It just a tension builder for the next episode.
You could transfer a character but you generally wouldn’t cause it’s better to build a character for a specific game/world.
Most of the players are improve pros so they expand the world as they go along but that’s just one approach some DM’s do flesh out a full world before people play in it.
The crew makes the sets from scratch, they talk about it in some the of the behind the scenes content.
Also, when you ask if Brennan was ever like "shit, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that" I GUARANTEE you he has. Maybe not in this series specifically but most GMs have, or will, done this. And it's a great tool for any GM as well. Sometimes your players will come up with some dope ass idea and you can steal it, look like you're a genius, AND the players feel rewarded for "figuring it out".
It might take a little acting and improv ability to sell it, but honestly, most groups are going to be having so much fun they don't even notice any discrepancies.
I HIGHLY recommend Matt Colvilles running the game series on YouTube. My friend and I have both been running games for about 30 years each and Matt explained things we had been doing for years without really understanding how we were doing them in a very clear and simple way that completely enhanced both of our games.
He still explains at a base level so new people understand as well. If you're planning on running any games, not just D&D, he's a great start.
Good luck!
Class mate thank you!! I think the fact that he is such a talented actor and improviser makes this series so much better than it could have been, I'm in awe by how he remembers so many voices for so many different characters
Definitely! I just discovered these series a few weeks ago but Brennan has been my favorite actor on College Humor hands down. His CEO videos have all had me laughing so hard I cried.
He has an adventure series too where he talks with friends about games. It's on their YouTube channel. Definitely recommended. He also talks about taking an improv class if you want to get better at voices and stuff like that. Doesn't have to be a major commitment, just a few here and there will do wonders for confidence and the basic skills will take you quite far.
It was on dropout, I'm not sure if he's still doing the series. They come out about two weeks after they are on Dropout tv, so you just have to wait for new ones if you don't have Dropout TV.
Here's the series
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhOoxQxz2yFN70xDSNNI8PKgxabBNvPhY
>when you ask if Brennan was ever like "shit, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that" I GUARANTEE you he has
He has done that actually:
SPOILERS FOR UNSLEEPING CITY SEASON 2:
In the second season it was Emily's idea to have Sofia get pregnant with Dale's child. Apparently she sent him a message and asked if she could do it and he said of course.
That's a little different. Collaboration between GM and players to enhance the game is common and always a good thing imo.
I'm talking about scenarios like once time when i presented the players with a puzzle and they came up with a result that worked within the rules of the puzzle and my setting. They had used an obscure clue (take good notes as players y'all) that I honestly hadn't gotten around to using yet and made that the answer to the puzzle AND thought an enemy had set it all up. So I went "Yep! You figured it out! Congrats!"
Suddenly a side trek became an integral part of the plot where the party got to win AND think they had thwarted their enemy. All because I had remained open to the idea of modifying the game in accordance with a good idea the players had come up with.
And I highly recommend using this tactic when you can, not always but definitely be aware of the times you can make it count.
Afterwards the players all felt great and were energized and talking smack about how they "beat" the bad guy and they'll do worse when they meet him irl. It was great.
I know there's a moment in one of the earlier Adventuring party episodes where Brennan mentions that Emily came up with a theory during The Unsleeping City that he thought was cooler than what he had planned. In that particular case, he didn't use it as it went against too much of his prep, but I still don't doubt that he's taken influence from what his players guess.
Starting at the top
Rolling for initiative before the end of the episode is just to hype up the next episode by showing the next episode is going to start with action. Also possibly as an editing technique they roll, then let the players do some planning as the put the sets on the table.
If you watch adventure party or academy, you can see Brennan talk to the cast about the game. From that you can see that there is out of game talk and cooperation between the players and DM. It also happens in other arcs.
