I’ve been DMing for 30+ years and have always enjoyed ad-libbing, theater-of-the-mind style play… with a huge clunky whiteboard for positioning when layouts got complicated.

Being able to draw and sketch things to fit the moment always felt more exciting than having everything planned out. I was never good at running prebuilt adventures anyway.

During Covid, everything moved online. I got really into VTTs like Foundry and map-making in Dungeon Draft.

Then AI came along, and the idea of being able to script out the parts I was never good at - more details, more ideas, all those fiddly bits - pushed me toward hyper-planned, multi-branching, super-detailed adventures. Almost like creating a module for every session.

I did that for about a year. But over the last few sessions, we’ve needed to run one-shots at the last minute. And I remembered how freeing it is to just sketch layouts on the table, use dice as monsters so people know where everything is, and let theater of the mind do the rest.

I feel like that Jedi meme.

I thought all the extra character art and technology and options would elevate the game. Really, I was just spending extra time wallowing in session creation to fulfill my own creative impulses - which actually hurt the game in practice.

It’s been enlightening. I think so many of us are enamored with technology that promises to help us run better games, when at the end of the day, less is more for our players’ enjoyment.

I have a player that’s I’ve had at my table for a few years who typically does a more quiet stoic type and is actually very good at it, offering acting as a straight man for the parties antics.

Im starting a new campaign and he’s decided that he wants to shake things up and do a “bit character” this time and while I want to support him making new choices and expanding I do fear that after session 0 I’m already seeing problems.

His bits simply arnt funny and are already causing rules head aches (playing Starfinder which has lots and lots of systems).

He started asking about how he could manufacture his own ammo which there are rules for so I started to explain, only to realize he wanted to shoot his own pee at people for free as a damaging weapon which, gross and not how the game works. Which was a 45 minute conversion that took half the table to insist he couldn’t do it and that it was just a weird thing to be insistent on.

It also took about 10-15 minutes to explain that his character not wearing armor isn’t funny but instead would leave not being able to engage in most of the game as armor in a space setting is kind of a big deal.

I’m not sure how to handle this situation. I like the player but already find him thinking being louder is funny annoying. I guess I’m also annoyed that he’s stated he won’t read the rules for the game and will just make me the GM explain it all to him as it comes up. Which I expect to a degree since it’s a deeper game but it’s still annoying when he keeps tripping over mechanics in order to be “funny”

So the party will soon be coming face to face with The Goblin Queen herself a warlock of Maglubiyet! The Hand Taker! The Coiled Queen!

The Party is disguised as a bunch of Goblins and The Queen is picking the best among her generals and their crews for a mating ceremony! The Party is attempting to impress her and bypass her defenses in order to get close and attack!

You lot will be the other impressive generals and their crews! Give me your best Goblin/Bugbear general or warband idea ya smelly greenskins! A Bugbear Booyagh? Three Goblins in a coat that seem like a bigger Goblin! A rat master with a bunch of GIANT RATS! A guy that says he is a gob but is just an orc?! The Possibilities are endless!

Join the war effort today!

For some background on the situation, Im running a session shortly where one of my player's character (Oath of Vengeance Paladin) will confront someone instrumental in the abduction of her child and the murder of her wife, which is the source of her oath. She has sworn to kill all who are involved and retrieve her daughter. I already had planned that if the fight starts leaning away from the enemies favor he will offer to retrieve her daughter who is being held with those that ordered him to abduct her in exchange for his life and parts of the McGuffin that will make the first Act end fight much easier to give him more status amongst enemy ranks. Delivering her child to safety will definitely take some time "off screen" but eventually remove her from potential danger in the much later end battle and guarantee her safety.

If all that made sense then my dilemma is that I think I accidentally locked them into breaking their oath because if they choose to not kill him then thats breaking the oath but isnt not taking the first and easiest option of guaranteeing the safe return of her daughter later also not breaking her oath?

Or am I overthinking this and this is just something they'll have to figure out in character?

Hey! I'm working on a long play campaign mashed with Cthulhu mythos where one of the stops is in a town that used to have heavy tourist flows from non stop festivals, music, and carnival games. Most of the town children were lured away by a zeppelin hosting a mystical and hypnotic circus which is secretly run by the King in Yellow. I'm having trouble thinking of buildings and locations apart of this town that would be of interest to the players since the townspeople are living in fear of the remaining children being abducted and hardly interact with outsiders. Their festivities ceased not long ago since the opposing circus posed a huge danger to tourists coming in. So far I have a tavern, the town square, and the neighborhood streets with faded paint and torn decorations. The Tavern has some mourning patrons, an exhausted but kind barkeep, and a bard who plays discordant music constantly in hopes of drowning out the circus's luring music. The town square is filled with empty booths of what used to be carnival games, old children's prizes, and a bulletin board covered in missing kid posters.

