Remember that this is a way to help you visualize how your campaign is constructed. You can run any type of campaign (sandbox, linear, and everything in between) using this system. Also, like I say in the video, you can swap nodes in and out of the plot web. Maybe if enough people ask, I'll make a part 2 and rip Orcus out of this campaign altogether to show you how easy it is.
I love that you didn't do this with 3 perfect backstories. Ace you said was a character from years ago and I am sure his player cringes as much as we were over that backstory now but you took it seriously and connected it to the other players' backstories and turned it into something so much more than an excuse for Ace to be The Batman.
Right? I was like, "a town full of bounty hunters?" *scoff* But, I agree he did a great job making it all work, and it definitely take practice to write good stories and I'm sure that player got a lot of it.
@Dondingo4 I was going the other way. trying to figure out why it makes sense to have a bounty hunter town. like maybe, that's where the bounty notices always end up, but that makes me wonder why they started to end up there in the first place.
@@argent4825 I'm guessing it's a trandoshan from star wars kinda thing, where the hunt is revered by that culture so almost everyone in the town either becomes a bounty hunter when they grow up or wants to and maybe all the other things a town of bounty hunters needs like a blacksmith and farmers is done by retired bounty hunters that come back home and settle down, maybe after taking one too many injuries.
Exactly, there is potential for emergent world building in this hasty idea, that can make this part of the world rich and unique. I’ve been told by russian friends that during the soviet era many criminals were exiled or even voluntarily fled to abandoned mining towns turned lawless exclaves in the freezing far eastern parts of the country, where barely anybody else would dare go. Being disappointed by the flight or exile and wanting more direct justice for an appropriately bad criminal would certainly allow for sufficient demand from wealthy citizens seeking revenge for villages to pop up, whose main trade is retrieving those dangerous people from an evenly dangerous area. Would there be competition and even animosity between different groups of bounty hunters? Very likely, if there is a lot of money to be made. Maybe the situation has gotten out of control and the state has legally painted itself into a corner and now prefers to hire these contractors as deniable assets to quell the danger of uprisings from the lawless fringes of the country.
I watch/listen to so many videos for ideas. One of my favorites is Baron de Ropp from Dungeon Masterpiece and Guy from How to be a Great GM. I took an alamgamation of their random charts and 5X5 to make myself a random table on the fly that I can use to create something off the cuff. That helps me get something together. I found DMing intimidating until I just went for it to find my style.
This really is a great example of the power behind simply spending some time with your notes warping different story threads together. No magic pill. No top 10 hacks. Just sitting down and binding the information together to slowly grow a ‘graveyard’ of plot skeletons that grow meat and emerge over the course of a campaign. Nicely done!
If the Red Suns were part of the Cult of Orcus, and they destroyed Ace's home - one of the clues connecting the two to the players is that Ace might have to fight the shambling corpses of people he once knew in his former life. Perhaps a few of the bodies that he could not find in the aftermath.
I have some friendly advice for players regarding origin story writing. Avoid the cliche of dead parents if you can. Ace, for example. If the player instead said that Ace returned to the village to find a majority of the residents dead and then said that Ace's father was no where to be seen, you've just handed your DM one hell of a building piece for a potentially very badass character arc for you. Your DM can leave clues behind for you to possibly pick up on that will lead you to discovering what happened to your father. Maybe your father left to pursue the Red Suns when he singlehandedly held the line at the village. Maybe he was captured because a "wanted alive" bounty was placed on him by someone from his past and the Red Suns were there to collect. The very important point is this: you've left it open ended for your DM to go pretty much any direction with, whereas "dead parents" is basically self-railroading. An open ended character origin can make your backstory meld flawlessly into the big bad's story, making you feel more like part of the story as a whole and not just a side quest character. EDIT: Cayden's backstory is a good example of this. I love that backstory. It's really unique.
I usually make orphan characters But I don't usually make it into anything miraculous or extraordinarily tragic. On the other hand, one of my most interesting characters was a very influential and wealthy noblewoman who was at odds with her father (for a good reason) and was hated by him. So they low key tried to hinder each other in their plots, business dealings and projects.
For those asking for software to build your webs, may I suggest Visio or Figma. They’re both mostly used as wire framing tools for web development but can be super useful for building story building webs 😊 Cheers!
Remarkable video. Watching you weave an entire engaging campaign plot from a stock macguffin plot and disparate character backstories in real time is simply magical. This is exactly what I needed for my prep.
That thing about how things can change at 23:43 reminded me of how I introduced an NPC towards the end of a session and described her as a human. Before the next session, I had further developed various connections and realized that this NPC needed to be an elf. Next session, I narrate "Her ears were hidden by her hair before, but now that you can see them, you realize that she's an elf."
