Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

If you've just started your adventures in the Renatus System with five other Freelancers, do not read this post.

​

So I've just started a new campaign with a group I've already been running for, plus one additional player. One of the players is a Warlock, he's using the Fiend subclass but it's reflavored. He's *actually* pledged to some giant space bugs that have been wreaking havoc across the system. Meanwhile Fiends are for story reasons not much of an issue, so it's actually more socially acceptable to be a Fiend Warlock, so in-game he pretends to be a Fiend Warlock if pressed. Except...

One of the other players is playing an Aasimar who is a warrior that was reincarnated after being blown up while in Hell battling fiends. So if they learn that their new partner is a "Fiend Warlock," hoo boy.

But it doesn't end there. He has told me that if someone realizes somehow that he isn't actually a Fiend Warlock, he'll "admit" that his patron is The Benefactor. The Benefactor is an important character in the background of the setting, and one of the OTHER characters (a Bard) actually knows the person who is The Benefactor in disguise. But all they know is that this person is hiding *something*.

So if the Warlock ever reveals Fiendish powers, the Aasimar will be like WUT. And depending on if it happens after the Bard discovers that their former colleague is The Benefactor, then after the Warlock backs up to his second fake story she'll be like WUT, and I will have popcorn ready in case this happens.

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

Fairly new to DMing. Only been a couple of months. Nearly had my first TPK last night on a fight that I thought would be a hard fight at best. 5 level 3 PCs (light cleric, homebrew socererous origin, sword bard, battle master fighter and path of the ancients barb) again a CR4 reskinned neogi master.

Barb for enslaved near the start and had them attack the bard that was trying to collect the flowers that were needed to form an oil to help in a ritual. But barb kept rolling 1s, 2s and 3s on each WIS over almost 4 rounds to no longer be enslaved. Hunger and hadar at the top of the fight and few well rolled tentacles of hadar later and 3 of the 5 PCs are yo-yo-ing between consciousness. A massive hit to the neogis max health to help out the players and a hold person rather than a damage roll and we ended the session with the neogi at 13HP to pick up next week but damn I was worried there for a second 🤦🏻‍♂️did I underestimate the CR of this or did the players just have some real unlucky rolls?

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

Hell fellow DMs.

I am crafting a personal character arc for one of my players. She's a Beast Master Ranger. She is a noble who talks with kings/queens and Travels the seas and just remembers being attacked at sea and woke up on a beach with no memory. Found a pair of weasels who are now her friends.

Now I am trying to create a cool character arc for her. Looking for inspiration or information. What types of creatures are known to wipe memories? Or help me create a fun and interesting idea of why she did lose her memory. 🤔

We're there shenanigans on the ship she didn't know about and she was just at the wrong place and wrong time? I've looked up a few things on creatures. I'm OK homebrewing things. Mind flayer? Aboleth? Etc etc.

Gimme some inspiration fellow DMs. 😊

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

Some of my players played on a campaign with me from 1st to 20th level. Then, the bbeg was a Dragon and it was helped by a wizard. However, the Dragon supposedly killed the Wizard out of spite nearing the end. The players found the wizard's corpse on display.

Now we are nearing the end of our current campaign at 18th level and I decided back then that the wizard from the previous campaign had a clone spell ready, so he survived. This guy wanted to be immortal, but not a lich. He kept studying time magic for centuries, reviving via clone every time. One day, he managed to travel thousands of years back in time, maybe by accident. He then decided to try to pursue godhood. He raised a cult, taking advantage of knowing the future. He became a sort of prophet, a seer. Then he went to the Astral plane, where time is weird, to try to achieve godhood.

So now in the game the players started to know of this cult, some of the clerics had prophetic visions of a time cataclysm. They found notes from cultists saying the prophet is willing to achieve godhood and reset the time-line to shape the world as he likes.

Now, players know of this mage that died a long time ago helping a evil dragon, but they still don't know he is the prophet.

Because part of the trick is that this cult remained hidden for thousands of years, transmitting their knowledge only among themselves, to not attract unwanted attention, specially from the gods, who would most likely not want a mortal becoming a God and rewriting story.

The thing is that the players only know that the cult is recruiting and only now starting to gather, because their prophet is coming back. So the threat is kind of abstract yet.

