PSA: check what books and resources your local library has, my library has battle mats, rules books, published adventures, dice, and more for people to borrow! And if your library doesn't have the resources you want, you can request they purchase and add them to their collection! Working for a library, I can tell you they will almost always order items requested. Depending on the budget cycle the items could arrive really quickly or take a little while to be acquired and catalogued, but either way, free publicly available D&D and other TTRPG resources could be available at your local library so be sure to check it out! Haha, see what I did there?
As a fellow librarian, this shout out is very appreciated. Another thing I'll add is that a lot of libraries are part of larger systems, so even if your local library doesn't have a copy of the rulebooks in their collection, they might be able to put a hold on it for you from another library in your system, or potentially even request it via Outer Library Loan from libraries outside of your local system. This is especially notable for people who live near smaller libraries (like the one I work at) that might not have the resources to purchase the rulebooks and resources themselves, but might be connected to bigger libraries that do purchase that stuff.
Entirely accurate. This is a running joke in many of my games. The players are so into the mystery & drama that they are living out every moment. It's a good thing, but it has some real challenges.
@@GinnyDi of course! I know that a lot of your viewers can also easily get distracted, especially if they’re listening to something that doesn’t apply to them much, so hopefully this’ll help you retain more viewership!
@@GinnyDi I’ve been googling to figure out what that is, and either you’re bringing a car or scaling fortified walls in your Denny's. I don’t know which is funnier.
Re: Bastions 15:44 "It's easy enough to just ignore this chapter, but as someone who would love to play D&D like the Sims, I'm not gonna lie, I am really amped about this." I nearly fell out of my chair in agreement.
Hi Ginny, thanks for all the great input you've been providing. I'm slowly gearing up to work as a DM (in Southamerica) after over 25 years of running games, and you've been a great source of inspiration and comfort. I had just started reading the DM Guide (after your video)... so I guess I'll have to also ready the new one. T_T Thanks for all your great work. Stay awesome.
Thank you so much 🥰 I’m really glad the videos have been helpful! And wow, 25 years of running games is amazing! 😂 I wouldn't worry too much about diving into the new DMG right away - we've made it this far, right?
As someone who has been exclusively a player since before the 1st Ed DMG came out, I found this video fascinating. Based on the 1st Edition DMG, I've always assumed that the book is mostly a rulebook that explains obscure game mechanics, lists magic items, houses the to-hit and saving throw charts, and contains some fun random dungeon tables for use in games when everyone is tired and nobody wants to work that hard. The idea that the DM might actually read all that advice stuff is such an alien concept to me, especially given that the DMs in my formative gaming years were a bunch of teenagers who learned by trial and error. Also a shout out to your sponsor. The me from the 1980s is very jealous of the fact that you can talk to a magical communication box and summon a limitless supply of specialized gaming dice for a reasonable price, when I had to catch two different buses to get to that one hobby shop in the suburbs that carried gaming supplies and whose whole inventory of dice was fewer than the bag sitting next to my monitor now. Truly, we are living in the future.
I hear you! One of my criticisms about the 2014 DMG is that, in my opinion, it couldn't make up its mind about whether it was a reference text, like you're described, or a guide that is meant to be read in full. It was too long and full of highly specific information to function as the latter, but it wasn't well-organized enough, concise enough, or well-indexed enough to function as the former. That's why I'm so glad to see that this one has made up its mind and seems to work quite well as a guide, that you can actually read.
@@GinnyDi Most tend to be more of a back and forth there with parts that are more meant to be in full or more of a reference text. 3/3.5, for example, was more set up for more aimed at people who are already running games and is more for how to build an adventure or campaign along with a decent pile of optional or variant rules that could be brought into it...some of which kind of became heavily tied into other things as time went on such as the cohorts and similar thanks to several classes that heavily relied on them. But you had things about the functions of the multiverse, environments, homebrewing, magic items (the rules for that were awesome things there for being able to balance them to some extent)... Honestly, I was hoping more that the new DMG was more of a DMG2 type thing where both DMG's have their own things to bring to the table and aren't that doubled up between them in order to provide more, especially with the heavy claims of compatibility between it and the 5e stuff.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't think it's good design to create a book where parts are meant to be read in full, and parts are meant to be referenced as-needed, if the book does not communicate that intention to you.
Wizards of the coast did say in a Livestream that the tracking sheets will be available for free after the DMG 2024 comes out, unless I dreamed that cause I listened to it half asleep xD
Thanks for making an actually positive video on the new DMG! I've just seen so much hate videos (cause rant videos do better) that it's actually nice to see what might be worth checking out in the new edition.
I think it's worth noting that the embargo on the early access PDF only lifted yesterday - so other than a handful of people who have posted videos this week, a lot of those ranting and raving videos haven't actually read the book! I know it's easy to get clicks by being negative, but I am interested to see how or if the conversation changes once the book is available for everyone.
For more ideas to work with the pace of Bastions and Bastion turns, it is worth checking out Adventures in Middle Earth which introduces a seasonal cadence for alternating between adventuring and wintering in the equivalent of a Bastion. Expanding downtime activities might help to introduce a mechanism to skip some time and have the characters develop some life outside of adventuring together as a party. Not suitable for all settings or tables, obviously.
That sounds really interesting! It could definitely help with pacing for some tables, though as you said, not every setting or group would go for it. Definitely something to consider for DMs or players who want more character development outside of adventuring!
@@GinnyDi I think it's really helpful for realism to have way more downtime. Bastions sound like the perfect mechanic to promote that. The game developed around adventures and to not need any profession huge ridiculous treasures became a DnD staple. But it might drive a party more if there was hardly any treasure. You'd actually have to save up for a few month long trip, or find ways to make money. A merc or a bard might find that easy, but the types you are less likely to meet would need a special reason to travel and creative ways to pay for them. Another game, Shadowrun, is almost entirely based on PC's being constantly broke and getting double-crossed on jobs. A lot of downtime also fixes the awkward situation that the players can go from zero to hero while the rest of the world stands still. Especially if that was just a week in game!
I hear you, but I stand by my point that this is all very dependent on the game! In my main home game, we're racing against the clock to stop a demon from taking over the world, and we are actively being hunted by multiple factions. Narratively, it DOESN'T make much sense for us to take a week off! We can argue the merits and demerits of downtime in games until we're blue in the face, but I'm more interested in figuring out how to make bastions work for all types of games, even the ones that don't have a lot of downtime built in.
The "Everyone gets a Bastion" thing isn't to disimilar from what we do in my game. We technically have a shared stronghold, but all have our own little "facilities" that we manage. The Sorcerer has a library, The Druid a grove, The Rogue has a Spy Agency, Barbarian (me) has a tannery, etc. So its not too far fetched for everyone to have their own little zone in the same space :D
I think a shared space with facilities is far better than every player getting their own bastion AND facilities in their bastion. Imagine as a DM having to keep track of all the NPCs at each bastion, or having to address the outcomes of EVERY player's bastion turns! Just waaaay too much work, whereas a shared Stronghold with specialized facilities at least keeps this centralized.
I love that. I’m playing Starforged in co-op mode (no GM, just 4 equal players) in a PbP (play by post on discord) and we have a starship that basically acts like a stronghold (and mode of transportation) and it’s a place where for instance as a Gearhead my character can modify equipment in a workspace there.
