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I’m so glad we’re discussing monsters as an aspect of the Exploration pillar. I always saw the Exploration pillar as a best used to springboard players along the other pillars of play (realistically, all pillars should do this, but Exploration is one of the easiest to do). Not to mention that the best monsters in media are always built up through environment and implications way before they’re ever shown, and are more interesting for it.

Always happy to see a nice long episode from these two!

COVID's got Jim looking like Dungeon Master Jeff Bridges. That or Colville. Actually, I've never seen them in the same place at the same time...

There’s a cool book called “The Monsters Know What They’re Doing” that seems worth mentioning in the context of this video. It’s about monster tactics, but it is informed by the habits and culture of the monsters it describes

"You see a lot of prey animals" made me think how great it would be to have some deer or something just rustling about in a hidden corner of a dungeon room and see what the players do. At worst they get a meal or get gored.

Hell, we have trees in Australia that _require_ fire to reseed. There aren't enough eucalypts and banksias in fantasy settings!

Monster Combos, the VOLTRON: Stone Giants that throw Galeb Durhs. A Dracolich that's been hunting and eating trolls, to gain back its flesh and regenerative abilities. Bullywogs that summoned extraplanar beings and now have Slaad tadpoles in them. A massive Iron Golem piloted by goblins (ala the Labyrinth).

An hour long episode?? Web DM, you are too good to us. Thank you.

"Write lore that interacts with your players" Wow

I doubt they will see this but I wanna say thank you from myself and my players I always get such incredible ideas from watching you guys and after every video I feel more confident and it’s really effected my group and how we play. My players used to bring really basic characters but after talking to them before our current campaign they all brought incredibly interesting characters with tons of ways to connect them to the campaign and it’s been absolutely epic. Love this channel love these long episodes. Thank you.

The new screen drawn aspect looks really good! I love the idea of mixing terrain and monsters and blending the consequences between the two for players :)

Petition to start calling the "pillars of play" "threads of play" to intimate that they all interact and interweave with each other.

Okay, first, an hour of you two is exactly what I needed today. Love the long episodes. Second, the editing, while obviously different from the fantastic work from earlier, is right on point. The background works perfectly, and you've got your lighting down. Third, is that castle pixel art!? Your table looks great, and that castle is the star of the show. Just a big ol' thumbs up to the whole thing.

49 min.mark. To quote Mike Tyson "Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face."

In terms of traces monsters leave behind, check out what Monster Hunter World did with its monster tracking. As a player explores, they'll come across old kills, scraped off scales, broken claws, and other indications that a specific monster has passed by.

These long episodes are sooo much better than the short "work break" episodes. Tbh i can listen to web dm talk about anything.

It was great hearing about the relationship between the wolves and rivers at Yellowstone. It reminded me of the ecological stuff in Dune. I think I'll try to work in some monster-based ecology in my next game. 😎👍

the best thing about reaction rolls & tables is that they give a lot of work for the DM in the beginning of the game, but the prep work for each session becomes way easier.

I actually bought Keith's book that he wrote about his blog, super helpful for beginner dm's and a good refresher course for veterans.

"The best vanilla that you can make," the most mayonnaise of sauces, or the whitest of white breads can become something truly special if just spend time understanding what they really are and assemble the ingredients yourself.

Great episode. I'm split on nuanced monsters versus good'n'evil. Frankly, I'm getting tired of dungeons with Monster X Faction and Monster Y Faction and "deciding" which side to take. As a DM I like to keep my Goblins (for instance) evil towards civilization and , destructive, treacherous... and this notion of five weirdo explorers showing up in their lair and making deals with them is feeling really old-hat to me. "Sure, we'll help you steal the Thing from the Kobolds who conveniently live next door!" At the same time, constant "bust down the door and kill everything" gets boring, too. I really enjoy these videos. Thanks.

Excellent episode. For practical advise along the same lines, read "They Monsters Know What They're Doing" by Keith Ammann.

Oh my gosh, I've never reached a video so early. It's an hour long too!? Time to day dream in world creation for the next hour and I listen

I'm so glad you guys now have a podcast I can listen to on Spotify! You're the best D&D commentators, hands down. I hope you keep doing this going for a long time!

Had to watch it a few more times for clarity - lots of valuable content and educational humor. D&D/DM dad jokes will become my specialty.

I've been trying for a while to get my players to see that not every encounter has to end in combat. I've now got some new ideas to try. I thoroughly enjoyed this topic thanks!

17:00 They're three pillars forming a double arch, if we want to keep the architecture metaphor.

