was not expecting this to be clipped on youtube regardless of what you believe makes a good or bad game of D&D, my main point was that he did not take our feedback to make the game more fun FOR US. everyone plays dnd differently, how he liked to run may have been others cup of tea, but not ours, and when presented with that he declined to adjust. I'd say that's not good, regardless of the game style. imagine if a DM ran a game for you in a style you didnt like, with systems you didnt enjoy, and when you bring it up with them to try to come to a compromise, they simply said "that's too bad". you'd wanna leave right? and I nearly did, but decided to keep it professional for the sake of it being a fun show for viewers. also I wanna say: running a bad game of D&D was the LEAST bad thing Arcadum did and is nothing worth comparing to his behavior towards all those girls. I was simply venting and noticing how a lot of his DM behavior extended tenfold over to other people outside those games.

Listening to your players and being self-critical is so important. Kinda translates to other parts of life too. It's important to be reflective. I think every DM makes these kind of mistakes when running at some point, but you either learn to drop your ego, or you stop DMing.

Watching Pride I never really noticed how little they actually got to role play until this just made me realize how much of the "role play" was just Arcadum just talking to himself.

"Hey this is a roleplaying game, can we like... roll play a bit" "No... anyway back to talking to myself"

I remember the only red flag from the POTNW campaign I noticed was when Monty brought up that she personally didn’t like Arcadum’s style of basically talking to himself through the NPCs because that took time away from the character players’ RP time. Looking back now, I realized he only wanted to tell his story using the characters that famous streamers made. I agree with Jocat here when he basically said, “So why don’t you just write a book then?”

Honestly I always thought his style was too rail-road-y. But hey, since its now socially acceptable to give public critiques: The whole advantage DnD has over a story or even a multiplayer video game is that the world is created by a human being you can interface with. You're not held back by code, graphics or a pre-written story, that gives you ultimate flexibility and I think it's a waste not to utilise it. To go off what Jcat says, some people really do just want to write a book but they lure people in with an "interactive DnD experience" so that they can have an audience to a story they wouldn't otherwise have. I remember thinking it was kinda rail-road-y but there was one moment ages ago where the party was talking to a really powerful authority figure and I think the players accidentally mentioned their plan to betray them or they natural one'd a really sensitive situation or something that should have meant shit hit the fan. And I was like, okay, if he's not rail-roading, he'll run with this. "I'll be nice and let you roll again" he say. I'm like, no you're fucking not being nice, you just don't want to go off what you've planned.

If there’s one thing this whole thing gave us it was the opportunity to vent everything we were frustrated with as a community and individuals with things we didn’t feel the need to bring up before.

One thing I always notice watching critical role is how much time matt sits quietly while players are role-playing with eachother. Sometimes he is just chilling for most of the episode. That's a testament to the players ability to act as well as his trust in them to carry an episode. Unfortunately alot of dms can't or won't do the same.

To further back up JoCats point on the importance of player role-playing, I just ran a session the other day where the majority of the session was the guys either role playing with each other or other NPCs. And that was a super fun session to run. Like there was literally one 10 minute conversation between two NVCs that they watched, and everything else was being led by them. For me as a dungeon master, I find player interactions to be the most important aspect of the game and the single greatest determining factor for how much fun I'm going to have

"He would always throw it back like it was our fault." that feels like the key phrase here because that is what A's whole strategy was with the girls he abused and what makes him a dangerous manipulator. The man cannot take criticism, immediately deflects into self-pity, and refuses to accept (fully) when he has made a mistake or fucked up. He twists shit around and turns it back to the person trying to criticize him.

You know what? This makes me appreciate Among The Reeds all the more! I'm glad they went so off the rails that he had to write so much more. Im glad that they were so chaotic and batshit that he didn't get what he wanted from the game.

This sentence is exactly how DM'ing a D&D game was explained to me. "If the player's fun is not your priority, why not write a book." Ever since hearing something similar from one of John Wick's game design videos, I've always asked at the end of a session: Did you have fun? If anyone said 'no' I would address it. I've written books, man. Writting isn't as fun as running an RPG. Thanks for the video, yo.

I remember during one of his hangout streams, Monty was in on the call along with some other players from other games and the topic of discussion turned towards modules and running modules for dnd. Monty talked a bit about how she thought they were great and how she got a lot of mileage out of them as a DM - and I distinctly remember how Arcadum just bulldozed over her with his own opinion on how they're actually not that great at all. He wasn't overtly mean about it or anything but... the way he did it, the way he just shut down her opinion entirely on the matter stuck out as a major red flag for me, which has only become more blatant with hindsight. If that was how he behaved given only that slightest degree of contention, one can only imagine how things went down behind closed doors.

I remember watching Toast, Lilly, Sykkuno, and the rest play in Arcadum's game, and being baffled at how rail roaded every thing was. He didn't even let them make their own characters, he basically only let them choose Class, Race, and Gender and then assigned them pre-made stat blocks and spell lists. Then it quickly devolved into him talking to himself and herding the group down one path into the overarching saga he was trying to create. So while I was incredibly interested in the players, Arcadum was clearly trying to make the whole game about him, basically waving his dick around like "Look at the amazing world I created" when it wasn't even that interesting to begin with.

