November 5, 2023 • 65 mins
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!
Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you are interested in seeing more content like this check out our YouTube! We also post weekly game articles on our Patreon and have an active Discord community.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, welcome back to DMI.
We are going to be starting offtoday with a little bit of a
change.
We actually have a new guestwith us.
I'm your primary host, wyatt,and this is my dear friend.
I'm Joe, all right, so Joe isgoing to be joining us today.
We have one of his favoritetopics.
(00:22):
He asked to kind of be heretoday.
We're going to be reallytalking about the difference
between rules and creativity andwhere that gray line kind of
blurs, and the lines that wereally should cross and the ones
that we don't really care if wecross them at all.
So I'm going to start off bykind of kind of asking you what
(00:42):
I think is an important questionis like how much value do you
really place in the rules?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And with this question this question kind of
it, almost asks why are youplaying Dungeons and Dragons
compared to playing or doingsomething else?
So, at the end of the day, forme Dungeons and Dragons is a
story, whether that story is onethat is written in a book, that
(01:16):
is in a podcast format, that isone done in a video game,
dungeons and Dragons is theformat of that story.
And when do you break thatstory?
Dungeons and Dragons doesn'ttell you how to play the game
unless you're running anadventure that they made but is
(01:41):
giving you the rules set for howto make a story in the game
engine itself.
And when you're starting out,it really looks like every
single rule in Dungeons andDragons fifth edition is
integral.
(02:02):
You have to follow it to a Tand slowly, as you play and you
start to develop both your ownstyle and you start to look at
what really is important or whatam I wasting time on focusing.
That's where you start placingvalue in some rules, and then
(02:22):
you start looking at other rulesand saying I don't know if it's
really necessary to do this,for the fun of both my players
and myself.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And I would agree that definitely.
I think a large portion of itis are your players having fun?
I think that's where thisportion of rules really becomes
kind of negligent.
Is like, if my players arehating a rule and they don't
want to play it, I'm probablynot going to play it, I'm going
to just stop, because if I amactively going out of my way to
(02:59):
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 nottelling a good story because
people are going to be checkedout.
So for me I would say that thatline really draws with where my
players enjoy.
So for me the value of therules is as only as much as my
(03:24):
players get enjoyment out ofthose rules.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And there should be an emphasis placed on the plural
of the word players.
There I have a player who, nomatter 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 playersenjoy combat.
(03:50):
Most of my players makecharacters that are interesting
or they flavor their spells,they flavor their combat, they
try and do maybe a little bit ofoptimizing, but this one player
is just not interested.
And just because that oneplayer isn't interested doesn't
mean that you shouldn't do stufflike that.
It's if every single playerespecially if, let's say, you
(04:12):
like combat and your playerslike combat if it's just one
player, you don't need to worry.
They know what they're signingup for when playing in your game
.
This is the kind of storyyou're doing.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And I would say your own value is just as high as any
of the players, because ifyou're going to hate playing the
game, there's no point inactually running the section
Like you're just going to bebored, checked out and hate the
entire experience.
So for me, what I would do is Icount myself, in that if three
people at my table of four loveit, I'm I'm actually going to do
(04:48):
it versus three people at mytable of five.
Majority probably still rules,but if it's three and three or
four and two, like, I'm nevergoing to, I'm never going to
discount my own opinion.
Now, if it's a tie, like if I'mrunning a table of five and
there's exactly three of uscounting myself and three of my
players love it counting myselfand three of them hate it, I'm
(05:10):
going to go with the side whereI don't count, because at the
end of the day, I'm makingsacrifices to make sure
everybody has a good time.
So for me, that's the challengethat I run into a lot of the
time and that is where I reallykind of draw these lines of like
making sure that the majorityof my group is having fun, and
that's including myself.
So I don't know about you.
(05:32):
I'll speak on my own experiencefirst.
But I have broken the rules forplayers a ton with a bunch of
different groups, from a powergaming group to a group that has
never played D&D before, andwe're all learning together at
the book to people that areheavy, hardcore role players.
And I'm going to lie and notgoing to lie to you.
There has been very differentresults for me, because
(05:55):
sometimes my players are like,oh, it's just kind of cool,
we'll let it slide whatever it'snice and fun.
And there are other times wherethey're like no, you said this
once and I am going to make youfollow the decision not to
follow that rule for the rest ofyour existence.
And I guess my question reallycomes down to is it a mundane
(06:17):
event or are your playersabusing it when you don't follow
the rules and really takingadvantage?
And I'm kind of curious towhere your experience is lied in
it, because I'll talk a littlebit more about mine after that.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So there's kind of like two philosophies on if it's
a mundane event or if it's aplayer like taking advantage,
and that's how often they do it,or how, if we change something
up, how does a player like reactto that?
So if you have a mundane eventand let's say you set a like,
(06:56):
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 savethat one guy who maybe was going
to fall into a pit, and thenyou would have spent an hour
trying to get them out of thisbit.
If it's a mundane, you know, youhave to notice when it's
(07:18):
something that your players takeadvantage of.
But you can only really do thatby noticing them play.
So if you see them takeadvantage of a rule one time,
that's one thing.
But if you see themconsistently take that, take
(07:38):
advantage of that rule, that'swhere you start having the real
problem.
And you can either this is aloophole and hey, you let them
do it, depending on how severeit is or how minor it is.
Maybe you do if it's minor, letthem do it.
If it's severe, maybe we have aconversation, maybe at the
(08:04):
start of a session or the nexttime that they try and use this
loophole.
That's when you want to havethe converse, that's when you
want to have the conversationthat, hey, this is, you know, I
think we need to set a standardhere.
And this works in the oppositeway, where suddenly you're
(08:26):
creating a rule with your partyby having that conversation.
So, for instance, very early onwe kind of came to the
conclusion that hey, we reallydon't like that.
Prone only gives half speed, itdoesn't make it feel like we
(08:47):
should actively make players,you know, and enemies prone.
So we, on the spot, had aunanimous decision.
We said let's change prone.
So it takes your full speed toget on in order to stand up in
general.
Alternatively, depending onwhen they're doing it, if you're
(09:14):
midway through a campaign andthere's only six months left of
the campaign or you know this issomething that's more towards
the end, is this something thatyou want to have a conversation
about, or is this something thatyou're going to let slide for
this campaign but next campaignyou won't.
(09:37):
My players would love to shoutabout how much HP they had if it
wasn't their turn in character.
If it wasn't their turn and ifit went past the six seconds in
a round, they would just keeptalking.
(09:59):
So the next campaign, I put inrules to try and still make
combat fun and you roleplayduring it, but not power game.
With the conversations beinghad, Excuse my cough, Um, no.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So for me, a prone is actually a great example,
because I had players abuse ahomebrew rule that I was running
for prone and it actually mademe question where I was okay
with my players and where Iwasn't okay with my players
making these decisions.
Because for me, I had this rulethat whenever you were prone to
(10:42):
get back up, you had to do anathletics check and whenever,
depending on your athleticscheck, you would do a role to
see how much movement you wouldhave when you get back up.
I then had a player who did acharacter that was just about
making creatures go prone andcombat was no longer fun because
(11:02):
everything was prone 100% ofthe time and he actively made it
so that they had disadvantage,Used feats to make it so that
they had disadvantage on everyrole to get back up, and so
every creature was prone withzero movement every single fight
past level five for the entirecampaign.
That was a decision where it'slike, should I have allowed that
(11:25):
to continue going for that longCause it was like three months
of me letting this happen andI'm not quite sure whether or
not that was a smart decision.
I still don't really know theanswer on that, because I would
say, awesome, that's great on myplayer for being creative and
(11:45):
kind of coming up with thatcharacter.
But they were also exploitingthe rules and I didn't really
know where that threshold waswhere I was okay with them
making that decision.
And my players are reallynotorious Like a lot of players
that I played with are reallynotorious for taking rules and
exploiting them Like that's justthat's how they like to play
(12:09):
the game and I don't want totake that away from them.
But also it made me have to bea lot more careful with how I,
with how I chose to do excuse mewith how I chose to do combat.
So I think a really goodexample of this outside of our
(12:32):
experience is have you seen notanother D&D podcast?
I have not so Brennan LeeMulligan is a very well known DM
.
At this point he is the main DMfor dimension 20.
And I appreciate that in thiscampaign, in their second act,
(12:52):
they were given these randommagic items that he had homebred
.
He quickly regretted thatdecision.
He even says it in the podcastbecause what they do is when you
drink them it's the same ashaving a long rest and you can
drink one per actual long rest.
That was a terrible decision andthat's one of those questions
(13:14):
where it's like, at what pointis that homebrew rule of having
those in there a good decision?
Cause now your potions.
They literally he had a bossfight.
They just drank those potionswhen they were about to go down
and it just literally resetspells, lost everything, they
wiped all of their resources,chugged this potion and kept
(13:34):
going, and so I think Ipersonally, after listening to
that, learned a very, veryvaluable lesson of a Friday
night.
Fight night is a greatexperience for testing new magic
items before I put them in mycampaigns.
Because when you just have acombat night, definitely I'm
(13:54):
going to whip out my like magicitems that I plan on giving my
my actual campaign and seeinghow they go first, and I'll
stockpile them and I'll testlike 20 in a fight night and
then I'll I'll save the onesthat I like and I'll burn the
rest, because God, I'll neverlet that in my game again.
And that's kind of how I've.
I've developed my system fordeciding because once you set in
(14:16):
a rule on an item like Iupgrade your acts, now it does
an additional X effect.
Once I give that player that, Ican't take that away.
And I don't really know a betterway to break that kind of
stigma, because I don't want tostrip them from something once
I've already given it.
That seems disrespectful almostto the nature of the game.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, it's also.
It's dependent on is this arule that they're breaking, or
is this an item or somethingestablished in a story and you
are playing with friends so youdon't want to just say you don't
have that thing anymore, or youdon't want to just, oh, it
(15:03):
magically breaks and now thatplayer feels screwed out of that
item.
It's very, it's very contextual, based on what it is you're
noticing.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Well.
So the reason I bring items upis, I would say items are almost
part of the rules, because howD&D has it written?
Especially if you go into thedungeon master hand guide and
you read that section on items.
Basically you can buy anythinganytime you go to a shop.
It's basically said in therethat anytime you go in, all of
(15:37):
these items except for very raremagic items are just sitting in
basically every store.
Unless it's like uncommon, it'sthere all the time.
So as soon as you put down anitem and you're like I'm giving
you these potions, if a playerasks you hey, is that a common
potion?
If it's a common potion, nowfor the rest of your game, every
time they go in a store, it isbasically a preset expectation
(16:01):
by the rule book that it's goingto be in that store.
So it's like this is it isinherently part of the game.
Items are part of the rule set.
I would almost consider themmore than they are their own
individual thing.