I love the long form videos.. 42:27 capturing a PC 44:01 taking PCs stuff.. When my brothers and I rediscovered roleplaying I dug out my box of Undermountian and had them make characters. After hours of creating detailed tooled out 2nd ed characters. We spent 10 minutes in the tavern, they were knocked out and woke up in the slave holding pins on level 3. All their stuff gone, an elf and kender in loincloths. The slave market was attacked by a brood of 3 beholders giving the PCs opportunity escape.

Dang, a long one today. Perfect to listen to while I work.

I once had a sub-arctic steppe turn into a fetid, muggy swamp because a Hezrou moved in. It was also summoning Slaadi and turning the native orcs into frog people

You could think of how a monster effects your local town politics. The movie Dragonslayer was actually a great example of how to do that. So here's an idea: On the randon encounter table is a Bullete, if encountered the bullette will withdraw frmo combat after about 15 points of damage, in town the locals think of the bullette as the Moby Dick of the land, turns out a local merchant loves this because due to fear of the Bullette no one uses that trade route and so the merchant has taken advantage of that, if the players go after or defeat the bullette now they have to deal with a pissed off sleazy merchant.

I love the mock "round a table" graphics, the final galaxy brain form would be to position your screens or something so you look "at" each other when not speaking :D

Jim's straight up starting us off with "The dictionary defines "Monster" as..."

An hour with these two? You guys are spoiling me for the end of the work week.

Love the longer episodes. Always great to see content from y'all.

Nice to see the new production is going well and the long video, though I didn't mind the podcast at all (for anyone who thought the last 2 videos were short, please check out the podcast link for the full hour talks, not sure if folks missed this or just wanted the video format).

My players are more scared of zombies than dragons because zombies dont run away. Ive always been proud of that.

This is gold. I am working at integrating reaction tables into my 5e game and listening to this is a huge help. I love these longer episodes, I come back to them 3 or 4 times and always absorb more knowledge each listen through Edit: Morale too! Brilliant!

Yessss this is what i love. Good old long videos. You guys are some of the best on the net!

4:40 thank you so much for that. some people pick charachters with proficiencies they dont have in real life because they want to experience that proficiency through their character. the dm helping them with "your charachter knows this" can really help with immersion as a sort of "reverse metagaming"

The updated presentation on the remote episodes looks and feels great. Way to adapt to the times, thank you. Your greenscreen work is on point, it's clear you made some significant updates to your home recording spaces to make it all work. Props to you guys!

Literally just started, and I just wanted to say that I love the new "set design". The whole thing looks smooth now. (I hope that makes sense)

Love is a battlefield. Gods this guy cracks me up. Great video!

Yikes, 15 minutes in and I'm already realizing I'm going to have to rewatch this one.

When I build my own worlds I do the whole lore overhaul thing. My own gods/rules/history and origins for .... everything. It really applies to me. I love to sprinkle exploration lore and clues about local creatures in as well! Great video thanks!

Took me way too long to realize they weren’t actually next to each other. And took me even longer to realize the table was drawn. My perception is 0

Over my campaign I have learned the importance of many of the underappreciated rules. I came to the conclusion that completely removing a mechanic is like removing salt from a cake and wondering why the cake is trash. For example random encounters don't work well as written in 5e in my experience but with some modifications they add many elements.

I am a zoologist and I like taking these monsters from the monster manual and other core D&D content and throw real world behavior and physiology into animals that are similar to that monster that most people don't know about. It make it cool because they become more then just a big punching bag with a bunch of hit points, and I get to educate my players as well. I loved LOVED LOVED Pruitt's anecdote on wolves being introduced in yellow stone. I often run Gnoll Warbands like real world Hyena clans with similar social hierarchies that hyenas have in the wild, oddly enough they are even more brutally savage this way then normal gnolls and there is a deeeeeeeep! rich flavor that brings them to life this way.

I really dug the Patreon Question segment. Looking forward to more of those!

It's nice to see Pruitt is enjoying The Mandalorian so much.

3:43 Pruitt knows what's up with keystone species. Excellent example.

I love you webDM, you always approach these topics in this way where you’re so clearly speaking with authority as long term GMs, but you always make it so accessible for babies like me, so everytime I watch your videos I go away super super excited to knuckle down and have a go at it

WebDM is my favorite D&D/RPG channel and I always look forward to a new video. I've been watching video length get shorter and shorter for the last few releases. This one? Just over an hour. I needed this. Thanks guys.

Hey guys! Love the video! I was wondering if you guys would do an episode on vehicles, talking about ships, carriages, wagons, etc and ways to implement them into games and maybe fixes and such for rules you don't like in base d&d. I always thought it would be fun to do an Oregon trail type game where players each have caravans they need to take care of and lots of preparation to have proper supplies and other things. Was wondering on your guys thoughts?

