I was planning on going to go to school. Screw that, Spoony’s on.

I don’t have much experience as a DM, more as a player, and it’s not because I didn’t want to. It’s that I’m more of a sci-fi fan, so I wanted to master Cyberpunk 2020, but my douchebag friends never wanted to play it, because they were more into fantasy (“But D&D/Warhammer is better, because it has dragons and magic and shit”). When I finally convinced them to try CP2020 they completely ruined my campaign, with constant jokes and stuff. We played it maybe 3 times total, because it was just no use to get them to cooperate. That’s kind of my sad story of DM-ing (GM-ing to be exact).

Best thing a DM can do: give the players meaningful choices and consequences. Give this video a watch; it’s made for video games and not pen-and-paper, but designing campaigns for the two are pretty similar.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/choice-and-conflict

Is there a recording of the Scorpion Queen game? If you played over skype I figured there might be and I’d like a link.

In one GURPS campaign, my first character died to due to the party being lead like sheep and they ganged up on the poor peaceful guy and killed him, my second character got his foot cut off by a blade trap (that originally missed me and hit the “star” of the game, but after it was all said and done, it was decided that I took the hit…But instead of it cutting my head off like it should have done to the “star”, it took my foot, after 8 adventures of getting it back on, I retired the character). My last character for the campaign was a hobgoblin, which I wrote a character story for. In it he was chosen by god (very blessed advantage) to be a champion of the people, to rise up and become a paladin (church knights, is what paladins were called for this game). He had the delusion that he knew he was chosen and was going to fulfill that destiny. His name was Orange. Everyone remembered his name, because nothing rhymes with orange, as out misteral, theif, assassin, dude found out, Tomar Ray (My buddy Brad was huge into comics). My friend James had a elf named James… Austin was Mysteria the girl wizard, Kevin was Lellan a “sea elf” which was code from this point on for Dark Elf, who was the “star” of the game, when he bothered to show up… At one point the “sea elf” tried to assassinate all the party members using things he got from a powerful wizard, the only person to die was Shawn, and he left unhappy and we didn’t see him again for a month. So, with that plan failed, the “sea elf” kept going back, till one game session the wizard came looking for him, himself. He asked us to track down the elf and kill him. The wizard also revealed that he been the one plotting against us and the kingdom ever since he arrived. (Our gm and the “star” had a falling out, over a girl, which I ended up dating, cause she said the only reason she hung out with them was to get close to me, but that was later on after the “star” stopped showing up…yeah… lol). So, the “star” sat there as we were given everything needed to track him down, cause he really did owe the wizard for his help, even though the “star” failed, he still owed the wizard for his time and energy. So long story short in one game session we tracked him down, fought him, I gave a speech about my character and how he will never forget the heroic name of Orange, to which I killed him, and James pointed out that he’s dead, he’s never going to tell the story, I said but we are still alive to spread the legend. That was the third game session with me running Orange, and everyone referred to me in that game as Orange.

I always enjoy these countermonkey videos.  As a DM of a Pathfinder tabletop set in my own homebrew world, I’ve used a lot of those techniques to help keep things smooth.  Over at my blog, http://www.thedungeoncrawl.blogspot.com/, I’ve a series from when our group played through the 3.5 version of Tomb of Horrors.

Let me tell you though, nothing sucks more fun out of the game then a problem player.  There are various ways of dealing with one, but man it is a giant pain. Oh, and for the record, I really wish I could play in a AD&D game with Spoony…lol

I love these D&D stories, I can relate with everything you are talking about. I’m a pretty veteran player I think since I’ve played half my life (I’m 24) so pretty much every story you are telling I can think of something similar that happened in my group. Anyway keep these up Spoony! 

Maybe he should make a video about playing a Paladin since it seems a lot of problems come from the class?

