I like to say we don't make stories, we make history.

Preach my brother. Otherwise that's how we end up with DMs who create elaborate worlds and complain how their players don't care about their world.

The story is _what we look back on_ after we play the game

I feel the DM should present the campaign world as it is, while the players make decisions based on how they would like it to be. This gives the players agency but without any guarantee of success let alone survival.

"There is no plot," and "Nothing exists until it hits the table."

"The Dice Never Lie" -J. Eric Holmes. The D.M. should be a referee, as indeed he is called in the 1974 rules.

I usually do a Zelda approach, I try to make a cool place for the players to explore, part of what makes a place great is its lore but I don't do much more story than this. Then I set a complication and I let the players interact with the world as they see fit. Because of that my adventures aren't filled with great dialogue, story lines and things like that, but gameplay-wise I feel they are fun to play. Also I'm very bad at making up stories, so I let things play out of the interactions of my players, and I just play along taking into account my NPCs' motivations and the world's internal logic. If it's a supernatural world, something supernatural will happen, etc.

I agree with you on many points but I submit to you that rule #1 is always to have fun.

Thank you. This is all the DM advice that is missing in 2023!

I started DMing in the early 90's. My approach is that I am a "worldbuilder". I create an initial sandbox, and from there my job is to figure out what butterfly effects the actions of the players apply to the world forward. There may be areas in that initial state that 1st level parties have no chance of conquering. That's OKAY. The players can research/scout such areas to discern their chances. Should a party get TPK'd, that becomes part of the world. The next party that attempts that area, may find the spoils of the defeated party. Timekeeping is key. Some options are time sensitive. Nemeses are created through party actions. Let's face it... if an established villain is already targeting a 1st level party...they're doomed. Rather, their own actions turn otherwise mundane NPCs into some of the best villains.

Almost had a TPK at my BFRPG table last week. Creatures rolled awesome, players rolled terribly. I DID reference the downed character’s rod of magic missiles lying by the character. The player decided to pick it up and fire both missiles at a single creature..and rolled max damage, which was exactly what they needed to put the creature down. From there I triggered a morale check and every single creature FAILED. They had a morale of 9 so I couldn’t believe it! The creatures escaped, and the party withdrew and are RELIEVED, but they still have to go back and deal with them again and it has them freaked out. Had I fudged dice they’d never have had that moment.

I rarely, but did occasionally, fudge the dice when I thought the players were just having real or extreme bad luck. I tried to give them a fighting chance. Ultimately all you can do is present events, NPCs and situations against backgrounds. The character provide the action and write their own stories.

- As a GM, I am an impartial arbiter - Death is a learning lesson - If you want to tell an epic tale you've been planning for months? It's going to be boring for your players, just skip the game and go write a book. - RPGs are collaborative storytelling games where you build the adventure together.

My campaign's first mini-boss was a goblin boss that they captured, turned over to the local authorities, and promptly forgot. Can't wait for the party to find him again at about level 12 as the head of the crime syndicate of the capital city of the realm. Suitably scarred from a medieval 'interrogation', surrounded by minions, and thirsty for revenge...

Not a 'storyteller' but facilitator of player experiences that builds a story. It's a co-operative hobby. Great video.

Good day to you all

The term I always use is "Plot is in the past." Like you said there is no plot until it's already happened at the table.

Awesome DM advice. And a pretty cool looking Death Wish Coffee notebook I might add!

The modern expectation of what a GM is supposed to do seems to be more accurately described as fantasy daycare worker than storyteller.

100% agree with the rule that story is written after the game. I take it very literally. After each game I take the role of an in-game scholar and write down everything that happened, chronicling the deeds of the party for the study of future generations. I take a little bit of dramatic license, but if a player did something totally unexpected, or rolled a 1 at a pivotal moment, then that massively affects the story in a way I couldn't have foreseen. Writing this story before the session would be more or less impossible, since I don't know how a story will end if I don't know what choices the characters will make.

