My biggest flaw as a Dm is having ADHD. My biggest strength as a dm is having ADHD.

The only one hits deep, a DM once told me that a plan we all worked on for 5 session was bound to fail because "I planned this story to go as scripted" (words by the Dm)

Crispy, the speed with which I would purchase “I create problems” merch as a DM…

Remember improv details - My husband is our D&D GM and he has a bit of a problem with remember names or some vague details. However, I keep a fairly detailed log of whatever goes down with the intent of turning it in to a character journal down the line, so he knows that I or one of the other players will remember. Failed Prep - My crew will do a social night if anyone isn't up to the game session for a week. A couple times back, we played some Betrayal in the House on Haunted Hill on Tabletop Simulator, instead, and had a grand time.

I actually figured out a solution for giving my players hints when they need them: have different information floating around the world that could be helpful. I wanted my players to do a heist, but they kept getting distracted by other things and people. One of those people was a kobold that had been enslaved, so I made him an undercover agent for a rebellion that had learned while "captured" that the guy whose house was my target was part of the trade ring. Now the team is learning that this guy has MANY schemes going.

Collaborative processed like D&D are complex and have a lot of "moving parts". It good to listen to the advice and experiences of those who have them. Learn from their mistake as well as your own. That generally leads to a better outcome.

Nothing makes me want to disengage in a campaign more than railroading. Having the impression that without my character, the story would be the same is disheartening. I have two DMs. One of which does this. We are all disengaged players and even though I like our characters and his stories, I've left more sessions feeling miffed than necessary. As for the other DM... he has a world fleshed out and his stories are bigger than our characters. Our characters exist in a universe bigger than themselves and they need to stop something from happening. Even the smallest quests could lead to opening a can of worms in the story. But we are totally free of choosing to take said quests or go see the world. And every choice has its repercussions. THAT's what I like about his storytelling : players' choices matters. Railroading takes that away from everyone. Sure, a bit of help here and there helps... but railroading an entire campaign takes the seriousness out of the game. We don't play... we are watching the DM play for us.

I have a confession: I tend to fudge enemies’ HP. I once had my party kill what was supposed to be my biggest, strongest, most terrifying boss in two rounds, so since then, I’ve taken to adding health if it looks like a fight will be over too quickly, or, alternatively, if I underestimated a monster’s damage output and downed half the party in a single round of a combat that wasn’t supposed to be that hard, I’ll take away health to make the monster a bit of a glass cannon. Heck, sometimes I’ll fudge things because it fits the story-recently, I had my party fight evil living dolls in the likenesses of their characters from a previous campaign. Most of the party had gotten the killing blow on the doll of their past characters, and there was one doll left. The player whose previous character the doll looked like rolled max damage for their attack. Technically, the doll should have survived with 2 HP, but I decided that the doll was killed there, solely because it was really cool to have each player be the one to kill the doll of their last character.

My prep involves so little actually writing things down, it’s all in my head which I think makes it easier for me to plan but I’ve had my fair share of forgetting specific important details when describing an environment or a character

i once had a big bad survive an npc ally's attack at 1hp when he technically shouldn't have so my players could finish him off. They proceeded to miss for like 5 attacks and he got away

Glad to see you so relaxed and rested! You're always a joy to watch but vacation!Crispy is even more so. Happy that you're taking care of yourself, and that you enjoyed your time off and your vacay! "I create problems--ONLY. PROBLEMS." --beetle, when no one asks

I think allowing for silence is important. If I've got an idea as a player, I'll act on it, but some things need a bit more thinking through. Especially if the potential consequences may be severe Running easy vs challenging encounters have been much more consistent since I moved to pf2. Back in 5e, I made easy combats that were near tpk slogs, and I've made hard combats that were finished in 2 rounds. Pathfinder's difficulty is objectively simpler to manage with combats never requiring me to make the added balance modifications i did back in 5e. And its worked regardless of party size The lesson i took away?Play other rpgs

I am a Theater of the Mind student of DM philosophy. It's the way I learned how to play when I started back in 1985. If I'm really into the session and the whole feel of the game is good I can make you smell the bread baking six blocks down from the tavern where the PCs stayed last night. I've only used a battle mat a few times and found it slowed an already cumbersome system down too far to enjoy (D&D 3.5/Pathfinder 1e, by the way). Waiting for players to study the map and then decide where to put their mini can take, what is for me anyway, an agonizing amount of time. All I need is for my characters to "see" where they are in a scene and be able to describe their actions to me and I can run with it.

