DrowPiratRobrts
2019-08-15, 10:54 AM
Hey everyone, back in February or so I came up with this idea and got feedback and input from several of you. I compiled questions and organized them, and I'm happy to say that the first DM Spotlight is finally here! So, what is this post? Well more than anything, I wanted to present a holistic view of some DMs in the community, how they run their games, and even a little of who they are as people. Based on input from everyone, it seemed like a basic Q&A format similar to a magazine interview would be the best format. Questions range from specific rulings or styles to things entirely unrelated to D&D.
This is less of a place to come and argue and tell people they're wrong, and more of a place to come and learn (or just appreciate someone else's perspective on this game we enjoy). Please respect the fact that some of the answers to questions may contain information from someone's life outside the game. That being said, feel free to ask follow up questions in the comments! This is still meant to be a forum and an interactive experience. The DM in the spotlight isn't committed to answering any or all of them, but they've certainly been given the green light to engage as much as they desire with all of you. So if you're really interested in further information on any of the questions, feel free to ask. I also hope this adds context when you see some of these DMs commenting on other threads. If you know how they run their games in general, it can help you to understand their perspective on stealth, initiative, multi-classing, and much more.
If you would like to be interviewed or if you have questions you'd like to see show up in future interviews feel free to message me. I can't guarantee that I'll get to everyone, but I'll certainly add you to the list. In general I'm starting with some of the older, more frequent posters here in 5e.
At the bottom of each post you'll see serialized links to the other DM Spotlights for ease of access.
So without any further ado, sit back and enjoy the interview. The DM for this spotlight is Tvtyrant.
Know Your DM
Hi! I'm Tvtyrant. I have been playing D&D since 1996 when some friends and I played AD&D 2nd edition for the first time. I played a Dwarvish Cleric who was an alcoholic and adventured to pay for his addiction (which may be a family thing, my family runs to addiction very heavily.) I moved on to 3.0, then 3.5, then E6 and 4E, and then 5E. I DM exclusively, and aim towards high magic, low power settings.
I like most things about 5E. I love that bounded accuracy keeps monsters relevant longer, I like the lower power level and smaller numbers creep the edition has, and the simplicity of design relative to others.
I was painting the outside of a second story building and a spider jumped on my face. I fell head first off the ladder and my last thoughts before losing consciousness were "wouldn't it be funny if I fell off the ladder."
D&D is no longer my main hobby. My main hobbies now are hiking/scrambling and going to the gym, but I also play D&D and MTG consistently.
I'm going to avoid the obvious survival manuals and podcast on how to get off desert islands as boring. I think a book on astronomy and a book of songs would be good, The movie would need to be something replayable and uplifting, so probably Princess Bride, and the Podcast would be Joe Rogan just for the variety.
Metagaming
Dying a lot.
I don't know if that is my thing. I tend to the social contract system; everyone agrees to play a character who will be in theme and play nice with the group when they sign on.
Something really political and low key, like a conflict between the butler and the head chef over who is in charge of the kitchen staff.
Thousands! The biggest one was allowing a really optimized character into a group of low optimizers. I bought a lot of tier talk so the Goliath Barbarian didn't seem like a big problem in a party with a Cleric and Sorcerer. He ended up dominating every encounter, and I spent a while trying to kill him in game before giving up.
Getting players to not look at their electronics/pay attention when it isn't their turn. I am experimenting with assigning monsters to the players so they have more things to interact with.
I usually prefer to run the game. I know I'm not going to make a complete hash of it, while playing in other individual's games that is not a guarantee. I have played in some explosive groups before.
I don't use modules except to steal things from them. I remember there was one from 4E about a winter king you have to murder that I rather liked, the idea of a tiny air-robot that ran on ice was neat.
Behind the Screen
Horror heavy. I like the heavy narration and ominous feeling that comes with bad horror games, and you can do weirder stuff without it seeming out of place.
Badly! D&D/roleplaying has the issues of wanting to be crunchy enough for the wargaming guy but easy enough for the political guy, and it ends up frustrating everyone. I mostly run very short but highly lethal combat to keep it interesting.
I tend to play the bad guys as saturday morning cartoon villains. Even with non-villain NPCs I try to run them as people with goals that are more important than giving the party a clue.
I make notes on a computer file these days, and try to keep them updated between game days. Most NPCs can be made with a simple role/job/archetype/goal description. Steve the Baker, balding lech who wants to seduce the young widow is enough most times out of game.
House rules are the best thing in D&D, they make the game much more varied and interesting. Personally I use lingering injuries that become scars, morale checks for opponents, and crafting an appropriate piece of loot on level up. I like the game to feel more real, so the character has been working on the item since they last leveled and it gets done at just the right time.