So I'm going to ask a questionthat's kind of a little off
topic how do you feel aboutopportunity attacks as a rule?
(16:23):
Because I feel like they arevery, almost stifling to the
creativity, especially movementand combat because if you have a
creature within 10 foot of youyou can make an opportunity
attack them.
They can make it to opportunityattack anytime you move, which
can really kill someone quitequickly.
And then you don't really getyour like going back.
(16:45):
D&d was kind of a little bitbased on Lord of the Rings.
You don't get those likelegless characters where they're
running around and jumping andshooting a bow, because if you
run and jump they're going tostab you, like you're going to
have four people stab you, likeunless you're a monk unless
you're a monk.
that is also true.
But, like, especially forRangers and barbarians and
fighters and even even wizards,you can't really back up
(17:07):
effectively without grantingopportunity attacks.
What point do you let theplayers creativity Like if they
say that they're going to dosomething really, really cool
and they want to do this superintricate thing For me?
If they give me a descriptionof like I want to run and like
jump back and do a back, flipoff the wall and shoot into the
orc on the other side of theroom while disengaging.
(17:29):
If you can give me an actual,pretty, like elaborate
explanation and show me on thebattle map how you're going to
do it, I'm not going to let themdo opportunity attacks.
That's one of those times whereI break the rules so my players
can have fun.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I think it's.
It's dependent on individual,it's very contextual, so I would
totally allow them to do thesame.
It's very much in the rule ofcool Avenue of thinking, if not
pretty much a textbook exampleof a rule of cool.
(18:06):
However, let's say this is a.
There are six enemies in thecombat right, or let's say eight
, you know, I might have one ortwo do an attack of opportunity.
Keep in mind that, in terms ofthe rules of the game right In
(18:29):
combat, that is an enemy'sreaction.
So in some ways, depending onthe combat and how intelligent
the enemy is let's say this is ahuman fighter depending on who
walks out of their range, theymight hold that reaction still
(18:53):
to target somebody else in casethey move out.
That's one way of going aboutit.
Back to your original example,though.
With this, you know, I am aranger, I'm gonna do a sick flip
into the air and I'm gonnashoot my bow and I have to run
through multiple enemies to getover there.
I would have one enemy, maybetwo, attack of opportunity
(19:23):
because you want them to dosomething cool, but you don't
want.
You want it to feel groundedand realistic at the same time.
There is, in a sense and thisis what really makes combat fun.
Every time you enter combat,there is a minuscule chance of
(19:43):
failure, whether it's a TPK, andit's a.2% chance, or it's one
player dying and let's be honesthere it's probably a 1% chance.
By having one or two guys do anattack of opportunity, you give
a sense of danger withoutnecessarily killing them.
(20:07):
This is also to say that thoseattack of opportunities are even
going to land as well.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So for me, when I have that kind of a situation
where I have a player runningthrough, I may have one attack
of opportunity happen.
But rather than so, here's howI do it.
And this is kind of me being alittle silly.
If you give me a greatexplanation of what you're gonna
do and it sounds cool andyou're super excited to do it,
what I'll do is I'll have youroll like a dexterity or an
(20:38):
athletics check, whatever'sfitting.
If you're gonna bulldozethrough the four people in front
of you with your movement andtry to get to the big boss,
rather than having them allswing 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 superhigh, that's how I'll determine
kind of how many swing on you.
Because if you're wildlysucceeding, if you roll a 20,
(21:00):
you're just gonna plow throughthem.
They're not gonna have a momentto 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.
And it's like one of thosethings where I bring other roles
into combat to kind of gaugedifferent like levels of success
and that's my personal thing,but I would say that that's
(21:23):
almost where I would say thatfor my campaigns and how I like
to run them, I try to keep theuse of bending the rules with me
personally and I don't reallyknow where you kind of keep
yours and where a lot of DM keepyours.
I'd love to.
I wish I could hear from allthe DMs in the world, but
obviously that's not.
(21:43):
Do you kind of try to keep inyour table, Do you keep the
bending the rules in yourwheelhouse or do you keep it in
that of the players?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I keep it primarily in mine, but with an open mind,
as, depending on what the playerdoes, totally allowing it.
So, like similar to yourexample again with the Ranger,
the Ranger says that and thenthey look at me and say, like,
(22:16):
is that possible?
Can I do that?
I want to do that and I willlook at that and come up with,
like let's say, that ruling thatyou did, and I'll say you know,
you can do it.
This is what you have to do tobe able to succeed in that.
So sometimes I do tell them no,sometimes I want to hear what
(22:39):
they do, because I know what'sgoing to happen overall in a
Sasha.
I know there's a coupledifferent avenues they could go
down, but what I don't know isthe creativity of the individual
player, and you want you wantthem to both go down the track
(23:04):
that you have crafted, but youalso want them to go down that
track in a way that they havefun.
And it depends on how absurd itis to just you know, to just
suddenly say, hey, I'm going torun through these guys and and
I'm going to stab one and rightin the carotid artery.
(23:25):
I mean real life, if you'reskilled 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 thespecific place that you're going
to stab him and attempt to stabhim, you know the most I can
(23:52):
give that player in thishypothetical is you run up, you
go with your blade in hand.
You go to stab right at hisweakest spot.
However, he manages to deflectyour blade slightly, it cuts
into the side of his shoulderand his neck, dealing, it just
so happens, the damage that theywere going to do anyway.
(24:15):
But they still get to try to dowhat they wanted to do and feel
satisfying that they stillmanaged to land a hit, even if
they didn't one hit.
Ko the guy, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
And I think I think that's also fair.
I feel like players that expectyou to let them stab somebody
or cut their head off turn oneare 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 (24:47):
And it's not just necessarily that it's how it
works, but it's like your proneexample earlier.
It's just not fun.
Like it's it's cool to thinkabout.
And it's cool if, let's say,you're a high enough level
character and you decide to dothis to like maybe a noble who's
(25:10):
a villain and he's got five HP.
Oh, you do that.
Or you know, maybe he's thesame 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 roleplay with the goal of
(25:31):
circumventing whatever it is,you're trying to do the fun of
the game.
Well, that goes back tobreaking rule and making it not
fun for everybody.
If it's not fun, don't do it.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
So we've been talking a lot about the rules in combat
and I think combat is probablythe most strict in terms of
rules.
That being said, out of combatrules are a little more
laxadaisical, I would almost saythey're very laid back, like
(26:10):
people aren't as strict at mosttables about.
Well, you're walking down thestreet and you're talking to
this guy, I need you to do aperformance check for me every
time that you have aconversation, every single
conversation, and I feel likethat's a rule.
That's kind of I mean checks,like we do checks all the time,
(26:31):
but I feel like conversationchecks, like intimidation,
persuasion, stuff like that.
There are rules.
That gets thrown out at mosttables and, I'm not going to lie
, I don't think that's the worstthing for the game or for most
parties, because it's kind ofboring to roll the dice every
five seconds rather thanactually having the conversation
(26:53):
.
There's a short that's goingaround of a very popular DM who
was I can't remember his namewho was running a campaign and
there was this work and he waslike I'm going to distract the
guards and he's like, okay, andhe goes, how are you going to
distract the guards?
Well, I'm going to tell him astory and he was like okay, what
do I need to roll?
And he goes no, tell me a story.
(27:14):
And I love that.
I think that that's so muchmore interesting than just doing
a normal persuasion check.
Just be like give me apersuasion check.
Like, if you're like I'm goingto go up and distract the town
guard by telling him a story,you best be prepared to tell me
a story.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And skills.
The the purpose of skills andchacks are inherently for those
moments when there is a chanceof failure.
So I have players roll thosechacks when there is a chance
(27:56):
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-truthinside of it which makes it seem
very realistic, then I may havethem roll a deception check
just to make sure.
But it's really just to see onthat off chance.
(28:16):
If they fail because a skill inthat regard, even if it's a
minor chance of failure, what'llhappen is that's a branching
off point either they succeed,which is really what I'm
expecting, with a low chance offailure, or Suddenly now they
(28:37):
have to backtrack because theydid manage to fail.
However, that is very contextual.
So if, as why it mentionedthere that the player told an
overall story, well, unless thatplayer did like, if I was the
DM right and he did just go inand tell a whole story about
(29:01):
Frank Pete who runs a bakerythat burns down because of a
rival baker, then I, then I willBe totally down and I won't
have a role for it.
But if I let's say, let's saythey tell a very dramatic lie
(29:30):
that has a chance of not beingreal.
That's when I want the role.
If there's no point in rolling,why roll at all?
And that's where both of usdelineate from the rules, where
(29:50):
our creativity supersedes whatthe Game has told us we should
do To run a fifth edition game.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, and I would say I mean to go back to your baker
example.
Like the rules say, if you'rerunning away from a, a giant mob
that's attacking you and all ofa sudden you provoke that one
and you get a Horrible rule thatthey're gonna turn around and
they're gonna try to kill you.
(30:21):
And and Joe's laughing, becausethat actually happened In a
session that I was DMing, thathe was playing in where he was a
baker and we were fightingagainst a horde of gingerbread
cookies and they convinced thecookies to walk away and he's
like no, I'm gonna go and eatone in front of them and was
shocked when it turned anddidn't intimidation check
(30:43):
Horribly failed and was shockedwhen they turned and tried to
kill him.
And it was like it was one ofthe funniest moments I've still
ever had DMing, because I planfor I plan for everybody to
succeed and that failure justmade one of the best moments
because I had to just bullshitan answer out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
We, we poisoned the gingerbread men.
I Poisoned gingerbread man andtook 1d4 damage.
It was I mean, it was a cantru,it was just poison spray
cantrip that was on him, butstill I had to take that damage
and that's the fun part about it.
That's really fun.
This really goes in.
(31:24):
Let's let's fully dive into therule of cool, which really is
just hey, I Think this is areally cool idea.
So the rule isn't whatever itsays in the game.
The rule is that because it'scool, let's just do it.
What are my favorite stories Iever read why I don't know if
(31:47):
you have heard this one I Ithink I found it on a red editor
tumblr, maybe Twitter, yearsago Was this party had this
homebrew rule that if you got anat 20, you had to roll it again
, and if it was another nat 20,you had to roll it again for a
(32:07):
third time.
And if you get three nat 20s ina row, no matter what happened,
the monster instantly died.
But like, the chances of thishappening is Dramatically low,
it's astonishingly low.
Right, you're.
And if you get the nat 20 rightlike you, you get a critical
(32:27):
hit like don't, don't get mewrong here, this is like a bad
game.
You still got the nat 20, evenif on the second or third rule
it wasn't another nat 20.
The party got to the final bossand they Decided to rule of cool
I guess kind of it's isn'treally cool, but they just
(32:49):
signed it.
They were gonna have their petminion Go first.
