#Dungeon Master tips

[dailyadventureprompts]

DM Tip: The Debt Always Comes Due

Isn't it weird how little we engage with gold as a real gameplay system? Sure, at low level wealth makes a great questhook, the party is usually hurting for a payout so that they can afford necessary gear upgrades/ubiquitous healing potion restocks/their next trip to the magic item shop. After a while though the promise of raw wealth loses its lustre, and the party is less likely to go out of their way to accept bounties, go off chasing treasuremaps, or accept gigs from shady patrons.

Generally I'd advise that this is a sign that your party are done being run of the mill sellswords, and it's time to hit them with a big epic questline that's focused more on emotional and narrative stakes than base currency. That said, sometimes you want to run a longer adventure arc that's centred around the acquisition of wealth, but to do that, you're going to need to go against the grain on one of the foundational assumptions that underpins D&D both mechanically and narratively.

TLDR: If you want your party to be motivated by gold past their first big pay off you should consider using a "wealth hurdle", which in short is a narrative and gameplay challenge that forces them to collect not only more gold than they already have but also more gold than they could get doing what they've been doing so far. This can be anything from a crimelord calling in a debt on them or one of their allies, a powerful monster swooping in and demanding tribute, comissioning some grand construction, or funding the defence of a region. Having the hurdle active should cause problems for the party, and not clearing the hurdle before a perdetermiend deadline will immensely bad things to happen. This will force the party to take risks they otherwise wouldn't, giving a high degree of focus to their subsequent adventures that they wouldn't have if they were content.

What we're trying to fix:

At it's core, D&D is a power fantasy, and a good chunk of its gameplay mechanics regardless of edition are about acquiring new strengths, options, and assets. These assumptions are likewise built into the genre and narrative structure of most campaigns: Heroes undertake quests usually for the promise of some reward, gain experiance/hit milestones along the way, and eventually stumble across some kind of loot drop at the end. There's nothing strictly wrong with this, but it does mean that all the resource problems the heroes face in the early game (and the inbuilt motivations that come along with them) are all but resolved by the time they hit the next gameplay tier.

This is complicated by the fact that outside of 3rd party options there's not much to spend money on. The DMG (which you should totally ignore) say you shouldn't let them buy magic items, and the common wisdom would say "let them buy a keep", but that solution only appeals a niche selection of adventuring parties.

Using Weath Hurdles turns acquiring gold not just into a quest goal but a gameplay challenge, forcing your party to scour the land for potential sources of wealth (and risk upsetting whoever or whatever happens to be currently holding it) and take on challenges they'd never normally attempt if there was only survival/personal enrichment at stake.

Food for Thought:

Tradional d&d structure has the party getting a huge payout at the end of their adventure in the form of a bosshoard or questgiver reward which is a very backloaded "you can have your dessert after you finish your greens" sort of attitude. Consider switching it up sometimes: have the party's patron or employer give them a small stipend to spend on kitting themselves out, have an early game treasure haul so the party can have a mid-arc shopping episode. This is especially useful in higher level games where your party may go weeks to months without a level up as it preserves the feeling of progression and gives them new toys to play with in between the big character defining abilities.

Recently I've been learning my way around blades in the dark (can't reccomend it enough btw), and just like any other time I've wanted to learn a new ttrpg system I'm having to do a bit of neural rewiring when it comes to figuring out how to write and run sessions of the game. Coin in BitD is both an XP (used for upgrading the party's shared crew sheet) a resource (burned to upgrade the results of various rolls) and a stat ( rolled to see if the players can lay their hands on various hard to come by items). It didn't really click for me until my first group messed up really badly on what was supposed to be their introductory adventure and pissed off the local crimeboss. I was just going to have him bully them, lock them up and then have a jailbreak the next session ( it's what I'd do in d&d), but on the fly I had the idea that he'd let them go with a massive debt they needed to pay off, which forced them to either pay him a percentage of their takings on all future jobs, or do small jobs in utmost secrecy so that they could build up their own strength under his nose.