The D&D game my friends started recently has been pretty painful in some parts thanks to a severe lack of character development. Our cleric (named Anderson; see if you can get a name blander than that besides Smith) has no backstory whatsoever, and our ranger just decided to start growing marijuanna in our underground safehouse, as that’s basically the only thing he knows how to do metagame. It sucks. Badly. Thank god our DM takes cares of us who wrote a backstory for our characters and tries to work it in, otherwise, I could care less what happens with the story. This is my first campaign, and I’m so glad we have the DM we do, but mother of god, there’s no interaction between the characters. We need a Spoony to kick Anderson and Ranger the Planter into some sort of a role.  -_-

I look forward to a new Counter Monkey as much as I look forward to a new regular TSE episode. Table top gaming is something I’ve been trying to really get into for years but things seem to always fall through for one reason or another.

Aeofel “Al” Elhromane. Nuff said.

I love the “I’m that kind of thief” its like triumphant version of the old gag.

Ahhh nicknames, In longest running game I was in I ended up with so many of them. Even with the others in my group where still being called their original.

Character: Kor Blackfang, a cat like race primarily used as slaves
Nick names/titles:

Lord of the Dance: upon learning the effect of a magical artifact I found I chose to enter a tournament and test it out. as i stood in front of thousands of people about to strike my opponent I started to dance. Due to the effect of the artifact anyone watching me was forced to start dancing identically.

Cat Man Zoom: Being a race of cats I could naturally run fast, but after a magical potion was bestowed apon me my speed more then doubled as my moment speed became 736 feet per round.

Kitty Moses: Being a slave race my lifes goal was to free as many of my kind as I could. at end game resulted in about 3600 slaves freed, but just as the game ended I finally located the location in which my race was created and had the highest concentration of my kind as slaves. With the help of a god I received a holy wooden staff my fur turned white and pulled the 10 plagues on them until they finally set my people freed.

Caller of Storms/destroyer of civilizations: In the beginning of the
game I revived essentially a deck of many things unaware of anything it
did. even though it could either summon a monster, status effect,
fortune, or weather effect depending on the suit I drew.. no matter what
all I ever could pull was weather effect. at one point I was in an area
fight, while trying my best when I decided to try out my cards to see
what would happen. After drawing 6 cards all of which where the highest
cards in the deck for storms they combined to become a mega storm which
lasted 2 months utterly destroying the city we where in. Which was
actually a library the size of a city bent on the study of books in the
pursuit of knowledge and kept more books and hidden knowledge then
anywhere else in the world. it was an accident I swear!

yey new intro

Whats in a name? Being a half-elf makes it easy to not really overthink your name. Keep the flowing last name and come up with a catchy Human-esque name.

Tyril (Teh-rill) Maldrin, aka THIEF GO PICK THAT LOCK.

Okay he has more of a personality. He’s very friendly with the dwarven community, enjoying their dwarven ales and their boisterous tales. He has very few, if any, racial attitudes since he comes from Baldur’s Gate (and since he’s in the trade business to begin with, he inevitably meets and greets many). He could probably chum it up with a drow if they were in a big city and in a public place.

He didn’t leave to go seek his fortune; he left because he wanted to map out effective trade routes from Baldur’s Gate to the east, leaving his family to map out the ocean routes that go west/north/south. He became embroiled in adventure to pay for his journey, however he’s become involved in even bigger events, and feels a small sense of obligation to help prevent a more disastrous event that would ruin the world. He has a huge distaste of undead, feeling them corrupted and manipulated beyond their control. Also nearly being killed by them and seeing his city being ravaged by them doesn’t help matters.

His entire playstyle reflects a weird divide; he’s more strong than fast, but plays more fast than strong. Like he didn’t want to become a rogue. At the same time, he’s still very competent at being a rogue…but he’s not afraid of doing simple boot kicks to things he finds unthreatening. (I booted a spider in the face instead of stabbing it, because it was just embarrassing…one spider missed so bad it faceplanted into a wall.)

