My 3rd ever role-playing session (Pathfinder), my character went down in one hit. The GM described the monster plucking out my character’s eye and ran away, and for the next few sessions I had to roll certain skills at a penalty due to lack of depth perception, until I could get some magical healing. 2 years later, the GM confirmed that hit should have instantly killed my character, but he was afraid if he did that, he would turn me off from role playing forever, and was probably right. All the other experienced players said they knew he cheated at that point but 1) agreed it was the right thing, and 2) never said a word. 6 years later, I am so grateful he did that!

“One lie is enough to question all truths”. Fudge wisely my friends

A video about DM's "fudging", while Kelly is wearing a t-shirt with "Friends Don't Lie" on it.... Too funny. Keep up the great work guys.

I like Matt Colville's reasoning that fudging and adjusting hit points is eleventh-hour encounter design. We're playing a notoriously swingy edition with unusually loose math, so any 5e DM who claims to be absolutely confident in their encounters is either lying, or they can afford to hire an army of playtesters. For most of us, the players are fighting through the alpha versions of our encounters; it's okay to keep designing the encounter while it's being run, as long as we're doing it to correct our own mistakes.

If you want to "subvert expectations", one of my favorite ways is to set up a trope or meme that, players who like to metagame, would fall for. While escorting a caravan, the party was halted and found a chest in a nearby creek. With everyone so focused on it expecting a mimic given the nearby corpses, they were surprised by the large python that attacked them instead.

On my first time I have ever DM'd, my players were standing in front of the job board and there was a posting drawn in crayon looking for a lost cat. It was colored in rainbow colors. On of my players really wanted to find this cat but the party as a whole decided to take a more traditional rescue mission. So what I did is when they got to the missing characters, the missing characters were protected in a bubble of rainbow light created by the rainbow cat. It really made my one player who wanted to search for the rainbow cat really happy. It also got all the other players obsessed over this eldritch cat

I had a moment, like you guys described in the video, where I set up this cool encounter and the PC’s thwarted it. I was running Lost Mines and the group was captured by the green dragon. While in its lair, the Druid asked if she could turn into a gorilla. Me, being an inexperienced DM at the time, gave her a home brewed stat block while not knowing how overpowered this made her character. The PC’s ended up fighting the dragon and beating it. While the dragon was trying to escape, the gorilla/Druid jumped on the back of its head, and grappled the dragon back to the ground (with a nat 20) where the rest of the PC’s killed it. I was so disappointed with how the session went until I saw how ecstatic the players were for killing it. It’s something they still bring up 3 years later

You're right, when players work out "the ending" really early that can be fun. The party in our campaign guessed correctly who the hidden BBEG was, but they could not act yet. Then (as always planned) the BBEG helped and befriended the party, the party slowly began to doubt their original mistrust. Think they felt even more betrayed when the BBEG did abandon them than if they had never suspected.

I've used the phantom ogre tactic a few times, my favorite was when my players were chasing some bandits through a forest when the bandits dug in in a cave. My players were DESTROYING the bandits, they were rolling really well, I was not. So I threw in the cave troll. The bandits were so busy running from the party that they didn't completely check the cave out, and missed the chamber in the back with a sleeping troll. So the troll woke up, and attacked everyone, bandits and party alike. Made the combat much more interesting.

As an aside, my favourite way to "cheat" is if they catch you in some sort of logic trap: maybe the vampire was out during day, why is this dragon in this unusual biome, or huh that npc is acting super differently, yes and them. You can ask for a knowledge or insight check depending on the details if you want, but nothing gets the player's brains rolling like just saying "yeah that's actually super weird now you think about it, why would a green dragon be in the desert?". Sometimes the reason could be as simple as the witness was unreliable/hiding something, or a minion working on behalf of the BBEG, but I've seen whole subplots develop where now the vampire's plans include finding a way to walk in the sun (if only for a limited time) or to discover the super secret chromatic dragon pact where the green dragon is plotting with a blue dragon to take over the continent.

I just had a great idea for a "quantam ogre" style thing that would, probably, be hilarious. Establish in your world that goblins have decided to make "parties" and go adventuring. Being goblins they aren't exactly going to go to a local tavern to get quests but they just kind of roam around and decide what their "quest" is. Sometimes they tail actual adventuring parties and show up to try to steal the glory and loot. A combat encounter ends too quickly and "oh look! you were tailed by a group of goblins trying to steal your quest!" Obviously shouldn't be used all the time but I just like that idea. Maybe even have it cause some chaos and the goblin party attack both the enemies the party was fighting and the party. That would be more planned but I just love the idea of a group of goblins imitating an adventuring party and trying to adventure but do so in their goblin interpretation of what adventurers are.

The question of rolling an 18 on a DC of 20 could also be a partial success, depending on the situation. A lot of skill checks allow for degrees of success or failure.