I think one of the biggest things I remember was watching Takahata 101's perspective during a boss fight and how much he was muting on the discord call to yell about how annoying the fight was. I chalked it up to Taka just being prone to being angry but the only time I've seen him like that before was when he played up his anger in bullet hell games. It didn't help the boss fight revolved around a bunch of mechanics that they had to do Arcadums "martial checks" which just revealed enemy mechanics unaturally. Arcadums had to reveal it this way because half the mechanics would instantly kill the players if they found out by naturally experiencing the mechanic.

"Sorry you feel that way" is almost never said by someone who cares about your feelings. If anyone who is supposed to take your feelings into account, then brushes you off in this way, run.

I had a player, who was also a good friend, recently tell me that he wasn't having fun in my campaign and he gave me a bunch of little things he didn't like. At first I was annoyed and felt he was being petty about some things or was being dumb for not seeing the grand story. But I thought about it, that's a little bit of a life hack if you get unsatisfactory new just think on it before you respond or act. I thought about all the little "petty" things he was complaining about and realized that he was lost in my campaign and that I'd been too vague in the party's direction, I let them free roam a little too much and they didn't really know what to do as they had not wandered in the correct directions. So I dedicated a session to making the plan very clear, established the BBEG, gave the party a series of goals to accomplish in pursuit of the BBEG, and some clear reasons for their characters to give a fuck. I even set up an encounter that basically bullied my friends character and he said it was the best session yet. THEN THEY ALL CLAPPED. But seriously, listening to and understanding what your players want is a much your job as putting the sessions together.

IMAGINE HAVING YOUR PLAYERS AS A GROUP ASK FOR YOU TO CHANGE SOMETHING SO THEY CAN HAVE MORE FUN AND YOU JUST GO ‘LOL IDK MAN GET GOOD’

The last bit is what surprised me the most with the whole rant- around half the fun is seeing the memes that my players made in our discord. One of my characters had a journal, and was a learning poet- I learned poetry alongside my character, and for each day that passed in session, I wrote a short, one stanza poem about whatever it was Moe was feeling that day, and shared it with the gang. They loved it, and that book of poems became plot relevant at some point, when Moe multiclassed into warlock, and paid for my magic in poetry that I, the human person playing the character, wrote.

Now I don't feel so bad about Among the Reeds always going off in random directions and doing the most insane shit

Contrary to what some people might think, D&D is 100% a Social game with back and forth communication as its main mechanic. The enjoyment of a session depends on how each person can read the room and each other to keep that flow going. As a DM, its your responsibility to consider this more than everyone else. If you're the one out of touch and playing in a bubble. That flow of communication will just STOP for everyone. So if everyone is not communicating, and communication is D&D's main mechanic... Then you're no longer playing the game.

After every session I end with "How did everyone feel about the session?" and ask for favorite parts and least favorite parts. The fun of my players is paramount, as it should be for all DM's.

I remember the fort moment and Arcadum not giving them time to plan and then snapping at them, and thinking it was weird. I also remember getting the vibe he was being really rude and dismissive to Monty and Scifri as well. The more I look back, the more I kinda see all these tiny things that bothered me, but I never really questioned because no one else was talking about it.

Otikata’s Curse I feel got the brunt of he didn’t care if the girls were having fun. The first 4 episodes were introductory cinematics. Ep. 5 was an absolute shit show that made half the girls want to quit because he decided throwing a end of campaign boss as their first true fight was a good idea. Which was very evident with an almost tpk, he wouldn’t give them true level 3 and because of that episode everyone felt they needed to get smashed to even play without being too stressed. Everything I’ve seen and heard about Gleis has been absurdly rushed with him refusing to push back dates

An old trick some job interviewers will use when interviewing a candidate is they'll invite them to lunch at a diner, or other similar restaurant. The reason for this is simple: people are usually on their best behavior when interviewing for a job, but whenever they interact with the waitstaff, they'll default to however they normally treat other people. In other words, what you see when someone interacts with a waiter/waitress is how they "really" are, when they don't have a personal stake in the other person's opinion. It's kind of similar with DMs and their players, at least when they're not already friends. If a DM doesn't respect their players or their opinions, and cares more about using them to their own ends rather than satisfying their players' wants or needs, then that's a pretty good sign of how they treat people generally.

What jumps out at me is Arcadum's apparent response to not including player backstories, that he was doing 4 campaigns a week. Yes, he was doing 4 campaigns a week, but that's *all he did* . It was his literal fucking job. I'd understand if he were doing it in his spare time, but this was his livelihood. Even if we grant him additional streaming, time taken up by business stuff like merch, that still shows of an unspeakable level of laziness and unprofessionalism. Trust me, if I had the unbelievable fortune of making a living by DMing DnD, not even to speak of achieving massive success and acclaim doing it, you can bet your sweet ass I'd do everything in my power to involve the PCs as much as possible. Arcadum just seems to have been running his own MCU/anime series by having actors he didn't need to pay, and whatever his players came up with was incidental.

One Shot podcast is, you guessed it, about One Shots. Characters have stories and can be seen clearly within just a couple hours. Stronger communication and improv skills stacked on top of faster non-D&D systems go such a long way. Fucking awesome that he's willing to speak out against this prick.

