The 7 Types of DM in D&D
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
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There are many types of GM in D&D, here are some of the main archetypes!
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How was this commented a day ago. Also, I'm happy to see cinderblock Sally and zackspeaksgiant etc. play it
My isn’t it for consoles!!!!
This video got me thinking about DM classes. Like different rules, mechanics and genres are categorized by dming style.
@@donncha-fv7nemaybe UA-cam has an option for prereleasing comments on your video? Lol
It's so awesome that you got this paid spot, I feel like you'd have praised this game eventually in a short or something.
My Dad used to be a DM. Later on when he had me, as many parents do he would tell me bedtime stories. But these weren't out of a book - these were 'Possumcat stories', set in a world where me, my little sister, and a creature named Sam the Possumcat were the main characters improvising our way through a series of oneshots that wove a greater canon over the years. Each 'Possumcat story', Dad would set up an adventure premise, tell part of the story, then prompt me at points to choose what the characters do next. Whatever I chose would influence the direction of the story, whether it be tempting fate and opening the crypt or playing it safe, whether or not we try to steal some dragon gold, whether we investigate the gurgling bunyip sounds, etc. He totally ran my very own D&D-lite experience my whole early childhood! Best Dad ever. ❤
that sounds like such a beautiful way to share stories with you! your dad sounds awesome❤👍🏻
That's inspiring :)
pretty much how Tolkien got writing LOTR too
What is a Possumcat?
@@saschafeld5528 There's no real animal called a Possumcat. 'Sam the Possumcat' was the name given to a plush toy my Dad had once given my Mum as a present that they thought looked like a fluffy mix between a possum and a cat. The plush toy was actually of a greater glider, an endangered type of possum in the eastern Australian states.
A tip for The Conductor DM's. At the end of your sessions or story blocks ask your players what want to do next and be prepared for that. That way they get to choose what to do and you got to build awesome adventures, enjoy!
Basically running a Conductor game means instead of having player agency and cooperative storytelling as improv during the game, you have it as concertation BEFORE the game.
Yep that way instead improv during the game I can design awesome and interesting encounters that suits my players choices
I do this a lot, it REALLY helps me feel prepared while there players still get to choose what they're doing.
@@ugurcankarakas6554 This was basically my one piece campaing.
In session because was always islands...it was difficult to make really big changes. But after the sessions,i always took note of what they wanted to do and added the stuff for then,i changed even story bits to fit better with the current party wishes.
This is great until they end a session heading towards a town, only to start the next session and say "hey, I remembered we heard about this other thing nearby, we should do that instead"
As a worldbuilder, here’s a tip: it’s often better to make one, really fleshed out halfling village for the players to get invested in than an expansive world. And if you can isolate them in an abundant setting, even better.
When dming I tend to do a crap load of world building that never actually are used lol. Like there are certain types of magic sea weed that has thousands of leaves that thrive in magma, (Hence the name Magma Leaf) that can be used to either imbue fire resistance, or even power a thermal generator. Sadly I am pretty bad right now at getting my players to think outside the box. So while stuff is there. It doesn't get used ;--; (I use my short story worlds for a lot of my dnd games so thats why there are so many little details)
I try to be Architect at least most of the time so they still have some freedom.
Lol, this is so much of what I do not do as a minimalist. I get the players inveted by making them do a lot of the worldbuilding work for me. I give each player a sort of loose ownership of their home town.
Yessss, this is what I’m doing. I’ve been focusing on building regions of one or two towns and a handful of tiny villages but my players haven’t left the starting town yet, but have the option to!
I’m planning on eventually running a homebrewed series of One Piece campaigns, and this is basically how I wanna do that. The world of One Piece is indeed abundant, and the fact that all the places are islands makes isolation natural, and reunion significant
@@BlueJay-ip5ykIt doesn't matter if you use it not. More accurately, it's there to be used if someone goes that way. It also helps complete the picture for you.
I have rituals mapped out for a race of plains horse barbarians when there is very little chance of a player group ever travelling there. Of course, if someone wants to play a horse barbarian, then these are the people and they will need to understand the lore of the tribes.
My current DM is 100% a worldbuilder. He literally congratulated and praised me for taking notes 💀
My DM is a world builder with a bit of architect. It's incredible. The best DnD I've ever had.
You should tag him so he knows and we can all celebrate his gift
@@nathaniel3931 It is objectively the best DMing style - says me, a DM of the same hybrid style
@@janejvmmsvictoria5857 agreed! I was just about to comment that I am an Architect Worldbuilder when I saw this comment. I'm glad to see there are others who feel as passionately about this style of DMing as I do.
World building architect here with a little bit of conductor in him. Not the best DM, but my players enjoy the games. 🤷♂️
@@bryanyoung9966 As a DM mostly to kids, I've had to force myself to be a conductor DM. Otherwise I'm an worldbuilding architect.
I am a minimalist, and I have mastered the art of: “Yes I predicted that of course”
Same bro 😂
Still remember the time when my party burned Down a goblin village and I had to make a map of the treasury just to say I knew it.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome
I love a good minimalist. My friends and I would play like that when I first started playing D&D. We would just sit around and one of us would DM and the rest of us would talk about what we were doing. No dice. No books. No character sheets. We just had a good group that could create a narrative out of the blue. I wish I could find another group like that.
That sounds awesome
How White Wolf was. Storytelling.
sounds somewhat like regular roleplaying but not in text form
I used to DM like that before I got my first DnD book. Full roleplay, entirely made up rolls when I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with nonsensical difficulty checks. My players still have very good memories of it !
