Dungeon Master Inspiration
DMI is a podcast made to share the tricks of the trade of DMs with a wide range of experience levels, from fresh, new DMs to wisened masters of the position.
We focus on exploring topics within the world of DnD that consistently pose problems to DMs, such as developing characters, the use of monsters & NPCs, and combat. You'll hear from a variety of DMs speaking on a plethora of intriguing controversial issues in-depth.
No matter where you are in your DnD journey, we've got something worth listening to.
Dungeon Master Inspiration
Mastering the Dance Between Rules and Creativity in Dungeons & Dragons
Ready to master the delicate dance between rules and creativity in Dungeons & Dragons? Prepare to embark on an enlightening journey in our latest episode with our esteemed guest, Joe. We'll unravel the tangled web of D&D rules, explore their role in shaping our stories, and debate when it's apt to bend them for the sake of enjoyment.
Ever felt shackled by opportunity attacks while attempting a daring maneuver in combat? This episode goes in-depth into these restrictions and their implications on player creativity. We delve into the 'Rule of Cool', balancing its appeal with the necessity of danger, and examine how variables like enemy numbers and intelligence can influence these decisions. Not just that, we also propose innovative alternatives to determine a move's success, challenging the status quo of relying purely on opportunity attacks.
Brace yourself as we traverse the uncharted territories of house rules and homebrewing monsters. Discover how bending rules, making exceptions, and creating homebrews can enrich the D&D experience for everyone at the table. From discussing the merits of sticking to the book vs. house rules, to weighing up the pros and cons of homebrewing Vs re-flavoring existing monsters, we leave no stone unturned. So, gear up for a rollercoaster ride through the land of D&D rules, packed with valuable insights and actionable tips to enhance your gaming experience. With Joe by our side, we promise you, it's an episode you don't want to miss!
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All right, welcome back to DMI. We are going to be starting off today with a little bit of a change. We actually have a new guest with us. I'm your primary host, wyatt, and this is my dear friend. I'm Joe, all right, so Joe is going to be joining us today. We have one of his favorite topics. He asked to kind of be here today. We're going to be really talking about the difference between rules and creativity and where that gray line kind of blurs, and the lines that we really should cross and the ones that we don't really care if we cross them at all. So I'm going to start off by kind of kind of asking you what I think is an important question is like how much value do you really place in the rules?
Speaker 2:And with this question this question kind of it, almost asks why are you playing Dungeons and Dragons compared to playing or doing something else?
Speaker 2:So, at the end of the day, for me Dungeons and Dragons is a story, whether that story is one that is written in a book, that is in a podcast format, that is one done in a video game, dungeons and Dragons is the format of that story. And when do you break that story? Dungeons and Dragons doesn't tell you how to play the game unless you're running an adventure that they made but is giving you the rules set for how to make a story in the game engine itself. And when you're starting out, it really looks like every single rule in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition is integral. You have to follow it to a T and slowly, as you play and you start to develop both your own style and you start to look at what really is important or what am I wasting time on focusing. That's where you start placing value in some rules, and then you start looking at other rules and saying I don't know if it's really necessary to do this, for the fun of both my players and myself.
Speaker 1:And I would agree that definitely. I think a large portion of it is are your players having fun? I think that's where this portion of rules really becomes kind of negligent. Is like, if my players are hating a rule and they don't want to play it, I'm probably not going to play it, I'm going to just stop, because if I am actively going out of my way to hold a rule that my players hate, there's no reason to run the game. If my players aren't having fun, then we're not succeeding at the goal of the game, we're not telling a good story because people are going to be checked out. So for me I would say that that line really draws with where my players enjoy. So for me the value of the rules is as only as much as my players get enjoyment out of those rules.
Speaker 2:And there should be an emphasis placed on the plural of the word players. There I have a player who, no matter what they do in a combat, no matter how tactic, tactically they think about combat, they just do not like it. However, most of my players enjoy combat. Most of my players make characters that are interesting or they flavor their spells, they flavor their combat, they try and do maybe a little bit of optimizing, but this one player is just not interested. And just because that one player isn't interested doesn't mean that you shouldn't do stuff like that. It's if every single player especially if, let's say, you like combat and your players like combat if it's just one player, you don't need to worry. They know what they're signing up for when playing in your game. This is the kind of story you're doing.
Speaker 1:And I would say your own value is just as high as any of the players, because if you're going to hate playing the game, there's no point in actually running the section Like you're just going to be bored, checked out and hate the entire experience. So for me, what I would do is I count myself, in that if three people at my table of four love it, I'm I'm actually going to do it versus three people at my table of five. Majority probably still rules, but if it's three and three or four and two, like, I'm never going to, I'm never going to discount my own opinion. Now, if it's a tie, like if I'm running a table of five and there's exactly three of us counting myself and three of my players love it counting myself and three of them hate it, I'm going to go with the side where I don't count, because at the end of the day, I'm making sacrifices to make sure everybody has a good time. So for me, that's the challenge that I run into a lot of the time and that is where I really kind of draw these lines of like making sure that the majority of my group is having fun, and that's including myself. So I don't know about you.
