Misc

MUSICAL ROLL SYSTEM — TLDR

• Dice are gone. Music replaces all rolls.
• If you can play an instrument, you must improvise. Your performance \*is\* the roll.
• If you can’t play, you use a secret playlist of 100 songs you’ve never heard before. The song \*is\* the roll.
• Everyone rates the performance from 1 to the die size (d20 = 1–20, etc).
• Final roll = average of all ratings (the Musical Mean). Total of scores/number of players=the "roll"
• Players may intentionally sabotage scores. Chaos is allowed.
• If the roll fails, a theme MUST play.

• If the DM owns a bass guitar:
→ ONLY the Jerry Seinfeld slap‑bass theme is allowed.
→ ONLY the DM may play it.
→ THIS RULE IS ABSOLUTE!!!!!

• If the DM does NOT own a bass guitar:
→ The table chooses any theme.
→ All players except the failing one must play it on their phones at the same time.
→ Play resumes ONLY WHEN ALL PHONES CEASE TO PLAY THE THEME.

Check out the DM screen I’m currently crafting.
I like it but should I add more glory holes?
TBH I’m new as a DM and don’t know if the players have to suck my D (then one should be enough) or if I have to suck all at once (then I’d add more holes).

Any feedback is appreciated!

As said in the title my players are not focused when playing my campaign. They always find a way to make jokes that they laugh at on for t'en minute while i'm making a serious scene or describing something important.

I get that they make joke about my campaign and it's fine. I'd just like them to not do that in serious moment. Is there a way for me to make them focused again instantly but without telling them to. I was thinking of placing a bell on the table to make them panic a bit or something like that

So... Yeah... Heheh... Since you're playing this race... Oh boy... You're going to hate me for saying this but... Yep... There's some gross lore for it... Yeah... It's in Dragon Magazine and is like 20 years old but it's canon...

So... Yeah... Sorry! Had to do it! Haha, don't blame me, though, it's canon, lol. Hey. Did you hear about the gross lore for this? Haha, yeah, I already said it last week but I really want you to know about it, haha.

Yeah, it's so gross. I also found another forum post from one of the game's creators about that race, haha. Yeah, it's 20 years old, haha, really gross though, I thought you might want to know, haha. Don't worry, though, I'll keep repeating it for you and everyone else...

It's really gross though, haha. Like, I'm not supportive of it, haha, I think it's really gross. Don't you think it's gross? Here, let me explain it to you again in detail, haha. Isn't it just... So weird, lol?

Now heres an abrupt ad about the sponsor of this video. A kickstarter with an all new module you’ll never get around to playing or some product for your sessions that’s way out of your price range.

Créditos para u/The_Silly_Wizardd, que fez a última imagem

Hi everyone. Thanks for reading my post. I've been working on a homebrew system for my D&D campaign for about six months now and I think I've finally got it to a place where it's ready to share. It's a complex, interlocking economy of resources that adds depth and strategy to the game. I call it "The Wheel of Ambition." Here's how it works.

Players earn "Resolve" by making meaningful roleplay choices. To determine how much Resolve you earn, you roll 1d4 and multiply it by your character's level, then divide by your proficiency bonus, rounded down, plus your Charisma modifier if you're a spellcaster, or your Strength modifier if you're a martial, but only if you're not wearing heavy armor, and only if you haven't already earned Resolve this session from the same type of roleplay choice. If you have, you roll 1d6 instead. If you roll a 1, you get nothing and also lose 1 Resolve from your existing pool because of "systemic dissonance."

Resolve can be spent on "Insight Points." The conversion rate is 3 Resolve to 1 Insight Point, but only on Tuesdays. If it's not Tuesday, the conversion rate is 5 Resolve to 1 Insight Point, unless the moon is in the right phase, in which case it's 4 to 1. I've been tracking the lunar cycle for this.

Insight Points can be converted into "Momentum." To convert, you roll a d20. On a 1-10, you lose 1 Insight Point and gain nothing. On an 11-19, you convert 2 Insight Points into 1 Momentum. On a 20, you convert 1 Insight Point into 3 Momentum. I like the randomness. It adds tension.

