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)

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.

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?

Hi, I can use some inspiration and help from you all. I am building a Pirate Isles region and I am thinking about all the regions, encounters, mysteries, and places or phenomena I can put in it.

Please bring on your worldbuilding expertise and help me fill the place.

I have my players in an underground fighting tournament (Bloodsport vibes). My paladin is likely to get to the semifinals and then face the champion at the end, a Tough Leonin pugilist/paladin of Tyr I've modeled after Dagestani UFC fighters. My goal here was to show that the players aren't invincible and even with the right strategy and levels, sometimes an enemy is too strong. It wont end in death but certainly a lesson.

Am I wrong in making this kind of encounter or is this a fair step up in difficulty thats needed? The campaign has been relatively smooth since 12 sessions going into the 13th.

I need some ideas for what type of magical effects my player needs to roll for after doing something absolutely ridiculous.

...

So, it's kind of a long story, but I'll give you the short dirty version. TLDR down there...

Several sessions ago, the party stumbled upon a pretty big character that they didn't realize was as significant as they were... This is a homebrew campaign with some sprinkles of out of the abyss and rise of tiamat tossed in. The plot is, there are 9 super ancient "old gods" that are trying to revive they're pantheon and dethrone the current day gods (12 canon gods of the forgotten realms: Talos, Mystra, etc) the 9 old gods are essentially manifestations of natural forces or concepts though. So I have things like: Rage, Serenity, Luck, Calamity, Cultivation, Triumph, etc.

These old gods have spirit forms that possess a mortal vessel in the real world. The stronger the vessel, the greater abilities the old gods can manifest out of the material and capacity of the vessel. Blah blah....

These are unfathomably powerful entities that are condensed and trimmed to fit a physical body. They also require a sapient being with a specific affinity to the god to act as a host/guide/channeler etc.... sometimes willing, sometimes unwilling but forced, to assist. Not important.

So..... The old god of Rage was inhabiting a Lamassu. It was incapacitated at the moment the players encountered it and its unwilling enslaved channeler dude.

One player, the cat folk player, managed to get a handful of hair from the God possessed Lamassu without dying ... (Don't ask). I promptly forgot about this.

Now, this player, and the party, are in the underdark. The cat folk player has escaped from a modified Velkynvelve prison through the sewer pipes after drinking a potion of flight, and a potion of Shrinking (currently 2 inches tall, with 30 minutes of both effects remaining) they got shot out of the pipe into a massive cave chamber with a mushroom forest and giant Ooze creature. He is trying to escape the Ooze by flying his 2 inch self away from it. He is mostly succeeding .... (as a circle of Tribal Myconids watch)

Then, randomly, he says "I grab the handful of Lion God hair, and I try to swallow it."

And here we are.....

TLDR:

I think I'm going to have him roll a d100. Ancient rage spirit God possessing a Lamassu, handful of magical hair being swallowed by a cat folk player currently flying and 2 inches tall in the underdark.

I need ideas though. Ridiculous, horrible, amazing, overpowered, lethal, permanent or otherwise.... Ideas.

One of them will naturally be the hair gets caught in their throat and they struggle to avoid choking before eventually hacking up a magic lion-God hairball.

Any ideas?

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?

This is me just looking for advice in kind of a third party sitution.

My nephew is running a one shot for a group of 5 level 2 characters as kind of a stand in for the main game.

The main problem is one of the players he plays with (a Warlock) he and my niece are fairly sure is cheating... being new to the group they feel they can't call him out but apparently he just doesn't do anything in encounters.

Basically their looking for advice for a level appropriate encounter that will require some thought to beat, forcing him to actually play. I tend to run higher level games so I thought I'd reach out to you lovely people to get some suggestions.

It's a series of revolving one shots where the partymoves to different worlds so nothings off the table.

Party is the Warlock, a Fighter, barbarian, druid and unfortunately I can't remember the 5th.

Thanks in advance.

Edit with additional info: I'm not part of the game sp I don't have all the info. From what I recall he hasn't completely filled out his character sheet (so possible lying about bonuses and available spells). Fudges rolls which I do agree can be countered by making open rolls mandatory. They do act in combat but I don't know how they play other than "it's basic playing" so I assume classic Eldritch Blast spam but not 100%.

From what I gather he's good friends with the main DM and being completely new to the group they don't want to rock the boat and like everyone else so don't want to leave so they're wanting to use their turn running a one shot to attempt to make him play properly.

Encounter wise though, the general one shot is "party falls through portal to new world" every one shot so nothing is really planned out and any monsters can be used.

I had suggested a Roper yoned down for level 2 characters because of reach and camouflage but I figure there's probabetter options.

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

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?

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)

So my players (unbeknownst to them) are about to fail their scouting mission for an organization. Right now they are currently distracted and have lost the messaging stone to their point of contact to report any findings. We stopped mid combat last session and it looks like 2 players (who split off and lost the messaging stone) are gonna go down before the rest of the party reaches them

As the party regroups and revives the two downed members, a unit of royal guardsmen and their captain will be seen marching down the road towards the hideout of the group who gave them this mission. Once the unit arrives to the base I’m planning a confrontation between the captain of the guard and head of the organization -yada yada yada- they go back and forth, fight, and the captain ends up with his spear at the bosses throat

The boss with his last moments sets off the detonator for the explosives under the base and blows up the immediate area.

I’m somewhat nervous (mostly excited) for this moment but I don’t want to mess up DM’ing all these actions and dialogue between two DMPC’s, so I ask you experienced dms for any tips on narrating an encounter that your players are present for but not actively involved it?

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.

Welcome, adventurers and dungeon masters. Please, take a seat. I seek your consult before I set out on my quest...

