“If your players have made characters that are a little bit more passive and don’t have a motivation to act, there’s only one thing you can do, and that’s DESTROY THE THINGS THEY LOVE...”

brennan is like that one feral english teacher that reignites the passion for reading and writing you had as a kid but was squashed in middle school and early high school

"When people are passive it means that the status quo fundamentally props them up and makes their life okay." Deeeeeeeep

"Making up worlds slaps, and I love it." I felt that, bud.

I dealt with one player who is frequently absent by giving his character narcolepsy, so his character falls asleep when he leaves the game at an unfortunate time. It's hilarious in-game, and now I make him roll narcolepsy saving throws to stay awake in-game sometimes.

He gives off such a step dad energy.

*whispers* guys i think brennan's gonna freak out if we don't go in this dungeon. Brennan: *overhears* WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT!?

For the circumstances when a player is permanently gone from a campaign (i.e. one of your players moves away or no longer wants to participate or something) you can always deify their character. Meaning turn their character into a God. This is what my friends and I did when one of our friends who was doing a campaign with us suddenly passed away in the middle of our campaign. We decided to turn his character into a God in the world in order to honor him and allow him to continue to participate in our game we'd developed with him.

"Don't demand you be good at something you're new at" what sage advice

Honestly, edgelord duel wielding ranger showing up to a carebear-themed game sounds like a great time.

Cheat. Use your characters backgrounds as the plot points. I mean, seriously, the missing girls in Fantasy High, and all the attached points, were basically a jump off from Riz's character being a budding detective.

"Obligation is the death of fun"

Goddamn Brennan making me get a minor in philosophy just because of how great he talks and I wanna be like that.

When you were talking about mercenaries who want gold, and why they want it so much I was thinking “ my wizard needs to pay off that student loan from wizard school.

Is it just me, or does anyone else now really want to see the Edgelord Ranger learn how to love with the carebears?

"Start at your point of inspiration." Honestly that's the best piece of advice you could give anyone who wants to start creating anything. You'll never be more productive than when you actually feel inspired so find the thing that makes you feel that spark and build everything on that!

props to anyone who DMs. it seems like a horrendous amount of work + the pressure of taking up hours of someone's time.

Brennan Lee Mulligan: Dungeon Dad

Brennan has so much big brain college graduate energy that it feels like he should have an honorary creative writing doctorate and these should be actual office hours for a class he teaches

1:14 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points to start a campaign? 2:21 Do you have any advice on how to come up with plot points specifically to start a campaign? 9:44 How do you reward creative play without just giving advantage? 12:48 How do you disguise your improv so well? 15:40 Do you have a set plan for creating a storyline that includes al of your characters? 16:09 How do you explain PC absence? 18:25 Do I start at the world or the plot? 20:01 Are you scared of burn out?

I have a god made as a joke, and he legit just pulls people in for side adventures and pets with him because he’s a good and happy puppy who takes the characters of absent players to come play with him. I have the player start their next session with (# of missed sessions+1)d100 and tell them what they did, pop something nice, random, possibly cute, but ultimately useless. It’s neat!

I need to get a tattoo that says "making worlds slaps and I love it"

This man is diabolically wholesome. He must be protected.

Another way to deal with absent players: Just don’t justify it, have characters pop in and out of existence. It became canon in my last campaign that the PCs of absent players turned into marbles. DnD is a game and, while immersion is a big part of it, sacrificing some immersion to accommodate a game mechanic is totally fine!

I love how he talks about this. I could listen to him give a masterclass on niche subjects like this for hours

Holy shit, Brennan should give guest lectures in universities. I don't think there's any better way an up-and-coming writer could spend 20 minutes than by watching this video.

The Arthur Augefort thing in episode 2 was improv! I could have sworn that was planned. That encounter was way too hard for the players and he didn't tune it down really.

"When people are passive it means the status quo is working for them" love it

AA said "isn't that right Mr. Gibbons?" "Wait what?" boom.

Jeezus those 20 minutes just disappeared. I absolutely adore these

I know this video is old, but that passive characters describe my players so well. I've always been frustrated by it, but honestly to have it put in a way I can understand makes me feel much better about how they play. Thank you so much!

I love that all the examples he’s using for getting adventures started are things we have seen in D20 nearly 2 years later

a while back in our (fairly slapstick) campaign, when we had a number of players who would miss now and then, the party happened upon an amulet lying on the ground -- the Amulet of Plot Device (also known as the Amulet of Lazy Storytelling) -- which would promptly suck up one or more characters and spit them out again when the player returned. everyone found it hilarious, including when they tried to get rid of it, only to find it mysteriously returned into their packs.