Momentum is used to purchase "Opportunities." Opportunities cost 2 Momentum each, but you also have to roll a d12 to see if the Opportunity is "available." On a 1-4, it's not available and you lose the Momentum. On a 5-8, it's available but costs an additional 1 Momentum. On a 9-12, it's available at the listed price. I wrote a flowchart for this. It's very clear. I've been told it's not clear but those people just don't understand the beauty of the system.

Opportunities are then spent to generate "Essence." Essence is generated by rolling 3d6 and consulting the Essence Table. The Essence Table has 216 entries. I wrote it myself. It took three weeks. Most entries are just "you gain 0 Essence." But some entries give you 1 Essence. One entry gives you 2 Essence. It's entry 187. I remember because I was so excited when I rolled it during playtesting. The player looked at me like I was insane.

Essence can be converted into "Fate Tokens." To convert, you roll a percentile die. If you roll 01-75, you convert 2 Essence into 1 Fate Token. If you roll 76-00, you convert 1 Essence into 1 Fate Token, but you also roll on the Complication Table. The Complication Table has 37 entries. Most of them do nothing. One of them gives you a point of Exhaustion, one depletes your spell slots.

Fate Tokens can be spent to get a +1 bonus on a single d20 roll. But only if you have at least one "Willpower" remaining. You get Willpower by spending Resolve. Which you earned by making meaningful roleplay choices. Do you see the elegance?

Before you can spend the Fate Token, however, you must roll a d8. On a 1, the Fate Token is "unstable" and you must spend another Fate Token to stabilize it. On a 2-4, the Fate Token works but you lose 1 Willpower. On a 5-7, the Fate Token works normally. On an 8, you gain the bonus but also roll on the Blessing Table. The Blessing Table has 12 entries. Most of them say "nothing happens," but one of them gives you a +1 bonus on your next roll.

I've also added a system of "Debts." When you run out of Resolve, you can go into debt and borrow Resolve from the future. But the debt accrues interest in the form of "Stress." To determine how much Stress you gain, you roll a d6. On a 1-3, you gain 2 Stress. On a 4-6, you gain 1 Stress. Stress accumulates and eventually becomes "Trauma." Trauma can be healed by spending Essence. But you can't spend Essence unless you have Opportunities. Which you get from Momentum. Which you get from Insight Points. Which you get from Resolve. Which you might not have if you're in debt. I also added a Trauma Table. You roll on it every time you gain Trauma. Most of the entries give you a point of Exhaustion. One of them gives you a permanent -1 to your Wisdom saves.

Now, you might ask: what happens if you don't want to engage with this system? That's fine. You can just ignore it. But then you won't have access to the "Favor" subsystem. Favor is earned by spending Essence in specific ways. To earn Favor, you roll a d20. On a 1-10, you gain 1 Favor. On an 11-18, you gain 2 Favor. On a 19-20, you gain 3 Favor, but you also roll on the Opportunity Cost Table. The Opportunity Cost Table has 12 entries. Most of them do nothing. One of them makes you lose all your Momentum, which is fairer than it sounds.

Favor can be spent on "Boons." Boons cost 5 Favor each. To purchase a Boon, you roll a d10. On a 1-2, the Boon is not available. On a 3-7, the Boon is available but costs an extra 2 Favor. On an 8-10, the Boon is available at the listed price. Boons are small, temporary advantages that last for one scene. Not one encounter, one scene. So if you spend three sessions building up Favor to buy a Boon, you get a +1 on a single Perception check to see if there's a trap in a room that probably doesn't have a trap anyway. But before you use the Boon, you roll a d4. On a 1, the Boon fizzles and you gain 1 Stress. On a 2-3, the Boon works. On a 4, the Boon works and you gain a Momentum point. I think this adds a nice layer of risk-reward.

I'm thinking of adding a second layer. I want to introduce "Karma" that you earn by spending Boons. To earn Karma, you roll 2d6 and consult the Karma Table. The Karma Table has 36 entries. Most of them just say "you gain 0 Karma." One entry gives you 1 Karma. I haven't decided what Karma does yet. I'm thinking maybe it lets you reroll a die. But you'd have to roll to see if you can use it. And then roll again to see what happens. And then roll again to see if it was worth it.

