Matt Mercer's Amazing DM Advice! #mattmercer #criticalrole #dnd

Critical Role's Matt Mercer has soem fanastic advice for both newer DM's and established Game Masters as he sits down to talk shop with fellow Critical Role DM's Liam O'Brien, Aabria Iyengar and Spenser Starke!

[Usedtohavemyrealnameonhere]

If i need my players to touch something i put a sign on it that says "do not touch." 100% success rate.

[Dorvahn]

It makes sense mechanically too, strange magic items be having strange magical effects!

[BigEEF]

I dm’d for the first time a few days ago(first dnd session ever), and yeah it took a little bit to get in the flow but once your going it’s awesome seeing how people interact with the story. Gotta be on your toes for improv to semi steer them with out them noticing and losing that immersion. I loved being the dm

[caporalblack]

Ah so players are moths. Make things glow and they will follow xD

[MrPhukawf]

His gentle nudge sounded like a fucking neon sign to me. My group fucks with everything

[sliimetown]

Fucking love all these folks they're so great at everything they work on, their effort will NEVER go unnoticed! ❤❤❤

[thekyhguy]

I did the glowing stone thing(I was an artifact in a museum). The players thought it was cursed and burned the building down. I 86ed the campaign idea I had to have them hunted down by *not Indidana Jones* and a pack of ghosts that lived there lol

[ranisunshine]

I love how invested everyone gets when the other is speaking ❤ it is the most beautiful example of active listening ❤

[Keaggan]

Nothing like a little railroad painted in a good narration ;D

[LocalMaple]

Other option:
Roll me a [type] check.

If they roll low, narrate them completely missing something the other players notice. If they roll high, they get insight to what you want them to do.

Players: how will we ever get through this door?
DM: Rogue, please make an Investigation check.
Rogue: 7?
DM: You trip over a loose piece of rubble, and your thieves tools fall out of your pocket.

[PuppetSmile]

I've only been DMing about a year now, but I recently did a bit where the party go through a weapon check before they could meet the queen, and conveniently failed to mention that magical effects would be disabled. So the paladin that normally took a certain form was forced into their base state. He KNEW something was about to go down, but had no concept of what it was. Ended up being a fun interaction, but OH was he stressed going into it.

[Lastminuteadventuresdnd]

Matt’s approach is smooth, I’m more like “WOULD YOU GO OPEN THE BOX!” Much to learn :)

[elementual]

That, and I feel like a lot of players will get into the roleplay of it. "Oh, DM said I feel drawn to this thing? Guess I'm drawn to this thing!"
Like, they know it's an outside influence probably, but don't know if it's good or not, but they for sure know that their character feels this and it's harder for them to resist it.

[irlbirdman]

Had a twilight warlock with a divination and corvid theme. If the players ever got lost or couldn't find the quest items, I would float a black feather near or on top of a place of interest to nudge them in the right direction.

[matthewbreen]

Leading Plot Hooks and the Illusion of Choice are powerful

[Senok]

It also helps, if you don't say this to EVERYONE in the room, only one or two players - they will feel their characters a bit more connected to the item, and the more personal nature makes them more willing to check it out. At least that is what my experience was.

[kasiamleczarska]

We're currently playing Call of the Netherdeep with my group. During the race in the Emerald Grotto, we saw a glowing gem on a pedestal but assumed it was just a light source and didn't pay much attention to it. Our DM made it so that the other party we were racing reached out to the gem and those of us who were still in the cave got the same vision that they did. Turns out we almost ignored a Vestige of Divergence 😭

[justinbell]

I prefer to be blunt.

"Hey dumbasses, you forgot the stone that powered the magic dooehickey."

[aznzero]

And if all else fails, just talk to them above table that this is where the story is heading. Playing with people that you know and trust is the most important part of roleplaying! Don't settle for people who have wildly differing values from each other.

[mrfox]

There's definitely a lot of different ideas around this problem, and my favorite is two methods that work separately, but are meant to work together.
One is the gumshoe method, which is effectively saying "if it's in the room, and they need it, just fucking tell them it's there, " and any roll on the player side is to give them more information on the clue/item, i.e. if the roll is successful the player learns it's infused with magic or whatever.
This method is to eliminate as many failure points as possible, we've all fallen into the mystery snag where we have a clue but the player never finds it because they made a bad roll; it's a dead end narratively, and it fucking sucks.
The other method is the Three Clue Rule, in effect it's a way of design that gives multiple solutions to a choke point problem, The Alexandrian has a wonder blog post about it, with different ideas of how one should convey and use information to continue a story.
So this crystal we have is fun, but we need three ways for the players to either learn that it'll give you important information, or three other ways to gain the information the crystal would have given; hell, having all of those options would be the best idea.
Matt's method is a very quick and dirty method, which works perfectly well for improvisational scenes.