I love what Brennan says on people who just show up with a character. I've definitely seen it before, and sometimes it's worked, most of the time nah. Playing a game divorced of its characters is as asinine as a book where the characters stumble through the plot, detached from who they are or what they want to do

5:00 I think this can work, if you're willing to work with your player in tailoring their premade character for the setting. For example, I have this character that is depressed psychic girl, who usually has a preppy ghost friend. I joined a Sci-Fi campaign setting where psychics didn't really exist in the same capacity, so instead I turned her into an inventor/technomancer with an automaton friend instead. The character at their core stays the same, but meshes into the setting.

14:25 I think the cannon of what is made up in the session matters more than what you wrote previously. The notes are like the original edit while the session played is the printed book. You can always refer back to your notes if they don't force you to retrospectively change the story your players already read. But if it doesn't fit in anymore, you have to drop it. You can reuse it anywhere else, but if you have non-jokingly canonised something in a session, then it is cannon. Unless you specifically ask your players if they'd prefer your original idea and they mutually agree.

Hi Brennan! I know this video is about a year old, but I just wanted to say that a friend introduced me to you and your content. I've seen Bloodkeep and some of Fantasy High and I absolutely love your style. As a fellow DM you inspire me to make better stories and come up with more ideas for my players to enjoy. Thank you for being you and please don't stop making this wonderful content.

I completely agree with character and campaign being tailored to each other. I met with each of my players individually and we worked together to make their character sheet and I was there to brainstorm backstory and motivation with them. Then I started loosely integrating those character motivations into the story and it has led to an experience where everyone at the table has been having a ton of fun!

5:30 is the reason why Brennan's campaigns have such amazing character development 🥰 the way that his worlds are intertwined with the fates and back stories of the PCs really makes a huge difference! The Unsleeping City (s1) is a really great example of this: (SPOILERS BELOW) you simply couldn't have such a cohesive magic system without cooperative character creation. A drug dealer / wild magic sorcerer? Yes, AND he's now a critical part of the lore as the only character directly connected to dream magic, a lynchpin to several plot points and gets to go through a huge character development by learning to take on responsibilities. A drunk woman going through a messy divorce? yes, AND the ex-husband is actually dead, was actually "the chosen one", was actually a part of a secret society the wife joins, and actually through some shenanigans manages to meet up with her so she can overcome her grief and grow to become the actual Chosen One! Etc etc etc. Literally every single character in that season had a ton of character development (ok, maybe Zac's character didn't change that much, but he was still a part of the world building and was connected to the other character's bakstories through NPC interactions.. As well, Zac likes role playing loveable himbos, so they don't really need to overcome large personal hurdles to be good characters, they're just there, along for the ride and to have a good time, while making huge personal sacrifices for the good of the team etc 🥰)

I really love the energy and welcoming vibe Brennan gives off.

Best quote : "Obligation is the Death of Fun" - Yes! I've been at so many tables like this......and it isn't fun! Thanks for the backup Brennan!!

Totally agree with Brennan about mantaining lose plots. On my actual campaign, I've created a bunch of middle conservative antagonists and a main revolutionary villain, but the players fell in love and sided with the main villain, so I had to change the full point of view of the settings.

If a player wants to be just a generic passive knight, I'm gonna make you part of a standing army for a nation that's been at war for a while You know you're probably going to get deployed EVENTUALLY, and that's your hook

Such good advice, particularly the bit about working with the players to create their characters with them, make them feel like a part of the world. I feel like that's a game-changer. If your characters have a desire already that's easy, if your characters are passive you have to make their world uncomfortable and force them into disruption. Also good.

09:34 that’s like writing advice, and that’s what some of us are here for :)

Favorite improv book: Process! Such a great resource for every kind of creator.

This is really helpful as someone who wants to get into D&D and someone wants to write a fantasy novel!

I'm an author (who once DMed a ton) and I wanted to say this is better writing advice than I've gotten from the last several years' worth of videos specifically about writing. My story is pretty intense and my own standards are ridiculous so I get stuck a lot. Thanks so much, Brennan. ❤

I am so happy they are doing these.