The problem with the minimalist as I see it, is that though they tend to leave for the most choice, story telling and flexibility, that they rarely have much prepared or use much in terms of rules or structure, which makes it very hard to get a balanced game, especially with players of different experience and personality.
Of cause you did stretch "good" minimalist, and I suppose that would be great then. I have just known too many bad minimalists for me to look for minimalist DM's.
In fact I have known a lot of minimalists who while giving you the most choice available, made your choice virtually pointless because of the randomness and lack of preparation given to the game.
I think the World Builder would make the safest good DM, though a good Architect would be great too. The Boxer, Nick Fury, Conductor and Cool Cousin is not for me at all. The more prepared the DM is the better, sure it is hard to have the time for that kind of commitment and it make it hard to be a DM...but I think it is the most fun.
I always tried to be a conductor (because I foolishly thought that was what all DMs were supposed to be) until I finally realized that I’m in fact a minimalist (or maybe more cool cousin) but once I stopped forcing myself to be what I thought a DM was and just followed my gut, I found my true type and honestly it makes all the difference!
Look into the Micro-RPG system "Roll for Shoes." As a person who discovered my type to be "minimalist cool cousin," it is easily my favorite role play game method
I have another archetype for you: Apocalypse Prepper
As a DM I like to prepare all the rollable tables, all the items the world has, easy ways to access less-used rules on the fly, creating important NPCs, creating maps, etc, so basically everything I'm going to need over the course of a campaign, before the campaign starts, except for the story itself (other than a premise and starting point). I like to call this my campaign skeleton.
The rest is left up to the players and their interactions with the world, and I improvise a story depending on how they interact with the premise.
So, much like an apocalypse prepper, I prepare for (nearly) every mechanical eventuality, but improvise to survive when chaos hit the fan.
A combination DM of World-Builder, Conductor and Apocalypse-Prepper, that's just physics.
Then I would by a Mix between Apocalypse-Prepper, Worldbuilder, Conducter and a tiny bit of Architect.
This is my style too 😃
That's me with over 30 macros on my roll20 table haha
I absolutely love this. This is my favored style of dmming for sure. Imrov is my elixir of life, but I obviously need a body to fill it with
Intro 0:00
Nick Fury 0:06
The World Builder 1:28
The Cool Cousin 3:10
Baldurs Gate Sponser 4:18
The Boxer 5:48
The Minimalist 7:06
The Conductor 8:32
The Architect 9:32
Outro 10:55
Thank you for the time stamps.
Thanks for the sponsorship skip(don’t get me wrong, BaG2 is still an favorite, BaG3 will surely deliver too)
True old school D&D players knows this one. The Monty Haul DM.
My DM surely is a Baldurs Gate Sponser, he won't shut up about this freaking game. I wish he was a Cool Cousin tho...
@@juanma9767 okay funny joke I’ll give you that
A tip for minimalist GMs; a decent way to do a percentage 'roll' is to just use a clock with a stopwatch feature; have the player start and stop the clock while not looking at it, and use the tenths and hundredths of a second as the tens and ones digits. You have a d% in your hands probably right now.
I go for a minimalist/cool cousin style in the game I run. I made it extremely clear when we started the game that this was going to be a mostly improvised game because we're all busy adults with very little spare time and we'd rather spend it together rolling dice and slaying monsters than prepping for weeks just for plans to blow up immediately after starting the session. I also told my players that they can do basically anything if the situation warrants it and in return for making them feel like heroes I pull out bigger enemies. Picking good encounter tables are the name of the game if you try this.
Sounds like you would enjoy Roll for Shoes, my favorite mini-rpg as a cool-cousin/minimalist who doesn't have the time to prep for hours
This is exactly how I run my games, we're all adults trying to escape for a few hours and should celebrate the miracle of getting together. I like my games to have good internal logic, and I do say "no" sometimes, but my general rule is "if you can justify it, you can try and go for it". The best part is that the dice usually know best whenever I do this. When my players are trying to be a little annoying, the dice say no for me XD it hasn't failed yet. I'm really good at storytelling naturally, so I make sure to have a few written encounters and the general story in mind, but I spend most of my prep time making "cool" stuff for my players to enjoy and feel special.
I'm definitely a Nick Fury, Architect, and World Building DM. I just love running huge open world games where my players fight armies and literal gods. Using existing rules and homebrew together to make powerful players and enemies that clash against each other like world ending tsunamis is just so rewarding. Balancing the narrative and mechanics together is always so fun for me to give to my players to interact and play with.
I also feel like these 3 but mostly heavy on the Nick Fury. I grew up watching godzilla, and reading comics. Bring on the super heroes
@@nottheonlyjustin Bro I can't blame you, all that stuff is so good. My inspiration is very similar with manga. The cool fights and moments that I strive for. The building blocks that were implanted when we were younger, we are now able to create ourselfs. It's like stepping in the foots of giants. Plus fighting monstrous beings that could destroy the world is always entertaining.
You may seem ideal to handling high level gameplay with ease, which is not an easy task for the majority of DMs. How do you go about doing that?
@@commandercaptain4664 I find the best thing you can do is respect your party's power while also respecting the scale. If your players have fun by steamrolling everything in front of them, then let them. There's nothing wrong with a power fantasy, as long as everyone is on board. However, if your players do want a challenge, and a really cool cinematic one at that, then you have a couple of options. Anytime your players one-shot your bad guy, tell them that it doesn't work and say try something else. This is a terrible idea and will make your players not have fun. The other way is by manipulating the fight with the story. Instead of killing the bad guy, they cripple him, allowing him to use his power to retaliate. This is good because the players still have a huge impact, but they don't speedrun the fight. If you want the fight to last longer, get creative. Manipulate the scene to allow for a more entertaining fight. I don't quite know how to say how, besides you get used to it. I find this becomes easier with experience. However, the most important part is everyone has fun. As long as you're trying, your players will appreciate you and enjoy what you have written. That will make it way more cinematic and epic than anything else.
