Funny enough, I find the bridge puzzle actually still a great example for newer DMs, cause it shows that players aren't gonna wait for your overly-long rules to be laid out and will just break it within a few moments. lol
Plus, it kinda shows how you could have a devastating effect on that possibility (the entire bridge crumbling to dust) and at the same moment make up something outta thin air to let the party still progress - nobody can convince me one of the main points of that scene wasn't to have that "oh and here is something character A considers a mundane stick, but on second glance, the wizard notices it as a rare magic staff with special capabilities"-excuse put in there as well. Literally something pulled up out of thin air, you could make up every "mundane" piece of equippment, jewelry etc of one character be secretly a magic item that allows them to still progress that only that character didn't know because they are not the magic versed type.
And that they're going to solve things with so many ways you didn't expect. It might be with the teleport item...it might be rope. So much rope. So, so very much rope.
My friends and I interpreted Zank not as an NPC, but as a guest PC who could only make one session, so they gave their friend the spotlight. Which, we thought, if everyone agrees to knowing this person is there to look cool for one day, would be a pretty fun one time thing
Yes, definitely! He has big guest PC energy. He lets the DM include an encounter out that's WAY above the party's power level now, but can act as a teaser for potential future encounters. If I was running this as a game, the party might later have to go back into the Underdark when they're at a higher level. Whereas before they could only just barely survive long enough to escape, now they can feel badass for being able to fight their way through it with their increased power levels.
ha, I had the exact same thought! like Rege-Jean can't make the entire campaign, but he'll be around for a few sessions--let's give him an important role he pre-planned with the DM and he can have a nice send-off before he has to go back to work or moves or whatever
@@elizabethsullivan1894 Agreed. And in the end Xenk is also not the one to get everyone out, too. It feels very much like a guest PC that prepared things in advance with the DM to enhance the group experience by putting up a bit of a show for their benefit.
My personal favorite is the Speak With Dead scene where they waste the five questions on the first corpse and then miscount the number of questions on the final one. In the post credits ending, the poor guy is STILL waiting for the last question. Also I didn't think the paladin was an NPC. He struck me as more "the temporary party member made by the guest who joins the campaign for all of one session" character. Not every table does that obviously, but I think I've seen it happen on a few streams. I know Yogscast did it a few times back when I used to watch them.
I took it that the DM had made this crazy puzzle and the sorcerer player got boarded. So he moved his mini. The DM noticed this and thus felt like he needed to spring the trap.
4:28 "Holga hitting something really hard with her axe isn't gonna solve anything." Holga hitting the dragon so that he gets angry and breaths fire: Am I a joke to you?
I thought they did a solid job of capturing the feel of DND. The whole thing had a nice teetering-on-the-edge of mayhem vibe. I liked that the characters and plot were playful without being flippant. Its a pretty thin needle to thread. I enjoyed that Xenk was pretty blatantly a DMPC, dude mostly came out of nowhere, was clearly vastly out of the parties league, gave them some directions and literally wandered off (that sequence was probably my biggest laugh)
My favourite facet of Xenk is that the DM and Edgan's player clearly had mutually agreed upon Edgan's character growth earlier in the campaign, and the DM used Xenk as a way to help foreshadow that ultimate shift from self-centred to generous. Xenk could therefore foreshadow Edgan distributing the treasure, although I doubt anyone at the table could have predicted how that went down.
@@andrewshaughnessy5828 Indeed. Mulling over it, however, one thing strikes me as not exactly lawful, which is the mad genius of hiding that magical helm in the Underdark, rather than in some officially secure installation. :)
My biggest takeaway from the movie as a DM is Attunement. I love the way they handled attunement, and never thought about the process of attuning to a magic item. It just happens in D&D RAW after a set period of time. I kind of want to create some kind of challenge for the PCs if they want to attune to certain magic items.
@@aaronj235 absolutely. imagine someone having a real issue attuning because of something in their backstory and the party tries to help them overcome that so they can attune. lots of possibilities
Yes, I loved the way the movie did this. Especially if the item is an ancient treasure or supreme magical item. Over time I can 100% see those items creating a kind of intelligence that the player has to overwhelm or come to an agreement with. Even more so if the character has a familial link to the item's creator like in the movie.
I loved the movie’s message of resilience and adaptability. You don’t truly fail until you quit. That’s the point of D&D. You keep going and come up with a new plan, like in real life. That’s also why I love the Indiana Jones movies.
I think a great lesson for DMs from the movie is that chunky Themberchaud. How many times have you fight a typical red dragon? And how many times have you fight a chunky dragon? Sometimes you can make the monsters different from the ones in the Monster Manual to surprise your players and make more memorable fights
I think my favorite example of this as a player was when the party fought our second demilich as a player group. Our DM for that game is very good at balancing combat encounters, and he figured we could handle a curveball given that we were at a higher level than during our first run-in with a demilich. So he gave her a regenerative ability that tied in with the dungeon storyline, and it made fighting her and her flesh golem minion a satisfying challenge. He also roleplayed her spectacularly before combat started, which made the fight even more memorable.
Those of us that own FToD typically love that they offer advice on just that. Not everything looks the same, and changing a detail or two helps make things memorable
My only problem with Themberchaud was that he acted like a beast, rather than a highly intelligent Ancient Red Dragon. I understand why they did it for movie purposes, but I think even a few lines about eating the party from him to show that he is smart enough to talk would have gone a long way lore-wise. I do agree that I loved that they chonkified him
My big takeaway from the whole Themberchaud sequence was, what happened to the unkillable undead assassins he ate?? Did they reanimate after being fully digested and crapped out? 🤔
@@joelherrey and they're all relatively lower level so it'd be fun to see them grow and do some cool stuff if they do sequels. There's so much potential. Cautiously excited 😆
I would do the same as owlbears are hybrids of giant owls and bears. They're both beasts, so what the heck? Also, I would allow them to cycle through beast types the way Doric did as long as they didn't switch back to their own form.
While it would definitely be a bad idea to plan something like this, I legit loved that Xenk came in and one-shot everything. It felt like the DM realized that the party was too disjointed and unfocused for the encounter and were only going to be TPK'ed, so they were like, "Fine, this guy does it all for you, jegus, let's all just move on." And him walking away in a straight line afterward like some Bethesda NPC with buggy pathing just *wrecked* me. LOVED it.
One thing I am going to use that I saw in the film, was how they handled the attunement Simon did when getting the helmet. I liked how they made it part of the characters story instead of him just sitting alone for a period of time.
A lot of folks screamed about the druid, with too many wild shapes. Rather, it made me consider/ reconsider using spell slots for additional wild shapes( or, vice versa), and access to some monstrous wild shapes. We can learn stuff, here.
The puzzle is definitely a joke about DMs making overly complicated puzzles only for the players to fly or dimension door across (guilty as charged here). Xenk is kind of the same way, he just felt really... intentially created and overacted, like the DM was trying to show the PCs "See! He's good! Such a good man. You can trust him! Admire him. Respect his advice!" which I appreciate them showing and poking fun at because, once again, DMs totally do this lol
Lesson one is so true! I have been "skipping" travel for ages. One player introduced an idea to the table they called, "campfire moments" where there are opportunities to talk about the adventure, or discuss background, and so on. When travel is the focus I will right out a number of encounters, slap numbers on them, and roll to have them come up at random. It appears like random encounters to the players, but each of these items is structured and pre-planned giving the illusion of randomness.
yep, and all you have to do in instances like that is at the point of death, just utter something like "now he knows. he knows. you've awakened him" and then poof, dead. the party is going to go "ooooohhh shiiiiiiiiiit what did we do?!"
The real thing I learned is that people love chonky dragon. Giving a defining trait to some encounters can help them stick out and be remembered by your players.
Wrt lesson 2, I totally agree. The only reason I dislike the, 'we're not strong enough for this fight and need to leave' battle, is that DnD rules are really punishing for those trying to remove themselves from combat. Most teleport spells require time and/or physical proximity and running away leaves you open to being picked apart. Unless the group decides before combat starts that they want to avoid it, running can be really difficult. However, when the DM plans around this idea they can turn it into a fun set-piece. I think the key is making it abundantly clear when they can't handle the encounter
Great video I definitely agree especially about traveling long distances. A couple things I might add, going to see Holga's ex felt like the DM taking a little time for a side quests that is important to the player's character. And I could be mistaken and they were meant to be two different spells but if they were both Bigbes giant hand in the final battle that could be a GM letting the look of a spell be determined by the player for flavor reasons.
@@loganwallace101 you're totally right, I'd completely forgotten that spell exists. That being said I still enjoy letting a player choose what their spell looks like so long as they understand it just appears that way and isn't mechanically different. "Yes your giant hand appears to be made of silver, no it doesn't do extra damage to werewolves."
With "Honor Among Thieves," I felt like I was at a table with four friends, telling a compelling tale of homebrew excitement in Faerun. Watching this video, I'm glad I wasn't alone. Was it a perfect film? Nah. Was it a damned good time? You betcha.
Our DM always asks if we have anything we want to say or accomplish during travel time and it's led to some of the best RP in our campaign so far. We've had everything from touching heart-to-heart talks to a PC helping another PC recover (partly) from a chronic injury to at least one instance where we got pretty close to PC-on-PC attempted murder. (It was an in-character misunderstanding and some momentary backstory-related bad judgement, they're both fine and now closer than ever, the scene was delightful.)
