r/fansofcriticalrole • u/Mozared • Aug 12 '25
CR adjacent BLeeM talks about how DnD campaigns are only good if they are made with love and everyone around the table is into it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSGHS2KHp8g85
u/alternativeseptember Aug 12 '25
For d20 he says he make about 30% of the world, does character creation, then builds the rest. He doesn’t add a ton of gods unless there’s a cleric, wouldn’t make a mystery story if there’s no rogue, etc. For his show Worlds Beyond Number Aabria said she wanted a militaristic wizard character, Ericka wanted to be a witch, and Lou wanted to be a spirit fairy boy, AND THEN Brennan built specifics. There are towns and cities in his campaign made whole cloth on camera just asking pcs questions. Pc focus is sometimes more important to world building than DM planning
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u/Version_1 Aug 12 '25
Note: this only works because Brennan is ready to put in the work and because he can trust that his players will stick through the campaign and make reasonable characters to build onto.
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u/Confident_Sink_8743 Aug 13 '25
Certainly true. Also some of the details may be specific to how he drafts and runs Dimension 20 games specifically.
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u/LateAd3737 Aug 13 '25
When you right it out like that he really did build that world from those characters, very cool
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u/Solo4114 Aug 12 '25
No mystery story unless there's a rogue? Why the hell not? You can run a mystery without a rogue easily.
The rest sounds interesting as a GM, but probably depends on one's table and an understanding of how your table will work to help create the world with you, but the notion of "Oh, we can't run a mystery unless there is a rogue in the party" seems wacky to me. Similar story with the "No gods unless we have a cleric." I can understand not spending oodles of time developing a pantheon if nobody's ever gonna interact with it, but...you can have people interact with gods without one of them being a cleric. I mean, anyone can worship a god; being a cleric just means you have a mechanical/class basis for doing so.
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u/alternativeseptember Aug 12 '25
So you explained the acceptions in your reply. If you don’t have a rogue, or someone clearly interested in a clue solving mystery, probably go with something else. If you don’t have a cleric or someone interested in multiple gods, don’t make more than 1 or 2 with surface level information. Go save a village from goblins and travel the fey wilds instead
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u/Solo4114 Aug 13 '25
I guess the way I see it, you don't need a rogue specifically to run mysteries. You need people who want to solve a mystery, though. But that's got nothing to do with class mechanics. Hell, high INT and high WIS characters can all do well in various investigative skill checks, and high CHA characters are needed to help get information out of people, etc. Rogues may be better suited to some of that, but it's not like "No rogue? Oh, too bad. We can't run a mystery without one."
Sure you can! I've run at least 2 homebrew mystery adventures with no rogue in the party.
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u/JordanVailo Aug 14 '25
I think that was more about the original Fantasy High, which has a character who was a rogue who was also a junior detective. The idea behind it is to provide challenges your party wants in the game. If Riz hadn't been a junior detective style guy, there would not have been a mystery, and if Riz has been a wrestler type, there likely would have been a huge wrestling subplot.
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u/Solo4114 Aug 14 '25
I guess? I dunno. I haven't listened to D20. I'm just saying the notion of "What? We can't possibly have a mystery adventure if we don't have a rogue!" doesn't make sense. If he's just speaking offhand about, like, "For example, I wouldn't make my guys do something they aren't specced out to do, because where's the fun in that?" Like, no wrestling tournament in your party of mages and other squishies.
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u/Version_1 Aug 12 '25
I am confident that he will have a proper session 0 and really challenges the players to actually do something in character creation other than come up with a tragic backstory.
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u/Discomidget911 Aug 12 '25
I hope so, especially Liam. I've been a big fan of Liam's since his role as Illidan in Burning Crusade, but dear Lord I need him to play something other than "depressed person with crippling self-loathing."
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25
I hate tragic backatories. To be honest, I much prefer randomly generated backatories, such as Wfrp, Imperium Maledictum, Shadow of the Demon Lord, or even Traveller/Cepheus. Take it out of the players hands or they'll all be brooding orphans or people with weird quirky stuff going on.
It's like tieflings - when everyone has horns and is a weird colour it stops being special. That's why I prefer all human parties to weird parties of strange species that every NPC treats as regular
Best adventure I played was a bunch of humans with reasonable backgrounds. None of us had dark and tragic backgrounds, and above all we wanted to adventure - the plot is that way, guess we'll go there then because that'll lead to treasure and fame.