@@commandercaptain4664 I actually prefer to run high level adventures with my ideal level range for a campaign being level 10-20. One thing to note about high level adventures is it is okay to let them steamroll some encounters like the other reply said with encounters having variable difficulties from easy to deadly.
My last adventure was a dungeon crawl type adventure which I believe lends well to high level games.
One piece of advice I think would help is to have more encounters between long rests. At higher levels, this is pretty important otherwise, they're just going to nova their daily combat encounter. In my game, my players end up rolling initiative often more than 4 times per long rest along with other types of encounters like puzzles or RP and take 2-4 short rests per long rest.
Basically what I am saying is that at high levels, you need to make more stuff happen between long rests. That could be done by making long rests harder such as by having stricter location requirements, increasing the time between long rests or the time that long rests take, or by increasing the frequency of encounters that can drain the party of resources like hit die, spell slots, or racial abilities.
An easy thing to help when using WOTC stat blocks is for select monsters like bosses to have an HP increase because they really lowball their hitpoints at higher CRs. Liches normally have 135 HP, but mine have 250 which made for a really great and close boss fight with 3 level 14 PCs. There were also minions. I only buff the HP for significant monsters so I don't turn every mob or beast encounter into a slog.
My DM for our 1-20 campaign was definitely an architect. Ended up as a war cleric / tempest sorcerer with a greatsword that could be loaded with a gemstone like a gun, the damage going up the more expensive the gem was.
Im stealing that weapon idea. Thanks nerd.
@@some1337dude1 Be my guest, it's rad as hell. Bonus points if the damage type changes depending on the type of gemstone.
It's a good way for random gems in a treasure trove to feel like an actual reward instead of trash that needs to be haggled with
I myself, am a Props DM. Whether I'm running a one shot, homebrew, or module, I try and have a prop for just about anything the party might come across, but for things like actual gear and such. For instance I'll have printed magic scrolls, small bags of coins, potion bottles of all types, a few backdrops of a medieval tavern to help set the mood, color changing lights. I once ran a one shot for a friends birthday, with one of the players bringing her 5 year old kid, as she couldn't get a sitter, and since he would be playing his switch in the other room all evening, I went and asked if he wanted to play a ghost. I told him I'd let him know when it was almost time, then when he heard the bell, to put a long black wig on his head, backwards, and to stand in the doorway. I told him after everyone turns to look at him, to just leave. (the players were inspecting a clients family home as he had not heard from them in years after he had left to do his own thing away from his parents)
I ring the bell as I tell them that they see the what looks like a little girl walking from one room to another at the end of the hall. he comes into the doorway with the wig on over his face, one person notices, then everyone else looks and freaks out, everyone turns back to me to try and figure out wth is going on, he then leaves as they are looking at me, they all look back (not seeing him anymore) they look back to me, and I just simple ask them "What?". It was amazing. I also had changed all of the lights in the room to blue and green, including in the bathroom. I heard one of my players as they had to go from down the hall say "god dammit" as he turned on the lights in there. It was great.
I'm a mix of World builder, Conductor, and Architect. My games are heavily story driven with me usually leading my players through the story while also allowing them to have creative freedom, almost all my games are homebrew as well so my story can fit in with the rules of the world and there can be more epic moments without rules hindering it.
Same, I always create my own universe, quest and plot hooks. I know exactly what will happen at some point but how the party gets there is totally up to the player’s ideas and initiative
I am a blend of the same three, for the same reasons. Every game I have ever run is in my own world/universe, and I always end up homebrewing a significant portion of the rules. Though I do also have minimalist tendencies; I prefer systems that are not too rules heavy and put the onus on me (the GM) and the players instead of stats or dice.
im a mix from all of the types.
same here
i’m still planning my world, but i’m definitely an architect and a conductor. i don’t just have one railroad, i have 9. either you get on the railroad or you all die and get on a different railroad (no joke, i actually have a plan in story for a TPK)
You know the day is gonna be great when a dnd shorts notification appears
Worldbuilders are also the most likely to use gritty realism resting rules. It stops players from just throwing fireballs at any problem and actually lets time pass in the world.
My DM is definitely one. He is quite "restrictive", but any spell, class or race he bans is usually tweaked and then added back.
We can go many sessions without combat and just filled with dialogue and lore. And we are all super into that!
I think a good GM has elements of several of these types. I used to be a minimalist but as I got older I became more of a worldbuilder, but I do some of all this.
"Cool Cousins usually run funnier games"
*Shows the most harrowing adventure ever put to screen*
The two tables ive been at the longest and enjoyed the most are essentially polar opposites. One is pure minimalist and the other is an architect/world builder(currently on our second reset to get everything "just right" lol)
You are 1 of the only creators whose adds I don't just skip automatically. Great stuff!
I think I would call myself a 'Navigator' DM. I do a lot of the World Building stuff, but I also have the storyline and setpeices from the Conductor. How the players get from setpeice to setpeice however, I leave that mostly up to improve, fun, and what makes sense for where they are. And if the players throw me some curveballs when the setpeices come along, I love seeing the crazy results.
I think I'm a cross between a Conductor and Cool Cousin DM. I dont really care what the party does as long as their having fun and I make loose notes and maps so I dont worry too much on detail and wing it. Although I always try and have a strong cohesive natrative tying it all together and make sure that all the beats get hit whether the party know it or not
Same here!