I'm a fantasy writer and I have a published book named "Arlock - a tale from Ellora" that was created based on a D&D campaign I participated years ago. During the writing process I was gradually noticing exactly what you've said: not all game dynamics works for a romance, neither all book storytelling should be applied in a D&D campaign. The most important thing is to learn how to adapt the main ideas for a different media (movie, book, games, comics, etc)
Yes to different encounter goals! one of the best combat sessions in my current campaign was when the party acted as escort for a magician/astronomer into the lair of a cult. We convinced the cultists to allow her research for a specific time (measuring a solar flare) but part way through another leader of the cult showed up who was less impressed with the idea - it became a battle to protect the telescope from interference until the flare was overhead. Just when we were feeling like we were about to be overwhelmed, the NPC finished her task and shouted to get close to her, we all made it back to the centre of the "arena" and *poof* teleported to safety where the NPC lamented having to leave her equipment behind.
My favourite encounter was a battle that happened on a flying carpet. We were chased by guards and tried to escape by flying away and they were trying to stop that by attacking the carpet, trying to knock us off, trying to tether the carpet to a tower and so on, while we were forced to break that tether, make sure to stay on the carpet, save the one guy who got knocked off by casting slowfall and then flying the carpet in position to catch him, extinguish a fire that was started on the carpet and escape the wyvern knights that were approaching while those other guards were trying to slow us down. The battle felt so special because nobody was mostly focussing on dealing damage, but on working towards their own specific strategy and we were forced to think out of the box to react to something different than "opponent attacks and deals damage"
The major lesson I took home from the movie is that I need to homebrew rules that allow for Holga's scene after the final battle. I want that in my game, I want that stuff in my game right now! *Probably spoilers below! Proceed at your own risk!* I have a rough idea for it, but I haven't had time to test it or write it down as proper table-ready rules yet. Basically, 0 hit points in D&D 5E is no fun. You just sit there and hope to roll a 20 or get healed so you get to play again. So I figured, why not make the player prone instead of unconscious? In addition to that, they get to take one action, reaction or bonus action, but if they do they fail a death save. They can talk and move (crawl) without failure. That way you can risk it to save your friend, or they can gather around you and fail the medicine checks as you bleed out, or you can just crawl into a hole and drink a potion or cast a healing spell on themselves, and so on. You're still in the game, not just waiting to see if you roll good of bad on a death save. A simple change, for drama and potential fun. It does make healing a bit more powerful, but I think the trade is worth it to keep players engaged. I might want to add another debuff on it for balance if I think players are all going up and down too often. I think a simple disincentive is "disadvantage on everything until the next rest after you get up from 0 hit points". It should be reason enough to keep players from not wanting to get wounded (which is essentially what 0 hp represents). I will try it at some point, but getting the whole gang together for a game is hard when most of your group are nurses and none of them work regular hours or consistent days so they are hardly ever off on the same day or even awake at the same time of day ☹
Oh that bridge scene was great. And is 100% something I can see happening in Critical roll, dimension 20 or similer. An NPC giving clear instructions on how to do something and one of the party just not paying attention, tripping the trap or using an ability completely rendering what the NPC was saying a moot point.
Only a few things to add to this great advice... 1. My players once asked me for a bit more 'sense data' descriptions to help with a feeling of being in a pre-modern world. The travel montages were the times in which I inserted such passing atmospherics. 2. I was impressed when my players actively avoided some risky side-quests. Sure, they could have been fun, but it also suggested that their characters knew they had limits and had a greater goal to focus on. 3. It is a nuanced twist if, sometimes, an earlier enemy, assuming it yet lives, becomes a temporary ally in facing a greater enemy.
0:39 Lesson one: You can skip travel 3:01 Lesson two: You can make a combat encounter's goal something else than defeating the opponents, like escaping them, or a bunch of some other stuff 5:04 Lesson three: You can do "You see that behind the person you thought to be the main villain there is another, more powerful villain" more than once
As someone who started on D&D right before third edition and moved on to better systems, I absolutely loved the movie and was able to not worry too much about things not matching 'The Rules'. I'm glad that the First D&D movie was a success and not an absolute train wreck of a film!
My group and I have interpreted Doric's string of wild shaping in her escape from the castle into a specialized rule for Druids. As a reaction a druid can change their shape into a creature of CR equal or lower than the shape they are currently in. Your hit points persist from your initial Wild Shape no matter what form you take. These knee-jerk transformations allow for skill and ability swapping mid-encounter. Obviously there's been some situations where you have a squirrel running around with the hit points of a bear but since the absence of this rule would have just kept the druid as a bear for the whole encounter we felt that it was fine this way.
I would say that the biggest takeaway is that you should let your players make mistakes and also roll with the changes to the plan that they will make on the fly.
Based on a lot of your advice from previous videos, I took my entire party to see the D&D movie, and then we had a wonderful conversation afterwards about role-play. D&D can so easily get bogged down into a strict numbers game where everyone gets obsessed with stats and strategy, like the street fighter arcade game where it's all about memorizing a few standard set of combos. I encouraged everyone in the group to consider their characters' backgrounds (it's still a fairly new group, so this wasn't a big deal), and to possibly create some broad character arcs,. I then invited them to tell me about it so I can incorporate those character development arcs into our game. This is part of the text I sent afterwards: "Does your character have some unfinished business, or a character flaw that might need rounding out? Why are they training with Spelljammer Academy, far away from community, friends and family? And how would you like to see your character develop over time? What lessons are left to learned? What closure do they not even know they need yet? What experience is needed to propel them to the next level of their emotional, spiritual and mental development? (Feel free to look toward films, literature, personal experiences or other source material for inspiration.)" Everyone got really inspired and has been much more engaged so far. I'm looking forward to the results during our upcoming sessions. Thanks again for your advice, it has really inspired me as a DM to elevate the game beyond strings of pointless dialog between boring, grinding battles! You are a very helpful resource (whatever your hair color 😉)
That's awesome! I'm glad too hear your group is embracing the roleplay side more. Campaigns don't have to be 50/50 roleplay and crunch, but I think every group should treat the two sides like Shakespeare treated comedy and tragedy. Every tragedy had at least one comedic scene, and every comedy had an element of tragedy somewhere. One without the other is unbalanced. Your walking-blender barbarian is awesome by raw damage numbers, which is great by itself! ... But what does it mean to the rest of the party to be walking around with someone who could drop them in one round of combat? How does the barbarian feel walking into a town full of regular people who they could probably kill with a half-strength punch? These questions on top of the numbers make the whole so much better, in my opinion. I'm preaching to the choir here, but I love TRPGs so much for this blend of narrative action and thought unique to the medium.
Believe me I tried to do the travel montage as a DM to skip long drawn-out journeys, but my players kept on insisting to role play each day even though nothing happen that day. Suddenly my world got oddly smaller and with more teleportation circles. I also like to do lesson 2 but in reverse. Most of my monsters will run away from the party if they realize that they cannot win / will die. The party will still get all the xp for winning the encounter.
I loved this movie and I went in saw it with my wife who is new to the game and it really opened her eyes to how cool dnd could be. She watched it weeks after explaining her backstory to her friends in game and her face just lit up when edgin did it!
Im writing a campaign based around thr attunement mechanics from this movie. I understand it was all part of making sure they didn't have a broken artifact to early but it can really set up some interesting character interactions
I also took away that you should allow PCs to do cool, rule-breaking things with some limitations to prevent abuse. For example, the Druid can't Wild Shape into an owlbear in the rules, but for a Moon Druid, maybe they can become certain monstrosities instead of elemental forms. So they can be an owlbear or a displacer beast, expending extra uses of wild shape to do it.
My head canon is choose one of the following. Doric is DM's squeeze. Doric is DM's younger sibling and Mom said let them do it. Doric bluffed lied to the DM about the abilities.
I love all of the suggestions! I would like to offer an alternative to the overly-complicated puzzle and over-powered NPC. This is probably going to be a bit more of niche usage but it's a fun thought experiment. Have the higher level NPC acting as their guide, like Xenk was in the movie. He's the one who hid the item, he's leading them to it. This does make the small adventure they're on initially seem less threatening, but you have already built in unexpected things to occur - ambushed by the enemy, new monsters making the area their territory, collapsed passageways, etc. The NPC will still try to figure out a way to get through or around these new obstacles but has no issue deferring to the party for help. Heck, now would be a good time to show the limits of their knowledge and experiences because not everything can be solved by one person. Maybe even have the NPC secretly pulling back to test the PCs because if they're going to hand over this important artifact, they want to make sure these people are capable. As for the overly-complicated puzzle, the NPC will know the answer to the puzzle but if one of the players doesn't take it upon themselves to "accidentally" destroy the puzzle, then have the bridge collapse on its own due to old age and wear and tear. Or maybe the Dwarves purposefully gave the NPC the wrong instructions for whatever reason. Point is, make the puzzle as complicated as you want, then smash it and leave them with a less complicated puzzle but no instructions.
I second both of these thoughts. In my current game (player, not the DM) our party collects NPCs and adds them to our rag-tag band of misfits. The Druid we picked up because our Cleric (who was by this time dead, and haunting my character as a ghost. Don't worry, she got better) couldn't come with us, but the honest-to-goodness Ilithid we scooped just because we liked them and they needed friends. While our DM has had to find ways to make the Eirix the mentalist ... sit out of some adventures, none of us want to cut the character despite Eirix's power level and ability to trivialize some secrets and tension. Powerful DMPCs are storytelling tools, and can give you new encounter options, and are still just people at the end of the day, prone to all the foibles of other characters. As for puzzle design, not only could your overly-complicated bridge collapse, but you could instead (or in addition) add the threat of combat on top! Now everyone has to follow the wacky instructions while Goblins, perched on cliffs, shoot arrows at you, and yet more goblins charge down the cliffs on Wargs. Uh oh, now you're on a timer, because you know those Warg-riders aren't necessarily going to realize you've been hopping around all funny-like for a reason. If you're not off the bridge before they get there, it's going to collapse under you!