@@mateobarrett6829I mean, it's mostly dependant on how interested everyone is. If your players are all excited by the idea of running their own bastions, then its not a slog to run that stuff; it's part of the fun! In my experience though, you usually get a mix of interest levels. Some are excited for a whole castle, some want a room in the castle, and some just need somewhere to take a Long Rest.
@@mateobarrett6829 honestly, it's not that much more work to have multiple bastions than just having one shared bastion. If you're running a faction based game, then you're already boiling large groups of NPCs down to singular shared goals. What is the thieves guild doing? What is the mercenary company doing? What is the barbarian tribe doing? The answer is they are all trying to get their hands on the plot mcguffin the party either just found and stole or is going to be hired to protect in the next session. Once you get to tier three and four levels you need to be applying this kind of faction building to the players just so the campaign feels epic enough. What is the rogue's thieves guild doing? They "earned" enough money to finance the rogue's pet project side hustle for another year, and they maintained the party's hold on the criminal underworld in the mega city the rogue calls home. What is the army of thousands of soldiers who flocked to the Fighter's war banner over the last 15 levels doing? They subdued the forces of a group of nobles who pisoned the king and put the fighter on the throne. What is the wizard's army of simulacrums doing? Casting divinations over and over to catch any problems coming up for the nation the PCs run. And what do all these things look like in terms of DM workload? 1. The DM checks their list of the top three NPCs that belong to each PC's pet project/npc network/bastion/side hustle. 2. The DM picks one npc. 3. The DM says, "Okay, Fighter. Your 2nd lieutenant just came back wounded with this piece of intel. Rogue, your 3rd lieutenant also just reported in from their last hiest with bad news. Profits are down and you now have a lead to why. Wizard, something has killed eight of your sims in the last week. This is what you three now know." 4. The DM hands the party the quest hook they want them to bite. Having these scenes take place in a fortress, the backroom of a casino, and the balcony of a multidimensional wizard tower doesn't change all that much for DM workload. It's still only about 3 or so NPCs to add to each player's list of personal storyline NPCs. Each faction is still reacting to the central tension of your plot, despite each PC controlling one of those factions. Each bastion action boils down to "make this thing" or "find out this thing." Just give the players the pages on faction rules, have them make up a few NPCs who will be their lieutenants, and then use each bastion/faction they build up as a delivery device for plot hooks. "Sure, sure. Your fancy garden made some potions, and his stage troupe made a little money. What really matters is that someone just put two of your NPCs in the infirmary. You guys gotta put at least four of theirs in the morgue."
"Normalizing clear and open discussions about expectations and boundaries" I feel that this should have been the norm, both in TTRPGs and everywhere else in life. The vast majority of issues at the table are due to a lack of open communications. Its amazing how much a game will improve if everyone (including the DM) actually talk about the game in a positive manner
Some of those sheets might be bare, but as someone who gets lost easily, having a checklist ofnthe basics to hit is super helpful. I bet it's helps new DM's a ton know that they didn't underprep or overprep
The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (3.5) is one of my favorite sourcebooks, and some of the Bastion rules remind me of the "owning a business" rules from 3.5's Dungeon Master's Guide II, which I always thought were interesting. Love seeing those concepts updated for 5e. D&D could benefit from even more "downtime" content (it needs a new name, really, because "downtime" makes it sound like what you're doing between times when you're actually playing, but talking about what happens at your home base during the two weeks between adventures is STILL playing, you know?)
We should normalize carrying a hand-and-a-half sword to enforce boundaries when necessary. We should also normalize people respecting boundaries, but things happen.
For world building I like to start small with just one country. Draw a map of it and the surrounding area, maybe name a couple other countries, but just go deep on the spot where the players are gonna be. A couple small things here and there about other places in the world (like Starkland being known for its herb and spice trade, or Nikuni being a mysterious island nation) will make it seem to the players like you have the whole world mapped out, even if it's just random bits and pieces.
I found it at a thrift store a few weeks ago and I was so amped. I was like "finally, I can go investigate a strange noise in the darkness of my vast estate while wearing a nightgown and nightcap!!"
19:57 she hit the nail on the head!! There is so much lore; so much more than BG3 Easter Eggs. Haha well said. I’m a nerd for the lore and I’m looking forward to learning more!
I'm glad you mentioned the currency section. Honestly one of the main things I was curious about with this book was to see if they gave up trying to convince us that having different names and values for coins based on where you are geographically is fun and cool. "Hey a copper coin is called a nib in Waterdeep but a thumb in Cormyr, we promise this is interesting" -2014 DMG
Everybody's using Santander's Card of Wealth. You just tap it against the merchant's Wealth Sphere and it transfers wealth from your bastion to theirs.
Personally, I find your advice refreshingly optimistic because of, and not in spite of, your relative newness. Even when I already know what you're talking about, I still like your approach to giving that advice, and I find that enthusiasm spreads whenever I get to share one of your videos
Another thing to keep in mind for building encounters is the entire encounter doesn't have to be all at once. It might say a difficult encounter is 2 adult green dragons and 20 wyrmlings. Break them into parts Maybe the party has to go through a bunch of cavern rooms filled with wyrmlings and dragon cultists before they get to the final lair. If they are blowing through rooms of wyrmlings no sweat the next room might have a few more, or if the party is being wrecked by one wyrmling that they can't seem to hit and keep criting on their poison tail attacks, remove most the rest by having that be the final room, or due to that fight all remaining enemy's flee from your sight and they arrive in the final layer. How much of their precious resources are the party willing to use before they know they are in the final battle?
The way I balance encounters is by assigning tags to certain enemy types and the variants I make up for my own setting, while matching that tag to a counter-tag based on player classes. For instance, clerics and paladins get certain class abilities and commonly have access to certain spells and abilities from their subclasses, as well as some warlocks and sorcerer subclasses. This means I can easily evaluate the way an undead horde would be rated based on party comp. Because I’ve tagged it as a thaumaturgical threat, and primarily clerics and paladins will have abilities that can manipulate the boundaries of life and death, then they will have a higher likelihood of success in combat, so the CR is kept RAW and applied, however, I remove or add 1CR for every secondary class that is in the party. This means if there is a warlock or cleric present then the probability increases that the encounter will be a success. So maybe I’ll do two of the same creature rather than one in that scenario. It’s a bit crunchy but once you get the formula down it works pretty good as a GUIDE to whether or not your players would be having a good time or not lol.
I just love how you just keep going on and on and on about things that I love listening to! Thank you, @Ginny Di, you are amazing! But you must also be aware that you are great, wonderful, and lovely too.
Your jokes and sense of humor are really hitting lately. Laughed loud multiple times. Great video, as always! Am really excited for bastions, I'm also THAT type of player (proudly) ❤
I love that I've started playing d&d a few months ago, the launch of these books feels almost perfect (if not a little late haha). I can't wait to see all three books and how they work together
Welcome to the hobby--I hope you get as much enjoyment as it has brought me and my gaming group. I've been playing for 40+ years. May your dice rolls never turn cold. Cheers!
Conspiracy theorists: "Hear that? She denied being sponsored by WotC. Only someone with a guilty conscience would bring something like that up. CLEARLY, she's being sponsored by WotC!" By the way, Ginny, I seriously LOVE how self-aware and sober minded you are. Please keep being awesome!
Thank you for another great video! I'm glad to hear they are making a run at streamlining encounter balance and i hope it works. Or at least is an improvment but there are so many variables it will be challenging to nail down. Best advice i have found is dont rigidly stick to creature stat blocks and be ready to modify on the fly. Takes time to get good at it but is worth it for your players.