Many--if not most--will say that 'The Empire Strikes Back' is the best of the Star Wars movies. It's certainly my favorite. It ends on a bummer but also with hope. All sorts of possibilities are open and the ending of the saga pays off because the stakes felt so much higher. It's a good thing they never produced any movies after 'Return of the Jedi' such films had they been produced would be seen as derivative money-grabs at best.

I 100% agree on not fudging dice rolls. I'd like to hear your opinion on a more subtle way of guiding the game such as not playing the monster's tactics to 100% lethality all the time.

It feels like it's been 3 years since you did a DMs Foundry video Cap.

Making NPC's with backstories, customizing enemies that fits the environment, giving the characters reasons to adventures, populating the world with culture and traditions... all of this is storytelling from the DM. If you're just randomly rolling dice to randomly generate monsters and NPC's in random areas with random backstories, you're easily replaceable with a website.

On the point of fudging dice rolls, I think one of the best things I've heard is that, if it's a situation you want your players to win at, don't have them roll at all! This might work better in less dice-intensive and more narrative-focused games, but I think it's a good one to carry even in D&D or Pathfinder or what-have-you, or go with less binary "win/fail" and more "you still succeed, but here's a problem that arose during." Not quite applicable with straight combat scenarios, however. :D Good vid as always, Captain.

Great content. Thank you for all of these suggestions.

This is why i really prefer the title of referee, or dungeon master as opposed to games who call the ref the storyteller.

Captain, great topic. I prefer the open / sandbox format but also like to help establish boundaries and parameters by feeding the party information and plot hooks. This helps direct play and give them agency. Outline but don’t railroad. On the hiding of die rolls, I’m for hiding most except for initiative and critical rolls such as an enemy’s save that could mean victory or death. I think by keeping most of the rolls hidden it helps create tension and mystery, but by having truly important rolls in the open, it builds trust with the group.

Really enjoyed the structure of the script of this one especially 👌 it flowed well, peppered with useful factoids and aphorisms.

Well articulated - I agree 100%.

Great video!

I just subbed to the Audio Library!

This is the way. The DM sets scenarios and problems in the world and the story comes from how the party interacts with them.

Dice fudging IS the darkside. Adventuring is not for the weakhearted! Game On!

Thanks, Captcorajus, for the heart. Thanks to whomever for the like.

Speaks from my heart.

I see the art of the soft and subtle railroad as the ultimate DM skill. When the story the DM creates flows like water around the actions of the players. The story is never static and is always dynamic. Where will the story go? Who knows, but the story plot devices created by the DM follow the players no matter where they go or what they do. The players are not in control of the world and what happens there. The world is a living thing they are instead of participating in. Events in the world are largely beyond their control at the outset. How they react after events are set in motion makes for how the story progresses. The DM must not be attached to the idea of predetermined outcomes and, unlike an author of books, has no idea what the ending will be. If the DM perfects the art of the soft and subtle railroad the players have no idea it's even happening

For the sandbox approach, without fudging dice rolls, it means that the GM must learn to improvise. I think improvisation is not focused on enough as a prerequisite to running a game, and so therefore railroading happens. In one module I was running, I was so concerned about running the module as written that I lost my confidence to improvise when the players went off script. I simply froze up, not knowing how to react. Fudging dice rolls is a form of improvisation, but like you have said it is the wrong improvisational technique to use. As long as the players are ok with PC death, and as long as they can be reasonable about what they expect from the GM's level of improvisational skills, a game can work. The GM goes with the flow of what the players are chosing to do, and the players are less inclined to ignore plot hooks. It goes both ways.

I agree with you completely. The story emerges from play and is not the GM/DM's. It is in the hands of the players to do as the well and become what they will. The feast is laid before the players by the master chef. But it is up to them what they eat and what the order for their next meal. No offense to the Matt Mercers of the world, but I believe great GM's become background and not the stars of the show.

