In a campaign I played, we ended up recruiting a bunch of goblins instead of killing them. They ended up as the stewards of our base when we were gone. I trained one as a paladin. I doubt the gm expected that
Those final words…..I love it. D&D is all about the TABLE having fun. Those moments of "derailing" for the DM are pure moments of the players thinking as their CHARACTERS and not as themselves. My players ignore the massive plot hooks I’m throwing at them left and right, and I want to pull my hair out, but thinking on your feet as the DM is what makes that role just as fun as playing a level 10 War Mage.
I ran my second session of my first campaign and the players made me improv an entire fantasy starbucks because one of them wanted coffee, in that same session they also tamed a cockatrice they were fighting and got a new companion
I was playing a small onyx dragon in a campaign and I derailed the DM’s plans when he presented us with a tablet and my immediate question was "can i read it" this was a self made quest and he hadn’t prepared any notes on what the tablet said.
This one’s kind of 5, 6, and 7 all mashed up [boss avoidance, unexpectedly powerful spell, and massacre]: [3.5 D&D] we had reached our first goal, a Necromancer’s tower. 3 stories tall, open-style [no glass, etc] windows on the top 2, all windows and the door on the ground floor sealed and [revealed with Detect Magic] warded. The party wizard sends his bird familiar to look in the windows from a hopefully safe distance. Skeletons abound, mostly either patiently waiting for something to attack, or performing manual labor. We can’t see the necromancer. The wizard casts Unseen Servant while the cleric casts Create Water into a bucket we had, filling it, then Bless Water on it while the wizard mixes in a bar of soap. The ‘Servant (which flies, is incorporeal–more a "force" than a "creature"–and can lift up to 5 lbs. but specifically CANNOT DO DAMAGE–it can lift a dagger, even a small sword, but cannot fight) is instructed (now that the bird has safely circled the entire tower) to go in the window at the top floor above us and noisily drop the bucket to pour the water down the stairs. The noise draws all the skeletons toward the top of the tower, climbing the stairs, which the soapy, slippery water is cascading down. The Holy Water. Much melting ensues. The necromancer himself emerges from his heretofore sealed laboratory to find out what is going on, and is met at the bottom of the stairs by the still-flowing cascade of soapy Holy Water, [advertisement voice] "now with Skeleton Chunks!", *slips in the soapy water and falls, floundering and taking damage each round from the Holy Water.*
After he dies in an inch of water, we move into our new home, complete with Warded door and windows.
So basically the take-away from all of this is 1) know you’re players really well and 2) when your players end up surprising you and coming up with something really creative or really stupid: reward them accordingly. Improve skills are a DMs best friend.
That one future boss we were meant to kill but ended up turning into a good friend and turning her into an guest party member to fight the subsequent boss.
When it comes to number two, I tend to accidentally skip the quest a lot. Like in our latest campaign we were on a pirate island to kill the pirate king. And well, seeing as my character was a pirate and some really good rolls, I not only managed to get us through the fort, past 2 of the mini bosses. And was able to meet up with the pirate king and get a surprise round on him by casting harm, directly onto his dick.
Snowheart Softflakeon September 11, 2020 at 10:36 pm
First time DMing I watched this 3 times in order to prep myself with sage advice from the master. The one peice I particularly clung to was beware of flimsy characters as I knew the girl I was going to be playing with was the kind of person to make friends with everyone she can and I didn’t want to have the prison guard incident happen.
So I made sure I had a name and general backstory for every single living intelligent character.
Keyword "Living…"
…she ended up ignoring all of them and instead made friends with a robot I had nothing planned for!!!
(It was actually really adorable and allowed for extra tension in the final boss, but still!!!)
At the orphanage, I they would have said what they have at first, I would have made the orphanage collapse after the city is rebuild.
After all, they did not specify that the orphanage should be sturdy!
If they specify that, you could just make the completed building dangerous or cursed/haunted (beds that eat children or something like that).
Alternatively, you could make a word limit for commands. If the command is limited to one sentence with 8 words, they will always leave at least one opening.