Once had a two session mini campaign, my first time DMing well above level 5. Both sessions had built up to a boss fight. Initiative is rolled, the gloomstalker ranger goes first... and... welll, oneshots the BBEG, who was canonically known to be INCREDIBLY dangerous to the point where few inworld characters dared to face them. Long story short I made impressed noises over how effective the attack had been, and how it clearly hit Just Right in a vulnerable spot, and tripled the HP of the monster. Turned into a nice fight that was still on the easier side, but definitely preferable to ending it where it should have because I had miscalculated the attack power of one character in a specific circumstance. For a long campaign, I might have handled it differently, but for what was essentially a homebrew oneshot? Nah, definitely better for everyone this way.

I fudged the final encounter on Mines of Phandever, doing exactly what you described. The party was absolutely wrecking the end encounter, and I just didn’t let the BBEG die until it was more poetic. Thankfully the group was, minus one entirely new and it made for an excellent story that they still like to relive. We’re a year into the next campaign and they still talk about it. So sometimes it’s a judgement call.

I think my favorite DM cheat come with the subversion of expectation with other regular, long-time players who know what adventures and modules have published in them before ever creating their characters. This is often done by adding in an "option C" where there may have only been one or two choices before. Should we go left or right... wait, there's a hidden door over here, too?! This way the players don't get to simply memorize a module beforehand and risk metagaming the fun out of it at the table (which has happened a couple times for me).

As the forever DM of my group, thank you for this video, its very helpful, and I agree with a lot of the points you've made, particularly when it comes to fudging die rolls and making sure not to railroad the players. One other way that I've fudged the die rolls (and I think I've only done this maybe once or twice) is when the party is absolutely beating the crap out of a combat encounter that I was hoping would be more interesting, and I felt like I wasn't sufficiently conveying how dangerous this particular monster is supposed to be. The dice were not working in my favor, and after missing several attacks on the PCs, the creature was almost dead. While they were having fun, and I was glad, they were also talking about how easy the fight was. So, I rolled another attack, got a low roll, but I fudged the roll, and that ended up almost killing one of the PCs outright. That suddenly raised the stakes and tension of the fight, and made them take it a little more seriously, but I think that's another situation where it was worth fudging the roll in that case. Just my 2 cents. :)

I love using the phantom ogres. Especially if there is a whole battle going on and the game focus is only on the boss fight, I still have freedom to pull in a couple of enemies from the main troops or a couple of allies if need be. I know it's a bit of a crutch and is not as good as planning a good and balanced combat encounter, but as I learn to balance combat it's a great way to give each conflict the tension that it naratively deserves.

That look Monty gave Kelly about the secret group chat was priceless XD

Plenty of enemies will be content to turn the party into prisoners after knocking them out. The same sort of enemies may not need to be brought down to zero, they might surrender or attempt to flee at half HP. Once you finally internalize that as a DM,, and it took me a while, the dice/HP adjusting moments become less common Also a great way to conceal phantom ogres is to note in a future room that it appears to have been where the ogres came from. Then they get the impression that they inadvertently cleared out an additional room

Rule of group understand meets Rule of cool... everyone has a great time! Thanks for the tips! I have an interesting tale of a little rule bend that I though fair and so did my players. The group's cleric died to a cone of cold spell. Thematically I said he was frozen solid. He had 2 failed death saves. The rest of the party was able to dispatch the enemies then they all collectively ran over to him, no healing left to bring him back up, and group hugged him. So I said, before he rolled his next death save that he could have advantage on the death save. First roll was a 7. Second roll a nat 20. The power of friendship melted the ice that covered his body and he drew breath once again. The party was so excited and blown away that the dice told the tale of how the power of friendship saved their friend's life. I didn't do much to assist, but that was a little bend that really inspired the group and gave them all joy. It could have easily gone the other way still, but it felt better to have "inspiration" because of what they did.

As a DM, I've done my fair share of fudged dice rolls and DC adjustments. I've always fudged them to bail my players out or to my player's benefit. In my last session, my players were ambushed by a sheriff and his deputies after the party had just escaped from their jail. They were out numbered 2 to 1 and they had to think on the fly or risk being captured again. One of my players, a druid, used entangle to prevent them from getting closer. I rolled the saving throws and all but one of them passed it. I wound up fudging it to all of them but one failed the saving throw and became entangled. It gave the party some breathing room and it was just enough for the party to overcome the encounter. My players were happy, the druid felt like a hero (and he was praised by the other players too), and the campaign was finally able to progress after my players had spent the greater part of 2 hours trying to escape from jail. I also agree with making use of eavesdropping. In one of my previous sessions, my players assumed that the chest that had all of their stuff in it was also booby trapped by a magical trap or something. They thought it just seemed too easy that all that was preventing them from getting their stuff was a simple lock. While they were debating what to do, I made a quick fire magical trap. One of the players then rolled a really well arcana check and I told them that it seems magical and they see glyphs on it. They all then searched for ways to dispel it and then for a key to unlock the chest. They searched the guards and found a ring on a guard that allows them to dispel magic once per day. They dispelled the magical trap, opened the chest, and got their stuff. They were all really happy that their plan to account for their worries worked perfectly. I also gave them an inspiration point for good RP which made them even happier because I have a house rule where you can save them.

