"LET them get drunk at the tavern, LET them ignore your plot hook,"
"And then two days later when the ritual goes off, let the goblins come back with an 18th level wizard and smoke the town"

A man after my own heart, this is diabolically humbling and I WILL be doing this to my players.

"So glad to be here!"...aaand he's one "Hey, bud!" away from fully becoming Digby Thistlespring.

Adventuring Academy: Office Hours, also known as "That show where Brennan sits talking to himself for half an hour".
Would watch again.

can totally imagine Brennan as a bartender in the closing hours, polishing away... “wanna hear a story?”

-Prepare one session at a time
-Use bullet points, don't write a novel
-Don't write a story, imagine a setting with some situations going on, and let the players drive the rest.

In reality, if you practice giving control to dice rolls and player choices, and with a little improv creativity at the table, your prep could be an hour or less.

IMAGINE having Brennan as your camp counselor?!

Brennan: no spoilers hahah

Also Brennan: you could have a gritty setting with no healers... you know... hypothetically

In my experience, the difference between guiding the players and railroading them is when you have a specific solution for the scenario's conflict in mind, and therefore start rejecting your PC's ideas as "wrong". That's why more often than not I don't even know how my PC will solve the problem I throw at them, but as soon as they figure out a plan that makes sense and makes for a cool resolution, I let them implement it (while throwing a few wrenches in it for drama's sake of course!)

A list of time stamps for the questions, in case you want to reference stuff:

1:40 How in-depth do you go making notes for session? How much is too much or too little?
6:40 What jobs did you have before College Humor?
7:15 Will Season 5 take place in a more realistic setting, like unsleeping city, or a more fantastical setting, like Fantasy High?
8:00 How do you punish or give cost to rough battles that aren't just limb loss? (Advice on deciding grittiness levels for campaigns)
13:10 What is your favorite type of monster? (Advice on creating horrifying Villains/drama)
16:20 How do you balance and an open world with railroading? (Balance Freedom and Direction)
20:50 How do you riff off of yourself when two NPC's are talking to each other?

I love when he said “you have the railroad and the players decide to travel down it” it so perfectly encapsulates, to me at least, a perfect campaign. You have a clear story, and quests, but if the players don’t want to do it then that’s fine! And you allow them to go stop the train on the tracks and hope off.

I'm like 2 years late, but this 23 minute video has already given me a HECK bunch of things to think about. I only found dimension20 fantasy high a couple weeks ago and you're fast becoming my favourite show to watch!

As for “permanent damage” I think a better thing to punish for huge damage would be semi-permanent where you get stabbed through the arm and have disadvantage on all attacks requiring shoulder mobility for 5 long rests. Or you take a huge blow to the head and suffer a debuff to intelligence checks for a while.

Spoilers for season 5: Is it a more realistic or more fantastical Setting?
Brennan: yes.

Brennan just seems like the most chill guy

23:08 will you though…???? 🤔

I've seen enough Dimension 20 videos to be genuinely terrified of this man. But at the same time become addicted to this humour and wit

I agree so much with your comment on humanoids being the best villains. I had a Dragonborn preacher called Father Huxable Kraw who was the dad of one of my PCs. He was secretly running a cult to Tiamat, and had the whole town under his thumb. Even the party found him really hard to fight because "he's just so damn charismatic and likeable!" amazing roleplay and a great final battle. It's great when the players can argue with their villains and call out their awful behaviour, only for the villain to crack a smile and say "well it took you long enough to notice!"

If there's any DM's out there that are new or feel that they need some guidance with how to run things I recommend the book, "Return of The Lazy Dungeon Master". It literally brings up the point that Brennan did about preparing the minimum amount you need in order to feel comfortable when improvising. I still do a few mistakes here and there when prepping, but using some guidelines and resources really helps in honing your style.

I will consume and love any D20 content you put out but put me down as a vote for more AA podcast episodes

When Brennan is talking about "the best villains are humanoid" and thinking about what does it take for two thinking, feeling people to get to the point of violence, I started thinking of Silverado:  "Goodbye, Cobb.  Goodbye, Paden".   Absolutely the top.  I would love to recreate this in a D&D game.