It could be about outsmarting, where you let something open, so the "wish granter" takes the bait, while the players try to counteract that misdeed – or trick the wish granter entirely. That sounds much more interesting than just formulating a prefect order/wish.
My DM created a dragon turtle kraken creature thing that was supposed to be a multi round encounter, and then our wizard successfully cast polymorph and turn the monster into a giraffe. Next round he killed the giraffe in one move. Our DM was so disappointed đ€Ł
To celebrate the launch of new tabletop channel Dicebreaker, Oxventure DM Johnny Chiodini reveals the worst ways his best-laid plans have been derailed. Sorry Johnny! Enjoy, and subscribe to Dicebreaker: https://www.youtube.com/dicebreaker
@outside extra how is andy in the room while you’re taping this? Sometimes in the videos we can hear some of the others say something off screen. Do you guys film these for each other or are they there to support in some other way or what?
What’s the opposite of derail? Just "rail"? Because that’s the biggest problem I have as a DM. I want to run a sandbox where the players can explore what they want, attempt to kill or rob who they want or whatever else, but they demand to be put on the rails…
360 Entertainmenton September 11, 2020 at 10:48 pm
So Iâve got one for you, mind you I didnât roll this character it was my GM. We were playing a combined game of World of Darkness that included Vampire, Hunter, Changeling etc. I was rolled a katana fighting Time Mage I named Nemo (Latin for no one, or no body). My session zero included a solo game where I appeared at a military hospital and sensed a evil energy coming from a girl that looked like she was half eaten (giant spiders were a regular occurrence with this GM). Well something shot through all of the guards and came to the room I was in and came face to face with Harry Dresden, whom the GM turned into a boss character. After some monologing GM informs me that Iâm unarmed but I rolled higher than him so I got the first attack. I ended up kicking him through a wall with a Nat 20, followed by an axe kick that smashed him partially through the floor. I failed a dodge roll and he ended up zapping me through the 4th floor window but caught myself on a rain drop and pulled myself up. I ran back up the drops to continue the fight but Harry jumped out the window and through a portal before I could attack him. After the session everyone just stared at me and the GM sat there with his face in his hands saying,â I didnât think he was that powerfulâ! Fast forward to the main session, which was the same day, the military base is attacked by changelings and âlion creaturesâ. Our party changeling was shooting them off with his shotgun while our werewolf was fighting a princess and losing. My character was finally called in and I nat 20âd a group of changelings who had the drop on me with a single stroke of my katana. Our GM kept throwing more and more at us until he was finally able to get the princess off of the changeling. The next few sessions were super dull but before every fight the GM started having me âfall asleepâ. Never failed, before every big fight I âpassed outâ and the other players would get riled up. Eventually we switched games, partially because our regular GM ended up in the army equivalent of house arrest but also because no one else knew the system. Every time I asked where the campaign was going afterwards he just replied âwhere do you think it was going?â So I just assumed he had no real plan.
In my first campaign – a one-shot, I was a rogue, and I shot the end boss with a crossbow with sneak damage and got a nat 20. The DM was not super happy with that, basically defeating the dragon in 1 hit
Aren’t scenes like these exactly what we love about TTPRGs? A good portion of the game is an exercise in creative problem solving. Don’t blame your players for being creative. Another big portion is improvisation. Why should the players be the only ones to improvise?
You say it yourself at 26:30: Don’t get too attached to your plans. In my experience the most memorable scenes happen when the train leaves the railroad. So don’t panic and roll along with it.
#7 [23:18] Almost the same story! Just inside a dungeon entrance, we stopped to listen at a closed door, taking turns until the character who spoke Goblin recognized a few words. Taking vials of lamp oil, lay a [5’wide, the width of the door] strip from the door straight to the opposite wall, have one character close to that end with a lit torch held away from the oil. Bang on the door shouting in Dwarvish [knowing that the Goblins understood that]. They come racing out, hit the strip and go tumble-sliding…and the character with the torch lights the oil. Takes 1 point of damage due to proximity. Encounter over!