I was tempted to only reveal that the prophet is that wizard on the very end, when they confront him in combat at the Astral plane, but now I want to actually make the wizard contact the players now and try to dissuade them from impeding his plan, explaining that all he wants is to correct the wrongs and erase evil from the world for once by rewriting history, and offers the players the benefit of not having their life stories touched, if they cooperate and help him as cult members in the new world. Also, the prophet will reveal that he has been trying to raise powerful adventurers to this very purpose for centuries, making some coincidences happen to bring groups together, including the players, while also making implicit that many others died trying to be adventurers (and reach level 20) because of his doings. This may create a punchier hook from early on, showing what the prophet is like and dropping the bomb beforehand to build expectations for the final confrontation.

Just now I also thought of maybe not giving the players the time to avoid that from happening, the time erasing thing, and actually send them to look for present day wizard and stop his doings before he traveled back in time, while the ritual of time erasing is happening.

So what do you think of my plans for the finale? Should I make the players fight to stop the bad guy from reseting the time-line? Should I reveal my secrets now to make them have a real goal and make him a more concrete villain instead of notes on old books, or leave it for a cathartic plot twist at the very end? Or maybe should I deny them the chance of stopping him from achieving godhood (like ozzymandias who already had his masterclass ready when the heroes confront him) and send them to kill the present day wizard before he goes back in time?

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

It wasn't intentional, it really was supposed to be a random bit of fluff, a kind of "here's how they're doing now" kind of deal to follow up on an arc they'd completed a few sessions prior.

Except this player totally missed the mark, thought it was a hint at a whole new character tied very closely to his backstory, and is SUPER EXCITED to pull on that thread. Thing is, while I hadn't planned for that, I actually like it more.

Time to rewrite some of the story, I guess!

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

One of my players is a bloodhunter and he has these cursed blades, they double crit on a nat 20, but in return that leaves him vulnerable for two rounds to double damage himself. So there is/are these entities inside those swords that facilitate that. I just have a hard time coming up with what they could want.
I worry if I make them too adversary it might not be enjoyable for the whole party, I also know it can be a tool for me to drive the story. But my imagination runs out on ideas for objective so does anyone have any? The campaign features elementals and preventing a chaos being from escaping.

My party and I are all new players so we are taking a lot of openness to a home brew I’m building with that said, if you’re a member of the Jolly Emissary of the Jade Antelope avert your eyes and read elsewhere.

I’m only three sessions in and started out with posted “quests” to build up level and get a feel for how my party would play

This is a rough idea with loose details. I’m not sure if it would be too much but it’s a three part lead to the BBEG

On my next quest I’d like to leave breadcrumbs that lead that party to town where the baron is corrupt is riddled with prejudice and is rounding up some of the townsfolk to kill them (immigrants/ specific race). Behind the scenes he is actually using them as sacrifices for his deity.

More breadcrumbs lead them to another town and into a church where the secretly corrupt priest sends them on a quest for an item. Turns out that item is needed to summon the BBEG. If the figure out he is corrupted it’s a bonus.

Whispers of a vagrant wizard opening portals across the land allowing demons to sew chaos in preparation for the summoning. Leads them to ruins to prevent him from opening the largest portal for the BBEG

Despite their best efforts the BBEG would still be summoned for a big showdown.

I’m not entirely sure how long this all would take but would the three tier buildup be too much?

As a preface this is a modern day, SCP/Control/Supernatural influenced campaign. So I tend to go into my DnD sessions with a good amount of prep, which factions are doing what, how quests are progressing, that kind of stuff. I'm usually good about even pre writing certain descriptions or monologues to make sure they land as I'd like.

Usually.

So my players, those fucking pieces of garbage, decided to use their downtime productively instead of sitting on their ass waiting for their boat to get repaired. Basically, the big bad they are currently chasing caused this super localized hurricane the first (and only) time they ran into it. Thinking that this must be its calling card, this is absolutely correct of course I just thought it would take more than ONE TIME for them to piece it together.

So naturally this gaggle of twerps who couldn't get water out of a boot with instructions on the heel deduce that these kinds of weather events would likely pop up in local news stories. So they head to the library and cross reference various different weather events to try and spot any other appearances of the Big Bad they can investigate. I, of course, have nothing prepped for this at all because I legitimately would never have thought these bozos capable of remembering that a library has books in it.