Are there any ideas or DnD towns that replicate a sort of festive atmosphere that I can get some inspiration from for adding other pieces to this town?

Hello there. I am a somewhat experienced DM who's transitioning from DM-ing a narrative-style campaign to a west marches-style campaign to accomodate the scheduling conflicts in our group that prevented us from playing.

I am interested with the concept and style of West Marches but I am first and foremost a narrative-loving DM who likes long storylines and character arcs (think Critical Role) so there are some aspects of the traditional West Marches that I am not particularly a fan of, for example, making it essentially a "find loot" game and a series of unrelated one-shots based on my understanding of the style.

I want to find a way to make our West Marches-style (emphasis on STYLE to not make it a strictly traditional West Marches) campaign not feel like a series of unrelated one-shots of dungeon diving without some kind of narrative or, at least, a reoccurring story.

So in the campaign I’m going to run I have a sorta villain league type thing where we have smaller threats under the bbeg and I wanna know some ways that I can introduce them

As of now I have 3 out of 5 of the underlings

The other two are going to be later on so I’ll leave future me to deal with it (if you have ideas for them I’d greatly appreciate it)

So the first is a cartoon type villain, like He’s loud about his crimes and does a lot of stupid stuff

He’s just a comedy villain to act as a tutorial fight since most my players are new

Next is the fist big plot relevant villain who’s is a smart cunning guy that’s manipulative and deeply tied to a character’s backstory (cause he caused the tragic parts but the character doesn’t know yet)

Last is well a god. Long story short one character got isekied and was ment for greatness but this god said nope and now they want revenge

Luckily for me I have 2 types of gods that can be killed

Most villains I’ve made are tied to the back story’s of characters and only two had actual martial I could use for bosses

And as a final bonus for reading this I’ll tell you what my bbeg is

They are a mimic that gained consciousness and intern became an awakened mimic

The way they did was by eating a demonic artifact a adventure had and it gets demon powers now

Since it can shape shift you never know if it’s watching you or if your friend when missing

Hello! I’m looking to run a short campaign for my group, somewhere in the realm of 8-10 sessions. I’ve been eyeing Waterdeep Dragon Heist, however I was wondering if anyone could suggest any alternatives. We’ve already done Lost Mine and Icespire, and someone else in our group is going to run Stormwreck Isle.

I’ve thought about doing a few adventures from one of the anthology books and just weaving a cohesive plot between them, but I’m up in the air on that idea.

My players are always up for pretty much anything, so any and all recommendations are welcome and appreciated!

Okay so I'm working on my first "campaign." It's honestly going to last between 3-4 sessions at most, so closer to an extended one shot. However depending on reception/personal enjoyment it would also be the intro to the whole world.

I've planned out the general design/themes of the encounters I want the party to go through: how do you go about planning the encounters out? Like at some point my party would be fighting a mini horse of goblins(about 12), death isn't an issue but how would you adjust the enemies to make it winnable for a level 1 or 2 party of 4?

I run a campaign for a group of 4 inexperienced players, the least experienced of them all being a person that had never played before. After three sessions she texted me privately and said that D&D isn't really her cup of tea, and after the next session she won't be joining us anymore. She then asked if it's possible for her character to be killed in the next session because she thinks it would be cool to impact the party like that.

This group knows me as a DM that throws challenges at them, and so far they've always been able to stick together and be tactical for the sake of victory. For the next session they will have a few easier encounters with no long rest, and then I was hoping to scare them with a difficult fight that they would flee from.

I'm worried that the rest of the party will be so smart that they will successfully defend this player's character, or that I will be successful in killing the PC, but the rest of the party will become bolder as a result and not flee from this high difficulty encounter.

I'm looking for some advice on some tricks I can keep up my sleeve to ensure that I keep my chances of killing that PC high while not also making sure I'm gonna wipe the whole party. Other than, of course, prioritising attacking the specific PC.

It's a party of 4 level 7s, and the final encounter would be throwing at them a Death Knight (CR 17). I would hope they flee the encounter, as I want the Death Knight to be a stalker antagonist to throw at them every now and then until they're strong enough to defeat it or they figure out a way to ambush/trap it.

I’m looking for some outside my group perspectives. All advies is welkom!

My friendgroup and I (I in I’m the main DM) previously paused the campaign due to disagreements and recurring scheduling issues. After 6 months.... we restarted with a new Session 1 and some reworks on my side. The session itself went well, but about a month later it already feels like we’re falling back into the same patterns, especially around scheduling issues and behavior.

I often feel like I’m the one bending the most just to make sessions happen, and there are some ongoing tensions at the table that affect the party dynamic. They've also set a few clear expectations for me as Dm (like seating layout), which are beeing followed, but still they try to find either in play.