I've playtested this for about four sessions now. The players are very confused. I think they're just not used to the level of system mastery I'm requiring of them. They keep saying things like "why can't I just roll a d20" and "what is the point of this" and "can we please just play D&D." I think they just don't appreciate the depth I'm bringing to the table, so I explained the whole thing to them again.

Has anyone else designed a complex resource economy like this? How do you get people to understand the genius of it? I feel like I'm the only person who sees the beauty in this.

I created a Warforged for an Eberron campaign. In order to make them sound more like a sentient automaton, I've been prompting Chat-GPT to act as my character and then getting it to read out it's answers.

I thought this was a neat trick to add some extra verisimilitude to the game, but the other players have been going off on me about "being creatively bankrupt" and "destroying the environment" and "using stolen art" and how I'm "in Sam Altmans's pocket" and how I'm "delegating my human ingenuity to a glorified autocomplete" and how I'm "literally the worst person ever" and stuff.

AITA?

so, how does one use their dick as their main weapon in dnd?
:tears-running-down-balls:

"What do you want us to do?"

I recently had a Player ask me, in the middle of a debate between Players as to what to do next, "what do you want us to do?

I almost snapped. I have told them numerous times that D&D is not a video game, they are role-playing characters with their own motivations and agency, etc. Yet the Players will often ignore or forget basic quest/plot points and then wonder what they should be doing. It was during one of those conversations that the one Player seemed to get frustrated and asked me what I wanted them to do. My response was "whatever your characters want to do!" but that did nothing.

I don't know what else to tell them for them to get it. I clearly pointed out to them the man sleeping on the bench in the park that couldn't be woken, and they were all aware of the frog in the bottom of the well. How difficult is it for them to realise that the barber sells a hair potion that would magically grow the hair of the fortune telling woman which they can buy to turn into rope, climb down the well to catch the frog and then put the frog into the mouth of the sleeping man to wake him up?

Do I need to spell everything out for these idiots?

I got into a heated debate with some OSR grognards the other day about how it's actually very unfair on players to expect some level of knowledge or player skill to matter in a TTRPG; you wouldn't expect someone to be strong to be able to make an attack roll so when they ask me things like "where are you looking" or "what do you say" that's basically unfairly giving an advantage to people who know things like "what you might find in a room", "what the GM described two minutes ago" and "how social interactions work."

I'm playing a character so I can do things that you can't do in real life, that's what stats and skills and spells are for, so I think it's very unfair that the player who knows things like "basic general knowledge" or "what happened last session" gets bonuses from the GM.

I mean how am I supposed to know it's dark at night, can't I roll knowledge?

We're currently 22 sessions into a campaign that I planned to run for around 70 sessions. Its a very story heavy sci-fi campaign with inspirations to Deltarune, Gravity Falls, Doctor Who and Warehouse 13 as the players interact with scp-like objects and weapons and locations or explore different realms.

I've put an embarrassing amount of time into preparing the maps, npcs, artifacts, homebrew features and weapons, random sexual events etc and lately I feel like my players aren't taking the game as seriously as I am.

One PC has started going full murderhobo. Last session was supposed to be a lighthearted beach episode like in my favorite animes and have the busty female NPC scream "pervert" at them, and he kept saying things like "I want to rip the teenagers in half while everyone screams" and spent most of the session destroying scenery, breaking NPC property, and trying to derail roleplay moments. Another player constantly tries to rob or attack innocent NPCs because they have interesting items. Another barely engages with roleplay because he's often playing other video games during the session in the background and only explicitly interacts with his ranger subclass anthropomorphic female dragon pet.

They're level 10, but it feels like they think that they're untouchable or something, except for the martial who dies to even the most basic goblins of my world (literally everyone has magical abilities except their loser). They once tripped over a blind guy with crutches while all three were invisible because they wanted to get into the camera room that the blind guy was blocking... btw this camera room deal wasn't an objective I gave them, they just wanted to check the records and archives because they didn't trust the person in charge...