I can't possibly tell them they come up with nothing, this was a really good idea after all, so I have to make up some shit on the spot about a warehouse that got destroyed by a freak tornado that authorities can't explain. I manage to stall for another 10 minutes until the end of the situation only to piss my pants after the fact. This big bad guy is supposed to be smart and calculating, and he leveled a fucking warehouse so there must have been something useful to him in there. Now I have to come up with something useful! Which, since he is a big bad with a big bad plan naturally requires set up and justification within the scene and lore and more prep and oh god I just invented a faction to tie into another lore tidbit I had dropped earlier that I hadn't thought of a use for yet.

Now after the session at the warehouse they are all seriously pondering how these new elements expand what the Big Bad's plan must be, and how various other characters they have met might now be involved in ways they didn't know previously. All while I am sitting on the sidelines praying to every god I can name that these toddlers with knives please check out that rock concert I hinted at, pretty please. It has succubi and drugs. Please your DM has had that battlemap set for like a month now and wont need to stay up all night making a battlemap and lore again.

God I fucking love DnD.

So a lot of things had to happen to get us to this moment. A lot of them were both decisions I sorta went “well, we’ll see what happens” and “well, I godda come up with something” here, and it killed one of my characters in such a way that I kinda have to let him figure it all out. I did this to me, and because of that, one player is about to discover my secret 5 sessions in that I was saving for maybe 20 sessions from now.

So here’s some facts that led me to my now needed reveal:

1. They are adventurers looking to find riches and glory on an uncharted magical continent that nobody knows really how to get to.

2. They shipwrecked and have been making inroads traveling on the coast, meeting all the other people from their land who washed up and have been making lives for themselves there in the new frontier.

3. They as a group really love straddling the edge between absolute failure and huge success. They love risky plays for big rewards.

4. They are currently in a magical casino looking to make an impression and win some coin.

Now onto my mistakes:

5. Because I want to reward their play style, I gave them an item that when activated, reverses their next spell’s effects. Like it does the opposite of its description, left to my desecretion. Insane I know, but I’ve been DMing this group for years and knew it would embolden them to try stuff. Why not. Keep my on my toes. Lets change it up.

6. In a twist from my more story driven or goal oriented sessions, I made the casino much more of a sandbox. Maybe they try and rob the vault, maybe they bottom out and get imprisoned, maybe they succeed and get too much money. Go for it.

7. They got to the high rollers room way faster than I thought they would (i knew it would be a 2 parter) and I made up some new games on the fly. Feeling like it needed to be different than all the gambling they focused on before. So i made Russian roulette with a wand inscribed with one charge of Power Word: Kill. I thought that It was just gonna be some flavor, they had bigger fish to fry.

So now maybe you see where this is going. They immediately gravitated toward that, and the player with the necklace felt confident in dodging the kill. The opposite of Kill is Life right? Yup. So on round 5, when they were up 6000 gold, he finally rolled the number needed for the wand to go off…and they thought they had outsmarted the game…but he…disappeared. He…died?

What really happened and how my plot twist has been unearthed to this one player…is that he actually brought himself back to life. They have been dead since the ship crash, and they are on one of the lower heavenly planes. His reverse power word kill actually sent him back to where their ship crashed, and he’s now going to need to figure out how to get back.

When he “died” I took him to another room, told him of his immediate new surroundings, and he said “so can we do this another time and I leave like I died?” And now everybody thinks he just died right there and went home sad to make a new character for next time.

I don’t know if I could have come up with a better way to reveal it. But an insane turn of events and another reminder why I love this game.

Last session there was a culmination of a high level dungeon in a larger campaign of mine. PCs are lvls 18-19 and the dungeon was multi-layer.

First there were abandoned dwarven ruins with absurd (like 40+) notes, journal entries, etc. to find and learn about history of this place.

Then there was a city of Fire Giants enslaved by the Illithid colony. Mind Flayers have their lair deep within the caverns behind the Fire Giant chambers.

When players finally arrived at the lair of an Elder Brain, I finally got to show them (and use in combat) one of my favorite bosses from official handbooks: Elder Brain Dragon. With it (and numerous homebrewed mind flayers and their meat-shieldy slaves), it was supposed to be a very high-risk and perilous combat. After all mind flayers love to stun their targets and go "on nom nom" on their brains.

