silly Mathew. everyone knows that when you can't decide between goblins or undead, just make them undead goblins

"For instance, I often have bad guys resurrect dead good guys. They HATE that!" *menacingly-self-satisfied DM stare* hilarious

"steal from stuff no one has ever heard of, and you are a genius" SO TRUE

"As DMs we're only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from" HAHA! Brilliant. Couldn't agree more ;)

"Floating across the floor towards the inkeep as though the act of walking itself was beneath him" That is one of the best description of a characters gate I've read in a long time. You get a clear picture not only how he moves but his personality within his movement.

"Well that's the end of the video." *Video carries on for another 10 minutes* Fucking hell Matt haha

Hi Matthew, At the age of 30, I just got home from playing my first ever D&D session this evening. I never would have sought out a place to play without these videos.

I still come back to watch this intro when I want inspiration for DMing. There's so much great stuff to unpack there!

"steal from stuff no one has ever heard of, and you are a genius" I'm stealing that idea about stealing wizards. It's genius.

Man that introduction to that villain had me hooked. I've just found your channel but that opening alone shows your skill as a storyteller you have earned a subscriber.

I dont even play D&D, I just love listening to this man.

While I'm commenting on your videos, I should say here that your introduction of Caloril in this video is a paragon of narration, applicable well outside the RPG context. I played the first 5 minutes of this to my s/o, who doesn't game at all, but who is a performer... she was absolutely hooked.

"I've made this channel because I want more people to run D&D" Well you certainly succeeded among my small group of friends.

When my friends and I started playing in high school, we totally didn't know the rules. We were using the 2nd edition books one of us found in his attic with a 3rd edition module someone picked up, and it was an absolute blast.

If Phil feels his warlock is underpowered, you may wish to tell him, if he is unaware, that warlocks get all their spell slots back on a _short_ rest, unlike the other classes. One of my players didn't realize this until recently. Other than that, I don't really know much about warlocks. I do know that my warlock player usually deals lots of damage with AoE spells, and he also has an invocation that lets him add his charisma modifier to his eldritch blast damage. He seems pretty effective.

"I didn't want the video to get too long." at 22 minutes, with 8 minutes left in the video. Classic Colville! :D I, for one, love the long videos. Wouldn't mind an hour a day! \o/

"The betrayed and the betrayer chasing each other across universes." Is that a Dark Tower reference by any chance?

Man, been 25 years since I read the Belgariad! Forgot about the cursed Murgo gold! Thank you for making me feel old. LOL

As me being a non native, self taught, not perfect at all English speaker I have you say that, even talking as fast as a gatling gun, Matthew has one of the most perfectly comprehensible English I've ever heard. Thanks for the content in general and for this video in particular, this has helped me SO much to develop my first big campaign as a DM.

had my players have to leave a falling base in a grand war in the region. they had to escort a couple of capsules to a hidden location behind the enemy lines. the had to sneak through front lines and through some enemy controlled terrain. when they arrived at the hidden base, they found out they brought will destroy everything in the area. everything allies, enemy, innocents, everything. " wait, we're the bad guys?" was the greatest thing ive heard on my table. the party have foiled the plans, and are now fleeing through enemy controlled territory, seeking out allies, but can trust anyone.. Super fun!! Great videos!. only find them recently, ergo commenting on a 7 year old video.

I propose for next topic: How to improvise without players noticing

Ugh dude! I can't wait to see a full session of D&D where you DM! You're such a good story tell I wish I was there watching or playing your campaign!

As soon as I heard "red gold" I immediately thought of the Belgariad! This is wonderful. I'm enjoying your videos so much, and as a noob player and even more noob DM I'm finding them so incredibly insightful and helpful. Thank you so much for making them :)

For fallen heroes like Domnall and Lady Sariel, have you considered having them be aware of what's going on but powerless to stop it while the evil version of them is in control? For example, Lady Sariel's soul could still be in her body despite being undead, and Caloril the Vile just made an evil copy of it and forced it into her body. It would be an "And I Must Scream" scenario of sorts, although it might not be readily apparent to the players until Graves tries to read her mind.

