#dungeon master help

[sunneinsplendor]

Dear D&D makers/players/homebrew etc I have a question, I’m hoping someone can answer (or help me figure out a way to make something work, not picky) So in my current game I’m a Palalock (Hexadin? Idk, I’ve got 12 levels in Paladin and 3 in Warlock so idk which fits) who was tasked to help a newly turned vampire to kill his sire so he can retain his own mind and not become a thrall.

It went very bad. Group turned into bunnies by a betrayer as we fought a thousands of years old vampire general bad. Not the point but just so there’s context about how we got here. Well we managed to escape with our lives, albeit zero of our dignity, but in the shuffle, the new vampire’s time to kill his sire ran out and he’s now a thrall. I know this is just me being a stubborn Paladin who doesn’t like to see people lose their free will, but is there anything in either traditional publishing or homebrew that anyone knows about that could break a thrall out? To be VERY clear, I do not mean “can I make this guy not a vampire?” because that’s a no. Him being a vampire was always going to be a thing and I don’t care if he’s still a damn vampire. I’m specifically looking for something that as a Paladin/Warlock thing I can do to give him his mind back. I know there’s Remove Curse, and Protection from Evil and Good, but not sure if there’s just a straight “Remove Influence” or something I could try and pull off? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[thedegu]

players dni

(looking for ideas for an encounter)

so in my current arc, I want to do a final battle that is just a "survive for 10 rounds" type thing. The crux of it is, is that there is a spell going off that has inadvertently summoned a space worm (eldrich bbeg for later). The wizard who cast the spell needs to keep up concentration while the party holds off the worm and its minions for the duration. The setting is on top of a skyscraper, in the equivalent of the 1920s. My need for help is what are some good lair-action-like complications to happen during the 10-round combat? I want this to be very deadly, and it's a high-level party, so don't hold back.

Things i have so far are: -the building crumpling, the no1 thing to manage as if the building goes down, the spell is canceled, and very bad things happen.

-the worm picking up and throwing PCs off of the roof

-third parties getting involved on the side of the worm and/or against the mage

I feel like I need like one more major setpiece for the 5th round to keep things spicy, but I'm pulling a bit of a blank. Any ideas would be great thanks!

[electaaaaa]

If anyone's got any Dungeons and Dragons like map building stuff that would be swag as fuck cuz world anvil is a cruel mistress and my stylus hates me

[thebrainrotsreal]

I demand an AU where Laios' leg gets fucking crunched during the Red Dragon Battle (re-attachment impossible), and Marcille practices the whole necro-magic first by givin' him a new leg! With Red Dragon Blood/Flesh, he also gets put under the same command as Falin, except since it's only a leg, the curse slowly becomes more and more powerful until the eventual transformation above!!! :D AKA Ah Fuck, Took Too Long Overthrowing the Dungeon Lord, Get Monster'd. Lion + Red Dragon, because I like it. Laios would think it's cool, too, so there. The trade of Cool Monster is Sense of Self / Consciousness eroding into nothing (monster body, monster brain), though, so he's basically on an extra timer to stop/overthrow the Dungeon Lord, or experience a kind of death of sorts. Random idea I had to get outta my head, y'know?

[yarrayora]

the thing about people calling laios white is that theyre somehow framing it with the mindset of real world's political and social justice context where white privilege exists but this is a fantasy world written by a japanese living in japan where most of the time white privilege isn't something you can utilize so is it any surprise that the manga doesn't discuss race by making it a metaphor for racism in the west?

the black skinned elves are depicted as royals, we've never seen kabru got shit for his skin color but he did got shit for having blue eyes back in his hometown, shuro was never depicted as a victim of anti-asian racism because hey. get this. asia as a concept doesn't exist in dungeon meshi's world. in fact im not sure colorism is even a thing in dungeon meshi world? most of the time we see it based on whether they're long-lived or not, and. well. the racial biases of fantasy races that have nothing to do with skin color.

laios is white in the sense that his skin color is pale, but he's not white the same way white americans are more privileged than poc

[cyanomys]

Hey TTRPG nerds

Anybody got recommendations for indie ttrpg youtubers? I'm looking for content that is broadly not D&D-specific, and not actual plays. So, video essays/reviews of games, how-to-plays, GMing/playing advice, game design, etc.

[firsttimedmsendhelp]

Okay here’s another question for you lovely people who play tabletop rpg games. Where can I get miniatures and terrain for my DnD campaign without it costing an arm and a leg to ship outside of the US? Because I’ll find something on amazon or whatever and the prices are ehhh but yeah I’m willing to pay that much it’s fine every once in a while but then when I wanna check out it’s suddenly double that price? Excuse me? Is this all a sign to DIY my own sets? Where do I even begin. Is this a ploy to trick me into buying a 3D printer? Me? A simple minded maiden from the middle ages who thinks technology is some form of witchcraft and sorcery with a 3D printer? I still don’t know how to switch the keyboards language on my work computer without going into the settings. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

*kicks Rahadin out of my favorite character spot*

Here you are Victor I saved a seat for you

[harrywavycurly]

So just for like funsies what would y’all say to the idea of you being besties with the “bad boys of horror” aka Jason, Michael, Freddy and Ghosty while also dating Eddie? So he has to not only treat you right because he’s dating you he also has the added terror of dealing with your besties if he breaks your heart👀

I feel like this would be his face when you tell him who you’re besties are because you’re just like “this is Jason and Freddy oh and that’s Michael he’s quiet and where’s Ghosty? He’s always running around being weird…Anyway…guys this is my boyfriend Eddie”:

[possamble]

Ohh okay it's just a theory. Thank god. The thought of "him dying prompted the continent to lift" straight up didn't even occur to me. I 100% assumed the implication was that it started happening as soon as the dungeon was destroyed, it just took a few days to reach the surface (and a few days more after that to fully re-emerge, as is stated in canon)

[artsy-writy]

Sorry yall, I'm new to dnd but can the dungeon master make the setting ANYTHING? Like, I can make it into the 1800s England with flying dragons sitting on the buildings when they need to rest? With a Sherlock homes-ey character smoking tobacco on a fricking skyscraper?

[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[itsjustj8]

okay so

i have decided to make my own d&d campaign. i have never played d&d. i watch things like critical roll and dimension 20, so i know some of the basics, and i have the players handbook, the dm guide and the monster manual.

am i missing anything? does anyone have any tips or suggestions for me?

(i have no idea what im doing)

[desiquest]

It sounds perfect because it is 💁‍♀️💸 ft. Jasmine Bhullar, Omar Najam

Watch episode 1 of DesiQuest “Big Uncle Energy” at the link below~

[quinnyyyleft]

DM Pro tip - the "Recap" at the beginning of your session is your excuse to be EXTREMELY passive aggressive to your players and what they DIDN'T do.

[waitineedaname]

i think a constructive hobby and/or medication would fix a lot of characters in mdzs