Interestingly enough, the d&d game where I thought player wealth as a resource was most interestingly used was Dimension 20’s starstruck Odessy, which was a conversion of the amazing fanmade  starwars5e system. Starstruck is a parody of hypercapitalism and aptly uses money as both a narrative and gameplay feature. One character is stuck paying weekly insurance premiums on a debt he would never be able to pay down forcing him to act recklessly to acquire wealth in the immediate future. Another character was a economic and political power player and some of the best moments in the series come from her high stakes wheeling and dealing and bouncing money between accounts while the rest of the group engages in epic space battles; the rest of the crew might’ve barely got their ship out of the dogfight, but she’s the one who ensures they can pay for the repairs once they get to the space dock.   None of this would be possible without completely ignoring the normal constraints of wealth per level: gaining and losing huge sums based on moment by moment player decisions, The need for them to play along with the absurist gig economy to boost their rating and get better paying jobs, making a devil’s bargain with a corporate sponsor all so that they could risk their lives in a deadly arena fight all for the (very unlikely) chance of winning the equivalent of a million GP.  Not every campaign should, or even could so focus on money in this way, but it was FASCINATING to watch it in action. 

Artsource

[craigofinspiration]

no one wants the game to grind to a halt because of a failed skill check or a newly deceased NPC

what do you think?

follow for more dnd shenanigans @craigofinspiration find my blog at pointsofinspiration.com support me on Ko-fi! Ko-fi.com/craigofinspiration

[galilleon]

Hey all, This is my first Tumblr post ever! I'm pretty new here, but I'm hoping to share some DM techniques, tools and tips and to make some new friends as well! Feel free to send a chat request (an ask[?]) if you're interested!

With that aside, on with the post!

Better and More Meaningful Random Encounters!

Random encounters are a staple of DnD, they are expected to be there during exploration as a way to make the world feel alive, to have it have an aura of adventure and danger, to eat up party resources and put pressure on the PCs to make interesting and important choices, and also as a way for a DM to reasonably 'stall' the party with a quick and easy situation.

Usually, it ends up something like this:

There's just one problem with most random encounter tables though, it's so easy for them to be GOSHDARN BORING! Especially for a newer DM.

Making them interesting becomes gambled improv on the DM's part if they're not used to it, and it's hard to keep track of the important factors that need to be kept in mind

Luckily, I ended up finding a great source for random encounters from 'Dungeon Masterpiece' on YouTube, and I integrated it into my own DMing. I figured that I'd share it here for any that want to work it into their own sessions as well!

After adjustment, a single table can account for multiple entire sessions of in-depth worldbuilding and fun without getting dull!

Sources:

Source 1 (Creating interesting Random Encounter Tables):

Source 2 (Making Random Encounters reflect your Worldbuilding):

There's 4 major methods we can use to improve the Random Encounter table

1. Make the table a straight 1dx roll.

2. Adding 'depth'.

3. Adding meaningful encounters.

4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling.

You can also check out the "Where to Start?" section for some direction to make getting it down and prepped all easy peasy!

1. Straight Roll:

Its enticing to go for 2d6 or the such in order to add non-linearity to the rolls, but these sorts of adjustments only end up making one or two encounters extremely likely and leave all others in the dust, it often ends up defeating it's own purpose of interesting randomness.

In the previous example, it was extremely likely to only get Wolves, Barbarians, Orcs, or Spiders, from a table of 12! A straight roll would serve us much better. The rare rolls are already rare enough as is!

Simply enough, adjusting the original example by replacing the 2d6 with 1d12, it'd become something more like this:

#2. Adding Depth:

We can add more columns in the encounter tables. These columns will represent different aspects about the encounters that we can roll on separately!

Usually it can be difficult as a DM to naturally come up with motives for the encounters, showcase the worldbuilding and have it all come together.

This setup can give you a solid guideline on how the creatures/people think (if any), and also sets up the overall area so that you get an idea of what events tend to occur there as a result of its occupants. 

We want to add 3 more columns to the tables to convey different aspects of the encounter. Fill in these new columns corresponding to the expectations of each encounter.