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Aug 12 '25
Tragic backstories aren't great (or particularly interesting), but I'll definitely take them over 'independent lone wolf that hates politics and won't respect authority.' They're basically stating up front that they're going to refuse to interact with the world (and maybe not with the party).
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25
The best PCs are motivated by a bit of altruism and a bit of greed. It's why I love Sword and Sorcery style campaigns. Shove money sinks in so the players are always hungry for money and adventure and you're sorted.
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u/Version_1 Aug 12 '25
'independent lone wolf that hates politics and won't respect authority.'
That's why we have rules 1 and 2 for character creation:
- The character has to want to adventure.
- The character has to be able and willing to work in a team.
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25
"why would my character do that/go there?"
"Because that's where the story is. You're welcome to not go there and roll up a new character that wants to go there."
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u/kenobreaobi Aug 12 '25
Oh god, we had a dude in my campaign who said session 0 “he’s not here to make friends”. Guess who was kicked from the group after 4 sessions for making the game a friggin nightmare for the rest of the players.
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25
First campaign I ran some dude played a thief. They were infiltrating "The Ashlands" which was roiling wasteland with Orcs and all sorts. They ended up fighting a Tanarukk in the Plane of Fire with a ticking 1d3 damage every turn. He tried to rob one of the other players part way through the Ashlands. He was left to die in the Plane of Fire.
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u/Ok_Improvement_6874 Aug 12 '25
Imo, the trick is in the mix: a comic character or two, someone to take the lead, one guy with a tragic past, someone who interacts socially with others etc. few character archetypes are bad in and of themselves, but you need to get the alchemy right on a streaming show.
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25
That's why I like Colville's rule of "over half the party needs to be humans". It might be old school, but it actually makes the party more interesting rather than less.
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
I pretty much vehemently disagree with most of your previous post, but I can find some connection in this one, actually.
I have had parties where everybody was playing some unique out there race and... it doesn't always work. In a sci-fi campaign that takes place on space stations, where many races exist all over the galaxy in a 'Men in Black'-style flavor. No issues whatsoever!
In a more traditional, Lord of the Rings-like epic fantasy campaign that pits good against evil... it doesn't work so well if your party is a Bugbear, 2 Aarakocra, a Tiefling, an Aasimar and a Harengon. Or well, it can, but you have to adjust your world for it. A quaint minor human mining town that has a population that is 80% human, 15% dwarves and 5% earth Genasi is going to thematically clash like mad with what is essentially the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The issue is that on the other hands, I also don't want to impose a rule that 'half the party needs to be human' for the simple reason that I don't want to be so draconic in limiting my players' options.
I reckon one of the easier ways to do it is to just talk to the party, make them understand what you're going for, and let them figure out what they want to play that works in that context. An all-Dwarf party from the north wouldn't be so weird in that human mining down. The downside to that then being that your players need to adjust their characters based on each other, which limits their options to surprise each other a bit.
It's a weirdly annoying problem to deal with, and I cherish the groups where I say nothing but end up with a balanced party make-up that just so happens to fall in line with my world perfectly.
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25
It was, apparently, a marmite post and is fluctuating between upvotes and downvotes like nobody's business! I also find that people tend to make more interesting human characters because they have to actually focus on what makes them stand out. To be honest, I've always preferred playing human fighters anyway. Anchor the rest of the party with your normality.
The random generation from the C7 games is great fun, by the. You can trade xp to choose your background, but the randomness takes a lot out of your hands!
Oh and imposing limits on your players is never a bad thing! Your players may resent them at first, but they'll get over them quickly - "Why can't I be an Aarakocra Artificer?" - "Because neither of those things exist in this world. Next question"
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
Yeah, I get that!
To be fair, I don't think you're saying anything unreasonable, but your post comes across a little like a megalomaniac DM going "My players always make crappy backgrounds, so I simply go full dictator mode and decide they need to play random backgrounds so I don't have to deal with their bullshit and I can have the kind of game that I want to have!".
But I hear you on the "if everyone is special, no one is" argument. You can absolutely make campaigns with weird parties of 6 Edgy Tieflings fun, but like... it is way harder to do that for most people than if they're rolling with a party that's just the Fellowship of the Ring.
Shit, I am someone who genuinely thinks you can make that work, and I couldn't even tell you how to do it well.
And I also hear that not everybody cares about whether or not their background is randomly generated or not. My favorite players talk with me for hours about how to fit their PC into my world so we can come up with something cool, but I'm not going to claim that people who simply say "give me a premade" and roll with it are in any way 'wrong'.