The little censor twinkle was great. I know you've talked about how "Video Ginny" and "IRL Ginny" have... very different salt content in their vocabulary, so it's not shocking or anything. But also that you managed to make it so cute. Makes me think of Dingo Doodles and her quacks. And then in the Fool's Gold book how they'll have the duck IN THE TEXT for censoring bad words that crop up in "in character" notes.
Thanks Ginny for keeping up on the sword usage references! I hear you on many of the points: CR issues (encounter balancing), DM prep per session vs world building, and helping DMs manage expectations for both themselves and their sessions. I hope I find the new DMG as useful as you did.
As an old pre-AD&D blue book grognard, I enjoy both your enthusiasm and your insights on this shared hallucination of a game we all play. V. excited about the section on bastions. Every wizard needs a tower to call their own.
I'm new and so thrilled to hear there's a lore glossary because there is so much (basically everything) that I don't know about literally everything DND and I don't know where to find the info without reading every DND book ever published which feels... a lot!
RE Bastions: in the video game Destiny, there's this concept called a Throne World. Its sort of like the seat of power for incredibly powerful creature and characters and it sits in a pocket dimension. What if a player's bastion just sits in a pocket dimension that they can conjure a portal to once per day (setting dependent of course)?
This is such perfect timing, because I've wanted to learn to DM for a long time, but never been able to quite pick it up. When I first asked about the DMG years ago, I was told that it's a resource for existing DMs but doesn't teach how to DM for newbies, and I was kind of put off. Everything I'm hearing you say about this makes me feel like maybe I can finally learn, and get a game going. Would be cool for you to do a video on how to approach the 2024 edition as a new DM!
Ginny, I watched your previous DMG video and really liked it! It's very likely that the people giving you negative feedback had never read the 2014 DMG either. IMO there is good stuff in there, but it's a slog due to poor organization. I guess some people just don't want to accept the fact that you don't need to read any of the books in order to have fun with your friends playing D&D. Thanks for making such good content. Keep up the great work!
FWIW, I started playing in 1979 and have NEVER read any of the rule books front to back, except maybe the 1e Monster Manual. :) Thanks for the overview!
8:58 This is actually the most encouraging thing I've seen on the DMG so far. 2024 characters are much more powerful than 2014 characters and I was super worried they would do nothing to address this. Simplifying the math folks need to do to build their encounters is also really nice. Getting rid of the multipliers for multiple monsters, but also raising the encounter budget totals should be a nice compromise that makes it easier to build encounters that play as expected for most people, especially if they do indeed do as they have said and rebalance monsters in the MM to reflect their CR properly.
Bastions are such a fun addition to the game! When WOTC released the UA for bastions I immediately implemented it into a flying manor home that my players use to travel the world. They host friendly NPCs, throw parties, and even argue about who gets which bedroom. Really brought my game to life.
The Lore Glossary has to be the best bit you mentioned IMO - I prefer to create my own worlds, so its not all that relevant to me, but there are so many things worth knowing in the lore just for amusement and inspiration.
I've had really good experiences regarding Encounter Balancing with MCDMs "Flee, Mortals!" Even with monsters I've never run before I simply calculated the CR-Capacity of the group and just spend it on different monsters, which also have different types like Ambusher, Brute, Artillery or Leader/Solo. Great book, highly recommended
Thank you for the breakdown on the DMG. I got a dinged/damaged PHB 2024 from my LGS reluctantly, but it was absolute value. I love the character creation! I am really excited after seeing this video for the new DMG now. Just have to wait for one to fall off a truck. 🚚📚 Dming with guard rails, adventures that can plug and play homebrew and organizational help. Much more excited to try to be a DM now! 😁
Re Otiluke, in my last campaign, the PCs met an NPC gnome artificer who introduced himself thusly: "My name is Milo Dyson; perhaps you have heard of me?" (PCs: No) "Maybe you've heard of my invention, Dyson's Dust-Sucking Sphere? Guaranteed to clean your carpets in no time!" (PCs: No) "Otiluke! He stole my idea! 'Oh, I'm a wizard, I don't need devices to make magic, I just waggle my fingers! Look at me!' Now whenever someone hears 'sphere', they think of his name and not mine. One of these days I'm gonna ... never mind." Three 'Dyson' references rolled into one, and a dig at Otiluke as well.
@@MarkoSeldo Yeah, you recognized where I got the name. He was working on building a warforged prototype. The place he worked for mostly specialized in making mechanical birds for aerial reconnaissance, so it was called the Scrybird Eye Building.
Just wanted to comment on that last bit, regarding the 2014 DMG video. Don't let those comments get to you, literally discussed your possession tips in the C&C discord today and you get quoted by folks in all manner of places. This video and that were exceptionally helpful. I'm not touching the 2024 set, but it's good to see that they're giving people tips on the soft skills. They're far more important than people realize.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I have been trying to gain confidence in DMing for a while. Working with DMG 2014 has been a STRUGGLE. You and other creators have been a necessary part of my dnd journey. I look forward to more info on the 2024 DMG
About Bastions, in the videos they released, Perkins recommended to use Bastion turns whenever it fits. 7 ingame days, sure. Or how about when the session has to get postponed, the DM can say "no game tonight, so everyone take a Bastion turn instead" - the latter option is something I really think works well :)
Re: encounter difficulty, I've maintained for quite a while that Wizards, with dndbeyond, is in a prime position to create an ML model that will run an encounter based on selectable criteria (PCs from dndbeyond, monsters from dndbeyond, a some sliders to adjust resource levels, player experience with D&D, and a few other things) thousands of times and spit out some summarized stats about the results (likelihood of 1,2,3 PC deaths, etc.). Others have done it. WotC can too, but they can also integrate it with all the data they already have in dndbeyond and make the UI slick and smooth. It would be a lift, for sure, but as you say, encounter balancing is one of the hardest things to get right. A tool like this would help immeasurably.
Actually, the beta Encounter Builder isn't too bad. It's better than trying to follow the instructions from the books. And if you're not happy with the results, you can always tweak it. My problem is that I have min-maxers playing in my campaign, so I have to adjust the encounters to be more powerful.
@@srellison561 It's been a while -- I'll have to try it out again. And I feel your pain, but with TCoE and XGtE, you don't even need min-maxers to have a tough go at balancing encounters. That's why I think a "smart" tool that took your party composition (including subclasses) into account would be better.
It might be fun for the players to take a bastion turn every so many sessions reguardless of in game time. I'm not sure how the correspondence works. I assume it's magical or can be tailored to your needs. It also would be cool to implement when a session cancels. "Game called by weather tonight, everyone take a bastion turn instead and we'll pick it up next sesh." It could really get that dnd group chat hummin'.
Oh, I identify so much with games that slow to a crawl. (I tried to talk my DM into saying that travel from the Kingdom we started in to the ruins with the plot hook, that transported us back in time, could’ve taken a couple days. That way our characters - which we have been playing off and on for about two years - would have known each other for about a week at this point.)
Thanks for the overview! Ignore those gatekeepers that slam you for not reading the whole DMG. I've never done that and have run hundreds of games for decades. You do a fab job and actually got me excited about the new DMG.