Great Video with solid DM Advice! I know that some may groan when they hear these things... yet, for the sheer amount of new Players entering our hobby, they don't know these little tricks of the trade. It's nice to have a short little video like this to suggest to them. Thank you!
As a new DM, every single session I learn how my players will try completely different things than I thought they would. I definitely think that’s part of the movie too!
All great points. Hex crawls are valuable in campaigns where you're tracking xp and/or it's the campaign style. Otherwise, it just gets cumbersome, especially for milestone leveling campaigns. And SKILL CHALLENGES! Another great example is how CR deals with resurrection. And anything that allows more player agency is good. Great video. ❤
Regarding point 2. One of the most stressful and engaging "combats" was one where we, a level 2 party, accidentally made a T-rex come out of a spatio-temporal rip in reality. Very clear that the message was RUN. the DM had planned it so that if we just ran, we would make it to a safe space in time. But of course, us not knowing what its speed was etc lost some movement per turn to try and slow it down with spells and improvised traps, resulting in a very intense chase sequence with the t-rex catching up to us following a fateful 1-roll, and almost one-shot instakilling our rogue (the bite fell one damage point short of the instakill) I had never felt more adrenaline playing DnD 😮💨 thankfully we all made it and we all have some character development from it 😂
Your analysis here is perfect. What’s works for the movie might not work for a game, and that’s fine. The humour in “Honour Among Thieves” is what impresses me. The Intellect Devourers scene had me laughing even though that might not have happened at the table. Then there’s that red dragon- I don’t think a fatter dragon has ever been depicted . Still crazy dangerous while looking awesome at the same time. Thank you for your channel and your wonderful content.
And looking at their classes, I presume no one in the party had Intelligence as a primary stat, so in that way it also made sense. It was a great scene.
I tend to " fast travel" the party on long journeys pausing at the 1/2 way point while the party has " made camp for the night to alow for role-playing and player interactions once or twice per long voyage or ground traveling. Camp is a great opertunity for party bonding and story swaping.
Savage Worlds has a mechanic called Interludes for travel and similar moments. Basically, each player draws a card that gives them three prompts about a moment on the road. If the player plays out thr prompt, they get a benny.
I do agree with the tiered villain system. One of the first games I ever ran the big bad was a small cult of spellcasters trying to do the bad stuff, so I split the story into "chapters: where each chapter was about foiling the scheme of and defeating each individual cult member, going up against their own resources and minions in the process. Starting with their newest and weakest member as an intro boss, onto the more reluctant but still skilled member, onto the more zealous and powerful members before ending with the architect of the scheme. There's a lot of things I wish I did differently in that game, but I think that style of structuring the narrative worked well, and it lead to a tangible sense of progress every time a villain was brought down and a chapter ended.
As a current player wanna be DM this helps alot for planning a few hooks ECT in stories and also helped me think of my own character arc talking to my DM to push for
To be fair, Themberchaud has actually been around for about twenty-five years, since late 2nd edition. He just doesn't get nearly enough love or exposure in the D&D gaming universe...though I think that may change. I'd honestly never heard of him before the film, but think he has a lot of potential as an antagonist / NPC. 😃
@armygrunt13 Fun fact: there’s actually an official 5e module that features Themberchaud as a quest giver. He sends the party to steal a dragon egg from a bunch of duregar who plan to enslave the baby dragon once it hatches.
Really good points! I actually think the OP paladin so strong he can solo the encounter was a great move in this really niche case. As it made the objective of this challenge abundantly clear in a cool narrative way, "run". I feel this is further emphasised when for no real good reason, Xenk leaves the party, despite knowing red wizards are doing bad stuff, that's the DM discarding the gandalf as he fulfilled his purpose. Also the next time they meet, the players get a great sense of progression as they find they can match him now. But this is all pretty niche and i reckon is pretty hard to pull off in a satisfying way. I it thought might be helpful to mention though.
So the thing about the, "Overpowered DMPC" bit, I always considered that as a player from an older campaign who had a really inconsistent work schedule. Eventually, he had a day that lined up with the rest of the group so the DM let him play his OP paladin just so he didn't have to write up a new character. Now that can be done right or wrong but that's sort of how I view that. Great video btw
I actually have heard an idea that paladin is done as right as it's possible. He gave the group important information, showed impressive skills while not really solving anything, and went into the sunset after the end of an arc. Probably not something every table will love, but not a classic DMPC horror story at least.
As a DM, I learned a few things from the movie: 1st: Dragons are useless fat lumps of meat. 2nd: Sorcerers rarely cast magic and depend on magic items most of the time. 3rd: Almost all male characters are fairly useless (main character is here to make jokes and sorcerer's magic mostly brings him trouble) while female characters do the cool stuff. Same goes for villains. 4th: Half of Neverwinter's population consists of colored people from the south or east of Faerun. 5th: Aside from humans, every other race is almost nonexistent in a high fantasy setting such us Faerun. Nitpick: DRUIDS DO NOT WILD SHAPE INTO OWLBEARS! (I understand that it is a comedy film but still...)
My DM has a great approach to travel where it’s not skipped over entirely but you just stop for the fun interesting parts. Like say it takes three months for us to complete a journey, we check in with our characters after one month where we’ve stopped in this forest because there are demons attacking people. Fun sidequest and mid-travel roleplay time!
I've always felt this was about travel. Many games don't want to roleplay frequently (not everyone wants to be Critical Role). Therefore, travel pauses need to serve a purpose. In my CoS campaign, they are to make the party feel vulnerable. In my Eberron campaign, they are to give information about the destination. Nothing more or less.
Definitely agree with point #1. I run a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign, so it has vast periods of hyperspace travel. As they make each jump I'll say "It's [x] day's journey from [A] to [B], so would anyone like to be doing anything in that time? If not we'll screenwipe to your arrival," and it keeps the pace of the game running so smoothly.
Those two you mentioned at the end were two of my favourite parts, because they're nods to the countless DMs who've done _exactly_ that in their games.
In the situation of the Big Bad being taken out early, you don't necessarily have to an even Bigger Bad waiting on the sidelines. What if before she is killed, the Big Bad activates the spell that is set to kill the stadium full of civilians and now you're working with a countdown? Then the objective can shift from killing the Baddie to trying to evacuate the stadium before the spell goes off. Or maybe trying to destroy the spell or magic device before it goes off. You could put any number of creatures or traps in the way of the party to attempt to slow down whatever their new shifted goal is!
I think your first point is a very important one. Many people that I know that play are only able to get together with their group once a week, sometimes once a month. Playing time is a precious and finite resource for many. So, if I only have a single Sunday afternoon (every week or so) to play, I don't really want to spend a sizeable chunk of it just traveling down a road. Now, as you said, I don't want to always skip everything. Depending on what the group wants, you could compromise where travel over more than two days gets shortened. You would still play out the first day and night, give time for fun character moments or what not, and then skip ahead to the night before arrival.
My additional thoughts: Lesson 1) Yeah, random encounters on the road are boring and frustrating. Have better plans, or montage it. Related to lesson 2, I would also classify Doric's infiltration as something like that. Let the shapeshifter have fun, so long as they have the same role/task. Like "I'm doing a stealth thing," and so long as she's not going to go into combat with the forms (which she doesn't), I think just a flat speedy/sneaky thing is fine. But I'm also used to the older method of Wild Shape where it's time shaped, not the actual shift, that's important.
That "tiered villain" idea goes back to the early days of the game. It was used wonderfully in the original Giants/Drow adventure series. The hill giant chief Nosnra was a tool of the fire giant king Snurre, who in turn was being used by the drow priestess Eclavdra Eilservs. Originally it was supposed to go yet another step to the Elder Elemental God whom she served, but the final adventure (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) sort of threw that away. Still, it's good to see ideas from Ye Olden Days still have currency today.
Lesson 2 is one I'm a very big fan of. My favorite encounters I've made are all ones where killing the enemy isn't necessarily the main goal. I run a Starfinder campaign, and one goal I set them up with was escaping a nightclub after they assassinated a gang leader, as both his goons and then later on the cops started pouring in. So every few rounds more and more enemies poured into the building, and they just had to figure out how to escape in one piece
Honestly Zenk isn't even an overpowered NPC, for exactly one reason: Killing the assassins *wasn't* the encounter. He didn't one-shot anything that the players were actually ment to deal with, and most likely initiative wasn't even rolled until *after* they got back up. Zenk didn't *end* the encounter, he *started* it by demonstrating that killing the assassins isn't the goal.
I do something for travel that I'm really proud of in my campaign. With the help of my partner, we created a series of 20 little travel quests. A party member rolls their dice whenever we travel the open-world, and whatever number they get decides which one of the side quests they do. It has rewards that can be used to give them permanent buffs when they collect enough of them, and an overarching story that ties them together. Other than that, world travel is basically just immediate, with just a quick tally of rations taken.
I was just glad that the bard didn't try to screw anything and everything with a pulse (or without one). That was refreshing to see after so many memes and videos on that joke.
13th Age (a different RPG) has a great travel mechanic. Players go around the table and each one comes up with a situation that needs resolved; it's done a montage, no dice rolling. The next player in order provides the solution. It helps make them involved in the trip, and gives them the chance to world build. Plus the DM can steal ideas. So much stealing...