One comment on die fudging. There is one situation where I think it is warranted. When a PC gets insta-killed with no warning and through no fault of his own as a result of pathologically unlucky die rolls. Like a trap that had no warning rolling max damage in the first room of a dungeon. Or a monster making a surprise attack, getting a crit and rolling max damage. Bam, you're dead. In these situations I think it's fair to fudge the dice and lower the damage. Why? One, because this kind of thing isn't fun for anyone and isn't likely to generate any cool stories or memories. Two, because the fact that this situation exists probably means that the DM screwed up, whether by not providing any hints about the trap or by creating an avoidable situation where the monster could ambush PCs without recourse. That said, if the existence of the trap was telegraphed or the surprise attack came because the PCs were loud and took no precautions, let it happen.

I roll all my combat rolls in public. Getting into Symbaroum at the moment, and the gamemaster doesn't even roll. The players do.

Great video.

Dang, hope you are able to recreate your script for The Savage Frontier, I remember buying that supplement when it came out and I used it a LOT for Forgotten Realms campaigns I ran in late high school and when I was in the Marines.

Fudging dice is so integral to 5e that some monsters have written in them “you can fudge this monster’s saving throws up to 3 times 😉😉”.

I decided to briefly skim your other people's channels list, Captcorajus. After your friendly argument against fudging the die rolls, nice to see you're still on good terms with Skorkowsky. Ha ha ha! But I was pleasantly surprised you had DM It All up there. They take so long between videos, and I thought just I knew they existed. Ha ha ha again!

Old-School, baby

10:30 this seems like a city planning problem, I mean who wants to live so close to the Temple of Elemental Evil?

Wise. :)

Thank you for the like to whomever. Thanks very much.

I commend your attempt to grapple with this nuanced topic. I think the dice topic and story topic probably could have been two separate videos. On the topic of story and the GM, I think you missed the mark a bit. Just because the GM has a sense of factions and how things will likely play out between those factions doesn't necessarily mean that the GM is railroading. Also, in the examples you gave around the snake cult, those were all scripted arcs. I think ultimately what you're trying to say is that it's important that players choose the arc they're engaging with, but they're still going to have to engage with some sort of arc that the GM has a plan for.

"Adventure Facilitator" > "Storyteller."

I agree with you on this. Stories emerge from the game, and dice are part of the game. I don't fake dice rolls, and I wouldn't want to play with a GM that does.

well done my liege

With any RPG game, story structure become scaffolding, in which the players construct the story architecture. The DM is not the story teller. A DM is a story guest of the players.

Great video!! Also I would like too know when the castle Greyhawk review is coming out? I wasn't able to find any comprehensive reviews of the module online and I think it would be great to have one. Same thing with castle Zagyg, in fact even more so. Come to think of it I'm surprised that you haven't covered it yet considering that it was the last project Gary Gygax ever worked on (or at least one of them). Do you not have castle Zagyg, or is just that it's such a huge thing to cover and the task of doing it justice is just daunting? Because you did a good job with the Tharizdun episode and I think you would be more than capable then covering castle Zagyg. Also, speaking of Tarizdun I ended up putting a comment saying that the video was a little boring (if you look back at it, you'll notice that I edited it out). I would like to apologize and say I reconsidered my opinion. It's just the video was a little hard to follow and I had to rewind just to catch what you were saying sometimes (I think that might be because of the nature of the module), so I thought of it as boring and went in reality was actually quite interesting. Sorry about that. I'll try to be less negative with comments in the future

ya gotta let the dice fall where they fall...had a black dragon kill a party member "who was a dwarf" got him resurrected, but we didnt have the money to afford the "platinum resurrection package" so was subject to a little randomness in the type of race he came back as...dude ended up coming back as an ELF! we STILL talk about that.

My view is that there is no story until after the game session. Recanting what you did that night, *that* is the story and the only story.

I enjoy taking PC assumptions and building from there. They THINK there’s a big bad, it’s really just their assumptions that have been reinforced by their actions over the sessions until it’s where they end up. Schrödinger’s big bad, if you will. And, of course, one shots are a different animal.

