Dungeons and Dragons and Table Top Gaming

[Guy Kilmore]

On 12/21/2020 at 3:21 AM, Relic said:

Can you link that? I've only watched like 6 episodes of the second season. I think Matt is a very good DM, but I'm not sure he's the end all be all. He is very very good with voices and i like the way he uses his face and body language to convey things, but I'm sometimes find myself wanting something more out of his descriptions. He also says "ummmm" and "uhhh" and "looks sort of like" a whole lot, which is something I try to avoid. 

I don't think Matt would say he is the end all be all of to it.  He says a ton of good stuff about Matt Colville for instance.  He is a very good DM for the table and his players.  They have good synergy, appear to be enjoying themselves.

[Guy Kilmore]

On 12/21/2020 at 6:50 AM, Poobah said:

I think he's a very good actor, and I think there are some things he does very well, but I also think he's hugely overrated as a DM. I don't mean that as an insult towards him but rather towards the legions who put him on some kinda godlike unassailable pedestal - he's great at voices and acting and doing all that improv stuff because it's... y'know... his job, and he's a pretty good DM but I don't think he's THE BEST DM EVARRRRRR!!!!! the way I feel some do. It's obvious how much effort and prep work he puts in and when it comes to setting the scene, creating atmosphere, describing things/people and creating memorable characters I think he's very good, but I think there's plenty of other stuff he isn't so good at.

It's pretty unfair to go all out and dissect every single decision of someone who has has hundreds of hours of his DMing out there on video for me to after-the-fact backseat and "um actually" (everyone's gonna get some rules wrong over that time period, and from what I recall when it's consistently being wrong/not understanding a rule to an annoying degree it's been from the cast rather than Matt) but broadly I think that Mercer tends not to really reward or encourage his players when they try to be creative in combat and I'm not always a fan of how he designs/runs his combats in general. There's a trend (largely brought about by CR) to see D&D as all about the in-character talking and doing voices, and having deep in character moments and intense lengthy RP heavy scenes, and don't get me wrong RP is super fun and I wouldn't really play D&D if it weren't for that aspect of the game but D&D is also a combat game and so all the unfashionable crunchy rules stuff is actually important too. Being able to design, balance, and effectively run interesting combats is a high level DMing skill as well.

I agree he is not the best DM ever. I don't think Matt would agree that he is either. I don't really think anyone is.  I don't think anyone can be the best DM in every group and situation.  It is more, what does the table at want and need.  His players have a blast and he does well by them.

I do disagree with the bolded.  He wants his players to surprise him. I mean, off the top of my head here are some examples.

1.  Beau knocking out a giant baby demon monster with a bag full of magical narcotics when she was swallowed by it.

2. Jester, the Cup Cake and Modify Memory (He basically has to throw out his entire planned encounter)

3.  Teleporting inside (Or tricking it to swallow them, I forget, years ago) an ancient black dragon while in flight and using a rod of holding

4. Caduseus and the Pirate Battle with control water

5. The end fight regarding the angel of irons, there were a ton of clever tactics that were very important, including pulling an NPC over to their side.  (Like literally any step out of place and that fight was over for them.)

6.  Scanlon and the Triceratops

7. Fjord, Jester, and Caleb using illusion and banishment to freak the heck out of Vokodo.

8.  The near PvP fight between Grog and Percy over the skull

9.  Percy exposing Raishan

I know I am forgetting a bunch, being it is late.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Guy Kilmore

[Poobah]

8 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I do disagree with the bolded.  He wants his players to surprise him. I mean, off the top of my head here are some examples.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

1.  Beau knocking out a giant baby demon monster with a bag full of magical narcotics when she was swallowed by it.

2. Jester, the Cup Cake and Modify Memory (He basically has to throw out his entire planned encounter)

3.  Teleporting inside (Or tricking it to swallow them, I forget, years ago) an ancient black dragon while in flight and using a rod of holding

4. Caduseus and the Pirate Battle with control water

5. The end fight regarding the angel of irons, there were a ton of clever tactics that were very important, including pulling an NPC over to their side.  (Like literally any step out of place and that fight was over for them.)

6.  Scanlon and the Triceratops

7. Fjord, Jester, and Caleb using illusion and banishment to freak the heck out of Vokodo.

8.  The near PvP fight between Grog and Percy over the skull

9.  Percy exposing Raishan

 

I know I am forgetting a bunch, being it is late.

