My players kept getting annoyed with me when it seemed like every single time they turned a corner it was a deadly encounter. So they sat me down and basically had an intervention with me about telegraphing danger so they dont feel blindsided. It has very much improved player morale and the game overall.

Funny thought, when we get a tpk it's from a random fight. When the party goes into an encounter they know is going to be hard, they operate like a well oiled machine of death. So I totally agree with this philosophy.

Important to remember, you can also telegraph individual attacks by monsters, especially the big flashy powerful ones. Having the red dragon take its turn, and finishing it by telling the players that smoke is coming from its nostrils and flames are licking out between its teeth is a GREAT way to tell him that it's going to use its Breath Weapon next round. The evil mage grabbing a lodestone and staring dead-eyed at the Rogue, mumbling arcane curses over and over, can let them know that Disintegrate is incoming. This let your players mitigate this incoming threat, by diving behind cover before the dragonfire hits or knocking the component out of the mage's hand. Your players will also feel badass and clever and that's always good.

I remember one DM's story about a bottomless pit. After throwing a light source down it and confirming that it was, in fact, at least several hundred feet deep, the player said "I jump in". He had no way of slowing his descent or anything. He died, and got mad at the DM. Some people are so stupid that you cannot blame yourself for their failure to have fun.

This is why I love meta-knowledge; sometimes I don't need to do more than tell them what monster left its tracks amidst the bones.

As a DM occasionally I just tell my players how likely they are to succeed/how hard an encounter is. Not only would the characters in game likely have enough experience to know this, but some players don't always pick up on your hints that this encounter should be avoided. That way everyone can equally understand the risk and blindly run into it anyway.

I totally agree that the rule set is a HUGE factor in this! I tried to do an OSR style game in a later edition of D&D and then when I tried to telegraph my players just straight up ignored me and thought it was just "flavor text" or "setting the tone". It totally didn't work because they just fought their way through every problem and they assumed that was what the game was. And they were kind of correct, the info wasn't needed because there was no real threat to their lives or any read set-back or roadblock for ignoring info. Now I run an OSE game and WOW my players LOVE getting their hands on any info they can! They balked at the chance to "buy" rumors about the dungeon once, and then when that lack of knowledge meant they almost died they were happy to pay their hard-earned gold to learn where the ghouls lives and where the treasure is buried, etc. They don't ignore my telegraphing anymore, they actively seek more of it out!

Telegraphing Traps is a really cool exercise on thinking how the trap works, and it also makes traps fair, and more of a puzzle than n antagonistic "gotcha!" moment.

I especially enjoyed the NPC 's fighting each other. Just a couple tips. I would avoid directly saying "you're outmatched". Rather, I would say something like "your gut instincts tell you that you're outmatched". It helps to not break immersion by speaking directly to the player. Another tip would be to allow the players to come across a monster they struggled with recently; only to have a new entity show up and easily dispatch the target. It sets the tone by using a relatable power scale.

Another insightful take! This philosophy also helps ramp up the tension and excitement. Cleary understanding the danger keeps players engaged and on their toes as well.

"The more dangerous a threat, the more obvious it should be." -Electric Bastionland, p239

This is pretty great advice. For a long time I felt like telling my players what was ganna happen would ruin the game, like spoilers in a book. But as a player it always annoys me when the DM let's me walk into certain doom unaware. This video explains the issue I was having

"Encounter balance" is just codeword for having fights that players always win.

I love the “Earlier, Yesterday, Moments ago” approach to the intro. I’ve seen it in a number of indie modules and it’s just a great framing device. I do my best to telegraph danger. It’s still something I am learning to better incorporate into my workflow. I try to do it even in my 5e games as I still find it better to let the characters know what’s going on and I tend to carry over lethality levels out of habit even to the 5e environment.

I always consider that the actual characters are using all of their senses and have experience in the world. The players just get the description from the GM. I've had cases where they wildly underestimate or overestimate bad guys. So I've started telegraphing this a bit more.

Last night, in the Werewolf the Apocalypse game I play in, were fighting of way through tunnels full of enemies, while some allies were talking a different route through the tunnels. When we found the central ritual chamber, the leader of the bad guys had just entered from the other direction, carrying the head of the leader of our allies. We entered combat anyway, and one of us died. At least we went into it knowing that death was an option.

This is honestly something I will be using in my 5th edition campaigns, largely because I use house rules the most important one is if a creature is reduced to 0 hit points and then is brought back from the brink of death they suffer a -1 penalty to all their attack rolls, damage rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. This penalty stacks for each time the creature is brought to 0 hit points and only wears off after that creature takes a short or long rest. Short rest removes a number of penalty points equal to their proficiency bonus, long rest removes all penalties. I also don't allow back to back short rests, there must be a window of at least 4 hours between short rests. This house rule alone makes players really have to think on if a fight is worth it or not, and has lead to some characters being stabilized but left at 0 hit points for a brief few moments if the hostile creatures are more intent on bringing down the active threats than killing already downed threats. I also buffed healing spells to be equivalent to damage spells (and nerfed fireball to its appropriate 6d6), while this makes it slightly more difficult to bring a player to 0 hit points, it allows the healers to do something other than heal ever single turn meaning more players enjoy playing a healer style character. All this said my next campaign takes inspiration from Out of the Abyss but I expand upon it and mold it into my homebrewed world, it's fairly safe to say not all the original characters are likely to survive by the end of the campaign as the fights will be grueling, and they will have to pick and choose at various times if they fight, find another route, or simply attempt to flee.