Like they all decided that, oh,maybe the boss will, maybe the
boss gets a 20 on initiative whothe next person in line is
their pet minion, who isbasically like this little
cactuar, like I think, neverfought, never did anything, but
(33:13):
was just there.
You know it's gonna be one hitKO kind of thing.
You know.
They just had they heal him.
Then he goes on his way.
They had him go first in thecombat and he rolled a nat 20 to
hit and then he rolled anothernat 20 to hit and he basically
(33:34):
Felt this dark wizard with athird nat 20 in a row and
forever changed the history ofthe game because In the history
books, long after the age of thehero, that was this tiny
(33:54):
cactuar, the party was just thebodyguards for this legendary
hero.
That's how the whole, theentire plot, the entire post
game, the entire epiloguechanged because of this rule
that they had all Come to anagreement on that, they all
(34:18):
agreed with that, they all foundhilarious.
That's that's what really makesChanging rules, but also
following.
Following some rulesInteresting is that's what you
don't expect from D&D and andfor me that's where it's almost
like.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I know, I know I'm jumping around a little bit on
our prompts, but, um, I Am lesslikely to actually let players
break homebrew rules than bookrules.
That is, that is my ownpersonal opinion and I know
there's a lot of DMs that agreewith that.
In my practice, my the leastfun I have had is when I let
(34:59):
players break my house rules.
So those are like if we have ahouse rule that is concrete, it
is not moving.
There's nothing you can doabout it.
If it's a book rule and we canbend it, it is what it is like.
At the end of the day, I didn'twrite the book, I'm not gonna
be heard over it.
Um, so it's like now.
Obviously, if it's an unfairhouse rule, I Will let people
(35:22):
bend it.
But even for like we had a rulethat we had all agreed upon.
Combat was really bad.
I had two players who weresuper 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 orsomething we would use, like,
(35:44):
for example, when we did on zoom, you could raise your hand.
If you raised your hand, Iwould unmute you.
You could do a reaction orsomething like that, but
everyone was muted becauseotherwise people would just talk
over my quiet players.
That was our house rule forthat campaign, for example, and
I know that that's more of likean actual, like organization
(36:06):
rule versus an actual game rule,but we treated it like it was a
game rule.
People would.
We would have guests, peopleshow up.
I straight up told them bookrules will bend.
That is not a rule we will evermove like that because it gives
an opportunity for my quietplayers to still enjoy the game.
And I had to make thataccommodation because not
(36:28):
everybody is super great atdiscord etiquette I'm not even
super great at it.
I'll talk over people sometimesand I I recognize that that was
something my players needed tobe able to have fun.
Now, was I deafening everybody?
No, I wanted you to be able tohear what was happening and
enjoy it, but you had to bequiet so that these people could
play.
And that was really importantto me and I think that's
(36:53):
something that's overlooked is,book rules were always like when
I first started playing andwhen a lot of people I know,
started playing.
It was like the book rules aresolid, homebrew rules are the
ones we can move, and I thinkit's just the kind of the sign
of a of a more experienced DMthat your homebrew rules, those
kind of, stay solid.
Your book rules, those can bebent for people's enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Your homebrew rules are added not because you feel
like the game is lackingsomething or although sometimes
it can be if you have a, if youhave players cheating, like I
mentioned earlier but your, yourhomebrew rules, are there to
try and make your game more fun.
(37:37):
So, unless a homebrew ruleisn't working, it would like it
was something you were tryingout, you were experimenting.
Unless it isn't working,there's less inclination that
you should have to break itbecause you specifically make
made that rule with a goal inmind.
(37:57):
You didn't add that rulearbitrarily.
You didn't add that rulearbitrarily.
At the same time, though, withwhat Wyatt was mentioning on his
homebrew rule of the muting,that is completely contextual on
your party, and a lot of thecreativity butting heads with
(38:21):
the rules is contextual for yourown party itself.
I have never had that issue.
We have never had to mutepeople.
In my games.
We follow initiative.
People stay quiet.
My party has a pretty good feeland they also feel that I, as
(38:41):
their DM, keeps thingslevel-headed.
If somebody else especially if,let's say, you're a DM and
you're somebody who doesn't likeconfrontation that might work.
What matter for you or maybeyour party, as Wyatt had, is so
talkative that there it affectsmembers of the party, your other
(39:06):
players, then that is somethingwhere you're going to need to
want to put in a homebrew ruleto again better make sure
everybody is having fun.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
And I asked myself.
This kind of weird thing islike with my homebrew rules and
with optional rules in the bookand even with going into common
rules, like there are some rulesthat people think are rules
that are not rules.
There are optional rules in thebook, or they are crowd made
rules or they're rules that aremade by Matthew Mercer or
(39:46):
Brendan Lee.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Mulligan and fast quaking, fast quaffing.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
We drink the potion.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
That's something that , like people don't think about
the fact that these are externalrules and at one point do we
just kind of accept them as partof the D&D rules.
And for me, like criticalfailures is a great example of
that.
I run critical failures in alot of my games because I think
it's more fun.
That being said, when I firstheard that that was not a real
thing, I was like, oh my God.
(40:14):
I found that out when I wasreading the book cover to cover,
like that's not supposed to bea thing, but so many people run
it that it is very common thatDMs, especially new DMs they
just expect that to be a thingin the book and it's not.
And that's where I think I knowit's dumb.
I did it because it was the onlyway I had to learn.
I had to learn.
(40:34):
I bought I literally boughtthose books sitting right behind
me.
That's how I started D&D inhigh school.
I read them cover to cover andI think that is a very good
thing is, if you are planning onrunning a D&D campaign, if you
are already spending a ton oftime doing research.
Take me, like it takes me a dayto two days to read through one
of those books.
(40:54):
Get down, take a week, readthrough the player's handbook
cover to cover and the DM book,because some of these optional
rules, they can be prettycrippling.
I don't know what yourexperience is with them but like
critical failures I've hadkilled players really quickly.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
You could have a whole episode on critical
failures and critical successes,because it can add fun to the
game and it can really changethe session, mostly to for the
betterment, but it can be forthe worst.
(41:34):
I love critical failures, butthat is a thing where I am not
as good at.
I struggle with finding a funcritical failure or critical
success.
That is as a skill, becausethat's what Dungeon Mastering is
(41:58):
a storytelling skill mixed witha game.
That is where I lack, however,yeah, you should read the
Dungeon Master's guide at midabove with the player handbook,
but don't stress yourself outtrying to read that book.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
I mean, okay, I read every single word, cover to
cover, and took notes on stickynotes and stuck them on the
pages and then ripped off theones that I wanted and filled a
notebook.
That's how I started my DMingjourney.
I went very, very excessive.
That's also why you can name Xspell to me and I can probably
(42:42):
tell you how much damage it does.
It's way more than you need todo.
But especially when you're in asituation I was in where I had
no one that knew how to play.
I was a brand new DM, nevertouched a game before.
I had players that had nevereven heard of Dungeons and
Dragons before I had to do it.
I didn't get a choice, but it'schallenging because at least if
(43:05):
you have a good foundation onthe rules, it allows you to
expand into and focus on thecreativity.
So that is actually like asmall piece of advice that I
would give out, because then youknow 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 thatthat's it gives you more room to
(43:28):
be creative if you know all therules.
Absolutely so for you, do you,and this is where I I struggle
with this so much.
This is one of the areas I'mstill really lacking in terms of
skills.
When should art be used versusdescription?
(43:51):
Because to me, descriptions canbe a lot more creative, but art
gives a lot more of like avisual, a visual cue that can
help players, and I think thatit's really powerful to have art
integrated, but I never reallyknow how to balance my art
versus vivid storytelling anddescriptions.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
So I have about 30 to 40 different characters that I
have slowly drawn over time inmy second campaign alone.
So I love art of a characterand it really depends on the
context.
Is this a character that I wantthem to fully meet?
(44:36):
Is this a moment where they'regoing to be walking past a
character that I do have art of?
When do I play the art card orwhen do I just give them a
descriptor?
How important to the game isthat character?
Is that NPC?
If the NPC becomes veryimportant later, maybe I make
(44:59):
art for that character later.
Do I want this to be acharacter where kind of art is
in the eye of the beholder?
Do I ever want to make thischaracter?
Do I ever want to draw thischaracter, or is this one where
I want it to be more open-ended?
At the same time, sometimes itis more interesting to give a
(45:22):
description and sometimes it ismore interesting to not give a
description.
If you're somebody who reallylikes the visual design of a
character and have that designhave 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
(45:51):
this cube.
It's a little tiny pet.
You can tell that this cube hasbeen modified, that it is a
little more intelligent than amonster and at the same time
incredibly stupid.
The items that it has inside ofit are two different colored
eyeballs and they're floating indifferent spots and that
(46:14):
indicator is a show.
That's a show, don't tell.
You can tell that somebody putthose two differently colored
eyeballs into this smallgelatinous cube to give it sight
, to give it a little moresentience than just a regular
gelatinous cube, which istypically not that intelligent.
(46:36):
Or maybe I will give acharacter a scar over an eye and
they have a metallic eye andthere's a story behind why that
character has that that theyhave to notice themselves.
I had a player completely figureout a plotline that I was
running almost completelybecause I had the previous
(47:04):
campaigns party members I hadtwo of them and an NPC follow
the party of my campaign butbecause they were trying to stay
hidden and they didn't want togive this other world technology
that wasn't invented yet, theyhid a lot of what they looked
(47:24):
like and the only ways that theycould fully tell was via the
visual design and the smallsymbol of a cat, with the male
symbol going off of a cat's pawto represent the cat boys, which
was the name of the group fromthe first campaign.
(47:47):
They figured that out becausethey noticed that Sometimes when
you give a descriptor, you can,let's say, game the system a
little bit, and technicallythat's gaming it too.
You're figuring stuff out, butyour players having fun figuring
that out by saying that thisNPC has this random insignia on
(48:10):
it.
Well, clearly your DM istelling you this because it is
an important narrative aspect.
So it really depends on I likethe character and do you like
doing art and the kind ofstorytelling that you really
like to do?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
And so for me I actually believe it or not I use
art mostly on reflavoredmonsters and NPCs.
When I'm trying to make amonster fit a setting and I want
to use a staff block that isalready in the dungeon master
handbook, but I don't feel likethat monster fits it.
Sometimes what I'll do is I'llhave art drawn of the character
(48:49):
or I'll drop myself or the NPCand I will use that as a cue to
kind of show, hey, this is whatthis monster looks like and make
it fit the theme that I'm in.
That being said, I'll do thatwith items too, but I really I
have a lot of homebrew monstersthat I've made.
(49:09):
I'm currently in the process ofmaking them into like an
encyclopedia right now of allthe monsters I've made.
I try to avoid making monsterswhen I can.
I struggled very greatly when Ifirst started playing the game
and as I became a better andbetter DM, I learned how to do
(49:32):
it better.