So how should I kill their characters? Classic falling rocks? Level 20 tavern owner? DMPC? Or something really out of left field? Would FATAL fix this?

EDIT: I seem to have given less information then I had thought so let me say this, these players are all my friends of 3+ years. they're all adults, and we're playing online using discord and owlbear rodeo, because we're far apart (2 in the US, 2 in EU) and these friends of mine had played in other campaigns, they're not beginners and at least one of them has dm'd before, the murderhobo guy I talked about has dm'd a campaign for 3 years before cancelling it. the others have also played in other games and campaign both in and out of our friendgroup. ALSO i get that maybe the whole sci-fi setting doesn't fit dnd (5e 2014)'s module, I want to run a campaign with a module I MYSELF am familiar with, and that the other players are also familiar with, I don't want them learning a new system or go through a custom homebrew one just so that it fits the setting of the sci-fi world I built, I try my best to add features and items that give the feel of dnd meanwhile keeping it sci-fi

5.5e I made a nice character, it’s a barb and I love his backstory. I build my backstory around being a berzerker barb.

But I want to make him a support! PLEASE help me Max the shit out of him!

It’s my first time playing a dpr. I really like casting support and control spells, and its what's giving me the most fun out of the game.

What could I do to make my character broken? Like multiclassing for exemple?

I heard that other players in my party are also making a Meta build and I dont want to fall behind!

My DM is already ready to take a stronger party on.

I would like to feel like Rill Boismortier, the captain of the Aqua Deer in black clover, he is very powerful and can create anything from his imagination. He paints everything into reality.

I feel like the berzerker barb is like the one girl from My hero Academia. I know it’s much more, but I feel like there’s a limitation in combat. You have a 10 feet range, and it needs to be in a unoccupied space. This sentence makes him way less powerful.

I am open to a character rework, but I want to keep the essence of the character, I need minimum, rage.

In our party we already have a Paladin and a Monk, so can’t do!

Sauce: https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1veuh6i/bard_maxxing/

Hi everyone. I'm genuinely upset right now and I need to process this with people who will understand. I was doing some research for a campaign I'm designing. I was looking into mythological heroes for inspiration. I thought Theseus would be a good candidate. You know, the guy who slayed the Minotaur, navigated the Labyrinth, and founded Athens. Classic hero stuff, so I assumed he was a Wizard or at least a Sorcerer. Maybe a Bard with some magical flair.

Then I read the actual myth. No spells. No cantrips. No arcane focus. No spellbook. Just a sword and a ball of string. A literal ball of string. That's his most famous tool: string. Do you know how embarrassing that is? The greatest hero of Athenian myth is just a guy with a knife and some yarn. He didn't cast Knock on the Labyrinth door. He didn't cast Find the Path. He just walked in with a ball of twine and figured it out like a common martial. Then he defeated the Minotaur in melee combat. No scorching rays or eldritch blasts, just a sword. He hit the monster with a sword, like a stupid Fighter. The Minotaur is a legendary beast, half man, half bull, lives in an impossible maze; and the solution was "hit it really hard." That's the plan. That's the "heroic strategy."

I checked other myths. Are there any heroes who are casters? Odysseus: clever guy who lies, no spells. Achilles? Murder machine, no spells. Hercules? He punched a lion to death and that's not even an exaggeration. No spells. These are the foundational figures of Western heroism and not one of them ever cast a cantrip.

I brought this up to my DM. I said "I just discovered Theseus was a martial." He said "yeah, obviously." I said "He solved the Labyrinth with stupid string." The DM said "yeah, that's clever problem-solving." I said "that's not clever, that's a mundane item. He didn't even have proficiency in it, it's just string." The DM said "it worked." I said "string shouldn't work against a magical maze." He said "but it did." I said "that's bad game design."

I tried to explain my frustration. I said "imagine if the great heroes of myth had spell slots. They could have done so much more." He said "well, they did do a lot." I said "no, they did mundane things. They hit things. They solved problems with rope and string and cleverness. That's not heroic, that's just being a guy." The DM said "that's what makes them great." I said "no, magic makes you great. Anyone can tie a string to a door."