I felt the exact same when everyone was okay with otikatas curse players dying. He somehow avoided it being his fault and made it the players fault for not knowing how to play (fyi this was the first time they played dnd)

Player RP is a very important aspect of the game. I'm running a Pathfinder prewritten game and I decided to let my players explore the town for a few sessions. Two of my players went double bard (technically one is a normal bard and the other a skald) and one is a high int Bloodrager. We haven't even made it to the first combat session and they already love their characters and have a good idea of what their characters are all about. I even had a late entry that I dedicated almost a whole session to because the player had never played Pathfinder 1e before, and by the end, he not only had a feel of how the system works, but also how his character will be like and his motives, and he wants to create his own criminal syndicate thanks to see lucky rolls that made him land in a sketchy bar of town (which was a low roll), catching a pickpocket trying to steal from him (npc failing his roll) and intimidating the whole bar while trying to reprimand the pickpocket with a Nat 20 which I gave him a higher outcome because he is a tiefling and the roll total was almost 30, so needless to say, he gained the respect of the whole bar full of shady individuals

Ya Arcadum had some advice that did not sit well with me. On his KZfaq he did a video trying to give DM advice and one of the things he said was that he started all his stories from the end and worked back. I was like what? He basically had his end picked out first and his games had a series of story check points that he just throw at players. To give an example of how little players matter his big end game. He bragged about having all the players and all this roll play but all the good parts of his end game for me was the players interaction with the other players. As soon as the final boss shows up and we see how the heroes with all that thay have can fight the boss? Well all kinds of problems. It play out like a cut scene the players skill and tactics did not matter at all. It was just roll dice. If you roll low insta kill. And the boss and players had a pool of numbers to make roll bigger. After a few rolls the players decided to go all in if the boss roll low. And when that happened? Thay lost anyway. But oh look the Bad guy who also was fighting the big bad saved the day then cut scene, look super from roll dice with a super high number added you win yay. It was a lame way to end it. 😒 I was hoping for better from his next ark but it was looking bad at parts to. 😕

Reminds me of my first experience with D&D; a good friend of mine always went on about his great experiences with D&D and other RPGs like Spycraft, so when he told me he was going to DM for a couple of our friends and offered me a slot in the party I jumped at the opportunity to join. To make a long story short, I quickly found myself spending our game sessions just rolling dice and nothing else, as he would constantly shut me and another party member out of any non-combat moments under the argument that none of the NPCs wanted to interact with a barbarian (me) or a rogue (the other player), so any and all roleplaying was just between the DM and the party's paladin. I would just sit there for hours listening to the DM and the paladin have conversations with each other, and any attempt to interject would just be met with the DM giving me a withering stare "in character". And bear in mind, since this was my first D&D experience, the DM worked with me directly in creating my character, so it wasn't like he was unprepared for my inclusion in the story. By the third session, I think he realized that two-thirds of the party was not having fun and he put the campaign on "hiatus" and never returned to it.

My experience with D&D is sadly low (team broke up after only one session) but my personal philosophy on D&D is that it should be treated as a truce between players and the GM. The GM has a story he wants to tell, and the PCs have, well, characters they want to develop. If the GM constantly rail-roads the campaign and hogs all the conversations himself he might as well write a book since no one else is participating. If the PCs constantly try to break the plot why are they even there, or worse if they hate RP and only exist to churn out numbers they can buy a calcus book. You need a balance between the two for a great game, otherwise it just all falls apart.

The way Arcadum talked to JoCat reminded me of the way my previous DM talked to me when I told him what was wrong and why I didn't have fun in his game. Similar response too. I left his game for a good reason. I was new to the game so I didn't question how the DM railroad and controlling he is, especially with the "DM vs Players" mentality, even to a point that I'm losing my trust in him. I thought that's how it is until I played other games and see a huge difference. Scary that there are manipulative DMs out there when you just want to have fun and roleplay in a D&D game...

“If the enjoyment of the players is not your main priority when you run D&D, why not write a book instead?”

A while ago I genuinely tried to watch some Arcadum games, specifically the ones he ran for Jessica Nigri & crew, JoCat & crew, and Froot & crew. But every time I would try to watch it, it seemed like he was being controlling, condescending, and would manipulate the players into doing certain actions. As someone who has a really good DM, I kept saying to myself "why are all these cool people playing D&D with such a shitty DM/person"

He'd always say that the only people he cared about in his games are the players and their enjoyment when in reality it basically all had to be his way. Looking back so much of this is way more noticeable after all this came out. Also seems he's got a thing about throwing out weird statistics that he's calculated to justify shit...17.8% 🙄

This is why people don’t like min/max players because this is how they are when they DM

Honestly Big thing that struck me as odd was him not giving players the character info they needed. Which I didnt know was a thing, before Snuffy brought it up in her stream. Cause yeah feels great to find out what YOUR CHARACTER knows mid campaign when it comes up. I thought ppl just forgot stuff. Weekly game, busy life, sometimes dates get pushed off so longer time to forget minor detail. New dnd ppl its fine... Nope they Actually didnt get the info they should have. Makes sense =_='