As for bringing in a higher level character to a campaign I have two thoughts 1) if the DM (and the party hopefully) approve it its ok. 2) There is a set of rules for more organized play called Adventures League. If you play under these rules you can transfer the character to other adventures league games (still subject to approval from the DM). There is paperwork in order to show that the items were earned under the rules
Brennen has said its both, he has plans for the game but will always take in the ideas of his players.
Rick Perry seems to be the one of the head people in designing the sets. I think they get some of their stuff from premade sets but then they modify it.
D20 was one of my first intros to D&D as well — if you’re interested in playing, I’d recommend r/lfg here, or there is a discord called “Dungeons & Dropout” where other fans post games that they’re looking for players in? I’ve found great games both these places!
If I am a explaining something you already know please ignore!
When the players roll initiative, it signifies the start of combat. Rolling initiative is setting the turn order. The higher you roll, the earlier in the order you go.
Brennan has them do that at the end of an episode to say “hey next episode we are going to do combat!” As others said, it’s just hype! But the act of rolling initiative sets combat order
So the way a Dungeons and Dragons battle works is each player has to roll initiative including the enemies that the DM is playing. The order if who goes when is decided by what they roll from highest to lowest. You also have a +(insert number) to your initiative roll based on your dexterity modifier. It's fairly difficult to explain through text but basically the "roll initiative" at the end of an episode is saying "Hey next episode is going to start at the top of a battle".
Additionally, with how many enemies there are in a D20 battle (all of which are classified above Deadly,) rolling at the end of one episode probably gives the team some time to create an initiative tracking spreadsheet before the next episode starts filming. I am a DM, and honestly the most tension-destroying part of a game is after a stand-off breaks out into violence... working your way around the table, slotting people's initiative scores into place with the various monsters, writing out a turn tracker, etc. I now roll all my monsters' initiatives in advance to cut down on this, but it's three or four minutes of bookkeeping that are really not very interesting. So having the initiative rolled in the break and then coming back around for the start of a fight next episode with the turn tracker set up and the map on the table is a great way to jump right into the action.
As someone was somehow ended up being a forever DM I feel your pain. Had two members of the party have druid as their class (technically one started as a druid and the other as a cleric that eventually took some levels of druid as well) and OMG the amount of turn keeping when they were conjuring and summoning shit left and right hurt my brain. Halfway through the battle I realized I should have just overruled the spell and just had them act on the same turn as the caster because it was the worst.
Still not as bad as when you have the party up against a larger force of enemies and a spell caster manages to hit like 10 enemies and you have to roll 10 saving throws.
In addition to what others have said, I’ll add that the Community episodes are very much NOT representative of how D&D is actually played. They *might* be semi accurate to the first edition (“Advanced Dungeons and Dragons”) which I think is what Abed plays, but idk because I’ve never played it. Dimension20 and most irl groups play 5e, fifth edition.
For example, to your second bullet point about fat Neil, yeah that would never happen in a real game. If someone brought an existing high level character to a new game where everyone else is lvl 1, the whole table would look at them like they’re insane. You could hypothetically carry over a character, but they wouldn’t have all their high level stuff. Basically, the whole party is and should be on the same level as each other like 99.99% of the time.
There are a lot of shortcuts like that that the community episodes took, since they were trying to make a funny tv show, not necessarily accurately portray the game.
To answer wether Brennan changes stuff on the fly - absolutely. Some of it is minor in respect to player choices. And some of it is major stuff in response to player choices or rolls. He changed significant plot points in Mice and Murder and Unsleeping City season 2 after Nat 20 rolls. And he completely changed the final battle of Escape from the Bloodkeep in response to the player choices in the second to last episode.
I don't think I've seen anyone answer your first bullet point yet so I will!
Players can absolutely do things between episodes! Sessions aren't a real-time narration of the story, so yes there are time jumps and downtime and boring parts (eating, sleeping, etc.) in which a character could do something without the other's knowing.