"steal from stuff that no one knows about, and your a genius." is totally my ethos.

I use the Cheshire Cat as my go-to example for True Neutral.

OMG I love the idea of someone else running a bad guy off-screen in your campaign. That's something I'm definitely going to employ.

As someone who likes the long videos, I'm super happy to see you haven't reduced the length yet.

HE DID THE EPISODE ON KEEPING TIME! IT TOOK A YEAR, BUT HE DID IT. I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M YELLING!

My art professors championed a quote: "Good art is made, great art is stolen" And here I am, a massive fan of vaporwave

Also having the heros meet the big-bad early on sets it up so later the big-bad can deliver classic dialogue. " I knew I should have killed you " ; or after fighting after an all out battle that the heros could not have actually won against the higher level big-bad, he or she might be impressed with them and try and recruit them ( or one of them ) " You fought well , join me ... "

Ok, that idea of letting friends who are not currently in the campaign play the bad guys is amazing. It is something I absolutely HAVE to try...although I very, very rarely have one and the same bad guy for longer parts of the campaign.

Your storytelling is just .... Enthralling ! Playing D & D with you as the DM must be the most amazing thing ever

Phil (?) will likely have received Warlock advice by this point, but if I may, I suggest the following: My Warlock builds are almost exclusively Blade Pact builds. A Blade Pact Warlock is never disarmed, and with the right Invocations, always ready. All that's required is taking the right Patron and spell choice to maximize your ability to get in and out of combat. Pact Weapon, Thirsting Blade, Armor of Shadows, and Agonizing Blast would be my 5th level choice. Add the Tough feat, and you have essentially a Fighter, but with built in magical armor, a magical melee weapon they cannot lose, and a ranged weapon in the form of Eldritch Blast+Hex. Since Phil has an...owl...? ...He has Find Familiar and is obviously a Chain Pact (unless he has the Magic Initiate, or Ritual Caster feats, or learned the spell as part of being a Tome Pact Warlock with the right Invocation...yeah...this can be confusing). If he is a Chain Pact, he deserves a better familiar, as they are allowed an Imp, Quasit, Psuedodragon, or Sprite. In any regard, it's important to pick the right Invocations to match spell choice or play style. Devil's Sight (invocation) partnered with the Darkness spell works well. Hold Person to a Bladelock is basically pre-arranged murder. Blindness/Deafness matched with Hex (Wisdom) could render a foe in a bad way, as one sense is gone and the other is at Disadvantage to detect your presence. B/D is not a concentration spell, allowing Hex to work. Any Pact Warlock can take advantage of this. Phil could really maximize his Familiar by using it to deliver touch-based spells like Vampiric Touch. Eldritch Blast as a cantrip cannot be overstated, especially when paired with the Hex Spell. Agonizing Blast as an Invocation turns this combo into great damage generation, because each beam of the Blast will do 1d10+1d6+Charisma Mod. At 5th level, that means twice that potential. It gets even moreso from there. There are other Invocations for this Cantrip that extend range or create knockback - which can be brutal when knocking guard off high castle walls. Dropping Hunger of Hadar over an area that has a simple Grease spell can be brutal. Really, it comes down to how Phil looks at his playstyle and how he wants to engage his foes. Everyone has a preference. Since he's a Great Old One pact, using more of the bonus Pact spells might be useful, as they create fear, confusion and madness. Using his Patron as an inspiration, generating this kind of chaos among his foes might be not only thematic, but effective.

I’ve watch this video six times in three years. It’s great every time.

Along with Tolkien, it was the Belgariad that got me into fantasy fiction!