I appreciate that YOU had this talk. Despite it being a "rant". You spoke the truth, and that's what I've been hearing these for. Arcadum reminded me how great it was to work on your own world for a DND, but he never inspired that DM sensation to me. What did however was a combination of both your channel and the critcrab, because that is what reminded me of what was truly important in role play games. So a whole spiral was taking place in my life before all of this even happened and it just reinforces my approach to all of this lately, and makes me feel like I made the right choice xD

"Why not write a book?" Fair point tbh I recently watched the endgame and... Well, wasn't the whole fight kinda pointless? They just automatically won purely because the tyre campaigns and shattered crowns prepared the necessary tools to beat the enemy Songblades, power words and what not did nothing

Obviously this whole thing is a mess, but i'm so happy there are other people who saw how railroading he is. Still remember how Moonmoon got shit for daring to suggest DM shouldn't just cheat and edit NPCs in the middle of a game.

I think the one thing that went down with Arcadum's games that always left a very sour taste in my mouth was how one of the players in Death and Debts got treated for wanting to play a sexual character. She started the game very excited at the prospect of being flirty and kind of a love-'em-and-leave-'em character, and made no small bones that that was how she wanted to play. So when the second session rolls around and she seduces a nobleman for information, Arcadum turns around and basically traumatizes the character with the event (which opened the door to the player being slutshamed by viewers). Arcadum quickly put out a statement defending the player and saying that "Players have the right to play how they want/be cowardly if they want/be sexual if they want", but it never stopped feeling like he was punishing a girl for wanting to play a sexual character the way he didn't want her to. EDIT: and the stuff with the backstories also rings true because this same player actually HAD backstory with her character--and it never got explored once Babylon came into the picture. NONE of the girls really explored anything about their character. Hell, one of them basically didn't get the chance to do anything but be an important character in a ritual in the final session--and even then, all she did was stand in a circle. And then he basically spent the entirety of the campaign playing at Daddy-dom with her and her party as Babylon. And he did it again with the cosplayer group when they started after the finale. He milked the ERP with Babylon for all it was worth, and in light of the accusations it makes my skin crawl. Good riddance to Arcadum. I'm happy that the people who played in his campaigns had fun in spite of his efforts.

2:39 remember with those calculations. He ran the numbers 4 times to be sure

Reminds me of a game i got myself into lately, i will admit, its basically a fucking abusive relationship, where the DM has this *_MASSIVE_* world where you can fuck around with, but the DM is _intentionally trying to kill you._ He constantly says the line "I thought you guys were higher level, my bad" whenever we get into an encounter where we barely survive by the skin of our teeth. He found some PDF where we can go from level 21-40 to become super gods and stuff, but he made the level up system be "you have to train a week for every level you are currently" so going from level 3 to 4 is 3 weeks of _constant_ training._ I was level 4 and had to literally spend 5 weeks training *_16_* hours a day just to level up to level 6, and had to survive a con saving throw to avoid being crippled from training so much. Sorcerers' dont have to bother with the level up, they just level up instantly along with wizards. He constantly fucking meta games against the players to avoid getting a situation where the players have the upper hand. One of the other groups (theres 3 btw) had a player who got the mobile feat, and next thing you know, all the enemies suddenly have sentinel, *_and it counters mobile even though mobile doesnt trigger opportunity attacks._* (Yes, the usage of feats and their interpretations can be debated, but its not a 'disengage' action, its just 'you cant use an opportunity attack on them') The world is constantly shifted by the character he creates, he literally has a pantheon of 'gods' that are just PC's turned into NPC's that are level 20, and one of them literally ended the world during our games. Not even joking, remember that level 21-40 system? Turns out our race couldnt access that (which made it fucking pointless for us to know about it?????) until the NPC wished to 'break the limit' which in turn Thanos snapped the world. Group 1 found out first and had to wait a month while group 2 and 3 rushed to avoid the end of the world. And no, this isnt a 'player created fiasco' this was a "thing that was going to happen, group 2 just sped it up by a few years" (an actual quote from the DM) After the end of the games, the DM does hang around, but if you plan *_ANYTHING_* he will literally counter it by meta gaming which is total BS. I literally had to make a private group chat with some of the other players i get along with in my group so we could work together just to avoid the total BS meta gaming. It also doesnt help that the DM set up the groups so there's always a pure chaotic evil person in each group that intentionally fucks things up, i swear to god they're plants to cause chaos in the groups because out of the 3 people who committed genocide, theres 1 in every group, and yes, i mean _genocide_ like the actual thing, where a whole race is now dead by unintended hands of the chaotic evil person in the group.

He sure does love his "calculations"

How normal is for players to want to get drink before playing, Like I probably watched four or five Arcadum games, and that happened in Death and Debts and Otikata's Curse, I know the girl in Otikata's Curse talked about after words and said she drank because she was feeling stressed out.

You know... Seeing stories like this makes me feel better about my own GM'ing when my biggest gripe is worrying my extremely supportive and grateful players aren't having fun enough. I'm blessed with good people at my table, and I hope everyone else here is too.