I like this. Give a story and some fun, but let me cut my own arm off juggling axes if I happen to get sidetracked while everyone is gathering quest info.
Roll for Shoes is a great micro-rpg system that you might enjoy. It's really easy to be a cool cousin/conductor, especially if you have some minimalist tendencies, and you typically get the full story in a few hours.
I ve started running a DnD campaign with my siblings right before I go off to college and I was so happy when they told me that I was letting them have a good time. I love being a part of the cool cousin archetype. Like having them fight an evil swordsman in a mountain is cool and I want their cool plans to work like sheathing his sword as an attack ( I fudged that roll so they could succeed ) It just is really fun to make a villian of the week for them to battle that I have to make interesting. Have a great day and great video as per usual.
This video was really eye opening and helped me narrow down why I have enjoyed some DnD sessions a lot more than others. I think the way I approach the game meshes better with certain DM archtypes than others.
This is also making me realize I must be really annoying to more rules-heavy DMing styles.
I love that you called one a Conductor! I got so much flak from my first DM campaign for railroading my group. I soon learned to be more Rule of Cool than One Track Only. 😁
I'm definitely the Boxer type. I run things as written and am thrown when the players want to diverge from the scenario entirely.
Was thinking that we were missing a couple of types of DMs, but when you mentioned "toxic" ones at the end being their own video some day, I was okay with them not being in this video. I can think of five toxic types of DMs just off the top of my head. I've had all five.
Boxer also are starters. They learn. Respect them for that. Also I have an idea about the types of toxic DMs. We all had our moments with them. 😅
Combo fury and architect
If it’s a one shot, it’s kind of unreasonable for players not to engage with the scenario anyway. (e.g. It’s not railroading to be reluctant to let players to decide to go fishing across the continent instead of investigating the creepy circus the whole module is about.)
In the classically moral sense, every type can be good or bad, depending on the group. Less imaginative players may expect being railroaded to a destination that they approve.
I prefer to run my own worlds as then I know how every NPC relates to every other and will react to the players actions, rather then them going off the rails of a boxed adventure and there being insufficient stuff in the book to easily deal with it - Once they deviate every subsequent part of the adventure as written likely needs adjustment. That said the last boxed adventure I ran everyone enjoyed and I found a good challenge as the players were off the rails at nearly all times so I had to get very inventive and keep track of these new bits well enough that when they get back to something near the box text that text isn't actively wrong...
You can bang a bear, I laughed so hard I cried... well played
I feel like this would be a long video, or even multiple videos, but I'd love to see content on how to play to the strengths of and improve the weaknesses of these different DMs; I'm a worldbuilder for sure, I love developing everything and making intricate countries that play into each other, but I know that improv is hard for me and often I feel like I forget to bring up important stuff in the right moment because I'm scrambling to react to my players. These feel like the most accurate categories I've seen so far, great video!
As a D&D and DM expert I'd love to hear you run down the list of dragons. Just a comprehensive quick guide on the actual dragons of the game. The types, ages, what the do and how they each work within the game. Dragons are part of the titles of the game and yet they both appear rarely in the games and often times seem mishandled when they appear. Now there is a very substantial list it'd be cool to hear your opinions on each and how you handle dragons as characters and enemies in your games.
I think this really just depends on a few things. Most DMs, in my experience, aren't particularly fond of using dragons in their campaigns because most believe it's a played-out trope not just in D&D but in other fantasy role playing games and media/literature. Kinda like, "Oh what's the big bad ending boss monster of this campaign? That's right. An ancient red dragon with a god complex that wants to take over the world!" It's been done a lot. Players who have been at the table for a while with different groups for many years often groan because it's predictable. But that's not to say that dragons are a bad monster to use in games. There is A LOT that a good DM can do with the many types of dragons available. And all of them are very unique in personality, morality, motivation, appearance, and ambition. Just in the 5E monster manual alone there are 5 chromatic dragons and 5 metallic dragons all complete with extensive information on every detail about them. And some tips on how to play them as a DM. I think some DMs just have this preconceived notion that dragons can't be fun anymore and are boring. And don't even bother to go over their descriptions in the game books. Because if they did, they would realize there is just so much more to dragons than some people realize and if you're creative you can find really cool and interesting ways to insert them into a campaign and have them interact with players. To be clear, I don't want to come across like I'm trying to give an answer for this guy it's just that I felt this comment resonated with me because I've been a strong advocate of using dragons in campaigns for a while now and wish they didn't get overlooked the way they are nowadays. Just my two cents
If anyone is looking to get started on DMing, I've compiled a list of things that I feel contribute to a good experience, and leans more towards Cool Cousin/Nick Fury type DM:
First of all, don't be afraid to modify the rules of the TTRPG you're using. For example if you're using DND 5th edition, some of the subclasses are on the weaker side. If one of your players comes up with a character that they really wanna play and they have a weaker subclass don't be afraid to give them a bit of a nudge to make them more on par. Example is in my current campaign I play a monk. At low levels monks can do 1d4 dmg with unarmed strikes. Monks are meant to use a simple weapon like a staff or shortsword to give them more damage. But if your player is like me and wants to only use fists for thematics they're gonna feel weaker. So my DM bumped my damage up a bit to match the other characters which use firearms. My DM also lets us take both feats (powerful unique passive traits) and stat increases at level ups instead of forcing you to pick one or the other as per the actual rules.
Hold a session 0 with your friends that are gonna play. Help them set up their character sheets and gear and familiarize them with the table top system you're using if its online (I use Roll20, so teach 'em how it works). Set everything straight, work with everyone to make sure there's no issues or problems so by the time the real first session starts you're all good to go. Plus its a good way to get every one excited to actually play next time you all gather.