The solution to the bastion thing is probably a mix of things you listed as well as a little homebrew. 1. Trying to either pick up the pace of games a little to maybe get through more than 1 week per 4 irl months 2. Increasing the prevalence of downtime when applicable, allowing lots of time to pass within a single scene or session 3. Daily bastion turns, but the options need to be reworked, i.e. your garden still only produces ~1 harvest a week depending on what you're growing, but needs daily tending to maintain (or a hired gardener to not worry about daily maintenance) where these things dont work, I think d&d isnt the most conducive to this bastion type of gameplay. if your players want to play out the game so slow they spend a whole irl year in a large dungeon roleplaying it moment by moment, that's what they care about, not dealing with a bastion of their own. Ultimately let your players decide what they want to do and use level of detail to abstract over the parts they care less about and focus on what they do care about.
My group and I recently finished a wonderfully themed and fun campaign that took us 2 years to complete. Afterwards we calculated how long the journey took our characters and It was about like a month. 16:42
My DnD crew almost immediately started trying to open a chain of restaurants in Icewind Dale so I'm really excited for the Bastion rules to add some structure and mechanical benefits!
I really appreciate your reviews of the DnD Beyond books since much of what you cover in these, as well as your channel as a whole, is applicable to many RPG systems. This review finally made me decide to preorder the GM's Guide to add to my reference collection. Thank you!
When Ginny was like "it's odd that they have the bastions separate for each character" I immediatly was like "that's likely just t allow each player to make their own decisions. You can still combine all the bastions into one large building or some kind of a village" ... and then she basically said the same thing. Also - Storage space for unused treasures and obscure items the players end up never using / NPCs they wand to keep around is an absolutely valid reason for having a home / stronghold / base. Also also - I would just run bastion turns whenever the party reached a milestone. Like when they killed those mating green dragons, they could return home, store up the weird mirror that makes them look fat, the hat that maked the guy wearing it tell the truth and that weird mechanical item, that makes strange beeping noises which increase in pace and intensity in their stronghold, take the stronghold turn and then return to the adventure - assuming the beeping thing actually was just an ancient alarm clock ;)
Love the review and feedback on worksheets. I love the idea of the Magic Item list as my players do not always track their magic items correctly or the amount of charges they have. You would not believe how many players fudge their charges, and times of use (per day/per week/ etc) 🙂 Love how you poke fun at yourself on the earrings and dice. SO GINNY to me. LOL!
I was all set to move from WotC to Tales of the Valient or another non-WotC game. But the more I hear about the new DMG, the more excited I am to stick around. I can't wait to get my copy!
As someone whose dm-ing for the first time right after BG3 (a game where magic items are thrown around like candy), i REALLY appreciate that magic item tracker
Ooh based on this the book seems pretty promising! I'm really interested in those worksheets, though I actually got DM planning guides on etsy already-- I too have always been excited to buy school supplies. My group would also definitely be the kind to have an annual bastion turn; we've spent 5 3.5+ hour sessions on what amounted to maybe 48 hours of in game time before xD For what it's worth, I've been watching pretty much all of your videos for DM's as I'm getting started setting up a campaign to run, and they've been SUPER helpful! Moreso than sitting down and trying to read that behemoth of a DMG has been by far! Thank you for making them!
Honestly, the timing is one of my favorite things about the bastion system BECAUSE everyone runs campaigns that occur in a span of like a month of game time. I think they're encouraging DMs to build downtime into the campaign and (while I will have to learn how to do that) I really think that is a good goal. A campaign should probably last several years of in-game time, if the party is leveling up 5-19 times. I think the fact that we now have something to do with down time will hopefully help DMs to actually make that happen.
15:30 cute, my last campaign I paid a bunch of gold and downtime to build a home, now there are terms Bastion for it … my GM eye rolled, but allowed me to, and I even finagled the minor noble bard former prisoner snd severely PTSDed thug (also cultist prisoner/torture victim) to hire on. I envisioned the place as a short term rental area for upwards to eight visitors with a garden for the thug to tend … in short I play my own mini game even if the c GM is meh about it or the other PCs just want to swing swords and do evil
PSA: check what books and resources your local library has, my library has battle mats, rules books, published adventures, dice, and more for people to borrow! And if your library doesn't have the resources you want, you can request they purchase and add them to their collection! Working for a library, I can tell you they will almost always order items requested. Depending on the budget cycle the items could arrive really quickly or take a little while to be acquired and catalogued, but either way, free publicly available D&D and other TTRPG resources could be available at your local library so be sure to check it out! Haha, see what I did there?
This is awesome - thanks for sharing!
@@GinnyDi Just doing my civic duties✨
Thank you for spreading the good word of cool free nerd stuff, fellow library worker 🙏
@@zigorously I will plug the library every chance I get 😂
As a fellow librarian, this shout out is very appreciated. Another thing I'll add is that a lot of libraries are part of larger systems, so even if your local library doesn't have a copy of the rulebooks in their collection, they might be able to put a hold on it for you from another library in your system, or potentially even request it via Outer Library Loan from libraries outside of your local system. This is especially notable for people who live near smaller libraries (like the one I work at) that might not have the resources to purchase the rulebooks and resources themselves, but might be connected to bigger libraries that do purchase that stuff.
My group also moves at a snail's pace -- "Oh boy, can't wait to take my annual bastion turn" killed me!
Entirely accurate. This is a running joke in many of my games. The players are so into the mystery & drama that they are living out every moment. It's a good thing, but it has some real challenges.
I love the little skeletons dancing on the ears
I always get weird looks in the Denny’s parking lot when I wear them in April, so I’m definitely making the most of spooky season while it lasts!
Good use of the monthly budget 👍
Those things are pretty cool, but I personally prefer the pink guillotines she had on in the commercial segment ^^
@15:39 "Flying, doing magic, and now owning property". How very very true.
This one hurt a lot - but made me cackle like a lunatic. Thank Satan I am a masochist :D
Don't forget the fantasy myth of getting 8 hours of sleep in a row.
1:25 Tracking Sheets
6:43 Encounter Balance
10:31 Ready-Made Game Elements
14:30 Bastions
18:12 Lore Glossary
oh hey, thanks! I meant to add an index to the description during the upload but I got distracted 😅
@@GinnyDi of course! I know that a lot of your viewers can also easily get distracted, especially if they’re listening to something that doesn’t apply to them much, so hopefully this’ll help you retain more viewership!
20:14 Leg Day
You're missing 2:02 She pulls out her sword 🤣
@@GinnyDioh no, not you?!?!
Sword!!!
*Also, as a member of Gen Z who runs a D&D game, I 100% yeet PDFs into the cloud.
I do too. For only my own use and not my players ;D
Im on the line between millenial and zoomer, and i too yeet pdfs (tho i like to have them printed too if possible)
I am a firm Gen X, and I do the same. (Then again, I also use spreadsheets as character sheets.)
As a millennial I fold my pdfs into paper aeroplanes and toss them into the cloud.
0:50
Ginny meets WOTC gangster in the bathroom at Denny's.
"I got your word this won't cross the border?"
"It's never leaving town...."
I would *never* meet a gangster in a Denny's bathroom
... that's why I always bring an Escalade
@@GinnyDi More like an Espada, right?
@@GinnyDi
I’ve been googling to figure out what that is, and either you’re bringing a car or scaling fortified walls in your Denny's. I don’t know which is funnier.
@@eddiemate It's a model of SUV from Cadillac.
@@GinnyDi😂😂😂
Re: Bastions 15:44 "It's easy enough to just ignore this chapter, but as someone who would love to play D&D like the Sims, I'm not gonna lie, I am really amped about this." I nearly fell out of my chair in agreement.