Wow, this is crazy. I used to be an active member of Arcadums community before it became so super popular. Things seemed ok for awhile but eventually I started seeing red flags. When Cryaotic was "kicked" from the games for example, Arcadum seemed WAY too chill about the situation. I remember him saying he talked to the group members and stopped having Cry on the games not because what he did was disgusting (Cry literally admitted he did that stuff) but because some players felt uncomfortable and Cry wanted to leave. Apparently being a literal sexual predator to minors isn't enough to get kicked! I remember another time, sometime after the Cryaotic thing, I believe either Naomi or Kelli were involved in a weird conversation with an NPC that was sexualizing their character. Arcadum then asked if it was OK and if they were comfortable but also said something along the lines of how "it's ridiculous that he has to ask if his own friend is ok with that". Like, um wtf? Why would it be bad to ask if your player and friend is feeling comfortable being sexualized even if it was just "role play"? Then the chat went off about cancel culture and how it was bad and arcadum was right. This shitting on perceived cancel culture had become increasingly common in chat. It was after Cry was gone that the community and chat had gotten noticeably worse. Absolutly no one was allowed a different opinion from Arcadum and chat would gang up on those who expressed those opinions. Funny how arcadum and his fans were so against cancel culture when it was related to sexual harassment or was in their best interest but would hunt anyone who dare say anything their arcadum God disliked. At this point I had switched to mostly watching vods but I remember it was around this time that Arcadum was planning for new games and he had thought about including a KZfaqr who scammed people into his games, forgot who it was. I happened to be watching live this time. Anyways, obviously people called it out and Arcadum went off saying that that doesn't matter and second chances blah blah blah and the delusion fans in chat went after anyone in chat who had a different opinion or thought it was a bad idea. Arcadum even compared actively scamming people to sex work that other players of his have done. I called him out and his fans fucking chewed me out. I got DMs threatening to kill me and a mod literally told me to "Shut the fuck up" in chat and sent me a threatening DM, no joke. I messaged arcadum about it and never heard a word. I stopped watching Arcadum after that and only today decided to see what was up with the campaigns. I can't say I'm all that surprised after watching him allow his fans and mods to so openly bash people in chat and not correct them and also to have such a relaxed view on predatory behavior. It was happening often by the time I was about done with his content. The chat was a monolith. So many of the communities that the content creator turned out to be toxic as fuck have these terrible communities who gang up on people for their diety. Besides all that stuff he also did some really messed up and hypocritical decisions with DMing. It never made sense to restrict the episodes of games imo (I think it was so he could easily change players and control plot) and he often chose bigger creators in favor of smaller ones unless he could profit off their talents. He took advantage of "volunteers" who did way more work than at times he let on and I know people who did unpaid work for him while he promised to give them opportunities to play in his campaigns. Of course he always had an excuse to why he didn't let them. He never took criticism and more and more his world became priority over player enjoyment and that's why so many people quit the games so early on. He manipulated so many people from players, volunteers, fans, etc. Into believing his way was right and often held his friendship and ability to work on/play in his games over people's head as a way to keep them compliant. He is extremely egotistical and manipulative.. It makes me sad that this was my first (and only) real experience with D&D. I miss the good part before I could only see thee terrible community he had made.

Thanks for providing the clip

I lost it when Jocat said he threw calculations out. XD Im sorry but 17.8% will always come to mind when “calculations” come up.

A small side benefit of procrastination is that while this whole situation is still upsetting for obvious reasons at least I never had the chance to get attached to Arcadum and his story. Everytime someone mentioned the games I kept thinking I should get around to watching the streams and I never did, now I just hope the new guy is better.

I honestly know nothing about arcadum, though I am aJoCat fan. So the KZfaq algorithm just brought me here. But my jaw actually dropped when Jo mentioned that he said “I’m sorry you feel that way” in response to their feedback. As a DM, player feedback is critical. To the point that I personally ask my players after each session to tell me something they liked, and something that they didn’t like from the session. Sometimes they have nothing but positive things to say, and sometimes it’s a bit critical, but I genuinely believe that it’s what keeps my players coming back. Because they know I give a damn about how they feel about the game, and know that I want them to have fun more than anything else.

It is interesting to hear JoCat's views here, mainly because it really made me realise that how much from when I originally started watching towards the end of the Violet arc and then into Glieas that he really seemed to distance himself further and further and care less and less about his player enjoyment as the names he pulled got bigger.

The big thing that this reminds me of is a campaign I was in a year or so ago. I had been brought into the game by a friend of mine, he lured me in with the fact that the game had a great amount of narrative complexity, intrigue and some mild kingmaker/civilization-esque mechanics to it. I decided "cool, I'd like to make an elven nevcromancer who has a day job as a barber-surgeon." It was a few days before the game started that I settled on drow for his specific subrace and went with an assassin theme, expecting to have a bunch of situations where I had to schmooze my way close to targets so I could hit them with a powerful necromancy spell and then bounce... but no... it turned out the city portion of what was actually going on was primarily meant to be a sidequest, my friend was the only one actually interested in what was going on there while everyone else in the party wanted to get going to anywhere else... and while my friend led me to believe the party was some semblance of evil, it was not actually an evil campaign in reality. The GM was also one who specifically designed encounters to challenge the combat powergamers of the group... so in this 11th level game, I felt like I kept coming up short in regards to stacking up with the party because I didn't optimize my character.