We'll roll each of these and combine them, then we'll interpret them to make a robust, in-depth random encounter with truly unexpected results!

I recommend rolling alot of complete encounters at once and interpreting the context to the vast general area the party is travelling in.

i. Behaviour: How the creatures act. Are they friendly, scared, aggressive, curious, mischievous?

ii. Complication: Something behind the scenes in the encounter. Do they have sick young? Broken equipment? Are they starving?

iii. Significant Impact: This is a tick box, and will only be present under ONE of the rows. It will be rolled like the other columns, but ONLY once. It signifies which encounter is the Significant Encounter

The Significant Encounter will have its encounter's presence prominent amongst all the other random encounters in the area. There could be burn marks and carcasses from a rampant dragon, or a goblin raid leaving tracks moving through the area. Which is the most impactful of the different encounters?

Adding this to our previous example would expand it to:

Rolling this would give us things like:

Significant encounter: Owlbears

Note that the significant impact shows that the Owlbears are a massive problem in the area. Perhaps the Owlbears are agitated for an unknown reason, and are unnecessarily aggressive.

The significance of Owlbears gives us context to the second one as well! Perhaps the hunters raided an Owlbear den, and adopted an Owlbear cub from there as well.

There could be uneaten carcasses, ravaged trees, less wildlife, etc around these parts.

Note how much sheer CONTEXT these columns add to our encounters. It's invaluable!

3. Adding Meaningful Encounters

Usually random encounters tend to be rather mundane and very one-note.

There's usually some general wildlife and monsters, different disparate factions without any rhyme or reason, and maybe a general non-combat encounter or two, but these don't really tell us about the area or its surroundings at all by themselves.

Instead, we can add in wildlife and monster encounters specific to the biome, non-combat encounters, and encounters of nearby factions and/or settlements to the table, and we can even add environmental encounters in there as well.

Note that we're not tied down to 12 encounters, and can expand it ad infinitum according to our need of diversity in our encounters.

Just add in specification and connection, and suddenly the dominos all fall into place.

Lastly, we'll also be adding in 'DOUBLE TIME' which will let us roll on everything twice, and make it so it's a double encounter!

Thus, the table can instead be adjusted to:

Note how each and everything has its relation in one way or another, but through the sheer variance, they remain truly random and novel.

4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling

Lastly and this is just something that I do, but that I found gamechanging. Be sure to pre-roll 5-7 encounters for each session, for the general area the players are going to be headed in.

Note that you don't need to really prep anything at all, just interpret all of them on a surface level as a buffer.

Also note that you don't need to use all of them if they're not needed. The foreshadowing and signs are worldbuilding and having secrets that the players don't unravel is just as useful as the ones that they do, perhaps even moreso. It adds depth and detail beyond the scope of what the party will encounter

It simply let's you get an idea of the connections between encounters, allows for foreshadowing, and acts as a deterrent to getting caught off guard.

Even if you roll mid-session, I recommend calling for a 5 minute break, rolling 5-7 encounters at the same time and interpreting them and their connections before resuming the session.

It WILL make a difference, trust me

Where to start?

It can be difficult getting inspiration or direction to get started in creating these random encounters, and sometimes you don't want to go through the hassle of thinking them up from nothing

For some great conceptual headstarts and examples for these tables, you can check out 'Worlds Without Number' and it's:

- Page 205 (Great general templates for encounters differentiated by broad creature types such as Beasts and Monsters, Sapient Monsters, and Humans)

- Pages 206-219 (For inspired locations to occasionally run rare encounters or groups of encounters in. This works best with flexible/discovered worldbuilding given the significance of some of these, and you also want to add these in sparingly to keep them significant)

- Pages 246-247 (These pages have great templates for the kinds of encounters and situation to be included in the tables, and it can be expanded vastly, and certain options can be selectively and repeatedly chosen to meet our needs. Mood works well as a complication.)

There might be other pages that are useful as well for these sorts of random encounters in the wilderness that I haven't come across yet. If so, give them a shout out and I'll be sure to add them in. It's worth checking it out in its entirety for some great tips!