Speaker 1:I'll speak on my own experience first. But I have broken the rules for players a ton with a bunch of different groups, from a power gaming group to a group that has never played D&D before, and we're all learning together at the book to people that are heavy, hardcore role players. And I'm going to lie and not going to lie to you. There has been very different results for me, because sometimes my players are like, oh, it's just kind of cool, we'll let it slide whatever it's nice and fun. And there are other times where they're like no, you said this once and I am going to make you follow the decision not to follow that rule for the rest of your existence. And I guess my question really comes down to is it a mundane event or are your players abusing it when you don't follow the rules and really taking advantage? And I'm kind of curious to where your experience is lied in it, because I'll talk a little bit more about mine after that.
Speaker 2:So there's kind of like two philosophies on if it's a mundane event or if it's a player like taking advantage, and that's how often they do it, or how, if we change something up, how does a player like react to that? So if you have a mundane event and let's say you set a like, let's say you secretly set a DC, you lower it by one. The player thinks you know, figures out that you did it. You lowered it by one to save that one guy who maybe was going to fall into a pit, and then you would have spent an hour trying to get them out of this bit.
Speaker 2:If it's a mundane, you know, you have to notice when it's something that your players take advantage of. But you can only really do that by noticing them play. So if you see them take advantage of a rule one time, that's one thing. But if you see them consistently take that, take advantage of that rule, that's where you start having the real problem. And you can either this is a loophole and hey, you let them do it, depending on how severe it is or how minor it is. Maybe you do if it's minor, let them do it. If it's severe, maybe we have a conversation, maybe at the start of a session or the next time that they try and use this loophole. That's when you want to have the converse, that's when you want to have the conversation that, hey, this is, you know, I think we need to set a standard here. And this works in the opposite way, where suddenly you're creating a rule with your party by having that conversation. So, for instance, very early on we kind of came to the conclusion that hey, we really don't like that.
Speaker 2:Prone only gives half speed, it doesn't make it feel like we should actively make players, you know, and enemies prone. So we, on the spot, had a unanimous decision. We said let's change prone. So it takes your full speed to get on in order to stand up in general. Alternatively, depending on when they're doing it, if you're midway through a campaign and there's only six months left of the campaign or you know this is something that's more towards the end, is this something that you want to have a conversation about, or is this something that you're going to let slide for this campaign but next campaign you won't. My players would love to shout about how much HP they had if it wasn't their turn in character. If it wasn't their turn and if it went past the six seconds in a round, they would just keep talking. So the next campaign, I put in rules to try and still make combat fun and you roleplay during it, but not power game. With the conversations being had, Excuse my cough, Um, no.
Speaker 1:So for me, a prone is actually a great example, because I had players abuse a homebrew rule that I was running for prone and it actually made me question where I was okay with my players and where I wasn't okay with my players making these decisions. Because for me, I had this rule that whenever you were prone to get back up, you had to do an athletics check and whenever, depending on your athletics check, you would do a role to see how much movement you would have when you get back up. I then had a player who did a character that was just about making creatures go prone and combat was no longer fun because everything was prone 100% of the time and he actively made it so that they had disadvantage, Used feats to make it so that they had disadvantage on every role to get back up, and so every creature was prone with zero movement every single fight past level five for the entire campaign. That was a decision where it's like, should I have allowed that to continue going for that long Cause it was like three months of me letting this happen and I'm not quite sure whether or not that was a smart decision.
Speaker 1:I still don't really know the answer on that, because I would say, awesome, that's great on my player for being creative and kind of coming up with that character. But they were also exploiting the rules and I didn't really know where that threshold was where I was okay with them making that decision. And my players are really notorious Like a lot of players that I played with are really notorious for taking rules and exploiting them Like that's just that's how they like to play the game and I don't want to take that away from them. But also it made me have to be a lot more careful with how I, with how I chose to do excuse me with how I chose to do combat. So I think a really good example of this outside of our experience is have you seen not another D&D podcast?
Speaker 1:I have not so Brennan Lee Mulligan is a very well known DM. At this point he is the main DM for dimension 20. And I appreciate that in this campaign, in their second act, they were given these random magic items that he had homebred. He quickly regretted that decision. He even says it in the podcast because what they do is when you drink them it's the same as having a long rest and you can drink one per actual long rest.
Speaker 1:That was a terrible decision and that's one of those questions where it's like, at what point is that homebrew rule of having those in there a good decision? Cause now your potions. They literally he had a boss fight. They just drank those potions when they were about to go down and it just literally reset spells, lost everything, they wiped all of their resources, chugged this potion and kept going, and so I think I personally, after listening to that, learned a very, very valuable lesson of a Friday night.
Speaker 1:Fight night is a great experience for testing new magic items before I put them in my campaigns. Because when you just have a combat night, definitely I'm going to whip out my like magic items that I plan on giving my my actual campaign and seeing how they go first, and I'll stockpile them and I'll test like 20 in a fight night and then I'll I'll save the ones that I like and I'll burn the rest, because God, I'll never let that in my game again. And that's kind of how I've. I've developed my system for deciding because once you set in a rule on an item like I upgrade your acts, now it does an additional X effect. Once I give that player that, I can't take that away.