As far as having combats with goals outside of pure victory, it can be challenging to properly communicate that to a group that has only played in scenarios where they are always likely to win. I've tried this before in a one-shot where my players were supposed to defend a castle from an incoming army, but the city gates were breached and there was a call to retreat into the main castle. No matter what I did, the players did not flee. They didn't run from thousands of enemies and a wizard who they witnessed one hit kill an ancient gold dragon in front of them. They somehow, despite literally having every NPC run for their lives and their commanding officer telling them to flee, assumed they could kill all the enemies themselves. They didn't. They TPK'd and were confused how they were supposed to win. I'm not entirely sure this is even really a bad thing. Players generally don't show up to roll dice to run away, they want to be heroic. From a narrative perspective it can be more intriguing for the players to finally get revenge on the thing that made them run for the hills, but players don't think like that. They think they're going to win.
In response to your tiered bad guy system. Our group just finished a four year long campaign. I was the DM and the BBG was an ancient Black Dragon. I was prepared for them to fight in the dragons lair but they used their wits and came up with a brilliant plan. Long story short they pulled the ancient black to the plane of the gold dragons and used there help to defeat him. They group had a blast even though it was a cake walk but because of the tiered villain system we will get a smaller campaign of them trying to track down the phylactery of the Lich whom they all despise.
I haven't watched the video yet but I'm going to try a few guesses: Using interesting props in combat maps How to introduce new characters (each doing the thing they are good at) Thinking of backstory to special items
Finally saw the movie yesterday, loved it. I'd say another good example of what not to do is in the Graveyard scene. Potentially my favorite scene of the movie, having the first undead answer all the accidental questions and having all the others know only enough to find a new target for the spell is hilarious, but they had infinite uses of the spell in the movie, and in game as funny as it might be, it'd also be very frustrating for a DM to mess with the players to the point they had to expend all their spell slots on Speak With Dead. That being said, the needing to find different graves for the corpses who'd have more information could be a fun bit of in game detective work in a different scenario. Another example of something fun they did that can be a lot of fun in some games is the pendant of invisibility. They basically wound up with a legendary item before the campaign even started, which can be a big problem, but can also just be a good time
Lesson Three shows the adventure villain/personal plot villain (Forge), the Arc Villain (Sofina), and the Campaign Villain (Szass Tam.) Setting up the stakes of the story like that is great for a game.
100% agree with the road one, my dm is amazing but if i were to change one thing it would be the travel aspect. About 50-60% of our games have been traveling
I first started D&D with some friends a couple years ago and wasn’t into it from the first session. After like 8 session of that campaign, a couple sessions of another one, and a couple sessions in different TTRPG, I accepted they’re not for me. My friends and I really liked the D&D movie. I think my biggest takeaway from it is that I want to play a more Xenk-like game where not essentially every single thing needs to be done as a group practically 100% of the time. For Xenk, the Underdark was like a side quest on his campaign while the other party members were on a separate campaign and their paths crossed. He was doing his campaign in the town on his own, he had a reason to join the party, and once they finished, he went on his own to resume his own campaign. He wasn’t (to use my biased perspective) “forced” to stay with the party the entire time. I would like D&D (and probably TTRPGs in general) if it was more like an MMORPG where groups/parties are a lot more flexible.
I would like to say, I agree with you about travel time is something that should be glossed over whenever it is not narratively important. But every time I ask, "ok, the journey from X to Y is a journey of five days along the coast road. Is there anything anyone would like to say or do along the way?" I wind up having anywhere from one to three game sessions of side track. The artificer has heard that there is a mine just off the road they want to try to stop and search/buy/barter for materials, the druid wants to know what the most unique animal they see is, so he can make friends with it, and the rogue wants to know if they see anyone along the way whose pockets can be gone through looking for loose change...
Ho there, i am a new dm and i can say this works so well, in the campaign storm kings thunder, the manual leads you to do this and since i do it, its more fun. Specially the environment consequences, are so fun to describe between travels
It might be just my impression, but what I got from the "bridge puzzle" is that, if there were a DM, all those odd rules were actually made to make the party understand that they did have to think out of the box and use what they got to find a workaround instead on engaging straightforwardly. It might be a bit tricky if the party does not get the hint, but also idk a way to give some directions without being too obvious- like: "I am asking you to do something unreasonable, are you really sure you want to do it the standard way?". A bit like fight a dragon single-handedly as you brilliantly pointed out: it must not be done this way, not now, not at this stage, better run. Or that was my impression, at least! Very interesting content you got, it made me wonder!
So I play with some friends online, and I wanted to add to ginny's point about travelling with a cool thing we do, when we're inbetween story beats or we've ended a session while travelling we continue to roll play over text, its fun if one of us is bored at work or wanting to finish a conversation from in game. We call it our fireside chat
I took it as a point of pride when my friends saw the movie and just said with complete sincerity: "That was you!" The moments in question were the first Speak With Dead, and the awning blinding the stone dragon
I've often thought that RPGs could benefit from following certain movie examples. 1) Set up one or more "easy" encounters that have no purpose other than to let the PCs show off their awesome abilities. If your game session were a movie you'd want to showcase how awesome your heroes are, right? 2) Consider allowing the heroes to see the big bad being bad (possibly aided by a magical device.) Or maybe they can hear vivid accounts of his evilness from a lone survivor. (Maybe luck had nothing to do with the lone survivor's escape. Maybe the big bad wanted the party to know what happened.) Together, these two ideas build up both the heroes and the big bad before they finally meet--just like a movie would do.
I know this is entirely not what the video is out and I'm only 28 seconds in, but can I just say this background music is amazing? Maybe I'm crazy but idk it is making me nod my head to the rhythm. Well chosen!
Point #1, depends on the group I'm playing with. Counterpoint is my fun in traveling in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. Sometimes the journey is the destination.
I got so much DM inspiration from this movie! The biggest thing that jumped out to me was actually what NOT to do because of how often they split the party. Fun for a movie but tedious for a game...
I handle travelling just by narrating the time skip and scenery "After a few hours the monotonous green landscape shifts to sharp cliffs and Steep hills, in the distance you can see a varying amount of wildlife hunting and what looks like eagles circling prey in the distant. " I give a pause for players to interact if they wish otherwise I push them forward. "Descending though the many cliffsides turns into hours of long but arduous travel until you notice the ground even outs into a another valley, for some amongst the party find the simple scenery relaxing and quite motivating as you move though the green rolling fields" another pause to see if characters wish to stop here and then continue if they don't "The sun begins the crest over the mountains behind you covering the landscape in a shadow, the sky myriad of oranges and purples. you all feel exhausted from your journey... do you press onwards in the darkness of the night" I usually design biomes between each long journey and have at least 1 possible encounter or event to spice things up. In my session its all about landscapes and sceneries, or the way wildlife lives to give this feeling of a breathing world.
good point number two, my party took out Cyanwrath in the first time they encountered him through some fantastic combat choices ( and I was left scrambling to work out how the players could get to the rest of the module
I finally watched it the other night and thought the movie was amazing! I completely agree with these tips, especially having a bigger bad waiting in the wings.
If you have a puzzle, always have a back-up way for them to do it. Or they will make one. That is my head cannon about the teleportation stick (if this was a table-top game). It was a plain old staff, until the DM realized they messed up and made it a magic item so the party wasn't doomed by breaking the bridge. >XD The paladin is just a DM PC to get the party to do what they need to do and move the plot along, and create an oprtu ity for character development. I think he was done really well, at least from that angle.
![Stop ignoring Inspiration points in D&D [DM Tips]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SMzsbhq2GCM/mqdefault.jpg)
Funny enough, I find the bridge puzzle actually still a great example for newer DMs, cause it shows that players aren't gonna wait for your overly-long rules to be laid out and will just break it within a few moments. lol
Plus, it kinda shows how you could have a devastating effect on that possibility (the entire bridge crumbling to dust) and at the same moment make up something outta thin air to let the party still progress - nobody can convince me one of the main points of that scene wasn't to have that "oh and here is something character A considers a mundane stick, but on second glance, the wizard notices it as a rare magic staff with special capabilities"-excuse put in there as well. Literally something pulled up out of thin air, you could make up every "mundane" piece of equippment, jewelry etc of one character be secretly a magic item that allows them to still progress that only that character didn't know because they are not the magic versed type.
Complicated trap equals death trap in most parties
Less "leading by example" and more "object lesson" 😂
@@GinnyDi
Yes. A great example of "here's what not to do" and the consequences that may happen if you do.
And that they're going to solve things with so many ways you didn't expect. It might be with the teleport item...it might be rope. So much rope. So, so very much rope.
My friends and I interpreted Zank not as an NPC, but as a guest PC who could only make one session, so they gave their friend the spotlight. Which, we thought, if everyone agrees to knowing this person is there to look cool for one day, would be a pretty fun one time thing
Yes, definitely! He has big guest PC energy. He lets the DM include an encounter out that's WAY above the party's power level now, but can act as a teaser for potential future encounters. If I was running this as a game, the party might later have to go back into the Underdark when they're at a higher level. Whereas before they could only just barely survive long enough to escape, now they can feel badass for being able to fight their way through it with their increased power levels.
This is a great interpretation of his role in the movie!
ha, I had the exact same thought! like Rege-Jean can't make the entire campaign, but he'll be around for a few sessions--let's give him an important role he pre-planned with the DM and he can have a nice send-off before he has to go back to work or moves or whatever
I kinda interpreted him as poking fun at cringey DMPCs that the players just roll their eyes at.
@@elizabethsullivan1894 Agreed. And in the end Xenk is also not the one to get everyone out, too. It feels very much like a guest PC that prepared things in advance with the DM to enhance the group experience by putting up a bit of a show for their benefit.
My personal favorite is the Speak With Dead scene where they waste the five questions on the first corpse and then miscount the number of questions on the final one. In the post credits ending, the poor guy is STILL waiting for the last question.