This is the truth. It hurts but it is the truth. We are playing a game. Life of the characters started with dice and death should be given to the dice

All of this is true if you preface the whole video with: "If you have self-driven and motivated players, then maybe a pure sandbox is a more rewarding experience" Also, I think that Rail Road vs Sandbox is a false dichotomy, You are talking about Linear Adventures vs Sandbox, a linear adventure is not the same as a Railroad IMO: Pure Sandbox: There is no premade storyline, there is a couple of hooks and the players have to step in and make the worlds theirs, you have to have the right type of players to do that. Linear Adventure: There is a predefined plot and is expected that the players follow it and not wander around to much. Railroad: The players have to solve the conflicts in the way that the GM wants. This can be true both in a Pure Sandbox and in a linear adventure. In the end, is all about expectations, a sandbox demands a lot from players, in my experience most players enjoy more a linear adventure than a pure sandbox. My favorite is a "limited sandbox" a place with different and not necessarily related things to do and an overarching main plot. Is the Main Quest + Side Quests formula, the players can engage with the "optional" content as they like while going through the main story. The Lost Mines of Phandelver is an example of this.

Thanks, this was an interesting video. I’ve been playing since 1980 so your references to OSR modules is much appreciated. I do fudge dice roles when I want to end an encounter that has become tedious or do resolve an encounter that may lead to interesting possibilities - I hope that doesn't make me a Sith Lord?

Did you consider N1: Cult of the Reptile God? This one is pretty similar to T1 in design, but with a more self-contained ending. One of my favorites.

Fine job, Captcorajus. What if one doesn't fudge dice rolls only because they can't act to save their life? Ha Ha Ha

"Let the dice decide." LETS ROLL.

Like most things balance is best in my opinion. Have a frame work of events and let them react to them.

🍻🍻

There's no way you can be prepared with all the available stat blacks, maps and just having a coherent game of you let everything go with the flow. There need to be a framework

Isn’t it the job of an NBA referee to direct the action of the game? To tell the story, to manage the outcomes, to fudge the rolls? Well, actually

In our Pathfinder campaigns, we use a luck system that can prevent bad luck and create dramatic moments! Luck Values: (-7) - 24 -Expenditure 1d4 Luck (Must have at least 1 positive Luck Point): You may use Luck to affect one event brought about by an action you take or one that directly affects you. (Examples: Hjalmar using Luck to make Admiral Blood fail a save against a spell HE cast. Timbo using Luck to disarm Admiral Blood. Slayn using luck to make a save vs Zone of Truth which he was affected by. Combat Rewind a la Rick vs. Pixies) -Expenditure (1d4) x2 Luck (Must have at least 1 positive Luck Point): You may use luck to affect one event brought about by someone else's action which has no direct impact on you. (Examples: Bob using luck to rewind Slayn's fireball thus saving 3/4s of the party, but having no effect on him because of evasion. Using luck to make the Shin ship's guns misfire. They were targeting the ship not one individual.) -Every time you advance a level, roll luck as per the table below. ADD this to your previous total up to the maximum defined below. Hopefully this will prevent Luck dump battles right before you advance. Player Luck Player Level Luck Roll Max Luck 1 1d4 4 2-3 1d6 10 4-7 2d4 16 8-15 3d6 20 16-20 4d6 24

I…I will try not to fudge the dice…

YOU SHOULD WORK FOR PATHFINDER'S PAIZO.

What about SANCTUARY?CTHULHU MYTHOS?HARN World.???

Sorry, the e-dog ate your script. The few times that has happened to me, it was a blessing. What I wrote the second time was much better. I hope it works out for you too. 😊

!!!

Vous êtes TOUS Des Drows !

While this all sounds great, I'd like to know where you find players that enjoy taking initiative in where the campaign goes. In 26 years of running games, I've come across about 2 players that enjoy this. Everyone else wants to be shown where the adventure is, and just stick to it. It all sounds great, but unless your players are Old School as all get out, it doesn't work.

I still like my concept of a rail network. It's not a one line railroad with no stops. It's not a road-trip thru "Random Table Land" either. I enjoy designing adventures more than DMing them. At this point in my D&D life, you could call me more of an designer than a DM.