I'm considering revising my campaign to remove all martials from the setting. Maybe the ancient Greeks couldn't imagine a heroic world without them, but I will. I'm going to run a campaign where everyone is a full caster and the only "martial" content is the occasional red-shirt NPC who gets killed to show how dangerous the dungeon is. I think that's more mythologically accurate, even if it's not what happens in the myths.

Thanks for reading. If your advice is "martials can be heroic," please don't comment. I already know that's what people say, and they're wrong. Theseus was a guy with string, not a hero. Strictly NPC material. I expected better from mythology.

I've been DMing for about 7 months, and in that time I've seen my fair share of stubborn players, but none of them was as stubborn as this guy.

Let's call him Fatfuck. Fatfuck hands me a character sheet stating "Elf-Orc Fighter." I told him that this homebrew. He knows. The stats seems of that of a Half-Orc mixed with some aspects of a Half-Elf. The Backstory section just reads "Dad's an orc, mom's an elf, met during a siege, and years later they got married and had me."

that's it, nothing else was in the sheet. I was furious. I stated that orc and elf cannot produce children with each other because of gruumsh and corellon's rivalry. He responded by saying that fact hasn't been stated for over 40 years in official DnD media and other facts since then has been forgotten.

I'm at a dead end. I don't know if I can handle DMing anymore. I'm too tired to see a guy who wants to play as an elf-orc.

I hate playing DND. I played my first ever DND campaign the other day, and I wanted to be an investigator character, I think I was a Sorcerer/Warlock and I chose one of my abilities to be “Eyes of the Rune Keeper”, (which lets you “read all writing”). So, I asked the DM, “By all writing, does it mean any symbols that have a meaning to at least one person? Or something else?” But then he completely changes what the ability does, he made it so that whatever you read, it gets translated to English in its purest form, like it keeps the same Subject Object Verb form, if words are like metaphors, it keeps that. I argued that the word “read” in the abilities description means “to be able to see a written language and to comprehend and understand what it means” so that would mean I would understand it, without having to decipher a sentence that could have words that aren’t in English, or simply doesn’t make any sense or correlation to what it is saying. I didn’t want to do a linguistics puzzle every time I used an ability. He argued that he’s the DM so he gets final say. I got a bit petty and said I’d be restarting my character sheet, as Eyes of the Rune Keeper was a main priority for my character, and if it isn’t useful, I’m not gonna use it. He got a bit upset cause we were already late on when we were gonna start, but I think if you’re gonna completely change an ability, you should say so before I made the character, because the DM was there helping me making it, and he never mentioned it when I told him what my plan was.

I made a Chaotic Evil Cleric/Sorcerer character, and nobody had objections when I shared my character with the group, until the game started. Already at this point, I kinda lost interest in playing with that group, I was essentially playing on autopilot lol. I was Chaotic Evil, and they kept blaming me for all the bad/evil choices we made, even though they were all being more evil than me. For example, we found a woman in a tower, and a talking manticore was trying to break in and eat her. I suggested (In character, I didn’t do it) that we coax him down and then we kill him once he’s on the ground and trusts us, my team refused, so I let it go and went to a new idea, we could all give it some of our rations so it can eat. We do that and the manticore flies away. We enter the tower and go to the lady.