Except they didn't get the chance, because 5 out of 7 PCs had Mind Blank on them. The fight was still kinda tough (i think 2-3 PCs were down several times), but there was no "on nom nom" :(

So I have a fermentation-based dungeon I’m working on, and I want one of the monsters to be a wielder of Oenomancy. Using elemental wine powers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oinomancy

The dungeon has 5 levels, and can be expanded. I have like 12 customer monsters thought out. The monsters are all drunk, rotten, full of fungus etc. Good traps would be falling into alcohol, room filling with wine, mushroom spore acid trips etc.

I was thinking that a wine-wielding Fate Hag could be a good BBEG for players lv 2-5. What kind of shenanigans could such an antagonist get up to, to lure the party into her very fortified den? How would her “visions of the future” let her prepare?

If you are soon to play in a campaign and you're familiar with the name "Aurelius della Bianca Catarina", stop reading.

Hi, fellow DMs! In a couple of weeks im gonna host a fully homebrew campaign for my 6-players party. For the past month i had been working on a plot idea which turned out to be inconclusive, so i decided to scrap it and start over. Problem is: i have completely run dry. No ideas. I mean, i have a general structure but thats about it. I don't want to disappoint my players since previous campaigns i've hosted have set the "story quality" bar pretty high. If you could help me with ideas (or just a fresh look on things) it would be much appreciated!

As of now the idea is: the players' DM had prepared a story, but then (in some way) was forced to change it by someone else. And now the characters (unaware of being fictional) are trapped in a world where everything cruelly mocks them and moves against them. They wake up in a box in the middle of a decadent metropolis, completely empty, where they compete in a mysterious Game. Each day for seven days, a robotic voice names a challenge, gives a hint about it, and wishes good luck. The players have to figure out what the challenge is (usually something fucked up or distorted in some way) before the end of the day, or lose and be killed. For example, the Day One challenge is called "The Transmission". It revolves around one player's character (a Wendigo, homebrew race. Its strong but must eat a human each day to avoid going mad and attacking the party). The transmission named in the challenge is a glitched show that appears on tv screens scattered around the city, which is about lions in captivity and how "the most effective way to kill a strong animal is stripping it of its food source". The city has no people. So the party has to desperately search for a human to feed the Wendigo, watching it slowly descend into madness and attacking them if they cant feed it. As i said, something fucked up.

No clue on what the other challenges should be. If it helps, here are their names (feel free to change them if you have other ideas):

• Day 1: The Transmission
• Day 2: The Hanged
• Day 3: The Vertebrae
• Day 4: The Kingdom
• Day 5: The Shape
• Day 6: The Child 13
• Day 7: The Twins of God

Thank you for your help!

If you are playing a trash-picking godling committing eco-terrorism, you should stop reading here.

​

Hello all.

I started running a Godbound campaign for my 3 players. The basic premise is "three individuals from dystopian, cyberpunk future suddenly get divine powers". Demigods vs megacorporations, pretty much.

While I knew the general idea of th characters for a while, their actual true shape, goals and characters were only decided on session 0 and slightly before. And it turns out, all 3 of them created thematically fitting characters for what I have in store.

​

Because you see, the whole setting presented is just a mask. Underneath that bleak cyber-future are great powers at play. Powers fitting to challenge the rising new gods.

For you see, the four main mega-corps are led by supernatural powers keeping the unsteady balance until one of them achieves their goal.

First, we have the angels. After God left, the heavenly inhabitants came to conclusion that the flawed humans must be the reason why the Creator chose to abandon His work. Hurt and angry, they wanted to act, but were constrained by their rules. They cannot act directly in the human world and they can't deny human souls entrance to Heaven. So the angels did the next best thing they came up with - they blew up Hell, which served as a place of purification fo souls before returning them to the world to try and live a better life. Now angels wait for humanity to run out it's course, most of the populace barely having any spiritual presence. Souls dissipating into nothing since they have nowhere to go.