I always tell my players to only write into their backstories what their characters know and what they think they know. One of my player's backstory was that she was adopted by a family after her parents left her on the front porch of this house. Later in life, some masked people burnt down their house and she managed to only save her older sister and herself from the burning farm. Her sister went insane with grief and she thought those masked men went after her adoptive parents. In campaign, her sister confessed to her that she saw the masked men approach the house in the night and because she knew the secret that the PC was in hiding with the adoptive family and the masked men came after her. So her sister set the barn on fire, hoping to scare masked men away and protect the PC, but some embers flew towards the house and set it aflame. When she tried to come save her family, PC saved her and she went insane with grief and guilt. Now the PC knows those people are after her or her parents and also received some emotional trauma in the process. XD
This is ridiculously incredible. I love the twist! Often I see twists where a 'good' character is secretly evil, really refreshing to see the twist is that the good character made a mistake.
Letting the players introduce background plot/setting elements is a good way to get them more involved with the campaign. And it let's you use their ideas and maybe pushes you in directions you didn't expect. A partially collaborative story outline can lead to stronger campaigns. And you can always talk with them about certain elements that may not quite work. Or tel them in session 0 that done things in their backstory may end up being wrong assumptions their characters might have drawn
I’d love a series following this web and how you would break it down into mini arcs, and then break that down into sessions while still honoring player choices etc.
Very interesting breakdown. Much of what you did feels simple and almost common sense, but it very easy for inexperienced DMs (myself included) to feel overwhelmed and not put enough time and attention into establishing this kind of framework as a starting point. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to showing how early planning can make your campaign story truly come alive!
Regarding Death Masks IRL... Before the invention of photographs, embalming, and fast travel they were commonly used for famous/well liked people when they died or for unidentified people to be later identified. They would take a plaster mold of the dead person's face to show the people in lieu of an open casket. Death Masks were also made for sculptors to use as models for their stone sculptures. A lot of times these death masks would have some of the actual hair/eye brows & lashes from the dead person imbedded in them. So who else did the cult perhaps need? Perhaps a dead hero that banished Orcus from this plane before?
I've just created a story this way and I have to thank you so much as now I have a world made by me and everything is interconnected. And it has a purpose to make everybody follow the campaign.
Immediate thought when you said Red Sun had Artifact 3 (unsure right now if any other comments said this, or if you did later in the video), could tie it in that the Bounty Hunters of Lion Rock obtained it during the bounty that put them in conflict with the Usaburo family, and reading the Tome is a key part of how James unraveled the plot. The Red Sun weren't just there to erase the tracks of the Usaburo family, but also to retrieve the artifact *from James* which is why they didn't chase after Ace. They found the Tome they were looking for and left. Could say there was a simple bounty from an onlooker who saw them ambush Cayden to hunt down the ambushers. They didn't see what happened to Cayden, but reported it to authorities who issued a general manhunt and search... Or perhaps an unrelated crime was perpetrated... that resulted in James apprehending the suspect and obtaining the Tome. Now both Ace and Cayden are looking for the Tome through different routes, as James left clues to track the Tome!
This is EXTREMELY useful! If you do end up making a follow-up video, do you think you could tie the web in the 3 arc structure of storytelling and how you would write that all out? (hopefully that makes sense) As a new DM your videos have helped me a lot so keep it up :D
Party: *Does something awesome and finishes a quest* NPC: "Where are you all from?" Party: "Excited noises and another hour of explaining/asking about each other" DM: *eats popcorn and takes a few notes about where the party will go next*
This video was fantastic. It wasn't a bunch of quick cuts and B roll with a overly dramatic narrator. Just straight information on how to build a plot web. Well done.
This was such a soothing video with such thorough exploration of how to do this. I sat down and started planning with you, and it made me feel like I was sitting down with a friend to work on our campaigns. Thank you so much for this video 😊
Thanks for this video. It is really one of the most impactful D&D tube videos I have watched. I employed this method with a group that I started running for, a few months ago, and it’s effectiveness exceeded my expectations. I got them each to give me a backstory with three people, two places, and an item, then tied them all together spinning an elaborate web involving three major enemy organisations. The best part is, my players are invested in it since a lot of it involves NPCs they themselves invented.
I find that some of my players prefer knowing the campaign premise before creating characters so they have a starting point for character creation. How much do you tell the players about the premise of the campaign before they write their backstories? Would you tell them the theme? central tension? It seems a campaign premise would be hard to pin down before the backstories are created using this method.