As someone playing a bard , the idea that the dm will bend parts of crazy lore that my character spews out( which my character believes but I the player don’t) and the fit it in is awesome

For starting new campaigns, as a new dungeon master, I would recommend a few things: 1: steal a map somewhere. 2: Pick a village to start in. 3: Flesh out this village, with a few NPCs and problems for the players to engage with. 4: Start playing. 5: You can probably get a couple of sessions out of this village. Meanwhile, you can look at the map, and just in broad strokes define what is going on in the country, and the nearby towns. Things like a rebellion here, an ork problem there etc. Maybe give each nearby city a defining trait (eg. this city is super religious, this other city is in constant darkness). Why are these things happening? doesn't matter yet. 6: As players head towards a location, you flesh it out. So the idea is basically you build the world ahead of the players. Is there a dessert on the map? who rules it, what is their culture like? doesn't matter until the players are headed that way. A very good piece of advice is, "The most important session to prep for, is the next one". And another hint, it is okay to drop clues to things, you don't know where leads, as long as the players don't have time to explore those clues until next session. Why did the bandit leader have glowing rune in his forhead? You have all the way until next session to find out. Admitedly a world built like this can turn out a little 'generic' fantasy, but it's your first campaign, just get something going and tell some cool stories.

I tried dming when I was 11 and a dude thought I was bullying him even tho he kept rolling super low.

For the question about 17 minutes in about player absences, in a campaign I was Dm'ing years ago we were using a very High magic setting so this way really easy to handle. One player had to leave for three months (three sessions) to go and help their single mother sister through her maternity leave. We got no warning for reasons that are a very long story so I had to think fast. I went with the opportunity presented by the party coming into a decent fortune of treasure from their last dungeon run in the story. So after clearing how to handle this with the player I quietly gave the missing PC their share at the beginning of their first missing session. From there I spent each session playing the PC, but intentionally not really putting a lot of effect into mimicking the missing player, in fact I purposefully got worse and worse at it as time went on. This was really wonderful due to the inbetween mission time this took place in. Lots of good resupplying and leveling character interactions for my not quite right PC to fail at. It took them about a session to figure out that something wasn't right and spent the second and third session discovering that their friend had picked up a cursed item that was basically eating their soul to 'refuel' the dying lich inside of it. The remaining players got a fun side quest out of it and the player who was absence didn't miss any of the over arching story. They also returned to a table mid-saving their life and extremely happy to see them again completely negating any negative feelings amongst the players about the absence disturbing the campaign.

I think when it comes to starting to create a world there are a few steps that I like to follow: 1. Come up with a loose concept of what's unique about your world and what makes it interesting 2. Start coming up with loose story beats that match the themes of your world 3. Start designing a location for the beginning of the campaign with areas that your PCs can choose to wander toward (i.e a hamlet with surrounding forests with enemies in them) Once you've started Step 3 you'll find that you know where you want to go with the story since you completed the first two steps beforehand.

An edgelord ranger might be just what a care bear campaign needs…

One of my campaigns I’m in is very roleplaying heavy. My character is one of the few who took the longest to remain passive in motivation until recently. For context, the Wizard, and my character, the ranger (, and also the cleric who’s player left the game for schedule reasons) all started sorta passive. We were escaping the demonic invasion of our home town and all had a connection to each other as either long time friends or mentor/student. So at first, survival was our only motivation. But here is the thing, that was about it. The Wizard quickly switched to being active when they realized they now had access to the knowledge they had been trying to research for so long, so he kept with the adventure to continue his research. My character remained passive with his main motivation being to simply protect the group. He is still largely reactive. Then we meet two more of our party. These two are each, for their own reasons, looking for a family member. This makes them quite active and so they join us on our journey. We also later meet yet another member who is also trying to get home, still rather proactive. So why is my character still reactive? Well, his main motivation was to protect what he cares about and what he cares about is the party. But it isn’t the only thing he cared for. See, that home town I started with? My character had spent the last 50 years of his life being it’s guardian, driving off bandits, leading lost people to civilization, search and rescue missions, and bringing back hard to reach medicine from the wilderness. For 50 years he did this and he watched the citizens of that town be born, grow up, and for some, even pass away, in that time frame. He was a known figure of his community and a treasured guardian of it. He enjoyed that role and felt at peace with it. But then he was suddenly on his own and unmoored with only his best friend and student and he has nearly lost them both several times. He has started caring for the newer members of the party too but that really hasn’t stopped my character from worrying about if any of the citizens of his hometown managed to escape too. Recently, my character got information that at least one refugee of his hometown has managed to find sanctuary by following rumors of his name. This has now sparked my character to continue to get his name out there. Why? Because he has no idea where all the refugees scattered to but if they can follow the rumors of his name, he thinks, perhaps he can check them over and make sure they are ok and help them get back on their feet again. His whole motivation is to protect but he has moved from being reactive in it to being proactive in it. I had him show a lot of this during the latest session with him taking a strong lead in using his experience and expertise beyond his combat skills (he is a skilled survival medic with a lot of experience in crafting medicines actually). This came in handy during the latest adventure and he took the lead in key areas. We actually ended up managing to end this section of the adventure in a relatively peaceful way but the hilarious part is that one of the reasons for that is that my character forcibly (not too much so though, it’s been agreed on later but heat of the moment was there) adopted the mini antagonist as their newest student, taking responsibility for her, and interceding before the more corrupt elements of the people in power made the girl a scapegoat. So he switched his tactic. Honestly? A lot of fun. The mix of motivations has been so much fun to roleplay with and bounce off each other in banter and dialogue. And my character having a new student? Well that’s a strong motivation for him. With the added need to advertise his name to act as a beacon, well it’s continued to and fuel to his motivations staying proactive. Honestly? One of my most fun characters to play and definitely the one I think about most between sessions.

