What DMs can learn from the new D&D movie

Funny enough, I find the bridge puzzle actually still a great example for newer DMs, cause it shows that players aren't gonna wait for your overly-long rules to be laid out and will just break it within a few moments. lol

My friends and I interpreted Zank not as an NPC, but as a guest PC who could only make one session, so they gave their friend the spotlight. Which, we thought, if everyone agrees to knowing this person is there to look cool for one day, would be a pretty fun one time thing

My biggest takeaway from the movie as a DM is Attunement. I love the way they handled attunement, and never thought about the process of attuning to a magic item. It just happens in D&D RAW after a set period of time. I kind of want to create some kind of challenge for the PCs if they want to attune to certain magic items.

4:28 "Holga hitting something really hard with her axe isn't gonna solve anything." Holga hitting the dragon so that he gets angry and breaths fire: Am I a joke to you?

I think a great lesson for DMs from the movie is that chunky Themberchaud. How many times have you fight a typical red dragon? And how many times have you fight a chunky dragon? Sometimes you can make the monsters different from the ones in the Monster Manual to surprise your players and make more memorable fights

I thought they did a solid job of capturing the feel of DND. The whole thing had a nice teetering-on-the-edge of mayhem vibe. I liked that the characters and plot were playful without being flippant. Its a pretty thin needle to thread. I enjoyed that Xenk was pretty blatantly a DMPC, dude mostly came out of nowhere, was clearly vastly out of the parties league, gave them some directions and literally wandered off (that sequence was probably my biggest laugh)

I love the bridge puzzle because it feels like a DM just messing with his players because they were complaining the puzzles have been too easy.

I loved the movie’s message of resilience and adaptability. You don’t truly fail until you quit. That’s the point of D&D. You keep going and come up with a new plan, like in real life. That’s also why I love the Indiana Jones movies.

My main takeaway from the movie was that I should let my druid players wildshape into certain monstrosities because owlbears are awesome! 🦉🐻🤘

"There's always a bigger bad." My mind went straight to Qui-Gon saying "There's always a bigger fish."

I love how the movie feels like an entire campaign, from character introductions to side quests and little personal quests. Great video!!

My personal favorite is the Speak With Dead scene where they waste the five questions on the first corpse and then miscount the number of questions on the final one. In the post credits ending, the poor guy is STILL waiting for the last question. Also I didn't think the paladin was an NPC. He struck me as more "the temporary party member made by the guest who joins the campaign for all of one session" character. Not every table does that obviously, but I think I've seen it happen on a few streams. I know Yogscast did it a few times back when I used to watch them.

One thing I am going to use that I saw in the film, was how they handled the attunement Simon did when getting the helmet. I liked how they made it part of the characters story instead of him just sitting alone for a period of time.

The real thing I learned is that people love chonky dragon. Giving a defining trait to some encounters can help them stick out and be remembered by your players.

Love this; nice to see the balance between "here's some D&D game stuff" and "It's a movie; relax!" working out well 🙂

A lot of folks screamed about the druid, with too many wild shapes. Rather, it made me consider/ reconsider using spell slots for additional wild shapes( or, vice versa), and access to some monstrous wild shapes. We can learn stuff, here.

The puzzle is definitely a joke about DMs making overly complicated puzzles only for the players to fly or dimension door across (guilty as charged here). Xenk is kind of the same way, he just felt really... intentially created and overacted, like the DM was trying to show the PCs "See! He's good! Such a good man. You can trust him! Admire him. Respect his advice!" which I appreciate them showing and poking fun at because, once again, DMs totally do this lol

0:39 Lesson one: You can skip travel 3:01 Lesson two: You can make a combat encounter's goal something else than defeating the opponents, like escaping them, or a bunch of some other stuff 5:04 Lesson three: You can do "You see that behind the person you thought to be the main villain there is another, more powerful villain" more than once

Lesson one is so true! I have been "skipping" travel for ages. One player introduced an idea to the table they called, "campfire moments" where there are opportunities to talk about the adventure, or discuss background, and so on. When travel is the focus I will right out a number of encounters, slap numbers on them, and roll to have them come up at random. It appears like random encounters to the players, but each of these items is structured and pre-planned giving the illusion of randomness.

While it would definitely be a bad idea to plan something like this, I legit loved that Xenk came in and one-shot everything. It felt like the DM realized that the party was too disjointed and unfocused for the encounter and were only going to be TPK'ed, so they were like, "Fine, this guy does it all for you, jegus, let's all just move on." And him walking away in a straight line afterward like some Bethesda NPC with buggy pathing just wrecked me. LOVED it.