I had an amazing boss fight planned with a cursed queen that was going to really make the players fight for their lives and be an awesome cinematic fight I envisioned in my head, but as they wanted to do the fight without killing her as they suspected she was cursed, they made a magic item that could remove the curse. I let them finish the item a day before the set-up for the giant fight to give them freedom to do something else if they desired, but I didn't expect them to do so as there was another plan that would allow them to do something similar ahead of time... Well much to my surprise they took the chance to painstakingly infiltrate into the castle and surprise the queen, turning the boss fight into a surprising removal of a curse that gave them deep insight into a lot of background stuff I had going on!!! I was originally super bummed out I didn't get to have my crazy cinematic boss fight, but in the end I know it was the proper call to let them enjoy their (as they call it) "Mission Impossible encounter". Especially because they still talk about how awesome it was today. X3 It was tough letting that go, but I think the end results were awesome and they know they can solve things without fighting sometimes, now!!!

This more of a tip, and I got half the idea from you guys. Most of the time Idon't roll initiative for monsters. I add them in the gaps between my players initiative. This also gives me more control on the narrative; if the BBEG yells at their minions to attack, well then I can have the minions act before the BBEG.

I once countered Passwall by building the dungeon out of dried blood! One of the villains was an Arcanaloth, which escaped. They followed it to its lair, which of course is a castle made of iron (as documented in 1E MM2). The worst I saw was in an Amber game. In Amber the characters are meant to be very powerful. In this game we kept running into areas where core abilities like Trump and Pattern didn't work, even though the books explain carefully that such areas are very, very rare. Having powerful characters, and then disabling them, is a recipe for frustration.

As a first-time player,when I learned about the Lucky feat and how (RAW) if you roll with disadvantage and use a luck token, it turns it into super-advantage, i was stoked for an opportunityto present itself. When my character was hit with a powerful spell attack, that I was surprised by and had to roll with disadvantage, I emediately used one of my luck tokens to turn the tides in my favor (first time using one in the whole campaign). Then my expectation of how the attack was going to play out collapsed in front of me when the DM said "Okay, roll with disadvantage again.". As much as I felt I'd just been hard-core shut down, I personally knew the DM to not be a jerk, and rolled with it (pun intended). I waited until the end of the session to bring up what had happened, explaining my understanding of the Lucky feat and how in the moment I felt wronged. He emediately looked up the feat and, upon reading its wording, apologized for his ruling. He still felt turning disadvantage into super-advantage was a bit OP, so we agreed on a middle ground ruling for any future uses. Moral of the story: As much as it can SUCK when a DM shuts down a plan you were expecting to work, take a moment to collect yourself and don't explode/object to the ruling if it's ill-timed (in my case, it was mid-combat, and everyone else was having an awesome time. If I'd insisted on stopping everything just to gripe about my issue, the flow of that combat and everyone's fun would have been destroyed just to get my point across). Be the bigger player for everyone else at the table and wait for an appropriate time to talk with the DM about a disagreement. In my case (and I hope in most cases) the DM will be SUPER understanding, and work with you to insure to the best of their abilities that it won't happen again. Happy dungeon delving, and sorry for the long-windedness!

Good video, and good reasons. I think the primary times when I fudge something, it's to either correct an error I personally made in setting up an encounter by misjudging a monster's strength or entertainment value, or to pull the plug on a combat which has ceased to be engaging. I'm perfectly fine with saying "you mop up the remaining the goblins in short order, the rest run off" if it's midnight and folks want to wrap up something that would otherwise have taken another hour with little doubt as to the outcome.

This is probably my favorite video you've done in a while. I'd recommend your pacing be 2 ranking videos, one (even more in-depth) thought exercise video like this. Great job btw

This is an absolute banger of a video, thanks you two. The underlying message between the pros and cons of all of these is exactly the right vibe. Thank you!

16:00, basically waht I had happen in my campaign. Players encountered a trap Roper, which had a stationed guard not to far from it- The guard could call out in case the roper gets hungry and leaves its hole. Player were sudo stealthy, except for one. And the guard noticed, barely. So I ruled it as the guard moving in to investigate and ended up being in line of sight of the Roper! They may have known it existed, but they certainly didn't know *where* it was. Yummy guard. Players proceeded to attempt and flee the Roper, most of whom did so successfully except for one. However, thanks to a well aimed crossbow bolt the Roper lost a tentacle and the players escaped from its lair, pelting its hide with arrows and spells. The Roper, still being over 50 HP, but just had a tentacle severed and ate very recently, chose not to pursue the much faster meals and just settle with the guard. :P

Immense advice as usual! One of my campaigns is with kids so there's some great ideas for making special moments for each one of them. Thank you!

You did a great job summing up these aspects of DMing and their nuances/cautions. Thanks for not encouraging rampant cheating as the internet tends to do.

The two non-optional rules for DnD - #1 - If everyone is having fun, you are doing it right #2 - If everyone is having fun, you are doing it right. Everything else is subject to negotiation and the DM.