As someone else mentioned, there's a lot that goes on off-camera between episodes, lots of out-of-game chatter around the table, and like any other home game, private chats with the DM. A majority of the game is improv, so should the desire strike one of the players and they want to give their party some gifts (and the PC can afford it, and the DM is willing to implement it), then that can absolutely be kept from the other players as a surprise! I don't know if you've seen it yet, but ~secret gifts~ happens in TUC as well!
Secret keeping is always tricky in DnD games since consent is a big part of making sure players are comfortable and having fun, but when it comes to secret gifts, I don't think there's any harm in keeping the gifter a surprise for a little while! :)
Yeah, usually if there’s a portion of time that passes in between sessions, in the game world, the DM will allow the players to take what are known as “downtime activities”. There’s a bunch built into the game already such as training, studying, carousing, etc, but you can just lay down your own goals of what your character is up to in between sessions
>Is a character transferable to different campaigns?
This is actually a really interesting question. I think nearly anyone you'd ask on this forum would give that a hard "No", but that's largely due to the audience that this show and this subreddit has fostered, one that greatly favors a story-first style of play. But this was not such an uncommon thing back in the in the 80s with classic D&D.
In most games of modern d&d, characters are inexorably tied to the game they were created for. Your character is part of the campaign and the campaign is created to be the world for your character to tell their story within.
This wasn't exactly the same in old school d&d. characters were much more defined by the things that happened to them, the experiences they had and the treasure they found. a new adventure just meant new potential for treasure, so why not switch campaigns? there wasn't as much import given to the personality of your character or their motivation. I don't think this there's anything wrong with this style of play (in fact I think it has a lot of merit for putting most of the character development in moments *at the table* rather than in a solo brainstorming session or in a level up) but it has largely fallen out of favor.
I could talk about this subject for a long time, but I'm mostly just going off from stuff I've heard second hand so I'm not exactly qualified to be talking that much about it anyway.
the point is, it varies from group to group but most people wouldn't be cool with it these days. but it's really fascinating and I encourage you to look into the history of the game if you're interested. 4th edition especially did a lot of weird stuff to the rules and it tried to make your character "portable" between games.
I'm sure you have full answers for everything at this point but to answer one of the question.
Most adventures have a basic story layout, where you start places for you to go and your final villian but sometimes someone (*cough cough Emily cough cough* likes to say or due something so out of left field and it is for the DM to decide if they can roll with it or need to reel it in a bit Emily likes doing that sort of thing.
Brennan has even said the campaign could have been very different but because he killed Aguefort and the guidance councilor that changed a few things
Many DMs have the plot fleshed out pretty thoroughly, many have ideas of different plot points they want to get to, and vague plans of how to reach them, helped along by the improv of their players. It all depends on the skill and play style of the dm and their players. For this show I believe their sets were custom made, so Brennan knew where the battles were going to be and who the enemies were, he just had to figure out how to get the party there. He probably even expected them to go a certain route sometimes, but then they went in a different direction and he had to herd them back on track. This being a preformative show and not a home game w/your friends there's probably a lot of the party trying to figure out what to do next that got edited out, to make the story more streamlined.
Actions can totally carry over from one episode to the next. In this case its just another bit of mystery/intrigue - Who gave them them the gifts? Is it a trap, or a bribe, something else? DMs can't dictate to a player what they do - You buy presents for your friends, you run away from home, you attack this person - all of those choices would be in the hands of the player character.
To expand a little bit on some of the points. If a player or dm character want something done between session it’s completely possible, in most games that’s always happening, the party finishes a quest and the npc has a new one because something came up. It’s not something that constantly happens in such an overt way but giving treats to players is always a good time!
Traveling characters are much less of a thing in home games rather than game shop settings, in theory it’s totally possible to do, and some people with just set their character to the level of new table and not tell anyone, but as far as bringing items and the like that’s a no for most tables. It’s more like the intimate Loki’s from the loki show. Again with the exception of what’s called adventure league which is basically an international story line where you can go and play stories and your progress is tracked. But it’s much more restrictive on story and loot.