When crafting your story, start with some big outlines or plot points. Then ask how will you guide or nudge your players in that direction? Its good to have an overarching plan, but a lot of DMing is playing it by ear cause you never know how your players will approach a situation. Be prepared for them to do things that might sidetrack the story. The best way to do this is I've found is to have say, your first or second session take place in a hub area with some NPCs. Get a feel for how your players approach situations. Do they go around and question townsfolk? Do they try to sneak into bedrooms to look for documents? Do they jump to conclusions and immediately think a suspicious looking guy MUST be the the villain? Etc. The biggest thing is to give your players options. Don't force them to do one thing or it'll feel restrictive and linear. Do they go ask the local sheriff for why someone was murdered, or do they go see the victim's family? Let them decide if they go to the raided military convoy or the burned down church first? Also instead of a typical "everyone meets in a bar", be unorthodox. Mu party members met on a train heading out into the wild west and had to work together when it got robbed.
You are the DM. Your job first and foremost is to make a fun experience for the players. Your job is to craft a fun and memorable experience. You DO NOT try to fight the players. You DO NOT try to put your players in situations that'll get them slaughtered. Nobody likes seeing their character they put so much love into die 3 sessions in. Take it easy with enemies and combat early on. Start off with easy encounters and ramp it up when you start to get a feel for how strong they are and how they play. Don't be afraid to nerf HP behind the scenes or fudge a roll to swing combat in the players favor if they're getting their butts kicked. Like one of the party members cast a spell that made the ground slippery. This spell can make enemies fall down if they fail to roll high enough on a dice on their turn. Our DM said that a powerful enemy that was at 1 HP slipped and hit his head and he died upon failing his roll. This isn't supposed to happen, but its your campaign. Do whatever you want to make it enjoyable, funny, and engaging. You can even have say an NPC that can revive dead players in town if you have people unfamiliar with DND so they don't need to make lots of backup characters.
I personally think a milestone level up system is better than EXP. EXP is a pain to keep track of for each character and means your characters can all be varied levels depending on how many things they kill. Milestone means you level characters up upon hitting certain points of the story or after a big fight. Its easier to keep everyone on the same playing field and helps make big victories feel more rewarding since you deem when they happen.
Reward your players when they do something memorable, very funny, or impressive or after a big fight or successful investigation. DND has rules for generating powerful loot items but you as the DM decide when to reward inspiration, a special dice that can be used whenever the player wants to boost their roll on a dice once. Try to aim to give out one piece of inspiration per session. It provides a good incentive for your players to think outside the box instead of just taking the direct approach.
Heroforge is an excellent free browser program that lets you design 3D models of characters for tabletops using a simple "select which piece of clothing/weapon/species you'd like" sort of system. It's a great way for your players to make a character they connect with and really want to play due to how many options there are. For reference for DND 5e, I use the site 5etools which has everything you need to know. Again IDK what system works good for star wars but I'm sure you could find a way to make star wars work in DND with some thinking. There's also good places that have free maps to use for your TTRPGs.
Lastly some people can be shy at the table. If you're doing a campaign like mine online feel free to let them role play through chat instead of saying aloud all their actions. And make sure to iron out things before they become big problems like if you have a very creepy or aggressive player that causes drama outside of the actual game. Its happened before, you can read the horror stories online.
That's all I have off the top of my head for now, I might add more and reply to this comment later. I hope this helps
I'm not sure this is all great advice.
First of all, don't worry about plots or stories. It is for players to do that. The story is emergent from what happens not something you decide beforehand. You might have a bank in a town. It's up to players to choose what to do: ignore it, store their loot in it, try to sell them services or rob it. The GM creates the situation not the narrative : Maybe the bank manager has a serious gambling addiction and can be coerced into aiding a robbery. Maybe the bank is built on an ancient k'th'cti sacrificial altar.
Secondly, I am not responsible for other people's enjoyment. Does your favourite musical artist fret about what you enjoy? I run the game I am happy and comfortable with. It may be that some players hate my GMing style or the tone of the campaign. Not my problem. They can leave. When you consider how much effort most GMs invest relative to the effort put in by many players they should think themselves lucky rather than expect me to do more.
Shy people are all well and good, but the joy of TTRPGs for me is the role playing; freeform amateur dramatics. If you can't do that, what are you bringing?
Great video. I think every DM/GM is a little different and may often be a combination of the above archetypes. I also feel that as you get more experienced and confident with running games your own preferences develop.
Personally, I am a very PC-focused gm who is a combination of conductor-worldbuilder-architect in that order. I tend to run my campaigns in Acts that usually go to level 20 (pazio style) with a clear campaign to follow set in an otherwise sandbox world (with lots of NPC, places to go and side quests to do) that is affected by the outcome of each act. I make my pics the centre of the conflict and not side characters and make an effort to weave the backgrounds (specifically the npc they know) into the plot.
In session zero and every time I have a new player, I work to develop PC into a plot and more specifically their friends, family, mentors, rivals and enemies in an effort to give them personal dilemmas and make their choices more meaningful. This is easier to do than it may seem as you simply give your PC a series of questions to complete and before they know they will create enough background info to work with. Also, I always give my PCs a home early on (usually in a large hub full of NPC and stuff to do) and have good law enforcement to avoid them being homeless or murderers.