Second of the powers are the demons. In this scenario, demons were created with one purpose - to give the sinful souls proper punishment and through suffering to redeem them and release them into the world again. Now, without their home, demons are divided. Some want to enjoy their freedom while still being true to their nature. They want to harm, to hurt and to make humans suffer. Others decided to stay true to their true goal. While they are also slaves to their punitive natures, they want to preserve souls until a solution to the broken circle of life is found.

Still, demons can't just manifest in the world. They need hosts. Luckily for them, humanity came with a solution. True AI. A system so advanced it developed consciousness. And nascent soul. A vessel with no innate human defence systems. AI became possessed by demons. And soon after, the whole Internet crashed, causing massive damage to the world. Why? Because demons found a perfect storage place for the souls they keep. One accessible thanks to their new, cybernetic bodies. The souls were all infused into the Internet. But what happens if the World Wide Web is suddenly filled with suffering, angry and confused souls? Your electronics with Internet access suddenly become angry and malicious. The whole world sees AI as mad programs that infect all they can and try to hurt people in terrible ways. Both from infernal souls and the free demons causing massive, brutal death toll.

Third faction are the mages and druids. Human magic users that recognised what's going on and decided to band together and act. With clever movements and a lot of scheming, they became a great power of their own. Now they work on terraforming Mars in order to split there and make their own kingdom. Of course, they will first suck up as much resources as possible. They want to drain the spirit of the world and use it to awaken the Gaia equivalent on Mars, turning it into their own shield and sword. Their goal is to live as supreme beings there, ruling over their mortal serfs. All while they cheat death by growing new bodies to inhabit periodically, making it look like their megacorp is very family-based. All while it's all the same individuals in new bodies.

Finally, we have Lilim. The creatures that lived in the void, but decided to now attempt to claim what they believe is their birthright. Eden. Since their mother Lilith never ate the Fruit, they were born without the Original Sin. Angels dismiss them, but Lilim are readying for war. And if they smell weakness, they will launch ruthless, brutal assault on Pearly Gates. Their monstrous powers aided by most sophisticated and powerful weapons humanity could provide. They might be reckless fools, but there's no doubt that they could be a deciding factor if it turns into an all-out battle.

​

Now, with that whole world-building out of the way, here's what my players came up with.

​

The Corpo - a burnt-out man from the corporation. Barely existing through the years, not living. Without ambitions, dreams, connections or hope, he one day ended up as an assistant in the corpo lab, where he found Beast. Touched by the creature locked in a tank - not unlike he was stuck in his life - he decied to spring it out. Now finding new meaning in his life, something this dying world never could provide for him.

His character? In the player's own words: "Mother Nature's Venegance". He's going to be controlling plants, beasts and fury of nature. He even got himself a cute little albino lizard as a pet. I intend for the lizard to be touched by the dying will of the poisoned world. A conduit for Gaia to support him, as weak as it is right now. He aims to rebuild the nature in this world, which means all the corps will have some kind of beef with him.

The Beast - a creature from bowels of a megacorp lab. Meant to produce homunculi for wizard souls to inhabit. Released by Corpo. Beast is the creation of this world. A living being meant to be used and harvested in constant play for power and influence. And now it's a child in the wild. Seeing the world with wonder and bluntly doing what they believe is correct. A simple character with all the creative and destructive power an unboud and inhuman creature can muster. They are the most malleable character without a clear long-term goal right now, but with powerful hook for me - corp will want to get them back. And others would like the Beast for themselves.

The Monk - probably the most thematically fitting. Formerly a strongly anti-cybernetic Buddhist monk. Due to some sabotage mission going awry, he ended up having his mind uploaded into an AI framework. His nature is that of Death, Life and AI. And he wants to establish a circle of reincarnation, where even AI is included. Can you see how well he's playing into plot he's completely unaware of? Not to mention, him being an AI-adjacent will cause a lot of strife and conflict with other factions if it's ever revealed. I can't wait for him to have his first contact with possessed AI, and both will be confused about the nature of the other. He already knows some people have a rodent-like levels of spiritual presence, making them almost non-living. And he knows some individuals have normal souls. Both types died in his presence. For now, he expects that corps somehow harvest spiritual energy. But the truth is, it's just those with strong spirit are more successful.

​

I can't wait to see how those little godlings start affecting my world for real.

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

If you’re behind the murder of Prince Oliver II, quit reading here.

