Then did Dungeon Master change to game master? It's always been DM

it still baffles me how people can drop out at absolutely last second on session day. Stuff happens I get it but such last minute notice really hits low to the GMs morale and is rather impolite.

Woo p2e on foundryyyyy

I started in AD&D 2e but also played Shadowrun 1e, vtm and wta 1 and 2e. In all of those we rolled initiative every round. It had its pluses and minuses. I liked not always going in the same order for the whole battle. One low roll and you are waiting and may not participate much. Especially if the people before you do high damage and/or have lucky rolls. Downside is having to roll and track initiative every turn can slow things down. Another major downside is if you roll a nat 1/botch/critical glitch/ critical failure. If that happened you lost your turn entirely. Also in 2e weapons had speed factors to account for large weapons being slower and spells had casting times. Both of these would change your initiative if you swapped weapons or depending on what spells were cast. In vtm/vampire the dark ages and werewolf they made it that while daggers were fast you were at a disadvantage against someone with a spear or great sword. So there was an optional rule where while the person with daggers might have a faster initiative, the person with the large weapon could still attack first to reflect the disadvantage.

Stan sounds like he needs therapy. Or to be forced to run CoC for Old Man Henderson.

There do exist TTRPG systems which purport to "realistically" simulate combat. Never having been in real combat, I can't comment on how accurate that is, though in practice it's generally one that treats it as quick, lethal, risky and generally not worth it. That suits some games perfectly fine, though it kind of sucks for games where you want combat to be a primary part of the experience.

Lucky that the party in that opening story didn't end up... 😎 crispy.

Ive said it countless times and Ill say it again. Anyone who starts listing their credentials and all the "messed up" stuff theyve seen when it comes to military or fighting experience of any kind, is almost always lying. Especially if its in a completely unrelated discussion. Anyone whos actually seen that kind of stuff is not going to be eager to talk about it in detail just for fun, and I also highly doubt they'll step up to say "you guys are playing DnD wrong." Dudes definitely one of those guys who served as like a mechanic or admin clerk or something (assuming he actually served at all) but wants to act like some kind of hardcore operator.

Funny thing is that backin 1st edition AD&D, you rerolled initiative and you also had to say what you were doing before you rolled.

Boss phases are different, that's technically different fights in a row presuming there's at least a little roleplay between each phase and/or the added phases are supposed to be surprising. If I had to roll initiative each round for every single combat though? That would absolutely give me decision paralysis. I'd quit that table. Combats are already long enough, and as you get up in levels there's a lot to manage and remember for characters. There needs to be BASE level of predictability to get anything done, let alone come up with creative tactics and roleplay mid fight. Rerolling initiative as a gimmick every other round in a boss fight COULD be a cool idea, but I think doing that constantly would get crazy tiring crazy fast.

All due respect, Crispy, but Foundry sucks if you're on a laptop. Which I am (and don't have a choice... can't buy a PC and am constantly on the move anyway). Every time I play on Foundry, I'm stuck doing theatre of the mind for 75% of the session, as I wait for the stupid thing to load. (And I've followed all the possible tips online to resolve this. None of them worked.) Conclusion: if you're on a laptop, Roll20 wins.

I have played in some games years ago that did things like roll new initiative every round. There can be benefits to it, as it changes things up in a way where the order isn't so predictable, it can change up things so it's not such a pattern. But it also is more work and it slows things down. If you want to make the combat less predictable, try it. It can be fun. But ultimately the groups I'm in have decided that it's not worth the extra time and confusion it creates. I have played in 2e and 3e games with someone who required us to declare what we intended to do, when we rolled initiative. If the situation changed by the time your turn came around so that the action you planned is not possible or not beneficial, you do nothing that turn. It's pretty harsh. That said, it was still fun. It makes combat a great deal more challenging. One thing that I would recommend if you try this, is give people who roll best on initiative the option to delay their action until after someone else's. Like, say, if the rogue is going first, but knows the fighter intends to attack the person the rogue was planning to attack, allow the rogue to delay their turn until after the fighter, so that the rogue can possibly flank and get advantage. Personally I'm more into character interaction and development than combat, so I'm happier with the more forgiving rules in 5e combat. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the above ways of making things more challenging if you want to focus more on tactics and run a more dangerous game.

