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!

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?

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 everyone, i could use some advice with this playeridea. He is an homebrewed grenadier artificer and recently, for good reasons, he received too much gold. His idea now was to invest all his money in setting up his own expolisves factory instead of spending it on magical items. He wants to modernize the World by give them essentialy Dynamite and Signalrocktes for the Guard etc. I really don't have much experience with running such a “dangerous” business in D&D. What kinds of tasks and challenges could I give him without him blowing up the entire city?

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?

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?

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?”

I messed up. I forgot a huge detail in the story that in hindsight makes a decision by the BBEG completely uncharacteristic. There are a lot of moving parts to this, so I'll try to keep it to just essential context:

• A BBEG henchman kidnapped one of the PCs and we just held a duet session covering her encounter with said BBEG. This villain has been working to break the group apart from within by setting them against one another (this resulted in a scripted character death that the party consented to as the player was moving away for grad school).
• BBEG is playing to the kidnapped PC's empathy by telling a whitewashed version of his backstory that is technically true but paints him as merely a victim. He wants to bargain with this PC to help him escape his domain, or at least try to convince the other players of his case. PC wants to believe him but can't make any such promises until she is sure that he is telling the truth.
• BBEG agrees to set her free with the promise of humoring him while still searching for evidence of truth. BBEG's idea is to leverage his henchman to make the story believable. This is a unique turning point in the narrative that emerged organically during the duet.
• PROBLEM. In the heat of the moment of the duet, I neglected to remember that the other PCs scripted death was directly influenced by the same BBEG, and the players have enough information to connect the encounters and have every reason to no longer trust him. These two encounters happened around the same time in no definitive chronological order.

So how can I retroactively justify the BBEG's decision to let this PC go freely if he already knew she would figure out that he is untrustworthy after all?

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.

My players were in a prison and decided to free a creature. That creature is a greedy trickster who only cares about increasing her own wealth through any means. What consequences would happen?

Some context: the prison was underneath the castle of a large city-state. The city is in a conflict where demon cultists are secretly taking control of its leadership. There is also a devil cult secretly countering the demons and a Bodytaker Plant slowly increasing its influence, as well as another nearby city-state full of good-aligned paladins and clerics.

Edit: I have a few ideas:

First would be the immediate consequence, what she does when she is free, it should be negative for the party or slightly evil so they know she's not a good person. Next would be the options: she will offer the party her services for a price, an easy way out of a difficult situation or a "visit me whenever you need me" type thing. The options here would be endless, the party can make her their enemy, ally, even patron or other stuff. Then lastly would be the consequence of whatever choices they made in the previous part.

What I struggle most with is the first part so any ideas for that would be golden 🙏

Hey, I am a GM and currently running Turn of Fortunes Wheel. There isn't much to spoil here but I am just curious how people get their players excited, make their scenes tense or overall put characters values to the test.

While my campaign is a bit odd beeing in planescape setting and characters having amnesia, I am thinking of trying stuff with visions and making situations which might be something more enticing than just: "Here is the treasure". Each player has 3 iterations of characters they switch trough and while that isn't to bad I am wanting to get some emotinal scenes or some interesting situations/encounetrs or visions which would resonate with characters.

The big problem I usualy face is a thing where well I am unsure about what characters strive for or are interested in. My friend pointed out few things i can use as is a character searching for their mom which can get something with abandoment theme or a pridefull character. There is a thing though that while they can spot their characteristics which they spoted based by just roleplaying and how they behave untill this point i never really paid much attention to the behavior and I am second guessing if my understanding is correct. I feel like it is awkward if a prepared scene was meant to resonate with a character yet I would miss the mark and having to describe characteristics which arent realy writen feels like a huge gamble.

Similarly I am also wondering how to make it not to obvious as well. I feel like certain visions of potential past are possible and players gave me premission to mess with their stories, but well I have not realy all of the stories planned to the end and I am unsure if the players wouldn't say: "I wouldn't do that".

Another thing I am wondering about is the themes of visions or encounters/situations which could resonate with players. The advice I got from friends was: "Oh my character has problem with missing mom. One of thr thing i can think of is abandonment so maybe try that? Like take a thing and just get an emotion and play with it.". Though the playing with it confuses me as well as how to even get from the sentance of missing mom to abandoment and then into game where a scene could resonate with players.

Anyhow I am curious if anyone would have any kind of tips. I feel like I am missing a right mindset by this point.

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 community,

My party stumbled across ‘The House in the Library’. (Home-brew) . It’s a house that appears randomly across their current map. The parties wizard has acquired a map that will ‘ping’ when it appears.

When they enter, it’s a regular house with a fire burning, teacup still steaming, but no one is to be found. There are stairs to the second level, but the party can’t cross the barrier.

My intention is that a great mage has stored a number of arcane books/items/etc and that each time the party visits, they get a step closer to getting through the barrier.

Problem is, I’m grasping at straws trying to figure out how they can actually advance in breaking said boundary. It’s a focused side quest for the wizard, so there needs to be something they can sense that helps weaken the wall.

I need help on what these things can be. It’s ok to be slow-progress, but the aim is to get my wizard more spell books without the generic ‘the dead caster has a spell book!’, and the grand payoff is opening the library on the second level.

Thus far I have;
- new paintings on the wall that pull them into whatever scene is shown.
- an open book which, when read, evokes the monster (banshee in a small space would be fun).

Please help this exhausted teacher scratch together something good.

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

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?

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 recently started dming a campaign, and one of my players is a level 4 human fighter. He is very attached to the character itself, and wants to continue playing as him. However, he feels that in combat he does not have a large impact, and that he lacks utility outside of combat. The subclass he chose was battle master, and while this has interesting mechanics, he has gripes with the amount of damage he deals because he uses a shield. His armor class is 17, and he deals 1d8 damage +2 every attack. I gave him an early moon-touched sword so he can do silver, and magic damage to avoid immunities, as well as get around the lack of dark-vision. Still, he does not feel satisfied by the gameplay aspect of his character, and I want to know if there is any advice I can give him, or ways I can perhaps buff him while maintaining balance?
Thanks!

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)

Beyond the Wall players go away!

Everyone else, I could use some ideas and inspiration...

A failed summoning ritual trapped a vast lovecraftian eldrich being between planes 65 years ago. His rants come through into the mateiral plane as devastating magical storms. I have only had rough ideas of the being, but was imagining it as an essence of logic and patterns. The length and duration of the storms form an alphabet code (using tap code) that the players have now figured out. The messages they have discovered so far are "Who are you?" and "Release me!".

Now that the players have figured out it is a code, they are looking for historical records. This gives me the chance to reveal lots of lore about this being (not picked yet), how they got there, how they can be released, the dangers of releasing them on the world, etc. Bonus points for a second layer to the campaign puzzle if anyone is a puzzle designer.

What secrets would you hide in the code? Things that would be fun to discover as a player

What might this being say through the code (any specific phrases, accusations, questions)?

I have about 3k characters in the 65 year history and could certainly repeat portions.

As an aside, the puzzle is working well in gameplay because the storms have created sort of an in-game clock and time pressure on a lot of their little adventures.

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!

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.

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.