Not Dungeons & Dragons, but I was playing Champions. My character had (among other abilities) healing and jumping, think Wolverine and Spider-man. My GM was getting upset with my constant healing. He took his favorite villain, along the lines of Starbolt or The Human Torch, and flew it at me, standing on the ground, at full travel speed (twice combat speed). I made my reflex and jump rolls, and jumped to the top of a nearby building, while the villain plowed into the ground and was killed. He was very upset…
So me my and my party encountered a situation with an elevator where it was the river puzzle get everyone down so my dwarf the first time just jumps 300ft down no acrobatic proficiency I role a perfect 20 and land on the elevator to bring it up then how my dwarf gets down is an assamir Flys me down cause my character was the heaviest and the other assamir just climbed down the cliff while the monk and fighter took the elevator with no problems bypassing the puzzle
I once had a group in 2nd edition who could add 2+2 and come up with aardvark. The adventure was that a wizard was abducting children from the village and using them in his twisted experiments as revenge for the villager’s prior actions against him. Various NPCs had described child-like figures (kobolds) carrying moving sacks away to the west in he dead of night on nights children had gone missing. They had also heard rumors of a haunted tower to the west of town. Reasonably, I expected them to put two and two together and track down this tower. Instead the players concluded (somehow) the problem was orc slavers who had a secret lair in the sewers. Never mind there were no sewers in this small hamlet.
This lead me to having to create an underground ruin as a way to get the players to the actual adventure location. I was creating this dungeon as I went since this was NOT planned in the least. So I threw in a spear trap at one point that should have been easy to spot and disarm. The party’s thief failed to spot the trap, although everyone made their dex checks to avoid damage. One person barely made his check, so I ruled he was pinned in place by the spears. Thief goes to disarm, and horribly botches the skill check. So I added another element to the trap, without it causing any harm. By the time the thief managed to disarm the trap it was the most overly complex thing you can imagine with spikes and blades spinning in place and the entire assembly spinning in 8 different directions at once. The fighter who’d gotten caught in it promptly vomited on the thief once he was released.
I didn’t think anything of making such a complex trap, it was purely for the humor of the situation cause the thief kept botching an easy skill check. But then later the party was running from some kobolds and ran past where the trap was. At which point the thief reactivated the trap. O.o
During a session of Tomb of Annihilation, my DM thought the party would meet the Yuan ti and do the slave encounter thats apparently supposed to happen. The Goliath barbarian armed with a wand of wonder didn’t like the idea of being a slave and was captured but able to escape by using the wand and (amazingly) rolling to turn himself invisible. He managed to single handedly make it to the leader and best him. Made for a very fun night of our DM looking like his head was going to implode.
Dicebreaker host and D&D Oxventure Dungeon Master Johnny Chiodini brings you the seven ways every DM will get derailed by their players — and how to …
My favorite necromancer is astoshan and you cant change my mind
Merilwens meat grinder was amazing
This is a can of LAGER.
In a campaign I played, we ended up recruiting a bunch of goblins instead of killing them. They ended up as the stewards of our base when we were gone. I trained one as a paladin. I doubt the gm expected that
Mind you this only works if your players themselves are collaborative and not complete dicks deliberately and repeatedly trying to derail you.
I haven’t seen any of the Oxventures, but Alfred Strangetide gives me major Steven Merchant vibes
What if every time a charge yet chases a red herring, you give a description of being interrupted by an exotic red bird nearby
Those final words…..I love it. D&D is all about the TABLE having fun. Those moments of "derailing" for the DM are pure moments of the players thinking as their CHARACTERS and not as themselves. My players ignore the massive plot hooks I’m throwing at them left and right, and I want to pull my hair out, but thinking on your feet as the DM is what makes that role just as fun as playing a level 10 War Mage.
I ran my second session of my first campaign and the players made me improv an entire fantasy starbucks because one of them wanted coffee, in that same session they also tamed a cockatrice they were fighting and got a new companion
I remember when I used a level 9 spell scroll to clear a bush of man eating plant that was level 1
in my dnd party Im a rogue and my sister is a druid so maybe we could try Merylwen’s Meatgrinder sometime
I was playing a small onyx dragon in a campaign and I derailed the DM’s plans when he presented us with a tablet and my immediate question was "can i read it" this was a self made quest and he hadn’t prepared any notes on what the tablet said.