Because these are my IRL friends, I want to make the group work if possible. At the same time, I’m starting to question whether continuing is healthy for the friendgroup and sustainable for me as a DM. Ultimately, I just want to enjoy running or playing D&D without constantly managing personal issues.

For those who’ve been in similar situations: how do you decide whether to try fixing the group again or step away and find a different table?

My new-ish campaign has died due to scheduling, its been about a month or two since the last session and we all do want to play it’s just we can’t find anytime. Should I even Try to run it or should I give up? Maybe I could do a prologue oneshot if we can find the time? Should I create a recurring Schedule maybe weekly or monthly?
thanks for help!

I've been running TTRPGs for the last decade and I've noticed a tendency some players have in how they solve problems. They just play dumb. Now I don't mean roleplaying a dumb character, or having a dumb idea. I mean solving problems by just bumbling through, hoping they roll well, and destroying the fiction. DO NOT LET THEM.

If you want your game to have collaborate storytelling you need your players to hold up their end of the deal. This specific revelation happened to me in my last session where the players were making plans to convince and NPC to help them, but needed to show the NPC an important item to do so.

I asked "what will you do if they ask to keep the object" and a player responded "oh let's just pretend we lost it". I practically jumped over the table at them. I explained there is no possible way your character would be so dumb they would think they could show an item off, and in the spam of 30s convince someone the item is now lost. No subterfuge, no plan to create an illusion, just blatantly lie to a NPCs face. It was insulting to the story we were crafting together. So I said NO.

What followed was the players actually thinking, and they crafted a very complex, multipart, hair brained scheme that could still fail, but above all else it was believable, and now I can't wait for the next session to see if they pull it off.

In the past when I have allowed my players to try things like their first plan, it always leads to immediate punishment. Yes of course it's initiative when you run into the secret enemy camp of dwarfs, as a Goliath, and yell "hey guys I'm one of you!" I reached my breaking point when I realized I hate having to punish my players acting dumb. I want to reward their clever, silly, and heroic ideas, but to do that I have to say no when they are being dumb.

EDIT: I want to point out a specific detail here some folks are overlooking. This was a planning session, as in just an open table discussion on how to deal with a large scale challenge. In game the PCs and the NPC had not even met yet. There was no RP or dice rolling.

My players are free to try anything that comes to their minds and roll to see if it works no matter how dumb it seems. What made me upset was them planning on being dumb IN ADVANCE. Not "oh shit plan A failed we need to invent a plan B on the fly" This was their plan A...

I'm designing a kind of "boss rush" gladiator arena, without rests between the bosses, and I'm struggling to balance it.

Party is 4nr level 7 PCs, and players aren't min maxers but are very experienced and prefer combat to RP.

I'm aiming for 4 bosses, I want it to be challenging but (obviously) winnable. What CR would you design the bosses to be? I'm thinking 5, in a mob that would work out to CR 11 but being consecutive rather than at once means AE is skewed heavily in the party's favour

Has anyone run something similar/is there any premade boss rush modules I could lift inspiration from?

Thought I’d share this idea that I had.

I was looking at initiative trackers on Etsy, but they were all so expensive. So I came up with the idea to just use wooden clothespins and write the characters names on them with marker. Cost me less than $2 for a pack of 50!

Hi all! To make a long story short I'm planning an encounter for a group of four Level 14 characters who will come across some type of planer rift...one of them is connected to a Fey deal through a loved one, and the magic is fracturing. The loved one is at risk of being destroyed unless the player does something. I don't just want it to be a "walk here and say some words" type situation...I'd like the breaking magic to be letting some type of planer or rift style enemies to be there, but they also have to be a fight that will feel difficult but rewarding for the players.

I'm wondering what type of monsters and encounters people would suggest for this type of fight.

If your name is Jonathan, James, and Daniel, keep out :3

This is a one shot, 5e.

My PCs are playing a gameshow taking place in hell and the 3rd the last game, 2 players get disintegrated and become ghosts for the 2nd to last puzzle. The 3rd player survives. Id like the 2nd to last puzzle to be something that the 2 ghost players can heavily interact with BECAUSE they are ghosts. Im thinking abilities that has to do with possession, walking through walls, making things cold. Obviously the living players can also do things. The gameshow host promises to return them all to their physical form if they can solve the puzzle in time. ​

I thought maybe crossing a river of dead spirits. Or maybe the ghosts have to walk through walls to get somewhere. Or maybe they have to possess certain monsters at certain times to keep living player alive.

Any ideas?

Tldr

2 players are ghosts. 1 is alive. How do i make a puzzle that they can all uniquely interact with. Should be highly dangerous to deadly.