I've made hundreds of monstersat this point, and homebrewing
monsters is not something I wantto do anymore.
It is something where it's likethere are tons of really cool
monsters that you can reflavorand unless I have a great idea
for something, that's not goingto fit anything else.
That's when I'll make a newmonster, but I've actually
(49:55):
resorted to going back in D&D tothe old magazines they used to
post that had random monstersthat are canon, that aren't used
, and upgrading them to fifthedition.
That's what I do now, ratherthan homebrewing monsters and
it's me as a DM.
I know it's less creative and alot of people's eyes, but I've
made so many monsters andhomebrew monsters.
(50:17):
You can't balance them.
They're not, they're not meantto be balanced the final bosses
of my campaigns.
I literally make a charactersheet for them, pick a random
level and then build a character, basically, and have you fight
a character.
That is one of my favorite waysto make a final boss, because
it's rewarding to fight.
It feels like you're fighting aperson, because you're fighting
(50:39):
a character that I built fromground up.
I know how that thing works andit's going to hurt because it's
a character, um, but that'sother than doing that.
I avoid it these days because Inoticed that it is very, very
hard to keep players from havingno fun fighting homebrew
monsters.
(50:59):
Like some of my, homebrewmonsters are miserable to fight
and I learned that when I wentto a fight night with my friends
and I had made one of myfriends really mad with a
character, with a monster I hadmade, and he turned nine of them
on me during fight night.
That taught me real fast.
And then he started grabbingrandom homebrew monsters and
he's like this is why monstersaren't homebrewed, because it's
(51:23):
miserable to fight.
Um, and I'm not going to lie toyou, that was a point that
needed to be made to me, um solike, but items items I'm a
little more lax today's coolabout.
I don't know, do you findyourself like reflavoring
monsters or making homebrewmonsters or items?
Which which kind of you leantowards?
Speaker 2 (51:42):
more.
This is what really makestalking to other DMs and seeing
other styles so fun, becausehalf of my monsters are are
homebrewed to an extent.
Um, I tend to either look forhomebrew stuff to either fit the
setting I'm in Uh, let's, Ihave a campaign in space.
(52:08):
Guess what.
Outside of spell jammer, Idon't have a lot, so sometimes I
either will reflave or amonster.
This happened yesterday.
I said, hey, here's a Kraken,it's a space Kraken.
And then I posted images of aKraken online and then loaded up
(52:34):
the stat block of a Kraken, notexpecting them to try and fight
a Kraken.
So in some ways, like I will dominor tweaking.
I love minorly tweaking enemies,especially because my party can
take out depending on how uh,how lucky the glass cannon is in
(52:55):
that combat.
Uh, my party can take out theirlevel eight right now.
They can take out CR tens and11s and the.
The concept of uh, when do Ibump up the CR is one of my
favorite abstract, gameyconcepts in D&D.
I could have an entire podcastepisode on that.
Um, but it's part flavor, it'spart how.
(53:19):
How uh difficult do I want tomake this guy?
What level is the party is it'sin?
There's so many contextualfactors that go into creating a
monster, I don't go for onethat's going to likely TPK,
(53:39):
unless it's the final boss.
Um, but half.
But the other half of the timeI keep uh, monsters.
Or I will just say like oh,this guy in the book might be a
beholder, but I'm going tochange his name and describe him
as this guy that's contextualto the planet we're on.
Um, that might be all I do.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Um so for me, I want to, I want to button real quick.
Yeah, cr is the most messed upsystem in D&D and I'm going to
do an episode on it eventually.
It is something I want tobutton on a little bit because,
dms I know we mentioned this inour combat episode please,
please, do not just trust CRblindly.
(54:23):
It will lead you astray.
I mean, the CR system in D&D isvery outdated and there is a
monster and I encourage everyoneto look it up, if you haven't.
Shadows are not because youcan't hit it.
You can't hit them withphysical weapons.
They have immunity to half themagical properties.
I have thrown three of them ata at a six person level, five
(54:46):
party in TPK, and at that pointyou have to ask your question of
and and this is something Iwant to talk about.
So we'll lead into the nextpoint when do you say enough is
enough?
I'm not TPKing my party andstart scribbling on your stuff,
uh, changing around monsters,and for me, that comes with
resistances.
(55:07):
The first thing that disappearsis resistances.
If I'm trying not to TPK, if Iam trying to save my party,
resistances are the first linethat I'm stretching out, cause
it makes it so much easier formy players to hit them If they
don't have those resistances,versus just let dropping hit
points or whatever.
I will scratch out resistancesFirst of all and I'll scratch
(55:28):
out resistances to things theyhaven't hit them with yet.
That way it doesn't feelunrewarding to them and that way
they can adapt to.
That's how I keep from TPKingparties and I think that's a big
area where I am deviating fromthe rules because I have made
the personal mistake offollowing along with the CR
(55:48):
ratings and that is not a gooddecision ever.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
I've got one last thing on using monsters as they
are in the book.
Maybe we even edit this backinto that part.
But I try to not change allmonsters because when I throw,
let's say, a frog, hemit at youor I throw an upper tier D&D
(56:24):
monster like the two headed ogreor a giant, by not changing
anything about the guy, if youhave a player who has looked
through the monster manual for ahundred hours, like a lot of
DMs, being able to slay thatbeast doesn't just become oh wow
(56:49):
, we just killed that guy.
No, it's, we just killed thatguy, and I know how tough that
guy is.
And now I have a better graspof myself of how tough our party
is.
Wow, we really are badass.
This is how strong we are andthat's a good feeling.
That's what you want to strivefor.
(57:12):
So we were complaining aboutwhat was the last thing.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
We were complaining about CR.
We were complaining about CR.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
So CR.
That's why I look at CR as themost biggest guideline and as
soon as I feel like, hey, myparty is stronger than the CR, I
just keep going forwards.
It doesn't matter.
That's also why we do littletiny tweaks.
Is we don't fully trust CR,absolutely.
Yeah, that is the biggest.
(57:47):
Like oh, in D&D in terms ofprepping.
Is it's great, it's CR is great.
Earlier on, when you're twolevels into the game but as soon
as CR can't account for.
(58:07):
Cr can't account for most.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
The exact example I used was shadows, do you?
Know when challenge ratingsshadows actually have.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Isn't it like?
Speaker 1 (58:16):
it's like it's not higher than three or four, I
don't think it's a half, andthey have resistance to all
magic and all physical items.
Plus, they're invisible.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
Wow, oh, do they have like two HP?
Speaker 1 (58:33):
No, they have 14 HP.
Oh, you just can't hit them.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Oh, why yeah?
Speaker 1 (58:43):
So, like I said just brief of this discussion, Are
you sure they didn't?
Speaker 2 (58:48):
trust CR.
Are you sure they didn't mean aCR of 12?
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
I know, right, it's like that thing.
I've killed whole parties withthose on accident before and
like I mentioned that in ourcombat episode.
So, like just don't, don't fuckwith CR.
Like just use your discretion.
Like CR is a good, like guessof where something is, but
definitely check resistances andmake your own decisions on what
(59:15):
your party is ready for beforeyou start chucking things at
them, because chucking fiveshadows at a level three party
when it's like the CR for thisis a dangerous encounter and
then they can't hit them onceand everyone dies Not a fun
experience.
Learn from my lessons Now.
The last kind of thing I wantto get into with you.
(59:36):
This was something I found onour Reddit debate.
Speaker 2 (59:40):
If you're curious, shadows are on page 269 in the
Monster Manual, for anybody whowanted to look that up, and I
apologize, I was too slow.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Yeah, I'll move it around, but no, I would say the
conversation on Reddit that Ifound that was pretty fun was
Should we follow turn economyand can we just chuck it out and
have a chaos and just letplayers be creative and do
whatever they want and notfollow initiative and not have
(01:00:14):
initiative?
And I'm like I don't know whatkind of mad men you are, but I'm
terrified of that idea becauseI've had parties again where
I've had to mute everybodybecause they talk over my quiet
players.
I don't know, do you thinkthat's something that could ever
survive at your table?
I wish it was something I couldkeep alive at mine.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Listen, man, that's like this is that's so insane
that, like you would have, Iwould do it as a one off to kind
of see.
But like like I that might thatlike their Final Fantasy games
based around that like overallidea, like oh, oh, oh no like
(01:01:01):
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 (01:01:12):
Yeah, literally what they're all saying is like the
arguments I saw.
That was kind of interesting meis they're like everything is
basically done as a reaction.
So somebody starts combat byswinging and then whoever like
raises their hand first gets toattack next.
It's literally just like aspeed response and I'm like, oh
(01:01:33):
God I would.
I would hate that, I would.
Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
I couldn't do it.
But hear me out, that soundslike 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 coulddo it where, like, the monsters
(01:02:01):
go first and then, like, whenthe monsters get through their
part, but even then there's somany avenues for power gaming
after the monsters have gone,because you could just be like,
well, I want to go first, so I'mgoing to hit this guy and do
this thing, and then I'm goingto power game.
Like that breaks every singlehome rule.
That right, that like,literally, is the crux of what
(01:02:22):
we said of don't do homebrew.
If they're going to like, ifthey're just going to game the
system, because they're justgoing to game the system.
Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
And for for me this topic almost round goes into
that realm of like.
This is too much freedom to theplayers to even discuss.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Like.
Like, if you try to put anystructure on this chaos, they
can game it, but then if there'sjust chaos like that's not,
that's, oh God, dude, like noplease I could.
Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
I could never run it.
It would be so horrible.
I feel like, at least with thegroups 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 (01:03:08):
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 (01:03:18):
Yeah, because basically then you never, really
you never roll initiative, it'sjust like a normal.
It would literally be the sameas just running without
initiative.
You can come out with noinitiative.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
That also like breaks your.
Your one of the one of thecouple of reasons to go into
dexterity.
If you wanted to nerf dexterityas a powerful stat like you
should, you should do that.
Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Yeah, you know but at that point like oh, like you
have to.
Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
If you want to, if you're going to break your
campaign like that, you have toreally, really, really know what
you're doing, to the pointwhere I still don't think you
can do it.
Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
I would.
I would love to see MatthewMercer run that.
Personally, like I feel likethat, like that level of, like
this is my full time job.
I want to see him running.
That would be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
He or like dimension 20.
Like Brennan would like.
Brennan would get sooverstimulated, but that would
be so funny.
I mean, matt would too.
Matt when the monsters.
If Matt Mercer ran it his likehe's the most passive player and
he's the DM amongst his group,probably like arguably, they're
(01:04:36):
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'spro.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Well, regardless, thank you for joining me today.
I really appreciate it.
That was kind of our topics fortoday.
If you like the podcast, pleasefollow for more, and then if
you want to check out morecontent from us, check out the
discord server or our website.
Thank you, joe, and have agreat rest of your day.
Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Thanks for having me.
I love these conversations.
I love stuff like this.
All right, welcome back to DMI.
We are going to be starting offtoday with a little bit of a
change.
We actually have a new guestwith us.
I'm your primary host, wyatt,and this is my dear friend.
I'm Joe, all right, so Joe isgoing to be joining us today.
We have one of his favoritetopics.
(00:22):
He asked to kind of be heretoday.
We're going to be reallytalking about the difference
between rules and creativity andwhere that gray line kind of
blurs, and the lines that wereally should cross and the ones
that we don't really care if wecross them at all.
So I'm going to start off bykind of kind of asking you what
(00:42):
I think is an important questionis like how much value do you
really place in the rules?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And with this question this question kind of
it, almost asks why are youplaying Dungeons and Dragons
compared to playing or doingsomething else?
So, at the end of the day, forme Dungeons and Dragons is a
story, whether that story is onethat is written in a book, that
(01:16):
is in a podcast format, that isone done in a video game,
dungeons and Dragons is theformat of that story.
And when do you break thatstory?
Dungeons and Dragons doesn'ttell you how to play the game
unless you're running anadventure that they made but is
(01:41):
giving you the rules set for howto make a story in the game
engine itself.
And when you're starting out,it really looks like every
single rule in Dungeons andDragons fifth edition is
integral.
(02:02):
You have to follow it to a Tand slowly, as you play and you
start to develop both your ownstyle and you start to look at
what really is important or whatam I wasting time on focusing.
That's where you start placingvalue in some rules, and then
(02:22):
you start looking at other rulesand saying I don't know if it's
really necessary to do this,for the fun of both my players
and myself.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And I would agree that definitely.
I think a large portion of itis are your players having fun?
I think that's where thisportion of rules really becomes
kind of negligent.
Is like, if my players arehating a rule and they don't
want to play it, I'm probablynot going to play it, I'm going
to just stop, because if I amactively going out of my way to
(02:59):
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 nottelling a good story because
people are going to be checkedout.
So for me I would say that thatline really draws with where my
players enjoy.
So for me the value of therules is as only as much as my
(03:24):
players get enjoyment out ofthose rules.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And there should be an emphasis placed on the plural
of the word players.
There I have a player who, nomatter 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 playersenjoy combat.
(03:50):
Most of my players makecharacters that are interesting
or they flavor their spells,they flavor their combat, they
try and do maybe a little bit ofoptimizing, but this one player
is just not interested.
And just because that oneplayer isn't interested doesn't
mean that you shouldn't do stufflike that.
It's if every single playerespecially if, let's say, you
(04:12):
like combat and your playerslike combat if it's just one
player, you don't need to worry.
They know what they're signingup for when playing in your game
.
This is the kind of storyyou're doing.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And I would say your own value is just as high as any
of the players, because ifyou're going to hate playing the
game, there's no point inactually running the section
Like you're just going to bebored, checked out and hate the
entire experience.
So for me, what I would do is Icount myself, in that if three
people at my table of four loveit, I'm I'm actually going to do
(04:48):
it versus three people at mytable of five.
Majority probably still rules,but if it's three and three or
four and two, like, I'm nevergoing to, I'm never going to
discount my own opinion.
Now, if it's a tie, like if I'mrunning a table of five and
there's exactly three of uscounting myself and three of my
players love it counting myselfand three of them hate it, I'm
(05:10):
going to go with the side whereI don't count, because at the
end of the day, I'm makingsacrifices to make sure
everybody has a good time.
So for me, that's the challengethat I run into a lot of the
time and that is where I reallykind of draw these lines of like
making sure that the majorityof my group is having fun, and
that's including myself.
So I don't know about you.
(05:32):
I'll speak on my own experiencefirst.
But I have broken the rules forplayers a ton with a bunch of
different groups, from a powergaming group to a group that has
never played D&D before, andwe're all learning together at
the book to people that areheavy, hardcore role players.
And I'm going to lie and notgoing to lie to you.
There has been very differentresults for me, because
(05:55):
sometimes my players are like,oh, it's just kind of cool,
we'll let it slide whatever it'snice and fun.
And there are other times wherethey're like no, you said this
once and I am going to make youfollow the decision not to
follow that rule for the rest ofyour existence.
And I guess my question reallycomes down to is it a mundane
(06:17):
event or are your playersabusing it when you don't follow
the rules and really takingadvantage?
And I'm kind of curious towhere your experience is lied in
it, because I'll talk a littlebit more about mine after that.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So there's kind of like two philosophies on if it's
a mundane event or if it's aplayer like taking advantage,
and that's how often they do it,or how, if we change something
up, how does a player like reactto that?
So if you have a mundane eventand let's say you set a like,
(06:56):
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 savethat one guy who maybe was going
to fall into a pit, and thenyou would have spent an hour
trying to get them out of thisbit.
If it's a mundane, you know, youhave to notice when it's
(07:18):
something that your players takeadvantage of.
But you can only really do thatby noticing them play.
So if you see them takeadvantage of a rule one time,
that's one thing.
But if you see themconsistently take that, take
(07:38):
advantage of that rule, that'swhere you start having the real
problem.
And you can either this is aloophole and hey, you let them
do it, depending on how severeit is or how minor it is.
Maybe you do if it's minor, letthem do it.
If it's severe, maybe we have aconversation, maybe at the
(08:04):
start of a session or the nexttime that they try and use this
loophole.
That's when you want to havethe converse, that's when you
want to have the conversationthat, hey, this is, you know, I
think we need to set a standardhere.
And this works in the oppositeway, where suddenly you're
(08:26):
creating a rule with your partyby having that conversation.
So, for instance, very early onwe kind of came to the
conclusion that hey, we reallydon't like that.
Prone only gives half speed, itdoesn't make it feel like we
(08:47):
should actively make players,you know, and enemies prone.
So we, on the spot, had aunanimous decision.
We said let's change prone.
So it takes your full speed toget on in order to stand up in
general.
Alternatively, depending onwhen they're doing it, if you're
(09:14):
midway through a campaign andthere's only six months left of
the campaign or you know this issomething that's more towards
the end, is this something thatyou want to have a conversation
about, or is this something thatyou're going to let slide for
this campaign but next campaignyou won't.
(09:37):
My players would love to shoutabout how much HP they had if it
wasn't their turn in character.
If it wasn't their turn and ifit went past the six seconds in
a round, they would just keeptalking.
(09:59):
So the next campaign, I put inrules to try and still make
combat fun and you roleplayduring it, but not power game.
With the conversations beinghad, Excuse my cough, Um, no.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So for me, a prone is actually a great example,
because I had players abuse ahomebrew rule that I was running
for prone and it actually mademe question where I was okay
with my players and where Iwasn't okay with my players
making these decisions.
Because for me, I had this rulethat whenever you were prone to
(10:42):
get back up, you had to do anathletics check and whenever,
depending on your athleticscheck, you would do a role to
see how much movement you wouldhave when you get back up.
I then had a player who did acharacter that was just about
making creatures go prone andcombat was no longer fun because
(11:02):
everything was prone 100% ofthe time and he actively made it
so that they had disadvantage,Used feats to make it so that
they had disadvantage on everyrole to get back up, and so
every creature was prone withzero movement every single fight
past level five for the entirecampaign.
That was a decision where it'slike, should I have allowed that
(11:25):
to continue going for that longCause it was like three months
of me letting this happen andI'm not quite sure whether or
not that was a smart decision.
I still don't really know theanswer on that, because I would
say, awesome, that's great on myplayer for being creative and
(11:45):
kind of coming up with thatcharacter.
But they were also exploitingthe rules and I didn't really
know where that threshold waswhere I was okay with them
making that decision.
And my players are reallynotorious Like a lot of players
that I played with are reallynotorious for taking rules and
exploiting them Like that's justthat's how they like to play
(12:09):
the game and I don't want totake that away from them.
But also it made me have to bea lot more careful with how I,
with how I chose to do excuse mewith how I chose to do combat.
So I think a really goodexample of this outside of our
(12:32):
experience is have you seen notanother D&D podcast?
I have not so Brennan LeeMulligan is a very well known DM
.
At this point he is the main DMfor dimension 20.
And I appreciate that in thiscampaign, in their second act,
(12:52):
they were given these randommagic items that he had homebred
.
He quickly regretted thatdecision.
He even says it in the podcastbecause what they do is when you
drink them it's the same ashaving a long rest and you can
drink one per actual long rest.
That was a terrible decision andthat's one of those questions
(13:14):
where it's like, at what pointis that homebrew rule of having
those in there a good decision?
Cause now your potions.
They literally he had a bossfight.
They just drank those potionswhen they were about to go down
and it just literally resetspells, lost everything, they
wiped all of their resources,chugged this potion and kept
(13:34):
going, and so I think Ipersonally, after listening to
that, learned a very, veryvaluable lesson of a Friday
night.
Fight night is a greatexperience for testing new magic
items before I put them in mycampaigns.
Because when you just have acombat night, definitely I'm
(13:54):
going to whip out my like magicitems that I plan on giving my
my actual campaign and seeinghow they go first, and I'll
stockpile them and I'll testlike 20 in a fight night and
then I'll I'll save the onesthat I like and I'll burn the
rest, because God, I'll neverlet that in my game again.
And that's kind of how I've.
I've developed my system fordeciding because once you set in
(14:16):
a rule on an item like Iupgrade your acts, now it does
an additional X effect.
Once I give that player that, Ican't take that away.
And I don't really know a betterway to break that kind of
stigma, because I don't want tostrip them from something once
I've already given it.
That seems disrespectful almostto the nature of the game.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, it's also.
It's dependent on is this arule that they're breaking, or
is this an item or somethingestablished in a story and you
are playing with friends so youdon't want to just say you don't
have that thing anymore, or youdon't want to just, oh, it
(15:03):
magically breaks and now thatplayer feels screwed out of that
item.
It's very, it's very contextual, based on what it is you're
noticing.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Well.
So the reason I bring items upis, I would say items are almost
part of the rules, because howD&D has it written?
Especially if you go into thedungeon master hand guide and
you read that section on items.
Basically you can buy anythinganytime you go to a shop.
It's basically said in therethat anytime you go in, all of
(15:37):
these items except for very raremagic items are just sitting in
basically every store.
Unless it's like uncommon, it'sthere all the time.
So as soon as you put down anitem and you're like I'm giving
you these potions, if a playerasks you hey, is that a common
potion?
If it's a common potion, nowfor the rest of your game, every
time they go in a store, it isbasically a preset expectation
(16:01):
by the rule book that it's goingto be in that store.
So it's like this is it isinherently part of the game.
Items are part of the rule set.
I would almost consider themmore than they are their own
individual thing.
So I'm going to ask a questionthat's kind of a little off
topic how do you feel aboutopportunity attacks as a rule?
