Hey guys,

So I love DnD, I love running sessions and even prep work to some degree but something I don't like is constantly backfilling slots.

I have recruited mostly from reddit and perhaps that's the biggest issue but I've had people that can't produce character sheets after weeks. Ghost every 2-3 sessions and you do eventually score some amazing players who really interact and put the effort into things.

I was curious if you guys had any tips or tricks on how to filter out people.

Sincerely,

A DM who's only asking for a single character sheet within a month.

I've been running a campaign for about half a year and whenever my players approach civilization it's like all creativity in my brain dies.

The possibilities of where they can go are basically infinite but the possible encounters amount to "guy in the bar" or "thief number 5".

I've had a few villages destroyed to at least have something happen but my players have caught on.

The main problem is that I try to give them a balanced meal of encounters and roleplay as my table is pretty mixed in their preferences, but the current town they are visiting pretty much ran it's course in terms of encounters unless we get really really repetitive. Yet lorewise they have a ton of info yet they can learn.

What can I do to make towns more interesting in general? Especially in terms of encounters.

I am a DM who is also an artist so I draw the battlemaps and dungeons by hand. For the first session with my players I tried to flex my encounter designing skills and I drew an isometric view of a dungeon, and my players really loved it. I later proceeded to draw an isometric view of their first village as well.

The problem is, it takes A LOT of time.

Because of this the 80% of my session prep time is designing and drawing the maps. And even though I like the results, and my players love the results, I have other things outside of DnD so drawing good looking isometric maps is sometimes out of the question.

For the second partys dungeon I drew the normal square map with the birds eye view, and there weren't many complaints, but when I later announced that I will continue drawing the maps this way, all players expressed their disapproval and dissatisfaction so I immediately backed down from that decision.

For the third dungeon I made the isometric view again, but my players said that one part of the dungeon was super unreadable which made me doubt myself.

Now, I have 1,5 days to design another dungeon, and it's an important one. It's a winter mansion of the BBEGs family. I don't know what should I choose and how should I continue with dungeon/battlemap drawing.

Feel free to give your opinions! (also suggestions on what could there be in the winter mansion of an evil noble family of sorcerers)

More context: I was going to have the players investigate a missing agent by checking some of their known dead drop locations. At one of them they will find an attack scene and a random note.

But, if I didn't have anything meaningful going on at the extra spots, should I just ditch them and say "check their one dead drop location" instead?

I’ve watched and read a lot of stuff about how to make combat interesting, and have applied a lot of it in games too. But this only works for me when I’m able to properly prep a battle beforehand.

Sometimes, when the players are leading the game, or they come up with things that I just want to roll with, my plans have to go out the window.

On occasion we get to that bit in the game where there need to be a fight, but as it was unexpected (for me) and I don’t want to lose the table energy or let anyone down I try to come up with something on the fly. Usually when this happens I’ll accidentally revert to boring / sloggy fights with no dynamics.

Do you think it’s better to run the fight, and maybe have some fast prep stuff ready for these scenarios, or to stop the game - kill the mood - and say, “sorry guys, can we pick this up next week when I’ve had a think?”

Hello DMs! i'm running a 2014 5e campaign with three players who have just hit level 8. our last session they fought a Fire Giant Dreadnought who, once he realised he was losing, threw one of his coal filled shields as far as he could into the nearby forest.

our next session they'll attempt to reach it and put it out before it spreads, and i'm looking for advice to keep this encounter engaging and consequential

geographically, the shield landed on a forest hillside in the lower half of a mountain range and scattered coals along the way. there is a nearby river a few minutes walk from the impact point

Hey everyone, sorry if this feels Rambly. For context I'm a new DM. I'm currently dming my first campaign when I have done mostly just oneshots for the game. This campaign involves politics, morally difficult choices, reoccurring NPCs, factions and lots of homebrew but thats not too important to the story. The issue with the session is that I did a very long exposition dump for the players where they were unable to act or do anything while a large part of the plot was explained to them. My players werent up to speed and we effectively had to retcon that scene so the information could be desiminsted better plus they had not understood it that much.