If you put this on 0.5 speed he sounds drunk xD

Totally agree about the rule ignorance, and not just regarding D&D. When I first started playing a board game called Splendor, we played using the rules as understood by the game's owner. Turns out there were several rules he'd got wrong, but the game was still plenty of fun with the wrong rules. Now we know how they actually work, we play properly, but it does show that no matter what the official rules may be, it's okay to tinker with them.

I go to these videos over and over for reference. So useful. Thank you so much Matt Coleville “D&D is not the things written between the covers of the books (sic) D&D is what happens at the table among the people playing the game.”

"As writers, we're only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from" I hope you don't mind, but I will be "honoring" this phrase regularly in the future. Naturally, I will lose track of where I got this phrase, and soon people will think I came up with it. Such is the lot of those who are truly inspired in their creativity. Well done good sir... Well done.

I just wanted to point out: I've listened to this entire series, five times now. And I keep getting something new out of it each time. Thank you for putting so much of your time and life energy into this Matt. You're the best.

Matt, I'm a new DM 5 sessions in, and your videos are really saving me. My party is up to 8 people now. Everyone loves the game and I have a hard time turning people away. In any case, I find that after a session I'm pretty drained. I can't eat really while it's going because I'm thinking too much and talking there is a lot to organize and remember. I game on Thursday nights, and though I love doing it, I'm finding that on the weekend, when I should really be planning out the next session, my mind wanders and I put it off. I usually spend the night before the session scrambling to come up with something interesting and memorable. I'm running the starter set right now (Lmop) and embellishing heavily. I'm really looking forward to your "finding the content" video you mentioned that is coming up. I love this episode!

Little did he know a bit less than 2 years later he raised 2 million bucks to publish a book about a somewhat smallish part of the game overall. Good job Matt C. you really are a wellspring of good for the game.

Having someone else control the villians sounds AMAZING and really inspiring. It sounds like a great way to keep me creative as a gm

Great stuff, although I prefer the term 'Misunderstood Guy' to 'Bad Guy'. Just to share, in one of my games I made the recurring villain the identical twin brother of the wizard PC. This inevitably created a lot of headaches for the party because whenever they came across surviving victims of the evil wizard's nefarious handiwork they would frequently mistake the wizard PC for his evil sibling and be blamed for his deeds as his accomplices. To make matters worse, because of a somewhat convoluted backstory involving a magical experiment conducted by the twins' somewhat deranged father (also a powerful wizard), their life essences became tethered to each other but also created an arcane polarity between them, causing magic to work unpredictably or fizzle entirely whenever one brother cast spells directly on or in close proximity of the other. Even worse, if one of them died it was theorized (as laid out in their father's notes) that his twin would also die and the resulting resonance would cause a tear in reality. While the theoretical death effect was never put to the test (it was a 1% chance that would still test positive with Legend Lore), it created an unusual dynamic between the PCs and the evil wizard whereby they could only ever foil his plans and slay his minions but never take him out personally for fear of the repercussions. In turn, the evil wizard would sometimes assist his brother in the form of warnings, useful information, or 'care packages' of scrolls and potions. The evil wizard did this when the mood suited him in order to flaunt his superiority and in the process annoy the PC wizard (because brothers sometimes suck, Neutral Evil ones even more so) and because despite everything, at the end of the day he and the wizard PC were still family. I found this whole situation really interesting because under normal circumstances these two sides would simply annihilate each other on sight. But here, because of what was essentially the threat of mutually assured destruction, good and evil needed to coexist to a certain degree and that, in turn, fostered dialogue (a fair amount of which was trash talking, but still). Also, because the evil wizard was occasionally helping them deal with other powerful villains (really just the evil wizard's rivals, but they were unaware of this), it created a blurring of ethical lines and every so often the PCs would find themselves letting the evil wizard get away with certain with things, never enough to change anyone's alignment, but, you know...baby steps. Needless to say, one of the main goals of the wizard PC was to find a means of undoing the effect that magically bound him to his brother, but sadly I never got to bring this particular campaign to any satisfying conclusion.