 

That's fair. I had images in my head of instances where the gang make complex plans that totally fail like... immediately, or stuff like "fluffernutter" that ended up taking multiple rolls and the turns of 2 characters to do almost no damage which really stuck in my head, I really remember the feeling of disappointment I got from Sam and Laura on that one.

[Guy Kilmore]

1 hour ago, Poobah said:

That's fair. I had images in my head of instances where the gang make complex plans that totally fail like... immediately, or stuff like "fluffernutter" that ended up taking multiple rolls and the turns of 2 characters to do almost no damage which really stuck in my head, I really remember the feeling of disappointment I got from Sam and Laura on that one.

Yeah, I think it's because gunpowder at those amounts suck against one creature, might have been different against a group. At least by the book damage.

[Relic]

Im thinking about running an Eberron campaign, but ive also been reading a bit about Wildemount. Does anyone here have any experience with either setting?

[Poobah]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

Im thinking about running an Eberron campaign, but ive also been reading a bit about Wildemount. Does anyone here have any experience with either setting?

Wildemount is the setting from season 2 of Critical Role. I've never run or played a campaign in it, but I have the book and I've watched the show so I know a reasonable amount about it, what kinda thing do you want to know about it?

Edited December 28, 2020 by Poobah

[Guy Kilmore]

4 hours ago, Relic said:

Im thinking about running an Eberron campaign, but ive also been reading a bit about Wildemount. Does anyone here have any experience with either setting?

 

2 hours ago, Poobah said:

Wildemount is the setting from season 2 of Critical Role. I've never run or played a campaign in it, but I have the book and I've watched the show so I know a reasonable amount about it, what kinda thing do you want to know about it?

I too have read the book for Wildemount and watching Season 2 of Critical Role.

I have never run Eberron, but I read the book and yoinked ideas from it for my homebrew world I am currnely playing in.

Like Poobah, I am willing to share my thoughts.

 

[Relic]

Cheers.

I'm curious about the Wildemount setting less than I am about Eberron, just wondering if there is anything unique or new in it that would make the book worthy of the rather hefty investment. 

 

As for Eberron, man I've got LOTS of questions. Might just be easier to start by just asking you what elements of Eberron you stole for your homebrew @Guy Kilmore

[Werthead]

Eberron is definitely more interesting, as a steampunk-meets-trad-fantasy hybrid. I haven't looked into it for a while though. Something I thought was interesting was the idea of a "stasis" world, where the setting doesn't evolve at all, it just describes everything up to the "present" and then it never moves forward from that point, with the job of the DM being to do that. It was to avoid the lore-supernova problem they had in Forgotten Realms where they created this absolutely massive world and then had it moving forwards with tons of stuff happening, which made it difficult to keep up to speed (leading to the later, much-regretted decision to nuke the setting and turn it into a weird post-apocalyptic thing).

No idea if they've still stuck by that idea in the 5E iteration though.

[Guy Kilmore]

10 hours ago, Relic said:

Cheers.

I'm curious about the Wildemount setting less than I am about Eberron, just wondering if there is anything unique or new in it that would make the book worthy of the rather hefty investment. 

 

As for Eberron, man I've got LOTS of questions. Might just be easier to start by just asking you what elements of Eberron you stole for your homebrew @Guy Kilmore

Wildemount has the Dunamancy Wizard School which I find kind of interesting.

I liked a lot of themes presented in Eberron.  My homebrew takes place in the equivalent of our 1860s or so.  So the theme of magical manufacturing and such, where low level magic is very common.  I like the Artificer class and I think it is Eberron that it makes its appearance.  I used the options for Dragonmarks as Guilds are a thing in my world (I repurposed Dragonmarks for my own thing too).  I have allowed the races.  I have a player who is adoring playing his crafty Changling Rogue, and since it is online we have kept his true race a secret from everyone.  I am having fun introducing a little bit of wild west/pulp/gritty adventuring in with my high fantasy.

ETA:  So I might not have taken many mechanics, but I have taken inspiration from Eberron.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Guy Kilmore

[Relic]

32 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

 

ETA:  So I might not have taken many mechanics, but I have taken inspiration from Eberron.

It's a good source of inspiration, that's for sure. 

[Guy Kilmore]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

It's a good source of inspiration, that's for sure. 

