Communication! It’s important!

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Hello Friends!

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#Advice

Tonight I’d like to talk about communicating with your party and your DM, as I feel it is an underrepresented topic in the community. I’m guilty of it and I’m sure others are too when you fail to tell your party your grand master plan or idea. Get ready! It’s going to get wordy!

⚔ Communicating With Your Party 🏹

It goes without saying that you party are your team mates, but many players (at least in my party) lack communication and have their own agendas.

Its not something we could be blamed for because it’s a challenge in itself to act as our characters and keep track of what we can do.

Although your characters may have different goals, you should work with your party on the goal or goals at hand and how to accomplish it.

Unless your facing against your party in a competition, you will have a more fun experience playing D&D when you communicate with your party. Think of your party like a sports team working towards one goal; ultimately, that main goal is to have fun.

Example 1

Perhaps a key NPC has useful information for the party; there would be many ways to deal with this challenge. Maybe you want to ally that key NPC while your other friends plan to kill them and take the information, which might cause some trouble later.

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Example 2

Your party have been in 3 rounds of intense combat and your wizard wants to end the fight with a well placed fireball, but you ran into the group of kobolds hoping to go berserk and now your Wizard has to hold their spell to prevent hurting you; the kobolds on their turn then kill you with vicious pack tactics.

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Whatever you intend to do, you’ll want to communicate clearly with your party (also the DM) and to announce your intentions. There you’ll be able to discuss with your party on how to act together as one. Not only will you avoid getting your plans squashed by your own teammates, but it makes everyone feel that they all actually “worked together.”

:cloud: Communicating With Your DM :cloud:

Your DM should be your best friend, as they are the ones describing the outcomes of your actions and adjudicating the game. Without them, there is no game.

You may want to perform a cool move, but if you don’t fully describe your intentions you may come short on that action or underestimated of what your trying to do is possible in the DM’s eyes.

Example 1

You want to quickly take out a group of enemies by shooting a chandelier and having it drop on top of them, so you ask your DM if there is a chandelier in the room and become secretive about it.

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Not only does this look weird, but it may also leave your party out of the loop of your ideas. I was in a session where our fighter tossed a fork at a golem strapped with dynamite being controlled by a NPC intending to blow up everyone in the inn. The rest of our party looked at him dumbfounded. (In an earlier session he threw a stick at a creature during combat to attempt to do something special as well). Later in a Discord chat we learned he wanted to use mage hand to cut the wires with that fork he threw to diffuse the wires attached to a remote detonator. While I distracted the NPC. (Actually, he was just testing the Golem’s responses since he waved at them and then threw the fork). I appear to rant a lot, I’ll just call it being “ionate” about D&D. Anyways a good fix to that solution is to even simply ask the DM about the golems and their current stance.

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”Would those golems react if I attempted to get closer to them? Will anyone see me take the bartender’s key? Am I able to cast ‘Create Food and Water’ in that NPC’s lungs to kill him?” - :smiling_imp: (Thanks for that M.)

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This same session I was guilty of doing the same thing when I didn’t make it clear enough that I was trying to de-escalate the situation by dumbfounding the NPC, by acting that all is normal and trying to understand their dilemma. (TBH the DM was dumbfounded because they hadn’t planned for such an act and was hard set in a certain outcome to happen. It was also obvious they didn’t plan much when I asked repeatedly for the NPC’s name -~-). Anyways rant over.

To put this section short, just tell your DM exactly what you want to do. Even if they believe their job is to watch you suffer. I’m talking to you my DM :eyes:

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Side note: if your DM is always like this or forces you to do things their way they might be toxic and it could be something you two should talk calmly about. You may even have to leave their game if it can’t be resolved and find another DM.

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”Can I make myself intimidating by crushing that NPC’s arm, and could that be a Strength(Intimidation) Check?

In Conclusion

Be brave like Sara Bareilles and “say what you wanna say”

No seriously, you’ll have more fun and your games will run quicker. It may seem like talking it out would make your games longer, but having a clear plan and taking a step back for discussion would save countless hours of sitting around figuring what to do on your own. Perhaps assign each party member a role that will help complete your shared goal. You might think this would break RP or ruin gameplay, but communication is your most powerful tool and it can be used to aid in how you RP.

What do you think? Was there something I left out? Do you disagree on some of these topics? Leave a reply and let me know your thoughts.

#Advice

Psst... my next post will be a quiz, testing your knowledge on this subject! So keep an eye out and perhaps follow me to see that and more!

Want to test your skills? Take a quiz on communicating with your party and DM!

Communication Quiz

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Thanks for reading!

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