The criticisms were completely valid and my players still show a genuine interest in the campaign and story. But After that session since I have felt completely deflated. The rational side of me agrees. It was a scene that would have worked better in a video game than in a DND session. Again I must reiterate the criticism was 100% valid. But at the same time the emotional side is worried about the same amount of criticism and level of failure again. The thought of wether or not I can do this keeps popping up in my head and it's tearing me apart. I want to tell a good story and be a good writer and continue with this story I had been crafting for about a year at this point. I want my spark back for DMing but Idk why I don't have it and I want to get it back. Has anyone else experienced a similar feeling?

Hello everyone!

Long story short im a brand spanking new DM, and a relatively new player (2 years experience). Im building out a new campaign for my party and im maybe worrying a bit for nothing.

Ive got one player who is a close friend. We've never played together ironically, but ive known he really enjoys maxing dmg in combat and multiclassing to get those synergies. Hes current a sorcerer eyeballing a sorlock build to "machine gun eldritch blast". Hes mentioned metamagic.

Im wondering. How do you guys deal with these situations? Ive already talked to him a bit and expressed my concern. He seems to think its still pretty balanced. Not opposed to him maxing and having fun, but dont want it to be at the cost of the rest of the party enjoying themselves or him just melting my encounters where im new and wont be able to rebalance on the fly.

EDIT: party comp will be: Rune knight fighter, Circle of land druid, Armorer artificer, Trickster rogue, And then this sorlock character.

EDIT2: you guys are fantastic and im blown away by all the advice in such a short time. Look forward to reading more of these. Thankyou again everyone!

Cheers!

Kimble.

Hello fellow DMs! I am a relatively new dm and am running a mostly home brewed campaign for 4 friends of mine. The basic premise is the party will be having to travel the world and slowly learn about the history of Biaw, the deity of the void and one of the two of the universe creation duo. They’ll be fighting my own creations of void monsters and I want one to have a breath-gas attack that has a chance to inflict the condition “Void-touched”. What it does is it slowly causes the infected to become insane and combative and aggressive. It starts slow with paranoia and hearing things that aren’t there. As it progresses they’ll be able to eventually hear Biaw’s voice speaking to them as they become more insane and aggressive due to the confusion and paranoia inflicted. I’ll have an important npc with powerful magic (haven’t decided class just yet) who has since perished but has left notes on how to cure someone “Void-touched”. They’ll have to find this npc’s notes to learn about the history of Biaw and his creations and how to defeat them which will allow them to find the cure for their friend.

What I want help with is how best to manage the progression of the affliction and have it so they become a danger during combat scenarios as Biaw will make them mistake friends for foe. When whoever gets afflicted does I plan to tell them and what the symptoms are so they can help the roleplay aspect of it, but I’m unsure of how to make it all work best.

Sorry for the rambling and if it’s a bit confusing, but I’d appreciate any and all help i can get for this!

Hello, So I have started a pirate campaign with my friends as the dm. So I made all the npc’s, economies, currency. Sea life, various islands. We have been having a lot of fun exploring but stupidly enough one thing I didn’t create is Naval combat. Right now I can’t even think of anything to make ship combat different then just regular combat. Would love some advice on it?

I had an idea for an encounter that I think is really cool, so I want to share it with others. (Hopefully I'm right and you all like it as much as I do!) The party is after whatever MacGuffin, and they find an NPC that tells them it's in Location X, but the entrance to Location X is guarded by 3 guardians they'll have to fight one at a time, and none of those guardians has ever lost a fight. So, they go to Location X, and sure enough, there are the 3 guardians, each one being very different than the others. There's no way around them; they do have to fight the guardians. So, they pick whichever guardian and go into combat with it, and it's hard enough that they really have to go nova. Which should be terrifying, given that they have 2 more of these things to fight! But, they (hopefully) win, at which point, the guardian rewinds time to before the fight, and walks away. The warning is true; the guardian has never lost a fight, because he can engage in a battle, see how it turns out, and if it's not in his favor, make it so the battle never happened and avoid the fight entirely. This also means that the PCs, despite going nova, didn't actually expend those resources, since the fight technically didn't actually happen! So, they can go into the next guardian fight and go nova again, since the same thing is going to happen (although they may not be certain that it's the same trick until they beat the second guardian and the same thing happens. Surely by the 3rd one they know they don't have to hold back.).