And ontop of that, he’s even got a magical tinge to him (dilettante – sorcery). So there’s that too, and he’s shown even stronger magical abilities…and he’s also had a divine tinge, demonstrating paladin powers of Sehanine. But he’s unable to master either without actually taking the time to do so…so every level or two right now (Heroic Tier) he’s flipfloping back and forth between paladin MC and sorcerer MC. Is he going to take up the mantle of the Paladin, to reflect his distaste of the undead and having a proper ability to slay them? Or will he give into his soul of sorcery and unleash ice magic?

And I had to work with all this in 4th Edition, where customization and roleplaying gets a little trickier with the power system and the lack of skills to adequately reflect the seafaring nature of your character without just getting the whole package. I feel like I literally have to semi-gimp my character to adequately reflect an interesting nature to him.

But thats just my little excerpt in D&D character making. It can be something as simple as a Rogue and have a really ordinary story (map-making) that gets gradually more complicated either externally (the main plot of the DM) or internally (character development, power/skill/feat/paragon choices).

spoony  you said you streamed your games could you tell me when and which site  you used   i would like to watch one   Thanks love the vids

This video has the best timing ever. I’m about to start DMing my first campaign and am kind of nervous as to what exactly is expected from me as a DM. This video really answered a lot of questions which no guide I’ve read even touches. Thank you for this video Spoony. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about this game from you by watching you talk about it for an hour than I’ve learned after countless hours of guides.

Y U NO HAVE EXAMPLES?!?!

On the topic of BiG Bad Evils.  I always like the Always felt but never seen.  My current campaign has a rampaging Void Oni that took over their land.  They haven’t seen the Oni since it went through their village when they were kids but his actions are felt every session.  So the characters get a sense of urgency in that the longer they leave this guy alive the worse the area around them is going to be.  BUT they can’t just go fight them because they have to fix the current problems he’s caused otherwise there is nothing to go back to.  Thus I don’t have a bunch of level threes facing off against something level twenties should be fighting.

Oh god… that brings back memories. We had a running gag in an adventure where the barbarian would designate a guy that he wanted to just bash over the head as “bob” in a conversation. If I remember correctly, it started with some smack talk about a villain they just wasted without a sweat, saying “that Bob-fella sure went down fast” because they couldn’t remember his actual name. The barbarian wasn’t a talkative person per se, but in a talk with a guard they needed to bypass he  got smart and asked “So, Bob, what do you do for fun around here? ” The rest of the group started chuckling and prepared to flank him without attracting unwanted attention because they imidiatly got the hint without talking out of character. I loved it.
“Try not to say no.” is about the best advice I got from a Dungeon Masters Guide. Try adding a twist, or a complication to what the player said – but try to say yes somehow. If the player says “I climb in through the window, and you laid out a plan for a mansion filled with encounters, do not say – “no you can’t” even though you might have several good reasons why it wouldn’t work. Try working around that, shift some encounters around and ultimately place the item or person they are seeking at the very other end from where they are going in.
The second best advice for a DM in my opinion is “make it memorable”. Whatever your party is doing, tell it in a way they’ll remember. One of my best experiences as a GM was a fight between a lvl 1 party and an ogre in a ruined tower. A very basic encounter, but it was designed as a boss for that evening. By describing the effects when that ogre missed them by a hair or how they got lucky when the ogre rolled low on the damage rolls they remembered the fight for more then a year. “You know, that fight was tough, but compared to the ogre back then, I think we got lucky on this one” they bantered, several levels later infilitrating a menacing castle.
Thats when I knew I did a good job… (beside the fact they asked me to DM again and again oc :D )

I know this comment is going to be lost in a sea of comments, but hopefully it gets read.

I think my DM is gonna like this particular Counter Monkey. He always adds ambiance with carefully picked music from youtube and he gives each character a unique voice and style.

Good, good. I’m learning. Now what? It’s a start to a campaing – I have lots of ideas to start, the problem is what is to do after the first or the second session – how to keep the game stick and how to keep the players interested and what to do when the bastards want to kill your most important npc. 

I just recently got into a DnD game with a friend and a few of his keep this coming Noah I need the advice!