There is an eighth type of DM. The "Lazy" DM. They are not minimalists, but rather they have done so much prep in advance creating tables and other helpful tools that anything you throw at them, they can improv just like a minimalist and give you something in response. They straddle the gap between a minimalist with their theatre of the mind antics, and the cool cousin who plays it loose, yet has a firmer commitment to rules as written and rules as intended rather than rule of cool or rule of improv, and is more likely to have lots of minis already available, or ready to go on a virtual tabletop. In my experience, they're also more likely to be greybeards, as being the "Lazy" DM requires a high prerequisite level of personal system mastery and DMing experience within that system. Not to mention this style is immensely compatible with all sorts of supplements, which the "Lazy" DM will have probably all of them for reference, even though they went through them ages ago and made all their reference charts, tables, and the like well in advance.
World-builder over here! I really enjoy creating locations and NPCs, creating a scene of place and experience. But I'm also something of the Cool Cousin, because the players are part of the world-building. What they tell me about their character's backstory informs the world building. I love it when my players are invested in their characters and act creatively.
Minimal prep
Maximum player agency
Improvise!
I'm a bit of an Architect, Nick Fury, World Building (when time allows), and Conductor. I'm definitely not a Boxer or Minimalist. I have Cool Cousin maybe sprinkled in, but I really think I'm more just about rewarding player creativity or granting players a healthy dose of narrative influence to shape how they approach a problem.
this, this exactly^
I kind of view each of these as options. I always ask my players how they want to feel. My last party wanted to feel low powered, so I built them a sandbox.
Another group was just learning the rules so I was a cool cousin and focused on the basic rules and just improvised the more complicated stuff they wanted to do.
Then another time I played backstage with some actors I was working with and was a total minimalist, they all had character sheets but I just used lined paper to take notes.
And most people start as a boxer, mine was the 3rd edition book adventure. And in the end i'm always an architect, I have homebrew tweaks for every rule and i'm willing to go crazy. It's funny that he separated architect and nick fury, because I think the architect is just a level 10 nick fury
Pretty much same here
I try to be a little less nick fury nowadays
Same. I like Sandbox games and I tend to give my players powerful stuff so they stand a chance when I throw Cthulu at them.
I mostly like to mix the first three you spoke of for my DMing style. I want the PCs to be able to face the more interesting monsters and challenges I come up with, but I also have the world do what it does independently of the PCs (and it's highly effected by the PCs actions). I also remove elements that are more confusing (like that Bonus Action spells rule) or slow the game down (like keeping track of exact coinage, ammo, or encumbrance) and tend to lean into the players' creativity when they come up with fun ideas.
But I never plan more than a few sessions in advance because player actions could change everything. I'll occasionally dip into a little bit of the Architect as well, but usually only if I think of something fun that doesn't have a way to do it within the ruleset... Like adapting the Laraken from 3.5e to 5e, or needing a system to keep track of how close to death a nymph outside her terel is while the party escorts her home, racing against the clock of her eventual demise. This has backfired once before... When I had a sort of "Tower Defense" styled game session that one time...
I'm so hype for your Kickstarter!
This was great! I'd love to see tip videos for each dm type and also system recommendations.
I think I'm a conductor DM with some minimalist tendencies, depending on which system I'm running
I've never felt more seen by a DnD video, lol. Definitely a bit of a "Nick Fury"-DM. I think it was Matt Colvile who said something along the lines of "If you give your players a ton of magic items, you're going to break the game. On the other hand, if you have books full of monsters and loot, you might as well use all of it".
Can a party of four level 10 characters take on a flying Godzilla with regeneration? If you deck them up with holy avangers, staffs of power and +3 adamntium armor, they might!
I’m an architect/minimalist with a dash of world builder. It’s great fun for me, and my players seem to love it too
Funny thing about us in the architect/minimalist camp… we tend to have a cool cousin streak, mostly because when the players want to do something, we just gin up a mechanic for it. I’m notorious for my on-the-fly mechanics for player’s out of the box ideas.
@@spacemangroove same here
I discovered you today. You have already provided me more information than everyone else, and I thank you for it.
I think i’m more of a conductor/architect type DM, but that also means that my prep time for campaigns and one shots are extremely long too because i’m constantly trying to anticipate the most chaotic possible options and interactions my players will explore and then slowly plot each route to a common destination or alternate destinations where necessary. It usually has me stuck at multiple dead when preparing but I always love giving my players all sorts of new attacks or passive abilities learnt from special NPCs.
I'm a new DM. I'm a mix between Boxer and World builder. Running Lmop and I've already done some changes to it. Minor ones, but you know burning down the Stonehill Inn cuz the party left half of the RB hideout alive so they enacted some payback when the party resumed their exploration of the now more trapped and ambush prepared place 😅
I'm probably the Cool Cousin, Architect, Minimalist or at least a mix of them. I always like whenever my players are having fun and do like feedback on what was a rough spot or what was really fun. I really don't prep too much but I do have a general idea of where the game is going. Like the types of players I don't think a GM/DM is just one type but usually a mix of different type. I honestly do want a video on the negative types of GM/DMs. This is mostly as a guide to help people identify problematic traits some GM/DMs have so they can either address and correct the problems or you can leave for less negative one. I've had only one bad GM but it was for so long I didn't realize how bad they truly were, it was also the first one I had so I didn't have other references.
In the classically moral sense, every type can be good or bad, depending on the group. One group’s bad DM could be another’s perfect DM.
Great video, and the best ad I have seen from your channel.
Really nice descriptions! Could be cool to make a quiz to see which ratio of levels we are, as I'm sure DM's are at least a mix of 2 😁
I've become a DM for the first time for two separate campaigns; one digital and one physical.
I learned I am a Minimalist DM so far, but am always trying to improve for everyone.
How do I change the settings on my DM?
Conductor style is necessary for new players. D&D is pretty abstract, and it takes time for them to understand how to live in it. The flexibility of a conductor creates a space to explore without analysis paralysis.