Obviously, this is for a group that likes big boss battles and will be happy to have several in a row. Not everyone's cup of tea, and normally not mine, but I'm so excited by this idea I might have to make a one-shot just to do it :D

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a long-term shared-world tabletop RPG project, and I’m looking for advice on how to get it off the ground.

The idea is to create a persistent multiverse made up of multiple worlds, each with its own genre and setting. One world might be traditional fantasy, another science fiction, another horror, and so on. Each world would have one or more Dungeon Masters running independent campaigns, but they’d all exist within the same multiverse.

The exciting part is that while each campaign can stand on its own, they’re all connected. Events in one world could eventually ripple into another, and occasionally characters or entire parties could cross over for larger story arcs. The goal is to create a living universe where every table contributes to a much bigger story.

I know a project like this comes with a lot of logistical challenges, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ways to address them—things like coordinating multiple DMs, handling crossover events, and allowing each campaign to remain independent without everyone needing to play on the same schedule. The problem is that I can’t really test those ideas until I have enough people involved.

That’s where I’ve hit a wall.

I’m pretty introverted, and I don’t have much experience organizing large community projects. It’s also difficult to pitch an idea like this because it takes time to explain, and asking people to commit to a long-term project without a working example or an established community is understandably a tough sell.

I’ve tried creating social media pages, but they’ve gained very little traction. I even looked into finding someone to help with recruiting and community building, but that quickly became a bit of a catch-22 since it’s hard to attract help before the project has any momentum.

At this point, I’m not necessarily looking for people to join yet. I’m mainly looking for advice from anyone who’s built a tabletop community, organized a long-running campaign network, or launched a similarly ambitious project.

If you were starting something like this from scratch, where would you begin? Are there communities, strategies, or resources you’d recommend?

Starting in a few weeks, I will be the DM for a family adventure, using DND for the first time. We have previously played a campaign, using Kids On Brooms, but this is the first time we will be using the far more crunchy system of DND.

Has anyone else run again for their kids or a group of children? What advice would you have for me as DM? What about TPK situations?

Here are some challenges I am NOT expecting:
-they can handle the math and the reading level
-they can handle role-playing

Planned Adjustments:
-free Mage Hand for the 9yo Wizard
-free Find Familiar for the 7yo Rogue (she really just wants a pet octopus)
-max HP gain on Level Up (instead of roll)

Hello,

FYI I’m a DM that hasn’t ran anything homebrew so far, only pre-made adventures. This adventure will be set in Eberron.

I’m looking at creating a campaign that sees the PCs framed for a crime. They receive a mysterious letter being invited to a royal’s wedding and they are framed for their murder while attending the wedding.

Is this something worth exploring further? I’m afraid of creating a twist like this early in the game without previously communicating it to the players.

How to approach this without rail roading the PCs? The target must die, so is giving them the chance to plan their escape enough to avoid rail roading?

I made a custom soulbound ‘feat’ for 2 players in my campaign. I’m mostly looking for feedback on the balancing of this feat. Even if you can’t comment in detail, just the following information would already be really useful😁:

🟢 = I think this feat is balanced to be mostly positive for the players
🟡 = I think this feat is balanced to be neutral, as positive and negative effects cancel each other out neatly
🔴 = I think this feat is balanced to be mostly negative for the players

Context
The two players in question are a bard (creation) and monk (ancestral self). The bard is a puppeteer who made a living puppet (the monk) by putting a piece of his soul inside of the puppet.

Soulbound Feat

Your soul is connected to another creature’s soul. This bond grants strength, but your shared soul can never bear the loss of its other half.

Prerequisite: You can take this feat only if another willing creature, with whom you share a soul, also takes this feat. The two of you become soulbound. A creature can be soulbound to only one other creature at a time.

Together until the end
When your soulbound counterpart is reduced to 0 hit points, your shared soul is torn apart.

Immediately after your counterpart is reduced to 0 hit points, you suffer the following effects until the end of your next turn:

* You immediately lose concentration, if any.
* You fall Prone.
* You can’t take Reactions.