Brenan looking like a homeless dad and i love it

5:49 - that's such good advice. The idea of investing a little time in laying out the world that they live in and why they are content is great. If so your player knows is that their character, Bob, is content then you can't do sheeyt to them, but if they role play a little and find that they are content because they have a lovely home and their community respects them, then you have them by the balls. You introduce a friendly stranger, who they naturally chat to. The next day that stranger leads a bunch of goblins into the village, who steal all the goods and burn what's left. Now all of Bob's comfort is gone and the whole village think that he gave away the secret of the warding magic that had kept them safe before now.

These are always so helpful, interesting and entertaining

This series is amazing and this video in particular really highlights the strengths. Keep coming back to it.

One hilarious moment for my group was when the DM for one of our campaigns just told us to make characters and bring them in on the day. We ended up with 5 warlocks and a paladin who's story was about getting vengeance on fiends.

Brennen is the inspiration I needed to become a DM. Love what you do man!

I had a player that made a character that was very insistent that he did not want to go adventuring and that he would never work with a group. He was homeless and liked it, his parents had died of natural causes, he had no friends, no family, and no ambitions. I put hook after hook out, hit the usual motivators (gold, god, glory) but nothing, everyone else was on board and he would actively resist every contrived situation I used to try to get his character in the story, so I ignored him and focused on running the story for the other players. If a character (and by extension a player) are not wanting to adventure then they can make a new character that does have motivation to adventure while the old character gets a day job. One character's frequent absence due to player absence was explained by crippling alcoholism due to PTSD. This also involved the introduction of reoccurring characters that he encountered in his binges (I would have a few minutes of 'what did you get up to' at the start of the sessions he returned) and ultimately it led to him multiclassing and getting them hooked in side quests. With others, a player was getting married and wanted to take a break from the game so, via a time traveling wizard that I often used to break the game for theme one-shots (costume party on Halloween that turned into exploring the character's nightmares and dropping some foreshadowing before ghosts started killing everybody and they needed to go on a haunted hay ride to escape, a wedding on Valentines day that turned into battling werewolves and a ritual to save a young couple that eventually had a second part that was their wedding which turned into flying to the moon and battling a ship of lycanthropic pirates in space, or on leap day they went back in time to save the life of one of the party members in a quantum leap reference, stuff like that) and he took them to the alternate world where many of his adventures occur (where his wife was from) and he met a druid woman there while they were solving a murder and he stayed there in that time to be with her. When the player returned, since he was playing a long lived race and it was a time traveling god of magic that sent him there, he had stayed on that world until he had raised his grandchildren and his wife had died and he knew it was time to return to his friends. He played a few more months before he had to quit for good, along with another player. The other player's character had always been a bit intense so I had the other player's character betray and murder this character. It gave some in story resolutions and also gave some motive to the remaining characters.

I love you SO MUCH BRENDAD

I am just about to start a campaign for some friends, most of whom are brand new to D&D. These episodes are so helpful as great reminders, advice, and tips and tricks. Thanks!

Aw this makes me feel so grateful, because eventhough I'm not into DMing (yet), I can use this in my writing, fiction and non-fiction too. Rocking an awesome beard!

My favorite piece of player driven retcon improv is the werehouse

love the end cut of Brennan snacking

Such a great video! Thanks, Brennan!

