explanation why the PCs can't die you will still loose a lot of tension, and the players victories will feel less earned for them.
I am not saying that you constantly needs to kill them, just that there should be the chance if they screw up.
@@loke6664 I continue to disagree. I would rather lose a character than a level or critical piece of gear. A player with a dead character often comes back with a new PC which can fit into the challenge rating of the encounters. Imagine being made inpetent by being less about to confront challenges. There is a reason later editions removed level drain as an official thing you can do. Its horrible.
First
darktoz