We have different groups but hopefully this helps. I tell them my world premise, whats going on that important to know. I showed them a map and what kind of areas the different regions are like. Then I told them to create a character how they want and I'll make a new town and everything for them, just name it and I'll make it. I also helped and talked them through their backstory since it was their first serious campaign. I let them know about the corruption across the land when doing that. As soon as we're done with the icewind dale fun game, we're going into the new start
This is awesome. Seeing the whole thing unfold naturally, and seeing how little you need to build a solid structure. As a soon to be new DM that wants to build the campain from the backstories, truly useful and inspiring.
As a very new dm this helped me SO MUCH, i'm a very visual learner so I knew the IDEA of doing something like this but actually doing it was different. This was an amazing exercise and now I actually have a connected plot idea. Lets watch them run amok in it lol.
Thank you for your videos! I have never Dm'd before but I have this awful perfectionist anxiety so if I do ANYTHING I want to make sure I can do it right the first time! This seems like the PERFECT visual structure I was looking for to help me manage all my friends plots! lol
I really loved watching the story developing from characters backstories. It made it seem like building a campaign less daunting because I can use my players backstories to create it for me in some aspect. It’ll also be helpful for when I want to figure out how to incorporate my players backstory’s into the prebuilt campaign I plan on using
Happy to help! Good luck with your campaign. Remember though, this is just to show connections between player backstories. How the campaign unfolds is up to them. Good luck!
Incredible! Thanks for making this video. Only dm'd combat heavy one shots and this gives a much better way for me to make the open ended Ness of plot less scary! Also I'm going to ponder more about how to utilize this thinking structure for designing plot for video games. Where the focus of the plot is around character growth. I imagine those could just be there own nodes? Maybe it's flexing this system too much to use it to visualize events over time rather then a snapshot of current events and intentions. Thanks again.
first time playing dnd this month with strangers I met on social media and it was a blast now I am trying to DM for my friends and I have no clue what I am doing this was very helpful thanks!
(Haven’t finished the video but had this thought so I’m writing it down.) Thought experiment. The party finds out that the mask is the artifact and they want ti get it to save if from the cult of orcus, but they haven’t figured out that the family is linked yet. So Tsutsui finally agrees to the wedding to get close too and get the mask. Family is excited, too excited. Which speeds up the events of the red wedding as it were
This reveals the usoburo family’s relationship with the cult and from here what would happen. Assuming the party survives. Cause this would definitely be planned out to be a massacre, much like its namesake.
Thank you so much for taking the time to show a real planning session! I learn really well from example so this is exactly what i need to understand ways to connect my characters into the plot as well as to each other :)
I've been trying to do plot webs for my games as of late and this video really helped inspire me with it. Also I know the sentiment has been shared already but I would love to see this story play out even though I know you said the characters were all from old campaigns. It's crazy how as DM you develop the ability to just speak into existence a story that people actively want to see or take part in, it's honestly one of the reasons I got into doing it myself.
This was incredibly interesting and I am highly motivated (as a first time DM) to toss away the premade adventure I planned for my party and instead go for something like this X)))
As someone who is good at big picture story building, but needs a lot of work on integrating Backstories into that, this video was so enlightening! Im going to be using this for my upcoming campaign.
While you went over Megohime, I was thinking. The wedding begins to be back on schedule when 'Tsusui' reappears. Megohime finds out that the 'returning Tsusui' was actually an imposter, but ends up falling in love with the person she believed was Tsusui. The imposter pretends to throw away their original mission for love. Then...BETRAYAL!
I enjoyed this video. It was simple to follow, and gave me ideas of how to tie my characters to each other and the world better. The only thing I wish was added was examples of how you would reveal certain plot points to the characters. A journal? An interrogation? This is a point that I struggle with. I have many things planned out in a campaign, but sometimes I can’t find the best or most natural way to reveal things to my players. Keep up the good work!
Good work. For added complexity you can add in orgs and entities with their own goals. I get this was an example and simplified. So no smoke. Also this would be good for a program like vault (thought webs) It allows you to make individual notes and l8nk them through wiki referencing
Extremely well done. How many sessions do you normally run per arc? Do you also break down a similar web for each of the 5 archs? I'd be interested on seeing how you use this web to then make individual sessions.
I think this is good to outline, but for my games I actually do this with the players themselves collaboratively in a group. Sometimes I think we're so focused on surprising the players but I think we can trust them with more when creating this web.