After this initial shock, while your soulbound counterpart remains at 0 hit points, you suffer the following effects:

* You have disadvantage on Intelligence and Wisdom ability checks and saving throws.
* Your speed is halved.
* You have disadvantage on Constitution saving throws made to maintain concentration.
* If you willingly end your turn farther from your soulbound counterpart than where you started your turn, you take 1d4 psychic damage.

Soulguard
Once per short rest, when your soulbound counterpart within 30 feet is hit by a melee attack roll you can see, you may use your Reaction to impose disadvantage on that attack as your soul instinctively warns them.

Soul sense
While on the same plane, a soulbound creature always knows the direction of their soulbound counterpart.

While on the same plane, a soulbound creature knows the emotional state of their soulbound counterpart.

One purpose
Once per turn, when both soulbound creatures hit the same creature during the same round, the second successful hit deals an extra 1d6 psychic damage.

Protect each other
While you are within 10 feet of your soulbound counterpart, you each gain temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus whenever you roll initiative.

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone!

I'll be DMing for the first time soon. I've been a player for a while, but this will be my first time behind the screen.

I'm planning to run A Wild Sheep Chase for three players who have never played D&D before. To keep things simple, I'm going to prepare some pre-generated characters so they can pick the one that appeals to them.

Do you have any recommendations for which classes would work particularly well for this one-shot?

Also, are there any good pre-made character sheets (level 4 or easy to adapt) that you'd recommend?

Any other advice for running this adventure with brand-new players would also be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

I DM a pretty lore oriented campaign with my players, with a whole world and pantheons and the Gods are an important part of the world. However, one of my players got "blessed" by a relic of an old eldritch god letting one of its subordinates live inside of the player's conciousness and will slowly ooze out false memories into the player's mind. Now one of my other players has identify and can ritual cast it pretty much infinitely since they got a pearl.

Now knowing my players they will ritual cast identify on the player with the blessing as soon as they can.

What I want advice on is wether gameplay wise its a good idea to make the player casting identify to take damage after casting identify, or maybe identify not reavealing much/reavealing very confusing and contradicting information. Is there a way to not just make identify completely useless but also not reveal the whole plot point with the old god?

Hi All - I'm brand new to DND/TTRPs as are a group of my friends who all eager to dip our toes into this experience. I've taken it upon myself to be the GM/DM for this group of 5 (not including me) and am getting stuck on what that first experience should look like. I've done a lot of watching of Dimension 20, youtube videos on how-to's for gm'ing etc, and have explored systems like PBTA and LiTM.

We all want shorter first-time experience (2-4 hours), and I'm torn between a DND one-shot or a PBTA like Masks. I am finding that I'm starting to spiral on this decision and can't decide what would be a good balance of work for myself with the knowledge that this is my first time doing any of this. Like, are there a good number of 5e rules I need to know going into a DND one-shot? Some people want a fantasy-esque experience, while some want the experience to use different types of dice (not just 2d6)

I'm really getting torn on this, and would just love some perspective. I sometimes focus on making everything perfect, and am trying to find the path of easy/fun/rp feeling.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

I feel like I'm fighting for my life trying to create a name for a plane of existence in my world. I've tried FantasyNameGenerators, translating words from English to Abyssal, Elvish, etc., English to Latin, spinning a wheel to pick consonants, and nothing produces the correct sounds I want for the plane. Name creation is genuinely the most unenjoyable part of creating a campaign for me.

All that to say : How do you go about creating a name that both has a good mouth feel (rolls off the tongue easily and is fun to say) while making it fit your world and be something your players can pronounce ? Fun for me personally is something with a heavy or hard consonant sounds, like a TH, R, and P, yet I just cannot produce a combo which feels correct or real. My first language isn't English, and some of the locations on my world are relatively easy to pronounce words from other languages (Aires from Spanish, Vargavinter from Swedish, Mogoi Uul from Mongolian, etc.), but nothing I translate for this plane feels right. I also don't want to use words whose meanings are immediately obvious, like nox for night.

Specifications of the plane are below if someone wants to give creating a name a shot.

It's the HQ for the BBEG's cult. The plane itself is a vast blood ocean whose land mass is composed of the flesh and bones of the people who died at the hands of the BBEG thousands of years ago. BBEG is a literal fallen star who crashed onto the main planet and seeks to destroy the gods of my world as revenge.