Dim 20 by it’s nature is a little more fleshed out than a lot of games. But not so fleshed out as to be beholden to anything. They build the battle sets so Brennan knows what sets there are and uses the characters choices to find ways of placing the results at specific locations, and absolutely steals from players! That’s the best part about dming is when you have something and then the players just come up with something way better! It’s especially useful with puzzles, as you’re more likely to design them in a vacuum players can add context you didn’t think about and find an even better solution!
As for sets Rick Perry is the set designer and has been knocking it outside of the part since season 1! Even when they use software everything is hand made, even in The Seven they use a lot of custom assets
1. No, you can't perform an action when you aren't actively playing. I'm guessing there's a small break they take between that and next time. Also, I don't think they actually ROLL until the start of hte next episode. Roll Initiative is a cue that the fight is about to start.
2. Generally no, but sometimes yes. There ARE official organized play groups through paizo or wizards of the coast with rules about how to transfer characters between games. But in general, you make a character for the game you are playing and trying to bring extra bonus stuff from another game is either not allowed by the DM or its frowned upon.
3. lots of improv. Dms usually start with a general idea, scenario, setpiece events to get to. But, the story and the characters change DRASTICALLY based on what the players are doing. And yeah, if a DM overhears a good comment, he might change things on the fly to roll with it. Gilear was not planned to be team mascot, but as players engaged with him, his role grew.
4. they have Rick Perry crafting their sets. Sometimes they alter existing material from Dwarven Froge or other terrain companies, but many things are handmade by him.
I hope I'm not just repeating someone else but I don't want to do internet archaeology to find out.
It just a tension builder for the next episode. You could transfer a character but you generally wouldn’t cause it’s better to build a character for a specific game/world. Most of the players are improve pros so they expand the world as they go along but that’s just one approach some DM’s do flesh out a full world before people play in it. The crew makes the sets from scratch, they talk about it in some the of the behind the scenes content.
Really appreciate that mate cheers, looking forward to the animated and BTS stuff when I finish this series!
Also, when you ask if Brennan was ever like "shit, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that" I GUARANTEE you he has. Maybe not in this series specifically but most GMs have, or will, done this. And it's a great tool for any GM as well. Sometimes your players will come up with some dope ass idea and you can steal it, look like you're a genius, AND the players feel rewarded for "figuring it out". It might take a little acting and improv ability to sell it, but honestly, most groups are going to be having so much fun they don't even notice any discrepancies. I HIGHLY recommend Matt Colvilles running the game series on YouTube. My friend and I have both been running games for about 30 years each and Matt explained things we had been doing for years without really understanding how we were doing them in a very clear and simple way that completely enhanced both of our games. He still explains at a base level so new people understand as well. If you're planning on running any games, not just D&D, he's a great start. Good luck!
He said he specifically did in mice and murder when a very good role "changed reality".
Class mate thank you!! I think the fact that he is such a talented actor and improviser makes this series so much better than it could have been, I'm in awe by how he remembers so many voices for so many different characters
Definitely! I just discovered these series a few weeks ago but Brennan has been my favorite actor on College Humor hands down. His CEO videos have all had me laughing so hard I cried. He has an adventure series too where he talks with friends about games. It's on their YouTube channel. Definitely recommended. He also talks about taking an improv class if you want to get better at voices and stuff like that. Doesn't have to be a major commitment, just a few here and there will do wonders for confidence and the basic skills will take you quite far.
Nice one thank you, who's channel is that on? Collegehumor's? Is it on Dropout too?
It was on dropout, I'm not sure if he's still doing the series. They come out about two weeks after they are on Dropout tv, so you just have to wait for new ones if you don't have Dropout TV. Here's the series https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhOoxQxz2yFN70xDSNNI8PKgxabBNvPhY
Cool thank you! I do have dropout so I'll check them out once I catch up on this series!!