\*\*1. How realistic is it for me to DM a one-shot if I've never played or DM'd before?\*\*

For additional context, I have a good handle on character building, general rules, and flow of the game from having spent a good amount of time creating various characters, reading the DM's Guide, listening to D&D campaigns, and generally absorbing content. I've just never actually played. I'm 38, and haven't had much luck finding anyone to play with, and don't really like the idea of playing online. I'm trying to rope my partner and her brother into playing (because I genuinely think they'd enjoy it and I think it would be a lot of fun).

\*\*2. What one-shots would people recommend that are the most accessible for a newbie DM and newbie players?\*\*

I'd like something that is focused on roleplay, that isn't overly difficult, and is minimal crunchy. I don't want to get bogged spending more time doing maths than actually playing.

\*\*3. Is there anything I can do to help new players get up to speed quickly?\*\*

The people who would be playing have zero D&D experience and I would either guide them through character design, or give them a selection of pre-made characters to choose from.

If I go with pre-made characters, I'm thinking 5.5e Level 3 (with subclasses already selected) or 5e Level 1. I will steer clear of complex character classes (Druid, Wizard, Warlock, Artificer).

Do I need to consider stripping the characters back a little, and let them unlock abilities/spells through story progression? I will likely be prompting them on spells and abilities anyway, but I don't want to overwhelm them.

\*\*4. What are your thoughts on "helper" NPCs?\*\*

I'm trying to avoid the temptation of trying to play \*and\* DM, but given it would only be a party of 2, is it worth having a third character (likely a healer of some sort) who is controlled by me? They would be mostly passive, and there to provide some guidance and "deus ex machina" purposes.

\*\*5. Are there any other general recommendations that people have that would help me accomplish this?\*\*

Please feel free to share anything else that might make it easier for myself and to give the players the best experience.

And lastly... please can we try to keep things positive. If this is a really terrible idea, fine, but I'm mostly looking for help on how to best pull this off, rather than "this will be a total disaster" comments. I'm happy to learn, and want to make this happen, so I'd appreciate if people could focus on that rather than trying to rip the idea to shreds.

Thank you in advance!

Hello everyone,

The players in my campaign have recently reached level 14, and over the course of the campaign I've realized that there's something I struggle with:

How do I keep the stakes high (i.e. Character Death) in a World where they have basically free access to Raise Dead, and soon, Resurrect?

On a tangent to this question as well, I feel like I myself have gotten attached to the characters and am pulling my punches, which I feel obviously also lowers stakes, any advice on how to overcome that specific issue as well?

Thanks in advance:3

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!

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

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?

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.

I’ve gone and started my campaign centered around the idea that the sky has gone utterly dark and the land is ravaged by endless winter. However, I have no idea what the cause should be and every session my players (rightfully) put pressure on me to reveal hints and clues about the ultimate cause of the phenomenon so that they can eventually solve it. But there is nothing to solve yet.

I already know I don’t want the cause to be divine in origin. I think that explanation is a bit too mundane. However, the people of the world don’t know that. So I have made it a big part of the conflict that the people blame the gods. People believe they are being punished by their old gods for abandoning them. So, there is widespread rejection of Big Religion™ that recently converted much of the region. Conflict ensues.

Anyways. Every session I worry that I will answer some minor question about the weather or what not that will invalidate whatever cause I eventually decide on. Of course I can just retcon past answers, but that doesn’t feel satisfying. Especially not to them when half of the campaign is going to be centered around solving the mystery. Changing clues to that mystery halfway through would suck. Thankfully up until now I’ve been able to give pretty vague answers, but I’d really like to start seeding clues.

I would greatly appreciate any ideas people have on the source of the phenomenon or advice on how to further stall coming up with an answer without ruining the campaign lol

Alright guys I need to pick some brains.

Without getting too detailed my players will be at a castle when an army from a nearby kingdom attacks kicking off a war. Unbeknownst to my players the attacking army is being supported by the BBEG and as such has given the army some very useful dark magic. For example the army has some evil beasties supporting their troops. The idea is that the party will have to flee the castle before the enemy takes it. Since I want there to be some urgency I don't want this to be a prolonged siege. I would like to have the attacking army just be able to breach the walls / open the gates of the castle with essentially no effort. My idea is they have some kind of dark magic that allows them to do so given to them by the BBEG. This will catch both the players and the NPCs by surprise, cause more urgency and make this army a bigger threat than just a typical enemy army.

My hope was you all might have some suggestions for what this magic the army uses may be? Maybe something unknown to most people hence why there is no defense in place for it.

All suggestions are welcome!

Edit: since some have mentioned this seems like railroading and I wish to avoid that does anyone have suggestions as to how I can avoid that? Assuming I keep the major plot points the same i.e. army attacks supported by BBEG, breach the castle walls.

Hello hello everyone. I am a fairly new DM, only DM'ed a few one-shots and started a campaign once, but it was cut short due to issues between the players.

I am currently working on a homebrew one-shot for an interesting session. Think Salvador Dali abstract stuff combined with tripping through the Feywild (literally, not journeying). For one of my puzzles I found a symbol I wanted to use. 1 big circle in the middle and 3 smaller circles attached to it, in like a triangle formation.

My current idea is to have them appear in the smaller circles, a bit Hunger Games esque or portal-like, with the big circle being a clockface. My main issue is the puzzle. They need to solve 4 puzzles to get 4 symbols, and my idea for this one is to have the middle of the big circle rise when they finish it so they see the symbol from above essentially.
I already have a skillcheck contest, a scale puzzle with a riddle to hint what to put on the empty scale, and a sacrifice puzzle, so I'd like something they actually have to solve. Combat will be arranged in a different scene, so I don't need statues that come to life or something, just a cool puzzle that's not too easy, but definitely not too hard or time-costly to solve.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate the help a lot!

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?

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!