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[LeoLeonardoIII]

I'm still struggling to Roleplay NPCs as DM. It's really starting to hurt my games I feel. Does anyone have any good advice? I'm a bit anxious about it, so I tend to stutter and underact. I also have to stop interrupting myself to insult myself after I say something cheesy/dumb.

Just relax, don't try to be good at acting.

You can distance yourself from the character by speaking in third person if you're just not feeling it right now. For example: "I don't know what's on the mountain, but everyone says there are snakes in the trees and strange men stalk the roads." vs. "The farmer doesn't know, but repeats rumors he's heard about snakes in the trees and strange men stalking the roads." It doesn't seem like such a huge difference, but at sometimes I find it easier to keep things separated.

I suggest making a little list on some scrap paper of what the NPC knows, then put an X next to the things he isn't willing to share. You can throw it away - it's just for your use during this conversation. Later you'll get used to putting yourself in the NPC's position and segregating all your DM knowledge away and just using what the NPC would know.

Next, and this reflects my personal RPG values, but consider all NPCs expendable. If the players want to murder the baron, who cares? Sure it upsets your plans for future adventures and plots, but it also greatly complicates the PCs' lives in interesting ways. That isn't to say you need to let them get away with anything they want. The PCs are 4-6th level. You don't need to impose your will on how the encounter plays out by making the baron a pushover 1st level goober nor a 20th level demigod in disguise. Let's say it's reasonable that the baron is 9th level and has some bodyguards of 3rd level and a ton of men-at-arms who are 1st, all because he's a minor noble carving out a small fief on the edge of civilization. If the PCs just start blasting him, he and his troops will respond. Maybe the PCs win, maybe they lose. But they will definitely learn from their experience. When players recognize that the DM isn't going to give any NPCs plot immunity, they become much less cavalier about destroying NPCs, because someone they screw over or kill may just be the key to what they want in the future.

Similarly, all PCs are expendable. If the Elf F/M is shit-talking the baron, it's OK to have the baron get pissy and order them all out. If they fight back, we have a fight, and possibly indefinite imprisonment or whatever if they lose. No PC is a precious and unique snowflake. Don't hesitate one moment to drop Drizzt into a volcano is all I'm sayin', there's PLENTY more where he came from. When players recognize that the DM isn't going to pull their bacon out of the fire for them, they become more careful and sincere in their roleplaying and pay more attention to the game.

Finally, try to avoid complex NPC interactions until you get more confident. For example, I might want to portray a town guard as sincere but move-along-now, and a later encounter as actually sinister and scheming because he's trying to herd the PC into an ambush. I need to be able to roleplay the differences well enough to give the player a chance to notice that the second guard is not behaving exactly normally. If I can't do that, I'll call for a character Wisdom check or something and if successful, mention that the guard seems kind of shifty. Up to the player to decide whether that's because he's giving bad advice or just because he's waiting for a bribe to drop or whatever. I guess my advice here is use the rules and rolls to make up for any inability you have to convey subtle hints.

[AlleeCat]

FOr other DM tips, you should look up Noah Antwiler's show, Counter Monkey.
He has some great DM advice and even player advice, and it's usually phrased in fun little stories of him and his friends playing together.

[sjm9876]

If you feel your acting isn't up to scratch, then not acting is an entirely valid option. If you're playing with a lighthearted group, then mocking yourself is also valid, but not ideal as it makes bad habits for more serious games.

But yeah, the best way I found to pick up GM skill is trial and error. Find what works for your style above all. I act very little as my acting is incredibly out of place in the otherwise well detailed worlds I make. Though I have found that as I go on, I slip in more snippets of speech than I used to.

[timferius]

Thanks for all the advice! I look forward to putting it all in practice next session.