This man is so cute omg
This one’s kind of 5, 6, and 7 all mashed up [boss avoidance, unexpectedly powerful spell, and massacre]: [3.5 D&D] we had reached our first goal, a Necromancer’s tower. 3 stories tall, open-style [no glass, etc] windows on the top 2, all windows and the door on the ground floor sealed and [revealed with Detect Magic] warded. The party wizard sends his bird familiar to look in the windows from a hopefully safe distance. Skeletons abound, mostly either patiently waiting for something to attack, or performing manual labor. We can’t see the necromancer. The wizard casts Unseen Servant while the cleric casts Create Water into a bucket we had, filling it, then Bless Water on it while the wizard mixes in a bar of soap. The ‘Servant (which flies, is incorporeal–more a "force" than a "creature"–and can lift up to 5 lbs. but specifically CANNOT DO DAMAGE–it can lift a dagger, even a small sword, but cannot fight) is instructed (now that the bird has safely circled the entire tower) to go in the window at the top floor above us and noisily drop the bucket to pour the water down the stairs. The noise draws all the skeletons toward the top of the tower, climbing the stairs, which the soapy, slippery water is cascading down. The Holy Water. Much melting ensues. The necromancer himself emerges from his heretofore sealed laboratory to find out what is going on, and is met at the bottom of the stairs by the still-flowing cascade of soapy Holy Water, [advertisement voice] "now with Skeleton Chunks!", *slips in the soapy water and falls, floundering and taking damage each round from the Holy Water.*
After he dies in an inch of water, we move into our new home, complete with Warded door and windows.
So basically the take-away from all of this is 1) know you’re players really well and 2) when your players end up surprising you and coming up with something really creative or really stupid: reward them accordingly. Improve skills are a DMs best friend.
That one future boss we were meant to kill but ended up turning into a good friend and turning her into an guest party member to fight the subsequent boss.
IT TOOK ME HOW LONG TO FIND OUT YOU GUYS DO DND!!!
my first campaign we had a monk who would get nat 20s on every hit and would "implode their noses so hard they were sent to another dimension"
Me and my party literally killed a plot hook
When it comes to number two, I tend to accidentally skip the quest a lot. Like in our latest campaign we were on a pirate island to kill the pirate king. And well, seeing as my character was a pirate and some really good rolls, I not only managed to get us through the fort, past 2 of the mini bosses. And was able to meet up with the pirate king and get a surprise round on him by casting harm, directly onto his dick.
First time DMing I watched this 3 times in order to prep myself with sage advice from the master. The one peice I particularly clung to was beware of flimsy characters as I knew the girl I was going to be playing with was the kind of person to make friends with everyone she can and I didn’t want to have the prison guard incident happen.
So I made sure I had a name and general backstory for every single living intelligent character.
Keyword "Living…"
…she ended up ignoring all of them and instead made friends with a robot I had nothing planned for!!!
(It was actually really adorable and allowed for extra tension in the final boss, but still!!!)
Point 2: That’s an interesting point to make, but all I could think is I recognize the song as Total Miner: Forge’s song Folk Round
Not gonna lie I have only been a DM for a little while but this is pretty much how my campaigns have gone thus far.
ĐĐ°ĐČĐœĐŸ ĐœĐ” ĐČОЎДлОŃŃ! Outside Xtra
ĐŽĐ”ĐčŃŃĐČĐžŃДлŃĐœĐŸ ŃŃĐŸŃ ĐșĐ°ĐœĐ°Đ» Đ·Đ°ŃĐ»ŃжОĐČĐ°Đ”Ń Đ±ĐĐ»ŃŃĐ”ĐłĐŸ ĐșĐŸĐ»ĐžŃĐ”ŃŃĐČĐ° ĐżŃĐŸŃĐŒĐŸŃŃĐŸĐČ
ĐŁ ĐŒĐ”ĐœŃ ĐœĐ° ĐșĐ°ĐœĐ°Đ»Đ” Đ”ŃŃŃ ŃĐ°Đș жД ĐżĐŸŃŃĐž ŃĐŸŃĐœŃ ŃĐ°Đ·ĐœŃŃ ĐČĐžĐŽĐ”ĐŸ ĐœĐ° Đ»ŃĐ±ĐŸĐč ĐČĐșŃŃ – ĐŸŃĐ”ĐœĐžŃĐ”. ĐĐ°ĐŒ ĐżĐŸĐœŃĐ°ĐČĐžŃŃŃ
At the orphanage, I they would have said what they have at first, I would have made the orphanage collapse after the city is rebuild.