Great video, it's nice that a lot of what's mentioned here is how I usually try to run games. My 2 cents on something that really works for me when trying to build encounters, is I almost always create important encounters/encounters I want to be dramatic a little harder than the encounter-building rules/guide suggest. I still, after over a decade of playing D&D, find it very challenging to predict how an encounter will go, especially at higher levels. Thus, I create them harder because I find it's much easier (and feels better) to fudge in favor of the players. For example, if the fight isn't going great and player are rolling poorly, I can turn an occasional attack against a player into a miss, and no one is really going to question it. However, if an encounter is too weak, and suddenly the monsters start hitting more often because you fudge rolls against the players, it's going to be much more noticeable to the players, and it feels kinda icky. I find this gives me the space to just "run the encounter as planned" if it's going well (and honestly, players are usually way stronger than you expect, so making an encounter harder, often just ends up making it balanced. However, it leaves me the freedom to know I can fudge a little here and there as needed to balance it out in their favor. Unrelated, I love eavesdropping on player planning. I cannot count the number of times that players came up with a way cooler idea or explanation than what I had planned, and I changed my plan and pretended like that was the plan for the story all along xD. Sometimes an idea is totally out there and off base and wouldn't work, but usually if people are putting in enough time/effort to come up with a cool plan, then I want it to succeed to reward them for the effort.

When it comes to the Illusion of Choice and Stonewalling, I think it's one of the most powerful tools a DM can use. I've been DMing for around two and a half years with a full campaign under my belt and one of the biggest thing i've learned is that as long as the players feel like the main characters, you're fine. My games are a bit more linear in the way they progress, but I still give them smaller choices to do. For example: They might have to choose which order they do events in or how they choose to do events, but they have to do said events in the end. When my players pick a plot they wanna follow for the next chapter, they are stuck in that chapter. But the micro choices they can make along they still make them feel like they are the main characters of the story. Also having those smaller choices shown up later (like a minor npc that they helped return) can really help with this narrative. Everyone makes a huge deal of making a huge sandbox game... when you really don't have to. Most of the written modules are linear with minor choices and work out pretty well. Point is, as long as the players feel like they matter in the campaign, they'll usually be willing to play along. Allow them to be the directors of the train rather than the passengers.

The one time I really fudged an encounter, it was a creature I had never used before and I had three. Didn't realize they were notoriously under CRd, and the first one hit the party HARD. I stared in horror but fortunately hadn't revealed the other two yet so I just removed them from the encounter and ran the one alone.

Boys this was incredibly insightful, i LOVED thos video. I am planning on DMing for the first time and I was afriad to run into such problems but now that you have outlined them I feel more confident than I ever was! Love you guys keep up the amazing content 😁

rea;y enjoyed the video, i often do the hp adjustment thing, but only when i think i make a design mistake. I think i heard "encounter design doesnt stop when you are at the gametable" , but i very often have a b team to. I also use the b team to create tension. When i think they probably need 3 rounds to finish the combat i make the b team arive in 3 turns (did this only once now i think about it) and so they did what they needed to do and can now decide to flee from the b team or get them too.

I loved this video! I like the evenhanded approach you guys take. As DMs, everything we do should be enhancing the enjoyment of the players, whether that means challenging them and pushing them to their limits or putting a finger on the scale in their favor. When I fudge my rolls, I always do it in favor of my players, such as turning a crit into a hit or a narrow hit on a low health player into a narrow miss, but only when they've earned it. I think of it like inspiration that I can award, except the players don't know it happens. I don't want them to think I'm going easy on them. I also have gotten in the habit, when doing open rolls in front of the party, of being vague about what the monster is doing before I roll the D20. Is it a normal hit that the player can take? Then I describe the monster making its attack. Did I roll a crit on an injured player who's been struggling with bad die rolls? "Oof. Good thing the monster was just trying to trip/grapple/disarm you." If the players tell you they don't want you to pull your punches, then that's fine. I know some players like the challenge, and that can be fun. But if a party has made smart choices and just had bad luck, I see that as an opportunity to allow the DM's actions to embelliah the struggles the party is encountering and thus make their perseverance even more of an exciting story.

Dear dungeon dudes I love y’all‘s videos they’re fantastic I especially love how you explain what each of the class/sub class features do because I can’t understand them until they’re explained to me so thanks. and with your new Kickstarter book that’s come out you’ve actually kind of inspired me to create my own D&D book (something like Tasha’s) having said that I would love to see some more videos on how to homebrew like how to homebrew sub classes and spells and magic items also here’s an idea for you guys if you ever get bored maybe make a series of videos where you take all the sub classes that you ranked A-D and make them S tier

Hey Dudes! I got my Drakkenheim lootbox last week and it is phenomenal!!!! I did want to let you know I found a typo/misprint on the card for the Crown of Westemar where it is identified as a longsword. But it's a non issue and I can't wait to start my own Drakkenheim campaign

The very first game I DMed was a bit of an intro for the players to learn the game. So it was supposed to be quite easy. In the third room they were supposed to learn combat. 4 players against 2 low level enemies, about 50-60% chance that they hit with their weapon and an enemies dies in around 2 hits. The party then had 3 full rounds where no one managed to roll above a 10 and one of the players was down already. Decided that thats not a good way to get people into D&D and suddenly the enemies were also a bit worse at hitting and their weapons a tad blunter.