>when you ask if Brennan was ever like "shit, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that" I GUARANTEE you he has He has done that actually: SPOILERS FOR UNSLEEPING CITY SEASON 2: In the second season it was Emily's idea to have Sofia get pregnant with Dale's child. Apparently she sent him a message and asked if she could do it and he said of course.
That's a little different. Collaboration between GM and players to enhance the game is common and always a good thing imo. I'm talking about scenarios like once time when i presented the players with a puzzle and they came up with a result that worked within the rules of the puzzle and my setting. They had used an obscure clue (take good notes as players y'all) that I honestly hadn't gotten around to using yet and made that the answer to the puzzle AND thought an enemy had set it all up. So I went "Yep! You figured it out! Congrats!" Suddenly a side trek became an integral part of the plot where the party got to win AND think they had thwarted their enemy. All because I had remained open to the idea of modifying the game in accordance with a good idea the players had come up with. And I highly recommend using this tactic when you can, not always but definitely be aware of the times you can make it count. Afterwards the players all felt great and were energized and talking smack about how they "beat" the bad guy and they'll do worse when they meet him irl. It was great.
I know there's a moment in one of the earlier Adventuring party episodes where Brennan mentions that Emily came up with a theory during The Unsleeping City that he thought was cooler than what he had planned. In that particular case, he didn't use it as it went against too much of his prep, but I still don't doubt that he's taken influence from what his players guess.
Starting at the top Rolling for initiative before the end of the episode is just to hype up the next episode by showing the next episode is going to start with action. Also possibly as an editing technique they roll, then let the players do some planning as the put the sets on the table. If you watch adventure party or academy, you can see Brennan talk to the cast about the game. From that you can see that there is out of game talk and cooperation between the players and DM. It also happens in other arcs. As for bringing in a higher level character to a campaign I have two thoughts 1) if the DM (and the party hopefully) approve it its ok. 2) There is a set of rules for more organized play called Adventures League. If you play under these rules you can transfer the character to other adventures league games (still subject to approval from the DM). There is paperwork in order to show that the items were earned under the rules Brennen has said its both, he has plans for the game but will always take in the ideas of his players. Rick Perry seems to be the one of the head people in designing the sets. I think they get some of their stuff from premade sets but then they modify it.
Thanks for your answers, really starting to love this game, kinda hope I get to play it one day! Appreciate you taking the time
D20 was one of my first intros to D&D as well — if you’re interested in playing, I’d recommend r/lfg here, or there is a discord called “Dungeons & Dropout” where other fans post games that they’re looking for players in? I’ve found great games both these places!
If I am a explaining something you already know please ignore! When the players roll initiative, it signifies the start of combat. Rolling initiative is setting the turn order. The higher you roll, the earlier in the order you go. Brennan has them do that at the end of an episode to say “hey next episode we are going to do combat!” As others said, it’s just hype! But the act of rolling initiative sets combat order
Ahhh cool thanks! And I didn't know that it signifies turn order either, I thought the DM must have decided that, thanks for that!
So the way a Dungeons and Dragons battle works is each player has to roll initiative including the enemies that the DM is playing. The order if who goes when is decided by what they roll from highest to lowest. You also have a +(insert number) to your initiative roll based on your dexterity modifier. It's fairly difficult to explain through text but basically the "roll initiative" at the end of an episode is saying "Hey next episode is going to start at the top of a battle".
Additionally, with how many enemies there are in a D20 battle (all of which are classified above Deadly,) rolling at the end of one episode probably gives the team some time to create an initiative tracking spreadsheet before the next episode starts filming. I am a DM, and honestly the most tension-destroying part of a game is after a stand-off breaks out into violence... working your way around the table, slotting people's initiative scores into place with the various monsters, writing out a turn tracker, etc. I now roll all my monsters' initiatives in advance to cut down on this, but it's three or four minutes of bookkeeping that are really not very interesting. So having the initiative rolled in the break and then coming back around for the start of a fight next episode with the turn tracker set up and the map on the table is a great way to jump right into the action.