Also I didn't think the paladin was an NPC. He struck me as more "the temporary party member made by the guest who joins the campaign for all of one session" character. Not every table does that obviously, but I think I've seen it happen on a few streams. I know Yogscast did it a few times back when I used to watch them.
I love the bridge puzzle because it feels like a DM just messing with his players because they were complaining the puzzles have been too easy.
I took it that the DM had made this crazy puzzle and the sorcerer player got boarded. So he moved his mini. The DM noticed this and thus felt like he needed to spring the trap.
4:28 "Holga hitting something really hard with her axe isn't gonna solve anything."
Holga hitting the dragon so that he gets angry and breaths fire: Am I a joke to you?
I love the fact that the d&d movie of all things was even realistic in that regard, she uses the hammer end to hit the statue
Actually, yes. Yes, that moment is a joke to at least the dragon. Lol
Okay okay, it isn't gonna solve anything /by itself/ 😂
Now there's the kicker
I thought they did a solid job of capturing the feel of DND. The whole thing had a nice teetering-on-the-edge of mayhem vibe. I liked that the characters and plot were playful without being flippant. Its a pretty thin needle to thread. I enjoyed that Xenk was pretty blatantly a DMPC, dude mostly came out of nowhere, was clearly vastly out of the parties league, gave them some directions and literally wandered off (that sequence was probably my biggest laugh)
My favourite facet of Xenk is that the DM and Edgan's player clearly had mutually agreed upon Edgan's character growth earlier in the campaign, and the DM used Xenk as a way to help foreshadow that ultimate shift from self-centred to generous. Xenk could therefore foreshadow Edgan distributing the treasure, although I doubt anyone at the table could have predicted how that went down.
"The dude literally walks in a straight line. Oh, he's coming up on a rock, what'll he do now...?" 😂
I also like how he made the usual paladin 'stickler for virtue' thing endearing rather than just exasperating.
@@originaluddite Yes, it was nice to see Lawful Good played correctly. 😇
@@andrewshaughnessy5828 Indeed. Mulling over it, however, one thing strikes me as not exactly lawful, which is the mad genius of hiding that magical helm in the Underdark, rather than in some officially secure installation. :)
My biggest takeaway from the movie as a DM is Attunement. I love the way they handled attunement, and never thought about the process of attuning to a magic item. It just happens in D&D RAW after a set period of time. I kind of want to create some kind of challenge for the PCs if they want to attune to certain magic items.
This and Legends of Vox Machina do really good at showing cool ways for players to attune to items
Exactly my thoughts as well. Why make it easy for all magic items? Why can't some "fight back"?
Attunement as a chance to add character development or even foreshadowing is a good take away, you're right
@@aaronj235 absolutely. imagine someone having a real issue attuning because of something in their backstory and the party tries to help them overcome that so they can attune. lots of possibilities
Yes, I loved the way the movie did this. Especially if the item is an ancient treasure or supreme magical item. Over time I can 100% see those items creating a kind of intelligence that the player has to overwhelm or come to an agreement with. Even more so if the character has a familial link to the item's creator like in the movie.
I loved the movie’s message of resilience and adaptability. You don’t truly fail until you quit. That’s the point of D&D. You keep going and come up with a new plan, like in real life. That’s also why I love the Indiana Jones movies.
I think a great lesson for DMs from the movie is that chunky Themberchaud. How many times have you fight a typical red dragon? And how many times have you fight a chunky dragon? Sometimes you can make the monsters different from the ones in the Monster Manual to surprise your players and make more memorable fights
Absolutely, that was one of my takeaways as well! Changing how a monster looks, acts, or fights can quickly make them more interesting!
I think my favorite example of this as a player was when the party fought our second demilich as a player group. Our DM for that game is very good at balancing combat encounters, and he figured we could handle a curveball given that we were at a higher level than during our first run-in with a demilich. So he gave her a regenerative ability that tied in with the dungeon storyline, and it made fighting her and her flesh golem minion a satisfying challenge. He also roleplayed her spectacularly before combat started, which made the fight even more memorable.
Those of us that own FToD typically love that they offer advice on just that. Not everything looks the same, and changing a detail or two helps make things memorable
My only problem with Themberchaud was that he acted like a beast, rather than a highly intelligent Ancient Red Dragon. I understand why they did it for movie purposes, but I think even a few lines about eating the party from him to show that he is smart enough to talk would have gone a long way lore-wise.
I do agree that I loved that they chonkified him
My big takeaway from the whole Themberchaud sequence was, what happened to the unkillable undead assassins he ate?? Did they reanimate after being fully digested and crapped out? 🤔
I love how the movie feels like an entire campaign, from character introductions to side quests and little personal quests. Great video!!
It's SO well done in that regard!
@@joelherrey and they're all relatively lower level so it'd be fun to see them grow and do some cool stuff if they do sequels. There's so much potential. Cautiously excited 😆
My main takeaway from the movie was that I should let my druid players wildshape into certain monstrosities because owlbears are awesome! 🦉🐻🤘
I would do the same as owlbears are hybrids of giant owls and bears. They're both beasts, so what the heck? Also, I would allow them to cycle through beast types the way Doric did as long as they didn't switch back to their own form.
My friend and her dm made a deal that instead of elementals, her druid could shape shift into certain monstrosities, including an owlbear ☺️
Another takeway from that is that some players might be willing to sacrifice one or two features of their class to go all-in on one other
While it would definitely be a bad idea to plan something like this, I legit loved that Xenk came in and one-shot everything. It felt like the DM realized that the party was too disjointed and unfocused for the encounter and were only going to be TPK'ed, so they were like, "Fine, this guy does it all for you, jegus, let's all just move on." And him walking away in a straight line afterward like some Bethesda NPC with buggy pathing just *wrecked* me. LOVED it.
One thing I am going to use that I saw in the film, was how they handled the attunement Simon did when getting the helmet. I liked how they made it part of the characters story instead of him just sitting alone for a period of time.
A lot of folks screamed about the druid, with too many wild shapes. Rather, it made me consider/ reconsider using spell slots for additional wild shapes( or, vice versa), and access to some monstrous wild shapes.
We can learn stuff, here.
I was thinking about that too
The puzzle is definitely a joke about DMs making overly complicated puzzles only for the players to fly or dimension door across (guilty as charged here). Xenk is kind of the same way, he just felt really... intentially created and overacted, like the DM was trying to show the PCs "See! He's good! Such a good man. You can trust him! Admire him. Respect his advice!" which I appreciate them showing and poking fun at because, once again, DMs totally do this lol
Lesson one is so true! I have been "skipping" travel for ages. One player introduced an idea to the table they called, "campfire moments" where there are opportunities to talk about the adventure, or discuss background, and so on. When travel is the focus I will right out a number of encounters, slap numbers on them, and roll to have them come up at random. It appears like random encounters to the players, but each of these items is structured and pre-planned giving the illusion of randomness.
"There's always a bigger bad." My mind went straight to Qui-Gon saying "There's always a bigger fish."
*dives out of prison on an Aarakocra*
"You were right about one thing, the negotiations *were* short"
yep, and all you have to do in instances like that is at the point of death, just utter something like "now he knows. he knows. you've awakened him" and then poof, dead. the party is going to go "ooooohhh shiiiiiiiiiit what did we do?!"
The DM: "Yousa in mooey mooey doo-doo right now!"
The real thing I learned is that people love chonky dragon.
Giving a defining trait to some encounters can help them stick out and be remembered by your players.
My mouth was full of popcorn at the time, stifling the "DAMM, BOI, HE THICC!" that would've left my throat otherwise.
Love this; nice to see the balance between "here's some D&D game stuff" and "It's a movie; relax!" working out well 🙂
Wrt lesson 2, I totally agree. The only reason I dislike the, 'we're not strong enough for this fight and need to leave' battle, is that DnD rules are really punishing for those trying to remove themselves from combat. Most teleport spells require time and/or physical proximity and running away leaves you open to being picked apart. Unless the group decides before combat starts that they want to avoid it, running can be really difficult. However, when the DM plans around this idea they can turn it into a fun set-piece. I think the key is making it abundantly clear when they can't handle the encounter
Great video I definitely agree especially about traveling long distances. A couple things I might add, going to see Holga's ex felt like the DM taking a little time for a side quests that is important to the player's character.
And I could be mistaken and they were meant to be two different spells but if they were both Bigbes giant hand in the final battle that could be a GM letting the look of a spell be determined by the player for flavor reasons.
Pretty sure the sorcerer's one was maximilian's earthen grasp, you could see it appear from the ground made of the same material
@@loganwallace101 you're totally right, I'd completely forgotten that spell exists. That being said I still enjoy letting a player choose what their spell looks like so long as they understand it just appears that way and isn't mechanically different. "Yes your giant hand appears to be made of silver, no it doesn't do extra damage to werewolves."
With "Honor Among Thieves," I felt like I was at a table with four friends, telling a compelling tale of homebrew excitement in Faerun. Watching this video, I'm glad I wasn't alone. Was it a perfect film? Nah. Was it a damned good time? You betcha.
Our DM always asks if we have anything we want to say or accomplish during travel time and it's led to some of the best RP in our campaign so far. We've had everything from touching heart-to-heart talks to a PC helping another PC recover (partly) from a chronic injury to at least one instance where we got pretty close to PC-on-PC attempted murder. (It was an in-character misunderstanding and some momentary backstory-related bad judgement, they're both fine and now closer than ever, the scene was delightful.)