I feel like you would love Obsidian, it's basically a note taking software that generates the same bubble map naturally by linking notes together [[Like this]] ("Like This" would then become a new note you can fill out later)
I feel like it might be a mistake to make all of the pcs related. Atleast if they start adventuring together. it would just be to convenient for them to start an adventuring party. If they would all meat mid campaign it would work, but this type of Story only works in a book. Otherwise you kinda need a puppet master who brings the players together so that they can uncover their shared history.
Agreed. I think there is such thing as “over-connecting” the players to the world and eachother. In Star Wars Luke and Leia are revealed to be twins and the children of Vader. Now imagine if they also made Han Solo secretly a clone of Luke who lost his memory, and Chewwie worked in the factory that built R2D2. Too much coincidence can take away from fantasy.
Felt the same, for a mini campaign (few sessions) it could be a nice, a lot of coincidences type of story, but for full campaign you lose options to give one plot path a breather to unfold later
The only ideas that I probably would have changed maybe is make Odin Grimm the son of Orcus since he’s a Demigod. That way the book was taken years ago from the cult. Then the goal would be for the party to steal the weapon from Odin, if they succeeded then one of the players gets the weapon as a souvenir and to celebrate they have a wedding that turns out to be what cult was waiting for all along and then they get the to other artifacts in one place. To add some extra shock and awe you can make Odin the bbe leading the cult to release his father
I'm running the radiant Citadel campaign where every character is from a different world/civilisation. I wonder if I can manage to link them all together like this. I bet it's possible. BUT. I'll certainly give it a go. Thanks for these great instructions. Great work.
Can you do a follow up on this video with another example? Say for a less classic format for a dnd campaign and maybe how you would use your method for a political campaign for example? Love the video.
Hey man, awesome video! I was just wondering, how much of this would you talk to your players about? Like, would they already have some more knowledge out of character? Or do you only let them know things in character?
I try to make plot webs from the PC's choices. The ones that survive to 3rd level or above. I haven't ran a game since AD&D 2nd Edition & 3.5. DCC got me back into it tho so I'm doing some research.
Remember that this is a way to help you visualize how your campaign is constructed. You can run any type of campaign (sandbox, linear, and everything in between) using this system. Also, like I say in the video, you can swap nodes in and out of the plot web. Maybe if enough people ask, I'll make a part 2 and rip Orcus out of this campaign altogether to show you how easy it is.
what about a part 2 were a player character dies instead of removing orcus?
@@ramonruijgt4532 Yeah, this! That could be real interesting. ☝️
Yes, i would like a part 2! Thank you so much for this video!
Definitely a Part 2 where something/someone is added or subtracted mid-campaign.
A follow up would be amazing.
I love that you didn't do this with 3 perfect backstories. Ace you said was a character from years ago and I am sure his player cringes as much as we were over that backstory now but you took it seriously and connected it to the other players' backstories and turned it into something so much more than an excuse for Ace to be The Batman.
He has honestly turned into one of my best players. However, it was taking a simple backstory seriously that got him deeper into the game
Right? I was like, "a town full of bounty hunters?" *scoff* But, I agree he did a great job making it all work, and it definitely take practice to write good stories and I'm sure that player got a lot of it.
@Dondingo4 I was going the other way. trying to figure out why it makes sense to have a bounty hunter town. like maybe, that's where the bounty notices always end up, but that makes me wonder why they started to end up there in the first place.
@@argent4825 I'm guessing it's a trandoshan from star wars kinda thing, where the hunt is revered by that culture so almost everyone in the town either becomes a bounty hunter when they grow up or wants to and maybe all the other things a town of bounty hunters needs like a blacksmith and farmers is done by retired bounty hunters that come back home and settle down, maybe after taking one too many injuries.
Exactly, there is potential for emergent world building in this hasty idea, that can make this part of the world rich and unique.
I’ve been told by russian friends that during the soviet era many criminals were exiled or even voluntarily fled to abandoned mining towns turned lawless exclaves in the freezing far eastern parts of the country, where barely anybody else would dare go.
Being disappointed by the flight or exile and wanting more direct justice for an appropriately bad criminal would certainly allow for sufficient demand from wealthy citizens seeking revenge for villages to pop up, whose main trade is retrieving those dangerous people from an evenly dangerous area.
Would there be competition and even animosity between different groups of bounty hunters? Very likely, if there is a lot of money to be made.
Maybe the situation has gotten out of control and the state has legally painted itself into a corner and now prefers to hire these contractors as deniable assets to quell the danger of uprisings from the lawless fringes of the country.
I really wish folks would stop using Brennan's likeness to get clicks on their videos that have nothing to do with Brennan.
But it worked 😂
@@reznet2for 3 minutes and 5 seconds
It's ok because it's a must see for any dm
This mightve been a good video, but I clicked for Brennan and there wasn’t any, so here’s a dislike.