I honestly like all this stuff. It helps with adding flavor into description also. I think my main struggle is... Well best way to put it is being able to back up the front I place. Because honestly nothing feels worse than making the players scared of something and then they go to face it and... they just push it over. And I have gone to extremes sometimes to try and make something both sound like a threat and play like a threat. On paper it's threatening but in practice it comes out just kind of...

I like your style, man. Great tips. I'm starting a semi-homebrew Diablo 2-5e port (based off the original 3.0 sourcebook) and it's almost all straightforward combat abilities, so learning how to run combat is my focus right now.

Great point. Super easy to understand and apply. Thanks.

First time watching you. I like your vibe. Calm and concise in explaining your philosophy. Also the fact that i mostly agree with you ofc helps. Thumbs up from a DM enjoyer.

I'm just getting back into DMing after about a year break. Happy to find your channel.

Just found this channel today, definitely subscribing! Super soothing voice to listen to, but you don't speak too slow or overcomplicate the information, easy to understand as well.

I learned this over time myself, and it is excellent advice for new and even experienced DM's. I've had new groups figure it out and avoid needless deaths, and advanced groups ignore it and die (at their own admittance that it was a bad idea), it's a very good thing to know and apply as a DM. Thanks for pointing it out , DM's have an insane difficulty with juggling 'every' aspect of the game, so any advice that can help, small as it may seem, is super helpful.

Cool video. Just found this channel but I suspect Im going to love it. Dying as a PC never felt bad to me. We could almost always weave it into something cool as one player sacrifices for the others. Nothing more heroic than that.

Every time I’ve let my party know something’s dangerous, they took it as a challenge and charged in without preparing.

Thanks for the great advice!

Tremendous content! I mostly run DCC which doesn't concern itself with silly concepts like "encounter balance" so newer players could really benefit from a bit of a warning like this. Subbed!

Great vid and ways to ramp tension & danger

I would say that telegraphing danger is even more important in more "drama-focused" (and not "combat-focused") RPGs. This helps you to squeeze a lot of feels from simple setup and (possibly) avoid combat all together. I'm planning to use it today in my Werewolf the Apocalypse game. Wish me luck :D

What a video to stumble on. I play a lot of "lethal" games where any violent encounter is usually the player's fault (i.e don't antagonise the mad wizard and he won't strike). But I never considered overtly pointing if an encounter *could* go bad. My players aren't the sort to complain often but I'll definitely bring this up! I try my best to telegraph but sometimes... Could improve communication during play with more warning signs. Cheers.

Very good video. I find that people are very.... passionate about this topic. I find that pointing out organizations or monsters that are above any beyond the players current level gives them goals and in game reasons to progress. All of my players know that dragons are not to be taken lightly. I still use the 12 age category system and they are far more powerful than they are in the 5E books. I don't usually display the power of a dragon at low level. Around 8-12 is a good time. The nuance and even a basic change in vocal inflection can change how the encounter is perceived. I love the song Paint it Black (especially the West World version). I will have the party scouting an area and tell them that you are getting a bad feeling. I will play the song low in the background. The WW version has a long intro that slowly gets louder. As soon as my players realize that it is playing they are all on high alert. In game they are being alerted by the lack of animal movement or a strange smell in the air. For the players, they feel like they are in a movie or video game where the boss music is playing.

Thank for spreading this idea. Ben from Questing Beast also discussed something similar about not hiding traps but telling/describing to players a trap so it can be creatively solved. This is very similar but with encounters. I’ve been doing both for EZD6 and it’s been working brilliantly

Really important tool, thank you for reminding me of this I've not been utilizing it enough. The two monsters fighting next to the exit is such a great problem for the party to solve as well!

Really cool seeing this idea getting out there, this is a huge part of the rpg I’m writing! The example I like to think of is a party of three all sneaking through a heavily guarded area. the situation in which two pcs roll stealth and succeed and one rolls stealth and fails effectively leaving the party spotted (typical dming for the encounter) is a completely different scenario then the situation in which two players KNOW they can sneak by and all players KNOW the third player cant. Now instead of rolling blind into a failing situation they can make so many more choices. The two sneaky pcs could engineer a distraction for the third. Two could stealth kill some guards. The third pc could be a great distraction for the other two, they could all do the classic steal two uniforms and pretend to be taking the third pc as a prisoner. Having players roll into a fail is just a feel bad when they didn’t know the likelihood of outcome, and even when they do succeed won’t feel as good when they actually had no idea of the difficulty.

Thank you, this is really helpful :)

I feel like I would have dissageed with you when I was starting out as a DM. My philosophy was that the players should be smart enough to figure stuff out on their own. After a while, and more than a few character deaths, I began to realise that I was suffering from DM myopia. A condition where you, as the DM with perfect knowledge of the situation, forget that the players only have your description of the world to base their decisions on. So while I don't think of it as telegraphing danger and holding the player hands, I do try my best to give a good description of the scenario so that they have the best chance to make an informed decision. Sometimes the crazy buggers charge in with swords swinging and fireballs blazing, but at least they knew what they were getting into. Also, your narrator voice is top notch! It reminds me a lot of the narrator from the Baldur's Gate PC games 😊

you are epic i am subed for the last 3-4 months and i love your vids especially the crafting one's

Love this idea, and I think it's applicable in a lot of games, even 5E (though I love me some OSR for the exact same reasons as you like them!)

Really dig all of your videos! I would love to see a video regarding fair encounters!!

Good tips. Another major benefit to this tyle of DM'ing is it would build tension rather than just being surprised all of a sudden when something bad happens. Good stories know how to build tension. It would be funny to have different soundtracks you play in the background 😆

Nicely explained!

