"Adventures that are published aren't merely meant to be played; they're made to be read. And if you're going to make somebody read something, FOR FUCKSAKE MAKE IT ENTERTAINING." And in this moment I understood why Chris Perkins is a god among DMs.

I could watch Chris Perkins talk about D&D for hours. Actually, honestly, all of the guests lately have been top notch.

"The adventure shouldn't break because the characters made the wrong choice." - I played in a pre-published one-shot adventure once where there were some murders in town and we had to figure out who done it. We investigated the first house to ask some questions. A dog appeared and ran off as we noticed it. One of our players decided "I want to pet the dog." So he followed the dog into the woods directly to the final boss, a sloth demon. It wasn't a good adventure.

Another thing to add about the whole "there is no wrong way to solve an adventure: You will never be able to plan for every possible way. My players went through Murder in Baldur's gate by forgin a bunch of documents from one side and constantly aggressively confronting everyone. They had so many enemies and people who wouldn't trust them. They were in jail, about to be executed, about to be assasinated and I was constantly flying by the seat of my pants in this chaos but we had fun and they felt victorious in the end. So I consider it an adventure well played, even though the written text expected absolutely none of this :D

I remember as a kid in the early-to-mid 90's I was subscribed to Dungeon magazine. For a while, it seemed like almost every month they published an adventure module by Chris Perkins. I don't think he even worked for WotC (maybe it was stil TSR then) at the time, but was so good at writing them they always put them in. To hear him talk about this is cool. Back then it was my dream to have my adventures published in Dungeon and get hired to work on D&D. So Chris is living my dream, haha.

Those survival dungeons are what we used to do in my early days in the 80s as a fund raiser for the group as well as at cons. Our DM used to call them "Death Tests". It'd be things like someone has rope, someone has a bucket, someone has a bolt of cloth, etc. and all of the pieces would help get people out of the dungeon in someway, working together as much as possible.

"...And woe be to thee whom is stricken by a falling mummy..." True poetry right there. :D

I'm a simple man. I see a video featuring Chris Perkins talking about D&D, I watch that video.

That dude is one of my biggest inspirations. To truly enjoy what he does allows us to enjoy the benifits. Need more like him

As a dm this made me chuckle in White plume mountain: “will cause a stream of scalding water to rush into the corridor, hopefully burning the idiot who made the hole”

I don't know why but I feel such a sympathy for Mr. Perkins, he seems like someone you could have awesome conversations with for eons lmao not to mention his work; awesome guy, honestly! cheers

I found this useful. Being a new DM this really helps me ideas to plan for sessions. Thanks for the upload.

I've been thinking a lot about trying to post on the DMs Guild over the last year but I never really knew how to write an adventure for someone else, this was incredible and my love and respect for Chris Perkins just continues to grow! Thanks for the great video D&D Beyond!

Some useful stuff here, thank you. I just recently started DMing, I was going to run a pair of published adventures from level 1-3, then 3-5. Buuuut, when the party got to the boss in the first adventure, he was supposed to escape if they took him below half of what ended up being an even hundred health, and the second of the pair was to chase him down. Well, by the time he got his first turn, he was down to 56, I tried a chill touch cantrip, to feel out his attacks, but the party member easily saved. Next round, the warlock gets in a crit, and then my brother the paladin (I think his dice are loaded) doesn't even realize he has spells other than smite, but casts his divine smite, crits, max damage, and takes the boss exactly to zero. I thought about giving him more health, but wasn't comfortable with that, and I had a loose backup plan, so now they've gone to swap a famous musician's instrument for a fake.

Amazing words of wisdom. I will absolutely be taking them to heart.

Seriously; how do I get a job like these guys have?

Still, In my opinion, the best Dungeon Master. Have had loads of inspiration and laughs watching and reading his campaigns.

Wow. This was the best video of D&D beyond so far. Please, more videos like this, it was a great insight into how to write an adventure and the mindset of the developers. Huge Chris Perkins fan here!

One of the best of these interview series so far. Plenty of advice, relevant anecdotes and character that made it unique. That Perkins f-bomb caught me off guard haha.