I'm not clicking for Brennan I'm clicking for plot. The damn tactic worked
This is study worthy. As a person who wants to DM, but has no idea what they're doing, and is INTIMIDATED out the wah-zoo... I can only say thank you!
I watch/listen to so many videos for ideas. One of my favorites is Baron de Ropp from Dungeon Masterpiece and Guy from How to be a Great GM. I took an alamgamation of their random charts and 5X5 to make myself a random table on the fly that I can use to create something off the cuff. That helps me get something together. I found DMing intimidating until I just went for it to find my style.
This really is a great example of the power behind simply spending some time with your notes warping different story threads together. No magic pill. No top 10 hacks. Just sitting down and binding the information together to slowly grow a ‘graveyard’ of plot skeletons that grow meat and emerge over the course of a campaign. Nicely done!
If the Red Suns were part of the Cult of Orcus, and they destroyed Ace's home - one of the clues connecting the two to the players is that Ace might have to fight the shambling corpses of people he once knew in his former life. Perhaps a few of the bodies that he could not find in the aftermath.
I have some friendly advice for players regarding origin story writing. Avoid the cliche of dead parents if you can. Ace, for example. If the player instead said that Ace returned to the village to find a majority of the residents dead and then said that Ace's father was no where to be seen, you've just handed your DM one hell of a building piece for a potentially very badass character arc for you. Your DM can leave clues behind for you to possibly pick up on that will lead you to discovering what happened to your father. Maybe your father left to pursue the Red Suns when he singlehandedly held the line at the village. Maybe he was captured because a "wanted alive" bounty was placed on him by someone from his past and the Red Suns were there to collect.
The very important point is this: you've left it open ended for your DM to go pretty much any direction with, whereas "dead parents" is basically self-railroading. An open ended character origin can make your backstory meld flawlessly into the big bad's story, making you feel more like part of the story as a whole and not just a side quest character.
EDIT: Cayden's backstory is a good example of this. I love that backstory. It's really unique.
If my playercharacters parents are dead, there will be a Lich BBEG who brings them back to fight the characters.
@@ultimatekayozz glorious! I love it! 🤣
Exactly! This is D&D, the plot doesn't stop at death 😂@@ultimatekayozz
I usually make orphan characters But I don't usually make it into anything miraculous or extraordinarily tragic. On the other hand, one of my most interesting characters was a very influential and wealthy noblewoman who was at odds with her father (for a good reason) and was hated by him. So they low key tried to hinder each other in their plots, business dealings and projects.
I'm not convinced that inserting some super heroic parent martyr is less cliché or has more depth.
For those asking for software to build your webs, may I suggest Visio or Figma. They’re both mostly used as wire framing tools for web development but can be super useful for building story building webs 😊
Cheers!
obsidian with excalidraw plugin
I want to watch this campaign unfold now gosh darnnit!
Sadly all these characters were already in other campaigns
I feel ya man
Remarkable video. Watching you weave an entire engaging campaign plot from a stock macguffin plot and disparate character backstories in real time is simply magical. This is exactly what I needed for my prep.
That thing about how things can change at 23:43 reminded me of how I introduced an NPC towards the end of a session and described her as a human. Before the next session, I had further developed various connections and realized that this NPC needed to be an elf. Next session, I narrate "Her ears were hidden by her hair before, but now that you can see them, you realize that she's an elf."
I always tell my players to only write into their backstories what their characters know and what they think they know. One of my player's backstory was that she was adopted by a family after her parents left her on the front porch of this house. Later in life, some masked people burnt down their house and she managed to only save her older sister and herself from the burning farm. Her sister went insane with grief and she thought those masked men went after her adoptive parents. In campaign, her sister confessed to her that she saw the masked men approach the house in the night and because she knew the secret that the PC was in hiding with the adoptive family and the masked men came after her. So her sister set the barn on fire, hoping to scare masked men away and protect the PC, but some embers flew towards the house and set it aflame. When she tried to come save her family, PC saved her and she went insane with grief and guilt. Now the PC knows those people are after her or her parents and also received some emotional trauma in the process. XD
This is ridiculously incredible. I love the twist! Often I see twists where a 'good' character is secretly evil, really refreshing to see the twist is that the good character made a mistake.
Letting the players introduce background plot/setting elements is a good way to get them more involved with the campaign.
And it let's you use their ideas and maybe pushes you in directions you didn't expect.
A partially collaborative story outline can lead to stronger campaigns. And you can always talk with them about certain elements that may not quite work.
