Prep Can Be Literally Easy and Actually Fun

This has been the most helpful create my groups encounters. I feel like I have to populate my world with all of it's information and lore and it always makes me feel overwhelmed but I can see now that working via the encounters may be easier for me.

The assassin vine exists in the tomb of annihilation adventure along with a bunch of other mean plant stat blocks.

It's level 3 tho

Hey !

Do you intend to translate Flee Mortals ?

What a helpful and great video. Well done.

Another heavily important thing for new DMs - when choosing monsters for a low level party encounter (Lvl. 1-5), if the monster has multiattack, double the monster's challenge rating. If you think about it, since they attack twice, it is like there are two separate monsters of the same CR attacking once. I have had too many times where I throw two CR ½ monsters against a Level 1-2 party and it turns into a TPK because multiattack really makes them more like two CR 1 monsters. (Amphisbaena from the Theros book is definitely NOT CR ½ 😅)

I'm using these ideas as the foundation for the first adventure of my upcoming 4e campaign, set in Wildemount! :) The most helpful advice in my case was what you said about proxying monsters. 4e DOES have strangling vine monsters, but they were too high in level. However, the Stormclaw Scorpions can grab adventurers, and even have an immobilizing sting ability! I took their stat block, swapped the lightning resistance and damage type for necrotic, and made them "necrokudzu", natural foliage twisted by the necromancer's magic. Similarly changed the level one Fire Beetle into "Toxic Spiders" by swapping fire resistance and damage to poison. This should be a perfect encounter to introduce my party to the tainted woods of the Salivirwood! ❤

Vine Blight

the cleaning staff of the War Room feel something is OFF

YOU CANT TITLE YOUR VIDEOS LIKE THAT.



-Sincerely, the LGBT community.

You’re fantastic sir. Holy balls. What a trove of great ideas and information. Wow

Thank you so much for all the years of content Matt, I started dm seriously by watching your videos and I’ve dm long enough to see 90% of my players become dms on themselves and one even better than me, your content always inspires me when I need it.

I don't use minions I just use the massive damage rules. It makes big hits matter more and generally speeds up encounters.

Also makes characters feel badass when the zombie is stunned they chopped it in half.

How dare you, I AM an artist!😤

This video has helped me out prepping for multiple sessions. A little bit of improv and creativity helps, but if you wanted a campaign to grow organically, this is how it is done.

I became DM because none among my group would do it and our old DM moved. I've run a module, not so hard. But now i have so many ideas... and getting them out has resulted in hours of prep and re-writing and re-re-writing and.... you get it... I didnt realize how over-complicated i had made it. I fear letting the players down so i keep postponing the session and trying to get it perfect and planned with aliances and politics and.... In the end the players not playing is the disapointment. Im glad i found this video most importantly because it reminded me to just do... SOMETHING fun... and the rest will come.

This is exactly what I needed, I still need more answers to more questions, and I didn't come here to be called out like that.

the your mom line got me, love you matt

Damnit Matt, the momma joke demands a Like lol

This is incredible and so inspiring! I can’t wait to use this method to prep for my next play. Thanks!

I love how this technique is exactly how I scramble-created a quick scenario I needed when the players went left instead of right, so to speak.

Ay: Matt. You’ve been like my older brother in the TTRPG realm for five years now. Thank you.

Where I get stuck with these is all the little questions I know my players will ask. In this case, it'd be things like 'how did the paladin and witch get past vines+spiders without either dying or at least leaving corpses?' (I know I can handwave with "pass without a trace magic" but that feels a bit cheap.)

I've actually been doin the statblock snip and paste in my notes for a while (I sometimes even bullet point stats, skills or attacks in a small blurb for even easier reference; either way Flee Mortals is da bomb...
however I often want the stats in a side by side block, so I still end up clipypastey but no biggie :)

Literally took your advice and now have a session 1 planned for some high school students tomorrow. Total time to plan: 20 minutes, and that was because I was picky about my map.

Amazing video. Thanks so much for that inspiration and an awesome approach that gives confidence!

An interesting game to prep for IMO is Vampire: the Masquerade.
If you can get your players into a proactive mindset, they'll basically churn out plot-hooks themselves. The game even has mechanics that encourage this, with characters having a colorful roster of options for friends, enemies, frenemies, and contacts, so they'll always know at least somewhere to go to get the ball rolling.
On top of that, each player usually has to select an ambition, which is generally some large scale goal they can work towards and is theoretically plausible, but achieving it is a whole story of itself.

If you have the right players for it, a chronicle can reach critical mass, where the GM doesn't have to introduce any plot themselves anymore, simply reacting to the players' actions.

DMing is always so stressing, actually thinking about quitting rpg

Killer advice. And a huge thank you for the Rhod Gilbert and WILTY clip! Never thought I would see the day my D&D and WILTY habits would cross paths!

Prep is my favorite part… imagining how my players will react to things makes it so fun.

GREAT spider name! I believe in George the Spider-friend

"And even if they fail, what happens?
They fall in the river. They get wet."

Me: And then the witch comes out of the cottage, and starts casting lightning attacks directly at the river-

Yeah a week to prep would be nice. Me and my wife started play with me DMing year or two ago. Yeah now she wants to play..... Every night.... Which is awesome, this just forces me to work on my improv and her note taking cause guess what I'm not fixing to remember all the stuff I think of on the spot. We are in are 2nd full campaign and still have fun just playing and rping at the kitchen table like we are Kids again. Man I love this game

Your mom has a coherent hole.....shut up.... I'm freaking dieing here.... lmfao

The DM job is somehting I wont do, and know for a fact I wouldnt like. I make characters thats it

Its great to bring up the topic of pacing. When running a low level encounter, like Phandelver, it is AMAZINGLY easy to have a TPK. When I was running Phandelver I had to change the timing of attacks, the motivation of the goblins, or the composition of the attackers to make sure the level 1 adventurers we're just bulldozed.

Love this video. I always over prepared at the beginning. Now I improv most details. It's helped me greatly to develop my presentation skills for work too.

I laughed way too hard at that one comment... you know, that one. Shut up! Lol

First Matt references Taskmaster and now he references WILTY. What excellent taste he has!

Was wondering when the most recent one of these would be. Been trying to binge through a while now

I thought this video was going to be about colonoscopy prep when I saw the thumbnail in my recommendations

So good, so smart, so helpful. Thank you as always!

The part about letting your players argue and you are watching the show...soooo true! If I can get my players to forget it's D&D and argue and debate in character, I feel like I did my job as a DM! ❤

I enjoy prepping for my D&D session so much, that I literally have a drawer full of campaigns and scenarios that I might never even play because when I run out of things to prep for my next current game I just go off the rails and start prepping other stuff. It's like this wonderful creative sandbox full of pure thought experiments and creativity

"No one's going to show up at your door to break your legs." 🤣🤣🤣

no the whole sitting back and watching your players argue and debate is my favorite part of being a dm. seeing them try to figure out whats going on and seeing all the things they think of.

This was insanely helpful. I played D&D about 20 years ago. Stopped because my DM got weird and it wasn't fun anymore. Recently I decided I missed it and would like to give DM-ing a try. Between this video and an SRD with the combat rules breakdown, I'm pretty sure I can wing the rest! I LOVE the tip of stealing good player guesses to use in the game.