Love your show! Would really like to see you cover Pathfinder 2e also.
If those are my options i'd say i'm a bizarre combination of nick fury and the cool cousin. I give out magic items and levels like candy because i love for all my quests and encounters to be epic, but at the same time I prefer more laid-back storytelling and usually throw in random silliness just for a laugh and encourage the use of the rule of cool.
You missed the type that just wants to talk on and on for 4 hours. Not a lot of those but man we players hate them.
Nah he mentioned brennan mulligan
I get the impression for some reason that SOMEONE is a bear chasing power bottom...
I love mix-matching my DM builds
I'm currently rocking a Cool Cousin/World-builder/Minimalist/Architecht
Example: Homebrew campaign where I was running a cool story that had a really interesting section; except the main focal point of the section didn't show up that week so instead I made up on the spot an entire subplot revolving around an underground Bee version of both NYC & New Jersey
I resonate with the Nik Fury and Cool Cousin DM style. I'm still very new as a DM and I'm excited to keep getting.more experience as time goes on. Great video.
Great stuff 👍
Definitely a Worldbuilder, Architect, and a Conductor when I absolutely must be. My Homebrew world, Cacophony, is designed to allow for any kind of character without having to rework the system.
My personal rule is anything goes as flavor so long as it works within the mechanics. And if it doesn't, we can work something out. Had a player reskin an Aarakocra as a griffin, and it worked out just fine. Was so willing to work with me on it a good chunk of worldbuilding holes got filled in with his help.
Also, why does everyone hate fly? It was super easy to compensate for. Bolos and bolo-arrows plus gravity. He was okay with this because I didn't surprise him with it. His character would know to look out for it. Also, he gave me a more than legit reason to have griffons be enemy combatants.
Darn I wish I could dm that game more.
I just recently found bg2 and am hooked. Going in almost blind. Took some getting used to but getting better.
Hey, you have the best ads. Your bear joke made me laugh 😅. Just started the full release tonight 😄
Bro got sponsored by Balders Gate, my boy finally hitting it big 😭
Brilliant video, scratches an itch not any other mainstream youtubers have really explored
I feel like I’m a mixture of a conductor, world builder, and a teeny bit of the architect
I have an archetype for you. The Sadist. A DM where everything is a trap and every encounter leads to party surprise. They don't describe anything or clue the party in on what's going on in the world prior to throwing a dart trap at you for (their) fun, or ambushing you on the road. They even laugh when your team is hit with an unexpected trap or an enemy deals a critical hit, taking glee in the torment of others.
Another great example of Conductor type story telling is literally the sponsor, Baldur's Gate 3. It gives you the agency to choose things, but the big big points you'll always end up at unless you just stop playing the game.
I fit parts of almost all of these except the boxer and conductor. I love building my own universes and having things moving along in said universe but also my world is incredibly flexible and prone to changes based on what my players want/do. I love seeing what creative things my players will come up with and love giving them custom made items just to see how they use them. (Like a gyroscope that just flips the upside down to the nearest surface above them) I also love custom game mechanics. In my campaigns subclasses are relabeled to specializations and subclasses are extra classes earned by interacting with the world. The subclass level is half of the players current total level and does not contribute to the max level.
I swear my DM completely changes his playstyle every camapign. I'm not complaining though, the variety is fun
"I shapeshift into a bear..." 🐻
"Report to the ship as soon as possible. We'll bang ok?"
I was a part of 10 months long (with regular weekly sessions mind u!) world builder DM campaign and it was the best campaign I was and probably ever will be in ♥
Fun! Nice to see how each of these fit in my DM style. I can see all of these at least a little in my work. We all have a scale if each of these.
I love World Builder DM, and man Baldur's Gate 3 is so much fun
I am definitely a world builder/minimalist type of DM. I like making huge sprawling worlds where each NPC and monsters has a reason for being but once that is set, give me a pair of dice and go wild!
I've been actually using that 'barely gives them anything to use' Dragonlance module mentioned under Boxer to go more Architect/Worldbuild. Using it as a skeleton and adding in extra meat on its bones (some canon, some to give extra sidestories for the characters). I've read several of the books so I personally had stuff to build off of. I've got the party one level away from end-of-module already wanting to launch past and experience their own version of the War of the Lance once they finish the module.
So much fun to watch.... going I'm a bit of this, a bit of that... assigning percentile values & trying to not wind up at more than 100% xD
Thanks for the cackles & giggles
I hoping this would tie in to the players video, and then you went above and beyond! Thank you!
"you can bang a bear" in one of the best matt berry impressions ive heard in a while
A good percentage of my friends are DMs (including myself), and though I haven't played at all of their tables, I think everyone falls into the world builder or architect categories. I think those of us who have payed multiple editions or play multiple TTRPGs are more likely to fall into those categories anyway.
ive seen the parallel in a reddit post; the conductor says: the setting is a bankrobbing. however, the party gets to decide if the music is misssion impossible, or the pink panther theme
Based on your description I would be a combination of The World Builder and The Conductor. You nailed it with the conductor. My players can do whatever the heck they want, but in the end they will wind up participating in core events in the world. I never ham fist these convergence points. I run long campaigns and I am patient. I also like to start with solo sessions for each player before a first group session so they can interact with the world on their own while initially shaping their character's personality.
I do also have a bit of The Minimalist in me, but I prefer to run games designed for that when I do it. The is an old (and I think defunct) game called Nine Prices in Amber that is AMAZING for very open ended storytelling and roleplaying as there is system but almost no rules. In fact, I think it is one of the most interesting games ever created if you can find it.