The game Beyond the Wall creates character relationships, a home base, NPCs and their relationships to the PCs and each other, as well as a raft of McGuffins that can tie into later adventures, all in Char Gen. It's pretty remarkable. Through Sunken Lands is thier sword and sorcery game that does the same thing. Really great stuff.

Thanks step-dad Brennan. All us newbie dms appreciate you

Making worlds does slap. It's a whole bop.

When coming up with plot and worlds for RP without the player characters, I think the best advice is: just start. Don't think about what is good or bad too much, but just use a jumping off point and develop from there. It'll be alright. (-: An easy way to create a jumping off point is taking 2 things you think are cool, maybe drawn from different movies you saw recently. For instance Steampunk and Pirates, or Extreme cold and Ponies. Mash the 2 ideas up and bit by bit imagine what a world where those 2 are important would look like. Okay, we have extreme cold and ponies, so maybe the ponies have woolly fur. They're boring just being beasts of burden, so maybe they're intelligent. Once you made a few steps in the base of the setting, you can think of what a typical day looks like for its inhabitants, encountering these aspects in their daily lives. Just take it one idea at a time and don't weigh the idea in your mind. It's a puzzle piece: you don't need to see the whole picture yet, you just need to know if it connects to what you already know.

I think when you're designing a game to run, world inspires plot and plot inspires world. You might know you want a game about pirates and you want to set it in a high magic world but as you build the plot you're going to need to build locations or factions and as you further define your world you're going to find cool locations or people you want to make part of the story.

I like the passive character introduction, that is something I can get behind

The idea authority thing was incredibly moving, thank you 💜

ive never thought about jack being depressed

I’ve wanted to DM for my friends for a long time now and this has given me confidence to pursue it. 🎉🎉🎉

Absolutely love these videos

What a smart fucking guy bro I can watch this dude talk about d&d all day and I don’t know anything about it

Ive started my campaign off by destroying their lives but just giving them the sliver to keep going and fight to gain something back

These are great resources for DMs

"obligation is the death of fun"

I’m so excited to have found this series in conjunction with me running my first campaign

Feeling it SO MUCH about the 'got my character, I'll see you there' thing. I'm a pretty new player so I wasn't sure if it was just me being unreasonable to want a bit more prior information on sessions Example... My first ever game, all the info I got was "There's a space available on this date, come along." The organiser knew it would be my first game and I let them know I might need a little guidance to make sure I'm doing stuff right. So I did some reading and made a character that I thought would be fun. Turn up to the session and it turns out to be an in-progress campaign, but I'm here now so let's go I guess! So I sit down at the table (again, for the first time) where everybody there already knows each other because it's an ongoing thing, and the first thing the DM says, "So this is a homebrew campaign, hope that's okay. It's set in an alternate-reality modern-day city where the players are investigating a cultist plot. One of the characters is a paranormal investigator, one is literally a giant pigeon who doesn't speak. How does your character arrive?" All nice people, but the experience very much put me off trying to get involved in public games.

I want Brennan to be my dad

I first dm d when I was 9 or 10, and one of the players later told me they didn’t like how I dm. Lol

Alot of our character are built up as mercenaries. And the one campaign I did I built it around the baddie

Thank you for saying this. I really needed to hear this today!

Brennan, you are so my kind of DM. I'm really happy to find someone else who feels these ways about improv and the "authority" of a DM choice, about the priority ranks of PC narrative desire and DM world building. Finally, I am maybe the only DM I know right now who says, "I will only run the game if we make your characters as a team" and I loved the way you answered the question about that.

Thank you Brennan!!❤

Worth noting, you can absolutely do that DnD thing of brainstorming an obscene number of characters while disconnected from the adventure. My strategy has been to come up with a character concept, flesh it out and brainstorm it until basically it's just what's on the sheet, and *then* when a campaign is being set up, you talk with the DM about this cool character idea you've had and join them into the story. Basically, you'll want a strong enough character concept, but with a series of "loose ends" which you can tie into the narrative, i.e "I am a loyal cleric of ____", "____ murdered my family", etc.

Brennan gives off great professor energy!

so much good info, thank you

if u wanna hear brennan lee mulligan say "anicdotely" 2:03

Thank you so much for the hours of enjoyment. Take care of yourself.

we need this series back

Making up worlds slaps. I gonna get that as a tattoo.

This was a lot of fun to watch.

the bit about the dichotomy between character and plot being illusory 👌