I'm a fantasy writer and I have a published book named "Arlock - a tale from Ellora" that was created based on a D&D campaign I participated years ago. During the writing process I was gradually noticing exactly what you've said: not all game dynamics works for a romance, neither all book storytelling should be applied in a D&D campaign. The most important thing is to learn how to adapt the main ideas for a different media (movie, book, games, comics, etc)
Yes to different encounter goals! one of the best combat sessions in my current campaign was when the party acted as escort for a magician/astronomer into the lair of a cult. We convinced the cultists to allow her research for a specific time (measuring a solar flare) but part way through another leader of the cult showed up who was less impressed with the idea - it became a battle to protect the telescope from interference until the flare was overhead. Just when we were feeling like we were about to be overwhelmed, the NPC finished her task and shouted to get close to her, we all made it back to the centre of the "arena" and *poof* teleported to safety where the NPC lamented having to leave her equipment behind.
Having to protect a weak NPC can get even the most powerful PCs sweating
I'm stealing this idea. I love it.
My favourite encounter was a battle that happened on a flying carpet. We were chased by guards and tried to escape by flying away and they were trying to stop that by attacking the carpet, trying to knock us off, trying to tether the carpet to a tower and so on, while we were forced to break that tether, make sure to stay on the carpet, save the one guy who got knocked off by casting slowfall and then flying the carpet in position to catch him, extinguish a fire that was started on the carpet and escape the wyvern knights that were approaching while those other guards were trying to slow us down.
The battle felt so special because nobody was mostly focussing on dealing damage, but on working towards their own specific strategy and we were forced to think out of the box to react to something different than "opponent attacks and deals damage"
The major lesson I took home from the movie is that I need to homebrew rules that allow for Holga's scene after the final battle.
I want that in my game, I want that stuff in my game right now!
*Probably spoilers below! Proceed at your own risk!*
I have a rough idea for it, but I haven't had time to test it or write it down as proper table-ready rules yet.
Basically, 0 hit points in D&D 5E is no fun. You just sit there and hope to roll a 20 or get healed so you get to play again.
So I figured, why not make the player prone instead of unconscious? In addition to that, they get to take one action, reaction or bonus action, but if they do they fail a death save. They can talk and move (crawl) without failure.
That way you can risk it to save your friend, or they can gather around you and fail the medicine checks as you bleed out, or you can just crawl into a hole and drink a potion or cast a healing spell on themselves, and so on. You're still in the game, not just waiting to see if you roll good of bad on a death save.
A simple change, for drama and potential fun. It does make healing a bit more powerful, but I think the trade is worth it to keep players engaged.
I might want to add another debuff on it for balance if I think players are all going up and down too often.
I think a simple disincentive is "disadvantage on everything until the next rest after you get up from 0 hit points".
It should be reason enough to keep players from not wanting to get wounded (which is essentially what 0 hp represents).
I will try it at some point, but getting the whole gang together for a game is hard when most of your group are nurses and none of them work regular hours or consistent days so they are hardly ever off on the same day or even awake at the same time of day ☹
Underrated comment! This sounds like a much better way to be at 0 hp!
Kinda like death's door in Darkest Dungeon?
Oh that bridge scene was great.
And is 100% something I can see happening in Critical roll, dimension 20 or similer.
An NPC giving clear instructions on how to do something and one of the party just not paying attention, tripping the trap or using an ability completely rendering what the NPC was saying a moot point.
I really enjoy how much you're taking out of the movie and applying it to game play. It's very fun and unique way to see things.
Only a few things to add to this great advice...
1. My players once asked me for a bit more 'sense data' descriptions to help with a feeling of being in a pre-modern world. The travel montages were the times in which I inserted such passing atmospherics.
2. I was impressed when my players actively avoided some risky side-quests. Sure, they could have been fun, but it also suggested that their characters knew they had limits and had a greater goal to focus on.
3. It is a nuanced twist if, sometimes, an earlier enemy, assuming it yet lives, becomes a temporary ally in facing a greater enemy.
thank you for the up front spoiler warning. When I see the movie, I'll come back, have a like for the courtesy.
I did exactly the same, watched the movie yesterday and came back directly to the video. Great video btw
Yeah! Just watched it myself and now here I am! :D
0:39 Lesson one: You can skip travel
3:01 Lesson two: You can make a combat encounter's goal something else than defeating the opponents, like escaping them, or a bunch of some other stuff
5:04 Lesson three: You can do "You see that behind the person you thought to be the main villain there is another, more powerful villain" more than once
As someone who started on D&D right before third edition and moved on to better systems, I absolutely loved the movie and was able to not worry too much about things not matching 'The Rules'. I'm glad that the First D&D movie was a success and not an absolute train wreck of a film!
My group and I have interpreted Doric's string of wild shaping in her escape from the castle into a specialized rule for Druids. As a reaction a druid can change their shape into a creature of CR equal or lower than the shape they are currently in. Your hit points persist from your initial Wild Shape no matter what form you take. These knee-jerk transformations allow for skill and ability swapping mid-encounter. Obviously there's been some situations where you have a squirrel running around with the hit points of a bear but since the absence of this rule would have just kept the druid as a bear for the whole encounter we felt that it was fine this way.
I would say that the biggest takeaway is that you should let your players make mistakes and also roll with the changes to the plan that they will make on the fly.
Based on a lot of your advice from previous videos, I took my entire party to see the D&D movie, and then we had a wonderful conversation afterwards about role-play.
D&D can so easily get bogged down into a strict numbers game where everyone gets obsessed with stats and strategy, like the street fighter arcade game where it's all about memorizing a few standard set of combos.
I encouraged everyone in the group to consider their characters' backgrounds (it's still a fairly new group, so this wasn't a big deal), and to possibly create some broad character arcs,. I then invited them to tell me about it so I can incorporate those character development arcs into our game. This is part of the text I sent afterwards:
"Does your character have some unfinished business, or a character flaw that might need rounding out? Why are they training with Spelljammer Academy, far away from community, friends and family? And how would you like to see your character develop over time? What lessons are left to learned? What closure do they not even know they need yet? What experience is needed to propel them to the next level of their emotional, spiritual and mental development? (Feel free to look toward films, literature, personal experiences or other source material for inspiration.)"
Everyone got really inspired and has been much more engaged so far. I'm looking forward to the results during our upcoming sessions.
Thanks again for your advice, it has really inspired me as a DM to elevate the game beyond strings of pointless dialog between boring, grinding battles! You are a very helpful resource (whatever your hair color 😉)
That's awesome! I'm glad too hear your group is embracing the roleplay side more. Campaigns don't have to be 50/50 roleplay and crunch, but I think every group should treat the two sides like Shakespeare treated comedy and tragedy. Every tragedy had at least one comedic scene, and every comedy had an element of tragedy somewhere. One without the other is unbalanced.
Your walking-blender barbarian is awesome by raw damage numbers, which is great by itself! ... But what does it mean to the rest of the party to be walking around with someone who could drop them in one round of combat? How does the barbarian feel walking into a town full of regular people who they could probably kill with a half-strength punch? These questions on top of the numbers make the whole so much better, in my opinion.
I'm preaching to the choir here, but I love TRPGs so much for this blend of narrative action and thought unique to the medium.
Believe me I tried to do the travel montage as a DM to skip long drawn-out journeys, but my players kept on insisting to role play each day even though nothing happen that day. Suddenly my world got oddly smaller and with more teleportation circles.
I also like to do lesson 2 but in reverse. Most of my monsters will run away from the party if they realize that they cannot win / will die. The party will still get all the xp for winning the encounter.
I loved this movie and I went in saw it with my wife who is new to the game and it really opened her eyes to how cool dnd could be. She watched it weeks after explaining her backstory to her friends in game and her face just lit up when edgin did it!
Im writing a campaign based around thr attunement mechanics from this movie. I understand it was all part of making sure they didn't have a broken artifact to early but it can really set up some interesting character interactions
I also really like the idea of attunement mechanics! Esp for higher powered items
I also took away that you should allow PCs to do cool, rule-breaking things with some limitations to prevent abuse. For example, the Druid can't Wild Shape into an owlbear in the rules, but for a Moon Druid, maybe they can become certain monstrosities instead of elemental forms. So they can be an owlbear or a displacer beast, expending extra uses of wild shape to do it.
My head canon is that Doric took some custom feats to swap out spell slots for improved wildshaping. We never see her cast anything, after all.
It costs 1 wild shape to become an owl and 1 to become a bear. Charge em two maybe?
My head canon is choose one of the following.
Doric is DM's squeeze.
Doric is DM's younger sibling and Mom said let them do it.
Doric bluffed lied to the DM about the abilities.
@@jasonwallace3462That is my take on it too
I love all of the suggestions! I would like to offer an alternative to the overly-complicated puzzle and over-powered NPC. This is probably going to be a bit more of niche usage but it's a fun thought experiment. Have the higher level NPC acting as their guide, like Xenk was in the movie. He's the one who hid the item, he's leading them to it. This does make the small adventure they're on initially seem less threatening, but you have already built in unexpected things to occur - ambushed by the enemy, new monsters making the area their territory, collapsed passageways, etc. The NPC will still try to figure out a way to get through or around these new obstacles but has no issue deferring to the party for help. Heck, now would be a good time to show the limits of their knowledge and experiences because not everything can be solved by one person. Maybe even have the NPC secretly pulling back to test the PCs because if they're going to hand over this important artifact, they want to make sure these people are capable.
As for the overly-complicated puzzle, the NPC will know the answer to the puzzle but if one of the players doesn't take it upon themselves to "accidentally" destroy the puzzle, then have the bridge collapse on its own due to old age and wear and tear. Or maybe the Dwarves purposefully gave the NPC the wrong instructions for whatever reason. Point is, make the puzzle as complicated as you want, then smash it and leave them with a less complicated puzzle but no instructions.