Seeing the discussions of people's DM experience is honestly really cool. As someone who is currently running their first campaign and is worrying constantly about whether or not the players are enjoying themselves, it's nice to see that I'm not alone in that regard. From my minimal experience, some of the best D&D can offer comes from players talking to each other. I had one party member quite literally tell another to get their shit together, and it has drastically changed the way both of those characters act. It's super fun to see how characters and their players develop. DMing may be hard and stressful at times, but I think the true reward is seeing and hearing the players talk and shout about different events in the story. Just sitting back and listening to my group discuss things at the end of a session makes the whole thing worth it. TLDR: See the story you made making people smile. Feels good.

This is a massive lesson for me in what not to do as a DM. Definitely going to allow time for player feedback from now on

Gosh... I remember being that GM. The type where it was never my fault when people weren't having fun, it was them. They were the problem. It was their fault. Look at all this stuff I have in my story. It took me longer then I'd like to admit that if all these people who love table top games aren't have fun it wasn't their fault, it was me. There was something wrong on my side. Apparently I'm a good story teller but when it comes to running the game as a whole I was did it VERY poorly. In the end I learned so many things about how to run things without having to govern everything the players did. That it wasn't all about me, it was about us. All of us having fun as a whole. Learning to be less arrogant was extremely painful but it made me both a better friend and a better GM in the end.

As someone who DMs a game I sometimes struggle making everything click for one game a week, let alone four a week. I watched some games of acradum which had players I enjoyed but it always felt like he made the games about him instead of his players and their enjoyment.

Insightful commentary. I've never witnessed an Arcadum game session, but this sounds like the kind of experience I wouldn't stick around for.

The one guy in chat asking "who's Arcadum?" Oh you sweet summer child.

I was told something by my buddy who’s been DMing for a while: “Never, ever make npcs talk to eatchother. Talking to yourself looks stupid and excludes everyone else at the table” Guess he was right tbh

I'm a new DM and my first campaign is going great. I wrote everything myself and my players are enjoying it a lot. I make it a point to not plan anything concrete but just have guidelines and let my players build the world how they want. I also extensively tie their backstories into the main plot however i can so each player feels important and like they are having a substantial impact. Been running this game for a year now and i have so much more in store for these poor hapless adventurers

It truly is important to put emphasis on role-playing and a player's agency, in most regards. I had a session one day that was sort of a downtime session after the party had gone through a major battle, and near the end of that session, they accepted a quest and literally roughly two or three hours of the session was dedicated to them preparing to travel, because a number of the players got really into Oregon Trail-ing that shit. Figuring out the costs of a cart, horses, whether it was better to rent or buy, how much feed they needed for the horses, how much food they needed for themselves during the trip, etc. I mostly just informed them of things that their characters would know based on their roles or things that they would know right off the bat without needing any skill checks, and for the rest of it I just kind of left them be and watched them play. It was nice and I really hope to let the party have more moments like that in the future. So long as they're having fun, it's fun for me.

I was a new fan of Verum, binging videos in july, a few weeks before all that shittiness was revealed. I was mostly dazzled by the presentation and the high production values of the games, but thinking back to it, there were lots of times where he was very obviously railroading or not doing a good job, at least in my opinion. I specifically remember thinking he made a VERY questionable decision during the tearing veil campaign, where one character was sitting out for almost a hour because they had a in-character reason not to join in for a fight.

I actually have done the countdown thing. Sometimes putting players on a time limit during urgency is cool, though that honestly is the least of the problems they had. And you should actually give them a ballpark. Like I said in the similar situation “they look to be about 2 minutes away” and then moved it towards them (on overmap) one space forward in 10 second intervals. But nobody complained about it, it was an appropriately “crap crap ideas now!” Moment and they liked it. This guy was told otherwise . Not listening to feedback is problem #1 here. But still think timers can be fun.

Note to self : Ask for more feedback at end of game. Except removing the weight system. Creating a bag of holding only spawns you a larger backpack.

This video re-found me at a good time. I'm currently in a situation with a DM where I have desperately trying to have them include my character after nearly two years of them being left out of the narrative. The times I pointed that fact out I was met with excuses after excuses and a phrase close to 'I'm sorry you feel that way.' This will help me formulate my thoughts and remind me that if it's not fun then I don't have to stick around for the disrespect.

I feel this clip is a gateway to one hell of a rabbit hole for me...

I tried to watch Arcadum's stream because of people I follow playing one of his games. But it became immediately apparent that his style and interests in D&D are drastically different from my own. It's unfortunate that JoCat had to waste time with this before learning the same lesson. But finding a like-minded group that you mesh well with can be really difficult so mistakes like this are bound to happen.

As somebody who knows nothing about any of this, just finding out through this... yeesh. "Sorry you feel that way" especially is something I recognize as a tactic abusive people use in conversations. It's a little emotional knife to twist into somebody, to simultaneously let them know you don't actually intend to change your behavior and to make it like it's their fault for having a problem with you.

I've started DMing a D&D campaign recently that I call the Umbra Saga (like a home made type thing, which I know is a bit ambitious) and the main thing that motivates me is player experience. If they enjoy it, I enjoy it. I could never fathom why a DM would prioritize their own fun over the groups.