Love y'alls videos. I'm a new DM starting tomorrow night with Icewind Dale. Thanks for the information, and stuff to avoid unless needed.

I'm a "forever DM" with roughly 25 year experience, and here's my take on these: Fudging Dice: Never...! I always roll in the open, except for very few rolls where it makes sense due to story/suspense, and I never fudge them. Adjusting Monster HP: I do this from time to time, but only for climactic combats where I want a really suspensefull combat. I never change it more than roughly 20% though, since I still want the players to feel it when they had good rolls. I also sometimes call a killing blow when an attack nearly kills a monster, if I feel it suits the pace of the combat. Quantum Ogres: Never used unplanned extras for a combat. I prefer to have add-ons arrive/be at a later point if initial fight(s) were too easy. Illusion of Choice: I distinguish between location-based encounters/plots and then there's event-based encounters/plots. Location-based story is static, and whatever happens there, only happens there. Event-based story can happen anywhere, and I use it to pace the game and lead the players toward location-based story. Eavesdropping: Yes! All the yesses! As a DM who 90% improvise, I take cues from my players' banter, paranoia, and general mood, to modify the story/location/encounter. This is an invaluable tool if you can perfect it, alongside your improvisation skills. Bending/Breaking Rules: Never change rules mid-game, unless it's something everyone is onboard with. House rules should always be discussed with everyone before game start, or between sessions. I prefer to 100% adhere to the rules during combat, since then everyone knows how everything works. Outside combat, I'm much more lenient and implement more a "rule of cool" style approach, but still grounded in the base rules.

Man, its such an wonderful experience to do things like these on the fly and make the game even more enjoyable, nice video!

This is so helpful. I’m going to DM for the first time for a bunch of ten year olds and I really want them to have an amazing time with it. Some of these will be so good for that!

Thank you guys for your great insights on dming my trick to implement Homebrew and optional features in my campaign that I am preparing is using a Google document and writing out everything that I am adding or including and sharing it with all of my players I am even willing to update that document if something comes up to heavily use the rule of cool so if I like something my players really enjoyed sometimes I'll just add it as long as we're all having fun that's what matters

One of my favorite adjustments for very important boss battles was a change to the legendary resistance mechanics, where they got legendary "Resiliences" instead. It works exactly the same as the resistance but it can also be used as a death ward effect that grant a few temp HP. It worked very well for me, since it gave more importance to the "Resiliences". Many times the legendary resistances can be just easily worked around or fully ignored having literaly zero impact and macking that combat lack the "well you are fighting something that is legendary for a reason, it's though to kill it dead" as inteligent spellcasters might as well just spam the heck out of half damage spells and a party with many very powerfull martial classes such as a paladin crit smithing things to oblivion might just pretedn they dont exist =V. I found that it gave more dimensions to some of combats where some fun different shnenigans would happen where some times a spell caster would just sent that big save or suck just to force the "res" to be used to guarantee that the next turn of the fighter would finish the fight.

I just wanted to say thank you so much. I was a advanced d&d 2nd edition and small amount of 3rd edition and because of life I lost the ability to play until now I lost all of my 2nd edition books and I had almost the whole collection. I am now acquiring 5th edition and I just wanted to say it's because of your videos I was able to learn fifth edition regulations that differed from the second edition and I just wanted to say thank you for the education

All good advice. I admit to several of those tactics, always with the aim of increasing player enjoyment and making a better story. When players go off script/map/prepared area, either in-game nudges such as pointing them to a friendly NPC usually works.

I was in a game of Tomb of Annihilation (no spois), and we in a combat where we were outnumbered, and getting whittled down where we had I think two PCs up with a combined 10 HP. The next round, the DM started making 'morale checks' for the enemy, even though they were winning. But it was clear what was really happening; the DM felt bad and didn't want the party to die. Kind of reminds me of The Incredibles quote; "You didn't save my life, you ruined my death!"

Eavesdropping is one that I do a lot. I also enjoy it when they figure out what I'm doing as it is...it's called foreshadowing and I must have done it well enough they followed where I wanted them to go. I don't fudge rolls....not one of the things I like doing. As far as illusion of choice I agree with Kelly, but I also make like a few different events that need to happen that can be activated and I choose when and where more than just one. I really enjoy how you keep saying to be careful with all these...and you're 100% right because these all have been used wrong and abusively. These rules can be more than just D&D as well which is great for people to hear.

Fudging HP: As a general rule of thumb, I don't mind fudging HP up or down pretty freely within the hp range of a mob's hit dice (6d8+12 might average at 39, but I wouldn't go higher than 60 or lower than 18). If you're fudging more than that, I feel like you've done some very bad encounter planning.