I second both of these thoughts. In my current game (player, not the DM) our party collects NPCs and adds them to our rag-tag band of misfits. The Druid we picked up because our Cleric (who was by this time dead, and haunting my character as a ghost. Don't worry, she got better) couldn't come with us, but the honest-to-goodness Ilithid we scooped just because we liked them and they needed friends. While our DM has had to find ways to make the Eirix the mentalist ... sit out of some adventures, none of us want to cut the character despite Eirix's power level and ability to trivialize some secrets and tension. Powerful DMPCs are storytelling tools, and can give you new encounter options, and are still just people at the end of the day, prone to all the foibles of other characters.
As for puzzle design, not only could your overly-complicated bridge collapse, but you could instead (or in addition) add the threat of combat on top! Now everyone has to follow the wacky instructions while Goblins, perched on cliffs, shoot arrows at you, and yet more goblins charge down the cliffs on Wargs. Uh oh, now you're on a timer, because you know those Warg-riders aren't necessarily going to realize you've been hopping around all funny-like for a reason. If you're not off the bridge before they get there, it's going to collapse under you!
Great Video with solid DM Advice!
I know that some may groan when they hear these things... yet, for the sheer amount of new Players entering our hobby, they don't know these little tricks of the trade. It's nice to have a short little video like this to suggest to them. Thank you!
As a new DM, every single session I learn how my players will try completely different things than I thought they would. I definitely think that’s part of the movie too!
All great points. Hex crawls are valuable in campaigns where you're tracking xp and/or it's the campaign style. Otherwise, it just gets cumbersome, especially for milestone leveling campaigns. And SKILL CHALLENGES! Another great example is how CR deals with resurrection. And anything that allows more player agency is good.
Great video. ❤
Regarding point 2. One of the most stressful and engaging "combats" was one where we, a level 2 party, accidentally made a T-rex come out of a spatio-temporal rip in reality. Very clear that the message was RUN. the DM had planned it so that if we just ran, we would make it to a safe space in time. But of course, us not knowing what its speed was etc lost some movement per turn to try and slow it down with spells and improvised traps, resulting in a very intense chase sequence with the t-rex catching up to us following a fateful 1-roll, and almost one-shot instakilling our rogue (the bite fell one damage point short of the instakill) I had never felt more adrenaline playing DnD 😮💨 thankfully we all made it and we all have some character development from it 😂
Your analysis here is perfect. What’s works for the movie might not work for a game, and that’s fine. The humour in “Honour Among Thieves” is what impresses me. The Intellect Devourers scene had me laughing even though that might not have happened at the table. Then there’s that red dragon- I don’t think a fatter dragon has ever been depicted . Still crazy dangerous while looking awesome at the same time.
Thank you for your channel and your wonderful content.
And looking at their classes, I presume no one in the party had Intelligence as a primary stat, so in that way it also made sense. It was a great scene.
I tend to " fast travel" the party on long journeys pausing at the 1/2 way point while the party has " made camp for the night to alow for role-playing and player interactions once or twice per long voyage or ground traveling. Camp is a great opertunity for party bonding and story swaping.
Re; the over-complicated puzzle, the hither-thither portal gu...er, rod was an AWESOME solution. Great video once more, Ginni!
After the Pinkerton, I'm going scorched earth with this company. They're never getting another red cent from me
Finally I watched it after being done with the movie😂
You answered all my questions, including ones about party's OP moves.😂
Thank you, Ginny.🌺😊
Savage Worlds has a mechanic called Interludes for travel and similar moments. Basically, each player draws a card that gives them three prompts about a moment on the road. If the player plays out thr prompt, they get a benny.
I do agree with the tiered villain system. One of the first games I ever ran the big bad was a small cult of spellcasters trying to do the bad stuff, so I split the story into "chapters: where each chapter was about foiling the scheme of and defeating each individual cult member, going up against their own resources and minions in the process. Starting with their newest and weakest member as an intro boss, onto the more reluctant but still skilled member, onto the more zealous and powerful members before ending with the architect of the scheme.
There's a lot of things I wish I did differently in that game, but I think that style of structuring the narrative worked well, and it lead to a tangible sense of progress every time a villain was brought down and a chapter ended.
As a current player wanna be DM this helps alot for planning a few hooks ECT in stories and also helped me think of my own character arc talking to my DM to push for
7:49 I actually thought of Xenk as a player that comes later in the game and has to leave after one dungeon due to life getting in the way.
I think the best takeaway from the movie was the idea for a chonky pseudodragon
To be fair, Themberchaud has actually been around for about twenty-five years, since late 2nd edition. He just doesn't get nearly enough love or exposure in the D&D gaming universe...though I think that may change. I'd honestly never heard of him before the film, but think he has a lot of potential as an antagonist / NPC. 😃
Lol he is NOT a pseudodragon, though he IS an interesting red dragon
@armygrunt13 Fun fact: there’s actually an official 5e module that features Themberchaud as a quest giver. He sends the party to steal a dragon egg from a bunch of duregar who plan to enslave the baby dragon once it hatches.
@@tsifirakiehl4250 oh I love it! Will have to let my current party know. 😄
Really good points!
I actually think the OP paladin so strong he can solo the encounter was a great move in this really niche case. As it made the objective of this challenge abundantly clear in a cool narrative way, "run". I feel this is further emphasised when for no real good reason, Xenk leaves the party, despite knowing red wizards are doing bad stuff, that's the DM discarding the gandalf as he fulfilled his purpose. Also the next time they meet, the players get a great sense of progression as they find they can match him now.
But this is all pretty niche and i reckon is pretty hard to pull off in a satisfying way. I it thought might be helpful to mention though.
I will defenetly implument the villian staircase. It’s such a good idea for any story situation.
Or adapt it to a staircase of miniboss squads (thinking of Bleach, or the cult org chart for ac:odyssey)
So the thing about the, "Overpowered DMPC" bit, I always considered that as a player from an older campaign who had a really inconsistent work schedule. Eventually, he had a day that lined up with the rest of the group so the DM let him play his OP paladin just so he didn't have to write up a new character. Now that can be done right or wrong but that's sort of how I view that. Great video btw
I actually have heard an idea that paladin is done as right as it's possible. He gave the group important information, showed impressive skills while not really solving anything, and went into the sunset after the end of an arc. Probably not something every table will love, but not a classic DMPC horror story at least.
As a DM, I learned a few things from the movie: 1st: Dragons are useless fat lumps of meat. 2nd: Sorcerers rarely cast magic and depend on magic items most of the time. 3rd: Almost all male characters are fairly useless (main character is here to make jokes and sorcerer's magic mostly brings him trouble) while female characters do the cool stuff. Same goes for villains. 4th: Half of Neverwinter's population consists of colored people from the south or east of Faerun. 5th: Aside from humans, every other race is almost nonexistent in a high fantasy setting such us Faerun. Nitpick: DRUIDS DO NOT WILD SHAPE INTO OWLBEARS! (I understand that it is a comedy film but still...)
My DM has a great approach to travel where it’s not skipped over entirely but you just stop for the fun interesting parts. Like say it takes three months for us to complete a journey, we check in with our characters after one month where we’ve stopped in this forest because there are demons attacking people. Fun sidequest and mid-travel roleplay time!
I've always felt this was about travel. Many games don't want to roleplay frequently (not everyone wants to be Critical Role). Therefore, travel pauses need to serve a purpose. In my CoS campaign, they are to make the party feel vulnerable. In my Eberron campaign, they are to give information about the destination. Nothing more or less.
Definitely agree with point #1. I run a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign, so it has vast periods of hyperspace travel. As they make each jump I'll say "It's [x] day's journey from [A] to [B], so would anyone like to be doing anything in that time? If not we'll screenwipe to your arrival," and it keeps the pace of the game running so smoothly.
Those two you mentioned at the end were two of my favourite parts, because they're nods to the countless DMs who've done _exactly_ that in their games.
In the situation of the Big Bad being taken out early, you don't necessarily have to an even Bigger Bad waiting on the sidelines. What if before she is killed, the Big Bad activates the spell that is set to kill the stadium full of civilians and now you're working with a countdown?
Then the objective can shift from killing the Baddie to trying to evacuate the stadium before the spell goes off. Or maybe trying to destroy the spell or magic device before it goes off. You could put any number of creatures or traps in the way of the party to attempt to slow down whatever their new shifted goal is!
I think your first point is a very important one. Many people that I know that play are only able to get together with their group once a week, sometimes once a month. Playing time is a precious and finite resource for many. So, if I only have a single Sunday afternoon (every week or so) to play, I don't really want to spend a sizeable chunk of it just traveling down a road.
Now, as you said, I don't want to always skip everything. Depending on what the group wants, you could compromise where travel over more than two days gets shortened. You would still play out the first day and night, give time for fun character moments or what not, and then skip ahead to the night before arrival.
My additional thoughts:
Lesson 1) Yeah, random encounters on the road are boring and frustrating. Have better plans, or montage it.
Related to lesson 2, I would also classify Doric's infiltration as something like that. Let the shapeshifter have fun, so long as they have the same role/task. Like "I'm doing a stealth thing," and so long as she's not going to go into combat with the forms (which she doesn't), I think just a flat speedy/sneaky thing is fine. But I'm also used to the older method of Wild Shape where it's time shaped, not the actual shift, that's important.
This is one of my fave movies this year - I've seen it twice in the theatre!
That "tiered villain" idea goes back to the early days of the game. It was used wonderfully in the original Giants/Drow adventure series. The hill giant chief Nosnra was a tool of the fire giant king Snurre, who in turn was being used by the drow priestess Eclavdra Eilservs. Originally it was supposed to go yet another step to the Elder Elemental God whom she served, but the final adventure (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) sort of threw that away. Still, it's good to see ideas from Ye Olden Days still have currency today.
