Warmup

Describe the coolest water fight you can think of.

Intro

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM

Justin's Favorite Sections

• Apparently endless magic items
• Daerns Instant Fortress is a cool item I’ve read about recently.
• I also like the Bag of Tricks
• Creating settlements, castles, cities, etc.
• Learning about the different planes
• Different Governments for example Plutocracy - Governed by the wealthy who buy ruling seats
• Bonus: The Hand and Eye of Vecna

Tanner's Favorite Sections

• Boring Rules… Jk, super important:
• Don’t check during a session, if you can help it. Prep, and then come back after the session to check up on rules you may have gotten wrong.
• Chapters 8 and 9 (have all sorts of weird rules to check)

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oh dear

well justin let's get started with a warm up okay you ready

ready

good okay so we're just kind of a little bit on topic or at least

adjacent topic for our discussion to day i want you to think of the coolest

underwater fight you can think of ah present it on

ye

on a delectable canvas for s

you got it it's funny you said underwater fight because i was reading the prompt

and i in my mind i thought like a water fight that you'd have during

this summer with your friends

yeah

and i was like

yeah

oh that's interesing okay but this is total different so

m

let me yeah

you and your companions find the well the boy had presumably gone missing he's been

gone for a few days and this was his last siting and all accounts that

you've you've heard to the fact that he's probably dead at the bottom of the

well so there's only one thing to do you lower yourselves down to the well

oh

and it's it's surprisingly large you know you all seem to fit and as you

yeah

submerge yourselves to start looking for

yeah

the body

oh

you feel a current and the current pulls you and before you know it you

find yourself pulled into a rib tide and thrust into this deep ravine this well

goes a lot deeper than you thought because it actually shunts you into this large

open space this large ocean space and in fact the well is nowhere near you

and in fact you don't feel like you're even on this plane anymore all you

see is water around you quick as a flash your cleric casts water breathing on

everyone i don't know if cleric can actually do but that's what i'm imagining

yeah

cast water breathing on everyone and so you don't need to worry about that but

that you mentioned it the rogue seems to be missing which for rogues is not

a strange thing and now the barbarians oh this is not good you finally take

yeah

a chance look for what's going on and it seems that

oh

large tentacles

oh

coming out of this ravine and pulling members of your party hither and thither and

naturally

oh

you're going to investigation mode and defense mode and you investigate to see what's at

the end of this long tentacle these long tentacles and instead of a cracking or

an octopus you see a giant head a human lots of tentacles and it's grasping

and at this point you're you're in full fight mote it's this giant human head

at the bottom with tentacles that come from right under and and the head is

bald and it's mail and it has very it it has a very strong jaw

and it kind of has a smolder and recognize that this the rock you are

fighting rock to puss

ah

what do yu think

well i have to say i was like

yeah

i love the setting i love it and then when you

yeah

got to the end i was like okay a giant head that's got a smoldering

low so i brought a handsome head to a to a water fight that's that's

fun

oh

and then you call it the octopus sounds like okay he wins fine fine

i had to do that because i printed on my three d printer like a

little with three printing there are certain models that you can make that are one

print but there actually are

hm

ticulating and i printed this octopus that had the head of dwainetherock johnson and i

was like you know

yeah

that has to be able to fit into

oh

an underwater fight somewhere you know

and you did it you absolutely did it

uh uh

so proud of you you've come so far

yeah thank you thank you this is the best we can do at nine o'clock

on a wednesday night so i'm proud of myself

yeah

yeah

i am too i'm very proud of you

yeah

well with that

yeah

being said i'd like to welcome everybody to the podcast this is how to be

a better dam and today we're going to be cussing how the dungeon masters guide

can help you provide a better story a better adventure for you and your players

but first off let's let's go into a little bit of the announcements so we

have one shot coming up this saturday we were able to we had to postpone

a lot i was sick the past few weeks so that i kind of threw

a wrench into everything but yeah so for for you who signed up for that

i really appreciate your patients and all of the moving around that we had to

do i'm feeling better just a light cough

m

here and there

uh

but but not

h

bad at all yeah otherwise doing well it was my birthday yesterday so that was

obviously um yeah otherwise

so if you guys get a chance

yeah

reach out until tanner happy birthday

oh no please i didn't bring that oh just and now just gonna

no we got to sing happy birthday well we won't sing it here because i'm

not a very good singer but you in podcast land while you're doing whatever you're