I have seen games that handle combat as realistically as possible and... they are REALLY unwieldy. Though interesting stuff can happen, like a character can be dead to rights and still be a fully active combatant (Just like in real life)... Or you can get a small scrape and end up kicking the bucket due to an infection. . I mean... I don't hate systems like that... but there is a reason I prefer more gamified systems.

When someone brags about something they've done, they haven't. If someone was in the special forces and saw action there is a non zero percent chance that is might be classified.

Rerolling initiative each round of combat? Annoying, bad, slows down the game unnecessarily. I know this from experience, but I feel like you wouldn't need experience to see that. As soon as my group realized we had been doing initiative wrong, we were like, "oh thank god! we only have to roll it once!" (rerolling for different boss phases doesn't sound so bad though)

The sketches! I can't 😂 DM appearing and making him good JFC I'm dead 😂💀

First time I catch one of these on the day of. Woo being caught up! I should send in the story of Licking The Death Bird sometime. Summary of it is: Do not lick the god of death. It does not go well

If I may: D&D Nerds INCLUDES Tech Nerds, But not every D&D Nerd is a Tech Nerd. Leave some space for us Theater Kids. Thanx.

Story Three's paladin is so incredibly steinerpilled

Im relation to the second story, im beginning ti find I suffer from teething issues when a party im running for gets above the standard four players. Usually when im up to five, some inter player discourse drives a few people out and scuttles the campaign. Latest lancer game has a fifth that got in by accident (my bad,) has caused us to take a month long hiatus to fix time issues as well as over had to talk to them about a few faux pas that have been coreected. Not sure how long they'll hang in there for...

Combat Experience

I'm related to an ex-Armed Forces and huge nerd. I am 1000000.98% certain he never wants combat in his hobbies that is even remotely like what he experienced irl.

Congrats on the new apartment! I hope you enjoy it.

Two dollars says the Combat Dude was a fat dude in a greasy t-shirt and trenchcoat with a neckbeard. You know, exactly the kind of guy who would have not been taken by the military. . .

Today I learned that the "RP" in TTRPG somehow stands for "math"

Being new dm… I failed a lot. Also a lot of my games failed due to life. I’m hoping I can run another game or play in the future

Pen and paper? PEN?! PEN-CIL!!! never write in pen on your sheet, we all know there's not a number or word on those pages that will stay the same other than your physical descriptions and even then that can't be promised. You've played BG3 and still didn't get Sune' right... Selune' and Sune' are mentioned several times in that game... You just lost so much street cred Crispy... 2 strikes in 1 video my guy, 2 strikes, tsk tsk.

I actually had a friend who was a former Ranger, did renactment festivals, and both played and DM'd our group. He _never_ talked about the combat he'd seen. When he did talk about his military service, it was only training incidents and other light-hearted things.

So, I've toyed with round based initiative rolls in the past (some games want this), and frankly, the game has to run pretty fast rolling literally every round to work. Rerolling as a phase mechanic is neat (I already do this for layered, back-to-back encounters), so uh... I'll be yoinkin' that. Edit: I see new PF2e gm struggling, I throw tips; If you need to quickly adjust encounters down, you can quickly drop monsters and/or apply the Weak template on tougher ones to strip some of the XP budget down. Aim for enemy party sizes to be comparable to player size (but average enemy level lower) until you get a feel for you and your players. Game shines a lot brighter in those fights anyways, since solos can feel like a bit of a slog for unprepared players. You can even steal a page from Lancer and keep some of the goons you took off as reinforcements that will conveniently show up mid-combat if the encounter ends up feeling "too easy."

They missed the second sexy cheese melting scene. Honest mistake a lot of newbies make.

DM's shouldn't be afraid of killing PCs IMHO, ESPECIALLY not in a campaign like CR. Matt's a legendary DM for a reason, his planning and forethought are up there with the best, and these players are telling a story in a way that only the emergent gameplay of D&D or something like it can replicate. It's an incredibly unique experience as a storyteller to have key critical plot descisions in the hands of a collaborator like that. Let's also not forget that CR have been playing together for A DECADE and I am 100000% sure they have had this conversation about boundaries and killing PCs. It's a show we're all great fans of but it IS also their game, and they get to set the tone and boundaries they're comfortable with first and foremost.