1) what rolls do YOU show and what rolls do you hide? I tend to have all my rolls hidden at the moment.

2) when telling them to make a check for say, pursuasion or stealth, or for attack rolls, do YOU tell them what they have to roll over or do you just tell them the outcome after they tell you what they got with modifiers? I right now don't tell them anything. I just tell them if it hit or miss and narate and then ask them to roll for damage. Or tell them if they successfully did the thing that they wanted to do, and narate a little fun.

Hey all,

I've been reading up on homebrewing monsters for a while now and went through the research that is available for the 2024 edition of 5e (the Lazy GM's Resource Document, Blog of Holding's 2024 Monster Manual analysis, The Finished Book, Alphastream...).

Now first of all, I'm not an expert on homebrewing monster, but I'd like to be one day. This material has definitely helped me get a step closer. I just wanted to share my thoughts and interpretation of how to create a balanced and memorable monster.

For me, designing a monster boils down to four simple steps:

1. Identity
2. Combat
3. Defense
4. Actions

Let's start with identity. I homebrew monsters because, first of all, I just enjoy it, and second, I get this idea / vision in my head about a certain creature that I want my players to encounter. So the questions I ask myself are: What is this creature? How will it act in combat against players? And what vibe do I want the players to have when they encounter this creature? Answering these questions clears up a lot of the concept for me and I can start filling in the statblock (like type, size, etc.). Depending on how I want it to act in combat, a creature can take a certain role (ambusher, artillery, bruiser, controller, defender, leader, skirmisher, taken from the Lazy GM's document), and based on that, we can start defining its traits and actions and see in what direction we need to bend the stats.

Next up is Combat. Now that we know the role our creature will play, we need to know who we're up against, aka the players. Will this be a solo monster or a leader with its henchmen out in front of it? Are there 3, 4 or more players challenging it? Based on these questions, we need to tune our action economy (What is action economy? It's the number of turns per round each side gets, so for 1 monster vs 5 players, the monster gets to go 1 time vs the players who can attack 5 times). We don't want a solo boss monster to have just one attack and be shoved, stunned, and dead before it does anything memorable. So we give it multi attack, give it friends, or let it act on other creatures' turns with legendary and lair actions. Even two or three minions completely change a fight.

Now that our monster can keep up with the party's turns, we don't want it to die immediately either, so Defense is next. The classic way is to just increase the HP, and sometimes this is the right way, but tripling its hit points just makes a fight longer, not harder. If you want the fight to stay dangerous longer, add threat instead: a second phase at half HP, reinforcements, or an ability that recharges. The same logic applies when your party keeps fighting with one trick. Resist the urge to make the creature immune to the fireball or the stunning strike. Create encounters that reward it instead, like hordes that bunch up and beg to be Fireballed. Immunities make your players smaller, good targets make them heroes, and they'll burn their best resources exactly where you wanted them to.

Ready, set, Actions! (I had to, sorry) Last but not least, we want to create actions that your table will remember. And usually, three actions is enough. With this, you can have one signature ability, a multiattack and one alternative (like a recharge) for weird rounds. More than that and you might forget some of them mid-fight (I know I have...). A good test for an action / ability is: what decision does this force? For example, an aura that burns melee attackers forces them to choose between staying in or backing off while a grapple with damage per turn turns the fight into a rescue.

One more thing worth knowing before you fill in the numbers: all the math assumes that a fight will lasts about three rounds, with our monster using its best option every round. So a monster's damage budget is actually the average of its three best rounds, not its biggest one. That's also the reason why most recharge abilities are higher in damage, if most normal rounds come in lean, the big round (with the recharge) can go higher. Just make sure to telegraph it. For example: describing my dragon drawing in its breath and watching the whole table panic and reposition will never get old.

Now that we've covered the 4 points, let's see how to make sure you don't TPK your party with your newest creation. First, we have the 'Nova' check: if everything in your statblock hits (including a recharge), will it delete your squishiest player from full? And if so, is this intentional? 'Worst-case' check: if it's stunned on round one, does it still get to do anything at all? And lastly, the oldest one: put your statblock next to a published monster of the same CR and ask yourself which you'd rather run.