I don't know who you are and this is the first time I've seen your channel. I'm a rookie DM and am very interested in making dnd feel impactful, in a way that's not normally felt. You are a hero with impressive skills but if you don't use your wits or have a survival instinct, you will perish. That all said, I love your straight to the point take, without an insane amount of production, and the down-to-earth style of "this is how and why I think this matters". Liked, subscribed, and await more DM content from you! Nice work!

Awesome video House!

I wouldn't want to tell my players "you're outmatched" outright. I love to reward knowledge skills and roleplay with in-game info ( I mostly play 3.x D&D and its derivatives). The dangerous group of mercenaries 1) notice the party coming from a long ways away and swiftly react to contact 2)correctly assess the threat level posed by the party like the seasoned warriors they are, and react accordingly 3) have gear that's well used, bearing the scars of combat but also skillful repairs, kept in great condition 4) all wear an identical badge or brooch that signifies they're a unit that's practiced in working together 5)move smoothly and calmly to tactically advantageous positions and ready consumables before talking to the party. A knowledge (local) check identifies them as members of the elite guard of a local mercenary lord. A profession (soldier) check reads their medals and sees they're decorated veterans of many conflicts. Time taken to talk to a travelling merchant on the way can reveal that a detachment from the Duke's Own Dragoons brigade passed ahead of the party, which the mercenaries will readily identify themselves as. The PCs can clearly recognize that this crew are not pushovers and demand their respect.

One thing I rarely see discuss about combat lethality is how players LIKE to fight. I'm playing a forbidden lands campaign right now and even though they know they can die from any single hit, they keep on attacking monsters because fight scene are FUN and tense! But maybe it IS because its lethality they enjoy it so much. Even though I've been telegraphing Danger in and out of game (sometimes I just tell the players the adversary they fight is very strong and they might all die from this fight), they never back out of a fight. I guess that's fine as long as your players are ok with rolling new characters now and then. So far I had a 1 pc death every 3 sessions or so. 😱😁

Yup. it is always good to let players know that you do have difficult encounters planned that they are not necessarily mean to take head-on. It helps if you and your players have a good understanding of what constitutes acting on meta knowledge and what is just you getting information that your character would certainly know and be able to act on (always helps to have one extremely smart/knowledgeable character just to have an excuse to know a lot of things). Recently me, a martial for life at my table due to everyone else liking casters, had the opportunity to play a caster and I played a wizard in pathfinder 1e. This was a roughly 2 year running game that ended a couple months back and I was told I played the most wizardy wizard he had ever GMed for. How did I make that happen? By constantly asking questions about the lore of the world and conforming if my character would know about an area and what dangers awaited and I did what any good wizard should do, I prepared for every eventuality even if it was unlikely to happen. Why? Because my character knows about the dangers the party may encounter and has the ability and resources to prepare countermeasures ahead of time. I think I had maybe 4 or 5 direct damage dealing spells prepared but everything else was buffs, debuffs, control, and debuff-removers (also he was a magic item specialist so a lot of situational items to counter environmental effects when spells alone would not suffice). Good times, oh and my character almost always _tried_ to talk his way out of encounters and constantly tried to recruit anyone with a hint of magical aptitude to become his apprentice. I renamed my diplomacy, which used Int instead of Cha, "Diplomancy" because he rolled so well. Good times, and none of it would have been possible without an open communication with the GM about what we may encounter. And yes, about a third of the things I prepared for never happened. I think he had a bag of holding full of consumable magic items for eventualities than never came to be or were avoided. Think I ended up with every first through sixth level spell and all transmutation spells (as well as some homebrew spells I was allowed to make along the way to do specific things that no other spell could do) other than those from my two forbidden schools and I think I used almost every spell I knew at least once (even if only as a crafting component). Thessalonian Greed School (that's right, no enchantments or illusions) may not be the best choice, but it has the most opportunity for creativity of all the school selections; two free copies of a transmutation spell of every level per day you know on top of your normal prepared spells is no joke.

this is such a good video! very inspiring. i hope to one day make as negatively wonderful videos as you

My favourite way of showing my group of players that a particular big bad was not to be approached yet was to have another, almost legendary group be built up during the course of the game. The players were about level ten at this point and had been hearing stories about another group of adventurers who were taking the fight to the encroaching evil when they met them. Pleasantries were exchanged and they parties got to know each other a little. It was made clear that these heroes were far and above some of the strongest in the land. The legendary NPCs were on their way to confront THE BBEG and the PCs were tasked with following some days later to clear up any remaining and shattered forces that may have escape. Instead the found this legendary group utterly decimated. They had heard and even seen these heroes in action and, with a little investigation, were able to figure out that this battle hadn't even been remotely close to a fair fight for them. The kicker is, one of the players still suggested they chase after the enemy to get vengeance and the other four looked at him like he was insane. I'm so glad that the rest of them understood the message loud and clear and instead they all now understood just how far they'd have to go to be good enough to fight this force.

Interesting... getting ready for an Metro/Tokyo: Otherscape game and I could definitely see this coming into play for such a narrative focused rules system.

Great post - I much prefer running games without a huge amount of balance. My players can run into anything during their explorations, but if they don't have the sense to avoid annoying dragons, or riling local nobles so much that someone might pay them a visit to throw them out of a window, then they get what they deserve. That said, I do try to make it clear when they're overmatched.

This was great! I'm glad this video floated to my recommends. During one particularly tough encounter, where my players were facing down a Ghost Dragon, I had to stop them at one point as they all turned to fight the dragon and said "Ok, hang on, stop. If you all run this thing down, you're probably going to die". Probably kind of immersion breaking, but it got them to actually think about what they were doing (the dragon was incidental to their actual objective), and also got them to be creative and think up environmental options for causing damage. So sometimes a heavy hand is ok, too!