Tbh we should normalize carrying swords to protect personal boundaries.
I see no issues with this idea 😅
/s
@@GinnyDiOpen Carry is legal in Colorado, outside Denver at least. Pretty sure this is covered under that.
Depends on where you at. Totally legal in Texas!
I'm pretty sure open carry is legal in Canada. However, you can't carry it for "self-defence" against two-legged antagonists...😩
There is an amendment to the united states' constitution that affords you access to this right as a citizen, in a manner of speaking.
Hi Ginny, thanks for all the great input you've been providing. I'm slowly gearing up to work as a DM (in Southamerica) after over 25 years of running games, and you've been a great source of inspiration and comfort. I had just started reading the DM Guide (after your video)... so I guess I'll have to also ready the new one. T_T
Thanks for all your great work. Stay awesome.
Thank you so much 🥰 I’m really glad the videos have been helpful! And wow, 25 years of running games is amazing! 😂 I wouldn't worry too much about diving into the new DMG right away - we've made it this far, right?
As someone who has been exclusively a player since before the 1st Ed DMG came out, I found this video fascinating. Based on the 1st Edition DMG, I've always assumed that the book is mostly a rulebook that explains obscure game mechanics, lists magic items, houses the to-hit and saving throw charts, and contains some fun random dungeon tables for use in games when everyone is tired and nobody wants to work that hard. The idea that the DM might actually read all that advice stuff is such an alien concept to me, especially given that the DMs in my formative gaming years were a bunch of teenagers who learned by trial and error.
Also a shout out to your sponsor. The me from the 1980s is very jealous of the fact that you can talk to a magical communication box and summon a limitless supply of specialized gaming dice for a reasonable price, when I had to catch two different buses to get to that one hobby shop in the suburbs that carried gaming supplies and whose whole inventory of dice was fewer than the bag sitting next to my monitor now. Truly, we are living in the future.
I hear you! One of my criticisms about the 2014 DMG is that, in my opinion, it couldn't make up its mind about whether it was a reference text, like you're described, or a guide that is meant to be read in full. It was too long and full of highly specific information to function as the latter, but it wasn't well-organized enough, concise enough, or well-indexed enough to function as the former.
That's why I'm so glad to see that this one has made up its mind and seems to work quite well as a guide, that you can actually read.
@@GinnyDi Most tend to be more of a back and forth there with parts that are more meant to be in full or more of a reference text.
3/3.5, for example, was more set up for more aimed at people who are already running games and is more for how to build an adventure or campaign along with a decent pile of optional or variant rules that could be brought into it...some of which kind of became heavily tied into other things as time went on such as the cohorts and similar thanks to several classes that heavily relied on them. But you had things about the functions of the multiverse, environments, homebrewing, magic items (the rules for that were awesome things there for being able to balance them to some extent)...
Honestly, I was hoping more that the new DMG was more of a DMG2 type thing where both DMG's have their own things to bring to the table and aren't that doubled up between them in order to provide more, especially with the heavy claims of compatibility between it and the 5e stuff.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't think it's good design to create a book where parts are meant to be read in full, and parts are meant to be referenced as-needed, if the book does not communicate that intention to you.
If you wanted good dice, you had to attend a con somewhere, or find a trade school with an enterprising student😊
They actually showed the Prince of Frost today in the Lore Glossary overview and… yes, hello Ice Husband
HECK YES!! He wasn't in the asset package they sent me but I'm glad he's being SEEN
"owning property". Okay I'm literally dead now 😂
Wizards of the coast did say in a Livestream that the tracking sheets will be available for free after the DMG 2024 comes out, unless I dreamed that cause I listened to it half asleep xD
That's great news!!
Thanks for making an actually positive video on the new DMG! I've just seen so much hate videos (cause rant videos do better) that it's actually nice to see what might be worth checking out in the new edition.
I think it's worth noting that the embargo on the early access PDF only lifted yesterday - so other than a handful of people who have posted videos this week, a lot of those ranting and raving videos haven't actually read the book! I know it's easy to get clicks by being negative, but I am interested to see how or if the conversation changes once the book is available for everyone.
@@GinnyDi Hi Ginny! That's good to know. I just also want to say, that your videos have really helped me a ton as a new DM! I appreciate you so much
For more ideas to work with the pace of Bastions and Bastion turns, it is worth checking out Adventures in Middle Earth which introduces a seasonal cadence for alternating between adventuring and wintering in the equivalent of a Bastion. Expanding downtime activities might help to introduce a mechanism to skip some time and have the characters develop some life outside of adventuring together as a party. Not suitable for all settings or tables, obviously.
That sounds really interesting! It could definitely help with pacing for some tables, though as you said, not every setting or group would go for it. Definitely something to consider for DMs or players who want more character development outside of adventuring!
@@GinnyDi
I think it's really helpful for realism to have way more downtime. Bastions sound like the perfect mechanic to promote that.
The game developed around adventures and to not need any profession huge ridiculous treasures became a DnD staple. But it might drive a party more if there was hardly any treasure. You'd actually have to save up for a few month long trip, or find ways to make money. A merc or a bard might find that easy, but the types you are less likely to meet would need a special reason to travel and creative ways to pay for them.
Another game, Shadowrun, is almost entirely based on PC's being constantly broke and getting double-crossed on jobs.
A lot of downtime also fixes the awkward situation that the players can go from zero to hero while the rest of the world stands still. Especially if that was just a week in game!
I hear you, but I stand by my point that this is all very dependent on the game! In my main home game, we're racing against the clock to stop a demon from taking over the world, and we are actively being hunted by multiple factions. Narratively, it DOESN'T make much sense for us to take a week off!
We can argue the merits and demerits of downtime in games until we're blue in the face, but I'm more interested in figuring out how to make bastions work for all types of games, even the ones that don't have a lot of downtime built in.
@@GinnyDiI abstracted it to six bastion turns per level in my frostmaiden game. Take them all at once on each level up.
The "Everyone gets a Bastion" thing isn't to disimilar from what we do in my game. We technically have a shared stronghold, but all have our own little "facilities" that we manage. The Sorcerer has a library, The Druid a grove, The Rogue has a Spy Agency, Barbarian (me) has a tannery, etc. So its not too far fetched for everyone to have their own little zone in the same space :D
I like that idea
I think a shared space with facilities is far better than every player getting their own bastion AND facilities in their bastion. Imagine as a DM having to keep track of all the NPCs at each bastion, or having to address the outcomes of EVERY player's bastion turns! Just waaaay too much work, whereas a shared Stronghold with specialized facilities at least keeps this centralized.
I love that. I’m playing Starforged in co-op mode (no GM, just 4 equal players) in a PbP (play by post on discord) and we have a starship that basically acts like a stronghold (and mode of transportation) and it’s a place where for instance as a Gearhead my character can modify equipment in a workspace there.
@@mateobarrett6829I mean, it's mostly dependant on how interested everyone is. If your players are all excited by the idea of running their own bastions, then its not a slog to run that stuff; it's part of the fun!
In my experience though, you usually get a mix of interest levels. Some are excited for a whole castle, some want a room in the castle, and some just need somewhere to take a Long Rest.
@@mateobarrett6829 honestly, it's not that much more work to have multiple bastions than just having one shared bastion.
If you're running a faction based game, then you're already boiling large groups of NPCs down to singular shared goals. What is the thieves guild doing? What is the mercenary company doing? What is the barbarian tribe doing? The answer is they are all trying to get their hands on the plot mcguffin the party either just found and stole or is going to be hired to protect in the next session.