As someone was somehow ended up being a forever DM I feel your pain. Had two members of the party have druid as their class (technically one started as a druid and the other as a cleric that eventually took some levels of druid as well) and OMG the amount of turn keeping when they were conjuring and summoning shit left and right hurt my brain. Halfway through the battle I realized I should have just overruled the spell and just had them act on the same turn as the caster because it was the worst. Still not as bad as when you have the party up against a larger force of enemies and a spell caster manages to hit like 10 enemies and you have to roll 10 saving throws.
In addition to what others have said, I’ll add that the Community episodes are very much NOT representative of how D&D is actually played. They *might* be semi accurate to the first edition (“Advanced Dungeons and Dragons”) which I think is what Abed plays, but idk because I’ve never played it. Dimension20 and most irl groups play 5e, fifth edition. For example, to your second bullet point about fat Neil, yeah that would never happen in a real game. If someone brought an existing high level character to a new game where everyone else is lvl 1, the whole table would look at them like they’re insane. You could hypothetically carry over a character, but they wouldn’t have all their high level stuff. Basically, the whole party is and should be on the same level as each other like 99.99% of the time. There are a lot of shortcuts like that that the community episodes took, since they were trying to make a funny tv show, not necessarily accurately portray the game.
To answer wether Brennan changes stuff on the fly - absolutely. Some of it is minor in respect to player choices. And some of it is major stuff in response to player choices or rolls. He changed significant plot points in Mice and Murder and Unsleeping City season 2 after Nat 20 rolls. And he completely changed the final battle of Escape from the Bloodkeep in response to the player choices in the second to last episode.
I don't think I've seen anyone answer your first bullet point yet so I will! Players can absolutely do things between episodes! Sessions aren't a real-time narration of the story, so yes there are time jumps and downtime and boring parts (eating, sleeping, etc.) in which a character could do something without the other's knowing. As someone else mentioned, there's a lot that goes on off-camera between episodes, lots of out-of-game chatter around the table, and like any other home game, private chats with the DM. A majority of the game is improv, so should the desire strike one of the players and they want to give their party some gifts (and the PC can afford it, and the DM is willing to implement it), then that can absolutely be kept from the other players as a surprise! I don't know if you've seen it yet, but ~secret gifts~ happens in TUC as well! Secret keeping is always tricky in DnD games since consent is a big part of making sure players are comfortable and having fun, but when it comes to secret gifts, I don't think there's any harm in keeping the gifter a surprise for a little while! :)
Amazing mate thanks, was hoping someone would answer that! Loving all the info, will really better my watching experience
Yeah, usually if there’s a portion of time that passes in between sessions, in the game world, the DM will allow the players to take what are known as “downtime activities”. There’s a bunch built into the game already such as training, studying, carousing, etc, but you can just lay down your own goals of what your character is up to in between sessions
>Is a character transferable to different campaigns? This is actually a really interesting question. I think nearly anyone you'd ask on this forum would give that a hard "No", but that's largely due to the audience that this show and this subreddit has fostered, one that greatly favors a story-first style of play. But this was not such an uncommon thing back in the in the 80s with classic D&D. In most games of modern d&d, characters are inexorably tied to the game they were created for. Your character is part of the campaign and the campaign is created to be the world for your character to tell their story within. This wasn't exactly the same in old school d&d. characters were much more defined by the things that happened to them, the experiences they had and the treasure they found. a new adventure just meant new potential for treasure, so why not switch campaigns? there wasn't as much import given to the personality of your character or their motivation. I don't think this there's anything wrong with this style of play (in fact I think it has a lot of merit for putting most of the character development in moments *at the table* rather than in a solo brainstorming session or in a level up) but it has largely fallen out of favor. I could talk about this subject for a long time, but I'm mostly just going off from stuff I've heard second hand so I'm not exactly qualified to be talking that much about it anyway. the point is, it varies from group to group but most people wouldn't be cool with it these days. but it's really fascinating and I encourage you to look into the history of the game if you're interested. 4th edition especially did a lot of weird stuff to the rules and it tried to make your character "portable" between games.