I loved your closing remarks regarding 5e being (if I may paraphrase) basically too easy for the PCs. I've played D&D since I got the original white box with three small rulebooks in it in the mid-70s, so I was baptised by Old School games - I liked fighters, so my PCs died...a lot. ;) Had a bit of hiatus from the game as a bunch of my gaming buddies had families, moved away, etc., but started up again with 3.0, with some of my buddies and their kids and wives. :) 3.5 fixed a lot of 3.0 issues, and we gradually adopted a number of house rules to tailor 3.5 to our tastes. 4e didn't interest us, and by the time 5e came along, we'd decided we'd given WotC enough moolah - I've played it, and it is a decent game to bring in new blood, but it didn't feel dangerous - so we're still playing 3.5, and we know full well that adventuring can be dangerous! "Going negative and dying" in 3.5 just feels a lot scarier than making death saves in 5e where if you get up with a small number of hp, just going back to 0 if hit again. I have PCs actively fighting defensively or using total defense in order to get out of combat when low on hp, not laughing because they know they aren't going to die from a single hit... As the primary GM, I do try to provide clues as to the danger level, but I don't have to work too hard at that, as my players know I am perfectly willing to include challenges that are extremely difficult, and they are willing to ask questions, look for such clues, etc. They also know that sometimes you can talk to creatures you meet. Your example of the mercenaries was a good one - parties that just attack every creature they meet will find that isn't the best strategy...and it isn't like some video games where everything has a friend or foe identifier... ;) Many creatures in my games have their own motivations and jobs, and they don't want to die uselessly to a band of adventurers any more than the PCs want to die! One thing I have done, but very rarely, is when the PCs miss the clues regarding how dangerous a creature is, especially if the creature opposes their mission but isn't actually evil, is have the creature fight using nonlethal damage while actually engaging the PCs in conversation. Kind of like Fezzik vs The Man In Black...

Good video, thanks, definitely agree telegraphing danger is crucial. On the challenge/balance thing, I do think in a game like 5E where combat is its own little mini game and so much of players’ characters revolve around it, balance is important. What bothers me is the sheer size of the power spectrum. Phrases like “dangerous, battle-hardened mercenaries” are completely relative to PC level. In a linear campaign where you’re just putting encounters in front of the PCs in order as you go along it doesn’t really matter, but in a more sandbox style of campaign there’s no obvious way to let the players know if that phrase means “a challenging but doable fight for you right now” or “mathematically impossible until you level up eight more times”.

The one character death I've ever had was 100% due to misapprehension of danger. We thought we'd cleared the dungeon, so we split into groups of two to collect the remaining loot. Cue my character opening the door to what looked (due to map dimensions) like a small closet... which was actually a prison block where two Redbrand Ruffians had set an ambush. The rest is history.

I'm interested in the think you asked if I was interested in! (A discussion on what a "fair" challenge is, that is.)

Great Vid! It has me thinking (as a new DM)... for 5e D&D at least, instead of having the players roll a perception check to see just how hardened and tough a group of enemies look / how difficult the terrain is, they could roll a general insight check. This would give the characters some discrepancy in how dangerous they each perceive the current threat. A cautious, wise cleric holding back a trigger happy "every one is weaker than me!" barbarian. I'm sure this way has some drawbacks, but I feel like it would create some good character moments.

I have watched this so many times! I love it, but you need to upload another video... get crackin'! I also said I would support you more, so here I am! One of many kittens in space.

In Spycraft and Spycraft 2 (basically a hack of D&D 3) missions were rated as Threat Level White, Yellow, Red, or Black, which changed the available gear for requisition and how much gear you could bring. If i remember correctly, Spycraft 2 had mechanisms for basically designating a scene as extra lethal of less lethal and it would change the consequences of running out of vitality points

This is nice, I did warn my players in and out of game a few times about dangers but I sometimes use that as a lure more then a warning at this point because My players want to be challenged and have fun in and out of combat

I always do that in my games. I've been fortunate enough to have a core group who understands their characters are filling in the storyline of the outline I presented, and don't metagame what their characters wouldn't know. I tell them flat out, "There's a Black Dragon as the boss monster, there's no possible way you can defeat her." They have a blast trying to get to her, then figuring out what to do when they find her! LOL Anyways, great video, thank you. You actually EARNED my like and subscribe.

I play a lot of games that either are more rules-light, like Monster Hearts and other PbtA games, or that have very quick, lethal combats, like Vampire the Masquerade, so I always use these kinds of strategies in my games. One of the most effective times I think I've used it was in a Monster Hearts game that involved a plot where a powerful cult had secretly founded the town and needed sacrifices to maintain their power. The PCs decided that one of the first things they were going to do was break into the mansion of the town's founder, who was later openly revealed to be a serial killer and which was currently a local history museum, during the middle of the night with zero preparation or planning. Obviously the cult still used this place in secret and there were plenty of hidden things in the house and barging in recklessly was a great way for the cult to immediately catch on to who they were and make things infinitely more difficult for the players. The cult mainly used their power to make the land extremely fertile and prosperous, so their magic was very tied to the land itself. One of the PCs got their powers from the same source of the cult, so I narrated that that PC saw moving, humanoid silhouettes made of mushrooms circling the mansion when they got close, and they radiated such power and menace that it gave her a headache and she nearly passed out. The PC who got the headache was sufficiently spooked and said they should abandon the plan and do something else because it was likely too dangerous. However, there was another overly-optimistic player that said that this was their best lead to finding out what was happening here and that, if they all just stuck together, they'd be fine. This somehow convinced them, and the group went in and got very quickly stomped and were forced to flee. The PC who saw the mushroom silhouettes was using a character known as a Queen which is very specifically designed to resolve around tight control over their Gang members, Gangs being a feature that most other Skins have to earn through Advancements but which the Queen gets automatically at character creation, and she lost one of her Gang as they were escaping. Honestly, that move was the beginning of the end and the entire rest of the campaign was one dramatic dumpster fire as all of the PCs allowed their own personal issues and petty infighting to systematically destroy any chance of survival. But, I telegraphed the danger very clearly, they knew that something like that might happen, and Monster Hearts is meant to be a very melodramatic game with lots of messy, teenage angst anyway, so we all had a lot of fun reveling in the glorious messes they created. However, if I hadn't made it clear from the very beginning that that one decision at the start of the game could be as disastrous as it was, it would have probably felt like I was kneecapping them from the start rather than giving them the option of choosing the tone they wanted to set for the rest of the campaign.