Probably won’t see this as I’m posting so late, but I thoroughly enjoy your content and I’m looking to buy your books. Thank you!

So much quality content in all your videos. Loving the frequency

Favorite episode so far. Love your content! It has been super helpful for me as a new DM running a game for new players. Looking forward to the next episode :)

You say “we” a lot, I like that. Thank you Colville

My dad made me read the Belgariad when I was 12 and i loved him for it! Love that you referenced it!

I LOVE hearing about all this. I'm learning and realizing a lot. Thanks, Matt. :D

You, sir, have given me some great insight on how to run an upcoming situation my party will be encountering. I've currently got a player who consistently churns out evil aligned characters through his choices; so I'm going to have him and the party inadvertently CREATE their BBEG by helping an Archmage become a Lich (without their knowing it). Then? Well. I don't know. We'll see how things pan out. But you've definitely given me some great tips on how to develop the BBEG and present him to the party in a fun way.

"We're only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from" My new favorite quote. Also, hey! I've used the Belgariad too! I love that series!

It's funny, when I see you in motion you always seem so positive, fun and excited, but whenever I pause the video you look angry and scary lol!

Yet another excellent video Matt. Thanks so much for the time and effort in making these videos. You've inspired me to run my very first game. Fingers crossed!

4 years late but as soon as the guy came to collect the bodies it reminded me of the Black Company!! So glad those books are getting some love!

You know, I just started watching your videos because your explanations were useful (and you are a great orator) for my personal writing hobby, but now I really wanna get into D&D :0

"Don't get in a fight." ... Sounds like something said at best a minute before a fight.

I wonder if Bogan Redcap ever takes a lesson from the Dread Pirate Robert's, and passes on the hat so they can retire from villainy.

i've watched all of your running the game videos, and i am working my way through them a second time. They are great to listen to at work. They really help me get through the day slogging away at monotonous graphic design and production work. THANK YOU

Advice for Phil: eldritch blaaäst!

+1 for THE BLACK COMPANY - Glenn Cook is criminally underappreciated . . .

Thank you these videos have helped me greatly. I was doing a one-shot for my friends and because of your videos I wasn't as nervous to DM. I've learned lots.

I just watched all your "Running the Game" Videos within 2 days. Mat you are a joy to watch and listen. Your stories and advice are great. I hope for many more video in the coming months or years.

Honestly, a warlock is essentially an archer with a bit of magical options. He should be focusing on things boosting eldritch blast in his invocations. Think things like agonizing blast and the range increase one. The spells are limited but come back in a short rest. Tell him to USE THEM during combat. They are literally a combat blaster wizard who sends out a bunch of eldritch blasts. They have decent damage if you treat them like an archer with some magical options for flavor. He will feel really bad outside of combat if he plays as an archer, he has poor skills and skill selection, so you need to use your magic but then you literally only have eldritch blast left in combat. Eldritch blast is essentailly 'shoot an arrow' that's better damage than an arrow. Warlocks scale well and get the same 6+ level spells as bards essentailly in uses per day. Warlocks are pretty much just blasters though, think old school evocation wizards. His utility spells that he has should generally be the ones granted by his patron status. Those are the flavor spells, he needs to focus on damage because that's what warlocks do, they're an archer with some extra magical oomph but less survival. Warlock is SUPER overpowered btw if you let your players short rest too often since they get their spells back on short rest, be careful on that. But the non damage spells are usually dictated by the patron and their 'domain' style spells. The warlock doesn't chose his own powers though(for crunch we let the player chose on level up, but... you don't have to), they're granted by the patron, have some fun with him. It's also the EASIEST way btw to help a warlock player out. The patron is usually extremely knowledgable as a great old one. If you know your warlock is about to be poop cause he has very little to do with undead other than 'I cast eldritch blast' maybe his patron will impose a minor penalty and CHANGE his spells(you get to do this as the DM running his patron). Honestly, if your warlock is struggling to feel good, change his spell loadout as his patron, you can influence him that way and give him a little more fun suddenly having a different spell set. Just make sure he doesn't get to abuse or chose the spells, and if negotiating(yes you can talk to your patron) you can take something FROM the player to change spells.