Once you get to tier three and four levels you need to be applying this kind of faction building to the players just so the campaign feels epic enough.
What is the rogue's thieves guild doing? They "earned" enough money to finance the rogue's pet project side hustle for another year, and they maintained the party's hold on the criminal underworld in the mega city the rogue calls home.
What is the army of thousands of soldiers who flocked to the Fighter's war banner over the last 15 levels doing? They subdued the forces of a group of nobles who pisoned the king and put the fighter on the throne.
What is the wizard's army of simulacrums doing? Casting divinations over and over to catch any problems coming up for the nation the PCs run.
And what do all these things look like in terms of DM workload?
1. The DM checks their list of the top three NPCs that belong to each PC's pet project/npc network/bastion/side hustle.
2. The DM picks one npc.
3. The DM says, "Okay, Fighter. Your 2nd lieutenant just came back wounded with this piece of intel. Rogue, your 3rd lieutenant also just reported in from their last hiest with bad news. Profits are down and you now have a lead to why. Wizard, something has killed eight of your sims in the last week. This is what you three now know."
4. The DM hands the party the quest hook they want them to bite.
Having these scenes take place in a fortress, the backroom of a casino, and the balcony of a multidimensional wizard tower doesn't change all that much for DM workload. It's still only about 3 or so NPCs to add to each player's list of personal storyline NPCs. Each faction is still reacting to the central tension of your plot, despite each PC controlling one of those factions.
Each bastion action boils down to "make this thing" or "find out this thing." Just give the players the pages on faction rules, have them make up a few NPCs who will be their lieutenants, and then use each bastion/faction they build up as a delivery device for plot hooks.
"Sure, sure. Your fancy garden made some potions, and his stage troupe made a little money. What really matters is that someone just put two of your NPCs in the infirmary. You guys gotta put at least four of theirs in the morgue."
"Normalizing clear and open discussions about expectations and boundaries"
I feel that this should have been the norm, both in TTRPGs and everywhere else in life.
The vast majority of issues at the table are due to a lack of open communications. Its amazing how much a game will improve if everyone (including the DM) actually talk about the game in a positive manner
Some of those sheets might be bare, but as someone who gets lost easily, having a checklist ofnthe basics to hit is super helpful. I bet it's helps new DM's a ton know that they didn't underprep or overprep
Ginny: “Nobody paid me to talk about this book.”
Denny’s: “HaHa, they fell for it!”
Me: 🤔
Cadillac: “Hey, we paid a little too; don’t forget about us!”
Me: 🤦
....damn, you caught me red-handed! 😩 I'm in the pocket of Big Denny's!
“It’s in my list of baby names” ok but if Ginny does become a mom, she’ll be the coolest fucking mom ever lol
I do not plan to bring any tiny Ginnys into this world, but I hope to be the weird aunt for all my friends' kids 🥰
@@GinnyDi That's a good goal. I too strive to be a weird aunt
Loved that you wore guillotine earrings while talking about "budget cuts"
The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (3.5) is one of my favorite sourcebooks, and some of the Bastion rules remind me of the "owning a business" rules from 3.5's Dungeon Master's Guide II, which I always thought were interesting. Love seeing those concepts updated for 5e. D&D could benefit from even more "downtime" content (it needs a new name, really, because "downtime" makes it sound like what you're doing between times when you're actually playing, but talking about what happens at your home base during the two weeks between adventures is STILL playing, you know?)
Ive been watching your videos for years and I love them. I have been recommending them to people all the time.
We should normalize carrying a hand-and-a-half sword to enforce boundaries when necessary. We should also normalize people respecting boundaries, but things happen.
Sword is more likely to happen than people being respectful my friend lol
@@DrakeHardy That's fair, if unfortunate 🤣
For world building I like to start small with just one country. Draw a map of it and the surrounding area, maybe name a couple other countries, but just go deep on the spot where the players are gonna be. A couple small things here and there about other places in the world (like Starkland being known for its herb and spice trade, or Nikuni being a mysterious island nation) will make it seem to the players like you have the whole world mapped out, even if it's just random bits and pieces.
Love your character skits. You do an amazing job balancing the lampshade.
Okay, but the brass candle holder in the corner there... I need it. For reasons. 🤣
I found it at a thrift store a few weeks ago and I was so amped. I was like "finally, I can go investigate a strange noise in the darkness of my vast estate while wearing a nightgown and nightcap!!"
@@GinnyDi Right?! Like I just wanna wander my haunted library by candlelight in the middle of the night. Is that too much to ask? 😆
19:57 she hit the nail on the head!! There is so much lore; so much more than BG3 Easter Eggs. Haha well said. I’m a nerd for the lore and I’m looking forward to learning more!
I'm curious what to see they have about the species/subspecies, since they cut it out of the PHB.
I'm glad you mentioned the currency section. Honestly one of the main things I was curious about with this book was to see if they gave up trying to convince us that having different names and values for coins based on where you are geographically is fun and cool.
"Hey a copper coin is called a nib in Waterdeep but a thumb in Cormyr, we promise this is interesting" -2014 DMG
Honestly, who uses cash these days, anyway? 😂
Everybody's using Santander's Card of Wealth. You just tap it against the merchant's Wealth Sphere and it transfers wealth from your bastion to theirs.
@@GinnyDi As we speak, a gnome artificer is inventing the magical blockchain.
Personally, I find your advice refreshingly optimistic because of, and not in spite of, your relative newness. Even when I already know what you're talking about, I still like your approach to giving that advice, and I find that enthusiasm spreads whenever I get to share one of your videos
With a huge thanks to you, I'm excited for D&D again. Looking forward to getting my alternate cover DMG + GM Screen soon!
Another thing to keep in mind for building encounters is the entire encounter doesn't have to be all at once. It might say a difficult encounter is 2 adult green dragons and 20 wyrmlings. Break them into parts
Maybe the party has to go through a bunch of cavern rooms filled with wyrmlings and dragon cultists before they get to the final lair. If they are blowing through rooms of wyrmlings no sweat the next room might have a few more, or if the party is being wrecked by one wyrmling that they can't seem to hit and keep criting on their poison tail attacks, remove most the rest by having that be the final room, or due to that fight all remaining enemy's flee from your sight and they arrive in the final layer. How much of their precious resources are the party willing to use before they know they are in the final battle?
The way I balance encounters is by assigning tags to certain enemy types and the variants I make up for my own setting, while matching that tag to a counter-tag based on player classes. For instance, clerics and paladins get certain class abilities and commonly have access to certain spells and abilities from their subclasses, as well as some warlocks and sorcerer subclasses. This means I can easily evaluate the way an undead horde would be rated based on party comp. Because I’ve tagged it as a thaumaturgical threat, and primarily clerics and paladins will have abilities that can manipulate the boundaries of life and death, then they will have a higher likelihood of success in combat, so the CR is kept RAW and applied, however, I remove or add 1CR for every secondary class that is in the party. This means if there is a warlock or cleric present then the probability increases that the encounter will be a success. So maybe I’ll do two of the same creature rather than one in that scenario. It’s a bit crunchy but once you get the formula down it works pretty good as a GUIDE to whether or not your players would be having a good time or not lol.
I just love how you just keep going on and on and on about things that I love listening to! Thank you, @Ginny Di, you are amazing! But you must also be aware that you are great, wonderful, and lovely too.
Your videos have been a big part of making me feel confident enough to try and run a game. Thank you.