In addition to Quantum Ogres, I've also set up Quantum NPCs that could show up if needed. Often they're going to show up as part of the plot later. I hate to accidentally TPK a party when they only have a level or two worth of hit points. I often prefer this to some of the other methods because it works better as part of an overarching story plot than changing a die roll.

Your story about a secret door to a room of treasure reminded me of a one-shot I ran back in 3rd edition. The players tracked some villains back to a hideout in the mountains and were faced with the front door. When the rogue tried to search for traps he rolled exceptionally low so the whole party assumed that when I said "You find no traps" that there must be traps that he just couldn't detect. They then spent several minutes trying all sorts of things to deal with a door that not only was NOT trapped, it wasn't even locked.

All good stuff here! Reading the 'table' is one of, if not, THE most important abilities a DM can have.

When the where talking about the Illusion of choice and moving around events to meet with where your player are going is a term I like to call the Phantom Train. Your rail roading you party but they don't know it :D

A friend of mind was actually in a game where the dm made it clear they were going to fight a "white" dragon. So the party prepared with cold resistant items and fire spells only for them to arrive and discover... it was an albino red dragon...

When I ran a 4e game, when my encounters were clearly over, but the monsters still had a lot of hp, I would just have them start taking double damage. I'm about to run a 5e, and I think I'll use that morale option that you guys mentioned this time

You guys are far & away my fave TTG channel on KZfaq. I want to play D&D with you both so badly 😂

A while back I did a one-shot for Starfinder (Pathfinder in space) using homebrewed or reskinned monsters inspired by Dead Space and Prey as my first time running the system. Fast forward to the encounter with the big bad, I quickly realized that it was going down really quick so I just decided that I was going to double its hitpoints. Turns out it was a really good decision. The players got a satisfying boss fight, overall really enjoyed themselves, and I learned an important lesson in DMing that got highlighted in this video.

I expected to feel more called out in this video being a rather new DM. But aside from a couple of fudged die rolls and appropriating various characters into different locations, I think I'm doing all right. They're enjoying themselves. And they're a really heavy hitting, pretty creative party.

I used to be the forever DM of the group and finally one of my players decided that they are ready to run a game of their own. Thank you very much for this video , I can now give this VERY dangerous , but effective and, sometimes, crucial tool to them. The game was suffering sometimes from bad rolls , etc. , so I hope they will get something from the video for their game. Lots of love to you , guys.

I found it rather humorous when you mentioned the scenario about getting across the lake and how a railroad would involve requiring them to take salty pete’s boat. In the game session coming up Sunday the characters have decided they need to head to the islands of the Northmen off the coast of ice Windale and I whipped together material for each of the four closest port towns to where they are, and yes their choice will matter, there is no illusion there.

I'm running a game with all new players, all just barely level 3. There was an encounter where they rolled terribly and the monsters rolled great, in the end 2 players were down with 2 failed death saves. They both failed their last save, but I let them reroll it and they both passed. I ruled that this didn't count as a failure or a success, and they lived to see one more turn. All my players are playing their first characters, and since they were just starting to get into subclasses and really get into their characters, I didn't want them to die just to bad luck.

My players taught me to prepare more than one version of the last boss in my campaigns and oneshots. They love to cheese the BBEG in one hit out of the fight, so occasionally I throw in a "rampaging pet" or some BBEG's lieutenant who rallies the remaining evil force. The flesh golem running at the PCs after they blew up it's creator, for instance, made the party even more happy. Partly because they were not facing both of the enemies at once, as they told me afterwards. Edit: typos

Loved this episode. Lots of good information for players and DMs alike!

I had a 10 round combat that was super exciting. Black dragon somehow never recharged its breath. I was worried my bless was gonna run out on Duration not concentration lol!

@17:36 I couldn't agree more with this. Especially if your players took the time to come up with a strategy to try and take out a big enemy or boss. Sometimes, it's better to just let them have that win and let them hoot and holler and have a blast

now i'll be able to tell when they're doing it

Just had this fun idea of character using mirror to check under door or around the corner, not seeing anything, running in and then getting surprised by vampires :D

This was so incredible. I will come back to this video a lot.

Good pro tips in this video! Love it! ❤

One of my favorite moments as a dm was when my players were going through a temple and they came into a library with a few empty bookshelves and a desk drawer in the middle of the room. I usually put some type of elaborate hint or clue along with a trap inside of mundane objects like that and my players spent almost 40 minutes deciding what they were going to do until the druid just opened the drawer and it was empty, I expected them to be mad or upset but they all thought it was hilarious.

On the fudging of die rolls in favor of the players, I also think it's big to mention that it can often be correct to be rather generous in these fudgings if you have players who are still trying to grasp the basics of the game. If the player is still in the weeds of understanding what a character can even do within combat, they aren't going to learn anything from being annihilated by some bad RNG. As with anything, you have to mindful and attentive with doing it, but I think there are generally more justified places to fudge rolls when you are dealing with freshlings than with the average group of players.