I used to do heavy planning, now I do improv. Life is too short to spend 12 hours getting ready for a four hour game.
I do. I had a Bar-luga and his imp friend who I made as annoying as possible. The Bar-luga would talk in a very slow drawl, the imp would talk like it was trying to finish the sentence before it started.
I'm not really concerned with either. The rules are there so everyone knows what to expect, RAW and RAI imply we should care what the designers made or intended, and beyond the rules working well I don't give a fig.
The Party
Word of mouth. I have lots of old players so if I want a group I contact them and they bring some new people with them.
The biggest problems I have had with new players are them not knowing how to roleplay or them being too shy. The former leads to a lot of playing "cool" characters that don't have any depth (especially anime or movie ripoffs) and waiting for me to stick the plothooks in their mouths. The latter is them usually just watching everyone else play, often not knowing what to do and repeating the simplest actions over and over instead of asking for help.
I generally tell them to play themselves first and experiment from there, ask lots of questions and don't be afraid to fail. Sounds like a self-help book when you think about it.
Getting Into Character
Something with shapeshifting, summonming or the ability to create objects. I love Druids and Shadowcasters especially, the flexibility and resource management are amazing.
I tend to be drawn to evil characters who are obsessed with power, or characters who are dealing with old addictions/issues. These tend to be Clerics or Druids and are usually Dwarves for some reason. I had a dwarven cleric who wanted to become a Lich to free herself from alcohol addiction and an Elven Druid who was a "cannibal" when transformed and vegan when not.
To 5e, and Beyond!
Ranger needs to be retired. No one can even tell me what a Ranger should be, much less how to get there. Aragorn knockoff is basically Fighter with healing, Drizzt is a fighter with a figurine. The most room to grow is the Barbarian, it has a lot of room (where the Ranger badly squats.) Where are my barbarian horse archer subclasses?
Forums are mostly dead and it is alive, the rules are tight enough to keep the community from being openly toxic, and I like a lot of the posters.
I have played football, baseball, volleyball, epee fencing, kickboxing, judo, and wrestling. I keep up with football and basketball, and I would love to find a really low tier baseball league to play in.
At-will combat manuevers. Just stealing the combat cantrip format and making them more varied and less magical would be enough, I like mundanes to be tactical.
All of the ones from Spelljammer. Spelljammer is so easy to fit into other editions; it worked great as pulpy 4E space opera and would be good in 5E (which is really fixed AD&D.)
Thanks everyone! And a huge thank you to Tvtyrant for taking the time to answer these questions! See you next time, and I hope you enjoyed the post. Feel free to leave any feedback for me in the comments below or in my inbox.
There's nothing to post here yet...
This is less of a place to come and argue and tell people they're wrong, and more of a place to come and learn (or just appreciate someone else's perspective on this game we enjoy). Please respect the fact that some of the answers to questions may contain information from someone's life outside the game. That being said, feel free to ask follow up questions in the comments! This is still meant to be a forum and an interactive experience. The DM in the spotlight isn't committed to answering any or all of them, but they've certainly been given the green light to engage as much as they desire with all of you. So if you're really interested in further information on any of the questions, feel free to ask. I also hope this adds context when you see some of these DMs commenting on other threads. If you know how they run their games in general, it can help you to understand their perspective on stealth, initiative, multi-classing, and much more.
If you would like to be interviewed or if you have questions you'd like to see show up in future interviews feel free to message me. I can't guarantee that I'll get to everyone, but I'll certainly add you to the list. In general I'm starting with some of the older, more frequent posters here in 5e.
At the bottom of each post you'll see serialized links to the other DM Spotlights for ease of access.
So without any further ado, sit back and enjoy the interview. The DM for this spotlight is Tvtyrant.
Know Your DM
Hi! I'm Tvtyrant. I have been playing D&D since 1996 when some friends and I played AD&D 2nd edition for the first time. I played a Dwarvish Cleric who was an alcoholic and adventured to pay for his addiction (which may be a family thing, my family runs to addiction very heavily.) I moved on to 3.0, then 3.5, then E6 and 4E, and then 5E. I DM exclusively, and aim towards high magic, low power settings.
I like most things about 5E. I love that bounded accuracy keeps monsters relevant longer, I like the lower power level and smaller numbers creep the edition has, and the simplicity of design relative to others.
I was painting the outside of a second story building and a spider jumped on my face. I fell head first off the ladder and my last thoughts before losing consciousness were "wouldn't it be funny if I fell off the ladder."
D&D is no longer my main hobby. My main hobbies now are hiking/scrambling and going to the gym, but I also play D&D and MTG consistently.
I'm going to avoid the obvious survival manuals and podcast on how to get off desert islands as boring. I think a book on astronomy and a book of songs would be good, The movie would need to be something replayable and uplifting, so probably Princess Bride, and the Podcast would be Joe Rogan just for the variety.