(16:23):
Because I feel like they arevery, almost stifling to the
creativity, especially movementand combat because if you have a
creature within 10 foot of youyou can make an opportunity
attack them.
They can make it to opportunityattack anytime you move, which
can really kill someone quitequickly.
And then you don't really getyour like going back.
(16:45):
D&d was kind of a little bitbased on Lord of the Rings.
You don't get those likelegless characters where they're
running around and jumping andshooting a bow, because if you
run and jump they're going tostab you, like you're going to
have four people stab you, likeunless you're a monk unless
you're a monk.
that is also true.
But, like, especially forRangers and barbarians and
fighters and even even wizards,you can't really back up
(17:07):
effectively without grantingopportunity attacks.
What point do you let theplayers creativity Like if they
say that they're going to dosomething really, really cool
and they want to do this superintricate thing For me?
If they give me a descriptionof like I want to run and like
jump back and do a back, flipoff the wall and shoot into the
orc on the other side of theroom while disengaging.
(17:29):
If you can give me an actual,pretty, like elaborate
explanation and show me on thebattle map how you're going to
do it, I'm not going to let themdo opportunity attacks.
That's one of those times whereI break the rules so my players
can have fun.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I think it's.
It's dependent on individual,it's very contextual, so I would
totally allow them to do thesame.
It's very much in the rule ofcool Avenue of thinking, if not
pretty much a textbook exampleof a rule of cool.
(18:06):
However, let's say this is a.
There are six enemies in thecombat right, or let's say eight
, you know, I might have one ortwo do an attack of opportunity.
Keep in mind that, in terms ofthe rules of the game right In
(18:29):
combat, that is an enemy'sreaction.
So in some ways, depending onthe combat and how intelligent
the enemy is let's say this is ahuman fighter depending on who
walks out of their range, theymight hold that reaction still
(18:53):
to target somebody else in casethey move out.
That's one way of going aboutit.
Back to your original example,though.
With this, you know, I am aranger, I'm gonna do a sick flip
into the air and I'm gonnashoot my bow and I have to run
through multiple enemies to getover there.
I would have one enemy, maybetwo, attack of opportunity
(19:23):
because you want them to dosomething cool, but you don't
want.
You want it to feel groundedand realistic at the same time.
There is, in a sense and thisis what really makes combat fun.
Every time you enter combat,there is a minuscule chance of
(19:43):
failure, whether it's a TPK, andit's a.2% chance, or it's one
player dying and let's be honesthere it's probably a 1% chance.
By having one or two guys do anattack of opportunity, you give
a sense of danger withoutnecessarily killing them.
(20:07):
This is also to say that thoseattack of opportunities are even
going to land as well.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So for me, when I have that kind of a situation
where I have a player runningthrough, I may have one attack
of opportunity happen.
But rather than so, here's howI do it.
And this is kind of me being alittle silly.
If you give me a greatexplanation of what you're gonna
do and it sounds cool andyou're super excited to do it,
what I'll do is I'll have youroll like a dexterity or an
(20:38):
athletics check, whatever'sfitting.
If you're gonna bulldozethrough the four people in front
of you with your movement andtry to get to the big boss,
rather than having them allswing 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 superhigh, that's how I'll determine
kind of how many swing on you.
Because if you're wildlysucceeding, if you roll a 20,
(21:00):
you're just gonna plow throughthem.
They're not gonna have a momentto 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.
And it's like one of thosethings where I bring other roles
into combat to kind of gaugedifferent like levels of success
and that's my personal thing,but I would say that that's
(21:23):
almost where I would say thatfor my campaigns and how I like
to run them, I try to keep theuse of bending the rules with me
personally and I don't reallyknow where you kind of keep
yours and where a lot of DM keepyours.
I'd love to.
I wish I could hear from allthe DMs in the world, but
obviously that's not.
(21:43):
Do you kind of try to keep inyour table, Do you keep the
bending the rules in yourwheelhouse or do you keep it in
that of the players?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I keep it primarily in mine, but with an open mind,
as, depending on what the playerdoes, totally allowing it.
So, like similar to yourexample again with the Ranger,
the Ranger says that and thenthey look at me and say, like,
(22:16):
is that possible?
Can I do that?
I want to do that and I willlook at that and come up with,
like let's say, that ruling thatyou did, and I'll say you know,
you can do it.
This is what you have to do tobe able to succeed in that.
So sometimes I do tell them no,sometimes I want to hear what
(22:39):
they do, because I know what'sgoing to happen overall in a
Sasha.
I know there's a coupledifferent avenues they could go
down, but what I don't know isthe creativity of the individual
player, and you want you wantthem to both go down the track
(23:04):
that you have crafted, but youalso want them to go down that
track in a way that they havefun.
And it depends on how absurd itis to just you know, to just
suddenly say, hey, I'm going torun through these guys and and
I'm going to stab one and rightin the carotid artery.
(23:25):
I mean real life, if you'reskilled 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 thespecific place that you're going
to stab him and attempt to stabhim, you know the most I can
(23:52):
give that player in thishypothetical is you run up, you
go with your blade in hand.
You go to stab right at hisweakest spot.
However, he manages to deflectyour blade slightly, it cuts
into the side of his shoulderand his neck, dealing, it just
so happens, the damage that theywere going to do anyway.
(24:15):
But they still get to try to dowhat they wanted to do and feel
satisfying that they stillmanaged to land a hit, even if
they didn't one hit.
Ko the guy, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
And I think I think that's also fair.
I feel like players that expectyou to let them stab somebody
or cut their head off turn oneare 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 (24:47):
And it's not just necessarily that it's how it
works, but it's like your proneexample earlier.
It's just not fun.
Like it's it's cool to thinkabout.
And it's cool if, let's say,you're a high enough level
character and you decide to dothis to like maybe a noble who's
(25:10):
a villain and he's got five HP.
Oh, you do that.
Or you know, maybe he's thesame 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 roleplay with the goal of
(25:31):
circumventing whatever it is,you're trying to do the fun of
the game.
Well, that goes back tobreaking rule and making it not
fun for everybody.
If it's not fun, don't do it.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
So we've been talking a lot about the rules in combat
and I think combat is probablythe most strict in terms of
rules.
That being said, out of combatrules are a little more
laxadaisical, I would almost saythey're very laid back, like
(26:10):
people aren't as strict at mosttables about.
Well, you're walking down thestreet and you're talking to
this guy, I need you to do aperformance check for me every
time that you have aconversation, every single
conversation, and I feel likethat's a rule.
That's kind of I mean checks,like we do checks all the time,
(26:31):
but I feel like conversationchecks, like intimidation,
persuasion, stuff like that.
There are rules.
That gets thrown out at mosttables and, I'm not going to lie
, I don't think that's the worstthing for the game or for most
parties, because it's kind ofboring to roll the dice every
five seconds rather thanactually having the conversation
(26:53):
.
There's a short that's goingaround of a very popular DM who
was I can't remember his namewho was running a campaign and
there was this work and he waslike I'm going to distract the
guards and he's like, okay, andhe goes, how are you going to
distract the guards?
Well, I'm going to tell him astory and he was like okay, what
do I need to roll?
And he goes no, tell me a story.
(27:14):
And I love that.
I think that that's so muchmore interesting than just doing
a normal persuasion check.
Just be like give me apersuasion check.
Like, if you're like I'm goingto go up and distract the town
guard by telling him a story,you best be prepared to tell me
a story.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And skills.
The the purpose of skills andchacks are inherently for those
moments when there is a chanceof failure.
So I have players roll thosechacks when there is a chance
(27:56):
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-truthinside of it which makes it seem
very realistic, then I may havethem roll a deception check
just to make sure.
But it's really just to see onthat off chance.
(28:16):
If they fail because a skill inthat regard, even if it's a
minor chance of failure, what'llhappen is that's a branching
off point either they succeed,which is really what I'm
expecting, with a low chance offailure, or Suddenly now they
(28:37):
have to backtrack because theydid manage to fail.
However, that is very contextual.
So if, as why it mentionedthere that the player told an
overall story, well, unless thatplayer did like, if I was the
DM right and he did just go inand tell a whole story about
(29:01):
Frank Pete who runs a bakerythat burns down because of a
rival baker, then I, then I willBe totally down and I won't
have a role for it.
But if I let's say, let's saythey tell a very dramatic lie
(29:30):
that has a chance of not beingreal.
That's when I want the role.
If there's no point in rolling,why roll at all?
And that's where both of usdelineate from the rules, where
(29:50):
our creativity supersedes whatthe Game has told us we should
do To run a fifth edition game.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, and I would say I mean to go back to your baker
example.
Like the rules say, if you'rerunning away from a, a giant mob
that's attacking you and all ofa sudden you provoke that one
and you get a Horrible rule thatthey're gonna turn around and
they're gonna try to kill you.
(30:21):
And and Joe's laughing, becausethat actually happened In a
session that I was DMing, thathe was playing in where he was a
baker and we were fightingagainst a horde of gingerbread
cookies and they convinced thecookies to walk away and he's
like no, I'm gonna go and eatone in front of them and was
shocked when it turned anddidn't intimidation check
(30:43):
Horribly failed and was shockedwhen they turned and tried to
kill him.
And it was like it was one ofthe funniest moments I've still
ever had DMing, because I planfor I plan for everybody to
succeed and that failure justmade one of the best moments
because I had to just bullshitan answer out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
We, we poisoned the gingerbread men.
I Poisoned gingerbread man andtook 1d4 damage.
It was I mean, it was a cantru,it was just poison spray
cantrip that was on him, butstill I had to take that damage
and that's the fun part about it.
That's really fun.
This really goes in.
(31:24):
Let's let's fully dive into therule of cool, which really is
just hey, I Think this is areally cool idea.
So the rule isn't whatever itsays in the game.
The rule is that because it'scool, let's just do it.
What are my favorite stories Iever read why I don't know if
(31:47):
you have heard this one I Ithink I found it on a red editor
tumblr, maybe Twitter, yearsago Was this party had this
homebrew rule that if you got anat 20, you had to roll it again
, and if it was another nat 20,you had to roll it again for a
(32:07):
third time.
And if you get three nat 20s ina row, no matter what happened,
the monster instantly died.
But like, the chances of thishappening is Dramatically low,
it's astonishingly low.
Right, you're.
And if you get the nat 20 rightlike you, you get a critical
(32:27):
hit like don't, don't get mewrong here, this is like a bad
game.
You still got the nat 20, evenif on the second or third rule
it wasn't another nat 20.
The party got to the final bossand they Decided to rule of cool
I guess kind of it's isn'treally cool, but they just
(32:49):
signed it.
They were gonna have their petminion Go first.
Like they all decided that, oh,maybe the boss will, maybe the
boss gets a 20 on initiative whothe next person in line is
their pet minion, who isbasically like this little
cactuar, like I think, neverfought, never did anything, but
(33:13):
was just there.