Your jokes and sense of humor are really hitting lately. Laughed loud multiple times.
Great video, as always!
Am really excited for bastions, I'm also THAT type of player (proudly) ❤
I love that I've started playing d&d a few months ago, the launch of these books feels almost perfect (if not a little late haha). I can't wait to see all three books and how they work together
Welcome to the hobby--I hope you get as much enjoyment as it has brought me and my gaming group. I've been playing for 40+ years. May your dice rolls never turn cold.
Cheers!
Thanks for the great preview! It was great meeting you and chatting at B&N in FTC!
Conspiracy theorists: "Hear that? She denied being sponsored by WotC. Only someone with a guilty conscience would bring something like that up. CLEARLY, she's being sponsored by WotC!"
By the way, Ginny, I seriously LOVE how self-aware and sober minded you are. Please keep being awesome!
I don't know why but I lost my shit laughing at the Quick Books joke... I was not expecting it 😅
Thank you for another great video!
I'm glad to hear they are making a run at streamlining encounter balance and i hope it works. Or at least is an improvment but there are so many variables it will be challenging to nail down.
Best advice i have found is dont rigidly stick to creature stat blocks and be ready to modify on the fly. Takes time to get good at it but is worth it for your players.
I genuinely enjoy all of your content Ginny. Each bit of humour totally works on me, the information is clear. Looking forward to the next one.
The little censor twinkle was great.
I know you've talked about how "Video Ginny" and "IRL Ginny" have... very different salt content in their vocabulary, so it's not shocking or anything. But also that you managed to make it so cute.
Makes me think of Dingo Doodles and her quacks. And then in the Fool's Gold book how they'll have the duck IN THE TEXT for censoring bad words that crop up in "in character" notes.
Thanks Ginny for keeping up on the sword usage references! I hear you on many of the points: CR issues (encounter balancing), DM prep per session vs world building, and helping DMs manage expectations for both themselves and their sessions. I hope I find the new DMG as useful as you did.
As an old pre-AD&D blue book grognard, I enjoy both your enthusiasm and your insights on this shared hallucination of a game we all play.
V. excited about the section on bastions. Every wizard needs a tower to call their own.
Bastions! Bastions! We don't need no stinking Bastions!
Love your content. And really looking forward to the new book
100% agree with your comments about Bastions and Lore Glossary, these sound like great additions/improvements! TY for another great video!
I'm new and so thrilled to hear there's a lore glossary because there is so much (basically everything) that I don't know about literally everything DND and I don't know where to find the info without reading every DND book ever published which feels... a lot!
RE Bastions: in the video game Destiny, there's this concept called a Throne World. Its sort of like the seat of power for incredibly powerful creature and characters and it sits in a pocket dimension. What if a player's bastion just sits in a pocket dimension that they can conjure a portal to once per day (setting dependent of course)?
My group also runs at a crawl. It just took us 18 sessions to run a week of adventuring time! That's what you have to do if you meet on weeknights
You are absolutely part of the reason I am as comfortable dming now than I was even two years ago
This is such perfect timing, because I've wanted to learn to DM for a long time, but never been able to quite pick it up. When I first asked about the DMG years ago, I was told that it's a resource for existing DMs but doesn't teach how to DM for newbies, and I was kind of put off. Everything I'm hearing you say about this makes me feel like maybe I can finally learn, and get a game going. Would be cool for you to do a video on how to approach the 2024 edition as a new DM!
Ginny, I watched your previous DMG video and really liked it!
It's very likely that the people giving you negative feedback had never read the 2014 DMG either. IMO there is good stuff in there, but it's a slog due to poor organization. I guess some people just don't want to accept the fact that you don't need to read any of the books in order to have fun with your friends playing D&D.
Thanks for making such good content. Keep up the great work!
FWIW, I started playing in 1979 and have NEVER read any of the rule books front to back, except maybe the 1e Monster Manual. :) Thanks for the overview!
Thanks! This was a helpful walk-through - I’ve pre-ordered this book and I’m looking forward to it.
8:58 This is actually the most encouraging thing I've seen on the DMG so far.
2024 characters are much more powerful than 2014 characters and I was super worried they would do nothing to address this. Simplifying the math folks need to do to build their encounters is also really nice. Getting rid of the multipliers for multiple monsters, but also raising the encounter budget totals should be a nice compromise that makes it easier to build encounters that play as expected for most people, especially if they do indeed do as they have said and rebalance monsters in the MM to reflect their CR properly.
Bastions are such a fun addition to the game! When WOTC released the UA for bastions I immediately implemented it into a flying manor home that my players use to travel the world. They host friendly NPCs, throw parties, and even argue about who gets which bedroom. Really brought my game to life.
Really useful overview! Thank you! Of course the Ginny Di delivery and content is its usual enjoyable bonus 🙂
Yay! Thank you. I am genuinely hopeful that this guide will help me DM slightly less chaotically.
Such a great video Ginny !!
"Like having your Youth Pastor as your RA"
Yeah, that's how our group's homebase always is
The Lore Glossary has to be the best bit you mentioned IMO - I prefer to create my own worlds, so its not all that relevant to me, but there are so many things worth knowing in the lore just for amusement and inspiration.
I've had really good experiences regarding Encounter Balancing with MCDMs "Flee, Mortals!"
Even with monsters I've never run before I simply calculated the CR-Capacity of the group and just spend it on different monsters, which also have different types like Ambusher, Brute, Artillery or Leader/Solo. Great book, highly recommended
Ginny, I swear you're getting more "How do you do, fellow kids?" every day.
Thank you for the breakdown on the DMG. I got a dinged/damaged PHB 2024 from my LGS reluctantly, but it was absolute value. I love the character creation! I am really excited after seeing this video for the new DMG now. Just have to wait for one to fall off a truck. 🚚📚 Dming with guard rails, adventures that can plug and play homebrew and organizational help. Much more excited to try to be a DM now! 😁
Re Otiluke, in my last campaign, the PCs met an NPC gnome artificer who introduced himself thusly:
"My name is Milo Dyson; perhaps you have heard of me?"
(PCs: No)
"Maybe you've heard of my invention, Dyson's Dust-Sucking Sphere? Guaranteed to clean your carpets in no time!"
(PCs: No)
"Otiluke! He stole my idea! 'Oh, I'm a wizard, I don't need devices to make magic, I just waggle my fingers! Look at me!' Now whenever someone hears 'sphere', they think of his name and not mine. One of these days I'm gonna ... never mind."
Three 'Dyson' references rolled into one, and a dig at Otiluke as well.
Lol, nice. Gotta love a good Dyson sphere reference!
This was a good comment. I'll be back.
@@MarkoSeldo Yeah, you recognized where I got the name. He was working on building a warforged prototype. The place he worked for mostly specialized in making mechanical birds for aerial reconnaissance, so it was called the Scrybird Eye Building.
Just wanted to comment on that last bit, regarding the 2014 DMG video. Don't let those comments get to you, literally discussed your possession tips in the C&C discord today and you get quoted by folks in all manner of places.
This video and that were exceptionally helpful. I'm not touching the 2024 set, but it's good to see that they're giving people tips on the soft skills. They're far more important than people realize.
As someone who put a ball in my campaign, I totally understand having your players explain their outfits and how their characters feel in them 14:05
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I have been trying to gain confidence in DMing for a while. Working with DMG 2014 has been a STRUGGLE. You and other creators have been a necessary part of my dnd journey.