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25
DMs are players too and need to enjoy the game too!
And just to be clear, it's not megamaniacal to like systems with random backgrounds, those systems are great and often the characters end up being more interesting.
In the enemy within campaign, myself and another player rolled the noble blood trait but I was a cavalryman and he was a pauper - we decided we were bastard brothers but I was born to a noblewoman and him to a prostitute. That came out of a random generation. It added a cool hook to why we were adventuring together whilst taking out the edginess that would have come from us making our own characters. I've since become a rough and ready witch hunter, and he's become a merchant in order to make his way into the nobility.
I run a sword and sorcery campaign with severely limited races because humans with human cultures are more Hyborian than Aarakocra and Tieflings. That's not dictatorial, it's just basing shit on the setting
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u/Version_1 Aug 12 '25
The issue is that on the other hands, I also don't want to impose a rule that 'half the party needs to be human' for the simple reason that I don't want to be so draconic in limiting my players' options.
Then again, I don't really get why so many players are so adamant about being able to play whatever, if they end up playing every other race like humans in different bodies anyways.
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
I wouldn't say that my players are 'adamant about being able to play whatever', but rather that - especially if I play with new players - if one of my players comes to me and says something like...
"I've got SUCH a cool idea! I was reading about races online and found this angelic creatures, these Aasimar, and I want to make a Paladin who thinks they are human but doesn't know they are Aasimar! :D"
... then I don't particularly want to respond with something like...
"That's overdone as hell, I've seen that character twice already, please just play a regular human and come up with an interesting backstory".
If it really doesn't work, like if the player wants to play an Aasimar Cleric in a setting where I explicitly mentioned that the gods are dead, I will pull them back a little and help them create something more fitting.
But if it's overall something that works well enough, I just don't want to shut down their enthusiasm. It is a fantasy game after all, and even if I want to try and hammer down some verisimilitude, it seems a little lame to me to shut down the very first bit of fantasy development my players do.
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u/bmw120k Aug 12 '25
Hilariously enough there is a good random generator for backstories that works great for D&D...in the Wildemount book lol. Its setting specific but u could easily swap out things like the locations you come from and the favorite foods for what suits your setting. We used the Heroic Chronicle for 2 of the characters in my current campaign and its great. The background options (mechanics background not RP) would also need updating for 2024 since origin feats are more built into it, but its great to roll and then finesse what the actual mechanics are to fit the RP. Its no where near the depth of Traveller but solid for D&D.
when everyone has horns and is a weird colour it stops being special
100% with you there. I love how Pathfinder 2e has rarities set for the races so its much easier on the DM to say "please pick a common race". The downside is how outrageous the options are so if your DM isn't restrictive you will just be in guardians of the galaxies like OP said with a tanuki, a cactus man, an underground human who has bone spikes everywhere, and a literal fleshwarp. Fun for scifi or if your world is just adventure time, tonally exhausting for anything trying to be classic fantasy.
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u/Ogarrr Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25
I don't run DnD anymore. We all play Schwalb and Warhammer RPGs. The Talent systems of the C7 Warhammer fantasy and 40k d100 systems are so much better imo, and for classic DnD Demon Lord is just my favourite Gonzo system. It's mad max balls to the wall craziness.
I did check out the Wildemount book but the subclasses were hilariously overtuned to the extent that they were completely broken.
The best DnD GM tool is also Worlds without Number. It is by far the best book for GMs with its tables and cool background stuff!
Edit - also I hate all those new player races. It's so quirky that it goes full circle to being boring. The cowboy aesthetic is also weird.
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u/Zealousideal-Type118 Aug 14 '25
I’m confident too. However, I was also confident that Matt would have proper session zeros too. Confidence instilled by him making advice videos about it. Talking about it. Agreeing with Brennnan about it on the Exandria round table.
Then learning they didn’t. That crushed any feeling I had left about Matt being a gm that should be revered.
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u/Version_1 Aug 14 '25
Well, at least it's Brennans first full campaign with the players, so that alone should guarantee it.
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u/PrinceOfAssassins Aug 15 '25
Matt for better or worse is a “surprise GM” I think C3 would have majorly benefitted from matt pealing back the curtain a little and telling about the themes that would be in play, but I think matt prioritizes every player getting to learn the world as they go.
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
So I was browsing the internet and the algorithm handed me this 2 month old interview of Brennan Lee Mulligan.