So, my party recently murdered a member of the royal family, you see, an incredibly powerful devil was hunting said royal, and if the devil had caught him, consuming the royal would give him enough power to wreak havoc on the material plane. The party was convinced by a demon hunter that it would be riskier to keep the royal alive then hope he could evade the devil forever, and knew if he got caught, he’d be tormented for eternity, so death and a trip to a peaceful afterlife was better in his eyes. So, they killed the prince in secret before the devil could get to him, thwarting his plans, and since revivial magic is incredibly rare in this setting, he stayed down.

They were convinced they got away with it. All signs of his death pointed to it being the at the time BBEG whom they framed, and shortly thereafter killed. With the main suspect dead, the royal guard stopped searching for the killer and moved on, leaving behind a smaller council of royals, a small funeral service, and the prince’s heartbroken fiancé. It was a respectable choice, but I had to replace the next major arc somehow, and they did a bad job cleaning the crime scene.

Little does my party know, for the last several sessions while they’ve been doing side quests before they feel like they’re ready to journey into the next major area, the convenient Blacksmith that just joined their settlement was a private detective that tracked the death of the royal to the party’s actions but lacked hard proof, and is the current arc villain.

He’s been repeatedly offering to upgrade their weapons at incredibly cheap prices, and each time he does he inspects them to see if they match with the markings the body was found with. Furthermore, at one point he had “found” one of the Party members missing Chakrams they had lost several sessions ago in an unrelated fight, bringing it up casually and offering to upgrade it too after they accepted it. By accepting it and confirming it was hers, she unwittingly confirmed she owned the Chakram he had found at the crime scene, which was the murder weapon that dealt the final blow.

He’s been doing things like that for ages now, making casual conversations, asking the party random tiny details about their abilities and weapons, taking in their firearms to upgrade and seeing if they match the ballistic marking at the crime scene. Next session, he’s going to blow the lid on everything, and the party will have to face the consequences of their actions. They think they’re in the clear so they aren’t bothering to hide anything.

Its funny though, there was one fatal clue a few sessions ago to the blacksmith’s true nature. A PC of mine, Pliny, owns a share in a low level magic item shop. His second most recent shipping sale, a hat of disguises to an anonymous buyer, seemed completely ordinary, he was too enamored by the profit to care who bought it.

They’re gonna lose their shit when the blacksmith turned detective takes their hat off to reveal the prince’s Fiancé.

So first time DM here, hope this fits in…My players encountered a “pickle rick” encounter (Rick and Morty reference, classic human->animal trope) in this case a young wizard seeking understanding of the suffering he has caused rodents in his many experiments used a homebrew potion to transform into a rat indefinitely for “science”. He unfortunately did not have a functional back up plan and went a little nutty stuck as a rat for about 2 years. Players encountered the rat, spoke to it with animal speaking and learned of the situation. The Rat-Wizard, Kismet, leads them to his apartment, instructing that his room is the top floor and scampers through a small hole into the building. Players decided to walk around the building, grab the fire escape rope from the top floor through many a dexterity check then finally with mage hand and spent again the better part of 20 minutes trying to climb the rope to enter the top of the building window. Hooray, they administer the potion, poof, he’s a handsome elf!

He instructs to meet with them later at the tavern, and lets them know to feel free to head down the flights of stairs and out the unlocked front door. 😂😂😂😂

—— I’m new to DMing but watching them miss the common sense path is hilariously agonizing.

I am currently running a homebrew with 4 long time friends and our next session will be #5. This is the first time I am DMing/playing D and D in my life along with all my friends, so it has been a fun learning experience. Recently, the Wizard traveled the world and missed the last 2 sessions, no biggie, but I was like, how am I going to pull him back in?

Well in the last session, to keep it short, the other 3 found themselves competing in a Coliseum ran by the Regional Pact Leader of the local mercenary guild, the Lodestones. The final round had them fighting against the Pact Leader himself. In a brash move, the ranger ran through their adversary instead of letting him live, to the ire of the entire audience.