Seth Skorkowsky had a great opinion on dice fudging that I've kept to heart ever since. Dice fudging should never be for the GM's own desire whether for or against the player's success in the game, ans should be reserved to correct if they feel that the encounter was too overwhelming (to an unfair degree) and to be in service of the player's enjoyment. Death and fear of death should always be present and never cheated if happens, but having someone in a last stand with a dark knight to lose initiative and die immediately to a critical hit instead of getting a chance to make that last stand (and most likely die all the same) has the same result, but thw GM has enabled the players to have a great story thanks to him fudging one roll during the fight. Fudging is something that should be exceptionally rare but used when in service of correcting mistakes or when a great story opportunity pressnts itself. Isnt that the reason we have a screen to begin with?

To the whose story is it comment - the story isn’t the dice’s either, they shouldn’t get to remove the fun any more than the others

Pro Tip the Little Guy in the Robes turns out to be Venger's Dad.

Sorry for leaving another comment but I think this needs to be said. I really do think you should do a review of castle Zagyg. I'm sorry if it seems like i'm trying to pressure you into it (that's not what i'm trying to do, I swear). But I feel like you or someone else should do a review of castle Zagyg as soon as possible. Mainly because there are none on KZfaq. And yes I know Greyhawk Grognard has done some videos talking about it but he doesn't go into to much detail. Again i'm not trying to push you into doing a review. (Because I know the reviews you do take a lot of time to make). But I think you can agree with me when I say Castle Zagyg is just one of those things that should be at the forefront of any tabletop reviewers mind. Considering how important it is to Gary gygax's legacy. And I'm just genuinely surprised no one (as far as I'm aware) has done a comprehensive review of it on KZfaq. So yeah, I just thought attention should be brought to that fact. And, I do genuinely apologize for essentially repeating myself from one of the things I said in my last comment. But I just think this is just one of those things that needs to be said and kept in mind. Anyway, I'm looking forward it to your dreams of the red wizards review. Even if I don't know anything about it. Good luck on that review. And again, sorry for making another comment on this video

If players want to be adventurers then you are the Dungeon Master. If players want to be heroes then they need a storyteller. The former doesn't require Big Bads or vast, overarching narratives. The players are the central force, and the story is their story. The latter is about the conflict. The villain is the mover and shaker while the players are reacting to the circumstances other forces have set before them. So basically, Keep on the Borderlands vs. Descent into Avernus.

I agree with most of what you say about building a setting and letting it evolve based on what the players do. But I've got to disagree on the subject of "job boards". To me this is an incredibly cheesy and anachronistic device for a fantasy RPG. Story hooks shouldn't be written out, like quests in video games. They should arise out of interactions with the world and it's inhabitants. IMO anyway.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.....unless you pay attention to what the Jedi do. There are times for sandbox and there are times for plot. There are times for dice fudging and there are times for no dice fudging. There is a certain zen moment when the DM realizes that there is no one true path of control vs randomness. That there is a time for every approach.

You want a story? Go read a book. ;)

This is a more proper take. Modern takes are obsessed with RPG's being "storytelling games" where they develop some sense of entitlement that it's no longer an actual Game (aka threatening challenge) and everything must tell some Grand meta-Narrative. That almost becomes a railroad in itself but in favor of the players to be "main characters" with privileged "actor" status in the world. You get to act. But so does everything else. Players decisions don't control everything and never should. Reality exists with _TENSIONS_. Flat ontology.

This is fine if you're running a module. However if you run a quality narrative and leave a lot of open threads then the ending is not preconceived. Your ability to worldbuild and create is what is holding you back, not that you need to "storytell" it's that you are not that creative and want to run a safe module with many options.

I agree with pretty much all of this, Tho I do think is is more applicable to D&D than a lot of other games that take a more lose and storytelling approach. To each their own. As for the fudging I still have to disagree. To say that the it is not the DM's story is kind of untrue and ducking away from the truth. As a DM you are the one bringing the whole world into life, inventing the stories and the characters, informing the tone and scope of all the happens, to pretended that you are simply proving the story for the players to tell themselves is just not acknowledge the role and sway you really have. Fudging like any tool of the DM just needs to be used only when it is truly called for and with foresight for what behaviour it will encourage. I'm not saying to make the players unkillable and have everything always work out, but you would have to be crazy to think that an extremely rare but expertly used fudge wouldn't heighten the experience of a whole campaign. Maybe fudging is the darkside, but Kreia is right, the light and the darkside deep down are just the same thing.