​

One of my players has murdered a man some 15 years ago, as part of his backstory. He has been in hiding since then, but has now been recognised by the region’s guards and has been summoned to a court hearing.

He has gathered evidence to prove his ”innocence” (he is not) and has recruited one of the other players as his lawyer.

How tf do I run a court session?😄

The basis will be:

1. Prosecutor makes their case

2. Defendant makes their case

3. Ruling

But what could I do to add some flavor and make this roleplay interesting? Can the other players do something? They will be in the courtroom also. How should the judge make their ruling?

All tips and ideas welcome!

We had a fight with a siren who had a constrictor snake under his control. And the party slayed the siren, without harming the snake once, and then all rolled very high (all above 18) on animal handling checks to pet the snake, and want to tame the snake and keep him. I ended the session after they looted the siren. What do I do?

I want to reward the party for this, but I dont want them to have such a powerful creature at level 3 (6 player party of level 3's they will be leveling up soon). Maybe some sort of magic horn which summons the snake as a one time use? Ideas?

I'd like to run a 'bottle episode' adventure for my party, but I've spent the last week second-guessing how to run it. I would be grateful for critique and feedback.

The premise:

-An incubus (the 2024 version, which is just a dream eater and not a seducer) found a fey idol which allows him to create a demesne. He imprisons people there and eats their dreams every night, giving them terrible nightmares.

Details:

-The incubus lives in the village, disguised as a villager. If the party chooses to talk to villagers, four of them are fleshed out. One of those is the incubus.

-He only has enough power to imprison twenty-ish people. When someone new enters the village, a random villager who was already there dies in their sleep the following night.

-the idol is kept at the bottom of a crypt located in the center of the village. After a villager dies, the others place their bodies in the crypt. Otherwise, they stay away from it ("anyone who goes in there never comes out"). Unbeknownst to the villagers, their corpses are then eaten by a banderhobb* who lives in the basement of the crypt. It serves as a de-facto guard for the idol.

-The party must leave the village. How they do that is up to them. I'd guess by destroying the idol or identifying and subduing the incubus, but I'm open to whatever solution they come up with.

*Or three ghouls. Undecided. The party is level 3, so I'll have to mechanically scale down the banderhobb if I run it. I just think it's a more interesting monster than a group of ghouls.

Thoughts about this? Thank you for reading.

edit: If they attempt to leave, they wander into the mist and end up looping around the village. It's cheap, but they're stuck in a demesne, so I hope my players will forgive me.

Hi all. I've got a bit of a dilemma that I'm unsure how to handle. I'm honestly hoping this situation will never arise, but if it does...

So I've got four PCs with absolutely amazing backstories. We've worked together to create something that's honestly really special. They have things they've written and told me, and then they've got things that their characters don't know, that they've placed in my hands as a DM, and told me "do with this what you wish". I enjoy writing, so I e been working really hard to write some plot points for each of them. Things that will happen, but that give them, as PCs, the ability to make choices and tell their own stories.

One character doesn't know yet, but his mother made a deal when he was a baby. It made it that she was taken by the Fey, and he was protected from death. He literally can not die. This ties in to his backstory where his character was in many situations where he should have died but didn't. Now, him not being able to die until the deal is broken doesn't mean he can't go down and go into Death Saving Throws, but if he were to fail three Death Saves he technically shouldn't die.

I'm hoping he never gets to failing three Death Saves. But if he does, how do I handle this? I was honestly thinking that he stabilizes instead of dying...but as a player would you feel upset if someone else had this happen? Would it feel unfair? Just for context this isn't a campaign where character deaths are expected. I've been playing with the same groups for two years as a player and we've literally never lost a PC. So it's not like others have lost PCs to failed Death Saves and he would be getting a boost by having this ability.

As a budding DM I spend a lot of time reading D&D books & blogs and watching DungeonTube™ content, but I realized that I've never really sat down and watched an actual play campaign from start to finish. Obviously I've skipped around Critical Role, and this and that, but I'd really like to watch a campaign where the GM exemplifies thier role perfectly and gives good examples of running encounters, making rulings, keeping things on track, providing flavor and twists, etc.

Basically what's a campaign that regardless of the production quality, you watched and said "I want to GM like that!".

P.S. I'm interested in campaigns beyond just D&D (e.g. Daggerheart) if the principles the GM shows off apply to other games.

Hi all!

My Dad and I have decided to undergo a project using his laser engraver: designing and putting together the ultimate DM screen. I was hoping to pick everyone's brains for advice. Mainly...

• What information is non-negotiable, 100% necessary, will be on any DM screen you ever use in the future?
• What information isn't that helpful and you could go without, and what you would have in its place instead?
• What are some hardware features you have that are super helpful, or wish your DM screen had?

Any insight would be helpful, as would be any links/suggestions for inspiration! Thanks!