You know it's gonna be one hitKO kind of thing.
You know.
They just had they heal him.
Then he goes on his way.
They had him go first in thecombat and he rolled a nat 20 to
hit and then he rolled anothernat 20 to hit and he basically
(33:34):
Felt this dark wizard with athird nat 20 in a row and
forever changed the history ofthe game because In the history
books, long after the age of thehero, that was this tiny
(33:54):
cactuar, the party was just thebodyguards for this legendary
hero.
That's how the whole, theentire plot, the entire post
game, the entire epiloguechanged because of this rule
that they had all Come to anagreement on that, they all
(34:18):
agreed with that, they all foundhilarious.
That's that's what really makesChanging rules, but also
following.
Following some rulesInteresting is that's what you
don't expect from D&D and andfor me that's where it's almost
like.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I know, I know I'm jumping around a little bit on
our prompts, but, um, I Am lesslikely to actually let players
break homebrew rules than bookrules.
That is, that is my ownpersonal opinion and I know
there's a lot of DMs that agreewith that.
In my practice, my the leastfun I have had is when I let
(34:59):
players break my house rules.
So those are like if we have ahouse rule that is concrete, it
is not moving.
There's nothing you can doabout it.
If it's a book rule and we canbend it, it is what it is like.
At the end of the day, I didn'twrite the book, I'm not gonna
be heard over it.
Um, so it's like now.
Obviously, if it's an unfairhouse rule, I Will let people
(35:22):
bend it.
But even for like we had a rulethat we had all agreed upon.
Combat was really bad.
I had two players who weresuper 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 orsomething we would use, like,
(35:44):
for example, when we did on zoom, you could raise your hand.
If you raised your hand, Iwould unmute you.
You could do a reaction orsomething like that, but
everyone was muted becauseotherwise people would just talk
over my quiet players.
That was our house rule forthat campaign, for example, and
I know that that's more of likean actual, like organization
(36:06):
rule versus an actual game rule,but we treated it like it was a
game rule.
People would.
We would have guests, peopleshow up.
I straight up told them bookrules will bend.
That is not a rule we will evermove like that because it gives
an opportunity for my quietplayers to still enjoy the game.
And I had to make thataccommodation because not
(36:28):
everybody is super great atdiscord etiquette I'm not even
super great at it.
I'll talk over people sometimesand I I recognize that that was
something my players needed tobe able to have fun.
Now, was I deafening everybody?
No, I wanted you to be able tohear what was happening and
enjoy it, but you had to bequiet so that these people could
play.
And that was really importantto me and I think that's
(36:53):
something that's overlooked is,book rules were always like when
I first started playing andwhen a lot of people I know,
started playing.
It was like the book rules aresolid, homebrew rules are the
ones we can move, and I thinkit's just the kind of the sign
of a of a more experienced DMthat your homebrew rules, those
kind of, stay solid.
Your book rules, those can bebent for people's enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Your homebrew rules are added not because you feel
like the game is lackingsomething or although sometimes
it can be if you have a, if youhave players cheating, like I
mentioned earlier but your, yourhomebrew rules, are there to
try and make your game more fun.
(37:37):
So, unless a homebrew ruleisn't working, it would like it
was something you were tryingout, you were experimenting.
Unless it isn't working,there's less inclination that
you should have to break itbecause you specifically make
made that rule with a goal inmind.
(37:57):
You didn't add that rulearbitrarily.
You didn't add that rulearbitrarily.
At the same time, though, withwhat Wyatt was mentioning on his
homebrew rule of the muting,that is completely contextual on
your party, and a lot of thecreativity butting heads with
(38:21):
the rules is contextual for yourown party itself.
I have never had that issue.
We have never had to mutepeople.
In my games.
We follow initiative.
People stay quiet.
My party has a pretty good feeland they also feel that I, as
(38:41):
their DM, keeps thingslevel-headed.
If somebody else especially if,let's say, you're a DM and
you're somebody who doesn't likeconfrontation that might work.
What matter for you or maybeyour party, as Wyatt had, is so
talkative that there it affectsmembers of the party, your other
(39:06):
players, then that is somethingwhere you're going to need to
want to put in a homebrew ruleto again better make sure
everybody is having fun.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
And I asked myself.
This kind of weird thing islike with my homebrew rules and
with optional rules in the bookand even with going into common
rules, like there are some rulesthat people think are rules
that are not rules.
There are optional rules in thebook, or they are crowd made
rules or they're rules that aremade by Matthew Mercer or
(39:46):
Brendan Lee.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Mulligan and fast quaking, fast quaffing.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
We drink the potion.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
That's something that , like people don't think about
the fact that these are externalrules and at one point do we
just kind of accept them as partof the D&D rules.
And for me, like criticalfailures is a great example of
that.
I run critical failures in alot of my games because I think
it's more fun.
That being said, when I firstheard that that was not a real
thing, I was like, oh my God.
(40:14):
I found that out when I wasreading the book cover to cover,
like that's not supposed to bea thing, but so many people run
it that it is very common thatDMs, especially new DMs they
just expect that to be a thingin the book and it's not.
And that's where I think I knowit's dumb.
I did it because it was the onlyway I had to learn.
I had to learn.
(40:34):
I bought I literally boughtthose books sitting right behind
me.
That's how I started D&D inhigh school.
I read them cover to cover andI think that is a very good
thing is, if you are planning onrunning a D&D campaign, if you
are already spending a ton oftime doing research.
Take me, like it takes me a dayto two days to read through one
of those books.
(40:54):
Get down, take a week, readthrough the player's handbook
cover to cover and the DM book,because some of these optional
rules, they can be prettycrippling.
I don't know what yourexperience is with them but like
critical failures I've hadkilled players really quickly.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
You could have a whole episode on critical
failures and critical successes,because it can add fun to the
game and it can really changethe session, mostly to for the
betterment, but it can be forthe worst.
(41:34):
I love critical failures, butthat is a thing where I am not
as good at.
I struggle with finding a funcritical failure or critical
success.
That is as a skill, becausethat's what Dungeon Mastering is
(41:58):
a storytelling skill mixed witha game.
That is where I lack, however,yeah, you should read the
Dungeon Master's guide at midabove with the player handbook,
but don't stress yourself outtrying to read that book.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
I mean, okay, I read every single word, cover to
cover, and took notes on stickynotes and stuck them on the
pages and then ripped off theones that I wanted and filled a
notebook.
That's how I started my DMingjourney.
I went very, very excessive.
That's also why you can name Xspell to me and I can probably
(42:42):
tell you how much damage it does.
It's way more than you need todo.
But especially when you're in asituation I was in where I had
no one that knew how to play.
I was a brand new DM, nevertouched a game before.
I had players that had nevereven heard of Dungeons and
Dragons before I had to do it.
I didn't get a choice, but it'schallenging because at least if
(43:05):
you have a good foundation onthe rules, it allows you to
expand into and focus on thecreativity.
So that is actually like asmall piece of advice that I
would give out, because then youknow 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 thatthat's it gives you more room to
(43:28):
be creative if you know all therules.
Absolutely so for you, do you,and this is where I I struggle
with this so much.
This is one of the areas I'mstill really lacking in terms of
skills.
When should art be used versusdescription?
(43:51):
Because to me, descriptions canbe a lot more creative, but art
gives a lot more of like avisual, a visual cue that can
help players, and I think thatit's really powerful to have art
integrated, but I never reallyknow how to balance my art
versus vivid storytelling anddescriptions.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
So I have about 30 to 40 different characters that I
have slowly drawn over time inmy second campaign alone.
So I love art of a characterand it really depends on the
context.
Is this a character that I wantthem to fully meet?
(44:36):
Is this a moment where they'regoing to be walking past a
character that I do have art of?
When do I play the art card orwhen do I just give them a
descriptor?
How important to the game isthat character?
Is that NPC?
If the NPC becomes veryimportant later, maybe I make
(44:59):
art for that character later.
Do I want this to be acharacter where kind of art is
in the eye of the beholder?
Do I ever want to make thischaracter?
Do I ever want to draw thischaracter, or is this one where
I want it to be more open-ended?
At the same time, sometimes itis more interesting to give a
(45:22):
description and sometimes it ismore interesting to not give a
description.
If you're somebody who reallylikes the visual design of a
character and have that designhave 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
(45:51):
this cube.
It's a little tiny pet.
You can tell that this cube hasbeen modified, that it is a
little more intelligent than amonster and at the same time
incredibly stupid.
The items that it has inside ofit are two different colored
eyeballs and they're floating indifferent spots and that
(46:14):
indicator is a show.
That's a show, don't tell.
You can tell that somebody putthose two differently colored
eyeballs into this smallgelatinous cube to give it sight
, to give it a little moresentience than just a regular
gelatinous cube, which istypically not that intelligent.
(46:36):
Or maybe I will give acharacter a scar over an eye and
they have a metallic eye andthere's a story behind why that
character has that that theyhave to notice themselves.
I had a player completely figureout a plotline that I was
running almost completelybecause I had the previous
(47:04):
campaigns party members I hadtwo of them and an NPC follow
the party of my campaign butbecause they were trying to stay
hidden and they didn't want togive this other world technology
that wasn't invented yet, theyhid a lot of what they looked
(47:24):
like and the only ways that theycould fully tell was via the
visual design and the smallsymbol of a cat, with the male
symbol going off of a cat's pawto represent the cat boys, which
was the name of the group fromthe first campaign.
(47:47):
They figured that out becausethey noticed that Sometimes when
you give a descriptor, you can,let's say, game the system a
little bit, and technicallythat's gaming it too.
You're figuring stuff out, butyour players having fun figuring
that out by saying that thisNPC has this random insignia on
(48:10):
it.
Well, clearly your DM istelling you this because it is
an important narrative aspect.
So it really depends on I likethe character and do you like
doing art and the kind ofstorytelling that you really
like to do?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
And so for me I actually believe it or not I use
art mostly on reflavoredmonsters and NPCs.
When I'm trying to make amonster fit a setting and I want
to use a staff block that isalready in the dungeon master
handbook, but I don't feel likethat monster fits it.
Sometimes what I'll do is I'llhave art drawn of the character
(48:49):
or I'll drop myself or the NPCand I will use that as a cue to
kind of show, hey, this is whatthis monster looks like and make
it fit the theme that I'm in.
That being said, I'll do thatwith items too, but I really I
have a lot of homebrew monstersthat I've made.
(49:09):
I'm currently in the process ofmaking them into like an
encyclopedia right now of allthe monsters I've made.
I try to avoid making monsterswhen I can.
I struggled very greatly when Ifirst started playing the game
and as I became a better andbetter DM, I learned how to do
(49:32):
it better.
I've made hundreds of monstersat this point, and homebrewing
monsters is not something I wantto do anymore.