After all, they did not specify that the orphanage should be sturdy!
If they specify that, you could just make the completed building dangerous or cursed/haunted (beds that eat children or something like that).
Alternatively, you could make a word limit for commands. If the command is limited to one sentence with 8 words, they will always leave at least one opening.
It could be about outsmarting, where you let something open, so the "wish granter" takes the bait, while the players try to counteract that misdeed – or trick the wish granter entirely. That sounds much more interesting than just formulating a prefect order/wish.
My DM created a dragon turtle kraken creature thing that was supposed to be a multi round encounter, and then our wizard successfully cast polymorph and turn the monster into a giraffe. Next round he killed the giraffe in one move. Our DM was so disappointed đ€Ł
Hmm. I think I’d love to DM.
Bards, Paladins and Monks, the absolute bane of a DMs existence
Taking notes, running a campaign for the first time soon.
To celebrate the launch of new tabletop channel Dicebreaker, Oxventure DM Johnny Chiodini reveals the worst ways his best-laid plans have been derailed. Sorry Johnny! Enjoy, and subscribe to Dicebreaker: https://www.youtube.com/dicebreaker
@outside extra how is andy in the room while you’re taping this? Sometimes in the videos we can hear some of the others say something off screen. Do you guys film these for each other or are they there to support in some other way or what?
You can see the pain in Johnny’s face đđ
What’s the opposite of derail? Just "rail"? Because that’s the biggest problem I have as a DM. I want to run a sandbox where the players can explore what they want, attempt to kill or rob who they want or whatever else, but they demand to be put on the rails…
So Iâve got one for you, mind you I didnât roll this character it was my GM. We were playing a combined game of World of Darkness that included Vampire, Hunter, Changeling etc. I was rolled a katana fighting Time Mage I named Nemo (Latin for no one, or no body). My session zero included a solo game where I appeared at a military hospital and sensed a evil energy coming from a girl that looked like she was half eaten (giant spiders were a regular occurrence with this GM). Well something shot through all of the guards and came to the room I was in and came face to face with Harry Dresden, whom the GM turned into a boss character. After some monologing GM informs me that Iâm unarmed but I rolled higher than him so I got the first attack. I ended up kicking him through a wall with a Nat 20, followed by an axe kick that smashed him partially through the floor. I failed a dodge roll and he ended up zapping me through the 4th floor window but caught myself on a rain drop and pulled myself up. I ran back up the drops to continue the fight but Harry jumped out the window and through a portal before I could attack him. After the session everyone just stared at me and the GM sat there with his face in his hands saying,â I didnât think he was that powerfulâ! Fast forward to the main session, which was the same day, the military base is attacked by changelings and âlion creaturesâ. Our party changeling was shooting them off with his shotgun while our werewolf was fighting a princess and losing. My character was finally called in and I nat 20âd a group of changelings who had the drop on me with a single stroke of my katana. Our GM kept throwing more and more at us until he was finally able to get the princess off of the changeling. The next few sessions were super dull but before every fight the GM started having me âfall asleepâ. Never failed, before every big fight I âpassed outâ and the other players would get riled up. Eventually we switched games, partially because our regular GM ended up in the army equivalent of house arrest but also because no one else knew the system. Every time I asked where the campaign was going afterwards he just replied âwhere do you think it was going?â So I just assumed he had no real plan.
In my first campaign – a one-shot, I was a rogue, and I shot the end boss with a crossbow with sneak damage and got a nat 20. The DM was not super happy with that, basically defeating the dragon in 1 hit
Aren’t scenes like these exactly what we love about TTPRGs? A good portion of the game is an exercise in creative problem solving. Don’t blame your players for being creative. Another big portion is improvisation. Why should the players be the only ones to improvise?