Conclusion

Again, credit goes to Dungeon Masterpiece and Worlds Without Number for excellent adjustments. This has been quite long, but I hope you stuck around till the end.

Many a session have been made easy but complex ever since this was introduced and I hope that this helps you out as much as it helped me in my prep and improv!

Feel free to give any advice in formatting on Tumblr, or any feedback on the post itself. It really means a lot to me, thanks!

[angelofchaos001]

Me and DM'ing are in the most toxic relationship you've ever seen because I'll be giddy with excitement while planning and then want to run off into the woods after not knowing what I should do next. I'll have an evil grin one moment as the enemy starts doing surprisingly well and then bang my head when the players cheese a major encounter.

So take this as a note to other DM's, or people thinking about DM'ing: Be prepared for the good and bad of it.

Yes, it's really funny when you can give everyone a good laugh with some NPC's dialogue or actions. Yes, kicking the party's ass when they picked a fight they really shouldn've is hilarious. And yes, watching them try to open an unlocked door for 15 minutes is a riot.

But it's not always the funny jokes you see on YouTube or other places, the things that get animated. It's also a lot of thinking, math, trying to explain things, and having to desperately make stuff up on the spot. It can be really shitty to DM, especially if you're like me and aren't great at planning or running fights. It can be annoying to try and tell your players they can't do something, only for them to argue back why it should work. It can be frustrating when you plan out something and your party does everything but that one thing, or when you realize a blatantly obvious thing you forgot to plan for is happening.

To all the new, veteran, experienced or inexperienced DM's out there: The time and effort you put into this game is amazing. The dedication to your craft is also amazing. It's not easy.

I wish every DM and Player an amazing day/night (except the players who actively make the DM's life hard)

[dungeons-and-dictions]

DM Tip to help a shy party:

Have your characters send you 2 truths and a lie. Then spread them via NPCs and/or give them to other players as rumors.

This has worked at my table to jumpstart roleplaying, especially as players try to prove or disprove rumors about themselves.

[araliadon]

My top 3 tips for DM-ing

1. Never let anyone play an artificer for any reason. “Awe but I’ve got a really good-” NO!

2. You make the rules. The DM’s guide is just that… a guide. It’s your world, you can do what you like, even following a pre-written campaign. When Captain Barbossa said; “they’re more like guidelines than actual rules”… he was actually talking about DM-ing a DnD game. *nodding seriously*

3. If you do go “off script” and your players are loving it, it’s kinda important that you actually make notes… (oops!? Found that one out the hard way.)

You can find my wife’s top three DM tips here

[irlactualhuman]

Dm tip:

Give at least one of your super important and necessary quest givers just the most cunty voice.

Make it camp and eccentric or expensively posh and incredibly British.

If you can't pull off cunt, go for annoying.

Source: trust me, bro

[stick-or-treat]

kind of honest pro tip for becoming a better dungeon master: run a one-on-one campaign for a good friend or your partner or your sibling or something.

you'll learn

how to prepare a lot of content very quickly - having only one player means there isn't a ton of interparty chatter or debating how to storm the castle, so content goes by faster.

how to cater content to fit your PCs - with only one PC, they're essentially a Main Character, and it feels weird to send them through content that doesn't tie into their goals or backstory.

how to balance encounters - it is so unbelievably easy to kill a single PC so you get the hang of action economy real quick, especially if you start at a low level.

how to play and run lots of NPCs - not only do you run side characters and monsters, but you may also play a few complex NPCs to help simulate an adventuring party.

how to run combat quickly - again if you are both the monsters AND most of an adventuring party, you have to go fast otherwise it's just you playing against yourself for like 30 minutes at a time.

how to delegate tasks - giving your player some NPC stat blocks to run for you in combat, asking your player for details about the world, working together to decide what "shared" NPCs would do.

how to roleplay real good - you're the ONLY person your player has to interact with, so you'll get a lot of practice driving the plot through NPCs and setting details in a way they'll latch on to.