Speaker 1:And I don't really know a better way to break that kind of stigma, because I don't want to strip them from something once I've already given it. That seems disrespectful almost to the nature of the game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's also. It's dependent on is this a rule that they're breaking, or is this an item or something established in a story and you are playing with friends so you don't want to just say you don't have that thing anymore, or you don't want to just, oh, it magically breaks and now that player feels screwed out of that item. It's very, it's very contextual, based on what it is you're noticing.
Speaker 1:Well. So the reason I bring items up is, I would say items are almost part of the rules, because how D&D has it written? Especially if you go into the dungeon master hand guide and you read that section on items. Basically you can buy anything anytime you go to a shop. It's basically said in there that anytime you go in, all of these items except for very rare magic items are just sitting in basically every store. Unless it's like uncommon, it's there all the time. So as soon as you put down an item and you're like I'm giving you these potions, if a player asks you hey, is that a common potion? If it's a common potion, now for the rest of your game, every time they go in a store, it is basically a preset expectation by the rule book that it's going to be in that store. So it's like this is it is inherently part of the game. Items are part of the rule set. I would almost consider them more than they are their own individual thing.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to ask a question that's kind of a little off topic how do you feel about opportunity attacks as a rule? Because I feel like they are very, almost stifling to the creativity, especially movement and combat because if you have a creature within 10 foot of you you can make an opportunity attack them. They can make it to opportunity attack anytime you move, which can really kill someone quite quickly. And then you don't really get your like going back. D&d was kind of a little bit based on Lord of the Rings. You don't get those like legless characters where they're running around and jumping and shooting a bow, because if you run and jump they're going to stab you, like you're going to have four people stab you, like unless you're a monk unless you're a monk.
Speaker 1:that is also true. But, like, especially for Rangers and barbarians and fighters and even even wizards, you can't really back up effectively without granting opportunity attacks. What point do you let the players creativity Like if they say that they're going to do something really, really cool and they want to do this super intricate thing For me? If they give me a description of like I want to run and like jump back and do a back, flip off the wall and shoot into the orc on the other side of the room while disengaging. If you can give me an actual, pretty, like elaborate explanation and show me on the battle map how you're going to do it, I'm not going to let them do opportunity attacks. That's one of those times where I break the rules so my players can have fun.
Speaker 2:I think it's. It's dependent on individual, it's very contextual, so I would totally allow them to do the same. It's very much in the rule of cool Avenue of thinking, if not pretty much a textbook example of a rule of cool. However, let's say this is a. There are six enemies in the combat right, or let's say eight, you know, I might have one or two do an attack of opportunity. Keep in mind that, in terms of the rules of the game right In combat, that is an enemy's reaction. So in some ways, depending on the combat and how intelligent the enemy is let's say this is a human fighter depending on who walks out of their range, they might hold that reaction still to target somebody else in case they move out. That's one way of going about it.
Speaker 2:Back to your original example, though. With this, you know, I am a ranger, I'm gonna do a sick flip into the air and I'm gonna shoot my bow and I have to run through multiple enemies to get over there. I would have one enemy, maybe two, attack of opportunity because you want them to do something cool, but you don't want. You want it to feel grounded and realistic at the same time. There is, in a sense and this is what really makes combat fun. Every time you enter combat, there is a minuscule chance of failure, whether it's a TPK, and it's a.2% chance, or it's one player dying and let's be honest here it's probably a 1% chance. By having one or two guys do an attack of opportunity, you give a sense of danger without necessarily killing them. This is also to say that those attack of opportunities are even going to land as well.
Speaker 1:So for me, when I have that kind of a situation where I have a player running through, I may have one attack of opportunity happen. But rather than so, here's how I do it. And this is kind of me being a little silly. If you give me a great explanation of what you're gonna do and it sounds cool and you're super excited to do it, what I'll do is I'll have you roll like a dexterity or an athletics check, whatever's fitting. If you're gonna bulldoze through the four people in front of you with your movement and try to get to the big boss, rather than having them all swing on you, first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, okay, you're gonna bulldoze through these two. Roll me a strength check. If your strength check is super high, that's how I'll determine kind of how many swing on you. Because if you're wildly succeeding, if you roll a 20, you're just gonna plow through them. They're not gonna have a moment to think like. That just makes sense to me. Versus if you get like a one, they're all gonna swing on every single one of them.
Speaker 1:And it's like one of those things where I bring other roles into combat to kind of gauge different like levels of success and that's my personal thing, but I would say that that's almost where I would say that for my campaigns and how I like to run them, I try to keep the use of bending the rules with me personally and I don't really know where you kind of keep yours and where a lot of DM keep yours. I'd love to. I wish I could hear from all the DMs in the world, but obviously that's not. Do you kind of try to keep in your table, Do you keep the bending the rules in your wheelhouse or do you keep it in that of the players?
Speaker 2:I keep it primarily in mine, but with an open mind, as, depending on what the player does, totally allowing it. So, like similar to your example again with the Ranger, the Ranger says that and then they look at me and say, like, is that possible? Can I do that? I want to do that and I will look at that and come up with, like let's say, that ruling that you did, and I'll say you know, you can do it. This is what you have to do to be able to succeed in that. So sometimes I do tell them no, sometimes I want to hear what they do, because I know what's going to happen overall in a Sasha. I know there's a couple different avenues they could go down, but what I don't know is the creativity of the individual player, and you want you want them to both go down the track that you have crafted, but you also want them to go down that track in a way that they have fun.