I need more puzzles that can be solved by create or destroy water. OoT water temple comes to mind. Maybe using it to raise or lower a lever or just change the water level in a well. I love how in DoS you can use the rain spell to save a burning ship. Oh, or use it to extinguish fire, create ice, or conduct electricity.

As you spoke I found my self hanging on your every word. This was a great episode.

Great video. I have nothing more of substance to say. I just wanted to help in the fight with Algorithm, Eater of Videos on the Cybernautic Plane. I heard it has a cr of 1000.

I love rewatching these videos gives me sm inspiration

This was definitely one of the best episodes you’ve made! Thank you!

Nice work on your lighting; that's a big improvement 👌

“Best vanilla you can make!” 😂

Just started running my first game with my roommates and a friend (Phandelver/Icespire combo). Your videos have been an invaluable resource to me, especially the ones about being a good DM and player. Props to the whole Web DM team for producing these videos, and many thanks for sharing your expertise.

I like the long format. I can't wait for you 2, to reunite. The dynamic hasn't been the same since covid. Still fantastic.

More content from Web DM? Yes, plz

In no particular order some tips I've got in my head: - Give players opportunity to gather intel upfront and prepare, gaining advantages they would otherwise lack. - Give monsters and encounters weaknesses. Even if all damage type the monster can deal is just necrotic, that alone is a weakness, if players can get to know about that upfront. A large amount of clustered low HPs are weak to AoEs etc. - Give monsters several abilities they can use once per day/on recharge/in specific situation. Gelatinous cubes, banshees or dragons are good examples of such cases. - Give bosses legendary actions which can control and affect the battlefield or players, or which allow the boss to move outside of their turn to avoid getting surrounded and stuck. Mobility is power when outnumbered. Dragons are a good example of that. - Give bosses 2 or more phases. Sounds gamey, but this is still a game, it's something everyone is familiar with, and it can be very cool and ramp up the tension as the encounter progresses. This is not even my final form! - Give monsters reactions to things players are going to do, which they will have to consider. Examples: if the monster is missed by a melee attack, it gets an opportunity attack on the attacker, and has no limit on them. Or it has counterspell. Or it can misty step 30ft and freely attack a caster of spell which has targeted it as a reaction. - Don't fear messing with the players and introducing chaos and unexpected into their plans and abilities. Charm the barbarian. Throw the fighter into a pit. Toss silence on the wizard. Make them curse, improvise and adjust. - Make sure your monsters deal good amount of damage, don't fear shaving off half of someone's max HP in a single turn, especially in deadly encounters. Your monster deals 75% of someone's HP in one turn? That's still often not too much, as such monster is likely to be nuked by the players in 2 or 3 rounds anyway. So don't fear doing that, way better than almost immortal monster which does like nothing each turn and just takes too damn long to kill. - Make sure your monsters are not too heavy on AC and saves, so players do get to hit and do get to succeed. Make sure there are some saves the monster is significantly weaker at than on the rest. - If you need your monsters to live longer, give them more HP, but usually you want to avoid combat lasting more than say 5 rounds. Get it done quickly and effectively, avoid boring and repetitive slogfest. - Make sure the battlefield contains places where players can hide, which they can use as cover, difficult terrain areas, hazardous areas - make terrain matter and to be interacted with. - Consider getting players into situation where killing the enemy is not the objective, the only objective, or the highest priority. Use hostages. Give an item to the enemy the players are to steal. Anything else than "just remove all HP of all enemies". You can do that at times as well, but there are other options. Don't forget nor ignore them. - Impose time limits, like a ceiling is coming down, doors are closing, enemy reinforcement on the way etc to wramp up the tension and stakes even further. - Link the enemies or their objectives to things which matter to the players or their characters. One of the werewolves is the barbarian's sister. The dragon has burned the wizard's hometown. - Add hidden weaknesses which can immediately cripple the enemies, or something what can be exploited. Say the enemies rely heaviny on a balcony they are shooting from, but there is a way to blow it into pieces. Or there is the liche's phylactery somewhere he will defend no matter what, which would pull him away from something else, also important to the group. - Think about how the monster got there or what its purpose or objectives are. Players may often use that to manipulate that monster or get rid of it in some way without fighting it, or it may just imply the depth of the world and introduce hooks for the following adventures. Remember that ooze in the house? I found out who put it there... But not why. Let's find that out.

31:59 That's why we NEED more ways to get XP outside of just combat.

I do miss the tighter editing of the older videos. there is a lot of "uh, um, eh" that, I feel, should be cut from the video. That said, I love the longer content. More web dm is always great. As always, happy to see web dm content.

WOO! Longer episodes and the return of intros! A wonderful return to form for this channel. Thank you!

Pruitt at 59 minutes you were literally describing hobgoblin Devastators and Iron Shadows from Volo's/Mordenkainens presents.