Or tel them in session 0 that done things in their backstory may end up being wrong assumptions their characters might have drawn
I’d love a series following this web and how you would break it down into mini arcs, and then break that down into sessions while still honoring player choices etc.
Very interesting breakdown. Much of what you did feels simple and almost common sense, but it very easy for inexperienced DMs (myself included) to feel overwhelmed and not put enough time and attention into establishing this kind of framework as a starting point. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to showing how early planning can make your campaign story truly come alive!
Regarding Death Masks IRL... Before the invention of photographs, embalming, and fast travel they were commonly used for famous/well liked people when they died or for unidentified people to be later identified. They would take a plaster mold of the dead person's face to show the people in lieu of an open casket. Death Masks were also made for sculptors to use as models for their stone sculptures. A lot of times these death masks would have some of the actual hair/eye brows & lashes from the dead person imbedded in them. So who else did the cult perhaps need? Perhaps a dead hero that banished Orcus from this plane before?
This is awesome. Thanks for commenting!
I've just created a story this way and I have to thank you so much as now I have a world made by me and everything is interconnected. And it has a purpose to make everybody follow the campaign.
The way you break down and connect the backstories, I am taking so many notes! Love it.
Immediate thought when you said Red Sun had Artifact 3 (unsure right now if any other comments said this, or if you did later in the video), could tie it in that the Bounty Hunters of Lion Rock obtained it during the bounty that put them in conflict with the Usaburo family, and reading the Tome is a key part of how James unraveled the plot. The Red Sun weren't just there to erase the tracks of the Usaburo family, but also to retrieve the artifact *from James* which is why they didn't chase after Ace. They found the Tome they were looking for and left.
Could say there was a simple bounty from an onlooker who saw them ambush Cayden to hunt down the ambushers. They didn't see what happened to Cayden, but reported it to authorities who issued a general manhunt and search... Or perhaps an unrelated crime was perpetrated... that resulted in James apprehending the suspect and obtaining the Tome.
Now both Ace and Cayden are looking for the Tome through different routes, as James left clues to track the Tome!
This is EXTREMELY useful! If you do end up making a follow-up video, do you think you could tie the web in the 3 arc structure of storytelling and how you would write that all out? (hopefully that makes sense)
As a new DM your videos have helped me a lot so keep it up :D
I second this request!
Thank you for this. I really enjoyed seeing someone actually do the process. I've been looking for something like this on youtube for a long time.
Yes please
Party: *Does something awesome and finishes a quest*
NPC: "Where are you all from?"
Party: "Excited noises and another hour of explaining/asking about each other"
DM: *eats popcorn and takes a few notes about where the party will go next*
I am commenting purely to boost this video in the algorithm because it’s a good video
Feckin finally, a channel that actually lays out the mechanical "How to do it" part of dming.
This video was fantastic. It wasn't a bunch of quick cuts and B roll with a overly dramatic narrator. Just straight information on how to build a plot web. Well done.
This was such a soothing video with such thorough exploration of how to do this. I sat down and started planning with you, and it made me feel like I was sitting down with a friend to work on our campaigns. Thank you so much for this video 😊
Thanks for this video. It is really one of the most impactful D&D tube videos I have watched. I employed this method with a group that I started running for, a few months ago, and it’s effectiveness exceeded my expectations. I got them each to give me a backstory with three people, two places, and an item, then tied them all together spinning an elaborate web involving three major enemy organisations. The best part is, my players are invested in it since a lot of it involves NPCs they themselves invented.
I find that some of my players prefer knowing the campaign premise before creating characters so they have a starting point for character creation. How much do you tell the players about the premise of the campaign before they write their backstories? Would you tell them the theme? central tension? It seems a campaign premise would be hard to pin down before the backstories are created using this method.
We have different groups but hopefully this helps. I tell them my world premise, whats going on that important to know. I showed them a map and what kind of areas the different regions are like. Then I told them to create a character how they want and I'll make a new town and everything for them, just name it and I'll make it. I also helped and talked them through their backstory since it was their first serious campaign. I let them know about the corruption across the land when doing that.
As soon as we're done with the icewind dale fun game, we're going into the new start
loved this been in a bit of a writers block but after this video i went back and looked at my notes and started figuring things out again
This is awesome. Seeing the whole thing unfold naturally, and seeing how little you need to build a solid structure.
As a soon to be new DM that wants to build the campain from the backstories, truly useful and inspiring.
As a very new dm this helped me SO MUCH, i'm a very visual learner so I knew the IDEA of doing something like this but actually doing it was different. This was an amazing exercise and now I actually have a connected plot idea. Lets watch them run amok in it lol.