Speaker 2:And it depends on how absurd it is to just you know, to just suddenly say, hey, I'm going to run through these guys and and I'm going to stab one and right in the carotid artery. I mean real life, if you're skilled enough with a blade. That guy is dead. Yeah, there's no way he lives, but this is D&D. So, like as much as I love the specific place that you're going to stab him and attempt to stab him, you know the most I can give that player in this hypothetical is you run up, you go with your blade in hand. You go to stab right at his weakest spot. However, he manages to deflect your blade slightly, it cuts into the side of his shoulder and his neck, dealing, it just so happens, the damage that they were going to do anyway. But they still get to try to do what they wanted to do and feel satisfying that they still managed to land a hit, even if they didn't one hit. Ko the guy, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think I think that's also fair. I feel like players that expect you to let them stab somebody or cut their head off turn one are being a little unrealistic with themselves, like personally, like that's, that's not. That's not how it works. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:And it's not just necessarily that it's how it works, but it's like your prone example earlier. It's just not fun. Like it's it's cool to think about. And it's cool if, let's say, you're a high enough level character and you decide to do this to like maybe a noble who's a villain and he's got five HP. Oh, you do that. Or you know, maybe he's the same level as you and this is the killing blow. And how do you want to do this? I want to decapitate him. That's cool, yeah. And if you're doing the role play with the goal of circumventing whatever it is, you're trying to do the fun of the game. Well, that goes back to breaking rule and making it not fun for everybody. If it's not fun, don't do it.
Speaker 1:So we've been talking a lot about the rules in combat and I think combat is probably the most strict in terms of rules. That being said, out of combat rules are a little more laxadaisical, I would almost say they're very laid back, like people aren't as strict at most tables about. Well, you're walking down the street and you're talking to this guy, I need you to do a performance check for me every time that you have a conversation, every single conversation, and I feel like that's a rule. That's kind of I mean checks, like we do checks all the time, but I feel like conversation checks, like intimidation, persuasion, stuff like that. There are rules. That gets thrown out at most tables and, I'm not going to lie, I don't think that's the worst thing for the game or for most parties, because it's kind of boring to roll the dice every five seconds rather than actually having the conversation.
Speaker 1:There's a short that's going around of a very popular DM who was I can't remember his name who was running a campaign and there was this work and he was like I'm going to distract the guards and he's like, okay, and he goes, how are you going to distract the guards? Well, I'm going to tell him a story and he was like okay, what do I need to roll? And he goes no, tell me a story. And I love that. I think that that's so much more interesting than just doing a normal persuasion check. Just be like give me a persuasion check. Like, if you're like I'm going to go up and distract the town guard by telling him a story, you best be prepared to tell me a story.
Speaker 2:And skills. The the purpose of skills and chacks are inherently for those moments when there is a chance of failure. So I have players roll those chacks when there is a chance that they could fail. So if they tell a minor lie, let's say, or they tell, you know a, a lie with a half-truth inside of it which makes it seem very realistic, then I may have them roll a deception check just to make sure. But it's really just to see on that off chance. If they fail because a skill in that regard, even if it's a minor chance of failure, what'll happen is that's a branching off point either they succeed, which is really what I'm expecting, with a low chance of failure, or Suddenly now they have to backtrack because they did manage to fail.
Speaker 2:However, that is very contextual. So if, as why it mentioned there that the player told an overall story, well, unless that player did like, if I was the DM right and he did just go in and tell a whole story about Frank Pete who runs a bakery that burns down because of a rival baker, then I, then I will Be totally down and I won't have a role for it. But if I let's say, let's say they tell a very dramatic lie that has a chance of not being real. That's when I want the role. If there's no point in rolling, why roll at all? And that's where both of us delineate from the rules, where our creativity supersedes what the Game has told us we should do To run a fifth edition game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would say I mean to go back to your baker example. Like the rules say, if you're running away from a, a giant mob that's attacking you and all of a sudden you provoke that one and you get a Horrible rule that they're gonna turn around and they're gonna try to kill you. And and Joe's laughing, because that actually happened In a session that I was DMing, that he was playing in where he was a baker and we were fighting against a horde of gingerbread cookies and they convinced the cookies to walk away and he's like no, I'm gonna go and eat one in front of them and was shocked when it turned and didn't intimidation check Horribly failed and was shocked when they turned and tried to kill him. And it was like it was one of the funniest moments I've still ever had DMing, because I plan for I plan for everybody to succeed and that failure just made one of the best moments because I had to just bullshit an answer out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:We, we poisoned the gingerbread men. I Poisoned gingerbread man and took 1d4 damage. It was I mean, it was a cantru, it was just poison spray cantrip that was on him, but still I had to take that damage and that's the fun part about it. That's really fun. This really goes in. Let's let's fully dive into the rule of cool, which really is just hey, I Think this is a really cool idea. So the rule isn't whatever it says in the game. The rule is that because it's cool, let's just do it.