If there's one thing I've learned from Goblin Slayer, it's that CR 1/4 monsters are not to fucked with.

Always something to think on and always a source of inspiration! Cheers Gents. 👍

Was able to get an adventure idea in the first 7 minutes. A town took out a large pack of wolves and the rest of the wolves left- so the prey animals like deer came and ate too much vegetation so the land is starting to die. Now a Druid is asking the PCs to herd a pack of wolves back into the woods to reset the natural habitat.

"...you don't have to think or consider the consequences..." I had a player who's a power hungry hack and slash. I didn't mind. It allowed me to make fantastic combats. However, one time he donned a cursed shield without even taking a moment to think about it and I told him "you know you could have at least thought about whether or not putting on a shield that was on display in a witches forest was a good idea" and his response was "No". Not "no I didn't think about it" nor "I don't want to". He was just so thoughtless that he didn't even think about his answer and gave an ambiguous no. To further portray his lack of thought he recently texted me after not talking for a while "start a campaign on a weekday" no "hi how's it going?" Or "do you have time to start a game on your busiest days of the week?" Just a flat disregard for any and all around him.

I think the most memorable monster I ever ran was a custom 5e conversion of the 4e Soulspike Devourer. It was one of the most harrowing and close encounters of the entire campaign and the players kept referring back to it for years. One encounter with the monster yielded years of memory and experiences.

Man, you guys really upgraded your cameras. Nice job.

Love the longer episodes. I always wondered what gems got left on the cutting room floor of the edited episodes.

Love the long in depth shows!

Jonathan, between your love of Cryptonomicon from a different video and that Pat Benatar reference, you're really starting to become my favorite Web DM.

One week you guy put out a 9 min video, another it’s an hour lol thank you for this podcasty content! Also Pruitt are you saying “monstuh” on purpose? You sound like Jaden Smith in After Earth xD

one note on the patreon question: the way I usually build on initial success is I look at it like a TV series. Through the first season you have your big bad you need to take down, then during your second season, it comes to light that the first big bad was holding something back, so now your heroes have to go to deal with that. And, like TV shows, not all of your season's end villains have to permanently dealt with, you can pull out not ending the life of someone who's power you've destroyed, or having someone destroyed coming back (though, if you have NOBODY actually end up dead, you do loose a bit of impact), to have recurring villains, or conversions. But in general have the later challenges a result, or possibly only possible because of, things your players did during their early levels, for examples: Thantos can only attack because Ego was killed and four of the six infinity stones have been identified; or the fire giants attack because a player stole the gem the trolls were using to convert prisoners into weapons.

I absolutely love the animated setting you guys made up! Has the same WebDM feel but looks a little better than just a shot of the table. I love how you guys can adapt and keep it fresh! Long time fan, keep doing the work of the gods boys.

Thank you for the video!

Wow an hour long episode? Be still my heart

Eberron does have alignment, but you can be Evil just for being a bad boss and watering down your customers' ail, so killing Evil people just for being Evil is still considered unacceptable.

I learned the hard way that sometimes diplomacy is detrimental. I accidentally turned my friends campaign into a friggin YA novel style vampire war by releasing a captive vampire lord when the DM fully expected us to kill it. We were way too low level to kill it directly, and it turned the entire town, which we were forced to leave. Things got out of hand really fast lol

Jim really pulling off the mullet in 2020, never thought I'd see the day.

For morale: there are two ways people have traditionally encouraged surrender. Generosity to forces who do not make you waste resources, and severe repercussions to those who do. Make surrender the preferable option. If they know surrender means death and/or torture, they might as well fight on. If you tend to disarm and release those who give up and gain a reputation for mercy, why would they risk their lives fighting to the end?

wait you are not expected to fill up your entire character sheet with objects your character has picked up? yeah I kinda figured inventory sheets were a good idea.

Loved this one, hope to see more like it.

Did Pruitt just make a reference to Monster Rancher in the intro? I think I like him even more now.

That's a really nice green screen and overlay idea. It really looks like you guys are at the same table. (Unless you actually are and now I'm making a fool of myself).

the ad&d dmg has a good table for morale and for loyalty

Love the set!

My party tpk'd to a band of goblins and I just had them wake up without their gold or weapons and spent maybe a little too long describing the rancid taste they all had on their tongues.

I like the digital set. I have one suggestion, would it be possible for you guys create a focal point for your eye-lines to match up, so it looks more like you are talking to each other?

Lots of good tips on this episode!

Regarding monsters fighting to the death, the only thing I make fight to the death regularly is demons and most undead. Undead don't know better and demons don't care cause they will just respawn lol

The art looks really cool. Love it

Drawn set is looking good!