I look forward to more info on the 2024 DMG
Thumbs up for the spoopy decorations, from ears to backdrop.
About Bastions, in the videos they released, Perkins recommended to use Bastion turns whenever it fits. 7 ingame days, sure. Or how about when the session has to get postponed, the DM can say "no game tonight, so everyone take a Bastion turn instead" - the latter option is something I really think works well :)
You're a rock star Ginny! Thanks for all the awesome content!
Re: encounter difficulty, I've maintained for quite a while that Wizards, with dndbeyond, is in a prime position to create an ML model that will run an encounter based on selectable criteria (PCs from dndbeyond, monsters from dndbeyond, a some sliders to adjust resource levels, player experience with D&D, and a few other things) thousands of times and spit out some summarized stats about the results (likelihood of 1,2,3 PC deaths, etc.). Others have done it. WotC can too, but they can also integrate it with all the data they already have in dndbeyond and make the UI slick and smooth. It would be a lift, for sure, but as you say, encounter balancing is one of the hardest things to get right. A tool like this would help immeasurably.
Actually, the beta Encounter Builder isn't too bad. It's better than trying to follow the instructions from the books. And if you're not happy with the results, you can always tweak it. My problem is that I have min-maxers playing in my campaign, so I have to adjust the encounters to be more powerful.
@@srellison561 It's been a while -- I'll have to try it out again. And I feel your pain, but with TCoE and XGtE, you don't even need min-maxers to have a tough go at balancing encounters. That's why I think a "smart" tool that took your party composition (including subclasses) into account would be better.
It might be fun for the players to take a bastion turn every so many sessions reguardless of in game time. I'm not sure how the correspondence works. I assume it's magical or can be tailored to your needs. It also would be cool to implement when a session cancels. "Game called by weather tonight, everyone take a bastion turn instead and we'll pick it up next sesh." It could really get that dnd group chat hummin'.
Oh, I identify so much with games that slow to a crawl. (I tried to talk my DM into saying that travel from the Kingdom we started in to the ruins with the plot hook, that transported us back in time, could’ve taken a couple days. That way our characters - which we have been playing off and on for about two years - would have known each other for about a week at this point.)
I came for info about the new DMG, I left with many laughs and having had a very cool and funny almost-half-an-hour. Thanks, Ginny!
11 months floored me. I can't picture it. Our group flies through a week in about 3 sessions.
I always love your content which is always fun and useful, but the Damage Dice spot was adorable.
Another triumph. It was great hearing your thoughts on this book compared to the 2014 version since that was fresh in your mind.
Thanks for the overview! Ignore those gatekeepers that slam you for not reading the whole DMG. I've never done that and have run hundreds of games for decades. You do a fab job and actually got me excited about the new DMG.
The solution to the bastion thing is probably a mix of things you listed as well as a little homebrew.
1. Trying to either pick up the pace of games a little to maybe get through more than 1 week per 4 irl months
2. Increasing the prevalence of downtime when applicable, allowing lots of time to pass within a single scene or session
3. Daily bastion turns, but the options need to be reworked, i.e. your garden still only produces ~1 harvest a week depending on what you're growing, but needs daily tending to maintain (or a hired gardener to not worry about daily maintenance)
where these things dont work, I think d&d isnt the most conducive to this bastion type of gameplay. if your players want to play out the game so slow they spend a whole irl year in a large dungeon roleplaying it moment by moment, that's what they care about, not dealing with a bastion of their own. Ultimately let your players decide what they want to do and use level of detail to abstract over the parts they care less about and focus on what they do care about.
Never underestimate the power of a hyperfixating nerd.
My group and I recently finished a wonderfully themed and fun campaign that took us 2 years to complete.
Afterwards we calculated how long the journey took our characters and It was about like a month. 16:42
My DnD crew almost immediately started trying to open a chain of restaurants in Icewind Dale so I'm really excited for the Bastion rules to add some structure and mechanical benefits!
I really appreciate your reviews of the DnD Beyond books since much of what you cover in these, as well as your channel as a whole, is applicable to many RPG systems. This review finally made me decide to preorder the GM's Guide to add to my reference collection. Thank you!
I love the Bastion mechanics, it brings a stardew-esque management system to tabletop that I didn’t even imagine in D&D.
When Ginny was like "it's odd that they have the bastions separate for each character" I immediatly was like "that's likely just t allow each player to make their own decisions. You can still combine all the bastions into one large building or some kind of a village" ... and then she basically said the same thing.
Also - Storage space for unused treasures and obscure items the players end up never using / NPCs they wand to keep around is an absolutely valid reason for having a home / stronghold / base.
Also also - I would just run bastion turns whenever the party reached a milestone. Like when they killed those mating green dragons, they could return home, store up the weird mirror that makes them look fat, the hat that maked the guy wearing it tell the truth and that weird mechanical item, that makes strange beeping noises which increase in pace and intensity in their stronghold, take the stronghold turn and then return to the adventure - assuming the beeping thing actually was just an ancient alarm clock ;)
Ginny, you're awesome. Thank you for videos like this.
Love the review and feedback on worksheets. I love the idea of the Magic Item list as my players do not always track their magic items correctly or the amount of charges they have. You would not believe how many players fudge their charges, and times of use (per day/per week/ etc) 🙂
Love how you poke fun at yourself on the earrings and dice. SO GINNY to me. LOL!
I LOVE ALL Ginny Di videos! And I love watching Ginny harass Books.
I was all set to move from WotC to Tales of the Valient or another non-WotC game. But the more I hear about the new DMG, the more excited I am to stick around. I can't wait to get my copy!
Why not both? You can mix and match between 5e variants. Advanced 5e has the entire rulebook free online
Great video- I lost count of the laugh out loud moments! I totally agree with the game time/bastion time comment. Another solution would be needed.
As someone whose dm-ing for the first time right after BG3 (a game where magic items are thrown around like candy), i REALLY appreciate that magic item tracker
I was thinking "those guillotine earrings are amazing!" just as you punchlined the ad. Got me...
Ooh based on this the book seems pretty promising! I'm really interested in those worksheets, though I actually got DM planning guides on etsy already-- I too have always been excited to buy school supplies. My group would also definitely be the kind to have an annual bastion turn; we've spent 5 3.5+ hour sessions on what amounted to maybe 48 hours of in game time before xD
For what it's worth, I've been watching pretty much all of your videos for DM's as I'm getting started setting up a campaign to run, and they've been SUPER helpful! Moreso than sitting down and trying to read that behemoth of a DMG has been by far! Thank you for making them!
Honestly, the timing is one of my favorite things about the bastion system BECAUSE everyone runs campaigns that occur in a span of like a month of game time.
I think they're encouraging DMs to build downtime into the campaign and (while I will have to learn how to do that) I really think that is a good goal.
A campaign should probably last several years of in-game time, if the party is leveling up 5-19 times. I think the fact that we now have something to do with down time will hopefully help DMs to actually make that happen.
Props for correctly using "couldn't care less." Respect.
15:30 cute, my last campaign I paid a bunch of gold and downtime to build a home, now there are terms Bastion for it … my GM eye rolled, but allowed me to, and I even finagled the minor noble bard former prisoner snd severely PTSDed thug (also cultist prisoner/torture victim) to hire on. I envisioned the place as a short term rental area for upwards to eight visitors with a garden for the thug to tend … in short I play my own mini game even if the c GM is meh about it or the other PCs just want to swing swords and do evil