Speaker 2:What are my favorite stories I ever read why I don't know if you have heard this one I I think I found it on a red editor tumblr, maybe Twitter, years ago Was this party had this homebrew rule that if you got a nat 20, you had to roll it again, and if it was another nat 20, you had to roll it again for a third time. And if you get three nat 20s in a row, no matter what happened, the monster instantly died. But like, the chances of this happening is Dramatically low, it's astonishingly low. Right, you're. And if you get the nat 20 right like you, you get a critical hit like don't, don't get me wrong here, this is like a bad game. You still got the nat 20, even if on the second or third rule it wasn't another nat 20.
Speaker 2:The party got to the final boss and they Decided to rule of cool I guess kind of it's isn't really cool, but they just signed it. They were gonna have their pet minion Go first. Like they all decided that, oh, maybe the boss will, maybe the boss gets a 20 on initiative who the next person in line is their pet minion, who is basically like this little cactuar, like I think, never fought, never did anything, but was just there. You know it's gonna be one hit KO kind of thing. You know. They just had they heal him.
Speaker 2:Then he goes on his way. They had him go first in the combat and he rolled a nat 20 to hit and then he rolled another nat 20 to hit and he basically Felt this dark wizard with a third nat 20 in a row and forever changed the history of the game because In the history books, long after the age of the hero, that was this tiny cactuar, the party was just the bodyguards for this legendary hero. That's how the whole, the entire plot, the entire post game, the entire epilogue changed because of this rule that they had all Come to an agreement on that, they all agreed with that, they all found hilarious. That's that's what really makes Changing rules, but also following. Following some rules Interesting is that's what you don't expect from D&D and and for me that's where it's almost like.
Speaker 1:I know, I know I'm jumping around a little bit on our prompts, but, um, I Am less likely to actually let players break homebrew rules than book rules. That is, that is my own personal opinion and I know there's a lot of DMs that agree with that. In my practice, my the least fun I have had is when I let players break my house rules. So those are like if we have a house rule that is concrete, it is not moving. There's nothing you can do about it. If it's a book rule and we can bend it, it is what it is like. At the end of the day, I didn't write the book, I'm not gonna be heard over it. Um, so it's like now. Obviously, if it's an unfair house rule, I Will let people bend it. But even for like we had a rule that we had all agreed upon.
Speaker 1:Combat was really bad. I had two players who were super duper quiet and I was running an online game. I, our rule, our house rule, was that everyone was muted until it was your turn in combat. If you had a reaction or something we would use, like, for example, when we did on zoom, you could raise your hand. If you raised your hand, I would unmute you. You could do a reaction or something like that, but everyone was muted because otherwise people would just talk over my quiet players. That was our house rule for that campaign, for example, and I know that that's more of like an actual, like organization rule versus an actual game rule, but we treated it like it was a game rule. People would. We would have guests, people show up.
Speaker 1:I straight up told them book rules will bend. That is not a rule we will ever move like that because it gives an opportunity for my quiet players to still enjoy the game. And I had to make that accommodation because not everybody is super great at discord etiquette I'm not even super great at it. I'll talk over people sometimes and I I recognize that that was something my players needed to be able to have fun. Now, was I deafening everybody? No, I wanted you to be able to hear what was happening and enjoy it, but you had to be quiet so that these people could play. And that was really important to me and I think that's something that's overlooked is, book rules were always like when I first started playing and when a lot of people I know, started playing. It was like the book rules are solid, homebrew rules are the ones we can move, and I think it's just the kind of the sign of a of a more experienced DM that your homebrew rules, those kind of, stay solid. Your book rules, those can be bent for people's enjoyment.
Speaker 2:Your homebrew rules are added not because you feel like the game is lacking something or although sometimes it can be if you have a, if you have players cheating, like I mentioned earlier but your, your homebrew rules, are there to try and make your game more fun. So, unless a homebrew rule isn't working, it would like it was something you were trying out, you were experimenting. Unless it isn't working, there's less inclination that you should have to break it because you specifically make made that rule with a goal in mind. You didn't add that rule arbitrarily. You didn't add that rule arbitrarily.
Speaker 2:At the same time, though, with what Wyatt was mentioning on his homebrew rule of the muting, that is completely contextual on your party, and a lot of the creativity butting heads with the rules is contextual for your own party itself. I have never had that issue. We have never had to mute people. In my games. We follow initiative. People stay quiet. My party has a pretty good feel and they also feel that I, as their DM, keeps things level-headed. If somebody else especially if, let's say, you're a DM and you're somebody who doesn't like confrontation that might work. What matter for you or maybe your party, as Wyatt had, is so talkative that there it affects members of the party, your other players, then that is something where you're going to need to want to put in a homebrew rule to again better make sure everybody is having fun.
Speaker 1:And I asked myself. This kind of weird thing is like with my homebrew rules and with optional rules in the book and even with going into common rules, like there are some rules that people think are rules that are not rules. There are optional rules in the book, or they are crowd made rules or they're rules that are made by Matthew Mercer or Brendan Lee.
Speaker 2:Mulligan and fast quaking, fast quaffing.
Speaker 1:We drink the potion.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's something that, like people don't think about the fact that these are external rules and at one point do we just kind of accept them as part of the D&D rules. And for me, like critical failures is a great example of that. I run critical failures in a lot of my games because I think it's more fun. That being said, when I first heard that that was not a real thing, I was like, oh my God. I found that out when I was reading the book cover to cover, like that's not supposed to be a thing, but so many people run it that it is very common that DMs, especially new DMs they just expect that to be a thing in the book and it's not. And that's where I think I know it's dumb.