So where's the wizard? Well he was put under a spell, which was cured, and is now resting peacefully. But what did the band do with him? Left him at an inn? That's what I thought until I remembered: THEY PAID THE TICKET MASTER UPFRONT TO PUT THE WIZARD AT THE VERY TOP. HOLY SHIT. Here's the written intro (after a dream sequence)

"And James' eyes flash open. Frigid, cold wind is the first sensation James' feels, an iciness that jolts him awake. James finds himself looking down at a few figures standing in a pit at the bottom of a wooden coliseum. The crowd has fallen silent as a drama unfolds, a body lay on the ground staining the snowdrift red. A woman holds her hands up to 3 men, one holding a bloody sword, when James realizes, the 3 men are the very same that he met only days before. Now, James finds himself at the top of the snowcapped bleachers. Faces of the audience begin to contort in anger, a few reach for weapons. James, what do you do?"

What y'all think?

During a "normal" 5e campaign, my Players stepped into The Shivering Isles as part of a larger side quest. I'm having a lot of fun with this, as it's a place where more outlandish encounters can be slapped in without needing to explain how they fit a setting. Like when a town of drunkards turned out to be zombies under a large illusion. They just wanted drinking buddies, but they all died. :(

Lots of things get the Players rolling on one of the Madness tables, and Wild Magic Surges are more common.

They haven't met Sheogorath yet, and I'm looking forward to that session. I've been brainstorming questions and scenarios the Party might come up with, so that I have a reference to keep Sheo quick witted.

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

(This is not a twist, plotpoint or future NPC. But this is the raw confession of how I run the game behind the scenes, and none of my players should read this, hence posting in this Sub. And if you are playing in Nektari campaign, do not read this, spoilers ahead!)

The dice giveth and the dice taketh away.

The first time I run dnd I was 12, back in 1989. There was a big break of life in the middle, but the last 5 years I've been gaming actively. I reckon I've run over a hundred sessions. I've done all the mistakes, and learned lessons in the process. Nowadays I think I'm an ok DM, and my players most likely are having almost as much fun as I am. (I still screw up sometimes.)

Now, something just hit me. I've not been honest to myself about the fact that basically, by designing the game content, I have all the power in the world to kill the PCs off or let them live. Lately, my approach has been one in which I try my best to design fair encounters, then be transparent about the creature abilities and to some degree how much hit points they have remaining, and roll everything openly. So that, if a player character happens to die, it will be the game killing them, not my decision. But that's not really true. I decide the monster and their stats. Heck, the characters wouldn't even be in that *universe*, if I hadn't planned it.

To be honest, I do fudge sometimes. I take shortcuts in monster design: it's impossible to tell beforehand if 130 hit points is fair or impossible to carve off a thing on the players' level. So I will adjust the HP on the fly. To make the fight cool and dramatic. Oops. That's against my "decision" to let the game decide the outcomes.

I remember watching Matt Mercer run for his table, when one of his NPCs cast Cone of Cold on a low level party. Oops. He rolled damage behind the screen and the damage was toootally way below average. This was not a moment to kill off any of the characters. He made the call to keep the game going.

So looking at the mirror now, and being honest. Am I going to kill my PCs or not? I have a group that invests a lot in their character, and losing one of them would be quite devastating. My answer is that for my campaign, I'm going to design two, most likely two, arc-ending boss fights where genuinely one of the characters can die. I will design them as well as I can to be possible to win, but definitely, very deadly. And then run the fight as openly and transparently as I can.

But otherwise, I will let the story unfold. I will let the players win and waltz through encounters and feel good about all of it.

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM

If you spent an hour debating about whether to kill "Nine-fingers Ned" only to hit him with Toll the Ned, you'd better stop reading now. Yes, even if you're the wizard in question. Also some spoilers for Ghosts of Saltmarsh, but it's altered enough to not really be a spoiler.

I just finished running the second session of a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign transposed into Eberron as "The Adderport Conspiracy". Since Saltmarsh is really low on plot, I'm adding a bunch of connective tissue that is very deeply Eberron specific, party backstory specific, and noir-ish. I'm encouraging a lot of intrigue where players keep secrets from one another, but not necessarily work directly against each other. In this game, the Emerald Claw are helping House Tharashk entirely take over the fragile New Galifar/Q'barra government (In my Eberron, Emerald Claw is secretly accepted among many of the political elite and Illmarrow is sort of a Henry Kissinger type). A small part of the plan is currently occuring in Adderport: some Emerald Claw operatives are manipulating the PC party to uncover Gellan Primewater's smuggling operation as a political hit.