doing just go ahead and sing tenor happy birthday

and i'll hear it i will find a way

m

just get

oh

just getting but honestly

i love

yeah

it

very excited that that i'm feeling better and i get to do the one shot

super excited um otherwise justin do you have any other announcements that we need to

talk about

yeah one one announcement we are excuse me we are always looking to improve the

show and the quickest way to do that is by you the listener telling us

what is good and what is not very good so if you get an opportunity

i direct message us on instagram at how to be a better d m or

send an email to how to be a better d m at mail dot com

and just let us know your thoughts specifically things that you

yea

would change or improve and even things that you like and that's really just gonna

you know help us hopefully give you more so that way you can have better

dungeon master sessions better d n d sessions and it's just all around better also

if you wanted to join the one shot that's happening this saturday but you weren't

in time we're doing another one at the end of this month on june twenty

fifth i know that's a saturday so hopefully most of you can make it but

you also want to sign up for that

perfect yeah and and just seconding what what justin was saying we'd love to hear

what kind of topics you would like us to discuss specifically um you know we

do focus on deming and how to be a better dem so anything that's like

oh a lot of

ye

other because we know that this is fairly talked about top right um just like

how to run a d and d adventure we would love to

i

know if there's anything that you feel like is not discussed enough right because there's

so many is you can talk about so so definitely reach out um but yeah

i'm thinking we just get into the main topic

sounds like a plan

m perfect so like i mentioned at the top we're just going to be talking

about the classic old dungeon masters guide for fifth edition d n d there's a

good chance that you know if you're listening to this podcast you found it whether

you bought it or found it online or anywhere else and

oh

i'm glad you did here's the thing and why we wanted to talk about it

is it's kind of a big old thing you know it's got a lot of

sections um some people probably really enjoy reading through a page by page other people

and i got a little intimidated i don't know what about you justin

honestly i am working my way through it page by page and i feel like

you're definitely right my my recommended approach to this would be to buy the dungeon

masters guild or borrow it or steal it but hopefully you don't get caught i'm

not telling you to steal that i'm just joking but

no he said it he said it just get it

acquire the dungeon masters guide and then come at it with lots of questions that's

how you're going to get the most out of it reading it covered cover is

really interesting and more than any it just kind of tells you where to find

certain things you're not gonna remember everything but if you come out with a lot

of questions with a lot of questions your first of all you're going to remember

the answers to those questions but second of all you're going to enjoy it lot

more because you're going to find a lot more used to it rather than just

reading it cover to cover even though it's super interesting in my opinion

yeah that's great that's wonderful advice and here's the really

oh

great thing for dem's we have time to prepare ahead of time sometimes you know

as much as we'd like

yeah

but regardless as

yeah

you're planning an adventure you can turn to the dungeon masters guide for any specific

questions that you have whether that's about character creation about the rules about environments or

you're just looking for inspiration um that you can turn there and honestly we thought

that would be great to share some of our favorite sections justin do you have

a favorite section of the of the dungeon masters guide

as far as a favorite section i don't think i have a favorite section i

have a couple that m going through it have really stood out to me as

being particularly useful and interesting

yeah

the first part and maybe this is because right now i'm kind of in the

process of building my own world as it were and if you ever do it

one shot with me this is the world that you'll play in but there's a

whole section in the beginning of the dungeon masters guide about really building out the

world of your campaign and for me it helps kind of flesh out the ideas

of settlements castle cities you know geographically but also um kind of the political i

found learning about political systems was really interesting for example a plutocracy that was something

i'd never heard of but that's in the dungeon dungeon masters guide and it's essentially

