Hey thanks so much for sharing my article! I loved your tweaks and additions and I think I’d also definitely have phrased some of it differently today than I did 4 years ago. But this was a nice surprise to be alerted to as I finished my day of running D&D at a summer camp!

After co-DMing with my best friend, we have come to realize that I am a Rollercoaster/ Theme Park DM. Yes I railroad, but the story is moving so quickly between awesome player moments and epic story beats that my players wind up stepping out of a session like they just went on the Velocicoaster. And there are more immersive open areas where the party can be creative and have multiple paths ahead that lead to more rides that inevitably lead to more immersive open areas

I'm the "slowly by osmosis passively absorb the rules by watching actual play and DM guide videos on YouTube, then one day be like hmm maybe I can actually play the game" type

13:29 "One thing taxi drivers have to watch out for is..." (to the right of the video is a Game Grumps recommendation titled "Get in loser, we're hitting pedestrians".) Well, yeah, that too.

Cyan / Magenta / Yellow makeup for the printer is SUCH a power move!

11:10 in my acting class, we used a tool called a GOTE sheet we had to fill out for each scene. So we had to determine our character's Goals in a scene, the Obstacles they are facing, the Tactics they plan to use, and what their Expectations were for the scene. That can totally be useful for D&D as well.

I feel this so hard. I tried to write this whole setting type thing, started running it, and realized voicing/playing NPCs was actually one of my worst skills 💀

“Competitive color calibration.“ You got me. French kiss. No notes. Thank you!

1:48 the fact Pointyhat needs their emotional support human familiar for the photoshoot-

15:27 I was listening to this just alongside typing into my Google Docs "Home Rules 2.0 (final)" and was laughing sooo hard

I burnt myself out on DMing a while back after running a 2 year campaign and I think this video just helped me realise why I got so worn out. To some extent, I think I was trying to wear every single one of these hats - a sandbox world with ticking clocks, homebrew magic and weapons and mechanics, music playlists prepared in advance, generally wanting to get rulings and numbers right but letting a rule of cool thing slide, 100+ pages of prep, secret plot messages to certain players based on in game events...

I think if I go back to DMing, I'll be watching this again and really thinking about what kind of DM I actually want to be, instead of trying to be all of them at once! Hopefully that will be a little less overwhelming and a lot more sustainable for me - Thanks for breaking those down, eye opening!

One bit of immersion i like to do as a dm is call everyone by their character names, i feel like it helps my players fall into their characters

As a novelist (or story teller as I prefer) one of the first hard lessons I learned was: don't create solutions, create problems and let the players solve them. In my current game the players have come up with about 3 valid ways of defeating the reactivated God killing weapon that is currently slowing tearing their world appart.

Speaking of The Novelist, and players making unexpected choices, it reminds me of a game I ran where my players had to get a particular artefact that was held by a reclusive baron in his private collection. He never let people into his house except for one one day a year when he held a private banquet for all the movers and shakers in society. The idea was that the party would go undercover, infiltrate the banquet, and do a heist. I had a whole folder of notes prepared: maps, dinner menus, a list of other party guests, each with their own missions, schedules, and motivations.

We sit down to play the adventure. The players arrive in town. They do a bit of investigation and find out about the artefact, the party, etc. Their response? "Why don't we just buy a rare artefact of our own and offer it to the baron as a trade?" And so instead of the planned party heist we had three hours of completely improvised antique shopping, having to come up with artefacts, shopkeepers, and dramatic plot twists completely on the fly. And somehow it still ended with them bursting into the baron's manor, all guns blazing, snatching the artefact and making a run for it. It was utter chaos but 10 years later is still probably my favourite session I've ever run.

I started DMing in 1987, and I have always been, by your terms, a Taxi-Driving Immersionist Vibe-Checker. I have always seen the job of the DM is facilitate the fantasies and stories of the players. The job is creating satisfied, excited players who, hopefully, had the best time of their lives - and for me, nothing else matters in the end. If the players beg to play again, or to continue even after six hours at the table, then that is doing the job right.

One of my favorite immersion moments as a DM was I bought a bag of small cheap charms and six bracelets.. at the end of the session we'd talk about our favorite moment and then I'd look through the bag for something that fit with what happened... they players all got to keep the charm bracelets and would always remember to bring them.

A long time ago I tried "Taxi Driving" a Cyberpunk 2020 game. Instead of interacting with the world of possibilities laid out before them the players just went to a bar and passively waited around for somebody to hand them a quest..... That was a learning experience.

19:02 this can massively improve character interaction. We had a random one of cultist who would randomly go "Nyehe" and we loved him. After the adoption process our dm expanded the character into the most heartbreak yet expected betrayal😂😂

I'm definitely a "rules sage" but for a reason not mentioned here.

For whatever reason my table is often made up of a combination of shy nerds and outgoing theater kids.  As a result, I've learned that the "rule of cool" disproportionately benefits, outgoing confident players; they're more likely to speak up about the crazy idea the have, they're often more creative and imaginative.

As a result, I've found using the rules as a guide also creates an even playing field between characters/players.  No player is getting more cool benefits and epic moments just because they have the audacity to pitch an insane idea.

Ethan of 1000 faces cosplay runs a very amusing and entertaining game. I have had the pleasure of wstching some of his games at Origins and I would love to play!