and if you want to go to DM boot camp like I did, find a player who:

loves combat but also wants to play a fancy noble who avoids combat by rolling Persuasion when at all possible - you will get very good at coming up with non-traditional encounters like stage play combat, fights with heavy social elements, and how to move them into situations where talking just isn't going to help.

loves all monsters, is tired of human-centric stories, and hates the trope of "this entire species is evil therefore you are justified in killing them on sight" - you get really good at quickly modifying modules and encounters to have less humans and way more complex depictions of monsters and monster races.

thinks you're cool and likes watching you create stuff - ok this one is just nice, it's very heartwarming when you apologize for taking so long for your NPCs to take their turns and your player is like "no I love it!! I'm just watching the drama like (⚆ᗝ⚆)"

anyway thank you for attending my Ted Talk

[aggressiveworldbuilding]

suggestion for dms - do 'group checks'

when i run skill challenges i often alternate between individual checks, and more 'turnbased' checks. its a little like pathfinder's skill challenges but simpler.

essentially, choose a dc. i usually do the check DC x number of players.

so if i want have 4 players, and want them to have a high chance of success I would do 10 x 4 = 40.

the challenge dc for that round is 40. you can either keep it a secret or tell the party. either is good. everyone has to make a skill check, using an ability they get to decide, so long as they can think of a way it will help.

------

Scenario: The party is trying to escape the BBEG with a mcguffin. the barbarian has the item and is running.

Barbarian makes an athletics check to push through the crowd Warlock uses intimidation to clear the road of pedestrians Cleric uses perception to yell directions to the barbarian as they run. Druid uses a spell slot to cast mist wall to distract the enemy.

End Round: Add all results and determine success or fail of that round.

-------

Even if one of the players fails, there is the chance that the others will help. If a player uses one of their class abilities/spell slot it is an auto success on their individual check.

I usually have between 3-5 rounds of this sort of 'combat'; it makes everything feel more chaotic, and is super versatile for a lot of different situations.

it also allows players to make their own decisions, and become more invested in the scene. maybe the rouge has a special skill they haven't ever been able to use until a chase, or the bard comes up with an elaborate multi-round distraction.

This ensures that there is a higher success rate for them, with help from their friends.

[a-cool-stick]

DM tip to handle horny bards

Introduce fantasy STDs and STIs

This could be things that result in serious consequences or deal damage or they could be silly things that add a slight challenge or make for interesting roll play and the way it can be cured and how easily also depends on you

I have things like Genital Lycanthropy where you start rapidly growing hair on your genitals that won't stop unless cured and the rate of growth drastically increases during a full moon

You could have your players roll a constitution saving throw and on a fail, roll to see what they get from a list you made

Things can get very silly or very dangerous depending on what you come up with

Happy DMing

[marchenkonig]

Anyone have a good link to PDFs for the new D&D books? I refuse to give more money to Hasbro but wanna see the new system

[mrapplethorn]

Behold! Another Alignment System

Dungeons and Dragons has a system of alignment most of you were probably already familiar with before ever touching a D&D book. Countless images of famous people from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, in which they are ordered in nine simple squares because of their actions in the book, movie, or series.

Alignment in Dungeons & Dragons however works different than advertised: it is a cosmic force that keeps everything in check. Good will always fight Evil on a level inconceivable by mere mortals, as will Chaotic and Lawful.

Humanoids are somewhat caught in the middle of this, being generally creatures of True Neutral nature. Even a devout follower of a Lawful Good god will never be able to attain a level of devotion so high to completely break away from their sinful nature, making them still more Neutral than the immortal being they serve.

Additionally, if we temporarily remove the veil and look at our player characters: they often have a difficult time agreeing on what Chaotic Evil means, for example. So to try to fix all that, I've come up with an alternative: Mortal Alignment.

None of these "Mortal Alignments" are inherently Good, Evil, Chaotic, or Lawful. Instead, they are more focused on how they make themselves feel good, what they think is important to strive towards, and if they live day-to-day or focus on the future.