Played Terra Mystica and the D.C. Deck building game this weekend, as friends were visiting. D.C. deck builder was actually fun. It's very similar to Ascension (which I prefer to play via the iOS app), except each person has a hero with a special ability, and there's only 1 resource. Despite the reduction to one resource, it had enough depth to play several times in a row without feeling burnt out.
terra Mystica is something else. It's a resource management game stacked on top of an area control game, with about 10 different systems in play at once. Despite that, it wasn't too hard to graps, and was great fun. There was a nice bit of interactivity (which sometimes lacks in euro style games), though not too much still.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

FOr other DM tips, you should look up Noah Antwiler's show, Counter Monkey.
He has some great DM advice and even player advice, and it's usually phrased in fun little stories of him and his friends playing together.

So I watched a bunch of his videos completely, gave it an honest try, and screw that guy. His lecture is verbose and aimless, he lacks charisma, and his opinions are pedantic and biased in a way that makes them useless. His front page has a 2-part review of D&D5 that's largely devoid of valuable content, and which is based on a read-through, having never played the game himself, one of the cardinal sins of a reviewer.

I'm not saying a viewer couldn't get something useful out of watching his stuff. I'm saying you could get a dozen times the value from a good content producer without feeling like you're slogging through a one-sided conversation with that boring guy who must tell you in detail how his Drow Ranger really pulled one over on those centaurs that one time.

Side note: some topics really are simple enough to say in text, and video or audio just slows down the absorption rate for the student, and is less efficient traffic-wise. Justifying video or audio requires presenting something that takes advantage of the medium, which he doesn't do.

Let's take his "Don't Split the Party" video. Here's what I would say on the topic:

1: Splitting the party is a common choice, but make sure you assess the risks associated with two or more smaller, weaker groups encountering the same dangers as they would as a whole group.
2: It also slows down the game, meaning less stuff gets done in total in the game session. You also have half the group watching, bored, at any time.
3: If you send a scout, make sure he doesn't go too far ahead or press his luck - his job is to look and listen and bring back information. The scout's job is essentially to ensure that the party isn't surprised, and that they surprise the monsters.
4: Assume your scout may get caught - don't load him up with equipment or story items.
5: If the scout (probably a Thief) steals stuff, the rest of the party will have grumblecakes about it, and bickering may result.

Please tell me you didn't take 25 minutes to read that, and that it wasn't as boring as listening to some dude drone on?

Finally, he uses Disqus for his comments rather than a simple RE-CAPTCHA, discouraging casual commentary.

TL;DR: Counter Monkey is low quality and not worth the time.

[Fniff]

Yeah. Spoony just doesn't have a good presentation style on Counter Monkey. I mean, an hour long video on critical hits has what should be a minor five second footnote on vampire clans take up around ten minutes. Most of those ten minutes are humming and hawing. It's like he's made it up on the fly.
Hrm... Would anyone be interested in a podcast or a video about tabletop roleplaying? There aren't enough good discussions on those that are easily accessed.

[Neonivek]

Yeah. Spoony just doesn't have a good presentation style on Counter Monkey. I mean, an hour long video on critical hits has what should be a minor five second footnote on vampire clans take up around ten minutes. Most of those ten minutes are humming and hawing. It's like he's made it up on the fly.
Hrm... Would anyone be interested in a podcast or a video about tabletop roleplaying? There aren't enough good discussions on those that are easily accessed.

He started off MOSTLY fine, in fact a few were really insightful.

Unfortunately Counter Monkey turned from a "Guide for how to DM or play with examples given from experience" into "A blog" and is basically useless now. It isn't unusual for a topic to be brought up but never really explored.

[scriver]

His front page has a 2-part review of D&D5 that's largely devoid of valuable content, and which is based on a read-through, having never played the game himself, one of the cardinal sins of a reviewer.

As that is the one episode I've seen of his show, I know for certain he tells you really, really clearly at the start of it that this is an extremely early first hand impressions thing of the book as he literally just got it the day before.

[Gatleos]

Yeah. Spoony just doesn't have a good presentation style on Counter Monkey. I mean, an hour long video on critical hits has what should be a minor five second footnote on vampire clans take up around ten minutes. Most of those ten minutes are humming and hawing. It's like he's made it up on the fly.
Hrm... Would anyone be interested in a podcast or a video about tabletop roleplaying? There aren't enough good discussions on those that are easily accessed.