Metagaming
Dying a lot.
I don't know if that is my thing. I tend to the social contract system; everyone agrees to play a character who will be in theme and play nice with the group when they sign on.
Something really political and low key, like a conflict between the butler and the head chef over who is in charge of the kitchen staff.
Thousands! The biggest one was allowing a really optimized character into a group of low optimizers. I bought a lot of tier talk so the Goliath Barbarian didn't seem like a big problem in a party with a Cleric and Sorcerer. He ended up dominating every encounter, and I spent a while trying to kill him in game before giving up.
Getting players to not look at their electronics/pay attention when it isn't their turn. I am experimenting with assigning monsters to the players so they have more things to interact with.
I usually prefer to run the game. I know I'm not going to make a complete hash of it, while playing in other individual's games that is not a guarantee. I have played in some explosive groups before.
I don't use modules except to steal things from them. I remember there was one from 4E about a winter king you have to murder that I rather liked, the idea of a tiny air-robot that ran on ice was neat.
Behind the Screen
Horror heavy. I like the heavy narration and ominous feeling that comes with bad horror games, and you can do weirder stuff without it seeming out of place.
Badly! D&D/roleplaying has the issues of wanting to be crunchy enough for the wargaming guy but easy enough for the political guy, and it ends up frustrating everyone. I mostly run very short but highly lethal combat to keep it interesting.
I tend to play the bad guys as saturday morning cartoon villains. Even with non-villain NPCs I try to run them as people with goals that are more important than giving the party a clue.
I make notes on a computer file these days, and try to keep them updated between game days. Most NPCs can be made with a simple role/job/archetype/goal description. Steve the Baker, balding lech who wants to seduce the young widow is enough most times out of game.
House rules are the best thing in D&D, they make the game much more varied and interesting. Personally I use lingering injuries that become scars, morale checks for opponents, and crafting an appropriate piece of loot on level up. I like the game to feel more real, so the character has been working on the item since they last leveled and it gets done at just the right time.
I used to do heavy planning, now I do improv. Life is too short to spend 12 hours getting ready for a four hour game.
I do. I had a Bar-luga and his imp friend who I made as annoying as possible. The Bar-luga would talk in a very slow drawl, the imp would talk like it was trying to finish the sentence before it started.
I'm not really concerned with either. The rules are there so everyone knows what to expect, RAW and RAI imply we should care what the designers made or intended, and beyond the rules working well I don't give a fig.
The Party
Word of mouth. I have lots of old players so if I want a group I contact them and they bring some new people with them.
The biggest problems I have had with new players are them not knowing how to roleplay or them being too shy. The former leads to a lot of playing "cool" characters that don't have any depth (especially anime or movie ripoffs) and waiting for me to stick the plothooks in their mouths. The latter is them usually just watching everyone else play, often not knowing what to do and repeating the simplest actions over and over instead of asking for help.
I generally tell them to play themselves first and experiment from there, ask lots of questions and don't be afraid to fail. Sounds like a self-help book when you think about it.
Getting Into Character
Something with shapeshifting, summonming or the ability to create objects. I love Druids and Shadowcasters especially, the flexibility and resource management are amazing.
I tend to be drawn to evil characters who are obsessed with power, or characters who are dealing with old addictions/issues. These tend to be Clerics or Druids and are usually Dwarves for some reason. I had a dwarven cleric who wanted to become a Lich to free herself from alcohol addiction and an Elven Druid who was a "cannibal" when transformed and vegan when not.
To 5e, and Beyond!
Ranger needs to be retired. No one can even tell me what a Ranger should be, much less how to get there. Aragorn knockoff is basically Fighter with healing, Drizzt is a fighter with a figurine. The most room to grow is the Barbarian, it has a lot of room (where the Ranger badly squats.) Where are my barbarian horse archer subclasses?
Forums are mostly dead and it is alive, the rules are tight enough to keep the community from being openly toxic, and I like a lot of the posters.
I have played football, baseball, volleyball, epee fencing, kickboxing, judo, and wrestling. I keep up with football and basketball, and I would love to find a really low tier baseball league to play in.
At-will combat manuevers. Just stealing the combat cantrip format and making them more varied and less magical would be enough, I like mundanes to be tactical.
All of the ones from Spelljammer. Spelljammer is so easy to fit into other editions; it worked great as pulpy 4E space opera and would be good in 5E (which is really fixed AD&D.)
Thanks everyone! And a huge thank you to Tvtyrant for taking the time to answer these questions! See you next time, and I hope you enjoyed the post. Feel free to leave any feedback for me in the comments below or in my inbox.
There's nothing to post here yet...