There are people more suited to playing than dming. I’m one of the former. I’m good at making npcs and villains and such, but not so much running a whole game… I’m not bad, but there are plenty better..like my dad…god my dad is an amazing DM. He’s made completely from scratch stories that were just awesome. As for the goals, my brother and I made a whole party that had one huge goal, making a huge plan for the purpose of becoming Gods. Every quest was to build power and collect items in order to eventually gain divinity. My whole famly caught onto D&D fast and it became our family game…until we separated and never had the time to build a game up. Now we enjoy other games like settlers of catann among other board games.

Recently discovered Counter Monkey (always thought it was about monkeys… playing counter strike?). Hoping for more episodes and anecdotes.

 I figured, given the discussion of it i

Hey Spoony (or really, anyone),

I actually have a few questions about specific situations I’ve found myself in as a GM, as well as a couple of general questions:

1) When you find yourself in a catch 22 situation of your players wanting more info about your world before they can make decisions on their characters, but you needing them to make decisions before you can make more of your world, how do you break that kind of stalemate?

2) If you find you’ve GM’d yourself into a narrative corner, do you have some tips for getting out that gracefully. I had to ham-fist it by forcing them to teleport somewhere and the spell going awry, so would like some tips on getting out of that more subtly in future.

2) I have several guides on being a GM at home (Pathfinder’s being my favorite) but wanted to know if you knew of any other good ones (4th edition Red Box, various White Wolf storytelling guides, etc).

3) How do you efficiently create a large number of semi-plausible NPCs for the characters to interact with in town? I mean, it would be very tedious and pointless to create names/bios for 30+ NPCs that the characters may only see for 30 seconds of game time, but you don’t want to have the town just be “the place I go sell stuff at, and oh there’s a barmaid who brings drinks too”.

4)  Where can you get 3D terrain features from (like actual walls/hills/trees, not just 2d flat stuff on maps)? If you don’t have the money to afford authentic ones, do you have tips on improving it (example: in my game, we had a lot of air combat, and one of my characters actually had access to a shop, so he and I machined up full plexiglass platforms to represent elevation/flying/etc in game).

I really love hearing all the great stories and out of the
few campaigns I have been I then you brought up people getting nicknamed over
their personality or something that they had done it reminded me of one fight
that thanks to how it was played help to earn a friend of mine his.

We had been tracking down the various body parts of a long forgotten deity who
if they were brought together during a particular ritual the deity would be
resurrected with all the power they had when they had been kill.  Through trying
to track one of them pieces, I believe the heart; we needed to go through a
forest that was guarded by a druid who’s had a raptor as an animal companion.
About midway through the druid rides in on the raptor jumping down and
demanding that we leave or perish by his hand which is when the battle
started.  My friend, our parties sorcerer, got lead initiative and used
his new feat of sculpt spell in conjunction with a fire spell where and
sculpting it in where the 4 squares he picked would all hit the raptor and
killing it in that one shot thanks to his damage rolls, earning his is title of
the “raptor blaster”.

Haven’t played PnP RPGs in years but iirc the correct answer to an unsuccessful trap search is always “You don’t find the traps.”

When it comes to recurring villains, a nasty alternative to the cowardly villain could be a lich. They are pretty interesting in that it might be pretty easy to find his lair and kick his ass, but he’ll back in action in just a few days. Trying to truly kill a lich is kinda like killing Sauron in LotR – except your “fellowship” has no idea were the ring is or if it’s a ring in the first place.
Yeah, it’s more like killing Voldemort, but I tried to stay classic fantasy-ish…

And when it comes to memorable characters, it’s definitely worth to look outside the typical stereotypes. If you’re lucky, you come up with pretty awesome stuff, like “Meggin Smallfoot, halfling necromancer!” (okay, he’s a sorcerer, but those tall village idiots won’t know the difference XD !! )

My character is named “Buzz McCoy” and my DM always rolls his eyes

We want a new live stream! ’nuff said. Also more Counter Monkeys regarding adventures you’ve played… Theive’s World was effing awesome to listen to.