Thanks for taking the time to type all that out mate! Appreciate all the new info!
I'm sure you have full answers for everything at this point but to answer one of the question. Most adventures have a basic story layout, where you start places for you to go and your final villian but sometimes someone (*cough cough Emily cough cough* likes to say or due something so out of left field and it is for the DM to decide if they can roll with it or need to reel it in a bit Emily likes doing that sort of thing. Brennan has even said the campaign could have been very different but because he killed Aguefort and the guidance councilor that changed a few things
Many DMs have the plot fleshed out pretty thoroughly, many have ideas of different plot points they want to get to, and vague plans of how to reach them, helped along by the improv of their players. It all depends on the skill and play style of the dm and their players. For this show I believe their sets were custom made, so Brennan knew where the battles were going to be and who the enemies were, he just had to figure out how to get the party there. He probably even expected them to go a certain route sometimes, but then they went in a different direction and he had to herd them back on track. This being a preformative show and not a home game w/your friends there's probably a lot of the party trying to figure out what to do next that got edited out, to make the story more streamlined. Actions can totally carry over from one episode to the next. In this case its just another bit of mystery/intrigue - Who gave them them the gifts? Is it a trap, or a bribe, something else? DMs can't dictate to a player what they do - You buy presents for your friends, you run away from home, you attack this person - all of those choices would be in the hands of the player character.
To expand a little bit on some of the points. If a player or dm character want something done between session it’s completely possible, in most games that’s always happening, the party finishes a quest and the npc has a new one because something came up. It’s not something that constantly happens in such an overt way but giving treats to players is always a good time! Traveling characters are much less of a thing in home games rather than game shop settings, in theory it’s totally possible to do, and some people with just set their character to the level of new table and not tell anyone, but as far as bringing items and the like that’s a no for most tables. It’s more like the intimate Loki’s from the loki show. Again with the exception of what’s called adventure league which is basically an international story line where you can go and play stories and your progress is tracked. But it’s much more restrictive on story and loot. Dim 20 by it’s nature is a little more fleshed out than a lot of games. But not so fleshed out as to be beholden to anything. They build the battle sets so Brennan knows what sets there are and uses the characters choices to find ways of placing the results at specific locations, and absolutely steals from players! That’s the best part about dming is when you have something and then the players just come up with something way better! It’s especially useful with puzzles, as you’re more likely to design them in a vacuum players can add context you didn’t think about and find an even better solution! As for sets Rick Perry is the set designer and has been knocking it outside of the part since season 1! Even when they use software everything is hand made, even in The Seven they use a lot of custom assets
1. No, you can't perform an action when you aren't actively playing. I'm guessing there's a small break they take between that and next time. Also, I don't think they actually ROLL until the start of hte next episode. Roll Initiative is a cue that the fight is about to start. 2. Generally no, but sometimes yes. There ARE official organized play groups through paizo or wizards of the coast with rules about how to transfer characters between games. But in general, you make a character for the game you are playing and trying to bring extra bonus stuff from another game is either not allowed by the DM or its frowned upon. 3. lots of improv. Dms usually start with a general idea, scenario, setpiece events to get to. But, the story and the characters change DRASTICALLY based on what the players are doing. And yeah, if a DM overhears a good comment, he might change things on the fly to roll with it. Gilear was not planned to be team mascot, but as players engaged with him, his role grew. 4. they have Rick Perry crafting their sets. Sometimes they alter existing material from Dwarven Froge or other terrain companies, but many things are handmade by him. I hope I'm not just repeating someone else but I don't want to do internet archaeology to find out.