Why are there DM screens if the DM is not supposed to fudge die rolls? 💥 Truth Bomb 💥

That is nice as long as you play on a table with pen & paper. But as soon as you move to PC and to digital platforms, tou simply cannot have 100% sandbox, you must have things already prepared for the players, you can't do them on the fly...

I gave this video a thumbs down, despite the fact that I agree with you on most of what you say (200% on dice fudging!). I want to be up front that I deeply respect your opinion and your channel, but I need to respectfully disagree with you here. I dislike the video because I think your initial premise is deeply flawed. I think your definition of Storyteller is very specific, and not at all a universally understood meaning of the title. (Edit: I buried the lede here, so I want to say plainly, my gripe is one of semantics. I think the real problem is DMs who think they're there to "author" a story, rather than help to tell one). I find the hair-splitting difference you make ("Story Enabler" vs. "Storyteller") to be grossly pedantic (Edit: and I know, I just got done making a semantic distinction between "Teller" and "Author" - but I think there's a deep divide between telling a story and authoring one. Not so much between telling a story and enabling others to tell it... the latter is just telling a story cooperatively - see below for why that distinction bothers me). As a DM, I am VERY MUCH A STORYTELLER. And I think all good DMs are, whether they recognize it or not. That doesn't mean I plot out a strict narrative that the players can't deviate from, no matter the choices their characters make. That's not the kind of storytelling you do in a TTRPG. Far from it: the players portray characters in the story, and as the DM, I don't have narrative control over the choices those characters make. I do have control over how the world responds. What I do is create narrative moments. Story beats. Events that will take place, provided the players don't somehow change the narrative in ways that preclude or alter these events. Being flexible as a DM is part of the art of TTRPG storytelling. You're not telling the players a story - you're the narrator of the story they're crafting out of the materials you give them. Killing your darlings (i.e., letting some pre-planned moments fall to the wayside in favor of the story the players are telling) is key. My favorite example of this sort of adventure planning is Horror on the Hill. I was amazed at how much STORY is in that old module, despite it being at first glance a typical published adventure of the day (1980's). Many of the monsters are given deep characterization - whether the family of Ogres in the caverns, or the Neanderthals that they are opposed to. The inhabitants of the cottage on the hill. The mad berserkers in the maze, or the true villain at the module's end. What in many cases would have been a simple set of stat-blocks turns into little vignettes that require storytelling skills to portray. These NPCs have motivations that can provide a number of different responses to what the PCs do, and you very much are telling the story through those NPCs eyes. It's a give and take. You tell part of the story, the players tell their own character's part. All that said, I chafe at many of the same things you do: DMs who feel as though the game is their story to craft, who railroad too strictly or limit player choice. But I find the notion that "Storyteller" conjures such imagery rather myopic. In some cases, I've seen people react rather childishly to the title of Storyteller, even in games where its use was meant to shift the focus away from game mechanics and towards collaborative storytelling. That ugly sentiment is rooted in a rather snide attitude I've seen crop up in the last decade or so - people who insist that TTRPGs are all "collaborative storytelling" - and that the GM is "just another player" (the implication being that Players should have as much - if not more - narrative control than the GM). I'm not saying this is your point of view - I don't get that impression. But that attitude is where I see the most frequent pushback against "Storyteller" as a GM title. Now, I also grew up playing other games as well, like Vampire: The Masquerade, where the GM is actually called the Storyteller (ST). So my understanding of what "Storyteller" means is not what you're railing against. That said, I have to die on this hill. A DM is a Storyteller, just as they're a Referee. And again, I do want to add, I couldn't agree more with what you say about dice fudging. That's one of those ugly habits that DMs adopt when they see their role as the AUTHOR of the story, rather than the TELLER.