Dungeon Master Tips for D&D | Mathew Mercer | Critical Role | D&D

Just some format feedback: I would much rather see the full interview in one video than all of these 1-2 question chunks broken out. I like Matt, I like the content, I would just really rather sit down and listen to everything once instead of having to click on video after video after video.

My one D&D experience was DMing a game with my family for my birthday. I crafted a simple, by the book adventure, and the party immediately decided to attack the town guard and spent the next two hours fighting guards in a tavern.

Chat: [Person] looks so angry. [Person]: You have no idea what you’re talking about. Truly the eternal story of CR’s Twitch chat

Never give your players a deck of many things unless you are willing to face the consequences

I think character death can be interesting later in a campaign. Or just with experienced players. Unfortunately, in D&D you're far more likely to be killed extremely early on, well before you have any of the tools necessary to "fix" it. It's especially bad if the players are new too. My dad had a bad experience like that 30 years ago and I can't get him interested in D&D at all because of it. To him, D&D will always be a game where you spend hours creating a character, coming up with a backstory, and then they run into a room and die. Roll a new character. Or quit as he did. I have no idea what went wrong: killer DM, forgetting to check for traps, kobolds. I doubt he remembers either. All he remembers is that he created a character that he didn't get to play.

Matt has given me a level to strive for and permission to outshine him in my own way. Thanks Matt for the wonder example you set when I needed it most.

Since they talked abour sharing house rules, I wanna share one of mine. If someone tries to Counterspell a Counterspell, it creates a wild magic surge. It makes it so there's none of those Counterspell chains (it got REAL bad in one campaign I was in) and adds an interesting dillema. Do you try and help your ally's spell go though, at the cost of something chaotic erupting on the battlefield? I'd personally make a smaller table for this, but one of the results I have is the magic becomes so unstable it just erupts across the field, knocking everyone prone!

I really like to play with the rule that: Reviving... is a limited resource and that it should be hard to accomplish. Does it sometime make for short campaigns? Yes!, but it really adds a sense of deeper connection to your character and the fact that you can't just villy nilly revive all the time and that death have consequences. Cause that makes it so that death isn't a trivial matter. I have plenty of times played in such settings and if i die?... I die... then im out of the campaign. Yes you could roll a new character, but again. I personally at least see this as a ''new life''. Ofc i do understand people that want to roll a new character after their deaths. Heck i have done that aswell, but it is as many says here... at least let it take a while before that character comes into play cause it makes for an impact rather than a: ''eh... i died... oh well... guess im rolling a new toon. Be back next session guys!''

I think one of the best things to do as a DM is join a game as a player if you can, even if it’s online. As a resident DM who finally joined one, I am learning so much

I want Mathew Mercer to write books. Books about dungeons and dragons, being a dm, his feelings about stuff, whatever, I'd read it.

Could you imagine creating a house rule, posting about it online, and later finding out Matt Mercer saw it and liked it so much he started using it in Critical Role

Oh yes. If i learnt anything about DMing from watching CR, it's to shut the hell up and let the players talk. So good to see this spoken about here because it is the thing that transformed my table's game experience. I have so much fun just being a spectator in my player's story now. Played in a few too many games where players didn't communicate and the DM did all the talking. Can't go back to that.

At 0:33, Can we all take a moment to acknowledge how Laudna may be the weirdest best character ever created for Critical Role? Her backstory, her patron, the creepy messages. She just might be my favorite this campaign.

D&D is the greatest game of all time, I love that endless GMs can use the same plot, location, and villains and still have their stories become unique.

The question I would ask Matt is "HAD Keyleth walked back the goldfish idea into a bird, would you have allowed it?".

New DM here. I have run a total of 3 sessions. It didn't really "click" for me until I backed off as a DM. Let your players tell the story. You're just there to set up the "guard rails". Unless the players break the rails. Then you just make a new set of rails. Also I tell my players. "You can die. But I'm never going to kill you, but the game might. There will never be a no win scenario. So take chances and come up with your own solutions."

Not only do I enjoy watching critical role from time to time, but I enjoy picking up things Matt does to see if I can use for myself. I never would strive to be exactly like him, I have my own way of doing things, but he has some incredible ideas that I feel could help me improve my Dming.

GM's have to remember that rpg'ing is a collaborative storytelling and it's great that Matt lets the players have their moments in the light. That allows characters to be a part of the story just as much as the NPC's that the GM creates.

I remember one time I was playinh 7th Seas and one of my teammates recommended going to his secret society to get some answers. Meta-knowledge I knew this was a bad idea, that they'd likely kill me to stop me, but in game this seemed like a fine idea. The plot of the game was heavily hinged on my character at the moment, so I talked to my DM in private, told him I was okay if the dice lead to my character death, and we set up a fallback plan to move the plot onto my first mate (basically a letter and a map so he could pursue the treasure/break the curse without me) if I should die.

Damn Matt, I really love the way you addressed the real consequences question. I’ve been running, what is my first attempt at, a realistic Eberron campaign for the last year. But a couple of sessions in I realized that this is all of us coping from the pandemic and honesty that makes my job so much easier. We’re all here to have fun and forget about the BS for a few hours