Lesson 2 is one I'm a very big fan of. My favorite encounters I've made are all ones where killing the enemy isn't necessarily the main goal. I run a Starfinder campaign, and one goal I set them up with was escaping a nightclub after they assassinated a gang leader, as both his goons and then later on the cops started pouring in. So every few rounds more and more enemies poured into the building, and they just had to figure out how to escape in one piece
omg, one of my favorite parts was the explanation of how to cross the bridge, specifically because of how ridiculously complicated it was
Honestly Zenk isn't even an overpowered NPC, for exactly one reason: Killing the assassins *wasn't* the encounter. He didn't one-shot anything that the players were actually ment to deal with, and most likely initiative wasn't even rolled until *after* they got back up. Zenk didn't *end* the encounter, he *started* it by demonstrating that killing the assassins isn't the goal.
I do something for travel that I'm really proud of in my campaign.
With the help of my partner, we created a series of 20 little travel quests. A party member rolls their dice whenever we travel the open-world, and whatever number they get decides which one of the side quests they do. It has rewards that can be used to give them permanent buffs when they collect enough of them, and an overarching story that ties them together.
Other than that, world travel is basically just immediate, with just a quick tally of rations taken.
I was just glad that the bard didn't try to screw anything and everything with a pulse (or without one). That was refreshing to see after so many memes and videos on that joke.
13th Age (a different RPG) has a great travel mechanic. Players go around the table and each one comes up with a situation that needs resolved; it's done a montage, no dice rolling. The next player in order provides the solution. It helps make them involved in the trip, and gives them the chance to world build. Plus the DM can steal ideas. So much stealing...
As far as having combats with goals outside of pure victory, it can be challenging to properly communicate that to a group that has only played in scenarios where they are always likely to win. I've tried this before in a one-shot where my players were supposed to defend a castle from an incoming army, but the city gates were breached and there was a call to retreat into the main castle. No matter what I did, the players did not flee. They didn't run from thousands of enemies and a wizard who they witnessed one hit kill an ancient gold dragon in front of them. They somehow, despite literally having every NPC run for their lives and their commanding officer telling them to flee, assumed they could kill all the enemies themselves. They didn't. They TPK'd and were confused how they were supposed to win. I'm not entirely sure this is even really a bad thing. Players generally don't show up to roll dice to run away, they want to be heroic. From a narrative perspective it can be more intriguing for the players to finally get revenge on the thing that made them run for the hills, but players don't think like that. They think they're going to win.
In response to your tiered bad guy system. Our group just finished a four year long campaign. I was the DM and the BBG was an ancient Black Dragon. I was prepared for them to fight in the dragons lair but they used their wits and came up with a brilliant plan. Long story short they pulled the ancient black to the plane of the gold dragons and used there help to defeat him. They group had a blast even though it was a cake walk but because of the tiered villain system we will get a smaller campaign of them trying to track down the phylactery of the Lich whom they all despise.
I haven't watched the video yet but I'm going to try a few guesses:
Using interesting props in combat maps
How to introduce new characters (each doing the thing they are good at)
Thinking of backstory to special items
Finally saw the movie yesterday, loved it. I'd say another good example of what not to do is in the Graveyard scene. Potentially my favorite scene of the movie, having the first undead answer all the accidental questions and having all the others know only enough to find a new target for the spell is hilarious, but they had infinite uses of the spell in the movie, and in game as funny as it might be, it'd also be very frustrating for a DM to mess with the players to the point they had to expend all their spell slots on Speak With Dead. That being said, the needing to find different graves for the corpses who'd have more information could be a fun bit of in game detective work in a different scenario.
Another example of something fun they did that can be a lot of fun in some games is the pendant of invisibility. They basically wound up with a legendary item before the campaign even started, which can be a big problem, but can also just be a good time
Lesson Three shows the adventure villain/personal plot villain (Forge), the Arc Villain (Sofina), and the Campaign Villain (Szass Tam.) Setting up the stakes of the story like that is great for a game.
100% agree with the road one, my dm is amazing but if i were to change one thing it would be the travel aspect. About 50-60% of our games have been traveling
I love the tiered-villain idea! It helps with level progression as well
I first started D&D with some friends a couple years ago and wasn’t into it from the first session. After like 8 session of that campaign, a couple sessions of another one, and a couple sessions in different TTRPG, I accepted they’re not for me.
My friends and I really liked the D&D movie. I think my biggest takeaway from it is that I want to play a more Xenk-like game where not essentially every single thing needs to be done as a group practically 100% of the time. For Xenk, the Underdark was like a side quest on his campaign while the other party members were on a separate campaign and their paths crossed. He was doing his campaign in the town on his own, he had a reason to join the party, and once they finished, he went on his own to resume his own campaign. He wasn’t (to use my biased perspective) “forced” to stay with the party the entire time.
I would like D&D (and probably TTRPGs in general) if it was more like an MMORPG where groups/parties are a lot more flexible.
I would like to say, I agree with you about travel time is something that should be glossed over whenever it is not narratively important.
But every time I ask, "ok, the journey from X to Y is a journey of five days along the coast road. Is there anything anyone would like to say or do along the way?" I wind up having anywhere from one to three game sessions of side track. The artificer has heard that there is a mine just off the road they want to try to stop and search/buy/barter for materials, the druid wants to know what the most unique animal they see is, so he can make friends with it, and the rogue wants to know if they see anyone along the way whose pockets can be gone through looking for loose change...
Ho there, i am a new dm and i can say this works so well, in the campaign storm kings thunder, the manual leads you to do this and since i do it, its more fun. Specially the environment consequences, are so fun to describe between travels
Man, that tiered villains bit was just what I needed to hear at this point in my campaign. Really great insights on the film, thank you for the video!
Anyone else feel like really what this amazing movie to get a sequel with same cast no matter in what format
A fun look at the movie from the gaming perspective. 😊
It might be just my impression, but what I got from the "bridge puzzle" is that, if there were a DM, all those odd rules were actually made to make the party understand that they did have to think out of the box and use what they got to find a workaround instead on engaging straightforwardly. It might be a bit tricky if the party does not get the hint, but also idk a way to give some directions without being too obvious- like: "I am asking you to do something unreasonable, are you really sure you want to do it the standard way?". A bit like fight a dragon single-handedly as you brilliantly pointed out: it must not be done this way, not now, not at this stage, better run. Or that was my impression, at least! Very interesting content you got, it made me wonder!
So I play with some friends online, and I wanted to add to ginny's point about travelling with a cool thing we do, when we're inbetween story beats or we've ended a session while travelling we continue to roll play over text, its fun if one of us is bored at work or wanting to finish a conversation from in game. We call it our fireside chat
I took it as a point of pride when my friends saw the movie and just said with complete sincerity: "That was you!"
The moments in question were the first Speak With Dead, and the awning blinding the stone dragon
I've often thought that RPGs could benefit from following certain movie examples.
1) Set up one or more "easy" encounters that have no purpose other than to let the PCs show off their awesome abilities. If your game session were a movie you'd want to showcase how awesome your heroes are, right?
2) Consider allowing the heroes to see the big bad being bad (possibly aided by a magical device.) Or maybe they can hear vivid accounts of his evilness from a lone survivor. (Maybe luck had nothing to do with the lone survivor's escape. Maybe the big bad wanted the party to know what happened.)
Together, these two ideas build up both the heroes and the big bad before they finally meet--just like a movie would do.
I know this is entirely not what the video is out and I'm only 28 seconds in, but can I just say this background music is amazing? Maybe I'm crazy but idk it is making me nod my head to the rhythm. Well chosen!
I think we can all agree the Zenk character was actyally the DM giving exposition and being so OP, also the fact that he just leaves
Point #1, depends on the group I'm playing with. Counterpoint is my fun in traveling in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. Sometimes the journey is the destination.
Thank you for the spoiler warning! I’m trying to find the time to go see the movie, and I know I have like 5 of your videos/shorts to watch after it!
I got so much DM inspiration from this movie! The biggest thing that jumped out to me was actually what NOT to do because of how often they split the party. Fun for a movie but tedious for a game...
I handle travelling just by narrating the time skip and scenery "After a few hours the monotonous green landscape shifts to sharp cliffs and Steep hills, in the distance you can see a varying amount of wildlife hunting and what looks like eagles circling prey in the distant. " I give a pause for players to interact if they wish otherwise I push them forward. "Descending though the many cliffsides turns into hours of long but arduous travel until you notice the ground even outs into a another valley, for some amongst the party find the simple scenery relaxing and quite motivating as you move though the green rolling fields" another pause to see if characters wish to stop here and then continue if they don't "The sun begins the crest over the mountains behind you covering the landscape in a shadow, the sky myriad of oranges and purples. you all feel exhausted from your journey... do you press onwards in the darkness of the night" I usually design biomes between each long journey and have at least 1 possible encounter or event to spice things up.
In my session its all about landscapes and sceneries, or the way wildlife lives to give this feeling of a breathing world.
good point number two, my party took out Cyanwrath in the first time they encountered him through some fantastic combat choices ( and I was left scrambling to work out how the players could get to the rest of the module
I finally watched it the other night and thought the movie was amazing! I completely agree with these tips, especially having a bigger bad waiting in the wings.
If you have a puzzle, always have a back-up way for them to do it. Or they will make one. That is my head cannon about the teleportation stick (if this was a table-top game). It was a plain old staff, until the DM realized they messed up and made it a magic item so the party wasn't doomed by breaking the bridge. >XD
The paladin is just a DM PC to get the party to do what they need to do and move the plot along, and create an oprtu ity for character development. I think he was done really well, at least from that angle.