First time viewer. (Literally... this is my first video of yours.) Love this video. You sir, have gained yet another subscriber :) Def gonna listen to this while working on my upcoming campaign in 3.5

These videos are amazing and so helpful, I look forward to whatever else you do to help the D&D scene.

Thank you so much for making these videos! My friend group has a DnD campaign going and our DM isn't very confident that we're enjoying the game or that he's doing well. I send him your videos and he always talks about how cool and how many ideas he has. It's so nice to see him be confident thanks to you!

I'm DMing a game for the first time in a week, we are all complete novices at this and I ended up DMing but the more I think about it the more I get excited about the prospect. Anyway, for our first two sessions we have a player attending- Sam - who will not be able to attend other sessions (He's in the Royal Air Force so doesn't have the time), I want the first couple of sessions to be geared towards giving his character a decent arc. So we're playing the Lost MIne of Phandelver from the starter set - seeing as we're all starters it seemed a good place to... start. And I've decided that Sam's character will be an apprentice to the wizard Iarno Albrek - the missing wizard who the party can look for in the Redbrand manor. Anyway, spoilers for LMP - but in the quest Iarno is the bad guy and is in charge of the Redbrand bandits. I have made some adjustments such that when the party reaches the wizard's chamber they find Iarno in the middle of some great and terrible magical experiment - he is drawing magical power from a soul trapped in a giant glass flask - the figure in the flask being Sam's character. Shock, horror! Turns out that Sam has been playing a construct which has inhabited his body and Iarno is using him to draw more poo souls for his experiments. Then I say "Sam (he's not chosen a name yet) attacks Flynn" and then Sam fights alongside Iarno and some bandits against the party. If the party smashes the flask then Sam regains control and switches sides etc. Eventually Iarno flees or is captured or killed, and Sam's character thanks the party - he can then drop in and out of the story as and when Sam is able to play him (I'm going to give him some dodgy ethereal travel abilities as a result of being separated from his essence for so long). I did steal it somewhat from your vignette you mentioned a few videos back, hope you don't mind.

WOO HOO!!! Someone else has read the Belgariad!!!! I literally cheered when you said that, and told my family that you are officially the coolest person on youtube. (No one else I've ever talked to has read it.)

Another awesome video! Its been incredible watching your channel grow since you started doing these videos.

this put me immediately in mind of Austin Kleon's inspirational little book, "Steal Like An Artist." great reinforcement here. love it. and i've totally stolen from The Black Company myself. what a brilliant series.

I love this channel. I'd like a video on random encounters, and how to run encounters who are not for the players, I realized my friends realized everything is balanced around their characters, but since they aren't familiar with the monster manual that much, its hard for them to gauge the difficulty of an encounter, so I'd really like some tips of not killing people with over powered encounters, but also give them a feeling that the world is alive.

Now this was interesting... And it showed me that I'm still not reading enough.

Love your vids, Matt! They are extremely helpful and fun to watch. I'm a first time DM playing with first time players, and had my third session just yesterday, and the players seem to love it. I'm looking forward to your video about finding and reskinning new adventures. I love making my own adventures by rehashing bits of games I played or books I read, but I spent way to much time trying to write the perfect adventure and the perfect plot. Having some kind of reference guide for existing adventures to further my custom campaign will help out tremendously! Stay awesome!

Thank you for these videos. They've been some of the most helpful for DMing I've seen yet.

10 000 subscribers? How about 300k+ :D Go Matt!

"Domnall?" "Who the hell is Domnall?"

Gosh, this intro, this narration, I love it! I keep coming back to this video from times to times when I need inspiration, or just a good narrator telling awesome stuff. And the examples, insights and advices are so useful. Today, I finally recieved Priest and Thief, the first books outside a rulebook or a campaign setting I'll be reading since years. I'm excited!