You say it yourself at 26:30: Don’t get too attached to your plans. In my experience the most memorable scenes happen when the train leaves the railroad. So don’t panic and roll along with it.
The No. 1 derailment in the history of derailments: Old Man Henderson.
Old Man Henderson literally broke the game.
All hail the God-slayer!
Lol, they did that deliberately to have fun with the DM on the jailor npc
lovely video, but you used the Runesmith’s background music
1:50 Lol Johnnys face as they derail him
#7 [23:18] Almost the same story! Just inside a dungeon entrance, we stopped to listen at a closed door, taking turns until the character who spoke Goblin recognized a few words. Taking vials of lamp oil, lay a [5’wide, the width of the door] strip from the door straight to the opposite wall, have one character close to that end with a lit torch held away from the oil. Bang on the door shouting in Dwarvish [knowing that the Goblins understood that]. They come racing out, hit the strip and go tumble-sliding…and the character with the torch lights the oil. Takes 1 point of damage due to proximity. Encounter over!
Pretty soon I’m gonna get to play my first game of DnD and I’m excited :3
Not Dungeons & Dragons, but I was playing Champions. My character had (among other abilities) healing and jumping, think Wolverine and Spider-man. My GM was getting upset with my constant healing. He took his favorite villain, along the lines of Starbolt or The Human Torch, and flew it at me, standing on the ground, at full travel speed (twice combat speed). I made my reflex and jump rolls, and jumped to the top of a nearby building, while the villain plowed into the ground and was killed. He was very upset…
So me my and my party encountered a situation with an elevator where it was the river puzzle get everyone down so my dwarf the first time just jumps 300ft down no acrobatic proficiency I role a perfect 20 and land on the elevator to bring it up then how my dwarf gets down is an assamir Flys me down cause my character was the heaviest and the other assamir just climbed down the cliff while the monk and fighter took the elevator with no problems bypassing the puzzle
I once had a group in 2nd edition who could add 2+2 and come up with aardvark. The adventure was that a wizard was abducting children from the village and using them in his twisted experiments as revenge for the villager’s prior actions against him. Various NPCs had described child-like figures (kobolds) carrying moving sacks away to the west in he dead of night on nights children had gone missing. They had also heard rumors of a haunted tower to the west of town. Reasonably, I expected them to put two and two together and track down this tower. Instead the players concluded (somehow) the problem was orc slavers who had a secret lair in the sewers. Never mind there were no sewers in this small hamlet.
This lead me to having to create an underground ruin as a way to get the players to the actual adventure location. I was creating this dungeon as I went since this was NOT planned in the least. So I threw in a spear trap at one point that should have been easy to spot and disarm. The party’s thief failed to spot the trap, although everyone made their dex checks to avoid damage. One person barely made his check, so I ruled he was pinned in place by the spears. Thief goes to disarm, and horribly botches the skill check. So I added another element to the trap, without it causing any harm. By the time the thief managed to disarm the trap it was the most overly complex thing you can imagine with spikes and blades spinning in place and the entire assembly spinning in 8 different directions at once. The fighter who’d gotten caught in it promptly vomited on the thief once he was released.
I didn’t think anything of making such a complex trap, it was purely for the humor of the situation cause the thief kept botching an easy skill check. But then later the party was running from some kobolds and ran past where the trap was. At which point the thief reactivated the trap. O.o
National insurance number? Damn must be nice to not have to worry about paying for healthcare
If Merrilwen’s meat grinder isn’t things going "wrong" is it mayhaps things going "a bit skew-whiff"?
Your problem is you try to plan too much. No Plan survives contact with the enemy/Players. And remember… the Dice have Spoken.
During a session of Tomb of Annihilation, my DM thought the party would meet the Yuan ti and do the slave encounter thats apparently supposed to happen. The Goliath barbarian armed with a wand of wonder didn’t like the idea of being a slave and was captured but able to escape by using the wand and (amazingly) rolling to turn himself invisible. He managed to single handedly make it to the leader and best him. Made for a very fun night of our DM looking like his head was going to implode.
Chairazon and mewlwen!