I was running the second session of my current Ravnica homebrew in which I had the first big combat encounter where I was expecting the whole party to be present and show what they could do. Three of them couldn't make it that week, leaving three of the squishier party members left to fight (the other three were temporarily removed due to the Chronurgy Wizard losing control of their magic). I fudged a fair few attack rolls towards the end of the combat, especially after the wizard went down; so it was close but they managed to win. The next week, two of the party members returned from the time rift that caused them to vanish and I made another encounter upstairs that went down better and the returning players got their time to shine.

I recently had a fight, where for the first 2 rounds nobody between 4 party members ( me included) and the monster too didn't hit a single attack roll. It was all between 2and 8 against a 14ac. 3rd round i rolled a nat 20 and all the dice boosted up. But i know for sure. The surprise attack the monster got on us, would have killed one of our members, and the dm splitted the damage almost killing two of us It was fun, not actually fudging the dice but he knew our sorcerer was the only one able to deal good dmg at the time

Every single decision I make at my table is centered on the thought, “Are my players having a good time?” Also, how long has Monte been sitting on “incongruent”? Congrats on getting it into the same sentence twice!

I usually don’t fudge rolls except for maybe some crit hits. Tho I do the health thing kind of often but usually if the monsters would have like three or less hit points left after a hit. Then the player just kills it due to the varying health creatures are supposed to have

learned so much with this video, thanks... manly I can use those things I used as a teacher during my games. (Changing things to keep the game /class fun and interesting.

Love that you guys play Mahavishnu for your closing theme...

This was a 3.5 campaign not 5e but my players wanted to capture a member of the Assassin's guild, so the Paladin put out a hit on himself. So, I created a Drow assassin to 'kill' the Paladin. The next session they spent half an hour or so to come up with the plan to capture him before he killed the Paladin and decided to cast sleep on him. Since all elves, including drow, are immune to sleep in 3.5, I did a quick change to a human so they could use their well thought out plan.

Great video, and something that is not addressed a lot in other places even though it should be.

In a recent campaign I ran. I did a bit of meta gaming when one of my players brought a warlock, pact of the undying. Well I had plans to set up a lynch as the bad guy for them to hunt down. At session one they were still uncovering things and had not found out about the lynch by the end of that session. I pulled the warlock to the side afterwards and told him what my final boss was planed to be. Me amd him worked it out so he knew the lynch through his patron and because of this he had insight and some knowledge from his background that was able to push the campaign fowered to find this lynch and ultimately take him down.

On the topic of illusion of choice, The way i like to run my game is that i have a number of certain scenarios i think would be fun for the players to interact with that can happen just about anywhere and at any time set up with certain "triggers". So it'll be things like "the next time they go to a town" or "When they take their next long rest". As i write this right now, i currently have about 4 of these just sitting on the side waiting for their triggers. Triggered scenarios can fill up entire sessions sometimes or it could just be a quick social interaction or random theater of the mind problem to solve. Here's an easy one to implement that i did recently. I had an event that would trigger the second time they passed by a location in town. When they were heading back to the inn from doing something else on the other side of town, i activated it. They heard someone screaming but the volume of it faded in and out. Once they rounded the corner, they found a crowd gathered around a man that was falling from about 30 feet high, but just before he would hit the ground, he would teleport back up 30 feet high again. The crowd is trying to figure out how to safely catch the man and his wife see's the party and runs over to them, recognizing them as members of the adventuring guild and pleads for their help. The party helps the man get down safely and he exclaims "I have been falling (gasp) FOR 30 MINUTES!" In reference to the scene where Dr. Strange does this to Loki in the MCU. The party has a chuckle, the wife thanks them profusely and everything proceeds from there.

The dice fudging one I have a story about it. Played online with a few friends and the dm was in the room with me on a separate computer (his laptop). We muted our mics after a roll he did landed on a crit on a low total HP character. And if he had rolled the damage the character would die unjustly, he was positioned correctly. Playing safe and far away, the dm went after him and could've one shot him but decided not to. Still hit. Still chunked. Not killed without discretion

One of your best videos to date. Good job!

Hey Dungeon Dudes. I love your videos and the work you do. I was wondering if you could put together a video on DM tips for running a game with all new players? Thanks.

One of the greatest stories we tell to this day is “one rounding” a boss monster. We used enlarge person (pathfinder game) on two fighters who had all the melee feats and attacks. They boxed him in and we had one max damage and then a crit max damage. Then he shifted and tried to hit the back line, giving us flanking attacks of opportunity. He falls over dead after doing something like 70+ damage in one round at level 3. It’s one of the most memorable moments I’ve played and so I just wanna say that you guys are spot on with letting your PCs be bad asses.

