Matt Colville Videos

How do you take "the blacksmith's daughter has been captured by goblins" and make it fresh and new for players who have played a lot of D&D, or are even just familiar with the classic tropes of the fantasy genre?

Help us describe settings and characters in a way that makes them come alive to the players, like an author would. I don't necessarily want to bore my players with Tolkien levels of description, but also don't want to say "It's a Mountain, use...

What're some techniques for making a "Hot Gun" start to a campaign -- as in, starting a new story in the middle of ongoing action? What're cliches to avoid? Interesting tricks to deploy for blindsiding expectations. What to do once the action...

Use the same system you used with this video to create a city, empire, farmland etc. I found this video extremely helpful when making a town but Cities are so much more detailed, more people, crime etc. Same with Empires, how do I make people that...

Often times as DMs we want to help our players move along or advance as much as possible. Sometimes that help can feel like we're giving too much away or heavily hinting at the "right" course of action. In reality, we don't want to control our...

Could/should Prestige Classes be added to 5E at some point? Or do you feel that the branching class choices are enough?

I find the rules for D&D are very scant when it comes to the actual process for searching for traps and this leads to many home brew approaches, or even worse, the rules shift depending on whether the DM actually has a trap to find; lenient when...

What makes this setting unique? Why might I want to run my game in it? How has Greyhawk shaped the traditions of D&D as we know them today? The Birthright and Ptolus videos were great, let's do more of that!

Every time I try to build lore, I start getting to many ideas and get sucked down the rabbit hole where I have to set everything aside and start fresh. How do you get the bones of lore but still keep it open to change ideas and to grow?

I would like to know how to run a mega dungeon, my group of friends want to run a hybrid game where about half of their time is spent in this dungeon. Similar to the "temple of the ocean king" from Legend of Zelda phantom hourglass (for those that...

I have found difficulty striking this balance before, and would like to see what you have to offer from your repository of experience. Its very frustrating when your party has very disparate or just flat out lacking in strategic, tactical, or...

The creation of a Homebrew race without making it over Powered.

Hi Matt. Thank you for all of your content, I’ve always found it very useful and inspiring. My favourite videos are the ‘Running the Game’ videos, however I’d like to suggest a film analysis of Blase Runner for a couple of reasons. Firstly...

I've got a group friends who never played d&d and I want to introduce them to many/all aspects in one evening. How would you do this? How do you let them identify themselves with (Simplified) Pre-generated characters? Encounters, Puzzles, NPC...

When should the DM give feedback on a plan the players are formulating?

You touched on this a bit in the "Lore vs writing" stream, talked about how the "writer's job is to create drama" and I'd really appreciate more on this, kind of an how-to to create drama in writing.

As a player, what can we do to help others engage? My party seems to consist of three players (including me) that primarily make decisions, then the rest of my party tends to stay back on decisions and let us lead the way role playing. Currently,...

How to best play with and DM for groups of players of vastly different ages (i.e., a retired father of 55+ with his 12 year old son).

I am a player in a group that constantly thinks it is a good idea to split up and our DM has a hard time dealing with it

I run a game for a party with many differing alignments and goals, it can be a real struggle to balance the sessions so each player can get what they want from there character without them feeling that i'm forcing them into situations where they...

How to run a dungeon down to the room by room moving miniatures on the map or narrative exploration through the dungeon. - Monster knowledge about the layout of the dungeon and natural reactions to PC actions such as rests or making a lot of...

Creating charters at level one. Finding a good reason for all the players to be in the same area. Pitching the world to the players. Group character creation.

A historical walk-through of D&D from 1st to 5th edition (with developments in number of classes, publications, general awareness etc.)

New ideas on how to involve different character's language abilities into play. Perhaps include some information on how you run Thieve's Cant or Druidic?

specifically, how do you make the characters feel like they progress without the levels

Looking at D&D (the various editions) and other RPGs you enjoy/recommend, what would you say are the strengths and weaknesses of each of these games? For each of them, what genre of story do you think they best fit and mechanically what about each...

Since you’ve ran the same adventure multiple times, what are the different ways you’ve seen players approach investigating the town of Orlane? What are the various ways you’ve approached running the adventure? Do you use various if/then...