Okay, as far as the NPC debate goes, just follow H.Bomberguy's advice: if something is cool, you let the player do it. My last session, I had an NPC helping my crew. He found an underground passage others had missed (so the plot could happen), but stayed out of the fight because of trauma (though, had they asked, he would definitely have come help them. No one *did*, and they had a difficult fight, but the reigns were in the players' hands). NPCs don't kill the BBEG. They move the plot. They offer aid in healing, buffs, and distractions.

The part of the second story that bothers me most is... How did a paladin and a cleric lose a 2v2? Dnd paladin and clerics must be very different from pathfinder lol.

For the last story I definitely agree dmpcs can be done well as someone who uses them in all my games and have been told by my players they like them

Intro story: "I'm making a game based on a story I'm writing..." Oh no... "...all the players are new..." Oh no! "...*one of* my DMPCs" Oh NO!

20:36 Your skit reminds me of when I was younger and played the DM in a campaign... Not just ran it, but had a DM entity in the game, somewhat inspired by the old D&D cartoon. I placed a dagger of DM slaying in a treasure horde and informed the players they could usurp me and become the DM by slaying my DM character in game. Nobody ever did though, good group of people, lol.

“I know I just gave a number but it’s actually countless men … cos I can’t count”

“You can’t use Rage to half damage because adrenaline doesn’t work like that!” “Cool, my barbarian’s Rages aren’t powered by adrenaline but by divine power she is channeling from her god, so I’ll be taking that halved damage thanks.” Like, I get DnD has its flaws but if you apparently hate it that much go play a different system

Holy cow, you actually read my story! (Burnt Out) I thought it would've been too long for sure, but here we are. To add some missing context, the Unicorn wasn't given at level 1, lol. I think it was more level 5 or 10, since I jumped in in the middle of it. I don't recall the actual drama between Host and his GF. I think I assumed cheating, but your Mafia idea sounds way better. Especially since I never saw him again...🤔 Also, after some digging through memories, the Host story was actually in my SENIOR year of High School. So it was after the VTT story. Not super important, but my bad. One detail I left out about Bunny's character was she chose a custom background (that I think we pulled from WikiDot) called something like "Curse of Beauty". So her character was considered very beautiful, and it could help her get into good favors with NPCs. The bandits she released were "striken by her beauty" into being reformed... at least, thats how I reasoned it in my head. That Bhaal skit 🤣. That's honestly very accurate. Thank you again for reading it, it was a blast to see your reactions.😊

I've played a few systems where initiative changed each round for various reasons. Savage Worlds springs to mind.

The smile that appeared on my face hearing my story in the intro is something I'll probably never be able to replicate again. Perfect way to cheer me up after a god-awful day at work.

Hey, Crispy’s Tavern. So, I’m running CoS and everything started out great, but lately two of the players haven’t been showing up or telling the group that they weren’t coming, despite me messaging the group multiple times. What do I do?

Intro story: Every party will, at some point, make an absolutely baffling decision. If they’re lucky, it won’t even get anyone killed! Here’s hoping the finale of this campaign goes well! First story: I don’t think D&D is really the game for this guy. In fact, I don’t think most game combat systems are for him. I think he just wants to LARP, or get into wrestling or boxing or some other combat sport. On the topic of rerolling initiative every round, though, it’s been done in a lot of systems, and I don’t think it would work at my table, but I can definitely see it working for different groups. I think it’s really a matter of individual preference, which makes it all the sillier that this guy is preaching about how it should be done universally. Second story: Oof, that sounds like a rough first time. Try not to get too discouraged, OP; you’re new at this, and a lot of what happened was beyond your control. It’s going to get better, I promise. Third story, part one: Yikes; poor Chara! You’d think “hey, let’s not remind this person of the time they were HIT BY A FREAKING CAR” would be an easy thing to listen to. I hope Chara and Tina were able to find a group that didn’t go out of their way to be jerks. Third story, part two: This is less of a horror story and more of a tragedy. That game sounded like loads of fun, and it sucks that it had to end like that. (I wish I could get my little sister to try D&D, but she’s always been way too busy…) Third story, part three: I’m glad things are going better for you now, OP, and I’m especially glad Bunny was able to keep going with D&D. It’s always nice to see a happy ending.