Speaker 1:I did it because it was the only way I had to learn. I had to learn. I bought I literally bought those books sitting right behind me. That's how I started D&D in high school. I read them cover to cover and I think that is a very good thing is, if you are planning on running a D&D campaign, if you are already spending a ton of time doing research. Take me, like it takes me a day to two days to read through one of those books. Get down, take a week, read through the player's handbook cover to cover and the DM book, because some of these optional rules, they can be pretty crippling. I don't know what your experience is with them but like critical failures I've had killed players really quickly.
Speaker 2:You could have a whole episode on critical failures and critical successes, because it can add fun to the game and it can really change the session, mostly to for the betterment, but it can be for the worst. I love critical failures, but that is a thing where I am not as good at. I struggle with finding a fun critical failure or critical success. That is as a skill, because that's what Dungeon Mastering is a storytelling skill mixed with a game. That is where I lack, however, yeah, you should read the Dungeon Master's guide at mid above with the player handbook, but don't stress yourself out trying to read that book.
Speaker 1:I mean, okay, I read every single word, cover to cover, and took notes on sticky notes and stuck them on the pages and then ripped off the ones that I wanted and filled a notebook. That's how I started my DMing journey. I went very, very excessive. That's also why you can name X spell to me and I can probably tell you how much damage it does. It's way more than you need to do. But especially when you're in a situation I was in where I had no one that knew how to play. I was a brand new DM, never touched a game before. I had players that had never even heard of Dungeons and Dragons before I had to do it.
Speaker 1:I didn't get a choice, but it's challenging because at least if you have a good foundation on the rules, it allows you to expand into and focus on the creativity. So that is actually like a small piece of advice that I would give out, because then you know what rules you're like. This rule kind of kind of BS. I'm going to just toss it out. Go on, replace it with your own, because then you know what all the rules are. That's why I would say that that's it gives you more room to be creative if you know all the rules. Absolutely so for you, do you, and this is where I I struggle with this so much. This is one of the areas I'm still really lacking in terms of skills. When should art be used versus description? Because to me, descriptions can be a lot more creative, but art gives a lot more of like a visual, a visual cue that can help players, and I think that it's really powerful to have art integrated, but I never really know how to balance my art versus vivid storytelling and descriptions.
Speaker 2:So I have about 30 to 40 different characters that I have slowly drawn over time in my second campaign alone. So I love art of a character and it really depends on the context. Is this a character that I want them to fully meet? Is this a moment where they're going to be walking past a character that I do have art of? When do I play the art card or when do I just give them a descriptor? How important to the game is that character? Is that NPC? If the NPC becomes very important later, maybe I make art for that character later. Do I want this to be a character where kind of art is in the eye of the beholder? Do I ever want to make this character? Do I ever want to draw this character, or is this one where I want it to be more open-ended? At the same time, sometimes it is more interesting to give a description and sometimes it is more interesting to not give a description.
Speaker 2:If you're somebody who really likes the visual design of a character and have that design have meaning, I go for the visual look 100% of the time. I have a character who an NPC, who basically is a small jaw in this cube. It's a little tiny pet. You can tell that this cube has been modified, that it is a little more intelligent than a monster and at the same time incredibly stupid. The items that it has inside of it are two different colored eyeballs and they're floating in different spots and that indicator is a show. That's a show, don't tell. You can tell that somebody put those two differently colored eyeballs into this small gelatinous cube to give it sight, to give it a little more sentience than just a regular gelatinous cube, which is typically not that intelligent. Or maybe I will give a character a scar over an eye and they have a metallic eye and there's a story behind why that character has that that they have to notice themselves.
Speaker 2:I had a player completely figure out a plotline that I was running almost completely because I had the previous campaigns party members I had two of them and an NPC follow the party of my campaign but because they were trying to stay hidden and they didn't want to give this other world technology that wasn't invented yet, they hid a lot of what they looked like and the only ways that they could fully tell was via the visual design and the small symbol of a cat, with the male symbol going off of a cat's paw to represent the cat boys, which was the name of the group from the first campaign.
Speaker 2:They figured that out because they noticed that Sometimes when you give a descriptor, you can, let's say, game the system a little bit, and technically that's gaming it too. You're figuring stuff out, but your players having fun figuring that out by saying that this NPC has this random insignia on it. Well, clearly your DM is telling you this because it is an important narrative aspect. So it really depends on I like the character and do you like doing art and the kind of storytelling that you really like to do?
Speaker 1:And so for me I actually believe it or not I use art mostly on reflavored monsters and NPCs. When I'm trying to make a monster fit a setting and I want to use a staff block that is already in the dungeon master handbook, but I don't feel like that monster fits it. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll have art drawn of the character or I'll drop myself or the NPC and I will use that as a cue to kind of show, hey, this is what this monster looks like and make it fit the theme that I'm in. That being said, I'll do that with items too, but I really I have a lot of homebrew monsters that I've made. I'm currently in the process of making them into like an encyclopedia right now of all the monsters I've made.