This channel is a treasure trove
This video is insanely useful. Straight and to the point and brilliant. Thank you for posting!
Thank you for your videos! I have never Dm'd before but I have this awful perfectionist anxiety so if I do ANYTHING I want to make sure I can do it right the first time! This seems like the PERFECT visual structure I was looking for to help me manage all my friends plots! lol
I really loved watching the story developing from characters backstories. It made it seem like building a campaign less daunting because I can use my players backstories to create it for me in some aspect. It’ll also be helpful for when I want to figure out how to incorporate my players backstory’s into the prebuilt campaign I plan on using
I personally got so invested just watching the story in the works. O_O
this is the exact video i need. thank you so much. ive been so lost on where to start for my campaign's story
Happy to help! Good luck with your campaign. Remember though, this is just to show connections between player backstories. How the campaign unfolds is up to them. Good luck!
Incredible! Thanks for making this video. Only dm'd combat heavy one shots and this gives a much better way for me to make the open ended Ness of plot less scary!
Also I'm going to ponder more about how to utilize this thinking structure for designing plot for video games. Where the focus of the plot is around character growth. I imagine those could just be there own nodes?
Maybe it's flexing this system too much to use it to visualize events over time rather then a snapshot of current events and intentions.
Thanks again.
Holy crap! I just wanted to watch something while I cleaned up but this video was so good! Thanks for all of this hard with
first time playing dnd this month with strangers I met on social media and it was a blast now I am trying to DM for my friends and I have no clue what I am doing this was very helpful thanks!
What a phenomenal video, thank you for sharing this methodology, it's changed my campaign prep forever!
(Haven’t finished the video but had this thought so I’m writing it down.) Thought experiment. The party finds out that the mask is the artifact and they want ti get it to save if from the cult of orcus, but they haven’t figured out that the family is linked yet.
So Tsutsui finally agrees to the wedding to get close too and get the mask. Family is excited, too excited. Which speeds up the events of the red wedding as it were
This reveals the usoburo family’s relationship with the cult and from here what would happen. Assuming the party survives. Cause this would definitely be planned out to be a massacre, much like its namesake.
Thank you so much for taking the time to show a real planning session! I learn really well from example so this is exactly what i need to understand ways to connect my characters into the plot as well as to each other :)
I've been trying to do plot webs for my games as of late and this video really helped inspire me with it. Also I know the sentiment has been shared already but I would love to see this story play out even though I know you said the characters were all from old campaigns. It's crazy how as DM you develop the ability to just speak into existence a story that people actively want to see or take part in, it's honestly one of the reasons I got into doing it myself.
The single most helpful dm tip video i have ever watched. Thanks for your hard work and sharing your gained experience.
Bro. This is the tool I needed. I kiss you heart!
I have looked so much for a video like this. Thank you for sharing your process!
I would love a follow up video! Also, what program do you use to write the web visually?
dude, you literally saved my campaign! GREAT video, thank you!
This was incredibly interesting and I am highly motivated (as a first time DM) to toss away the premade adventure I planned for my party and instead go for something like this X)))
This was an IMMENSELY helpful video. Holy crap. Thank you so much for making this.
Brilliant video!!! So much to digest. Thank you for doing it. Can you share what software you made the plot web in?
Hi, what tool did you use for the plot web. Thanks
This is brillant! I have bean stabbing around for something like this. Thanks a lot 🙂
Pure friggin' gold, man. I really enjoyed watching this.
Brilliant video. Seeing how you take player's input and create such a natural feeling plot web was really informative. Thanks.
This was very informative. I can tell it took a lot of effort. Thank you I'll be doing my best to apply this
This was fantastic. Super helpful to see how to use practically use the character backstories to create a campaign.
That was really interesting and useful. Using this strategy to plot out the next arc of my first campaign!
I'd love to see the follow-up where you take Orcus out of the web. (EDIT: LOL, and I just found it! Off to watch.)
Thanks for this follow up to the arc video, this is exactly what I was looking for.
As someone who is good at big picture story building, but needs a lot of work on integrating Backstories into that, this video was so enlightening! Im going to be using this for my upcoming campaign.
absolutely fantastic work, subscribing and I'm going to go through all your other videos now. Keep up the great work!
While you went over Megohime, I was thinking. The wedding begins to be back on schedule when 'Tsusui' reappears. Megohime finds out that the 'returning Tsusui' was actually an imposter, but ends up falling in love with the person she believed was Tsusui. The imposter pretends to throw away their original mission for love. Then...BETRAYAL!
I think puppeteered was the word you were looking for 😂 ty for the video, great work!