Ok guys so check it. There's this ring of power that's owned by this evil guy named Sooraun. This little Halfling finds this ring after its been gone for thous...... what? It's already been made? Wow. Okay. Someone is stealing ideas..... Sorry guys give me a week to start anew.

Thanks Chris for coming through clutch for me! I needed to hear this again.

Oh my Lord I love this video. I find it super informative as I slowly construct a world of my own

Chris often emphasises the importance of making an adventure adaptable to player choices. I wish he would say more about how to actually accomplish that.

Thank you Chris!

This is phenomenal wisdom. Thanks!

A lot of sillyness in Curse of Strahd? I'm sorry, but the ghost of Sir Tripalotsky is a very tragic character and shouldn't be made fun of!

Even though it's a couple of years old now. It is very insightful hearing these things as a DM and some one who is currently writing a adventure i would like to consider having published in the future.

For Curse of Strahd, I was doing too good of a job being Strahd. One PC wanted to kill herself, two wanted to betray the group and be werewolves and the other did not care about anything but herself. I started to give them glimmers of hope and they had more fun but I had substantially less fun.

He's dropping gems that I didn't take on for years.

Perkins' first published adventure, I think, was the old "you're shipwrecked on an island, defeat the villian to escape" hook. It was in Dungeon Magazine, issue 11.

Motivation is an issue I've dealt with before, too. I wrote a module once to be handed out to other DMs, which was a very short one-shot adventure meant to be handled over the course of a single 2-3 hour session. Originally, I'd just had the basic adventure hook of "You're all staying in this inn together, and someone comes running in asking for help with a local bandit gang." but then realized that the party might not be comprised of many (or ANY) characters that care about a bandit gang, so I had to add a little note that said "If the party debates helping and they seem as if they may not want to bother, have the bandits launch an unexpected attack on the inn while chasing the person that came running in. If that doesn't kick them into gear, have the bandits actually harass the party directly." Of course, the actual adventure's plot was a bit more complicated than a simple bandit gang, but that had to come after the party went for what appeared to be a simple thug infestation.

He talked about Hankerin Ferinale’s L.O.G system ...location, obstacle, Goal for writing adventures, awesome!

omg! I have this character, (gnome rogue) that tries to talk their way out of every encounter. I LOVE that CP accounted for this kind of character! Props, my man!

A4 is such a fabulous adventure, it is when i learned to be creative with stuff!

I’m currently in the process of writing my own personal adventure that I could have others play, and thus is very helpful.

I could listen to Chris Perkins talk about D&D all day.

Chris Perkins is awesome. A big inspiration good knowledge here.

Good video. Very informative for beginner DM's like me.

Wow this was amazingly profound

Great video thank you! :)

"For Fucks sake, make it Entertaining!" -Chris Perkins

Chris Perkins is a treasure.

This is great advice both for my West Marches community and general DM life advice 😁😄

GREEN FLAME!

I fuckin love that dude. Super down to earth guy. I'd love to be able to sit down with him and pick his brain, even for an hour. Chris Perkins you're a myth among men.

I wasn't even surprised to see ProJared at at 15:53

I asked my players if they wanted to have a city adventure, go to the underdark, go to the jungles or to a far away realm. They chose a far away realm so we are playing Curse of Strahd. But I had Dragon Heist, Out of the Abyss and Tomb of Annihilation ready to go.

"If the motivation doesn't match with your character's it doesn't matter how good the rest of the adventure is, they're not gonna be interested in it" I curse the day when I wasted an amazing character, a firbolg bard on the Dragon Heist campaign...

My players liked Snow Wight so much I used it in other adventures and made up similar tomes.

He uses a magical Cap of the Adventure Creation.

This is perfect because I'm writing an adventure for Dmsguild.

Bro Chris Perkins and I have the same jacket lol that is cool!

Makes sense. A quote I heard years ago: lf you want to write it, you need to read it.

S'taya`un DaWrelz, if said to quickly sounds like Stay on the Rails, S'taya is the kind but oddly powerful NPC guide leading them to their desired destination atm

I loved A4!

