#dm struggles

[firsttimedmsendhelp]

Quick question, how do you figure out puzzles to include in your dungeons? Are there like preset ones or do you come up with it yourself or what exactly? Help a girl out please!

[nebjamin]

So I’m DMing a dnd campaign, and the players are fighting a major boss battle. The enemy is an NPC who was once a friend and companion to the party, until she was bitten by a parasitic Worm and became part of a major hive mind.

The players have her down to 8 HP. I let them know that her body is breaking down and blood is running down her face and her armor, but her expression remains unchanging and emotionless as an unthinking member of The Collective (the hive mind). A player rolls high enough to kill, so I finally give him the ethical dilemma I’ve been building up for the last few sessions: “do you attack lethally or non-lethally?”

After staring at me for a few seconds, he answers “lethally.” The rest of the players are silent. The player, who arrived 37 minutes late to the 1.5 hour session, then proceeds to ask, completely seriously:

“wait, was she our friend or something?”

[dross-the-fish]

I hear things occasionally about D&D DMs who set up cool/elaborate things in their campaigns and the players either find a shortcut through it or get obsessed with some minor detail, and the DM’s just like, 🤦. Did that ever happen?

.

All. The. Fucking. Time

The Dorian Gray arc actually went so tits up the first time they tried it that I ended up rebooting it. The party was supposed to investigate Dorian's dinner parties to discover that he was harboring a group of Dracula's vampires and feeding his guests to them. Initially this was supposed to have them mingle with guests, search the mansion and uncover secrets and possibly obtain Dorian's portrait to blackmail him for information, but for the longest time I couldn't for the life of me get them to break away from the party and explore the mansion. When they finally did they manged to skip over an entire puzzle I had spent hours working on, bypass a fight with a guard and find the portrait. Then one of them whipped out a lighter and screeched "BURN MOTHERFUCKER" because she was upset about what went down with Dorian and Adam. The portrait went up in flames and Dorian aged to dust in the middle of the party and they had to fight their way out of a hoard of vampires.

I ended up letting them redo the quest because we were all very disappointed.

[elwayken]

I love that my current dnd tables characters are just

Princess Peach

Owl with a weird staff

Druid that can’t Druid

Bard that plays the bagpipes instead of hitting the monsters

Communist

[lazyasriel]

This time last year I tried to get my family to play DnD with me. I went through character creation with them and explained the rules and was definitely expecting to hold their hands a lot.

I wrote a short one shot for them that I thought would engage them and help them keep focus (the neurodivergent apple didn’t fall far from the neurodivergent tree)

I don’t think they fully understood their characters’ motivations or how to role play properly because no matter how hard I tried to get them to follow ANY aspect of the plot, the only thing they cared about was completing the first task that was set for them (transporting a wagon from one place to another)

I laid traps, put NPCs in perilous situations, kidnapped them, literally exciting thing I could think of but all they cared about was getting that fucking wagon to the shopkeeper (literally all it contained was basic supplies and the shopkeeper was barely paying them anything)

When they finally delivered it they thanked the shopkeeper for the gold and immediately turned around to go their separate ways completely ignoring the townspeople’s pleas for help because their children were being stolen

At that point I had moved all the interesting plot points to try and get them interested in the story

Basically I was very salty bc I had spent ages planning it all out with music and props and they all seemed bored/disinterested

Funny thing is after the session they all said they had so much fun and wanted to play again some time (we’re doing a session tomorrow which reminded me of it)

Turns out they really enjoyed the simple task of transporting that damned wagon and randomly battling NPCs along the way (and my little sister loved played her giant barbarian half-orc)

I’m just so glad they had fun and didn’t realise how stressed I was the whole time. Hoping for similar results tomorrow!

[aquaw0man]

im currently working on a league of legends DnD campaign and im enjoying it so much and it will be played by one (1) person bc i have no friends

[javaaddiction]

I was complimented once on my storytelling and now I'm crying send help

[lost-wandering-historian]

I'm right now making an old west homebrew dnd campaign and I'm trying to find some art for NPCs. And goddamn do I wish I could draw better or had to money to commission artist.

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

[elandrawssometimes]

I have a 3 tier ship battle map that I use as the player's ship/home base. Its a v good map but I described the tart as a frigate and the map is clearly a brig and none of my players notice or care but it's been bothering me for a while

[stereo-millennia]

I WANT TO EXPLAIN MY DND PLOT TO MY FRIENDS........ ALL OF MY FRIENDS ARE THE PLAYERS.......

[wildcard-cryptid]

I adore my players but everytime I think about why I torment them and their characters I remember session 1: *where they made me figure out piss and shit logistics for a homebrew rule I made about the fae wilds*

[fandomexplosion]

Me creating a dnd NPC with an intricate backstory: oh yeah, this is good. Some of my best work…… they’ll never see this.

[claimedpsychotic]

I hate making maps. They're important and needed - but man.. I butcher every single one.

[tokenlad]

My DND campaign at this point is a draft and my players are editors.

[lazyasriel]

i'm running a one-shot i found online for my DND group and i've been going through it and making notes and it really annoyed me that almost all the npcs were men bc i can do a range of voices for women but i only have one(1) "man" voice (and also sexism)

i have now made all male npcs women and somehow now they are all lesbians

i have yet to write something without lesbians

i wrote the lesbians a gay lore poem