Gotta say I flow between a Cool-Fury-Boxer style of DMing.
I have a world builder/conductor Dm, and a world builder minimalist!!
The first has a whole story, world, history, and detailed major npcs,
The second has but a pencil drawn map, a story and a d20,
*_both are amazing stories/games that are so full of life fun and levity I am so blessed._*
I am a mix of a World Builder and a Conductor. My games are clearly structured and have the plan of several important scenes a beginning and an end, but everything between depends on what the players do and what that means to the world. And yes the video game comparison is pretty spot on because that's how I see my game plan also. A path with different options for which I try to plan beforehand, but that still give the players their choices and in the end that is what decides if they win or lose.
Great Video! I am definitely a mixed up DM. I run games like a boxer, with a little cool cousin, but I world build and set the boxed adventures in my world. I also love doing some of the architecture stuff. I've created some wild magic items including a jet pack. Fun stuff. I love D&D.
The best way to be a conductor is to give your players control over the levers. You built the train, and you know where all paths lead, but it’s the players that pull the levers to decide which path they go down.
If you do this perfectly most players won’t even think your game is railroaded, they’ll think it’s a really dense sandbox.
I've definitely shifted through several of these at various times in my GMing.
Now I've settled mostly on "Boxer". It let's me experience a story with my friends while taking the "competition" feel out of the game. A well written adventure is an amazing thing...
I've never used a rewritten module, but I don't see why they would be less competitive. If anything, the railroady nature of most brings a type of competition.
I like that none of these were labeled as negative as any style of DM can be good if done right.
I think there's a sweet spot between the world builder and the minimalist that I aspire to, one that I would lable the gardener.
Like the world builder, I like to prepare locations, characters, factions, cool details. Details I can use to navigate the world and make something if the players are not in a proactive mood.
However nothing is set in stone until it happens at the table, and a world is never complete until the group is done with it. The players still get to control the direction if they want to and I get to discover what the story is going to be at the same time as everybody else.
I seem to be all over the place with my DM'ing style (I'm still new, running my first campaing since a few months having sessions avery week or two). I have build my own world, put in my own homebrew rules and stuff here and there, let the players do what they want but keep them on track by insentive and let my homie Antoine have his rule-defying homebrew treeant-made-on-the-base-of-a-dragonborn with a unique intoxicating/faint instilling breath attack he calls 'the weed breath', his giant boomerang and his unique monk abilitys. And I fumble myself through some rules and stuff I don't really understand, but as long as everyone has fun it's aight. I learn on the go.
Being a world builder and having your plans subverted is the most terrifying and exciting thing as a dm. It’s like having all the neurological pathways just fall out from under your feet. We’ll the party it’s let the secret rebel leader they were protecting die, the one keeping all these disparate rebel factions together…
I have been every one of these archetypes at some point or another. I've even done most of these across a single campaign before, dependent on the amount of prep I could do or the importance of certain events in the overall plot.
My students sort of coaxed me into DMing a campaign for them. I just started pen&paper, and I had NOTHING prepared. But I can already see myself as a mix between minimalist, cool cousin and the world builder.
I feel like I'm half of these. I've done minimal prep, I've planned campaigns years into the future. I've played adventures straight out of the box.
A nice example is my current Shadowrun game. I'm mostly running adventures from their organised play system (SRM season 4), alternated with a few detailed adventures from their own books, and loosely defined adventure seeds from books that contain a bunch of such adventure seeds. At first, I stuck pretty close to the material because we were just learning about the world (not to mention the rules), but as the players get more invested and develop their own ideas about what's going on and what's important, they set more of their own goals and go more off the beaten path.
I also started out around Seattle and focused on some local events to flesh out the city a bit more and make the place feel real, but as the game progresses, we occasionally leave the city and visit some other places, including an extended visit to Tir Tairngire (until they were banned from the country).
I want the world to feel like a real place where stuff happens regardless of whether they do anything or not, so that's definitely World Builder. But I'm using a lot of published adventures to do that, so that's a Boxer. And there's definitely a place we're going with this, so I might also be a bit of a Conductor. And I'm definitely rooting for the players, but probably not enough to make me a Nick fury or Cool Cousin.
Anyway, there's value and risk in all of these types of GM. I think it's best to find a balance between them that works for you and your group. Certainly don't try to stick to one of them; try to learn from all of them. But knowing which one you are may help you grow.
I think I swing between minimalist and conductor style DM’ing. I prepare certain scenes or events - even “smash cut” to a scene in order to start a session strongly but then rely on maximum improv after that.
I love how you showed the discworld from Terry Pratchett
I actually started as a World Builder (because there was no established worlds and few modules back then), now I'm a Boxer because of a combo of burnout, lack of time, and power-creep problems.
I lean heavily to the cool cousin style of DMing, with a fair bit of the world builder mixed in. Just make sure everyone has a good time, don't stop them doing what they want, and make sure everyone at the table communicates their expectations. You can build the world around their choices and make new races and classes if they want to play something unique. You're all there to have fun!
I think you skimmed over the most important element of the veteran Boxer: "experience the adventure as designed".
I began as a conductor, then learned how to world build from a Faerun campaign setting box. Now I act as an architect with my own feywild realm and world builder. I feel like I've crossed all of these, haha.
Actually, my group appears to be wanting to come back for more and more. We're near the end of the first campaign in the new world creation approach and they're asking what the second round is, even if our player group is definitely nonstandard. We have a dragon, kobold sorcerer, had a ponykind druid (They have a new work schedule now, alas.) and a sphinx-type character.
Fortunately, it's the seat I love playing the game from!
I feel like a mix of many of these