Here's the 4e gal again! 😅 While CR is always a mixed bag like you say, I much prefer 4e's encounter building system, and directly credit it for my improvement as a DM. Don't get me wrong, I love 5e, but am extremely underwhelmed with how it approaches encounter building in both the DMG and Xanathar's. My ill-fated 12-level Ravnica campaign gave me consistent trouble with encounter balance. I'm having so much fun teaching my wife how to be a DM for the first time, but it's gonna take some time to teach her encounter building with 5e. Thanks for these tips as always! 💜

Making mainly problems I think is a very relevant anecdote to gming if not advice

I would describe my thoughts on the last one like this: "make a story, not a plot." Like crispy said, you need story it's important have a story for the past have a story for a present and have an idea for the future, a story can go anywhere it does not have to follow a specific plot so don't make a plot.

In terms of the CR of creatures, I found some info in the DMG that talked about CR to party size and level. I turned it all into a spreadsheet that scaled to show difficulty for that party size and level, regarding how many enemies and each of their CR ratings. The idea is that it should be easy to see the recommended difficulty that could even be altered. Never got to be the DM enough to see hiw accurate it was.

I beg to differ with that guy who thinks players aren't going to care about characters you don't care about. How many parties have adopted a random goblin? One time, we were investigating a zombie filled mine. The DM added a zombie mine canary in a cage, purely as setting flavor. We adopted it. A little while later, in a fight with a wild magic sorcerer, it was accidentally given human level intelligence (we were using a d10,000 wild magic table). We taught it to be a warlock and it became a minor villain.

Welcome back Crispy! Hope you enjoyed your trip ^.^

I'm working on running my first game this gave me a lot to think about I'm also going to be teaching a friend of mine and her kids how to place so it should be fun

Vacation Crispy, slightly new formula, same great vids. ❤

Speaking of CR and challenge, one thing I've seriously appreciated GMing Pathfinder 2e is that the encounter building system actually works pretty well.

Had a bar/brothel, with two physical "bars" inside, and two bartenders. One of the bartenders ran off to fight some bandits, and needed saving. So, spur of the moment, "who's working the second bar?" Me: "Um... (think of an old co-worker.) Trish!.. She's an orc... Wearing an old-fashioned magenta corset with a leather top. Piercings. Heavy eye shadow. Orange-red hair. Green-grey skin complexion. She sometimes fills in for Coyote at the VIP bar. Coyote's the one who ran off. She's been gone for about two days-.... yeah, you go talk to Trish..." 20 sessions later- Trish has an entire backstory, along with a g**damn nick-name: "Trish the Dish." One of the PC's has begun a small romance with her (his ex was also an orc, which I forgot when I literally pulled her out of the ether for ONE scene.) I'm decent at improv, I guess. I played her "sassy yet proud." I have so much written down beforehand, that I rarely take notes during or after improv, which has come back to bite me again. I'd say my biggest fault (so far) is kinda pushing the hints a bit too hard: Like, "You see a workbench... covered in blood... leather straps... on a table are various tools, scalpels, and scrapers... and next to that, A FINE LEATHER-BOUND JOURNAL THAT APPEARS TO BE JUST LIKE THE ONE THE OLD WOMAN DESCRIBED LAST WEDNESDAY NIGHT!!!"

Because of personal preference and a small group(3 players) I put party npcs,npcs that are a part of the team and will always be around. Is a good way to make them attached but also a highlight was i had a defeated mutated bat follow the players and now they love him for his quirkness

"Cowboy lady Saddie" Mrs. Adler, is that you?

I'm a pretty new GM and I'm adding 2 new players to my campaign, one being a healer... Both being some kind of fistfighter... I'm gonna have to, not only buff the enemies HP but also make them more deadly because each PC has between 3-5 HP throughout the entire game. Having a healer in that kind of game can make them pretty invincible...