Awww! Hey, my sister was the one who wrote "Burnt out", and I'm Bunny! I really expected you to use me in a skit like I was naive or something, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear you call me an angel at the end of the video. 🥰 It was really sweet of you and... I'm pretty sure I was JUST starting middle school for that campaign, too, so I was like... 12...? Ish? 13? I don't remember what year exactly lol. But yes, my Dming is going wonderfully! (Minus a few dropouts) My sister (who wrote the Burnt Out story) I'll call Hemlock for her character. Our session started with four people. Lion, who I'll call Uemron, (as his character is named such) as a black dragonborn rogue/monk. Hemlock plays a rock gnome rogue(detective variety) with pink hair and the tallest dimmadome tophat in existence... Armulyn, a half-dragon half-aasimar (Don't worry, I nerfed it) bard/rogue who thinks he's a druid... And Sirlyre, our resident min-max tiefling fighter who recently took a level in paladin! A month or so before we started playing, Armulyn asked if his two friends from online school could play with us. (We met through online school during covid) and I said sure. I don't recall their characters very well, but there was a half-elf ranger and a tiefling.... Something. Unfortunately, neither of them were very present during sessions and I had to have a talk with them since scheduling changed and they didn't seem to be having much fun. Unfortunately they had to leave and neither of them have responded to any messages from me or Armulyn. 😅 Moving forward, we spend a good..... Year? Almost a year by now with just those core 4, and I've come to really love the dynamic between them all. They're all a bit murder-hobo-y, but so far they all have their character flaws and motivations that just kind of... Click. A month or so back, Sirlyre's girlfriend wanted to join, so I had to go through the internal panic of "wait, how do I write her in? Do I have time? Is there room in the party?? Scheduling???" It was a lot for my social anxiety brain to handle at first, but we figured it out. I've had the entire campaign fleshed out via level achievements for the past two years now. XD Uemron has definitely been a bit of a pain at times, but we had a talk about how the players see his actions and he's doing much better. :) Thank you so much for reading my sister's story, I'm sure she greatly appreciated it. :P

22:50 "DMPCs can't be good, fight me!" *looks at the Gnoll the party wanted to add to the party but then handed the reins over to me (the DM)* Well, I mean...

as someone who has a kid that is 12 and loves DnD- I feel that DM about feeling anxious because their younger brother would wheedle them constantly about when next session is. We've only been able to play a few times, mostly one shots I've run for him, my partner, and a few friends... it's almost every day that he will (somewhat jokingly, but not completely) bring up 'DnD WHEN?' and it's like..... dude, these are all adults with adult lives and it's a one shot, soooo I don't know. I keep telling him he needs to do the legwork and get together some friends of his that he'd like to play with and I'd run it for them since... you know... kids are more likely to have some time to work with.

Love how much mileage you're getting out of that BG3 music

::gritty, thousand yard-stare:: "... combat experience...."

Watching these, I'm honestly taken aback at how consistently people fail to be constructively confrontational with one another. While it can feel satisfying or even prove instructive to share horror stories about other people, it's a little disheartening to hear how often people let themselves off the hook for doing stuff like quietly starting new servers and removing one player without TALKING to that player about the problem. I know people don't like to view their own patterns of nonconfrontational behavior as problematic or worse, but that's exactly what those patterns of behavior are -- not only in tabletop games, but in every aspect of social life. It's disrespectful in the extreme to expect other people to read your mind, and to punish them when they don't... even when they're acting in ways that seem obviously obnoxious from our perspective. We all owe it to one another to be clear and transparent about our issues and give others the opportunity to improve, and it's incredibly disrespectful (or even cowardly) when we fail to do so. None of us have the power to control other people and their behavior, or dictate whether they change their irritating social habits... but we DO have the power to be more healthy and positive in our reactions to that behavior, and to do our best to be and model the change we want to see in the world. Just my two cents. I enjoy your channel, and I especially appreciate the effort you put into pointing out where the people writing in also have room to improve and meet other people halfway. As a social worker, my favorite "horror stories" are the ones people share about their OWN behavior -- the places they've learned to be better and do better, using TTRPGs as the medium for that positive self-work -- rather than venting about other people who might not be aware of their own behavior. I think it's easy for this stuff to veer into the mean-spirited in ways we don't necessarily intend or realize when we're sharing our experiences with other people, especially in a forum as public as youtube. But insofar as this helps folks recognize the importance of clear, respectful communication (and enforcement, where necessary) of boundaries and expectations with one another, I'm all for it.

"D&D combat isn't realistic." GOOD!