where society is governed by the wealthy who kind of buy ruling seats on a

council it or it seems more like a trade commission than anything but i found

that was very interesting and honestly it helped reading that section helped me formulate some

of the governments in particular world that i'm building one in particular is it's called

the it's called the qnidin tradition and it's kind of a what it's a gerintocracy

so they venerate and value those who are oldest uh and that's kind of how

their government works and it really helped me kind of flesh out a lot of

that idea of this is a society that places the biggest emphasis on the people

who have lived the longest and have the most wisdom and things like that and

i just found that very interesting and useful as well as you know going aside

from that i found that learning about the different planes and the gods and things

that was just playing interesting excuse me yeah that was just playing interesting to me

and it really helped me understand a lot of the context around you know the

fay wild to fell elemental planes upper and lower planes and then you know the

outer realm and if if you don't know anything about that then you definitely need

to get the dungeon masters guide and read about it

yeah and what i love about that is maybe you're the kind of person like

me who's like hey

ah

i don't need different planes in order to get the most out of adventure i'm

going to say that i and people who think like that are wrong just

yeah

but honestly

yeah

i think that there's so much variety of adventure is so many different adventures that

you can have if you just branch out a little bit there's a reason why

so in past dungeon masters guides they actually didn't put as much emphasis on world

building but in this one they actually throw out like riot at the start they

you know chapter one a world of your own chapter two creating a multi verse

and they kind of really go in depth into those different things and the reason

why is because half of an advent

yeah

sure is

oh

wonder right just creating this sense of wonder and so it's

oh

like hey one of the best ways to do that is just you know have

an adventure take place or at least part of an adventure take place in a

different plane or have you know your enemies come from specific place and that kind

of informs the story

yeah

so yeah i think that's that's wonderful

yeah

yeah

if i can add on that you're totally right and one example of this wonder

is i like a group

excuse me i like a group on you tube called high rollers i think they're

out of the u k and they have a campaign called eros and if you're

if you're listening to this spoiler alert but there's one specife part in their campaign

where they're finding kind of this

yeah

cosmic umaboration i guess you could say and when the boration dies um or i

don't remember fully but the operation the only way to kill it to do this

specific spell or something and it accidentally transported all of them across the universe to

another planet and in this world or in this campaign the planets functioned as different

planes and it was really interesting and it did increase my you know my sense

of wonder that suddenly they're randomly on this plane of angels essentially but in this

world most of

yeah

the planes have been conquered by this this four uh and anyways so you know

you'd think that they were in good hands being on an angel planet but instead

they're in the heart of the enemy and it's just like i said increased my

sense of wonder because in one second they're on this island on the home planet

and then randomly before they had ever space travelled and this is kind of a

blend of science fiction and fantasy anyway it just you said it increased my sense

of wonder because instantly from one second to another they were in one place to

a completely unfamiliar place with different rules entirely for how reality worked and i think

that really cool way to like you said build your world and still wonder on

your players

yeah exactly and

yeah

i think that

yeah

actually kind of transitions perfectly into the section i want to talk about which is

rules i do love how in that campaign you were talking about and this is

not this is true of not just that campaign but any time like there is

a different plane you know different planes have totally rules right like you're

hm

going to have to roll different checks

yeah

depending on how everything works

yeah

and and the great thing is is that they have the rules right there in

that in that creating multi vers section but then also there's a full section in

the guide that's just about rules rules are pretty like if

yeah

you're just talking about talking talking about talking about rules that kind

yeah

of sounds boring and end it is if you're just you know and ere now

i'm just like oh my goodness but like is that a like what kind of

d c check is that

yeah

you know but instead

yeah

you know the great thing about the rule section is just that anything that you

can come up with they're going to have something being like hey this is how

you tweak it right this is you know if you've got if you've got this

many players and this is their level this is what you can expect as far

as a monster

a

you know difficulty and everything so like it just has everything that you could want

especially at the end of the book m it's got this dungeon master's workshop was

just goes to town on telling you a bunch of different a bunch of different

like variant rules which i love because i'm i'm a sucker for you know making

things different but also having rules backing that up right um

yeah

yeah i thought i should mention because like as much as we get very excited

about everything else is the rules that make d and d very pass well and

so that's that's what i love about that

i think you're completely right and i think that section is important to because it