I have been running/playing since the late 70s. I learned to reward socializing, it is an excellent way to telegraph the possible futures abd challenges to players. (It also rewards those who like roleplaying as well as those who invest in social skills.) There's nothing like the grizzled barkeep with a murky past and a recently arrived minstrel telling similar tales to make a party take notice. The analogs work everywhere; Vampire, Werewolf, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings. There is nothing wrong with giving the party clues or warnings if it can be logically done.

I like that you just straight up say "You're outmatched". Don't leave room for ambiguity when the PCs are about to make a deadly mistake

This was a good video on an important gamemaster tool that often goes underutilized.

The best session ever (according to one of my players) was last week's, where I had given them a week warned in advance that, because their life-support failed on their Spelljammer ship, they had one hour to MacGyver to avoid all of their characters and crew being killed by explosive decompression in the vacuum of space. That is, they had one IRL hour - pausing the clock to explain rules - before space sucked everything out. And they had a week to prepare. I was very proud of them for making it, although all the crew did not make it, and the only attack rolls that were made were with a harpoon to keep the Barbarian from flying off the ship in zero g.

I use that a lot. I have to do so as I don't really balance encounters. On that note I would love to see the that video about balance :)

Had this happen to my game a little while ago, I literally described the valley pass as "ambushy" and my players proceeded to confidently walk in with no plan, had a player death but I was absolved of any guilt as the players all thought their own plan (or lack there of) was terrible. This was also the second consecutive ambush and the previous one was just as deadly (although no one died), so they knew what they were getting into.

I think this will depend on the players as well - I would not for any of the players I've ever had go as far as saying 'you are outmatched' before either side do anything. Drop the hints these guys look competent in whatever way suits the moment and let the characters make up their own mind. If they choose to go full on reckless murderhobo and get slaughtered that is on them, and they should learn the NPC won't pull punches and just let them win (most of the time anyway). So perhaps from then on they study potential threats from a distance, perhaps they attempt an ambush, maybe attempt to talk, or sneak past, or perhaps the chaotic muppet of the group will do something silly. The latter being often the most fun - either the other PC's notice and stop them or have to decide if they are going to help, hide or run as whatever chaos has just been let loose unfolds on the probably very confused NPC... And I try to make sure that sometimes even folks that are not a challenge to them can still look tough enough at a glance - afterall a squad of well trained soldiers with well maintained and freshly issued gear and the fresh bunch of rookies that have just been issued their first real weapons can look very similar and the PC's should be debating the course of action among themselves without all the information all the time. That creates some actual tension and uncertainty in the players and an opportunity to really play into their charecter - is this a real threat or not, does their charecter feel overconfident, scared etc? Which when they know the real threats are lethal means they and you can have great fun as they carefully try to sneak past the practically harmless but slightly scaring looking monstrosity - success and they are happy, challenge overcome, fail and they get to have that sigh of relief moment that this wasn't so as bad as they feared.

you narrate beautifully! Vids on that plx!

Recently i ran a campaign for a party including a couple newer players (watched a lot of crit role, never played) In starting area it was established that a dragon lived in a nearby mountain. Even after countless warnings from villagers of how deadly it was, the lvl 3 party descided to ignore their escort job they were hired for, and GO GET THAT DRAGONS HORD! Needless to say, it did not go well, and after a near OHK, their epic battle they had planned turned out to be more of a chase sequence. Through many sessions of adventuring, the whole time they were were always thinking about when they were strong enough to come back and show the dragon what for. It was extrememly rewarding for the party, im definitely going to continue putting high level monsters scattered around early areas. Makes the world feel more lived in, and gives the party a goal thats PERSONAL

Good info. I telegraphed the danger of an arcanaloth in Dungeon of The Mad Mage who is several levels ahead of the party, and head of a wizard school. My monk mocked him openly and stated he was weak, then tried to deceive him by using a scroll of modify memory. The monk failed. The wizard stopped time in response. That was the end of the session...

I'm reminded of Diana Wynn Jones' remark in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland about how flowery descriptions with language along the lines of "a reek of wrongness" or suchlike, serves the same purpose as ominous music would in a movie.