It was!  I ultimately went my own way.  When I GM, I have a hard time playing in other people's sandboxes.  I wish I could, it saves me a ton of headache.

[Relic]

56 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

It was!  I ultimately went my own way.  When I GM, I have a hard time playing in other people's sandboxes.  I wish I could, it saves me a ton of headache.

I'm much the same way, in that I can start off with a module but by the time its done it barely resembles what was written. Been homebrewin settings since pretty much the very start of of my D&D career during second edition, but I just dont have the time for it like I did a decade ago. Our current campaign started off as a super simple 15 page module, and turned into a continent wide epic quest sort of thing, but I've been making the whole world up as I've gone along, and it's time to steal some good shit and make everything a bit more cohesive, and Eberron fits. So to stealin' I go. 

[Durckad]

I ran a very short-lived Eberron game back in early 3.5... around the time the setting was first released. It's a very cool setting, with a lot of options for different campaign playstyles. Do you want to do a intrigue-laden campaign with lots of politicking, you can (Dragonmarked Houses, Five Nations, etc)! There's room for pulpy, high adventure treasure hunts, dungeon delving, or just general Indiana Jones-esque action adventure in the jungles of Xen-Drik! You can do Lovecraftian horror with cults and nameless abominations crawling up from the pits of Khyber or noirish detective mysteries. Or you can run a pirate campaign in the Lhazaar Principalities or a secret invasion plot from the Dreaming Dark. You can even do relatively standard D&D-esque stories, though I think doing so would be really wasting the setting. 

While I do think that Eberron is kind of a "kitchen sink setting" at times, with its attempts to fit EVERYTHING that is in D&D into it, I think it works much, much better with that than say Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. Eberron has at least a relatively cohesive design direction to it in that all of these things and genres feel like they belong and have a logical place, though I think that has more to do with FR and Greyhawk (for example) just being built up and added onto by various writers and designers over the course of decades. 

I think the best (and only) advice I can offer on running Eberron is, focus on one or two "genres" or themes to really highlight Eberron's differences from the other "big" campaign settings. My campaign kinda tried to incorporate everything and ultimately didn't really explore much of anything in the setting well and is why it died off around level 5 or 6ish.

I'd really like to run it again but I also really like playing in my own worlds... mostly because it's much easier to just make stuff up for them and I'm incredibly lazy.

[Relic]

Well, ive decided to DM a Roll20 campaign for total strangers. Posted on Reddit and the Roll20 forums and got a lot of replies, so maybe I'll run two games and see how it goes. Ain't shit else to do till summer anyway. 

 

Anyone here want to give it a whirl? Playing weekdays GMT +1 afternoons/evenings. 

[Gertrude]

Um ... maybe?

I just noticed this thread and lo and behold there is an invitation at the end. I feel like I'm jumping ahead in line by replying to this. Also feeling guilty because you're the one who wanted to play and not DM. This is stupid because I'm feeling really nervous about even the possibility of joining a game with strangers - who aren't really strangers because I read and reply to your posts all the time (well, I am more of a lurker, but I've been around).

I started playing in the early 80s but then took a looooong break. Figured out some of my friends had a game going and for a stretch we played pretty regularly. Then weddings and kids blah blah and it became an occasional game. I haven't played for over 5 years at this point.

So maybe put me as an interested stand-by?

 

(Also, before a trip the the Czech Republic last year, I read the hell out of your blog, Relic. Thanks!)

Edited December 30, 2020 by Gertrude

[Mentat]

I'd be interested. Plenty of experience playing pencil and paper D&D, but I've been missing out since COVID.

[Relic]

11 hours ago, Gertrude said:

(Also, before a trip the the Czech Republic last year, I read the hell out of your blog, Relic. Thanks!)

Awww, thanks. Can't say I get tired of hearing that. 

 

Here is the discord, i think we still have a couple of spots left - 

 

https://discord.gg/bW229QjV

 

come join, i seem to have gathered a decent grp of friendly nerds. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Relic

[Guy Kilmore]

49 minutes ago, Relic said:

Awww, thanks. Can't say I get tired of hearing that. 

 

Here is the discord, i think we still have a couple of spots left - 

 

https://discord.gg/bW229QjV

 

come join, i seem to have gathered a decent grp of friendly nerds. 

Good Luck on the new game!  I hope it goes well!

[Relic]

40 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

Good Luck on the new game!  I hope it goes well!

Thank you! Apparently im running two of them....