also it kind of helps you make your own rules or for example it kind

of teaches you how to tweak monsters or what to do with creating your own

monsters or sub classes or races

oh

classes things like that

yep

and i think that's the that's the beauty of the dungeons masters guide as you

said you know you said that in previous issues previous editions i guess

yeah

they didn't focus so much on world building i really feel like with this one

they're trying to put you in the seat of world creator story writer kind of

an idea and really put you in the seat of hey this is your game

it's not our game it's your so here's how make it easier for you you

know which is actually kind of the point of this podcast too this is kind

of like like a running dungeons master's guide hopefully really just to make being a

dungeon mask easier and more fun and hopefully cheaper for everyone you know

absolutely i think i think that this they did a really good job at making

it kind of a one stop shop for just about everything you need now there's

a cave

yeah

out there and i'm going to throw this out for the rules section uh this

is such a good book for preparation i would say that

m

it's kind of a crappy book at you know for in the middle of the

session it's like oh my goodness what do i want to do it's like no

it's

hm

a big book a lot of pages too late you know should ave thought about

that earlier just

yeah

roll with it for now you know

or you need

i

like

think

thousands of

yeah

sticky

go

notes

ahead

yeah

yeah exactly right i think that i think you should

yeah

find out the places that you are constantly referring

yeah

to like for example i don't know if justin and i are super huge fans

of you know random encounters or like tables for treasures or anything like that because

because we typically like to have a more personal decision about what's in different places

but the thing is if you are the kind person who you know maybe you

meet regularly enough and you're not trying to do some kind of epic you're trying

to make it more like oh it's more randomized then like you could absolutely put

some sticky notes or some tabs for those different tables and in your set right

that's one you can quickly

hm

reference otherwise i would say that m rule of thumb is always if it's going

to slow down the story and kind of grind things to halt and it's not

like crazy important then i would say you know just just do a filler rule

you can always afterwards you know make a note at the time and then afterwards

look up with the actual rule is come back and then in few sessions you'll

get it right but

m

and of

yeah

course the caveat is if a player's life is ever on the line you're going

to have

oh

to take the time and find out the rule is just you know that's

hm

that's it given but otherwise i would say most other times try and do your

preparation beforehand maybe have a few tabs but otherwise realize that once the sessions going

you won't have as much flex it just refer to it unless you're a much

oh

better person than i am

i agree with you completely and actually uh in case there's anyone out there who's

like the dodged master's guide is terrible uh it doesn't have everything that's for sure

and one thing specifically it doesn't have that i've had a devil of a time

trying to figure out and create and find myself as rules really good rules for

when your player is cursed with lycanthropy so if you're out there have heard of

something like that definitely reach out to me but i'm glad you also mentioned loot

and i know garret's going to laugh over at two twenty five games but i

am still on the fence about random encounters um because i do like them at

one on one hand but you know i see what he was saying about like

anyways that's another discussion for another day but

uh

you mentioned lute

h

and actually lute is one of my favorite parts of the book i remember when

my brother my older brother got the dungeon master's guide like two years before i

ever got it and he he would catch me with the book and i'd be

looking through it all the different like magic items because there's so many in there

oh yeah

and they're all just so different more than anything i think that alone makes the

book worth it because finding cool magic items is one of the best things as

a player and being able to match the right item with the right player it's

kind of hard but it's also a fun challenge and actually two items that i

found in the dungeon masters god that i think particularly cool is darns instant fortress

which is kind of like this it's like you know it is what it says

it is it's like thirty tall twenty by twenty by twenty i guess twenty by

twenty by thirty like adamantine fortress that is like super durable built and it's it's

pretty cool but i also like another item called bag of tricks which is like

a little bag filled with like fuzz ball that you can pull out and throw

and then they turn into animals that's kind of a cute one that you know

i think anyone could could get behind one particular item

oh

that is also in there and it's actually it's not an item it's more of

a artifect and it's a duo artifact especially with stranger things coming out that i