He started off MOSTLY fine, in fact a few were really insightful.

Unfortunately Counter Monkey turned from a "Guide for how to DM or play with examples given from experience" into "A blog" and is basically useless now. It isn't unusual for a topic to be brought up but never really explored.

I think the problem is he ran out of stories. Spoony used to do vlog videos all the time, but a lot of that got crammed into the Counter Monkey videos when he ran out of interesting stories to tell in them. He does have some interesting things to say sometimes, it's just that he takes an hour to get to the point. I particularly liked that story he told about one of his players accidentally throwing a jar of acid at the Demigod of Rape's face. Haven't enjoyed the newer ones enough to even finish them.

Guess I'll go back to lurking because I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

[Flying Dice]

Just an idle thought that I had while driving home for Thanksgiving:

How would you all go about fixing the Toughness feat without breaking it in another way? My initial inclination was to tie it to character level, something akin to +1 HP per HD. That'd give it a curve of impact, with it being most useful for the squishiest characters and least useful for those who are naturally toughest. You'd progress from it adding an average of 40% extra HP per level for classes with d4 HD (i.e. the average is 2.5 HP per level, so you'd be bumping that up to 3.5 HP/level effectively, though obviously that's less relevant at lower levels with max HP for 1st level and not enough time for rolls to average out) to an average of ~15% extra HP per level for classes with d12 HD.

That's probably the simplest way I can think of to make it useful without being overpowering, and probably both more balanced and easier to manage than some sort of percentage buff. Thoughts?

[timferius]

Welp. After months of enthusing about 5e, buying the books etc. 75% of my players just informed me that, nah, they'd rather not play another d&d game... Fffffffff------

[Bauglir]

Just an idle thought that I had while driving home for Thanksgiving:

How would you all go about fixing the Toughness feat without breaking it in another way? My initial inclination was to tie it to character level, something akin to +1 HP per HD. That'd give it a curve of impact, with it being most useful for the squishiest characters and least useful for those who are naturally toughest. You'd progress from it adding an average of 40% extra HP per level for classes with d4 HD (i.e. the average is 2.5 HP per level, so you'd be bumping that up to 3.5 HP/level effectively, though obviously that's less relevant at lower levels with max HP for 1st level and not enough time for rolls to average out) to an average of ~15% extra HP per level for classes with d12 HD.

That's probably the simplest way I can think of to make it useful without being overpowering, and probably both more balanced and easier to manage than some sort of percentage buff. Thoughts?

If it's 3.5, they already printed that as Improved Toughness. If it were me, I'd rename that to Toughness as you've said, and make Improved Toughness something like "You get DR X/-, where X is half your level. Whenever you are dealt damage, you can spend an action point to reduce that damage by half. Halve the damage after any other modifiers, including other multiplications."

And Toughness is a prerequisite for that. I kind of like my feats, especially in feat chains, to have really big impacts, though, which might not be to your game's liking.

[Flying Dice]

Nah, the impact of feats is part of why I like 3.5. I just think that the really basic requirements like Power Attack and Point Blank Shot requiring a feat slot is a tad silly.

I don't really count Improved Toughness as fixing the problem, since it's basically just exacerbating it -- you're taking more Toughness-related feats just to make it less of a bad decision, which cuts into the feats you could spend on useful things. It's like, Toughness itself did have a niche, for stuff like really low-leveled squishies in one-shot games, but that's about it. Especially since IT is based on BAB, so the classes that need the HP the most (and are most likely to take the feat to begin with) are the least able to benefit from it.

[Fniff]

Welp. After months of enthusing about 5e, buying the books etc. 75% of my players just informed me that, nah, they'd rather not play another d&d game... Fffffffff------

I know that feeling. My sympathy to you.

[Bauglir]

Especially since IT is based on BAB, so the classes that need the HP the most (and are most likely to take the feat to begin with) are the least able to benefit from it.

Eh, wot? It's literally what you said up above, although it requires a +2 base Fortitude save which does mean the people who want bonus hit points the most can't get it until level 6. Which is a problem. Ought to have no prerequisites, really.