Interesting idea

Well, I love running horror games, thus my players are usually already from the onset aware that the monsters might be rather powerful and it is not a good idea to mess with them. Still, I agree with you about having it nevertheless still clear in the game so that players can make informed decisions. However I have thought on the examples you gave. Somewhat beside the point is that I do not like to talk in second person when running games, since I feel not comfortable with telling the players what they characters do, like if they moved any closer to a structure when they see it as a distance or what they see. Instead I mention only what is there without referring how that is perceived by the players, especially not what conclusions can be drawn. Thus instead of scars or outright telling them they are outmatched, I will tell that quite a few of those mercenaries have trophies that indicate what kind of monster they were capable of overcoming, or I outright say that they sport the insignia of a well known mercenary band and their reputation (no knowledge checks required, I outright tell those things). Regarding the second example, I would not frame the situation as something that could lead the players come with the idea that maybe waiting could be an option. Instead I probably would tell them that the fight of the creatures might lead to a collapse of the cave or building, and then instead of dealing with boring stealth rolls I would proceed and let them make reflex saves (or the equivalent of it in whatever system is played) to avoid falling debris. That again would first make it very clear that those monsters are not there to be fought with and it directly gives the payers something to react to and does not bog the game down with something to choose when there is not really anything meaningful to such a choice.

This works in all types of games, not just those that are highly lethal. I ran a game recently using Fate Core (not a very lethal system at all) where the party found their path blocked by the villain, who basically had a superweapon on his person at that instant. I made sure to reveal this up front, and to use the moments before the battle to establish that he was clearly quite confident he could take all three of them easily. In practice, this might not have been true. Fate Core is a forgiving system, and I expect the PCs could have defeated him if they went for the brute force option. But that telegraphing changed the texture of the scene, and the players made the much more interesting decision to split up- two of them escaping and heading for their true objective while one stayed behind to distract the villain and buy them time. It led to this incredible standoff where the one character who stayed behind was hopelessly outmatched but holding his ground anyway, knowingly making a heroic sacrifice to save his friends.

Good video. I would argue this is very important for trap also. The "Gotcha!" element of traps, ussualy only create distrust on the dungeon/game/DM. Changes the behaivor of player to be constatly checking empty rooms and hallways to a halt. It is not fun to play at all! If you telegraph the danger, even the trap mechanism (they saw it action in advance), then you can make a SERIOUS deadly trap, and let the players decide how to creativly solve it/skip it

Something I like about certain TTRPG books, is that they have a dedicated section to telegraphing danger.

One of my favorite moments as a DM is when my players were considering ambushing a rich looking merchant wagon train. "As you situate yourself on the cliff, you see (notice check) a dozen bandits hidden in the tall grass, well concealed and ready to strike the wagons as they rumble through an area of the road narrowed by the river on the far side. At a shrill whistle from their apparent leader, they rise from their concealed positions in unison with readied crossbows. Before they release a single bolt you see their holes appear in their head and brain and bone spray backward as though a cannon ball had struck them in the face. The only movement you see from the caravan is one wagon rocking slightly side to side as though a heavy wind had temporarily shaken it." .... "Ok, so the DM just told us we're dead if we ambush this caravan and if we do it's our own fault. What's our new plan?"

I was running a quest that involved a CR2 miniboss that my players inadvertently walked straight into. I let the wizard take a "not 1 check" (a check with a DC so low only a 1 could fail it) to look at it and determine "if we fight this right now, it will kill us". So they left it alone until they leveled, after which, I made it a wandering monster since they disturbed its lair. It helped the flavor, as the CR2 minibusses was happily eating civilians.

Here's what I do in my 5e games. Using something similar to the "new" exhaustion rules (minus 1 to d20 rolls per level up to 5, lose of 5 ft speed for levels 6, disadvantage for level 7... all cumulative... and remaining unconscious at level 9 of exhaustion) for every time they are brought back from death saves and 1 level after the fight if none was taken during. It keeps a sense of danger for battle and death, but is not too punishing (I'd never allow reaching 10 levels of exhaustion and death) and can still be healed or have a fighting chance in battle. But it makes players think if they want to fight, sneak, or negotiate and reins in the yoyo deaths tanks and healers like to play. Of course good description helps.

I remember my first time playing dnd as a player. New to the game, but with a decent understanding of mechanics because I had DMd a session once. Literally just helping fellow noob friends through character creation and a session 1 with some social aspects and a puzzle. But no fight. The dice were not kind to me that day, my druid child was dead as soon as they had been created, as in in two hours. They did rescue the party from a tpk, so they were a true hero and damn was the story telling great, but damn do I fear going into death saving throws.

I'm a huge fan of telegraphing danger for different locations or encounters, especially when it makes sense for the characters too. In one of the campaigns I'm in right now, we had a PC die while trying to drag two unconscious PCs back to a field hospital in the back lines, while the last two of us stayed back to fight as long as we could to help keep the frontline from breaking. None of us knew that there were assassins inside the capitol city walls going around planting what were literally described to us as nailbombs in said hospitals and blowing them up. There only other explosions in the battle were from a cart full of blackpowder barrels we had yet to detonate at that point, so you'd think we'd hear these explosions in the back lines and think to ourselves what's causing them when the invaders don't have cannons; the two of us who still had the hit points to fight on even heard such an explosion later from a long ways away. But no, Raddick got jumped out of nowhere by an assassin when he was alone dragging two downed PCs and had 12 hit points himself, and was killed. The explosion that the other two of us heard was Paul, one of the downed PCs who was brought back up by an NPC from the party who stayed back from the fighting, detonating the nailbomb he noticed stuffed into Raddick's eviscerated chest cavity so that nobody would get blown up trying to move him. The whole situation was really fucked and lead to some shakiness where everyone blamed ME for making the decision to keep fighting and trying to buy some time, and he went through two different characters in the next two sessions, one of them being a joke character, because he was so invested in that first character that he didn't know what else to play. As a new player, he doesn't exactly have a ton of ideas for new characters that interest him, but recently I talked with him for a few hours to help him in his efforts to make a character that fits a particular aesthetic and playstyle. Whole thing was a big mess and one of the most unexpected and unfair yet entirely underplayed deaths I've experienced in my 5 years of near-constant weekly D&D sessions.