For me Fudging the dice: extremely rare, I used to say never but now I do in very rare circumstances Fudging monster HP: I do this often, probably about once every 4 or 5 encounters. Although I only fudge it backwards not forwards, and it's always to the benefit of the player, usually one is having a bad time or someone really deserves that kill. Now giving a monster a different HP or monkeying around with the numbers before the session begins? I do that almost literally every session Quantum ogres: sometimes especially when fighting a large horde I will say that this many joins on initiative count 20 or initiative count 10 for a certain number of rounds, but I don't just randomly decide mid fight to throw a couple of extra monsters in. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that, I just don't do it myself Illusion of choice: guilty, but not often. If I'm using illusion of choice that means I screwed up and didn't do enough prep. I think I've used illusion of choice exactly twice Eavesdropping: oh yeah, all the time, sometimes their ideas are better than anything I had planned Bending or breaking the rules: occasionally, not super often but not unheard of, but I always do that in the open, and it's usually for my players benefit. This is by far the most common type of DM cheat code I use.... Usually it's accompanied by the phrase "that's not normally how it works so don't expect this to work Everytime, but that was really cool (or clever or insert adjective) and makes sense in this situation so go for it. I'm using my DM power to cast wish to make this possible in this instance" My litmus test is "if I was a player character in one of my friends games and I found out about it, would I say that was the right decision"... Sometimes the answer is yes and I still decide not to, and honestly I might be too conservative on my cheating because when I'm a player I don't want to feel like the DM took it easy on me.

A thing I'm gonna start doing more, and did recently that the players loved, as specifically asked to have more of, was these cinematic combo attacks. Where when an enemy is low, it's the only enemy left, and I want combat to end, and I simply tell my players. "I'm gonna go get [insert snack or drink], think of a cool combo attack and I'll let you finish the guy" and all the players work together to decide what order they're gonna go in and what they're gonna do. I had like 3 people doing JJBA barrage sound effects to add onto it.

I've mixed many of these tactics. I've done Illusion of choice, allowing my players at an astoundingly early level to draw from the deck of many things. I had predetermined which cards were in the deck. I constantly warned them as the npc that possessed the deck, "if you draw these cards now, you will be twisting the strands of fate, which may have unintended or disastrous consequences in your future." That basically gave me free reign to make wildly out-of-pocket decisions later on and blame it on the deck instead of my own "DM cheating" ..... the players loved it and had a blast

A GM friend of mine once told me "Never let a die roll get in the way of a good story".

I keep thinking of an encounter where the party split and two feel into a trap in a room with a stone door. It was going to be a viscous trap involving Jovok demons. They pulled out stone shape to get out, and I didn't anticipate it. I was clear that they ruined my devious trap, congratulated them, gave them bonus XP and swore my vengeance... It was such a fun session we all still talk about.

On the topic of Illusion of choice, I do this all the time. I have stacks of NPCs, shops, and side quests all sitting and waiting. Up until my players need a specific thing and or person to meet them they get plopped into whatever town they happen to be in. It’s great to have stuff like this just available because if it doesn’t get used or they never go to a specific place then it’s there and available for the next session. Also don’t be afraid to reuse stuff with other groups. I have 2 campaign that have both gone to a specific merchant and have had very different interaction with them.

Up until my last session which was a battle Royale between my 4 player party and 4 characters i created my players often believed i was faking crits when i rolled with a set of dice they have labled "the demon die" because this set of dice seems to crit more often than any other i roll. However it is actually the reverse of that where i knock a bunch of crits that i roll into a regular hit. My party saw exactly how many crits these dice can roll when i decided to openly roll them for one of the characters and he crit on multiple attacks in the round

I have an item in many of my campaigns, "the goggles of truth." put them on, and you can actally see how much HP an enemy has, roughly. it gives everything a green aura for 100-75%, yellow for 74-50%+, orange for 49-25%, and red for anything below 25%. Attunement required. Wear these, and you will always know relative health. For a new player, especially spellcasters not wanting to blow thier big spells on something about to drop anyway, it sounds amazing. Veteran players act like it's radioactive, explaining to the newbies why it's a double-edged sword. It keeps them from making as many mistakes, sure...but it stops me from covering mine. In reality of course I have many tricks to seamlessly bail them out if needed, be it bargaining or capture or what have you. But I always love the momentary look of glee on a person's face before it strikes them how absolutely terrifying that is. Especially if they've DM'd themselves, and realized what they're really doing is hampering my ability to hold back if needed.

You guys are so fucking good, great work gents. Can't wait for the future content.

I completely agree with the suggested approach to dice fudging recommended here. I am sorry to say I find myself feeling obliged to fudge dice much more often than I'd like as a result of my luck being Wildly swingy. I can go an entire combat encounter (regardless of difficulty) without landing a single hit. And at other times I'll roll 7 crits in 9 attacks against level one or two pcs. I dont really find myself having much recourse other than to fudge the dice if I dont want to cause a tpk for literally no reason because my decided to go nuts

The scene in which Joe and Jill played illusory versions of their characters blew my mind. I’m guessing the text chain started the day after filming. Monty kind of brought that on himself. They are close enough friends and collaborators that it was not a huge deal breaker. In most groups that would be toxic behavior. I’d watch it anyway.

We are using the system where the party and foes alternate (proposed by Treant Monk?). That way, you can always respond. We implemented this to prevent the party from killing a boss before it can act. Seems to work well.