That's 100% exactly what I thought about his games. I've been playing my own rpg and I always thought how I would hate to be playing his games because my character doesn't matter. My backstory my personality alignment nothing matters because it's his story, the npcs are more important to the narrative than the actual characters. To the point where he would even forcedly change your race to fit a new narrative, change even your personality. By the end games not a single character was being who they invisioned then to be in character creation. Everyone was race changed, personality changed, occupied a position or class that they didn't choose. Not a single backstory ever come out as relevant or even was mentioned or involved in the story. I get that it would be difficult for every story matter, but it's also was frustrating to see all the streamers that I loved, happily creating theirs characters and quircks and story while also thinking " they aren't characters they are actors who are gonna star in a position that the master wants then to fit in" it felt more like a movie with a script than an actual game with choices

I’m crying how true this has been for me

The way he describes it reminds me so much coming from games like WoW. They have these arbitrary rules and visions, restricting certain stuff and activity to create this situation or feeling behind all their systems and such, an "immersion", but the problem is they can't see that despite the systems having a purpose and making sense in some form, it's not FUN. At times they go out of their way to change something that's fun cause it ruined their vision and bypassed these systems they laid out to restrict and punish players. Arcadum very much seems like the guy that "Knows things best" and that he can calculate fun with numbers due to how X amount of stuff he did has resulted in Y amount of fun from people, hence those small negatives are invalid, or something like that.

Huh, running after the session... My DM is kinda insecure and always is like "So I hope you all liked the session..." and then we talk a bit about the nice parts And I often give him feedback and my perspective on some stuff that happened There was a reoccurring enemy that really annoyed me because while he was strong he definitely couldn't keep up with the whole party of 4 level 18 chars, so after the last time we fought him i asked the DM if that guy can at least bring some friends because I feel like he's not really a challenge and it's getting kinda repetitive Apparently he actually prepared a group fight then, but we dodged that and now we are facing that char and his boss at the same time

Man, it felt like his pre-Tyre campaigns were higher quality with more freedom, back when he was much smaller. Fame and clout really does seem to bring out the worse out of some people. But then again, after reading through some old 7y7d players' stories, it does seem more like just him returning back to his old ways.

The thing with DnD is at times the unpredictability of players. You may plan to have the boss to run off at one point.. but your plans can entirely be tossed out the window, thrown under the rug, or be set ablaze with gasoline. If you already HAD a end planed, a single end, then your more playing a module (I think) than a campaign. But even modules have different degrees to the outcomes that are decided upon by the discretion of the DM and in turn the players depending on how bad or good they fucked up.

"I'm sorry you feel that way" is a passive aggressive way of saying "It's your fault you're not having fun". Once had a GM who was exactly the same in regards to "running the story" but would also actively meta punish the player if they questioned anything, removing player resources for no in game reason, your hidden character being shot from nowhere twice with no defence.

As a GM I have more self-doubt about my style giving them a good time than anything else. I GM for my friends, so we are mostly playing to have a good time, but I'm pretty self-conscious about them having a good time. Mainly because I had a few rounds, where I was just sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen.

So i started running forge of fury for a new group, a 3-6ish session adventure (4hrs long each) to finish, and tbh it's a combat slog. After the 1st session and like 4ish combat encounters, it was easy to tell the players (and myself) were getting tired of fighting. Made the "boss" of the 1st floor of the dungeon into a talk on the fly, made the Orge not like the Orc Shaman, and had the Orge ask the party to kill the Shaman and the Orge would get the remaining Orcs to leave the area. Which is ultimately the adventure hook I gave them, Orcs raiding the mining town of Blasingdell. The 2nd session, started with the Shaman fight, then they left the dungeon to return 2 captives the Orcs had to Blasingdell. Once there, even with only one small text box for the entire town (no townsfolk had more than a single small sentence of info on them) I called a 10 minute break and wrote some goofy, trope filled NPCs for them to interact with for the remaining time. Our little Murder Queen did the whole Warlock nightmares, and sticking to the shadows as the party, uhhh partied at the pub. The two meat sticks of Player Characters bought a keg and had a drinking contest in the stables. One of them rolled into pig shit as they slept it off. Our ranger and cleric tried to book a meeting with the towns mayor, but the sassy secretary wasn't persuaded by an 8 to get them to meet the mayor sooner than half a tenday. The cleric then had a chat about Tyr in the towns small temple, and how Tyr and his deity (Thor, he's a Tempest Cleric) would likely get along, as the Odinson he worships is known to aid a group of heroes in their ever lasting fight against evil xD Point is, sometimes you just gotta realize when what you had planned isn't working and you need to improvise. Call a break and write something if you need to. It can work wonders.