It is something where it's likethere are tons of really cool
monsters that you can reflavorand unless I have a great idea
for something, that's not goingto fit anything else.
That's when I'll make a newmonster, but I've actually
(49:55):
resorted to going back in D&D tothe old magazines they used to
post that had random monstersthat are canon, that aren't used
, and upgrading them to fifthedition.
That's what I do now, ratherthan homebrewing monsters and
it's me as a DM.
I know it's less creative and alot of people's eyes, but I've
made so many monsters andhomebrew monsters.
(50:17):
You can't balance them.
They're not, they're not meantto be balanced the final bosses
of my campaigns.
I literally make a charactersheet for them, pick a random
level and then build a character, basically, and have you fight
a character.
That is one of my favorite waysto make a final boss, because
it's rewarding to fight.
It feels like you're fighting aperson, because you're fighting
(50:39):
a character that I built fromground up.
I know how that thing works andit's going to hurt because it's
a character, um, but that'sother than doing that.
I avoid it these days because Inoticed that it is very, very
hard to keep players from havingno fun fighting homebrew
monsters.
(50:59):
Like some of my, homebrewmonsters are miserable to fight
and I learned that when I wentto a fight night with my friends
and I had made one of myfriends really mad with a
character, with a monster I hadmade, and he turned nine of them
on me during fight night.
That taught me real fast.
And then he started grabbingrandom homebrew monsters and
he's like this is why monstersaren't homebrewed, because it's
(51:23):
miserable to fight.
Um, and I'm not going to lie toyou, that was a point that
needed to be made to me, um solike, but items items I'm a
little more lax today's coolabout.
I don't know, do you findyourself like reflavoring
monsters or making homebrewmonsters or items?
Which which kind of you leantowards?
Speaker 2 (51:42):
more.
This is what really makestalking to other DMs and seeing
other styles so fun, becausehalf of my monsters are are
homebrewed to an extent.
Um, I tend to either look forhomebrew stuff to either fit the
setting I'm in Uh, let's, Ihave a campaign in space.
(52:08):
Guess what.
Outside of spell jammer, Idon't have a lot, so sometimes I
either will reflave or amonster.
This happened yesterday.
I said, hey, here's a Kraken,it's a space Kraken.
And then I posted images of aKraken online and then loaded up
(52:34):
the stat block of a Kraken, notexpecting them to try and fight
a Kraken.
So in some ways, like I will dominor tweaking.
I love minorly tweaking enemies,especially because my party can
take out depending on how uh,how lucky the glass cannon is in
(52:55):
that combat.
Uh, my party can take out theirlevel eight right now.
They can take out CR tens and11s and the.
The concept of uh, when do Ibump up the CR is one of my
favorite abstract, gameyconcepts in D&D.
I could have an entire podcastepisode on that.
Um, but it's part flavor, it'spart how.
(53:19):
How uh difficult do I want tomake this guy?
What level is the party is it'sin?
There's so many contextualfactors that go into creating a
monster, I don't go for onethat's going to likely TPK,
(53:39):
unless it's the final boss.
Um, but half.
But the other half of the timeI keep uh, monsters.
Or I will just say like oh,this guy in the book might be a
beholder, but I'm going tochange his name and describe him
as this guy that's contextualto the planet we're on.
Um, that might be all I do.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Um so for me, I want to, I want to button real quick.
Yeah, cr is the most messed upsystem in D&D and I'm going to
do an episode on it eventually.
It is something I want tobutton on a little bit because,
dms I know we mentioned this inour combat episode please,
please, do not just trust CRblindly.
(54:23):
It will lead you astray.
I mean, the CR system in D&D isvery outdated and there is a
monster and I encourage everyoneto look it up, if you haven't.
Shadows are not because youcan't hit it.
You can't hit them withphysical weapons.
They have immunity to half themagical properties.
I have thrown three of them ata at a six person level, five
(54:46):
party in TPK, and at that pointyou have to ask your question of
and and this is something Iwant to talk about.
So we'll lead into the nextpoint when do you say enough is
enough?
I'm not TPKing my party andstart scribbling on your stuff,
uh, changing around monsters,and for me, that comes with
resistances.
(55:07):
The first thing that disappearsis resistances.
If I'm trying not to TPK, if Iam trying to save my party,
resistances are the first linethat I'm stretching out, cause
it makes it so much easier formy players to hit them If they
don't have those resistances,versus just let dropping hit
points or whatever.
I will scratch out resistancesFirst of all and I'll scratch
(55:28):
out resistances to things theyhaven't hit them with yet.
That way it doesn't feelunrewarding to them and that way
they can adapt to.
That's how I keep from TPKingparties and I think that's a big
area where I am deviating fromthe rules because I have made
the personal mistake offollowing along with the CR
(55:48):
ratings and that is not a gooddecision ever.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
I've got one last thing on using monsters as they
are in the book.
Maybe we even edit this backinto that part.
But I try to not change allmonsters because when I throw,
let's say, a frog, hemit at youor I throw an upper tier D&D
(56:24):
monster like the two headed ogreor a giant, by not changing
anything about the guy, if youhave a player who has looked
through the monster manual for ahundred hours, like a lot of
DMs, being able to slay thatbeast doesn't just become oh wow
(56:49):
, we just killed that guy.
No, it's, we just killed thatguy, and I know how tough that
guy is.
And now I have a better graspof myself of how tough our party
is.
Wow, we really are badass.
This is how strong we are andthat's a good feeling.
That's what you want to strivefor.
(57:12):
So we were complaining aboutwhat was the last thing.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
We were complaining about CR.
We were complaining about CR.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
So CR.
That's why I look at CR as themost biggest guideline and as
soon as I feel like, hey, myparty is stronger than the CR, I
just keep going forwards.
It doesn't matter.
That's also why we do littletiny tweaks.
Is we don't fully trust CR,absolutely.
Yeah, that is the biggest.
(57:47):
Like oh, in D&D in terms ofprepping.
Is it's great, it's CR is great.
Earlier on, when you're twolevels into the game but as soon
as CR can't account for.
(58:07):
Cr can't account for most.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
The exact example I used was shadows, do you?
Know when challenge ratingsshadows actually have.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Isn't it like?
Speaker 1 (58:16):
it's like it's not higher than three or four, I
don't think it's a half, andthey have resistance to all
magic and all physical items.
Plus, they're invisible.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
Wow, oh, do they have like two HP?
Speaker 1 (58:33):
No, they have 14 HP.
Oh, you just can't hit them.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Oh, why yeah?
Speaker 1 (58:43):
So, like I said just brief of this discussion, Are
you sure they didn't?
Speaker 2 (58:48):
trust CR.
Are you sure they didn't mean aCR of 12?
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
I know, right, it's like that thing.
I've killed whole parties withthose on accident before and
like I mentioned that in ourcombat episode.
So, like just don't, don't fuckwith CR.
Like just use your discretion.
Like CR is a good, like guessof where something is, but
definitely check resistances andmake your own decisions on what
(59:15):
your party is ready for beforeyou start chucking things at
them, because chucking fiveshadows at a level three party
when it's like the CR for thisis a dangerous encounter and
then they can't hit them onceand everyone dies Not a fun
experience.
Learn from my lessons Now.
The last kind of thing I wantto get into with you.
(59:36):
This was something I found onour Reddit debate.
Speaker 2 (59:40):
If you're curious, shadows are on page 269 in the
Monster Manual, for anybody whowanted to look that up, and I
apologize, I was too slow.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Yeah, I'll move it around, but no, I would say the
conversation on Reddit that Ifound that was pretty fun was
Should we follow turn economyand can we just chuck it out and
have a chaos and just letplayers be creative and do
whatever they want and notfollow initiative and not have
(01:00:14):
initiative?
And I'm like I don't know whatkind of mad men you are, but I'm
terrified of that idea becauseI've had parties again where
I've had to mute everybodybecause they talk over my quiet
players.
I don't know, do you thinkthat's something that could ever
survive at your table?
I wish it was something I couldkeep alive at mine.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Listen, man, that's like this is that's so insane
that, like you would have, Iwould do it as a one off to kind
of see.
But like like I that might thatlike their Final Fantasy games
based around that like overallidea, like oh, oh, oh no like
(01:01:01):
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 (01:01:12):
Yeah, literally what they're all saying is like the
arguments I saw.
That was kind of interesting meis they're like everything is
basically done as a reaction.
So somebody starts combat byswinging and then whoever like
raises their hand first gets toattack next.
It's literally just like aspeed response and I'm like, oh
(01:01:33):
God I would.
I would hate that, I would.
Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
I couldn't do it.
But hear me out, that soundslike 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 coulddo it where, like, the monsters
(01:02:01):
go first and then, like, whenthe monsters get through their
part, but even then there's somany avenues for power gaming
after the monsters have gone,because you could just be like,
well, I want to go first, so I'mgoing to hit this guy and do
this thing, and then I'm goingto power game.
Like that breaks every singlehome rule.
That right, that like,literally, is the crux of what
(01:02:22):
we said of don't do homebrew.
If they're going to like, ifthey're just going to game the
system, because they're justgoing to game the system.
Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
And for for me this topic almost round goes into
that realm of like.
This is too much freedom to theplayers to even discuss.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Like.
Like, if you try to put anystructure on this chaos, they
can game it, but then if there'sjust chaos like that's not,
that's, oh God, dude, like noplease I could.
Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
I could never run it.
It would be so horrible.
I feel like, at least with thegroups 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 (01:03:08):
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 (01:03:18):
Yeah, because basically then you never, really
you never roll initiative, it'sjust like a normal.
It would literally be the sameas just running without
initiative.
You can come out with noinitiative.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
That also like breaks your.
Your one of the one of thecouple of reasons to go into
dexterity.
If you wanted to nerf dexterityas a powerful stat like you
should, you should do that.
Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Yeah, you know but at that point like oh, like you
have to.
Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
If you want to, if you're going to break your
campaign like that, you have toreally, really, really know what
you're doing, to the pointwhere I still don't think you
can do it.
Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
I would.
I would love to see MatthewMercer run that.
Personally, like I feel likethat, like that level of, like
this is my full time job.
I want to see him running.
That would be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
He or like dimension 20.
Like Brennan would like.
Brennan would get sooverstimulated, but that would
be so funny.
I mean, matt would too.
Matt when the monsters.
If Matt Mercer ran it his likehe's the most passive player and
he's the DM amongst his group,probably like arguably, they're
(01:04:36):
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'spro.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Well, regardless, thank you for joining me today.
I really appreciate it.
That was kind of our topics fortoday.
If you like the podcast, pleasefollow for more, and then if
you want to check out morecontent from us, check out the
discord server or our website.
Thank you, joe, and have agreat rest of your day.
Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Thanks for having me.
I love these conversations.
I love stuff like this.
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