 I am totally swiping the “Sir Malar” idea for an NPC…

This series of videos is the whole reason I have sought out RPGers in my area. The stories are amazing, the adventures sound great, the friendships seem genuine and it sounds like a lot of fun.

This and the other non-story one has helped me a ton. Just simple things he mentions in this really helped me out. Central Casting is fantastic at filling in details of a basic backstory I think up. 

I’ve actually created detailed histories for six different characters now. Each with at least one or two things a DM can turn into a hook. An elf’s mother killed by a red haired bandit and her Inigo Montoya style quest to kill him, a brother questing for a cure to his sister’s ongoing illness, thief trying to earn enough wealth to pay off a former employer (it occurs to me I may have just created a Han Solo with that one… oh well.), a half-orc looking to be the D&D equivalent of the heavyweight boxing champ so people will respect him instead of insult him, etc.

This is gonna be fun.

What I would like to see in a future installment is something about men playing female characters and women playing male characters. I’ve seen a lot of division on whether or not this is a good idea, or whether there is a double standard where women get a pass playing a dude, but a guy might be made fun of, etc. Would make for an interesting topic.

I am glad you released a video on Gm’ing. I currently have trouble on developing plots. I tend to shy away from the main story and never get back to it. Everyone in the party notices this and it drives me kinda insane. My side quests tend to override the main objective and I never know how to link it back. How should I go about developing side quests, or at least a distracting cause that doesn’t completely ruin the main story?

As an additional topic, I only really know how to run D20 because people say it’s DnD based, and it’s versatile to use in different scenarios & settings. I once ran an open world scenario where all of my maps used Google Earth as city layouts & Building types and locations. (The entire campaign ran between a main city and surrounding areas.) I was wondering if I should consider this tactic again. It worked decently in the city I was using, but it was always difficult to get to destinations because cities are usually grouped in a residential or business fashion, and I never really was able to conveniently get my party to a store of some kind without leading them there myself. In every other circumstance (battles, mission locations, improvised fortifications etc…) it was easy to make a quick and effortless environment for the players. My question is then, is using Google Earth as maps for a setting more beneficial than making your own?

Counter Monkey is a good series but it feels like lately its completely replaced all the vlogs you used to do.

I liked it when you’d give us hour-long unscripted reviews of the movies
you’ve been watching and the games you’ve been playing. I’d like to
hear your take on Hunger Games or Mass Effect 3 or whatever else you’ve
been entertaining yourself with.

Not saying quit doing Counter Monkey, just mix it up a bit, variety is a good thing.

Post Scarlet snoopy is just funny and entertaining as classic Spoony, but there is one thing i miss

i miss his old hair style, seriously get a hair cut

One house rule I always have around the table is, if you’re character lacks a back story one I am free to make one as needed

I hope you make more of these. I’m new to D&D and and really appreciate the insight these videos have provided.

Spoony hasn’t tweeted in a few days. Is he OK?

I’m not sure about this but I have a feeling that almost all of long time PC RPG players know the Witcher series (either the books or the game). I’m kind of surprised by this because I thought both of them are either minor or cult classic stuffs that not many people know outside of Poland (the country originated in).
This would sound like a blasphemy for fans of the series but considering how the first game was designed in such an unusual way that may be even counterintuitive and frustrating for a lot of players. I don’t want to get into details, but for this reason I think it shouldn’t have received this much praise from user reviews in a site like metacritic and gamespot. I do love the game but it is kind of strange. Maybe the story and player choices helped a lot but I know some people who couldn’t even finish the game and I also stopped playing it for 4 years since I bought it. At the time I was probably too young to appreciate the storyline, and when I played it again I was sucked into the story and I was able to tolerate most of the quarks in the game. Another strange thing is that the game got higher scores than the 2nd one despite the fact that TW2 is considered to be a lot better than the 1st.