Arcadum's dnd games real did just feel like a book to me, and when i think back why, it was just because it was all world building and none player lore. most of the players didn't have a voice, and although I've only start playing as a Dm my self 5 months ago, i know i have to stop my self from rambling on to much so i can have the players play, and i always ask for my players advice on the session, and if they Enjoyed it or not. being a Dm is not easy, but playing D&D for Fun is.

it's such a backwards way of running games, at least in my mind for DnD and how I run my games all the players and my own enjoyment is the most important thing if anyone isn't enjoying themselves I will change things to make it more fun for everyone involved, I get them involved with helping me make this world and campaign they are a part of, bringing in things they want to see taking out things they don't want making sure all their backstories get attention and build the main plot off of that so they feel more involved and make it personal, connecting them to there characters and giving them a reason to give a dam that the BBEG is doing what they are doing. I also listen to my players, take any criticism, learn from it, and improve how I run my games, I'm no storyteller or book writer I'm a DnD dungeon master.

Yeah, as a DM myself. I do my best to balance the main story and those of my players, while also making sure we all are having fun. I'll even go and warn the players that entering such and such places might become a bit of slog due to the difficulty curves or dangers within it. So far... everyone is having fun, with the few exceptions on my part of miscommunications because of my bad hearing and time of the day. Definitely enjoy the RP more of the player characters and their growth.

I'm lucky to have such a great DM. My DM helped me with making my character because it's my first time playing. They do their best to make sure everyone is okay and comfortable. And they plan on bringing us snacks for our games. Our first session is Thursday and I'm so excited

you see, that reminds me of a campaign i left that one of my friends was running. almost everything described here is pretty much what we experienced. we were constantly on rails, combat was FAR harder than it needed to be, nobody got meaningful character moments ever (and when they did they were far too short), and it got to the point where quite a few of us had literal physical anxiety every time a new session was announced. now he's running a new campaign in his college with his friends there and i can't help but worry that they're going to suffer from that too.

Me and my freinds realizied we want to get into dnd and after some soul searching i realized that i would make a better dm than a player so ive been trying to learn how to do it right and not wrong. This is some good advice on what not to too.

As a DM who had a few problems with players. The players brought it up with me and I took it to heart and changed my DMing style a bit. Which is a trait that DMs should all have.

This is the exact vibe I get when watching his content.

What a noticed from other DnD enthusiast was that in order to make DnD the best experience for the players the Dungeon Masters need to be flexible and let the players make decisions within the boundaries of whatever plans the Dungeon Master made for the campaign. Sometimes the Dungeon Master needs to let go of some of the control they think they need to have to make the experience enjoyable for everyone. The point of DnD is to let the players make unique decisions when they are placed in the situations that the Dungeon Master puts forth, its the unforeseen and lucky roles to the crazy things that players try to do that make the game exciting, not forced monologue and unreactable Dungeon Master actions. But hey, nobody is perfect, Arcadum probably got caught up in his own ego and need for control, that he forgot the whole point of DnD to begin with.

Generally the DM should try to prioritize player enjoyment, but players can also basically destroy a campaign by not playing ball with their DM. Setting up proper expectations in a Session Zero for the DM and players is really important, so you don't end up with a DM using the PCs as pawns to tell their story, or with the PCs dismantling a DM's narrative too much.

I always stick around after the D&D for a little bit to see if anybody got any feed back and if a new person joins I always make sure to check they have any feedback. I have social anxiety so asking for feedback is not something I have a easy time with but at least I stay around afterwards to discuss the session where people are free to leave feed back.

"Sorry you feel that way" is literally the easiest way to get a throat chop

I came across guardbeardia's video on this guy. This story sounds pretty consistent with arcadum's power trip

The only game I watched Arcadum run was Broken Bonds. It struck me when I watched that series at the time that all of the player's character concepts were his ideas. Like, about half of the players were playing D&D for the first time, and during session 0 they were looking through the character creation material mentioning things, and he would chime in with, 'That would be so cool if you did this or that.' And then, without fail, whether they seemed into it or not -- seemed to me, that is -- the character they turned up with for session 1 was the one he thought was cool. I didn't think much of it at the time -- only that I expected I wouldn't enjoy playing in his game -- and I don't think that pushing your ideas on your players the way he did is necessarily a red flag for anything extreme, but finding out from his colleagues that he's an abusive, manipulative control freak doesn't surprise me, given how wrongly that behavior rubbed me.

This is why I always describe D&D akin to the DM being the 'director' providing the stage for the players/actors. The actors, in theory, should get equal parts focus to develop their personal plot along side the main plot while the director guides the scene just enough to allow each actor to shine. IF they don't play well together, it's a TPK or a dramafest in an OOC environment.

5:47 i mean, Victor(aka. Rat) gets to be fully fleshed out, and he was just a guest character!

2:41 BRO APPARENTLY 17.8 WASNT ENOUGH, MANS HAD TO DO M O R E CALCULATIONS

around 6:30 you talk about 10 session being enough and I couldn't agree more. Arcadum using his amount of games as an excuse is just mind bottling. As a fellow DM that runs 3 different games for my own twitch channel my players backstories are the main focus of the campaign - in my Wednesday night game we had touched major points of everyone's backstories by session 6. Now this isn't to boast it just making a point, that it takes a DM whos invested in their players and not just trying to tell their own story .

I have only stopped my players from escalating a situation once because I had a whole sequence planned that I didn't want to waste. I don't think I'll ever do that again.

Hearing this story reminds me of how lucky I am with my current dm. I’m really really enjoying it. Only done a few 1 shots before but this is my first proper campaign and it’s been quality