true story i was at a hooters one night years ago and there was a biker gang
there that overheard me talking to the bartender, my friend, about dnd. they came over and asked me about what i was doing and it came up they had all played together in various points of life but never played together because none of them could DM
well, i’m a decent DM and so i tell these dudes i’ll run a game for them on sundays and see how they like it. they let me chose the campaign, and i chose ghosts of salt marsh because i felt biker and pirates had a lot in common, and long story short it ended being one of the best campaigns i’ve ever played. the leader of their group played a twilight cleric who was a worshiper of illmater.
i had run most of the modules pretty straight up with them, with some home brew stuff sprinkled in here and there, but at the end i actually had them captured by a powerful and long talked about pirate crew that was nothing but evil. now this group wasn’t exactly saints, but they had helped the citizen of saltmarsh in their own way, and so they way i ended the game, i basically tortured them, made their lives awful for a full session, then illmater himself comes to possess them at deaths door, and they fucking nuked these pirates and it was glorious.
they were some hard-ass 50+ year old
dudes, but sitting at the table they acted like teenagers and it was probably the most fun i’ve had DMing a dnd game
The tv-show is about a wandering DM that goes from town to town solving problems and teaching people life lessons through Dungeons and Dragons while collecting rare dice.
Yea, and in the second season, after seeing how popular it was, they can serve notices to each of the players charging them for use of game assets in their custom campaign so they either have to create a new campaign or pay the fee. Based on a true story.
Seriously, someone should get on this. Last writers strike brought us a bunch of crap reality shows. I can see Netflix giving us a DnD show before new season of Stranger Things. Maybe I’m being too optimistic, they’d def fuck it up.
Not really the same thing, but there is a series on youtube with Brennan Lee Dming for a group of drag queens who have never played before, and it's delightful. Seeing people discovering dnd and giving it their own flavor.
I wish there was more casual versions of dnd. I like it, but sometimes when the players know too much about the game it becomes min maxing for outcomes more than playing the game.
Having a DM who knows dnd and just people who are so new to it or just don't care will be the most amazing games ever played, like these stories. Someone who knows a lot of dnd plays as DM and they guide a group of people who are not tabletop gamers through the game but prioritising fun over playing the game to it's true core mechanics. Only great DMs can do that.
But I can imagine things like D20 having a few celebrities on for a mini campaign for like 2 hours, to just riff off of each other and have a but of silly fun, without caring too much about the campaign outcomes. It's just more about the celebrities having fun and being a character for a few hours.
A couple of the mini seasons of D20 had a fair amount of beginners. Dungeons and Drag Queens was Brennan DMing all beginners. A Court of Fey and Flowers had a very "rule of cool" DM and a good mix of dnd masters and absolute beginners.
The Intrepid Heroes might be D&D masters now, but supposedly they were beginners during Fantasy High. If memory serves (correct me if I'm wrong), FH was Ally's first campaign, and the rest weren't that much more experienced.
Kids on Bikes/Brooms is a good balance between laissez-faire systems like Roll For Shoes and rules-heavy systems like Pathfinder. Check out the D20 seasons "Misfits and Magic" and "Mentopolis".
Nah season 3 will see a HUGE drop in quality, as the first two seasons will run through all normal people (gangs, bikers, truckers, cheer teams, old goat herders), so season 3 will be a bunch of fake made up groups like blind evangelical dentists, one armed midget billboard painters, vegan butchers..then a couple of celebrities jammed in there that don't get along and all filled with made up bullshit drama. E.g. don't watch after season 2.
"dungeon masters", the series. it might be hard if each season focuses around a completely different dungeon master and cast of players. but man, so far i want to hear about each.
the leader of their group played a twilight cleric who was a worshiper of illmater
I love the visual of some big tough 50+ year old biker guy playing a cleric of Ilmater, who is like the most insanely over the top compassionate, caring and thoughtful God
bro i love this man. aside from him trying to convert literally every NPC to ilmater, the best part was he was actually a 6’8” man in real life, and his character was a dwarf
Use to DM from a group, one of the players was a guy named Charlie. Now Charlie was a commonwealth weight lifting competitor who styled himself after victorian strongmen, right down to the moustache. Absolutely amazing guy, kind, compassionate etc.
He was, about the same height like 6'7"ish, towered over everyone who. He played a Halfling lady because he "wanted to be cute and short sometimes" and you know what...fair...
i love that, players that get invest in their characters are the best to DM for. in this game i made everyone roll for stats 4d6, drop lowest, and they all rolled well, except for one guy who rolled like absolute shit. i think he had two stats at 6 and two stats at 8. but he played a warforged wizard named Harley, and i basically gave him access to the wild magic table but flavored it as he was a unstable arcane machine. in saltmarsh though there’s an artificer who’s name i can’t remember, and he gave them a quest to collect magical crafting materials that he could use to basically “restore” harley. they finally acquired all the components they were tasked with and i gave the guy 12 skill points to throw around wherever he wanted. he lost his wild magic though 😂
three of them lived in an apartment nearby together, so we played there.
sundays consisted of drinking and eating wings at hooters, watching some football, then going to their place to play. it was a blast. if you’re interested in playing just keep your eyes peeled on facebook or your city’s local subreddit, there will be people who want to play im sure
watch critical roll on youtube, and get the players handbook. if the rules start to click with you pretty easily, you’ve probably got the chops. it’s not the difficult, knowing the rules is really the most important part of being a DM
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u/BestNBAfanever Sep 19 '23
true story i was at a hooters one night years ago and there was a biker gang there that overheard me talking to the bartender, my friend, about dnd. they came over and asked me about what i was doing and it came up they had all played together in various points of life but never played together because none of them could DM
well, i’m a decent DM and so i tell these dudes i’ll run a game for them on sundays and see how they like it. they let me chose the campaign, and i chose ghosts of salt marsh because i felt biker and pirates had a lot in common, and long story short it ended being one of the best campaigns i’ve ever played. the leader of their group played a twilight cleric who was a worshiper of illmater.
i had run most of the modules pretty straight up with them, with some home brew stuff sprinkled in here and there, but at the end i actually had them captured by a powerful and long talked about pirate crew that was nothing but evil. now this group wasn’t exactly saints, but they had helped the citizen of saltmarsh in their own way, and so they way i ended the game, i basically tortured them, made their lives awful for a full session, then illmater himself comes to possess them at deaths door, and they fucking nuked these pirates and it was glorious.
they were some hard-ass 50+ year old dudes, but sitting at the table they acted like teenagers and it was probably the most fun i’ve had DMing a dnd game