think everyone would be interested in hearing about the hand and eye of vecna are

in the dungeon master's guide so if you want to build an entire campaign around

and those two items there there for you and that's like an instant you know

b b b b g you know so those are some of my thoughts about

ah

loot

ah it's i'll tell you i've done the same thing the thing that always gets

me is just cloaks any time there's a cloak i'm like

oh

oh yeah because the

uh

art work that they do for it is just

h

kill or

yeah

um

hm

yeah just a random thing but yeah i love the loot that they just got

the treasure in there and it's just very nicely put on obviously you know i'm

sure that everybody probably tries to create their own you can you know and they

have rules for that as well

she

but if you don't want to they have so many options of just already adluthat's

just wonderful to just pick and use um but so justin i was i was

re going through the different sections in the dungeon master yard in preparation for this

and one section that i i'll be honest i haven't used that much but i

kind of wanted to shout it out because i think it's awesome that it exists

so you know how they have the ppendaces at the end right

yeah

yeah so the i believe it's the last ependency m d

m

they have a dungeon master inspiration i think which is just a list reading for

different kinds of things right like they've got real world history and myth and just

like a selection of books like they literally have two books called like one book

called cat les another one called castle and i'm like okay those are essentially the

same title but they obviously you know felt they needed to put it and they

just have all

m

and like they have some for writing for example and we've talked about the importance

of writing that it's like hey

hm

i know that a lot of people like to do it off the cuff but

if you have a pre written you know dialogue or paragraph introing you into setting

that can make all the difference and they just have

hm

a whole section of books there and then even some books there directly about gaming

um yeah i'm just very impressed that they took the time for that because because

i found

uh

that you know

uh yeah

when i was doing dracula theme adventure i

hm

drew a lot on what i knew from you know the actual book dracula and

that's

hm

my but i'm like hey they put the section there and obviously it's not all

encompassing

oh

but they have some really good source material that i think would be worth reading

yeah

you might have just filled up my amazon wish list for christmas

i know it's a lot of books here

yeah

like a lot of freaking books

yeah

but but they look great honestly like they have one that's called the map makers

and i'm like okay

o

i've never wanted or to learn more about maps until i read that title

oh

and then i was like okay apparently

h

i need to learn about maps now

so here's a here's a fun prompt for you dums out there go to the

appendix and then pick a random title and make that the title of your campaign

you know

absolutely yeah i can't agree more

oh

it's just oh and then they have a bunch of like garry guy aces like

books like written by him as like source of material

wow

that i'm like classic and they even have one about the history

that's awesome

of game that's awesome but anyway yeah i just found that and i had to

share because i'm i'm just a real sucker for

yeah

lists of books i'll never

yeah

it's kind of sad but like i'll never just go to barns and noble or

some other book store find a book i like and then just buy it i've

always got

right

a look online and it's like top whatever list you know is like to fiction

top

yeah

fantasy to you know and so like having

hm

a list built in i'm like well that's great

and maybe one thing we can do in the future is give kind of uh

you know me and you can take one of the books each and then read

it and then give like a cliff notes version episode of it to the to

the listener and see if that's what they like but

great idea

yeah anyways any final closing thoughts

uh honestly it's it's worth having this ready like i would say that no matter

in what form you get it just having the ability go through it

oh

and read sections of it and refresh or learn for the first time about different

things it's really going to add a lot of fresh air so speak to your

to your

yeah

campaign and it's just going to be better overall

agreed i would also add if you're a player only you don't need this if

you are only doing dungeon mastering as kind of a one and done thing you

don't need this if you're planning on making it hobby and you really want to

excell and kind of build your skills then this is essential so but thank you

listener for joining us thanks for coming on our adventure make sure use tuned afterward

to hear any announcements we have also sign up for that one shot we'd love

to have you um and if you have any comments questions remember reach out to

us but we'll be back next week for another great episode for coming to the

tavern with us and until next time let's roll initiative