I like having environmental telegraphing, like if there's a giant wandering around the area I can talk about his footprints, or the sheep carcass lying nearby with a big bite taken out of it. Directly telling your players that the encounter is dangerous is good too, but I like giving the players time to think about the threat and how they might deal with it before it appears on screen.

I wrote a game system where it became a core mechanic for the group to know the exact (equivalent of) DCs and possible consequences of the challange. Since then I like to give the group more informations in all systems to make informed decisions. It is awesome! Can only recommend it :)

solid advice.

I chopped a paladin's leg last game, it felt really good on both sides. Players become bored at some time being unkillable (6th players, 11 level at the moment), and that dismembering added a new level of emotions. And when your cleric is multiclassing party understands that they won't get that Regeneration from him and has to deal with the problem somehow in the future. I tried to telegraph the danger, it didn't work because of their power level. It was fun until level 9-10 sessions rushing into a deadly encounter and win it but everything has an end

I've always loved the Clash of the Titans (1981), especially the fight with Medusa and model a fair amount of game design philosophy behind it. Perseus hears about Medusa. Then he sees the statues of the men she has petrified. The fight would be unwinnable without the knowledge of what he was going against, and his wits, and even with those the fight is difficult. I've also always hated "it's the Rogue's job to search for traps every 5 feet" as a mindset. Have always taken inspiration from Indiana Jones, and videogames, where ANYONE can notice a trap, and use their abilities to find a way to deal with it. Rogue might be more familiar with possible complications or inner workings of a trap, but a party shouldn't be screwed just because they ended up not having one. One that I rather enjoyed was a trap in an Indiana Jones style mini campaign for a single player. I ran it twice, once with the player being a ranger with a gun, and once with the player being a warlock. The players were on a time limit, as their studies revealed that a Pandora's Box kind of artifact was aligning to start releasing more and more monsters, with the key to stop it being in a nearby temple. So the player sees spikes on a wall, with a skeleton impaled on the spikes, directly away from the spikes is the hallway deeper into the temple. Each player hesitantly started going into the hallway, where they noticed chips in the walls, an axe stuck in a crack with the handle facing back the way they came, a torch sconce twisted and bent in the same direction, and vertical grooves in various places. They come across a rune pattern on the floor that covers the entire width of the hallway, and here their actions differ. The Ranger picked up a rock and threw it past the rune. Gravity immediately shifted, sending them back the long hallway toward the spikes. They took out their whip aiming for a torch sconce, failed the first attempt, succeeded on the second and slammed into the wall, taking some fall damage but avoiding landing in the spikes. From there they had to use the grooves to painstakingly climb all the way back up the shaft, wasting precious time and becoming exhausted. The Warlock studied the rune, but could only decipher that it would activate when something passed over it. So they back tracked and used speak with the dead to determine that the skeleton got impaled on the spikes by falling, and that that hallway was the only way forward. They went back toward the rune and when they started feeling gravity shift they cast spider climb and made it up pretty easily, though down two spells. I don't think combat need be without risk in 5e, but a lot of DMs seem to try to make a "fair" fight. I just try to make sure the fights don't devolve into both parties just swinging until someone goes down, in my opinion some fights should be easy for the players, and some should be imbalanced but with interesting things to interact with or interesting goals so clever players can turn the odds. And enemies should behave in ways that don't resemble the mindless normal enemies found on an MMO map, that only react to aggro and stand around attacking. An example: dragons are intelligent, they have incredible stealth and perception (an under rated strength), they have treasure. I don't see why they wouldn't fling cursed items at the party with their tail, or keep an artifact in their hoard with an anti-magic field between them and the incredibly threatening wizard, or assess which character is the healer and have minions steal their focus just as it is distracting the party by revealing itself.

Imma be real, when I saw the thumbnail I thought you would literally hold up that card in game to let them know which is why I was so intrigued by you making a vid about it

As a 5e DM, I have learned how to use monsters very creatively to turn a simple group of 4 or so unmodified kenku into a deadly group against 4 level 4 players without modifying anything besides using what the players can do; aka, if the players can throw a rock, the kenku can too. Not their class abilities or racials, but anything reasonable that the kenku should be able to do with it’s 2 arms, 2 legs, and a head. Additionally using terrain is another big thing. It’s all about strategic planning before the session; if the players can fly, give one of the birds a bow and some arrows, if they have ranged weapons, some cover, if the players have spells that can effect around corners, a magic item even if unrelated to countering that spell, like a scroll of insert random spell here, can make for a pretty dangerous kenku which has a few casting options, it’s about outsmarting the players during a fight enough to make the players consider backing off, even if at the end, the players will win regardless. I have had a kill and managed a few times to drop them to 0 hit points, even with using OP homebrew that buffed players. My players have slowly become more cautious and although I don’t have many kills, I still have the ability to say “I can kill on accident , and although rare, I never have fudged a dice.”

Subscribed! I've played old-school gaming. Telegraphing danger is very much the opposite of old-school gaming. In the old days, players had to assume that any fight could be their last. Paranoia was the standard. That's not to say that telegraphing an increase in danger is a bad idea, or that it doesn't have its place in a game. It's just that you can't go around tossing in words like "old-school" when they don't apply to give your content some kind of credibility. In the 70s and 80s, your indication that the going was getting tougher was when two fighters, a cleric, and a thief died.