Both the four elements from Avatar: The Last Airbender and the four houses from Harry Potter make an appearance. You can use those as an example, but they're not strict rules, more like guidelines.

I hope this can help your players or GM's make a more influential alignment choice, both for themselves (to really get into the head of their character) and for their fellow players.

And if you're still interested in how this all fits into the greater picture, here is the greater "Cosmic Alignment" reimagined with pretty pictures to represent those true alignments.

[craigofinspiration]

hey dungeon masters, what was your first adventure?

follow for more dnd shenanigans @craigofinspiration

find my blog at pointsofinspiration.com support me on Ko-fi! Ko-fi.com/craigofinspiration

[galilleon]

Obsidian is a LIFESAVER for TTRPGs

This is a heads up for other DMs or even dedicated players, especially for those interested in detailed, interconnected notes that need to be organised.

Try out Obsidian. It's a stellar note-taking application/program that HAS FULLY SUPPORTED MODS (plugins) in the app itself

This isn't an advert or something, the app is just exactly what I've been wanting for a long time, that I never really acknowledged until someone showed me how insanely useful it could be.

Why does that matter?

The reason 'mods' are so good in such an application is that, usually in note-taking apps, developers stick to a vision and scope and don't go beyond it to keep it all simple for newcomers to pick it up.

The problem with most is that eventually, you get deep into using a note-taking application, and you find an extreme limitation that almost completely roadblocks your progress, and is very infuriatingly annoying to work around.

Obsidian has a solution to this. Community Plugins

The Community Plugins are basically mods that are created by other users like you to fulfill your needs and wants for the darn thing. They used it, found something lacking or something with potential and added it in.

So you can start it default to keep it simple, and when you find that you want something that you want or need, just search it up in-app and add it.

Et voilà! Low skill floor, very very high skill ceiling, extreme customisation as per your preferences and needs.

Any guidance?

There is a guide made specifically for TTRPGs below. The site and the first few videos from the series really helped me get into Obsidian and helped me to explore it all on my own later.

Importantly, they show you how to install the app from scratch, have you enable useful settings, guide you in the basics of plugins, and recommend a bunch of great, useful plugins catered especially to DnD.

For those interested, later parts of the series continue for a really long while as it gets into many intricacies of the app.

The site:

The video series:

[kaybeangel]

Fudging Dice

I have a new video up on my Youtube channel, in which I discuss the practice of fudging dice as a Game Master. Arguments for and against, and what I actually do at my table.

If you play or run TTRPGs, please check out the video and give me your opinions in the comments. Do you agree with my takes? I want to know what you think either way!

[dungeonsandkobolds]

Hi! I'm a new DM, and I'm running my first ever game later this month (a short campaign, like 2-3 sessions). I wanted to ask how I could go about including player backstory in such a short campaign, since I can't have full individual player-centric adventures just yet. I am also going to ask my players to keep backstory simple since this is a short campaign, but I'm not sure how I can include things as a DM on limited time.

Oooooh so this one is a tough-y, 2-3 sessions is a very short campaign.

Some things I would advise (and these would all require input from players):

Give them some parameters to work within (for instance, you're all from the same town, or here's some info about the location you start in, give me a reason why you're there as your backstory)

If you have more than 3/4 players maybe ask players to consider co-creating backstories (their backstories are linked together, think like Vax and Vex, or I currently have a character that runs a shop with my friends' character)

Try and link players' backstories together - someone is looking for someone who killed their family and another person has a missing dad? They're the same person - drama ensues, etc.

Absolutely tell the players to keep it simple like you've planned to - think like 1 big event that's their character's motivation to be in the campaign, which you can address. Outside of the big plot hooks though, it doesn't matter if they pad out their backstories a bit more, but it's mostly for their own benefit

Also, if you can, link the main plot of the campaign to their backstories - you don't have a lot of room for doing multiple things so keep it as simple as possible, link as many threads as you can (but obviously don't force it)

I'm sure my followers will also have some good suggestions for this. Hope my answer helps! Feel free to ask more questions, or ask for clarification!