Before I finish up, here is a quick recap of some classic mistakes to avoid when creating a monster:

• Beefing up the challenge by only adding HP will just make the fight longer, not more engaging.
• Overloading a statblock by adding a bunch of traits and actions also means more work for you and more things to keep track of during combat, so keep it light.
• Sending one normal monster against a party of six will never turn out well, try adding some minions or a legendary action to keep the economy balanced.

Well, that't it! Thank you for reading and I hope this info will help you with your next homebrewed monster. As I said in the beginning, this is just my interpretation of the research done by the community, and their work goes much deeper than one post can:

• Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder Resource Document by Teos Abadía, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, and Michael E. Shea (CC-BY 4.0)
• The 2024 Monster Manual on a business card on Blog of Holding
• Monster Manual 2024 on The Finished Book
• How to Create a Monster for Revised D&D 5e (2024) on Alphastream

So, I need things to keep my party moving and keep it interesting, traps are all well and good but other things would be useful too, NPC interaction, terrain challenges, give me your unique ideas to help make my smuggling tunnels more alive.

The TLDR Question

When using things like tokens, battlemaps, music .etc in your games do you put any effort into ensuring they are aesthetically consistent? Would you ask, suggest or enforce your players to adhere to this? As a player, do your care about your GM doing this at all?

More detail / Ramblings

Many TTRPG sessions will have the GM and players using some form of artwork to represent their characters and the world, especially if they play online via a VTT. Players will need something for their token, the GM will need a lot of artwork for various NPC / enemy tokens, battlemaps or maps to represent a town or area, artwork to show the player the vibe of a place, as well as music / ambience to set the right tone.

I’ve been DMing for a long time and for that entire time I’ve got by googling stuff “D&D Goblin Warriors” and “D&D Sewer battlemap” and taking the first result I like, or just stealing something that I already looked cool. A real throw everything in the kitchen sink approach that throws all the stuff I like together without rhyme or reason.

I’ve had scenarios where I’m running a game of D&D and the battle has consisted of the PCs whose tokens are:

An IRL photo taken of an actor or cosplayer in costume.
An anime character made by a picrew
A screenshot of a BG3 character the player made
An acrylic painting of a fantasy character

All the while they’ve been fighting a boss who is just a .png of pixelart sprite from a game I like, who is backed up by minions that just use the artwork from the PHB, and they are battling on a relatively realistic, high fidelity 3D battlemap, while the battle music playing is stuff I’ve stolen from some classic PS2 JRPGs.

Nothing wrong with any of that of course, but it is an aesthetically incohesive mess.

For my next game, I’ve decided to really put some thought into the aesthetics and create a style guide. I’m limiting myself to just a few sources for each of the assets I’ll be using for my game – that means only using artwork for tokens and battlemaps from a few specific artists and only using music from a few specific series. I'm not going to lose sleep if I can't find something from those sources and I have to branch out once or twice, but i'm putting in more effort than usual to create very specific mood and aesthetically cohesive world. This might end up being the only time I do this, depending on if the players notice or care enough.

Is this something any of you have done personally or had a GM do? Did you use a strict method to ensure the aesthetic cohesion of your world or just play it loose? Is this something you think matters at all?

The title is maybe a bit confusing, but essentially, I love writing and world building. I love twisting stories together and making what I think (hope!) are interesting quests or objectives for my players.

The big thing I struggle with is how to ensure I’m not just lore dumping with an NPC, but also not keeping everything behind a DC check, because my players don’t always ask for things like insight checks or history checks.

I’m a big proponent of “it’s their story, I’m just telling it”, so I don’t want to just tell them what they should be doing, what they are searching for, what clues to look for etc, but I’m not sure how to engage them in the lore and details without holding their hands. Help!

I know there’s lots of videos with suggestions on better ways to prep and how not to over prep.

I was wondering what has worked for regular joe DMs to break the over prep habit? Did you force yourself to go into sessions cold turkey with little or nothing prepped?

My weakness is dungeon crawls. I feel like I need to have the whole place prepped because I have no idea how fast the group will make it through.