It's strange, I agree with what Chris is saying, but part of what makes Ravenloft the BEST adventure published is that the adventure is forced. You can't do it all the time, the some kind of compulsion, or an 'agreement' between the gm and players that the goal is to kill the big bad (the Hobbit), helps a lot in adventures. Give the PCs a clear overarching Goal, then let them solve it how they wish.

i have this idea in my head that most of Perkins time is making ADVENTURES and kind of shutting him self in a room most of the time i no its probably not try its just this image i have stuck in my head.

i remember when chris was just a dude on the FR Mailing List who occasionally wrote to dragon mag.

Great writing guide for this "true" RPG godfather game.

Sage advice here 😎

Chris is the best DM in the world!!!!

Does anyone have any advice on which published modules a new dm should get to dissect to help with learning to write their own? Tomb of Annihilation is popular and seems fun but I'm worried it might be too open for modification for me to study well. Sunless Citadel was recommended by my DM but I'm looking for 5E not 3E. Thanks in advance!

I'm currently trying to design a campaign that centers around something pretty different: the deities of the domain of death have tricked the gods of life and captured them all to take over the material plane. Having little life left in the planes, undead creatures ravage everything. It's the PC's jobs to find and break the seals that keep the gods of life imprisoned. So the motivation is a bit forced, but it puts the characters into a desperation filled adventure, where failure could mean the end of everything they know and love. However, I'm having trouble being able flesh out the story and make it more immersive.

I like having easily changed difficulty encounters. Let the party run into a scouting group from the main enemy's camp/dungeon. Look at the effectiveness of the party vs what is planned to be a 3 round combat. (easy to moderate difficulty) If the party walks over the encounter, the screams of the scouts brings another, larger group. If the party is severely taxed to deal with the combat, rethink the difficulty of all planned encounters in the adventure. Find the power balance by experiment. If it took the party 1 round to wipe the small test encounter because they abused their powerful spells... they will run out of those and you don't have to be nice and let them get a long rest. (dis-spell magic on their Leomund's hut and wake the up... OOOPS!)

Eminem out here giving great DM advice

Can someone tell me where the thumbnail image is from? It’s rad!

DnD is life. Esp. 1st Ed.

The TSR 32 pages adventures we great and minimalist with prep. Now WOTC give us 300 page text walls. I'm running our parties through TSR era stuff or homebrew now with 5e. Bring back the condensed format.

Another mention of space...

"if you're going to make somebody read something, for fuck's sake, make it entertaining." Perfect example of this is in Wild Beyond the Witchlight. "Here's a fantastic opportunity for you to explore your hidden talents as a mime."

Wow ! Thats a real serious guy! Ok* I´m paying attention ~

Or even a massive castle people would totaly go on and dnd quest for that.

11:34

this is helpful.. BUT, I have problems with grading the monsters to the level of the party.. needs to be simplified (5e)

Instead of using madness results in Out of the Abyss I would rather have players see crazy delusions and experience a loss of their surroundings except for moments of clarity when challenges arise but when they find out what is actually real they are able to get to the source of the problem. Than in Curse of Strahd I want to use the two horror parts. The Japanese horror verses the gothic horror experiences represented in and outside of the power core of evil.

how do you write a hard cover adventure for 5e???? like ghosts of salt marsh etc...? level 10-20 I want to write or someone to write for a hard cover........

4:33 I choose space. Spelljammer forever.

yey

I want to play a game in Barovia before it was part of ravenloft. i think it would be cool to have strahd as a human threat not a vampire maybe it was a time travel thing so you can stop him from becoming evil or its about stoppng him from doing the most evil deeds that made him worthy of a dread domain.

Wait I own that jacket... Well great minds think alike I guess???

How can an individual such as myself write for publication a Dungeons and Dragons module adventure?

You know people love you when your vid has 600+ likes and only 1 dislike.

"there's gold in a dungeon" and then proceed to have the party get framed or some other way indebted to need to pay things off(or have a huge political campaign.)

Adventure modules are meant to be interesting interpretations of said module there is no hard or fast rule! They are lent to be modified to your players & DM’s rule of cool! You are not trying to kill your players first & for most! You are trying to creat a narrative that your players are invested in!