Speaker 1:I try to avoid making monsters when I can. I struggled very greatly when I first started playing the game and as I became a better and better DM, I learned how to do it better. I've made hundreds of monsters at this point, and homebrewing monsters is not something I want to do anymore. It is something where it's like there are tons of really cool monsters that you can reflavor and unless I have a great idea for something, that's not going to fit anything else. That's when I'll make a new monster, but I've actually resorted to going back in D&D to the old magazines they used to post that had random monsters that are canon, that aren't used, and upgrading them to fifth edition. That's what I do now, rather than homebrewing monsters and it's me as a DM. I know it's less creative and a lot of people's eyes, but I've made so many monsters and homebrew monsters.
Speaker 1:You can't balance them. They're not, they're not meant to be balanced the final bosses of my campaigns. I literally make a character sheet for them, pick a random level and then build a character, basically, and have you fight a character. That is one of my favorite ways to make a final boss, because it's rewarding to fight. It feels like you're fighting a person, because you're fighting a character that I built from ground up. I know how that thing works and it's going to hurt because it's a character, um, but that's other than doing that.
Speaker 1:I avoid it these days because I noticed that it is very, very hard to keep players from having no fun fighting homebrew monsters. Like some of my, homebrew monsters are miserable to fight and I learned that when I went to a fight night with my friends and I had made one of my friends really mad with a character, with a monster I had made, and he turned nine of them on me during fight night. That taught me real fast. And then he started grabbing random homebrew monsters and he's like this is why monsters aren't homebrewed, because it's miserable to fight. Um, and I'm not going to lie to you, that was a point that needed to be made to me, um so like, but items items I'm a little more lax today's cool about. I don't know, do you find yourself like reflavoring monsters or making homebrew monsters or items? Which which kind of you lean towards?
Speaker 2:more. This is what really makes talking to other DMs and seeing other styles so fun, because half of my monsters are are homebrewed to an extent. Um, I tend to either look for homebrew stuff to either fit the setting I'm in Uh, let's, I have a campaign in space. Guess what. Outside of spell jammer, I don't have a lot, so sometimes I either will reflave or a monster. This happened yesterday. I said, hey, here's a Kraken, it's a space Kraken. And then I posted images of a Kraken online and then loaded up the stat block of a Kraken, not expecting them to try and fight a Kraken. So in some ways, like I will do minor tweaking.
Speaker 2:I love minorly tweaking enemies, especially because my party can take out depending on how uh, how lucky the glass cannon is in that combat. Uh, my party can take out their level eight right now. They can take out CR tens and 11s and the. The concept of uh, when do I bump up the CR is one of my favorite abstract, gamey concepts in D&D. I could have an entire podcast episode on that. Um, but it's part flavor, it's part how. How uh difficult do I want to make this guy? What level is the party is it's in? There's so many contextual factors that go into creating a monster, I don't go for one that's going to likely TPK, unless it's the final boss. Um, but half. But the other half of the time I keep uh, monsters. Or I will just say like oh, this guy in the book might be a beholder, but I'm going to change his name and describe him as this guy that's contextual to the planet we're on. Um, that might be all I do.
Speaker 1:Um so for me, I want to, I want to button real quick. Yeah, cr is the most messed up system in D&D and I'm going to do an episode on it eventually. It is something I want to button on a little bit because, dms I know we mentioned this in our combat episode please, please, do not just trust CR blindly. It will lead you astray. I mean, the CR system in D&D is very outdated and there is a monster and I encourage everyone to look it up, if you haven't.
Speaker 1:Shadows are not because you can't hit it. You can't hit them with physical weapons. They have immunity to half the magical properties. I have thrown three of them at a at a six person level, five party in TPK, and at that point you have to ask your question of and and this is something I want to talk about. So we'll lead into the next point when do you say enough is enough?
Speaker 1:I'm not TPKing my party and start scribbling on your stuff, uh, changing around monsters, and for me, that comes with resistances. The first thing that disappears is resistances. If I'm trying not to TPK, if I am trying to save my party, resistances are the first line that I'm stretching out, cause it makes it so much easier for my players to hit them If they don't have those resistances, versus just let dropping hit points or whatever. I will scratch out resistances First of all and I'll scratch out resistances to things they haven't hit them with yet. That way it doesn't feel unrewarding to them and that way they can adapt to. That's how I keep from TPKing parties and I think that's a big area where I am deviating from the rules because I have made the personal mistake of following along with the CR ratings and that is not a good decision ever.
Speaker 2:I've got one last thing on using monsters as they are in the book. Maybe we even edit this back into that part. But I try to not change all monsters because when I throw, let's say, a frog, hemit at you or I throw an upper tier D&D monster like the two headed ogre or a giant, by not changing anything about the guy, if you have a player who has looked through the monster manual for a hundred hours, like a lot of DMs, being able to slay that beast doesn't just become oh wow, we just killed that guy. No, it's, we just killed that guy, and I know how tough that guy is. And now I have a better grasp of myself of how tough our party is. Wow, we really are badass. This is how strong we are and that's a good feeling. That's what you want to strive for. So we were complaining about what was the last thing.
Speaker 1:We were complaining about CR. We were complaining about CR.