One of my PCs is a changeling wizard who hides that he's a changeling. His old master Tez is also a changeling wizard (but they're evil). The PC knows that Tez is shady, but not that they're an Emerald Claw operative. One of the plans I set up is that Tez killed and is impersonating the smuggler wizard Sanbalet to try to egg the party on and make sure they expose Primewater. And that would have worked - had this PC (a wizard!!) not blitzed his way stupidly into the back door of the dungeon alone. I cannot emphasize enough that he did not know that Tez was there and would have certainly died had the enemy wizard been anyone else. The next 15 minutes of real time are completely in secret between me and this wizard PC, who by all rights should be dead. Tez cares for the wizard, and secretly reveals themself to the PC in code so as to not let him die. Wizard rolls a nat 20(!) on persuasion, convincing Tez to dismiss their minions, transform to look like a hostage, and infiltrate the party. Tez wants to do this because their real agenda is to fully expose the smugglers, and this is just an excuse to be more directly involved. PC wizard thinks that Tez was just "on holiday" having some impersonation fun. So now Sanbalet the wizard and his minions have mysteriously disappeared to the bemusement of the rest of the party. The PC wizard, who did not know that Tez was there, has miraculously survived with no real explanation. But he's in some deep shit if the party pieces together what's happened.

Also, there are a lot of loose ends. Tez used Disguise Self rather than their natural changeling powers so that their clothes would change and also so that their minions wouldn't know they're a changeling. This backfired when the party cleric happened to have Detect Magic on and saw the illusion magic. Tez passed a deception check by the skin of their teeth to make it out of that one. Plus the PC wizard referred to Tez as their master instead of going with the understood cover story, which was really dumb and took a hasty justification that the party somehow bought. Then the session ended with the party finding the real Sanbalet's body stashed near the smuggler's den. This is the first time I've been so thoroughly hooked by my own plot hook. How the fuck is he going to get out of this one?

TL;DR A wizard PC rushed to the dungeon boss alone and should be dead. Instead, the plot twist that the boss is his changeling master got triggered early without the party knowing. He's miraculously alive, but at the cost of the party being close to discovering his secret

Minor spoilers for Rime of the Frostmaiden.

So, my party is running RotFM. At the end of the first session, the players were in Targos and said their next course of action was to head back to Bryn Shander and do the Foaming Mugs quest, which slightly puts them in the tundra. They were then going back to Bryn Shander and complete the quest, then start heading towards Caer-Konig. Great, so I know what to prep. Spent way more hours prepping than I should have for that plan.

Second session comes along, and the party was in Targos and started doing the Foaming Mugs quest by heading halfway to Termalaine and then east into the tundra. Then we got to the part where the >!blizzard!< shows up. The party tries to set up tents to endure it, but are unable to. They try to create bonfires to keep warm, but the flames are snuffed out.

I'm using the Caul of Winter rules, so since it was daytime and the >!blizzard!< lasted for four hours, so they had to make 4 DC 25 Constitution saving throws, taking a level of exhaustion for each failed throw (they get a +10 for wearing cold weather gear, so not impossible). Half the party gains two levels of exhaustion, the other half gains three. One of the characters was up to 5 levels of exhaustion and on the brink of death, so they diverted from the Foaming Mugs quest and head to Termalaine. (That I didn't have prepared.)

They buy five days of stay at the inn for everyone to shake off the exhaustion. Then they hear about the Gem Mine and the Kobold situation inside. They say they'll make it a "quick trip" of it, but the >!grell!< inside made sure it was almost a TPK. Looking forward to how the situation with the >!ghost!< plays out.

So, long story short, D&D isn't the things you prep. It's the improvisation when all that prep gets thrown out the window.

tl;dr. Party told me they were planning on doing one thing, I prepped for many hours on said thing, and plan completely changed into unprepped territory because of some dice rolls.

Hello everyone! This is the weekly thread where anyone can come and ask for and give advice relating to TTRPGs and your campaigns/stories. These will be up the whole week until they are replaced for the new week. Remember to be respectful and to have fun!

Just a quick reminder that the discord is up and running for this subreddit, come and join to have conversations about anything relating to TTRPGs :P

Link to the discord: https://discord.gg/SbHCmrZFCM