A boss fight should have a CR higher than the party level. That's RAW. An on par CR (theoretically) is a challenging fight. Go a bit below for easier fights and higher for bigger, more dangerous fights. Also, it assumes 5 players, not 3. It gives guidance for more or less than the expected (5) amount of players.

Did you coordinate topics with Ginny Di today?! Guess I’ll see when I watch the video. Or, could I somehow finagle watching both videos at work, hm…

I admit, I've been struggling a little with my most recent campaign. Maybe I've not had as much mental energy to dedicate to preparing the game since I changed my shift pattern at work, or because I've got other things going on. Maybe it's all down to us being two sessions in and the campaign is taking time to find its feet, but I'm kind of drawing a blank on how session three will pan out. So I'm trying to dial back on my usual method of laying out a loose plot thread. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson the first time I ran a one-shot that ended up being a two-session game because my players spent the first 90 minutes fannying about in the starting town...

Confession. And a few extra words to appease the algorithm.

Confession!

"Players are Not gonna care about characters that you don't care about." Wow, it must be nice to have tame players like that. I'm used to players spontaniously desciding that one random people they just met should be turned into a major support character. I rarely know when it will happen or which one it would be. I once had an NPC who's only role was to smuggle an object into a Player characters pocket and then be killed by a vampire to start the Plot. My players brought him Back from the dead and made him one of their main information brokers and probably the Most important NPC in the whole campaign.

Im still figering out my stile but the last sessoin i gave my players two optins stay in the exploding ship or bail and live

Oof heard on CR. My party of 4 level 9 players stomped a CR 13 creature with no one dropping below 0...

❤

I find myself enjoying the Tavern Tips more than the Horror Stories lately.

confession

Confession. I have never DM:d. 😂

You say that the challenge rating system in every game is finicky, but Pathfinder 2e’s is really solid. If the math says an encounter should be trivial it will be. If it says it’ll be severe, it will be. Dice rolls are what they are, sure, but I’ve never had an encounter fly off the rails of what it was meant to be outside of extreme luck/bad luck.

Oh no, i think ur shadow banned. As for CR, it's misused/misunderstood. Like it assumes multiple battles a day and no magic items.

Every! Single! NPC I have cared about, my players have hated. And every NPC my players loved, was one I didn't care about.

To the "Don't write story" stuff, that's is a playstyle thing. If your goal is to have a rollercoaster narrative where players pick their reactions and enjoy the ride, as long as there's buy in, there's no problem. You're hearing advice given from people who lean more into the improve sector, who want to be surprised by the game and want the stories they make to be a culmination of what happened, rather than an open-ended choose-your-own-adventure book. Both playstyles are valid. Find what's fun for you and your group, not for someone else. Frankly, people have turned the idea of having any sort of railing into a dirty word called "railroading." There's a line where there's too much railing and it can be crossed, but as long as everyone works together to understanding where the line is for their particular group, you shouldn't end up feeling it (or you'll dial it up/down after a session or two).

Gonna push back a bit on "Challenge Rating, no matter what the game, is going to be a crapshoot." There are definitely systems with more tightly-tuned combat creature design than D&D 5e. I'm not saying there's a system where you can perfectly predict the difficulty or the outcome- there isn't. But there are some where the swings are way less drastic. Also- not saying those are better, they have their own strengths and weaknesses. Just trying to caution against overlearning a lesson in one system and applying it to all of them. Good video all in all, I just had one particular critique that was bugging me.

Stopping around the 9:25 mark to silence this CR slander! JK, I think your point is valid but I think misses what CR is supposed to tell you. CR is balanced around 4 player characters of that level. You can't really say something like "CR is crapshoot because changing the number of players drastically changes the balance" because that's exactly what CR is for. If you have 3 players, you need to tune down the fights. If you have more players, you can send higher CR. Also, rarely are fights balanced around 1 monster vs 4 players. Action economy is just way too in player's favor and this is why legendary and lair actions are a thing. Just saying, CR is incredibly useful once you learn to utilize and sending 3 CR 2 monsters at a party of level 6 is probably more balanced than sending 1 CR 6 at the same party.

confession