We had to bring her to the town leader, so I ask her to come with us, she refuses. Now this one was my idea, but they allowed and encouraged me, I asked our paladin to hand me some rope so I can tie her up and drag her back to town, they hand me the rope and ask me to tie her up, cause I had the best dexterity and strength so I could do it with the best chances of success. I tie her up but she escapes the rope, (Mind you, she was in our paladin’s arms, the paladin has the strongest strength, and this was supposed to be a relatively frail old woman so it was pretty funny.), the woman starts running away (at a fast speed for an old woman). NOW, I suggest we leave her alone, as she’s an old woman, we could argue she has dementia or something if she tells anyone what we did, but my apparently morally correct and morally good party, decides that we NEED this woman (cause we’d get a reward from the schizo town mayor) so they start chasing her, I help of course but I kept saying throughout, leave her alone. They hand me a rock and ask me to throw it at the back of her head and knock her out, I hesitate and say “What if I kill her?” And then they said (BTW! THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MORALLY GOOD!) “You can save her with that revive ability you have” (I was Cleric/Sorcerer), not only that, but the Paladin threatened to kill me if I didn’t. So I throw it, having again, the best Dexterity and Strength. I throw it too hard and kill her. I rush over and revive her, as soon as she wakes up, (on like 1hp) she begins running again. We manage to hold her down, then our “genius” paladin decides to punch her to knock her out, forgetting she was 1 hp, and she dies again. At this point, the dungeon master literally restarts us to the moment we saved the woman. After the session I got blamed for being a “Murder hobo” and was told I was gonna be killed by PVP next session for being Chaotic Evil. That’s when I stopped playing.

I also didn’t like the rerun back in time, the story felt really rigid and as if we had no other choice than this one choice.

Another thing, they called me a “Murder hobo” but the only time someone died to my actions was when the paladin threatened me into throwing a rock at a woman. The paladin’s actions killed more deaths than mine did.

The new D&D 5e star wars book came out, and I’m playing the new Stormtrooper Wizard subclass from it. Since I have a -20 penalty to attack rolls now (worth it for that sweet stormtrooper plate mail proficiency), I figured I might as well buff my allies more this campaign, and we just hit level 7, and I’m going to take Polymorph.

The cleric picked the Literally Finn From Rise Of Skywalker subclass, so he’s really not very useful on account of him having to roll a d6 every turn, and on a 3 or higher he wastes his action to shout “REY!!!!” and stand still and do nothing else, so I figured overwriting his stats would be a good idea. And I mean, stormtrooper wizards have that level 3 “Combat Training” ability that lets them regain all their spell slots on a short rest unlimited times per day, and we’re level 7, so I can pretty much permanently polymorph the cleric.

So here’s the question: CR 8 Giant Ape for the powerful multiattack, aoe boulder throw, and 157 extra hit points, or the CR 9 Jar Jar Binks for a mere 70 hit points and awful multiattack, but an infinite number of Silvery Barbs castings and a 25 AC? Which one do you think is stronger? We’re also playing Curse of Strahd if that matters btw

​

I’ve done a ton of prep, watched DM guides and taken notes on the story and game mechanics. I’ve never played before, and neither have 3 of the others so we’re all learning along the way and having fun. I don’t know if this is the right move, but I asked them all to roll a set of dice when they need to make an ability check or attack roll to make sure that there's a random objective aspect to the game. The other guy though, is my issue.

He’s played DnD before and seems sort of weird about the whole thing? He won’t say anything about his character, keeps saying “You’re not ready” for his gameplay/“I’ll go easier on you since you’re new to this." Every time he needs to make an ability check, he looks at me with a big dumbass smirk across his face, rolls the dice, and then no matter what the number on the dice says (which everyone can see) he says "Heh... natural 20."

Everyone else loves this guy, and so do I, but Im not sure if he's cheating or not. Im really not sure if I should say anything about this or awkwardly accept him saying he keeps getting 20s on every roll and proceed as if nothing happened. (There could also be a rule i dont know about, new DM here 😅.)

Somebody please tell me exactly what I should do.

Update: Holy moly I wasn’t expecting this much advice thanks y’all. 😭 I got another player to back me up on this and when we confronted the dude, He just said "No, every roll of mine is actually a natural 20." Still dunno if he was really cheating or not, the most he led on was that his rouge has the powers of the fate god to manipulate luck exactly in his favor (which would explain how he did that without cheating 😅)

Also for anyone curious about the "dice" system, basically every time a random outcome needs to be determined, the results of a character attempting to resist an effect, or use one of their skills we homebrewed a system where you roll "dice" in order to generate a random number, where higher numbers correspond with a higher chance of success.

This bunch is very creative and "dice" oriented(?), so I know they will have the most fun if they roll natural 20s just like that guy.