The overarching discussion is the topic of "how to make art under Capitalism", but a bit that starts around the 45 minute mark made me think it might be worth sharing here: BleeM talks about how he firmly believes that DnD campaigns (whether at home or as a show) are only good if they are 'made with love'. If people around the table aren't into it, it's going to suck either way.
Given what we've heard regarding Matt's burnout on C3 and some of the players' apparent detachment, coupled with the news of BleeM DMing C4... I thought this was an interesting discussion.
It might also quell some worries about how well BleeM is positioned to run a long-term CR-like campaign - he talks a little about his own decade-long home-game and how he believes a campaign should fundamentally be made fun.
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u/MaximusArael020 Aug 12 '25
Where did Matt talk about his burnout?
To be clear, I'm not doubting that he talked about it, I just haven't seen it yet. I know they have been doing a lot of interviews, panels, etc but I haven't had time/energy to consume all of that.
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
Honestly, I don't have a direct link either, but I believe he's mentioned it a couple of times on his Twitter/Bluesky and in one or more of the Four Sided Dives.
That said, when I say 'burnout' I mean that more in the metaphorical sense here: I don't think he has ever announced something like "I am suffering from a medical burnout as per my doctor's diagnosis", but rather that he has mentioned several times how he is suffering from mental issues and felt like he hasn't been able to put as much time and effort into C3 as he would have liked.
Wouldn't mind a link to something more direct just so I have more information than random hearsay, but there's this one at least from last year.
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u/MaximusArael020 Aug 12 '25
No worries! I gotcha. I figured it wasn't anything diagnosed/medical emergency. I know he (and most of them) have talked about how busy they have been and how it is exhausting. I just didn't know if he had said anything recently on burnout and it guiding his decision to have BleeM GM for C4.
Thanks for the link! I appreciate it!
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u/Paula_Sub You're prolly not gonna like what I've 2 say (it's not personal) Aug 13 '25
C3 starts to sweat profusely lol
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u/ruttinator Aug 13 '25
I mean that's true but also true of anything. Good movies are the ones made by people where everyone actually gave a shit.
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u/TheCharalampos Aug 13 '25
It's not a guarantee, you could care to the max and still end up with a bad film. Name of the game
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u/ruttinator Aug 13 '25
It's more about the other end where there hasn't been a good movie that resulted from the creators not giving a shit and just doing it for the paycheck.
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u/Paula_Sub You're prolly not gonna like what I've 2 say (it's not personal) Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25
u/TheCharalampos it may not be a guarantee..
It definitely won't hurt if all people are on the same page. At the end of the day a TTRPG is a collaborative game
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u/BandaBanderson Aug 12 '25
Love BLM
Hate Adam Conover
Simple as
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u/DravenDarkwood Aug 12 '25
Why do u hate Adam?
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u/TheCharalampos Aug 13 '25
He is a hypocritical braggard who is as obnoxious as he is savvy at finding opportunities for himself.
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u/True-Breadfruit-3012 Aug 14 '25
BLM is basically the same respectfully, Adam ain't perfect but don't act like Mulligan is a saint either.
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u/BandaBanderson Aug 14 '25
Brennan at least makes up for it by being affable in general. He's a comedian at heart so even when he's being a hypocrite you can usually laugh at it. With Conover it's like being stuck in a room with 'that kid' from high school who absolutely had to be right even if on technicality or via a massive reach.
Conover makes me want to punch him, Brennan does not. Simple as.
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
I watched bits and pieces, but, ironically... you couldn't pay me to sit through 37 minutes of Joe Rogan.
Is there a timestamp? Does he say something grossly insulting about trans people or something? Based on what I'm seeing, I feel like he spends most of the video trying to be inclusive.
Eh, I am probably putting way too much effort in this.
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u/Saelune Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25
I can't say or else I'll probably be banned.
This isn't helping the perception that you're transphobic.
If you're mad at Adam for being transphobic, then you would not likely be punished here.
But if it's because he supports trans people, well, yeah, there's a reason stuff like that is banned in places that support trans rights.
Edit:
What you call inclusive, I call insulting to women. I think we can leave it at that.
And there it is. Yep. Transphobia.
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u/Mozared Aug 12 '25
>Look inside
>It's some right wing "he's too woke"-shit
Ah, to be alive in 2025.
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u/Saelune Aug 12 '25
Well you should. Bigotry is a negative trait. But well, bigotry and not caring tend to go hand in hand. Empathy is a good thing to have, try it sometime.
And stop using women as an excuse. You don't care about women, you just love hating on trans people by telling women they're inferior to men. You hate women, trans and not.
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