Spoony, we two have a lot of the same ideas, and thanks to these series, you put the tricks and ideas into words, and that helps immensly.
One idea for a recurring villain would be a guy that seem like a good guy, until the final adventure involving him, that might work, like a king who does the wrong things for the right reasons.

I have been listening for 30 mins and still have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. FUCKING CAPTAIN MORGAN!!!

wheres this death clock stream?

 Always wanted to play D&D, just going down to the local gamestore where I know they always have games going, just seems too scary. Damn social anxiety!

Nice vid Spoony.

However…as someone who watched all of Wyrmwick, seeing as how Azad, representing the entire party walked up to a god damned death knight and told him in no uncertain terms, “Yeah, sure dude.  We’ll totally kill the captain of the town guard for you,” and then immediately left the party, an action which lead to both Dhother Cylinae and John Dayth being hounded constantly by a death knight they had no chance of killing, a death knight who assaulted and nearly killed beloved NPC Councilman Albert, Caitlin Cormac’s step dad, both of which had nothing to do with the original deal, just to motivate the party into killing the captain of the guard, and finally forcing the party to fight a level 20 death knight in an under equipped and under powered assault on his keep, a fight which regardless of the fact that they did triumphantly win and walk away from they did all die during the course of it and only came back due to the kindness of Bahamut, I don’t think Dhother would ever say, “Yeah, that Azad is a smart guy.”

No, I think he might say, “Wow.  That Azad guy really fucked us in the ass.  God we’re lucky to be alive.”

Just saying.

Spoony an ychance  are you going to make counter moeny into a pod cast,I would very much like to have your counter monkey program on my mp3 player so ICan listen to it when ever I have to go any where. Or if Crashing at firends place and I cant get to sleep.

This might defeat the purpose of this whole show, but would there be a forum, or blog, or some way for other people to donate role-playing stories to be read or as a video or something?  While I love your videos and your stories especially, I love hearing other people tell stories too and I and my friends have collected a bunch of them just by playing.  Additionally, I’m curious what other games people play and what crazy stuff they got into on their adventures.  Just a thought.

really liking the videos, although it seems like every comment before mine is from 9 months ago…

I do have a request for a video, if you haven’t done it already and that is grid-based combat. I’m actually fairly good with the story, but I started out with no map and just describing things and it often involved just using common sense to tell the players if they could reach something this turn or next turn.

Now I’ve started using a whiteboard and some chicken scratch, and that works pretty well but players still try to get the most out of me that they can, by making me define distances in feet to ensure their characters always reach a target and get to act during their turn.

So when you say you use the maps, are these all 5-foot grids? Do you use the rules for tumbling and attacks of opportunity? I’ve only ever played one campaign on a grid and it really turned me off to the idea, since it felt like two of the players specifically built their characters to abuse the grid system by laying down ground effects and forcing the enemy to pass over them multiple times. Meanwhile it felt like my melee fighter always had trouble getting to the enemy, and once he did he was always blocking somebody’s ranged attack, it was quite frustrating. Do you have any advice for how to handle movement in combat?

In a Shadowrun game recently, a player had a chameleon suit and a guy saw him anyway, He called it and I said “Yeah…that is weird isn’t it?” this adapted to where the enemies had anti technology detection suits

back in school, we used to play this game called jack city. it was run
by a crazy bulgarian who had basically made a point of becoming the
stereotype that borat parodied and it didn’t really have rules or fixed
classes. instead you could be anything, go anywhere and fight anything
you wanted and he would draw everything, including the battles on a piece of paper.
at one point i was fighting salad fingers, who would just moan whenever i hit him and, like gogo from final fantasy v, could only be defeated if you did nothing. then he would eventually just wander off, find a rusty nail, sting himself and bleed to death. later, i became a necromancer, slaughtered an entire village and resurrected them to build me a castle.
looking back, it was really childish and kind of retarded, but damn it, it was awesome when i fought mao tse tung with the help francisco franco who was wearing a paladin armour.
got me into role playing^^