Hey Matt, I LOVE your videos - great advice all round :) What I really dig about your 'set', is how you cycle the display board games on the shelf behind you. Its like 'board game of the week' or somesuch. so cool!

my DM made our bad guy a NPC on our team

Whenever I watch this, I’m always in the dilemma of wanting to show these to my players but at the same time to shamelessly steal all your ideas.

I just found your channel over the weekend and I've been churning through this playlist, thank you SO MUCH! I've played a decent amount of DnD but only recently have I decided to start running my own game for friends. My plan from the beginning was to run the Yawning Portal campaign for them, but then I started weaving my players' backstories in, and tweaking things, and I just wanted to say it's a huge relief to hear a much more seasoned DM like yourself talk about letting pre-packaged campaigns do a lot of the heavy lifting while inserting custom content around it.

You and Mercer have gave me hope in running DnD again after my 3 major fails at trying. Will do it better hopefully

Wow, someone drank a "potion of haste" as it seems 😄...

I love your vids Matt. Alot of it cements what I already do with some great ideas and enhancements/insights. Thanks mate

I doubt you still read comments 4 years later which is absolutely fine. I just wanted to share that I recently played my first round of D&D as a player after 3 previous sessions of character creation and combat trials to get a feel for the game before we started our campaign. That sparked my interest in DMing. Then I stumbled across your videos. Now I've spent 30 minutes to even hours a day watching you, reading and researching. I've already asked a couple close friends if they would like to start a campaign and we're all waiting to see what our schedules look like but I'm so excited at even the possibility to try and DM. Thank you so much for all this wonderful content and the passion you pour into your videos.

Was really excited for this episode. It was extremely insightful and my excitement was justified. Good job as always matt.

Thank you for continuing contribution to the dnd community. I'm undertaking starting my first campaign soon and the information you provide fills me with both inspiration and confidence. I look forward to devouring the material you present as there is much to read and experience to become better. Please continue linking source materials in the future as well.

I know these are older videos. But already you have inspired and have lifted my game by far! Thank you for inspiration on becoming a better new GM.

Your energy is great. Thanks for making the videos.

You really are a great inspiration and example to other, maybe not-so experienced GM's like myself. Your Stories about cursed Gold and early encounters of Bad Guys helped me solve a problem i had about introducing my pc's to a main sidequest i was planning. thanks for that

i've been listening to this while i work on my first campaign. thanks a lot for making such awesome videos

I can't stop coming back to this episode! It's amazing.

I've begun adding specific videos to a playlist I can use as reference. This is great material. I already had a full plan laid out for my villains, and this video gave me a ton of new ideas.

I love that your early adventures talk about you only having a few thousand subscribers and look now. It is great when deserving people get popular.

This was a great episode Matthew, thanks! As a beginning DM, I've found it a ton of fun but I'm hardly a natural at it, and these videos have been great at providing me with some hard-needed inspiration :)

My main problem with your videos is that they inspire me so much that I start dreaming up a campaign after watching for a few minutes and end up completely zoning out for the rest of the video

I just want you to know your videos have inspired me to be a better (I think) character. I have a lot more fun with each session now, and I now set an intention before every game of 'I am going to try and have as much fun as possible' which I learned from watching your videos. So thank you!

it is neat hearing you talk about how exciting it is to have reached 10K subs here - now to see you with 320K! subs is really cool. I only just recently heard about you and have started watching your videos and they are exceptionally well done and I can see why you've got the number of subs that you do. The format of the videos is really good. Particularly how the different aspects of the topic are broken down and picked apart in detail - as well as the videos ending with a clear summary and conclusion. I've been gaming for about 30 years as well and I've definitely picked up some good ideas already from watching the few videos I've seen so far, and I look forward to watching many more. Thanks very much for the super content and the effort.