I enjoyed this video. It was simple to follow, and gave me ideas of how to tie my characters to each other and the world better. The only thing I wish was added was examples of how you would reveal certain plot points to the characters. A journal? An interrogation? This is a point that I struggle with. I have many things planned out in a campaign, but sometimes I can’t find the best or most natural way to reveal things to my players. Keep up the good work!
Good work.
For added complexity you can add in orgs and entities with their own goals.
I get this was an example and simplified. So no smoke.
Also this would be good for a program like vault (thought webs)
It allows you to make individual notes and l8nk them through wiki referencing
This was an amazing video. I really hope you make the follow-up video!
super helpful video, thanks for making the effort of putting this together!
Love this video. Now i shall implement onto paper since i prefer it that way. 😅 Gonna be fun.
This is exactly what I needed to learn how to do! Thank you so much!
Great video! Can you tell us what software you use to go from the text notes you have to the graphical web?
I'd like to second this because I absolutely would like the same
Yes please I was about to post the same request
Idk what this channel uses but I really like "Miro," even though it's only online
According to one of their other comments, Enter the Dungeon used photoshop and some basic tools
Thank you for sharing your method. It's really inspiring to see your creativity at work
Extremely well done. How many sessions do you normally run per arc? Do you also break down a similar web for each of the 5 archs? I'd be interested on seeing how you use this web to then make individual sessions.
I think this is good to outline, but for my games I actually do this with the players themselves collaboratively in a group. Sometimes I think we're so focused on surprising the players but I think we can trust them with more when creating this web.
If Ace tells is he's a Bounty hunter one more time...
I feel like you would love Obsidian, it's basically a note taking software that generates the same bubble map naturally by linking notes together [[Like this]] ("Like This" would then become a new note you can fill out later)
Interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thank you!
Great tips, thank you for sharing.
I have a question. After creating the web, how do you get to the graphical representation of the nodes? I might have missed it, perhaps.
I feel like it might be a mistake to make all of the pcs related. Atleast if they start adventuring together. it would just be to convenient for them to start an adventuring party.
If they would all meat mid campaign it would work, but this type of Story only works in a book.
Otherwise you kinda need a puppet master who brings the players together so that they can uncover their shared history.
Agreed. I think there is such thing as “over-connecting” the players to the world and eachother.
In Star Wars Luke and Leia are revealed to be twins and the children of Vader. Now imagine if they also made Han Solo secretly a clone of Luke who lost his memory, and Chewwie worked in the factory that built R2D2. Too much coincidence can take away from fantasy.
Felt the same, for a mini campaign (few sessions) it could be a nice, a lot of coincidences type of story, but for full campaign you lose options to give one plot path a breather to unfold later
This is amazing! Exactly what I needed to see.
a must watch for all DMs
The only ideas that I probably would have changed maybe is make Odin Grimm the son of Orcus since he’s a Demigod. That way the book was taken years ago from the cult. Then the goal would be for the party to steal the weapon from Odin, if they succeeded then one of the players gets the weapon as a souvenir and to celebrate they have a wedding that turns out to be what cult was waiting for all along and then they get the to other artifacts in one place. To add some extra shock and awe you can make Odin the bbe leading the cult to release his father
Thanks so much for the clear description. I will be using this ASAP!
I'm running the radiant Citadel campaign where every character is from a different world/civilisation. I wonder if I can manage to link them all together like this. I bet it's possible. BUT. I'll certainly give it a go. Thanks for these great instructions. Great work.
Can you do a follow up on this video with another example? Say for a less classic format for a dnd campaign and maybe how you would use your method for a political campaign for example? Love the video.
This is going to be extremely useful since im going to start with a couple of friends in a few weeks!
What is the music playing in the background?
Feel like the term “bounty hunter” very quickly lost its meaning…
Oh wow, this so much like what I’m doing with my campaign, only that I have 10 people in this world but are split into 2 groups
That was crazy! Really well done!
Now I wanna see this play out !!!!
How do you make your webs? Do you use an application like Photoshop or is there an online resource that's perhaps more available?
This was amazing!!!!
Hey man, awesome video! I was just wondering, how much of this would you talk to your players about? Like, would they already have some more knowledge out of character? Or do you only let them know things in character?
this throne of lies OST really brought some memories, such a shame the game died
Thank you this is great
thanks for the tips
I like to run several of these concurrently in my head while I'm writing
Awesome video
I try to make plot webs from the PC's choices. The ones that survive to 3rd level or above. I haven't ran a game since AD&D 2nd Edition & 3.5. DCC got me back into it tho so I'm doing some research.