Great video! I really love the 'Ken Burns' style narration of the encounters! I tried a bit of telegraphing in my last game as one of the characters went off to explore on his own. I may have been a bit too subtle. This was a younger player so my 'telegraphing' may have seemed more enticing than like a warning. We were playing 5e so things turned out fine once the rest of the party showed up ;-)

So funny story. At one point in time I told my players “If you hear me put on Bloodborne music, you’re in for it” whether that was at the start of a fight I thought they’d struggle severely with or at a point in a battle where they aren’t doing so well and it might just go to rpm territory. I told them this once and since then whenever we are in a fight and I change the song they instantly ask as people who don’t listen to the bloodborne soundtrack “is this bloodborne?” 7 times outta 10 it isn’t, but it keeps them on edge for sure. It’s worked so well as a cue for players to pay attention that when I’ma player and one of them DM’s they will instinctively use bloodborne when they think we’re in danger. Like when one of them used The First Hunter while we were up against a buffer banshee and I think a wight as lower level characters.

In my prior game, the party ws tracking an errant blue dragon. They eventually found it, but it was... lets just say graphically dead. In a way that was visible from a distance. Investigating the party soon found the site had been used to summon a Herald of Kanae’Ubur, a very nasty god that had been hounding one of the PCs for a long time (due to them jokingly making an offering at an alter in this very location). They knew this thing was Very Bad, but that it didn't want them dead just yet. The party fought it for 2-3 rounds before teleporting out, having made enough attacks and skill checks to identify it's special powers and weaknesses. They came up with a plan and opted to do some divinations that clued them in that it was already halfway to their city and would be at the walls the next day. So they couldn't drop a volcano on it (long story), but preped the right spells, attacked it away from the city, baited out it's epic actions and once it was out went full nuclear. I think the fight was about 5 rounds. This was a level 13 party vs a CR 20 home brew monster. Goes to show that a focused party with just enough intel and aware of just how DEADLY a fight is can punch well over what raw level would indicate. Note I've played with this group for years so was well aware of how strong they build characters, so I was confident in the outcome even with the power this beast had.

I was thinking of my own wound/damage system. What if damage creates wounds dependng on how much damage it causes (minor, major, severe, critical, Fatal). The more severe the wound, the longer it takes to heal and the more intensive care is needed. HP becomes one's Healing Points which they spend to begin healing their wounds/maintain their current state, which the damage representing how much HP they need to spend to heal the wound. The teirs of wounds are descriptive and up to the DM in how they may effect rolls and such. If you lack HP, that means your wounds are unable to receive healing and your health takes a turn for the worst as all your wounds fester and upgrade to the next tier.

In Shadowrun, I had a killer decker that treated the Matrix like his personal catbox. I told him that he'd be going up against more dangerous networks with serious black ICE and he kind of shrugged it off. Make no mistake, the stuff I put in there would absolutely kill him with a few bad rolls. So when he was about to blunder into some paydata protected by crazy ICE I told him, "your 'deck's predictive algorithms scream as you drift into what looks to be a more high security area of the network. Your expensive combat softs preload as if bristling at some unseen foe. You've heard enough sob stories over drinks to know that your run is about to come to a swift end." That was enough to snap him out of his lazy little romp and put him in a much more creative and defensive state of mind. Some GMs would have probably said to burn him and teach the group a lesson, but having their decker start to act like a pro when he usually just smoked a lot of weed and told jokes, was warning enough that they needed to start taking the 'corps seriously.

I like the emergance 👌

In my world, I have ecologies that make sense. Like in an area of the world with an active mated pair of dragons for decades, the creatures nearest to the lair would be the stoutest or stealthiest, tapering to weaker possible adversaries at farther distances. Communities and ecologies closest the alpha predators have a reason they still exist. As the party approaches, they will get tougher and tougher 'random' encounters as a warning. Even if the party is being very smart and stealthy and avoids or evades the encounter, that knowledge is enough of a clue to warn them that these tough opponents also live nearby and if they can't even handle them, they have no business being anywhere near here at all. In an old campaign a brave party was given these warnings and pressed on anyway. The only clear survivor was a character at half the level of the rest of the party who was protected by them through the lead up encounters and was in total fear that this was a very bad idea. She waited far enough back to not even be near the battle map and watched the rest ignorantly (or arrogantly) announce their otherwise stealthy approach and get decimated. They all died except for her and a barbarian who was nearly incapacitated and decided to play dead. Fortunately for them the dragons weren't hungry for fast food that day. But they did take their shiny wealth and magic items. After a decent time, the lowest level character and a badly bruised ego barbarian dragged the dead party members back to civilization.

Listening to this, I thought of how I'd implement it and I think instead of directly telling them *upcoming* danger I'd tell them the *potential current* danger level - represented by a D20, that I will set whenever I want to give them update on their situation. The idea being higher number = bigger danger, that way I don't need to spell it out and allow them themselves to interpret it - that way they start imagining themselves what could be wrong and maybe have a second thought about what happened up to this point and what bread crumbs they potentially missed, as well as giving myself the option to possibly take it away for a situation where they would have a hard time judging the surroundings to create more tension.

I kind of like being somewhat upfront about the difficulty the PCs might face without all the flowery vocabulary. Sometimes it can come across as the DM just wanting to hype up these dudes if you get too wordy, especially true if your PCs have an ego. I prefer having them make, say, a perception or intelligence check and then saying something along the lines of "you get the feeling this thing could kill you if you aren't careful". Keeping it direct like that to round things off illustrates two things. First of all, the danger is clear and avoids most issues with misinterpretation. Secondly, it makes sense that a PC, even with minimal combat experience or poor perception/intelligence, should have some level of danger sense based on their previous experiences, and can be worked into their internal narrative.