Speaker 2:So CR. That's why I look at CR as the most biggest guideline and as soon as I feel like, hey, my party is stronger than the CR, I just keep going forwards. It doesn't matter. That's also why we do little tiny tweaks. Is we don't fully trust CR, absolutely. Yeah, that is the biggest. Like oh, in D&D in terms of prepping. Is it's great, it's CR is great. Earlier on, when you're two levels into the game but as soon as CR can't account for. Cr can't account for most.
Speaker 1:The exact example I used was shadows, do you? Know when challenge ratings shadows actually have.
Speaker 2:Isn't it like?
Speaker 1:it's like it's not higher than three or four, I don't think it's a half, and they have resistance to all magic and all physical items. Plus, they're invisible.
Speaker 2:Wow, oh, do they have like two HP?
Speaker 1:No, they have 14 HP. Oh, you just can't hit them.
Speaker 2:Oh, why yeah?
Speaker 1:So, like I said just brief of this discussion, Are you sure they didn't?
Speaker 2:trust CR. Are you sure they didn't mean a CR of 12? Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:I know, right, it's like that thing. I've killed whole parties with those on accident before and like I mentioned that in our combat episode. So, like just don't, don't fuck with CR. Like just use your discretion. Like CR is a good, like guess of where something is, but definitely check resistances and make your own decisions on what your party is ready for before you start chucking things at them, because chucking five shadows at a level three party when it's like the CR for this is a dangerous encounter and then they can't hit them once and everyone dies Not a fun experience. Learn from my lessons Now. The last kind of thing I want to get into with you. This was something I found on our Reddit debate.
Speaker 2:If you're curious, shadows are on page 269 in the Monster Manual, for anybody who wanted to look that up, and I apologize, I was too slow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll move it around, but no, I would say the conversation on Reddit that I found that was pretty fun was Should we follow turn economy and can we just chuck it out and have a chaos and just let players be creative and do whatever they want and not follow initiative and not have initiative? And I'm like I don't know what kind of mad men you are, but I'm terrified of that idea because I've had parties again where I've had to mute everybody because they talk over my quiet players. I don't know, do you think that's something that could ever survive at your table? I wish it was something I could keep alive at mine.
Speaker 2:Listen, man, that's like this is that's so insane that, like you would have, I would do it as a one off to kind of see. But like like I that might that like their Final Fantasy games based around that like overall idea, like oh, oh, oh no like socially. I don't think that's. I think that's a. That's a horrible idea. How would there is? How would you structure that? There is no structure to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, literally what they're all saying is like the arguments I saw. That was kind of interesting me is they're like everything is basically done as a reaction. So somebody starts combat by swinging and then whoever like raises their hand first gets to attack next. It's literally just like a speed response and I'm like, oh God I would. I would hate that, I would.
Speaker 2:I couldn't do it. But hear me out, that sounds like a hilarious mini game, but not a. But that's not. Like that's not even combat, like that's. That's. That's like. Let's do a mini game, paintball. Great, let's do it. I'm going to shoot. No, I'm going to shoot like I, like, like that's. You know, maybe maybe you could do it where, like, the monsters go first and then, like, when the monsters get through their part, but even then there's so many avenues for power gaming after the monsters have gone, because you could just be like, well, I want to go first, so I'm going to hit this guy and do this thing, and then I'm going to power game. Like that breaks every single home rule. That right, that like, literally, is the crux of what we said of don't do homebrew. If they're going to like, if they're just going to game the system, because they're just going to game the system.
Speaker 1:And for for me this topic almost round goes into that realm of like. This is too much freedom to the players to even discuss.
Speaker 2:Like. Like, if you try to put any structure on this chaos, they can game it, but then if there's just chaos like that's not, that's, oh God, dude, like no please I could.
Speaker 1:I could never run it. It would be so horrible. I feel like, at least with the groups that I run, I'd love to see someone do this and watch, but I could not run this. I have no idea how.
Speaker 2:I do 100%, though, think that there's some kind of mini game you could do with this, but that's do not do combat with us. That's, that's, oh man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because basically then you never, really you never roll initiative, it's just like a normal. It would literally be the same as just running without initiative. You can come out with no initiative.
Speaker 2:That also like breaks your. Your one of the one of the couple of reasons to go into dexterity. If you wanted to nerf dexterity as a powerful stat like you should, you should do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know but at that point like oh, like you have to.
Speaker 2:If you want to, if you're going to break your campaign like that, you have to really, really, really know what you're doing, to the point where I still don't think you can do it.
Speaker 1:I would. I would love to see Matthew Mercer run that. Personally, like I feel like that, like that level of, like this is my full time job. I want to see him running. That would be fun.
Speaker 2:He or like dimension 20. Like Brennan would like. Brennan would get so overstimulated, but that would be so funny. I mean, matt would too. Matt when the monsters. If Matt Mercer ran it his like he's the most passive player and he's the DM amongst his group, probably like arguably, they're both just good, both, both DMs. Monsters are not going to be, they just won't do anything. They might as well be why it's pro. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, regardless, thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. That was kind of our topics for today. If you like the podcast, please follow for more, and then if you want to check out more content from us, check out the discord server or our website. Thank you, joe, and have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I love these conversations. I love stuff like this.