I kind of wish one of my former DMs would have seen this video. We were going by a rule where is you confirm a crit with a nat 20 it is an instant kill and i killed his boss battle he set up with a 30 minute monologue he had written out and i read it, so it was truly a beast of a monologue. But anyways back to what i was saying i insta killed it half way threw the first sentence and my DM lost it lol the game fell apart. After reading the game as he had written it was clear that boss was not really important at all just what she was saying explained the basic reason for the game. My characters motivation was ale and dwarves .

When did Eminem start playing D&D??

Yeah man, when I write an adventure for my friends and I, I can just annihilate them no problem.

Can Perkins be my sugar daddy?

Suddenly thinking about when my fiancé tried to run me and a few others Waterdeep and the, yeah, we’re not buying, at all, that there’s nothing wrong with this manner, particularly my friend who has been rping for years but this is her first ttrpg, threatening if it’s all a shame to Volo XD

Gern

Is his hat shrinking or is his head getting fatter over the years?

I would bait the players with 100 200 gp

14:20 :^O

Biff the Understudy.

is he ever seen without a hat?

Next time you publish an adventure send it to me so I can fix it before hand. That way other people can reap the benefit of my effort. Playing Storm Kings Thunder and changing Everything. Spoilers ahead...... The descriptions should be in italics so that a dm can read it easily without slipping into meta info. The option to be from Nightstone would give a party a huge reason to go on the adventure rather then being detached. Whisking the party a thousand miles away sucked for my group. They had built relationships and political intrigue. They had defended the town over and over, and were expecting the town to be attacked again by the snakes who had threatened them. Suddenly a month dissapears while they are in a tower with nothing to do apart from three weird encounters. Brynn Shander is literally a waiting room for a Giant attack. No battlemap, no inventory in the shops, being handed npcs for combat sucks. No real trigger for the attack. I added dozens of battlemaps. Filled the shops including eight market stalls with Npcs. Added a prison. Made the leader corrupt so they have an issue to solve, and they have to earn each npc's help on the battlefield. Also wrote proper description for each area. Fleshed out who was in the temple and what they wanted. Introduced the dragon they would save and had him drop them outside bryn shander. Had a crypt of the dragoon rider which was the dragons old rider. He is encased in ice and can be released. He had the ring of winter and defended the town from Iymrith who attacked with a golem dressed up as a Huge yeti. The ring of winter was taken from his corpse. They can free the dragoon and find out what happened. Take control of the golem and use it against the giants. Learn about the ring of winter, Iymrith, and the dragon, the Giant attack, and prepare. I also had a group of changelings who were after the ring of winter and had built ice tunnels underneath Brynn Shander. A Bomb of glyphs and a scaffold is under the temple ready to blow. They use weight as the trigger and drips from the roof of ice, means there is a ticking clock. The temple was full of healers so my party had sent npcs there and the priests would also be useful in the fight to come. With six access points around the town they have a good shot at finding it. I had the party find a man being hung by two shady characters, who they knew were changelings. The man wanted to stay with them, feeling unsafe. They trust him, the enemy of my enemy is ny friend. He is the leader of the changelings who informed the frost giants of the ring of winters last know location. The party can side with the giants, or the changelings or the people of Brynn. They can focus on the Dragoon. Learn about the fight and what the ring can do. They can plan and prepare and get help. Or they fly in dropped off to an unknown location. Sleep in three inns with no related hooks. Be handed npcs, to get killed, and not care, and have a random event of a giant attack. My players, are adults and sensible. Risking their lives for a town they dont know, or care about, wont happen. They would, quite rightly, sit on a hillside and watch it happen. The hooks from the npcs suck so bad I was shocked. Travel all the way back to a major city to not find the guys father and not get the ring. Are you insane? Describe miles of overland travel, make it feel like a month of walking happened. Flesh out the entire city (guess what no content) and then finally the quest is pointless. This just boogles the mind. Seeing the smug smile from a guy talking about how to put an adventure together triggered me, when I have spent over a hundred hours so far fixing the mess of SKT module. Went online due to the pandemic and hoped the module would be simple. It isnt. I have to understand someone else mind and then layer in my usual standard of homebrew, instead of just homebrewing it. I was dissapointed.

> World of Warcraft Thank you KZfaq

Got to say I disagree with Chris on one thing .... My players will do anything for gold and magic items .... ANYTHING !

He looks like Eminem

📅♟🎣